"THE PIN DOWNS AND HALF NELSONS OF FILM"

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ATTACK OF THE MAYAN MUMMY
"starring" George Mitchell, Rosa Arenas, Ramon Gay, "directed" by Jerry Warren
with additional footage directed by Rafael Portillo, B/W, Unrated, 1964
Distributed by Rhino
DVD Reviewed By: Ryan Lies

People often cite Ed Wood’s flicks as being the “worst movies ever made.” And if not those, then it’s Manos: The Hands of Fate, or The Beast of Yucca Flats, or something of that ilk. Inept, hardly-watchable films all (well, actually, I don’t think Ed Wood’s movies are all that bad, really. I mean, say what you want, but they are entertaining as hell. Tell me you didn’t have a grin on your face the whole time you were watching Bride of the Monster.) But nothing, and mean nothing comes even close to being as ineffectual, as stinky bad, and as utterly useless as this patchwork mess known as Attack of the Mayan Mummy (aka The Mummy Strikes, aka Putrid, Steaming Pile of Crap Passing As a Monster Movie.)

First off, a little anecdote: I borrowed this video tape from a friend after taking one look at the cover that Acme Video slapped on the box. Next to the dramatic words RISING FROM THE GRAVE TO RECLAIM HIS THRONE! sat the stupidest looking mummy I had ever seen. I thought, Well, jeez if that thing is “the Mayan mummy” then I have to watch this! I mean, seriously, look at that thing. Wouldn’t you feel compelled to watch the movie, just for the chance to see actors trying to feign terror while being “attacked” by that thing? B-movies have long claimed a mélange of famously negligible “monsters” (check out It Conquered the World or One Million AC/DC or even Van Helsing), and most of the time these ridiculous creatures are part of the fun.

However, the mummy on the box is NOT in the movie. Just so you know. Hopefully by telling you that, I’ve deterred you from watching the movie. But if you want to continue, then I have a bit of “history:”

Back in the heyday of exploitation movies, distributors eager for a buck, and not wanting to do much work to get it, would often buy foreign B-movies and re-edit them, throw in new footage, and repackage it as a new movie. Sometimes the results were sublimely awful, as in the case of one of my personal favorites, Horror of the Blood Monsters (aka Vampire-Men of the Lost Planet), which was composed of three different movies: a space adventure film, a caveman movie, and a Mexican vampire film. But more often than not, the results were purely imbecilic, and ultimately insulting to the audiences.

Attack of the Mayan Mummy is one of the latter. “Director” Jerry Warren purchased the rights to a popular Mexican horror film called The Aztec Mummy and took about 20 minutes or so from it and then went and filmed some new footage and then threw it all together to make what amounts to, in my opinion, the worst goddamn movie I’ve ever seen. And I’ve seen a lot. I even hated this more than I hated House of the Dead. And that’s saying something, cuz that movie made me want to kill innocent animals.

There’s about four minutes of actual mummy stuff in this flick. The rest of it is a whole lotta people talking. The first ten minutes is two guys sitting at a desk, talking. The next ten minutes, two guys sitting in a living room, talking. Then there’s another scene of people talking. Then a scene at a lecture, where we don’t actually hear the characters talking, but instead are treated to a narrator telling us what the people in the scene are saying. Figure that one out. And then there’s a scene in a lab. Then some kooky Aztec Mummy ceremonial stuff. And then more talking. And then it gets “exciting” cuz they actually get to where they’ve talked about going for 50 minutes. Then there’s some mummy footage. The mummy gets captured, but we don’t get to see it. That’s right, you guessed it: someone in the next scene tells us it was captured. And then they talk about it. Then it escapes. And then a car runs it down, killing it. However, as per the “aesthetic” of the movie, we don’t see that happen. We just get two guys sitting at a desk talking about it happening.

The footage Jerry Warren shot to wrap around the mummy footage is poorly lit, poorly staged, and ludicrously over-scripted. Literally, the entire plot of the movie is discussed by people sitting in rooms, or narrated by those same people. A few minutes of kinda cool mummy and laboratory stuff is all we get in the way of action. It sucks. It blows. This movie eats shit.

What a contemptible waste of time. I hope somewhere in the afterlife, Angel Di Stefani, the actor who played the Aztec Mummy, is bitch-slapping Jerry Warren.

Fiend Without a Face has long been one of my absolute favorite 50’s SF movies. In fact, I can honestly say I loved this flick long before I ever even saw it, due to a picture of the brain-creatures that I saw in a magazine in my early teens. I loved those damn brain-creatures so much that there was no way any movie that featured them in it could be bad. And my assumptions proved correct.

