BLOOD (1974) - This is one of Andy Milligan's least-seen, but most enjoyable films (it also doesn't hurt that it's a tad under one hour in length). Of course, to enjoy any Andy Milligan flick, you need two things: 1) a tolerance for long-winded dialogue scenes and 2) an understanding of why the homosexual Milligan thought so little of the Catholic Church or its religion (reading Jimmy McDonough's book, "The Ghastly One: The Sex-Gore Netherworld Of Filmmaker Andy Milligan" should also be a prerequisite for anyone interested in Andy's films or simply the life of a tortured soul). To me, at least, there's no doubt that Milligan had talent; for no matter how much he prattled-on about his distaste for religion, he at least transported the viewer to some alternate universe where people spoke the Queen's English even in the most extraordinary of circumstances. Watching a Milligan film is akin to stepping in a time machine (anachronisms be damned!) and being transported to an era that only existed in Milligan's twisted mind. BLOOD opens sometime in the late Nineteenth Century, with Dr. Lawrence Orlofski (Allan Berendt) returning to the United States (Staten Island, NY, to be more precise) with his wife Regina (Hope Stansbury), who suffers from a rare blood disorder where exposure to five minutes of sunlight could burn her alive (We see the effects of the sun on her face in the beginning of the film when Dr. Orlofski and his servants fail to bring Regina into the new house in a timely manner. Maybe they should have waited until nightfall. Just a thought.). Regina must be injected weekly with a serum her husband has created to allow her to live a normal life. Dr. Orlofski believes that their solicitor, Carl Root (John Wallowitch), may be robbing them blind and plans on confronting him about it in the near future because he needs the family fortune to continue his research. Carrie (Patti Gaul), the good doctor's assistant, is in love with Dr. Orlofski and a practicing Catholic, which pisses-off Regina because she has an aversion to Carrie's crucifix. Carrie also has a bad infection in one of her legs and may have to have it amputated if Dr. Orlofski doesn't cure it soon. Speaking of legs, the Orlofski's butler, Orlando (Michael Fischetti), is missing both of his and gets around in a wheeled cart that he pushes around with his hands. The maid, Carlotta (Pichulina Hempi), is a deaf mute who also must take daily injections in her junkie-scarred arm. As you can probably tell, this is one fucked-up household and to add insult to injury, Orlando and Carrie drain a couple of pints of blood from Carlotta nightly (for use in the doctor's serum) and there are a bunch of man-eating plants in the basement (the doctor uses extracts from the plants for the serum) and they are growing hungrier by the minute (one of them tries to bite Orlando's hand off!). When Dr. Orlofski finally visits Carl Root, he discovers that there is not much money left in the family fortune (Carl has been robbing them blind), but there's not much he can do when Carl threatens to expose the doctor's real last name, Talbot (Larry Talbot? Uh, oh!). When Carrie's brother, Tommy (David Bevans) comes for a visit and sees what a sorry state his sister's leg is in (it turns out that Carrie's leg was another victim of those damned basement plants), he threatens to go to the police, but Regina lures him down to the basement, buries a meat cleaver in his head (a Milligan staple) and dissolves his body in a tub of acid (the bottles have "ACID" crudely written on them with magic marker!). Nosy realtor Mr. Markham (Martin Raymart), who is renting the house to Dr. Orlofski, sneaks into the house and when he is caught snooping around, Orlando knocks him out with a shovel and feeds him to the plants, while Regina chops-off the head of a live mouse (there's really no reason for showing it, but Milligan does) and eats it! Dr. Orlofski gains the trust of Carl's secretary, Prudence (Pamela Towers), they fall in love and she agrees to help him recover papers from Carl's office that will return the family fortune. In a not-so-surprising twist, we discover that Larry is a werewolf, Regina is a vampire and their marriage was pre-arranged in the "Old Country" between the Talbot and the Dracula families! The finale finds a fully transformed Larry battling a dimestore-fanged Regina as the house burns around them. In the Epilogue, the house is restored and is then bought by Baron and Mme. Von Frankenstein! My hand to God!  The first thing you'll notice about BLOOD is how quickly it moves, which, if you're an Andy Milligan fan like me, is highly unusual. This could be because of the participation of producer Walter Kent (who also has a small role as a man in Carl's office and whose entire movie career seems to be just this film) and not Milligan's usual producers, the legendary William Mishkin (Milligan's BLOODTHIRSTY BUTCHERS - 1970; THE MAN WITH TWO HEADS -1972) and later, his son, Lew Mishkin (CARNAGE - 1983; MONSTROSITY - 1987), who always "tinkered" with Milligan's finished product. There are some noticeable jump edits here, especially during the film's bloodier scenes (and there are a few, including Johnny's murder, the lancing of Carrie's puss-filled leg, Prudence's neck-biting and the mouse head-eating scene), but those were probably done at the behest of distributor Bryanston Films, a Mob-run business who were notorious for cutting films to their bare minimum for playing on the bottom tier of double and triple features (just look what they did to JACK THE RIPPER GOES WEST [1974] and LEGACY OF SATAN [1972] for further proof). The IMDB lists a running time of 74 minutes, a claim I find highly dubious. Still, this is one of Andy Milligan's most accomplished efforts and Milligan fans (you know who you are) should search it out. Also starring Hazel Wolffs, Joe Downing and Eve Crosby as Petra, an old hag who gets her hands cut off (the sight of her obvious mannequin arms during the aftermath is hilarious). I don't believe this ever received a legitimate home video release in the U.S.; the print I viewed was sourced from the British VHS tape from Iver Film Services. Not available on DVD. Rated R.

BLOOD RAGE (1984) - Extremely gory Florida-lensed regional horror film. You may have seen this film under its alternate title, NIGHTMARE AT SHADOW WOODS (released to theaters and cable TV under this title in 1987), and are saying to yourself, "Hey, Mr. Smarty Pants, this film isn't bloody at all!", but what you watched was a severely edited version of the film. Not only were all the gory murders totally removed and sequences switched around, even the ending was changed to "soften" the film. If you want the entire bloody goods, then your only choice is the BLOOD RAGE version, and it's a keeper. At a drive-in in Jacksonville, Florida (where they are showing THE HOUSE THAT CRIED MURDER [a.k.a. THE BRIDE] - 1973, which turns out to be a sly in-joke, because BLOOD's director, John Grissmer, produced and co-wrote it!) during the Summer of 1974, sex is running rampant (Ted Raimi puts in a cameo as a condom salesman in the drive-in's mens room) and even Maddie (Louise Lasser; SLITHER - 1973), the divorced mother of identical twins Todd and Terry (who are sleeping in the back seat), wants a little lovin' from her new boyfriend. The twin boys wake up and sneak out of the car while Mom is necking and Terry picks up a hatchet,  walks a few cars away, whacks a necking guy about the face until it is nothing but a bloody pulp and then gives the hatchet to Todd, wipes the dead guy's blood on his face and screams for Mommy to look what Todd has done. Todd is committed to a mental institution and ten years pass. Todd's psychiatrist, Dr. Berman (Producer Marianne Kanter), informs Maddie that Todd's memory has come back and he remembers Terry committing the murder. Maddie, of course, doesn't believe Todd (Mark Soper; THE UNDERSTUDY: GRAVEYARD SHIFT II - 1988) and continues to treat him like a child, while Terry (Soper again) is seemingly living the normal life of a teenager. While Dr. Berman tries to free Todd from the institution, Maddie announces over dinner that she is marrying her long-time fiancé Brad (Bill Fuller), the manager of the Shadow Woods apartment complex they live in, which upsets Terry, but he hides it with a fake smile. Todd escapes from the institution before Dr. Berman can legally release him and soon the murders begin. Dr. Berman shows up at Shadow Woods with her assistant Jackie (Doug Weisner) and a tranquilizer pistol and begin their search for Todd, while Terry (or is it Todd?) walks into Brad's office and cuts off his hand with a machete. Todd/Terry make Jackie the next victim by running him through with the machete. Dr. Berman is next on the list when she is cut in two at her waist. Wouldn't you know it, Terry's virgin girlfriend, Karen (Julie Gordon; SUPER FUZZ - 1980), decides tonight's the night she wants to pop her cherry, but she asks Todd instead, who is more than happy to oblige, but Karen figures out who he is before he can get in her panties. It all ends in a bloody mess of mistaken identities, as Terry goes about killing everyone in sight (he's a virgin, too, but he only has eyes for Mommy!) and, once again, blaming Todd for it all. Will Mother set everything right?  There is not much that is surprising story-wise in BLOOD RAGE, but director John M. Grissmer (SCALPEL - 1976) and screenwriter Bruce Rubin (ZAPPED! - 1982, who takes the pseudonym "Richard Lamden" here) offer so many gory deaths and unusual character traits, it's hard not to get involved in the goings-on. Louise Lasser is her usual nutso neurotic self. When she is not drinking heavily, she can be found sitting on the kitchen floor in front of an open refrigerator, pigging out on whatever is available or vacuuming the house while soused. There's a long sequence where an intoxicated Maddie tries to call Brad (who is already dead) on the phone and she gives the operator a hard time or keeps dialing the wrong number. I'm flummoxed why this sequence is even in the movie at all, when all Maddie has to do is walk a couple of door down to Brad's office, which she ends up doing in the finale. Maybe it was in Ms. Lasser's contract that she needed more screen time and this is what Bruce Rubin came up with. But it's the gore on display that will make you sit up and take notice. The sexually repressed Terry kills without mercy, whether it's decapitating neighbor Julie's (Jayne Bentzen) sugar daddy and hanging his head at her front door; cutting off Brad's hand and positioning his head on the stump; cutting Dr. Berman in two so that she can watch her legs twitching before she dies; slicing-up Gregg (Chad Montgomery) and Andrea (Lisa Randall) while they are making love on the pool's diving board; shoving a barbeque fork into Artie's (James Farrell) neck; Karen discovering Terry stabbing Julia in the chest with a machete, before Karen grabs Julia's baby and makes a mad dash for their lives; Maddie discovering Brad's posed body and then discovering that his head was cleaved in two; and the frantic finale, where Maddie puts an end to the horror at the apartment complex's indoor pool and then commits suicide when she realizes she killed the wrong son! (In the NIGHTMARE version, she doesn't commit suicide). Add copious amounts of nudity and a twisted sense of humor (although Mark Soper is weak as an actor) and most horror fans will probably have a good time with this. Also starring Gerry Lou, Ed French and twins Keith & Ross Hall as young Terry and Todd. The VHS tape from Prism Entertainment is the only uncut version of this film available. All other versions are cut to threads and unwatchable. Rated R.

THE CHILDREN (1980) - It's hard to make a list of the best low-budget horror film of the early 80's and not have this film appear in the top twenty. It's moody, scary and, above all, shocking in the way it deals with children killing adults and adults killing children. A toxic leak at the Yankee Power Company's nuclear power plant causes a radioactive fog in which a school bus full of children from the town of Ravensback passes through (this film is a.k.a. THE CHILDREN OF RAVENSBACK). Sheriff Billy Hart (Gil Rogers) finds the bus abandoned on the side of a road opposite a graveyard (the motor is still running and all the children's belongings are still on it), with the children and bus driver nowhere to be found. The sheriff stops at the first house on the bus's route to see if student Tommy Button (Nathaniel Albright) has made it home, but Tommy's mother is too zonked out on codeine to notice, so her personal physician (and probable lesbian lover), Dr. Joyce Gould (Michelle LaMothe), helps the sheriff search for Tommy and the other children. Billy has his deputy, Harry Timmons (Tracy Griswold), set up a roadblock to the only entrance in town to stop anyone from leaving and to only let residents enter, since he begins to think this is looking like a mass kidnapping. We know this is not the case when the acerbic Joyce declines a ride of from Billy (her distaste for men is quite evident), discovers the bus driver's dead body in the graveyard (his entire body looks burned to a crisp) and she is hugged by an infected Tommy (you can tell the infected by their black fingernails). Joyce suffers the same fate as the bus driver, as Tommy's radioactive fingers burrow into Joyce's back and she instantly becomes an overcooked steak. Katie, bar the door, because some killer children are about to terrorize Ravensback! The children instinctively head to their homes, but Billy seems to always be one step behind. The only house he comes to before the children attack is the one belonging to the loopy Dee Dee Shore (Rita Montone), who is sunbathing topless by her pool while her muscle-headed boyfriend is pumping iron. Dee Dee seems more excited about the prospect of her daughter being kidnapped than her welfare (Most of the parents depicted here are less than complimentary). Billy picks up John Freemont (Martin Shakar), a parent of one of the missing children, whose car has stalled on the side of the road and agrees to drive him home after thay stop at the Chandler residence, but little Ellen Chandler (Sarah Albright) has already given her mother and father the hug of death. When Billy and John find Dee Dee's daughter, Janet (Julie Carrier), walking down a dark road and discover her killing power (she grabs Billy's hand and gives him a nasty burn), they race to John's house, where his pregnant wife and young son (who was home sick from school) are about to be attacked by their infected daughter, Clara (Jenny Freemont). John and Billy have to make the difficult decision to kill the children by the only means effective: by chopping off their hands! The final coda should not come as a surprise to eagle-eyed viewers who paid close attention when the school bus passed through the radioactive cloud.  What can I say? This is one of those horror film that I can watch over and over and never grow tired of. Director/co-producer Max Kalmanowicz (DREAMS COME TRUE - 1984) and screenwriters Carlton J. Albright (a co-producer here and also the director of the underrated LUTHER THE GEEK - 1990) & Edward Terry (the star of LUTHER, who also has a role here as a deputized hick) have fashioned a creepy, atmospheric and scary horror film about what happens when children become killers and how responsible adults (although there are too few in this film, which I believe was intentional) must deal with the situation. The screenplay handles the situation in a frank, straightforward fashion (but not without some intentional humor) as parents are confronted with a truly unique situation. Most of them naturally go for the hug (Who wouldn't when they stick their arms out and say "Mommy!"?), but Billy, John and John's wife, Cathy (Gale Garnett), must make the heartbreaking decision that all the infected children (who have gathered outside of John's house in a sly tribute to NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD - 1968) must die and the only way to kill them is to cut off their hands. There is very little here left to the imagination, as the children are shot (but they get right up) and chopped into pieces (where they let out a god-awful growling sound), but that's what makes this film work so well (the special effects are surprisingly well done, especially the radiation burnings). This is a parent's worst nightmare and THE CHILDREN illustrates that nightmare in a way very few horror films can. Harry Manfredini did the evocative music score and if it sounds a little like his score for FRIDAY THE 13TH, it's because he did this film directly after finishing FRIDAY. This would make a perfect double bill with DEVIL TIMES FIVE (1974), another effective killer kids flick. Remade in 2008 as THE CHILDREN, but the plot is distinctly different in tone. Also starring Joy Glaccum, Jeptha Evans, Jessie Abrams, Suzanne Barnes and Shannon Bolin. Originally released on VHS by Vestron Video and then on a truly abysmal DVD from Troma Entertainment. Try to find a boot of the Vestron tape. Rated R.

