Splatter Farm (1987)

Man, those Polonia boys are always getting in trouble. This time, John, Mark and their friend Todd Michael Smith start with the strangeness of Hallucinations and then decide there’s no way to go but all the way as they direct, write, star and survive this assault.

So yeah, the simple breakdown would be something like Alan and Joseph (Mark and John Polonia) plan on spending the summer with their Aunt Lacey, but soon run into Jeremy (Smith), one of the workers on her farm who just might be killing people.

Except that, well, Aunt Lacey is ready to take the virginity of either of her nephews, Jeremy isn’t just killing but keeping body parts and oh yeah, that scene where John craps out a full knife and screams in bloody underwear from Hallucinations comes back to destroy minds.

What can you say about a movie that begins with a man axe hacking a body to pieces, except for a hand that he uses it, well, give himself the ultimate stranger? Or when it comes out that the body of their uncle is in the house and their aunt still has sex with him? Or a fisting scene that ends with a killer forcing his victim to eat feces, all while Casio synth plaintively blasts?

This is amongst the most offensive and in your face SOV films I’ve ever seen — I haven’t even mentioned the golden shower or oral sex with a severed head scene, but you know, not everyone is ready nor should they need to be — and it’s amazing that the Polonias were teens making this and that Mark is still making movies today. This feels like the kind of movie that you need to watch with a room of people and see how many make it to the end.

Killing Spree (1987)

Tim Ritter might not be the best person for your female friends to date but we’re not trying to fix him up with someone. We’re watching SOV. For that, he’s the right person, as Killing Spree builds on the same plot I’ve seen in several of his movies — man is either getting cucked or has fears that his wife is sleeping around — and he loses it and kills everyone he knows.

Tom Russo is that man, an airplane mechanic working non-stop to keep a nice house for his wife Leeza. He’s sure that she’s cheating on him — he’s read her diary — so he starts killing anyone who she has written about, starrting with his friend Ben and a punk girl whose head he cuts off and uses as a weapon to murder his former buddy.

Anyone in Leeza’s notebook dies, like the electrican who gets chopped off by a machete ceiling fan and the lawn guy who gets buried up to his neck and mowed.

The truth? Leeza has been writing for a romance magazine to earn money so Tom doesn’t have to work so hard. But now, Maniac-like, all the victims are coming back from the dead and begin to shout at Tom to kill his wife so they can rest.

Shot on 16mm instead of camcorder — yes, I know, it’s another SOV that doesn’t live up to the format — this movie has an old ladyt’s face get hammer-based surgery and the line “You screw my wife, I screwdrive your head!”

Also: The lead actor’s name is Asbestos Felt.

Screen Kill (1987)

EDITOR’S NOTE: Here’s another take on this movie

Doug (Mark Williams) is a wedding videographer — did he teach the Bergeron Brothers: Wedding Videographers? — who keeps dreaming of making a horror movie. When he meets Rails (Al Darago, who co-directed and co-wrote this with Doug Ulrich, who one assumes is the inspiration for the character in this movie), the lead singer of a shock rock metal band, he finds a kindred spirit who can help him make the movie he’s been fantasizing about. Unfortunately, Rails is also a killer and using the movie to create grisly murder scenes that begin to fascinate Doug and make him complicit in the crimes.

People get dynamite in their mouths, bodies are hung up and chainsawed in half and heads roll. If you like erotic knife torture, I think this was made for you. Once you watch a few of these scenes, you’ll figure out why this movie was also named Snuff Kill. There are plenty of stabbings in this with a variety of implements and despite its low budget SOV origins, it all looks pretty good. In fact, the grainy and grimy nature of this format adds to the overall feel.

Ulrich and Durango also made Scary TalesDarkest Soul and 7 Sins of the Vampire together and all of those are pretty fun, too. I kind of love that Rails’ band looks all grim and kvlt, then sounds like more of a 60s psychedelic band than the SUNN O))) you expect them to be playing what with all those robes. There’s also a band on the soundtrack called Thee Enigma Jar. The other band is called Surefire and yes, that’s Doug and Al’s band.

SRS put this out on DVD a few years ago and I just love that this has been upgraded for today.

Night of the Living Babes (1987)

Chuck (Andy Nichols, one of the doctors in Nightdreams and Max Melodramatic from Cafe Flesh) and Buck (Louie Bonanno, who was in Chuck Vincent’s Slammer Girls and also appeared along with Nichols in Dark’s In Search of… the Perfect 10) leave their women behind and go to a new wave whorehouse — in case you’re wondering about that term, stick around — called Madame Mondo’s Zombie Palace, where they try and find the perfect zombie women and just end up tied to the wall in tutus.

