Butts Motel (1988)

Directed by:
Scotty Fox

A lot of people thought Psycho II (1983) was completely unnecessary and perhaps it was, but the film itself ended up being way more popular - and far better - than most of its initial detractors thought. On a five million dollar budget, it went on to gross around 35 million dollars in North America alone, making it the 20th highest grossing film of its year and also one of the years most profitable when one takes into consideration budget investment vs. gross. This led to a resurgence in popularity for star Anthony Perkins, his infamous Norman Bates character and the Psycho brand name in general. A few years down the line, Perkins was able to both star in and step behind the camera to direct for the very first time with Psycho III (1986), which proved to be mildly successful but still a clear case of diminishing returns. That same year, both the film itself and the Norman character factored prominently in the “Welcome to My Nightmare” episode of Amazing Stories. Next came Bates Motel (1987), a made-for-TV anthology (and unsuccessful pilot for a proposed series) that centered around one of Norman's insane asylum buddies (Bud Cort) who inherits the motel after Bates passes away. Smack in the middle of all that and the later made-for-cable Psycho IV: The Beginning (1990), the awful Gus Van Sant remake of 1998 and the latest incarnation, the 2013 cable series Bates Motel, came this forgotten porno parody.

One can't expect much from these kinds of movies from this era. After all, by the late 80s most XXX films were being churned out as quickly as humanly possible (in a matter of just a couple of days) and most were shot on video with budgets that didn't extend far beyond paying the performers, purchasing blank VHS tapes and perhaps renting a few hotel rooms. Butts Motel fits all of the above criteria but, since no one's going to be watching this for lavish production values anyway, that's all a moot point. What's important is that the film carry through on the sex and, since it's a parody of a well-known, extremely popular film, provide a few chuckles for fans of the original. This accomplishes at least that much.

On the lam and headed toward Mexico, Ophelia Tush (Carol Cummings, who later did R rated films like Psycho Cop Returns under her real name, Kimberly Spies) and her girlfriend Brenda Over (Sasha) show up at Butts Motel with a suitcase the latter is very protective over. Weirdo motel owner Norman Butts (Jerry Butler) carries on and on about how he and his dead mother used to be close, warns the ladies of a potentially noisy honeymoon couple next door and puts them up in their room. Norman then spies on them having sex through a hilariously huge peephole hidden behind his mum's portrait while talking to her ("It's that time! It's that time ma! Talk to me ma! ... OH MY GOD!") Afterward, we pay a visit to both the newlywed couple; Annie (Kassi Nova) and Peter (Marc Wallice), and a couple of cops; Officer Dick Hershey (Jeff James) and Sheriff Beatrice Hinds (Frankie Leigh), who've tracked Brenda to the hotel. Everyone, of course, has sex in various combinations (there are six scenes crammed into just 65 minutes) and the corny jokes fly fast and furious in between.

One of the unsung talents of 80s and 90s adult films was writer Cash Markman, who is said to be the most prolific screenwriter of all time. Because of all the aliases he used throughout his career, it's nearly impossible to get an exact figure on his credits, but he was involved in writing somewhere between 850 and 1000 (!) porn films. When mainstream movies parody the hokey double entendre jokes adult films often contain, they're parodying exactly what Markman was doing at the time...

Beatrice

"You know for a small town cop, you sure do seem to have a lot of balls, Officer Hershey."

Officer Hershey

"Call me Dick, Bea."

Beatrice

"Well Dick, that shouldn't be too hard... or should it?"

Officer Hershey

"May I say there's something about a female cop in uniform that makes this private dick want to go public."

Beatrice

"Was that public or pubic?"

Officer Hershey

"How long do you think that Norman guy is going to be?"

Beatrice

"I don't know. I've never seen him naked."

Officer Hershey

"No. I mean, what if he comes in while we're..." 

Beatrice 

"I don't care if Norman comes... as long as we do."

Brilliant? No. A dumb, goofy and amusing way to lighten the mood? Sure. Markman's script also pokes fun of Psycho throughout, including a long shower scene complete with similar camerawork, shots of the showerhead, drain, shadow through the curtain and all that. If that's not enough for ya, this includes some extremely odd and sometimes twisted bits of humor throughout. How odd? Well, Norman's mother apparently left him a vibrator in her will. And the last sex scene is a flashback of Norman having sex with his own mother (Candie Evens) after she takes off a prune-faced Halloween mask while creepy music plays!

