B & S About Movies podcast special episode 20: Adam Hursey defends Mardi Gras Massacre

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Adam Hursey is our guest this episode, a pharmacist specializing in health informatics by day, but his true passion is cinema. His current favorite films are Back to the Future, Stop Making Sense, and In the Mood for Love. He has written articles for ⁠Film East⁠ and The Physical Media Advocate, primarily examining older films through the lens of contemporary perspectives. He is usually found on Letterboxd, where he mainly writes about horror and exploitation films. You can follow him on ⁠Letterboxd⁠ or ⁠Instagram⁠ at ashursey.

Adam is defending the 1978-made, 1983-released Mardi Gras Massacre. This was a fun episode and I really loved discussing the movie with Adam. He’ll be back soon!

You can listen to the show on Spotify.

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Theme song: Strip Search by Neal Gardner.

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VISUAL VENGEANCE BLU-RAY RELEASE: Saurians (1994)

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Directed, written, produced, starring and edited by Mark Polonia, this movie makes Carnosaur look like a 5D CGI spectacle by comparison, but come on. It was shot by a teenager in Pennsylvania and has the energy that that statement embodies.

I mean, what’s your tolerance for stop motion dinosaurs on green screen and Amiga graphics? You’re either the kind of person that looks at this and thinks it’s complete junk or you get obsessed and can’t turn away. There’s really no in-between. You know what side I end up on, because I’ve seen so many Polonia films, like the sequel to this, Saurians 2. Hell, I even have a signed copy.

Explosions wake up two dinosaurs, who proceed to destroy most of Mark’s hometown, Wellsboro, PA. It looks like this movie is all him and not as much of his brother John, who does show up as an extra. And Mark cares about you, his audience, so much that he even has his future wife do a shower scene.

This isn’t just low budget; it’s using the family camcorder and a dream budget. The stop-motion dinosaurs don’t just look rubbery—they look like they were unearthed from a discount bin at a 1980s Kay-Bee Toys and brought to life through sheer stubbornness.

The stakes in Saurians are hilariously localized. Most disaster movies threaten New York or London; Mark Polonia threatens the local diner and his neighbors’ backyards. The explosions that wake the beasts feel like someone set off a pack of Black Cat firecrackers behind a bush, yet the characters react like it’s the end of days.

And that’s beautiful.

Extras include commentary with director Mark Polonia, moderated by the Visual Vengeance crew; The Making of Saurians; a locations visit; interviews with Todd Carpenter and Kevin Lindenmuth; stop motion outtakes; Super 8 raw footage; the alternate, never released Rae Don Home Video version of Saurians; bonus SOV feature film The Dinosaur Chronicles; a commentary track for Rae Don version with director Mark Polonia and the Visual Vengeance crew; Visual Vengeance trailers; a “Stick Your Own” VHS sticker set; a reversible sleeve featuring original Saurians VHS art; a folded mini-poster with alternate vintage promotional art; a limited edition O-Card  and a rare, original piece of Super-8 film from the movie! You can get this from MVD.

VISUAL VENGEANCE BLU-RAY RELEASE: Colony Mutation (1995)

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Shot on Super 8, this film tells the story of PR exec Jim Matthews (David Rommel) as he tries to leave his wife, genetic designer Meredith Weaver (Anna Zizzo), for his secretary, Jenny Dole (Joan Dinco). His wife doses him with her latest experiment, which causes his extremities to start thinking on their own and destroy his mind. Yes, his hands, his arms, his legs, even his cock, all can move away from his body to kill and feed, kind of like a demented version of the Myron Fass Captain Marvel that split into different parts.

The core of the film’s horror isn’t just the gore. It’s the loss of agency. Jim is a man defined by his lack of impulse control; he can’t keep his hands off his secretary, so his wife ensures he literally cannot keep his hands on his body.

Directed and written by Tom Berna (his only film; however, he has acted and provided special effects for several others), Colony Mutation features great acting from Rommel, and the relationship between Meredith and her sister Suzanne (Susan L. Cane) feels authentic. How strange that a body horror film is mainly about the human emotions of a marriage being destroyed and a woman falling in love with a man who is already taken.

