Despite being 54 years old and already surviving one heart attack, Paul Naschy took on the heavy burden of playing multiple monsters in this film, as he appears as Frankenstein’s Monster, Mr. Hyde, Phantom of the Opera, Quasimodo, The Devil and the humans Hector and Alex Doriani. Oh yes — and Waldemar Daninsky, El Hombre Lobo!

For a long time, this movie was never officially released. Before the death of one of its producers, it was to have a lavish budget. It’s better than Naschy usually got, which gives him ample time to get into makeup and play multiple roles. It also got better talent, including Howard Vernon (Dr. Orloff!) and Caroline Munro (Starcrash).

Mostly, Naschy plays Hector, a horror actor devoted to living a carnal life that he compares to de Sade, Gilles de Rais, Vlad Tepes and Jack the Ripper. Each night, Vernon brings him a new prostitute and he dresses up in complicated horror makeup. As you do.

Meanwhile, he’s raising his brother’s son Alex (or Adrian, depending on the translation, played by Naschy’s son Sergio Molina) ever since his sibling killed himself. He may have been helped by the fact that his wife was cheating on him with his own brother. And since he overdosed on heroin, Alex is with Hector, yet lost in his own world of monsters, which is where we get to see Daninsky.

Oh and meanwhile again, there’s a priest in love with a servant girl (Munro) who left him in the past. He pays a homeless man to spy on her and bring him back under penalty of her death. And while all that’s going on, a giallo-style killer is offing people on the grounds of Hector’s estate. And beyond all that — so much is happening! — Alex is trying to bring his father back from the dead.

Imagine Godzilla’s Revenge about Universal Monsters but with the budget and insanity of a Naschy movie and you’ll see why I loved this so much.

The end of this movie — I don’t want to give anything away — somehow has an actor known for Jess Franco movies getting treated like a Lucio Fulci character in a conclusion that somehow makes this an Omen ripoff by way of The Beyond‘s running to nowhere conclusion. It is truly the Dagwood sandwich of sleazy horror scum and I — pun intended — wolfed down every bite.

You can watch this on YouTube.

As a 16-year-old in 1988, I have to tell you that this was probably the most important movie of my life — all the short time I had spent on Earth — and it made me dream about heading off to the Sunset Strip and taking my singing abilities in the service of bands like Jetboy and the Sea Hags.

And here we are, as I write about this on my couch while working all day on a Sunday afternoon, writing marketing materials for a college somewhere in New York.

If you watched this movie at 16 and didn’t want to be Chris Holmes, what was wrong with you? It’s funny, because as we watched this, my wife asked, “When did he die?” He’s still, improbably, alive.

Before reality TV decimated the Satanic edge of metal, seeing artists like Alice Cooper, Aerosmith, Ozzy Osbourne, Dave Mustaine, Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley discuss their careers rarely happened. I love that each of them gets a background that relates to them — Joe Perry and Steven Tyler are just chilling on a couch while Ozzy is in a bathrobe making eggs and Stanley is covered in models as he talks about the life he leads. By the way, him spilling orange juice never happened and that’s not even his kitchen.

That said, W.A.S.P. bassist Holmes steals the show, mumbling throughout and providing the films one sobering — if totally drunk — take on the fakeness of it all. Just witness the band Odin, who is surrounded by models in a hot tub, discussing how they’ll be bigger than Led Zeppelin or The Doors or commit suicide. Or nightclub owner Bill Gazzarri, who just seems like a character straight out of the hell of a Dark Brothers film.

I kind of love that Lemmy was shot from a distance and asked questions in the hopes that he’d give dumb replies. Lemmy being Lemmy, he seems above it all, despite spending just about every night at the Rainbow, right in the heart of all of 1988’s hairspray.

Detroit band Seduce was added to fill the loss of Guns ‘n Roses, whose management kept them out of this movie. Several have pointed to the excesses in this film as killing off the era of glam and hair metal. If that’s so, bands like Steel Panther have seen this as a map to the world they wish still exists.

Spheeris told Louder Sound, “In a way, you can look at Decline II as the research and then Wayne’s World as the final product.”

