October 25: A Horror Film about a Killer Doll (That’s not Chucky or the Puppet Masters)
Directed by William Mims (who was in the art department for The Beastmaster and produced and shot plenty of swimsuit videos) and written by Sidney Mims, Death Doll has a poster that promises Chucky and a film that delivers near-giallo.
Young widow Trish (Andrea Walters) is being stalked and asks her brother-in-law Dillon (William Dance) to help her. It turns out that someone keeps leaving a doll behind and she keeps finding it, which as you can imagine freaks her out. Those same dolls are being left at crime scenes.
There’s also a fortune telling machine that absolutely terrified me on film and if I ever saw it in person, I would run the other way. It also has a doll inside it and can tell when your palm isn’t facing the right way. When your hand does, it tells you just how screwed you are and how doom is coming for you. No thanks. Weird dolls and strange future reading mechanical devices? I’m real good with not being around any of that.
Monica (Ulrike Butz) and Helga (Marie Forså) are the guests at a huge castle where a will is about to be read. The girls will need to stay there for a year to claim the estate of Baroness Varga, who was burned at the stake for being a vampire hundreds of years ago. They’re joined by folklore scholar Dr. Julia Malenkow (Anke Syring) and her brother Peter (Nico Wolf) crash in the woods nearby. They are descendants of the women who killed Varga, which probably won’t go all that great with the castle’s maid, Wanda (Nadia Henkowa), who conducts nightly lesbian rituals devoted to the fallen blood countess.
Also known as Vampire Ecstasy, this feels like it fits right in with Jess Franco and Jean Rollin’s vampire women. I say that as a compliment. Unlike many of his New York City-shot movies, director and writer Joe Sarno shot this in an actual castle owned by the relatives of producer Christian Nebe.
Other titles include The Curse of the Black Sisters, Plaything of the Devil and Veil of Blood.
October 23: A Horror Film That Features Someone That Has Lightning Powers
Directed by John Llewellyn Moxey and written by William Clark and Edward J. Lakso, The Power Within is about Chris Darrow (Art Hindle), a pilot who is struck by lightning and gains the ability to shoot it out of his fingers. In order to get a handle on his powers, he turns to his father, General Tom Darrow (Edward Binns) and learns that he has to recharge those powers when he uses them or he’ll die.
This was a pilot for a series that never happened. Back then, comic book movies just took ideas from comics and made them their own. This is very Green Lantern mixed with the opening of The Hulk TV origin. I’m sure if I had seen this as a kid, I’d still be drawing scenes from this movie.
October 22: A Horror Film Shot for less than S10,000 (That’s not found footage)
Former baseball players Ben (director and writer Jeremy Gardner) and Mickey (Adam Cronheim) are roaming the highways as a zombie outbreak has destroyed the world. They were trapped in a house in Massachusetts for three months. Mickey’s family is now dead and Ben won’t sleep inside. They also meet members of a survivors group known as the Orchid — Annie (Alana O’Brien) and Frank (Larry Fessenden) — who won’t allow them to join.
Ben forces Mickey to kill his first zombie and learn how to finally be someone who can make it in this world. Annie still won’t allow them to join and later causes Mickey to have to rescue Ben. He’s bitten by a zombie and has to be killed by his best friend. He promises Andy that he will get revenge.
When Ben and Mickey are trapped in the car surrounded by zombies, they get drunk and start singing “Show Me the Way to Go Home.” That part made me laugh even if it’s quite sad. This is an interesting movie. It cost $6,000 and was made very much as they went.
October 21: A NonSupematural Shaw Bros Horror Film.
I think I’ve seen all the Shaw Brothers non-supernatural films and the HK Database says that this is a drama, so…let’s just agree that it may have demons and magic but it’s kind of its own thing.
Long Fei (Jason Piao Pai) left behind the world of martial arts fisticuffs and now lives in a secluded mountain studio where he and his assistant Fatty (Wong Chun) have spent five years carving a woman out of crystal. Long Fei wishes that his woman had a soul, so he adds some blood because you know, nothing bad would happen, and of course everything bad in this movie happens as the crystal woman (Yu-Po Liu) starts killing people.
Masked Poison Yama (Wei Hao Ting) and his son (Yu Hsiao) want to kill Long Fei, so they spend much of the movie inside a treehouse lab where they mix plants, snake venom — yes, the movie shows us it being extracted, it’s a Shaw Brothers movie — and animals to make a poison that blows people up from inside their stomach. Yes, they show it. You know you want it.
Yet the son is soon killed by the crystal female and Yama declares revenge on everyone, first using poison gas to kill everyone in the family of former fighter Prince Tian Di (Jung Wang). As this is all going on, he sends his men White Judge and Black Judge after Long Fei and Fatty, who are hiding out in an inn where the owner decapitated people and serves their flesh.
