Terror in Tinseltown: Hollywood Horror (2005)

Hollywood Horror (2005)

Rating: **1/2

Starring: Forrest J. Ackerman, Christopher Berry, Jimmy Bridges

A rarity and an oddity! We have ourselves a twofer here!

Differing groups of teens find themselves mysteriously invited to a horror-themed party way up somewhere at an old Hollywood building once owned by a socialite named Howard Hughes back in the 1930s, left abandoned and condemned all these years after a fiery accident. What they didn't know, however, is that the building's built like a maze, a perfect prowling spot for an enigmatic cloaked figure in a skull mask to thin down the attendee count one lost victim at a time, as well as for ghostly apparitions to haunt and taunt these hapless chumps. Who will be left alive by the end of this Hollywood Horror? Only time will tell...

Admittedly, this isn't a very good movie, but the reason for that leans heavily from the fact that this here is a lost slasher title; there are no posters or trailers for the film, nor any actual evidence of video releases despite a few online sources citing a US release date of 2005, which makes the plot taking place in 2007 just that stranger. By all means, Hollywood Horror (2005) looks like it was filmed in the late-90s, riding along Scream (1996)'s pop culture self-references ala dialogue and inside jokes, only to be seemingly shelved unedited and unfinished until it's leaked online via Youtube at 2022. 

We're basically watching a rough cut here, so I'm a tad more forgiving about its production flaws of missing reels and shoddy editing, and too its uninspired audio quality and shlocky camerawork. In terms of the movie's plotting and tone, it's a shoddy attempt of merging low-budget supernatural hauntings with the common slasher affairs of a costumed ghoul murdering people. The resulting work is an undeniably cheesy smorgasbord of ghosts and spooks menacing the casts, running gags of dismembered body parts expressing their annoyance of being killed off, and an overly ambitious twist that simply boils down to someone being bitter about money. It's all done in a hammy manner through its writing and actors for an intentional tongue-n-cheek approach and although it doesn't always work, it can be fairly funny, not to mention bloodily decent whenever it does. Where else, after all, can you find a slasher movie where a victims gets crushed and flush down a rigged toilet? That sure got a laugh out of me!

Intriguingly, there's a good line of familiar faces to be seen here, such as late-horror veteran Angus Scrimm as a curious psychic who warns some of the teens about the dangers residing in the Howard Hughes building and Diff'rent Stroke's Todd Bridges in a cameo as a weed-smoking security guard who gets a bad ending encounter with a forklift. Twins Tamera and Tia Mowry of multiple TV projects also show up here as a pair of fun-loving sisters looking for a swell time and, too, Natalia Cigliuti, Lindsay Warner of Saved by the Bell: The New Class, donning the obvious final girl role with a B-grade flair. A good deal of the casts are practically a walking time capsule and I'm all for it, frankly!

I can understandably see how Hollywood Horror (2005)'s unpolished mish mash of ghosts and killers  wouldn't fly right for most audiences but, as a guilty pleasure of sorts, I can dig it; the story has potential, the characters are fun, the killer looks alright and the gore effects are an okay mix of practical and hilariously dated green screen effects. Without a doubt, the film can definitely benefit from a couple more visits through the cutting rooms but, judging on what we have so far, not bad for a lost and unfinished late-90s/early-2000s find!

Bodycount:

1 female set ablaze

1 male knocked out of a building with a forklift, falls to his death

1 male crushed against the ceiling by a camera crane

1 female decapitated with a guillotine

1 female crushed and flushed down a rigged toilet

1 male electrocuted to death

1 female decapitated with a battle axe

1 male hit with a car

2 females hit with a car offscreen

1 male thrown off a building, falls to his death

1 elderly male succumbs to gunshot wound

1 female crushed dead in a falling elevator

Total: 13

This is The Whack of Undertaker Zach: The Embalmer (1996)

The Embalmer (1996)

Rating: **

Starring: Jennifer T. Kelly, Kenneth E. Mullen, Myron Creek

Tell you a story about Undertaker Zach.

He killed his wife with a whack, whack, whack!

His daughter started cryin’ ’cause her mama was dead;

He shut her up by choppin’ off her head.

Life at home isn't good for Chiffon (real name Laura), not with her folks practically making a slave out of her, ordering her to do laundry, fetch beer and change TV channels using the dial before getting angry at her for blocking the damn screen. One night, though, this troubling sight got out of hand and next thing we see is that Chiffon's kicked out from her own house. Distressed, she calls her boyfriend Duane to pick her up after explaining what happened, who in turn calls his bud Archie to help them out as a favor and the guy tagged along his girlfriend Cindi because why the hell not? The gang basically decided to run away from their crappy lives that evening but, after running a red light, they got a little trouble with the law and got chased into hiding inside an abandoned house's garage. 

The stunt, unfortunately, killed the car's battery and the teens find out that not only did they lock themselves in by accident, but the house also once belonged to Dr. Zachary Harbotswood, AKA Undertaker Zach, a local urban legend who's known to have murdered his wife and daughter during a psychotic episode. Chiffon doesn't like this fact at all seeing she used to have nightmares about this place as a kid, but with no other plan at hand on how they'll get out of the house, the gang opted to stay put and just deal with the situation until they figure something out.

Badly acted melodrama here, a tame sex scene there, maybe even throw in a last minute nightmare sequence involving big snakes (both literally and figuratively), the foursome eventually encounters Undertaker Zach in the flesh, as well as a nasty little secret hidden down in the basement...

