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.
Ruggero Deodato, how I love you. I love that you somehow convinced a real actor, Michael York, to be in an insane film about a man getting progeria way past its due date and murdering people left and right. I can get how you got Donald Pleasence. I can even sort of understand how you got Edwige Fenech. But Michael York?
York plays Robert Dominici, a pianist who suffers from that previously mentioned genetic condition that causes him to rapidly age, and by that, I mean that his face starts looking like Klaus Kinski. To make up for the bad hand he’s been dealt, he starts killing people and targeting Inspector Datti ‘s (Pleasence) daughter Gloria.
Deodato would later say, “I did Phantom of Death because it was based on a true element — the idea of growing old. And I got to work with Michael York and Donald Pleasence.” He also threw in that the producer demanded Fenech, who was miscast. This is also one of the few movies where she isn’t dubbed, so you get to hear her real voice.
Notice: It doesn’t say from the makers of. Or from the people who brought you.
Also known as Close Your Eyes and Pray in the U.K., this movie is all about a bunch of teens having a graduation party in a furniture store before they’re stalked and slashed by a cross-dressing killer. Obviously, the movie Chopping Mall doesn’t exist in this universe, because I’d never celebrate in a furniture store after that one.
After the murder of a hooker, we get right into the story, as four couples all gather in the aforementioned furniture store without realizing that an ex-con is living in the basement.
A game of hide and go seek turns into two different sexual situations that are broken up by the cross-dressing killer, who uses a trident to kill the first two of many. And of course, despite those two being missing, the gang continues its carnal lock-in and just goes to sleep.
This is yet another continuation of the trope of sex equals death. There is, however, an amazing kill in this one where an elevator completely severs the heads of one of these teens.
It also has an amazing reveal at the end: the killer ends up being Fred’s gay prison lover, who feels like the kids were coming between them. Yes, Fred was dating all of the kids. That makes sense, Zack. Yes, Zack is the killer’s name. Have you ever heard of a frightening killer named Zack?
Director Skip Schoolnik also edited Halloween 2 — the original — so he should know a thing about a good slasher.
Day 17 Evil in Broad Daylight: Scary stories aren’t just for the night time
Tracy Keenan Wynn is the gold standard in screenwriting and teleplays. Look at that resume: The Glass House (1972; TV’s Alan Alda, Vic Morrow of Message from Space and Clu Gulager of Hunter’s Blood), the platinum standard of football—and prison movies—The Longest Yard (1974; Burt Reynolds), The Quest (1976; Kurt Russell and Tim Matheson), The Drowning Pool (1975; Paul Newman), and the Peter Yates-directed ocean adventure, The Deep (1977).
And Wynn wrote a film that—if it had been shot and released as a theatrical feature film in the U.S (it was a theatrical in Europe), it would have swept the floors with Oscar nods (even wins) for David Soul, Michael Gross, and Ronnie Cox. So, do yourself a favor: beg, borrow and steal to watch director Dick Lowry kicking ass with the greatest series of continuing-storyline franchises in TV history. There isn’t a theatrical franchise that holds a candle:
In the Line of Duty: A Cop for the Killing (1990)
In the Line of Duty: Manhunt in the Dakotas (1991)
In the Line of Duty: Street War (1992)
In the Line of Duty: Ambush in Waco (1993)
In the Line of Duty: The Price of Vengeance (1994)
In the Line of Duty: Hunt for Justice (1995)
In the Line of Duty: Blaze of Glory (1997)
And, if you need another great football comedy from the man who knows his pigskins: Search out the TV Movie Pigs vs. Freaks (1984) fronted by the stellar character actor, Eugene Roche. Then there’s the teen drug movie Angel Dusted (1981), with the always reliable John Putch (Jaws III, 1983).
I know, “What the hell R.D? Enough with squeezin’ the Charmin over some screenwriter dude. Get back on the tracks and tell us about the movie already.”
I was living in Dade County, Florida, during the time this movie chronicles, and trust me when I tell you: we were scared shitless in broad light to the point that people were afraid to go inside banks. If you saw an armored car (which the antagonists of this film were hitting) in the front of a bank or strip mall, you kept on driving. Back in the undeveloped days of South Florida, a body turning up in The Everglades with two taps to the head or missing limbs was a once a month occurrence. Ted Bundy dumped his bodies down here. In my misguided punk adventures as a bassist, we wrote the songs “Serial Killer Alligator Alley” and “Serial Killer Express.”