This movie is, well, absolutely wild. There are battles in a graveyard, a school of masked female assassins, wire-assisted swordplay and every character coming together for one final battle. I just realized that Hus Shan also directed Inframan, Kung Fu Zombie and Dynamo. Yeah, that makes sense even if this movie doesn’t — like how is the crystal woman related to the assassin academy? — but who cares? It looks good, it moves fast and it’s super weird.
October 20: A Horror Film About A Class Reunion Gone Wrong!
Director Anthony DiBlasi also made Last Shift and was into this as he always wanted to work on a slasher. The killer in this movie is known as The Graduate and they have come to a class reunion with revenge on their mind.
Ashley (Skyler Vallo) comes to the house of her boyfriend, former hockey player Ray (Jason Tobias). She finds threats all over the place and is soon kidnapped and taken to a shed, just as his high school friends — Gaby (Heather Morris), Freddie (Perez Hilton), Jade (Tess Christiansen), DJ (Chad Addison), Lamont (Johnny Ramey) and Simone (Marci Miller) — arrive. There’s also the weird butler, Tarkin (Jake Busey), but he’s soon murdered by the cap and gown-clad killer.
Much like all class reunion movies, all of these people share a secret: they wrote Most Likely to Die under the photo of a classmate, John Dougherty, and now The Graduate is killing them based on what their yearbook superlatives were, such as Ashley was Most Likely to Have Her Name Up In Lights and she’s found dead under lights that spell it out. This theme plays itself out as you learn exactly who is killing all of their old friends.
October 19: A Horror Film with Undead Cowboys and/or Undead Civil War Soldiers
Directed by Rene Perez, who wrote the story with Barry Massoni, The Dead and the Damned is about a meteor causing a zombie infestation in the West of the past. Mortimer (David Lockhart) is a bounty hunter out to capture Brother Wolf (Rick Mora), a Native American accused of sexual assault. To lure him into his trap, he brings Rhiannon (Camille Montgomery). Yet they all have to work together when miners try to break that rock that crashed from space.
Also known as Cowboys & Zombies, this has a sequel called Tom Sawyer vs. Zombies. There’s also a third movie, The Dead and the Damned 3: Ravaged.
In case you wondered, yes, this is the same Rene Perez that made Death Kiss, the film that introduced the world to Charles Bronson lookalike Robert Bronz. Perez also made two recent movies that I know I’m going to have to watch, Pro God – Pro Gun and They Want Us Woke Not Awake — that I also realize I am going to hate with every piece of my heart.
This movie also has most of the cast wearing modern cowboy boots with rubber soles and Levis from the 21st century. It also has the tagline “It’s Clint Eastwood meets George Romero as undead, flesh-eating gun-slingers roam the Wild West.” Yeah. That tagline.
October 18: A Horror Film That Features Blood and Stop Motion (not by Harryhausen)
Note: I’ve been trying to do all new movies for this challenge but I want more people to watch Alvaro Passari movies. I already reviewed this, but I spoke to the creator and got some answers between us trying to speak English and Italian.
B&S About Movies: Who were your teachers in film that inspired you?
Passari: It was a long process. I started making sculptures, then set designs, then special effects with Tentacles directed by Ovidio G. Assonnitis, then I also took care of shooting the special effects including optical effects. In 1990, Asian countries started financing my films. All this lasted until 2004, after which there was a collapse of world cinema and it was all over.
B&S: I love all of your films so much. What inspired them? What’s your favorite?
Let me just let Alvaro Passeri tell you what this movie is about.
“It’s Christmas Eve and the snow is falling gently all around a log cabin. This is the home of Mary. who lives here with her family. She has a serious case of flu and is lying in bed with a very high temperature. Gathered around her is Kevin her young brother. her mother Nancy and her grandfather. Kevin opens the Christmas gifts and finds a book called The Golden Grain. He starts to read it. Out in distant space, the Little People’s Castle is threatened by the Black Fortress. ruled by Makeb. The king of the castle calls the Queen of Hope for help. Her name is Jade and when she reaches the Fortress she gets drawn into a dangerous computer game with Makeb. She is attacked on all sides by huge balls of fire. slashing swords. laser rags and a terrible monster. Back at Mary’s house. Jethro, a nasty neighbor, is trying to take the place of Nancy’s husband who is missing, presumed dead. When the game comes to an end Makeb plays the Joker and a flood sweeps Jade away. At the same time Mary’s heart stops beating! Then Jade reappears again alive and well. The death ray hits Makeb. whose mask falls off to reveal the face of Jethro. Jade triumphantly reaches the Castle of the Little People and is presented with a grain of corn as her reward. which begins to glow in the palm of her hand. She throws it and it lands by Mary’s cabin. Suddenly cured. she leaps out of bed. ripping off the scarf around her head, to reveal the face of Jade! At that moment the door opens and Mary’s father comes in. having escaped from a mine he had been trapped in for weeks. At midnight the family gathers around the fire. happy and united once again. It’s going to be a happy Christmas.”
