All posts by Rod Lott

Horror

Amityville: The Awakening (2017)

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Maybe it’s a “me thing,” but if I had a comatose child whose life were dependent on electrical machines and other things to work without a hitch, I wouldn’t knowingly move my loved ones into a legendarily haunted house, no matter how many points the realtor sacrificed to lower the principal.

Yet Jennifer Jason Leigh’s character does just that in Amityville: The Awakening. The 10th official entry in the storied (get it?) Amityville Horror franchise, the Franck Khalfoun film cannily exists in the real world. Its characters discuss not only Ronald DeFeo Jr.’s family slaughter of 1974, but George and Kathy Lutz’s (fabricated?) experiences that informed Jay Anson’s 1977 bestseller, which a student recommends, and 1979’s blockbuster movie, which they watch — after briefly considering Amityville II: The Possession and outright deriding the Ryan Reynolds remake, as one should.

That’s a fun conceit in what is a resoundingly dull picture — something to be expected when your lead is the vapid Bella Thorne (Boo! A Madea Halloween), more tabloid personality than actress, as attested by a résumé that extends from the Disney Channel to hardcore pornography. Thorne plays Belle, a single vowel away from her own first name, underlining the low-stretch demands of her role as twin sister to James (Cameron Monaghan, Tron: Ares), the aforementioned vegetative boy who can’t move anything but, we presume, his bowels.

Once 112 Ocean Avenue trots out its usual unlisted amenities — voices from beyond, swarms of CGI flies, dogs driven bonkers, et al. — James’ condition ironically shows signs of inexplicable improvement. Why, it’s almost as if he’s possessed by those vague demonic forces in the cellar’s bricked-up passage to hell.

Amityville: The Awakening is one odd duck feathered with questionable creative choices that suggest a problem-plagued production — not from any Satan basements, but worse: Dimension Pictures’ meddling head honchos Bob and Harvey Weinstein. They copresent with Blumhouse, which aligns with this viewer’s feeling of Awakening having one foot stuck in the teen-horror past as the other struggles to reach as far forward as possible. We know Khalfoun is more than capable of crafting suspense, as his P2 debut and Maniac remake prove, but this tired exercise is merely a jump-scare-a-palooza free of imagination and the ill at ease.

Although toilet goo appears to be absent this go-round, it’s not; the movie itself is a bowl of that. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Horror

Summer School (2006)

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No more pencils, no more books, no more teachers — unless you’re stuck in summer school. Mark Harmon is nowhere in sight. Instead, we get Charlie (one-timer Simon Wallace), who arrives to class like he’s King Shit, although he’s gangly, mainlines Tic-Tacs and wears rollerblades. 

Most repellent, Charlie runs a movie review website. Assumedly this keeps him up late, because he keeps drifting into sleep glorious sleep. (However, his “reviews” appear to be one phrase and a letter grade.) Every time he falls aslumber, he’s in a self-contained dream on campus, thus affording the shaggy Summer School the veneer of a horror anthology. Among its five directors is Mike P. Nelson, who graduated to bigger, better things like the 2021 Wrong Turn reboot.

In these nightmares, Charlie might encounter vampires or spider-masked furries. He could find himself the subject of a satanic sacrifice, complete with gored chicken. His teacher (Jennifer Prettyman, Zombie Dollz) and security officer (Ty Richardson) could be gun-toting Nazis, or he could be pursued by horny hillbillies who think his shirtless self looks “finger-lickin’ good.” 

Regardless, each time he dies, he wakes up in class again — sometimes alone, sometimes among classmates like the bleached-blonde, Jennifer Tilly-ish Lindsey (Amy Cocchiarella, who should be the lead). It’s all a bit much and unable to sustain itself. Paired with somnambulistic pacing and pauses, the murky videography really harms engagement. And with Charlie front and center, Summer School all but challenges us to hang with it. He’s arrogant and looks like he never met a comb. Where’s Freddy Krueger when you need him?

The “shock” ending isn’t one, signaling its own approach with everything but an overweight guy in an orange vest and hard hat. Let’s just say I wonder if Charlie promised his Terry Pratchett paperbacks to anyone. You’re better off auditing actual summer school than viewing this remedial Goosebumps. To quote the movie’s poetically sassy line, “You’re welcome, dillhole.” —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Documentary

Tulsa Terrors (2023)

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As a born-and-bred Oklahoman, I’ve long been proud, baffled and entranced by the city of Tulsa’s right-time-right-place role as ground zero of the 1980s’ made-for-home-video horror revolution. So much so, in 2014, I started interviewing players for a massive article on it.

Then overnight, I found myself facing a divorce I didn’t see coming. All creative endeavors, like the 20-year marriage, died on the vine.

That was then, this is now. John Wooley and Bryan Crain give us Tulsa Terrors, a feature-length documentary about the 918 area code’s foray into VHS frights. Wooley’s the ideal person for the job, having covered the low-budget productions from the front line as a newspaper journalist (and later, in his 2011 book Shot in Oklahoma).

Naturally, Terrors’ initial chunk focuses on Christopher Lewis’ Blood Cult, the 1985 slasher that Started It All. Taking advantage of the movie fever lingering in T-Town from Francis Ford Coppola’s one-two punch of The Outsiders and Rumble Fish, Lewis turned $27,000 and a lousy script called The Sorority House Murders into a nationwide video-store smash.