In a way, it's not hard to picture why this low-budget regional urban horror is so below the radar as instead of your typical bodycounter plot of murdered horny teens and angry maniacs, The Embalmer (1996) dragged its focus more on the somber schmaltz going on with our lead girl life, which frankly would have worked with the genuinely dark and uneasy issues tackled like trauma, child abuse and sexual assault, if only the tone and direction were anywhere as competent. It's simply difficult to buy into the seriousness of the subjects when most of the casts act their parts and deliver their lines like your everyday B-grade horror fodders, which can be either hilarious or bothersome, though I will give actress Jennifer T. Kelly for putting more effort in her role as the troubled main gal, Chiffon. Couple these with the usual talk of the killer's lore and sexy times under the sheets, and the film essentially yapped its way through a really clumsy and sloppy midsection.

Thankfully, the last twenty-some minutes picked up greatly as this is where the slasher elements kick in with a few good gore effects given the budget and, too, a fairly decent twist reveal that nicely leads to a surprisingly effective and satisfying conclusion that I didn't entirely see coming. It's a good enough take on the teen slasher set-up, one that kinda gives The Embalmer (1996) the potential to be a tolerable watch given, that is, you could overlook the distracting low cost production and the slow lumpy road. All in all, it's nowhere near being a real gem of a find, but it is an adequately interesting time waster should you ever need one. 

Bodycount:

1 female slaughtered to death with a scalpel

1 girl hacked to death with a meat cleaver

1 male castrated with a knife, brained to death with a hammer

1 female stabbed to death with a scalpel

1 male had his throat cut with a scalpel

1 male and 1 female killed offscreen with a knife

Total: 7

A Nightmare Brat: Milo (1998)

Milo (1998)

Rating: **

Starring: Jennifer Jostyn, Antonio Fargas, Paula Cale

Sixteen years ago, Milo, a ten year-old boy in a yellow rain slicker and sounds an awful lot like someone's creepy basement-dwelling cousin in their twenties, lured five girls to his father's abortion clinic and murdered one of them with a scalpel. He tried to escape from the crime by swimming through a lake, he instead drowned in his attempt. Or did he?

Skipping ahead to the present and three of the kids who were with Milo last, now grown-up, got invitations to attend the wedding of the fourth only to learn that the bride-to-be was just killed in a crash. Our heroine, Claire, decided to honor her friend's passing by taking her job as a teacher at a local school and no soon after, she starts seeing glimpses of Milo scurrying around the playground, yellow rainslicker, bike with card spokes and all. Her students also begun acting weirdly around her, pranking her with live frogs, obscene drawings on the chalk board and getting passed her own childhood photo with Milo scribblings on the back. The school staff and Claire's friends think these are all just tricks from the tykes to test the new teacher, but Claire is convinced that Milo is still out there, somehow alive and haven't aged since, apparently out to kill her and her friends because, um, evil kids will do evil kids stuff?

This one is just kinda existing to exist, honestly; Milo (1998) had the potential to be a creepy killer kid flick with its ideas and a few effective scenes with the tiny terror, but bearing an overly simple plot, lackluster direction and uninspired acting from its casts, the film hardly passes as interesting and instead leaves us with nothing but a dull drawl and some unanswered questions in the end, like who or what exactly Milo is. (I mean, hints were given at the last act suggesting it all had something to do with a botched abortion, but that doesn't explain why Milo is still a kid 40 something years later, or why he's seemingly immortal and/or supernatural) It also doesn't help that the kid just sounds silly whenever he gets talking, nor the fact that there's not a lot of noteworthy murders to write home about, but I will give the movie points for its lead Paula Cale being decent enough on her role, a few creepy aesthetics and, too, the unintentional hilarity of the titular mini-killer's unique characterization. 

It's tolerable, but easily replaceable by better killer kid flicks. 

Bodycount:

1 girl stabbed with a scalpel

1 female mentioned killed in a car accident

1 female cut to death with a scalpel

1 female slashed through the gut

1 male found murdered

1 male stabbed to death with a scalpel

Total: 7

Raiders of The Lost Shlock: Playroom (1990)

Playroom (1990) (AKA "Schizo")

Rating: ***

Starring: Lisa Aliff, Aron Eisenberg, Christopher McDonald

Suffering from reocurring nightmare-flashbacks of how he found his entire family murdered inside some old tombs as a child, American archeologist Christopher Hayden decided to revisit the same dig to finish what his late father started as a form of closure, tagging along his magazine editor boss/girlfriend Jenny, his drunkard photographer friend Paul and the photographer’s yoga-loving wife Marcy to supervise and document the find. Their excavation is for an ancient Yugoslavian monastery that's built on top of the tomb of a notorious prince named Ilok, who's said to have bargained with a demon in order to gain eternal life and cured the boredom that naturally comes with living forever by torturing peasants through mostly medieval means. 

Curiously, as soon as Chris steps into the place, he starts seeing and getting tormented by his childhood imaginary friend "Daniel", who may have something to do with the deaths of his family. The further he dwells on this, the more Chris obsesses over digging out all the secrets he could get from the tomb, slowly losing grip of his own noggin before eventually going into a murderous rage by the time he unearthed the titular playroom. All the while, a man who was wrongfully accused for massacring nearly all of the Hayden family many years ago gets an earful of Chris' return, enticing him to escape his confines and leg his way to the monastery to get even with the guy who got him locked up in a mental ward, unaware that an ancient evil has awakened and it demands to be entertained through carnal violence...

