That’s a pretty bold proclamation for a movie, but Mother Noose Presents: Once Upon a Nightmare isn’t a movie that’s all that interested in subtlety. It’s barely a few moments in when the big bad wolf sprouts an erection and things don’t slow down from there.
Directed by Richard Tanner (Room for Rent, Frankenthug)*, this film starts when a poor man starts his new job as assistant to an eccentric storyteller living deep in the woods. Her stories — “Mother Noose and the Assistant” — form the thread of this anthology, with each tale growing darker and more menacing.
The first story, “The Big Bad,” is a retelling of Little Red Riding Hood, with Erin Brown playing that role. You may know her better under her other stage names Sadie Lane and Misty Mundae.
Jon Devlin, who was in Joe Stryker, appears in the best story of the bunch, “A Real Boy,” in which he plays Merrick, an abused wooden boy in a sideshow.
Other tales include “Through the Woods,””Sinderella,” a retelling of — you get it — Cinderella and the extremely dark “Breadcrumbs,” which reinvents the story of Hansel and Gretyl as an abusive marriage and the lengths that a husband would go through to escape it.
While this movie isn’t released yet, you can keep up on it on its official Facebook page. I’m glad that the filmmakers gave us an early look at it. If you love low budget anthologies and would fun with a more gory and ribald take on children’s fairy tales, then this is the movie for you.
*IMDB also lists Dan Beck as the director of “A Real Boy” and Eric E. Bow as the director of “Through the Woods.”
Bobby Chrystal (Matt Lattanzi, who was in Xanadu where he met his one-time wife Olivia Newton-John) might never graduate high school thanks to his poor French scores. But this being a 1983 movie, all he cares about is losing his virginity, just like his buddies Billy and Jack (a practically all hormone Crispin Hellion Glover).
To help him improve his French, Mr. Chrystal (Invasion of the Body Snatchers star Kevin McCarthy) hires Terry Green (Caren Kaye, who played Jason Bateman’s mom on the one season NBC sitcom It’s Your Move) to teach his son. Well, she sure does, starting with him perving her while she skinny dips in their pool and ending with the predictable motion of the oryctérope.
Of course, dad wanted Terry all for himself and tells his son that she only was there to teach him, with a $10,000 bonus if he passes. He calls her a prostitute, because that’s what being a young incel is all about, before realizing that she taught him so much. Now, he has the ability to ask out his crush Bonnie.
Katt Shea, who would go on to direct both Stripped to Kill movies, as well as Poison Ivy and The Rage: Carrie 2, is in this as a mud wrestler. So are Shelley Taylor Morgan (Malibu Express), Jewel Shepherd (Zapped!, Hollywood Hot Tubs 2: Educating Crystal), Jacqueline Jacobs (who is in pretty much every Crown International winner like Malibu Beach, The Van, The BeachGirls, Weekend Pass, The Patriot and Hunk) and Kitten Natividad (Night Patrol, Beneath the Valley of the Ultravixens). If I have to explain to you why any of these women appeared in this movie, you haven’t watched enough 1980’s teen sex comedies.
With the Italian title meaning The Female Gladiators, this film was released here as Thor and the Amazon Women. It’s actually a sequel to Taur the Mighty, but I think you’ll be fine with just watching it without seeing that movie.
It comes from Antonio Leonviola, the man who made Atlas in the Land of the Cyclops and Mole Men Against the Son of Hercules.
A civilization of women warriors, lorded over by the evil Black Queen (Janine Hendry, Taur the Mighty) has been decimating the men of their country. Soon, they come up against Tamar (Susy Andersen, Black Sabbath), who is the daughter of a great warrior who teams with Thor (Joe Robinson, who was Taur in that aforementioned movie and I guess may be that character again. Perhaps not. Is it more confusing if Tamar is the daughter of Taur and Robinson is just playing a whole different role? Ah man…), Ubaratutu (Harry Baird, The Four of the Apocalypse) and her younger brother Homolke.
Nera the Black Queen like two things: her cat and gladiator battles between captive women. She must be Italian, because this is one of the prized tropes of my ancestral forebearers. One of the captives, Ghebel (Carla Foscari, Mole Men Against the Sons of Hercules), tells the evil leader about Thor, a strongman who prophecy claims will end the Black One’s evil kingdom. Tamar ends up getting kidnapped and turned into one of the gladiators.
