Tag Archives: 1992

ARROW 4K UHD RELEASE: Hellraiser: Quartet Of Torment

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We’ve all seen Hellraiser, I hope, by now, but if this movie has eluded your collection, as it once did mine, this Arrow Box set is incredible and will fit the bill. As the Cenobites say, “We have such sights to show you.”

Hellraiser (1987): Horror movies don’t scare me. Not anymore. Some of them disturb me, like the cannibal films. But only one still kind of scares me. And that would be Hellraiser.

There was a time, before the eight sequels to the film and BDSM became well-known fodder on shows like Law and Order that Hellraiser seemed like it came from some alien land more than its true origins. The monsters of the piece, the Cenobites, looked like nothing we’d never seen before, all leather, blood and open festering wounds. The idea that sex and pain could be united wasn’t trite back in 1987, so it’s difficult to convey the power and fear this film had. It feels wrong. It feels dirty. It feels evil.

How this movie was made for $900,000 blows my mind. It looks lush and gauzy at times and at others, like when we see Frank’s heart and veins being formed, positively nightmarish. It shouldn’t be this good — it was Clive Barker’s directorial debut after seeing two of his stories, Underworld and Rawhead Rex, get made into films he didn’t agree with. What kind of deal with the devil did this guy make to turn out something so perfect on his first try?

The misconception that many people have of this film is that the Cenobites are the villains or the horrific part of the film. If we go to the poster for proof, it says “Demon to some. Angel to others.” Pinhead and his gang are there to move the story forward and certainly look frightening, but they are bound by the rules of Hell and the Lament Configuration, the puzzle box that sets the events of the film in motion. Matter of factly, these rules aren’t truly defined yet — is Pinhead a tortured soul stuck in the wheels of some hellish bureaucracy? Who created these boxes? None of this matters — “You solved the box. We came.” Yes, it can be that simple. You don’t need to know all of those answers right now. When Frank buys the box and Morocco and solves it, he gets the answer to limitless pleasure and the drug of all drugs — as Frank says, “I thought I’d gone to the limits. I hadn’t. The Cenobites gave me an experience beyond limits. Pain and pleasure, indivisible.”

That’s one of the real horrors of this film: people will do anything to chase a high. That high may be drugs. It may be pain. It may be a sexual experience that makes the mundane life you’re stuck in — like Julia, bored with a suburban life with a husband she never really wanted in the first place. The chance to be with Frank again, no matter if she has to seduce and kill for him, is everything. Notice that as he gains more muscle and skin with each drop of blood, she becomes more and more attractive, her skin gaining new color.

The main horrors of this film are family and other people. The Cotton family had issues before the Cenobites took one step out of Hell. The most horrific part of the film comes when Frank wearing Larry’s skin, stares at his niece in a moment of sexual longing and says, “Come to daddy.” Sure, there are horror film trappings, but this type of morally bankrupt behavior isn’t something confined to the cinema. So much of the betrayal and madness of Frank and Julia could happen. It happens every day.

Hellraiser exists on the border of reality. It’s fantastic, but it feels like it could happen. It’s the dangerous fiction that could overwhelm your truth if you go too far. In that it’s quite similar to Barker’s Candyman, which posits that saying the name of its titular character three times in a mirror is all it takes for him to come for you. That seems too unrealistic, but do you want to take the chance? And much like the black leather garbed creatures in this film, Candyman must adhere to a dream logic that only comes into our reality when you allow the genie from the bottle.

Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988): Most of the cast and crew of Hellraiser returned to make this movie and you know, despite the reduced budget, the dark tone of this movie and continuation of the themes from the original makes this one of the better horror sequels.

Kirsty Cotton (Ashley Laurence, returning from the first movie) is admitted to a psychiatric hospital where Doctor Channard and his assistant Kyle MacRae listen to her story. She begs them to destroy the bloody mattress her stepmother Julia Cotton (Clare Higgins) died on but Channard ends up being a man who has been obsessed with the Lament Configuration. After a patient slices himself open upon that cursed object, Julia comes back to our reality.

Channard and Julia have been luring mentally disturbed men to his home so that Julia can feed off of them. Meanwhile, Kirsty meets Tiffany, a girl skilled at solving puzzles who is forced by the doctor and his demented mistress to open the gates of Hell with the infernal box at the heart of this story.

