Entries Tagged 'SHOCKTOBER' ↓

Oh, Film Clubbers, I'm guessing that some of you (if not all of you) had a hard time making it through Slaughter High (1986). It's not a great movie by any means, or even good. However, it has a special place in my heart and of this I am not ashamed. I'm not ashamed I tells ya!

Marty Rantzen is a high school nerd who's picked on and humiliated by all the cool kids. An April Fool's joke goes about 50 miles too far, and Marty ends up in the hospital covered in horrible burns. Ten years later, the cool kids all receive invitations to a class reunion...and one by one, they all die die die.

I'm not going to delve into gobs of details recapping the plot, because Slaughter High follows the standard slasher movie formula: a traumatic event breaks someone's brain, then that someone seeks revenge on the perpetrators of said event. The film hit towards the end of the slasher heyday, and it's undoubtedly a fairly lethargic entry in the genre. Still, as I said...I kind of love this movie. Those of you who've seen it may not understand how that's possible, so I'll make with why:

• The score is by a slumming Harry Manfredini, who utilizes his famous Friday the 13th work for a sting.
• Slaughter High comes to the world courtesy of the Sultan of Sleaze, producer Dick Randall...who also gave the world a little something called Pieces. That should tell you all you need to know before you even press PLAY! Randall briefly appears in Slaughter High as film agent Manny, who's got a Pieces poster on the wall of his office.
• The "prank gone awry" in the film is one of the most horrible in all of slasherdom: after being lured into nudity with the promise of sex, Marty is photographed and laughed at by his classmates...then he's subjected to some mild electrocution...then he's given a swirly...then he's given a fake joint that causes him to barf...then he's burned with nitric acid and fire. You can't really blame him for being a little pissed off.
• This movie features the most egregious use evarrrrr of actors far too old to play high schoolers as high schoolers: Caroline Munro, for example, was 36 here- a couple of decades beyond her school years.
• Not only are the actors too old for their roles, they're too British. Bad American accents abound, while their native accents peek through from time to time.
• These characters have got to count amongst the stupidest in all of horror movie history. There's a killer on the loose, but they're constantly separating and spending time having sex and taking baths. Their big escape plan involves riding a fucking tractor to safety- surely the killer could never catch up to a vehicle traveling 5 miles an hour.
• The sex scene is AWESOME. Stella, who's a leopard print-clad Markie Post-by way of Jersey-type, seduces Frank with this hotness: " I wanna go to bed with you, Frank." It works, and when she asks for a little mid-coital dirty talk, Frank responds with "Uhh...tits...screw...tits..." It's the best sex scene EVER.
• The aforementioned bath-taker is Shirley, who gives one of my favorite bad line readings of all time when the gang first arrives at the reunion: "C'mon you guys, let's par-deeeeeeee!" I want to make it my ringtone and my unholy life partner. Is that possible?
  

• One of the elaborate killings involved a poisoned can of beer, which causes the drinker's guts to burst through his abdomen Alien-style. Never mind trying to figure out what kind of poison could possibly do that- let's try to solve the mystery of how the poison got inside a sealed beer can!
• Oh yes, the deaths in Slaughter High are indeed elaborate. Running acid through the sewer lines just in case someone decides to take a bath (good thing that panned out!), the poisoned beer, a bed rigged to electrocute whoever's in it just in case someone decides to sleep or have sex (good thing that panned out!)...the set ups are so complicated and impractical that they make Final Destination jealous.

Now, all these bullet points are either going to drive you to the hallowed halls of Slaughter High, or leave you yelling "Fuck that noise!" I suppose it has to do with tolerance levels and the like. Me? I've got a pretty high one. Read on to find out what the rest of the Film Clubbers think...lots of first-timers this month, which is awesometastic. Now let's par-deeeeeeee!

Film Club Coolies, y'all!
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Kill Everybody in the Whole World

At times, I'm pretty easy to please. Throw the words "TV movie", "1977", and "Lee Grant" into the same sentence and I know I'm gonna be in for a good time. I'll admit, though, I have no idea why the prospect of seeing Lee Grant makes me happy- she's always so damn cranky in every movie, but not in an Adrienne Barbeau delicious sort of way. Grant is just plain scowly and never particularly likable...maybe I like that? I don't know. Maybe she's the female J.R. Ewing for me- I love to hate her. It's very complicated, as you can tell.

Anyway, all those keywords I dig come together to bring me- and the world- The Spell, the tale of an "obese" teenager who strikes back at her tormentors with the mysterious powers of her mind.

Hey, maybe that's it! Maybe Lee Grant has mysterious mind powers, and compels me to watch her films.

The Spell opens during gym class, wear all the leotard-clad girls are picking on the oversized sweatsuit-clad Rita for being a "tubbo" (let's ignore the fact that Rita actually isn't particularly fat, shall we?). The teacher pairs up the girls for a little rope-climbing competition, and while Rita fails miserably at the task, her bitter arch-enemy Jackie has clearly enrolled in Advanced Cirque Du Soleil Theory...or, she moonlights at The Doll House or some such.

While Jackie spins and flips defies gravity and thinks she's so big, the camera repeatedly zooms in on Rita's face to the tune of several musical stings. When Jackie falls to the floor and lands in a broken heap, we can only infer that Rita has eerie mental powers.

Home life is just as much a drag for Rita as is school life. Her father also picks on her for being fat, perhaps as a way to overcome his insecurities regarding his obvious hair loss...or, perhaps, he's simply a dick. Mom Marilyn doesn't pick on Rita per se, but she's not very nice, either; then again, she's played by Lee Grant, so what do you expect? It's difficult to tell when she's not supposed to be a cooch. Rita's younger sister Chris (a little baby Helen Hunt) is pretty and popular though dim, but since looks are all that matter to this family she's the favored daughter. Sorry, Rita, it's tough being 15.

The fact that Rita is hounded by her father for being grossly overweight when she's not raises a question that pops up in my brain place, especially when friends of mine are expecting: what if you just...don't like your kid? What if you do your best to raise them right, and then they turn out to be racist, or homophobes, or Paul Reiser fans, or they hate everything you like, or they're just plain jerks? Even worse, Rita isn't really any of those things- she simply doesn't fit in with her family. Granted, her dad is a total a-hole - when his wife suggests they send their daughter to a shrink, he responds with "Or a firing squad!" - but still. You can't like everybody, and what if you don't like somebody you're supposed to? It's a depressing thought, and The Spell is probably the most depressing Carrie rip-off in existence.

