Winterbeast (1989)

Directed by:
Christopher Thies

A guy with half his face ripped off pulls out his guts. A sloppily-animated "creature" with tentacles that looks like it belongs in a child's toybox roars. A screaming man falls against a tree and a smiling skull pops out of stomach. Never fear, it's just a nightmare... I think. The editing in this one's sloppy to put it mildly. Somewhere in the mountains, a bunch of rangers have set up a new station near an abandoned former tourist trap which used to be a popular vacation destination and ski lodge. For some strange reason, the place was swingin' back in the 1950s before dying out. Now investors want to try to reopen it. Sheriff Bill Whitman (Tim R. Morgan) finds out someone or something has roughed up female ranger Sally (Lissa Breer), only she can't remember what happened. Bill sits down with Sally's smarmy and thoroughly annoying co-worker Stillman (Mike Magri) to drink whiskey, look at vintage nudie magazines and talk nonsense. Another of their ranger buddies went up on the mountain days earlier and never came back, so the duo plan to go to the newly-opened Wild Goose Lodge to look for him. Meanwhile, a frizzy-haired chick strips off her top and a stop-motion-animated tree grabs her through the window and throws her against the side of her house (!!!) Whaaaa?

With the Fall Foliage Festival coming up, Wild Goose Lodge owner Dave Sheldon (Bob Harlow) doesn't want to comply with the ranger's wishes to keep guests off the mountain until the missing ranger is found. It seems the locals know better than to go up there since disappearances, unexplained deaths and half-eaten corpses are the norm. Oblivious tourists on the other hand, do not know this. Two female hikers fall into that category and find themselves being gobbled up by some bug-eyed hairy thing that pops up out of the ground. And so does a mountain-climber, who gets his head ripped off by some alien-looking thing with a bendy neck. Sally does know better, but that doesn't stop her from going to the mountain, finding a grave and getting killed by a blue-faced zombie-mummy. Somehow, Mr. Sheldon gets ahold of her body, brings it back to his lodge and strings it up in the lobby. He's a bit of a psycho it seems, loves lip syncing to children's songs, puts on a clown mask and dances for his collection of shrivelled corpses. I'm completely lost by this point.

We hear much speculation about what's causing all this senseless crap. All along the mountain are Indian charms which supposedly ward off evil, but clearly aren't quite doing the job. Someone says the area is the "Indian gateway to hell." Many characters mention a demon called a Chakira (or is that Chikaru... everyone in this movie seems to pronounce it differently). Indian general store owner Charlie (Charles Majka) and his girlfriend Barbara (Dori May Kelley) even own what is reputed to be a Chakira tooth. We see the Chakira reborn by bursting out of some random man's stomach in a flashback. Mr. Sheldon knows something about it or is somehow involved, but his head erupts into flames and his face melts before he can divulge too much information. I tried following this movie but it's an impossible task. During the last twenty minutes, Bill sends Stillman to chop down an ancient totem pole against the Indian general store owner's wishes. (Uhhh, why?) The pole comes to life and scares him off. Next thing we know, Bill and Stillman are in some ghost town looking around when a giant lizard shows up to chase them around. It eventually bites Stillman's head off. I can't go on!

Let me start by saying that I am a huge stop-motion animation fan. I even love badly-done stop-motion animation. Hell, I even loved a lot of the hokey sfx in this one, but it's hardly worth slogging through the rest of this inept, confusing mess to see them. Shame because this really could have been a lot of fun if these people had a clue how to make a movie. Characters will appear and then disappear for no reason or will be going somewhere with someone and when they get there be with someone else. That's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to continuity problems. I think I've already established that the plot makes zero sense. There are some flubbed lines and people clumsily stumbling over their dialogue. The audio recording is pretty muffled at times and much - but not all - seems to have been dubbed in later. It's also one of the most ineptly photographed films I've ever seen, taking you from a beautiful shot of the evening sky to a close-up so blurry or grainy that it looks like it was filmed by a completely different person with a completely different camera. Some viewers find all of this engrossing in a track wreck kind of way. I was right there with them... part of the time.

Stories vary online for this title depending on where you get your information. IMDb currently claims filming began in 1976, was suspended and picked back up in 1986 and it was releaed in 1991. However, the WINTERBEAST OFFICIAL WEBSITE (yes, amazingly there is one!) has a different story to tell. They claim this was filmed in 1989 (making no mention of the supposed 1970s footage) and that it made its home viewing debut in 1992 (via Tempe Video). Supposedly, the film utilizes both Super 8 and 16mm photography (which explains the variance in quality from shot to shot) and scenes were cheaply shot on video at one point, but eventually scrapped.

