"Your In-Flight Movie Selection"

The Manster has long been one of my favorite late-night creature-features. I hadn’t watched it in a couple of years, though and thought it was high time I revisited it once I realized it had premiered on DVD. And I still loved it. It’s more fun that it really has any right to be. My girl watched it with me and we both had a ball with it, adding our own MSTie commentary to it.

An American foreign-correspondent climbs high into the mountains of Japan on the trail of a story involving a scientist who’s doing research on human evolution. While there the scientist drugs him and injects him with some sort of experimental serum and turns the reporter into a raging alcoholic, misogynistic asshole, who eventually grows a hairy hand and an eyeball on his shoulder, which eventually grows into a second head. While all this is happening the reporter begins killing people in the streets while his estranged boss and wife try to save him.

This movie could’ve been called "The Jerkster" because the reporter’s transformation into a womanizing, verbally abusive husband is so mean-spirited and vitriolic that it almost makes you cringe. That’s if you take this crap seriously. Which there’s no reason you should. But yeah, he gets injected with strange serum and before he turns into a hideous, homicidal monstrosity, he turns into the worlds’ biggest jerk. This would be a great flick to watch after your girlfriend dumps you.

The picture on this disc is no better or worse than it ever was on VHS, but who cares? Flicks like this are supposed to look like crap. Polishing it up would expose all the seams and ruin it. I suggest watching it on the tiniest black and white TV you can find. Then grab a twelve-pack, invite some obnoxious buddies over and pop this baby in. Declare OPEN SEASON on it from frame one and have a ball!

The Manster is the shit, man … ster. (That bad joke courtesy of my girl Daintry.)

Here upon this DVD lays the first two (and only) true Nudie Musicals. Oh, sure, there was that Cindy Williams film from the 70s called The First Nudie Musical, but these are the real thing, baby!

The first film on this 2 movie special edition is Sinderella And The Golden Bra and it goes without saying that it is very weird. It sort of reminds me of Cinderfella or Snow White And The Three Stooges, but the boobs in this film aren't people just playing dolty characters. The songs are not bad for their time and it made me want to burn a CD from the audio on the film. You know the story here...you haven't seen it, but you know the story. Sinderella wants to go to the ball, but her evil stepmother and stepsisters keep her busy at home doing chores. Her "fairy" godfather comes down and grants her wish, but as she leaves the party at the stroke of midnight (per the original story), the Prince's sticky fingers are only able to grab her bra before she runs away. Well this, of course, leads to a massive search around the kingdom to find the woman who fits the bra. Alas most of the whom are either too big or too small. Will the Prince find Sinderella (who they usually call Derella) and live happily ever after? Well, you already know he will,but that is not the point. This is an interesting film and is worthy of a group viewing or background at a party.

The second film, Goldilocks And The Three Bares, is not based on the fairy tale at all, but involves some people in the entertainment industry who find out one of their own is secretly a...(gasp!)...nudist! This film is actually the true "first nudie musical".shot in `63, and directed by Hershall Gordon Lewis (Blood Feast, 2000 Maniacs). Nudist films tend to be pretty boring, but this one is interesting and the commentary with William F. Friedman and Mike Vraney makes it even better. You gotta love William Friedman's commentary tracks for Something Weird Video. He always has interesting stories to tell. For example he didn't hold back as to how he felt about the male lead in this film (he didn't like him very much). He also points out something that I didn't catch while watching the movie...that same actor is also missing half of a finger. Crazy.

As almost always on Something Weird DVDs, there are a ton of extras on the disc including a bunch of shorts, a ton of retro nudie trailers, and a gallery of vintage nudie magazine cover artwork (being a self taught student of retro cover art, this feature was a really cool suprise)! Definitely worth a rental or a purchase if you are into the genre.

John Michael McCarthy instantly made a fan of me with his first full length film Teenage Tupelo. It's grainy black and white Drive-In style was a perfect homage to a genre that pretty much no longer exists in modern filmmaking. I was lucky enough to meet J.M.M. at this year's Miss Exotic World competition where he was a judge. To me, this is equal to meeting Tarantino or Doris Wishman. Anyway, he passed along this, his latest film, for review and here we are now with me writing and you reading. How charming.

