Reviews

"CSPWDT" is a creation by the talented Bob/Benjamin Clark (Porkys/Christmas Story), and this film reveals his love for cinema, plus his devotion for theatrical stage presentations. The awkward cast and desolate sets are a credit to his young genius in this best of early 70s shock-o-rama drive-in delight. Alan Ormsby (director of "The Substitute") is the flamboyant leader heading an acting company of young wannabees who all sail to a deserted island off the coast of what I think is Florida. There, like college hazings he torments his crew with tricks and very hammy acting. Alan (it's his film name too)and his real-life sister Anya(her film name also)along with an ensemble of seventies post-hippie actors and stagehands are left at mercy of Alan's cruelty and megalomania in a remote cemetary. Alan bullies and requires his crew to participate in his sick fantasy of satanic worship and perverted ghoulish delights. The tables are turned, and Alan is discovered to be harboring a desire for necrophilia. My favorite character is Anya, who I suspect is tripping on acid during her scenes. The jokes are funny. It's black comedy shines, and the ending is astounding. It may be a collection of other popular films (even a film in the future "Weekend at Bernies")but, collectively this fright flick authentically one of the best horror/comedies I've ever seen. I have only one complaint. The old VHS is better than the DVD. DVD color is melted, but that doesn't change the brilliant acting and dialogue.

I just watched this beach flick and I'm certain that the music in Rocky Horror was influenced by this awesome surf and skin flick. There's even a scene where Tommy Kirk has a "Transducer". The story is less than ridiculous and that makes it enjoyable camp from the summer in America before the Beatles. West Side Story it's not, but the dancing and music are so expertly snychronized you'll think the actors are computerized. Look for Buster Keaton as "Cowabunga", he steals the show!

I just watched this beach flick and I'm certain that the music in Rocky Horror was influenced by this awesome surf and skin flick. There's even a scene where Tommy Kirk has a "Transducer". The story is less than ridiculous and that makes it enjoyable camp from the summer in America before the Beatles. West Side Story it's not, but the dancing and music are so expertly snychronized you'll think the actors are computerized. Look for Buster Keaton as "Cowabunga", he steals the show!

The latest of serial killer direct to video is "Gacy". Filmed in California that passes for Chicago, except for the mountains behind Gacy's house, this movie is really a good look at Gacy from certain angles. Played by Mark Holton who you would remember as the younger Buxton in Pee Wee's Big Adventure, does a superb job as Gacy. Overall, the story doesn't fit, the time frames are weak at best, and the overall truth of the crimes are overlooked. The Gacy residence yielded over two dozen bodies, and the film never gets close to those facts. The smell of Gacy's home is overplayed with black comedy that just doesn't work, and the supporting cast's sub-plots are led nowhere. Horror seekers are fooled by the vicious clown "Pogo" on the cover of the DVD, only to be let down when there isn't much violence paraded here. The next round of real-life serial killer DVDs will emerge with even more incorrect facts and sensational killing chapters just to satisfy an audience of horror seekers looking for Freddy/Jason/Meyers violence only to be let down to find out real serial killers look and sound like anyone else. The gruesome reality of Gacy's sick and demented mind couldn't be painted onto a canvas like a simple Pogo watercolor. The suffering he caused and the torture he inflicted is way too perverted and ghoulish for any audience at any age. To show these hideous events unfold and act out on your DVD is too graphic for even the most hardened splatter fan. Real people died, and the memory of them I'm sure says in someone's scarred mind somewhere including the people who knew Gacy and watched him die on the lethal machine May 94.

Don Dohler, the unsung hero of home-grown sci-fi, has finally come to DVD. The Alien Factor is a complete cheeseball that has a decent storyline and hypnotic music to enjoy while laughing at impossibly cheap alien costumes. If I were Don, I'd want to sue Steven Spielburg for ripping off his idea of marooned aliens. The whole show is fun, the alien make-up is actually scary. Unlike the following John Waters attained from his home-grown Baltimore movies, Don Dohler's overlooked home-grown Baltimore movies will be considered cult classics someday thanks to these fantastic revival DVDs.

This is a good ole' movie about some mangy brothers who free their Indian buddy, Cima, from the police. Leroy, a Lord loving psychotic, and his mentally retarded brother, Wilbur, kill cops and innocent people during a series of bizarre kidnapings. Sound typical? Well, actually it has a rural theme that makes the killers seem like charming fellows in only a way the drive-in could, back in '73. The sound track is very entertaining, and is a delight as the movie rolls out on the road, and straight to hell.