Shot on Super 8 in Milwaukee, the film carries that specific Midwestern gloom. The grain of the film stock acts as a veil, making the beyond microbudget effects feel like something you weren’t supposed to see, almost like snuff-adjacent glimpses of a body coming undone.

Where else would you get a movie with a killer penis and a man who no longer can control his body because he couldn’t control his body? Milwaukee, Wisconsin, was far from Hollywood, and films made like this were the last bastion of what regional filmmaking was: grimy, rough blasts of unreality that infect our brains.

Colony Mutation: This has a new, director supervised 2K transfer and restoration from original Super 8 film elements; commentary from producer/director Tom Berna and a second commentary from Tony Strauss of Weng’s Chop Magazine; interviews with Berna, star David Rommel and music composer Patrick Nettesheim; an archival public access interview with Tom Berna; alternate VHS and DVD cuts; the original script; an image gallery; a teaser trailer; stick your own VHS stickers; a booklet with liner notes by Tony Strauss; a poster and a limited edition O-Card with art by Justin Coons. You can get this from MVD.

VISUAL VENGEANCE ON AMAZON PRIME AND FAWESOME: Dracula’s Sorority Sisters (2014)

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Originally shot in 3D for the Sterling’s Ultimate 3D Heaven, this Jeff Leroy-directed opus spent years in limbo before being rescued from the digital ether by Visual Vengeance. It’s exactly the kind of unhinged, DIY spectacle the label was built for.

It has everything you want in a movie, and by that, I mean effects Leroy-style, male genital mutilation and nearly constant nude scenes.

And if you don’t want that, why are you even here?

The carnage kicks off in a stylized 1950s prologue. We meet Eva (Nicole Laino) and her husband Ward (Robert Rhine), a couple who make the fatal mistake of playing Good Samaritan to a seemingly ill woman (Kelly Erin Decker). That woman is a vampire — yes, that’s how we get to the sorority — and the ensuing chaos leaves Ward dead and Eva infected. In a moment of grisly desperation, witnessed by her young daughter, Eva is forced to feast on her own husband’s remains to survive. 

Fast-forward to the present day, and get ready to meet a full-blown sorority of the damned. Annabel (Missy Martinez) and Scarlet (Jacqueline Fae) are the veteran sisters who spend their nights luring unsuspecting men back to their lair, where they drain them.

Their blood. Not their balls. Come on, people. 

Eva, now the matriarch, is hunting for the “chosen one” among her new pledges. Enter Holly (Alejandra Morin) and Lilith (Antoinette Mia Pettis). Holly possesses a rare blood type that promises an evolutionary leap for the vampire race, but the rank-and-file sorority girls have more… immediate interests like using the electric spark of a dying man’s soul as a metaphysical masturbatory aid. 

This was shot for 3D, so in addition to the Leroy effects you hoped for, there are also moments where the stakes come right at the camera. It’s really magical.

You can watch this on Amazon Prime and Fawesome.

The Hackers (1988)

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Directed by John Duncan, who also made Black River Monster, The Hackers is a Michigan SOV by way of rednecksploitation that is all about the Hacker family: Pa (Howard Coburn), his sons Arnie (Dale Caughel) and Eldon Junior (Steve Prichard), who already cut off most of his face with a chainsaw, so he wears a mask. You may watch this and wonder, ” Am I watching a cosplay Sawyer family? You sure are. But the actors are all in, so let’s go for it too.

The film’s pacing is a strange, hypnotic slurry. In between unsettling trips to a local playground, the Hackers operate a makeshift handyman service. Their business model is simple: if the invoice isn’t settled, the client is liquidated. The body count swells with disgruntled employers, unlucky hitchhikers, and a local farmer who ends up a grisly piece of outdoor decor. Just as the viewer begins to wonder if there’s a narrative compass, the plot arrives in the form of Marcie (Michelle Rank). Dispatched by her boss to oversee roof repairs on a summer home, she brings her sister Angelia (Denise Ferris) along for a getaway that quickly sours.

It also has some fishing.

