Evil Sister 2 (2001)

... aka: Evil Sister II
... aka: Evil Sister II: Bound by Blood

Directed by:
Brad Sykes

Producer David S. Sterling and director / scripter Brad Sykes deliver another camcorder catastrophe in a eye-catching video box to skip out on. Shot on the cheap in Arizona, this follows blonde teen psychic Tamara (Heather Branch) and her stern, overprotective, incestuously-inclined father Frank (Joseph Haggerty) on a road trip through the Mojave desert looking for Frank's missing daughter Lorna (also played by Branch, wearing a red wig). The two spend most of their time fighting, cruising down the road in a van, making pit stops at hotels (where Frank handcuffs his daughter to the bed and watches her shower) and crossing paths with a tarot-card reading drifter (Tisha Draft) and a homeless punk named Widow (Jarrod Robbins).

Meanwhile, Lorna (who is mute) is hiding out in an abandoned junkyard preying on stray travelers. Wearing only a cape, she strolls around fully nude, seducing men onto a mattress in the floor of a junked-up trailer, who she then proceeds to viciously stab to death. Lorna turns out to be the victim of a brutal rape (by...guess who?) that has driven her crazy. The attack scenes are very, very bloody and reasonably well done (rapid fire editing is employed) considering the low-grade quality of the rest of this production, which was dedicated to Jean Rollin. Also with Susannah Devereux (the only person in this film who can act) as a woman who briefly befriends Lorna and the director as a photographer.

I don't know much about the rare original EVIL SISTER aside from the fact it's a slasher that was shot on video and has absolutely nothing to do with this "sequel."

★1/2

Eyes of the Werewolf (1999)

Directed by:
Tim Sullivan

A group of hunters track down a werewolf, kill it, decapitate it and then sell the head to unethical Dr. Atwill (played by director / writer Sullivan), who runs a private clinic specializing in corneal transplants. Research chemist Rich Stevens (Mark Sawyer), whose eyes were destroyed when acid flew into his face during a lab explosion, is the unlucky recipient of the werewolf's eyeballs. It takes awhile to get to the first full moon, so first we get a tender love story between Rich and his compassionate, big-breasted nurse Sondra Gard (Stephanie Beaton). Sondra is so compassionate that she strips off her clothing and starts riding Rich in bed before he even has a chance to remove his bandages! After a month in the hospital, Rich returns home to icy wife Rita (Deborah Huber), who promptly tells him "You look pretty ugly" before speeding off in her Kia. Our hero soon discovers that Rita is not only a bitch, but an adulterous skank who's been carrying on an affair with his supposed friend Craig (Lyndon Johnson). Finally, the full moon rises and Rich finds himself in a hairy predicament as he transforms into a (very silly looking) werewolf creature. Predictable carnage ensues.

After ripping out Craig's throat on a beach, Rich wakes up in the brush the next morning with his clothes tattered and vague recollections of the evening's events. He makes friends with dwarf psychic / occult expert Andros (Kurt Levi) and is hassled by both local author Siodmak (Jason Clark) and lesbian-police-detective-in-a-pants-suit Justine Evers (Tarri Markel). When Rich confronts Dr. Atwill, the doctor sends his sadistic bald henchman Kass (Eric Mestressat), who gets a kick out of dismembering corpses with a machete at the clinic, after him. With help from Sondra, Rich manages to escape. Sondra takes him back to her place and basically rapes him on the couch during an overlong sex scene that lasts about five minutes. Will Rich be able to control his lycanthropy or find a cure for it before he claims more victims?

Shot on the cheap with a camcorder, this homemade werewolf flick has a somewhat unique premise with the eye transplant angle, but trots out cliché after cliché otherwise. The sets are sub porn level - the clinic scenes seem to have been filmed inside someone's home or apartment. The wolf transformation scenes don't even look as good as the time lapse photography used way back in the 1940s. Instead, they employ ragged editing. Throw some hair on the actor. Cut. Throw some more on. Cut. More fur... and fill his mouth full of white gunk he can spit out. Cut. No need to worry about continuity! There's no fade, no dissolve, nothing. It's pretty sloppy. Once fully transformed, the werewolf costume (designed by Jeff Leroy, who also edited and shot the movie) is pretty awful. It has red, glowing Christmas bulb eyes, fur that looks like shag carpet and a plastic face that's almost completely immobile. There are several times you can see the cameraman's fingers in front of the camera lens, and does the moon really stay full five nights in a row? As far as the cast is concerned, they're amateurish, but tolerable. And as far as B horror flicks are concerned, there are worse out there. This one is paced fairly well, is only 70 minutes long and does provide plenty of the red stuff during the attack scenes, as well as the aforementioned T&A from Ms. Beaton.

