Twice Dead (1988)

A family inherits a home and moves in sight unseen, which is unfortunate since it's the hangout for a local gang, filled with junk, and lacks utilities. It is also the former home of Tyler Walker, an olde tyme magician who committed suicide after his beloved assistant - who is the families great aunt - left him for another man.

Rumors are the house is haunted, and indeed Tyler's ghost still haunts the third floor, which is filled with his possessions including a life size mannequin of the great aunt. Strange things happen, such as a noose wrapping itself around Scott's neck in the middle of the night, but none of the other family members believe there is a ghost present. Robin is the spitting image of her great aunt, and Tyler's ghost starts to help the family protect themselves from the gang of toughs, who consist of Silk, Crip, Stoney, Candy, Melvin, and two others.

Mom and Dad head back to Boulder to deal with some business problems, leaving Scott and Robin alone in the huge mansion, which is a real smart thing to do considering the gang has been stalking them. It's even more ridiculous as there had just been an incident in the middle of the night where the gang showed up in halloween masks, killed Robin's cat and nailed it to the backdoor, tried to rape Robin, and beat the hell out of Scott. Of course, the police won't do anything because no one actually saw the gangs faces. Yes, but let's leave the kids alone in the house. They'll be fine.

Scott and Robin decide to scare the gang off, which seems insane considering that something as harmless as asking the gang to stop hanging out at their home had made them targets for stalking and harrassment. The kids concoct an elaborate plan to scare the hell out of everyone and succeed. But instead of making the gang leave them alone, it just makes Silk even angrier and more interested in making them pay for humiliating him.

Late one night, an uncalled for pizza delivery guy shows up on their doorstep. Since it's the last stop of the night, the delivery boy says he'll sell it to them for five bucks as he'll just have to trash it otherwise. Scott agrees and is soon eating pizza and drinking coke, which oddly enough came in a container that looks like a cross between a paper milk carton and a dixie cup. Was soda ever really sold in this type of odd container?

Later Scott wakes up in a daze to find the entire gang partying in his living room. Seems the whole pizza ploy was arranged by Silk who put "liquid lude" in the coke carton. Crip goes upstairs with Robin, while the gang wreaks havoc downstairs, complete with the extremely corpulent Melvin repeatedly running over Tyler's mannequin with his motorcyle. Tyler just won't stand for this, and the gangs downfall begins.

Something to note: in the beggining of the film when the family is driving in the car, the close up scenes of the two kids appear to be two entirely different actors that closely resemble them.

Blood Song (1995)

Marius, a cutrate drunken composer, is hired to finish a symphony by the beautiful Gabriella, whose uncle was killed by vigilantes before he could finish the piece. Gabriella believes this will be a marvelous song to play at her upcoming wedding, which is very odd since the music sounds a bit dissonant and is titled Symphony for the Devil.

Carlotta, the uncles maid, is still caring for the house. She turns out to be waiting for the uncle to come back to life, which starts to occur once Marius gets to work on completing the piece. However Marius is starting to see the late uncles reflection when he looks in the mirror. He is also getting super drunk and having dreams in which he goes to the local brothel and kills prostitutes with piano wire. Oiks!! Gabrielle insists that Marius was at home all night, but the constable does not believe her. Neither does her fiance Julien, who wants Marius out of the house.

As the symphony becomes more complete, Gabrielle's late uncle inhabits Marius more frequently, and there are more dead prostitutes. The late uncles inhabitation is annoying later in the film, as some scenes have a tendency to show a shot of Marius, then a shot of the uncle in the mirror, over and over. It's disconcerting as it almost appears as if some random conversation is going on or as if he's talking to himself.

Trog (1970)

Oh Trog, you just know things aren't going to go well for the poor fellow. Spelunkers discover a cave not on any maps, and excited by their find, strip down to their underwear to swim under a ledge as far as they can. The first explorer finds... another cave (heavens!), and a large hairy apeman which promptly kills him.

Scientist Joan Crawford leads an expedition, along with one of the surviving spelunkers, to verify the apeman story and gets a fantastic photo of Trog throwing a rock at them. With this undisputable proof, Trog is quickly captured and confined to a cage in Crawfords lab. He's actually quite well behaved considering he's been ripped from his dark underground home and planted in a small cell where strange people stare at him, call him Trog, and attempt to teach him how to play with dolls.

