I learned a long time ago not to move ahead in a busy intersection onto the next block until I'm sure there's enough space for me on the other side, because God forbid the light turns red just as I find out too late that there isn't enough room and Happy Birthday to Me, I'm the asshole blocking traffic. This is even more important at a railroad crossing, where instead of angry honks from Toyota RAV4s and Tesla Model 3s, I'd have panicked blares from the horn of the oncoming train about to send me and my motor vehicle to the next world.
Apparently, some people didn't get that memo, as I found out on my way to the Aero Theatre. I was on the right lane of a railroad crossing, and the cars ahead of me were moving surely but ever so slowly over the tracks and onto the other side. Rather than crawl across the train tracks and hope that the light ahead of me wouldn't turn red and cause the cars in front of me to stop, stranding me in full crash position of either a MetroLink passenger train or a Union Pacific freight, I decided to wait until there was enough space on the other side before moving.
This did not please the gentleman in the Honda behind me. He honked and showed his upset visibility levels, and I did the only thing I thought I could do. I gave him a shrug as if to say "Sorry, but what can I do?" Evidently this man hailed from a culture where my gesture was tantamount to telling him to go fuck his mother in the mouth with no protection or lube. He flipped me off and gave me quite the mouthing.
As I finally drove across the tracks, and turned right, heading for the freeway on-ramp, Mr. Honda drove up beside me to express himself further. I certainly wasn't going to do anything, because I've jerked off to -- I mean, I've watched enough videos of people getting shot in road rage incidents to know that it's best to let it go. My motto is Think Tabby, Not Stabby. So instead, I tuned him out by turning up the volume on my Halloween playlist.
But I'm getting ahead of myself, because that incident occurred on October 25th, while I was on my way to the last of the three horror movie marathons I attended that month. So let me flash back a couple of weeks to Saturday, October 11th, at Brain Dead Studios in Los Angeles, for Ha-Ha Horror, a 12-hour showcase of horror comedies presented in 16mm, the titles kept secret until we saw them on-screen.
Hosts Mike Williamson of Secret Sixteen, Bret Berg of the Museum of Home Video, and Josh Miller of Killer Movies opened the marathon by informing us that rather than screening the usual suspects such as Dead Alive or The Evil Dead, we were going to get lesser known films that get little to no revival shows. Williamson then said that these would be "the stupidest fucking shit you've ever seen in your life", but that he really loved them.
Before the movies there was a pre-show put together by Williamson that included teasers and trailers for Gremlins 2: The New Batch, Army of Darkness, Young Frankenstein, and Dr. Giggles. There was also a short film about a group of creepy cloaked cultist types who were about to stab down on something with their daggers. It turns out that they're not sacrificing an animal or a human, but a pizza, which they then devoured in a manner not unlike zombies tearing into somebody's guts. It concluded as a bona-fide drive-in intermission ad, and it's pretty cute for a short involving dudes smearing greasy pizza slices all over their faces.
We then watched a Three Stooges short titled "The Ghost Walks", where Moe, Larry, and Shemp tell a bedtime story to their sons -- also played by Moe, Larry, and Shemp -- about three movers -- yet again played by Moe, Larry, and Shemp -- dealing with spooky shenanigans at a haunted house. It was funny.
The first film was 1985's Once Bitten, starring Lauren Hutton as the 400-year old vampire Countess who needs to drink the blood of a virgin three times before Halloween, otherwise she loses her mature-hot-chick looks and becomes old in a non-sexy way. She and her crew are having a tough time finding a virgin because it's the 1980s and they're in Los Angeles, where everybody is getting it on. If this had taken place today, she could take her pick of virgins from any online forum, especially if they're fans of guys like Andrew Tate or any other shitheel who claims to teach young men how to be Real Men. Anyway, she finds a virgin in a high-schooler named Mark (Jim Carrey), who has been having a real devil of a time trying to get his sweetheart Robin to put out.
During the intro, Bret Berg told us how this evening would also serve as a kind of tribute to HBO, because for most of us of a certain age, it was on cable where we were first introduced to these titles. Once Bitten was certainly one of those movies for me; in the 80s, I watched this often, but after that, I averaged about one viewing every decade, with my last viewing in 2018.
Jim Carrey plays it relatively straight, but there's still enough goofiness in his performance to hint at the rubberfaced whacko we'd all know later from his work on "In Living Color" and the Ace Ventura films. Hell, I'd argue that it would be another 15 years before he ever played someone as likable as Mark. Hutton is a hoot as the Countess, I especially enjoyed her interactions with her assistant Sebastian played by Cleavon Little.
As I would find out during the rest of the evening, watching familiar movies with a crowd really freshened up the experience and made it feel as if I had watched them for the first time that night. It played very well with this audience; they laughed throughout the film, and even cheered at the end of a very fun sequence that takes place at a high school dance, with the Countess and Robin engaging in a dance-off for Mark's hand (and eternal soul).
Because this is a comedy from the 80s, there are a couple of gay panic jokes and a transphobic joke thrown in for good measure. I've seen and heard worse though, and based on the amount of people who laughed at those parts, it's safe to say the audience had as well. And hey, they were funny jokes, I laughed. But it's OK for me to laugh, because I'm fluid as fuck -- depending on how drunk you get me and whether or not you complement me enough.
After the movie, Miller -- who also co-wrote the screenplays for the Sonic the Hedgehog trilogy -- shared an anecdote about visiting Carrey at his house, where he doesn't have a single photo, prop, costume, or any other memorabilia from his films. The only exception is a framed photo of Carrey standing under the marquee for Once Bitten on opening weekend.
The next film was Vamp, from 1986. It stars Chris Makepeace from the fondly remembered youth classic My Bodyguard, and Robert Rusler from the touching homosexual drama A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge. They play Keith and A.J., two fraternity pledges who make a deal with a group of binge-drinking date-rapists that in exchange for membership into the frat, they will provide a stripper for their upcoming party.
Along with rich kid Duncan (Gedde Watanabe), they head for the After Dark Club, located on the wrong side of the tracks in the wrong part of town. The star attraction at this club is Katrina (Grace Jones), and A.J. becomes a slave to her rhythm, unaware that she is like a hawk steeling for the prey -- or to be more specific, a vampire looking over a potential victim. Yup, turns out Katrina is Queen of the Vampires and this strip bar is the original Titty Twister. So now Keith, A.J., Duncan, and Michelle Pfeiffer's adorable kid sister have to deal with bloodsuckers, familiars, an albino Billy Drago, chicks with fucked up teeth, and the guy who gave Jerry Seinfeld his space pen.
Quentin Tarantino has stated that Stephen King's novel "It" is a ripoff of Wes Craven's film A Nightmare on Elm Street. He's a funny guy, that Quentin, because it's not a stretch to imagine him watching Vamp during his Video Archives days and going Hmmm...and then a few years later out comes the screenplay for From Dusk Till Dawn, which also happens to take place in a strip bar that is also a feeding ground for vampires. But compared to that film, Vamp has a much lighter tone to the proceedings, it's a little less mean and a little more fun. Also, From Dusk Till Dawn doesn't have Chris Makepeace wearing a Letterman jacket, looking like a Hollywood Blvd. street impersonator of Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon 2.
