Blood Diner

 

Blood Diner
1987
Jackie Kong

Blood Diner is a delirious mess. I don’t think I like it, but I keep coming back to because there are some inventively goofy sequences, so there must be something compelling going on. The biggest issue with Blood Diner is that it is always running at full tilt. Every moment feels like a grotesque cartoon which would work fine in a short film, but Blood Diner just becomes exhausting. The whole enterprise feels like it runs out of steam as we hit the climax which is just when things should be reaching peak zaniness. This is a problem that plagued horror in the later half of the 1980s, too much comedy and not enough horror elements. 

"Look, I'm just really into contact lens solution, OK?"

 

The film is a riff/homage on Blood Feast (1963), a film that is also very silly but plays it very serious which manages to be much more interesting (while not being a very good film either). Michael (Rick Burks) and George (Carl Crew) Tutman are brothers who have been indoctrinated into the cult of Sheetar a goddess worshiped by the lost civilization of Lemuria. Their uncle, a disembodied brain in a jar, guides them in the ritual to resurrect their goddess and it involves harvesting a lot of body parts from unsuspecting women. 

In 2022 it is difficult to escape the misogyny inherent in the movie’s premise. The vast majority of women in Blood Diner are reduced to victims, literal slabs of meat to be consumed. Thankfully the movie never lingers on their suffering it is much more interested in silly spectacle. The flip side of this is that cast is filled out with non-white actors including a POC woman as the antagonist looking to bring the Tutman family to justice. A nice change from the parade of square-jawed white cis men who were (and still are) the heroic forces of so many films.

 

"Bring on the corn on the cob!"

 

The director, Jackie Kong, has made a movie I did like, The Being (1981), which is also a campy homage to horror films of the past, but that one works much better than Blood Diner. Aside from a dream sequence, the monster movie elements are played straight and this flip flop of tone makes for a much more interesting film. 

Blood Diner is trash, but it supposed to be trash. It’s a trashy homage to a trash film. Technically that makes it double trash. I personally have a pretty low tolerance for movies that try to deliberately be camp and emulate ‘bad movies.’ Ultimately, I feel like Blood Diner is just trying to hard to be wacky and gross and it becomes annoying rather than entertaining. I’m not a fan of Blood Feast either but it is a far more entertaining film and at least has some historical importance as an early gore film. Blood Diner is a movie that has its fair share of fans, but I can’t count myself among them.

Phantom of the Mall: Eric’s Revenge

 

Phantom of the Mall: Eric’s Revenge
1989
Richard Friedman

I don’t know why we need to know its Eric’s revenge up front. Is it important that we know Eric is going to be doing some revenging, before the movie starts? Unsurprisingly, the Phantom of the Mall terrorizes the residents of a brand-new mall. This mall just happens to be built on the remains of the burned down house of Eric Matthews (Derek Rydall). Susie (Kimber Sissons), Eric’s former girlfriend is on the case to discover the identify the mysterious figure killing mall employees.

It's Eric.

"Okay, maybe I should have read the Instant Pot Instructions."

  

Phantom of the Mall: Eric’s Revenge is set to be prime junk cinema and I think if it had been made just a few years prior it might have been. The film we get is unfortunately listless and lacks that maniacal spark that can make a rote slasher film like this feel fresh. There are attempts to make something unique, the mall setting, giving the Phantom modern technology, his kung-fu skills, and making him an angsty teen. These never work as well as they might. The uninteresting staging and dull lighting don’t help matters much either. By 1989 the slasher film was feeling tired, and it shows in a film like this, there’s just nothing here that feels fresh.

By 1989 horror films had also been under intense scrutiny for years, miserable authoritarians had gone after them for their depictions of violence. Many films in the later 1980s were rendered toothless by editors who were told to cut depictions of gore in order to be suitable entertainment for places like Blockbuster Video which had a terrible track record of censoring the films it made available. Phantom of the Mall is filled with scenes that might have had an impact on the screen but are rendered as forgettable.

"What is a weasel?"
"A miserable pile of secrets."

 

None of the cast is terrible but even the charismatic Ken Foree feels like he doesn’t have much to do as a mall security guard. Morgan Fairchild has a handful of fun scenes as an archly evil mayor, the rest of the production certainly could have taken a few cues from her. Pauly Shore appears as Buzz who happens to act just like Paul Shore. If The Phantom (or Eric if you’re nasty) is supposed to be an updated version of the classic horror character he is supposed to be charming, or at the very least a talented and soulful person, but Eric (aka The Phantom of the Mall) is bland. He’s just angry and mean, and although he’s given a tragic backstory it never translates into a sympathetic character.

The most notable thing to ever come out of Phantom of the Mall: Eric’s Revenge is the end credits theme song which is an amusing enough goof on the whole movie (it does repeatedly drop the r-slur so your ability to enjoy it may vary), when I have brought up the movie to others, it’s the only thing that ever gets mentioned.

Phantom of the Mall: Eric’s Revenge isn’t great but if you need some 80’s mall horror nostalgia… I’d just watch Chopping Mall (1986). It’s better in every way and it's even set in the same mall.

