Last Slumber Party, The (1988)

Directed by:
Stephen Tyler

Vulgar 30-year-old 'teens' have their throats cut with "an extremely sharp implement of an undetermined nature, possibly a surgical scalpel." News at 11!

Dr. Sickler (David Whitley) has a little "disagreement" with his patient Mr. Randalls (played by the director), a psycho killer who was recently apprehended after sneaking into a teen girl's bedroom and is now upset because the doctor "tried to cut out part of his brain" (?) Apparently never secured to his bed, Randalls gets up, steals some scrubs and a scalpel and somehow manages to just walk right out of the hospital; stuffing blankets under his sheets to fool Sickler and his not-very-observant nurse Lisa (Mary Louise Michel). Now on the prowl, the nut has revenge on his mind. He slashes up the nurse at a bus stop while some orderly just sits there sleeping and then heads toward his favorite doctor's home for an unscheduled visit. And wouldn't ya know it, he shows up on the same night Sickler's teen daughter Linda (Joann Whitley) is having two of her friends - Chris (Jan Jensen) and Tracy (Nancy Meyer) - over for a slumber party.

You'd figure that making a film where an escaped killer slices up teen girls would be easy enough to do, but this movie does everything wrong. It even does things wrong that I didn't know could be done wrong until I saw them here with my own two eyes. There's no nudity, no gore, the acting is some of the worst you will ever see, the characters look only mildly inconvenienced to be having their throats slashed and the movie somehow manages to simultaneously not have a plot and not make a lick of sense. The sound sometimes completely drops out, ends of lines have been clipped off due to inept editing (or filming), the same shots of the killer bugging out his eyes and coming toward the camera are repeated over and over again and the photography is all over the place. One moment the image will be crystal clear and the next it's so dark and blurry you can barely make anything out. I couldn't even figure out what kind of camera or film stock they used because some shots look completely different than others.

Back in the day, the video stores in my town always put this right next to the first two Slumber Party Massacre films on their otherwise alphabetically arranged shelves; probably assuming it was the final entry in the official series. That was probably distributor United Home Video's intent all along, as this film's poster - which shows three girls in sexy lingerie being attacked (when the ones in the film actually wear baggy shirts and shorts) - completely rips off the ad art for the SPM series. However, what this movie copies the most is actually HALLOWEEN (1978). A timid Laurie Strode-like girl and her two slutty friends are the primary targets, one of the girls actually seems to be trying to imitate P.J. Soles and the two more 'experienced' ones repeatedly tease the virgin about setting her up with some guy she has a crush on but is too shy to ask out. The difference between the two films is that the girls in Halloween are at least somewhat likable and the ones in this film are obnoxious, foul-mouthed skanks. The Chris character seems go down a checklist of every known gay slur and uses them all to make fun of the boys who eventually show up to crash their party. Chris' love interest is a sweet talker himself, calling her a "stupid bitch" and saying things like "Fuck you whore!" as she looks on adoringly. Nice.

The "victims" do such boneheaded and senseless things throughout you'll be left scratching your head wondering whether anyone was taking the proceedings seriously or not. When it gets down to the final girl, there's one point where she's standing in front of an open door and one of her friends falls over dead inside from a fresh wound. Instead of, you know, running out of the door she's standing right in front of like any normal person would do, she quietly steps back inside and closes the door! As far as the ending is concerned, if you could make any sense out of it, you're one step ahead of me. It's something like a nightmare-inside-of-a-nightmare-that-may-actually-be-a-premonition-or-just-another-nightmare-that-may-loop-continually-for-infinity. Or something. I have no idea.

I  also somehow doubt this was made in 1988, despite the fact that's the copyright in the end credits and some late 80s 'hair metal' tunes from Firstryke were added to the soundtrack at some point. The hairstyles and clothing were definitely not cool in late 80s, there's a reference to Shelley Hack being on Charlie's Angels and one of the girls has posters of The Bee Gees (!) and The Beatles on her bedroom wall. A poster for Xanadu (1980) is also seen, so I'm gonna venture a guess and say this was actually filmed sometime between 1980 and 1982 (Note: It was filmed in 1981 according to the director). In 2004, VCI released this on DVD along with the insufferable shot-on-video slasher TERROR AT TENKILLER (1986).

