Killer Tongue

If El Dia De La Bestia is the heavy metal equivalent of a Spanish horror movie, then Killer Tongue is it’s glam rock derivative, being shiny and interesting to watch, yet it’s music rocking and easy to swallow. Our story involves a woman named Candy, who is sent to a convent waiting for her criminal boyfriend to get out of jail. When he’s about to get out, she leaves the convent with a group of dogs and a cool car. But this doesn’t last long, as a meteor with a weird lifeform possesses her and turns her into a weirdo monster with a giant tongue with a mind of it’s own. And the dogs get turned into fags.
I really don’t know what to make of this film. When I was a kid I would always see it in the horror section, but never got myself the courage to buy it because it’s original cover looked scary. I know, it’s ridiculous but hey, what can I say I was a kid. Now that I’ve finally watched it, I wonder, what the fuck was I thinking? It has horror actors in it, though. Doug Bradley from Hellraiser, Robert Englund from the Nightmare On Elm Street films, and even the drop-dead-gorgeous Melinda Clarke from Return of the living Dead III, who is mostly naked and wearing bodypaint. Yummy.
But no, this is not a horror movie. This is a comedy, and a surprisingly entertaining one at that. The three horror actors are put to the test of stretching their acting muscles and doing comedic work, and you know what? The three of them are really good! Englund in particular is hilarious in the role of the asshole police warden, and Clarke is surprisingly sympathetic and beautiful. But none of them are as funny as the tongue itself. It has a personality similar to Chucky from Child’s Play, and like Chucky, it’s funnier when it curses. Sadly the third act kind of loses me, with it’s lead turning into an evil monster and our hero turning her back on her for no other reason than to fuck a nun, I just didn’t dig it. Still, the movie is colorful and funny and never takes itself very seriously, and neither should you. Go check it out.

Barbara The Barbarian

By The Deformed Dicks of Cronos, this is a bad porno. I mean, it features some of my favorite porno actresses of the 80’s, like Barbara Dare, Nina Hartley, Erica Boyer and Jeanna Fine, but it sadly wasn’t enough.
The story involves a barbarian queen named Barbara (Barbara Dare) who goes to war to rescue her little sister, who is also a hot porn star-looking barbarian. That’s basically the plot, as the story is padded with intensity with some pretty short but non-eventful sex scenes. And I also had a problem with the way the film was produced. We start off with women living in a cavegirl-like existence, meanwhile the bad guys live in what looks like a rejected stage play of Arabian Nights, with frilly costumes and expensive-looking rugs. I know this is a porno and I shouldn’t give a shit, but for some reason this really bothered me. I actually preferred the cave settings, since they looked like they were made in paper mache and I’m always a sucker for cheap-looking crap.
You’ll definitely get a boner from the actresses in the film, and I guess that should be enough, but I normally defend 70’s and 80’s pornography, but this title is just not worth defending. It’s not great like Femmes De Sade or Through The Looking Glass, that’s for sure.

Bobbie Jo And The Outlaw

I love Lynda Carter. I have the entire Wonder Woman TV series and I even watch that stupid movie, Sky High, just because she’s in it. She’s tall, she’s voluptuous, she has the best tits of the 70’s and her big blue eyes are simply bewitching. No wonder it’s so hard to cast the WW movie, I’m not surprised that they can’t find a good substitute! When I heard she made a movie in the 70’s where she showed her beautiful naked body, I had to hunt it down. Surprisingly enough, I stayed on after the nude scenes, and was really surprised by how good this movie is.
The film is basically a rip-off of Bonnie & Clyde, having the same basic story. Marjoe Gortner plays Lyle, a good-looking rebel who gets himself on the wrong side of the law by accident and goes on the run. On the way she meets Bobbie Jo (Lynda Carter), an aspiring country singer who wants to escape the small town life and go-nowhere existence with her mother. Turned on by crime, she decides to join in, and soon the two become a regular pack of criminals, forming their own gang and going out robbing banks. Of course, the law is in their tails not long after that.
Even with it’s derivative plot, the movie is very interesting. Marjoe Gortner and Linda Carter both share a lot of chemistry and are good as the gang of criminals, and the rest of the supporting cast is believable, not being too good-looking to upstage them and for the most part looking like real people. The movie also shares a good deal of action sequences, and very well-made robberies. The last stand-off, in front of The Alamo, is very well staged and even if the ending is predictable, it kind of leaves you with a sense of tragedy about what might have been. Lynda Carter looks great of course, but I have to admit that her acting talent is definitely not very good, at least not here, she got better on Wonder Woman. Even so, this is a very entertaining caper flick and features one of the most beautiful women in the history of film in the nude, so what do you have to lose?

