All posts by Rod Lott

Roger Corman’s Frankenstein Unbound (1990)

In B-movie king Roger Corman’s last directorial effort to date, Frankenstein Unbound, L.A.-based scientist Dr. Buchanan (John Hurt, Alien) hits a “time slip” caused by testing his latest weapon, thus transporting him back to 19th-century Geneva, where the monstrous creature (Nick Brimble, Little John of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves) created by Dr. Frankenstein (Raul Julia, The Addams Family) is running loose and killing people.

Buchanan drives around the primitive village in his computerized super car, trying to end the reign of the monster, who at one point pulls a guy’s heart out and shows it to the poor guy just before he drops dead. Somehow, Buchanan still finds time to get inside the corset of Mary Shelley (Bridget Fonda, Jackie Brown). “Percy and Byron preach free love,” she says. “I practice it.” Bo-i-i-ing!

Bizarrely, Buchanan and the monster team up to get the car in another time slip, in a scene that recalls both Back to the Future and TV’s Knight Rider. That’s kind of the uneasy mix that floats in and out of this one. Put good actors in front of Corman’s camera and his proficiency as a director can be seen. Based on the 1973 Brian Aldiss novel of the same name, Unbound is unusual, colorful and sometimes cool. Although it lags in its dream sequences, Corman’s take on the tale is better than Kenneth Branagh’s more straightforward one just a few years later. —Rod Lott

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Club Dread (2004)

In Club Dread, the once-promising comedy troupe Broken Lizard’s follow-up to the stoner-beloved Super Troopers, an island paradise turns into a blood-soaked nightmare when a machete-wielding killer interrupts a vacation of sun, sex and suds.

A game Bill Paxton stars as Coconut Pete, a drug-addled Jimmy Buffet-like singer who runs the getaway spot, with the unmemorable members of Broken Lizard serving as his staff, including a tennis pro, a DJ, the “fun police” and a fat masseuse who can give women orgasms just by touching a certain spot above their upper lip. One by one, members of the staff meet gruesome deaths at the hands (which hold a very sharp blade) of the unknown murderer.

It’s a spoof of splatter films, but by the second act, it threatens to become the very thing it parodies. By the third, it does. As with the overrated Super Troopers, it’s on-and-off fun, but highly flawed. A couple of the jokes are brilliant, while many more are absolutely infantile. There’s the same problem with flow and tone, but here, at least they try to make up for it by throwing in the bare breasts of Cabin Fever babe Jordan Ladd. There’s also a monkey. —Rod Lott

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The People That Time Forgot (1977)

Following 1975’s hit Edgar Rice Burroughs adaptation of The Land That Time Forgot, the sequel, The People That Time Forgot, is markedly better, with more action, more adventure, more dinosaurs and the added bonus of snakes, spiders and genuine cavegirl jiggle! Also based on a Burroughs work, it opens with an expedition headed to the land that time forgot in order to save Doug McClure’s ass. Heading up the search party is his pal, Patrick Wayne (son of John Wayne, and star of Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger), and Superman II’s Sarah Douglas is a photographer along for the ride.

They enter the land not via sub, but biplane, which is immediately attacked by a pterodactyl. After landing, Douglas plays a cruel trick on Wayne that’ll leave you hoping the bitch gets eaten first. Then, in the jungle, they meet a curvy cavegirl (Dana Gillespie, Hammer’s The Lost Continent) whose outfit tests the bounds of the PG rating. Among all of The People That Time Forgot, hers is the cleavage I’ll never forget.

Soon they stumble upon McClure, pulling a Chuck Heston-style cameo in a subplot with a distinct Planet of the Apes vibe, as our heroes are menaced by an army of masked missing links with swords on horseback and who live in a mountaintop cave shaped like a giant skull.

Yeah, it ends with another run-from-the-lava finale, but People isn’t the same movie as Land. With very little setup required, it sprints through 90 minutes with imagination, fun and chest-baring eye candy. —Rod Lott

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I Eat Your Skin (1971)

A real ladies’ man of an author (William Joyce) is convinced by his publisher to hop a flight from Miami to the Caribbean isle of Voodoo, because he thinks the stories of human sacrifices there might make good research for a rip-roarin’ adventure novel. Our writer is not convinced, however, until he hears of the island’s 5-to-1 girl-guy ratio, and he’s all, like, “Homina homina homina!”

Armed with a litany of sleazy pick-up lines (ranging from “What part of heaven did you fly out from?” to the less subtle “We’ve got some dictation to do!”), he soon scores with a blonde bombshell (Heather Hewitt), whose father is a scientist who feeds radiated snake venom to natives, turning them into crusty-faced, bug-eyed zombies. Although our hero quickly dispatches one with a tiki torch to the face, a random Mexican isn’t so lucky, losing his head to a zombie-slung machete.

I Eat Your Skin was directed by Del Tenney, the guy who gave us the legendarily awful Horror of Party Beach, and it shows. You get to see a tube shoved down the throat of a live snake, and when an alarm goes off, you also get to hear someone saying “Whoop!” repeatedly on the soundtrack. Certainly a cheapie like this can’t be scary, but it’s definitely charming in its own Playboy After Dark meets Revolt of the Zombies kinda way. —Rod Lott

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