Superstarlet A.D. actually seems to be a continuation of the film that was within the film Teenage Tupelo. In that film D'Lana Tunnel was watching an old apocalyptic themed burlesque film where starlets ran around in vintage underwear fighting off cavemen in broken down trailers. In this film starlets run around in vintage underwear hunting down cromagnon-like cavemen in apocalyptic Memphis, now called Femphis. All men have devolved into the cavemen in question while all women have evolved into superstarlets and roam in gangs designated by hair color. Many of the women roam the city wearing old film reels on their backs. These reels contain footage of their ancestors in old burlesque loops. The two main characters in the film are from different tribes (blonde and brunette), but have fallen in love against the wishes of other blonde and brunette superstarlettes. They travel the ruins of Femphis searching out brunette Naomi's grandmother's burlesque film. Along the way they encounter "Beauty Cults" like the brunette Satanas, the blonde Phayrays, and the evil redheaded Tempests. They also encounter a strange time traveler who may or may not hold a secret about the past. Who knows. As you can tell, this is a strange film and can be hard to follow at times, but that doesn't mean that it's not good.

Ok, the bad news about this film first. Lloyd Kaufman (the head of Troma) introduces the film and informs us that they digitally cleaned up the film. I think this worked against it a little bit since it comes off as a little TOO clean. This type of film (which like Teenage Tupelo is shot mostly in black and white) needs the grain and scratches. The film feels like a lost document and those little honest bits of grain would have helped with the theme. Troma's computer retouching of Cannibal: The Musical! was great, but it wasn't needed here. As far as the story, it took a second viewing with John Michael McCarthy's commentary track to really know what was going on. Still the film was entertaining...really way-out and weird, but entertaining. One interesting fact from the commentary was that Naomi's blonde partner Rachel was actually played by 5 or 6 different actresses. I didn't quite catch that when I first watched it, but I did notice that she looked remarkably different in a scene when her hair was down. The commentary track actually made me want to see the film again armed with the knowlege of what was going on.

So this isn't a film for everyone, but if you are a fan of retro-style, machine toting supervixens, and pycho singing demonesses...this could be the film for you and your friends to watch in a group. Now, I gotta go watch that copy of JMM's The Sore Losers I just got!

Wow, remember back when the paper version of No-Fi "Magazine" used to review the occasional 70s adult film as a joke? Well, this "film" made in 1990 was in a friend of mine's DVD player I was using recently and I forgot to put it back in the machine when I returned it (no, not the cute "accidently forgot to return it" excuse... It was actually legitimate). I guess that person knows now who I am talking about. Anyway, Holly-Tron threw it in our own player as a joke and we actually sorta' watched the film via the commentary track.

First off, this was like no other commentary track on any other film as far as I know. The director actually taped himself at the editing bay where you see the video playing in the background as he comments on the scenes as he fast-forwards through the film. This was actually cool (for what it's worth), because the sex scenes looked quite boring. So John the director (who is also the "butt-man" in the title) talks us through the set up of the scenes and why he chose to shoot scenes in certain ways and editing choices. There are a few stories about the actors "performances" and aside from him taking short breaks from the film to fondle his girlfriend, it is actually more clinical than raunchy. He didn't really talk about one of its stars, Madison, who we interviewed back in Issue #3. Nor did he mention that Zara Whites became a huge mainstream star overseas after her porn career (don't ask me how I even know that). I guess this was interesting in a "wow, pornos have comentary?" or a "so that's the thought process behind these" sort of way.

Oh, one creepy thing of note, he mentions that when he shot this film, one of its stars Alexandria Quinn had ID and birth records that showed that she was 18 although she was really 17 at the time. So her scenes were cut out of the movie on the DVD. BUT in his commentary, he has to cut the camera or turn the camera whenever she is on his monitor. Although we, the viewers, don't see her, doesn't that imply that he may, in effect, be in possession of child pornography? (I believe that all filmakers who worked with her were cleared of any wrongdoing on their parts.) That is your debate topic for this evening. Talk amongst yourselves.

As Public Enemy once famously said, “Don’t believe the hype!”

And that’s about all I can say by way of warning you about this flick. The cover art for the DVD looks promising: a bloodied female face, obviously that of a recently butchered victim. And above her dead visage read “Original Uncensored Version.” Always a good thing.

Flip to the back and you find out that Unhinged sounds pretty much like any other exploitation horror movie: a group of teenagers get in a car crash, are taken in by strange family, and then things get bloody and nutty. Well, of course, that doesn’t sound all that exciting, but look around the plot synopsis and what do you see? Why “Unhinged outsold Poltergeist before being banned!” and “Contains nudity, violence, language, disturbing themes,” and “graphic violence and full nudity caused English Parliament to ban Unhinged in 1985!” and “Now, for the first time ever Unhinged is available for purchase!” Wouldn’t you buy a movie with that much purportedly going for it? Of course you would. So is this worth it?

