That was then, this is now. I watched HATCHET again on Blu-Ray recently and all I can say is “It hurts!” Seriously, I feel as if I’ve just had my spine ripped out by the fearsome Victor Crowley himself. Experiencing HATCHET in hi-def with the lights turned low and the surround cranked up simply rocks. The image is dripping with tons of detail and the colors seem to burst from the screen. From the gaudy, puke-filled streets of Mardi Gras to the dark, dank swamps of Louisiana, the film has never looked or sounded better. The high-def experience totally elevates the movie’s shoestring budget and you can clearly see and hear all of the love that Green put into this project (Love that I sorely missed before, but totally appreciate now, with the immediacy of a proverbial hatchet to the face. Really sorry for my oversight, Victor. Please don’t hurt me! Okay big guy?)

In his commentary with Kane Hodder (more on that below) Green points out that he wasn’t completely happy with the Victor Crowley design and that there is a “night and day” difference (for the better) in HATCHET II. I also remember being disappointed by the Victor Crowley creation after my first viewing. His overall look just didn’t do it for me and as a result, he didn’t come across as very menacing or convincing as “the next great horror movie icon.” But all of that changed for me after seeing Victor mercilessly rip, cleave, bludgeon and mutilate his victims in high def. With a hulking frame, twisted spine and misshapen head, Victor is a fully realized freak of nature played with reckless abandon by Hodder. Love the denim overalls too, as they add the perfect hillbilly touch.

Just like every other card-carrying member of the Hatchet Army, I could continue to sing endless praises about the performances (they’re all solid), the humor (laughed out loud a few times) and practical gore effects pulled off brilliantly by FX maestro John Carl Buechler. But I won’t because if you’re a HATCHET fan and you have the tech, this Blu-Ray has no doubt been on your pre-order list for awhile. Based on the rock-solid image and aggressive sound mix, I’d be perfectly happy to recommend it as a bare-bones disc, but thankfully I don’t have to! There’s a ton of great bonus material to slice n’ dice through, including a bunch of cool “making-of” featurettes. But the standout for me is the all-new audio commentary with writer/director Adam Green and actor Kane Hodder.

Both Green and Hodder spend most of the commentary talking in broad strokes about how the production came together, wisely staying away from shot-by-shot anecdotes. This is very insightful stuff and there are plenty of behind-the-scenes war stories about Hollywood rejection; distribution challenges; lousy shooting conditions; dealing with the MPAA; the dangers of hype and the importance of being pro-active and creative when it comes to raising money, or as Green bluntly puts it: “You can’t sit around and wait for the phone to ring.”

If you haven’t been able to tell yet, I am a HATCHET believer now. Not sure why I didn’t “get it” the first time around, but boy oh boy…something can be said for enjoying a hot, steaming, bloody plate of sloppy seconds. Simply put, HATCHET rocks and this fine Blu-Ray release deserves to find a comfortable home on the shelves of discerning horror fans the world over. Can’t wait to pay another visit to the bayou when HATCHET II wreaks major box office damage during its wide release this fall!

-Tim Clark

Cut It Up with Crowley and Order HATCHET Here!

When Stevan Mena discusses MALEVOLENCE, he mentions how SCREAM made light of all the conventions of slasher films, and his debut film is a response to that. Instead of lampooning the clichés, Mena intended to embrace them, because those were the elements that made the horror films of his youth so great. This is the double edged sword that is MALEVOLENCE’s greatest strength and its greatest flaw.

The film starts with a textual fact about kidnapping, then a description of how Martin Bristol was stolen at six years old. A brief scene then illustrates a nasty scene from his youth. Following shots displaying lush fields and empty roads act as transition to modern day, where a surly group of young adults have plotted a heist. The robbery goes bad, as one of the group is injured and another kidnaps a young woman and her teenage daughter. When the daughter escapes, one of the robber chases her, right into the lair of Martin Bristol, who has turned out to be not such a nice guy. Holing up in a house, the surviving thieves must deal not only with the fall out from their crime, but also with a knife-wielding maniac.

If much of that sounds familiar, to any horror fan worth his salt it should. The robbery and the subsequent escape plan take up much of the first 1/3 of the film, a la PSYCHO. The maniac isolated in the rural wilds is straight from THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, and his penchant for knives is derived right from HALLOWEEN. A young, attractive group of protagonists/victims belongs rightly in just about every slasher from the 80s. Mena stuck to his guns and delivered a slasher that could perfectly fit among the Reagan era, right down to the way his shot selection builds suspense and his musical stings heighten the brutality.

All of which makes judging MALEVOLENCE complicated. Does it act as an homage, a pastiche, or just a rip off of the source materials? Does a movie intended to bring back to prominence the greater glories of older works do that if it mimics them? Is there anything fresh in this approach?

Fortunately, upon repeated viewings I was able to find answers for myself. The more I watched MALEVOLENCE, the more obvious it became that Mena doesn’t just love or admire those 80s slashers; he generally respects them. If there’s nothing exactly groundbreaking here, it’s no big sin, because Mena does 80s slashers well. For a first timer, his shot composition, plotting and pacing are all commendable, and the film shows real promise for his career. He’s got pure talent, and the film puts it on display. If MALEVOLENCE had come out 25 years ago, it would have been looked upon as one of the better entries in the genre.

One thing that makes the film stand out is its slasher, Martin Bristol. The main theme in the movie is that a destructive home environment will create destructive individuals, who in this case will harm bank robbers who wander into the wrong hideaway. Again, not exactly a novel concept. But Mena invests some legitimate care into it, and makes it work. Through plot and action, he manages to succeed where Rob Zombie so greatly failed by having young Michael Myers chat with Loomis for 45 minutes of screen time. Interestingly, Mena also contrasts Bristol’s scenario with that of the thieves’ captives; the concept of family is under assault, as the kidnapped mother, bound and mouth duct taped, abandoned by her fleeing daughter, finds herself in peril at the hands of the thieves.

Fortunately, Anchor Bay matched Mena’s prodigious potential with a prodigious set of extras. The two main events are the half-hour documentary “Back to the Slaughterhouse” and the commentary. Listening to Mena discuss the pitfalls of low budget filmmaking for the first time director reminded me of all the behind-the-scenes tales I’ve heard and read so many times about NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. Mena took great pains in making the movie, at his own cost, both financially and as a test of character. It took years of his life and a lot of ingenuity to get the film finished, but I gather from the way he speaks of it that it was all well worth it for him.

There are also 9 minutes of deleted scenes, none of which would have added anything by their inclusion in the final product. There’s a minute and 20 seconds of rehearsals, too brief for any real enticement. TV and radio spots, as well as the trailer for the film and some other Anchor Bay discs round out the package. Of most joy to me was a DVD-ROM version of the script; as someone who’s had his hand at writing several scripts for horror movies, I like that I can see just how Mena’s words translated to the screen.

Stevan Mena’s MALEVOLENCE is not a revolutionary film. But then, it’s not intended to be. If you can look past the fact that it’s all been done before, you should appreciate that it’s being done extremely well in Mena’s hands. With his second film, BRUTAL MASSACRE, Mena showed that he has a talent for comedy as well as horror. With the premiere of his third film this Friday, MALEVOLENCE’s prequel BEREAVEMENT, he’s got me wanting to see more. He’s a fine young talent, and it’ll be interesting to see if he sticks to the clichés as his career advances, or if he steps out of the safety zone and becomes a visionary in his own rights. With MALEVOLENCE as proof, he’s certainly got the potential to do so.

--Phil Fasso

Support Horror's Young Talent and Icons! Buy MALEVOLENCE Here!

If there’s one job that’s less enviable than being the President of the United States, it’s being a low budget filmmaker. I gather most Americans think of directors as people to whom studios hand millions of dollars, so they can point a camera and sit in a folding chair between their glitzy parties in the Hollywood Hills. People who think this have no idea just how much grunt work goes into making a film, and how hard it is to get one finished. Stevan Mena knows this. It took him six years to get his debut film MALEVOLENCE in the can, and during that odyssey, he encountered some strange situations, and some even stranger characters. When he couldn’t secure budget for his prequel, instead of committing suicide, he did the one thing a director knows how to do: he made another film. Not just any film, though. A film about the odyssey a low budget filmmaker has to go through to get his latest work off the ground. The final outcome is BRUTAL MASSACRE, and it’s a hilarious romp that serves as a brutal warning to all those who want to make films.

BRUTAL MASSACRE starts off in a place so many of us find familiar: the horror convention. Harry Penderecki is ready to make his directing comeback, and he’s got a documentary crew in tow. Harry’s public appearance among those who laud him is just the beginning, as he goes about his work: securing funds from a cowboy who thinks “titties” are the key to a horror film’s success; sending out his assistant director Jay on location scouting, to find the perfect house; hiring a cast of dubious talents and assembling a crew, all of whom will work for little or no money; and in the end, marrying sound to image and putting together a film. None of this, I assure you, goes smoothly.

Mena could have made a mean spirited, biting piece about the difficulties of making a film, and I’m sure he could have made a fine piece. But the genius here was that Mena decided to satirize the events. In doing so, he manages to point out all the suffering a low budget director must suffer, but in entertaining fashion. Take, for example, the controversy of the nipple. Penderecki and Jay have to bend over backwards to persuade an actress, who has already agreed to do nudity, to show her nipple once. Simple enough. Until it unfolds into filming the scene itself. A misunderstood non-verbal communication between Harry and his DP Hanu (with whom Harry shares an almost psychic link) leads to an out-of-focus nipple shot; which subsequently leads to a hilarious showdown between Penderecki and Hanu in the DP’s hotel room. But the true payoff comes near the film’s end, when the film’s eventual distributor praises Harry for his out-of-focus nipple. Had Mena played this straight, his point would have been taken, but not nearly as enjoyable.

What makes these scenes even more poignant is Mena’s documentary on the DVD for MALEVOLENCE. Toward the end of it, he rattles off a number of problems he encountered, such as an overflowing toilet in an RV, a crew member who hijacked the film negative and ransomed it for pay, and a crazed local who rented a film location under false pretense. It’s no surprise that every one of the terrors he describes, he goes on to satirize in BRUTAL MASSACRE. Though he stretches and alters them to absurd ends, his comedy is so effective because Mena himself has experienced them firsthand.

One of BRUTAL MASSACRE’s greatest strengths is its veteran genre cast, all of whom are playing against type. David Naughton is perfect as Penderecki, a moron who fashions himself a visionary; but even he seems to see through his own smoke screen, as he’s always one step from losing it. Brian O’Halloran of CLERKS is superb as the dimwitted assistant director whose constant hustle keeps both the director and his work from falling to pieces. EVIL DEAD’s Ellen Sandweiss does no-nonsense in style, the bulldog who keeps things real as Harry yearns to fulfill his artistic spirit. Gerry Bednob brings an insane glee to his role as Vanu, the sometimes lethally angry DP. Ken Foree is far from the self-confidence he brought to Peter in DAWN OF THE DEAD; as a rigger whose plans to get out of the film industry and work with computers while he still can... well, I’ll leave that to the film. The most inspired bit of casting is Gunnar Hansen as the local who rents the perfect house to the crew set. His maniacal gaze sells his unhinged Vietnam vet, and his frequent promises that the crew can do anything to the house can only end in disaster, at least in this film. Throw in cameos by Mick Garris and former Fangoria editor Tony Timpone as themselves, and this cast goes at the material full tilt. I was surprised to find that so many other reviewers criticized BRUTAL MASSACRE for its lack of comic timing; for the most part I disagree, and when the timing was off, I found it even funnier. I feel too many people sold this film short, and maybe if they gave it another shot, they would see the comic genius in it that I see. Make no mistake: in a world of lame studio comedies that don’t tickle the funnybone, BRUTAL MASSACRE is outrageously funny, in large part to its cast.

Anchor Bay provided a few extras on the DVD. The two main extras start off with the behind-the-scenes. It fits the film like a glove, because everybody in it stays in character. The other extra consists of about 20 minutes of deleted and extended scenes. I can see why most of them were cut, as they would tamper with the film’s flow. But some of them are flat-out hilarious, especially the one that involves Foree and Bednob sharing a room. Well worth a look.

While Spielberg and Ridley Scott are off partying while negotiating their next eight-figure deals, Stevan Mena is down in the trenches, alongside Harry Pendercki. Mena knows how tough a time it can be, and thankfully for his audience, he’s still able to have a sense of humor about it. Hopefully, Harry is too.

--Phil Fasso

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NOTE: HIDEOUS SUN DEMON is available via Amazon in a 2-Pack with REVENGE OF THE SUN DEMON, a re-dubbed spoof of the original. As I only had access to the original, I cannot comment on the second film. And I really don’t want to. –P. F.

I imagine the screenwriters who work for the SyFy channel revere THE HIDEOUS SUN DEMON as an altar for worship. They kneel before it humbly and reverently, and pray for it to inspire their next MEGA SOMETHING vs GIANT ANYTHINGOID. They offer the great oracle back copies of DINOCROC, and appease it with the sacrifice of Tiffany and a MEGA piranha in exchange for its wise counsel. If the Sun Demon is pleased, they go about their work as a SyFy executive calls Lorenzo Lamas off his speed dial.

The writers have good reason to call HIDEOUS SUN DEMON their god; because it acts as the template for every piece of schlocky programmer they yield. Poorly acted, based on silly premises, with ludicrous dialogue and ridiculous monsters that wouldn’t scare my five-year-old nephew, the SyFy films are really just new incarnations of the 1950s programmers; films made for 15 year old boys to gobble popcorn with as they smooch with their best girl. Bad films? Certainly. But taken in the right light, fun films. Nobody’s going to put HIDEOUS SUN DEMON on par with NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (which, as an odd footnote, recycled part of SUN DEMON’s score). But then again, nobody has to. Now putting it on par with MEGA SHARK vs. GIANT OCTOPUS...

