Which is the worst part of the complicated rights issue with the original 1968 Night of the Living Dead? Is it:
A. that director George A. Romero and company were screwed out of millions, or
B. that it allowed Jeff Broadstreet to make Night of the Living Dead 3D: Re-Animation?

With apologies to those good people’s bank accounts, the answer is B. Trust me on this one. You’d agree if you saw this abomination, but I encourage you to run in the other direction. The answer is totally B.

Even if writer/director/producer Broadstreet — who also helmed the 2006 Night of the Living Dead 3D “remake” — had left the classic film’s title off his own, the results still would remain abortive. Ladies and gentlemen, we have the 21st-century Ed Wood. The difference is that nobody will be watching Broadstreet’s work after he passes. Hell, they shouldn’t be watching it while he’s alive, either.

It took me four tries to start NOTLD3D:R-A before I could muster the strength to watch it all the way through. Andrew Divoff (Wishmaster) fronts the film as Gerald Tovar Jr., a second-generation mortician who doesn’t cremate the corpses he’s paid to; instead, he piles them into one dank dungeon of a room, which characters can enter and somehow not vomit from the stench. Guess what happens to the bodies. (Did you say “zombies”?)

I suppose NOTLD3D:R-A holds a curiosity factor among those wishing to see Divoff act alongside Re-Animator‘s Jeffrey Combs, who plays Gerald’s no-good, conspiracy-prone teabagger brother. To horror-con geeks, this sounds akin to Pacino and De Niro’s diner scene in Heat. It’s not; it’s the gum under the table at that diner. And I like both actors.

This chore of a watch is all about CGI blood and green-screen antics and, because of shooting in three dimensions, intrusive angles. The 3-D doesn’t even work, so why bother? On the disc’s production featurette, Broadstreet tells you why: Because he thinks he’s making a sociopolitical statement. He’s delusional; he’s made the A/V equivalent of a bowel movement. I hate to be so harsh, but this time, it’s merited. —Rod Lott

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And you thought Carrie had a bad prom night? In The Loved Ones, a razor-sharp slice of Ozploitation, troubled high schooler Brent (Xavier Samuel, Bait 3D) has an arguably worse one, and this six months following an auto accident that claimed the life of his father. Brent has blamed himself ever since, becoming a cutter as a result.

Cue Little River Band’s “Lonesome Loser” (which the Aussie film actually does) and enter Lola Stone (Robin McLeavy, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter), a homely classmate who asks Brent to prom. He politely declines, because he already has a date with his girlfriend, Holly (Victoria Thaine, Son of the Mask).

Lola doesn’t accept rejection well — like, at all. With the help of her father (John Brumpton, Romper Stomper), Brent is kidnapped, drugged and tortured for his “crime” of rejection, all during a makeshift, private prom in her kitchen. But, hey, at least he’s crowned king!

The Loved Ones marks a truly twisted feature debut for writer/director Sean Byrne, and his baby exhibits a mean streak of humor as black as its soul. I find this to be a good thing. More films should challenge their audience, should take turns unexpected, should cross a point of no return; Byrne does all. He also gets a deliciously delirious performance from McLeavy, whose social outcast may be screwed in the head, but somehow retains a smidge of viewer sympathy, even considering her threats to nail poor Brent’s penis to the chair. —Rod Lott

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In the 1970s, movies about paranormal and/or cryptozoological phenomena were all the rage, from Chariots of the Gods to The Legend of Boggy Creek. Boy, did they keep Leonard Nimoy and Peter Graves’ electricity running.

Not as prestigious is Blood Beast of Monster Mountain, produced by adult-film theater owner (and, if one believes the onscreen credits, world traveler, lecturer and psychic investigator) Donn Davison. Basically, Donny inserted hilarious pseudo-documentary footage about Bigfoot into the even more hilarious 1965 family film The Legend of Blood Mountain, which has next to nothing to do with Bigfoot.

