Bad/awesome flixxx review: Castle Freak (1995)

"There's somebody else here there's somebody in the castle!" - Rebecca

"Giorgio D'Orsino- he was never burried! She kept him alive! He's here somewhere in this castle!" - John

"I didn't kill her, I fucked her, Okay?" - John

This flick has been suggested to me on several occasions. A bunch of dudes said, If you dig RE-ANIMATOR, then you should check this one out. From the same director Stuart Gordon comes this story based on the Lovecraft novella THE OUTSIDER. It was released straight to video and stars a few of the same actors from RE-ANIMATOR, Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton (who my Earth mom would tell you was a huge soap opera star). I present to you CASTLE FREAK!!!





Supposedly this is a hard to find movie. I think maybe that was the case a few years ago, but I think maybe if they never released it on DVD, you may actually be able to find it on Blu-Ray now. Here we have the story of an old Duchess who had a son. Apparently he was all fucked up, or maybe he wasn't fucked up at all except for that she beat the shit out of him with a whip- or kept him as a "whipping boy" as they state near the end of the movie. The movie has a creepy feel throughout that beings right away with the weird low camera angles on the old lady chopping bread, and shooing the kitty out of the way. The prologue ends quickly after serving some bread to whatever is tied up way downstairs in this castle, she suddenly has a heart attack and dies, and is found months later mummified.



Fast forward who knows how many years later, and John Reilly and his wife and blind daughter are called to Italy to check out this castle he has inherited. He didn't even know that his dad had been married to a duchess and is suprised by the whole thing. There's a weird pause where the wife asks the maid if she can prepare an extra room for John. So there is tension in their marriage. We learn through flashback that he had been drunk-driving and flipped their car killing their four year old son and blinding their daughter. BUT the real reason that she is not into him anymore is that he has been caught cheating with some other chick in the past as well. And even though he wants to get back with her, she's not having it.
Pretty soon after moving into the castle, they begin to hear weird crying and moaning coming from the basement. Upon investigation, they never really pinpoint where its coming from.



The cat is still loose in the house and the blind girl goes running after it one day and almost reaches the freak's cage. Her dad calls her back upstairs, and when she leaves the kitty starts to follow, but is quickly snatched up by the freak. When they're eating dinner they hear something and you see the bloody kitty corpse slam against the wall. Then the Freak wants out so he rips his own fucking thumb off just so he can get the shackles off his arm. Then he starts cavorting around the castle as he pleases wrapping a sheet from a chair around himself because he sees himself in the mirror for the first time ever and realizes he's hideous. He then smashes the mirror. The police comes because the family thinks something fishy is going on, but the cops can't be bothered to check it out. So after further advances on his wife don't work and she tells him she wishes it was him who died instead of the kid, he contemplates suicide at the top of the tower, but decides to get drunk for the first time in a long time instead. GOOD PLAN. He ends up taking this whore home and bangs her but is disgusted with himself and throws money at her telling her to get out. She is splitting up the backstairs when the freak grabs her and chains her up, feeds her wine, shows her that he doesn't have a weiner, and then viciously kills her and the maid. We see the setup coming, their gonna pin it on the reanimator.



So apparently the cop has a kid with the whore so he's super pissed when she comes up missing. John tries to get his lawyer to get him out of the shit, but then the lawyer tries to blackmail him. Then they search the castle and find the whore and maid (who was the lawyer's sister) and they immediately blame John. They won't allow the wife or the daughter to leave. I don't want to spoil the ending, because even though I saw the setup coming, I wasn't entirely sure what the outcome of the movie was going to be. I will say that the Castle Freak seems to me to be a victim of circumstance. He couldn't help who he was. He even takes his scarf off when he realizes that the daughter is blind. She can't see him and he likes that because maybe he thinks that the reason he was treated that way all these years was because of his appearance. She can't see that, so maybe she won't treat him that way. I don't know. I'm pretty sure that's what you're supposed to get from it, but it goes so fast and is so focused on gore, that you may not actually grab that in a portion of a horror movie like you would if you read it in an eloquently stated book (or movie review). Should you see it. If you're lucky, its still up for free on Youtube.

Bad/awesome flixxx review: Phantasm II (1988)

"You think that when you die, you go to Heaven? You come to us!" - The Tall Man

"Come on. Lets go kick some ass." - Reggie Bannister

"You've got to warn people!" - Father Myers

If you watched the first Phantasm movie and like me decided it was one of the awesomest/most confusing horror films ever made, its possible that you too were hooked and craved more information about this "Tall Man" and his gate to another world. And its highly likely that you too sought out the first sequel thinking that you would probably be filled in with some sort of origin story or some background for the Tall Man and his dwarf minions... well you like me were dead wrong. This is another highly confusing Coscarelli masterpiece set 9 years after the first film. Reggie Bannister and Angus Scrimm reprise their roles in PHANTASM II!!!





