Chopping Mall

This is a cheesy little horror flick from the mid 80's that never really picked up at the box office but made a killing in the world of VHS home video. It starts out with a demonstration by mall security, showing their latest and most efficient security system ever. This new system consists of steel doors that close and don't open till morning, plus three bulletproof robots that are ridiculously over armed. They have lasers that can cut through steel and can shoot poison darts and from time to time employ some explosives as well. The demonstration ends with those famous last words... "Absolutely nothing can go wrong.". First of all, what mall has such a bad crime rate that they have to have solid steel bank doors and three murderous robots? Second of all, that line "Absolutely nothing can go wrong" pays homage to (is stolen from) the last line to a famous movie called Westworld, another film about robots going berserk. Lightening strikes the robot recharger and causes the Killbots (I mean, the Protector Series 101) to malfunction. It just so happens that on this very night, a bunch of stupid mall employees decide to have a late night party (orgy) in the furniture store. They plan to disperse before the doors lock, but the robots keep them busy and before you can dump this movie in the can, the doors close and they are locked in for the night. This pack of teens seems to be able to destroy at least two Killbots before all the kids are killed off, yet one lone survivor named Allison lives and there's still one Killbot left. A funny side note to this is that every time that a robot kills a kid, the robot says "Have a nice day." Allison has an idea, she makes a big mess in the paint shop with paint and turpentine, lures the Killbot inside and throws a flare at him, but not before saying "Have a nice day!". Another strange similarity in this film is the lead actress Kelli Maroney. She played Samantha in the movie "Night of the Comet", and in that film her dad was a Marine and had taught her to use firearms. In this film, she's a crack shot and when this is noticed, she says "My dad's a Marine." Plus, there's a cameo of Mary Woronov near the beginning of the movie. Mary Woronov also played a prominent character in Night of the Comet. One thing that kept me laughing (the only thing) throughout the film are the painfully obvious stunt doubles. Cheap wigs that bear little resemblance to the actors hair and bodies that didn't really match in weight or stature. A mushy ending is tacked on to the end. Allisons blind date for the evening (orgy partner) who was thought to have been killed already, shows up alive with a bloody roll of toilet paper stuck to the back of his head. They hug, the end. Awwwwww. The movie was originally released to bad reviews with the title of "Killbots", but when it tanked, they re-released it with a punchier (and totally misleading) title. But it does have a great tagline... Chopping Mall: Where shopping can cost you an arm and a leg. A good tagline is always appreciated... no matter how badly the movie sucked. Another stolen item featured in this movie is the sound that the Killbots make when they shoot their lasers. It's unmistakeably the same sound that the martian spaceships made in War of the Worlds.

Meet the Feebles!

Y'know, when I think of Peter Jackson, I think of a filthy rich multiple Oscar winning director. Professional in every sense of the word. But few people know that before Lord of the Rings, Peter Jackson had a taste (Bad Taste, I should say. Forgive the pun) for gore and perversion. Even Meet the Feebles, a movie with a cast made entirely of puppets was perverted and gory. Needless to say, this is a very strange film and Jackson must've been high as a kite to come up with this shit. Meet the Feebles is a hodgepodge of bizarre occurrences and situations surrounding a puppet based variety show called "The Feebles". It truly does have way too many plots to keep up with, it's more the characters themselves that make the film. The bare bones of the story is this... Heidi the Hippo is married to Bletch the Walrus. She catches him screwing Samantha the Cat. Bletch humiliates Heidi and then fires her. She freaks and goes on a shooting spree killing pretty much everybody. Along the way, while following Heidi's downfall into food addiction, suicidal tendencies, and complete and total madness (Gee, I bet she would get along great with Britney Spears) we witness the following, note the ironies between the character and the animal chosen to represent them: A gossip columnist fly that loves to take pictures of people at their worst. A perverted and rude rat that runs the show and date rapes a poodle. A drunk elephant is slapped with a paternity suit by his ex-girlfriend... a chicken. She has just given birth to a bunch of "elephickens". Bletch the Walrus pukes up a fish that he ate earlier while it was auditioning for the show. Fish asks if he got the part then keels over. A warthog and a bulldog supply everyone with cocaine. An over sexed rabbit catches AIDS and slowly gets grosser and grosser throughout the movie. There's a porno sex scene between a cow (who has multiple piercing on her udders) and an insect. Cow accidentally sits on the insect killing him, the she and the the porno director plan to sell it as a snuff film. A knife throwing crocodile suffers drug withdrawal and kills everyone that dares to get on the spinning wheel. Eventually, he throws a knife into the air and catches it with his forehead. AIDS rabbit is determined to be on stage despite his illness. He shows up all green and slimy, then pukes all over the stage. This is very much like Muppets on crack. It's bawdy, it's disgusting, it's tasteless, it's gross... therefore I totally loved it. Although, during the hippo shooting spree I was quite alarmed to find out that puppets had blood and guts. I guess all those cotton stuffed animals I got as a child were just fake knock offs... thanks for nothin' mom!!!

