All posts by Rod Lott

Horror

Maniac (1934)

Leave a comment

Dwain Esper’s Maniac is one of the more notorious early exploitation films, but it’s still dreadfully boring, even at 50 minutes. And while you can cut it a little slack for being from the 1930s, the story still doesn’t make a lick of sense. Maniac is amateurish in all aspects, from the actors (sometimes gazing in the camera) to Esper’s direction (sometimes the performers’ faces are blocked by props).

An old, eccentric doctor and his young assistant are experimenting with formulas to revive the dead. When the doctor wants to kill the assistant and then bring him back with a new heart, the assistant shoots the doctor dead. Instead of shooting him with reanimating juice, however, he holes him up in the wall of the basement and then changes his appearance to look like the doctor so no one will notice his absence.

To help mask the illusion, the assistant-as-doctor keeps seeing patients, including a shy, topless chick and one man who goes mad, kidnaps a formerly dead girl, strips off her clothes and rapes her. Meanwhile, the assistant’s wife hangs out with her friends in their bras and granny panties. The nudity in this must have been shocking way back then; now it’s simply comical.

The high point comes out of no-where, when the assistant grabs a cat and pokes its eye out in graphic detail, admires it (“Why, it’s not unlike an oyster … or a grape!”) and pops it in his mouth. Bon appétit! Then the cops arrive and find the doc in the wall, thanks to the cries of a cat accidentally trapped in there with him, thanks to a storyline swiped from Edgar Allan Poe. Then you get to go to sleep, if you haven’t already. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

Sci-Fi & Fantasy

In the Year 2889 (1967)

Leave a comment

In In the Year 2889, fashions have devolved to the late 1960s. Oh, and nuclear war has occurred, leaving an old, curmudgeonly military man and his pretty daughter alone and holed up in their quiet, isolated valley home. He has just enough rations for three people: himself, his daughter and her fiancé, for whom they’re waiting to show up.

At the first knock at the door, however, some random, radiated, bacon-faced guy falls into their entryway. Capt. John gets out his Geiger counter and is concerned about the radiation, but his daughter insists on letting him stay. Oh, well, okay — since you asked nicely, honey.

Then, immediately following, four others show up and weasel their way into the compound. It all serves to piss off Capt. John, who promises to settle arguments with the trusty gun hanging in a holster from his tan jumpsuit. It’s not long before the group is bickering and at each other’s throats.

To complicate matters, such as a shortage of food and no more alcohol, there’s a mutant monkey monster on the loose. Or so they say it’s descended it’s from monkeys, but the budget only allows for a grampa mask with added fangs and one hollow eye socket. What else would you expect from Mars Needs Women schlockmeister Larry Buchanan? —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

Action

Black Moon Rising (1986)

2 Comments

Freelance thief Tommy Lee Jones is hired to steal some accounting reports from a corporation. Lucky for him, they’re marked “ACCOUNTING REPORTS” in big, block letters. Unlucky for him, he triggers the alarm during this assignment and is forced to hide the cassette in the back of the Black Moon — an experimental super-car that runs on water and hits 325 mph — during a chance meeting at a gas station.

He tracks the Black Moon to a hotel, where, unlucky for him, professional car thief Linda Hamilton steals it for boss Robert Vaughn’s chop shop, hidden in the basement of a twin high rise. Lucky for him, Hamilton’s having some issues with her boss, so she agrees to help him steal it. Unlucky for him, she also beds down with him — seriously, she kind of looks like a dude.

The fun of Black Moon Rising is all contained in the final third, with the nighttime break-in of the tower, the theft and the escape, all with cranky-puss Tommy Lee climbing through air shafts and doing donuts.

Any movie set in a high-rise at night automatically carries a cachet of cool (unless it stars Paul Reiser), but imagine how much cooler this would have been if screenwriter John Carpenter had directed it as well. This was an early Carpenter script dusted off after he hit it big, so his involvement is limited. But it’s a fairly well-crafted B-picture that knows every so often, you just gotta focus on the car. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

Action

Blind Rage (1978)

1 Comment

If Dobermans can be taught to rob a bank, why not blind guys? That’s the premise behind Blind Rage, an oddball crime film that assembles a multicultural quintet who can’t see for shit, to pull off a money heist to end all money heists. Because they’re blind, yes, but also two of the men have names that are synonyms for penises, Wang and Willie. I don’t think history has seen such a thing.

As with that series of bank-robbing doggie movies, this film’s best scenes are the training sequences: “Let’s begin by synchronizing your Braille watches.” Heck, there’s even to-scale model created out of the barest of wood framing so the guys can soak up the sound of each other’s footsteps, the placement of the deposit-slip table, and whatnot. They’re even taught target practice: “Any foreign sound you hear, shoot.” Solid advice; that’s how kids get killed, you know.

And what would this movie be without a little kung fu fighting when it comes time to doing the crime? Probably just as incredibly average, running a few less minutes.

Who are director Efren C. Piñon and writer Leo Fong kidding? This should all but be credited as a remake of The Doberman Gang franchise, because instead of exploiting animals, they’ve just exploited the handicapped. They’ve also exploited a top-billed Fred Williamson, who shows up only at the tail end as his Jesse Crowder character (“one mean cat!”) from Death Journey and No Way Back. The fucking IHOP gets almost as much screen time. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

Horror

The Toolbox Murders (1978)

2 Comments

To be fair, the slasher portions of this infamous slasher film make up only a small part of the picture. It should be called A Criminal Investigation Into the Toolbox Murders. Regardless, The Toolbox Murders is one of those movies I was too young to watch at the time it hit VHS, only able to read and hear about it being one of the most vile things ever committed to celluloid. Not sure if this says something about hype or me, but really, now that I’ve seen it, I found the movie fairly tame.

Don’t worry, though: Bloody murders using tools do occur. They all go down at an apartment complex that, conveniently, is the kind where lovely ladies undulate in their underthings at night in front of open windows, as if inviting pervo-psycho killers with a True Value rewards card. The most infamous moment involves porn star Marianne Walter (Screw My Wife Please 44: She Needs Your Meat) being nail-gunned after masturbating in the tub. It happens.

After the ski-masked killer’s rounds of chiseling and hammering tenants, one right after the other, The Toolbox Murders switches into a police procedural, à la Law & Order: Hardware Victims Unit, as the cops investigate. Unlike Tobe Hooper’s superior 2004 remake, the movie then hits some serious drag. Had it spaced the crimes out, one’s attention would be better held.

Still, it’s The Toolbox Murders. When something with such a demented concept enjoys cultural impact decades later, it’d be a shame not to embrace it at least a little bit. It’s almost worth watching just to see Wesley Uhre, simultaneously breaking out of his Land of the Lost typecasting and smothering his career. It’s definitely worth watching just to see Cameron Mitchell, being Cameron Mitchell. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.