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Silent Night Deadly Night (1984)
Santa's here!
My only experience with Silent night, Deadly night is the fourth film in the series (a proper b-grade slasher) so I decided to get my hands on the film that started the most known Christmas horror franchise and finally give it a watch. To my surprise it wasn't as bad as I would have expected. Maybe it's the spirit of Christmas giving me strength to overlook flaws in films or maybe it's just a damn good film.
It's far from the b-grade sleaze-fest I was expecting and I found myself amazed that there is an actual slasher focused on a maniac Santa that puts the first 30 minutes of the film away for a proper back-story and character development. As young Billy our main character grows up he sees his parents get killed by a maniac dressed as Santa. He gets sent to a Catholic orphanage where a sadistic nun tries to teach him right from wrong the only way religious folk know, namely intimidation, fear and the good 'ol leather belt. He grows up to become a timid but disturbed man taking the only job a man that fears Santa can take, namely working as Santa in a children toy-store (what was the local employment agency thinking?). Long story short
. he goes mental.
This is where an otherwise superb film goes haywire and becomes sloppy. The back-story of a disturbed man trying to keep a code of conduct and keep his morals is awesome and could have given us a main character not that unlike Dexter. Instead they decided to rush the whole thing and instead of killing the naughty and sparing the nice he breaks into homes of completely unknown people and simply kills them for no reason other than him being a complete nut case. "A psycho killing people at random is every other slasher out there" some might think and yes you are right, but few slashers put the killer in the leading role like this one. So we have a Santa that simply turns up at random events killing everybody and we have no victim as a lead character to route for since Santa is the lead role. All of this makes it a confusing experience to watch and I wish Charles who wrote the script could have kept the more psychological and smart approach that dictated the first half of the story. This might be the only flaw of the film but it sort of ruins an otherwise great experience.
Even though the story takes a turn into turd the film works as a gory slasher much thanks to the main character Billy played by Robert Wilson. Billy has a creepy little smile on his face the whole movie and really intimidates even though he's dressed up in a jolly red Santa outfit. Watching him scream "Naughty, naughty. Punish!" as he slowly impales a nude Linnea Quigley on a hunting trophy is one of the most disturbing scenes I have ever seen in a slasher and reason enough for anyone who loves the genre to go out and get themselves a copy of the film.
Mutant Hunt (1987)
Blade runner for "special" viewers
The film was created on next to no budget by an infamous director/writer/producer of adult pornography. Watching the fashion and mustaches on the male cast that last thing might not be that much of a surprise but what surprises me the most is the ego of the production team. If you have no money and hardly any skills in filmmaking then you might get away with creating a sleazy slasher at most. This film takes it inspiration from epic films like Bladerunner but fails fails in nearly every department, fails HARD. Awful settings, uninspired wardrobes (except for Domina's), no logical plot, weird fight scenes, laughable "inventions" and utterly useless cyborgs that look like failed EBM musicians and act like stiff zombies.
Bladerunner had its following of low-budget cyberpunk copycats and a lot of them actually succeeded with delivering a somewhat engaging story (Robotrix for instance) so this film can't really get away with it just because of finances. If I were to cut it some slacks then it has to be the effect and gore. I am especially thinking about the decaying cyborgs that are skillfully done with both stop-motion and makeup.
Sorceress (1995)
Nothing works...
As sad excuse of a movie that has a hard time deciding what leg to stand on and instead just flip-flops back and forth from being a bad horror-thriller and a wannabe playboy-flick. Every single time the story makes some sort of progression it's instantly halted by weird softcore sex-scenes. No matter what the situation might be they somehow find some excuse to throw ugly silicone tits in your face. I am in no way against exaggerated nudity in films but it has to be done with either humor or class and this film lacks both of those elements. I somehow get the feeling that it was two directors instead of one that filmed two completely different films and then just mashed them together, where Linda Blair stars in some bad occult thriller that at least has some "TV-movie" qualities and then a softcore Playboy flick starring Julie Strain and some other bimbos. The end result is just weird and since I love most stuff starring Linda Blair I felt sad seeing what became of her career after the 70's and 80's.
It's far from erotic unless you enjoy watching desperate silicone bimbo's rubbing their nether parts against equally desperate and washed up "Days of our life's" actors. If you ignore the bad sex-scenes then you're left with a bad thriller involving witches. It's not smart, it's not scary (unless you count Julie Strains plastic tits) and the only thing it has going for itself is two decent actors (Michael Parks and Linda Blair) that do their best to save it from a complete disaster, without success.
Trick or Treats (1982)
Oh boy...