While Trog has a huge ape head with apey hair cascading from it, the rest of his body is that of a man. He is even wearing a fur loin cloth. If he truly is the missing link, he might look a bit less like a man with an ape mask. The sounds he makes are like a cross between a lamb and a squeeky toy.

Crawford insists that Trog's brain holds secrets. In order to learn about evolution and past history, they must find a way to communicate with him. I suppose that could be true, if Trog happens to be a million years, but what if he's only thirty? So they implant a transmitter inside him, which is ridiculous as it doesn't seem like a great idea to operate on the only creature of it's kind when you know nothing about it's anatomy.

Afterwards Trog does manage to say one word, and we see a short film of dinosaurs, which I guess is supposed to be from Trog's memories. But mostly Trog just makes unintelligible noises, which start sounding more and more like a cross between a bad Peter Lorre imitation and a dalek.

You just know things aren't going to end well for Trog, especially after he kills Murdoch - an outspoken Trog hater - and kidnaps a little girl from a playground, taking her back to his home. I must mention that I am quite impressed by Trog's homing technique as I can't imagine how he could find his way back to the cave.

Crawford, whose hair appears to grow bigger and bigger throughout the film, talks Trog into giving back the girl, which means the army can then open fire on poor little Trog. Apparently they are bad shots as they have to shoot about a thousand rounds to even hit Trog, who then falls onto a stalagmite and die.

Mind Ripper (1995)

Scientists find a dying man in the desert and bring him back to their top secret underground experimental genetics lab to see what will happen if they pump him full of a virus. Six months later Lance Henriksen (who resigned from the facility due to ethical reasons) is getting ready for a camping trip with his kids when he gets a call that there is a problem with the guy with the virus. Lance heads out to the secret lab, taking his children and daughters oversexed boyfriend with him.

Security is pretty lax as even though he hasn't worked there in months, he can still gain entrance to the lab by scanning his hand and punching in a code. Since he's bringing three teenagers into the top secret underground genetic testing facility, I guess no one is all that concerned about the danger of toxic chemicals, nuclear fallout (as it's an old nuclear testing site), or the virus ridden genetic experiment gone amuck that necessitated the request for his help.

The half dead virus infested man has turned into a rampaging Chippendales dancer with an alien-like tentacle in his mouth, which comes out from under his tongue and zips into peoples brains. It's pretty disgusting, as well as a bit stupid looking as our muscle bound mutant has to keep opening his mouth as wide as possible before this thing can pop out of him. Very much an alien ripoff with a male dancer instead of an alien.

Raging Sharks

Corpses Are Forever (2003)

Malcolm Grant, a CIA operative, awakens to find he has no memory of his life. But under the influence of a hypnosis serum, Grant flashes back to a world in black and white where he has shorter hair, an Australian accent, fights zombies, has nightmares from a serial killers perspective, and is searching for his kidnapped son.

In the present, Grant is told that zombies walk the earth, and the only hold outs are Alaska and some of the Florida Keys. But oddly enough, the film only has about ten or fifteen zombies in it, and they are easily dispatched when Grant does a slow spinning kick that comes nowhere near them. In fact, he looks more like he's doing ballet rather than any sort of martial art.

The other problem with the zombies walk the earth premise is that in more than one scene, there is the sound of traffic competing with the dialogue. Did the zombies learn to drive or did the filmmakers assume we wouldn't notice? Even worse are scenes where cars are on the road in the background or the scene where Grant is informed the world has been overrun by zombies, but out the window of the office building there is traffic driving by and a person walking along the sidewalk. Eek!

The House on Sorority Row (1982)

Another early 80s slasher film, although this is a decent flick which stands out due to the competent acting and a different take on the standard plot, especially for a sorority movie. Horrid sorority mother, Mrs. Slater, always makes the girls leave the house as soon as school is over. But this year the girls decide to use the house for an end of the year party.

Mrs. Slater blows a gasket when she walks in on the girls getting drunk, and chastizes them. Ringleader Vicki sneaks her boyfriend into the house to put her new waterbed to use. But Mrs. Slater bursts in and slashes the bed with the head of her cane, ruining Vicki's encounter with her boyfriend. Vicki vows revenge, coming up with a plan involving the other girls and a gun. She's going to pretend to shoot Mrs. Slater. Doesn't sound like a good plan to me, but then again I'm not an insane sorority girl.