The funny thing is, despite Ronnie O’s claims that he’d kill himself — like GG Allin without the punk heart or body covered in feces and gore — the band had already broken up before the film came out, with guitarist Jeff Duncan joining Armored Saint, a band that he’s still in.

Anyways, I’m 47 now. And I can tell you that most of what Chris Holmes was drinking was water. But it doesn’t mean that I don’t dream of 1988 a lot and wonder what it was like to play the Whiskey or the Cathouse.

You can watch this on Amazon Prime and Tubi.

Yes, every once in a while, I wonder — after watching movies like The New York Ripper, Cannibal Holocaust, Last House on Dead End Street and on and on — do I have the capacity to be shocked and upset any longer?

Happily, a steady diet of Mexican 1980’s VHS era films has proved that I still have the capacity to be upset by movies.

1988’s El Violador Infernal (The Infernal Rapist) is the kind of movie that saw Fulci’s roughest film and said, “Yeah, but what if the killer was the main character and he sniffed coke and we ripped off Shocker?”

Carlos (Noe Murayama, who came from Japan to Mexico with his dentist father and ended up being a character actor in tons of movies) is the main character, who is about to die in the electric chair when Satan herself (Ana Luisa Peluffo, who was in Vagabundo en la Lluvia and one of the first mainstream Mexican stars to appear nude in films; her career stretches from 1948 to 2014 and here, she was already sixty years old), who is a fabulous older woman dressed and shot in the way that only telenovela characters and the finest drag queens dream of being filmed.

She tells him that if he wants to live, he must sexually assault people, kill them and then carve 666 into their bodies. She seals the deal by firing laser beams out of her eyes and blasting his brain into the body of a drug dealer. These are the kinds of scenes that I keep rewinding and watching before sending them in the middle of the night to Bill from Groovy Doom like some kind of insomniac zombie fiend.

I mean, she promises him quite literally “all the drugs.”

His first kill is the drug dealer’s best friend, who he first overdoses on a bad batch of heroin, then, just when you’re thinking, “I hope he doesn’t have sex with that guy’s dead body,” that’s exactly what he does before repeatedly stabbing the man and carving the number of the beast into his freshly defiled ass. Seeing as how this is shot with wacky synths and with a lead who it’s difficult to tell if this scene is making him laugh, cry or come, this movie starts in a bewildering fashion and does not let up.

For some reason, the cops can’t catch a criminal who has come back from the dead, uses his real name and tells people what he is about to do and basically goes after every woman who works at the same beauty salon. He’s able to make them float, surround them in fog and kill them one by one, yet none of them say, “Girl, don’t go out with Carlos El Gato. He’s bad news.”

Eventually, El Gato screws up and doesn’t carve seis seis seis into an asscheek quick enough, which leads to Satan flinging him off a roof after he shrugs off numerous cops shooting him.

Wow. Obviously, Mexican films of this era had no budget to go with their utter lack of morality. It’s amazing to me that this movie even exists. I learned of it by wanting to see what other films that Princess Lea, who is also in Intrepidos Punks and La Vanganza de los Punks, was in. I can only imagine what other indignities she would suffer in her other films after this one.

Note: Just because I wrote about the Herschell Gordon Lewis goes to Mexico direct to video sleazefest doesn’t mean that I condone sexual violence toward men and women. Obviously, if you know me or have read any of my writing, you know where I stand on these issues. Yet in today’s society, I feel like I have to make some form of disclaimer to let you know that I find the behavior in this film — as well as others I’ve mentioned — abhorrent. Now let’s all treat each other with respect and empathy while loving really bad movies.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: This article was posted way back on October 30, 2019 and ignited my love of late 80’s Mexican horror. Please check this out and join me in bugging every horror DVD label about releasing this. 

It appears like director and screenwriter Ruben Galindo Jr. wanted to make his own version of A Nightmare On Elm Street but somewhere along the way he decided to he’d like to make a Mexican version of an American teen sitcom, too. Honestly, if you told me Ruben came from another dimension, I’d believe you just as much. This is one of the strangest movies I’ve ever seen — I’ve watched it three times just to try and get my thoughts together — and if you take a look through the films on our site, you can see that that is no idle boast.