While I watched it a few times back in the day (ten, twelve years ago that is) I had actually not seen it in quite some time, so when I heard it was finally coming out on DVD, I flipped out. Perfect chance to revisit an old friend. Then I found out it was going to be released through The Criterion Collection and I just about exploded. Criterion was going to release Fiend Without a Face? God bless ‘em, but … why? I mean, I know that around the same time they released a super sweet edition of The Blob, but I figured that was about as insane as they were going to get as far as releasing old B-movies went.

Whatever the reason, Criterion did it. As if I didn’t have enough reasons to love them in the first place. So I finally tracked down a place in my hometown that had a copy of this, but of course, as is usually the case with me, it took me forever and a day to actually get around to watching it.

Fiend Without a Face tells the story of a small country town beset by a series of gruesome murders, wherein the victims have their brains and spinal chords sucked out. Only thing is, the killers, whatever they are, are invisible. The ever paranoid townsfolk blame the nearby Army base and “radiation.” The Army is quite sure they have nothing to do with it and heads up an investigation into the situation. What they discover is quite terrifying and … well … kick ass! Turns out some local scientist is siphoning radiation from the Army base and using it in his telekinesis experiments. And in doing so, he accidentally creates a race of “mental vampires,” forged from his own unconscious mind! (Kind of like the Id Monster in Forbidden Planet, another totally awesome 50’s SF flick with similar ideas.)

Does it still hold up, then? Boy oh boy, fuckin’ A does it ever! This movie is a gem all around. And Criterion’s DVD looks absolutely amazing. Better than it has any right to look, really. The black & white movie is simply gorgeous! Yet, despite the digital makeover, it still looks and feels and sounds like it should, like a low-budget B-movie. Sometimes when these old movies get cleaned up, they really show how limited their means of production really were. But not in this case. However, my bias may be showing here, cuz I pretty much always thought this movie was perfect for what it was anyway.

It’s those brain-creatures, man! Mushy looking brains, with twitchy antennae, trailing slithering spinal chords, flying through the air, latching onto the necks of their victims, sucking at their nervous systems! The person who conceived and created these cerebral beasties is a damn genius. They spend most of the movie invisible, their presence marked only by eerie crunching noises. Director Crabtree builds the suspense extremely well, given his limitations, and when he finally chooses to reveal the monsters, he does so perfectly. On screen for just enough time so as to not to inundate, but plenty of time to leave a lasting impression. These are my favorite monsters from this era of SF filmmaking. They SHOULD put any surviving models of these guys in the Smithsonian.

The climax of Fiend (which uses the “trapped and barricaded in a farmhouse” idea that I love so much, and was later mined to perfection by Romero in Night of the Living Dead) is balls out cool. The creatures attack, guns blaze, girls scream. And it’s pretty damn gory, too, I might add. Whenever one of the fiends is shot, the brain explodes in a bloody mess, gurgling and sputtering. Totally wicked.

Sure, the dialogue can be dumb at times, the science is sketchy at best, and the acting isn’t always much to behold, but I can’t even bring myself to worry about that. The movie is a blast, from start to finish, the blemishes far outweighed by the sheer force of late-night monster-cool the rest of the film exerts.

Criterion’s DVD isn’t exactly laden with extras, and some might find this a turn off, considering its hefty price tag (which is somewhere over 35 bucks.) There is an audio commentary by executive producer Richard Gordon, along with genre writer Tom Weaver and a nifty illustrated essay on the history of British horror/SF filmmaking. There’s also a collection of trailers from other Gordon films. For me, though, there is no question that it is worth every penny.

If you love these kinds of movies as I do, then this is one for the archives. In fact, I may just want a copy of this movie buried with me when I pass on someday … just in case those Egyptians were right and you do get to take it all with you.

(Ryan Lies is a No-Fi Staffwriter and has a face too.)

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TROLL
starring Michael Moriarty, Noah Hathaway, Sonny Bono, directed by John Carl Buechler, Color, , 1986
TROLL 2
starring Michael Stephenson, George Hardy, Margo Prey, directed by Claudio Fragasso, Color, , 1991
Double Feature DVD Distributed by MGM
DVD Reviewed By: Ryan Lies

First off, yay to MGM for putting these out on a double DVD (they also did the same for a bunch of other flicks like Missing in Action 2 & 3 and Ghoulies 1 & 2). However, I personally feel that both of these movies deserve their own Special Edition DVDs. I would like to start a petition one day to give to Anchor Bay and tell them to get on that.

