EDITOR’S NOTE: Dream A Little Evil aired on USA Up All Night on August 6, 1993; Febraury 26 and December 9, 1994 and June 24, 1995.
Also known as Dream Evil, this has an unsuccessful electronics technician named George (Richard J. Sebastian) building a machine in the home he shares with his brother Mark (Tom Alexander) and sometimes with his brother’s girlfriend Veronica (Kathy Smith, whose IMDB otherwise is all workout videos). That machine can make anything in your subconsciousness become real, as Billy (Duncan Rouleau — who would go on to co-create Ben 10 with fellow Man of Action studio members Joe Casey, Joe Kelly and Steven T. Seagle; he also co-created Big Hero 6 with Seagle) finds out when he creates his dream girl Angie (Michele Gaudreau) just by thinking about her. But when Veronica gets angry that all the noise is ruining her sex life, she destroys the machine.
George wishes death upon his brother and you know who shows up? Death (Lyle Waggoner). So does Angie, who is devoted to having as much sex with him as possible, as well as eating as many bowls of cornflakes as one can inhumanly eat in one sitting. And then the demons emerge because hey, the human mind — especially one that loves horror movies — is a wild place, right?
Royce Mathew, who directed and wrote this, started as a production designer working on the films of his former roommate David DeCoteau.
So yeah. It’s very Weird Science until the end, when it goes absolutely insane. That sums up a lot of USA Up All Night movies, I have come to discover. There’s also a role for Victoria Nesbitt, who was Missy in Linnea Quigley’s Horror Workout and also appeared in Fortress of Amerikkka.
Cryptids started its funding all the way back in 2013 and had an Indiegogo in 2020. These days, years feel so much longer, so I’m sure there have been some people excited to see this for some time.
This anthology is united by a radio show called The Truth Serum hosted by Major Harlan Dean (Joe Bob Briggs). The subject is cryptozoology and the wildcat line is jammed up as each caller tells an increasingly stranger story about the myths and monsters that lurk at night, all while Dean worries that a prank caller and those very same monsters may be even closer than he thinks.
This project was put together by Justin M. Seaman and Zane Hershberger, the same guys who created The Barn, The Barn Part II, 10/31, 10/31 Part 2 and Force to Fear. They’ve brought along several indie filmmakers to create the different stories within Cryptids, including Brett DeJager (Bonejangles), Max Groah (Bong of the Living Dead), Johnny William Holt (The Dooms Chapel Horror), Billy Pon (Circus of the Dead) and FX artist Robert Kuhn.
What I loved most about this was how much it felt like listening to the old days of Coast to Coast. This was confirmed when I read some info about the film, as well as it being inspired by Monsters You Never Heard Of by Daniel Coen, a Scholastic book that I read so many times that the cover fell off and I needed to repeatedly tape it back on. In fact, so many of the books of Cohen inspired me to write, including his novel The Monster Maker and his non-fiction books The Greatest Monsters In the World, The Encyclopedia of the Strange, Super-Monsters (with a cover featuring the monster from the end of Night of the Demon) and The Ancient Visitors.
As the calls come in, you get to get in deep — very, very deep in some cases — with the Hopkinsville Goblins, Melonheads, the Loveland Frogman, The Beast of Bladenboro, Chupacabra Death Machines and Bigfoot. As always with anthologies, the stories can be a mixed bag. That said, the gore is more than up to the task to smooth over any cracks and the main story is absolutely perfect thanks to Joe Bob giving a way better performance than in most of the movies he showed on MonsterVision.
This is a great idea for a film and I’m excited that the filmmakers finally got to realize their vision. I don’t want to give too much of a spoiler for one of the later stories, but man, there’s a facial wound in this that really caught me. Like I said — the grisly stuff looks gorgeous.
Cryptids was watched as part of The GenreBlast Film Festival which is from August 31 to September 3. All screenings for GenreBlast are held at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in Winchester, Virginia. Passes are on sale through The Alamo Drafthouse Winchester. Learn more at the official site.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Nightmare Beach aired on USA Up All Night — I remember watching it! — even if my lists can’t give me an exact date.