Before they get turned into women, their better halves — Sue (Michelle Bauer, who has been in everything from uncredited roles in Get Crazy and Tomboy to Roller BladeNightmare SistersSorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-RamaEvil Toons and so many more great films; as Pia Snow she was also an adult actress and is also in Cafe Flesh) and Lulu (Connie Woods, The Forbidden Dance) — have to come and save them from Madame Mondo and her assistant Igor (Cynthia Clegg).

The zombie women include adult star Blondi (who also worked as Blondi Bee; she shows up in the KISS eXposed video as their personal envelope licker), Teri Lynn Peake (Penthouse Pet of the Month for October 1987), Ashley Elstad, Violet Lickness and Lisa Devine.

If this feels like a late 80s adult feature, well, that’s no accident. Director and producer Jon Valentine is actually Gregory Dark! Writer Veronica Cinq-Mars was really Anthony R. Lovett, who was also Antonio Passolini, the director of some late 80s sequels to classic adult films like — you guessed it — Cafe FleshThe Devil In Miss Jones and even Dark’s New Wave Hookers. He also used the name Johnny Jump-Up to write Dark’s White BunbustersLet Me Tell Ya ‘Bout Black ChicksDeep Inside Vanesse del RioThe Devil in Miss Jones 3: A New Beginning and The Devil in Miss Jones 4: The Final Outrage. He was also the head of production for VCA Pictures, which pretty much ruled adult in the 80s. He’s also the Anthony “Tex” Lovett that wrote Faces of Death rip-off Inhumanities II: Modern Atrocities and Gesichter des Todes V, which was sold in Germany as the fifth Faces of Death and has scenes taken directly from the former film as well as Death Faces IV. There was a Gorgon Video-released Faces of Death 5 in the U.S., but it’s just clips from the other four movies. The German one, though, lists Countess Victoria Bloodhart as a director (who is also credited with a fourth installment of Mondo Cane which is just more recycled clips and stolen footage from Nick Bougas’ Death Scenes and, yes, Inhumanities II: Modern Atrocities which was directed by Wesley P. Emerson, the director of nearly every Deep Inside 80s adult compilation). Ah,man — Lovett also wrote most of Michael Ninn’s stuff too.

Most amazingly, Gesichter des Todes V also has footage taken from Stelvio Masi, who as Max Steel was the director of Hell’s HeroesTaxi KillerArabella: Black Angel and probably the movie those Germans ripped off to make their fake sequel, Savage World Today. Of course, he also made tons of awesome Italian crime movies like Convoy BustersMagnum Cop and Highway Racer.

That was a tangent, huh?

Anyways! Gregory Dark! The man who reinvented porn in the 80s and brought a sense of punk energy to what had become a very staid video formula made this and it’s a lot like all of his movies of the era minus the sexual gymnastics. He’d go on to pretty much also own the adult thriller section of your video store, as well as Showtime and Cinemax after midnight on Friday and Saturday nights. And oh yeah, directed a few hundred music videos before reinventing himself again and making mainstream movies.

There you go. Greg Dark stealing a Romero title and trying to make a mainstream softcore movie with the same sensibilities as his porn work. Thanks for listening.

Cemetery Sisters (1987)

Leslie and Joan Stanton are sisters played by real life sisters Leslie and Joan Simon and they like to post video personal ads, marry financially stable men and murder them, all with the someday dream of owning their own mortuary business just like their father once had.

Then Aunt Ingrid shows up and screws everything up.

She’s played by director and writer Nick Millard’s wife Irmgard and she’s something else. She’s got a bag packed with lingerie and wants to be part of the singles scenes — and swap lovers maybe — with these two ladies. Except, you know, there are a lot of bodies.

This being a Nick Millard movie, you can be sure that it’s about an hour, that it’s padded with whole scenes from Criminally Insane and Satan’s Black Wedding, that it’s deranged and that it seems like hairbrushing scenes go on forever and then happen again. You can also be certain that this was made in his house and that it feels weird, the kind of weird that isn’t easily explainable and isn’t “fever dream” or “slow burn” but just plain strange and not to show off. The weird that feels earned.

Where are the Nick Millards of today, the people filming their wives as insane horny aunts and finding people to sit around their house being murderers who clean up crime scenes with so many rolls of paper towels?

Youjo Melon (1987)

The Legend of the Woman’s Mystery Youkai Melon may start with very solemn readings of scrolls in the forest, but this SOV Japanese short is ready to give you so much more. A punk rock band has found a grimy new place to practice in and when that hets boring, one of their members finds some wooden boxes filled with — you guessed it — melons. Yet he should have paid attention to that opening narrations — we all should have — because it causes everyone in his band to get killed in increasingly gory ways, the kind that only happen in 1980s SOV Japanese short videos with mermaids, manholes and flowers of blood.

