The Brainiac (1962)

(This is a review I did for a roundtable over at Strictly Splatter.com, a bunch of cool guys who do the same thing I do.  Check 'em out!)

A lot of people take Mexico for granted.

Sure, just take a hop, skip and a jump across the Southern-most border of California or Texas and you're there.  But how much do we big, overfed Anglos know about our neighbor to the South?

If your knowledge of Mexican culture is limited to the local Taco Bell, you may be surprised to discover that Mexico is actually rich in history and art; the Porfirian Era fostered a surge in economic progress and peace, which in turn led to the development of a cultural identity based on the melting pot of all races best described as the mestizaje.  This led to the creation of well-received literature by such renowned writers as Alfonso Reyes and Nobel Laureate Octavio Paz, post-revolutionary visual arts from such creative souls as Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, and the creation of such indigenous music as Mariachi, Banda, Norteño, Ranchera and Corridos.

Not to mention mas movies than you can shake a quesadilla at.

It's the same as every other country in the world, though; Just like Italy, Japan, Russia, Australia and New Zealand, Mexico has a lot of movies under its collective sombrero that many of you have never heard of, I'll wager.  Dramas, romances, comedies, documentaries, the whole nueve yards.  As a matter of fact, there would be a lot more movies you've never heard of before if not for the works of one K. Gordon Murray.

Now here was an enterprising man: a producer from the States, Murray took it upon himself to find foreign movies to bring to our sunny shores and, with judicious dubbing and a vigorous marketing campaign, reintroduce them to the local theater in downtown Des Moines, Iowa for a whole new passel of thrill-seekers.

Fans of TV's "Mystery Science Theater 3000" (like me) will recognize Murray as the man who brought us Santa Claus, the story of the Jolly Old Elf who, from his Heaven-bound castle, fought the forces of Satan and his minions to bring Christmas to two children in Mexico.  Oh, and Merlin the Magician gets involved, too.

There's also the bright, bouncy musical Little Red Riding Hood Meets The Monsters, where everyone's favorite red-clad girl with a basket of goodies is beset by ogres and witches and demons, but fights them off with ingenuity and a biped skunk.  And there's songs, too.  Lots of 'em.  Maybe too many but it's all for kids so it's okay....

That's just two examples but you see what I'm getting at: Murray sought out not only unusual stories but also ones in which you didn't necessarily have to know the language or hold a doctorate in foreign relations to understand: just follow the bouncing visuals and you'd be good to go.

But what about horror movies, you may ask?

What about 'em, indeed?  Murray gotcha covered there, too, with a little number that was indeed under the right classification for "Horror" but also supplied us with sexy sexy women, shape-shifting monsters, brain cups, comedy relief cops, and The Spanish Inquisition!

(...weren't expecting that last one, were you?)

The Brainiac is only one title for this beauty, as you may already have guessed since most any foreign movie has at least one, maybe two, extra titles to toss around.  This one's also called Baron Of Terror (or El Baron Del Terror), which is actually a more apt title for this, since it has a Baron in it, and he is the focus of the movie's Terror...and there really doesn't seem to be any brainiacs of any type in it.

However, The Brainiac works for reasons you're about to discover, even if they are about the most far-fetched reasons you could grasp for.

Here's the plot del muerte: In 1661 Mexico, the Baron Vitelius d'Estera (Abel Salazar) is sentenced to be burned alive by the Holy Inquisition of Mexico for witchcraft, necromancy, getting the hootchie-cootchie on with many poor innocent hot little mamas, double parking and other crimes. As he dies, the Baron swears vengeance against the descendants of the Inquisitors...which evil barons were always doing back in the 1600s.  This kinda makes it safe for this evil barons' tormentors, I guess, since their descendants - which they won't even have to answer to - will do all of the suffering for them....

Sorry, was I nit-picking a script about witchcraft-practicing barons being burnt at the stake?  Let's continue.

Cut to 300 years later (that's 1961, if you don't want to do the math), as a comet that was passing overhead on the night of the Baron's execution returns to earth, bringing with it the Baron (Salazar again) who has this neat by-product of being able to hypnotize people (especially female people) into doing whatever his twisted, evil little heart desires...oh yeah, and every so often he morphs into a horrible, pulsing-headed, brain-eating monster that terrorizes the Inquisitor's descendants.

All that stands in his way are the efforts of two stalwart meteorologists researching the meteor...one of whom happens to be the great-great something-or other of one of the Inquisitors.  Oops.  And a lady, to boot.  Double oops.

This is a pretty intricate plot for any horror flick, let alone a K. Gordon Murray run-for-the-border dub job like this.  But The Brainiac has a lot more going for it than you average scary flick with brain-sucking demons has.  For one thing, we have a man (the Baron) who makes a deal with Satan for immortality, has power over women, can paralyze men with a look, eats brains out of what looks like The Holy Grail (no wonder Indiana Jones wanted it), and can turn into a big-headed, hairy demon thing with hands borrowed from Vincent Price's version of The Fly and a long forked tongue with which he can drain the gray matter out from the backs of his many victims' heads.  Plus he has to get revenge on all of those descendants of the guys who had him killed 300 years ago.  That's a pretty heavy workload for any villain, let alone an English-dubbed Mexican playing a 300+ year-old Spaniard.

Never mind the fact that he kinda looks like Sheldon Leonard, and I half-expected him to start throwing pixies out the door or through the window.

He also has a nice modern-day castle at his disposal, complete with an unexplained butler (Francisco Reiguera).  I hate unexplained butlers, especially when they don't do anything to help their master get brains or fight off gatecrashers.  Damned useless unexplained butlers.  What good is it to be a reincarnated demon if you can't get good help?

Director Chano Urueta does a good job of giving us what looks to be a fairly modernized Mexico, what with gentlemen walking around in nice gray suits and tuxedos, ladies in nice clean party dresses that Donna Reed would be proud to wear, and plenty of shiny late 50s-early 60s vehicles tooling about.  The decor is Old World elegant when it has to be and Art Deco when it should be, too.  And every scene has the look of a polished work of horror straight outta Hollywood, baby.  If not for the dubbing, you'd swear this were an art house picture or something up for an Oscar for Best Foreign Picture Featuring A Brain-Sucking Monster.

And the story, scripted by Federico Curiel, Adolfo López Portillo and an uncredited Antonio Orellana (why was Antonio uncredited?  who knows; maybe he was negra-listed) moves at a quick clip with plenty of dramatic pauses and sinister looks from our man Vitelius.  In fact, even dubbed/rewritten as it is by we Amerikanners, the story matches the visuals quite well, methinks.  Not to mention the fact that it's hard enough to make a story so supremely silly as this one a plausible affair.

I guess what can be said of the acting is that, even with dubbed voices, the effect of the actors' physical presence comes through.  Salazar's leers and sneers come through 100%, even though he looks incredibly uncomfortable eating what indeed looks like real brains (calf brains, maybe) from that chalice of his.  Ah, the sacrifices of acting.

(One thing, though: WHY is the Baron eating brains to begin with?  Does it give him power?  Does it keep him alive?  Was it part of the contract between him and Satan?  Did he not have a "no-brains-eating" clause in his deal for this film?  My guess: if you're gonna call your movie The Brainiac, you might as well show your villain doing something like this or being really, really smart.  I'll bet he was praying for a scene where he explained quadratic equations instead of chowing down on brains al dente.  Again, my guess.)

Our lead heroes/romantic interests/professors/star-gazers Reinaldo (Rubén Rojo) and Victoria (Rosa María Gallardo) do their noble best to fight for truth, justice and the Mexican way and come across just a hair shy of being the Mexican answers to Pat Boone and Anita Bryant, in terms of wholesomeness and acting. 