Though promoted as “A Psycho-Anal Thriller,” don't be fooled into thinking this is going to be filled with big-haired backdoor action. It's not. That's limited to just two brief scenes and both feature the Turkish-born Nova. The most erotic sequence is Cummings' solo shower scene - going places no Janet Leigh has ever gone before! - followed by sex with Butler in the bathroom. Despite IMDb claiming this is 80 minutes (they currently also have much of the cast listing wrong), this runs barely over an hour and some of the same shots are repeated numerous times to even push it that far. As far as I know, this was only released one time on home video, on the Executive Video label. There were five "sequels;" many of which were made by the same people.

★★

House (1986)

... aka: House: Ding Dong, You're Dead

Directed by:
Steve Miner

Made by numerous Friday the 13th series alumni (including director Miner and producer Sean S. Cunningham), this horror-comedy is all over the place but at least tries to do something a bit different than the norm. Roger Cobb (William Katt) is a famous writer who's picked a poor time to start suffering from writer's block: his agent is threatening to take back an advance paid on a follow-up to his hugely successful first book "Blood Dance" if he doesn't have something else for him in a month. Luckily for him, his kooky Aunt Elizabeth (Susan French) has just hung herself and he's inherited her large Victorian-style home and all of its belongings. Roger initially puts the house up for sale, but then begins to have second thoughts. This is no ordinary house, but the house he grew up in and the house he was raised in after his mother passed away. It also happens to be the last place he saw his son Jimmy before he vanished into thin air never to be seen again. Roger decides that instead of going through with the sale, he's going to move in. For starters, he needs the solitude to concentrate, but he'd also like to get to the bottom of his seemingly-happy aunt's suicide-by-hanging death and uncover what happened to his son.

Roger wants his new book to be all about his experiences in the Vietnam war. While he works on the novel, he has flashbacks to his service days, as well as nightmares, hallucinations and flashbacks about both his aunt and his son, as well as either hallucinations or real visions of grotesque monsters which may or may not be ghosts yet may be hallucinations caused by the haunted house itself or may not exist at all and are just figments of Roger's imagination because he's actually going crazy from all of the stress life has thrown his way. The house itself may not even be haunted at all, but actually a portal to another dimension where numerous creatures dwell. Yeahhhh, that about sums it all up. The screenplay seems to be aiming for allegory in regards to overcoming life's demons, but I'm not quite sure a goofy 80s haunted house horror-comedy needed to be so bloody complicated. The ending fails to tie up the numerous loose ends and it also never seems to find the right tone. One minute it's as goofy, lighthearted and even cutesy as can be and the next it's completely serious dealing with subject matter like post traumatic stress, survivor's guilt, abducted children, divorce, depression and suicide. It's a bold mix but never really comes together. Regardless, there's still a lot of other things to enjoy.

The cast all do their best to try to sell this. Katt, one of those busy but overlooked "everyman" actors I appreciate more the more I see of him, does fine in the lead role and there are several bright and entertaining supporting performances. George Wendt (then known for the TV series Cheers) is great as the nosy next-door neighbor Harold, who suffers from a case of foot-in-mouth disease but can also be helpful and even insightful ("Solitude's always better with someone else around.") in his own annoying way. Big guy Richard Moll (then known for the TV series Night Court) appears in the 'Nam flashbacks as a reckless squad member who features prominently in Katt's novel (and his list of personal regrets). Blonde former Miss World Mary Stavin also has a fun role as another of Roger's new neighbors, who uses her looks to her advantage and cons Roger into a night of free babysitting. The other big name here is Kay Lenz, who plays the ex-wife who still loves and cares about her former spouse. Lenz is a very good actress but her talents are under-utilized in this particular role. In small parts are  Michael Ensign as a real estate agent, Billy Beck, Steven Williams, Alan Autry, Mindy Sterling, Dwier Brown and Ronn Carroll.

Perhaps the best aspect of all is the amount of monsters on display. There's a big clawed mutant living in the closet, a fat / wrinkly old witch whose arm continues to live on despite being severed, a couple of little goblins, a stuffed and mounted swordfish coming to life, an armed zombie soldier and, toward the end, even a stop-motion-animated skull with wings. All of these special effects are great fun and some even appear to have inspired certain moments from both of Sam Raimi's Evil Dead sequels. Harry Manfredini was in charge of the score, so you'll hear familiar bits of music from the Friday sequels re-used, particularly Part V. The end theme is a cover of "You're No Good."

On a budget of 3 million dollars, House grossed nearly 20 million in U.S. theaters alone; enough to edge its way into the Top 50 by year's end. Its success led to two official sequels: HOUSE II: THE SECOND STORY (1987) and HOUSE IV: HOME DEADLY HOME (1992). There's a jump between 2 and 4 because an unrelated film called THE HORROR SHOW (1989) had been released in Europe as House 3, so to avoid further confusion they simply skipped ahead to Part 4 here in America.

