gore

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

Murderock – Splatter Generation

murderock-splattergen

Hey gorefiends, here is the horror metal album you’ve been waiting for. Hailing from the desert wasteland of Nevada, Murderock wears their film fandom on their gore-soaked sleeve with songs inspired by Italian horror fare like Dellamorte Dellamore, The Beyond, and The New York Ripper. Any band with a track about Dr. Freudstein of The House by the Cemetery gets serious points with me right out of the gate. Plus, you can see the sexy doc’s face on the cover. And to keep things nice and sleazy, they also reference grindhouse flicks like Thriller: A Cruel Picture and Last House on Dead End Street.

My favorite song is “Cut You To Pieces” about, what else? Pieces! They even incorporate that splatter classic’s very memorable tagline, “You don’t have to go to Texas for a chainsaw massacre”, into the chorus. Just calling them metal does the band a disservice as the influences of punk and fuzzed out rock and roll are all over their sound making Splatter Generation fun, scary, catchy, and heavy as fuck. All of the musicianship is great from everyone involved and the lyrics make a great case for the benefits of necrophilia.

http://murderock.net/

https://murderock.bandcamp.com/

That Freudstein House!

thatfredusteinhouse

Let me go ahead and show my hand here. Lucio Fulci’s The House by the Cemetery (from 1981) is my favorite film of all time. It’s not just my favorite horror film. It’s my favorite film. Period. Exclamation mark. While The Beyond is a bigger spectacle and Don’t Torture a Duckling is a better film, the tale of Dr. Freudstein, for my money, represents the best of Fulci’s gory golden age. I’m also particularly attached to this film because it reminds me so much of autumn. You see, I live in Tampa and fall around here just means more summer so anything that can jumpstart my autumnal heart is essential. Think of this as Fulci’s It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown except the pumpkins are rotting corpses and Linus Van Pelt is Bob Doyle, the most irritatingly dubbed kid in the history of Italian horror cinema.

In the film, Dr. Norman Boyle (Paolo Malco of New York Ripper) is called to continue the work of Dr. Peterson, a colleague who killed himself while researching old houses in Boston. Norman, his wife Lucy (Catriona MacColl of City of the Living Dead) and their young son Bob (Giovanni Frezza) relocate to Boston for six months so that he can finish his work. Almost immediately, Bob meets and befriends a little ghost girl named Mae (Silvia Collatina) who warns him not to go into the house? What house? Why the Freudstein house, of course!

A crooked realtor named Laura Gittleson (Dagmar Lassander of The Frightened Woman) sets up the Boyle family for a whole mess of trouble by putting them in the former home of Dr. Freudstein, a place where people have been dying violently and/or disappearing. It turns out that Norman’s former colleague was so obsessed with Dr. Freudstein, a mad scientist who was exiled from the medical community 80 years prior, that he committed suicide. In walks Ann the babysitter (Ania Pieroni), apparently sent over by Laura to look after Bob.  Lucy can’t help but notice Ann’s bizarre demeanor but Norman can’t be bothered.

Strange noises echo throughout the house and Lucy (who is already hopped up on mood stabilizers anyway) begins to lose her grip on her sanity. In order to help his wife keep her shit together, Norman agrees to go into the basement that has remain locked the entire time. While Lucy and he are down there, they are assaulted by a bat that looks like turds and fur with a pair of wings. The bat latches onto Norman’s hand; he then rushes upstairs and starts stabbing the thing with a kitchen knife. He appears to be taking great joy slaughtering the thing and flings blood all over the place including Bob (who looks just a tad shell-shocked by the spectacle).

That evening, while the Boyle fam is at the doctor, Laura the shitty realtor shows up when everyone is out and gets royally killed to death by an unseen Dr. Freudstein who drags her body down to the basement. The following morning, Ann is wiping up the blood but nobody notices because… um… the coffee is ready. As it starts to look like she may be in on the conspiracy of murders, Ann gets her friggin’ head chopped off which Bob sees rolling down the stairs. Of course, Lucy can’t find any evidence of the babysitter’s decapitation and convinces him it all just in his imagination.

