Monthly Archives: September 2021

Phantom Brother (1988)

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Five years ago, a fiery car wreck wipes out a family and orphans young Abel Evans. Then, like Billy Eye Harper before him, Abel’s dead brother is back from the dead and taking his revenge. Of course, as the copy on the box gives it away . . . Abel’s brother isn’t a zombie: he’s a ghost. And, if the tagline of “It kin (can) happen to you” doesn’t give it away: this is a horror comedy (although some will debate on the “comedy”). But “Cain” on the cover looks like a hardcore Halloween-inspired slasher.

Starting out as Blood Brother, the film shot in Mamaroneck, New York, at a house that was owned by director Jeffrey Delman; the home also appears in his film, Deadtime Stories (1986). Another location that appeared in another film was the “hillybilly house,” aka the grandparent’s home of Gabriel Bronsztein, a film crew member; it was used in Frank Henenlotter’s beloved home video renter, Frankenhooker (1989).

Phantom Brother is one of those movies we love for the fact that the individuals who worked on the film drop their two-cents worth on social media (sometimes You Tube; in this case, the IMDb) about their experience. Right off the bat, Gabriel Bronsztein, who was the film’s camera assistant, key grip, and gaffer (holding multiple jobs on-set is par for the SOV course), lets it be known that the film “was not his fault” — which only succeeds in us wanting to watch Phantom Brother, even more. Bronsztein also appears as the director of “Vampires on Valium on Valentines Day” within the film. Phantom Brother was his first job fresh out of film school; he worked for director William Szarka as an assistant editor at a film distribution company.

Like Dead Girls . . . before Scream there was the . . .

Bronsztein speaks about how most [backyard] filmmakers [like Don Dohler] would opt to shoot on 16mm. Of course, as we have discussed all this week (and we still have a couple of more days of reviews and SOV analysis on deck), the ’80s home video revolution hit and the likes of Boardinghouse* and Blood Cult revolutionized the low-budget film industry. Because of video tape, filmmakers could eschew expensive film stocks, fiddling with “short ends,” and bypass regional drive-ins and go straight for national home video distribution — either via brick-and-mortar outlets or via mail order. (Blood Cult, while not the first SOV, it was the first SOV to eschew drive-in premieres or festivals and go straight to the stores while “four-walling” pulpy, genre movie mags.) In the case of Phantom Brother, they broke out the camcorder: a Betacam. Gabriel’s brother, David, who was the DP (Director of Photography) and owner of the camera, chipped in funding. Another actor who wanted to be in the movie, Patrick Malloy, who played Dr. Van Dam, also funded the production. Others involved with the film also held dual jobs: Art Director and set designer Nora Maher, appeared as the pasty-face “Killer Girl Scout.”

So, if you haven’t been in these woods before . . .

Not the Phantom Brother. Hold the Tranya.

We have a two “Totally ’80s” couples who run afoul of a crazy family at a secluded county house, complete with a masked brother and his perpetually, Girl Scout uniform-clad sister and their fat mother — of course, they’re all dead from the car crash, remember? Now, why did the couple end up at this house of horrors? Well, to work on that movie shooting there that we mentioned earlier. So we get a little meta here — and a shiny implement here and there — with a horror movie concerned with murders while real murders are being committed. And Able tends to, aka hides, the real murder committed by his family, got that?

Ack, no we don’t.

The four MTV-rocker dopes ventured into the woods to find the head of Abel’s dad and cash-in on the “buried treasure” urban legend. Oh, and get a little of the rock ‘n’ roll hoochy-coo. You know the teen-type: Pentgrams and “666” on the walls, and the little creepy doll (that resembles our killer) are of little concern when you’re a horny, 30-year-old high school teenager. To that end: Yes, we do get breast shots. And undie bottoms. And bad ’80s synth-ballad augmentation. And Able’s not telling everything.

Okay, so the plot is settled.

Hey, this is an SOV, so that means the special effects are so special, but what SOV throat slash n’ dismembered body part fest of the Karo Syrup variety is, right? We give these Tiger Bloodin’ Charlie Sheen’ers credit for tryin’ at “winning,” as they give us a decent body count, just like a good SOV should (but this should have gone full-on Fatal Exposure in the gore department; we’ve also reviewed that fellow SOV’er, this week).

And this is good. Okay, decent-to-fair (so spare us the smart-fuckery in the comments below that “we’re hipster douche bags” and this is the worst movie you’ve seen in 25 years). The parody aspect actually works here, with the hammy scenery-chews of Dr. Van Dam, in particular. Yeah, the film itself is grainy (leave the Ed Wood and “Citizen Kane of bad movies” comments at the B&S About Movies’ smoke post/ash can out back) — as it was shot on a camcorder, after all — but the shots are well-framed. I could, however, done without the voice over narration (the lazy deathknell of screenwriting). But the sub-plots are all over the place, so there’s a bit o’ skill here in the thought-process department, and there’s a decent twist that improves on the we-seen-it-coming twist in Rocktober Blood. Well, a double twist: once the “brother” angle is exposed.

