Category Archives: Low Budget

Fore Play (1975)

Posted on May 30, 2012 | 1 comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 1 out of 10

4-Word Review: This sex goes limp.

This is a boring, flat, and completely disastrous attempt at sex comedy. This is the type of teaser T & A picture that gives all other T & A pictures a bad name. Out of the entire running time there is less than a minute of any actual nudity. The sex jokes are stupid and a child could watch this and not be overly shocked. It also looks like it was meshed together on the smallest of budgets.

The film is structured much like a horror anthology with three different stories all based on the same theme in this case sex. The first one features comedian Pat Paulsen as a lonely man who buys a realistic looking sex doll (Deborah Loomis). The doll is supposed to be Polish, but her accent sound more like it is Swedish. This segment is somewhat interesting because Paulsen plays against type here. He is much more emotional and hostile. He even ends up swearing at his own mother (Sudie Bond). There is also an amusing bit of seeing him trying to get the doll, with her stiff arms and legs, into a taxi cab. However the segment goes by too fast and the ending is really stupid. Paulsen also sings here and it sounds as bad as you might expect.

The second segment features Jerry Orbach as a writer going through writer’s block. Here you see the film’s one and only offensive sight, which is having to witness George S Irving in a bikini bottom. He plays Orbach’s muse and takes him back into time to reverse certain sexual conquests that he initially bombed at. One amusing bit has him in a game where he must undress a beautiful lady in sixty seconds in order to have sex with her. He does only to find that she is frigid. Like with the first segment this one also has a really stupid ending.

The third and final story sounds like a winner, but fails terribly. It consists of Zero Mostel as the President whose daughter is kidnapped. As ransom he is forced to have sex with his wife (Estelle Parsons) on national television, which ends up being incredibly dull and unsexy. The only amusing bit, and it is a very brief one, is when one of the secret service agents has to frisk the first lady before she is allowed to hug her husband. Both Parsons and Mostel play dual roles neither of which is funny.

The film is sleep inducing. Although many sources list it with a very brief running time it ran a full 90 minutes on the print I saw, which of course only means more minutes of boredom.

My Rating: 1 out of 10

Released: March 24, 1975

Runtime: 1Hour 30Minutes

Rated R

Directors: John G. Avildsen, Bruce Malmuth, Robert McCarty

Studio: Cinema National

Available: DVD (Troma)

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Posted in 70's Movies, Crude Comedy, Drive-In/T & A, Low Budget, Movies with Nudity, Obscure Movies, Sex

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The Honeymoon Killers (1969)

Posted on May 27, 2012 | 3 comments

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Kill the old ladies.

A lonely and overweight nurse by the name of Martha Beck (Shirley Stoler) meets and falls in love with the shady Raymond Fernandez (Tony Lo Bianco) through a ‘lonely hearts’ club. As their relationship progresses he confides in her his practice of marrying women and then robbing them of their savings. She decides to get in on the scheme by posing as his sister. Together they roam the countryside and murder and rob lonely old ladies in this darkly humored tale that is based on actual events.

It is impossible to watch this film and not have actress Shirley Stoler imprinted on your mind forever after. The scenes of her working at the hospital make her seem like the ‘real’ Nurse Ratched. Lo Bianco is also perfectly cast in his role as Fernandez when one reads the actual account of the case the face and voice of Lo Bianco’s almost immediately comes to mind even before you’ve seen the film. His slow revelation at finding out just how vicious and cold Martha really is and that she ends up shocking even him is memorable. The crime sequences themselves are more like humorous vignettes. The lady victims are all humorously flawed and portrayed with such a variety of annoyances that you end up finding yourself looking forward at seeing them ‘get it’. The music played over the killings that starts out low as the crime begins and then builds to a loud and intense crescendo is terrific and the black and white cinematography nicely compliments the stark subject matter.

I was disappointed that although this is a story that is based on actual events for whatever reason the film is set in the present day when the actual events took place in the 1940’s.This was possibly done for budgetary reasons, but it would have made it much more authentic had it been kept in its proper time period. It would also have helped the viewer gain a little more understanding to the Martha Beck character had it given us more of a background on her. In real life Beck had been abused by her father and was also the mother of two children and yet the film never even mentions any of this.