SBIG

Movie House Massacre (1984)

... aka: Blood Theater
... aka: Blood Theatre

Directed by:
Rick Sloane

Discovering his girlfriend has been unfaithful and is going to leave him, a young theater owner (David Millbern) stabs the ticket booth girl to death and then gasses the place, killing all of the patrons and employees inside. Many years later, the Spotlite Theatres chain is planning on expanding to their eleventh location. Guess which abandoned building they pick? The one with the history of murder, of course! Experienced projectionist Adrian (Andrew Cofrin), his squeaky clean girlfriend Jennifer (Jenny Cunningham) and some other dude named Malcolm (Daniel Schafer) have all been hand-selected to help open and run the new location. Their cheap, sleazy boss - Dean Murdock (Rob-Roy Fletcher) - is promising them a 1000 dollar bonus if they can pull off a successful opening night, but that includes lots of cleaning and prep work. As soon as the trio arrive in the new theater, strange things begin happening. The power goes on and off, furniture tips over on its own, a spotlight turns on by itself and mysterious clouds of smoke appear. A couple of Jennifer's cheerleader buddies pop in after everyone has already left, only to get stabbed to death by a mysterious old man (Jonathan Blakely).

Adrian and Jennifer decide to go back to their old theater to watch "The Clown Whores of Hollywood" (I guess "Chainsaw Chicks" and "Amputee Hookers" weren't to their liking). Bitchy usherette Selena (Joanna Foxx) is pissed off they get free popcorn. After hearing input from an angel and a devil on each shoulder (!) she goes and sits next to Adrian and rips her top off, then starts fighting with the entire audience and knocks the popcorn out of their hands. I reckon that kind of behavior would get most people fired from a normal job, but here it only merits her a transfer to the new theater branch. The next day, Adrian, Jennifer and Malcolm get back to work fixing up the other theater. They find film cans that contain footage shot during the day of the original "massacre" but think nothing of it and don't report it to the police. Jennifer is almost strangled by the same old man who knifed the cheerleaders earlier and decides she ain't setting foot back in that place until opening night... Good thing since two other girls get stabbed in the meantime. Some other girl gets yanked under the stage, a guy is electrocuted and another gets his head lopped off. The end.

It truly doesn't get much worse than this, folks. I'm not the biggest slasher fan to begin with, but this is so mind-numbingly inept it makes me want to award an extra star to every other mediocre / formulaic slasher I've seen just for possessing basic competence. This film is riddled with plot holes, continuity errors, cardboard characters and painfully unfunny "comic" elements. Fun ideas emerge every so often only to be trampled over by the piss poor execution. Even the basic premise doesn't make a lick of sense. The psycho responsible for the original murders is clearly doing the killings in modern times, so who exactly is haunting the place? And how does a seemingly normal psycho suddenly get supernatural powers? Nothing is explained. It's also not a wise idea to use titles like Movie House Massacre and Blood Theatre to sell your film to a specific audience and then refuse to give them any blood or gore. Most of the kills are off-screen and even a decapitation is bloodless and almost impossible to see. Viewers expecting a "massacre" are really gonna be pissed, especially if they wasted their money on this.

Most of the acting is dreadful. For some reason the actress playing Selena had all of her dialogue dubbed over later. If they had the rest of the audio recording set at a "5" on the volume knob, then Selena's seems set at an "8." Even the characters who should be likable aren't, including our cheerleader "heroine," who looks like an over-tanned Tonya Harding having a bad hair day and screams at her boyfriend because he didn't pick her up from school and she (God forbid!) had to take the bus. "What if someone had seen me?!" Ugh. The sole bright spot here and what single-handedly spares this film from my lowest possible rating is the presence of Mary Woronov in a nice-sized supporting role as Miss Blackwell. Woronov - an underrated talent with a unique charisma who Hollywood never had a clue what to do with - gives a wry, witty, winning performance here as the theater owner's sassy assistant. Her scenes are actually worth watching even if the rest of the film isn't.

Rick Sloane, who not only directed but wrote, produced, edited, photographed, scored and did the special effects, is best known for HOBGOBLINS (1987); a film considered by many to be one of the worst ever made. I haven't seen it yet but it would have a hard time "topping" this one, that's for sure. The DVD was released by Retromedia, and there were several VHS releases.