At times this movie feels like a horror version of Martin Scorsese's After Hours; it doesn't just stick to the strip club, our characters also make their way around this nearly deserted part of the city that is populated by unsettling weirdos who may or may not also be creatures of the night. It's got a great 80s look as well, with Steven Soderbergh's former cinematographer Elliot Davis lighting everything with neon pink and green. It's also very 80s in that Grace Jones is the main selling point; it's hard to imagine anyone else playing this role. She has the perfect blend of scary and enticing and I would've liked to have seen her in more horror films. Hell, it's not too late for her to do Vamp 2, going up against her ex-boyfriend Dolph Lundgren. Now that I'd pay to see on the big screen.
The third film was 1988's Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, starring Cassandra Petersen as the horror hostess with the mostest herself. She just learned that her great-aunt died, and Elvira is named as one of the beneficiaries in her will. Upon arriving at the small town of Falwell, Massachusetts where her great-aunt lived, she finds herself a fish out of water among the conservative residents. To her disappointment, Elvira is told that her inheritance isn't financial, but residential -- her great-aunt's rundown mansion, to be exact.
Of course, things won't be easy for this big titty -- I mean -- big city girl in small town Americana. She has to contend with an ultra-religious hypocrite (Edie McClurg) who seems intent on trying our girl Salem, Massachusetts-style. And then there's her very sinister uncle (W. Morgan Sheppard) being real creepy about wanting to acquire a recipe book that Elvira also inherited from her great-aunt. It wouldn't be spoiling to tell you that the book is not full of recipes for home-cooked meals, but rather more supernatural fare.
If there was ever an audience who would welcome such a film with open arms and elevated libidos, it would be this audience. It's like Williamson said after the film, how could you not love Elvira? I would like to add to that and ask, how can one be a fan of horror and not at the very least like Elvira? Hell, how can you be a fan of fun in general and not like Elvira. I try not to judge people, but when it comes to Elvira, I feel very righteous about judging those who don't at least crack a smile at the thought of her. I won't be vocal, but you better believe I'll silently judge the hell out of you.
So yeah, the crowd was all in upon realizing what we were watching. And throughout the film, people cheered for Elvira, and every gag and joke was met with raucous laughter. Which I think says a lot about the goodwill we have for our mistress of the dark, because the jokes and gags in this movie are unabashedly corny. But I guess it's one of those deals where it's not so much what song you sing, but how you sing it. Elvira in action is just a delight to observe; she's a sexy, funny, take-no-shit smart-ass who doesn't fit in with the norm -- to say nothing of her magnificent tits -- so it makes sense that both fiercely heteros and mega-flamboyant drag queens can find common ground in going, "yeah, man -- fuckin' Elvira, right?"
That makes me wonder; my country is such a divided pile of shit now, but maybe Elvira can be the one true leader that can bring us back together. I wouldn't mind her staying in office for the rest of her life. I know, I know, there are currently protests against that sort of thing, but nobody said anything about No Queens.
1999 was a very good year for movies -- so good, in fact, that a lot of solid stuff fell through the cracks. One such movie was Lake Placid, our fourth film of the night, and a first-time viewing for me.
Bridget Fonda plays Kelly, a paleontologist from the Museum of Natural History sent from New York City to Maine, that way her boss/ex-boyfriend can fuck Mariska Hargitay. (It's a long story.) So yeah, Kelly is in Maine at the titular lake, joined by a Fish and Wildlife Service officer (Bill Pullman) to investigate the some dude's death-by-chomping. She's kind of a pill and he's your standard boring hero type, and together they discover that there's a giant crocodile in the water, who in addition to biting people in half also likes to take down entire grizzly bears and cows.
The screenplay was written by David E. Kelley, who at this time was at the height of his career as the creator of hit television programs like "Ally McBeal", "The Practice", and "Chicago Hope", and here is where I ask a question that might as well be rhetorical, for the lack of response it will get: Are those shows full of snappy and funny dialogue and don't take themselves too seriously while still delivering the goods required by their respective genres? Because this film is definitely all about that.
This was directed by Steve Miner, who also directed the 1986 film House, which I watched at a previous Secret Sixteen horror marathon. I didn't care for that particular horror-comedy, mainly because I felt Miner didn't have a firm hold on either the horror or the comedy. Well, based on his handling of tone here, Miner has been Born Again Hard. This is a hilarious film full of snarky assholes communicating to each other in sick burns and witty retorts, but it also has effective moments of tension and scares. It's a movie just as exciting as it is funny, and it was such a blast to watch with a crowd. It's one of those movies where you miss every other line of dialogue because people were still laughing over the previous one.
Everybody is pitch-perfect in their roles, including Oliver Platt as a crocodile expert who wants to capture the beast, but not in some Captain Ahab or Quint sort of way, he respects them and believes some spiritual mumbo-jumbo about them. There's Brendan Gleeson as the tired, cranky sheriff who doesn't cotton to everybody else being so sarcastic to him. But I feel the audience's favorite character -- certainly my favorite -- was Betty White as Mrs. Bickerman, the elderly widow who lives by the lake and could very well be thanking the crocodile for being her friend. Kelley, god bless him, gave White the bulk of the movie's R-rated language. If nothing else, I recommend this movie just so you can hear White say the line "If I had a dick, this is where I'd tell you to suck it."
It really is becoming an increasingly lost art in film to do its job, do it well, and not waste a second of the viewer's time, so I applaud a movie like this that does all of that in 82 minutes. Having said that, I would've been fine with a slightly longer runtime in exchange for a few more severed heads and chomped bodies. We only get one red shirt in the entire crew, when I think two or three more would've hit the sweet spot of carnage. But that aside, this was such a nice way to watch a movie I likely wouldn't have gotten around to watching on my own.
Williamson told us that the next film was not only the stupidest of the night, but it was also hands-down his favorite of all the films being shown that evening. Berg added that this was very much a "your mileage may vary" kind of deal, which Williamson illustrated with an anecdote about screening this film in his backyard to his friends a few years ago. It didn't gain any new fans that night. Williamson likes this film so much that he owns the one-sheet poster and the vinyl of the soundtrack. I understand this kind of love for a movie. I only wished I shared his love for this movie.
Which isn't to say that I hated the 1985 comedy Transylvania 6-5000, because I didn't. I'll even go as far as to say that there are genuinely funny moments in it. But the plot is mere pretense for a variety of gags and routines that felt like a mix of Mel Brooks and vaudeville, which would've been fine if the aimlessness hadn't gradually affected the whole thing into feeling draggy. By the end, I felt as if I had been invited to an improv show where most of the audience consisted of other improv actors.
Jeff Goldblum and Ed Begley Jr. play reporters for a tabloid rag who are sent to Transylvania to cover the supposed sighting of a real-life Frankenstein's Monster. Partial hilarity ensues involving very silly characters played by Geena Davis (who can do no wrong), Jeffrey Jones (who definitely did wrong), and Michael Richards in his finest work since his stand-up act at the Laugh Factory in 2006. This was written and directed by Rudy De Luca, who co-wrote some of Mel Brooks' films; it feels like he was trying to make a film in a style similar to Brooks, but he couldn't quite pull it off.
Here's something odd; according to my movie viewing log, I watched this in 2014. But I couldn't even begin to form any memory of having seen this film before. I can only assume I was deep deep deep into a state of alcohol-soaked, cannabis-caked zombified paralysis, which I'd sometimes end up in during that fun part of my life. Maybe I liked it more back then.
