Urge to Kill, The (1989)

... aka: Attack of the Killer Computer
... aka: Computer Strikes Back, The

Directed by:
Derek Ford

Director / writer Derek Ford and producer Dick Randall were both mainstays of the Euro exploitation industry of the 60s, 70s and 80s. Ford began - in collaboration with his brother Donald - as a writer (amongst his earlier credits are 1964's THE BLACK TORMENT and 1965's A STUDY IN TERROR), but would became best known for writing and directing British sex films, including the hits THE WIFE SWAPPERS and I AM A GROUPIE (both 1970). He also made the seldom-seen witchcraft documentary SECRET RITES (1972) and wrote the genre films THE LEGEND OF SPIDER FOREST (1971) and THE HOUSE THAT VANISHED (1974). Randall (born Irving Reuben) began his career as a TV writer, moved up to film distribution and then started producing his own films; nudie cutie and mondo films to start. By the end of his career, he'd amassed quite a resume of trash flicks (some of which went on to become cult classics); KING OF KONG ISLAND (1968), THE WILD, WILD WORLD OF JAYNE MANSFIELD (1968), THE MAD BUTCHER (1971), THE FRENCH SEX MURDERS (1972), ESCAPE FROM WOMEN'S PRISON (1978), CROCODILE (1979), SUPERSONIC MAN (1980), THE CLONES OF BRUCE LEE (1981), PIECES (1981), THE POD PEOPLE (1983) and many more. He even made time to direct his own feature; the trashy (and not very good) FRANKENSTEIN'S CASTLE OF FREAKS (1973).

By this point in the late 80s, Ford (who passed away in 1995) and Randall (who passed away a year later) were both reaching the end of their respective careers. The two had already collaborated at least once before, on the sleazy slasher DON'T OPEN TILL CHRISTMAS (1983), which featured a serial killer going around murdering (and in one case, castrating) men dressed up as Santa Claus, and they didn't stop there. The duo also teamed up to create this ridiculous sleazy delight involving a killer computer, which was filmed in Randall's London flat and was never officially released to the masses. Some sources claim the original title was Attack of the Killer Computer, but the bootleg copy I was able to acquire was titled The Urge to Kill; also the name as the theme song that opens the film. The copy had a time-code in the top left hand corner the entire time, and something was blurred out on the bottom right hand corner (probably either a logo or something saying "Screener Copy").

Our "hero" is a repellent, sleazy, middle-aged, womanizing creep named Bono Zorro (Peter Gordeno), who uses his wealth and prominent position as a top music producer to get in the pants of nubile young blondes. A large-breasted airhead named Melanie shows up at his studio wanting him to listen to her demo tape. He makes her dance, completely ignores her while he makes a phone call and then invites her back to his place. His place turns out to be an ultra-modern apartment run by a sophisticated computer system called S.E.X.Y., which he claims stands for Central Environment Control System... and yet it doesn't begin with an "s" and is distinctly lacking an "x" and thus makes absolutely no damn sense. S.E.X.Y is able to open doors, run bathwater, turn on romantic music, operates his personal answering service and even keeps a video library of Bono's sexual trysts so he can have his own private homemade porno collection. It has also developed a mind of its own... and turns out to be one jealous bitch!

So anyway, Bono nails Melanie and takes off the next day, leaving her there alone. Melanie invites her friend Julie, also a well-endowed bisexual blonde gold digger, over for lunch. S.E.X.Y. overhears Melanie tell her girlfriend that she's just using Bono to produce her album and kills the ladies off by shooting one's nipple off with a laser while she's in the tanning bed and turning Melanie's relaxing shower into an acid meltdown (a death that had previously been used in SLAUGHTER HIGH, another Randall production). Bono arranges for his female friend / lover Jane (Sarah Hope Walker), who I think is a high-priced hooker and sounds like she was dubbed by a 60-year-old woman, to come over for a three-way. When they arrive back and find Melanie missing, Jane arranges for some other girls to come over.