It was produced by David S. Sterling (CAMP BLOOD), who was one of the first to ride the wave of digital video right when it was first starting to dominate the low-budget/independent horror genre scene back in the mid/late 90s. Many of his notoriously awful productions were released by Brain Damage Films, a label to avoid like the plague for the most part. Fx guy Leroy (who is listed as co-director on IMDb, but not in the film's actual credits) and Vinnie Bilancio (who appears in a small role as one of the hunters) went on to make the much more fun and polished exploitation flick WEREWOLF IN A WOMEN'S PRISON in 2006, which had a similar-looking creature on display (red glowing eyes and all).

★★

Skinned Alive (2008)

... aka: Eat Your Heart Out

Directed by:
James Tucker

Depressed, lonely insurance agent Jeffrey (Jack Dillon) lives alone in a huge house he inherited from his late mother. Striking out with every single woman he tries to ask out, Jeffrey becomes desperate enough to start arranging "dates" with women from an escort agency. None of them want anything to do with him once services are rendered, but things change once the mysterious Pandora (Melissa Bacelar) shows up at his doorstep. The two have an immediate emotional connection, but Pandora is harboring a deep, dark secret that will test their blossoming love... she's actually a cannibal who enjoys eating people alive! Will Jeffrey still stand by his new girl once the truth is revealed? Or will their union be cut short by thug brother of one of her victims (Joshua Nelson, also the writer), who's looking for revenge.

I went into this with no knowledge about the plot or any of the people who made it and was surprised to see some genuine promise here. It's entertaining and a much more ambitious film than most micro-budget horror films I've seen. There's plenty of blood and nudity, the acting from the leads is OK, some of the dialogue is well-written and, compared to other films in its budget range, the sound and photography aren't too bad. The main thing I had a problem with was the fluctuation in tone. The film starts out being a dark and serious character study with an almost somber mood, but once Pandora reveals her secret to Jeffrey it becomes a little too camp for my tastes. Some of the humor works, but other times it falls flat or seems out of place.

The filmmakers also toy around with keeping things ambiguous. We're never sure what exactly Pandora is. Is she a non-supernatural cannibal who just happens to crave human flesh, or some kind of monster? A vampire? A zombie? A demon? I liked this aspect of the film because slapping some kind of label on the character isn't even necessary. The film also introduces the idea that Pandora doesn't even exist and Jeffrey is just going mad, but that possibility is pretty much a waste of time since we've already spent part of the film watching "The Stalker" tracking down Pandora. The concept also isn't supported by the ending.

Jeremy Selenfriend's gore fx are pretty good (especially a decapitation at the end) and there's a great Nine Inch Nails-style song over the opening credits, plus small roles for Jeanette Bonner as Jeffrey's concerned sister, Alan Rowe Kelly (I'LL BURY YOU TOMORROW) as a madam, Erika Smith (BITE ME!) as a prostitute and Peter Stickles ("The Lair") as a victim. It's set in New York City and has some decent aerial photography of the city.

Worth a look.

