Edge of Sanity does not find Anthony Perkins at his sleaziest. That would be Ken Russell’s Crimes of Passion, but if one discounts that 1984 film, then yes, holy crap, Edge of Sanity finds Anthony Perkins at his sleaziest. (Interestingly, both pictures contain scenes that sexualize nuns.)

Like virtually everything he did in the wake of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, this Budapest-lensed, Victorian-set production of Harry Alan Towers (H.G. Wells’ The Shape of Things to Come) typecasts Perkins as a maniacally unhinged character. At least it’s one of popular culture’s most enduring: Robert Louis Stevenson’s Mr. Hyde. Of course, Perkins begins the picture playing Dr. Jekyll, the buttoned-down but workaholic ego to Hyde’s rampaging id. The dual personality is gained through pure accident after synthesizing an anesthetic alternative to morphine in his lab; a coked-up monkey kicks over a vial of this into a pile of that, and the resulting cloud Jekyll inhales brings out the beast in him.

With a 19th-century bong ever at the ready for a moment’s-notice smoke, Hyde trolls the streets of London looking for whores to feel up and kill — expressly in that order, because even Hyde has his limits. Director Gérard Kikoïne (the following year’s Edgar Allan Poe adaptation Buried Alive, also for Towers), however, seems not to, even setting Perkins up to deliver a woefully anachronistic James Bond joke as Hyde introduces himself at a party of disrepute: “Hyde … Jack Hyde.” See, Edge merges Stevenson’s literary creation with another UK legend, this one not fictional: serial killer Jack the Ripper.

To honor due credit, Perkins simply could have rested and let his makeup do Hyde (or an emaciated version of MTV personality Kurt Loder) for him, but the man was a true professional, giving his all to a project he had to know was junk. Edge of Sanity is, after all, a strange case in itself — a fairly insane picture in which Hyde masturbates a prostitute with a cane, just because. Although not as enthusiastic as Perkins, the ravishing Glynis Barber (Invaders of the Lost Gold) matches him in talent, playing Jekyll’s all-too-understanding wife. You feel more for Barber than for her character. —Rod Lott

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One of the better entries in the Bigfootsploitation cycle — granted, that feat is not at all difficult — Sasquatch: The Legend of Bigfoot takes the docudrama approach in following seven men on an Oregonian expedition to the Peckatoe River to hunt for the fabled monster.

Lead researcher Chuck Evans (George Lauris, director of Buffalo Rider) narrates the film and introduces his fellow travelers, including:
• shirtless Native American Techka Blackhawk (Joel Morello, clearly wearing a wig);
• a skeptical, big-city journalist (Lou Salerni), of whom Chuck tells us, “His negative attitude disturbs me”;
• Barney Snipe (Jim Bradford, From Nashville with Music), the curly-headed cook who looks like a truck-stop Ronald McDonald and executes a fine pratfall (“He’s a little clumsy. But his coffee isn’t bad.”);
• and an old coot (Ken Kenzle) and “his faithful mule, Ted.” The former, Chuck relays, is the only one who knows the way to Peckatoe … despite a scene mere moments before that shows Chuck and an anthropologist reviewing a wall-sized map with a point clearly marked as Peckatoe River.

As the gents mount horses and gallop through the forest, one-and-done director Ed Ragozzino throws in nature footage — Wolf vs. badger! Bear vs. raccoon! Bear vs. bear! — and, I presume, literally throws a mountain lion from an overpass to land on the horses below. (That shot is pretty funny; I watched it five times.) More famous are the Bigfoot-sighting stories the men tell one another at the campfire and on the trail, which Ragozzino cuts away to recreate; the most memorable finds a log cabin of miners under fire by rocks hurled by a family of Sasquatch.