SBIG

El juego del diablo (1975)

... aka: Alucinaciones
... aka: Devil's Exorcist, The
... aka: Game of the Devil, The

Directed by:
Jorge Darnell

El juego del diablo ("The Game of the Devil") is one of at least a dozen Exorcist-inspired films made within the first two years of Friedkin's landmark film. Nearly all of these immediate clones were European in origin. THE ANTICHRIST (1974), Beyond the Door (1974), The Eerie Midnight Horror Show (1974 aka Enter the Devil) and The Possessor (1975 aka Return of the Exorcist) were all Italian productions and there was also Devil's Female (1974) from Germany, Seytan (1974) from Turkey, the American blaxploitation effort ABBY (1974) and others. Another handful of these; Demon Witch Child (1975), the dreadful Paul Naschy vehicle EXORCISMO (1975) and this one were from Spain. To confuse matters even further, shameless international distributors also added even more 'rip-offs' to the cycle by re-titling films that were made prior to The Exorcist - often films that didn't even contain an exorcist or any exorcism - to try to cash in. A good example of this is Las Melancolicas ("The Melancholy"), yet another Spanish production, this time set in a 19th Century mental asylum. That film was released in its country of origin in 1971 but made it stateside in 1974 in a horribly-dubbed version under the misleading title of Exorcism's Daughter. Juego is a strange case in that it has also been dubbed into English and given the new title The Devil's Exorcist somewhere along the line, yet doesn't appear to have ever been released in the U.S. theatrically or in any other form.

Because of this film's rarity, there's lots of misinformation about it online. As of this writing, IMDb currently has 12 actors listed as appearing in the film. Of these 12, four aren't even in the movie and only one character name matches up to the right person. Other roles, like two male teachers, "bandit," "town mayor" and "priest in cell," are nowhere to be seen. The star is 15-year-old Inma de Santis (billed as "Inma de Santy"). De Santis was a pretty young actress who began her film career at age 5, transitioned into a frequently sexualized teen actress and continued on into adulthood in similar roles until her tragic death at age 30 in a car accident. She'd already appeared in the previously mentioned Exorcism's Daughter prior to this one and also made appearances in the genre films The Ancines Woods (1970), Murders in the Rue Morgue (1971), Killing of the Dolls (1975) and LEONOR (1975); almost always in small parts. Devil's Exorcist marks a very rare top-billed lead role for the actress. She's essentially asked to play the Linda Blair role here and actually does a fine job of it.

Things kick off with a religious quote ("Tentado por el diablo, dijole entonces Jesus: 'Al Senor tu dios adoraras y a el solo daras culto" = Tempted by the Devil, Jesus therefore said: 'Worship the Lord your God and Him only you shall worship') and follows with some red-tinted, swirling POV camerawork hovering over the bed of young Sheila Roberts, a Catholic schoolgirl who's not been acting like herself lately. Sheila lives at home with wealthy parents (Luis Prendes and Alicia Altabella) who are both too preoccupied with their own lives to pay her much mind, and an elderly gardener named Benjamin (José Orjas), who has a pet Dalmatian. With his daughter suddenly behaving disobediently and showing signs of a sociopathic personality disorder, dad decides to push her off on Dr. Liza Greene (María del Puy). I was never quite sure what kind of doctor Ms. Greene was but before Sheila enters her life she's shown experimenting on electric eels with flashing lights and chimpanzees using colored backgrounds and elephant noises (?!) Either way, the childless Liza decides to take on Sheila's case and forms a maternal bond with her in the process.

The filmmakers appear to be trying to give us two possible explanations behind Sheila's behavior: 1. She's possessed by a malicious spirit, or 2. She's gone crazy. However, by the time they begin trying to play that angle, we've already seen too much to ever believe the latter is a possibility. At a hospital, Sheila sneaks into a room and kills a small boy by turning off the air in his oxygen tent. She later throws mom off the balcony (in a scene that predates a similar scene in THE OMEN) and hangs the groundskeeper's dog; causing him to have a fatal heart attack. She also becomes nasty and violent toward Dr. Greene; constantly commenting on how old she is while noting that she, by contrast, still has "plenty of life between her legs," and then  smacks, kicks and claws at her before collapsing and spitting up white foam. The patient doctor eventually takes her to a small village near the ocean for some quiet time, where Sheila attempts to push her over a cliff and has visions of a Jesus statue crying blood and a monk statue spitting up more white foam. It takes awhile, but Dr. Greene finally decides she has no other choice but to commit the dangerous young girl to the nuthouse, which leads to a grim finale for all concerned.

