My friend Patrick Murphy suggested this one, which was the first film to spoof slashers like Halloween, Friday the 13th and Prom Night. My favorite part of this silly movie is that every single time someone is killed, a helpful body count graphic appears on screen to inform you just how many people have been killed.
Director Mickey Rose collaborated with Woody Allen on the films What’s Up, Tiger Lily?; Take the Money and Run and Bananas. He also wrote the movie I Wonder Who’s Killing Her Now? He had uncredited directing help from Michael Ritchie, who also directed The Island, Downhill Racer, The Candidate, Semi-Tough, The Bad News Bears, both Fletch films, The Golden Child and more.
A serial killer called The Breather (voiced by Richard Belzer!) is watching and murdering the female students at Lamab High School. He loves to call people on the phone — the makers of Scream had to have watched this film — when he’s not getting upset and killing them after sex. The women are all killed with a ridiculous arsenal of weaponry, like bookends and paperclips, while the men are placed in trash bags.
I kind of love that this movie references the giallo tradition of a black covered killer, except here, The Breather wears dishwashing gloves. The film ends with reveal after reveal, with The Breather’s identity coming out, it all being a dream — like The Wizard of Oz — and the real killer being revealed, but then the ending of Carrie gets parodied.
I’m also a big fan of how this is shot. It looks like an honest to goodness horror film, no matter how silly things get. The music, the camera angles, the feel of the movie — it’s all legit. The story itself is what’s silly.
While Student Bodies contains no gore or violence, it does contain one moment of profanity in a really clever way. A man interrupts the film to explain that in order to get an R rating, movies “must contain full frontal nudity, graphic violence, or an explicit reference to the sex act.” For this movie to be a success, it needs that R rating, so the man says that “the producers have asked me to take this opportunity to say, ‘Fuck you’.” Then, the MPAA rating card appears. This scene is legit — it’s what really got the movie the rating it demanded.
My only downer here is that an eggplant was used to kill the black victim in this movie. In case you didn’t know, the term mulignan is a Sicilian word taken from the derived from the Italian melanzane, or eggplant, as a slur against the skin color of African-Americans. One hopes this was a coincidence, but I think not. I get that culture was different in 1981 and I hope that we all continue to grow, but it’s pretty jarring in 2019.
The final movie directed by Roy Ward Baker (Asylum, The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires) and produced by Milton Subotsky (who was behind Amicus along with Max Rosenberg), this portmanteau film is based on the stories of R. Chetwynd-Hayes. While it all feels like an Amicus film, it is not. But don’t hold that against it.
R. Chetwynd-Hayes (John Carradine!) meets the famished vampire Eramus (Vincent Price!), who bites him and then takes him to the Monster Club, where nightclub acts perform and three stories are shared.
In The Shadmock, Angela (Barbara Kellerman, Satan’s Slave) takes a job at a secluded mansion owned by a Shadmock named Raven. The strange creature falls in love with her and her controlling boyfriend (Simon Ward, Zor-El in Supergirl) forces her to marry him so they can steal all of the beast’s money. The night of their engagement party, Raven discovers Angela stealing his gold and she screams that she could never love him. In anguish, he responds with his demonic scream, destroying her face and putting her boyfriend in a mental home.
Next is The Vampires, where a young vampire is bullied at school and ignored by his father, who is played by Richard Johnson (Dr Menard from Zombi 2!). Meanwhile, some totally business-like bureaucratic vampires — led by Donald Pleasence! — kill the father, or so we think. Family bliss is soon returned when dad fakes his demise and mom — Britt Ekland! — bites good old Donald.
In the third story, The Ghouls, a movie director (Stuart Whitman, Guyana: Crime of the Century, Demonoid) discovers a new location for his film, a place where ghouls eat the living. There, he meets the hum-ghoul Luna and her ghoul father (Patrick Magee, Tales from the Crypt). He tries to escape but learns that this will be the final location he ever sees.
Finally, Eramus and the club members decide that humans are the worst monsters of all. Except for Chetwynd-Hayes, who is made an honorary monster and club member.
