First off, there are no dinosaurs in this movie. There is, however, plenty of happy go lucky island music, a large amount of nudity, cannibals and gore. It’s also called Cannibal Ferox 2, but isn’t this a better title?

Michael Sopkiw, the star of 2019: After the Fall of New York, plays an American paleontologist who likes to fight, fuck and find archaeology. He somehow cons his way into a professor’s voyage to the green inferno that is Dinosaur Valley. Along for the ride? A Vietnam vet and his housewife, a fashion photographer and plenty of hot models. Holy shit, this cannot go well.

Directed by Michele Massimo Tarantini, written by an uncredited Dardano Sacchetti and featuring music recycled from Blastfighter, this movie is everything I love in movies. It rips off the high heel cutting scene from Romancing the Stone. It’s wildly uneven in tone, going from comedy to horror in the same scene. There’s a lesbian rape scene, subverting notions while fully being pure exploitation. And in all honestly, all this movie is missing is a “based on a true story” tag at the beginning.

This is a movie that delivers everything that it promises. Well, except dinosaurs. There are a lot of escapes from cannibals. And lots of sweet, sweet lovemaking, Sopkiw style. That’s how you can tell I’m not an 80’s action star. When I’m getting chased by cannibals, I don’t stop to make whoopie inside the footprint of a dinosaur.

There’s some slavery too that our hero and heroines need to deal with if they want to get out of Dinosaur Valley alive. Yes, that’s one way out — give yourself up to a lesbian slave owner. That doesn’t work too well, though, as the heroine who tries that gets shot in the back. And then that dude, China, who runs the slaves? He rapes the other heroine before Sopkiw saves her and makes a joke about the mile high club as a helicopter rescues them. Dude. I guess comedy equals tragedy plus time, but maybe wait a little before making with the funny. At least until we get out of Dinosaur Valley, right? Also, China looks like an indy wrestling promoter.

You can get this from the fine folks at Severin, complete with interviews with Sopikw and Sacchetti. And hey — they quoted us in the sale copy!

Cirio H. Santiago sure has some interesting movies in his oeuvre: TNT Jackson, Vampire Hookers, Stryker, Hell Hole, Caged Fury, The Sisterhood, Demon of Paradise and many, many more. Today, we’re here to talk about his take on post-apocalyptic movies.

“If you thought Max was mad — meet Trace!”

Trace is looking for his sister, Arlie (Lynda Wiesmeier, Malibu Express) and finds her running with the Nomads and her boyfriend, Bo, who loses a fight for her car. Trace fights that guy and wins — he’s Trace, of course he fucking wins, bro — and we get a car chase. It will not be the last one in the film.

Soon, everyone is battling Scag and The Scourge, who ends up tying Arlie spread eagle on the hood of his car. Dude, you’re going against Trace! What the fuck are you thinking?

Bo dies — of course, he’s no Trace — and then we meet Stinger (Laura Banks, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan), who is the film’s badass girl (she’s playing the Sandahl Bergman to Trace’s Arnold). Meanwhile, his sister is getting raped by everyone (these scenes are left on the cutting room floor thankfully).

There’s also a mutant and a little person who help them, which they’ll need it as they battle the gang that done took Trace’s kin.

Long into the movie, we learn that the True Believers and how they are building a rocket to go to Paradise, a planet safe for man. Oh yeah. Trace used to be part of The Ownership, a government group that keeps order. And so was The Scourge.

Did I mention that Stinger has a trained falcon, so that this movie can rip off The Beastmaster too? Well she does.

Anyways, Trace goes to rescue his sister, who ends up sacrificing herself to save him. And Skag dies when Stinger sacrifices herself. Man — post-apocalypse female life is cheap.

If this all seems like a jumbled mess to you and you may say, has Sam forgotten how to coherently relay a plot, you obviously have never seen this movie before.

Interestingly enough, The Scourge was going to be played by Fear lead singer Lee Ving. But he left before shooting began.

You could do worse for a movie. I’m not sure how. But I’m certain you could.

When I saw this movie, way back when I was 13 years old, I wondered when every other kid would embrace it and treat it like the blockbuster I was sure that it would be. Then, it never happened.