As expected their prank goes horribly wrong and Vicki accidentally shoots Mrs. Slater who falls back into the scummy green pool that never gets cleaned. Once the girls determine she is dead, they decide to tie her up in sheets, weight down her body, and dump her in the pool. Ah yes, a brilliant plan - no one will ever find her there.

That night, they hold their party as scheduled, and as with any drunken party where a pool is handy, several people end up jumping in. The girls are afraid someone will turn on the pool lights and see the body. But when the lights are turned on, they are shocked to see nothing in the pool. Thus the rash of killings commence.

Is Mrs. Slater still alive? Has she come back from the dead? Or is someone else killing the girls? Worth watching if you're into slasher films, or if you're into the band 4 Out of 5 Doctors, who play at the sorority party. They even have a song called Mr. Cool Shoes. Eeeek!!

The Initiation (1982)

Kelly has nightmares about stabbing her father after walking into her parents bedroom and seeing him in bed with her mother. Immediately after the stabbing, a strange man walks into the room, gets in a fight with her father, and catches on fire. As he thrashes around in flames, she and her parents run from the room. She's had this nightmare since she was nine years old, when she was in a coma for a few months, and has no memory of anything before the coma.

She decides to do a research paper on dreams for her psychology class, and her TA just happens to be a graduate student doing dream research for his masters degree. He talks her into seeing his research space in the basement, and convinces her to let him monitor her dream state. I thought he was going for a graduate degree in psychology, but later he says it is parapsychology, which is not the most scientific type of psych and I'm not sure if I would want to let him near my brain.

Running parallel to this story, Kelly is also pledging a sorority in which the initiation is for her to steal the key to her fathers building, which turns out to be a multi-story mall. Then the four pledges are supposed to steal the security guards uniform. What the pledges don't know is that Meagan, the bitter pledge master, plans to scare the hell out of them.

This leads to much running around the mall at night, with the obligatory testing the stores merchandise scenes. There is confusion, killing, people getting lost, more killing, and an ending that just comes out of nowhere. Did I happen to mention at the beginning seven prisoners escape from a sanitarium and Kelly's parents are concerned? Yes, well you'll forget all about that as the movie goes on since it really isn't revisited again. Then the ending will pull you up by your shoulders and slap you silly, leaving you asking what sort of relevance it has to anything.

And this movie wouldn't be complete without the "Come As Your Favorite Suppressed Desire" costume party at the frat house. One guy shows up dressed as a penis. A giant, head to toe, penis costume with a small cut out for his face. So.... his desire is what? I don't even want to make a guess.

Girls Nite Out (1982)

A very strange slasher film as there is no killing until a good length into the movie, and a complete lack of nudity. The film also has a sountrack that has lots of bubblegum music from the 60s and 70s, which is strange as it takes place in the 80s. On the night of the big football game, celebratory party, and scavenger hunt, the school's mascot is murdered, and his suit stolen. It's a very silly looking bear suit, but the thief takes four knives wrapped together with tape, puts them in the paw of the costume, and uses his deadly bear claws to kill students on campus while they are scavenging for the required items.

Hal Holbrook plays the campus security guard, whose own daughter was killed several years ago. And yes, it was during the schools big scavenger hunt. He even gets a call from someone claiming to have killed the current students as well as his daughter. But the real murderer hung himself in his cell earlier in the week.

The main suspect is Mike Pryor, a big brooding guy with a bad mullet, whose girlfriend is making out with the mascot at the party, even though she arrived with Mike. She's planning on dumping him later that evening, but feigns innocence and even takes a haughty attitude with Mike when he tells her he saw what she was doing.

Another suspect is Maniac, whose girlfriend just dumped him and is dating another guy. He runs into them at the party, and is upset that she won't get back together with him. However due to the strong homosexual overtones between Maniac and his best friend Teddy, I don't think he'll be lonely very long. These guys are overly touchy and get drunk in their bedroom, while bare chested. Maniac is also missing his pants, and Teddy is clinging to him like ugly on ape.