This is literally the description of the movie and it gives most of the film away.
Let me tell you something.
You could be told word for word everything that happens in this movie and in no way will you be ready for it.
This is The NeverEnding Story that I had hoped that movie would be when I saw the trailer as a kid. Alvaro Passeri is the closest director that I’ve ever seen to Luigi Cozzi at his wildest. This is also very The Princess Bride if that movie also had a Satanic figure whose face looks like he came directly out of Ron Ormond’s The Burning Hell.
The first of Passeri’s films I saw was The Mummy Theme Park and this delivers the same delirious world of gigantic factories filled with tiny rooms of drones, all creating death machines, all preparing to fire mind cannons at the Queen of Hope. Yet these are all human beings inside those cubicles from Hell, all moving and living and breathing.
There are puppet people, there’s an entire bar filled with skeletons — and the dog hero also bites one of the leg bones and runs with it — and so much charm. This is a movie that I have run through my head again and again, way more often than movies with budgets thirty times more.
A video game puppet stop motion Christmas movie with an alternate reality inside a book that brings you back to a potential snowbound tragedy. All of Passeri’s movies have a sense of childlike wonder, but they often have eyeballs getting torn out and bodies being destroyed. This one is kid-friendly, even if it might be the oddest movie your children ever see.
October 17: A Horror Film That Takes Place During a Camping Trip
Julie McConnell (Jessica Morris), Jason Hathaway (Justin Ross Martin), Dean (Michael Stone), Whitney Chambers (Tracy Pacheco), Brad Thomson (David Smigelski) and Tobe (Patrick Cavanaugh) are working this summer at Camp Placid Pines for Patrick (Peter Guillemette), despite killings by Trevor Moorehouse in the past and a warning a strange man — as is always the way — named Henry (Bobby Stuart).
A game of Bloody Murder ends with Jason dressing as Trevor Moorehouse and hurting Brad, but Dean is the one he really destroys when his best friend discovers that he’s getting with his ex Whitney. Soon, everyone is either getting killed by the masked killer or they’re being accused of his crimes.
In case you wondered, does a movie that has a hockey masked killer at a camp have anything new to say about the slasher film, the answer is in no way possible. Bloody Murder Directed by Ralph E. Portillo, who also made Malibu Summer, this film looks ugly, has nothing to add or appear to have learned anything from any of the films made before it and is pretty much a Crystal Lake movie except that there’s no way they were getting the license. There’s a sequel and I know that I’ll watch it because I’m odd like that.
October 16: A Horror Film That Involves a Killer House Pet
John Lafia also made The Blue Iguana and co-wrote Child’s Play and directed the sequel. He also made The Rats, the American made-for-TV movie adaptation of the books of James Herbert.
It starts with the death of Judy Sanders (Robin Frates), an employee of the EMAX genetic research facility. She has been talking to television personality and animal activist Lori Tanner (Ally Sheedy) about the abuse she’s seen at her lab. Before Lori can get to their meeting, an animal under the control of the company’s owner, Dr. Jarret (Lance Henriksen). Nonetheless, Lori and her camerawoman Annie (Trula M. Marcus) break in and free one of the dogs, Max.
Max becomes Lori’s protector — he goes a bit far, chasing down and killing a mugger — and the nemesis of her boyfriend Perry (Fredric Lehne).
Jarret tells the cops that Max is a genetically altered dog that has the DNA of big cats, snakes, chameleons and birds of prey. He’s also given to berserk freakouts, which means that he needs to be on drugs that he hasn’t received in some time. Max is, however, super rad. He does all sorts of insane things like bite through Perry’s brake lines, kill a mailman, eat a parakeet and make sweet love to a collie, knocking her up with the puppy that Lori will adopt when this is all over.
He also gets sold out because Perry wants her to get rid of him. She finds who she thinks is a kind junkyard guy (William Sanderson) but that weirdo is soon hitting Max with shovels and burning his face with a blowtorch. Max does what you hope he does. He decimates that guy and then comes back home to a new dog taking his place. He responds by pissing acidic urine all over Perry.
Max forgives Lori and comes to rescue her from Jarret, giving up his life in the process. I hate this. I am all for Max and none of the humans in this movie. He’s a good boy all the way to the end, even if he does eat a cat.
B&S About Movies 