Slashers in the Night II: The Death Kill

slashersinthenight2

It seemed like I had nothing but excuses for putting off this moviethon. The next thing I knew, several months had passed since I’d made my initial playlist and my annoyance with myself was too much to bear. “That’s it, we’re doing this!” I screamed into the night. The unseen rule of the first Slashers in the Night was off the table so this left me free to choose whatever the dang hell I wanted (though I prefer to pass on anything released after 1989 for this series). What transpired was easily one of my favorite moviethons of all time. Here we go!

Friday

I get off work and arrive at home to find my wife LeEtta –who had had the day off today- taking my advice and watching whatever she pleased since I would be hogging our primary visual entertainment device for the next 54 hours or so. As I bring the trashcans in from the street, I couldn’t help but notice that the weather is typically Florida as hell meaning sunny and muggy. There was an apocalyptic thunderstorm earlier this afternoon and it left everything hopelessly funky.

While LeEtta makes dinner, I fall asleep on the recliner while some random home design show on Netflix babbles on in the background. LeEtta wakes me up several minutes later to tell me that dinner is ready. One of her old standards, couscous, asparagus, and a fried egg awaited me. She’s way, way too good to me. Feeling refreshed and full, I pour myself an unsweet iced tea and pick the first movie.

nightscreams

“A really nice place? God, what a dickhead!”

6:17pm

Night Screams (1987)

This jumps right into things with a girl changing in a locker room. Her boobs are exposed before I even have time to process what is going on. This flashes between her friends scaring her and a couple watching TV on the couch. Are they watching a movie or are we? Oh wait, they’re watching the gory bits of Graduation Day! Spoilers much? Jeez. While the husband is outside cooking burgers on a grill -that isn’t even lit- someone takes a butcher knife and his kills his lady friend. Then he gets it. The killer plays chopsticks on the piano and we get the title screen.

LeEtta and I debate about how I’m collating the body count. I say that every murder that happens on screen gets counted and every corpse that is the result of an offscreen kill gets counted. Oh my goodness, this score is peppy and delightful. A bearded psychiatrist is talking into a tape recorder about releasing a patient and then we cut hard to a high school football game with some very passionate fans. Everything has just been confusing and fun so far. I already have high hopes for this film.

Some escaped lunatics kill a couple of cops and then destroy a diner with lots of squibs exploding willy-nilly. More importantly, we get not one but two locker room scenes. One with the guys where they talk about dicks and someone gets a wedgie. And another with the girls where they talk vaguely about sex. This movie is dripping with the 1980s. The music, the hair, the clothes, the dance sequence, etc. There’s also a bevy of characters played by utter cheeseballs spouting off droll dialogue that is making me giggle with delight. I’ve already forgotten this is supposed to be a slasher.

The whole gaggle of partying kids head out to a remote house for some sexy shenanigans, burgeoning alcoholism, and melodrama. The script is setting up some really obvious red herrings and there are still those two escaped convicts hiding in the basement. Uh oh, someone just cut the phone line! The most ridiculous thing in this movie is instead of having the actresses in the movie get naked, the producers keep cutting in scenes from a porno movie. That’s just wacky. Swimming pool at night? Yes. Huge body count? Yes. That’s it, I’m calling it, Night Screams is a new favorite. Wichita seems like a lovely place.

mountaintopmotelmassacre

“I’m so horny, I can’t stand it!”

8:02pm

Mountaintop Motel Massacre (1986)

This has been on and off (mostly off) my radar for many years. The movie tells us about Evelyn, owner of the Mountaintop Motel, who was in an institution for three years. Now she’s out and having trouble coping with her daughter Lorri’s guinea pig  and hobby of invoking the spirit of her dead father. With all the amazing lighting, piles of baby dolls, and broken strangeness, it’s immediately apparent that I should’ve watched this ages ago. Evelyn accidentally kills Lorri with a scythe during a violent rage but she convinces the cops it was an accident. Wait what?

