Beyond the Darkness

This is another of those little italian horror flicks that director Joe D'Amato came out with that were very cheap to make, are extremely hard to find these days and was categorized as a "video nasty". Video Nasties were usually films that could not be rated (if so, they would have gotten an X rating which would have given it an incredibly limited release) and were usually pretty gory. For the most part, his films had a very good plot that was poorly executed with bad acting, not enough action, boring dialogue (made all the worse by the terrible english voice dubbing) and not enough gore. Thankfully, Buried Alive was re-released on DVD a few years ago under the new title "Beyond the Darkness", (which makes it a little easier to acquire, but harder to identify due to the title being changed). I've seen the VHS version and I can say for certain that the DVD release has acquired a bit more footage that wasn't on the VHS version. These extras made this film ten times better. Apparently, several minutes of gore footage was removed and then replaced for the DVD version. Well worth seeking out, now on with the story. Frank is a weird little guy who's hobby is taxidermy, who's parents have recently died, a housekeeper named Iris (who is madly in love with Frank) and his beautiful girlfriend Anna. Iris is extremely jealous of Anna, so she has a Voodoo priestess stick some pins in a doll and kill Anna with a curse, so that she can have Frank all to herself. Anna dies, Frank is deeply grieving and only has Iris to comfort him. He decides that this is not enough (did I mention that Iris looks like a horse?) so after the funeral he digs up Anna, with intentions of using his taxidermy skills to keep her near (and not smelling too bad). Unbeknownst to Frank, Anna's twin sister Elena has arrived in town to pay her respects (obviously played by the same actress). On the way home from the cemetery with Anna's body in the back seat, Frank picks up a pothead hitchhiker. The female hitchhiker gets real stoned and takes a nap in the truck. Frank brings Anna's body into his "house of horrors" taxidermy studio and proceeds with prepping her for the keep. First he pulls out all her guts (deliciously disgusting) and replaces her eyes with glass replicas. He kisses her, tongues her, and when he can't hold his passions back any more he pulls her heart out and eats it (yum, that formaldehyde goodness). The pothead hitchhiker comes out of her stupor long enough to catch Frank embalming his girlfriend. She runs, he chases her, she trips over a bucket of guts, he holds her down and proceeds to pull off her fingernails one by one with a set of pliers, then strangles her. Being the ever dutiful keeper of pretty much everything, Iris helps him hack up the body and dissolve it in a bathtub full of acid. Frank puts Anna's body in bed and leaves her there. With the fake eyes Anna looks like she has drank about 17 pots of coffee, so lying in bed looks even more ridiculous. Bored one day, Frank goes jogging and befriends a young female jogger who has just sprained her ankle. He convinces her to come back to his place where he can tend to her ankle. She comes onto him and he fucks her in the same bed that Anna is lying in. Eventually the smell reaches her, she discovers the body and freaks out. She doesn't get far before Frank catches up with her and bites a chunk of flesh out of her neck. While she lays there dying, Frank really enjoys chewing on the hunk of neck while watching the female jogger die. Dutiful Iris helps Frank dispose of the body in the incinerator. Why they didn't do that with the hitchhiker is beyond me, it just seems that an incinerator would be much less messy than a tub of dissolved guts would be, but I digress. For some reason Frank allows Iris to convince him that marrying her is the way to go. He must have at least some interest because he sure sucks on her tits a lot. Some detective comes snooping around with questions about Anna's grave being desecrated. Iris comes out from under her hangover from the previous night's wedding festivities and finds the detective looking around, so she stashes Anna in the closet. The detective eventually opens the closet, Anna's body falls out, and for some reason the detective doesn't look very surprised and whips out his camera to take pictures of Anna's corpse. Meanwhile, Anna's sister Elena shows up at Frank's house because she knows that he was Anna's boyfriend. Elena hears her sisters voice and the lights go out (either Anna's ghost calling or Iris is throwing her voice to trap the sister. I'm not sure which). Elena sees her sister sitting in a chair, so she goes over to her and Iris comes out of the darkness with a knife and intentions on killing Elena (for obvious reasons). Frank sees Iris about to stab Elena and attacks her, Iris stabs him, he grabs the knife and kills her. The detective returns and sees that Iris is dead, he goes to the basement and catches Frank burning something in the incinerator. The detective shoots and kills Frank when he sees that there are human body parts in the incinerator. He also sees a body on the table. Since they are twins, we don't know which sis was cremated but we are lead to believe that was Elena, probably to get rid of her body in the same manner as all the other victims. The movie ends when at the mortuary,when "her" coffin is about to be nailed shut and Elena pops out alive. Apparently Frank had cremated Anna. I guess since Elena (a live version of Anna) has come along, he decided that he no longer needed Anna's corpse. Of course no one knows this but Frank who is now dead, leaving poor Elena to almost be buried alive (hence the title). Sounds fascinating doesn't it?!?! For some reason, it's not. You have to watch it a couple of times to be able to completely understand what has happened, but very few people have enough patience to do that. Once you get it, it ain't so bad.