In 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower is brought to Area 51 in the middle of the night to see a UFO. He orders them to get rid of it. 

28 years later, it’s found by high school gearhead Michael Harlan (Christine), who is searching through an airplane graveyard for something to turn in for his final science project so he can graduate. He’s brought along Ellie (Danielle von Zerneck, La Bamba), his nerdy friend who wants to be his girlfriend, and along with her and his friend Vince (Fischer Stevens, not playing an Indian as he did in Short Circuit or a Hollywood style hacker as he did as Eugene “The Plague” Belford in Hackers) he has to figure out how the device works and how to not destroy the world.

Hippie science teacher Dr. Roberts (Dennis Hopper, in one of his first mainstream return roles) realizes that the gizmo is actually a portal to another dimension before he is teleported away. The machine goes out of control, helped by the meddling of jealous nerd Sherman (Raphael Sbarge).

All ends up well and good, despite a dinosaur attack, post-apocalyptic mutants attacking the school and the police searching for our heroes. Dr. Roberts even comes back, getting to see Woodstock one more time (Dennis Hopper is wearing the same outfit he wore in Easy Rider). Our hero gets an A and the girl. All is well.

Known as TimeBusters in Sweden, this is an 80’s film about time travel. And no, it’s not Back to the Future. It’s interesting, though. And pretty much forgotten. It’s worth revisiting.

What happens when you mix a teen sex comedy with a gore film? It’s kind of like chocolate and peanut butter, one would think, but the results don’t always taste as good. Witness 1985’s Evils of the Night.

Three vampire aliens, Dr. Zarma (Julie Numar, who of course is the Catwoman, but is also a writer, real estate mogul and lingerie inventor), Cora (Tina Louise, who is of course Ginger from TV’s Gilligan’s Island) and Dr. Kozmar (John Carradine, who is of course skinny Dracula), have come to a college town to get the blood of young co-eds, which keeps them young.

There’s also Neville Brand (Al Capone from TV’s The Untouchables) and Aldo Ray (whose career trajectory goes from the highest of heights to the lowest of lows) as two old mechanics that are helping the aliens. As for the teens, we’ve got Tony O’Dell (Ferdy in Chopping Mall), Karrie Emerson (who was also in Chopping Mall), 80’s adult movie queen Amber Lynn and “Raw Talent” Jerry Butler, who was also a well-known adult film star.

Director Mardi Rustam (who wrote and produced Psychic Killer and Tobe Hooper’s Eaten Alive) is the person to blame for all of this. If you’re used to sex in the woods looking fake and feeling gratuitous, then this film will decimate your sensibilities. It feels like porn sex could literally break out at any minute, but the only penetration is when one of the girls gets drilled. With a drill. Get your mind out of the gutter.

Along the way, there are lesbian aliens, spaceships, axe murders, the Millenium Falcon on the poster for the movie, rings that shoot lasers, John Carradine in a space suit and more.

You can also blame Aquarius Releasing for this one, the fine (well, maybe not fine) folks who brought Dr. Butcher, M.D., Zaat, Deep Throat, Make Them Die Slowly (Cannibal Ferox) and Silent Night, Deadly Night to 42nd Street. They also released The Beyond as Seven Doors of Death, cutting out plenty of gore along the way to get an R rating.

Look, this movie is terrible. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t entertaining. The pathos at the end when one of the mechanics laments his dead friend are poignant. You could find a worse movie at 4 AM to watch. You can check it out for yourself by ordering the DVD/blu-ray combo from Vinegar Syndrome or watching it on Amazon Video.

They will make cemeteries their cathedrals and the cities will be your tombs. With that line, you know that what you’re about to watch better be the most mind-blowing horror film possible. Good news — Demons is all of that and then some, the kind of movie that has everything that I watch movies for.

I can’t be silent or still while it runs, growing more excited by every moment. It is the perfect synthesis of 1980’s gore and heavy metal, presented with no characterization or character growth whatsoever. It’s also the most awesome movie you will ever watch.