Troll has long been a personal favorite of mine. As a kid, I loved it, no questions asked. It had magic, monsters and a kid as the hero. How could I not love it? Upon watching it recently, I can still see what the kid in me loved. However, I can also see that it’s pretty hokey. But that’s part of its charm.

Harry Potter, Sr. (Michael Moriarty) moves his family into an apartment complex that also happens to be the home of an evil Troll that is trying to turn the entire world into a big garden. It can turn people into big green pods by poking them with its ring. Eventually, Moriarty’s son, Harry Potter, Jr., uncovers this nefarious plot and teams up with a witch living in the building to put a stop to the terror once and for all. (Did J. K. Rowling ever see this movie? I mean, a kid named Harry Potter, getting involved in magic …? One has to wonder, doesn’t one?)

Along the way we are treated to Sonny Bono as a swinger, crazy cheap optical effects that are supposed to be “magic,” a mushroom that sings, Moriarty making a complete fool out of himself while singing and air-guitaring to “Summertime Blues,” and a truly odd musical interlude featuring a bunch of puppets. And this Charles Band production boasts a great cast, besides Moriarty and Bono, including June Lockhart, Noah Hathaway (Boxey from “Battlestar Galactica”), Julia Louis-Dreyfus, her real-life husband Brad Hall, and Phil (Willow, Ghoulies 2) Fondacaro, simply one of the greatest actors ever. His is actually one of the most thoughtful and nuanced performances in the movie, playing a little person who seems to have given up on his will to live, but not on his kindness to others. The dude’s just a damn great actor.

But anyway, Troll is a treat. Not perfect by any means, but still a lot of fun.

Whereas Troll is a flawed yet competent and amusing fantasy pic, its in-title-only sequel is an exercise in absurd stupidity. The fact that this movie exists flat out astonishes me. Its level of badness actually borders on the surreal.

Troll 2 has nothing to do with the original, and on top of that, it has nothing to do with trolls period. The creatures in it are called goblins throughout the entire movie. And the eccentricity only increases from there.

The story deals with a suburban family who decides to swap their house for awhile with a family that lives in the small town of Nilbog. Joshua is scared to move because his dead grandfather warns him that evil awaits. Once they arrive in the town, the neighbors treat them very strangely and Joshua discovers the true horrors that await them (in case you missed it, check out the name of the town in a mirror.) Eventually the family realizes that an evil, vegetarian witch and her flock want them for supper. Through the use of her amazing “Stonehenge Magic-stone” she disguises her goblin minions and turns unsuspecting humans into plants (so they won’t have to eat human meat, ok? Now it makes sense, right?). Eventually Joshua devises a plan with help from his dead gramps, and believe it or not, the future of mankind rests on a double-bologna sandwich. And the power of love. Really, it does.

Yeah, I know, you’re thinking WOW. And I’m just scraping the surface here, folks. This movie has innumerable strange sights and sounds in store for you. For starters it just may the have the worst acting ever captured in a motion picture, especially Joshua’s mom, dad and sister. God, are they terrible. Watch the daughter (Connie McFarland), particularly, as I think she’s the worst. She even has a scene where she dances to cheesy faux-New Wave music in her room (making the best scene of its kind since the Pseudo Echo robot-dance in Friday the 13th V: A New Beginning.) And the chick who plays the witch chews so much scenery she chokes on it, but keeps on going. I can’t believe this actress can actually live with herself after this. I’d be so embarrassed that I’d probably eat Drano.

There is a weird subplot involving the daughter’s boyfriend. Seems her parents don’t like the guy too much because he “spends too much time with his friends.” And even the daughter isn’t so sure, proffering him an ultimatum: “It’s either me or them.” And the dude just can’t seem to leave his friends behind. When the family relents invites him to join them in Nilbog, as long as he comes alone, he doesn’t show up on time, and then rushes in an RV to meet them, with his friends along. The homoerotic/homophobic undertones to this whole subplot are so heavy that it’s laughable.

And I better not neglect to mention the best use of the song “Row Row Row Your Boat” since Captain Kirk and Bones tried to teach Spock how to sing it in Star Trek V).

Anyway, I could go on. There’s so much to love and laugh at in this movie (God, wait until you see the “popcorn” scene!), and for anyone who can appreciate and love really, really bad movies like Queen Kong, Godmonster of Indian Flats, The Worm Eaters or Petey Wheatstraw: the Devil’s Son-In-Law, then this is one of those stinky cinematic treasures that you find only once in a great while and savor for a lifetime.

