Guy Gerard Noel

The Killers

United States - 1965

Director Don Siegel

Starring - Lee Marvin, Ronald Reagan, Angie Dickinson and Clu Gulager

This Mummy poster and the Horror of Dracula poster down below come courtesy of user eatbrie at the Movie Poster Forum.
Check out the Movie Poster Database page on Gerard Noel HERE. I found the artist through the Killers poster at the top, I am a big Lee Marvin fan as you may know and was instantly attracted to the poster. I had already comitted myself to seeing the film when I noticed the names of the other stars. Could you ask for a better classic lineup than Clu Gulager, Angie Dickinson and Ronald Reagan? I didn't think so. I regret that I do not have the time to do enough research to uncover more on this great French artist. His style reminds me of something between a screenprint and a theater backdrop. Awesome. If you know anything more about Guy Gerard Noel, drop us a line.

War Is Hell

United States - 1963

Director - Burt Topper

At The Order of the Tsar
France - 1954
Director - Andre Haguet

The Caine Mutiny

United States - 1954

Director - Edward Dmytryk

The Horror of Dracula
United States - 1958
Director - Terence Fisher

Prime Risk

I love the burning Capitol Building and rocket blasted Washington Monument.

Prime Risk

United States – 1984

Director – Michael Farkas

Lightning Video, 1985, VHS

Run Time – 1 hour, 38 minutes

Prime Risk is yet another movie that is completely at the mercy of history, but what film that hinges around a specific technological marvel isn’t similarly parochial? Without some historical awareness of the profound leaps in computer science that occurred in the 1980’s and 90’s you would be justifiably confused and or bored by this film whose plot relies so completely on magnetic information storage and retrieval methods. You might also have no idea that is quite literally the mold from which 1995’s Hackers was crudely squeezed. While Prime Risk features neither the cool topical pseudonyms like “Crash Override” nor the thrilling and absolutely timeless rollerblading scenes of its successor, it does have a doofus-male/ hot-female whiz kid team-up on the run from the Feds while simultaneously trying to stop a dastardly computerized plot to rule the world.

In the same manner as the atomic monster films of the 50’s, Prime Risk relies on the public’s sketchy knowledge of the subject to orchestrate a cacophony of both fear and intrigue. In this case it is computers, those dastardly machines that are slowly (in the 80's) encroaching on our lives with all their menacing and mysterious bleeps and bloops. Ahhhh, the great fear of new technology; that in embracing it for our convenience or security before we fully understand it, we open the door for all kinds of unpredictable malicious mayhem. This theme is driven home in the opening sequence of Prime Risk when a jamming-signal broadcast by some as-yet-unknown source causes televisions, remote control cars and escalators in a shopping mall to go haywire. See!? If they can threaten our catatonic communal consumption experience, the very fabric of our society is clearly threatened with a fundamental and catastrophic unraveling!

One notable break with its postwar predecessors is the use of a female science-whiz as the protagonist (despite this she still plays second synthesizer to the much less interesting male lead). Julie (Toni Hudson) is still in high school but she is already a brilliant computer engineer. Because she is a woman however, her application for an IT job at the local bank is rejected. Vowing revenge, she uses an oscilloscope to read the magnetic pulses from an ATM computer at the bank, and coverts the electromagnetic cycles into a tone frequency -sound notes- which she uses to determine the PIN numbers for people's bank accounts. Somehow she teams up with a depressed classmate Mike (Lee Montgomery) who needs raw cash because his authoritarian father won’t pay for anything but law school. In the process of manufacturing fake ATM cards and fleecing the bank however, Mike and Julie stumble upon a terrorist organization that is doing the same thing, intending to crash the Federal Reserve computer system and bring the world, and U.S. financial systems to their respective knees.

Just as the shit is hitting the fan, Julie and Mike turn to the Feds whose agents Minsky (Clu Gulager), and Yeoman (Sam Bottoms) don’t believe a word of it because there’s absolutely no way the fate of the totally invulnerable and monolithic U.S. government could be in the hands of a couple of punk kids. But we know better. We know it happens all the time because by the dawn of the Reagan era we’ve become cynical about American omnipotence, (thank you Vietnam!) and because we saw War Games last year.

A Spanish Embassy Home Entertainment VHS insert from someplace. 

French poster from Movie Poster Database

The Willies

The Willies

United States - 1990

Director – Brian Peck

Prism Entertainment, 1990, VHS

It seems to me that The Willies came a little too late for just about everything it was trying to do. It dragged its sorely underfunded carcass across the finish line well after the race was over, and more importantly after the crowds were gone. Fortunately, due to the lasting virulence of the VHS format, we can deride this little gem in the comfort of our own homes.