This is an all-star film, if you consider Italian 80’s horror creators to be all-stars. There’s Lamberto Bava directing and doing special effects, Dario Argento producing, a script written by Bava, Argento, Franco Ferrini (Once Upon a Time in America, Phenomena) and Dardano Sacchetti (every single Italian horror film that was ever awesome…a short list includes A Bay of Blood, Shock, The Beyond, 1990: The Bronx Warriors, Blastfighter, Hands of Steel and so many more), and assistant directing and acting from Michele Soavi.

The movie starts on the Berlin subway, where Cheryl is pursued by a silver masked man (Soavi) who hands her tickets to see a movie at the Metropol. She brings along her friend Kathy (Paola Cozzo from A Cat in the Brain and Demonia) and they soon meet two boys, George (Urbano Barberini, Gor, Opera) and Ken.

The masked man has brought all manner of folks to the theater: a blind man and his daughter and some interesting couples, including a boyfriend and girlfriend, an older married one and Tony the pimp and his girls, one of whom is Shocking Dark‘s Geretta Giancarlo. As they wait for the movie to begin, a steel mask in the lobby scratches her.

The movie that unspools — a slasher about teenagers who disturb the final resting place of Nostradamus — also has that very same steel mask. When it touches anyone in the movie, they turn murderous. At the very same time, one of the prostitutes scratches herself in the bathroom and her face erupts into pus and reveals a demon. From here on out, the movie becomes one long action sequence, as the other prostitute transforms into a demon in front of the entire audience.

Meanwhile, four punks do cocaine in a Coke can and break in, releasing a demon into the city as the rest of the movie audience attempt to escape and are killed one by one. Only George and Cheryl survive, as our hero uses a sword and motorcycle to attack the demons before a helicopter crashes through the roof. But then the masked man attacks them!

I’m not going to ruin the rest of the movie, only to say that even the credits offer no safety in the world of Demons. And oh yeah — Giovanni Frezza (Bob from House by the Cemetery) shows up!

Look for Argento’s daughter Fiore as Angela and Ingrid the usherette is played by Nicoletta Elmi, who was the baron’s daughter in Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein, as well as appearing in Baron Blood, A Bay of Blood and Who Saw Her Die?

This is but the first of a series of movies with the title Demons. I can’t do justice to the twists and turns of how that all works. Instead, I turn to the master, Joe Bob Briggs.

Demons is ridiculous. Pure goop and gore mixed with power chords, samurai swords, punk rockers and even a Billy Idol song which had to blow the budget. It also looks gorgeous — filled with practical effects, gorgeous film stock and amazing colors, no doubt the influence of Bava’s father. The scene where the yellow-eyed demons emerge from the blue blackness is everything horror movies should be.

This doesn’t just have my highest recommendation. It earns my scorn if you haven’t seen it yet!

You can grab the Synapse blu ray or DVD at Diabolik DVD or watch it on Shudder, which offers versions with and without Joe Bob Briggs commentary.

There isn’t a better slasher film tagline than “By sword, by pick, by axe, bye bye.” So how does the movie that it’s promoting live up to it?

Young Ed Jr. is cleaning his dad’s guns as a birthday surprise and accidentally shoots his mother. Big Ed never forgives him. So of course, when Ed Jr. and his friends are looking for a fun activity for fall break — is there even such a thing? — they follow him to close up his dad’s beach condo for the winter.

When they get there, they find Big Ed passed out drunk, dreaming of killing his son. So of course, they stick around — as you do. Mike and Linda go skinny dipping, which allows Big Ed to drown the girl and kill the boy with an outboard motor. Then he chops up a cop with an axe. And he’s just getting started!

There’s Ralph, who gives stabbed in the throat with a pitchfork. Sue, who gets stabbed in the crotch with a hook and decapitated. But Ed Jr. and Pam succeed in figuring out the killer and knocking him out — that is, until he attacks them by trying to get through the roof of their car. Pam responds by cutting Big Ed in half with the car, but he’s still strong enough to kill a cop by chopping his leg off before laughing until he dies.