This has a completely different vibe from Night Screams and that makes me very happy. The rundown look of the motel and all the countrified accents are simply to die for. ­­­Evelyn gingerly handling a rubber snake like it was going to come to life bite her is friggin’ genius. The random strangers heading to the motel are so hilarious in their quaint little introductory scenes. There’s a gentleman carpenter, a pair of sexy singing cousins, hillbilly newlyweds, a sleazy salesman, and a drunk preacher. The sound effects of the storm that traps the guests in the motel is making our cats, especially Crisco, very nervous

Anna Chappell is trying to chew the scenery a new one with her bizarre performance as Evelyn. She seems to think she’s an avenging angel for the Lord so she’s using snakes, rats, and roaches to annoy her guests. I feel really bad for the actor who has a roach crawling on his goddam face! Around the time that Evelyn starts dispatching mofos with her trusty scythe (at the behest of the disembodied voice of her dead daughter), I start scrounging through our Japanese candy stash. While I chew some orange-flavored gum, I decide that I waited way too long to check this charming and odd movie out.

Saturday

Okay, that wasn’t a great way to start a moviethon. The films were two unseens and two fantastic discoveries but by the time Mountaintop Motel Massacre was over, I felt like crap. I decided to call it a night with the intention of getting a goodnight’s sleep. That was an excellent plan! With the bonkers plot of Night Screams still doing impossible algebra in my head, I fell into a deep sleep with crazy dreams.

By morning, I felt refreshed and ready to tear into some movies! Well, after chores anyway. I made bagels and cream cheese for LeEtta and I. I also peeled an enormous orange for us to split while she made coffee. We realized that we had accidentally bought fat free coffee creamer and we both made faces at each other while drinking our caffeine down. Rookie mistake! All of this is taking place while my LP of The George Shearing Quintet’s Satin Affair plays smoothly on in the background. After I vacuum the house, I pour some more iced coffee for myself, and pick the first movie of the day.

bloodtracks

“If you fear God then you’ll want this madness to end.”

9:52am

Blood Tracks (1985)

I found a VHS copy of this film at a flea market, burned it to DVD, and then sold the tape on eBay for a nice profit! That’s why I’m independently wealthy these days. Oh and then I forgot to watch it! The moment this starts, I immediately realize that we are in dubbed country here. The director of this is Swedish and that’s all the trivia you’ll get from me today. A family squabble turns deadly when mommy gets stabby. The family is forced to flee and a helpful narrator tells us that they have been hiding out for the last forty years in “the middle of nowhere”. A rock band and film crew are heading into the snowy mountains to film a music video. I’m practically wringing my hands with excitement over this one.

The family is living in an old hazardous waste factory out in “the middle of nowhere” and they’ve gone practically feral. They’re monster makeup is pretty frickin’ cool. Me thinks they’re not going to get along with a bunch of shithead music and film industry types. Beautiful people and mutants go together like oil and grease. There’s an avalanche and everyone is stranded up on the mountain. Between the dubbing, the cave-people that look vaguely like George Eastman in Antropophagus (1980), a high body count, and the drug-addled antics of the band, this is a lot of fun so far.

Blood Tracks does something really inventive. In spite of the danger of getting lost or killed, people start splitting up into smaller and smaller groups. I think this might be one of the single most cleverest ways of moving the action along in a slasher film. You are a true original, Blood Tracks! One of the kills was so confusing that I have to assume that it was cut to heck. Ooh, I really like some of the tense synthesizer music in this one. This movie sets itself up for a sequel very nicely. I don’t think that ever happened. LeEtta has come and gone to the grocery store and the liquor store for our very important supplies like food and rum. I married very well.

mutilator

“I’m gonna set a new high score on the video machine.”

11:28am

The Mutilator (1984)

And the unseens just keep on rolling out. Special thanks to my pal Scott MacDonald for sending me this one. The Mutilator opens with a bang as a kid named Ed accidentally blows his mother away with his dad’s rifle. Woops! Gun help is help. Dad doesn’t take this birthday surprise very well. Years later, little Ed is all grown up and hanging out with his college buddies. The single most important thing is that they are trying to figure out what to do on their fall break. Matt Farley has spoken very highly of the “Fall Break” song that plays in this movie. It does not disappoint.

The characters are kooky as fuck and way likeable. Ed and these jokers are heading out to his dad’s isolated beach house to get it ready for the winter and get some serious partying done. This is what fall break is all about, bitches. Ed’s dad is a real weirdo. He’s got hunting trophies all over the house as well as a sacrificial mask AND a huge battle-axe that has gone missing. Uh oh. Dad is hiding in the house and having fantasies about killing Ed when he was a kid. Yikes!

