EDITOR’S NOTE: You can read another article about this movie here.
How did I get this far into SOV movies without more Donald Farmer?
The band Rikk-O-Shay is trying to get big in the heavy metal business and you know what would help? If their lead singer Michelle Shock (Carol Carr) wasn’t biting off their male groupies’ cocks and draining them of their blood. She tries the same thing to Derrick (Nikki Riggins), who is one of the band’s two backup singers and let’s just stop there and say that no other hard rock or metal band seemed to ever have dedicated singers outside of Motley Crue and their Nasty Habits backup singers and dancers (the fact that I knew they were named Donna McDaniel and Emi Canyn maybe says something about how much I read Hit Parader as a teenager). This already seems unrealistic.
Well, Michelle invites Derrick over for some demonic fellatio and he ends up nearly dying too, so they replace her with a new singer named Jamie Summers and she’s neither the Six Million Dollar Woman or the Brat. She’s played by Melissa Moore, Glaze from Vice Academy Part 2 and Angelfist. She’s soon overcome by the same demonic possession thanks to Michelle.
The fact that a full demon-suited monster is coming after a band because they screwed with their demonic leader, well, this is the kind of movie that seems like a Jack Chick pamphlet come to life. As I watch years after I was a Rip! obsessed lover of metal, well, I found it all so very charming. So much blood, so many puppet demons, Tennessee instead of the Sunset Strip, video in the place of film. This is at the center of so many of my loves — devil movies, SOV, heavy metal, gore — all within one great compilation. Rock on.
Joey and Toby are doing what all delinquents did in 1991 and that’s racing their BMX bikes instead of learning in school. Soon, they discover a miniature coffin with a statue of the demon Asteroth inside and even when a spirit that looks like a younger Reverend Henry Kane appears and tells them to just stop, then laugh and keep it. Where do you find a coffin in the Nevada desert? Anyways, later that night, Joey’s brother Josh has a seance party — seriously, what else is there to do but try and drive into the middle of nowhere to find a generator-powered Kyuss performance? — and like a bunch of kids playing Sabbath in their garage and sounding not that bad, this movie decides to riff on a cover of Night of the Demons.
Joey also is cool enough to have a poster of the remake of The Blob in his bedroom, so I was on his side.
Then this movie delivers what its body and eyeball-strewn credits promised: demonic possession and relentless gore. Seriously, a Fulci-worshipping eyeball decimation, heads literally rolling, a saw through the crotch and bodies literally shredded in half.
Director and writer Charles Lang also made High Desert, in which partying teens run into a biker gang. Also, IMDB lists the wrestler Taz in this and honestly, you’d think I’d remember if Taz was in this. I think whoever did the IMDB saw that a character named Rocky is played by someone named Tazz and went with it.
Stick through all the 90s dude talk and basketball scenes. You are about to see something special.
Before Alex Chandon made Cradle of Fear, he made this and wow, I love every bit of this grimy movie way better than that. It starts with a barbecue party being destroyed by shape-shifting Hare Krishnas who can become monstrous beings that feel like they belong up on the stage with Gwar but here they are destroying the suburbs.
Those monsters have just two days to worship their god Kalimah — the Kalimas are the basic beliefs of Muslims all around the world, so don’t come here for actual religious class — but they run into a biker gang given to giving chainsaw enemas — I mean, the same guy made Chainsaw Scumfuck — as well as a gang of BDSM enthusiasts and even some rednecks complete with a banjo player.
F bombs, British punk energy, monsters that look like they could parade about your town for Halloween, an up-close castration via garden shears, a Death Wish 3-looking gang, Frisbee-fu, a pole right to the face, bad acting and at least one part that had to be shot in a hotel room and I bet they ran out and didn’t use one of their own credit cards to pay for the damage to the room.
It’s cheap, messy and will take up about 1/6th the time that that new Avatar will waste and it cost a fraction of that movie’s budget that I am in no way good enough at math to comprehend. Most of the money on this was spent on FX and the rest on beer. As it should be.
Again, altohippiegabber has kept this alive and on YouTube.
Mickey Rooney famously decried the original Silent Night, Deadly Night. He said that the scum who made it should be run out of town for having sullied the sacredness of Christmas. Yet here he is, starring in the fifth installment. Hollywood is funny that way.
Neith Hunter, Clint Howard and Conan Yuzna — who played Kim, Ricky and Lonnie in Silent Night, Deadly Night 4: Initiation — make cameo appearances, but as far as I know, they aren’t the same characters.
One night in December, Derek Quinn finds a gift on his porch. His father yells at him for being awake so late and opens the gift himself, which has an orb shaped like Santa inside it. Soon, it unleashes some tentacles which strangle dad and make him fall down on a fireplace poker. His wife Sarah soon finds his body.
