Category: What The Hell Is Chris Watching

Ballets would probably be more popular if they contained more beheadings.
Or at least that’s my opinion.

In my ongoing efforts to complete a viewing of all of the available films in the Rue Morgue’s 200 Alternative Horror Films You Need To See, I decided to sink my teeth into Guy Maddin’s Canadian production Dracula: Pages From A Virgin’s Diary (2002) before it left The Criterion Channel. With this viewing, I can confirm that this is probably the most unique performance of an adaptation of Bram Stoker’s novel that I’ve ever seen. And I mostly mean that in a good way.

Produced by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Maddin’s film is even unique as a dance film in the use of jump cuts, close-ups, and speed changes that in combination with being in mostly in black and white (with some monochrome sections) and the use of German expressionist sets made this feel very “avant garde” to me. At times, it made me think of Haxan and Faust, especially during Lucy’s night terrors. Also used to fair effect is the occasional splash of color that reminded me of the style of color enhanced black and white photos and videos in the mid-to-late 1980s.

With the opening title cards and cuts, we are set to fear an immigrant invasion from the East. I found that to be oddly specific and a bit spot on given that the Dracula of this production is skillfully performed by Wei-Qiang Zhang. Our Renfield possesses “clairvoyant” abilities that allow him to sense and see where his master is during Dracula’s journey to England. While dear Lucy (Tara Birtwhistle) selects from her three suitors, Dracula comes for her during the night, and for the most part the story unfolds in the usual manner we are used to viewing with regards to Vlad.

Where this production stands out for me is in the editing and some of the changes made to the story. If you watch this, note that when Dracula goes into bite, the literal plunge into his victim’s neck is accelerated with the cutting of frames in the sequence. I felt it gave it a more animalistic and violent sense of Dracula in those moments. In contrast, when Lucy has been transformed and begins taking blood, her bite is a slowed down and almost sensual assault, yet it also uses the editing technique of cutting frames.

One of the standout horror moments for me was late in the film when Dr. Seward is trying to use Renfield’s ability to location Dracula. It took a second glance for me to realize that Seward was using a sounding probe and essentially tuning in Renfield by giving him a temporal lobotomy! The staking and beheading of Lucy are also stand out and well-choreographed. Speaking of the choreography, the dancing is superb and performed by The Royal Winnipeg Ballet. There does become a point where the amount of crucifix related choreography made me feel like I was in an old school Madonna video though.

And this is where I clarify why I started out by saying “mostly in a good way.” Too much of a good and different thing begins to feel stylized and overdone for me at a point. Even with only a 73-minute runtime, this film did hit that point through a chunk of the second act but rebounded in the finale. Your own mileage may vary if you choose to check this one out.

(Currently streaming on The Criterion Channel, FilmRise, and currently YouTube.)

As I’ve stated before, and as this blog series shows, I tend to watch some obscure and flat-out weird titles from time to time. Rare is the time when I mention to Joe and Jenny a title I’m considering doing a write up on, and one of them has already seen it! Well, this gem scarred Joe in his youth, and now we all can share in the trauma.

Nudist Colony of the Dead was released in 1991, the year I graduated high school. As the opening credits declare, it was “written, rewritten, rewritten, and directed” by Mark Pirro and produced on a budget of about $35,000. The version I rented on Amazon Prime was the remastered version that combined numerous elements to try and make for a better final product. … Yes. This is indeed the better version of the film. (SPOILERS AHEAD)

Following a parody of the old THX sound test, our opening scene finds the parishioners of the Merciful Father of The Holy Guilt Ridden Church in a courtroom battle with the members of the Sunny Buttcheeks Nudist Colony in an effort to shutdown the fornicators and kick them off their property. With Judge Rhinehole (gawd, I’m a sucker for cheap puns!) presiding, the church wins. I must admit now that while watching the movie, I completely missed that the legendary Forrest J. Ackerman played the judge!

The nudist, agreeing that they would rather die than give up their land and way of life, form a suicide pact and literally drink the Kool-Aid. But with her dying breath, the tough as leather (and looking like it, too!) Mrs. Druple curses any bible thumpers that come upon the land.

