Cropsey (2009)

Around my parts in Long Island there is a right of passage that all teenagers must go thru to prove they are tough. It involves going to Kings Park abandoned insane asylum and exploring the creepy buildings. Apparently the teens of Staten Island have the same test of manhood. The only difference is that their abandoned loony-bin has a bad-ass urban legend behind it. That is the legend of Cropsey!

 When I learned that the teenagers of Staten Island have a similar favorite pass time I was naturally interested. When I learned of the infamous serial killer "Cropsey" who dwells in the underground tunnels of the abandoned buildings and snatches young kiddies off of the streets to cut them up, I was even more intrigued.

When I hear the name Cropsey the first thing that comes to mind is the gory 80's Slasher film The Burning. Well just like the stalk & slash 80's classic Cropsey is a fictional character. He doesn't exist. However they say all legends have some truth behind it and I guess it has never been more evident then in this case. It just so happens that there was a homeless sadistic killer who lives on the grounds of the psyche buildings and kidnapped young children off of the streets and butchered them. His name is Andre Rand.

This documentary explores the abandoned loony-bins of Staten Island as well as the urban legend of Cropsey. It eventually leads us to Andre Rand and does its best to make sense out of what really went on. Andre Rand was a strange individual who prayed on the mentally retarded. Having an odd connection with the mentally disabled from his younger years when he worked as an orderly in the nut-house, he felt a strange compulsion to kill these children.

The documentary itself is a bit of a mess and like many of the murder victims there is never really any closure. At times it gets confusing and a bit hard to follow. The information is hard to process as the narrator jumps back and forth in year. I wouldn't necessarily say Cropsey is a bad movie but it certainly isn't very good either. The subject matter is interesting enough but the clumsy approach and anticlimactic ending left a bad taste in my mouth.

The film makers behind this thing would go on to do a much better documentary in 2014 called Killer Legends which looks at some of the world most grotesque urban legends and searches for the true events that may have inspired them. I would say skip Cropsey and take a look at the later film for a much more coherent and better made doc.

 

Don't Open Till Christmas (1984)

With the success of the infamous American slasher film Silent Night Deadly Night the British would release their very own Christmas slasher just months later.

Instead of a madman running around in Santa outfit slashing up teenage boys and girls like in the American classic, This one showcases a psycho killing anyone who wears a Santa outfit. Ah very unique right? I guess I can relate to this killer to a certain degree considering we both hate Christmas and just about everything it stands like. However unlike this mask wearing nut-bag I don't stalk the streets looking to put a blade into the guts of Santa Clause. I will hand it to whoever thought up some of these murder sequences. Each one is different from the last and it does make for an interesting slasher movie. In the most memorable scene the killer castrates a man in a Santa costume while he takes a piss at the urinal. The blood shoots into the pisser and the fat jolly bastard bleeds to death right there in a dirty public bathroom. Hows that for Christmas cheer?

 Another Santa has his brains blown out the back of his head while another has a spear shoved thru his face. We have meat-cleavers to the achy-breaky skull, eyes are gouged out, another is burned alive in his car, plenty of stabbings and of course some prevy Sanat action.

I have never seen a good copy of this movie. Not even in the VHS days. It can usually be found on dollar-disc multi-packs but the prints are usually very dark and washed out, not mention they are probably cut. The fact that the film quality is so bad and I still enjoy this movie says something to me. Perhaps it is worth it to upgrade to the Mondo Macabro DVD for optimum Santa killing pleasure.

This one comes complete with some Brit-Tit and an incredibly sleazy scene that takes place in a sex-booth. Where a stripper watches the killer rip into yet another Santa Clause as the blood splats across the plate glass. Typical of Slasher films from this era, they try to hold back on the killers identity till the very end but it is of course a sort of generic and predictable type ending.

Still Don't Open Till Christmas is good slasher-fun with enough sleaze and gore to keep fans of the genre happy. I would like to see this on a double bill with Silent Night Deadly Night. Thats the Christmas spirit.

Bettie Page Reveals All (2012)

Okay all you perverts & Bettie lovers, here's the one we've all been waiting for. This is possibly the best Bettie Page movie to date and as the title says Bettie Page does reveal it all.

