555...the horror, the horror, the hor...

by I. Alexander Nash

   My house...shit; I'm still only at my house...Every time I think I'm gonna wake up reviewing a movie.  I'd wake up and there'd be nothing. I hardly said a word to my wife, until I said "yes" to a microwave pizza. When I was here, I wanted to be there; when I was there, all I could think of was getting back to reviewing movies. I'm here a week now... waiting for an assignment... getting softer. Every minute I stay in this room, I get weaker, and every minute someone on youtube uploads a video, he gets stronger. Each time I looked around the walls moved in a little tighter.  I proceeded to get wasted on cheap whiskey and dance around in my underwear while Nena whales about their 99 Luft Balloons.  I quickly punch a mirror to get back in touch with reality.  God do I miss Emilio.  I collapse on the floor never feeling lower in my life.  The wife finds me naked and crying; never feeling less sexually attracted to me.  The assignment is here.  Everyone gets everything they want.  I wanted an assignment, and for my sins they gave me one.  They brought it too me like room service...I never did get that microwave pizza though.  It was a real choice assignment and when it was over I'd never want another.  I was gonna watch the worst movie in the world and I didn't even know it yet.  An hour and a half of the the stupidest shit committed to film all the way to the end.  It was no accident that I got to be the caretaker of the movie 555's story, no more than it was an accident that I was naked when they arrived in that room.  There is no way of telling it's story without telling my own.

  At first I thought they handed me the wrong dossier.  I couldn't believe they wanted this movie reviewed.  Shot on video.  No professional actors or film makers.  About a thousand bad reviews online.  I'd seen the clips on youtube and they really put a hook in me.  Like they said it was impressively bad.  Maybe too impressive...I mean perfectly shitty.  It was being totted as the worst thing ever shot on video.  It was buried for 25 years.  Why the fuck would they try to bring it back?  2013 it ends up my problem.

  There's a knock at my door.  It was my brother...my escort to the mouth of the Nung River...I mean the Mom and Pop Video Store where I would pick up the tape.  He wasn't suppose to be here for hours...that boy just couldn't stay put.  He had just traded in his Kubrick collection for the Complete Jess Franco box set, and gone tearing around video store to video store looking for the shit.  He looked at my wife laying in bed nauseated by sitting thru Wizards of Demon Sword.  He asked, "Hey what's this?  What is this?"  I replied "She's hurtin' pretty bad.  About the only thing holding her together are those pajamas.  She wants a glass of Kool Aid.  Dirty Twilight lover, she can drink puddle water."  He screamed back at me, "Get out of here!  Gimmie that Kool Aid.  Get outta here or I'll kick your fuckin' ass!  Any Twilight fan brave enough to sit through Fred Olen Ray can drink my Kool Aid any day."  My brother had had a pretty good day.  He made himself and some friends a couple of T-bones and beer; tried to turn The Phantom Menace into a screening party.  The more he tried to make it Empire Strikes Back, the more they missed it.  He wasn't a bad guy.  He was one of those guys that had a weird light around him.  You knew he wasn't gonna get so much as a scratch watching Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.  He advised me that the particular video store we were going to was pretty hairy.  When I informed him that they had an uncut copy of Yor Hunter from the Future there he yelled, "Well why the hell didn't ya tell me that before?!?  There aren't any good Italian movies in this whole shitty town!  It's all goddamn Hollywood studio films!"  I informed him the fact that our friend Charlie had checked out that tape yesterday, he yelled back "Charlie don't know Reb Brown!"

  We got in his car where he proceeded to put a CD of Ride of the Valkyries in...which gave me a strange sense of deja vu.  This whole experience seems to have happened somewhere before...nah.  "Shall we dance?" he said as he tore ass down the roads as if he had a purpose.  Almost as if he were a colonel in some sort of pointless South East Asian war.  We drove faster than I'd ever been.  We cut off cars, burned rubber and other descriptive words you use when trying to describe driving crazy.  Once we got to the strip mall and the lady from the adjoining Chinese restaurant tried to set our car on fire, I knew we had arrived.  "Ok man, quit hiding.  Ok, let's go dickhead," he said.  We entered the double doors and walked through the shoplifter sensors.  He took a deep long breathe.  "You smell that?  Do you smell that?  Stale popcorn and cigarette smoke son.  Nothing else in the world smells like that.  I love the smell of stale popcorn in the morning.  The smell, you know that old dead feet smell, the whole video store.  Smelled like victory...no I mean failure.  It smells just like wasting your life watching shitty movies instead of getting laid or making friends.  Someday these video stores are gonna end."  Someday these video stores are gonna end.  That would be just fine with most people.  They weren't looking for more than a way to sit on their ass and watch things streaming from internet.  Trouble is I've been there and know that it will be the same 250 movies rotated over and over again.  It was seasons of your favorite shows, but only 30 movies pre-2003.  There was enough of that to go around for everyone. 

  I found 555 sitting on it's labeled shelf.  I stared at it's hot pink video cover; it stared back at me with it's cold calculating decapitation photo penetrating my dark heart...my heart of darkness so to speak.  I had no idea what I was getting into and no idea what it would turn me into.  I grabbed the tape and left.  Should have never got outta the car absolutely goddamn right.  I referred back to the dossier to learn more.

  555 was directed by Wally Koz in 1988.  It was his one and only venture into the film making business.  He split from the whole fucking program after that.  He got into gold mining soon after.  How did that happen?  What did he see when he made 555?  48 fucking years old.  If he joined the film industry he would never make it above shot on video.  Koz knew what he was giving up.  The more I read and began to understand, The more I admired him.  His family and friends couldn't understand it, they couldn't talk him out of it.  The next youngest guy on his gold claim was half his age.  They must have thought he was some far out old man panning for gold.  A tough mother fucker.  He could have gone for the million dollar gold score, but he went for himself instead.  The internet knew his name by now, and they were scared of him.  I read a letter Koz wrote his wife from the gold mine:

"Dear Linda,

I'm afraid that both you and my brother Roy (writer of 555) would have been worried for not hearing from me these past weeks.  But my situation here has become a difficult one.  I've been officially accused of cinema atrocities by the United Internet Critics Association.  The charges were unjustified.  They are in fact, under the circumstances, completely insane.  In film making there are many moments for compassion and tender action.  There are many moments for ruthless action, for what is often called ruthless, what may in many and many circumstances be the only clarity; seeing clearly what there is to be done and doing it directly, quickly, aware...looking at it.  I would trust you to tell my brother what you choose about this letter.  As for the charges, I'm unconcerned.  I'm beyond their timid, lying morality.  And so I'm beyond caring.