Whatever. This movie sucks. And I’ve watched it three times, so I feel I have the right to say that. I have a lot of patience for B movies and exploitation movies. I generally like most of the ones I see, and I’m rarely that hard on a movie. Being a low budget filmmaker myself I can sympathize with most low-budget/indie efforts and I try to cut them some slack. But not this time. There’s only one thing going for this movie and that’s the ending. It’s pretty sweet. And maybe, just maybe it’s worth it for that. But after sitting through it three times (I had to understand where all the hyperbole was coming from – I mean, that cover was pretty convincing!) I don’t think so. If the ending of this movie could be transplanted to another movie, well then that other movie would have a kick ass ending. Unhinged doesn’t deserve its cool ending.

I really hate to be so negative and I would love to say better things about this, but if you watch the extras on this DVD, there’s an old 1980 interview with the director and one of the stars (the only actually good actress in the thing, I might add) and even he can’t think of anything interesting or relevant to say about his own movie. He just stammers away, talking about how horror flicks make money and whatever. Never once does he appear to actually be proud of what he did, or have any real passion for what he’s talking about.

I guess it goes to prove that just because a movie got banned for whatever reason, or because it has tits and ass and blood and guts doesn’t mean it’s GOOD. It just means they lucked out and landed a distributor that’s good at slinging hype. There are, after all, a lot of folks out there who get paid good money to polish turds on a regular basis. Stand up and refuse them! Don’t let them bamboozle you, adventuresome movie geeks! We may shell out our hard earned money for the silliest of cinematic trifles at the drop of a hat, but it doesn’t have to mean we’re completely gullible!

In other words, don’t buy Unhinged. If you do, you’ll hate yourself in the morning.

This has to be the most ridiculous movie Charles Band has ever made. And that’s saying something, considering his resume.

I don’t know … I still don’t really know whether I liked this flick or not. Sure, it had the makings of what my friend Jeremy would call "beautiful greatness:" Midgets dressed up as famous monsters (Dracula, Wolfman, Frankenstein's Monster, The Mummy), gratuitous nudity, gratuitous drool … and speaking of those famous monsters! Guess who plays Dracula? Yes, the diminutive master of the macabre himself, Phil Fondacaro, simply one of the greatest actors of all time. I mean, anyone who can go from Troll to Willow to Ghoulies II all in one career has got to be given some sort of props.

The premise here is rather hokey, but then again, aren't all Full Moon productions guilty of a little "hoke?" A stuttering, corpulent mad scientist steals some first printings of the most famous horror novels in history and uses his "Archetype Inducer" to bring the monsters of these classics to life. For some reason, things don’t go quite as planned, and when the monsters emerge from their chambers, they are half the size they should be. This is high concept stuff here. Seriously, who ever thought of taking all the famous monsters of horror cinema and have them played by "little people?" Personally, the concept alone is the best part of the movie, cuz the movie itself never quite lives up to its promises.

Or does it? See, that's just it. I can’t decide. There are some great moments sprinkled throughout here. There’s a lesbian who masturbates with a first printing copy of Jane Eyre, a werewolf drooling onto a woman’s naked breasts (this scene is actually filmed in what can only be described as "Breast-O-Vision," as we see the drool slop all over the lens from the POV of a pair of mammaries), and Fondacaro’s wonderfully campy delivery of the line "We shall live on … in your nightmares," as he jumps into a vortex of psychedelic colors.

Problems is, for every great scene, there's at least two utterly annoying scenes. Your finger itches for the FF button on your remote. But you resist, out of fear that you may miss something good. Like, for instance, the lead actress is painful to watch. She’s good looking enough, but as per usual with a Full Moon movie, her acting leads one to deduce that perhaps she was one of Charles Band's nephew's girlfriends. She just can't act. No matter how hard she tries. She was also in Full Moon's Hideous!, which I admit I actually enjoyed a great deal better than this. The ironic thing is, when I read reviews in Fangoria of both of these movies, The Creeps was given a better review than Hideous! To each their own, I guess.

And the mad scientist really gets on your nerves. At first, his character is kinda funny. Endearing, with that hopeless stutter, and portly figure. But after the first scene, you just want to slap him bloody.

One other good thing in this movie is how it gives a nod and a wink to horror/cult cinema geeks by having one of the main characters work in a video store. Many cult titles are mentioned, some of which only the most astute Movie Geek will recognize. My favorite line is "Yes, I got you the uncut Cut and Run."