Many sci-fi films start off by showing some horrible incident, then having a scientist explain it. This film breaks the “show, don’t tell” rule right off the bat by skipping right to the explanation. A close up of an alarm marked “DANGER Atomic Research Inc.” rolls into an establishing shot of some orderlies loading a gurney into an ambulance. As it drives off, The Elder Scientist kindly warns us about the hazards of radiation from the sun, hazards already discovered by Dr. Gilbert McKenna. Fortunately for us and the film’s budget, the Elder Scientist and the Lab Assistant Love Interest (right out of the 1950s model of the Generic Stereotype Generator) are able to provide exposition to the Puzzled Doctor about how McKenna bombarded himself. All because he had a hangover. Imagine that! Not that he was drunk, but because he was hung over. Talk about a prude opening. And a talky pseudo-science lesson at that.

But oh when it breaks into action! It turns out that every time McKenna soaks in some rays, he reverts to a lizard-like HIDEOUS SUN DEMON! This leads to all sorts of fun, as McKenna Demon runs amok, terrorizing an old lady on a hospital roof, medical staff,
a sexy lady pianist and her mobster boyfriend (whom he also pummels in his human form), his Lab Assistant Love Interest, and a group of little kids. He’s also not too kind to animals, as he crushes a rat and murders a dog (fortunately, the latter happens off-screen). In between his stints as a monster, he recuperates, not regretting what he’s done, but that he wanted to do what he’s done. As McKenna, writer/producer/director Robert Clarke brings just the right amount of schmaltzy pathos, as the tortured scientist goes on the lam. The whole thing plays for fun; its suggestion that man gestates from a one-celled creature through a lizard state before he’s born heavily outweighs any message about the dangers of radiation the movie may toss at us. With its wonky science and silly monster, SUN DEMON exists in a world all its own; I can’t criticize it as I would an average bad film, because it adheres to its own logic. Clarke clearly understood the engine that made these programmers work, because SUN DEMON is an enjoyable trip.

The best thing the film has going for it is the monster’s mask. It’s actually a neat looking piece, with its scales and big eyes. McKenna runs around with his lizard chest sticking out, his scaly arms protruding from his lab coat or dress shirt, the whites of which make for a nice contrast. Clarke throws himself into his beastly scenes, and does everything to sell the pains of his transformation. Unfortunately, I pegged it pretty early on that the flick would end poorly for our tortured sun demon doctor.

Though the DVD packaging claims there’s liner notes and personal recollections from Clarke, they’re not on the disc. It’s a shame, because this disc really deserves a commentary, a making-of doc, and a full featurette on monster masks from the 1950s sci-fi/ horror boom period. You can, however, find a great commentary on the film’s trailer by Joe Dante, who grew up on these programmers, at his website Trailers from Hell. It’s definitely worth a listen.

“HE WAS A MAN... THE BLAZE OF NOON MADE HIM A MONSTER” proclaims this flick’s tagline, and it would fit nicely in among the promos for any of SyFy’s movies (well... they may have to proclaim him a “MEGA-MONSTER,” but you catch my drift). The story goes that Clarke had starred in so many of these programmers that he decided anyone could make one. Apparently the powers that be at SyFy agree whole-heartedly.

--Phil Fasso

Don't Get Caught in the Sun Without This DVD! Support Icons of Fright and Buy Here!

I want to talk to you today about dubbing. Forget the plot. Forget the acting. Forget the cinematography. Forget all of that for now. All those elements can be masterfully executed, and it won’t matter a damn bit if the dubbing on a foreign film is ludicrously off kilter. And the dubbing is a flawless disaster in DON’T LOOK IN THE ATTIC.

Not that the plot, acting or cinematography are any gems here. There’s something about the sixth and seventh generations of a family from Turin and their “twice-accursed” villa, as one character puts it. The characters are all sleazy, most of them are generally mean, and our heroine, the one we’re supposed to be rooting for, is a bitch. Scenes of fighting and the occasional attempted rape are broken up by long, banal dialogue, and during many of them, it’s so dark, I wanted to give the cinematographer a flashlight. Even with Robert DeNiro, Laurence Olivier and Marlon Brando doing the voices, this would have been utter trash.

All that I could have forgiven, but for the dubbing. Because every dubbed male in the movie (including the one who looks astoundingly like a teenage Robbie Benson) has a voice that sounds just like Terrance and Phillip on SOUTH PARK. Ponder that for a minute. I kept expecting to see the top parts of their heads separate from their jaws as they spoke. How am I supposed to be terrorized when every male in a horror film sounds like fey Canadians?

The dubbing in this movie is so bad, I wanted to tap it on the snout with a newspaper and rub its nose in its own poo. Bad dialogue! Bad! Sit! Heel!

Avoid seeing DON’T LOOK IN THE ATTIC. Unless you and your buddies want to play drinking games that involve providing your own absurd dubbing for the dialogue. That’s the only way this movie could ever be enjoyed.

--Phil Fasso

Don't Listen to the Dubbing! But Do Support Icons of Fright and Buy Here!

So what works with THE CRAZIES? Pretty much everything: Story, effects, acting, atmosphere and action are all top-notch. Not once was I pulled out of the movie due to an inexplicable plot development, piss-poor CGI effect or lame one-liner. In short, THE CRAZIES had me captivated from the opening frame, up until the credits rolled. It goes without saying that I was eager to learn more about the production and there are a few bonus features on this DVD that more than satisfy this craving.

“Behind the Scenes with Director Breck Eisner” is a mixed bag and is basically a drawn out vignette of the actors and producers kissing each other’s backsides. To be fair, Eisner is the most informative, doling out tid-bits of the exhaustive script revision process and casting anecdotes. It was also fun to watch some of the actors try to “sell” the concept of THE CRAZIES. How it’s SO SCARY and COULD REALLY HAPPEN.

“Paranormal Pandemics” dives deep into the motivation behind THE CRAZIES virus and how the infected people should look in the movie. The effects team did their due diligence, referring to real medical research about a multitude of different pandemics to find their inspiration. Their efforts to stay away from the traditional “road-rash” zombie face is commendable, and I think it shows in the end result.

“The Crazies Motion Comic Episodes 1 & 2” is a bit of a letdown. I was expecting something a little bit more exciting but instead, what we have here are some early story board ideas around THE CRAZIES with color, choppy movement s and bad dialogue added. It doesn’t always work. But if I was high, drunk or both it’d probably be a hell of a ride.
“The George A. Romero” template is a series of interviews with Ryan Rotten of Shock Till You Drop, Uncle Creepy of Dread Central, Don Coscarelli and director Breck Eisner. All did a commendable job of explaining to the uninitiated why Romero is a legend in the field of horror films. Most interesting was both Rotten and Creepy’s thoughts on the recent spate of re-makes. Creepy believes you have to “bring something new to the table” for a re-make to work. Rotten compared the Hammer era of re-imagining classic horror icons to the similar trend we are seeing today with horror icons of the 70’s and 80’s getting re-makes. Nicely done.

Rounding out the DVD bonus features is an informative audio commentary with director Breck Eisner and some crazy good segments on how the visual effects were pulled off in addition to storyboards that reveal how complex scenes were built. The sound rocks, the transfer is solid (although curious to see how it compares to Blu-ray) and the bonus features are plentiful. Do yourself a favor. Remove THE CRAZIES from your Netflix queue pronto and go buy the DVD. It’s worth it.

– Tim Clark

You'd Be Crazy Not to Support Icons of Fright and Amazon! Buy The Crazies Here!

Back in September, I went on opening night to see SORORITY ROW, a silly remake of a just-as-silly 1980s slasher. I really don’t like slashers in general, so why this lame remake inspired me, I’ll never know. But inspire it did, and I set myself to the task of reviewing a bunch of slashers, the first round of which were school-based. Several months later, I stopped stalling and actually committed myself to following through on it (hey, I told you I can’t stand slashers). Below is the tenth and final part of this series.

And so here I am, back at the beginning. After nine reviews, I gathered it was time to take a look at the slasher that started it all. SORORITY ROW is in many ways just like those nine other school slashers; it’s got a school, a slasher, and a bunch of young people for the slaughter. It even qualifies as a loosely based remake of one of those films, THE HOUSE ON SORORITY ROW. But it’s also got its foot in the new century, with cell phones and cheeky dialogue that comments on the modern age. That foot forward also attempts to distance it from those films, as it claims it’s based on a draft of the script for the original, instead of the original itself. It drops the masked killer from its source, his unresolved identity, and its naive sense of innocence and fun. That last omissions cuts the deepest, as SORORITY ROW turns out to be a snarky, bitchy film where I was hoping a nuke would drop at the film’s conclusion and kill every single character in the film. And hey, that’s rare.

SORORITY ROW establishes its plot and introduces its characters at a party in the sorority house. While girls in pink pajamas bounce on a bed and have a pillow fight, others mark up a girl’s fat pockets with Sharpies. Yes, this party is fully misogynistic fantasy developed by older male writers. As the camera swoops through the party, it’s clear that everyone at this fest is a college douche bag, except the drunken house mother, who probably drinks heavily because she’s a house mother for a bunch of douche bags. Our five main characters meet upstairs, where they toast insults to each other. Lead bad girl Jessica reveals to goody-goody Cassidy that they’ve set up Chugs’ brother to think he killed his ex-girlfriend with roofies. This sets the plot in motion, as the girls and the brother drive the phony corpse out to an abandoned mineshaft to “dispose of the body.” That move leads to the best moment in the movie: thinking that his ex is really dead, and that air in her lungs will float her to the top of the water, the guy drives a tire iron into her chest. While Cassidy wants to tell the police, Jessica convinces the rest that they should cover the murder up, so they don’t ruin their families’ legacies or their own futures. Jessica’s manipulation wins out, and they dump the body down the shaft. When Cassidy threatens to turn them in, including herself, the others say they will blame her for murder.

Let’s pause and reflect on this. The movie sets up Jessica to be our main baddie, as she hides behind the sorority code of “Trust, Honor, Respect, Solidarity, Secrecy,” twisting the others by invoking their families and futures. But let’s face facts: all these characters are scumbags. Though Cassidy rightly objects to hiding the murder, she makes the pact with the rest of them, and abides by it. This actually makes her the worst character morally, because unlike Jessica, who has no qualms doing so, Cassidy believes she’s doing wrong and does it anyway. But each is equally complicit; they caused a death, and take no responsibility for it. So it’s impossible for me to sympathize with any of them. And when a movie doesn’t have sympathetic leads, it fails on all cylinders.

It doesn’t help that most of these characters are bitches, as several of them constantly make note of in the dialogue. They’re sarcastic, caustic and outright rude. The film’s dialogue is supposed to be hip (as if tossing out a Facebook comment makes this movie so current), but it comes out as ridiculous and phony; it certainly doesn’t make any of the characters likable. When it becomes clear that someone has discovered their secret and has decided to kill them, it’s a relief, if only because death should shut them up. The killer also murders several students unrelated to the crime, just because they’re douche bags too, I’m sure. As if there aren’t enough of them in the film, the script also introduces us in the second act to the dead girl’s little sister, who’s less concerned with mourning than pledging the sorority and bedding down Jessica’s boyfriend. This film has such a terrible view of college kids, that it made me wonder what kind of post-high school education its writers had.

As the girls head toward their last school party, the film leads us to its inevitable conclusion, where, after one ridiculously out of place twist with a minor character, the killer reveals himself before the final battle. The explanation for why he’s murdering everyone is a crock, as is the suggestion at one point that the girl who took a tire iron in the heart and was thrown 50 feet down a well may be the killer. Just how gullible are the girls of Theta Pi?

The script isn’t the film’s only sin, though. I’d like to suggest to director Stewart Hendler that he buy a tripod and invest in a focus puller on his next film. So many shots are out of focus as the camera shakes in all directions. I surmise that he was trying to slick and imitate the amateur approach many of the slasher flicks suffered from back in their heyday, but it comes off as if Hendler doesn’t know how to shoot a film. And though most of those films were made on ultralow budgets, they were shot competently.

And then there’s the casting. When the daughters of B.J. McKay and John McClane are among your leads, I wonder if you’re hiring them just because of their fathers. Briana Evigan does a decent job holding down a thankless role, which involves her crying a lot and whining. Rumer Willis, on the other hand, is unlikely to have the same career track as Bruce, if this film’s any indication (though, if you put a red wig on dad, you’ve got the daughter). Give her credit, though, she can scream. Leah Pipes is the most entertaining actor of the bunch; she understands how much bitchiness the role requires, and she delivers. The rest are just kind of there. God knows why, but this movie recycles Julian Morris from another modern slasher, CRY WOLF. And then there’s Carrie Fisher as the foul-mouthed alcoholic house mother with the shotgun. When Fisher has come so far from Princess Leia that she’s camping it up in bad slashers, it’s time to pack it up. I gather audiences loved the comic relief (they laughed hysterically at her lines when I saw this in theatres), but I found it sad.

Though there are a number of them, I found the disc’s special features sad too, but then I didn’t dig the film, so keep that in mind. There’s “Sorority Secrets: Stories from the Set,” a fluff piece in which the actresses introduce themselves as their characters, before speaking as themselves. Their stories involve everybody loving everybody else, and everyone being great at everything. “Killer 101” involves Hendler explaining how this flick follows the rules of the subgenre (though he doesn’t mention how poorly it does so) and co-writers Josh Stolberg and Pete Goldfinger proving what creepy misogynists they are. “Kill Switch” acts as a jump-to-a-kill, if you want to avoid all the dialogue; a more merciful feature never existed on any DVD. The deleted scenes are scant and short, and you’re not missing anything if you skip them. Same goes for the outtakes. I’m surprised there’s no commentary with Hendler and his writers, but then, this film doesn’t really merit one.

SORORITY ROW wants to be an 80s slasher, but at the same time it wants to distance itself from the films that made the subgenre. If Hendler or the writers had had any appreciation, or even understanding, of the school based slashers of old, this could have been a fun flick in that vein. Instead, it amounts to a whole lot of sound and fury and bitching. Lots and lots of bitching.