I can’t think of a better excuse to spend $9 than this MGM goodie. Until Anchor Bay (or whoever, I don’t care) gets off their butts and gives these flicks the special treatment they deserve (man, I think a Troll 2 director’s and actors’ commentary would be priceless), then this will be good enough.

(Ryan Lies is a No-Fi Staffwriter and wins 10 points for using the word "kooky".)

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Reviews from November 2004

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SEED OF CHUCKY
starring Jennifer Tilly, Brad Dourif, Redman, John Waters, directed by Don Mancini, Color, , 2004
Distributed by Rogue Pictures
Film Reviewed By: Ryan Lies

Seed of Chucky is nasty fun, folks. Good, nasty, unwholesome fun. Just what we need coming up on Christmas time. After seeing Team America: World Police and now Seed of Chucky, all I can say is "Praise the Lord" that someone out there still knows how to make raunchy, tasteless flicks that aren’t hindered by Hollywood’s penchant for appealing to the broadest, safest demographic possible.

I mention Team America because that brilliantly offensive and pissing-the-pants hilarious movie is Seed’s cinematic cousin in a few important ways. Like all of Trey Parker’s and Matt Stone’s work, they manage to not only gross out and offend a many people as possible, they also manage to pack very astute social observations into the raunch. In fact, I’m often surprised at the family values South Park often espouses. Same with Seed of Chucky. Despite the nastiness, there’s an underlying theme about family tolerance, addiction recovery and finding one’s own self while still adhering to your family bonds.

Ok, so maybe I’m stretching. Maybe not. Who cares? Seed of Chucky is a great time at the movies. Picking up along the same vein that 1998’s Bride of Chucky laid forth, Seed tells the story Chucky and Tiffany’s offspring and his/her attempt to find where it is he/she came from. I say he/she because, well, the poor young thing is without genitalia (and we know from past installments that Chucky is quite anatomically correct, as is Tiff, who flashes her boobies in this one) and cursed with very asexual facial features and hair. Chucky and Tiffany argue over what to name their progeny, and settle on Glen or Glenda (extra props for the Ed Wood nod there!)

Once the family has reunited, things become tense, as Chucky wants to school his “son” to continue the family traditions of murder and mayhem. Tiffany, after a moralistic epiphany decides that they should change their bloody ways so that their “daughter” can grow up normal. Of course, little Glen/Glenda doesn’t want to be a killer, but neither does he/she want to disappoint the folks.

Just to complicate things (and to give Chuck & Co. plenty of limbs to hack and entrails to dislodge) Hollywood is making a movie based on the exploits of Chucky and Tiffany. Jennifer Tilly is playing the role of Tiffany and the real Tiffany is a huge fan! What Jennifer Tilly really wants to do is act again and when she finds out that rap star Redman is looking for someone to play the Virgin Mary in his own movie about Jesus, Tilly leaps at the chance. The real Tiffany decides that she will transfer her soul into Tilly’s body and that Chucky can have Redman’s. Of course, then they need a body for Glen/Glenda … so I guess they’ll have to knock Tilly up with some of Chucky’s sperm so that they’ll have a fresh, young body for the kid to …

Yeah, this movie is that twisted. And it’s effing hilarious, too! Jennifer Tilly is great skewering herself and shallow actors in general. And Redman is great as the pious playa filmmaker who thinks Tilly can prove her worth as the Virgin Mary by going down on him.

Brad Dourif, as usual, brings much demented charm to the voice of Chucky. And newcomer Billy Boyd (Lord of the Rings’ Pippin) is completely creepy yet oddly affecting as the androgynous “Seed” of Chucky. He should definitely win the Chainsaw Award this year for this role.

There’s blood and gore aplenty, including one of the best decapitations I’ve ever seen on film. Steaming entrails, hydrochloric acid baths, turkey-baster insemination. The film even opens with a cascade of sperm filling the screen, followed by the audience joining a swimming throng of eager seeds on a wild fallopian-tube ride! Fangoria fans will appreciate the scene where Chucky has to “ready himself” for a “donation.” Next to the love scene in Team America this is the funniest look at puppet sex since Meet the Feebles.

Instead of being scary, the filmmakers have opted to put the emphasis on comedy. Not all the jokes work, of course, but that happens. In fact, I’ll be honest and say that I didn’t like this one as much as Bride. Bride struck a good balance between comedy and horror that this film just didn’t seem to want. And that’s fine, but I kinda wanted it to be a bit more horrific than it was. I thought they lost something this time around. But that’s a minor quibble.

