Notably, none of those movies relate to one another at all. So go figure, the one film in the series that I never watched ended up the only actual sequel.
That said, the start of the film completely ignores everything we’ve learned before. Mary Lou, now played by Courtney Taylor instead of Lisa Schrage, has been in Hell since she died at a school dance in 1957. But she has a nail file and has been chipping away at the chains that bind her for decades, finally escaping back into our world. As she returns to Hamilton High School — totally in Canada, but overly American thanks to “Yankee Doodle Dandy” and flags a plenty and non-Canadian football — she starts off on the right foot by killing a janitor and using a jukebox to blast the pacemaker out of an old lover’s chest.
Speaking of those American flags, one night totally average high school student Alexander Grey leaves his girlfriend Sarah Monroe (Cynthia Preston, who is in another beyond wild Canadian film, Pin) behind as he soul searches about his total average-ness. He’s discovered by Mary Lou and after some two person push-ups on the stars and bars, he’s under her spell.
It works. His grades go up. He becomes a football hero. And he’s never had better sex ever.
So what’s wrong? Well, Mary Lou is killing everyone in his way.
Like the guidance counselor who doesn’t believe in our protagonist? She gets her face burned off with battery acid. His football rival gets a ball thrown through his stomach. And soon, even Alexander’s slacker best friend Shane gets his heart ripped out.
Alexander is conflicted. He loves his average girlfriend, but she’s already dumped him for a nerd. Well, a nerd who gets killed by AV equipment. And as we’ve already learned about Mary Lou, she will not be stopped when she wants something, even if her female rival has learned how to use a flamethrower.
Ron Oliver wrote the screenplays for the second and third films in this series (and directed this one). The original title was The Haunting of Hamilton High, as there was no plan to connect these to the Prom Night series. The money for this came from Live Entertainment. A few days before filming started, Oliver ended up going to dinner with the family that owned that company, only to learn on Monday that production had been delayed because the sons had killed their mom and dad. You know them as Erik and Lyle Menendez. Another Oliver fact: he and his partner were married by Udo Kier. One more? He wrote and directed several installments of the Nickelodeon show Are You Afraid of the Dark?
This can’t live up to the proceeding version, but that doesn’t mean that it won’t try. I’ve always loved that Mary Lou is the lone slasher that embraces sex and forces men to become the final survivor — but never lets them live.
DAY 25. HEY BABY, CAN YOU DANCE TO IT?: This one has to have one substantial dancing scene in it.
For this day of the Scarecrow Challenge, I decided to do that Italian movie about ghosts and murder in a dance academy. Oh, there’s more than one?
You know, the Italian horror movie that Jennifer Connelly did. Oh, there’s more than one of those, too?
Etoile. Everyone knows this one, right? It’s that movie where a girl gets possessed as she dances Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. There’s a more famous movie like that, too?
But seriously, this is the film that is not Suspiria or Phenomena or Black Swan.
Connelly plays Claire Hamilton, a ballerina who comes to Budapest to further her dance career and loses her identity to a 19th century dancer named Natalie Horvath who was killed in a tragic carriage accident. But this movie is not content to merely homage — or rip-off — one Argento film. The end was called out by critics for how close it is to Operaand the entire basement sequence reminds one of Inferno, except you know, there’s a giant swan pecking at the hero.
Also — Argento didn’t somehow get Charles Durning into his movie.
Peter Del Monte is better known for his film Julia and Julia. While not a bad movie, this would really benefit from a more artistic eye, but there I go comparing this movie to Argento all over again.
You can get this from Ronin Flix or watch it on YouTube.
There’s no way that the Gahan Wilson that wrote this movie is the Gahan Wilson who drew all those cartoons for Playboy, right?
Because if he is, then this is a comedy and this movie makes a lot more sense.
And if not, then I have no idea what the filmmakers were going for in this one.