Nope. Not the Phantom Brother: The before-Scream dude from Dennis Devine’s Dead Girls (1989).

I always thought screenwriter Joseph Santi and director William Szarka (who got his start cutting “coming attractions” promos for a distribution company) did alright with this late ’80s addition to the SOV canons, as each displayed sparks of potential. While Phantom Brother (which sounds like an ’80s “Brat Pack” mystery-thriller starring James Spader) is not as horror-comedy effective as the black laughter (a county-hicks connection in both) of Charles Kaufman’s Mother Day (and what horror-comedy is), this masked slasher romp is not as much of an epic fail as the comedic-horror boondogglin’ tomfoolery of Hard Rock Zombies (dopey teens and a remote house of crazies) — and that was shot on film by a “more experienced” filmmaker in Krishna Shah. Phantom Brother is not incompetent on the behind-the-lens end, but is a wee-bit clumsy in the comedy and even more so, as well as awkward, in the thespin’ departments.

And, with that, Santi and Szarka punched out after Phantom Brother. But Szarka made two prior films: South Bronx Heroes (1985) and Plutonium Baby (1987). I never came across his debut on VHS (it was shot on film). Plutonium Baby is another story. I have seen that on the shelf under a different title: The Mutant Kid. For whatever reasons, even after seeing it a couple of times on different shelves, I never rented it. Phantom Brother was the pure camcorder-shot film that I wanted and rented. It’s also Szarka’s best-known film — and one of the better SOV’ers of the era.

There’s no trailer to share . . . but BurialGround5 comes through again with the SOV-VHS memories assist (and spares us coin). You can watch Phantom Brother via their You Tube page.

* That review on Boardinghouse is coming. You know it! So search for it.

About the Author: You can read the music and film reviews of R.D Francis on Medium and learn more about his work on Facebook.

The Brainsucker (1988)

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If you’re a fan of the junk cinema of Ray Dennis Steckler, who’s given us a celluloid trove of 52 directorial efforts — the most notable three being Wild Guitar (1962)*, The Thriller Killers (1964), and Rat Pfink a Boo Boo (1966) — then you may have heard of the career of actor, writer, and director Herb Robins in passing. As actor, you know Steckler, aka Cash Flagg, for The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies (1964). (We are also working on Steckler’s later, post-’80s slasher entry, Las Vegas Serial Killer (1986); it’s coming; use that search box, kiddies!)

Born in 1930 as “Rabinowitz” in Newark, New Jersey, Herb worked on a couple Steckler projects, making his acting debut in The Thriller Killers, as well as Steckler’s Body Fever (1969) and Sinthia: The Devil’s Doll (1970), which also served as his screenwriting debut; he Second AD’d Rat Pfink. And, if we are to believe the QWERTY’ing digital content warriors of the IMDb plains: Herb Robins had bit parts in Invasion of the Bee Girls (1973), the Ted V. Mikels classic (it really is) The Doll Squad (1973), the pretty decent CB-radio flick Convoy (1978), and Tobe Hooper’s The Funhouse (1981).

Then, after appearing in Fred Williamson’s Blaxploitation vanity western Adios Amigo (1975) with Richard Pryor and James Brown — and with one Steckler writing and AD credit each under his belt, and a production assist from Ted V. Mikels — Herb Robins decided to do the celluloid “Triple Lindy” (know your ’80s Rodney Dangerfield film references) to write, direct, and star in — we kid you not — the telepathic worm horror-comedy, The Worm Eaters (1977).

We’ve never reviewed The Worm Eaters at B&S About Movies. I can’t speak for Sam, but I have seen it. And it’s a case of don’t ask, don’t tell. But I will tell you that it’s pure Bill Van Ryn digging-up-the-old-drive-in-newspaper-ad fodder for a Groovy Doom Facebook posting — if he already hasn’t done one. So, The Worm Eaters did reasonably well. It must have, since Herb Robins returned — a decade later — in the midst of the shot-on-video craze of the ‘80s to write his third and final and direct his second and final film: The Brainsucker, a _______ that has the nerve to soil the name of Mel Brooke’s by name dropping the horror-comedy classic, Young Frankenstein. And, are they trying to tie this into Mad Max and make us think we’re getting a “futuristic” flick?

Paul Z. at VHS Collector comes through with the cover assist, once again. What would we do without him?

We’ve never had a reason to review The Brainsucker — no more than we had any reason to review The Worm Eaters. Then Sam the Bossman had to come up an “SOV Week” tribute, and you know me: I like to dive deep into the celluloid muck and mires of Allegheny County. I am ashamed to admit I rented this on VHS back in the day. Hey, at $0.49 one-day rentals at a Phar-Mor drugstore that had to be returned at midnight with a brisk walk down to the corner: why the hell not?

