It’s October. Time to talk horror. This year I’m reviewing a different horror movie each day of the month.

Teenage metalhead Brodie moves in with his aunt and uncle after his mother is jailed for meth problems. His cousin is an obnoxious jock, who enjoys beating the snot out of outsiders like Brodie, and Brodie’s only two friends are a couple of tabletop roleplayers. When Brodie is caught pining over a beautiful classmate, his new friends tell him to dream on: chicks like that, they say, only go for assholes like Brodie’s moronic cousin.

Sound cliché? Yeah, but I’m doing a bad job of selling it. Deathgasm is aware that most of this stuff is familiar ground. Considering how often it steps outside the boundaries of “normal” tastes, it’s probably a good thing it has these tropes to keep it anchored. Even at its most predictable, it’s somehow fresh. And when it goes full speed insane, it’s at its best.

Brodie’s only refuge is the local record shop where he meets Zakk, an older metalhead who’s been expelled from school. After bonding over metal albums, they make a blood pact, napalm the schoolyard, and start a band called Deathgasm. During this time, Brodie almost manages to swoon the girl, who discovers a love for heavy metal she never knew she had.

The earlier portions feel a bit too much like Detention, which was an enjoyable if not scatterbrained movie that diluted its horror elements with a lot of… well, “spoilery” stuff I won’t mention here. Then Brodie and Zakk discover an ancient score which literally raises hell when played on their guitars. That’s when the movie becomes unabashed horror, tossing Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson references left and right.

There are two kinds of a horror-comedies. Those which make fun of horror and those that have fun with horror. The second is what Deathgasm is—and it’s one of the best examples in a very long time. Some of the jokes are too obvious, but most of the time I was either smiling or outright laughing at the mayhem. Look, beating people to death with sex toys is old hat now, but it’s the look on the characters’ faces that sells it.

Deathgasm has some great actors, memorable characters, and bitchin’ filmmakers who will go on to bigger movies. Let’s just hope they retain what was awesome about them when they inevitably end up in Hollywood. Great horror, great comedy, great fantasy. Fuck yes.

Come back at midnight Central Time for the next movie.

It’s October. Time to talk horror. This year I’m reviewing a different horror movie each day of the month.

I’ve heard a lot about Rock N’ Roll Nightmare. My imagination built it up to be a very different movie. I thought it was going to be a horror version of Flash Gordon involving an 80s hair band descending into hell. I hoped for Gwar theatrics and scenery resembling a heavy metal album cover. Conversely, I’d never heard of the movie prior to the mid-2000s so I suspected a fledgling DVD distributor found an unseen piece of garbage and was attempting to push it as a cult classic in close-out stores and truck stops.

Both my positive and negative expectations were wrong, which is another reason I try to learn little about these movies before I actually watch them. Rock N’ Roll Nightmare is deserving of its newfound cult status even though I’m convinced Synapse Films marketed it as a cult classic long before the cult actually existed. If this movie really did have a cult following in the 90s, how is it possible the MST3K guys never featured it? (Apparently there’s a RiffTrax, but that came out after the Synapse release.)

A band drags their uninterested girlfriends out to an old farm, the barn of which has been converted into a recording studio. The caretaker tells the band’s manager that the barn-studio was previously used by Alice Cooper and, if my ears weren’t deceiving me, “Bob Stewart.” The last ten minutes of the flick are brilliantly unexpected, it’s as if the filmmakers threw their hands up and said, “Eh, fuck it. We were making that movie, but now we’re making this movie. So enjoy these flying squids and homemade pyrotechnics.”

The first half of the movie is so tame and wonderfully cheesy, the characters act more like a Christian youth group than a heavy metal band. The sex takes place entirely off camera… until suddenly it doesn’t. Because you were lured into thinking this was PG-rated content, an unexpected sex scene involving a flickering tongue-kiss is jarringly hilarious. Why they wouldn’t cut away before that happened, but take care to show almost none of the violence, is beyond comprehension.

If you’ve heard of Rock N’ Roll Nightmare at all, you probably heard about how awful it is. Sure, the “demons” in the film are little more than sock puppets. Not only is the acting atrocious (intentionally so, I’m sure), the audio is rarely in sync with the footage. But the movie was shot in seven days and, considering it was little more than a vanity project for its lead (a pretty interesting jack-of-all-trades according to Wikipedia), it’s way better than it has any right to be. It’s charming, funny, and endlessly entertaining.

I’ll admit it if no one else will: the music’s not bad at all. Cheesy, yes, but that’s what we all came for, isn’t it?