Within the dimension of Leviathan, the humans are more duplicitous than the demonic Cenobites that carry out the orders of their master.

Barker had plans to show how each of the Cenobites had once been human and how their own vices lead to their becoming angels to some, demons to others. You’d think that with the success of the first film they could have had a little more money here.

Another intriguing notion is that Julia was originally supposed to rise from the mattress at the end of the movie as the queen of hell and be the recurring character. As the first movie gradually became a success, Pinhead ended up becoming the favorite.

Back in the video rental days, I may have brought this home more than twenty times. I was obsessed by the look of Leviathan’s dimension and the strange sound that it makes — Morse code for God — blew my teenage mind. It still holds up today, despite a litany of lesser sequels.

Hellraiser III: Hell On Earth (1992): Anthony Hickox made both Waxwork movies, so that qualified him to take on the third trip to visit the Cenobites, which was necessary as the two films that had already come out were huge rental successes.

Series creator Clive Barker reprised his role as executive producer, though he was largely uninvolved until post-production, while Tony Randel at least contributed the story.

At the end of the last film, as Pinhead tried to reclaim his humanity, he finds himself split into his demonic form and as the limbo-trapped British Army Captain Elliot Spencer. As for Pinhead, he and the Lament Configuration remain within the Pillar of Souls that appeared as the last movie finished.

The pillar is bought as art by a club owner and when one of his sexual conquests is dragged into it and absorbed, Pinhead emerges and demands more blood. Without the influence of Spencer, Pinhead has become true evil and is using our reality for his own pleasure, which is against the regimented laws that the Cenobites live by.

Ashley Laurence returns for a cameo, as her Kirsty character explains the events of the previous films. And hey — Armored Saint plays the club!

Between the Barbie and CD Cenobites and the more American locale, this film suffers in comparison to the first two movies. That said, when viewed against what was to come, it ends up being pretty decent. The idea that Pinhead lost his faith in humanity after war rings true even many decades later.

Hellraiser: Bloodline (1996): Directed by Kevin Yagher and Joe Chappelle, this is the last Hellraiser to play theaters, only has one returning character in Pinhead (Doug Bradley), the last to involve Clive Barker and is both a prequel and a sequel.

Yagher left the production after Miramax demanded new scenes be shot. This is a theme that will appear in nearly every 90s horror movie that Miramax got their weird creepy hands on. The new scenes and re-shoots changed several characters’ relationships, gave the film a happy ending, introduced Pinhead earlier and cut 25 minutes of the original cut Yagher turned in. These were enough changes that he was able to use the Alan Smithee credit.

Dr. Paul Merchant has designed a space station to be in the shape of a giant Lament Configuration. Yes, within four movies, the Hellraiser franchise does what it took Jason Voorhees ten to arrive at. Yes, we’re in space. And we’re also going back in time, as Merchant’s ancestor creates the original box that starts all of these demonic events.

The Merchant bloodline has been cursed ever since they helped open the gates to Hell. There’s also a new Cenobite, Angelique, who tempts people and this puts her into conflict with Pinhead, who only believes in pain. There’s also a Merchant ancestor in 1996 that has created The Elysium Configuration, an anti-Lament Configuration that creates perpetual light and will close the pathways to Hell forever.

Bruce Ramsay ended up playing all of the Merchants and I kind of like that the end of this movie attempts to close the story. How crazy is it that this was Adam Scott’s film debut?

As you can imagine, Arrow has gone wild on this, packing this set. You get brand new 4K restorations of all four films from the original camera negatives by Arrow Films, as well as a 200 page hardback book, Ages of Desire, with new writing from Clive Barker archivists Phil and Sarah Stokes. There’s also a limited edition layered packaging featuring brand new Pinhead artwork.