Exactly. I don’t know why. But I do know that it had nothing to do with Herb or Steckler or any connection to The Worm Eaters: I just liked stacking up the $.49 cent Phar-Mor tapes (I bought my used copy of FM and two of the four De Ossorio’s “Blind Dead” epics there) to see what I came up with — which was usually, you guessed it: muck and mire of a dog’s ass variety. Such a film is The Brainsucker, a ___________ that gives “backyard” filmmaking a bad name and was shot-on-camcorder because Kodak and Fuji Film forged an alliance to make sure not one frame of 16mm film was sold to Herb Robins. For it is a film (I hate using the word “film” in this review) that is an insult to the Reverend Samuell Henshall and wine bottles the world over.

“Corkscrews?” you say.

Yes. This is a movie about a serial killer with a loose screw on the loose (Santa Fe, New Mexico, where this was shot) with a corkscrew-sucker-thingy that’s part garden weasel and part bong. He carries it around in red bowling bag. He drills into the back of one’s skull, turns the handle, and sucks brains, aka raw, fatty bacon strips, up through the shaft. We think someone watched Phantasm one too many times — but couldn’t afford the Chinese harmony balls and X-Acto blades to come up with something better than a garden weasel, a bong, and a rotating handle from a kitchen vegamatic.

At least exploitation auteur Frank Henenlotter knew how to create insanity with the likes of Frankenhooker and Basket Case. Then, in his infinite mad genius of wisdom, gave us Brain Damage: an examination of man’s relationship to drugs — personified in a worm-creature named Aylmer who demanded his hosts eat brains to feed him. But The Brainsucker personifies nothing; for it has no brain to damage. There’s no mad genius. There’s just stone cold stupidity.

Did Herb Robins, perhaps, see the SOV’er Gore-met Zombie Chef from Hell (1986) and Redneck Zombies (1987) and said, “I can do that?” and broke (out) the camcorder? If so, he succeeded in making those (admittedly fun; with fan bases) inert-inept’ers look better than they are — and that’s a tall order to fill for a zombie-burger Wednesday Special. In fact, Robins succeeded in making T.L.P Swicegood’s utterly awful The Undertaker and his Pals (1966) look even better that it should — and that film strove — and failed, miserably — as a comedy rip on Hershell Gordon Lewis’s Blood Feast (1963; considered the first “splatter” film). But Swicegood’s final film wasn’t no Blood Feast and The Brainsucker ain’t no pal to the Undertaker, so it surely ain’t no Blood Feast.

Maybe, just maybe, if Glenn Danzig worked images from Robins’s opus into his music (as he did with Swicegood’s) or Rob Zombie sampled Brainsucker dialog into his music (as he did with Swicegood in “What Lurks on Channel X” from Hellbilly Duluxe) . . . no, not even Danzig or Zombie is helping us swallow this film’s hash browns and bacon-cum-brain-strips. Maybe if this was more “cannibal” and we had Lemmy and this was titled Eat the Rich (1987) and Motorhead composed the theme song, “. . . come on baby, and bite my brain / Come on, baby, suck my brain / drill the bong into the back of my brain / feel the sucking, roll / Come on, baby, Brainsuck the Rich.”

Nah.

Now available on eBay and other fine, online retailers. Bacon strips, not included.

The psycho-helixophile twistin’ the brain bong is not, however, Herb Robins: it’s someone named Jonathan Mittleman — as Max — in his film-and-then-vanished-debut. But Herb Robins is here as (the bumbling line-reading) Detective Kropotsky.

Now, with that name — and since were dropping Mel Brooks, and Mad Max, and soiling-ripping Frank Henenlotter — is the “Kropostsky” name supposed to evoke the New York urban legend of the Cropsey manic that fueled the slasher flicks The Burning (1981) and Madman (1982)? As with the lack of any Henelotter baskets, brains, or hookers . . . there’s no burning or madness . . . and no slashing, no special effects, no lighting, no sound, no framing, no soundtrack, no budget, and no permits, along with bad accents, and yelling and line-flubbing actors in a VHS toilet swirl with no rhyme, no reason, no purpose, and no plot. The Brainsucker is an SOV that, when the wow-and-flutter credits and soundtrack music ends . . . two more whole minutes of black screen accompanied by low-rez buzzing, ensues. And like an idiot: I watched those two minutes, thinking there was an “Easter Egg” to be had. And there was: 30-more seconds of hissing mixed with black-and-white snow flurries.

In the little that passed as a “plot”: Max is a career criminal placed by a judge under the care of a psychiatrist: an evil psychiatrist. Now Max is a corkscrewin’ n’ brainsuckin’ serial killer of the Troma variety. Why and how did the medical malpractice “Frankenstein” our little Maxwell into a helixophile is anyone’s guess. What’s Max’s backstory: Did he collect fine wines. Did he have a traumatic experience in a wine cellar. Did a rich, wine collecting uncle fondle Max’s lower abdominal Pez dispenser. Did his wine-swillin’ aunt seduce him on the couch in the wine cellar. What tragedy — if any — occur in wine country. Perhaps a flashback car wreck that killed mom and left dad impaled on a twisted road sign post?

Nope, there’s no reason. Max just like corkscrews.

What is certain: Troma movies do not audibly have their directors urge “zoom, zoom, zoom” off-screen to their DP (well, a kid holding the VHS camcorder) or implore their actors to “keep going” with a scene reaction. Troma movies also do not have a radio DJ swallow-breathing a portable cassette player’s microphone as a studio mic.

