This is a really screwed up film... on many levels. Wow, where does one start? First of all this film looks like it was filmed with a home camcorder, the characters are beyond surrealistic and totally unbelievable, the concept is really weird, and the acting is some of the worst ever caught on celluloid. Anyway, the story is about how Satan discovers the amazing qualities of a popular modern item we all know as a DVD. He creates a monstrous cartoon character (mostly played by a guy in a costume) called Dr. Carnage and his sidekick, a ravenous monkey named Max Assassin, and places them on DVD's and drops one in everyone's mailbox (I guess since AOL always did that, he thought could too). Some weird chick with breasts big enough to be classified as weapons of mass destruction, that also looks 35 years old but acts like a 6 year old, finds one in her mailbox and decides to play it out of childish boredom. Meanwhile, her parents (consisting of an obvious man in drag with a voice like John Wayne) are going out of town for the weekend and put her older sister in charge. Somehow as if planned, the "older" sister looks much much younger than the "younger" sister. Anyway, the older sis invites some friends over, some boys, some liquor, what have you, and has a party. Little sister with boobs so big they have separate zip codes, is watching what looks like a stupid cartoon about a mad doctor and his rabid pet monkey. Suddenly, Dr Carnage and Max Assassin leap from the TV and extract very cartoonish (and strikingly gruesome) ways of killing everyone. All the cartoon cliches are used... safe dropped on the head, sawed in half, spine ripped out, TNT explosives, etc. Live action is mixed with cheap cartoon overlay and computer effects, some of which are truly hilarious and deserve really good drugs. As expected this movie is extremely colorful, being about cartoons and all, but this is as gory as can be expected when a safe falls on your head. In a real cartoon, their head came out flat, they blew on their thumbs and everything pops out into place. But here, when a safe falls on you, you're squashed beyond recognition, your guts are coming out and brain matter is staining the wall. All through the night, everyone gets it in a different way. Monday when "Mom" and Dad return, they find the house a mess and body parts everywhere. The drag queen mom goes into a totally hilarious spastic fit that was so side-splittingly funny that it was almost worth sitting through this cheap piece of crap! And, I serious stretch the word "almost".
Before David Lynch made his first full length feature film, the cult classic "Eraserhead", he produced several short films during his early years using different filming styles and techniques. Most of them are only a few minutes long and don't make much sense. Even Lynch himself has a hard time describing them and has only the faintest recollection of what he was thinking at the time and what he was trying to portray. Fortunately, these rare gems that show us how the creative genius that is David Lynch came to be, have been gathered together, dusted off and put together on one DVD. Now if we could only get John Waters to do the same thing with his early short films.
Six Men Getting Sick Six Times:
Filmed in 1967 with a cost of $200. Lynch made his first short film after gazing at a painting on display. A door opened and a stray breeze made the painting move a little. This inspired him to make a "moving painting". He built a sculpture screen 6X8 and animated a surrealistic image of what looks like six figures that move slightly, then puke. This sequence repeats six times and has a (very annoying) looping siren sound track. The final product is about 3-4 minutes long. A gentlemen named H. Barton Wasserman saw this piece of artwork, loved the idea and offered David Lynch $1000 to make one for him. Lynch bought a new camera with half the money and used the other half to film a new piece. He filmed over 100 ft of footage only to find out that there was a problem with the camera and all the footage was ruined and completely unusable. Fortunately, the buyer took pity on Lynch and gave him a little more money and said "Just give me a print". The result was his second short film, The Alphabet.
The Alphabet:
David Lynch was married to a girl named Peggy at the time, who was an exceptional painter and he used her talents to make most of this short film. Lynch got the inspiration for this film one night when Peggy's niece woke up from a nightmare where she was frantically repeating the alphabet. Filmed half live and half animated, letters appear (a capital A even gives birth to a bunch of little lower case a's) and change. A girl (played by Peggy Lynch) writhes around in bloody sheets, reciting the alphabet, blood red flows from her mouth and eyes in an otherwise completely monochromatic atmosphere. The soundtrack is mainly an operatic male singing and wind sounds. Approximately 4 minutes long. Very gothic, very nightmarish.
The Grandmother:
After completing "The Alphabet", David Lynch had been "bitten by the bug" and immediately started putting together another project titled "The Grandmother". The script was very dense and very short, a trait that we soon learned came with most of David Lynch's movie scripts. Lynch was already in the process of making Eraserhead (almost a hobby, taking over five years to complete) for over a year and the money had run out. Lynch applied for a grant from the American Film Institute, not at all expecting to get it. The scripts for both movies were submitted and surprisingly, he got the grant which was eventually used for the shorter of the two films (Eraserhead was over 90 minutes and The Grandmother was only 23 minutes). The Grandmother was finished in 1970 and quickly gained notoriety and very much displayed what was to be known as David Lynch's gothic personal style. It begins with some stop-motion animation using photo cutouts. A man, woman and child are "born" from the earth, the man attacks the child, which is the opening to the film's theme in live action. The story is told through imagery and has probably a total of six words said throughout the entire film. Basically, a young boy that has very neglectful and abusive parents yearns for love and affection. After getting his ass whipped for pissing the bed, the young boy pours dirt on his bed and plants a seed of some kind. He "waters" it daily and grows a disgusting looking plant that "gives birth" to an old lady. She turns out to be a grandmother figure towards the child. All is well, apparently the grandmother has no problem with the kid wetting his bed (we see it colored yellow against a mostly monochromatic background). One day the grandmother starts to "malfunction" and goes flipping out all around the room. The kid goes to his parents for help, but is met with abuse. The grandmother disappears. Next we see the kid strolling through a cemetery and he runs into the grandmother there, they both scream, kid goes home... The End. What does it all mean? I don't even think David Lynch knows for sure.