--Phil Fasso

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Back in September, I went on opening night to see SORORITY ROW, a silly remake of a just-as-silly 1980s slasher. I really don’t like slashers in general, so why this lame remake inspired me, I’ll never know. But inspire it did, and I set myself to the task of reviewing a bunch of slashers, the first round of which were school-based. Several months later, I stopped stalling and actually committed myself to following through on it (hey, I told you I can’t stand slashers). Below is the ninth in this series of reviews.

I fondly remember walking out of SORORITY ROW, the remake of this flick, and saying to myself, “That was really trashy.” Even more fondly, I remember my immediate response: “Yeah, but so was the original.” THE HOUSE ON SORORITY ROW wasn’t exactly one of those 1980s classics screaming for an update. Hell, I’m positive a large percentage of horror fans had never even heard of it; I know I hadn’t before talks of the remake hit the net. Somehow, the perversity of Hollywood redoing such an obscure film drove me to the original, then to the update, and eventually to this entire series of reviews. And I’m glad it did. Because THE HOUSE ON SORORITY ROW is my favorite of all the movies in this series, and a fine place for me to have started with the school based slashers. Yeah, it’s trashy. But it’s trashy fun.

The flick is refreshing right from its establishing shot, for one simple reason: it’s not a big, panning view of a college campus. Instead, writer/director Mark Rosman opens the film with a blue moon. It’s June 19, 1961, and under that moon, a very pregnant young lady is about to have an emergency operation. “She’s the last one,” the doctor says, as he brings the heated knife to her stomach. The last what? And what happened to her baby?

Flash forward about 20 years, and there’s that sweeping shot as a coed runs across the campus. It’s the end of senior year, graduation is upon seven sorority sisters, and they’re ready to have their final college party at their sorority house. Standing in their way is house mother Mrs. Slater, who wants to rid herself and her house of them, the sooner, the better. This causes animosity between her and the girls, most of all Vicki; an especially nasty incident occurs when Slater discovers Vicki and her boyfriend having sex and destroys the girl’s water bed with her bird’s head cane. When Vicki decides to get revenge by staging a prank, the results end up in a character’s accidental murder.

The film sets the stage early on for a personality clash between Slater and Vicki, the domineering elder authority vs. the headstrong youth who threatens to undermine her. The struggle of wills is intensified by the fact that Slater has started to slip into an angry psychosis (beautifully played out when she tears to shreds pictures of her previous sorority classes and throws them in the fire); as she gradually loses her grip on reality, she holds on for dear life to the only thing she has left: her control over the house, and the girls within it. As teens will do, Vicki stubbornly rebels against the house mother, doing what she pleases when she pleases it. Had these two been a little less obstinate, and a little more understanding of the other, they certainly would have avoided violence.
But conflict is the driving force in fiction, and violence comes. The murder acts as the motivating incident for the film, as the girls act quickly to cover themselves by concealing it. I came down hard on the SORORITY ROW remake because once all the girls agree to the cover up, even the good ones are morally reprehensible. The same logic should come to bear in the original as well, but somehow it doesn’t. In the middle of a hectic quarrel about how to react to the murder, they’re flushed into making a hasty decision (a truck arrives with the band for the party); as the night commences they’ll struggle with the decision they made, and grow to regret their choices. I think I forgave them mostly because they’re acting out of fear; as Karen states to a character, in an attempt to cleanse her soul, they were all so scared. This is how teens react in real life, driven to make impulsive choices without weighing out the consequences first.

Had the night not taken a turn for the worse, clearer heads might have prevailed to set things straight. But the party kicks the film into second gear, as a murderer stalks the girls and starts to eliminate them. Rosman provides some great tension, pacing out scenes where the unknowing girls go about the night in ignorance, then punctuating them with a violent kill. The killer himself, dressed in court jester garb and mask, is distinct and creepy. It’s suggested he may be Slater’s son, the result of the opening scene, and he sure likes putting her cane to violent use; but his identity is never resolved, and this air of mystery makes him even scarier. A plot twist puts Karen’s life in jeopardy near the film’s conclusion, and the ambiguous ending leaves it open as to whether the helpless, ordinary girl will survive the night (thus killing the whole overrated notion of the “final girl” ploy). I was rooting for her right until the end credits started, but I rather suspect she ended grimly after they began to roll.

Rosman’s film is much more accomplished than most of the 1980s slashers. His editing keeps things moving at different paces, from the smash cuts that establish the girls’ preparations at the beginning of the film, to the more deliberate timing of the kills. His camera placement keeps things off kilter at times, and goes beyond flat cinematography throughout. Balancing the “hide the body” concept and the slasher’s predatory movements, his plot does a nice job of intertwining the two. And most importantly, his characters are realistic; they’re never over the top or campy, and just look to enjoy their last days together as sisters. An early scene where they’re drinking and getting high shows them for the ordinary teens they are, and I appreciated the movie for that.

One more character of note is the pool. Its foul green waters play a crucial role in the proceedings, and it’s a fine symbol for Slater, a woman who’s let herself go. Submerging things beneath the waters will not submerge the sisters’ problems, as they’ll soon discover. And watch how they react when, at the party, a bunch of frat boys want to dive in.

What’s really foul is the lack of extras on this DVD. There’s a sum total of a trailer. I had hoped with the remake that there would be some sort of re-release, but this is all you get. Some of the lesser school slashers got more than this, and this is a bigger crime than the murder the girls are trying to conceal. At least the film’s in wide screen, and doesn’t clip Rosman’s cinematography.

THE HOUSE ON SORORITY ROW has quickly become one of my favorite slashers, and takes the top spot for those based in schools. Its unconventional approach, realistic characters and court jester killer make for a real thriller that is head and shoulders above many of its counterparts, including its remake. Sure, it’s trashy. But it’s smart, trashy, and above all, fun. If only SLAUGHTER HIGH, GRADUATION DAY et al. could claim the same.

--Phil Fasso

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Back in September, I went on opening night to see SORORITY ROW, a silly remake of a just-as-silly 1980s slasher. I really don’t like slashers in general, so why this lame remake inspired me, I’ll never know. But inspire it did, and I set myself to the task of reviewing a bunch of slashers, the first round of which were school-based. Several months later, I stopped stalling and actually committed myself to following through on it (hey, I told you I can’t stand slashers). Below is the eighth in this series of reviews.

Get out your tuxedos. Gas up the van. Pull Jamie Lee Curtis out of the mothballs and get her expensive dress ready. IT’S PROM NIGHT! And some of our students aren’t going to make it out alive (and they thought the greatest tension of whether to go all the way or not would be their biggest problem).

Originally I intended to critique this film in standard paragraphs. I decided instead that it would do better justice to PROM NIGHT to present my review as series of yearbook quotes and “most likelies,” to reflect the spirit of the film.

• “Most Non-Standard Opening Scene with Striped Shirts” – The film opens with some of the blandest kids playing a game in an abandoned building. As this is a horror film, these bland kids manage to cause the death of another bland kid. Kudos to his and his sister’s matching striped shirts, though, as they are the liveliest characters in the scene. Even if they’re apparel.

• “Biggest Bob Clark Rip Off in a Slasher Film” – When our killer starts making obscene phone calls in whispers, it’s more black Christmas than June in Cali. Hey, at least no one’s wearing Alan Ormsby’s ascot (extra points scored with your prom date if you get that reference).

• “It Was the Best of School Slashers, It Was Close to the Goofiest of School Slashers” – PROM NIGHT has some very tense stalking scenes, and some really well done, bloody kills. Parts of it are very competently made, unlike some of its ridiculous brethren (SLAUGHTER HIGH, anyone?). And then there’s a scene with Jamie Lee Curtis dancing disco. Dancing. Disco. Jamie. Lee. This dance runs on for several minutes. Watch it and you’ll be guffawing for several days.

• “Catchiest Theme” – It plays during the disco dance. It’s on the soundtrack album. Yes, I said “soundtrack album.”

• “Most Standard Red Herrings” – Why is the custodian/janitor/grounds keeper always a suspect in these films, and never ever the killer? My dad works maintenance at a college. At least I know he’ll never be the one responsible if the students start getting snuffed. Equal mention goes to the Michael Myers ripoff “escaped psycho from another town” who never ever was the murderer in a slasher unless he was... well, Michael Myers.
• “Studliest Use of a Paraplegic” – There’s a kid in a wheelchair who uses some incredibly awkward pick up lines. They work. He gets laid. Then he gets offed.

• “Best Central Event for a School Slasher” – If you’re gonna do a school slasher, which school event can trump the prom? None, that’s which.

• “Most Gratuitous Disco Ball” – It was such a big part of the final third of the movie, I consider it a character. If I close my eyes now, over a month after watching this movie, I can still see it with my burnt retinas.

• “Most Big Names Cast” – Jamie Lee had already played Laurie Strode. Leslie Nielsen had yet to play Lt. Frank Drebin. It certainly beats having Daphne Zuniga’s screen debut in THE DORM THAT DRIPPED BLOOD.

• “Mask that Best Reflects the Film” – Damned if this kid isn’t wearing a cloth disco ball on his head.

and my favorite of all

• “Slasher with the Testicles in His Purse” – Most slashers, they’re unstoppable killing machines. This one? As the tense climax arrives and he encounters resistance from our remaining protagonists, they fight back. And then he runs away. He runs away. In all the slasher films I’ve seen, this is truly unique.

Okay, admittedly this is a goofy review. But PROM NIGHT is a goofy film, at times playing like an atmospheric slasher, at times like a rowdy lampoon of slashers. And it’s well ahead of the curve; while most of these school slashers were out to imitate FRIDAY THE 13TH and ride its coattails, PROM NIGHT came out right on the heels of the first FRIDAY, following it by barely two months. It’s the ground zero for films of this type, and certainly deserves the “Most Likely to Be the Grandest of All School Slashers” in the yearbook. In that regard, it’s just as prominent in its influence on them as Jason Vorhees’ initial trip to Crystal Lake.

Not prominent are special features. There’s a trailer that sells both the creepy and silly aspects of the film. And nothing else. Given its pedigree, it’s criminal it didn’t get more.

PROM NIGHT counts itself among the better entries in this series of reviews. Slasher fans should dig the prolonged chases, the tense build up to the kills, and the true terror of Jamie Lee dancing under a disco ball with Leslie Nielsen. I enjoyed this film’s unique approach to the school slasher, and appreciate its odd legacy as an innovator in horror, even though I never went to my own high school prom. Which very well might have saved my life.

--Phil Fasso

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(Unrated Widescreen Edition)

Back in September, I went on opening night to see SORORITY ROW, a silly remake of a just-as-silly 1980s slasher. I really don’t like slashers in general, so why this lame remake inspired me, I’ll never know. But inspire it did, and I set myself to the task of reviewing a bunch of slashers, the first round of which were school-based. Several months later, I stopped stalling and actually committed myself to following through on it (hey, I told you I can’t stand slashers). Below is the seventh in this series of reviews.

I debated whether to include CRY WOLF in among this series of reviews, and with good reason. It’s got a school; it’s got a slasher; it’s a whodunnit. But watching it again tonight, it just didn’t seem to sit right with the likes of SLAUGHTER HIGH and FINAL EXAM. It’s not really a school slasher, per se, but a thriller, basing its appeal more off the mystery than the actual violent murders. Pondering it, I concluded that though it doesn’t outright fit into the subgenre, it’s a spiritual brother to those films, and so I decided to give it an entry. Mostly, though, I made this choice because it’s a really good little film. Though most people looked upon it as a throwaway when it came out (I myself spent years confusing it with WOLF CREEK, a very different slasher flick), it’s well worth a watch.

CRY WOLF starts out as so many school slashers do, with the pre-credit murder in the woods. A female running through the trees at night ends up on the wrong end of a bullet. Following this, the obligatory panning shot of the school hones in on our protagonist, Owen, a Brit who’s new to the boarding school. The film sets up an offsetting tone right out, as the new kid finds the school eerily empty. When he encounters the redheaded co-ed Dodger, she gives him the expository news about the first murder victim, a townie with a bad reputation as a slut. Owen and Dodger seem instantly drawn to one another, and the script actually gives them some interesting dialogue, then lets them develop some legitimate chemistry.

From here, the film introduces the audience to Dodger’s friends, a mixed group who meet in the school chapel late at night. As with the students in DEAD POETS SOCIETY, they engage in games to spell their boredom. They involve Owen in a game of Wolf, as the group tries to identify which is the beast among the fold of sheep. But the game isn’t enough for Owen. He and Dodger decide to create their own mythical campus killer, the Wolf, and send out an email to the entire student body explaining his M.O. But when the game seems to turn real, Owen finds he may be in peril.

At its core, CRY WOLF is a multi-leveled, ever shifting game of cat-and-mouse, and a quality one at that. As the movie progresses, Owen, and through him the audience, tries to discover the identity of the Wolf. Or if there really is a Wolf, for that matter. Is one of his new friends a murder, and if so, which? Or is this an orchestrated game among them to deceive him? If so, which are in on it, and which are fellow victims of the gag? Every time he thinks he’s figured something out, one of his friends throws a new wrinkle at him. More thought went into this script by Beau Bauman and director Jeff Wadlow than most screenplays for slashers, as the worm turns every few minutes. Though I suspect some fans will feel let down by how one character surmises the entire mystery in the last few minutes of the film, I actually enjoyed the explanation. The intricate plot takes one final twist, and it’s a worthy payoff.

Slasher fans are likely to be more annoyed by the almost complete absence of blood. Though the DVD is billed as the “Unrated” cut, this is not exactly Romero’s DAY OF THE DEAD. I think the Fascist MPAA would probably still have given it the PG-13 it had in the theatres, even with the 15 seconds of minimal gore that it includes now. Not only is the gore factor scant, but the killings aren’t really creative. And that’s if they exist at all. But I can forgive this, because CRY WOLF isn’t really about the body count. It’s about figuring out the puzzle.