Then we have the police detectives of this piece; one is the Chief (David Silva) who is gruff and no-nonsense, and the other is Detective Benny (Federico Curiel) who is fluff and all-nonsense.  They provide exposition, unnecessary cut-aways and comedy relief when needed, which by the script's decision, is far too often.  Seriously, between the Chief's sour observations and Benny's clomping about and striving for that unattainable Huntz Hall vibe, this is probably as close as Mexican cinema ever got to Abbott and Costello Meet The Brainiac.  Yarsh.

They do, however, provide the most hilarious end to a movie like this; an ending that you, the uninitiated, could never ever expect.  Not in a thousand years.  It's appreciated, believe me, because without it, this thing would have probably lasted far longer than its 77 minutos.  I won't spoiler it for you in this review - since it is seriously something that must be seen to be believed - but I will say that if you watch The Brainiac with a crowd, there will be laughter and cheers to spare.  Trust me on this.

In the end, The Brainiac is a more-than-enjoyable film.  I'd go so far as to proclaim it a necessity for anyone who wants to know what foreign films are all about.

Forget La Dolce Vita.  Forget Amelie.  Forget The Tin Drum.  The Brainiac is where it's at - goblets of brains and all.  You think you're gonna find meteors and demons in L'Avventura?  You gonna get your fix for brain-sucking necromancers in Y Tu Mama Tambien?  Will you discover all your needs for hypnotized professors crawling into fiery kilns by watching The Burmese Harp?  Well, maybe...but The Brainiac does it all far more succinctly for you.

On a final note, I notice that in director Chano Urueta's filmography, he has had a long career which included directing such films as The Witch, The Revived Monster, The Seductor, Tigers of the Ring, Machine Gun Man and no less than three Blue Demon masked wrestler movies. 

It's good to see that in his work Urueta remained, if nothing else, admirably consistent. 

And to that I say, Eso hará, Chano; eso hará.

I'm Thankful For Scary Short Movies...

But what can I say; I like movies.

And I think you'll like these too: consider them my Thanksgiving gift to you. You're welcome.

(just make sure and watch them in a dark room and the volume up loud. Trust me. Oh, and keep a pillow handy. Okay...)

The first one is Bedfellows; it is directed by Drew Daywal and shows what can happen when you get a phone call in the middle of the night.





The next one is longer but worth the effort to watch it. It's called Daughter and is directed by Eduardo Rodriguez. This one is a very good example of what can be done in a few minutes' time.

DAUGHTER from Eduardo Rodriguez on Vimeo.

Okay, that's good. You can lose the pillow and turn the lights back on now. Glad I could be there for ya.

Dope out.

- TGWD

What Really Scares Me (An Essay)

Okay, since Halloween is a scant couple of days away, and I've really done nothing that could be construed as a truly "Halloween-based" post, or even anything with a scary basis, I felt that I owed it to you, my faithful few, to give a little essay on what little stupid, nonsensical things really and truly scare me, TheGreatWhiteDope.

I guess this qualifies as an essay, even if it's just another one of my stupid little lists but, let's face it: this is a list that will probably come back to haunt me - even if I did bring it upon myself. After all, content is content.

Now, let's begin.

Hi. My name is TheGreatWhiteDope. I watch bad movies. Some of them are scary. They don't faze me all that much, though. Why? Because they're just little forms of entertainment that pass the time in an otherwise uneventful life. Everyone needs a good jolt just t prove they're alive, right? Just ask Frankenstein's Monster.

There are other kinds of scares, though. Ones that make you wake up in cold sweats in the middle of the night. Ones that make your skin crawl. Ones that make the hair on various parts of your body twinge and shudder. Ones that just outright give you the creeps. I have them, just like anyone else does. And so I give you, dear reader:

What Really Scares Me.

THE KIDS FROM THE BROOD

David Cronenberg made some really creepy movies back in the day.

Anyone who ever saw Scanners, Videodrome or Dead Ringers knows this is a fact.

But when he gave us poor witless jerks The Brood back in 1979, it featured some creepy little kids in colorful jumpers and dead eyes that kill people.

Just look at these little monsters.

Imagine these things toddling slowly towards you or grabbing at you through a splintered hole in a door.

Creeps. Me. Out.

And if you have a soul of any kind...

Then this ad will creep you out, too.

THE TELEVISION AD FOR IT'S ALIVE

I know; it was really just more or less a spoof of monster movies, only this time with an overly-exaggerated killer baby this time out.

It's really just a riot, honestly.

HOWEVER, the ad campaign for this thing absolutely freaked me out when it came on TV back in 1974 when I was young, impressionable, and a wuss.

Yes, I realize that it's innocuous enough but...but...

I mean, look at this thing!!! This is the ad they played on prime time television; a time when they knew families would be gathered around their televisions watching the latest episodes of "Happy Days" and "Laverne and Shirley" and "Bridget Loves Bernie" and stuff!

Who in the hell was thinking of the children, I ask you!

Look at this freaking ad and tell me what you'd think if you were a very small, still-impressionable child and was expecting NOT to be scared out of 12 years of your life!

LOOK! AT! IT!!!

Yeah, right; tell me that wouldn't have given you nightmares when you were nine years old. No wonder I'm so paranoid of bassinets.

THE SCREEN GEMS END CREDIT

Any long-time addicts of the blog already have read about this one. I've had a hate/hate relationship with certain TV end credits, but none moreso than the 'S' From Hell.

This literally made me run out of the room at top speed after any given episode of "I Dream of Jeannie", which was stupid; any reason to watch Barbara Eden in her skimpy little costume, y'know?

But then this horrid orange "S" slithered at me through a sea of vile yellow, its shrill tinny horns blaring at me.

This is playing on an endless loop on every TV in Hell.

Then there are two last things I will talk about at length that absolutely are the most horrifying things I have ever seen in my life and will haunt me till my dying day, I just know it.

BUT...this is meant as a strengthening exercise, so I will talk about them regardless.

And they are both tied for #1 in the "What Really Scares Me" sweepstakes.

And they are...

ALFRED E. NEWMAN and FATS FROM MAGIC (1978)

...and no, I refuse to post any pictures of them. They freak me out to this day that much. Plus, I want to be able to sleep tonight. Google them yourself and may God have mercy on your tortured soul soon afterwards. I will explain my fear of them, at any rate.

Alfred E. Newman you'll recognize as the namesake of the representative of Mad Magazine, naturally. But ever since I saw him on the covers of those same-said magazines, I was seriously freaked out at his dead eyes, constant missing-tooth smile and other-worldly shock of red hair. Those eyes, they always followed me, no matter how far I walked away from that damned magazine.

There he was...leering at me like a demented leprechaun, he haunted my dreams growing up until I would literally shake with fright whenever I walked by the magazine rack at Foodland. I refuse to even look at any issue of Mad Magazine to this day because I can't stand Alfred E. Newman's face. It's just really freaky, real or not.

I haven't even watched all of Up the Academy because I accidentally caught a glimpse of it on TV one night and saw...HIM. In human form. That same look on his face...his eyes stabbing through me.

I know I'm an idiot, but...jeez.

And as far as Fats goes...I'm well-aware that Magic is more of a psychological thriller than a "killer-puppet -on-the-loose" movie. Not that you or anyone else would have been able to tell from the basis of the TV ad that premiered on prime time TV back in 1978. It freaked everyone, myself included, out of their wits so badly that angry calls and parents with freaked-out little kids who probably shouldn't have been up watching TV during prime time forced the producers to pull it almost immediately.

Not that it did any good to promote the movie, since it did so badly. Anthony Hopkins would have to wait a few years to be cast as a cannibalistic genius before he could fittingly scare people out of their wits without angry phone calls to the network playing into the equation.

After all, this Fats dummy, though a dummy he was, was the only character in this ad. But for 30 seconds the camera just trained on him as he did his little rhyming, creepy little ditty...closing in slowly as he spoke, wide eyes staring dead into your slowly cringing soul...until, near the end, his eyes fluttered and he finished. The title of the movie was superimposed over his face as the ad finished, trained tight on his horrific, wooden, dead eyes.

