"Where have you been, Cap'n?"

 Ah, yes. Apologies for the lack of reviews. It's not for lack of having seen anything, but mostly because Cap'n Howdy has been busy putting the final touches on Summer Fest 7. Around this time of year my schedule goes haywire, because the logistics of a fest, even eight years in, is time consuming. And this isn't even a large scale one: just our normal get-together weekend of B-Movies. That said, bringing back the "Field Trip" movie has turned out to be slightly more complicated than usual, in part because the film we're going to see performed so poorly last week that most theatres aren't interested in showing it this week. But it's worth it, my Fest-ers and vicarious Fest-readers.

 This year's Fest is broken up into three, loosely theme-based days:

 Friday: Unnecessary Sequels

 Saturday: A Taste for Flesh and Blood

 Sunday: Super Hero Origin Stories

 I believe that I've put together a good balance of schlock to entertain the Fest faithful. This year will include past favorites from the earliest Summer Fests, in large part because the audience has changed enough that some of them never made it to the first three years. There are also some other, heretofore, unseen films joining the lineup that I'm excited to show them. And, of course, there's the Trappening.

 This year's Trappening is something that I watched many times years and years ago, but has inexplicably never played at a Fest. Why? I'm not sure, because it absolutely fits in. Like the people coming to see it in person, it's going to remain a mystery until the moment it plays. Could it be Night of the Lepus? Death Bed: The Bed That Eats? Big Money Rustlas? Titanic: The Legend Goes On..? Only I know for sure...

 Here's the schedule as planned - feel free to watch along at home if you like:

Friday
  
Terminator Genisys (Summer Fest Field Trip Movie)
 Kung Fury
 Revenge of the Ninja
 Traxx
 Shark Attack 3: Megalodon

 Saturday

 Without Warning
 Tremors
 Deadly Eyes
 Blood Car
 Zombeavers
 TRAPPENING
 A Vampire on Bikini Beach (USA Up All Night Experience)

 Sunday

 She Devil
 Teeth
 Super
 Lucy







Recap to come in the following week. In the meantime, the madness begins soon...

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.

Reflections on "Bad Movie Night" by Cap'n Howdy

 Bad Movie Night is coming up this weekend. For some of you that means you'll be at the Blogorium, inexplicably sharing in on the agony and the ecstasy of the best of the worst I can throw at you. For some, it will be a recap you take a look at later on, and think to yourself "wow, I'm glad I didn't have to sit through that." For the Cap'n, it's a fun, if admittedly unorthodox way to spend time with friends. It's also a good opportunity to clarify a few things, as I do from time to time. There's an inherent contradiction coming up, but I am vast and contain multitudes. Or I'm a walking contradiction. I can't remember. Anyway, let's discuss how Bad Movie Night fits into the evolving notion of the Blogorium and the Cap'n Howdy mission statement overall.

 Without fail, at some point during Bad Movie Night, someone is going to ask me if I'm going to see X or Y terrible movie, and I'm probably going to say "no". A friend recently asked if there was a review on the Blogorium for Tusk, and was confused / disappointed when I explained that I stopped watching the movie around the time that Johnny Depp showed up. That was the straw that broke the camel's back for me, the point at which I realized that nothing Kevin Smith had in store for Tusk was worth investing any more time on. If you really want to know how I feel about post-SMODcast Kevin Smith as a director, there's a review for Red State out there that pretty much covers it. I'll add that it isn't particularly enthralling to hear his M.O. for making movies that aren't sequels is to get really high, record a podcast, and then turn whatever he comes up with into a movie. You know, like "Jaws with a moose." Nevertheless, I fully expect a question about how excited I am for Mallrats 2 (not at all).

 That said, it's totally fair to ask me that, especially at something called Bad Movie Night. Historically speaking, the get together-s hosted by the Cap'n have centered around horror movies or schlock, and primarily schlock. They're fun films to rally around, and are conducive to a party atmosphere. It's an informal crowd that comes to Blogorium events, and while you aren't expected to participate in any MST3k-like riffing on movies, I don't discourage making comments when something just doesn't make sense. The specious plot that bridges gratuitous nudity in Andy Sidaris films practically begs for some level of commentary. But I wouldn't do the same if I was at Nevermore (well, sometimes, but much more quietly). We do, on occasion, watch screwball comedies or more serious fare, and there's talk of branching into different "fest" directions, but let's stick with Bad Movie Night for now.

 Bad Movie Night was borrowed from a tradition my brother and his friends started more than a decade ago: during birthday celebrations, they'd each buy the birthday boy or girl the worst movie they could find, and everyone would have to sit through it. They would drink heavily and apparently it got quite loud. I'd never actually been to one, but the first Bad Movie Night was built loosely on that premise. Having had some experience with Horror Fest and Summer Fest, I thought I could program one that had some really entertaining stinkers, and we'd kick it off with a field trip to see Crank 2: High Voltage. Trust me, while highly entertaining, it falls squarely within the rubric of "bad movie". That was followed by The Giant Claw, Batman and Robin, Mac & Me, Troll 2, and Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky. A good time was had by all, and whenever possible, I've tried to keep it going.