★

Murder obsession (Follia omicida) (1981)

... aka: Fear
... aka: Murder Obsession
... aka: Murder Syndrome
... aka: Paura
... aka: Satan's Altar
... aka: Unconscious
... aka: Wailing, The

Directed by:
"Robert Hampton" (Riccardo Freda)

Actor Michael Stanford (Stefano Patrizi) is playing a psycho in a new horror film and seems to be getting a little too into his role, actually strangling actress Beryl (Laura Gemser) until the crew intervenes and pulls him off of her. Though his co-star is slightly shaken up (though not nearly as much as she should be!), director Hans (Henri Garcin) seems happy about his convincing portrayal. While going through some old family pictures later that evening, Michael decides to go visit his estranged mother Glenda (Anita Strindberg), whom he hasn't seen in years. Flashbacks show how Michael's father William (also played by Patrizi) keeled over from a heart attack while conducting an orchestra and also reveal that Michael may have stabbed him to death as a child. Michael decides to bring along his girlfriend Debora Jordan (Silvia Dionisio) on the trip and invites part of the crew to come out later so they can discuss the film they're working on. Upon arriving to his childhood home - a dark and very gloomy mansion, naturally - the butler and estate caretaker Oliver (John Richardson) informs Michael that his mother is very sick... Indeed she is!

Glenda seems a little too close for comfort with her son, who's a dead ringer for her deceased husband. She kisses him, caresses him, lets her breast fall out of her nightgown while he hugs her and constantly gives him loving looks... and I don't mean harmless knowing glances usually shared between parents and children. Strangely, Michael introduces his girlfriend to his mother as being his secretary, presumably not to upset her, which understandably pisses Debora off. She's also not too happy that she's stuck sleeping in a bedroom alone on the other side of the house as Michael. The next day, director Hans, leading lady Beryl and assistant director Shirley (Martine Brochard) all arrive at the home. Glenda welcomes them and seems glad to have some company. Later that night everyone sits around sipping wine and discussing the supernatural. And it isn't long before people start experiencing something supernatural. The home shakes, muddy foot prints appear on the floor, doors seem to open and close on their own, lights flicker (blamed on the home's poor wiring) and Beryl is almost drown while taking a bath by a mysterious gloved assailant who seems to disappear into thin air.

During a nightmare sequence which lasts nearly ten minutes, Debora (breasts flopping out of her nightgown the entire time) is attacked by a guy with a disfigured face, runs into a web with a giant rubber spider on it, gets attacked by bats on strings, gets caught up in some tree branches and then passes out when a bunch of skulls cry blood on her. When she comes to, she's tied to a cross, gets her clothes ripped off by a mutant cultist, is forced to drink fresh chicken blood (from a real chicken they've just killed) and is attacked by the big spider, whose legs turn into fuzzy arms. Michael finally admits to having murdered his father as a child and now claims to suffer from "psycho traumatic disassociation," which involving blacking out for several minutes at a time only to awaken with no recollection of what he's done. While out in the forest, Beryl, already almost strangled by Michael on the movie set and already almost drowned in her bath just the night before, turns around and spots Michael glaring at her and holding a knife. So what does she do? Run? Scream for help? Say "What the hell is your problems?" Nope. She has sex with him (!) while Hans hides in the bushes snapping pictures.

People eventually start dropping like flies. When Michael wakes up from his encounter with Beryl, she's dead and there's a bloody knife next to them. Hans, having witnessed the murder, runs back to the house and tries to leave but someone surprises him with an axe to the head instead. Suspicious Hans left his camera behind (he never goes anywhere without it), Shirley decides to develop the film in an attic darkroom and gets decapitated with a chainsaw. After finding Shirley's head, Debora tries to run off during a rainstorm and ends up in black-gloved clutches of the killer instead. All that's left is to unveil a few skeletons in the family closet. The hopelessly muddled plot tells two conflicting stories from mother and servant and everything from adultery, blackmail, spousal abuse, sleepwalking, rape and even Satanism is trotted out in the last fifteen minutes.

Freda's film - which first saw the light of day in the U.S. under the title Fear (released on the Wizard VHS label) - is a very mediocre little mystery with Gothic trappings, slasher moments and a convoluted plot about on par with most gialli. There's nudity provided by Dionisio, Gemser and Strindberg (in one of her last film appearances) and a few poorly-done gore effects. It opens with a quote from Hieronimus A. Steinback. The music score is good and it's fairly well photographed but there's not enough style present to really overcome the script shortcomings.

Wizard recycled clips from this for their living dead-themed pastiche ZOMBIEGEDDON (1986). In 2011, Raro Video released it on DVD (using the Murder Obsession title).