HOLY %$!#!!! The hair on the back of my neck stood on end just remembering it!!

Myself, I refused to go to sleep all night after seeing that, would not watch TV at all for a couple of weeks and I'm pretty sure that it kept me from watching a re-release of Star Wars at my local theater out of the fear that I would see that same damned ad for Magic before the movie.

Still, for kids of the late 1970s, Fats will be a part of their scarred, catatonic psyche.

And when you look them up, you may even notice a resemblance between Alfred and Fats. I'd post a picture of the two for comparison, but I don't want to end up in a strait jacket out of fear for my own life.

And so there you have it: What Really Scares Me.

I hope you're satisfied with me sharing my inner-most fears; now I'm going to be dreaming about Alfred E. Newman popping out of a baby bassinet holding a ventriloquist doll: a Screen Gems production.

Pleasant dreams.

Dope out.

- TGWD

Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977)

1977 was a pretty big year for motion pictures in general. After all, this was the year Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind came out. It was also the year we saw the release of such big "event" films as Saturday Night Fever, Annie Hall and Smokey and the Bandit. We're talking big stuff here.

But along with such name projects also came out sequels to some huge showpieces from past years as well. Airport '77, The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training, The Happy Hooker Goes to Washington, Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo, Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger, The Spy Who Loved Me and Walking Tall: The Final Chapter all jockeyed for position to make the most money for their respective franchises. Some made their makers proud, some didn't, but there they were to round out the year, film-wise.

Then there was the legacy of 1973's The Exorcist. A blockbuster success as directed by William Friedkin from a novel both written and adapted by William Peter Blatty and starring such luminaries as Max Von Sydow, Ellen Burstyn, Lee J. Cobb and Jason Miller, and debuted the formidable talent of a young Linda Blair. It won awards, made money and scared every viewer out of their wits, whether they were devoutly Catholic or not.

In spite of the finality of the film and the neat containment of the story itself, since it DID make money, the suits at Warner Bros. insisted a sequel be made, no matter what. And so, four years down the road, so posed the question on the poster for Exorcist II: The Heretic - what does Regan (Blair) remember about the traumatic events that overtook her life?

And for as intriguing a premise as that is, and for as formidable a task as it would be to match the intensity and frights posed by Friedkin and company before, this is one sequel that certainly had its work cut out for it. Not like Airport '77 had to find all that many different ways to crash a plane, or the Bad News Bears had to win a ball game in a unique manner, or the Happy Hooker had to find a new way to.... Uh....

Let's get to the plot.

Dr. Gene Tuskin (Louise Fletcher) works with troubled children, among their number Regan MacNeil (Blair), who suffers from bad dreams and memories she represses from four years prior. Dr. Tuskin discovers that the demon she was possessed by, named Pazuzu, still lurks within her, desperate to emerge again and wreak havoc.

Meanwhile, Father Philip Lamont (Richard Burton) is ordered by his cardinal (Paul Henreid) to investigate the death of Father Merrin (Von Sydow), who died while performing the exorcism on Regan. Father Lamont undertakes his task reluctantly. His investigation takes him to Africa where he locates a doctor named Kokumo (James Earl Jones), a past exorcism subject of Father Merrin's, who tells Father Lamont something about locusts that will bring everyone's destiny together.

Okay, right now the first thing you'll notice is the cast. Lots of big names, good actors and two callbacks from the original - one in particular that will raise more than a couple of eyebrows. Von Sydow; didn't he die in the first movie? That's right, he did...but he plays a ghostly vision here in a scene where...well, I'll get to that soon.

Seems a couple of things are different here. Since Friedkin was not available for direction as he was busy working on the film Sorcerer - which was NOT about magic nor the occult but rather a remake of the film Wages of Fear - the director here was John Boorman of Deliverance fame, in spite of the fact that his tone and framing just do not fit the tone that a movie like this should have. It's just too light a touch, which is strange from a man who made us all fear canoeing.

And since Blatty was only available in the sense that his original characters and situations were used, the script this time was written (and rewritten and rewritten) by one William Goodhart, who also wrote the 1980 film Cloud Dancer with an acrobatic plane-flying David Carradine...and that's about it. But that's okay, because Boorman also helped with the many rewrites to come, as did Rospo Pallenberg, who also wrote the script for 1981's Excalibur.

Should be okay....

Except for the fact that instead of dealing directly with Satan, Hell and Catholicism, now we are solidly in the realms of psychology, African demons and psychobabble. AND a "synchronizer".

A what?

Oh, this is a centerpiece in the film. Doctor Ratched...uh, Tuskin, hooks herself and Regan up to two headbands with wires connected to a machine with a rhythmically blinking light that hypnotizes them both in tandem so they can be in each other's minds and the doctor can see what's going on in Regan's. Unfortunately, the demon in Regan's head tries to kill the doc, so Father Lamont has himself hooked up to this thing and blinks his way into the good doctor's mind so he can see what's going on and sees the deceased Father Merrin in the netherworld with the possessed Regan from the first film and then the real-life Regan gets involved and...

There is a point in a film where you can tell that the story is slowly sliding off of the rails. At this point in Exorcist II, the train goes off the tracks, jumps the shark, nukes the fridge AND spontaneously combusts in time to Wagner's "Entrance of the Gods into Valhalla". Or maybe that's just me. It DOES go downhill from here, though.

Never have so many actors seem so embarrassed in the same movie at one time. Burton, the Prince of Players himself, seemed on the wane in his later years and here plays as if bored stiff, stone drunk and prone to short outbursts. During the course of this film's almost two hours, Burton barely changes expression from a "staring straight ahead with disinterest" look to a "sweaty and concerned" look. Fletcher doesn't fare much better, seeing that she just plays a psychiatrist and not a sadistic nurse so there's not much need for differing vocal inflection.

However, since this IS Regan's story, the movie succeeds or fails on the performance of Blair. And it would seem that in four year's time, the main thing that's developed in Blair's repertoire was her body. Which is apparent during her tap dance routine (choreographed by Daniel Joseph Giaghi), where feet aren't the only things bouncing around. I know, that sounds terrible and, bless her heart, it's just her being herself. But this is an Exorcist sequel - should there be a moment where we find our minds wandering as to what Linda Blair must be thinking while she's up on screen there, looking around at her surroundings with doe-eyed innocence whereas, just four years ago, she won an Oscar for convincing us she was possessed by Satan.

By Satan.

Yes, Satan. NOT Pazuzu. What the Hell (get it?) is the deal with changing religions mid-stream here? Did we really need to go from Catholic guilt to African soul-jumping via demons in the form of locusts? Makes no sense to me but hey; I'm not Catholic, either. And neither am I African.

I guess it made sense to Goodhart in a theological kind of way, seeing that the movie's climax takes place not only in Regan's old place in Georgetown, but also incorporated an old-style exorcism from Lamont, a cat-eyed Regan demon and an immolation but a sudden locust storm out of nowhere that destroys everything.

I'll grant you will be hard-pressed to find a movie more seriously disturbed than this one. You certainly won't find one with a more notorious reputation than this (outside of Heaven's Gate, maybe). And I'm sure that Richard Burton got more crap for Exorcist II than for any other movie he ever did in his career.

This IS a bad movie, no question. A sequel that is seriously disjointed and had almost nothing to do with the original source material outside of lip service to a couple of past events. Anyone who's seen this movie can attest to its low quality and laughable scenes. They had to literally go back and re-edit the movie no less than three times during its initial run to keep people from laughing at it as much as they did in its previous incarnation.

But you know what? It still made money. Yes, Exorcist II made over double its budget back once all was said and done, just proving that Hell hath no fury like a sequel scorned.

True, that amount is NOTHING compared to the original's take, but how well do you expect a comedy to do when compared to a horror movie?

