Cellar Dweller (1988)

1988
Directed by John Carl Buechler
Starring Debrah Farentino, Brian Robbins, Pamela Bellwood, Vince Edwards, Jeffrey Combs and Yvonne De Carlo

It has come to this.  The climax of the Halloween 2017 Empire-a-Thon, and it's a movie that I saw for the first time on some long ago Saturday afternoon on WGN of all places ('memba that?).  Of course, this was before they combined with UPN to form the current kinda-teen-oriented-but-not-really ultra-hip lineup that they sport now and aired mostly syndicated stuff and old movies.  I can't imagine that Cellar Dweller cost more than about 17 bucks to acquire the rights to, so their ineptitude was my gain as a bored 11-year-old.

All these years later, the flick definitely still has its moments.  Of course, this movie was in and out of theaters in roughly seven days and sat pretty much undiscovered until Scream Factory rescued it in 2013.  Kind of for good reason.  Out of all the Empire movies I've seen, this one is probably the one that qualifies as a "slow burn" the most.  It has a nice, long build up to the final 20 minutes or so, at which point the shit hits the fan and it suddenly becomes an insane movie.  Up until then, it's pretty mundane, including a couple details that admittedly had me laughing out loud.  But we'll get to those in due time.  Still, you've got Charles Band producing, you've got John Carl Buechler directing (and those of you who have read this whole series of reviews are definitely familiar with his name by now) and doing the awesome creature effects, and you've got Debrah Farentino playing a character that I'm possibly more attracted to than any female I know in real life (/skeevy).

Once again, we get one of those classic Empire prologues that probably goes on for a lot longer than it should.  But we have to pad out that 75-minute running time, baby.  This one is a real doozy, as comic book artist Colin Childress is busy at work creating his most horrifying creation to date.  The guy is meant to be an EC Comics-esque horrormeister, and since he's played by Jeffrey Combs you know that we're about to see some serious shit.  He completes his drawing of a huge, furry creature complete with the slightly cliche upside-down pentagram symbol on his chest killing a beautiful woman, and said scene soon plays out immediately behind him before Childress decides to destroy his creation by burning his own drawing, an act that also kills himself in the process because...reasons.  I don't know why.  But the movie has my attention.

Warp forward thirty years to the present day of 1988 after an amazing credits sequence featuring a whole bunch of horror comic art.  Meet your main character, Whitney Taylor, played by the aforementioned Debrah Farentino.  Now, I could look her up on IMDB to see what else she has been in, but the only other thing that I've seen her in is the 1993 thriller Malice...and good lord, one of her scenes in that movie got me through some lonely nights.  Man, this review is definitely turning out much more lascivious than anticipated.  Here, she's years younger, pluckier...and obsessed with the work of Colin Childress and horror comics in general.  I think I might be in love.  Even better, this means that we are introduced to the setting of this film.  Boy, it's something else.

See, Whitney is arriving at a COLLEGE.  Said college is located in what looks like a 19th century English cottage in the middle of f**king nowhere, and inside, it's essentially a six-room apartment complex lorded over by the standoffish Mrs. Briggs (Yvonne De Carlo).  If college was like this one, I might just go back.  Of course, it's totally unbelievable, but it doesn't matter when you've got denizens like the one this one has.  In addition to Whitney, there's also a dude who makes abstract finger paintings (seriously), a performance artist who does some truly unique stuff involving stabbing balloons and dolls (seriously), and some older guy who is some kind of actor and part-time private detective (seriously).  Oh, and the bitchy girl who once stole a job from Whitney, but she doesn't matter too much.  Three guesses as to who's the first one to die.

Well, Whitney eventually finds her way to the same cellar where Colin made all of his horror comic masterpieces.  She sets up a pretty sweet studio down there with some help from finger painting guy (for those keeping score, his name is Philip, and he's played by Brian Robbins, one of cinema's truly great "that guy" actors and a man who eventually wound up having a pretty respectable directing career).  Taking a cue from the Necronomincon-esque book that Colin left behind, she starts making drawings.  The creature comes back to life, and since we're already something like 45 minutes into the movie by this point, it's time for people to start dying.  Once it happens, we get some pretty damn cool stuff.

I'm not going to mince words.  There are portions of Cellar Dweller that are terminally slow.  In particular, a lot of the stuff with the bitchy girl and the private detective guy are moments that you'll probably spend desperately trying to think of other stuff to do.  Like, deep clean your refrigerator or dust off your ceiling.  That's the kind of stuff we're talking about here.  I should also report that after watching a whole bunch of Empire movies in a row, this one had a little bit of a "more of the same" feel.  Group of people all together in a small area, established past threat, slow build, occasional kill bits.  It was a go-to plot for a small production company putting together short movies on small budgets, but I found myself wondering during this movie if this was really the only thing they could think of.

Fortunately, there's a lot that this film has going for it.  You've probably heard me say it to the point of delirium in all of my reviews of Empire and Full Moon movies, but the tone of these films really can't be beat.  Yeah, they're dumb.  But they're dumb in such an honest way, completely free of pretense that you can't help but be caught in the infectious sense of fun.  And then there's all of the stuff you get from John Carl Buechler.  Every Empire regular director had their own trademark.  Stuart Gordon was known for pure insanity.  David Schmoeller did the more serious, heady movies.  Ted Nicolaou had an awesome handle on Gothic atmosphere.  And Buechler?  His forte is amazing hand-made special effects, and you get plenty of them here.  The scenes where the creature stalks, kills and eats (yes, eats) his victims aren't exactly scary, but they're fun to look at.  It all results in a final act that gives us some pretty kickass awesome stuff.  Trust me, guys, stick this one out.  Just like every Empire movie, it's worth watching until the very end, no matter how tepid some of the stuff leading up to it might be.