★★1/2

Dorm of the Dead (2006)

Directed by:
Donald Farmer

After a Criswell-like introduction (featuring "Dukey Flyswatter" / Michael D. Sonye, a veteran of several notable 80s B movies), the action cuts to Arkham Hall Girls' Dormitory, where some strange things are afoot. A sorority girl and her boyfriend are both killed by zombies; one of whom does a back flip for no apparent reason. Tiffany Shepis then puts in a cameo and manages to make it through a long lesbian scene without losing any of her clothing. I know, I'm as surprised as you are. She and her abusive boyfriend, as well as her friend Jane (Amanda Barnett), are killed by more zombies in a parking garage. After wasting about 15 minutes on basically nothing, the film finally gets to the meat of the story. Two best friends, the more straight-laced "geek" Allison Gellar (Adrianna Eder) and goth vegetarian Sarah Hannigan (Ciara Richards) want to do "something cool" so they go visit a cemetery to do some charcoal tracings of tombstones. Afterward, they encounter Southern fried campus bitch queen Clare Ryan (Jackey Hall), who looks and sounds like a less-talented version of Tara Reid. Yes, that is possible. All three girls attend science class, where their hunky professor Dr. Xander (ugh, kill it with the "Buffy" references already...) talks about death and claims he has a vial of zombie blood he acquired on a trip to Haiti two years earlier. Clare observes in her monotone voice "Someone's been watching too many crappy movies." Tell me about it, sister. Double billing this flick with POT ZOMBIES tonight has almost turned ME into a zombie.

Well, Sarah is called to the financial aid office and is told her tuition check has bounced and she has three days to come up with 4 thousand dollars. She's kicked out of her dorm room and forced to go to dreaded Arkham Hall, a run-down building used for "charity case students" who have no money. Arkham is also the hot spot for zombie activity since Dr. Xander (Christopher Slade) had already used his blood sample to turn a female student who tried to blackmail him into a zombie. Since then, things have spiraled out of control and the zombie girl has infected several other students (including Ms. Shepis) who lurk around in the house.

Meanwhile, Clare coerces her bimbo friend Julie (Andrea Brooke Owneby, who apparently is "America's Dumbest Stripper" after her IQ score came back near the mental retardation bracket during her appearance on The Howard Stern Show) into helping her break into Dr. Xander's lab to steal his zombie blood. Julie wusses out (and promptly disappears from the rest of the film despite her star billing on the DVD cover), but Clare gets the vial after the doc is killed by zombies. Being the nice girl she is, Clare goes to Arkham Hall and dribbles some of the blood into Sarah's mouth while she's sleeping. That next morning, Sarah awakens in a daze and soon she's feasting on rare meat before graduating to human flesh. It's at this point, nearly an hour into the film, that the films gets slightly better for about ten minutes as Sarah goes on a mild rampage around town. She chews on a dummy head that's supposed to look like Kimberly Lynn Cole and kills the dean's wife. She also hitches a ride from a guy (played by Jim O'Rear) who takes her to a drive-in playing SEE NO EVIL and SILENT HILL. Poor girl. Then it's off to a bar to get back at a drunken Clare, and then to a carnival. There are a few OK metal songs that sounds a lot like White Zombie that play during her feeding frenzies.

Director Donald Farmer is a name somewhat familiar to fans of horrible horror films. He's been making no budget movies like this since the mid 1980s, but sadly doesn't seem to have improved much over the past two decades. Dorm was shot on digital and the picture quality is decent for the format. However, it's otherwise full of technical goofs usually attributed to amateur first-time filmmakers. There are tons of continuity errors, it's badly paced, it's padded, the attempts at humor almost always miss the mark and the editing, acting, script, gore fx and sound are all pretty lousy. The Clare character is only seen in close-up and doesn't interact with most of the rest of the cast, which makes it seem like all of her scenes were shot separately. The zombie make-up is almost nonexistent. A little dab of faint green paint and a little blood is all there is to it. There are three instances of T&A in the film, which is basically all it has to offer its target audience.

★

Tomb of the Werewolf (2003)

... aka: Unliving, The

Directed by:
Fred Olen Ray

Elizabeth Bathory (Michelle Bauer) sells her soul to Satan for eternal youth and (as most of us know) must bathe in the blood of young women (not just virgins, as you will later see!) to retain her youth. She is also responsible for periodically sending her dark lord Lucifer some damned souls by making human sacrifices. Somewhere along the years she crosses paths with Waldemar Daninsky (Paul Naschy), a nobleman in love with Lady Eleanor Daninsky (Stephanie Bentley). When the black plague ravages Eleanor, Elizabeth strikes a deal with Waldemar to return her to life. She does, but then Waldemar is transformed into a werewolf, kills the newly-revived Eleanor and is captured by townspeople who drive a silver cross through his chest. He's then laid to rest in a hidden crypt in the Daninsky family castle and forgotten. (By the way, the time and place of these events are never given.)