There's enough here for me to consider watching it again, should I decide to jump off the wagon. Goldblum and Begley Jr.'s chemistry was enjoyable enough for me to wish their characters had been in a better film; Carol Kane is absolutely adorable as a hunchback's overly affectionate wife, and Davis is a goddamn smoke-show who left me wishing her character wound up in a crossover movie with Elvira, Mistress of the Dark -- which wouldn't have been out of the realm of possibility, because both this movie and Elvira's movie were released by New World Pictures. Maybe in this imagined crossover they could've faced off against Grace Jones as Katrina. Because guess what else was a New World Picture? Yuuuuup.
I'd apologize to Williamson for not being all that hot on this movie, but I don't have to because during the intro for the next film, he told us that he didn't care what any of us thought, he loves Transylvania 6-5000. Which is as it should be; I sure as hell have movies that I adore with all my heart and soul, yet everyone else thinks is hot garbage. I'm not going to tell you their titles, because the last thing I need is for some pathetic piece-of-shit to talk shit about how much it sucks on their blog/podcast with some stupid ass name like, I don't know, Banished from Serenity.
The sixth and final film was 1984's Night of the Comet, starring Catherine Mary Stewart and Kelli Maroney as Regina and Samantha, two sisters from the Valley who are among the few survivors after a giant comet disintegrates everyone else into red dust. Our girls try to make the best of it in the empty, dusty streets of Downtown L.A.. They take over the radio station, have a shopping spree at the mall, and shoot up cars on the street for target practice. About that last part; they might seem like your typical Valley girls, but they're also Army brats who were trained by their Green Beret father to take care of themselves. And they'll need those skills, as they come across deadly zombie-types, sinister scientists, and scariest of all, a Mexican-American man.
Back during the totally awesome 80s, while kids my age were going gaga over movies like Ghostbusters and The Goonies, I was all about Trancers and Night of the Comet. As far as I was concerned, Tim Thomerson was way cooler than Bill Murray, and I'd much rather dance along with Stewart and Maroney to a cover of "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun", than crawl around some filthy caves with a bunch of little shits from the Pacific Northwest. I never went as a Ghostbuster for Halloween, but you better believe that every time I made the high score on an arcade game, I'd enter the initials "DMK".
Among the many non-traditional holiday movies I like to watch in December, like Die Hard and The Silent Partner, I also like to have myself a double feature of Trancers and Night of the Comet. They're both funky neon-soaked sci-fi movies from the 80s that take place in Downtown L.A. during Christmas time, and I think they pair well together, preferably with Chinese food. A couple years ago at a previous Secret Sixteen marathon, I finally got to see Trancers on the big screen, so how fitting that when I finally got to see the other half of my December double-bill at the cinema, it was also at a Secret Sixteen marathon.
As much as I enjoyed it as a kid, I like it even more as an adult, and I'm able to further appreciate the big sister and kid sister dynamic between Regina and Samantha. There's a scene in the film that as a kid I considered one of the boring parts, but now, it's one of my favorites; the two girls are chilling out and Samantha begins to talk about her friends at school, as well as a guy she liked. It begins as just a casual chat but eventually the heartbreaking reality of what has become of all those people gets to her and she has to fight back tears. Regina notices this, she knows her little sister is hurting and in need of cheering up, so she comes up with the shopping mall idea, leading into a playful, joyful montage of our girls trying out clothes, putting on jewelry, and dancing their worries away.
It's an example of writer-director Thom Eberhardt's deft handling of tone, never veering far off in any direction, and not lingering on any particular emotion too long to upset the balance. This film is silly when it wants to be, creepy when it needs to be, and serious when it has to be -- and the entire time it never loses its sense of fun! I'll be honest though, while I feel this was the best film of the evening quality-wise, it's the balance of different tones that also makes it the least funny of the films we were shown. So I can understand if some people in the crowd walked away with the opinion that this was actually the worst film of the night. I would do all the martial arts to their face for feeling this way, but I'd understand.
What I don't understand are people who don't believe that representation in movies matters. I would advise those people to get their lips off the MAGA cock and wrap them around the barrel of a shotgun -- because it does matter. Case in point: Regina and Samantha find a survivor named Hector (Robert Beltran), and he was the first time I saw a Latino character in a Hollywood movie who wasn't only one of the main characters, but one presented as a normal guy. No funny accent, no shady background as a gang member or a drug dealer or an ex-con. Hector was just a blue-collar dude who could've just as easily been one of my uncles or a cousin or a neighbor.
So it's nice to see Hector partner up with the sisters, even becoming a potential love interest for Regina. Sure, she's kinda shitty to him at first, throwing in a couple of insensitive cracks related to his background. But I get it, she and Samantha were raised by a Green Beret, before he left them with their stepmother so he could to take part in helping the right-wing Contras fight against the left-wing Sandinistas over in Nicaragua. I can only imagine the kind of Reagan-loving worldview those girls were inundated with in that household. But as we see here, sometimes it takes being forced out of your white-bread bubble by a world-ending comet to discover that brown people have feelings too.
Anyway, good for Hector for winding up with two White girls.
It was about 2am when the film ended; as is the custom for every Secret Sixteen marathon, we all gathered with Williamson, Berg, and Miller to take a group photo under the marquee outside Brain Dead Studios. After that, I stopped at Taco Bell on the way home, but don't let mi gente know I told you that. All the sit-down restaurants were closed and it was either Taco Bell or Jack in the Box and I don't drink or get high anymore, so Taco Bell won by default.
The following Saturday, October 18th, while people with hope went to attend the No Kings protest, my defeatist ass went to The Frida Cinema in Santa Ana for their annual Camp Frida marathon. This year's theme was "Monster Mash", with films featuring creatures big and small causing violence and/or mayhem. As with the previous marathons at this two-screen cinema, following the first film, we would be given a choice of two films to watch in either the main "Monster Mash" auditorium, or the screen next door, renamed "Graveyard Smash". This would continue for films two through five, then we'd return to "Monster Mash" for the sixth and final film.
The pre-show included: The sketch from "Key & Peele" about how Gremlins 2: The New Batch got made; some clips from The Simpsons' "Treehouse of Terror" episodes; a commercial for the Quija board from Parker Brothers; the Dancing Pumpkin Man; a couple minutes from "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown"; an SNL sketch about Spirit Halloween; the 1996 cartoon short "Season's Greetings" from the writer-director of the 2007 film Trick r' Treat; and my personal favorite, a fake commercial that suggests Newport cigarettes as a welcome alternative to candy for trick-or-treaters.
Following an intro by our hosts Trevor and Bekah, we were shown the first of many kooky skits featuring staff and volunteers from The Frida that revealed the mystery titles. For example, for the first film, we watched as a lady fought a person wearing a hog mask, before a man with shaving cream on his face stepped in to ask for his "razor back".
The first film was the 1984 Australian joint Razorback, directed by Russell Mulcahy and written by Everett De Roche. It begins on a happy note, with a baby being whisked away to be chomped by an oversized boar -- our titular Razorback -- but not everybody is happy about it, namely the boy's grandfather, Jake (Bill Kerr). Nobody believes his story, but there's no evidence to convict him of anything aside from being a shitty babysitter. So off he goes to spend his golden years as a Down Under version of Quint and Captain Ahab, except his seas are the arid regions of the Outback.