Action Jackson

The 80’s was the great decade of action, in my opinion. It was the decade where people like Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, Dolph Lundgren and Chuck Norris made their best work during this era. But one of them seems to have gotten lost in the shuffle, and it’s sad because he’s actually pretty cool. This lost action icon is Carl Weathers, who kicked ass as Apollo Creed in the Rocky films and ruled as Dillon in Predator. So some people seem to forget his biggest role as “Action” Jackson.
The plot involves Action, a good guy cop who gets himself into a lot of trouble for using too much violence. Kinda like a soul-brotha version of Dirty Harry. When an old nemesis, Peter Dellaplane (played by Craig T. Nelson) returns to his life and frames him for the murder of his wife, Jackson must pair up with former Dellaplane drug whore Sydney Ash (played by singer Vanity) to clear his name and fight the evil Dellaplane before he continues wiping out his competition.
I don’t know why the hell this movie didn’t become more of a cult hit, it’s awesome! For starters, the cast is spot on. Carl Weathers is badass as already mentioned, and Craig T. Nelson is surprisingly slimy as the bad guy, and looks like he’s having a helluva good time. Sharon Stone and Vanity are also great, since they’re very attractive and get naked enough times to get me turned on. Yeah, too much information. The action sequences are all pretty badass, and we get a lot of extreme stunts and explosions. It’s obvious that Jackson was meant to have his own franchise. I guess the movie didn’t make any money, because we never saw any.. It’s too bad, because there was the potential to make something really special, at least based on the first one. It’s got kick-ass stunts, car chases, gore, and nudity. Highly underrated, check it out!

Shock 'Em Dead

Stephen Quadros plays Martin, a true loser who can’t seem to get his life in check. Girls laugh at him, his landlord is giving him shit, and his dreams of becoming a rock star with the band Creeping Flesh are not going anywhere. So, he makes a deal with the devil, and turns himself into a guitar-shredding soul-sucking psychopath named Angel Martin. Things are looking good, committing violence and getting laid with a trio of evil assistants, until his affection for band manager Lindsay Roberts (Traci Lords) begins to bring tension into the band, and soon they discover that things aren’t quite right with their talented guitar player.
A friend of mine recommended this film after I told him I had an interest in heavy metal horror films, like Rocktober Blood, Trick Or Treat and Hack O Lantern. So I hunted down a copy and finally saw it, and this is definitely the least interesting of the genre I have seen in a while. The music is goofy as hell, the kind that would make Nitro sound like Led Zeppelin. The script is truly ridiculous, and has so many plotholes. The way the characters change personalities and inconsistency in their performances really made it kind of hard to understand, and some are so over the top, like the singer, that you have to laugh. If he’s in a metal band, why is he dressed like a Loverboy reject?
Not even Traci Lords can save this. Sure, she’s hot, but she can’t act and she doesn’t get naked so who gives a fuck? I preferred her when she was in porn. So yes, this movie is bad, but if you like cheesy flicks, you might find this entertaining. In it’s defense, I never found the movie boring at all. I laughed a lot, even if it was more at the movie than with the movie, but I can’t complain, it gets the job done. So even with it’s faults, I recommend it for being hilarious. Watch it high.

Syndicate Sadists

Thomas Milian stars as Rambo (yes, that’s his name, believe it or not), a tough biker and probable Vietnam vet who arrives in Milan smack in the middle of a gang war between rival crime families. Rambo wages a war of his own when his brother, a member of a kidnap investigation, is maliciously murdered. Rambo plays a dangerous game, pitting the two families against each other, backfiring with the brutal murder of his girlfriend. Consumed by anger and rabid with revenge Rambo sets ut to viciously take the families out one by one.
I have to say that I was very disappointed by this film. I was expecting a badass crime film by Umberto Lenzi, the violent master of cinema responsible for classics like Cannibal Ferox and Nightmare City, but I wasn’t really given something as exploitive as those. This film is very much like a straight action film. There are things to recommend, though. I really loved the cast. Thomas Milian has always been good at playing a badass, especially in his more classic spaghetti westerns like Django Kill, Companeros and Four Horsemen For The Apocalypse. He’s gruffy and takes no shit from people, but I guess I was wishing him to be more like the Stallone Rambo, more of a tough psychopath. Hell, I think Milian would have been great in the John Rambo role. I was also pleased to see Joseph Cotten, one of my favorite actors from the 1940’s, although to be honest, his role is kind of wasted in this film.
There are a couple of action sequences but none of them are really memorable, and the villains are all forgettable for the most part, none of them standing out of the pack. I’m sure a lot of people will have an appreciation for this film, but other than the great acting of Thomas Milian, Syndicate Sadists was, sadly, not sadistic enough.

