Boris has just been released from jail and has been agreed to do just one more heist — rob the mansion of paraplegic millionaire Lord Breston, who just so happens to be his ex-girlfriend Wendy’s boss. That’s the simplest explanation for a movie that is so much more.

This piece of Canadian strangeness was directed by B. D. Benedikt, who is also the “inventor of a brand new literary style, popularly called RELIGIOUS THRILLERS. But instead of OUR SPIES over-smarting THEIR SPIES, the invisible GOD’s and SATAN’s agents fight for our souls!”

Boris is played by Lazar Rockwood, whose name is nearly as amazing as his screen presence. It’s as if someone got a time machine and went back in time after saying, “You think Tommy Wiseau is strange? How my Molson.”

Seriously, Lazar is something else. So few of the things that he says are comprehensible to Western ears. He seems nervous and fidgety on screen, yet the things he mumbles and screams (yes, at the same time) are gloriously repeatable. He’s also wearing the finest Canadian tuxedo ever.

Our hero has been convinced by his ex-girl that her boss’s house would be easy to break into. However, when they sneak into the basement a few days later, a door slams shut behind them and a loudspeaker says that they must make their way past seven doors and through six chambers of elaborate deathtraps and deadly puzzles. That said — if they survive — they will gain the reward of their dreams.

So imagine if Indiana Jones was in a movie made by David Lynch with little to no budget, shot like a TV movie and with a virtual unknown in the lead instead of Harrison Ford. Now, ingest as many drugs as you can find in your home. There — you have a small idea of what this movie is like.

Can Boris make it through the various deathtraps? Will it have an insane ending? Are the extras on the disk even weirder than the movie itself? You’ll have to get the DVD yourself.

If it’s Canadian weirdness, Intervision usually releases it. Good news — they put this out this year and you can grab it on the Severin website. You should do so as soon as possible.

If I’ve learned anything from Cathy’s Curse, it’s that when someone in Canada gets possessed, they just end up being rude and swearing a lot. This movie — no relation to Prom Night — only adds to my theory.

Originally entitled The Haunting of Hamilton High, this film is rife with horror trivia, such as lockers that look exactly like A Nightmare on Elm Street, allusions to Carrie and a character who references The Exorcist. Several characters are named after famous horror folks, too.

Back in 1957, Mary Lou Maloney goes to confession and doesn’t follow the rules at all. She’s disobeyed her parents, used the Lord’s name in vain and had sex with many boys — and she loved every minute of it. Then, she leaves her number for the priest.

At the prom that night, her boyfriend Billy (soon to be played by Michael Ironside) gives her a ring, but she just tells him to get her some punch. That’s so she can have sex with Buddy Cooper. They get discovered by Billy, who grabs a stink bomb and throws at her when she gets crowned prom queen, ala Carrie. Her dress goes up in flames and she dies in front of the entire class.

In 1987, thirty years later, Vicki Carpenter is having a rough time getting ready for the prom. Her mother refuses to allow her to buy a new dress and doesn’t approve of her boyfriend. She searches the school for a dress in the prop room and finds Mary Lou’s doomed gown. It starts claiming victims right away, like Vicki’s best friend Jess, who is killed by a beam from the tiara. Seeing as how she was despondent about being jilted while pregnant, everyone figures her death was just a suicide.

Vicki has nightmares every night and confides in her priest, who ends up being Buddy. He believes Mary Lou may be back, a fact that’s confirmed when a Bible bursts into flames at her grave. He tries to warn Billy, who is not the principal and the father of Vicki’s boyfriend Craig.

Vicki is at war with Kelly Hennelotter (Terri Hawkes, Killer Party), the meanest girl in school. Mary Lou takes over Vicki’s body at a detention caused by a fight between the two girls. She goes to confession at Buddy’s church and unleashes a torrent of obscenities before stabbing him in the face with a crucifix.

Mary Lou makes over Vicki to be a 50’s girl just like she was. When Monica tries to get to the bottom of everything, she’s killed by being crushed inside a locker.

Mary Lou seduces Craig, something that the virginal Vicki would never do. His father rescues him just as Mary Lou reveals herself. He knocks out his son once he ensures that he is safe and digs up Mary Lou’s grave. Inside? Buddy’s dead body.

Then it gets really crazy. Mary Lou takes Vicki home and makes out with her father and then tosses her mother through a door.

