Escape From New York
(1981)
I have been thinking a lot lately about the sad state of the cool, tough guy
characters of times past that seem to missing from movie screens in recent years
and watching Snake Plisskin command the screen in "Escape From New
York" was a sad reminder that these classic characters are few and far
between anymore. Kurt Russell stars as Plisskin in this classic flick from
director John Carpenter when both of them were in their prime. The island
of Manhattan has been turned into a massive prison by simply building a wall
around it and dumping the criminals in to spend their lives as they
choose. There are no laws, no parole, and no escape. When Air Force
One is highjacked, the president escapes in a 
small
pod only to be kidnapped by the inhabitants of the prison. The only hope
that the US government has is to send in a soldier turned criminal named Snake
Plisskin to get him out. To add tension, Snake is only given 24 hours to
retrieve the president or else his arteries will explode and he will bleed to
death in a matter of minutes. Once inside, Snake meets a variety of great
characters including Ernest Borgnine ("The Poseidon Adventure") as a
friendly cabbie, Harry Dean Stanton ("Repo Man") as an intelligent
criminal named Brain, Adrienne Barbeau ("The Fog") as his squeeze,
Isaac Hayes ("Truck Turner") as Duke the most powerful dude in the
prison, Kurt's then wife Season Hubley ("Vice Squad") as a girl who
wants to get out, and Donald Pleasance ("Halloween") as the
president. Carpenter really shows his talent as an action director by
incorporating scares, suspense, fight scenes, conflict, and wrapping it all
together with one of the most memorable film scores in the genre and one of the
memorable lead characters. Also look for Frank Doubleday as the freaky
hissing punk with the president's finger and the Duke's super-cool car complete
with chandelier lights and a disco ball rear-view mirror ornament.
Capenter co-wrote this movie with Nick Castle who played the shape in the
original "Halloween" and directed "The Last Starfighter".
House On The Edge Of
The Park (1980)
This is the third of three movies that typecast actor David Hess as the
ultimate sleazy deviant. The other two were of course "Last House On
The Left" and "Hitchhike". It is unfortunate that Hess has
this title as his claim to fame but man, he plays the part so well. Hess
plays Alex, a stud who wants to boogie and who also happens to be a
rapist/murderer. Alex owns a garage and one night a rich couple come to
have their car repaired by Alex and his friend Ricky. After fixing the
car, our two bad boys invite themselves to a party that the yuppie couple are
going to. Things seem alright at the party until Alex notices the yuppies
taking advantage of and toying with them and soon he freaks out and begins an
hour of degradation, rape, and beatings. In comparison, I found "Last
House On The Left" to be a little more brutal as the victims are much more
sympathetic in that film with the exception of one scene involving the innocent
next door neighbor named Cindy. One thing that struck me as odd, however, is
that during one of the rape scenes the victim seems to be enjoying it and at
another point in the movie, a potential rape victim actually seduces the
character of Ricky. Both of these scenes were a little puzzling to
me. You are also witness to every female character appearing in some state
of undress and a final act with an explanation that
only an Italian exploitation movie could pull off. This film is an Italian
sleaze extravaganza as we have Ruggero Deodato ("Cannibal Holocaust")
directing, John Morghen ("Cannibal Ferox") as Hess' mentally slow
sidekick, Annie Belle ("Antropophagus 2") as the hot girl who takes a
shower, Christian Borromeo ("Tenebre") as the long haired yuppie who
gets his face smashed, Brigitte Petronio ("Emanuelle Around The
World") as the virginal Cindy, Lorraine De Selle ("Cannibal Ferox")
as the bored looking Gloria, and music by Riz Ortolani.
Zombi 3 (1988)
As far as zombie movies go, you can do much better than this one but as far
as trashy Euro horror splatter, you could do a hell of a lot worse. This flesh eating
outing involves a scientist whose new discovery is stolen and the thief is
contaminated by the chemical substance. This results in him turning into a
zombie, chopping off his hand, and murdering a hotel maid. The virus soon
spreads and things really get bad when the virus becomes airborne due to the
burning of the bodies. Yes, there were many shades of "Return Of The
Living Dead" in this one complete with people being clinically dead and a
former friend changing and saying 'I'm thirsty for your blood' instead of 'I
want to eat your brain'. I quite enjoyed "Zombi 3" for what it
was and there were a few decent gore effects including a half body surprise
after a piranha attack (I think), the aforementioned hand chopping, a bird
attack complete with pecking, a hillarious flying head gag, and a head
mash/quick unborn-baby food recipe. The acting by the head scientist was noticeably
bad as this guy looked like he was overacting at a theatre for nearsighted
people. Some of the cast includes Deran Sarafian (now a popular TV
director), Richard Raymond and Alex McBride from "Rats - Nights Of
Terror", and Ulli Reinthaler (Fulci's "Aenigma"). This was
co-directed by Italian genre directors Lucio Fulci (as a follow up to his
awesome "Zombie") and Bruno Mattei (who took over after Fulci quit the
project). I thought this was a lot more fun than it's reputation would
lead you to believe. Most fans of cheesy Italian horror movies should love
this.
