October Horrorshow: Creepozoids

David DeCoteau might be the most prolific b-movie director of all time. As of this posting, he has 161 non-porn directing credits on his IMDb page. During his career he has treated film production as a volume business. Art? What’s that? Budget? If you can make a movie for less, we’ll match it! TV movies? Direct-to-video movies? Horror? Sci-fi? Comedy? Hallmark movies? DeCoteau will direct it. He can’t direct every movie that’s released in a year, but he can sure as hell try.

The second feature of DeCoteau’s career, Creepozoids was commission work from Charles Band’s Empire Pictures, the predecessor of his long-running house of schlock, Full Moon Features. The film was written by DeCoteau and Dave Eisenstark. Continue readingOctober Horrorshow: Creepozoids”

Lo spettacolo dell'orrore italiano: Torso, aka I corpi presentano tracce di violenza carnale

Viewers of gialli would be hard-pressed to find a film that ticks more of the genre’s boxes than 1973’s Torso, from writers Ernesto Gastaldi and Sergio Martino, with direction by Martino. It has copious amounts of gratuitous nudity, a killer who stalks women, a final reveal of the killer’s motivations that makes little sense, and enough blood and guts that the film bleeds over into the slasher horror genre.

In Perugia, Italy, a killer sets his sights on lovely female students of a local university. The women are stereotypical free spirits of the age; into drugs, sex, and nude sunbathing. They stand out amongst the stodgier parts of contemporary Italian society, not least because their miniskirts reach nowhere close to the knees. Martino seems to take glee in showing the clash between the prudes and the debauched. Continue readingLo spettacolo dell'orrore italiano: Torso, aka I corpi presentano tracce di violenza carnale”

October Horrorshow: Zombie Island Massacre

Zombie Island Massacre plants its flag very early on. The funky James Bond-type intro, instead of going with the silhouettes of scantily-clad women, just shows us a transparent breast, instead. The message is clear. This flick is going to be trashy, and you will like it. Then, the very first scene features a nude Rita Jenrette showering and lathering up her buxom body. What a start to a Troma-distributed film. Knowing their tastes, and then seeing the title of this film, this is just the start of a raucous ride. Only, it isn’t. This scene is the high point of the movie. Afterwards, this flick is all promise, and little reward. Continue readingOctober Horrorshow: Zombie Island Massacre”

Lo spettacolo dell'orrore italiano: Cannibal Ferox, aka Make Them Die Slowly

…And then there’s Cannibal Ferox. Released a year after Cannibal Holocaust, in 1981, Cannibal Ferox tries to succeed as a film by taking the most exploitative moments of Holocaust, and wrapping footage around them. Writer/director Umberto Lenzi did not seem to realize that what made Cannibal Holocaust a successful movie was not the animal slaughter or the graphic violence. Those are, arguably, essential parts of the package, but Holocaust is indeed a package deal. It succeeds because most aspects of the film are well done, including story, acting, cinematography, music, etc. Without all those things working together, viewers get, well, Cannibal Ferox. Continue readingLo spettacolo dell'orrore italiano: Cannibal Ferox, aka Make Them Die Slowly”

October Horrorshow: Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan

See that subtitle? The one that reads ‘Jason Takes Manhattan?’ There’s a lot of promise in a subtitle like that. New York City is a big place. It’s an assault on the senses like nowhere else in the country. It’s loud; it’s packed full of smells, strange, pleasant, and offensive; no matter where you are in the city, there is always something worth looking at. It’s a city that begs to be experienced every day one is there. It’s also an expensive place to film, so when writer/director Rob Hedden had his Friday the 13th sequel greenlit by the studio, they told him there could only be two days of filming in the Big Apple.

So, that subtitle? It would have been more accurate if it had read ‘Jason Takes a Pleasure Cruise’ or ‘Jason Visits the Alleys of Vancouver.’ Hedden was crushed by the studio’s decision, but soldiered on, delivering a movie that he knew disappointed fans, because it disappointed himself just as much. That’s the bad news. The good news is, after a string of films with loosely-connected plot threads and uninteresting premises, the Friday the 13th franchise returns to a more basic slasher formula, and one that works better. Continue readingOctober Horrorshow: Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan”