At the prom, evil girl Kelly gives Josh, the geeky horror movie fan, a blowjob in order to win the prom queen crown. Too bad for Josh, as Mary Lou electrocutes the poor geek and switches the outcome. As she takes the stage, Billy shoots her. That’s when all hell breaks loose, as Mary Lou turns into a charred corpse and tries to bring Craig into hell. His father saves him at the last minute by returning Mary Lou’d crown and kissing her.

That’s not the real ending, though. It turns out that Mary Lou is now inside the principal and he drives off with his son and Vicki!

I wasn’t expecting much from this movie, yet it more than entertained me. It surprised me with its sheer lewdness and language in the confession scene. There haven’t been many horror movies with a villain that doesn’t punish those that have sex but wants more of it.

Here’s a drink for this movie.

Prom Night Virgin (from Tipsy Bartender)

• 1 oz. Southern Comfort
• 1/2 oz.peach schnapps
• 3 oz. Mountain Dew
• 1/2 oz. grenadine

1. Fill a glass with ice and pour over the Southern Comfort, schnapps and soda.
2. Drizzle in grenadine…like blood.

Cirio Santiago was the president of the Philippines Film Development Fund, a position that charged him with improving the quality of Filipino films and encouraging the production of foreign movies on location in the Philippines. But you may know him better for movies like Firehawk, T.N.T. Jackson, Stryker or Vampire Hookers (or Cemetery Girls or Ladies of the Night or Night of the Bloodsuckers or Sensuous Vampires or Twice Bitten, title depending).

Let me see if I can sum this one up: fire-twirling women take part in rituals to keep a fish god happy. Illegal dynamite fishing ends the hibernation of this fish god, Akua, who wakes up and starts eating human flesh. A sheriff and female herpetologist must join forces and stop the beast, which they do by blowing it up real good.

I’m trying to think of one good reason for you to watch this movie. Hmm. Kathryn Witt has on tight 80’s jeans? The sheriff’s name is Keefer? It feels more like a travelogue film than something gripping and filled with drama? I’m doing a horrible job on these last two films. I mean, you start with Creature from the Black Lagoon and it’s all downhill from here this week, huh?

If this feels like you just read the review of Up from the Depths again, imagine how I felt watching both of these films on the same DVD from Shout! Factory!

In a perfect world, Creepshow 2 would be even better than the original. But sadly, the world is not perfect and we often have to make due with what we have.

Directed by Michael Gornick, who was the cinematographer for Romero’s Martin, Dawn of the Dead, Knightriders, Day of the Dead and the original Creepshow, this follow-up is based once again on King stories (but screenwritten by Romero).

Creepshow 2 was originally going to be five stories (Pinfall and Cat from Hell went unfilmed, although Cat does appear in Tales from the Darkside: The Movie), but a lower budget forced the film to only include three tales.

PInfall was to be about the rivalry between two bowling teams with one coming back from the dead to kill the other. It reminds me a lot of the story in Haunt of Fear #19, Foul Play!

Instead of what wasn’t filmed, let’s get into what was: In Dexter, Maine, a delivery truck pulls up and drops off the latest issue of Creepshow, with the driver being the Creep himself!

In Old Chief Wood’nhead, an elderly couple named Ray and Martha Spruce (George Kennedy and Dorothy Lamour in her last role) live in an old town on its last legs. No one in town has money and soon, the store they own — and their lives — will fade away, too. Chief Whitemoon comes to visit and gives them sacred jewelry to pay back his debt. It’s not money, but the thought is what counts.

As the wise old man leaves, the wooden Indian that stands guard in the store nods to him, which frightens him. It foreshadows what happens next, as that night, the chief’s nephew Sam and his gang rob the store and kill the kindly old couple. Their blood splashes all over the old wooden chief as they depart with the stolen sacred jewels.

The gang plans to go to Hollywood, where Sam thinks his long hair will make him a star. But he and his entire gang are killed, with their scalps and the jewelry left for the old chief.

In The Raft, four teens (one of them is Page Hannah, the sister of Daryl and all of the characters share the surname of the actor playing them) try to go swimming but have to contend with a black blob that wants to kill them all. Again — this is an incredibly simple tale told well. I’d say it’s the highlight of the film, but the more I write about these, the more I remember how much I truly enjoy this movie.