After being a near feature-length tease, the film climaxes with a tree trunk-tossin’ finale that gives way to a tender Bigfoot ballad playing over the end credits. What an odd, chunky stew this Sasquatch is: a Sunn Classics fauxmentary mated with Disney nature shorts. For that reason, I can’t help but recommend it. —Rod Lott

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Tulsa, Oklahoma: birthplace of The Gap Band, porn star Stacy Valentine, 1921’s most incendiary race riot and, depending upon who you believe, the shot-on-video horror movie made expressly for home video. Following that trail blazed by Blood Cult were such Tulsa-lensed terrors as Revenge and The Ripper. As recently as the late aughts, T-Town was still at it, with the slasher known as The Stitcher. It’ll have you in stitches, whether you want it to or not.

Thanks to a freshly dead aunt, hot girl Brittany (Carmen Garrison) has inherited a luxurious lake house. Although she is not pleased the place is located in “hillbilly hell,” Brittany invites seven pals to make the trip for a par-tay weekend of bikinis and brewskis. Unfortunately, most of them show up! I say that because several of The Stitcher’s characters are exceedingly annoying, none more so than the obnoxious Digger (Justin Boyd), an obnoxious writer for the fictional (yet likely obnoxious) Blast Zone music magazine. He is the worst, because he is an obnoxious misogynist, because he is an obnoxious stoner with a bong seemingly glued to one hand, and because his name is Digger. Among all of Brit’s friends, he’s the one you cannot wait to see killed off, by that mysterious masked man for whom the movie is named.

The Stitcher is to this Blackstone Cove what Jason Voorhees is to Crystal Lake, the difference being that across the dozen or so Friday the 13th chapters in existence, not once to my knowledge does Jason leave behind a handful of buttons as a calling card. Limbs, heads and entrails, yes; sewing materials, nay. As the backstory explains, back when the textile-mill biz was boomin’ and The Stitcher was just a wee lad, he was abused in a rather unique manner: Ma would sew a button to his bare skin every time she felt he was a bad boy.

And if you think that’s outlandish, wait until you see how at least four local yokels are presented: with missing teeth! (While the whale-like feed store employee escapes this indignity, he is saddled with an arguably worse social ill: uncontrollable flatulence.) Writer/director Darla Enlow (Toe Tags) also fills a role among these Okie rurals, but you won’t catch her with blacked-out chompers or an overactive anus; instead, the blonde is running and bouncing in just tight shorts and a tighter bra while fleeing The Stitcher in the flick’s prologue. I’m willing to cut her some slack, because she has made a deliriously entertaining movie. It’s amateurishly acted (although there are exceptions, like Garrison and Laurel Williamson), but what do you expect for $70,000? As much as I desired to punch Digger, I wanted even more for The Stitcher to keep going past the point at which Enlow decided to stop. —Rod Lott

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Although now virtually extinct, the horror-movie host once was a staple of local TV up and down the UHF and VHF dials. Paying tribute to this nearly lost art — while mocking it — is Late Night Double Feature, a Canadian indie that shows us an episode of channel 13’s Dr. Nasty’s Cavalcade of Horror as it also takes us behind the scenes. As hosts, Dr. Nasty (Brian Scott Carleton, Bigfoot and the Burtons) and sexy sidekick Nurse Nasty (Jamie Elizabeth Sampson, Dead Rush) introduce two movies (actually short films, which we see in full): Dinner for Monsters and Slit.

Directed by Zombieworld contributor Zach Ramelan, Dinner follows a chef (Nick Smyth, 11 Blocks) to a private meal for six he’s been hired to prepare, only to discover his hosts’ choice of meat is a human corpse. Just when you think that the cannibalism “reveal” is the whole joke — and not a particularly novel one — Dinner leapfrogs genres in a burst of gonzo energy.

The inferior Slit, from Terror Telly helmer Torin Langen, also is an on-the-job tale, as Brad (Colin Price, Bed of the Dead) makes a house call to a crazed client (Caleigh Le Grand, Save Yourself). See, Brad is a professional cutter … and a freelance asshole.