Double Feature: Miami Golem & The Kindred

  

Miami Golem (aka Miami Horror)
1985
Alberto De Martino

Craig Milford (David Warbeck) is a TV reporter who is caught up in a conspiracy after interviewing a scientist about cloning research. A wealthy businessman wants him dead and to make matters worse the cloned lifeform might be a potential threat to the universe.

Miami Golem is a middle of the road Italian action/SF film, but it happens to come during arguably the golden age of Italian genre cinema, so it is still very entertaining. Miami Golem keeps things fresh by jumping from detective mystery, action film, and science fiction story. In general, the story is lighter in tone and lacks the excessive gore that was often a hallmark of the Italian cinema of the time. This restraint is what really keeps this film from reaching a level of notoriety that films like Demons (1985) or The Beyond (1981).  Ultimately this strength is also the film’s undoing, as it loses focus by the climax and then wanders around for several minutes afterwards before finally concluding with a limp finale.

 

How I though babies were made as a child.

 

The best element of the entire film is catchy synthesizer score that gets plenty of play including an extended number over the opening credits. Some may say that it is repetitive and the synth sounds cheap, but I think that’s part of the charm. The cheapness of the music mirrors the cheapness of the special effects and if that sounds appealing to you, you should give Miami Golem a look.

 

The Kindred
1987
Jeffrey Obrow and Stephen Carpenter

John Hollins (David Allen Brooks) honors the dying request of his mother by heading to her remote cabin to destroy her research. She also happens to mention a brother that he knew nothing about. John meets a woman (Amanda Pays) who claims to be a fan of his mother’s work. John, Melissa, and some friends travel to the cabin. Here they find something horrible that will make you side-eye every watermelon you see.

I have distinct memories of seeing the poster for The Kindred when I was younger and it giving me a little chill. The movie doesn’t live up to the effectiveness of the poster, but if you’re a horror fan you should be used to that at this point. The Kindred is never bad per se but it rarely rises above passable. The plot is listless where it should be a creeping dread the continues to rise until the appearance of ‘Anthony’.

 

Me thinking about how babies were made as a child.

 

Anthony is the monster, and it is pretty obvious this where all the energy of the film went. There are number of fun gooey rubber monster scenes and other inventive sequences, the most notorious being a scene of Anthony hitching a ride in a watermelon. All of this isn’t nearly enough to right the film, but it is enough to make the slog of the actual plot bearable. I think with a stronger story The Kindred could have fallen into the pantheon of beloved 1980s horror films, as it stands, it is a curious footnote.

Gamera: Super Monster

 

Gamera: Super Monster
1980
Noriaki Yuasa

Look, as kaiju fan, you learn to deal with low budgets, cheap sets, and incredible levels of silliness. None of that will prepare you for how bottom of the barrel Gamera: Super Monster is in terms of well… everything. By 1980 Gamera’s home studio, Daiei, was in deep financial trouble so they decided to throw whatever they could into a film with minimal cost to try and generate some profit. It worked for a little while as Daiei limped along until finally closing for good in 2002. We did get three excellent
Gamera movies in the 1990s out of this, so in that respect we should thank Gamera: Super Monster.
 

 This may be the only reason we should thank it.

Some aliens show up to cause trouble like always do in Gamera movies. The earth is protected by three women, creatively called the Space Women, who are not very good at their jobs. The Space Women get help from a kid who can call Gamera to fight back against the onslaught of familiar monsters that the aliens are unleashing on Earth. Can even Gamera face all his fast foes at once and save the day? That is a much more exciting description of what amounts to 80% stock footage, shot on video sequences, and a final ignoble end for our hero.

The majority of this film is complied out of reused footage from the previous Gamera films. We get a parade of fights with Gyaos, Barugon, etc. To sit through recycled fight after recycled fight is agony. These fights have no connection to the story, there are no stakes, nothing to push the plot along. I can compare it to the inserted wrestling matches in luchador films, they exist to take up time and nothing else.

"A tiny space ship!"

Somehow the scenes with the Space Women are even worse if not as boring. They feel slight and silly, which could be fine, Gamera movies are no strangers to being silly. Even at their silliest, they at least made some attempt to show characters in danger. The Space Women are presented as just embarrassingly bad at their jobs. They aren’t particularly fun to watch.

The film looks like it shot on video and converted over to film. This not only makes the movie look incredibly cheap, but it makes the reused footage stand out even worse than it would normally. The effects are mostly video based and look terrible for even a late stage Gamera film.

 

"Good-bye everyone! I hope someone makes
a kick-ass reboot in the 1990s!"

 

The awful cherry on top of this movie is the half-assed way it kills off Gamera, lazily crashing him into a spaceship and then having someone tell us he’s dead. I understand that this was a minimal effort cash grab for a series that had been dead and gone for some time, but it is still a sad send off for a character with plenty of fans.

I consider myself a big of Gamera (I even recently an essay about it), but this not a film that I revisit often. It’s pure pain and not the fun kind you can get from a bad movie.

The Majorettes

The Majorettes
Bill Hinzman
1987

The Majorettes opening credits are a prime example of the 1980s aesthetic that a lot of modern films try to capture. It features heavy buzzing synths and imagery of the flickering title including a skeleton that occupies the space between cool and hopelessly silly. The film itself never achieves this balance but it does a have few surprises along the way. Are they enough to save the film from itself? That depends on the reason you are watching.