The joy of it all is that the witch that comes from the boxes and kills everyone can be reasoned with and is totally fine with resurrecting the band and being on stage with them when they play a secret show in the bowels of some urban bombed out section of Neo Tokyo in the year 19XX and everyone rocks out and maybe some people are more machine than man and demons and normal people can all get along and we can erase all that goopy head exploding like water under the bridge. Just don’t jump in the water off one of those bridges, because they’re super polluted.

Thanks to Garbage Gibbage, you can download this on the Internet Archive.

Conton (1987)

Also known as Jushin Densetsu (Beast God Legend), this 46-minute blast of Japanese SOV insanity was directed and written by Takuro Fukuda who went on to write for several Kamen Rider series.  It’s the story of  orphaned college student Goh (Tasashi Kato) who is dealing with several issues all at once, foremost that that he owes the Yakuza not just the money he’s paid but now more money for interest. When he tries to sleep, he dreams of being followed by demonic creatures that he tries to recreate in sculpture form in his waking hours. And his girlfriend Emi (Kyoko Katayama) keeps trying to help him but all he does is push her away.

Those dreams keep getting worse, like a mouth in the sink and a decapitated zombie head that attacks him. If only his job at a movie studio paid more, yet that seems just an excuse — actually, a good one — for some flamboyant 80s dance.

This is a movie that wears its influences proudly, like a title card that is 100% stolen from Demons and a fanatic devotion to 80s transformation effects.  I mean, when Goh finally transforms and takes out those organized crime toughs, it’s shot for shot taken from An American Werewolf In London. And hey — there’s the soundtrack from Phenomena blasting through a scene!

If I saw this in my teens, I’d be drawing all the monsters over and over again. Who am I kidding? I’m doing the same thing in my old age. Behold the power of goopy gore, long may it drizzle and bubble.

You can download this from the Internet Archive or watch it on YouTube.

Cinematic Void January Giallo 2023: Stagefright (1987)

EDITOR’S NOTE: Cinematic Void will be playing this more slasher than giallo movie on Thursday, Jan. 19 at 7:30 PM ET at The Little Theatre in Rochester, NY (tickets here). For more information, visit Cinematic Void.

There was a moment two minutes into this movie, when a slasher-like scene turned into a Cats-like play, that my mind was blown. And there was a moment halfway through when a body was torn in two that I jumped off my couch, screaming, “Soavi, I love you!”

There’s no other way to say it — this movie is completely crazy. Is it because of Michael Soavi’s (The SectCemetary Man) direction? Or the script from George Eastman (better known Nikos Karamanlis from Antropophagus and, well, kinda sorta Nikos in Absurd, a movie so brutal that it inspired a murderous black metal band)? Why ask questions? Why not just sit back and enjoy the mayhem?

The entire movie takes place in a theater, where actors and a crew are creating a musical about the Night Owl, a mass murderer. Alicia (Barbara Cupisti, The ChurchCemetary Man) sprains her ankle, so she and Betty sneak out to a mental hospital to get some help. While there, they see Irving Wallace, a former actor who went on a murder spree, which has continued in the insane asylum. He uses a syringe to kill an attendant and hides in Betty’s car.

Because Alicia left, the director fires her while Betty is killed with a pickaxe outside. Alicia finds the body and calls the police (one of them is Soavi, who spends an extended scene asking if he looks like James Dean), who lock them inside the theater and guard the premises. Because, you know, that’s the way the police handle these things.

The director is inspired — the play will now be about Irving Wallace and everyone must stay the night to rehearse, even the rehired Alicia. While rehearsing the first scene, Wallace dons the killer’s owl costume and strangles, then stabs one of the other actors in front of everyone.

Then, Wallace cuts the phone and starts killing one person at a time. It’s at this point that this movie goes off the rails and does some rails. A power drill going through someone? Yep. Hacking someone up with an axe? Yep. A woman cut in half that sprays blood all over an entire room full of people? It’s got that, too. A dude getting chainsawed until the saw runs out of gas and then getting decapitated? Oh yes.

Wallace takes all of the bodies and blares the theme from Sergei M. Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin while feathers fall. Alicia finds the key to escape and a gun while Wallace pets a black cat, his face covered by the owl mask.

Alicia has no idea how a gun works and can’t take the safety off. Wallace chases her, even stabbing him in the eye ala Halloween. The higher in the theater Alicia climbs, Wallace keeps following, in a POV shot that makes it feel like he’s climbing toward us. She cuts the cord he is climbing and he falls to his death. But this is a slasher — albeit one through the eyes of Soavi — and the killer comes back until he is set on fire.

The next day, Alicia goes back to the theater to find her watch. Willy, the janitor, tells her that they took eight bodies out, which makes her realize that Wallace is still alive. He shows up, unmasked, and tries to kill her all over again. After hearing Willy tell her how she didn’t even have to think to kill him and that the gun would do it all once the safety is off, she unloads a bullet “right in-between the eyes.”

