Midnight is the movie Rob Zombie keeps trying to make. It’s seriously demented and filled with so many truly unlikeable characters. Most of them make you want to take a shower just watching them.
Written and directed by John Russo, one of the creators of Night of the Living Dead, Midnight was shot on location outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and features special effects by Tom Savini. While never prosecuted, the film was seized and confiscated in the UK as a section 3 video nasty.
How can you not love a movie that starts with a girl caught in an animal trap getting killed by a bunch of children who all pray to Satan while they murder her? And hey look — one of the killers is John Amplas, Martin in the flesh.
Midnight is really about Nancy Johnson, who runs away from home after her police officer stepfather Bert (Lawrence Tierney, berserk as always) tries to assault her. She gets picked up by two guys, Hank and Tom, who also grab a Baptist preacher and his daughter.
As they stop to see the preacher’s wife’s grave, the older man is soon killed. To top that off, the killer delivers the body to his daughter’s door and then kills her with the same machete.
After racists in the town refuse to serve Hank, the three heroes steal groceries before they’re stopped by some even more racist cops. The two men are quickly gunned down and Nancy goes on the run. Of course, the house she ends up in just so happens to be the one where her friends are being cut into pieces.
The movie then descends into even more depravity, like locking our heroine in a cage to witness a Black Mass, her insane stepfather tracking her down and finally, our heroine discovering herself in time to wipe everyone out with extreme malice.
The original ending had the crazed family — who had already killed the cops and stolen their uniforms — getting away with the murders. However, the distributors demanded that the film have a more uplifting ending, which is why the one that is in here happens so quickly. It works for me — it’s really shocking.
While the film was released as Backwoods Massacre, I’d compare it to more of a Western Pennsylvania Texas Chainsaw Massacre in tone.
UPDATE: I’m beyond happy that Severin has released this on blu ray and even used a quote from our site on the back cover!
How much do I love this movie? This poster is in our movie room.
DAY 29. COMEDY OF TERRORS: A matter of laughter at the splatter of the matter. A funny one, duh.
There was a time, let’s call it 1983, where we couldn’t just sit down and instantly find any single movie from anywhere in the world and any point in time. You might think that that would have been a dreary existence, but it was actually kind of awesome. You were at the mercy of the HBO Guide, whatever was on TV that day and whatever new releases were in your video store. Now, it’s all very robotic.
Pandemonium is exactly one of those movies, a film that would just show up on HBO to my delight and one that I’d often stare at on the video shelves. Did it belong in horror? Did it belong in comedy? What kind of maniacs would make this?
Alfred Sole, that’s who. It’s the last movie he’d direct. If anyone knew what slashers were — and had the timing to make fun of their conventions — the director of Alice, Sweet Alice was more than up to the task.
Welcome to It Had To Be, Indiana. It’s a place where football is king and Blue Grange (Tab Hunter!) wins the 1963 National Championship before he goes on to professional glory. As the game ends, Bambi the cheerleader (Candy Azzara, who played Rodney’s wife in Easy Money and was almost Carol — she was in the second failed pilot — on All In the Family) tries to win his heart before the rest of the cheerleaders kick her out. Seconds later, they’re all skewered together by a javelin.
Almost two decades pass and the cheerleading camp remains closed due to this tragedy, but Bambi comes back to town to start it back up. I just love how the words EXPOSITION and STILL MORE EXPOSITION flash on the screen while she explains her backstory to Pepe (David Landers, who was Squiggy on Lavern and Shirley) and his mother, Salt.
As each student arrives at the school, they’re labeled VICTIM #1, 2, 3 and so on and so forth. The first is Candy (Carol Kane!), who is basically Carrie as she gets into a fight with her mother about dirty pillows at the bus station.
Then there’s VICTIM #2: Glenn Dandy (Judge Reinhold), who comes from a strange family made up of Kaye Ballard (who was in Spike Jonze traveling group of musicians and would use her catchphrase “Good luck with your MOUTH!” on shows like The Patty Duke Show and The Perry Como Show) and Donald O’Connor from Singin’ In the Rain. And VICTIM #3: Mandy, whose dad (James MacKrell, who played Lew Landers in both Gremlins and The Howling) introduces her as if he were Bert Parks (look for Victoria Carroll from Nightmares In Wax as her mom).
VICTIM #4 is Sandy (Debralee Scott, Cathy Shumway from Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, a show that probably will elicit blank stares from, well, anyone), who gets a ride from Ronald Reagan. And then there’s Andy and Randy, VICTIMS #4 and #5, played by Mile Chapin (Richie from The Funhouse) and Marc McClure (Jimmy Olson himself!).
“Candy, Mandy, Sandy, Andy and Randy,” they all shout.