 Over the years I have collected quite a bit of Bettie Page movies, stag films and documentaries including the infamous Irving Klaw bondage stags and the slightly less raunchy Bunny Yeager stuff but this one offers up the all the grit and dirt and of course plenty of NAKED BETTIE PAGE! Yowza! In this documentary we have an in depth interview with the queen of bondage. She tells her insane life of sexual abuse, partying, modeling and even her decent into madness, where she spent nearly ten years in a mental institution for repeatedly stabbing her landlord. In one of the most memorable moments Bettie recalls an abduction in New York City where six men held her captive and forced her to preform oral sex on each and every one of them. This is pretty intense stuff. I guess its almost reasonable that she went bat-shit crazy and took a knife to someone. She was also molested from childhood by her pedophile father who apparently would have intercourse with chickens and other farm animals.

   While all these filthy stories from the past is interesting and all the thing that makes this one so special, or at least for all us perverts is the previously unseen nudie pictures of Bettie. According to the documentary Bettie Page hated two things. That was cigarettes and alcohol. Only once in her life has she been drunk and she was taken advantage of to the max. When some sleazy cameramen gave Bettie a bit too much booze they convinced her to take the only pictures of her career that she would regret. Bettie Page drunkenly lay spread-eagle and bares it all. If for no other reason this one is worth owning for the stills of Bettie Page and her hairy beaver. Aside from these gloriously trashy pictures Bettie Page Reveals All also sports a huge amount of naked cheese-cake photos and films of the worlds favorite pin-up model.

This is a must see for anyone who loves Bettie! If you don't love Bettie you might be another weirdo who digs farm animals or something. See this... You wont regret it!

The Freakmaker (1974)

Originally this one was supposed to be called The Freakmaker which is the more suiting title but for some odd reason the producers felt it would work better as The Mutations. Not quite sure I agree with them. At any rate this one takes Tod Browning's Freaks and gives it the 70's treatment with violence and nudity amped up.

Freakmaker is a strange little exploitation flick. Its not necessarily strange just because of its odd subject matter or the fact that we will ogle human deformities and killer plants. Its odd because it was all done so well. We have beautiful lighting, very nice cinematography, excellent direction and big actors like Donald Pleasence. Granted Pleasence may not have been a super star at the time or anything but it is still strange to see such a professional approach at a film that most would probably consider a piece of trash. Due to its production value Freakmaker plays a bit like an art film masked as a exploitation movie. Leave it to the British!

Donald Pleasence plays a mad scientist who has discovered some new Mutations is carnivorous plants. He bribes the deformed ringleader of the local freak-show to abduct beautiful young girls as subjects in his new experiments. The demented scientist is turning the victims into a sort of half human half plant but as I mentioned these plants eat meat. Its not long before the giant plant monsters are roaming about and munching on the flesh of bums and street trash. This one comes complete with plenty of midgets including Michael Dunn who I remember best as the necrophiliac dwarf in Dr. Frankensteins Castle Of Freaks. We also have a deformed dwarf who calls himself the human pretzel. Lets just say his appendages move in all the wrong places. We have the alligator woman, a monkey woman, the bearded lady and even the human skeleton which is nothing more then an anorexic woman. Aside from the freaks there are also quite a few naked ladies on display in this one which is always nice and there is a touch of the red stuff for all the gore-hounds out there. However the real highlight of this movie is Popeye! Popeye is famous for his ability to pop his own eyes out of his skull. Yuck!

Certain scenes are directly lifted from Browning's Freaks and others seem to be completely unique. There are also elements of Eyes Without A Face (1960) to be found within and perhaps a touch of Day Of The Triffids.

While I wouldn't exactly say that The Freakmaker is a great example of cinema, it certainly is strange enough for the average exploitation fan. Check this one out for fun with drooling freaks, mad scientists and knife wielding dwarfs.

The Devils Daughter (1939)

The Devil's Daughter is one of the worst movies I have seen in a very long time. Not exactly sure who this movie was marketed towards. This one sports a predominantly black cast and follows some jive talkin hep-cat from Harlem who is roaming around the plantation fields of Jamaica. He comes across a snooty upper class couple who get themselves into some trouble with the voodoo tribes.

The poster brags that it has an "All-Star colored cast" but I'm not so sure if any of these actors were stars. I can't really see this thing appealing to black audiences even in the 30's because it all comes off slightly racist. We have what seems like endless chit-chat about black magic and every couple of minutes we are tortured with another shitty song & dance number. Bongo drums play thru the majority of the film and after a while you just want to plug your ears but that wouldn't work very well either because the dialogue is so low and muffled with bad Jamaican accents.