Its tag-line "when Halloween night stopped being fun" speaks volumes about this dreaded film because I can't really see anyone finding any enjoyment in watching this trash. I had never watched this film until now and to be honest never even heard anyone talk about it so I had absolutely no idea what I was getting myself into.
The premise of the film is great with a perfect 80's VHS-cover a plot about an escaped mental patient about to seek vengeance on his family (not original but has worked before) and appearances by one of my favorite b-movie action-heroes David Carradine. But then I made the mistake of watching the actual movie and boy oh boy was I let down.
The film starts of as a weird family drama and soon then later turns into some weird comedy about a boy playing pranks on his stupid babysitter. This goes on for an hour or something and when the horror actually starts you don't care and actually want the cast to get killed so the dreaded thing can be over with.
The cast is set up of somewhat skilled actors but Gary Graver seems to have gone out of his way to create characters that nobody can like. The kid is an evil little brat that speaks with a freaky baby-voice, his mother is an egotistical and evil bitch and the babysitter seems to have the IQ of a donkey. To be honest the only lovable character in the whole film is the deranged father that's doing all the killings. Was this intentional or just poorly written? The only enjoyments one can get out of it is by watching it as a vigilante film and actually cheer for the killer as he gets back on society and the bastards who locked him up. But even then you'll probably spend half the movie hitting the fast forward button.
The Wasp Woman (1995)
Watchable but lacks that "Corman charm"
Being a fan of Coman's original creation from 1959 I had a hard time stomaching this remake. Sure the original film has its flaws like most Coman films with its dragged out dialog and quite boring mid-plot but it sure had charm which is something this film lacks. Everything ain't bad though and even if Wynorski fills out the majority of the plot with boring sex scenes there's one thing that this remake does better than the original and that the actual wasp woman. I'm not talking about Jennifer Rubin who just like a wasp couldn't act her way out of a paper bag; I'm talking about the transformed version of her. In the original film it was basically just Susan Cabot running around in a black spandex suit. This time Cormans studio actually put some dollars into creating a monster which is far far from believable but nevertheless quite creepy (almost at least). Sure it's stale and quite weird in some scenes but thinking of the budget and the year it was shot the only alternative would have been CGI-effects and we all know how that went in Dinosaur Island.
The story follows Cormans classic to the book with some exceptions but even so I can't help but asking myself what went wrong along the way. The whole film feels like a dragged out episode from Tales of the crypt. A show that I love but there was a reason why these episodes never went full-length.
Leaving this film behind in my Wynorskivaganza marathon (which never became a marathon because of work and other stuff to do) I am left with an empty feeling since it didn't really deliver where Wynorski often delivers. The sexy parts of the film are far from sexy, it lacks any humor like some of his other work and that creative cord that was still intact in his earlier films is long gone. In many ways it reminded me about his remake of Not of this earth. An movie that somehow survived a complete trashing thanks to its original story, which it copied from a 50's flick.
Swamp Thing (1982)
Genre-film done right
I know what you think. A movie for kids about some cartoon hero. Well sure it is based on a comic book but don't let that premise fool you. First of all this movie comes with a 15+ rating and for good reasons since people die to the left and the right and Adrienne Barbeau can't stop from pulling her tits out. Some of the scenes like the one where Swamp Thing crushes a man's head with his bare hands can also be a bit to graphical for minors. This is the way I remember it since my mother never kept a close eye to what I was watching as a kid and this resulted in me without any recognition of the English language at an age of 9 getting my hands on this tape through a friends friends older brother or something like that. Even though I couldn't understand most of the dialogue I just loved the movie with all its awkward action scenes, rubber monster-suits and most of all the voluptuous woman known as Adrienne Barbeau. A woman whom I as a kid had a crush on, a crush that made me watch everything from Escape from New York to the fantastic film The Fog.
I am no longer a kid (even though most people I know keep telling me that I act like one) but I must say this piece of cinema is an excellent example of how good B-movies can be if given a proper budget. The plot is not the most original (think any other super hero from your childhood) but it has a story that is interesting and easy to follow. It sports some of the biggest genre-stars of its time all under the directing wings of none other than the legendary Wes Craven. It has tits, midgets, heads being crushed, swamp monsters, shoot outs and even a little "Women in bondage" section. All this is made with a class and taste that is far from common in the 80's genre movies.
One can laugh hard at the rubber suits and try to poke fun at the numerous plot holes throughout the movie, especially in the beginning when the bad guy orchestrates an attack on his own facility or the little black kid that seems to pop up from nowhere in the middle of the swamp but this is just too good to be picked on.