 The Blogorium has existed in various forms over the years, but since I moved to this service, I've kept the "about" information over to the right basically the same. Sometimes, the phrase "Trash Savant" has come back to haunt me, because it implies that my movie watching palate is limited to sifting through lots of garbage to find the Least Worst Of. And I get it, because around the turn of the century / millennium / whatever, there was a point where the Cap'n and friends would go see anything. Like, literally, we'd just go see a movie to see a movie. How else do you explain watching The In Crowd, or Loser? Or the double feature of The Nutty Professor 2: The Klumps and The Replacements when I had an entire multiplex to choose from? Yes, I saw 8mm and Idle Hands and the first two Resident Evil movies. On the big screen. I don't know why. Well, I do: they were playing and we had already seen Payback or whatever else we really wanted to see. Sure, I also spent the summer of 99 watching Eyes Wide Shut and The Sixth Sense, even The Blair Witch Project and South Park (and, yes, The Phantom Menace), but for some reason only the bad movies stuck.

 It continued over the years, and yeah, I would organize group outings for Alien vs. Predator or The Matrix Reloaded, or Professor Murder and I would just go see, well, anything. Again, allow me to stress that yes, we only saw Paycheck because we were too late for Win a Date with Tad Hamilton. I don't remember why we went to see Godsend or The Butterfly Effect, or even Saw. A lot of that was a throwback to high school, I think, when we would regularly go to the discount theater to see things like The Big Hit or Suicide Kings, or The Big Lebowski. And also Godzilla, Lost in Space, Scream 2, and whatever else was playing. It was fun, and cheap, and bad movies are tremendously entertaining. The summer of 2008 had to be a record for "what's playing this week," because I saw The Dark Knight, The Happening, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Hellboy II: The Golden Army, and The X-Files: I Want to Believe. One of them was good.

 But, over time, they became a smaller part of my cinematic consumption. I know that a lot of friends from that era didn't necessarily keep up with that, which is why I'm still chided for not having watched Alien vs. Predator: Requiem. I'll probably still get grief for it, because I have no plans to watch it, and what I'll go out to the theater to see grows more and more limited. Most of the things I've seen on the big screen over the last year ended up on the Best of List. The last two movies I saw were Birdman and It Follows, both based on the great word of mouth I had been hearing from friends. Despite what people might assume, It Follows was the first movie I saw in theaters from 2015. These days, if a movie just looks bad (like, oh, Seventh Son), I'm less inclined to see it just to see it. The last time that happened was probably Movie 43, which was every bit as forgettable and terrible as you've probably heard. Lockout was the last time I really had fun with a terrible movie, which is why it's playing as a double feature with Lucy at Bad Movie Night this year.

 Herein lies the aforementioned contradiction, because I do still watch bad movies. Hell, I watched Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster last week, and Sorority House Massacre II the week before that. They are, by no stretch of the imagination, good movies. In the past you'd have reviews up for those, instead of It Follows and The Babadook. In fact, Sorority House Massacre and Sorority House Massacre II are probably going to end up under the "Cranpire Movies" banner, which is what I tend to use when I want to talk about schlock. It's not that Cranpire will watch anything (even he has limits), but it's become a running joke between us that he'll sit through what I won't. Still, the two (technically three) Sorority House Massacre films are so disparate, even from each other, that I'd like to share their charms with you all. But I'm probably never going to watch Taken 3. And I doubt I'll ever finish Tusk.

 The funny thing about having had this blog for so long is that I'm frequently held responsible for reviews I wrote years ago. That's fair, I suppose, but I have tried to evolve as a writer and as a reviewer, so when I look back at a quarter review of something like Student Bodies and have to defend it when someone from the film takes exception to it, I cringe a little. Not because I didn't write it - I did, in the middle of a Fest - but because it's not really a review. It's a reaction to something that happened that I wrote quickly while people had a smoke break. It's a time capsule of a moment in the history of the Blogorium, but it's not how I would write it today. But you can't tell that to somebody who finds the review through a Google search - it's not an ongoing evolution of film criticism to them. It's a review, one that says the movie they like sucks.

 Or worse, it's The Mechanic review, which was a run of the mill Jason Statham movie, where I didn't feel one way or the other about it. In fact, by and large I gave up reviewing films headlined by Statham because they'd all be like The Mechanic - an overview of the plot, general comments about the action, he was good, the supporting cast was okay, the story was serviceable. Other than the Crank films, it's a pretty succinct reaction to most of his starring roles, and if I can't add anything to the conversation, I'll find something else to review. That doesn't stop people from reading The Mechanic review - which they do - and assuming that's currently how I feel about the movie. Honestly, four years later? I've forgotten almost everything about it. Even the "World Champion" ring, but it doesn't matter. Everything is contemporary on the internet.