The Amputee:
Filmed in 1973, The Amputee exists in only two takes on two different types of film tape. The American Film Institute was looking into buying a large quantity of a particular kind of film tape and since there were two major brands being made at the time, both were tested using the same scene to see which looked better. Lynch asked if he could film whatever he wanted and was given permission to do so as long as it was exactly the same scene. With the freedom to do what he wanted, he scripted a scene where a male nurse (played by Lynch) is cleaning and dressing the wounds of a woman who has recently had both of her legs amputated. The woman (played by Catherine Coulson which we all grew to love as "The Log Lady" from Twin Peaks) is busy writing a letter or novel of some kind and pays absolutely no attention to the nurse who is about to puke because oozy crap is flowing out of her wounds. The first take had the better quality, but the second take is much funnier. Much more ooz than in the first one and the actress is clearly on the verge of laughing. Catherine Coulson who plays the amputee, was married to Jack Nance at the time. Jack Nance who played Henry in Eraserhead and Pete Martell on Twin Peaks was married to Coulson when Eraserhead and The Amputee were being filmed. They were reunited several years later when both had major roles on the hit series Twin Peaks.
The Cowboy and the Frenchman:
After Blue Velvet was released, David Lynch took a vacation in Paris. While there, he was approached by an associate about a TV series about how Americans see the French. David originally declined because he didn't really feel that it was something that could be done in what was becoming an ever evolving personal film style of his, which was very artful, abstract and gothic (everything this film wasn't supposed to be). Six different directors were chosen to make a short film that could possibly end up being the pilot to a new TV series. David Lynch went home and did some thinking about the offer and thought that maybe he could make a film with this theme. He should have stuck with his gut instinct, because this film really sucks and is my least favorite of the entire collection. Basically the story goes as such... Four ranch hands are sitting around chewin' "Tabaccee" and out of nowhere, a Frenchman comes staggering out of the forest carrying a suitcase with all the french essentials, such as wine, cheese, snails, perfume etc. Eventually, the group is joined by three women, who only dance around and have no apparent purpose for being there. Also a choir of three other women break in every now and then to sing a single verse and then back to the "story". When David Lynch presented his version of the pilot, he was greeted with the insult "Great, two cliches for the price of one". Needless to say, his version wasn't chosen. Can't say that I blame them, it really was bad and had a theme that I don't think Lynch could lower himself enough to even attempt to make this kind of crap. I think he felt a need for a more artful kind of work and a little more freedom when it came to his artistic integrity. But hey, it was worth a try.
Lumiere:
In the late 90's, Lumiere Brothers Incorporated., a large producer of TV and movie cameras, was doing an experiment with an antique camera. The camera was made of wood and had a crank. This camera was passed around to a few different directors. Each individual director was to produce 55 seconds of footage with the camera. Also there were some restrictions enforced: you could have no more than three takes, and once you got the crank turning, it couldn't be stopped until the film was over. In the short 55 seconds that David Lynch had, we see quick flashes of events such as... cops finding a dead body on the lawn, people crying, fire, and a naked woman in a large aquarium tank. If allowed more time, this film could have had some promise.
Shortly after the cancellation of the hit television series known as Twin Peaks, fans still yearned for more. A year after the cancellation of the show, a prequel was made to help tie up some of the loose ends left by the series. Unfortunately, it created more questions than answers. The film didn't do very well, at least not in comparison to the cult phenomenon that emerged from the success of the TV series. It had more than a few strikes against it. A typical David Lynch (who abandoned the show in it's second season, yet returned to film the prequel movie) maneuver was to film as much footage as possible and then piece it all together later on. Over five hours of footage was filmed, yet was cut down to a mere two hours, leaving a tremendous amount of plot holes. Talk is in the air about a re-release of the film with the deleted footage returned. Maybe then, we can make better sense of the movie. Another strike against this film is the absence of all but a small handful of actors that were in the series. Most of them either declined to be in the movie or had other scheduling conflicts. A main character of the show, Donna Hayward, played by Lara Flynn Boyle, cited scheduling conflicts as well, but wide rumor has it that she just didn't want to do the nude scenes to be included in the movie. Therefore, since Donna Hayward was a critical part of the story, the part was recast with Moira Kelly, which confused a lot of people. Being a monster fan of the show, I found the movie quite a work of art and was able to (mostly) understand what was happening. As everyone who's seen the show knows, the story begins with the murder of Prom Queen Laura Palmer. The series builds momentum as the hunt for Laura's killer leads us face to face with the underbelly of the town and about how everyone in Twin Peaks has a secret. The first 17 out of 29 total episodes deals with the Laura Palmer case. The events leading up to Laura's death are slowly but surely revealed. The movie is more or less the last seven days of Laura Palmer's life, verbatim with what was described in the series. Another fault of the movie was that Sheryl Lee was already 25 when she played Laura Palmer who is only supposed to be 17 years old, and when playing out the tawdry secret life she lived, Sheryl Lee could almost pass for 30-something. Another complaint that many people have about the movie was that it was too "in your face", which was a stark contrast to the show where everything was bubbling just under the surface, the allure of everything being so secretive. I never really found this to be a fault though. I mean I loved the secrets of the town and all but this film was supposed to be about Laura's demise, which included drug abuse, prostitution, sexual promiscuity and bondage. So of course it's gonna be tawdry, because that's who Laura was. The audience craved for more information involving Laura Palmer, but when they got it, all they did was bitch about it. I'm positive that this movie could stand alone without having seen the series because that's how I saw it. One night a friend of mine rented it, I'd never seen the show before but was still able to understand what it was about and loved it. Like the show, it was well written and very clever. Granted a few things made more sense after watching the series, but if you don't have an extra 30 hours to watch the series, the movie does just fine.