Both Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing turned down this film! I like it — the music in between is really weird, with a girl stripping her clothes and then her flesh off. It’s…well, this is a strange one! It’s also the only movie where Vincent Price played a vampire.
Beyond John Bolton painting the picture of the Shadmock, there was a limited edition comic book made of this movie to promote it at Cannes. 2000AD creators like Dez Skinn and David Lloyd also worked on the comic! Here’s a great YouTube video of it.
Also: this part about the genealogy of monsters is the best part of the film! You can get a copy of it at Amok Time.
You can also listen to our podcast about this movie!
Can we all admit that Ovidio Assonitis is a bona fide maniac? I’ve tried to explain The Visitor to people and always fail to capture the sheer lunacy and notion that it’s a film at the very same time about everything and nothing at the very same time. Nor can I divine why Franco Nero lives on the moon with bald dancing children determined to stop Satan from helping Atlanta to win a basketball championship.
You may wonder — what if Assonitis made a slasher? Good news. He did. And it’s also as deranged as you’d have hoped.
Julia teaches deaf children when she’s not having flashbacks to her horrific childhood, including her mistreatment at the hands of her twin sister Mary. Her uncle James, a priest, urges her to visit her sister and deal with her past.
Mary is suffering from a degenerative skin disease and their reunion does not go well to say the very least. The evil twin promises to make her sister suffer as she has suffered and begins using her evil dog to kill nearly all of Julia’s friends and neighbors.
At some point, Assonitis decides to just throw reality to the wind and we’re given a scene where the priest asks a lady to help him move some packages into Julia’s basement. One of them is a dead body and when she panics, he chases down the neighbor and murders her. The next day, the now insane priest arranges a surprise party for our heroine, complete with the dead bodies of everyone he has taken out. Mary confronts her sister, but is also murdered by the Catholic maniac priest.
Julia’s boyfriend comes back just in time, killing the evil dog with a power drill and rescuing his woman, who gets her revenge by repeatedly striking Father James with a hatchet before sitting down next to the dead body of her sister.
This is a theme in his catalog, but Assonitis had to fire and take over for the original director ten days into the production. There are touches of high art here amidst the slasher gore and the setup of the evil sister is quite well done, only to be thrown away at the end.
Also known as There Was a Little Girl and And When She Was Bad, this movie was re-released by Arrow a few years back. You can grab a copy from Diabolik DVD or watch it with on Amazon Prime.
My wife wants to go away on a fancy vacation. While horror films have forever enriched my life, they’ve also damaged her chances of going anywhere. The tropics? Have you seen Zombi? A resort like Sandals? I assume that Laura Gemser will show up and I’ll be boiled in a pot. And now, thanks to this movie, we can also cross Mexico off the list.
As much as horror may have curtailed my partner’s opportunity to globetrot, it’s also imparted several important lessons to me. To wit: if your mine is over a Satanic temple where left hands were severed to honor demons and every single worker refuses to go any deeper, perhaps it’s time to find a new mine. And if by chance you discover a miniature coffin with a hand inside it, just leave it where you found it. Don’t take it back to your hotel room. This is why I’ve made it forty six years on this Earth without being possessed or dealing with a face melting cult in the desert.
My true joy in the movie Demonoid comes from reading the review that it received when it was released in 1981 and laughing in their prose faces. How can anyone dislike a movie where a possessed man decides that old school Las Vegas is the best place to hide out? Who can dismiss a film where Samantha Eggar obviously dressed herself in some of the most astounding fashions that the early 80’s could unleash? The woman wears an ascot and oversized orange counter to explore a mine (let’s be fair, every outfit she wears in this movie are a paradox, somehow both gorgeous and ridiculous at the same time). And damn anyone who speaks ill of Stuart Whitman! This former boxer and soldier had already played Jim Jones — I’m sorry, James Johnson — in Guyana: Crime of the Century, released less than a year after that tragedy? Here, he plays a battling Catholic priest who we just know could win over Ms. Eggar if he didn’t have that pesky collar and angel on his shoulder to worry about.