Here are the extras by movie:

Hellraiser

Brand new audio commentary featuring genre historian and unit publicist Stephen Jones with author and film critic Kim Newman, an archival audio commentary with writer/director Clive Barker and actor Ashley Laurence moderated by Peter Atkins, another archival audio commentary with writer/director Clive Barker, a brand new 60-minute discussion about Hellraiser and the work of Clive Barker by film scholars Sorcha Ní Fhlainn (editor of Clive Barker: Dark Imaginer) and Karmel Kniprath, a brand new visual essay celebrating the Lament Configuration by genre author Alexandra Benedict (The Beauty of Murder), a brand new 60-minute discussion between acclaimed horror authors Paula D. Ashe and Eric LaRocca celebrating the queerness of Hellraiser and the importance of Clive Barker as a queer writer, a brand new visual essay exploring body horror and transcendence in the work of Clive Barker by genre author Guy Adams (The World House), newly uncovered extended EPK interviews with Clive Barker and stars Andrew Robinson, Clare Higgins, Ashley Laurence, and effects artist Bob Keen, shot during the making of the movie , with a new introduction by Stephen Jones and Kim Newman, the original 1987 press kit, archival interviews with Sean Chapman, Doug Bradley and Stephen Thrower on the abandoned score by his band Coil, trailers, TV ads, an image gallery and drafts of the screenplay.

Hellbound: Hellraiser II

Brand new audio commentary featuring Stephen Jones and Kim Newman, archival audio commentary with director Tony Randel, writer Peter Atkins and actor Ashley Laurence, another audio commentary with director Tony Randel and writer Peter Atkins, a brand new 80-minute appreciation of Hellbound, the Hellraiser mythos and the work of Clive Barker by horror authors George Daniel Lea (Born in Blood) and Kit Power (The Finite), a brand new appreciation of composer Christopher Young’s scores for Hellraiser and Hellbound: Hellraiser II by Guy Adams, archival on-set interviews, behind the scenes footage, archival interviews with Sean Chapman, Doug Bradley, barker, Randel, Keen and Atkins, trailers, TV ads and an image gallery.

Hellraiser III: Hell On Earth

Alternative unrated version (contains standard definition inserts), brand new audio commentary by Stephen Jones and Kim Newman, archival audio commentary with screenwriter Peter Atkins, archival audio commentary with director Anthony Hickox and actor Doug Bradley, previously unseen extended interviews with Clive Barker and Doug Bradley, FX dailies, archival interviews Paula Marshall, Anthony Hickox and Doug Bradley, a trailer and an image gallery.

Hellraiser: Bloodline

Brand new audio commentary featuring screenwriter Peter Atkins, with Stephen Jones and Kim Newman, a brand new featurette exploring the Cenobites’ connection to goth, fetish cultures and BDSM, a newly uncovered workprint version of the film, providing a fascinating insight into how it changed during post production — this is worth the price of the entire set! — as well as an archival documentary on the evolution of the franchise and its enduring legacy, featuring interviews with Scott Derrickson, Rick Bota and Stuart Gordon, an archival appreciation by horror author David Gatwalk of Barker’s written work, from The Books of Blood to The Scarlet Gospels and a trailer.

You can get this on 4K UHD or blu ray from MVD.

UNSUNG HORRORS HORROR GIVES BACK 2024: Legend of the Roller Blade Seven (1992)

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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 is working to save the lives of cats and dogs all across America, giving pets second chances and happy homes.

Today’s theme: Karen Black

Donald G. Jackson made The Demon Lover while working in a Detroit car factory before heading out to Hollywood to make movies like I Like to Hurt People and Hell Comes to Frogtown. He met up with Scott Shaw and together, they invented something they called zen filmmaking, which is all about making movies with no screenplay, just an idea.

Together, they made several end of the world rollerblade movies — Roller Blade, Roller Blade Warriors: Taken by Force, The Roller Blade Seven, The Legend of the Rollerblade Seven and Return of the Roller Blade Seven — and this is in the middle of them. And oh yeah, Rollergator.

Hawk Goodman (Shaw) has been sent on a mission by Father Donaldo (Jackson) to rescue Sister Sparrow Goodman from Saint Offender (Joe Estevez) and the Pharaoh (William Smith), a man who rules over the dead world of the future time. Inside the Wheelzone, most travel by rollerblade or skateboard. Yet Hawk has embraced the two wheel Harley.

To learn all he will face, Hawk must trip out with Tarot (Karen Black), learn to skate and then take his samurai sword and join up with Kabuki (Claudia Scholz), the banjo playing Axxx Man (Joe Coolness) and Stella Speed (Allison Coleman, who would later in life be a producer and director of reality shows like America’s Next Top Model). They will battle rollerblade ninjas, the Black Knight (you guessed it, Frank Stallone), the metal-clad Kabuki Devil (Don Stroud) and so many more enemies.

