Pet Sematary (1989)

I first saw Pet Sematary as a young kid. I started watching it with my father but it was past my bed time and was forced to go to sleep. The next day I was eager to see the end of the film but my father didn't want to watch it again. He gave me the tape and told me to take it to the basement and finish it by myself. I was never so scared in my life. I ran upstairs terrified and couldn't finish the movie on my own. Pet Sematary has been a favorite of mine ever since.

 The thing that amazes me so much about Pet Sematary is that it seems to have so much going against it but it still managed to be a great horror movie. Not to sound like a sexist pig but female directors usually do not offer up a great product when it comes to horror films but this one is jam packed with creepy images and is a very morbid vision from start to finish. Also we all know that it is rare when a Stephen King adaption is worth a shit. Yet again Pet Sematary goes against the odds and perhaps most importantly this thing comes from the bowels of 1989 which is a horrible time for horror movies in Hollywood. With all these odds stacked against it, I think it is safe to say that Pet Sematary is a phenomenon of its own.

There is a certain level of cheese in this one. You have the character of Pascow who walks around with a shattered skull and is trying to help the family from falling victim to the evil ways of an ancient Indian burial ground and some of the acting is way over the top but even the cheesy moments are not done horribly. The dark, morbid, depressing flow easily washes away most of the embarrassing moments. Fred (Herman Munster) Gwynne shows up in this one as a beer drinking old timer who knows the secrets of The Pet Sematary. He offers up so many great lines in this movie. His screen presence is larger then life and its pretty hard not to love his character. The film also offers up a disturbing scene where a little boy gets hit by a truck, a suicide by hanging, some scalpel-violence, zombie-fu and the incredibly creepy character of Zelda. This character is the reason that at eight years old I ran upstairs and couldn't finish the movie on my own. She still creeps me out to this day. Of course the film also comes complete with a Romones soundtrack and thats cool on its own. We also have what is possibly the worst line in cinematic history "Today is thanksgiving day for cats. But only if they came back from the dead" What does that even mean?

  If I ever get stuck with a kid of my own I am going to be sure to have the little shit watch this one in the basement alone and continue family tradition. Keeping the spirit of Pet Sematary alive.

I recently saw this in the theater on a double bill with the great cult film Night Warning. The audience seemed to love the movies as much as I did and it got its well deserved applause. Pet Sematary is a timeless classic and it gets better with every viewing.

The Devil Bat (1940)

Bela Lugosi plays a pissed-off, bitter doctor who concocts an aftershave that makes his giant pet bats go crazy and attack whoever is wearing it.

The film gets rather repetitive with the same thing happening over and over again. Lucky for us the films running time clocks in just over an hour at 68 minutes. Keeping it short and sweet and to the stupid point seems to be the best option here. If the film ran any longer it would be bound to put people to sleep.

As far as the entertainment goes, Ya have Bela Lugosi in big goofy goggles playing with his potions and bats, you get two dim witted reporters who are trying to figure the whole thing out and a bunch of cheesy scenes in which victims are attacked by the giant fake looking bat. Not only does the bat look fake but it squeals like a hawk before it attacks. This all happens while the bad actors try their hardest to look believable. Lugosi's accent is as thick as ever in this one and most of the time its pretty hard to understand him but this is nothing new to fans of the cult icon.

The Devil Bat is only worth looking at for lovers of truly bad cinema and Lugosi fanatics. All others would probably be better off skipping it all together.

White Heat (1949)

James Cagney plays the most vicious gangster of his career in White Heat. His name is Cody Jarrett and he is one mean dude. Cagney defines the definition of the antihero with this character. He is psychopathic, ruthless and probably insane but you can't help but love Cody Jarrett.

  Cody and his mother are the masterminds behind the criminal organization. The rest of the gang takes orders from the mother and son and they all are quite aware that Cody trusts nobody in this world except his mother. Even his wife is subject to beatings and constant verbal abuse. If you question Cody or his mother you will get a Cagney sized fist across the chops but if you cross them you are a dead man walking. When the gangs latest heist goes wrong and the police are hot on their trail Cody flies to another state and confesses to a crime that he didn't do. Knowing the phoney crime will get him no more then two years in the pen, he will be getting off easy from the real crime that left four dead and a police officer wounded.

