Category Archives: Cult

La Grande Bouffe (1973)

Posted on November 28, 2013 | Leave a comment

la grande bouffe 1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: They stuff their faces.

This film will start an annual Thanksgiving Day theme of reviewing movies that have something to do with food and eating. This one may be the most notorious of them all and despite its offbeat plot and crude scenes won the Cannes Film Festival’s International Critics award as well as attaining a large cult following and be one of the highest grossing movies in the history of Italian cinema.

The story deals with four middle-aged men (Marcello Mastroianni, Ugo Tognazzi, Philippe Noiret, Michel Piccoli) who despite attaining affluence and wealth are bored with life and decide their only recourse is to get together for a weekend and commit group suicide by eating themselves to death.

At first the movie will make you hungry.  After an initial set-up the characters can be seen eating in just about every shot. The variety of foods and menu that is served is almost mouth-watering and features a wide array of exquisite dishes seen only in the most fanciest of restaurants. However, after visually seeing these people overeat I felt myself feeling as bloated as the characters and almost sick. The film also gets quite gross with several segments featuring loud sounds of flatulence and a scene where the toilet bursts and covers the men and room with feces that even drips down and gets into the kitchen.

Some may find this ‘hilarious’ while others will think it’s disgusting. For me despite the moments of over-the-top crudeness the strongest scene may actually be when the characters start dying and their dead bodies are carried into a freezer while the rest of them continue to make food and stuff their mouths like it is a compulsion.

la grande bouffe 2

The four leads are old pros who couldn’t give a bad performance if they tried. I started to wonder though how they could eat so much and whether the scenes were all done in one take with no retake as eventually I think they would all start puking. Mastroianni’s death scene is a stand-out simply because it manages to keep his expression completely frozen and does not manage to blink for several minutes, which I found impressive. Tognazzi’s death moment is also fun although it’s Andrea Ferreol who starts out as a proper school teacher, but ends up becoming as decadent and hedonistic as all the men combined that steals it.

The film makes a strong if not impactful statement about gluttony and how a life of prestige and luxury may actually be more of a trap and curse. The more some people get of it the more they want until it is never enough and death may end up being their only true source of salvation and escape.

The idea is outrageous and clever and I loved the concept, but the execution is lacking. The direction is too loose with scenes going on longer than they should. Some tighter editing would have helped the pace and momentum.  I also don’t think it is possible for a person to stuff themselves with food and then die as I think instead they would just vomit it all out.

la grande bouffe 3

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: May 17, 1973

Runtime: 2Hours 4Minutes

Rated NC-17

Director: Marco Ferreri

Studio: Films 66

Available: VHS, DVD

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Posted in 70's Movies, Crude Comedy, Cult, Erotica, Foreign Films, French Films, Movies with Nudity, Offbeat

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Eat the Rich (1988)

Posted on November 7, 2013 | Leave a comment

eat the rich

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: Rich feed the poor.

This is an extremely garish mixture of loud music, ugly visuals, and shock comedy. The story is about a waiter, a gay man with a real fun bitchy attitude, who gets fired when he refuses to suck up to the arrogant clientele. He gets revenge by banding together other misfits who return and kill everybody and then feed the dead bodies to new unsuspecting patrons.

Sounds gross and tasteless, but it really isn’t. There’s no nudity or sex and no graphic violence or gore. A little bit more of these things would have actually helped. At least it would have solidified it as the underground shock comedy it seems to be striving to be. Instead it’s cluttered with no real objective or foundation. At times it plays like biting social commentary and at other times nothing more than a silly gross out teen flick

By the time you get to the way off-base ending it becomes obvious that the filmmakers were trying to be outrageous simply as a way to get noticed. There is no real insight to the have and have-nots of society. They simply came upon the idea because they felt it would appeal to the type of audience they were looking for.

This is too bad because had it been a little more polished it might have been a stronger film. Believe it or not there are some clever bits. The jabs at the Queen are a riot. The scene involving terrorism and the Middle East crisis is a true original. The rich characters are so over-the-top obnoxious you have to laugh-out-loud.

The true scene stealer though is Nosher Powell. He is a former stunt man/ stunt coordinator who worked on many of the stunts in the early James Bond movies. Here he plays a sort of Teddy Roosevelt times ten a ‘working class’ politician who bullies everyone and everything. The actor has a rather rough, amateurish delivery which only adds to the saltiness of the character.

