The third National Lampoon movie* to reach theaters — it was filmed after National Lampoon Goes To The Movies — this was written by John Hughes, who was pretty unhappy with the final product. He’d tell the Chicago Tribune, “They didn’t even want me around, and I was shocked when I saw the movie”. My screenplay had been completely butchered, and my name will nevertheless be on the credits forever.” That said, I think no one but me remembers this movie and Hughes ended up doing just fine.
The film failed at the box office and the Lampoon name would end up being hit and miss, with films like National Lampoon’s Animal House and National Lampoon’s Vacation being all time comedy classics and others like National Lampoon’s Loaded Weapon 1, National Lampoon’s Barely Legal and National Lampoon Presents Surf Party (amongst many, many others) became a series of dwindling returns, much like the magazine would be after most of its talent left.
If you’re hoping for the wit of the infamous National Lampoon 1964 High School Yearbook Parody, know that P.J. O’Rourke and Doug Kenney had nothing to do with this film. No, instead this is the tenth reunion of the class of Lizzie Borden High School and they’re being haunted by Walter Baylor, a student who had a prank played on him, ala Terror Train and Slaughter High.
The film certainly has a great cast. I’m always pleased to see Gerrit Graham (Phantom of Paradise,TerrorVision) on my screen. Plus, there’s Michael Lerner (Barton Fink), Misty Rowe (Hee-Haw, SST Death Flight), Blackie Dammett (the father of Anthony Kiedis, who is awesome in Nine Deaths of the Ninja), Miriam Flynn (Cousin Catherine from the Vacation movies), Stephen Furst (Flounder from Animal House), Mews Small (who was in the original Broadway production of Grease) and Anne Ramsey (Mama Fratelli from The Goonies).
It also has an on-screen performance by Chuck Berry performing a medley of his songs (“It Wasn’t Me”, “My Dingaling”, and “Festival”) and a theme song by Gary U.S. Bonds.
In a world of slasher silliness — I’m looking at you, Wacko, Pandemonium, Student Bodies and Saturday the 14th — this one isn’t all that good. It does, however, posit something that no other slasher in my memory really has done before. It redeems its killer.
In the very same year of this film’s release, director Michael Miller would make another strange slasher hybrid, Silent Rage, which features Chuck Norris against an unstoppable killer. MIller would use most of the crew from this movie and Stephen Furst for that one, too.
*I’m not counting TV movie Disco Beaver from Outer Space in the list of National Lampoon films.
The best part of a slasher is that if it works, you get more than one. 2010’s Hatchet II starts exactly where the first ended, placing Marybeth Dunston (now played by Danielle Harris) into the grip of Victor Crowley (Kane Hodder). There’s even a scene that ties in this movie to another Adam Green film Frozen, which film geeks — hello, everyone reading this — will enjoy.
Sadly, this was to be the first unrated horror movie to be released in theaters since 1978’s Dawn of the Dead, but pressure from the MPAA took it out of AMC Theaters before most fans got the chance to see it.
Marybeth learns that from Rev. Zombie (Tony Todd) that her father was one of the boys whose prank started the sequence of events that took Victor Crowley physically from this world, leaving behind his unstoppable ghost. Along with her uncle (Tom Holland, the director of Fright Night) and a team of hunters — all being offered $500 to get back Rev. Zombie’s boat and $5,000 for the head of Crowley — she ventures back into Honey Island Swamp one more time. But all, as they say, is not as it seems.
With references to Jason and Leslie Vernon, as well as numerous and incredibly inventive kills — the last one is incredible — this is pretty much a slasher lover’s dream film. Where movies like Scream use the genre as a joke and springboard for their own retread of the form, this is a tribute worth watching.
How much does Adam Green like slashers? He was in a band called Haddonfield. And he’s made four movies in the Hatchet series, as well as writing the Tommy Jarvis tapes in Friday the 13th: The Game.
Hatchet straddles the line between tribute to the past, humor and being a slasher that can stand on its own quite well. I was pleased to discover how much I loved every single one of these movies.