October Horrorshow: Deadly Manor

The late 1970s into the early ’90s was one of horror cinema’s golden ages, and that success was built on the slasher flick. The names of villains are iconic. Michael Myers. Jason Voorhees. Freddy Krueger. Chucky. But, most slasher flicks didn’t have larger than life villains such as these. The grist mill was running too hard and fast. The VHS boxes were piling up in the back of the video store. The mantra was to take the familiar slasher tropes, throw some new, young faces into the mix, and let loose. Most slashers ended up being one-offs, with no hope for a sequel. Some, like Maniac or My Bloody Valentine, became iconic in their own right. Most were crap, though. Like Deadly Manor. Continue readingOctober Horrorshow: Deadly Manor”

Lo spettacolo dell'orrore italiano: Massacre in Dinosaur Valley, aka Nudo e selvaggio

Massacre in Dinosaur Valley movie posterThere are good Italian cannibal horror flicks, and there are bad Italian cannibal horror flicks. Besides the plot elements they all share and steal from one another, the other thing they have in common is that they are prime exploitation cinema. Massacre in Dinosaur Valley is one of the more exploitative of the bunch, and it has nothing to do with animal slaughter and mutilation, or graphic depictions of bodily injury. This flick is about the nudity. It’s right there in the Italian title of the movie.

“Nudo e selvaggio” translates into English as, “Naked and wild.” The English-language distributors must not have thought much about that title, which would probably have frightened off more than a few theater owners back when it was released, so they titled the film Massacre in Dinosaur Valley. It’s just as descriptive and accurate as the Italian title. There is a massacre, and it happens in some place called Dinosaur Valley, but I have to admit that, going into this film blind, I was disappointed that there weren’t any dinosaurs. Meanwhile, had the film just been called Naked and Wild, my expectations would have been satiated. Anyway…

From 1985, Massacre in Dinosaur Valley is a joint Italian/Brazilian production, written and directed by Michele Massimo Tarantini, with some uncredited script work by prolific screenwriter Dardano Sacchetti. The film stars Michael Sopkiw as Kevin Hall, a mercenary paleontologist who roams all over South America in search of fossils. Continue readingLo spettacolo dell'orrore italiano: Massacre in Dinosaur Valley, aka Nudo e selvaggio”

October Horrorshow: Forbidden World

Roger Corman has caught a lot of heat in these pages for being a cheapskate. The man was, and still is, ruthless in his pursuit of efficiency in his productions. This has often been a detriment to his films. As a filmmaker, Corman could make better movies if he loosened the purse strings ever so slightly, but he always seems to err on the side of budget over art. That said, the man’s contributions to cinema, and shitty movies, cannot be overstated. Forbidden World, a Corman production from 1982, encapsulates just about everything that makes a movie shitty, and is an excellent example of the Corman style. Continue readingOctober Horrorshow: Forbidden World”

October Horrorshow: The Mutilator, aka Fall Break

At its most basic, American regional cinema is defined as films made elsewhere than Hollywood or New York City — the two great hubs of American entertainment. It turns out the United States is a big place, and there are filmmakers scattered all over it, like fleas on a mutt. Sometimes little-known filmmakers produce masterpieces, such as Night of the Living Dead or Carnival of Souls. What mostly marks regional cinema is local flavor that Hollywood productions can’t quite match, even when they invade the further reaches of the country to shoot on location. Continue readingOctober Horrorshow: The Mutilator, aka Fall Break”

October Horrorshow: Video Demons Do Psychotown, aka Bloodbath in Psycho Town

Video Demons do Psychotown movie posterWhat a pair of titles. Video Demons Do Psychotown and Bloodbath in Psycho Town. Both are great titles for a sleazy drive-in horror flick featuring the three ‘B’s’ — Blood, Breasts, and Beasts. Well, there are two of those, which doesn’t make this flick a total bust, but viewers have been subjected to that all-too common feature of shitty filmmaking: the misleading title. Titles like that above promise something extreme, something visceral, something that satisfies the basest desires of the depraved horror movie fan. But, in truth, this flick is just cheap.

Distributed by Troma, mass purveyors of trash cinema, Video Demons comes to us via writer/director Alessandro De Gaetano.

Released in 1989, Video Demons follows student filmmakers Eric and Karen (Ron Arragon and Donna Baltron) as they set off into rural Indiana to make a documentary movie about a town full of psychics, hence the ‘Psychotown’[sic] of the title. Continue readingOctober Horrorshow: Video Demons Do Psychotown, aka Bloodbath in Psycho Town”