Tag Archives: L.A. Morse

Trash Or Terror Tuesday: Movie House Massacre / Blood Theatre (1984)

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It’s time for #TrashOrTerrorTuesday

…when I examine a film that’s been languishing in my personal library to determine if it is #Trash or #Terror

– or more importantly, if it deserves to stay in my collection.

And so, out from the dusty shelves of #VHS tapes comes…

The VHS box for Movie House Massacre / Blood Theatre (1984)Movie House Massacre / Blood Theatre (1984) by #RickSloane

w/#MaryWoronov

An old movie house plagued with a history of unexplained tragedies is reopened with bloody history repeating itself.

“When the movie starts … the terror begins!”

#Horror #Slasher
#TrashOrTerrorTuesday

 

Movie House Massacre (1984) got panned in every movie review book I read back in the days before the internet rendered those books somewhat obsolete (although I still love to flip through them and read the opinions of reviewers I trust). As a result, I avoided renting this one for a number of years – but when I found a cheap VHS copy for sale in a bargain bin, I simply couldn’t resist buying it. For one thing, it had Mary Woronov in it, and I’ve been a fan of hers since first seeing Eating Raoul (1982). For another thing, I believed it to a be a slasher film, and I’ve always thought that slasher films are kind of like pizza: even when they’re bad, they’re still pretty good.

Of course, the older I get, the more I prefer good pizza to bad pizza – and yes, there is such a thing as bad pizza that really isn’t good at all. More to the point, watching Movie House Massacre for the first time in decades has to led me to question whether or not it is in fact a slasher film. It seems to be more of a weird supernatural story. There are some slasher-like killings, but not enough to sustain it – and most of them happen in the very final moments of the film. The first two thirds of the story seems more like a bad attempt at comedy. Mary Woronov is the best thing in this film, and she did make me laugh a couple of times, but she really doesn’t have enough to do (just like Linda Blair in last week’s #trash-fest).  

So what’s the verdict?

Movie House Massacre / Blood Theatre (1984) is #Trash. It’s certainly not scary – and that would be perfectly okay if it was funny, but it only manages an occasional laugh or smile. Mary Woronov completists might want to see it, but… I enjoyed it much more the first time I watched it, after my expectations had been sufficiently lowered by all of the bad reviews I had read. Perhaps if I am negative enough here, I will give other people the same opportunity to be pleasantly surprised by it. So with that in mind…

Don’t watch this movie. It’s a “grindingly bad slasher” — James O’Neill, Terror On Tape. Not only that, it’s “too sophomoronic and leadenly unfunny to work.” — L.A. Morse, Video Trash & Treasures. If that isn’t enough to dissuade you, it currently rates a 2.9 on the IMDb. This movie is bad pizza bad. Don’t waste your hunger on it, when there’s much better bad pizza to be had.

Friday Night At The Home Drive-In: Attack of the Robots / Cartes sur table (1966)

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I became interested in Jess Franco while studying film at university. That may be a sentence that’s never been written before. Let me explain… I did not study Jess Franco, or his films, at university.  I’m quite sure that none of my professors would have considered Jess Franco’s films to be worthy of study. They may have been wrong about that, but that’s beside the point. Franco was not taught alongside Fellini, Truffaut, Antonioni, and Scorsese. However, I did write a major essay for one of my classes that focussed on the Women In Prison genre – not exactly a typical FIlm Studies topic, either, but that’s what attracted me to it – and that’s how I became aware of Jess Franco and his strange oeuvre.

The story of my relationship with the Women In Prison genre is one I will have to save for another day. Suffice it to say that I randomly rented a Jess Franco movie called Hellhole Women (1981), and then later read about it in what would become one of my favourite books, Video Trash & Treasures Volume II by L.A. Morse. It was, in fact, part of a mini section called Jess’s Jungle Frolics. The overarching chapter was called HOT CAGES, NAKED CHAINS: A Cell Block of Women Behind Bars. One of my fellow film students, and a connoisseur of cinematic trash, had recommended that I buy the book and read this chapter when he found out my major essay was about the WIP genre.