Also putting bodies into the Glades were two ex-Army Rangers by the name of Bill Matix (Michael Gross; TV’s Family Ties, Tremors franchise), and Mike Platt (David Soul; TV’s Starsky and Hutch, Magnum Force). They were blatant, cruel, and just didn’t give a fuck: Matix, to get out of his Ohio-based marriage to marry his girlfriend: he murdered his wife, collected the insurance, and moved to Florida. When Platt’s “payday” of fixing and selling pinball machines goes sour, well, the guy who sold the machines regrets it. And their clueless family believes all the mystery “cash” is the spoils of their (fantasy) joint C.I.A. drug-covert ops. “We take out the dealers and the agency lets us keep the money,” Matix the wife-killer tells his love—and not nicely.
Another harrowing scene (criminally cut from the 2005 DVD reissue): When the agents get a jump on Matix and Platt in a stolen gold Monte Carlo bunkered in the Everglades, Mike Platt causally sighs: “Let’s go to work,” as he mounts up his weapon. They’re going to kill more people, and they are just causally “going to work,” like it’s a normal, sane job.
It was on April 11, 1986, when South Florida’s TV and news radio outlets broke from regular programming with a story regarding a bloody shootout in a quiet Miami neighborhood. The drug wars connected to Castro’s Mariel Boat Lift were so bad at the time; everyone assumed it was rival drug gangs.
The images on the news and in the papers the next day told a different story: Two F.B.I agents were dead. There were multiple wounded. Cars were crashed and scattered everywhere, pockmarked with bullets in a scene lifted from a Cirio H. Santiago post-apocalyptic romp. Madix and Platt were adrenaline-drunk and determined to escape the authorities and went the Bonnie and Clyde route—times 10. They would not go down. And if they did, they were taking everyone with them. Watch it for yourself (spoiler alert!).
As I said: The cast on this is Kiss-double platinum: Ronny Cox (Deliverance, 1972) as Bureau Chief Benjamin Grogan, Bruce Greenwood (Commander Christopher Pike in the Star Trek reboots) as Agent Dove, and the supporting actors portraying the rest of the squad—along with their wives—aren’t superfluous; all are fully-character arc’d and your heart sinks when the shootout goes down. And David Soul and Michael Gross—we know them most intimately from their respective TV series and they completely shed those roles and absorb themselves as, what is best described as two serial killers with a bank robbery fetish.
Yes. When it came to the golden age of “Big Three” TV Movies, NBC never disappointed. Ah, but caveat emptor movie collectors: Watch the online VHS rips of the home-taped original/first-run version of the film. The 2005 DVD from Platinum Disc is criminally edited and missing scenes. Why a reissues company would execute any cuts and shorten an already short TV movie at one hour thirty-two minutes insults Wynn’s painstaking scripting in creating sympathetic characters to heighten the impact of the film’s harrowing conclusion:
— A scene of dialogue during an F.B.I beach party that occurs before they all take a group picture with the greenhorn agents they’ve welcomed into the family: Losing this scene diminishes the impact: you know that’s the last they’ll be together.
— A scene in the shooting gallery where Grogan is asked if he’s good with the gun without wearing glasses: It’s a chilling piece of foreshadowing of Grogan’s fate that we know, but he doesn’t.
— A crucial, seat-gripping scene when an agent loses his revolver after drawing it from the holster during the vehicle chase and placing it between his knees. During the subsequent crash, he loses it out the door and is unable to recover it during the gun battle.
So watch the uncut VHS TV-taped rip on You Tube either HERE or HERE. The DVDs are available at Amazon and Barnes and Noble if you want a digital copy for your permanent, home movie collection. This is one time where I’ll support a grey market DVD-R rip of a VHS recording of Lowery’s original 1988 cut.
It has to be mentioned: David Soul had two #1 singles: 1976’s “Don’t Give Up on Us Baby” in the U.S and “Silver Lady” in the U.K. He’s been on the road for years throughout Europe, where’s he’s a respected, sellout solo artist. Definitely check out David in the excellent U.S TV movies (overseas theatricals) The Fifth Missile (1986; full movie/You Tube) and World War III (1982; full movie/Archive.org). If you pick up Mill Creek Entertainment’s Prime Time Crime: The Stephen J. Cannell Collection, you can watch all eight episodes of David’s excellent and criminally cancelled F.B.I procedural, Unsub (1989; the one Stephen J. Cannell produced-TV series that flopped).
