Revenge of the Virgins (1959)

revengevirginsRambles uncredited narrator Kenne Duncan (The Astounding She-Monster) at the beginning of Revenge of the Virgins, not all Old West tales were born from truth. Some of them were “conceived in the minds of grizzled old prospectors … consumed by their one dream … convinced that he’d one day hit the biggest bonanza of all.”

Doesn’t that description sound like good ol’ Ed Wood? It should not surprise you that a picture this boring was written by the wrong-reasons legendary Wood, under the pen name of Pete La Roche; after all, when you hear that the black-and-white Western has a running time of 53 minutes, you automatically assume someone of suspect talents had a hand in its making … because the other hand was busy, as Revenge of the Virgins exists so the members of its all-female Indian tribe can parade around topless. Although led by a blonde Caucasian (Nona Carver, 1963’s Terrified), the tribe of “ornery redskins” hates the white man and his dadgum Christianity.

revengevirgins1Thus, when prospector Pan Taggart (Stanton Pritchard, Like Wow!) guides the greedy Melvin (Charles Veltmann Jr., 1960’s The Alamo) and his harpy wife (Jodean Russo, Airport) into tribal land in hopes of finding gold, the lady Indians stop dancing naked in circles long enough to fling some arrows their way. Incidentally, the girls don’t wear quivers, so where are they keeping those arrows?

And that’s all there is to this quick-buck pic of buck-naked chicks. Directed by sexploitationist Peter Perry Jr. (Kiss Me Quick!), the whole thing looks to have been shot along a neighborhood greenbelt. An attack by a fake rattlesnake stands as the sexless film’s most engaging moment, but that’s because you’re busy seeing if you can spot the wire. You can. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Don’t Go in the Woods (1981)

dontgowoods“Something smells,” we hear no more than five minutes into Don’t Go in the Woods. “What’s that stink?” The piece-of-shit indie slasher is the answer to its own question.

Roughly 25 minutes later, we hear, “I wonder if something’s happened.” I’ll handle this one, movie: “Barely a thing.”

An obvious ploy by talent-challenged director James Bryan (The Executioner Part II) to trick Friday the 13th fans, Woods throws a bunch of asshole campers (or camping assholes, if you prefer) into the Utah wilderness. Among them are our eventual heroes, Ingrid (Mary Gail Artz) and Peter (Jack McClelland); since they both look like men, it is possible to tell them apart because Peter is wearing a pink T-shirt advertising Boogie Vision, a Bryan project that is somehow way worse than this one. (Aside: Boogie Vision is supposed to be funny, yet isn’t, whereas Woods is not supposed to be funny, yet is.)

dontgowoods1It hardly matters who’s who, except for the antisocial antagonist who will be narrowing that list to as close to zero as he can get. Per the credits, that freak of nature is Maniac (Tom Drury), a mute mountain man who lives in a booby-trapped hoarder cabin and looks like awards-show banter writer Bruce Vilanch doing Mad Max cosplay after stopping by the crafts fair for beads. He grunts softly and carries a big stick with a pointy blade and a coonskin cap on its stabbing end. No one is safe — not the photographer in the pink beret, not the ’bout-to-boink newlyweds in the VW Bus with the Farrah Fawcett-Majors poster in its ceiling, and especially not the wheelchair-bound guy out for a … what, a rolling jaunt through the mountains and all its rough and uneven terrain?

Amateur actors utter their lines with blundering pauses … as if … they’re reading … from … cue cards. Doing that is well within the realm of possibility, since Bryan shot almost all of Don’t Go in the Woods in that fright-killer you and I and every moviegoer we know call broad friggin’ daylight. —Rod Lott

Don’t get it at Amazon.

Dangerous Men (2005)

dangerousmenJohn S. Rad’s Dangerous Men does not tell a story in any conventional manner — not because its Iran-born multihyphenate creator had an innovative narrative approach he was itching to impart, but because he did not know how to tell a story. At least his trash can be branded as one-of-a-kind trash. To see it is to disbelieve it, and that should count for something.

When her fiancé (one-timer Coti Cook) is murdered by her would-be rapist on a public beach in broad daylight, Mina (one-timer Melody Wiggins) dries her tears and immediately befriends the evil deed-doer. Mira’s intention is to get this fat, bald biker named Tiger (one-timer George Derby) alone in a hotel room, which she does only after they share a pre-sex steak dinner. Naked, she insists he rub her knees as he kisses her belly button, and as Tiger complies in ecstasy, she retrieves the fenced steak knife hidden between her butt cheeks and stabs him to death. Move over, Ms. 45! Vengeance, thy name is Mina!

dangerousmen1From there, Mina vows to kill — and perhaps even castrate — any male who dare use and abuse a woman. To do this most effectively, she dons the disguise of your common street whore. It’s as if we are witnessing the origin of a feminist vigilante superhero … except that Mina just kinda disappears from Dangerous Men, so the movie morphs into something else — that being the tale of a police detective who would have become Mina’s brother-in-law (Michael Gradilone, Animal Instincts III) out to crack down on a drug-dealing biker gang whose leader is a poodle-mulleted Caucasian named Black Pepper (Bryan Jenkins, 1997’s Riot). Mr. Pepper earns an interminable, Tommy Wiseau-length sex scene with a skank after their strange idea of foreplay: hiring a belly dancer (Roohi — just Roohi, thanks) to perform her hip-shimmying routine while they watch from the living room couch.