So after this movie completely rips off the open of Piecesand Nightmare, we move to an asylum where the inmates are being given cigarettes as some form of therapy. One of them escapes and kills everyone in his way and that’s Arthur (James Jude Courtney, who would go on to be The Shape in the 2018 Halloween). He nearly kills an actress named Linda (Loren Winters, who was a one and done actress in this, along with producing the film), whose experience ends up getting her cast in a cheesy science fiction movie called Astronette that will use her notoriety for publicity.
There’s no way Arthur would hunt her down, right?
I have so many questions for this movie. How did they get Robbie Krieger from The Doors to write the theme song? Why did they have Linda’s boyfriend cheat on her and suddenly become a sympathetic hero in the last act? Why is there no real freeway in this movie? Why does Arthur howl at the moon? Why is some of this movie well-shot with decent stunts and other portions have the worst acting you’ve ever seen? Are you surprised that this was released by Cannon — well, released on VHS in the Netherlands by Cannon Screen Entertainment, so not really produced by Cannon.
There’s not really another slasher like The Freeway Maniac. It’s…something else.
Directed by Kendall Flanagan and Ollie Martin, the whole campaign for this movie pretty much seems to revolve around how bad it is. That said, I’ve seen plenty worse slashers, but I’m also someone who likes to eat the fruit out of the bottom of the broiler at the Melting Pot, as it were.
A rock band is making a movie on Lake Infinity and — as the title suggests — have a houseboat to live and work on. What follows is what you expect — red herrings as to the identity of the killer and what you don’t — a large portion of the movie is given to a hunt for mushrooms in the forest.
This is also pretty much Jason Vorhees down under, complete with a protective mom and harpooning lovers together just to make Mario Bava fans cry foul. It also uses plenty of music cues that sound exactly like they came from Crystal Lake. What it has that those movies don’t is a band that sounds like an Australian version of The Replacements at times and a killer named Acid Head.
What’s your tolerance for shot on video slashers? For movies where everyone has a mullet? Where continuity and lighting change within the very same scene? Allow this to determine whether or not you want to waste your time and watch this on YouTube.
Let’s be perfectly frank. I’d watch a movie that was 85 minutes of people repeatedly making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches as long as Linnea Quigley was in said movie. I’m sure they’d figure out some way to make her take a shower while the sandwiches were being made, which I find to be a bold directoral choice that I would explain to my wife was necessary for the foreign markets.
Anyways — Witchtrap.
You have to admire the dumbness of a movie that has a warlock as the final boss and still calls itself Witchtrap. Then again, the alternate title was The Presence and that’s not as good.
Kevin S. Tenney made two versions of Night of the Demons, along with two Witchboard movies. Here, he tells the story of a team of phenomena busters who have a special machine — a witch trap, if you will — to aid themselves in de-ghosting the Lauder House. Tenney even acts in this, as they couldn’t get another actor in time when one dropped out and hey — he already knew the script.
The whole movie is dubbed thanks to an on set filming error. But hey, if you watch Italian movies as much as me, you’ll gloss over that. I love reading reviews of this movie that decry its wooden acting and long stretches of dialogue. What did you really expect? It’s a direct-to-video 80’s movie. Be happy that there’s a super gory head explosion and Linnea gets in a shower. That said, the shower kills her, but she does fulfill her contractural obligation to jump in the stall. Seriously, why has Bathfitter or ReBath not hired her for a series of commercials?
You can watch this on Amazon Prime and Tubi. Of course, it’s available from the company that must have rented 5 for $5 movies every day of the week, Vinegar Syndrome.
Dennis Devine has been making movies since this film, turning out stuff like Dead Girls (Kay Schaber, Angela Eads, and Brian Chin from that film, star here), Fat Planet, Vampires of Sorority Row, and, most recently, Camp Blood 8: Revelations. For this one, a serial killer kills himself, but not before he seals his soul into a camera. And what if, by pure happenstance, that camera sends up being sold to a young girl and all of her friends start dying? Why, we’d have a slasher, would we not?
This movie has a character that wears her pajamas under her clothes all day long because it saves time at night. It’s hard to argue with that kind of logic, which you would not expect to arrive within an SOV slasher made 31 years ago. Yet here we are.