The Majorettes starts out like of the other dozens of slasher movies from the era. There are some horny majorettes and a goof in all camouflage is sneaking around and slitting their throats. Since The Majorettes emerged just as the slasher heyday was crumbling under an onslaught of film censorship, the kills are largely bloodless and that definitely lessens the impact of the horror. There is also the strange choice to have layers of voices making dinosaur roaring sounds while the killer does his thing. A slasher in just a camouflage outfit isn’t an interesting choice, especially by 1987 when we had the likes of Freddy Krueger on the slasher scene.

"No, don't flush the toilet, AAARRRGH!"

Then things take a bit of twist. The killer is revealed well before the end of the film and pressed into service by an evil couple. From this point on The Majorettes becomes an action revenge film complete with a shirtless hero machine gunning his way through bad guys. It’s a weird twist but it does liven up proceedings just a little. The Majorettes performs another genre trick by ending on a final moment that is legitimately disturbing, probably the only real moment of horror in the whole film and they do it through implication rather than yet another poorly edited throat slitting.

Where the film really falls down is in its characterization. I realize this is a low rent slasher film and odds are it never was going to have strong characters, but most of the characters in this film don’t rise above odious. I expect that from the killer and the gang, but the majorettes themselves barely rise above helpless targets. 

This is happens to people who repeatedly pee in the pool.

The soundtrack is a delight, a throwback to earlier 1980s slashers with harsh analog synthesizers. It is far and away the most successful element of the entire film. This feels like the gritty kind of score that a lot of modern synthwave music tries to recapture, but this is real thing. A cheap yet effective soundtrack to a cheap ineffective movie. 

In the end The Majorettes has a lot of elements that just don’t plain work mixed with some novel ideas. Nothing here blends together well enough to elevate the material beyond being a quirky slasher. That’s not to say it isn’t entertaining at times, but there is lost potential to be something so much more than it is.  The whole plot is confusing mishmash of slasher movie, biker film, murder mystery, and T&A exploitation but it never finds its voice.

Satanic Summertime Blues

It’s a notable sign of the times when watching a summer filled with satanic cults, possessions and even the arch fiend himself feels like a fun vacation compared to the world outside. I’m not religious in the slightest, so I can only imagine that someone more devout would take things away from these films that I don't. In the end though a horror film is about the violation of autonomy, and satanic movies are no different. Each and everyone one of these films is about the intrusion of an inherently transgressive force, in this case, they are dressed up in the costuming of Christianity. For most of these films, the religious nature of its antagonist is really just set dressing, Satan and western religion are an easy shorthand for good and evil that most people in the audience will be familiar with. What is particular to many of these films is was how they are centered on the loss of self. The horror of these films tended to be very personal in the nature, I assumed we would be hitting some apocalyptic stories but in most of them the stakes are surprisingly low, a family, some random kid, or a village were threatened, but rarely the whole world. Maybe that’s why they seemed almost cozy in the light of an ongoing global pandemic.

Best Film: The Black Cat

Worst Film: Satan’s Cheerleaders

Weirdest Film: Night Vision

Biggest Surprise: Beyond the Door

Satanic Summer

976-Evil (1988)

Beyond the Door (1975)

The Black Cat (1934)

Brotherhood of Satan (1971)

Fear No Evil (1981)

Legacy of Satan (1974)

Night Vision (1987)

Race with the Devil (1975)

Satanic Attraction (1989)

Satan’s Cheerleaders (1977)

Satan’s Storybook (1989)

The Whip Against Satan (1979)

976-Evil

976-Evil
1988
Robert Englund

The late 80s was the height of 900 numbers. For those who weren’t around at the time, in pre-internet days, you would see ads on late night television offering spooky thrills and sexy times at the push of a few phone buttons and a few dollars a minute. Much like b-movies, the real thrill was often in the advertisement rather than the content. Even Freddy Krueger had his own 900 number which leads us too…

This is Robert Englund’s directorial debut, and he’s obviously been taking notes while working on the Nightmare on Elm Street series. The look of 967-Evil definitely takes inspiration from the later films in the NoES franchise but with the neon cranked up significantly. There are some ambitious sequences that the movie doesn’t quite have the budget to pull off, but they get an A for effort. This film almost functions like a remake of Nightmare on Elm St. Part 2: Freddy’s Revenge gay subtext and all.

Meanwhile at my apartment.

The plot is a very by the numbers affair at its core. We have a poor nerdy loser who goes by the name of Hoax (Stephen Geoffreys) and his much more successful cousin, Spike (Patrick O’Bryan). Both of them live with Hoax’s mom, Lucy (Sandy Dennis), a religious fanatic and incredibly abusive force in their lives. Hoax gets hooked on calling 976-EVIL, a phone line which initially seems to only be giving out fortunes in a spooky voice, but soon it influences him to do evil acts and reward him demonic power. If you are familiar just about any demonic influence movie (Evilspeak (1981)) for an example, you know where this is all going.