In the mini-section, Morse first reviews Women In Cell Bloc 9 (1978), noting that it contains “what is probably the only all nude jailbreak on film”. Then, in his review of Hellhole Women, Morse says:

“While it must have been a challenge to top the all nude jailbreak, old Jess was not daunted, and here provides us with an all topless prison camp — inmates, guards, and dragon-lady warden included.”

When my friend Ian and I first watched Hellhole Women, we recognized it as a crazy, over-the-top sleaze fest that had a lot of camp humour value. We did not know anything about the makers of the film. Thanks to L.A. Morse, I now knew that the genius behind it was Jess Franco, and that he had made other must see cinematic atrocities. In fact, Morse would comment throughout the book every time that Jess Franco was involved in a movie. Admittedly, the comments were most often negative. Morse was not a fan of Franco. He would say things like “old Jess has reached the point where he can effortlessly make nudity and violence seem boring.” But I was intrigued. And the worse the review, the more I wanted to see the movie. I started to rent, and later buy, any movie that I came across that had the name Jess Franco on it (or Jesús Franco as he is sometimes called). Some of them were, by any normal means of evaluation, bad – but there was always something interesting about them. And some of them were downright delightful. One of my favourite surprise discoveries was Kiss Me Monster (1969).

Those were the days of VHS and no internet, so unearthing a rare Franco film did not happen very often. He made over 200 hundred movies in his lifetime, and to this day I still haven’t seen anywhere near all of them. With the right online connections, it’s not as hard to locate the movies now – but it’s also not as special. I haven’t made it a mission to relentlessly download or stream every title in his filmography. I’m old school, so I still get excited when I find a physical copy of one of his movies – and if it’s a reasonable enough deal, I buy it. Of course, if I’m really lucky, someone will give me a nice edition of one of his films on DVD or Blu-ray for my birthday (or some other event for which gifts are appropriate). This is how I came to be the owner of a nice, shiny new Blu-ray of Attack of the Robots AKA Cartes sur table (1966).

This is an early Jess Franco movie, and as such, does not contain the kind of over-the-top sleaze that a movie like Hellhole Women does. However, it does contain a lot of the elements that Franco would remain obsessed with over the course of his 60 (!) year career as a filmmaker. There are scenes in nightclubs, featuring sexy dancers. There are women in chains. Franco appears in the film, as he often did. And this is the first of seven films that Franco made about a private detective character named Al Pereira. In this one, Pereira is played by Eddie Constantine, who was famous for playing a hard-hitting private detective named Lemmy Caution in a series of films. His portrayal of Al Pereira in Attack of the Robots could be seen as more comedic send up of his image from the Lemmy Caution films. Or maybe it was just simple exploitation of a well known actor in a similar role. Who knows? Whatever the case, Constantine is great in this movie – and it’s a shame that it’s the only time he ever got to play Al Pereira. The next time Pereira was seen, he was played by Howard Vernon in Les ebranlées in 1972. 

Attack of the Robots is a delightfully fun movie. It’s a post James Bond spy spoof that contains elements of science fiction, as a mad scientist finds a way to essentially turn people into robots if they have Type O blood. It’s beautifully shot and feels like a lush production compared to some of Franco’s later films. Sure, it’s light on sleaze and violence, but it’s played for laughs and for the most part it gets them. If you’re in the mood for  something light and fun, with the kind of stylistic flourishes that only a filmmaker like Jess Franco could provide, Attack of the Robots might just be the kind of #NotQuiteClassicCinema that you’re looking for. It’s not too far removed from another Franco film I wrote about a while back, Dr. Orloff’s Monster AKA The Mistresses of Dr. Jekyll (1964). That one is more of a monster movie, and less of a comedy, but it’s also an early, more restrained version of Franco. Each of them, in their own way, make for a mighty fine #FridayNightAtTheHomeDriveIn.

