Horror

The Church (1989)

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Filled to the brim with incomprehensible horror, The Church is director Michele Soavi’s follow-up to his feature film debut, Stagefright. Billed in some areas as the third Demons entry, the film has more in common with Rosemary’s Baby and John Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness, released only two years prior, than it does with the series.

There is some connective tissue between the two, namely the presence of producer Dario Argento and the premise of people trapped together fending off supernatural entities. But while Demons and its sequel features superb creature makeup and tons of gore, The Church trades in surreal imagery and set pieces that form a somewhat cohesive but altogether disjointed story. 

The narrative begins in the Middle Ages, where a group of knights slaughter an entire village based on the assumption one of its citizens is a devil-worshipping witch. The knights bury the corpses in a mass grave and construct the titular church atop it, as a means of keeping the supposed evil trapped within.

Fast-forward to present day, where Evan (Tomas Arana), the church’s new librarian, arrives for his first day at work. A wannabe archeologist, Evan loathes his new job and seeks a project that will bring him fame and fortune. He thinks he’s found what he’s looking for when Lisa (Barbara Cupisti) discovers a parchment in the church’s dilapidated catacombs that appears to be hundreds of years old. Evan obsesses over the document, eventually discovering hidden passages in latin that speak of a stone with seven eyes.

This leads Evan to return to the church in the middle of the night to search for the stone. He finds it in the catacombs, affixed to a large cross on the ground, and when he moves it aside, naturally, all hell breaks loose. It becomes up to a friendly archer priest (Hugh Quarshie) and the young daughter of the church’s sacristan (Asia Argento, in one of her earliest film roles) to restore balance and keep the evil contained. 

While not much more can be said of the story, the film’s visuals and special effects deserve special recognition, in particular a shot of a winged creature embracing a nude woman — a direct reference to Boris Vallejo’s Vampire’s Kiss painting Also of note is the music, alternately by Keith Emerson (of Emerson, Lake & Palmer fame), Philip Glass and Goblin. The Church is overall a splendid audio/visual experience that’s a must-see for fans of surreal horror. —Christopher Shultz

Get it at Amazon.

Reading Material

Pure: The Sexual Revolutions of Marilyn Chambers

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I don’t recall a time in which I wasn’t aware of ’70s porn sensation Marilyn Chambers; growing up watching Johnny Carson’s monologue from the foot of your parents’ bed will do that to a kid. Let’s put aside whether a child should even understand what Behind the Green Door was, much less what went on there. The fact is, Chambers’ name was everywhere, even if her work wasn’t as accessible as the three network TV channels. 

To this day, I’ve never seen her appear in anything other than David Cronenberg’s Rabid, which, being rated R, kneels a level below the style of films for which she became famous and/or infamous. I hold neither either affection nor attachment (nor ire, it should be noted.) 

All that to say, for 2024, Jared Stearns’ Pure: The Sexual Revolutions of Marilyn Chambers is the biography I didn’t know I needed. 

Given the subject matter, I was concerned Pure might reveal itself as hackwork. I can’t tell you how many fringe-culture bios read like public records, even beginning with, “[Name] was born on [date] in [city and state].” My worries were unfounded; like his subject, Stearns is determined to defy expectations from the outset. 

You wouldn’t know this was his first rodeo. He’s a gifted writer who knows how to tell a story, and it would be difficult to imagine a tale with as many ups and downs (and ins and outs) as Chambers’. From his own interviews and extensive research, he relays her modest beginnings as a “show-off” among in an emotionally cold Connecticut family to a high school model wholesome enough to be selected for the Ivory Snow detergent box. 

By the time that packaging hit grocery shelves, Chambers had accidentally leapt into the career that forever defined her: porn star. She thought no one would see Behind the Green Door; instead, it rode the Deep Throat wave into a cultural behemoth of “porn chic,” making the actress an instant icon. 

Most of the remainder of Pure, published by Headpress and named after Ivory’s “99 44/100th pure” slogan, details her attempts to use porn as a stepping stone, only to be shoved aside every time. Whatever she reached for — Hollywood legitimacy, a recording contract, a loving spouse — was removed from her grasp. Although Chambers could be her own worst enemy, many of her setbacks can be blamed on husband No. 2, Chuck Traynor, the former Mr. Linda Lovelace and professional piece of shit. (Not for nothing does “Dog Fucker (short)” appear atop “domestic violence” in the index.) 

It’s a hell of a survival story — and one without a happy ending, as Chambers died in 2009 at the tragically young age of 56. 

Stearns’ portrait is mostly sympathetic. Clearly, he holds magnificent reverence for her, yet does not shy away from sharing incidents that place her in a negative light. In total, the point of Pure is granting Chambers the credit and acceptance she deserves, which the author argues go beyond acts captured on celluloid. She was, after all, what most of America refused to see her as in her lifetime: human. —Rod Lott

Get it at Headpress.

Action

Expend4bles (2023)

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Gaddafi’s old chemical plant: Remember that ol’ thing? Expend4bles sure does! By using those four words onscreen in its prologue, the ’80s throwback franchise gives a nod to those better times — the “glory days,” we called them — when Expend4bles didn’t exist.

Why the movie didn’t just go with The Expendables 4 is a from-the-start sign of h0w 5tup1d 1t i5. Need another? Right after the title sequence, Barney (Sylvester Stallone) visits a local strip club to retrieve his wedding ring from a two-pronged dildo behind the bar. 

I almost wish that alone were the plot, since that’s a scenario I’ve never seen, whereas assemblages of shipping containers? Been there.

