Tag Archives: drive-in

Friday Night At The Home Drive-In: Drive in Massacre (1976)

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The first time I saw Drive in Massacre (1976), I hated it. I had seen the VHS box on the shelves of my local video store, and it had been calling to me to rent it for quite some time. I loved slasher films, and I loved old fashioned gore films (hello Herschell Gordon Lewis), so this film seemed likely to be something that I might enjoy. However…

It was very short, according to the running time on the box, which may have been one reason that I hesitated and passed it over a few times. I’ve always liked to feel like I’m getting a good deal. A two hour movie would cost the same to rent as a 90 minute movie. Same with a three hour movie, or a two movie set (which was rare, but it happened occasionally). Drive in Massacre was only 78 minutes (it was actually less than that, but I can’t remember how much less). Why would I pay the same amount of money to rent a 78 minute movie when I could have so much more?

The answer eventually became “because I want to see this one.” So, one night, when it was late and I was tired, I decided that a 78 minute movie might be just about right.

VHS tape for Drive in Massacre (1976)I say that it was actually less than 78 minutes. That’s because 78 minutes is the running time of the uncut version of Drive in Massacre. The VHS tape that I rented turned out to be a censored version of the movie. There was no gore whatsoever. And if you’ve ever seen Drive in Massacre, you know that aside from the gore there isn’t too much to recommend it. At least not to a young, unsophisticated viewer who has yet to develop a taste for the truly trashtastic limits of Not Quite Classic Cinema.

All I can recall about that edited cut of Drive in Massacre is that is was boring. Nothing happened (on screen). And it was ridiculously short, which offended me on principle in those days, but in this case might have been a welcome mercy. I was so angry that I had wasted $1.99 and my time on this movie that I actually wrote a message on the back on the box before returning it to the store: “Very bad – don’t rent,” or something very close to that. This was the only time that I ever dared to do something like that. I’m not sure if the store ever noticed, or tried to erase it, but they never asked me about it. Maybe they knew that tape deserved it.

Some years later, I bought a cheapo DVD set called Drive-In Classics, and was intrigued (and perhaps a bit disturbed) to see that Drive in Massacre was included in the set. I watched it, prepared to be just as bored and annoyed as the first time, but was pleasantly surprised to see that this copy of the movie contained some pretty over-the-top gore. And perhaps for this reason – or perhaps because my expectations had simply been lowered so far that nothing could have been bad enough to meet them – I found the movie much more enjoyable the second time.

Fast forward a lot of years, and I decided that I had to revisit this movie of dubious quality and decide once and for all if Drive in Massacre is a horrible waste of time, or a rare gem of cinematic wonder.

Two cops in Blood Feast (1963)

Two cops in Blood Feast (1963)

The first thing that struck me about Drive in Massacre is that it bears some resemblance to the films of Herschell Gordon Lewis. Nowhere near as good, of course, but I had to wonder if the filmmakers had perhaps been going for that. Just like in H.G.L.’s Blood Feast (1963), there are a series of gory murders, and two male cops investigate. And by investigate, I mean they do a lot of talking – to each other. This is something that always amused me about Blood Feast. We see a murder, and then we see two cops sitting around the police station talking about it. I’m sure it was due to budgetary concerns, but I always wondered why they didn’t get out there and DO something.

The two cops in Drive in Massacre (1976)

Are these two cops played by the same actor?!

The two cops in Drive in Massacre (1976)

Unbelievably, these actors are not even related.

The cops in Drive in Massacre are played by John F. Goff and Bruce Kimball and I swear to the Godfather of Gore that they look exactly alike! I thought for a minute that they were being played by the same actor! They are both overweight, dark haired, and they could be brothers. If they weren’t together in the same shot, I couldn’t tell which one was which. Hell, I couldn’t tell them apart when they WERE in the same shot. I’m not sure what kind of casting genius was at work here – maybe they both auditioned for the part of the cop, and the director couldn’t decide which one he liked better, so he cast them both. I think more likely they were the biggest names that the producers could convince to be in the movie, so they went with them even though they look a bit too much alike (a bit?!).

