A Dozen Ways to Die!! (1990)

Directed by:
Randall Hill

Some movies really got robbed of potential cult status by their obscurity. In this case, that can be traced right back to its original VHS distributor. Platinum Productions, not to be confused with Platinum Pictures (whose catalogue consisted almost exclusively of Chuck Vincent movies), was never one of the major players in the video era. What didn't help matters was their consistently awful box art, which usually featured an anonymous hired model who wasn't in the movie doing some kind of dumb pose. The one box of theirs that was kind of eye-catching was their release of the gritty / tasteless slasher flick Blood Splash (1981; better known as NIGHTMARE or Nightmare in a Damaged Brain), which featured a woman drenched in blood getting hit in the head with an axe. The company also threw together unrelated independent shorts for the bogus anthologies Final Destinations and TERRIFYING TALES (1989) and had perhaps their most interesting acquisitions in One Minute Before Death and THE OVAL PORTRAIT, a pair of (not very good) Mexican Edgar Allan Poe adaptations that starred a couple of has-been former Hollywood stars, were filmed back-to-back in 1972 and are often mistaken for the same film.

Like many other low rung distributors, the company also attempted to cash in on the Faces of Death craze with their own rip-off tape called Inhumanities (1989), which desperately tried to pass off scenes from EMANUELLE AND THE LAST CANNIBALS (1977) as authentic cannibal footage. There was even a sequel to that. Other Platinum pick-ups included the terrible Primal Scream aka Hell Fire (1987), the Mormon propaganda flick Savage Journey (1983), the escaped slaves blaxploitation (with a white “albino” lead!) trash Black Rage (1972) and the extremely cheap black-and-white sci-fi spoof It Came from Somewhere Else (1988). What do almost all of those have in common? Well, most are bad, most didn't make it out to all that many rental stores and most are currently unavailable on DVD. Unlike most of the other titles listed above, A Dozen Ways to Die!!, while itself bad, is actually pretty entertaining and should be in consideration for a DVD release.

Sheriff Jake Bouvier (Gilbert Houseaux), his wife Maggie (DeeAnn Varns) and their teenage daughter Melissa (Christy Bruneau) are traveling cross country in their truck / camper when they make a few stops in some rocky desert area best described as Hills Have Eyes territory. During one of those stops, they're menaced by a biker who does a bunch of spins around them and hisses “I'll be back!” before speeding off. For some foolish reason that defies all common sense, the family decide to camp out there for the night. The next morning, guess who shows back up? Yup, the same threatening biker along with seven of his sadistic biker friends who are ready to capitalize on the “easy pickins.” While they do a lot of cliché bad biker things frequently seen in these kind of movies, the filmmakers go to hilariously ridiculous lengths to give them all a specific character, which results in perhaps the least believable biker gang in film history.

The gang is led by top-billed Darwyn Swalve, who is also the only person in the cast who had any kind of film career outside of this one movie. If you're unfamiliar with this actor, you can probably guess exactly what he looks like based on other characters he's played. These include “Bar Tough Guy,” “Bear,” “Ox,” “Hog”,” “Skin Head,” “Crusher,” “Huge Inmate” and, last but certainly not least, “Scary Inmate.” Yep, he's big, bald, fat and mean-looking. Horror fans may know Swalve best as the homeless psycho in the slasher OPEN HOUSE (1987) but he also appeared in small roles in some 'A' films like Barton Fink and Summer School. His character here is called Cyclops because he has a third eye tattooed right in the middle of his forehead. Cyclops is not only ringleader but also slave master seeing how every one of his followers does exactly what he tells them to do while he spends most of the movie lazily sitting around drinking beer and barking out orders.

As far as the rest of the gang is concerned, Village People comparisons aren't too far off the mark. There's Panzer (Lee Thomas), a helmeted, eye patch-wearing Nazi with an awful German accent who refers to Cyclops as “Mein Führer.” Billy Bob (Tate Wilford) is a hick decked out in full cowboy garb who yells “Yee haw!” The amusingly dry Chains (Linda McCall), sole female of the group, runs around in an open vest with her tits hanging out for most of the film. There's also a pot smoking hippie who doesn't last very long, another big guy named Tank who is upset he never gets any “poontang,” Mexican pothead Pancho (Anthony Gamboa) who says things like “Give me some of that loco marijuana, ese!” and even a ninja armed with a samurai sword named Banzai who keeps his face covered most of film. When they're not terrorizing families, they sit around drinking, smoking weed and spouting amusingly insipid dialogue like “This stuff makes me more hornier than a three peckered billy goat."