While Troma movies have their crimes (don’t get Sam the Bossman started), The Brainsucker is a celluloid-destroying wehrmacht that instills a whole new appreciation for all boondoggles Don Dohler — while it simultaneously inflicts 16mm backyardin’ of the ‘70s and shootin’ on video of the ‘80s with a bad name. Not that Ray Dennis Steckler is a cinematic genius by any stretch of the ol’ celluloid . . . but did Herb Robins learn nothing between the years of 1964 to 1988? Steve Martin said, “Comedy is not Pretty.” He did not, however, say comedy was deaf, dumb, indigent, and incontinent.

Was The Brainsucker possibly produced on an ENG camera sometime in the mid-‘70s and issued in the late ‘80s? Nope. The copyright in the end credits states this all got legal like in 1988. And it was, in fact, shot on an RCA-styled VHS Camcorder. It’s also the worst of the SOVs I’ve either watched and reviewed or re-revisited/nostalgia-binged this week. And I can’t believe I sucked my brain clean of 8,000-plus character to create 1,700-plus words for a movie that chilling described what it did to my cerebellum. Calling the Ramones! Give me a dose of DDT! The bacon-bong sucker is here for my teenage lobotomy.

Never under estimate the power of the Ryn/June 1982, Louisville, KY.

But hey, you gotta love a movie where one of the actresses — Marjorie Morris, who played Max’s girlfriend, Joanne — finds the movie on You Tube and leaves a comment of her fond memories of the project. Yes. Margorie, in a few simple keystrokes, just made The Brainsucker a lot less sucky and a lot more fun. And you, dear reader, can experience the sucky fun on You Tube, courtesy of film historian extraordinaire, TheBurialGround5. (Who’s going to be gettin’ an ear-mail full from me; for if there was no copy to share, I wouldn’t have gotten this far in the review.)

* So, you need a Arch Hall, Jr. fix? Well, we didn’t get to Wild Guitar, but we did review and overview Archie’s career with a look at The Choppers. And Arch is alright, we love the guy. Just like with Herb Robins.

About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.

Wanton Want (2021)

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Update, March 2022: You can now watch Wanton Want as a free-with-ads stream on Tubi. Other viewing options are available at the end of this review.

If you grew up watching Buffy The Vampire Slayer, then you’ll have an immediate streaming interest in Wanton Want, the ninth indie feature film from Joston Theney. In addition to starring Nicholas Brendon, who portrayed Xander Harris on that TV franchise (1996 to 2003), the film also stars Tuesday Knight (who got her start in A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master; with eleven films in various states of production) and Phillip Andre Botello (the 2019 Jesse Eisenberg vehicle, The Art of Self Defense). In support are Shoshana Wilder (Roku’s 2021 original series, Cypher) and a 55-indie credits strong Jackie Moore.

Wanton Want is the story of Douglas Paynter (Nicolas Brendon), a lackadaisical writer with hopes to shatter his recent bout of writer’s block and create his “magnum opus” by taking a remote (uh-oh), weekend getaway with his wife (Jackie Moore). No writing, however, will be done on this retreat: Paynter’s estranged friend Dan Mackie (Phillip Andre Botello) crashes the weekend with his femme fatale wife Pia (Shoshana Wilder) as the noirs of film slip and the screws turn when their once causal, sexual secrets and obsessions come to a head for a fatal weekend.

During a promotional interview for his second feature film, Axeman (2014), at Bio Gamer Girl, Atlanta, Georgia-born producer and actor, writer and director Joston Theney cited Takashi Ishii’s penned Evil Dead Trap (1988) as his favorite horror movie:

“[I’m] probably gonna catch hell for this but Evil Dead Trap. It’s ruthlessly violent and gory. It’s dark and moody, and it’s visceral and gritty. It doesn’t pull any punches. It was made at a time and in a nation where films of that nature were pretty much banned. But a very ballsy [Toshiharu Ikeda] found the money, dug deep and made a truly disturbing and jaw-dropping film when it was very unpopular and detrimental to your career to do so.“

Evil Dead Trap? What type of person chooses that film of all films as their favorite horror film? Passing over the oft, ad nauseam-cited bloody trinity of Carpenter, Cunningham, and Craven for a U.S-obscure director from Japan? You know what that means: Mr. Theney passes “GO!” and collects $200 bucks and becomes part of the B&S About Movies family.

Sadly, we don’t have $200. We can’t even afford to offer Joston a B&S drink tumbler or mouse pad. But we can review his movie.