Finally, The Hitchhiker concerns a businesswoman who is trying to get home from a tryst with her lover before her husband notices. Along the way, she hits a man who keeps coming back. And coming back. And coming back. Again, simple idea, but told really well. Ironically, the hitchhiker is played by Tom Wright, who played the civil rights activist who comes back from the head in Tales from the Hood. It’s an amazingly similar role! Even stranger is that Barbara Eden was to play the woman before her mother’s illness caused her to drop out.

Ed French was the original effects guy for this, but got upset when director Gornick asked Howard Berger for advice, as he wasn’t happy with the look of the creature in The Raft. Greg Nicotero and Berger ended up finishing the movie and they enlisted Tom Savini to play The Creep.

Creepshow 2 doesn’t have the gloss of the original. That doesn’t make it a horrible movie. But the original sets a bar that’s incredibly high.

Now that I think about it, there are some great moments in this film. It’s worth checking out. Diabolik DVD has the Arrow blu-ray, which has some gorgeous packaging. Fright Rags has you covered with an entire series of t-shirts and pins for the movie! And Waxworks Records has you covered with the soundtrack!

In 1970, Lee Katzin made The Phynx, a nearly lost film about a rock band’s influence on world politics. It’s packed with names, with everyone from Warhol superstar Ultra Violet to Edgar Bergen, Charlie McCarthy, Busby Berkeley, Leo Gorcey, Colonel Sanders, Harold Sakata and the inventor of the Bloody Mary, George Jessel. Just as oddly, Katzin would make his contribution to post-apocalyptic films nearly two decades later with this film.

2087. Earth has been decimated by nuclear war and water is the most precious thing there is. The Lost Wells outpost has survived, but now an evil group of renegades, led by Derek Abernathy (Adam Ant), wants to take over.

This is a film packed with plenty of interesting actors, like Bruce Dern and Michael Paré (Streets of Fire) as the heroes, along with Catherine Mary Stewart (The Apple, The Last Starfighter, Night of the Comet), Julius Carry (Sho’Nuff from The Last Dragon) and Alan Autry Jr. ( Captain Bubba Skinner from TV’s In the Heat of the Night).

That said — this is a flimsy film, unsure what it wants to be. When you hear something like “Bruce Dern against Adam Ant after the end of the world,” you want it to be awesome. Sadly, it falls short. If only an Italian director was in the chair, ready to throw rats at everyone in the cast or bring in George Eastman!

When will young kids learn that you can’t pull murderous pranks without supernatural reprisals? Take the girls of St. Mary’s College, for example. They set up skinny, unattractive Kathy with Fred Vernon, that hunk of a gym teacher. But it’s all a trick — the minute Kathy starts jumping Fred’s bones, cars surround them and begin flashing their lights and honking their horns. Kathy runs from the embarrassment directly into the path of an oncoming car.

Now, Kathy is stuck in a coma while her weird mother, Mary, cleans the school and mopes. A new student, Eva, arrives and meets all of the girls. But Eva is possessed by Kathy and here to get revenge, starting with Mr. Vernon. While he styles and profiles in front of a mirror in preparation for a date with Eva, his own reflection strangles himself. The next morning, a police detective (hello, Lucio Fulci!) states that he died of a heart attack. Virginia, the next victim, is killed by snails (oh Fulci!). And every time someone is killed — or Eva suffers trauma — Kathy’s body reacts.

Dr. Robert Anderson notices. And he also notices Eva, who takes him on a date and seduces him. But their relationship is super intense, including dreams where Eva basically fucks him to death. Luckily, Eva’s mom takes her home and he can start dating Jenny, the only girl who has any remorse for what happened to Kathy.

And the other girls? Glad you asked. One of them is killed by a marble statue come to life! And Eva makes Kim see visions of her boyfriend being decapitated, ending by shoving her out a window. The camera pauses on a poster of Tom Cruise in Top Gun for no reason at all! And then Kim’s boyfriend is decapitated, with his severed head landing next to his girlfriend’s dead body! Fulci, you’ve gone and done it again!

At the hospital, Jenny meets the doctor for a late night date. However, she gets lost in the building and ends up confronting Evain the morgue. A battle ensues between the doctor and Eva, who suddenly falls to the floor, dead. Why? Turns out that Karen’s mother has finally pulled the plug, sending Kathy’s soul to Heaven.