I’ve done the kind of work the Hackers do, and I feel some catharsis watching this, imagining getting people back for shortening my day by slicing them to pieces. It’s cheap, it’s quick, and it’s all that is good and warm about SOV.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Murder, She Wrote S3 E10: Stage Struck (1986)

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The murder of the leading lady’s understudy disrupts a play starring two previously married actors.

Season 3, Episode 10: Stage Struck (December 14, 1986)

Two of Jessica’s old friends bring her back to her old job at a theater. One of them faints on stage, and then her understudy dies.

Who’s in it, outside of Angela Lansbury?

Shea Farrell is Larry Matthews.

Bob Hastings (Commissioner Gordon’s voice in the Batman cartoons) plays Eddie Bender.

Donald Most — come on, Donnie! — is T.J. Holt

Edward Mulhare may have been Rex Harrison’s understudy in My Fair Lady on Broadway. But we all know him from Knight Rider. Here, he plays Julian Lord.

Christopher Norris (Eat My Dust) as Pru Mattson.

Dan O’Herlihy (Conal Cochran and The Old Man!) is Alexander Preston.

Eleanor Parker plays Maggie Tarrow.

John Pleshette is Nicky Saperstein.

John Schuck from McMillan and Wife is Chief Merton P. Drock.

Ann Turkel (Humanoids from the Deep) as Barbara Bennington.

Smaller roles include Richard Hoyt-Miller, Annie Gagen, and Jeffrey Lippa as reporters; Weldon Bleiler as a doctor; and Fritz Ford as an onlooker.

What happens?

Julian Lord and Maggie Tarrow are essentially the Lunt and Fontanne of Jessica’s past, a legendary acting duo who were once married and still share a spark, though it’s heavily smothered by egos and secrets. They invite Jessica to the Applewood Playhouse for a revival of The Night of the Phoenix, but the production is cursed from the jump.

Maggie’s health is failing, and her understudy, Barbara Bennington, isn’t just waiting in the wings. She’s actively sharpening her claws. But when Maggie faints and Barbara gets her big break, she doesn’t just break a leg. She drops dead mid-scene after drinking from a prop decanter.

In the middle of all this, the cop in charge — Chief Drock — tries to sound like Hercule Poirot.

While he’s being a weirdo, Jessica realizes that the poison in the prop wine was meant for the leading lady, but the real target was always the person holding the secret.

Who did it?

When JB confronts Julian backstage, she learns that the blackmail was over the fact that he and Maggie had conceived a child and given it up for adoption. Julian admits to Jessica that he poisoned the wine specifically to kill Barbara and keep their secret buried. To make the accident look like it was meant for Maggie and deflect suspicion from himself, he had previously played with Maggie’s vitamins to make her faint, ensuring Barbara would be the one on stage to drink the lethal dose.

Who made it?

This was directed by John Astin, who was Harry Pierce in other episodes, and written by Philip Gerson.

Does Jessica dress up and act stupid? Does she get some?

No! Ugh.

Was it any good?

It’s a decent one.

Any trivia?

This episode reveals how Jessica met her husband Frank. Their romance blossomed in the theatre community, proving that Jessica has always had a flair for the dramatic, even if she prefers the technical side of the stage.

Edward Mulhare and Ann Turkel were also on Knight Rider. 

Give me a reasonable quote:

Jessica Fletcher: Oh, certainly not. No, but I was Applewood’s second-best set painter. And in case you haven’t guessed, there were only two.

What’s next?

Jessica comes to the aid of Dorian Beecher, a shy poet who is the prime suspect when his bully is found dead.

Planet Manson (1998)

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You know the style of Rinse Dream and the Dark Brothers? What if they did that, but there was no penetration? Well, I think it would be close to this movie. Well, there is a blowjob, so give them that much.

A note to the non-perverts: I’m referring to the neon-lit, 35 mm grindhouse-on-video adult vibe that was big at one point in the late 80s and early 90s. See Party Doll-A-Go-Go, Cafe Flesh, New Wave Hookers or Nightdreams (which is nearly too fancy to fit in).