Maybe they weren’t watching the Mexican cut (Macabra!), which has more dialogue, more death and a different ending? Look, you can’t please all of the people all of the time. And most of those critics, they never got pleased all that much anyways. Demonoid is worth the whole lot of them. Would they dare to feature an ending so downbeat after 98 minutes of rooting for our British heroine? I dare say no. They’d be afraid to insert so many flashing shots of a demon raising his fist, they’d be too concerned about a soundtrack that practically screams in your face and they’d sooner hide behind their film theory books than make a movie in 1981 that feels like it came from 1974.
Demonoid is why I watch movies. Samantha Eggar screaming at the top of her lungs while a mine explodes all around her? There. An appearance by Haji, she of Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, Bigfoot, Supervixens and the wonderfully titled Wam Bam Thank You Spaceman(whose real name Barbarella Catton wasn’t sexy enough for a stage name)? You got me. Overacting in nearly every scene? I’m riveted. A poster that promised nubile ladies reclining for a fallen angel carrying a gigantic sword? I might have piddled a little.
Keep your Oscar picks and guilty pleasures. I have no such taste or qualms. Give me Demonoid or give me a severed left hand!
This article originally appeared in Drive-In Asylum #13, which you can get right here!
Appearing under a variety of titles, like Great White, The Last Jaws, Jaws Returns and L’ultimo Squalo, this movie made $18 million in its first month of U.S. release. Universal Pictures had been trying to block Film Ventures from even releasing the film in America, but the request was denied in U.S. District Court. However, about a month into the film’s run, federal judge David V. Kenyon ruled that it was too similar to Jaws and the film was banned from theaters. Guess what? He was totally right.
After watching a windsurfer surf his little heart out over the opening credits, we get to watch a Great White Shark ruin his fun by eating him. That’s when we make our way to the resort town of Amity — I mean, Port Harbor — where Mayor Larry Vaughn — sorry, I meant to say governor William Wells (Joshua Sinclair, Ice from 1990: The Bronx Warriors) — refuses to believe that a shark is attacking his beach.
That’s when horror writer Peter Benton (James Franciscus, Butterfly and the voice of Jonathan Livingston Seagull ) and shark hunter Ron Hamer (Vic Morrow, who has delighted us in so many movies, such as Message from Space) realize they gotta do something. In my wildest dreams, Hamer’s son will grow up to be the evil Hammer from 1990: The Bronx Warriors, another Morrow role.
The governor refuses to cancel the windsurfing regatta (you gotta regatta!) because he feels like that will hurt his political ambitions. Yes, in the bizarre universe of Italian shark movies, the windsurfing lobby is incredibly powerful. That said, Wells did put in shark nets, but all the splashing around makes the shark nuts, so it tears through the nets. The next day, as the windsurfers line up to compete, the shark appears to the sounds of the guitar from the Torso trailer and treats all these teens on their boards as if I’d treat a sushi buffet. And for dessert, may we recommend the governor’s aide? Mmm.
Benton and Hamer head out to sea with some dynamite, but the shark goes off Spielberg’s shooting script and traps them in a cave. While they’re figuring out why the shark would go into business for itself, Benton’s daughter Jenny (Stefania Girolami Goodwin, who is Ann in 1990: The Bronx Warriors, a radio operator in Moses’ group in Warriors of the Wasteland and would go on to be an assistant director on Empire Records and Super Mario Brothers) and her friends head out on a yacht with some steaks and a shotgun, which seems like the worst plan ever. The shark also stops the boat by using its own body to jam the motor of the boat, which seems patently ridiculous.
Of course, the shark yanks her off the boat and ends up eating her leg, which is done as tastefully as Italian scum cinema will allow. In the hospital, she screams at their father to kill the shark. In an attempt to finally get something right and make it up to Benton — his son was the reason why Benton’s daughter was out there in the first place — Governor Welles grabs more steak (was this movie endorsed by Italy’s beef council, who remind you “Manzo è quello che è per cena”?) and heads out on a helicopter with dynamite to blow up the shark real good. Of course, the shark messes up the best plans and drags the governor into the ocean, biting him in half and dragging his helicopter into the unforgiving ocean. This scene is both astoundingly satisfying and completely stupid, which is what I demand from every movie that I love.