“I’ve been a long time fan of film in general. Growing up, I was always a quiet kid. I was always kind of shy. Movies and television is what I always turned to. As I grew up, I created my own little stories and stuff, short stories. I had a little comic book I started. I think all of that, overtime, naturally led to me picking up a camera.”
— Horror Fuel, 2017

“I say make a good film, show it where ever you can and tell everyone you can. You can’t just rely on social media. It’s only a cog in the machine. Without it, the machine doesn’t function properly, but you can’t focus solely on that or the rest of the engine will fail. Fans need to see it, feel it, sniff it, etcetera, and only hearing you yap about how awesome it is isn’t going to suffice.”
— Horror DNA in 2014

“Growing up on ’80s slashers and never really growing out of them . . . this was and always has been my favorite era of filmmaking. It was a time when creativity and entertainment value were the things that drove film.”
— Sandwich John Films, 2014

As you can see from Joston Theney’s previous insights, he’s an accomplished filmmaker with a cause; a filmmaker that doesn’t wait for the studios to come to him. So, with that, he’s created nine feature films since 2011, which includes his Axeman trilogy, along with a tenth — The Tale of Two Faces — in post-production. As an actor in the frames of his own works, you’ve also seen the writer-director in the uber silly, but very entertaining streamer Snake Outta Compton (2018). He’s also appeared in the latest, unofficial entry in the ongoing Jurassic mockbuster franchise, Jurassic Hunt (2021)*.

The Amazon Prime and IMDb reviews for Theney’s self-produced efforts haven’t been kind, but there are a few that “get” his efforts. In preparing for my review of Wanton Want — not being familiar with his works — I spent some time with three of his films. While there are, as is the case with any self-made filmmaker blazing their own trail, cinematic faux pas (see the great Flywheel as an example), Joston Theney is certainly not an incompetent filmmaker; he knows how to act-structure a screenplay and create character arcs, and he’s learned his craft with each film in his past as he matures with the next film. That’s the sign of a true filmmaker: growth, as Joston Theney doesn’t make the same mistake — or the same film — twice. Courtesy of having the most recognizable and thespian-strong cast of his now ten films, Wanton Want proves Joston Theney’s tremendous growth as a filmmaker, as his ninth effort is by far his strongest effort. This may also be, with the exception of his in-post-production The Tale of Two Faces, his last self-produced film.

Last film? I am wishing him bad luck? No, exactly the opposite.

Joston Theney is infinitely ready to be called up to the indie-shingle big leagues; he’s professional prepared to tackle damsel-in-distress flicks, even romance Christmas romps for the Lifetime and Hallmark Channels (if our beloved Fred Olin Rey and David DeCoteau can make em, why not). So watch Wanton Want today, so you can say you remembered Joston Theney, then.

For it will happen for him, sooner than later. He’s a filmmaker to watch out for and remember.

Wanton Want will have its VOD release on September 28, 2021, via Amazon Video, GooglePlay, and YouTube Movies via Indie Rights Movies; you can learn more about their catalog of films on Facebook and stream them at their Amazon Prime portal. Other recent releases from the Indie Rights Films shingle we’ve reviewed include A Band of Rogues, Banging Lanie, Blood from Stone, The Brink (Edge of Extinction), Chasing the Rain, Double Riddle, The Girls of Summer, Gozo, Loqueesha, Making Time, and Still the Water.

You can keep abreast on the latest with Wanton Want on Facebook and Instagram or go direct to the source at the Joston Theney’s official website. You can also read more of his insights on film with interviews at Final Girl and Search My Trash, along with a new interview, post-Wanton Want release, with Authority Magazine.

As you wait for the debut of Wanton Want, you can catch up with Joston’s work on Tubi with the free-with-ads streams of Snake Outta Compton, along with his horror directing efforts Adam K, Axeman at Cutter’s Creek, and Stained. If you’d prefer your Joston experience ad free, you can VOD stream his efforts via his Amazon Prime page.

* We reviewed Jurassic Dead (2017), Jurassic Thunder (2019), and Attack of the Jurassic Shark (2021), as well as breaking down the Universal franchise with our “Watch the Series: Jurassic Park” featurette. And be sure to look for Jurassic Hunt, starring Joston Theney, which hit the streaming platforms on August 24.

Starring Joston Theney!

Disclaimer: We received a review request from the filmmaker prior to the film’s distribution. That request has no bearing on our review of the film. We researched and retrieved all review quotes within this review — on our own. Those materials were not provided to us by the filmmaker, any PR firm, or film studio now associated with the film.

About the Author: You can learn more about the music journalism, fiction and screenwriting endeavors of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.

Bits and Pieces (1985)

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If Leland Thomas, an ex-army combat photographer in his lone writing and directing effort, wanted to blow out all other SOV horror films released in the wake of Boardinghouse (1982; that review is coming!) — the first home video-era shot film — then he succeeded. (Blood Cult was the first SOV video store-only distributed film; Boardinghouse, while making it to the stores, began as a mail-order only release.) This is graphic, gruesome, crude, rude, and scuzzy. While Bits and Pieces is remembered as an SOV — and quacks like an SOV — it wasn’t shot-on-video, but on 16mm film in the summer of 1985 in and around Los Angeles — Burbank and the San Fernando Valley, in particular. But, no matter. Bits and Pieces is still an SOV’er forever in our VHS-pumpin’ hearts.

The overseas VHS of Bits and Pieces: a gagged, beheaded woman? Punch the membership card. We’re weird that way.

