It is terribly easy in this day and age to accidentally break one of the many laws on the stature books. Although no-one wants to do anything wrong, it is simple to steal money, defraud a bank or smuggle drugs purely by chance. To help our readers avoid any such nasty events, here is a guide to one such accidental crime.
How to make sure that you don’t grow any hallucinogenic mushrooms in your cellar.
Unless you’re really careful, pint or quart jars can become 3/4 full with a mixture of 50 gm. rye grain, 80 ml. water and 1 gm. of calcium carbonate. When this happens, hallucinogenic mushrooms can easily grow in great quantities.
Ensure that, if any pint or quart fruit jars do get filled with this type of substance, you don’t accidentally allow any psilocybe mycelium to get into the jars as well. The mycelium is just as likely to produce mushrooms as the fruit bodies.
If you get this far by complete accident, please be certain not to let the jars stand at a temperature of 70-75 degrees F. since if this happens, the psilocybe production will be high.
Be sure not to harvest any mushrooms which you see after 10-12 days. Harvesting, by the way, is done by removing the mycellum mat, drying it at gently in an oven with an open door and powdering the resultant product – don’t do this with anything you should happen to fish out of any pint or quart jars lying around your cellar.
If you were careless enough to extract the powder by soaking in methanol, filtering and evaporating the liquid over a low heat, you’d end up with usable psilocybe. It is easy to do this inadvertently so do be on your guard.
Next: How to build your own nuclear deterrent.
Eh? A couple of remarks that caught my ear.
In a hi-fi shop: “What do you mean ‘quieter’? Do you mean ‘not as loud’?”
Bryan Robson, England soccer captain, on ‘The Big Match’: “If we played like that every week, we wouldn’t be so inconsistent”.
February 24, 1990 Scala Cinema, King’s Cross, London
And after the away leg of Black Sunday, the home leg of Splattcrfcst ‘9O, played the next weekend at the Scala. This was undoubtedly the most eagerly anticipated genre event in London since last Shock, which meant there was a full house and the crowds arrived early: we turned up with just less than an hour to go before the doors opened, and already the queue stretched about 100 yards.
We got in and grabbed seats. pleasantly close to the front, then discovered, horror of horrors that there was NO FESTIVAL T-SHIRT. Jeez, what’s the point of going to these things if you can’t proclaim the fact on your back afterwards? Also, there was no programme to tell you what the running order was likely to be which. since nobody was sure which films had been pulled and which were on, left us a little in the dark. Eventual|y_ the first film was announced as ‘Henry, Portrait of a Serial Killer’, and the director. John McNaughton, was introduced to the crowd to loud applause, with a promise that he, like all the other guests, would be available to answer questions afterwards. This was the case; up until “The Comic” [see later], each film with an appropriate guest was followed by a Q & A session. The guests generally hung around afterwards as well and l was impressed with their attitude and the way they were willing to take time and chat to the fans. On with the films…
HENRY, PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER (John McNaughton) – Loosely based on the exploits of Henry Lee Lucas, an American murderer currently on Death Row for having killed, according to his confession. around about l50 people, all over the States. The film gained notoriety when the MPAA, the US equivalent of the BBFC, refused to give it a rating due to its ‘tone and intent“; they couldn’t suggest any cuts that would let them pass it. The film tells of Henry’s relationship with an ex-conmate Otis, and Otis’s sister, Becky, who has just left her husband. Henry did not have a happy childhood, to say the least. and he now kills people at random, whenever he wants to, carefully varying his modus operandi to avoid detection. At first, Otis & Becky do not know about this, but Otis eventually finds out after Henry kills two prostitutes they’ve picked up; Becky, on the other hand, is falling in love with Henry…
This is a dark movie. I cart see why the MPAA didn’t like it – there is very little gore compared to most slasher pics and, apart from one horrific sequence when Henry & Otis make their own snuff movie. not a great deal of violence. What makes it so chilling is the lack of any supernatural element to allow you to distance yourself front it and the fact that it’s based on reality (there are still many serial killers at large in America) doesn’t help.
The direction is gripping from the first frame to the last, aided by good performances especially from Michael Rooker as Henry ~ if perhaps you get to the end and think “What was the point? That wasn’t educational, informative or entertaining”, it’s not until afterwards, when you’re sitting on the bus wondering about the person sitting opposite, that you’ll realise you’ve seen a film with a totally original stance that will stay with you for a long while.
RABID GRANNIES (Emmanuel Kervyn) – Reviewed in TC3. and just as good on a third viewing. if anything. it’s getting better as each time I appreciate more of the parody – it’s a pisstake of the whole splatter genre, especially badly dubbed Italian pics; how you react to it depends to an extent, I suspect, on how you feel about the targets for it’s humour.