It ends with … well, you’ll have to witness this baffler for yourself. Even among all the cinematic detritus I’ve consumed in four decades’ time, I cannot recall a single one wrapping up quite like this!

Rad’s coda should not have caught me so off-guard. It’s not like my eyes didn’t notice the cop’s badge reading “Policeman Police” earlier. It’s also not as if Rad’s own looped-synth score didn’t register with my ears throughout, its plucky mix of Bobby Brown’s “My Prerogative” and the Seinfeld theme incongruent with the tragedy unfolding onscreen. Dangerous Men is consistent only in that it is woefully incompetent for every second. The conclusion is par for the course, considering Rad’s course clocked roughly 20 years from idea to premiere. The wait was worth it, even if none of us knew we were waiting. Again, that should count for something. Shouldn’t it? —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Winners Tape All: The Henderson Brothers Story (2016)

winnerstapeallAlthough I laughed a lot while watching Winners Tape All: The Henderson Brothers Story, I cannot recommend it outright.

No, first you have to instinctively know the meaning of the acronym “SOV” — without Googling, without pausing to think. For those whose gifted with a synapse that instantly retrieves “shot on video,” then yes, unequivocally I recommend this inspired mockumentary. Viewers familiar with those negative-budget, positive-enthusiasm DIY horror shows of the VHS era will recognize certain patent components — the awkward pacing, the amateurish performances, the kitchen-conjured gore effects — and smile in respect. Grins give way to guffaws.

And if you don’t know your “SOV” from “SUV”? Go experience David A. Prior’s Sledgehammer and Christopher Lewis’ Blood Cult — because “watch” is not a strong enough word for it — and get back to me.

winnerstapeall1The subtitular stepsiblings of Winners Tape All: The Henderson Brothers Story are the slobby Michael and uptight Richard (respectively played by co-writers and Faces of Schlock co-stars Zane Crosby and Josh Lively), being profiled on a public-access cable station in West Virginia. With Chris LaMartina (director of the equally faux and fabulous WNUF Halloween Special) acting as Henry, their No. 1 fan, the newsmagazine reunites the boys, who reminisce about their pioneering ways in the 1980s. In a nutshell, it was inevitable they take a stab at shooting their own slasher movies after renting so many of them in their formative years. Particularly influential was I Piss on Your Guts: “Wanna know what the best part of that movie was? When he pisses on his guts.”

Their big-box career may have been brief, but their efforts live immortal, as we witness via prodigious clips of both Michael’s directorial debut, The Curse of Stabberman, and its sophomore slump of a follow-up, Cannibal Swim Club. Unsurprisingly, these bits combine for much of Winners’ 67 minutes of running time and nearly as many earned laughs. It is more difficult to make authentic “bad” footage than it looks, but director/co-writer Justin Channell (Die and Let Live) possesses just the right touch to have his characters convey earnestness and delusion. In love with its own losers, Winners Tape All starts and finishes as a winner itself. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Bunny the Killer Thing (2015)

bunnythingBecause we only live once, you may think you shouldn’t deny yourself the opportunity to see what a movie about a genetically mutated rabbit-human hybrid might be like. If that’s the case, you may as well just get it over with now, via Bunny the Killer Thing.

The Finnish film depicts what happens when a writer (Gareth Lawrence) arriving at a remote cabin in the snowy wild for seclusion and inspiration instead is kidnapped and subjected to an injection that turns him into a bunny monster with a murderous streak and an oversized penis. Much to the misfortune of the young party people on holiday nearby, he longs to utilize both.

bunnything1Expanded from a 2011 short, Bunny the Killer Thing comes courtesy jack-of-all-trades filmmaker Joonas Makkonen. With some two dozen shorts under this directorial belt, he makes his first feature here, which shows in how repetitive the picture quickly becomes as Makkonen struggles to reach a passable running time. His single idea is stretched past the point of breaking. It’s not even that good an idea to begin with — the creature is, yes, but not the misogynist madness exhibited as it hits women and slaps them unconscious with its engorged member, all the while exclaiming either “Pussy!” or “Fresh pussy!” or, one presumes for the sake of coining a culture-penetrative catchphrase, “Who’s gotta bigger digga?”

This infantile approach to splatter comedy squanders Bunny’s initial promise — one that hints at becoming another cult favorite on the level of Dead Snow or Rare Exports. It looks fantastic, yet feels written by two middle schoolers giggling at their own juvenile jokes in the back row of math class. Sorry, Bunny, but you’ve earned no carrot. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Random Genre & Cult Movie Reviews