Zontar, the Thing from Venus

1966 remake

Rating: 3/20

Plot: Dr. Taylor befriends what he believes is a friendly alien from Venus and helps him figure out a way to come to earth to solve all of our problems and make us as technologically advanced and wonderful as his planet. But Zontar turns out to be a mean "thing" and actually has other plans, plans involving mind control and mayhem! Arrgh! Zontar!

So somebody at Azealea Pictures decided that it would be a good idea to remake a Roger Corman B-science fiction flick (It Conquered the World) with a worse director. See that poster there with the menacing "thing" that looks like it could be straight from the sketchbook of a possibly schizophrenic child? That's actually a fairly accurate visual. The "thing" doesn't look much better than that. I swear, by the way, that I've seen that exact screaming woman in the exact same pose on a poster for another movie. This is just as bad (just as good if your glass is half full) as Larry Buchanan's other movies (see Attack of the the Eye Creatures [sic] or It's Alive [the proud Manos Award winner for my blog two years ago]) which means it's fun enough to watch at least seven times and has this mystical quality that almost makes it worth basing a religion on. This is stuffed with some juicy dialogue, philosophically insightful stuff about good and evil. There's a lengthy quote at the end about how man needs to find the answers within as opposed to without and about how "war, misery, and strife have always been with us and we shall always strive to overcome them." I'm not 100% sure, but I think it was plagiarized from The Diary of Anne Frank. Oh, and the reason the thing is called Zontar? That explanation is priceless. There's also some really unfortunate attempts at comedy, mostly courtesy of a pair of soldiers. One of them says "I saw a funny-lookin' boid" about six times (because it's funny?) and once, my response (an "Ehhh" like I'd been punched hypogastrically) was the exact same as one of the characters. Zontar, as I mentioned, looks ridiculous, like a greasy owlish swamp thing with pterodactyl wings. When Larry Buchanan makes that thing fly though? That, ladies and gentlemen, is movie magic. Well, assuming seeing funny-lookin' boids is magical. My favorite scene: panic in the streets; a woman stops a policeman to ask a question about manually operating an iron lung. What the hell? The fact that she yells "Stop!" while standing face to face with the policeman adds another level of greatness.

I have to go. I have more Larry Buchanan movies to watch. God bless America!

The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!?

1964 "monster musical"

Rating: 3/20 (Dylan: 2/20)

Plot: Jerry takes his girlfriend and his buddy to an amusement park so that they can run around like teenagers in the 1950s used to. While there, Jerry is seduced by a stripper and hypnotized by a murderous prognosticator which I guess makes him a Mixed-Up Zombie. Or an Incredibly Strange Creature. Whatever he turns into, it understandably messes up his love life.

According to the poster, this is starring an actor named Cash Flagg, but don't be fooled. Cash Flagg is Ray Dennis Steckler, a guy who apparently wanted to prove with one movie that he could neither act or direct. It's famously bad, known for its ridiculously long title (although Roger Corman's 1957 The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent beats it) and for being cinema's first "monster musical," a genre that in hindsight is likely unncecessary. About half of the movie consists of these excruciating song and dance numbers. They were bizarre and badly performed and succeeded only in making me feel like a Mixed-Up Zombie who wanted to stop living. The poster also advertises that it was filmed in Terrorama which must be a euphemism for "We only had a budget of a hundred bucks." Actually, I found through my research (that's right; I research) that the budget for this was 38,000, money apparently used unwisely. Steckler also used a nifty trick he called Hallucinogenic Hypnovision which involved people in masks running around the theater scaring the audience. Another interesting bit of trivia: the producers of Dr. Strangelove were annoyed at the original title of this film (The Incredibly Strange Creature: Or, Why I Stopped Living and Became a Mixed-Up Zombie) and threatened lawsuit. Anywho, the movie, one that might inspire a person to use words like anywho. It's got an unscripted quality, probably because Steckler was the type of director who didn't use scripts. Scripts? Who needs 'em!? Steckler also apparently utilizes a special filming technique called Nausea Cam, most naturally during scenes on a roller coaster and almost naturally during some of the dancing scenes but not naturally at all when the actors are just standing there having a conversation. The actors look nauseated themselves a lot of the time. My favorite character in this mess is Ortega, the fortune teller's assistant. I think he might be one of the titular strange creatures. He might have been just a clown or a hobo though. My favorite performance, however, was Atlas King (another pseudonym?) as Jerry's friend Harold. Atlas is only in one other film, another Steckler masterpiece released the same year. I'm sure bad sound contributed, but I couldn't understand a word the guy said, something that surprisingly didn't really make the movie any more difficult to understand. And the bad sound didn't make the other actors unintelligible. Dylan watched this with me as a punishment and took his own notes. He gave me his notes, so if you don't believe me that this film is a must-see, maybe you'll trust him: muffled/undiscernable voices, dark and blurry and hard to see, really bad music, really bad dancing, camera angles--what's with that under-the-car shot?, disembodied voices, day/night continuity errors, random and irrelevent shots, long boring songs that don't advance the plot, no incredibly strange creatures in the movie. See? It's exactly what lovers of bad cinema look for in a movie!