You'd think the film would be all about him, but instead we focus on Carl (Gregory Harrison), who has come down from America to investigate the disappearance of his wife, a reporter who was doing some kind of exposé on people who hunt kangaroos and turn them into dog food. Instead of answers, Carl gets a crash course in Australian hospitality which ranges from an innkeeper happily lending Carl his car, despite only knowing him for all of five seconds, to a couple of skeevy-looking dog food workers taking Carl out on a genuine Wake in Fright tour, complete with copious amounts of alcohol and kangaroo hunting.
And of course, in the center of all this is the Razorback, mostly seen at a distance on top of a hill, towering over his much smaller brethren, knowing full well what a scary piece-of-work he is. And every once in a while, he'll come down to terrorize the locals and do some damage to both property and human flesh. Those scenes are pretty cool, lots of shots of the super-boar's snout and jagged fangs as it unleashes unholy squeals. The filmmakers pull a Jaws with it, holding back on showing us the entire creature, probably for the same reasons Spielberg and company held back. The Razorback attacks are cool, but they're thinly spread out, and what fills in the fat gaps is mostly lumbering to the point that the film feels longer than its 93 minutes. But it works enough, and it certainly ends on a high note.
For such an ugly movie, it sure is pretty to look at. This was Mulcahy's feature directorial debut, he had already quite the resume as a music video director, including the very first one to play on MTV, "Video Killed the Radio Star" by The Buggles. In collaboration with cinematographer Dean Semler, they both create a visually stunning film with lots of epic widescreen vistas, sharp shafts of light, smoky interiors, sweltering exteriors, and close-ups of very interesting faces. The production and costume design at times suggests a missing link between the first and second Mad Max films, but I couldn't tell you how much of that was intentional and how much of it was simply the Australian outback in the early 80s.
The next skit revealed our choices for the second film: 2017's The Ritual, and from 1983, The Deadly Spawn. I had already seen The Deadly Spawn a few years ago at the Aero Horrorthon, so I stayed at the Monster Mash room to watch The Ritual, which Bekah did a good job selling during the intro.
The Ritual is kind of like The Descent if it had been made for Da Boys, with a group of family men on a hiking trip in Sweden. This trip had been in the planning for quite some time, but somewhere between then and now, tragedy struck. Their vacation is no longer just an excuse to be away from their balls & chains and little burdens, it is also a memorial to their fallen friend Rob, who was killed during a liquor store robbery, six months earlier.
He wasn't alone when it happened, by the way, he had walked into the store with his friend Luke (Rafe Spall), who immediately bitched out as soon as he saw the blokes with machetes. Obviously, I can make that judgment call because I wasn't in that situation. I'd like to think I'd handle it like Steven Seagal in the movies, putting foot to ass and fist to balls. But in reality, I'd likely handle it like Steven Seagal in real life, shitting myself as soon as one of the bad guys puts me in a chokehold. But because I'm not there to say all of this to Luke, he has to carry the guilt that comes with not doing anything while watching his friend get sliced and diced by some punk-ass chavs.
Of course, their hiking trip doesn't go as planned. One of them hurts his knee, forcing the group to take an unplanned shortcut through the expected creepy-ass woods, leading to a creepy-ass cabin, complete with creepy-ass mysterious symbols and something that looks like a scaled-down version of the wicker man from The Wicker Man. (The good one, not the Nicolas Cage bullshit.)
These are men we're talking about here, so no one wants to admit that they're scared. But that doesn't last long, because it's hard for one to act tough after they've woken up screaming with their pants soaked with piss. But what they can do after that is begin to bicker and blame for getting lost, or for having the idea to stay in the creepy-ass cabin, or in Luke's case, for not doing anything about Rob at the liquor store.
It's that last part that really made me cringe, it felt too real; up until that moment, I wondered if the other guys had any kind of suspicion as to what happened that night, and if so, were those suspicions also accompanied by feelings of resentment? The answer is You Bet Your Sweet Ass there's resentment, and it was just waiting there, simmering until the most opportune moment of weakness. It says a lot about the strength of this very good and scary film, that even before we get into the actual horror stuff involving a giant moose demon, I was already full of anxiety just from watching the end result of a bunch of guys who chose to keep it all inside, rather than talk shit out.
This was directed by David Bruckner, who was also behind the excellent 2020 film The Night House and the pretty good 2022 version of Hellraiser. Like those films, The Ritual also features a lead character dealing with the two Gs: Grief and Guilt. I don't know if Bruckner intended it that way, but all three films make quite the strong thematic trilogy about the two Gs. They're certainly not the most fun trilogy, but they can't all be Rush Hour 1, 2, and 3.
For the third film, it was either stay and watch An American Werewolf in London or go next door to the Graveyard Smash and watch Attack the Block from 2011. Having seen the John Landis joint at another marathon in the past, I went with Joe Cornish's alien invasion flick, which I had never seen.
The film opens with a group of teenage thugs and whugs sticking up the Thirteenth Doctor from "Doctor Who" for her wallet and ring. So basically I went from one British film that opens with someone getting robbed, to another British film that opens with someone getting robbed. But unlike the man in the previous film, the good Doctor doesn't get the chop-chop treatment, the bandits let her go -- on account of them suddenly being distracted by a mysterious falling object landing just a few feet away from them.
As it turns out, the object is an alien creature, of which the leader of the group, Moses (John Boyega) makes quick work. So he and his boys are feeling pretty good about themselves, until more objects fall from the sky, and these creatures are much bigger, scarier, and deadlier. Once they realize what they're up against, Moses and his crew find themselves humbled real quick, running for their lives in and around their tower block, evading and defending themselves from these aliens. These things kinda look like gorillas without a face, just glowing neon fangs to chomp with. But mostly what these aliens reminded me of are what the Internet has dubbed "void cats", you know, black kitties, the best kitties. Except I'd argue that adorable void cats do way more damage than these monsters.
I'll be real with you, the first 15 minutes or so, I was struck with an overwhelming sense of "Am I supposed to like these assholes?" During that opening scene, I kept wanting Michael Caine as Harry Brown or Charles Bronson as Paul Kersey (with his good friend Wildey) to show up. So it's quite an accomplishment by the filmmakers and actors to get me to actually like these assholes. It's not unlike the way Jodie Whittaker's character Samantha starts off not trusting these dudes; after all, they did mug her. And Moses isn't quick to trust Samantha to not call the cops on him and his crew whenever their backs are turned, either. But slowly but surely, they -- and me, the viewer -- get to know each other better and grow to trust one another.
Which is why it genuinely bummed me out whenever one of them got merked by the toothy voids. But those sad moments are few and far between a movie that is just full of energy and doesn't let up. It's exciting and very funny, and it's such a good time to have with an audience. There were plenty of laughs and cheers throughout, with a welcome appearance by Nick Frost, who I didn't even know was in this movie. I get why The Internet was really hyping this up back in 2011.
Halfway through the marathon, Trevor gave prizes to those who had attended the most Camp Fridas, with two of them having attended all nine. Then we had a costume contest where those who were really in the spirit of the season came up on stage. Among them, we had The Invisible Man, a group of Cenobites, Quint from Jaws, a Pumpkin Spice Latte from Starbucks, and I forgot the name of this one, but the lady was dressed in white with her guts hanging out and she had wings -- which worked, by the way! -- and she was based on Filipino folklore. They were all very cool and they all deservedly ended up getting prizes.