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 reviews for B&S Movies.
DAY 12. THE FRACAS AND THE FUZZ: Something revolving around cops and criminals.
Beyond being the CEO of Blue Underground, Bill Lustig will get a forever pass just for making the films Maniac and the three movies in this series. I mean, Bruce Campbell, Tom Atkins and Robert Z’Dar in the same movie? And it’s written by Larry Cohen? Count me in.
There’s a series of murders going on in New York City, all being committed by someone in a police uniform, which leads to complete panic. However, that policeman is even more frightening than anyone dared dream. He’s not just a cop. He’s a…Maniac Cop.
Ellen Forrest thinks that her husband Officer Jack W. Forrest, Jr. (Campbell) is the Maniac Cop, following him to a hotel where she catches him in bed with fellow officer Theresa Mallory (Laurene Landon, Yellow Hair and the Fortress of Gold, Wicked Stepmother, your teenage dreams). She runs from the room right into Maniac Cop, who kills her, a murder for which Jack gets the blame.
Detective Lieutenant Frank McCrae (Atkins) believes that Jack was framed. He gets Jack to tell him about his fling with Mallory, who is currently undercover working as a prostitute. She and McCrae fight off the Maniac Cop, who is cold to the touch, doesn’t breathe and shrugs off several bullets.
The trail of the killer leads to Sally Nolland, a fellow female officer who Mallory confided in. She’s played by Sheree North, whose life was pretty interesting. In the mid-1950s, 20th Century-Fox groomed her as a replacement for the studio’s leading — and volatile — leading lady, Marilyn Monroe. They even had her test for two roles — The Girl in Pink Tights and There’s No Business Like Show Business — that Monroe was up for. To add insult to injury, the studio gave her Monroe’s wardrobe.
In March 1954, North dealt with a scandal when a stag loop of her in a bikini surfaced, but the studio capitalized on the bad press. Her next leading role was opposite Betty Grable in How to Be Very, Very Popular, a part Monroe had turned down. She was suspended by the studio as a result and this led to North getting into Life magazine with the headline “Sheree North Takes Over From Marilyn Monroe” emblazoned on the cover.
How to Be Very, Very Popular is a forgotten film today, but at the time, North’s “Shake, Rattle and Roll” dance proved memorable. The studio kept trying, casting her in two movies with Tom Ewell, Monroe’s co-star in The Seven Year Itch. While their second pairing, The Lieutenant Wore Skirts, was a success, the studio soon grew disinterested and began hyping a new blonde star — Jayne Mansfield.
Part of that reason may have been North standing up for herself. Her agent advised that she turn down a role that parodied Monroe in The Girl Upstairs and when Elvis dropped out of The Way to the Gold, North hated his replacement, Jeffrey Hunter.
After North’s contract with Fox ended in 1958, her career slowed. She did a series of TV shows, appeared in John Wayne’s last film The Shootist, was in Destination Inner Space and finally acted alongside Elvis in The Trouble With Girls. Ironically, she played Marilyn Monroe’s mother in the made-for-television film Marilyn: The Untold Story.
Today’s audiences would probably remember her best for two sitcom roles: Blanche’s sister Virginia on Golden Girls and as Cosmo Kramer’s mother Babs on Seinfeld.
But I digress…
McCrae follows Noland to a warehouse, where she meets with the Maniac Cop. She calls him by his real name, Matt, which leads McCrae to discover the history of Matthew Cordell (Z’Dar), a cop who was jailed for brutality before his fellow prisoners mutilated and murdered him. Of course, he was also set up after discovering corruption all the way up to the mayor’s office. It turns out that he survived — barely — and has been waiting to get his revenge ever since.
From here on, we get the shock and awe we were looking for, with Officer Cordell wiping out cops left and right. Yet even being impaled on a pipe at the end of the film can’t stop the rage of this now undead peace officer, who rises to murder the mayor as the film closes.
Look for Sam Raimi, Richard Roundtree and boxer Jake LaMotta, Lustig’s uncle, in cameos.