Come back at midnight Central Time for the next movie.

It’s October. Time to talk horror. This year I’m reviewing a different horror movie each day of the month.

I had no idea what to expect from Ghost Town. I went in blind because I’m a sucker for a desert setting in horror. Highway to Hell, Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat, Tremors, and Full Moon’s Oblivion were all oddly compelling western mashups. Speaking of Full Moon, Ghost Town was released by Charles Band’s Empire Pictures, the precursor to Full Moon Productions. It’s well known this was a superficial name change in lieu of bankruptcy; Ghost Town was among the last batch of films that would carry the Empire name, along with Robot Jox and Cannibal Women of the Avocado Jungle of Death.

A sheriff (Franc Luz) tracks a missing woman (Catherine Hickland) to a literal ghost town. Early on there’s a great bit of fantasy when a gnarly-lookin’ corpse bolts upright out of the ground and begs the sheriff to save his town. At first you’ll be thankful the movie doesn’t exhibit many of the horror clichés that drag down most movies like this, then you quickly realize it’s only because it trades in horror clichés for western ones. The stunts, by the way, are only as exciting as what you’d see at a western theme park.

The sheriff soon finds out the damsel in distress (who you might recognize from small appearances on CHiPs, Airwolf, and three episodes of Knight Rider) was kidnapped by an outlaw ghost named Devlin, who conveniently wears black to remind us that A) this is a western and B) he’s the villain. Devlin is alternatively kind of cool and lame as a villain. He and his gang crucified the town’s original sheriff a hundred years ago, but not before the sheriff shot a bullet through one of Devlin’s cheek and out the other.

Whereas most of the ghosts look like normal people, Devlin looks like a zombie. Why? I don’t know. I don’t think the filmmakers know, either. And none of the ghosts seem to know why they haunt the town or how to lift the curse… that is until the movie closes in on its climax, at which point a bartender tells the hero exactly what he has to do to dispatch the villain, which is oddly specific for a character who, up until then, didn’t even seem to know she was dead.

Other offenses include a serious take on the old Bugs Bunny routine where the wascaly wabbit would plug Elmer Fudd’s gun with his finger to make it backfire. Then there’s the blind character, whose actor wears cloudy contact lenses in the first half of the movie, then resorts to just trying (and failing) to keep his irises tucked behind his eyelids. Yikes.

I’m being harder on this movie than it deserves. It’s decent enough fun and I’ve raved about movies here which weren’t as well made. But there’s much wasted potential here as desert horror is almost always funner than this. It’s just a mediocre western with a handful of horror elements tossed in as an afterthought.

Come back at midnight Central Time for the next movie.

It’s October. Time to talk horror. This year I’m reviewing a different horror movie each day of the month. 

“I wrote it to democratically offend every group on the planet,” says screenwriter Roy Frumkes. I’m not sure if he manages to offend every group on the planet, but if you’re a man, a woman, or human, you’ll probably be offended by Street Trash at some point. It’s a movie which plays the kind of dopey score you would expect from a bad slapstick comedy even as it deals in gang rape, necrophilia, and castration. The severed penis, by the way, ends up becoming the subject of a game of hot potato.

When the unscrupulous owner of a liquor store finds a long forgotten case of booze in his basement, he decides to sell it to the local bums on the cheap. What he doesn’t know is the stuff is toxic. Anyone who drinks it melts spectacularly. Street Trash is part of a small subgenre called “melt movies.” (The 1988 remake of The Blob is probably the most mainstream melt movie. 1985’s The Stuff was one of the first horror movies I remember ever seeing in my life.)

Soon, a curiously psychotic policeman begins investigating the rash of mysterious deaths. When he beats the shit out of a suspect, leaving the assailant unconscious, he doesn’t just kick him and shove his head into a urinal. The cop finger-forces himself to puke on the back of the man’s head. There’s a violent, punk rock energy about Street Trash, and it keeps the picture swiftly moving despite the fact there are way too many characters for a movie like this, too many plot angles, and very little to do with the toxic hooch that causes the human meltdowns.

That’s not a complaint. Merely an observation. This is easily one of the wildest movies I’ve ever seen. It’s just really fucking weird.

Nothing’s off limits in Street Trash. Although it treats the homeless with all the emotional complexity of a Smokey and the Bandit sequel, you can tell Muro feels a kinship with the marginalized group. The hobos aren’t just there for him to poke fun at—they’re the heroes of the film, the people we’re supposed to be rooting for… and in some cases against. I rather like that the villain of the film is a dishonorably discharged vet who carries around a knife fashioned out of a human femur—but what we end up with is a movie which ultimately scrambles to give us closure for each of its many characters before reaching its hilariously bonkers climax.

