All posts by Louis Fowler

Comedy

Oh, God! You Devil (1984)

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Thanks to the Oh, God! films I grew up with, when I think of the Lord Almighty in his human form, for better or worse, it’s typically in the guise of late comedian George Burns. In the trilogy, he aided grocery store produce manager John Denver, rode in a motorcycle with the single-monikered Louanne and, in his grandest casting ever, battled a doppelgänger devil over Ted Wass’ eternal soul.

It’s the third one, Oh, God! You Devil, that casts Burns as his own worst enemy, Satan. But instead of a devil who wants to murder and maim the world over, he instead uses evil to commit rather irritating pranks, usually the kind where someone falls into a wedding cake or pushes a couple of people into a pool.

Going by the name of Harry O. Tophet — “Tophet” is the Hebrew word for “hell,” so kudos on that — he comes across the path of failed songwriter Bobby (Wass, not to be confused with Craig Wasson, a regular mistake of mine), who, as you can guess, wants to make it big. He makes a deal with Tophet for instant stardom.

Being a deal with the devil, things don’t go exactly as Bobby thought. He is inserted into the body of rock star Billy Wayne and, for a while, things are great: fame, fortune and all the threesomes he can handle. Until, of course, he runs into his wife, who has no idea who he is; this meeting has him wanting to back out.

Too bad! As expected, the Prince of Darkness is a total asshole. With about 20 minutes of the film left, Burns enters the film as the deity you’d expect, God. They wager a game of high-stakes cards over Bobby’s soul, with stakes that make me feel a little uneasy.

Having not seen this entry since the constant HBO airings circa 1985, I was surprised by how much I actually liked it, despite it seeming like the cheapest film in an already cheap series. Wass — not Wasson! — is a decent enough foil for these satanic shenanigans, but Burns is likable even as the devil, even if he’s really not that far off from his interpretation of God.

I wonder how the actual God liked these movies though. I don’t want to step on any supernatural toes, mostly for the fear of eternal damnation. —Louis Fowler

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Horror

One Dark Night (1982)

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One dark night, sometime in the early ’80s, I remember watching a film with HBO with my father, like I usually did almost every night when he got off work as a policeman. With its scenes of a downright creepy mausoleum, electric-eyed corpses and toothbrush-chewing schoolgirls in oblivious danger, this was seemingly a one-and-done airing, never to be viewed again, the title lost to the reanimated corpses of my mind.

It has haunted me forever, with searches at every video store I ever worked, coming up typically with only Mortuary, released the next year, but sadly, not the rotting videotape I was looking for. Recently, One Dark Night turned up in my mailbox, a movie I put on one afternoon for some background noise.

As it continued on behind me, a rush of putrid prepubescent memories came flooding back, as the puzzle of flesh and bones began to come together to form a horrid whole picture: One Dark Night was the movie I had visions of long in the back of my mind for almost 40 years; now I had it in my Blu-ray player, feasting on the insides for all eternity, or at least the next 90 minutes.

Starring a very cute Meg Tilly as good girl Julie, she’s looking to join a group of trashy girls, one of whom is played by E.G. Daily and another is constantly chewing on a toothbrush throughout the flick — it’s all coming together! They tell Tilly that for her initiation, she has to pull an all-nighter at the local mausoleum, which isn’t all that bad.

Well, normally it wouldn’t be all that bad, but earlier that day, renowned evil psychic Raymar — who was found dead in a room next to a pile of dead teenagers — was laid to temporary rest there. I say that because, as discovered by his daughter (and her hubby Adam West!), he was trying to harness his mental abilities through death and, good for him, it works.

For the teens, however, it’s not so great, as you can probably assume.

Directed by Tom McLoughlin (the highly entertaining Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives), One Dark Night is an entertaining piece of ’80s trash that still works, especially with the corpse-filled finale managing to deliver a shrill scare up my spine all these years later, betraying its low-budget roots to give us a cold slab of ancient horror that absolutely lives up to the demonic memories it bred.

Now, that I know what flick it is and have seen it as an adult, I can finally lay One Dark Night to rest in the annals of my mind under six feet of broken images and numerous tries. —Louis Fowler

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Documentary

Chariots of the Gods (1970)

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Based on the famed book by Erich von Däniken, the documentary Chariots of the Gods was always from the school of thought that if a white man couldn’t do it, then it had to be aliens.

