An international co-production of the United States, the Czech Republic and the Netherlands, Frankenstein’s Army puts zombie soldiers created by a descendant of the mad scientist against the Red Army at the end of World War II, all seen in found footage format.
Director Richard Raaphorst was frightened of Frankenstein’s Monster when he was young, so a movie filled with multiple creatures would have really freaked him out. While this movie has plenty of CGI, it also has more than enough practical FX and stunts. The look is great, a worn steampunk-esque world of rust, gore, meat and murder.
I’m not a fan at all of found footage and find it a silly gimmick outside of obvious masterworks like, well, Cannibal Holocaustis one of the few I can dredge up. The creature design in this, however, pushes this movie well beyond any concerns I have with the way that it was filmed. It’s a delight to take in all of these creatures. It looks like my high school notebooks come to life.
Giving the job of assassinating a couple in their hotel room, contract killer Frank Zimosa finds himself fighting for his life in a maze-like building filled with demons. Yeah, it’s kind of like a first-person shooter, except that it’s an Italian movie literally overloaded with gristle, gore and all manner of gross-out violence. Welcome to Hotel Inferno.
Director and writer Giulio De Santi has made three sequels to this movie with three more n the way. He’s also the founder and president of Necrostorm, a multimedia company that produces and distributes movies, games, cartoons, comics, music and merch, often serving as each production’s writer, director, art director, lead animator, digital effects director, producer and editor.
It soon turns out that everyone in the building is a killer and they’re all here to be offered as a sacrifice, as has been done for hundreds of years. Except that Frank thinks that he can beat the devil.
This came out three years before Hardcore Harry tried the same trick and has about a hundredth of that movie’s budget (and voice acting ability). That said, the scene where the occultist covered in flies writes the spells on a wall approaches near murderdrone levels in its movie drug intensity. This is definitely a movie that you should at least watch for a few minutes, as it’s a pretty insane way to make a movie.
The seventh — and promised to be the last, but come on, who were they kidding — Texas Chainsaw movie, this was at least the last film for Marilyn Burns and Gunnar Hansen. It’s also pretty cool to see Bill Moseley play Jim Siedow’s role, as well as John Dugan be Grandpa again.
But they’re going to keep on making these movies long after I’m dead.
Platinum Dunes, who made the other new ones, decided they didn’t want to make another Leatherface movie, so Twisted Pictures, Nu Image and Lionsgate Films took over from New Line Cinema but only LionsGate’s name is on the movie.
Maybe it’s Stockholm Syndrome, but I kind of like the central idea of this movie. After the events of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the town sheriff arrives at the Sawyer house demanding that Leatherface surrender. The family complies just in time for the entire town of Newt, Texas to burn down the Sawyer home and kill everyone except a baby kill. In fact, after she’s saved, her mother is killed. The man that murdered her, Gavin Miller, and his wife Arlene raise the baby as their child.
Fast-forward and we meet Heather Miller, who learns that her grandmother has died and left her an inheritance in Newt, Texas, a place she’s shocked to learn that she was from. Her friends join her on the trip to find out what the will has in store for her, but when one of them starts casing the house to steal things, he meets Leatherface. Actually, she shouldn’t get too close to any of her friends because the most famous of the Sawyer killers just wants to wipe out everyone and anything, then make face masks out of their bodies.
The other part I kind of love about this movie is that its lead comes to accept the burden of family and realizes that if she takes care of him, he will always protect her. That’s a strange close to a film series that usually has Leatherface whooping and dancing and upset that he didn’t get to murder everyone.
(I know: This is technically a “vampire” flick, but this chick removes hearts and penises after sucking ’em dry. That’s “slashy” enough for me!)
Here’s the rub with 7 Sins of the Vampire: You’re watching and wondering why it looks the way that it does: like an ’80-era VHS SOV release — considering this came out in 2013, the era of digital cameras and software editing suites. Well, that’s because 7 Sins of the Vampire — shot and private-press released as Blood Seduction (year unknown) — was completed in 2002; its production began in the late-90s, not long after the completion and release of Snuff Kill in 1997. Personally, when considering how much Doug Ulrich and Al Darago improved as filmmakers across their three films, and the positive reception given to their best-known and distributed film, Snuff Kill, I’m shocked that it took a decade for the film — shot in Dundalk, Maryland — to make its first baby steps into national distribution platforms.
