FleshEater (1988)

... aka: Flesh Eater
... aka: FleshEater: Revenge of the Living Dead
... aka: Revenge of the Living Dead
... aka: Revenge of the Living Zombies
... aka: Zombie Flesh Eater
... aka: Zombie Flesh Eater: Revenge of the Living Dead
... aka: Zombie Nosh

Directed by:
Bill (S. William) Hinzman

"I think you've seen just one too many cheesy zombie flicks, paaaaal." - Actual line of dialogue from film spoken by a drunken vampire

If you're anything like me, you can't fully hate a movie with a zombie in a chicken suit or one featuring a scene where a zombie thrusts its hand inside a girl's lower stomach and pulls out her heart. FleshEater (originally released on home video in 1989 by Magnum Entertainment, who used the new title Revenge of the Living Zombies) is the type of low budget (60K) regional horror movie you need to put your brain in neutral to fully enjoy. The good news is that it delivers in spades if you like fast-paced exploitation horror with a high body count and lots of gore, nudity and cheap laughs. The bad news is if you're looking for competent filmmaking, you're best off looking elsewhere. The acting couldn't possibly be any worse, the plot is nearly nonexistent, the dialogue is horrendous and the movie is choppy and poorly edited, with little attention paid to continuity. However, I found this entertaining and likable nonetheless, so I give it a mild recommendation to all the B movie fans in the house.

Flesh was the brainchild of director, writer, producer and editor Samuel William Hinzman, who will forever be best known for playing the tall graveyard zombie who kills Johnny and chases Barbara around in the beginning of the original NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968). He also served as an assistant cameraman on that classic and went on to do further work for both Romero and Night co-writer John A. Russo. One thing that amuses me about Hinzman is that I always assumed he was much older than he actually was. Based solely on his physical appearance, I would have guessed he was at least in his mid 50s when he appeared in Night when in fact he was barely into his 30s! And he really looks no different here twenty years later playing basically the same role, though this time he's some kind of an Satanic zombie or something to that effect. While that's a potentially interesting idea, it's something the script never goes into any real detail about.

A farmer out in the middle of the woods removes a tree stump with his tractor, brushes a few leaves aside, finds a stone burial marker with a foreboding message inscribed on it, ignores said message, removes some chains and then opens the coffin (with a pentagram on it) underneath. Inside is Bill, who wastes no time immediately springing to life, jerking the guy into the coffin and biting his neck. When he throws the dead body out, you can easily see a cable attached to the actor's back pulling him.

Ten "college kids," who are all hilariously dressed in the ugliest flannel / stone washed jeans / jean jacket ensembles of the day, are on a Halloween hayride. The driver drops them off in the middle of the woods so they can drink, smoke pot and mess around. One of the girls says "I feel like dancin'!" and all the women in the group suddenly jump up and start barely moving to some generic supermarket music, trying to pull the guys up while they groan and guzzle their Iron City beer. Aside from one guy who is kind of a jerk / prankster, these "kids" are given no personality whatsoever. One girl flashes the camera for random boob shot number one. There will be many more of these. Another woman (who looks about 20 years too old to be in college) puts in a gratuitous topless scene in a barn where she virtually date rapes the guy she's with before Bill's zombie bursts in, sinks a pitchfork into the guy's chest and rips the girl's heart out and eats it. Two farmers are then killed and everyone returns as zombies to attack the others. The survivors make it to a farmhouse and try to barricade themselves in but the living dead attack and kill just about everyone inside except for one couple (John Mowod and Leslie Ann Wick) who hide out in basement. And this is only the first half hour!

All of the dead teens, plus the farmers, plus Bill, then descend on a small town and kill even more people, including several children. We also get random boob shots #3 and #4, plus random gratuitous fully naked girl who will become a fully naked zombie. What's funny is that despite all of the zombie madness going on, Bill's the only one who gets to wrestle around with and kill the naked girls and he even gets to bite one right on the breast! The best scene takes place at a Halloween keg party. While the zombies feast on the guys, all the girls screech and huddle in the corner for several minutes until it's their turn. One girl in a hula outfit tries to climb up a ladder and a zombie sticks a hook in her leg and jerks her back down. Another guy has his nose bitten off. The best gore effect though is when Bill impales a topless girl with his arm, sticking it through her back and out her chest.