Society (1989)
The directorial debut of Brian Yuzna is a bizarre look at what could be
behind the world of the rich and the strange rituals that their fictional
society engage in. Soap star Billy Warlock ("General Hospital")
plays Bill, a teenager who has everything going for him: he is a good looking,
popular, star athlete with rich parents. One other thing he has is a
feeling of paranoia that everything around him is not what it seems. This
is soon proven when an acquaintance named Blanchard secretly bugs Bill's sister's
earring and it is revealed that there are major issues of incest going on as
well as strange sexual rituals among the rich. Other strange things begin
happening and Bill begins to see weird body contortions and starts to question
his own sanity. Many of Yuzna's films deal with body modification
("Return Of The Living Dead 3") and weird creatures ("Bride Of
Re-Animator") and "Society" is the one that started it all.
While not for all tastes, it is difficult not to appreciate the sheer oddness
and originality of it all and there is no other movie where I can recall seeing
a man transform into a 'butthead' literally. There is also no other
place where I have seen a person turn inside out by way of a hand up the ass,
through the mouth, and then pulling the head out back through the ass.
This effect is absolutely disgusting and will stick with me for years.
Although these set pieces are pretty incredible, the movie as a whole is a
little slow for my taste but the last twenty minutes are worth the wait Playboy playmate Devin DeVasquez is the hot brunette with the sex scene and the
hair eating freaky mom, Heidi Kozak ("Friday The 13th Part VII",
"Slumber Party Massacre II") is Bill's shallow cheerleader girlfriend,
and Evan Richards ("Mute Witness") is the unpopular best friend.
The innovative make-up effects were done by Japanese make-up artist Screaming
Mad George who has also done 'surrealistic' effects like these in
"Freaked", "Silent Night Deadly Night V", and more.
Hell Asylum (2002)
"The Blair Witch Project" and a sickening amount of television
shows have spawned a new sub-genre that has become something that people do not
like to admit that they like. This type of thinking is what tends to
create a cult following and I think that these so-called 'reality' movies are
going to be something that people seek out one day in the same way they seek out
disaster movies, killer bug movies, or rock and roll horror movies.
"Hell Asylum" is a low budget entry into this genre and I found it to
be not a bad way to spend 70 minutes. Tim Muskatell stars as Max, a TV
producer who needs a hit and comes up with a concept entitled the 'Chill
Challenge' where contestants spend a night in a haunted house and face their
fears. Think of it like "Fear Factor" meets "The House On
Haunted Hill". Our five contestants are (in typical b-movie fashion)
young, good looking, and have clashing personalities. We have Stacey
(Stacey Scowley) the cute blonde, Rainbow (Sunny Lombardo) the goth chick, Amber
(Tanya Dempsey) the snobby blonde, Marti (Olimpia Fernandez) the buff black
chick, and Paige (Debra Mayer) the bitch. The contestants are all herded
into a safe room where they are given headsets and await instructions where they
will explore the house and face their fears. By this point, I was quite
intrigued and looking forward to both what the reality show would come up with
and how our contestants would deal with the challenges. Unfortunately for
me (and the girls) some hooded spectres show up and begin to murder our fair
maidens before they even have a chance to face any challenges. I was quite
disappointed that such a promising idea took such a quick turn and became
another low budget slasher flick. Another thing that was a little
perturbing was that only one of the girls stripped down (and this was just to a
bra and panties). So they dropped the ball on a good idea and then didn't
even deliver the slasher movie staples of gore and nudity unless you count blood
and body parts dumped down a chimney as gore. Sure there was a lot of
blood and guts but most of it was lazily splashed across the screen. It
would have been a lot more impressive had we seen some more make-up effects and
action shots rather than aftermath shots featuring fake blood and body
parts. I was also wondering what was up with the spaghetti
intestines. Nevertheless, I watched the whole movie and enjoyed it but I certainly will not get my hopes up next time I see a 'reality'
horror movie. Director Danny Draven obviously knows what he is doing and
can tell an entertaining story that is of much better quality than the majority
of low budget offerings, I just wish that the script had expanded more on
the potential it began with. Look for a barely recognizable Brinke Stevens as the head
spectre as well as Joe Estevez (b-movie staple/brother of Martin Sheen) as Stan
the investor. This movie was written by Trent Haaga who got his start with
Troma.