I’m loving the beach location in this one and the weird percussion sound on the score. It sounds like someone throwing a basketball against a concrete wall. There’s some great atmosphere in the pool scene from some awesome lighting and slow motion camerawork. Wow! The Mutilator is really living up to its title. Sam has texted me to say that he and his lady friend Laura will meet us at Señor Tequila, a fine Mexican restaurant. I feel bad because they’re missing this. The hide and seek scene is one for the ages.

Lunch

Señor Tequila is fun times with Sam and Laura. LeEtta gets fish tacos, I get tacos al pastor, Sam gets a quesadilla, and Laura gets veggie fajitas. As I have found with this restaurant every time I’ve gone there, the food is excellent! Of course, the place is a madhouse and we’re there for nearly 2 hours but it was worth it. Afterwards, Sam and I jam. We run through about 6 GYROJETS songs and then it’s time for some movie watching!

evillaugh

“I’m not playing with your butt.”

Evil Laugh

3:45pm

We’re off to a great start! This DVD is tore up and ridiculous. In the film, there’s a house in the middle of nowhere and a killer just ripped some yuppy’s heart out. Three dorks are cruising in their convertible when it breaks down. Barney is reading a Fangoria. Johnny has gotta go “drain the lizard”. He pees on a couple taking a nap in the dunes. Almost-comedy ensues. The realtor is the best character ever. I think his name is Mr. Burns.

They play the boombox and a cleaning-the-house dance montage starts. So far, both the dialog and the plot are brilliant. All of the acting is extra brilliant. Mr. Burns almost rapes his wife for our amusement. Tina says, “Just give me some sandpaper and send me to the nursery.” How much of this is meant to be funny and how much of this is meant to be serious? I think the filmmakers probably thought they were being much funnier than they actually were. Barney needs to die. He represents everything I hate though I will concede that he is proto-Randy for all you Scream fans out there.

There’s another swimming pool at night scene. I almost forgot to note it. Those are my jam, yo. When Connie gets scared, she whips out a gun that is bigger than her head. She shoots into a room and screams even though no one’s in there. It’s fantastic and silly. The ending is utterly insane and I loved it. If only the entire movie had been that on point.

graduationday

“You know something, Mr. Guglione? You’re a real bastard!”

Graduation Day (1981)

5:26pm

Sam and Laura leave but I know that Evil Laugh has forever changed them as people. Graduation Day starts and I’m ready for some teen sports, y’all! Um, you guys. Laura (the movie one, not Sam’s Laura) doesn’t look so good. The opening song is saying that “everyone wants to be the winner” but Laura looks like she just wants to live until the end of the race. It’s important to note here that not everyone gets what they want.

Oh boy, that first murder was pretty weak. The knife was bleeding before it hit the blonde jogger chick’s throat. It splashed her to death. Christopher George is in this and honestly, that’s all you need to know about this film. His gravelly voice is just so sexy and he plays an utter dickbagel. Laura’s sister Anne comes home from the navy to see her family, collect her sister’s honorary trophy (I actually LOL’d while typing that), and- BEEGEES POSTER! Anne’s stepdad Ronald is a real fucking asshole. Anne herself is a badass but she’s also rather creepy like in a “Hi! I could be the killer” kind of a way.

Oh snap. Michael Pataki plays the principal in this and big surprise, the senior class collectively loathes him. Those fools! I love Michael Pataki. This stalking scene looks familiar. Could it be because Night Screams already showed it to me!? The editor likes to cause seizures in the audience. Linnea Quigley just showed up in a scene that was already nuts to begin with. Now she’s seducing the cornball music teacher.

The cop busts some teenagers for smoking dope and then he himself smokes some dope. That’s what they call simile in the screenwriting industry. After the quarterback is killed by a sword-football, the film cuts to Laura’s boyfriend playing harmonica and entertaining the girls while some joker plays “The Graduation Blues” on guitar. He looks forty. The band playing the graduation dance is outstanding. Nafa and Amanda stop by to drop off a Boogeyman and Friday the 13th Part II CEDs (those are Capacitance Electronic Discs, by the way) that he picked up at a thrift store for me. I’m going to send the Friday the 13th one to Brad. The killer in this movie gets two monologues. TWO. Classic.

girlsschoolscreamers

“Liz, you are one crazy lady and I think you oughta cool your jets!”

 Girls School Screamers

8:02pm

Here’s another film I bought on tape and converted to DVD. After a pair of ridiculous Troma previews, this movie starts so nonchalantly that I couldn’t tell if it was actually happening or not. On a dare by his friends, young Billy goes snooping in a house and is confronted by a nasty ghost. He ends up in the hospital in shock. Now we jump to the reading of a will and we jump yet again to some Catholic school girls being silly. This gang of cuties gets called to the principal’s office. He wants them to catalog the art collection of the school’s greatest benefactor in the same house that nearly killed young Billy.