Aenigma is not Fulci’s best work. But even his middling efforts — save some of his much later films — have something interesting within them. This pastiche of Carrie is a fine time waster. Just don’t expect it to be on the level of past glories.

You can find this at Diabolik DVD, along with all your Fulci needs.

UPDATE: It’s also streaming on Amazon Prime!

Ethan Wiley, who injected the humor into the original House script, returns to direct the sequel, which comes from a story by Fred Dekker that Wiley adapted. If you disliked the comedy in the original film, well, get ready. This one has no interest in being serious.

Prologue: a young couple gives up their child before an undead gunman murders them in their mansion. That baby grows up to be Jesse (Arye Gross, who was the original voice of Kevin Arnold on The Wonder Years before Daniel Stern took over), who decides to move back into that house with his girlfriend Kate (Lar Park Lincoln, Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood). They’re soon joined by goofball friend Charlie (Jonathan Stark, Fright Night) and his wannabe rock star girlfriend Lana (Amy Yasbeck, who met husband John Ritter on the set of Problem Child).

Jesse has insomnia, which leads to him digging through the basement. He discovers a photo of his great-great-grandfather (Royal Dano, who starred in plenty of cowboy films) standing in front of an Aztec temple with a crystal skull in his hand. In the background is Slim Reeser, his one-time partner turned enemy over the ownership of the skull.

At this point, anyone would be happy to discover this photo and move on with their life. But that’s normal life. Here, Jesse and Charlie decide to dig up his ancestor’s grave to find the skull. Imagine their surprise when Gramps is still alive inside his coffin. Compound that with the fact that he wants to bond with his grandson.

It turns out that the house was built with stones from an Aztec temple and that it contains gateways into other time periods with the skull acting as the remote control, if you will. The forces of evil are drawn to the skull, though, so the boys better be ready to defend it.

Meanwhile, a Halloween party ends up with the boys losing their girls and an appearance by Bill Maher as a record exec. A caveman also attacks the party guests looking for a skull and a baby pterodactyl and a caterpillar-dog come along for the ride.

To compound the film’s weirdness, Bill (John Ratzenberger, who like George Wendt in House was a star on TV’s Cheers) comes to inspect the wiring, but he’s really an adventurer with a sword in his toolbox. He leads the guys through a portal — he’s incredibly nonchalant about the proceedings — and helps them save a virgin who is about to be sacrificed.

During a meal where Jesse embraces his new family — yes, a family that includes a dinosaur and a dog-headed caterpillar — Slim makes his return, rising out of a serving dish. He shoots Gramps, who reveals that this is the man who killed Jesse’s parents. Jesse defeats the evil gunfighter, but can’t save Gramps, who tells him that its time to say goodbye.

The cops come to the house, alerted by all the gunfire, and prepare to fire on Jesse. He uses the skull to go back in time to the Old West, taking his friends and pets with him. The film ends with him burying Gramps and using the crystal skull to make his grave, as he follows the old man’s dying advice and doesn’t become addicted to the skull’s magic.

Interestingly enough, Marvel Comics did an adaption of the film!

House 2 is something else. It’s never sure what kind of movie it wants to be, but it gets so strange that you just feel like you have to go along for the ride. The scenes with Bill are great fun and the ending drama always makes me tear up. And you have to love the caterpuppy.

If you’re confused by the fact that this movie has nothing to do with the original House, the way the movie was released in Italy is going to blow your mind.

The Evil Dead was called La Casa there and Evil Dead II followed that numbering. But as we all know, Italian filmmakers are fond of making their own sequels. That’s what led Joe D’Amato to make La Casa 3, which was released here as Ghosthouse*. Don’t worry — we’ll cover that one tomorrow and it’s well worth the wait.

Two other sequels in name only, La Casa 4 (released in the US as Witchery) and La Casa 5 (Beyond Darkness) followed. Yes, those are coming up this week as well!

So here’s where it gets confusing. Our House 2 is La Casa 6. And The Horror Show, a movie that is pretty much the same film as Shocker, is La Casa 7. But in the US, The Horror Show was sold as House 3, despite having nothing to do with any of the other movies. Huh? What? A final sequel with William Katt reprising his Roger Cobb role would come out in 1992.

You can grab a copy of the great Arrow Video re-release of this film at Diabolik DVD. They also have the box set of the first film, this one and a book about them here.

I totally love how confusing things like this can be. And I love the La Casa series! I can’t wait to share even more of it tomorrow with you!