When the gang attacks, Jake is beaten, dragged through the desert behind a bike, forced to play Russian roulette, knocked out and staked to the desert floor and left as “buzzard bait.” The wife and daughter try to hide in the camper but Cyclops cuts through it with a chainsaw and they're both dragged out screaming. Cyclops then rapes the virginal “sweet meat” daughter while the Nazi gets a go at the mom and drools all over her. After the bikers blow up the trailer, the ladies are kept prisoner and taken to another location. Cyclops keeps the daughter by his side on a chain just like Jabba the Hutt does with Princess Leia while the mother is thrown into a wooden cage where she must watch helplessly as her daughter gets pulled into the trailer for sex while shrieking things like “Let my daughter go YOU MOTHER FUCKER I'LL KILL YOU!!"

Naturally Jake manages to free himself, packs a bag full of supplies and then sets out after them. What follows is a lot of running and riding around in the desert with Jake picking off the bikers one by one while delivering truly groan-worthy pun-liners. One disappointing thing about this one is the lack of ingenuity and variety in the kills. When I hear “A Dozen Ways to Die,” I expected a dozen individual ways to die... not for half of the cast to be shot! Most of the other kills (like a hanging, strangulation with a chain and getting blown up) aren't memorable either but this does at least have two good ones, including a rattlesnake head fashioned to the end of a spear used to poison someone. This also gets bonus points for managing to surprise in a major way during its final scene, which I didn't see coming at all. It's the best ending to a biker film since Cycle Vixens (1978)!

Though most of the acting is pretty bad, it's the good kind of bad where at least the cast is spirited and enthusiastic about what they're doing. Not like, say, Keanu Reeves in Coppola's overrated version of Dracula, which is plain bad acting that's not the least bit entertaining because he's so dull. Strangest of all is the male lead, who's French and doesn't quite have a grasp on enunciation and what words to emphasize in the English language as he's attempting to emote, giving his line delivery a Tommy Wiseau-type feel. Had this movie been made twenty years later or been better distributed, who knows? Gilbert Houseaux may have found himself now being portrayed by an Oscar-nominated actor in a major Hollywood film.

While I had a lot of fun with this and enjoyed it, I can't lie: This is, technically-speaking, really bad. Inept even. It has virtually all of the traits of being a first film from a first time, inexperienced, untrained director who bit off more than he could chew. For starters, there are constant ragged cuts because they clearly didn't shoot the right amount of footage and didn't pay any attention to shot continuity. They sometimes try to hide that by inserting nature shots (mostly birds flying around) at random times. The editing and fight choreography are also some of the worst I've ever seen, especially a bit where the ninja decides to demonstrate his martial arts skills to Jake after Cyclops sends him out on a mission to decapitate and castrate (?!) him. But, hey, at least that's preceded by the should-be immortal line: “The ways of ninjitsu will triumph. I will bring his balls back to you!"

SBIG

People Across the Lake, The (1988) (TV)

... aka: Al di là del lago (Beyond the Lake)
... aka: People from Across the Lake, The

Directed by:
Arthur Allan Seidelman

Neurotic real estate agent Rachel Yoman (Valerie Harper) returns home at dark after a long day at work. She puts in her security code both before and after entering the door, because when you live in a big city you have to have a security system. She then is pretty much ignored by the rest of her family. Her corporate husband Chuck (Gerald McRaney) is always on the phone or has his head buried in the paper and any romantic spark that once was in their relationship has vanished. Her young son Stevie (Gregory Togel) is always in his room listening to rock music. And her teenage daughter Lisa (Tammy Lauren) has the usual teenage daughter bad attitude and refers to her mother as “pathetic” while recommending she see a shrink because she thinks her boyfriend drives too fast. All Rachel wants is to unwind in a nice, hot bath... except the bathtub is filthy because no one's bothered cleaning it. To top off her glorious day, she catches someone peeping in her bathroom window and hits the security alarm. In minutes, their home is swarming with police and pointing neighbors. The problem? Well, the peeper was just an elderly neighbor who claims to have accidentally locked himself out of his house.