Luckily, the captain of the guard opposes the queen is ready to help our heroes. She tries to lead an uprising but is killed and the Queen orders Tamar and Ghebel to fight to the death. Just then, the rest of our heroes attack. Tamar ends up winning the battle and kills both Ghebel and the Black Queen, deposing her rule and putting her brother on the throne, which seems kind of backward to have a little boy leading everyone when Tamar has more than proved herself.
That’s right. A movie about a female empowered society that does all it can to prove to you that a female empowered society is the worst idea ever. What I’m saying is that if you expect a movie that proves the superiority of female leadership, look elsewhere than a 1963 peblum movie.
By the way Thor and Ubaratutu look at one another, I think Tamar would have been better off keeping Nera in power. If you must watch this, you can find it on Tubi.
Rafael Portillo, come back on down, you’re back for another blast of strangeness, this time taking us to an island of dinosaurs! Much like Columbus searching for a trade route to the West Indies and finding Florida, these scientists are seeking Atlantis and end up somewhere else entirely, a place teeming with all manner of giant lizards.
Yes, the Professor (Manolo Fábregas, Two Mules for Sister Sara) has convinced Pablo (Genaro Moreno, Las Mujeres Panteras), Esther (Elsa Cárdenas, Giant) and Laura (Alma Delia Fuentes, Panic) to jump in a prop plane and seek out this secret spot. Of course, the plane crashes but everyone is having so much fun on the island — no one gets upset at all — that this seems like a breezy travelogue.
That is until Laura is taken by a caveman named Molo (Armando Silvestre, Santo contra Los Zombis) and together, they battle dinosaurs — amazingly, stolen from much bigger productions like One Million B.C.* — and fall in love, at which point she teaches him the value of money, shows his people how to make new weapons and gives the women tips on combing their hair. She’s like one of those angels from the Book of Enoch that comes down to Earth after the Great Fall only to teach us things like dying garments and how to use makeup**.
Everything works out . Well, a volcano does wipe out most of the island and that too was taken from that 1940 Hal Roach movie. So maybe not so well for everyone.
*To be fair, these lizards with fins glued on them show up in more than just this movie. You can also spot them in everything from Tarzan’s Desert Mystery, Two Lost Worlds and Untamed Women to Robot Monster, King Dinosaur and Teenage Caveman. Thanks to Mark David Welsh for pointing this out.
**The angel Azazel is the one who did all that, plus showed humans how to make swords, daggers, shields, breastplates, bracelets, ornaments and how to create jewelry. Other angels like Amezarack, Amaros, Baraqiel, Kokabel, Tamiel and Asradel had to content themselves with just showing humanity how to cast spells and astrology.
“Nothing, but nothing, is left to the imagination!” Yes, this section 1 Video Nasty* is also known as Trauma and Expose. It’s all about Paul Martin (an incredibly young and dubbed Udo Kier) is a writer who has rented a home in the country to finish his latest book. Writer’s block hits him hard, as does a fight with his girlfriend Suzanne (Fiona Richmond, Eat the Rich). That’s when he hires a new secretary named Linda (Linda Hayden**, The Blood on Satan’s Claw). And that’s where everything goes to hell.
From their first meeting, where Linda is intimidated by several men who eventually assault her — and she also eventually shotgun blasts them — our protagonist is obsessed with her, despite her constantly resisting her advances. She replaces the housekeeper — who is soon murdered — and when Suzanne comes back, Linda seduces her, just in time for Paul to crash his car into a river and his ex-girlfriend to be killed in the shower.
Director James Kenelm Clarke also made two soft core films, Hardcore and Let’s Get Laid, which also star Richmond. They’re much less scummy than this one, which pretty much the definition of the word. The alternate title that we reviewed this under sets up this being a takeoff of Straw Dogs, but it’s closer to a straight-up sex movie — minus all the murder.
This was remade by Martin Kemp in 2010 as Stalker, with Hayden appearing as Mrs. Brown.
I’m not saying that all movies should have William Smith in them, but I kind of am. This was the 17th highest grossing film in 1969, which sounds like hyperbole but I’d like it to be true. It also has a Tammy Wynette soundtrack, which is another way into my heart.