Pieces

Pieces is a great shlocky flick from the early 80's. It's spanish and (hopefully) dubbed into english. I had seen this a long time ago and thought it was great. Then one glorious day, I managed to find it on DVD and was thrilled! The sound was much better and the dubbing is only obvious just now and then. It's been restored pretty successfully and is definitely worth seeking out. Anyway, it begins with a little boy putting together a porno puzzle of a naked lady. His mom walks in and catches him and freaks out, tearing his whole room up. Little boy grabs an ax (well, doesn't every 10 year old keep an handy?) and slaughters mom. When police arrive, they assume there was an attack and kid goes free. Fast forward a few decades. A college campus is starting to have some problems with young women being butchered to pieces by some unknown maniac. We see from the killers point of view that it's definitely the kid that long ago developed a personal relationship with his ax and even still has the porno puzzle. Only this time as the pieces of the puzzle fit together, someone comes up with some missing parts. It appears that the killer is possibly recreating this puzzle in real life. Who dunnit, you ask? Well, we're given several suspicious characters to choose from. There's Willard the grounds keeper, an ape of a man, wielding his chainsaw all over the place (the most obvious attempt at diversion possible). There's a few suspicious students at the campus, there's a weird police lieutenant, a sexy tennis player, etc, etc. No real clues are ever given and it ends up being the Dean of Students, whom you rarely see throughout the movie. As a final shocker, there's a double climax at the very end. When someone leans on it, the Dean's bookshelf slides backwards revealing his human jigsaw puzzle he's been working on. Then out of nowhere, the puzzle corpse reaches up and grabs one of the students by the crotch, yanking off his beany weenies. The movie is actually pretty good and the ending alone is worth giving it a go.