For the fourth film of the night, I decided not to stay in Monster Mash to watch the 1988 remake of The Blob because I'd already seen it on the big screen at a previous horror marathon. But you know what I hadn't seen on the big screen? SHAKMA from 1990. So I went back to Graveyard Smash to watch medical students take over a research hospital after hours for an all-night LARP session, only for these potential Meredith Greys and Gregory Houses to be picked off permanently by a baboon with its switch set to Kill Mode. This could've all been avoided had Christopher Atkins from The Blue Lagoon hadn't cocked up the task of euthanizing the rewired creature earlier that day. But he didn't, so here we are, watching SHAKMA! as he roams the hallways literally rocking out with his cock out, ready to pounce and tear up anyone he runs into.
This baboon is awesome. He's either locomotion-ing down the hallways at furious speed, bouncing off the walls like some amped-up meth-head who took way too much, or he's nonchalantly munching on the flesh of one of his previous victims during downtime. When he's not doing that cool shit, he's doing even cooler shit, like going off on doors, because this baboon hates him some fuckin' doors. I suspect that when SHAKMA! was young, some asshole paid homeless doors to beat the piss out of the little primate, thereby instilling within Lil' SHAKMA! a violent abhorrence for all things Doorknob'd and Deadbolted.
I first saw this back in 2011 and I was stoned to the gills, but for this revisit I was hopped up on free Krispy Kreme doughnuts provided by the Frida. Regardless of which substance, my opinion remains the same. It's a very dumb movie logic-wise, but as far as doing what it sets out to do, SHAKMA! is a well put-together low-budget B-movie. The idea of a crazed baboon skulking around dark corners of a practically abandoned building in which you are trapped inside, well shit, that's pretty scary to me. Hell, being in a well-lit, wide-open space with an even-tempered baboon would scare the shit out of me. It's effective, is what I'm saying. If there's anything that threatens to dip this into so-bad-it's-good territory, it's some of the acting, that's what I found mostly humorous about this movie.
I'm about to spoil a death here, so you might want to skip ahead to the next film, but here goes: Blue Lagoon's love interest is played by Amanda Wyss, and I was very surprised to see her get terminated with extreme prejudice by Our Baboon during a sequence that I was certain was going to result in her getting away. It begins with her hiding out in a bathroom stall, standing on the toilet while trying to pull off an air vent cover, so she can hide inside John McClane style. The end of this scene is shot from the outside of the stall, so we only see the top half of Wyss as she tries to make a jump for the air vent -- but then you hear SHAKMA! enter the stall and down goes Amanda. The sound of screams and bloody murder follow...until...out pops Amanda into frame again, barely hanging on. Everything's quiet now as she slowly tries to make an attempt at crawling back up onto the air vent. A few beats pass, and then SHAKMA! pulls her back down and finishes what he started.
Now, I was wondering what happened during that brief period of non-violence. Was SHAKMA! being a sadistic fuck by fooling Miss Wyss into thinking that she might escape this ordeal? I only wish it were that simple. Remember what I said earlier, that SHAKMA! is hanging full dong throughout while killing everything he sees, because he's the male id personified. So when you consider that, along with where SHAKMA! is located during his attacking of Miss Wyss -- on the floor, looking up at the girl standing on the toilet, her ass in full prime view -- well, it doesn't take the proverbial rocket scientist to figure out that when you're as Horny As Fuck as this pent-up creature is, you take advantage of the time a quick break gives you and you beat that meat, son, you beat that fuckin' meat. Unfortunately for poor Amanda Wyss, my boy SHAKMA! is like The Flash when it comes to Turning Japanese, so she didn't have time to escape before he finished.
It's thoughts like these that keep me from ever wondering why I'm going to die alone.
My choice for the fifth film of the night was the new 4K restoration of the international cut of Tobe Hooper's Lifeforce from 1985, which also happens to be one of my all-time favorite movies. Sure, I've already seen Lifeforce on the big screen four times, while the other choice, the really good alligator movie Crawl, I've only seen once in my backyard. But dude, it's Lifeforce. I'm not going to turn down any opportunity to watch that on the big screen if I can help it.
The film starts out on a space shuttle where a crew of Yanks and Brits led by Steve Railsback are going to check out Halley’s Comet because that’s what people were all about in 1985. They discover a large 150-mile-long skinny umbrella-looking thing with desiccated monster bats inside as well as three very naked humanoids who eventually end up on Earth.
The main humanoid is referred to only as Space Girl (Mathilda May), and she goes around hypnotizing her poor victims with her pretty face, beautiful body, and more importantly, her great breasts. After she puts them in a trance, she sucks the life energy out of them (the victims, not her breasts), leaving them to shamble around the streets and fields of England searching for others so that they can get in on some soul-sucking action, and so on and so forth. You find out later that Space Girl learns everything about her prey before feeding on them. I guess if we were a more evolved species, she’d have to charm us with a winning personality, but no, we're only human, simple nudity will suffice.
The two other naked Space Vampires are men, and that’s where the horror begins, if you ask me. Who wants to see that shit? Certainly not a couple of guards at the Space Research Centre, where the humanoids were placed under surveillance in their see-through coffins. But after these Space Guys wake up and explode out of the coffins, they stare at the two guards, and it's uncomfortable because these guards are just regular dudes and now here are these two handsome naked men in great shape, already they’re threatened. Then the two naked guys start walking towards them like a couple of cigarettes, so the guards unload on them with their machine guns like “I’m not gay!”, they have no choice, they have to stop those two before they turn them gay.
I don't care if Hooper directed Poltergeist or not, because he sure as hell directed Lifeforce -- and Lifeforce is better. It is the best Quatermass movie never made, with a plot that loses its hold on sanity with each passing minute. I also love the look of the movie; the color scheme, lighting and shot compositions really made it feel like I was watching an unreleased sci-fi/horror joint that had been sitting on the vault since 1967, then pulled out and rolled around in cocaine and ecstasy. Even the acting is awesome in that British sort-of-way, no matter how out there and ridiculous things get, these guys treat the material as if it were Shakespeare. They’re wrong, however, this ain’t Shakespeare — it’s better than Shakespeare. I don’t recall ever seeing a stage production of "Twelfth Night" where Viola and Maria have blood shoot out of their orifices (orifici?) and then have that blood form into Orsino, who then lets out a banshee-style scream before collapsing back into a puddle of blood. I must have been in the bathroom during that part of the play.
After our final break, everybody went to the Monster Mash room to watch the sixth and final movie of the night. But first, we all took a group photo on stage -- and by "we", I mean everybody but me. Then it was the final film of this year's Camp Frida -- 1990's Gremlins 2: The New Batch, which brought me back to the Key & Peele sketch they showed us during the pre-show -- a very clever way to give away the last film right in front of us. We were given a brief intro before the film by a volunteer named Isa who picked this movie because she felt this was better than the original because it was both a parody of its predecessor and even more of a live-action Looney Tunes cartoon than the actual live-action Looney Tunes cartoon director Joe Dante went on to make years later.
In this follow-up, Billy Peltzer (Zach Galligan) and his now-fiancee Kate (Phoebe Cates) are living in the Big Apple, where they both work in the Clamp Center, a towering monument to capitalism and the base of operations for its head honcho, Daniel Clamp (John Glover), who appears to be based on Ted Turner and the stupid, evil, child-fucking scumbag cult leader who is currently destroying my country. But the funny thing is that Clamp doesn't come off like a bad person, just a weirdo who errs too much on the side of Could rather than Should. Which is why I'd much rather have Daniel Clamp running things from the White House right now.
