Like pumpkin pie and tryptophan comas, Blood Freak deserves a place in your annual Thanksgiving traditions. It’s not every day you see a movie about mad science turning a man into a turkey monster, but if there’s a day that’s perfect for such a flick, it’s that last Thursday each November. However, if you’ve never seen it, don’t wait until fall to gobble up this one-of-a-kind crap!

All mutton chops and good manners, Herschell (Steve Hawkes, who co-wrote, -directed and -produced with Brad F. Grinter) is a lost-soul biker who looks like the love child of Elvis Presley and Richard Kiel. After coming to the aid of a Bible-thumping beauty with the unsubtle name of Angel (Heather Hughes, Grinter’s Flesh Feast) on the highway, she invites him to stay at her groovy pad. Apparently decorated with the entire inventory of velvet paintings from that corner with the abandoned gas station, the place also is home to Angel’s polar-opposite sister, Ann (Dana Cullivan), for whom life is a constant drug party, despite her sibling’s penchant for spouting Scripture. Protests a sky-high Ann, “This Bible stuff is really a drag.”

Ann tries to push pot, then herself, onto Herschell, who rebukes both advances … until the next day when a bikinied Ann successfully seduces a shirtless Herschell by the pool. The dude’s muscled, and his might leads to a job offer by the girls’ father: “I could use a husky man like you on my poultry ranch.” Aside from picking up freshly laid eggs and shaking them, Herschell is tasked with playing guinea pig for a chemical experiment that turns him into a mutated man with a giant turkey head and sends him on a murder spree. Why, God, why?

That answer is simple, because a chain-smoking Grinter sledgehammers the story’s moral lessons with the occasional story-stopping lecture toward the camera, like a rednecked Rod Serling. In his final host segment, Grinter discusses the sin of putting chemicals into our templed bodies, all while hypocritically sucking down a cancer stick that causes a deep coughing fit. That he and Hawkes didn’t feel a need for a second take says a lot about Blood Freak‘s place on cinema’s ladder of technical prowess, which is to say it resides on the lowest rung. The Florida homemade morality tale is such a piece of gobsmacked entertainment, I wouldn’t want it standing any higher. —Rod Lott

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Ironically, the element that attracts most viewers to Terror in the Haunted House is the very thing they’ll care the least about: its “Psycho-Rama” gimmick of subliminal images. There’s a devil head here, a snake or skull there, but nothing worth writing tweets about. Instead, the story supplants cheap novelty and pulls you in, whereas we’d expect the opposite.

Life is ever so keen for the just-married Sheila (Cathy O’Donnell, Detective Story), if not for the fact that she is plagued by nightmares of an old house to which she swears she’s never been. She always awakes before she reaches the attic, where she’s certain “death in its most hideous form” awaits; in Switzerland, her shrink (Barry Bernard, Return of the Fly) believes her subconscious is shielding her from some heinous act in her past that she cannot remember.

Oh, well, so much for that breakthrough, because it’s off to Florida with hubby Philip (Gerald Mohr, The Angry Red Planet)! “I’ve got everything,” Sheila says, “tickets, passports, money, smallpox certificates.” Arriving in the Sunshine State, Philip drives up to their new rental home and … wait for it … it’s the one from Sheila’s dreams! Let the family curses and falling chandeliers begin.

O’Donnell has the part of the Meek and Subservient Newly Mashed Cherry down pat enough to carry us through an hour and some change. She does more for Terror in the Haunted House (aka My World Dies Screaming) than the flat direction from Harold Daniels (Roadblock). The script by Robert C. Dennis (The Amazing Captain Nemo) contains some nifty twists, but the exposition-filled end makes Psycho‘s look like the definition of brevity.

As for those subliminal frames, flashing messages such as “GET READY TO SCREAM!” and “SCREAM BLOODY MURDER!” kind of kills any intended shock effect. Luckily, Terror‘s power source is rooted in the psychological. —Rod Lott

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With HazMat, writer/director/producer Lou Simon not only proves that women can make slasher films, too, but also that they can be as terrible as men’s.

Dave (Todd Bruno) is the host of a TV prank show titled Scary Antics. Since it’s on the bubble, he aims to amp things up; ergo, the setups grow meaner. The latest involves some “friends” setting up Jacob (Norbert Velez) at a supposedly haunted warehouse … that also is the site of his own father’s murder. Hilarious, right, bro?