My Rating: 5 out of 10

Released: April 22, 1988

Runtime: 1Hour 30Minutes

Rated R

Director: Peter Richardson

Studio: Recorded Releasing

Available: VHS, DVD, Amazon Instant Video

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Posted in 80's Movies, Black Comedy, British Movies, Cult, Foreign Films, Gay/Lesbian, Offbeat, Satire

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Death Race 2000 (1975)

Posted on November 1, 2013 | 5 comments

death race 2000

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: New meaning to roadkill.

Based on the novel ‘The Racer’ by Ib Melchior the year is 2000 and a highly rated cross-country race takes place on television between many colorful individuals. There is Frankenstein (David Carradine) who has lost an arm and a leg in past races and must wear a leather mask to cover up his facial scarring. Then there is his chief rival Machine Gun Joe Viterbo (Sylvester Stallone) and also Calamity Jane (Mary Woronov) Nero the Hero (Martin Kove) and Matilda the Hun (Roberta Collins). Of course this is no ordinary race as crossing the finish line isn’t really as important as how many innocent bystanders they can kill along the way.

The idea is outrageous and for the most part director Paul Bartel manages to pull it off especially within the limitations of the budget. There are real kick-ass car explosions here and none of that computerized crap, which in itself gives it a few extra points. I liked the scene were an actual car is seen dropping down a steep cliff and how they were able to block off long sections of highways in order to be the only cars on the road. Some of the dark humor is funny although more so in the beginning. The best moment is when a group of doctors and nurses wheel up some elderly patients onto the middle of the roadway in order to be slaughtered by the racers as part of the their annual ‘euthanasia day’.

Sly is really funny. I know some critics have gotten on him over the years about his acting, but here he steals it from his costars and the film wouldn’t have been as effective without him. Carradine is pretty good in his part and his more subdued acting style makes a nice contrast to Stallone’s flamboyant one. The two even end up in a nice fist fight. However, I liked the idea of having the Carradine character being this walking gimp of a man so intoxicated with winning that he continues to drive and compete even as his body falls apart. Having him take of his mask and look completely normal and making that all a sham was disappointing and took away the unique gritty mystic of the character.

The initial treatment of the script was written by producer Roger Corman and then Bartel was hired in to put a more humorous spin on it. Although I like the idea of having some comedy I still wanted more gore and grittiness. Instead it becomes too campy and cartoonish and losing the potential edge that it has at the beginning. There also needed to be more of a focus on the race itself. As it is it goes too fast with pit stop segments that bogged the whole thing down. They manage to get from New York to St. Louis in one day, which if going on I-70 would be 953 miles and doesn’t seem possible even at high speeds. There is also a question of the speed of these cars. Supposedly they are ‘real fast’, but there is one segment where Joe tries to run down a kindly fisherman and the guy is able to out run the car for quite a distance before he is hit, so they can’t be all that fast.

There is also a secondary storyline involving an underground group called the People’s army that is trying to sabotage the race and put an end to it. Initially I felt this thread would allow for more intrigue, but instead it makes the whole thing too over-the-top. The short running time doesn’t allow for such a convoluted plot and the whole thing would have been better served had they stuck to the race and racers personalities itself. The sappy ‘feel-good’ twist ending is terrible and ruins whatever potential edge the film had.

My Rating: 5 out of 10

Released: April 27, 1975

Runtime: 1Hour 20Minutes

Rated R

Director: Paul Bartel

Studio: New World Pictures

Available: VHS, DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Instant Video

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Posted in 70's Movies, Action/Adventure, Black Comedy, Campy Comedy, Cult, Fast Cars/Car Chase, Low Budget, Movies Based on Novels, Movies with Nudity

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A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child (1989)

Posted on October 29, 2013 | 3 comments

Nightmare on elm street 5

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: Freddy’s in the womb.

Alice (Lisa Wilcox) who survived Freddy’s attack from the last film and supposedly killed him is now suffering from those dreaded reoccurring nightmares again. This time she sees herself inside the mental institution where Freddy’s mother Amanda was raped and even witnesses his rebirth. She also finds out that she is pregnant and Freddy is trying to drive his spirit into the fetus so he can be reborn into the real world.

