Cranpire Movie(s): Sorority House Massacre and Sorority House Massacre II

 Welcome back to Cranpire Movies! It's been a little while since I visited this feature of the Blogorium, so maybe a quick refresher is in order. There are bad movies I like to watch, but many more of them that I just can't (or won't) find time to sit through. When that happens, I'll hand then off to my friend Cranpire, who will watch just about anything I won't. He's fond of Syfy Channel Original movies, and not just the new ones - thanks to Bruce Campbell's presence in Terminal Invasion, Alien Apocalypse, and The Man with the Screaming Brain, Cranpire was on board early with their quickly manufactured schlock. Every now and then, the Cap'n ends up watching something (usually accidentally) that would normally fall into Cranpire's wheelhouse, and when that happens, they are reviewed accordingly.

 Today we're going to take a lot at the Sorority House Massacre series, specifically the first two. The third film - Hard to Die - is technically a sequel in that it has much of the same cast and uses the exact same back story, but it's also a Die Hard knock-off instead of a slasher flick, so I'll mention it in passing or when relevant. It's also worth noting that other than possibly using the same exterior, there's no continuity whatsoever between Sorority House Massacre and Sorority House Massacre II, although the second films does tie itself to a completely different slasher series. But more on that when we get to the sequel in name only.

 For a Roger Corman produced, late-era slasher cheapie, Sorority House Massacre is kind of... classy? It's a relative term, I realize, but considering where it came from and what the marketing sells the film as, there's a comparably nuanced story buried inside of slashing and T&A. Yes, it's borrowing (heavily) from A Nightmare on Elm Street during the dream sequences, but the imagery is also suggestive of Dario Argento in a way you wouldn't expect. If you somehow end up seeing the films in the wrong order, you'd be shocked at how much better Sorority House Massacre is than its "sequel". While Carol Frank didn't quite make a "Feminist Slasher" on the same scale as Amy Jones and Rita Mae Brown's Slumber Party Massacre, it's definitely a less voyeuristic approach to the subgenre than I had expected.

 Actually, it's debatable that Sorority House Massacre is even a slasher film at all, because the dream / psychic connection between the Final Girl and the Killer (shades of Halloween II) means we almost immediately meet our antagonist. Most of the film is about putting together how they're connected, what he's after, and what it has to do with the sorority house their paths collide in. By necessity, I'm going to SPOIL this, but it's hardly that since the audience is miles ahead of the characters for most of Sorority House Massacre. Beth (Angela O'Neill) is a withdrawn college student staying over at a friend's sorority house during Spring Break. Most of the girls are gone, including their sorority "mother," but when Beth arrives, she begins having nightmares about the house, of tables covered with blood and butchered mannequins. Her dreams begin to affect her waking life, and simultaneously Bobby (John C. Russell), an inmate in a mental institution, becomes more active, eventually escaping. He's looking for Laura, the only member of his family he didn't kill during a bloody massacre, and wouldn't you know it that Beth just happens to be her middle name...

Sorority House Massacre is not an especially violent or even gratuitous movie. Sure, there's nudity, but not in copious amounts (mostly taking place while Beth's friends (Wendy Martel, Pamela Ross, and Nicole Rio) try on the "rich" girl's clothes after she leaves, and during a Teepee make-out later in the movie), and most of the film's 77 minute running time is devoted to cutting between Beth's hallucinations / memories and Bobby coming "home". He kills just about everyone he runs into quickly, particularly the unfortunate boyfriends (Joe Nassi, Marcus Vaughter, and Vinnie Bilancio) of the main characters. What keeps Bobby interesting is that when he sees the women, it switches to his POV, where he imagines them as his sisters. He calls them not by their names, but by who he sees them as, almost as though he was killing them all over again. The disconnect between imagination and reality in the film actually makes the deaths that much more brutal.

 Of the two films, the first Sorority House Massacre is probably less deserving of being a "Cranpire Movie": it's a lower-to-mid-tier slasher film, but is surprisingly atmospheric for a low budget horror film. While it borrows from better movies, Frank at least manages to make the "lifts" seem interesting, and the characters are at least developed enough that you care when they die. Horror hounds looking for a quick and bloody fix should probably go elsewhere, as this is (surprisingly) reserved considering where it came from, but I might have a film that's right up your alley in the next paragraph...