“And me, Glen.” Everyone stares at Glen.
“Glen Dandy!” This line makes me laugh like a maniac. Look, I was 11 when I first saw this.
After meeting all of these folks, we get to know Sgt. Reginald Cooper (Tommy Smothers), a mountie who is the U.S. for some reason. He’s on the trail of a convict named Jarrett (Richard Romans, who provided voices for Heavy Metal), who killed his family with a drill and turned them into bookshelves. Perhaps he can meet up with The Breather from Student Bodies and they can discuss bookends. Anyways, he’s escaped and Warden June (Eve Arden, Our Miss Brooks and Principal McGee from Grease) has no idea where he’s gone.
This is where I should mention that Johnson, Cooper’s assistant, is played by Paul Reubens in an almost proto-Pee-Wee Herman mode. In fact, much of the cast are Groundlings, so you get appearances by a young Phil Hartman and John Paragon as a prisoner.
The movie turns into a slasher as the killer makes his way to campus and Cooper falls in love with Candy. Glenn gets blown up on a trampoline. Mandy is trying to brush her teeth for hours when she gets drilled.
But it’s not Jarrett or another killer named Fletcher or ever Dr. Fuller from the mental hospital that’s behind it all. The real killer is still at large, with Bambi getting drowned in a tub full of milk and cookies. Randy, Andy and Sandy are killed after a game of strip poker. And now the killer is after Candy, revealing that he’s…
Well, don’t you want to watch this for yourself?
Other notables that show up are Alix Elias (Coach Steroid from Rock ‘n Roll High School), Pat Ast (Edna from Reform School Girls), Don McLeod (T.C. Quist from The Howling), Edie McClurg (who was in, well, any role that needed a funny redhead mom in the 1980’s) and former pro wrestler Lenny Montana (who was most famously Luca Brasi in The Godfather).
Will you like it? Well, I know some people that love Full Moon High and Wacko, while I dislike those films. And I’ve read plenty of folks online who have negatively compared this film to those. But this is just so much better, in my eyes. Sole has a great eye for a gag and some innovative camera movements. And despite the racism of the Japanese Airlines scene, having Godzilla as a stewardess that uses atomic breath to warm up coffee is still hilarious to me.
Imagine, if you will, a movie with the termenity to steal large chunks of Halloween while also taking most of its soundtrack — and some ideas — from The Omen and The Exorcist. Then you’d have Jing hun feng yu ye, or as we would say in America, Devil Returns.
It is as amazingly ridiculous as you’d hope it would be.
Our heroine Mei-hsun Fang called for the wrong cab. Its driver is a wanted robber and serial rapist who attacks her and leaves her to die. But she survives and her testimony puts him in front of a firing squad. Even though she can see his death in her dreams, he hasn’t left her memory and she begins to fear that the life growing in her womb isn’t from her husband, but from that killing machine.
Her attempt to have an abortion ends with the nurse attacked and the doctor being violently hurled from the operating room and out a window. By violently, I mean that this is a Hong Kong movie where life is cheap and stunts are painfully real.
What would you do now? Throw yourself down a flight of stairs? How about throwing yourself down the stairs accompanied by Jean Michel Jarre’s “Oxygene?” Could it be because the second part of that song was also used in Jackie Chan’s Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow?
Well, that doesn’t work either and the baby is born. Mei-hsun is so fearful of the child that she refuses to name it. And when no one is around, the baby torments her, crying non-stop. Luckily, an exorcism turns the child to the side of good.
The killer is enraged that his son is no longer evil, so he returns back to the world of the living, wiping out everyone in his path, from the nanny who suggested the exorcism to a young couple.
Finally, the movie settles into straight-up Halloween ripoff mode, except you know, with the Asian twist of the murderer being covered in wine to banish his evil spirit before he’s shot several times.
This movie plays with the issue of motherhood and the changing role of women within Chinese culture pretty well until it decides that someone needed to see an Asian version of Jamie Lee stab those knitting needles into the eyes of a killer all over again.
Of course, this is also a movie that takes large bits of its story from When a Stranger Calls and Black Christmas, so you can’t fault it from stealing as much as it can.
However — can these movies claim to have a scene shot in a karaoke parlor where the singer outright brutalizes every single man in the club with her lyrics that take down each one of them as they try to laugh it off? Nope. They cannot. It’s moments like this that make this movie shine.
As you watch this clip, you may notice that my copy of Devil Returns isn’t a high-end boutique blu ray release. No, it’s a shoddy VCD downloaded off the internet, featuring hardcoded Asian and Chinese subtitles, while each line of dialogue is spoken in both Cantonese and Mandarin. The strange feedback from all of this information overload makes this movie somehow even better as a result. It’s also a grainy mess, transferred from VHS to a CD-R, with no care whatsoever for quality. Magical.