But since this series loves it some shipping containers, it tasks Barney and Christmas (Jason Statham, The Beekeeper) — and any other Expendables just chillin’ at HQ — with keeping stolen nuclear detonators from falling into the hands of a shadowy terrorist. Because this madman goes by the name “Ocelot,” prepare to hear that word more than you’d find in an entire run of Zoobooks magazine.

The movie’s largest problem is how little it resembles one. As helmed by Need for Speed’s Scott Waugh, it’s way too clean, looking like a Nickelodeon kidcom at worst or a Jardiance commercial at best. Consider the following:
• Nearly every outdoors shot of our principals is green-screened, even if they’re merely standing on a front porch in the suburbs.
• All instances of blood splatter appear swiped from a decade-old video game.
• Effects sequences involving planes, trucks and anything else explodable are animated no more realistic than episodes of Hot Wheels AcceleRacers. 
• Former Transformers eye candy Megan Fox is the one effect not in need of meddling, yet someone has Clone Stamped her entire face in Photoshop to give her an eerie RealDoll look.

With three-peat Expendables like Jet Li, Terry Crews and Arnold Schwarzenegger hard-passing on a return, new recruits have been drafted apparently at random from Redbox, by Redbox. When he’s not steering a tugboat, Tony Jaa (Furious 7) impresses with his lightning-fast moves, and Levy Tran (The First Purge) makes a brief impression wielding a chain. Meanwhile, Andy Garcia (Geostorm) chews a toothpick, and 50 Cent (Den of Thieves) utters modern action cinema’s most clichéd line: “Now that’s what I’m talkin’ ’bout!”

Despite the brainpower of three screenwriters, one good scene made it through to final product: Dolph Lundgren’s sniper character can’t shoot for shit without first donning reading glasses.

I enjoyed the first film. Same goes with The Expendables 2 and 3, albeit to a lesser, messier degree, and I can’t tell you a single thing that happens in them. Expend4bles is such a huge step down in quality — not to mention literacy — that it’s too often indistinguishable from the franchise’s direct-to-video imitators. Perhaps it’s time for The Expendables to go from expandable to expunged.

Sly almost makes a wise decision to ensure if there’s a fifth chapter, it’d be without him. But you know the 33 credited producers wouldn’t allow that. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Kitchen Sink

Side Show (1981)

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WTF

Lance Kerwin, God rest his soul, was the master of losing his virginity on prime-time TV: first on a controversial episode of the celebrated James at 15 series, then again in the rightly uncelebrated telepic Side Show. (Did he ball a vampire in Tobe Hooper’s Salem’s Lot? My memory’s not what it used to be.)

With an open mouth forever stuck on flabbergasted mode, Kerwin plays Nick, a 16-year-old runaway and puppeteer with a killer Jimmy Durante impression right down to the last “ha-cha-cha-cha.” Back when those were marketable skills, that’s enough to earn him a spot in the traveling circus. In the freak show tent of the traveling circus, that is, but a job’s a job — and then some, with the fringe benefit of seduction by the luscious, post-Scorchy (and grown adult) Connie Stevens!

Directed by actor William Conrad after his long run on Cannon, Side Show offers little for viewers to grasp between the murder occurring in the final stretch and Nick’s intro (via Red Buttons, When Time Ran Out …) to his co-workers: the tall lady, the fat lady, the snake lady, the tattooed lady, the sword swallower, the man with no face and a little-people couple with the last name Tiny. With respect to the latter, the movie’s big conflict is whether Nick can finagle a reunion with their normal-sized son so the Tinys can meet their granddaughter. Can your nerves stand it?

Pay no attention to the entirely misleading VHS box art that sells this particularly low-wattage melodramatic number as some kind of slasher. Its horrors are, at best, the clowns, trained chimps and Stevens’ soon-abandoned Hungarian accent. Still, in concept, Side Show gives producers Sid and Marty Krofft their version of Freaks. Just don’t expect the brothers to employ their usual brand of Saturday-psychedelia disturbia, ladies and gentlemen — neither the encephalitic H.R. Pufnstuf nor the monstrosities of D.C. Follies. —Rod Lott

Horror

Close Calls (2017)

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While Dad’s out dining with his bitchy new girlfriend, troubled teenaged girl Morgan is grounded and home alone — well, almost home alone, if not for her invalid grandmother. 

So the prodigiously chested Morgan (Jordan Phipps, Amazon Hot Box) ditches her shirt immediately and hangs out in a red bra. Between bong rips and asthma inhaler hits, she receives creepy, increasingly obscene phone calls, likely from her incel stalker. 

The sitter-in-peril flick is an exploitation staple. Close Calls may be the only one to dare go this far. I don’t mean in content; I mean in literal running time. 

Look, as a heterosexual male, let me say unequivocally that I love boobs. But let me also say unequivocally there is no reason — none! Not even those! — for Close Calls to play out for 128 minutes. On one hand, I get that writer/director Richard Stringham (who also worked with Phipps on that year’s 10/31 anthology) would want to showcase his lovely leading lady and her special effects as much as possible. The camera placement makes that clear, especially when her face isn’t even in frame.

On the other, needless scenes litter and clutter the movie — often a problem of directors making the leap from shorts to their first feature, which is the case with Close Calls. It needs to be tight in order to be taut. For example, what does a scene of Morgan pleasuring herself add? Nothing, except for the squish-squish-squish SFX, which are more than a bit much.

So is that twist ending, which emerges from nowhere and goes to the same place. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

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