 If Sorority House Massacre has some degree of class in the way it's presented, Sorority House Massacre II has all of the exploitation elements, and almost nothing else. Directed by Chopping Mall's Jim Wynorski, it offers gratuitous nudity, spurts of blood, leering perverts, dumb jokes, pointless subplot(s), and 60-ish minutes of nubile young ladies running around in their nighties, sometimes soaking wet. That said, as schlock goes, it's pretty entertaining, provided you're watching it in the right frame of mind. The opening should be a dead giveaway that it's not to be taken seriously, with an aggressive synthesizer soundtrack and pseudonyms in the credits like "Produced by Shelley Stoker" or introducing an actor as being the same person as his character.

 The jokey tone is heightened after we're introduced to the new sorority sisters moving into a house that may or may not be the same one from the first film (if it's not, the exterior is pretty close, but the interior looks nothing like it - just a generic "house" set). In short order, we meet Linda (Robyn Harris), Jessica (Samurai Cop's Melissa Moore), Kimberly (Stacy Zhivago), Suzanne (Michelle Verran), and Janey (Dana Bentley), who are staying at their new house overnight until the power and phone utility men come over the next morning. They got the house cheap because it was the site of a series of murders five years ago, which kind of creeps out the girls, but they have tequila, so it's okay. They also meet their creepy neighbor from across the street, Orville Ketcham (himself) who, in addition to keeping the key to their basement in his underwear, was present during the original massacre. Just not the Sorority House Massacre.

 For reasons unknown to me, instead of using the fact that there's already a Sorority House Massacre and it's kinda the same house and roughly five years later, Wynorski opts to use the back story from a completely different movie in both Sorority House Massacre II and Hard to Die. Even though the house looks nothing alike, all of the flashbacks to "Old Man Hocksteder" who went crazy and killed his family is footage from Slumber Party Massacre, another Corman produced slasher movie that has its own sequels. And it's a lengthy flashback to many of the "kill" scenes from Slumber Party Massacre, which uses a totally different murder weapon than the hook in Sorority House Massacre II. Why? Your guess is as good as mine, but it adds another layer of intertextuality, albeit a very silly one.

 The girls, having taken cold showers and slipped into something more comfortable, go down into the basement and find a Ouija board, so they have a little séance - as you do - which ends in a spooky way. And by "spooky" I mean "basically what happens in Night of the Demons but much cheaper". Maybe it's the framing, but it's easy to spot the boom mike in many scenes, most notably in the living room near the beginning. It's also a shockingly well lit house for only having candles and a few portable lamps. Maybe it's the lightning that helps, although that looks an awful lot like the same stock animation I saw in Hillbillys in a Haunted House...

 Anyway, so the girls try to get some sleep, but they have arguments about sleeping with a guy someone else is "going with," and somehow Jessica's 40-something boyfriend Eddie (Mike Elliott) never comes up again. Sorority House Massacre (mostly) waits until the boys come over to start a-murderin', but Sorority House Massacre II is ladies night through and through. Other than persistent cutaways to Ketcham looking menacing / loathsome, the bulk of the film is just gals in lingerie bouncing around the house, running into oddly placed bear traps (in the attic!) or getting murdered by a hook (despite the presence of a chainsaw in the basement). Interestingly, the drill that "Hocksteder" used to kill all of his victims in the "flashback" is nowhere to be found in the film.

 To keep the "appropriating Slumber Party Massacre as a prequel to this film," Sorority House Massacre II has a subplot involving to cops (played by Jürgen Baum and Karen Chorak) who are slowly investigating a phone call that came from the "old Hocksteder place" - which, for the record, is the house with no phone service. They don't want to drive through a roadblock (or something) because of the rain, so instead they head to a strip club. If you're asking "why?" the answer is more breasts on camera while the action slows down back at the house, but the plot excuse is that one of the survivors of the original massacre is now stripping to work through her trauma. Candy (Bridget Carney) has her own routine, followed by a sit down with the cops while another stripper does her show (all on camera, of course), and suggests that maybe Ketcham shouldn't have been ruled out as a suspect. While this should surprise nobody, Bridget Carney wasn't in Slumber Party Massacre, nor was there a character named "Candy." But hey, more boobs, am I right fellas?