The movie hardly made any money at the box office, as opposed to Bride, so the future of the franchise is in question, I’m sure. But if they end it on this, then that would be just fine. I can’t think of what else, or where else they could really take it.

So if you can take mean-spirited, extremely violent, sexually deviant family-films, then Seed of Chucky will make for fun viewing. If not, well … what the hell are you doing in a movie called Seed of Chucky anyway, if you don’t already know what you’re getting into?

(Ryan Lies is a No-Fi Staffwriter and would totally be all up in that Tilly.)

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THREE ON A MEATHOOK
starring Charles Kissinger, James Pickett, Sherry Steiner, directed by William Girdler, Color, , 1973
Distributed by Rogue Pictures
Video Reviewed By: Ryan Lies

This is the movie that brought me and my girlfriend, Daintry, together.

What happened was, she came with a friend of mine to a party that I was throwing for St. Patty’s day a couple of years ago. I was looking like a total dork in a giant green hat and a Playboy shirt (in fact, I know Chris has a picture of this!) Anyway, I’d met her before, but never really talked to her. Thought she was hot, but probably out of my league. You know, the usual.

But with beer comes confidence and so I spent a great deal of the night hitting on her. She mentioned that she had an Alf puppet and a Zuckuss figure (for those of you who don’t know, Zuckuss is in The Empire Strikes Back.) So not only was she hot, and not only did she have a damn Alf puppet and an obscure Star Wars figure and not only did she have a hot, hot, hot tush … she told me she loved geeks. So I figured I was in.

Then, she comes out and asks me a question that I never, not in a million years, thought I would ever hear an attractive woman ask me; “Have you ever heard of a movie called Three On a Meathook?” Holy shit, right? Well, being the geek that I am, and being the obsessive video-store, bargain-bin raider that I am, not only had I heard of it, I owned a copy of it!

So her and her friend eventually popped it in the VCR and had a great old time watching it. Me? I was completely drunk (and I maybe, just maybe, might’ve had one little hit off a friend’s joint, but don’t say anything, ok?) and, well, I don’t really remember much else about the rest of that night.

A week later, we went bowling together and then the rest is history.

So finally, just the other night, I sat down and watched the movie with her, as I had still never seen it. Fond memories aside, the movie was pretty bad. And I probably could’ve lived my entire life without ever having seen it. But I have seen it now, and there’s nothing I can do about it, so here you go…

Pa Townsend is killing pretty young girls that happen upon his isolated farmhouse and blames the heinous deeds on his son Billy. While in town one night getting supplies, Billy ends up meeting a pretty waitress in a bar, who takes pity on him and brings him home. Instantly they are in love and Billy wants to invite her to the farmhouse. Despite the fact that every other young girl who’s ever come to farm has ended up dead. And despite the fact that Pa has a “special way” of cooking meat? But what are you gonna do? Dude’s smitten. And boring. And stupid.

And that pretty much describes the movie. Boring and stupid. All the characters are flat. The pacing is soporific. It takes way too long to get to the “three on a meathook,” but seeing how that is, after all, the title of the movie anyway, it’s really no big surprise when it does finally happen. The kills are cool, but few and far between. One decapitation scene (which is Daintry’s favorite scene) was actually mimicked in the recent Wrong Turn, whether on purpose or on accident, who knows. Oh, and the denouement is completely ripped off from Psycho.

I can’t say I liked this movie, although there were a couple moments on unintentional hilarity. When Billy’s new girlfriend’s best friend goes off on a tangent about how she lost the love of her life (“He got a letter in the mail, inviting him to take place in one of their wars …”) we get some of the worst acting and hammiest dialogue I have ever seen and heard.

William Girdler directed a couple of decent flicks after this (Sheba, Baby and Grizzly) but this was a slow start. It has a cult following, and well, there’s a small part of me that can appreciate the movie’s indie, grassroots origins (Fangoria did a retrospective on Girdler’s career awhile back, so I know the story behind this movie.) And yeah, I would probably buy it on DVD if it ever came out in a nice Special Edition or something. But that’s because I’m an idiot. After all, I do own copies of Zombie Lake and The Alien Factor on DVD, so adding Three On A Meathook to the collection wouldn’t necessarily be any more of a step down than I’ve already taken.

It’s still got a special place in my heart, though, for bringing me to Daintry and for that I can’t help but keep the old piece of crap around.