Evil Dead 2

Although a sequel, this movie seems more like a remake. The first movie (The Evil Dead) was made to be scary and came out rather humorous. Sam Raimi decided to basically redo the movie, this time trying to make it funny but ultimately came out with a much scarier story. It's the same story as the first movie, only done in a much more professional way. Widely successful, it employed better special effects, stranger characters and a jazzed up version of the original story about finding the Necronomicon: Book of the Dead and releasing demons that can possess human flesh. Anyway, the story goes like this. Ash and his girlfriend vacation in a small cabin deep in the woods. Ash finds a tape recorder in the cellar, plays the demon resurrection chants and soon the trees attack and kill his girlfriend Linda. She becomes possessed, he chops her head off with a shovel and buries her. He soon becomes possessed himself, but the rising sun saves him from being possessed for too long as the demons are forced back into the woods by the sunlight. He makes for the bridge, but suspiciously the bridge has been mangled, making an escape out of there impossible. The sun soon sets as Ash tries to make it back to the cabin. We learn that the incantations recited on the tape recorder were made by an archaeologist and his wife. Their daughter is also an archaeologist and has the missing pages of the Necronomicon needed to dispel the evil. Linda soon pops out of her grave and proceeds to torture Ash, so he takes her to the tool shed and gives her the ol' slice and dice with a chainsaw. Now that Linda is out of the way, his own hand becomes possessed and keeps attacking him. He cuts it off and puts it in a trash can and sets some books on it so the hand can't get out. Ironically, one of the books he uses is the novel "A Farewell to Arms". Meanwhile the daughter shows up at the bridge and is met by a hillbilly couple that demand money to show the daughter a trail to the cabin. Still at the cabin, Ash starts losing his mind when all the furniture starts laughing at him (this scene alone is worth watching this movie.) The daughter and the hillbilly couple make it to the cabin and by the looks of it (blood everywhere and a bloody chainsaw in the corner) it appears that Ash has killed her parents, so they throw him down into the fruit cellar. As the daughter listens to the tape recorder, the professor states that his wife had become possessed and he has buried her in the earthen floor of the cellar. Henrietta (the mom) pops up and goes for Ash. he is rescued just in time by the people upstairs. Hillbilly wife Bobbi Jo freaks and runs into the woods... bad move. She gets attacked by the trees and dragged through the forest and smushed into a tree. Buford Butthead (Bobbi Jo's hubby) grabs the missing pages and throws them down in the cellar and demands that the others help him look in the woods for his stupid wife. When he's attacked, the others high tail it back to the cabin. Thankfully, he gets too close to the cellar door and Henrietta gets a hold of him and chows down. The missing pages are crucial in dispelling the evil, therefore Ash and Annie (professors daughter) must get into the cellar but not before having to kill Henrietta. She mutates into some long necked monster. Ash uses his chainsaw to sever her head and arms in order to get into the basement. The pages are retrieved from the cellar and evidently there are three passages that must be recited. One to make the evil appear in the flesh, one to open a rift in time and space and one to force the evil into the rift. Unfortunately, she is killed by Ash's severed hand and only gets to recite the first two passages. The evil appears and is forced into the rift, unfortunately there is no way to close the rift, so Ash and a few other things (like his car) are sucked into the rift and ends up in another time and dimension. The place he ends up looks very medieval and he's greeted by knights with swords drawn. Some evil bat creature swoops down from the sky. Ash instinctively shoots it down (he's a pro at this by now). The knights are amazed and hail him as a new king. Ash is not amused by this, but it sets the stage for the third movie titled "Army of Darkness" where Ash must fight a war against the "Deadites". Frankly, I found "Army of Darkness" to be a terrible movie that can only be enjoyed if you're really into "Three Stooges" type of humor. Stick with Evil Dead 2, it's by far the best out of the whole trilogy.

Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things!

Alan is an obnoxious theater director who brings his acting troupe to a remote island to engage in some black magic tomfoolery. Actually he's quite a dickhead with a terrible and often macabre sense of humor and delights in cheap pranks. First he rigs the cemetery with live people in graves. He convinces the group that they're really gonna dig up a dead body in order to achieve a new level of acting skill ( y'know, for the hell of it). These fake corpses leap out of graves scaring the young actors to test reactions and such. Eventually we learn that to have a fake grave with an actor in it, you have to remove the original resident, in this case a corpse named Orville. The actors often try to out act their teacher (impossible because this dude is a walking carnival) and act out the demon resurrection chant that the teacher tried to scare everyone with. Not having the ability to be out done, he decides to make his relationship with Orville a rather close and disturbing one. he declares him as his new best friend and takes him back to the cabin these people are staying in. He even stoops to the point of having a mock wedding where he actually marries Orville. They even share a bed for the night. Then suddenly (for no real apparent reason) the dead actually start to rise from their graves. I guess they didn't find his pranks any more amusing than his troupe did. It soon becomes a "Night of the Living Dead" situation with a bunch of weird actors trapped in a cabin surrounded by zombies. They try to get away, they are not successful. And as for Alan the demented theater director, he is finally given his comeuppance when Orville comes back to life and eats him. I guess he didn't appreciate being used as a party prop. This campy classic is an hour of humor with bad jokes and great one-liners and 30 minutes of zombie horror. Made in 1972, it has some of the grooviest wardrobes I've ever seen. A strange side note that I noticed during the credits, all but two of the actors in the movie all used their real names as the names of the characters they played.