Pretty quickly after entering, Jacob cannot separate reality from stupid prank shows and snaps. He then … well, let’s let one of the more annoying characters tell us via her unbelievably calm phone call for help: “There is a crazy man with an ax. He’s already killed two people and he’s coming after us.”

Misreading of dialogue plagues the script’s pages; the tech guy who speaks as if he has rocks in his mouth reads the panicked “Oh, no!” as the morphine-sedated “Oh, no.” As per usual in microbudgeted horror, the act of killing has been given more attention than performances or plot, both of which are atrocious here. Too bad, because on looks alone, Jacob’s HazMat suit screams “franchise character.” Let’s hope it never gets the chance. —Rod Lott

While his Catholic school roomies are obsessed with copping a feel, Perry (Bobby Jacoby, Tremors) is obsessed with conjuring a demon — specifically, Angela (role-reprising Amelia Kinkade), the satanic seductress who wrought hell in 1988’s Night of the Demons. Ozploitation pioneer Brian Trenchard-Smith (Dead End Drive-In) takes the reins from Kevin S. Tenney to direct this follow-up.

Like the original, Night of the Demons 2 is set on Halloween night. At St. Rita’s Academy, that means a big dance. But when some of the students sin their way out of an invitation, they aren’t about to let some yardstick-wielding nun rain on their parade; instead, they go to Hull House, the abandoned abode still haunted by Angela. Being dragged there is the unpopular, mousy Melissa (Merle Kennedy, May), Angela’s orphaned sister.

Not entirely the same story retread, Night of the Demons 2 distinguishes itself with better actors (including The Brady Bunch Movie‘s Christine Taylor, aka Mrs. Ben Stiller, as a snooty prude), better effects (including a lipstick tube that looks like a dog’s erection) and better breasts (Linnea Quigley has nothing on Zoe Trilling or Cristi Harris). It also has more inventive death sequences. For instance, I’ve seen plenty of movies in which a horny guy grabs a pair of boobs, but never before have I seen a pair of boobs grabbing a horny guy. Another EC Comics-style standout has one unfortunate boy playing basketball with own head; on the downside, this unleashes sports puns galore, each more groan-inducing than the one before.

Trenchard-Smith loses focus in the third act as he allows returning screenwriter Joe Augustyn to steer the material toward self-parody (example: Sister Gloria, played by Heathers‘ Jennifer Rhodes, busts out some martial-arts moves), but I suppose that’s all part of the fun. As with its predecessor, Night of the Demons 2 is one of those rare horror films that feels like a Halloween party in itself. —Rod Lott

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While based on Bram Stoker’s 1911 novel, his final, The Lair of the White Worm is such a different beast in the meaty hands of British writer/director Ken Russell, the author would blush at the hard-R results, if not faint outright.

In a bravura turn, Amanda Donohoe (Liar Liar) slithers her way through this ribald tale of the reptilian threat as Lady Sylvia Marsh, a wealthy, seductive woman who returns to her English mansion soon after the skull of the village’s legendary D’Ampton Worm is excavated by visiting archaeologist Angus Flint (Peter Capaldi, aka TV’s 12th Doctor Who) at a nearly B&B.

It so happens that the quaint inn is built over the site of an ancient convent, and it so happens that Sssssssylvia is a snake woman who was part of it. Baring needle-sharp fangs and spitting hallucinogens when she needs to, she belongs to the cult that worshipped the giant worm. Now that its head has been unearthed, she just needs to sacrifice a virgin to resurrect the monster from its hidey hole; Eve (Catherine Oxenberg, TV’s Dynasty), girlfriend of Lord James D’Ampton (a baby-faced Hugh Grant, Cloud Atlas), looks to fit the bill.

Continuing in the sacrilegious tradition of his most controversial picture, The Devils, Russell is gleefully go-for-broke in this low-budget hot mess of high camp. It’s okay to laugh at it — clearly, that was his intent — but prepare to be taken aback by it as well. Triggered by a touch of Sylvia’s venom, scenes of psychedelic nightmares set out to shock with profane images of nuns being raped, Sylvia suggestively sucking a spear and poor Jesus Christ not just having to deal with being nailed to a cross, but the oversized serpent wrapping around him.

Subtlety was thankfully absent from Lair‘s call sheets. What little audiences it had didn’t know what to make of it, and many still don’t. For the rest of us, it’s a hoot and a half, fulfilling where Russell’s 1986 companion piece, Gothic, was fatuous, and even more insane than the filmmaker. —Rod Lott

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