You can say that Umberto Lenzi’s films are trashy, sleazy paeans to mayhem and gore. I won’t disagree with you. There’s Cannibal Ferox, a movie that tries to take that genre further and deeper than even I thought it could go. It worked, as its advertising proclaims that it’s “the most violent film ever made” and “banned in 31 countries.” Then there’s Ironmaster, where George Eastman wears a lionpelt on his head and murders his way through a ripoff of Clan of the Cave Bear that’s a million times better than the movie that inspired it. And then there’s Ghosthouse, a slasher haunted house film that’s baffling in its ridiculousness and willingness to get weirder and weirder as time goes on, as just as much time is given to discussing chili and the question “Who is more popular in Denver, Kim Basinger or Kelly LeBrock?” than exploring the House by the Cemetery and watching teens get colorfully pulped into oblivion.
In short, Lenzi is the kind of filmmaker that makes me tear up and yell things at my TV like, “Genius!” and “I love you, Umberto!” Nightmare Beach — also known as Welcome to Spring Break — is his take on the slasher in Miami, halfway around the world from home, celebrating sin, sex and stabbings.
That said, Lenzi for years denied that this was his film.
Supposedly, he had a falling out with the producers and wanted to be taken off the film as he found it too similar to his film Seven Blood-Stained Orchids. Screenwriter James Justice, working under the name Harry Kirkpatrick, took over but convinced Lenzi to remain on set as an advisor. Now, knowing what we know of Italian horror, a name like Harry Killpatrick sounds like a fake Americanized name for the director. Lenzi would continually say, “My contribution consisted solely of providing technical assistance. Welcome to Spring Break should be considered the work of Harry Kirkpatrick.”
However, in his book Italian Crime Filmography, film historian Roberto Curti would claim that Lenzi really did direct the film and refused the credit when the film was done. After all, Lenzi and Justice would work with the same producers to make Primal Rage (with this movie’s writer Vittirio Rambaldi directing and heroine Sarah Buxton showing up, too).
No matter — I love this movie. Yes, the kind of love that I’ve only reserved for Lenzi’s films, where I ignore how patently insane the dialogue is. Actually, I love these films because of that. This movie is everything that you want from a slasher and so much more.
Diablo, the leader of the Demons motorcycle club, is about to be executed for killing a young woman. He confronts his accusers, like her sister Gail (Sarah G. Buxton, Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead) and Strycher (John Saxon!), the cop who put him away for good. He tells that he’ll see them all in Hell because he’s innocent and plans on coming back to kill all of them.
A year later, it’s Spring Break time in Miami, which brings football players Skip Banachek (Nicholas De Toth, who left acting for editing, working on movies like Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines and X-Men Origins: Wolverine. He’s also the son of Andrew De Toth, who was behind the camera for House of Wax and Crime Wave. He also had an amazing eyepatch, which he needed after he was attacked by a group of young men as he scouted locations in Egypt. They thought he was military leader Moyshe Dayan. He was also married to Veronica Lake, who was just the first of his seven wives) and Ronny Rivera (Rawley Valverde, who has gone on to a career in real estate) to the beach. Ronny is a pip, saying amazing things like “How would you like her to do squats on your tool?” and “You wanna bump short hairs?”
While all the sex and drinking of Spring Break is happening — this movie becomes a teen comedy like Porky’s for a bit — a masked biker has been offing people left and right. This slasher isn’t content to just use simple weapons. No, he’s custom-built his bike to include an electric chair that fries people just like Diablo. So he’s totally the killer coming back from the dead, right?
Of course, Ronny is fated to get in a fight with the Demons and get killed by the biker, just as Skip is due to hook up with Gail. Why does she find him so attractive? Because while everyone else is out and about pouring water all over t-shirts and throwing up all over themselves, he’s refusing beer and being sullen. Seems like perfect mating material, right ladies?
That’s when Nightmare Beach takes a page out of Jaws, with the town council covering up the murders and pinning the blame on Diablo while the real killer has been running free. This point is hammered home when a jokester puts a fin on his back and swims directly at some partying teens, leading a cop to just open fire without warning.