Teddy has a steady girlfriend, but also flirts with the waitress at the campus eatery, and girls at the party. Teddy's not such a great boyfriend since usually being a good boyfriend means you don't try to pick up other girls when you're at a party with your girlfriend. And you definitely don't go into a girl's bathroom while she's taking a bath and hand her a washcloth when she asks for a towel. Teddy is such a tool.

As with many early slasher films, there is a twist ending which you may, or may not, see coming. The killings are tame even by 80s standards, and most of the kids look way too old for college. But on the plus side, one of the guys who worked on the film had the last name of Hellfire, and the waitress in the film has a bicycle horn in her waistband. Honk honk!

Women's Prison Massacre (1983)

Also known as Emanuelle Escapes From Hell and Blade Violent, this badly dubbed Italian movie is the only one I can think of in which one prisoner insults another by calling her a "haughty hottentot." Emmanuelle, an investigative reporter, is framed and sent to prison while following a story on drug smuggling. Poor Emmanuelle. The female prison guards and female warden make her life hell, and so does their flunkie, Albina.....the albino.

Yeah, you heard me, an albino. And what a fine albino she is, due to her puzzling blunt haircut and bright red lipstick. All I could think of during her scenes was that I was watching either a Cloris Leachman character from a Mel Brooks movie, Edgar Winter's sister, or Rutger Hauer in drag.

Soon the prison opens it's doors to four escaped male convicts, lead by Crazy Boy. Before they are even put into a cell, they have over powered the female warden, female guard, and lone male guard, who stupidly gives up his weapon during a stand off. Crazy Boy and pals proceed to use the prison as a playground, while outside there are plans for the police to break into prison, since they are no match for four armed men. Yeah, it's as stupid as it sounds.

The police break in through a window in the hospital ward. Since it has bars, they repeatedly crash against it with their boots, alerting the semi-drugged and injured Albina, who promptly reports the happenings to Crazy Boy. Unfortunately, the police only go with three guys in gask masks, and a video camera operator, who they have not even bothered to equip with a mask. So I guess once they use the gas canisters, the video will quickly jolt to a nice view of the floor.

Slumberparty Massacre (1982)

Chicks. What's up with them? They have all girl slumber parties where they take off their bras and get all naked and stuff. Uh, no they don't. Having been to slumber parties as a teen, there was never a time when anyone got any naked. Nope. Just didn't happen.

And just for the record, if you answer your door and a pizza delivery boy with his eyes gouged out falls into your living room, the proper response is to shove the dead eyeless kid outside and slam the door. It is never proper to drag his corpse inside.

Spellcaster (1988)

Rock TV vj Rex brings a group of contestants to an old Italian castle where they will compete in a treasure hunt to find a million dollar check. Their host, Diablo, never makes it to dinner, but he does have a servant who pases on his regrets and takes care of the guests.

The guests are stereotypes and the killings are pretty tame. Adam Ant plays Diablo, but is rarely in the movie, which is unfortunate since that is why we chose to watch it. Mostly you see long fingernails around a crystal ball, and later on you find out it is Diablo. Also of note is this is a Charles Band film- enough said.

Brainscan (1994)

A babyfaced, lonely rich kid named Mike (Edward Furlong) spends his days playing video games, being president of the schools Horror Club, spying on the girl of his dreams next door, and hanging out with his only friend Kyle. After Kyle sees an ad for a new interactive game called Brainscan, Mike calls the number in the ad and skeptically asks questions about why the game is so great.

Even though he doesn't order it, the first disk arrives in the mail a few days later. Mike plays the game, which is a first person through the eyes of a killer adventure. It is so intense that Mike feels as if he were actually the one who stabbed the victim and removed his foot.

The next day, after raving to Kyle about the game, he finds out that a man in their town was brutally murdered and is missing a foot. As Mike realizes that the murder in the game was real, the Brainscan game vomits up a kind of creepy, kind of retarded looking guy named Trickster. He goads Mike into continuing the game, and each time Mike plays, he gets in deeper and deeper.

This movie wasn't bad, although it was really more of a thriller than a horror movie. The beginning of the movie seemed a bit slow, but the plot and continued harrassment by Trickster, who was really annoying, were effective. Frank Langella was sufficiently cold and business like as the police detective.