With that, the Halloween Empire-a-Thon is complete and I can resume my regular life.  This film isn't exactly a classic, but if you can find the double Blu-Ray with this and Catacombs, it's well worth a buy.  *** out of ****.

Catacombs (1988)

1988
Directed by David Schmoeller
Starring Tim Van Patten, Ian Abercrombie, Jeremy West and Laura Schaefer

We're up to movie #2 in this marathon run that I had never seen before, and so far we're definitely batting a thousand on the quality ratio of said films.  Catacombs is another rarity in the Empire catalogue in that it has no real camp value.  It's played completely straight and the death scenes are actually meant to be scary.  The same could also be said for Crawlspace, the OTHER movie that was entirely new to me when I watched it in preparation for reviewing it.  Both movies were also directed by David Schmoeller, and I'm mystified why this guy never got more of a look in Hollywood, because his talents are amazing.

I knew Schmoeller's name from a few different things before taking in this box set.  Mostly for the original Puppet Master and a bunch of episodes of Silk Stalkings (note: I may or may not have binge-watched this show on Hulu a few months back).  Now, he might be #1 on my list of underrated horror directors.  Before Blade and the rest of those guys came along, Schmoeller seemed to be Charles Band's go-to "serious movie" director, and I've gotta hand it to him because both Crawlspace and this flick did a number on me for vastly different reasons.  We'll be getting to them in due time, trust me.  The last thing that I should mention in this particular go-round of introductory stuff designed to make me sound like an actual writer is that, despite being damn near 30 years old, this movie still looks GREAT.  Nothing really dates it, with the possible exception of the main girl's choice of slacks.  Time to dive into the caves (/horrible segue)...

First things first: you know how I've mentioned the Rule of Ten when it comes to writing screenplays?  Like, to the point that you're probably all sick of hearing it?  Well, this film has a first ten minutes that's quite simply something else.  We start off in in a 17th century Italian monastery where a man has been possessed by a demon, signified by his freaky-deaky deathly white face.  He's chained up in the catacombs of said monastery, and the residing monks and church officials soon appear to perform an exorcism.  It fails, somewhat, but they manage to brick the demon up inside a wall with a holy seal.  It should also be noted that this follows the demon psychically using his mystic powers to kill the dick out of a few of his attackers.  Yeah, attention had.

Flash forward to the present day of 1988, where the monastery is now led by the wise old Brother Orsini (Ian Abercrombie) and his assistant Brother Marinus (Jeremy West).  I've seen Abercrombie in plenty of stuff in the past; he is something of an Empire/Full Moon regular as well as being the unquestionably awesome Mr. Pitt character from Seinfeld.  West was new to me, but as the yin to Abercrombie's yang he was fantastic.  See, Orsini is the Brother Superior of this place at the start of the film, a super-likable character that we immediately attach to, while Marinus is the much more serious and almost immediately dislikable second-in-command.  Both react in very different ways when they get a visitor in the form of American schoolteacher Elizabeth Magrino (Laura Schaefer).  To say nothing of the demon that' still dying to get out of its prison in the maze of tomb-like caverns underneath the place.

Just HOW the demon resurrects itself is never really explained, at least in the version of the film I saw.  Elizabeth shows up and from that point on weird stuff starts happening, complete with a bunch of creepy POV shots traveling through the catacombs complete with maniacal laughter being played over the sobering soundtrack.  Eventually, some of the monks start to die due to an unseen force...and eventually it becomes not-so-unseen.  While not a gory flick in the least bit, Catacombs plays up the psychology of death to near-perfection, as we get a buried alive death, psychic neck-breaking, stabbing...and how the monk who has a penchant for candy bites it is horrifying.  I'm not going to spoil what happens there.

One character that I completely forgot to mention is Father John Durham (Tim Van Patten), present at the monastery to preside over the death of his longtime mentor.  That's a side plot that I won't bother to spell out, because in truth I found it pretty boring.  I think this guy was undoubtedly the weakest link of the film, especially since he's the one who we're left rooting for when the movie reaches its final climax section with the same possessed albino (don't sue me, PC police - that's actually his name in the freakin' ending credits!) using his mystical mind powers to throw him all over the floor.  But +2 cool points for the final scene and ending fadeout that pretty much tells us that this story is wrapped up with no possibility of a sequel.  This alone almost always makes me add an extra half-star to any horror movie simply because I find it so minty-fresh.

To be sure, there is some stuff in Catacombs that doesn't quite work.  I think the biggest WTF this flick has is just how the demon operates.  Sometimes, it seems to be a kind of ghost.  Sometimes, it's a flesh-and-blood dude with a weird face.  And sometimes it's full-on William Peter Blatty possession, although the "black eyes" marker on this one is really disturbing.  Because of this, the movie seems to jump around in tone quite a bit.  I liked what we got to see of Laura Schaefer, but we also don't get to know her character that well.  Another ten minutes of development for her would have done wonders.  I also can't help but think that the climax wouldn't have been much better with one of the monks getting the final honor of being the demon-killing hero of the film instead of Father John.  That dude is just milquetoast to the core.

