Demons (1985)

Out of all the movies that I have ever caught on the big screen, be it a midnight movie, a creature double feature or a all night horror festival, I believe Demons is the one movie that I have probably seen the most times with an audience. While Demons never seems to get old for me, this weekend I had the privilege of seeing it yet again with an audience, however this time I watched it the way the gods intended it to be seen. At the drive-in of course!

 Seeing this blood drenched monster flick under the stars amongst rows of cars filled with gore-hound ghouls was an experience all in its own. The film print looked great and the reaction was what one would expect from such an awesome crowd. For those who have never seen Demons, the basic plot although full of holes... is about a group of people who get trapped inside of a movie theater while an untitled horror film is playing. While this may not sound like the worst thing that could happen to someone, things do turn for the worse. Its not long before members of the audience are being attacked by blood-thirsty Demons from hell.

Its a good thing that this movie is so much god damn fun because the story is as stupid as they come. If you try to follow this thing with any kind of logic you are bound to end up scratching your head in confusion. Things seem to happen for no apparent reason and there is never any explanation to back them up. Normally this would piss me off to no end but Demons is something special. The gory spectacle that splats across the screen is so damn entertaining that you tend to ignore the fact that the whole thing is really brain-numbing and dumb. The Demons cult following rightfully so usually has a strange obsession with the character of Tony played by the great Bobby Rhodes. Tony is a jive-talking, foul-mouthed, black-pimp who takes two of his bitches to the movies. When his main girl Rosemary (Geretta Geretta) becomes a Demon and rips her friends throat out Tony, or super-pimp as I like to call him, takes charge of the situation and leads the movie-house crowd down a path of survival. It is a combination of the dialogue and the dubbing that makes Tony the super-pimp a cult icon of his own. Sometimes I feel that there is a bigger fan base for this character then the actual movie.

Partially written by Dario (Suspiria) Argento and directed by Lamberto Bava (Macabre), I think its safe to say that they pulled much of their inspiration from George A. Romero's Night Of The Living Dead. Super-Pimp is kind of like an over the top version of the character of Ben from NOTLD. This of course even stranger when you think of where Demons comes from. It is of course an Italian film and I can't think of any other Italian film that portrays a black man as such a beloved bad-ass. I guess they knew there was going to be a bigger market for this thing in the United States and risked it. I just can't see Italy loving this character in the mid 80's the way us Americans do. Long live Super-Pimp!

Aside from Bobby Rhodes character Demons sports one gory special effect after another. It comes complete with eyeballs being pushed into the sockets, throat ripping, teeth falling out, exploding latex pimples (complete with green puss), scalping, strangulation, stabbings, torsos are completely ripped open from the inside and of course plenty of flesh chomping. This thing played in the drive-in as part of a weekend long zombie festival. While I personally do not really consider Demons to be a zombie film, it does have enough of the elements to work amongst them. Apparently demonic possession is transmitted thru saliva just like zombie-ism because thats how these monsters wreak their havoc.

If you like fast paced, insanity mixed with heavy metal and pimps then Demons is a must see. Its pure splatter-house entertainment and plot comes second.

Hitch Hike To Hell (1977)

This one comes from the director of the awesome 1950's monster movie The Monster Of Piedras Blancas. Jumping forward to the sick and twisted 70's there is no doubt the depravity would have to be amped up to ten.

Hitch Hike To Hell is one of those pre-slasher sickies from the 70's about a sex-maniac terrorizing young women. You know the type. This one follows a mammas boy named Howard who comes off like a cross between Norman Bates and Jim Carrey. A normal day for Howard consists of going to work where he drives around this big red, goofy van and drops dry cleaned laundry to customers. More often then not Howard picks up female hitch hikers, rips their clothes off and strangles them with wire hangers. You see its not that Howard hates hitch hikers. He just hates run aways because his sister ran away from home and upset his mother.