Two eccentric old aunts are having a birthday party. All the party guests are family members that are just after the old bat's money and intend to use the birthday party to both make themselves look better as well as making each other look as bad as possible. The oddball family ensemble consists of a bumbling cowardly priest, a married couple with obnoxious kids, a fat cousin with a very young stripper wife, a female cousin with her lesbian girlfriend, a horny dipstick in a Trans Am and a frigid old cousin that is so conservative she makes Mother Theresa look like a 2 dollar whore. As the aunts start receiving their birthday gifts, a knock at the door sounds the arrival of someone else. The cook's helper answers then the door and there stands a gothic looking grandma with a gift sent by the black sheep of the family, a nephew that was banned from the family and written out of the will for becoming the leader of a Satanic cult. Through the note on the gift he shmoozes the aunts by saying that he wants forgiveness, he knows his presence is not wanted but still desires to give them a unique gift for their birthday. They open the package which contains a pretty box. Thinking that it's a lovely gift, they open it and some demons come out and possess the aunts, who then begin attacking all members of the family and most of the relatives are killed off in various comical ways. The frigid cousin and the lesbian are like the only two people left. They guess that if they destroy the box that they can destroy the demons that came out of it. It works and the aunts return to normal (borrrrrrring!). The next morning police arrive and start collecting the bodies. One of the two kids (the other got torn apart by one of the aunt/demons) wants to go live with the lesbian, because even though his mother survived, she's now a basket case in a straight-jacket. In the last scene, Bertha the frigid cousin starts puking up green slime in the cab ride home, then gets all possessed looking and tears off the cab drivers arm... the end. I have to say that the first half of this movie is slower than dial up internet, almost enough to give up on it before the fun even begins. The second half of the movie picks up with some gruesome special effects and some pretty bloody murders. Well worth the wait. Don't try and make too much sense out of the story, it's relatively insignificant. The only fun in this film is watching two demons run around in flowery dresses killing people in comically terrifying ways that are very reminiscent of "Evil Dead". Ironically, despite the title, the grannies in this film are the victims of demon possession and the rabies virus is never even mentioned. An enjoyable flick... if you have absolutely nothing else to do.
This is a great cult classic from the late 60's that has been on a steady rise to fame over the past few years, mostly due to a decently clear print of the original 16 mm transfer being released on DVD about four years ago. It's a great campy little flick that is pretty evenly split into half comedy and half horror. The legendary Lon Chaney Jr. plays chauffeur to a family of inbred weirdos called the Merrye Family. The movie begins with an introduction by a family member from the non-inbred half of this clan, telling us about a disease. A disease so rare that it only affects the members of one family, the Merrye Family. The story then jumps back a few years when an innocent postal delivery man gets hacked to pieces by a teenage looking girl that thinks she's a spider and that this here mailman is a nice juicy fly. None of this really bothers their caretaker, the families chauffeur Bruno (Chaney), he cleans the mess and carries on with his daily duties. It appears that there is just Bruno, Virginia (spidergirl), Elisabeth (a boring extra) and Ralph (a young and rather disturbing Sid Haig). All have a disease brought on by massive inbreeding that causes them to slowly degenerate into childlike and even cannibalistic behavior. There seem to be some missing relatives that aren't necessarily accounted for... yet. Anyway, a couple of greedy members of the non-inbred side of the family have come to run them out of the rather large house they live in and sell it for their own greedy gain. To make them even more irritating, they've brought their own lawyer with them. They barge in and start giving orders and demanding to stay in the house. Well, this doesn't sit well with the three retards that Bruno is caring for, so they start killing off their stuck-up family. Virginia (played by Jill Banner, an actually quite beautiful actress that was dating Marlon Brando when she was accidentally killed in a car crash a few years after this movie) is the scene stealer in this film. She not only acts like a spider, she also has pet spiders, eats spiders, and likes to throw nets on people, calling them beautiful bugs and then eating them. Which ironically leads to the original title of this film... "Cannibal Orgy". I wonder what Lon thought of that title. Soon we learn that the missing "Dad" (I must use quotes for this family because with inbreeding, you never really know who's who) is a corpse in one of the upstairs bedrooms and the rest of the fam are in the cellar (a creepy bunch of googly eyed, hairy faced nuts). More people are sure to come looking when they discover the others missing, so Bruno decides to end this chaos here and now. He lights up some dynamite and blows himself and the Merrye Family to bits. Jump forward again to the dork reading the book that apparently catalogues this incest disease that has plagued the "other" side of his family. In walks his "weird from the get go" daughter. She looks like one of the Children of the Corn, so immediately you know that something's up. She asks to go play outside and is instantly entranced by a tree spider. I guess the moral of the story is that if you are descended from a completely inbred family, you're gonna hit a few bumps down the road when having kids.