DOCUMENT OF THE DEAD (Roy Frumkes) – George Romero is one of the most often cited masters of the horror genre, thanks mainly to his ‘Night/Dawn/ Day of the Dead’ trilogy. This non-fiction piece traces his work on ‘Dawn of the Dead’, set inside and around a Pittsburgh shopping malt. I’ve never been a great fan of ‘The Making Of style articles, books or films, since I find it harder to suspend my disbelief if I know how a certain effect or shot was done. This, the fact that I’m not a die-hard George Romero fan and the absolutely hideous sound quality meant this was a bit of a disappointment to me – the best part was a commercial for washing powder directed by Romero. which was a nice parody of ‘Fantastic Voyage’. However, the O & A session with Frumkes’ afterwards was interesting – he came across as intelligent and articulate, with some fascinating (and potentially slanderous) anecdotes about Romero and Dario Argento.
COMBAT SHOCK (Buddy Giovanazzo) – I thought ‘Henry’ was grim, until I discovered… not Smirnoff. but ‘Combat Shock’. a Vietnam movie that deals with the horrific mental scars left on returning GIs. Frankie, played by the director’s brother, is a veteran without a job and no hope, but with a whining, nagging wife and a deformed baby caused by his exposure to Agent Orange. They live in a hellish section of New York where addicts cram fixes into their arms with coat-hangers, thugs hold sway and life is just one big vicious circle. The movie relentlessly follows his slide into crime 8 madness, which ends with him killing his wife, baby and committing suicide.
Done on a budget of just $60,000, this is without a doubt the most depressing picture l have ever seen – no character is remotely sympathetic; even Frankie, the most obvious target for audience association, is so screwed-up with his ‘Nam flashbacks, that there’s no empathy possible. Though you can feel for him, once again, the Vietnam factor comes into play – the only thing we British can relate that to is the Falklands and that’s a completely different kettle of fish, not least because we won. While ‘Henry’ was a frightening film, this isn’t. I’m not sorry I saw it – it certainly has plenty of redeeming qualities – but I won’t be making an effort to see it again.
The nest item up was a showing of ‘Within the Woods’, the original show-reel made by Sam Raimi, Bruce Campbell and Scott Spiegel to raise money for ‘The Evil Dead’. This 30-minute, 8mm. film was an interesting comparison, both in terms of the similarities (certain shots were almost EXACTLY re-used in either Evil Dead or Evil Dead ll) and the differences (in the original, it’s a girl that survives, rather than Ash). Scott Spiegel had also brought along another short film, directed by Josh Becker. Titled ‘Cleveland Smith, Bounty Hunter’ and starring Bruce Campbell and Sam Raimi, it was a l0-minute parody of Indiana Jones and got probably the best reception of the entire festival for its relentless array of slapstick humour (it’s no secret Spiegel, Campbell & Raimi are Three Stooges fans). Although it’s a pity that it was never expanded beyond a show~reel. I imagine Steven Spielberg would have started writ-writing had it gone any further!
Here seems an appropriate point to discuss the other short films and clips that were shown. There was a promo reel for ‘Maniac 2’ – I was in the toilet at the time, so we’ll move rapidly onto ‘Horrorshow’ which was a promo piece directed by Paul Hart-Wilder to by and win backing for a feature length film. There wasn’t a great deal to it. but then, it was showcasing the director’s talent and not the scriptwriter’s! The most impressive thing was a nine-minute advert for ‘Hardware’, a British film (partly sponsored by BSB, if I read the caption right!). While not being particularly original, ‘The Terminator’, ‘Max Headroom’ and ‘Blade Runner’ being obvious influences, it looks highly intriguing and with a terribly un~British quota of splatter ‘n’ sex.
THE LAUGHlNG DEAD (S.P. Somtow) – Better known as a writer, mainly of SF books, Somtow turned his hand first to script-writing. then to directing (when he realised he couldn’t afford union rates!) and finally to acting in his film: it’s one way of keeping the costs down! It starts of as a simple spam-in-a-Mexican-town film, with a variety of, mainly nasty, characters gathered together for a coach tour organised to fit in with the Mayan Day of the Dead (see next column). These include a priest and his bimbo(!). a couple of New Age freaks, an obnoxious kid, etc. The priest gets possessed by a Mayan death god, slaughters one or two folk and the police forbid anyone to ieave. Then the story changes tack and the spam, er, characters have to follow the priest into another world and defeat him.
On the plus side. there are some juicy effects – cheap, but well done and used effectively by Sorntow for a ‘virgin’ director — and some nice humour; Somtow the writer makes sure Somtow the actor gets most of the best lines! On the other hand, the story isn’t ALL that original, even if the setting is – the ending is a total cop—out. Not enough deaths either – any film that kills a kid gets 10 bonus points, and this one had a golden chance to do so, with a brat that deserved to die. but it wimped out. Still, overall, it was fun and since that was all it was meant to be, I’m not complaining.