Stephen Geoffreys is playing a riff on his famous Fright Night (1985) character, Evil Ed. Hoax is oppressed from all sides and underneath his meek demeanor lurks white hot rage. Geoffreys is a great character actor who should have been destined for greater things. I found him very entertaining throughout the movie. Patrick O’Bryan is less interesting as Spike but that is to be expected, he’s not the one turning into a clawed revenge demon with dorky sunglasses. Special mention goes to Robert Picardo as Mark Dark, the purveyor of the actual 976-Evil phone number.

"Ugh, CornNut breath."

It’s hard to escape the Nightmare on Elm St. parallels here. We’ve got a wisecracking monster with a clawed hand seeking revenge on those who have wronged him. We also get some significant Nightmare on Elm St. 2 elements with an oppressed main character who is subtextually given some sexuality issues through his interaction with the men and women in his life.

Is 976-Evil worth viewing? It never breaks new ground, but for a debut film, it holds together well. It is also interesting seeing Robert Englund employ many of the visual and narrative tricks of the film series that made him a household name. Heck it even garnered a direct-to-video sequel which is rarely talked about. 976-Evil is for the 1980s completist and trash enthusiast, anyone else might want to stick to watching Freddy movies.

Satan's Storybook

Satan’s Storybook
1989
Michael Rider

Satan’s Storybook is an anthology movie of sorts. It is only comprised of two stories and the wraparound segment. None of them are very good but far from the direst of shot-on-video (SOV) films. The whole thing is less than the sum of its parts which aren’t worth much any way. It does show some ambition but fails in the worst way possible by not by being interesting in the process. I love a noble failure, but  I can’t deal with a boring one.

Let’s get the good out of the way. The make-up and costuming are actually quite good, especially considering the budget limitations of the film. Satan has a cool articulated face, the evil jester and undead clown are solid creations. The gore effects are limited to the first story and are very simple but effective. There is clearly some talent behind the lensing of the film, too often SOV films are just point the camera and go, but here there is care taken in setting up of each scene. This all works to give the film more polish than I expected but it also serves to highlights the amateurishness of the script.

"Behold my EVIL NIPPLE!"

Satan’s Storybook’s biggest sin is that characters just endlessly stand around talking. They talk about their pasts, they talk about their feelings, they talk about how much they’d like to kill someone, they talk about being witches or missing their Satanic girlfriend. The film is constant dialogue with just a few scenes of action. It reaches the point of being ridiculous almost immediately and then it just keeps going

The Wrap Around: Satan’s Queen has been kidnapped by another woman and some ninjas. They stand around talking about their pasts like two dorks LARPING in the woods. They like to speak in ye olde speech patterns and one person is named Christeeth (Star of porn and Things (1989), Amber Lynn). Meanwhile Satan has the big sad that his queen is gone so he summons an evil jester to tell him dumb stories.

The Dead Guy and the Witch: A young woman gets yelled at by her parents for reading about witchcraft. They are promptly murdered by the world’s most try-hard spree killer who then gets caught by the cops. He gets the chair and then becomes a murdering ghost who goes after the witch.

"Whoop whoop!"

The Bad Clown and the Other Badder Clown: A clown kills himself and meets death who is also a clown. They talk forever and nothing gets resolved. I like the idea that an evil version of whatever job you do shows up to usher you into hell, like an evil mail carrier or a demonic telemarketer appears before you as you die. 

Satan’s Storybook wraps up with a cliffhanger of sorts promising more chapters to come which thankfully or sadly never materialized. Satan’s Storybook isn’t bad or weird enough to enter the pantheon of cult SOV like Things or Science Crazed (1991) but it has a kind of low rent charm that might win you over if you are in the mood for it.

Satanic Attraction

Satanic Attraction (aka Atração Satânica)
1989
Fauzi Mansur

Satanic Attraction engages in a long string of satanic nonsense that never comes together as a story but more than makes up for it in bloody mayhem and gross-out gags. Satanic Attraction takes its influence from Italian horror of the era with plots that float along on a sort of dream logic followed by bursts of violent gore. It has its own distinct Brazilian flavor and a few cultural references that probably went right over my head during my initial viewing, but if you need a change from firing up House by the Cemetery (1981) for the 54th time, you might find something here to interest you.

"I THINK WE'RE DOING IT WRONG!"

Fernanda (Gabriela Toscano) is a radio DJ who has a gimmick of telling gruesome tales of a murderer stalking the streets. When people start showing up murdered exactly as described, the police and public suspect Fernanda of foul play. This is about the only element of the plot that lands near coherence. Everything else is just a slurry of a masked figure killing people, resurrecting his sister/girlfriend, killing more people and then an ending of absolute nonsense.

If you’re here for nauseating gore this is your movie. There is something especially awful about the grue in this movie. It mixes in a lot of brown and yellow muck with its red viscera creating some truly gross looking images even on the 2nd generation VHS copy that I saw. For all its narrative flaws there are some inventive was to shed blood in this film including razor blades in soap, scimitar through the door, and an overly complicated stabbing though a hammock that must be seen to be believed. There are some demonic shenanigans as well but nothing that rivals the slasher elements.

Every AirBnB ends like this.