If you’re into sleaze, you’re going to love Street Trash, too. It’s the Troma movie Troma never made… and probably would have made if they weren’t so damn cheap. “Don’t drip on me, man!”

Come back at midnight Central Time for the next movie.

It’s October. Time to talk horror. This year I’m reviewing a different horror movie each day of the month.

A Japanese television host receives a genuine snuff film in the mail. Instead of forwarding it to the authorities, she and a handful of others decide to investigate the location where the video was shot. Once there, the characters quickly split up so some can have sex and many can get picked off, one by one. Evil Dead Trap wants you to believe it’s a standard slasher film, but early on a character is impaled in such a manner it’s impossible to believe a single human was the culprit unless he or she possesses supernatural powers. The strange happenings increase in frequency as the movie progresses, but each time we see the killer on screen, he’s clearly depicted as a powerless man.

One thing that’s unique about EDT is the stylized horror: you’ll either appreciate its attempt to tighten the tension, one millimeter at a time, or be bored to death. It employs a surreal, dreamlike pacing that makes the 105-minute movie feel much longer than it actually is and not necessarily in a bad way. Characters stumble around backwards all the time. One even sprains her ankle on the flattest of terrain. It’s the plot devices of a nightmare—and about as coherent as one, too.

This is the hardest movie review I’ve ever written. Will you like Evil Dead Trap? I’d have an easier time predicting whether you prefer vanilla or chocolate. There are certainly things in it that are enjoyable, and a few that aren’t, but its attempts to defy formula should be commended even though many clichés are present. Looking at the picture in retrospect only makes it more confusing… and somehow more likable?

The camerawork and lighting looks great. It’s obviously made by talented filmmakers. There’s something that’s genuinely unsettling about it, too. Why can’t I give it a more positive review? I dunno. If I ever watch the sequel, it won’t be this month.

It’s October. Time to talk horror. This year I’m reviewing a different horror movie each day of the month.

My DVD copy of Scalps opens with an apology. The filmmakers regret to inform us that this is a partially lost film. According to the director’s commentary, they’ll never be able to make the definitive cut because the footage simply doesn’t exist. To recreate the original theatrical release, which was butchered by the distributor, they had to pull from a variety of sources. Most of the movie is pieced together from excessively blown-up and washed-out film. At other times, they had to pull snippets from VHS tapes, including all the death scenes, because their main sources (a German print and a Canadian print) had heavily censored that stuff.

I’ve heard about the legendary badness of Scalps and expected to enjoy it in a Mystery Science Theater 3000 kind of way, but even those guys wouldn’t touch it because there just isn’t enough dialogue to rip on. There’s only so many times you can make fun of the awkward pauses and clumsy transitions between scenes. Long sections of it are like watching a stranger’s vacation footage on Super 8 film. At one point, during an extended scene of a car driving down a desert road, my girlfriend got up to let the dog out. When she got back, they were still showing the same scenery. At which point she decided to go to bed.

There’s one Native American in the entire movie and, according to the director, he was a Scientologist. This actor, who could be a stand-in for Keith Richards, gets perhaps two minutes of screen time, which is hilariously misguided when your movie’s moral is “white people should respect Indian culture.” Taking an obvious inspiration from Evil Dead, the spirit of a “renegade Indian” possesses one of six whiny white people who are on an archaeological vacation in the desert. The evil spirit then proceeds to pick off the rest of the camp one by one. One of the actresses, while running, takes care to adjust her shirt for the camera even though her back is full of arrows.

The filmmakers claim the movie they shot is not the movie you see. While the movie was intended to be a slow burn until the climactic carnage, the distributor edited the movie to maximize the shocks per reel, which was done at the sacrifice of continuity. There’s a human-lion hybrid who watches the campers from afar, but has nothing to do with the rest of the movie. One character manages to watch himself arrive to the area. At various points, you see characters’ dead bodies before they get killed.

I should probably point out that the gore effects are surprisingly… well, I was going to say “good,” but let’s say “not bad.” The scalping looked realistic enough. A decapitation was satisfyingly bloody, even though the head came off before the blade struck the neck. I’ve seen much worse so I’ll take what I can get.

I have no idea how Scalps would have played to a large audience, but I’m sure there was no shortage of snickering. The best part about the DVD is the candid nature of the commentary. Right off the bat, the director admits he hasn’t seen this movie in a long time because it’s just not something you show off proudly. Aspiring filmmakers will probably love listening to him talk about his troubles. It actually does sound like there was a better movie than what we got and he’s not just shifting the blame.