So- the main obvious weird thing that sticks out for everyone watching this sequel is that once you watch the flashback scenes that get you up to speed on what went down in the first one (since it was ten years later and they had a bigger budget, they were planning on having a ton of new fans) you realize that they neglected to cast the original Mike! They brought in some other douche! And he SUCKED! BIGTIME! He's the guy from something and something else. You recognize him, but you can't put your finger on it. IMDB says POINT BREAK and DRUGSTORE COWBOY. I say whatever. He doesn't ruin the movie, you figure, its been ten years, the kid's gonna look different anyway. So this one starts right where the last one left off. Only its being told by a female narrator who is psychically linked with Mike. She sees what happened to him in the first movie and believes that when her grandfather dies, the Tall Man is going to come for her as well. The only thing is, if she would have just ignored him, the Tall Man probably would have left her alone.



So she sees Reggie run up the stairs at the end of the first movie to save Mike from the dwarves. He is surrounded but turns off the stove pilot lights thinking that it will blow the house sky high once the fumes reach the fireplace. He's right, and he barely gets Mike out before it goes. Fast forward and Mike has been in a mental hospital for 10 years! HA! Because no one believed him. Fucked up how Reggie didn't have to go or anything. So Mike, even though he has visions and secretly speaks telepathically with this chick Liz, fakes his way out of the looney bin by pretending to be all cool. They let him out and like a few hours later Reggie finds him in the graveyard digging up graves. Sure they're all empty, but Reg talks him out of there so they don't lock him away for ever for being weird as hell. He tries to convince Reg that what he says is true but Reggie doesn't really believe him, and is taking him to his house with his new wife and daughter who are making them dinner. Suddenly Mike has a vision that the house explodes and then the house really does explode right before their eyes killing Reggie's whole family. Now we have Reggie as the narrator. So far we've had three narrators for this one. WEIRD (but unique). He tells us that his family being blown to bits showed him the Mike may be on to something with his visions. Its also weird as hell that we've seen this similar looking house blow up 3 times in the first ten minutes of the movie.




So now we get a solid 5 minutes of sweet scenes of Reggie and Mike driving Mike's dead brother Jody from the first movie's badass car around the country in beautiful settings searching high and low for the Tall Man. There's a montage scene where they build a flame thrower and a sweet 4 barrell sawed off shogun. All the while Mike keeps getting closer and closer to finding the Tall Man having these weird psychic links with Liz. Her grandfather dies and then at the wake, Liz wonders around tehf funeral home that looks like the one from the first flick. Then the weird priest stabs her dead grandfather in the heart while he's in his casket causing the grandmother to faint in the church AND THEY NEVER EVER SAY A THING ABOUT IT!!! She's just laying in the bed that night. I guess we don't really get the chance because she ends up waking to her dead gross husband laying beside of her. The priest is ashamed because he knows heavy bad shit is going down in the morgue below, but he can't really do anything about it because he knows they'll kill his ass too. Anyway, Liz gets a psychic email from the Tall Man saying if she wants her grandmother back she'll have to come back to the morgue to get her. Back on the trail with the boys, Mike wakes up and finds that Reggie picked up this super hot hitchhiker that he may or may not have seen laying dead in the morgue way back where ever they were. He tries to warn Reg, but Reg has some solid boner logic that pulls through. So the hitchhiker chick just so happens to need to go to Perigord where Liz's fiasco is going down.



The Tall Man releases the wild ass flying sphere from the first movie, only this time, he has 3 in a baby coffin. Then a lot of shit happens. Preacher eats it, Liz meets Mike, they all go back to rest, Liz gets kidnapped, they wreck Jody's badass car flipping it and gas leaking with a narrow escape before explosion a la MAD MAX, they boys fight with the morticians and some grave digger dudes, and capture a sphere so they can enter the Tall Man's realm. They also get a sphere to jab into his face but he pulls it out and crushes it like it was a beer can. The Tall Man throws them into the weird dimension through the portal and this creepy baby almost gets Reggie till Mike pulls him out. They get out and barely rescue Liz from being pumped with what the Tall Man thinks is the dwarf embalming shit, but its really hydrochloric acid that Reggie switched. They act fast and jab the hose into the Tall Man filling him with the acid and melting him down. Its SICK. Then they torch the place and split in the Tall Man's hearse that Alchemy (the hitchhiker) stole. Mike and Liz hop in the back and Alchemy starts to take her shirt off and Reg is ready for it, but then she pulls some of her hair off and he starts to freak out, bailing out of the speeding car. Mike and Liz try to tell themselves its just a dream, but the Tall Man looks back through the window of the hearse and says, "NO- IT'S NOT." And then hands pull them screaming through the back window just like at the end of the first movie. WOW. This one is pretty bad, but for some reason, I STILL liked it. Something about this series. The Tall Man, the weird spheres, the graveyards, the nonsensical plots, the bad ass car, some nude stuff- Its got a little bit of everything. Should you see it? Its not essential like the first one, but go for it if you were a fan of that one.