This is a fun movie that I have no complaints about at all. It’s fun, fast-moving and is filled with stunts and violence. If you’re expecting an Oscar-winning movie, well…
After years of rumors, a new Maniac Cop is on its way. According to Variety, the series will be the first production of Nicolas Winding Refn’s byNWR Originals, a part of his cultural site byNWR.com and will air on HBO.
Here’s the press release: “Set in Los Angeles, Maniac Cop is said to be told through a kaleidoscope of characters, from cop to common criminal. A killer in uniform has uncaged mayhem upon the streets. Paranoia leads to social disorder as a city wrestles with the mystery of the exterminator in blue. Is he mere mortal, or a supernatural force?”
Sounds interesting. Want to know about the other Maniac Cop films? Stay tuned — we’ll be covering them both today.
How did it take so long for this movie to make it to our site? Has there ever been a better high concept — alien clowns coming from space to eat humans? How did this movie even get made? Man, I have questions. Let’s get some answers.
It’s the only movie to be written, produced and directed by the Chiodo Brothers. These insane masters created the puppets and effects for films such as Critters, Ernest Scared Stupid, Team America: World Police, Large Marge for Pee-wee’s Big Adventure and the mouse artwork in Dinner for Schmucks. A sequel to this has been in development forever; if I had my way, these guys would make movies all of the time.
On a lover’s lane in Crescent Cove, Mike Tobacco (Grant Cramer, New Year’s Evil) and his girlfriend Debbie Stone (Suzanne Snyder, Weird Science, Night of the Creeps) are parked when a strange object falls to Earth.
Meanwhile, farmer Gene Green (Royal Dano, Gramps from House II) and his dog — who my wife knows is named Pooh Bear without even needing to look it up — track the comet and discover the crash site looks more like a circus tent.
Mike and Debbie find the same strange tent and discover teh farmer trapped in a cottom candy-like cocoon as a Klown appears to shoot popcorn at them. They’re chased away by more Klowns and a balloon animal dog, because this movie is ready to tear out your brain, stomp on it and laugh the entire time.
They make their way to the police station where Debbie’s ex-boyfriend, Deputy Dave Hanson (John Allen Nelson, Deathstalker from the third version of that film, Deathstalker III: The Warriors from Hell), and mean-spirited Deputy Curtis Mooney (John Vernon!). Seriously, John Vernon should be in every movie, because he’s majestic in this, treating every single person with oodles of contempt.
The Klowns make their way to the town and start blasting people with lasers, punching people’s heads clean off and shrinking people down and putting them into bags of popcorn. There are also scenes of Klowns drinking people with crazy straws and a giant Klownzilla that attacks the town. Obviously, the reality went right of the window with this one. It resembles the Topps Mars Attacks! cards, with episodic encounters of the goofball Klowns running wild.
This movie frightened my wife worse than any of the many, many films that she watched in her childhood. She was already afraid of clowns, so these Klowns ended up infiltrating her dreams. Yet she still watched it all of the time. She also wanted Debbie’s jumper-tastic wardrobe, which makes a lot of sense when you see her fashion sense today.
While the Chiodos were able to get The Dickies for the soundtrack, they couldn’t convince producers to pay the money to have Soupy Sales — the king of getting pies thrown in his face — appear as a security guard.
You can watch this on Tubi, Vudu and YouTube. If you want the best possible experience, let me recommend the Arrow Video release, which is packed with more extras than a car full of Klowns, including a complete collection of the Chiodo Brothers short films and interviews with the stars and The Dickies.
This is the kind of movie that I’m glad exists. I return to it time and time again whenever life seems meaningless, because the fact that a movie about giant Klowns attacking a small town for food makes me feel better, knowing that somehow a studio bought this and allowed it to happen.
Remember Sleepaway Camp, a movie whose shock ending disturbed everyone back in 1983? Well, Angela is back — this time played by The Boss’s sister Pamela Springsteen — and a counselor at a new camp. Of course, she (that’s the pronoun I assume that she prefers) just can’t stop killing everyone.
Renee Estevez — in her second slasher month film — plays final girl Molly. She makes it to the end at least, but her fate is ambiguous.
You know that The Nails song “88 Lines About 44 Women?” That’s how I should review this movie. Just play the song and sing along:
Sean Whitmore played Tony Higgins
Molly’s guy, he lost his head
Valerie Hartman was Ally
Got drowned in a toilet stall
Brian Patrick Clarke is T.C.