13 minutes in and they’ve already made fun of the “fat girl” Rosemary twice. Of course, she’s the hottest one. LeEtta has made me my first mojito of the night. This could be trouble. Rum says yes! Just like Blood Tracks, I never actually watched this one until now. I sure hope it’s a slasher movie! The girls are certainly catty enough for my standards. During a game of hide and seek, Jackie finds the diary of Jennifer Wells, one of the girls who used to live in the house. The nun gets really upset when Jackie asks her about it but they figure that Jennifer must have died mysteriously. Time to have a séance. The only thing I love more than nighttime swimming pool sequences is séances!

They find a portrait of Jennifer Wells and -gasp- it looks like Jackie! During an extended flashback to young Jennifer Wells, the dialog gets even more stilted. This is how old timey people talked! We finally get our first kill with a meat cleaver and damn it to hell, it’s “fat” Rosemary. I miss her already. A couple of the girls’ goofy boyfriends show up to mess with them. This is getting good. And my fingers are numb from the mojito. LeEtta strikes again. Supernatural slasher for the win! Son of a bitch. Troma just talked over the last shot of the movie. Fuck you, Troma. Fuck you.

toallagoodnight

“Tom, will you stop messing around and take me to bed like a real man?”

To All a Goodnight

9:36pm

A bunch of moronic girls chase their friend through the finishing school with knives and an axe. She falls to her death over the edge of a balcony during Christmas vacation. What the heck was gonna happen if they caught her? Unlikely prank fail! It’s 2 years later and a killer is getting ready to kill some girls at the same school. Man oh man, I needed another Christmas-themed slasher in my life and this will do nicely. Lots of bitchy chicks and a creepy groundskeeper. Hallelujah!

The goofy dude characters show up to party with the girls via plane and things get even sillier! Trisha the sassy Brit gets killed but her skirt already had blood all over it before the killer even got in the room. This movie is so fun. There’s an excellent double whammy kill scene that made me cheer. Then it’s the next day and everything just slows down while the cast goofs off. Even the detective is kind of off somehow but in a good way. Wow, David Hess could direct a frickin’ slasher! I’m not gonna lie but I’m pretty buzzed right now. If this movie was 9 hours long I’d be fine with that.

Sunday

In case you were wondering, I’m a lightweight when it comes to booze. I woke up in the middle of the night with an incredible hangover and had to trudge to the kitchen for some ibuprofen. Despite our cat Sparkles’ best efforts to wake me up before my alarm, I slept rather well. In the morning, I went out to Dunkin Donuts for some breakfast substance for us in the form of bacon, egg, and cheese croissants. LeEtta doesn’t like their coffee so she started brewing a pot while I was gone.

After breakfast, I put on the first movie. It’s called Attack of the Lawnmower starring LeEtta and Richard. Ah yes, yardwork. Now that we own a home and it’s Florida, we have yardwork every weekend between the months of April and November every damn year. Once that is done, we shower, and head out to lunch. The always reliable Burger 21 is a goodtime place, especially on Sunday before everyone gets out of church. I’m wearing my Camp Crystal Lake t-shirt so people know I’m not fucking around. I have a hotdog with bacon and an espresso milkshake while LeEtta gets a bean burger. We’re literally the best people in the world.

slumberpartymassacre3

“Did somebody mention hips? Here come the cookies!”

Slumber Party Massacre III (1990)

12:34pm

Son of a bitch! I’m breaking my 1989 rule. Woops. This eerie opening theme is so good that it puts my mind at ease. We’re on the beach for some volleyball fun but there’s a creepy Kurt Cobain Lookalike Dude watching this group of teens who are about to die horribly. Too cynical? Jeffrey Canino warned me about this movie. The first kill with the drill happens and some seriously noodly guitar solo plays over the top. I love it. We go right into some subpar Bananarama song as the girls cruise in a convertible. So far, so good.

LeEtta appreciates the checklist being marked off for things that you need in a Slumber Party Massacre sequel. 1. Teens. 2. A slumber party. 3. A drill. 4. A creepy neighbor. 5. Shower scene in the first 15 minutes. One of the girls looks like Peggy from “Married with Children” by way of Elvira: Mistress of the Dark. She’s dating a 50 year old!? The freakazoid neighbor is some next level shit here. He’s stalking the house like a complete psycho, making creepy phone calls, and reading a book on human anatomy. Leather Jacket Frank is my new favorite character. He is way too cool for this movie.

