aka The Legend Lives/Madman Marz
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
A likable group of camp counselors run afoul of the super human psycho Madman Marz in this wonderful piece of campsite slasher horror. Mean as hell farmer Marz murders his family and is lynched by the locals shortly after. His body vanishes from the hanging tree and now local legend holds that he’s still lingering around his old stomping grounds. A song and a story about the legend inspires one cocky young camper to lunge a rock through the Marz estate window and shout out some challenges. Sure as hell, the madman returns and begins picking off the counselors. Is he a demon? A ghost? Some sort of zombie monster? It doesn’t matter because he has his own damn song and a big-ass axe. It follows the basics of the genre but for some reason has always felt a bit off which would explain why it’s a personal favorite. The lovely Gaylen Ross (billed here as Alexis Dubin) makes for a fine lead and the rest of the cast are memorable enough to not be wastes of space. The shadowy beast that is Marz is one memorable villain and the film follows a familiar yet strangely refreshing path. There’s also a death by car hood, so that’s pretty fantastic.
aka There Was a Little Girl/And When She Was Bad/Flesh and the Beast/Scared to Death
⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
Mentally ill siblings are the worst, I can vouch for that message, I know just how awful I am. A lot of people don’t know this about me but I had a twin brother named Rüdiger. He perished in his late twenties when the treehouse at my parent’s place mysteriously caught on fire. All I’m saying is it’s hard to be an unstable twin and it’s easy to set old wood on fire. With this in mind, I can sympathize with the plot of this flick. Julia is a pleasant young teacher at a school for the deaf. Her life seems to be going pretty well but when her deformed (some undiagnosed skin disease is fucking her up something fierce) and deranged twin sister (she’s always been a violent pain in the ass) escapes from the nuthouse she’s been calling home for years, Julia’s life takes a turn for the worse. Looks like Nutty McGee has a special plan for Julia on their upcoming birthday. Their past is full of Nutty torturing her sis and when Julia goes to visit after their uncle Father James reached out, Julia gets a guarantee that her birthday will be one to remember from her mentally and physically deteriorating sister. Granted, I’m probably sympathizing with the wrong person here but that’s never stopped my enjoyment of a film… just look at my firm support of Dolores Umbridge in Harry Potter 5: The Pink Hero Rises. So, Psycho Sister (Mary, if you would like me to stop insulting the mentally ill) and her trusty Rottweiler begin terrorizing Julia and have no issue murdering the hell out of her friends and acquaintances. Hell, even an adorable deaf kid gets his ass killed offscreen… that’s a movie that knows its priorities. It also leads to an unexpectedly heartbreaking scene in the classroom where the movie pays more heartfelt detail to a character’s death than most 80’s stalk and slash flicks. Julia’s doctor boyfriend Sam (a magnificently mustached Michael MacRae) believes his lady that something strange is going down but proves to be about as useless as everyone else in Julia’s life and the revelation of another killer adds an unnecessary bit of drag that feels just a tad too silly. There’s a disturbing birthday party (80’s horror flicks were always inviting corpses to birthday parties) that stretches on well past the point of being welcome but some of the cheap violence is effective nonetheless. It’s worth a watch for the opening acts which pull off a nice balancing act of tension, characterization and death. It feels way more American than Italian but never comes off as awkward in its psycho-thriller progression over the expected giallo tendencies... except when it finally loses its fucking mind. It may run out of steam but the dog puppet is hilarious and it’s mostly an interesting time no matter which twin you’re rooting for. You should be rooting for Julia… I feel like I should clarify that… in honor of Rüdiger and the tragic accident that befell him… an accident I had no part in whatsoever… the judge said so.
⭐️1/2
Three filmmakers looking for a story and filming their exploits run afoul a Minnesota legend and get the usual found footage comeuppance. The opening text warns that this is footage from a recently discovered vhs master presented in its original form but then right after they throw the standard poorly-acted Blair Witch apology in your face, opening credits completely negate any suspension of disbelief. Great job. Gateway Township has a history of ghost sightings, missing hitchhikers and strange noises and it all comes back to the notorious Satan worshipper Jasper Hagan and I guess it’s intriguing enough to get the small crew out there following an email from a local. Of course, old creepy Jasper had some property in the woods and of course our gaggle of dimwits will be heading out to the isolated forest. There’s more camera shots that defy the reality they’re going for and you can’t technically call anyone actors because I’m sure that would be considered libel. Brenda, said motor-mouthed Minnesotan gal, takes them on a tour of the woods but doesn’t want to stay there too long. Inverted crosses get the director/host/producer (probably) Chuck really excited and he refuses to listen to reason because he smells himself a ticket to big bucks city. He and his cameraman head to some abandoned cabins where bad shit went down and the girls are left behind in the car to ramble on about shit and get spooked. There’s an out-of-focus POV shot to represent the evil force, a satanic journal that was probably crafted during a study period and a distorted noise to go along with the POV. Things pick up when it drops the broke-ass Blair Witch angle and hits us with a broke-ass Evil Dead one. Is it good? No. No, no, no, no. Is it entertaining? Also, no but it did happen and I can’t deny that.