A hair metal band plays in a field, everyone has on comfy sweaters and someone’s arm gets ripped off. There are worse things you could be doing with your time, to be perfectly honest. Devil worshipper photographers bonded forever to their cameras, emerging to murder everyone they see? It’s basically a feel-good picture. What helps this along is the effects that come courtesy of the iconic Gabe Bartalos, who worked on Dead Girls, as well as Frankenhooker, Spookies, Brain Damage, and the Fright Night, Basket Case, Leprechaun, and Texas Chainsaw Massacre and, Gremlins.
You can watch Fatal Images on YouTube. And be sure to join us for our “Drive-In Friday” tribute to the works of Dennis Devine.
Puppet Master may have started with one direct-to-video movie, but since then, there’s been ten sequels, a crossover with Demonic Toys and a recent reboot, Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich.
After Empire Pictures went out of business, Charles Band started Full Moon Productions, which would partner with Paramount Pictures and Pioneer Home Entertainment to create direct-to-video movies. Puppet Master would be first and it’s very similar to another Band movie, Dolls. Yes, this was originally intended for theaters, but Band thought it would make more money as a home release.
Think Star Wars is confusing? Well, Puppet Master is really the sixth film in chronological order. It starts in Bodega Bay, California in the year 1939. A puppeteer named André Toulon (William Hickey, Uncle Lewis from National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation) is finishing a puppet he calls Jester when Nazi spies come for him. He places Jester and the other puppets (Blade, Shredder Khan and Gengie) into a hidden panel before killing himself.
Fifty years later, psychics Alex Whitaker, Dana Hadley, Frank Forrester and Carissa Stamford take a journey to meet their old colleague Neil Gallagher, who has found Toulon’s hiding place, all thanks to a series of visions. Soon, a doll named Pinhead is taking out the psychic’s one by one, finally revealing that Neil has been alive all along using Toulon’s Egyptian secrets of alchemy to reanimate himself. However, he’s dumb enough to cross the puppets and throw Jester at a chair. Those puppets stay together. Only Alex and Megan survive along with Dana’s formerly taxidermied dog, which is now mysteriously back alive.
Such a small debut for a series that would go on to so many more installments, right? Even though they only have five minutes of screen time, people fell in love with the little guys. How can’t you adore Blade, who is based on Klaus Kinski and the Leech Woman? Strangely enough, most of the music in this movie comes from a movie Band produced that’s also about bringing inanimate objects to life, Tourist Trap.
Back in the early ’90s, when it came to SOV productions released direct-to-VHS, writer-director Dennis Devine (2020’s Camp Blood 8 and 2019’s The Haunting of La Llorona) was a name you could trust to give you the goods. Problem was, his stuff was impossible to find on video store shelves—surely not at a Blockbuster, but shockingly, not at many, if any, mom ‘n pops. As was the case with most of the ‘80s-’90s SOV canons—even after Christopher Lewis, with Blood Cult, proved you could successfully distribute movies shot direct on 3/4” tape direct to retail-rental outlets—you had to buy Devine’s works via mail order via ads in the back of Famous Monsters. (Well, not Famous Monsters; that was a bit too slick, as I recall. But it was one of those pulpy, black & white horror mags from back in the day.)
Ah, the dot-matrix cover tucked behind the plastic-sleeved clamshell I remember. Our thanks to critcononline.com for preserving it.
So, being a sucker for and a collector of rock ‘n’ roll-oriented films of any genre—including horror—and the fact that all of the pulpy, underground critics raved about Dead Girls—I sent in my little grocery store money order to Something Weird Video (I think it was them; it was one of the those mail-order film studios-distributors). And as is the case with most, if not all, Dennis Devine productions (several of which I picked up over time; to date, he’s directed 31 and wrote 23 films), Dead Girls was a pretty decent flick that lent to replays over succeeding Halloweens. That is, until—as is the case with all mail-order film studios procuring low-grade VHS tapes in multi-packed, shrink-wrapped bricks and churning out copies via high-speed dubbing machines—my copy of Dead Girls caught a bad case of the molds. (And the mold grew . . . and spread to and took out Alice Cooper’s Monster Dog cataloged next to it; why that cataloging? I don’t recall the reasoning that paired the two. I think I was just messy-lazy in my alphabettin’.)