Bad/awesome flixxx review: Class of 1984 (1982)

"What's the matter with you? What's the matter with me? What's the matter with matter?" - Stegman

"I am the future! I am the future! I am the future!" - Stegman

"I'ma gonna kill yo', sucka! No one messes around wit' my man, Leroy. I'm gonna cut you, white-meat." - Joo Joo

This is a longtime favorite of mine. I'm not sure when or where I first saw it. I'm guessing this was a late night Joe Bob Brigg's Drive In Theater showcase from The Movie Channel when I was younger. I remember it just being brutal as Hell, and me hoping that high school wasn't that raw (It wasn't QUITE that bad in my Earth hometown...almost... in a more redneck way). But this one changed had it all. I think it probably showed a lot of the country what punk rock WAS at the time. A lot of movies remade this theme and tried to spin it maybe in an urban way (THE PRINCIPAL, DANGEROUS MINDS) or an action way (THE SUBSTITUTE) or even parody (CLASS OF NUKE 'EM HIGH), but none of them came close to how raw this flick is and how psycho Tim Van Patton was onscreen. With a weird theme by Alice Cooper, young Tim Van Patton, even younger Michael J Fox (billed as Michael Fox) and Roddy McDowell star in CLASS OF 1984!!!!





Teachers Roddy McDowell and the new teacher Mr. Norris meet each other in the school parking lot. Mr. Norris wonders why Roddy has a pistol in his briefcase. Roddy asks him where he's been teaching. He says nowhere, but the real answer is Wisconsin. They've recently moved to what I'm guessing is Detroit, they don't really ever say. When they go in the school we see Mr Norris surprised that all of the students are being cowed through metal detectors before they enter. He sees one of the students sneak in a knife but Roddy tells him if he's gonna last he needs to look the other way. So Mr. Norris is the new music teacher replacement, and no one will really tell him what happened to the last guy. From day one he receives guff from this rich kid asshole gang leader named Stegman and his cronies, half of whom aren't even supposed to be in his class. He shoos them out after being cussed out and is pissed when he sees his car sprayed with graffiti when he's about to go home. Tells his wife it cost him 45 bucks to get taken off before he got there. She reassures him that it'll probably get better. IT DOESN'T.



Norris tries to keep the gang out of his class, which is full of promising students who could do well if they weren't so distracted by the hooligans. Stegman and his gang: the chick, the drug dealer, the enforcer beefcake, and the mohawk chain guy catch a black student selling dope to a girl at her locker, they chase him into the bathroom and beat the shit out of him. Then after school the all black gang and Stegman's gang fight until the pigs come. Then the gang goes to a punk show and after slam dancing and stage diving for a while they set up shop backstage. One young kid wants to sell for them, and one chick wants to whore for Stegman's prostitution ring for free coke. They make her get naked for "tryouts". Then the gang come by and fuck with Mr. Norris. The next day, Norris tries to get the cops after the gang, and so begins the relentless battle between Stegman and Norris. Roddy keeps trying to tell him to calm down, but Norris just wants to nail Stegman. But everything he does keeps fucking up. He catches them selling dope to a kid, but he can't prove shit, and then the kid they sold to falls from the top of a flagpole and dies. They chase MJ Fox so he doesn't rat them out and Norris tries to stop them against Roddy's advice off school grounds and Roddy ends up getting cut. Then they finally knife MJ Fox b/c they think he ratted them out. Then Norris tries to fuck Stegman up in the bathroom, but doesn't have the balls, so Stegman beats himself up and gets Norris in super hot water.



Norris tries to go to Stegman's house to talk with his mother but she tells him to get outta there. Stegman tells him that if he ever comes back there he'll kill him. Norris goes crazy and hotwires and wrecks Stegman's car. He gets a lot of satisfaction out of that, but ultimately only provokes Stegman and his gang to go even further with their terror. Over the weeks Norris's class gets better and he prepares for their recital. To get Roddy back for interfering with there plans, they go to his lab and murder and crucify his rabbits and smear the blood all over the walls. A few days later, he reacts by pulling a gun on them during class and putting it in their faces asking them questions telling them if they don't answer he'll blow their heads off. He ALMOST DOES blow Stegman's head off, but Norris grabs his arm at the last minute and he shoots through the roof. The bell rings and (HERE'S A PART I CALL TOTAL BULLSHIT ON- NO MATTER WHAT YEAR IT WAS) the principal and the cop just let Roddy WALK OUT OF THE CLASS and the school after that!!! WHAT? No way in Hell he'd ever be allowed to split and take the day off after almost killing students. Doesn't matter anyway, later that night he chases the gang down in his buick until flippng his car and dying horribly in a fire.