Even bumpered by a mortgage commercial (deftly parodying the awfulness of locally produced ads, which attempt creativity without having any) and two fake trailers (for the just-as-it-sounds Night Clown and the backwoods creature feature Encephalopithecus), Late Night still has a full third to go. Director Navin Ramaswaran (Pete Winning and the Pirates: The Motion Picture) fills this by expounding on the previous bits and hints of off-camera chaos among members of the cast and crew. In short, Dr. Nasty comes by his stage name naturally, being a narcotized misogynist who takes advantage of cute interns, and his co-star is damn sick of it. In fact, after being physically tortured for real by the doc during one show segment, she reaches her breaking point and then flies right past it.

Unfortunately, Double Feature’s tonal shift is jarring, going from light and funny to grim and cheerless, and the film as a whole suffers for it. Adding more phony ads and coming attractions would aid tremendously in restoring the balance, especially since the flick does not present a whole-hog facade along the lines of the WNUF Halloween Special. The best course, however, would have been to pick a mood and stick with it, because the movies within the movie feel more like Ramaswaran and friends sandwiched in the shorts they could get, rather than build the shorts to suit the concept, which itself is killer and could withstand another go-round. As is, Sampson earns MVP status with her strong performance. —Rod Lott

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Troubles abound in the San Francisco nightlife scene, as a trail of bodies left by an unknown serial killer bears one peculiar calling card: The victims’ brain cavities have been sucked dry, emptied through the eye sockets. While the police are left in quite the pickle, the murders are like gold to magazine journalist Jean (Kate Alexander, From a Whisper to a Scream), who’s writing an article on “the atmosphere of fear” when she’s not enjoying the FWB setup with her roomie, Bryan (Caleb Dreneaux). The snot-nosed punk rocker — a member of the local phenom Disease — appears to be young enough to have exited his lover’s womb.

Because Bryan once was involved in a fatal incident of ODing groupies, the long arm of the law extends his way. Police detective Alonzo (Deadly Desire’s Jonathan Zeichner, heavily perspiring a mix of ’80s tough guys Nick Mancuso, Steven Bauer and Joe Piscopo) is crazy-suspicious of Bryan (“Saying Disease is just a band is like saying Hitler was just an overzealous politician!”) and clearly will end up soiling the sheets with Jean, even though he repeatedly and dismissively calls her “Reporter Lady” to her face. (When the inevitable sex scene arrives, ’tis a real Sophie’s Choice to determine which is grosser: that he keeps his necklace on or that his arms are so hairy, viewers might think he’s still wearing a shirt.)

Despite Alonzo’s public investigation, literally brainless bodies keep turning up. Perhaps the neighborhood’s facially disfigured hobo everyone refers to as The Creeper (Robert Duncanson, looking like Manos’ Torgo swallowed a whale) has something to do with it? Whatever, man, cuz danger ain’t gonna keep Disease (collectively billed as The Nuns) from spreading its aural infections, e.g., “Slit your wrists / Fuckin’ bitch / My suicide child / My suicide child!” Other than Disease’s sporadic performances (one at a house party where a guy walks around with a python draped around his neck, no big whoop), music in Night Feeder amounts to producer James Gillerman’s tin-eared score of seemingly random buttons pushed on a Little Virtuoso teaching keyboard.

For all of the movie’s ridiculous wrongs, its most glaring misstep among VHS-shot oddities is most unexpected: having ambition. Yes, freshman (and still that today) feature director Jim Whiteaker remains constrained by underfunding, yet proceeds with Linnea Due and Shelley Singer’s whodunit-procedural script as if it were slated for airing on PBS’ Mystery! They try hard, even aiming for scientific accuracy in a gory autopsy sequence depicted so meticulously that it feels real-time. Many members of the cast actually can act; while leads Alexander and Zeichner are unable to elevate the material, maybe it doesn’t need elevating. After all, the movie never reaches monotony.

Special commendation goes to Cintra Wilson (So I Married an Axe Murderer) for scene-stealing through general spaciness. Everything out of her mouth emerges with an “Oh, wow” quality, no matter what is being said. That I cannot ascertain how much of this is performance only adds to Night Feeder’s appeal. Don’t let anyone spoil the ending! Even if they do, there’s still plenty of 1980s video-horror fun to be had by soaking in all the aerobics, overly teased hair, cordless phones with antennas and so so so much leather. —Rod Lott

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