Marjorie (Eva Hamilton, Ruin Me) was once with Jon (Jody Barton, Ugly Sweater Party) and maybe even had a thing with his hunting partner Frank (Trae Ireland). Now, they find themselves on cursed land and end up killing one another again and again.
Written by director Hunter Johnson, Barton and Chuck Wagner, who originally published this story in the comic book Tales of Terror in 1986 as “Bag Limit,” Sawed Off is a cabin in the woods movie in debt to best of the form, The Evil Dead, but for its budget it looks good and has some fun practical gore.
There’s a great idea in the script, as often friends for life wish they could kill one another at times. Throw in the wrong — or right — girl and a curse and the woods and things can’t help but get messy.
I don’t know who wants to hunt. You have to get up early, spend all morning in the freezing woods and from what I’ve learned in this movie, you have to see your ex and then get shot and stabbed by your best friend while trees attack you. I think I’ll just stay under the covers and watch more movies.
That said, this one is pretty fun.
Sawed Off is available on demand and on DVD from Uncork’d Entertainment.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This was originally on the site many years ago. June 15, 2018 if you want an exact date. Yet now it’s back because Kino Lorber has re-released it on blu ray along with so many extras, including an interview with actress Tracey E. Bregman, new audio commentary by co-screenwriter Timothy Bond moderated by historian and filmmaker Daniel Kremer, three TV commercials from the U.S., one from the UK, two radio ads and the trailer. You can get it from Kino Lorber.
Virginia “Ginny” Wainwright (Melissa Sue Anderson, TV’s Little House on the Prarie) is popular, rich and pretty. She’s a member of the biggest clique at the fancy pants Crawford Academy — the Top Ten. These snobbish, rich and rude assholes rule the school and — if you’re anything like me — you’ll celebrate their brutal deaths. Just look at how they act at their local pub, the Silent Woman. Total dicks.
One night, Top Ten member Bernadette (Canadian scream queen Lesleh Donaldson, who has been in several films we’ve featured recently) is attacked in her car by someone without a face. She plays dead, then finds someone she knows. As she explains what has just happened, the real killer slices her throat.
The rest of the gang? They could give a shit. They’re all at the bar, putting mice into old men’s beer. It’s enough to make you want to be the killer and wipe them out. But it gets worse. They play chicken on a drawbridge and are all nearly killed. Ginny even yells “mother!” as the car goes over the opening bridge. Everyone survives, but Ginny runs away, all the way to the cemetery where she tells her mother that she’s been accepted by all of the rich kids.
When she gets home, her father yells about how she’s out past curfew. And while that’s happening, Etienne, one of the Top Ten, sneaks out a pair of her underwear.
The next day, Ginny and Ann arrive late to class, leading principal Mrs. Patterson to put the entire Top Ten on notice, threatening a ban on their favorite bar. Soon, a frog dissection leads to Ginny having flashbacks that she shares with Dr. David Faraday (Glenn Ford, slumming it after a career in films like Superman, Gilda and Pocketful of Miracles), her psychiatrist.
This is where Happy Birthday to Me pulls the rug out from under us — thirty minutes or more into the film. After the accident at the drawbridge, she underwent an experimental medical procedure to restore her brain tissue.
Meanwhile, the Top Ten are thankfully getting bumped off, one by one. Etienne dies like Isadora Duncan, his scarf caught in the wheels of his motorcycle. Greg gets killed lifting weights. Here’s where the film has a bit of a giallo feel — all of the murders are done by black-gloved hands, until Alfred (Jack Blum, Meatballs) follows Ginny to her mother’s grave, only for our heroine to stab him with garden shears. What?!?
During Ginny’s 18th birthday weekend, her father leaves town, so she goes to a school dance. There, she invites Steve (Matt Craven, Meatballs) home to smoke weed, drink wine and eat kabobs, as you do. However, while feeding Steve, she stabs him in the mouth, a murder so memorable it ended up on the poster and box cover.
The next morning, Ann comes over while Ginny takes a shower and has a major flashback. Four years ago, she was having a birthday party but none of the Top Ten would come. Her mother flipped out, got drunk and tried to take her to Ann’s competing party, where a groundskeeper told her that she would never be anything more than the town whore. Her mother gets drunker and drives off the bridge from earlier in the film, where she drowns and Ginny barely survives.