I came into this thing with extremely low expectations, but found myself delightfully surprised and consider this a definite improvement over the previous installment. Director Stephen Hopkins inserts a more artistic visual flair here. Some of the segments even have a certain Salvador Dali look especially near the end when the dimensions in the rooms inside the dreams begin to have all sorts of odd configurations. The use of a moonlit-like lighting accentuates the film’s dark imagery. I saw here the makings of the modern day horror movie that we are used to seeing today with more emphasis on the dark psychological undercurrent and less on the mechanical slasher formula.

The special effects are imaginative. Watching Freddy coming out of his mother’s womb as a baby is excellent as well as having him as a deformed baby run around an abandoned sanctuary as a sort of freak child. The scene showing Alice’s unborn baby inside her womb and attached to an umbilical cord I found to be quite impressive. I also was impressed with the segment where Alice’s skinny model friend Greta (Erika Anderson) gets her mouth stuffed with food by Freddy and her cheeks balloon out excessively, which may sound funny, but the way it is shown gets disturbing and even unsettling as they go back to it several times later on in the film. A segment cut from the theatrical release where Freddy force feeds her the insides of her own stomach can be seen on the unrated version.

The characters seem more like real people and the dialogue is an improvement as well. Wilcox now sports blonde hair and no longer has that reddish hair look that reminded me too much of Carrie. She also seems more confident in her role and gives a solid performance. Anderson, who was a former Elite model, makes for a pleasant addition to the eyes.

Freddy doesn’t have quite as much screen time as he did before, but that works for the best. The pace is slowed down with more emphasis on mood and atmosphere, which gives it a slightly more sophisticated feel.

My only real complaint is the blaring rap song that gets played over the closing credits, which is jarring and out-of-place.  Some fans of the series consider this to be one of the weaker installments, but I don’t agree. However, if you didn’t like it feel free to leave a comment as I would be interested to hear why.

My Rating: 5 out of 10

Released: August 11, 1989

Runtime: 1Hour 30Minutes

Rated R

Director: Stephan Hopkins

Studio: New Line Cinema

Available: VHS, DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Instant Video

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Posted in 80's Movies, Adolescence/High School, Cult, Horror, Moody/Stylish, Movies with Nudity, Sequels, Slasher/Gore

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A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988)

Posted on October 28, 2013 | 1 comment

nightmare on elm street 4

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Freddy won’t go away.

Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) tracks down and kills the last of the three remaining Elm Street teens, but Kristen (Tuesday Knight) wills her dream powers to her friend Alice (Lisa Wilcox) who now finds herself taking on the different traits of the past victims.  As Freddy tries to draw on a new batch of teen victims she fights him off with her new found abilities.

What started out as a highly original idea has now become formulaic. I didn’t find any of it scary, or even all that entertaining. The nightmare segments are redundant and the storyline cluttered. I wasn’t wrapped at all in the perils of any of the characters and would be surprised why anyone would. The whole series would’ve worked better had it stuck with the original Nancy character solely being the victim of the dreams and her lifelong battle against Krueger instead of always having some new character being the victim of the nightmares, which starts to make it derivative.

The dialogue is stilted and the characters are cardboard. The acting is also uniformly bad. Past entries in the series have had teen cast member go on to super stardom, but it is easy to see why this one didn’t. Due to being pregnant Patricia Arquette was unable to reprise her role as Kristen and Knight makes for a very weak replacement. I also didn’t like Wilcox because she seemed to resemble Sissy Spacek and started to remind me too much of the original Carrie. I did appreciate Danny Hassel as Dan simply because his wooden acting and one-note facial expressions aptly reflected the dull personality of your average high school jock.

The special effects are okay. The part where Alice is at a movie theater and gets sucked into an old movie is groovy as is watching the attractive Brooke Theiss morph into a giant cockroach. The segment where the souls of Freddy’s victims burst out of his body is excellent and the best moment of the entire film. However, other effects like having the heads of Freddy’s victims on sausages of a giant pizza are too silly.

Englund is in top form and really seems to be having fun. The part where he bursts out of a water bed and asks Joey (Rodney Eastman) “How’s this for a wet dream?” is fun as are his other choice lines. Englund even appears briefly as a female nurse and does as the Freddy character a rap song during the closing credits.

The series at this point looks to be dying a slow death with not enough new elements being added in and too much rehashing of the same old stuff. It seems incredulous to me that another two entries were made before the concept was finally retooled.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: August 19, 1988

Runtime: 1Hour 32Minutes

Rated R

Director: Renny Harlin

Studio: New Line Cinema

Available: VHS, DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Instant Video

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Posted in 80's Movies, Adolescence/High School, Cult, Horror, Movies with Nudity, Sequels, Slasher/Gore

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Lisa and the Devil (1973)

Posted on October 25, 2013 | 1 comment

lisa and the devil

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Where is the plot?