And there we have the main thing about Exorcist II: The Heretic - this is without a doubt one of the funniest movies you will even see. No matter how much one expects another psychological and theological mind-trip like in The Exorcist, they will be floored with laughter from the non-acting of Richard Burton, the nonsense of such concepts as the "synchroinzer" and, more than anything, some of the worst ideas ever introduced in sequel to a movie that has been hailed worldwide as the most frightening movie ever made.

Is it worth watching, though? Maybe, if you want a good laugh. Or just have it in for Richard Burton.

Or really, really, really hate locusts.

The Beast Within (1982)

Now here's a nasty little piece of work: in 1982, at the height of the "splatter" genre of monster / killer movies ushered in by the likes of Friday the 13th and Halloween (for better or worse), here came a film that not only featured murderers, monsters and Lovecraft-ian undercurrents, but also cicadas.

Don't know what a cicada is? Neither did I, until I Wikipedia'ed them:

A cicada (pronounced /sɪˈkeɪdə/ or pronounced /sɪˈkɑːdə/) is an insect of the order Hemiptera, suborder Auchenorrhyncha, in the superfamily Cicadoidea, with large eyes wide apart on the head and usually transparent, well-veined wings. There are about 2,500 species of cicada around the world, and many remain unclassified. Cicadas live in temperate to tropical climates where they are among the most widely recognized of all insects, mainly due to their large size and remarkable acoustic talents.

That explains that. Now remember that, as I explain just what, exactly, cicadas are doing in a horror movie like The Beast Within.

Here is what the writer of this calls The Plot: In the 1964 country back roads of Mississippi, newlyweds Eli (Ronny Cox) and Caroline (Bibi Besch) suffer a car breakdown and, as Eli tries to go and find help, Caroline is viciously attacked and raped by an unseen figure and gets pregnant.

Now a teenager, the boy Michael (Paul Clemens) is dying from an unknown disease which befuddles all the doctors who examine him. Caroline convinces an understanding Eli that they have to try to learn the identity of her attacker, and perhaps find out if something genetic about the rapist holds the key to Michael's illness.

Soon after arriving in the small town of Nioba, Mississippi, the couple discovers clues, hints, evasive townsfolk and outright stonewalling from the local judge (Don Gordon). Meanwhile, Michael sneaks out of the hospital he is in and instinctively goes to Nioba himself. Not long after this, dead bodies start turning up.

Up to this point, everything seems pretty straightforward for movies like this, doesn't it? It's not like there's anything out of the ordinary, outside of the attacking and raping and murder, right? And so it would have been, too, if not for this particular tagline that was slapped right there on the original posters for The Beast Within:

We dare you to watch the last 30 minutes of this film without screaming, covering your eyes, or running from your seat.

And why is that, you ask? Remember all that with the cicadas earlier? Well, it seems that the monster rapist who fathered Michael was also...well, was also...wait, no; how can this be? It's not like...

Okay, okay: the rapist was....

Uh...hold on a second, I'll be right back.

(gets out movie, watches again, comes back)

Guess I wasn't imagining it; the rapist was half-cicada.

Which makes Michael part-cicada, and also prone to one of the most prolonged transformation scenes ever committed to film that didn't involve stop-motion or Lon Chaney.

You see, the transformation effects, supervised by Thomas Burman - who also did effects and makeup on such latter-day classics as My Bloody Valentine, The Hand, Happy Birthday To Me, Halloween III, One Dark Night and Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone - and by Fred Cramer - who worked on films like Taps, The Killing Fields and (God help us all) Inchon, and employed an interesting brace of effect called "bladder effects". This was achieved with air-filled condoms underneath all the makeup and latex facial coverings that were inflated so as to achieve a morphing effect. And if that sounds familiar, you must have seen The Howling (1981) around the same time. Well, it goes into overdrive in The Beast Within.

There are also many of the more-conventional effects one would expect in a movie like this, and brother, they are brutal with a capital "B": many beatings, cuttings, gougings, stabbings, shootings, biting out chunks of flesh and the ever-popular ripping off of heads takes place here and quite effectively, too. I guess "effective" is the right word to use when it comes to showing someone ripping someone else's head off of their shoulders.

This is directed by Philippe Mora, who also gave the world a great documentary (Brother, Can You Spare A Dime?), an interesting Dennis Hopper movie (Mad Dog Morgan), two Howling sequels (and some good looks at Sybil Danning's breasts, for which I am always grateful), and an intriguing alien abduction movie (Communion). He is creative, I'll give him that. And so is writer Tom Holland, a revered name now in fantasy and science fiction writing whose career took off in 1982 after writing this and the Vincent Van Patten ode to teen violence The Class of 1984. And would you believe this was not an original screenplay? That all this murdering and cicada-crossbreeding was all based on a book? Well, it was. I know; I'd never read it, either.

And those Lovecraft touches I mentioned earlier? Well, other than the main character being an horrific monster, there are two characters named Curwin and Dexter Ward. And anyone who is familiar with the work of H.P. Lovecraft knows where I'm going with that. So there you go.

What surprises me are the names attached to this. Not only Cox (who I still think did his best work under Paul Verhoeven) and Besch (with 1982 being her banner year with this and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan under her belt), but also esteemed cowboy actors R.G. Armstrong, Luke Askew and L.Q. Jones, character actor extraordinaire Logan Ramsey (who co-starred with even more-famous wife Anne "Throw Mama From The Train" Ramsey in Any Which Way You Can), the Mannequin movie series' favorite stereotyped actor Meshach Taylor, and John Dennis Johnston.

Yes, John Dennis Johnston. If you watched any movies at all in the Late Seventies/Early Eighties, you know who John Dennis Johnston is by the face alone. A face that belonged to Chopper from KISS Meets The Phantom Of The Park, the testicle donor in Jekyll & Hyde...Together Again, the co-pilot from the Terror at 20,000 Feet segment of Twilight Zone: The Movie, Pete the Mechanic in Streets of Fire and...for those whose minds don't go back that far, you'll recognize him from such TV series as "Walker: Texas Ranger" and "In Plain Sight". He's done a lot, 'nuff said.

As Michael, Paul Clemens does a sympathetic job as the tortured teen who harbors a deadly secret. I was surprised that not only had he worked before this (as early as 1974) and had a lot of success on several TV series, but his mom was Eleanor Parker! You know: from The Sound of Music, The Man With The Golden Arm, Detective Story. Her. Yeah.

Oh, and lest I forget to mention Katherine Moffat. No, she did not sit on a toffat eating curds and whey; she played Amanda, the love interest for poor buggy Michael, and herself has been featured in over 50 movies and TV series in a career that has extended since 1977. Not that she plays much of a character in the proceedings of The Beast Within, but I thought I'd better mention that, in spite of her lack of presence, she is an actress. So there.

Now I'm going to venture a guess that, for a 1982 movie that featured impressively bloody effects, relatively-unknown but well-versed actors and a fairly interesting storyline, an overall gross of nearly $8 million domestically is pretty impressive, and I'll also guess that it more than broke even, seeing that this was the kind of film that movie-goers stumbled over themselves to catch at the mega-cineplex during its two-week run while double-billed with The Last American Virgin or whatever.

As for me...I more or less liked it. That may not sound like a glowing endorsement you'd read on the back of a DVD box, and it may also be waffling when considering my feelings on other like films of this era, like Friday the 13th or Prom Night. But The Beast Within is NOT the same as those, either in terms of story in terms of execution (so to speak) or in terms of imagination. I'll grant you that this is certainly one of the more original kinds of mad killer movies that came out of the 1980s.

So yes, I will recommend that you find yourself a copy of The Beast Within and watch it with an open mind. I guarantee you'll never feel the same again when you hear a tree full of cicadas.

Cicadas. Ooohhh....