So finally, Norris is about to have his recital and he's got the whole school board and a bunch of special guest in the audience, we're talking a packed house. Only he notices that his wife hasn't showed up yet. Stegman and his gang bust into Norris's house push his wife down, rape, and beat her, and then take pictures and kidnap her bringing her to the school. The chick gives some nerd an envelope with a polaroid in it, and he takes it to Norris who freaks and runs down the middle of the isle like a bat outta hell leaving the audience bewildered. Their left to wait for what seems like forever between scenes of the gang beating the shit out of Norris in the dark corridors and hallways of the school at night. Finally after clapping and almost rioting, his best student decides to lead the band. Then their performance is cut between Norris stalking the gang in different classrooms and fighting for his life ultimately killing the chain punk first BRUTALLY on a fucking table saw. Hey- it was him or Norris. Then one by one he kills the others, finally making his way to the roof in a battle royale with Stegman that leaves the viewer very satisfied in the end, I mean if you're like me and you want to see Stegman fucking suffer really badly. This is a flick that you (or at least I) got totally caught up in. And I hope you all can do the same. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

Bad/awesome flixxx review: Hellraiser (1987)

"Come here, damn you, I want to touch you." - Frank Cotton

"Explorers in the further regions of experience. Demons to some. Angels to others. " - Pinhead

"No tears, please. It's a waste of good suffering." - Pinhead

Probably the number 4 best selling horror franchise of all time. I'm guessing that. The toss up for one and two would be NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET and FRIDAY THE 13TH, and I'd have to bet on HALLOWEEN being the 3rd biggest. No slouch in 4th place with a serious NINE sequels comes this piece of work from Clive Barker. His 1st feature written and directed by him based on one of his novellas. A pretty solid (arguably simple) plot with very effect special effects especially concerning the resurrection of Frank Cotton. Doug Bradley as the Cenobite Pinhead (although much like with Jason in FRIDAY THE 13TH not having a mask till later- they don't call him Pinhead till later in the series) in HELLRAISER!!!





Our story begins with a dude Frank buying a small puzzle box from some dealer in Morocco (?) or some such place and then proceeding to draw a pentagram on the floor and hang out naked in his house with candles in the dark playing with this thing like its some kind of porno rubix cube. Apparently he never heard the saying, "be careful what you wish for"- because on his search for eternal sexual enlightening he unlocks the puzzle and comes across the keepers of those secrets. The keepers are a quad of s&m sex monsters called cenobites that rip his skin off using hooked chains shooting out from the puzzle box. Cenobites are a gang of religious monks that hang out together in groups. These cenobites just so happen to be crazy sadomasochist sex monsters from Hell. CONGRATULATIONS.



So fast forward, and we have a couple moving into the dingy old house trying to repair their strained relationship. The marriage is the second for the husband Larry, who is moving back into this old house that's been in his family for years. Turns out his derelict half brother (Frank) has been squatting in the old house but has seemingly abandoned it. It ALSO turns out that right before they were married, Frank came to their old house during a storm and totally fucked Larry's (HIS BROTHERs) wife, and made her beg for it. He came in a just used her and made her act like the cheapest slut ever. It was pure lust and she is obviously haunted by this memory. Also moving to town is the dude's daughter (Kirsty) from his first marriage who kind of hates the new wife (Julia) anyway. But she has no plans to stay in that creepy house. So as they are moving in to the house, Larry cuts his hand on a nail pretty badly and drips blood on the floor in the attic, somehow conjuring up Frank's spirit, allowing him to SOMEHOW escape the Cenobite's realm. I call bullshit on this. It seems like EVERY movie I watch only need drip blood onto the ground or field or in the woods to somehow resurrect some evil shit that comes back to haunt them until they can quell it back into some Hellish depths (see ELVES). At one point there's this creepy homeless guy who eats a bunch of moths and creeps the shit out of Kirsty and anyone else who has eyeballs.



Oozing up out of the ground and reforming his exoskeleton, Frank calls out to Julia from the attic. Even as a half formed bloody monstrocity he somehow still makes her panties wet. So she agrees to go out and get him more blood. While Larry is at work, Julia goes out barhopping and brings home no less than four or five dudes with the promise of a good happy hour fuck and then smashes them in the head with a hammer while Frank then sucks them bone dry and hides the bodies in an upstairs guest bedroom! Julia obviously begins to go out of her mind all the while lusting for Frank to be whole again so they can be together. When Julia considers bailing on the whole thing after he keeps requiring more bodies, Frank explains the story of the puzzle box to her. Julia agrees to bring home one last dude, but gets busted by Kirsty who was coming to talk to Julia about acting strange at her father's behest.