This footage from The Rollerblade Seven was combined with footage from the sequel, Return of the Roller Blade Seven, and played as Legend of the Roller Blade Seven on USA Up All Night. And yes, that’s Rhonda Shear as Officer Daryl Skates. Not to mention Jill Kelly as Deserette and several half nude women as O’ffenderettes and wheelzone warriors.

I often advise taking drugs during movies but this one may need you to be sober. There’s one scene where Hawk keeps pulling out of the same parking lot eight times in a row. Even if you’re totally clean, you’re going to be high by the end.

“You’re going into the wheel zone? There is so much danger!”

“So much danger?”

“So much danger!”

“So much danger?”

“So much danger!”

You know how in old 1980s adult films they’d try a plot and you’d wonder when the sex would happen? This is that without any sex to get in the way. It’s just swords, martial arts, religion, butts, skating, parking lots, punks, face paint, some more butts and repeated dialogue. But yeah, William Smith in a wheelchair being evil, mushrooms with Karen Black and the neglected Stallone and Estevez brothers.

I want action figures of every character in this movie.

You can watch this on YouTube with all of the nudity…

An edited version…

And the unseen scenes.

UNSUNG HORRORS HORROR GIVES BACK 2024: Kung Fu Rascals (1992)

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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 is working to save the lives of cats and dogs all across America, giving pets second chances and happy homes.

Today’s theme: Physical Media

Here’s the difference between physical media and watching this on streaming. Streaming will not have a menu that has animated mouths on all the characters so they can sing the theme song.

Kung Fu Rascals was directed by Steve Wang, who also made The Guyver, Drive, Guyver: Dark Hero, Sirens of the Deep and episodes of Power Rangers Lost Galaxy and Kamen Rider: Dragon Knight. He also has worked on the FX crews on movies like The Monster Squad, Predator, DeepStar Six, Gremlins 2, Arena, the Underworld films and so many more.

He also wrote this with Troy Fromin and Johnnie Saiko and, as he played a role in the Super 8 trailer that led to this movie, he ended up acting in it as Chow Chow Mein. He and his friends Lao Ze (Troy Fromin) and Reepo (Johnnie Saiko) have to stop Dar Ling The Bamboo Man from destroying their village. Just like a sentai show, Bamboo Man (Ted Smith) sits in a throne room and orders around his underling Raspmutant the Mad Monk (Wyatt Weed). Then, they send out new monsters and ninjas to fight our three heroes. As for the evil sheriff, that is not Primus’ Les Claypool but the man who wrote the music for Guyver: Dark Hero  — thanks Outlaw Vern — and an Imperial Torture Master (Matt Rose). The bad guys are really bad. The good guys are really good. The humor? Really silly.

$43,000 has never been better spent than it was in the making of this movie, one that closes with giant stone monsters fighting on a beach. And hey — those are the frogs from Hell Comes to Frogtown being brought back and who can blame Wang, because they look great.

In a perfect world, there would have been ten of these movies. Have you ever been forced to have a playdate as a kid with some other child whose mom works with your mom and you don’t want to go and then you get there and not only do they have all the action figures you don’t but also understand their file cards and motivations and you end up having a great time? Well, that’s how this movie feels.

Visual Vengeance has just released this film, the first time it’s ever come out on blu ray. It has tons bonus features, including commentaries, rare BTS footage and a brand new feature-length documentary on the making of the film. Here’s what you get:

  • Director-supervised SD master from original tape elements
  • The Making of Kung Fu Rascals: Brand New Feature Length Documentary
  • The Reunion of the Three Rascals
  • Commentary with director Steve Wang and actors Johnnie Saiko, Troy Firman and Ted Smith and composer and actor Les Claypool III
  • Commentary with Kung Fu Rascals superfans Justin Decloux and Dylan Cheung
  • Steve Wang & Les Claypool III meet again
  • Chris Gore Interview: Distributing Kung Fu Rascals on VHS
  • Behind The Scenes video diaries
  • Original Kung Fu Rascals Super 8 short film
  • Steve Wang Short Film: Code 9
  • Complete Film Threat Video #6 BTS Article
  • Stills and behind the scenes galleries
  • Visual Vengeance Trailer
  • “Stick Your Own” VHS Sticker Set
  • Reversible Sleeve Featuring Original VHS Art
  • Folded mini-poster
  • 2-sided insert with alternate art
  • 12 page mini comic book
  • Limited Edition Slipcase by The Dude

If you love kung fu, weird cinema, low budget films or just want an incredible physical media release, you can’t go wrong with this. Get it now from MVD or Diabolik DVD!