If there’s one complaint I have about the film, it’s the acting. When Jared Padalecki is one of the shining stars in a cast, there’s a problem. Sure, the actors are playing dumb kids, but they range from bland to borderline incompetent. Lindy Booth stands out with her witty performance and fire red hair, and is much more memorable here than she was in the DAWN OF THE DEAD remake. Why the filmmakers chose to cast Gary Cole in a role that saddles him with a British accent is a mystery, but it doesn’t work. Neither does Jon Bon Jovi as a philandering teacher. He’s a distraction, and I half suspect whoever sees CRY WOLF will be waiting for him break into the chorus of “Wanted Dead or Alive.” I know I did.

For a minor film, CRY WOLF boasts a healthy set of extras, though Bon Jovi doesn’t sing on any of them. There’s a behind-the-scenes featurette that doesn’t offer much, and screen tests that highlight the poor quality of most of the acting. There are also a slew of deleted, alternate and extended scenes, very few of which offer much of interest; the exception is a scene of Owen in the woods. All are available with or without commentary. If you’re going to check them out, it’s worth going through them twice so you can hear why the scenes were cut or altered. Two of Wadlow’s short films are here, but they’re unlikely to please the slasher crowd. They’re not horror flicks, and they really don’t belong on the disc. There’s also a commentary by Wadlow, Bauman and editor Seth Gordon. They go into great detail about the script, and also cover the acting and the cinematography, some of which is pretty creative; such as when it bends the text of the email into the silhouette of the Wolf. Though the discussion isn’t flashy, I enjoyed it.

CRY WOLF is likely to disappoint slasher fans who love SPLATTER UNIVERSITY and PROM NIGHT. It’s not really a horror movie so much as a thriller, and it lacks the creative deaths and gallons of blood they usually seek. But for what it is, I enjoyed it. Maybe it doesn’t really belong in the subgenre at all. But it’s got the trappings that hearken right back to those school slashers, and even if it is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, it’s an enjoyable one.

--Phil Fasso

The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing! Support Icons and Amazon and Buy the Unrated Widescreen Edition Here!

Back in September, I went on opening night to see SORORITY ROW, a silly remake of a just-as-silly 1980s slasher. I really don’t like slashers in general, so why this lame remake inspired me, I’ll never know. But inspire it did, and I set myself to the task of reviewing a bunch of slashers, the first round of which were school-based. Several months later, I stopped stalling and actually committed myself to following through on it (hey, I told you I can’t stand slashers). Below is the sixth in this series of reviews.

There’s nothing quite like starting a school slasher flick with a bunch of track and field events set to a disco tune. A mixture of slow motion and regular speed shots of runners, pole vaulters and gymnasts set to a funky synthesizer sure makes for a unique opening not only within the subgenre, but within all of horror. Now that’s a feat. But it doesn’t stop with the opening. No, GRADUATION DAY does everything it can to be a flashy, extroverted entry that is sure to entertain in its goofiness, which includes all of the following: a disgruntled fencer; a burly, horny guy in a yellow ascot; a perverted music teacher in a powder blue suit; poofy haired teen idol Billy Hufsey, of the TV show FAME; the ever-wooden Christopher George and his letter turning, non-talent niece Vanna White; and a very interesting landing place for a vaulter.

Look beyond the absurd trappings, and the plot is pretty standard. After a track star dies in a race, a slasher comes to the campus. As graduation day approaches, the killer stalks and eliminates the athletes on the track team. When the track star’s sister arrives home from her military post in Guam, she tries to figure out the identity and motive of the killer. All common slasher fare, right down to the whodunnit and the black-gloved maniac crossing off his slaughtered prey in the team’s yearbook photo. But focusing on plot robs this movie of its greater glories. The real joy comes in watching scenes such as the one that intercuts a female athlete on the uneven bars with flashes of the first victim and slow motion footage of her coach watching on, licking his lips. Or that music teacher wooing teens as he croons and tickles the ivories, right before the most non-erotic seduction I’ve seen in ages as Quigley hits him up for a passing grade. Or even better, the creative use of a jock, a football and a fencing foil. Best of all, though, is the gratuitous use of a stopwatch. When a slasher sets out to beat his best killing times, he’s doing something special. Much of the credit for this inspired insanity goes to co-writer/director Herb Freed, who surely intended to make a film that would stand out in a glutted market; with GRADUATION DAY, he succeeded.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t special mention to Christopher George’s performance as Coach George Michaels. He may be the most bitter state employee ever committed to film. I inferred very early that here’s a man who was a stellar athlete back in his day. His past glories now faded, he’s poured his pathetic existence into coaching high school track. When everyone turns on him after his prize runner dies, he becomes a caustic bastard, spewing vitriol in all directions. I’m used to a stoic cardboard cutout every time George shows up in a movie, so watching pissed off George jazzed me.

If my facts are straight, Troma didn’t release the film in theatres, but they handled the DVD. And so the extras match the lunacy of the film itself, right down to the menu presentation as yearbook pages. Troma co-founder and creator of the Toxic Avenger Lloyd Kaufman introduces the film wearing graduation cap and gown, from in front of an inner city high school that he claims is his alma mater, Yale. Who but Lloyd would introduce a film and brag about how it beat out the Columbine killings by 19 years? Who else would schedule an interview with Linnea Quigley and arrange for the interviewer to be none other than... Sgt. Kabukiman, NYPD? Lloyd clearly has no shame, as he shills one of his many books during the demonstration of a Troma-style arm rip. There are also trailers for a number of films, the most fitting of which is a more modern school slasher, THE HALL MONITOR. And yes, it looks like a Troma movie. But that should be obvious from its tag line “Reading... Writing... Reloading.” Haven’t got your fill of Tromatic extras? Search around the “Detention” menu, and you’ll discover a music video that Lloyd directed for the song “The Cannibal Lesbian Hoedown.”

GRADUATION DAY is by no means a good movie. But it is schizoid entertainment at its best, gaudy, eye-popping fun that never ceased to entertain me from the first shot of a stopwatch. The accumulation of a series of insane scenes transcends plot, and manage to rouse Christopher George to act for a change. Credit Herb Freed for going above and beyond the usual slasher fare with panache. High school sports were never this fun.

--Phil Fasso

Graduate with Vanna White! Support Icons of Fright and Amazon and Buy Here!

Back in September, I went on opening night to see SORORITY ROW, a silly remake of a just-as-silly 1980s slasher. I really don’t like slashers in general, so why this lame remake inspired me, I’ll never know. But inspire it did, and I set myself to the task of reviewing a bunch of slashers, the first round of which were school-based. Several months later, I stopped stalling and actually committed myself to following through on it (hey, I told you I can’t stand slashers). Below is the fifth in this series of reviews.

Back in the 1990s when SCREAM popularized the phrase “post-ironic” with horror fans and Wes Craven told us it was okay for films to poke fun at the genre’s conventions, several films basically stole his concept and cashed in. Clumped in with these films was URBAN LEGEND. This is a crime, as the flick actually hearkens back to a cash in period from a whole decade earlier: the slasher cycle of the early 1980s.

Oh sure, the flick attempts to be cheeky at times; any film from this period that would dare to have Bonnie Tyler singing the line “Turn around, bright eyes” when doing so might save a life is begging to fit in with the SCREAM crowd. But notice that Tyler’s song “Total Eclipse of the Heart” came out in the early 80s? I can’t chock this up to mere coincidence. Because at its heart, URBAN LEGEND is a throwback to the times when school-based slashers were a crazy trend in the genre.

It begins in a car on a dark and rainy night, as a female student from Pendleton University races toward the campus. When she runs low on gas and stops at a gas station where a retarded Brad Dourif is the pump jockey, terrible things are bound to happen. Terrible things that, given this movie’s predilections, will set off a chain of slasher killings at Pendleton University. The twist is that our slasher bases every death, from the first to the last, on a famous urban legend. This gimmick distinguishes the flick from all the other school-based slashers I’ve watched in recent months. It’s a nifty conceit, and offers a few touches of originality.

Sadly, it offers the film’s only touches of originality, as everything else makes for a by-the-numbers rip off of a decade-old formula. From the panning shot that establishes the campus, it’s the 1980s all over again. The acting borders on atrocious, from our heroine Alicia Witt to perennial butt of jokes Tara Reid. The film forgives this, as most 80s slashers did, because the characters are all expendable fodder for our killer; but I cannot be so kind to these cardboard cutouts that come straight from the Generic Stereotype Generator. Then there’s the music; if you’re dense enough not to predict every killing long before it comes, don’t worry, as the score will inform you with a sting.

Worst of all, the flick takes its original concept and does absolutely nothing original with it. Instead of offering up a fresh take on the subgenre, the plot plays the whodunnit angle, with several decoys and cheap scares along the way. Students gaze suspiciously at each other, staff and faculty, and we’re supposed to play along in this game of 10 Little Campus Indians. The body count ratchets up accordingly as the flick heads towards its conclusion, where one character will be revealed as the urban legend killer; a superhuman student who has great strength and can absorb huge amounts of damage without losing a step. None of it’s new. It’s all been done before, right down to the creepy custodian. Given all this, the film in spirit is more a remake of PROM NIGHT than the actual PROM NIGHT remake.

Oh, and let’s not forget the dialogue: “You guys, what if there is a lunatic on campus?” It really does speak for itself.

I have to give credit where it’s due. One place where this film was far ahead of the curve was its use of cameos. Danielle Harris and Robert Englund show up in small roles long before it became fashionable to do so. Add Dourif’s inspired performance as the pump jockey, and that’s a triple threat of genre studs. Watching the flick for this review, I kept looking for Dee Wallace.

Does all this make the film worth watching? If you’re a slasher junkie, yes. You’ll salivate as you watch an old formula done with slick cinematography and “real” actors. Sure, it’s all been done, but that’s part of the fun for slasher fans. If you abhor the subgenre, you’re likely not to enjoy. Avoid the film as if it’s the bubonic plague. If you’re a SCREAM fan? You may catch some of the in-jokes, but you’re barking up the wrong tree. Try SCREAM 2 instead. Or SCREAM 3 for that matter. Or even the upcoming SCREAM 4.

If only the commentary made any mention of my theory. Director Jamie Blanks, writer Silvio Horta and actor Michael Rosenbaum have fun with it, but a lot of it is nuts and bolts about the script and the production. This would have been a prime opportunity for the three to discuss this film’s place in the tradition of slashers, but it passes on that. Oddly, the three make references to RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD and PET SEMATARY. The making-of featurette is a dry piece that shows B-roll footage and some post-production stuff, with commentary from Blanks. It does, however, include a completely useless deleted scene. There’s also the trailer. WARNING: Don’t watch the trailer before watching the movie, as it gives away a major gag at the beginning of the film. Bios of some of those involved round out the extras.

URBAN LEGEND came out at a time when SCREAM had the hot hand in horror. It really should have come out a decade earlier, when it would have been more at home with school-based cheapie slashers than hip, post-ironic horror. Watch it right after SPLATTER UNIVERSITY and SLAUGHTER HIGH, and try to tell me I’m wrong.

One more thing: How does a film that calls itself URBAN LEGEND not have a character get eaten by an alligator in the sewer? But that’s another review.

--Phil Fasso

Get Out of School Alive! Support Icons and Amazon and Buy Here!

Back in September, I went on opening night to see SORORITY ROW, a silly remake of a just-as-silly 1980s slasher. I really don’t like slashers in general, so why this lame remake inspired me, I’ll never know. But inspire it did, and I set myself to the task of reviewing a bunch of slashers, the first round of which were school-based. Several months later, I stopped stalling and actually committed myself to following through on it (hey, I told you I can’t stand slashers). Below is the fourth in this series of reviews.

de•riv•a•tive (adj) copied or adapted from others

slash•er (n) a horror film depicting such criminal (attacks with a knife, razor, or the like) and featuring gory special effects.

I kindly thank American Heritage and Random House, respectively, for the definitions above. They made reviewing THE DORM THAT DRIPPED BLOOD easy for me. Looking at this film for my review, I was amazed at just how derivative the slasher film had become in a period of only two years. In 1980, Sean Cunningham’s FRIDAY THE 13TH established much of the template for this cheapie breed; by 1982, so many scores of films had aped its elements that they became cliché in a record amount of time, even by Hollywood standards. As director and producer after director and producer rushed to cash in on Paramount’s cash cow, so precious few of theM seemed intent to add anything to the formula. DORM decided to adhere closely to the formula, and turns out one mundane experience.

Cunningham’s film began with a group of young adults at an empty summer camp, building it up before kids arrive. This film flips that concept: after a quick kill that seems totally unrelated to the rest, DORM has a group of young adults breaking down a dormitory after all the students have left. The setting provides the necessary isolation, as well as plenty of dark locations for the killer to lurk within (too dark, in many cases; several scenes are so close to pitch black, it’s nearly impossible to see what’s going on). It’s also one of only two element for which I can applaud directors Stephen Carpenter and Jeffrey Orbrow. Its scope added instant production to what is obviously a low budget effort.

If only the two had done anything exciting with that locale. THE DORM THAT DRIPPED BLOOD’s biggest sin is how it operates strictly by the numbers. A woman sitting alone in a car at night? She’ll get it from someone in the back seat. A man washing his face in front of a bathroom mirror? The killer’s bound to be behind him when he straightens up. This film even employs the “victim walking up the darkened stairwell as killer walks down it” not once but twice. And herein lies the problem: I see the solitary victim walking in the shadows, then the killer’s legs, I hear the “Harry Manfredini meets Bernard Herrman’s PSYCHO” score, and I know the slashing is imminent. By telegraphing every kill in the film this way, the movie’s attempt to provide build-up actually minimizes the tension, and as a result, it’s not frightening all. Following a formula is one thing. Following it in such rote fashion makes for a dull experience.

I mentioned there were two things that worked in this film when I discussed the setting. The other is its ending. By that, I don’t mean the last 15 minutes, in which DORM reveals its killer (yes, this is a whodunnit, another tired slasher convention), which I’m sure was supposed to surprise the audience, but didn’t catch me. I mean the last three minutes or so. I’m a fan of bleak endings in horror films, and DORM is audacious enough to break from formula here. These three minutes are grim and provide something fresh, but it’s too little, too late. If only the rest of the film had taken the risks that its finale does.