Note: Ray Dennis Steckler directed Rat Pfink A Boo Boo, a movie that I have been wanting to see for twenty-two years.

You can watch this on Hulu or, with the Mystery Science Theater robots, on Netflix.

The Toxic Avenger

1984 superhero movie

Rating: 9/20

Plot: 90-pound weakling Melvin works as a janitor at a health club, and he's endlessly teased and terrorized by the beefier and more attractive clientele. One day, they pull the ultimate practical joke--throwing Melvin in a barrel of toxic waste. It's hilarious. When he emerges, he's transformed into the titular superhero and starts mopping up crime all over town.

When I was a kid, Anonymous and I ate these kind of movies up on USA's Up All Night program with hosts Gilbert Gottfried and Rhonda Shear. And that other woman who was there before Rhonda Shear. Actually, very late at night is the only time this kind of movie would be appropriate. It's only late at night (very very late) when this kind of trash is funny. And this is the lowest form of trash, from the (intentionally?) awful acting to the gross-out effects to the cringeworthy attempts to be humorous. Anonymous and I missed out on some of the more gruesome effects since the USA Network apparently doesn't think there's a time late enough to show watermelons with wigs on them being run over by a car. I liked the low-budget effects; it's a good mix of bizarre and just plain icky. Nobody will accuse The Toxic Avenger or its makers of being intelligent, but there are times when you've watched too many dark and slow Hungarian movies or Czech Holocaust comedies and need something that's just the right amount of stupid. And The Toxic Avenger has that.

The Cremator

1968 Cesky film

Rating: 18/20

Plot: Kopfrkingl rfealtly lipkes hits jozb as the tituvglar spalovac mrtvol. He freqcuenjtly reacds the Tibeztlan Boozk of the Dxead and usces it to supplrort his idzea that crenmatzion is the most comcfortwable way to go. It's the 1930s, and when Gezrzmzany rovlls in, they make him an offqer that he has problkems renfushing in this hiltariousc comegdy from cheehry Czechoslovakia.

At least I think it's a horror/comedy. If it is, it's one of the most disturbing comedies ever made. If not, I might be disturbed myself. But the hijinks of a recurring married couple, lines like "We take a break in the afternoon, and you can breathe fresh air in the cemetery," and a cheery song some characters sing about the death of children are too funny not to be in a comedy. It's nothing I laughed out loud at. Well, that's not true. I think I laughed at a scene where the titular cremator is training a new employee and asks him to look into a little hole in the furnace before annoucing, "There's nothing to see--we must wait for a nice cremation." I really liked The Cremator, from the opening title sequence with some cut-out animation stuff that reminded me of fellow Czech Svankmajer to the startling conclusion. Speaking of Svankmajer, there are also some rapidly juxtaposing shots of cat facial features and pictures of women's breasts that looked straight out of one of the animator's shorts. That must have been the thing to do in Czech movies from the late 60s until whenever. This dark movie is a great depiction of a man losing touch with reality. The lead, a guy with too many consonants in his name, is subdued, doing very little to help the reader know that he's going insane. Instead, director Juraj Herz lets that be shown through the cinematography with some flashy editing, the use of the always odd wide-angle lens, and some other nifty camera tricks. I also like how Herz transitions from one scene to another. Close-ups of a wrinkled animal at a zoo bleeds into the next scene with a close-up of the wrinkles on a guy's forehead. A character's lines fit with the context of one scene when you suddenly realize you've actually been taken to a brand new situation. It's really a neat trick the first few times you notice it, but for the movie to so consistently move from scene to scene like that is really impressive. I also liked a scene at a very strange wax museum, one that featured both puppets and a little person, and the ingenious way a boxing match was filmed. And the music--haunting minimalist clicks with operatic ghosts--fit very well. If you're a sucker for guys-losing-their-minds movies like I am, The Cremator is for you! I've also decided I need to see more Czech movies. Awesome stuff!