Friday Night At The Home Drive-In: New Year’s Evil (1980)

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Back in the 1990s, I appeared on a radio show to promote one of the low budget film projects that I was working on at that time. The host asked me if I had seen any good movies lately. For some reason, this question threw me. It’s always a little tricky to think of a good answer to an unexpected question when you’re put on the spot during a live interview. However, I watch at least one movie a day, so surely it should have been easy for me to rattle off a list of seven or ten titles just from the past week. But perhaps it was the inclusion of the word “good” that made me hesitate, and see nothing but visions of dust and tumbleweeds where the memory of my recently watched pile of movies should have been.

The last thing anyone wants on the radio is dead air, so I immediately started to answer the question with some sort of awkward stammering about how it all depended upon a person’s definition of “good”. Thankfully, as I was speaking, one recently watched movie came back to me.

“I just saw New Year’s Evil,” I told him.

The host looked puzzled. “New Year’s Evil…?”

“It’s not a recent movie,” I explained. “It’s an old slasher film from the ’80s. Made after Halloween, so they named it after a holiday – or at least a day in the calendar. Like Friday the 13th or My Bloody Valentine.”

“I haven’t seen it,” the host admitted, “but I know which movie you’re talking about.” He was roughly my age, and a huge fan of ’80s movies, so it wasn’t surprising that he would have heard of it.

“As you know, I’m a fan of slasher films,” I continued, “but I had never seen this one either. Maybe because the books all said it was bad.”

“And was it?” he asked me.

“I actually liked it,” I said, and I’m not sure which one of us was more surprised by that answer.

Truth be told, my expectations for New Year’s Evil (1980) had been pretty low. My most trusted review book, Terror On Tape by James O’Neill, gave the movie one and a half stars and called it “A less than great throwback to those bygone days when no holiday was safe from the makers of mad slasher movies… With bad music, little blood, and a predictable twist ending…” In Video Trash and Treasures, L.A. Morse says “I think there are more music/dance interludes than bodies in this one, which probably says it all…”. I actively avoided watching this movie for the better part of two decades. It was only when I found an old VHS tape in a bargain bin that I decided it was time to finally see what it was all about.

I certainly did not expect to discuss this movie on a live radio show about FIlm.

It was true that I had enjoyed New Year’s Evil much more than I had expected to – perhaps largely due to the very low expectations that I had developed over the years. Most reviewers criticized the film for it’s extensive use of rock band performance footage – and often called the music bad. I actually enjoyed that aspect of the film. It’s about a big New Years Eve rock show. They call it a “punk rock” show, but the music seems to be more straight up hard rock or classic rock. We do see bands performing several times throughout the movie.

I have a particular fondness for movies about rock bands. This Is Spinal Tap (1984) is a favourite of mine from way back – and it is, in way, about “bad music”, although my friends and I all bought the soundtrack and loved it. I am also a huge fan of the heavy metal horror films like Rock ‘n’ Roll Nightmare (1987), Black Roses (1988) and Rocktober Blood (1984). New Year’s Evil is not really like those movies. It’s not a story about the band(s), or in which the members of the bands are characters. In fact, the bands in New Year’s Evil are actually real bands. This makes it, in some ways, closer to movies like The Prowler (1981) which features a band performing on stage. But New Year’s Evil features so much music – and a flamboyant rockstar-like celebrity host played by Roz Kelly (who some might remember as Pinky Tuscadero on Happy Days (1974-84)) – that it takes on a bit of that rock band horror movie feel. And call me crazy, but I like the music featured in the film – you can hear the theme song by Shadow on YouTube.

So, I wasn’t lying to the radio host when I said that I had liked New Year’s Evil, but I think it was a fairly mild like after that first viewing. Over the years, however, I started to watch New Year’s Evil on New Years Eve (go figure), and I found my appreciation of the film growing stronger with each viewing. Kind of like a song or album that you hear once and think is okay, but after you hear it a few more times you start to really get into it. Those are some of favourite songs/albums. After wearing out my VHS tape, I upgraded to the Scream Factory Blu-ray and I couldn’t be happier. The film has never looked (and sounded) better, and it’s nice to have a few extras to enhance the experience.