While Cody is serving his time a member of the gang makes a move for his wife. The new couple kill Cody's mother and make a deal with Cody's inmates. Cody is a walking target. His cheating wife and backstabbing partner are trying to see that he never makes it out of prison alive because if he does there will be hell to pay. Well Cody does get out and things end pretty badly for everyone.

With a plot like this and a star like Cagney how could this film fail? The thing that I am most surprised at is that White Heat ever got passed the censors board. Cody's revenge is violent and brutal. He fills fellow criminals and police officers full of bullet holes and at times has this sinister smile on his face. The character of Cody seems to be a complete sociopath with a total lack of empathy for anyone and anything that does not involve him or his mother. Something you are not used to seeing in a 1940's film.

Cody's wife played by the beautiful Virginia Mayo is also a character with a lot of depth. She is drop dead gorgeous but she is rude and crude. Shes a bit of a slut and will also do anything to save her own skin. In the film she is actually the one to put the bullet in Mothers back. She spits, drinks and has little to manners. Of course she gets away with a lot of this because of how attractive she is but even her introduction goes to show that White Heat is going to break all of the rules. We first see her sleeping. Her pretty face is made up with tons of lipstick and eyeshadow but she is snoring like a slob. The camera pans down only to show us she is passed out in a robe. To my knowledge no movie has ever depicted such a beautiful woman in this way before White Heat.

   Part of the reason that White Heat brakes so many rules is due to James Cagney himself. He got his way when Warner Brothers Studios signed a contract saying that Cagney gets to chose all of his own roles and play his character the way he wanted to. He also had the right to rewrite the script if he wanted to. So much of the dark nihilistic tone in White Heat comes from Cagney in this one and it proved to be a huge hit. People were so please to see Cagney back on the big screen doing what he does best and that is of course depicting bad-ass gangsters. In one of my favorite scenes Cody kidnaps a enemy, puts him in the trunk and leaves him there over night. In the morning he grabs a chicken leg and his pistol, walks over to the car and fills the trunk full of bullet holes. Then he takes a bite of his chicken and gets on his way. He does all of this without blinking an eye. This just goes to show the kind of man Cody really is. On the other hand he had a complete and total dedication to his mother. Once his mother dies Cody sets out on a self destructive path of violence and bloodshed. It all comes complete with an amazing nihilistic ending that has to be seen.

Check this one out for some fun with wife-beating, police killing and prison fights. It comes complete with explosions, car chases, burn victims, witty dialogue and plenty of Cagney gun violence. "You wouldn't kill me in cold blood would ya Cody? No I'll let ya warm up a bit".

Aunt Peg Goes To Hollywood (1981)

With a title like Aunt Peg Goes To Hollywood one would think that this movie would be filled with Juliet Anderson a.k.a. Aunt Peg scenes... Surprisingly this is not the case at all.

Instead this one plays like the ultimate Aunt Peg fan-boy movie. She doesn't even show up until towards the end of the film but she is on the tip of everyone's tongue throughout the entirety. Aunt Peg plays a producer in the porno industry and everybody and their grandmother wants a piece of the action in her next film. Directors, casting agents, actors and actresses are all trying to make themselves viable for the big film coming up and this is basically a big excuse for a whole lot of sex scenes. The plot here is pretty thin but I was impressed with the speed of these sex scenes. They are banged out (no pun intended) at such a fast pace that the sex scenes never really get too dull or boring. I'm not so sure I have ever seen a porno flick that approached the fuck-scenes in this way.

  There does seem to be an emphasis on oral sex in this one and it almost seems that it was trying to lean a bit more towards female audiences then the average fuck-flick from this time. Little Oral Annie pops up in here and does what she does best in a projection booth in one of the films best scenes. We also get Ron Jeremy to offer up some laughs in his role as a sleazy casting agent. Lisa De Leeuw is also in here with a somewhat boring sex scene. Some of the highlights involve a mean bitch who calls a man a "bastard-asshole" over and over while he performs some oral sex on her, a double penetration scene and some really silly orgasm faces. The dialogue is overly bad and is bound to get a few chuckles and we even have a really bizarre set with robots and aliens. Not sure why the robots made it into the film?