The interactive videogame plot has been worked to death, but this one is worth watching.

American Scream (1988)

Completely inexplicable movie with no real plot and scenes that go nowhere and make no sense. It's not funny enough to be a comedy, but not scary enough to be called horror. However it does have one thing going for it - Blackie Dammett as the preacher. He's creepy, he's spooky, plus he's the father of Anthony Keidis.

A family and two of their kid's friends, head off for a winter vacation in a small town. While the parents are treated well and have a great time, the teens are menaced by the townspeople who appear to hate kids. In fact, there are no kids anywhere in town, only adults.

There is also a strange man who drives around with his dead dog, a freaky couple with a baby who -when shown later - might be eating it, a guy in lederhosen who keeps staring at the kid while he's in the restroom at the dance, and a smiling head on a spike. And not one damn minute of it makes any sense at all.

We were confused. We were flummoxed. We were discombobulated. Random, bizaare, incomprehensible. Swine movie.......

Last Rites, aka Dracula's Last Rites (1980)

Mr. A. Lucard is the proprieter of the local funeral home. He and his blood sucking friends have a nice little set up going until Ted Fonda asks for the body of his wifes aunt. They want to have the viewing and funeral in her parlor, but the funeral home tells him that local laws forbid them giving him the body back at this point.

Ted shows up with another mortician who tells him there is no law that says they can not turn the body over to him or another funeral home. Lucard is furious when he finds out Ted has the body, as they remove the blood from the fresh bodies the old vampire way. After this they stake the bodies, and cover this up with mortician's wax and makeup.

Usually they do this immediately following the blood letting, but for some reason that is never explained, they neglected to stake old auntie, which is a problem as now she's lying in state in the downstairs parlor. Ted grows increasingly frustrated as the aunt's body disappears, burglars break into the house, and Lucard plots against him.

Yes, nothing is as it seems in this town or the funeral home.

Fresh Kill (1987)

Can someone tell me what this is on the cover? It appears to show male feet in sneakers, female feet in high heels, and an inexplicable thing on the ground that appears to be a two foot wide piece of grilled chicken and a pile of money. Surely it can't be chicken, but two out of three of us thought that's what it looked most like, while the third couldn't even hazard a guess.

This film has what must be the absolute WORST sound ever. You literally can not hear at least half of the film's dialogue due to traffic, wind, the ocean, background music, and ambient noise. It is truly unbelievable, as well as unforgivable. Often characters are obviously having a conversation, yet any sound that might be coming from their mouths is absent. Ultimately, we ended up fast forwarding through the last third of the movie because it didn't make any difference since the dialogue was buried.

This hideous little romp concerns a young man named Alec ( I think ) who goes to California to be an actor, but ends up working in a butcher shop. After a girl hides in the closed shop to elude two thugs, thing go terribly wrong when Alec accidentally kills one in self defense while waiting for a late night meat delivery. The girl then uses a meat cleaver to dispatch of the other. But instead of contacting the police, they speed off to the girl's mom's house, where Alec protests about how upset he is before succumbing to the girls sexual proposition.

Turns out the girl is the ex-girlfriend of the local drug czar played by Robert Zdar. While Alec and the girl take a helicopter ride, have a picnic, and eat pizza, crazy Zdar tries to find them, because one of the thugs was his brother and the girl is his ex-girlfriend.

Of special note is the scenic helicopter ride that they take to get to the romantic picnic in the field near the ocean. The picnic that is already set up and alone on the hillside. Sounds romantic enough, but ants would be all over that picnics hinder before that copter could even get there.

Tales From the Grave (2003)

Four tales of horror intercut with shadowy host segments featuring a second rate Cryptkeeper host, who spends the entire time in the shadow and with it's mouth out of sync with the words. The horror segments are shot on video, and sometimes the sun is so bright that any hope for a creepy atmosphere is dashed.

"Crazy Gunderman"
The town lunatic, hermit, and reputed warlock, Old Man Gunderson - white makeup in his hair, beard, and some smeared on his face - is rumored to curse anyone who messes with him, but that doesn't stop a stupid jock from beaning him in the back of the head with a basketball. After cursing the boy with nonsense chants and making it impossible for him to breathe, Gunderson wanders off muttering.