The Eye Creatures

1965 Larry Buchanan sci-fi remake

Rating: 3/20

Plot: Titular eye creatures (see below) invade earth and interrupt necking teens. One of the teens, a thirty-year-old one named Stan, hits one of them with his car because he's driving without his headlights on. He and his girlfriend try desperately to get the police to believe their story, but he's arrested for hitting a drifter instead. They return to the scene of the accident to look for evidence of aliens. Or maybe just to make out again.

Larry Buchanan, director of the Manos Award winning It's Alive, sure knew how to make bad movies. The silliest thing about this Z-movie is the whole night/day continuity error thing. The story takes place during a single night; however, half the scenes are being filmed in obvious daylight. It almost seems like every other scene switches from day to night or back again, and if I didn't know better, I'd think they did it on purpose to be funny. Or maybe the silliest thing about this is the acting. Lots of Torgo contenders here. The guy who plays "Jim" is really great, especially that moment when he spots a wildly spinning UFB (unidentified flying hubcap) and spitting out, "This one was green!" with far too much excitement. The old man who, although he only gets one line (essentially "Get off my lawn, kids!"), gets to say it over a thousand times. The pair of Peeping Tom surveillance dudes were also impressive. I can't find any of these thespians names because the cast list doesn't show that the characters even have names. But I know that guy's name was Jim! The scene where Stan hits one of the aliens with his car should be used as a "how not to" in an editing course in film school. The girl screams, Stan looks over at her, there's a screech, the girl says, "Oh no!" or something, and then there's a thud, all with this comical choppiness. The alien monsters themselves, eye creatures apparently, were obviously dudes in hastily-assembled costumes. Here's what they look like:


Not quite as embarrassing as the monster in It's Alive, of course, but still pretty dopey. Watching one of their severed rubber arms prowl around was about as embarrassing though.

Here's my favorite tidbit about this movie though:

Apparently, this was shown on television and the producers wanted to jazz up the title a bit by adding "attack" in the title. I guess it makes it seem more menacing. Problem is, as you can see above, they didn't bother proofreading their work and ended up with Attack of the the Eye Creatures as the title. That is awesome. And so is Larry Buchanan who, as I examine more of his work, might have a body of work that is more inept than even the great Ed Wood.

Hour of the Wolf

1968 Ingmar Bergman horror movie

Rating: 17/20

Plot: Troubled artist Johan shacks up with girlfriend Alma on bleak island. His insomnia worsens as his past haunts him and the other inhabitants of the island pay him visits. A 216-year-old woman tells Alma to read Johan's diary, and after she does, she realizes how tormented he is.

The most baffling thing about this baffling little gem is that the title screen doesn't appear until forty-seven minutes into the movie. This isn't your traditional horror flick. It's more disorienting than scary, more surreal than terrifying. And although there aren't monsters or ghosts roaming the island our protagonists are staying, it just doesn't feel like the other inhabitants of the island are entirely human. This is a movie that seems like it takes place not just in the subconscious but in the subconscious of a ghost. It's a stark glimpse at a mentally-disturbed mind, one troubled by a past we only get some peeks at. The artist's female companion is along for the ride, and the story unfolds in a way that puts us in her shoes. Put Hour of the Wolf in that category of movies that you feel more than you comprehend. And although it isn't traditionally scary, it is something I'd avoid watching alone at night. The brooding atmosphere, the way Bergman makes this expansive island with a sky that never ends feel claustrophobic and suffocating, the haunting imagery during the encounter with a boy on a rocky shore or the desolate castle corridors, the insane scene with the woman taking off her hat. Nightmare time, kids! This is thick with typical Bergman symbolism and has a sleepy structure, but it's well worth attempting to unwrap. Even without any werewolves in sight.

Nightbeast

1982 sci-fi horror movie

Rating: 4/20

Plot: An alien crashes in the woods, and some guys camping hear it. They investigate and are immediately lazered into oblivion. Who is going to stop the Nightbeast, a being impervious to bullets and seemingly unstoppable? Oh, and there's a Bad Fonzi character running around raping people. Somebody's also got to stop him.