Fortunately, there's a lot that this movie does right.  Most of it has directly to do with Schmoeller.  The atmosphere here is just off the charts, mainly due to the fact that they filmed this movie at an actual monastery in Italy.  There are some things that just can't be replicated by any amount of CGI wizardry, and the world that this movie inhabits is one of them.  The camerawork is super unsettling during the various scenes where characters are walking around in the catacombs - there always seems to be something just around every corner, and when it's time for somebody to bite it, Schmoeller makes it count.  Lastly, the acting by everyone involved is top notch, especially Abercrombie and West.  If I wasn't into somebody's character, it was a script problem and not a flesh puppet problem.  And when I start reaching for alleged jokes like "flesh puppet problem," it's time to wrap up a review.

*** 1/2 out of ****.  This was actually the final Empire movie produced before the company capsized with the weight of its loan debt, and it was definitely a classy way to go out.  Check this one out, kids.

Dolls (1987)

1987
Directed by Stuart Gordon
Starring Stephen Lee, Guy Rolfe, Hilary Mason, Ian Patrick Williams, Carolyn Purdy Gordon, Cassie Stuart, Bunty Bailey and Carrie Lorraine

Killer dolls.  If there is one thing that Charles Band has made a living off of (like, to the point where the guy probably has enough cash stashed away from these low budget epics to buy his own solid gold island), it's killer doll movies.  You might think that the Child's Play franchise was the film that invented this little subgenre of horror, but you'd be wrong-'em, boyo.  Sure, there had been plenty of movies about this little villain ever since the dawn of man.  But the movie in question today actually predates Chucky by a solid year, and it's the one that most closely resembles everything that would follow, so I'm giving the nod to Charles Band on this one when it comes to who set off this wave of "toys come alive" flicks.

Dolls was yet another in the long, long list of Empire movies released between 1986 and 1988, and it was from yet another of Band's list of buddy directors.  Out of all the guys who worked with Band repeatedly over the years, I'd say that Stuart Gordon definitely has the biggest following, having also helmed the certifiable weirdo classic Re-Animator and later charging up Robot Jox during Empire's waning days and The Pit and the Pendulum for Full Moon Features.  While all of the Empire and Full Moon movies have a similar style, these different directors really do bring their own flair to what we get from these stories.  I think Gordon is probably the most polished of them; his movies feel bigger, flashier and sometimes just more insane.  In the good way.  I rented this movie back when I was in middle school and remember liking it quite a bit, although it has lost a little bit of its luster these days.  Film criticism like this simply cannot be found anywhere else on the internet.  On with the show.

Tell me if you've heard this one before: a group of characters find themselves trapped in a creepy old house while a thunderstorm rages outside, and while inside find themselves facing off with a powerful supernatural force.  It's a plot mechanism that has been used in something like 17,478 films, and it's the device that we get for this particular cinematic masterwork.  The first people we meet are the Bower family - father David (Ian Patrick Williams), stepmother Rosemary (Carolyn Purdy Gordon), and their young daughter Judy (Carrie Lorraine).  Longtime readers of the blog know how I feel about kids in horror movies, and I've got to tell ya...this kid pushes it at times with her overt adorableness.  Not QUITE to the point that I ever wanted to see her as doll fodder, but what the script does to this tyke's parents is the stuff of legend.  These two are just hateable to the max, with the classic "wicked stepmother" bit being played to perfection with a dad who just actively does not even give half of a shit about his own offspring.  What a douche.  In short, I give these two 1:4 odds of survival.

Alas, their car gets stuck in the mud in the middle of nowhere Europe (indicated by the position of the steering wheel), and they quickly find their way to a nearby castle.  This place is lorded over by Gabriel Hartwicke (Guy Rolfe) and his wife Hilary (Hilary Mason), erstwhile old couple who seem way too nice to be living where they are.  They're soon joined by lovable oaf Ralph Wilson (Stephen Lee) and a pair of punk-rock hitch-hikers whom I'm not even going to bother naming, due to the fact that they might as well just have "CANNON FODDER" spray-painted on their heads from the moment they appear on screen.  The character of Ralph in particular is pretty well-done; I've seen Stephen Lee in a few other things, and he's a pretty damn good actor who dove right into this nice underdog guy who is a child at heart.  Which is perfect, considering that this house is filled with goddamned dolls.

I think you know where it's going from here.  Various characters are led away to their bedrooms, the punk chicks start talking about stealing things, Judy's father almost hits her (yes, really), a couple of characters are offed by the dolls coming alive...the usual.  See, the whole idea is that the dolls are possessed by the souls of various unsavory characters that the Hartwicke's have met over the years, and this is their punishment for being asshats.  Thus, everyone who gets killed in this film pretty much deserves it, and it's a crowd-pleaser all around.  It's also especially worth noting that one of the creators of the dolls is played by Guy Rolfe, since he's the same guy who would go on to play the ultimate doll-maker Andre Toulon in a few of the Puppet Master movies.  I swear to you that almost every Empire movie has a later counterpart in Full Moon, and folks, you can virtually see the blueprint for the PM franchise being formed before your very eyes in this flick's 77 minutes.