The girls’ striptease action is interrupted when the boys sneak in and scare them. It’s pretty frickin’ great. Whoa, the killer is like a dang ninja. He dispatches our only black character with a realty sign. Two more items on the Slumber Party Massacre list: 6. Pizza delivery shenanigans. 7. Horny friend invites a boy over. The nerd character looks like Code Red Bill. Because Jackie left her address book at the beach, Kurt Cobain Lookalike Dude is snooping around now too. I just love teenagers so much.

Juliet tries to sleep with a dude but he was impotent so it’s inferred that he went down on her. Then she gets electrocuted in the bath by a plugin dildo. The list continues to grow. 8. Dead girl stuffed in a garment bag. 9. Useless boys go run for help. And this movie just got crazy. The only person who’s a bigger asshole than the killer is the cop who won’t send a damn patrol car around to the house. This movie has a really bleak edge to it. The killer in part III is crazy in a real-life serial killer kind of a way. Yikes! That’s what Jeffrey was warning me about. The faux Billy Idol song at the end is just disturbing enough to go along with the movie.

boogeyman

“I never seen a kiss this long!”

The Boogey Man (1980)

2:07pm

Now here’s another one that I’ve actually seen but not for many, many years. Wow, the Carpenter-esque score for this is kicking my ass! A typical scene from any American home in the 1950s starts when naughty mommy lets her skeevy boyfriend terrorize her children. Little sis helps her bro out by giving him a butcher knife and he makes them sandwiches for her with the crusts cut off. The end. Just kidding! Little Willy stabs the shithead duder to death and that makes me smile. I believe the children are our future.

Years later, Willy and his sister Lacey are all grown up and living in what looks like the Amityville Horror house! Willy is mute but he’s got nice overalls. Lacey has a kid and a loving husband but she’s been able to suppress her terrible sexual kinkiness that obviously runs in her family so I guess she’s kind of okay. Shit starts getting weird when their naughty mommy writes a letter to Lacey and Willy. Both kids are haunted by the memories of that night. I guess I would be too. I have always liked this one but man oh man, The Boogey Man is way better than I remember it. Fuck that lazy ass sequel.

Supernatural slasher! John Carradine! Exclamation points! Some horny chick is hitting on Willy and he nearly strangles her to death. What the pliggity plot is going on here? Plot? When Lacey and her husband visit her childhood home, she goes bananas after she sees that the man that Willy killed is staring at her from inside her mom’s old mirror. Her dumbass husband brings the offending reflective device home to help cure her and Willy of their trauma. Now a bunch of murders start happening when sharp and blunt objects start coming to life. Luckily, there’s some jerky teenagers lined up and ready to add to the body count. This is aggressively batshit crazy. I’ll say it again. Fuck that lazy ass sequel.

satansblade

“I just hope I have better luck with my first murder case than you had with yours.”

Satan’s Blade

3:37pm

Brad speaks very highly of this one so I’m pretty darn stoked. A knife flies into frame from nowhere and sticks into a tree and I ask, “Is that the Satan’s blade?” When it starts glowing red, I know that it’s not. The stilted acting kicks in almost immediately. Then a bank robbery ensues and a girl gets menaced with a blade that may be Satan’s blade but possibly not. Next, a girl gets shot and she milks her death scene for all it’s worth, taking several hours to fall down. This is friggin’ great so far! The bank robbers flee to their hideout and surprise, they’re all women. Grrl power!  Oh wait, is the leader of their gang a man? Boo! That’s penis power. And there’s the double cross. Or is that a triple cross?

Oh my God, this is getting better and better as each new goofball character shows up to drop a ton of exposition on us. The old lady who owns the lodge where all these fools are staying is simply outstanding. Where’s her damn Oscar? There’s an old local legend that is just ridiculous. We pause the film for dinner and it doesn’t go very well. I’m sure LeEtta won’t want me recording a rare culinary failure here but it was pretty funny. Orangey-brown zesty slime and okra over mushy rice is a dish that will probably never come back to the Schmidt house.