If you’re looking for this flick on DVD, you won’t find it. At least, not under its true title. The DVD goes by its British name, PRANKS, which doesn’t even make sense. But that does make it an entry in the Horror Movie Relocation program.

You also won’t find any extras, except a “Bios and Filmography” section. That’s actually a misnomer, because there’s only one. It outlines the career of Daphne Zuniga, who has a minor role here, and had a minor career in the 80s and 90s. Clearly, Substance Video didn’t think to excite slasher fans with extras any more than the film itself will.

In my recent reviews for SPLATTER UNIVERSITY and SLAUGHTER HIGH, I hammered those flicks for being ludicrous. They hold to their own ridiculous rules, and are by their very nature outlandish. What I didn’t acknowledge is that their absurdity at least gave them personality. Sure, they’re terrible, but they’re anything but boring. And under the right circumstances, they’d provide some good laughs over a few beers with some friends. I can’t say the same for DORM THAT DRIPPED BLOOD. It’s more competently made than those films, but infinitely duller. If you always thought that school was mind numbing and you couldn’t wait for the closing bell, DORM THAT DRIPPED BLOOD will prove you right.

--Phil Fasso

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Back in September, I went on opening night to see SORORITY ROW, a silly remake of a just-as-silly 1980s slasher. I really don’t like slashers in general, so why this lame remake inspired me, I’ll never know. But inspire it did, and I set myself to the task of reviewing a bunch of slashers, the first round of which were school-based. Several months later, I stopped stalling and actually committed myself to following through on it (hey, I told you I can’t stand slashers). Below is the third in this series of reviews.

If I were going by the logic of SLAUGHTER HIGH, I would be 74 years old and British. Casually strolling through Picadilly Circus, walker in hand as I headed for a spot of tea, I would look forward to reclining in my elderly years as a happy septuagenarian. Right before I got slain by a pissed off nerd.

Asking yourself “WTF?” You should be. Because as much as I’m not a “WTF” guy, this is the most “WTF” slasher flick I’ve ever witnessed. I don’t think anything could have prepared me for the jaw dropping insanity that is SLAUGHTER HIGH. Think I’m in engaging in hyperbole? Get a load of this:

The movie jumps right into things with a panning shot of the front of an “American” high school. Inside, Caroline Munro’s character, high school senior Carol, is luring the school’s biggest nerd Marty Rantzen into the girl’s locker room for some quickie sex. How fortunate we the audience are that a hand rips down a calendar sheet to reveal that it’s April Fool’s Day. Pull back a shower curtain, and there’s Marty, stark naked, with the biggest bush of pubic hair in film’s history, facing not only Carol but what seems like 47 other mischievous students. As the gym teacher punishes them for their prank, they manage to set up Marty for Prank # 2, which involves Marty smoking a tainted jay and quarterback Skip sabotaging his science experiment. As a fireball explodes, Marty is burnt to a crisp. The entire first 1/3 of the movie plays like a teen sex/nerd comedy, reminiscent more of REVENGE OF THE NERDS and Bob Clark’s PORKY’S than a horror film. Though the movie could’ve played off the pranksters as mean spirited (and rightfully should have), the tone suggests that they’re just having a good time. Nothing for the first 26 minutes—the acting, the dialogue, the rather catchy theme song with the cackling singer—suggest this is a horror flick at all.

The movie then kicks into its second gear, as the cruel students set off five years later to the school for a 5-year reunion. Ehh? In this script’s alternate reality, that makes perfect sense. What doesn’t is the severe change in tone. As the assembled baddies arrive, this turns on a dime into another movie. It becomes just another FRIDAY THE 13TH ripoff, containing all the hallmarks of the slasher subgenre: an isolated location; characters who don’t react logically to danger; people separating often when there would be obvious safety in numbers; the whole overrated “final girl” thing; and Marty running around in a jester’s mask, slaughtering everybody and absorbing much more abuse than he should be able to withstand. Punctuate each murder with a musical sting orchestrated by—you guessed it—none other than FRIDAY’s composer Harry Manfredini, and this is “What if Jason were a horribly scarred geek in a high school instead of a mongoloid in a lake?”

And then, there’s the ending. Marty revels in a job well done, but not for long, as the film manages to rip off 3 much better horror flicks in a matter of 3 minutes. Hey, that’s an average of a rip off a minute. None of what comes at the conclusion fits either the sex comedy or the slasher film; this ending is right out of left field, but knowing the lead up, it’s exactly what I should have expected. As the credits rolled, I was so confused that I couldn’t tell what had happened in any of the film.

What does any of this mean? Taken as a whole, it’s likely that the filmmakers had no idea what kind of film they wanted to make, or any knowledge of the word “cohesion.” According to the credits, it took three men to write this, and all three also directed. Perhaps one wanted to make a sex comedy, the second a FRIDAY film, and the third... well I can’t explain what he might have wanted to make. What all three combined to make was a mess. But a unique mess, I’ll give them that. Like the recent MEGA SHARK vs. GIANT OCTOPUS, SLAUGHTER HIGH exists in its own universe. If you need more proof, consider this: according to one character, April Fool’s Day ends at noon.

Want a little more skewed sanity? Our “final girl” Carol is an 18 year old American high school senior. So how did Caroline Munroe get this role, considering she’s sincerely British and was 36 during the filming? I know it’s common to cast post-teenage actors to play teens. But someone pushing 40? Really? The fact that most of the cast painfully try and fail to conceal British accents flings this flick further into its own universe; especially when one character mentions the 7-11 down the block, and wanting to see “America the beautiful.” Even the school is clearly not American; I’ve taught in several high schools, and I’ve never seen one with a full bathtub and bedrooms.

SLAUGHTER HIGH is so whacked out that I don’t quite understand how I expected an average package of extras. Instead, I was greeted with a trailer that boasts the film comes from the makers of FRIDAY THE 13TH. This is clearly a bald-faced lie, unless you consider a composer and one guy who put up money for that flick to be “the makers of.” And then there’s the trivia track. You’ve got to see this to believe it. Why bother to give background about the film, when it can inform you that Adolf Hitler was the man behind the Volkswagen? A film with logic this bizarre deserves a commentary track with logic this bizarre.

Films based in schools often seek to educate their audience. So in recap, what did I learn from SLAUGHTER HIGH?

• Caroline Munroe is the oldest teenager in history
• Kevin Costner may have struggled with an English accent, but he was only returning the favor to the cast of this film
• Some nerds have a really big bush of pubic hair
• Some girls would rather try reaching in vain for the faucet that’s pouring sulfuric acid into the tub, instead of getting out of the tub
• A movie can be 48% PORKY’S, 48% FRIDAY THE 13TH and the remaining 2% a bizarre concoction of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, CARRIE, and DRESSED TO KILL
• Films that claim to be “From the Makers of FRIDAY THE 13TH” aren’t necessarily from its makers
• Harry Manfredini knows how recycle his music from other films
• It only takes one director to make a film that is all over the map, but three can do it as well
• Nebraska was the last state to ban electrocution as a sole form of the death penalty

and most importantly of all...

• Unlike every other day in the calendar year, April Fool’s Day ends at high noon

--Phil Fasso

Don't be an April's Fool, even after noon! Support Icons of Fright and Amazon, and order SLAUGHTER HIGH here!

Back in September, I went on opening night to see SORORITY ROW, a silly remake of a just-as-silly 1980s slasher. I really don’t like slashers in general, so why this lame remake inspired me, I’ll never know. But inspire it did, and I set myself to the task of reviewing a bunch of slashers, the first round of which were school-based. Several months later, I stopped stalling and actually committed myself to following through on it (hey, I told you I can’t stand slashers). Below is the second in this series of reviews.

Maybe it was the title. When a movie bears the name FINAL EXAM, it can play with a lifelong teacher’s memory, remind him fondly of those end-of-course evaluations. It had to be the title, because I had only seen the film once, a few months back; my general impression, as I dove headlong into school-set slashers last September, was that this was one of the easier to swallow entries, more believable and in turn better than the rest of the crop.

But memory can be fickle, and it reared its ugly head last night. Just as I pressed play, the full formed memory hit like a lightning bolt: FINAL EXAM was the slasher flick with the terrorists firing on the school’s quad full of students. The realization dredged up accompanying thoughts: The attack did not belong in a slasher at all. The underlying reason for the attack, when revealed, is even more preposterous than the attack itself. The scene leads to the subsequent introduction of characters fresh off the Generic Stereotype Generator, including: the bumbling, inquisitive Cop; the even more bumbling, incompetent Campus Security Guard; and the Coach who wears the Gray Sweat Suit and the Blue Baseball Cap. These scenes are so out of place, they seem to have come from a different movie.

Minus that bizarre distraction, the rest of FINAL EXAM plays out mostly to form. The initial scene presents a couple in a car, making out. We know they are going to die, because this is a slasher, and couples making out in cars always die in slashers, especially when they start the film. But wait. They’re students on another campus, which makes their killings totally random and unrelated to the rest of the film. But then every killing is random in the film, because the killer’s incentive is never made clear. At film’s end, his identity isn’t even evident. He is the Slasher Without Motive, the rarest of all killers in the slasher realm. This led me to speculate: Was he a disgruntled victim of financial aid withdrawal? A canned professor? Some bewildered former Vietnam vet who never made the most of his GI Bill? He could be any, all or none of these, and this is a major flaw in the film.

But there had to be greater reason for me to remember the film fondly than the title, right? As I watched a second time, it dawned on me quickly. Unlike most slashers, FINAL EXAM takes the time to establish characters, and make them likeable. Most notably, the leads Radish and Courtney are amiable and real. The fact that they’re portrayed by first-time actors makes the performances, and their unrequited romance, naturalistic, so it’s easy to root for them. The film focuses more on them and their fellow students than the murders. Sure, this means there’s a long span without killings, which may bore the gore hounds. And the kills themselves aren’t even that bloody, truth be told. But they’re fairly creative, and writer/director Jimmy Huston uses some great campus locations that ground the film in reality. The dorm, the gym and the quad are dangerous places, as night falls. The best set piece is the bell tower, where the final confrontation takes place. It’s well done, and unlikely to disappoint.

The extras shouldn’t let the film’s fans down either. The most prominent is the commentary. Moderated by the New Beverly Theatre’s programmer Julie Marchese and Darren Miller from someplace called Rock World, the track also includes actors Cecile Bagdadi, Sherry Willis-Burch and Radish himself, Joel S. Rice. The three are, like their characters, likeable as they share some moderately entertaining back stories (after every kill was filmed, the cast sang Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust. Now that’s cool). The problem here is Miller and Marchese. They act like Fanboy and Fangirl, boasting some wildly ridiculous claims, such as how the film is among the top five slashers of all time (come on now, seriously?). Listen to Marchese’s unfounded theory that the killer is really a set of twins, as she repeats it ad nauseam. The track would have run better if it had not been moderated.

There are also short interviews with the three actors, filmed at the time of the commentary’s recording. The questions show up on a black background, followed by a pause before the actor answers them. This is a stiff way of doing things that I don’t prefer at all. Though the interviews are interesting, they’re just extended versions of issues covered in the commentary. If you omit them, you won’t miss much. Finally, there are trailers for FINAL EXAM and four other horror flicks. Nothing too thrilling here.

My final analysis of FINAL EXAM is this: stick it out through the silliness of the unfitting terrorist attack and a few other outlandish scenes, and there’s some stuff to like in the film. It’s competently made, and contains some affable characters who find themselves in peril in some craftily employed set pieces. Does it pass the test as one of the greatest slashers of all time? No. It won’t make anybody forget the likes of Michael Myers, but it’s not a terrible way to kill an evening if you tire of Haddonfield and Crystal Lake. Maybe I’ll remember that next time I pull it off the shelf.

--Phil Fasso

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Back in September, I went on opening night to see SORORITY ROW, a flick that is a silly remake of a just-as- silly 1980s slasher. I really don’t like slashers in general, so why this lame remake inspired me, I’ll never know. But inspire it did, and I set myself the task of reviewing a bunch of slashers, the first round of which were school-based. Several months later, I actually committed myself to following through on it (hey, I told you I can’t stand slashers). Below is the first in this series of reviews.

When a movie calls itself SPLATTER UNIVERSITY, and then turns its title into a pun as appallingly ridiculous as “Splatter U.” (get it? Splatter “you?”), it might as well call itself WE’RE NOT AIMING VERY HIGH HERE, ARE WE? A little history lesson puts this film in context: after FRIDAY THE 13TH said it was okay to show blood and made a lot of money doing so, the floodgates opened and a whole slew of slashers came down the pike. They all followed the same, stale formula, pretty much; and while a few were truly effective (MY BLOODY VALENTINE is shamefully underrated), many were out solely for the buck, adding nothing distinct to the subgenre but another uninspired effort. Such is SPLATTER UNIVERSITY, which offers an education on lazy, messy filmmaking, and isn’t shy about it.

One of the worst and most overlooked clichés in horror is the peek into the psychiatric ward, and that’s exactly where this film starts. Having a bunch of people stare into nowhere and walk into walls was overdone even in 1984 (as was the slasher cycle itself, incidentally). This movie goes one farther by having one lunatic in a bathrobe crisscrossing his eyes and poking those of a mannequin’s head. Do mental institutions provide these when a patient is committed? I’ve never been institutionalized, so maybe some lunatic reading this can email me an answer. Regardless, a doctor wanders the hall looking for one mental patient, and finds him when he opens a broom closet. Watch the first attack closely, because you can shut the movie over after you’ve seen it. Here’s how nearly every death in the film will play out:

1. The killer’s POV shot of the perfectly calm soon-to-be victim about to get the knife (randomly on the floor of the psych ward? Sure why not).
2. Extreme close up shot of hand driving knife through what is obviously not human flesh (and this first guy gets it in the yarbles—ouch!), followed by gushing blood.
3. Victim stands for roughly 2 seconds before bending slightly at the waist as if stabbed (was the editor incompetent, or just careless? I’ll guess the latter.)