Leatherclad dominatrix Tiga and her subservient "toy" Susan arrive next. Tiga makes Susan lick all of Bono's fingers. Susan then joins Bono and Jane in the bubble bath. Tiga decides to hit the sauna and take a shower, then starts using an electric toothbrush that explodes in her mouth. S.E.X.Y. then possesses Bono and makes him drown Susan in the tub. Jane also passes out after discovering some dismembered arms in the tub. The computer then keeps Bono and Jane prisoner inside the apartment by electifying the front door knob and blocking incoming or outgoing phone calls. It also tries to turn them against each other by creating fake videos of Jane killing the women, as well as causing hallucinations. The program has somehow been able to manifest itself in human form; a green and silver painted nude woman who can do things like push people down and driving a car.

The big finale finds two women from the escort agency 'Cat Calls' showing up dressed in mesh body stockings. They pop in a mud wrestling video and then start having a cat fight, while Jane grabs a butcher knife and heads for the computer. Someone is stranged with animated electric cords and a head is pushed through a television. Will our over-the-hill gigolo, armed with such classy feminist catch phrases as "One night and O.U.T.!," "Kleenex, right? Use 'em and throw 'em away!" and "What's one bimbo? More or less." manage to survive the wrath of the creature he created?

Like many other Randall productions, this has major potential as a cult bad movie if someone would just get it out onto DVD. It's colorfully lit, the acting is abysmal, it's extremely trashy, there are loads of unintentional laughs and it's just weird (and bad) enough to be really, really entertaining.

SBIG

CreepTales (1989)

Directed by: 

Tim Boxell 

Stephen Hegyes

Ken Mandel

Greg Middleton

Roger Nygard

James Salisbury

Rod Slane 

Here's a horror anthology you may have missed. The title, of course, is clearly meant to allude to another anthology hit directed by some guy you may have heard of named George A. Romero. While all five tales contained within Mr. Romero's CREEPSHOW (1982) were lensed specifically for that film, here the director (Mandel) has gathered together six short films from other filmmakers and shot a silly framing device to tie them all together. In the linking scenes, a couple of retarded-acting hunchbacks (played by writer / producers Michael Minton and Jess Sherman) stop by a video store on Halloween night to pick up a copy of a horror movie called "CreepTales," but the owner has just closed shop. They go to a graveyard, dig up the corpse of their undead Uncle Munger (Tim Choate) and steal his copy of "CreepTales" (which he was buried with) instead. They then go to a party full of mutants and monsters, scarf down popcorn and chips, scare off some pizza delivery guys and watch the movie, while Uncle Munger rises from the grave and heads toward the party.

"Warped" (by Nygard) is one of the longest segments and begins with a flash-forward of a woman driving after another woman and chasing her with a pitchfork. Pretty blonde Elizabeth (Jennifer Barlow) has just spent a few months at an insane asylum after suffering from an emotional breakdown. To recover, she goes to stay at a farmhouse with her homely spinster cousin Viola (Frances Marshall-Labyorteaux) and senile, elderly old Aunt Grace (Kay Bonner Nee). Elizabeth finds Viola's diary, which details her getting pregnant as a teenager and her father forcing her to wear a corset, which resulted in her baby being stillborn. Elizabeth goes to explore the locked attic, gets into a fight with Viola, is knocked out with a vase and is tied up in bed. A sheriff who weighs at least 500 pounds eventually stops by. Viola stabs him but it takes a half dozen shots to put him out. There are flashbacks and family secrets involving rape, incest and suicide come forth. This short was also released as part of the 1990 anthology TALES OF THE UNKNOWN.