Rita, meanwhile, starts to become a little more jerky by the day as she gets a little more witchy by the night, sneaking out at all hours in her finest capery to hone her telekinetic skills with the help of her mentor.

When Rita's face flashes on screen, you know that one of her tormentors is about to be on the receiving end of something or other. This is the case when Marilyn goes to visit a friend who silently chokes and spontaneously combusts as Marilyn looks on, more appalled than frightened (again, this is Lee Grant, folks).




This sequence is without a doubt the money shot of the film.

At home, however, Rita smiles serenely as she embroiders her "Hang in there, kitty!" wall decoration and remains preternaturally calm in the face of hideous nightwear.


The hijinks escalate as Chris almost drowns at a swim meet and dad is almost flattened by a car...and although Rita's not present during either incident, Marilyn begins to suspect that something's hinky with her eldest. Soon it's time for a showcase kitchen showdown for the ages!

Okay, so "for the ages" might be a bit of an exaggeration.

Okay, so "a bit of an exaggeration" might be a bit of an understatement. This is a made-for-TV effort that's fairly tame even for its time period. Again, I can be easy to please, and this bargain basement Carrie pleased me. It's little more than a pleasant 70-minute diversion, and what's wrong with that? Dammit...it must be Lee Grant and her witchy ways compelling me again. But how was I to know? It's not like she was wearing a cape!

For a limited time, you can watch The Spell on Hulu and judge for yourself if you're so inclined.

The fact that I'd never seen Saw up until today made me feel, at times, like one lameoid of a horror fan. Love it or hate it, the franchise is a bonafide juggernaut, dominating the box office come Halloween- the sixth film in the series is due to hit next week. I'd been loathe to pop it in the DVD player because I have seen Saw III, and I thought it was a big ol' pile of bleeargh. People generally agree with me as they add "But the first one's good!", which is entirely possible. Can you imagine someone neglecting to watch Halloween because their introduction to the series was Part 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers? That would make a person what doctors refer to as "crazy". I'm not crazy, so I figured it was time for me to check out the original film; that way, if I wanted to hate on it, I could do so with an opinion based on experience.

As I'm the last person on the planet to see this movie, I'm sure you know the plot: a mysterious figure known as "Jigsaw" abducts people who, he feels, don't appreciate life enough. He hooks them up to deadly contraptions that are generally timer-based; escaping with your life generally means ending someone else's, or at the least losing a limb or two. Lawrence and Adam (Cary Elwes and Leigh Whannell) wake up chained to rusted pipes in a filthy bathroom, and they must comply with Jigsaw's rules or figure their own way out before the clock runs out.

I was expecting...I guess, more from the film in terms of violence and gore. Given that Saw (along with Hostel) is one of the films "responsible" for the "torture porn" genre, I figured it would be much more graphic. There's violence and blood to be sure, but nowhere near on par with what its detractors would have you believe. I appreciated that, although by the third installment it's the traps and the death that are the thing, not the tension raised by the ticking of the clock. However, that's true of most any horror franchise- compare Friday the 13th to Part VII: The New Blood. It's assumed that fans want the outrageousness to grow exponentially with each new outing...and maybe they do. Franchises don't get to six and seven films for nothin'.

The filmmaking style, all jump-cuttin' and seizure-inducing, actually seemed to work here, as if it were an intentional device and not simply an arbitrary choice; unfortunately, director James Wan has spawned a generation of copycats and the aesthetic has been rendered largely pointless and driven into the ground.

I was surprised at how dodgy the acting was at times, although you can't really go wrong with Shawnee Smith and Dina Meyer, even if their roles are but wee. Well, I guess you could go wrong, but not here.

The bottom line? I think Saw has gotten a bad rap as far as its reputation as a slice of degenerate cinema. Though it started a trend that's deeper than a sewer line, way back in 2004 it was a fresh kick in the ass for the genre. I don't think I need to see any more films in the series, but I'm glad I finally gave it a shot. My opinion is now based on experience, hooray!

Okay, so for today's dose of SHOCKTOBER madness, I'm cheating a little bit. Rather than simply watching & reviewing a movie, I decided to talk about a subject near and dear to me old ticker: horror-based video games. It's been a while since my last big installment- three and a half years, holy crap- so I figured it was time to run down a few of the titles that have sucked me in and consumed hours of my life in the last few months.


BioShock is one of the most fascinating, best-looking games I've seen in my long, long life. The alt-history underwater city of Rapture is an art deco paradise lying in ruin; the utopia based on the philosophy of Objectivism crumbled as gene-splicing became a way of life, transforming the city's inhabitants into hideous mutants. In this first-person shooter you're Jack, a man with no memory who made his way to Rapture after an oceanic plane crash...and now must find a way out in the face of Big Daddies, Little Sisters, and all other manner of psychos. Ayn Rand, stem cell research, body modification, morality...fun for the whole family!


Yeah, I know I actually reviewed this game once upon a time, but you know what? I'm still playing it, and it's still all kinds of awesome. Zombies, zombies, zombies...so many zombies in the mall. There's also creepy-mask-wearing, knife-wielding cult members and psychotic clowns with chainsaws and and and...Dead Rising is like a love letter to my crusty old horror movie-loving heart.


I have one major complaint about Dead Space: it's too damn short! I want more more more! This game is like Resident Evil meets Event Horizon, and it's absolutely one of the scariest games in the history of the history of ever- yes, it's that scary. You've got to repair your disabled ship while fighting off mutated crewmembers- of course there's an alien flu bug goin' 'round. Standard stuff, eh? Well, Dead Space utilizes sound and light like no other game since Silent Hill, and it's downright terrifying, to the point where I hit 'pause' on more than one occasion just so I wouldn't have to continue on into a pitch-black hallway where something was moaning. The score sounds straight outta Kubrick's The Shining, and it helps sink you into a never-ending state of heebie jeebies. Oh, if only there was more of it...ooh, there's a new Wii-bound prequel, a 6-issue comic mini-series, and an animated feature film prelude, as well. Sigh, I suppose those will have to do.


While it wasn't a major hit, this oldie but goodie Gamecube release is a favorite amongst nerds in the know. Explore the mansion that belonged to your recently-deceased grandfather as you try to unravel the mystery of his death. Find chapters from the "Tome of Eternal Darkness" and engage in a little time-travel...and then Eternal Darkness really starts fucking with you via the "sanity meter". The more scary stuff Alexandra encounters, the nuttier she gets...and the nuttier you'll get. You'll be in the middle of a boss battle when suddenly your controller no longer works...or the game cuts to the title screen...or Alexandra ends up on the ceiling- the game really messes with your head as a player. There's nothing else like it. Hey, now you're a nerd in the know!