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I Was A Laughing Dead During my time as a student in the Arts department at Pima Community College, in Tucson. Arizona, myself and a few other people were told by one ot the instructors that a production company was to film in Old Tucson. They needed about 100 people to be extras in the movie, dressed up as skeletons or zombies to take pert in Dia de los Muertos or the Day ot the Dead, a festival that makes up a small part of the movie. Celebrated on All Souls Day. it dates back to the pre—Co|umbian Indians and is a party-like event when people and families gather in churchyards to eat, drink, make music and polish the tombstones in the belief that this is the only night of the year when the dead can partake of food in spirit.
Dressed in black. we were picked up at the University ot Arizona and taken to the set where we were made~up, myself as a skeleton. Although we only shot around 3 or 4 scenes — in front of a saloon bar. an old church and in the streets — it all took about four or five hours, during which retreshments were provided. atter which we were taken back to the University by bus. I had the time of my lite and had danced with one of the math extras, who makes appearances through the film. Being an extra in ‘The Laughing Dead’ is an experience I’ll remember for a long time, and one that I’d love to repeat. —- Elena M. Nitchman.
THE TOXIC AVENGER 2 (Herz and Weill) – See TC2. Ever wanted to fall asleep during a film, but not been able to?
THE COMIC (Richard Driscoll) – When this movie finished, there was a storm of applause front the audience. Unfortunately, this was because a lot of people were very glad to see the back of it – there was just as much applause for the guy who shouted out ‘We want an apology for that film’. lt wasn’t the fact that it was five years old and rumoured to be available in HMV for under a tenner that got to people (‘The Evil Dead II’, which was shown at the end for reasons I’ll explain later, is similar in that respect and was treated almost with reverence). It was just that… it wasn’t very good, shall we say.
What it was doing at Splatterfest is difficult to tell since it was just about 100% splatter-free — it was an ‘Eraserhead’ style picture, set in an indeterminate future time. about a prospective comic who kills a rival, falls in love, etc. It succeeded in all the minor areas. such as set design and costume, while failing in the important ones – the story was incoherent and inadequate and the acting was damn near laughable. especially from the lead actor. whose name shall be erased from the pages of history forthwith.
However, personally, I think if people don’t like a film, they should take a nap, go get a cup of coffee and just shut up and let those people who want to watch it, do so. No matter how bad the movie is, slow hand-clapping, shouting out ‘This is a load of shit’, etc has never to my knowledge got a film taken off, so it’s a pointless & annoying exercise only engaged in by sub-human morons who should be kept out of cinemas. All it’s done here is made one distributor pretty sure he won’t give any films to horror festivals in future.
There was no question and answer session after ‘The Comic’; the director had vanished without trace and the organisers decided it would not be politic to show ‘Cold Light of Day’, directed by the same man. Bit of a shame, because it wasn’t the direction that screwed up ‘The Comic’. Instead. we got:
BRAIN DEAD (Adam Simon) ~ This is one highly bizarre movie. that tries to double its audience by attempting to confuse the hell out of them to such an extent that they have to go back and see the film again. It stars Bill Paxton as a brain surgeon coerced by a multi-national company into trying to salvage the mind of one of their scientists (Bud Cort) who is suffering from severe paranoia. The whole boundary between reality and fantasy dissolves when the surgeon is knocked down by a car – from then on, we haven’t got the faintest idea whether we’re in a hallucination or the normal world. He keeps regaining consciousness only to find out that he was dreaming about waking up, or dreaming about dreaming. This bizarre, multi-level scheme, reminiscent of Jess Franco’s “Virgin Among the Living Dead” without the zombies (or the virgin for that matter!) only clears up in the last five minutes, leaving you wondering what’s been going on for the previous 90. How it all gels together remains a complete mystery to me, but at 3 am, it had a weird sort of logic…
BRIDE OF THE RE-ANIMATOR (Brian Yuzna) – The one everyone was waiting for. ls it as good as the original? Well, no. but it’s a nice try. With just about the same cast as last time, save Barbara Crampton, it begins with Herbert West down in Peru continuing his experiments on war casualties. Soon. he’s back at Miskatonic and this time, he’s less interested in restoring life than creating it. I don’t want to say too much about it, since half the fun are the surprises; but I don’t think it’s giving too much away to say that this is based quite heavily on Frankenstein (‘The Bride of Frankenstein’ was the last sequel Brian Yuzna thought was any good!). So we get an acknowledgement to Mary Shelly [sic], a bride that looks straight out of Andy Warhol’s ‘Flesh for Frankenstein’ and Herbert West doing Peter Cushing impressions.
It’s perhaps no bad thing that Yuzna has gone for a different approach but with the exception of Dr. Hill. who makes a return appearance (or at least his head does), the whole first film might not have happened – we almost start from scratch again, which is a bit of a waste of time. The effects are generally messy and well executed. with the exception of one that might have come from ‘Batman’ (I mean that more literally than you realise!) – Jeffrey Coombs is, if anything, better now than he was in the original, though he has more to work with here. If it hadn’t been for ‘Re-Animator’, this would have been a highly acceptable FX feast — trying to live up to Stuart Gordon’s masterpiece is a different matter, and I came away feeling disappointed, for no reason I could work out.