The film wonderfully explores the twisted and sometimes pathetic nature of people in both the perpetrators and in the victims. This becomes much more than a simple reenactment of a true crime story and more like a dark expose of our fragmented world and the fringe characters that dwell in it.

Martin Scorsese was the film’s original director, but was fired early on due to creative differences. Leonard Kastle took on the reins and does a fine job. I like his grainy, cinema verite vision and it was a shame that this proved to be his only directorial effort

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: September 8, 1969

Runtime: 1Hour 48Minutes

Rated R

Studio: American International Pictures

Director: Leonard Kastle

Available:  VHS, DVD (The Criterion Collection) 

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Posted in 60's Movies, Black & White, Black Comedy, Cult, Low Budget, Movies Based on Actual Events

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Carrie (1976)

Posted on May 4, 2012 | 9 comments

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: Prom was a disaster.

A shy, awkward teen (Sissy Spacek) who is a virtual outcast at her school and has a religious zealot for a mother (Piper Laurie), learns that she has telekinetic powers and uses them in terrifying and deadly ways after falling victim to a cruel prank at her high school prom.

Nothing really seems to mesh here and the pacing is poor. For a great deal of time you feel like you are not watching a horror movie, but instead an annoying, clichéd 70’s drama. The majority of the scares occur at the end while the rest of the film has no tension at all.  It’s visually flamboyant, but empty and unable to hide its low budget roots. Like with director Brian De Palma’s other thrillers his style and heavy-handed Hitchcock-like touches become overpowering and you lose touch with the story. Too much is orchestrated and the movie is never allowed to gel and have its own natural flow. The opening, which takes place in a girl’s shower, looks like a soft core porn flick especially with the choice of music.

The teen-age girls are certainly cruel and their snotty attitudes seem valid, but the actresses are all wrong. Yes, Nancy Allen and Amy Irving are hot to look at, but they were too old for their parts. All of them were in their 20’s and look far more like college girls instead of students in high school. The P. J. Soles character is irritating. In an effort to give the role some distinction they have her constantly wearing a pink baseball cap. She even wears it to the prom with her prom dress and looks ridiculous and yet still has the audacity to laugh at Carrie when she shows up when in reality they would most likely be laughing at her instead.

Miss Collins, the physical Ed. Teacher, which is played by actress Betty Buckley is another problem. She goes beyond the call of duty to give Carrie the individualized and sensitive attention that she needs. It sounds nice, but I couldn’t buy into it because in most cases shy students that don’t otherwise cause problems usually get overlooked even by the best of teachers simply because the school systems are too large with too many students to handle.

William Katt was not very convincing in his part as a dumb jock. John Travolta is good, but only because he is playing an extension of his Vinnie Barberino character from ‘Welcome Back Kotter’. In fact I found his portrayal here to be even funnier than his TV counterpart.

Spacek is the best thing about the movie as she brings the Carrie character to life with a vengeance. The part where she tears up the gymnasium with her powers is genuinely creepy and the way she opens her eyes and moves them around is freaky. The use of the split screen during this segment help to make it a uniquely scary moment in cinema history and saves what is otherwise a forgettable production. The famous ‘surprise’ ending isn’t bad either and even managed to startle me a little and I don’t startle easy.

Unfortunately it’s lacking the necessary ingredients overall to make it a classic. It’s based on the Stephen King novel and yet leaves certain crucial elements from the book out, which only creates more questions and confusion. De Palma takes the most simplistic parts of the story and then glossies over the rest leaving the viewer feeling unsatisfied when it is over.

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: November 3, 1976

Runtime: 1Hour 38Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Brian De Palma

Studio: United Artists

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

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Posted in 70's Movies, Adolescence/High School, Cult, Horror, Low Budget, Moody/Stylish, Movies Based on Novels

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Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1988)

Posted on April 9, 2012 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 8 out of 10

4-Word Review: Clowns aren’t for kids.