Todd tells his friend Mike - a horrible artist who appears to have let his grandmother decorate his apartment - how scary it was. This prompts Mike to declare that if they scare crazy Gunderman they will be famous. They go into the woods, find Gunderman's tent, and burst in on him during a satanic ritual. Oh crazy Gunderman, what will you do next?

Watch as Gunderman, who resembles Charles Manson, terrorizes the boys and makes every path in the woods lead back to his tent. Stare in disbelief as Todd ties Mike to a tree to keep him from sleepwalking. Look in jaw gaping confusion as crazy old man Gunderman's mind control makes Todd look like he's doing a bad 1950s dance. Isn't that scary, kids? Isn't it?!??!

"Hercaylac"
How this movie got Joe Estevez is a puzzler that will haunt you for the entire story. Estevez is writer Vinnie who decides to rent a cabin to keep from going crazy. But from his actions, it seems to be far too late for that. Most of this segment is Vinnie's rantings and ravings. Of particular interest are Vinnie throwing a typewriter through a window, and the hysterical lemon/pipe cleaner spider that jumps at Vinnie's neck!

"Lab Rats"
A man wakes up in a straight jacket in a white room. He has no idea where he is and does not know his name. Eventually he starts walking around the maze of white halls, sees lots of blood, and a partially dismembered-but still living - man. What is going on? What is it? Unfortunately, this tale is predictable and you'll know what the ending is before it's offered.

"The Billywack"
Legend has it that out in these here woods, there is a creature called the Billywack. This is unfortunate as a young couple picks this woody spot to do some late night parking, and damned if they don't park right in the Billywack's spot. What is a billywack, you ask? Damned if I know, but it appears to be covered in faux fur that was used in the 1970s to make those big furry rugs shaped like feet. Another story of legends come to life and the stupid kids that get in it's way.

Up From the Depths (1979)

I've actually seen this movie twice. It was an accident. During the screening, I was so mind numbingly confused that I blotted it from my mind. So when Michelle suggested we watch it again, I couldn't even remember seeing it. But I chanced my sanity by viewing it a second time.

A sea monster awakens from his slumber and starts indiscriminately killing treasure hunters, as well as tourists at a tropical resort. The resort manager doesn't want anyone to know an arm has washed up on the beach, as he will lose money if the guests leave. Meanwhile on a jetty, an alcoholic captain and a smooth talking hipster take a couple from the resort out in their boat in an attempt to con them out of some money. Havoc ensues as the sea monster keeps a-killing and the resort manager keeps his guests in the dark. This culminates in a crazy sea monster hunt which lets us know that all the guests are idiots.

The strange thing is that this is a horror movie, yet many of the characters are comedic. They throw one liners out of nowhere. And do you see the cover art? Who was it that okayed this, surely with the words, "Just make the picture look a little more like Jaws." Still mind numbingly awful, but not as puzzling the second time.

Slime City (1988)

Alex, a slightly effeminate college student with a virgin girlfriend, moves into an apartment building which turns out to be inhabited by the spirits of an occultist named Zachary and his followers, all of whom committed suicide. After a strange dinner with the downstairs neighbor, Alex expresses his sexual frustration by having sex with the heavy metal skank next door. These two events cause him to become intermittantly possessed by Zachary's spirit, and become an evil slime oozing monster. While not a good movie, it's got a certain charm and I enjoyed it.

The Fog (2005)

A questionable remake of the 70s horror movie of the same name, The Fog fills itself with stereotypical beautiful twenty somethings, computer generated fog, and a lack of palpable tension. Unlike the first movie in which Adrienne Barbeau played the sultry voiced dj Stevie Wayne, this versions Stevie has an on air personality that is so annoying you want to throw a brick at her head.

This delightful little romp's storyline revolves around a town that becomes over run with a fog bank that moves under it's own volition. As if that isn't creepy enough, this fog is filled with the ghosts from a ship filled with lepers that the towns founding fathers murdered. Oddly enough, the heroes vagabond girlfriend, who has returned to town just before the fog, is a dead ringer for the ghost leper leaders young bride. Unfortunately, she's also the stupidest girl alive, and destroys the only evidence about what is really happening in town. Go lepers!!