His face met battery acid
Walter Gotell was Uncle John, once General Gogol of the KGB
He didn’t even get to die on screen
Susan Marie Snyder was Mare
She got drilled, literally
Terry Hobs was Rob
Also killed off the screen
Kendall Bean was Debbie
Killed with a guitar string
Julie Murphy as Lea
Stabbed by our he and she
Carol Chambers as Brooke
Grilled to death
Her sis Jodi played by Amy Fields
Also was fricasseed
Benji Wilhoite? He was Anthony.
His throat slit with Freddy’s glove.
Walter Franks? He’s Judd.
Chainsawed, he got no love.
Justin Newell? Charlie.
Also killed but off the screen.
Heather Binion as Phoebe.
Tongue cut out, neat and clean.
Jason Ehrlich? Emilio.
Also killed but not shown on screen
Carol Martin Vines was Diane.
Another stabbing. Another teen.
Tricia Grant had no name.
Her character was sent home.
Jill Jane Clements drove a truck.
She met Angela. Had no luck.
Anyways — Sleepaway Camp II is played for laughs versus the original. Interestingly enough, all of the cannon fodder are named for 1980’s cultural icons: Molly (Molly Ringwald), Ally (Ally Sheedy), Uncle John (John Hughes), Rob (Rob Lowe), Demi (Demi Moore), Lea (Lea Thompson), Anthony (Anthony Michael Hall), Judd (Judd Nelson) and so on and so forth.
I’m not as much for the jokey slasher, but this is fine if you’re looking to continue the Sleepaway Camp experience. A third film was shot at the very same time, Back to the Future-style, so you can keep it going even further, if you’re so inclined.
You can watch this on Tubi and Vudu for free. Learn more at the official site and you can get a new blu ray of this from the fine folks at Shout! Factory.
The art for this article comes from Fright Rags, who have it available on their high quality t-shirts. This isn’t a paid plug. Trust me, we’ve spent plenty on their site.
DAY 1. SLIP INTO SOMETHING CHALLENGING: Ease into 2019’s list by watching something with a lot of slime, body goop or questionable muck in it. Wiggle your toes in the gooey glory.
Sure, I could start off easy. But I’ve already watched Street Trash, The Stuff and Society, the two movies that most make me think of slime in films. Movies like Slime City Massacre, Slime City, The Green Slime and The Slime People seemed too easy.
Which meant that there was only one place to go: Hideshi Hino’s Guinea Pig series. Part 6 to be exact. Mermaid In a Manhole.
If you don’t know what Guinea Pig is, you probably shouldn’t.
Hino was born to Japanese immigrant workers in Northeast China and his family left just as Japan surrendered to the Soviets. They were nearly killed en route and when they arrived back in the mainland, he’s claimed that his grandfather and father were both in the Yakuza. These memories have informed his horrific manga visions in books like Panorama of Hell and Ghost School.
Hino produced the Guinea Pig series to transform his manga into movie form. These videotapes became infamous when the fourth film of the series, Devil Woman Doctor, was found in the thousands of tapes that Japanese serial killer Tsutomu Miyazaki owned. Because of this controversy, the series went out of print but the series has been reissued on DVD in the US, UK, Netherlands and Austria.
In 1991, the series made international news thanks to Charlie Sheen. Film Threat editor Chris Gore had given him a copy of the series and upon watching the second installment, Flowers of Flesh and Blood, Sheen was convinced that he was watching a snuff film. He called the FBI, who soon learned that Japanese authorities were already on the case, as they had summoned the filmmakers to court to learn if the movies were fake.
Maybe everyone would have been better off if they just kept watching, because at the end of each video, there was behind the scenes footage of how the makeup and FX were achieved.
Make no mistake — these are unrelenting and sadistic films. Your capacity to withstand gore will be tested by them. But this is perhaps the easiest in a very rough lot and absolutely overflowing with the requisite slime, body goop and questionable much for today’s challenge.
The Guinea Pig 6: Mermaid in a Manhole (Za Ginī Piggu: Manhōru no naka no Ningyo) is based on one of Hino’s manga stories.
An artist is trying to cope with the death of his pregnant wife through the work he creates. For inspiration, he often visits the sewers beneath Okinawa, places that once had been rivers where he once met a mermaid as a child. Now, she has been trapped in the sewers but agrees to let him paint her.