So it is Doc Willet (Michael Parks)? Strycher? Or Reverend Bates (Lance LeGault, Col. Decker from TV’s The A-Team and Elvis Presley’s stunt double in plenty of movies), whose daughter Rachel is out of control? Or Mayor Loomis (Fred Buch, who shows up in Caddyshack, Shock Waves, Porky’s II and The New Kids)?
Nobody is safe, because the killer even takes out Diablo’s girlfriend Trina by blasting her headphones with electricity, sending her eyeball straight out of her head. So is it Diablo? After all…his body is missing from its grave.
I’m not going to tell you who the killer is, other than to tell you that if you watch enough giallo, it all makes sense. After all, that’s kind of what this movie is, along with the added slashtastic gore that this era demanded.
While shot in Miami, this film boasts plenty of Italian connections. Claudio Simonetti did the score, the aforementioned Vittirio Rambaldi wrote it and his dad Carlo did the special effects. Supplementing the fine score are appearances and soundtrack songs by the bands Kirsten, Animal (whose song “Rock Like an Animal” lives up to the idea that every metal band needs a tune that references their own name), Derek St. Holmes (who played on Ted Nugent’s first solo albums and in the band MSG) and Ron Bloom, Rondinelli, Juanita and the band Rough Cutt, whose members included Jake E. Lee (Ozzy’s guitarist after Randy Rhodes, Badlands), Amir Derakh (Orgy), Paul Shortino (Quiet Riot) and Craig Goldy and Claude Schnell, who both played in Dio. If you liked how Demons mixed metal into the film, then you’re going to bang your head throughout this movie.
No moment in this movie that is boring. It’s like doing drugs with the band backstage and then getting to sit in, then go backstage and they offer you your pick of groupie. It has no morals, it knows no laws and all it wants is to ensure that you have the best time possible.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Message from Space aired on USA Up All Night on September 30, 1989 and October 5, 1991.
I’ve seen Spookies in the double digits and I still have no answers for so many parts of the movie’s plot, motivations or reasons for existing. Hours of research have been spent reading up on the film, looking for the truth as to how such a strange movie escaped from some wall beyond sleep to infect my waking life.
There are moments of Spookies that are utterly terrifying — an incredibly realistic looking grim reaper, a spider sucking the life out of a man and zombies good enough to fit into a Fulci film. Then there are farting monsters, a wolf boy and acting on sub-Ed Wood level. How can all of these pieces fit into one movie?
That’s because, well, Spookies is more than just one movie. And despite its flaws, I love it.
Much like another of my favorite bits of 1980’s video insanity, Night Train to Terror, Spookies has its roots in a strange fashion. Whereas the former film is three movies all stitched into one, Spookies is a movie that was finished, then torn apart and finished again by a totally different creative team.
Spookies was once a movie called Twisted Souls, which was written and produced by Frank Farel, Brendan Faulkner and Thomas Doran, with the latter two men directing. It was filmed at the home of James Jay — one of the Founding Fathers — in the summer of 1984 before the producers and their financial backer ran into artistic differences. That meant that while the film was shot, the editing and post-production was never finished.
How much of Twisted Souls is left? Everything where the people arrive in two cars, as well as the monster attacks in the house came from this footage, including the demon girl with the Ouija board, the muck men, the snake demon, the grim reaper and the muck men.
A year later, the financial backer hired Eugenie Joseph to direct more footage and splice it into the original film. She hired an entirely new cast, which would be the scenes where the boy looks for his birthday party, the guy in the tree, the cat boy, the old magician, all of the zombies, the blue boy and the witch in the basement.
This would all make some semblance of sense if any of these multiple plot points and characters ever crossed over. But they really don’t. Unlike Night Train to Terror, which at least attempts to weave its three stories into one portmanteau narrative, Spookies just throws things at you until you really have no idea what’s next. Imagine if Evil Dead made even less sense and changed its tone and narrative every five minutes and you’ll gain some idea of what this movie is like. Think Demon Wind, but with more rambling insanity, more characters and way better effects.