Written by Jackie Earle Haley (Yes, that Jackie Earle Haley) and directed by Dr. Giggles (1992)'s Manny Coto, Playroom (1990) starts out, by all means, as a slowburn psycho-horror as we watch our leading archeologist go down the rabbit hole of uncovering the hidden chambers of a tomb while battling his inner demons, brought upon by the memories of his father's abuse and a then-hinted possible supernatural influence. Think Jack Torrance's axe-happy breakdown from The Shining (1980), only we have a sweaty Christopher McDonald's going cuckoo for murder, egged on by a demonic ten-year old. This goes on for about almost an hour, with the rest of the small casts of characters showing concern over Chris' mental deterioration but doing little to nothing to remedy this aside from telling him off how crazy he's starting to sound, as well as suggesting getting out of there while they're still have two working legs. (Right, suggesting, even after one too many outbursts from the increasingly pissed-off prehistorian...) 

By the time Chris' little doomed crew finally decided to waltz back to the nearby town and get help, this is thankfully the same time the film finally kicked things up with gruesome delight and cheesy hokum as the angry archaeologian finally discovers Ilok's playroom full of torture devices, thus earning him the prince's full influence and act out as their executioner. With that, Playroom (1990) delves into slasher grounds and even though there's hardly any strong gore to speak of (save for the last kill), a fair set of the murder scenes are a decently good bunch for their crazily wicked set-pieces, workable cinematography and Christopher McDonald going full ham on his excitable killer persona, playfully taunting and throwing childish insults at his victims before offing them. There's also a brief scene where Miss Virginia 1983 Lisa Aliff's character encounters Ilok in his true form, a diminutive mummified man brought to life onscreen through an animatronic puppet full of jerky body movements and rubbery facial expressions. The whole moment is, without a doubt, this movie's ironic highlight as the hilariously awful-looking scraggily tiny terror is a rather memorable presence, devilishly spewing one-liners while prowling around in one of the stranger cat-and-mouse stalking scenes out there in horror.

As a concept, Playroom (1990) had the potential to be a better movie should its narrative was handled better, delivering on its promising ideas of psychological downfall and maybe even give its small casts a little more depth than your average paint-by-number slasher victims. Still, it succeeds in invoking tension and tone from its gloomy direction and the effective Slavic ruin backdrops, before going all out on the crazy massacre that sets itself well enough as this film's final act, so the film isn't a total loss in my opinion. A tad misguided, but passable nonetheless. 

Bodycount:

1 girl found murdered

1 male found dead with a head wound

1 female found murdered

1 female got her back sawed open

1 male repeatedly beaten with a skull, falls into a spiked pit

1 male killed offscreen

1 male had his neck shot off, decapitated

1 male ran through with a pickaxe, dies from injury

Total: 8

A Beary Traumatic Experience: Arbor Day (1990)

Arbor Day (1990)

Rating: ***

Starring: Scott Bradshaw, Chris Calomino, Michael Calomino

So what do you get when you cross the spoof comedy of Airplane! (1980) with the paint-by-number tropes of a slasher flick? Probably Student Bodies (1981). National Lampoon's Class Reunion (1982). Wacko! (1982). Pandemonium (1982). Scary Movie (2000), even. Well, joining in this cavalcade of comedic creeps is a film lost for three decades after its initial run through art houses, comedy clubs and indie theaters midnight screenings around 1992 West Babylon, NY. Unearthed and restored from the nothing via a successful crowdfunding, it is now here to terrorize and satire one of America's most beloved National Holiday, one that is cherished by men, women, children, quadrupeds of all age, gender and race.  It is now here to show that no holiday is safe anymore, not even... Arbor Day! 

Opening with a black-and-white callback to gothic horror (and, for some reason, Citizen Kane (1941)), we see an elderly man expiring after uttering the word Arbor Day, which the visiting doctor believes is a reference to what happened many years ago, when everything is in color; cue in a flashback of our psycho-killer, Elmer Jacobs, as a kid, celebrating Arbor Day by finding a spot to plant a tree with his dad and mom, the latter very likely a man in a dress. Things go horribly bad, however, when dad spots a man in a bear suit and cockily played with it to show young Elmer that there's nothing to be afraid of, only for his noggin to be clawed off while his wife gets mauled (and apparently raped) by the angry grizzly. 

The horrors of that memory left Elmer catatonic in an insane asylum over the years to come, all except during the one day when his brain activity gets restored and his strength gets a big buff: Arbor Day. As an annual precaution, the doctors and nurses do their best to avoid mentioning his parents' deaths or show anything bear-related during the holiday under the risk of triggering Elmer's murderous rampage. This year, however, an orderly made the mistake of mocking him just minutes before the clock strikes midnight at Arbor Day, igniting Elmer's killing spree as he eventually escapes and slay a few more randomly placed people along the way.

In come our casts of hapless victims-to-be consisting of a cool guy stoner, an annoying prick of a prankster, a pair of babes, an unremarkable final girl and her geeky kid brother. The gang is celebrating Arbor Day inside Elmer's abandoned home, an idea so terrible that a random doom-sayer manifests himself out of some nearby bushes, enthusiastically telling them that they'll be sorry if they go in any further. And as any of you would have guessed, they still did. They all went inside. And now they have to face the murderous wrath of Elmer Jacobs, now armed with deadly gardening tools and donning a handmade paper daisy mask...

Oh, and there's a detective who's supposed to be out trailing on our killer, but he's busy pigging on Arbor Day turkey and cake.  

As a slasher parody, Arbor Day (1990) does its fair job of lampooning the tropes slasher films are built upon, from the tendencies of the killer suddenly going superhuman after long periods being a vegetable, to the obnoxious use of caricatures as character personalities. At times, the humor can get too silly and overcooked whenever it focuses too much on a joke, like this one gag where the killer tries to cut a simple phone line only for his efforts to be dwarfed by the unusual strength of the cable, or when the finale is practically just one fake out to the next that seems to go on forever, though the intentional unhinged direction these gags run on does have its enthusiastic charm. A kind of silly playfulness with a clear goal to be simply entertaining despite being made under a production budget that's obviously cheap considering the flick's abundance of terrible costumes and make-up, the rubbery special effects and intentionally atrocious acting. Heck, one could even say that the clunky, shoestring production may as well help build up the movie's insane sense of humor for how hammy the sight gags can get!