I'm tempted just to write "Fallout 3 is effing AMAZING, go play it!" and leave it at that. Here's the wiki synopsis to further tempt those of you who haven't become completely absorbed by the game:

Fallout 3 takes place in the year 2277, 200 years after the nuclear war between the United States and China that devastated the game's world in an alternate post-World War II timeline. The game places the player in the role of an inhabitant of Vault 101, a survival shelter designed to protect a small number of humans from the nuclear fallout. When the player character's father disappears under mysterious circumstances, he or she is forced to escape from the Vault and journey into the ruins of Washington D.C. to track him down. Along the way the player is assisted by a number of human survivors and must battle myriad enemies that now inhabit the area now known as the "Capital Wasteland".

Your morality is up to you as you travel the wasteland and encounter religious wackadoos, raiders, mutants, ghouls...I can't even begin to adequately describe how massive- and how massively awesome- this game is. Fallout 3 is effing AMAZING, go play it!



Here's another game that got little attention, but horror fans should definitely bust out their PS2s and give it a whirl. At the start of Haunting Ground, you wake up in a cage (!!!) on the grounds of Castle Belli, and you've got to figure out what the eff is going on and how you can escape. Eventually you team up with a white German Shepherd named Hewie to solve puzzles and defend yourself as you search for a way out. What sets Haunting Ground apart from other survival horror games is that your character wields no weapons...just about all you can do when confronted by an enemy is run and try to find a good hiding spot. Sometimes these hiding spots work, and sometimes they don't...but you can never use the same place twice. It's incredibly tense to be crouched behind a curtain while someone is in the room, actively looking in all the corners for you. While there's definitely too much backtracking (and man oh man does the story get a bit perverse), Haunting Ground boasts one of the greatest, scariest video game villains ever in Daniella, the creepy-ass maid (pictured above). I'd say they should stick her in a movie, but we all know how movies based on games tend to go...


Surviving the zombie apocalypse has never been more fun. What Dead Rising is to George Romero, Left 4 Dead is to Zach Snyder. These walking dead aren't walking at all- they're running really fast because they want to eat your face. There are hundreds and hundreds of them, along with "special" zombies, upgraded with all sorts of new ways to kill you. My favorite is the Witch, the goth-looking chick who sits around in her underwear, crying...until you get too close, and then she's up and clawing your eyes out in a flash. Reminds me of college!


I've told you time and time again, I loves me some Rezzies. I'm gonna admit, though, Resident Evil 5 was a bit of a disappointment. On the one hand, it was a delight for an RE nerd like myself (Chris Redfield, Jill Valentine, and Albert Wesker are all present and accounted for) and the co-op gameplay was cool. The graphics were amazing and the action was non-stop...but that was, perhaps, the problem. Since the incredible Resident Evil 4, the series has been moving away from the solve the puzzle and read the diary in the dusty, zombie-filled house angle that I love and geek out on so much. The developers should bring the series back to its roots because I want them to. Who's with me?


It pains me in my heart place, but I'm starting to think that the Silent Hill series may be on its last legs. I enjoyed Homecoming, but it felt like more of the same, you know? Somehow it's missing the magic of the earliest games in the series- it feels like an imitation. The franchise was handed off from Japan to America, but that can't be the only reason why it's stale. Maybe it's just stale altogether...ugh, it hurts to type that. And who am I kidding? Silent Hill: Shattered Memories hits next month, and I'm sure I'll pick it up...and it'll be okay, but I'll have the sads 'cause it's just not like the Silent Hills of my yoot. Then I'll cry, then I'll play something else, repeat until I'm dead.


Did you know that there's a video game set right after the events of John Carpenter's The Thing? There is, and it's pretty good! You can imagine how it goes: after contact is lost with MacReady and company, the military sends teams to investigate...alien parasite hijinks ensue. While you've got to battle the creepy-crawlies, you've also got to battle the rising worries of your teammates as they become increasingly paranoid: no one trusts anyone. Dudes get scared and they kill themselves, or they try to kill you. You may have an infected teammate in your party. It's a lot like the game, except no one wears weird, giant sideways cowboy hats- and that's a pity.

Things, as SHOCKTOBER continues apace:

• To see the posters for Audrey Rose, getcher archive on and check out the Crap I Bought on VHS Recently edition.
• For Whoever Slew Auntie Roo? posters, go back in time and visit the Hag Horror edition.
• All those bitchin' posters are really making me want to watch Dracula A.D. 1972 again! In particular, the Italian poster with all the bikini-clad girls is just gorge. And why don't theaters feature "horrorituals" anymore? Let's bring 'em back! I want an honorary membership card.
  
• The poster for the Americanized titling of Let Sleeping Corpses Lie, Don't Open the Window, is one of the worst posters I've ever seen. It has nothing to do with the plot, and it's completely misleading- who are those people featured in the photos? Chloe Sevigny and Shelley Winters? Whoever they are, they're not in the film. And way to rip off the tag line from Last House on the Left, right down to lifting the graphic from that movie's poster!

You know what I like? Truth in advertising. Therefore, I like that The House of Seven Corpses (1974) actually has seven corpses. As best as I can remember (and really, I'm trying not to remember), the House of 1000 Corpses was missing several hundred. This is all neither here nor there...I am just saying.

The titular house once belonged to the Beal family, the members of which all met grisly ends by unexplainable, often illogical suicides (how does one shoot oneself in the back, exactly?). A crew is now holed up in the venerable house, shooting a Hammer-style film that's loosely based on the Beals.

The movie-within-a-movie boasts a few lite black masses, which feature the requisite stabbings, black candles, and reading from an eeeevil ancient tome. When one of the actors comes across the Tibetan Book of the Dead lying around Chez Beal, director Eric Hartman (John Ireland) figures "It may be garbage, but it's better than the garbage the writer gave us". The book is read aloud during the course of the shoot, and as you can imagine, this is a big mistake.

The dead rise in the film, all bandaged toothache-style...and they also rise from the Beal family crypt out back, all crusty-faced and frizzy-haired.


And that's pretty much it. All of the action takes place within the last half hour of the film...although "action" isn't quite the right word, as all of the murders occur at a snail's pace. I've given an overview that may give the impression that The House of Seven Corpses is logical, but it's not. Very little of it makes sense if you try to take a closer look, so it's best to throw your brain out the window and simply enjoy the movie.