Throughout, we’re given otherworldly examples of astounding architecture in Egypt, stone wonders in Mexico and so on throughout the non-white world, learning that it was impossible for these ancient cultures — that, quite honestly, we still have barely an idea about — to build them in their wholly primitive and desperately unknowing ways.

The simple solution? Aliens, of course!

Hey, it was the ’70s, as the world was deep into the Mondo Cane-structure of many popular documentaries. Chariots of the Gods was probably on the low end of this somewhat fantastical spectrum, utilizing more of a science class film strip approach to telling its tall tales of universal visitations and, apparently, community rebranding.

The usual suspects are all here, including the famous Easter Island statues and the not-as-famous Nazca Lines, which, we learn, were used to guide incoming spacecraft to the burgeoning brown civilizations. While these ideas, though mildly racist these days, can still be fascinating to hear, they’re also extremely quite dated and filled with mostly made-up facts, like said science class film strip.

Chariots of the Gods takes us back to a time when we so desperately wanted to believe in extraterrestrials that helped to shape the then-Earth, except that it’s viewed through a whites-only telescope that really doesn’t — and really shouldn’t — hold up today. —Louis Fowler

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Action

Camino (2015)

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The Spanish word camino translates to “road” in English, which is a very apt title for this primo action flick, as it travels down many bloody South American streets, all of them barely lit by a flickering streetlight as stuntwoman extraordinaire Zoë Bell tries to make it out of a green inferno with her life.

Bell is prizewinning photojournalist Taggert, who is sent on assignment to follow a group of heavily armed missionaries through the dense jungle. At first glance, the team seems as nice as a group of guerillas possibly can be, with leader Guillermo (Oscar-nominated director Nacho Vigalondo) providing much of the group’s capable bluster as their likably annoying leader.

However, in a drug deal that is witnessed by Taggert — and photographed, no less — Guillermo slits the fucking neck of a small child for fun. Spotted, she goes on the run as the charismatic leader and his soldiers are after her, wherein she unleashes her masterfully choreographed martial arts capability on much of the offending party.

With Camino mixing important social critiques with blistering ass-kicking potential — the best way to get any kid to learn, if you ask me — Bell is at the top of her B-movie game, with a surprising turn from Vigalondo, helmer of films like Timecrimes and Colossal, portraying a truly despicable general who, at times, is kind of likable.

Camino is a road I’d definitely like to travel again, even if it means pulling over to get kicked a couple of times. —Louis Fowler

Get it at Amazon.

Horror

Dead & Buried (1981)

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Over the years, I have had so many opportunities to view Dead & Buried. Sadly, something I thought would view even better took precedence and, typically, wasn’t even that good. But now, after viewing it, I feel like a jerk because Dead & Buried is good. Really good.

In the coastal village of Potters Bluff, the seafaring community has a weird way of welcoming visitors: by burning them alive. While that would hurt most places — how did the tourism bureau cover this shit up? — more and more visitors visit and more and more are horribly manhandled, mangled and murdered by the fisherman and their lone blonde seductress.

It’s a crime that has local sheriff (James Farentino, The Final Countdown) increasingly puzzled, as his attractive wife (Melody Anderson, Flash Gordon) goes about her business, teaching witchcraft to her interested middle-schoolers. It seems almost no one cares about this death and destruction — and those who do, like the area’s kindly mortician (Jack Albertson, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory), find themselves either strictly murdered or fraudulently useless.

Even weirder still, the bodies of the deceased are soon brought back to life and join the murderous rampage. What is going on here, guys?

Written by Alien’s Dan O’Bannon and Ronald Shusett (although O’Bannon later disowned it completely) and directed by Poltergeist III’s Gary A. Sherman, Dead & Buried is one of those blissful horror films from the early ’80s that manages to continually toy with the audience, switching between subtle mystery and graphic horror to — as the corpses are stripped to the bone and re-animated — ghoulish cinema.

With its shocker ending offering no rhyme or reason — just a black screen followed by credits — if I had seen this as a kid, I would still be gushing about it today. Instead, I’m gushing about it now. —Louis Fowler

Get it at Amazon.