DAY 21: POWER PLANTS. One where the vegetation fights back.
Swamp Thing can trace his roots — yes, it’s a he — back to “It,” Theodore Sturgeon’s short story that ran in the pulp magazine Unknown in 1940. The story is all about a man — Roger Kirk — who dies and is reborn in a swamp.
This was an influential tale whose roots — pardon the pun — took hold throughout comic books, which were the younger brother of the pulps. In Air Fighters Comics #3, published in 1942, Sky Wolf (a World War II fighting ace given to wearing the mask of a wolf and helping Airboy battle the Axis) the muck-encrusted form of World War I German pilot Baron Eric von Emmelman returned from the grave in the same way that Roger Kirk did two years before.
Thanks to his immense force of will and the help of the goddess Ceres, as the Baron’s body decayed, he became one with the vegetation of the swamp that he was shot down over. Now, he was more marsh than man, and fought Sky Wolf until discovering the fanaticism of his countrymen.
Before long, The Heap was the heroic star of his own backup in Airboy Comics, with adventures lasting from 1946 to 1953. He’d return in 1986 as part of Eclipse Comics’ reboot of Airboy before being bought by Image Comics, where he’s now part of Todd McFarland’s Spawn Universe.
After EC Comics (the creators of Tales from the Crypt and The Vault of Horror amongst others) and other horror comics publishers were taken to task for their extreme material, the Comics Code Authority outlawed all monstrous characters unless they had literary roots. In fact, until the year 1989, you weren’t even allowed to say the word zombie in a mainstream comic book (Marvel got around this by calling them zuvembies, if you can believe that).
As the CCA relaxed its rules at the start of the 70’s, two different characters that both grew from the Heap started at both Marvel Comics and their cross-town rivals, DC.
Man-Thing was created by Stan Lee and Roy Thomas (who’d go on to write Fire and Ice and adapted plenty of Conan stories, including the one that would be filmed for Conan the Destroyer). A series of conversations led to five different potential origins for the character, with the name being recycled from another character that had already appeared in Tales of Suspense #7 and #81.
Thomas would tell Alter Ego that Lee “had a couple of sentences or so for the concept — I think it was mainly the notion of a guy working on some experimental drug or something for the government, his being accosted by spies, and getting fused with the swamp so that he becomes this creature. The creature itself sounds a lot like the Heap, but neither of us mentioned that character at the time.” Lee also had the name for the character, which would lead to perhaps by favorite comic book title of all time: Giant-Sized Man-Thing.
While you’d think that Man-Thing would be a one-note character — he never speaks and he just kind of shows up in the swamps — but he grew from his first appearance, where he battled Marvel’s Tarzan-esque Ka-Zar to become something much different thanks to the deranged hands of Steve Gerber, who made Man-Thing the center of the Nexus of All Realities, which just so happened to be inside his swamp.
Once biochemist Dr. Theodore “Ted” Sallis and a former co-worker with Dr. Curtis “The Lizard” Connors, the man who would become Man-Thing was working on a version of Captain America’s Super Soldier formula with Dr. Barbara Morse (who would become Hawkeye’s wife Mockinbird, man, I read too many comics as a kid) when techno soldiers from Advanced Idea Mechanics (A.I.M.) and his betraying wife attacked. The result? You guessed it. Fused with the swamp, no brains and a tendency to wander. That said, Man-Thing also gained the ability to burn anyone who felt fear in his presence, so he had that going for him.
Man-Thing became a story engine for Gerber (who contended that he was just a reporter for the very real tales of the character, as he appeared as a fictional character within the comic), who used these stories to introduce sorceress Jennifer Kale, the barbarian Korrek who emerged from a jar of peanut butter, the serial murdering Foolkiller, Dakimh the Enchanter and Howard the Duck. Yep, Gerber’s Man-Thing was pure imagination writ large across the comic book page. After leaving comics, Gerber would write for plenty of cartoons, including Dungeons & Dragons, which his work had a major influence on.
At pretty much the same time, Len Wein came up with the idea for a swamp-based character as he rode the subway. “I didn’t have a title for it, so I kept referring to it as that swamp thing I’m working on. And that’s how it got its name!” Master illustrator Bernie Wrightson (he drew the comic cover for Creepshow) designed the character’s visual image and helped tell his first few adventures.
The Swamp Thing was once Dr. Alec Holland, who was working with his wife Linda to invent a solution for the world’s food shortage problems. After some thugs blew up their lab, his destroyed body was coated in one of his formulas and grew within the swamp, transforming him into a conscious plant with all of his old memories. Of course, once Alan Moore came on board — after this movie brought the character back to comics — we would learn that Swamp Thing was really the latest in a long line of Earth elementals that protect the Green.