"Snatcher" (by Boxell) is about a purse snatcher (Tom Kenny, who'd go on to become a stand up comedian and is best known as the voice of Spongebob Squarepants) who picks the wrong purse to steal (it's some kind of monster). It runs about ten minutes, half of which is a purse stealing montage set to some punk song called The House of Skulls. With J. Renee Gilbert (THE DEVIL'S GIFT). "The Closet" (by Hegyel and Middleton) runs just a couple of minutes and is pretty useless. It's the old kid thinks there's a monster in his closet chestnut, which has been filmed numerous other times and all probably better than this one. Salisbury's "Groovy Ghoulie Garage" is up next and it's a pretty fun story. On Halloween night, friends Marvin (Peter Ortell) and Ed (Christopher Prestia) decide to go pick up his sister after she's kicked out of school. They stop by a diner where everyone warns them to stay away from a small town called Tower Springs. Unfortunately, their car breaks down and they're picked up by a truck driver dressed like a clown who ends up taking them to, you guessed it, Tower Springs. While ghoulish garage mechanic Rob Ghoulie (Todd Toon, an award-winning sound editor) works on their car, the guys borrow Fred Flintstone and Popeye the Sailor Man masks and go to a neighborhood party. There, a 60s style garage rock band plays and people seem a little on the dated side. The twist was swiped from TWO-THOUSAND MANIACS! (1964).

 

The basically worthless "Howling Nightmare" (from "Steve Hegyi," who I'm assuming is the same guy who did "The Closet" segment) is up next. This one involves a posse of hunters headed out into the woods at night to hunt down a man in a rubber werewolf mask. There's a ripped out throat, a cheesy wolf costume and the acting is terrible. Thankfully, things end on a high note with Slane's amusing, imaginative "Sucker" (easily the best of the stories). Frumpy housewife Dora Duffy (Melanie Fry) lives in a pig sty of a home with who she claims to be a terrible and abusive husband named Roy (Greg Roach). At midnight, there's a knock on her door. Thinking it's her husband, she goes downstairs to find bespectacled, fast-talking vacuum salesman Feldon Broom (Bill Orton) at her doorstep. He offers to leave her a powerful "Dirt Demon" mini-vac that she can use for 24 hours to clean up her life. The vacuum has the miraculous ability to clean everything. Just point and shoot and trash disappears, drapes are cleaned, blankets are folded, dishes are washed, etc. He tells her he'll be back the next evening to pick it up, but warns her to not use the vacuum for longer than 30 seconds at a time and to never, ever point it at another person. So what'll happen when Roy finally comes home? This segment has a great performance from Orton, as well as a good twist at the end.

 

Some of the directors went on to do other things. Boxell made the entertaining killer gecko flick Aberration (1997), Hegyes became a successful producer (White Noise and its sequel are among his credits), Mandel directed documentaries on blues music, polio and artist Frida Kahlo and Nygard made the successful Star Trek documentary Trekkies and is a prolific filmmaker and editor. Slane had previously done music for a few early shot-on-video hits; BLOOD CULT (1985) and FOREVER EVIL (1987) among them. Forrest J. Ackerman received a creative consultant credit here, as well.

 

CreepTales was not very well distributed on VHS, despite not being too bad overall. That was remedied by a 2004 DVD release through BCI/Eclipse. The film (which was in production from 1986-1989) is erroneously listed as a 2004 title on IMDb. 

★★

Jiang shi jia zu (1986)

... aka: 殭屍家族

... aka: 殭屍先生 2

... aka: 殭屍先生續集殭屍家族

... aka: Geung see ga zuk

... aka: Geung si sin saang juk jaap
... aka: Jiang shi xian sheng xu ji

... aka: Mr. Vampire II
... aka: Return of Mr. Vampire, The

Directed by:
Ricky Lau

An immediate, mostly unrelated and from all indications rushed follow-up to the 1985 horror-comedy hit MR. VAMPIRE, this one moves to a modern day setting and unwisely concentrates on crude adult-oriented comedy, cutesy / cloying kid humor and syrupy sentimentality than it does on the action and horror. Despite being made by the same people (including Sammo Hung on production duties), same production company and featuring much of the same cast, this fails to pull off the impressive balancing act the original film did. Professor Kwok (Fat Chung) and two of his bumbling students (Billy Lau and Lee Fung) stumble upon a bunch of centuries-old remains. They then discover a cave, some jewels and the surprisingly well-preserved corpses of a couple and their young son; all of whom have the yellow spell paper attached to their forehead... at least for the time being. They're taken back to the lab. The professor and one of his flunkies decide to head out to try to sell the little boy's corpse and, on their way to their destination, the paper blows off the kid's head and he manages to escape into the woods. Meanwhile back at the lab, the other guy removes the paper from the adult corpses and they're resurrected as vampires. One bites him before the professor returns to help contain them. They're re-papered, wrapped in aluminum foil and put in shipping crates.