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.

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!

Demons

This horrific masterpiece comes from the masterminds of Italian horror cinema, Dario Argento and Lanberto Bava. Argento has been repeatedly labeled as the Italian George Romero, which is a huge compliment as far as I'm concerned. The movie opens with a strange man with a sort of "futuristic phantom of the opera" kind of mask, handing out free movie tickets, evidently for opening of a new movie theater. As the customers arrive, they notice that this movie theater is a little odd, but assume it's just promotion for the movie. In the auditorium there's a mask hanging from the statue, a woman tries it on and accidentally scratches herself on the cheek. Meanwhile people are watching the movie, which seems to be a story about the excavation of a cemetery that supposedly houses demons of some kind. People start to notice similarities between the film and reality. There's a man in the movie joking with a "demon mask", much like the woman who tried the exact one she tried on in the auditorium. He scratches himself as well and starts to become a demon. The woman in the audience notices that her scratch is starting to fester and eventually explodes in a burst of pus, deforming her face. Her friend eventually goes to the bathroom to see what's taking so long and upon finding her friend, drooling green slime and has big red eyes, freaks out and runs, but not before being scratched by her demonic friends long claws. Within minutes, her friend begins to transform into a demon too. Since merely being scratched by a demon can turn you into one, the masses of demons grows incredibly fast. The remaining humans find that despite all their efforts to get out, all the entrances have been bricked up and they are walled into the theater by forces yet unknown. A gang of coke snorting punks running from the police find a back way into the theater hoping to ditch and hide from the cops and ultimately become demons themselves (no big loss, but they did make for some creepy looking demons). Out of nowhere, a helicopter falls through the roof. The last two humans alive crawl inside and manage to figure out how to make the blades turn, resulting in the mass decapitation of dozens of demons. You'd think real demons wouldn't be so susceptible to such human mortal coils, but I guess not. Anyway, after getting a few dozen demons off their back, they use the hole in the roof to escape, but not without having to kill another demon along the way (the man wearing the futuristic looking mask from the beginning of the movie). The happy couple having escaped the demon infested movie theater only to find that the "demon plague" has already overrun most of the town. They hitch a ride with a well armed family that's headed out of town to start a new life and all seems well until the girl starts to grow claws and fangs. A kid in the front seat turns around and blows her away with some kind of M-16 or something. The ending credits just show the shock on the guys face as he sees his girlfriend lying dead in the road. Not really a happy ending, but a satisfactory one. Great italian flick (the dubbed voices are actually decipherable). Non-typically, this movie actually spawned a pretty good sequel too, one that we'll discuss soon. A side note worth mentioning is that this movie has a very surprisingly cool soundtrack, featuring artists like Billy Idol, Motley Crue, Rick Springfield, and Go West. This is very uncommon with foreign made films.