I did enjoy it quite a bit, although I'm hesitant to recommend the thing. Let's put it this way: if I were to rewrite my recent column discussing guilty pleasures, this film would surely make the list. It's not good, but I liked it. It's got that slow mid-70s vibe...it's chock full of character actors (John Carradine getting offed by a zombie? Come on!)...there are liberal doses of humor and it never seems to take itself completely seriously...and for some reason that must be deep-rooted in my psyche, crusty old oatmeal-faced zombies always work for me.

And then there's the sequence wherein the lead actress's cat gets into a staring contest with a painted devil kitty...




Wait...what am I saying? Kitty cat Mexican standoffs? Oatmeal-faced zombies? This is the best movie ever!

No, really...it's not. But I liked it. Watch at your own risk.

As if to prove there really is some sort of Internet Kismet or some such, Mr. Arbogast dissected The House of Seven Corpses for his 31 Screams series just yesterday! It's a small world, after all.

Today I'm talking about Let Sleeping Corpses Lie (1974) because you, The People, demanded it via cyber-poll! If you're all "Whaaat? I've never heard of this 'Let Sleep Corpses Lie'!", then perhaps you know it by one of these other names:

• Non si deve profanare il sonno dei morti
• Le massacre des morts-vivants
• A Revanche dos Mortos-Vivos II
• Breakfast at the Manchester Morgue
• Das Leichenhaus der lebenden Toten
• Do Not Speak Ill of the Dead
• Don't Open the Window
• Fin de semana para los muertos
• Invasion der Zombies
• No profanar el sueño de los muertos
• No se debe profanar el sueño de los muertos
• The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue
• Zombi 3 (Da dove vieni?)
• Zombi: Epidromi apo to nekrotafeio

Phew. While Breakfast at Manchester Morgue is appealing, I think Invasion der Zombies takes the prize for sheer simplicity. In related news, what's up with all the Zombis out there? I always called Fulci's Zombie...well, Zombie, obviously. Then I grow up and discover it's actually Zombi 2. There are at least three different movies called Zombi 4. What's what? Which movies are actually sequels for other movies? Which ones are worth watching at all? What's a simple-minded horror fan like moi to do? Life is so hard sometimes I could just puke.


But! Onto today's movie...y'all done chose good, friends! The setup is rather simple. Scientists have been demonstrating a new machine that uses ultrasonic waves to kill off crop-eating bugs; farmers are pleased as the contraption actually works. However, the radiation emitted causes beings with low-level brain function to go mad with rage and cannibalize each other...and dead people fall under the umbrella of "low-level brain function". Damn that experimental agriculture! If it's not creating giant ants and a kingdom of spiders, then it's creating zombies.

A couple meets by happenstance, and they're soon embroiled in an undead nightmare as they try to convince the police (led by an awesomely cranky and mean Arthur Kennedy) that they're not responsible for the mounting body count- it's the zombies!

Let Sleeping Corpses Lie owes a great deal to George Romero's Night of the Living Dead...but then what zombie movie doesn't? Still, this could have been a sub-par ripoff (as so many later flicks are), but director Jorge Grau has crafted a movie that's more about atmosphere than gut-munching. The biggest nod to Romero comes when we're introduced to the first walking corpse, who's just a-shamblin' along in broad daylight until he spots The Walking Lunch:



Incidentally, zombie movies are still cannibalizing each other. I wonder if Danny Boyle ever watched this "rage infected" zombie movie that came 30 years before his own 28 Days Later.


While Let Sleeping Corpses Lie falls completely within the zombie movie paradigm, it's also a fresh enough take that it subverts the formula. The first hour or so is all build-up, developing the characters just enough that we become invested in them (even when they're not completely pleasant) and pumping up the atmosphere to high levels of tension. Grau really knows how to frame a shot and move the camera; he makes you wonder what's lurking in the corners, and the pans are so slow that your anxiety to see what's happening just off-screen becomes unbearable at times. It's all so damn competent and accomplished- what a treat.

Sound is used to maximum effect here; the score gets under your skin before you realize it, and the raspy, wheezy moaning of the walking dead is positively haunting. There's just something about these zombies that makes them so much creepier than any other zombies I've seen. They're empty-eyed, but determined- seemingly aimless, but actually deliberate. They're vicious without resorting to snarling and grunting...there's a slowness to them that suddenly gives way to an attack- and they can climb ladders and use tools. These are some seriously uncanny living corpses- you think they're thinking, but you know they're not. When they feast (of course there are some feast scenes), they don't dig in quickly and wolf their food- they chew 21 times before swallowing, and while the film is less explicitly graphic than others of its ilk, it's just as nauseating.

This isn't some fast-paced actioner like you kids of today are becoming used to- it's a good old-fashioned zombie flick...the kind of film that's deceptively difficult to create. I thought I'd seen enough of this genre to be essentially desensitized to it, but wow- this is one helluva creepy movie. Thanks, voters! You're the best!

Dracula A.D. 1972 was Hammer Studios' attempt to revitalize their Dracula franchise and to take the Count out of musty castles and into hotpants-flavored modern times. Did that idea ever stand a chance of being successful? Eh, why not.

The prologue, set in 1872, pits Dracula (Christopher Lee) against Van Helsing (Peter Cushing) atop a speeding carriage. There's a crash and ol' Drac ends up with a heart that's so like a wheel, Shirley Muldowney weeps in jealousy. No, this isn't the way this film's predecessor Scars of Dracula ended, but man, continuity's for squares!

Anyway, the spoke is like a stake to the heart and Dracula croaks, leaving behind naught but a pile of dust and a bit of bling bling. A young fellow with sinister-looking sideburns scoops up Drac's ring and some ashes while Van Helsing looks on and dies.

Finally we get out of the gloomy 19th-century and into the swingin' 1970s! The city is hustlin' and bustlin', and the soundtrack is relentlessly hornalicious. Some crazy kids are having a party that's totally Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, complete with revelers in desperate need of Alberto Vo5 hot oil treatments, girls go-go dancing on tables, couples humping underneath tables, and wealthy elders looking on in shock. Dracula A.D. 1972 is instantly dated...beyond its title, even.

The cops are called in to break things up, and one group of partiers decide they need a fete that's "way way out". One of them, Johnny Alucard (no really, "Alucard"), suggests that what they need to satisfy their party urges is to hold a black mass in a church that's due for demolition. Seems logical. Everyone's on board except Jess Van Helsing (Stephanie Beacham), who's warned by her grandfather (Peter Cushing, again) that the black arts are best left to...well, no one. If only he'd gone on to warn her about wearing horrendous wigs!