However, all the time within the muck and bile has given her tumors all over her body. The artist takes her back to his home and keeps her in a bathtub, giving her medicine in the hopes of bringing her back to life.
The more she suffers, the more she oozes blood and pus from nearly every orifice in her body, fluids that the artist is able to use to create art. Yet with each brushstroke, she’s nearer to the final curtain, demanding that he continue painting her all the way to the point of her death.
That said — she may not have been a mermaid at all, but instead his terminally ill wife — and the fetus that he removed after her death just possibly may have been their child. Yet where did the scale come from that they discovered in the bathtub? And just what is moving in the sewers after the credits?
Mari Somei, who played the mermaid, is a real trooper for her work in this, being covered near head to toe in practical and oozing effects. The artist is played by Shigeru Saiki, who is in Audition as well as several sentai shows on Japanese TV.
As for answering the Scarecrow Challenge for today, I don’t know where else I’d be able to find a movie so awash in fluids. There are literal geysers of vomit, blood, bodily fluids and even intestines filled with worms and insects spraying out all over the bathroom tile. There’s a message here about love and loss or art and death, but really, it’s nearly an hour of watching a mermaid expire in a filthy tub. Only in Japan, right?
You know how slashers go: you need to get the horny teens to wind up in a secluded place with some promise of sex and drug hijinks. An abandoned mental hospital? That’s not frightening — it’s a good place to screw!
Of course, inside the walls of this old asylum, there’s more than just a place to party hearty. There’s also a deformed maniac who just so happens to be the attorney that split final girl Kiki’s parents up and caused her mother to die a decade before. Again, in slashers, there are no coincidences. Everything has been ordained, as if by freakish fate.
Now, the former Attorney Mitch Hansen has become The Coroner, a serial killer who uses surgical tools to wipe out anyone in his way.
The dual roles of Kiki and her mother Judy are played by Patty Mullen, Penthouse Pet of the Month for August 1986 and 1988’s Pet of the Year. You may also remember her from playing the title role in Frankenhooker and being married to Joey Image, one of the drummers for The Misfits.
However, Jane — one of the many friends of Kiki set up to die, as is the wont of the slasher — would grow up to be Kristen Davis. Yes, from Sex and the City. So if you ever wanted to see her get her face sawed off…
There’s also a punk band played inside the asylum named Tina and the Tots. Tina is played by Ruth Collins, who was also in Witch Academy and was paid $100 extra to show her breasts. Because you know, you can’t have a slasher without them (actually you totally can).
This was all written by Rick Marx, who also was behind the movies Taboo American Style 1: The Ruthless Beginning, Wanda Whips Wall Street, Blonde Justice #3 and Christy In the Wild. In case you didn’t guess, those are all adult films. He also wrote Snapped for Chuck Vincent, Warrior Queen, a biography on WOR late-night fixture Joe Franklin and the two Gor movies.
Behind the camera? None other than Richard Friedman (Scared Stiff, Phantom of the Mall: Eric’s Revenge). This movie is all over the place in tone and presentation, but if you rented it back in the late 1980’s — it’s pretty much a perfectly goofball slasher that would go well with a six-pack and pizza — you probably have much fonder memories than I do. After all, if you went and watched Bloodsucking Freaks without seeing it through the lens of being 15 years old and landlocked in a small town, you probably wouldn’t understand why people liked it either.
You can get this on blu ray from the fine folks at Arrow Video or watch it for free on Tubi!
Oh, hell no. Not more Def-Con 4 graphic art fuckery.
A dilapidated bridge. A decaying skyscraper. An eye patch. Armored motorcycle-knights. Mad Max spiked-adorned cars with blowers. Luigi Cozzi-spaceships. Post-nuclear action with Sergio Martino-vibes. Yeah, I won’t be confusing this with Enzo G. Castellari’s The Desert Warrior (1984, AKA Tuareg: The Desert Warrior). No wait . . . I did, actually . . . and I watched it anyway.
(“Poop, poop, poop, poop, I love you,” Sing it, Tina. Bob’s Burgers rules!)
Warning: Images do not appear in the film.No really. See for yourself: this trailer proves it.
Tuareg, the other “desert warrior” of VHS yore.