This is a fun and well-crafted sci-fi satire dealing with outer space aliens that resemble clowns and fly in a spaceship that look like a circus tent. They arrive on earth and begin killing everybody, wrapping them up in a cotton candy like cocoon and storing them in a freezer on their spaceship. When these cocoons become ‘ripe’ they stick a straw into them and suck out their blood.

It’s all a very unique parody on clown culture and those old sci-fi movies from the 50’s. There are shades of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Day the Earth Stood Still, War of the Worlds, and The Blob to name just a few.  Everything is fast paced with an inventive mind set. All those things that were always considered harmless and childlike have been turned into threatening and scary things here and it’s brilliant. The best one is the balloon dog that becomes a vicious barking little beast.

The special effects are outstanding. For a low budget picture this may actually be the best you will find. The circus tent spaceship is impressive especially when it takes off at the end. The popcorn ray guns and the shadow figure of a hungry tyrannosaurus are also good. You got to love the distorted features of clowns that are made to look genuinely frightening where even their bodies are misshapen and grotesque. You start to believe that these are actual creatures and not people inside a costume.

The only drawback is that it was made in the 80’s and is embedded with very bland looking, bland acting teens as the protagonists that seem like cookie cutouts from the genre. It even starts out with the very clichéd scene of having them making out in their parked cars at a secluded, wooded area. Outside of the clowns John Vernon has the only other interesting part. He plays a hardened and slightly corrupt cop who has seen it all and doesn’t fall for anything. He is both edgy and funny and gives the film some added grit. His death scene is good (like most of the others) but it would have been nice had he been able to carry the picture.

Overall this is clever and creative and sure to click with those possessed with a warped sense of humor.

My Rating: 8 out of 10

Released: May 27, 1988

Runtime: 1Hour 28Minutes

Rated: PG-13

Director: Stephan Chiodo

Studio: Trans World Entertainment

Available: VHS, DVD, Amazon Instant Video

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Posted in 80's Movies, Black Comedy, Cult, Horror, Low Budget, Parody, Sci-Fi

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The House That Cried Murder (1973)

Posted on April 6, 2012 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: The bride goes nutzo.

Despite a low budget this is an intriguing horror film with a unique vision. Barbara (Robin Strasser) is a young headstrong woman who designs an ominous looking, modernistic home, which she then has built. She plans on moving into it with her fiancé David (Arthur Roberts) who is caught fooling around on their wedding day, which sends Barbara into reclusion. Soon David begins experiencing strange occurrences, which leads him back to the house where an odd climatic sequence ensues.

This film stands out from the other low budget, cardboard horror movies of the 70’s simply because director Jean-Marie Pelissie shows a good understanding of the genre and how to effectively create eerie sequences. The house itself is an odd spectacle that looks like something designed by Frank Lloyd Wright while drunk. It’s erected in a large, empty field which gives it a very pronounced presence. The inside of the place was unfinished, and Pelisse uses the large windows of the home to casts unusual shadows along its white plastered walls and gives it a spooky look  as the camera goes spinning around it. Some of the imagery used during a nightmare sequence is equally creepy.

Strasser herself is quite frightening and flies into authentic looking rages easily. One good segment has her walking in front of all the wedding guests wearing a blood stained gown while behaving erratically. She then runs off with only hints that she may or may not be lurking in the shadows, which nicely taps into the fear of the unknown and mysterious.

The unfaithful groom is a good character with all the qualities that you love to hate. He is good looking, but amoral. He uses people while climbing the social ladder, but is quite dumb in the process. He tells his bride that he will be gone “for only a minute” and then has the audacity to go to an upstairs room of the house where they are having the wedding party and fools around with his former girlfriend, but doesn’t think to lock the bedroom door. When he gets his eventual comeuppance you have no problem seeing it.

As Strasser’s father John Beal is unimpressive. He is supposed to be a man of money and power, but instead comes off like a wimpy old man. Iva Jean Saraceni,,who portrays David’s old girlfriend Ellen, looks too much like Strasser, which doesn’t help.