If this all sounds like DC was stealing ideas from Marvel — well, they were all stealing from the Heap who was stealing from Theodore Sturgeon — let me blow your mind a little further. Swamp Thing writer Len Wein and Man-Thing’s co-writer, Gerry Conway, were roommates.
Despite the first version of Swamp Thing appearing House of Secrets #92, Len Wein would later say, “Gerry and I thought that, unconsciously, the origin in Swamp Thing #1 was a bit too similar to the origin of Man-Thing a year-and-a-half earlier. There was vague talk at the time around Marvel of legal action, but it was never really pursued.”
It was decided that this was just a strange coincidence and after a while, the characters became so different, no legal action was necessary.
If you’d like to learn more about the fascinating lives of comic book swamp men, I recommend TwoMorrows’ Comic Book Creator 6: Swampmen.
Whew! I told you all that so I can tell you this: In 1982, Wes Craven wrote and directed an adaption of the comic, long before comic book movies were a thing. His intent was to show the major Hollywood studios that he could handle action, stunts and major stars, all while doing it under his $2.5 million dollar budget. Good news — he succeeded.
A top-secret bioengineering project in the southern swamps is dealing with sabotage, so Alice Cable (Adrienne Barbeau, playing a mix of the comic’s Matt Cable and Abigail Arcade) has been dispatched to replace one of the scientists who has been killed. She soon meets lead scientist Dr. Alce Holland (Ray Wise) and his sister Dr. Linda, who together have developed a glowing plant with explosive properties, as well as a combination animal/plant hybrid.
The real issue is that the secret base is being eyed by the evil Anton Arcane, a paramilitary leader who wants the fruits — and vegetables — of all this labor for himself. He’s played by Louis Jourdan, who is absolutely perfect in the role, oozing menace from every pore while remaining aloof and almost high cultured in his pursuit of evil.
Soon, Arcane’s forces attack, murdering Linda and blowing Alec up real good. However, just like the comic, he now rises as the Swamp Thing, played by stuntman DIck Durock (who was also the pie-eating champion in Stand By Me). Now, he must protect Alice and his notes, keeping them both from Arcane.
The movie differs from the comic in that Holland’s formula unleashes whatever the dominant personality trait exists within each person. For Holland, it’s the ability to heal and transform his inner strength into outer muscle. Yet Bruno (Nicholas Worth, who played the heavy in plenty of films and lent his voice to the Reaper in The Hills Have Eyes Part II), the biggest of Arcane’s henchmen, becomes a small rat-like creature and Arcane himself becomes a gigantic boar.
Another of Arcane’s henchmen — Ferret, the one who gets his neck snapped by Swamp Thing — is played by David Hess, who was Krug in The Last House On the Left. Also, Karen Price, who plays one of Arcane’s messengers, was Playboy‘s Playmate of the Month for January 1981. I tell you that because it’s her centerfold that appears on the tail of Gyro Captain’s copter in The Road Warrior.
There was one bit of controvery this film caused, more than a decade after it was released.
In August 2000, MGM released this movie on DVD and althought it was labeled PG, it actually included the 93-minute international cut, which amps up Adrienne Barbeau’s ample charms and nudity in the skinny dip sequence. Two years after that, a woman rented this film in Dallas for her kids and was shocked and dismayed by what her family saw. Trust me — they should be so lucky!
Durock and Jourdan — along with much of the crew, including producers Michael E. Uslan and Benjamin Melniker — would return in 1989 for The Return of Swamp Thing. It’s directed by Jim Wynorski and features Heather Locklear as Abigail Arcane, who heads to the swamp to confront her stepfather Dr. Arcane. He’s been brought back to the dead by the evil Dr. Lana Zurrell (Sarah Douglas, Ursa from Superman) along with an army of mutant Un-Men, all ready to do battle with Swamp Thing.
If anything, that movie gave us more than a series on the USA Network and a cartoon complete with Kenner action figures (of course I bought every single one). It also gave us this, a PSA where Swamp Thing speaks for Greenpeace.
Good news. Today you learned way more than you ever thought you would about 20th century popular fiction involving swamp based creatures. Would it help even further if I told you that Man-Thing also appeared in a 2005 SyFy movie directed by Brett Leonard (The Dead Pit, The Lawnmower Man, Hideaway)? I sure hope so.
You can watch this for free on Tubi. You can also grab the blu ray from Shout! Factory and the MVD blu ray reissue of the sequel from Diabolik DVD.