We actually do get a decent amount of kills here, and a couple of them are actually pretty horrific.  The movie uses its most disturbing bit within the first ten minutes as the wicked stepmother throws Judy's teddy bear into the forest, which is then followed by an honest-to-goodness fantasy sequence where the bear returns - now fully grown - and morphs into a real-life monster bear that rips the parents apart.  Not gonna lie, that one actually creeped me out.  The scene where David comes back to find Rosemary dead and mummified in bed (come on, did that really need a spoiler alert?) is also pretty cringe-worthy.  The effects stuff is once again by John Carl Buechler with some stop-motion help from David Allen, and once again, they do a fantastic job.  Just one caveat: the dolls themselves aren't very memorable.  And I think Charles Band knew this, too.  The evidence is there in the Puppet Master films, where they decided to give each of the killer dolls a recognizable gimmick and weapon, and those films might just be awesomeness personified.

Dolls is a pretty predictable movie, all things considered.  Within the first twenty minutes, we know what's going to happen, who is going to survive, and most likely how it is going to end.  What the movie DOES spring on you is how likable the characters are that the script actually intended to make likable and how damn DETESTABLE the bad ones are, particularly Judy's parents.  Those people are some real assholes, and when they get what they have coming, they're stand-up-and-cheer moments.  The acting is also pretty good by and large.  Guy Rolfe is always amazing, but really, everyone here seemed to be giving it their all with the exception of the punkers. 

My only real complaint with this movie other than that it occasionally lags is that we get way, way, WAY too much of Judy onscreen in this one.  I wouldn't have a problem with this if she were doing things other than crying about what she sees to her parents in a really, really high-pitched voice for the standard-issue horror movie "parents don't believe me" plot device, but yeah, that stuff takes up something like 15 minutes of running time here.  Yeah, it makes the parents that much more worst people ever.  But it does get tedious.  Maybe I should check this movie out with the cast audio commentary, because it actually includes Carrie Lorraine.  Hearing her today could be a revelation.  Overall, however, you know what you're getting with Empire Pictures and Dolls delivers the goods fairly well.  Good effects, a solid, basic plot and instantly identifiable characters.  Color me there every time.

*** out of ****.  It might not be a great flick like the first few Puppet Master movies, but it's still worth a watch.  Eat it, Chucky.

Crawlspace (1986)

1986
Directed by David Schmoeller
Starring Klaus Kinski, Talia Balsam, Barbara Whinnery, Carole Francis, Tane McClure and Kenneth Robert Shippy

Now we're getting into the good stuff.  Crawlspace was yet another film released by Empire Pictures in that almighty year of 1986, and I've got to say that it is without a doubt the best.  David Schmoeller was one of Charles Band's loyal directors, and this flick was without a doubt his passion project in the whole Empire/Full Moon library.  For starters, he wrote the script himself.  Secondly, it's just really different.  I've seen enough of this guy's work to know his tone, and Crawlspace is a very strange animal.  It's dark, it's gritty, and it has Klaus Kinski diving right in to a truly evil, diabolical role with a vengeance, almost to the point that those making the film put together a plot to kill him for insurance money.  And that, my friends, is actually a true story.  Google it.

I suppose the other main thing that I need to share about this one is that I don't have any personal background with it.  I'd never even HEARD of it before I got my hands on the box set that all of these reviews are coming from.  For mysterious reasons, this film was a pretty rare find back in the video store days, and I had the greatest video store in the history of video stores right in my very own hometown.  In and out of theaters in something like 30 seconds, it followed the tried-and-true Charles Band formula of "aim for a respectable theatrical run, hook 'em in on video."  And that's just what this movie did.  More than that, this flick has a truly nasty little edge that's almost nonexistant in the rest of the Band film universe, and it definitely shocked the hell out of me.  It's no cinematic masterpiece or anything, but it's effective.  With all of that gushing out of the way, let's get to the movie.

Schmoeller's script for this movie follows the "first ten pages" rule to absolute perfection, quickly introducing us to the whole motif that will follow.  A woman is wandering around in an apartment complex and finds her way to to an attic where the door locks behind her.  Inside is a caged woman, and behind her is Karl Gunther (Kinski), super-creepy landlord who not soon thereafter presses a switch that impales the woman with a knife.  Attention had.  Right after that, we're clued in that this guy is the son of a former Nazi doctor, and all of what we're about to see is some sort of experiment on his part.  Yikes.

The film then spends the following 15 minutes or so introducing us to all of our side characters.  The one who stands out as the "final girl" is Lori Bancroft (Talia Balsam), friendly college student who is immediately taken in by Karl after he mystifyingly rejects somebody else.  There's also piano player Sophie (the ridiculously hot Tane McClure, who spends her character's first scene cutting the nipples out of her bra), nondescript Harriet (Barbara Whinnery) and gold-digging soap opera actress Jessica Marlow (Carole Francis).  All of them are decent enough in their roles, but the this is Kinski's movie all the way, baby.  He owns every scene he's in, and whenever he's not on screen you find yourself wanting to watch him more, despite just how despicable he is and how vile his actions are.  For an indication of what we're dealing with, the caged woman who I mentioned earlier (who has had her tongue cut out by Karl, no less) writes him a note stating "Please Kill Me," to which he replies "but then I wouldn't have anyone to talk to."  Screw you, buddy.

I think the movie has a bit of a weakness in that Karl's motivations are never really spelled out.  We see his METHODS plenty of times.  The title Crawlspace comes from the fact that he does most of his scouting my sliding around the building's air vents spying on all of the various female tenants, usually in various forms of undress.  He has the woman in the cage, and he also kills the dick out of two anciliary characters with plenty of aplomb.  But why?  There are little bits of narration as Karl gives us bits of his background, about studying what his father did and how he found them appalling yet did them anyway.  But I could just be looking too much into it.  When the end of the movie comes and this guy starts playing videos of Hitler speeches and putting on the official uniform, amazingly, you buy it.  But that's just the magic of Klaus Kinski.