Although this film has potential the low production values almost destroy it. The lighting is flat and certain segments are so dark you can barely see what is happening. Many scenes were filmed in small, cramped looking rooms with tacky props in the background. The music used during the scary scenes is good, but the soundtrack played over the rest of the film sounds like a bad rendition of Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass.

If you’re into cheap 70’s horror flicks then this is one you should check out. It definitely has some distinctive moments and is an interesting forerunner to A Nightmare on Elm Street since Barbara terrorizes David and his girlfriend through their dreams.

My Rating: 5 out of 10

Alternate Title: The Bride

Released: December 14, 1973

Runtime: 1Hour 25Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Jean-Marie Pelissie

Studio: Golden Gate Productions

Available: VHS, DVD

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Posted in 70's Movies, Horror, Low Budget, Movies with a rural setting, Obscure Movies

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Maniac (1980)

Posted on March 26, 2012 | 4 comments

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: He wants their hair.

A loner (Joe Spinell) terrorizes New York City by killing young women and scalping them. He then takes their hair, brings it home, and places it (actually he nails it) onto the heads of some mannequins that he has.

In a lot of ways this is the same old mechanical slasher flick as it has all the predictable characteristics of the others that dominated the early 80’s. The story is simple and strung along by long, drawn-out murder sequences. There is some suspense, but it is minimal since we know exactly what is going to happen. The victims are young, good looking women, who are clueless to the dangers that are lurking until it is too late. One segment in particular features a nurse getting off of work late at night, who mentions her fear of the killer and yet for some reason she still foolishly refuses a ride home from her friend and instead walks down a dark, lonely street and into, of course, eventual carnage.

There are also some rather glaring technical errors. One features a woman (the same one who refused a ride) running from the killer by going into an empty subway. Although isolation is the whole factor here there is one shot, taken from inside a departing subway car that clearly shows a whole bunch of people standing just across from her on the other side of the tracks. There is also a segment where Spinell takes his girlfriend to his mother’s grave. When the car pulls up to the cemetery it is a nice, bright afternoon, but when they reach the actual grave it has become pitch black with a strange unexplained fog that has rolled in. Lastly there is the ending. This is a man that has terrorized a whole city and yet only two policemen in an unmarked squad car come to his residence and when they do they don’t even bother to secure the site.

Despite the low-budget problems there are a few things that raise this slightly above the rest. One is the fact that it actually manages to get inside the killer’s head. You hear the inner conversations between his ‘good’ side and his ‘bad’ side. Of course this only touches the surface of a true schizoid personality, but it does offer a little more depth than most. It also helps create a good portrait of a tormented soul and you end up feeling more sadness than fear for the man. The film also consistently has a dark, grainy look, which helps accentuate the ugly theme. Having it take place in New York City gives it a little more distinction and atmosphere.

The special effects are good. The part where he blows a man’s head off, through a car windshield, looks very realistic and has become the film’s most famous scene. The surreal ending, where the mannequins all come to life and exact a sort of revenge, is also well-handled and imaginative. Makeup artist Tom Savini, who also appears as the character of ‘Disco Boy’, has had a lot of success, but the stuff here may be his best.

Director William Lustig shows some panache and Spinell, who also co-wrote the screenplay, gives a surprisingly strong performance, but their attempts at creating a better understanding of a crazed killer prove placid and simply done for shock value.

My Rating: 5 out of 10

Released: December 26, 1980

Runtime: 1Hour 27Minutes

Not Rated (Graphic Violence, Brief Nudity, Language, Adult Theme)

Director: William Lustig

Studio: Magnum Pictures

Available: DVD, Blu-ray (30th Anniversary Edition)

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

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Bunny O’Hare (1971)

Posted on March 9, 2012 | Leave a comment

bunny

By Richard Winters

My Rating 2 out of 10

4-Word Review: Bette becomes a hippie.

Extremely odd Bette Davis vehicle made in her later years when her career had crested and she was forced to be less choosy about her projects. The story has to do with a lonely widow named Bunny O’Hare (Davis) who losses her home to foreclosure and is rendered homeless. She meets an older man named Bill Gruenwald (Ernest Borgnine) who is an escaped bank robber. Together they dress up as hippies and rob banks throughout the state of New Mexico in order to survive.