 As it's really not clear where this movie should be going, Wynorski throws in a "possession" angle to justify the Ouija board, and while I won't tell you who ends up with Hocksteder's ghost at the wheel, I will give the director enough credit to make sure they're always where the killer would be or at least separated from the group. There's a lot of "let's split up" that you'd expect from really bad slasher movies, but in this instance it does serve as pretty good misdirection, at least until there aren't enough ladies left to rule out anybody else. Despite continually trying to imply that Ketcham is dangerous, it's pretty clear he's just a weirdo red herring, and despite being stabbed, choked with a chain, drowned in a toilet, and being shot by the police, he's still somehow alive at the end of the movie, not to mention the one who kills the, uh, Final Girl. It must have been all the raw meat he was eating earlier...

 While I can easily say that Sorority House Massacre is pretty good "for what it is," it's difficult to say the same for Sorority House Massacre II. It is exactly the lurid, dumb, gratuitous slasher movie you think you're getting based on the cover. So it has that going for it. If you want cheap thrills, you'll mostly get them without groaning too much. Gone is any hint of artfulness, replaced with a workman-like approach of showing the goods and getting out. The comedy isn't that funny (trust me, I'm not sure if we're really supposed to laugh at the "Arab" stereotypes at the strip club, or just marvel at how dated they are), the gore is mostly limited to blood splattering on the wall (and one bathtub scene lifted from Slumber Party Massacre 2 - oh, did I not mention that there are more than one Slumber Party Massacre films?).

 I guess the only thing that Wynorski really delivers on is the nudity, which I suspect Cranpire will agree is at least a selling point. They are attractive young women, and have no problem disrobing and taking cold showers for no reason, or standing directly underneath a porch dripping water in white nighties. Good for them? While Hard to Die is more of an "action comedy," it does have most of the same cast, including Orville Ketcham, playing the same kind of unkillable exposition machine he does in this one. Oh, and yes, the same flashbacks to a different movie. Well, the same different movie, because Hocksteder was a busy driller killer. As Cranpire Movies go, these are arguably better than his normal fare, but what is that really saying? I can easily recommend Sorority House Massacre and Sorority House Massacre II over the likes of Sharknado 2: The Second One and, uh, Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No, but they aren't going enhance your life or anything. Or maybe they will. Who knows, it might win you trivia one night, just by knowing what other series this one flashes back to. And if I'm being honest, the Sorority House Massacre movies are better than Slumber Party Massacre 2 and 3, so there's that. If you're the sort of person who hears the phrase "Cranpire Movie" and is excited, you're probably Cranpire, but if not, prepare for a fun double feature.

The Return of Cranpire Movies: Underworld - Awakening

 (If you don't think there are SPOILERS in this review, by all means read on and try to be surprised when there are.)

 I don't actually know if Cranpire ever watched any of the Underworld movies. I know Professor Murder did, and that he liked the first one enough to insist that I at least watch the scene where a vampire with silver whips fights a werewolf (sorry, Lycan). The way he described it was more entertaining than the actual scene (for the record, that Korn song isn't actually playing during the movie but you work with what you can find), but I found the first Underworld film to be agreeably stupid.

  For those of you that somehow missed out on the REAL "werewolves vs. vampires love story saga for the new millennium," I can happily recap it for you. Selene (Kate Beckinsale) is a Death Dealer, which is the vampire equivalent of "Blade Runner". She hunts Lycans (a fancier way of saying "werewolves" so the movie doesn't sound so stupid) while both warring factions avoid being seen by humans. It's kind of like the Blade movies, except that there are a bunch of Blades and they all take themselves very seriously and so do the Lycans. The leader of the Lycans is Michael Sheen, and the leader of the Vampires is Bill Nighy. Selene falls for Michael (Scott Speedman), who is a Lycan that becomes a hybrid, which means he turns all black and has super vamp-can powers, and the two of them kill Viktor (Nighy - see why I saved that for now?) and then go into hiding because they betrayed blah blah blah. You get the idea.