Our hero Michael is going through some stuff. His parents are fighting so much that his dad sends him and his mom to Mexico City, where his mother decides to drink herself into oblivion. While trying to fit into his new school, he turns seventeen and his frien Tony gives him a Ouija board.

Now, unbeknowst to us, the viewers, Michael and Tony had a past session go wrong with a Ouija board, so this really was a bad idea. Virgil — what a name for a slasher villain — is released and begins killing people.

Now, up until this point in the film, this has felt like a teen coming of age movie, filtered through the lens of a Mexican filmmaker trying to create a movie that would make sense for American audiences. But just like how huge chunks of The Last American Virgin seem to make no sense to Western eyes, this movie also feels like it was beamed down directly from space.

How else do you explain the fact that our hero — who appears to be in his late 20’s playing a high schooler — wears dinosaur pajamas for nearly the entire film? This isn’t some Troma movie trying to play it all for laughs. This is a serious movie with such lunacy inside it that you can’t take it seriously.

It does, however, have awesome special effects courtesy of Screaming Mad George, including a face that emerges from a TV years before The Ring and huge chunks of gore, like a person stabbing through the chin and the blade emerging inside their mouth.

This film was a total surprise and delight to me. I’m shocked that Mondo Macabro or Severin hasn’t picked this up yet, because this is the kind of movie that would sell for them. I found it heartwarming just how insane and inane and odd this all was. Now pardon me, I’m about to watch this movie for the fourth time.

I love that we live in a time when the movies we once watched on fuzzy VHS rentals that were scored with wear and tear are now available on pristine blu rays from boutique labels. For example, 1988’s Dream Demon is now in my hands and instead of a tape that might fall apart in my battered VCR, I have a director’s cut blu ray that’s been lovingly restored from the original camera negative.

Diana (Jemma Redgrave) is about to marry the man of her dreams, a war hero named Oliver, freshly home from the Falklands. Yet as she moves into a huge new home near London, she starts to experience terrifying and gore-strewn dreams where she’s beaten, abused and tormented. She’s also being stalked by two journalists (Timothy Spall and Jimmy Nail, who were on the show Auf Wenderstein, Pet) who are determined to dig some dirt up about her future husband. Things get even stranger when an American named Jenny (Kathleen Wilhoite, Witchboard, Fire in the Sky) shows up not only in her waking life, but in the dream world as well.

Director/co-writer Harley Cokeliss made the first filmed version of J.G. Ballard’s Crash, as well as working second unit on The Empire Strikes Back before he made films like Battletruck and Black Moon Rising.

Here, he shows a deft hand for telling a dream logic story that is packed with practical effects and so much of the goopy red stuff. Not all of it makes sense, but you can pretend that it’s the late 80’s, you’re in a video rental store and this looks pretty great from the box cover. It lives up to that promise.

Like all Arrow releases, this movie is absolutely loaded with features, including interviews with nearly everyone involved, two cuts of the film, a making of feature and commentary by Cokeliss and producer Paul Webster.

You can get this from Arrow Video, who were nice enough to send us a copy.

Let me tell you, when I read about this movie — about Brigitte Nielsen playing a music video director who is obsessed with finding love and making a movie about Billie Holiday while taking care of her jewel-covered turtle — I knew I had to track it down.

It’s running on our site during giallo week and it’s not particularly a giallo. But I honestly have no idea what kind of movie this is. That said, it does have Tomas Arana (The Church), David Warbeck (The Beyond) and Geretta Geretta (Demons) in it, so there’s that.

To top that off, writer and director Ivana Massetti was pretty much the same person as the lead character in this film, a female director in a time where that was quite rare. She had the idea to experiment here and make a film with hardly any dialogue. Or story, to be honest.

Domino wants love, so when she gets a phone call that promises her that romance is possible and that love can be real, she starts to see the world with much different eyes. She can certainly do better than having a mannequin for a lover, right? But what if that voice on the other end of the phone is a lie?