Dolls (1987)

There's going to be some dissension with this review, and I know it. After all, the director AND the subject matter are going to be one of those "take it or leave it" options that leaves no room for discussion. This is either a project you love whole-heartedly or hate vehemently. With that in mind, let us begin, hmm?

When you hit the ground running, sooner or later you're gonna stumble, fall and hurt yourself.

Take Stuart Gordon.

This is a man who really displays some absolutely undeniable talent; not only in his breakthrough film Re-Animator (1985) but also its follow up, From Beyond (1986). These were both loaded with way-over-the-top special FX, appropriate hysteria-level acting and gruesome carnage, with a little H.P. Lovecraft thrown in for good measure. That H.P.; he always pops up when least expected.

But don't you see, that's the problem when you hit it off with great success - or even successes - you're always having to top yourself, the next film HAS to be bigger and better than the last one, give the people what they want. If you don't, sure enough people will say: "Hey, remember the one film that guy did; it was great! His last one sucked. Oh well...let's go watch a Seth Rogan movie to cleanse our palate."

And there goes another talent through the Hollywood shredder, forgotten like yesterday's meatloaf.

So it's kind of surprising that Gordon followed up his roaring dual juggernauts with a movie that really had nothing to do with Lovecraft or medical procedures. No, in 1987, Gordon released a much smaller-scale feature about...killer dolls. That's right, killer dollies...and not ones like in Child's Play or Puppet Master that pull out a full-throttle attack on the unwary.

That kind of stuff would be all too well expected by the jaded viewer.

In Dolls, director Gordon and writer/compatriot Ed Naha brew up a tale of an odd old couple played by Guy Rolfe (whom the wise will remember quite well not only from Mr. Sardonicus but also Snow White and The Three Stooges. Ahh, memories...) and Hilary Mason (Don't Look Now) who, one dark and stormy night, take in some stranded travelers - including a rude couple (Ian Patrick Williams, Carolyn Purdy-Gordon) and their poor little put-upon girl (Carrie Lorraine), a big lovable lug of a guy (Stephen Lee) and some nasty young punks - into their nice big and spacious mansion.

However, one by one, many unexplained accidents occur to the nastiest of the group. It certainly couldn't be the work of this frail old couple, could it? After all, the only others in the mansion are a bunch of...dolls.

And when I say "a bunch of", I mean hundreds, thousands...this is kind of like Night of 1000 Cats, only with dolls, which are much creepier than cats anyway.

Now, Gordon cannot be faulted in direction; it's all effectively creepy and such but the tone, in one Dope's own humble-yet-battle-weary opinion, goes for the old British veddy-proper horror tone of good manners, deep shadows, odd noises and then EH, WOT? - dead people. I guess this is a Hammer-ish way to tackle the proceedings, but does it work, really? In an homage to the old style of scares, I guess it does. It won't do much for the modern blood-and-guts Saw crowd, though.

And the FX are really good, too; the stop-motion dolls by legendary effects maestro Dave Allen are good, even if you can tell in some spots where the matte lines and differences in shadowing are. But hey, who asks for perfection in movies like this?

The actors do well enough, too. Rolfe and Mason play very effete and unassuming, save for a wry cackle here and there. The victims play up the fact of how nasty and cruel they are, practically begging to be offed by murderous dolls. As the little girl, though, Lorraine is a very sympathetic figure who counts on small little plush toys for comfort where she can count on little else. And as the big lovable lug, Lee is just that: big and lovable. It's not much of a spoiler in Dolls to say they are the only survivors, but for awhile it's a pretty close call.

Now I know it sounds like I'm being down on the "mood and shadow" school of horror. I have to protest that fact: some Hammer films are my favorites. And the mood fits Dolls for what it is. Indeed, Dolls was completed BEFORE From Beyond and would have been released first had it not been for the fact that the effects weren't quite finished yet.

But this time out, why didn't Gordon do as he did before and simply turn up the heat and the volume, go for more hysterical screaming, spewing effects and give us something we hadn't seen a million and one times before? I ask you, don't we - the B-movie crowd - deserve that?

I may be too hard on Dolls, though. I guess it just stands as a case of a let-down; looking again at Re-Animator and then Dolls, wouldn't you expect something more from a story like this? More...I don't know what, but something. Then again, expecting more than what you get is a common thing for those who expect greatness from titles like Mega Shark Vs. Giant Octopus or The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies. Of course, some of us get the greatness we expect from these projects. We are fickle in our likes, we B-movie lovers are.

Suffice it to say, this is one of the lesser-known works in Stuart Gordon's repertoire. He still works and is fluent in his productivity, with varying degrees of success and acclaim. On one hand, Dagon. On the other hand, "Honey, I Shrunk The Kids: The TV Series". On another hand, King of the Ants. On yet another hand, Robot Jox. And still another hand has Space Truckers and Stuck. And you can see in the ever-present other hand The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit and Fortress.

So you see, with all of those hands to account for, Gordon's brilliance comes and goes in ebbs and tides.

Maybe someday we will see yet another fiery punch to the gut like Re-Animator; something that will get us going on another Lovecraft-ian mind trip to the black pit of the soul - a real roller coaster ride.

Until then, these Dolls will be all we have to play with. Until better toys come along.

Return of the Living Dead (1985)

Y'see? Another 1985 flick! But don't worry; this one's an anomaly.

Anyone who knows me knows that, as a rule, I am a firm believer that many, if not all, sequels are unnecessary. At least 89% of them.

Look around; they litter the rental queues, numbers and Roman numerals alike, and make us realize just what classics the originals were. Yes, even Porky's. If they retell the story you saw before, why pay good money to see the same thing again and again - huh, fans of Friday the 13th? Why??

Let's face the fact that as far as a sequel goes, there had better danged well be a really good reason for one -- especially when coming after a superior movie.

Would YOU want to see a sequel to Gone With The Wind? How about Citizen Kane II? Gandhi: The Reckoning, anyone? Up for Kill Bills 4, 5, 6 and 7, now with new and improved CGI David Carradine?

Well, how about a sequel to one of the most well-placed zombie movies ever made? A classic? Something that most any b-movie nerd worth their salt owns and loves?

HISTORY LESSON: In 1968, Night of the Living Dead was unleashed onto an unsuspecting public-at-large and became both a turning point and a landmark achievement for director/co-writer George A. Romero and horror movies in general. Earning money hand-over-rotted fist to this day, Night was the haute cuisine (so to speak) in a world where every other wannabe was just fast food.

Another thing: when it came to the pretenders, any movie purporting to be a sequel to this - the creme de la creme - was pretty much asking for it.

But Dan O'Bannon was no ordinary director, either. Here was the co-writer of John Carpenter's classic entrance bow Dark Star and he also typed furiously to give us the scripts for even more modern-day classics such as 1979 trend-setter Alien, 1981 sleeper Dead and Buried, 1981 group effort Heavy Metal and 1983 Roy Scheider super-helicopter/Jaws callback Blue Thunder.

Then came 1985, a hallowed year rife with badness and foul stench, in which he sallied forth and made his maiden directorial effort with this little self-penned continuance of Romero's classic. Good idea, I guess. Yet it juuuust barely escaped being lumped together with the rest of the gruel and vomit of 1985 since, in its original incarnation, Tobe Hooper was going to direct and it was to be a 3D project. Not exactly two good omens, were they?

But with Return of the Living Dead, O'Bannon gave us what any right-thinking sequel to Night of the Living Dead needed; thick swirling doses of dark humor and a fiery shot of adrenaline. To paraphrase Nigel Tufnel, this is a sequel that goes to eleven.

Guess what? It would appear that the events depicted in Night of the Living Dead really happened. At least that's what jaded Louisville, Kentucky morgue worker Frank (James Karen) tells new night shift worker Freddy (Thom Matthews) as he regales him with horrific stories and shows him barrels in the basement which contain the preserved remains of the zombies in question, along with some displaced tanks of U.S. Government issue "zombie gas". One of the tanks gets nudged, gas spills out, tanks crack, zombies awaken and everything jumps in the first hand basket headed for Hell.

