Posts tagged horror

By Dan Kinem



Looking at this fantastic cover of a woman with her throat slit dripping blood, plastered in beautiful rental sticker warnings, you would expect this to be a classic crazy 80s slasher. You’d expect it to be anything other than what it actually is, a sixty-minute-long softcore drama from the 60s called The Kill. Luckily, or unluckily, for the audience the film was re-titled, re-edited and re-dubbed into a weird nudity-filled unintentional comedy.

Blood Hunger opens with a dead cat on the side of the road for needless shock value (can’t say 100% for sure if it’s real or not, but it looks it). Great start to what I can only assume will be a classic cinematic masterpiece. There’s an overly long car chase that culminates in three men in black (galaxy defenders) beating the shit out of a woman with their fists, then dragging her back to a room with only a mattress and a bunch of film canisters to be raped (likely the director’s actual room, which is sad on so many levels). The sound effects for the punches are hilarious, as they sound like frozen meat is being hit with a stick. The re-dubbing I mentioned above is done so poorly that it becomes comical. The girl’s screams go in and out, don’t match up, and sound like they are meant as score to the film rather than an actual sound effect. The sound of a guy unzipping the zipper on his pants in order to rape this poor woman is priceless (sounded like a bee buzzing in my ear). I cannot get over the effects they settled on. When the guy finished raping the girl there’s a literal lion’s roar and a car crash played. Then the sound of him zipping his fly back up is a creaky old door. I can only assume they had a library of effects to pick from and just tried to use every one of them randomly.


“I’m about to, I’m about to… Aaaaahhhhhhh!”

The rape victim goes to hire a private detective to help her catch these bad guys. As if his 40s/50s movie detective-schtick wasn’t obvious enough, they plastered a gigantic poster of Humphrey Bogart on the wall of his “office,” too. She talks to him, but all that comes out is a sped up Alvin and the Chipmunks-like effect over her voice so you can’t hear anything she says. Turns out this rape victim is a nympho who only cares about getting revenge on the guys who raped her and having sex with anything that moves. She bangs the detective and the detective says in his head, while they are both having sex, “I still didn’t trust her, she might be from the phone company.” Huh? Is this humor?



A hunchback/retarded janitor, who, because of his fake hunchback, can’t even button his shirt fully, gets raped by the girl who got raped. She throws him on the detective’s desk while he is gone, has sex with the guy’s hunchback, with the Lone Ranger music playing in the background (actually, it was an advertisement for the Lone Ranger playing), in front of the Humphrey Bogart poster. I could barely believe my eyes but it happened.



While the detective is investigating, he gets caught by the thugs and gets tied up. Turns out these are heroin dealers headed by a man named Adolf Krueger (lol). He manages to call the rape victim to come save him in a hilarious scene featuring him struggling to get the phone and falling all over the place. She comes over and she has sex with him in the gangs’ room where she was raped… Classic.


Adolf.

There’s another WC Fields-like car chase (ala The Bank Dick) between the gang and the detective/nympho. The whole time this chase is going on she is giving him road head, I think. The scene was so disjointed and crazy that I can’t be 100% sure of anything that happened.

A few random simulated sex scenes followed (including one random death) and then both of the main characters were killed. The end.



This movie plays more like Woody Allen’s What’s Up, Tiger Lily? than an actual serious horror or rape-revenge film. It’s like a group of teenagers found the original footage without sound and were given the job of creating a comedy out of it. The footage comes across like one of those late 1960s, grab a camera and shoot some sex and violence-type of movies (i.e. a perfect candidate for a Something Weird release). I enjoyed the movie for how bad and funny it was, but overall, it’s a pretty terrible movie that’s saving grace is its short, sixty-minute run time.

The fact the director, Gary Graver, went on to work with Orson Welles is baffling. His skills as a cinematographer increased greatly after working on this as some of his later stuff, like Welles’ F for Fake is amazing! Graver also directed and worked on so many other semi-noteworthy horror and porn movies, such as Trick or Treats, Mortuary, and Young and Restless II (starring an underage Traci Lords!). The man is a legend so it’s definitely cool to see where he got his start, though, I assume this release was edited without his approval (I could be wrong, though).