After a hard day at work and strangling young run away girls Howard goes back home to Mamma and drinks root beer. I'm not making this stuff up. Howard is a total geek. Root beer comes up quite often in this movie but in one of the films most memorable pieces of dialogue, Howard asks his Mamma if he can "go down to Swanson's for a root beer". Naturally his worried mother doesn't allow it because boys shouldn't be out after dark. Little does mommy know that Howard is a bat-shit loony who gets his jollies off by killing young girls. The Professor from Gilligan's Island shows up here as the police chief and it is his job to catch Howard and put an end to all the senseless killing.

This one ends up getting a bit repetitive after a while. Go to work, strangle a girl, go back home and drink root beer. Still it manages to be entertaining enough to make it through the duration but the replay value is not so high on this one. It does throw in a random scene where a confused Howard meets his first flamboyant homosexual and an unexpected scene with a very young murder victim. Hitch Hike To Hell is a average time passer for those who really like 70's movies about sicko's. Just don't expect to much.

Curfew Breakers (1957)

I picked this thing up thinking it was going to be a juvenile delinquent film with greaser gangs fighting on the city streets. Man was I wrong. Curfew Breakers may have marketed itself as a JD flick on Johnny Legend's Untamed Video but it turns out to be more of a drugsploitation movie when it was all said and done. This makes a lot of sense considering the original title was Hooked and then Narcotics Squad. Being a fan of the silly druggy genre I wasn't all to disappointed.

Curfew Breakers starts like an episode of dragnet with old geezer police trying to break into a teenage drug ring. Things get more serious when a high school kid kicks the bucket from "a hot shot". For those unfamiliar a hot shot is when a dealer purposely sells a junkie poison bag of goods. We see lots of this in blaxploitation flicks like Hammer and Coffy. Anyway the cops are after the killer drug dealers and come across typical greasy haired street kids with hep 50's jargon and a bad attitude. The lead female Julie is a bit of a babe with torpedo-tits and a tight sweaters but she seems to be running with the bad crowd. The portrayal of heroin addiction is surprisingly accurate for a movie in the 50's, similar to Frank Sinatra's The Man With The Golden Arm. As the police close in on the dealers the teenage junkies have a hard time getting a fix and they resort to crime. In one of the films highlights two delinquent street kids shoot and kill a gas station attendant only to end up burning alive in a explosive car crash. This one also comes complete with two ridiculous songs one of which involves a scat-singing weirdo who looks like hes about 45. We also get a pretty cool artsy-fartsy withdrawal sequence and plenty of cheesy 50's dialogue.

If you're not a square and you dig cheesy drugsploitation flicks of the yesteryear you could do worse.

  

Like Mother... Like Daughter (1972)

Not to much to say about this stinker. In case you couldn't tell from the title, this early 1970's smut-fest involves a family that is really quite into each other and when I say "into each other" I mean they have family orgies. Incestuous themes was nothing new in 70's porno films. In fact there seems to be an endless supply of the stuff and after seeing the great Taboo (1980) a movie is going to have to be pretty good to stand out from the piles of never ending incest fuck flicks. That however is not the case in Like Mother, Like Daughter.

In this one mommy shares her new hubby with her teenage daughter. A typical night consists of step-daddy banging out his wife while the daughter sits on her mothers face. Sounds pretty good, I know but the family fun is about to be disturbed when the real father comes back into the picture. Having worked in Japan for the past 15 years, his daughter can't even remember him. With the drop of the hat he decides to take his wife to court and gain custody of his daughter. Now this sounds like a pretty good idea considering mommy has been bopping her teenage daughter but the funny thing is that daddy is unaware of all the incest action that has been filling the happy families nights. He just wants his daughter because hes a prick. So what can be done about all this. Just do what comes natural. Yep you guessed it, daddy's little girl seduces her unknowing father and blows his whistle. It all comes to an abrupt end when she bites her fathers banana. This is by far the best scene in the movie. In fact its probably the only moment worth watching. Once daddy finds out that his own daughter was the one performing oral sex on him, he runs away in shame and the filthy fucking family lives happily ever after. Did I ever tell you how much I hate happy endings?

This one comes complete with a really shitty and typical jazz soundtrack, lots of hairy sex and a street named "Stag Road". The great Jamie Gillis shows up for some sleazy 70's sex but offers nothing special here. There is also a pretty gross moment where one of the actresses gets her period blood. The camera eventually cuts away and tries to pretend we didn't see what just happened but god damnit we saw it! This one turns out to be nothing more than a run of the mill porn flick with average to boring sex scenes.