Benton and Hamer try one more time to blow the shark up, because much like pro wrestling, Italian ripoff shark fighting also works in threes. This fails — this shark will not get any memos — and Hamer is killed.
There’s another shark hunter who decides to change the game by using spare ribs (the Italian National Pork Board would like to remind you “carne di maiale l’altra carne bianca”) and chaining them to the dock, but of course the shark won’t listen to reason and decides to drag every single person into the ocean and make a meal of the hunter, a cameraman and assorted rubbernecking beachcombers.
While all these shenanigans are going on, Hamer’s dead body floats on by and Benton (who is wearing a jaunty red wetsuit that seems like it would only enrage a crazed shark further and yes, sharks can see tones of colors depending on their species, I looked this up on Google because I really do care about the facts, dear reader) remembers that he has the detonator, so he blows his friend’s body up and takes the shark’s head with it. He then walks over and punches out a reporter played by Giancarlo Prete, who we all know and love as the hapless Scorpion from Warriors of the Wasteland!
It took four writers — Ramón Bravo (who also wrote Tintorera: Killer Shark), Vincenzo Mannino (who helped write Devil Fish, Miami Golem, Murder Rockand The New York Ripper), Marc Princi and Ugo Tucci — to completely rip off the first two Jaws films. But it only took one director to create this carbon copy carnage. That man was Enzo G. Castellari and if you can’t guess by the related credits of the crew, he’s the man who brought us such magic as 1990: The Bronx Warriors, Warriors of the Wasteland, Escape from the Bronx and the original The Inglorious Bastards. He’s brought me such joy in my life and if IMDB is to be believed, he’s ready to bring even more, as he has a film called The Fourth Horseman in pre-production. This thing has to be a fever dream or a made up story, because it has Sid Haig, Michael Berryman, Bill Mosely, Kane Hodder, Franco Nero (as Keoma!), Fabio Testi, George Hilton and Gianni Garko (as Sartana!) in it. Sometimes, life can surprise you.
No matter what you call it, The Last Shark is anything but boring. You’re not going to see anything you haven’t seen before, but if you want to see b-roll footage, model helicopters and a shark that honestly may be better than Bruce was in the first movie (also it’s a shark smart enough to stop boats and grab ropes in its teeth so it can take out docks full of people), then this is the movie for you.
My only issue with this film: Castellari had not yet met Mark Gregory yet. If Mark was in this movie, I may have lost my mind. I mean, even more than I already have.
Any movie that starts with a couple taking off their scuba equipment to make love underwater inside sunken ship and then being devoured by a school of mutant flying piranha before a James Bond style graphics sequence is immediately going to rocket to the top of any to watch list there is. Get ready: Pirahanha II: The Spawning is here, it can fly and it will eat your fleshy bits clean off.
Anne Kimbrough (Tricia O’Neil, Are You in the House Alone?) is the diving instructor for the Hotel Elysium. She tells her class to stay out of the ship wreckage, but some people just don’t listen and become more food for those little biters.
Anne wants to see the body, but her police officer ex-husband Steve (Lance Henriksen, who I remarked was young in this movie and Becca said, “He’s never been young. He’s always been…leathery.”) won’t allow it.
This movie is packed with all manner of horrible folks set up to be victims. For example, Jai (Carola Davis, one of the few people to ever pose for both Playboy and Penthouse, has had a really interesting life, co-writing “Slow Love” with Prince, appearing as Roxie Shield in Mannequin and performing the song “Serious Money” that was the original theme song for BET’s Rap City) and Loretta are sea bandits who dock at the vacation spot to steal food before sailing back out to their doom as they soon learn that yes, piranha can fly.
