Posts tagged clamshell

By Dan Kinem



There’s some movies that are so bad you wish you were never born, and then there’s The Mummy’s Dungeon. This is a sleazy piece of shot-on-video fetish horror that is the movie equivalent to the shit that splashed up under the toilet bowl. It’s the type of movie that fails on every conceivable level so bad that it might legally be defined as a torture device.



The Mummy’s D. (as I like to call it) is more of a compilation than a film with a plot, but, I’ll try my best to describe what happens in this turd. There’s an old sleazeball photographer who is taking pictures of girls in his house for a living. He dabbles in Egyptian rituals in order to awaken a sleeping mummy that he, for some reason, has in his basement. An actual line of expository dialogue he delivers is, “I need virgin’s blood to revive the ancient warriors and put Egypt back on the map.” His obsession with Egypt is never explained, nor are there any “ancient warriors.” There’s one mummy (singular). Stop kidding yourself.



Over and over this photographer brings girls to his house, takes pictures of them, makes them change while he spies on them (don’t worry, the audience doesn’t get to see anything!), and then sends the mummy in to scare them and make them faint. Without fail, each time one of the girls sees the mummy, she screams and falls on the ground. Then they tie her up, drink her blood, and kill her. This happens thirty fucking times. It is the same shit, over and over again. We never get to see any nudity, and the gore that is shown would be weak even by daytime television standards.



There was clearly never any script, either, because the entire film’s dialogue consists of model directions, like, “Turn at the hip.” and “Look this way.” And somehow, even though it’s improvised, the actors manage to flub nearly every line. I kept rubbing my eyes the entire time to make sure I was awake and this wasn’t some sick roofie-induced nightmarish trick Tim was trying to play on me. How could this movie be aimed at people looking to be turned on? The women are sickening, the pace is excruciatingly slow, and there’s no nudity.

The whole reason the guy gets caught and this movie actually ends is, get this, one of the girls he killed had a twin sister who could sense that she was killed. SHE COULD SENSE IT. She goes undercover and right before she gets killed herself, some fat cop comes and shoots the photographer and dumps a special juice on the mummy that kills him. Credits.



The tape was released by I.D.S. Productions/WAVE Productions (yes, the infamous company who produces nothing but shitty fetish horror). This VHS release is extremely rare and as you can tell by the cover, it looks like it was done by hand and colored with marker. On the tape itself, written in black sharpie, it says “10/96,” which hopefully means that only 96 of these abominations were released. The marketing used to advertise this movie is so bizarre, too. On the back it says it features “topless nudity” and “bondage.” I can’t imagine the reactions of the horny people watching it when all they got was one flash of a fat girl’s areola and some girls being handcuffed in order to be killed. That is hardly bondage and there’s not enough nudity to even mention. Insanely enough, WAVE offers you the awesome chance to own this masterpiece on DVD-R for a measly $25 plus shipping. How could you turn that offer down?

To call this a movie is a stretch, to call this porn is a stretch, to even call this a piece of entertainment is a stretch. This thing is so rare and so obscure that finding a copy is harder than finding an actual mummy, and that’s a good thing. I thank the Egyptian gods every day that all other copies of this movie must have been buried in a sarcophagus deep within a tomb in Egypt. I wouldn’t wish this upon even my worst enemies and those who dare to try and watch even a minute of The Mummy’s Dungeon should be put on suicide watch or checked into the nearest mental institution.

(Source: vhshitfest.com)

by Dan Kinem

Oh, what’s this!? An unexpected beastly double feature?! You got that right! To go along with the semi-classic Beasties, we have another underrated masterpiece, Attack of the Beast Creatures. Me and this movie actually go way back, back to the days where I would wear size XL “I’m with stupid”-esque shirts (when I should have been wearing medium sized shirts that didn’t suck ass), when I would wear AC/DC pajamas pants out of my house, and when I would spend seven hours at the mall each weekend with my laptop and never buy anything. This was way back in my early days of film love that I got to see Attack of the Beast Creatures in the theater with director Michael Stanley (who had only done one movie up until that point) and an actual beast creature present. This screening will always stick out in my head as it effected me at a young age in one of the most deep ways possible and still stands as one of my favorite theater-going experiences ever. I saw the movie alone (Friends? Nice try.) and it really took me back and made me feel like I was watching a screening of this in a shitty theater back in the 80s. It felt like I was one of the few people who had ever experienced this and it was just so bad, yet it had a magical quality to it that seemed to tap into some otherworldly terribleness/greatness blend that is unmatched to this day. Even still this movie brings a childish joy out of me and reminds me of that great experience in my life which I will likely take to my grave. I mean, I saw a fucking beast creature in person! There’s nothing cooler than that!