After opening with a country song about Bigfoot, Donn tells us that for years he has told producers “no” to taking part in a Sasquatch picture, but changed his mind when the director promised to make “a lighthearted movie, while still adhering to the facts.” Enter the original film, which opens with a hunter tripping about and screaming, ending up with blood all over his face.

So far, so good, right? Well, you haven’t met the film’s “hero,” Bestoink Dooley (Moonrunners’ George Ellis), a newspaper copy boy who dresses like a vaudevillian Sam Kinison and looks like Buddy Hackett after a night of lovemaking with Otis, the drunk from The Andy Griffith Show. As he begs his editor for the Blood Mountain story, a guy who looks like Moe Bandy hits something in his truck, but this is never followed up, because it immediately cuts to Bestoink’s dream — a bizarre sequence about him being a good reporter and making his editor look like a doofus, as if a guy named Bestoink could do that.

After that, things get really confusing, as scenes constantly switch from day to night, women walk through in bikinis for no reason, and Bestoink get his hands on a flamethrower. Bestoink is the most appalling human being I’ve even seen in a movie (and that includes everything with James Spader); furthermore, Blood Beast of Monster Mountain is shot with a technical expertise that would even have Eegah director Arch Hall Sr. shake his head and say, “Geez, that was shitty.”

Overall, a most entertaining hour-and-a-half. —Louis Fowler

Thirty seconds is all it takes for nurse-school dropout Edith Mortley (Priscilla Alden) to kill her first victim in Death Nurse 2. As viewers of its previous year’s predecessor know, timing is not among writer/director Nick Philips’ strong points. Hell, I’m not sure he has any strong points, thereby resulting in an auto-accident watch made more difficult by being shot on video.

This sequel offers more of the same: more of Edith grousing, “You nosy old bitch”; more scenes from Philips’ Criminally Insane/Crazy Fat Ethel films passed off as her dreams; and more minutes, yet this still fails to hit an hour by a handful of seconds.

Plot? Edith continues to kill patients, but at least DN2 offers a twist: This chapter’s new admissions are indigents the mayor finds pesky, from the alcoholic Brownie (Philips’ wife, Irmgard Millard, playing a different drunk from DN1) to some crazy guy who spouts rhetoric in front of City Hall about the country being headed toward socialism. (Yes, Philips apparently predicted the establishment of the Tea Party.)

Still, Death Nurse 2 is so lazy that it even reuses scenes from its big sister. This follow-up easily boasts the saga’s best sequence, when Brownie and her butcher knife chase Edith ’round and ’round the living room furniture — so cartoony, it lacks only a Carl Stalling score.

Once more, the movie just ends by petering out mid-scene. Oh, how were all the loose threads supposed to conclude? —Rod Lott

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In Grease, when they sang about Sandra Dee being “lousy with virginity,” I’d like to believe it was a direct reference to The Dunwich Horror, an H.P. Lovecraft adaptation from AIP. In it, Dee plays Nancy Wagner, a college virgin lured to the sleepy, strange town of Dunwich by its least favorite son, the creepy-eyed Wilbur Whateley (Dean Stockwell, Blue Velvet), sporting a porn-star mustache.

Wilbur lives with his freaky-ass grandpa in a big, spooky house. He’s also the son of the devil and has recruited Nancy as his virgin sacrifice for a ceremony that will open the gates of hell. Meanwhile, just what in the hell is that thing in Wilbur’s closet?

This could have been some half-assed, thrown-together horror effort, but surprisingly, it’s pretty classy, like Roger Corman’s Edgar Allan Poe pictures. Although some dialogue is dry, the look and feel of Dunwich is top-notch. Die, Monster, Die!‘s Daniel Haller does a terrific job with the direction, especially in the latter half when things get really weird; the tricks he pulls with quick cuts and color flashes help intensify the film’s jolts.

Dee looks rather puffy-faced in this one, but does turn her image on its head by doing a nude scene. Stockwell pulls his patented weirdo character out of his sleeve, but hey, it works. Everything gels in this one; I find it somewhat of a minor classic. Dig that ending! —Rod Lott

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