To make sure that his college fund is a complete waste of time, Bob decides to head down to the basement that night and search for Ann (or at least her head). This time, Bob comes face to face with Dr. Freudstein and the charnel house that he has made of the basement. Norman, armed with proof that Freudstein is alive and using human remains to recharge his cells, and Lucy, armed with a mother’s love, rush to Bob’s rescue. But are they too late to save their irritating little boy? And more importantly, just who will save them?

Seems pretty straight forward, right? Well, it ain’t. There is so much more to this moody gorefest that every time I watch it, I have to wonder what planet it came from. Frequent Fulci collaborator, Sergio Salvati, is a fantastic cinematographer and doesn’t miss a beat here. The man knows how to pick up the minutest details and knows when to slap on the old fish eye lens to distort the truly terrifying sequences. Salvati is also complicit in feeding Fulci’s eye fetish and there are many, many close-ups of peepers. He also captures the amazing Freudstein house in all of its exterior Massachusetts glory (interiors filmed in Rome). It’s such an amazing house, I want to live there- oh fuck me, is that a tombstone built INSIDE the house? I still want to live there.

You’d think that child actors would get dubbed by child voice actors but no, that’s too expensive. Bob and Mae’s voices are provided by adults pretending to be children and they are both outrageously irritating. Bob wins out as the most annoying dubbing job in Italian horror history (his only rival is Marco in Mario Bava’s Shock). But screw the dubbing, all that matters is that Catriona MacColl’s trademark scream comes through loud and clear in this flick. Oh, I better mention the soundtrack by Walter Razatti. The House by the Cemetery has the quintessential early 80s horror score with a bevy of eerie synthesizer and piano pieces.

Lapses in logic and obtuse exchanges between characters make for a confounding viewing experience the first time around but after you let the magic set in, it all makes sense. Okay, maybe ‘sense’ is too strong of a word. The embodiment of incomprehensibility is Ann the babysitter. Ann is played by the captivating Ania Pieroni whom you may remember from Dario Argento’s Inferno where she played another weird role as the Mother of Tears. What the hell is the secret that Norman and Ann seem to share? Why does Norman deny that the Freudstein house looks exactly like the one in the photo hanging in his office? Why is Lucy on crazy pills? Can we trust her? Why doesn’t Bob get run over by a car in the first five minutes of the film and spare us the pain of listening to his ass-feather voice? The answer to all of these questions comes in the explanation of how Dr. Freudstein has stayed alive all these years: “He needs human victims to renew his cells.”  Well, aren’t you satisfied?

As soon as we see down in that basement with all those chunks of people scattered all over the place, my eyes light up like it’s my 10th birthday forever. While I did pick this flick up in a bargain DVD bin for chump change back in 2003, the basement sequences feel so strangely familiar that I keep trying to convince myself I’ve seen this before. Some of my favorite childhood memories are fighting insomnia by catching horror movies in the small hours. Two of the most important were Joe D’Amato’s Rosso Sangue AKA Horrible and Girls Nite Out (the one where the killer wears a bear costume). Could it be that I tuned in just in time to see Bob and his mom desperately trying to evade the rotting grasp of Dr. Freudstein?

Well, if I first discovered this film when I was just a pup or not until my mid-20s makes very little difference. The House by the Cemetery has a zombified mad scientist, a grand old haunted house, a ghost with psychic abilities (is that special or do they all have them?), numerous gore setpieces, and a plethora of themes and hidden meanings to explore and dissect. Add all that up and you’ve got one seriously essential piece of Italian gore-art. The house awaits you; creaky doors, an inch of dust, cobwebs, intestines, and all. Come for the splatter but stay for the intangible horrors and the unmistakable Lucio Fulci-ness of it all. And I tell you, good people, that gory and bleak finale is one of the most satisfying in all of horror filmdom. If you call yourself a horror fan, then check this one out. Or else.