You have all my faith.

Your loving husband."   

  555 was close.  It was real close.  I couldn't watch it yet, but I could feel it.  As if this car was being pulled down this road.  Whatever was going to happen, it wasn't gonna be like they thought.  I read further as we arrived back at the house, never getting the full picture of what this movie was.  Plenty more happened on the trip back like a run in with some Playboy Bunnies, a bridge blowing up and a freak occurrence where we had dinner with some French people.  I'll just spare you the details as it really has no place in this review.  The whole French dinner thing really seemed out of place here or anywhere else and that's why it's been mostly omitted from this report.  I mean it was really pointless and didn't seem to have a purpose or a reason for being there like at all, so let us never speak of it again.

  My friend Hank was at my front door waving his hands and screaming, "It's all right!  It's all right!"  Hank was a scraggly bastard.  His long hair chopped his face in half like a kaleidoscope while his beard sagged to his chest giving him the appearance of war torn photojournalist aged years before his time.  He had spent his time with 555 and I think it changed him as a person forever.  I asked him about his experience with 555.

 "You don't watch 555 man, it watches you.  Once you've seen and experienced what it is and what you are, it'll turn around and slap you in the face begging you to question yourself.  Questions in your face saying do you know that 'if is the middle word in life?  If you can keep your head watching 555 while all those around you are losing theirs and blaming it on you, if you can trust yourself when all men doubt you .  I mean no, I can't. I'm a little man and that's one shitty movie."

  I go in the house to look at other reviews of this film.  After consulting the one thing 555 and Koz hated, the internet, I had found horrifying things.  Like severed heads used as decoration, all the previous reviewers of this film had gone completely crazy or had ended up dead.  I was a professional and come hell or high water I was going to complete my review, but all this had become unsettling like a Tom Six film.  I could feel the darkness creeping up on me and filling my soul with...well...black stuff.  Hank crept up behind startling me with a tap of my shoulder.  With calm and half lidded eyes he said, "The reviews, you're looking at the reviews, I uh...sometimes 555 goes too far you know...Wally Koz would be the first one to admit it."  I calmly replied, "You're drunk."   His expression burned a hole straight through me while he screamed, "Wrong!  Wrong!  If you could have just seen me yesterday while I was watching it!  You're gonna tell me I'm drunk?...alright fuck you I drunk as shit."

   Everything I saw told me that 555 drove men insane.  If I was still alive, it was because the movie wanted me that way.  I went into my room to put the dreaded tape into the player.  It smelled like slow death in there, boring plot line, shitty actors and production values, nightmares.  This was the end of my journey alright.   

   The shitty hot pink opening credits flickered in my minds eye.  The nightmare was beginning.  The film quality reminded me of war footage I've seen before.  Hap hazard and unprofessional...off the cuff.  It opens with a clumsily staged murder by a guy in a hippy wig and beard.  He's shirt gave me fits of seizure.  After chopping the head of the male of the naked and copulating couple, he stabbed the girl with a sacrificial dagger.  He pulls down his pants and mock humps her corpse.  The police arrive and the nightmare grows stronger.  Lots of shittily written police procedural dialog and bad jokes.  This can only take me further down the drain pipe deeper into hell.  We enter a pea soup green room and barely leave it for the full 90 minutes.  The cops blame an old war vet for the crimes but have no proof.  We introduce the D.A. and his female reporter girlfriend.  She's a total bitch.  I can barely stand to listen to her voice as it reverberates in my skull.  Plus she looks like my mother another reminder of how much I don't want to do this.  We get to another murder.  It's basically the exact same scene played in repeat.  I don't know if I can handle this.  They bring the same old Marine in for questioning, but can't peg him down.  The lady reporter decides to use her feminine whiles to get info on him.  These two old people proceed to make out as he unbuttons her shirt and...oh my god!  Is this 50 year old woman going to do a nude scene!?!  As he exposes her saggy breasts, I stop the tape and run outside to hide in the shed.

  Hank bolts outside to come and get me.  Not so much for the sake of being concerned as much as it is to see what has happened.  He twirls his beard and watches me rock back and forth in the fetal position.  The blackness is consuming me throughout.  "Dialectics.  It's very simple dialectics.  No maybes, no supposes,... no fractions...you can travel through space, you can't go out into spac..." I interrupt Hank, "What the fuck you talkin' about?"  He pauses  "Really dude I have no idea.  I polished off that bottle of SoCo about half an hour ago and I'm just spacin,  But there is one thing I can tell you, there's only love and hate, you either love a movie or you hate it!"  "Then I fucking hate it," answering him.  "You don't know that.  You didn't finish that movie man.  How do you know you hate it if you leave it hanging in the wind like an Arby's fart?"  I throw my shoe at him at this point.  "Is this the way it ends man!?!  Look at the fucking shit you're in!  And with that I'm fucking splitting Jack!"  Hank runs off into the woods only to resurface much later hooked on Nitrous asking hookers to call him Daddy I presume.  He was right though.  I had Arby's earlier that day and wouldn't let the same thing happen to 555.  It's judgement that defeats us. I put my big girl pants on and continued the film.

  Horror has a face and you must make a friend of horror...but not just yet. I fast forward to after Delta Burke puts away her fun bags.  As much as I thought there would be answers in completion, I was wrong.  The cops continue to spout bad dialog and harass Beetle Bailey about the crimes.  This is going nowhere.  everyone knows he's not the killer, but yet they continue the charade that this is a whodunit film.  Then  something happens.  One thing.  One thing happens in this entire film.  Another murder, this time with a top notch decapitation scene which shouldn't surprise me as it is the box cover imagery of the film.  Thank god for tiny horrors.  The cops figure out that he kills on the fifth month killing five people for five days for a tiny explanation of the title.  I didn't want it, nor did I need it, but it is there.  More bullshit cop dialog.  I want to hunt them all down and assassinate them, but I'm merely a video store clerk sent to collect on late fees.  Out of fucking nowhere the female reporter reveals that she has seen the D.A.'s high school year book and figured out he is the killer.  What the fuck?  They find him and gun him down.  The end.  The horror, the horror of this shitty fucking movie.  It's not only poorly made but insulting in it's banality.  It's been a waste of my life as well as my sanity.  It never even attempts to entertain.  It sits there like a sacrificial ox waiting for slaughter.  I now understand why other reviewers went insane or turned up dead.  There is literally nothing to talk about or even poke fun at with this film.  It's like watching a home movie or a slasher film made by twelve year olds for a class project.  It is the anti-cinema.  It is absolutely nothing.  