Ginny begins to think that she has killed all of her friends, including Ann who she finds in the tub. Dr. Faraday has no answers, so she kills him with a fireplace poker.
Whew! What happens next? Well, Ginny’s dad gets home and sees blood all over the place, as well as Amelia (Lisa Langlois, Phobia, The Nest) outside in shock. Running to the cemetery, he sees his wife’s grave has been opened and Dr. Faraday’s body is in it. Then, entering the guest quarters, every one of the Top Ten members’ bodies are arranged around a table, celebrating a birthday.
Ginny arrives with a cake, singing to herself, when she slices her father’s throat. He never sees that his daughter is really there, the only living guest at the party. The second Ginny, the killer, screams about having done all of this for Ginny, but it turns out that she is Ann! The girls are half-sisters, sharing a father! What?!?
Ginny escapes and stabs Ann, just as the police arrive to ask, “What have you done?” The film fades to black — never letting us know if Ginny will be jailed or proven innocent. Then the film closes with a goofy — yet awesome — closing song by Stevie Wonder’s ex-wife Syreeta.
Columbia Pictures went full William Castle promoting this movie, suggesting theaters re-create the film’s closing scene in their lobby, inviting people to celebrate their birthday party while watching the movie, preventing anyone from entering the film during its last ten minutes and also conducting a scream contest for radio stations.
Happy Birthday to Me arrived in theaters at the height of the slasher boom, but it defies expectations. At times, it’s a giallo. At other times, it’s supernatural. And others, it’s a teen comedy. It’s also crazy that such a directorial talent made it — albeit one who was rumored to spray blood all over the set to make the film even gorier — and Glenn Ford are in a slasher!
Police officer Danny (Joseph Almani) is working on an antique car at his uncle’s remote ranch when an earthquake traps him under the vehicle and leaves him hurt and unable to get any help. But then, something worse happens: something crawls out of the cracks.
Michael Paré plays the uncle and honestly, that’s what got me into this. What also helped was that director Dale Fabrigar also made Reed’s Point with writer Tricia Aurand and also made D-Railed, a movie that combined a train crash with aquatic monsters. This time, he’s making a movie all about killer worms that make you hallucinate. I mean, at this point, I would totally buy one of those worms. What’s the street value of those worms?
This movie is inspired by 50s monster movies yet it has all of the gore you need. That said, it has a lead who may be amongst the dumbest I’ve ever seen in a film, someone who knows an earthquake may happen and then throws a car up on a jack. You can’t be mad when said jalopy lands on you after that. When his girlfriend leaves him in the beginning, you totally get it and you barely know him.
They Crawl Beneath is available on digital, blu ray and DVD from Well Go USA Entertainment.
The animated shorts from Fantastic Fest that I got to see are here.
Drone (2022): In this film by Sean Buckelew, a malfunction at a CIA press event pushes a drone installed with an ethical AI personality to go off its mission as it attempts to understand its purpose. The animation in this short is astounding, rooted in reality yet having a cartoon look that’s really appealing. I loved how we saw not only the actions of the drone, but also the way it impacts the lives of the many people who were part of it. The world starts to follow the drone on its mission, but the government learns nothing, putting a smiley face on weapons of death even after the only machine — or soldier — with a heart is long gone. A sobering, realistic ending for a movie filled with sheer fantasy.
Goodbye Jerome! (2022): Directed and written by Chloé Farr, Gabrielle Selnet and Adam Sillard, Goodbye Jerome!, the protagonist tries to find his wife Maryline. In the course of his search, he gets lost within a surreal and colorful world in which no one seems to be able to help him.
With the voices of William Lebghil and Alma Jodorowsky, as well as a gorgeous art style that just guides you into a simple yet complicated and rewarding otherworld, this is a film that will stay in my brain for some time.
This film looked like the posters in Spencer’s in the 70s when I was too young to smoke marijuana. Ah, a wistful simpler time and man, I wish we still had Wicks ‘n Sticks.
The Grannies (2022): Director Marie Foulston relies on the imagery of the video game Red Dead Redemption 2 and the voices and experiences of players Marigold Bartlett, Andrew Brophy, Ian MacLarty and Kalonica Quigley as they explain what happened when they decided to go beyond the borders of the online version of the game and found places where reality broke, where they dropped for hours in endless chasms and were able to create shared moments despite not being actually together.