The Last Hunter (1980)
Vietnam looks extremely grim in this wicked war action movie from Italian
director Antonio Margheriti ("Cannibal Apocalypse"). David
Warbeck ("The Beyond") stars as Harry Morris, a soldier who is on a
solo mission to blow up a radio tower behind enemy lines. After an tense
opening sequence in a whorehouse, we are propelled right into the action as
Morris is dumped from a chopper into a river where he soon meets up with a small
squad of Americans including Tony King ("Bucktown"), Bobby Rhodes (the
pimp from "Demons"), Tisa Farrow (Mia's sister who was also in Fulci's
"Zombie"), John Steiner ("Caligula"), and Margi Eveline
Newton ("Hell Of The Living Dead"). By Italian genre movie
standards, this is an all-star cast! The war scenes are quite brutal and
scary with things blowing up everywhere (almost too close to the actors), eyes
being shot out, people being disemboweled, horny soldiers attempting to rape
poor Tisa, a twisted game of coconut fetching, and pungent corpses falling from
trees. Maybe I'm giving the movie too much credit but this film did not
glamorize war in the least and things were pretty intense, exciting, and
entertaining from the first frame. A particularly nasty scene finds Morris
captured by the Vietcong and thrown in a bamboo cell in the river where he is
accosted by hungry river rats that were quite intimidating. Sure there
were some nods to "The Deer Hunter" and "Apocalypse Now" but
overall, this was totally easy to watch, action packed, effects filled, and I
hope that it gets some more recognition as it is much better than many of the
action movies that came out of the era. David Warbeck always brought a
decent performance to the screen and oozed cool. Watching him in a movie
like this, one wonders why his career did not get bigger than the string of
Italian films from the 80's. It's a damn shame that he is no longer with
us. Dardano Sacchetti co-wrote the screenplay.
Squirm (1976)
I thought I was going to get a standard horror movie here but what I got was
a campy throwback to 50's b-movies with more killer worms than I ever thought I
would see. Don Scardino ("Cruising") stars as Mick, a pretty
uncool guy from New York who has come to a small fishing town called Fly Creek
to visit his new girlfriend Geri (Patricia Pearcy). Upon arrival, he is
forced to walk through the bush as a recent electrical storm has flooded the
main road and has cut off all electricity to the town. Fortunately for
Mick, Geri also happens to be wandering in the same bushes and they soon end up
back at Geri's house to meet her overacting mom and pothead sister.
Unbeknownst to all of them, the recent
electrical storm has turned the local
earthworm population into killer worms with a thirst for blood. It is also
unfortunate for our odd group of main characters that they live next door to a
worm farm that is run by a dimwitted man named Roger (who has an unhealthy crush
on Geri) and his overbearing dad. While the movie itself did not move
along very quickly for a horror movie, it kept me interested with it's constant
demand for my suspension of disbelief as characters kept doing the weirdest
things. These moments included characters walking around in wet pants for
much too long, having showers at odd hours of the day, and continuing to walk
even after their head had been tunneled through by the worms. The number
of actual worm deaths shown on screen was minimal but the sheer volume of worms
has to be seen. This was a decent entry into the 'nature runs amok' sub genre
and was never dull to watch. Director Jeff Lieberman also made the equally
entertaining "Blue Sunshine" and "Just Before Dawn".
Editor Brian Smedley-Aston also produced the British movie "Vampyres".
Rick Baker designed the 'worm man' effect. The movie also shows us that
knocking over a salt shaker really does bring bad luck.
Air Marshal (2003)
I just wrote a review of this, erased it, and am now trying again. It
is difficult with these straight to video action movies when there is not one
person in the cast that I can really relate to. In most cases, there is at
least one actor who is on career life support and it is at least interesting to
see some of these actors make an appearance somewhere other than on "E True
Hollywood Story" or the 'Gone But Not Forgotten' section in the
Psychotronic Video Guide. In the case of "Air Marshal", there is
not one cast member that I can bring up other than Tim Thomerson ("Trancers")
but he has made so many low budget action movies that his presence is beginning
to be expected rather than a treat. In any case, the thin plot revolves
around a US air marshal who has to deal with a hijacking. Sure this was
inspired by 9-11 and is a real pro-America rah rah rah type script but it was a
little much when the writers had the nerve to make a character utter the
infamous "let's roll" line in an obvious nod to the Pennsylvania crash
of 2001. While the movie was watchable, I didn't feel like the villains
had much pizzazz and our hero was not very heroic to me and seemed more like a
buffoon than an action star. Maybe it was the music or something but I was
never really gunning for this guy. Not much more to say other than the
fact that one of the stewardesses (Kate Connor) was kinda cute. Don't even
get me started on the CG planes...