Lewis quickly followed with the generically titled sequel, Revenge, as well as the Tom Savini-starring The Ripper. Crain and Wooley close their documentary with another threesome of slashers, all from Southern firecracker Darla Enlow: Toe Tags, Branded and The Stitcher.

In between, Tulsa Terrors turns its neck to gawk at others who picked up the camcorder torch — albeit to lesser returns, if any. For example, today you can find DVDs of 1986’s Mutilations (with its cattle killings charmingly rendered in stop-motion animation). On the other hand, IMDb-less pics like Bio-Kill (a sci-fi actioner with a hovercraft) and Curse from the Mummy’s Tomb (a Poverty Row tribute with a $75 price tag) remain elusive, other than the glimpses you get here. And to speak again of slaughtered livestock, Vigilante Blood disappeared immediately after premiering at a local Outback Steakhouse.

In a giant leap up from playing as background noise to patrons enjoying a Bloomin’ Onion, Tulsa Terrors debuted on a public university TV channel before hitting video. That’s not a slam, but more of a barometer for setting your expectations, as this isn’t polished or propulsive like Mark Hartley’s hard-charging retrospectives. While entertaining, the doc is nearly as lo-fi as the treasures it fetishizes. Naturally, the more affection you hold for shot-on-video cinema, the more you’ll get out of it; this is not the type of project designed to convert newcomers.

I do wish Crain and Wooley had widened their scope to the whole of the Sooner State. That way, they could include the likes of Offerings, Blood Lake and Alien Zone; because they saw the light of day, they all enjoy far larger profiles than any movie here that’s not Lewis’. Also missing is Terror at Tenkiller, despite being pictured on the poster. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Sex

Everybody Loves It (1964)

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Making a parody film is difficult when you can’t afford to record live audio. And ever more so when your actors don’t move their mouths to approximate dialogue that could be dubbed later. Nonetheless, Everybody Loves It remains undaunted.

Oh, it’s not successful — just undaunted. Its “solution” to its self-inflicted conundrum? Wall-to-wall narration from a four-leaf clover. As if that weren’t bewildering enough, the trefoil speaks in a Viennese accent, courtesy of cartoon royalty Paul Frees, aka Boris Badenov from Rocky and Bullwinkle. Not that any patron cared, this being a nudie cutie and all. (Frees sure did, wisely going uncredited.)

With a soundtrack heavy on xylophones and foghorns, Everybody Loves It plays loose and lecherous as a paltry spoof of three TV shows and — whoa there, horsey — one whole commercial. Going under the heavily dulled knife first is hospital drama Ben Casey. Dr. Sven Crazy and fellow surgeons remove a heart-shaped candy box from a patient — not to mention clothing from the bosomy bodies of scrub nurses, leaving them in panties resembling placemats.

When the respirator fails, the physicians opt for a bicycle pump. At surgery’s end, the patient is revealed as Mad magazine mascot Alfred E. Neuman (via mask less terrifying than what the mag would use in its own movie. Up the Academy). Hell, this one wishes it were one-tenth as good as Mad. It’d even settle for Cracked.

Next, Naked City undergoes a dressing down, as master criminal Louie Linguini plots a heist of redemption stamps from a fur salon. This plan requires his hourglass-shaped moll to pose as a nude mannequin to fool the half-blind security guard. Frees’ near-nonsensical play-by-play includes such gags as, “They have to be as fast as butterflies doing push-ups on a lemon meringue pie.”

Finally — woefully — the hourlong pic finishes by taking aim at Combat! The humor gets not one iota better (“Is that a parachute? Looks like Sonny Liston’s nightshirt!”), but the ladies get barer. Here and elsewhere, they include cheesecake models Althea Currier (Kiss Me Quick!), Penny Bello, Michelle Swain, Paula Angelos (Dr. Sex), Karen Nichols and Cathy Crowfoot (Mondo Keyhole), not that any represents a recommendation. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Comedy

Trick or Treat with Reed Richmond (2025)

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I can think of few ways more enjoyable to prep for Halloween than revisiting the 1995 cable special Trick or Treat with Reed Richmond. After all, it’s not like the cult icon from such B-horror faves as Beverly Hills Graverobber and 1-900-Frankenstein hosted many of these things for Monster Planet’s airwaves.

If you’ve seen the 2022 release of the Out There Halloween Mega Tape, you’re already in on the joke: Richmond, his cheapo movies and Monster Planet don’t exist. They live only where it counts: inside Chris LaMartina’s WNUF Halloween Special universe.

LaMartina’s golden touch with faux artifacts continues. The hourlong Trick or Treat looks, sounds and feels like it could’ve, would’ve and should’ve filled a bar the Sci-Fi Channel programming grid several times a week.

In Richmond’s inimitable fashion — alliterative, pun-happy and oblivious — the aged actor (in reality, John Waters regular George Stover) dons orange sweater to take “boys and gargoyles” through mini-histories of such All Hallows’ Eve stalwarts as pumpkins, witches and werewolves (supplemented by judicious clips from horror flicks in the public domain). In between each factoid package is a “trick” or a “treat,” like a scene from Richmond’s Mooniac or a cooking segment on hot dog mummies.

And because a WNUF project would be nothing without generous commercial breaks, LaMartina fills those with more deadpan and dead-on ads of questionable (read: local) production value. They shill everything from taco joints and nursing homes to movies like Alien Seance and Moonshine Frankenstein, with a phony AIDS PSA for good measure. The only trick to this treat is how LaMartina keeps knocking them outta the park. —Rod Lott

Get it at WNUF.