Here’s the best I can do at summing it up: Billy runs away from home when his parents forget his birthday like he’s Samantha Baker or something. As he goes through the woods, he meets a man who is soon stabbed by a werecat dressed like Adam Ant and then finds an old mansion decorated like a birthday party. Thinking it’s for him, he opens a gift and finds a severed head before the werecat buries him alive.
We’re never going back to Billy. Seriously, that’s it.
A group of teenagers — along with some adults who are way too old for them to all be hanging out together — come across the mansion and decide to party. There’s Duke, who claims to be the leader and brags that he’s a horny ghost. Linda, his girlfriend. Her friend Meegan and her older boyfriend/daddy figure Peter who seems exasperated by the teenage antics. Then there’s Rich, who wears a t-shirt of himself and only speaks through a hand puppet. Oh yeah — and Carol, who gets possessed by the Ouija board. And a British woman and her American husband. I may have missed or combined a few characters, because watching this movie is very much like doing a gravity bong hit and then trying to describe everything that happened in the last twenty minutes you spent lying on the floor and attempting to stay within this plane of existence.
None of these mismatched pals counted on battling Kreon, an ancient warlock who has kept his dead wife Isabelle preserved for seventy years. He needs human victims, so he uses his bootleg Ouija board and an army of demons of all shapes and sizes to kill them off. We’ve covered some of them above, but there are also an electric octopus, a skeleton witch and reptile demons. Oh yes — I nearly forgot that an Asian woman becomes a spider.
Everyone finally dies, but Kreon’s wife runs away, chased by zombies in a scene that actually approaches true fright. It’s seriously one of the best parts in the film. She escapes to a car and a man drives her away, but he’s really the werecat. A man bursts from his grave and it’s Kreon, who laughs as the credits roll.
I have so many questions.
Why does Kreon burst out of the ground other than to just act cool? I mean, is bursting from your grave cool?
Why do the muck men — who appear terrifying — fart?
is Korda the werecat the son of Kreon and the queen who has been trapped for seventy years?
How did they talk Richard Corben, the noted comic book artist and painter of Meatloaf’s Bat Out of Hell album cover to do the poster for this?
Why does the grim reaper explode?
Why does RIch have a hand puppet that he talks to?
Why has this never been released on blu ray in an era where every film has been rediscovered?
To answer some of that, this movie ran mostly on USA between 1988 and 1991. There was also a Sony Video VHS release. In 2003, UK company Vipco Entertainment released a Region 2 PAL DVD mastered from that VHS. My copy is one of the ones released in 2017 by French company Intercontinental Film and Video under the title Les Spookie, which claims to be from a new 2K scan. It still looks beat up and worn, so who knows.
This is not the first copy of Spookies that I have bought.
This article at The Dissolve gives some answers, though.
From the film’s ex-Green Beret cinematographer’s son dying from crib death on the set to the film’s original FX guy getting fired (he was replaced by a 16-year-old Gabe Bartalos (who created the Leprechaun) and future Emmy Award winner Jennifer Aspinall), it’s packed with info. And the blame for the farting zombies lies with executive producer Michael Lee, who wanted to call the movie Bowel Erupters. And somehow, out of all of this, Errol Morris’ cinematographer Bob Chappell ended up shooting the new footage (much of the crew went on to work with J, Michael Muro on Street Trash).
This is truly a lost film, despite what the back of the French release claims (“We have found the lost film!”). The original ending has never been seen, although Al Magliochetti, the visual effects artist, has an interpositive of it. And the rights, which were owned by Michael Lee, Sony, then Vestron, and then Lionsgate, are murky. No negative or print has been found.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Cyber-C.H.I.C. aired on USA Up All Night on January 6 and June 24, 1995.