CHRISTMAS EVIL (1980) - Ever since Christmas Eve in 1947 when Harry (Brandon Maggart) learned from his brother that Santa Claus wasn't real (he peeps from the stairs and watches Mom make out with Santa), he has become obsessed with Christmas and what it represents. It's thirty three years later and nothing has changed. His house is decorated for Christmas, both inside and out, all year long. He sleeps in Santa pyjamas. He spies on the neighborhood children with binoculars to see who is naughty or nice and puts the bad children in a book balled "Bad Boys And Girls". Harry even has a job in a toy factory and has just got a promotion, even if he is not happy with the quality of the toys they manufacture or care for the attitude of his greedy boss Frank (Joe Jamrog). When Harry becomes stressed, he hums Christmas carols to himself and spies of his brother Phil (Jeffrey DeMunn of THE HAUNTED - 1991). Harry pines for the life of his brother, who has a beautiful wife (Dianne Hull of THE FIFTH FLOOR - 1978) and two kids. Harry knows that he will never have that kind of life because he will be unable to find anyone who will understand his obsession. As Christmastime rapidly approaches, Harry becomes more and more disillusioned with the way people take Christmas for granted. After trying to teach people the true meaning of Christmas and failing miserably, he finally snaps and adds murder to his ever-growing list. The Santa you see standing next to you may not be of sound mind. Also known as TERROR IN TOYLAND and YOU BETTER WATCH OUT, director Lewis Jackson (his only effort) films this more as a psychological tale of a man's descent into madness rather than the horror film the ads make it out to be. Brandon Maggart (who got his start on SESAME STREET, believe it or not!) is wonderful as Harry, as he makes his character sympathetic, even when he is doing creepy things such as superglueing a fake white beard on his face so no one can pull it off (thereby making him the real "Santa Claus") or replacing presents under Christmas trees that he thinks are more appropriate for the bad boys and girls. While we may think that Christmas has become too "commercial", Harry has the balls to do something about it (even if he does get carried away). He has his faults, but his heart is in the right place, as the scene where he delivers a vanload of stolen toys to a children's hospital shows us. When he finally goes on his killing spree, all the right people get what they deserve. He first kills three arrogant men who ridicule him after they come out of church. He stabs one in the eye with a toy soldier and kills the other two with axe-blows to their heads. As with all vigilantes, he goes too far and is chased by an angry mob of parents carrying torches (!) and ends in what has to be one of the most whacked-out finales that you will ever see. But does it really end the way it seems? You will have to use your ears here to really know how it ends. It is memorable. The film also has some humorous moments, such as the police line-up of Santas who are forced to say "Merry Christmas!" in their best jolly voice or the kid who says he wants a lifetime subscription to Penthouse for Christmas. There's precious little violence here, besides what I have already mentioned and the death of Harry's boss by throat-slashing. This film is not about the violence and rightly so. Most reference books rate this film as a bomb which makes me wonder if they have watched this film at all. This is an excellent film that chronicles one man's foray into madness in a world that doesn't deserve a man like him. Then again, maybe I'm just reading too much into it. Either way, I enjoyed it immensely. This film is available in many forms. The one I viewed was on the 10 film DVD compilation titled TALES OF TERROR from BCI Eclipse. It's sourced from a VHS master but it's servicable. There's also a remastered Special Edition DVD from Synapse and a terrible DVD from Troma as well as various VHS incarnations. Pick one, watch it and enjoy. Also starring Mark Margolis, Ray Barry, Sam Gray and Bobby Lesser. Watch for a cameo by a then-unknown Patricia Richardson of TV's HOME IMPROVEMENT.  Rated R.

THE CORPSE GRINDERS (1971) - Director Ted V. Mikels is an acquired taste. Some people love his films to death, while others think he's nothing but a talentless hack. I fall somewhere in the middle, but I must confess that I find this film to be one of my guilty pleasures. The story here is rather straightforward and simple: The owners of Lotus Cat Food Company, Mr. Landau (Sanford Mitchell) and Mr. Maltby (J. Byron Foster), manage to stay in business competing with the larger pet food companies by keeping their overhead low. Very low. They do this by substituting their meat by-products ingredients with the flesh of human corpses, which they obtain from grave robber Caleb (Warren Ball) and a couple of workers at a mortuary, who supply them with fresh bodies of the recently interred or bums whose bodies will not be missed. As the demand rises for for their product, Landau and Maltby have a hard time keeping up with the supply, so they begin to rely on murder to keep them stocked with fresh meat. The only problem is, domesticated cats eating Lotus Cat Food begin attacking their owners and some of those owners end up dead, which attracts the attention of Dr. Howard Glass (Sean Kenney) and his nurse/lover Angie Robinson (Monika Kelly), who are performing the autopsies. They begin piecing the pieces of the mystery together and discover all the murderous cats are being fed Lotus brand cat food. They go to the FDA to have the cat food tested and discover what the mystery ingredient really is but, remarkably, the FDA refuses to investigate further without more proof, so Howard and Angie go undercover to get more proof. They are not very good at undercover espionage (they really suck at it) and Landau and Maltby, who see through their ruse immediately, kidnap Angie. Howard must race to rescue Angie from the jaws of the corpse-grinding machine before she is turned into the ingredients for a new batch of pussy chow. Howard is given a helping hand from a mysterious stranger (whom we see stalking Landau and Maltby at various times throughout the film) and they save Angie in the nick of time; both Landau and Maltby end up dead, one of them getting chewed up by their own corpse-grinding contraption.  As undoubtedly everyone already knows, this film is mostly famous for it's chintzy corpse-grinding machine, a plywood creation with flashing lights and levers where bodies are fed through one end (all the bodies are still in their underwear!) and come out hamburger meat on the other end. To me, though, that's the least interesting aspect of this film. What I find much more entertaining are the eccentric and downright ugly characters on view here, including beef jerky-chewing grave robber Caleb; his doll-carrying retard wife Cleo (Ann Noble), who treats the doll as if it was a real baby; the mute, one-legged Tessie (Drucilla Hoy), a Lotus Cat Food employee who hobbles around on one crutch while delivering the mail; and Willie (Charles "Foxy" Fox), the rubber-faced, impossibly skinny Lotus janitor who becomes the first live victim of the grinding machine. Director/producer/editor Ted V. Mikels (THE ASTRO ZOMBIES - 1968; BLOOD ORGY OF THE SHE DEVILS - 1972; THE DOLL SQUAD - 1973; and many others) uses garish lighting schemes (bathing scenes in red and green gels), quick cutting (I laugh every time he cuts to shots of Caleb's caged geese for no other reason than to hear them squawk) and threadbare sets (the office of Lotus Cat Food is a study in minimalism; just a desk, a couple of chairs and a cheap hand-painted sign that reads: LOTUS CAT FOOD: "For Cats Who Like People"!), which all together make this film seem like it was made on some alternate version of Earth. Some people speak with a thick Cockney accent for no reason at all and the cat attack scenes are hilarious in their ineptitude (As the proud owners of two rescue cats, I can assure you this is not he way cats would attack). While there is no nudity in this film (the women walk or lay around in their bra and panties), this impossibly cheap film does have it's share of gruesome sights (including a graphic cat autopsy and a basement full of body parts) and some intentionally funny scenes (including Cleo feeding her doll soup at the dinner table). This film is also the last credit for Arch Hall Sr. (director of the classic badfilm EEGAH [1962] as well as being a producer/screenwriter of many of his son's, Arch Hall Jr., films, such as THE CHOPPERS [1961] and WILD GUITAR [1962]), who co-wrote the screenplay with Joseph Cranston. To me, THE CORPSE GRINDERS is one of those cheap independent horror films that more than lives up to it's title and reputation. Some people find it deadly slow, but I find it mesmerizing. Mikel made an overlong sequel, THE CORPSE GRINDERS 2 (2000) nearly thirty years later, but it's a crappy SOV shadow of the original. During the early 70's, THE CORPSE GRINDERS played on a popular triple bill with THE UNDERTAKER AND HIS PALS (1966) and THE EMBALMER (1965) with a lurid ad campaign promising "The Final Dimension In Shock!" Also starring Ray Dannis, Vince Barbi, Harry Lovejoy, Earl Burnam, Zena Foster and Curt Matson. Originally released on VHS by World Video Pictures. Alpha Video offers a widescreen print on DVD that also includes the original trailer, a full-length commentary track by Mikels and a short interview with Mikels, all for less than $6.00 (It's a direct port from the more expensive DVD released by Image Entertainment a few years earlier). Most of Mikels' films can be purchased directly from his website: www.tedvmikels.com. Rated R.

DEATHDREAM (1972) - This is an absolute must for any horror fan. Director Bob Clark (who also gave us CHILDREN SHOULDN'T PLAY WITH DEAD THINGS [1972], BLACK CHRISTMAS [1974] and MURDER BY DECREE [1979] before giving up on horror and giving us PORKY'S [1982], the Christmas perrennial A CHRISTMAS STORY [1983] and the truly abysmal LOOSE CANNONS [1990]) has fashioned what is probably one of the best psychological horror/gore films of the 1970's. When Andy Brooks (Richard Backus) is shot and killed in Vietnam, the Brooks family is notified by the Army of his demise. Andy's overly-devoted mother, Christine (Lynn Carlin) refuses to believe her son is dead and wishes for his return home. Her wish comes true as Andy shows up at their door, not quite acting himself. He has in fact turned into an undead zombie that needs the blood of the living to keep him from rotting away. Andy's alcoholic father, Charles (John Marley) knows something is wrong with Andy after he witnesses him killing the family dog in front of a bunch of children (a truly horrifying scene). Andy's sister, Cathy (Anya Ormsby, wife of screenwriter Alan Ormsby) is just glad that he is home, even if Mother always liked him best. Charles brings the family doctor (Henderson Forsythe) to check Andy out, but Andy refuses and later shows up at the good doctor's office and kills him by stabbing him repeatedly with a hypodermic needle, injecting the doctor's blood into his veins to stave off the decomposition of his flesh. Things really get out of hand when Cathy sets up Andy on a double date with his old girlfriend Joanne (Jane Daly) and Cathy's boyfriend Bob (Michael Mazes). They go to a drive-in and Andy kills Joanne and Bob, runs over an innocent bystander and drives home to Mother as he begins to literally fall apart. Charles tries to kill Andy with a pistol, but cannot do it because he's still his son and uses the gun on himself instead, committing suicide. Mom drives Andy to get away with the police in hot pursuit. Andy makes her stop at a cemetery, where earlier he dug a grave and scratched his name on a tombstone with his name, birth date and death date. He literally throws dirt on himself before passing away, his flesh peeling away from his body. There's a lot of subtext in this film concerning the Vietnam war that would be lost on audiences today. That's OK, because the film holds up as a truly frightening horror film with good performances by all, some early gore effects by Tom Savini and the last 20 minutes are the best twenty minutes of any horror film of its' time. The scene where Joanne discovers Andy's forehead beginning to blister open and drip yellow goo while trapped in the back seat of a car at the drive-in is a scene you're likely to never forget and Andy's final decomposition is handled for pure shock value. Many people find the first hour of this film slow going, but I think that director Clark and screenwriter Ormsby build the suspense to the breaking point before all hell breaks loose. Drastically cut when shown on TV in the 70's, you'll be surprised how much you missed when viewing the videotape. This is one of those films known under a myriad of titles, including: THE NIGHT ANDY CAME HOME, DEAD OF NIGHT, THE VETERAN, WHISPERS and its original shooting title, NIGHT WALK. Under any title, DEATHDREAM is a great ride for people who like to be scared. A Gorgon Video/MPI Home Video Release. There are various versions out there from a PG-Rated television cut to the Gorgon Release which seems to be uncut except for a snippet of dialogue by Andy's mother at his gravesite in the finale. This version is Unrated and contains a scene where we see a person run over as well as a scene of a policeman slamming into a telephone pole after falling off a car. It's also available on DVD from Blue Underground. It's hard to believe that director Bob Clark is now turning out pablum such as BABY GENIUSES (1999) and its' sequel. A crying shame!