★★1/2

Devil Dynamite (1987)

... aka: Devil's Dynamite

Directed by:
"Joe Livingstone" (Godfrey Ho?)

Oy vey! Here's yet another incomprehensible mess from Filmark International, this time involving a silver super hero, drug lords, gamblers and hopping vampires. Large chunks of the movie were swiped from a 1979 crime drama called The Casino Giant (aka City of Vengeance or aka Duel in a Gambling Den) as well as a second film called The Stunning Gambling, made in 1982. Most of the rest of the footage was made by one "Joe Livingstone" who may be producer Tomas Tang or may be Hong Kong cut-and-paste master Godfrey Ho or may be someone else entirely. Reference books and most websites credit Ho with the direction, so I will be listing him as such too unless I hear definitive proof to the contrary. Not just content with borrowing from two other films, much of the same footage used here was also seen in another Ho / Tang hack-job called Ninja, the Violent Sorcerer, which credits director "Bruce Lambert" and is listed on IMDb as being released in 1982 but was probably slapped together sometime later (a Hong Kong film database claims 1987). Yes, this is all confusing as hell but that's par for the course with nearly all of the output from Tang, Ho, Filmark, etc. Maybe one day someone will figure this all out.

And while we're on the subject of confusing, all of this spliced together and re-dubbed footage boasts three completely different plots simultaneously running parallel to one another, never really gelling together and all duking it out for our attention. There's no winning this particular battle, though, None of this makes a lick of sense. There's lot of fighting and numerous WTF moments sprinkled throughout, but this doesn't really cut it as a good bad movie. It's mostly just confusing, senseless, frustrating and just plain boring to sit through.

Using a voodoo doll, American drug lord Ronald has managed to put a Taoist priest under his spell and forces the man-of- the-cloth to tend to four hopping, blue-faced vampires who become more and more powerful with each drop of human blood they consume. These karate- fighting bloodsuckers can appear or disappear at will and are only kept in check with a piece of spell paper attached to the forehead. Meanwhile, "gambling king" Steven Cox (Kuan-Hsiung Wang) has just been released after ten years in prison and has vengeance on his mind. Steven wants to get back at Madame Mary (Elsa Yeung) aka "the bitch who betrayed me," for not only getting him arrested but also helping to destroy his previous marriage and driving his wife and kids away. Mary is now engaged to a young, apparently not-very-observant policeman named Louie (Lau Seung-Him), has taken over his home and casino business and is now known as "the queen of the underworld."

Elsewhere, a man named Alex (Suen Kwok-Ming) is living a double life as a crime fighter named "Shadow Warrior." Decked out in a baggy silver outfit, silver boots and silver motorcycle helmet, Alex battles not only the vampires, but also the evil priest, the American mob boss and their black-clad ninja henchmen, all of whom are working for Mary. So who is Alex working for? Well, apparently a guy named Mr. Ivers (Chung Tien Shih), his yellow-robed Taoist "master" and Steven Cox... I think. There's lots of double-crossing and even double-crossers being double-crossed, characters flipping allegiances and a bunch of people running doing things that don't necessarily make any sense. It's impossible to keep track of all of the characters and what they're up to. I'm not even fully convinced the people responsible for dubbing this understood what was going on.

Also thrown into the mix are a bunch of annoyingly-dubbed kids playing vampire games, a hidden case of gold buried on the beach that numerous characters want to get their mitts on, an "anti-sorcery mirror," long scenes of the Taoist cutting his hand, bleeding into a bowl, playing around with fire and sparklers (which I guess is the "Devil Dynamite" of the title) and conducing vampire training sessions, tons of random fight scenes and some laughable dialogue ("Do unto yourself what others want to do to you... CUT YOUR BALLS OFF!!") There's also one scene that is repeated in its entirety two times for no apparent reason. At the very end there's a fun fight sequence between some of the more colorful characters but it's too little too late by that point. The entire cast listing in the opening credits is fake, though martial arts fans may recognize "Lady Kung Fu" Angela Mao Ying in about 30 seconds of the recycled footage.

To my knowledge, this was first issued on VHS here in America on the Star Classics label in 1990. IMDb claims it was released before then by TransWorld, who also released numerous other films from these same people, like DIAMOND NINJA FORCE (1988) and The Vampire Is Still Alive (1989), but I can find no evidence of that. In 2006, BCI / Eclipse released it on DVD as part of their "Eastern Horrors" collection. That set also includes the similar and equally awful, though slightly more fun, ROBO VAMPIRE (1988).

★