Or, if they do have the sense, they stupidly return to the house soon after. In the 1982 original written by Rita Mae Brown and directed by Amy Holden Jones, a girls’ basketball team (whose players suck on the court, it should be noted), shack up for a night at the house of Trish (Michelle […]
shout
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Psycho II / Psycho III / Bates Motel
However, that doesn’t mean one can’t make a satisfying picture that continues to tell the tale. While they’re sacrilege to some, the Psycho sequels get a bad rap, yet they’re actually pretty good, considering the awfully intimidating shadow in which they exist. The first two, 1983’s Psycho II and 1986’s Psycho III, have made their […]
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Cockneys vs Zombies
In jolly ol’ England, the Bow Bells Care Home is set to be demolished to make way for luxury apartments, thereby displacing many a needy elder. The move comes earlier than anticipated when the construction crew unearths a “plague pit” chock full of the living dead. Meanwhile, one of the residents (Alan Ford, The Sweeney […]
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Dark Angel
Oh, well. At least it’s finally available on Blu-ray, so I can ditch the MGM burned-on-demand DVD (an overdue 2011 release that finally allowed me to ditch my VHS — Google it, kids). Any Dolph Lundgren fan worth his weight in protein powder knows how welcome this high-def release from Shout! Factory is. In a […]
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X-Ray / Schizoid
The former, perhaps better-known as Hospital Massacre, comes from the age where you not only could smoke inside a medical center, but could rest a nationwide release on the shoulders of a Playboy personality — in this case, Barbi Benton. She plays Susan, a beautiful divorcée who goes to the hospital to hear her results […]
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The Fog
The picture depicts a supernatural takeover of the sleepy California coastal town of Antonio Bay by a band of ghost pirates seeking revenge for their deaths 100 years prior. They menace the entire populace, but for the purposes of this story, Carpenter focuses primarily on the DJ of the lighthouse radio station (Adrienne Barbeau, Swamp […]
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The Kentucky Fried Movie
Nothing more than a collection of roughly two dozen unrelated sketches, The Kentucky Fried Movie succeeds most at skewering its own medium: American commercial cinema. Fake trailers mock the exploitation fads of the era with Cleopatra Schwartz (blaxploitation), That’s Armageddon (disaster movies) and Catholic High School Girls in Trouble (youth sex films); they’re so dead-on, […]
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The Incredible Melting Man
TIMM (for short) continues his head-ripping rampage, leaving Geiger-equipped Dr. Ted Nelson (Burr DeBenning) to follow the putrid piles of the grubby, brown-red pus he drips everywhere, not to mention the occasional ear or eyeball. Basically, TIMM looks like he is using a Little Caesars Hot-N-Ready as a face mask. The movie is one of […]
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Crimewave
When I ran across Crimewave at the Buttons video store at N.W. 63rd and May Avenue in 1988, I had never heard of it. However, I rented it as soon as I spotted that it was co-written by Joel and Ethan Coen; at the time, they had just made this little comedy I absolutely adored, […]
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Tower Block
The title refers to an apartment complex built post-WWII, a title card informs us. Once attractive and affordable, the place deteriorated over the decades into England’s equivalent of Chicago’s infamous Cabrini-Green, to the point of demolition. As the thriller opens, only the top floor of Serenity House, aka Tower Block 31, awaits removal and rehousing. […]