  They were going to make me a site moderator for this and I wasn't even on their staff anymore.  Everybody wanted me to do it, the movie itself most of all.  I felt like it was sitting in the VCR waiting for me to take the pain away.  Even Koz wanted it dead, and that's who it took it orders from anyway.  I rubbed my body down in Bath and Body Works face mask and approach the VCR from the side quickly hitting the eject button.  I throw the tape to the ground as Nena echos through my head.  "99 Luftballons Auf ihrem Weg zum Horizont Hielt man für Ufos aus dem All Darum schickte ein General..."  I pick my laptop up from the desk and begin to bash the tape with all the anger and hate that I can muster.  Bash!  The viewer window breaks.  Bash!  The case itself snaps and breaks.  "'ne Fliegerstaffel hinterher Alarm zu geben, wenn es so wär Dabei war'n da am Horizont Nur 99 Luftballons."  Bash!  The tape comes flying of the spindles.  "99 Düsenjäger
Jeder war ein großer Krieger Hielten sich für Captain Kirk."  Bash!  The tape crinkles and twists.  Bash!  All of my thoughts and emotions are blank.  I'm just a reviewer on a mission.  I completed their fucking mission.  I completed Koz's mission.  Her old lady nipples still burned into my memory...the horror.

  I put on my pajamas and bring my wife some Kool Aid.  We lay down together and watch Twilight.  After 555 nothing can be that bad...right?  I still never got that microwave pizza.

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 ,
 ."

20 Slasher Films You Forgot About

  by I. Alexander Nash

That's a fucking bold ass statement.  There really aren't that many slasher films that haven't been uplifted by fans and critics in this age of internet.  There are plenty of youtube videos and blog pages full of reviews of these films.  The question you're asking yourself right now is what makes this entry different from any of those?  The answer is simple:  I am a thousand times funnier than any of those people.  You've probably heard of many of these movies before, but I have scrapped the bottom of the barrel to find the most esoteric of slasher films for this.  Let me also state that these are primarily 1980's American and Canadian slasher films.  Yes  I'm sure there are tons of French, Italian, and...I don't know...Chilean slasher movies that many people haven't seen, but there's a certain joie de vivre to North American made slasher films.  Maybe the Italians created it with giallo movies, but dammit, Americans perfected it and made it into the trashy art that it is today.  They're listed in sort of in an order from easily available to rarest, but really, what the hell do I know. Many of these are out of print or only released on VHS, but if you're suave in your interneting I'm sure you'll have no problems tracking them down.  Hint:  a shit ton of them are fully uploaded on a popular streaming video website that starts with you and ends with lube.  No wait, that's what most of my dates end in.

20.  Slaughter High (aka April Fools Day)[1986]

Easily assessable British slasher film moonlighting as all American as apple pie, or welfare.  Typical plot about high schoolers (or people in their mid-thirties) playing a prank on Marty the local nerd, causing his face to be sprayed with acid (after it falls off the top of a rickety self.  sweet storage chemistry club).  Marty gets his revenge after inviting all interested parties to a staged class reunion dispatching them in some what creative and graphic ways.  What works in this movie are the murders, the soundtrack (Harry Manfredini of Friday the 13th fame) and the killers creepy old man jester's outfit.  What doesn't work in this movie is the acting, the acting and the acting.  All the actors use the worst faux American accents really disconnecting you from the story.  Plus the very obvious British boarding school sets don't help this thing pass for American.  Still, the kill scenes and the prerequisite Caroline Munro jiggling should keep your attention to the end.  A notable entry in the slasher genre.

 19.  Just Before Dawn [1981]

Fairly prototypical backwoods slasher film with a very slight twist.  Camping teens get attacked by rednecks in the woods.  I know, I know.  As glowing as that plot description sounds, this one really is a find.  What sets this film apart from trash like Don't Go in the Woods is the superior acting and the amazing nature photography.  Directed by Jeff (Squirm, Blue Sunshine) Lieberman, this is the one Friday the 13th clone that really works.  Nothing new in the way of plot, but utilizes the greatest aspect that a "lost in the woods" movie can have, location.  It's strange saying that one of the best things a slasher movie has going for it is the pretty waterfalls and greenery, but it really opens this movie up and gives it a scope that adds so much to the production value.  Overall what makes this movie sing is the awesome performance by Greg (Slither, Super) Henry.  Henry plays the typical slasher alpha male, but what makes his performance special is his degeneration into weak and scared excess baggage, opening up the opportunity for the survivor female to take her place.  And what a fucking last survivor!  The last stand finale of the film has yet to be topped in slasherdom.  It has only been somewhat replicated by the film Feast.  I won't ruin the twist ending for you, but let's just say there's a reason for the killer being in two places at once in this film.  Better than The Final Terror and Wrong Turn combined.  With George Kennedy batting clean up.

18.  Sledgehammer [1983]

And now we're getting to the dregs.  Video cameras became prevalent in the 1980's and everyone and their muscle bound Playgirl appearing brothers thought they could make a cheap horror film for the video market.  They were not wrong.  Made by the Prior brothers in 1983, Sledgehammer, the second shot on video movie ever, concerns a house full of trashy 80's people being stalked by a guy wearing a mask carrying a sledgehammer.  Pretty basic slasher plot.  It tends to meander in hallucinations, child abuse and I guess ghosts (?) as a back story for the non-seminal lead character.  None of this makes much sense other than it's the typical previous evil that all slashers seem to have.  Back story of the character aside, this movie is as junky as you think it is.  It never get's interesting nor gory as most of the sledgehammer murders get as destructive as you you think they should.  It basically ends up being a bunch of very unlikeable and ugly young adults throwing a boring party in a trashed house.  The main point of the thing seems to be an excuse for Ted Prior to remove his shirt at the drop of a hat.  Shot on video for the video market crap.