Smith plays Angel, a motorcycle gang member who sells the real story of what it’s like on the inside to a magazine for ten grand — about $70,000 today — and earns the anger of every biker in the world. The word gets out — Angel is to be killed.
Unlike most biker films where the hero gets worse and worse, Angel actually finds a sheep farmer who gives him a brief moment to live a normal life off the road. Unfortunately, the gangs are never far behind.
Director Jack Starrett does some amazing things in this, like some incredibly dangerous shots of the gang on the road, shooting them with a camera that moves from biker to biker in the days before when a drone would make such a shot simple. He’s also gone wild with multiple split screens and dropped out audio and made this a living, breathing comic book.
Starrett’s wife Valerie plays Angel’s old lady, while Dan Kemp plays the kind rancher and Margaret Markov is his probably doomed daughter. Markov lights up the screen in plenty of Corman-era movies like The Arena, Black Mama White Mama and The Hot Box.
I had a blast with this movie. It’s filled with drama and shot in a way that you totally won’t expect. Watch it and let me know what you think.
If you’ve been following along this week, you know exactly how much we love the films of William Gréfe. So this documentary — originally released by Ballyhoo Motion Pictures as a limited edition double disk (you can get it at Diabolik DVD) — is exactly the kind of thing that we devour, absorb and now, share with you.
Honestly, if you have the smallest interest in exploitation film or if you’re an absolute maniac who thrills at the very mention of names like Barry Mahon and Crown International Pictures, then you absolutely must own this. Luckily, if you buy the new He Came from the Swamp set, you get this film along with several of Gréfe’s films.
“If there were rules to making a movie, one indie director would break them all!” These are the kind of taglines that make me beyond overjoyed to watch a documentary and trust me, this one delivers.
As a Miami-based regional filmmaker, Gréfe transformed the Everglades into his own personal studio. This doc has everyone from Ross Hagen, Frank Henelotter, David F. Friedman and Fred Olen Ray to William Shatner, Herschell Gordon Lewis and many of the actors that worked with Gréfe on his many films all speaking about what it was like to be part of this magical time in low budget filmmaking.
If you’re the kind of person who obsesses about the extras on a DVD, then you’ve probably seen the work of director Daniel Griffith. It’s a real joy to see him expand his work to a full-length feature on one fascinating subject. I can’t wait to see his next movie, Celluloid Wizards in the Video Wasteland: The Saga of Empire Pictures.
The Arrow Video He Came from the Swamp box set is available at Diabolik DVD or from MVD. You can also learn more at the official site for the film.
David Twohy started his time in Hollywood as a writer on films like Warlock, Timescape and Critters 2: The Main Course before graduating to big budget films like The Fugitive, The Arrival, Waterworld and G.I. Jane. He started directing with the aforementioned Timescape and then really kicked his directing career into high gear with this sleeper of a movie.
The first of four appearances of the Riddick character* — which launched the career of Vin Diesel — this movie owes plenty to the Alien franchise but comes into its own thanks to plenty of suspense and great effects.
The ship Hunter-Gratzner is transporting passengers as they sleep, including a Muslim preacher named Abu ‘Imam’ al-Walid (Keith David) and his three sons, an arms dealer named Paris, a teenager named Jack (keep in mind the gender neutrality of the name), some settlers named Zeke and Shazza, as well as a bounty hunter named William J. John (Cole Hauser, the son of Wings) who is transporting a Furyan alien who can see in the dark named Riddick. Meteors bring their ship down on a planet of near-constant daylight — or so it seems — yet when underground creatures attack Riddick is offer amnesty if he can help everyone get out alive.
That wouldn’t be easy even if the planet wasn’t headed for an apocalypse that will allow the photo-sensitive monsters to run wild anything and everywhere they want to go.
The intriguing part of this movie is the journey that pilot Carolyn Fry (Radha Mitchell, the …Has Fallen movies) makes from someone willing to jettison the passengers to save her own life to someone who convinces Riddick to stay behind and help others, despite his criminal nature.
Originally, this was a stand-alone movie and Riddick was supposed to die, but Vin Diesel and the cast and crew fell in love with the character and saw the potential for more. In the original Nightfall script, Riddick wasn’t even a guy; she was called Tara Krieg.