Having grown up in a small lake town in the Midwest, big city life in L.A. isn't treating Rachel too well. She's sick of traffic jams, smog, the noise, the thieves, the murderers... And Chuck, who is from the city and should be used to it, is starting to feel the same way and in need of a big change. Against their daughter's objections, the two purchase a waterfront fixer-upper in the small rural town of Lake Tomahawk situated around a large, picturesque lake. Chuck plans on starting a “windsurfing board” business there to cash in on the vacationing tourist crowd who frequent the area. Not long after moving into their new place, the couple start thinking they've made a big mistake moving... especially after Chuck goes for a swim and ends up with a severed arm dangling over his shoulder. Yet when he goes to retrieve the Sheriff (Thomas Peacocke) and returns to the scene where he left the arm, it's suddenly gone.

Denizens of Lake Tomahawk are a mixture of friendly yokels and menacing, weird rednecks who seem to be hiding some kind of secret. They're first warmly welcomed by Malcolm Bryce (Barry Corbin), who shows up to cook them fish and is perhaps a bit too friendly. Rachel is befriended by gossipy ice cream parlor owner Ruth Mortimer (Dorothy Lyman), who clues her in about all the shady types in the area. She makes special mention of Henry Link (Daryl Anderson), a crazed war vet and hermit who doesn't hesitate to pull his gun and threaten to shoot whoever wanders onto his property, as Rachel and Chuck eventually find out. But Ruth's husband Duane (Gary Bisig) and his buddy Eli (Frank C. Turner) really aren't any better and keep trying to bully the family out of town with thinly veiled threats.

Though most of the local law enforcement aren't helpful, Malcolm's nephew, Deputy John (Jeff Kizer), reluctantly tells them that people have been regularly disappearing there for the past fifteen years. Sometimes a body or body part turns up in the lake. Sometimes nothing does. There's some talk about locals being hush hush about everything because they're scared of driving away tourists but one thing's for certain: A killer's been on the loose there for quite some time and no one's really done anything about it. But the Yoman family don't let that little detail keep them from enjoying life! The daughter and son both frequently go out into the woods at night to go camping. The mom takes the son canoeing. And when mom and dad go for a jog and he pulls her aside for a little outdoor nookie, the two are hilariously interrupted by the presence of a rotten corpse.

Writer Dalene Young tries to use a flimsy financial excuse to explain why Chuck and Rachel don't immediately leave town but that's pretty much bullshit. Any decent parent would get their kids out of there ASAP or send them off to live with a friend or relative or something. Ya know, cause there's a killer around and the kids, ya know, could be killed, especially if you're anything like these parents and have no issue with your children wandering around in the woods at all hours of the day or night. Instead, mom decides to play detective and even goes over her possible suspect list with her own children... while they're hanging Christmas decorations! The family begin to sense that someone's been sneaking into their house while they're gone, too, but that doesn't stop them from a smiley, happy family photo sessions montage a scene later. It takes a bloody corpse turning up next to the Pop Tarts in their pantry for them to finally start packing boxes.

What makes a lot of the nonsense above more palatable is that there's a slightly tongue-in-cheek tone to this whole thing and a few lines poking direct fun at how implausible some of the character actions are and thus the writer appears as clued in to the absurdities of much as most viewers will be. So while this is silly and sometimes flat out dumb, there's still enough entertaining stuff going on here (including an over-the-top finale) to make it at least mildly enjoyable. The acting is fine (I found Harper's constant shrieking - she really seems into this - pretty hilarious) and it's also slightly more bloody, violent and twisted than I was expecting for a made-for-TV movie from this time.

Even though he's won a number of major awards over the course of his career (including several Emmy's), and likely much to his own displeasure, director Seidelman is probably best known for Hercules in New York (1970), the notoriously awful film debut of Arnold Schwarzenegger. He also made the genre films Echoes (1982) and The Caller (1987). After debuting on NBC in 1988, this was never released on home video here in the U.S., though it was elsewhere. There were VHS releases in the UK, Germany, Japan and the Netherlands, all on the RCA/Columbia label. The copy I watched had Dutch subtitles.

★★