The Dead and the Damned (2010, Rene Perez)

Coming 7/26/11 from Inception Media Group is a new cult film which takes two of my favorite genres (Zombies and Westerns), throws them in a mixer and crafts a delicious brew of violence, action, gore and everything else you'd hope for.  The film is called The Dead and the Damned and was directed by newcomer Rene Perez. 

The Dead and the Damned starts off in a small town in California 1849.  A bounty hunter named Mortimer (David A. Lockhart) is trying to capture an Indian named Brother Wolf (Rick Mora) for an unknown reason and buys a beautiful young woman (Camille Montgomery) to use as bait.  After heading off on his quest, the small town of miners find a mysterious, glowing rock.  Thinking it might be filled with emeralds, they decide to break it open with a pick axe.  The rock turns out to be a meteorite and it unleashes a green gas turning the town folk into the undead.  After capturing Brother Wolf, the trio find themselves stalked by the zombies and have no choice but to band together to survive.

The Dead and the Damned does a great job of mixing two contrasting genres into one fun, action-packed romp.  The zombies look great and the Western settings/costumes are well done.  Even with a running time under 90 minutes, the simple story had a few nice twists and turns but it could have been filled out a little (there are several long stretches with just music and the characters walking around).  Other than that I have no gripes with this movie.  The CGI gore FX are surprisingly good (considering CGI is my kryptonite) and the acting is also convincing.  For a low budget horror/action film, this one stands out above the rest of the seemingly endless DTV garbage being released today.

RATING: 7/10  

The Secret Life: Jeffrey Dahmer (1993, David R. Bowen)

 

Another title just released by Intervision Pictures Corp. fairs a little better than Things in the fact it actually feels like a real film and not a series of random images that you would see from a food poisoning hallucination.  The Secret Life: Jeffrey Dahmer is a little seen, low budget documentary from 1993 starring Carl Crew (who also wrote the screenplay) as one of the world's most infamous serial killers.

 

The Secret Life: Jeffrey Dahmer follows the subject from the time he was young and used to disect road kill to the end of his murderous reign, when he was finally caught.  In between, we see inside the mind of the killer and how a bad home life, alcohol abuse, self loathing and just a demented soul caused Dahmer to commit the unspeakable acts that he did.  We see how he used to lure strange men and boys to his home with the promise of taking their picture for money and then drug them before torturing, killing and dismembering them.

 

The Secret Life: Jeffrey Dahmer is a very well done and factual depiction of the homicidal cannibal.  Crew does an impressive job as Dahmer, displaying how vile and sad he was and the situations with his victims more often than not have a  very candid feel.  The low budget film making style and dated fashions actually help the movie feel more authentic, especially considering it was made shortly after the killer was caught (and before he was murdered in jail).  Some of the killings are pretty brutal and the make up FX are pretty realistic (for the most part).  Intervision put out a nice disc here of an obscure film which comes with a trailer and commentary with director David R. Bowen and Carl Crew.

 

RATING:  8/10

 

 

 

Things (1989, Andrew Jordan)

Just released by Intervision Pictures Corp. is a rare slice of late 80's Canuxploitation that has to be seen to be believed - Things.  What is Things?  Is it any good?  Will I need to see a therapist after viewing this film?  These are all very hard questions to answer, but I will do my best. 

 

Things is a no budget horror film made by Andrew Jordan and Barry J. Gillis and what I assume to be a bunch of their friends/relatives.  Oh yeah, 80s porn star Amber Lynn is in it as a Newscaster (filmed in what looks like the back room of a pawn shop).  Don and Fred (Gillis and Bruce Roach, respectively) go up to Don's brother's house in the middle of nowhere on a road trip.  When they get there, brother is acting really weird.  It turns out that him and his wife were having trouble getting pregnant so the local doctor used her as an experiment and artificially inseminate her.  What hatches from her pregnant womb is not human....and begins a bloody rampage on anyone it encounters.

 

My inital review for Things was going to consist of three letters and punctuation mark:  W T F ? 

 

Is Things any good, you ask?  It depends on what you consider good.  If your weekend plans are to see Transformers 3 then I would say definitely not.  If you like watching terrible movies that are beyond comprehension to the normal, non-lobotomized brain then you are in luck!  There is no denying that Things is probably the worst movie ever made.  Luckily though, unlike some other bad movies - Things is so eye-poppingly, brain-meltingly bad that it's almost brilliant.  How a film like this made it beyond the film maker's (and I use that term loosely) house (or the parent's basement that they most likely still lived in at the time) and not only onto home video - but to amass a cult following and be released by a reputable DVD label is mind boggling.  Still, I can't deny that it deserves all of this.  Though probably best watched with a group of friends and as much alcohol as you can consume without blacking out, fans of cheesy cinema will undoubtedly be sucked into the parallel universe of hand made puppets, terrible dubbing and a double assault of mullets and mustaches that is THINGS!  Intervision Pictures Corp. gives Things an unbelievable abundance of bonus features including two commentaries, a cast reunion, and several interviews.  So once the dizziness caused from watching the film ends, you are left with these features to try to make sense of the whole thing.  Good luck with that!