Jess quickly caves to peer pressure and the group heads off to the church where- guess what?- Van Helsing was buried in 1872! What a coinkidink. Johnny Alucard gets things underway with a "Dig the music, kids!"as he winds up the reel to reel and the weirdest, grooviest black mass ever begins.

There's writhing, making out, and Caroline Munro generally looking as sexariffic as always...but Johnny Alucard is taking this all very seriously. He's a descendant of that 19th-century fellow with the sinister-looking sideburns, see, and he's brought Dracula's ring and ashes to the affair, fully intending to invoke some demons as well as the Count himself.

A blood sacrifice is called for, and Caroline Munro volunteers; Alucard mixes his own blood with the vampire dust to create a gross sort of mac & cheese sauce of the damned. He pours it over Caroline Munro while everyone else splits, thinking Johnny has gone off the rails of all kinds of trains, crazy and otherwise.

Unfortunately for Johnny, the demons he called upon don't show...but You-Know-Who rises from the you-know-what and promptly sets about making up for 100 years of inactivity by putting the bite on Caroline Munro.

Count Dracula renews his centuries-long battle with the Van Helsings by launching a diabolical plan to turn Jess into a vampire- now wouldn't that be mud in ol' Professor VH's eye?

This penultimate film in Hammer's Dracula line is goofy, sure- from the dialogue to the clothing, the film was passe even before it was released. The music is perhaps the biggest offense- it may have been appropriate for the time period, but it's almost always incongruous with the on-screen action. Scenes that may have been creepy or may have packed a bit of a wallop are undermined by the incessant groovy action soundtrack, rendering the entire affair more than a little campy. Most of all, though, Dracula A.D. 1972 suffers from one massive, insurmountable setback: there's simply not enough Dracula! After his resurrection, the Count is all but relegated to a supporting role, only appearing for a few minutes of the run time. Peter Cushing is as reliable as ever, but even he is squandered as Van Helsing. Stephanie Beacham is suitably bosomed-out for a Hammer flick, but it's disappointing to see Caroline Munro offed so quickly. One highlight, however, is Christopher Neame- he's suitably over-the-top, clearly delighting in his role as the eeeevil Johnny Alucard.

Though it may be for good for a laugh here and there, Dracula A.D. 1972 is really one solely for the Hammer-Dracula completists. After all, we'll sit through just about anything, so long as Christopher Lee bares the fangs and Peter Cushing bears the cross!

The 1974 ABC Movie of the Week Bad Ronald has long been a sort of holy grail for this lover of all things made-for-TV. Rare and expensive (it was released on VHS once, in the early 80s), it was always on my "someday" list- although friends who know about these sort of things always cited it as a gem of the genre. Well, thanks to Warner Archives, Bad Ronald is now available to the masses, of which I proudly call myself a member. It's a barer-than-bare bones edition, sure, but the important thing is that you can now live every night like it's Movie of the Week night! The DVD cover blurb from our old pals at Kindertrauma is all but a Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.

Ronald Wilby (Scott Jacoby) isn't really bad, he's just a bit of a shy, dorky mama's boy...and mom (Kim Hunter) likes it that way. The divorcee never achieves Mama Bates levels of son suffocation, but she tries her best to warn him about the evils of...you know...the rest of the world.

She's proven a bit right when Ronald goes to ask out a cheerleader he's got a crush on; as expected, she spurns his advances while all her friends- those damn popular kids!- make fun of him. Dejected, he walks home only to be further taunted by a bratty bike-riding tween. Ronald calmly responds to "You're weird!" with "I'm not weird." - but once she calls his mother weird, however, it's on. He shoves the girl and she hits her head on a cinder block. She's dead, but really, it's the cinder block's fault.

Ronald calmly confesses to his mother...but wait, there's more! Panicked, he buried the girl in a shallow grave, really throwing a wrench in the works. Mom, ever quick on her feet, immediately comes up with a plan: they'll hide Ronald in the house until this all blows over, then they'll escape and Ronald can go on to medical school and become the fabulous doctor she knows he'll be. In response, Ronald shows us his method for eating an apple, the side-nibble.

The two set about transforming the second bathroom into Ronald's hideaway. They wall over the door completely, then build a trap door in the pantry so Ronald can get food and powdered milk from mom; they even eat their meals together through the doorway, but Ronald can never leave his secret nest.

The plan, though ridiculous, works. The police come sniffing, as does nosy neighbor Mrs. Schumacher, but Ronald's mom insists he ran away, leaving behind only a note. No one suspects that the boy is walled up inside the house, and the weeks pass. Ronald spends his days exercising, boning up on his studies (you can still get into med school without graduating high school, right?), and drawing and writing about the fantasy world he's created, "Atranta".

Life in the walls is peachy until mom dies on the operating table; whatever is Ronald to do? Rather than escape to a new life (or, you know, face the consequences of that little manslaughter thing), he stays in his room, getting ever-drawn into Atranta and slowly losing his mind.

The house is eventually sold to an all-American family led by Dabney Coleman. Ronald drills peepholes all over the place and spies on them as the eat. He becomes enamored with Babs, the youngest of the family's three girls, and imagines that she's the physical embodiment of Atranta's Princess Fancetta. As he's Prince Norbert, it's only natural that the two of them should be together...Ronald becomes bolder in his excursions for food, and soon he has to make himself known to his Princess.

The good-natured, if a bit weird (sorry, Ronald, that girl you killed was kinda right) boy transforms into a filthy and completely weird nutjob thanks to months of quiet isolation. I know how he feels- I work from home, and I get a little out of it after a day or so of no human contact. FYI, the day I start signing these posts "Princess Fancetta" is the day you should send someone to look in on me...I promise they won't meet the fate of that snooping Mrs. Schumacher.

There's not a lot of overt, action-packed horror in Bad Ronald, although the climax is definitely worth the wait. The idea of a homicidal Anne Frank living in the walls is a great one, though, and the film is undeniably creepy. There are plenty of questions it's best not to ask (the family really doesn't see all those massive peepholes in the walls, even when they hang a picture right above one?), sure, but if you suspend your disbelief just a little then you're in for a real treat. It moves along at a fast clip, and it's full of tension. If you're down with the '70s made-for-TV vibe, it doesn't get much better- or badder- than Bad Ronald.

Crazy Eights, one of the films in After Dark's second Horrorfest lineup, is one of those films that, when it's over, you sort of shrug and say, "Umm...yup. Okay, so I just watched that." See, Crazy Eights is firmly planted in horror movie purgatory: neither good nor particularly terrible, it's just sort of there. It inspires no emotions in the viewer of any kind, and at the end of the 90 minutes you spend with it, you promptly forget about it and go about tending to your Olivia Newton-John scrapbook.