The bitten guy's infected arm gets worse, so he goes to medicine shoppe owner Cheng-ying Lin (Ching-Ying Lam, still rocking an impressive unibrow) to help. Noticing his injuries are in line with a vampire attack, Cheng-ying decides to investigate with help from his soon-to-be son-in-law Jen (Biao Yuen), a reporter and annoying camera fetishist who can't stop taking pictures of everything. Jen stupidly decides to break into the lab, removes the corpses from their crates to take a picture with them and removes the yellow papers. The vampires return to life yet again. Mr. Lin and his daughter Gigi (Moon Lee) show up for a long slow-motion fight scene when a jar of "retarder" is busted and sedates everyone.

Meanwhile, the little boy vampire ends up hiding out near the home of Mr. Hu (Fung Woo), a widower with two cherubic (read: chubby) kids. His young daughter Chia-Chia discovers the vampire boy hiding out in their greenhouse and, after watching a TV news program about illegal immigrant children, decides to sneak him into her bedroom. He hides out in her closet and makes her toys float. Chia-Chia introduces the docile undead boy (who they nickname "OK Kid") to her brother and then to her other friends (who the subtitles tell us have names like "Glutinous Rice Chicken" and "Trussed Duck Feet" [??]). The next day, they slap a pair of sunglasses on the vampi-kid, wrap his head in a scarf and take him to a playground where he does funky things on the slide and teeter totter, protects them from bullies and sneaks over to a blood bank for a little afternoon snack. By the way, these scenes are clearly meant to parody E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial (1982).

The film then devolves into a lame fight over the vampire couple; with Mr. Lin and Jen wanting to kill them before things get out of hand and Professor Kwok and his assistants wanting to capture and sell them. One thing leads to another and the vampire couple manage to burst out of a burning truck and wreak a little havoc on some motorists and police officers on their way down the road. Watching a live news broadcast of the vampire couples rampage, their boy begins to wail because he misses them. His vamparents hear his call and head toward Mr. Hu's house to get him back. Touching it is not.

All of this seems more geared toward children than adults, but the occasional off-color joke about necrophilia, virginity or AIDS (plus a scene where a snake gets in a guy's pants and looks like a hard-on) should really keep this out of the reach of the wee ones. There's still some decent fight choreography and good stunt work here (including a great scene of the vampires hopping from car roof to car roof and then over a wall), but the humor is extremely juvenile and misses the mark for the most part, the characters are more annoying than endearing and it's not near as smoothly directed or imaginative as Lau's first entry.

After being pleasantly surprised by the thoroughly enjoyable original, I was really stoked about watching the rest of this series. All Part 2 managed to do was send me crashing back down to Earth and to the reality that most sequels fail miserably at recapturing the magic of their predecessor... even when they're filmed immediately after by the exact same people.

★★

Geung si sin sang (1985)

... aka: 殭屍先生

... aka: 暫時停止呼吸

... aka: Jiang shi xian sheng
... aka: Mr. Stiff Corpse
... aka: Mr. Vampire
... aka: Taoist of Spiritual Illusions, The

... aka: Zhan shi ting zhi hu xi (Hold Your Breath for a Moment)

Directed by:
Ricky Lau

Almost completely eschewing European and American vampire mythology, this Hong Kong horror-comedy (which was a huge hit in Asia) is a fresh and entertaining take on the subgenre. Set primarily in and around a mortuary, wise Taoist priest Master Kau (Ching-Ying Lam, also the film's action director) and his associates keep busy trying to make sure the dead stay dead. His young apprentices; handsome but immature Chou (Siu-hou Chin) and the entirely goofy Man Choi (Ricky Hui), are still novices when it comes to battling the undead and are constantly getting themselves into sticky situations. They seem to be doing a good job keeping the peace in their village until wealthy Mr. Yam (Ha Huang) decides he wants to move the corpse of his father after a fortune teller predicts it will bring him prosperity to do so. The old corpse ends up coming to life, kills Mr. Yam (who will return to life himself) and then hides out in a cave getting stronger by feeding on rats. If that's not enough to deal with, Man ends up getting infected by vampire toxin and Chou ends up attracting the attention of a beautiful female ghost / succubus named Jade (Pauline Wong), who seduces him and threatens to suck out his life force.

