Tag Archives: 1991

Mutant Massacre 2 (1991)

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Imagine if Alien Beasts had a sequel, but one that Boogieman II handled, where you’re never sure if you’re seeing the same movie, a re-edit or whatever this is, a movie mainly having you stare at old monitors while a monotone voice repeats the lines several times. It’s a drone on a drone on a drone, and yet it wrapped me in a warm blanket and coaxed me into a feeling of comotose oneness, a place where I don’t think about the fact that doing five days of emotionally exhausting work only gives you two days off and more than most of those days is spent worrying about the next five days. Instead, let’s discuss monsters, mutants and the hum of old video camera footage. It’s better that way.

Carl J. Sukenick makes movies with titles like Lesbian Beasts 5000 AD, The Toxic Retards, Stamp Killer and Ninja Dream. These movies may all have reused footage from the one that preceded it, but who are we to tell Carol how to do what he does? He doesn’t come to the corner and knock the dick out of our mom’s mouth, after all.

Letterboxd describes this movie as follows: “Aliens are turning people into mutants. Opening scene features claymation.”

What a simple TV Guide one-line take on such insanity.

There is a Mutant Massacre, but again, both movies all come from Alien Beasts, a film — charitably a film — that has dialogue like “My friend Joe put on anti-radiation clothing and tried to stop the female enemy agent! My friend Joe, I repeat, put on anti-radiation clothing and tried to stop the female enemy agent from stealing the weapons from the base.”

I love that Carl got his dad, some fireworks and some friends to fight in the backyard and turned it into movies that morons like me ponder over and write thousands of words trying to ascribe some meaning to, in a world where meaning is a maelstrom and that making sense of things feels harder by the day. 

“After the meeting, Joe notified Carl that there were traitors on their mission. After the meeting, Joe notified Carl that there were traitors on their mission.”

How did Carl get a woman to put on a mask, take off her top, and, most importantly, show up in this? 

That said, I would rewatch this or another version of this over nearly anything currently playing in a theater.

Vampire Trailer Park (1991)

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The Twin Palms Trailer Park isn’t just a setting; it’s a buffet. Wilma and Buddy’s urban renewal plan via supernatural pest control is peak landlord villainy. By weaponizing John Devereux Laporte, they’ve turned a 17th-century aristocrat into a glorified hitman. A man who once owned plantations and lived in opulence is now reduced to hunting in a trailer park, his refined palate ruined by the gamey flavor of the elderly and the marginalized. His projectile vomiting isn’t just a gross-out gag. It’s his body literally rejecting the low-class blood he’s forced to consume. He’s a bulimic blue-blood in a Walmart world.

Between the vampire and a teenage crime duo, Buzz (Bently Tittle) and Jana (Blake Pickett), they’re clearing the place out and getting ready to sell the trailer park at a profit, even if every old person has to die.
How do you catch a vampire in a regional SOV horror movie? Well, if you’re this Florida-made wonder, you hire Jennifer Baiswell (Kathy Moran), a psychic who is joined by Detective Andrew Holt (Robin Shurtz). I have no idea how they’re getting paid, as their client has been killed by one of the bloodsuckers. And then there’s Aunt Hattie (Ethel Miller), who seems to drive our vampire anywhere they need to go.

Meanwhile, Jennifer has a psychic connection to her grandmother, often finding herself possessed by her. Can you be possessed by someone who isn’t dead yet? As for the vampire, he was a plantation owner and certainly a rich man, now left to be bulimic because he isn’t eating the best of food. Old people are kind of gamey, I guess. Just listen to what the dialogue has to say about him: “John Devereux Laporte, died 1746. Our job was to make sure he died again, this time for keeps. In life, Laporte was an obscenely wealthy Louisiana planter and slaveowner, the last of his line, a true aristocrat, a born leader of men. You know, a real asshole!”

There’s a hypnotic TV, SOV drone, original songs, way too much plot and a few laughs, some of which work.

Director Steve Latshaw would go on to make Jack-O, Return of the Killer Shrews and Biohazard: The Alien Force with Moran writing.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Dead Again (1991)

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I wear yellow glasses, and when I have them on, terms like adult thriller and neo-noir appear as they should: giallo.