Flashing ahead to today, descendant Richard Daninsky (Jay Richardson) learns he has just inherited a huge castle reputed to have a treasure hidden somewhere inside. He travels to Europe with the crew from the television series "Current Mysteries" in tow. Amongst the group are arrogant TV reporter Melanie Charles (Kennedy Johnston), her producer boyfriend Tony (Leland Jay), script supervisor Leslie (Beverly Lynne), beefcake cameraman Steve (Frankie C. Cullen) and make-up artist Christie (Jacy Andrews). The group also hire psychic Amanda Collins (Stephanie Bentley again), who is a dead-ringer for the long- dead Eleanor because she is actually a ghost. And wouldn't you know it, there in the castle alive and well-preserved is Elizabeth, who is posing as the caretaker and housekeeper, but is naturally up to other devious things.

Elizabeth leads Richard down into the dungeon / crypt and tricks him into removing the cross from the corpse of Waldemar. Waldemar returns to life, kills Richard, gets outside and starts biting chunks out of villagers. Meanwhile, the TV crew goof off and get off in assorted combinations. The sex scenes for the video release (including the expected girl-girl encounter) cut to black before they get too racy, suggesting there may be an unrated version out there somewhere. If one does indeed exist, it will probably end up on Cinemax at 3 a.m.; this film is perfect for late-night trash-film fanatics. Director Fred Olen Ray does an OK good job with the return of Naschy's famous Spanish horror character. He's added a little fog, a little ambiance, a little blood and some romanticism to this tale in intentional reverence to the El Hombre Lobo movies of the 1970s. He also stuck pretty closely with the original werewolf design and special effects. The only major difference is that the cheesy time-lapse werewolf transformations of yesteryear have been replaced by the cheesy computer morphing werewolf transformations of today. The film is nowhere near as atmospheric as the original Spanish productions, but there's plenty of nudity / sex and even a decent amount of blood to keep B movie fans mildly entertained.

The period details (aside from the castle and some costumes) are not convincing in the least and neither are the performances from most of the younger cast (Beverly Lynne and Jacy Andrews excluded), but having three veterans in the pivotal roles makes a big difference here. Jay Richardson dies pretty early on, but he's an-always reliable character actor and does just fine here. It's great to see Paul Naschy in an American movie and playing Waldemar again. He has a few English-language lines with his thick Spanish accent, but spends most of the film in make-up or standing off in the background watching the action from afar. But the real star of this one is Michelle Bauer, who is menacing, sexy, sardonic, wickedly funny and delivers her dialog with great camp relish. Pay careful attention to her facial expressions. She never just stands around waiting to say her line; she's always active in what's going on while others around here often seem to be drifting off. It is one of her best performances and largest roles... and none too soon! The 44-year-old (who seems to be growing old gracefully with no signs of reconstruction or Botox face-freeze) is surrounded here by girls who are young, attractive and refreshingly devoid of silicone. Never mind that, Michelle steals the spotlight away from all of them.

★★

Undertow, The (2003)

Directed by:
Jeremy Wallace

I'm a patient guy and have no problem with slow-moving horror films if the slow-moving parts actually serve some kind of purpose, such as helping to define characters, setting up an interesting storyline, creating atmosphere or mood and/or helping to build suspense. However, when a simple shot-on-video slasher/gore film spends the first 45 minutes (!) completely gore or murder free you know you've got a problem. Aside from briefly establishing the back-story of the killer, the film spends the majority of the first two-thirds of its run-time showing a bunch of obnoxious "friends" screaming profanities at one another as they drive around in the boonies, visit a general store, go canoing and set up their camp. Again, I have no problem with dialogue as long as the dialogue is interesting and serves some purpose. Here it's not the least bit interesting and creates tedium right from the start. In fact, I have a strong suspicion that the majority of the dialogue in this film was just made up on the spot. Characters frequently and awkwardly talk over top one another like it's some kind of improv class from hell, and there's no attempt whatsoever at characterization. It's a real endurance test to even make it to the first murder scenes as the film the film doesn't even really hit any kind of stride until the final 20 minutes, when nearly the entire cast thankfully gets butchered.