Times were obviously tough for ex-Hulks “two decades after the Third World War” when the world is a twisted jambalaya-tapeworm with Drones, Tyrogs, Zendos, Sterraz Amazonian Women, and Scavengers all bumbling about the Philippine wastelands in this way-too-late entry in the Mad Max rip-off sweepstakes. Lou Ferrigno (who went from this . . . to the CBS Network comedy King of Queens—in a clever parody of himself; an acting turn as respect-giving as Jean-Claude Van Damme’s turn in JCVD) stars as Zerak, a gay-leather Snake Plissken-baddy who scours the wastelands for the genre’s obligatory-uncontaminated females. His boss, the obligatory-horny fat slob, Lord Baktar of the Tyrogs (Hey, that’s Kragg! Canux-actor Kenneth Peerless from 1988’s The Sisterhood), wants to make babies à la George “Big Ape” Eastman in After the Fall of New York because . . . well, you know, the only way to save a post-apoc world is by rape. (Why is male sperm always potent in the post-apoc epoch and females are the ones with the bad plumbing? Oh, that’s right: fallout turns men into chauvinistic dicks.)
Anyway, Racela (Shari Shattuck), the bitchy “Princess Leia” daughter of Cortaz (Anthony East, Lord Jar of The Sisterhood!!) and the niece/granddaughter of the bloated, sash-adorned President Antarius of the techno-advanced Drones (Mike Cohen of 1985’s Warriors of the Apocalypse!), is out for a romantic, wasteland drive in a Logan’s Run-cum-super mutant Hot Wheels buggy (complete with vacuum cleaner-SFX engines). So Racela has a tiff with her boyfriend, jumps out, and gets captured by the desert-bandit Zendos for breeding. You know how it goes in the post-apoc Philippines: Zendonians aren’t having any luck raping the female Sterrazs, and the Tyrogs are sterile skank hoes no one wants—not even The Humongous. Not even the bald Urak dude from After the Fall of New York who gets his eyes gouged-out by a robot claw.
Anyway, love blooms when Zerak the Tyrog rescues Racela the Drone and they become the resident spaghetti western Moses and Zipporah tearin’ up the Exodus sands with a Star Wars (I mean, Star Crash) laser battle assault on the Drones’ fortress—after the usual low-budget/no-budget and off-screen yakity-yak nuclear holocaust. (Oh, no . . . RED ALERT . . . TEXT SCROLL plot-set up . . . lazy-writing warning . . . and, depending on what bogus-title version you see: voice-over narration to back up that text.) Oh, and get this: Zerak and Baktar close this epic with a friggin’ hug: A HUG, and Zerak and Racela stroll into the post-apoc sunset accompanied by the synth-pop ditty, “Love Will Find a Way.” (Dear Lord, we don’t need another hero!)
If you’re looking for something with no holocaust and no acting, with the same ‘ol apoc-props, not-special effects, sets, costumes, and action (Apoc-déjà vu: I swear this film is recycling footage from Cirio H. Santiago’s Filipino films, i.e., Stryker,Wheels of Fire, and The Sisterhood) lacking in plot or point: this is your movie.
If you’re cool with the fact that the bridge and skyscraper, the Mad Max cars, and the spaceships never show up—and you’re okay with a couple of ‘70s-era jeeps with machine guns: this is your movie.
If you find excitement with Star Crash laser blasts, a kiddie thunderdome match, a low-rent Humongous, recycled Roman galea/centurion helmets, Darth Vader warriors, white-clad “New Confederacy” penis soldiers from After the Fall of New York, and an appearance by the TOMY Omnibot 2000 doubling for R2D2: this movie is for you.
The Def-Con 5 caveat: That drippy Drones-mobile takes me back to those Hot Wheels with glass domes (Hairy Hauler, Silhouette, Splittin’ Image) and those ‘70s-era model kit cars and cycles (Monogram’s Cherry Bomb, Revell’s Beatnik Bandit, and the bright-green airfoil “Dragonfly” chopper-trike I can’t track down). I wish that old AMT Interplanetary UFO Mystery Ship, AKA “The Leif Erickson,” made an appearance to make up for the Def-Fuck we got on the spaceship cover tease.
The Def-Con 4 caveat: Filipino apoc-king Cirio H. Santiago did not make this movie. But how we wish pasta-apoc guru Enzo G. Castellari did, so we had some Trash.