Ms. 45 (1981)

Ms. 45 is one of the best rape revenge films ever made. This one takes the familiar rape/revenge concoction and sends it off in a totally different direction. Between Abel Ferrara's brilliant direction and Nicholas St. John's writing, Ms. 45 becomes more of a piece of art to be debated and discussed rather then pure exploitation. While the film does still manage to hold those beloved elements of an exploitation film, it seems to be something more. Something with a controversial theme. That theme is of course feminism.

  Zoë Lund does a brilliant job in this movie. Her acting is on point and she gives the main character Thana so much life. Considering Zoë Lund was only 17 years old when she took this role on, makes it all the more astonishing. Thana is a silent mute who seems to be completely disgusted with the male gender. This repulsion will of course grow when she has the worst day of her life. On her way home from work with her sleazy boss Thana is harassed by the droves of horny men on the New York City streets. They give her all the usual "hey baby, hows it going" pick up lines, blow her kisses and whistle at her as she walks by. Before she gets home to her apartment she is pulled into an alley by a masked rapist played by no other then directer Abel Ferrar.

The rapist comes complete with a gun and one of those creepy translucent masks from movies like Alice Sweet Alice and Last House On Dead End Street. The masked scumbag rapes Thana at gun point and makes it a point to tell her "See ya, later. I'll be back baby". Thana picks herself up from the filthy city street and makes her way back home only to realize that another man has broken into her home. When the burglar finds nothing worth stealing he takes it out on the freshly raped Thana and yes you guessed it, she is raped again. This time around the rapist doesn't get away so easy. Thana picks up a clothing iron and caves the dirt-bags head in.

Since our main character has been sexually assaulted twice in one day, I think it is safe to say that she might not be so mentally stable. Her repulsion for men grows to a deep hatred and its not long before she goes on a brutal killing spree of revenge with the loaded gun she stole from the now dead rapist. One of the things that makes Ms. 45 so much more interesting then the average rape/revenge flick is the fact that the main character isn't really acting out vengeance on the ones that did her wrong. Instead she takes her anger out on the entire male gender. This would of course be explored again in a later French film called Baise-Moi (2000) but it was done much more effectively in Ms. 45.

   It is this thought provoking feminist theme that so often brings Ms. 45 into discussion and debate. While it is arguable that all or most rape/revenge films have the underlining message that ALL MEN ARE SCUM!!! This movie takes it to a new level. However I feel that most view this movie slightly wrong. While at first glance it may seem that  Zoë Lund's character is the ultimate feminist, it doesn't mean that the film is a pro-feminist movie. In fact it portrays her more as a damaged human being with many social and probable mental disorders. In this review I used the word repulsion a lot because the character of Thana greatly resembles the disturbed character of Roman Polanski's Repulsion (1965). In fact the similarities are so great that I am almost positive that Ferrara and the Ms. 45 crew were highly influenced by Polanski's horrific art-film. Damaged in the brain or not the audience can't help but love the character of Thana. The remainder of the film we watch the fem-fatale blow away men with her beloved pistol. Some of them seem to deserve it and others... not so much. It all comes to violent end where Thana dresses up like a nun and massacres the men at a Halloween party. 

Ms. 45 has the perfect blend of art and exploitation. It comes complete with locations from the great genre film Death Wish, a pretty cool musical score and it really captures the mean streets of NYC in a time long past. A must see for genre fans.

Lady Snowblood (1973)

This movie is awesome! If you are new to the Samurai genre Lady Snowblood is usually one of the first you would come by, due to its huge cult following. I would say Shogun Assassin and then this one are probably the two most popular and rightfully so.