If only Dow came up with a video tape cleaner!
So, why am I waxing nostalgically sad over an admittedly obscure ‘80s (well, ’90s) SOV? Well, we have to blame Sammy P, B&S About Movies Chief Cook and Bottle Washer (again, I am just the fry cook, grease bit scrubber, and dumpster pad cleaner around ‘ere) for reviewing ALL of the Scream movies (in one week; the last week of August/first week of September) and yeath proclaiming all review slots for the month of October be forth dedicated to Slasher Movies—so say we all (moan) from under our cloak and cowls (and fedoras, hee hee). And since fans of the horror blockbuster Scream, which itself is a mock-slasher parody-homage, will recognize the plotline similarity to Dead Girls, which was completed several years prior to the later, 1996 Wes Craven hit, we’re reviewing it. So thanks, Mr. P! (For the uninitiated: Scream had deaths according to horror movies; Dead Girls had kills by songs.)
Yeah, I love it when the analog stars align at B&S About Movies and inspire a review. I wonder if Dennis Devine will drop us a pissy note in our “Feedback” section, decrying us for “how dare” we review their masterpieceshite without “permission” forthwith. . . . Nah, Double D’s not a maniacal, “Oscar bound” auteur. And his stuff isn’t shite. Oops, I’m getting pissy and off point, again. DOWN BOY! Good boy. . . . (Sorry, I’m letting those thin-skinned, self-financed via Kickstarer “next Tarantinos” of the digital age get to me.)
Who da frack are these girls? That’s not Diana, Angela Eads, Kay, and Angela Scaglione . . . wait, is it? Curse you, art department!
The retail-rental slipcase reissue that I don’t remember/courtesy of 112 Video via Paul Zamerelli of VHS Collector.com.
So, anyway . . . the Dead Girls are a female death metal band . . . but their low-grade rock is neither “death” nor “metal” and reminds of the Cycle Sluts from Hell . . . remember CSFH’s freak, ‘90s metal-parody hit “I Wish You Were a Beer” . . . and its members Queen Vixen, She-Fire of Ice, Honey 1%’er, and Venus Penis Crusher . . . only the Dead Girls aren’t that good . . . where’s Gord Kirchin’s gag-studio project Piledriver (music newly featured in Girls Just Want to Have Blood) when you need ‘em?
Anyway, I digress . . . the Dead Girls come complete with the “evil aliases” of—an idea that, I bet Brian Warner, aka Marilyn Manson, swiped (just kiddin’ Manson, had to work your aliases-band into the review)—Lucy Lethal, Randy Rot (the male “pussy” of the group on drums; brother of lead singer Ms. Lethal), Bertha Beirut, Nancy Napalm and Cindi Slain. Their collective shticks, which we learn through journalistic expositional babble (ugh): Cindi Slain (aka ex-magician-illusionist Susie Striker) is into self-eviseration, Bertha Beirut likes to strangle herself on stage with the American flag, and Nancy Nepalm is the para-military “Lemmy” of the group; a “weapons expert” who adorns herself in camo and “live” ammo-bullet belts and jaggling explosives as she slings a custom “machine gun guitar” (on loan from mid-’80s Alice Cooper guitarist Kane Roberts).