Any horror elements still present in Arbor Day can be found through its collection of murders and its generous amount of bloodletting and gore. In execution and tone, though, they're in par with the cartoony nature of the film, even more so when the killer committing them is the type of maniac who thinks a giant papercraft daisy a kid can make in kindergarten counts as a threatening slasher mask, or daydreams about their potential future with the final girl should he decided to turn over a new leaf as a loving husband! (A random emotional ballad in the movie did say that behind every masked killer, there's a regular guy!) Frankly, I find the killer here to be the movie's strongest point as everything from his (very preventable) tragic childhood to his refusal to die from being shot with submachine guns and a fiery house explosion is just one outrageously jokey, tongue-in-cheek stab at a slasher trope and I love every one of them! 

A lost satirical gem that deserves a growing audience, Arbor Day (1990) can be a tad rough in its edges, but its sheer ridiculousness and bonkers bodycounting make it enough to be a worthwhile slasher spoof to scratch one's itch for crazed obscure comedies. Watch it with friends or watch it alone, see it sober or redonkulously drunk, chuckles are guaranteed!

Bodycount:

1 elderly male dies of old age

1 male decapitated by a man in a bear suit

1 female mauled and molested to death by a man in a bear suit

1 male had his gullet disemboweled

1 male killed offscreen

1 male killed offscreen, got a fishing rod through his head

1 female brained with a shovel, guts scooped out 

1 male gets a water hose shoved down his throat and inflated with water, bursts open

1 male decapitated with a weed whacker (Not the way you think, though)

1 male and 1 female squashed with hurled bags of fertilizer

1 boy had his head twisted around

1 male mauled apart by a man in a bear suit

Total: 13

The Hooked Horror of Valentines Day: Lovers Lane (1999)

Lovers Lane (1999) (AKA "I'm Still Waiting For You")

Rating: **1/2

Starring: Diedre Kilgore, Carter Roy and Brian Allemand

When Wes Craven's Scream (1996) revitalized the slasher craze for a whole new generation of horror fans to enjoy back in the late 90s, it's not far off that the straight-to-video market would cash in to the success and have these considerably less-funded and roughly polished productions grace our video players and small screen tubes with sometimes-competent-sometimes-not video titles such as this rare teen holiday horror, Lovers Lane (1999).

Opening "thirteen years ago" with a take on a well-known urban legend, we watch a horny couple at the titular make-out doing all sorts of risqué canoodling before they're suddenly terrorized by a maniac armed with a hook. The kids soon escape from their tormentor to raise the alarm, but not before discovering to their horror that the two occupants of another nearby car have also fallen victim to the hook-handed menace. 

Flash forward to the present, we now learn that the slaughtered couple were involved in a secret affair behind their spouses' backs, with the woman being the sheriff's wife and the man being the husband of the high school's current principal. A suspect was apprehended that night of the hook murders and, over the years, has been under the watchful eye of the town's psychiatrist, who just happens to be the sheriff's half-brother. The sheriff's daughter, Mandy, was also present at the time they found her mother's mangled corpse and has grown up to be the quite geeky kid that everyone picks on, especially her own half-cousin Chloe, the school's Queen bee-type who's dating the principal's son, Michael. And with it being Valentines Day, Chloe's clique plans a little party at lover's lane and Mandy finds herself roped into the gig when one of the friends got desperate for a date.   

Unbeknownst to these gaggle of youths, the hook-handed killer broke out of an asylum earlier that day (apparently he hated prison food?) and has now made his way back to the make-out point to stalk and slaughter some more teens. After seeing one of their own get murdered in front of them, the gang ends up fleeing to an abandoned farmhouse where the killer proceeds to stalk them one by one, all the while the sheriff and the principal, despite awkwardly knowing that their former spouses were having a go at one another, decided to work together to find and stop the maniac after learning about his escape. 

On one end, Lovers Lane (1999) isn't exactly what you call quality cinema as there's a considerable stint on its budget in terms of lighting and special effects. More often you'll find yourself squinting at some dimly lit scenes to make sense of what you're looking at or who's getting hooked to death, plus a good dose of the kill count is made up of offscreen murders in which bodies are simply found slaughtered. A few characters also fail to be as interesting and important as they're intended to be, sometimes coming off as annoying or ridiculously inept to the point you'd wonder if these certain individuals would get the fatal end of the hook and be disappointed when some of them lived to see the morning after the carnage.

Still, I can attest that there's some fun to be found in this late 90s bodycounter as Lovers Lane (1999) simply embraces the clichés of a slasher plot wholeheartedly and treats us with a back-to-basics dead teenager film. Most of the teen casts are a fun watch with their cheesy high school dramatics and hammy dialogues, with one pre-Scary Movie (2000) Anna Farris appearing as one of Chloe's clique girls who spent the entire film wearing a cheerleader outfit and got snuffed out in the gnarliest way one could with a hook. The third act in the farmhouse has some nice thrilling scenes going for it when the killer starts prowling the place and relentlessly pursue their victims. I could also applaud this film for dishing out one of the better twist reveals I've seen in a slasher, especially when the build-up getting there is as convoluted as this one wherein things like incest and revenge gets thrown in.

Yes, Lovers Lane (1999) is far from a rough hidden gem, but it could worth one's time if you're into bad slashers with a big heart to entertain!

