En route toward some much-needed R&R, the oil-and-vinegar brothers Josh (Wings Hauser, Vice Squad) and Mike (Lee Montgomery, Burnt Offerings) run afoul of a truckful of rednecks on the open road. The encounter ends with the sibs’ car in a ditch, effectively stranding the boys in this tiny town of Confederate flags, Royal Crown Cola and one alcoholic sheriff (Bo Hopkins, From Dusk Till Dawn 2: Texas Blood Money).
Oh, and blue-faced ghouls whose bodies leak pus the color and consistency of baby diarrhea — can’t forgot those!
Thanks to a toxic waste facility on the edge of town, various residents turn into zombies of some sort: the kind imbued with the touch of death. Their hands can melt glass and contact with human skin causes burns — or at least a little sizzle o’ steam, like the kind you may see while ironing.
Personally, if I’m asked to choose a story of a small town under siege that also happens to be directed by John “Bud” Cardos, I’m picking Kingdom of the Spiders each and every time. No offense, Mutant, but you rate a not-even-close second. The troubled and final Film Ventures production, Mutant (aka Night Shadows, a redundant title similar to saying Wet Water) works as passable time-filler without becoming anything special, although Cardos does have the balls to pull a Marion Crane near the 20-minute mark. More notable about Mutant is that, like a certain brand of feminine hygiene products, it has Wings. And the intensity of his performance is matched only by that of his Afro. —Rod Lott
If only Officer Downe were a phony trailer wedged into Grindhouse’s midsection and went no further, it would be perfect. Instead, it is a full feature film — one that tries the soul before tearing it. The initial feature to be directed by clown-masked Slipknot founder Shawn Crahan, it exists from elements of RoboCop, Taxi Driver and a failed Adderall placebo, yet puts onscreen what neither Paul Verhoeven nor Martin Scorsese dared: a running “Orgasm Counter” — twice, in fact, just in case you don’t get your fill of this “joke” the first time it wears out its never-extended welcome.
Based on the same-named graphic novel — emphasis on “graphic” — Officer Downe puts Kim Coates (The Last Boy Scout) in the uniform of the LAPD cop who cannot be killed, at least not permanently. Armed with a custom .85 Magnum and a God-given bad attitude, Downe battles the devilish scourges of the City of Angels, from a group of gun-running nuns (including Drag Me to Hell’s Alison Lohman) and the animal-headed criminal organization dubbed the Fortune 500 to the martial-arts dynamo Zen Master Flash (Sona Eyambe, Wolf Warrior), whose speech is out of sync with his mouth movements — a wacky idea that died 31 years ago with Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment.
“Gun-runnin’ nuns? Are you fucking kidding me?” asks one apoplectic character, echoing my exact sentiments.
Faithfully adapted for the screen by Downe creator Joe Casey, the movie is a candy-colored mess that carelessly yet knowingly scatters flakes of its own detritus everywhere. Crahan’s crank-addled camera is not its problem; that dubious honor falls to a failure to justify its existence, and mind you, I would have accepted “just for fun” as an answer. But it’s not fun. Gleefully infantile and all too reliant on the word “fuck,” it reminded me of the witless comics that junior-high classmates and I would draw, exquisite corpse-style, in attempts to amuse ourselves on days of standardized testing: We knew they were terrible, but we had to do something while waiting quietly for the football players and/or woodshop students to struggle to finish each section. You, however? You have a choice of a million other flicks. Like Slipknot’s popular brand of nü-metal noise, I am sure Officer Downe has its place; I am more certain I reside nowhere near it. —Rod Lott
Picture this (because you certainly don’t want to witness it for real): Two alien creatures who happen to be brothers crash-land on Earth. One of them, Nukie (rhymes with “dookie,” which is what he appears to be made of), lands safely in the jungles of Africa. The other one, Niko, is injured upon his arrival in Florida, whereupon he is snatched by evil NASA staffers who stick tubes up his nose and jab him with needles. As contrivance and convenience would have it, both aliens speak English, yet never move their mouths.
In his search for his sibling (who also looks like a bowel movement with eyes), Nukie inadvertently scares away rhinos, yet carries on conversations with baboons as snot drips out his nose. He also encounters twin native boys whose loincloths constantly expose their 8-year-old rumps. Glynis Johns (1962’s The Cabinet of Caligari) plays a nun in the village, while Turkey Shoot-er Steve Railsback is an astronaut in search of Nukie.
Co-directed by Sias Odendaal and Michael Pakleppa (Break Out: Rap in the Bronx), this international production is E.T. meets Sally Struthers’ ChildFund commercials. Given that animals talk and that its space-monkey star is a foam-rubber creation with facial paralysis, Nukie is aimed directly at the kids. Two words of warning to parents, however:
1. The scenes of Niko being subjected to shock therapy will frighten them.
2. Also, they will come to resent you with every fiber of their being years in advance. —Rod Lott
Not content to let Italian producer Dino De Laurentiis corner the entire giant-monster market with 1976’s King Kong, his fellow countrymen ripped off his blockbuster with, among other titles, Yeti: Giant of the 20th Century, directed by Gianfranco Parolini (aka Frank Kramer, helmer of the Sabata trilogy). But really, the two films are vastly different; in Yeti, the big guy climbs down a skyscraper. See? Nothing alike!
A giant of a different sort, the rotund captain of industry Morgan Hunnicut (Plot of Fear‘s Edoardo Faieta, aka Eddie Faye), calls upon an old friend, the professor Henry Wassermann (John Stacy, The Headless Ghost), to assist in a “humane expedition” in Northern Canada. (Despite always wearing a cap swiped from one of Santa’s elves, Wassermann enjoys great credibility in the field.)