 The only really distinguishing factor between the Blade and Underworld series is in my opinion the fact that Kate Beckinsale is in skintight leather instead of Wesley Snipes in slightly less skintight leather. It's certainly what 99.9999% of Underworld fans talk about on the internet and why there are now more Underworld movies than Blade movies (and you thought it was because of the tax evasion...) despite the fact that Blade Trinity is arguably just a collection of the worst series of decisions ever committed to film.

 Since the second one was coming out soon, I did what you would expect the Cap'n would do - waited for it to come out on DVD and then rent it from the used book store I worked at. Underworld Evolution was also stupid, but more bombastic and with less story. More importantly, it didn't have the "this is a very serious story we're telling, thank you" that made the first film so hilarious. Underworld: Evolution did have the benefit of having Bill Nighy come back (in flashbacks? I don't remember) plus returning Michael Sheen, and then on top of the Derek Jacobi (I, Claudius) as an ancestor of Michael's. The story gets more complicated, yadda yadda, super vampire bats or something.

 I did not see Underworld: Rise of the Lycans, a prequel that brought back Sheen and Nighy and added Rhona Mitra (The Descent) when Kate Beckinsale decided that skintight leather was too much of a bother. I have no idea what it was about, although if I had to guess I'd say it centered around the feud between vampires and Lycans in the middle ages because they seem to be holding swords on the cover.

 This brings us to Underworld: Awakening, which is the fourth film in the series (and is in 3-D!!!). Kate Beckinsale, who clearly had so much fun making Whiteout and Everybody's Fine that she decided it was time to be miserable in skintight leather again, returns as Selene. She and Michael are on the run (again), but this time because between Underworld: Evolution and Underworld: Awakening, the humans noticed that people in skintight leather outfits were running around cities, shooting at each other, and that when some of them died they exploded. One of the people who seems to be organizing this is Dr. Jacob Lane (Stephen Rea), who joins the inexplicably quality supporting cast for movies this silly.

 Somebody brielfy plays Michael, but it sure didn't look like Scott Speedman and the character isn't listed in the credits or IMDB. In fact, he isn't mentioned at all anywhere except IN the film. He's killed and then Selene is frozen for twelve years until she's rescued by "Subject Two" (India Eisley), a twelve-year-old girl who has the same powers that Michael does. Hrm...

 I know what you were thinking, but she's not a twelve-year-old female clone of Michael: she's their DAUGHTER!!!! Selene was almost as surprised as you were, because to her twelve years didn't pass. It was like she went to sleep underwater across from a guy who kinda looked like Scott Speedman but not really and then woke up the next day with a preteen vamp-can. In fact, Selene says something very much like that later in the film, in case we were too confused by the plot to remember that.

 Unfortunately for Underworld: Awakening, its plot isn't nearly as convoluted as the first two films (and, what the hell, let's assume the third one too), so it's actually not that hard to keep up. See, Dr. Lane works for Antigen, a company trying to cure the "disease" of vampirism and lycanthropy (I guess separately, they don't address this until THE TWIST!), and the hybrid-daughter is the key to cracking the code. Since she escaped, they let Selene escape to track them, and send some Lycans after them. Selene, in the meantime, finds a hidden coven of vampires led by Thomas (Charles Dance), who is hiding to keep his people alive. His idiot son, David (Theo James), wants to fight the Lycans and they all get their asses kicked when a super-Lycan that's immune to silver shows up (in normal form he looks like Coldplay's Chris Martin).

 Anyway they all go back to Antigen and Selene gets Detective Sebastian (Michael Ealy) to help her break in, just in time for THE TWIST! See, Jacob and the rest of the Antigen team are Lycans, and they used the whole "exposure to humans" angle as a way to get vampires on the run while they researched a way be immune to silver. That's it! That's the extent of this movie - the master plan of the Lycans is to be immune to silver and kill the rest of the vampires while still being closely monitored by humans. Well, that last part clearly isn't important because they'd be invincible, right?

 But if that's the case then how did Selene kill the Coldplay Lycan by putting a silver grenade in his stomach? And her daughter just clawed Stephen Rea's face off, so that works too.