Director Don Dohler directed The Alien Factor in 1978, but he apparently wasn't happy with it and thought he could do better. So just four years later, he remade the story as Nightbeast. If this movie actually is better, I wonder how bad The Alien Factor is. The first half of the movie is jam-packed with repetitive action scenes involving the monster shooting people and them disappearing with some graphics that look like something I could have seen while playing Atari as a kid. The spaceship scenes at the beginning were cheaply artistic. I was all ready to give the guy who played Uncle Dave the Torgo award for the year until I noticed that every single performer in this movie is almost as bad. I'm not sure I've seen a worst ensemble cast. Don Leifert played Bad Fonzi (actually, Drago) with a low-budget intensity that gave me chills, and I'm guessing, since a quick glance at his short resume shows that he only acts in movies from this same director, that he was either a good buddy of Don Dohler or they were both in some club for people named Don. And who do we get to be the big action hero who will eventually save the day? This guy:

That guy! He, by the way, only acted in one other movie--The Alien Factor. But Tom Griffith sure nailed this one, rocking that salt and pepper afro and shooting an insane amount of bullets at the monster during several scenes despite knowing that it has no effect. And to top it all off, he gets himself a sex scene! That's right. You get to see that guy's ass. If I made a top-ten list of awkward sex scenes, this would be in there somewhere. I have to give credit to Dohler for his ability to shock though. Along with that shocking sex scene, there are some pretty gruesome deaths. Well, after the thirty minutes of lazerin'. Intestines make a cameo appearance, and there's a nifty decapitation. Hell hath no fury like a rubber-faced alien scorned, I guess. If you like bad movies, this isn't a bad way to spend eighty minutes. Or three hundred and eighty minutes if you have to rewind and rewatch that sex scene a bunch of times like I did.

Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter

2001 religious kung-fu musical horror comedy

Rating: 12/20

Plot: I haven't read it, but I think this might be based on John's the Book of Revelation.

Yes, that's Santo on the cover, side-by-side with Jesus and ready to fight lesbian vampires. And in the middle is Mary Magnum in that tight little red leather number. Fetching. Making Jesus an action hero is dangerous business, especially since a lot of religious folk don't have much of a sense of humor. But I'm not sure Christians would be too appalled with the character Himself since I don't think He does anything Jesus wouldn't have done like Scorsese had Him doing in The Last Temptation of Christ. Unless bad puns are offensive. In fact, even though the title hero is your typical overblown action hero, he is the hero. He fights evil, and he quotes scripture. What's likely more blasphemous is the use of Santo. El Santo in Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter can't wrestle and is portly. When watching this movie, your first thought (other than "This is blasphemous!") would probably be, "I think this might have been made on the cheap." And you'd be right. Your third thought would probably be, "This was made in 2001? No way! It's got to be from the 70s!" But there's a charm to the proceedings, and the script, littered with (intentionally?) bad punnage and silly action hero banter, is funny enough. I found myself laughing more than I really wanted to. For whatever reason, hearing Jesus deliver the line "I'll need to buy some wood. . .for stakes!" was hilarious. I also thought the spinning crucifix used as a Batman-esque transition between scenes was clever. I also liked a scene where about three hundred baddies get out of an SUV. Not all the comedy worked though, evidenced by a scene where Jesus has a conversation with a bowl of cherries. The bowl of cherries actually tells him to find El Santo. I can't decide if seeing Jesus and a priest hanging out at a Hooters-type restaurant is funny or not. There's a lot of kung-fu in this movie, and it won't exactly make you think of Bruce Lee. The fight scenes often seemed endless, and if the guy who played Jesus (Phil Caracas [Wait a second! Isn't the guy who plays Jesus in the Mel Gibson movie named Caracas?]) had any martial arts training, they wasted their obviously limited funds on it. There is a scene where a character uses intestines as a weapon though. I should have started making a list of those movies a long time ago. This is also a musical, and although the songs were only slightly more tolerable than Repo: The Genetic Opera's numbers, there at least was some eclecticism. You had punk, techno-robot-lounge, keyboard blipping, 80s feel-good movie rock, Mexicali funk, cheesy lounge, neo-funk with vocoder, dance music, retarded jazz, and my personal favorite--a really creepy song where somebody whispered the books of the New Testament with cymbal accompaniment. The performers were likely friends of the director, some of them, I think, appearing as more than one character, but three of them were real stand-outs. Josh Grace was deliriously over-the-top as Dr. Praetorious. I checked his resume, and he's been in a few of JCVH director's Lee Demarbre's movies including one where Demarbre includes another Mexican movie legend--The Aztec Mummy. I can't find the name of a screaming woman, but it was one of the best screams I've heard in a long time. But the very best part of the movie is the introduction and musical performance of Blind Jimmy Leper played by an actor named "Lucky Ron" who had about as many teeth as Shane McGowen. He does this scatting number which could probably prove the existence of God to even the most diehard of atheists. Jesus jumped on the stage and did his own scatting, but he couldn't beat the work of Blind Jimmy Leper. And when you're Lucky Ron and can prove in your lone movie that you can out-scat Christ Himself, you don't have to do anything else as a performer to win a lifetime achievement award on shane-movies.