*Even more confusing — The House of Witchcraft is called Ghosthouse 4.

Feed Shark

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 where 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 Sect, Cemetary 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 Church, Cemetary 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 Days, Eleven 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.

You can get this from Blue Underground or watch it on Shudder.

Six people are stranded at a mansion in the English countryside — David Bower and Rosemary Bower (Carolyn Purdy-Gordon, wife of Stuart Gordon), two totally selfish and uncaring parents, and their daughter Judy. Plus, we have nice guy Ralph and two British punk rock hitchhikers, Isabel (played by Bunty Bailey, who starred in two landmark music videos for the band A-Ha) and Enid.

The mansion is owned by Gabriel and Hilary Hartwicke (Hilary Mason, the blind psychic from Don’t Look Now), toy makers who fill their home with their creations. As Judy had to give up her old teddy bear by her evil stepmother, they give her a new doll, Mr. Punch.

We soon discover that the dolls are alive and love to destroy humans — the eviler the better. The two girls try to steal antiques and get their faces smashed in and shot by toy soldiers before becoming dolls themselves. Rosemary is attacked by the dolls, then leaps out a window to her death. Her body is brought back to the house, leading David to believe Ralph is a killer.

Meanwhile, Judy reveals to Ralph that the dolls are alive and talks them into saving his life. David attacks, knocking out his daughter and the man he blames for his wife’s death, but the dolls save them. Mr. Punch battles David but is destroyed.

The old owners of the house reveal themselves and explain that the house tests people. Either they pass — like Ralph and Judy. Or they fail, like everyone else, and are turned into dolls. It just depends on who believes in the power of childhood. David now becomes Judy’s new doll, Judy picks Ralph to be her new dad and she leaves for home.

Meanwhile, we see all the evil folks as dolls on the shelf as new people get stuck outside the house and the cycle begins again.

Dolls is a Stuart Gordon (Re-Animator, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, Castle Freak) film and feels like a test run for the Demonic Toys movies. There are some moments of great invention, like the giant evil teddy bear and the eyeballs popping out of the punk girl. It was a theatrical release that actually didn’t do well, but found new life on video — where a young version of my wife found it and rented it just about every day.

Interestingly enough, the house where the movie was filmed once belonged to Dino De Laurentiis. It was an actual two-story house, but the outside of the house featured remnants of other De Laurentiis films, including Barbarella!

You can listen to us discuss this film on our podcast right here! https://youtu.be/OinZmF4art8

Is this a giallo? A neo-noir? A detective story? Let’s not play with labels. Let’s just see it for what it is — a whodunit where priests and nuns are the victims of a serial killer who leaves a black rosary on their dead bodies.

Directed by Fred Walton (When a Stranger Calls) and adapted by Elmore Leonard, this is a dark, rough take on William X. Kienzie’s novel (Kienzie left the Catholc priesthood in 1974 after 20 years due to the Church’s refusal to remarry divorced people). This may have been the only movie concerning the detective skills of Father Robert Koesler (Donald Sutherland), but the character appeared in twenty three more novels from Kienzie.

The character is a progressive priest — even falling for a reporter, Pat Lennon (Belinda Bauer, RoboCop 2, Flashdance). He serves with Father Ted Nabors (Charles Durning, Tootsie), who is the exact opposite — a racist throwback to pre-Vatican 2 who follows the Church to the letter of the law.

The central dilemma of the film? The killer confesses to Koesler, who can’t do anything about it, thanks to the Church’s Seal of Confession. But what if other lives — maybe even his own — are in danger?

The film was shot on location at Detroit’s Holy Redeemer Parish, and if you look hard enough, you’ll see an uncredited Jack White — years before The White Stripes — as an altar boy. That feels like it should be an urban legend, but it is true.

The film has what some describe as a leaden pace. There are some great moments in it, such as when Koesler hears the killer in a cemetery and the ending, where the real killer is revealed. I’m always debating with myself whether or not to spoil the ending. It’s a thirty year old movie, but I feel weird doing so here. Must be the Catholic in me.

If this was made today, it wouldn’t be seen as controversial as it was in 1987. Today, it feels like a lost movie, were it not for Becca, who watched it on cable as a kid. Keep in mind, my wife was born in 1984, so the chances that she watched this gritty tale at the age of 7 or 8 hover around 100%.