The special effects are surprisingly well done at times, especially for the budget range, and there's plenty of guts, an axe to the head, impalements, pitchforkings, heads blown off with shotguns, zombies with eaten off faces and much more. In fact, this is easily one of the goriest zombie movies of the entire decade. The ending is directly "inspired" by the ending of NOTLD (i.e. ripped off), but at least our desires for the surviving Brad Paisley look-a-like and his girl are finally fulfilled. The cast also includes Kevin Kindlin and "Theresa Marie" / Terrie Godfrey (the stars of Hinzman's previous film THE MAJORETTES), Rik Billock (GORGASM), Vincent Survinski (reprising his role as posse member Vince from the original Night), Heidi Hinzman (Bill's daughter), Bonnie Mastandrea (Bill's wife) and the voice of Michael Gornick.

The DVD and Blu-ray from Media Blasters/Shriek Show (which uses the title Flesh Eater) is a decent enough print with some good extras, including a photo gallery, a Bill Hinzman zombie pizza commercial and a 35-minute documentary featurette called Back Into the Woods featuring interviews with Hinzman and make-up artist Jerry Gergely.

★★

Night of the Living Dead: 30th Anniversary Edition (1998)

... aka: Night of the Living Dead: Final Version

Directed by:
John A. Russo

Instead of leaving well enough alone or releasing a new remastered version of Romero's masterpiece NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968), John A. Russo and many other Night alum got together and decided to film brand new scenes. Blasphemy you say? You would be correct for the most part. This footage (about 17 minutes in total) was then wedged into a shortened cut of the '68 version wherever it would fit for the film's 30th Anniversary release. This new stuff was shot in black-and-white (by original Night cemetery ghoul S. William Hinzman) in an ill-fated attempt to match it to the original. A new music score was the other major change. Hinzman also helped produce and edit while Russo directed, wrote and edited, plus helped finance the project through his company Market Square Productions. Seeing how Market Square was making things like Swimsuit Sensations (1992), SANTA CLAWS (1996) and Scream Queens Naked Christmas (1996) at around the same time, who'd have ever guessed the resulting footage would end up so shitty?

Other Night vets who got involved include Russell Streiner (an editor), Karl Hardman (still photographer and make-up) and Marilyn Eastman (who handled some of the zombie extra make-up). Perhaps the biggest sin of all was that they actually cut about 20 minutes from the original just to make room for the new stuff. For the record, Romero wanted nothing at all to do with this project. He didn't work on it, didn't endorse it and didn't even want his name associated with it, so I'm not going to list him as the co-director out of respect despite the fact he's credited as such on the print. I'm also not going to recap the events of the original as most people already know what goes on there.

The new footage begins at a prison as grave diggers Dan (Grant Kramer) and Mike (Adam Knox), escorted by guard Charlie (Scott Kerschbaumer), carry a coffin to their pick-up truck and load it into the back. Inside the box is the body of a notorious child molester / murderer who's just been fried in the electric chair. In order to skirt any potential controversy, the warden has ordered the men to quietly, secretly deliver the corpse to the local cemetery and bury it without any commotion. Meeting them there are Arthur (George Drennen) and Hilda Krantz (Julie Wallace), the parents of one of the young victims who want some closure, as well as bald Reverend John Hicks (Scott Vladimir Licina). Arthur demands they open the casket so he can spit on the corpse then he and his wife storm off. After reciting a prayer, the reverend then walks away. And once the corpse (played by Hinzman to connect it to the original) rises from the grave, the two movers jump in their truck and also take off. (This was used as a prologue before Johnny and Barbara arrived at the cemetery.)

Next up we visit a car crash site where a family of four lie dead. The mother and two daughters return as zombies and exit the car while more zombies - including a waitress with her arm ripped off (Heidi Hinzman) and a mangled garage mechanic (Dan Abraham) - start feasting on the father's body. We then get a parade of zombies across the screen from multiple angles. (These shots were blended in with shots of the zombies gathering outside the farmhouse after the truck explosion in the original.)

Adding to the "next day" scenes, reporter Darlene Davies (Debbie Rochon) is interviewing the Reverend about the burial of the killer at the cemetery while, hilariously, an armed posse just shoots zombies all around them. The Hinzman zombie then reappears. The Reverend is bitten on the face while trying to give him a sermon before Hinzman is finally put out of his misery with a shot to the head.