Jump ahead five years, and Reverend Ritz has planned a retreat to Camp Cutchaguzz Out (formerly the location of the nudist colony) for all of the fornicating and wayward teens of the congregation that need redeeming. This goes ahead, even over the objections of Mr. McRighteous. Objections that remind everyone of the two other groups that were killed at the camp. Well, accidentally died, that is. Especially that group of 47 that all got fed to a woodchipper!

As the kids are all packed into the van, we get our first of many musical numbers, because “God’s Gonna Show Us The Way.” This is the moment I would like to give respect to Gregg Gross, Joyce Mordoh, and Mark Pirro for the ear-wormy and actually pretty funny songs. But is also when we get into the cringey racist humor of the time when we meet “Juan Tu” (“My mother was Mexican, and my father was Japanese”), complete with a bad Asian accent. The rest of the campers have their own little quirks to make them stand out from each other.

Upon reaching the camp, Ranger Bygbutts tries to warn the counselors to leave through the traditional method of rapping a retelling of the last slaughter of churchgoers. But the pious parishioners aren’t put off, of course, because we wouldn’t have a movie otherwise! Bygbutts is brighter, though, and bails right away before the bloodshed begins. On cue, the undead nudists rise from their graves and start the carnage with the counselors.

Blissfully unaware that they are now unattended, the campers great the day with an eye-opening musical number (complete with a random Black man that you see no other time in the film) that seems to be one of the bits that most people might know from it. And I’m happy to share that earworm with you here.

Like any other slasher camp, bodies body parts start to appear. Some of them even talk. As the campers are picked off one by one in several hilarious and creative methods, the zombies have to get in on the musical fun, too. Trust me: the legacy of Thriller is still very secure.

Even though I’ve shared a lot of the plot at this point, I’m going to bury the urge to talk about the ending. I’ll just say that it’s as goofy as the rest of the movie was and gives an unseen twist before the credits roll.

So was this a bad movie? Yes. But was it fully self-aware that it was a bad movie and had fun with it? Oh, indeed it was! And for me, those are the best kind of “bad” movies. From the opening credits, to the thumb in the eye of religious zealots, and the closing credits of this edition that list “Scraggs – Camera Operator’s Seeing Eye Dog” and “Helen Keller IV – Focus Puller” as a nod to the poor visual quality, Mark Pirro and company were 100% in on the joke. I’m glad they chose to share it with us.

**NSFW Warning – Some graphic images included in this post.**

You know what? Looking back on it, I should have realized it as I was ordering it. Would it have changed my purchase? Probably not.

But I digress. Let me set up the story for you that lead to me watching a sasquatch sex film.

(Yes. You read that correctly. A sasquatch sex film.)

During Vinegar Syndrome’s “Halfway to Black Friday” sale a couple months back, I found this collection at 50% off:

I figured twelve genre films, potentially artsy, indie, and low budget, for the low price of $15 was a bargain. What did I have to lose? They also looked to be a bit on the sexy side, so I bought it.

It seems so obvious now, what with the cover blown up like that, prominently showing “Rated X” there. But my eyes ain’t what they use to be when looking at thumbnails on my laptop! What I thought was a collection of nearly homemade softcore genre flicks turned out to be a dozen hardcore horror films. … Oops?

The first film in the set, 1971’s The Geek, is the focus of this entry in the blog series because it genuinely had me asking myself, “What the hell am I watching??”

There are zero credits on this, so I can’t tell you who made it. Three of the uncredited cast members are listed on IMDb, but who knows who added them. Clocking in at just under an hour, The Geek starts out with the feel of a nature documentary, including a voice over and scrolling text. It made me think of The Legend of Boggy Creek that would come out a year later. Three couples take a trek into the woods, hunting for Bigfoot. Without a weapon in sight, without any obvious camping gear, the party manages to hike “about 30 miles” without any change in the lighting. (Old Hollywood joke: “What’s the difference between a studio film and a porno? The lighting!”)

From here on out, at about 10-15 minute intervals, the couples break off on their own to have some tastefully intimate relations in the realm of nature. Or, to be more honest, they go off to the grope each other and screw in the woods to the accompaniment of some laughably terrible dubbing. Seriously, I was in tears at some of it!