UNSUNG HORRORS HORROR GIVES BACK 2024: The Ghosting (1992)

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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 is working to save the lives of cats and dogs all across America, giving pets second chances and happy homes.

Today’s theme: Ghosts

This film’s director and writer, Walt Hefner, got out of the Air Force and went right into working at Spokane, Washington’s State Theater. He worked hard and eventually owned his own theaters and in 1972, opened the Starlite Drive-In. According to this article from the Inlander, Hefner showed some pretty great triple features, such as  I Spit on Your Grave, I Dismember Mama and Snuff all in one night in 1976.

In 1991, Hefner sold his drive-in to a theater chain and used the money to make this movie, produced and filmed in Spokane with an all-local crew. Where did this debut? The Newport Cinemas, built over the drive-in that Hefner once owned, four years after it was filmed.

Ralph (Charlie Shores), Amy (Pamela Kingsley), Jeanie (Jennifer Salmi) and Steve Jessup (Jason Jackson) are stuck. He can’t find a job and is angry that he has to live with his father and have his wife make the money. Then Amy learns that their church needs a caretaker, which gives Ralph something to do other than have flashbacks to Vietnam.

Then he hits Dan Marcum (Bill Hutton) with his van.

Marcum just escaped a mental hospital after years of care. He’d killed his family in that same church where the Jessups now live and his spirit won’t leave Dan alone.

So yes, this sounds like it’s inspired by every 80s haunted house movie — The Shining with the axe and caretaker parts — but what Hefner made is so strange that it begs to be seen. Ralph and Amy seem ready to murder one another at any moment, while Jeanie hurt her legs in an accident that her mother forces her to get past and when she finally gets over it and prepares to go on a date, the ghost of Marcum chains her legs and forcibly spreads them apart. This is a clothed scene but feels like such a violation and her trauma is not ignored. It all happens while one of those strange monkey with cymbal toys goes nuts. It’s terrifying.

Steve seems codependent on his dad. At times, they seem like the only two people who care about each other and then Ralph is abusing him. This all ends with Steve trapped in his room as a low budget version of Gozer mauls him and Ralph can’t figure out how to break the glass window into his son’s room. Who has a glass door for their bedroom? And who lit this scene, because the fog and pink light inside that haunted place is great!

Speaking of family issues, three years after this was made, Jennifer Salmi’s father Albert — the actor who appeared in Caddyshack, Superstition and Empire of the Ants — was served with divorce and restraining order from his wife Roberta. Suffering from clinical depression, he went to her house anyway and shot her before killing himself.

This also has the baptism pool being confused for a pool, explorations of the haunted church, burning baby dolls and a date scene at a movie theater that has no dialogue and seems to go on forever while farting synth plays. As I watched this scene, I was amazed that the movie theater workers had no gloves on and were just about bare handing the popcorn. No one cared in 1987, when this was made, about germs.

Amy does. Ralph gets in bed covered with maggots and acts like it’s not a big deal. Rightly, she goes insane screaming at him and he follows that up by having his son get hit by a car, which is bad guy karma. There’s also a scene where someone gets into a tub filled with snakes and so many poems.

Hefner couldn’t get anyone to pick this movie up. He would have in the early 1980s, as no one would care that it seems like the film stock changes and it sometimes appears shot on video. But in 1987? No, sadly. He kept all the VHS copies in the church he bought to film this in, along with his camera equipment and it all went up in flames in 2017.

Before that, he shot a few other movies. Shooting Grunts is his autobiographical story of how was a combat cinematographer in Vietnam and was seriously wounded at the battle of Khe Sanh.