 Then again, I don't watch an Underworld movie for the story. I watch it because the deadly serious tone coupled with the absurd action scenes and gaping plot holes are a potent combination, the end result being incredulous laughter. Underworld: Awakening is not a good movie, not by any standard. That's fine, because I wasn't expecting it to be a good movie. I was expecting something stupid and I got it, and I chuckled for most of the film. Adding children used to be the touch of death for television shows, and sure enough it's a sign of desperation in Awakening, designed to cover up the fact that Scott Speedman / Michael don't factor into the story much (oh, did I mention he isn't actually dead and that Selene unfreezes him so he can escape?). The daughter fills that role and is half-hardheartedly designed to give Selene some depth, but it largely fails.

 Underworld: Awakening has some fun, if imbecilic, action sequences, although I can't imagine they would be necessary in the third dimension. The color palette is (unsurprisingly) dark blues, blacks, and greys. The dialogue is stilted and designed to get us to the next fight scene, where at least the gore is pretty good. To be fair, it's probably more watchable - if not as staggeringly dumb - than Blade Trinity, and it's definitely better than the fourth Resident Evil film.

 I know, I know; when I'm comparing Underworld: Awakening to Resident Evil: Afterlife and Blade Trinity, most of you are politely nodding your head and slowly backing away towards the door. That's fine, but this is a Cranpire Movie, and compared to most of the Syfy Channel Originals he prefers, Underworld: Awakening is a minor masterpiece.

Retro Fifteen Minute Cranpire Movie Review: Season of the Witch

...And they said it couldn't be done. This will also be the "year end recap" write up for Season of the Witch, as there are literally dozens of movies I'd watch before finishing this film.

 Waaaaaay back in the spring or early summer of 2011, before we committed our time to Drive Angry and The Mechanic, the Cranpire and I tried watching Season of the Witch. You know, the Nicolas Cage / Ron Perlman / Christopher Lee joint about a few AWOL Crusaders roped into helping the Church escort a witch to a church or.. something. That movie. The one you heard nothing about after groaning at the trailer (and Cage's recycled wig from The Sorcerer's Apprentice). The one you see in the lower corner of Redbox or your Netflix "new arrivals" and think to yourself "maybe when I'm drunk enough."

 If you're me, you thought "Ooh! Cranpire movie!" because Nicolas Cage and Ron Perlman and witches is exactly the combination a guy who tries to get me to watch Evil Bong is going to go for. Sure enough, he was game. I was game, because we tend to attack these films without mercy. The stupider the better, we figure; it is the same impetus that brought us to Drive Angry, after all.

 For the first ten minutes, we weren't really let down: there was a dumb prologue about killing witches and one that backfires because - of course - there's an ACTUAL witch. We then follow two Crusaders (Cage and Perlman) as they gleefully slaughter heathens, villagers, and anyone dumb enough to hover near their swords. They have "buddy" banter about who can kill more people and then drink to their murderous ways. In the span of five minutes the film jumps forward thereabouts ten years* when they somehow develop consciences because they see fellow soldiers kill women and children. Because they've never even accidentally done that during their wanton days of butchering.

 So they run. They tuck their swords away, hide in barns, and try to sneak off. They are exposed when some guy notices Cage's weapon and a creepy Cardinal with hideous sores (Lee) strongarms them into escorting a witch... somewhere.

 That's where we stopped, because the film suddenly lost all sense of momentum, lost any sense of being interesting, and we decided that anything else would be worth watching. Or just going home, which is what I did. Cranpire probably watched Netflix or went to bed. I promptly forgot about the prologue until he reminded me several months later. That doesn't speak well for Season of the Witch, which now has the distinction of being less memorable of the George Romero film that nobody knows exists, which really says something.

 If I saved this for my "year end recap," chances are I wouldn't remember that I saw any part of Season of the Witch. It's not bad enough to be entertaining and not good enough to overcome being slow and unengaged. It wouldn't shock me to discover that The Sorcerer's Apprentice was more watchable. The End.



* Sorry, I'm not going to go back and check the accuracy of that, but YEARS do pass by.

Cranpire Movies Presents: Bong of the Dead

 Normally, I wouldn't watch a movie called Bong of the Dead. The title really tells you everything you need to know about the film, and I'm positive I can find ten more movies with little to no effort that will be more enjoyable. Then again, I said the same thing about ThanksKilling, and I was dead wrong. Since friend of the Blogorium Cranpire has transplanted himself to a commune, he can't watch movies like Bong of the Dead, which he normally would.