Of course, “death rock” is “on the way out” (don’t tell that to King Diamond and Cronos of Venom), with their manager urging them into a more “commercial” Into the Pandemonium-to-Cold Lake Celtic Frost fuckover as he sends the girls into the “Cherry Orchards” (no pun intended, I swear!) and be the friggin’ the Go-Go’s with friggin’ Wall of Voodoo covers. Do you remember when the record executives eviscerated Motley Crue’s collective gunny sacks and went from Shout at the Devil bondage leathers to day-glow the Bangles biker pastels, stopped singing about Satan and gave us songs about girls and friggin’ motorcycles and doctors and “going home” ad nauseam, ala Poison? Yeah, like that . . . all the world needs another “Clowns,” by golly! Or maybe we’ll get lucky and Artie the manager (Brian Chin, who became a voice actor then became an animation storyboard artist) will turn them into Vixen and rock us with “Edge of a Broken Heart” or Lita Ford with “Kiss Me Deadly,” perhaps? Nah, Artie’s a dipshite who thinks touring the warzones of Russian-occupied Yugoslavia is a smart career move.
Kane Roberts; courtesy of Floyd Rose.com/Celtic Frost; Metal Addicts.com.
As was the case with the dippy-dopey Champaign, Illinois, new-wave poppers the Names not finding any success until they transformed themselves into a low-rent Kiss-cum-Phantom of the friggin’ Opera (not) “metal” band the Clowns slicing up mannequins in Terror on Tour (Am I the only one who remembers “Lonely” and the Queensryche-ish album Transcendence from the phantom half-masked Crimson Glory hailing from the metal wilds of Tampa, Florida?), the gals of the Dead Girls weren’t finding much success with their dippy-dopey, new-wave synth-droning, so they went (not) death “metal,” complete with images of death that were devised as a marketing gimmick to sell records—no one was supposed to take them seriously, so says lead lyricist, sweet Gina Verilli, aka Bertha Beirut. (Now, I know this is sexist, but I got those boilin’ hormones—actress Diana Karanikas (as Gina) is the most heart weeping, prefect mix of “hot” and “cute” to ever bless the screen. And she friggin’ quit the biz after this film. Heartbreaking. Also quitting, after doing Things II for Devine: Angela Eads as Dana/Lucy Lethal; is it just me, or does she look like the perpetual Lifetime damsel-in-distress Alexandra Paul of Christinefame? Just sayin’.)
Anyway, the (coke) mirror, that is, “image” cracks when a group of teenagers, led by Gina’s sister Brooke (sexy/creepy Ilene B. Singer in her only film role; why did everyone quit the biz after this movie) commit a mass suicide to the soundtrack of the Dead Girls. Uh, oh. Career over? Nay, it’s time to hop into the Mystery Machine, Shaggy! We need recuperate Sam Raimi-style in the not-so Norwegian Wood. (Speaking of the Beatles . . . and death rock, did you ever hear Coroner’s cover of the Beatles’ “I Want You (She’s So Heavy),” well, you just did.)
Hmmmm . . . seems someone in the Dead Girls band camp paid attention to the James Vance and Ray Belknap Judas Priest “subliminal suicides” of 1986 (which became an hour-long PBS segment, Dream Deceivers in 1992) and the three Ozzy Osbourne heavy metal suicide trials of 1985 to 1990. (Dream Deceivers is on You Tube; you can find Ozzy trial clips HERE and HERE.)
Anyway . . . yeppers, it’s more dopey rockers of the Blood Tracks and Monster Dog variety driving right into the mayhem as they head off to a secluded country retreat for rest and relaxation—and for Gina to take care of her sole-surviving sister, much to the chagrin of her bible thumpin’ aunt who cared for them after their parents died in a car crash. (That’s gratitude; Auntie takes you in, gives you room and board; you form a death metal band in spite; while little sis has metal posters on the walls.) Oh, and get this: Gina has E.S.P abilities, so she foresees all this coming . . . but still goes to the wooden retreat (fuck, not Spine, again?) . . . where, in a Friday the 13th twist, a psychotic fan—cloaked in a black cape, fedora, and skull mask (the “Scream” part) goes “Billy Eye Harper” and unfurls the Rocktober Blood, murdering managers, boyfriends, fans, and musicians in short order, using the lyrics as a “how to” guide.