LSD + Rabies + Satanic hippies + deplorable acting = I Drink Your Blood. Filmed in 1970, it earned the title of the first film to be given an X rating based on violence alone. Thankfully, it has now been released uncut on DVD, so now everyone can enjoy this piece of cinematic shit. A gang of Satanic hippies are traveling around in a van (going... somewhere?). They break down in a town with a population of like 12 people. Horace Bones, the extremely eccentric leader of this gang of total acid heads that worship Satan and vow to die and kill for Him, blah, blah, blah. No one except Horace really takes this crap seriously, most of the members are a (somewhat) normal band of misfits that are basically decent people who just like to trip out. Anyway, a young girl accidentally sees them performing a ritual sacrifice of an unfortunately real chicken (hope they ate it afterward) and screams and runs. They catch up to her and attack her. She stumbles home and Grampa vows to get revenge on these hooligans that have moved into this vacant town in a run down hotel full of "yummy" rats (Don't ask, they look frighteningly real too). A slightly younger version of John Boy Walton is part of the family of the attacked girl and beats Gramps to the punch by offering the satanic hippies some meat pies that he has laced with Rabies that he got from a mad dog he had killed earlier. All the hippies start to get sick and foam at the mouth. Unfortunately, It looks like they just sprayed whipped cream on their mouths, making them appear totally unscary and instead they looked like rejects from those "Got Milk?" commercials. The extremely diminutive population of this desolate town band together and shoot all the hippies. It's a little gory here and there... a pregnant woman stabs herself in the belly, a man is beheaded, some guts spill from here and there, nothing my readers won't enjoy. All the hippies are killed off in variously cheap ways. The acting is truly a spectacle, it's so bad that I absolutely must include this in the comedy section of Cultarama, absolutely had no choice. There's a plethora of weirder than weird characters in this film. I love the title, but the sequel title is even better, aptly named "I Eat Your Skin" I highly recommend both films, their what true cult is all about.
On the planet Pluton, a nuisance creature disposal unit vaporizes unwanted creatures and shoots them into space. Unfortunately, one of the discarded aliens has landed on Earth. More precisely, the Putterman families new satellite dish. The Putterman family is weird enough without extraterrestrial influence. Stanley and Raquel Putterman are sexual swingers and their entire house is designed to look like a porno palace. Suzy Putterman is a teenage Cyndi Lauper clone, complete with multi-colored hair and makeup that could scare a clown. Grampa Putterman is a military obsessed peddler of lizard tail jerky that lives in a fallout shelter in the basement. 12 year old Sherman Putterman is like the only halfway normal member of the family. The new satellite dish doesn't seem to be working very well, at least until the space creature lands in it. Then miraculously it works, with the exception of two channels. One just shows a googly eyed slimy alien and the other channel is a different looking alien that seems to be pleading with humankind over something. Armed with a remote the size of a small car, the Puttermans explore the wonders of satellite TV. Mom and Dad go out clubbing, Suzy has a punked out date from hell aptly named OD, leaving Gramps and Sherman alone for the evening. Soon lightening and tentacles come out of the TV and eats Gramps. Mom and Dad come home with another couple to have sex, Sherman complains about a monster and Mom gets mad about him disturbing their orgy and throws him in the fallout shelter. He calls police, they of course don't believe him. So he calls the only person that might believe him. An Elvira wannabe named Medusa, that has her own horror show on TV. She doesn't believe him either. Meanwhile the monster has eaten the entire orgy. Suzy and OD come home from their date and find the monster and thinks he's kinda cute. They at first treat him like a pet, then decide to exploit him on TV, so they call Medusa and see if she's interested in a real monster for her show. She scoffs at first, then says that she "might" come over. Unfortunately, the monster gets spooked when he sees the other alien on TV and eats OD's head (no big loss there). Armed with machine guns and grenades, Suzy and Sherman decide to try and kill the monster who is sitting in the indoor pool watching satellite TV. They throw the monstrous (pardon the pun) remote into the pool in an attempt to fry him. The other alien comes through the TV and apologizes for the inconvenience of having unknowingly transported someone's unruly pet into space, specifically into their satellite dish. Suzy and Sherman tell him about how the monster has eaten their parents. The "good" alien says that their parents DNA can be extracted from the monster upon capture, unfortunately they'll have to live in specialized aquariums from now on. He vows to help them in any way he can. Medusa shows up and sees the alien with a raygun pointed at two kids. She assumes it's an attacker and smashes his space helmet, causing his head to explode from the pressure. With good alien out of the way, the monster proceeds to consume everyone that's left alive. The last scene is a half Medusa/half monster telling her chauffeur to "C'mon C'mon C'mon, I'm in a hurry" (on the show, she sounds sexy and sultry, but in real life she talks like a Jewish harpy). Everybody dies and the monster escapes. Perfect ending to a less than perfect movie. This film doesn't have much in the way of good acting or sharp humor, but makes up for it with cheesy slapstick jokes and situations. Worth a watch, just to see all the laughable eighties cliche's.