The set up is pretty simple: someone is killing the patrons of a male strip review, cutting them up into “bits and pieces,” as we are advised by the most unlikely news reporter to ever hit the field. Bits and Pieces is either incompetent or — in a Tommy “The Room” Wiseau twist — intended to be “bad” to push the funny to soften the graphic X-rated gore. And this film is gore and a bag o’ chips. Is this a pseudo-porn, like Spine? No, but there is bondage, as was in Spine. But the cheesy porn-esque music is “wah-wah’in” everywhere. But this is less Spine-bondagey and more Dead Girls-slashy. Oh, and our killer hears “wind chimes” in his head, we think; unless that was an artistic choice by the soundtrack composer (who’s connected to Spine; more on that later). Yeah, that’s it. This movie isn’t that “high” on the art to go “subjective” into the killer’s head.

So the “someone” is Arthur, and he has Norman Bates not-an-average-guy issues with his mommy — and he lives just down the street from head scalpin’ Frank Zito who plops hairpieces onto his mannequin collection — which leads Artie to carry conversations with an armless mannequin adorned in a red wig. Of course — in his mind — the mannequin talks back, berating him that he’ll never find a girl as pretty as her.

Man, does this film have the padding — no pun intended. There is a LOT of male stripping in this film. And lots of beat-up looking babes hootin’ and a tootin’ it up. That’s where we meet Tanya — the psych undergrad, natch (Sheila Lussier) — and her friend Rosie (Suzanna Smith) as they leave the “2001” strip club (a homage to 2001 Odyssey, the club in Saturday Night Fever, perhaps). So, one blow to the head later, and Tanya’s kidnapped. And our red-headed mannequin tells little Artie “how” to inflict the pain in his homespun Grand Guignol.

So Tanya ends up in a dumpster and makes the papers. Rosie goes to the cops. And we get our required, dry-as-toast inept cop in Lt. Carter. And we have another girlfriend, Jennifer (Tally Chanel), and it looks like Arthur has got some more kidnappin’ for faux-mommy mannequin to attend. And there’s a lot of “ensuing” in this film: Jennifer screaming and flailing through the woods. And while murders are afoot, Rosie goes on beach dates. And there’s hot tube interludes. And male strippers. And glasses of wine. And nary a one worried about a strip club-stalking serial killer. Yikes, and I thought the people in Stallone’s D-Tox were dumb, always putting their eyes up to peepholes at every door knock and door bell — with a serial-killing peephole-driller on the loose.

Lovely.

Well, this sure ain’t Bill Lustig’s Maniac (1980), because Bits and Pieces doesn’t have that film’s unsettling “creep” factor. And it sure as hell ain’t Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho and doesn’t have anything from that film. If only our dippy Lt. Carter was Charles Bronson’s Leo Kessler and S.E Zygmont (Arthur, our serial) was Warren Stacey from J. Lee Thompson’s 10 to Midnight (1983).

But you know what: I love this movie: Leland Thomas is Wiseau-committed to giving us a deep psychological study into his poor, hapless killer f’d up by an abandoning dad and floozy mom. To that end, through flashbacks — because this ain’t no Jason Vorhees-cum-Micheal Myers just-kills-for-killing slasher romp — we learn the whole mannequin snafu with the wig n’ lipstick thang is because, as a form of punishment for spying on her and interrupting her boozin’ it up, she forced Artie to wear a wig and make up. Oh and the salami scene. Mommy taunts little Artie with summer sausage meats. And she turns into a bloody skull in a wig screaming at him. Yeah, NOW, I can’t help but think of Wesley Stuart, portrayed by Gerald “Simon & Simon” McRaney inflicting his own Night of Bloody Horror over his mommy issues. And that J.N Houck cardboard horror is bad, but is looking a lot better to me now — especially in the acting department — after my sitting in our Arthur’s flashback counseling sessions. And, like Wessy-pissy pants in that film, Artie kills mommy. The rest will be plot spoiling. . . .

So, is there life after Bits and Pieces?

Remember the Spine soundtrack Easter Egg we dropped? Don Chilcott, the musician responsible for Spine’s scuzzy, slasher-appropriate synth-soundtrack, also scored Bits and Pieces. Don never stopped rocking: he became a successful studio musician and a respected guitarist and lead vocalist for several California-based blues bands.

Remember, in our review of Peter Carpenter’s Point of Terror, when we discussed that everyone — even in Hollywood — has to start somewhere, and Oscar-winning editor Verna Fields, who worked for Pete on the film, later earned an Academy Award for her work on Spielberg’s Jaws (1975) and edited American Graffiti (1973) for George Lucas? Well, producer Richard Bansbach also worked on that influential shark fest’s second-unit for the film’s land-based shots; he also directed the Jaws-rip, Claws (1977). (Nope, not Islands Claws. That was in 1980 and a different, but sorta-the-same, movie. Well, the first was a bear, the second is a crab . . . oh, never mind!)