17.  Rocktober Blood [1984]

This film came out in the height of the cock rock music genre.  Cock rock and horror go hand and hand, it seems natural to mix the two.  Rocktober Blood was one of the first to cross the two genres beating out Trick or Treat by about three years.  It is also one of crappiest in the subgenre.  The plot concerns a band named Rocktober Blood, who has many members murdered on the cusp of releasing a new album, seemingly by there lead singer Billy.  Billy is charged with the crime and executed.  The girl who fingered (not literally) him takes over as lead signer of the new line up of Rocktober Blood.  When the murders start up again right before the release of the new album all fingers (man this guy loves to get fingered) point to Billy rising from the grave for revenge...or maybe the bitch has just huffed too much Pink Aquanet.  When all cards are on the table you won't be impressed with the outcome.  Ah hell I don't mind ruinnign this one for you.  It's Billy's twin brother.  Thrilling.  Not a great slasher, but you haven't seen it...unless you have.  And if you have, what the hell are doing reading this?

16.  Hollowgate [1988]

Kid gets abused by his father while bobbing for apples (which is actually a hilarious scene) only to return years later to kill people on Halloween in a variety of ways that are represented by his costumes (i.e. solider: he shoots them.  farmer:  runs them over with a combine etc)  This movie works conceptually, but fails technically.  It's shot on that weird late 80's film...or video, you really cant tell.  It's to clean looking to be film, but to dirty to be video.  Either way it makes it look like shit.  This thing could benefit from a rewrite and better production value.  Actually if you did it as a big budget remake, it could work very well.  As it stands now, way too sub pair to be taken seriously.  I appreciate the effort though.

15.  Open House [1987]

Dog food eating homeless psycho kills real estate agents as some sort of commentary on yuppies and the declining middle class or something like that.  This movie plays out like an episode of Falcon Crest or Dynasty.  It misses the mark with the nasty side of slasher films and ops to be a whodunit concentrating more on the leads (Joseph Bottoms and Adrienne Barbeau) and their love story.  There are some great concepts working in this thing.  The kills are strong (one in particular involving a toilet plunger and razorblades is particularly inventive) as well as the look of the killer.  We just don't get enough of it in this movie.  It tends to drag you through boring situations instead of dragging you through unpleasantness which is what slashers are all about.  Recently it has gotten renewed interest as it appeared on Netflix instant.

14.  The Redeemer (aka Class Reunion Massacre) [1978]

Not a 1980's slasher film, but most people know it as Class Reunion Massacre which was released on video in the 1980's.  This movie is a glorious mess as it uses so many ideas that are never explained but all add up as whole to make a deliriously enjoyable early slasher film.  A preacher is visited by a three thumbed kid who rises from a lake transferring his extra appendage which makes the preacher go on a killing spree.  Sounds awesome right?  Well I think so.   I know you're saying "Sounds like Slaughter High" well you'd be some what right about that, but this film has it's own swerve to it.  The preacher uses a number of disguises to lure and kill "sinners" at a phony class reunion.  What works in this movie is it's absurdity as well as it's strange sometimes comical tone that can change on a dime into being completely creepy and serious as a heart attack (the clown killing a girl in the shower while yelling religious nonsense at her is a perfect example).  A great synth score and the strange addition of the "thumbs" subplot really kick this thing into being one of the more interesting slasher films from that era. Props go to the actor (with the name none other than T.G. Finkbinder) playing the killer for his over the top and movie saving performance. A winner in my book, I don't give a shit about your book.  Shit your book was probably written by Dean Koontz.

  13.  Horror House on Highway 5 [1985]

This movie is fucking senseless.  It quite literally makes no sense.  Nothing is explained nor is any of it important.  That's also where most of it's charm comes from.  Dip shit in a Richard Nixon mask runs around killing random people as his two retard sons prepare for his return.  He suppose to be some kind of great scientist/wizard that a group of college students are studying if only to give them a reason to encounter the retarded sons or the killer himself.  What works in this movie is it ridiculous dialog and concepts (one of the sons philosophizes while maggots pour from his head).  I don't know what the fuck is going on and I don't really care.  The source music keeps the pace moving and the kills are fairly well shot and are appropriately grisly (the open scene of a girl slicing her hand up with a piece of broken glass for protection for example).  This is lunacy at it's best.  I don't know if they set out to make a serious movie or not, but they created a perfect cult film experience...if it wasn't so annoying at times.  Check it out for yourself.  You haven't seen anything like this ever.

12.  Amsterdamned [1988]

Apart from having the most hilarious film title in history, this movie doesn't have much going for it.    People end up dead as a killer stalks the canals of the city famous for whores and weed smoking tourist.  It honestly plays more like a cop drama than a slasher film but made the list anyway because I just like saying Amsterdamned.  It does have tons of cop style "action" and the greatest slasher in history, a guy wearing scuba gear and swim fins.  Just the idea that a guy who walks like a duck (not sounds like a duck, that would be New York Ripper) killing people is fucking hilarious.  How can you not get away from him?  Just push his wobbly ass over and run.   Not great cinema, but made the list for a great title and dumb fucking concept.  From the director of BOTH of the possessed killer elevator movies, Dick Maas.  Yeah it ain't North American but it's fucking called Amsterdamned!  I had to include it...Amsterdamned, I had say it again.

11.  Killer Party (aka Fools Night, aka Fools Party, aka April Fools) [1986]

This movie simply has no idea what it wants to be, which is apparent with it's two count them TWO movie within a movie opening sequences.  Girls pledging a sorority get more than they bargain for when a ghost crashes their party.  This thing is equal parts college comedy, slasher film and exorcist clone.  They try to bridge three genres together and end up separating their entire audience.  It just has too many starts and stops for anyone to find it engaging.  The deaths are relatively bloodless and edited, while they earn the award for second dumbest slasher with guy in diving helmet.  It's just not scary nor is it funny. I will give it this, the zombie themed music video at the beginning is the 1980's personified.  The sad thing is, you wish this really was the movie instead of it being the fake out that it is.  It's probably the best shot and edited scene in the film, which begs the question, "What the fuck are you doing?" And that's when you receive the answer, "I really have no idea."  This movie was written by Barney Cohen (Friday the 13th part 4), directed by William Fruet (Funeral Home, Spasms) and has the worst theme music used in horror film history "These Are the Best Times."  Watch it if you are interested in the 1980's being vomited into your face.  Lucifer Valentine I'm talking to you.