Directed by Jacques Boyreau and filmed at the Werepad artspace in San Francisco, this features numerous characters pitching ideas for exploitation movies to a producer with skeleton hands, which I would like to think is a tribute to Death Bed: The Bed That Eats. The club has a 60s look, people do kung fu like Dolemite, and there’s just a lot of talking. There was a time when I’d have to search all over for a VHS of this. Now, I just got online.

It was probably more fun to be there than it was to watch.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Mutant Massacre 2 (1991)

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Imagine if Alien Beasts had a sequel, but one that Boogieman II handled, where you’re never sure if you’re seeing the same movie, a re-edit or whatever this is, a movie mainly having you stare at old monitors while a monotone voice repeats the lines several times. It’s a drone on a drone on a drone, and yet it wrapped me in a warm blanket and coaxed me into a feeling of comotose oneness, a place where I don’t think about the fact that doing five days of emotionally exhausting work only gives you two days off and more than most of those days is spent worrying about the next five days. Instead, let’s discuss monsters, mutants and the hum of old video camera footage. It’s better that way.

Carl J. Sukenick makes movies with titles like Lesbian Beasts 5000 AD, The Toxic Retards, Stamp Killer and Ninja Dream. These movies may all have reused footage from the one that preceded it, but who are we to tell Carol how to do what he does? He doesn’t come to the corner and knock the dick out of our mom’s mouth, after all.

Letterboxd describes this movie as follows: “Aliens are turning people into mutants. Opening scene features claymation.”

What a simple TV Guide one-line take on such insanity.

There is a Mutant Massacre, but again, both movies all come from Alien Beasts, a film — charitably a film — that has dialogue like “My friend Joe put on anti-radiation clothing and tried to stop the female enemy agent! My friend Joe, I repeat, put on anti-radiation clothing and tried to stop the female enemy agent from stealing the weapons from the base.”

I love that Carl got his dad, some fireworks and some friends to fight in the backyard and turned it into movies that morons like me ponder over and write thousands of words trying to ascribe some meaning to, in a world where meaning is a maelstrom and that making sense of things feels harder by the day. 

“After the meeting, Joe notified Carl that there were traitors on their mission. After the meeting, Joe notified Carl that there were traitors on their mission.”

How did Carl get a woman to put on a mask, take off her top, and, most importantly, show up in this? 

That said, I would rewatch this or another version of this over nearly anything currently playing in a theater.

Savage Vengeance (1993)

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I Will Dance on Your Grave, I Will Dance on Your Grave: Savage Vengeance, I Spit on Your Grave 2: Savage Vengeance — whatever you call this, it’s a kind of, sort of sequel to I Spit On Your Grave, to the point that Camille Keaton is in it, using the name Vickie Kehl. In fact, she even has the same name as the original, Jennifer.

How can every movie that followed the scummy first movie be so much worse?

Man, Camille Keaton has had it rough in the movies. She started as Solange in What Have You Done to Solange?, playing the doomed girl around whom the entire movie’s narrative revolves. She’s also in some further Italian weirdness like Tragic Ceremony, Sex of the Witch and Madeleine: Anatomy of a Nightmare before being decimated at length in Day of the Woman AKA  I Spit On Your Grave. I’ve spent so much time considering rape revenge (and revengeomatic) movies, that force us through so much pain in order to get to the catharsis; do we need so much pain to get to redemption? 

And yet here we are again, as this starts with Jennifer being assaulted by four men in a park, then is doxxed by a law professor, revealing to their class that she killed everyone who attacked her and got away with it. Angry, she goes on a vacation with her friend Sam (Linda Lyer), which ends up with — you guessed it — Sam being raped and killed before Jennifer is attacked and left for dead, stabbed in the chest. Well, you also can prognosticate that Jennifer returns, with a chainsaw and shotgun, and slices men’s heads in two and blasts another right in the dick. 

Shot in Tennessee for $6,000 by Donald Farmer, this had some insane behind the scenes happenings, according to critic Dan Tabor: “The strangest part in all of this is Camille Keaton under the name Vickie Kehl actually decided to go along with it and star in the film even though she was married to Meir Zarchi who directed the original I Spit on Your Grave. So she had to know this film was done without his permission. But after filming concluded on No Justice, she began shooting what amounted to a fan film, only to change her mind halfway through production. It’s rumored she called her husband, crying, and left the film about 75% finished, which is why this film barely clocks in at over an hour.”