Bodycount:

1 male and 1 female found slaughtered with a hook

1 male found murdered

1 male seen murdered with a hook

1 male hacked to death with a hook

1 male found slaughtered with a hook

1 male hacked with a hook

1 female gets a hook to the groin

1 male knifed to death

1 female hit with a car

1 male and 1 female found murdered

1 female had her throat slashed with a hook

1 male repeatedly shot, hook to the back

Total: 14

Just A Couple Of Dummies: The Dummy (1995) and The Dummy (2000) Double Bill Review

From the titular Devil Doll of 1964 to Slappy of R.L. Stine's Goosebumps franchise, ventriloquist dummies have been a minor staple of horror media, tapping into the pediophobic creepiness of the dolls' uncanny valley looks. Entrust this trope to capable hands and we'll get horror cult classics like Magic (1978) and Dead Silence (2007) treating us to a chilling good time. On the other side of the coin, the more clumsy low budget side, we'll unfortunately get messes such as these instead...

The Dummy (1995)

Rating: *

Starring: Lisa Cook, Todd Jason Cook and Sabrina Cook

Directed and starring Todd Jason Cook, who I'm sure a few of you reading this would know as the same guy who brought us underground cult films like Evil Night (1992), Death Metal Zombies (1995) and Zombiefied (2012), this shlock starts with a newlywed couple visiting a gypsy psychic for laughs and insulting her readings. This obviously enrages the woman, so she casts a death curse upon them and calls forth a demonic ventriloquist dummy to end the couple as well as basically anyone they come across. The rest of the story is practically a rinse-repeat cycle of the couple visiting, getting visited or receiving a phone call from friends and relatives, only for those folks to get attacked and slaughtered by the killer dummy while heavy metal plays in the background, up until only the newlyweds are left for the dummy to terrorize.

As one can expect from a shot on video Z-grade flick, The Dummy (1995) has the production quality of an aged moldy peanut with grainy and dull camera work, an uninspired repetitive direction and appalling audio quality. The characters are outrageously hammy and their dialogues are equally dim, unsurprisingly, and the killer dummy itself is practically just a dummy getting wiggled around while kitchenware is taped or glued on their hands. I will say at least that the hokey gore effects have a little sense of cheesy charm to them, coming fact that there's some effort made to make them as gruesome as possible, but there's only so much random people talking and doing crap on low budget standard that I could take before a boring movie absolutely shoots down any interest I have with it. 

If anything, the whole dreck is more of a collection of kill scenes held together by a very thin and unremarkable excuse of a story, trailing along the creepy killer doll fad that's ineptly and, dare I even say, hilariously executed here. Fans of extremely low-budget do-it-yourself horror flicks may have a fair time enjoying this, but for the rest of us, this one might be a difficult fling to sit through...

Bodycount:

1 male stabbed in the eye with a dagger

1 female repeatedly slashed with a knife, stabbed in the mouth

1 male had his throat cut with a dagger

1 male whipped on the face with a length of chain

1 female stabbed in the gut with a dagger

1 male stabbed in the throat with a dagger

1 male shot on the head

1 male stabbed in the knife (dream)

1 female had her throat cut with a knife (dream)

1 male ran through with a fire poker

1 male stabbed in the back with a knife (dream)