Lady Snowblood is a classic Japanese tale of  revenge. The film opens up in a female prison with a dying woman giving birth to a baby girl named Yuki. Yuki's mother was done great wrong in life and decides that Yuki will dedicate her life to vengeance. The newborns fate is already sealed. She will walk the path of revenge and kill the scum who murdered her father and raped her mother. Yuki is raised by a mean-hearted gray haired dude who teaches her to be tough. Similar to so many Hong Kong Kung Fu Films, Yuki goes through a long painful training period and many of the techniques seem quite ridiculous. Especially this one scene where she is put in a barrel and kicked down a hill. I'm not quite sure exactly what that does to train someone in martial arts but it does happen more than once in this movie. Anyway as Yuki becomes an adult she seeks out the bastards that destroyed her family and rips through them one by one with her samurai sword.

Yuki is played by the great Meiko Kaji who you might remember from the Female Prisoner # 701 : Scorpion movies. She is just as bad-ass in this one and sheds enough blood to keep the average gore-hound happy. When it comes to the blood & guts department we have plenty of Japanese style blood spraying, severed hands go flying, a very brutal scene in which a Yakuza gang violently takes turns stabbing a man to death and a very gratuitous scene in which a woman hangs herself and then has her torso cut in half, complete with buckets of pouring blood. On the other hand oddly enough Lady Snowblood does not offer any nudity. That is of course with the exception of a very uncomfortable moment when we see a prepubescent Yuki striped down nude. Although it is the furthest thing from kiddie-porn or anything like that, the scene might feel a bit wrong to Americans.

Lady Snowblood would go on to spawn a sequel in the following year which many don't think holds up to the first films standards. None the less the follow up is still entertaining and action packed. Quentin Tarantino would be heavily influenced by this movie and steal large chunks of it for Kill Bill. What else is new? Lady Snowblood is of course far superior to Kill Bill or anything else that fan-boy Tarantino has ever done. If you dig movies about strong women who fuck shit up and take no prisoners Lady Snowblood is perfect for you. There is nothing negative to say about this movie. Its a masterpiece!

Serial Killers (1994)

This tape is a bit of a mystery. I picked it up in the dollar bin at the local video store not really expecting much. When it turned out to be a decent documentary I was honestly surprised. However I wasn't really able to find any information on this thing at all. In fact I'm not even sure it was actually made in 1994. I'm just going by the copyright on the back of the tape and we all know that really doesn't mean shit.The documentary itself has no credits, so it offers no clues to the writer, director or narrator. On the other hand this generically titled VHS isn't exactly worth making a life time search to find its origins.

Aside from being a total mystery this has to be the fastest paced documentary ever made and thats what I liked about it. It opens up with Charles Starkweather and zips forward with a very fast speaking narrator. Before you can say "sociopath" we are on to the Green River Killer. This one covers so many of America's most infamous serial killers, one at a time. We get a bit of back story on each of the psychos and then of course a lesson on the true crimes they have committed. Being a bit of a serial killer buff I tended to fill in the blanks on my own because at times this movie is to fast for its own good. By the time it got to Edmond Kemper, I felt that it only covered the loony for about five minutes. How can you only spend 5 min. on a guy like Ed Kemper? There is so much to say about him. Anyway this was a pretty good find considering it was only a buck. Worth a watch for serial killer and true crime buffs just for the fun speed of it all but don't expect to learn anything new. It really keeps each maniac pretty brief. On the other hand if you don't know much about these people it would probably serve as a great introduction to each of them.

Killer Barbys Vs. Dracula (2002)

This very late Jess Franco follow up to his 1996 punk rock horror flick Killer Barbys is amongst the worst in the infamous directors filmography. While Killer Barbys was by no means a masterpiece, it was entertaining enough to hold the viewers attention. I can't really say the same for the sequel.

This one yet again showcases the Spanish pop punk band The Killer Barbies and this time around they accidentally awake Count Dracula. Dracula is a bald-headed creep who runs around biting women. He seems to have a infatuation with the hot blond singer for The Killer Barbies Silvia Superstar and I don't quite blame him. She is a total babe. Anyway, like the first film it all seems like a giant promotion for the band. We get a whole bunch of songs from the band and after a while it all just seems like one big music video.