For years, Superstition was a movie that was impossible to find. The 2006 Anchor Bay release was out of print and you could only find bootlegs of the film at conventions. That’s just part of this movie’s troubled history, as even though it was finished in 1981, it wasn’t released in the U.S. until 1985.
That’s probably why when people bring up great 80’s horror, this is a film that rarely enters the conversation. That’s changing, thanks to Shout! Factory finally bringing this odd film out on blu ray.
Filmed under the title The Witch, Superstition is all about murder. Violent, slasher-like murders filled with brutal amounts of blood-spraying gore. This is a movie that does more than not care about its characters. It seems to outright despise them, reveling in their horrible destruction. That makes it stand out from the pack of Amityville Horror and Poltergeist films. Much like Umberto Lenzi’s Ghosthouse, it melds the world of the slasher with the supernatural.
It all starts when two boys play pranks on a couple parked on lover’s lane. As they hide inside an abandoned house, they’re soon dispatched, which brings Inspector Sturgess (Albert Salmi, Viva Knievel!) and Reverend David Thompson (James Houghton, TV’s Knot’s Landing) in to investigate. Sturgess believes that the house is a place where occult rituals are taking place, as more than one murder and several drowings have happened on the estate.
What follows is a brutal series of kills, such as Sturgess’ partner being dragged under the lake, an elderly priest (Stacy Keach Sr., father of Stacy and James) being killed by a table saw, a contractor being hung by a clawed hand, exploding shards of glass mutilating another priest and so much more. Don’t fall in love with a single character in this movie — man, woman or even child.
Everything can be traced way back to a witch trial that happened in 1692, during when Elondra Sharack was accused of murdering a nine-year-old girl named Mary. The witch was drowned and then the church nearby instantly burned down. So when young Mary’s ghost starts wandering thr grounds, nothing good can happen. By the end, not even a crucifix can stop the witch from killing anyone and everyone that crosses her path.
Look for Larry Pennell — Dash Riprock from The Beverly Hillbillies — as doomed priest George Leahy, who somehow has a wife and three kids, one of whom is played by Billy Jayne, who is also Billy Jacoby, brother of actors Robert Jayne, Susan Jayne and Laura Jacoby, as well as the half-brother of Scott “Bad Ronald” Jacoby. Billy is also in Bloody Birthday, The Beastmaster and Cujo.
While not an official sequel, Alessandro Capone’s 1989 film Witch Story was also sold as Superstition2. That makes sense, as thematically these movies are incredibly similar. However, in Germany, Witch Story was retitled Tanz der Hexen Teil 2 and sold as the sequel to Larry Cohen’s Wicked Stepmother, a movie that feels like a complete 180 from Capone’s attempt at making a haunted house film.
Inspired by Friday the 13th, Stephen Carpenter and Stacey Giachino wrote the script for this film while students at UCLA under the title The Third Night, which later became Death Dorm.
We start with a man running from someone, then hiding in the bushes, before he’s attacked from behind and murdered. Yep — get ready to meet one of the more downbeat slashers you’ll find. To quote Jim Morrison, “Nobody gets out alive.”
Laurie Lapinski — in her one and only role — plays Joanne, a college student staying behind over the holidays to clean up Morgan Meadows Hall before its demolished.
Of her friends, only Daphne Zuniga, in her very first role, may be the only actor you’d recognize. She plays Debbie, whose parents show up only to be murdered with a spiked baseball bat and strangled (not at the same time, mind you). Then, as if that wasn’t enough, the killer drives their car over poor Debbie’s head.
This movie sets up more red herrings than a giallo, with drifters and traveling salesmen fingered as the manic.Along the way, a drill and a pressure cooker get used as the real killer uses the confusion to continually kill more innocent people.
So what was the motive? Love. Well, the kind of love incels have for women that we didn’t understand all the way back in 1982. Of course she should be happy he killed all of these people for her!
I won’t tell you who the killer is, but I will say that you have to like a movie willing to end on the down note of its final girl shoved into an incinerator and leaving behind foul-smelling smoke. You also have to love a movie that completely apes its title from The House That Dripped Blood.
This movie was released in the UK as Pranks, where it was placed on the category 2 video nasty list. It must have been all the nail-covered baseball bats. UK censors are particularly squeamish about weapons that kids can easily get their hands on.
Synapse has released the Death Dorm director’s cut and all of the censored gore on a great blu ray release. It’s not the best slasher you’ll ever see, but it’s certainly worth a watch.
Middletown, U.S.A. is the biggest show on TV. Sure, it’s controversial, but the ratings are through the roof. The only problem is that every time a major villain gets any traction, they end up dying for real.