 Which brings us back to Bad Movie Night and bad movies in general. As long as the Blogorium exists and posts can be found ala carte on search engines, people can and will safely assume that's all the Cap'n is about. And that's fair - I like the Dr. Re-Animator picture at the top of the page and The Werewolf vs. the Vampire Woman background scroll bar. Perhaps someday they'll change, but hopefully it gives visitors an indicator that things aren't taken too seriously around here. Please don't think that I don't enjoy bad movies: one of the things that drove me crazy in film courses was an attitude of intellectual snobbery, of a dismissal of "low art" that wasn't to be bothered with. It wasn't rampant, but there is an attitude of "if it isn't a classic or a modern classic, it's not worth bothering my time with". I remember working with someone who sneered at the idea that Peter Jackson would adapt The Lovely Bones because it was "pop fiction" and that he was "above" that*. He should just stick to Tolkein, I guess. Look how well that worked out for The Hobbit.

 Over the years, I've tried harder to provide a balance of "high" and "low" art, and to be honest with you, I don't watch a lot of these neo B-Movies. If you read my Hobo with a Shotgun review, you'll notice that I didn't have a lot of fun with the movie. I hated Machete Kills. There wasn't enough about Wolf Cop to merit a review, to be honest, and I don't watch Syfy Channel Originals. It's not a matter of being dismissive of them, to jump back a paragraph - I don't particularly care one way or the other, and I'm not going to tell anyone not to watch them. I try to mention them as little as possible, so unless someone asks why a Sharknado movie isn't at Bad Movie Night or Summer Fest, you won't hear about it in the Blogorium. It's the same thought process behind the Transformers series: I haven't seen them, I'm not planning on it, so why devote time and energy into insulting them? There are literally thousands of blogs that do that. But if you want to know about The Beach Girls and the Monster, I've got you covered.

 Moving forward, the goal is to try to bring you reviews for films you maybe haven't heard about, old and new. If it's a major release, I might review it if there's something worth bringing up I haven't seen anywhere else. Otherwise, you probably won't see it until the Recap. In the meantime, I'd rather focus on movies like Under the Skin or Spider Baby (to name a couple from last year). They're very different movies for very different audiences, but I really enjoyed both of them, and you might too. I'm always open to suggestions, but it's been a long time since the Cap'n would go watch literally anything. By the same token, I'll pay money to see Samurai Cop with an audience, even though I own two copies of Samurai Cop. It was worth it to see their reaction. That was the same situation with Things at last year's Bad Movie Night - I suffered through it alone so I could see the faces I made on my friends. And by the way, they could have left, but no one did.
 

 This year's Bad Movie Night is a... shall we say, unique assemblage of "so bad, it's good"**: Continuing in our trend of "being afraid of women in the 1950s," there's Devil Girl from Mars, followed by High School Confidential, Disney's The Black Hole, Raw Force, the aforementioned Luc Besson double feature, and a special Trappening. Because you shouldn't always know what you're getting at a Bad Movie Night. A recap should follow some time next week, and then after that, it's back to whatever strikes the Cap'n as worth writing about. Maybe schlock, maybe not. We're on the cusp of blockbuster season, so maybe those will make it into the mix. I'm not sure. Above all else, my goal for the immediate future is to make Cap'n Howdy's Blogorium as unpredictable as possible, so as to keep you from settling in to "this is what to expect." Hell, I might even go back and re-review some of the older posts, just for kicks. Stay tuned, and if you're on your way to Bad Movie Night, prepare yourself...



 * I never saw The Lovely Bones, so I can't weigh in on whether it was any good or not, but it's a similar attitude to refusing to read a book that's been adapted into a film - like Trainspotting - because that "taints" the source material. And yes, that was another instance that came up with a similarly dismissive person.
** That's a big criteria for me - bad movies that are just bad are a waste of everybody's time.

It's the (Second) Most Wonderful Time of the Year

 At one point, the Cap'n used to update the Blogorium to let everybody know when Horror Fests and Summer Fests were. That was back in the days before I was (vaguely) active in "social media," and the Blogorium was the best place to tell friends about it. And then I could create "events" and what not, and I kinda drifted away from "social" updates here in order to focus on reviews. After the fact, I'd put recaps up, but people visiting this blog didn't know when Fests where happening.

 Well, let's rectify that today. This weekend brings The Hyde Park Summer Fest Massacre Part 6(66), the seventh year of July film festival mayhem*. It promises to be a madcap extravaganza of the strange, the unusual, and the "what?!"; I've spent the better part of the year putting together the precise combination of B-Movies, slasher flicks, low-rent action films, and general "what the hell was that?" entries, and this year looks to be another wild one.