I'm not necessarily saying that I have an Olivia Newton-John scrapbook, mind you, but I almost did. When I was a wee one in that heady year known as "1980"- yeah, when Xanadu hit, ON-J fever was at its height (for me), and the world couldn't get enough of her musical collaborations with E.L.O. (at least, I couldn't), I somehow got it in my head that making an Olivia Newton-John scrapbook and selling it would be the greatest moneymaking scheme in the history of ever. I have no idea who I thought would buy it, or why I thought someone would actually pay big money for an Olivia Newton-John scrapbook, but I promptly set about cutting out every magazine article I could find about her and scotch taping them inside a notebook. Perhaps I sensed that I was on a fool's errand, or perhaps my love for Xanadu waned too quickly- whatever the reason, I dropped the project in but a few days. Had I kept at it, I wonder how much it would have brought at, say, Sotheby's (surely they would have auctioned it off for me); would I be a millionairess right now, wearing a monocle and acting indignant when some rube has the nerve to call Polaner All Fruit "jelly"? That seems likely.

I don't know why I'm thinking about all this...wait, yes I do! It's because there's not much to think about in Crazy Eights. However, this blog is called Final Girl, not Let Me Bore You With Stupid Pointless Stories From My Youth (though that's catchy), so I need to get to the horror.

After 20 years apart, a group of friends reunites when one of their mutual childhood buddies passes away. In his will, he requests that the group dig up a time capsule they buried together and...I don't know, spend some quality time together or something.

They find the trunk, and beneath the slingshots and other things left behind they find the skeletal remains of a young girl. Oops! Forgot about her!

Through a series of plot contrivances, they end trapped in an abandoned secret hospital, where they're stalked by the ghost of the dead girl as they try to piece together their shared history. When they were children, they were subjected to a series of behavioral studies that left them all plagued with nightmares and at differing levels of functionality as adults.

It's an interesting- if familiar- set up, and the cast assembled here is fairly impressive, including Frank Whaley, Gabrielle Anwar, Dina Meyer, and Traci fucking Lords. Unfortunately, they're squandered, hampered by a weak script that doesn't flesh out any personalities or histories. In the end, we don't care whether any of them live or die because we don't know any of them. This should have been horror touched with a tinge of tragedy, but there's none of either. Still, there's always something great about seeing Traci Lords in mainstream movies, so watching her get chased by a vengeful ghost is nothing short of awesome, even though it kinda sucks.

There are some huge issues with the plot- the characters make enormous leaps of logic as they figure out how to get out of their dilemma, while the audience is left shaking their heads. The events of the film happen rather quickly, but very little of the time is spent with the characters trying to physically find a way out of the hospital. All in all, it's a head-scratcher.

Most bizarre, though, is that director James Jones doesn't seem to know how to handle horror action. Thing happen and characters die, but we're always cutting away just before the violence begins and coming back a moment after it's over. I'd blame the lack of FX on budget constraints, maybe, but Crazy Eights must have cost a few pennies- although maybe it was all spent on the cast? Eh, who knows. The point is, we're never shown much of anything- to the point where scenes frequently feel disjointed.

As I said, it wasn't terrible, but it also wasn't very good...and it's a shame to see the likable cast all but wasted. I mean, Traci Lords, man!

To be honest, the highlight of this movie was the bonus featurette that compiles the webisodes from the Miss Horrorfest 2007 competition. Like some reality show set in Hot Topic, the Top 10 finalists were gathered together to compete for the dubious honor of winning the crown. The best part of the whole affair was watching Shannon Lark try to maintain interest while she was clearly appalled to find herself stuck in the middle of some goth-flavored hooker convention. She's awesome!

I put off viewing the 2007 Korean film Black House (Geomeun jip) because I'd been completely judging the book DVD by the cover. The photo and copy on the sleeve of the disc make it out to be yet another in a long line of Asian ghost stories, and lawd oh lawd...those taglines: "There's no place like home...TO DIE!" and "The address where DEATH lives!" Really, they sound as if they're straight outta one of my goofy Ghostella movies. I finally decided to give it a go, however, and once again I've been taught the lesson that just won't stick: don't judge a something by the something something. Black House is a terrific slow-burning thriller-slasher flick with nary a ghost in sight.

Jeon Jun-oh (Jeong-min Hwang) is a mild-mannered investigator for a large insurance company, far too personable and kind for the job. His bosses must repeatedly remind him that he needs to maintain a businesslike detachment and not get involved in the lives of clients; Jun-oh can't help himself, however, and even goes so far as to divulge personal information to a caller he feels is suicidal.

Jun-oh's reputation as a the nice guy of the agency leads to his being requested at the forbidding home of Park Chung-bae (Shin-il Kang), who's tired of dealing with nasty agents.

Shortly after he arrives, Jun-oh finds Chung-bae's young son hanging from a noose in his bedroom. Chung-bae's odd behavior leads Jun-oh to suspect that it's not suicide, but homicide- and he doesn't want to award a large monetary settlement to a murderer. The police are reticent to investigate, but not so Jun-oh; horrified at the notion that anyone would kill a child for financial gain, he sets out to expose Chung-bae- who in turn hounds Jun-oh and his agency for his payout.

Jun-oh becomes embroiled deeper and deeper in his investigation, which stirs up painful memories of his own troubled past (which includes the death of a younger brother) and puts a strain personal relationships. As Chung-bae's history comes to light, it becomes evident that this may not be the first time he's killed, and Jun-oh becomes fearful for Chung-bae's wife Shin Yi-hwa (Yoo Se-on)- after all, the policy on her life is quite large.

Things are not at all like they seem, though, and at the hour mark Black House takes a sharp left turn into Wackadooville. The pace and action increase, and the film becomes a slasher-flavored glimpse into the nature of evil. The cruel secrets buried in the basement of Park Chung-bae are revealed, and they're decidedly bloody.


Black House suffers a bit from the plague of multiple endings- just when you think it's over, there's more. Still, it was extremely enjoyable right up until the credits finally started rolling. The slow build of the first hour may be off-putting to fans with short attention spans, but I found the slow-burn approach refreshing and welcome. The film features- GASP!- actual character development bolstered by strong performances. The villain of the piece is so soulless and empty, even Michael Myers would be aghast.


There's just enough torture-tinged gore to make you squirm, but it's not so overdone as to be off-putting. The film is slick and stylish, but never in a way that sacrifices story: there's no frenetic editing here. The score is subtle and haunting.

