Horror

Death Screams (1982)

Leave a comment

Hey, everybody! The carnival’s in town! The carnival’s in town! And Death Screams takes place in the supposedly idyllic American small town where that kind of thing is Earth-Shattering News. Shot in North Carolina, it’s the rare slasher with no discernible lead and in which the killer has no discernible gimmick. To complete a hat trick of sorts, it’s also the only slice-and-dicer to be directed by a member of the Ozzie and Harriet Nelson family, early sitcom titans. While brother Rick zigged his way into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, David clearly zagged.

This hicksploitation horror’s biggest crime is being instantly forgettable. More screen time is given to quilt-selling than story setup. Had Nelson given any character half as many traits as the number of times someone mentions having to work tomorrow (three), we might relate to one of them. As is, they’re as fleshed-out as the fair’s “Junk Shop” booth, which literally has just a toaster. Having more presence than the appliance are H.O.T.S. honey Susan Kiger, who’s inappropriately wooed by the coach (Martin Tucker, Rockin’ Road Trip), and Jennifer Chase (1983’s Balboa) as the one ride that doesn’t leave town when the carnival does.

Amid all the toothpick activity of the sheriff (Earl Owensby Studios regular William T. Hicks, A Day of Judgment) and talk of mince pies are recurring cutaways to two teenagers floating the river like bobbed apples: the ones who were offed in the prologue for having hormones. By the time all the young people ditch the bonfire for an ill-advised trip to the graveyard, a guy named Diddle (John Kohler, Ownensby’s Dogs of Hell) excuses himself to “make heh-heh,” which is a first for my ears.

Aimless and ambling, Death Screams may not be painful, but it’s heh-heh all the same. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Scanner Cop II (1995)

Leave a comment

Like its 1994 predecessor, Scanner Cop II makes its audience wait until near the end before getting around to exploding a head. While the sequel isn’t as enjoyable as regular ol’ Scanner Cop, it is chockablock in throbbing foreheads and popped veins.

Very much like a TV episode, Scanner Cop II needs not bother re-introducing hero cop/scanner Sam Staziak (Daniel Quinn, Wild at Heart), not even to remark on his mullet, acquired between then and now. This time, he’s romancing the redhead (Khrystyne Haje, 1987’s Bates Motel) who runs the clinic that dispenses the scanners’ version of methadone, but this subplot just gets in the way of Sam having it out with an evil scanner named Volkin (Patrick Kilpatrick, The Toxic Avenger).

In addition to tossing objects about, scanners now can create elaborate illusions that would guarantee a smash Vegas residency. But dueling orgasm faces maketh the movie, which director Steve Barnett (Mindwarp) seems to understand in spades, because not for nothing is the pic also known as Scanners: The Showdown.

Sam and Volkin’s final battle is such a master class in clenched jaws and gritted teeth that both men look like they’re on the verge of either a self-induced aneurysm or the evacuation of an entire El Charrito Grande Saltillo Enchilada Dinner in one violent grunt. I won’t give away whom, but one of them paints the back wall with the contents of his head, while the other quips, “He won’t be available for questioning.” (It’s probably easier to guess which one screams, “I’m waiting for you, scanner cop!”)

Believe it or not, this isn’t even Scanner Cop II’s standout special effect! Thirty minutes in, a man basically sizzles and liquifies before our eyes as Volkin scans the power right out of the poor bastard. Barnett repeats this parlor trick several times, including — but not limited to — a joint his-and-her demise. The budget for rubber cement must have been insane; one hopes David Cronenberg’s check were even more. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Horror

We Need to Do Something (2021)

Leave a comment

As residents of states in Tornado Alley know, the singular experience of hunkering down in the bathroom with your family as storm sirens wail can be frightening. It certainly is for the four-person fam of We Need to Do Something, but their sheer terror does not translate to the viewer, try as though director Sean King O’Grady might by adding a rather wily rattlesnake, disembodied voices and, well, other things.

Thick with tension among family members but not dread, the film traps the clan in the room for the duration, as a wind-transplanted tree blocks the one doorway out — effectively bringing the haunted house to them. Stress-reduced to knocking back Listerine, the father (The Innkeepers’ Pat Healy, who elevates everything he’s in) is ineffectual, which his may-as-well-be-estranged wife (Eyes Wide Shut’s Vinessa Shaw, ditto) does not let go unnoticed.

Her main concern is the safety of their children, little Bobby (John James Cronin, TV’s NOS4A2) and teen Melissa (Sierra McCormick, The Vast of Night), whose flashbacks of life outside these four walls are the only thing keeping the movie from a single-setting classification.