The story definitely operates in starts and stops.  There are small bits of the cruelty that Karl displays toward the woman in the cage, which is then usually followed by him shuffling around in the air vents, then an unrelated murder, and then bits of Lori pensively walking around trying to piece things together.  It might not be the officially-licensed Lick Ness Monster A-B-C storytelling method, but it's still effective.  By the time the ending rolls around, you really, really, REALLY want Karl to get what he has coming to him.  Emotion like this can't be bought.

Now for the section where I spend a couple paragraphs summing things up.  It's kind of a difficult task with this movie, because it's unapologetically basic.  This is the case for almost all Empire and Full Moon movies, and this one is exactly the same.  Shoot me if you've heard this one before: it's only something like 75 minutes long.  Thus, there's no time for bullshit, but unlike some of the stuff in the earlier Empire movies I've reviewed there is not a single boring moment in Crawlspace.  Every minute is spent either being repulsed by Kinski or actually kind of fearing that he might be around somewhere.  Call this movie the anti-Christopher Nolan Batman trilogy (/intentional flame baiting comment).

There is also something that I wish to pontificate on (what a great vocabulary word that is) that usually doesn't get much ink here on the ol' blog: the score.  Good music can really up the ante for a movie that already has some decent things going for it, and I was really impressed with what composer Pino Donaggio.  I found myself humming the menacing tune of this flick a few times after I finished watching it, and it fits the movie's slow-build/fast chase stuff fantastically.  And now you see why I don't talk much about musical scores in my reviews.  It kind of takes away from the normal nostalgia masturbation and bad jokes.  So allow me to conclude this review by stating once again that Tane McClure's nipples are amazing.

*** 1/2 out of ****.  Crawlspace is a damn fun time with a really, really good performance from Kinski.  And trust me, guys, type "Please Kill Mr. Kinski" into Google and be prepared to be amused.

TerrorVision (1986)

1986
Directed by Ted Nicolaou
Starring Diane Franklin, Gerrit Graham, Mary Woronov, Chad Allen, Jonathan Gries, Jennifer Richards, Aleandro Rey and Bert Remsen

Ahhh, TerrorVision.  A precious flick from my childhood for a wholly unexpected reason.  See, when I was in fifth grade there was this one-month stretch where my brother would pick out a movie for me to watch on Saturday nights.  To this day, I still remember those four movies.  Schwarzeneggar's Commando, They Still Call Me Bruce, and Spaceballs were the first three, and I'll never forget informing all of my grade-school bros about the glories of those flicks.  The last one was the movie in question today, and while I fully acknowledge that it isn't a good flick by any traditional standard, it's loads of fun.  Needless to say, 11-year-old me loved it with a vengeance.

Released in theaters just a few weeks after Troll, the movie was directed by Ted Nicolaou, a long-time Charles Band collaborator who would later go on to helm the Subspecies franchise for Full Moon Features.  Again, this film kind of has a Full Moon counterpart in Bad Channels, which had a similar concept and was also directed by Nicolaou.  I'm sure I'll be getting to that one in due time.  There were a lot of directors who repeatedly worked with Band, but Nicolaou has a pretty unmistakable style.  He starts off with a singular idea without a whole lot of substance and stretches it out as far as it can go.  TerrorVision is no different.  He timed this one out like a boss.  Hell, there are long stretches where nothing of note happens, and while the stuffy dude that I am today was a little annoyed by it, it's the good kind of annoy.  It also has some pretty impressive makeup effects stuff from John Carl Buechler, a name that everyone who read last week's review should be more than familiar with, along with an atmosphere that I can only describe as Pee Wee's Playhouse on crack if it wasn't already on crack.  Now, time for the almighty plot description.

The action kicks off with what is pretty much an Empire Pictures staple - a long credits sequence to pad out the already lean 85 minute running time, this time with the added bonus of the Fibonaccis' amazing "TerrorVision" theme song.  From here, we flash cut to a house unlike just about anything I've seen in any horror film before or since.  There's overly sexualized Picasso-style paintings on the walls, lots of jarring colors, weird decorations...and then there's the people.  Kids, it's time to meet the Puttermans, the movie's exaggerated-to-the-hilt nuclear family.  The dad kinda looks like Jeffrey Jones if you hit his face with a mallet, and his wife starts the movie off in workout gear.  The teenage daughter is the most wildly stereotypical "'80s rocker chick" your mind can possibly conjure up, complete with big hair and lots and lots of leather.  That leaves the kid, Sherman, your star character who gives the movie its emotional Tootsie center (/MST3K joke).  Oh, and there's also a live-in grandfather who is a gung-ho survivalist in the vein of Burt Gummer.  I shit you not, all of this happens.

So how is this a horror movie?  Well, I'll tell you.  It seems that the dad (named Stanley) is all kinds of stoked about the brand-new satellite TV that he has just installed for their house.  Somewhere off in space, an alien tasked with taking care of dangerous specimens has just royally fucked up and sent a dangerous creature out into the opens of space.  Guess where it lands when the Putterman family has a fight with the movie's comically huge remote control.  We see this beast in the first trimester of the movie, and I rank it slightly ahead of the Trolls from Troll and a good five yards behind Dream Master Freddy Krueger on John Carl Buechler's makeup effects list.  It's big, it's fat, it's definitely disgusting and it has a tongue that acts like a vacuum.  This thing likes to eat.  Be prepared for lots of scenes of said creature eating stuff throughout the movie.