Back in 1948, Margaret Strauss (Emma Thompson) is killed during a robbery, and her husband, Roman (Kenneth Branagh, who also directed this movie), is executed for the crime, but not before he whispers something to Gray Baker (Andy Garcia), a reporter.

In 1991, private detective Mike Church (Branagh) is looking into the identity of a woman whom he names Grace (also Thompson), who has appeared– mute, amnesiac and with nightmares — at the orphanage that raised him. Mike asks his friend Pete Dugan (Wayne Knight) to publish her info in the paper, while hypnotist Franklyn Madson (Derek Jacobi) tries to use his skills to bring her mind back. She doesn’t, but does remember a lot about the lives of Margaret and Roman. And oh yeah — Franklyn is really Frankie, the son of Margaret and Roman’s housekeeper Inga (Hanna Schygulla), Grace is artist Amanda Sharp who paints scissor-themed photos and — man, is this an exposition dump? — Frankie killed Margaret with scissors when Roman rebuffed his mother’s love. The scissors were put in Roman’s hand, and that brings us to now, as Franklyn tries the same thing on Mike and Amanda.

Roger Ebert said that this was similar to the works of Orson Welles and Alfred Hitchcock, saying, “Dead Again is Kenneth Branagh once again demonstrating that he has a natural flair for bold theatrical gesture. If Henry V, the first film he directed and starred in, caused people to compare him to Olivier, Dead Again will inspire comparisons to Welles and Hitchcock — and the Olivier of Hitchcock’s Rebecca. I do not suggest Branagh is already as great a director as Welles and Hitchcock, although he has a good start in that direction. What I mean is that his spirit, his daring, is in the same league. He is not interested in making timid movies.”

But hey, that ending, where — spoilers — a scissor sculpture kills the killer? Ever seen Tenebre? That said, I do like the twist that Mike was actually Margaret and Grace was Roman.

88 FILMS BLU-RAY RELEASE: The Cat (1991)

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A cat from outer space teams up with a young alien girl and her knight, along with a novelist named Wisely, to fight an alien that possesses people.

Sounds pretty simple, but from that description, you have no idea just how strange things can get. Based on Old Cat by Ni Kuang, this is like The Hidden with a cat. 

Wisely (Waise Lee) is a writer who comes into contact with a girl named Princess (Gloria Yip) and her cat, General (is this a Cat’s Eye reference?) and a knight named Errol (Lau Siu-ming). They’ve robbed an archaeological find called the Octagon, hoping to use it in their quest. As it is, Wisely is writing their story, even if he only knows them from afar. That soon changes as Wisley and his friend Li Tung (Lawrence Lau) help them battle the shape-shifting and possessing Star Killer.

This is berserk, filled with neon colors, goopy monsters, eyeball destruction, glittery cats, people set on fire and everything else you want from Hong Kong cinema. The scene where the cat battles a dog in a junkyard took six months to create. It’s just a few moments on screen.

If you like this Wisely story, check out The Seventh Curse, a perhaps even more deranged film. It shares the same director as this movie, Lam Ngai Kai. He also made The Ghost Snatchers, Erotic Ghost Story, and another of the oddest films ever made, Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky.

The limited edition 88 Films Blu-ray features a rigid slipcase with new art by Sean Longmore, a 40-page book, a premium art card, audio commentary by Frank Djeng, an interview with Gordon Chan, and an image gallery. You can get it from MVD.

88 FILMS BLU RAY RELEASE: Eleven Days Eleven Nights 2 (1991)

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Joe D’Amato and Rosella Drudi reteamed for this sequel in name only to Eleven Days Eleven Nights, even though the character of Sarah comes back. Now she’s played by Kristine Rose and has been married and separated and given the new job of the executor of the estate of Lionel Durrington (James Jackson), one of her past lovers and the richest man in Louisiana.

Guess what? This is actually the third film in the series because Sarah was the lead character in Top Model, which is also listed in plenty of places as Eleven Days, Eleven Nights 2. Look — it wouldn’t be Italian movies if it weren’t confusing.