All of the women in this are just phenomenal, especially Rita who may not be from Earth. While the guys are busy getting drunk, she has a nightmare of a deranged killer stabbing friends to death. A prank is pulled and everyone ends up in their nighties wrestling in the snow. This film is probably going to be the best thing I watch in my entire life. Even the cops are perfect. Much like To All a Goodnight, I really like these characters and don’t want anything bad to happen to them. Why so much killing? That final title screen is so boss.

Smoke Break

Even though I’m feeling the moviethon haze creeping in and I just want to finish this damn thing, it’s time for a smoke. I grab a pipe, a tin of tobacco, and some Gatorade I didn’t finish during yardwork today. While the wind is blowing and the clouds are flying, I’m melting away in the deliciousness of pipe smoke. I shoot some texts back and forth with Brad about future moviethons and just enjoy watching the world go by. Okay, it’s time to start up again and finish this thing before I’m cut into little tiny pieces.

terrorattenkiller

“I try to help Leslie out but sometimes I feel… she’s just a born victim.”

Terror at Tenkiller (1986)

6:30pm

I have heard this is a piece of crap but once that drum machine kicks in, I’m very confident in my choice. A girl named Denise gets her throat slit and then her body is dumped in the lake while the soundtrack plays a warbling lament. After that, a busty girl named Leslie is swimming in a pool and some jerk named Josh wants to talk things over with her. Guess what I’ve never used… a frickin’ public shower! Her friend Jana scares the living daylights out of her. Guess what I’ve never had… a friend! Leslie wants to break up with Josh and I wholeheartedly endorse this.

They head out to a place called “Tenkiller” for some lakeside fun and all kinds of jaunty music follows them there. The girls are going swimming and just sunning themselves while an air of lingering dread creeps in. Maybe I’m imagining that lingering dread. This movie excels in melodrama and lady talk. Just like Satan’s Blade, there’s a legend or some such that might be important later. We follow a girl who works at a diner while a mysterious figure is stalking around outside. He’s Mister Canadian Tuxedo and he just killed her. Oh diner girl, we hardly knew ye.

The girls rent a boat from a dirty old man named Preacher and a young guy named Tor -who just killed the diner girl- and head out to the middle of nowhere to stay in a cabin. Things take a turn for the classy when I see they’re sharing a can of Slice. During some real talk about Josh from Jana, Leslie looks absolutely shell-shocked. The plot gets really complicated when the girls talk about working at the diner. Major revelation! On the first night, Preacher invites himself in but Jana says no. Then he stalks around smoking and watching the cabin. Tor shows up and he and Preacher have a conversation that is un-fucking-believable. It doesn’t end well for Preacher.

Tor gives us an eyeful from his short shorts when he sits on the lanai. LeEtta is not impressed. In an unexpectedly atmospheric scene, Leslie has a dream where Josh is playing a harmonica and beckoning to her from the woods. She goes outside and everything is foggy and eerie. I loved it! I’m way past the hour mark with this one and I don’t understand this movie’s bad reputation. While working late at the diner, Leslie is reading The Stand and that made me giggle. Tor kills people because his harmonica commands him? Maybe. Now I’m not saying it’s a necessity or anything -and it should in a no way speak to the quality of this film- but I needed to drink iced coffee during Terror at Tenkiller. This is an awesome movie.

lastslumberparty

“Let’s go rustle up some menfolk.”

The Last Slumber Party

8:20pm

Even though my brain feels like an old milkshake, I start the final film of the moviethon. I have heard lots of great things about The Last Slumber Party and that’s why I saved it for last. This opens with some serious rock music while a deranged mental patient who’s dressed like a surgeon is running amok. We cut to a high school classroom and the movie opens up its wonders to LeEtta and me. At the mental hospital, some funny dialog about a violent lunatic is just outrageous and grand. Then I notice this seems to have been shot on both video AND on film which makes it feel like two movies stitched together.

The teen slumber party elements mixed with the hospital stuff is making for a very intriguing concoction. LeEtta noticed that the girls are having a slumber party while the girl’s parents are home. I suggest that this is The Last Chaperoned Slumber Party. All of the guy characters are real cockfaces except for the class nerd. They pick on him and call him “Science”. Back at the slumber party, the girls are goofing off and drinking booze while the psycho surgeon is creeping about. The worst character just got killed and I cheered. The movie just improved substantially!