One more rock and roll reason to love New Year’s Evil (at least for me), is the fact that Nurse Robbie, whom our psychopathic killer encounters at a mental institution, is played by Jennie Franks. She has a few acting credits over a ten year period, and was apparently also a photographer and playwright. I had never noticed this before, but she also has quite a few songwriting credits on the IMDb – and they are all for one song: Aqualung by Jethro Tull. Those who know me, know that I am a huge fan of Jethro Tull, and Aqualung is one of my all time favourite albums, and songs. When I saw Jennie Franks’ soundtrack credits on the IMDb, my brain couldn’t quite comprehend them – until I remembered that Aqualung is one of the only songs in Jethro Tull’s vast catalogue that wasn’t written solely by Ian Anderson. And I had noticed, years ago, that the co-writer of Aqualung was a woman… Jennie Anderson, in fact; Ian’s first wife. Now I discover, much to my surprise, that Jennie Franks, the actress who plays the nurse who (SPOILER ALERT) gets murdered in New Year’s Evil, used to be called Jennie Anderson, and is, in fact, the very same Jennie Anderson who co-wrote one of my all time favourite songs!

What are the odds of that?

I actually always liked Jennie Franks’ portrayal of Nurse Robbie in this movie, but I had no idea who she was until this year. I suspect that all future viewings of New Year’s Evil will only be enhanced by this exciting new discovery…

Director Emmett Alston only made eight films during his relatively brief career, and by the looks of them they might all be #NotQuiteClassicCinema of one type of another. Alston seemed to be particularly partial to ninjas, having made three films about them. A year before  New Year’s Evil was released, Alston made his directorial debut with something called Three-Way Weekend (1979). It’s described on the IMDb as “Two bisexual girls go camping in the woods and are followed around by a perverted guy in a gorilla mask and a man in uniform with a whip who thinks everyone’s a communist…”. If ever a film heralded the arrival of a cinematic genius it’s got to be this one. Needless to say, I’m putting it on my must-find-a-copy-and-watch list.

 

 

For me, New Year’s Evil (1980) will always be a welcome addition to any #FridayNightAtTheHomeDriveIn – especially if that Friday also happens to be New Years Eve, or New Year’s Day. And looking at my new 2021 calendar, I think I know what I’ll be doing next December 31…

Friday Night At The Home Drive-In: Yor, the Hunter from the Future (1983)

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I remember really wanting to see Conan the Barbarian (1982) when it first came out, but it was rated A.P.G. – which meant that I couldn’t go unless an adult (presumably a parent) accompanied me. Somehow I talked my Dad into it, and he declared it to be the worst movie he’d ever seen. A distinction that may have changed when I convinced him to take me to Friday the 13th Part III (1982), but that’s another story.

Conan… may have been the first of many movies of it’s type that I watched over the next few years. Having a VCR helped greatly with this, as I don’t think I could have convinced my Dad to take me to any more movies like Conan… Thankfully the video store clerks never seemed to worry about how old you were when they took your money and allowed you to rent R-rated films on VHS and Beta. 

When I refer to movies of the same type as Conan…, I’m actually talking about a few different genres. There were the fantasy films, with swords and sorcerers – like The Sword and the Sorcerer (1982), Conan the Barbarian, The Warrior and the Sorceress (1984) and Deathstalker (1983), 

There were also the post apocalyptic variants like She (1984), Phoenix the Warrior (1988) and Warriors of the Apocalypse (1985). Movies like Land of Doom (1986) and 2020 Texas Gladiators (1983) weren’t far off in their own way, but
the characters tend to use guns instead of swords.

Then there were the prehistoric fantasy films, like Quest for Fire (1981), Ironmaster (1983) and The Clan of the Cave Bear (1986), I suppose. 

Yor, the Hunter from the Future (1983) is a movie that almost defies description, but it’s kind of a combination of all three of the above genres. I did not see it back in the ’80s, when I was renting strange fantasy and post apocalyptic movies on a regular basis. I remember Yor… hitting the theatres back in the day – and it wasn’t even R-rated, so my friends and I COULD have gone to see it. But the reviews were pretty bad, and the poster didn’t inspire confidence in me at the time, so I guess just passed it by. And I continued to walk past it in the video stores for the rest of the decade. 