You'll probably find this movie in the horror section of your local video store, but that doesn't mean you're gonna get any screams out of it. Made in 1972 with a very young Sam Elliot (almost unrecognizable without his handle bar mustache) and an equally young (pre-cosmetic surgery disaster) Joan Van Ark, playing her normal bitchy self. The movie starts out with a very ominous feel, with young photographer Pickett Smith (Sam Elliot) taking pictures of the tremendous amount of toxic waste that's being dumped into the nearby swamp. Due to a boating accident where Smith's canoe is almost run over by a speedboat, Smith is taken aboard the other boat. Apologies all around for nearly killing him, the people in the speedboat invite Smith to their island mansion where their cantankerous grandfather is having a (very dull) birthday party. Grandpa hates everything, especially frogs. Therefore he poisons the whole swamp, hoping to rid himself of their endless croaking. The theme of toxic waste turning frogs into killers never really happens, instead people are bitten by poisonous snakes, eaten by crabs, etc. There's even a scorpion or two (technically a goof, because scorpions don't like aquatic environments like swamps). It's strange, I never thought of frogs being all that scary or malevolent. They don't bite, they don't sting, and if you pick one up, the worst that could happen is it would pee on you. Anyway, as the story goes, Grandpa's bratty kids and dingbat wife are killed off by something in the swamps (always snakes, leeches, spiders, etc, never the frogs). Despite the death count, Grandpa is determined to have his birthday celebration, even with the frogs jumping in and out of his birthday cake, which is by the way, the only gross or disturbing scene in the film. Smith, a few kids, and a blonde hottie manage to make their way out of the swamp and to the road. A lady motorist with her kid stops to give them a ride, even though Smith is carrying a huge rifle (smart move, Mom). Aside from common sense blunders, there's also enough movie goofs to qualify as an Ed Wood production. Day turns to night and back again many times in one scene as it switches from the cheap stock footage of swamp critters to the actors reaction to the cheap stock footage of swamp critters. Many of the frogs that "jump" into the scene land on their backs, letting us know that the frogs were actually thrown into the scene. Supposedly dead bodies are clearly shown to be breathing, etc, etc. In the end, Gramps is "attacked" by frogs that manage to get into the house. His death isn't shown and I suppose he has a heart attack, since frogs are harmless. No scares, no chills, just lots of unintentional humor. A funny side note to this movie is that most of the 500 frogs used in the film escaped during production. It also has a great tagline, "Today the pond, tomorrow the world!!".
This was one of the more clever slasher movies of the mid-80's in the fact that it very effectively psyches you out and truly lives up to it's title with one of the greatest endings ever made. The story goes something like this... Muffy St.John ("Valley Girl" actress Deborah Foreman) is a popular and somewhat rich and eccentric college student who has invited eight friends to come and enjoy spring break at her newly inherited island estate. Being that it's April Fool Day, the jokes are aplenty. It starts when two idiots fake a knife stabbing accident while on the ferry to the estate and a few people have to dive into the water to save him. Everybody has a chuckle, but when one of the men that jumped into the water is accidentally crushed between the ferry and the dock, the hilarity is instantly turned to panic and remorse. He's rushed to a hospital, which leaves everyone on edge because he really looks like he ain't gonna make it. Muffy greets everyone and tries to lighten the mood with the commencement of their spring break festivities. Continuing with the April Fool's Day tomfoolery in a much calmer fashion, the jokes include endless dribble glasses, exploding cigars and a trick chair that flips you backwards when you sit in it. After the party when people start retiring for the night, they all find strange things in their rooms. Drug paraphernalia, bondage equipment, newspaper clippings of grisly car accidents, just to name a few. The next day, Muffy is not quite the same. She's all of a sudden very shy and timid. She looks disheveled, confused, and is wearing a drab outfit and nurses shoes. She also keeps getting her close friends names wrong. To make a long story into a shorter long story, everybody starts disappearing or showing up dead. The last two people left, a romantic couple named Rob and Kit discover certain clues such as a photo of two female twins in the father's study, a letter addressing the family that "Ms. St.John" has escaped from an asylum. They know Muffy hasn't been in an asylum because she's been at Vassar College with all her friends. When they sneak back into the house through the basement, they notice height measurement marks on the wall, like the ones used to measure a child's growth rate. Only there's two height measurements side by side, labeled Muffy and Buffy. They see a painting with the eyes cut out and real eyes staring from behind the painting. They pull the painting away only to have Muffy's severed head fall into their laps. It's now quite clear that Muffy has an insane twin sister named Buffy, who has escaped an asylum and has murdered her twin sister Muffy and assumed her identity and that she's the killer. Kit is cornered in the dining room by Buffy, brandishing a huge knife. Then, while trying to fend off Buffy's knife attacked she manages to open the dining room door and stumbles into another room filled with all her supposedly dead friends just sitting around hanging out like nothing has happened. Buffy enters the room, lifts the knife and plunges it into her hand and then retracts it, revealing a fake knife. Kit is less than amused as everyone shouts out "April Fools!". Evidently, everyone got sucked into it and was only a part of it after they had been killed off. As it turns out, Muffy has received the estate as part of her inheritance, that's true but only if she can prove that it can carry itself. She wants to turn it into a country inn, but not some ordinary "run of the mill" country inn. Instead, being one that specializes in a once in a lifetime whodunnit weekend, and she needed a rehearsal so she suckered all her friends into it. It's a totally unexpected ending because the movie has every indication of being a typical 80's slasher flick with a typically predictable ending. This has always been one of my favorite movies and it's gained quite a cult following in recent years. Truly an enjoyable 80's classic.