Last year, we interviewed Amanda Reyes from Made for TV Mayhem. She recommended this film and it’s been on our list for awhile. Trying to get in sixty slashers that aren’t all that well-known for October gave us the perfect opportunity to watch it. If you’d like to read Amanda’s take on the movie, check out her site.
Director William Wiard was also behind This House Possessed, a fine example of made for TV horror. Here, he’s working from a script by David Levinson, who also worked on that film.
Suzanne Pleshette plays Carla Webber, who after being left by her husband decided that she’d become an independent woman. After watching daytime soaps, she soon learned that she was pretty good at writing for them, which leads to her running the biggest soap around. Barry Newman from Vanishing Point shows up as her love interest, plus Robert Vaughn is the slimy network president.
While this film doesn’t have much gore, it doesn’t skimp on the murders. It’s close to giallo territory with a humming killer only seen from their own POV, as well as a duplicitous identity and mental disorders at the end.
It’s not perfect, but Pleshette is. It’s fun to see her fully embracing a leading role after so many only knew her as Newhart’s wife. I know that Lifetime exists now to create movies similar to this, but there’s just something missing in a world that no longer has made for TV movies quite like this. Sure, TV is going through a golden age now, but give me the 1970s and 1980s past.
Oh Visiting Hours — I’ve stared at your box art so many times and never watched you, despite you being on rental shelves and in my collection for years. I’ve been meaning to watch it for awhile, but every time I grab the case of the Shout! Factory DVD, I just end up watching Bad Dreams, which is one of my favorite films despite just how much it rips off of the Elm Street films.
Oh Canada — your tax laws are just as responsible for slashers as much as sex and drinking in the woods!
Also known as Get Well Soon and The Fright, this movie tells the tale of Deborah Ballin, a feminist journalist and activist, who is played by Lee Grant (The Swarm, Valley of the Dolls). She gets under the skin of misogynistic serial killer Colt Hawker (Michael Ironside!), who has a name like a gay porn star. He attacks her, but she survives and is placed in the generically named County General Hospital.
As Deborah befriends a nurse named Sheila, Colt starts killing old people and other nurses. He also starts dating a girl named Lisa (Lenore Zann, who is also in Happy Birthday to Me) only to assault and torture her.
Our heroine is convinced that Colt is stalker her, but everyone — including her boss, played by Canada’s greatest export William Shatner — thinks she’s gone crazy.
Speaking of crazy, we learn that Colt got that way because his father was disfigured by his mother. That’s how these things happen, one assumes. He’s also nuts enough to take out everyone connected to our protagonist and then stab himself with a beer bottle so he can go to the same hospital as her.
Despite featuring little to no outright gore, Visiting Hours made the video nasty category 2 list, causing issues in the UK throughout the 80’s. Ironside really has a focused and evil performance, but I don’t know why this would make that list. Maybe I’m jaded.
Visiting Hours doesn’t live up to its poster art. Even by ripping off the theme to Halloween and aping Halloween 2‘s hospital setting, it can’t live up to other slash classics. Watch it for Ironside and Shatner, or just because you love Canadian tax shelter laws.
Writer/producer/director/lead actor Steve Barkett only would create one other movie — 1990’s Empire of the Dark, in which a private detective battles a Satanic cult, monsters and ninjas — but he lent his auteur spirit to this post-apocalyptic bit of strangeness.
Barkett was such an artist that while he originally filmed this in 1978, he wasn’t happy and re-shot most of the footage with different actors.
Just like Def Con 4 — or more to the point Planet of the Apes, as the film was shot in many of the same locations — Newman (Barkett) watches the world end from space and comes back to try and survive in the end times. Of course, he does that by undergoing a montage where he tidies up a mansion, so you’ll have that. Incidentally, that mansion belonged to Ted V. Mikels. It was literally the castle that he referred to when he kept a harem of women he called his “Castle Girls.”
Newman looks like every stepfather in the late 70’s and early 80’s, the kind of guy that takes you fishing even though you don’t really want to go and says stuff like, “I really care about your mother” and “You don’t have to call me dad, unless you want to” while at nights you ball your fists up and sob hot, wet tears while he and your beloved mother act out the next ten pages in Dr. Alex Comfort’s The Joy of Sex.
Yeah, Newman is no Snake Plissken. Or Max Rocktansky. Or even Paco Queruak. He is our bastard step-fathers of old.
Stop motion animator Jim Danforth plays a fellow astronaut and Forrest J. Ackerman — wearing the prop rings from Universal’s The Mummy and Dracula — shows up as a museum curator dying from radiation (he even plays Newman a tape with Dick Miller’s voice on it). And Sarah is played by Lynn Margulies. You may recognize her for her romantic involvement with comedian Andy Kaufman. However, the real star of the show is Sid Haig, who plays Cutter, the leader of a gang of cannibalistic mutants who kill all the men and children, only keeping the wives. All of the meanness and brutality of this whole sordid mess can directly be traced back to Cutter. For some reason, our hero is so stupid that he allows Cutter to escape — so Cutter can come back and kill everyone to get back at Newman.