Anyway, Gizmo the Mogwai is back, and shortly after getting reacquainted with Billy, we've got Gremlins all over again. There's a part in the original film where the Gremlins are having themselves a good time of wrecking up a bar and it just gets sillier and more outlandish. This sequel feels like a feature-length version of that sequence, as the Gremlins have their way all over the Clamp Center.
Gremlins 2 is part of an exclusive club of films that includes Richard Lester's Superman III, Tobe Hooper's Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, Tim Burton's Batman Returns, Steven Soderbergh's Ocean's Twelve, Rob Zombie's Halloween II, Neveldine/Taylor's Crank High Voltage, and most recently, Gerard Johnstone's M3GAN 2.0. I'm talking about sequels that purposely betray the tone of the previous film and/or takes the piss out of its predecessor and/or gets giddily goofy with it. The New Batch could very well be the king/alpha dog/chairman-of-the-motherfucking-board of this exclusive club.
It's chock-full of cartoonish chaos while also commenting on and critiquing the first film in the most smart-ass and meta manner. It's clear that Dante was given free rein to do whatever he wanted in the sequel, and based on what he ended up doing, it's also clear that his mission statement was a big middle finger to anyone who expected more of the same. It sidelines Gizmo for most of the runtime, and whenever we do see our lovable, adorable Mogwai, the poor thing is getting tortured by the Gremlins because Dante clearly sides with them over him.
Dante even breaks the fourth wall by having critic Leonard Maltin appear as himself to give the first film a negative review, and then later in the film, the Gremlins themselves mess with the presentation of the film, taking it off the projector and replacing it with something else, and it's up to a superstar of wrestling to keep the Gremlins in check. About that last part: Since we're clearly losing the war against A.I., well then, shit, how about replacing that union-busting, racist, daughter-ogling Hulk Hogan with my boy, the late, great Macho Man Randy Savage?
Whether or not they actually do that, I still think this is better than the first Gremlins, but not for the above-mentioned reasons -- because there's a hot woman in glasses, and women in glasses are my foot fetish. Actually no, feet are my foot fetish but glasses are my foot fetish too.
And that concluded Camp Frida: Monster Mash. As I walked back to my car, I overheard a group of people absolutely shitting on Lifeforce, calling it the worst movie of the night. I would've done all the martial arts to their faces for saying that, but I was tired and hungry, so I spared them and went to Norm's for a breakfast sandwich and a short stack of pancakes.
A week later, it was Saturday October 25th, aka The Day of the Road Rager. But fuck that guy, he was probably off to an unhappy life while I was headed to good times at the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica for my third and final horror marathon of the month: The 20th Annual Horrorthon. Now I've attended my share of Horrorthons in the past, about ten total (eleven, if you count the home version in 2020 during COVID), and I've written about six of them on the blog. If you want an even more detailed look at what makes the Aero Horrorthon its own wild thing compared to other 12-hour horror marathons, I suggest starting there. It might help make sense of what I'm about to talk about.
It was rather felicitous to be joined by my friend Cathie, as it was her coverage of one of the first Aero Horrorthons on her own blog, as well as her posts on other cool L.A.-based movie outings at places like the New Beverly Cinema that inspired me to ramble about my own movie-going ventures online. This is turn led to the Exiled from Contentment blog, which begat the Exiled from Contentment podcast. I figure this is as good as time as any to say something that has been long overdue: Don't blame me, it's all Cathie's fault.
As with previous Horrorthons, artistic director of the American Cinematheque Grant Moninger was our host, throwing candy, peanuts, and other goodies at the audience. He was joined by an assortment of unusual characters like Corn Gorn, a kinder, gentler, ear-of-corn flaunting version of the Gorn from the original series run of "Star Trek". Throughout the night, we watched the usual assortment of absurd clips that make up the interstitials shown between films. The clips are mostly taken from other sources like old tv shows, movies, commercials, public service announcements, and various found oddities. There are also original works featuring the Horrorthon's cast of characters. All of these are fun to watch and invite audience participation.
But since my last visit to the Horrorthon in 2019, there have been some new additions to the interstitials, including short films created with AI. On the one hand, the use of AI made it possible to feature outrageous spectacles featuring the Horrorthon crew that would've been logistically and financially impossible otherwise. On the other hand, so fucking what? I think these shorts were making some kind of winking commentary on the use of this abominable technology, but they also went on and on and on to the point that I felt the statement -- if indeed a statement was even being made at all -- was lost in all the slop. It was such a fucking bummer, man, and I ended up going to the lobby every time that shit started playing. The audience seemed to dig it, though. So I guess I'm the asshole.
While it's sold as a slasher movie, that part of the film doesn't really kick in until nearly two-thirds into the runtime. In fact, I wouldn't even classify this as a proper slasher. I feel it's more of a hangout movie done Tobe Hooper style, which is to say, there is a kind of diseased undercurrent to even the most blah moments. In the hands of any old hack, the opening scene where the final girl (Elizabeth Berridge) gets prank-scared by her little brother while taking a shower would play out fairly simple and quick. But through Hooper's warped filter, the scene goes on for an extended period of time. You're left knowing that Berridge's little brother is getting a nice long gander at his big sister's naked body. Michael Myers started an entire massacre after seeing his sister's tits, but in this movie, it's just another way siblings get on each other's nerves.
In Hooper's world, nothing feels safe nor is there a safe haven. If it's not little brothers trying to plunge their phallic symbol of a prop knife into their naked sisters, it's some oldster in a pick-up truck in the middle of a country road cackling while aiming a shotgun at a boy, or it's some creepy carny lovingly wiping that same boy's face with a wet rag while his father and alcoholic mother just stand by and let it happen, or it's a Romani fortune teller doing what you'd expect a Romani fortune teller to do back when they were called Gypsies, or it's a carnival barker and his Frankenstein's Monster of a son trying to kill people who saw too much.
It's the latter that happens to our final girl and her dead meat friends, by the way, and when it happens to them about 50 minutes into this 90 minute movie, it doesn't feel like too much of a surprise. Instead it feels like the inevitable catching up, like if it wasn't that, it sure as hell was going to be something else. I'm not saying these characters were doomed the second they stepped into the entrance of this carnival, no. I'm saying these characters were doomed as soon as they were birthed into the Tobe Hooper-verse.
As much as I dug this film on its mood and vibes, mood and vibes only go so far for so long before I wanted it to get to the meat of the matter. Which is why this doesn't rock my world from Minute One the way Hooper's other films like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and uh, oh I don't know, uh...Lifeforce do. Still, it's worth a watch for the above-mentioned qualities as well as to dig on watching people in the early 80s in their period-appropriate automobiles wearing period-appropriate clothing, having period-appropriate fun before being plunged into Hooper's patented sweaty-toothed madness of garish colors, epilepsy-inducing lights, and screaming victims who are either dead or traumatized for life by the end credits.
After another block of fun and depressing interstitials, we were on to the second film of the night: The 1990 remake of George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead, directed by legendary makeup artist/indifferent convention guest Tom Savini. As for the film, you know the deal: Her name's Barbara, and they're coming to get her, so she hides out in a farmhouse along with other survivors of what appears to be an epidemic of the dead coming back to life to attack the living.
Romero also wrote the updated screenplay, and plot-wise not much has changed between the 1968 original and this version, but the little that has changed makes a lot of difference. I'm gonna go as far as to say that I feel the screenplay for the 1990 version is even better, as Romero doubles down on his pessimistic worldview. Which considering the state of humanity nowadays, seems to be a very accurate one and not what Young Me used to dismiss as general old man grumpiness. Or it could be that I myself have also grown into a grumpy old man.