Around the 40-45 minute mark, we finally have a Bigfoot sighting! The make-up vaguely reminded me of how Andre The Giant looked in the classic episodes of The Six Million Dollar Man, but only if you squinted real hard and had had a few whiskeys already.

Now comes the reveal that the guys wanted to use their women as bait to lure in Bigfoot! Whether or not the women were in on this plan wasn’t fully clear, but their reluctance when Sasquatch wants to get sexy is not. The piecemeal costume allowed the actor fairly easy access to engage in what the makers of this production deemed to be the mating rituals of said creature. But the make-up on his hands kept wiping off during the deed, leaving big black smudges on the pale white bums of his female co-stars.

In the end, this was a laughable lark, though a bit rapey, that looked like someone had swinger friends that would be willing to go out in the woods for a day or so with a 16mm camera and fuck on film, under the pretext that they were looking for Bigfoot. Not high art in the slightest, but it’s also not the worst film in the set either so far (I’m only 5 films into it). Other films in the set deal with satanic cults, hauntings, possessions, witches, and more.

Bless Vinegar Syndrome for preserving and distributing stuff like this that would otherwise just vanish from existence or only be talked about in the tones of myths and legends. Just like Bigfoot.

With the range of topics we cover on the podcast, I can travel down some rabbit trails that find the oddities that end up being perfect fodder for this (oft neglected) blog series. May I present to you “Exhibit A”, a film I stumbled into while trying to create a starting list of Satan and satanic cult films for our “Desert Island Picks” episode of them. Though it didn’t even come close to making my list then, it hung out on my Amazon Prime queue anyway.

Devil Times Five also caught my eye for one cast member in particular, and that’s ’70s child star, Leif Garrett. As a child of the ’70s myself, I remember having one of his albums on 8-track (or one of my siblings did) that had his smash disco hit “I Was Made For Dancin'” that came out about 4 years after this film. It also includes his sister, Dawn Lyn, who would appear as his sister again in a couple other productions. So with that twinkle of nostalgia in my eye, I figured why not give it a go.

Turns out that Devil Times Five isn’t even the original title for this! On it’s initial release in 1974, it was titled PeopleToys or People Toys. On re-release in 1976, it was changed to Devil Times Five in the US and UK, and then even changed again to Tantrums for a home video release in UK. And that’s the least confusing or convoluted thing about the film and its production.

Strap in for this ride, Fright Fans.

The quick and dirty synopsis of this delight is that a van loaded with what turns out to be five kids from a pediatric sanitarium crashes in the remote and soon to be snowbound woods. Not everything is revealed about the kids from the start, but you learn right off the bat that Brian (Tierre Turner) has a delusion of being a military commander and can’t actually tell when people are dead. Seriously, he says, “They’re all dead,” to Moe (Dawn Lyn), Susan (Tia Thompson), and “Sister Hannah” (Gail Smale), only to have David (Leif Garrett) stumble out without a mark on him two minutes later. The doctor who was driving comes crawling out of the wreckage not long after the kids have fled.

As for the victims, I mean other cast of characters, Rick (Taylor Lacher) is a doctor and the boyfriend of Julie (Joan McCall), the daughter of “Papa Doc”(Gene Evans), a gruff asshole who owns several medical facilities, including a new sanitarium that Rick is aiming for the director position of. But Rick has competition from Harvey Beckman (Sorrell Booke), who has a hard time standing up for himself, especially when he keeps getting savagely cut off at the knees by his perpetually drunk wife, Ruth (Shelley Morrison). Pour another glass for Lovely (Carolyn Stellar), Papa Doc’s gold-digging wife, as she spreads her own discontent about the scene as well. The six of them are spending a weekend at Papa Doc’s winter lodge, along with the mentally challenged caretaker, Ralph (John Durren). Ralph even talks to his small herd of rabbits.

Yes. … They went there.