Another alternate title for the film — which sometimes appears as a tagline on alternate DVD pressings — is Invasion of the Vampire Hookers. Now, is team Ulrich-Darago going for an Al Adamson-patch job-starring-John Carradine vibe — without (thankfully) any John Carradine footage dropped in from another film? Probably, because these guys are one of us and have probably VHS O.D’d on way too many Al Adamson flicks with superfluous, edited-in-from-another-picture John Carradine (in lieu of superfluous John Rhys-Davies and Eric Roberts). Ugh. You’re making me remember Cirio H. Santiago’s inept Vampire Hookers and Nai Bonet’s inert vanity-fanger Nocturna: Granddaughter of Dracula — both with John Carradine. Oy. I don’t know if that’s a good thing . . . or a bad thing.
I hope you’ve read my reviews for Doug and Al’s previous three films (Scary Tales, Darkest Soul, and Snuff Kill) and previous SOV film reviews and analysis of the genre (click the SOV tag at the end of this review to populate the site’s SOV reviews). You know how I feel about SOV films — and the respect I have for Doug Ulrich and Al Darago, who grew up as longtime, Patterson High School friends. Sure, 7 Sins of the Vampire is technically rough — and what SOV, whomever makes it, isn’t — and there’s artistic-disciplinary miscues, especially in the acting department. But team Ulrich-Darago’s storytelling matured in this ’70s drive-in styled, supernatural detective tale — that reminds of the law enforcement horrors of Christopher Lewis’s Blood Cult (1985) — concerned with two detectives who come to discover the recent rash of murders plaguing their city are being committed by a vampire pimp and his bevy of vampire hookers. And our vamp-pimp is a chauvinist and there can only be one: he can bite and turn any woman he wants, but the girls, after feeding, need to de-heart the Johns so they don’t turn. Oh, and remove their penis.
Groper and Butkus (our filmmakers Al Darago and Doug Ulrich) are rival cops, one always trying to outdo the other, always butting heads on cases. So, when they both end up at a crime scene with a man hanging by his neck and his guts slit open, Grouper calls it a murder: Butkus, a suicide. But that’s their relationship: opposites attract. Meanwhile, Groper’s grizzled “Dirty Harry” gets assigned a Slimski: a baby-faced rookie for a partner — whose teenage sister is the latest vampimp (a new word!) victim. It all comes to a head — pardon the pun — at the pimp and hooker’s abandon warehouse lair. It’s all very Carl Kolchak: The Night Stalker on a shoestring and couch change — and I like it. And it’s all wrapped up in just over an hour, making it the shortest film of Al and Doug’s quartet of films (Snuff Kill was the longest, at 80 minutes).
Is this gory? Of course. How gory? Well, when a John picks up one of our fair-fanged hookers, she doesn’t just fang ’em: she rips out his throat. And don’t forget the heart removals. Oh, and the penis-ripping. Oh, and this SOV ups its game with the casting of professional Baltimore-based actors — a first in the Ulrich-Darago’s canons — George Stover (100-plus credits; including John Waters films and Don Dohler’s The Alien Factor and The Galaxy Invader) and Vincent DePaul (140-plus TV and film credits).
So, yeah. Heart and penis removals . . . with subsequent licking, sucking, and munching. Lovely.
The DVD, a well-pressed and easy-to-purchase release via Amazon Prime and other online retailers, features a “Making Of” featurette, along with actor screen tests and make-up effects tests. Also featured is the 15-minute, black-and-white thriller-short The Devilish Desire of Dario Dragani (2012; thus why the DVD was issued in 2013). Shot by Mark Mackner in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, for $100, it’s a modernized re-telling of the silent German short, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920). (But I’d have to film-drop the really cool Michael Caine black comedy, A Shock to the System (1990), with his put-upon executive resorting to murder to move up the corporate ladder.)
Here, Dario Dragani’s desires take a supernatural turn: he uses an office underling, Cecil, as a somnambulist to murder those who stand in his way to promotions — and winning the heart of Jane, the office heartbreaker. It’s very retro-homagey and very nicely done. You can watch a rip on Vimeo. Mackner — who has made four features films since 2008 — is completing his forth feature: Daisy Derkins and the Dinosaur Apocalypse. Now how can you pass up a film with a title like that?
The embedded clip below (ugh, another You Tube black box of death) — courtesy of DarkFallFx — features the trailer and a couple post-production clips and camera test vignettes. When you go to that You Tube portal, you can also watch the short film The Prophet of Oz (2013), Doug Ulrich’s Christian-based inversion of The Wizard of Oz.
I’ve had a lot of fun revisiting and reviewing the Doug Ulrich and Al Darago canons this fine, and viewing-appropriate, October. I dig these dudes and so will you. Stream ’em.