10.  Killer Workout (aka Aerobicide) [1987]

Ah christ, not the Prior brothers again.  I've got to stop pissing God off.  He really knows how to fuck you in the ass at the end of the day.  That's right the Priors make their second entry on the list with this 1987 pseudo slasher movie, this time set in a health spa.  Chick get's burned to death in a tanning bed and years later people start to die in horrible ways, namely stabbed with a large safety pin.  This plot was handled better in the much superior Death Spa.  Where as that movie had tons of gore and a goofy plot (Ken Foree doesn't hurt either), this movie again plays out like a whodunit (I'll give you a hint, David Prior has seen Sleepaway Camp).  Ted doesn't manage to keep his shirt on this time either, which I'm sure was the whole point in setting it in a health club.  At least this thing was shot on film and plays out like the lost episode of T.J. Hooker.  The Prior's continued to make movies through out the years.  Whether they be action, drama or horror, Ted always would lose his shirt.  Damn those slippery things.  Lame, very lame.

9.  Destroyer [1988]

Not sure why a jackhammer needs laser sights and a scope, neither did the film makers as he only uses a regular jackhammer once in this fucking thing.  This one falls into the late 80's category of executed and no returned from the dead slasher genre.  Which is kind of a lie.  Unlike Shocker and The Horror Show, the chair doesn't even kill the dude.  Like the poster says, it just gave him a buzz.  Lyle Alzado plays serial killer/rapist Ivan Moser, who on the night of his execution jumps the chair only to stalk the now abandoned prison halls waiting to prey on the film crew that is shooting the new Linda Blair and Sybil Danning showering opus.  Not particularly gory nor interesting.  Though it is kinda fun seeing Lyle Alzado go fucking bat shit giggling the whole movie while slicing and dicing.  Anthony Perkins does his best to not laugh his ass off through every shot he's in, while Deborah Foreman provides the eye candy.  This one is primarily lost to time, but with technology being the way it is, I'm sure it will pop up streaming on Netflix or on a mass market crap DVD soon enough.  Maybe this movie is why God gave Alzado the brain cancer...yeah I'm going to hell for that one. 

8.  Terror on Tour [1980]

From the same shitheads that brought you the terrible Home Sweet Home comes this story about "What if KISS really were evil?"  The band The Clowns (which I assure you are a bunch of fucking clowns) are the darlings of the teen audience and experience a bit of a hiccup when someone in Clown's make-up starts killing drug dealers, groupies and drug dealing groupies.  Was it a member of the band, the adoring roadie or maybe the head of the parents group that want them off the stage?  Do you really care?  I don't.  This movie has a million red herrings and when the killer is revealed you practically forgot he was even a character.  This film tries so hard to comment on the current state of pop culture and falls flat on it's face faster than Ace Freely after a bottle of Jack.  I guess the next question you have is "Well, what's better?  This or Rocktober Blood?"  Neither.  They both suck a bag of dicks.  If I had a gun to my head (and I do so someone please call the police!) I would have to say...ah Rocktober Blood I guess.  Mainly because it's goofier and the music is just a tad better.  So yeah.  It's a movie.

7.  The Ripper [1985]

 

More shit for the shot on video market.  Don't believe the lies on the box about Tom Savini being the Ripper.  Yes, Savini is in the movie and he is the Ripper, but for about 5 minutes right at the end.  He was on set for maybe a day.  The idea of the movie involves a balding college professor who comes into contact with a antique ring that used to belong to Spring Heal Jack.  When he puts on the ring, he get's possessed and starts to kill people.  There is tons of blood in this movie, but that's just it, blood.  It never gets gory nor very interesting.  The movie, scratch that; the video looks like shit.  It reminds me of garbage like Woodchipper Massacre or local car commercials.  They attempt to do some period style dream sequences that end up looking like they visited the Ole Tyme Photo kiosk in their local mall.  Tom can't save anything when he pops in for the final scene wearing yellow contact lenses for no other reason then it makes him look creepy.  I'll give you my entire set of Kubrick DVDs if you can set through this thing and not fast forward.  I fucking dare you.  I triple dog dare you mother fucker!  This movie might as well have been made by Al Adamson.  Where was he anyway?  He wasn't buried under concrete yet.  I want dates and alibis.

6.  Honeymoon Horror [1980]

The owner of a weekend getaway island burns her husband to death because she's a lousy cheating bitch.  A year later, she reopens it with her dumb male lover and her handyman that could give Shriek of the Mutilated's Laughing Crow a run for his money. .  A bunch of sorority girls are getting married and stay on the island.  You don't have to be Poirot to figure out where this shit is going.  What does work are the characters.  Most of the sorority babes (and I use the term "babes" loosely) and their new hubbys pretty distinct personalities.  You still confuse them left and right, but for the most part they are not just a carbon copy of one another. This is another poor example of apeing Friday the 13th and basically has the same sets.  Lots of spooky woods and cabins are they stars of this film as it sure ain't the terrible actors that crap out pointless dialog. The killer hides and watches behind bushes like so many other of these films tend to do.  Where they trip up is constantly showing the killers burned and mangled hands really killing any sort of suspense of who the killer is.  You are primarily just waiting for this guy to ultimately put the hatchet into his miserable cheating wife's head (a decent scene of gore).  They build sympathy for him in the beginning but loose all of it when he kills the relatively blameless college kids.  You've seen this movie time and time again.  The kills aren't anything special and make you long for Madman Marz to show up.  Apart from this amazing vhs box artwork this movie should have been lost in time like so many Christopher Reeves.