Remember how I said that this movie was weird?  Well, as little kid Sherman and the grandfather kill time with a midnight monster movie show featuring a big-titted host wearing a Medusa hat (really), we get more victims in the form of the elder Puttermans and their honest-to-goodness swinger's party that they're throwing that night.  Unfortunately, this introduces us to Spiro, a way-over-the-top (just like everything else in this cinematic masterpiece) Ricardo Montalban-style dude who's way more into Stanley than his hot wife.  Hey, I thought she was hot in that workout gear, alright?  The creature shows up and kills off all of the unimportant characters until we are eventually down to Sherman, his sister and her Heavy Metal Dude boyfriend.  And lemme tell you something about Heavy Metal Dude - he is the best part of the movie.  Creatively named O.D., I LOVED this guy when I first saw this movie, especially with what followed as the younger characters actually manage to BEFRIEND the monster and spend 10 minutes of your life attempting to teach it the meaning of life on Earth.  Again, Nicolaou...he was something else when it came to stretching a basic concept.

I vividly remember that even as a kid I didn't find this movie's epic finale to be all that epic, but still, at least it's better than the final 10 minutes of Troll.  See, while all of this has been going on, the alien who accidentally sent the monstrous beast to Earth has sporadically been popping up during the Medusa chick's show to warn the people of Earth about what they are facing.  He eventually shows up to relay this message in person.  So many complicated, layered plot threads going on at once, I tell you.  I won't spoil exactly how this movie ends, but suffice to say it's kind of a downer on par with the Sword of Damocles (/obligatory reference).  Although we at least get to hear that awesome song again as the ending credits roll.

To be sure, this movie isn't good by pretty much any definition that someone can objectively look at movies and quantify such things.  The external reviews seem to concur, being as this movie has one of those amazing 0% ratings on Rotten Tomatoes.  But does anyone else besides me think that number is becoming more bullshit with each passing day?  It seems that every decent movie these days gets an 80% or above.  Some kind of deal between the studios and the critics since box office numbers are down?  (/conspiracy theory)  Anyway, TerrorVision was in and out of theaters in the blink of an eye in 1986, but it's become a big-time cult hit in the years since because it's just so out there. 

I don't know exactly what the budget of this movie was, but whatever they were dealing with they managed to get their money's worth.  In addition to the creature itself, there's plenty of laser blasts, electrocutions and even one scene where a somebody's face gets sucked off.  Yeah, I know that I didn't mention any actors by name in this review.  It's a complete roster of no-names, very different from the surprisingly star-studded lineup that we had in Troll.  I can't say that this isn't without merit, considering that I just watched this movie and was blown away for all the wrong reasons by the acting ability put on display.  Amazingly enough, though, it works to the movie's advantage.  Fans of cheesy horror flicks will find plenty to like here, especially in the form of those characters.  Every bad '80s stereotype isn't just on display, it's celebrated, and with how mean-spirited most modern movies are this is always a welcome change of pace.

Rating time.  *** out of ****.  This one DEFINITELY ain't gonna win any awards, but it brought me right back to childhood, and it looked great in HD.  Check it out.

Troll (1986)

1986
Directed by John Carl Buechler
Starring Noah Hathaway, Michael Moriarty, Shelley Hac, Jenny Beck, Sonny Bono (yes, really), Phil Fondacaro, Julia Louis-Dreyfuss (yes, really!) and June Lockhart (yes, really!!)

Now we're getting into the meat of the Empire Pictures filmography.  The video store success of Ghoulies really must have been like some sort of satellite beckoning the low-budget movie gods, and low and behold studio started giving Charles Band that most holiest of holy things: greenlights.  A whole lot of 'em.  The movie in question today was released in January of 1986, and this was a year in which they would seemingly churn out a new movie seemingly every month.  Empire was the Hammer Studios of the '80s - they were a factory, and Troll was tailor-made for their assembly line.

First things first: I saw this movie way back in the late '90s when we actually used to have a semi-decent video store in my hometown during a summer in which I rented a ton of old horror movies.  I remember not really liking it then.  On this watch, I actually found it to be semi-enjoyable.  Maybe not in the way that I want to immediately watch it again, but the movie's goofy charm and glorious HD presentation did a lot for me this time around.  That, and I've now seen a bunch of Full Moon films.  Troll is prototype Charles Band.  It's "blink and you miss it" short at 85 minutes, it's chock-full of goofy characters, and it's got some really flashy effects for the time period.  If you're looking for a decent time that exactly require your full attention while watching, look no further.  It's also got some cast of actors.  More on that in a bit.

The thing that everyone should know about pretty much everything connected to Empire Pictures and Charles Band: these movies have unapologetically basic plots.  I've said this before about many other films, but it goes doubly true for these guys.  They take something like two minutes to set up and get going, and Troll is no different.  By the time you're half-done settling in to watch this thing, we've met the main family.  Stereotypical Mom, Dad, teenage son and little girl daughter.  Most fascinating is the fact that the dad and the son are both named Harry Potter.  Yes, really (got it in again!).  Considering that I chose to watch Lord of the Rings instead of that film series, I've definitely gotta hand it to this movie when it comes to my favorite iteration of this character's name.  Also amazing is that the son is played by Noah "Atreyu" Hathaway, a couple years removed from The Neverending Story and now fully in teen idol mode.  The character that he plays is a big magic and Star Trek fan, so -1 points for realism in terms of cool kids there.  The mom is played by Shelley Hack, who kind of looks like a budget version of Catherine Hicks here minus some of the sex appeal.