Sometimes you’ve just got to make something to get somewhere in the film business. Sometimes it turns out to be Scalps.

Come back at midnight Central Time for the next movie.

It’s October. Time to talk horror. This year I’m reviewing a different horror movie each day of the month.

An elderly couple keep a mysterious pet in their bathtub. The woman proudly shows her husband the brains she’s just picked up from the butcher, exclaiming, “He’s going to love these!” But when she tries to feed the pet, she discovers it’s flown the coop. As the couple go from door to door, barging into people’s homes and inspecting bathtubs, the film introduces us to Brian (Rick Hearst), the “hero” of the story. He’s fevered and passed out in the apartment he rents with his brother and we never learn why he’s so sick. (I’ve read there were supposed to be earlier scenes featuring the character, but were never shot due to budget constraints.)

The missing pet finds its way into Brian’s bed and, concealed by the covers, slithers up his body to attach itself to his neck. This marks the first of many psychedelic sequences depicting the high Brian gets whenever the parasitic creature latches into him. Naturally, Brian thinks the far-out images are pretty cool. As he comes down from his trip, the thing detaches to introduce itself. Through a charming mixture of puppetry, stop-motion, and (briefly) rotoscope-animation, we see the leech-like monster in all of its miniature glory.

The thing’s name is Alymer (sounds kind of like “Elmer”) and it has a smooth tenor voice, provided by John Zacherle (uncredited), the horror host of an old show along the lines of Svengoolie and Elvira. Alymer asks Brian if he’d like to go for a walk. When Brian asks where to, Alymer says, “Anywhere.”

They end up in a scrapyard where Brian gets so high on Alymer’s secretions that he screams about how beautiful all the junk is. This gets the attention of the night guard who comes to inspect the commotion, and Alymer eats the man’s brains while Brian looks on in sick, drug-addled satisfaction. It’s not long before Brian’s addiction starts turning bad, however, and while a lot of directors would have fumbled the ball at this point, director Frank Henenlotter always keeps it entertaining. Unlike lesser horror directors, who heavily pad the filling in between kills, Henenlotter never dwells, never dawdles. All his movies, which include Basket Case and Frankenhooker, are fresh from start to finish.

Find the uncut version or nothing at all. There’s a scene so sleazy the crew allegedly refused to help the director to shoot it. You’ll know what scene I’m talking about when you see it, but let’s just say it involves the act of fellatio. I think the biggest mistake, considering the movie is about the horrors of drug addiction, is that Brian is on the receiving end of that blowjob.

P.S., there’s a cameo that’ll tickle horror fans to death.

Come back at midnight Central Time for the next movie.

It’s October. Time to talk horror. This year I’m reviewing a different horror movie each day of the month. 

While watching an interview with director Umberto Lenzi, it occurred to me he’s legitimately fucking insane. Here’s what Lenzi had to say about Nightmare City:

• The script was horrible.
• Hugo Stiglitz was a stiff actor.
• Franco Nero or John Saxon should have been cast in the lead instead.
• The producer wanted zombies in the tradition of Romero and Fulci.
• The film is based on reality.

Yeah, you read that last bullet point right. Everything that happens in Nightmare City, Lenzi suggests, is reality. He talks about media cover-ups and exploding chemical plants before going on to compare the importance of his own movie to Tom Hanks’ Philadelphia. Either Lenzi’s English translator is having a little fun on our behalf or Lenzi has genuinely lost his mind.

It takes a crazy person to make a movie like Nightmare City, aka City of the Walking Dead. The “infected people” don’t just stumble around, waiting for dinner to enter their line of sight, but actively hunt their prey with Thompson machine guns and hatchets. Whereas most horror films spend an eternity getting to the good stuff, Lenzi opens his picture with a surprisingly tense scene involving an unauthorized plane landing. The plane violently births a hundred bloodthirsty psychopaths.

What’s great about it is there’s no bullshit—at least if you’re a fan of mindless exploitation—and there’s remarkably little filler. It’s just ninety ridiculous minutes of crazy shit and Hugo Stiglitz kicking ass in a tweed suit. And I stress “kicking,” as kicking seems to be his move of choice. Why, exactly, is this television reporter such a bad ass? Beats me. But after watching Fear the Walking Dead and its characters’ reluctance to do anything of interest, Hugo’s sense of agency is a welcome change of pace.