5.  Twisted Nightmare [1987]

Made in 1982 but not released until 1987, if that tells you anything.  Shot on the same set as Friday the 13th 3D, and that's not the only thing it has in common with Friday.  A bunch of "teens" go back to their old camp and start to be picked off one by one by the retarded kid they used to poke fun at back in the day.  Sounding similar?  The kid was basically Joey from Friday 5, but in this one he is burned horribly and it was even on an old Indian burial ground.  Holy shit did they throw every horror cliche at this one.  It never really picks itself up off the ground.  You think with all these cliches it would be the ultimate experience in horror...or a gigantic mess.  I vote gigantic mess.  The burn make up makes him look more like Leatherface than Cropsy, but his costuming is pretty cool especially for the time period.  I this had to had more to do with Columbine than the Matrix or Marilyn Manson ever did.  The murders happen mostly off screen so that tends to devalue this as a horror film.  It really ends up being more stalk than slash.  Possibly the most annoying group of slasher fodder teens you've ever seen in a horror film.  Mullets abound in this movie.

4.  The Prey [1984]

By far this movie has the best poster tagline in screen history.  "It's not human, and it's got and axe."  Well sorry, to burst your bubble, but it is human.  He does have that axe though, so there can be truth in advertising.  Back in the day there was a forest fire that burned a bunch of gypsies in cave.  One survived and years later it strikes back a bunch of campers.  Wow, in the early 80's they really didn't bother to come up with any plots.  They tried to come up with an original back story for the killer or monster, but beyond that they really just didn't give a shit.  The campers are just that.  The characters are boring and really have no purpose to go on living.  It's not like one of them was going to grow up to be President one day.  Although most of them do have the personality of a young college aged George W Bush, sans the coke addiction.   They are literally just there to be menaced and to be lopped off one by one.  This one is no different.  You feel as if you've seen this movie before, and you really have.  The two points in this movie that make it any different from any other movie is when they reveal the killer at the end (which looks like a cross between the Lady Frankenstein creature and the pinhead from The Brain that Wouldn't Die) and when the park ranger tells a really bad joke...to a deer.  Even he doesn't find it funny.  That fucker has a screw loose, but mutant man does try to fix it as he's choking the life out of him.  The movie does earn some respect for killing primarily all of the cast  As boring as they come.  You'll be looking for something else to do.  Anything.  Go cook some dinner for your wife or something.  If you're not going to I will.  What would you like sweety? 

3.  House of Death (aka Death Screams) [1982]

This movie was, funnily enough, directed by one of Ozzie and Harriet's kids who was trying to make a break from his goody goody...well Ozzie and Harriet style lifestyle.  This is your A typical 80's slasher movie with really no wit at all.  This movie takes a good long while to get going.  It starts with two simultaneous bloodless murders on a train track and stalls like Knightrider 2000 after that.  This movie is absolutely enamored with the county fair that's come to town.  We spend a good portion of our time on the Tilt A Whirl and the pedafiliac kissing booth.  It really starts to give you fits remembering the horror that is Carnival of Blood.  Plus, I don't think I've ever seen older "teens" in a horror film in my life.  Pretty positive I saw one of their AARP cards drop out of their wallet in one scene.  And I shit you not, one of them has a pronounced bald spot.  They try to establish the horror film retard as a red herring, but you never believe a bit of it as he seems way to into his toy trains to ever pic up a machete.  Plus they never even tell you what happens to Corky.  The teens finally decide to get up to horror movie hi jinx at the cemetery 50 minutes in. That's where this thing really picks up it's pace faster than Prefontaine (I just wish it had his sweet mustache).  The kills start to get pretty damned graphic with some beheadings and a chick getting cut in half.  It seems like all the kills in this happen in about a 10 minute blistering period as well.  Why couldn't the whole movie be this balls out action?  Really abrasive musical score that seems more at home on an episode of the 1960's Batman show than in an 80's slasher movie.  Probably the only slasher film where the lead villain dies due to his own dumbassery...that and the cop blowing his head off after he is already dead.  Great police work there Kojak.

2.  Silent Madness 3D [1984]

Made in the 1980's 3D boom, Silent Madness is only that, a 3D movie (and not even good 3D).  A Dr. (ahem) Krueger is trying to cut down on overcrowding at the mental ward accidentally releasing serial killer Howard Johns to wreak his 3D brand of havoc on a bunch of sorority girls. The funny thing about this movie is the amount of actors from other horror films it has in it.  You have Ronnie and Meg from Sleepaway Camp as well as hard working slasher girl Elizabeth Kaitan appearing in this picture.  Which is actually very apt as this movie seems like a hodgepodge of other slasher movies.  It's kinda like 20 great slasher hits from days past.  The kills are never inventive while lead Belinda Montgomery stares into the camera with a look on her face as if she's just shit her pants at Denny's.  It doesn't take long for the thing to get going, but the "what went wrong" subplot keeps wanting to drag you down keeping this thing at a snails pace.  Sydney Lassick shows up, not demanding his cigarettes for once, as the town sheriff (check his house for basement dwelling retards please).  The 3D in this movie sucks with it's best gag being a cartoon hatchet thrown right at the camera.  This has to be the biggest waste of 3D since Parasite 3D.  They didn't shoot it like a 3D movie, never once taking advantage of the scope 3D can bring to a film.  It's just an occasional gag with something being thrown at the camera.  It's the kinda film that spelled the death of 1980's slashers.  No real story to speak of, just fodder to get to the murders which again aren't much to write home (if you grew up in my fucked up house) about.  Why the fuck do they keep going in the basement!

