Author: capcom

Curse of the Cannibal Confederates, aka The Curse of the Screaming Dead

Just because a movie is objectively bad, does not mean that it is unwatchable. That’s a maxim here at Missile Test, but it cannot be denied that, often, there is correlation between the two. A case in point is Curse of the Cannibal Confederates. It’s an objectively bad film in just about every way, and it’s tough to sit through. By the time this review is over, it will have settled into the leprous nether reaches of the Shitty Movie Sundays Watchability Index, but it does have a few of those sublime moments of true unselfconscious ineptitude that mutants live for.

Curse is one of many films that Troma picked up for release a number of years after it first saw daylight. The film was originally released in 1982 with the title The Curse of the Screaming Dead. After Troma picked it up in 1987 they gave it a new name and did some light editing to the title sequence. This version, a low-quality VHS transfer, is what I saw. But, should one feel the need to see this flick in an HD scan that removes most of the mud and restores the original cut, Vinegar Syndrome released it on Blu-ray in 2023. Continue reading “Curse of the Cannibal Confederates, aka The Curse of the Screaming Dead”

Bottom Feeder

To give one an idea of this film’s shoot, Bottom Feeder, writer/director Randy Daudlin’s parvum opus from 2007, was Tom Sizemore’s first movie after he got out of rehab. As if that weren’t tough enough for an actor who had spent the past decade in supporting roles in top tier movies, Sizemore brought along a TV crew capturing the entire thing for the reality show Shooting Sizemore. An actor who had been flirting with A-list status, in recovery, with the pressures of carrying a movie and a television show at the same time, in a b-movie titled Bottom Feeder? It’s amazing this thing ever made it into the can.

Sizemore plays Vince Stoker, a Vietnam War veteran (Sizemore was born in 1961) who currently works as a maintenance man at a shuttered mental hospital. He leads a small crew, including right hand man Otis (Martin Roach), young dipshit Callum (Joe Dinicol), and his niece, Sam (Amber Cull). Part of their job is to patrol the tunnels under the property that link the buildings, and roust out any teenage partiers or homeless people who have set up camp. Continue reading “Bottom Feeder”

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2

In a business that is so laser-focused on exploiting intellectual property, it’s amazing that it took over a decade for a sequel to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre to see release. Sure, it’s not unusual for a sequel to take so long to be made, but it is uncommon. This is especially so in horror, where movies can be made for miniscule budgets and, if lucky, see huge returns.

From 1986, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 sees Tobe Hooper, working again with Cannon and Golan-Globus, return to the well one more time. But, if viewers are expecting a simple retread of the first movie, they are in for a surprise. The original movie has a reputation for gore, and Hooper also viewed the film as black comedy. Well, neither is accurate. There is not a lot of gore in the first movie, and only Hooper seems to have found much humor in it. All that is fixed in the sequel. Hooper went all-in on some sicko campiness, and gave so much free reign to f/x guru Tom Savini that the film was released unrated in the States, and remained unreleased for decades in several large overseas markets. Continue reading “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2”

Black Cab (2024)

Who doesn’t like Nick Frost? He’s a big, cuddly teddy bear. Which makes him an ideal antagonist in a horror flick like Black Cab, where Frost’s unnamed cab driver turns from being a part of society’s background, into a troubled couple’s torment.

From this past year, Black Cab comes to viewers via director Bruce Goodison, from a screenplay by David Michael Emerson. Frost and Virginia Gilbert are credited with additional dialogue.

Synnøve Karlsen plays Anne, a twenty-something urbanite who is engaged to Patrick (Luke Norris), a philandering shithead whom audiences will despise even before they pick up on the duo’s dynamic. After a dinner with another couple that runs well into the night, Anne and Patrick hail a cab and Nick Frost pulls up in his clanking, sputtering, stinking, diesel-powered UK black cab. The couple begin arguing in the car over whether or not they are still engaged, and whether or not Patrick is moving back in with Anne, when Frost mentions that he recognizes Anne from an earlier fare. He picked her up outside the maternity ward at a local hospital. Anne’s pregnancy is news to Patrick, who responds by being even more of a dick. Continue reading “Black Cab (2024)”

The Kindred

This movie was on the way to being a lost film. Released theatrically in 1987, Stephen Carpenter and Jeffrey Obrow’s opus, The Kindred, hadn’t seen a home video release since the VHS days. But, Synapse Films dotted all the i’s and crossed all the t’s, and produced a 4K digital release in 2021. Good for them, because this is a creature feature that deserves to be seen.

Taking elements from monster flicks, cabin in the woods flicks, and mad scientist flicks, The Kindred follows a group of post-grad medicos who are trying to survive attacks from a gooey human/sea creature hybrid at a country house. Continue reading “The Kindred”

Dead Mail

Is this a horror movie? Usually, if I ask that question, it means a movie is not a good choice for the October Horrorshow. Just because a movie has horror elements in it, does not make it a horror movie. A case in point, much disputed, is The Silence of the Lambs. I do not think of that as a horror movie. I think of it as a thriller, or a police procedural. Sure, when Hannibal Lecter rips someone’s face off and wears it, that’s horrific. The iconic character Leatherface in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre wears someone’s face, and there’s no doubt that is a horror flick. But the use of horror in Silence is in service to the story, and not the purpose of the story. Continue reading “Dead Mail”

Cyberjack, aka Virtual Assassin

If there is any formula that has been beaten to death in action flicks, it is the “Die Hard in a…” film. Die Hard on a ship and its sequel, Die Hard on a train; Die Hard on a plane; Die Hard at the White House; Die Hard at a boarding school; Die Hard on a freakin’ bus. It’s such a reliable formula that sometimes an action flick can fall into all the Die Hard tropes as if by accident — like the filmmakers had something else in mind, but the lure of Die Hard was just too powerful to resist.

From 1995 comes Cyberjack, directed by Robert Lee from a script by Eric Poppen.

It’s the near future! A team of computer scientists, led by Dr. Phillip Royce and his daughter, Dr. Alex Royce (Duncan Fraser and Suki Kaiser), have created a new computer virus that acts as an anti-virus, and it lives in biological matter, and it may or may not have some kind of intelligence…it’s not all that clear. The details behind the virus are unimportant. In this movie’s world, the virus is a dangerous commodity that will have worldwide impact should it fall into the wrong hands. Continue reading “Cyberjack, aka Virtual Assassin”

Phoenix the Warrior, aka She-Wolves of the Wasteland

This movie has to be trash, right? One doesn’t go into a 1980’s post-apocalyptic sci-fi b-movie with a scantily-clad female cast and expect Shakespeare. In the days before the World Wide Web, a movie like this was about one thing and one thing only, and that was gratuitous nudity. It’s true. Movie watchers were shallow enough that for about three decades leading up to the widespread use of the internet, showcasing nudity was a core purpose of thousands upon thousands of substandard movies. Good for them!

Phoenix the Warrior is a little skimpy with the goods, though. Although the look and feel of this movie is lifted from Mad Max, in many ways this has more in common with a women in prison flick. Director and writer Robert Hayes (Dan Rotblatt shares writing credit) even managed to squeeze in a pseudo shower scene, but that’s about it. Hayes did the absolute worst thing he could do as the director of an exploitation flick: he relied on his skill as a filmmaker to see him through. Continue reading “Phoenix the Warrior, aka She-Wolves of the Wasteland”