Last Stop Before the Preview

Tomorrow begins the 30 day preview of the 2011-12 season, and this has been a long time coming.  Today however, I get to write about a movie.  Creepshow 2 is the follow up to the original Creepshow.  However, this version is not directed by George A. Romero, nor does it feature an all-star cast like the original.  What the sequel does is hold its own with three stories that were Stephen King-inspired (sadly, King does not make an appearance in any of them).  "Ol' Woodhead" is your average cursed inanimate object come to life to avenge its owners' deaths.  The deaths are done quite nicely, but they are also done too quickly for my tastes.  "The Raft" is four teenagers who spend a day at the lake, only to be swallowed by what can best be described as an oil spill come to life.  Nothing outwardly spectacular, but decent enough to be here.  "The Hitcher" was the best of the three, with a woman trying to shake off a hitchhiker that she ran over.  The relentlessness of the hitcher adds a scare element that was sorely missing from "Ol' Woodhead," particularly when you line it up with one of the thieves from the first story trying to shoot the wooden Indian.  The segues are mainly animated, giving it more of a comic book feel, but Billy comes across as a total jerk.

Bug Off!

I know I missed a day, but summertime colds are a bitch.  I still have this problem, but I have something to write about.  The Friday and Saturday events of ProgPower VIII autobiography will wait until tomorrow so that I may bring you a really old movie.

The Wasp Woman was a Roger Corman movie that featured some incredibly lo-fi effects and was one of the first B-movies made.  The basic story: a scientist offers an aging cosmetics president a serum that would make her look younger.  The serum? Something taken from the wasps that he collected.  The serum works, but it also turns her into a hideous wasp-like creature.

The movie is in black and white, which covers up some flaws within the movie.  The "wasp woman" looks more like a third grader's project of Cat Woman.

In addition, there isn't much in the way of either actual horror or for that matter, science fiction.  It plays out more like a 50's television show, which is one of the charms of the movie.  Overall, The Wasp Woman is the definition of B-movie, but not a total waste of 73 minutes.

Breaking Shakespeare

Take a very good look at the picture to your left. Now, tell me what you're thinking as you see what amounts to a bastardized take on a classic William Shakespeare play. Yes folks, the fine folks at Troma have their sexed up version of Romeo and Juilet titled, appropriately, Tromeo and Juliet.

If you have read the Shakespeare play at all, and don't lie, I'm sure your high school English teacher made you read it at some point, then you know the basic plot of Tromeo and Juliet. So I won't waste any time here. What I will regale you with is that the movie is narrated by Lemmy (You've probably heard of him), and it becomes obvious that Lemmy is reading from the cue cards. The conflict between the Ques (Troma shortened it from the Montaques) and Capulets centers around one group stealing a movie production from the other (Take a good guess what kind of movie production it is and you win absolutely nothing). The story here follows the Shakespeare version, except that we are intorduced to numerous freaky people and strange things that Troma is known for (the popcorn scene being the best example here).

As someone who isn't greatly into either Shakespeare or Troma, as both require patience and some discipline, I found this to be quite an interesting take on the classic play. The younger set should stay away from this though, as like all Troma films, there is a fair share of nudity and violence.

Tales From the Loony Bin

To mark the occasion of this, the third time that I have been in Portland, OR, today will be a look at a movie that is quite obscure, and has gone under quite a few names since its release in 1972. The Roy Ward Barker directed Asylum is a movie that is divided into four short stories about a prospective doctor whose job is to find out who is Dr. B. Starr by interviewing four different people who are in confinement at the asylum.

The first story involves a woman and her plot to get rid of a woman who was betrothed to a man she loved. Unbeknownst to her, the woman had studied voodoo, which meant that after she was hacked to pieces, she somehow killed the man and the parts started going after her. The second story is told by a tailor who had tried to make a suit for a person using an unusual fabric that brought anything to life, even the dead. The third story is told by a woman who had been in the asylum before and was being monitored after the first release. The final story is told by a doctor who tries to transfer his soul to an automated miniature version of himself, complete with oversized head.

The movie itself is pretty campy and often makes no sense if you don't go through the entire stories. Also known as House of Crazies, this movie is a little slow in its pace, and there isn't much in the way of gore to speak of, but the overall camp value is pretty good if you need a change of pace from the usual fare of gore and violence.

What's Going On Here?

From the same guy that brought the epic disaster known as Troll 2 comes yet another movie in the Zombi series, only that none of the movies in the series are related to one another. Yes, Claudio Fragasso is at it again, this time forcing Zombie 4: After Death onto us viewers. Now, admittedly, this movie is actually better than the Fulci/Mattei effort Zombie 3, which was a total trainwreck. Of course, that isn't saying much, either.

The plot of the movie is quite convoluted, as there is way too much in the way of an actual storyline, but I will try to cut through it anyway. Basically, a woman who was on the island that the zombies (who look strangely like ninjas) inhabit had escaped the island 20 years earlier as a child as her parents along with some other scientists were eaten. Now all grown up, she returns with some military buddies and another woman. Also on the island are more scientists who open up "The Book of the Dead" and read something that magically unleashes more zombies. One of them survives and manages to meet up with the remaining group of military folks and it is up to them to stop the invasion before it is too late.