The only other film I have seen from director Paul Vatelli is Girl From S.E.X. which is a total mess of a movie in comparison to Aunt Peg Goes To Hollywood. This one isn't half bad but it is slightly to classy of a storyline for me personally but if ya like fast paced porno from the early 80's with a touch of fantasy and romance, you could do worse.

Friday The 13th (1980)

Friday The 13th is a timeless classic and Jason, the hockey mask wearing psycho has become as iconic as Santa Clause and Michael Jackson. Well it all started with this 1980 ground breaking slasher and it would spawn a whole franchise of sequels and remakes.

The plot is as simple as can be. A bunch of teenagers head to the woods to repair a old campground called Camp Crystal Lake while a unknown psychopath stalks in the shadows and kills them off one by one.

The killers face is not shown until the final reel of the film and I'm sure it was a shock to theater goers in 1980 and sorry to disappoint the young kiddies here {spoiler alert} but there is no hockey mask wearing Jason in this movie. In case you were born on mars or something and have never seen the original, it is a woman who is doing all these brutal killings and the woman is Jason's mother.

Betsy Palmer who just recently passed away did a great job as the deranged mother. We also have a very young Kevin Bacon who has a arrow shoved thru his neck in a pretty gruesome scene. Some of the other memorable moments involve a axe to the achy-breaky skull, a graphic throat slashing and a decapitation. Legendary makeup artist Tom Savini does the effects here and they all look great as usual. Oddly enough modern viewers are more likely to be disturbed by the scene where a real snake is chopped to bits with a big machete. Aside from the blood and mayhem Friday The 13th offers up some great characters. One in particular has a cult following of his own. He is of course crazy Ralph. Ralph kind of runs around scaring the teenagers and warning them that they are going to die. "You're all doomed!".

Recently I caught this in a theater as a double feature with Wes Cravens A Nightmare On Elm Street. Both films looked great on the big screen and there is of course no better film for Friday The 13th play with on a double bill. Both Nightmare and Friday would of course go on to be huge franchises and of course the odd connection is that both directors have previously worked together on the infamous Last House On The Left. Both Nightmare and Friday were not intended to have sequels but unlike the Freddy movies Friday The 13th would spawn good trashy entertainment in the years to follow with plenty of gory death scenes for 80's teenagers to get their rocks off too. A great musical score and lighting which goes from dark to blinding light help set the mood for this groundbreaking horror flick. It offers plenty of jump scares and is a staple in this brand of a horror.

A Nightmare On Elm Street (1984)

How does one good movie spawn so many shitty sequels? While I always did like this movie, I can't help but feel the shame of the rest of the franchise. The first Nightmare was original in story, creepy as hell and still managed to be good 80's gory fun. The whole slew of follow-ups and remakes are just plain comedies disguised as horror films and I can't stand any of them!

I just caught A Nightmare On Elm Street at a local theater on a double bill with the original Friday The 13th. It looked better then ever in its true 35mm format and now I am not so sure why I have passed this one up so many times on previous theatrical screenings.

I won't go into detail about the plot because everyone and their censorship loving mother has seen this movie but it is a strange take on the slasher genre. Freddy Kruger has become a household name as well known as Frankenstein or Dracula but it all started here in 1984 when the child murdering burn-victim first stepped onto the big screen. The idea of a psychopath who kills kids in their dreams has never been done with any kind of elaboration before this movie and anyone to come after it was blatantly ripping it off. The thing that makes this movie work so well is the odd blend between realistic psycho-murders and supernatural elements. In this sense A Nightmare On Elm Street seems perfectly balanced.

 Oddly enough, what I like best about this movie is not the blood and gore. Its not even the character of Freddy. The truth is I find the character to be a bit on the silly side. I actually prefer the creepiness of the dream sequences. The scenes of body-bags being dragged across a empty hallway by an invisible source. Or the scene where the corpse spits up the giant centipede. Was Wes Craven watching some Hong Kong horror movies at the time he filmed this? I know the Chinese love their centipede-horror. Anyway it is these dark elements that make this movie work for me. Sure the scenes of teenage girls in their undies being slashed open and thrown about a room is always a nice touch but there is more going on in here.