Maybe it's both. When I first saw this movie back in the day, I found certain actions and stances taken by the characters too stupid to be believable, but now I just nod and go "Yup, I could totally believe somebody would be that stupid because we are indeed that fucking stupid. We'd sooner burn down the whole world and everybody in it before ever considering the possibility that Our Side might be wrong about something." Jackie Chan was right.
I love what Romero did with the character of Barbara. He made her stronger, but not in some cliche action movie way. I'm talking about strength through levelheadedness. She begins very much like Original Barbara, totally freaking out before zoning out. But as the shock wears off, she becomes Remake Barbara, slowly taking stock of the situation while the men are busy measuring their dicks. While everybody else acts like the rest of this fucking planet with their petty No I'm Right And You're Wrong squabbles, Barbara is in Fuck Sides, What We Need Here Is A Little Solidarity mode. Barbara just wants the shit that needs to be done, fucking done.
Patricia Tallman is great in the role of Barbara, as is Tony Todd in the role of Ben. I think what I especially liked about their very strong performances is how they'll let out some vulnerability now and then. With this viewing, I noticed how often Ben would be all business while having tears roll down his face. And even as the only one acting like a grown-ass person the entire time, Barbara has to let out an anguished cry every now and then, because really man, God Damm It. She also gives one of the most awesome "you've got to be fucking kidding me" facial reactions I've seen in a movie; it happens after an attempt at refueling a pick-up truck turns into an absolute clusterfuck. It's such a perfect reaction and the entire audience burst into laughter when she gave it.
Tom Savini's direction is not bad but it's nothing special neither, and at times it's kinda clunky. I really wish Romero had directed this one as well, because I feel he might've been able to have the remake measure up to the original in every aspect, not just the screenplay. Hell, he might've even been able to surpass the original.
But flaws aside, I think this is a damn good remake. It was a real treat to finally see it on the big screen, in a beautiful 4K transfer of the new uncensored director's cut, which featured a black & white opening and extra gore that was cut from the original theatrical release.
There's a moment near the very end that always gives me a good case of the Fuck Yeahs. This viewing was no different, except I was joined this time by most of the audience breaking into cheers and applause. But it came with a nagging feeling and I wondered that if feeling that way about that moment, were we making Romero's point? Or was it intended as an audience-pleasing moment?
Eh, I'm all too human and even if it's wrong to cheer during some shit like that, I'm gonna go ahead and do it anyway because we live in an ugly world run by childish people with frightening amounts of power. And if watching some asshole take a bullet in the fucking face for similar-yet-smaller-scale behavior gives me the satisfied feeling of justice being served -- a satisfaction you and I are being denied in the real world, aside from the occasional Luigi? Well then, to that I say Fuck Yeah.
Thankfully, the AI torture came to an end before the third film and we were rewarded with the on-stage appearance of a man the Horrorthon has come to identify as "Business King Bill", the actor from a Red Roof Inn TV commercial that has been a staple of the marathon's interstitials for a long time. This was actually his second appearance following last year's Horrorthon. I felt so bummed out to miss out on that momentous event, figuring the chances at seeing him at the Aero again would be...remote. So you better believe I was very, very happy at getting another shot at seeing the legend in person. Most people outside of the Horrorthon might not even know who this man is, but as far as everybody in the Aero that night was concerned, he might as well have been The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, and The Rolling Stones all rolled into one.
The third film of the evening was 1987's Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II, a Canadian tragedy about a real go-getter of a girl named Mary Lou Maloney who lives life to the fullest in one of the most square of time periods, the 1950s. She's introduced giving a righteous sorry-not-sorry in a confessional booth, before heading off to the high school prom. Once there, our girl has herself the night of her life -- which also happens to be the last night of her life when right before being crowned prom queen, she becomes the victim of a prank gone wrong.
Forgive the redundancy, because all pranks are wrong. If you're a regular reader of this blog, then you probably know about my hatred of pranks. So the fact that this swell gal Mary Lou ends up being immolated as a result of this prank only made my sympathy for her grow. She dies knowing who was responsible: Her bitch-ass date Billy, who couldn't handle the fact that she did with her pussy whatever the fuck she wanted to whoever the fuck she wanted, just like any woman should be free to do.
Because revenge is a dish best served cold, Mary Lou chills out in the afterlife for three decades, until a high-schooler named Vicki opens a trunk in the school's prop room that happens to contain Mary Lou's crown. This brings our girl back from the other side, and soon Vicki and Mary Lou find themselves in one of those "You've got the body, I've got the brain" deals, so it's like a horror version of the homosexual drama I mentioned earlier, A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge.
Once Mary Lou gets behind the virginal wheel, the previously demure Vicki starts to let her hair down, goes retro with her fashion styles, and even gets a little frisky with one of her female friends. And every once in a while, she'll murder a motherfucker to break up the boredom. Meanwhile, we are reintroduced to Billy (now played by Michael Ironside), now the principal of the very same high school where all of this is going on, which means that he's in for quite the surprise when he finds out that his sex-positive chicken has come home to roost.
The film alternates between entertaining and kinda boring, because I felt anytime my girl Mary Lou wasn't doing her thing, the movie fell into a Great White Northern slumber. I know this movie's success was mostly due to people discovering it on good ol' VHS, and I feel a movie like this plays best at home with other people to fill in the dull stretches with chatter about the movie or whatever else is going on in their lives. That's something one can't do in a movie theater, even one with a crowd as loud and loose as the Aero Horrorthon.
But the fun stuff -- when it happens -- is very fun indeed. There's a gleeful nastiness to it that I appreciated, especially in the way it sets up side characters that suggests that they're going to matter, only to have my sister from another mister dispatch of them in just as brutal a fashion as she does the jerky characters. A couple of the kill scenes got good reactions from the crowd; my favorite involved someone making the mistake of hiding in locker. Most enjoyable of all was Lisa Schrage as Mary Lou herself, who had me like that guy in that old news clip who declared John Gotti as the "best guy around".
I've actually seen this movie at another all-night horror marathon, the one at the New Beverly Cinema back in 2019, which I rambled about in this post. So I'll keep this one short and sweet: A coven of Satan-worshipping witches give the local police chief's daughter a necklace that allows the spirit of their mistress to possess her. This results in the young girl making quite a spectacle of herself. Among her dirty tricks are using X-rated language, levitating, and slicing off a man's penis and sending it to his girlfriend in a container.
There's also a subplot about a handsome priest who we learn dumped his fiancee to join the seminary. I guess he weighed the options between going on horseback rides with a pretty blonde or having an all-you-can-eat buffet of alter and choir boys, and found the latter more satisfying. As for his fiancee? She ended up becoming a prostitute, because this is a Spanish movie from the 70s and women are nothing without a man, nothing. I swear I was born in the wrong country in the wrong era.
It's a very dopey film with the occasionally harsh moment, such as a baby getting sacrificed, and the aforementioned boxing of the dicks. This played just as well with a sleep-deprived audience as it did at the New Bev.
The fifth film was Squirm, a movie from 1976 that has been lingering in the purgatory of my mind known as "I've been meaning to watch that". I have the Vestron VHS somewhere, and I never watched it. I have the MST3K episode somewhere, and I never watched that either. So it was nice of the Aero to take the initiative by screening a 35mm print so I can finally scratch it off the watchlist.
