Princess of Darkness (1988)

Directed by:

"Bill Blackman" (Ron Jeremy)

A man sits in front of Bogie and Bergman posters with his favorite "old picture book" and thumbs to the page of a certain legendary character that he refuses to name but claims that everyone knows. Though the pudgy, hairy, greasy, unkempt-looking actor playing the storyteller also uses the names "David Elliott," "Hiramus Merkin" and "Bill Blackman" in the credits, he'll be instantly recognizable to nearly everyone as Ron Jeremy. You know, the same guy who has appeared in over 2000 adult films and is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the world's most prolific porno star. And the same guy who was chosen by AVN as the #1 porn star of all time. That guy. Sex films aside, Jeremy has also appeared in a hundred or so "legit" films, both big budget and small. Included among his work are over 70 horror films. Troma really got the ball rolling there, making him a regular in their cast rotation starting in the mid-90s. He's usually in the campier stuff and certain directors probably think they're being witty and edgy by casting someone like him. Jeremy has also starred in video games, music videos, television shows, kid's shows (!!!) and had feature-length documentaries made about his life and career. As far as porn goes, he's as mainstream as it gets.

Part of Ron's greatest appeal was, ironically, his complete lack of appeal. It was porn's way of saying, "Hey, if this sweaty, smelly, furry, pot-bellied blabbermouth can score with these beautiful young women, maybe there's hope you for, too!" I suppose that's a relatable angle to use if one can ignore the reality of the situation. You know, the part where these women wouldn't be having sex with him if they weren't being paid for it. Personally, the only feeling ever aroused in me watching him paw and pump away at his co-stars was usually pity for whatever poor starlet was stuck doing the scene with him. But that's just the superficial me talking. The real issue I, and so many others, have with the guy is something much worse, namely Jeremy being a serial sex offender.

Jeremy's off-screen "antics" are also why I never enjoyed seeing him on screen. The countless stories about his inappropriate, and often times criminal, behavior with female costars goes as far back as 1981; just two years after he first entered the business! That he was allowed to flourish in both the adult entertainment industry and in the mainstream regardless is simply pathetic. Even worse, his accusers were disbelieved, and their abuse completely disregarded, simply because they were female adult film stars. It's almost as if society was telling us that assaulting a woman was permissible if the woman also happened to be a sex worker. According to a number of the female performers, the adult industry protected Jeremy, opting instead to punish the female victims who dared to come forward. Meanwhile, the police did their part by ignoring numerous reports filed against Jeremy going back decades. Geesh, what kind of messed up world are we living in, anyway?

It wouldn't be until 2017 when literally dozens of women, prompted by the #MeToo movement, came forward that people started taking these allegations seriously. Jeremy was finally arrested in June 2020 and currently has over 30 charges leveled against him from 21 different women that stretch all the way back to 1996. One victim claims she was just 15 years old at the time of her assault. His case hasn't gone to trial yet though due to Jeremy being temporarily transferred to a mental health facility for a psychiatric evaluation and other lawyer shenanigans. In an interview with Rolling Stone, he claims the accusations are coming from jilted women suffering from "buyer's remorse." We'll see.

Quite an ugly intro for a review for a silly vampire porn, eh? Hey, I needed something to talk about. Besides, this film also happens to be rather dark and ugly itself, so it's rather fitting. One of the very first images we see in this classy production is a barely-dressed woman lying on an ugly rug on a dirty floor in a wood-paneled room with flies crawling on her. You turned on yet? After the woman is bitten by a rubber bat on a string, the young actress then has sex with a guy who looks old enough to be her father in a scene shot in about as unappealing a manner as possible. When a few simple crotch shots are the most horrifying thing in your vampire film, you know you got problems. The girl then flashes a set of plastic vampire fangs after she finishes earning her paycheck. Eek!

The bat flies off into a smoky closet and reemerges as a nameless vampire (Dan T. Mann) dressed in a cape and bikini briefs. I imagine he's supposed to be Count Dracula due to Jeremy's introduction, though the name is never uttered. The vampire approaches Samantha Strong painting her nails, pushes back her foot-high teased hair, leans in toward her neck and then, well, nothing. She snarls, "Don't even try it, fang face! We're two of a kind, remember?" Sam is apparently the vampire's wife or girlfriend or something. She tells him she's been eyeing another woman and is planning on paying her a visit later on that evening, while he's off to the neighborhood hospital to raid their blood bank.