Dead Alive

I'll say it upfront, this movie is very gross and gory, even though it's much more humorous that horrifying. As far as the gore is concerned, this movie actually boasts that is has more blood than any other movie (this is actually measured by estimating the gallon per second per scene. In fact, the last scene in the movie reportedly used over 7,000 gallons of blood for the final 5 minute scene. Anyway, the movie starts off a little slow, but picks up momentum quickly. Some kind of rat bat creature from deep in New Zealand is caught and put in a zoo. Meanwhile, our main character Lionel is dealing with a very weird and domineering mother and a young girl named Paquita that has fallen in love with him. Lionel and Paquita go to the zoo on a date and of course mother comes along and hides behind bushes and shit, just to spy on her rather innocent son. Mom gets too close to the rat bat cage and gets bitten by it. Mom starts to undergo many gross and disturbing changes. Her ear falls off, her flesh is falling away and she has big pus splattering sores all over her body. Hoping to nurse mom back, he keeps her at home where things really start going wrong. Paquita comes over with her dog and the dog runs upstairs where mom is. Mom gets the dog, disembowels it and shoves the rest down her throat. Paquita exclaims with shock and hilarity "Your mom ate my dog!" and Lionel points to the dogs guts all over the place and replies "Well, not all of it". Later that evening mom seems to die and come back as some sort of evolving zombie. By evolving, I mean she gets bigger and grosser all throughout the movie. After dying she starts infecting people left and right, turning everyone that comes into contact with her into a bloodthirsty zombie. Out of nowhere a ninja priest comes to save the day but instead accidentally impales himself on a pointy gravestone. Being the ever faithful son, Lionel keeps his mom at home, along with a few of her infection victims, mostly to contain them and to keep mom company. Unbeknownst to lionel, two of the zombies get their groove on and a about an hour later a zombie baby is born. He may be an infant, but he can kill like a pro. A money hungry uncle shows up claiming to being the rightful owner of Lionel's mothers (his sisters) property now that she's dead (little does he know). The uncle blackmails Lionel for the house and five minutes afterwards has a party to celebrate his new wealth. With this precarious new situation, Lionel and Paquita decide it's time to kill all the zombies by injecting them with poison (why they thought poison would work when bullets and fire didn't, is anyone's guess). So they shoot them all up with this poison and bury them. Unfortunately, the poison they chose was some kind of animal stimulant, that creates super zombies bursting from their fresh graves, ready for some chow. They run rampant, killing everyone at the uncle's party thus turning them all into bloodthirsty zombies. Paquita gets bitten and faces becoming a zombie (fortunately for her, the guy that bit her had dentures!). After killing everyone at the party with a lawnmower, Lionel now has to face his "mother" which is now a HUGE monster with big saggy tits, claws, fangs and old lady jewelry. Lionel stands up to his mom for the first time in his life. She eats him and he manages to kill her by lawnmowering his way out of her stomach. Shockingly, this disgusting movie is brought to you by Peter Jackson, multi-Oscar winner for Lord of the Rings. Most people don't know that growing up in New Zealand, he made gore movie after gore movie. This was his zombie flick, Bad Taste was his alien flick, and Meet the Feebles was his porno-puppet flick. All of which will be discussed soon, here on Cultarama!

Day of the Dead

First, there was Night of the Living Dead. Then there was Dawn of the Dead. Now it's Day of the Dead, the third entry to this (at the time) trilogy. Three separate movies that are supposed to be literally the events that occur only a day or so after the first movie. The irony being that there was ten years between "Night" and "Dawn", and eight years between "Dawn" and "Day". One simultaneous event stretched over 18 years. The differences in clothing and hairstyles are obvious and dramatic, yet the films creator George Romero makes no apologies for his continuity short comings. Frankly, the movies are so great that nobody really cares. Day of the Dead takes place in an abandoned underground missile silo, where a handful of scientists and soldiers were grouped together to help figure a way out of this horrible zombie fiasco. This film has many elements of the first movie, being that the real story doesn't have much to do with the zombie outbreak, they are merely a backdrop for a story concerning people with strong personalities and the dynamics of those relationships in a desperate situation. The head soldier, who's a total prick (and a terrible over-actor) demands answers from the scientist half of the group and as usual, gets no answers. The soldiers are all a bunch of obnoxious neanderthals and the scientists are really demented (well, at least one is). The head scientist Dr. Logan is obsessed with mutilating zombies in the effort of understanding the zombie situation. He's convinced that the key to mankind's survival is teaching zombies to be good little boys and girls by rewarding them. Finding this preposterous, the relationship between the scientists and the soldiers comes to a boiling point. And when it's discovered that Dr. Logan's "rewards" are the remains of some of the recently departed soldiers that were assumed to be buried in the makeshift graveyard up on the surface of the silo, all hell breaks loose... again. Violence and death run rampant when one of the soldiers who has been bitten and knows he's gonna die, opens up the gates to the silo, letting all the zombies in. One of the scientists, the radio guy and the helicopter pilot make it out to the surface while the rest of the soldiers are made into a zombie buffet. The soldiers were real pricks all through the movie so their very graphic dismemberment by zombies in the end was very satisfying. The three that made it out, make it to a zombie free island (I guess), giving us hope for the resurrection of humanity... or at least another sequel!