I am absolutely in shock over the fact this film was also released on VHS under the name Reservoir Cats with the bold statement, “Quentin Tarantino fans will love this!!!” This is not even remotely like Reservoir Dogs, nor have I ever heard Tarantino mention this. Such a funny attempt at a cash-in that probably pissed more people off than even this Blood Hunger release did. This release was put out by Even Steven Productions, one of my absolute favorite companies (Midnight Intruders, Swinger’s Massacre, Satan’s Storybook, etc.). So far I have 7 of the 8 known-releases by them and their whole gimmick for the most part was re-editing adult stuff or random movies they had access to and making them look like horror movies. I highly recommend copping this tape if you can find it. I heard the movie was released on DVD, but as far as I can tell there is no official release of the movie so you have to go with the tape and you won’t regret it!


Meow.

(Source: vhshitfest.com)

By Dan Kinem


HAPPY HALLOWEEN, VHSHITHEADS!

Bro – Someone who has no interests other than drinking, partying, and girls and lacks the braincells to have an intelligent conversation.

This is the type of stuff that makes me appreciate VHS even more. Not only could VHS provide you with a way to go out and make your own feature-length film, but it also provided you with a way to get it seen by the masses. HauntedWeen is a perfect example of this. Director, Doug Robertson, wanted to go out and make a movie, so he enlisted the entire community of Bowling Green, KY and his college, Western Kentucky University, to help out. He managed to finish the film and then started his own label, Consumer Video, in order to get over 2,000 copies released around the country. In fact, in a couple towns over from mine there was still a copy for rent up until a month ago when I begged the owner to sell it to me! The VHS is now a highly sought after collector’s item and in my opinion, the film itself is an underrated cult classic similar to stuff like Blood Frenzy and even Slaughter High.



The movie opens with The Burber Haunted House where kids go to get scared…and get axed. Young Eddie Burber isn’t allowed to work at the family’s murder mansion — despite it being his dream job — so instead of playing with his toys like a good boy, he puts on a mask and sneaks in to scare a little girl. He ends up scaring her to death, literally, and instead of scolding him, Eddie’s mother says, “We need to get far away from here.” They abandon the house of horrors and move to a cabin in the woods. Twenty years later, coincidentally in October, his mother falls to her knees and dies, which gives Eddie the excuse he finally needed to go after his dream…right after he screams “Noooo!” in possibly the most hilarious Frankenstein homage ever.



Now the movie really picks up when we are introduced to a fraternity of bros in trouble and in need of money. They keep throwing parties, but all the money is spent on booze before the party is even finished. The really stupid one, Hanks, with the fakest-sounding hillbilly accent ever (who you actually grow to love as the movie goes on) comes up with the idea to have a haunted house in the old abandoned haunted house. Genius. It’s been twenty fucking years and the house is still intact and the sign is still hanging. If a little girl died in there you would think the place would have been destroyed for the girl’s parents sake at least, but nope, it’s still intact and ready for a bro bash like you’ve never seen. Eddie hears about this possible party and donates them the keys to the place. The cops even come by to stop this haunted hoedown from happening, but because they have the keys he’s like, “Welp, it must be okay, then!”


Hanks, the biggest joker on the planet.

All while this is happening the main bro, Kurt (played by Brien Blakely), has a crush on one of the hottest female actresses to ever appear in a straight-to-video slasher, Mel (played by Leslee Lacey). She reminds me of a cross between Traci Lords and Kelly Bundy. They keep breaking up and getting into fights that don’t matter. I mainly bring up this subplot because I need to give props to Leslee, she is a goddess and she even gets naked, too (!), which doesn’t happen often with the female leads.


Mel lookin’ fiiine.

Rock music blares as they fix up the place for a night of scares they’ll not soon forget. They miss decorating one room, which is where Eddie sets up shop. He decides to actually kill people and torture them in front of the audience. The audience is under the impression it is all fake and this works pretty well as a clever horror plot device. Eddie even manages to find a working electric chair somewhere. One by one the bros are picked off and brought to Eddie’s chamber. The audience gets so sadistically into the killings it’s hilarious. Little kids are screaming stuff like, “Cut his head off! Yeah!!” and “Batter up, dude!” Eddie hams it up for them and you can tell he really loves being an actor.



Finally the fake-accenting-having bro, Hanks, realizes this isn’t right and tells everyone to run (think the scene in The Blob). He manages to save Kurt and Mel from near death and they begin fighting. Hank wields a flame-thrower and catches Eddie in the face, but doesn’t kill him. Eddie escapes and is driving away when all of a sudden Kurt shoots two bullets near the truck (which is well over a block away) and the truck explodes immediately. The end… wait! The flaming truck begins to drive again right before the credits roll. Is Eddie alive? Will there be a sequel? Well, according to the credits there was supposed to be, but according to the facts, there isn’t.