I guess it has some giallo feel as she’s being stalked by a man and wants to turn the tables on him. There’s also a dream where she speaks to the ghost of Holiday. Honestly, you’ll have to decide for yourself whether this movie is art or pretension, because I tend to love things that make no sense and any time I recommend them to people, I get the strangest looks.

Shh — I loved this insane, gorgeous and yet completely inane film. You can watch it on YouTube and decide for yourself.

Mondo Cane kept influencing movies a quarter a decade after it was released, as this film uses its all over the place format — in this case, a girl explores New York City — to showcase a variety of performance artists and give you an idea of what was happening in the late 80’s art scene. It was produced by Night Flight creator Stuart S. Shapiro.

This movie includes performances by Charlie Barnett (who was nearly selected for Saturday Night Live; Eddie Murphy was picked instead. He’s also Tyrone in D.C. Cab), drag star Joey Arias (Big Top Pee-Wee), Rick Aviles (who in addition to hosting It’s Showtime at the Apollo, also killed Swayze in Ghost), Phoebe Legere (the Toxic Avenger’s girlfriend), poet Karen Finley, Robert Mapplethorpe collaborator Veronica Vera, no wave star Lydia Lunch, shaman artist Frank Moore, performance artist Ann Magnuson and Joe Coleman, who eats mice heads and nearly blows himself up.

Director Harvey Keith also was the creator of the Fat Boys’ video for “Are You Ready for Freddy,” which is just one of the many pieces of art he’d created.

Everyone talks about Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, but nobody talks about this movie. I mean, it has Susan Tyrell — yes, from Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker and Forbidden Zone — as a miniature woman who is married to Kris Kristofferson. Why is nobody talking about this?

It’s also directed by Randal Kleiser (Grease, The Blue Lagoon) and produced by Debra Hill, two people who I would also never think would have anything to do with a Pee Wee Herman movie. Sadly, this was the second and last of what could have been an entire series of these films.

It’s also the debut of Benicio Del Toro, so why should any of these people make sense?

The idea of the film was that Pee Wee had become famous, due to the James Brolin and Morgan Fairchild film made from his last movie and now he is a Frank Sinatra-esque singer. Then, fame became a cruel beast and Pee Wee went away to live as a farmer. This is never explained other than an odd dream sequence, which is, I assume, all that remains.

Pee Wee and Vance the Pig (played by Wayne White, who helped with Pee-wee’s Playhouse and art directed the videos for Peter Gabriel’s “Sledgehammer” and the Smashing Pumpkins’ “Tonight, Tonight) were once content to make giant plants and romance a schoolteacher (Penelope Ann Miller) before the storm brings a carnival led by Mace Montana (Kristofferson).

Soon, our man — or boy — has fallen for Gina Piccolapupula (Valeria Golino), a trapeze artist who inspires him to be in the circus. When the town says no, Pee Wee uses a hot dog tree to turn them into children and…well, that’s the whole movie.

The montage when Pee Wee and Gina finally make love is something that still makes me laugh to this day. This is so much stranger than the first film while seeming normal, yet it has less of the whimsy of Tim Burton, so that hurts it.

Lynne Marie Stewart — Ms. Yvonne! — is a bearded lady, the one-time Henry and Predator Kevin Peter Hall shows up as a tall man (what else could he be?), Matthias Hues is a lion tamer, former Bozo Vance Colvig is a clown (and he was also in Mortuary Academy), Terrence Mann (Ug from Critters) is another clown, Franco Columbu (Arnold’s best man when he married Maria Shriver) is a strongman, Michu Meszaros (Hans from Waxwork and the man who played ALF) is a small person, Jay Robinson (Dr. Shrinker!) plays Cook, Kenneth Tobey (who shows up in plenty of Joe Dante films) is the sheriff, Leo Gordon (the Evil One in Saturday the 14th Strikes Back) plays the blacksmith, Frances Bay (Happy Gilmore‘s grandmother, plus Aunt Barbara in Blue Velvet) is Mrs. Haynes and former movie and kid host Jack Murdock is Otis.

You have to love that Pee Wee followed up his biggest career success with a movie about the circus filled with character actors. Of course, this made nowhere near its budget and that brings us back to today. No one ever talks about this movie. They should.