Blacula

He's black, he's beautiful... he's Blacula! Dracula's soul brother. This great blaxploitation film is basically just Bram Stoker's Dracula with black characters. Mamuwalde (great name) is an african prince who along with his wife Luva visit the legendary Count Dracula. Mamuwalde is bitten, turned into a vampire and locked in a coffin for centuries while his wife Luva is killed. In the year 1972, two gay interior designers buy Mamuwalde's coffin and bring it back to Los Angeles where he is unleashed upon the city and is hungry for fresh blood (I guess centuries in a coffin does tend to make one a little peckish). Mamuwalde meets Tina who is the reincarnation of his beautiful wife Luva. He pursues her while dodging her friend Mr. Gordon who finds out that Mamuwalde is a vampire. Gee... a cape, fangs, sleeps in a coffin... how did he ever figure that one out? Mr. Gordon thinks he's got Blacula by the balls when he finds his coffin, but when he opens it and stabs the inhabitant in the chest with a wooden stake, he realizes that he's accidentally stabbed Tina... duh. Blacula having lost his one and only true love for the second time, commits suicide by crawling into the daylight and frying himself. This movie was sincere in it's efforts to be a real horror film, but lacked the ability to frighten due to it's blaxploitation overload. Huge afros, some groovy disco music and Blacula... who's afro, eyebrows and sideburns grow huge whenever he vamps out. There's maybe one or two scary moments, but for the most part, this is a totally campy movie and is therefore very amusing to watch. A true cult classic.

Nosferatu

This is a true masterpiece of film. It has reached a high cult status and is just as scary today as it was when it was released in 1922. It's taken almost verbatim form Bram Stoker's novel "Dracula", which didn't sit well with Stoker's widow who had never given away rights to the story. Therefore, all references to "Dracula" must never be used and then she went a step further and decided that it was completely plagiarized and tried to have all copies of the movie destroyed. Fortunately, she was unsuccessful at halting the movie entirely. Director F.W. Murnau changed a few characters names, slightly altered events, including the name of the movie to Nosferatu. Instead of Count Dracula, we have Count Orlock. Even with the changes, this is without a doubt, an obvious adaptation of Bram Stoker's novel. Rights or no rights, we have it today to enjoy and that's all that really matters. The part of Count Orlock was played by Max Schreck, who was a very very eccentric person who actually thought he was a vampire in real life, only filmed at night and traveled around in a coffin at all times. He ate bats and rats and pretty much freaked out anyone who had the non advantage of being around him. Due to his vampiric ways, the movie took much longer than anticipated, special sets had to be built of a ship because Max Schreck refused to film on a real ship. Despite the controversy about Max Schreck and the ongoing problems that plagued the making of the film, Max Schreck delivers a bone chilling performance. He's so creepy looking, it literally gives me chills and has been scaring the hell out of people for over eighty years now. The filming of this movie and the antics of Max Schreck have been legend for years and was used as the topic of a recent film called "Shadow of the Vampire" starring John Malkovich and Willem Dafoe.