About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.
Directed and written by Lucky McKee (May) and Chris Sivertson (I Know Who Killed Me) in 2001 — then remade in 2013 — All Cheerleaders Die is about the very dangerous world of cheerleading which takes its first victim early as one of the girls — the subject of a documentary — is killed when she isn’t caught in time.
Maddy, who was filming that documentary, joins the team and begins a series of machinations that leads to the accidental death of the entire team. Using magic, she brings them back to life and they begin getting their revenge.
What I liked about this movie is that it promises what guys have always gotten out of horror movies — attractive women being killed or doing the killing — but it subverts expectations and makes its viewers confront that very same objectification.
Plus, that moment in the woods, where the villainous Terry confronts the girls? That feels like real tension.
I kinda wish they’d make the teased sequel already.
7. IT CAME FROM THE SCREEN: One where a TV is a major part to the story.
I grew up directly between Youngstown, OH and Pittsburgh, PA, which meant that growing up, I got to see UHF channels from Cleveland, Wheeling, Stuebenville and everywhere in between. There are still local jingles that I know by heart — Youngstown’s Remnant Room — and when I see the staticky look of this ancient television, it warms my heart beyond belief. Beyond Superhost and Chilly Billy, I can remember characters like Barnaby and the local news teams that had no hope of ever working for the networks.
The WNUF Halloween Special could have been horrible, but I get the feeling that its creator Chris LaMartina grew up watching plenty of Baltimore TV* (he probably knew Captain Pitt as Captain Chesapeake on WBUF (but we both may have not known that he was also Ghost Host), because this is so authentic that I thought that I went back in time.
A home recording of WNUF’s Halloween special that aired on October 31, 1987, this tells the story of Frank Stewart’s investigation of the Webber House, the site of the Spirit Board Murders. He’s brought along a priest and Louis and Claire Berger, psychic investigators who use a cat named Shadow to speak to the dead.
By the end of the night, the evil inside the house will show itself. And no one is safe.
The story may have been told before, but its the entire package that is perfect. There are references to Dust Devil, R.O.T.O.R. and so many more movies, plus it captures that strange moment of the pre 90s when UHF stations would air just about anything, when major bloopers happened almost every day and something like a series of occult murders could happen live while you watched.
*Producer Jimmy George confirmed that WNUF TV28 was inspired by Baltimore’s WNUV TV54, a similar TV station that was independently owned until the mid-90s.
You know that scene in Tenebre where the camera keeps flying back and forth across the roof of the apartment building that seems to break the film’s narrative or the moment in Opera where the bullet explodes out of the hole in the door? Argento is the master of these set pieces yet — for a while at least — he was able to make them work within his plot instead of being style over subtance.
For anyone that wanted all the style and very little substance — is it even worth saying that a giallo story makes no sense when that feels like one of the most essential parts of the form — may I recommend the Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani (Amer, Let the Corpses Tan) film The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears. If you want a narrative film that tells a story, you will hate this will all your heart. But if you want to go on a kaliedoscopic ride, well, this one has plenty of visual horsepower.
If you need a thread to hold on to, Dan (Klaus Tange) is the protagonist, a man who comes home to find his wife missing. His journey to find her takes him through the dwellers in his apartment complex, who all have their own stories to tell.
Look, it’s a gorgeous movie with a missing woman named Edwige, an awesome poster, an even better title and music from movies like All the Colors of the Dark, Torso, Eyeball, So Sweet…So Perverse, The Black Belly of the Tarantula, Short Night of Glass Dolls, Maddalena and The Violation of Emanuelle. So by all rights, I should love this. It’s like watching a supercut of out there moments and feels like it would be perfect to put on at a party where people don’t get offended by knives coming out of sexualized wounds (I mean, I’ve never been to this kind of party, but I figure they exist and people wear paper dresses and Ivan Rassimov shows up looking all sinister).
Yet it all kind of leaves me cold. The films of the past that this references, while strange to our American eyes, still had a beating heart. This feels like a cool move from set piece to set piece. And while I can’t say that I didn’t like it, it’s not going to knock The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh or The Fifth Cord out of my blu ray player.
Alright, I’m fascinated by these Full Moon remix affairs. This one tries to cash in on the zombie trend — no shame there — but at least one of the films is actually pretty well-known and you’d think it would sell more copies than just changing the name. But hey — I don’t run the house that puppets built.