After that fascinating little introductory scene that manages to introduce all of those fascinating character traits, we meet the Troll when little girl daughter (named Wendy, and also kind of a budget version of Kristie Klark) goes into the laundry facility of their new apartment complex.  This movie was directed by John Carl Buechler, a well-known horror movie effects guru, and you can tell that this guy was his creation from fur-covered head to...um, fur-covered feet.  The thing was impressive for its time, especially in how expressive the face was.  But here, he's after taking over the entire freakin' world, and it starts with little Wendy as he uses his magic ring to possess her spirit.  Yes, really (#5!).  It escalates from here as the movie almost self-destructs with just HOW stupid the main family is here with Wendy, watching her wander all around, disappear for hours, act like a completely different person and still say things like "I think Wendy isn't quite herself lately."  Nobody ever said horror movie characters were smart, but this is really more a fantasy flick, so that's slightly less of an excuse.

And now for the requisite "plot unspooling" paragraph, complete with bonus commentary on all of the side characters contained within.  See, the Troll is really an ancient wizard who, for some convoluted reason, must transform the apartment complex by taking possession of all of the residents with his ring in order to conquer the world.  This is completed when said apartemnt turns into a green, lush fairy world.  But it's the residents of said apartments where this movie is really something else.  Sonny Bono is in this movie, introduced in pretty much one scene so that he can die, but boy is he unforgettable.  He's kind of a Hugh Hefner-esque playboy dude who takes pride in macking it to the ladies, and it's glorious.  We've also got Julia-Louis Dreyfuss as a sort of nondescript hot girl who gets transformed into a goddamned NYMPH (complete with a nearly-nude Dreyfuss running around in the simulated forest).  There's Phil Fondacaro, the guy who would later show up as Sir Nigel Penneyweight in Ghoulies II, and his story arc is actually kind of emotional.  And then there's everyone's favorite TV mom June Lockhart as a mysterious old woman who turns out to be a righteous witch overseeing the apartment complex as the guardian of good in the universe keeping the troll/wizard at bay.  She does this by sitting back oblivious as all of the residents are turned into green slime all around her.  Nobody ever said she was a good witch.

By this point, it should be apparent that I'm getting ready to wrap up the plot description, so here goes.  All the while, Hathaway has been hanging around watching his little sister do strange things and spent forty-five minutes saying things like "she looks like my sister, but she isn't!"  He's made friends with Lockhart and asked to be trained in the ways of good witchery.  With all of the other characters transformed into mystical creatures (via some admittedly good-for-the-time practical effects courtesy of Buechler), it's time for the big showdown.  And...it's kind of a letdown.  No spoilers, but I don't think it makes a whole lotta sense.  Maybe it's just me.

This movie isn't scary at all, but it really isn't supposed to be.  There are some horror ELEMENTS to it, considering that a good portion of the middle of the movie consists of Wendy (that's possessed little girl for those keeping score) showing up to people's apartments, turning into the Troll, and stalking and transforming them.  But it's more a wizard/sorcery kind of story.  At that, it's alright, but this movie's little moments will make sure you never forget it. 

Empire and Full Moon movies are like that.  They might not be technically GOOD, and I've spent more than a few of them desperately trying to think of something else to do.  But after the credits have rolled, I find myself thinking about them and often laughing.  For an indication of what we're dealing with, there's a five-minute reverie in the middle of this thing where all of the newly-turned troll creatures have an impromptu music video, and it's just as amazing as it sounds.  Couple that with Fondacaro doing his thing, lots of animation and stop-motion style special effects, the dad of the main family randomly dancing and singing karaoke to himself for something like seven years (yes, really - that's the last one, I promise) and a whole bunch of other stuff and I kind of want to watch this again.  In twenty years.

Rating time.  This flick gets ** 1/2 out of ****.  Not a masterpiece by any stretch, but it's definitely worth a watch at some point if you've got 80 minutes to spare.  Check it out.

Ghoulies I and II (1984 and 1988)

1984 and 1988
Directed by Luca Bercovici and Albert Band
Starring Peter Liapis, Lisa Pelican, Michael Des Barres, Royal Dano, Phil Fondacaro and J. Downing

It has begun.  The annual, all-too-early anticipation of the Halloween season.  And this year it's starting a little earlier, for reasons that I'll get to in a little bit.  I've already taken on a whole bunch of different themes for this unholy time of year, from slasher flicks to last year's marathon of Universal monster movies.  Neither I nor my parents live on the greatest street in the history of Halloween anymore, which means that particular part of my childhood has died.  I was saddened greatly by this, almost to the point of not quite knowing what I was going to cover this year.  But fear not, good citizens, because I got my hands on this beauty over the course of the summer...