DEATHMASTER (1972) - This is one of those films that played incessantly on TV during the 70's and early 80's and then disappeared into obscurity. That is, until now. Retromedia Entertainment now offers a deluxe wide screen edition of this title, the first ever "legal" home video edition available in the United States. Put away your old, dupey copies and watch the film like you have never seen it before. A coffin washes ashore containing the body of Khorda (Robert Quarry), a centuries-old vampire. Khorda's henchman, the mute Barbado (Le Sesne Hilton), brings Khorda to the local hippie commune. Khorda quickly becomes the commune's spiritual leader, spouting philosophical mumbo-jumbo and performing magical acts that put a sense of awe and wonder into the commune's long-haired occupants. Khorda begins putting the bite on the commune's residents, turning them into crazed, bongo-dancing vampires. The disappearances and strange behaviour of some of the commune's population bring out the suspicions of Pico (Bill Ewing), the local Indian hippie who has the moves of Billy Jack. With his girlfriend, Rona (Brenda Dickson), they try to escape the commune, only to be stopped at every turn by Barbado and a growing horde of vampires. After they are captured, Pico refuses Khorda's offer to become a vampire and escapes his shackles in the commune's subterranean basement. He finds Khorda's resting place and accidentally sticks his hand in a bowl of leeches. He disables Barbado by drawing a cross on his face with his leech-drained blood and escapes to town where he seeks the help of Pop (John Fiedler), the local store owner. Pop doesn't believe Pico's story, even when his dog is found dead with two puncture wounds on his neck. Pop becomes hip when the local motorcycle tough is found dead and members of the commune act like zombies in his store. Pico and Pop bring the police to the commune, where Khorda convinces the cops that nothing is wrong. Rona, under Khorda's control, refuses to leave the commune. It's up to Pico and Pop to stop Khorda before the "incubation time" expires and everyone at the commune become full-fledged vampires. Be prepared for a real downbeat ending. Robert Quarry, just off the successes of COUNT YORGA, VAMPIRE (1970) and THE RETURN OF COUNT YORGA (1971), returns for a third helping (he was Associate Producer of this one) as a vampire. He plays Khorda as part Charles Manson, part New-Age healer and part menacing vampire. At the time this was made it was quite fresh, but today the concept seems dated. It's still entertaining and has many fine qualities. This is a pristine print, enhanced for 16x9 viewing, and I doubt you'll ever see such a beautiful copy of such an obscure film in quite a while. The colors pop and I swear you can see the pores on Quarry's face. While not overtly violent, the film picks up during the latter half and has an "oops" staking scene that reminded me of a similar one in BLACULA, filmed the same year. This is perhaps director Ray Danton's finest effort, which included the dreadful CRYPT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1973) and the so-so PSYCHIC KILLER (1975). Danton died in 1992.  Robert Quarry is still making films today, usually appearing in small roles in movies by Fred Olen Ray (who owns Retromedia Entertainment) such as THE SHOOTER (1997) and FUGITIVE MIND (1999). Some extras on the DVD include: behind-the-scenes photos of the film (a photo with a clapboard shows the film was shot with the title "Guru Vampire"); TV commercials including a Lucky Strike cigarette ad starring Quarry, a Shasta soda commercial starring John Fiedler (the voice of Piglet on all the Winnie the Pooh cartoons) and Frankenstein's monster and TV spots for COUNT YORGA and SUGAR HILL (1974), both featuring Quarry. For any Baby Boomer with fond memories of watching this film late at night on TV during their youth, or for anyone interested in horror and hippies, this DVD of DEATHMASTER is a must for their collection. This is one childhood memory that lived up to my adult expectations. Also starring Betty Anne Rees and William Jordan as the motocycle tough who leaves the commune to get a "steak and beer" dinner only to come back and be scared to death by Khorda! A Retromedia Entertainment DVD Release. Not Rated but the film was rated PG on its' initial release.

DOCTOR DEATH: SEEKER OF SOULS (1973) - "Enter that body! Enter that body! I command you, enter that body!" Once you hear this phrase, be prepared to laugh hysterically. This little gem from the early 70's should fail on every level. It's statically filmed like a 70's TV movie. The acting is so broad that it becomes hard to overlook. And the plot is so absurd that it is laughable. Guess what? I believe that all these points are deliberate and gel together beautifully. Fred Saunders (Barry Coe) loses his beautiful wife Laura (Jo Morrow) in an automobile accident. Before she dies, she promises Fred that she will somehow come back and be with him. He preserves her body and places it in a tomb where he instructs the caretaker, Franz (Jim Boles), to leave it unlocked so he can come back and look at her body. An obsessed Fred tries to find a way to bring his wife back from the dead, visiting a phony medium and a crazy death-worshipping cult, with no success (but much enjoyment for the viewer). He then spots an ad in an alternative newspaper advertising a way to reincarnate souls. He answers the ad and meets Tana (Florence "QUEEN OF BLOOD" Marley), a representative for a doctor that can solve Fred's problem. She takes him to a demonstration given by Doctor Death (John Considine), who has found a way to transfer souls from murdered bodies to corpses! His demo consists of transfering the soul of a horribly-scarred girl (who he saws in half simply for the "theatrics") to the body of a dead beautiful girl. When she rises to life, Fred at first rejects the notion of transferring another soul to his wife's body ("It won't actually be her coming back to life, will it?" he asks the Doctor) but soon relents since he misses her so much.  Doctor Death and his facially-scarred mute servant Thor (Leon Askin) then murder Tana in front of Fred, buy throwing a knife into her heart (theatrics again). Fred, who is horrified, wants nothing to do with it but is forced by Doctor Death to go along. When the good doctor tries to transfer Tana's soul into Laura, it is unsuccessful, because Laura's will, even in death, is too strong. Fred sees this as a sign to stop but Doctor Death sees this merely as a challenge and soon (unbeknownst to Fred) begins murdering young girls in various ways, capturing their souls and, time after time, failing miserably in transferring their souls to Laura's body (this is where the phrase at the top of this review comes into play.). Meanwhile, Fred has moved on and begins dating his secretary Sandy (Cheryl Miller). When Fred is delivered a severed head of one of the murdered girls to his office by Doctor Death (who leaves a note telling Fred that he will complete their contract no matter how many girls he has to kill), Fred springs into action and, with his physician friend Greg (Stewart Moss) and a couple of policemen, sets out to stop Doctor Death. Unfortunately, Doctor Death has kidnapped Sandy and is slowly bleeding her to death, in hopes that her soul will be the final one he needs to bring Laura back to life. Will Fred arrive in time and stop Doctor Death?  This wonderful little-seen gem delights in so many ways that it should be viewed by all lovers of 70's horror. Surprisingly, it is nudity-free (but full of beautiful women in various state of undress) and the blood doesn't really flow until about the 45 minute mark. When it does come, it is shocking and hysterical at the same time. When Doctor Death is stabbed in the stomach by a young man he has attacked, his blood squirts on the man's face, melting it like acid! There are various other bloody bits that earned it an R-rating when regionally released to theaters in 1973. I'll leave them for you to discover. The real standout here is John Considine (THE THIRSTY DEAD - 1974, and long-time soap opera actor), whose over-the-top portrayal as Doctor Death lifts this film from simple black comedy to the overly surreal. He digs his nails into this role and the viewer is greatly rewarded for the experience. I was laughing constantly at his failed attempts to revive Laura. Director Eddie Saeta, who died in 2005, sadly never directed another theatrical film (he previously directed a couple of series TV episodes) but was a jack-of-all-trades in motion pictures, being producer, assistant director and production manager on many major films right up till his death. As I said earlier, the film has a TV-movie look, but switches to almost dream-like sequences at the most unexpected moments (such as Fred's visit to the death-worshipping cult), throwing the viewer for a loop. Silver-haired Stooge Moe Howard (his last role) makes a cameo as an audience member who assists Doctor Death in confirming that a woman's body is dead (and makes a sexual quip about the experience) as does horror host Larry "Seymour" Vincent, who appears as a killer in a film shown on a victim's television. Add a finale that is creepy (and should have spawned a sequel but, alas, it never happened) and you have a great unsung minor classic that has managed to stay mostly unseen (at least in the New York area) for over 30 years. If you see this VHS tape for sale anywhere, grab it as I doubt that it will be released on DVD any time soon. A Prism Entertainment Home Video Release. Rated R.

DUNGEON OF HARROW (1962) - I haven't seen this film in over thirty five years. Oh, it's been available on video for years in various dupey, unwatchable editions. I should know. I own most of them. Why haven't I viewed any of them? Because this film scared the shit out of me when I saw it on TV in the middle 1960's as a pimply-faced kid. It introduced me to the horrors of leprosy, a disease I had never heard of before watching this film. It left an indelible impression on me, an impression that is as fresh today as it was 35 years ago. That is why I won't watch any of the video versions I own. I don't want to destroy my memories of that day with a crappy, third or fourth generation copy. Imagine my surprise of finding this film on DVD while doing one of my weekly trash film runs at the local Best Buy. And it cost only $5.99! Released by upstart company Alpha Video, this DVD contains the best-looking copy that you're likely ever to see of a film of this vintage and pedigree. It's far from perfect, as the colors have faded and the whole film has a brownish tint to it, but it is watchable and therefore worth every cent it cost me. So, what's the verdict? I am glad to report that my memories didn't deceive me this time. As an adult, I can see that this is an impossibly cheap film which opens with the lamest shipwreck ever committed to celluloid (later, check out the rubber bat and giant toy spider), contains acting that can politely be called wooden, has bad library music and sets that are made of cardboard. But that just adds to its' overall charm. On the plus side, there's a fair amount of blood for an early '60's effort, some sadistic torture scenes and the last 20 minutes which involve a chained-up aristocrat being seduced by a whacked-out leprosy-ridden Countess in a wedding dress. Want to know more? Spend the six bucks and take this baby home. Directed by late comic book artist Pat Boyette (who also directed the hard-to-find films THE WEIRD ONES and NO MAN'S LAND [ both also in 1962]) more in the vein of a filmed theatrical production than an actual movie. The whole film looks and sounds like a stage play with just enough outdoor locations (filmed in San Antonio, Texas) to relieve the claustrophobic interior scenes. Boyette (who also wrote this with Henry Garcia) also gives this film a real downbeat ending, something unheard of in a film of its' time. I'm glad I waited all these years. It was euphoric reliving a memory that made such an impact on my youth. Starring Russ Harvey (also the film's producer), Helen Hogan, William McNulty, Michelle Buquor, Maurice Harris and Eunice Grey as the leper Countess. Available from Alpha Video, who have released a slew of public domain horror flicks on DVD including: ATTACK OF THE GIANT LEECHES (1959), ATOM AGE VAMPIRE (1960), CREATURE FROM THE HAUNTED SEA (1961) and THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN'T DIE (1962 - the uncut version), all in attractive and colorful slipcases. DUNGEON OF HARROW is also known as DUNGEON OF HORROR, though in all my years searching for a good version of this film, I have never seen it under that title. Not Rated. NOTE: For an interview with Pat Boyette and an overview of his films, check out the Astounding B Monster Web Site by clicking here.