The best aspects of this film by far are Sheila's frequent visions. Some are genuinely creepy, especially hazy shots of a mysterious, well-dressed man who's missing part of one hand walking through the fog toward her. Sheila sees this same man - who's played by the creepy-looking, though often underutilized (as is the case here), José Lifante - as a wax museum figure and, later, in a church dressed as a monk. He may be Satan. He may be an evil priest. He may be the former occupant of the home. He may be a cashier at McDonald's. We are never told. While this certainly works on an eerie ambiguous level, a part of me would have liked to have known something about this guy. Sheila also envisions mannequin hands rising from a pool and (in a REPULSION nod) hands emerging from the walls grabbing at her. The film really could have done with more of these haunting scenes and less of the psycho-babble in the generic main plot line. Despite the English title, there's no exorcist, no exorcism and not even much of a religious component to this one.

Euro exploitation regular Jack Taylor is on hand to play Dr. Jack Morris, Liza's moody / possessive lover. Unfortunately, he is given nothing of interest to do and his character borders on being utterly pointless. The only other credited cast member is Alberto Fernández as Dr. Kline. The director also made the vampire comedy Tiempos duros para Dracula ("Hard Times for Dracula"), which featured Lifante as the titular count.

The English-language version I viewed ran 80 minutes and was from a Greek VHS tape. The only other country with an official video release to my knowledge is Spain, with the company Kalendar Video stealing their cover art from the poster for the American slasher flick THE INITIATION (1984). On the original Spanish poster, de Santis is seen topless but never in the actual film (which is quite possibly a cut version). There are currently only 25 votes on IMDb, which means this is one of the least-seen of these types of films, though it's actually somewhat better than most of the more-famous ones.

★★1/2

Gnaw: Food of the Gods II (1989)

... aka: Food of the Gods Part 2
... aka: Gnaw
... aka: Gnaw - Food of the Gods: Part 2

Directed by:
Damian Lee

After I saw Bert I. Gordon's masterpiece The Food of the Gods, I stayed up many a night hoping, praying that there would one day be a sequel. I said to God "Could you please make sure the sequel has nothing to do with either the original film or the H.G. Wells novel of the same name. I would like it to focus around only giant killer rodents this time as I do not want giant worms, giant chickens or giant wasps ruining my giant rat fun. However, it is OK if it includes an angry, foul-mouthed 8-year-old giant with a large rubber hand. It must also have an 80s synthesizer score, a man in a cow mask repeatedly screaming "Animals have rights!," a guy in an awful toupee trying to find a cure for baldness by butchering dogs and Clint Eastwood, or at least someone imitating him if he is unavailable for filming. Could you please also throw in a scene where synchronized swimmers get eaten? Thank you very much for your time." And then I waited... and waited... and waited some more, but nothing. After awhile, I had no other option than to give up hope, renounce God for not listening to me and try to move on with my life. It wasn't easy. In the back of my mind I could never completely forget my yearning for a giant rat sequel. It was always nagging at me, eating at me, gnawing at me... My obsession ended up costing me my marriage, as my wife quickly tired of me talking about the film every night in my sleep, as well as my job after my boss discovered the collection jar I set up to help little Timmy get a kidney transplant was actually a ruse and I was planning on using that money to personally finance Food of the Gods II myself. Little did I know, but all this time the film already existed under the title of "Gnaw." Doh!

Note: If you detect a hint of bullshit in the air, it is only to prepare you for watching a film filled with even more ridiculous bullshit than I could ever dream of mustering up.

Neil Hamilton (Paul Coufos); a professor and researcher at some Canadian college who's experimenting with plants, receives an urgent phone call from former teacher and mentor Dr. Kate Treger (Jackie Burroughs), who has run across a little problem. Well, a big problem actually. It's not that her new super growth hormone 192 Methyanol is unsuccessful. It's just that it works a little too well and has turned a sweet, vertically-challenged little boy named Bobby (Sean Mitchell) into a vulgar, volatile 12-foot-tall brat who suddenly has a four-letter vocabulary and won't stop growing. Though Neil specializes in botany, Dr. Treger believes he's the right guy to whip up an antidote. He takes samples back to the college and immediately begins working on a cure. Meanwhile, at the same college, smarmy scientist Dr. Edmond Delhurst (Colin Fox) has been receiving government funding for cancer research but is instead using radiation on monkeys, dogs and beavers (!) to make them lose their hair so he can give them "scalp transplants" (?!) Student and animal activist Alex Reed (Lisa Schrage), who just so happens to also be Neil's girlfriend, along with her likeminded friends Mark (Real Andrews), Angie (Karen Hines) and Al (Stuart Hughes), break into Delhurst's lab, destroy his files, formulas and research data, take photos of the animals and then plaster their university with anonymous fliers the next day about what's really been going on. The Dean (David B. Nichols) can't prove who actually did it but threatens the four with expulsion if he ever does catch them.