And that was that, almost. To make up for the loss of ‘Cold Light of Day’, the organisers pushed in ‘Evil Dead I1’ to make up the ten movies, which I’d guess 95% of the audience had seen before, but it was tolerated since no-one could think of anything better to do at 5.30 on a Sunday morning. What started so well. thus finished in near disarray – however. as it was a first attempt. the organisers can be forgiven the odd faux pas. A little more care with the selection of films, a little better organisation and it’ll be up there with the best of them.
I haven’t yet bothered to invest in a satellite dish, mostly because I’ve not been overawed by the product on offer – the films of interest on it have been few, far between and easily available down the local video shop. The Lifestyle channel, run by W.H.Smith’s and carrying programs like ‘Fashion File’, ‘Wok With Yan’ and ‘Great American Gameshows”, is not the place you’d expect to find trash of the highest order, but tucked away at three o’clock on a Sunday afternoon is a programme which on it’s own makes buying a dish appealing. That programme is ‘Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling’, known to it’s fans as GLOW. If they were to make a TV series of “Reform School Girls”, it’d probably look like GLOW – similar OTT characters, gratuitous violence and total lack of plot.
There are two sorts of characters: Good Girls and Bad Girls. The former are mostly all-American beauties with blonde hair who play fair, except when pushed too far by the Bad Girls. THEY, on the other hand, are evil, corrupt and nasty people, who’ll cheat at every opportunity and drink beer STRAIGHT FROM THE BOTTLE. Examples: Amy, the Farmer’s Daughter (hair in bunches, Mid-West drawl, cut-off jeans) is a Good Girl. Palestina, the Syrian Terrorist (khaki fatigues, wields a scimitar, prays to Mecca before each bout) is a Bad Girl. I should point out there is no anti-Arab bias – one of the Good Girls supposedly hails from Egypt, though I have my doubts whether either of them has been closer to the Middle East than a New York bagel bar.
Other Good Girls include Tara the Southern Belle, the California Doll, Susie Spirit (enters carrying the American flag) and head Good Girl, Tina Ferrari. She is often called upon to intervene when one of the Bad Girls goes too far i.e. Palestina taking on the announcer, the ref and the entire audience with her scimitar. In the other corner we might have the Princess of Darkness, Hollywood & Vine (a tag duo specialising in cat-fighting, where the violence gets SERIOUSLY unnecessary) or Dementia, perhaps the weirdest of them all. She’s straight out of ‘Halloween’, and enters wearing a mask and carrying her twin trademarks of a toy, usually a doll, and a weapon, her favourite being an axe. The first programme I saw featured a bout between her and Tina Ferrari – on her way in, Dementia passed a young fan waving a Tina Ferrari poster (planted? Nah, surely not!). This was snatched and scrawled upon with crayons, before being mercilessly shredded. The girl ain’t all there.
Each programme contains four bouts, which may be one on one, tag team (with two or three a side) or battle royal (TWENTY in the ring, all vs. all). Between these, you get totally feeble attempts at humour, with perhaps two Good Girls putting on their make-up and bitching about a Bad Girl (or vice-versa). Here’s an example :
“Ashley is really top-heavy” “Yeah, they stopped her in the bowling alley for stealing the equipment!”
Hysterical.
Just as bad are the horrific song and dance numbers: “Good girls don’t, but good girls might” sing the Good Girls, as they strut their stuff beside the swimming pool (Bad Girls don’t either, at least not in GLOW – though nearly anything else goes, costumes are sacrosanct, inviolate and remain firmly stuck to their owners). Sometimes, before a match, a contestant will indulge in some rap – Colonel Ninotchka (Soviet, thus 100% Bad Girl), before taking the GLOW championship off Tina Ferrari, came up with : Tina Ferrari’s the capitalist dream / She won’t look as good, face down in the ring She thinks she’s sexy and so very strong / I will destroy her, it won’t take long”.
There are regular spots such as “Amy’s Letters Home” (she’s the Farmer’s Daughter, remember?) which are just an excuse for another joke. “Tina’s Hints & Tips” sounded like one of these : “Tina Ferrari here with another tip on how to get the man you want. Don’t be upset if things don’t work out at first. A relationship is a lot like a puzzle; the fun is finding all the pieces and making them fit”. I waited for the punch-line. And I waited. Eventually it dawned there wasn’t one; it was supposed to be serious. Somehow, that was far funnier than the deliberate jokes.