Lisa (Elke Sommer) is a tourist in Spain who gets lost and finds shelter inside a large mansion run by a butler Leandro (Telly Savalas) and a Countess (Alida Valli). Soon Lisa begins to experience strange occurrences and visions. People turn up dead and then alive again. When she tries to escape she finds that she can’t and is now stuck in a surreal world with no exit.

I am use to watching Italian horror films being strong on the visual end and weak with the plot, logic and character development especially when they attached to either Mario Bava or Dario Argento, but this one goes to the extreme. Nothing makes sense and scenes are thrown in haphazardly and go nowhere. The basic premise is too general and unfocused and the entire production seems to be an exercise in interesting camera work and nothing more. Yes there are a few atmospheric moments, but it all adds up to very little.

Had the special effects been gory or impressive I might have forgiven it, but for Bava standards they are lacking as well. For one thing there is very little gore to begin with and what we do see looks amateurish. The scene where a man gets run over by a car clearly looks like a mannequin and as the driver backs up and runs him over several more times it becomes even more obvious.

Sommer makes for a weak heroine. Her character is as vague and mysterious as all the others, so the viewer never gains any empathy or concern for her fate. Her short shoulder length haircut makes her look middle-aged and dowdy. Also, Sylvia Koscina her costar has facial features that are too similar to Elke’s and for a while I thought she was Elke with a brunette wig. Her best moment is actually her nude scene of which she looks great although I noticed her eye lids constantly fluttering when her character was supposedly asleep.

Normally I love Telly Savalas and he can be effectively menacing, but here he is sorely underused. The character pops in and out sporadically, but really doesn’t do much. I did like that he is constantly sucking on lollipops, which later became his trademark during his run on the ‘Kojak’ TV-series.

I was hoping for some grand over-the-top finale to make up for having to sit through all this, but it never came. The climax, which takes place inside a jet airliner no less, is as underwhelming as everything else. Not surprisingly this film was edited into a completely different story and reissued as The House of Exorcism, which will be reviewed tomorrow.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: May 9, 1973

Runtime: 1Hour 32Minutes

Rated R

Director: Mario Bava

Studio: Leone International

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Instant Video, Netflix streaming

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Posted in 70's Movies, Cult, Foreign Films, Horror, Italian Films, Movies with Nudity, Surreal/Fantasy

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Nightmare (1981)

Posted on October 23, 2013 | Leave a comment

nightmare 2

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: This one gets grisly.

George Tatum (Baird Stafford) is a middle-aged man tormented by strange nightmares where he sees himself as a young child decapitating with an ax an older man and his female lover. The dreams have had such an adverse effect on him that it has sent him to the mental hospital, but now the doctors consider him cured and send him back out into the real world, but the dreams continue pushing him into a psychotic state where he murders a woman that he meets and then eventually starts menacing a family.

This film while not being a particularly good movie and still straddled with a lot of the expected low budget limitations has managed to achieve a strong cult following as well as a limited Blue Underground 30th Anniversary release due mainly to its explicit violence. While the body count isn’t high the gore is nasty and effective. One scene involves George knifing a woman and the camera cutting in real close to her slashed neck and we hear her literally gurgling on her own blood and then watch as he licks her blood off his hands in an aroused manner. The scene where the boy cuts the head off another woman is also well handled despite the fact that it looks too much like an empty mannequin’s head. Writer/director Romano Scavolini approaches it with an artistic flair and it works. Watching the boy, who couldn’t be much older than 10, drenched in blood and looking menacingly into a mirror is the film’s creepiest moment.

The wide array of locales also helps and takes this a step above most other films of this genre and time period. Scenes are shot on-location all the way from New York to South Carolina, Georgia, and even Florida where there is a nifty segment inside an abandoned house. I found George’s trip to an old-fashioned New York adult theater to be the most captivating. I liked the part where the male customers put a quarter in a slot, which raised a small yellow door that allowed the men to peer through a window at a stripper dancing, but instead of seeing it from the male point-of-view we see it from the stripper’s. I got a kick out of seeing several of these guys looking all wide-eyed at this naked woman through their little windows and as their time ran out and the little yellow door began to slide down over their peep holes they would strained their necks as far as they could through with what little opening was left to continue to gaze at her as long as possible.