Ghoul School

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Ghoul School (1990)

A couple of criminals sneak into a high school to shake down the janitor for some money he owes them. They accidentally unleash a toxic chemical into the water supply. Two horror movie fans, Steve (played by William Friedman) and Jeff (Scott Gordon), discover that their school’s swim team has been turned into flesh-eating zombies. Just as they are about to make their escape, they realize that the metal band, The Bloodsucking Ghouls, are still in the auditorium, practicing for the school dance. Steve and Jeff make their way back through the zombie-infested school in order to rescue the band.

Holy crap! What an utterly hideous viewing experience! Now just hold on a sec, there’s something important here. If you revel in the extreme mullets, the odious fashions, and the cheesed-out heavy metal of the 1980s then Ghoul School might just be for you. The film is as cheap as they come (but they had squibs!) with performances only a mother could love. Keep your eyes peeled for legitimate cheeseball Ivan Sergei as the worst basketball player on Earth and character actor Richard Bright as Principal Kaplan (my favorite character).

Ghoul School comes to a grinding halt very early on once Joe Franklin and Jackie “The Joke Man” Martling have a scene together. The excuse for the film to feature Franklin is thin enough already (he is the speaker at a pep rally?) without an extended scene of he and Martling shticking it up. What high school student is able to appreciate the subtle comedic styling of Joe Franklin? I’m serious. The jump cuts indicate that this scene between these two jokers was probably even longer than it turned out here and that is some scary shit. Somehow the film recovers.

Elements of Return of the Living Dead and Class of Nuke ‘Em High are liberally borrowed but that’s only part of the problem. The fact that they play the same punk song over many of the gore scenes doesn’t help matters much and EVERYONE’S SHOUTING. However, those of you out there who seek out all this straight-to-video junk, Ghoul School will have its merits. The film has its own dumb energy that keeps right on through until the end but most viewers will walk away wondering why they bothered. Watch at your own risk.

Church, The

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The Church (1989)

Sometime in the 12th century, a group of Teutonic knights slaughtered a group of Pagans thinking them to plagued by a Satanic curse. A church was built on top of the site of the massacre. 800 years later, Evan the librarian (Tomas Arana) uncovers an ancient document that details a horrifying incident which inspired the design of the church. The closer Evan gets to uncovering the truth, the more bizarre and horrifying events begin to take place. When blood is shed inside the church, an automatic locking system traps everyone inside. Father Gus (Hugh Quarshie) tries to do his best to find the secret of the church’s architect in order to destroy the demonic plague before it spreads outside the church and destroys the world.

Michele Soavi (Stagefright) directs The Church AKA La Chiesa, an exercise in unholy atmosphere and gory entertainments. Visually, this film is nearly perfect: the razor-sharp cinematography, moody lighting, and must-be-seen-to-be-believed setpieces all come together in a dizzying explosion of hot and goopy damnation. The soundtrack provided by Keith Emerson, Philip Glass, Fabio Pignatelli, and Goblin is fantastic without a trace of any inappropriate heavy metal or silly pop.

Where the film goes wrong is in the writing. There are 8 or so writing credits (some credited, some not) heaped on The Church and you can really tell. This is one confusing film with many, many unanswered questions. The best unintentionally hilarious moment comes when Barbara Cupisti’s character calls the police from her (seemingly remote) cabin and their response time is around 30 seconds. Those viewers who need to understand what they’re watching will want to avoid this film. Oh, and the English dubbing. Holy crow, there are some awful voices and performances in this one.

TV and film actor, Hugh Quarshie, is excellent as Father Gus but where’s the dang character development? It’s pretty obvious that he’s the hero of the story once Evan the librarian goes south but the film could have easily devoted some time to giving some background to what drives Father Gus. Put Tomas Arana (Body Puzzle) on the list of actors that I don’t trust. Seriously, this guy is really creepy and I really hope he gets some more starring roles in horror films.