 This year, we'll be digging into:

 The Creature with the Atom Brain

 Remote Control

The Visitor

Tales from the Crypt Presents: Demon Knight

Attack of the Crab Monsters

Sleepaway Camp

Suburban Sasquatch

Creepshow 2

Deadly Prey

Savage Beach

Godzilla on Monster Island (aka Godzilla vs. Gigan)

A Special Mystery Movie

Destroyer

From Hell It Came

Death Sport

Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II

Zaat!

  Reviews / recaps will be up as quickly as I can get them online next week, but the entire weekend (starting Friday) will be devoted to movies. I'll also cram in as many trailers, interstitials, and crazy finds as I can (including our dear friend, Dr. Re-Animator). We aren't as young as we used to be, so we can't stay up until the crack of dawn. Ah, the days of Summer Fest 2, when we watched Shark Attack 3: Megalodon and Friday the 13th Part 2 until the sun came up. Still, we'll go as late as people with kids and 30-somethings can before we nod off.

 Summer Fest is (and always has been) a little different from Horror Fest, in that I'm open to watching more than strictly horror films. In the past few years we've tried to branch out from cult films to include action movies, science fiction, and Z-Grade schlock, all with great success. We don't pretend to be Mystery Science Theater 3000, but we aren't afraid to react to what's happening on screen, so keep that in mind. Try to keep conversation on-topic with the film, however.

 If you would rather experience Summer Fest vicariously, or would just like to know more about previous Fests, what the general atmosphere is like, check out the list of films here, or coverage here:

 Horror Fest (Summer Edition) (aka Summer Fest 1)

 Summer Fest 2

 The Greensboro Summer Fest Massacre Part 3

 Summer Fest 4 (Supplemental)

 The Cary Summer Fest Massacre Part 4

 The Hyde Park Summer Fest Massacre Part 5


 Also, Horror Fest: A People's History (Parts One and Two), which covers all Fests.

 Please forgive the writing in earlier recaps: not only was I writing between films, but my style was... evolving. The trade off in later years is immediacy in favor of quality.

 It's going to be a wild one, so if we see you there, be prepared!


 * Summer Fest 4 had to be pushed back a year because of work commitments, so there are "Supplemental" and "Official" versions, hence the numerical inconsistency. Think of it like The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror, if you like.

Retro Review: Eight Legged Freaks

 Yeah. That's right. The summer of 2002 had a number of memorable films - Spider-Man, Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, Insomnia, Undercover Brother, The Bourne Identity, Scooby Doo, Lilo and Stitch, Minority Report, The Road to Perdition, The Kid Stays in the Picture, xXx, One Hour Photo, Signs, and uh, The Master of Disguise* - and I'm going to talk about a movie most of you forgot. Oh, who am I kidding, most of you never saw Eight Legged Freaks, so what you forgot is that a movie called Eight Legged Freaks ever existed. But it did, and among all of the other movies I saw in 2002, that was one of them.

 Actually, despite the fact that I haven't seen Eight Legged Freaks in, oh, six or seven years, it's still a better movie than anybody would have ever given it credit for. Think of it like 21 Jump Street - you know how all of a sudden your friends are raving about that movie even though when all of you saw the trailer you were like "eh?" Well, you aren't going to be as enthusiastic about Eight Legged Freaks but it is a movie that's much better than the trailer suggests.

 Here's the trailer, just in case you also wiped it from your memory:

  So yeah, the Men in Black-ish music, the dumb spider sound effects, and the presence of David Arquette is probably good reason to assume that Eight Legged Freaks would suck. I get that. But because this fell in a period where Cap'n Howdy still "watched everything," I went to see the movie with some friends, assuming at the very least we'd have some laughs and tear it a new one. Only that didn't really happen because behind the bland marketing is a well meaning throwback to schlocky giant monster movies from the 1950s.

 Yes, David Arquette is the star of the film, but it also has a respectable supporting cast that ranges from "wow, they were in that?" to "Wow! They were in a real movie?" For example, a post-Ghost World / pre-The Island Scarlett Johansson plays the daughter of Arquette's love interest, who is played by none other than Skinemax staple Kari Wuhrer (also in Hellraiser: Deader, Anaconda, Sliders and The Crossing Guard? Really??). Also appearing in Eight Legged Freaks is Doug E. Doug (Cool Runnings, Cosby, and Mo Better Blues?? Man, I have got to watch some of these movies again), just to remind you that in 2002 Doug E. Doug was still working. That's not meant to be a slight to Doug E. Doug, by the way, but I have a feeling more of you said "who?" than said "Wow! Doug E. Doug!"

 And look, I realize that this particular headlining cast (with the addition of a bunch of familiar character actors and Tom Noonan) isn't helping make my case but Eight Legged Freaks is actually a lot of fun. The cast is clearly having a good time while still taking the premise of giant spiders banding together to attack a small town seriously enough that the movie doesn't collapse on itself. Believe me, the idea that solitary creatures like spiders would wander around in packs (different arachnids, mind you, not even the same kinds of spiders) is enough to deep six something like Eight Legged Freaks, but the movie isn't trying to be anything other than a quasi-modern version of Them!.