Cannibal Holocaust

This is another "video nasty" that was banned for years and is making a comeback via new interest and DVD releases. Cannibal Holocaust is pretty convincing, and although there was a tremendous belief that the footage is real, it most certainly is not. Some of the cannibals really are actual native people though, mostly from South America. The only real and ultimately most distressful footage is of some live animal killings. A muskrat gets gutted alive, a turtle get mutilated, a monkey has his head chopped off and a pig gets shot in the head. Being an animal lover, I can say that this is the only thing that I found disturbing about this film. The rest really isn't too bad. The director of this film says that the animal killings are the only thing he regrets about this film, despite being arrested under the belief that it was a real snuff film. Anyway, the story goes as such... A team of scientists are going into the deep jungle to find and study cannibals. The two missions before them never returned, yet these snotty adventurers think they have what it takes. Two months later they are classified as missing (well, duh). A new research team is sent in to find these people. They find traces of them here and there, some of their clothes and equipment, some rotting bodies, etc. They also stumble upon the film canisters from their expedition. Upon returning to the states, the films are watched and reveal a rather stupid group of people that frankly deserve to be cannibalized. Instead of research, they use the cameras to record orgies, the raping of native women and totally disrespect the tribes in every way by eventually burning down their village. The last canister reveals them finally getting their comeuppance as they are all butchered and eaten by the cannibals. Yum!

Trouble in Mind

I never in a million years could possibly conceive the idea that there would ever be a movie out there with Divine in it that I didn't love. I found one... I'm very sad about this so bear with. The truth is, I'm not totally sure what this film was about. I watched all 120 minutes of it desperately trying to tolerate an endless parade of stupid characters doing stupid things while waiting patiently for Divine's grand entrance. This is labeled a "crime drama" (with Divine?!) and is pretty hard to find now, I stumbled across it merely by chance. Imagine my excitement! Behold my disappointment!! Anyway, it's a crime drama (still don't know what exactly what the crime was) starring Lori Singer who stumbles around aimlessly, doing her best "Daryl Hannah in Splash" impersonation. The only difference is that she carries a baby around with her everywhere. She has a weird boyfriend that slowly gets weirder as the movie goes on. First he starts wearing a new stiffly sprayed pompadour hairdo. Then the hairdo has color streaks. By the end of the film he has pieced ears and full makeup (so 80's). Throw in Kris Kristofferson and Keith Carradine as some sort of law enforcing agents and there you have it. Divine's screen time was minimal at best. He plays some kind of eccentric gay mobfather. Snow white hair, a huge diamond earring and a solid black suit. He was obviously placed in the film because he was Divine. This was after Polyester but before Hairspray when Divine was finally starting to become a well known entertainer. His cameo is brief and in the end, he gets shot in the head. I can't really say that this is probably a movie Divine would have eventually hated as would be expected (well, it sucked), but I can say that it was nice to see Divine finally shown some true respect as an actor and placed in a big budget film as a cameo. Had he not died shortly after Hairspray, he would have seen a tremendous increase in his stardom because Hairspray was a huge hit. Oh well, those are the breaks. Even though this movie was terrible, I still savored every single second that Divine left on film.

Killer Condom

This is another gem from Troma. A little different though, it's in french, hopefully with subtitles and actually had an air of quality to it that most Troma movies lack, due to the fact that H.R. Giger (artist, most popular for having designed the creature in the high budget film Alien) was recruited to design the Killer Condom. Anyway, the story goes... a man in a sleazy motel gets his penis bitten off and the woman performing fellatio on him is the presumed culprit. She's soon exonerated due to many other attacks on different men's penises around town. Inspector mackaroni, a gay chain smoking sleuth with one testicle is on the prowl for what's attacking men all over town. They soon discover vicious, hungry organisms that look like condoms and are biting off weenies left and right. That's right, it's the rubber that rubs you out. The condoms are hilariously fanged and can even run. Inspector Mackaroni soon discovers that these creatures are being genetically manufactured by a woman scientist with a hatred for men, especially gay men (I guess if one penis makes her mad, then two penises should really piss her off.) It's a very funny film with a lot of laughs and definitely worth seeking out.