Full Moon seems to be venturing into the more self-referential horror as of late, with this movie and The Dead Hate the Living. Never ones to forgo a trend, those wacky Full Moon freaks.

This is not a porn flick...it just features a former porn actress from the 70s in its cast. Annie Sprinkle is a former prostitute turned porn star turned new age guru turned photographer turned writer turned lecturer turned art hero (You can read all about her in the essay I wrote about her in issue #3). In a rare non-adult film appearance, she co-stars in this art-house film about a German lesbian woman named Vicky trying to make it as an actor in New York while waiting tables. In a La Cage Aux Folles-esque turn of events, she learns that her German father is coming to visit and she is worried because she has been telling him that she has been a successful actor in a great marriage. She gets her male gay roommate to pretend to be her husband, but it proves to be tough when he tries to sneak out for play in the middle of the night. Anyway her father goes with her on an audition and that's when they both meet Annie Sprinkle (playing herself...not with herself which would normally be the case). So anyway Annie is charmed by the out of place and bewildered father and soon gets her mits (and boobs) all over him. Things get crazier when Vicky's dad is cast in a successful commercial and she finds herself involved with both the girl of her dreams and with a man who may have been a woman at one time. The box that this video came in had a sticker on it that says "Lesbian Theme" and while that may be true, it's weird that some company out there produces little yellow stickers that say "Lesbian Theme" on them. What would happen if I stuck them on a couple of my female friends? Lots of great pictures, that's what would happen. Anyway, I liked this film. The cast was good and he story was entertaining. It's a "chick flick" for the kind of girls you would actually want to know. I would say that it's a nice film to watch with a boyfriend or girlfriend, but I think most straight guys would be afraid to give it a try due to the lesbian and transexual storylines. But No-Fi "Readers" are different right? Right! So go to your local videostore that rents out independent films and check it out. (And hey, you get to see Annie Sprinkle's boobies so whattaya waiting for?!?)

I recently had the privilege of seeing a midnight screening of The Last House on the Left on a big screen. The print was really awful, severely damaged: spliced wrong, speckled with age, chunks of the film were cut out, the soundtrack was tinny and barely audible. But truth be told, that added to the thrill of seeing it on the big screen. It made the movie seem all the more sleazy, like something I just shouldn’t be watching.

While watching Blue Underground’s recent release of The Toolbox Murders on DVD, I thought of that battered print of Last House, and I couldn’t help but feel that sometimes these kinds of films, these sick, low-budget, grindhouse exploitation flicks work best when they don’t look and sound so good. You’re supposed to revel in the sleaze that only a shoddy looking videotape that’s set in the sun too long at the video store can bring. Like, no one’s rented it since 1986 and you get it home and the tape’s all sticky from someone’s spilled beer and it creaks as it rolls through the VCR. Know what I mean? That’s how a lot of us late night freaks saw these movies and that’s part of the reason they remain entrenched so fondly in our memories. Not that I’m complaining … it was just a thought. Cuz truth is, Blue Underground’s DVD looks and sounds superb! And I love the fact they put so much effort into salvaging such an unsavory little gem as The Toolbox Murders.

While not a great film by any stretch of the imagination, it serves its purpose as a down and dirty little indie sickie that’s best enjoyed with a head full of a beer and an eye turned towards a more innocent, yet depraved era in movie making history. Things will never be like they were in the 70s and 80s again, we might as well get used to that. Which is why having companies like Blue Underground saving these films is such a godsend.

Toolbox is probably best remembered for its infamous “nail-gun scene.” And it really is the highpoint of this flick. And it is one of the more disturbing sequences in annals of exploitation cinema. I would rank it up there with the fellatio scene in Last House, the meathook scene in Texas Chainsaw Massacre and the rape scene in I Spit on Your Grave. It’s pretty brutal and, I thought, staged rather well. This movie features a rather interesting performance from Wesley Eure, who some of you might know from “The Land of the Lost.” It was great seeing him in this flick, playing a rather unstable friend to the young hero who’s trying to find his kidnapped sister. (And, on a completely trivial note, Eure just might be the only actor to ever have the opportunity to scream out the line “Do you wanna be dinosaur stew!?!”)