When I was at university in the ’90s, I would often come home late at night, sit down in front of the TV and watch whatever movie happened to come on at midnight. I had a strange schedule one year, and all of my classes were on Tuesdays and Thursdays. This meant I had a lot of days off, which was great, but it also meant that I had very long days twice a week. Classes started at 8:00 AM, which was a couple of hours before I generally ever liked to be awake. And I needed to leave about an hour early if I expected to catch a bus and make it all the way out there in time. Needless to say, watching a midnight movie the night before was not a good way to ensure that I would stay awake and alert all day.

It seems impossible to me now, but I believe that on one particular night, I finished watching whatever midnight movie had been on and was about to head up to bed when a second movie started. It was Yor, the Hunter from the Future, and I had still never seen it. I knew that there was no way I could stay up and watch it. Not when I needed to be up before 7:00 AM. I was already going to get less that five hours of sleep. I couldn’t cut that down the three. No way. 

Yor… caught my attention immediately. It was impossible to look away. It was jaw droppingly, mind-blowingly bad – in the best way possible! I knew it had been panned back the day, and I expected it to be bad, but this was something else. It was a celluloid miracle. I was majoring in film studies at the time, so I was used to watching and analyzing films (sometimes on three or four hours of sleep), and I admit that sometimes I would nod off while watching a certified masterpiece. But this ridiculous, over the top, indescribable thing that was flickering on my TV screen had me completely mesmerized. Every time I  thought I thought I would be be able to turn off the TV and walk away SOMETHING ELSE would happen that was even more ridiculous than the last thing – and I would keep watching! What was wrong with me? I had to get up in four hours. I needed to stop!

Just in case you doubt my first experience of Yor…, and even I have trouble believing it when I think back on it, here is what L.A. Morse had to say in Video Trash & Treasures: 

“The first half of this is so vigorously inane and astonishingly cheap and shoddy that it’s a complete hoot, with technical incompetence combining with utter brainlessness to produce as shabby a spectacle as is ever likely to pass in front of your glazed eyes.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself. And the first half is exactly how much I sat through before I forced myself to turn it off and have a brief nap before classes started in the morning.

When I saw my friend Ian in class the next day, he said “You’re not going to believe this movie I started watching on TV last night…”

It was Yor… and he had had the exact same experience as me.

We were both film students who loved Martin Scorcese, Charlie Chaplin, and classics like His Girl Friday (1940) and The Bicycle Thieves (1948). But we had found a new cinema god, and his name was Yor.

For reasons I can’t explain, I did not watch Yor…  again until last #FridayNightAtTheHomeDriveIn. I always intended to, but somehow it never happened. Perhaps a part of me knew that I could never have that same experience again. Now that I knew what to expect, it couldn’t catch me off guard and make my jaw hit the floor. Perhaps more importantly, I’ve watched a lot of bad movies in the intervening years. A LOT of bad movies. And probably many that were way worse than my old friend Yor… It’s possible that he would pale in comparison to my memory of him, and maybe I didn’t want that to happen. But you can only go so many years without knowing how a story ends. So, I finally invited Yor…  back into my living room.

Did it live up to my memory? Not exactly. I expected it to be shoddier and more ridiculous. But the good news is that I really enjoyed it. It had a charm and an energy that only a campy bad movie can have. And in some ways, it actually looks more lush than a lot of the no budget crap that has been produced in the past ten years. This was a movie that played theatres, after all. And it had practical effects that I find way more pleasing to the eyes than the bad CGI that has plagued modern genre films. It’s fast paced, the characters are likeable, and it’s just plain fun. It’s a #NotQuiteClassicCinema masterpiece that I will without a doubt be watching again in the future – and I won’t wait twenty plus years to do it.

Friday night at the home drive-in: Dr. Orloff’s Monster AKA The Mistresses of Dr. Jekyll (1964)

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Jess Franco directed over 200 movies in his lifetime. Most of them are considered to be bad by mainstream critics. I first took an interest in him when reading bad reviews of his movies in Video Trash and Treasures by L.A. Morse. Continue reading →