Watch it with a group of friends who love this kind of shit. The more booze, the better. It’s a hell of a lot of fun with the right mindset. I would have said it was the basis for 28 Days Later if I believed Danny Boyle had ever seen this movie, which I don’t.

Come back at midnight Central Time for the next movie.

It’s October. Time to talk horror. This year I’m reviewing a different horror movie each day of the month.

Do you know what Freddy films are missing? Singing and dancing, that’s what. Leave it to Bollywood to address this oversight. I haven’t watched a lot of Hindi reduxes because they can be much longer than their Hollywood counterparts. Awara Paagal Deewana, which remakes both The Whole Nine Yards and action sequences from The Matrix, is nearly three hours long. Mahakaal, despite condensing the kills from several Nightmare on Elm Street films into one movie, is mercifully only a little over two hours long.

The film is made by the Ramsay brothers, who I’m led to believe are a big deal in Bollywood. According to Wikipedia:

The Ramsey Brothers have made more than 30 horror films in India, which epitomize the lower depths of 1980s Bollywood sleaze and gore, but which have secured their place in Hindi cinema’s hall of fame as the pioneers of horror.

So it’s safe to say you can expect some dance numbers here. What you might not expect is a Michael Jackson impersonator who incorporates mime routines into his act. He’s not very good at it, either. Whether or not that’s the joke, I honestly don’t know. I’ll be the first to admit that Indian humor is a bit lost on me.

The first act of Mahakaal is almost a carbon copy of the original Freddy film. Instead of high school teens, the leading characters are college students who are played by full grown adults. The biggest deviation, other than the dancing, is the inclusion of a street gang which attempts to rape the main character. The crime is averted by a hilariously choreographed martial arts scene, which leaves the young woman understandably shaken. Don’t worry, though: the booger-picking Michael Jackson impersonator is quick to cheer her up with his silly antics, just as any woman would want following such an intense trauma.

Seconds later you can expect to see a gratuitous dance number set during a picnic on the beach. Somehow their pickup truck ends up in the water and then they wonder why it won’t start. Stranded in the middle of nowhere, they decide to check into a nearby hotel. That’s where their nightmare really begins. It turns out Shakaal, an evil magician with a familiar bladed glove, is killing these young adults to… well, I don’t know why, but it sure is entertaining.

Even when Mahakaal doesn’t jell with my American sensibilities, the movie is downright charming. Which isn’t to say it won’t be funny to Americans. Mahakaal can be a lot of fun with the right group, and not all of the laughter will come from the low production values and bizarre dance sequences. Even though this version of Freddy Kruger looks as if his makeup consists of oatmeal and shoe polish, there’s still something creepy about the way his scenes are shot.

So don’t call it a ripoff. Call it a tribute to Freddy’s greatest hits. Even the trademark nursery jingle is here, replicated just a few notes short of a lawsuit.

Come back at midnight Central Time for the next movie.

It’s October. Time to talk horror. This year I’m reviewing a different horror movie each day of the month.

What do you think of when you hear the word “intruder?” Do you think about a homicidal bum breaking into your house? A grotesque alien borrowing human heads so he can pass as one of us? A clueless house guest who just won’t leave? Intruder is none of those things. It’s about a maniac killing the night crew at a grocery store. Okay, sure. I guess the title kind of works until you find out the deranged killer isn’t someone who wanders into the store after hours, but a guy who’s always been there.

That’s not a spoiler because you won’t be surprised anyway. When a horror film takes this much care to foreshadow its trash compactor, its meat hooks, its ticket spike, and literally everything else that can kill someone in a grocery store, there simply isn’t time for surprises. The only thing that surprises me is I’ve heard splatter fans talk about Intruder as if it’s some kind of forgotten masterpiece. Maybe that’s why I’m disappointed.

The poster art for Intruder prominently features the names of Bruce Campbell and Sam Raimi as if they’re the stars of the picture. They’re certainly the biggest stars in it, but they play very minor roles. Campbell shows up about three minutes before the credits roll while Raimi spends most of his time hanging lifelessly from a meat hook. Dan Hicks, who played the hillbilly in Evil Dead 2, offers the best performance in Intruder, but even he can’t save it.

Whenever the camera ends up in a shopping basket or hovers over the actors at extreme angles, it’s obvious director Scott Spiegel learned how to direct from his pal, Sam Raimi. While there are some good gags and a few good special effects by KNB EFX Group, Intruder is just mediocre at the end of the day. It’s a shame because I really thought I was going to like this one.

Come back at midnight Central Time for the next movie.