Victor Crowley was born when his father Thomas (both roles are played by slasher killer elite Kane Hodder) has a child with the nurse of his terminally ill wife, who curses the child. Born deformed in a difficult birth that claims the life of his mother, Thomas has raised the child as best he can when a prank causes a house fire and an accidental hatchet to the face kills the boy, who must now roam the New Orleans swamps as a ghost forever searching for his father and ready to kill anyone in his way.
Woe be to anyone who takes a tourist boat ride through the swamps on a night that Victor is out roaming, which is the perfect set-up for this type of film. I mean, how much more do you want to know?
Crowley is opposed by Marybeth Dunston (Tamara Feldman for the first film, to be followed by Danielle Harris in the others), who blames Crowley for the deaths of her father and brother.
The other thing this movie gets right is having Tony Todd in the cast. He elevates everything he’s ever been in and is a standout here as Rev. Zombie, who has been sued too many times to lead tours. He’ll become more essential in the second film. Actually, if you watch the first three movies together, they tell one big story, kind of like Halloween and Halloween 2. Robert Englund shows up as well, making this the second movie that Hodder, Todd and Englund all appear in (the other is The Wishmaster).
This is a spin-off five-minute film from Nicholas Michael Jacobs’ Tales from Six Feet Under, just like the last film he sent us, Genevieve. Actually, it feels exactly the same as that movie without all that much difference. This is all about “David Burr’s last few minutes of life as Genevieve punishes him for breaking into her home.”
The truth is, this movie is five minutes long, with two minutes and twenty seconds of that time being the credits. I’m all for reusing footage, but this just feels like a throwaway when Jacobs does seem to have talent.
Philip “Hawk” Hawkins (Ryan Barton-Grimley, who wrote, produced and directed) was kicked out of the army for killing someone who he thought was a vampire and has been thrown out of his parents’ house, too. He’s working as a security guard in Santa Muerta, California — which would probably be great if it wasn’t for all the gd vampires — when some actual vamps show up. Only one person believes him, his vegetarian pacifist friend Revson “Rev” McCabe (Ari Schneider). Can these two save the world? Well, maybe not. But they might be able to save their neighborhood.
Will Hawk get the love of Theo (Jana Savage)? Will Rev escape unharmed? Will their mysterious eyepatched mentor teach them the ways of vampire butt kickery? How does that goth band fit in? Will mummies show up?
I absolutely loved this quick — 84 minutes! — blast of 80’s infused horror comedy, which moves at a lighting pace and makes you fall for all of its characters. I could foresee several films within this world and hope that this is exactly what the filmmakers intend! Hell, this could be a video game, a comic, action figures, a marital aid line…
This may also win the award for the most volume of blood I’ve seen in a movie in 2020. Or at least the funniest use of way too much blood. Ah, what am I saying? Too much is never enough.
Hawk and Rev: Vampire Slayers was the midnight movie on the opening and closing nights of the Dances with Film Festival and will soon be available on demand from October Coast. You can learn more on the official site and offical Facebook page.
DAY 7. THEY’RE OUT TO GET YOU: One with heavy paranoid (real or imagined).
I was going to do A Scanner Darkly for the Scarecrow Challenge today, but somehow, someway I found a movie that might be even more off the wall insane than a Phillip K. Dick adaption. Just imagine that.
This only came out in the UK and Spain, as far as I know, and went straight to video in the U.S. Somehow, in a world where it seems like every mom and pop horror movie section rental has been pulled off the shelf and transformed into a 4K clean print with a million extras and a collectible slip cover, this one somehow escaped.
We begin with Rip Torn — yes, the Oscar and Emmy-nominated actor from The Larry Sanders Show and, of course, Freddy Got Fingered — screaming in Egyptian at a bug at the top of his lungs before transforming from a Nazi scientist who has somehow escaped war crimes before becoming the Egyptian god Khepera, the scarab-faced representation of the rising or morning sun. Sure, he represents creation and the renewal of life. But isn’t Lucifer also the light bringer?
Meanwhile, in a completely different movie, Murphy (Robert Gintry, The Exterminator) is getting decimated in a bar before he walks into an ambassador’s house and easily cucking him. Then he gets arrested.