That well-known movie is The Dead Hate the Living! but here it’s called “Zombie Apocalypse.” This movie was a film I’d see all the time back in the magical days of the Kennywood Hollywood Video, a place that I dream of today, a gigantic paradise filled with tons of movies. Written and directed by Dave Parker, it’s the story of a movie crew being trapped inside a real zombie outbreak. The fact that the crazy doctor is named Eibon should give you an idea that this movie was made for fans of zombie movies by fans of zombie movies.
“Undead Sentence” is Prison of the Dead, which was directed by Victoria Sloane…err…Dave DeCoteau. I recognize you anywhere, my friend. I feel as if I’ve seen the plot to this before — rich kid invites his friends to a funeral for himself but its all a ruse — but hey, Full Moon is a LEED-certified organization. The prison below the funeral home was known as Blood Prison, built by Puritan extremists specifically for the torture and execution of witches and heretics. Can you imagine how scary it would be if the executioners came back to life? And what if this also appeared on the Horrific remix DVD meaning that I watched the same movie three times in one week?
“Shallow Graves” was released in full-length form as Hell Asylum. The reality show Chill Challenge has charged five models with surviving for one night in an abandoned building if they want to win a million dollars. Hey — Brink Stevens and Joe Estevez are in this and it wasn’t Prison of the Dead 2 despite having that title while it was being filmed.
Look at that baby stroller on the cover of this. Are you scared yet?
Man, I’ve just spent about a week watching these Full Moon cut down remixes — taking full-length movies and shortening them to thirty minutes each with no connecting story, no concerns about aspect ratios and really no care at all toward quality — and then will be spending another week doing even more Full Moon movies. My OCD and ADHD are paying off for you, dear reader, so I can see how many of these movies I can cross off my list.
“Protectors” is really 2009’s Skull Heads AKA Devious, which was written, produced and directed by Charles Band. It stats with cute little Naomi Arkoff (Robin Sydney, who seems to be in nearly every 2000s Full Moon movie) being is tortured on a rack by her father Carver (Power Rangers voiceover artist Steve Kramer) for having a cell phone. Supposedly, a bunch of filmmakers are trying to get into the Arkoff home to make a movie, but they really want to steal some artwork. Luckily, the house is protected by the Skull Heads, which are — if you know Charles Band like I know Charles Band — little tiny killers.
“Worry Dolls” is 2008’s Dangerous Worry Dolls and I have to give this one credit for not only being a movie with killer dolls, but for being a women in prison movie unafraid to have an evil trans guard get pegging by our heroine once she unleashes the tiny little worry doll that has burrowed its way into her brain. Yes, Eva (Jessica Morris, who has 115 IMDB credits and will probably have 119 when I look back tomorrow) may be abused by every woman in the prison, forced by that aforementioned guard into doing amateur pornography and continually creeped on by the warden, but once she lies down at night and the dolls go inside her ear and then out of the middle of her forehead, things get much better for her.
“Dangerous Toys” is not just a band from the 80s, but also the last chapter which is really Dollman vs. Demonic Toys, which was a pretty big movie at the time of its release. Band really pushes the idea of a Full Moon universe here, as recycled footage from Dollman, Demonic Toys and Bad Channels ended up making a whole new film. Yes, Brick Bardo (Tim Thomerson) from Dollman, Nurse Ginger (Melissa Behr) who was shrunk in Bad Channels and Judith Grey (Tracy Scoggins) from Demonic Toys all get together to battle Baby Oopsy Daisy, Jack Attack, Mr. Static and the evil G.I. Joe called Zombietoid. The best part of this one being cut down so much is that all of the flashbacks have also been removed.
I’d give this one a solid review as it definitely made me want to watch the full versions of each film. I think that that is more due to the originals than anything this cut and paste treatment did to improve their stories.
Mike (Marcin Paluch) and Carrie (Tracy Willet) Bonner have just been married and move into a secluded forest home. Of course, it takes but a few weeks until the other people who live in the area start to upset Carrie, which leads her to believe that their new hometown is filled with the supernatural. Mike blows it all off, but you know, if a house tells you to get out, you should get out.
Animosity was originally filmed in 2012 as a thesis project at the School of Visual Arts with professor Roy Frumkes (Street Trash) acting as the film’s executive producer. It faded away until Brendan Steere, the movie’s director, had a hit with Velocipastor.
I was surprised that this is a film closer to Let’s Scare Jessica to Death — credit for that theory goes to Jim Morazzini on Voices from the Balcony — than the goofball gross-out action that Steere has become known for. Despite some audio issues and being too dark to see in places — hey, it had a $14,000 budget — there’s enough in this to warrant a serious watch for any horror lover.
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