This isn't the haunted house movie you'd expect from the packaging, but it is about the evil that lives next door. I was pleasantly surprised and extremely glad I gave Black House a shot...and I'm sure there's a lesson in there somewhere.

Why do I like Shannyn Sossamon so much? She's one of those actors who, when I see her name attached to a film, I think "Oooh! Yes, I'll watch that." (see also: Ed Harris). I don't get it. She's not a particularly good actress- she tends to deliver every line as if she's just done a shot of heroin. She hasn't been in any films I love, or even like a whole bunch. So what is it? Is it just because I think she's super duper adorable in some magical kinda-scuzzy elfin way? That's probably it...eh, these things happen. In the end, all it means is that I watch some movies I probably wouldn't otherwise check out, like Catacombs (2007).

Sossamon stars as Victoria, a young lady who's apparently got some "nerve issues" or some such. She heads to Paris at the suggestion of her sister Carolyn (Alecia Moore- yes, that's "Pink" to you), who's there to study...something at the Sorbonne. Though Victoria begs off doing much because of a headache, Carolyn insists they spend an exhausting day doing French-type stuff like scooter-riding. They shop, and then Carolyn drags her sister to a rave in the Catacombs beneath the streets.

Yes, a rave in the catacombs. Any old excuse to get the kids down there, I guess...I mean, the same rave-gone-wrong idea worked in House of the Dead and Return of the Living Dead 5, right?

Anyway, once they're all down there, Carolyn and her French friends regale Victoria with the legend of The Cult of the Black Virgin...apparently, some Satanic cult is lurking in the catacombs, and they've managed to create their own Antichrist by raising an incest rape baby in darkness and feeding him raw meat. Now he wears a goat's head for a mask and stalks the tunnels, hacking up unlucky wanderers of the depths. But...that's totally just a legend, so we don't have to worry about that in Catacombs.

Just kidding! Later on, the sisters have separated themselves from the pack and as they bicker, Goat Head pops out and puts the blade to Carolyn...so you know what that means.


Goat Head grunts incessantly and chases Victoria around for a while, but she manages to elude him. Unfortunately, she's completely lost and wanders around for the next 35 minutes, looking for an exit. Just so you know, I don't mean 35 minutes in the world of the movie...I mean 35 minutes of the movie's run time. She walks around. And looks. And walks around. And looks. For 35 minutes.

She meets up with a fellow Lostie named Henri, but Victoria leaves him behind when he falls into a shaft and breaks his leg. She wanders around some more, then maybe meets up with Goat Head again, and then in its last ten minutes Catacombs pulls a fast one and kicks you in the nuts, be they metaphorical or for reals. Even Shannyn Sossamon was not amused.

If you were sitting here with me right now and you asked my opinion of Catacombs, I'd wiggle my hand up and down, scrunch up my face, and say "Mnehhhhhhh" in a whiny voice...or, in keeping with the film's Paris setting, I'd give it a "comme ci, comme ca". The direction was, at times, horrendously irritating; co-directors (and co-writers) Tomm Coker and David Elliot employed liberal use of the epilepsy-cam to the point where it was frequently difficult to discern what was going on. I don't know who started the frenetic jump cutting / strobe lighting / fucking with film speed epidemic that's STILL plaguing horror film directors, but the trend has really got to stop. None of those bells and whistles make the film any scarier.

The plot is paper-thin, and the resolution would have been bolstered by some character development earlier on; perhaps if we'd spent some more time learning about Victoria and Carolyn, the events that stem from their contemptuous relationship might have had more impact. Instead, we watch Victoria walk around in the dark for half an hour, but the film never feels particularly frightening or tense.

Oh well. In the end, all it means is that I watched a movie I probably wouldn't otherwise have checked out. Damn you, Shannyn Sossamon!

Though it may seem nigh impossible for a film to reach the lofty heights achieved by yesterday's craptacular Mausoleum, I'll admit I had high hopes for Blood Song (1982). After all, it's on the same disc with Mausoleum (an Exploitation Cinema double feature!), and it features beach party boy Frankie Avalon as a cold-hearted killer. As we all know, however, high hopes are sometimes beat to a bloody pulp and flushed down the toilet. Such is life.

In the year 1955, a young boy bears witness to a horrible crime: dad comes home and catches mom in bed with her lover; dad shoots mom, the lover, and himself. The boy reacts to the carnage as anyone would- he plays the flute.

In 1982, Marion (Donna Wilkes) lays in bed having a waking nightmare. In a sequence repeated several times throughout the course of the film, the camera zooms in on Marion's eyeball, then the segues to another location via garish colorization.









It's like magic! The scene above transports Marion (or her brain, anyway) and us to the "State Mental Institution" (err, yeah...the SIX WRITERS of Blood Song couldn't be bothered to name the damn hospital), where Flute Boy- Flute Man, now- is a patient. He's all grown up now, of course, and he's played by the aforementioned Frankie Avalon. As you'd expect from a horror film, Flute Man kills a guard, steals his uniform, and busts a move out of the Institution.

Flute Man hitches a ride along the way to San Francisco and manages to irritate the driver by playing the same lousy song over and over again on his flute. When the driver asks him to knock it off- and goes on to actually insult the flute-playing- Flute Man becomes enraged and kills him. The he steals the Black Van of Doom and continues on his way.



In a bid to Pay It Forward, Flute Man picks up his own hitchhiker, a young lady who should know better than to climb into a stranger's van. The two head off to a cheap motel for an Afternoon Delite, and everything's going swell...until Flute Man does his flute thing- and no, that's not a euphemism.

The hitchhiker asks him to knock it off, and of course he gets irritated to a homicidal degree:

"Don't you like my music?"
"Nothing personal- just not as much as you do!"

At this point, one realizes that yes, the premise of Blood Song is really going to be that Flute Man kills people who insult his lousy, incessant flute playing...and yet this is not a satire or black comedy.

Meanwhile, what of Marion, our eyeball nightmarist? She's got it rough. Her leg is in a brace thanks to the night daddy (Richard Jaeckel) did some drunk driving and cracked up the car. While she was in the hospital, she required some blood...which was nicely donated by Flute Man while he was in the Institution. Now you see why she's having these visions- it all makes perfect scientific sense!

Things begin to look up for Marion, however, as she graduates from a brace to a can and takes a lonely stroll on beach, accompanied by a ballad sung by Lainie Kazan.

Things begin to look down for Marion, however, when she stumbles across Flute Man burying the body of the hitchhiker.