I also enjoyed that this group played as old women, as whenever they encountered other players, they found that others reacted strongly to how odd it was to have four old women attack them.
A Guitar in the Bucket (2021): Created by Boyoung Kim, this feels like the big problems with our world and the world that is to come, a place where push buttons and machines decide what we want and what’s good for us. Machines have everything that anyone could want, but when a young girl wants to be a guitar player — something that no one else wants but her — the world keeps that from happening. It reminds me of the fact that we can get any movie we want at any time and people choose to not challenge themselves with cinema but instead keep watching the same movies or worse, refuse to explore the films of other countries.
Happy New Year, Jim (2022): Morten Hakke and Jim Muzungu are playing video games all day just like every single day but today is New Year’s Eve and things feel different in this animated film by Andrea Gatopoulos. I feel this, as I sit here all night and try and fill my site with content that maybe nine people will read. Then again, if you can reach nine people, that’s more than you just experiencing things for yourself. So even if all you have is one friend playing video games with you, that’s something. I have to confess, I have spent hours in video games earning achievements and getting new clothes for a character that in days I won’t need or think of, but at the time, it feels like it means so much more than it eventually does. Also: are we all just in a video game instead of life?
Krasue (2022): The krasue may be best known to film fans from Mystics In Bali and Demonic Beauty. This animated film by Ryo Hirano has a Yakuza encounter one of the creatures, which looks like a woman’s head with all of her organs hanging out as she flies around.
Everything in this movie is absolutely stunning, a neon-colored and blood-strewn romance that also looks like River City Ransom and I’m here for all of that. This whole thing would be pretty frightening if it were live action but seeing as how it’s animated, it’s really pretty whimsical.
More movies should have flying heads with guts hanging out floating all over the place.
Magnified City (2022): This movie makes me consider the fact that my love for cinema is often trapped in the past sometime around 1981. Those are the kind of thoughts that come into your head when you think over a movie about a human magnifying glass being kidnapped by a secret society of projector humans who want to use his lens to recapture the city’s greatness. Do I find too much joy in nostalgia? Am I doing enough to expand my influences?
Perfect City: The Mother (2022): A stop-motion story all about a wood monster giving birth to a child covered in ugly roots. A liquid with the brand name of Perfect is able to sculpt the wooden baby into a perfect human child, but should it? How wonderful that the child is CGI and it’s up against the real tactile traditional animation. This looks absolutely fantastic, a movie that blew my mind and that would make a great zone out movie if it wasn’t so sinister in parts, because I could see this taking me into some strange trips. It also makes me worried about having children any time soon. You can see more of this at official site of Shengwei Zhou, its creator.
Trichotillomania (2021): Trichotillomania is a disorder that is known to cause irresistible urges to pull out hair from the scalp, eyebrows or other areas of the body. Kate is someone suffering from it and she isn’t finding any of the answers as to why on the Internet. Man, I used to get so mad at myself in my thirties that I would just grab fistfuls of hair and yank them out. Just like cutting, the feeling of adrenaline would make me forget the mental pain that I was in, but then it gets really obvious when you have large chunks of hair missing. This short, directed and written by Anotai Pichayapatarakul, explores how this impacts people and how there are no simple solutions.
Directed by Fernando González Gómez and Raúl Cerezo, who wrote the script with Rubén Sánchez Trigos and Javier Trigales, The Elderly starts with an older woman falling off a balcony to her death and then deals with dementia, aging and the elderly telling their children that they plan on killing them.
Yeah. Get ready.
Manuel (Zorion Eguileor) is the grandfather who faces life without his wife of fifty years. His son Mario (Gustavo Salmerón) would rather his father stay with him than a home, no matter what his wife Lena (Irene Anula) wants. Meanwhile, his teenage daughter Naia (Paula Gallego) starts to see the spirit of her grandmother. It starts slow, but by the time things increase in tension and the temperate increases in Madrid, every old person could be a threat.
What is it with everyone doing the Ari Aster thing where old people get naked and we’re supposed to be creeped out by it? Let me screw your head up. Your once supple skin and gorgeous looks will one day face aging and if you’re turned off now, you’ll be turned off then. Get over it. We are our souls, not this whole fiction suit we wear in this reality.