 If I needed to know why not to watch Evil Bong or One Eyed Monster or Mega Shark vs. Crocoppotamus, I could ask him. But now he's gone, so somebody needs to carry on the tradition. Why it was me, I'll never be quite sure, but here we are. I just watched Bong of the Dead. Yeah, I really did. It's the first of what will be a regular series of "Cranpire Movies," which honestly is the same thing as "So You Won't Have To" for most of you. Sorry Cranpire, but it's true.

 Meteors fall to Earth, turning humans into flesh eating zombies. After six months, most of the cities are deserted, so stoners Edwin (Mark Wynn) and Tommy (Jy Harris) have all the time in the world to get high and act like idiots. One day, Edwin discovers he can use zombie brains to make a super powerful strain of weed, but when he runs out, they decide to head into the "danger zone" to collect more zombie fertilizer. Along the way they meet Leah (Simone Bailly), a loner living in her family's gas station / bar, who grudgingly helps them fix their broken down car. But trouble is ever lurking from the zombies, include Alex Montgomery Dickens III (Barry Nerling), a talking member of the undead creating his own army to wipe out the living...

 Bong of the Dead is so busy borrowing from better movies that one has to wonder why this turned out as badly as it did. The movie is, at bare minimum, a combination of Pineapple Express and Zombieland with just a pinch of Blood Car to make things interesting. Or it should - the concept of using dehydrated zombie brains mixed with water to create a super weed fertilizer is introduced and promptly forgotten until nearly an hour into the film, and when it comes back, it's more for a "hey guys, we know we set this up and then turned into a 'road' picture, so we're going to at least acknowledge you aren't as high as we are" fait accompli. But like nearly everything else in Bong of the Dead, that too is forgotten to move on to the "big" showdown.

 The editing is lousy, which undermines the occasionally impressive cinematography, and the over-use of digital effects to mask budget shortcomings doesn't help. Then again, I could overlook the trappings of a low-budget zombie movie if I cared about Edwin, Tommy, or Leah. Two obnoxious stoners and a stock "badass babe" character can't carry the long stretches of bad jokes, punctuated by moments of "drama" that grind the film to a halt.

 Not having zombies in the movie after the opening (a semi-clever prologue featuring a guy who looks like Hulk Hogan and his wife turn into zombies and eat each other) for nearly thirty minutes wasn't an issue for me. It's nice to see a zombie movie made on the cheap that doesn't rely on the zombies to carry the film. Then again, when it means spending time with Tommy and Edwin, which includes no less than two "we're high and doing stupid stuff half naked" montages, Bong of the Dead tested my patience.

 The zombie boss wasn't interesting enough to sustain this chicanery, neither was Leah (who is, admittedly, resourceful before those morons show up), and the movie dragged along until suddenly we needed gratudity, a joke about a Chinese zombie using chopsticks to eat brains, and an appropriation of Dead Alive's lawnmower-as-weapon. The ending doesn't really make much sense, except for a "you can see it coming a mile away" ripoff of Shaun of the Dead (appropriate, since it also rips off the beginning of Shaun of the Dead). Thankfully, there's a mid-credits sequence that recycles a concept from Return of the Living Dead 4: Necropolis, in case you hadn't seen that winner. If you want to say it's "homage" be my guest, but I calls 'em as I sees 'em.

 I guess I was supposed to be grossed out or offended or something when the pregnant zombie gives birth to a zombie baby and another zombie picks it up and eats it, but by that point in the film such a cheap stunt is too little, too late. Bong of the Dead takes far too long to deliver any of the exploitation its title sequence implies is coming, and instead leaves audiences with a (no pun intended) half-baked experience. Flashes of good ideas come and go, but in the end I was left with three characters I didn't give a shit about, a story that could at best be described as "meandering," and some scattered gore that deserves to be in a better movie. I can't even say that this is a "Cranpire" kind of movie because I think he'd turn it off and take a cigarette break before watching Swamp Shark. And to be honest with you, I wouldn't blame him.