The final new bit is set "one year later" at the Ormsby Medical Center. Darlene arrives to interview the now-even-crazier Reverend, who has somehow not been transformed into a zombie despite being bitten. He claims it was God's intervention and his wounds being cleansed with holy water that protected him. However, he's being held at the center against his will so doctors can study his immune system in hopes of coming up with an antidote. He rails about evil atheists and agnostics, theorizes that the dead are "creatures of Satan" and claims that walking corpses have been possessed by demons. Darlene gets spooked and then rushes out of the room. The end.

While these newly added scenes are probably not all that much worse than what you'd find in most other low budget zombie films from the 90s and 2000s, they stick out like a sore thumb when spliced into Romero's film. Not helping matters any is the acting, which is downright awful for the most part. Licina, who looks like Anton LaVey and also did the new music score, cannot act a lick so of course they give him five times more dialogue than anyone else. Despite being shot in black-and-white, the image is too clean to ever match up to the original. Santa Claws, which was shot in color on 16mm film stock (also by Hinzman), is far grainier and grittier looking than this so perhaps they should have gone that route instead. Or perhaps they shouldn't have gone any route and not tried to enhance something that's perfect the way it is.

★

Electric Blue 32 (1985)

... aka: Electric Blue '32'
... aka: Electric Blue 32: Too Hot to Handle
... aka: Electric Blue Presents Too Hot to Handle

Directed by:
Robert Veze

The Electric Blue series – a video magazine featuring nude centerfold models, softcore vignettes, cars, sports, travelogue footage, movie clips, celebrity nudes and other things deemed appealing to most heterosexual men – debuted in the UK in 1979. The series would become a resounding success in Europe and one of the top selling video series' of the entire decade. They churned out one tape after another until the late 90s. There were at least 53 numbered Electric Blue tape releases in the UK as well as off-shoots like “Best Of” videos, Sex Model Files, Reader's Wives, Girls in Uniform and other specials that pushed the total number of video releases well into the hundreds. The series was so popular that there was even a 1982 theatrical release; Electric Blue: The Movie. These videos were released on their own Electric Video label, which also began acquiring and distributing adult titles (both R and X rated) from the U.S. and other countries, which were then promoted on the various EB tapes.

What's extremely confusing about these is that the UK Electric Blue releases are not the same as the U.S. Electric Blue releases despite them sharing order numbers and some footage. In other words, the original Electric Blue 001 in the UK, which was hosted by Fiona Richmond, is not the same as the original Electric Blue 001 in the U.S., which was hosted by Marilyn Chambers. Only furthering the confusion, Electric Blue releases in other countries like Germany and Australia were also different. Some were censored and cut down to as little to half an hour apiece (the full versions ran about an hour) and various scenes were shuffled around from tape to tape. For instance, a scene from the third UK Electric Blue series may end up in the seventh U.S. Electric Blue and then the tenth German Electric Blue. It's nearly impossible to keep track of and makes establishing a coherent database for these a chore. The current listings on IMDb and most other websites are pretty much a mess of false information.

Here in America, the initial Electric Blue releases were distributed on VHS on the Kenyon Video label but the tapes apparently didn't sell as well as they did in Europe so they were discontinued fairly early on. However, the series continued on the Playboy Channel and ended up going up to at least entry #57. While the numbered UK versions were made for decades and all were released on VHS, the U.S. versions were all released in a five year window lasting from 1983 to 1987 and most have never been made available on home video. The American scenes were filmed on both coasts. Most of the top West Coast porn stars of the time appear in vignettes while others feature people who also acted for New York-based exploitation directors like Chuck Vincent, Frank Henenlotter, Tim Kincaid, Ernest G. Sauer and Roberta Findlay. Credits list both (Jim South's) World Modeling Talent Agency out of Sherman Oaks, California and Jane Hamilton Productions out of New York City (I didn't even know Hamilton / Veronica Hart even had her own agency at one time) for supplying models.

The U.S. Electric Blue 32 is what we'll be reviewing here today. Dubbed "Too Hot to Handle," this features a framework story set in a smoky and red-tinted hell. Hence why it's even on this blog to begin with. Cosgrove and his assistant Raven (Laurie Smith) are horned demons whose job it is to make sure none of their subjects is ever satisfied. He calls her "the lowest, the filthiest, the most disgusting creature I've ever laid eyes on!" while she considers him "a walking spittoon." That's their idea of foreplay. White-suited, cigar-smoking angel Jasper comes down to complain that they're not meeting their quota and heaven's getting too crowded. He then demands they start increasing the number of hellbound souls.