Directed and written by Ed Hansen (whose career includes Takin’ It Off, Party Favors, Party Plane, The Bikini Car Wash Company, Hell’s Belles, The Bikini Car Wash Company and editing episodes of The Bullwinkle Show and 9 1/2 Weeks) and Jeffrey Mandel (Super Force and way to bury the lead, the writer and director of Elves), Cyber-C.H.I.C. (or Robo-C.H.I.C. which is the better name and even better, itw as called Thunder-Tronic in Germany) is about Dr. Sigmoid Von Colon (Kip King) creating Robo-C.H.I.C. (Kathy Shower, Playboy‘s Playmate of the Month for May 1985 and Playmate of the Year for 1986., who appeared in a lot of stuff, including The Further Adventures of Tennessee Buck and Frankenstein General Hospital; later in the movie Jennifer Daly takes on the role) to fight the forces of bad.
In this movie, that bad would be Harry Truman Hodgkins (Burt Ward), a nuclear bomber planting death traps all over town. This movie is so bad that Shower, despite an Executive Producer credit, left before it was done. The one good thing is the joke that the biker gang is called Satan’s Onions because of a printing problem.
In case you wondered, C.H.I.C. stands for Computerized Humanoid Intelligent Clone.
Also: Kip King was Chris Kattan’s dad.
The idea of this is right. It was better done in Steel and Lace, so I hear, as well as Programmed to Kill, The Demolitionist, Lady Battle Cop, Robotrix and my beloved Vice Academy 2 and BimboCop.
EDITOR’S NOTE: The Companion aired on USA Up All Night on December 31, 1996.
Of all the Terminator clones, who knew that I’d be watching one with Bruce Greenwood — Pike from the later Star Trek movies — as a male companion named Geoffrey?
Romance novelist Gillian Tanner (Kathryn Harold, Raw Deal and Yes, Giorgio) has her agent Charlene (Talia Balsam) inform her that perhaps she should give up men — she just got cheated on by Bryan Cranston! — and get with the future. Yes, she is embracing the fourth point of the Church of Satan’s five-point program for Pentagonal Revisionism: Development and production of artificial human companions: The forbidden industry. An economic “godsend” which will allow everyone “power” over someone else. Polite, sophisticated, technologically feasible slavery. And the most profitable industry since T.V. and the computer.
At first, she’s cold to Geoffrey who is too perfect, too good looking and too willing to cater to her every need. It even puts off her friend Ron Cocheran (Brion James, cast as a reference to Blade Runner?*) and his way too young girlfriend Stacey (Joely Fisher). But when she allows Geoffrey to mess with his programming so that he can become more surprising and therefore her perfect man, Gillian learns that maybe she likes men that are bad for her whether they’re human or machine.
Director Gary Fieder would go on to make Things to Do In Denver When You’re Dead, Kiss the Girls and Don’t Say a Word. You can see he was meant for bigger things when you watch this. It was written by Ian Seeberg, who also wrote and narrated The Naked Peacock, a documentary on nudist camps, and the movie Temptation.
The cast also has James Karen, always a good thing, as the robot salesman, and Earl Boen — as a holographic talk show host — and he was in Terminator, which is a nice reminder that this is referencing that movie.* Plus you get a quick roles for Stacie Randall (Lyra from Trancers 4 and 5), Courtney Taylor (Mary Lou in Prom Night III: The Last Kiss), Brenda Leigh (Scanner Cop) and Bob the Goon himself, Tracey Walter.
It was shot by Rick Bota (who also worked with Fieder on Kiss the Girls), who directed a few movies of his own, including three Hellraiser movies: Hellseeker, Deader and Hellworld. He was also the director of photography for twenty-three episodes of Tales from the Crypt, House On Haunted Hill and Valentine.
The special effects at the end — Scott Wheeler (300, Big Fish, Us, The Mangler, Demon Wind and so many more movies — look really good. Understated and very T800-like, but for a TV movie, it looks great. I had no expectations of The Companion when it started and I ended up really liking it. It feels like the kind of movie that a studio would make today and here it is, a low budget made-fot-TV movie that played on USA.
*Kind words to Matty Budrewicz from the incredible The Schlock Pit site for pointing this out.
Here’s the last set of shorts that I watched at GenreBlast Film Festival.