My friend Séan and I talked about this kind of casting phenomenon in our discussion of Canadian horror film Rituals (1977). To apply our thoughts to this movie, why not cast one cop with dark hair and one with blond or grey hair? Or one fat cop and one thin cop? Or one tall cop and one short cop? Or one man and one woman? There are endless possibilities that could have made these two characters easier to tell apart.

Having said this, as a connoisseur of the finer things in life (like Not Quite Classic Cinema), I actually LIKED the fact that Drive in Massacre made this strange casting choice. It added to my enjoyment of the movie.

The director, Stu Segall, had a long career in Hollywood. He made a few bad movies  – I mean, Not Quite Classic Cinema classics, like Saddle Tramp Women (1972) — which is featured in Drive in Massacre, by the way. Other titles include Harvey Swings (1970), The Suckers (1972), and C.B. Hustlers (1976). He also made some golden age adult movies like Teenage Sex Therapy (1976), Spirit of Seventy Sex (1976), Teeny Buns (1978) and the X-rated classic Insatiable (1980), starring Marilyn Chambers.

As a director, Segall did more porn than non-porn, to be honest. But starting in about the mid-1980s, he produced a whole bunch of respectable TV shows and movies – starting with the classic Hunter (1984-1988). Other shows include Silk Stalkings (1991-1999), Pensacola: Wings of Gold (1997-2000), and 18 Wheels of Justice (2000-2001). His last credit was a show that only lasted for 4 episodes called Saints & Sinners in 2007. What an amazing career!

Drive in Massacre (1976) is #NotQuiteClassicCinema for those with an appreciation for Herschell Gordon Lewis, and a tolerance for sub-par imitations of Herschell Gordon Lewis. At only 78 minutes, with its gore scenes intact, it’s pretty easy to sit through. Without the gore scenes, it might be a bit of an endurance test. But if, like me, you take pleasure from campy details like two cops who look suspiciously alike, then you will find yourself amused throughout the movie. And let’s face it, any movie called Drive in Massacre will always be a welcome sight on a #FridayNightAtTheHomeDriveIn.

Friday Night At The Home Drive-In: Mission: Killfast (1991/shot in ??)

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As I mentioned in a blog post about The Doll Squad (1973), I first found out about Ted V. Mikels in a wonderful book called Incredibly Strange Films, published by RE/Search. His most famous films, it seemed to me, were The Doll Squad, The Astro-Zombies (1968) and The Corpse Grinders (1971). I can’t recall if Mission: Killfast (1991) was talked about in the book, and it was certainly not on my radar at all until I bought the special Blu-ray edition of The Doll Squad released by Vinegar Syndrome. Mission: Killfast was included as a second feature on that disc, and I was excited because I knew absolutely nothing about it.

What I have learned about it, since watching it last Friday, is that Ted V. Mikels shot most of it back in the early 1980s, which makes it primo home drive-In material. There are no hard rules about what qualifies a film as a “drive-in movie”, or “home drive-in movie”, as I like to say. Basically, the “home drive in” is the home video experience that occurred in the 1980s. People used to go to the drive-in to see marathons of horror and cheap exploitation films. Thanks to VCRs, people could stay home and watch the same kind of films all night long if they had the inclination (and you know I had the inclination).

A typical home drive-in marathon would have included traditional drive-in movies of the past (like The Doll Squad and The Astro-Zombies) but also more current horror films and B-movies (current, as in made in the 1980s), such as Chained Heat (1983) and Hell Night (1981) – yes, Linda Blair was a home drive-in superstar.  So now, when I programme a #FridayNightAtTheHomeDriveIn, I tend to include movies from roughly 1930 to 1989. I have, on occasion, included a movie from the early 1990s, when it is particularly drive-in worthy for some reason. I figured that Mission: Killfast qualified on both counts, having been mostly shot in ’82, and then released in 1991. 