Occasionally I do get pangs of guilt about finding two women trying to beat each other up funny; certainly, if there was a man dishing out the punishment, it would not be entertaining in the least. Somehow, GLOW transcends all that, perhaps because the actual wrestling is a very minor part. What’s engaging are the characters, the naff humour, the commentary (Motormouth Mike Morgan deserves an article to himself for things like “Her smile is so big she’s getting lipstick on her ears”) and even the adverts (“Another great invention from TELEBUY!!”), all combining to produce something more surreal than even this writer’s imagination can invent. The last edition taped for me had running chainsaws, Colonel Ninotchka becoming the champion, and the President of GLOW absconding to Brazil with the cash after he was discovered wearing ladies’ underwear. Can Tina Ferrari take the title back? Will Col. Ninotchka mellow in this era of glasnost? Are they EVER going to tell a funny joke? I, for one, will be watching avidly to find out…
I have a theory that New World Pictures exists, not to make movies, but as psychotherapy for mentally disturbed film directors, allowing them to act out their fantasies on celluloid. For example, Michael Lehmann, director of “Heathers”, exorcised the ghost of his unpleasant schooldays by killing a few teen bitches. Tom de Simone used “Reform School Girls” to pursue his lingerie fetish and in “Hellraiser”, Clive Barker showed a deep, unconscious desire to be reincarnated as the meat department in Sainsbury’s.
If this theory holds true, Donald G. Jackson must be the most warped and twisted of the lot of them, as “Roller Blades” is a story of post-apocalyptic, roller-skating, warrior nuns. Not only that, but to judge from the large number of Smiley badges being worn, this could well be the first ever case of an exploitation movie FOR acid casualties, BY acid casualties. Only the fact that it predates The Second Summer of Love by some time prevents the ‘cuffs going on and Mr. Jackson getting charged with being in possession of an offensive mind.
The story (written, naturally, by Donald G. Jackson) takes place in ‘The City of Lost Angels’ during ‘The Second Dark Age’, though it looks like a shopping-centre car park on early-closing day to me. We meet the Sisters of the Holy Order of Roller Blades, led by Mother Speed and their ally Marshal Goodman (who talks in a weird mix of skate-speak and Middle English – only the fact that he IS a marshal stops me from being able to make a joke about his mother having been frightened by a hi-fi catalogue). Also, we meet their enemy Saticoy, who looks like Gordon the Gopher with an especially nasty skin disease (SFX by Donald G. Jackson) and is capable of speaking without moving his lips, and of moving his lips without speaking, though since all the sound is post-synched, he is no worse off than the rest of the cast in this respect.
Out of the west arrives the Bimbo with No Name (costume by Donald G. Jackson), currently acting as a hitwoman for Saticoy in exchange for batteries for her Walkman – she slits the throat of one of his employees who was trying to defect. Three of the nuns (I use the term loosely) are caught by Saticoy and their comrades mount a rescue mission. Their philosophy, quoted by the Mother Superior, is “All weapons and techniques of battle are converted into tools of love”. Precisely how this applies to their favoured butterfly knives is not immediately clear (I don’t think you can get arrested for “being in possession of an offensive tool of love”), but it turns out they use them, and some mysterious Power (as in all exploitation pics, it’s obviously Power with a capital P), to heal – this is demonstrated on a poor Sister with a slit throat.
The Bimbo With No Name is given her next mission – to infiltrate the Sisters and steal the crystal which is the source of their Power. She does this by seeking sanctuary there, adding realism to her plea by letting herself get roughed up a little by a gang of skate-punks, the Spikers, on the way. Not TOO much – she eventually kicks them in with, literally, both hands tied behind her back.
The Sisters let her in and agree to show her the ropes (and the chains, and the whips – oops, wrong nuns, that’s ‘Racconti Sensuale’). She is given a name, Sister Fortune, and Sister Sharon agrees to take on the task of training her. The first stage of this is a ceremony to “cleanse the soul”. Yea, verily thou knowest that when two or three bimbos are gathered together in the name of Exploitation, and thou hearest talk of cleanliness, we are talking Shower Scene City. And lo, this is the case; before you can say “Hail Mary”, they’re in the jacuzzi soul-cleansing.
Meanwhile, Saticoy has kidnapped Marshal Goodman’s son, Chris, for no good reason. This takes place in the Devil’s Playground, which also looks like a supermarket car- park to me. One wonders what the set designer was playing at – probably too busy writing the script, directing, producing, costume designing, etc. Yep, it’s DGJ again. Sister Fortune’s training progresses rapidly, since it consists of sod all apart from a bout of sparring with butterfly knives. During the course of this session, the Spikers come along and retain their 100% beaten record by getting their asses kicked in rapid time. She is then ordained in a ceremony, with no clothes on (above).
We’ll move on, tho’ not without a hint of regret. Sister Fortune steals the crystal of Power and exits stage left. Enter Marshal Goodman, having discovered his son’s disappearance. He seals off the convent to prevent any of the Roller Blades coming to help him find Chris. The logic there escapes me for the moment but he clearly thinks butterfly blade bearing bimbettes are likely to do more harm than good. Sister Sharon, seeking to undo the wrong she feels responsible for (the notion of free will is clearly not in the Roller Blades’ theology textbook), escapes the convent and the blockade, pausing only to greet the Spikers in the customary way, by beating them up.