I have never been the worlds biggest fan of Wes Craven. In fact I think this was probably the mans last good movie. Of course the success of Nightmare played a part in his obligations to please boring, mainstream movie goers and the glory days of exploitation trash like Last House On The Left were over. However fans of The Hills Have Eyes certainly would notice the similarities in Nightmare. The booby-trap revenge against Freddy brings back good old memories of a family who fights back against cannibalistic psychos. What was with Craven's obsession with booby-traps anyway?

Since everyone in the world has seen this movie... Instead of recommending it I will just say keep an eye out for a screening of this thing. It always pops up in big city theaters. Go and see it on the big screen, the way the gods intended it.

 

Evil Dead Trap (1988)

The first time I saw this movie I was up for well over a day. My over tired and over partied brain wasn't quite ready for what I was about to see. Already being a jaded horror fanatic I didn't think there was too much I haven't seen. Well I guess it was a perfect blend of tiredness and delusion because this movie scared the hell out of me. While I'm not to sure Evil Dead Trap would have the same affect on a well rested and normally functioning person, I wouldn't change my first experience for anything.

Looking at this movie now as a sober and responsible adult with a normal sleeping schedule the film still managed to be creepy and gross but maybe less scary.

Evil Dead Trap is about a late night television host who reaches out to her insomniac viewers and tells them to send in their personal home videos which she will air. Amongst the piles of boring shit she receives a VHS tape that showcases a young woman having her eye punctured by a psychopath with a kitchen knife. Blood and fluid pour from the screaming woman's eye before she is killed in graphic detail. The mailed in snuff film also comes complete with the location of the murder so the curious TV host gathers some friends and heads out to the abandoned building where the killing supposedly took place.

Once inside the creepy old building the characters are killed one by one in stalk and slash fashion. The entire movie is soaked in crimson and each death scene is totally different from the last. The masked killers identity doesn't become known to the very end but there seems to be something super natural about this place. Many of these murders seem impossible for one man to do on his own and it all serves to keep the viewer scratching their head in confusion.

The title of this movie is bound to annoy Sam Raimi fanatics but at least the name isn't completely random. This one plays like a cross between Evil Dead and Suspiria. We get the Evil Dead cinematography crossed with the influence of Dario Argento's stylish lighting. Even the musical score seems like something that would come form an Argento flick. When its all said and done it probably has more in common with Argento then Raimi considering it is almost a Japanese version of a Giallo.

The only problem I have with this movie at all is some of the supernatural elements. It ends up going into a bizarre world where nothing makes much sense. When it is all eventually explained it is to silly and strange to be taken seriously at all.

Still Evil Dead Trap is gory and sick enough to please the average gore-hound. Some of the more memorable scenes include eyeball stabbing, a body swinging from a meat-hook, a woman has multiple poles shoved thru her bloody body, heads are split open by sharp booby traps, a woman is raped and then strangled with a wire and a man is set on fire and crumbles to ash.
This one works for fans of slasher movies, Italian Giallo's, monster movies and supernatural ghost flicks.

Phenomena (1985)

Phenomena is one of the most entertaining Dario Argento movies. It has everything a Argento fan could ask for, Gory murders, nice cinematography, a pretty good plot, a cool soundtrack, Donald Pleasence, a deformed killer child and of course a straight razor wielding chimp on a murderous rampage.

If that's not cool I don't know what is. A young Jennifer Connelly plays the insect loving lead in this unusual Giallo. Not only does she love insects but they love her too. The girl and the insects have a sort of telepathic connection and when she gets mixed up in the middle of a serial killers mystery the bugs come to her rescue and help her solve the crime. Unfortunately this comes at a high price for the young girl. She becomes the killers next target and again calls to her creepy crawly friends for help. What she actually endures is quite disturbing and has to be seen to be believed.