Note: I've heard that there's an Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter movie being made. Joaquin Phoenix is attached to that project. I guess his career is doing just fine!

The Boogens

1981 silliness

Rating: 5/20

Plot: Four guys reopen an abandoned mine and unleash the titular monster. The Boogens. Maybe it's monsters instead of just a lone monster actually. I'd probably be able to figure it out if somebody told the story a little better.

Rarely do I want to penalize a movie for its title, but this movie is called The Boogens. That might have worked if this was a horror-comedy or a horror spoof or something like that, but it's not. It's a straight monster-on-the-loose movie with only a bit of the dated humor that 80's horror filmsters would inject into the story. It's also got several of those "ha ha just kidding" moments where the bad synthesizer music and timid characters lead you to believe that something scary is about to happen (you know, like The Boogens or A Boogen jumping out of a closet and doing whatever Boogens do) but then it's just like an old guy who isn't scary at all and you say, "Ah, director of The Boogens! You got me!" while you secretly wish you were watching something else. This is a cheapo production, but the main problem is with the unlikable characters, poor storytelling, and a complete lack of style. Unless tedious shots of characters descending into basements or mine shafts is stylish. You get two kinds of shots in The Boogens--lots of quick zooms and a wobbly, nauseating Boogens-cam. But the makers of the film sure make you wait a long time to see the monster itself. You wait so long that you just think you're going to get a cool monster. That's only if you completely forget that you're watching The Boogens though because everybody knows that nothing is allowed to be cool in The Boogens. Except the dog maybe. The dog spends most of the movie trying to leave the movie, and he impressively out-acts the humans with every bark.

Mr. Sardonicus

1961 Castle drama

Rating: 15/20

Plot: An ex-fling summons Dr. Cargrave to Gorstava, and he makes the trip because it sounds like she's in trouble. He encounters one-eyed butlers, leech-covered maids, mysterious masked hosts, tales of ghouls, pudding slurping, and torture chambers before being forced to perform an experimental operation on a disfigured grave robber. With any luck, he'll at least get laid in the end.

Pretty cool flick from the twisted mind of master showman William Castle. He starts the proceedings with a look at moody, fog-drenched London where he defines ghoul for his "homicidal friends" before launching into the narrative. Of course, it wouldn't be a William Castle joint if there wasn't some sort of gimmick, and this one involves a "Punishment Poll" in which the audience got to vote on whether or not the titular bad guy got a happy or unhappy ending. I'm pretty sure only one ending was filmed though, making Castle a big ol' liar. I'll forgive him though because the movie world is a better place with his movies. This would be your typical B-horror movie if not for a lot of really strange goings-on, including a scene where the one-eyed man talks to leeches. And watching the guy who played Baron Sardonicus deliver the majority of his lines behind an expressionless mask was off-putting. But Castle's films aren't just about strangeness and off-puttingness; it's the underlying dark, dark humor that really makes these worth watching. I really wish this guy's movies were easier to get my hands on.

Horrors of Spider Island

1960 go-go-ploitation movie

Rating: 2/20

Plot: Sleazeball Gary, nightclub manager, hires himself a posse of leggy dancers and hops in a plane to Singapore. Unfortunately, the plane crashes and the group winds up stranded on an island. They find some food, enjoy their time skinny dipping, and struggle to survive. Gary, after wandering into the woods one night, is bitten by a dopey-looking spider and turns into a horrible monster. Will the dancers be rescued before Gary kills them all? Can they survive the horrors of spider island? And is this the worst movie I'll see all year?