In bat form, Samantha visits a sleeping Frankie (Frankie Leigh) and bites her on the neck. In this film, the bite not only turns one into a bloodsucker but also turns them on in another way. Frankie starts rubbing herself when Samantha appears in her room in sexy lingerie and helps out. Meanwhile, Not-Really-Dracula takes a wrong turn at the hospital, accidentally walks into the "AIDS Patients" ward, comes out spitting and says "I don't want to fuck with their blood!" Yes, that's the level of "humor" to be found here, along with the vampire couple repeatedly telling each other to fuck off. The rest of the film is comprised of sex scenes featuring Not-Really-Dracula with Frankie, Not-Really-Dracula with Samantha and, capping things off, Jeremy having a go at some unknown blonde after finishing up his story, which is somehow an even lower point of the video than that terrible AIDS joke.

Strong's naturally voluptuous body notwithstanding, this Video Exclusives release has next to nothing to offer even avid porn watchers. Some of the dialogue is raunchy and you get a look at two new-ish actresses (Liza Anne and Crystal Hart) who didn't do much else beyond this but, as a whole, this is unappealing, bottom of the barrel stuff. Poorly-shot scenes, poorly-improvised dialogue, butt ugly 80s décor, ugly actors and one set of cheap, ill-fitting plastic fangs being passed around by the entire cast, although that's hardly the least hygienic thing seen here. 

This also has nothing to do with John Carpenter's similarly-titled film from the previous year. They really missed a golden opportunity to make a green lava lamp the erotic catalyst.

NO STARS!

Spooked! (1988)

Directed by:

John Kolopanis

With the advent of the internet, iPhone's and cheap digital cameras, which enable virtually anyone to make their own own movies for next to nothing and then release their glorified home videos to the unsuspecting masses online, came the true death of the B movie industry. We're at such a low point now that streaming platforms are virtually bursting at the seams with so many zero budget horror films that no person could possibly see them all... not that they would necessarily even want to. Most of these things are bloody awful! And it's truly a headache having to wade through so much junk to find a single worthwhile indie horror film. 

80s and 90s amateur filmmaker kids had it much harder than the kids of today. First of all, we had to have access to something like a VHS camcorder, which started out as a fairly pricey piece of equipment and wouldn't become "every household has one" affordable until the end of the 90s. Then we had the issue that the internet either wasn't around or was in its infancy, so we had approximately zero chance of ever releasing our films. Strangely enough, this hardcore porno reminded me of my youthful days as a video-shooting wannabe horror auteur in the 90s. No, not for THAT reason, ya perverts! Let me explain...

Back when my friends and I shot our camcorder horror videos, we would never, ever use a script. It was all ad-lib. We'd come up with a single idea, or have a single cool prop (skull, prop gun, etc.) or some fake blood and make-up or access to a good shooting location (abandoned farmhouse, college theater), and we'd just roll from there. And this movie is quite identical to the way we did it back in the day. Well, minus the sex, of course. It's quite obvious that the genesis for this one day wonder's entire existence was access to a fairly decent latex monster mask. Everything else smacks of make-it-all-up-as-you-go-along indifference.

Amateur magician Daddy (Frank James) is jealous of his roommate Sonny (Marc Wallice) because he's the best looking one in the house, though admittedly that's not saying much when your competition is Frank James and Buddy Love. Sick of Sonny getting "all of the pussy in the world" and leaving his "left-over trash" for them, Daddy talks their other roommate (Love) into helping him concoct a magical potion to turn Sonny into a hideous monster. After mixing all of their ingredients together (though I don't know how many people keep Nile crocodile balls stocked in their kitchen pantry), they slip the concoction into their unsuspecting roomies morning coffee and it works like a charm. Sonny is now a hideous monster.

Sonny's generously-endowed blonde girlfriend (star-billed Samantha Strong) shows up, sees a photo of the new Sonny and sighs, "I used to go out with him but there's no way I can go out with that!" She then immediately goes into another room and has sex with Buddy right on the living room floor. It's just that simple, folks!