Two weeks later, Derek’s mom takes him to the toy store of Joe Petto (Rooney) — get it, JOE PETTO — to pick out a toy. Petto’s son Pino — yes, Pino Petto — is a weird duck who tries to get Derek to pick Larry the Larvae. Derek rejects the toys and Joe begins screaming at Pino, blaming him for the toy store failing. While all that’s going on, Noah Adams has followed the family and takes that worm toy, which he gives to his landlord. Larry the Larvae crawls into that dude’s mouth and out his eyeball, proving that this movie isn’t screwing around when it comes to holiday gore.
The next day, Sarah takes Derek to see Santa, who ends up being Noah. There’s also another gift on the porch and if someone didn’t want a gift any more than this kid, I have no idea who that person is.
So that gift ends up being rocket skates and a kid ends up getting hospitalized by them. And oh yeah — Pino gets beaten into oblivion by his dad. And oh yeah part two — Noah is really Derek’s real dad.
What follows next is a sequence where the babysitter and her boyfriend are accosted by a toy hand and then annihilated by an entire army of toys that basically dissects them. Joe steals Derek and Noah reveals that the old toymaker hurt a whole bunch of kids after his wife died by selling them toys that would hurt them.
As they get to the toy store, Noah is knocked out and Pino reveals that he is a robotic boy created by Joe to replace his dead son, but that he can never live up to being a real boy. Joe beats him to the point that he dies time and time again, but now he wants Sarah to be his mom, so he sexually assaults her. Yep. This movie is taking no prisoners.
The end of this movie is completely out of control. The robotic kid — who has an asexual body like a Ken doll — gets chopped in half and his head stomped on, as he cries for his father. You really have to see it to believe it.
Director Martin Kitrosser has had an interesting career, writing starting as a script supervisor on the first Friday the 13thbefore eventually writing the third and fifth films in that series. He also wrote Meatballs Part II and has gone on to be a script supervisor for nearly all of Quentin Tarantino’s films, with his credit in Once Upon a Time…In Hollywood listing him as Martin “The Cobra” Kitrosser.
Brian Yuzna, who produced Re-Animator, was also on board for this. The effects, by Screaming Mad George, are incredible, with tons of gore and some really inventive deadly toys. Actually, this whole movie is way better than it has any right being, seeing as how it’s the fifth movie in the series. To be honest, it’s several cuts above the other ones all put together.
You can watch this for free — with commercials — on Tubi.
You can also get it on the Vestron Video Silent Night Deadly Night set which you can buy from Diabolik DVD.
This movie has become a holiday tradition in our home, a short documentary by George King about the Townsends, a family that opens its Elvis loving God-fearing home to their Atlanta neighbors, and we get to meet everyone from Grandma Margaret, who loves the King so much that she has a Fantasy Room with lit-up black velvet paintings and Gloria, who flirts in line and shows off the ring her ex-husband gave her but she’s not getting back together with him. Then there’s Raymond, keeping order outside and telling people to not make any backtalk while fully strapped with a gun and plenty of seasonal goodwill.
The family has been asked to leave Atlanta for Charlotte, NC and you wonder why. Is it because thousands of people line up outside their house every Christmas? Could it be that they told visitors that the power company will give you back the money you spent lighting up your house? Who can say.
What I love is that everyone smokes, non-stop, even when they’re making cookies or a Nativity with a candy Jesus that someone is going to eat. Yet what I love the most is that this movie never makes fun of them or calls them rednecks or denigrates the South. They’re good people who open their home to others and give a part of themselves that other families can take home with them. Even on their last night, they’re giving the lights away and trying to part with some of the decorations. You can say that this is kitsch and look down on these folks, but that makes you the fool.
This movie makes my holiday season right.
You can watch this on the best movie YouTube channel there is, White Slaves of Chinatown 3D.
Based on a book by John Russo, this was directed by Steven Fierberg and had a script by Jeffrey Delman (Stuck On You!, Deadtime Stories), Thomas Rendon and Evan Dunsky (the creator of Nurse Jackie). It has Tony Todd as Makoute, an evil voodoo priest transforming his workforce into zombies. I mean, it’s cheaper than a health plan.
Gina Gershon plays one of his employees and man, she has some great stories to tell. For example, before this movie, she had just gotten back from New Orleans where she said she met a weird voodoo girl” and came home to a black cat just as the script came. With some reflection, she said that’s not the best way to choose a movie. She also claims that one of the producers didn’t want any chanting in the movie, saying “I don’t want any of that voodoo shit in here.” She asked him why the movie was called Voodoo Dawn.
This also has Raymond St. Jacques, who became the first black actor on a TV series when he was on Rawhide. There’s also Theresa Merritt from The Wiz, the recently deceased Kirk Bailey who was Kevin “Ug” Lee on Salute Your Shorts and Gloria Reuben from ER.