Punk Rock aka Teenage Runaways

I love 70’s/early 80’s pornography. It’s just awesome, seeing this stuff being filmed on 16/35mm stock gives it a real air of authenticity. Not that there’s anything wrong with watching the newer gonzo stuff, but the gonzo stuff is more for private moments. These I can actually share with a girlfriend and give her the excuse that we’re watching something artistic…. That is, if I had a girlfriend. Plus, there’s a real air of sleaze to the proceedings, not to mention really nice, bouncy breasts and more body hair tan a chipmunk and women with more hair on their vaginas than I do on my hair. It’s excellent. This film involves a private dick named Jimmy Dillinger (Wade Nichols) who gets himself framed and his young lover kidnapped. So he goes after her in the grimy streets of New York, and gets himself mixed up with the oh-so-dangerous punk rock scene, which is there solely to kidnap young girls, get hooked on drugs and sell them into white slavery. Weird, I was a part of the PR punk (and metal) scene for the longest time and I never heard of any white slavery rings. Yes, this movie isn’t exactly made to be an exact account of the punk rock scene in New York. In fact, there are no punk rock bands on the movie. There is one called The Squirrels who wear platform shoes and look like members of the Bay City Rollers. And the music? Forget it. The cast in the film is pretty good. Wade Nichols is surprisingly funny and realistic, and his NY accent is cool. We also get Robert Kerman (from Cannibal Holocaust) playing a police detective who really hates our hero Dillinger. And last but not least, I’d like to talk about the cute Jean Sanders, who plays Nan. She’s cute and very young looking, and her fucking talents are excellent. Hell, the best sex scenes in the movie are the ones that involve her, the others are pretty forgettable (even the pinball one). This is her only credit on IMDB, which is sad because I would love to see her fucking in other movies. This film was directed by the great Carter Stevens, who made such classics as Bizarre Styles and my personal favorite, Teenage Twins (featuring real twin sisters, yum!). This is a pretty damn good, funny porno film with a lot of great sex and a surprisingly good script. Make sure you hunt down the 77 minute porno version, you won’t be disappointed.

A drunken sea captain (Timothy Buttons) loses a boat (and a couple of crew members) to a gigantic sea snake, who we find out at the beginning of the film that it was created by a nuclear explosion. Or was it woken up from the deep? Who knows, they don’t explain. So he’s accused of drinking on the job, but another person witnesses the snake (Taryn Power), so he decides to unite with her by making her escape from a mental hospital. With the help of some dinosaur expert played by Ray Milland, they decide to go on a manhunt to kill the giant serpent.
I don’t know about this movie, man. It’s given me something of a bad taste in my mouth, but I can’t say I completely hate it either. It was directed by Amando De Ossorio, a really talented filmmaker from Spain who made the great Blind Dead films and The Lorelei’s Grasp, which I love as well even though so many people say it’s crap. But this movie… I dunno. I guess I was hoping for something very atmospheric like the previously mentioned films, but nope, not in here. We get a Japanese-style monster movie, but it’s script doesn’t really make sense. I already mentioned the dubious origins of the sea monster, but the thing that really peeves me about the story is that it has the most ludicrous coincidences in the history of cinema. Our ‘hero’ is accused of driving a ship while drunk and sentenced to jail, but he goes walking scott-free right after his sentencing. This is a dubbed version, did I miss something? Then he helps the nutty girl escape, right in front of a horny orderly who recognizes the girl only after she’s inside an elevator. Then they return to a hospital (!) to talk to another survivor. You’d think there’d be security ready to see two excons hanging around, but I guess not.
Now, the film has a very talented task. Timothy Buttons is a great actor who appeared in the great Last Picture Show, and Ray Milland has appeared in hundreds of films, many of them classics like The Lost Weekend, Dial M For Murder and The Thing With Two Heads, although sadly his behavior is similar to his character in The Lost Weekend, slurring and almost falling over thanks to what looks like an over-use of the sauce. But the best performance is given by the Sea Serpent itself, a sock puppet modified by special makeup that makes Reptilicus look like the beast from Cloverfield. So those are my two cents on this, De Ossorio’s weird bastard child. I didn’t love it, I didn’t hate it, but it’s still a lot of fun…. If you’re high.

