Really Dirty Beddings: Lucker The Necrophagus (1986)

Lucker The Necrophagous (Belgium, 1986)

Rating: *1/2
Starring: Nick Van Suyt, Helga Vandevelde, Let Jotts

I remember my very first Fangoria magazine; I was 13-years old and it's issue #252, with Michael Rooker's face in heavy and slimy alien mutant make-up gracing the front cover. Within those pages are DVD reviews and one of them happens to be of Lucker The Necrophagous (1986), and I recall the magazine being unfavorable about the film. I guess I should have taken that as a warning of what I'm getting myself into when I finally decided to see this grey market exploitation indie many, many years later, but the damn curious cat inside of me is egging to see just how much of a trainwreck this movie is.

And, boy, is it a trainwreck.

The story of Lucker The Necrophagous (1986) follows the titular serial-killer who likes to rape and murder women, though not necessarily on that order. The film opens with him heavily sedated in a mental institution after a suicide attempt, but his medication wears off too soon and Lucker is up killing orderlies, having his way on some of the bodies, and escaping into town to lay low. We eventually learn that it's been eight years since his reign of gross terror ended with his capture, a total of eight victims under his kill count. Should have been nine, though, and after hearing about this one gal, Cathy Jordan, surviving his rampage (and finding out where she lives through a damn phone book!), Lucker sets off to correct his mistake, taking a few lives along the way. (And, yes, the freak got his rocks off on a few of the resulting corpses)

Apparently, Lucker The Necrophagous (1986) is a film made to be purposely offensive as a way for the director, Johan Vandewoestijine, to get back at the Belgian Film Commission. The resulting production was rough, with Johan withholding the finer details of the movie from fiscal backers just to get the money to make it, only for the producer to destroy the negatives, leaving only bits and pieces of the film to work with for the final product. That would explain the choppiness of the story and the patchwork-editing quality of the movie itself, though that did little to null the extreme repulsiveness of its taboo subject matter, especially when an infamous "bed scene" was done leeringly long and filled with as much vomit-inducing gags you'd wish to could bleach away from your brain once the dirty deed is done. Past that, the story is basically a 68-minute short slasher (74 minutes for the Belgian VHS release) wherein we simply watch Lucker stab people to death with very little workable dialogue to go with, even more so by its climax when everything devolves into a cacophony of screams and grunts amidst the film's score, punctuated by a rather confusing ending. 

There's few in the way of substance here, but we do see some bit of style through the giallo-inspired candy-colored lighting and stylized photography. Gore and make-up effects are also a fair highlight, something a movie of this dirty of a plot would benefit from and did, but that's as far as the positives could go. Sad to say, Lucker The Necrophagous (1986), a button-pushing shlock made to test just how far one can go before feeling cold and dirty, is quite lousy as an entertaining horror piece, its overall quality just all sorts of bad. If all of this tickled your curiosity, then, a word of advise, prepare a barf bag...

Bodycount:

1 male stabbed in the eye with an icepick

1 female beaten to death against a steering wheel

1 female disemboweled with a knife

1 male bashed to death against a wall

1 female stabbed on the throat with a kitchen knife

1 female head seen (flashback)

1 male strangled, head beaten with a pipe

1 female knifed to death

1 female disemboweled with a knife

Total: 9

Feeling A Little Devilish: Hell Of A Summer (2023)

Hell Of A Summer (2023)

Rating: ***
Starring: Adam Pally, Rosebud Baker, Fred Hechinger

At age 24, Jason Hochberg (Fred Hechinger) could have been working a real job. One that probably pays more than a hundred bucks a week. But, no, he prefers to cling on to an adolescent happy place and accept a lead camp counselor gig at his childhood Summer haven, Camp Pineway, after the owners have to take a leave of absence. Genuinely thrilled by this, Jason went on and about trying to befriend the latest turnover of young camp counselors, who are more or less your walking and breathing killcount tropes, only coated here with a fresh paint of Gen Z-stereotyping. Needless to say, Jason's overly-friendly approach to be one with the teen clutter is mostly taken with an awkward stance and a chuckle, maybe a couple of eyerolls at its worse, but this will drastically go South later that evening when someone in a handcrafted devil mask starts to hack aspiring social influencers dead inside their cabins, as well as decapitate vocal vegans with a mean meat cleaver, among many other gruesome bodily atrocities...

It's a backwoods slasher plot as old as time, though the direction and tone here is noticeably more focused on the coming-of-age comedy than throwing dismembered limbs on the air for a splatter-fest. A lot of the jokes and dialogue centers on the generational clash between Jason and the group of junior counselors who would rather speak about meat being murder, gathering online clout, or practicing their death shrieks for a stage play they're working on; occasionally, it's cute and worth the little giggle here and there for how cleverly written and edited some of these sequences are, though a few did fall flat, fumbling whatever gag they're building to, making the whole teen camp comedy angle a hit-or-miss. That said, though, it would be a disservice to the actors to not at least credit their talents as they did manage to pull off the one-note ridiculousness of their characters, yet still making them likeable enough to feel sorry for whenever they're in trouble. May it be from the killer, or their own stupidity. 

For the slasher side of things, it started strongly with two gruesome murders involving a guitar and a knife murder that's executed oh so deliciously, only for it to take a backseat until halfway into the movie when it makes a clumsy comeback; while it has its share of splashy kills like a gnarly axe to the head and a brutal rock beating, its more novel deaths were only teased such as the killer taking a mean-spirited advantage on a victim's nut allergy by dipping their knife in a jar of peanut butter first, though rather than showing the dirty deed, the next thing we see is the poor shmuck's lifeless red-faced body being dragged out. It's kinda frustrating, though not as frustrating as the killer's overused motive of doing it because of a sociopathic need to have eyes and ears on them, though I'll give credit to the twist reveal as I honestly didn't see it coming, plus I do dig the gradeschool craft devil mask and cloak combo! In the end, we're treated with a passable enough final act that ties things as neatly as a standard backwoods slashers would and it's, well, fine.