I spent the majority of this movie trying to figure out why it was dubbed, very poorly dubbed. The actors and strippers certainly looked like English speakers. Turns out that this was filmed in Germany as Ein Toter hing im Netz, or A Corpse Hangs in the Web. It's also known as It's Hot in Paradise. References to both webs and spider (and horror for that matter) are misleading since there's a single shot with a corpse hanging in a web and not all that much action involving the dude who turns into a murderous spider/man hybrid. But anyway, this certainly shows how low Germany had sunk following WWII. What makes me most angry is that this movie was just a big tease. You saw a lot of leg and a great deal of skin, but nary a nipple. And you saw a spider puppet a couple times and a spider-guy a few more times, but the latter's hairy hand sort of grabbing at victims was about it for the titular horrors. I did dig that dubbing though. You get to hear people pronounce "rations" with a long a-sound, lots of exaggerated sound effects like slurping and moans, and inflection that doesn't come close to matching the moods of the character. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if the characters had better things to say. "Is there anything more wonderful than water?" "A dead man. . .in a huge web." It's not good writing, but at least by the end of the picture, they had figured out what the plot would be. Throw in what has to be one of the worst fight scenes in cinematic history (it ends with a hug) and some special-ed effects (that plane crash was really something) and a jazzy score and you've got yourself a pretty bitchin' movie. Oh, there's a catfight in this one, too, if you're into that sort of thing.

Madhouse

1974 horror film

Rating: 12/20

Plot: Paul Toombes is a horror film actor, famous for playing Dr. Death. When his girlfriend is murdered, Toombes loses his mind and his career and is committed to a mental institution. He's lured to England to film a television series with his old character, and upon his arrival, people start dying. Oh, snap!

This is a really boring movie. There's nothing wrong with Vincent Price or really even his character or the fictional character his character plays. In fact, Dr. Death looks pretty cool, especially during one of the few good scenes in the movie--Dr. Death stalking one of his female victims through an elaborately landscaped yard. But a few good-looking scenes and a solid Price performance isn't enough to salvage this oft-incomprehensible borefest. It's either confusing (what the heck is with the weird spider woman?) or I got bored and lost focus. At first, I thought that some of the movies-within-the-movie were interesting, but I started to recognize them from other Vincent Price movies, and then it all just seemed cheap and lazy. Bonus points award for not only Vincent Price but Vincent Price singing, something that always makes movies a little better.

Jack Frost 2: Revenge of the Mutant Killer Snowman

2000 horror-comedy

Rating: n/r

Plot: Well, apparently a mutant killer snowman from a first movie is brought back to life after a laboratory accident. He travels, naturally, to a beach resort to get revenge on some really boring characters. After travelling as water, he manages to collect a carrot and charcoal in absurd ways and eventually, I'm guessing since I couldn't finish the movie, becomes an entire mutant killer snowman.

This is not just a movie that I couldn't finish. This is a movie that forced me to wonder what the hell I'm doing with my life. After shutting this one down, I sat in a motionless, depressed funk for what I thought was a week and a half but turned out to be only seventeen minutes and twenty-three seconds.

Madman

1982 crazy guy with an ax movie

Rating: 4/20

Plot: Some old guy, a few counselors, and some campers at a summer camp share some scary stories around a campfire. The old guy tells the tale of Madman Marz, a crazed ax murderer who lives in that house right over there. This inspires one of the kids to start shouting his name. That's apparently a bad idea. You know how the rest of this goes.

If you're a young woman running from a Sasquatch with an ax and you decide to hide in a refrigerator, wouldn't it be easy for the Sasquatch to find you if you had emptied the contents of said refrigerator all over the kitchen floor before you crawled inside? Not in Madman. There's not a single original idea in this slasher. The killer isn't the least bit interesting, and neither are the victims. I do like that the madman apparently has an unseen sidekick who periodically noodles around with a portable synthesizer. This is a bad movie, but it's not the kind of bad that makes it worth watching. I really lost patience waiting for all of these kids to die.