Davis is exceptional. Usually she plays cold, manipulative characters, but here she gives a perfect, touching performance as a nice old lady. She is terrific in every scene that she is in and the only bright spot in what is otherwise a misfire. Borgnine though seems wasted and thrown in only as a stock character.

The story really has nowhere to go. The intention was to make the film a mixture of social satire and slapstick, but it fails on either end. The novelty wears off quickly and it soon becomes derivative. Initially their ploy to rob the banks seemed clever as Bill releases a bird into the bank, which causes such a distraction that they are able to rob it without detection, but it becomes tiring when it gets played-out again and again. The police are portrayed as being universally bumbling and making it seem like a six-year old could rob a bank and easily get away with it. I also did not like the banjo music being played as they are trying to get away from the cops as it seems too similar to the much better film Bonnie and Clyde and in fact the original title for this movie was going to be ‘Bunny and Claude’.

The casting of Jack Cassidy as Lieutenant Greely, the policeman who becomes obsessed with capturing them, should’ve worked.  He was very adept at playing cold, cunning, slightly offbeat characters as evidenced by his Emmy Award winning performances on the old Columbo TV-show as well as the cult TV-series He and She. He was the husband of actress Shirley Jones and the father of Shaun and David Cassidy whose career was unfortunately cut short when he ended up dying in a fire in 1976 after falling asleep with a lit cigarette. His unique talent here is stifled because the character is portrayed as being unrealistically dimwitted and saps any possible energy from the scenes that he is in.

Actress Joan Delaney makes a terrific addition as his female counterpart R.J. Hart. She is young, attractive, and hip. She plays off of Greely’s old, regimented ways quite well and it is a shame that, with the exception of a very brief appearance in the 1991 comedy Scenes From a Mall, this ended up being her last film.

The New Mexico landscape is nice, but I got the feeling that the location shooting had not been scouted out sufficiently. The police station didn’t look authentic at all. It seemed like scenes where shot in any building that they were able to attain a film permit. The lighting consists of one bright spotlight put on the subject while the sides of the frame and the background are dark and shadowy. Sometimes, in a good movie, this is done for artistic effect, but here I felt it was more because that was all they could afford. This one is for Bette Davis completest only.

Well known character actors John Astin and Reva Rose appear as Bunny’s two grown children, but are essentially wasted. The then acting governor of New Mexico, David Cargo, plays one of the state troopers.  Larry Linville, who would later become famous for playing Major Frank Burns on the classic TV-series M*A*S*H, can be seen very briefly at the end, but has no lines of dialogue.

My Rating: 2 out of 10

Released: October 18, 1971

Runtime: 1Hour 28Minutes

Rated PG

Director: Gerd Oswald

Studio: American International Pictures

Available: Netflix Streaming

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Posted in 70's Movies, Comedy, Low Budget, Obscure Movies, Offbeat, Robbing Banks

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Happy Birthday to Me (1981)

Posted on March 5, 2012 | 1 comment

happy2

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: This birthday isn’t happy.

            Virignia Wainwright (Melissa Sue Anderson) attends a private school where she is a part of a snotty clique whose members start getting killed off just before her 18th birthday. Due to a freak accident suffered years before she has blackouts causing suspicions that she may be the culprit. With the help of her psychiatrist Dr. David Faraday (Glenn Ford) they try to come up with some answers.

Despite being listed as a slasher film and having gained a loyal cult following I found the gore factor to be disappointing. The killings are quite brief and the camera quickly cuts away before much blood, or anything else is shown. The famous shish kebab murder that is captured on the film’s poster is poorly executed. Apparently there was more footage of the killings, but in order to get an R-rating director J. Lee Thompson was forced to cut a lot of it out. However, it would be nice to get a director’s cut version as I am sure today’s horror fans may feel cheated otherwise. The grossest sequence for me wasn’t the killings at all, but instead the scene where Virginia undergoes brain surgery and her skull is vividly cut open and one can see the brain pulsating and expanding inside. The deaths really didn’t seem all that creative and clever despite the film’s reputation and if anything my favorite death scene didn’t involve one of the killings but instead was the part where Virginia and her mother are riding in a car that goes off a bridge and then fills up with water, which is surprisingly intense.