The Def-Con 3 caveat: Beware of those bogus alternate titles: Sand Wars (Are you kidding me, Mr. Distributor?), Nuclear War and Kill Count with new artwork (more friggin’ skyscrapers?)—and all references to the country and year of origin removed—so as to dupe, you, the responsible post-apoc buyer, into thinking you’ve discovered some new, lost apoc-poo.
The Def-Con 2 caveat: Turns out that “nobody” director, Jim Goldman, is really a “somebody.” Duck and cover.
The Def-Con 1 caveat: The saga of these contaminated, inert desert bozos is only for the most non-discriminating, post-apoc VHS packrat storing their copies of Future Force and Robot Holocaust in a 50-megaton proof bunker amongst their David Prior and Tim Kincaid Def-Fucked ineptitudes. While you don’t want to, as B&S Movies’ proprietor Sam would say, give Jim Goldman a “David Prior-kick in the dick,” you will want to give Goldman a solid “Tim Kincaid-broadsword thrust into the brain,” so as to spare us video fringe survivors a sequel.
And thank Lord Humungous . . . there wasn’t one. No need to flush the bombers, General Jack Beringer. The video fringe is safe. If we can make it through this celluloid compost, we’ll be able to deal with Wez—no trouble at all. Plus, Jim Goldman never produced or directed another film and screenwriter Bob Davies never wrote another film.
Boom! You’ve been consumed by the mushroom cloud. Learn your Def-Con numbers.
Jim Goldman, AKA John Gale, is Filipina Jun Gallardo gone incognito who, after Bruce Lee’s untimely death, took the 100-odd hours of footage from Bruce’s unfinished final film and “directed” Golden Harvest Studios’ bogus 1974, first version of The Game of Death. Across his 54 credits, Gallardo flushed/dumped the VHS Rambo–Commando cheese-clones* that we love: The Firebird Conspiracy (1984), Commando Invasion (1986), and the BIG KAHUNAS: the Linda Blair-starring SFX Retaliator(1987), and the Shannon “Ms. Gene Simmons” Tweed and Reb Brown (Yor!, Space Mutiny!) non-war epic, The Firing Line (1988). (The Filipina nom de plume of Bob Davies is anyone’s guess. For when you script something this epic, there’s no way you wrote just one.)
At least the Jun Gallardo-connection didn’t kill the career of ex-MTV video babe Shari Shattuck (38 Special’s “Caught Up in You”; Sam, is that you chuggin’ the Bud at the 00:19 mark?), who we LOVE around here at B&S Movies. (Oh, man, I got the VHS shakes!) Amid her 50-plus U.S television and film credits: Shari starred in our FAVORITE piece-o-George Kennedy-fecal matter, the crazy cat movie, The Uninvited, the warped, how-did-it-ever-get-made movie with the asparagus-sex scene, Death Spa (1987), and the Don “The Dragon” Wilson’s wooden Steven Segal-rip, Out for Blood (1992; how have you not reviewed that one, Sam?). She eventually went “legit” with Jack Smight’s (Midway, Damnation Alley) genre-too-late Beverly Hills Cop/48 Hours-rip, Number One with a Bullet (1987), and Steven Seagal’s directorial debut, On Deadly Ground (1994; Shari’s scene/clip). You can catch up with Shari in this interview regarding her most recent film and top-billed role (hopefully, not her last), Scream at the Devil (2015; trailer).
May The Humungous be to your backs and may the radiated sands rise to meet your feet as you watch the full movie on You Tube. All praise Lord Baktar!
Our images our clickable?! Yep. Really!
You can catch up on the wide array of post-apocalyptic adventures with B&S Movies’ “Atomic Dust Bins” Part 1 and Part 2 featuring 20 mini-reviews of movies you never heard of, along with a “hit list” featuring all of the apoc-flicks we watched for September 2019’s Apoc Month.
* We unpacked a cornucopia, a virtual plethora of Pacific Rim war flicks with our crazed Philippine War Week I and II features. Yeah, we love our Jun Gallardo and Teddy Chiu flicks, well, anything under K.Y. Lim’s Silver Star Film Company shingle. So sue us. Or make fun of us. We don’t care. (Now, we gonna stuff our faces with sugar-shocking hopias.)
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.
B&S About Movies 
_-_Computer_History_Museum.jpg){kind=link}
You must be logged in to post a comment.