 For some reason I don't see Eight Legged Freaks on television that much, which is weird because it wouldn't require much editing and it's the kind of movie that belongs on a Saturday afternoon matinee showcase on some channel... TNT maybe. I'd say Syfy but they're busy with their own crap like Camel Spiders (which borrows roughly the same formula of vaguely recognizable "stars" fighting a CGI monster menace). But that's just it: Eight Legged Freaks is better than Camel Spiders. You're going to enjoy Eight Legged Freaks more, and if you consider yourself a fan of Syfy Originals, there's no reason not to seek this movie out.

 Just don't seek to hard. I mean, it's not like it's going to be hard to find (check the bargain bins or markdown section at used DVD stores) and like I said, this isn't going to change your outlook on marketing in trailers or anything like that. Eight Legged Freaks is a enjoyable, if slight, movie that wants nothing more than to make you chuckle, and it mostly succeeds at that. Seriously, put down Camel Spiders and give this a shot. It's not like Camel Spiders or Arachnaconda won't be playing next week before the next Syfy Original airs.



 * Seriously, did you think I was going to say Halloween Resurrection?

Blogorium Review: Corman's World - Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel

 I may be totally wrong about this, but one of the points made in Alex Stapleton's fine documentary Corman's World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel is that the average "twenty year old film buff" doesn't know who Roger Corman is. During an interview late in the film, Martin Scorsese (who made Boxcar Bertha for Corman) says "I think it's very important to let the generation of today know who he is, and we all, we knew it almost forty years ago, so it's time to reintroduce him as a director, but also what he represented to American entertainment." It's probably true that the average moviegoer doesn't know who Corman is, and I don't totally disagree with Scorsese or Penelope Spheeris (who makes the earlier point about his obscurity), I would argue among film buffs that the prolific exploitation director / producer is not only well known, he's revered.

 Roger Corman is credited with producing over 400 films, most of which are some variety of exploitation if not outright schlock. He's known for making films on a shoestring budget, sometimes in less than a week, and for providing many writers, directors, actors, and producers their first "break" in Hollywood. That list includes Jack Nicholson, Joe Dante, Dennis Hopper, Peter Fonda, Bruce Dern, John Sayles, Pam Grier, Dick Miller, Johnathan Demme, Spheeris, Scorsese, Peter Bogdanovich, Allan Arkush, William Shatner, David Carradine, Robert DeNiro, Monte Hellman, Francis Ford Coppola, and Ron Howard (who directed his first film, Grand Theft Auto, for Corman). Many of these "Corman School" graduates appear in Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel, to help tell the story of a fiercely independent filmmaker.

 Corman started his career as a script reader at 20th Century Fox, but when the story editor took his notes for The Gunfighter and took credit for it, he decided to go at it alone. He produced and assistant directed Monster from the Ocean Floor, then The Fast and the Furious (using borrowed sports cars from dealerships), and learned the keys to making films cheap in order to always turn a profit. He teamed up with American International Pictures and produced and directed a string of no-budget films (Dick Miller points out a scene in Apache Woman where he, as a cowboy, kills himself as an Indian).

 Corman's World breathlessly covers his stock actors, his period at AIP, the success Corman had producing a series of Edgar Allan Poe stories with Vincent Price, and the development of "teenage" pictures with Nicholson. The influence of The Wild Angels on Easy Rider (a film that AIP refused to make with Hopper as director and accordingly lost Corman a producer's credit), the decision by Corman to take LSD before The Trip, and the only Corman movie that ever lost money, The Intruder, are covered in some degree. Jack Nicholson makes his case why The Terror doesn't make any sense (the film had at least four directors, one of which Corman can't remember), and Scorsese used the "no-frills" schedule on Boxcar Bertha to make Mean Streets (which, had Corman produced the film, would have been changed to Blaxploitation!)

 The Intruder, in fact, may be the surprise for many people who only know Corman for films like Attack of the Crab Monsters or Little Shop of Horrors. Made in 1962 by Roger and his brother Gene and based on the novel by Charles Beaumont (who also wrote the screenplay), the film is a condemnation of the segregated South, told through the perspective of a racist rabble rouser named Adam Cramer (William Shatner), who arrives in the fictional southern town of Caxton to incite riots as a result of court-ordered integration of schools. The film, which is surprisingly un-exploitative, reflects Corman's own view of racial tensions, but was met with hostility when released. When he lost money on the film, Corman opted to go back to the formula that worked, and The Intruder, while highly regarded, remains unseen by many of his exploitation devotees.