I also had some major issues with the film’s opening murder that features a young girl getting strangled while inside her car. For one thing the killer’s hands didn’t seem to be all that tight around her neck and when the girl manages to escape there are no marks around her neck even though realistically there should be. Also, when she escapes she runs for only a few feet and then stops behind a nearby parked car and acts like she is now ‘safe’ even though most people would run several blocks and probably wouldn’t stop until they found someone else that could help, or the police. The victim also speaks, but if someone has been strangled as severely as she has her voice would have to be effected by it and she might not be able to say anything, or at least speak in a very raspy tone, which is not the case here.

For the most part I found the film to be boring and predictable. I never once got scared, or even all that intrigued. The movie is jammed with every cheesy 80’s horror movie cliché that you can think of. Normally film’s from this genre run no more than 90 minutes and sometimes even less. Going 110 minutes as this one does is much too long for a plot that is paper-thin.  However, the very macabre ending is excellent and almost makes up for it. The surprise twist isn’t bad either although a bit implausible.

Anderson, best known as Mary Ingals from the long running TV-show ‘Little House on the Prairie’, isn’t bad. A shot of her at the end where she is carrying a birthday cake and looks up and smiles is both chilling and sexy and quite possibly the film’s pinnacle. There is no nudity although director Thompson teases the viewer by having her undress to get into the shower, but the camera never gets past her bra and panties.

Hollywood icon Ford is wasted and his tired appearance is almost sad. His wardrobe features him wearing an open shirt showing his bare chest and it looks ridiculous for a man his age. There is another scene where the police dig up a skull on the school’s grounds and the Ford character asks to take a look at it and the police promptly hand it over to him, which I found to be equally ridiculous as that is a crucial piece of evidence that would only be handled by a forensic expert.

If anything Sharon Acker as Virginia’s alcoholic mother Estelle gives the best performance.  Her overwrought slightly hammy scene near the end gives the film some much needed energy.

There were a few other loopholes and inconsistencies that irritated me enough to be mentioned here. One is that years earlier Virginia had a birthday party and all her friend’s snubbed her and didn’t show up, so they could instead go to a party held by a girl who was more wealthy and popular, which made me wonder why then would Virginia want to remain friends with them like she did.  Another part involves a member of their clique named Alfred (Jack Blum) who the girls initially think is storing the severed head of one of their murdered friends. They later realize that this was simply a realistic looking plastic mold that he had made to resemble her, which makes them feel ‘relieved’ enough to continue to socialize with him. However, anyone who makes plastic molds of heads from someone they know that has just been killed seems just as creepy to me and enough to make most normal people concerned, which the characters here are not. There is also no explanation at the end for how the killer, whose identity I will not divulge, was able to come up with such an elaborate and realistic disguise. The gory effects are also not convincing and could have used Tom Savini’s help

Like I said I found the film’s ending to be pretty cool and enough for me to suggest this film to horror fans, but only if they are willing to stick around for it.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: May 15, 1981

Runtime: 1Hour 50Minutes

Rated R (Violence, Language, Adult Theme)

Director: J. Lee Thompson

Studio: Columbia

Available: VHS, DVD, Amazon Instant Video

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Posted in 80's Movies, Adolescence/High School, Cult, Foreign Films, Horror, Low Budget, Movies from Canada, Slasher/Gore

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Re-Animator (1985)

Posted on February 10, 2012 | Leave a comment

re animator

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: The dead come back.

Daniel Cain (Bruce Abbott) is a student at a nearby medical college who decides to take in as a roommate a foreign student named Herbert West (Jeffrey Combs). West seems a bit anti-social and very intense about his work. He sets up a lab in Cain’s basement where he does experiments to bring back the dead by injecting them with his specially formulated serum. He starts with animals, which makes it intriguing enough for Cain to get in on it, but when they start to move onto cadavers at the school’s medical lab things spiral out of control.