Then, in the third movie of one movie, we watch a politican fencing with his graddaughter before one of his servants places a scarab on him and he ends up killing himself.
As if this barrage of stories doesn’t make you disoriented, we get back to Murphy, who watches another politican kill himself with a gun after anotehr scarab gets put on him and then a nun named Elena (Cristina S. Pascual, who played a night club singer hiding out with gay nuns in Pedro Almodóvar’s Dark Habits the very same year) runs away before revealing that she is the daughter of the Nazi scientist/Egyptian god.
Also, she has psychic powers.
This movie has it all. By all, I mean that it has two movies in one.
The first is all about Rip Torn dressed like a bird/bug human god who has long rituals of women dancing near-nude when he isn’t making love to women who transform into cows, at which point he spits milk into their faces. He also transforms outfits throughout the film, becoming the scuzzy direct to VHS version of Serpentor by the end of the proceedings.
The other movie is about Ginty strolling around, getting wasted, having sex with the wrong women and then using an axe to battle hooded bad guys.
At some point, the two movies come together and all them witches paint Rip Torn’s daughter’s bosom with weird squiggly black lines and make her up like Ming’s concubine took care of Dale Arden.
The tagline for this movie was “Evil, plotted by a mad sorcerer… bizarre beyond imagination.”
They’re more than half right.
This was written by Robert and Steve-Charles Jaffe (who also were behind Motel Hell; Robert also wrote Nightflyers and Demon Seed), with Steven-Charles directing*. Ned Miller and Jim Block, who were behind the Ashutosh Gowariker in America vehicle West Is West, were also on hand to presumably say things like, “Guys. Guys. Guys! This movie makes no sense.” Thank Khepera the brothers Jaffe had the good sense to tell them to shut the fuck up.
You know what I’m looking for in a movie? Half-nude dancers in Satanic rituals, screaming at bugs with microphones, Robert Ginty in anything and a movie that despite featuring human sacrifices throughout ends with the kind of music that you’d hear over the end of a failed McLean Stevenson sitcom and not bat at eye.
This is the kind of movie that I drive people nuts talking about. Trust me, you should be glad to be quarantined because if parties were still a thing, I’d sit next to you in a maniacal rage screaming “Ginty and Torn in the same film!”
There aren’t enough stars in every parallel reality to properly rate this batshit paen to…something. I’m just glad these crazy bastards had the gumption to go to Spain and convince people to give them money to make their politcial conspiracy of a scarab Nazi scientist god movie. Their balls are as huge Set’s testicles, which of course are healed at the same time as Horus’ eye after their comsic conflict.
Canada, I love you. Seriously, you have made so many crazy slashers that you’ve won my heart. And just when I think I’ve seen them all, I find this 1987 rarity that features a killer named Frankie who kidnaps women, forces them to dress up like his mother and then stores their used up dead bodies in a closet. But now that he’s found — and lost — Madeline (Melissa Martin, Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan) thanks to dear old mom, he decides to commit matricide and take off into the night looking for the one that got away.
This ones comes to us from Lloyd Simandi — whose resume is packed with wonderful junk like Empire of Ash films, Chained Heat II, Medieval Fleshpots 2: Hot Wenches and Forbidden Rage: White Slave Secrets — and Michael Mazo, who also directed Empire of Ash III. In case you’re wondering who did Empire of Ash II, the secret is that these guys were so scumtastic that they just released the first film all over again as the second one.
For all the scenes of women soaping up in the shower — seriously, this movie must have employed a 35,000 gallon hot water heater to ensure all those showers remained piping hot — there is also a scene of women going to the male strip club. And everyone chasing the killer. And the killer chasing them back. And, perhaps most amazingly, the killer stabbing a woman and then using the same knife to slice up some pizza.
This is the kind of movie that Twitter kids would today label as problematic and that my wife walks past and shakes her head, wondering why I always end up watching movies where everyone is either stupid, naked or stupid and naked.