The BIG KAHUNA of the cast and crew is Thomas L. Callaway. He worked as the cinematographer on the USA Network favs Creepozoids and Slumber Party Massacre II (both 1987), as well as Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood (1989). And Callaway is still at it — 120-credits strong — with a lot of Lifetime movies, and is David DeCoteau’s go-to camera man for the likes of A Husband for Christmas (2016) and A Christmas Cruise (2017). (Yes, we have a Lifetime and Hallmark and Up Channel X-Mas flick fetish goin’ on at B&S.)

Did you see Chuck Vincent’s Warrior Queen (1987)? Well, that was Suzanna Smith’s only other role; Tally Chanel, who did a few of Chuck’s movies, was in that, as well. (Chuck’s done 55 T&A soft-porn flicks that ended up on Showtime or the USA Network in the ’80s; you’ve seem a couple of them, such as Bedroom Eyes II.)

Now, Sandy Brooke, who plays Ms. Talbot, Rosie’s (Suzanna Smith) tweaked mom . . . oh, do we ever know her around the B&S About Movies’ cubicle farm! She was an SOV warhorse, as she also appeared in David A. Prior’s SOV debut film, Sledgehammer*, as the lead, Taura. (Visit our week-long tribute to him; just search his name on our site and you’ll find all of his films.) Sandy was also in Fred Olen Ray’s Star Wars-dropping Star Slammer (1986), Ron Marchini’s directing sidekick Paul Kyriazi’s One Way Out (1987) (Join us for our two-day Ron Marchini tribute with this career wrap up), Terror on Alcatraz (1987; with Aldo Ray as Frank Morris!), and she ended her career with (YES!) David DeCoteau in Nightmare Sisters (1988; with Linnea Quigley, Brinke Stevens, and Michelle Bauer!).

Denied. No trailer to share, but wow! VoicesInMyHead does it again, as you can watch Bits and Pieces — uncut — on their awesome You Tube page. Spend some time there, as they have LOTS of great ’80s VHS oldies to enjoy.

* That review on the BIG KAHUNA of SOVs that is Sledgehammer, is coming. Oh, you know it. Search for it. Oh, already linked it!

About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.

Demon Queen (1987)

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Donald Farmer has forty credits as a director and they have titles like Cannibal Hookers, Red Lips, Shark Exorcist and Chainsaw Cheerleaders. This is an early SOV title from him that has a video store clerk that tries to get people to rent horror movies and a female demon — well, a vampire, but let’s make the title work — who moves on in with a drug dealing couple.

It’s also 46 minutes or so with 6 minutes of credit and sound that you can barely hear. So, you know, pretty great. It also has drone synth compositions of one long note, massive amounts of video effects that probably felt dated by 1987 and tons of actually pretty decent gore.

If this had better quality and was shot on film, I probably wouldn’t care as much. There’s just something about the beyond faded quality of Shot On Video that gives these movies a heart that they may not have had otherwise.

FANTASTIC FEST: Barbarians (2021)

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Charles Dorfman has produced plenty of movies as of late, including VFW, Satanic Panic, The Fanatic, Boys from County Hell and plenty more. Barbarians is the first film that he’s directed but it sure doesn’t seem like it.

The concept is simple: our friends come together for a birthday celebration in a remote country home.

Yet you know how movies about dinner parties go. There are secrets to be unearther and hell to be unleashed.

You can sense the tension from the moment that the party begins. By the end of the main course, Lucas, Adam, Chloe and Eve have gone from polite conversation to outright resentment. And them, well, three armed gunmen intrude on the festivities.

At the heart of all of this is the conflict between two brothers. Tom Cullen is perhaps best known for his work on Black Mirror and Downton Abbey, while Iwan Rheon was Ramsay on Game of Thrones (and Maximus in Marvel’s first take on The Inhumans and Mick Mars in The Dirt). Their interplay and how their long-standing relationship — and how it changes as their partners come into their life — form the backbone of this tale.

By the end, things get dark. And not just in narrative tone, but the film gets literally shadowy in tone, which feels like something Rheon was used to coming from the inky blackness of Thrones. Also, this is yet another film that presents chapter headings for each narrative shift of the story.

Personally, I’ve had enough tense family dinners to last me the rest of my life, but if you’d like to sit in on another one, this is an intriguing film that explores the ridiculousness of influencer culture and masculinity while telling a gripping and brutal story.

Twisted Issues (1988)

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Man, talk about a movie I was not prepared for!

Originally intended to be a documentary of the Gainesville, FL punk/skate/thrash scenes, this somehow became a horror movie just as much as the opportunity to document bands like Psychic Violents, Young Pioneers, Mutley Chix, Doldrums, Just Demigods, Cindy Brady’s Lisp, Officer Friendly, the Smegmas, Hellwitch and the Bill Perry Orchestra.

Yet it can also be the story of the Death Skater, influenced by — according to director Charles Pinion in Underground Film Journal — The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies, Polyester, Psych-Out, The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T and Return of the Living Dead.

The moment where a girl sees a killer in her own house on her television before being killed by him and him enacting what he did on the TV afterward messes with time and scene and place and image better than most movies with way more of a budget. It also has tons of filler and moments of nothingness, but you know, we didn’t have jump to chapter buttons back in the days of VCRs.