Redneck Zombies

Some idiot is driving down a dirt road smoking a joint with his dog, supposedly attempting to deliver a few barrels of toxic waste. The scene is now obviously set for a movie from Troma. Toxic waste, bad acting, and the appearance of being filmed with a home movie camera. Anyway, the guy loses the barrel, a fat redneck finds it and uses it for an an alcohol still, therefore making toxic moonshine. One by one, these rednecks start becoming toxic zombies. Fortunately for the story, there are a group of campers nearby that make for some tasty vittles. This movies starts out quite comically with the stereotypical rednecks being their weird little country selves, but about halfway through the film it just turns into outright gore. Troma movies can be pretty gross, but this one is totally disgusting. Not much plot, really. Just colorful characters and lots of gore. Absolutely do NOT invest any time trying to understand anything in this movie, for it just isn't relevant. Just sit back and enjoy the humorous zombie make-up, cheap special effects and non funny one liner jokes.

Orgy of the Dead

Orgy of the Dead was one of Ed Wood's last films. And if you thought Glen or Glenda or Plan 9 was bad, this farce makes them look like masterpieces. Towards the end of his life, he had already been a raging alcoholic for years and had begun making monster/nudie films. Light weight porn with a vague monster theme, basically. This movie has no plot at all and only the bare bones of a story. A young couple are traveling down the road and run out of gas near a cemetery. Day instantly becomes night as we move from an outside shot to a studio shot (one of Ed Woods favorite continuity goofs). They are tied up by a werewolf (you can actually see the actors whole neck because the mask is too small). The infamously incorrect self proclaimed psychic (and Ed's favorite drinking buddy) Criswell rises out of a coffin and gives some kind of speech about the creatures of the night, blah, blah, blah. He is obviously reading a cue card, as his eyes move back and forth. He even moves his head back and forth a little too. It also looks like he has on enough make-up to carve your initials in. He is joined by some Vampira wannabe that looks like Elvira's younger sister. Throughout the rest of the movie, the captive couple are subjected to striptease after striptease, by heavily endowed females jiggling around to a "spooky" soundtrack. Each girl comes out "dressed" as something different. There's the Voodoo girl, the jungle girl, the skeleton girl, the mummy girl, etc. They come out half dressed to begin with and "dance" around until all clothes are a distant memory. One after the other, like it's Halloween at a strip club. Then it abruptly ends when the couple untie themselves and escape. I truly believe that there's something out there for everyone, so if you like big bosoms and strippers on Halloween... this Bud's for you.

Dawn of the Dead

This is the infamous sequel to Night of the Living Dead. Dawn of the Dead was a bit more mainstream than it's predecessor, mostly due to Night of the Living Dead becoming such an unexpected major success. The storyline is supposedly the next day, even though it's obviously not, due to the different, more modern clothes and hairstyles. Anyway, the dead are still being resurrected for some as yet unknown reason (it was hinted as space radiation, but never confirmed) and are outnumbering the police and military, and eventually starting to overrun the planet. At a television station, people are panicking and abandoning their jobs as TV informants and are heading for who knows where. A helicopter pilot, his girlfriend, a military buddy and his friend take to the skies, trying to figure out what the hell to do next. They come across a huge shopping mall (another storyline continuation discrepancy) and land on the roof. There's a few zombies roaming around, but not many. They soon realize the benefits of staying there for a while. They rid the mall of the few zombies it has and block all the entrances to the mall with freight trucks. Finally, after getting some sleep, they milk the mall for all it's worth, which is quite a lot. Food, clothes, televisions, radios and ammunition as far as the eye can see. While placing the freight trucks, one of the men was bitten on the leg by a zombie. Three days later, he dies, then comes back, then dies again and is buried in the mall garden courtyard. All goes well for a while, then the mall is raided by a gang of motorcycle bandits. In fighting for what he has claimed as his, the helicopter pilot flips out and fights back. He ends up wounded and then attacked by zombies, dies, resurrects and comes after the only two remaining live people he knows of. The rest of the zombies follow him and bombard the upstairs sanctuary leaving the military guy and the pilots girlfriend to escape the only way possible... up. They fly off in the helicopter (thankfully, he taught his girlfriend how to fly it) and that's the end. I have to say that I was a little disappointed when it ended. There were just too many unanswered questions. Near the beginning of the movie, we find out that the pilots girlfriend is pregnant, but she's like 9 months pregnant at the end when they fly away. Also, where the hell did they go with almost no fuel left. I guess it was so that they could make another sequel (which they did, and much like this one it differs greatly in time discrepancy). The movie basically ends right where it began, so it makes a good transition between the original and part three. This movie was recently remade and unlike the great majority of movie remakes, this one is actually pretty damn good. Scary as hell.