There is one gag that is mystery to me and makes me wonder if there is a whole Brazilian cultural element I am missing that would suddenly make this mess become coherent. About midway through the film a character encounters what looks like a pair of severed feet that are also in fact… shoes! Whereas I went, “What?” the character on the screen reacted in complete terror to these foot-shoes. What are they? Why are they so scary? People seemed more scared of the foot-shoes than the maniac wielding two daggers chasing them down the beach. Brazil, what the heck is going on over there?

Satanic Attraction is too long, doesn’t make much sense, and has an ending that might leave you angry if you can invest in the story on any level. That said, the gore is gross and creative. So, your best option here is probably just to fast forward to the all the killing spree moments. Heck the story might even make more sense if you do that. Odds are you won’t be very attracted to Satanic Attraction, unless you are really thirsting for a satanic slasher. If this isn’t you, I’d just go ahead and put House by the Cemetery in your VCR like you were planning.

Night Vision

Night Vision
1987
Michael Krueger

Andy Archer (Stacy Carson) arrives in the big city to follow his dreams of being a writer. He has a difficult time supporting himself and takes a job at a VHS rental store where he falls in love with his co-worker, Jill (Shirley Ross). He also befriends a small-time criminal named Vinnie (Tony Carpenter). Vinnie gives him a stolen VCR as a present. Andy finds a tape in the VCR that shows a recording of a strange ritual. It also begins to give him visions of the future.

The biggest surprise of Night Vision is the eerie atmosphere it evokes. By keeping the cult and the contents of the haunted video tape mostly obscured. We see the cult in action just a little bit but other than knowing they have Satanic connections; they are a bunch of alien weirdos. The haunted VCR displays vague unsettling images and abstract flashes. Night Vision takes the campiest element of its plot and transforms it into something surreal which in turn plays against the very broad comedy of the rest of the film.

The real horror.

The Denver, Colorado of Night Vision is a cartoonish den of crime, poverty, and short-tempered smartass citizens. Andy claims he’s from Kansas without ever stating a city but it is a place so backwoods that he doesn’t understand how hotels work. It’s a place where cloaked cultists roam the streets at night and 10-year-old kids regularly try and steal VHS porn from a rental place the size of a closet. Everyone who lives there is cagey and eager to use other people. In contrast is a character so guileless that he gladly falls in with the first opportunist hustler he meets.

A satanic VCR is an idea ripe for over-the-top storytelling, so to the turn the tables and pull off a character study out of that ends up being a delightful subversion. Instead of still horror we are forced to watch as the idealistic Andy is slowly ground down by this city and its inhabitants. The way the VCR and its contents hollow out Andy can be seen as the various forces of the city at work on him as he naively tries to pursue his writing career despite the doom closing in on him.

I hate daylight savings time too.

One of my favorite elements of this film is how the sound of the city is constantly in the background. I’m sure this was a way to try and cover for the fact that much of this film is shot on sets that are nowhere near a busy city, but what it ends up doing, is keeping the city as an omnipresent force in every scene. The city is so evil as be unreal but that only adds to the weird gloom and black comedy.

Michael Krueger is also the director of Mind Killer (1987) another film that presents itself a broad comedy but turns out to be a very strange horror movie. Krueger sadly died at 39 after directing only these two films. It is a shame because he shows he know how to create unique films with little resources. Night Vision was a delight and one of my favorite recent discoveries. 

Fear No Evil

Fear No Evil
1981
Frank LaLoggia

For the majority of its running time, Fear No Evil plays out like a sillier version of The Omen series with Andrew (Stefan Arngrim) alternating between hapless teenager and a cartoony queer Antichrist engaging in all manner of horrors. These scene grow increasingly strange, a kid is killed via dodgeball, someone grows magical breasts, some zombies show up and do nothing, and a passion play goes horribly wrong with hilarious results. The set-up for Fear No Evil may be nothing special, but these moments certainly are. I’m not saying they make for effective horror film (they don’t) but you’re not going to forget them anytime soon.

The whole story is driving to a final conflict between devil and some angels (or three people who have to become and angel?). In a typical satanic film this would become the most serious conflict of the narrative as the souls of the entire planet on the line. I’m sure Fear No Evil felt like this battle was serious stuff but instead we get a lot of flashing lights, fog machines,  to the point that the whole thing borders on incomprehensible. This vast biblical war plays out something more like a cheap fantasy film. It likes any gravitas, but it does pack in plenty of pretension.

"Ok, that was a pretty good kiss."

The acting in Fear No Evil is uniformly bad but none more so than Stefan Arngrim as Andrew aka the son of the Devil. He is woefully miscast here, neither convincing as a wormy dork or font of all evil.  This only adds to the nonsense lightshow that passes for a climax. There is something very camp about him as a character which leads to the most infamous moment in the whole film: The shower kiss. 

It should say something about Fear No Evil that the most notable moment  in the film doesn’t feature demons, zombies, or even a drop of blood. Tony (Daniel Eden) the local bully, decides to taunt Andrew with a kiss in the boy’s shower. This game of gay chicken takes an unexpected turn as they lock lips and continue doing so. Tony isn’t happy about this, but Andrew seems into it. Is Fear No Evil conflating homoeroticism with ultimate evil? This coupled with Andrews final form would suggest yes, but at the same time there is no doubt that he is the protagonist (anti-protagonist?) of the story. It is a strange transgressive moment for a number of reasons (especially for 1981) and the film certainly could have benefited for having more things like this moment.