This is much closer to the pre-Romero zombies of White Zombie, so go in with that mindset. And keep in mind that this is not the 1998 Voodoo Dawn which has Roseanna Arquette and Michael Madsen.
Silence of the Lambs is a movie that more intelligent writers than me have discussed, so let me speak on where it was made instead.
Yes, that really in Quantico, Virginia and Clay County, West Virginia, but a lot of this movie was made throughout Pittsburgh, including scenes at the Old Allegheny County Jail (our jail looks like a castle), Hannibal Lecter’s (Anthony Hopkins) impromptu cage being inside the Soldiers and Sailors Museum and Memorial (you can go there every year before Halloween and watch the movie) as well as locations in Canonsburg, the Bradford Court apartments in Crafton, the Grieg Funeral Home in Rural Valley, a house in Glenwillard, Moxley’s Drugs being located in Homestead and Buffalo Bill’s (Ted Levine) house in Perryopolis, which is now a bed and breakfast where you can stay in.
Here’s what’s wild. Levine is from Bellaire, Ohio and he was amazed to discover that the house being considered for his home in the movie was not only in the town where he grew up, but next door to the house of his high school girlfriend.
Based on the book by Thomas Harris and adapted for the screen by Ted Tally, this movie was such a big deal all over the place when it opened in 1991 but man, it has become even a bigger deal here. It even has a cameo for George Romero as a janitor, that’s how much it embraced being made in Pittsburgh.
If you ask me — and you just might — I love Manhunter more than this, but I can admit that everything about this movie is quite good, including the acting from Hopkins, Levine and Jodie Foster. You know who doesn’t agree with that? John Carpenter, who said that the movie focused too much on Clarice and that he could have made it “much more frightening and gripping.”
At first, this was going to be a direct-to-video release as studio executives felt that the film’s subject matter was too gross for a mass audience. Then there was the idea that it win some awards — more on that in a second — and Orion Pictures banned Fangoria from covering the making of the movie.
In closing, allow me to give you some trivia-contest winning info: Silence of the Lambs is one of three films to win all five major Academy Awards, which are Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress and Best Screenplay. The other two are It Happened One Night and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
Directed by Hiroaki Yoshida, whose Twilight of the Cockroaches had an English translation by Robotech remixer Carl Macek and inspired Joe’s Apartment, Iron Maze was co-written by Yoshida and Tim Metcalfe, who wrote Kalifornia, Revenge of the Nerds and Fright Night 2. What a resume! It was produced by Oliver Stone, whose name is high above everyone else on the VHS box art.
It’s all based In a Grove by Ryûnosuke Akutagawa, the writer of Rashomon.
It’s set in Corinth, Pennsylvania, a town that does not exist but was the setting for the soap opera Loving. Junichi Sugita (Hiroaki Murakami) has bought a local steel mill and plans on tearing it down to make a theme park — hey, Kennywood is ten minutes away if this is set in Pittsburgh — but he’s found near brain-dead inside his factory. Is it the steelworkers, led by former boss Jack Ruhle (J.T, Walsh) and Mayor Peluso (John Randolph), angry that they’re about to have to work minimum wage jobs? Or is it hotel worker Barry Mikowski (Jeff Fahey) who was insulted by Sugita and has been taking it out by sticking it to the man’s American wife Chris (Bridget Fonda)?
It’s Gung Ho with steel instead of cars and sex instead of hilarity.
This was shot in Braddock, the home of Martin and John Fetterman’s adopted hometown. This really gets across just how bad the dead mills made Pittsburgh amongst its surreal scenes. Fonda’s character is from Harmony, but I bet it’s really Zelienople and she doesn’t want to teach Japanese people how to pronounce that. Also: 1991 Bridget Fonda is a good argument for intelligent design.
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.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This was on the site on December 23, 2021. It’s back because Ronin Flix has released it on blu ray. You can get it now from MVD.
Shot as Panga by director Sean Barton (who only directed this one movie, but has edited many more) on location in South Africa in 1989, this film was added to the Curse series of films. None of these movies are connected and you know, that’s kind of how we like it. You can call it Witchcraft, Blood Sacrifice or Curse III: Panga, if you’d like.
Geoff Armstrong (Andre Jacobs) and his wife Elizabeth (Jenilee Harrison, Cindy Snow from Three’s Company and Jamie Ewing Barnes on Dallas) are running a large sugar plantation in East Africa. Things go wrong when the sacrifice of a goat by the locals get interrupted and a witch doctor calls a demon from the sea that kills everyone in the Armstrong family except Elizabeth.
Elizabeth gets help from Dr. Pearson (Christopher Lee) and to break the curse she must lure the witch doctor into the sugar cane fields and set him on fire. Seems like a good plan, I guess.
The fish man is designed by The Fly special FX artist Chris Walas, so this has that going for it. It’s not really all that exciting, nor is at as devoted to being entertaining weirdness like the first two films in the Curse non-series.
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