Repeat this once, and I’ll let it slide. Repeat it eight times, and you, sir, should be punished (insert your own lame detention pun here; I’m sure the people behind this flick would). In fact, you’ll see the same thing about two minutes later, as a professor at St. Trinians College gets offed in exactly the same fashion.

If you were worried that the kills were the only lazy element in the film, fear not. The scripting is just as haphazard, as is evident from the next scene when our female lead arrives to take a new job; just read the subtitle, “ST. TRINIANS COLLEGE/The next semester/Yesterday...” Huh? Folks, I couldn’t make it up if I tried. The slapdash scripting squanders the religious implications its setting offers, providing instead the escaped mental patient cliché. In place of complexity, it offers some of the most astoundingly mindless character decisions. For example, why would the lead trust her boyfriend’s alibi for one of the repetitive murders one second, then break into his house looking for damning evidence the next? Why is she the only one who’s more concerned by the fact that people on campus are dropping like flies? After the lead actress says she’s leaving the school, why does the head priest try to convince her to stay, and then later say he can’t meet her at the school when she calls to say she’s figured out who the killer is?

And yes, that last question means SPLATTER U. follows yet another 1980s slasher trend: the whodunnit. Ok, so let me get this straight. The director, writers and producers didn’t care enough to offer up a competent plot or bold kills, but they want us, the audience, to care enough to expend the gray matter to figure out the killer’s identity? Take my word for it; you won’t. Even if you revere slashers and live for a revival of their heyday, I can guarantee you’ll be hard pressed to fall in love with this ugly stepchild of the subgenre.

Special mention must be made of the film’s score. I don’t know how its synth-driven track went over in 1984, but at a distance of a quarter century, it’s ludicrous. Instead of enhancing the affair with its stings during the kills and its pounding chords, it dates the film terribly, confining it not only to the slasher ghetto, but to the 1980s. Dear God, why is my brain reeling with grade school memories of Ronald Reagan?

I can only commend SPLATTER UNIVERSITY for two things. Shockingly, it breaks from the “last girl” part of the slasher formula. Bold, right? And in truly bad taste, it offs a pregnant lady. But seeing that FRIDAY THE 13TH PART III had already beaten it to this punch by two years...

Elite Entertainment apparently thought as highly of this movie as I do, which shows from the two trailers that act as the only extras. Certainly there’s nothing elite about the extras or the movie, which hardly qualifies as entertainment.

Full disclosure, I’m not a big fan of slashers. But that doesn’t mean I can’t give them a fair review on an individual basis. SPLATTER UNIVERSITY is a lazily assembled cash-in that only the most accepting or desperate fans will enjoy. As I’m not nearly as derivative as this film is, I’m sure you’ll give me a pass on not leaving off with a school pun.

--Phil Fasso

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Sometimes a series of things lead a man in one, inevitable direction. During an interview with Kathleen Kinmont recently, we discussed her ex-husband and RENEGADE co-star Lorenzo Lamas; last night the totally misguided cover version of “We Are the World” brought me to a German lip synched version with stars from the 1980s that starred none other than... Lorenzo Lamas. I thought this was passing coincidence. That is, until I turned on my TV this afternoon and Discovery Channel was showing a block of shark programs. This wouldn’t have been out of the ordinary during Shark Week, but this week it was just a random block. So what does this have to do with a horror review? Simple math: Lorenzo Lamas + sharks = MEGA SHARK vs. GIANT OCTOPUS, one of the silliest pieces of schlock I’ve watched in a long, long time.

In fact, because this falls so heavily under the “schlock” category, I almost passed on writing this review. After all, when it comes to Icons of Fright, Mad Man Dan Price is the resident expert of schlock. A little investigation, and I found that he’d already discussed this seafaring opus of poor filmmaking under his “Schlock Value” banner. Still, there’s no avoiding that which is inevitable, and so I decided to go ahead and review it anyway. I’ll try to avoid covering the areas on which Dan already wrote, and give my own observations.

The movie’s opening sets the tone for everything that is to follow. The camera pans over copious CGI mountains in what is supposed to be Alaska. A helicopter drops a sonar transmitter into the water, and drives a group of migrating whales to commit suicide by driving their heads into a glacier. As they die, the whales crack the ice so much that it shatters and releases a MEGA SHARK and a GIANT OCTOPUS. Witness to this is Deborah “Don’t Call Me Debbie” Gibson, playing a marine biologist gliding around in a nifty submarine with her crew of underwater whale watchers. Excepting Gibson’s performance, everything in these scenes is computer generated: the whales, the sub, the glacier, the sonar device, the helicopter, the surrounding waters and the titular beasts from the depths. The thing is, none of it is generated convincingly. I didn’t buy that I was looking at anything but a bunch of silly images. Want proof? In full disclosure, I am deathly afraid of whales. I can’t even bear to watch FREE WILLY. But these leviathans didn’t so much as make one hair stand up on my neck.

These computer images create a world that is outright fantasy, with no connection to reality at all. Given this, it’s then easy to forgive that everything in this movie is absolutely implausible. If you’re looking for anything logical whatsoever, you’re watching the wrong film. So even when a behemoth megalodon and a gargantuan cephalopod started attacking the most wildly inconceivable targets ( and believe me, I’m not understating how wildly inconceivable those targets are), I found I couldn’t bash the film. No, it’s not a great film by any stretch. But it exists in its own universe, and plays within that universe’s rules.

You may ask yourself, given how hard I am in my scrutiny of the films I review, why I’m not destroying MEGA SHARK vs. GIANT OCTOPUS. Well, I can’t. Sure, this film is absolutely absurd. But then, what did you expect when going into a film called MEGA SHARK vs. GIANT OCTOPUS? But even that’s besides the point. Though the folks at The Asylum may not have intended it, the film hearkens back to a tradition in horror that was in its heyday in the 1950s; it recalls films such as HIDEOUS SUN DEMON, FROM HELL IT CAME, THE GIANT GILA MONSTER and the whole catalogue of Bert I. Gordon. Filled with reams of ridiculous dialogue, much of which was scientific jargon, as characters discuss how to fight the monsters instead of actually fighting them; stilted acting at best and incompetent at worst; and cheapjack, unconvincing monsters that were meant to produce spine tingling dread but often conjured only full-belly laughter; these programmers found their way onto double bills in front of thousands of popcorn eating adolescents. Could casting Debbie “Electric Youth” Gibson as a marine biologist who will watch on as a MEGA SHARK engages in mortal combat with a GIANT OCTOPUS be anything but a nod to those programmers? I think not.

Note that none of those films were good. And neither is this one. In following their formula, it makes every mistake those films made. But it does have plenty of action, which many of those old programmers lacked. Over the top, laughably implausible action, but when a film stars a MEGA SHARK and a GIANT OCTOPUS, it’s stacked the deck. The film may be many things, but I don’t anyone could call it boring.

And then there’s Lorenzo Lamas. Given his combination of good looks and limited acting abilities, it seems only fitting that he’s been relegated to these types of flicks lately. Watching his stony screen presence and dashingly handsome looks, I could only think that he would have been perfectly cast in INVISIBLE INVADERS, another schlocky programmer. Surely he was born in the wrong era.

How could a film this titanic manage such scant extras? There’s an 8-minute making of featurette, bloopers, and a selection of trailers that capture beautifully just how silly all of their films are. I didn’t expect a commentary, but it’s sad that the best special feature on the disc is the animated main menu. Shame on you, Asylum, for not providing extra cheese on this schlocky selection, as I believe my colleague Mad Man Dan would say.

MEGA SHARK vs. GIANT OCTOPUS is an implausible that exists in its own implausible universe. Because of this, I can’t judge it as I would any other flick. It’s not good, it’s not scary and it’s not effective. Yet I can’t hate it, because I don’t think it was supposed to be any of those. It’s schlock, and it knows it. But then, just reading the title told you that.

Hey, at least it had Lorenzo Lamas.

--Phil Fasso

Get in on this Titanic battle: Buy Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus here!

Note: TALES FROM THE CRYPT is available in a package that comes with another Amicus portmanteau, VAULT OF HORROR. I'll cover that film in a separate review.

Last month, I gave Icons of Fright fans a Thanksgiving review of MOTHER’S DAY. Being that next week is Christmas, I figured I would write a review that actually ties in to the right holiday, instead of crisscrossing. Fortunately, I found the perfect movie: 1972’s Amicus portmanteau, TALES FROM THE CRYPT.

Sure, I could have chosen CHRISTMAS EVIL, or any of the SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT flicks, but Mike Cucinotta and I chose to follow our viewing of SCROOGED this past Monday night with Amicus’ well-made little anthology film, and neither of us were disappointed.

If you’ve seen any of the Amicus portmanteaus, the opening will be familiar: The film begins with five people going on a tour of a crypt. The door locks behind them, enclosing them in a tomb, and a weird figure dressed in Druids’ robes appears before them. They claim they have appointments to keep, but their only appointment is with death, and the Crypt Keeper is sure not to delay them. He reveals to them, one by one, the stories of their undoing.

Each story is a classy little piece in its own, and each subscribes to the morality of the EC Comics of old: People do evil for their own gain, and evil comes back to close the door on them. The film might as well have been called “BAD PEOPLE AND THE BAD THINGS THAT HAPPEN TO THEM.” And it starts off with Joan Collins, to boot.

“All Through the House” begins with an affable guy laying out gifts for his wife on Christmas Eve. As he sits down to read his paper, there’s a nifty shot of his wife ending him violently. When a deadly lunatic dressed as Santa arrives, the tension unfolds perfectly; with a dead body in the house, she cannot call the police to save her. A nice final shot ends this excellent segment. Given that all this takes place with a Christmas tree lit up in the living room and holiday standards playing on the radio, the irony involved is beautiful. Fans of the HBO television CRYPT series will know this segment even if they haven’t seen the film, as it was used for one of the first episodes. Obviously HBO wanted to start off on a strong foot.

“Reflections of Death” follows, and it’s a bit of a letdown. A seemingly nice guy says good bye to his wife and children, and trots off to the apartment where he’s keeping his mistress. He joins her in his car, ready to run away from his family, to a new life. When the mistress takes over driving and gets run off the road, the accident triggers some weird reactions as the man tries to discover what has happened. His reflection spells it out, but I figured it out long before a mirror told me. A weak episode, but it’s short and relatively entertaining.

“Poetic Justice” is the middle segment, and by far the best. An unscrupulous land owner wants to develop his neighborhood, but Mr. Grimsdyke, the kindly old widower across the street who entertains the neighborhood children and loves his many dogs, refuses to sell. The land owner turns up the pressure by arranging to ruin Grimsdyke’s life little by little, until the poor old man hangs himself. If you’ve know anything about the EC Comics, you know where this is going. But that doesn’t make this segment a failure. In fact, this segment is superior to the rest, based on one performance: Peter Cushing as Grimsdyke. I tend to think of him as the British gentleman he portrayed as Dr. Frankenstein and Grand Moff Tarkin; but he brings such shades of character in playing a decent, simple old man who’s victimized, and in doing so displays his versatility as an actor. He does such a great job in making Grimsdyke so sympathetic, which paints his neighbor all the more evil. This may be the best acting I’ve ever seen out of Cushing. The story itself works on both the character level as a horror story, an effectively creepy piece that’s a triumphant little tale with the EC twist.

Milton Subotsky must have had the undead on the brain when he wrote the screenplay, because “Wish You Were Here” is the third tale in a row that involves living corpses. This is a rip off of the old story “The Monkey’s Paw,” and I love how this segment goes out of its way to mention the story, as if it’s an homage instead of a plot thief. Having fallen on hard times, a man gets a call to meet his lawyer to discuss financial considerations. Driving off, he sees a motorcycle rider in a skull mask following him (this visual gag takes symbolism to silly lengths). His death in the car crash leads his wife to make some inadvisable decisions involving a statue that basically serves as the stand-in for the monkey’s paw. The segment is a decent rip off, and the EC twists clearly spells out that greed will only lead to suffering.

“Blind Alleys” is the last story, and also the longest. A particularly cruel retired army major takes a new job, presiding over a home for blind men. While his charges eat poorly and sleep with no heat (which causes death to one of them, a pivotal event), the major and his dog live an effete life, eating well, surrounded by creature comforts; there’s one great scene where the German shepherd is lying on a blanket, which could have saved the dying blind man. When the blind men decide to rebel in a fashion that as sadistic as it is creative, the major gets his comeuppance. As the spokesman for the blind, Patrick Magee proves why he was so perfect in roles of creepy old men in many of the Amicus tales.

Story wise, what keeps this movie relevant today is the morality behind the tales. Nasty things just don’t happen randomly, as they so often do in real life; instead, they happen to people who, through their own actions, deserve them. The horrors, even if they’re supernatural, actually serve the natural order of things, whether you want to call it the yin and the yang, or karma, or whatever. Order is restored at the end of one of these tales. So if you’re a murderer, or a adulterer, or greedy, or you abuse a position of authority, you will be brought down. If only real life worked like this.

Beyond story, the film also benefits from the direction of Freddie Francis. He directed many of the later Hammer films, so he was more than adept at ably handling horror films. He was also one of the greatest cinematographers in the history of film, and though he’s not his own DP here, his knowledge in that area is on display here as well. His work on the film bolsters the material, and gives the whole affair a level of class it wouldn’t have had in lesser hands.

Warner Brothers did nothing to bolster the film in the way of special features. Other than a long trailer, there’s absolutely nothing on the disc. How great would it be to have Joan Collins commenting on her segment, or David J. Skal discussing the importance of the horror anthology? Apparently the studio didn’t think TALES FROM THE CRYPT merited any extras, and decided to dump it into the bargain bin. Considering some of the talent involved (for God’s sake, Francis won two Oscars for cinematography), it’s an insult to fans and those involved that this disc got nothing.