I often joke that John Carradine and Donald Pleasence never said no to a movie, but the films they refused were probably asked of Cameron Mitchell, who absolutely, positively would never ever turn down a role. He’s in the movie — released at the absolute peak of VHS rental mania — as the owner of a video store of the beyond, renting out all manner of sleazy films to an increasingly more bizarre cast of characters, including scream queen Michelle Bauer (Reform School Girls, Sorority Babes in the SlimeballBowl-O-Rama, Evil Toons) before she became so well-known.
Much like Terror In the Aisles, Zombiethon and Famous T&A, this is a compilation tape of horror films. But until the high class by comparison Pleasence and Nancy Allen-starring Terror In the Aisles, this is a bottom of the barrel — and that’s where we like it, thank you — scraping collection of clips from the Continental Video catalogue.
As Mitchell holds forth at the Shoppe of Horrors Video Store, one-and-done director Robert A. Worms III throws every film the label has at you. And while many reviewers have mentioned how bad these movies are, guess what? They’re the bread and butter of what we talk about here. And this bread may be soggy, but it tastes delicious.
For many, this was their first exposure to the films of Herschell Gordon Lewis, as clips of Blood Feast, Two Thousand Maniacs! and Color Me Blood Red are in this. Plus, there’s a whole mess of wonderful occult oddities like Enter the Devil(truly the peak or valley, depending on your point of view, for bad taste Satanic shockers), Suicide Cult, To the Devil A Daughter, Ruby and — spectacularly and incredibly grainily — Cathy’s Curse.
Continental Video would also release plenty more great junk in the years to come, such as Witchboard, Thrashin’ (which was the hardest movie to get in the days of Prime Time Video), Eaten Alive!, Daughters of Darkness, Hollywood Vice Squad, Mary Mary Bloody Mary, The Redeemer, Maniac Mansion, El Castillo de los Monstruos, two Fred Olen Ray Sleazemania compilations and the Bubba Smith exercise video Bubba Until It Hurts.
I have a free idea for Vinegar Syndrome or Severin. Remake this and throw in clips of all your new releases. After all, you have fans like me who pretty much buy everything you do. And buy it again. And again.
Day 7: They’re Out to Get You: One with Heavy Paranoia (real or imagined).
“I don’t want to take lessons! I wanna have a fucking band!Fucking be like Deicide! Deicide. Yes, Deicide!” —Shane Carver, loser leader of the Black Circle Boys
Yeah, maybe the guitar is broke, douche-dick.
I won’t say I hate this movie. But I was certainly disappointed by this movie, considering it “starred” John Doe of X and dealt with a misguided ne’er do well finding solace in black metal music. A group of Satan worshiping dopers want to start a band—and kill people—and John Doe? I’m up for that.
Oh, be careful for what ye hail, black metal and horror film buff.
What we ended up with here is an all-male version of—without the supernatural hocus pocus—1996’s much better The Craft, which also gave us a peek into the teenaged occult, as well as 1987’s The Lost Boys. And, oh shite, this film pulls the ‘ol Eric Roberts (Power 98) bait-n-switch on you.
Bastards!
Either John Doe was cast—in typical Eric Roberts fashion—for one scene just to get a brand name on the box/in the credits, or Doe’s work as a police detective investigating the Black Circle Boys Murders, for whatever reason, ended up on the cutting room floor. And sorry, Donnie Wahlberg is cool these days (and excellent) in TV’s Blue Bloods, but he just isn’t an effective consolation prize when we came to see John Doe (but, truth be told, the ex-New Kids on the Block member, in his third acting role, is very good as Greggo, effeminate Satanist who introduced Shane to the Black Arts). Oh, yeah . . . blink and you’ll miss Lisa Loeb (remember her gal-paldom with Ethan Hawke and hitting the U.S. Top 10 in 1994 with “Stay (I Missed You)” from Reality Bites?) as an “angry goth chick” in a club.
As you can see, the casting on this movie is flat out, upside down FUBAR’d. Why would a production (granted, it’s low budget, but still) take known commodities—that inspire us to rent in the first place—such as John Doe and Lisa Loeb—and place them in one scene cameos; each should be in the larger, respective roles of Detective Roy, played by Victor Morris (NBC-TV’s In the Line of Duty film series and Bigger Than the Sky), and the Dead Head-high schooler Chloe, played by Tara Subkoff (The Last Days of Disco; The NotoriousBetty Page).