Sister Fortune goes to give the power crystal, sorry, Power crystal, to Saticoy (now revealed as a man in a leather ice hockey mask wearing a ‘Smirk’ badge – the mangy sponge creature really IS just a hand-puppet) – he reveals his plans to use the Power crystal to ignite the “acid fuel” in his rocket and leap across the chasm (possibly the San Andreas fault?) to a weapons store on the other side, which he can then loot for use against the Roller Blades on his return. This gives Sister Fortune second thoughts about letting him have the Power crystal (typical religion – gives you a bloody guilt complex!) and she double-crosses him.
Sister Sharon encounters some Oriental warriors and engages in a spot of roller-fu; meanwhile, in another match-up, there’s a shock result as the Spikers finally get to beat someone up. Saticoy and his hand puppet have some fun undressing a bimbo wrapped in Bacofoil – Sooty never got up to that sort of thing, I’m sure. The Marshal arrives to rescue his son who is suspended over a vat of Triple-C 934 – scary, huh?
Sisters Fortune & Sharon fight – the former wins but is shot by one of Saticoy’s guard who takes the crystal and gives it to his master. The Spikers go back to their old ways, ending the season with a played five, won one record. I think I got distracted slightly at this point – my notes read “Sister Sharon takes her top off, Chris is rescued”, but I’m sure there was more to it than that, and also that those two events were not logically connected.
Anyway, Saticoy tries his leap and doesn’t make it, plunging into the chasm. Since he took the Power crystal with him, you’d expect this to be a bit annoying for the Roller Blades, but Sister Sharon has discovered that “the Power lies within”. Damn good job too. The End.
This film certainly has interesting similarities to other movies: “Mad Max”, “Bad Taste”, “Surf Nazis” and “Rollerball” all have some resemblance to “Roller Blades”. Unfortunately, it steals the wrong bits – if it’d had the characters, gore, poor taste and good acting of them respectively, we’d be laughing; instead we have a film that’s worth watching once, anyway, to see how a man can take an obsession and use it to make a movie, though admittedly not a very good one. That there’s a market for this sort of thing is clear from the fact that it spawned at least one sequel, the only Incredibly Bad Film I can think of to have done so. I have yet to see it myself – if it’s half as trashy and pointless as this one is, then it’s worth 75p (which is what it cost me to rent “Roller Blades”) of anyone’s money. Whether it’s worth much more, though, is a question I prefer to leave unanswered…
We arrived in Manchester Piccadily about 5.50 and noticed that the last train to Ashton went at quarter past six from Manchester Victoria – one lightning dash across town later, we discover the small letters ‘SX’ did not refer to the late, great ‘Shock Xpress’ but meant Saturdays Xcepted (no-one said BR’s employees could spell!) and we hung round for a while, finally catching a bus there instead. The driver wondered why we were off to Ashton (it obviously wasn’t the centre of the universe) and got a vague answer about films, no-one wanting to go into detail about Nekromantik’s plot.
Arriving in Ashton, the first step was to find the cinema. Possibly in revenge for my not having enclosed an SAE when I sent off for the tickets, I hadn’t been sent any info on where the festival was taking place – fortunately, the bus driver could point us in the right direction. The second step was to find the nearest pub. While perhaps not the most lively setting (the walls being plastered with LP covers for a group called Fivepenny Piece, whom I’d never heard of, but who’d managed to acquire a pair of gold discs), with bitter 25p/pint less than London at 86p, it was more than tolerable, especially once other weirdos started turning up. We stayed in there for most of the evening, making a brief sorty out for food and discovering the entire town was closed, except for McDonald’s.
Eventually headed queue-wards, and stood around for a while in an orderly fashion, until one of the organisers shouts out ‘Those of you with reserved tickets go to the front of the queue’. Great, we thought, having already got ours, and we joined the charge to the front. Uh-uh. That was ‘reserved’ as in ‘paid-for-but-haven’t-picked- up-yet’. Eventually, we got inside and found seats, downstairs with the plebs – not bad for leg-room, though after 20 hours of occupation there’s no such thing as enough. A brief sortie upstairs to grab the program and near compulsory T-shirt (which were damn good value – six quid, printed front & back) then we were off…
HOT LOVE (Jorg Buttgereit) – Made by JB before ‘Nekromantik’ (more on which later, I guess!), this short film is a simple tale of boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy rapes girl & kills himself, girl gives birth to baby, baby mutates into monster and kills girl and lover with a broken bottle. Not bad going for half an hour, and almost standard Buttgereit fare! The FX, though cheap, are imaginatively used (true of the film in general) and the fact it’s in German is no problem. As with a lot of Jorg’s work, it’s a little difficult to tell where the man is being serious – for the sake of his sanity, I hope it isn’t very often… SOCIETY (Brian Yuzna) – Reviewed in TC2, so no point in saying more about it here; the first hour is just as dull as last time, though it makes more sense now, and the last thirty minutes are still seriously OTT.