We open in a rural part of Georgia, as a storm downs a power line which then lands smack dab in the middle of worm territory. The shock treatment somehow causes the worms to develop an appetite for humans. But before we get to those little buggers burrowing into flesh and chowing people down to the bone, we are introduced to Mick (Don Scardino), a big city kid who has arrived to see his girlfriend Geri (Patricia Pearcy).
As expected with a city mouse like Mick, he finds himself floundering among the good ol' boys and the power-tripping sheriff. Some of it is his fault, though, like do you honestly expect a small country town circa 1976 to know about egg creams? Better yet, why couldn't Mick just do as the Georgians do by asking for whatever everybody else is having? I'm sure he'd be just as likely to find a worm in a bottle of Coca-Cola with peanuts in it. Instead, he finds one in his piss-poor excuse for an egg cream, which serves him right. If he had gone with the former, the people at the diner might've taken him seriously. How are they supposed to know that an egg cream shouldn't have a worm in it? I mean, tequila has a worm in it, why can't your fancy Yankee egg cream?
The worms take a back seat for most of the film, and somehow the movie manages to remain icky and strange, on account of most of the actors playing the citizens of this town looking very much like they belong there. You have Mick, who just looks like some bland bookish type, and you have pretty red-headed Geri, and then you have everybody else looking a wee-bit interrelated, if you get my incestuous drift. Some of these characters look and act like writer-director Jeff Lieberman found them off the street and gave them a general outline as to what they're supposed to communicate in their given scene.
So even though the majority of the film felt more like an investigation thriller than a creature feature, there's such a strong atmosphere to everything else, that I was always entertained. I'm still not sure what made my skin crawl more -- the worms or the people. Keep in mind, this is a movie where worms are oozing out of shower heads, drain pipes, roofs, walls, they're climbing in your windows, snatching your people up. They worm their way into people's bodies, they form worm-pools and swallow up anybody who falls in them. And the townspeople are still neck and neck with them in regards to who grossed me out more.
There's a scene late in the film where the sheriff and some floozy are having one of them there fancy eye-talian dinners, and we're treated to close-ups of their mouths as they slurp very wormy-looking strands of spaghetti. And it's like, I would've found it just as disgusting in some normal non-worm drama with those same characters doing the same thing. I mean, I wasn't grossed out by Meryl Streep sucking up fettuccine alfredo in Defending Your Life, in fact, I thought it was kinda cute. So you tell me -- am I being a snob?
After the film, Cathie bid me farewell. I offered to walk her to her car, that way if some Psycho Freaky Jason were to attack, I can attempt and fail miserably to defend her, buying her time to run to safety while the Psycho Freaky Jason slices and dices me while I scream out something pathetic like "You're killing me!" like Rob in Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter -- which wasn't the final chapter. While I was sad to see her go, it also allowed me to break out the cocaine I was sitting on all night.
After a couple of bumps, it was time for the sixth and final movie: 1980's Night of the Demon, which begins at the end with an anthropology professor by the name of Nugent recovering in the hospital, with half of his face bandaged. He and his students had gone out on a trip to the woods to investigate potential Bigfoot sightings, and now the authorities want to know why only he came back. The answer comes in the form of the flashbacks that tell the rest of the story.
Bigfoot is the reason that only Nugent came back, in case you were wondering.
This was directed by a man named James C. Wasson, who according to IMDB went on to direct gay porn. I find that interesting, because this movie has similar non-qualities to the works of Tim Kincaid, who directed such terrible horror and sci-fi films as Breeders and Mutant Hunt before moving on to make dude-on-dude fuck films like Men's Room: Bakersfield Station and Alabama Takedown. (For the record, I pulled those titles off Kincaid's IMDB, not from my personal library.) But I am a bit intrigued; do those movies have the same style as their mainstream work? Are all gay porno movies like this? I couldn’t tell you, because the only gay porn I've seen are a clip from MTV's "The Tom Green Show" and the entirety of Top Gun.
But what I can tell you is that Night of the Demon felt like switching channels between two movies. The first is a forgotten low-budget regional attempt at an adventure movie from the 70s, as we watch Nugent -- who looks like someone who fishes for comments on how he vaguely resembles Burt Reynolds -- and his bland white bread students as they trek to the wilderness in their search for Sasquatch, accompanied by 70s-era Muzak that sounds like it was intended to accompany a slideshow selling you on timeshares in Florida. It's all very amateur in the way it's indifferently shot and acted, but it's the actions taken by the characters that made this feel like something created by an extra-terrestrial with only passing knowledge on how humans behave.
But then you'll switch to the other channel, where there's a sleazy 80s grindhouse horror joint already in progress, with someone getting killed by Bigfoot as cheesy synth music that sounds like someone is just banging on random keys plays on the soundtrack, while the victim either gasps, chokes, or screams while their mouth is clearly closed.
Watching those gory and ridiculous kill scenes with an audience is what made the movie for me. Reacting with the crowd to the sights of a man getting his arm torn off his body, or another guy getting his own axe used on him, or Bigfoot picking some dude up while he's still in a sleeping bag and swinging the screaming sack as if the creature were competing in some track & field hammer throw, that's the good stuff right there. Speaking of swinging sacks, one poor man has his dick ripped off by the creature mid-pee. That one got a nice round of applause, but I'm sure some of us were clapping while wincing.
Bigfoot doesn't discriminate either, he believes in equal rights and lefts towards the opposite sex, and age is nothing but a number to this R. Kelly of cryptids, as we see when he takes out a couple of unfortunate Girl Scouts who made the fatal mistake of wandering off the hiking trail. Maybe if they had boxes of Thin Mints and Caramel Delites to throw at him, they might've had a chance.
I wish this stuck to being a Bigfoot-killing-people movie, but then they bring up a Satanic cult and a woman who was raped by Bigfoot and I guess I just wasn't in the mood for that lurid shit at six a.m. Speaking of which, the movie eventually started getting dreary for me in between the good stuff, which might have something to do with the time. But the last ten minutes of carnage might as well have been a double shot of expresso, because it definitely pepped me up. BTW, I called it "expresso", because that's what people called espresso back then, they didn't know any better and Sabrina Carpenter hadn't been born yet. Anyway, we finally get a good look at Bigfoot during those ten minutes, and he looks about as good as you'd expect in a movie of this caliber. Which is to say, not very.
It was a little after 7 a.m. when the 20th annual Aero Horrorthon concluded. Those of us who stuck around to the very end stepped out into the misty morning craving sleep, food, or more movies. I went with the second choice, stopping at a diner called Rae's. This is the same place where Clarence and Alabama went for pie after a Sonny Chiba triple feature in the film True Romance. But I didn't see pie on the menu, so instead I went with the "Hobo" breakfast platter: Ham, bacon, sausage, three eggs (over easy), and three pancakes. It hit the spot.
And so ended an October full of horror movie marathons. While it's been a terrible year for human decency, this might be the best October I've had in years. I hope it's just as good next October, provided I make it to next October. Because I have to be careful out there, and so do you, dear reader, especially on the road where there are angry little men with angry flaccid penises just itching for confrontation. Just remember: Think Tabby, Not Stabby.
And if that doesn't work, then just take out your Smith & Wesson 442 Airweight and squeeze off a couple rounds of .38 Special into their nutsack.
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