...but in this movie, that's a positive thing.

Throw into the mix a carload of punk teenagers (including a young punked-out Linnea Quigley), people who not only believe but play by the rules that movies lay out and the power of a nuclear bomb, not to mention a nearby graveyard full of dead people (or at least dead for the moment) and there you have it -- instant party!

This could just as easily been one of those cheap-jack flicks that didn't care about the black heart and eroded soul of zombie movies, but it isn't. If anything, Return loves and adores such films to a fault and every blood-soaked moment of this film proves it, from the resurrection of long-dead corpses, split-down-the-middle dog cadavers barking, bags full of rabid zombie weasels to rip your flesh (RZZZZ!) and ingenious flesh-eaters radioing in for more paramedics and more policemen to chow down on.

James Karen is one of the absolute most under-rated actors on the face of the Earth. Anyone who can survive the rigors of starring in Time Walker and go on to the long and varied career he's had in Hollywood sure must have something going for him. And as the self-aware-yet-oblivious Frank, he has some absolute classic lines and no one can express facially the horrors of zombie attacks and the bewilderment of whispered rumors come to life better than he.

You'll also recognize such glorious movie standbys as Don Calfa, Clu Gulager and that ever-lovin' b-movie grand dame Jewel Shepard. As someone who has watched her in anything and everything (including Party Camp, which is another review for another time), all I can say about Jewel is that she certainly does distract from the zombies.

The others in the cast do as good as anyone else in the same situation would. It's not easy to maintain a plausible character when surrounded by the marauding undead, as any actor from Zombie Holocaust or The Beyond will tell you. They do it, though, if by the virtue of either screaming, fighting or succumbing to the threat. And I'll grant you this is one of the few zombie movies in which a zombie explains to you for themselves just exactly why they do what they do. Good stuff to know.

Even if he did base this off of an actual, honest-to-goodness book (by Night veteran John A. Russo) and was helped along with the story by other Night alumni like Rudy Ricci and Russell Streiner, O'Bannon concocted a script from this base material which has ambrosia-like dialogue for the b-movie lover's soul. There are individual lines here worth quoting to your movie-loving pals - that is if they don't quote them to you first.

The gore and blood is gloriously gratuitous as is the nudity of Linnea Quigley, and when a zombie that will forever be known to we in the know as Tarman looks at a room full of teenagers and yells out (without lips, mind you), "MORE brains!!", that is the mark of a film that will never let you down, from first frame to last frame.

I guess the worst thing I can say about Return of the Living Dead is that it's just too darned short. After 91 minutes, I was still wanting more. More excitement, more humor, more braaaains. Apparently so was everyone else, seeing that there were two or three other sequels to this very movie that came out later down the road. Not NIGHT of the Living Dead, mind you, but RETURN. The NIGHT sequels would be coming later on....

You see, though? You see the thing about sequels? Did any of those sequels to Return of the Living Dead do as well or get as much play as this, the very flick they were based on? Surely you jest - how could any of them possibly be as quick and funny as what Dan O'Bannon and company originally conceived? Did we have any actors as worthy of their roles s James Karen or Don Calfa? Did we even get anyone as sexy as Linnea Quigley striping down to her leg warmers?

All in all, it takes a special movie to deliver the goods with $4 million in its budget - and earn back that much plus interest its first weekend alone - and with as much of the imagination and good humor you get with Return of the Living Dead. That's just icing, my friend. Icing on a specially made zombie cake. With extra guts and sprinkles.

If there is anyone out there who really desires to see a sequel that lives up to the promise of its source material, I guess now there are three suggestions for your Netflix queue: Godfather II, Aliens and Return of the Living Dead. Maybe not in that order, necessarily.

I understand that this film's German title is Verdammt, die Zombies Kommen, which can be translated to Oh Crap, the Zombies Are Coming. I think O'Bannon and company missed a bet, American title-wise.

This Is The Last Day To Enter TheGreatWhiteDope's Mecha-Blog-Zilla Mecha-Contest!

Hey out there!

What are you doing?!

Don't you realize that this is the last day to enter my contest?

What contest??! THE contest, man! The one in which you, the innocent reader who's done nothing to me enters for the chance to win one of the, if not THE, worst movie ever, that's all!

Why wouldn't you want a chance at that?

As if I should remind you, the signed DVD is of the movie Death 4 Told (2004), and you can read all about it here.

And as for the rules of the contest, you can read all about them here.

Relax, though; you still have till 11:59 PM EST tonight to get your entry in and then wait patiently till I make a decision. Right now this is a contest between two bloggers: Matt-suzaka of Chuck Norris Ate My Baby and Simon of four of them. Are you gonna let these two guys duke it out alone and be the ones who get all the fame and glory and, more importantly, win a movie that will make mere mortals run screaming into the night with confusion, disorientation and the need for fresh pants?

And it makes for a great trailer, too. Well, maybe not great but good.

Okay, maybe not good, but interesting.

Okay, okay - it's a trailer.

Alright, and it's NSFW. AT least it has THAT going for it.



Get to work. Enter the contest, you only have a few hours to prove your insanity...I mean, your worth.

Dope out.

- TGWD

Death 4 Told (2004)

I've got a dirty little secret.

In fact, I've got the same dirty little secret that thousands of other movie geeks have, just in varying degrees.

(deep breath)

I was in a movie.

Okay, maybe not a movie, but in a direct-to-video movie.

Okay, maybe not direct-to-video, but direct to DVD. One format.

I was in a movie so cheap it couldn't even afford to be on VHS.

You know how it is: you have a friend that has a friend that has a dream. My friend Andrew Jones, who is an accomplished blogger and writer in his own respect, had a friend named Bo Buckley, and Bo had a dream that started when he created little panoramic haunted house exhibits to make a low-budget horror movie to get his foot in the door in Hollywood and follow the same tried-and-true path trod by Sam Raimi, Joel and Ethan Coen and Harold P. Warren. Well maybe not Sam and the Coens....

So, Bo gathered together some money, some friends, shot a movie and crossed his fingers.

And I think he may have written a script, time permitting.

Maybe I'm being too hard on this right off the bat. After all, I'm way too close to the situation to be objective and, in all honesty, I've seen what devastation was wrought after the mushroom cloud settled. It'll be difficult, but I'll try to make myself a disembodied entity on this....

...you know, on second thought, no I won't. This is important to me. I have to keep my integrity in this: I review bad movies and, even if I were the one who wrote, produced, directed and headlined this thing, I'd be telling you that this movie, Death 4 Told, has all the appeal of a BP executive at an oceanographer's convention.

If this were a horror convention, I would hear the razz of the Bronx cheers and feel the pain of the brick bats, and I'd know in my heart of hearts that I deserved it.

I could have said no when approached for a part. I could have passed on an opportunity to commit to a role in this film. I could have walked away free and clear, but no: I was a starry-eyed fledgling actor wannabe who wanted fame and fortune and got neither. I got $50, free room and lodging in the seediest hotel north of the Mason-Dixon line and a queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach.

But that experience is another post for another time. Right now, let's dig into this.

Anthologies have a long regal standing in the world of horror films. Many studios stood by them (Hammer, Amicus) and there were innumerable variations of the story collection field of film-making. Some of them good (Tales from the Crypt, Creepshow), some of them bad (House of the Dead, Creepshow 3) and some of them...okay, I'll say it: and some of them being my film.

Yes, I'll admit to Death 4 Told. I won't deny it 3 times before the cock crows. This is my albatross and I shall dissect it like any good reviewer would, knowing full well that I'll lose all of the fame and standing I once had in Hollywood.

May the Lumiere Brothers have mercy on my soul.