I BOUGHT A VAMPIRE MOTOR-CYCLE (Dirk Campbell) – This was made by the same folks who are responsible for the TV series “Boon”, and stars a lot of the same people. According to John Wolskell, the co-producer and co-writer of it, they “set out to make a film with loads of blood and that was lots of fun”. Right on both counts – IBaVM is an outstanding entry in that difficult genre, the horror-comedy, and will be a well-deserved success if the reaction here was anything to go by – it was generally regarded as the hit of the festival. The title says it all; a Satanist is trying to summon a devil when proceedings are interrupted by a gang of Hell’s Angels who kill him. Thanks to the demonist bleeding into his motor-bike’s tank, it becomes possessed and at night, goes around seeking blood and revenge against the Hell’s Angels. This happens after it’s sold to a dispatch rider (Neil Morrisey), who has to fend off the bike, the Hell’s Angels, his girl-friend (Amanda Noah), and the police while trying to get a priest (Anthony Daniels) to turn it into an exorcised bike [ Ouch! ].
The effects, from Bob Keen’s Image Animation, are highly arterial, with the (severed) head count close to double figures – add in fingers, legs & a bisected nurse and we’re in messier territory than ever reached by Hammer. And it’s Hammer who are the closest in spirit here – although without any sexual overtones, the bike is a true ‘classic’ vampire, repelled by garlic & crucifixes and fearful of day-light; with nearly every surface capable of slicing, crushing or mutilating, it’s one mother of a machine. If the film has a problem, it’s that it tries to cram in TOO much – one or two chunks, such as a dream sequence involving a talking turd, are funny but add little to it. However, given the probably low budget (the makers &l31were very coy about it, in case it prejudices negotiations with distributors) it’s a lovely piece of work and hopefully will get a theatrical release, possibly with Blue Dolphin, the company who distributed “Bad Taste”.
NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 5 (who cares?) – After the delirious Renny Harlin induced excess of NoES 4 this entry, subtitled “The Dream Child”, returns to familiar territory. Far too familiar, in fact, as I could tell inside five minutes who &l84was going to survive, with a 100% success rate. A series of annoying American teenagers get offed by Robert Englund regardless of what passes for a plot. A few mildly impressive & totally gratuitous effects are the twitches of the corpse – this is definitely stillborn.
THE STEPFATHER II (Jeff Burr) – Not having seen the original, I was worried I might have been lost here but there’s no problem as we soon find out the stepfather was a guy who went around joining families and then slaughtering them. Why? He’s a psychopath, next question. What does he do in this one? Goes around joining families and then slaughtering them. What happens at the end? Three guesses. Any more of a review would be difficult since I was asleep for most of it, though what I did see possessed some dark humour. I won’t be making an effort to see the bits I missed.
MONKEY SHINES (George Romero) – See TC2 again. I went out for a lie-down though I ended up chatting to some other ‘zine editors; Paul Higson (Bleeder’s Digest) and Dave Flint (Sheer Filth), the latter of whom is the undisputed number one of fanzine sleaze. Popped back in to see the audience jump at the end, and they did!
SALUTE OF THE JUGGER (David Peoples) – Most Mis-quoted Title of the Year; at various times I’ve heard Juggler, Jugular and Juggernaut and it was always ‘to’, and never ‘of’. This marks Rutger Hauer’s return to trash cinema, following his foray into real movies with the very good, but trash-free “Legend of the Holy Drinker’ (for which, see TC3). Here, he’s back to looking cool and kicking ass, in a post- apocalyptic society which looks a bit Mad Max-ish. The Juggers are teams of warriors who travel the land taking part in The Game to win their living – this is a cross between American football and all-in wrestling, with the object being to wrest a dog’s skull from the opposition and drop it onto a stake at their end of the pitch. There is a plot about Hauer having been thrown out of one of the cities and one of the top teams, but it’s secondary to the sequences of The Game being fought – these battles are possibly the best I’ve seen and are astonishingly well staged with relentless barrages of blows from all the competitors. Although the lack of much else and the heavy use of a gravel pit as a location are certainly deficiencies, I’ll still be heading back to see it again.
SUNDOWN (Anthony Hickox) – ‘Waxworks’, also by Hickox, was an uneven film about, surprisingly, a wax museum; one of the segments was a vampire story, well up in the running for the bloodiest scene EVER. He’s expanded up to an entire film about blood suckers, yet the amount of red stuff here is minimal – in this modern age, vampires have started creating artificial blood (and also using UV cream to let them go out in the day!). This causes friction with traditionalists who believe in hunting their prey; civil war looms. Into this comes David Carradine, as the inventor of the artificial blood, his family, and Bruce Campbell as Van Helsing, out to continue his ancestor’s work. Cue a long stream of mostly obvious jokes about garlic, as Carradine fails to believe his family’s tales until just before the final battle. ‘You’ve been watching too many horror films”, he says, a sentiment that brought a ripple of agreement from the, by now, VERY tired audience! Enjoyable rubbish is the best way to describe this one; the odd new idea and humorous situation keeps it all ticking over and Bruce Campbell is excellent. If at the end you feel as if you’d eaten a stick of candy-floss, it’s stlll a pleasant way to spend ninety minutes.