Its hard to decide who the best character is in this one because there are so many good ones but for me it has to be the pissed off killer chimp. Donald Pleasence plays a wheelchair bound cripple who spends most of his time with insects and his pet monkey. When he falls victim to the gloved serial killer the chimp goes bat-shit crazy and seeks revenge with a straight razor. Apparently this primate wasn't only mean on screen because during filming it bit Jennifer Connelly's finger off. It had to be sewn back on. Apparently the chimp was really nasty to her thru the entire filming. Perhaps the chimp was also telepathic and didn't like the fact that Connelly would be doing The Labyrinth with David Bowie in the following year.

 Aside from the vicious chimp, Phenomena sports some violence with scissors, a spear is shoved thru a girls head, faces are shoved thru glass windows, throats are slit and in a very nasty scene a handcuffed cop must smash and mangle his own hand to get out of the cuffs in a brilliant and gory pre Saw scene. There is also plenty of maggot-fu in this one. In one of the films most disturbing scenes a girl falls into a maggot filled pit of rotten corpses. This scene makes me want to puke every time. Phenomena was also released in a heavily cut version known as Creepers. It can be found in many public domain boxsets or in the dollar bin at the local video store. However the cut version is so brutally butchered it isn't worth fifty cents. Seek this one out in its true, gory, uncut form. You wont regret it. Its a must see for anyone who digs gory Italian Giallo's.

She-Devils On Wheels (1968)

Here's another great one from The Godfather Of Gore Herschell Gordon Lewis. This one comes in the form of a Bikersploitation film. Typical of an H.G. Lewis film She-Devils On Wheels is quite different from the average biker film.

A all girl biker gang known as The Man-Eaters are concerned with two things. The first is riding their motorcycles and the second in men. "You treat men like a slab of meat". These chicks have one major rule. No boyfriends! Getting it on with as many men as possible is the key here but if you get hung up on a particular guy, you are dead meat! In one of the most memorable scenes a gang member does just that. They teach the girl a lesson by beating the tar out of lover-boy and force his girlfriend to drag his bloody body from the back of her chopper. As one would expect from Mr. Lewis this is shown in gory detail. The film also offers up a blood caked rape victim and a gory decapitation that comes complete with a head flying thru the air in slow motion.

With a plot like this one would think it would be an excuse for tons of naked female flesh and it would play more like a Sexploitation flick but oddly enough this is not the case. In fact the is absolutely no nudity in the entire film, not one bit of tit. You never know what you're going to get with a Herschell Gordon Lewis film except that its probably going to be crazy and done in total bad taste.

Unlike other biker flicks that pass themselves off as girl-gang movies like Hells Bells, Angels Wild Women and The Hellcats, She-Devils On Wheels actually casts real biker chicks and only one of them was an actor. So as one would expect the acting is totally ridiculous here but that is nothing new for a H.G. Lewis film. Another thing that makes this one so strange is the fact that these supposedly rough and tough street girls never use profanity. Instead they deliver absurd insults that a grandmother might use "why don't you fumigate yourself crap-head". However where these broads lack in the verbal abuse department they make up for it with violence. In very unbelievable gang fights we watch these chicks destroy gangs of men. They beat em with fists, boots and chains and win every time. Even the cops can't stop The Man-Eaters.

The original title for this movie was going to be Man-Eaters On Motorbikes but Lewis wisely changed it to the more exploitative title of She-Devils On Wheels. This thing comes complete with a bad-ass theme song called Get Off The Road which has been covered by multiple bands including The Cramps. If you dig crazy and violent biker films and you can stand the unintentional ridiculousness then this one is perfect.

Little Shop Of Horrors (1986)

26 years after the release of Roger Corman's 1960 cult classic Little Shop Of Horrors comes this musical remake. Taken from the success of the off Broadway show this has to be one of the most bizarre remakes of all time.

While big Hollywood, family orientated productions is usually not my bag I have to admit that due to how weird it all is its a interesting watch. Rick Moranis plays Seymour, the nerdy clerk at a flower shop in "skid row". He comes across a strange plant which he believes is a sort of flytrap. Eventually Seymour will learn that the plant is in fact a blood thirsty meat-eater from outer space. How does he learn this you ask? The plant speaks of course. The foul mouthed jive talking plant even sings and thats just plain wacky. The plant promises Seymour success under one circumstance... Seymour must provide the plant with human victims and its not long before Seymour is chopping up a dentist with an axe and feeding his limbs to the killer plant.