Let me start right off with the title itself. Death 4 Told. I know, it's supposed to denote the amount of stories in the film itself (in fact, its tag line says "Four Wicked Tales of Terror". So you know it's gonna be good...don't you?). But looking at it, the title comes across as leetspeak and I, for one, hate leetspeak; it's better suited for text messages, chat rooms and computer nerds. I guess I should be grateful I wasn't in a movie called D34th 4 T07d. That'd just be silly.

Oh, did I say FOUR wicked tales of terror? Funny story: when I got in on the ground floor of this pyramid scheme, there were only three wicked tales of terror, not four. It seems as filming progressed and three segments were completed, Bo got the idea that it could be longer and so decided to write one more story to add a little more oomph to the project and, thanks to connections, added some big name stars (well, as big as could be afforded, since at one time Bruce Campbell's name was bandied about until cooler heads prevailed) and really send this flick over the edge into classic territory.

Good thinking. I'm sure it worked out well for them...

Wait! What am I saying?! I was there! I saw how this turned out!!

Okay, okay...whew. The best way for me to dig into this is section by section. So let's get to it.

BEGINNING CREDITS - A favorite way to begin a scary movie is with disjointed pictures and scenes of scary ambiguity spliced in at random intervals, backed by a suitably creepy score. Bo and company do that here, but they also give you screen credits so small and so jumpy that it takes a leap of faith to see who did what in this film! Maybe they were trying to protect the guilty. And the music? Sounds like someone tapping different lower-register notes on an out-of-tune piano. Hmm....Not to worry; there'll be more issues with what you hear in the background.

A DOLL'S HOUSE - A writer and his wife rent a house in a small town for him to work on his next novel. However, there is something about the house that won't let him focus...it may not let him live!

Okay; this segment serves as all setup, no payoff. It's like an unfinished Stephen King short story that never got past the outline.

The music score and soundtrack don't help - so many times they will drown out huge chunks of dialogue so that not only will you not hear what's said, you'll miss key plot explanations as well! Good job, sound guy.

If you should find yourself (by some unforeseen happenstance) watching this segment, ask yourself this: why doesn't the writer try to draw a story experience out of this situation? He should just stay in the house and note every last detail he sees and experiences - that is, if he's serious about writing a new book. Most writers would give their eye teeth for an atmosphere like this to draw inspiration from.

And the MacGuffin itself...let's just say that the lack of a budget really hurts this one.

However, the crazy drunk named Pete could have had a couple more scenes (INSERT SELF-SERVING COMMENTARY HERE).

FOLKLORE - A group of vacationing college friends run over a strange animal in the woods and, only marginally aware of local Indian lore, learn that some legends aren't to be ignored.

They tried to make this more of a character study except that these characters are so obnoxious, annoying, bone-headed and shrill that the last thing anyone would want to do is study them.

And since there were only a stuffed wolf and a severed hand for special effects, character study is what we're left with, which quickly degenerates into one of those off-screen action/aftermath-shown-later things.

Unfortunately, in spite of a few glimmers of actual talent here and there, these actors never get a chance to do anything except whine, scream, and/or insult each other. So much for character study. Even a "jump scene" doesn't help matters.

THE WORLD'S MOST HAUNTED - A camera crew goes to an asylum in a small town to set up for a remote broadcast of one of those haunted house/reality shows, only to discover they don't need to rig up fake ghosts after all.

This is probably the most ambitious of the stories, content-wise, and everyone does a good-enough job; there's even some decent shocks. They even use a stunt man! But this, like the stories before, suffers from time constraints and limitations of budget that limit the potential to make this story what it could have been.

And the most unforgivable thing: during the exposition of the history of the asylum, an echo box is employed that makes that entire segment of story completely unintelligible (during the first showing to cast and crew, the main thing I heard in the audience during this segment was, "WHAT???".

THE PSYCHIC - Here we go; the monster at the end of the book. This is the added segment, the oomph! A foreign-accented card-reader (Margot FREAKIN' Kidder!) finds that the cards and predictions she culls from them not only are coming true, but predict violent futures for their subjects.

A lot of times when a segment is added to a film like this, it's because its producers realize what a do-or-die situation their project is in and so film a little "insurance", if you will, by getting "name stars" in it (like the aforementioned Kidder, Tom "More Famous For His Makeup" Savini, that blonde who played the daughter on TV's "Roseanne" and one of those guys who was on Howard Stern's radio show), upping the special effects quotient (there's some more blood and splatter here than in any of the other segments), a little of that popular nudity the kids love so much (female frontal and a three-way mooning) and actual crowd scenes!

The problem is that everyone and everything is undermined by unimaginatively setting up, presenting and executing (so to speak) so many of the scenes that it doesn't really matter what happens or what is to become of any of the characters (you want to know what happens to Kidder's character - LOOK ON THE BACK OF THE FLIPPIN' DVD BOX!!!!) - you'll still feel like you took a trip to visit some of your favorite relatives only to discover they weren't even at home.

Put all of this together, and what do you have? Nothing when you compare it to 1945's Dead of Night, 1972's Asylum, 1963's Black Sabbath or even 2001's Strange Frequency. At least some modicum of imagination, style, color and real thorough scares came through in those; a couple of them even added some laughs to the mix. When stacked up against even the lesser-known of such anthologies, Death 4 Told is in trouble because of one simple fact....

It doesn't give you what you want.

You want scares? You get none. You want atmosphere? You get none. You want consistent filming? You get none. You want creative storytelling? You get none. You want entertainment in its most basic form? You get....

Hold on, hold on...I think I may have to concede on the last point. If you get together a group of friends that want to have their own at-home "Mystery Science Theater 3000" party, THIS is the film to use. It will give every single person that watches it the comedic powers of Joel Hodgson, Mike Nelson, Trace Beaulieu and the entire Best Brains corporation et al. Riffing will come naturally as this thing progresses until, once the unreadable end credits come up, you will realize that there in your living room with your friends you have had the only fun that can come from watching Death 4 Told.

Like I said, I probably have been far too hard on a film that I, at one time, defended to my dying breath because I felt I owed it to Bo Buckley.

He was a friend who gave me a break and thought I was worth casting in his film. I will always be grateful for him giving me this opportunity.

You know something, though; this film was a test reel, an example of rushed-through filming that was slapped together as a calling card to proverbial "bigger-and-better" things for its makers.

For the most part - THAT worked: Fearmakers Productions is running strong to this day and has a whole slew of works to their credit. Bo is still working steady as a producer and writer, Margot Kidder has had many more roles since (even in 2009's Halloween II), Tom Savini works steady in front of the camera, a handful of the lesser-known actors are even busy in film and TV, if a tad under the radar of Hollywood's sweeping range.

And me...?

Well, I went into this knowing full well that I would never have a future in film. This was a lark, something to do just to say "hey, I was in a film!". At the time, of course, I treated the situation with the utmost seriousness. After all, art is art. One day, I felt, I would be telling stories to my friends and anyone else who would listen, feeling akin to Ian McKellen talking about Richard III.

It turns out I ended up more like Jack Benny talking about The Horn Blows at Midnight.

So if you get that analogy, you know full well what I mean.

Another Not-on-DVD Update!

Okay, I had to get on here real quick and post this because, kids, this one is a shocker.

Many of you already know my love for the hard-to-find movies (NO!) and how thrilled I am to find one and know that I am one of the chosen few who actually owns it on DVD o VHS or whatever.

Well, there is a certain statute for some movies, I guess, when the company who originally released it decides that, yes, the public-at-large has waited long enough indeed and reaches the conclusion to throw us a bone and allow us our little victory and give us what we want.

For some of these, I get a little sad because it means that now I won't be one of the few who owns it - I'll be one of the hundreds of thousands who ALSO owns it.

But for others, I say - it's about flippin' time they got off their collective white-collar tuckuses and did this.