I just purchased the re-release of "Last House" on VHS from MGM Movietime for less than $10. I watched the film and was bitterly disappointed at the reduction of quality compared to the 1985 Vestron Video I already owned. The new video was inferior, and was not only formatted to fit your TV, it was out of focus and left a great deal of the picture out of frame. The film itself is campy, with hokey country background score put the beat of an amateur production. There's two girls looking for pot that end up in the hands of four psychotic kidnaping perverts. Coincidentally, they are led to woods where the main girl lives, humiliated, and then led to their fates by the hands of disgusting criminals. The movie isn't as disturbing as "Chainsaw Massacre", or as gruesome as "Henry: Portrait Of A Serial Killer", but has a couple scenes that one might find rather unsettling. The original film deserves a widescreen DVD revival that hasn't happened yet. I hope it's better than the murky copy I just bought.

I've just bought the DVD for "Parasite". The widescreen DVD is totally superior to the old vhs rental copies, and the fun of this awesome 80s prediction film only gets better with age. The debut of Demi Moore isn't even nearly as interesting as the campy story of a scientist meeting a bunch of strange early eighties punk bikers (who have to be the stupidest gang I've ever seen)and unleash a big wormy looking monster with teeth. The story is fun and scary at the same time. The world was going to come to and end in '92, well that was '83 thinking anyway. There's no end to the fury of bad films you love being promoted to DVD. This one of them.

The Hemmingway sisters play out rape scences that are intensely graphic and insanely perverse in this lost HBO presentation from '78. The rape scenes are so sick and twisted(lipstick humiliation on a teenager)that it leaves the viewer senseless. In the same light, beautiful women are depicted as sides of beef all for the glory of last ridiculous stand-off with the rapist. If this becomes available on disc, I'll be suprised because of the graphic acts and language.

As you may have read, it is indeed a very cheesy drama based on the Manson Killings. Actually, it's a "statement" film that doesn't "cop out". The film introduces our pseudo-Manson character,"Moon",who arranges sex parties for rich people and in his spare time introduces his friends to the last chapter of the bible while tripping. In the meantime the music is quite pleasing, and the whole film rolls by like an old record. If you enjoy Manson films, I think you'll be let down. The story is non-existent, but some swingers getting ready for an orgy nonchalantly as if going to a luncheon might be worth examining again. The characters are reduced to idiot strippers and goons. I loved that wild background score, so I can't say I didn't think it was a good movie, despite the desperate attempt to imitate what happened to Sharon Tate and others in August of '69.

The worst horror film ever made I think is, Boogyman 2. There's almost no story at all except for scant spooky scenes involving a possesed piece of broken mirror. The film is so slow and dull even a very old John Carradine can't help it from stinking. There's always the stupidest film that can be entertaining in a great way, but this isn't one of them. Avoid this waste of your attention.

Like all Nite Owl Theater DVDs, this Fred Olan Ray film is a mess of tired special effects, poor acting, and nudity. There's a weak plot about a beautiful aging actress who turns into a six and a half foot tall rubber monster that rips people up here and there. There's a detective or something and a scientist or something..that doesn't really matter if you're just waiting to see a bare body in a following scene because that's all there is here. A cheap soap opera with pathetic monsters. There's alot of entertaining alien films out there..this isn't one of them.

Multiply named and strangely casted, "One Dark Night" aka "Mausoleum", is one of the better early horror video-rentals. Original and quite raw, we meet Adam West briefly in this film about telekinesis and teen-age headgames. Meg Tilly is dared into spending the night in a crypt by "The Sisters" a high-school gang of hair-hoppers in blue satin jackets. The initiation is interrupted by the recently interred body of a mass-murdering psychic wizard called "Raymar". Surprisingly awesome make-up and scare effects paints this chiller film with style and deliver a heart-pounding climax.

Dixie Peabody stars as "Dag" in this hypnotic biker film. Dag and her two male biker friends search for the murderer of Dag's brother, who was shot during a party. The film marches the trio into constant trouble,and a friendly encounter with Dan"Grizzly Adams"Haggerty as a young hippie. The music in the film reflects the times of free love and peacenik joy, but the background score in the flashback scenes invoke a witchy pride to the story that itself is dreamy and illusionary.

If your looking for a very funny and weird 70's horror movie, try to locate a copy of "Dr. Gore". J.G."Pat" Patterson pretends to be Dr. Frankenstien in this homegrown gore-flick with the help of his hunchback,cigar-smoking, bearded helper, "Greg". His goal is to create a perfect woman from parts he manages to cut off unwilling subjects. I love all the cheap laboratory effects(including wrapping a woman in Reynolds Wrap, then setting the stage alive with fireworks),and I can recommend this movie to anyone who loves cheap cinema and Herschell Gordon Lewis who tells about J.G. Patterson in the preface of the film.

I found this movie in a bargain bin a week ago, and I thought it was an outstandingly great b-flick with a strange story about killer mutant slugs and sexy moms. There is a scene where a loud older woman in cats-eye glasses chews out a new one for a disinterested city worker. That act alone is worth the $25 price tag on the DVD