When Keaton walked off, Farmer was left with a jigsaw puzzle where half the pieces were missing, leading to the disjointed, dream-like (or nightmare-like) pacing that defines the final cut. Meir threatened to sue, which is why there’s so much ADR that changes plot details. One assumes that Farmer was going to go all The Boogieman and use footage from the first movie to set things up. Now, he would have to remake that, and in the attack, no one takes off their pants. Farmer claimed the DP — he had a DP on this? — didn’t like the idea of making the sexual moments dirty. 

The bad guys, Dwayne and Tommy, are cartoonish versions of the squalid original bad guys. In fact, Tommy even keeps dead bodies in his house. This film is like a cover band version of a great band, and it just reminds you to enjoy the inspiration, not what Xeroxes what you already liked. The lack of grime makes the cartoonish villains feel less like threats and more like community theater actors who wandered onto the wrong set.

I asked, “Do we need so much pain to get to redemption?” The original I Spit on Your Grave argued that the audience must earn its comeuppance by enduring the assault in real time. Savage Vengeance fails because it treats the assault like a box to be checked; at least Meir’s movie has something resembling a soul. This is…man, what a weird film. I’m amazed that it exists.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Forbidden Power (2018)

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After a one-night affair, George (Lincoln Bevers) finds himself with, well, forbidden power and a cryptic message.

He should be so lucky.

George used to be a pilot, but now he’s stuck in a corporate drone job and forced to work with a jerk named Miles (Eric Stayberg). As they head to another soulless convention, he meets Veronica (Nasanin Nuri), who goes back to his room faster than he could expect. She refuses his offer to wear a condom, and they have the kind of sex that you only used to read about in Penthouse Forum. He wakes up; she’s gone, and a strange note is left behind. 

He feels a strange energy now. When he sails the sea of mayonnaise with his girlfriend Cathy (Hannah Janssen), he lasts longer, has more passion and finally, perhaps for the first time, gets her off. He’s also able to become a martial arts master in a matter of days, thanks to that power and the teachings of Chang (Harry Mok). 

He wonders, “How could this happen to me?”

That leads him to try to find Veronica, which brings him into her backstory: as a child, she met something inside a crater. But it’s not all kung fu and carnal knowledge. There’s also a cabal of dudes who have buttered Veronica’s crumpet, led by Michaelson (Charles Leggett), who have formed a secret society of rich elites. George is on his way, as the power teaches him how to play the market. He has no interest whatsoever in joining this Bilderberg bangers. But ah, Veronica is part of them and is consolidating her power.

You will believe in a vast conspiracy obsessed with destroying the Status of Liberty. The one in Vegas. Of all the landmarks to target, choosing the New York-New York Hotel & Casino version is high stakes, but on a budget.

If there were an award for “Movies That Feel Like They Were Written by a Sentient 1980s Men’s Magazine,” this would be the undisputed champion. Yet director Paul Kyriazi isn’t a newcomer. He also made Death Machines, Omega Cop and Ninja Busters. And he’s obsessed with personal development and success, having written books on the subject like How to Live the James Bond Lifestyle and Clearing the Subconscious for 00 Agents. In his world, sex isn’t just sex. It’s Energy Transfer, which turns a standard erotic thriller setup into a superhero origin story.

It’s rare to find a modern film that captures the earnest, slightly off-kilter energy of a 1980s straight-to-video action flick. It doesn’t feel like it’s winking at the camera or trying to be a parody. Forbidden Power genuinely believes in George’s journey from a bored drone to a stock-market-crushing, kung-fu-fighting alpha.

Kyriazi also wrote Burt Reynolds, Miko, Dinah and The Slasher: The True Story of a Serial Killer Waiting in Burt’s Closet and man, I have to just share the Amazon sales copy: “February 1975. Burt Reynolds was awakened by a bloody man crawling on his bedroom floor. About to call an ambulance, Burt came face to face with the infamous Skid Row Slasher, bloody machete in hand. What saved Burt from disaster? What woman did he break up with that ultimately saved him, and probably her?”