aka Splatter Asylum
⭐️⭐️
A woman drives alone on an empty street, the quiet is disrupted by two desperate women who force their way into her car and tell her she needs to drive. A gaggle of children who cannot contain their joy and giggles attack the car. The three women speed off and someone flies across the hood of the vehicle. The driver stops to check and is attacked by a homeless man. Thinking quick, the blonde chickadee in the backseat grabs an umbrella and forces it into the homeless man’s eyeball. The children, who have reappeared, cannot help but smile. One of the girl’s tells the driver what has brought them to this point. The day before some dance club owner purchases an old mansion on the hill, aptly named Dread Mansion. What does one do with a creepy-ass mansion on a hill? Throws a party! Duh. The housewarming party comprised of a friend group that definitely spends its weekends playing Magic seem to open an evil doorway on accident and splattery deaths come their way. A part-time Elvis impersonator and full-time comic shop employee finds out his pregnant girlfriend is going to abort their child, some dude in a wheelchair and a stupid hat is convinced the house is cursed, new mansion owner Rudy doesn’t have time for this spooky bullshit, the dark history of Dread Mansion is shared by bonfire and that sets up all we’ll need to know for what’s coming. An antique chest gets opened, an ancient tome gets discovered and various evil entities get themselves some freedom for the first time in too long. But before you get excited, remind yourself you are watching a Todd Sheets film. So you’ll have to deal with plenty of ambling action and attempts at comedic dialogue that just comes off as people who dislike each other half-heartedly pretending to be friends. Sheets brings his usual very amateur and very wet sensibilities to his love letter to Lovecraft, Fulci and haunted house attractions. Filled with graphic violence, questionable digital effects work and annoying idiots being as abrasive as humanly possible, it’s an endurance test that still has that Sheets charm he somehow manages to throw into most of his braindead output. I mean, a ghost gives a lapdance to a guy in a wheelchair. That’s just something I didn’t know I needed to see. Should it be 105 minutes long? No. God, no. Should I have enjoyed it as much as I did? Also, no but that one is definitely my fault.
⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Exorcist and the success it had inspired a whole lotta films, especially in Europe. This time we get the familiar possession plot but with the addition of boobs and Paul Naschy. Yes. That is a victory. A young woman is an unknowing participant in a Satanic ritual (the high cost of hanging out with hippies and having your fiancé being an archeologist who may have come across some things better left buried) and before you can say “Pazuzu”, she’s inhabited by the spirit of her dead father. This possession leads to a potty mouth, plenty of puking and that ol’ familiar head spinning (of course this time it’s the victims getting their nigh ins twisted in ways noggin are not meant to be twisted). Naschy is the village priest brought in to save this poor girl’s soul after medical science can’t find anything wrong with her (and some false leads answer some questions but not all of them) and her brother John worries that the supernatural is at play. Father Dunning does some digging and Leila’s family (and the house staff) have more than a few secrets of their own. Leila attempts seduction, familiar scenes play out but due to a lack of skill come off as pale imitations and organ music wonderfully blares on the soundtrack. Lacking the atmosphere and upsetting realism of its inspiration, Exorcism still manages to entertain by being somewhat seedy and way dumber. The Exorcist didn’t have a Satanic mass with naked chicks and swaying hips… much to its detriment. Plus, a bearded Paul Naschy is always welcome in this house. The full blown possession makeup is amateur in comparison but still fucking awesome and I’ll never complain about sexy Euro-girls taking their tops off and flashing some bush. It’s minor but still entertaining enough.
⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
The Polonia Powa has always banked on an off-putting atmosphere of awkwardness, confusion and undeniable enthusiasm. Teenagers when making this one, you get that trifecta of blissful inanity in abundance. Three brothers (Mark, John and good buddy Todd Michael Smith portraying the adopted sibling) suffer from violent visions when their mother leaves for work. Why? Fuck if I know but I ain’t mad about it. Awkward teenagers do awkward things and perform it with a kind of alien emotion that points to a quiet comfort of performing in front of people who know you and always refuse to add any criticism to their summation of your performance. After lazy plot explanation, lazier character crafting and attempts at something that may be comedy or just may be teenage boys on the brink of adulthood showing the audience what life simply is, a phone call from a creepy voice warns of oncoming awfulness. Bad dreams follow. A man in a monk’s robe appears to mentally slow Mark and nobody else and John thinks the family cat has been slaughtered but the blood-stained chainsaw he saw in the cellar has vanished. John gets sick and takes a nap. He dreams about crapping out a butcher’s knife which, naturally, castrates him and bloodies up the toilet. After putting his blood-soaked underpants back on, he pukes up his guts. It’s dirt cheap and immensely disgusting. Mark looks for his cat in the cellar and hallucinates about a ghoulish version of his adopted brother taking a big knife to his throat. John explains to Todd that it’s more than nightmares plaguing the house (IT’S HALLUCINATIONS) and Mark cries over a photo of his missing cat. Todd is struck next when he hallucinates about being tied to a bed and attacked by a man with a sack over his head. He’s smacked around, gagged with a tie (clip-on), whipped with twine and then sliced at the crotch by a big-ass knife. The three brothers agree that all these hallucinations are really weird. Todd blames Mark, John comes to his defense and Mark just thinks they need to stick together. Possible psychic powers, a severed leg in a fridge, unsettling mustaches, uncomfortable crotch fixations, a bloody fetus attack, dismemberment, Freddy Krueger’s budget-strained yet way more horrifying Serbian cousin, an elf doll pisses on stuff, the Grim Reaper’s discount store brother and a shower scene featuring a butt-naked Polonia attacked by a phallic monster brought to life with HVAC material and sculpting clay hammers home the idea that we’re in a snow-covered no man’s land where enthusiasm clashes with sexual confusion and is mostly exploited to ease boredom. A very strange film from a very strange group of humans who somehow managed to capture the more deviant thought projections most of us folks tend to suppress deep down. It’s weird. It’s not at home in this dimension. It’s Polonia.