1.  Hauntedween [1991]

There's a reason you've never heard of this 1991 slasher film as I'm pretty sure only 2000 copies were  available for rental at select gas stations around America.  This Kentucky made movie was a pet project by a bunch of radio/tv graduates from Western Kentucky University.  The director wanted to prove that you can make movies in Kentucky.  This movie proves nothing.  The story concerns a family owned haunted house where the son accidentally kills a young girl.  Years later, a fraternity needs to make a bill payment and decide to open the supposedly cursed haunted house to make money.  Guess who shows up?  Michael Myers!  Okay so it's not Myers, but damn close.  The kid from the past returns on Halloween night wearing a variety of cheap jack Dollar Store Halloween masks to kill all the annoying college kids.  The trick here is all the visitors seem to think it's all part of the haunted house attraction, that is until one guy runs in and say's "This ain't part of the haunted house, it's real!"  I don't know why they all of a sudden listen to the least creditable character in the movie, but they do.  Full of some of the worst acting I've seen in movies period.   Hauntedween will go down in history as being one of the most generic and poorly put together slasher films ever.  A good example of it's cheap quality is the baseball bat death where one character gets his head knocked off with one clean non-abrasive strike.  Christ even the neck stub looks like the head was removed with a scalpel.  The villain is ultimately dispatched with a flamethrower and a car wreck.  Where these college kids got their mitts on a flamethrower is beyond me. This one wins the award for the least sympathetic most annoying characters.  There's a reason you don't set movies in Kentucky, people want to see white trash die.  With the exception of the lead actress some of the most non-erotic nudity in filmdom.  They all look like they're on day twelve of a six day meth binge. The character, who I believe is named Hanks, is the worst character ever bar fucking none.  He's suppose to be the wacky fun frat guy and only succeeds in alienating the entire audience with his forced southern accent.  He thinks he's Joe Bob Briggs...he is no Joe Bob.  You want him dead after the first line he speaks.  You wait and wait for him to finally get his comeuppance.  You want it to be so painful.  You want him to beg and plead for his life, if only you didn't have to hear his grating voice again.  Pull out his fucking tongue!  I want his fucking face turned into cube stake!  The sad thing is for once I want all these things to happen to the actual actor...and the fucker lives!  The only guy you care to see die ends up being the fucking hero!  The one mother fucker that lives!  Way to just shit on the audience.  Die mother fucker die!  They took away the only joy I had while watching this.  The one thing I wanted to see, and they stole it from me.  I cry death at the makers of this film!  Death I tells you.

Juinor (aka Hot Water) (aka A Cut Above) (aka How many titles does this thing have?)

By I. Alexander Nash

  It's been many years since the classic film Deliverance posed one engaging question to America, and through it's success, the rest of the world:  If you had a choice to rape Burt Reynolds or Ned Beatty, would you pick Beatty!?!  I mean I understand Beatty was weak and it was all about preying on that weakness, but young, shirtless and fucking chiseled Burt!?!  Gay or not you rape that dude!  I mean I'm not gay or anything.  Just ask my girlfriend...wait...on second thought.  Maybe you ask...ah...my...mom?  Yeah talk to her, she'll back me up.  She's my mom....I'm not gay alright.  Where was I?  Oh yeah, hardcore raping Burt Reynolds.  First I tussle his wet comb-over and see him for who he truly is.  He doesn't need to put heirs on for me.  He's beautiful just the way he...okay, after receiving a text from my girlfriend I need to kill this whole line of thinking...for now.  Deliverance was a huge success and helped create the genre of Hicksploitation.  Many entries in this genre have been created and disappeared over the years.  You have your Backwoods from 1987, Hunter's Blood from 1986 and of course the superior Best Little Whore House in Texas from 1982.  God, did Burt look great in the that Sheriff's hat.  Man I'd love too...moving on.  Canada was not exempt from this genre.  Canada did their own share of tar and feathering with movies like 1982's Trapped and with the Canada staffed but Texas shit, I mean shot Junior (aka Hot Water aka A Cut Above).

I want to listen to Air Supply and sip Chablis with this box art

   This movie is one of video store lore so to speak.  Released primarily as Junior in the states, it was toted as a supreme horror film with it's Jason/Freddy bashing on the cover as well as it's chainsaw wielding star buzzing right through the fucking cover.  God, you have to miss 80's video box art.  The giant balls these marketing companies had to try to sell you something they knew god damn well was not the movie in their beautifully designed package is worth the price of the rental alone.  Junior is no exception.  They packaged it as slasher (with absolutely no still shots on the back might I add) when in all honesty this is a Hicksploitation film through and through.  When sold in other territories as Hot Water, you get exactly that.  Bountiful breasts and explosive action don it's cover.  Well maybe the action part is bullshit, but the bountiful part is right on the nose.

Vixen album cover or vhs art.  You be the judge.

  I don't know where the hell this thing was sold as A Cut Above.  It's even listed as it's title on IMDB and most of the internet.  The only place I've seen that title is as a splash line on the Junior box.  The internet is never wrong about any of it's facts.  I'll just chock this one up as the internet's first ever mistake.  IMDB can't  be wrong, right?  I know the film in it's cut form as Junior and will be discussing this version as I don't have enough time nor give a shit to bother to ever find an uncut copy of this movie.  In the video explosion era of history, this movie would taunt me from the mislabeled horror shelf.  Junior's soft psychotic buggy eyes seem to call to you, "Come forth young squire and find a new horror icon." As it turns out, I was lied to by Junior that two timing tobacco chewing fiend.  He just wanted to fuck me as a horror film but he was really engaged to be married to Hicksploitation this whole time.  Burt wouldn't dare pull that shit on me.

Andy Sidaris assistant buys a new pair of pants

  The film was shot in English but apparently had shitty sound as the actors are all dubbed.  And it's not quite like Italian film's Nick Alexander dubbing, but more like Indonesian Lady Terminator dubbing.  Odd.  We start with the title song "Hot Water," played over a very cheap video title card which obviously was not it's original.  Plus the song is too much of a good time song.  This thing could have played in the film Up the Creek and no one would be the wiser.   A couple of Whitesnake groupies/whores (which is basically synonymous) get released from the set of The Destroyer only to run into their ex-pimp.  After literally exploding his nose with a coke spoon, the gals steal the pimps wheels and show us how sassy two 1980's ex-prostitutes can be by stopping an attempted rape with nothing more than a bathtub in the middle of a working garage filled with slop.  The Macks special stable decide they need a new line of work and a less coked up costumer.  Seemingly out of fucking nowhere they decide to go straight and do what all modern ladies of the night do when their time to leave their profession comes, open a marina?  I mean after all old Lita Ford over here did take that mechanics class in prison.  Immediately after taking over this dilapidated lake shore house, the girls are harassed by the local Dukes of Hazzard cosplay club.

The perks of being Winger's security

   This is where we are introduced to our star, Junior.  Very rarely in film history have we been introduced to a main character mid-coitus as Junior comes barreling through their front door with his dick firmly implanted (while wearing overalls the whole time.  still haven't figured this one out) in what appears to be a leftover extra from Roadhouse.