Instead of attractive, seductive, cultured bloodsuckers, the ones here are entirely monstrous and have about as much in common with zombies as they do vampires. They have a rotting corpse-like appearance, have been resurrected from the dead and can transform others into the undead with as much as a scratch. They can also fly, hop and fight, have long blue fingernails and hate seeing their own reflections. 

Forget about stakes through the heart, sunlight, garlic and crucifixes, because you'll find none of that here. The arsenal of vampire fighting methods includes chicken blood (which - when dotted on their forehead - can freeze a vampire in its tracks), black ink (which - when applied to caskets - can keep the dead inside, and also can be applied to strings to electrocute them), incense (for appeasing the dead), yellow paper (which is attached to a vampire's head to keep them standing in place), snake venom sacks (which - when mixed with other ingredients - helps heal vampire wounds) and uncooked sticky rice (which removes vampire toxins from one's body after infection and also decreases a vampire's power upon contact). You can also hold your own breath to keep them from attacking you.

In addition, the film also introduces some new techniques in dealing with ghosts, such as rubbing eucalyptus leaves on your eyes to acquire the ability to see a ghost's true face and using a special dagger powered up with moonlight to fight them off. During one outrageous scene where Master Kau is fighting the succubus Jade, she uses her ponytail to strangle him and then detaches her own head while he headless body continues to fight. There's also a compass-like gadget that helps determine where invisible ghosts might be lurking.

Sometimes the comedy (which relies heavily on slapstick) is a bit strained, but a surprising amount of it actually does works and there are several hilarious moments and many more infectuously silly ones. The cast acquits itself well and the main characters are either likable of funny, with Lam's composed portrayal as the smart, vampire-fighting Master the perfect counterbalance to some of the more aloof characters. The film also delivers in a big way on action. There are brilliantly-choreographed fight sequences spread throughout the film. Hell, almost every stick of furniture is destroyed inside the mortuary during the final ten-minute confrontation with the main vampire! The make-up work and special effects are solid, the period setting is vividly captures, the cinematography is bold and colorful and the stunt work is excellent.




This was produced by Sammo Hung and made for his production company Bo Ho Films Company Ltd., and was distributed theatrically by Golden Harvest. The cast also includes Moon Lee (under the name Choi-fung Li) as Mr. Yam's make-up obsessed daughter Ting-Ting (who sparks the romantic interest of both of Master Kau's assistants and even her own cousin; a police officer played by Billy Lau), Wah Yuen as the main vampire menace and Anthony Chan as another Taoist priest who controls a mini-army of obedient vampires. Many of the actors returned in other films in this series (though playing entirely different roles). Sammo Hung was the producer and this was made for his production company Bo 


Because of its popularity in the East (it was nominated for eleven Hong Kong Film Awards), Mr. Vampire was followed by many sequels (each directed by Lau); the highly disappointing MR. VAMPIRE II (1986), MR. VAMPIRE 3 (1987), MR. VAMPIRE 4 (1988 aka Mr. Vampire Saga) and MR. VAMPIRE 5 (1992; which was released under the titles Chinese Vampire Story and Mr. Vampire 1992). In addition, there was MAGIC COP (1990), which was the unofficial Part 5 in the series, as well as another unofficial series consisting of New Mr. Vampire (1987 aka Kung Fu Vampire Buster) and New Mr. Vampire 2 (1987; aka VAMPIRE VS. VAMPIRE).

The DVD was released in 2001 on the Hong Kong Legends label.

★★★1/2