Week 5 (July 19 – 25) – Sub Rosa Studio
Ron Bonk’s SRS Cinema has been providing the underground with TOP QUALITY GRIME since the 90s. Not only does he release a deluge of Sharksploitation, Amityville ripoffs, and Cocaine-addicted critter flicks, he also distributes auteurist masterpieces like Tim Ritter’s Truth or Dare? – A Critical Madness, Hugh Gallagher’s Gore Trilogy and the Polonia Brothers’ Hallucinations, plus he’s moved into the world of Japanese kaiju cinema with Howl From Beyond the Fog and The Whale God.
As you watch this movie, keep in mind that the twin brothers, Mark and John Polonia and their friend, Todd Michael Smith, were around 17. This movie is exactly the sheer mania that is inside the mind of a child about it being a man, as the three guys are all brothers in this, stuck at home as their mom is working multiple shifts just in time for a horrific monk to move in next door and destroy their fragile brains.
Todd is reading a book about Herschell Gordon Lewis. John is calling a sex line, because that’s what guys did in 1988 when there was no world wide web in the way we know it now. Mark is out shoveling snow. And then stuff gets absolutely bonkers: John craps out a blade that also castrates him; Mark ties up Todd and caresses his skin with a razor blade and, again, castration; John takes a shower — there’s no Hollywood attempt at hiding the male nudity — when a homemade — yet raw as fuck — penis monster assaults him. Also: an elf pisses in Mark’s face.
Man, what were these kids on? High on camcorders? This movie is filled with latent fear of post-puberty, becoming a man and leaving the nest. And man, like all SOV, you get to be a psychiatrist, because there’s some definite trauma at the idea of homosexuality becoming a normal part of your life. I have no idea if they intended this, but even if not, it’s all here on tape, stomach explosions, masked killers and authentic 80s beige haze everywhere.
You could gather all of Hollywood, give them all of the money, and they would never make a movie this great. Or weird. Or with so much dick.
Some of this movie was remade into Splatter Farm, the movie the Polonias were once best known for, as well as the actual remake, Lethal Nightmare.
You can watch this on Tubi.