aka Deadly Tales/Dead Time Tales
⭐️⭐️
Rudyard Kipling, Mary Shelley and H.G. Wells are dragged into the long line of folks who have their names tarnished thanks to the machinations of Sterling Entertainment and whatever sometimes enjoyable garbage they decide to unleash upon the world. The cheap creature hijinks of the Things series takes its inspiration from well-respected authors and the results are just as charmingly dreary as one would probably expect. Opening credits feature moments of gore, nudity and budget monsters spliced in between footage shot in one of those side rooms filled with actual antiques you find in a secondhand store. Crystal Gazing adapted from The Crystal Egg by Wells is the first up and works as our wraparound segment. An antiques dealer would much rather be writing science fiction stories and his wife is frustrated that she ended up with a gigantic loser. The only reason he’s running the store is because his mother-in-law left it to her daughter. A fresh batch of antiques come in from an estate sale where the family was torn apart by some unknown murderer. The former owner’s mysterious practices are purely conjecture but when the brow-beaten man cames across a postcard of a masked dominatrix in the box of crap, it catches his interest. The box glows green and Winston discovers a large crystal that zaps his bologna sandwich and then shows him an image of an alien world. A man comes in looking for a gift to give to the fiancée he’s just pissed off and buys the fetish card that was in the box (not for her, that old timey smut is for him). This leads us to our second story Cold Feet which is Shelley’s The Transformation dressed up as a cheapjack erotic thriller full of people you have no interest in seeing naked. The groom-to-be becomes obsessed with the masked woman in the photo card he stumbled upon, even fantasizing about her when he goes to bang his future-wife at a seedy motel. We also learn that Eric stood her up at the alter before and the rough sex he tries to initiate ain’t her thing. Eric, my guy, be better. She leaves and Eric heads to a nearby stripclub to get a private lap dance. Jesus. This dude sucks. He confesses to the stripper that if he could just have one night with the kind of woman in the postcard, he’d be able to dedicate himself to one gal. After some sage-like stripper advice, Eric leaves and gets spotted by his future father-in-law. The next day he visits the home of his in-laws. He fantasizes some more about fetish girl and future-dad threatens him to show up at the rehearsal or else and then lets him know that if he fucks up that it’ll be it for him in this town. The argument escalates and Eric has a vision of himself murdering the man and then flashes of the murdered corpses of his lady and her momma. Eric rushes out and encounters a female monster who looks like she’s cosplaying as The Beast from the Linda Hamilton and Ron Perlman show. He takes a header off the top of a parking garage and wakes up in the chamber of that fetish chick. Plenty of artwork involving massive dongs is shown and Eric pays for his transgressions… along with the family he could have had. Good riddance. The antiques dealer keeps feeding his crystal and an alien creature shows up in the crystal, moving around like a kid pretending to be a monkey. He begins cracking and his wife sells the crystal to some New Age woman she knows. The crystal zaps the woman and she vanishes. Crap-film regular Randal Malone shows up as a crime boss looking to collect some protection money and when someone comes in looking for a very important and dangerous piece of jewelry that shouldn’t have been sold in the estate sale, the criminals decide to take it for themselves. The gold wolf’s head ring transforms the obnoxious crime boss into a basement quality werewolf… and that’s Beastiality which is Kipling’s The Mark of the Beast presented as an incredibly unfunny comedy performed by a dinner theater troop comprised of a head trauma ward. Inept but when not being abrasive, it’s the kind of a inept I got a soft spot for. Finally, our wraparound comes to a close when that weird little alien-troll things makes its way out of the crystal. A mostly annoying time with some small bits of trashy charm.
aka Marshall of Hell
⭐️⭐️1/2
Naschy-led period piece involves a desperate French baron (Barón Gilles de Lancré played by a super dashing Paul) looking to expand his power and regretfully turning to the dark arts to do it. Under the guidance of an alchemist, the baron learns he can continue his scientific work with the heavy cost of Virgin sacrifice and oppression. He just needs to get his hands on that pesky Philosopher’s Stone. His super hot lady love (jaw-dropper Norma Sebre) encourages such bad behavior because she is all about power. Not that he really needs much of a push, looks like the necromancer and the super sexy baroness are in cahoots and manipulating the once noble man. Madness and possible possession are a dangerous mix. An old war buddy of the baron arrives and discovers his friend has become an evil scumbag, which has him joining up with the oppressed people to revolt once he turns down his old friend’s offer to join him in glory. The baroness sees the former soldier as a threat and wants him dead. So there’s plenty of swordplay this time around but a real lack of the supernatural tomfoolery I like in my Naschy flicks. There’s a torture chamber and our boy’s hair is fucking stellar, like a beautiful helmet of suaveness. It’s kind of Robin Hood with Devil worship but nowhere near as entertaining as that sounds. Naschy does wear an eyepatch after a jousting accident and it’s a solid look for the man… he really could wear anything.