Kirsty sneaks up the stairs and interrupts the murder. Frank tries to grab and kill her, but Kirsty is smart and grabs the puzzle box and slings it out the window. Frank freaks out and Kirsty splits out of the house and down the street, grabbing the box on the road, but its power makes her weak and she passes out, waking up in a hospital bed. The doctor gives her the box back and then she solves the puzzle and the cenobites come to get her. She barely escapes them and when Pinhead tells her she's gotta come with them, she says she knows that one of their subjects escaped and basically makes a deal that if she rats out where Frank is, they'll leave her alone. So she goes back to the house and sees her dad. He tells her not to worry because he had to kill Frank and he's knows all about everything. She doesn't believe him until he shows her the corpse. Then she freaks out because she realizes he's just Frank wearing LARRY'S SKIN!!! Frank tries to kill her and ends up killing Julia instead, but he doesn't care because he was just using her in the first place. DOH!! And then when he's about to kill Kirsty, he admits that he's Frank and then the Cenobites appear POOF! And then they rip him to shreds and decide to renege on their deal, but Kirsty somehow begins sending them back into the puzzle by solving it backwards. Yeah, I guess I'd try that before they started ripping me apart. Still a little hard to believe if you ask me. So her and her boyfriend manage to send them all back and they try to burn the box, but the creepy old bum grabs the box out of the fire and transforms into a winged dragon skeleton and flies away while they look on. ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? They'd have to put me in the psycho tank after seeing all that shit. Somehow the box makes its way back to the original store and the dude is about to sell it again. The end. Should you see this? Absolutely. I can't vouch for its sequels, but this is class A horror right here.

Bad/awesome flixxx review: 1990: The Bronx Warriors (1982)

"I work for nobody. I don't care about the Manhattan Corporation! I don't care about the girl, I don't care about politics, I don't care about anything! I believe in nothing. I'm Hammer - The Exterminator!" - Hammer
"You're the biggest son of a bitch in the world. You're afraid somebody might remember you were born in the Bronx?" - Trash
"No, you're wrong. I'm gonna make sure that nobody ever forgets." - Hammer

"You fuck! It could be a pile of shit out of someone's asshole!" - Trash

"Yer playin' with fire." - Hot Dog
"I know, and I love it. I LOVE it." - Hammer

Here we go with another great piece of cinema trash. If you're a longtime fan of WARRIORS, then you'll love this Italian knockoff that was actually filmed in Brooklyn and the Bronx. This is another one of those pieces of art that you've heard about for a longtime, and forever they were hard to get ahold of, but now with things like Amazon.com or whatever, you can usually find a VHS copy for maybe like 6 bucks. If you're into it, go for it, this is a gem. Featuring Fred Williamson, Christopher Connelly, and Vic Morrow in his next to last movie (before he was decapitated on the set of TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE), I present to you 1990: THE BRONX WARRIORS!!!





Off we go (as so eloquently put in the beginning of the movie) “In the year 1990 the Bronx is officially declared No Man’s Land. The authorities give up all attempts to restore law and order. From then on the area is ruled by the Riders”. The Riders are sort of like the Warriors. I guess they are like any gang, not without their faults. The Riders obviously ride motorcycles with skulls above the headlights. They have sort of an internal power struggle going on between leader Trash, and cocky, bespectacled hothead Ice. Ice wants to be the leader of the Riders and he thinks that Trash pussyfoots around when it comes to dealing with other gangs. He would have The Riders start a war between the other gangs without stopping to think of the consequences. Not only do they have each other to deal with, but this one dude The Ogre (Fred Williamson) is the head of one of the major gangs around has beef with the Riders and is intent on getting whatever it is they owe him back. Basically things are just dandy without any more hassles coming their way. So one day a 17 year old chick runs across the bridge from Manhattan.



This runaway is confronted by a bunch of gang members from The Zombies who dress up in rollerskates and carry hockey gear to fight with. Fortunately for her, and unfortunately for the Zombies, the Riders show up in force and chase the rival gang off, questioning the young girl whose name is Anne. Anne keeps mum about her decision to come into the nastiest part of the country, long having been abandoned by those who job it is to "protect and serve". Trash says fuck it, she seems like a hot piece of trim to him and he takes her for his girlfriend. Anne goes willingly. Now for some reason we don't know about, There's some major heavies including the mayor of NYC that are SUPER PISSED that Anne has runaway to the Bronx. They start organizing an effort to get her back.



So the cops seem to be working for some organization. They send in a dude named Hammer to infiltrate the Bronx and find out where Anne has gone. Hammer follows the Riders to their hideout and immediately starts annihilating motherfuckers from the inside. The Riders don't know what's hit them. They aren't sure if its a rival gang or what. So they ride out following the guy running away, but Hammer escapes thanks to a reluctant truck driver friend named Hot Dog who just wants to get paid. When the Riders come up empty handed, they bury their dead and then have a huge discussion on why they were just fucked with. Anne tries to run away again because she feels guilty that some of the Riders died because of her. Trash asks her why the cops want her so bad that they have actually come back into the Bronx after so long of not giving a shit on what happens there. She fesses up that her birthday is coming up, and when she turns 18, she'll be the head of a major organization that is part of many nefarious schemes across the globe, keeping people in poverty and basically fucking shit up, and she can't handle that kind of heat, and morally doesn't want to be a part of it.



Too bad for her, she gets kidnapped and Hammer gives her over to the Zombies. He pits the gangs against each other until one of his buds tips Trash off that Ice has betrayed the Riders. Now Trash has to convince the Ogre to help him beat the shit out of the Zombies and kill Hammer so that shit will be set right again in the Bronx. This one has it all, Horse cops with flame throwers, judo chicks with whips, motorcycle wrecks, plenty of gang fights, and it all happens in the run down early 80s setting of the 5 burroughs, where you really get a sense that things ARE dangerous, and dudes WERE tough as shit, and if you fucked around, you MIGHT just get your ass kicked. I highly recommend finding a copy of this one, and I'm going to do my best of find a copy of the sequel. Upon further review these last few months, Vic Morrow may just have been a bad guy genius. Get it if you can.