Tentacles

1977 Jaws rip-off

Rating: 6/20 (Dylan: 20/20)

Plot: Henry Fonda is digging a tunnel or something, and somehow awakens a giant octopus which begins terrorizing a nondescript beach community. It grabs babies and devours fisherman and ruins child yacht races. Somebody's got to stop it, and Richard Dreyfuss is nowhere to be found!

Dylan was convinced that this was a comedy and said it's the funniest one he's ever seen. He doesn't know what he's talking about though. Remember, he's the same guy who gave Dr. Strangelove a 6/20. I'm amazed at this piece of garbage's cast. John Huston plays his cliched character stoically. The sultry and seductive Shelly Winters really hams it up (no, Cory, she doesn't die in this one). And poor Henry Fonda just looks completely lost. There are far too many characters in this, and there's far too much incoherent dialogue. I really would have liked to see more tentacles, especially since that's the title of the movie, but maybe that's just my love of Japanese tentacle porn coming out. Almost frustratingly (not quite, but almost), there are some moments in this movie that are almost (almost!) good. There's some nifty stylistic touches when the monster's first making his moves during the exposition. It's style that feels plundered, but it's still a little style. The scene with the baby and the others are startling, more startling since we don't get to see the culprit right away. But it doesn't take too long to realize that we're dealing with complete ineptitude here. The underwater scenes are nicely done, but a lot of the shots of boats look like they're being filmed by a drowning man. And there are lots of close-ups of the backs of people's heads, the sides of boats, and (most alarmingly) crotches. There was a shot of a belt buckle that actually convinced me I was supposed to have 3D glasses on. I thought that belt buckle was going to wind up in my living room! The most embarrassing scene in the movie involves a hefty Italian guy (the underwater shots of his body are the most horrifying parts of this movie) enjoying a swim. The director plays the fake attack card (you know, the here's-some-scary-music-and-a-shot-from-the-perspective-of-an-attacker-because-oh-no-he's-about-to-be-attacked-but-no-it's-just-his-friend-playing-a-joke-ha-ha trick) very awkwardly. Twice! Withing two minutes! Also embarrassing is the soundtrack. Inspired by Jaws, the filmmakers knew they'd have to have a sort of memorable theme for the octopus, Tentacles' dum-duh, dum-duh. But the five-note motif used here, something that sounds like a cat falling on a piano, is just dumb. Things get beyond ridiculous when Bo Hopkins delivers a seemingly endless monologue while straddling a killer whale tank. It's nothing less than a magical movie moment, but it's only a prelude to a climactic battle scene (SPOILER ALERT!) between a pair of killer whales and the giant octopus. Yeah, that's exactly as badass as it sounds.

The Fearless Vampire Killers or: Pardon Me, But Your Teeth Are in My Neck

or, Dance of the Vampires

1967 horror comedy

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A pair of clumsy vampire hunters travel to Transylvania in search of vampire hearts to hammer some wooden stakes into. They stop at an inn because Professor Abronsius needs thawing, and Alfred, his young assistant meets and falls for the beautiful red-headed daughter of the innkeeper. She's swiped by a vampire while bathing, however. Oh, snap! Can the professor and Alfred get to the castle and save her in time?

I'd only known Sharon Tate as a name. I'm not going to claim that she's the greatest actress who ever lived or anything, but there sure was something appealing about her. There is a lot to see in this movie. The cinematography is often stunning, the settings are sensual, and the quirky goings-on in the backgrounds force your eyes to examine every inch of the screen to suck it all in. But despite the gorgeous imagery, my eyes were a little angry every time Sharon Tate wasn't on the screen. But my eyes needed to calm down since most of her scenes seemed to take place in bathtubs. This is an unusual movie, a sometimes baffling movie. Unfortunately (I guess), it's neither scary or funny, and you'd figure that a "horror comedy" would be at least one of those. But there are enough of those How's-Polanski-Doing-That? moments to make it not really matter. I did have a lot of trouble understanding the actors, especially the Jack MacGowran who at times looked like Dana Carvey doing some failed Saturday Night Live character. And after a bit, I really stopped caring about the plot so that I could focus on Sharon Tate and the way Polanski weaves his camera through the gray corridors of this really cool castle. There are some really cool mirror tricks, and a great vampire ball scene where the vampires are all gray, like they've been borrowed from a Roy Andersson movie. Seeing them mingle with the still-human characters in an ornate ballroom was a nifty effect. Cool vampire flick! It does have too many names though.