There are four heirs and one after another, they all get with our heroine, who will determine which one is worthy of the money based on how good they are in bed, one supposes. Sonny is the only one with no interest in Sarah, even when she danced for him at a strip club, but that’s because his last girlfriend was abused in front of him by friend of the family Alfred, who is also trying to get the money.

Because Italian films really don’t care about how insane or twisted — actually, this is what they run toward, not from — things get, Sarah disguises herself as Sonny’s old lover and goes to the impotence institute and gets a rise out of him.

By the end, she realizes that no one deserves the money, so she comes up with a plan. She’ll write a book about the family and its secrets while they split the $500 million with a mystery person. They quickly sign and yeah, the mystery guy is the man who was supposed to be dead and we have a happy ending. We also have Laura Gemser in the blink and you’ll miss it role of Sarah’s jogging publisher and Ruth Collins from Lurkers, Doom Asylum and Prime Evil show up.

For a movie about people getting naked, D’Amato has plenty of women in sweaters show up. I’m all for this.

Also: This has also been listed as The Web of Desire and Eleven Days, Eleven Nights Part 4 because Italian movies are wonderful and confusing.

88 Films has released this in an incredible slipcase with art by Sean Longmore. It also has a booklet with notes by Calum Waddel and Rachael Nisbet. Inside, you’ll find a new 4K remaster from the original negatives, audio commentary by Eugenio Ercolani and Nanni Cobretti, interviews with Mark Thompson Ashworth, Piero Montanari and  Pierpaolo De Sanctis, and Italian opening and closing titles. You can get this on 4K UHD or Blu-ray from MVD.

UNSUNG HORRORS HORROR GIVES BACK 2025: The Great Satan at Large (1991)

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Each October, the Unsung Horrors podcast does a month of themed movies. This year, they will once again be setting up a fundraiser to benefit Best Friends, which works to save the lives of cats and dogs across America, giving pets second chances and providing them with happy homes.

Today’s theme: Hail Satan!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Adam Hursey is a pharmacist specializing in health informatics by day, but his true passion is cinema. His current favorite films are Back to the Future, Stop Making Sense, and In the Mood for Love. He has written articles for Film East and The Physical Media Advocate, primarily examining older films through the lens of contemporary perspectives. He is usually found on Letterboxd, where he mainly writes about horror and exploitation films. You can follow him on Letterboxd or Instagram at ashursey.

Before the internet, if you wanted your opinion on a matter to be known, you had limited options. You could write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper or periodical. You could go down to the town square, stand on a soap box, and annoy any and all passers by with your rant regarding the topic about which you were most passionate. Or you could book time on your local public access television station, free from the limitations and regulations of the Federal Communications Commission.

Probably my own previous experience with public television was the Wayne’s World sketch on Saturday Night Live. If my hometown had a public access station, I never knew about it when I was a kid. Eventually, I did discover one public access station in my hometown in Louisiana once I moved back from college. Every Friday night, this station would broadcast an auction of the most ridiculous items. Forget going out to the club or bar or whatever third space was around in the late 1990s. This show truly was must see TV. 

Apparently larger markets had stations devoted to public access. Thanks to AGFA, I recently discovered the show Decoupage!, a Los Angeles based program featuring the performance artist Craig Roose and his alter ego character Summer Caprice. A drag character, Summer Caprice would host a talk show where people as diverse as Susan Tyrell and Fred Willard would come through for unhinged interviews. And where else might you find Karen Black singing a cover of Nancy Sinatra’s Bang Bang with the band L7? Nowhere but public access television.

A more pertinent recent discovery is The Great Satan at Large, a program that aired a single time in Tucson, Arizona in 1991. In retrospect, perhaps the station airing it at 6 PM was not the best idea. Wanting to provide an alternative to the televangelism he saw on a lot of local stations, Lou Perfidio created a talk show where he portrayed Satan, complete with red suit, pitchfork, and devil horns, spewing the most profane statements imaginable while images of Hitler and swastikas were projected on a screen behind him. Like most talk shows, Satan had a panel of guests. God was there. And a perpetually masturbating court jester. There are special guests—a sadomasochistic couple who show up to perform some simulated sex acts. And here is where Perfidio landed in legal trouble with an obscenity charge as the female in the couple was only 17 years old (he later pled guilty to the delinquency of a minor). Meanwhile, it is also a call in show, and incels across Tucson dialed in, asking Satan to push the boundaries further and further.