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.
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!!!
Umgar is a strange little German guy who loves his pet worms. He plays with them and builds them little houses and seems to be able to communicate with them. Umgar also runs a camping sight with a lake. The townspeople (the Mayor mostly) wants Umgars land so that they can dry the lake and build condos. He hides the deed to the property in the worms playhouse. Soon some German cutie named Heidi comes along and tries to woo Umgar, despite his eccentricities, because she believes that he has money (which he doesn't). She sees that he has a worm fascination and even keeps some of his worms in the kitchen cooking pots, which she discovers and runs away screaming, only to return a few minutes later a calm collected woman who actually agrees to a spaghetti dinner with Umgar and it's filled with worms (like we didn't see that coming). After eating these worms that Umgar has collected while a strange red tide filled the lake (the red tide is never explained) Heidi turns into a half woman/half worm creature. Some bitchy wife gets some worms in her room/tent service and soon Heidi has company. Apparently, during the red tide, some worms developed into half men/half worms. By the way, the bottom worm half of these dorks is so obviously fake. They look like people with their legs bound up in trash bags. Anyway, these worm men threaten to take Heidi and the bitchy wife, Umgar still wants them as pets and promises to have three other worm women for them so that they can breed and live happily in the lake. Umgar tricks some young people that have been griping that there are no hot dogs at his camp sight into eating some worm infested hot dogs. They had squirmy worms all over them, if these dumb chicks are that blind and stupid, I say they deserve to be turned into mutant worms. The worm men come back to collect their worm women. A funny turn of irony is when the worm men catch Umgar with a worm baited fishing hook and reel him in from his bed to the beach. Before going into the lake, the worm women get Umgar back by making him eat some of his own worms. Soon he changes to a worm man and is trying desperately to get to the lake before he fries in the sun like so many other worms before him. While crossing the road, a truck runs over him and he gets smushed, the end. This was a very comical movie because it's just so way out there. Though I think the main purpose for making this movie is so that they could have lots of gross close-ups of people eating and slurping on live worms. Chewing them up and letting their green slimy guts run down the sides of their mouths. It's quite obvious that they are actually eating these worms too. Not for everyone, but perfect for Cultarama fans.
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.
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!
There are three versions of this story, all of which are amazing. In the early 90's when the club kid craze was at it's peak, a club kid named Michael Alig (the crowned prince of all club kids) committed murder and even though he bragged about the killing, everyone just thought that that was just Michael being Michael, a well known drug user who would lie and swindle Jesus Christ if he thought it could get him some drugs. James St. James (self proclaimed original club kid) was a close friend and sometimes roommate with Michael Alig, and was therefore present for most of the inside story. In fact, it was James St. James that started this ball rolling. He wrote a wonderful book called "Disco Bloodbath, a Fabulous but True Tale of Murder in Clubland". It's a must read. Anyway, they made a documentary on the whole affair, including footage from all the key players in this bizarre story. Before his downfall, Michael Alig was a huge success as a party promoter, mostly for a club in New York called "The Limelight". Drugs flowed freely and the weirder you were, the cooler you'd be. It was a nonstop psychedelic world of color that was very intriguing and fun and even spawned a celebrity or two (RuPaul was a club kid). They also made the talk show circuit for a while, appearing on shows like "Geraldo" and "Sally Jesse Raphael". His favorite tactic was an impromptu surprise party held in anyplace from small McDonald's restaurants to subway stations. He made the news all the time and was a strong personality on the hippest of scenes. Eventually, the more drugs that Michael took, the more grim his party themes became. My favorite being the "Blood Feast Party" featuring every gruesome sight imaginable. Alig and his friend Freeze were all strung out one day when Mr. Pissed Off Drug Dealer Angel Melendez shows up and demands money which of course they don't have. A fight erupts, Angel is hit on the noggin with a hammer, dragged to the bathtub by Alig and Freeze, injected with Drano and smothered with a pillow. Michael dismembers Angels body and stuffs it in a large TV box and uses it for a coffee table. They also feel the need to hastily paint most of the walls red and blame a mysterious stench on screwed up plumbing. Eventually the smell becomes overwhelming so Michael and Freeze dump the box with the body in it into the river. The body is found and put into a freezer with a misidentification of race (he was listed as Asian, and Angel was Hispanic). If it weren't for Michael Alig bragging about it, he probably would have gotten away with it. When Michael Alig told his stories of killing Angel, everyone thought it was a joke because Michael always joked and was a notorious liar. Rumors started to circulate that Michael was not kidding when he bragged about killing Angel and certain people close to the situation started to come forward with their stories to save their own asses. Eventually, it all caught up with him and he and Freeze were convicted of first degree murder. A big budget movie has just been made that is the documentary verbatim minus the documentary narration, feel and look. Macauley Culkin plays Michael Alig with stark precision. Seth Green plays James St.James. Marilyn Manson and Chloe Sevigny also have notable parts in the movie. It's a colorful flick with a fantastic soundtrack which is somewhat nostalgic for those of us who watched the club kids and dared to be like them. It truly is a fabulous tale about murder in clubland.