EQUINOX (1967/70) - A sense of nostalgia swept over me when I slipped this bootleg video in my VCR. A favorite of mine when I was a young teen (in part, no doubt, to the frequent times it was shown on TV in the early 70's), this precursor to THE EVIL DEAD holds many surprises when viewed today. When Dave (Edward Connell) is struck by a driverless car and rushed to the hospital, he tells a frightening story to the staff psychiatrist. He and three college friends travel to their professor's cabin in the mountains to assist in a dig. They find the cabin destroyed and discover a cave in which a laughing lunatic resides. He gives them an ancient book filled with Latin writing and symbols. Dave recites a passage which turns out to be the Lord's Prayer in reverse. Dave accidentally kills the professor (who acts like a madman) after he steals the book. Strange and mysterious things begin to happen. The professor's body disappears. A castle appears and disappears on the mountainside. Huge V-shaped footprints are found near the cabin. The park ranger named Mr. Asmodeus (Jack Woods, who also wrote and directed this version) tries to rape one of the girls but is twarted by her crucifix necklace. Our quartet are up to their necks in deep shit as they are chased by a huge ape-like monster, a giant caveman, a flying demon and other supernatural menaces (including a rip in the fabric of time), all trying to get their hands on that ancient book. It was a joy to view this film for the first time in over 15 years. When the TV showings dried up, the only way to see it was on video. The only problem was that it was impossible to find (under this title or as THE BEAST from Wizard Video, it's alternate video title with a shorter running time). Made as a college film in 1967 by effects master Dennis Muren as THE EQUINOX...A JOURNEY OF THE SUPERNATURAL, producer Jack H. Harris picked it up for distribution, had Jack Woods direct some new scenes, recut and reshuffled some scenes and released it to theaters in 1970 with the shortened title EQUINOX. This film is a trivia buff's dream. The excellent stop-motion effects were done by Dennis Muren, David Allen and Jim Danforth (what a team!). Co-star Frank Boers Jr. is actually Frank Bonner, who achieved minor fame as Herb on WKRP IN CINCINNATI. The assistant cameraman (on the second version) was Ed Begley Jr., who would later reach stardom on ST. ELSEWHERE and then turn himself into a pain-in-the-ass ecologist and conservationist. Noted author Fritz Leiber makes a brief appearance as the  nutty professor. Horror's biggest fan, Forrest J. Ackerman, is the voice we hear on the tape. Not bad for a no-budget flick, eh? This film does have many flaws. The characters' clothing changes from scene to scene and the actors visibly grow slightly older as the story progresses. This is due to the fact that it took four years to finish the filming because of the intertwining of the two versions. The beginning of the film is very choppy, either because it was a bad print or because of  producer Harris' post-production tampering. That's just nitpicking though. I, for one, just enjoyed the ride. As far as no-budgeters go, EQUINOX shows much imagination and enthusiasm and deserves to be judged by  it's merits and not by its' slim budget. Sam Raimi owes a big debt to this film as THE EVIL DEAD "borrows" a few of its' major plot points. Besides, how could I bad-mouth a film which has brought back so many good memories? Not Rated. (Note: American Movie Classics is now showing this film with a TV-PG rating but it is an unedited second edition in much better shape than the bootlegs. Tape it if you get the chance.) NOTE: Now available as a special edition two DVD as part of The Criterion Collection showing both versions of the film. Yours truly supplied some box art for the DVD's supplemental disc.

LASERBLAST (1978) - An early film from producer Charles Band (MANSION OF THE DOOMED - 1976; CRASH! - 1976; TOURIST TRAP - 1978) that mixes teen angst with alien gadgetry. The film opens with an alien (portrayed by makeup effects artist Steve Neil), armed with a laser weapon that fits over the hand and forearm, trying to escape from a dinosaur-like alien duo (stop-motion effects by Dave Allen), who are chasing him through the Arizona desert. The laser-carrying alien is killed, but before the dino-aliens can collect the laser weapon and the crystal medallion that operates it, a plane flies overhead and the two aliens beat a hasty retreat back to their spaceship before they are spotted. We then switch over to teen Billy Duncan (Kim Milford; CORVETTE SUMMER - 1978; who was well into his late-twenties when he essayed this role), a lonely guy who lives with his absentee divorced mother, who is once again leaving him alone to go on another "business trip" to Acapulco (in other words, Mom's a slut).  Billy drives his yellow and white van to girlfriend Kathy's (Cheryl Smith; CAGED HEAT - 1974) house to commiserate, but he is blocked by her senile grandfather, Colonel Farley (Keenan Wynn; PIRANHA - 1977), who babbles-on about "Operation Sandust" and people not being who they say they are. Billy finally gives up, gets in his van and leaves. To make his day even worse, Billy is pulled over by pot-smoking cops Deputy Pete Unger (Dennis Burkley; NIGHTMARE HONEYMOON - 1973) and Deputy Jesse Jeep (Barry Cutler), who ticket him once again for speeding (Unger also makes an uncalled-for remark about Billy's mom). To add insult to injury, Billy is challenged to a race by town bullies Chuck (Mike Bobenko) and Froggy (Eddie Deezen, in his film debut and the only time I can remember him ever portraying a bully!), but his van won't start. When he finally does get it started, Billy takes a drive out to the desert, where he finds the laser weapon and the crystal medallion (he's a smart lad and quickly learns how to use the weapon, blowing up cacti and tree stumps). From this moment on, Billy's life will never be the same and neither wll those who pick on him. There's one deadly caveat in using the weapon, though: Every time Billy wears the crystal medallion and fires the weapon, he slowly begins to transform into an alien creature and starts to lose his compassion and humanity. To make matters worse, government agent Tony Craig (Gianni Russo; LEPKE - 1975) and the two dino-aliens are looking to gain possession of the weapon. When Chuck and Froggy try to rape Kathy at a pool party, Billy dons the medallion and uses the weapon to blow-up Chuck's car, nearly killing Chuck and Froggy. Billy begins growing a metallic lump on his chest and, as it gets bigger and bigger, a worried Kathy makes him go see Dr. Mellon (Roddy McDowall; THE LEGEND OF HELL HOUSE - 1973) for a check-up. Dr. Mellon removes the metallic fragment from Billy's chest and plans on driving it to a lab out of town later that night to have it analyzed, but the alien Billy uses the weapon to blow up Dr. Mellon in his car as he is driving down the highway. Billy then uses the weapon to kill Deputy Ungar (he blows him up in a gas station outhouse!) and Deputy Jeep (incinerated point-blank) and then turns his attention towards Chuck and Froggy (after blowing a government search plane out of the sky); killing them by blowing them up in Chuck's new muscle car. The alien Billy then kills a stoner and steals his van (blowing up a STAR WARS billboard along the way, in a humorous bit), driving it to town and using the weapon to lay waste to everything he can find, including cars, telephone booths, a couple of newspaper stands and the town's sheriff (Ron Masak). The dino-aliens put an end to the madness by killing Billy with a death ray and take the weapon and the medallion with them as they streak off in their spaceship.  This is a fun, if disjointed, little horror film, directed by Michael Rae (his only directorial effort, although he was a Producer and Second Unit Director on SINNER'S BLOOD - 1969) and written by Franne Schacht (who appears as the sheriff's secretary) and Frank Ray Perilli (ZOLTAN, HOUND OF DRACULA - 1978), that contains a little bit of everything, including action, aliens, explosions, stunts, minor gore and even a small bit of topless nudity, all wrapped-up in a tight little PG-rated package. Kim Milford, who tragically died in 1988 of complication of heart surgery at the age of 37, is quite good as Billy and his transformation into a soulless alien creature is quite effective, but the film basically falls apart during the second half, as it seems some scenes were never filmed (or were filmed and didn't work) and the final twenty minutes are a disjointed, confusing mess where the alien Billy just goes bonkers for no rhyme or reason. Still, LASERBLAST contains enough weirdness (Dennis Burkley and Barry Cutler are the unlikeliest cop duo in screen history, smoking dope, eating each other's food and ogling women with wild abandon) and inventiveness (the stop-motion aliens and the weapon itself) to be recommended viewing. Also starring Rick Walters, Simmy Bow, Joanna Lipari, Wendy Wernli and Janet Dey. Producer Charles Band and director David DeCoteau (using the pseudonym "Julian Breen") remade the film as ALIEN ARSENAL in 1999, turning it into a typical watered-down "nerds vs. bullies" high school action comedy. Originally available on VHS by Media Home Entertainment and later released on DVD by Cult Video/Koch Vision. Rated PG.

MONSTER MAN (2003) - Who says they don't make good horror movies anymore? This horror/comedy movie is an excellent example of how to make a good film on a low budget. It's so good, it should have gotten a theatrical release. Two friends, the virginal Adam (Eric Jungmann) and loudmouthed Harley (Justin Urich), are on a road trip in Adam's Chevy Vista Cruiser so he can tell Betty Ann, his one true love, how he really feels about her before she gets married to another man. Along the way they are shadowed by a black hearse, get a flat, run out of gas (and steal gas from a parked camper with a headless corpse in it, but not before Harley accidently sucks out liquid from the camper's septic tank), pick up (or get picked up by) a hitchhiker called Sarah (the beautiful Aimee Brooks), have drinks in a bar where everyone but them is missing an appendage and are attacked by the title creature (Michael Bailey Smith) who drives a huge monster truck. This film is not only extremely funny (including a STAR WARS sex scene and a piece of black humor involving a corpse in Adam's back seat) but also very bloody, as in the opening scene we witness a man having his head squeezed in a vise until it explodes, later on we see another man's legs and head run over by the monster truck and a final 20 minutes that has to be seen to be believed (which includes a major plot twist). Director/writer Michael Davis, who usually makes romantic comedies, is to be commended for making a film with characters we care about. Adam may be anal retentive (and a Velcro fanatic) and Harley may come off as a jerk some of the time, but we feel their comraderie and friendship become stronger as the film progresses. Also starring Joe Goodrich as Brother Fred (believe me when I say you won't soon forget him) and a cameo appearance by Bobby Ray Shafer (PSYCHO COP) as a cop with a thing for comparing Adam and Harley's asses to tires. This is one bloody good show (effects by Todd Masters) with excellent Dolby 5.1 sound (listen to the "I'm gonna get you" scene in the motel) that should be seen by all those interested in this web site. A Lions Gate Home Entertainment Release. Rated R, but believe me when I tell you this is hard R territory.

MY NAME IS BRUCE (2006) - Bruce Campbell, who also directed, has fun lampooning his image in this amiable horror comedy. The small mining town of Gold Lick (whose population is either 333 or 339, depending on what sign you read) is besieged by a Chinese demon called Guan-Di (James J. Peck), when Bruce Campbell-loving teen Jeff (Taylor Sharpe) wakes it up from a long-dormant sleep after removing a protective medallion from the entrance of an old mining shaft where the demon was being held captive. Jeff manages to escape, but his three teen friends don't fare too well, as Guan-Di dismembers and beheads them with his trusty staff sword. We are then introduced to Bruce Campbell the (fictitious) actor, who is in the middle of starring in CAVE ALIENS 2 and is considered an insufferable wanker by cast and crew alike (So much so, that when he orders crewmember Tiny [Adam Boyd] to fetch him a lemon water, he grabs an empty bottle out of the garbage, pisses in it, hands it to Bruce, only to have Bruce complain that it's too warm, but he drinks it anyway!). Bruce's boorish behavior knows no bounds, whether it's handing one of his rabid fans a stick of deodorant ("Here, you know how to use this?"), pushing a paraplegic's wheelchair away with his foot or demanding free a free lap dance in a strip club (he is flatly refused). Bruce's personal and professional lives are a complete mess. He's recently divorced from wife Cheryl (Ellen Sandweiss; Campbell's co-star in THE EVIL DEAD - 1983), is an alcoholic (he drinks so much, even his dog is a drunk!), drives a junker car and lives in a dilapidated trailer (Things are so bad, he drinks the alcohol in his dog's dish when he discovers that there is no booze left in the trailer. It's a laugh-out-loud scene.). When Jeff shows up at his trailer door at 4:30 in the morning and begs him to come to Gold Lick to help the citizens fight Guan-Di (who we find out is the Chinese patron saint of bean curd!), Bruce thinks Jeff is pitching an idea for a new film and slams the door in Jeff's face. Jeff ends up knocking-out Bruce with a baseball bat, throwing him in the trunk of his car and driving him to Gold Lick, where Bruce is welcomed as a hero by the Mayor (Ben McCain, who along with brother Butch McCain [as "The McCain Brothers"], interrupt the film a few times to play guitar and sing the song "The Legend Of Guan-Di", whose lyrics keep the audience up-to-date with the proceedings) and the entire Gold Lick population, who are dwindling in number and losing their heads to Guan-Di's sword. Bruce thinks the whole situation is a low-budget film shoot; a birthday present set-up by his agent Mills (Ted Raimi; SKINNER - 1993), so he plays along, thinking everything that is happening is nothing but an elaborate joke to bolster his fragile ego (Little does he know that Mills is fucking his ex-wife!). Bruce begins falling for local girl Kelly Graham (Grace Thorsen), Jeff's divorced mother, still not realizing that his life is actually in mortal danger. As the film progresses, Bruce begins to actually do some good (after a particularly cowardly start) and slowly gains back his humility and humanity. Only Kelly seems to realize that Bruce is not taking the situation as seriously as he should, but she play along for the good of the town and finds herself falling for Bruce's charms. The finale finds Bruce, Kelly and Jeff facing Guan-Di alone, armed only with bean curd, some Campbell movie memorabilia and a few sticks of dynamite.  This reverential comedy has some laugh-out-loud moments and some spot-on dialogue (When the entire town interrupts his first kiss with Kelly, Campbell screams out, "For the love of God, I can smell her Chapstick!"), but a lot of it will go over the heads of those who never heard or are not fans of Campbell. It also makes some poignant statements about the state of celebrity and fandom in the world today, but not at the expense of either the celebrities or the fans. Bruce Campbell has a field day parodying his image and Mark Verheiden's screenplay spares no Campbell film from some very sharp barbs (When Campbell carjacks an old lady's car while retreating Gold Lick in a cowardly moment, the old lady screams at him, "You were the worst thing about MOONTRAP!"). There are some laugh-till-you-cry moments on view here, such as the miniature angel and devil on Campbell's shoulders debating him returning to Gold Lick (both angel and devil portrayed by Campbell in the appropriate costumes) or the director of CAVE ALIENS 2 replacing an absent Campbell with a stunt dummy and no one notices! Campbell does a grand job as actor and director (much better than he did with THE MAN WITH THE SCREAMING BRAIN - 2005), making MY NAME IS BRUCE a rare treat: A horror comedy that actually delivers the goods. It's funny, gory and moves at a brisk clip. Ted Raimi plays three roles here: Mills the agent; Ted the sign painter (who keeps changing the population number on Gold Lick's welcome sign as Guan-Di dispatches the townspeople); and Wing, a Chinaman who warns the town of their impending doom. Two of them have their heads cut off. Be sure to stick around during the closing credits to see The McCain Brothers get their long overdue comeuppance. Also starring Tim Quill, Dan Hicks, Logan Martin, Ali Akay, Ariel Badenhop and Jennifer Brown. An Image Entertainment DVD Release. Rated R.