The dialogue and characterizations were less cardboard than the usual slasher film. However, outside of the gore it is not very suspenseful. The scares are derivative and too much time is spent on the bratty C.J. trying to spook his babysitter and mother.

Although the film keeps things plausible for the most part I was a bit confused why the doctors at the hospital didn’t know about George’s violent past or why he was menacing the certain family that he was. They were able to track down his whereabouts and car, so why were they not able to do the same with his criminal and family background? Having this loophole hurts the film as it ends up seeming poorly thought out.

nightmare 1

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: October 23, 1981

Runtime: 1Hour 37Minutes

Not Rated

Director: Romano Scavolini

Studio: 21st Century Film Corporation

Available: DVD, Amazon Instant Video, YouTube

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Posted in 80's Movies, Cult, Exploitation, Horror, Low Budget, Movies that take place in the Big Apple, Movies that take place in the South, Movies with Nudity, Slasher/Gore

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A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987)

Posted on October 21, 2013 | Leave a comment

nightmare on elm street 3

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: Can’t get enough Freddy.

The last of the Elm Street children find themselves plagued by the same terrible nightmares and are now put into an institution where a grown-up Nancy (Heather Langen kamp) works as a dream therapist. It is found that Kristen (Patricia Arquette) has the ability to invite other people into her dreams, so the entire group goes into her nightmare and takes on Freddy (Robert Englund) as a team.

This third entry into the series proves to be one of the best. It makes the most creative use of the dream idea and shows a nice mix between horror and comedy. I enjoyed the camaraderie between the characters and how they seem to genuinely care and look out for each other. Freddy gets more screen time and has some  great lines. I wasn’t so sure how someone can invite others into her dreams, but for the most part it’s fun.

The special effects are imaginative. I liked the scene where Freddy lifts his shirt and exposes the crying faces of all the spirits of the dead children pushing out of his stomach. I also liked the shot showing the needle marks on the arm of a former heroin addict suddenly coming to life and going through the sucking motion like they are little mouths.

The best moment though is when Dick Cavett is seen on TV interviewing Zsa Zsa Gabor only to suddenly turn into Krueger while making the statement “Who gives a fuck what you think”.  The only negative is that the camera cuts away before we see Freddy slash her with his glove, which would have been icing on the cake.

I stated in my review of the first film in this series that Langenkamp is the best victim in a horror movie, which I think is still true, but Arquette, who makes her film debut here, has to come in as a close second. She has an appealing face and seems very much like a real teenager and you really got to admire her feistiness.  Jennifer Rubin as Taryn also makes her film debut and has one of the prettiest pair of blue eyes you will ever see.

Langenkamp for whatever reason seems a little stiff and awkward in her role although she improves as the film progresses and gets more into the dream sequences. I also didn’t like the streak of white hair that seems to hang down on the right side of her face. I wasn’t sure if this was added in to make her appear ‘more mature’, but it seemed out-of-place, unnecessary and even a bit distracting.

Craig Wasson who is a terrible actor and whose presence seriously hurt Body Double is cast as Neil one of the doctors in the clinic. Here I found him to be a little more tolerable simply for his perpetual looks of either confusion or concern that I think are the only two expressions that he is able to show.

I remember back in 1987 this was THE movie to see and be seen at amongst the teen crowd and how on opening night there was a line of teenagers going around the block to get in and me being the self-proclaimed film connoisseur was right at the front of it. I enjoyed the film very much at the time, but found upon second viewing that it didn’t grab me quite as much.

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: February 27, 1987

Runtime: 1Hour 36Minutes

Rated R

Director: Chuck Russell

Studio: New Line Cinema

Available: VHS, DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Instant Video

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Posted in 80's Movies, Cult, Horror, Movies with a Hospital setting, Movies with Nudity, Sequels, Slasher/Gore

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My Bloody Valentine (1981)

Posted on October 17, 2013 | 1 comment

my bloody valentine

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 2 out of 10

4-Word Review: A Killer with heart.

After 20 years a small Canadian mining town of Valentine Bluffs has decided to hold another Valentine’s Day Dance. The previous ones were canceled due to one ending in bloodshed by a psychotic mine worker named Harold Warden. Now he is locked away so they think it is safe except the killings start happening again and this time the killer tears the hearts out of the victims and delivers them in heart shaped boxes to their relatives.