Marine biologist Tyler Sherman (Steve Marachuk, The Eyes of Laura Mars) keeps trying to get with Anne, so for some reason, she takes him to the morgue. Beyond being a diving instructor, she’s was once a marine biologist so that relationship is a natural. They start taking pictures of the dead bodies, but a nurse kicks them out. This is where we learn another important untrue fact about piranha: they can hide inside dead bodies, then fly across the room and kill nurses.
Anne and Tyler beat feet and then do some horizontal mambo. While he sleeps, she studies the photos and is frightened. It gets worse — her ex-old man finds the credit card and comes back to their old house to throw it at her, get mad she’s getting lucky and accuses her of murder. Like I said before, Piranha II: The Spawning is packed with horrible folks.
Much like all films where man — or woman — battle the terrors of the deep, Anne tries to do the right thing and cancel all dives. Raoul, her manager, fires her in response, so she does the only sane — or insane — thing: try and capture a flying piranha as proof. That’s when Tyler drops a bombshell on her: he’s really a biochemist who was part of a team that developed the ultimate weapon, a genetically modified killer fish that can fly. I guess ultimate weapon may be stretching it, because it doesn’t seem like the kind of thing you can unleash in a city or the desert or in cold weather. Man, let’s not bring logic into this. Let’s just go with it: flying piranha are the ultimate weapon.
Can it get worse? Sure it can. The piranha are running out of food and turning on one another, which means they will eat anything and everything they can. Anne tries to reason with the resort manager one more time and her ex is even on her side this time, if only to tell her that Tyler is crazy.
Oh yeah — there’s a fisherman whose son gets killed by the piranha and he tries to get revenge and well, it doesn’t go so well.
Of course, while this is all going on, Raoul decides that the resort should have a midnight grunion catching party because that seems like a fun idea for a singles ready to mingle place. Of course, the piranha attack and absolutely decimate anyone and everyone in their path.
Here’s another untrue piranha fact: they are afraid of daylight. Tyler and Anne decide to chase them back to their coffin, err, their sunken ship and taking a cue from every other undersea monster movie, blow it up real good.
What could make all of this even worse? Well, it turns out that Anne and Steve’s son Chris has snuck around behind their back to work for Captain Dumont, with the hope of getting with his daughter Allison. You guessed it — they’re stranded right in the path of the flying fish.
Luckily, everything works out. Chris and Allison survive, free to hopefully spawn themselves someday soon. Anne and Tyler blow up the sunken ship and take out every single little fishie. And Tyler even has the good sense to get chewed up by the monster fish, allowing Steve to not look like a moron that wrecked his own helicopter for no reason and instead the hero that saved his soon to be not ex-wife.
Here’s yet another untrue fact: this film is the first movie directed by James Cameron. Well, parts of it are. Here’s the true story.
The original director was another graduate of the Roger Corman training school, Miller Drake. His script was all about Kevin McCarthy replaying his character from the first movie, coming back from the dead to create flying piranha and even killing Barbara Steele’s character. Producer Assonitis fired him and replaced him with Cameron, who was originally going to do the special effects.
After the first week of shooting, Cameron learned that he was there strictly to follow Assonitis’ orders. There are claims that he wasn’t allowed to see or edit the footage and even broke into the editing room to create his own cut.
Cameron has said, “He just fired me and took over, which is what he wanted to do when he hired me. It wasn’t until much later that I even figured out what had happened. It was like, “Oh, man, I thought I was doing a good job.” But when I saw what they were cutting together, it was horrible. And then the producer wouldn’t take my name off the picture because [contractually] they couldn’t deliver it with an Italian name.”
Lance Henriksen has also stated that the making of this movie was probably the worst time of his life. There was no budget for his uniform, so he bought a waiter’s outfit for $75 and found some badges, then hand carved a gun handle to at least look like an actual harbor officer.
Cameron’s been quoted as saying that this gets better halfway through if you’re drinking a six-pack at the drive-in. I’ll agree — this is a movie made for a large group of people and a variety of substances. I enjoyed it, but as we all know, I’m not really known for having highbrow tastes.