If that last paragraph was confusing to you, imagine this all playing out on the screen. Like its predecessor, logic has to be thrown out the window and run over repeatedly as somehow zombies can perform ninja tricks, talk, and wield M-16s. Again, don't ask how the hell zombies can suddenly shoot M-16s with precision. The music score to this film is actually the worst part of the film, as somehow, Survivor-inspired pop music doesn't quite fit in with zombies eating people. Zombie 4 was actually released after Troll 2, which in some ways, made up for Fragasso's idiocy, though again, that isn't saying much.

Blood Feast

So, in keeping with the horror fest that I am going to try up until I head to Portland, OR in late April, I have found that a fairly limited selection in the ol' DVD collection has me trying to improvise. Fortunately, the fact that I haven't really watched most of the films in the collection in their entirety helps here, as does this blog that you are reading right now.

Earlier, I covered a Herschell Gordon Lewis film in The Gore Gore Girls. Today, I will cover an earlier film that he did that is considered one of the first gory films in movie history in Blood Feast.

Blood Feast is about women getting killed in gruesome ways and the idea of preparing a feast for the Egyptian goddess Ishtar. Before I continue, Ishtar is actually a Babylonian goddess, but considering that this is a B-movie, all logic should be thrown out the window. Unfortunately, some of that logic could have easily been used, especially for the detectives that are trying to solve the particularly gruesome killings (more on this later). Immediately, the killer is known to the viewers, as the old man Fuad Ramses kills a woman in her bathtub and hacks off a leg. Soon, it is revealed that Ramses runs an exotic catering shop and is asked by a mother to help cater an Egyptian style feast for her daughter. To help prepare for this feast, Ramses kills another woman on the beach and takes parts of her brain, but not before knocking her boyfriend unconscious. Another killing sees Ramses pulling out a tongue of an anonymous woman staying at a hotel. More killings happen until the feast, when Ramses tries to offer the daughter as a sacrifice to the goddess Ishtar. Before he can, he gets run off by the screaming mother and eventually meets his fate by trash compactor.

The murders are particularly gruesome, which while it may not be as spectacular as say, Suspiria, the murders in Blood Feast did set a standard for subsequent horror movies to follow. For most of the movie, the viewer will likely find themselves screaming at the detectives. Despite the fact that the victims had some link to a "book club" and one victim describing the murderer (accurately, I might add) and mentioning something that sounds like "Eethar," which sounds similar to "Ishtar," the detectives still can't put it all together. Acting isn't all that great, either, but what would you expect from a B-movie? Those inconsistencies aside, Blood Feast is recommended for those who enjoy campy 60's horror and gore.

The Toxic Avenger

Around 1984, the Troma Corporation was just a fledging film company. That year, they stumbled upon what is undoubtedly their biggest success to date in The Toxic Avenger. Nowadays, it is hard to imagine the Troma Corporation without what is the face of the movie company.

While there are in fact four movies that make up the Toxic Avenger series, it is often difficult to top the first movie. The first Toxic Avenger movie begins in the town of Tromaville, New Jersey, where the town's health club janitor Melvin is often the target of abuse from the people who regularly work out there, with Bozo, Slug, Wanda, and Julie being the primary tormentors. One day, the four play a joke on Melvin that causes him to eventually fall out of a window and into a vat of chemicals. Instead of killing him, the chemicals somehow give the 98 pound Melvin some much needed bulk and a horribly disfigured look. One of his first heroic acts since the transformation is saving the blind girl at a restaurant from some robbers, and it is there that the comedy ensues. Along the way, Toxie (as the former Melvin is now known) takes revenge on his tormentors, shaving one of the women bald, making another woman sit on hot coals, and killing their boyfriends. Toxie also cleans up the town of the other thugs and eventually, the corrupt mayor himself. The death scenes are hilarious, with one of the robbers in the restaurant being stuffed into an oven, while in another sequence, an old lady being given the dry cleaning treatment. The romance between Toxie and Sara (the blind girl) is also hilarious, especially when it is revealed that Sara keeps a stockpile of walking sticks that blind people carry when they are trying to not run into things. Yes, there is a fair share of gore, too, as the mayor's death is particularly gruesome.

The Toxic Avenger is the ideal movie for people who seek some humor and some gore. Neither is really in abundance, but there is the right amount of both to satisfy people who like one element over another.

Blades

From the people who came out with releases such as Cannibal: The Musical and The Toxic Avenger comes a rather silly movie with an absolutely absurd premise. Imagine a lawnmower that mysteriously gains a mind of its own and decides to cut down people who think having sex on the golf course at night is a good idea. Well, leave it to the folks at Troma to put that idea into practice.

Stop and read the opening paragraph again for a minute. That is about all that needs to be said about the plot for Blades. It couldn't be any simpler than that, so why would I want to be talking about this movie then? Like most of the movies talked about here, I had this one force fed to me, and being that I have a fairly high tolerance for blatantly dumb movies, I figured that it wouldn't be too bad. Well, what was a bad idea on paper was actually bad in practice, although it wasn't quite as bad as I thought it would be, and that is where the disappointment sets in for me. I was hoping that it would be completely over the top and in some ways, it is (e.g. lawnmower is on fire and jumps into the lake to put itself out, only to be running again afterwards). The murder scenes could have easily been much better, but given that it's hard to do so for a lawnmower when it is severely limited, I can understand. Really though, all logic should be thrown out the window with Blades because when an idea is stupid on paper, you shouldn't expect anything remotely intellectual to begin.