The Church sports quite a familiar faces from the Italian horror world. With an unforgettably menacing visage, Feodor Chaliapin Jr. (Dario Argento’s Inferno) is great as the creepy bishop. The queen of the overbites, Barbara Cupisti (Stagefright), plays Lisa, a young woman working at restoring the church’s frescos. The lovely and criminally underused actress Antonella Vitale gets all messed up in her role as “Bridal Model”. Be sure to keep your eyes peeled for even more Italian horror awesomeness: John Richardson of Fear, Giovanni Radice of House On The Edge Of The Park, and of course, Asia Argento of The Stendhal Syndrome and Trauma.

The Church is a visually stunning film with a seriously battered and neglected script. The plot trails off several times and the WTF? factor is quite high throughout the running time. Thanks to Dario Argento’s producer credit, this film is quite lavish when compared to much of the late 80s Italian horror output. (Note: Supposedly, Dario Argento imposed some cuts to the film against Soavi’s wishes which might explain much of the film’s confusing narrative.) Also, you’ll have a tough time trying to find a film with as much blasphemy, perversion, and gore as The Church. The extremely talented Soavi went on to do even more amazing films such as The Sect and Cemetery Man before spending time directing made-for-TV action and drama films. We should all collectively pray that he returns to horror very soon.

“C’mon, have a biscuit! They’re groovy!”

Baby Blood

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Baby Blood (1990)

Yanka (Emmanuelle Escourrou) works in the circus along with her abusive husband and is terribly unhappy. One night, a parasitic monster bursts out of a recently delivered leopard and goes looking for a new host. Yanka is impregnated by the creature and the next day, she flees from her husband, stealing all of the circus’ money. As the weeks go by, Yanka’s child begins to speak to her telepathically. It tells her that it needs blood to survive and it forces her to kill using the threat of pain and death to spur her on. Before long, Yanka begins to enjoy killing for her baby and finds that she is becoming more and more careless and violent in her pursuit of blood. As the time of its birth comes closer, the creature tells her that she must take it to the ocean. Yanka then makes a bloody b-line for the sea leaving a path of gore and destruction in her wake.

Okay, where did the hell did this one come from? Think of Baby Blood as a shorter and less cerebral Possession (1981) and instead of Isabelle Adjani you get Emmanuelle Escourrou. This ain’t art but somehow it works. Director Alain Robak really has it in for the viewer with this one, pouring on the gore and blood liberally while filling the film with some of the most brutish and unattractive dudes I’ve ever seen. Not to mention the repulsive sensuality (?) of our leading lady. More on that later. The plot is quite chaotic and simple but builds up quite nicely to its explosive conclusion. The cinematography by Bernard Déchet is gritty, grimy, somewhat sleazy, and workmanlike but captures all of the action perfectly.

Emmanuelle Escourrou’s performance as Yanka (mother of the year) is quite a bold and dynamic one. She is willing to strip for the camera frequently, get covered in blood, put the pillow under her dress, and wholeheartedly take part in one of the most unflattering roles I’ve ever seen. Thankfully, the rest of the cast takes Baby Blood as seriously as the lead keeping the film from getting out of hand (too late) and campy. And did you ever wonder who the ugliest man in all of France is? Well, it might just be Jean-François Gallotte who plays Richard, the ex-clown “ladies’ man”, who has the brilliant idea of attempting to start a relationship with Yanka.

As it moves erratically along, Baby Blood becomes madder and madder in its willingness to shed more and more blood as well as become even more outlandish with each scene. The very literal male-bashing becomes quite shocking as Yanka’s own bloodlust surfaces out of her child’s need. Clearly, our voluptuous gap-toothed vixen has some issues. Is Baby Blood a sloppy, slippery, and chunky feminist manifesto? You make the call, duder.

I have to put Baby Blood way up there in my top 10 Eurohorror flicks of all time. It’s also a must see for anyone who doubts the French’s ability to make quality horror. I have been infatuated with Yanka (ewww, now I feel dirty) and her grisly Cronenbergesque journey since I first caught the censored cut of this on VHS a while back as The Evil Within. Expecting mothers beware, this is a trashy tale of body horror with a serious mean streak. Baby Blood will make you feel all warm and fuzzy (and squishy and squirmy) on the inside shortly before it asks you to kill for fresh male blood but only because it wants to be born. But isn’t that what we all want?