"Yeah it was."

The continue the thread of unexpected touches, Fear No Evil features an incredibly strong New Wave/Post-Punk soundtrack featuring Talking Heads, Boomtown Rats, and the Ramones just to name a few. There is no in-movie reason for these particular bands, and I can’t even draw a line from the mood of the film to this music. They have nothing to do with each other and although I enjoy this music, I can’t defend it being in this film at all. The mystery of Fear No Evil continues…

Fear No Evil is a camp disaster and a continuously entertaining one at that.

Twinkle Twinkle Little Star

Twinkle Twinkle Little Star (aka Xing ji dun tai)
1983
Kwok-Ming Cheung

Shaw Brothers Studio is most well-known in the west for their kung-fu film output, and for good reason. They are the studio that brought out some of the most famous, wuxia, kung-fu dramas, and a whole variety of historical and modern-day action films. The output of Shaw Brothers is actually incredibly versatile, they released films ranging from animation to comedy and even in the case of Twinke Twinkle Little Star, science-fiction. Twinkle Twinkle Little Star occupies itself with very broad comedy and more than a little parody of some popular science-fiction cinema of the west.

Plot takes a back seat to silly set-pieces but here goes, Li Tien-Chen (Cherie) is a ditzy and unlucky woman who has difficulty holding down a job. She is swept off of her feet by the son of a wealthy businessman. The two are bound to be married but her potential father-in-law will only approve if she is a virgin. Unfortunately for Li she loses her virginity to a very Millennium Falcon looking UFO. Her future in shambles, she decides to end it all on some railroad tracks. Along come two detectives (James Yi Lui and Tam Tin-Nam) who are also down on their luck and looking to end things. The three decide to prove that Li is telling the truth and hopefully make some cash in the process

Desperately looking for the plot.

So, this is 1980s comedy is dealing with rape in a manner that is tasteless at best and is the one of the  big sour notes (the other is some 'haha men in dresses funny' transphobia) in the whole production. The whole plot hinges on this development so it is kind of hard to ignore. If you look get past that fact, the film dumps ridiculous moment upon moment onto the screen. There are car crashes, musical numbers, and visual gags galore. The barrage is constant to the point where it just becomes exhausting to engage with the film. We get plenty of nods to Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) along the way.

It might behoove you to just skip to the third act where we are treated to an enjoyable lightsaber between James Yi Lui and a certain dark cloaked, heavy breathing assailant wearing a helmet. This is the one moment the film is really effective as the fight is not only silly and creative but manages to create some real drama as both opponents suffer at the ebb and flow of the combat. The set design is wonderful here creating an arena for the fight that feels lifted out of Star Wars (1977) with out directly copying a specific location.

"Golly, that is a big one."

Twinkle Little Star is a big mess. If you are in the mood for a noisy disaster, give it a go, but if you’re just interested in the watchable parts I would skip to the last third. You won’t miss much, and the entire plot is explained at that point, then you can just sit back and watch an enjoyable and very goofy fight.

Dracula's Widow

Dracula’s Widow
1988
Christopher Coppola

The plot of Dracula’s Window is about as standard as they come for vampire films… well almost. In movies of this subgenre, the vampire often awakens after a centuries long slumber and goes in search of a lost love (usually a reincarnation), along the way they bring someone under their control to help do their bidding. Dracula’s Widow indulges in quite a bit of this, Vanessa (Sylvia Kristel) is the wife of Dracula and after being resurrected by the hand of a wax museum proprietor, Raymond (Lenny von Dohlen), she’s off and hunting for her long-lost husband. Vanessa isn’t really the focus here, instead the film splits it’s time between Raymond’s descent into ghouldom and a cranky detective by the name of Lannon (Josef Sommer).

What is interesting is that there is no hope for Vanessa’s quest, Dracula is long dead. The last descendant of Van Helsing is an ancient old man. Her quest is over before it ever gets started and she is locked into the this cycle. There is a tragedy in her character that remains understated. This is especially notable in a film where virtually everything else is overstated. The downside of this approach is that Vanessa doesn’t have a character arc. She wakes up, wanders around looking for her husband until she finds out he’s dead.

"Where is Electric Dreams 2?"

Dracula's Widow sports some decent creature effects, plenty of blood, and even that staple of vampire movies, the very dodgy bat puppet. It’s a glorious celebration of SFX and grue that really gives this movie its charm. There is definite camp streak throughout the film, dramatic tilted angles, film noir voice overs, comic book style scene transitions, and plenty of gore. Vanessa is not the seducing kind of vampire, more the turn into a hideous monster and tear your throat open kind. It is a refreshing change that give this film some 1980s style monster movie energy. There are moments of humor, but they never overwhelm the horror, a common problem in late 1980s horror movies.