NIGHT OF THE DEMON (1979) - You know you're in for something very special when, right in the beginning, we see a bigfoot rip off a camper's arm and his stump bleeds into a bigfoot's footprint. Yes folks, this is the only bigfoot gore film to see if your taste is for bloody, atrociuosly-acted and badly-plotted flicks about a sasquatch with a grudge. After discovering a newly discovered reel of film which purportedly shows a bigfoot, Professor Nugent (Michael J. Cutt) and five of his students go on a field trip to the area where the film was found (the photographer was never found), in hopes of finding proof that bigfoot does exist. They begin by asking the townspeople for some info and learn about Crazy Wanda (Melanie Graham), a woman who lives deep in the woods and may have some kind of connection to the bigfoot. After learning some background info about Crazy Wanda and a sect of inbred religious fanatics who live in the forest, our stupid group of need-to-know-it-alls decide to trek through the woods and look for them. Meanwhile, bigfoot is going on a tear, savagely butchering a naked couple screwing in a van, killing a camper in a sleeping bag by swinging him wildly overhead and impaling him on a tree branch and, in the film's highlight, yanking the penis off a biker when he stops to take a leak. Our thirsty for knowledge sextet break up a ritual being performed by the fanatics and have their boat stolen, which is their only way to return to civilization. Instead of being worried like normal people would, they decide to stick with their plan and try to locate Crazy Wanda. Professor Nugent's wife, Susan (Lynn Eastman), is having terrible nightmares back home, where she dreams of her husband having his throat torn out by the bigfoot (this does not lead anywhere later on in the film). After one of the student is mauled on the back by the bigfoot (he survives), they find Crazy Wanda's house and notice that all her windows have bars on them. Wanda lets them in (after the Professor gives her a cinnamon stick), but all she does is sit in her rocking chair and stare at a locked room. The Professor then tells his students a couple more horror stories about the bigfoot: He kills a guy chopping wood with his own axe by planting it in his shoulder and he kills two knife-wielding Girl Scouts (!) by grabbing their arms and making them stab each other. Why the Professor decides to tell his students such horrific stories at this point only the screenwriter (Mike Williams) can say. It is finally that time in the movie for our six heroes to face the bigfoot and it turns out that it may not be a bigfoot after all (OK, it's half-bigfoot), just Crazy Wanda's son who was born malformed years earlier after she was raped by a real bigfoot and her preacher father made her drink poison to try to abort the baby. It didn't work and, boy, is he one pissed-off individual. In a finale that can best be described as surreal, bigfoot traps and kills all the students in Wanda's house, each proceeding kill getting gorier and gorier (it's also hilarious, as each student just stands there waiting for their turn to be slaughtered) until only the Professor is left (barely alive). Did I forget to mention that this entire sequence is shot in super slo-mo?  I just love this film even though everything in it is just plain wrong and politically incorrect, not to mention piss-poor technically in every department. This film wallows in the gore and director James C. Wasson (who, regrettably, never made anything else) linger on the red stuff lovingly, some would say a little too long for comfort. The crank-yanking scene and the finale are particularly juicy as a man is beaten to death with his own intestines and the Professor has his face forced down on a hot stove until his flesh stretches like string cheese. These aren't top-of-the-line special effects, but they are rather unnerving. It's also filled with a lot of "What The Fuck1?!?" moments, like the rocking chair cam, the student who takes photos while he is being attacked and Girl Scouts carrying big-ass knives (I'm sure the GS didn't OK this). The acting is generally poor but, surprisingly, hardly hurts this film at all as you will probably sitting there slack-jawed at the frequent bloody visuals on view (and I'm not exagerrating, this is one bloody film). The only piece of "acting" that was noticable was when one of the female students, seeing that their boat is missing, says, "Oh my God, my God! What are we going to do?" like she was reading it off of cue cards for the first time. This is one of those films where everything should fail but, somehow, it all gels together for a wildly outrageous experience which words (such as these) cannot begin to describe. This gets my highest recommendation. Also starring Joy Allen, Bob Collins, Jodi Lazarus, Richard Fields, Michael Lang and stuntman Shane Dixon as the Bigfoot. NIGHT OF THE DEMON was a very early VHS release from VCII and later was available on tape in a terrible EP-mode recording from Gemstone Entertainment. The version I viewed was on DVD from a pirate outfit called Miracle Pictures. The print was in pretty good shape and is only marred by some static sound for a couple of seconds throughout the film. Not Rated.

NIGHT OF THE LEPUS (1972) - Let me preface this review by stating the following: This has to be the silliest horror film ever financed by a major studio (MGM). Anyone who thinks giant bunny rabbits are scary should have their heads examined. That said, this film is one of my favorite guilty pleasures, for all the wrong reasons, of course. When Rancher Cole (Rory Calhoune) loses his best horse when it breaks it's leg in a rabbit hole, that is the last straw, as the overabundance of wild rabbits have destroyed most of Cole's grazing land for his cattle. Fed up, Cole goes to the university to look up old friend Professor Elgin Clark (DeForest Kelley) for some help in getting rid of the rabbits. Elgin recommends Roy and Gerry Bennett (Stuart Whitman and Janet Leigh), two ecologists who have solved similar problems with wolves. The Bennetts take back a dozen rabbits to their lab and treat half of them with an experimental hormone, hoping to disrupt the rabbits' reproductive cycle. The treated rabbits were never supposed to be released back to the wild (the hormone is still untested), but that's just what happens when the Bennett's young daughter Amanda (Melanie Fullerton) switches an untreated rabbit with a treated one and accidentally sets it free to join the other wild rabbits. Pretty soon after, giant rabbits ("The size of wolves!") are killing the populace, leaving mangled bodies in their wake. Roy, Gerry, Elgin and Cole find the giant bunnies' hiding spot (in an abandoned mine) and blow it up with dynamite. But, since rabbits are burrowing animals, they escape, so our group has to come up with another way to destroy them. Maybe electricity will work? Ah, good old electricity. A giant monster's worst enemy.  This film works best as an unintentional comedy. The sight of normal size adorable bunnies running around in slow motion on miniature sets should bring a smile to everyone's lips. But the truly laugh-out-loud moments come from the attack scenes, as hordes of confused rabbits run around with fake blood smeared on their furry faces, the camera closing in on their buck-toothed mouths while grunts and growls of what sound like dobermans wail on the soundtrack. Let's not forget the awful full-size rabbit suits worn by some hapless extras that are on view whenever a human is attacked. Surprisingly, director William F. Claxton (who was mainly a director of episodic TV until his death in 1996) plays everything super seriously and it is very bloody for a PG rated film.  There's bloody shots of mutilated kids, adults and rabbits (who are mercilessly hit with red paintballs whenever cast members fire rifles, shotguns or machineguns at them) and the attacks on humans are especially bloody. It's that bright red blood that was used in a lot of early 70's horror films. It's not the least bit believable, but it sure does look good on screen. I was surprised that the cast of pros were able to keep a straight face throughout this entire ridiculous film, but they do. Personally, I would have fired my agent, but appearing in this didn't seem to do too much damage to their careers. Besides, I wouldn't trade the sight of giant bunnies running down a highway and jumping over the camera in slow-motion for anything in the world. Am I glad this film was made? Hell, yes! Long sought after by collectors and traded for years on the grey market in terrible third generation dupes (usually with Dutch subtitles), Warner Video finally relented in 2005 and released a beautiful widescreen print of NIGHT OF THE LEPUS on DVD. You can now throw away all your lousy dupes and see this insane film as it was meant to be seen. Just a word of warning: If you have stitches, be prepared to bust a few. Originally released to theaters on a double bill with William Grefe's STANLEY (1972). A Warner Video Release. Rated PG. Do yourself a favor and watch the overwrought trailer on the DVD after the film is over for one last laugh.

PEACEMAKER (1990) - This is not the 1997 George Clooney-Nicole Kidman starrer of the same name, but director Kevin S. Tenney's excellent action/sci-fi story concerning two aliens, one good, Townshend (Lance Edwards), and one a serial killer, Yates (the always excellent Robert Forster), battling it out on Earth. With the help of coroner Dr. Dori Caisson (Hilary Shepard, who sees about 20 bullet wounds disappear on Townshend after a fight with the police), the good alien (who is a cop on his home planet) try to track down and kill the bad alien and also retrieve the black keycard to his spaceship, which he lost during the scuffle with the police. His ship is in the ocean and he needs to get into it before the tide washes it out the sea. The only problem is, is that the Yates is tracking him, along with a detective (Robert Davi) who thinks that Dori is being held captive. The aliens can take as many hits to the body as possible and survive. It just takes some time to regenerate (as when Yates rips his hand off to escape a pair of handcuffs). The only way to kill them is to put a bullet in their brainpan, whereby they disintegrate within 20 seconds. Filmed on a low budget, this is still good old-fashioned nail-biting stuff as director Tenney films the frequent chase and fight scenes with verve and a sense of urgency. The film also has a good sense of humor as when Townshend learns English overnight by watching TV and Dori's interrogation by the detectives when she tries to explain that both men they saw were aliens. (She also says to one of the detectives: "The only difference between a brown-noser and a shithead is depth perception.") When Yates kidnaps Dori to trap and kill Townshend, the story takes a shocking turn. In a surprise twist, none of the aliens turn out who you think they are as Yates tells Dori that he is a Peacemaker, the real good guy and he has been on Earth for 20 years, sent to this planet as a intergalatic relocation program. He tells Dori that there are hundreds like him on Earth and that Townshend was sent here to kill one of the relocators. As a matter of fact, the rest of the film is full of twists and turns and action-packed. Nobody turns out to be who they say they are. Director Kevin S. Tenney has never done better. He has made some pretty good films (WITCHBOARD - 1986; NIGHT OF THE DEMONS - 1988), some decent ones (WITCHTRAP - 1989; WITCHBOARD 2: THE DEVIL'S DOORWAY - 1993; THE ARRIVAL II - 1998) and some terrible ones (THE CELLAR - 1990; PINOCCHIO'S REVENGE - 1996), but none as good as this one. It deserves to be a cult hit or at least a sleeper. Watch this and enjoy the wild ride. Also starring the always reliable Bert Remsen (CURFEW - 1989, he died in 1999), John Denos and Wally Taylor. A Fries Home Video Release. Rated R. A special shout-out to William Wilson for getting me to view this film again. I'd forgotten how good it was.