TALES FROM THE CRYPT is a superior example of the portmanteau, that should reside in any horror fan’s collection right alongside George Romero’s CREEPSHOW. It’s a classy affair that offers five morality tales, and is effectively creepy. Given the Christmas theme in the first segment, it also gives me a nice reason to write about it, and deliver it like some evil Santa to our loyal Icons of Fright fans.

--Phil Fasso

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Sometimes, it’s easy for me to see exactly what the filmmakers were thinking when they put together a project. In the case of ZOMBIES ON BROADWAY, the people at RKO Studios had three obvious lines of thought:

1. Two years earlier in 1943, their somber zombie movie I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE had been both a critical and financial success.

2. Abbott and Costello’s comedy BUCK PRIVATES had brought in a huge box office of $10 million in 1941.

3. In 1931, Bela Lugosi had played Dracula. In the intervening years, he still had some name value, and came on the cheap. Oh, and he’d also starred in WHITE ZOMBIE, the most influential zombie film to that date, and the one that created the genre.

RKO clearly figured that if any one of these three was a great success on its own; then combining them to create an Abbott and Costello style comedy that featured some of the elements of I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE and Lugosi could only augur success. Unfortunately, sometimes the whole cannot possibly equal the sum of its parts; despite those stellar elements, ZOMBIES ON BROADWAY wastes whatever potential they offered to the mix.

From the very start, it should be obvious to even the most casual observer that ZOMBIES ON BROADWAY wants to be, essentially, an Abbott and Costello movie. Two bumbling public relations guys are advertising for a gangster’s new club, the Zombie Hut. Promising him a real-life zombie becomes an issue when a radio man who hates the gangster threatens to ruin the club’s opening if said zombie doesn’t show up. After the PR guys Jerry and Mike take a silly trip to a museum, the gangster sends them off to St. Sebastian in search of a real zombie. Upon arrival, they’ll encounter a mad doctor who wants to create zombies just like the voodoo islanders do; a femme fatale who throws knives in a bar; a monkey with a lot of personality, who’s funnier than the two leads; oh, and a few zombies.

There’s some quality stuff here. Though Lugosi could phone in performances in these cheapie programmers, he’s good in his limited time as Dr. Renault. The man could play role like this with his eyes closed, but he imbues Renault with just enough creepy charm to distinguish him from every other mad scientist of the day. He doesn’t overplay it, and whoever got him to restrain himself did his performance, and the movie, great favor. Unfortunately, even in a movie that’s only 67 minutes long, his onscreen time is too fleeting. If RKO took the bother to get Lugosi, the studio should have had the screenwriter beef up his role.

The references to I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE also work, but as with Lugosi, only to a limited extent. I’m not a big fan of the Val Lewton/Jacques Tourneur collaboration (read my review here), but it did have some elements that were deservedly to become iconic. Two of these were the Calypso singer, portrayed by Sir Lancelot, and the lead zombie in both films, the shirtless, bug-eyed Darby Jones. I greatly appreciated when Jerry and Mike stepped off the boat, and the singer crooned about the fate of strangers on St. Sebastian, to the same tune he used in Lewton’s film. When the silent zombie stalks Mike through the fields, it’s as if he has walked directly from the crossroads where the women found him in the earlier film (Interestingly, Jones’ zombie goes not by the name Carrefour here, but as Kolaga; I think it’s fair to speculate that his full name is Carrefour Kolaga, no?). But so many of the island scenes play out at Renault’s castle that it’s easy to forget this is St. Sebastian, and thus the location is wasted.

Given that two of the three borrowed elements somewhat succeed, this movie could’ve worked. The film’s biggest flaw is that it’s an Abbott and Costello movie that lacks Abbott and Costello. In their place as Jerry and Mike, we get Wally Brown and Alan Carney. I watched the two interplay throughout the film, and every time they did a new gag, I would say to myself, “I can see exactly how Bud and Lou would’ve delivered there, and it would’ve been a lot funnier.” Clearly Brown and Carney have neither the chemistry nor the talent that the other two had, and it’s painful to watch their fourth rate impression. But it’s not all their fault; if RKO couldn’t get Abbott and Costello, at least they could’ve hired some of the comedy duo’s screenwriters. The gags weren’t funny, and the dialogue was bland and flat. Even the least funny of Bud and Lou’s films always supplied crisp dialogue that set the scene for their brilliant comic timing; here, we’re force fed lines such as these:

JERRY: How do we know a zombie if we see one?
JEAN: If you see a corpse walking around, that’s a zombie.

Clearly inferior stuff. Take a look at ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN, which came out three years later, to see just how adept the masters were in handling similar material.

I would tell you that the other flick on the DVD, YOU'LL FIND OUT, is an extra, but I like you and don't want to insult you. The only extra is French subtitles; maybe the deaf French will find this funny, as the French like Jerry Lewis.

With ZOMBIES ON BROADWAY, RKO tried to combine three popular film ideas and forge a new movie from them. In hindsight, the choice elements for their ploy were excellent: Abbott and Costello’s films are considered classics, as is I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE. And though he fell into decline and Ed Wood, Lugosi’s iconic turn as Dracula is still talked about by horror fans, and will be for many years. Funny that nobody talks about ZOMBIES ON BROADWAY, isn’t it?

--Phil Fasso

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It’s Thanksgiving’s Day, so as a treat to all you Icons stalwarts who take time between cranberry sauce and turkey to visit our fine website... here’s a review of MOTHER’S DAY.

Okay, I’ll be honest. I don’t own any Thanksgiving themed horror movies. In fact, I’m not even sure any exist, although Brion James’ supernatural spirit does inhabit a dinner turkey and go wild in the Horror Show. But I digress. To honor the holiday spirit, I chose to review the Charles Kaufman film instead.

If that last name rings in your ears, it should. Charles’ brother is Lloyd Kaufman, president of Troma Studios. And if you were to watch MOTHER’S DAY without this information, you would certainly notice that the film is genetically linked to Toxie’s home studio. Though it wasn’t produced as a Troma film and precedes Lloyd’s first official horror flick, THE TOXIC AVENGER, by four years, this is a tried and true sister film to brother Lloyd’s output.

To describe the plot would be as pointless as the plot is simple. All you need to know is that Mother and her two demented hillbilly sons kidnap three women. Torture, rape and murder ensue. If you’re reading this review, what you really want to know is how many of the elements of a Troma film are present. Super low budget: check. Run and gun filming: check. Gallons of blood: check. Cheapjack special effects: check. Rape: check. Humor: check. Cheesy looking decapitation: check. Social commentary: check. Loony dialogue: check. The Troma aesthetic and attitude: absolutely a check.

Okay, so it’s a little slow for a Troma product, and in some ways bears a stronger resemblance to FRIDAY THE 13TH than SGT. KABUKIMAN. But when I’m watching a cross-eyed mother wearing a neck brace constantly move her head from side to side, in my mind I’m saying “God bless Troma, Uncle Lloyd.” If you love Troma’s output, it’s fact: this minor title is going to please you.

The extras might not please you so much. Lloyd starts the disc with one of his wacky introductions, complete with phony pregnant lady. The main attraction is the commentary with Charles Kaufman and assistant art director Rex Piano. They share a multitude of stories, in the most boring fashion possible; they’re not even exciting when they discuss one actor puking on another. If only Charles was blessed with Lloyd’s charisma gene. There are also two brief interview segments with Charles; he’s slightly more entertaining in those. There’s a silly feature from Troma’s Edge TV, where Lloyd plays himself and his mother. A number of trailers for other Troma films also grace the disc. And, of course, there’s my favorite Troma featurette of all, “The Radiation March.”

There’s been much talk about MOTHER’S DAY of late, not because today’s Thanksgiving, but because Darren Lynn Bousman is remaking it. I’ll spare you all the arguments about horror remakes, and also the “Why on Earth would anyone want to remake a Troma film?” But I will say that unless Bousman makes it essentially a Troma film, it can’t possibly work. If it strays from that checklist I mentioned above, as he’s already done if it’s true he spent $11 million to make it, it may be a film, hey, it may even share the title of a Troma Film, but a Troma film it will never be.

In the canon of Troma films, MOTHER’S DAY is more along the lines of SURF NAZIS MUST DIE than THE TOXIC AVENGER. It lacks an iconic character, and isn’t quite as zany as brother Lloyd’s output. But any film that has murder by blown up plastic breast has the Troma seal of approval. Toxie fans can take pride in this one.

-- Phil Fasso

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Sometimes I watch a film and I can’t tell whether it’s brilliant or trash. This type of film is usually so audacious, so beyond the realm of what a normal movie-going experience has to offer, so lurid in aesthetic and storytelling, that it confuses my senses. The answer should be obvious: the film is brilliant trash. One such film is 1977’s THE SENTINEL, Michael Winner’s flick that sets the gold standard for such flicks.

As with so many other religious horror films, this one starts off in a church in Rome, and a conversation with priests about impending doom. But that doesn’t even begin to tell the story. The movie then shifts to New York, where it chronicles the life of model Alison Parker, who wants to move out of her boyfriend Michael’s apartment. After her father’s death, Alison meets a realtor who offers her an incredible deal on a vast, furnished apartment, which she can’t refuse. Upon exiting, she looks up at her new building and sees someone staring down at her from a high-up window; the blind Father Halliran. It should come as no secret that there’s something wrong with the priest, the building and Alison herself.

I’m afraid a plot summary could not close to express just how whacked out this film is. It’s probably better if I explain some of the odd occurrences. At the 20 minute mark, Burgess Meredith shows up as Charles Chazen, Alison’s neighbor. He’s accompanied by a parrot on his shoulder and a cat in his hands. He introduces the parrot, stating, “This is Mortimer. He’s from Brah-zil,” as only Burgess Meredith can. The cat’s name is Jezebel, and later in the film, Chazen will throw the feline an insane birthday party, complete with party hat for the guest of honor; at the soiree, a phrase as innocuous as ‘Black and white cat, black and white cake” becomes an unhinged motto. An encounter with the lesbians on the first floor makes the flesh crawl, as Beverly D’Angelo’s Sandra, dressed in a red leotard, suddenly begins to masturbates on a couch in front of Alison. When Alison asks her partner Gerde what the two do for a living, the big German replies, “We fondle each other.” Sex is filthy in this movie, as in the earlier flashback when Alison walks in on her decrepit, aged father having a threesome; the camerawork is absolutely lurid as it zooms in and out on the dirty old man’s leering face. A dream sequence that reconfigures the cat’s party is abundant in both nudity and sleaze. As disjointed scenes roll one into another, offering no progression but that of a bizarre nightmare, Alison’s reality rapidly falls apart.

More disturbing than any of these scenes, though, is Winner’s dementedly inspired casting choice for the climax of the film. In a move that echoes Todd Browning’s, the director cast real freaks as the monsters from Hell, a decision that not only drew great outrage against the film at the time of its release, but perfectly fit the film’s tawdry aesthetic. There’s something seriously tacky in Winner’s casting choice, and yet for THE SENTINEL, it seems not only the right choice, but the only one.

If all this sounds gaudy and exploitative, that’s only because it is. But it’s exploitative genius. Winner’s film is so bold in its imagery and ideas, so far out there past where any sane film takes its audience, that I absolutely love it. It’s the horror genre’s answer to a John Waters film. Ironically, the film only falters when it bogs down in more mundane storytelling, as it involves the police and tries to explain what is happening through the trappings of a crime procedural. Its offers to decipher things theologically, with Arthur Kennedy popping up throughout the film as a priest who knows Halliran’s secrets, falls flat as well. If the movie had only stuck to its chosen path, these answers would be unnecessary; because there are no answers to a nightmare.

My favorite aspect of THE SENTINEL is Winner’s choice casting. In between ROCKY movies, Meredith was playing lots of oddball parts in oddball horror movies; this is my favorite of them, as good old Burgess is absolutely outlandish, and plays Chazen to the hilt. Cristina Raines does a great job of falling apart, growing paler and seeming thinner and thinner in later scenes. As Michael, Chris Sarandon walks the line between caring boyfriend and potentially dangerous sociopath perfectly. Ava Gardner doesn’t belong in her role as Miss Logan, the realtor, which is exactly why she belongs in that role. And if you’re going to choose an aged actor to play a creepy, blind priest who stares out a window all day, would you choose anyone other than John Carradine? No, because John Carradine was born to play that role.

I’ve read in a number of places that THE SENTINEL was supposed to be Universal Studios’ answer to THE EXORCIST. With its religious elements, it should fit right alongside movies of that ilk. But it’s not a classy affair as THE OMEN is, nor is it as restrained or as high-minded as THE EXORCIST. That much I knew when I first saw it. What I didn’t know was whether it was brilliant or trash. The answer should have been obvious. As so often the case is when I come to question a movie as such, it’s because THE SENTINEL is brilliant trash.

--Phil Fasso

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In an era when JAWS rip offs were proliferate, screenwriter John Sayles was a hot commodity. His output was responsible for two such films, the first of which was 1978’s cheeky, low budget PIRANHA (see review here), which foreshadowed the humorous touches to horror that led to director Joe Dante’s early success with THE HOWLING and GREMLINS. Sayles’ second plundering of the big shark tale was ALLIGATOR, a middling effort that foreshadowed just what a mediocre horror director Lewis Teague would be. It’s hard for me to watch ALLIGATOR without wondering how good a flick it could have been had Dante directed it, instead of Teague.

The plot for ALLIGATOR is absolutely preposterous. A little girl’s parents take her to watch gator wrestling. After a bunch of quick cuts that indicate a wrestler just got mauled by a gator, the family returns home. The girl plays with her pet, a baby alligator. Dad, an overbearing blowhard who’s possibly abusive, takes the gator and flushes it (in a POV shot from the swirling inside of a toilet bowl, no less). Flash forward. A pet store owner with male pattern baldness funds animals for illegal genetic research. A cop with male pattern baldness investigates body parts found in the city sewer. His bald boss tries to keep the city from fear. A supersized gator who’s naturally bald taunts the cop with more and more body parts. A reptile expert who’s not bald hooks up with the cop, both professionally and in bed.