Bad/awesome flixxx review: Elves (1989)

"What? No. Grandfather's in the study. Dad is dead." - Kirsten

"I don't know, a troll? I think it knows you're helping me." - Kirsten

"Yeah, you've got fucking big tits and I'm going to tell everybody I saw them." - Willy

"Yeah, well, I had a rough day at work... Santa got murdered." - Kirsten

"I need to know the connection between the elves and the nazis!" - Mike McGavin

This is one of the best bad flicks I've seen in a long time. It falls in with the category of GREMLIN ripoffs but is more in line with the TROLL 2 unintentionally funny type gems. Its low budget, poorly shot, and ridiculously written. Starring Dan "Grizzly Adams" Haggerty, I give you- ELVES!!!





First of all, let's not beat around the bush... There are no Elves. There is one ELF. This is the kind of stuff I live to find. Most flicks you hope are this good/bad don't come close to living up to how cheesy this is. My VHS copy (Given to me by HOSS- who also gave me my CAPTAIN AMERICA from 1990- thank you brother) has another amazing trailer for a flick called ALIEN SEED starring Erik Estrada. It looks like it may even be better than this (better being the subjective word here). So our protagonist Kirsten and her friends hate Christmas. They go out into the woods to have a pagan "I hate Xmas" ritual and somehow Kirsten cuts her hand, and they all get grossed out and decide to split back to the house. She drips blood on the ground though and literally 5 seconds after they walk away, smoke rises from the blood spill and a hand comes up from the depths. As soon as Kirsten gets back from the woods, her German grandfather (bound to his wheelchair) smacks the shit out of her and she runs upstairs to take a shower. Then her little brother spies on her naked and she catches him and he's proud of it. On top of all that her mom is a COMPLETE bitch for seemingly no reason at all. Weird family.



That night the elf busts in on the little brother and is jumping on his face but then runs out the window when the mom and sis come in. Mom blames Kirsten's cat (her "only" friend), and then viciously drowns it in the toilet the next day. HEAVY. So Kirsten works at the mall (big surprise) and since its Christmastime there's a Santa picture setup there. Kirsten hates xmas so much that she wants to fuck with the mall Santa on her break. Meanwhile there's an ex-cop named Mike McGavin on the hunt for a job since he's just gotten his 60 day chip from AA. Mike is a bigtime chainsmoker/ ex alcoholic / ex fuckup / ex detective since he apparently fucked up bigtime in the past. He's just at the mall looking for some kind of job but the uptight store manager has nothing for him. So the Santa says some fucked up shit to Kirsten and she gets him in trouble and almost gets fired herself. Mall Santa goes in the back and he's sweating and freaking out and chopping out lines and cursing everyone saying they'll all pay when- OH SHIT- here comes the little elf monster. He kills Santa quick fast and bolts. Guess what Mike? Yer hired.



So Mike, never without a smoke becomes the new Santa and quickly decides he's gonna stay in the mall overnight. Little does he know that Kirsten and her friends have the same idea and are inviting some boys over to get wild. Mike catches them, but Kirsten calls him out for being there without permission as well. He agrees to let them stay as long as they don't steal anything or bother him. Before the boys can get there though, Kirsten's friends are murdered one after another by the elf. All the while something totally bogus and fishy is going on with this symbol that keeps showing up, and Kirsten's grandfather and his weird germany/Nazi-ish friends. Mike, against his better judgement, gets caught up in probably the world's worst attempt at modern noir ever.



Mike decides to hit the local library (?!) to get some information on the symbol and then is directed to a VERY informative professor and busts into his house on xmas eve. If I go any further, I'm going to reveal probably the most ludicrous xmas plot to a movie ever. There are so many words I want to use here but will all give away things that I was totally not expecting, so I feel like I should clam up. However, IF you are so inclined, you can head over to YOUTUBE and see the whole movie for FREE!! Hope you dig it as much as me. Probably hit that one hitter first.

Bad/awesome flixxx review: Red Sonja (1985)

"No man may have me, unless he's beaten me in a fair fight. " - Sonja
"So, the only man that can have you, is one who's trying to kill you. That's logic. " - Kalidor (Conan)

"*It will kill us all.* Majesty, what do you want? Our vaults are brimming with gold. Great kingdoms live in terror of us! *What more is there?* " - Ikol

"I don't need eyes to find you, I can smell you at a hundred paces!" - Sonja

This flick gets a LOT of shit. I was reading online that not only do people think that its shit, but they also don't like it because there's supposedly some part of the plot that says Red Sonja doesn't like Queen Gedren because Gedren wanted to bang her and because she rejected her sexual advances that for some reason that makes this a movie against lesbians or alternative lifestyles. I call bullshit. She just didn't want to bang Gedren! Gedren stole the fucking talisman and killed her sister and her sister's friends and was using it to take over the world. No one said that shit about BARBARELLA when she didn't want to get banged by the chick with the eye patch!! So, I don't believe the movie is intolerant, AND I don't believe its that bad of a flick. Starring Bridgette Nielsen in her first role ever, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Sandal Bergman in a little film I like to call CONAN 3, I give you RED SONJA!!!