Oh, and there’s also a laser gun that gets made in this movie and we’re just supposed to say, “Yeah, lasers exist.”
If you read our Section 3 video nasties article, you already know that this film was seized and confiscated, but not prosecuted for obscenity. And did former fill-in Duke boy Chip Mayer remake all this — with Richard Moll in the Sid Haig role — as Survivor in 1987? Yeah, pretty much. And if this all wasn’t weird enough: Aftermath was co-written by Stanley Livingston — Chip Douglas from My Three Sons — who also played Jeff in Paul Bartel’s astounding Private Parts, Russ in Smokey and the Hotwire Gang, and, somehow, ended up as a sidekick to Dolph Lundgren in Masters of the Universe, so as to diddle with the “cosmic key.”
The single most difficult hurtle in bringing speculative fiction portrayals of future societies to the big screen is financial: without the backing of a major studio, it’s difficult to create a new world off the racks, whether its clothing, technology, vehicles, or architecture. So while major and mid-level studios can dazzle filmgoers with a future built from scratch in films such Blade Runner (1982) and Escape from New York (1981), the little guy has to make do with what’s available and compromises with a simplified version of the future that pretty much resembles our present—with a few splashes of “futuristic” accoutrements. Jean-Luc Godard’s neo-noir Alphaville, Elio Petri’s pop-art romp The 10th Victim (both 1965), Francois Truffaut’s Fahrenheit 451 (1967), and the American PBS-TV adaptation of Ursula K. LeGuin’s A Lathe of Heaven (1980) are each fine examples of this celluloid ingenuity. Another is Claude Chabrol’s futuristic updating of Germany’s famed “Dr. Mabuse” in Docteur M (1990).
It’s important to understand these economic restraints to the creative process when watching Kamikaze ’89 as the reason for German director (and Fassbinder confidant) Wolf Gremm eschewing the serious-dramatic approaches of the three previous adaptations of Per Wahlöö’s 1964 best-selling, futurist neo-noir novel, Murder on the 31st Floor (twice for Russian TV as a mini-series and TV movie; then as a Hungarian TV movie), instead taking a black comedic, social satire approach that detracts from the novel’s serious sociopolitical and technocratic statements and bears little resemblance to those previous adaptations.
Regardless of its unorthodox approach with its garish character development and set design, Kamikaze ’89 garnered nominations and awards at the 1983 Fantasporto International Film Festival held in Portugal—which honors sci-fi, fantasy and horror films. As result of those festival honors, the film was marketed for an American release; the film subsequently flopped on the U.S art house circuit, grossing less than $25,000 in its initial release (but became a popular U.S VHS rental among sci-fi buffs and Fassbinder disciples).
In the “future” of 1989, Communism has fallen and the happy days of the good ol’ 1940’s—when the Federal Republic of Germany was the world’s dominate economic superpower—has returned. But since this is the “future” on a budget, the country has become a day glow, neon soaked, new-wave dystopia filled with Billy Idols, Boy Georges, and Madonnas prancing around in a low-budget Clockwork Orange-styled society. This is a world where male (female?) assassins dress in black lingerie and matching go-go boots—complete with ski masks and goggles. Women swim wearing leg warmers. Everyone mimics the police force’s logo seen throughout the film—a “thumbs up”—as some type of pseudo “Heil Hitler” salute in greeting each other. This is a world where citizens tool around on three-wheeled choppers, cops wear green crushed-velvet and peppermint-striped blazers, ambulances have six wheels, nurses wear gleaming-white lamé uniforms, and corporation executives make phone calls from Superman telephones (the handset cradles into his cape).
Meandering through this brain dead police-welfare state of citizens blinded by an endless stream of propaganda that proclaims “everything is perfect” is acclaimed German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder. He stars as Jansen, a rogue police lieutenant whose proclivities include a penchant for leopard-print suits and a revolver with a matching leopard-skinned grip. (Why? The film never tells us.) He works out in a gym—in leopard work out sweats—playing a solitary form of badminton-racket ball. He perpetually gulps down bicarbonate soda and relaxes on his lunch breaks in a dentist chair next to a ‘60s jukebox inside his rundown, paint-peeling “Bat Cave,” so to speak. And what’s the message behind the larger-than-life poster of Neil Armstrong on the Moon in his office, and the voice-over moon-transmission chatter between Armstrong and President Richard Nixon that Jensen listens to as he masturbates hip-thrusts into the poster, you ask?