The kids find the lodge and break into the wine cellar. Following their trail through the snow, the doctor finds them, only to be dispatched in a gratuitous slow motion, sepia-toned scene of slaughter that drags out for over 2 minutes. Meanwhile, around that same time, Lovely is trying to bed Ralph, who misses every single hint, no matter how blunt. But when Julie walks in on this stunted attempt at seduction, she and Lovely have an argument that quickly devolves into one of the tamest “cat fights” to come out of ’70s cinema.

The kids are found (or reveal themselves) to the other occupants of the lodge, with most of them taking pity on their plight. From here, it’s a steady progression of the kids getting creepier and the adults getting deader, so I won’t go into those details because I don’t want to spoil some of the better parts of this good-bad film.

But what I will go into is some of the batshit craziness that happened behind the camera! Such as rumors that director Sean MacGregor was having a relationship with under-aged actress Gail Smale during the production, and that the reason her character was dressed as a nun was to conceal her albinism. From there, we have tales of MacGregor and producer Michael Blowitz getting physical with each other. MacGregor reportedly punched Blowitz in the face, and Blowitz threw MacGregor through a plate glass window in reply. Add to that that MacGregor was pulled from the film 2/3 of the way in because his work was deemed unusable, and David Sheldon was brought on to finish the film. To cap off MacGregor’s saga, it’s also reported he was admitted to an actual psychiatric hospital shortly after he left the production.

As for other endearing errors within the film itself, play a drinking game for each time Leif wears a wig because he had had his hair cut short for another film he started working on when he was brought back for reshoots. I would say you could do a drinking game around how often night immediately turns to day (or vice versa) or when the snow levels change outside, but I respect your respective livers far too much to abuse you like that.

“Heav’n has no Rage, like Love to Hatred turn’d, Nor Hell a Fury, like a Woman scorn’d.”

– “The Mourning Bride” by William Congreve (Act III Scene 2) (1697)

Revenge films are a sub-genre that dances along the edge of horror, but they can often be found diving fully into horror as well. Another sub-genre that is also known to do just that are the “women in prison” exploitation films. The film series I am going to discuss this time around brings all these together in Female Prisoner Scorpion franchise out of Japan.

The four films series from Toei Company ran from 1972 to 1973 with Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion (1972), Female Prisoner Scorpion: Jailhouse 41 (1972), Female Prisoner Scorpion: Beast Stable (1972), and Female Prisoner Scorpion: Grudge Song (1973). Actress Meiko Kaji played the lead role of Nami “Scorpion” Matsushima in all four films with Shunya Ito directing the first three and Yasuharu Hasebe directing the fourth. Based on the manga Scorpion by Toru Shinohara, the stories center around Nami who was wronged in the worst ways by her boyfriend, Sugimi, a corrupt narcotics detective. Set up and abused, Nami attempts to kill Sugimi in front of police headquarters and earns her trip to prison.

In Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion, Nami is subjected to brutal abuse from both the guards and her fellow inmates. But never does she break, because Nami is a bad ass, filled with rage and driven by vengeance. Fueled by this rage and through clever manipulations of her tormentors, things get bloody and gruesome, with many of those said tormentors meeting a nasty end. Outside of the “standard” tortures that Nami is put through, the set piece punishment in this installment was the digging and refilling and redigging of an exceptionally large hole in the prison yard. Events evolving from this led to a riot and escape, allowing Nami to finish her acts of vengeance.

Female Prisoner Scorpion: Jailhouse 41 opens to Nami having been returned to prison and bound up in solitary confinement. But she can still move her head, and she has been holding a spoon in her mouth and grinding it down on the concrete floor to make a shank! Told you she’s a bad ass. The prison riot kicks off early in this one, permitting a larger group to escape and going on the run during a transfer. This one dips into the spiritual and metaphysical a bit when the group of escapees comes across the hut of an old woman who essentially foretells what crimes they committed and how each will meet their end . . . except for Nami. There is still vengeance to be meted out as the warden from the first film survived and continues to torture and torment Nami whenever and however he can. As the road trip continues, it literally gets on the road with the hijacking of a tourist bus that leads to a standoff with the police. The ending takes a bit of a surreal twist, but it works.