SAMURAI COP (1989/1991) - Oh...my...God! If you thought Iranian director/scripter Amir Shervan's HOLLYWOOD COP (1986) was brain-damaged entertainment, wait until you get a gander at this, an even more mentally-challenged actioner that contains plentiful nudity, violence, gore and, most of all, some of the most anemically-staged action sequences ever committed to celluloid. Toss in one of the most unbelievable, pretty-boy leading men in film history and what you have is a total package of ineptitude. Matt Hannon stars as Detective Joe Marshall, a cop in L.A. (on loan from San Diego) who speaks fluent Japanese (although we never hear him speak a single word of it) and was somehow trained in the way of the Samurai (as a matter of fact, "Samurai" is his nickname). Joe (who has hair down to his shoulders, is irresistable to most women and has the emotional range of a cucumber, like some mutant Fabio) teams up with L.A. detective Frank (Mark Frazer) to bring down Japanese drug kingpin Fujiyama (Joselito Rescober; and, yes, you read that correctly, a Spanish actor playing a Japanese!). After catching one of Fujiyama's men after a memorable car chase (where Joe repeatedly says to Frank, "Shoot! Shoot him!") and putting him in the hospital with burns over 90% of his body (his van simply taps the side of a hill and explodes!), Joe and Frank hope to get him to talk (!), but Fujiyama sends his #1 muscle, Yamashita (Robert Z'Dar; yeah, you read that correctly, too!) to cut the burned guy's head off so he can "place it on his piano". Yamashita does just that, sneaking into the hospital room while hiding in a garbage can and cutting the guy's head off with a Katana while he lies in bed, all bloodied and bandaged. When Police Captain Roma (Jimmy Williams) finds out, he nearly bursts a blood vessel (He says, "I feel like somebody stuck a big club up my ass...and it hurts! I've gotta figure out a way to get it outta there!"), but he gives Joe and Frank one more chance to bring Fujiyama down. That "one more chance" includes numerous fights, by sword (where one guy gets his arm sliced off), gun and fist; a hilarious encounter with a gay Costa Rican waiter; an invasion on henchman's Okamura's (Gerald Okamura) house, where Joe and Okamura have one of the most badly choreographed martial arts fights in memory (not to mention the constantly changing location photography); and a visit from some New York hitmen. After various attempts on Joe and Frank's lives, they kill Fujiyama, Joe and Yamashita have a sword and fist duel (where Yamashita commits hari-kari for losing face) and Joe falls in love with Fujiyama's new girlfriend, Jenny (Janis Farley). Is that a tear in your eye? Here, let me get you a tissue.  I can't begin to explain how bad this gem truly is. I don't think there's a second in this film where one thing goes right, whether it the acting, editing, music, action sequences or some of the poorest post-sync dubbing and sound effects this side of a Doris Wishman film. Matt Hannon (who was once a bodyguard for Sylvester Stallone) is so stiff and wooden as the long-haired American Samurai, I was waiting for my TV set to start spitting out splinters. Mark Frazer, as his black partner Frank, must have studied acting from the Steppin Fetchit school of emoting, as all he does is stare bug-eyed into the camera in a series of reaction shots or talk about his "black ass" or how big his dick is. He sets back the cause of African American acting (not to mention Civil Rights) by at least fifty years. Robert Z'Dar (MANIAC COP - 1988; EVIL ALTAR - 1989) covers-up his extrodinarily big chin with a beard and proves how mean he is by pouring a frying pan-full of bacon grease onto the legs of nymphomaniac cop Peggy (Melissa Moore of VAMPIRE COP [1990]) to get her to talk. Otherwise, his expression never changes throughout the entire film. Director Shervan (who, at one time, owned the majority of movie theaters in Iran) manages to throw in as much nudity as possible (always a good thing), but the entire film looks like it was shot and edited by someone with a severe case of ADD, as it jumps from one scene to the next with no establishing shots or connecting structure and contains gunfights where it's plain to see that the weapons are nothing more than cap pistols (in some scenes, you can actually hear the clicks of the pistols where they forgot to overdub the sounds of actual gunfire) and some of the most unbelievable dialogue I have ever heard. The Police Captain gets the best lines, including where he incredulously tells Joe and Frank to "kill everyone" and "make sure it's a bloodbath" in the film's finale or the scene where he tells Fujiyama's lawyer (who simply says to him, "I'll see you in court!"), "You motherfucker! I'll see you in Hell! Leave me alone! Get a job!" Wow. Who knew being a lawyer wasn't a job? There's also a surreal scene between Joe and a hospital nurse that must be heard and seen to be believed. I can't recommend this film highly enough for all badfilm lovers. It's the best anti-action action film you will ever see. Filmed in Los Angeles in 1989, but not released until 1991. Joe Bob Briggs does his usual hilarious, biting commentary on this film's DVD release from Media Blasters. The DVD also contains a funny interview with co-star Robert Z'Dar (If his jaw gets any bigger, it will have it's own gravitational orbit!), who reminisces about this film, his life and his real-life romance with co-star Krista Lane (here billed simply as "Cameron"), who he swears ignorance to her porn star credits at the time, even though his first filmed scene with her was a nude lovemaking bit in a bed (which had to be reshot, after a bottle of wine, because she was too "stiff"!). Great stuff. A Media Blasters/Guilty Pleasures Release. Not Rated.

A SAVAGE HUNGER (1984) - An (offscreen) plane crash leaves a diverse group of people stranded in the desert. They are your typical cast of stereotypes: Young, naive Matt (Chris Makepeace; MEATBALLS - 1979), who has just lost his father in the crash; spoiled rich bitch Jennifer (Suzanne Snyder; RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD PART II - 1987), who is not used to doing anything on her own; fitness and health food fanatics Anna (Anne Lockhart; TROLL - 1986) and Alex (Rick Podell; WORLD GONE WILD - 1988), who won't even eat caviar found in the wreck because it contains "fish byproducts"; photographer Paul (Richard Cox; ZOMBIE HIGH - 1987), whose camera is an extension of his arm; co-pilot Eric (Mark Metcalf; ANIMAL HOUSE - 1978), who has suffered brain injuries; regular joe Louis (Ben Slack; SOCIETY - 1989), a nice guy in an awful situation; brave middle-aged New Yorker Jill (Dori Brenner; ALTERED STATES - 1980); and physician Jake (Scott Hylands; DEATH HUNT - 1981), who becomes the unofficial leader of the group. After realizing that no one in the outside world knows where they are and with food and water getting scarce, Jake, Alex, Matt, Paul and Jill leave the rest of the group back at the wreckage and head-off in search of civilization and rescue, not aware that the directions given them by Eric are completely wrong. When Anna discovers that Eric is a couple of sandwiches short of a picnic, she and the remainder of the group head out to catch up with Jake and his gang and put them in the right direction. They do catch up, but a lack of water puts them all in a weakened state. Louis is the first to fall victim. Too weak to walk, the group are forced to leave him behind as they move forward (Paul takes one last picture of him, but a disgusted Jill breaks his camera). Eric takes his life the next day by swallowing a handful of sand, imagining it to be water. The remaining seven survivors trek on through the blazing sun and hot sand, all of them moments away from dying of dehydration and heat stroke (Alex gets so thirsty, he drinks his own urine). Anna and Alex steal the last bit of water and break-off from the rest of the group, selfishly heading out on their own. Too bad for them, because the rest of the group find a man-made mini oasis, complete with a well full of water. They have two major problems, though. The first one is that though they have plenty of water, they have nothing to carry it in, forcing them to stay at the oasis and hoping someone finds them. The second problem is food. Besides a couple of lizards, there is no nourishment to be had. They are in quite the conundrum, which is further complicated by a wound on Jill's foot that is turning gangreinous and Jake going looney from hunger. He wants to kill Jill and cannibalize her body, but Paul protects her until she dies and he then buries her in a secret location. Jake goes quite mad and murders Paul while Matt and Jennifer (who are now lovers) watch and do nothing. Jakes slices-up Paul's body (it's a pretty graphic scene) and cooks his flesh over an open fire. Matt refuses to eat it, but Jennifer gobbles it down and becomes Jake's bitch. Will Matt finally cave-in and eat human flesh or will he fight the craving and realize that when the Paul buffet runs dry, he will be next on the menu? Man, I get the feeling that things are going to get hot at the oasis.  I remember watching this film (also known as THE OASIS) on the CBS Late Movie in the mid-80's, but finally seeing it on home video is like watching a whole different film, since the sanitized TV edit deleted all the nudity, violence and the entire cannibal subplot! Director Sparky Greene (sadly, this is his only feature film credit) holds off on most of the graphic violence and nudity until the final third of the film, so when it does come, it's shocking and totally unexpected. The scene where Jake cuts into a dead Paul's arm with a jagged piece of metal is about as graphic as a film can get. Until then, Greene was more interested in showing us the plight of the survivors as they traverse the barren desert (filmed in Death Valley, California) in search of food and shelter. Watching their suffering is an emotional ordeal and I dare you not to reach for something to drink while viewing this. The script (by Tom Klassen) has minimal dialogue, but the words are chosen carefully and some lines resonate, thanks to a cast of veteran actors. Just listen to what Louis asks of the group before they walk off, leaving him in the hot sun to die: "Every once in a while, just think of me, okay?" You can actually see the pain and anguish on the other people's faces when he gasps that out. Not a typical line of dialogue for a film like this. I especially liked the downbeat ending, where Jennifer knocks-out Jake when he is choking Matt. When Matt and Jennifer leave the oasis with a full jug of water (Matt finds the jug next to the corpses of Anna and Alex, who have been picked-clean by vultures), Matt asks Jennifer why she picked him over Jake. When she answers, "There was more of him!", it leaves little doubt what is in the backpack Matt is carrying. They then spot a road and think they are saved, throwing the water and backpack to the ground and running towards the road, but as the camera pans overhead, it reveals that nothing but miles of barren, empty terrain lies ahead of them. That's just mean but, boy, does it ever pack a punch. If you can find the VHS tape of this film from Vestron Video, grab it, because it's not yet available on DVD and it's worth your time. It would make a good companion piece with Rene Cardona's SURVIVE! (1976), which was remade as the less-exploitative ALIVE (1993). Not Rated.

SHRIEK OF THE MUTILATED (1974) - This classic low-budget gem finally is available on DVD. For the uninitiated, the story goes as follows: Dr. Ernst Prell (Alan Brock) brings four of his students to the private Boot Island to search for a Yeti. Seven years earlier, the good doctor also brought four students to the island in search of the same Yeti with disasterous results. Three of the students didn't come back alive, their bodies mutilated. On the island, the four students meet Ernst's associate, Dr. Karl Werner (Tawm Ellis), and his mute Indian servant, Laughing Crow (Ivan Agar), who serves them some unknown meat which they all dislike except Keith (Michael Harris), Ernst's favorite student. Tom (Jack Neubeck) is the first student to be attacked and killed by the Yeti (all that's left of him is a severed leg). Lynn (Darcy Brown, who is a dead-ringer for Velma in the SCOOBY-DOO cartoons) is the next student to be offed by the white-haired demon. Ernst uses Tom's severed leg as bait and is attacked by the Yeti but survives. Karen (Jennifer Stock), another student, finds the rest of Tom's body hidden in a greenhouse but can't get Keith or Ernst to believe her. Ernst and Keith use Lynn's body to snare the Yeti in an elaborate trap. The Yeti gets away and Keith follows it, only to discover that this whole trip was just a ruse. They have been set up by Ernst and Karl, as their bodies are to be served for breakfast for Ernst's cannabalistic associates, who are staying in a motel a few miles away. It seems the best-tasting human meat is that of someone who is frightened to death (or as they say, "Untouched by the blade."), which they do to Karen using the Yeti (actually Karl in a costume). Keith is given a choice: Join the cult or end up as Karen (this is after they all attack Keith with forks!). The film ends with Keith drooling over the body of Karen as Laughing Crow, electric knife in hand, asks, "Dark meat or white?" For long a favorite of mine, SHRIEK OF THE MUTILATED is presented on DVD in a tattered, hacked-up print that, though better looking than any VHS version available, seems to be missing pieces of gore that appear in the cassette versions. The biggest omission here is the song "Popcorn" by the group Hot Butter during the party at the beginning of the film. It has been replaced by some public domain music track and it sticks out like a sore thumb since it's the only true stereo track in the entire film! The song's omission really doesn't hurt the film, though. Directed by Michael (listed here as "Mike") Findlay and photographed by wife Roberta Findlay, both responsible  for many classic exploitation films of the 60's & 70's, including TAKE ME NAKED (1966), THE TOUCH OF HER FLESH (1967), THE KISS OF HER FLESH (1968) and the infamous SNUFF (1976). The wickedly clever screenplay is by Ed Adlum, who also wrote and directed another minor gem, INVASION OF THE BLOOD FARMERS (1972). SHRIEK OF THE MUTILATED is not overly bloody, but the subject matter and the distasteful final denouement make it seem sleazier than it actually is. The scene early on of a wife getting even with her crazy husband with the help of a plugged-in toaster in a bathtub is a classic of trash cinema. The cast of non-professional actors acquit themselves rather nicely and on the whole deliver a sense of realism to their roles which also helps the film leap ever-so-gently over the edge. You could do a whole lot worse than purchasing this DVD since it will probably be the only chance to view it in this format in the near future (according to Fred Olen Ray, who released it). I just wish it was in better shape and more complete. This is the best fake Yeti film that you are ever going to see. A Retromedia Entertainment DVD Release. Rated R.