The show is indeed pretty hellacious, and perhaps a better glimpse into Hell than even Ron Ormond and Estus W. Pirkle provided in their series of Christian exploitation films aimed at scaring viewers into accepting Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. After 45 minutes of The Great Satan at Large, I was on my knees asking for forgiveness. I kind of want to watch it again right now though. But that’s just the way sin is I guess.

Perfidio did appear on another program on the Access Tucson network entitled 666Israel, where a televangelist character and Satan have a…well…I’m not sure how to describe their interaction honestly. You just have to see it to believe it. And thanks to the wonders of the internet, you can. It’s right there at your fingertips, along with every other perversion you can imagine. Hail Satan indeed.

UNSUNG HORRORS HORROR GIVES BACK 2025: Battle Girl: The Living Dead in Tokyo Bay (1991)

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Each October, the Unsung Horrors podcast does a month of themed movies. This year, they will once again be setting up a fundraiser to benefit Best Friends, which works to save the lives of cats and dogs across America, giving pets second chances and happy homes.

Today’s theme: 1990s

After a meteor crashes into Japan, unleashing a drug called cosmo-amphetamine on the country, which means that most of Tokyo goes all Romero and starts eating human flesh. Only Keiko (Cutey Suzuki) can save those who are left from the punk gangs and Captain Fujioka, who is using this accident to create his own zombie army.

It’s Batoru Garu: Tokyo Crisis Wars!

Directed by Kazuo Komizu (Guzoo: The Thing Forsaken by God: Part I) and written by Daisuke Serizawa, this has a pro wrestling star in the lead. Suzuki was so popular that she had her own video game, Cutie Suzuki no Ringside Angel, and appears in this film and the Go Nagai movie The Ninja Dragon. She was also a gravure model. This refers to how  Japanese magazines used to have a front page known as the gravure page on the inside front cover. This page often featured gorgeous women in seductive poses. According to Gravure Kid, “While gravure and gravure idols specifically have found their origin in Japan, the overall concept can be likened to pin-up models or bikini idols overseas. Unlike mainstream pop idols, gravure idols are known for their more innocent and sensual image that emphasizes glamor, beauty, and sensuality without explicit nudity or sexual acts.”

In addition to Suzuki, her enemies Devil Masami, Shinobu Kandori and Eagle Sawai all appear as the human hunters, tracking down survivors for the army. This allows for fight scenes between women who were used to battling each other.

Is it great? Nope. Does it have attractive Japanese warrior women dressed post-apocalyptically and beating one another up? Yes. Therefore, it is better than great.

You can watch this on YouTube.

UNSUNG HORRORS HORROR GIVES BACK 2025: Children of the Night (1991)

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Each October, the Unsung Horrors podcast does a month of themed movies. This year, they will once again be setting up a fundraiser to benefit Best Friends, which works to save the lives of cats and dogs across America, giving pets second chances and providing them with happy homes.

Today’s theme: 1990s

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: John Connelly is a lifelong genre film fan living in New Jersey. His Letterboxd profile is https://letterboxd.com/johnconn/

In 1990, Fangoria Entertainment launched Fangoria Films, a short-lived production company. Founded in 1979 as a spinoff of science fiction film magazine Starlog, Fangoria is a brand deeply associated with a certain kind of Gen-X horror fandom. What Famous Monsters of Filmland was a generation earlier, Fangoria became for a generation raised on slasher films and Tom Savini effects.

Fangoria Films would produce three features between 1990 and 1992. The first of these efforts, Mindwarp, is a post-apocalyptic mutant thriller starring genre heavyweights Bruce Campbell and Angus Scrimm. The third would be Severed Ties, a creature feature starring a later-career Oliver Reed. The second is the focus of this piece, 1991’s Children of Night.

Children of the Night feels in certain ways like an adaptation of Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot. Or, perhaps, of John Farris or Charles L Grant, the kind of writers you might find in Paperbacks from Hell. The story begins with two teenage girls, eager to escape their small town. Together, they engage in a local tradition: symbolically washing the “dirt of this town” off of them by swimming together in a flooded church crypt. When one of the girls, Lucy, drops her crucifix, the pair accidentally awaken Czakyr, an ancient vampire with a penchant for virgin blood. Teacher Mark Gardner (played by Stargate SG-1’s Peter Deluise) and his friend, the local priest, must lead an effort to save the town from being overrun by the restless dead.