 Steve Martin plays a sadistic dentist who rides a motorcycle and comes complete with a leather jacket and enjoys beating his girlfriend, inhaling medical gas and of course torturing his patients with a variety of dental tools. In my personal favorite moment Bill Murray shows up as a sadomasochist who is looking to be tortured in Steve Martins dental chair. This is the kind of scene that is kinda weird to think of families watching together. While it is all done in typical Bill Murray fun the idea of it itself is a bit sick and twisted. I remember as a kid I could not understand what was going on. I just though Bill Murray was being silly again.

  John Candy also pops up in here for a cameo and offers up a few laughs. I personally couldn't help but think about Planes, Trains And Automobiles which would come out a year later and star Steve Martin and John Candy. They both had supporting roles in Little Shop and of course would be the stars of the John Hughes film.

The budget on this thing was enormous and it shows. Estimated to be filmed for $25,000,000 the special effects are awesome. When putting it in comparison to Roger Corman's 27 thousand it seems all the more bizarre.

If you can stand musicals Little Shop Of Horrors is probably the best of the whole shitty bunch. Its light hearted family entertainment but its possibly weird enough for monster movie fanatics and horror fans. "Feed me Seymour"

Blood Feast 2 : All You Can Eat (2002)

Way back in 1963 the great Herschell Gordon Lewis painted us a blood soaked picture with what he believed to be the first gore film ever made. That movie was of course Blood Feast. H.G. Lewis being a pioneer in exploitation cinema has touched upon just about every tasteless taboo that one could hope to see on the screen. However it was Blood Feast and his gore films that he is mostly remembered for today.

In the 80's a bunch of fan-boys put out a pretty fun sequel to Blood Feast which is widely known as Blood Diner rather then its alternate title Blood Feast 2. Jump forward to 2002 and H.G. Lewis himself makes his come back for the first time in 30 years with his official follow up to the cult classic Blood Feast. It went under the title of Blood Feast 2 : All You Can Eat. Its sad to say considering Lewis is amongst my all time favorite directors but Blood Diner is probably the better of the two sequels but none the less Herschell still delivers the blood and guts in the follow up to what he created all those years ago.

 For those familiar with the original and the cannibalistic villain Fuad Ramses who met his fate at the end of the film, All You Can Eat brings us the great great grandson of the Egyptian cannibal and he goes by no other name then Fuad Ramses III. Fuad III looks kinda like John Travolta in Pulp Fiction with his long slicked back hair and button down shirts but instead of being a bad-ass gun-slinging mofo he is back to his grandfathers old tricks and hacking up young girls for a bloody feast which will be held in the name of Ishtar the goddess. Blood Feast 2 offers up plenty of bloodletting with graphic on screen murders. Make sure to pick up the uncut copy so you don't miss any of this gory mayhem. In the films most nasty moment we see Fuad dig a corkscrew deep into a woman's ear. The blood and carnage pours from the screaming woman's head in gory delight. We also get multiple throat slashings, a tongue is ripped out, eyes are plucked from the sockets, women are disemboweled, brains are pulled from achy-breaky skulls, hands are shoved into meat grinders, fingers are cut off and we are also treated to tons of vomit-fu from the character of detective Meyers who pukes at every crime scene.

   All You Can Eat relies pretty heavily on comedy with typical bad Jim Carrey impersonations and over the top acting. However I can't help but love some of the characters in here. We have a fat detective named Loomis who eats excessively at every crime scene while his partner vomits, we get a bunch of hot chicks who strip nude for the camera and model their favorite underwear during a lingerie party and even John Waters shows up as a pervy child loving priest. If you look closely you can also spot Herschell's partner David F. Friedman.

By no means does this thing stand up to the original film in weirdness of shockingness but its still worth owning for H.G. Lewis fanatics. It has its moments and doesn't shy off on the blood but I still can't help but with Lewis took it a bit more serious instead of making what seems like one big joke and homage to a timeless trash film known as Blood Feast