DEMONS 2

All right, classic splatter fans--sit down, shut up, and brace yourself as Bava and Argento bring us more eighties survival splatter in DEMONS 2.  If you're already looking askance at this piece and muttering at your monitor: "Hey...wait a second.  Wasn't the end of DEMONS basically an 'end of the world' scenario with people bugging out to the countryside because the cities were jam-packed with cannibalistic, fanged, demonic subhumans hell-bent on murder, mayhem and lunching up the populace?", you're not alone.  Seriously, I thought much the same thing.  And don't worry--there's a rational explanation.

SHADOW PUPPETS

Ever since you were a little kid, you were probably freaked out by what was moving--or what looked like it was moving--in your bedroom at night.  That's the joy of SHADOW PUPPETS, taking the worst of the fear of the unknown and packaging it into movie form.  Not to give too much away, but several people find themselves trapped in an abandoned insane asylum.  They have no idea who they are, where they came from, or what they're doing whereever it is they are. So, when they start gathering together in an attempt to find their way out and recover their lost memories, it's not going to be too much of a surprise that a lot of them will start dying.  And now, they have to not only get out, but also get out alive.

ROB ZOMBIE INTERVIEW

Interesting interview with Rob Zombie, director of the Halloween remake...

MUMMY MANIAC

When I first slipped this into my DVD player, I thought I'd finally gone completely over the edge.  It looked like yet another Ulli Lommel shitheap, with its poor video quality and its heavy dependence on gratuitious violence and gore.  Not to mention the necessity of text crawls to advance the plot--it's standard Lommel to not even bother giving up the plot with things like exposition and character development.  No, you see, these things just get in the way of reasonably attractive young actresses getting strangled and rendered, so why bother?  But no...unless "Max Nikoff" is a psuedonym for "Ulli Lommel"--and frankly I wouldn't be a bit surprised if it were--this is just another godawful shitheap of a movie that has absolutely nothing to do with Ulli Lommel and instead with Nola Roeper and the Hollywood House of Horror.

DEMONS (1985)

Once again, Anchor Bay salvages the darkest depths of 1980s video store fare to recover a classic.  Funny, but they very seldom seem to dredge the turkeys out of the lake, rather sticking to fantastic treasure ships.  And this one will be no different--welcome to Lamberto Bava and Dario Argento's great Italian nightmare, DEMONS.  In a move that displays why the video store is your greatest and safest entertainment value, DEMONS offers a special treat--a free screening of a horror film at the local theatre, the Metropol, courtesy of a guy in a truly freaky metal half-mask.  Those expecting a simple night at the movies couldn't be more wrong, as in short order, people abruptly start turning into insane monstrousities bent on murder and destruction.  Okay, the premise is pretty flimsy, but we're not here for a deep and involved storyline--we're here to watch people try and survive the theatre of horrors! 

SHOCKWAVE

Another Sci-Fi Channel Original Picture comes at our video store shelves via SHOCKWAVE, the story of automated defensive droids gone horribly wrong on a deserted island.  A pack of Navy SEALS is dispatched to shut off the robots, and you almost certainly saw it coming long before you put the DVD in the case that it wasn't going to be easy to do just that.  Never mind that SHOCKWAVE is heavier on the Star Trek alumni than James Doohan's funeral procession, containing Worf, Sulu, and the Emergency Medical Hologram from "Voyager".  Never mind that these super-destructive robots both look and behave, almost verbatim, like the tripods from WAR OF THE WORLDS right down to the heat rays they mount on their fronts. Never mind that the concept of Original Picture in the title Sci-Fi Channel Original Picture means less and less by the movie.  Never mind that the effects in SHOCKWAVE are so monstrously cheesy that they have to resort to lousy CG to take off a human's head, and that somehow, all firearms seem to contain limitless supplies of ammo because I never so much as saw anybody changing a clip on camera.  You know what?  I changed my mind.  Mind it.  Mind ALL of it.  This kind of godawful filmmaking is ruining the video stores.

ABLE EDWARDS

I could start this off with a really convoluted "What do you get when you cross" joke, but frankly, I'd just wind up looking insane. And I have ABLE EDWARDS to blame for that.  Because, you see, ABLE EDWARDS has decided to just completely blow my mind by giving me a retro-science-fiction style version of the Walt Disney story.  See? I already sound nuts.  Imagine what would've happened if I'd gone with the joke.  But anyway, "Able Edwards" basically takes the story of a Disney-esque character born in the late nineteenth century. He grows up, fights in World War One, and eventually gets the idea for Perry Panda, the practical equivalent of Mickey Mouse.  Edwards Studios rises to prominence, and in pretty much every way mirrors the Disney company rise to prominence.

DREAMLAND

There are some movies that let you know very early on what kind of ride you're in for.  Whether it's a whole lot of explosions or a whole lot of dead bodies or a whole lot of laughs, sometimes you just know what you're in for before the whole thing really gets firing up.  DREAMLAND is one such movie.  And what DREAMLAND is letting us in for is the ride of a lifetime -- across the desert.  With a young couple whose primary hobby seems to be squabbling.  After a quick stop at the Little Green Aleinn (sic) for a Beam Me Up Burger and Groom Lake Shake, they get back on the road, and sure enough, all hell breaks loose.

MUSTANG SALLY'S HORROR HOUSE

First, you're not hallucinating.  That name listed first in the credits, Elizabeth "E.G." Daily?  She WAS a Powerpuff Girl.  And that's the start of the uncomfortable fun brought to us by MUSTANG SALLY'S HORROR HOUSE.  Basically, in a move that won't surprise anyone, six twenty-year-old guys decide to go to a whorehouse.  But not just ANY whorehouse -- Mustang Sally's.  Where the girls are just to die for!  And since the movie can be found on the main shelves and not in a back room somewhere, you know that they mean that literally.  From there, we'll get a few killings, some mild cat-and-mouse games, and a couple warmed-over twists.

THE LAST SUPPER

Any time you can look on your shelves and find a movie from Psycho Films, it's really got to give you pause.  Okay, I'm overstating.  THE LAST SUPPER actually comes to us from Saiko Films, which is merely a sound-alike, but still, a pretty nifty one at that.  And what Saiko Films brings our way is a story that should be shockingly derivative--namely, a cannibalistic doctor.  Yes, I know, there's lots of eye-rolling and catcalls that feature dear old Hannibal Lecter at this point but don't let that scare you off.  Yes, it's about a Japanese doctor who turns cannibal.  But this time around, it's a plastic surgeon!  And if you think about it, just for a minute, how he gets started down the road to cannibalism will make so much sense it's unsettling, even if it is pretty disgusting when you get to the end of it.