By this time, I kept thinking "Where the hell is Donna Wilkes??" - of course, she's here as Marion, but I was thinking of (and wanting to see) Donna Pescow. No offense to Donna Wilkes- I mean, she was Angel (schoolgirl by day, hooker by night) and all, but she's no Donna Pescow. Mind you, this has nothing to do with anything, I am just saying.

Oh, umm...for the rest of the film Flute Man chases Marion around town, attempting to kill her, The End. Oh wait, he kills Richard Jaeckel along the way, which is fine by me.

Blood Song was more than a bit of torture to sit through. Sure, Frankie Avalon gives it his best effort, but the brief flashes of action and violence are wrapped up in a tortilla of boredom. The entire affair is plodding and dull- the "Don't insult my mad flute skillz" angle is taken too seriously (also, not serious enough) to be any fun, and the psychic connection between Flute Man and Marion proves pointless in the end. All in all, it's a sub-par slasher flick with a "shocking" ending that goes on and on and on until you cry "uncle". What a drag.

Now, I did truly dislike the film, but I'll admit it does have a couple of highlights.

1) There's a guy who looks like Paul Williams, and he comes sauntering in wearing a homemade t-shirt that says "BEAT THE BALONEY":

2) The kitchen cabinetry is rad:

I mean, it's just so hard to find avocado kitchen accoutrements these days.

It's a wonder to me that Mausoleum and I have both been walking this planet since 1983, yet last night marked the first time we'd crossed paths. Approximately three minutes after I started playing the DVD, I realized that I'd found my one true soulmate. It doesn't matter where Mausoleum has been all my life- the important thing is that we've found each other at last, and we're now destined to walk the earth together!

Whilst visiting her mother's grave, li'l Susan decides she no longer wants to live with her Aunt Cora. She takes off running through the graveyard, stopping only when she hears someone whisper-singing her name. She peeks inside one mausoleum, but then spots another one across the way that's far more interesting in that it features its own weather system.

She enters the crypt, which is all lit up in greens and purples like the finest Spencer's Gifts. We learn that this is the tomb of the Nomed family...yes, NOMED. That's some seriously Nilbog shit, if you know what I mean.

Anyway, a clawed hand rises from the sarcophagus, things that defy explanation happen, and Susan's eyes light up all green and make a laser noise. The girl done went and got herself possessed!

Fast forward! Susan is now all grown up- she's portrayed by ex-Playboy Bunny Bobbie Bresee and she's married to Marjoe fucking Gortner. A charmed life, you say? It's easy to assume so, but there's a dark side to this fairytale existence! See, a woman of Susan's...err, attributes finds herself constantly subjected to the lechy gaze of creepy weirdo peeping tom gardeners and creepy weirdo Dan Haggerty-esque disco patrons.


All Susan wanted to do was go dancing with her husband (yes, Marjoe fucking Gortner disco dances!), but that Dan Haggerty-esque jerk made it so difficult that she was left with no choice but to use her magic green gaze to set his car on fire while he was locked inside.


The next day, the creepy gardener makes a bold pass at Susan while her husband is at work- her eyes get their green on and we know it's time for some demonic justice! But not before we bear witness to an eerily silent montage that clues us in as to just what, in fact, a gardener does with his day after making a pass at his employer:












Finally, Susan gets around to launching Operation: Get Back At The Grope-y Gardener: she strolls out onto her balcony wearing only a towel, then sips Riunite as if she's straight from a Jackie Collins novel.

Okay, in reality that's only Phase One of her plan. She continues the seduction approximately 9 hours later, when it's pitch black outside...insert helpful moon shot!

Susan's plan includes actually sleeping with the gardener- boy, this really teaches him a lesson! He suggests they partake in another round, but instead, Susan does her green-eyed thing, turns into some sort of a monster, and kills him with a garden implement. Okay, I guess that really teaches him a lesson.

Soon enough, Susan's victims don't actually have to trespass against her in order for her to unleash the NOMED lurking inside. Poor Aunt Cora, for example, shows up for a visit only to find herself floating around and killed dead thanks to her monsteriffic niece.



One person spared Susan's wrath is Elsie the maid (LaWanda Page...yes, Aunt Esther from Sanford & Son!). Intended as comic relief, Elsie is, in fact, a whopping slice of politically incorrect pie. Yet while she's given to saying things like "Great googily moogily!", Elsie is a rarity in that she's a black character who makes it 'til the end of the picture. When faced with a green fog emanating from Susan's bedroom, Elsie admits there's "Some strange shit goin' on in this house!", yells "No more grievin', I'm leavin'!", and splits.

There's so much more to Mausoleum, but I don't want to give away the whole package, as everyone should be allowed to discover it for him- or herself. Director Michael Dugan has truly given the world a gift! However, a few highlights:

- Susan undergoes hypnosis where she reveals her NOMED nature and corn teeth!

- There's the use of the term "facial fantasy"
- Dialogue includes "Yes...there's a history of possession."
- When possessed, Susan's depravity has no limits- she steals art from the mall!
- Something happens- I cannot reveal what it is, for you must witness it with your own eyes, but suffice it to say, it causes Marjoe fucking Gortner to pull what can only be called a Ridiculous Face of Pre-Death:

- While Mausoleum makes no sense as a whole, the very last shot of the film is so illogical that it actually defies the laws of science and mathematics. Even if you've never seen the film, your guess as to what the fuck is going on here is as good as mine:

- Then we get the end credits, which feature a tender song called "Free Again", written and sung by Frank Primato. It boasts lyrics like "Let's blow the fire dead...that's burning in my head..." and it's every bit as dreadful as you think it would be.

In case you haven't guessed, Mausoleum is a terrible, terrible film. The acting is horrendous, the dialogue atrocious, and the timing between the players is so off that every scene comes across like rejected audition tapes. There's a charm to Bobbie Bresee, but it's one borne of a performance that feels bathed in quaaludes. The sound is awful, as if there's a muted coffee pot percolating somewhere just off camera for the duration of the film. The direction is all but incompetent at times with dull compositions, pointless zooms and pans, and bizarre insert shots. The end of the film, featuring the "exorcism" (I use that term wicked loosely), takes 20 minutes but should only take seven. The creature effects, by genre vet John Carl Buechler, are '80s-style cheesy.

All of that is true, but oh how I loved this movie! I never wanted it to end, ever. On a scale of 1-10, I'd honestly rate it infinity. Lawd help me, it's true- the depths of deliciousness achieved are face-rockingly limitless. Forgive me, Shark Attack 3: Megalodon...step aside, Pieces...there's a new love of my life, and its name is Mausoleum!