Neil manages to whip up his own growth hormone, with hopes of deconstructing and reversing it. He first tries it out on some tomatoes; which grow to five times their original size in a matter of hours. His assistant Joshua (Frank Pellegrino) brings in 35 rats to test the formula out on. Though Neil is anti-animal testing, he decides to try it out on one of them because a child's life is at stake. Joshua accidentally leaves the hormone-laced tomato plant next to the cage and the hungry rodents chow down. The animal activists (sans Alex, who is busy screwing the professor) break into the lab and end up accidentally releasing the monster rats, who chew off Mark's face and then immediately head into the sewers to hide out. The king size rats make short work of a pest exterminator, a janitor riding some kind of motorized scooter and Al and Angie, who moronically go down into the dark sewers looking for "proof" of giant killer rats armed only with a tennis racket (!) and a net. They rip off a scientist's arm, cause a car accident by sneaking into the backseat and bite a Mexican guy on the ass while he's taking a pissing and singing "La Cucaracha," prompting him to to run out into a busy highway and get run over. Many others are also killed and a police lieutenant (Michael Copeman) shows up but he doesn't really do anything.

The Dean turns out to essentially be the same character as the mayor in Jaws and doesn't want the school shut down because of the grand opening of a new sports complex, which will attract rich alumni (and their donations). All the rats see is an all-you-can-eat buffet and promptly invade the place, leading to scenes of giant rat tails flailing in the pool, swimmers and spectators getting attacked, screaming people running amok, police gunning down innocent people, a frantic man getting his hands on a gun and shooting at least a half dozen people in his rampage, the Dean getting pushed off a balcony and all kinds of other chaotic hilarity. Not enough for you? Good news, there's more! During perhaps the film's more bizarre scene, Neil has a bad dream where he's fucking a girl whilst simultaneously growing into a giant (!) When Dr. Delhurst accidentally contaminates himself with a combination of hormone and dog's blood, he melts down into something that would look more at home in a Troma movie. Frank Moore (from Cronenberg's RABID [1977]) shows up as Jacques, a cigar-smoking, Eastwood-impersonating Rat-A-Tak pest extermination with a flamethrower. And lest I forget Louise, Neil's beloved white pet rat. Louise responds when "Three Blind Mice" is played on a flute, ends up getting injected with the hormone and decides to go after Alex because she's jealous the coed is gonna steal her man!

This film is extremely difficult to evaluate. On one hand, most of the acting and dialogue ("If this university is shut down because of giant rats, no one is gonna send their kids here!") is terrible, some of the attempts at comedy are embarrassing, it can't settle on a tone and the whole thing is utterly stupid and ridiculous. The boom mic is visible numerous times and you can even see hands pumping special effects ooze into an actor through tubes at the bottom left corner during the meltdown scene  Several cast members have been dubbed over for some reason, including Schrage, who was great in Prom Night II (1987) but comes off horribly here thanks to the awful dub. On the other hand, the production values are decent, it's well-photographed and edited, the special effects (cheesy as they may be) are fun, there's a lot of blood and gore and the whole thing is fast paced and brainlessly entertaining. Some of the cast members (like Fox) seem to be in on the joke and camp it up like nobody's business, while others appear to be taking the proceedings completely seriously. All in all, I can't say that I was ever bored, and that has to account for something, right?

La malédiction des rats (Curse of the Rats) [France]

Denti assassini (Killer Teeth) [Italy]

Die Stunde der Ratte (The Hour of the Rat) [Germany]

A Praga assassina (The Prague Killer) (?!) [Brazil]

Filmed primarily in the winter of 1987 on the York University campus in Ontario, this has a 1988 copyright date and received a very limited theatrical release through Roger Corman's company Concorde Pictures in 1989 before hitting video and cable TV. In 2004, Artisan released it to DVD.

★★1/2