The Evil Dead

The Evil Dead was the first movie collaboration with Director Sam Raimi and actor Bruce Campbell. It spawned two more sequels making it a trilogy. The story starts as a group of 5 young people take a vacation in a deserted cabin deep in the Tennessee woods, (sounds like the ideal getaway doesn't it). During the course of their mundane partying, they hear noises in the basement (which appears to be about three times bigger than the house itself) so they investigate. They find a tape recorder, a strange dagger and a book (Noturam Demontos, book of the dead). As they listen to the tape recorder, a man describes how the reciting of the passages of the book can awaken the evil beings that haunts the forests and dark bowers of mans domain. The man on the tape recorder recites the passages and before long the forest starts to come alive. One by one, the happy vacationers are possessed by evil demons and start killing and eating each other. The main character "Ash" is for some reason, never possessed, but has to deal with his sister, girlfriend, best buddy, etc... all getting possessed and turning into vigorous flesh eating zombies. They can't leave because the surrounding forests seem to be possessed also. One girl tries to escape and is actually raped by a tree. Poor Ash goes through hell just trying to survive the night, because hopefully the demons will recede back into the forest when the sun rises. He has to dismember and bury his girlfriend (which doesn't really work). He gouges eyes, chops up friends, and gets lots of blood splattered everywhere. When he becomes the only non-possessed, non-dismembered person there, and it's almost dawn, he thinks he's gonna be alright. ...I don't think so.

Night of the Living Dead

This movie probably has the largest cult following of all time. Most Cult Fiends know it word for word (it would make for some interesting karaoke). This is another film that was made on a shoestring budget and not expected to be an Oscar winner, but instead this movie has very much become art in itself and still delivers a frightening punch that is truly scary and still very effective. I have an admitted obsession with "living dead" movies. I'm not sure why, I guess it's because of having been in mortuary school and worked in funeral homes, I just find the subject to be most disturbing, terrifying, effective... and wonderful! Anyway, this is also another movie to be recently colorized by Off Color Film, very interesting. Ok, so Johnny and Barbara are at the cemetery putting a wreath on their dead fathers grave. In a joking manner, Johnny teases his sister saying "Their coming to get you Barbara." "look, there comes one of them now". Barbara notices the man coming and wants to apologize but instead he attacks her. She nearly gets away with her life which is more than I can say for her brother. She holes up in an old farmhouse (the owner is a meat salad at the top of the stairs) with a man who manages to get to the house just as his truck runs out of gas. He tells her about other attacks going on outside, she slowly loses it and becomes either hysterical or mute during the rest of the movie. Soon we learn that there are people hiding in the basement. A young local couple and an obnoxious man and his barely tolerant wife. Their kid is downstairs and sick by having been bitten by one of those "things". One gripping aspect to this movie is the dynamics between all the people in the house. Had they got along and helped each other, they might have made it through the night, but instead, they all pulled in different directions and eventually everybody got it soon or later. The other dynamic being the "show no emotion" factor. "How can I shoot my daughter, even though she's trying to eat me?" Nerves are shattered now and then by really creepy corpses banging their way through the windows and doors. This film was the beginning careers of two of the most respected people in the movie industry... George Romero and Tom Savini. George Romero went on to have a huge directing career and Tom Savini is one of the largest names in the special effects department for more movies than I can count. Night of the living dead has spawned three additional sequels, had tons of copycats made, a remake by Tom Savini in the early 90's. Who better to do a remake, right?. Most remakes are really bad, but I can honestly say that it really wasn't bad and stuck to the original script and had an interesting new twist ending. This is as classic as they come. A must for any Cult fanatic!