This is the first time I watched it in nearly a decade and it didn’t let me down. Starting the bizarre terribleness off right, the film takes place in May of 1920, “somewhere in the North Atlantic”. The purpose of this setting is literally as pointless as DVD snapper cases. There’s absolutely no reason to set the story in 1920. It’s not like it was to avoid some advanced technology of the 1980s, there was none. They’d be as stuck on this uncharted island in 1980 as they would in 1920. Regardless, there’s a small group of well-dressed ignoramuses that manage to survive the cardboard cutout boat crash and find safety on the shores of an uninhabited (or so they think) island. One of the passengers lands on the shore already injured and covered in blood. This causes the rest of the surviving passengers to begin bickering amongst each other as to what to do with this helpless carcass. A mustached motherfucker, who you can only assume was the captain of the boat, takes charge. His genius idea? Wander off into the jungle with no plan and leave the injured guy to rot away on the beach. The group decides this is a good idea, too, but wait, there’s of course the old-as-fuck naysayer who seems to literally always have something negative to add and always go against the group. He’s the most contrarian prick you can imagine and can’t die soon enough. “Go into the jungle?! Are you out of your mind?!” No matter what someone suggests, he disagrees with it. It’s almost hilarious, in a way, that someone could be so negative.

While roaming the jungle they are on the lookout for food and drank, when all of a sudden a huge polar bear attacks the survivors… Oh wait, I might be confusing this with something else. I can’t remember. Probably something not nearly as amazing as this. Anyway, they finally stumble upon a little pond and one of them dives face first into the water… too bad it’s actually acid water and he melts away until he’s nothing but a toy skeleton.

The rest of these meaningless characters continue to walk around like idiots, not even questioning why the water made him melt away in a matter of seconds, until they are attacked by the true stars of the film.

When the beast creatures are finally revealed it is on the same level as God himself reaching down from the heavens to crack open a fresh ice cold Coke for you. They may be the best movie monsters ever created. Whether it’s their pupil-less white golf-balls-for-eyes, their thick black horse hair manes, or their tiny rib-caged bodies, they are perfect in every way. Their means of attack is being whipped into frame by the film crew from off screen. It’s hilarious watching dolls come flying from every direction and attacking helpless saps. After their brutal beatdown, bruised and bloodied our characters run back to the beach to safety. Michael Stanley, to create ominous tension, keeps using quick flashes of beast creature wigs to remind you that they are just waiting for their next chance to pounce.

When they make it back to the beach, all that remains of the guy they left there is a skeleton. They are baffled by this and one guy says, “What could have done this, rats?” Are you kidding me? You left for a couple hours and now this guy is completely BONE DRY (pardon the pun). You really thinks rats could have torn through this guy’s skin and muscle and licked his bones clean in a matter of a few hours? Not to mention you were just attacked by little creatures with razor sharp teeth. Maybe they were the ones who did it?

They realize that the only logical thing to do is to force some girl to stay up all night and keep watch. Great idea. The second everyone is asleep more and more white dots keep lighting up in the distance (implying that beast creatures are watching them), then hundreds of them begin attacking all the people. They come swinging in on super tiny vines ala Tarzan and use tiny little spears and their razor sharp teeth to do some minimal damage on everyone. It’s possibly the best scene ever filmed. Watching the beasts run in to attack is one of the funniest things I’ve ever had the pleasure of viewing. Their tiny limbs swishing back and forth as they shoot through the jungle and jump on their next victim. It’s perfect. “There must be millions of them!”

Looks like there’s about six, maybe.

One of the characters ends up dying during this attack and for some reason they decide it’s a good idea to go back into the jungle. This makes it easy for the beast creatures to do some solo attacks and weaken the group down more and more with each tiny toothpick-like spear they throw. The old grouchy guy managed to survive the first attack, but he ends up attempting to go into the acid water for some reason. He, of course, melts away. When the captain finds him he’s nothing but a skeleton. The captain says, in what is hands down one of the funniest lines/deliveries ever, “Well, there’s nothing we can do for him now.” No-fucking-duh. He’s literally just a skeleton. Obviously you can’t do anything for him and obviously everyone already knows that!

From this point on it’s just attack after attack with more and more people dropping dead. Seeing the creatures and how mad they are just staring from the trees at these people in their land is hilarious. They’re so pissed off. It’s great to see the actors pretending to scream and yell as they hold these dolls against their bodies and shake them around, too. It reminds me why killer doll/puppet movies are the best. I also love how they just get repeatedly attacked and attacked until they are almost all dead before they decide to go to the beach and find a way off the island. The remaining few characters stumble across this little cardboard cutout that the creatures apparently worship. I would have loved to see some delving into the mythology of these creatures and their god… actually, no I wouldn’t.

Lol, how?

The last two survivors finally make it to the beach and randomly at that exact second they make it there, there’s a boat to pick them up and save them. The guys on the boat say, “Whoa, what were those things?!” No response. Credits. Unintentionally one of the funniest endings I’ve ever seen in my life.

I cannot recommend this movie enough. It’s one of my all-time favorite flicks in general, one of my top five so-bad-it’s-good movies, and just a blast the entire movie. Everything clicks perfectly and I cannot think of a more fun movie to watch. Get some friends and some Chinese food with Coke to drink and pop this beast in. It should be in every horror fans collection and is a must get for any VHS collector. The movie was released in a beautiful clamshell through World Video Pictures (same company who put out Sledgehammer). Somehow this has never received a DVD despite its mass appeal and easy marketability. I had an extremely rare DVD-R given to me by the director, but traded it for the VHS, which, for me, is the more preferred way to view the film. If you get your hands on this one, don’t hesitate to snatch it up. It’s everything a monster movie should be and more.