A campout in the woods finds several young boys including Sean Astin (The Goonies, Lord of the Rings) who are diligently reciting their well practiced and clearly written by an adult spooky stories and trying to give each other “The Willies”. For apetizers, it’s mostly urban legend fare, including the “fried chicken” rat gag, and an amusing poodle in the microwave bit which is painfully suspenseful thanks to some exceedingly long static shots of granny bubbling with excitement as Pookums whimpers. Unfortunately as I was soon to discover, this part was the most fun.

Ahhh, but all that was all before the credits, now it’s really time to start skimming the scum off the long since curdled Creepshow. The first of the longer stories is a classic. 8 year-old nerdy kid gets picked on by mulleted Iron Maiden shirt wearing bully. When he goes to the bathroom during the math test, Nerd discovers what appears to be a giant fanged turd-monster coming out of the toilet. Returning to class to raise the alarm, he pees his pants. No one believes him of course, especially not the teacher, cruel Mrs. Titmarsh , whom the monster promptly snacks on. Strangely enough, the poop monster also likes to roam around the halls of the school disguised as James Karen who along with his fellow Return of the Living Dead star Clu Gulager are only two of the staple no-name cameos in this film. In any case, after eating all the bullies we get to see the monster put his rubber human outfit on and glare menacingly at someone knowing full well that the gleam in his eye is really just undigested corn.
It’s beginning to look a lot like a shit-themed movie when in the second story a fat kid named Gordy Belcher repeatedly breaks into a farm to steal manure. The farmer Mr. Spivey, who looks at first like Bruce Dern, but disappointingly isn’t, has a meth-lab set up in his barn where he pumps the shit full of amazing growth hormones which yield freakishly large vegetables. Gordy though uses the poop to lure flies which he de-wings and uses to populate tiny dioramas including a diner, a castle and a church replete with fly-Jesus on the cross, and fly-preacher.

When Gordy is suspended from school for giving fly laced cookies to the cheerleaders, his chesty mother destroys his fly laboratory and he has no choice but to return for a fresh batch of shit. Instead of chasing him off, Spivey hooks Gordy up with some super chronic shit, which is promptly fed to more flies. Predictably some giant flies make an appearance and not so predictably eat Gordy’s arms off, leaving the rest of him to wallow like a big turd in the swirling poorly planned low class bowl of this movie.

The only reason I'm labeling this Gorror is because of the poodle explosion and the armless kid, and comedy only because of the plethora of dumb cameo bit-parts and sheer laziness of the production which were just about all that I found enjoyable about this movie. I knew as soon as the Iron Maiden bully pissed his pants in close up that this was going to be simple. I was right.

Hunter's Blood

Hunter’s Blood

United Statesl – 1986

Director – Robert C. Hughes

Embassy Home Entertainment, 1987, VHS

Run Time - 1 hour, 42 min.

Surprisingly comfortable within the warm fold of 80’s exploitation, Hunters Blood, with all the B names behind it, has a lot to go on, and with little hesitation it sets to work. The cover, and box synopsis immediately invoke Deliverance, an association I am surely not the first to draw (and in fact the reason I bought it). Nevertheless, Hunters Blood quickly sidesteps any chance at class with an instant shower scene, an asexual one, but the point is that we establish this as exploitation right away.

David (Samuel Bottoms, Lance the surfer in Apocalypse Now) and his dad (Clu Gulager) don flannel & vests and hop into his uncles rumbling Bronco and rip up the road on their yearly hunting trip. Picking up dads brother and his New York lawyer buddy Marty (Joey Travolta) they back slap their way up to a beer joint in the Apilachians where loudmouth Marty plays the boorish tourist and gets the vengeance ball rolling. After sexually harassing the barmaid, they get in a knife fight with some more hillbillies, and take flight in the Bronco.
With sheer stupid blundering luck propelling them from here on, the protagonists run into the redneck’s poaching operation. Time after time they are self-trippingly lucky enough to escape, capture, be captured by and escape again the bloodthirsty filth encrusted hillbillies. Yet, despite prolific flayed and crucified warnings from skittish Game Wardens, the group resorts to positive thinking.
Thanks to good old fashioned yankee naivete, they continue the hunting trip. It is this very stubborn determination to die that makes the horror films of this generation so watchable.

Somebody has to get shot, yes, there will be blood in this movie. Between a fair mix of shrieking idiocy and meat-headed obstinacy, the surviving civilised guys will, after a few dramatic personnel cutbacks, surely catch the last meat wagon back to town .

VHS sleeve from Backwoods Horror

  The poster whence came the artwork. Courtesy of 123 Nonstop as is the one below.