Mostly shot in 1982? I had thought it was entirely shot in 1982, but according to Ted V. Mikels, he actually shot the bulk of it in 1980, then had to finish it in 1989. He even brought back three of the actors, including (I think) the star, Cheng-Wu Yang, or Tiger Yang as he is sometimes known. Luckily, Yang (if he was indeed one of them) and the others looked exactly the same nine years later!

Tiger Yang plays Tiger Yang in this movie. So, much like The Doll Squad may have been the pre-cursor to Charlie’s Angels (1976-81), Mission: Killfast may have been the pre-cursor to shows like Seinfeld (1989–1998), in which the stars play “themselves”. If only Mission: Killfast had been released BEFORE Seinfeld, Ted V. Mikels might have gotten the recognition for being a trailblazer that he truly deserved. Or maybe not.

Tiger Yang had made several films in Hong Kong, so he was undoubtedly the real deal in terms of martial arts mastery. But you wouldn’t necessarily get that impression by watching Mission: Killfast. I actually spent a few years studying the Korean art of Tae Kwon Do when I was a teenager, and I couldn’t help but notice that Tiger Yang’s martial arts school in Mission: Killfast featured the Korean flag. Was he a Tae Kwon Do master? I’m not sure. But it made me feel a certain connection to him, and I could tell that he was genuinely skilled at martial arts.

However, from what I know about Hong Kong movies, they can spend days or even weeks shooting one complex martial arts scene. Knowing what I know about Ted V. Mikels, they were probably lucky to have a few hours to complete the action scenes in Mission: Killfast. So, you can’t really fault Tiger Yang, or any of the actors, for not looking as good as they might have in another production. 

Don’t get me wrong. Slightly inept action sequences are one of the many charms of Mission: Killfast. The phrase “so bad it’s good” can, and has been, applied to this movie. I would suggest that it’s not quite that simple. The action scenes aren’t totally inept, as they might be in a film that features actors who have no martial arts training. I’ve seen much more over-the-top examples of “so bad it’s good” in my time at the home drive-in – but the camp factor is certainly at play here. 

For my taste, it’s the story that makes this film worthy of (re)examination. I would try to summarize it, but that would require a reasonable understanding of it – and after only one viewing of this film, I’m not sure that I can claim to have that. It seems deceptively simple on the surface, but there are a lot of different pieces in play, and I’m not sure how they all fit together. Perhaps it is a symptom of having been shot during two different production periods – nine years apart. Some story threads may have been suddenly dropped, or picked up, depending on the requirements of the current production. Honestly, I’m not sure. But the movie managed to keep my attention, and I was left with the distinct feeling that I needed to watch it again.

It should be noted, by those who may be looking to me for an answer as to whether or not they should watch this movie, that I have a very high tolerance – and in fact an appreciation – for movies that most people would dismiss as “bad”. And therefore, it is difficult for me to give a definitive answer. “I enjoyed it” is often my response. But this is no guarantee than any other normal human being would enjoy it. As I mentioned in my last blog post, I loved Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982) when it first came out, and most of my friends thought I was crazy. Halloween III has recently enjoyed a sort of renaissance, during which it has been re-evaluated and found worthy by many people – which is nice. I don’t think that Mission: Killfast will be experiencing a similar re-evaluation any time soon. But that doesn’t mean it couldn’t be an undiscovered gem for people with just the right taste – and tolerance – for trash.

I noticed that one reviewer of Mission: Killfast said: “It’s a martial arts film made by Ted Mikels…need I say more?!” and then went on to give it a seriously negative review. The basic thrust seemed to be, if it’s made by Ted V. Mikels you know it’s going to be “bad”. This is a fair review, only in the sense that Mission: Killfast IS a Ted V. Mikels film, and if you KNOW what Ted V. Mikels’ films are like, then you have a pretty good idea of what your response to this one will be. I happen to like Ted V. Mikels’ style of cinematic schlock, and I admire his ability to get things done – even after a nine year hiatus. So I enjoyed Mission: Killfast very much. It is undoubtedly #NotQuiteClassicCinema – although some might say nowhere near classic cinema – and I will definitely be programming it again on a future #FridayNightAtTheHomeDriveIn.