The whole thing is a giant mess and it turns out to be more of a stamina test then anything else. Stay far away from this one.

  

Return Of The Living Dead (1985)

Return Of The Living Dead has become one of the largest cult films in the zombie film genre. The reason is probably because it appeals to multiple groups of people. Due to its punk rock soundtrack and bleak message which goes against structure, police and of course the military, Return Of The Living Dead has a large following of punk rockers but it also appeals to those who prefer silly 80's mayhem in their horror films and of course the zombie fanatics hold this one close to their hearts as well.

Being a young horror obsessed teenage punk rocker myself at one time I have seen this movie countless times on video but last night I saw it for the first time on the big screen with an audience. The seats were jam packed with punks and horror-freaks who knew just about every line to the movie. "What do you think this is a fucking costume? Its a way of life!" It played on a double bill with Re-Animator which came out the same year and is equally fun when it comes to 80's zombie cult flicks.

Dan O'Bannon's follow up to Night Of The Living Dead involves a bunch of young punk rockers who barricade themselves inside a mortuary while fighting off droves of brain-eating zombies. Yep, in this one the zombies are very picky eaters and are not content on eating human flesh. It is strictly a human brains diet and in one mind-numbing scene a naked female zombie who is missing the bottom half of her body explains why they eat brains. Return Of The Living Dead is more of a comedy then anything you can take seriously and they are not the slow staggering George A. Romero type of zombies. So if zombies that run fast and speak is against your zombie religion or something, you should probably stay away from this one all together. However if you want to see scream queen Linnea Quigley get naked and dance on a tombstone before having her brains munched on by a bunch of rotten zombies, then this one might be for you.

This fast paced zombie-fest sports a soundtrack with The Cramps, 45 Grave and many more. We have midget zombies, a pick axe to the brain, multiple decapitations, dismemberment, brain munching, split dogs, dead cops and some naked breasts. Its an all around good time. If you like your zombie films to be more serious then stay away from this one and stick with Romero's Dawn Of The Dead and Day Of The Dead.

From One Second To The Next (2013)

In this short film Werner Herzog takes the boring subject and turns it into a heart wrenching look at reality. This 34 minute documentary looks at people who's lives are forever destroyed due to cellphone texting while driving. I personally can't think of a subject that is more lame. However when Herzog gets behind something it can get a tear from the most jaded of viewers. As we all know the cellphone-youth or internet-babies as I like to call them can not wipe their own ass without the companionship of their cellular device. This one shows them for the scum they truly are. Well okay maybe that wasn't Herzog's exact message but thats how I see it.

Only worth looking at for Herzog completists. Warning this one plays like an afternoon television  tearjerker for bleeding-heart housewives.

The Slave (1962)

The Slave is a strange little sexploitation film from French director Max Pecas who is known for trashy titles such as A Sweet Taste Of Honey and House Of 1000 Pleasures. This one is no different when it comes to bare breasted ladies and raunchy characters but the plot is a real weird one.

A wealthy woman is planning on spending the next ten days with her gigolo boyfriend in her suburban home while her husband is away on business. Her plans a disrupted when her half brother shows up with his mistress. It turns out her half brother has just committed a robbery and needs to hide out in his sisters home. The only problem is big brother is a bit of a pervert and gets a bit rapey with his sister. Apparently he has been blackmailing his sister for the past nine years with some pornographic pictures he has of her, so calling the police is out of the question and the whole house becomes his slave and he does what he wants to all of them. While all this is going on some skin-headed mobster is plotting a revenge against the domineering criminal.

It all comes complete with a very strange twist ending with plenty of perversion and over the top violence. This has to be one of the weirdest sexploitation films ever made. While it isn't necessarily a very good movie it is how bizarre some of the scenes are that makes it a relatively interesting watch. In one of the weirdest moments a woman strips off her clothes and furiously humps a tree while she watches a man in a straightjacket being violently beaten. How cool is that?

This one plays like a cross between a crime film and a roughie with a touch of the artsy-fartsy stuff. Its just weird!

Into The Abyss (2011)

Werner Herzog takes a look at Michael Perry on Death Row in Texas. It also looks at Perry's accomplices and the victims families. In true Herzog fashion this downbeat documentary follows the broken lives of the criminals and the victims with beautiful camera work and gut wrenching interviews.