 Franco's wife Lina Romay (Female Vampire) also shows up as a sort of fascist Nazi type who is traveling around with the coffin of Count Dracula. She is very old in this movie but as always its great to see her. However I guess we are lucky that she is not getting naked in her old age. Franco sparred us on that level but perhaps the weirdest and most out of place element to this movie is that there is no nudity. No nudity in a Jesus Franco film is like no guns in a Sam Peckinpah movie. Its absurd and unheard of. Why Franco couldn't convince Silvia Superstar to do a spread eagle close up zoom shot is beyond me. Perhaps his sexual perversion is dying in his old age. Nah that's impossible. The fact that there is no bare breasted women and close ups on vaginas is all pretty offensive considering there isn't really a plot to be found in this awful waste of time. Aside from the worlds weakest story the score is horrendous. When ever we see Dracula we have this annoying water going down the drain noise. It is quite irritating. There is no gore, no sex and even The Killer Barbies songs aren't as cool as the first film. Skip this shit all together. Not even recommended for Franco fanatics. Just stay away!

Class Reunion Massacre (1978)

This fairly forgettable slasher film also went under the title of The Redeemer : Son Of Satan. It focuses on six assholes who reunite for a high school reunion . A demented serial killer traps them in the old building and is killing them off one by one in unique ways, with various weapons. None of this makes sense of course because there are windows and doors everywhere. These people deserve to die.

   While certainly not my favorite of all slasher flicks it does have some entertaining kill sequences. My favorite of the lot involves a giant sword that is impaled into a victims skull and leaves blood spatter all over the place. This gory moment is sure to put a smile on the faces of gore hounds but unfortunately most of the other murders come off silly and dull. In another highlight a man has his crotch set on fire with a blow torch and its not long before his entire body is bursting in flames. Props to the stunt guy on that scene.

The killer in this one changes costumes constantly. Actually his disguise changes for every kill scene in the movie. Most of the time its too silly to be taken seriously and one can't help but be annoyed at the stupidity of it all rather then any feelings of fear. So as a horror movie Class Reunion Massacre fails miserably. It offers no scares, no thrills and barely any suspense.

   While it is definitely better then the late 80's shot on video slasher films, it is still a bottom of the barrel crap-fest, especially for the year in which it was released. The killer in this movie does have a motive. He is some sort of religious nut who is trying to rid the world of its filth. One of the victims is a lesbian, another is very rich and greedy, another is a movie star with to much vanity, etc. These religious undertones run through the entire movie and serve as the killers main motive. It all could have worked quite well if the killer wasn't running around in silly costumes. The scene where he dresses up like Elmer Fudd and blows away a helpless victim takes the cake in the ridiculous department. Its too bad because this one really did have some potential. To top it all off the film tries to pretend it has some kind of metaphoric message when it opens with a little boy with two thumbs coming out of a lake and then ends with the boy going back into the lake. Who is he? Why is he there? Why does he have two thumbs? Who cares! This movie can not fool me. It is to dumb to have a message.

If you feel the need to watch this one, do it with a group of friends and quite a bit of alcohol. You are going to need the support.

Hey Is Dee Dee Home (2002)

Hey! Is Dee Dee Home? was never intended to be a feature film. The director Lech Kowalski who was responsible for punk cult classics such as D.O.A. and Story Of A Junkie was finishing up his Johnny Thunders documentary, Born To Lose : The Last Rock & Roll Movie when he realized he had enough Dee Dee Ramone interview footage for a 64 minute film.

 Well thats exactly what you get with this one. Left over scraps from another film, which tells the life story of Dee Dee Ramone. Personally I always enjoyed Dee Dee Ramone interviews. I find the punk rock burn-out to be extremely interesting and entertaining, so this movie is actually pretty cool for a guy like me. However, I could see how most people would really not be into this thing... even Ramones fans. During the filming of this Dee Dee was apparently clean from heroin. He spends most of the films running time talking about his life long struggle with the drug and the insanity that it has brought to his life. The rest of the interviews are pretty much about Johnny Thunders, which makes sense because the footage was of course taken for a Thunders documentary. Dee Dee would die of a heroin overdose a year or two after these interviews and Lech Kowalski cashed in on the punk icons death by releasing the footage as a feature.