The latest sinner to walk through the gates of hell is Daisy Diddleman (Penthouse Pet and U.S. series regular Krista Pflanzer), a large-breasted bimbo who was killed when her vibrator short-circuited and exploded. Despite the fact she has a low evil quotient, she's desperate to earn her horns and is assigned the task of corrupting an Earth soul. But first we cut to a vignette called "Damsel in Distress" starring Michelle Bauer as the titular damsel. Set in Northern France, Bauer is a woman on holiday who's renting a country villa that's rumored to be haunted. While out riding her horse, she's thrown off, knocked unconscious and then has a romantic fantasy involving the knight on horseback (Jay Sterling) who rescues her. Bauer started with this series back in 1981 when she appeared under the name "Felicity" in the UK-produced #6 and #7. She went on to appear in many more of these and shot scenes for both the UK and U.S. versions.

Next up we meet Homer Jones, whom Cosgrove calls a "pusillanimous pussywillow" and a "petrified powder puff." In other words, he's too nice of a guy to ever end up in hell. Because she wants her to fail, Raven makes sure Daisy is given the near-possible assignment of corrupting him. The story is then interrupted with a British vignette taking a look at "Party Palaces," described as a place for R&R where "singles in the know" play "adult party games." The games include strip poker, "grab bag," costumed Twister with people dress like cavemen, Hawaiian girls and Indian warriors and another card game where the top prize for the winner is "Get Laid." Seeing how UK nude models like Marie Harper and Charlie Dean are featured we can assume this isn't a real activity people partook in in the 80s. (For the record, these scenes are all snippets from a separate 1985 UK EB release called Adult Party Games).

We return to poor Homer, who is sitting around being miserable when he's visited by Daisy, clad only in a red cape. She whisks him away in a cloud of smoke to his favorite night club "The Flesh Pit," where he always strikes out, only this time he's mauled by every girl there. Angry at Daisy's success, Raven sends a few devil men to pose as bouncers to throw him out. Homer is then transformed into a glamour photographer but right when he's about to score with a model, Raven sends her devil girls Dulcie (Gina Carrera) and Pippi (Paula Harlow) to interrupt the proceedings. She does about the same routine when Homer is turned into a rock star and in bed with a couple of groupies, only this time she sends her gay friend Lance to do the dirty work, which leads the girls (including Lois Ayres) to shriek "Oh God! This guy's a flamer!" before storming out. Will Homer ever find true love? Will Daisy ever earn her place in hell?

In between the main story we get a number of shorts, including a "Critic's Corner" review for the porn film Pink Champagne (1979), a segment on downhill skiing, a "Fantasy Girl" segment about competitive best friends at an all girl's health club who fight over a lifeguard and "Cool Hand Lizzie" featuring Monique Gabrielle as a biker babe / pool hustler who has sex with her opponent. The winner gets to take on Julia "I'm the cousin of Dolly" Parton, who appears for all of five seconds.

For what it is (a showcase for female nudity with some goofy comedy and misc. stuff), this is actually pretty entertaining. The hell sets are decent, the dialogue is sometimes amusing, the cast look like they've having fun and there's a certain upbeat charm to the whole silly thing. Smith - known only as a hardcore performer - is surprisingly good in her role as the she-demon and should have done more mainstream films. I'm not sure who the actor playing Cosgrove is but he's also pretty good. Pflanzer, whose most notable part was getting naked then butchered in the 80s slasher Cheerleader Camp, does the cute airhead routine adequately enough. For soft erotica, this was a lot more pleasant and engaging than most of those "erotic thrillers" that saturated the market in the 90s.

Despite being listed on many websites as "adult" this features no X-rated content whatsoever. I've seen plenty of R-rated B movies with just as much nudity. Director Veze went on to make some other entries in the series and the dumb T&A comedy Bikini Summer (1991), which enjoyed frequent cable runs in the 90s and probably made a fortune. The current IMDb listing is completely wrong. They actually don't even list #32 and instead stuck the cast for this one under Electric Blue 34.

★★1/2