Long ago, in a remote corner of the world, ancient astronauts landed from a distant planet with a gift for mankind…the Phoenix. For a thousand years, he has waited…suspended in time. Now, he’s awakened to complete his mission. He searches for his partner, Mira. For only she knows his ultimate assignment on Earth. Dependent on the sun for his trek for survival, endowed with a superior intelligence, he has fully developed the powers of the human mind. Relentlessly pursued by those who seek to control him, he must stay free. The Phoenix.
In 1981, a young Sam (Becca was just a glimmer at this point) was obsessed was science fiction, ancient aliens and television. This TV movie — and the four episodes that followed — were repeatedly discussed in the Panico household as a show that seemed to have such promise and then suddenly just disappeared.
Judson Scott (Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan) played Bennu, an ancient astronaut who is awakened from suspended animation within an Incan pyramid. He’s constantly on the run, as the government wants to either control or cut him up (they’re led by Richard Lynch from Bad Dreams).
In the movie, he acquires a love interest who is killed as a result of his escape. The whole movie is pretty dark, actually, setting Bennu up as someone above human emotion and morality who learns how important life on our planet is. His home planet is called Aurica in the movie, but Eidebran for the series.
He has plenty of powers, too. Physical levitation, telepathy, astral projection, precognition, clairvoyance and telekinesis, which are all helped by his Phoenix Amulet and its ability to draw use solar energy.
Beyond Richard Lynch’s Justin Preminger antagonist, Bennu must also contend with another alien named Yago. Just like our hero uses the sun, he uses our moon. It’s hinted that Lucifer and Dracula are both fictionalized versions of this villain, who can deafen with his Bells of Thon and has a musical instrument named the Black Moonball that allows him to teleport or change his appearance. Even more interesting to me, at least, is that his original name in the show was to be Aiwaz, the angel who read The Book of the Law to Crowley!
Bennu isn’t all alone, though. He’s helped by Dr. Ward Frazier (E.G. Marshall, Creepshow) and spends the series searching for his mate, Mira (Sheila Frazier, Super Fly).
The show was created by Anthony Lawrence, who wrote several Elvis movies and created the TV series The Sixth Sense that was often syndicated along with Night Gallery. And get this, a few of the episodes were directed by Douglas Hickox (Theater of Blood)!
There’s never been an actual release of this series, but you can find it on iOffer and other grey market sites.
Before Mandy. Before The Wicker Man. Before Face/Off. Hell, before Fast Times at Ridgemont High and anything else he did, Nicholas Cage appeared in this blast of odd, a failed TV pilot from 1981 that was supposed to be the Laugh-In for the video generation.
This absolute mess was directed by Don Mischer, who today is better known for being the master of big scale appointment TV. From Motown 25 to the Emmys, the Billboard Music Awards, Superbowls, the Academy Awards, the Kennedy Center Honors and more, Mischer is the go-to guy for these glitzy events. But before that, he was directing specials for Donna Summer, Barry Manilow and Goldie Hawn. Which makes sense, as he was also trying to get Laugh-In relaunched in 1977 and was part of the Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell that kept the SNL trademark name until it went off the air in just three episodes.
In addition to the future Nick “Kinski of the West Coast” Cage, here billed as Nicholas Coppola, we have one of my favorite actors ever, Crispin Glover as the wacky host of the show. There are moments where he acts ridiculous, such as dancing to a cassette of the Talking Heads — the music being played is notably not played by the Talking Heads but instead probably some library music — but he shows none of the undercurrent of menace that would soon inform so many of his characters.
Here where this gets really odd — the teenagers on the show play themselves, with even Glover’s real-life mom playing the voice of his show mom. However, the few adults in the show, such as Mr. O’Reilly, the owner of the store where everyone gathers, who is played by Jackie “I ruined Caddyshack 2” Mason. Actually, I kid. Everything ruined Caddyshack 2.
In addition to Cage and Glover, there’s Jill Schoelen — yes, from The Stepfather and Popcorn — playing the cute girl of the bunch, plus original Facts of Life cast member Julie Piekarski, future CSI writer David Rambo, Kevin Cortes, Lisa Hope Ross and rocking guitarist Janet Robin, who was actually a student of Randy Rhodes and was Jennifer Jason Leigh’s guitar coach for The Hateful Eight.