That said — this movie is gorgeous and freaked me out with its ever rising tides of fascism and high temperatures. It hits a lot close to home, as my father is currently suffering from early dementia, at times thinking he is sixteen and wondering how he has a son so old.
In just two months after the announcement that Roe vs. Wade would be overturned, a group of female filmmakers gathered to create this anthology of short films. They are:
Hold Please: director Hannah Alline and writer Savannah Rose Scaffe
God’s Plan: director and writer Avital Ash
DTF: Director Bonnie Discepolo who co-wrote this short with Trevor Munson
The Last Store: Director and writer Loren Escandon
Crucible Island: Director Valerie Finkel and writers Laura Covelli and Danielle Aufiero
Abigail; The Cheerleaders: Director and writer Natasha Halevi
Sweetie: Director Caitlin Josephine Hargraves and writer Madison Hetfield
Good Girl: Director Danin Jacquay, who wrote this with Matthew Vorce
The Walk: Director and writer Sarah Kopkin
Traditional: Director Francesca Maldonado and writer Lexx Fusco
Vasectopia: Director Kelly Nygaard and writer Natasha Halevi
Plan C: Director and writer Megan Rosati
Crone: Director and writer Mary C. Russell
mediEVIL: Director Monica Suriyage and writers Rowan Fitzgibbon and Lexx Fusco
The Voiceless: Director and writer Megan Swertlow
Our Precious Babies: Director Erica Mary Wright and writer Anne Bond
There’s also plenty of talent on hand, including Alyssa Milano, Milana Vayntrub, Virginia Madson, Gina Tores, Jennifer Holland, Sean Gunn, Molly C. Quinn and many more.
Much like so many modern horror anthologies, this is somewhat of a mixed bag, but with its cause it nearly is critic proof. I did like the entry about sex contracts and in no way was I bored. But don’t go in expecting Amicus. Do expect to get upset. Instead of posting about it, do something about it.
Created by Jonni Phillips, this movie is the first production produced by her independent animation studio Herbert Sorbet Studios. It’s a continuation of Jonni’s 2019-2020 series Secrets and Lies in a Town of Sinners which told the many stories if the town of Des Amato, California. One of the characters, Barber Westchester, was a young aspiring astronomer dealing with the death of her brother and her father’s religion The Cult of DACIA. That series ended when she got an invitation to intern for NASA.
Now, as this movie starts, Barber learns that space is a lie and NASA is a sham.
The movie features original score and songs by Dylan Kanner, as well as guest animation by Emily Martinez, Benni Quintero, Ian Worthington, Chris Kim, Yasmeen Abedifard, Mel Murakawa-White, Frankie Tamaru, Kelly Ficarra and Victoria Vincent with paintings by Tyrell Solomon, additional character animation by Maddie Brewer, Sidney Gale and Franky Wish, and additional character designs by Zaria Bohanon.
I really enjoyed this, as it has a fun animation style and tells a wild story. I never saw the original series, but in no way do you need to. I assume it would be a somewhat richer experience if you did, but I still had a great time.
Directed by David DeCoteau and written by Charles Band, C. Courtney Joyner and David Schmoeller, Puppet Master III is not a sequel but instead a prequel, starring Guy Rolfe as the creator of the many puppets that we’ve come to know, love and maybe be afraid of, the legendary Andre Toulon.
When the story begins, Toulon and his wife, Elsa (Sarah Douglas), are performing puppet shows for children, incorporating anti-Third Reich messaging, such as when Six-Shooter attacks a Führer puppet. A German scientist named Dr. Hess (David Abercrombie) wants to create a formula for living puppets, while Major Kraus (Richard Lynch) wants to arrest him for treason. To prevent this, he takes him and his puppets, Tunneler and Pinhead. He also kills Elsa right after Toulon gives her a puppet with her likeness. That puppet becomes the Leech Woman, and we also get to see another creation named the Jester.
Hess isn’t horrible. He bonds with Toulon, who explains that each puppet was someone he knew and loved. Their strong will to live after death kept them residing within each of their creations. This is also the origin of Blade, who may be the most popular of the puppets.