STANLEY (1972) - Remember the good old 70's when horror movies rated PG showed plenty of violence, skin and allowed enough forbidden behavior to please even the most jaded fan? Today, any horror movie rated PG would barely pass muster with kids. That's why you never see any. Even the PG-13 rated ones released today don't hold a candle to the PG ones of the 70's. Which brings us to STANLEY. Originally released on a double-bill (remember them?) with NIGHT OF THE LEPUS (1972), STANLEY tells the semi-sweet story of recently returned home (to everglades Florida) Vietnam veteran Tim (Chris Robinson), a Native American who catches poisonous snakes for their venom, which he sells to local Dr. Everett (played by screenwriter Gary Crutcher) for research. Since Tim never hurts the snakes he catches, he builds up a friendship with them, especially a rattlesnake he calls Stanley. Tim butts heads with local businessman Mr. Thomkins (the sleazy Alex Rocco), who wants Tim to help him trap and kill snakes for their skins. Tim refuses Thomkins' offer, partly because he was responsible for Tim's father's death (he was shotgunned down, mistaken for an alligator!), partly because because Thomkins is a raving racist (he calls Tim a "redstick" ) and mostly because Tim likes snakes better than people. Tim also supplies snakes to exotic dancer Gloria (Marcia Knight), who uses them harmlessly in her act at a club run by her money-grubbing husband Sidney (Rey Baumel). Tim also has to deal with Thomkins' two right-hand men, Crail (singer Steve Alaimo) and Bob (Mark Harris), who travel around the swamps capturing snakes for skins. Tim gets into a fight with Crail and Bob (after catching them with a truckload of snakes) and Bob gets bit in the ass by Stanley. Tim reaches the breaking point after getting hit on all sides with troubles that have to do with his snakes. Thomkins hires a loose cannon called Psycho Simpson (Paul Avery) to help Crail and Bob with their snake hunting. When Crail and Bob get caught in some quicksand and Tim just watches them sink to the bottom, Psycho breaks into Tim's house and kills Stanley's mate Hazel and their three offspring. Psycho threatens Tim with an outboard motor but Stanley bites him on the neck and kills him. Gloria is talked into biting the heads off snakes in her act by her husband in hopes it will increase business for his failing club. It does, but when Tim sees the act in the packed club, he later kills both Gloria and Sid by throwing a bag of snakes in their bed (in slow-motion, an effective scene) while they plead for their lives. Tim then kidnaps Thomkins' daughter Susie (Susan Carroll), who we see earlier is being hit on by her own father with an incestuous leer, after she sees Tim kill her father by filling his swimming pool with snakes. It is at this time the audience is allowed to see that Tim is not the sympathetic hero we thought him to be. He is actually quite psychopathic and the snakes revolt when they see he has no respect for anyone but himself. Director William Grefe is no stranger to horror fans. This lifelong Florida resident also directed  STING OF DEATH (1966), DEATH CURSE OF TARTU (1966), MAKO: THE JAWS OF DEATH (1976) and the classic William Shatner flick IMPULSE (1974). As a film, STANLEY is not without it's charms. One funny scene shows Tim telling the nightclub stage manager (Butterball Smith) about the death of Hazel and her kids. He thinks Tim is talking about people that he knows and looks very concerned. When he realized that Tim is talking about snakes, his look is absolutely hilarious.  There are also copious amounts of carnage, as we see snakes bite people, snakes themselves being killed by shotgun, machete and having their heads bitten off. Add in the incest angle and Tim's character at first portrayed as sympathetic and eventually as psychotic and you get one strange film that would not get a PG rating today, especially the scenes in the finale of Tim killing live snakes by flinging them against the floor and walls (it's clear they're not fakes). Hell, a film like this couldn't get made today! In case you didn't know: I like this film a lot. I never said I had good taste. WARNING: The only uncut version of this film available in the U.S. is the VHS version released by VidAmerica in 1988 (the box art is above). It runs 96 minutes (other sources list a 106 minute version, but that information is false). All other U.S. releases of this title are the edited TV version which runs about 92 minutes and missing most of the violence and the incest scene. This includes the print Rhino released on DVD as part of their HORRIBLE HORRORS COLLECTION VOLUME 2. BCI Eclipse supposedly has an uncut widescreen edition coming out on DVD sometime in 2007. A VidAmerica Release. Rated PG.

SUPER SOUL BROTHER (1978) - I really feel sorry for people who didn't live through the 70's. It was a decade when CB radios pre-dated cell phones, going to a disco in your best polyester suit while cranked on coke or high on pot pre-dated going to a rave with a bottle of water while sweating-off the effects of X, and you were able to go to a movie theater and watch a film with the word "nigger" in the title without Tyler Perry or Al Sharpton putting a posse together and boycotting your ass. Only in the 70's, people, only in the 70's. SUPER SOUL BROTHER was originally released to theaters as THE SIX THOUSAND DOLLAR NIGGER (and THE SIX THOUSAND DOLLAR SUPER-BROTHER in less "urban" areas) and is an ultra-low-budget blaxploitation take-off of TV's THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN (1974 - 1978), directed and co-written by the man responsible for THE GUY FROM HARLEM (1976), so you know you're in for some brain damaged fun. Party comic and Rudy Ray Moore buddy Wildman Steve (real name: Steve Gallon; PETEY WHEATSTRAW - 1977) stars as Steve, a "nigger off the streets" who is kidnapped by crooks Bob (Benny Latimore) and Jim (Lee Cross) and brought to the laboratory of dwarf mad scientist Dr. Dippy (Peter Conrad, who can't speak a single line without tripping over his tongue), who injects Steve with a new serum that gives him supernormal powers, but unless he gets a neutralizer shot within one week's time, he will die, There's one caveat: The neutralizer shot has not been invented yet, but that means very little to Bob and Jim, who want to use the superhuman Steve to pull-off a multi-million dollar diamond heist and then let him die (this way, they don't have to pay him his "cut"). Before any of that happens, we are subjected to some of the most cheaply filmed dialogue and exposition scenes that take up nearly three-quarters of the film's running time. Steve is nothing but a wino (the first time we meet him, he's getting the shit kicked out of him by three homeless guys for stealing a newspaper!), but Dr. Dippy's beautiful black assistant, Peggy (Joycelyn Norris), who is (naturally) a virgin, falls in love with him and he deflowers her in a swanky apartment (I'm being kind here) loaned to him by Jim (Peggy: "Steve, don't hurt me with that ring on your finger!" Steve: "Peggy, that's no ring. It's the watch on my wrist!"). After getting a shot of the serum, Bob and Jim convince Steve to pull a "practical joke" on their friend, which turns out stealing a (Styrofoam) safe from a jewelry store while Dr. Dippy and his girlfriend, the big-breasted Monica (the obviously pseudonymous "Wild Savage"), keep the saleswomen occupied by arguing over the price of a diamond engagement ring (I never laughed so hard in my life!). When Bob tries to kill Steve by shooting him in the face and the bullets just bounce-off ("Goddamn, this nigger is bulletproof!"), Steve knocks-out Bob, hides the diamonds under a huge (Styrofoam) boulder and heads to Peggy's house, where he himself creates the neutralizer by putting the ingredients in a flower vase and drinking it! Bob, Jim and Dr. Dippy force Peggy and Steve at gunpoint to retrieve the diamonds, but the trio end up shot dead ($100 to the first person who can tell me who shot Dr. Dippy!) and Steve and Peggy live happily ever after with an on-screen scrawl that promises "This Nigger Is Coming Back" (he didn't).  It's hard to describe how utterly cheap and ridiculous this film really is. Director Rene Martinez (who also gave us ROAD OF DEATH [1973], as well as the aforementioned THE GUY FROM HARLEM) makes any Rudy Ray Moore film look polished and professional in comparison. The acting is worse than amateurish (especially Wildman Steve [who passed away in 2004] and Peter Conrad, who smokes a cigar that is almost bigger than he is!) and the sets, sound recording, editing, music and camerawork are all sub-level 70's porn quality. What makes this film so watchable are the quotable pieces of crazy (and racist) dialogue and silly sight gags (screenplay written by Martinez and Laura S. Diaz). Wildman Steve mainly does his dirty nightclub comedy act ("A white woman once offered me fifty dollars to 'knock her out'. I fucked her three times and then hit her over the head with a brick!"), but he says some other crazy things like telling Jim's maid (Addie Williams), "Wash my butt, not my back!" and "Come in this water and let's have a fuck!" when he is taking a shower. My favorite line is when he describes why marijuana is illegal, but homosexuality is not, by saying, "If you get caught with a joint in your mouth, it better be connected to two balls!" The fact that it takes nearly two-thirds of the film's running time for Steve to do anything slightly superhuman shows the cheapness of the production, but when he proves his super-strength by bending an iron bar, lifting and obvious Styrofoam safe (which supposedly weighs 2000 pounds!), beating up (and killing) two of the three bums who picked on him when he lived on the streets (in some of the worst fight choreography I've ever seen) and then stealing the safe (it's the same safe that was in Dr. Dippy's lab!) from the jewelry store (When he puts the safe in the trunk of Bob's Cadillac, the shocks don't even move! Now that's one well-built car!), you'll either laugh yourself silly or turn the damn film off. There is no middle ground with this film. Either you'll love it for its awful cheapness or you'll hate it for its awful cheapness. Also starring John A. Jacobs, Larry Hannah, Eric Gregory Gallon and Herbert Murray. A Xenon Home Video VHS Release. Not available on DVD. Rated R.

TERROR FIRMER (1999) - Director/star Lloyd Kaufman proves once again that sometimes having a "kitchen sink" mentality can really work in your favor. Before Kaufman's POULTRYGEIST: NIGHT OF THE CHICKEN DEAD (2006) came along, this was Troma Films' premiere horror comedy, edging out Kaufman's THE TOXIC AVENGER (1984) and TROMA'S WAR (1988) for sheer idiotic brilliance and wall-to-wall gore. This film is quite complex in its simplicity: Blind director Larry Benjamin (Kaufman) is trying to make his gore masterpiece, but a female serial killer begins murdering cast and crew members in increasingly bloodier and gorier ways (The film opens with her tearing-off a chauvinistic guy's leg and beating him to death with it and then ripping a sunbathing pregnant woman's baby out of her womb and running away with it!). Larry not only has to deal with the rash of killings, but also the difficult cast and crew of the film, including diva star Christine (Debbie Rochon; CHAINSAW CHEERLEADERS - 2008); her white trash boyfriend D.J. (Mario Diaz); extremely strong boom mike handler Casey (Will Keenan); special effects technician Jerry (Trent Haaga; THE GHOULS - 2003); shy gofer Jennifer (Alyce LaTourelle) and other assorted nitwits, halfwits and twits who make creating a movie look like a fraternity toga party gone out of control (and, yes, there's a toga party in this film!). When soundman The Toddster (Gary Hrbeck) walks off the film, he is later murdered by the mysterious female killer when she stabs him repeatedly about his head and chest with a broken bong (this is after she shoves a funnel up his ass and gives him a bong water and cocaine enema!) and then ripping out his brains with her bare hands (and doing a "This is your brain on drugs" PSA parody). Larry also has a young daughter named Audrey (Lloyd's real-life daughter Charlotte Kaufman) who was struck dumb when she witnessed her mother being killed during a stampede at a taping of The Jerry Springer Show (her mother's head is trampled over and over until it is just bloody mush). While Larry is trying to finish the film, whose script gets changed daily, he's also trying to teach Audrey how to speak again. There's also a competition between Casey and Jerry for Jennifer's affection, which Casey wins due to his unusual strength (he keeps beating-up and humiliating Jerry) and his unusual love of pickles. As the murders continue, including the killing of the film's financial backer, Jacob Gelman (portly Troma regular Joel Fleishaker), who is graphically torn apart by an escalator (!), it becomes clear that Jennifer has a deadly sexual secret she is hiding from the crew (her sex scene with Jerry is one for the books). But is she the killer or could it be another crewmember that has a much more serious problem? Maybe the jar of pickled red herring is a clue? The entire crew bands together to defeat the killer in the film's blood-soaked (and painful) finale, which ends with an impassioned speech about independent filmmaking that is both inspiring and hilarious.  In TERROR FIRMER, there is no joke so juvenile or sight gag so low that Lloyd Kaufman won't use it on screen. You want people shitting their pants in graphic detail? It's in the movie. You want to see a guy throwing up and then immediately kissing his girlfriend? It's here. How about jokes about A.I.D.S., shameless self-promotion of other Troma films, a cameo by Lemmy of Motorhead (C'mon, Lemmy, a doctor could probably remove that fucking mole! But then he wouldn't really be Lemmy, would he?), fart, pissing, puking and shitting sight gags, ventriloquist dummy crucifixion, penis stretching, references to SEINFELD, JAWS and too many other TV shows and blockbuster films to take-in in one viewing? All here. The funny thing is, a lot of this stuff is actually funny and sometimes side-splittingly so. There is also plenty of full-frontal nudity on view, both male and female (and transgendered) and some of it approaches porn level, but it is done so over-the-top, you can't possibly be offended by it. Yet for all of TERROR FIRMER's excesses (and there are plenty), Patrick Cassidy, Douglas Buck and Kaufman's screenplay (inspired by Kaufman and James Gunn's book, "All I Need To Know About Filmmaking I Learned From The Toxic Avenger") is still a biting satire on ultra-low-budget independent filmmaking, including the camaraderie, in-fighting and unexpected setbacks, and it still finds time to have a cohesive murder mystery plot. And, surprise, it's not really that easy to solve; and the rest of the story is linear and resolves most of the major plot points (including Audrey's speech problem). If it's a tad overlong at two hours (slightly over two hours if you play the film with all the excised bits, a special DVD feature), there is so much going on both in the forefront and the background, time will fly right by. The gore is plentiful (and very well done), the women are beautiful and the jokes non-stop. What more could you ask for? Also starring Yaniv Sharon, Sheri Wenden, Mo Fischer, Lyle Derek, Roy David and funny cameos by Ron Jeremy, Joe Franklin, Eli Roth, Tiffany Shepis, Trey Parker and Matt Stone. A Troma Entertainment DVD Release. Unrated.