Hell of a Summer (2023) doesn't really need to much to be entertaining. Dare I say it's actually halfway being a decent backwoods bodycounter you can pop in anytime for a simple fun watch, but it held off a bit on the carnage and sets its gums on a more comical venture that only partially works. The end product is a half-and-half attempt, but, frankly, it could have been worse. So much worse.

Bodycount:

1 male found with his mouth impaled with a guitar neck

1 female stabbed in the head with a hunting knife

1 female hacked with a meat cleaver, head found in a refrigerator

1 male stabbed with a peanut butter-tainted kitchen knife, dies from allergic shock

1 female knifed in the back, beaten with a rock

1 male hacked in the head with an axe

1 male stabbed in the neck with a swiss army knife

1 female gets an arrow shot to an eye, stomped

Total: 8

The Douche Who Cried Axe: #ChadGetsTheAxe (2022)

#ChadGetsTheAxe (2022)

Rating: ***1/2

Starring: Spencer Harrison Levin, Michael Bonini, Taneisha Figueroa

Personally, I see fame as more of a bother than a benefit. Sure, you get the riches and recognition, but it comes with the pressure of meeting people's expectations and this often comes with the price of one's self-respect and decency. When fame becomes an obsession for clout, this need for attention can spiral towards notoriety and you'll become trouble. Or be troubled.

Though, I don't believe getting troubled by an axe-wielding maniac is something a fame-hungry moron would need to worry about. 

That much.

Based on a 2019 short film of the same title, #ChadGetsTheAxe (2022) follows vlogger "Spicy Steve" (Michael Bonini), couple Jennifer and Spencer (Taneisha Figueroa and Cameron Vitosh) of the beauty blog 'Spennifer", and uber-popular prankster Chad Ryan (Spencer Harrison Levin) plan a collaborative urban exploration video and stream for the weekend. The place they'll be exploring is one Devil's Manor, a dilapidated backwoods property near a swamp, which is said to be the hotspot of supposed cult activities around the area as a Satanist named William Burrows did have a mass murdering spree there many years ago. The night goes as you would expect it being populated by social media celebrities; they explore the manor while responding to comments, advertise their merch once in a while, and do obnoxious dares whenever their view count reaches a certain number. (One of which echoes the real life sickening stunt influencer Logan Paul did during his visit to Mount Aokigahara)

The fun times could only last long before things start to get unnerving; when one of them gets attacked, it's very well clear then that somebody else is inside the manor. Someone masked up, wielding an axe and not too pleased to have these people roaming around. Chad, unsurprisingly, is ready to dismiss this as a prank plotted by fellow pranksters until, that is, more of his friends disappear and all that's left for the mysterious masked maniac to hunt is him...

Shot through the rarely used Screenlife format, wherein we see the action unfold through the screen of a device via apps and sites (think Unfriended (2014), Spree (2020) and Deadstream (2022)), #ChadGetsTheAxe (2022) gets the benefit of being fun by satirizing the many stereotypes of click chasers while delivering a good dose of creepy imagery and set-pieces. It doesn't waste time getting into the main event, almost immediately throwing the streamers into the supposed haunted manor and simply letting the story develop as it goes by, showing us just what kind of people behind the camera phones are as the situation gravely escalates, as well as the reaction of the community they are catering to. The direction is pretty spot on to what we would normally expect from a weekend night stream hosted by an appalling content creator, pure unhinged and aggravating debauchery, and director Travis Bible practically knows we're here to see these idiots get their comeuppance for giving in to the almighty viewer count at the cost of common sense and a soul. Happy to say, we get what we came to see!

One by one, our streamers are picked off, a few clearly axed dead. Whenever #ChadGetsTheAxe (2022) slides in a creepy scene and build-up, it's all done with a straight face that's greatly effective. The villain doesn't ham it up, making their murderous assaults often jarring, even more so when the story finds opportunities to shed a sympathetic light on the victims, such as moments of clarity among the creators when some of them recognize how messed up the gags and situation are becoming, or slices of commentary on the unhealthy relationship between creators and their fanbases. It's not overly scary, per se, as the film still has its focus more on humor than frights, but it's a satisfying watch as the stalk-and-hunt onslaught with Burrows and his axe add weight to the horror side of this horror-comedy. 

This all leads to a third act where the story puts the hurt on Chad as he becomes an unwilling final boy dodging a masked killer's axe swings. He gets stalked through the woods, his means for escape repeatedly thwarted, and his cries for help dismissed by most of his viewers as either a joke, or just something they can cruelly exploit for fun. It's both cathartic and pathetic, impressively working both in a balance as we see this guy who spent most of his onscreen time being noisome reduced to a helpless whelp, more so on the movie's final act as a good twist reveals a hopeless situation hinted in a blink-and-you-miss moment in the chat. The end result is a grimly satisfying end full of desperation, axe falls and blood flowing on a live stream.

#ChadGetsTheAxe (2022) can be a little rough on the edges, but it understands the culture of online clout and the toxic people surrounding it. It uses those to its advantage, crafting a smart, funny and creepy backwoods slasher that shouldn't work, but did! Chad got the axe and I'm glad to have seen it!

Bodycount:

1 male body found rotting

1 male hacked with an axe

1 male hacked with an axe

1 male killed offscreen with an axe

1 female hacked with an axe

1 male killed offscreen with an axe

1 male hacked with an axe

Total: 7