THE KISS (Pen Densham) – This one was a late replacement for “Phantom of the Opera”, which Medusa failed to come up with. Its cinema release was pretty limited, though, as the company seemed unsure of the target audience; it was introduced as having elements of “The Witch” and “The Omen”, and I can perhaps see a resemblance to “To the Devil a Daughter”, or am I being Kinski-ist again? The film centers around two sisters; Felice (Joanne Pacula), who’s been in Africa and is now a successful model into black magic, and Hilary, now married with a teenage daughter, Amy (Meredith Salenger). Hilary is killed in an auto accident and Aunt Felice comes to stay, but Amy has bad vibes about her, which get worse when ‘accidents’ start happening to Amy’s friends.
Although not especially messy in the 18-rated version we saw, the director racks up a fair bit of tension towards the end which cover up the plot deficiencies. Pacula and Salenger are both very pretty (when the latter asked “Am I old enough for sex yet?”, the ripple round the cinema suggested the male members of the audience thought so!), and I stayed awake throughout, which is more than I did for the preceding and following movies! Well crafted all round, though the Chris Walas special effects aren’t up to much (the man is very good at Gremlins, but does EVERY movie {bar “The Fly”} he does have to have them?). A film with a good chance of crossing over to a mainstream audience.
LEVIATHAN (George P. Cosmatos) – Why does Amanda Pays only appear in films with slimy creatures? “The Kindred” had the a slimy genetic experiment, this has a slimy undersea monster and “Max Headroom” had, er, Max Headroom. The next film in the Jacques Cousteau season (we’ve still got Roger Corman’s “Lords of the Deep” to come) steals a lot from “Alien”, a fair bit from “The Thing” and a tad from “Jaws”, adds Peter Weller and comes up with a workmanlike movie that is the best of the submarine bunch I’ve seen, though that’s not saying much. Workers in an undersea mine discover “Leviathan”, a sunken Russian ship that isn’t supposed to be there. The reason it’s not marked is it’s holding an especially nasty creature which wiped out the crew before it was scuttled – before you can say “Nostromo”, it’s chewing through the workforce, mutating them as it goes. Out with the weaponry – circular saws, chainsaws and flamethrowers, all of which do no good. Their employer writes them off as a tax loss (icky things at the AGM would be embarrassing), the escape capsules are blown by the doctor to save the rest of humanity from the creature, and it’s exciting climax time. Totally predictable (5-4-3-2-1-SHOCK!), but I find it impossible to actively dislike – the acting is decent, the dialogue is plausible (one up on “The Abyss” there!) and Amanda Pays gets damp.
NEKROMANTIK (Jorg Buttgereit) – Looking through old TC’s, I find I’ve often mentioned it, but never reviewed it; now seems as good a time as any. Like “Hot Love”, it’s an eternal triangle – only this time, one of the members is dead. Rob (Daktari Lorenz) works for a company who clean up the bodies after car accidents, etc. – he likes to take bits of his work home with him for his girlfriend (Beatrice M) to play with. This story really starts when he gets a whole male corpse for a bit of three-in-the-bed (in case you’re wondering, the answer is a piece of metal pipe!); unfortunately, shortly after that Rob is fired and Betty runs off with the corpse. Rob tries other ways of getting sexual satisfaction; he kills a cat and bathes in the entrails; he watches a stalk and slash movie, but has to walk out; he takes a hooker to a cemetery and can’t do anything until AFTER he’s killed her for laughing at him. Finally, he realises the way to ultimate release can only be found through his own death…
The whole film is bizarre, to say the least, yet thanks to the sympathetic portrayal, the most disturbing thing is the killing of a real rabbit in a dream sequence (just about permissible, in contrast to say “Cannibal Ferox”, as it was done without cruelty, to illustrate the processes that have turned Rob’s mind) – in the rest of the film, it’s easy to feel sympathy for the man without having to share his deviation. Thanks to Lorenz’s performance and a haunting score, it’s a movie you can appreciate, if not enjoy. Exploitation it isn’t.
And there it ended. Pretty smoothly running (save the projector suffering moral qualms in the middle of ‘Nekromantik’, which led to a five minute pause) and with nearly all the films worth watching, I reckon I’ll be there next year. As I write this, the Glasgow re-run of it has hit some trouble, the city fathers slapping an injunction on them with just 3 days to go, preventing them showing uncertificated films, which wipes out half the programme. How the organisers, Messrs. Dalglish & Bryan will cope is yet to be seen – it’s a real kick in the teeth after all their hard work but I’m sure they’ll do the very best they can.