Although the script indicates lyrics to songs such as “Drown Your Sorrows,” “Nail Gun Murders,” “Hangman,” “Angel of Death” and “You’ve Got to Kill Yourself,” none of the songs appear in the film, nor does the band perform on screen. So, while we’re denied the “death metal,” what sets this Devine production heads and shoulders heads above most (well, all other) SOVs is that make-up wizard Gabe Bartolos, who also worked on the Basket Case and Leprechaun film series, handles the special effects and gives us a film that is as fun as—and significantly better than, but not as revered as, the rock ‘n’ horror, “No False Metal” classics that are Rock ‘n’ Roll Nightmare and Shock ‘Em Dead. All in all, Devine’s go-to scribe, Steve Jarvis (Things II and a dozen other Devine productions), gives us decent film noirish twists, double crosses, dream-within-dream fuck yous, floppin’ red herrings (bitchy aunts, pussy-whipped uncles, creepy preachers in need of an eyebrow trim, Christian ex-boyfriends, mentally-challenged caretakers, Yugoslavian reporters, graduates from the Josef Mengele School of Nursing, pseudo-lesbian uber fans, beefcake bodyguards, Ms. Lethal and Mr. Rot are into incest and bondage), and you-didn’t-see-that-coming moments to keep you entertained.
Now, remember in our review of Spine, when I mentioned a fellow con-freak discussion where I “learned” that star Janus Blythe was “in the running” for the Janet-role on ABC-TV’s Three’s Company and “lost out” on the part of Lynn Starling in Rocktober Blood? Well, in a con-conversation about Dead Girls: I also “learned” that the reason you never heard from any of these actresses ever again—sans one, maybe two, Dennis Devine flicks—is that all of these actresses were actually incognito adult film stars, you know, like Michelle Bauer (Beverly Hills Vamp! Witch Academy! Evil Toons! Sorority Babes in the Slime Bowl-o-Rama!), who aka’d as adult star Pia Snow, and Linnea Quigley, who aka’d as adult star Jessie Dalton (Linnea’s out with two new ones: The Good Things Devils Do and Clownado). As with the Janus Blythe rumor: I can’t confirm these assumed adult identities, if any, of the cast of Dead Girls.
And since we’re dredging up all of these old movies, let’s talk The Redeemer (aka The Redeemer: Son of Satan, aka VHS Class Reunion Massacre; You Tube/trailer)*. You’ll recall that masked killer dispatched victims wearing . . . a skull mask under a cape and cowl (sans fedora). So, while horror connoisseurs call out Wes Craven for “pinching” Dead Girls, can we call out the Dennis Devine-Steve Jarvis-Gabe Bartolos collective borrowing the skull mask idea from Constantine S. Gochis (Cochis shot it in ’75 and released it in ’78, so it predates Carpenter’s Halloween)? Just sayin’.
And major kudos to the gang at The VHS Apocalypse over on You Tube for taking the time to rip those faux hard-rock ditties of the SOV-era and uploading them. Here’s the Dead Girls end-credits tune “You’re Gonna Kill Yourself” to enjoy.
And alright! You Tube comes through in the clutch! I haven’t watched Dead Girls in years (f-you, mold.) But I am now with a very nice, clean VHS-rip courtesy of The Burial Ground 5. (BG5’s got 1974’s Corpse Eaters? 1988’s Brainsucker? Yes! Now, that’s a motherf-in’ Halloween double-feature right there!)
And now . . . while we are on the subject of obscure tunes from obscure films—in this case, 1989’s Twister—that no one has heard or seen sidebar: Bless you, William Gibson You Tube, for VHS-ripping Crispin Glover’s “band” the Uncalled Four and their downer-rocker “Dance Etiquette (Daddy’s So Mean)” off the film’s end credits. But here’s the scene where it was featured. (Crispin, what in the hell did your daddy, Bruce, do to you? Just kiddin’. Let’s get a beer!)
The schlub writer sucking up for acting work sidebar: Mr. Devine, I act. And I have a reel. Could I be in one of your movies? (Did you think I wrote this review out of the goodness of my heart? Nope. Pure sucking up for acting work!)