True, both Morris and Subkoff are affable in the roles, but wouldn’t you, as The Devil’s Advocate (sorry) producer, want to predominately feature Doe and Loeb’s names on the box in smaller type under the leads and copywrite-plug their past, known works on the box’s flipside? Loeb could totally pull off the wiles of a hippy chick high schooler—and you could feature her playing the acoustic guitar and singing a folk song—to the antithesis of the goth kids running the school. And if you’ve seen John Doe’s work in A Matter of Degrees and his co-starring role as Teddy Connor, the leader of the once great Wotan, in the NBC-TV Law & Order: TOS 2003 “Ripped from the Headlines” episode “Blaze” (which took it scripting cues from Great White’s tragic 2003 performance at The Station night club in Rhode Island*), you know that Doe not only carries a film as a lead actor with distinction—he can pull off a goth rocker with class and style. (Sorry, Donnie. No offense. We love Doe ’round these ‘ere Allegheny wilds and crush any actor before him.)
Ye, hail Teddy Connor! Courtesy of Gregory Hill Design/NBC-TV
But alas . . . Black Circle Boys was made in 1998 and not 1988; so the producers decided to appeal to the then nostalgic-maturing New Kids on the Block contingent, instead of the ol’ punk codgers (aka myself and B&S boss Sam) who admire John Doe and rocked out to X in the ’80s via The Decline of Western Civilization and Urgh! A Music War. And yeah, David Newsom (ABC-TV’s Homefront) is a fine actor (and now a successful reality television producer; kudos, Dave!), but the divine Dee Wallace Stone of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and The Howling fame is wasted in her “Eric Roberts Casting” as the troubled mom; Wallace would have been more effectively utilized in Newsom’s larger role as the swim coach-physics teacher hybrid—and being the horndogs we are, even get a few scenes of her in a curve-accentuating one piece. And yes . . . that is the pride of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Richard “Les Nesman” Sanders of WKPX in Cincinnati (check out our review of FM) also being woefully underutilized in his one (uh, I think it was two?) shot role as Principal Dunkel. (At this point, the producers should have called in Eric Roberts—who we friggin’ love like blood around here. And yes, another major f-up by the producers: not having Killing Joke on the soundtrack, Deicide references be damned.)
Now, that’s how you cast, music consult, and sell tickets, kiddies. But alas, I am a schlub writer and not a casting director or music consultant. . . .
So, anyway . . . We meet Kyle (Scott Bairstow of FOX-TV’s Party of Five), a star high school swimmer wallowing in depression over a personal loss (an idiot friend fell off a bridge/water tower and broke his neck while they were drunk; instead of moving on and taking responsibility, Kyle blames “the world”)—which makes him easy pickings for paranoia-poster child Shane Carver (a very good Eric Mabius; big screen debut in Welcome to the Dollhouse, noticed in Cruel Intentions) and his little goth clique, The Black Circle Boys. Kyle is introduced to hard booze, drugs, devil worship, and frog beheadings-by-mouth in quick succession . . . and murder, by way of drug-dealing Rory (an early Chad Lindberg of The Fast and the Furious), a BCB “slave-trainee” by Shane as a form of sacrifice. Along the way the boys start a band, which is an utter failure. So, out of frustration—and a parnoid belief his goth-clique is betraying him—Shane starts killing off the other members of ‘the Circle.
At least I think that’s what happened. Yeah, they lost me. That’s what happens when you deny me of my John Doe fix, boondoggle me with Donnie Wahlberg, and don’t give us the black metal we came for and stick us with a bunch of never-heard-of bargain bin basement clutter that is neither “black” nor “metal” or anything worthy of woof or a tweet. I mean, come on . . . a movie about “black metal murders” that only uses the word “Satan” once? And what in the Sam Hill (another music consultant f-up: no Glenn Danzig and Samhain**) is this B.S. referring to Satan as “Father” all the time? Get the Anton LeVey (The Devil’s Rain) out of here, Mr. Politically Correct screenwriter. Fuck, dude.