 

Rating:  7/10 

(This rating is based on sheer fucked-upedness and enjoyability, as opposed to actual film quality)

The Sweet Life (2003, Rocco Simonelli)

Now available from Synapse Films is a little known romantic comedy from the writer/producer of Street Trash (Roy Frumkes).  Yeah, I know what you're thinking but there are no people melting in this film.  The Sweet Life is actually a pretty straight forward movie, which I have to give Synapse a lot of credit for (considering the rest of their catalog).  It's an odd film to be put out by a company that usually focuses on horror and exploitation but I must commend them because it is actually a really good film.  Honestly, I didn't have very high expectations but I was pleasantly surprised.

 

The Sweet Life follows smooth talking, womanizer Frankie (Robert Mobley) and his shy, pessimistic brother Michael (James Lorinz).  They couldn't be more different but after Frankie dumps his hard partying girlfriend Lila (Barbara Sicuranza), Michael befriends her and soon their relationship escalates.  Michael encourages Lila to follow her dreams of becoming a massage therapist, which ends with disastrous results (for both of them).  They soon question their compatability while trying to keep their relationship a secret from Frankie, who wants Lila back.

 

The Sweet Life takes everything I hate about romantic comedies and flushes them down the toilet, replacing it with wit, humor and believable situations.  Your typical Jennifer Aniston dreck this is not.  The characters are easy to identify with and I found myself laughing out loud consistently.  James Lorinz does a great job as the grumpy, self deprecating and Barbara Sicuranza is also very believable as the sweet but rough around the edges Lila.  I must also mention Joan Jett's hilarious performance as Lila's drunk biker roomate Sherry.  For a low budget film with a mostly no-name cast, Frumkes and director/co-writer Rocco Simonelli construct a fun and rewarding movie experience.  Like I said, there are no melting people in this film, but it might just melt your heart (*sniffle*).

 

RATING:  8/10

 

 

Second Quarter Review 2011

Yes folks.  Here were are again.  Second Quarter review of 2011.  Hard to believe the year is half over but it's even harder to believe that I started this blog almost 3 years ago.  As always I've been watching a ton of movies and I'd like to share what I watched over the last 3 months.

Here is my quarterly review of films watched from April through June:

4/2
Bob Dylan Revealed

4/3
Crippled Masters 3
Brian Eno: 1971-1977 -The Man Who Fell to Earth

4/4
Anywhere USA

4/9
State of Grace

4/10
Some Kind of Wonderful

4/11
At Close Range

4/13
The Wild Life

4/14
Career Opportunities
Fresh Horses

4/16
Don't You Forget About Me (John Hughes documentary)
Scream 4

4/18
...About Last Night

4/21
Against All Odds
Dorm that Dripped Blood

4/22
Real Cannibal Holocaust

4/23
Brian Wilson: Songwriter 1962-1969

4/24
St. Elmo's Fire
Brian Wilson: I Just Wasn't Made for These Times

4/26
Breakfast Club

4/27
Trading Places
NOFX-Backstage Passport

4/28
Kentucky Fried Movie
I Vinti (The Vanquished)
Blue City

4/29
NOFX - Ten Years of Fuckin' Up

4/30
The Night Shift

5/1
Jackson County Jail

5/9
Rituals

5/11
Embodiment of Evil

5/12
Poor Pretty Eddie
The Passenger

5/13
The Switch

5/14
Gutterballs
Eyes of the Chameleon
Dahmer vs. Gacy

5/15
Zabriskie Point
Killer Yacht Party

5/17
Silent Running

5/22
Flipside Vol. 5
Decline of Western Civilization
Decline of Western Civilization 2: The Metal Years

5/23
Hangover
SLOG movie

5/24
Rockers

5/25
Yesspeak

5/26
(500) Days of Summer

5/27
Trailers From Hell Vol. 2

5/28
Scavenger Hunt
Boys Next Door

5/29
The Searchers

5/30
Red River

6/1
Rio Bravo

6/2
Magnificent Seven

6/4
The Burning

6/5
Bullet for the General
Welcome to Blood City

6/6
Stranger's Gundown (aka Django Il Bastardo)