Then, there’s 2008’s Bad Ghost. I can’t find a copy but it seems like a re-edit of The Ghosting, starring most of the same cast: Salmi is Jeanie, Keith Lee Morris is her boyfriend, Hutton is Dan (called Crazy Dan in this) and Edna Caldwell plays Edna, his wife, a character not in the original movie. The one photo on IMDB of Salmi looks a bit older than she was in The Ghosting. I need this movie.

I’m not saying that this is a good movie but if you know the kind of things that obsess me, you know that I loved it and will recommend it to you.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Thanks to The Schlock Pit for so much info that I used in this review.

UNSUNG HORRORS HORROR GIVES BACK 2024: Black Ice (1992)

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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 is working to save the lives of cats and dogs all across America, giving pets second chances and happy homes.

Today’s theme: Michael Ironside

It’s still early fall as I write this and the last thing I want to think about is snow or icy roads and here I am, watching a movie shot in Winnipeg where huge snow piles are all over the place.

Called A Passion for Murder in the UK, this stars Russian actress Joanna Pacula as Vanessa, a government agent who is sleeping with a married politician named Eric Weaver (Arne Olsen).  After they have a fight, he’s killed when she shoves him out a window and she has to go on the run, as she’s left out in the cold by her black ops bosses. The only person that can help her is Ben Shorr (Michael Nouri), a cab driver.

Directed by Neill Fearnley, whose career was mostly in TV, and written by Olsen and John Alan Schwartz — the Conan le Cilaire who wrote as well as the Alan Black who wrote Faces of Death — the main reason I watched this was Michael Ironside, who plays Quinn, Vanessa’s boss who tells her that she’s a loose end that needs to be killed.

Ben, an author who can’t get a break, has to drive her from Detroit to Seattle, all on back roads. Those roads are all in Canada and man, they’re cold. And kind of boring. There is a sex scene in a rest stop, where Nouri bends Pacula over a sink and someone accidentally walks in.

The real star here is Michael Nouri’s fake long hair. It looks like they threw yarn at him and just gave up. You can’t stop looking at it.

I just wanted Ironside to kill everyone.

You can watch this on Tubi.

UNSUNG HORRORS HORROR GIVES BACK 2024: Hell Spa (1992)

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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 is working to save the lives of cats and dogs all across America, giving pets second chances and happy homes.

Today’s theme: 1990s

If Killer Workout and Death Spa weren’t enough for you, Hell Spa is a shot on video 1990s film (shot in 1992, released in 1992) that has the best line I’ve heard in a long time: “There’s someone out there and they stole my beans!”

A woman is stalked and killed, at which point we see a computer monitor that tells us that her children, Maggie (Betsy Ryan) and Marcia (Heidi Gross) have to also be murdered so that they’re aren’t any loose ends.

Mr. Ex (Ron Waldron) is such a strange character. He buys into mom and pop shops by giving people their fondest dreams, then begins to kill their customers and finally the owners, like a combination of Needful Things and Blockbuster to your favorite local video store in the actual 1990s that no one remembers, feeding nostalgia into a beast that destroyed the actual stores that kept interesting movies on the shelf. Mr. Ex is something like a vampire or Man In Black or demon and the movie never really explains his plan of buying auto parts stores and gyms. It’s an odd Satanic business plan, but it seems like he’s getting somewhere with it.

The Hell Spa is owned by Rona Benson (Deirdre West), an older woman who is losing ground to a corporate gym that destroys every small workout place in its way. Mr. Ex shows up and offers an interesting plan. He will save her beloved gym, make her look young again and she can sign people up at her gym for free and lose weight, as long as they sign up for life. Plan Ex, as it’s called, is on all the scales in the form of stickers, which seems kind of budget for someone who is either a monster from another dimension or some higher form of demon, but who am I to tell Mr. Ex how to do what he does.

Catherine Clark (Lisa Bawdon) is the editor of a local newspaper that no one likes other than to write letters telling her how bad the paper is. She learns about the spa when her friends, yes that would be Maggie and Marcia, go missing. There’s a whirlwind of plot, as Mr. Ex buys out one of her reporters, Doyle Shakespeare (Leonna Small), by giving her the mental illusion that her sick mother is better, all while Catherine falls for hunky but kind of dumb — or so he appears — computer guru Ken Brock (Raymond Storti). But then Mr. Ex takes those two pieces off the board and even cuts the finger off — he didn’t lose enough weight — of the owner of the print shop that the newspaper comes out of, Roque Jarvis (Augie Blunt), Catherine becomes in deep with the conspiracy that is swirling about her city.