How is this movie forgotten? It boasts a director whose other movie is well-known — Tibor Takács also made The Gate — and it straddles the line between the fantastic, a slasher and giallo all at once without falling apart. It also has artistic pretensions, as it’s based on Julio Cortázar’s La Continuidad de Los Parques (The Continuity of the Parks), a short story that is at once three stories that all are aware of one another in a place where fiction meets meta-fiction.
Man, I love this movie. I want you to love it, too.
Virginia (Jenny Wright from Near Dark) has become obsessed with Malcolm Brand’s (Randall William Cook, a special effects man whose career stretches from Laserblast to Peter Jackson’s Tolkein films) book I, Madman. Within this story within the story, the deformed Dr. Kessler (also Cook) is attempting to win over actress Anna Templar by killing people and adding their faces to his own.
The more our heroine reads the book, the more she realizes that it is real and that Kessler has entered our world. Virginia is exactly the kind of lady who would be content to sit in the back of a musty used book store, reading her way through seedy pulp novels and gothic horror fiction and dreaming of being part of those worlds until she truly is.
Bruce Wagner, who plays the piano player, used to be married to Rebecca De Mornay. He wrote Maps to the Stars, the book that Cronenberg based his movie on, as well as the graphic novel and TV series Wild Palms, co-produced and helped write Tracey Ullman’s State of the Union, has a story credit on A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriorsand wrote Paul Bartel’s Scenes from the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills. Even cooler, after interviewing Carlos Castaneda for Details magazine in 1994, Wagner became part of the mystic inner circle of the shaman, using the name of Lorenzo Drake.
Writer David Chaskin was also behind A Nightmare On Elm Street 2and The Curse, which has Ovidio G. Assonitis as an executive producer and Lucio Fulci as an associate producer and special optical effects designer.
This is one strange movie that sadly no one really remembers. It doesn’t have the body count that some slasher fans look for and it may be too dream logic for many — the ending is completely out of reality and beautifully poetic — and it may honestly be just too much a piece of artwork when it should have been commerce.
Maybe this isn’t a movie that everyone can love and that’s just fine. However, I do recommend you watch it and become part of its world. Just watch out. If reality is truly a continuity of parks, Kessler could become part of your world.
And be sure to join us as we examine Tibor’s career and films with our “Drive-In Friday” featurette.
Sometimes, the right movie comes along at just the right time. This would be that movie. Today would be that day.
Memorial Valley Massacre — also known as Valley of Death, also known as Son of Sleepaway Camp (complete with the music cues from Sleepaway Camp and hardcore penetration footage) — was released beyond the golden years of the slasher, but damn if it doesn’t make me just as happy as if it had been released between 1979 and 1982.
Evil land developer Allen Sangster (Cameron Mitchell!) has just broken ground on the Memorial Valley Campground and wants some teenagers to build it for him. Nothing happens at all for the first hour, with just one murder — that said, it’s the murder of an obese rich kid on a quad that I was hoping would die painfully and oh yes, he did — but by the end, all manner of slashtastic violence is unleashed.
Did I mention this movie has a cave boy? Yes, much like Encino Man but with death, this wolf child lives in the woods and doesn’t like all these rich folks knocking down his trees.
Beyond Mitchell, this is a junk film fan’s dream, with John Kerry (Dolemite), William Smith (Red Dawn, Terror in Beverly Hills, so many more) and Karen Russell (Hellbent). It’s directed by Robert Hughes, who would go on to make Zadar! Cow from Hell, Hunter’s Blood and Lusty Liaisons II before directing episodes of Mighty Morphing Power Rangers.
Seriously, outside of Don’t Go Near the Park, this is probably my favorite prehistoric people in public lands killing people movie. That said, I only know two of movies of this genre and I love them both.
You can watch this on Amazon Prime or do the right thing and order the Vinegar Syndrome reissue, which is packed with extras, including a 4K reconstruction of the film and interviews with actor John Kerry and director Robert C. Hughes. Rent it now and be assaulted by its soundtrack, which seems way too chipper for the carnage that unspools over the last twenty minutes of running time!
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