Knit One, Stab Two: This essay film examines the representation of knitters and knitting, in over sixty horror films made by women, from the 1920s – 2020s, across South America, Europe, North America and East Asia. Alison Peirse — who also made Three Ways to Dine Well about eating in horror movies — explores these questions: What happens when the woman knits in a horror film? What might the representation of knitting tell us about social and cultural expectations around gender, genre and age?
Knitting is just one of many stereotyped representations of aging women across over a century of horror cinema, a fact that this movie attempts to get around. It’s really interesting, as is so much of Peirse’s work, which you can find on her website. For a list of the films in this, check out the Letterboxd list I made. This is so worth your time.
Peccadillo: Lorenzo (Huitzili Espinosa) is an 18-year-old boy struggling to come out to his religious family of female tailors. It’s difficult as he must be a man filled with machismo, yet he stares longingly at the dresses that they work day and night to create. But to them, being gay, much less wearing female clothes, the kind of sin that is stuck in his mind so much that he constantly has vision of the devil (Pablo Levi), who appears in song and dance numbers whenever the urge to be who he want to be strikes Lorenzo.
Director Sofia Garza-Barba has made a work of art that beyond sings. I loved every single moment of this, a movie that not only has something to say but looks like a painting come to life while it does so.
Some Visitors: Jennifer (Jackie Kelly) is home alone, mourning the loss of her child and worried about a recent series of home invasions. Then the door rings and brings Jeff (Clayton Bury) into her life. Jennifer seemingly makes the worst mistakes, like letting Jeff into her home, telling him that she’s there alone and revealing way too much about her life. But just like The Strangers, Jeff is not alone. There are two other intruders (Carlie Lawrence and Richard Louis Ulrich).
Director and writer Paul Hibbard mentioned on Letterboxd that this is going to become a feature, so I don’t want to ruin what happens for anyone. I’ve seen some say that it’sFunny Games if Brian De Palma directed it. And that’s close — the split-screens and super quick jump edits that hammer home the reveal do that pretty well — but this film feels like even more than that. I thought that once one of the masks from The Purge showed up that this was going to just be all the basics of home invasion and modern horror played out in a shorter film, but then I realized by the end that Some Visitors was using everything that I expected against me and when it happens, when you get it, it’s jaw dropping. So well done.
Raja’s Had Enough: Raja is a creature — an angel? — in human form working at The Afterlife Bureau, the place where souls are processed into the next life after their death. Fed up after years of processing femicide victims, Raja (Anisa Butt) decides to change fate and go to Earth with the goal of stopping the murder of Zooey (Veronica Ellis), a woman she doesn’t even know.
Directed by Ekaterina Saiapina and written by Axelle Ava and Lisa Gaultier, Raja’s Had Enough has a unique look and concept as well as an audience-pleasing idea. Raja may not understand humanity, but she can comprehend that all of the death that she sees as paperwork has actual pain within it. Perhaps some computer error can change things for the better.
Ikala: We always like to think that we are the Rebellion, but more often, it feels like we’re the Empire. In this short, directed by Maninder Chana, a Sikh prisoner trapped in solitary confinement turns to his faith to make a daring escape before U.S. forces destroy a Mujahideen camp to cover up their role in funding the runaway terrorist organization. The attack goes FUBAR and everyone is dead except for the Sikh prisoner trapped in a solitary cell with little light or hope of getting out. Now the U.S. bombers are on their way to erase what’s left of the base. This film is one that shows us the other side and is quite daring in how it does so.
The Erl King: The erl king is “a sinister elf who lingers in the woods. He stalks children who stay in the woods for too long, and kills them by a single touch.” In this film, directed by Genevieve Kertesz, who wrote the script with Keith Karnish and Rachel Weise, a young woman named Leora (Emma Halleen) leaves her strict village when she is seduced by the erl king (Marti Matulis). That said, his love is as horrible as the rules of the people who she has grown up with, leading her to having no place in the world other than alone. This film has incredible effects and the erl king looks as realized as a larger budget film. Really well made and intriguing short.