1 female hacked on the neck with a machete 

Total: 12

~~~

The Dummy (2000)

Rating: *1/2

Starring: Keith Singleton, Irina Björklund and Jocelyne Lopez

Saw this one when I was just around a single-digit age and I can clearly say that, after seeing it recently, nostalgia isn't what it used to be with this title.

This little obscurity centers around a ventriloquist named Paul (Keith Singleton, who also happens to be its director, producer and writer!) coming back to his home town and making a career out of his talent at a comedy club after a lengthy 20 year stay at a mental hospital. Things were going as fine as a jittery puppet master could try make it to be, even bringing home a couple of women from the club to sleep with, but it all starts to unravel for the worse when Tommy, his ventriloquist dummy, seemingly comes to life and murders one of his coworkers at the club. The following morning comes and a local snarky entertainment critic bites the big one next with a poisoned blow dart after bashing Paul's performance.

Hearing about these recent deaths, Paul starts to freak out and reaches out to a few people he could trust for help, including a new lady friend who wanted to write a book about people with special conditions and a psychiatrist who treated him back at the ward. It seems this isn't the first time the man had some problems dealing with dead people and he believes all of this has something to do with a few blackouts he have been getting lately, as well as his own foul-mouthed homicidal ventriloquist dummy...

I'll give The Dummy (2000) this; it tries to mold itself as this low budget Hitchcockian stride of hero-antagonists struggling with their dark pasts, a "Jekyll and Hyde" premise coupled with some efforts to deliver genuine suspense and thrills as seen in some scenes such as Paul trying to dispose the body of one of Tommy's victims, and too the few kills that focus more on build-up rather than blood and gore. The whole strive has its potential to be effective but it mostly fails due to the fact that plentiful of the talents involved couldn't act to sell what the movie's offering and the plot itself is just as basic as they could come, very much predictable from the start to finish even with all the red herrings thrown in to try sway us away from figuring things out too soon. You could say it overstayed its implications to what's going on in our lead's head to the point that its little reveal in the end comes to no surprise, in turn leading to a letdown of a finale regardless of whether you see this film as a straight-to-video psychological thriller or a killer doll slasher flick.

It's cinematography is shaky at its worse, lowered down further in quality thanks to this movie's inept editing and uninspired lighting. The only thing The Dummy (2000) would probably be best remembered for is its long gratuitous sex scene between Singleton and Irina Bjorklund, a Finnish Jussi Award winner in her first American movie role, basically handing this film its obligatory B-grade sleaze. Other than that, this film is a rather overly familiar walk down the psychodrama path paired with slasher film bodycounting and risqué business and, honestly, there isn't much you're missing here. In fact, it can get darn tiring if you don't have the patience for ludicrous bargain bin Hitchcockian thrills but should you find yourself curious about this little mess, a word of warning: Avoid the UK DVD release! They zoomed in the whole thing so much that it cropped heads and credits! The US VHS release does fair a tad better, but it is getting shorter in supply...

Bodycount:

1 female knifed in the gut

1 male knifed in the neck

1 female knifed to death

1 male shot on the neck with a poison blow dart

1 female hacked to death with an axe

1 male ran through with a spear

Total: 6

T'was a Naked Scream Queen Christmas: Santa Claws (1996)

Santa Claws (1996)
Rating: **

Starring: Debbie Rochon, Grant Kramer and John Mowod

While many of us remember John A. Russo as the writer behind Night of The Living Dead (1968)'s screenplay, those skittering about the lower, lower depths of the horror trash bin would also remember him for directing one of the many horror stinkers to exist, Santa Claws (1996).

As a child, Wayne never got over his father's death and hates just about anybody who would try to take his place. So when he finds his mother and uncle canoodling one Christmas night, the boy lost it, picked up his uncle's handgun and emptied it on the two adults.

Flashforward to the present, scream queen Raven Quinn is in the midst of a troubled marriage when she agreed to star in a shlocky softcore horror feature, "Scream Queen Christmas". Her in-laws disapprove of this and her husband is out elsewhere on a photoshoot (and an affair) so no full support on his part, which leads us to the now-adult Wayne who just happens to be her neighbor; secretly, Wayne is Quinn's biggest fan and whenever he's not worshipping her through a creepy shrine decked with her memorabilia (including a life-size bust that he smooches), he's doing his best to feign normalcy and tries anything he can to win her over.

And by anything, I mean apart from being a supportive friend, he's also out killing anybody he deems unworthy of Quinn's attention and love. Like, duh.

Frankly, Santa Claws (1996) doesn't work as a genuine horror effort; it's painfully obvious in its low-budget straight-to-VHS production, treading through a soggy, paper-thin story littered with atrociously bad acting, zero scares and a dry kill count. The pace is bogged down by too many skin scenes featuring characters that aren't particularly likable (or mattered at all considering the writing quality here), so I'm sure as shit thrills won't be a thing in this shlock as well. Still, the badness of it all at least reaches a form of high point as an unintentional comedy and I do find myself laughing at this mess from start to finish; the awkward shots, the inept line delivery, the clumsy murder sequences, there's a sense of corny weirdness to them that I just can't help but grin and chuckle. 

And, yes, if you have to count it, I guess the movie's multitude of eye candy stripteases can be a treat for some people. But if we're just in it to see some tits and ass, then one should know that the outtakes from this movie, along with additional topless footages were actually compiled into a real video titled Scream Queen’s Naked Christmas (1996). From what I heard, it's just as terrible as Santa Claws (1996) but, hey, Boobs Ahoy!

Obviously the worst choice you would make if you're looking for a good, good Christmas-themed slasher, but if you're open for a weirdly goofy and cheap holiday horror trasherpiece, then drink that bourbon and watch away!

Bodycount:

1 male and 1 female shot to death

1 female hacked to death with a garden claw

1 male hacked to death with a garden claw

1 female strangled to death

1 female hacked on the gut with a garden claw, strangled

1 male strangled to death with a choke-hold

1 male hacked on the throat with a garden claw

Total: 8

Robokill Bloodbath: Mikadroid (1991)

Mikadroid (Japan, 1991) (AKA "Mikadoroido", "Mikadroid: Robokill Beneath Discoclub Layla") 

Rating: ***

Starring: Hiroshi Atsumi, Sandayû Dokumamushi and Yoriko Dôguchi

From Japanese film, theater production and distribution company Toho, which many of us would know best as the producer and distributor of kaiju and tokusatsu movies, comes this relatively interesting yet clumsy scifi horror flick about killer cyborgs and mutant soldiers.