Sonny's blonde "main squeeze" Dana (Dana Lynn, who can't act a lick but is awfully cute) shows up to help and reveals that Daddy has a magic spell book. She plots to steal it, reverse the spell and give Daddy and Buddy a taste of their own medicine. But first she needs to seduce Daddy. Well, actually she doesn't really need to but it's time for another sex scene so there she goes. Jessica Longe (K.U.N.T. TV) shows up as yet another of Sonny's bottle blonde girlfriends and she's so kind and compassionate that she's willing to have pity sex with her malformed lover on the couch, which is the most memorable scene in the film by default.

Meanwhile, on the back patio, Jessica and Samantha try to comfort one another. Jessica explains: "I tried to talk him in to trying out the story of the Princess and the Frog. You know how the princess turned into the monster? I tried to talk him into it and we, we're makin' love and we finish but he doesn't change back and I mean, he's the same if, if not uglier!" Samantha replies, "I personally can't think of any man on campus that could turn me on", leading to the following lesbian scene segue that the girls can barely spit out without laughing: "But you said man." / "Man. That's right." / "What about a woman?" / "That's true."

As is often the case, the highlight of these poorly slapped together quickies, and the greatest source of amusement for yours truly, is watching the performers try to bs their way through the dialogue scenes. We'll just say that some are better at it than others.

Most of these VHS-shot porn titles from the 80s were quickly cranked out with the absolute bare minimum of effort for the sole purpose of stocking adult book stores and video rental establishments back in the day. These things will never be remastered. They will never have special edition DVDs. They will never look or sound good due to the fact they were so poorly shot and lit and will simply float around the interwebs becoming more and more obscure and forgotten as thousands of new and much better-quality porn clips get uploaded every single day. That's the sad, albeit deserved, epitaph of these cheap tapes, which were once big money-makers. This one was put out by Video Exclusives.

★

Man Beast (1956)

... aka: El hombre bestia (The Beast Man)

Directed by:

Jerry Warren

One person's filmography I was decidedly not in a big rush to get back to was Jerry Warren's. He holds the distinction here of being one of the only directors to make multiple NO STAR-rated films not even fit for bad movie connoisseur consumption. Furthermore, Warren himself flat out admitted he had zero interest in making good or entertaining films, which I guess makes him a cinematic charlatan of sorts. He was in the business solely to make money, which required cheap as possible investments on what he hoped would be big returns. That's his entire dispassionate career in a nutshell. While I'll never begrudge anyone trying to make an honest living, what Warren was doing ventured more into the realm of hucksterism. Any filmmaker who's worth a damn is either an artist or someone at least attempting to make enjoyable product for consumers. Warren was neither. His usual routine consisted of buying the distribution rights to unreleased-in-the-U.S. foreign films, having them hacked up and re-dubbed (or simply narrated over) and adding cheap, talky scenes featuring American actors so he had names to put on the poster to lure in unsuspecting genre fans. In doing so, he simultaneously destroyed the original director's work, showed genuine contempt for his target audience and became quite possibly the laziest director to have ever walked the face of the Earth.

Though most of his work was pilfered material, Warren did make a handful of his own films. These included the God awful bore TEENAGE ZOMBIES (1959), the almost tolerable THE INCREDIBLE PETRIFIED WORLD (1959), Frankenstein Island (1981), which I've not yet seen, and this one, which was also his directorial debut. Still, even most of these "original" works depended strongly on recycled stock footage to fill in the budget gaps and boost the running time, and this barely hour-long effort is no exception.

 

After a strenuous hike through the Himalayan mountains, determined blonde Connie Hayward (Virginia [Asa] Maynor) and her sourpuss friend Trevor Hudson (Lloyd "Cameron" / Nelson) arrive at a remote outpost. They're there because Connie is searching for her missing brother, Dr. James Hayward, who'd taken an "experimental injection" back in the states and now may die due to a side effect caused by high altitudes. Along with a small team, James had set out to explore the area ten days earlier and hasn't been seen or heard from since.

In the same area, there've been occasional Yeti sightings going back decades. More recent Yeti footprints have been discovered, which merit further investigation. Four previous expeditions to find the fabled creature have turned up nothing though, and every expedition had lost at least one man. Connie manages to sweet talk reluctant expert climber Steve Cameron (Tom Maruzzi) into escorting them to where he believes the brother has set up camp.