So in the beginning, Red Sonja is visited by this angel who gives her an arm that's really tough because she was raped by this chick Queen Gedren's guards after refusing Gedren's sexual advances. Here's where the controversy lies. I think she probably was less likely to want to get in a relationship with Gedren based MORE on the fact that she burned her family's village and had her troops RAPE Sonja MORE than the UNSTATED (possibly MADEUP) belief that homosexuality is evil. No where does it say that, and no where does it really lead us to believe that or give any facts showing support of this claim. Either way, now she has some power and goes to train with this Asian master swordsman. Actually, Red Sonja is more likened and chided for her hatred towards men (stemming from her rape). Meanwhile a church type building full of warrior nuns is about to throw a glowing idol called the Talisman into an eternal abyss because the head nun claims the Talisman's power is too great and is growing out of control, and may end up destroying the world it was used to create.



All of a sudden, Queen Gedren and her troops bust in and repel from the top of the tower of this holy joint and start duking it out with the battle nuns. They beat them mercifully, steal the Talisman, and throw the nuns into the very abyss they were going to snuff the Talisman with. Only one chick escapes and she's mortally wounded. She just so happens to be Red Sonja's sister, and Conan (called Kalidor in this movie only at the very end of the production! This was supposed to be Conan) just so happens to come along and take her to Red Sonja. So the sister before dying manages to get the message to Sonja telling her she must destroy the Talisman at all costs.



So Conan tries to help Sonja but she says no way. She sees a storm in the distance and knows it Gedren. She goes to the destroyed town of Haberk and meets Prince Tarn a young jerky lil prince and his protector Falkon. He offers Sonja a place in his new army to go fight Gedren as a cook (even though his army is just him and Falkon). She tells him he's a little jerk and splits. Then she fights some mountain assholes with a little help from Conan who's been following her. It turns out that Conan likes super tall warrior redheads. Me too. So they catch up with the Prince and Falkon and help them out of a tight spot. Then they head to Gedren's castle. She conjurs a storm that forces them to find refuge in a cave. Greedy Prince Tarn forces Falkon to steal a pearl eye out of a statue that makes a giant fish robot attack all of them, and it takes all of them to help Conan (Kalidor) blind the thing so it would finally stop its watery rampage.




Conan tries to bang Sonja but she won't let him until he bests her with a sword. They try until they wear themselves out and then fall asleep for the night. The next day they approach the castle telling Tarn to stay behind. They fight guards and then Tarn who snuck in accidentally kills the cautious head of Gedren's army Ikol. The Talisman's power gets so wild that it actually starts breaking the castle apart. Sonja and Gedren battle in the throne room until Sonja finally bests her and throws her in a fiery lava river below the castle. Then she throws in the Talisman and they have to spend the next 15 minutes trying to leave the castle. The only way they can is thanks to Tarn who helps them out twice. Good thing he came in the longrun. Then finally Sonja and Conan smooch. Tarn and Falkon roll their eyes. Apparently so does a generation. I liked it. Should you watch this? ONLY if you have already seen the first 2 Conan movies, OR have an obsession with super tall hot redheads who could kill you if they wanted to.

Rocknowledgy Episode 34 is finally up and ready!!!

alahoyus broskeetos, brollums, hombres, Thorriors, Rocknowledgists, and wayward wastelanders!! Its been a long time and I don't want to hold you up from this heavy set of killer jams! I'm super proud of this episode as being on the road and at home for a sec allowed me to dig HARD through the archives and find a bunch of relatively unknown OLD local, regional and national stuff to share with you. I have some older deep cuts and some brand new stuff for you from Torche!!! and Turbonegro!! A really badass mix and some major NC love representin'. Ok, enough jabberin, I'll let you get to it.
You can download or stream the episode HERE or get it over at iTunes! either way---
DIG DEEP!,

LOVE,
Valient and the T-6000

Episode 34 playlist:
Intro by T6K,
April Wine- Say Hello,
Danava- White Nights of Murder,
Need New Body- Beach,
Creta Bourzia- Marijuana Trajedy,
Andromeda- Too Old,
2013 Wolves- TrenchSinner$MoneyHype,
Those Poor Bastards- Crooked Man,
The Curtains of Night- Golden Arrows,
Fun Things- Lipstick,
Andre Nickatina- The Al Capone Suite,
The Lumps- Homework From Hell,
Torche- Reverse Inverted,
Turbonegro- You Give Me Worms,
The Ladderback- Shoestrings and Chainrings,
The Cadets- Blessed Are The Untravelled,
Outro- T6K,
The High Numbers- Leavin' Here