The show starts with Glover breaking the fourth wall and speaking right to the camera, somewhat awkwardly, about the plight of the kids in 1981: “Well, we’re all teenagers and we’re all treated as faceless members of this society. Our parents bug us at home, our teachers always hassle us at school, and when we drive, the cops are always on our backs. And everyone thinks you’re on dope! Well, I just want you to know that teenagers are woven into the fabric of American life, and, without us, there’s no future.”
There are plenty of these dialogue-heavy soliloquies that break up the show, which is somewhat episodic, somewhat bursts of sketches (again, think Laugh-In), such as a moment where Cage flexes for the camera and drops a heavy dose of reality on the show:
“But you don’t think there’s gonna be a war, do ya? I wish my dad wouldn’t talk about it all the time. My mom looks at me and starts to cry! And dad says the Army’ll make a man outta me. Look at that! Huh? I thought I was a man already.”
This wildly uneven collection of material continues with a moment discussing teen runaways that goes from upsetting to jokey to, well, upsetting again and then, there are musical numbers. That’s right — you haven’t lived until you’ve seen Nick Cage wearing overalls and no shirt singing the most soulless version of “9 to 5” ever committed to video. There’s also an equally milquetoast rendition of “Hit Me With Your Best Shot” just to cement the fact that this show is going to hit you with musical choices on the level of Cop Rock.
The Best of Times is a true oddity, but it’s also a pop culture time capsule of what Hollywood thought that youth culture was before MTV even rocketed into space just three weeks after this show aired for the first and only time.
Today’s movie comes to us from Roger Braden, whose Facebook group Valley Nightmares is all about the history of the films that played at the drive-ins and theaters in his home state of Kentucky. He also writes from Drive-In Asylum and likes The Car as much as I do! Thanks for helping out, Roger!
During World War II a Nazi squadron transporting gold across the North African desert are ambushed by the Allied Army and everyone is killed except one man, Captain Robert. Years later Capt. Robert tells his story to German fortune hunter Kurt who reveals that he trained that German squad and murders Capt. Robert so that he can find the gold. Nazi Bastard! After hearing of his father’s death, Capt. Robert’s son discovers his Dad’s diary’s about the battle and the gold and decides to try and find the gold himself. Both men ignoring the legend of ghosts that haunt the oasis where the battle happened.
Looks and sounds like a decent movie to watch, right? You couldn’t be more fucking wrong. Other than the pre-credit opening of two young women stumbling across the seemingly “unfindable” oasis being attacked, there are no more “zombies” until almost halfway through the film. Instead we get story, and we get story flashbacks with scenes from other movies spliced into it. And we get narration of story during some really bad “battle” scenes while some jazzy cymbals play in the background. But Captain Robert is a true badass in these scenes, only using a pistol during the battle despite the Nazi’s having machine guns, grenades and having 5 times the manpower as the Allies.
When the zombies finally make their appearance they are some of the worst looking creatures you’ll ever see. Honestly, the two “main zombies” are fucking hilarious. One is apparently just a concrete head with an eye stuck to it. The other at least walks around, with 2 giant wet bug eyes. How he kept those giant eyes wet despite being buried in the sand is beyond me.
And they are S-L-O-W zombies too. More than a few people, despite seeing the zombies moving towards them like a glacier, wait to the last second to move, and then run right into the pack and get eaten. The gore in this is poorly done, and there’s not as much as one would expect. There is also one incredibly lame “sex” scene. “Day for night” scenes where sometimes its broad daylight when it’s supposed to be dark. The same footage being repeated throughout the film, this is one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen. Trust me, I watched this turd 3 times (!) in October alone. First to refresh my memory from seeing it (for the 2nd time) probably 15 years ago with my sons. The other two times were trying to figure out how to write about it. I can still only name about 3 characters in this entire movie, that’s how forgettable it is. Legendary low budget filmmaker Jess Franco can take full credit for this, despite his many aliases in the credits, as he was the co-editor, co-writer and co-musical score, wrote the screenplay and Directed it. Hell, he even played one of the fucking zombies.