Alien Predator

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Alien Predator (1985)

When Skylab crashes to Earth containing an alien parasite that causes people to go mad shortly before their heads explode, NASA steps in to clean up the mess. Unfortunately, the monstrous parasite proves to be too much for the scientists and their temporary base in Duerte, Spain is abandoned and the entire town is infected. Three American college students: Damon (Dennis Christopher), Michael (Martin Hewitt), and Sam (Lynn-Holly Johnson) just happen to be driving their RV through Duerte when they discover that the town is full of raving lunatics. They meet Dr. Tracer (Luis Prendes), a specialist from NASA, who believes he can develop an antidote to the parasite. Now the four of them must fight off the insane inhabitants of the town while working on the antidote before the rest of the world becomes infected.

Seeketh splatter and ye shall find it. But at what cost? I finally tracked down Alien Predator (thanks to the help of Uncle Sam at B-Headed). You see, I had nothing more than a couple of half-remembered scenes to go on. My mind was snagged on some images of mutilated corpses and dreary Spanish scenery from a movie I hadn’t seen in 20 years. So here I am, reunited (and it feels so good?) with Alien Predator at last. Why don’t we scavenge this corpse together? Chicken violence!

Deran Sarafian directs Alien Predator (about a million miles away from Alien Vs. Predator), a horror/sci-fi film that is dark, surreal, splattery, and pretty dumb, all at the same time. The story, based on a screenplay called “RV Park Massacre” or some BS, is pretty clunky, somewhat padded, and wildly unoriginal. Hey, how about another car chase!?! There are some disturbing and quite nasty gore setpieces scattered throughout the film but they just aren’t enough to catapult Alien Predator into the halls of classic splatter flicks. The soundtrack is ominous and perfectly suited for a horror movie until it suddenly dips into some 80s ass pop. Decent lighting and workmanlike cinematography come together quite well to provide a handful of eerie moments. The Spanish locations are especially drab adding to the sickening and hopeless atmosphere of the film.

Dennis Christopher (Fade To Black, Doppelganger) delivers as Damon, a goofy but rarely irritating “ladies man” (read as: subdued and charming crackhead). Veteran Spanish actor Luis Prendes does a fine job as Dr. Tracer but I’m sure glad he ditched his sidekick early on. I’m talking about J.O. Bosso. I don’t know who he is but I know that I couldn’t have been any happier when his character, Captain Wells, blows his brains out. Bond-girl Lynn-Holly Johnson (The Watcher In The Woods) is great with her spunky portrayal of (bad hair) Sam.

Now this is where the casting of this film is even more damaging than the script: Martin Hewitt as Michael. Holy shit, this guy is a terrible performer and astoundingly bland. His only believable scene is at the beginning when he is asleep at the wheel of the RV. Once the romance between Michael and Sam starts heating up, it’s all over. The fact that this is supposed to be our hero couldn’t be more pitiful. Dennis Christopher is clearly the romantic lead, dang it! I probably shouldn’t elaborate on my feelings.

Even though this movie was scratching at the back of my mind for 20 years and even though I really enjoyed it, I’m still having a tough time working up a good recommendation. As creepy and gory (exploding faces!) as Alien Predator is, it is also painfully stupid. The film gets bogged down in lame car chases and a romantic sub-diversion that will have you screaming for (“Hollywood’s #1 Driver!”) Michael’s head on a platter. In the film’s favor, there is an undeniable aura of weirdness throughout (dig those locals) and I’m astounded that the filmmakers got so much right. Alien Predator delivers quite a few genuinely haunting moments and downright freaky gore effects but folks looking for a lost 80s classic will be disappointed. I just can’t believe that I snuck this one past my parents all those years ago. Suckers!