That’s the second Beegees poster in this moviethon! And the first Sesame Street poster. I can’t even process what’s going on in this movie. The girls are watching Forever Evil, one of my childhood trauma films! Dear reader, you need to see The Last Slumber Party for yourself. If you open up your heart to it, you will live forever, I promise. Between the multiple film stocks and cameras and stupendously baffling bullshit of the screenplay, my mind has been dismantled and reassembled incorrectly. I hope there’s a 1-800 number at the end of the film to some kind of Last Slumber Party support network.

Conclusion

Slasher movies are just good melodramas with a couple of murders thrown in. For instance, Terror at Tenkiller felt exactly like a Me Generation leftover like Savage Weekend but way, way more sedate or possibly in a coma. I can’t believe so many unseen films ended up being so rewarding. That being said, The Boogey Man and Graduation Day have inspired me to make sure that next time the old favorites will be populating the playlist in a big way. Everything went perfectly this time around except for the sleaze factor of Slumber Party Massacre III. That one was just gross. See you next time, you dang murderers.

Final Stats

Boobies: 34

Butts: 5

Wieners: 0

Body Count: 120

My Doomed Moviethon

mydoomedmoviethon

I first became hooked on horror movies watching Elvira’s “Movie Macabre” when I was a kid (around 9 or 10 years old). She was making fun of Flesh For Frankenstein and I was totally flipping out. I was laughing at her gags (and oggling her goodies) but I was also really enjoying the movie (despite the fact that it was cut to ribbons for television). After that night, I tuned in every weekend to catch her shtick and I always ended up enjoying whatever movie she hosted.

Soon after, my parents gave me their old TV and I started up staying up all night to watch whatever was on the local channels. Some of you who remember the 1980s may also remember that there used to be horror movies on ALL THE TIME on late night TV. I have this vague memory of catching the creepy mannequin-filled Tourist Trap just before dawn. Good or bad, damn it, they were always on.

There were two films which aired in the middle of the night that caused me to slip over the edge and become completely obsessed with horror movies. The first one was Zombie 6: Monster Hunter (AKA Joe D’Amato’s Absurd) and the second was Girls Nite Out (a dull yet atmospheric slasher flick with the killer wearing a bear costume circa. 1984). Granted, neither of these are the best examples of horror but these two movies totally blew me away. I can still hear the announcer’s voice saying “We now return to Zombie 6: Monster Hunter” in a laughably menacing voice. I know George Eastman is out there somewhere stuffing some babysitter’s head into an oven.

Although I’m sure she has no idea, my sister Lora also had a hand in altering my filmic fate forever. While she was babysitting me one night, her boyfriend came over with a copy of Nightmare On Elm Street. Before they started the tape my sister told me the story of their “friend” who still sleeps in the same bed with her mother after watching the film. That didn’t scare me and neither did the first Elm Street flick. Later, my sister and her boyfriend took me to the local drive-in for a weird triple feature: Hot Pursuit (John Cusack, huh?), Cut And Run (yep, the Ruggero Deodato flick), and Creepshow 2. “Thanks for the ride, lady!”

By this time, my parents and I were renting 4 movies every weekend. Well, that all changed when I caught the horror bug. When I was 11, my parents gave me my own VCR. They had just purchased a new VCR, so, once again, I got the hand-me-down. Lucky for me the old one was in terrific shape and soon the thing was running nearly every time I set foot in my room.

There, at the video store (a Video-X-Tron before Blockbuster bought them out) was something that thrilled me: the HORROR section. There is something devious and alluring about an entire set of shelves full of dead teenagers, dark places, unholy incantations, and severed heads. Oddly enough, my parents had no problem with allowing me to watch whatever I wanted (sure, blame the parents!) so I had no trouble getting started on my mission which was to rent every single horror movie in the store. Nowadays, this would be easy since it is rare to find a decent selection of horror titles anywhere.

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My family’s rental program changed one weekend. Two movies for my parents, one for the whole family, and four horror flicks for me. The ones I remember loving the most were Evil Dead 2, the Friday the 13th series, Halloween, The Masque Of The Red Death (1964), Rabid, Night Of the Creeps, Hellraiser (both 1 and 2), From Beyond, Critters (both 1 and 2), Night of the Demons, Dawn of the Dead, Return of the Living Dead, Ghoulies, Warlock, Creepers (aka Dario Argento’s Phenomena), Munchies (terrible I know but I must have watched this one 4 or 5 times), Lamberto Bava’s Demons, Forever Evil (actually scared me!), April Fools Day, Dario Argento’s Trauma, Revenge Of The Dead (AKA Zeder) and many, many more.