Opening in 1945 Japan at the near end of World War II, we see an underground research bunker assigned to create armored super soldiers getting violently shut down under the orders of the Japanese army. When the scientist in charge of the project retaliates and gets shot for his defiance, he spends his last moments setting two test subjects free and activating Mikadroid, the only finished armored cyborg of the project. Allied bombers eventually rain down on Tokyo and the bunker gets destroyed, burying the lab and everyone in it. Years later, a disco club is now built over the bunker's remains, unbeknownst to its patrons that Mikadroid, pretty much still alive and functional, would reactivate one night due to the club's faulty generator and starts massacring anyone that happens to get in its way. 

The history behind Mikadroid (1991) is that it's originally a horror film titled Mikado Zombie, in which an undead WWII soldier rises from his grave to continue fighting the war by pretty much killing anybody on sight. The film was only in talks when Japanese serial child killer Tsutomu Miyazaki was caught and, thanks to the shmuck's massive collection of splatter films, horror movies went through a bit of a witch hunt and production for Mikado Zombie was put to halt. The concept was soon redeveloped with more scifi outings by replacing the zombie with a war android and the resulting product would become one of Toho's lower budget films made for the direct-to-video market.

The first half of Mikadroid practically shows the story's horror origins, with the cyborg returning back to life after decades of being buried, making its way to a disco club's parking garage and killing people left and right in a manner not unlike a maniac in a slasher flick. Teens get stalked and shot down with a submachine gun and/or hacked down with a sword, with one kill going a bit artsy by having a victim repeatedly slashed with a sword until their clothes get sliced away, leaving them bloody and swirling around like a naked ballerina before ending the scene with a darkly comic sight gag. The fact that these slayings are all done by a uniquely designed killer cyborg fittingly resembling a 1950s robot adds a welcome cheesy charm to the carnage, which is fortunately balanced out by the movie's atmospheric visual direction and creepy location choices.

After a while of people getting chopped and gunned down by a manic mechanical man, the film shifts gear into a slightly more action oriented second act once the two freed test subjects, both rendered ageless by the experiment, arrive armed to the teeth to stop Mikadroid after sensing its revival, in turn saving and tagging along a young repairman and a distressed clubgoer. This is where the movie hobbled in its run as while the gunfight between the mutated soldiers and the cyborg do boasts some energetic fun with all the pyrotechnics and the underground ruins set is pretty impressive in its details down to the giant tank machine left to crumble in dust, the pacing here often lacks momentum with some characters either just standing there amidst the gunfight or them spending a good chunk of time wandering around, looking for an escape. It also doesn't help that all of this leads to a lackluster finale that may have gone way better if it didn't went a tad too far on the random twists but, little mercies, it could have done worse.

For a movie made with relatively small budget, special-effects connoisseur-turned-director Tomoo Haraguchi put a lot of good work around the production's monetary restraints, mainly utilizing odd camera work and editing to emphasize the somber yet hammy tone of the film. At most, Mikadroid's serviceable special effects managed by Shinji Higuchi of the Heisei Gamera trilogy make up for most of the film's flaws, treating us with fair highlights of an impressive looking design for the Mikadroid, savage kills and explosive firefights against a killer bot. With the film's short running time of just 73 minutes, the acting is fair and decent for most parts though really isn't much to speak of in terms of character development, a point I'm fine with considering the net result is still a fun little guilty pleasure flick that delivers grue and gunfire. All in all, an underrated yet spiffy scifi horror tailor made for lovers of kitschy fiction.  

Bodycount:

1 male shot, bled to death

1 male shot dead with a submachine gun

3 males killed in bombing

1 male shot dead with a submachine gun

1 male shot dead with a submachine gun

1 female shot with a submachine gun, slashed with a sword

1 female slashed to death with a sword

1 male beaten to death against a water fountain

2 males shot death with a submachine gun

1 male succumbs to injuries from a gun fight

1 male stabbed though with a sword, caught in explosion

1 male destroyed in an explosion

Total: 15

The Sparrows Are Flying Again: The Dark Half (1993)

The Dark Half (1993)

Rating: ***

Starring: Timothy Hutton, Amy Madigan and Michael Rooker

In 1963, aspiring young writer Thad Beaumont finds himself under constant blackouts, headaches and seizures accompanied with, strangely enough, the sound of wild sparrows. As his condition worsens over time, he's soon set up for surgery where the doctors discover, much to their horror and amazement, the source of the boy's pain: a growing teratoma inside his skull, formerly a twin absorbed in utero. 

Decades after the removal of this parasitic mass of eyeball and teeth, Thad grows up to be a creative writing professor, a loving husband to his wife and a proud father of two infant children. It's a good life, though he further make ends meet by writing hyper-violent novels about a “high toned son of a bitch” named Alexis Machine under the pseudonym "George Stark", a dirty secret only his wife and agents know about. So when an opportunistic dink finds out about Thad's private life as a trash novelist and blackmails him for a large sum to keep it his mouth from flapping, the author ponders about and ultimately makes the choice: out himself out as "George Stark" and metaphorically kill off the persona as a publicity stunt, fake tombstone and all.

Something "George Stark" isn't happy about.

No soon after the mock burial, those involved with the stunt starts to get killed off, starting with the photographer who gets bludgeoned to death with his own prosthetic leg and then the blackmailer who is later found de-tongued and de-groined. Investigating the killings is Sheriff Alan Pangborn who suspects Thad as the one responsible for the deaths seeing his fingerprints were found in the scenes, but is unable to completely pin the crimes on the author as Beaumont is able to give solid proof that he's elsewhere during the murders. 

Stranger things are abound, however, when Thad starts to think the killer hunting down his colleagues is none other than "George Stark" himself, describing him down to the mannerism and hairstyle which perfectly fits the eyewitness descriptions of the killer. Has Thad somehow willed the pen name into a murderous existence, now out for revenge for "killing" him off? Or is the author finally succumbing to his darker id?

Reading through most of Stephen King's horror novels, his 1989 outing The Dark Half, which was written in response to the time he himself was outed to be Richard Bachman, a supposed "real" author who wrote darker, more cynical horror novels compared to King's usual gothic, psychological style, is technically the closest to the man penning slasher literature with the book's macabre story of a murderous nom de plume out to torment and kill the people surrounding an author's life. The film adaptation, produced and directed by Night of The Living Dead (1968)'s George A. Romero, playfully maintains the duality of the book's tone, mainly the horrors of the unexplainable and the brutalizing slasher flick cynicism lensed with dark humor, done here with a mostly straight face that's occasionally cheesed from time to time. 