TERRORVISION (1986) - Cult horror comedy from Executive Producer Charles Band and his late, lamented Empire Pictures production outfit (Band would form Full Moon Pictures after Empire went belly-up). When the planet Pluton's Creature Disposal Unit accidentally beams an alien criminal off the planet, the transmission is picked-up by a newly installed satellite TV dish ("The Do It Yourself 100") belonging to the wacky Putterman family, which included dad Stanley (Gerrit Graham; PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE - 1974); mom Raquel (Mary Woronov; EATING RAOUL - 1982); punk rock groupie daughter Suzy (Diane Franklin; AMITYVILLE II: THE POSSESSION - 1982); young son Sherman (Chad Allen; DO YOU WANNA KNOW A SECRET? - 2001); and crazy Grampa (Bert Remsen; LIES - 1983). When everyone else is out of the house (Mom and Dad are at a swinger's party and Suzy is on a date with her punker boyfriend), Grampa and Sherman watch an all-night monster movie marathon hosted by Medusa (Jennifer Richards, who wears a wig made of plastic snakes), only to have a real monster come out of the TV and kill Grampa (by liquefying him) in front of Sherman's eyes. Sherman calls the police, but they think it's a crank call and when his parents come home with another swinging couple (played by Alejandro Ray and Randi Brooks), Mom locks Sherman in Grampa's fallout shelter to shut him up (Terrific parenting, Mom!). It's not long before the monster makes quick meals out of Mom and Dad and the other swinging couple (Rey's character turns out to be bisexual, but leaning more to gay!), so Sherman makes another call to the cops and one to Medusa and when they both blow him off, he blows the door on the fallout shelter using Grampa's WWII explosives, just as Suzy returns home with her punk rocker boyfriend O.D. (Jonathan Gries; FRIGHT NIGHT PART 2 - 1988). The monster attacks, but stops in it's tracks when it sees O.D.'s studded armband (a flashback shows that it reminds the monster of it's kind owner back on the planet Pluton), so Sherman and Suzy don studded armbands, too, and attempt to domesticate the monster. The trio plan on making a million bucks off the monster, so Sherman calls Medusa again and Suzy talks her into coming to the Putterman home to look at the monster. Things go horribly wrong when Officer Nutky (Ian Patrick Williams) shows up to arrest Sherman for making crank calls and the monster eats both O.D. and Nutky. Pluthar (William Paulson), a friendly alien from the planet Pluthon, beams through the TV screen to save Sherman and Suzy, but Medusa sees him as competition and kills him, which leads to the film's bitterly funny conclusion. Let's just say that when Medusa hosts her next horror marathon, the monsters in the films she will be showing will pale in comparison to the hostess.  This is one of the better horror comedies to come out of the mid-80's, thanks to director Ted Nicolaou's (SUBSPECIES - 1991; BAD CHANNELS - 1992; VAMPIRE JOURNALS - 1997) funny screenplay, which mocks everything from BOB & CAROL & TED & ALICE (1969; a funny scene involving the kids finding the talking severed heads of their parents and the swinging couple in the bedroom) to E.T. (1982; What do you feed a starving monster? Everything!) and our never ending obsession with TV. John Carl Buechler's life-size creature is a ridiculous concoction of sharp teeth, big eyes, a huge crab claw and plenty of latex and slime, but it totally works in the framework of this wacky universe. Besides a quick shot of the planet Pluton in the beginning of the film (look closely and you'll see the wrecked remains of STAR TREK's USS Enterprise in a junkyard), the entire film is set within the confines of the colorful Putterman home, which includes one of the biggest indoor hot tubs I have ever seen (It plays an important part in the death of Alejandro Ray and Randi Brooks). The sets are a masterwork of primary colors (filmed on stages in Rome, Italy) and offer every excess the coke-fueled 80's had to offer. While some of the effects are disgusting, you will notice the total lack of blood here. When people are killed, they simply dissolve into a puddle of ooze. Sure, some of the humor seems forced and dated, but everyone plays it so broadly, it's hard not to fall for it's many charms (Grampa, who sells lizard tails on the sidewalk, expounds the eating of the tails by saying, "You cut it off, eat it and it grows back. And you can eat that one, too!" He may have something there.). This actually got a theatrical release through Band's Empire Pictures distribution arm and shortly thereafter obtained a VHS release from Lightning Video. (Remember when Band was capable of making entertaining films and not shit like THE GINGERDEAD MAN [2005]?). Although it has yet to receive a DVD release, a nice widescreen print has been shown on pay cable stations Showtime and Turner Classic Movies bearing the MGM logo (the print I viewed), so a DVD release in the near future is not out of the question. Rated R.

WINTERBEAST (1986) - Here it is, folks: the badfilm to end all badfilms! It's got incoherent editing, terrible sound, grade school stop-motion effects, a grating music score that gets under your skin like a staph infection, amateur makeup and gore effects, a cast that couldn't act their way out of a paper bag (including a lead actor whose moustache changes from scene-to-scene) and, above all, a storyline that could confuse a Mensa member, yet the film is such a train wreck, you would have to be dead not to enjoy it (I can't speak for the dead, though. Maybe they'd like it, too!). The film opens with Sergeant Bill Whitman (Tim R. Morgan, the man of many moustaches) having a very violent nightmare and then being called into a Ranger's station to interview Ranger Sally Bradford (Lissa Breer), who was rescued in the woods by a weird character named Dick Seargent (Bill McLeod, who looks nothing like the late BEWITCHED star). While Ranger Stillman (Mike Magri) and Dick trade homosexual barbs, Bill questions Sally about the disappearance of Ranger Tello (David Mica) at an abandoned hunting lodge deep in the woods. Sally doesn't have much to say except, "I don't like that place. It's so quiet, it's...so dead!", so Bill asks Dick to take Stillman to the abandoned lodge the following morning to look for clues into Tello's disappearance. Before that happens (this is where the disjointed editing comes into play), Bill and Stillman (who is obsessed with nudie magazines and drinking beer) take a trip to the Wild Goose Lodge, the area's only operational tourist lodge, to talk to owner Dave Sheldon (a lisping Bob Harlow) to see if he knows anything about Tello's whereabouts. Meanwhile, a wooden Indian totem comes to (stop-motion) life and pulls a topless female extra through the window of her home, tossing her (obvious rag doll) body against the outside of the house, killing her (If you aren't laughing out loud at this sequence, you have no sense of humor!). After Bill questions Dave and comes up with nothing (somebody should have questioned Bill about the wild fluctuation of the bushiness of his moustache in this sequence) and Stillman manages to win the lodge's toaster raffle (it's a fucking used toaster, for Christ's sake!), Dick finally takes Stillman up the mountain to where he found Sally (and to confuse the viewer even more, Bill and Sally suddenly appear on the mountain with a fellow named Charlie Perkins [Charles Majka] and Dick is nowhere to be seen!). They all spot a gruesome sight where human skeletons are posed with Indian totems just like in Bill's nightmares. Bill wants to shut down the Wild Goose Lodge until all the murders and rumors of Indian legends are laid to rest, but Dave refuses since this is prime tourist season. Or does he have a more sinister reason? As more creatures begin killing hikers (and Sally), Bill and Charlie (who is an expert on Indian legends) uncover the truth and destroy the source of the Indian curse, or so they think. In the finale, Stillman has his head bitten off by a dinosaur-like creature, Charlie is chased though town by a giant chicken creature (complete with loud cackling sounds!) and Bill must face the Winterbeast (Chris Lenge), an ancient Indian creature who likes to strip humans of their flesh. I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried!  Not since EQUINOX (1967/1970) have I been so enthralled by what is basically a film made with no money and pure imagination. Like EQUINOX, this film is filled with stop-motion creatures but, unlike EQUINOX, the creatures here elicit laughter rather than awe (not necessarily a bad thing). I'm sure that's not what one-and-only-time director/screenwriter Christopher Thies and producer/editor Mark Frizzell were aiming for, but, by golly, this is one of the funniest, most incoherent films I have witnessed in quite some time. WINTERBEAST is entertaining as hell and the humor, whether intentional or not (for an example of the former, pay close attention as Charlie stands next to a statue of a cigar store Indian), drives the film to delirious heights that you will not see anywhere else. Just as it takes special talent to make a classic film, it also take that same kind of talent (only on another plane of existence) to make a film like this, where all of it's deficiencies add-up to pure entertainment. I guarantee you will never see stop-motion creatures as unusual and cheap as you'll see here, whether it's living totem poles, a furry creature that bursts out of the ground and drags away two female hikers or (my favorite) a four-armed drooling creature that attacks a guy rappelling down a cliff and rips off his head. The only non-stop-motion creature is the Winterbeast itself and it's a rather creative and effective full-body make-up job. But, by far, my favorite creature is Bob Harlow as the dastardly Dave Sheldon, whose lisp makes him seem gayer than Paul Lynde going as Rock Hudson's date to a Liberace concert. When he dons a 20's-style harlequin mask, lip-synchs to some old tune on a 78 rpm record and begins fondling human corpses he keeps in a secret room at his lodge, it's the film's creepiest moment and worth the price of admission alone. So what are you waiting for? This film can be purchased on DVD for a mere $7.99 directly from the filmmakers at www.winterbeast.com. It's full of special features, including deleted scenes and outtakes and is worth every penny. I can't recommend this enough. Also starring Dori May Kelly as Barbara, Charlie's girlfriend/assistant. Originally filmed in 1986, but not released on home video until 1992 (via VHS from Tempe Video). Support the filmmakers and buy the DVD. Not Rated.

THE WITCHMAKER (1969) - This is one of those fever dream films that has haunted me as a teenager in the 70's due to its' many showings on TV (albeit in edited form). The great news here is that Midnight Video has released an uncut 2.35:1 widescreen print that lets you view the film as it was actually seen in the theatres in the late 60's. The plot is rather simple: A group of parapsychologists, led by Dr. Hayes (Alvy Moore, also the Associate Producer and better known as the crazy "Hank Kimball" on the GREEN ACRES TV show) go to the Louisiana swamps to investigate a series of murders of women who were strung up upside down from trees with their throats slit and all the blood drained from their bodies. One of the group, Tasha (Thordis Brandt), is a "sensitive" whose grandmother was a witch and quickly catches the eye of Luther the Berserk (John Lodge, who left acting shortly after this film to become Governor of Connecticut!), a Warlock who has been committing the murders to keep his love Jessie (Warrene Ott), a witch, young forever. Luther wants to bring Tasha in as the 13th member of his coven and begins knocking off the rest of Dr. Hayes' team sometimes using Tasha as his instrument of death. A lone reporter on the trip, Vic (the prolific Anthony Eisley of THE MIGHTY GORGA - 1969; THE TORMENTERS - 1971 and many other genre films) begins to unravel the mystery with Dr. Hayes as they begin to find the members of their party hanging upside down drained of all their blood. Dr. Hayes puts Tasha under hypnosis and finds out the truth: Tasha will take part in a Blood Sabbath tomorrow and become the 13th member of Luther's coven. Luther attacks the cabin and uses the body of one of the dead researchers, Owen (Tony Benson), to attack the group. Vic and Dr. Hayes decide to find Luther and Jessie and shoot them both in the head. They come up with a plan to defeat the coven (which includes becoming invisible wearing a necklace of wild garlic!), using the remaining female researcher (Robyn Millan) as bait. They manage to subdue Luther and tie him up as Vic (who is wearing the garlic neclace) invades the coven and replaces the human blood for the sacrifice with pig's blood. Luther breaks free of his bonds and knocks out Dr. Hayes and the girl and tries to race back to the coven to stop them from drinking the pig's blood. Alas, Luther is too late and his entire coven is killed. Tasha becomes herself again and Luther chases her and Vic through the swamps, where Vic puts the garlic necklace on Luther and pushes him into quicksand. Vic meets the same fate as Tasha knocks him into the quicksand. I guess she didn't become herself again after all. Director William O. Brown (whose only other known film is ONE WAY WAHINI [1965], also starring Eisley) has crafted an atmospheric chiller with good visuals (filmed in Marksville, Louisiana), especially the shot of Brandt running through the woods in slow motion holding her bare breasts in her hands. Rumors abound that this film was shot with much nudity, but that's simply not true. Even though this film was rated "M" when originally released, THE WITCHMAKER is practical when showing nudity, using branches and other objects to cover breasts and showing nudity from the back instead of the front. Actor L.Q. Jones (ROUTE 666 - 2001) was Executive Producer of this and next went on to Produce THE BROTHERHOOD OF SATAN (1970) and then Direct/Produce/Write A BOY AND HIS DOG (1975). He and Alvy Moore had earlier worked as Director/Associate Producer respectively on THE DEVIL'S BEDROOM (1964). Most of the people appearing in this film have, sorry to say, passed away. Anthony Eisley passed away in January 2003. Alvy Moore croaked in May of 1997. John Lodge took a dirt nap in October 1985. Warrene Ott hit the concrete condo in January 1995. This is a good witchcraft film which should be viewed by everyone interested in horror films. Also known as THE LEGEND OF WITCH HOLLOW and was re-released in 1975 under the title THE NAKED WITCH containing footage not in the original film and Rated R. Many people remember the Interglobal Video version of this film that was released in the 80's. It's the TV version missing some of the more erotic footage and blood. My suggestion: Buy the Midnight Video DVD version (it's scratchy in spots, but highly watchable) and watch the film the way it's supposed to be seen. Rated M (a late-60's version of an R-rating). Isn't it amazing that all the films we remember seeing time after time on TV in the late 60's and early 70's are now considered rare and sometimes downright impossible to find? It boggles the mind.