This movie manages to have all the right elements that a slasher needs: it has nudity, teens, gore, quick pace, rock music, and Halloween as a backdrop to the madness. It is as entertaining as you could expect a slasher to be. It’s genuinely well-done for the budget they had and is going to be a new staple of my Halloween movie marathons. I highly suggest seeking this out, whether it’s the VHS or the new DVD, it’s a great movie that deserves more credit.

The VHS was released by Consumer Video and normally sells for a decent chunk of change online. It has much better cover art than the DVD, but the DVD has a ton of special features you won’t want to miss. I suggest buying both like myself!

You want more HauntedWeen-related goodies? Pick up my ‘zine, Tape Mold, for an interview with the director and lead actor! Buy it here before it is sold out!

(Source: vhshitfest.com)

by Tim May

Mind Killer is an enigma. It’s a film with no particularly positive or negative elements. You’d think with its mind control concept, it would be able to at least eke out a few over-the-top telekinesis sequences, but nope. Nothing to see here. That said, I found it oddly well-paced and watchable. Am I in too deep with this kind of shit?

Our protagonist is Warren, an archivist at the local library who’s never had any success with women, and relies on motivational books and videos like “The Manly Art of Seduction.” On a seemingly nightly basis, he goes to some slimy singles bar called “Swingles” with his even dorkier co-worker Larry and his “cool guy” roommate Brad.

Warren has a thing for Sandy, the meek new librarian. After being rejected once, Warren finds a manuscript in the library’s archives which details how to practice mind control. After completing a few simple tasks like helping Larry complete a rubix cube, Warren is ready to test out his new powers on a random slut from Swingles before he tries it on his dream girl. It works.

The next day, he tries to use his new moves on Sandy, who proves resistant at first, but like many real life douchebags, he eventually wears her down until she’s forced to say yes. When he invites Sandy over to have dinner, Brad’s natural, non-creepy-mind-control charm comes across as threatening to Warren. When Warren’s out of the room, Sandy tells Brad her concerns about her new relationship. “I don’t even like Warren!” Don’t worry about that, Sandy. No one in the audience does, either.

Meanwhile, Larry has been testing out the powers a little bit, and he’s kept the final chapter of the manuscript from Warren, who’s been getting creepier and rape-ier by the day. When Warren realizes Larry’s been holding out on him, he telekinetically pulls down the arm of a paper cutter on Larry’s fingers, nearly chopping them off.

When Brad notices Larry’s wounds, he takes charge and leads Sandy and Larry in hatching a plan to help Warren. They decide the best course of action is to look into the origins of the manuscript. The writer of the book died in some mysterious accident many years earlier, but his mother lives on in a mental asylum. Larry goes to see her and discovers that the writer created a “device” which could magnify the effects of the mind control to the power of ten.  Unfortunately, Warren’s powers have already advanced to the point where he can constantly keep track of his friends’ thoughts, so he’s able to figure out where the device is and receive its benefits before anyone can stop him.

But, of course, Warren gets what’s coming to him, as the “benefits” of the device are mostly just his brain literally growing in size. This amount of brain power proves to be too much for one man, so, after chasing Sandy around for a while, Warren collapses, but not before his brain becomes its own entity which attaches itself to Sandy’s chest. Then they do the body snatcher thing where she sneak-attacks Brad, who just chops the brain off of her. Finally, Larry comes in with the device and fries the shit out of Warren’s twisted anthropomorphic brain.

The film ends with Larry continuing to use mind control to bed chicks from Swingles. This film has no idea whether it wants us to like Larry or not. He seems to want to use the powers for good, but then he still uses them to take advantage of lonely women at sleazy night clubs.

I’m not sure what to say about this movie. It’s fucking terrible, but if your favorite X-Men characters are Professor Xavier and Jean Grey, then you’ll probably be able to tolerate it. The “joke” quote on the back cover—“Somebody’s finally done it—A horror film that’s intellectual!”—is a good indicator of the quality within.

The film was released in a slipcase by Prism in 1987. It also had a few cool foreign covers you can see here and here. It has never been released on DVD. You can watch the entire film on YouTube above.

(Source: vhshitfest.com)