THIS is one of those "flippin' time" times.

The date will be September 28, 2010.

The company will be VCI Entertainment.

The sound of a little girl's squeal of excitement will be coming from you.

And the event will be the release of this:

Yes. That's right. You read me.

Amazon backs me up.

And so does VCI Entertainment themselves.
As hard as it is to believe, one of the greatest scarecrow-based horror movies ever made is FINALLY getting an official release. You may now do your happy Snoopy dance in front of your PC. I know I did one.

And why is this such a monumental occasion? because Dark Night of the Scarecrow has all the atmosphere, all the fright, all the heart-stopping, pillow-grabbing shocks and scares that good old-fashioned scary stories should have. It even features Charles Durning in all-out creep mode.
Trust me: even if you haven't heard of this movie before, you'll WANT to get this one.

If I already didn't have a great copy of this my own self, I'd be grabbing this new one up! But that's a collector for you.

Just to whet your now-quivering appetite for more, I leave you with the clip of the beginning of this classic horror...which is about to become a classic again.



Start saving your nickels and dimes, kids; and remember - my birthday's in a couple of months!

BUBBA LIKE!

Dope out.

-TGWD

My Bloody Valentine (1981)

My BLINE!

Sorry, just thought I'd start my review with an obscure in-joke.

Anyway, this is yet another mad slasher movie set during yet another holiday where yet another masked killer is killing yet another gaggle of stupid teens yet again.

What's the difference this time, you may ask?

Same crap, different holiday.

Lessee: Halloween came out in 1978, meaning that the rest of Hollywood had to scramble fast to climb onto the blood-soaked bandwagon and rake in the bucks to cash in on something before its time went by. And for the years to follow Halloween, they sure did that.

Figures, though; they did the same thing with musicals, with documentaries, with 3D movies and with Burt Reynolds movies. And all of those things came and went pretty quickly (apologies to Burt, but it's true), but like all things, they come back around every so often for a renaissance for a few months or so. Except maybe for one of them; hang in there, Burt....

Mad Slasher movies, though, have always been and always will be around because they can be made cheaply, cast inexpensively and rushed through and turn a profit. Most of them can also be marketed almost entirely by word-of-mouth. And when it comes to premise, a lot of them can be summarized by five words:

Mad killer strikes during holiday.

And so it came to be we had Friday the 13th, Mother's Day, Silent Night Deadly Night, New Year's Evil, April Fool's Day, Happy Birthday to Me, The Hand (oops...I was thinking of Palm Sunday there...nevermind) and so on, some of which had sequels, others which were so slipshod and under-developed that they were lucky to get the one shot they got.

So it only makes sense that almost every holiday would get its own representation in the horror genre. Bringing us logically to Valentine's Day.

Now hold on: Valentine's Day was a holiday that came about in 500 AD when then-Pope Gelasius I established it in honor of the early Christian martyrs, many of whom were named Valentine. And then we have Geoffrey Chaucer in the Middle Ages to thank for the day being associated with romantic love. How, then, did we go from such a high-minded celebration of idealized love to a murderous masked killer on a rampage?

The same way we went from the celebration of the birth of Jesus to an axe-wielding Santa Claus: there's money to be made in it.

Now, as if this kind of thing needed any setup: 20 years ago in the peaceful little mining community of Valentine Bluffs, an explosion of methane gas took the lives of a group of coal miners on Valentine's Day, all because supervisors left their posts to attend the annual Valentine's Day dance. Oops.

A year later, Harry Warden, the only survivor of the accident - and he did look a bit plumper when they rescued him (wink wink, nudge nudge) - retaliated by killing the supervisors and warning the town never to hold another Valentine's Day dance.

Fair enough; I'd listen to a warning like that.

Flash-forward 20 years later as a group of young adults (let's just call them "teens", even if they are older, just because they all act stupid and won't listen to reason) decides to hold another dance.

Idiots.

After the usual warnings pop up - blood-soaked heart in a candy box, old woman tumble-dried to death in a laundromat, the usual stuff - all accompanied by ominous messages to knock this Valentine crap off, the dance is canceled. Good.

But (and there's always a "but" in movies like this because the people in them are stupid) a Valentine party is held in its place... at the coal mine.

You stupid moronic idiotic teenage-acting-and-thinking idiots!!!

Well. Because these "teens" and everyone else in this town all seem to be auditioning for their own personal Darwin Awards, they begin dying violently. Pickaxes to the chest and face, shower nozzle through the back of the head, hard-boiling of faces, nail-gunning, limb-chopping, hanging: everything that makes Valentine's Day memorable. See what happens when you don't listen to Harry Warden?

My Bloody Valentine came out during the heyday of Fangoria Magazine, which shows production pics of all "the good shots" from upcoming horror movies. I remember catching the issue that had pics from this beauty in it, many gory, detailed captures showed the salivating reader looking for blood and gore just what they could expect at their local theater.

Of course, many of them would be sadly disappointed, but I'll get to that....

This was concocted by story creator Stephen A. Miller whose career led up to this by writing for such TV shows as "The Jeffersons", "Flo" and that one show where MacLean Stevenson played a priest. The script was detailed by John Beaird who also wrote, ironically, Happy Birthday to Me, which did for birthday cakes and shish-kebabs what this movie does for miners. Which ain't much.

Director George Mihalka began his career by helming that 1980s sleaze epic Pick-Up Summer then made a career of directing many films and TV shows you've probably never heard of before in your life. Lord knows I hadn't. There are a few good camera angles here and there, but that's like trying to find Waldo when you're not really sure he's there to begin with.

The actors themselves all try their best but, seeing that 90% of them (and this whole production, in fact) hail from Canada, that's about 1/3 of the U.S. going rate for talent here in the States, so a lot of it doesn't get across the border. You may recognize names like Neil Affleck, Lori Hallier, Cynthia Dale and Helene Udy, since they are synonymous with stuff like this and many of them were there in the thick of it when it came to Canada's churned-out theatrical junk - in fact, if you had HBO at all during the mid-Eighties, you've probably seen the biggest chunk of this cast's work.

Now, about the effects: they are, for lack of a better word, good. Effective I guess is the best way to put it. But in its original release, albeit in its first VHS and DVD releases, the censors did more hacking and chopping than Harry Warden did, leaving carnage still, but not the kind of blood and guts those earlier Fangoria readers were coming into the theater to see. Can't give that Video Nasty group any reason to throw a conniption, now can we?

Of course, they got everything back to where it was meant to be seen 20-plus years down the road, but seeing that My Bloody Valentine's wealth was in its gore, could it stand on atmosphere alone?

Some. Cinematographer Rodney Gibbons gave a gritty look and feel to the proceedings and editors Gérald Vansier and Rit Wallis knew how to splice things together so that the viewer got their money's worth for shocks. But as far as actual bank-ability goes...?

For a budget of $2,300,000 in Canadian earning back almost $6 million American, I guess that's pretty respectable, though I don't know the allowance between currencies off the top of my head. Maybe it just sounds good, like having one million Mexican pesos sounds good until you convert it?

As far as a crass exercise in earning money for being on the holiday killer kick, My Bloody Valentine has no shame. It tries pretending it's original, but it just renamed Jason Voorhees Harry Warden, changed a summer camp into a mining town and replaced Kevin Bacon with Canadian bacon - or ham in this case.

I didn't care much for it, but darned if I don't still feel some nostalgia for this thing. After all, My Bloody Valentine was part of my childhood - as it was of anyone who grew up in the late Seventies/early Eighties. I grew up watching the ads for this on TV, catching glimpses of gore in magazines and wondering if I'd ever have the nerve to see it and find out if it was all that it was cracked up to be.

Well, I had.

And I did.

And it wasn't.

But it made me feel like a kid again.

Not that I want to rush out and buy Valentine's cards or anything.

My own mining mask? Maybe.