Mike Bowler, who directed this, also was behind Things (not the Canadian one) and its sequel, as well as writing Fatal Images. The co-writer of this was Dennis Devine, who has been making movies since Fatal Images like Dead Girls, Things II, Vamps In the City and so many more. In fact, if you liked the theme from Dead Girls, good news. You’re going to hear it again.

“God made a fatal error when he gave men free will,” says Mr. Ex at one point, just after he’s show Catherine that large computers from another time and place — their computing power would fit into your phone these days — are behind his empire. Then, he giallo kills the other writer by stabbing her right in the brain.

This just gets wild, as there’s an underground lair filled with computers, as if this has become a Halloween 3 cover movie, except that it’s really about how Walmarts and Dollar Generals stripmined small towns across America, putting up stores every two minutes, until anything unique or special has been torn away while taking what they need, whether that’s money or blood or souls.

Those are some big ideas for a microbudget shot on video horror movie — and maybe I’m filling in the holes with my own concepts as I savored this — but you have to love a bad guy who says things like “I am the dark in every man’s soul” before describing how he will use sin to unite the entire world.

Also: This movie is way longer than it should be, yet I wanted it to last like another hour. You might find that it drags, but I could live in the world of Hell Spa for some time.

In 2000, Bowler took footage from this and made Club Dead, which is almost the same movie but now it has Tommy Kirk as a cop. This is a move that I can’t help but applaud. He should have remade it with little bursts of footage every few years, like a Satanic small business Star Wars prequel.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Tales from the Crypt S4 E14: Curiosity Kills (1992)

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Directed by Elliot Silverstein (Cat Ballou, The Car) and written by Stanley Ralph Ross, who developed Wonder Woman for TV, this story has Jack (Kevin McCarthy) find the secret to youth in the woods. He gives it to his friends Harry (J.A. Preston) and Lucille (Madge Sinclair), but they keep it a secret from his wife Cynthia (Margot Kidder).

“Geronimo! So glad you could drop in, kill-seekers! Don’t worry about me, it only hearse when I laugh! Boy, that was good! It’s even better than hang-gliding! Of course, some folks would rather keep their feet on terra firma, like the people in tonight’s putrid piece. They’re spending a nice, quiet weekend in the woods, going *hack* to nature! I call this fetid fable…”Curiosity Killed.””

Cynthia has abused Jack for their entire marriage, so no one wants her to deage along with them, thanks to the Icarunda bulbs that Jack has found and that Lucille is cooking into a voodoo serum. Harry saved Jack’s life in the war, so he wants to repay him with a new life. Cynthia thinks they are trying to murder her, so when she learns that they are planning to get young without her, she ruins their plans, kills them and takes it for herself. The only problem? She gets mauled to death by a dog, who soon becomes a puppy.

This episode is based on a story from Shock Illustrated #3. It was written by Al Feldstein and drawn by Reed Crandall. This story is actually a revision of “Curiosity Killed…” from Tales from the Crypt #36 which was written by William Gaines and Feldstein and drawn by George Evans.

Tales from the Crypt S4 E13: Werewolf Concerto (1992)

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Directed by Steve Perry and written by Rita Mae Brown (Slumber Party Massacre) and Scott Nimerfro, this feels like James Bond in a horror movie. That makes sense, because Timothy Dalton plays the hero. Or does he?

“This is your brain. This is your brain on drugs. And this is your brain after watching Tales from the Crypt! Evening creeps. We interrupt your regularly scheduled terrorvision program to bring you a bit of culture. That’s right kiddies. Tonight instead of rotting your grave matter, I’m going to improve it with a tasteful tale about someone who just can’t fright the feeling. I call it “Werewolf Concerto.””

Lokai (Dalton) and Mr. Hertz (Walter Gotell) are matching wits as werewolf attacks happen at a hotel. Hotel owner Antoine (Dennis Farina) has hired a werewolf hunter to keep his guests safe and we’re to assume that Lokai is that man and that Hertz is the monster. Lokai also falls for a former actress, Janice Baird (Beverly D’Angelo) who — this is Tales from the Crypt so it’s not a spoiler — is more than she seems. Actually, everyone is hiding something in this.