6/7
Dudes

6/8
Little Shop of Horrors

6/10
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

6/11
Duck You Sucker

6/12
Fistful of Dollars

6//13
For a Few Dollars More
The Nesting

6/16
Mystery Science Theater 3000: Gunslinger
Once Upon a Time in the West

6/18
Rio Conchos
Mystery Science Theater 3000: Hamlet

6/19
Today We Kill...Tomorrow We Die
Take a Hard Drive

6/20
Damnation Alley

6/22
Red Sun

6/23
Gordon's War

6/25
Danger: Diabolik
Tattoo

6/26
Brotherhood of Satan
Gator Bait

6/28
Last Summer

6/29
Keoma

6/30
Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid
Oblivion

Damnation Alley (1977, Jack Smight)

Coming 7/12 from Shout! Factory is a film that many folks have been waiting a long time to get their 70's, post apocalyptic, sci-fi lovin' hands on - Damnation Alley!  First announced by Anchor Bay several years ago as finally hitting DVD, it never happened (sons of bitches).  Finally, Shout! Factory comes to the rescue and adds another great title to their already-fantastic catalogue.  I had read about this film a few years ago because it has two of my favorite actors from the 70's and 80's - Jackie Earle Haley and Jan-Michael Vincent (gotta love those girly first names).  Anyway, after realizing that I would probably have to seek out a crappy VHS version to see this film, the Gods reached down and placed a copy of this DVD in my mailbox.  Amen.

Damnation Alley takes place in the near future after a nuclear attack has shifted the planet off of its axis, causing all kinds of weird shit.  A group of army officers surive in their bunker and venture out in their survival vehicle (The Landmaster) to find civilization.  The team - Maj. Denton (George Peppard), Lt. Tanner (Vincent) and Keegan (Paul Winfield) - find themselves in an endless number of obstacles, including giant scorpions, mutant cockroaches and some backwoods creeps. 

Damnation Alley is admittedly not a great movie.  Some of the special FX are laughable and there is an slight lack of depth in the story and characters.  That said, you'll be hard pressed to find a more fun sci-fi post-apocalyptic film than this!  A definitely cult classic, Damnation Alley has a great cast, an awesome vehicle for them to ride around and kick ass in and some really cool scenes (the cockroaches being my favorite).  Shout! Factory does an incredible job here with a beautiful new transfer and a bunch of bonus features (commentary with producer Paul Maslansky, producer, screenwriter and car designer/stunt coordinator interviews, trailer and TV spot).  Though the film is definitely flawed, it's fun and well worth a watch - especially for a seemingly lost cult classic like this.

RATING:  8/10

Pre-Order the DVD and BLU RAY directly from Shout! Factory and receive a free 8x10 lithograph! (while supplies last).

Oblivion (1994, Sam Irvin)

Cowboys and Aliens?  I'm sure most of you think that new movie with Indiana Jones and James Bond battling ET in the Wild West is the first time these two crazy genres were melded together?  WRONG!  Coming July 5th from Shout! Factory is Oblivion, a 1994 low budget sci-fi western from Charles Band's Full Moon Entertainment.  I thought the idea of Cowboys and Aliens was interesting and, though not expecting much considering it was made by Full Moon, I decided it would be worth a watch.

 

Oblivion, a futuristic western town is being taken over by hideous alien cowboy Redeye (Andrew Divoff) and his horde of baddies - femme fatale Lash (Musetta Vander), boneheaded Bork (Irwin Keyes) and more.  The town's sheriff is gunned down by Redeye and it looks like the townsfolk are doomed.  Enter the sheriff's estranged son Zach Stone (Richard Joseph Paul - three first names?) and his Native American friend Buteo (Jimmie F. Skaggs - now that's a name!) to clean up and fight for justice.

 

Oblivion was a silly, action-packed, sci-fi romp with a fun story and great cast.  The film is like a who's who of b movie stars and has-beens - Catwoman Julie Newmar as Miss Kitty, Star Trek's George Takei as hard drinking Doc Valentine (using as many allusions to Star Trek as possible), The Addams Family movie's Lurch Carel Struycken as the grim reaper Gaunt and They Live's Meg Foster as cyborg Stell Bar.  The special FX in Oblivion are surprisingly well done, especially the "Night Scorps" scene at the end.  The story is hokey but it works and has its tongue firmly planted in its cheek.  The DVD from Shout! Factory looks pretty good but I can tell the source was not the best to work with (very common for the seemingly endless DTV output from Full Moon in the 80s and 90s).

 

RATING:  7/10

 

Pre-Order Oblivion directly from Shout! Factory HERE