Several years later, my buddy Scott (the original Moviethoner) and I started renting enough movies and buying enough junk food to get us through the night. Scott introduced me to Peter Medak’s The Changeling starring George C. Scott. We often tore through the entire Omen trilogy (yes, I still like to pretend Omen IV: The Awakening never happened) as well as Phantasm and Phantasm II before the night was through.

Then, I just stopped watching horror movies. I have no idea why I gave up on them. Perhaps films like Pulp Fiction and Clerks steered me into Indie land. Or maybe it was the sixth entry in the Halloween series or Hellraiser: Bloodline. I could just as easily blame the Leprechaun series or The Mangler for ruining horror movies for me.

I was still a film buff, watching tons and tons of artsy cinematic masterworks. I would sit through Last Tango In Paris, Rashômon, A Woman Under The Influence, Touch Of Evil, Amacord, etc. I was always searching for something with meaning and depth. Then one day (about three years ago) I was watching Fellini’s Satyricon and I just snapped. Sure, it’s a disturbing film filled with frightening characters and some gory moments but it (like Fellini’s other films) is half an hour too long. I didn’t want to endure the lofty and pretentious any longer. I wanted something fun and something gory that I could ingest in 90 minutes or less (preferably less).

One day, I was talking my friend Nafa about horror movies. He was a former moviethoner who had stopped watching horror flicks years ago but had been quite a connoisseur in his own time. Charged from the conversation, I decided to start renting horror movies again. My first surprise: I was appalled at how little horror Blockbuster Video actually carries nowadays. The company is reducing their VHS stock to make room for DVD but not restocking their shelves with the DVD versions. This corporate giant had bought out nearly all of the ma and pa video stores but it didn’t keep the one thing that gave them their strength in the first place:, their selection.

Frustrated, I went on the internet and started to poke around for horror facts and trivia. I suddenly noticed just how many of those old horror flicks I used to love had been censored long before I ever got a chance to watch them. As a child of the 80s, I absolutely despise censorship (thanks to the PMRC), so I decided to track the uncensored versions of these flicks down. No easy task, especially considering that I wasn’t into collecting. Yet.

Nafa told me about this horror/eurosleaze/porn video store across town and decided to check it out. Well, the situation looked grim. The place, Unique Video, as cool as it is was way out of my jurisdiction and had a 24 HOUR return policy. The duder wanted the movies back by closing time, THE NEXT DAY and I’m 20 or 30 minutes (of shitty Tampa traffic) away.

Figuring that I’d never see this type of selection again, I bit the bullet and rented four (only four! I was such an idiot) movies: Zombi 2, Phenomena, The Stendhal Syndrome, and Ms. 45, albeit not a horror movie but a classic piece of trash if ever there was one. This is one of the reasons why Doomed Moviethon extends its reach into the cult genre as well. So, I watched Ms.45 first to get it out of the way. That isn’t to say it wasn’t a perfect film to start my moviethon with. Next, I jumped into the horror with Zombi 2, Phenomena, and then finished everything off with The Stendhal Syndrome (not a fan favorite but one of my top 10).

So, I returned the tapes on time (barely) and made a decision not to return to the place. It was just too difficult to get across town every time I needed to return a tape. This decision was painful because none of the video stores I’d ever been to had this kind of selection. Hell, I had never even heard of Lucio Fulci before that night. The seedy looking covers of the Italian horror, German gorefests, and Giallo VHS tapes pulled the trigger in my brain. I was sold. I wanted my own horror movie library.

Of course, staying a horror purist is impossible with so many genre jumping directors and films (so yeah, Takashi Miike), one gets lead into other territory so easily. The yakuza film has ruined the American gangster movie for me forever. I even find myself craving the occasional spaghetti western, kung-fu flick, or even some trashy exploitation garbage.  Also, I found that it takes a lot of fact checking and reading up to find the uncut versions of films and that it is easy to get bogged down in “Special Editions” and “Director’s Cuts”.

And that’s my horror story. My collection is now past the 500 mark and I’m loving every gore-soaked and scream-filled minute of it. I’ve almost located everything that inspired me to start this here website. However,  I keep uncovering forgotten movies buried in the recesses of my brain. As more and more obscure as hell titles start coming to DVD, I’m sure I’ll be able to put all the pieces of my horror film geekhood together. Anyway, I’ve already spent too much time writing this and not watching something. Thanks for reading, moviethoners.