From there, it's a dangerous ascent up the mountainside and then a long trek through the snow-covered, rocky terrain. They finally catch up to famous anthropologist and evolutionary scientist Professor Erickson (George Wells Lewis) and his two local guides, who are on their way to meet up with Connie's brother at base camp. Everyone decides to do the rest of the journey together. Like the brother, Erickson's ultimate goal is to try to locate and capture a live Yeti, which he believes to be the missing link. Coming across the previous expedition's camp, they find it wrecked, abandoned and in total disarray. Setting up there for the night, they awaken the next morning to find Erickson's hired help have run off and left them.

Eventually turning up at the camp is the "half-Mongolian" Varga (George Skaff), one of the best and most requested local guides in the area, who's so experienced at what he does that he never runs out of breath and seems almost immune to the freezing temperatures. Varga had brought Connie's brother up to the mountain and claims to have been out scouting for tracks when whatever happened back at the camp went down. Still, Connie and the others are skeptical of his story and find him to be shady. There's a ludicrous, though amusing and, I must admit, original, plot twist here involving the species of Yeti attempting to incorporate themselves into our society. That involves killing human men so they can kidnap and then knock up human women to produce human/Yeti hybrids. Naturally, we never actually get to see anything of the sort in the film itself!

All of the impressive mountain climbing footage and aerial shots seen here have been snatched from an unfinished film of unknown origin (some sources claim it's Mexican). Having that footage in his possession, Warren then had a script fashioned specifically around it, attempting to match up his new footage, using the same amount of characters, trying to dress them all similarly to the climbers, etc. Surprisingly enough, he actually does do fairly good job of splicing it all together! If one were to nitpick specific details they can certainly find discrepancies between wardrobe, gear, locations, cast appearance, etc., but very few things really leap out as being extremely obvious either. And, in a way, this approach is really not all that dissimilar to how major studios work, where they'll send a 2nd unit director and crew off to shoot location footage with stunt doubles while the primary director handles all of the close-ups and actor stuff.

Warren has also lucked out that the footage he acquired is actually excellent and features some thrilling moments, imaginative camera shots and beautiful locations. That said, most of what Warren himself brings to the table is, as expected, not very good. He's shot mostly dialogue scenes here but, unlike some of his other films, at least he put some effort into finding snowy / rocky outdoor locations to use instead of filming scenes of people sitting around on some porn-grade set talking to each other as he'd later do. The Yeti suit, which is (supposedly) the same costume used for White Pongo and The White Gorilla (both 1945 releases), also isn't too bad.

Most of the performances are pretty lousy, with the actors sometimes randomly looking off to the side as if searching for cue cards, stumbling over lines or even looking directly at the camera as others are speaking. The sole standout here is Skaff, who puts in a good campy turn as the mysterious guide. His hilarious facial expressions alone almost make this one worthwhile all by themselves. Skaff would go on to a decent career as a character actor and later appeared in some good movies, like Michael Ritchie's Smile (1975) and John Carpenter's Someone's Watching Me! (1978). Warren's soon-to-be wife Brianne Murphy, who'd go on to a respected career as a cinematographer, plays the Yeti in some scenes and was also the script supervisor. 

Top billed above everyone else in the cast is one "Rock Madison," who plays, well, nobody! This was a fake name added to the credits for some reason, though I'm not exactly sure what that reason was. Perhaps attempting to confuse fans of Rock Hudson and Guy Madison?

This was, I believe, only the third genre movie made about the Yeti / Abominable Snowman. It was preceded by the dreadful THE SNOW CREATURE (1954) and the decent Japanese BEAST MAN SNOW MAN (1955), which later became the basis for an "Americanized" version called Half Human (released in 1957). Amusingly, Man Beast wasn't even Warren's only Yeti movie. He also purchased the rights to a 1959 Swedish / American co-production called Rymdinvasion i Lappland (given many English titles like TERROR IN THE MIDNIGHT SUN), did his usual butcher routine on it (adding boring new scenes and narration from John Carradine) and released it as Invasion of the Animal People in 1962.

 

In theaters, this played on a double bill with Prehistoric Women (1950). There were numerous VHS releases here in America, two from Rhino in 1985 (paired with 1948's Human Gorilla / Behind Locked Doors for their release "Saturday Night Shockers: Volume 2") and 1988, and another from Acme (a subdivision of Rhino) in 1996. Rhino also released a DVD in 2002. In 2013, Kit Parker Films released three multi-disc DVD sets of Warren's work. Man Beast is included on the first volume along with Curse of the Stone Hand (1965), which was mostly bastardized footage from several 1940s Chilean films, and The Wild World of Batwoman (1966).

★★