The Alien Factor

When I first started this blog in 2009, one of the first films I reviewed was a documentary on the life of backyard filmmaker Don Dohler from Baltimore, a guy who made no-budget monster movies until his death from cancer. That documentary meant a lot to me, since I was a big fan of Dohler and his flicks, especially his earlier ones. I decided to finally give him his dues and review my favorite movie of his, the underappreciated classic known as The Alien Factor. Our story involves a trio of aliens, two bad and one good, who crash-land on a small town and cause havoc wherever they go. It’s up to the police department, and a mysterious scientist, to help them stop the evil aliens and get to the bottom of what’s going on. That’s the whole movie in a nutshell, ladies and gents, and it’s more than enough. The script is an obvious tribute to the 50’s monster movies that Dohler loved so much, with your law-abiding heroes and police officer heroes, supporting characters from all over the town and of course, the aliens themselves. The three aliens are different but they’re very interesting. The first one, the good one, is just a guy wearing some kind of monster suit and jeans. It looks pretty cool. The second one is the giant, a dude wearing another cool monster suit but with legs so long it’s obvious he’s wearing some stilts. Every time I see him I giggle, although I also worry since it looks like he’s about to fall at any minute. The third one is stop-motion, a creature that looks like the gecko from the Geico commercials, only full of steroids. Now, to be fair, the movie isn’t a perfect one. The acting is atrocious for the most part, and Tom Griffith makes the most unconvincing hero in film history (although he got worse in the ‘sequel’, NightBeast). Also, the effects aren’t that convincing, particularly the stop-motion one which looks like a dissolve effect. Still, they look great, and this movie has more heart and energy than any big budget science fiction piece of shit any day. I’ll take this movie over 2001 A Space Odyssey and Transformers any day of the week. All hail Don Dohler!

Curse of the Vampires

The Philippines is not a place known for creating high cinematic art. Hell, every movie I’ve seen from there is an exploitation film, and for the most part, they’re the ‘so-bad-they’re-awesome’ kind. From low-rent monster movies to women in prison films, they seem to jump in on every genre, and I guess gothic horror is no exception. Taking it’s cues from the Hammer films, the story involves the Escodero family in Mexico, a family that is cursed with vampirism, particularly the mother. When the eldest son Eduardo (Eddie Garcia) gets himself infected, he decides to turn everyone in the house, including her sister, into vampires. Now it’s up to the ghost of Eduardo’s sister, Daniel Castillo (Romeo Vasquez) to destroy the curse. Only problem is, he’s a ghost! Yep, the plot sounds pretty ludicrous, doesn’t it? I mean, just when you realize you’re watching a Philippine movie that’s set in Mexico during the 1800’s, you already start feeling suspicious. But to my surprise, this is a very good, and very interesting old school kind of horror film. The best part of the film are the sets, which are very well designed and will remind everyone of the Roger Corman Poe films, particularly the later ones like The Terror and Tomb of Ligeia. The concept is also interesting, with a ghost fighting the undead, bringing a level or originality to the already tired vampire subgenre. There are a lot of interesting themes, like the honor of family, and the conflict between Catholicism and medicine, nothing new to vampire films I know, but still very interesting to watch. Now, this movie is not without it’s flaws. I can’t say anything about the acting because the version I’ve seen is dubbed, very badly I might add. I can still see that the acting is not very good, particularly Eddie Garcia who doesn’t make for a very convincing evil vampire. Christopher Lee he isn’t. Also, I know this probably shouldn’t bother me so much, but a lot of the cast members are Philippine women in blackface. All I could think of was “Minstrel show!” every time they showed up and it really took me out of the film. In the end, however, this is a very interesting, if flawed, gothic horror film and still comes with my recommendations.