Children of the Night is directed by Tony Randel. Randel’s other credits include the only good Hellraiser sequel, Hellraiser 2 and Amityville: It’s About Time, the second-best Amityville sequel. The cast includes Karen Black — star of such horror classics as Burnt Offerings and Tobe Hooper’s remake of Invaders from Mars, but perhaps best known to this readership for Trilogy of Terror. The film also features a memorable turn by Juilliard-educated SNL alumnus Garrett Morris. Industry legends KNB Effects provided makeup effects for the movie’s bloodsuckers. There are many reasons why it is surprising this film is not a cult classic. If it were more widely available, I believe it would be. The first time I saw this film was on a bad VHS rip with Russian subtitles. The second time was on Tubi, where it is not currently available.

UNSUNG HORRORS HORROR GIVES BACK 2025: Basket Case 3: The Progeny (1991)

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Each October, the Unsung Horrors podcast does a month of themed movies. This year, they will once again be setting up a fundraiser to benefit Best Friends, which works to save the lives of cats and dogs across America, giving pets second chances and providing them with happy homes.

Today’s theme: The Sweetest Taboo!

“…Belial suffers through his brother’s neurosis, his girlfriend’s death, and the death of one of his children when the sheriff’s daughter drops it.”

Poor Belial. Three movies in, and he’s still trying to adequately express his emotions.

Last time, his brother Duane (Kevin Van Hentenryck) was trying to sew him back on. Now, Duane’s being held by Granny Ruth (Annie Ross), but allowed to go on the bus trip to see his ex, Doctor Hal Rockwell (Dan Biggers), so that Belial’s children with his girlfriend, Eve, can be born. They’ll also see her son, Little Hal (Jim O’Doherty), a multi-armed blob who can also practice health care.

There’s also a bigoted sheriff (Gil Roper) and his bad girl daughter, Opal (Tina Louise Hilbert), to deal with; the cops bust in at one point, guns blazing — realistic — and murder Eve. Then, they take Belial’s children as if they’re a practice run for late-child-stealing government operations. To fight back, Belial has an exoskeleton built that allows him to kill even more people and cause the sheriff to kill his own daughter. Then, they arrived at Renaldo, where they killed the host, and Granny says that freaks will no longer hide in the shadows.

This is a Frank Henenlotter film, and if you know what that means, you’re either going to love or hate this. I loved it, perhaps even more than the last one, because it just gives in and lets go.

As for the song “Personality”, being in this, “the owner reportedly gave them the rights for a dollar after he found out that Annie Ross would be singing it.” I want IMDbs to be true.

USA UP ALL NIGHT: Puppet Master III: Toulon’s Revenge (1991)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Puppet Master III was on USA Up All Night on May 24, 1996.

Directed by David DeCoteau and written by Charles Band, C. Courtney Joyner and David Schmoeller, Puppet Master III is not a sequel but instead a prequel, starring Guy Rolfe as the creator of the many puppets that we’ve come to know, love and maybe be afraid of, the legendary Andre Toulon.

When the story begins, Toulon and his wife, Elsa (Sarah Douglas), are performing puppet shows for children, incorporating anti-Third Reich messaging, such as when Six-Shooter attacks a Führer puppet. A German scientist named Dr. Hess (David Abercrombie) wants to create a formula for living puppets, while Major Kraus (Richard Lynch) wants to arrest him for treason. To prevent this, he takes him and his puppets, Tunneler and Pinhead. He also kills Elsa right after Toulon gives her a puppet with her likeness. That puppet becomes the Leech Woman, and we also get to see another creation named the Jester.

Hess isn’t horrible. He bonds with Toulon, who explains that each puppet was someone he knew and loved. Their strong will to live after death kept them residing within each of their creations. This is also the origin of Blade, who may be the most popular of the puppets.

I hate that the new movies make the puppets become Nazis instead of killing them. Let’s get back to the idea of this movie because it works so much better.