Alicia wanders out of frame, toward a bright white doorway that we first saw just before Wallace attacked her. And in this scene, we can really see why Soavi stands ahead of the pack when it comes to horror. That doorway offers escape, not just from Wallace, but from the film itself, as her fictional character, her final girl, is removed from our minds. The killer lives long after the victims and survivors, so the camera pans down to reveal Wallace, blood pouring from behind his eyes, and he begins to laugh. Soavi said that he intended this to be a wink to the conventions of the slasher, where the killer never really dies.

This film was produced by Joe D’Amato, who had a scene from this movie play within his 9 1/2 Weeks rip-off Eleven DaysEleven Nights. Also known as Aquarius and Deliria, it features an amazing soundtrack by Simon Boswell. And Soavi — in his first time as a director — shines with intricate camera work (it’s very Argento), complete with a wordless final twenty minutes of Alicia fighting against Wallace.

The end of this film approaches near surrealism within the horror narrative. This gets the highest review I can give. It’s a slasher that transcends the genre to become real art.

DISMEMBERCEMBER: Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 (1987)

EDITOR’S NOTE: Garbage day! This was first on the site on December 24, 2019.

Remember Silent Night, Deadly Night? Well, that movie was a big deal before it was pulled from theaters and then became an even bigger deal on home video. A sequel was demanded and it was delivered, but it was made on a shoestring, with director Lee Harry trying to make something other than a greatest hits reel of the first film. Seriously, though, this movie is nearly the entire first film with a couple of new scenes.

Ricky Caldwell, the 18-year-old brother of Billy from the first movie, is in a mental hospital after a series of murders. He’s being interviewed by psychiatrist Dr. Henry Bloom, which allows us to watch pretty much the entire first film before Ricky goes off on his own rampage.

Ricky did have a chance once, because he fell in love with Jennifer Statson (Elizabeth Kaitan, Savage DawnFriday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood and several of the Vice Academy films). However, her ex-lover Chip sends Ricky over the edge, which ends with Ricky hooking his head up to some jumper cables and then him killing his girlfriend just because. Then he goes even crazier, causing cars to nearly hit him (an incredible stunt) and then yells, “Garbage Day!” and wipes out everyone.

Ricky is captured by the police, but now we flash forward (or back) to the beginning of this film, where he kills the doctor and goes after Mother Superior, whose face now looks like Catholic school lunch pizza. Billy gets stopped, but he isn’t dead. And why should he be? After all, it’s Christmas.

You have so many options to watch this movie with. You can see it for free on Tubi or Amazon Prime. Or watch it with or without commentary from Joe Bob Briggs on Shudder. Finally, you can get the collectors set from Shout Factory, complete with an action figure.

DISMEMBERCEMBER: The Oracle (1987)

Roberta Findlay knows how to make movies that entertain me and here, she takes a possession movie, sets it during the holidays and fills it with berserk set pieces and man, this movie got me through the day before all the family Christmas craziness begins and you know, Roberta has never let me down with a single thing she’s made.

Parker Brothers wouldn’t let this movie use Ouija, so there’s a stone hand that writes from the spirit world but who cares? This is so many times better than the Ouija films that got made by Hasbro years later and that’s because this is so strange. Jennifer (Caroline Capers Powers, in the only movie she ever made) and her husband Ray (Roger Neil) have moved into the apartment of a dead psychic who has left behind that fortune telling object which allows Jennifer to be taken over by industrialist William Graham who gets her to figure out who killed him.

You can’t destroy that hand. A garbage man tries and strange creatures appear all over his body and he ends up stabbing himself in a scene that kind of destroyed my mind and when Ray tries later, he literally loses his head. All this happens while Findlay shoots in the New York City apartments that could be next door to The Sentinel or Inferno and certainly have the Argento lightning style intact from that movie. Plus there’s a gender switching killer played by Pam LaTesta on the loose like a John Waters character in a Bill Lustig movie and there’s even a scene set in the legendary occult store The Magickal Childe.

I realize that Roberta hates her own movies but I won’t hold that against her. I always find something to enjoy, like how the heroine has the wildest clothes, all berets and puffed-out sleeves and even a pair of red overalls. She dresses like a lunatic and it’s frankly charming, plus she screams nearly as much as a woman in a Juan López Moctezuma movie.

There are people who will say that this movie is trash and boring and those are people you want nothing at all to do with. Yes, this is trash, but it’s glorious. It’s the kind of movie I leave on when people come over and hope they ask me what it’s all about so I can talk about it with them. Just writing about it now I want to go back and watch it again. Will you sit down and check it out with me?

You can watch this on Tubi.