Class of Nuke 'em High

Class of Nuke 'em High is one of Troma's greatest hits. For those of you who don't know what Troma is... it's a production company that for a while had their own actors to star in most of their early films. Troma also buys and reproduces old and otherwise lost cult films. Their also known as the Troma Team. Some of their more recent self produced films have been beyond awful, even for cult fiends. They certainly do have a few very entertaining movie gems though, but the rest look like they were filmed with a simple camcorder with some of the worst acting ever. As always, it's a matter of taste. But the fact remains that Troma has an undeniable cult following and deserves it's rightful position among the strangely elite. Class of Nuke 'em High is a great movie with a really fun plot. As with most of Troma's movies, this one centers around the topic of nuclear waste. A nuclear plant that is next door to Tromaville High School begins to leak toxic waste and starts turning teenagers into violent cretins. A gang of thugs start selling pot that is grown out of toxic chemical waste and when a Warren and his girlfriend Chrissy smoke a joint at a party, they start undergoing strange happenings. Warren turns into a green drooling sort of disgusting superhero, that is compelled to fight crime and his girlfriend Chrissy belches up a weird wormlike creature that gets flushed down the school commode and ends up in a barrel of toxic waste where it grows to an enormous size. When a gang of thugs (The Cretins) get kicked out of school for violence and drug pushing, they take revenge by trashing the school. Unbeknownst to The Cretins, there is a huge, tall, slimy, worm thing in the school that seems pretty pissed off (maybe because he's protecting his "mommy"). The worm thing eats Cretins left and right and when it gets it's tentacles on Chrissy (Mommmiee...), Warren finds a laser and beams it at wormy the thing. It lets Chrissy go and everybody gets out (well, most everybody). Moments later, wormy thing explodes, school explodes too and creates a lot of really happy students (school's out!!!) It's reading, writing and radiation! Great fun!

She Devils on Wheels

First of all, I was shocked to actually find an H.G. Lewis film that had no gore or even a horror overtone. With this in mind, I really didn't know what to expect. Basically we have an all girl biker gang called the "Maneaters" that act like they have more testosterone than Mike Tyson. The mostly female cast seems to have had some trouble acting butch enough for this film, because it comes out so forced and scripted (which is terribly funny to watch these over-actresses at work, they so aren't feelin' it). Despite their incredibly lesbian qualities and overtones, they race motorcycles to see who gets the privilege of picking a "useful stud" from a lineup of men from who knows where, (that's never really explained). They sometimes make references to "roping in a Philly" but it never really happens. This is quite a change from anything H.G. Lewis had done before. When She Devils was made, it was right when he was making his gore movies. He may have just been trying to make some money and sexy biker chick movies were very popular at the time. Even though there's no gore (except maybe a small decapitation scene near the end) H.G. Lewis fans will still enjoy the atmosphere, the absurdity of it all, and the cheap crap that H.G. Lewis was all about. A funny tidbit about this movie that still makes me laugh... after every intense scene, there's a painting of a colorful she devil biker that spins around and around making one almost sick, but hey, H.G. thought this was cool, and maybe it was for the time, but it's camp value today is priceless.

Tetsuo: The Iron Man

This particular art film has an incredible idea. It's in Japanese (hopefully with subtitles) and is very cleverly edited. This movie jumps around in time and the plot isn't shot in order. There's a lot of fast forward video and stop motion animation with what looks like several different types of mediums (people, wires, coils, and lots and lots of tin foil). The basic story (as best I can make out) revolves around two men. One is a cleancut business man and the other is a professional runner. The runner has inserted a rusty pipe into his leg, a reason is not given. Anyway, the runner screams in pain and runs into the street where he is hit by a car driven by the business man. Business man and his girlfriend dump their automotive victim into a nearby ditch and proceed to make love while the dying runner lies in the ditch watching them. Business man begins to have real troubles though when a transister looking zit appears on his face due to a small cut from a clean new razor. When touched, it pops and gets worse. He begins to change. He begins to develop a metal rash that is spreading over his body and he's become strangely magnetic. Meanwhile, the runner is morphing into a supernatural being bent on destroying Mr. Business man. It becomes a strange game of good vs. evil. Clean metal good, rusty metal bad. Eventually since neither one can manage to win, they decide to unite and turn the entire world into metal... then rust it all just for the hell of it. A truly fascinating movie to watch.