And what the hell, bass player? Learn your root, 3rd, and 5th triads. Fuck me. Even the shittiest of shite bassists know ’em. You deserved Shane slashing your throat and tossin’ your lame ass off a bridge. I’d nut-punch you myself, dick breath. The Relentless from American Satan would dissolve you and your “boys” into a puddle just by pissing on ‘ya. Pusswads.
Ugh. Another great clip — lost — that ruins the point of the previous paragraph.
In the end: What we have here is an ineffective, low-budget variant of 1987’s far superiorRiver’s Edge (starring Crispin Glover and Keanu Reeves), in the Black Circle Boys claims in its promotional materials that it is “Based on a True Story.” And while it’s beneath River’s Edge, Ricky 6 — which is also based on Ricky Kasso’s “Satanic Panic” inspiring crime — is better than Black Circle Boys.
F-You, marketing department. Your “true story” and John Doe bait-n-switch be damned, pisses me off. And you too, Mr. Music Consultant.
That “true story” takes us back to Slayer, whose loud and aggressive music—featuring violent themes that would even scare Tony Iommi of Black Sabbath—went beyond the usual horror-film influenced, satanic lyrical themes to include odes to sadism, necrophilia, serial killers, and Nazi death camps. Not helping Slayer’s reputation in the eyes of the Moral Majority was Slayer’s music being predominately featured in the River’s Edge, the film itself based upon the 1981 California murder of Marcy Renee Conrad and the 1984 New York murder of Gary Lauwers, where their troubled-teen killers bragged about and returned to the murder site of their victims.
The most catastrophic example of this ignorance regarding hard rock and heavy metal music was the highly publicized, 1994 West Memphis 3 case in which questionable “evidence” led to the wrongful conviction of three non-conformist boys as murderous Satanists. Their only guilt: a shared interest in rock music, horror films, and unconventional art and books (you know, guys like myself and Sam, B&S About Movies’ boss. And we’re harmless, really).
A seriously f-up dude giving AC/DC a bad name.
The occult and the America justice system simmered in a cauldron of abhorrence and ignorance once again in the 1999 Columbine massacre, as satanic-panic maligned the music of shocker-rocker Marilyn Manson and, to a lesser extent, the industrial/goth bands KMFDM and Rammstein as underlying causes. The misguided controversy forced Manson to cancel the remaining dates of his 1999 Rock Is Dead world tour and negatively affected the sales of his third album, Mechanical Animals (1998). Additionally slandered as “co-conspirators” were Oliver Stone, by way of the Quentin Tarantino-scripted Natural Born Killers, in addition to the designers behind the video games Doom, Wolfstein 3D, and Duke Nukem. (A 1999 Rolling Stone article: “Columbine: Whose Fault is It?,” in addition to Dave Cullen’s 2009 in-depth tome, Columbine, examine the tragedy.)
Paving the way for the legal atrocities of the West Memphis 3 was the 1986 case regarding the seminal British metal band, Judas Priest. In that judicial miscarriage against the creative arts, the parents of two Reno, Nevada, teenaged boys sued Judas Priest and its label, Columbia Records, for $6.2 million dollars, claiming the band’s 1978 release, Stained Class, contained backward, subliminal messages that drove the boys to suicide (the court dismissed the case in 1990).
F-in railroaded. Man, Don’t even get me started.
Prior to Judas Priest’s slandering by religious zealots, Ozzy Osbourne, the ex-lead singer of Black Sabbath, became the victim of another bogus suicide-by-rock music claim. Three sets of parents sued the “Prince of Darkness” between 1985 and 1990, claiming the song “Suicide Solution” from Ozzy’s 1980 debut album, Blizzard of Oz, encouraged their young sons to commit suicide—all three cases were eventually dismissed. In an archetypal overreaching misconstrue by the Christian Right blinded by satanic-panic to deflect their parental failures and to excuse the “misadventures” of their own children, the clearly anti-alcohol and an anti-suicide song, with lyrics written by bassist Bob Daisley, was a touching tribute to Bon Scott, the then recently deceased lead singer of AC/DC (AC/DC: Let There Be Rock). Other tomes claim it was actually about Daisley’s concerns regarding Ozzy’s health. Whatever Daisley’s lyrical motivation, the song certainly is not a clarion for teenagers to commit suicide.