At most, The Dark Half (1993) is pretty well made as a production looking into its sleek visuals and adequate special effects, especially during the finale of the film wherein we get a gruesome death involving birds. Talent-wise, leading actor Timothy Hutton plays both Thad Beaumont and George Stark in a cheeky dual role, though I do find him more memorable as the psychopathic Stark with his Elvis Presley-esque get-up, drawl Mississippi accent and grimly fun lines, a far stronger presence compared to his approach on the Thad Beaumont character who predominantly feels like a walking stereotype of a mild-mannered yet awkward family man. Cult favorite Michael Rooker is also here, doing a swell enough job as the determined Castle Rock sheriff Alan Pangborn, though unlike in the book where he developed a much closer relationship with the Beaumonts, his character feels mostly removed from the plot and acts more like your typical horror trope law enforcer.

If there's any real issues to speak here, it would be The Dark Half (1993)'s problem with its pacing; while there is a good build-up towards and within Stark’s killing spree, the narrative soon falls a bit uneven when it comes to the ongoing investigations into the murders, as well as the last act leading to the eventual confrontation between Beaumont and Stark. It's mostly talks of psuedo-metaphysics regarding manifestations and will, implemented in time with Beaumont sitting it down with a decaying Stark in an attempting to literally write out the other from existence in a scene that feels too talky and drawn out than necessary. Fortunately, the supernatural aspect of this third act is a welcome take (albeit it lacks of solid explanation to how all of this happened to begin with) which I like further when it all ends with an impressively gory and creative demise to note.

On the whole, The Dark Half (1993) is simply an okay movie. A pretty good swing on a story that runs on basic slasher bodycounting and supernatural-lensed pop psychology, doing enough scares and thrills to be at least an agreeable watch despite the flaws. Though I won't mark this as one of the best Stephen King adaptations, nor is it a slasher title worth losing sleep over, it is certainly among the better horror titles out there that you can check out, nothing more, nothing less.

Bodycount:

1 male beaten to death offcamera with his own prosthetic leg

1 male found slaughtered, castrated and his tongue cut out

1 female had her throat cut with a razor

1 male had his head kicked against a building heater

2 males found murdered

1 male had his throat cut with a razor

1 male had his throat cut with a razor

1 male seen murdered

1 male pecked apart by birds

Total: 10

Yuppie vs Hobo: The Vagrant (1992)

The Vagrant (1992)

Rating: ***

Starring: Bill Paxton, Michael Ironside and Marshall Bell

While the remnants of the 80s' Golden Age slashers do their darnest to breathe life unto their brand of cinematic carnage by end of its decade, the early 90s experimented with what can be done with the hack-and-slash formula and brought out a recognizable amount of horror thrillers that used an element or two from the stabby horror sub-genre. Yuppie horror (Or Yuppie-In-Peril as some would call it) is a fine example of a slasher aftershock that focuses on the comfortable existence of young urban professionals getting disrupted by often violent outside forces, from malicious family members and disgruntled officers to, well, as suggested by this film, random vagrants whose threat may or may not exists. 

Successful Arizona businessman Graham Krackowski (Bill Paxton) just wanted a quaint and tidy house to nests his perfect little life of paperwork, salaries and finances. He finds one eventually in the suburbs and it was quite a charming abode until, much to his horror, Graham discovers a very dirty vagrant dawdling in his new property. Unsettled but trying to be rational, he dismisses the bum as nothing more than a nuisance, but that proves to be easier said than done when the vagrant seemingly begins to stalk him both in real life and in his nightmares.

Growing paranoid from the homeless man's presence, Graham goes to the extreme to make his house safe from his perceived intruder, going as far as calling the cops multiple times on the man and even walling up his place with an elaborate, military-style security system. But things are about to hunker down for the worse when a string of suspicious murders starts happening around town and all the leads (as in, dismembered body parts) trail back to our growingly schizoid businessman. Has Graham completely lost it, walking and killing in his sleep? Or is there something else far more vile responsible for the gruesome bodycount?

One on end, The Vagrant (1992) is this cheeky satire on yuppie lifestyle doubling as a jab at prejudice mindset as the first third of the story appears to be working on the idea that Graham is an oblivious douche who couldn't wrap around his brain as to why no one would take his issue with the homeless man seriously, granted that said homeless man hasn't done anything overly vindictive despite his very dirty and manic appearance. The increasingly distressed approach Graham goes in order to resolve his problem is mostly played for laughs at how ridiculous they're getting, its direction oozing with surrealism and a good pinch of black humor, plus it kinda helps that our lead's pathetic, ass-kissing nature is played charmingly well by Bill Paxton, keeping his character from being too unlikable albeit still a one-note hack.

Once the bodycount starts, The Vagrant (1992) kinda goes all over with the strangeness as it shifts focus on victimizing Graham while still playing around the idea that he may not be, or is at least no longer right on the head. There are times where this works, with the added intrigue giving more substance to the story and it barely hinders the comedic satire of court dramas, popular psychology and media sensationalism around these parts, though there are moments where the resulting developments felt too random to vibe with the movie's sudden curveballs and do nothing more than be a hurdle on the pacing. (i.e. Graham's transition into a trailer park supervisor) A good bulk of the killings are also done offscreen, later to be revealed as bloody body parts in a probable ploy on the ambiguousness of the perpetrator, so those hoping to see a massacre may want to keep an open mind as the film aims for more creep factor and gooey absurdity than carnal violence for its kills. 

It all leads to a finale that certainly fits the slasher bill and the overall growing weirdness, complete with gnarly last minute deaths and a far-fetched explanation to everything that would either make you groan or just stare blankly because, of course, that's the explanation they're going with. By the end of it, The Vagrant (1992) is a cult classic that earned its reputation for how bizarre it is, unsteadily teetering between being smart and outrageous. It definitely has a good set of talents to keep the performance watchable courtesy of Paxton in his lead role and Michael Ironside as a bumbling, trigger-happy detective, as well as a production value showing enough budget was used to keep the movie competent, but the story undoubtedly could've used a lot of tweaking and maybe a better understanding on which satire to stick with to maintain a consistent sense of humor. A fun little timewaster and that's pretty much the gist of this movie.

Bodycount:

1 elderly female seen murdered, fingers cut off

1 female found dismembered inside a fridge

1 elderly female suffers a heart seizure

1 dog found murdered with a meat cleaver

1 male dies from shock (?)

1 male impaled with a chair

1 male repeatedly shot, last seen dying from his wounds

Total: 7 (?)