I married Dracula and all I got
was this lousy wig (and vampirism)

Lenny Van Dohlen really steals the show here. Van Dohlen has always been an underrated actor, and here he’s perfect as the tragic and romantic lead of Dracula’s Widow. He seems to perfectly grasp what kind of film he’s in and take a melodramatic angle that wouldn’t be out of place in a Universal Dracula film. Despite this, he is an effective as a tortured soul who finds himself in an impossible tug of war between his blood bound actions under Vanessa and his love for his own girlfriend.

I had never heard of Dracula’s Widow until recently and that is surprising. It is a solid little creature feature that goes heavy on the camp at times but always stays true to the fact that it is a horror movie. At its core, Dracula’s Window is a small horror film that keeps its aims modest and meets them. It is the kind of film that doesn’t exist anymore, and the world of horror cinema is the worse for it. 

Forever Evil

Forever Evil
1987
Roger Evans

Forever Evil feels like an Evil Dead (1981) fan film that spirals out of control into a two-hour epic of cosmic horror. Mind you, this is a two-hour cosmic horror epic on the budget of a short film. but what it lacks in technical expertise it more than makes up for in pure love for the genre. Forever Evil is ambitious for sure and I think it is often overlooked in the pantheon of Lovecraft inspired movies. 

The first act of Forever Evil is more or less Evil Dead on even less of a budget. A group of friends gather at a cabin the woods. They drink and fool around. They make weak jokes about each other. We are supposed to be caught off guard when the horror finally takes hold, but the homage is so obvious that it never becomes suspenseful. Where Evil Dead delivers its horror in a number of inventive ways, Forever Evil lacks that spark. It does engage in some gruesome baby removal so kudos for stepping over the line a little bit.

"I'VE BEEN RUBBING MY WOOL SOCKS ON
THE CARPET FOR THREE HOURS!"

Had Forever Evil ended there it would be mostly forgotten as a simple Evil Dead rip-off. It is after this point that the film finds its own direction as a mystical detective story complete with Lovecraftian hints of a cosmic horror while never directly referencing Lovecraft’s work itself. There is an intriguing element of murders coinciding with a quasar’s activity. There are the requisite ancient tomes and talks of old gods. It is all a fun love note to Lovecraft's work.

Our hero Marc (Red Mitchell) is a beefy, all too smart, bad ass and charmer. He lacks the comedic smugness or cowardice of Bruce Campbell and instead plays the role perfectly straight. Mitchell’s performance is fine but the character is more power fantasy than person. I have to make special note of his invention which is teased as something amazing near the beginning of the film and later it turns out to be a wrist mounted harpoon gun that can pull a small log. In a way it is the perfect metaphor for the ambition of Forever Evil versus. what it can deliver.

"No log is safe from me."

Reggie (Tracy Huffman) serves as Marc’s sidekick/love interest. She is also assured and competent. Having two very capable characters can make for an interesting story but horror really requires our protagonists to be on their back foot for most of the film. Here they are almost never in that position.

Forever Evil invests much of its focus on the main antagonist, a zombie played by Kent T. Johnson. Here is where the effects and make-up really shine as the zombie becomes increasingly damaged and decayed as the movie progresses. He’s a fun monster and used effectively. It shows that Forever Evil does boast some decent gore when it wants to.

Forever Evil is an earnest yet occasionally silly foray into cosmic horror by people who obviously love the genre and that love shine through despite its many shortcomings. It clocks in at two hours long thanks to a laborious set-up but once it settles into it's own story things move quickly. 

Mutator

Mutator
1989
John R. Bowey

A medical company hires a new security guard after one 'vanishes'. David Allen (Brion James) is the new hire but he is also a highly trained scientist who is investigating the company. He comes to find out that genetic mutants are running free in the building and only he and a band of security guards know what is going on. Can they escape before they become cat food?

Mutator is yet another in a long string of Alien (1979)/Aliens (1986) oh, let us say inspired films. A group of people are trapped in a location and must get from point A to point B while monsters roam the air ducts and occasionally snatch unsuspecting people. It is a well-worn formula and that is because it works… mostly. A lot of these movies are terrible. Mutator is also terrible but it has three things that make it interesting. 

1) The Building

I am an aficionado of brutalism and a large portion of mutator takes place in a cool brutalist space. The whole evil corporation looks more like a haunted mall and it gives parts of the movie a low-key vaporwave vibe.  Other settings are interesting industrial spaces that are a step above the typical drab factories that plague many movies. More importantly, it’s all lit so that you can see it. This film is almost entirely shot on location which means the filmmakers didn’t feel the need to hide shoddy sets in the dark.

2) The Monsters

Let me be upfront, you never get to see the monsters in full view. What do you see is amazing. Pale furry boot/claws, ripped abs, and cute little paws. These aren’t just any old rubber monsters, these are giant mutant kitty cats! It’s a shame we really don’t get to see them do anything until the 45-minute mark and even then they are relegated to quick cuts and POV shots.

3) Brion James

You probably know Brion James from the dozens of roles where he is a bad guy. One of his most famous roles is as the replicant,  Leon Kowalski in Blade Runner (1982). He’s a big guy with a unique look and he was typecast as a heavy his whole life. So, it is a special treat to see him here as the hero, and not only that, he’s a scientist who uses his training to fight off the monsters. Mutator stops short of giving him a full-on romance plot but it comes closer than I expected. Brion James fans this your film.