This has a pretty good cast, as Reginald VelJohnson, Charles Fleischer, Lela Rochon and even Wolfgang Puck make appearances.

This is based on “Werewolf Concerto!” which was in Vault of Horror #16. It was written by William Gaines and Al Feldstein and drawn by Johnny Craig. It has Mademoiselle Micheline, a famous piano player, staying in a hotel that is haunted by a werewolf who ends up being the owner. She’s a vampire, so you can guess how this ends.

Tales from the Crypt S4 E12: String Along (1992)

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Back in the 1950s, Joseph Renfield (Donald O’Connor) and his puppets Koko the Clown and Cowboy Clyde were the biggest show on TV. Now, however, Joseph is an infirm shut-in who makes puppets all day and talks to Koko as a voice in his head. He’s also incredibly jealous about his wife Ellen (Patricia Charbonneau), refusing to let her leave the house. Then, Joseph gets the offer to appear on a tribute show.

“Oh, hello boars and ghouls. I hope you’ll excuse me if I don’t get up. I’m a little stiff today. Then again, I’m a little stiff every day! Actually, I twisted my neck playing croak-et. But it wasn’t hurting the way I thought it should, so I called my chiro-hack-ter. Of course, some people look elsewhere for their pain, like the old man in tonight’s terror tale. His idea of an anti-die-otic was to marry a younger woman.sure) Ahhhh. I call this plasma play: “Strung Along.””

The one day a week that Ellen can leave is for her acting class and that’s where she meets David (Zach Galligan). She suggests that he be her husband’s assistant for the show and as they grow close, he soon learns that his wife is cheating with someone named Rick and not even going to her lessons.

This being an E.C. Comics story, David is really Rick and they make a fake murder using Koko, setting up him “killing” Ellen. Joseph has a heart attack, but yes, this is Tales from the Crypt, so the real Koko appears and does away with the lovers.

Directed and written by effects artist Kevin Yagher, this is a pretty fun episode. You should never cheat on anyone around the Crypt Keeper. This was co-written with Yale Udoff, who is pitched the Batman TV series. He also wrote the TV movie Hitchhike! and the Nicholas Roeg film A Sensual Obsession.

This episode is based on the story “Strung Along!” from Vault of Horror #33. It was written by Al Feldstein and William Gaines and drawn by Graham Ingels. There isn’t cheating in that story, but there is a wife who tries to sell her husband’s puppets.

Tales from the Crypt S4 E11: Split Personality (1992)

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Directed by Joel Silver — normally a producer; this is the only script he has directed — and written by Fred Dekker, this story has a con man named Vic (Joe Pesci) dating twins April Dobbs and June Echeson Blair (Jacqueline Alexandra and Kristen Amber Citron) to get their inheritance. However, things don’t always work out on Tales from the Crypt.

“Oh, hello kiddies! Tonight’s coffin caper is so crammed with ghastly greed, sickening sex, and vomitous violence, that parental guidance is advised. So… guide your parents out of the room, so we can have some fun! (cackles) This tale concerns a gambling man with a bad case of double vision, who’s about to hit the hack-pot. I call this twin helping of horror “Split Personality.””

Vic starts out stealing ten grand from Don (Burt Young), then crashes his car because of two black cats. This leads him to the Blair mansion, where the twins hold him at gunpoint. He uses his smarmy charm to talk about their father’s architectural abilities as he starts to seduce both of them, all to get the $2 billion bucks they are worth. He takes it so far that he creates a twin for himself, Jack, who is him with sunglasses and a ponytail.

He switches identities every month and marries both twins, April as Vic, June as Jack. Things are so good that the girls even discuss just giving themselves at the same time to whatever husband is home. When they discover that there’s only Vic, it’s bad news for him, because just like how they couldn’t stand to share their father, they can’t share him. So they chainsaw him in half and each take a bloody piece back to their beds to fondle and sleep with.

This comes from Vault of Horror #30 and was written by Al Feldstein and William Gaines and drawn by Johnny Craig. In that story, the twins are more innocent, but the end of the story is almost the same, as they split the antagonist with an axe.