 The documentary uses a wide cross section of Corman's output, from the monster flicks to biker films, women in prison films, blaxploitation films, and science fiction cheapies, and once the rating system came into being, the gore and gratuitous nudity required every few minutes. Stapleton also includes the tidbit that when Corman left AIP to form New World Pictures, he not only distributed his own films, but also provided US releases for Bergman's Cries and Whispers, Fellini's Amarcord, Laloux's Fantastic Planet, Fassbinder's The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum, Schlöndorff's The Tin Drum, and Kurosawa's Dersu Uzala. The desire to distribute foreign films when no one else would and, in some instances, play them in drive ins, reflected Corman's actual taste in films, despite his reputation.

 Also appearing in the film are Corman's wife Julie, herself a producer, director Eli Roth and Paul W.S. Anderson, the latter a director of the remake / sequel Death Race. At the beginning and near the end of the film, Corman's World shifts to the production of Dinoshark, one of the new films Corman is producing in a partnership with the Syfy Channel (you might have seen Sharktopus, another entry last year). It's star, Eric Balfour (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake) talks about the guerrilla filmmaking techniques employed and general cost saving techniques that can make shooting the film difficult (including walkie talkies that don't work because they were made for children to play with).

 It's not too far away from the experiences of Corman's previous collaborators, who made do with too few extras, too little time, and not enough money. Bogdanovich's first "job" for Corman was taking a Russian science fiction film and turning it into The Gill Women of Venus, despite the fact that there were no women in the original film. He shot footage with Mamie Van Doren and other scantily clad women on the beach, and was told to shoot it with no sound. Once he delivered the footage, Corman decided that it needed dialogue, so the silent footage was overdubbed even though no one was speaking. Because he delivered the film in time and under budget, Bogdanovich had the opportunity to use an extra day of shooting from The Terror and made Targets. Corman may be fiercely independent and incredibly cheap (Nicholson mentions this repeatedly), but he knows how to spot talent and nuture it. Arkush and Dante started their careers as trailer editors for Corman before going on to make their own films.

 Corman's World manages to be both breezy and thorough in most points of Corman's career, but there are a few points of contention the film raises when dealing with his period running New World pictures. There's a distinct lack of coverage for the films Corman produced at New World (they instead focus on the distribution of respected foreign directors). The reason, at least one might argue, is that those films directly contradict an argument that Corman and Eli Roth make: in the wake of Jaws and Star Wars, Hollywood figured out the "Corman formula" and beat the schlockmeister at his own game. Accordingly, Corman couldn't compete with the major studios.

 What the film glosses over is the fact that a great deal of Corman's New World Pictures were ripoffs of the Hollywood films he claims beat him at his own game. It explains why Joe Dante's Piranha is moved around in such a way that the fact it was designed to cash in on Jaws never seems to come up, and other pictures like Battle Beyond the Stars (Star Wars), Forbidden World (Alien), and Galaxy of Terror (also Alien) aren't mentioned at all. Corman also claims he had no interest in slasher films, even though he put his name on a boxed set of the Slumber Party Massacre films (he produced parts 2 and 3) and The Sorority House Massacre parts one and two.

 It's not a serious problem, but Corman's World does gloss over a lot of the 1980s and 90s in favor of leaping forward into his work with the Syfy Channel (specifically Dinoshark). The "New World Pictures" section of the film is more devoted to footage from an earlier documentary about Roger Corman explaining his interest in distributing foreign films and also including interviews with director Jonathan Kaplan (Night Call Nurses) the late Paul Bartel (Death Race 2000, Eating Raoul). While it may be an odd omission, Stapleton's chronology does smoothly transition from the birth of the blockbuster to the death of the independent film (including a pointed comment from Nicholson to that effect) to the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences awarding Corman a Lifetime Achievement Oscar. At the ceremony, many of the faces we've seen during Corman's World are in attendance, as well as Quentin Tarantino, an acolyte of the Corman style. The section caps the story nicely, although it is clear that Roger Corman is far from done producing exploitation films.

 And folks, that's not a bad thing. Even if it is the Syfy Channel.

A Few Thoughts on SyFy Channel Originals

If there's one thing the Cap'n gets more grief about from friends, it's my unwillingness to embrace the Syfy (née Sci-Fi) Channel Original films. "But you love schlock," they say, "this is the same kind of b-to-z grade crap they churned out in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, so where's the love?"

And it's true: I have no love for Syfy originals like Frankenfish, Mega Piranha, Raptor Island, S.S. Doomtrooper, Ice Spiders, and Grizzly Rage. Beyond that, I really don't like the more recent trend of "giant _____" films that are then combined into dreck like Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus or Dinocroc vs. Supergator (or the forthcoming Mega Shark vs. Crocosaurus and Mega Python vs. Gatoroid). I'm not even sure the latter qualify as "Syfy Originals" or if Syfy just airs them.