Bad/awesome flixxx review: Humanoids From The Deep (1980)

"Oh get off your antique manners Jim, I'm a professional scientist. Let's go." - Dr. Drake

"You mean to tell me you've been out here all day and you didn't even fill up the gas in the goddamned winch motor?" - Zeke

"I'm tellin' for the last time, get yer drunk ass outta here before I kick it out!" - Hank Slattery

Oh ho ho! Here's one they love to hate! This is premium trash right here! BUT, its not one of those unintentionally funny horror flicks. This one is more akin to the '50s black and white low budget sci fi that you'd find on MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000. Although Roger Corman produced this one in 1980. Pretty much the end of an era if you ask me. Every once in a while you'll come across a gem that has the same kind of camera work, and look and feel as this, but technology changed shortly thereafter and the feel of this kind of film (which is very important to me) was never the same. Pretty much a cast of folks that I'm not familiar with EXCEPT ol Vic Morrow playing his usual crabby asshole type character. This time a Native American hating fisherman (much akin to his bigot role in THE TWILIGHT ZONE {where he also actually lost his life on set when a helicopter crashed on him and 2 small children, decapitating him}). Sometimes known simply as MONSTER, I give you Roger Corman's HUMANOIDS FROM THE DEEP!!!





Early one morning out at the docks in the town of Noyo, tensions flare as the fisherman go off about their business. Some of the fishermen led by one guy in particular (Hank Slattery) are excited that a cannery is coming and setting up downstream near their town. A young native american dude is pissed because its going to be hard for him to make a living here anymore, much less even feed himself. Stuck in the middle of the decisions is Jim Hill who just wants things to be peaceful. Later in the afternoon, a fisherman catches some kind of monster in his net and accidentally blows his boat sky high trying to reel it in after his son falls in the water. This rattles the town which is already heated up about the cannery debate. Trying to ease tensions is the mayor who is determined to have a super elderly quartet play the same song throughout the movie beginning at the annual town dance that night. Hank dislikes Johnny Eagle bigtime, and his racist tendencies play out throughout the whole movie as he seeks to discredit and harm Johnny at every corner.



Jim's dog gets eaten by one of the monsters, and so does every dog in town EXCEPT Johnny Eagle's. Naturally Hank blames him and kills Johnny's dog. Johnny interrupts the big dance and brings his bloody dead dog and lays it in the middle of the dancefloor. Then there's a knockdown dragout. Jim & his brother end up on Johnny's team. Two horny teenagers go out to swim the next day and the boy gets his face ripped off and the monster chases the girl up the beach and starts humping the shit out of her. Its SUPER creepy, and even though the poster said they were "after our women" or whatever, it never registered to me till even like the next girl that they were totally out to fuck human chicks, and probably impregnate them. Also at the dance the night before we're introduced to a female scientist who comes along with reps from the cannery to "pitch" the idea to the townspeople and tell them they have new scientific ways to make the salmon bigger and more plentiful than ever before.



This scientist chick goes along with Jim to study what's happening out in the water. Hank plots to blow up Johnny Eagle's shack. Jim's brother and chick go with Johnny to discuss his plans to sue the cannery and take back some of his people's land. Hank throws a molotov cocktail at Johnny's house but before they have a chance to retaliate, humanoids show up and start eating them and clawing them and generally causing havok. Johnny saves Jim's brother and takes him to town by boat. This one kid and his ventriliquist dummy gets this chick to fuck him in a tent but the monsters maul him and bang his girl. That happens a bunch more. Busty girl shows up, gets chased, gets fucked. So the scientist chick finally fesses up to whats happening. Apparently she had a bunch of growth hormone and it leaked out during a storm or some shit and then fishes ate bigger fishes who morphed in to these fishmen and they got a taste for human pussy.... basically.



Ok, so too late, once they figure out that it is really those fishmen that have morphed (which really, come on lady, you knew that shit from the start...) they have to drive their boat all the way across town to the annual town carnival which is going on, but like all of a sudden, there's about 50 fishmen, and they come up all over the docks and there's about a 30 minute showdown where they're killing all the dudes and raping all the women, and people are shooting shotguns and a dj is reporting all of it live till he gets mauled. And then 3 fishdudes break in on Jim's wife back home and she annihilates this one with a knife in one of the most brutal fake murders I've ever seen. And then Jim sets the whole bay on fire and Johnny Eagle actually saves Hank from a monster. But they don't say anything else about them AT ALL!?! I guess all is supposed to be fine and dandy with them, EVEN THOUGH HANK TRIED TO MURDER HIM! Forgive and forget I guess. EPILOGUE: Hospital room, one of the chicks survived the raping. She's about to give birth- BUT OH NO- A BLOODY LITTLE FISH MAN BURSTS THROUGH HER STOMACH AND SCREAMS!!! It ends with her screaming and holding her ripped open belly! Should you check it? Fudge yeah. Its FREE on youtube!!!