★★

Che Dau Che (1980)

... aka: Hex versus Witchcraft
... aka: Hex vs. Witchcraft
... aka: Xie Dou Xie

Directed by:
Chih-Hung Kuei

HEX (1980), from the same director, was basically a rip-off of LES DIABOLIQUES with a supernatural bent. This follow-up is completely unrelated and completely different in tone. It's a ghost comedy. Cai Tou (James Yi Lui) has the very bad combination of a gambling addiction and terrible luck. He seems to lose at every game he plays: cards, mahjong, you name it. He even loses big to a street hustler playing a simple game of "Say 'yes' to every question I ask." And, of course, he's losing a lot of money in the process. Having already pawned nearly everything he owns (except his wife, he jokes), he's broke. At a domino game, Cai Tou steals 100 bucks off a woman and loses it in a match. He's busted and brought before Brother Nine (Chan Shen), who owns the parlor. Already indebted to him for a significant amount of money, Brother Nine tells Cai Tou if that he can get his wife (Jenny Leung) to sleep with him he'll forgive his debt. Cai Tou agrees and borrows 200 bucks off of him to help loosen his old lady up. On her birthday, Cai Tou takes her out, plies her with drinks and rents a hotel room but everything backfires and Brother Nine ends up losing his testicles after wifey pushes a table into his crotch.

Brother Nine has his thugs beat Cai Tou up, then gives him three options, which involve either them killing him, him killing himself or them cutting off his dick. His wife leaves him and plans to start divorce proceedings immediately, so Cai Tou decides to hang himself. Unfortunately, he chooses a public park to do so at and ends up going to the police station for breaking a branch off one of the trees. An attempt to eat rat poison backfires when he's given a package of ecstasy pills instead and goes streaking. Back to the jail he goes. Once he's out, he attempts to jump off a balcony but bounces off a truck onto a mattress. It's there that he spots something shimmering in the sunlight. Why, it's a duffle bag full of gold and jade jewelry. Good luck at last! Not quite.

Liu San (Chi Hing Yeung), an elderly man, comes knocking on his door and has a snapshot of Cai Tou with the bag in hand. He says Cai Tou can keep the bag and promises to put him up in an expensive flat and give him plenty of money if only he'll do just one little favor for him: marry his daughter, Ah Cui. The catch? Ah Cui is dead. Murdered by gangsters while trying to sneak across the border, Ah Cui's spirit wanders around restlessly and her father doesn't want his poor girl to be lonely. Liu San warns Cai Tou beforehand that his daughter isn't perfect, though. In fact, she's hot-tempered, jealous and knows Judo. She's also so lazy he has to install a Clapper in their bedroom. Cai Tou goes through with the marriage thinking it's all a sham. It isn't until he tries to go on a date with another woman - whom Ah Cui promptly possesses - that he starts to believe it. Trying to make amends, he cooks his new ghost bride her favorite meal (Ramen noodles with fried eggs), but she just dumps it over his head.

Cai Tou gets fed up and tries to get help. An acquaintance of his hires a psychic to call forth the ghost so he can speak to her, but it turns out to be a scam. Our luckless hero then goes to see a street-corner clairvoyant who calls himself The Great Spiritual Master, who comes over to the home to perform an exorcism but decides against it because the ghost runs the home. Ah Cui possesses the sexy air hostess (Yue Fa Booi) who lives next door so she and Cai Tou can have sex. Now she wants sex all of the time, which would be fine for him if she kept using the stewardess as a host body, but instead she decides o inhabit a dumpy old cleaning lady and a cross-eyed male painter and wants sex then. Despite the issues, the relationship does have its perks, such as the spirit helping to fend off Brother Nine and two of his thugs who show up wanting to castrate Cai Tou with a machete, and helping him win a climactic gambling match against a skilled opponent (played by Shirley Yu) with other-worldly abilities of her own.

With Hex vs. Witchcraft, I got something I wasn't expecting at all, but that turned out to be a good thing in this case. While the original was an average, derivative supernatural horror film, this one's an above average supernatural comedy. It's entertaining, often very clever, acted with gusto and has many hilarious moments. I was particularly fond of the Johnson's Baby Powder dance. Also interesting to point out, if this were a Hollywood movie the filmmakers certainly would have shoved some heavy-handed moral message down our throats at the end to ensure the main character learned some kind of valuable lesson from all he has gone through. Not so much here. Cai Tou is who is he. He's no angel and never will be, but that ultimately makes him more believable and even more endearing.

HEX AFTER HEX (1982), which is a genuine sequel and picks up where this one leaves off, followed. Celestial Pictures distributed this - and many other Shaw Bros. titles - on DVD.

★★★