These are the highlights of a movie that makes a lot of mistakes and by all rights should be a complete failure. I see its value really for people who are fans of low-budget movies, their culture, and their nuances, anyone in it to see a competent horror-action move is going to be very disappointed. There are some silly things for the joy of bad movie fans but probably not enough to keep them engaged.

If Brion James vs. The Thundercats sounds like your thing. Check it out. 

Beyond the Rising Moon

Beyond the Rising Moon (aka Outerworld aka Star Quest: Beyond the Rising Moon)
1987
Philip J. Cook

Beyond the Rising Moon was a charming surprise. When I originally selected it, due to the date it was released and the fact it looked like it was a small direct to video feature. I expected something akin to the numerous Alien (1986) rip-offs that were very popular around this time. I was delighted to find a more cyberpunk film that was filled with ambitious miniature and model effects. Beyond the Rising Moon borrows actually ends up borrowing from Star Wars (1977)  more than Alien. There are plenty of shortcomings but there is also so much love and effort put into the production that it is easier to overlook these things. 

The writing is perhaps the weakest element of the entire movie. The first act of the film contains endless amounts of expository dialog all of which add up to very little. We learn of a corporate created cyborg assassin and her companion as they race against that same corporation to locate and claim a spacecraft created by an ancient alien race. Nothing explained is especially relevant to the story. It gives the characters some minimal motivation, but it comes across as workmanlike at best.

Waiting around for the plot to happen.

The acting is stiff and awkward, but this feels more like a combination of amateur acting and the less than perfect writing, than the actors being bad. The dialogue is stiff in a way that harkens back to SF films of the 1950s. If you are in a generous mood you can pretend that is a deliberate choice.

The special effects on the other hand a quite good and once I found out that the film was made for around $8000, they are downright stupendous. The models and cities go a long to building an interesting future world. The spaceship designs are cool and sleek. The space dogfights are exciting and dynamic in ways I did not expect from a small film like this. When you are used to seeing the same 6 effects shots from Corman films from this era, seeing a bunch of lovingly filmed sequences is refreshing. This is still an obviously amateur effort but that makes it even more impressive at times.

Space Hotel (Spotel)

During the home video boom, it was easy to find clone after clone of big-budget films looking to grab the interest of people. The best of them approach their subject in a unique way or push their content into places that a large studio would never dare to do.  Beyond the Rising Moon takes what could have been a typical Star Wars clone and breathes life into it with a lot of enthusiasm and love. It cloaks the film with a charm that might otherwise be absent in a more mercenary production.

Check out Beyond the Rising Moon, but make sure you track down the original version on YouTube. At some point, the SFX sequences were redone with CGI for the SyFy Channel. Much like the Star Wars Special Editions they look terrible, out of place, and diminish the film.

Drifting Classroom

Drifting Classroom
1987
Nobuhiko Ôbayashi

Sho Takamatsu (Yasufumi Hayashi) is a schoolboy who has a fight with his mom before running off to class. While in the midst of a song about the school principal marrying another teacher the whole school is catapulted into a strange desert landscape. The bottom floors fill with sand and strange monsters invade. Sho must try and hold together everyone in his school as well as find a way home, but there may be no way home after all. 

Drifting Classroom is a glorious mess. Tonally it is all over the place. Initially, it has the look of a Spielberg movie of the same vintage. The is a quality of light and a kind of joyous youthful vibe. Later there are weird musical numbers, cute monsters, and some light drama. Then the movie shifts gears and the horror and mystery settle in. That’s fine. Plenty of movies handle a major tonal shift, but then Drifting Classroom just keeps going. Broad comedy sits side by side with some graphic horror. Children die by the dozens, but hey there’s a romance subplot that seems cute, but then that ends in tragedy too.

I know there's a monster but I just keep staring at that kid on right's haircut.

A well-structured movie can navigate tonal switches, but this is not a well-structured movie. It is more a collection of moments that constantly pile on top of each other. It’s difficult to know what or who to invest yourself in, there are just so many characters and they all run around having their own disconnected moments. There is a struggle for leadership, there are romances, there is the mystery of what has happened to the school, and although there are a lot of the things happening none of them feel like they have anything to do with one another.

The look of film mirrors its jumbled narrative. We move from the cheery soft light of Earth to the strange bluish light of the school on the alien desert. There are some gorgeous sets and scenes, these run headfirst into the clumsy green screen and stop motion effects that don’t exactly take you out of the film because the whole thing never lets you forget its strange artificiality. There are some large-scale monster effects that clever and quite fun. The film certainly could have used a little more of their presence.

#MovieForChildren

No more is the weird disconnected nature of this film more apparent than in its closing moments.  We have what is without question q tragedy of children trapped in a hostile environment and torn away from their families.  We get impassioned speeches by their parents about how this is a good thing, as they desperately try and force some kind of happy ending into place. While you are reeling from that the movie wallops you with a) an underage girl talking about how she is going to have another character’s baby and b) a black kid pouring sad out of an extremely racist bank. 

It’s a confusing mess but Drifting Classroom is an engaging mess at least.