Now third film, Female Prisoner Scorpion: Beast Stable, goes off in an odd but effective direction and adds in a bit of gothic horror and supernatural happenings. Yet again, Nami has escaped custody and is on the run. The first person to spot her is a prostitute in a cemetery . . . where Nami is trying to chew through the severed hand of the police detective that is still cuffed to her wrist. And that’s not even the most cringeworthy moment in this one! I don’t want to say much more than that, because I feel this is one you just need to jump into and go with. Just be prepared for the occasional head scratching and the “WTF?!?” reactions now and then.

The final film, Female Prisoner Scorpion: Grudge Song, ended up being the weakest of the films for me, and I can chalk it up to a few reasons. The first being that while on the run (again!), Nami is found and aided by Kudo, a former student revolutionary who was tortured and maimed by the police. More than a third of the film focuses on him instead of on Nami, and it’s suppose to be her film. The second reason is the change in directors. Shunya Ito had a style in the first film that bordered on giallo to me, with his use of creative sets, bolded lighting, and quirky editing tricks. In each of the three films he directed, there was something technique-wise that caught my attention. Outside of one or two slightly trippy scenes in Grudge Song, Yasuharu Hasebe’s direction didn’t really do much for me. And a third thing! Even though Meiko Kaji could convey so much with a look that it allowed for keeping her dialogue to a minimum in the first three films, she had maybe four or five lines in the entirety of Grudge Song, and even those were used as internal monologue instead being spoken out loud.

Overall, it’s not a bad series of film if these are genres you like watching. If you are a fan of Japanese martial arts cinema of the early 1970s, you might recognize Meiko Kaji’s name from the legendary role she would go on to play shortly after this: Lady Snowblood. Like the theme from Lady Snowblood, theme song of this series will stick with you, too.

So, if my musings have piqued your interest, all four films are currently streaming on Shudder. What better way to pass the time in lock down than watching someone else in lock down?

Every now and then, you come across a title in your streaming platform scrolling, and it just jumps out at you. Or in this case, hops out at you.

Godfrey Ho’s (aka Joe Livingstone) 1988 opus, Robo Vampire, just sounded like cheesy, low-budget fun, and the poster even leans into that vibe fairly hard. The core concepts of this production just make you giggle and ask, “Wait, what??”

As simply put as I can, American heroin smugglers in south east Asia get tired of the repeated run ins with “Tom, the anti-drug agent” and his team, so they hire a Daoist priest to train jiangshi (“Chinese hopping vampires”) to fight those darn anti-drug agents.

Are you still with me? Tom and most of his team are killed in their first encounter with the jiangshi. After literally 3 seconds of mourning from his commanders, one asks to use Tom’s corpse for his android experiments. Thus, Tom is resurrected as “Robo Warrior” to continue the fight against the vicious smugglers and their vampires. Keep in mind that “Robo Warrior” is one of the worst RoboCop knock offs you will ever witness. But wait! There’s more!

In an effort to counter Robo Warrior, the Daoist raises a vampire beast. Or at least a vampire in a gorilla mask. The raising of this creature is not without difficulty as its ghost witch (or witch ghost?) lover interrupts the ritual and battles the Daoist as two of the American drug smugglers stand around watching. One of strongest powers of the witch ghost (or ghost witch?) is being able to spew out a crap load of exposition in under 3 minutes.

Often, I use closed captioning just to not miss dialogue. But one of favorite things now is how the CC interprets sounds or actions on the screen. Anytime it says <squelching sounds> during a movie, I know great things are happening on screen! Robo Vampire brought a new level to the experience for me with <mystic whooshing>, <frightened groaning>, and <monstrous wailing/yelling> during the fight scene between the Daoist, the witch ghost (or ghost witch?), and the vampire beast. And just when I thought it couldn’t be topped? They dropped this cherry on my sundae: <intense mystic whooshing>!