Then, the movie plays a song called “Fall Break,” which is the original title of the film. It’s a happy go lucky song that stands in stark contrast to the exercise in goofy dialogue and bloody gore we’ve just witnessed. Sure, this isn’t a great movie, but it’s entertaining as hell, packed with some really brutal kills. It was directed by one and done director Buddy Cooper and released unrated, as it would have had an X rating for all the gore — so know that going in.

You can grab The Mutilator in its newly released Arrow Video format at Diabolik DVD or watch the film on Amazon Prime.

Happy Independence Day, everyone. Today, we’re going to talk about a movie that concerns World War 2 and a secret part of that war that nobody talks about: aliens.

In Italy, an American military patrol discovers a crashed spaceship and its alien crew. It also finds itself up against a Nazi flank packed with soldiers and tanks. Also: Hitler gets punched in the face.

Written by Paul De Meo (Eliminators) and directed by Danny Bilson (who also wrote The Rocketeer), this is a film long on humor and crazy ideas but short on plot. If you like Trancers, well, you’ll like this as it shares a lot of the same actors. Tim Thomerson is great as the near-mythic Sarge, a man who never dies no matter how many times he’s shot. If you’ve ever read Sergeant Rock, he’ll seem pretty familiar.

If Empire Pictures was around today, they’d be talking about a shared universe where characters from ReAnimator would battle Jack Deth from Trancers and The Dungeonmaster. Oh man — don’t forget RoboJox, Dolls, The Eliminators and Klaus Kinski from Crawlspace!

If you’re sick of launching off bottle rockets today, by all means, sit down and watch this. You can find it at Amazon Prime.

I have no idea how to explain this movie to you. There are moments that are pure ridiculousness. There are scenes filled with amateur hour acting and effects. And then there’s an ending that is powerful and shocking. It’s really a rough one to figure out. I loved it — but it’s another in a long line of movies that I don’t recommend to anyone but the people I know who will get it.

The old VHS box explains it like this: “A group of college students on holiday become prey for a killer and his two sadistic and demented sons. One son, an unlicensed doctor, is mentally unhinged by destructive brain parasites. The other son, a shy and lonely psychopath, falls in love with a dead girl. While the insane boys are blundering through their destructive rampage, the father stalks the night with random violence. Though he is shot, beaten, and run over by a car, the maniac cannot be defeated.

One by one the students enter the horror house, where they must face the malignant forces left behind by unnatural scientific experimentations. They are hunted down, tortured and eliminated until only one girl is left to fight for her life against the trio of murderers.

Directed by the notorious rock video maker, Richard Casey, Horror House on Highway 5 is filled with strange humor and wild action.”

We go from a typical slasher murder right to a classroom, where he assigns three of his students to go to Littletown and investigate Bartholomew, a dead Nazi rocket scientist and make model rockets.

The most studious of the kids, Louise, goes to interview Dr. Mabuser, who is the one with bugs in his head. His brother (or partner) Gary falls in love with her, but they still use an iron to sear her breast in some Nazi black magic rite. While that’s going on, Sally and Mike go to the quarry to smoke weed and make model rockets. And then there’s the whole matter of the guy in the Richard Nixon mask who can’t be killed (and who is listed as Ronald Reagan in the credits).

Obviously, no one paid for the music used in this film, as it has everything from “Rumble” by Link Wray to acid rock to violins to surf rock like The Safaris to The Dictators and The Count Five playing “Psychotic Reaction.”

And then the ending! Seriously, the last two minutes of this film, where one of the victims thinks that she has escaped, feels like the movie that Rob Zombie has always wanted to make.

Director Richard Casey was behind several music videos for bands like Blue Oyster Cult, whose songs are said to have coded messages relating to The Process Church. In 2014, he directed a spiritual sequel, Horror House on Highway 6, which is about the following: “A college student is injured by a malfunctioning soda machine on Highway 6. His fellow students take him to a doctor who lives in a basement bomb shelter and awaits the second coming of Elvis Presley. They can’t leave, and a killer stalks them with an ax.”

You can check this out for yourself on Amazon Prime or order the Vinegar Syndrome lovingly restored blu-ray. They claim that it’s one of the most confusing and compelling homemade horror films ever made. They’re right. You can also grab it at Diabolik DVD, but stock is limited!