 Michael Perry is set to die in eight days for the triple murder of an innocent family. In his last days Perry copes with the fact that he will most likely be executed. While Herzog and most others in the film make it clear that they are not in favor of capitol punishment, we do hear from the victims family members who feel justice is being served. Into The Abyss shows us how capital punishment affects everyone involved from the victims to the priest and even the executioners.

Aside from the heavy capital punishment theme that runs through most of the movie, we get the whole back story on the crimes committed and even the actual crime scene videos are displayed for us. After Perry and his friends executed a family for nothing more then a car that they wanted to steal, they got into a bloody shootout with Texas police. The apprehension scene was something out of a Bonnie & Clyde movie. Cars and buildings filled with bullet holes, a police officer run over by a car and of course the criminals took many bullets themselves. Its just amazing they survived the shootout.

This one is a good watch for anyone who is into true crime and can stand the dark side of human nature. Its also got that Herzogian artsy flow to it but I warn you, Into The Abyss is a sad movie and it packs an emotional punch. Bring your tissues.

Cinemania (2002)

This interesting documentary follows the lives of New York City's cine-maniacs. With a compulsion to see as many films as possible on the big screen every day, it is hard to find time for work, family, friends and even cleaning ones house.

Some of the people in the film see up to six movies a day in the theater. Always on the run to the next film with no time to even use the bathroom its amazing to see how cinema has affected these people into a neurotic state of living. Everyone in the film is unemployed and living off of disability or some form of service, some have been arrested for their neurotic behavior for violence against annoying theater goers and one man in particular even chooses a diet that constipates him. I mean who wants to leave a movie to take a dump anyway? One woman has gone to see a movie every day for over 50 years and saved every stub for every movie she has been too. She was banned from one particular theater for strangling a employee who ripped her stub in half. While most of the people in this film are into movies that I couldn't give a shit about their lives are interesting none the less. This is with the exception of my favorite guy Harvey. Harvey will go and see anything. He digs 50's monster movies and trashy films from the 70's. I would like to go to a movie with him and watch something. He also knows the runtime to every film he has ever seen and thats just nutty.

The thing I found most interesting about these people is that almost all of them are against seeing a movie in any other format then film. They do not watch VHS or DVD. Its strictly film screenings. While I do understand this I find it amazing that they don't feel the need to own copies of their favorite movies and I can't help but wonder what they are doing now considering almost all theaters have transferred over to digital. I feel their pain.

 

Night Warning (1982)

This movie has grown a unique cult following in my home town of shit-hole Long Island. Every year this film plays and the audience grows. It last played on a double bill with Pet Sematary which makes for a pretty strange double feature but then again Night Warning is a pretty strange movie. This is the third time I have seen this movie with a audience so I guess you can say I am a member of this Long Island cult following.

Susan Tyrrell (Forbidden Zone) plays Aunt Cheryl. This aging weirdo has quite a few problems. Her strange obsession with her teenage nephew is turning dangerous and its not long before she is drugging the teenage jock, smashing his girlfriends achy-breaky skull in with a meat tenderizer, plunging kitchen knives into the homosexual television repair man, slashing her elderly neighbors guts open with a machete and chopping police officers hands off. In other words Aunt Cheryl is bat-shit crazy and the question is how long has she been a psycho. By the end of the film all of the answers are laid out for us but it is the absurdity of the movie its self that brings people back to this movie over and over again.

 Night Warning also went under the title of Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker which is almost as odd as the film itself. While it is certainly high in entertainment there seems to be a few social messages thrown into the mix. I even heard this film played a gay & lesbian festival due to its heavy homophobic subtext that runs throughout the films entirety.

Bo Svenson from the Walking Tall movies plays detective Carlson, a gay hating fascist who is blinded by his hate. Instead of trying to solve the murders that have been taking place he spends most of his time fag-bashing and bullying the local gay men. Seeing this movie with an audience in 2015 is pretty amusing considering how up tight people are with any kind of bigotry. The anti-gay slurs fly and the bodies keep dropping.

Aside from the homosexual subtext Night Warning is full of surprises. While it starts off like a weird cross between a thriller and a drama it eventually shifts gears into what seems more like a slasher movie. Its sleazy, gritty and violent. Its safe to say that the biggest fan base of this movie is probably anyone who really digs 70's exploitation movies. Anyone who likes shocking titles with taboo subjects will probably enjoy this movie. Homosexuality, incest and of course murder. Its all here right in your face. Check it out for a good time with a knife wielding Susan Tyrrell.

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".