Now’s when we cut to the story of Ray being recruited by Chief Thompson to go and rescue Sophie the spy a group of gangsters and smugglers that captured her. And by “cut to,” I mean cut nearly an hour’s worth of footage from the 1984 Thai film Paa Lohgan into this one for all of the gang war and spy story stuff. Keyways to tell which is Paa Lohgan versus Robo Vampire when key characters aren’t on screen? Besides the visual difference in color grading of the film, all the Thai footage uses real guns with blanks. All the Chinese footage uses these weird barrel attachments that contain 5-6 firecrackers (that you can often see) that fire off in quick sequence.

There are a couple scenes of old school “Chinese water torture” under a dripping faucet for Sophie that feel almost quaint now when you think of waterboarding. But it seems to work on her! Ray and Wendy face the same torture later with the same results.  But let’s get back to Robo Warrior and the hopping vampires.

A scene that I’ve found the most GIF worth, the jiangshi encircle Robo Warrior on a beach. Immune to most of his bullets, he goes hand to hand for a brief bit with limited results. He then summons his machine gun back into his hand like it’s fricking Mjolnir! This happens at least two other times in the movie, as well as his gun suddenly being able to shoot a rope of flames. Seriously. It’s a flaming rope strapped to the end of the gun!

This movie was just bad in so many ways, from the acting, the dubbing, the effects, and beyond. Man was it fun to watch! The only part I found a bit objectional was a scene out of nowhere that had a woman cutting open the belly of a cow or oxen to stuff several bags of heroin in and sew it back up. Outside of that, Robo Vampire is just straight up laughable. Even the closed captioning made me laugh.

Kick back with a beverage of choice, some snacks, and a few friends (however social distancing permits), and just have a good laugh with this one. Heaven knows we can use a laugh or three right now.

(On Amazon and YouTube)

(Holy hell! It’s been a year since I posted one of these?!? I swear, fright fans, that this will be coming out more often again as we continue to create more original content for our site.)

Have you ever had one of those nights where you just want something brainless, short, and funny to watch? A little while back, such a night made me finally dive into an indie micro-budget film that hooked me clear back with its “is-this-real-or-a-parody?” trailer: The Velocipastor!

As told by the writer-director, Brendan Steere, he tried to type “velociraptor” into his phone one day in film school, and autocorrect changed it to “Veloci Pastor.” Kind of weird how a seed gets planted sometimes, eh? Anyway, after a few funding hurdles, Steere secured an investor and $35,000 to make his film.

Clocking in at just 75 minutes and featuring not a single person you’ve probably ever heard of, The Velocipastor is just silly fun that pays homage to low-budget indie films but never taking itself too seriously. Most of the performances (many provided by friends and family members of Steere) are bad in the best way possible. Even the trained actors do a deliberately bad performance, and that makes it even better!

(**Minor Spoilers Ahead!**)

The plot of this film you never knew you needed to see revolves around young Pastor Doug Jones (Gregory James Cohan), who shortly after graduating from “priest college” witnesses his parents die in a fiery car explosion. … Or at least that’s what the placeholder card tells us on the screen. Seriously, this moment was the true hook for me. A brilliant yet hilarious way to save on the budget. It set the tone for me and let me know what to expect from here on out.

Following this tragic event and the not-so consoling words from his mentor, Father Stewart (played by Daniel Steere, Brendan’s father), Doug travels to China. (Trust them, it’s China.) While there, he happens upon a woman wounded by ninjas (yes, we get ninjas, too) in a forest, and she gives him a dinosaur claw that passes the curse onto him. Now, when Doug gets angry, he turns into a velociraptor-sized dinosaur. Or at least a step up from the inflatable T-Rex costumes you see at Halloween.

As fate would have it, Doug is spotted by Carol (Alyssa Kempinski), a lady of the night, when he transforms and decapitates a mugger in the park. Carol then encourages Doug to use his powers for good and eliminate the criminal element in the town. From there, montages ensue, romance blooms, ninjas (like you’ve never seen) resurface, an exorcism is sort of attempted, and an out of left field Korean War flashback help progress the plot to a gloriously “WTF?!? LMAO!!” finale.

I highly recommend checking this one out, fright fans. Go in with the only expectations of having some laughs, some gore, and a good time. It’s not often in this series I can genuinely say, “Go see this!”, and mean it with sincerity. So, go now, my children, and may the blessings of The Velocipastor be upon you.