In the small town of Old Mines, Missouri, the townspeople are hiding a deep dark secret. The religious fanatic mayor (Ed Belt) hates people from out of town visiting the area. He views them as being impure and thinks they are possessed by demons and wants no part of them. When tourists can't take the hint to high tail it out of there, the mayor unleashes his incest-bred mongoloid son on them. The son - named Dewey or just "The Boy" - is a big, hulking, mentally-retarded behemoth dressed in overalls and a pillow case over his head, who's kept locked up in a shed until he's needed to get to "work" killing off anyone dumb enough to refuse to leave the area. In come six people; Eli (Jason Christ), Carol Anne (Julie Farrar), Buster (Chris Grega), Mia (Emily Haack), Judy (Robin Garrels) and Tim (Todd Tevlin), who fumble through their awkward scenes seemingly in a contest to see who can throw out the "f bomb" the most times. The people in town, including the sheriff (Joseph Palermo) and the killer's sister (Trudy Bequette) try to scare them off, but they don't listen. "The Boy" is then set free and goes on a rampage, also killing some other people in town along the way. "The Boy" doesn't like to use weapons much of the time and uses his bare hands to rip open heads and chests.

The movie does eventually provide some gore, but most of it is at the very end. For a 75-minute film, that's otherwise pretty worthless, to wait that long to start flinging around the red stuff, is pretty much unforgivable. If you've read this far, know the basic plot already and still feel like you must watch for whatever reason, I'd recommend fast forwarding until the first murder scene occurs. The rest is a waste of time.

★1/2

Rockville Slayer, The (2003)

... aka: Hidden Fears
... aka: Unaware

Directed by:
Marc Selz

With this low budget film, you know you're in trouble right from the beginning. It's your typical slasher movie set-up featuring two football players and two cheerleaders getting killed, but what makes this grueling to sit through isn't the amateurish acting (which I expected anyway), but the absolutely pathetic dialogue the characters are given. The guys communicate via walkie talkies from separate cars as they prepare to get laid, using (ugh) football lingo ("I'm at the ten yard line!" ... "I'm going for a touchdown.") The filmmakers could have at least given us a cheap jump scare or a bloody murder as compensation. Nope! Just a quartet of off-screen kills that are tame, boring and poorly staged.

Despite the dull opening sequence and despite the fact this film was packaged and re-titled (it was originally called Unaware) to be a slasher film, it's anything but. I'm even hard pressed to even call this a horror film because it's seriously lacking in anything horrific. What it really is is an old-fashioned mystery-thriller with geeky small town deputy Charlie (Circus-Szalewski) teaming up with attractive female detective Amy (Nicole Buehrer) to investigate the aforementioned crimes. What's eventually uncovered is a secret from Charlie's own childhood that turns out to be the key to solving the mystery. Not that you'll really be all that interested in the mystery elements of this film because the whole thing is just so monotonous, derivative and uninteresting.

The highly variable acting and unimaginative direction don't help but the screenplay is what really does this film in. There is literally no original idea to be had in this entire film. Everything is a painfully worn out cliché, from the character interactions to the flashbacks to plot twists we've all seen used many times before. The explanation behind the slaying of the four teens at the beginning is downright absurd at best. Silly red herrings (including your token mental home escapee) are synthetically injected into the film to try to throw you off, but they really don't do much other than kill time. The three guest stars in the cast; Joe Estevez as a sheriff, Linnea Quigley as a batty harlot and a campy Robert Z'Dar as her sadistic partner, all do their jobs in an entertaining way.

Some people mentioned the music drove them up the wall, but it really didn't bother me much. What *did* bother me a lot was the sound quality on the DVD. I constantly had to fumble with the remote turning the volume up or down throughout the entire film. I'm not sure if this is incompetence on the filmmakers part or just a poorly and cheaply distributed DVD. The picture quality is surprisingly good for a film of this budget range and DP Joseph Farris deserves a shout out for a job very well done.

★1/2