Carnival of Souls

This movie made such an impact on me that I almost believed it to be complete truth. This haunting movie is quite unnerving in a very subtle way. Mary Henry is in a car accident, how she survived is anyone's guess. But ever since the accident, her life seems somewhat altered. She is a paid organist that has decided to make a new start after the accident by relocating to Utah and taking a job as the organist for the local church. Mary seems to be haunted by an eerie pale faced man with dark eyes that appears to her but no one else. Mary also becomes a little obsessed with an old pavillion just outside town. Soon even stranger events begin to happen. There are times when no one can hear or even see Mary, as though she has no place in the world. During these episodes, the only sound that can be heard is the spooky organ music that is almost a character in itself and present through most of the movie. Mary finally sets out to solve the strange events that now plague her constantly. Believing that the answer lies in the old pavillion, she goes there and faces the ghostly truth behind her own existance. Tons of easy to understand symbolism, a great story, an unexpected ending and an actress that seems cold as ice, even when she smiles. This true classic was made on a shoestring budget but was an instant hit, and has gone on to gather followers of the cult for years. It's also been colorized as of lately by Off Color Films, who did an excellent job, but it's the black and white version that really has the more haunting impact. This movie makes a great conversation topic, due to the different ways the story can interpreted. A wonderfully artful film.

Deranged

This is a creepy little flick is about a creepy little guy named Ezra Cobb. This was the first and most accurate telling of the Ed Gein story. A story that would go on to inspire many other popular movies like Silence of the Lambs, Psycho and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Ezra Cobb (Ed Gein) is a hopeless mama's boy that caters to his mothers every need, but when she dies Ezra just can't control his grieving and soon falls into insanity. Unable to cope with the seperation from his mother, he decides that it's high time he went and got her from that nasty old cemetary and brought her home. Unfortunately Mama Cobb doesn't look so great (being dead for almost a year can do that to you). Ezra becomes a regular at the cemetary, collecting body parts from other corpses to help restore his mother. Eventually he starts bringing whole corpses home to keep mom company. He also has become quite a ghoulish artist, hanging faces on the wall and keeping skin from his victims to make a woman suit (Ed also had gender issues). He made bowls from skulls, lamps made with a spinal column and lampshades made from skin. He eventually turns his interests toward live women (I guess he got tired of the smell) and when people start to go missing, nobody even thinks of Ezra Cobb, who is by all accounts considered a nice guy. The police soon link him to one of the murders and when they come to his house to check things out, they find a woman in his barn... decapitated, gutted and hung upside down like a deer. It turns out that sweet Ezra has been very naughty. Even though this movie is very gross and disturbing, it doesn't even compare to the real events that occured in Plainfsield Wisconsin.

Death Bed: The Bed That Eats!!!!

This is a very strange art film that was made but never really released. It floated from one dusty shelf to another for about thirty years until it was finally dusted off and released on low budget DVD. Apparently, during those thirty years, only a handful of people got to see it, but that was enough to generate a buzz about it's existence and a copy was finally located and released. The story is simple yet effective. Various people happen upon an old house with a mysterious basement room containing a large four poster bed and an odd painting hung on the wall. Anything edible that comes in contact with the bed, gets eaten, leaving chicken bones and empty wine bottles amongst the sheets. As people go to lie on this bed, they also begin to disappear. The actual digestion of whatever it eats is shown in a hilarious way and with side splitting sound effects (it sounds like crunching on raw carrots). Slowly we learn that the artist of the painting on the wall, is actually still stuck behind the painting, watching helplessly as the bed chomps down on anything and everything. A guy gets his hands eaten off when he sticks them under the sheets, but for some reason is perfectly calm with no pain and an "oh well" kind of attitude. A treasure of a movie, that successfully rides the fence between horror and comedy. A must see for any cult fan.

Nekromantik

Wow, what can one say about Nekromantik?  Being a cult movie master, I thought I had seen it all...  I was DEAD wrong. Nekromantic is a story about a little German guy with an unpronounceable name who has a job as part of a cleanup crew for grisly car accidents.  One day he happens upon a very very rotted corpse in a swamp and brings a piece of his job home to his necropheliac wife as a gift.  They proceed to have repeated intercourse with it until little german guy gets fired from his job and his wife decides that he can no longer provide her with fresh (or not so fresh) playthings, she decides that she can have a better life by running off with their "new friend".  Unable to cope with his wifes betrayal, he seeks his carnal pleasures among impatient but creative prostitutes, only to find that he cannot acheive any pleasure at all... at least with y'know, anything alive.  For a cheap foreign film, the acting is actually pretty good and the special effects are nothing less than disturbing.  For those who crave shock value, this is definately the movie for you.