The thing that I find most interesting about this movie is that it really shows how strange Dee Dee is. I mean we all know hes weird but this movie places us in a room with him for just over an hour and he almost seems insane. First off he looks like Christopher Lloyd here, with a shaved head and his big ears. He spends much of the movie talking about his tattoos and scars but then he gets real weird and starts talking about haunted apartments and Satan and stuff like that. Its a weird movie about a weird guy. Probably not a very big fan base for this one. I would only recommend it to people who are really interested in Dee Dee Ramone.

  

Curse Of The Aztec Mummy (1957)

This 1957 follow up to The Aztez Mummy is yet again not a example of great cinema but the like Rock N Roll Wrestling Women Vs The Aztec Mummy it gets entertainment points for how bizarre it all is.

This low budget Mexican crap-fest blends classic horror, Monster Movies with Mexican wrestling Lucha Libre madness. It's silly and short but still manages to get a bit tired in some of the talky scenes. While The Curse Of The Aztec Mummy clocks in at a short 65 minutes it feels more like a full length feature due to the slow pace of the movie.

The evliv Dr. Krupp is back and wants to get his hands on the ancient jewels in the mummy's tomb. Krupp concocts a plan to abduct a scientists wife and hold her for ransom in exchange for a translation of ancient hieroglyphics that behold the secret hiding place of the jewels. However Curse Of The Aztec Mummy shifts gears and gets a bit more fun when a masked super hero shows up to kick the evil doctors ass. At first glance one might think that is El Santo up there. Wait why does Santo have a anarchy symbol on his belt. Ohhhh wait, that isn't El Santo at all. This silver masked Mexican wrestler is El Angel. Of course we all know El Angel. Wait... who the fuck is El Angel?

  Anyway since the Aztec Mummy doesn't show up until the lats ten minutes of the movie El Angel is really our main source of entertainment here. Don't worry we do get to see this masked hero jumping around in his horribly fitting leotard, kicking the ass of every thug in the movie. However Angel seems to lose just about every fight. He gets captured over and over again and one can't help but wish Santo was doing the action scenes here. Before the film is over El Angel has his mask removed and we learn his true identity. Everyone in the movie acts surprised but I kinda just thought to myself, who cares? When the Aztec Mummy finally shows up in all his rotted glory he seems to have a certain preference to who he attacks. It all comes to a rather abrupt ending and left me wondering why they felt the need to make more of these stupid Aztec Mummy movies.

This one is only for lovers of really bad monster movies and lucha libre antics. It's silly, poorly acted, poorly lit and generally slow but on the other hand it is a sort of strang comic book film and gets points in the bizarre and unintentional humor departments.

Class Of Nuke 'Em High (1986)

Remember when Troma Studios was still cool. Aside from The Toxic Avenger, this one is probably Troma's second biggest hit. Clearly influenced by the cult classic, Class Of 1984 which would come out four years earlier then Nuke 'Em High. This is one of the best from the Troma team.

Directed by Troma president Lloyd Kaufman (Terror Firmer) and Richard Haines who's directorial debut was Splatter University, Class Of Nuke 'Em High is a strange concoction of genre films that fills the screen with fast paced anarchy, adrenaline and pure entertainment. Nuke 'Em High manages to mix the classic Juvenile Delinquent films with monster movies. While the film never takes itself serious. Nuke 'Em comes off somewhere between a spoof / comedy type movie and a geek-boy homage to many films before it. Yet it still has enough originality and style to stand alone as a highly entertaining movie with tons of replay value.

Here's the stupid plot. Tromaville High School is located next to a nuclear power plant run by Troma fatty Pat Ryan who most would remember best as the fat corrupt mayor in The Toxic Avenger who gets disemboweled. Yet again Pat Ryan plays the bad guy and he doesn't care to much that Tromaville High is becoming a radioactive nightmare. "I don't give a wet fart" He says when he learns that the radiation levels are becoming dangerous. Its not long before the honor society at the school become a violent gang of drug pushing maniacs. They call themselves The Cretins. This group of wild punks are so over the top, they make the cast of Grotesque look serious. Its not long before The Cretins start selling radioactive marijuana to the clean-cut students and things start to get really strange. The atomic weed is causing the students to mutate and in one of the most memorable scenes a teenagers erection grows to be about eight feet tall and he also grows giant latex breasts. His girfriend becomes pregnant and vomits up a little monster similar to chest bursting creature in Alien. She flushes the monstrous fetus down the toilet, where it will end up in a vat of toxic waste and grow to become a menacing slimy killing machine.