Dynamite Brothers

Stud (Timothy Brown from MASH, of all places) and Larry Chin (Alan Tang) are a black guy and a Chinese guy that are paired together through a series of bad misunderstandings, mainly a Chinese crime syndicate (led by James Hong, from Big Trouble In Little China), a bunch of black criminals, and a corrupt cop (played by Aldo Ray) in one mish-mash of kung fu and blaxploitation that is so pointless it must be seen to be believed. Yes, this is the story of the Dynamite Brothers, also known among MST3K and Cinematic Titanic fans as East Meets Watts. I hate Al Adamson’s films. I’m just going to start off the review with that little bit of phrase. I’m pretty sure the guy was cool when you got to know him, but his movies are abominable. If you’ve ever seen his productions, you know what I mean. First the constant re-editing of Psycho A Go Go into Bloody Pit Of Horror into the Fiend with the Atom Brain and then to Fiend With The Electronic Brain, I mean how many versions of the same movie are you going to make? He also gave us Dracula Vs. Frankenstein, which has the worst Dracula in the history of film (and he has an afro). His movies are like 50’s cornball horror made in the 70’s for no reason or point other than to be outdated for the drive-ins. And hey, he made a fortune! This is one of the few movies of his I’ve seen that seem to be ‘current’, and by current I mean that they were made during the appropriate time. Like I said before, it mixes two popular types of films, with blaxploitation and martial arts. The problem is that the movie has no way of pulling it off in a competent manner. The movie begins as a new version of The Defiant Ones, with the two men going around handcuffed, jumping from one red pick-up truck to the next. Yes, there’s a lot of running around time used for padding in this movie, so get used to it. There are a lot of action scenes as well, but these go half and half. The traditional stuff is badly staged and so badly lit you can’t really tell what the hell is going on. However, the action stuff, performed by Bruce Lee’s action stunt team, is pretty damn good. Alan Tang is no stranger to kung fu flicks, and even looks a bit like Bruce Lee. But sadly, it’s not enough to salvage this film. It’s better than most of the Al Adamson films, and if you get drunk with a bunch of friends, you might get a kick out of it, but other than that, you’d be better off just watching a jackass video.

Syngenor

A company named Norton Cyberdine (yeah really original name there, dudes) have created the ultimate super soldier, the Syngenor (Synthetic Genetic Organsm), a creature that is perfect for surviving in desert enviroments. Sadly, these ‘ultimate soldiers’ are still uncontrolable, and when one of them escapes, things get pretty hairy for the company. Soon people start getting killed, and the people in the company start dying in violent ways, and not just from the beasts. It’s up to a reporter (Mitchell Lawrence) and a hot chick (Starr Andreff) to get to the bottom of it. This film was meant as a sequel to the 1980 William Malone film, Scared To Death, since it features the same monster. In truth, other than the monster, it has nothing to do with the original. It’s more of a cliched action/scifi monster film, with very little originality to be had. The acting, for the most part, is just terrible. It’s as cliched as it gets. The only exception is David Gale (Re-Animator, The Brain) who plays the boss of the building where these creatures are being created. For the first half of the film, he’s just an unstable, uncomfortable dude who keeps injecting himself with some green shit ala Re-Animator. But when the second half breaks in, the dude turns into a true psychopath, shouting and acting like a crazy buffoon, trying to protect the Syngenors. Gale really over-acts but seems to be having a ton of fun in the process. It reminds me of a crazy Vincent Price performance, only nuttier. The creature effects are also pretty good. They look like a more humanoid-like Gillman, but hey it’s not as good or as memorable as the Universal fishman. You’ll never be fooled as it being a man in a costume. They drink spinal fluid, which is kind of cool. What I was very disappointed about is that the film just doesn’t have the energy, nor the gore, of either Re-Animator or The Brain. I guess when I saw David Gale, I expected this film to be very crazy, but it just wasn’t. In fact, it gets kind of boring. There are sequences that are completely ripped off from Aliens, with a group of soldiers going after the Syngenors (In the worst soldier costumes in history). And the ending is just insane, with the Syngenor/girl hybrid and David Gale going to it like they're in love. Sadly it all ends in crap. So yes, the monsters and David Gale are all great, but this movie just isn’t. The script is weak, the pace is slow and there’s very little to recommend, other than the previously mentioned. Watch it with a buddy. Or drunk.
By the way, the Syngenor's only weakness is water. Do you think M. Night Shamalama-ding-dong saw this while writing Signs? I think he did. This is better than Signs though, sad but true.