Hollywood Vampyr (2002)
Brain Damage Films strikes again with what plays out like another classroom
scare film about the goth scene. I don't understand why they think that
goths are so scary and have such a bad influence on the youths of today.
Maybe they are crazy religious folks or maybe goths really are scary but I don't
see it because I used to be involved in the subculture. Anyways, people
are ending up dead in an American city and the police are blaming the goth scene
and it's two most influential figures Blood (Trevor Goddard) and Anubus (Mark
Invingsen). Also involved in the main plot is a girl named Fatal who is
pregnant with Anubus' child and has a tutor named Tom who is concerned with her
appearance and attitude. After Fatal loses her child, she decides to get
away from the goth life while the previous straight shooter Tom decides to
become a goth full time and seems to have been born with the ability to apply
his own make-up even though he knew nothing of the subculture. Things get
even weirder when, after a homoerotic scene with Blood, Tom decides he is gay
and proceeds to blurt this out to his unsympathetic college professor (Muse
Watson from "If I Die Before I Wake"). We also have some
conflict when Blood is fired from Anubus' goth club and decides to open his own
but ends up creating the lamest looking club ever that made the cafeteria used
in my grade 8 school dance look cool. Overall I was bored and astounded at
the ignorance of the filmmakers in trying to make these characters so evil when
to me they just looked like lame-ass poseurs. This one made me like Brain
Damage's other gothsploitation film simply entitled "Goth" a whole bunch
more. Trevor Goddard played Kano in "Mortal Kombat" and had a
lead role on the TV series "JAG". He died in 2003 of an apparent
drug overdose.
Straw Dogs (1971)
A film whose reputation precedes it, "Straw Dogs" is a depressing
look at a dysfunctional couple who move into a small house in the English
countryside. David (Dustin Hoffman) is a neurotic math nerd who is
obsessed with his work while his wife Amy (Susan George) is a young hottie who is quite playful
and wants to enjoy life. We soon learn that Amy used to live in the small
town and also used to date a local bad boy who still has a thing for her.
During a brief conversation, it is established that said local bad boy will join
some other locals in the completion of some work on David and Amy's
garage. This brings them closer to the house and the combination of
David's neglect of Amy's needs and Amy's suggestive behaviour and clothing
brings escalating harassment towards the couple. It culminates in a
notorious rape scene that confused me as to whether Amy was enjoying it or not
(at least until the second rape occurred). Things progress from bad to
worse when a local sexual deviant named Henry Niles (David Warner) goes off with
a local girl and ends up at David and Amy's house after the girl goes
missing. A manhunt by the local thugs for Niles culminates in a siege on
the house and David having to make some decisions on how to deal with a
frightening situation. I know that my synopsis sounds fairly clinical but
this is a serious movie with nonstandard characters and an intensity that is
rarely seen like this. Usually when we see a couple encountering danger,
we see them team up and work together to fight off the evil but in this film the
suspense is heightened further by the fact that the couple is fighting between
themselves in addition to the external threat. Sam Peckinpah did an
amazing job with this film in his handling of the characters, the incredible
locations, the tense tone throughout, and the growing sense of the fact that
everything is going to come to a head in ways that no one thought imaginable at
the beginning of the film. By the end I was questioning what was a worse
character trait, the arrogance of the locals and how they felt like they could
take whatever they wanted or the ignorance of David towards just about
everything. While some may feel like this movie is slow paced, I think it
merits repeated viewings as their are many layers to both the characters and the
plot. Susan George was also in "Dirty Mary Crazy Larry" and
eventually married "The Manimal" Simon McCorkindale. She is currently
concentrating on their Arabian horse farm in England.
Scrubbers (1983)
I knew this was not going to be a typical women in prison flick but I also
didn't think it was going to be quite this boring. Maybe this is what
women's prison was really like in the 80's but I am so used to seeing the likes
of Wendy O. Williams and Sybil Danning in flicks like this that a serious take
on the genre seemed a little dull. We open with a couple of girls escaping
from the borstal. This does not last long as one of them is almost
immediately apprehended and the other is caught soon thereafter when trying to
visit her kid in an orphanage. What follows is a slow paced movie with
lots of shouting, dirty limericks, and drama that I just wasn't very interested
in. Aside from one punk haired girl who I think was in "Sid And
Nancy", most of the characters were
relatively unappealing and therefore I was not terribly interested in their
fates. Maybe my expectations of exploitation got the better of me but this
played out more like a made for females anti-WIP flick
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