Oh yeah, the Empire Pictures Blu-Ray set, straight from the fine folks at Full Moon Direct.  At $250, it definitely wasn't cheap, but having seen a good two-thirds of the movies featured within before, it really is like watching them for the first time again considering the difference in the old beat-up VHS rental copies that I was used to versus whatever the hell the technical specs are on a Blu-Ray.  Eye opening.  And I now somewhat regret my years of ranting about having to buy an HDTV and how it wasn't "pure," or something.  I've always said things that don't really make sense.  This is no new phenomenon.

First, a little bit of background.  I've always been a huge fan of Full Moon Features, the almost exclusively direct-to-video juggernaut started by Charles Band in the late '80s and maintaining a glory period that lasted well into the '90s with the awesome Puppet Master franchise remaining front and center throughout this time and many other classics too numerous to mention.  Before there was Full Moon, however, there was Empire Pictures, the studio started by Charles and his father Albert.  I was a late-comer when it came to Empire, but holy hell, was I missing out.  I think you can sum these films up best with the following sentence: mean subjects but never mean-spirited.  That's the short end of the stick when it comes to the films contained in this box set...but it should also be noted that the set ITSELF is incredibly well put-together.  Almost every disc on it is stocked with extras, the box art is nifty, the enclosed booklet is interesting, it's all like an orgasm in convenient $250 form.  Whoa.  There's the most weirdly disturbing thing I'll say all year.  Having said all of that, as you can see above I manage to obtain set 262 out of 600, and I can only assume that they've sold quite a bit more of these in the months since.  If you are able to snatch one up, do it, and soon. 

Having said all of that, let's get to a couple of the movies contained in this bad boy!

Charles Band and the rest of the crew had done some movies under the Empire label before, but 1984's Ghoulies was definitely the one that made people stand up and take notice.  Well, sort of.  It's weird.  I remember seeing this VHS tape prominently on display in pretty much EVERY video store I visited as a kid, yet no one I knew seemed to have seen the movie.  A few years earlier and it would have been a different story, because this movie was a MASSIVE success as a rental.  The sequel Ghoulies II came four years later, pretty much after every other film that is going to get reviewed in this marathon, only this time it went theatrical.  I've already reviewed both of these movies.  Look to the April and May 2012 sections of this here blog if you want those reviews along with the later films in the Ghoulies series if you want those and if you're really masochistic, because that was when I wrote MAMMOTH reviews.  Think they're long and masturbatory now?  I used to detail every single last NUANCE of the flick in question.  Thus, I'll spare everyone the pain and make these reviews extra brief.  I promise.

The first movie is really a strange beast, as it has almost nothing to do with the title creatures in a move that most people claim is a shameless to cash in on the success of Gremlins.  Only Band came up with the "Beasties" concept before that film was even a thing, so chalk one up for ol' Charlie.  Peter Liapis is the star, and he plays Jonathan Graves, college kid who has just inherited a pretty damn sweet castle from his extended family.  He brings his girlfriend (Lisa Pelican) along with him, and they are also joined by Jonathan's college buddies - one of whom looks a hell of a lot like Kiefer Sutherland.  And when he starts break-dancing, it's hilarious.  Also worth mentioning is the caretaker of the house who shows up at the end to give us the most hilarious belly-laugh in cinema history.  Spoiler alert.

The flick is actually a lot more of a "sorcery" movie than a horror film for the most part, with Jonathan finding out that his father dabbled in the black arts and then doing a lot of dabbling himself.  The film might sound dumb, and in many ways it is, but it's also a lot of fun.  Liapis turns in a great performance, but the movie REALLY belongs to Michael Des Barres as Jonathan's zombified dad who shows up at the end for a demonic magic battle the likes of which you've never seen before.  Watching the extras on this Blu-Ray, I was stunned to find out that the dude is actually a rock singer in real life.  Makes sense considering some of the lines he screams out here.  I give this flick *** 1/2 out of **** for all of the wrong reasons, but it's definitely worth watching.  One of my favorite movies to pop in around October.

Which brings me to the second film.  Folks, THIS is your big Gremlins ripoff, as the ghoulies who pretty much only showed up to appear out of the shadows in the first film get front-and-center treatment this time around.  Through convoluted means that I won't bother recapping, they find their way to a carnival and wreak all sorts of havoc.  By and large, the protagonist aren't very interesting with one very notable exception: the always awesome Phil Fondacaro as Sir Nigel Penneyweight, a worker at the carnival's spook house who constantly talks about his amazing acting skills.  The movie also gives us a Mrs. Deagle-esque human villain in the form of a big company representative who is looking to shut down the carnival, thus putting everyone out of work.  Boo-hiss.

I don't enjoy the second movie quite as much, mostly because it is basically what I've already typed out.  You've seen this movie a bunch of times before.  However, it DOES manage to have the saving grace of the ghoulies themselves.  There's a bat-like ghoulie, a ghoulie with cloven hooves, a ghoulie that throws up toxic sludge, and the famous green "toilet" ghoulie that scare the bejeebers out of me as a kid when I saw it on the VHS cover.  We actually get the "ghoulie in a toilet" sequence in this movie, but all those years later I found it pretty underwhelming.  The movie isn't scary at all, and it isn't very much fun until the final trimester, but it is pretty damn offbeat.  That should be enough for a ** 1/2 out of **** rating...along with the awesome W.A.S.P. ending credits song "Scream Until You Like It."

Chronologically, the two Ghoulies movies bookend all of the other movies you're about to read about.  But they're a perfect starting point for those just getting into the goodness of Empire horror.  Over the coming weeks, we'll be diving into the abyss...and coming back alive.  Prepare yourself.