This expedition involves the thawing and subsequent reanimation of an ancient abominable snowman encased in ice, discovered by Hunnicut’s grade-school grandson, Herbie (Jim Sullivan, the prototype for young Fred Savage), who has been mute ever since he lost his voice in a plane crash that claimed the lives of his parents. Under the prof’s supervision, Hunnicut’s team assaults the cryptozoological Popsicle with flamethrowers to reveal the body underneath, five times taller than you or I, and preserved in “a perfect state” for all these years. Just how many years wavers from scene to scene, from “millions” to “a billion” to “1 million,” with all estimates coming from the same source, and all running square in the face of the film’s 20th-century subtitle.
For some reason, the yeti (Mimmo Crao, Sergio Martino’s Sex with a Smile) has to be revived while within a TARDIS-like contraption hanging from chains to a helicopter in flight. This works, but down on the ground, the hirsute sasquatch gets freaked out by camera flashes, triggering the unavoidable rampage; before you know it, the blood of extras is on his hairy palms. He licks them.
Also unavoidable: He becomes smitten with Hunnicutt’s hot granddaughter, the teenaged Jane (Antonella Interlenghi, aka Phoenix Grant, Lucio Fulci’s City of the Living Dead), so he scoops her and little bro Herbie up and carries them to a private spot among nature. Along the way, Jane accidentally touches the yeti’s breast, which gets the creature so excited, his nipple inflates. The creature’s resulting grin is so wide, it looks as if he inhaled a hit of Smilex. Aroused or not, he resembles Dan Haggerty with mange (see Exhibit A).
Speaking of aroused, Jane becomes just that when the yeti combs her hair with a giant fish skeleton likely still wet from being stripped of stinky meat seconds earlier. One could argue that the public is aroused as well, once it hears of this Bigfoot’s existence; Hunnicut Enterprises enjoys doubled sales, thanks to full-fledged yeti mania through everything from yeti gasoline to ladies’ “Kiss Me Yeti” T-shirts, whose fronts are adorned with the monster’s handprints purposely at boob-grabbing level.
Because the yeti’s initial dealings with camera-snapping humans went so well (read: not), the greedy Hunnicut plots the publicity stunt to end all publicity stunts, evidently forgetting it also will end the lives of several innocent people. But, hey, a buck’s a buck! And Parolini and his fellow producers spent as few of those as possible, judging from nearly two hours of evidence. Replete with miniature models and what sounds like two songs on repeat, Giant is chintzia — pretty sure that’s Italian for “chintzy.” —Rod Lott
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away On the tomorrow after tomorrow, according to the opening crawl, people fled Earth after the robot wars left it polluted, and colonized the moon. It also tells us that we are dependent upon the miracle drug RADIC-Q-2, which is produced only on the distant planet Delta III.
In and of itself, that is not necessarily a bad thing; the situation changes when Delta III ruler Omus (Jack Palance, Tango & Cash) decides to withhold 100 percent of the drug’s supply in order to blackmail the moon’s New Washington into making him supreme commander of the moon and Earth. Clad in a cape that makes Palance’s character look like an AARP-sponsored superhero (superpower: craps bigger’n you), he’s basically Big Pharma price hijacker Martin Shkreli. (Given that Shkreli was negative 4 years old at the time, the film indeed predicted Things to Come. Mind, consider yourself blown.)
Powered by dated Honeywell computers, the senators of New Washington negotiate neither with terrorists nor past-their-prime matinee idols in the nadir phase of their career, so whereas viewers may expect a war among the stars, the battle instead is waged — per Towers’ iron grip on the pocketbook — on the farm pasture of Québec. Among those fighting the good fight against Omus and his boxy, walking robots with arms constructed from shop-vac hoses: The Dead Zone’s Nicholas Campbell, The Boogens’ Anne Marie-Martin (her hair lively with considerable, just-been-conditioned bounce) and The Poseidon Adventure’s Carol Lynley.
Effects for this sagging space saga run the spectrum, from quite nifty to rather embarrassing. Budgetary woes weep loudest in the practical settings and costuming, particularly spinning pound-cake pans used as a torture device and protective helmets that are nothing more than inflated plastic bags placed over the actors’ heads — both examples fine for Saturday-matinee fare of the ’50s, but hopelessly out-of-touch by the high-bar standards of the George Lucas generation. Perhaps worst of all, The Shape of Things to Come fails to connect narratively; if Towers jettisoned everything from the book but Wells’ title, why settle for a tale of politics? For every minute that limps by, those robot wars of the aforementioned crawl sound all the more appealing. What we were given can be summarized by a line uttered by Campbell after experiencing Shape’s no-frills version of 2001’s famed stargate sequence: “What the hell was that all about?” —Rod Lott
En route toward some much-needed R&R, the oil-and-vinegar brothers Josh (Wings Hauser, Vice Squad) and Mike (Lee Montgomery, Burnt Offerings) run afoul of a truckful of rednecks on the open road. The encounter ends with the sibs’ car in a ditch, effectively stranding the boys in this tiny town of Confederate flags, Royal Crown Cola and one alcoholic sheriff (Bo Hopkins, From Dusk Till Dawn 2: Texas Blood Money). 
Personally, if I’m asked to choose a story of a small town under siege that also happens to be directed by John “Bud” Cardos, I’m picking Kingdom of the Spiders each and every time. No offense, Mutant, but you rate a not-even-close second. The troubled and final Film Ventures production, Mutant (aka Night Shadows, a redundant title similar to saying Wet Water) works as passable time-filler without becoming anything special, although Cardos does have the balls to pull a Marion Crane near the 20-minute mark. More notable about Mutant is that, like a certain brand of feminine hygiene products, it has Wings. And the intensity of his performance is matched only by that of his Afro. —Rod Lott