This movie has a cool looking poster and a deliciously macabre concept and has also attained a strong cult following including Quinton Tarantino, but I unfortunately was not impressed with it. I found it to be excruciatingly boring and a major strain just to sit through. The direction and writing are uninspired creating predictable scenarios and delivering all the expected teen slasher movie clichés with a monotonous regularity.  Nothing is distinctive or scary and it fails to deliver any suspense or tension. It can’t even make effective use of its unique mine shaft setting. The final sequence takes place there, but it is nothing spectacular. The constant delivering of human hearts in candy style boxes soon loses its effect and eventually becomes stupid especially with the corny poems written on the attached note cards.

The young victims are dull and stereotypical. They look like caricatures from all the other slasher horror films except here they speak with thick Canadian accents. One of them looks like an overweight version of Meathead from ‘All in the Family’. There is also a ‘class clown’ type of character that resembles very closely the ‘class clown’ character from Friday the 13th . Here he does nothing but crack dumb jokes and watching him eventually get decapitated is the film’s single most gratifying moment.

The sheriff character is a real loser. He wears a big belt buckle and dopey haircut that makes him appear to be some middle-aged buffoon who has just stepped out of the 60’s. His logic is also flawed. He decides not to warn the town that a killer is on the loose even after he has killed a couple of people as he is afraid it will create too much of a panic, so instead he waits until seven more people die and the citizens all go into a panic anyways.

Usually in even the poorest of horror films the killings and gore can at least keep things entertaining on a tacky level and yet here they are as dull as everything else. Also, since when has going into a dark and dingy cave been considered a great place to have sex? To me it seems absurd and yet several of the teen couples go into the mine for distinctly that purpose.

Remade in 2009.

My Rating: 2 out of 10

Released:  February 11, 1981

Runtime: 1Hour 30Minutes

Rated R

Director: George Mihalka

Studio: Paramount

Available: VHS, DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Instant Video

 

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Posted in 80's Movies, Cold Climate/Wintertime Movies, Cult, Foreign Films, Horror, Low Budget, Movies from Canada, Movies with a rural setting, Slasher/Gore

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Chopping Mall (1986)

Posted on October 15, 2013 | 1 comment

chopping mall

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Killer robots on prowl.

A new high-tech shopping mall installs robots as their night security team. They are programmed to apprehend and subdue any intruders, or anyone not showing them their security badge. A bunch of teenagers who work at the mall during the day decide to hang out and party there at night, but find that the robots have run amuck and are now trying to kill them. Locked into the place for the whole night the teens try fighting them off while desperately looking for a way out.

This was writer/director Jim Wynorski’s second feature and the beginning of an almost assembly line string of direct-to-video/B-movie features that of this writing now equals 94 and many of them done under a pseudonym. Wynorski shows some flair by injecting comedy into the proceedings including an engaging opening sequence done over the credits that includes a lot of sight gags and a good up-tempo synthesized score that fits the mood and action. There are also some fun cameos including Paul Bartel and Mary Woronov who appear at the beginning and recreate their roles from the hilarious cult hit Eating Raoul. You can also spot Mel Welles from Little Shop of Horrors fame as well as perennial B-movie favorites Dick Miller as a janitor and Gerrit Graham as a technician.

It was filmed at an actual mall in Sherman Oaks, California, which makes for an interesting backdrop and good authenticity. I also liked how the teens, both the men and women, are very resourceful and come up with different and elaborate ways to combat the robots. The female cast is attractive with a decent amount of nudity. The special effects aren’t bad either. I was impressed with the exploding head sequence as well as the burning body moment. My only quibble in this area is that they were able to break the glass of the storefront windows, which happens several times during the course of the film, much, much too easily.

The biggest problem with the film is that it just isn’t scary or suspenseful enough. The only time there was any real tension is towards the end when the Kelli Maroney character hides underneath some shelves at a pet store and is forced to keep quiet from the lurking robot while a  snake and spiders crawl all over her. Despite some interesting directorial touches it still comes off as mechanical and formulaic and even though the running time is short I still found myself getting quite bored with it. There is also never any explanation for why the robots go haywire, which I felt was a major oversight.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: March 21, 1986

Runtime: 1Hour 17Minutes

Rated R

Director: Jim Wynorski

Studio: Concorde Pictures

Available: DVD, Amazon Instant Video, YouTube

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Posted in 80's Movies, Cult, Dry Humor, Horror, Low Budget, Movies with Nudity, Slasher/Gore

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