Compared to most low-budget horror films of the 80’s, and I have seen many, this thing is nicely compact and well-paced. There is none of that extraneous dialogue and needlessly slow, drawn out scenes before you can get to any type of action, or horror. It grabs your attention right away with a clever, whimsical opening sequence and a musical score that although does sound similar to the one used in Psycho is still quite effective.

The gory special effects are excellent even when compared by today’s standards. Normally I have no problem watching these things no matter how high the gore factor is, but the scene where the instructor peels the skin off the head of one his cadavers during a class lecture and then cuts through the bone of the skull and takes out his brain had me feeling a bit queasy. The best part comes when Dr. Carl Hill (David Gale) gets his head chopped off at the end of a shovel, which is again well-done, and then has both his body and head injected with the serum. The scenes involving the headless body walking around while carrying this talking head are creepy, hilarious, and highly effective. It is realistically enough looking during a couple of sequences that it had me sitting there wondering how they pulled it off. My only quibble in this area would be the part where West reincarnates a cat that comes back to life and turns homicidal.  It is very clear that this ‘killer cat’ is nothing more than a stuffed animal as its fur looks fake and the body is unrealistically thin.

The film is directed by first-timer Stuart Gordon whose only claim to fame before this was when he was a student at the University of Wisconsin in 1969 and he brought in an audience into an auditorium to watch a play he had written and then locked the doors so they couldn’t get out. He intentionally made the play as boring and annoying as possible just to see how long it would take them to rise from their seats and clamor to be let out. Although this was enough to get him expelled I still admire the guy’s panache. That same type of snarky humor is evident here and woven in, in a way that nicely balances the horror. My favorite scene here, and one that I remember most distinctly from when I first saw it back in the 80’s, is when Dan meets his girlfriend Megan (Barbara Crampton) in the school’s hallway. He starts to kiss her passionately and she feels embarrassed and tells him ‘no, no, no’ and then it quickly cuts to show them in bed where she is saying ‘yes, yes, yes’.

Another thing that differentiates this from other low-budget horror films is the fact that the lead characters are not as bland as usual. I liked the way Dan has a moral quandary and teams up with West on some of his experiments. Both Dan and Megan are better fleshed out as characters and believable. Crampton also looks gorgeous and has a good nude sequence at the end.

Kudos must also go to Robert Sampson an actor who has worked steadily since the 1950’s, but has never become a household name. He plays Dean Halsey father of Meagan and his part takes off after he is accidently killed and brought back to life with Herbert’s serum where he turns into a mumbling, crazed lunatic. This isn’t as easy to pull off as you may think and his catatonic stares are fabulous.

David Gale deserves mention as well playing the evil doctor. His pale skin and sullen face make him look like he is dead from the very beginning and he has the perfect look for a horror film. He clearly relishes his role and hams it up nicely. He started to garner a large cult following after his performance here and offers to play similar roles in other horror films began to pour in when he unexpectedly died in 1991.

The only performance I really didn’t like was that of Jeffrey Combs. I know he has pretty much become the face of the Re-Animator franchise, but this guy seemed hammy without ever being amusing, or funny with it. I didn’t like the square, metal rim glasses that he wore as they were much too typical.  An eccentric character should wear eccentric looking glasses and attire to help accentuate his off-beat personality. I also didn’t dig his accent that seemed to waver between Bavarian, German, Russian, and some weird variant in between.

If you are looking for something different this Halloween then I suggest checking this one out. It has just the right amount of ingredients to be both entertaining and scary at the same time and it can still easily hold-up with today’s jaded viewers.

My Rating 7 out of 10

Released: October 18, 1985

Runtime: 1Hour 26Minutes

Rated R

Director: Stuart Gordon

Studio: Empire Pictures

Available: VHS, DVD, Blu-ray

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Posted in 80's Movies, Black Comedy, Horror, Low Budget, Movies Based on Novels, Movies with Nudity, Slasher/Gore

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Targets (1968)

Posted on January 12, 2012 | 1 comment

targets

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: He kills his family.