It is true that I enjoy low budget "thrillers" like Them! or Fiend without a Face or The Beginning of the End. All are imminently watchable, and while cheap often attempt to disguise their low budgets with imaginative monster effects and as many thrills as they can muster with a no-name cast. Attack of the Crab Monsters, a very early Roger Corman film, is still far better than it has any right to be, as does Beast from Haunted Cave. So yes, I do like vintage schlock; now allow me to explain why calling what Syfy does the same is erroneous.

The central difference between the films listed in the above paragraph (plus many, many others) and the weekly Syfy output is simple - every time I see a Syfy Original, it seems like nobody is trying at all. The films are barely competent, and not because the people involved weren't capable of doing so, but because many of them look like they're in it for a quick paycheck. I mean, who's going to see this garbage, right?

That's the impression one quickly gleans from these films, which all seem to follow a similar formula: cast one or two actors / musicians / quasi-celebrities on a career decline in lead roles, find one more B-movie icon to cast in a tiny role that requires as little work from them as possible, fill the rest of the cast out with desperate unknowns, then unleash a Toy Story 1-era CGI monster to kill them off, mostly by eating them because it requires less animation for one "gulp."

The films then pad out the cheap, uninteresting "monster" attacks with long, pointless subplots that continually separate the main characters from the action, introduce superfluous roles for truly talentless amateurs as "comic relief," then eventually get back to the monster in time for the finale, which of late consists of the main characters watching two badly animated creatures "fight" until one or both "die" - at least until the next sequel.

For example, this is exactly what happens in Dinocroc vs. Supergator, minus any recognizable cast members aside from the late David Carradine, who really seemed to be shooting his scenes at home and literally phones in most of his dialogue as the evil corporation head who had something to do with... I don't know, let's say Supergator's existence. Even he doesn't seem to care that he's in the movie, so why should I be enthused that he graced this waste of 90 minutes with his presence? Or F. Murray Abraham trying to stay involved in Blood Monkey before being killed? (Oops, SPOILER).

The Mega-whatevers vs Giant-whatsits are even more transparent in their attempts to draw audiences into interminably boring conversations and lab scenes by including "whatever happened to's" like Deborah Gibson, Lorenzo Lamas, Jaleel White, Corin Nemec, Vanessa Williams, Casper Van Dien, Lou Diamond Phillips, Sean Patrick Flannery, Armand Assante, Amy Locane, Robbie Williams, Mickey Dolenz, Barry Williams, Daniel Baldwin, and Tiffany. The plots are so interchangeable that it doesn't matter how the monsters got there, let's just watch the singer of "I Think We're Alone Now" fight a giant piranha! Then they throw in Bruce Campbell, Robert Englund, Tony Todd, Daryl Hannah, John Rhys-Davies and Jeffrey Combs (or anyone else who won't say "no") to come in and give the film some "cred" for fanboys.

It's fair to note that the other big Syfy trick has been licensing sequels on the cheap, like Lake Placid 2 (and 3), Firestarter 2, Stir of Echoes: The Homecoming, House of the Dead 2, Pumpkinhead (Ashes to Ashes and Blood Feud), Dungeons and Dragons: Wrath of the Dragon God, Bats: Human Harvest, Anacondas 3 and 4, and a remake of Children of the Corn. Of the films I've sampled from that last, almost all of them had the same "we just don't care" attitude that rubs off on the audience.

Say what you will about schlock films of yesteryear, but they weren't boring. Well, some of them were boring, and a lot of those have faded into obscurity, with good reason. Horror of the Blood Monsters is a turgid, lifeless mishmash of prehistoric and vampire elements, and I can't finish it. I will happily watch The Blob though, because an effort was made to, oh, entertain audiences even as the producers sought a quick buck.

By the way, it's not as though movies with virtual unknowns and limited cgi effects can't be entertaining - Shark Attack 3: Megalodon, which has Torchwood's John Barrowman as its marquee name (nothing against Barrowman, who is great in the movie and on the show, but this did come out four years before Torchwood and I'm making a huge assumption that the average visitor to this site has seen the spin-off of the 2005 relaunch of Doctor Who). It has all of the same hallmarks of cheap "giant monster" schlock, but the film is funny, occasionally surprising, has better than expected "kills," and the best pick-up line in film history (even better than "get the butter"). Blood Car, another Blogorium favorite, has no monster but a better gimmick and My Girl's Anna Chlumsky, and it's better than any Syfy film mentioned above.

There are a handful of Syfy Originals that I've found amusing in small doses - Alien Express, Terminal Invasion, parts of Alien Apocalypse, The Man with the Screaming Brain, and Beyond Re-Animator. It's probably worth noting that almost all of them deviate from the formula listed above in one or all aspects. Alien Express, for example, has actual puppets instead of CG monsters, and even if they look goofy, it's a creative choice. Terminal Invasion makes the best of a limited location, and Alien Apocalypse tries hard (and fails miserably, if enterainingly) to tell an Planet of the Apes knock-off story. I've heard good things about Abominable from people like Dr. Murder and the Cranpire, and he also swears by Hammerhead because of the presence of William Forsythe and Jeffrey Combs.