Well, can you tell me the meaning behind the cackling villain-assassin dressed in a dinosaur costume (I think?) behind the driving wheel trying to run Jansen off the road with a car adorned bumper-to-bumper with the pages of comic books—complete with a full-sized Spider-Man plastered on the hood and a Captain America image stuck on the rear window? And what’s the deal with the Reality TV series watched by 99.3% of the population where contestants try to win prizes based on who laughs the longest—and the shows been going on for four days?
Yep. This film is way out there . . . and is only for those who enjoy the terminally weird and are brimming with patience to fulfill their Fassbinder fix—and decipher the hidden meanings, such as Gremm’s endless comic book references. All others are better off watching a Mark Gregory or Michael Sopkiw Italian-future world romp. Or, if you can handle the tomfoolery of Paul Bartel’s Death Race 2000 (1975), perhaps you’ll be able to stick with Kamikaze ’89’s black comedy slant to the bitter end. (It’s interesting to note that Ridley Scott’s similarly themed neo-noir sci-fi romp, Blade Runner, was issued a month prior to Kamikaze ‘89’s release.)
As in the future world of 1975’s Rollerball, Germany’s new totalitarian government-corporation has pacified and dehumanized the citizens through the legalized use of barbiturates and resolved all of the country’s social and political ills. There’s no more pollution. There’s no more murder or suicide (only “accidental death”). Alcohol and gardening (because the seeds are poisoned) are outlawed. But everyone is so miserable, they get drunk anyway . . . and they get locked up and fined . . . and get plastered again. And the wheel goes round and round and it all goes into the corporate coffers. And the rest that don’t get tanked, they garden the illegal seeds and eat the spoils in an act of suicide . . . oh, “accidental death,” so says the corporate edict. Everything is fine. Everyone is laughing on TV, after all.
Yep, you guessed it. Everyone is ignorant to the unhappiness perpetuated by this Soylent Green-inspired government-corporate . . . because the corporate also controls the broadcast and print media and perpetuates a “Group Think” mentality through a nascent forefather to the Internet via a media-soaked culture controlled by the few to manipulate the many. Things have gotten so out of control that Konzernchef, the Trumpian-Rupert Murdock leader of the family-run corporate concern, is immortalized as a villainous superhero, “The Blue Panther,” in a line of comic books published in protest against corporate regime . . . and he loves the attention. (Ack! No “Orange Panther” comments, wise guy!)
It turns out the underground protest comic is the product of a handful of intellectuals that ran the corporation’s Orwellian “cultural department” from the perch of the corporate headquarter’s hidden “31st floor.” Reasoning the corporate is evil, the corporate rogues work for a phantom terrorist group, “Krysmopompas,” to liberate the citizens. When their activities to overthrow the government crescendos with a fake bomb threat that results in the first “real” suicide-murder (of a corporate executive ready to spill the beans that takes a header off the “31st Floor”) in four years, they call in the world’s foremost and successful detective—Jansen—to solve the case. But the family-run corporate—and the in-the-pocket police department—doesn’t want the case solved . . . the world can’t know what going on up on the mysterious “31st Floor.”
Sweden-based crime novelist Per Wahlöö is best known for his series of ten best-selling novels regarding the exploits of Stockholm police detective Martin Beck published between 1965 and 1975. In 1971, one of those books, The Laughing Policeman (an English translation of Den skrattande polisen originally published in 1968) was adapted into the Walter Matthau and Bruce Dern starring film, The Laughing Policeman (1973).
Film Movement Classics honored Kamikaze ’89 with a 2016, 4K restoration issued to Blu-ray. You can watch the full movie for free on TubiTV and enjoy the Edgar Froese (of Tangerine Dream; Thief, Risky Business, and Grand Theft Auto V) soundtrack on You Tube. The 1980 Russian film version—for comparison—is also on You Tube.
The sad post-script to the film: Fassbinder died six weeks before the film was released. As you watch, you can clearly see the heavy and bloated Fassbinder was in poor health and looks much older that his 37 years. The professional momentum Gremm gained from his previous feature, Fabian (1980), being chosen as West Germany’s official submission to the 53rd Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film (it wasn’t nominated) was lost. While critically lauded, the box office failure of Kamikaze ’89 on the European circuit lead to it being Wolf Gremm’s last feature film; he then worked strictly in German television.
There are more, budget-inventive German dystopian visions to enjoy in the celluloid frames of the somewhat similar, previously mentioned Docteur M, and the Jupiter-to-Earth psychological adventure, Operation Ganymed.
About the Author: You can read the music and film reviews of R.D Francis on Medium and learn more about his work on Facebook. He also writes for B&S Movies.
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