Bowling 4 Eva: Kristina (Olivia Claire Liang), a troubled teen girl, spends her time talking to men online and bowling with her grandfather, all while she is increasingly medicated by her psychiatrist. Directed and writer Aelfie Oudghiri, this gets a lot of the 90s right and not just the gigantic bell bottomed jeans. This is the kind of movie that I hope for when I watch shorts in a festival, one that shows me a world that I am not part of and never will be and lets me feel like I am inhabiting it.
I also never thought that I would watch a movie where insane bowling score monitor illustrations come to life.
Partnr: This is the story of Jackie (Melinda Nanovsky), whose bionic boyfriend Ethan (Brian Barnett) has just proposed marriage. Directed and written by Kaylin Allshouse, this is the story of finding a happily ever after as well as what love with an actual human can feel like. When a perfect love is created, is it really all that perfect? Or is it just what you think that you want? This film asks that question and tries to answer it.
Even in the future, people will still go to bars and sing karaoke. That is one of the many things that I have learned from this movie. I also really liked the black and white color scheme of the scenes between Jackie and Ethan as they are in bed versus the colors in the other scenes.
A Ben Evans Film: Directed by Bret K. Hall and James Henry Hall, who wrote the script with Josh Malerman, this is about a kind, yet delusional man named Ben Evans (Sky Elobar) who makes a film starring his recently dead parents. Yes, if you can get past the idea that a man is moving around the bodies of two deceased old bodies, well, you may enjoy this.
I wonder how much of this movie was inspired by the films of Charles Carson, who the documentary A Life On the Farm went into detail on earlier this year.
Exactly like the short The Lizard Laughed, Elobar is so great in this. What a strange concept and well made short.
These shorts were watched as part of The GenreBlast Film Festival which is from August 31 to September 3. All screenings for GenreBlast are held at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in Winchester, Virginia. Passes are on sale through The Alamo Drafthouse Winchester. Learn more at the official site.
Whatever side you’re on when it comes to the controversy between whether Mikey Smash or William Mouth played Smash Mouth in the sequel to Warren Q. Harolds’ 1965 slasher End Zone, you can say quite simply that they’re both better than Snead Crump when it comes to menacing Angela Smazmoth (Julie Kane). Now that there’s a restored version of this never-released to the public slasher, well, now we can all fight that same fight all over again.
And hey — whatever happened to that final half hour of this movie? Have you seen it? Did you check it out when it played with The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb and The Evil Eye?
Put together from six partial prints and a partial Italian internegative — that explains why the language changes — this is the film that didn’t just give birth to the American slasher, it also influenced movies like Let’s Scare Jessica to Death.
Shh…I like keeping up the premise that this is a lost movie, so don’t tell anyone that it works because it’s just as rough and ramshackle as those pre-78 slashers that we love so much like My Brother Has Bad Dreams and Scream Bloody Murder (which ironically nearly shared a title). I also think it’s kind of wild that in the same year we’ve had two double features based around slasher movies of the past based around football (this pairs with The Once and Future Smash; the other entry is The Third Saturday In Octoberand The Third Saturday In October V).
End Zone 2 was watched as part of The GenreBlast Film Festival which is from August 31 to September 3. All screenings for GenreBlast are held at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in Winchester, Virginia. Passes are on sale through The Alamo Drafthouse Winchester. Learn more at the official site.
As they both attend the Mad Monster Party horror convention, they learn that a modern End Zone will be made and they can both audition. That movie will start one hour into End Zone2 before it retcons everything that happened after.
It’s pretty amazing that a This Is Spinal Tap documentary comedy could be made about slasher movies but that’s because we understand the genre’s conventions. And, well, conventions. If you’ve spent any time doing that awkward walk past near-empty stars of the past and the hangers-on who attempt to be important by being in their orbit, this movie will more than ring true.
Directors Sophia Cacciola and Michael J. Epstein, who also brought the world Blood of the Triblades, Magentic and Ten really know what they’re doing. This was a blast.
The Once and Future Smash was watched as part of The GenreBlast Film Festival which is from August 31 to September 3. All screenings for GenreBlast are held at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in Winchester, Virginia. Passes are on sale through The Alamo Drafthouse Winchester. Learn more at the official site.
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