The recent Sharktopus (with Eric Roberts) at least has the right idea with the goofy trailer and theme song, even if it looks like every other "hybrid / giant monster" movie the channel ever aired. And what is Syfy airing this week? Will it break the trend of movies the Cap'n is happier not seeing? It's - oh, something called Mega Snake. No thanks. Let me know when the execution actually meets the premise of this so-called "schlock."

Addressing Directors Who Could Care Less

Pointless question directed to M. Night Shyamalan:

Why call the new movie Devil? I realize you didn't direct Devil, but you came up with the story and produced the film, and the trailers have your name and credentials all over them, so why not use some of that sway to change the title to something people would really be interested in?

Something like, oh say, Devilvator? Or Evilvator? (strangely, neither title is in use at IMDB)

You see, Mr. Shyamalan (who will never read this but let's stick with the premise he is), I watched The Happening, which you abruptly shifted in description from "Thriller" to "B Movie" when people started laughing at how awful it was. I saw the movie twice in theatres, bought the Blu Ray, and then showed it to people again. Yes, it's a terrible, terrible movie, but it was a lot of fun. Devil, aside from being about the Devil (one assumes) looks like it's also designed to be some kind of "B" horror movie, but unless you've seen the trailer, no one really knows what it is. Even if you have seen the trailer, all you know is that it looks like "one of the passengers on this elevator is the Devil," and I can't say the title has me very interested. The pun-based opportunity, however, would push Devil over into a "must-see" category.

I realize that they may seem stupid - or awesome - but a really off the wall title like that sets you apart and gives the audience incentive to go see the movie. Which, from the people I've talked to, Devil does not. Eventually, somebody will capitalize on the Devilvator / Evilvator title and make a really bad / great horror movie about an elevator to hell or a "devil on the elevator" or just human-eating elevator, and I don't know that Devil is going to be anybody's first choice when they're side by side at the video store.

---

Ah, James Cameron... I try very hard not to go back to the well of "things I don't like about James Cameron" in the Blogorium, because the Cap'n is clearly in the minority when it comes to the director of Aliens, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Titanic, and Avatar. So I keep my opinions to myself, until something like this pops up:

Vanity Fair: Was there any sense of nostalgia when the Piranha movie came out last weekend?

Cameron: "Zero. You’ve got to remember: I worked on Piranha 2 for a few days and got fired off of it; I don’t put it on my official filmography," he explained. "So there’s no sort of fond connection for me whatsoever. In fact, I would go even farther and say that... I tend almost never to throw other films under the bus, but that is exactly an example of what we should not be doing in 3-D. Because it just cheapens the medium and reminds you of the bad 3-D horror films from the 70s and 80s, like Friday the 13th 3-D. When movies got to the bottom of the barrel of their creativity and at the last gasp of their financial lifespan, they did a 3-D version to get the last few drops of blood out of the turnip. And that’s not what’s happening now with 3-D. It is a renaissance—right now the biggest and the best films are being made in 3-D. Martin Scorsese is making a film in 3-D. Disney’s biggest film of the year—Tron: Legacy—is coming out in 3-D. So it’s a whole new ballgame."

I could stick up for Piranha 3-D, but since the studio was so impressed with the positive critical reaction that they've greenlit a sequel (and to be perfectly clear, Scott Pilgrim fans, Piranha 3-D didn't exactly light up the Box Office either), so no, the movie doesn't exactly remind me of Friday the 13th Part 3* or Jaws 3 or T2 3-D: A Battle Across Time. It reminds me that since 3-D movies have been making money - whether it be A Christmas Carol, Spy Kids 3, Clash of the Titans, Beowulf, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Hannah Montana Live, The Final Destination, Alice in Wonderland, Up, Monsters vs. Aliens, or Avatar - that every studio wants to slap 3-D on to their movie in order to cash in. Call it whatever you want, the major studios still see it as a gimmick that gets audiences into theatres. When it stops making money, they'll stop making them.

And oh yeah, not to undermine your point about the 3-D "renaissance," but it was a really bad idea to use "Disney's biggest film of the year," Tron Legacy, as the final example. Considering that Disney is hoping that the 3-D will be the icing on a cake to their sequel to a 28 year-old movie that didn't do very well when it came out. I was going to see Tron Legacy whether it was in 2-D or 3-D, and while I know several people who also are, it's not an overwhelming amount of folks. Despite my excitement for a new Tron movie, Cameron is actually undermining his own point about sequels reaching for 3-D to get "blood from a turnip," a desperate act.

This will be my final point, I swear, but which side of the coin do House of Wax and Creature from the Black Lagoon fall on? Renaissance or Last Gasp?




* Wait... how many Friday the 13th movies were there? The third film was the end of its financial lifespan???