More often than not, We Need to Do Something’s title doubles as an audience demand. Indeed, not enough happens in 97 minutes to wring a winner, especially since it seems built for a half-hour TV episode; indeed, Max Booth III adapted it from his own novella. Similarly structured to 10 Cloverfield Lane, but without as much imagination or suspense, the film does climax with one hell of an image that wouldn’t be out of place in the better Elm Street sequels. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Sex

Lucifer’s Women (1974)

Leave a comment

Let’s just get this out of the way: The most memorable thing about Lucifer’s Women is that four years later, Al Adamson hacked it into Doctor Dracula. The runner-up: It’s edited by David Webb Peoples, future screenwriter of Blade Runner and 12 Monkeys.

Now we return to Lucifer’s Women, already in progress: Professor Wainwright (Larry Hankin, Billy Madison) not only has written about a book about the second coming of Svengali, but believes he is just that, down to claiming psychic powers of control and having the appropriately ratty, assured-to-reek beard — so pointed it looks pilfered from the Pistachio Disguisey disguise kit.

The narcissism is catching. Also believing himself to be a reincarnation is his publisher, Phillips (single-hitter Norman Pierce), who needs “a pure soul” for an upcoming black mass so he can ensure an all-new possession. He convinces Wainwright to procure that meat for him, complete with awfully specific instructions: She must be killed at the point of orgasm, precisely at midnight, on her 21st birthday.

Seriously? I can’t even get my own wife to slip on a pair of going-out shoes with 45 minutes’ advance notice. But Svengali 2.0 accepts all these conditions, like “No problemo!” His target is the naive Trilby (Jane Brunel-Cohen, whose only other role is in Freebie and the Bean), who somehow fits the “pure soul” portion of the bill despite being a stripper and freein’ her bean while reading underground sex comix at night.

As the fated, er, stroke of midnight approaches, both men cough and wheeze, making the movie all the more disgusting than its drab, gauzy brownness already does a bang-up job of doing. It all, um, climaxes with horned-goat-head rape at that satanic crucifixion as scheduled. Weird, right?

Even before that, Lucifer’s Women is overloaded with weird as director and co-writer Paul Aratow — later the producer of outdated comic-strip pics Sheena and The Spirit (the good, made-for-TV one) — dishes out a mute magician named Bobo, a butterfly girl, lines and lines of cocaine, the professor leaping spectral planes and a menage a trois a single thrust from becoming porno — especially since the tripod of that triumvirate is played by XXX star Paul Thomas (Ready, Willing and Anal).

And it’s all really, really boring. What can I say? The devil made me do it. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Thriller

Siege (1983)

Leave a comment

Down Nova Scotia way, the po-po are on strike due to a labor dispute, so crime runs rampant, primarily under the grip of the New Order — not the band, although that would be something. Of blue collars and unfettered ignorance, the loose collection of garden-variety fascists take advantage of the lawless land — at least as far as the night on which Siege is set — by terrorizing a friendly neighborhood gay bar known as The Crypt. (Oh, it’s right next to Thrifty’s Just Pants; you can’t miss it.)

When the bartender is accidentally killed, the New Order homophobes call in their fixer, Cabe (Doug Lennox, Police Academy), a strong, mostly silent type in black leather and silencer to match. To dissuade the bar patrons from reporting what they’ve seen, Cabe executes them one by one. Except for the one who gets away: Daniel (Terry-David Després).

Pronounced “Danielle,” Daniel runs and runs like Lola to the relative safety of an ugly, three-story apartment building, where he’s saved by the couple Horatio and Barbara (Winter a-Go-Go’s Tom Nardini and Echoes in the Darkness’ Brenda Bazinet, respectively). The remainder of the film entails the despicable New Order’s efforts to penetrate the couple’s threshold to nab the “fruit pie,” even if it means positioning a sniper across the street.

Siege so deftly plays with simple a “what if?” scenario that it quickly doesn’t matter we know nothing about Horatio and Barbara, such as why they have two blind students (Meatballs campers Keith Knight and Jack Blum, aka Fink and Spaz) just hanging out in their shithole of a pad. And why does their medicine cabinet lead into the unit of their next-door neighbor, Chester (Daryl Haney, Lords of the Deep)? I’ll answer that: Because it gives our heroes a unique home advantage, as does Chester’s proficiency at making dirty bombs and other tools of the terrorism trade.

Also known under the yawner title Self Defense, the Canadian production from co-directors Paul Donovan (Def-Con 4) and Maura O’Connell is taut and ingenious — the kind of thriller that works best then seen with an audience, but you’ll love all the same if watched alone. It’s as if Roberta Findlay’s Tenement had a moral code; Mr. Wizard harbored a Death Wish; and the Westboro Baptist Church participated in The Purge. Siege is all that and more. See it! —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Random Genre & Cult Movie Reviews