Its not long before the whole gang of Cretins get expelled from school and they plot what might be the worlds first school shooting. The punks walk into the radioactive school and blow away the teachers with assault rifles. They drive motorcycles thru the school halls, spray paint the walls and destroy the whole building. It all comes to a conclusion when The Cretins meet the giant green monster in a battle to the death. Class Of Nuke 'Em High comes complete with decapitation, extreme genital stomping, mutilated faces, giant monsters, small monsters, radioactive human melt-downs and one of my favorite party scenes in any movie.

If you like movies where high school punks take over the school (Over The Edge) and run amok or you dig giant monster movies, then this one is perfect. Its got the typical Troma tongue in cheek social comentary, comedy, action, sex and violence. Its fun!

The Suckling (1990)

This one plays like a cross between a Troma movie, a Frank Henenlotter film with a touch of John Waters. The Suckling also went under the title Sewage Baby which is arguably the better title.

 A pregnant woman and her boyfriend go to see Big Mama, who runs a local brothel with a secret abortion operation upstairs. Right off the bat you know this is gonna be a classy one. Big Mama rids the pregnant one of her problem and flushes the fetus down the toilet. We watch the fetus go down the drain and land in sewers. When raw sewage pours into the drainage system the fetus begins to mutate and becomes a monster with a thirst for human blood. Its not long before the killer baby is coming up out of the toilets and pulling the heads off of the houses prostitutes in gory detail.

The degenerates within the house become trapped inside when the house is coated with a strange placenta like substance. I guess you can say in a way the house almost becomes a womb and the hookers, pimps, madams and perverts are all stuck inside with the rapidly growing, mutant, monster-baby. One can't help but wonder if there is supposed to be some anti-abortion message going on here but the total depravity and sheer bad taste of the film would suggest otherwise. If there is some kind of moralistic metaphor going on in this one it was certainly executed horribly. On the other hand if you are a fan of exploitation films or just trash films in general this one is a pretty entertaining watch.

 Being a fan of The Suckling I am the first to admit that there is a lot of problems with the film. First off its supposed to be set in Brooklyn. Being a New Yorker myself I can say that this thing was certainly not shot in Brooklyn. The whore house is in the suburbs somewhere and it takes place in a giant mansion. If the Suckling was shot in New York at all I would guess it was upstate somewhere. Anyway aside from this, the acting is pretty horrendous with the exception of one blond hooker who offers a believable performance from time to time. The rest of the cast is extremely wooden and have a sort of shot on video feel to them. However The Suckling was not actually shot on video. They did have the decency to use film. A low grade, bottom of the barrel film yes... Perhaps super 8 but at least its film.

 For me the films worst aspect is how annoying the characters get at times. The entire cast in The Suckling is  constantly bickering and arguing amongst themselves. At times its funny and reminds me of a John Waters film but other times it gets quite irritating. I suppose in a way this works because it makes you despise just about every character in the film and when the get killed off it makes you so much happier. Everyone in this movie is on some kind of a power trip. Its almost as if they took Mr. Cooper from Night Of The Living Dead and molded every single character after him.

On a more positive note, just about everybody dies. The monster in this movie is awesome. It looks like a cross between Pumpkinhead and the monster in Entrails Of A Beautiful Woman. The Suckling doesn't lack in the gore department either. We have decapitations, slit throats, gunshot wounds to the head, electrocution and a great moment where the Sewage Baby retreats back into its mothers womb. Some of the other highlights include a rape scene gone wrong, in which the monster interferes and a hilariously raunchy scene where a prostitute preforms some dildo-fu on a obnoxious client.

As a hole The Suckling is a entertaining piece of filth and its very surprising that this thing came out in 1990. It certainly is better then most of the other stuff coming out of America at this time and its well worth a watch for fans of this kind of smut.