Jerry O'Connell selects a new bride

   Turns out Junior, the sheriff and the whole town are out to get them for being the whores that they are, even though they are a way higher quality whore than any of their local whores.  Why step in the way of whore progress in your town?  First you get a McDonalds.  Then you get a Wallmart and a Pizza Hut.  Then you get a more upper class of whores.  This is how the economy works people!  Junior gets dunked into the drink damaging the only part of his brain untouched by that bathtub crank, i.e. his ego.  Junior seems to have a very Norman Bates like relationship with that 20 kid from tech support dressed up as an old woman representing his mother.  Why is it in a lot of these exploitation movies do they always throw a powdered wig on some young, dumb, and to top it off male actor to play old women?  Kinda like throwing the baby out with the bathwater and then squashing it with the whole bathtub.

Ike you've made your Mother very proud

  This is where the real action begins as this is where this movie turns into a huge tittyfest.  I mean so many pointless nude scenes, and even in the midst of action there are always, and I do stress always, close ups of this girls ass. Man I've seen this girls ass more than my own at this point.  This cinematographer really knows what he's doing.  Further on into the thing one of the girls meets an aquaphobic botanist who lives on a houseboat that is literally a Semi trailer roped onto a couple of pontoons.  Man is this guy swift.  He plays guitar AND he had the same pain tolerance surgery in Darkman as Junior rips a fish hook right out of the guys hand with no response whatsoever.  Where do I sign up? I mean he's no Burt Re....stop it!  Stop it!  I don't wanna wear the dress mommy!  Who was I again?  Right, movie reviewer.

That girls ass...plus leaches

   Where I get lost in this movie is Junior's attitude towards the whole kitten caboodle.  Apparently he is trying to impress his mother with his property destruction and his many attempted rapes.  Aw that rascal Junior. I guess it's the same mother from the Charles Kaufman film Mother's Day.  Problem is you put Junior in a street fight with Ike from Mother's Day and I take 4 to 1 odds on Ike any day of the damn week.  It really never gives a reason why this guy is basically one of the characters from I Spit on Your Grave.  I guess it's the same reason as in that film, he's just a regular dumb shit old redneck.  Dumb shit or not, he does have a great parlor trick by consuming a long neck, bottle and all.  Slow witted Junior continues to fuck with the trio (the whores invite one of Junior's victims to join their coven) relentlessly always asking his mother for acceptance and approval.  Ah I see.  I guess this was the base story for Forrest Gump.   They should write "Based on the Winston Groom book" on the video sleeve.  It'll help those sorts of issues out.

My momma always says that I have magic raping legs

    Probably the most exciting scene in this movie happens when the girls get their high performance speed boat out on the lake, only to be surrounded by Junior and company (a possible sequel title for Coscarelli's Kenny and Co.  Don I have a phone that rings.  I'm just saying).  This whole thing is starting to play out like an evil Meatballs 3.  Hold on...yep, shot on the same set.  What do ex-prostitutes do when surrounded on a speed boat by several dingys in.dingys?  They do what any whores/Hollywood actresses/bikini models/Hooter's waitresses/strippers (again all synonymous) would do.  Why you make a Molotov cocktail with your soaking wet bikini top and a handy 40 oz Coors bottle filled with gasoline, that's what you do.  Oh Patrick Dempsey, you had it so wrong brother.  You didn't need the ghost of Sally Kellerman at all.

Still from the new parody porn film "Ramboob"

  It's a whole back and forth situation until I'd say the last 20 minutes when their dog, who was specifically introduced to be killed, is killed.  I can't really say it was the dog or even Junior's actions.  I prefer to think Rowlf the piano playing Muppet was having a hard time balancing out that Seroquel prescription. Junior is at his wit end and proceeds to take a chainsaw to the house for ten minute scene of destruction culminating in a very phallic display chainsawery.  The sheriff finally takes an interest when they find desiccated corpses in the boat house.  He must be up for reelection.

Chainsawery!  It's a word.  Look it up

  The final straw for the Bangles is when Junior's intended rape victim shows up dead and Bud, one of the boyfriends, gets dragged away by a boat and a noose combo...did I forget to tell you about Bud earlier?  Well, you see how much that character registered on my radar.  With one girl left at the house and one girl on the hunt, Junior's last stand comes as he tries to burn down what the producers of the film called a house.  Through trickery and chicanery the girls trap Junior in a net ala the Ewoks on Endor.  Nets were all the rage in 1984.  What we are given at the end is actually a surprise, it's a switcharoo.  I can honestly say I didn't see it coming.  I mean yes in a plodding sort of way it's not unexpected, but for them to even try to pull the switcharoo at the end is the unexpected part.  I figured dispatch Junior, movie over.  They attempt to actually do something at all.  Congrats guys Dom Perignon on me.  It's been the sheriff the whole time.  It's strange that in this movie you spend the whole time hating this white trash river rat and they actually have the balls to try to give Junior some sympathy at the end.  It doesn't work but the attempt is much appreciated.  Momma becomes the ultimate savior running in with shotguns blazing.  Quite literally blazing as she sets the whole fucking house on fire engulfing herself, her son and a few dead bodies including the shotgun blasted sheriff.

Nice work fuzzball

  Im surprised about the downer ending for this thing.  All the boyfriends die.  All the villains die.  All emo kids pretending to be old women die.  In fact, everyone who comes in contact with these two die.  Christ those are some cursed whores.  The sheriff was right the whole time.  Those girls really were trouble.  No one comes outta this thing smelling of roses.  The weirdest curve ball this movie throws at you at the end are two just depressed ex-whores riding off on a home made houseboat while the extremely upbeat song "Hot Water" reprises.  I don't really know how to feel about this.  How do you feel when you go in feeling Gorp, go out feeling Bellflower, and then left with the title track from King Frat?  I'm a little frightened.  It's very rare when I don't have an opinion on a movie.  Am I broken or is this movie.  Was it great?  No.  Was it terrible?  No.  Was it entertaining?  Not really.  Was it boring?  Not really.  I guess the only thing I can equate this movie with is like that funeral you had for your pet fish Burt when you were a kid.  It's not that you were sad.  It's not that you were happy.  You just kind of....were.  Wait a minute.  Is this what that Smashing Pumpkins album was talking about all along?

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