Yeah, we love this so much, we reviewed it again, as we blew through a bunch of Jess Franco stuff in 2020.
Day 30 of the Scarecrow Psychotronic Challenge is Slash Your Face. A solo maniac is out to get ya. You can run but you can’t hide! I’ve been wanting to watch Absurd, the truly bonkers movie from the scumbag team supreme of Joe D’Amato and George Eastman.
Originally called Rosso Sangue (Red Blood), this movie is also known as Zombie 6: Monster Hunter, Horrible, The Grim Reaper 2 and Anthropophagus 2. This really has nothing to do with Anthropophagus (well, D’Amoto and Eastman were involved there, too and that movie ends with Eastman’s guts all over the place and this one starts that way), as it’s more of a Halloweenripoff. And I don’t mean that as an insult.
Mikos Stenopolis (Eastman) starts off being chased by the Vatican priest (Edmund Purdom, of all people) who created him. So let’s get this crazy set-up out of the way: a Greek monster who can’t be killed because his blood coagulates very quickly was created by the Roman Catholic church somewhere and when that maniac escaped, he ended up in some small American town that only cares about the game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Los Angeles Rams, so I’m just going to assume that they’re in New Castle or Zelienople.
The chase leads to a fence where Mikos is impaled. He makes his way to the front door of the Bennett house, holding his bloody guts as he passes out. He’s revived in a local hospital — shades of Haddonfield Memorial — and escapes after murdering a nurse with a drill. This being an Italian film, that entire murder appears in great detail.
The priest — let’s call him Father Loomis, cousin of the other Father Loomis in Prince of Darkness — informs the authorities that there’s only one way to kill Mikos: destroy his cerebral mass.
Synchronicity rears its head when Mr. Bennett, in a hurry to get home and watch Terry Bradshaw thread the needle to Lynn Swann, hits Mikos with his car. He just keeps going. When he gets home, he’s brusque with his wife and kids. Seems that his daughter, Katia, has a spinal condition and must stay in traction. All she wants to do is use a compass to continually draw the same drawing over and over again, while her brother Willy is obsessed that the Boogeyman is coming to kill him. Guess what, Willy? You’re right.
Mikos spends the rest of the movie randomly killing anyone who gets in his way, like a young Michele Soavi playing a biker and a butcher who gets the top of his head sawed off. He finally makes his way to the house. Peggy is on her way to watch the kids when she gets a pickaxe to the head. And the other woman who was watching them? Well, she gets her head forced into a lit oven that bakes the flesh off of her face in an extended sequence before being stabbed in the neck with a pair of scissors.
Willy goes all Tommy Doyle and runs to get help while Katia finally frees herself from her bed. She stabs him in the eyes with her compass and leads the killer on a chase throughout the house, using loud music to distract him. The priest arrives and struggles with Mikos, just in time for Katia to chop off the killer’s head with a ceremonial axe.
The police arrive late, but Katia assures her little brother that everything will be fine as the camera reveals that she is holding Mikos’ bloody head.
Absurd inspired the German black metal band who took their name, who eventually went from watching gore films to killing people for real as their music went further and further into far right extremism.
Your enjoyment of this film will be colored by how much you like gore, how much you understand that Italian movies are often very hard to understand and how much you’re willing to forgive a film. Personally, I loved it. The oven kill scene is really uncomfortable to watch and the gore is incredibly effective.
Severin Films has just re-released this film with all of their trademark quality and insanity. It’s the first uncut release of the film in the U.S. and features an interview with Eastman and Soavi, as well as a bonus soundtrack CD. They’ve also rereleased Anthropophagus and also offer an amazing bundle that comes with pins of Niko and Joe D’Amoto, as well as a George Eastman stuffed doll. I love that Severin gives films as disreputable as these all the care and concern that Criterion would to a movie from a director much more esteemed and talented (but so much more boring).
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