Fritz the Cat has been one of my very favorite movies for years. It's got so many pluses that make it worth watching again and again. It's got fascinating animation which is beyond cartoonish in its intermittent psychedelic sequences. It's got a great soundtrack. It's got a great story that is both comedic and moralistic (sort of), especially for a film that actually became the first animated motion picture to receive an X rating. Therefore, like most of the content on Cultarama, it really shouldn't be shown to kids, even if it is animated. It also received the honor of becoming the first independent film to gross over a million dollars. The character of Fritz the Cat was actually a character created by Robert Crumb who's "Keep on Truckin'" logo became part of the 60's. In fact the entire movie really captures the feel of the late 60's which is when it was being made, despite a 1972 release. Robert Crumb never gave the producers of the movie any rights or permissions to use his characters and actually sued to have his name removed from the credits. Crumb even went so far as to kill off Fritz the Cat in his comics so as to discourage another film. It didn't work, a sequel named "The Nine Live of Fritz the Cat" was released the following year. The story takes us through Fritz's adventures as he strolls through the major themes of the late 60's... orgies, drugs, religion, music, activism, etc. Even though it's rated X doesn't mean it's a porno, and especially by today's standards, far from it. It's just a great adventure story told by one of the most suave cool cats you'll ever meet. Plus a myriad of other colorful characters. All animals of course, but appropriate animals (cops are pigs, black people are crows, shady activists are lizards, Jews are old lions, the list goes on and on). This is a true classic and doesn't just deserve to be watched, it demands to be owned. It just made it to DVD so you have no excuse not to go out and get your copy!! An interesting side note to this movie is towards the end of the film when the activists are plotting to "make a statement" (blowing something up, I think). The makers of the movie invited real militants and activists into the recording studio and just recorded whatever they talked about. This actual dialogue recording was edited and used as the dialogue of the shady activists in the movie.
Wow, what a masterpiece! This movie was made by Tod Browning (original film version of Dracula, Bela Lugosi) and has all the same subtle creepiness building into a most satisfying climax that all of his films seem to possess. When Freaks was filmed in 1932, the carnival sideshows were a big hit and there were many traveling circuses that had a freak sideshow. Mostly comprised of people born with deformities, women who have hormone problems and grow beards, conjoined twins, etc. Tod Browning used this freakshow backdrop as the frame for the moral plot of the story. The plot being as such... Hans and Frieda are two dwarfs that have a romantic relationship (which must have been odd because they were in reality brother and sister). That is until normal sized Cleopatra, the trapeze artist, comes along. Hans is instantly smitten. He callously dumps Frieda to pursue Cleo, who is definitely beautiful but is still by all means a conniving bitch. She milks Hans' generosity and makes fun of him behind his back, all while she secretly is having an affair with Hercules, the circus strong man. Cleo discovers that the reason Hans is so generous is that he has inherited a huge fortune. She then decides to convince Hans to marry her, then bump him off and make off with the loot. At their wedding reception, with all the freaks present, Cleo puts poison into Hans's champagne in an attempt to kill him then proceeds to make a drunken ass of herself by calling everybody a dirty slimy freak and to get away from her. She puts Hans on her shoulders and humiliates him by treating him like a child. She then fakes nursing him so that she can continue to poison him to death. Luckily one of the freaks overhears her plans to kill Hans and decide that she must pay. Apparently, when it comes to circus freaks, harm one and you piss off the entire tribe. In the middle of traveling through a rainstorm, all the freaks gang up on Cleo and chase her into the woods... a strike of lightning hits nearby. Fast forward a little and we see Cleo in a freakshow of her own, having been somehow changed into a sort of chicken woman. What's great about this film is that Tod Browning didn't want to fake the freaks, he wanted the real thing and throughout the movie we are shown some pretty incredible people. There's a woman with no arms that can do absolutely anything with her feet, a man with no arms or legs that can roll, light and smokes his own cigarettes. For some reason, this use of real persons really "freaked" people out. Apparently the audience is much happier knowing that there is a zipper somewhere that can be pulled and out comes a normal person. It freaked people out so much that it was banned for literally decades. Made in 1932, banned shortly after release and didn't make it onto video cassettes until the mid-80's and even then it was really hard to find. It's been released on DVD finally as of 2005. It's also been recently voted a cinematic masterpiece. It's not vulgar at all and has some very endearing characters as well as a great story, so why was it banned for so long? I wish I knew, but by the time it was released on video, there were all sorts of video nasties out there that are far more disturbing than Freaks. Due to it's notoriety as being banned for so long and it's difficulty in locating a copy, it has gathered a huge cult following and now thanks to DVD, can finally be appreciated and praised by future fans and admirers.