I hate that the new movies make the puppets become Nazis instead of killing them. Let’s get back to the idea of this movie because it works so much better.
He came from poverty and racism in Mississippi to California where he launched the Sal/Wa and Marsel record labels to showcase the music of local black performers, hosted local music show Soul Is, had several restaurants and owned Mr. Sal’s Fashion Stores, where he sold clothing made by local black fashion designers.
Then, in 1974, while Hollywood was making blacksploitation often with white directors and writers, Sal was the director, writer, producer and star of Solomon King.
Sal’s widow Belinda Burton-Watts said, “Sal was an extraordinary man who remained humble throughout his life and just wanted equality for all. He loved all people and wanted to live in a world that treated people fairly. He would be grateful to know that his film will see the light of day once more.”
This film was lost for decades with only a faded print in the UCLA Film & TV Archive. Dennis Bartok, who runs Deaf Crocodile with Craig Rogers, found the rare soundtrack that was released on Watts’ own label. Once he learned more about the film, he had to save it.
After several years of searching for rights and elements, he and Craig finally connected with Sal’s wife and collaborator, Belinda who manages his estate. They took the UCLA print, did a 4K restoration and matched it with the score and soundtrack elements that had been in a closet for decades.
Shot with a cast of mostly non-professional actors, all wearing clothes from Watts’s store, Watts himself is Solomon King, an ex-CIA operative/ex-Green Beret/nightclub owner whose Middle Eastern lover Princess Oneeba (Claudia Russo) gets killed, just as he uncovers a global conspiracy and heads off to a castle to cut the head off the snake that is Prince Hassan (Richard Scarso).
It’s synchronicity that Scarso is in this — as well as Louis Zito — as they were also in another movie made to cash in on a trend yet one that made a more honest film in the genre, Duke Mitchell’s Massacre Mafia Style. Both Watts and Mitchell came from worlds outside of Hollywood yet had dreams of being part of it and did it on their terms. Sure, the world didn’t know when these films got made but decades later, their work was rediscovered.
This ends with King getting his old army buddies together and using grenades when they could have just used knives but hey, if you have firepower, use it. Then go explore all the amazing clubs of 1974 throughout Oakland and rock out to that soundtrack.
Thousands were spent to make this real again, hours of hard work, but the joy I felt watching it meant that it was all so very well spent.
Solomon King is available from Deaf Crocodile. In addition to the new restoration by Deaf Crocodile from the only known complete 35mm print, you get commentary tracks by film critic and historian Walter Chaw and another one from author, journalist, and documentary film producer Steve Ryfle, a new three-part video interview with Belinda Burton-Watts (widow of director/star Sal Watts), a new booklet essay by Josiah Howard, the July 18, 1976 episode of The Jay Payton Show (executive produced by Sal Watts), a reproduction of the pressbook and a restoration demo video featuring the original faded print and the newly restored feature. You can get it from Deaf Crocodile.
Directed, written and filmed by Luis Tinoco — his first full-length movie — this movie is anchored by Andrea Trepat, who plays astrophysicist Alexandra Baeza. The entire film is spent with her, all in one room, as she works for SETI to find intelligent life in the universe. When a signal comes in from the Antares system, she also gets another more earthbound signal that her father is dying. Where do her loyalties lie? Toward science or family?
Alexandra receives messages from co-workers, a boss, her sister and her father as she remains inside that one room in a storm, hoping that this will be the moment that all her work gives us proof of life on other planets. Meanwhile, her father’s life slips as he sends her messages that the understands her work.
SETI has a protocol that must be followed to ensure that the message from space isn’t something human. That means that our heroine must verify everything in a very short window because her project can only use the observatory for a limited amount of time. As the rain begins to fall and winds howl, that window grows tight and her sister can’t get to be with her father as he passes, so her life is hammering her from both sides.
This movie hit me directly in the heart. So much of my life has been devoted to my work and never to many people. My own father has been dealing with dementia for the last few years and often, I find myself bound by marital and work commitments and feel like Alexandra, in a cold war as everyone works so hard to be there and you have made yourself an undependable ghost. This movie has made me consider my place not just in my world, but in the worlds of so many others.
At no time does this give you any answers, easy or hard. You’re just like you are in life, lost and adrift amongst the dust of the stars.
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