The DVD features a short interview with actress Marianne Walter, the victim in the nail-gun scene, who later went on to star in porn films under the name Kelly Nichols. She reminisces about the scene with surprising humor and aplomb. I can’t say the audo commentary was as interesting. It’s rather dull and sparse and I couldn’t get into it. I’m sure Toolbox devotees will eat it up, though. My interest in the film is merely as a curiosity and I guess I don’t have too much interest in how they got to film in the apartment buildings that they filmed in, and so on and so forth. But hey, I recommend this DVD to any and all horror/exploitation fans out there who get a sick little kick out of this garbage. I know I do, and this one isn’t as good a film as most of its contemporaries, but it’s still worth having in your collection. I only wish that Blue Underground, and all other companies who specialize in resurrecting these dirty little gems, would include a grainy, horribly spliced and mixed version of the film, so you can pretend, for just a moment, that the grindhouse days never left us...

I love dinosaur movies, I really do. More specifically, I love old dinosaur movies. You know, the ones they made before they figured out how to animate dinosaurs on a computer screen. The ones where they used either claymation or puppets, or they just caught a couple of lizards and taped cardboard fins to their backs. I collect these things, man, and when I saw this DVD at my local movie store, sitting in the cheapie bin for only 8 bucks! I thought, Hell, this is already worth it!

Well, it's not. As far as dinosaurs movies go (old and new, big-budget and small alike) this is just about the most flaccid, dull flick you can imagine. I know it was made half a century ago, but that's no excuse. King Kong is older than that and it still kicks some ass. No, this movie is limp from the get go. You see the cover, with our hero and heroine fearfully watching as two feral behemoths duke it out against a fiery, volcanic landscape, and you think, "Holy Wow! This is gonna be a good one!" Nope, not even close.

And here's the absolute worst part: the movie is only 61 minutes long … and the dinosaurs don't even make an appearance until exactly 45 minutes and 42 seconds into the movie! I paused it and wrote it down, just so I could tell you. What kind of crap is that? Adding insult to injury, once they do appear, they are nothing but an alligator and an iguana with dumb cardboard fins taped to their damn backs. They wrestle around for a couple of minutes, and then they’re gone. And then pretty much the movie ends and you sit their shaking your head, telling yourself that being a fan of these kinds of movies is great and all, but sometimes even YOU have standards.

So it's about 55 minutes of dull, pre-Atomic age '50's melodrama, two or three minutes of prehistoric landscapes and volcanic apocalypse and two reptiles going at it in an age before the ASPCA or PETA had anything to do with anything. I won’t even tell you the plot because you won't care. If you want to sit through this, fast forward to the 35 minute mark and you’ll be treated to a neat little pirate ship battle (although the action is so confusing I doubt you’ll be able to discern who the good guys are and who the bad guys are.) After that, flip ahead ten minutes, watch the reptile rumble and then use the DVD for a beer coaster.

I love dinosaur movies, man. The cheesier the better. But this is just stinky bad. Boring, stinky bad, if you really must know. And generally I can take stinky, and I can take bad … but BORING … nothing can save boring.

Nightcrawler has always been my favorite X-Men character and I am happy to see him make his big screen debut. Not only is his character accurate to his comic book persona, but he looks really good too. It would have been cool to see his black and red costume, but they got his face, hands, feet, and tail almost as perfect as can be. My favorite X-Men comic book was the graphic novel "God Loves, Man Kills" and that is what this film is loosely based on.

"X2" takes place a year or two after the first film and it finds Wolverine trying to find out where he came from (until last year's "Origin" comic book, Wolverine's true origin has never been known). Returning to the X-Men mansion, he finds hilmself playing babysitter as the rest of the X-Men investigate the attempted assassination of the president. Professer X and Cyclops visit Magneto in his plastic prison to see if he has anything to do with the incident, but find out that it is actually somebody in the government who is out to put an end to all mutants; using them against themselves.

As this is brand new to the theatres, I don't want to give away too much of the story. I can say that this film is three times better than the first. Plenty of character development and you really see Bryan Singer stepping up to bat in the director's chair. There are a lot more characters (Pyro! Kitty Pryde!! Colossus!!!) in this film, but it doesn't bog the film down at all. What really highlights the film are the acting jobs by Hugh Jackman as Wolverine and Ian McKellen as Magneto...and even better than that is that we see Wolverine use those metal claws the way we all know they were made for! It's so nice to see a comic book translation that treats the original with respect. It really sucks when studios think, "Hey, here is a popular comic book! Let's take everything that helped make that comic book popular in the first place and change it until it really sucks." ("Steel" and the original "Punisher" movie, I'm looking at you!)

Anyway, this is a great film. Go see it. Plus if you are nerdy comic book fan from back in the day like me, you'll understand what they are setting up for the next film by checking out the last few seconds of the film! (OooooOOOooooh!!!!!)