Up from the ground comes a bubbling white creamy substance. Some guy stumbles upon it, tastes it and since it's so delicious, decides to market it. The world loves it, but some people, a Texan detective and a kid in particular are highly suspicious. The detective is hired to find out what The Stuff is made of and a kid who sees this yummy dessert moving about his fridge. People start showing clear signs of dependency on The Stuff and are turning into yogurt zombies called "Stuffies", encouraging everyone to eat The Stuff, because it's so tasty and good for you too. They discover that there is no mixing or processing of The Stuff, it's just being mined out of the ground without even being tested. The Stuff is pretty aggressive in large quantities and can attack at will. The detective sneaks into the factory where The Stuff is being distributed from and plants a few land mines and blows up the geyser that the Stuff is bubbling out from. The Stuff is outed as a mind altering bacterial substance and the people vow to get rid of all of it. At the end, when all seems right with the world, you see what looks like some kind of drug deal, and you learn it's a couple of Stuffies getting their fix and transporting it like a drug cartel. This has been a great cult favorite and a great time capsule from the early 80's too.
Contrary to popular belief, "Chastity" was not Sonny and Cher's first movie attempt. Before Chastity, there was "Good Times". This very unknown part of Sonny and Cher's career went unnoticed since the day it was released. At this stage of their career, they were looking to do something different aside from singing to support their act and keep it alive and up to date (all kinds of musicians and bands were making movies as well), and this was their first try at movies, therefore it is the ONLY movie that stars both Sonny and Cher. It looks like it's gonna be a great comedy played by a famous duo, but is ends up coming out boring and depressing. I think the folly of this film is that Sonny not only wrote it, but he also played all the major roles. Cher by contrast isn't allowed nearly as much screen time. And let's be honest, between the two, who would you rather watch? Anyway, Sonny and Cher Play themselves (painfully honest, I assume). They are solicited by some weirdo named Mr. Morticus (George Sanders, who committed suicide not long after making this pile of crap) to make a movie because he rather fancies them and thinks their "with it, man.". Mr. Morticus has people wrestling and fighting in his office and stewardess looking women who are delivering drinks and whatnot to everyone (a truly bizarre scene that is never explained). Morticus and Sonny strike a deal, Morticus tells the writers to just plagiarise "Rags to Riches" and just change a few names around. Sonny and Cher hate it and Morticus gives them ten days to come up with something themselves using props from the studio. The rest of the movie is Sonny trying to think of a cool movie theme (still thinking that they actually have a say in the movies story). Sonny has a western themed scene, a jungle themed scene and Dragnet with girl Friday themed scene. All are pretty boring as Sonny does most of the talking and singing, and Cher is just this stubborn spoiled side dish that gripes about anything and everything throughout the entire movie (and wears some of the wildest clothes ever seen). Morticus hates all Sonny's ideas (who wouldn't?) and still insists on the "rags to riches" story. They say "no", he says "you'll never work again, blah, blah, blah." Sonny and Cher walk out and happily stroll down the street. The End. What can I say... in this move Sonny is stupid and Cher is a Bitch. Painfully contrast to the squeaky clean image that they had at that time. As a funny side note: This film was directed by William Freidkin (The Exorcist). From Sonny and Cher to demon possession. A bit of a leap there Mr. Friedkin?
Wow, what a great movie! Even though this film is very well known (which is definitely contrast to the general definition of a cult classic. But this movie has without a doubt gathered a huge cult status and has been recently remade as a comedy starring Nicole Kidman, Mathew Broderick and Bette Midler. The original is far superior to it's remake in both style, creativity, suspense and depth of character. A growing family is tired of the city (and all the craziness that comes with it) and decides to move to the cleaner suburban outskirts of the city to raise their children in a more wholesome environment. They choose Stepford, a town that from the start seems a little off kilter. For one thing, all the housewives are extremely vapid, caring only about cooking, cleaning and tending to their husbands every need with the utmost enthusiasm. When they talk, they sound like living TV commercials (If Shiny Clean Dishwasher soap were to ask me to do a commercial for them, not only would I do it, but I'd do it for free.) Despite it's oddities, this new couple manages to cope. The kids are doing well in school, making friends. The husband joins the Stepford Men's Association. Only Joanna the wife is not content, believing tha