⭐️⭐️
Med students take a weekend to fix up an old building which was once an orphanage. We say “once” because ten years ago the place was burned to the ground following accusations of abuse and molestation concerning the owner’s son. Before his innocence was declared in a court of law, the father killed himself and the son went on to strike the occupants and accusers at the place with murderous vengeance. He set the place on fire and then supposedly killed himself. A young doctor about to become a pediatrician looking at the rebuilt place and plans to reopen it as a foster home. This brings the young derps (his friends) to help not only set up but get a little partying done in the process. To the surprise of no one, there’s a giggling manic on the loose (murdering the aspiring pediatrician immediately and supplying some meat for dinner in the process), sticking close by to the building and eyeballing the bevy of annoying victims now roaming around the joint. Elderly young people come to bloody ends at the hands of a masked murderer… but there’s a tight budget, a focus on lame comedy and it’s towards the end of the decade that made the subgenre so popular. A combination that doesn’t always lead to the best of outings. A cleaning montage that involves plenty of swaying hips and awkward dancing comes to an end when the dude in the shortest of shorts finds a cassette tape that contains the kind of audio that probably would have had them fleeing if they weren’t checking on their missing friend’s missing car. So now nobody is questioning the lack of Jerry. There’s hijinks, a couple of entitled yuppies, butt squeezing, drama between “friends”, general horniness, a fat police chief looking for a missing delivery boy, a realtor with marital issues, a bunch of topless dudes, a college kid who may be pushing fifty (could just be because he’s from New York) and some early meta humor when it comes to the genre. It’s dull but sometimes dull enough to be kind of charming and Tina is kinda cute so it has that going for it. A little splat and a suitably disturbing past makes it more watchable than expected. Still, a very lame slasher flick.
aka Tiger Woman, Black Magic II
⭐️⭐️1/2
After the violent (and may I say well-deserved) murderous deeds of the first outing, Katemi (lovely Suzzanna again) is hiving a go at living a quiet and pious life. The shunning she receives from the locals is about to get worse because the mentor of that crocodile witch from original Santet has found her and a new curse is thrown out. Did you say “nightly tiger transformations?” You did? That’s kinda weird that your head went there. You can’t just abandon black magic practices without paying a price, ya know. Turns out the old hag wants the life of the holy man that put an end to her pupil. So, now villagers are getting their judgmental asses slaughtered (barely) and Katemi is finding her living situation put into peril. It’s not even five minutes in before we get our first hilarious tiger transformation. This leads directly into the opening credits. These opening credits end and we get a live performance from an all-girl band with some sick flute work singing about the “world of news”. There’s also “comedy” involving an angry wife, a dancing husband and swaying hips. “Where’s the tiger-lady?” Will definitely be the question running through your head. Well, the arguing couple discover a mutilated goat on their walk home and tiger tracks which lead back to the home of Katemi. Katemi, for her part, confesses to the handsome local holy man that she’s being possessed and that he’s the witch’s main target but unlike the locals, he believes her faith in Allah can be used to halt the evil plans of revenge. The witch (and her head of hair that looks like it’s comprised of several dead animals) ain’t happy about Katemi’s religious resolve and flees into the night when her targeted vessel prays her away. Unfortunately, the locals still have no love for her and don’t mind being complete dicks to her. Stupid jerks. Worse yet, that awful crime boss with the mug even a mother couldn’t love who got himself perished by the wife he murdered had a son (played by the same actor, naturally) and that son has just arrived to the village. Dad’s old crew is happy to have someone to follow again and it’s looking more and more like the only person on Katemi’s side is the young holy man she’s been told to kill. Ouch! Crime boss 2 and his crew set fire to Katemi’s house while she’s still inside (about to hang herself after she attempted to seduce her religious friend) but she escapes into the night. With no faith left, the recovering practitioner of the dark arts gets back to doing what she’s good at and the movie brings on the tiger-lady vengeance. Or it would go down but there’s more comedy to be had involving the horny cop Bokir and his frustrated wife. Stuffed tiger attacks accompany stock footage, awful people cause problems and the holy man attempts to save the soul of our lady. A strong focus on ass-numbing comedy throws a massive wrench in the enjoyment of this one and it only remembers to bring the Indonesian genre insanity every so often. Working more as a remake than a sequel, it follows a familiar pace and plot while only giving glimpses at just how much fun it could have been. Again, the last few minutes are a blast.