Also: there’s an extended sequence inside a 1988 7-11 and for someone that hates advertising — and juxtaposition crazy has worked in it his entire life — I absolutely love everything about 7-11. The first thing I do in any new city — our new hometown has two of them — is find the 7-11 and grab a drink. In every fancy city my ad career has ever taken me, I’ve dined at more of these places and “thanked heaven” for them because they’re always there, even if my hometown didn’t get one until a year before I graduated high school. So the opportunity to drink in a time capsule of the store with the older branding and just live that world, man, that’s why I love movies.

If you die on a skateboard and a doctor brings you back to life, I hope that you have the festering brains that it takes to screw your board to your foot, wrap your face in bandages and then hunt down everyone who has ever wronged you.

You can get a handmade bootleg of this from the man who made it, Charles Pinion, on his official site. Sometimes they are sold out, but hey — again, it’s good to be made to wait.

Apache Junction (2021)

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Apache Junction is a place for thieves and cold-blooded killers, not big-city reporters like Annabelle Angel (Scout Taylor-Compton, Laurie from the Rob Zombie Halloween films). Luckily, she finds that Jericho Ford (Stuart Townsend, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Queen of the Damned). But can she trust her life to a man with such a notorious past?

Writer/director Justin Lee (Final KIll, Big Legend and Hunters) brings this western film to your small screen, his third film in the genre after Badland and A Reckoning. And this time, he has Trace Adkins and Thomas Jane as a saloon owner named Al Longfellow.

So other than the cast, I can say that the locations look good and the film is competently made. As for the rest, well…I can recommend all manner of much better Italian westerns, if you’d like.

But hey — Trace Adkins playing a murderous U.S. Army man? I guess there’s that.

 

FANTASTIC FEST: Name Above Title (2020)

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Known in Portugal as Um Fio de Baba Escarlate (A Scarlet Little Thread), this 59-minute film has no spoken dialogue and tells the story of a serial killer whose latest kill is interrupted when a woman throws herself off a balcony and lands next to him. As he embraces her, she whispers something to him and he gives her a last kiss before she dies.

That act causes his life to be forever changed, as a crowd complete with smartphones has gathered and view that last kiss as an act of kindness delivered to a lost and dying woman. But what were those last words she said to him? And when several push their way to the truth, how will it change the life of our killer?

Make no mistake, this movie borrows the feel and look of the giallo — if not the need for a procedural investigation — to tell the story of the murderer. Yet it has artistic aims — the same actress, Joana Ribeiro, plays all of the victims — and could pretty much be telling us that serial killers are the new saints. The director, Carlos Conceição, said of his film: “In a contemporary sense, the serial killer is just a convention. My interest is not in his murderous impulses but in the fact that society turned him into a kind of superhero.”

In his only second full-length film (he made Serpentarius in 2019), Conceição is making a major statement here. By removing the voice from the film, he’s asking you to determine what you have heard the killer say. That said, the end symbolism may be a little too easy, but by the time you’ve gone on this ride — what movie makes a post-coital killer catching his breath next to his garotte-killed lover look this gorgeous — you may not mind. Consider it an hour-long music video for you to explore.

Name Above Title is playing Fantastic Fest this week. When it starts streaming, we’ll update this article.

FANTASTIC FESTIVAL: Luzifer (2021)

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Johannes is a young man who has never left home and only knows his mother — a recovering addict — and the vet that cares for his eagle Arthur. Maria, the mother, has raised him on a life of hard work, isolation in the Austrian alps and service to God.

All is well.

That is, until a ski resort developer intrudes, obsessed with owning the land that Johannes and his mother live upon. His harassment starts with phone calls, but before it’s over, he’s unleashed a torrent of threats and a veritable squadron of drones upon our protagonists.

Johannes is a child trapped in a man’s body and that man is about to learn that the world that his mother has told him is true is something quite different. Has she been raising him — really, not raising him — to never grow old, to remain a child for as long as she is alive? If she’s found God in her solitude, why has she treated her son this way? And is their relationship oedipal?

Susanne Jensen, the non-actor who plays Maria, and Franz Rogowski, considered one of Europe’s finest actors is Johannes, have tackled some truly challenging roles here. This isn’t a crowd-pleasing movie per se; this is a claustrophobic piece of film that goes from stark wilderness to religious unawakening to a battle against a relentless sea of machinery within nature.

Peter Brunner is just getting started as a director — this is his third film after To the Night and Those Who Fall Have Wings — and as the son of a psychoanalyst and a painting therapist, you can see the contemplative nature of that kind of upbringing has turned him into an intelligent filmmaker; he’s also studied under Michael Haneke (Funny Games, Amour) at the Vienna Film Academy.

There’s a claim that this movie is “inspired by the true story of an exorcism.” The director also claims that this only comes at the dark end of this film. I leave that interpretation up to you, but for someone who mostly watches the work of low-end directors, seeing an artistic film like this is often like staring at the sun.

Luzifer is playing Fantastic Fest this week. When we have streaming information, we’ll update this post.