In 1967 producer Roger Corman gave fledgling director Peter Bogdanovich the green light to make any movie he wanted as long as he followed two stipulations.  The first one was that he had to use footage from Corman’s earlier film The Terror and the second one required that he use the acting services of Boris Karloff as Karloff still owed Corman two day’s work per his contract.  This movie is the result of that agreement, which kind of works and kind of doesn’t and seems more like two movies rolled into one.

The first story deals with a young, clean-cut man starting to have homicidal urges. The second scenario involves an aging actor played by Karloff, who decides he wants to retire despite the appeals of his agent and film studio. He plans to attend a showing of one of his films (The Terror) at a local drive-in where the sniper is waiting to shoot him.

I enjoyed the scenes involving the sniper and felt it helped elevate this film from the typical exploitation fare.  The character is based very closely on Charles Whitman, an All-American ex-marine, who on August 1, 1966, climbed to the top of the clock tower at the University of Texas in Austin and shot 32 people, killing 14. It was one of the very first mass-shootings in American history and it caused worldwide headlines.

Tim O’Kelly, the actor who plays the gunman, looks almost exactly like Whitman. What I liked about these scenes is the way it follows the character around and shows his interactions with his family. Like in real life there were no indicators, or violent past.  It is creepy watching him say grace at the dinner table, or having wholesome conversations with his wife when you know what’s going to happen.  The film goes into almost meticulous detail with the build-up and I found it gripping despite the fact that there is little action, or music.

The shootings are uniquely done.  Like in the actual incident, he shoots his mother and wife first and then puts a towel over their blood stains while carrying their dead bodies back to their bedrooms so it would look more ‘tidy’ when the police came.  This is all done with a docu-drama approach, which heightens the impact and realism.

The scenes involving the sniper shooting at people while they drive in their cars along a busy roadway are excellent as well.  It was done on an actual freeway and the viewer watches the action from the killer’s perspective through the telescope of his rifle, which is chilling. The cars veering off the road and people getting shot are vivid.  The only fault here is that Bogdanovich had the killer climb up on top of an ordinary tank at an oil refinery to do the shootings.  The clock tower in the actual incident was a very distinct structure and it would have been stronger visually had they found another one that was similar to it.

The parts involving Karloff are weak and tend to be cluttered with a lot of uninteresting dialogue.  Bogdanovich casts himself as the screenwriter for Karloff’s next proposed project.  I always thought it was a bit weird for a director, especially one that at the time was young and unknown, to cast himself in his own movie.  I know Woody Allen and Spike Lee, as well as others have done this, but it always came off as a bit narcissistic to me. However, I saw Bogdanovich in person a few months ago and he hasn’t seemed to have aged a day.

The climactic sequence in the drive-in is poorly handled. The dark lighting makes it hard to follow the action.  The final confrontation between Karloff and the killer is dull and unimaginative.  The only good points here is that it gives you a chance to see both Randy Quaid an Mike Farrell in their film debuts playing two of the sniper’s victims.

The film ends with a bird’s-eye view of the drive-in’s empty parking lot taken the next day with the sniper’s car being the only one left.  It was shot during the early morning hours so the sunlight gives it a surreal quality.  It also has a moody feel because the only sound is of blowing wind as the credits scrawl over, which I liked. However, the police would certainly have impounded his car and gone through it for clues and not have let it just sit there.

Under the conditions that he was given I think Bogdanovich did a commendable job. It is hard to know what category to put this film into.  At times it seems like a horror movie and then at other points it’s a drama. Some may even argue that it is a sentimental tale dealing with an aging actor moving into the final years of his life. Personally I wished it had gone all out as a horror film because the ingredients were there except that the tension was inconsistent. Fans of Bogdanovich may want to check this out because it is radically different from any of his later works.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: August 15, 1968

Runtime: 1Hour 30Minutes

Rated R

Director: Peter Bogdanovich

Studio: Paramount

Available: DVD, Amazon Instant Video

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Posted in 60's Movies, Cult, Drama, Low Budget, Moody/Stylish, Movies Based on Actual Events, Thrillers/Suspense

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