PS: If you want to see the wreck of the Hunter-Gratzner, it’s still in the Australian desert and visible on Google maps. This is also the same area where The Blood of Heroesand Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome were made.
PPS: The Robert Heinlein story Tunnel in the Sky has characters marooned on a planet threatened by a once-a-year danger and a character named Jack who is really female. Luckily, Heinlein wrote that and not Harlan Ellison.
The new Arrow Video release of Pitch Black is absolutely overloaded with all the extras you expect from this great company. It starts with a brand new 4K restoration by Arrow Films of the Theatrical and Director’s Cuts of the film, which were approved by director David Twohy. Then, you get two sets of archival commentary, a newly filmed making-of documentary, as well as new interviews with Rhiana Griffith, cinematographer David Eggby, visual effects supervisor Peter Chian and composer Graeme Revell. Plus, there’s behind the scenes footage, special effects tests, an introduction by Twohy, a Chronicles of Riddick Visual Encyclopedia, a short prequel narrated by Cole Hauser telling the tale of his character’s hunt for Riddick, the Dark Fury animated short (as well as the bonus features from that release), the Slam City motion comic, the Into Pitch Black TV special with further information of what happened before and after the events of the movie, a dance event that promoted Pitch Black and trailers for all of the sequels and video games.
You can get this from Arrow, who was kind enough to send us a review copy.
*The others are The Chronicles of Riddick, Riddick and the animated The Chronicles of Riddick: Dark Fury (you can also count the shorts Pitch Black: Slam City and Riddick: Blindsided, as well as the video games The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay and The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena. As stated above, all of these are shown on this incredible release.
Along with Edge of the Axe and Deadly Manor, Spanish horror director José Ramón Larraz made this movie explicitly for the burgeoning American video rental market. It has all the cheap thrills you want, but it feels like a Michelin star chef just made you a mac and cheese pizza.
Helen Hewitt (Lorin Jean Vail, The Patriot) and her husband Bob (Scott Thompson Baker, Open House) have just moved into the country villa of her recently deceased Aunt Catherine. Everyone there is pretty much beyond rude and more in your face hostile to them both, which is only the start of the weirdness they endure. I mean, I would have given up when the corpse of Catherine sat straight up when Helen kissed her.
Actually, even before they get there, Helen learns that her father was Catherine’s ex-husband and that he died soon after she was born. Her aunt has held a grudge out against the family, but still gives her everything she owns before she commits suicide during the video will by drinking poison milk. Yes, you read that correctly.
Jack Taylor — who was in more horror movies than even I have watched, but I’ll list out the Nostradamus films, The Ghost Galleon and Female Vampire to start — plays a blind musician who plays a concert while everyone in the town conspires against the two newcomers. Euro horror queen Patty Shepherd also shows up as a character named, get this, Gertrude Stein.
It’s not great, but the idea of a great movie is in here. But you know me. This is exactly the kind of goofball horror that I love.
A horror movie filmed entirely in Kalamazoo, Michigan including the Henderson Castle, WMU, Kalamazoo College and the Kalamazoo State Theatre, Housesitter sat on the shelf for more than thirty years before finally being finished, thanks to sound engineering from Skywalker Sound and final picture from Paramount Picture’s color department.
Andy (Richard Gasparian, who co-directed this and went on to work in animation) is an idealist medical student with an Elvis obsession. He’s obsessed with changing the face of modern science with his rat-to-brain transfer, which takes him to the Reinhardt Institute. Meanwhile, his professor and mentor Doc Crosby has a black and white lab that he’s been using to create something even more astounding than Andy’s goals — brain pyramid from 13 unwilling donors so that he can fix his severely damaged brain.
Directed by Robin Nuyen, who played a thief in Wes Craven’s Deadly Friend, this 1950’s by way of the 1980’s hybrid that has an Elvis fan — who has a doll of the King that speaks directly to him — as the only person that can save us from science.
I wanted to love this movie, as it feels like it should be a perfect fit for everything that I love. And it also has a slasher kill where someone gets drowned in the toilet. But it never finds the right balance between horror and goofiness, which is a tough line to tightrope walk. You may find yourself enjoying it way more than me, however.
Housesitter is available on demand and on blu ray from Leomark Studios
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