And then there’s the hunter that the cops bring in to kill the gator. The idea of hiring a great white hunter to patrol the city streets with a rifle in hand is just silly. The fact that he hires black kids off the streets as “natives” to help him track the alligator is insulting. The fact that the hunter is played by Henry Silva... well, that is ludicrous.

More ludicrous than the gator itself? Perhaps, but that’s too close for me to call. The creature is portrayed in two ways. The first looks as if it cost the majority of the film’s budget, a rather large mock up of a gator. Teague mostly uses this version to show his monster tearing with its teeth and massive jaws. It’s moderately effective. In fact, it’s much better than the alternative; because Teague could not get the mock up to move down streets and toward victims, he used a baby alligator on obvious miniatures of sets. If this movie had any chance of being credibly scary, it was gutshot by this goofy looking attempt to make a baby gator look big and dangerous. Especially when Teague has already treated us to watch a sibling flushed down a toilet with a POV shot.

And yet, I really believe this could have worked, had Joe Dante directed it. Dante would have brought a zany energy to the film, playing it for the joke it should have been; in short, it would have succeeded because it would have been PIRANHA (precisely the reason Dante would never have done the film). Teague doesn’t know quite what to do with the material. He plays much of the film as a gruff cop drama, but there’s no mystery here at all, because the name of the movie is ALLIGATOR.

Features abound like those body parts the police keep finding on this DVD. Look to the trailers for other Lions Gate films to see how millions of dollars of poorly done CGI can look just as silly as a baby alligator on a miniature set. The first of the two main features is the commentary track with Teague and lead balding actor Robert Forster, moderated from someone from Dark Delicacies. Teague tended to be repetitive on the other two commentaries I’ve heard from him, but with Forster constantly asking “Do you remember when...?” and the moderator prodding him, he’s merely dull here. This track might have had a shot at being interesting had it included Sayles, who’s not boring. Fortunately, Sayles gets his own 17-minute featurette, “Alligator Author,” during which he discusses many of the reasons for the things he included in his script for the film. And he explains why he had to change his ending more than once to preserve the gator mock up (I couldn’t make this one up if I tried, folks).

When John Sayles was writing ALLIGATOR, he was also drafting a script for Joe Dante’s follow-up to PIRANHA, a werewolf film called THE HOWLING. For both films, he was given a previously written script, and told this: Keep the title and the monster, and do whatever you want with the rest. There’s not a little bit of irony in the fact that Joe Dante directed THE HOWLING, which many consider a minor classic. Given the same talented writer, Lewis Teague put forth ALLIGATOR, a laughable horror film where the laughs aren’t intended and there’s not much horror. It’s an interesting dichotomy of what two directors can do with a common writer.

--Phil Fasso

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NOTE: Mad Man Dan's review of HOWLING III covers the Region 4 version of the disc. Special features might vary in other regions.

Directed by: Philippe Mora
Starring: Barry Otto, Imogen Annesley, Leigh Biolos, Ralph Cotterill
Reason for existing: TBA

AUSTRALIA… home of many things: beautiful beaches, cricket, barbequed shrimp, a sandwich spread made from the same stuff as beer, not to mention a strange and still unexplained tendency to put eggs atop anything remotely edible. Oh and it’s also the birthplace of one of the undisputed kings of so incredibly bad that it borders on sense numbing, brain damaging, seizure inducing idiocy… no, scratch that. This thing crossed that threshold long ago. It’s nasty, it’s putrid, it’s rather hilarious, it has an odd odor to it that’s kind of like that time you opened your cupboard and found that dead rat in there. It’s Howling III: The Marsupials.

Let me preface by saying, this is a werewolf…

And this is a marsupial...

I hadn’t seen THE MARSUPIALS in a long while, and I suspect that was my subconscious trying to protect me from all memory of it. But during a conversation with Fasso, he brought up the flick and decided that it needed a revisiting, and who better then a Down Under native to do it. “What the hell,” I thought; it wasn’t THAT bad… was it?

Yes Dan, yes. It was that freakin’ bad.

So if you didn’t already know, there’s werewolves living throughout the great Down Under. Oh and in Russia, of course, but that doesn’t come into play until late. Jerboa (played by the rather gorgeous Imogen Annesley) lives with her family somewhere in Australia, and she too is a werewolf and a much sought after piece of were-arse apparently but Jerboa ain’t serving, so she decides to make a run for it. She winds up falling asleep on a park bench in the middle of Sydney, only to wake up to the sight of some guy later identified as Donny, who spots her from a mile away, leaps out of his car and proceeds to chase her half way across the park and corner the frightened girl.
Turns out the over enthusiastic bastard is working on a movie called Shape Shifters: Part 8 (a title almost as inspired as HOWLING III: THE MARSUPIALS) and despite having only just met the rough looking bush girl, lying barefoot on a park bench in the middle of a rather scrupulous city, he believes her to be the perfect person to play the films lead. Yeah, because the “I’m going to rape you” approach works every time!

Despite only knowing each other for only a day or two, Jerboa and Donny fall in love and bump uglies one insanely hot night (seriously, nobody should sweat THAT much, not even during sex). A bigger mystery than Donny’s amazing sweat glands is: How, during his passionate night of oblivious interspecies love making, did he not notice Jerboa’s strangely hairy stomach or for that matter HER FREAKIN’ POUCH!!!! That’s right kiddies, the weregirl has an actual pouch.

Jerboa gets pregnant and ends up giving birth to a baby werewolf, which is brought to life by dressing a mouse up in a full body baby wolf costume (I kid you not!).
With her wolfy nature made public, she becomes the target of a bunch of military types and – with the help of her three werewolf sisters disguised as nuns – goes on the run with Donny and old mate Professor Beckmeyer, the typical crackpot-theory-believing type who has dedicated his life to the discover of werewolf existence.

Oh, and at some point, there was a Russian werewolf ballerina named Olga. Yeah, can’t forget her. She transforms into a werewolf mid-twirl and gets all gushy over the ol’ prof.

If there is one foreshadowing of just what type of film THE MARSUPIALS would turn out to be, it’s that the filmmakers actually named the Jerboa’s village FLOW. It’s called FLOW as in WOLF spelt backwards…NILBOG anybody? That’s right THE MARSUPIALS is the Australian TROLL II. It’s just that bad, and yet has enough B-Movie charm to it to entertain you, even if it is that “dirty little black book” mistress you keep secret from family and friends. I mean for Christ sakes, she has a freakin’ pouch!

But honestly, how did THE HOWLING, a genuinely awesome movie, end up here, left to rot beneath the Australian sun and layered with slices of process celluloidic crap!? I think where THE MARSUPIALS ultimately failed as a film was that it just wasn’t a werewolf film. Director Philippe Mora was trying too hard to say too much in too little a time. That said the thing is Schlocktastic with a capital “CRAP;” whether the filmmakers were trying to make it that way or not, the film never seemed to take itself too seriously. When you have a dancing werewolf, a trashy film within an even trashier film you were already watching, and more absurd twists and turns then an M. Night Shyamalamadingdong movie, how could you take any of it seriously? Not to mention… she has a POUCH! An actual pouch!! Is that not the most absurdly hilarious notion, concept, thought, idea or image you have ever come across? Most people consider The Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf to be the better of the two super schlocky entries in the condemned series but too all them I say: NO WAY! Let’s see your she-were-bitch take on Olga the flying ballerina wolf!!

If you like you’re werewof movies dripping in cheese and good old fashion what-the-Hellery, then look no further then HOWLING III; THE MARSUPIALS…Coming to a $2 bin near you. – Danny

Editor’s Note: I don’t know if the Region 4 disc includes it, but the Region 1 has a commentary track by Mora that absolutely has to be heard to be believed! Mora seems to think he’s a legitimate filmmaker... which he’s not, the same conclusion you should reach if you’re watching HOWLING III: THE MARSUPIALS! Listen to this only if you want to enhance the cheese of the movie itself, as Danny suggested! Oh, and $2 might be much, as Amazon currently has it listed as cheap as 62 cents American.

--Phil Fasso

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Between NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD and his next zombie film, DAWN OF THE DEAD, George Romero’s career followed a frustrating path. NIGHT was a critical and financial success that would one day be considered a classic. His next three films, however, were not greatly lauded and, for various reasons including poor distribution, went largely unseen by his fans. The third of these was THE CRAZIES, and though it has the name value of neither NIGHT or DAWN, it is one of Romero’s best.

The film starts off with two children in their pajamas who find their father destroying the house. He’s already killed their mother, and soon sets the house ablaze. As the film progresses, the audience discovers that the military has accidentally infected the water in Evans City, Pennsylvania, and its citizens are going quickly insane. The story then follows five uninfected people who try to escape not only the crazies, but the soldiers as well.

Thematically and structurally, THE CRAZIES strongly resembles NIGHT: survivors from a plague hole up to escape once-normal citizens who now offer threat; the authorities botch their handling of the situation, and offer little protection to those they’re upheld to protect; and in the absence of sound-minded authority, society goes screaming into total chaos. (During the film’s commentary, Romero even draws attention to the opening of the film, in which a brother and sister are in a normal situation that goes suddenly awry) The films are so close, in fact, that THE CRAZIES acts as a perfect if unofficial bridge between NIGHT and DAWN. If there’s one difference here, it’s the focus of the commentary. Romero’s key note comes in the question, Who is really crazy, the unbalanced masses, or the destructive military? The crazies may lack sanity, but the powers that be, as represented in the film, lack conscience and soul.

Romero’s greatest tool to propel that social commentary is his visual palette. No longer restrained by black and white, the director presents a world colored by the lush, green forests of Evans City and the blood red of those mowed down. The omnipresent white-suited soldiers with their black masks and assault rifles are like angels gone wrong. Romero’s burgeoning editing is also on hand here, favoring quick cuts over lots of camera movement. The plot is often disturbing, making the film hard to watch at times, but that only makes it more potent; because the movie’s subjects are not zombies but people, it’s a frightening prospect that this could actually happen.

If I have one criticism, it’s one I have with many of Romero’s films: the performances. Shouting often replaces nuance, and scenery seems to exist solely for actors to chew. I understand that in crisis, people would likely take to arguing, but Romero far too often lets his actors engage in unparalleled histrionics (think Joe Pilato in DAY OF THE DEAD). But Romero is such a craftsman that I can forgive him. And THE CRAZIES offers an early glimpse at DAY’s Dr. Logan himself, Richard Liberty, who plays unhinged with the best of them.
Blue Underground hinged together a nice package of extras for the DVD, the first and best of which is a commentary with George Romero. The company’s head and fellow filmmaker himself, William Lustig conducts the discussion, and it’s a great one. The two cover all sorts of background material, the plot and how the film influenced Dustin Hoffman’s film OUTBREAK, while putting on a school for low budget filmmakers. I generally love Romero’s commentary, but I find that sometimes he plays down to his company; here that’s not a fear, as Lustig, who also started out directing on meager budgets, keeps him on his toes. This may be the best commentary Romero has ever done.

The other main feature is “The Cult Film Legacy of Lynn Lowry,” a 14 minute discussion with her about her career. Lowry is, to be polite, quite a character, and her film career is a series of oddities during which she acted for both Romero and David Cronenberg. And you even get footage of her lounge act toward the end! You have to see this one. Two theatrical trailers and a pair of degraded TV spots that are a little more tame do a great job at presenting the film’s crazy microcosm, and a robust stills gallery and bio of Romero round out a deep, high quality set of special features.

THE CRAZIES came out in 1973, five years after NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD and five before DAWN OF THE DEAD. Though not many people saw it then, it’s a crucial tie between the two that also stands alone as one of Romero’s best. Essential viewing.

--Phil Fasso

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For the many of you who watch John Carpenter’s HALLOWEEN with reverence on its titular holiday, you’re going to have a new companion piece for years to come. Yes, TRICK R TREAT is that good, and while it will never replace Carpenter’s film, you’ll have a wonderful double feature to go with your Halloween candy.

You may already know that Michael Dougherty’s project was shelved for more than two years. There’s speculation as to why, but I can say this: it certainly was not based on the quality of the film. TRICK ‘R TREAT tells a set of interweaving stories set in small town Ohio. It starts off with a couple heading home to some horrific results, and never lets up from there. You’ll find homicidal neighbors, werewolves, a busload of special needs ghouls and the movie’s mascot, Sam. Unlike CREEPSHOW, characters cross over from one tale to the next, creating a uniformity of story, and an effect much like that of PULP FICTION, with a touch of the old Amicus stories. Like Romero’s work, the movie revels in being gleefully creepy, in the vein of VAULT OF HORROR or ASYLUM, with Sam serving as a silent Cryptkeeper.

This is a stylish movie, both in performances and settings. Dylan Baker is pitch perfect as an odd school principal, humorously channeling the ghost of Paul Lynde (of course, this may be because we watched this immediately immediately following the PAUL LYNDE HALLOWEEN SPECIAL); Brian Cox is inspired as his curmudgeonly neighbor, and several others round out the cast with above average performances. For a movie that relies on a creepy atmosphere, the set pieces are beautiful. A spooky bog and a woodlands party both sport lush cinematography and genuine ambience. Clearly Dougherty, for a first time director, knows how to create an old Universal rolling fog with the best of them. TRICK ‘R TREAT relies little on CG, and a lot on old fashioned atmosphere.

Sadly, the DVD itself offers little in the way of extras. Dougherty’s Halloween-inspired cartoon is here; it’s a witty little piece, even if I guessed the payoff. The cartoon gets a commentary by Dougherty, which includes a nifty tidbit about his blood. But the feature itself gets no commentary, and this is criminal, as I really would have enjoyed listening to the director discuss his labor of love at length. Folks, you don’t even get a trailer on this one. A shame.

What’s no shame for the end of this month is that you can finally add a new film to your Halloween viewing, and a high quality one at that. You now may be speaking the name “Dougherty” right next to “Carpenter” every October.

-- Phil Fasso and Mike Cucinotta

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