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Larue, a schizophrenic young man with compulsive reading syndrome, is released from a New York hospital thanks to budget cuts and overcrowding. He shacks up at the Love Hotel and the insanity escalates from there. Dr. Noguchi, the chief psychiatrist at the hospital and a pigtailed sexual surrogate therapist in training (played by Kerri Kenney) are trying to track down an escaped Tremataurus Cycloptus, a giant one-eyed prehistoric flatworm recently discovered in Mexico and now on the loose spreading an incurable flesh deforming disease which the horny doctor believes will make him immortal... transforming him into a love god. Larue meets his new neighbors, the crime-scene-cleaning mother daughter duo (mom is obsessive in her cleaning and the daughter is a mute who has the hots for Larue) and his soon-to-be new roommate, a ski-mask-wearing man with Tourettes Syndrome. There’s also a blue-painted self-mutilating schizophrenic prostitute named Kathleen who believes herself to be Kali and slaughters people as sacrifice to Shiva... she’s my favorite. All these chaotic characters come together thanks to the exploits of the weirdo eye monster running around the streets of New York, attracted to shiny objects. If my above wording made this sound like a cohesive film, I apologize. This movie is an exhausting mess but that’s exactly what it’s going for. Chewed-bubblegum sculpting, the anal birth of a worm monster and an attempted rendezvous with prostitutes in the uncleaned crime scene of Kali’s handiwork ring like hellish bells as you take a journey down one fucked up rabbit hole. The lack of establishing shots and abuse of closeups further throws you off your feet. Think one of those rage monkeys from 28 Days Later with severe ADD and you’ll be close to what the experience is like. There’s nothing quite like it and I feel we should be thankful for that.
aka High Moon
⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
In the late 1800s, Canyon Creek, Texas has been visited by a roving gang of werewolf gunfighters. A mysterious man in black rolls into town with a personal vendetta and plans on putting an end to the gang of murderers. I’m so damn happy the werewolf makeup doesn’t take the Van Helsing route and charmingly runs more along the lines of Werewolf of Washington and Lone Wolf. That’s just fine by me. The mystery monster slayer kills the beasts, burns them, makes his peace and is cut down by a ninja (yes, a ninja) that he obviously has a history with. Now that’s how you open up a flick! After the credits, we join the action in the present day some one hundred and fifty years later. Following a big storm, a bunch of old wooden coffins appear next to a mutilated man in the middle of a small creek. You better believe those lycanthrope bastards are back but fortunately for us, the man who put them down has also returned from the grave. The kids who found the disturbing site claim that werewolves are to blame. The adults dismiss the claims but they’re gonna regret that soon enough. The gang of reanimated werewolves stumble across a biker gang drinking and partying and after some quick killin’, get themselves some wheels. The sheriff is dealing with marital issues, the sheriff’s daughter comes home from college to visit, her best friend Lucy falls for the mystery gunman and a welcome Sean Patrick Flanery is the scuzzy town mayor who has a history with the sheriff and is also banging his wife… YOWCH!!! Saloon fights, cgi blood, cowboy hats, begrudging team ups, a dimensional-traveling ninja called The Keeper, severed limbs, werewolf prostitutes, ripped out hearts and maybe even… love? Of course the fate of the world is on the line because if these things spread and evolve, that’s it for the human race. It feels like a vanity project for a producer who really wanted to be a cowboy and if that’s the case for Chad Michael Collins well, good for him. He’s got the brooding badass bit down (even if he looks like a less-rugged Zack Ward) as the monster hunter Colt. I mean, it still feels like trying too hard (ya never go shirtless under a bulletproof vest, nobody will ever take you seriously) but he’s way better at it than eighty percent of the folks that attempt it in these kinda flicks. Ted Ferguson from The Hopewell Haunting shows up as the town doctor and I was way more excited to see him than I probably should have been. Performances aren’t strong all around but they do lead to some hilarity where one probably should not be giggling but that’s a bonus in my eyes.
⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
An indescribable dread curses a culinary teacher following the horrific suicide of a student who was claiming to be plagued by the noise of chimes. Unease is our only co-pilot as we join our protagonist on his one-way trip to a psychosis slowly decaying himself and perhaps even the city he calls home. There’s not much breathing room with its limited run time but we’re in some capable hands and we’re supposed to feel like we’re suffocating anyways. Kiyoshi Kurosawa hits gold again but I am biased as he is the man behind one of the greatest horror films ever made (Kairo), not to mention a list of wonderful genre additions to boot (Cure, Sweet Home and Retribution come immediately to mind). I don’t often label things this good as unbearable but the tension is so damn thick, even in the most mundane of settings, that it’s the only word I can really think of. The careful audio design adds an unsettling depth to the proceeding and just further proves how much of a master Kurosawa is.
⭐️⭐️⭐️
A scuzzy grave robber has no issue whatsoever desecrating the tombs of Egypt. His qualm-less attitude bites him on the ass when he snatches a few pieces from the unmarked final resting place of the evil Nefratis. Not one to let something like death get in her way, she tracks down the thief and follows him to Los Angeles. She begins going about collecting her relics from the archeological scumbags our grave robbing hero has sold them to. After his father is found with his heart ripped out, a young man begins to investigate. This brings him to Cameron Mitchell, who just so happens to have in his possession one of those relics. He is not forthcoming in the least with information and lies his ass off when asked about any Egyptian relics purchased on the black market but his kind niece offers her assistance. Turns out Nefratis needs these relics to carry out a ceremony where she sacrifices a young woman to maintain her youthful vigor. This is bad news for Cameron Mitchell’s favorite niece. Fred Olen Rey brings his usual lazy charm and John Carradine pops in for a nice cameo. Cheesy fun should not have teased Sybil Danning and then not delivered Sybil Danning. The queen briefly graces us with her presence in the opening scene and then vanishes like the mirage of primeval blistering sex appeal she is. Instead we get Michelle Bauer as some sort of energy shooting vampire/zombie/mummy queen. It’s not a completely fare trade but it’s one I can live with.