Anyway, back to Black Circle Boys.
This ain’t no River’s Edge and director Joe Berlinger’s theatrical, three-film documentary series Paradise Lost is more disturbing and far more engrossing (in addition to the non-fiction books Blood of Innocents by Guy Reel and Mara Leveritt’s Devil’s Knot, both which examine the WM3 tragedy at length; the later book itself was adapted into a 2013 film). If the filmmakers behind Black Circle Boys had only adhered to their source material: David St. Clair’s 1987 expose Say You Love Satan, about 17-year-old Ricky Kasso and the murderous exploits of the Knights of the Black Circle (which resulted in the death of the aforementioned Gary Lauwers).
You can stream Black Circle Boys for free on You Tube, as it is not available on any streaming platforms. Used copies of the unnerving Say You Love Satan are readily available in the online marketplace—it’s a highly suggested read. In fact, read the book instead of watching this movie.
Ugh. Another trailer bits the digital dust.
Seriously, though: The appreciation of a film—whether it is good or bad, well-made or poorly made—is based in the age of the viewer; for film appreciation is of a time and place. While I love my horror movies (Phantasm to Rocktober Blood) and my Killing Joke, Samhain, The Misfits, Venom, King Diamond, and Deicide as much as the next guy, I was already ensconced in adulthood (wearing shirts with collars, even ties!) when Black Circle Boys was released. So, if you were in middle school or just starting high school at the time Black Circle Boys was released—as I was when the juvenile delinquency drama Over the Edge was released in 1979—rewatching this film will warm the cockles as your own person “classic” film.
* The Great White tragedy also served as the basis for the Mark L. Lester-directed and Eric Roberts-starring Groupie.
** Glenn Danzig is in the filmmaking biz these days. We recently reviewed his film Verotika. Yeah, we adore auteur projects and movies with rock stars ’round here. Speaking of which . . . you can get all of the rock ‘n’ roll flicks you can handle with our “Rock ‘n’ Roll Week” and “Rock ‘n’ Roll Week II” features from this past July and September with links to over 100 film reviews.
About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook.He also writes for B&S About Movies.
Somehow, some way, this movie played the Cannes and Berlin Film Festivals in 1973 as The Cuckoo Clocks of Hell. It also was named The Fun House, which is possibly how Tobe Hooper’s The Funhousebecame a video nasty. It was finally released in 1979 under this title by Cinematic Releasing Corporation, who tried to pass it off as a film connected to The Last House On the Left.
Because every name the film is a pseudonym and no one came forward to claim making this movie, there were rumors for years that this was a real snuff movie. In 2000, Roger Watkins came forward to take ownership, even telling how Otto Preminger had gifted him with the Bolex camera he used to film the snuff sequences. He was also hooked on amphetamine while making it, spending $2,200 of the movies $3,000 budget on drugs.
Watkins, who apprenticed with Freddie Francis and Nicholas Ray, would go on to make several adult films under the name Richard Mahler. His films Her Name WasLisa and Corruption are less porn than art movies with penetration.
Let me state this up front: this movie is not for those looking for an easy watch.
Terry Hawkins just got out of jail for a year on drug charges and wants to make something beyond pornography. He wants to capture murder on film. He rounds up a crew of like-minded people and gets Jim and Nancy Palmer involved. Jim’s a porn director who says that people are getting too desensitized. Terry’s just the guy to shock everyone.
From real animal mutilation to people being forced to orally satisfy goat hooves — and oh yeah, body parts being torn apart while smelling salts are used to keep people awake — this is a movie about horrible people doing horrible things.
As for the square up reel at the end, where a voiceover claims everyone was punished for their crimes, distributor Leon Fentonand his assistant Bernie Travis added that as they felt that some punishment had to be delivered to the bad guys. Watkins felt that this ruined the film.
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