Horror

DeathBed (2002)

4 Comments

deathbedTanya Dempsey (Shrieker) was one of the most masturbated-to starlets in the direct-to-DVD scene. It’s too bad she was constantly saddled with crappy movies like DeathBed. It seems like with a title like DeathBed, it would have to be good. However, this DeathBed doesn’t cause much death. It also doesn’t cause much sex. Mostly a bunch of dry humping. Dry humping can be good in real life when your pre-teen girlfriend is nervous about going all the way, but in movies the ladies should be ready to give it up. Especially the boobies.

DeathBed is the story of a young couple who move into a new apartment. At the beginning, it wants to be Rosemary’s Baby. Except it is shot on video. And is stupid. But Tanya Dempsey is decent to look at. Also in this movie is a guy named Dukey Flyswatter, whose face looks like dookie, and Joe Estevez (Beach Babes from Beyond). He has a talking parrot that gives plenty of wisecracks. It’s not as funny as LL Cool J’s parrot that gets eated by the shark in Deep Blue Sea. But parrots add production value.

deathbed1The monster in this movie is a bed. That doesn’t sound creepy, does it? Well, it doesn’t really do anything creepy, either. Back in the old days, this would have been a raping bed. But now it just has non-scary ghosts that come out of it. Also, the boyfriend likes to give it to his girlfriend rough when he gives it to her on the DeathBed. That’s about it.

There is a good scene where Tanya Dempsey leans over for a long time and Joe Estevez looks at her cleavage and we get to look at it for a long time, too. This is a fucking B-movie; in B-movies, the chicks are supposed to be naked and getting screwed by trees (The Evil Dead) and fish men (Humanoids from the Deep). And even in one movie, they got screwed by worms. In this movie, there’s not even any nudity or any gore. It’s just boring and tries to act important.

The cover says that this is “Stuart Gordon presents.” Well, Stuart Gordon made Re-Animator and in that movie, the girl almost got screwed by a cut-off head! What is the world coming to? These girls don’t even get naked! This is what political correctness brings.

The director is Danny Draven (Reel Evil), who has made a bunch of other crappy movies. He seems to have a lot of fans. I don’t know why. This one is boring and has Joe Estevez in it. Not even a talking parrot can save that shit. —Ed Donovan

Buy it at Amazon.

Kitchen Sink

Assassin of Youth (1937)

1 Comment

assassinyouthWTFReefer Madness isn’t the only drug-hysteria film out there, you know. One year later, there was Assassin of Youth, another misguided anti-“marihuana” lecture disguised as entertainment that today, because of its misinformation and over-the-top histrionics, is entertainment.

As an opening newspaper headline screams, “AGED WOMAN KILLED,” leaving young, virginal, good girl Joan (Luana Walters, The Corpse Vanishes) in line to inherit her grandmother’s fortune. But what happens when she gets mixed up with the wrong crowd?

assassinyouth1A reporter working undercover as a soda jerk is about to find out along with her. After the kids enjoy their malted milks, you see, they go out for a smokefest, which causes them to tell bad jokes, do swami dances and attack each other with butcher knives (whereas, in reality, pot simply causes people to eat snack foods, smell like damp basements and be under the severe delusion that The Rocky Horror Picture Show is a good movie). —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

Martial Arts

Black Mask II: City of Masks (2002)

Leave a comment

blackmask2If you took X-Men and crossed it with The Island of Dr. Moreau, and then removed the good ideas of both and replaced them with pro wrestlers, you would — and do — have Black Mask II, the highly disappointing sequel to 1999’s terrific superhero kung-fu fest.

Although Jet Li wisely declined to return in the role, his Once Upon a Time in China trilogy director Tsui Hark — who merely served as producer on the original — agreed to helm the whole thing, a curious move akin to something like Steven Spielberg agreeing to do Poltergeist III.

blackmask21In his film debut, Andy On (Mad Detective) stars as Black Mask, the genetically engineered super-soldier dedicated to protecting his public. This time around, the bad guys are the aforementioned pro wrestlers, five of them (including Tyler Mane, Rob Van Dam and, um, former porn star Traci Lords) infused with animal DNA that turns them into actual reptiles. Thus, Black Mask spends his time kicking guys in rubber suits. It’s as if the Syfy channel had been granted full creative input, with acting on the level of any given Slim Jim commercial. Once Black Mask was shown riding down a street on an elephant, I gave up any hope that the movie might get good.

The major problem is the weak script (with five credited writers), but also detracting from one’s enjoyment are a heavy reliance on CGI, the terrible kid actor and downright confusing editing. Martial-arts choreographer extraordinaire Yuen Woo Ping serves as just that, but I sure couldn’t tell, as there’s nothing here that will excite any of your senses, except your desire to go to the bathroom without bothering to hit the pause button. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

Comedy

It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963)

2 Comments

madworldSocial-issues auteur Stanley Kramer (Judgment at Nuremberg) really cut loose with It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, a comedy that bears no agenda beyond driving its superficial plot. Perhaps feeling guilty that the project wasn’t Important Enough, the crusty Kramer couldn’t resist bloating the material into an epic 202 minutes that begin with one of those old-fashioned musical overtures that play against a blank screen. It’s about the only moment of respite.

The goofs get going when a crook (Jimmy Durante) accidentally drives off a cliff; coming to his aid are five fellow drivers (played by, in ascending order of irritation, Jonathan Winters, Sid Caesar, Milton Berle, Buddy Hackett and Mickey Rooney). Just before croaking, the dying man tells them that $350,000 — an amount that seems positively quaint today — is buried under “a big W” in a California state park. His news sets off a veritable rat race to snag the loot first; because the money is stolen, a bulldog-faced cop (Spencer Tracy) monitors their progress.

madworld1Problems and hangers-on pile up in equal numbers along the way, per rules of the slapstick subgenre. The sheer size of the cast is so big — and so loud, thanks to Ethel Merman — that Mad World‘s imitators curl like Shrinky Dinks in comparison. Had the adjective “zany” not existed beforehand, Kramer’s comedy would coin it — and likely concurrent with the occasion of a paint can landing atop someone’s noggin.

But is the film funny? Personally, if not for the final set piece that violently hurls the leading men off an uncontrollable fire ladder, I’d say no. I suppose that once upon a time in Hollywood, the sights of cars weaving, people yelling, objects falling, structures collapsing and Dick Shawn gyrating automatically translated into laughter. Ah, those were the days, weren’t they, Meemaw? —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

Sex

Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (1964)

Leave a comment

fannyhillBefore Russ Meyer found his groove exercising his autonomy across a well-built body of work, he took on the for-hire job of adapting John Cleland’s notorious erotic novel of the mid-1700s for the silver screen of the mid-1960s. The result, Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, is far more faithful to its source material than to what we today consider the Meyer aesthetic.

At least the black-and-white period piece opens with a hint of That Meyer Touch, drawn in broad brushes of suggestive humor such as a fish landing in the cleavage of our heroine. The mayhem that ensues in this slapstick sequence would do Mack Sennett proud — a nod to him exists on the street’s “Pie Maker” sign — yet as if the film already tired itself out, it settles into an extended stay of conversation.

fannyhill1Orphaned teen Fanny (Letícia Román, The Girl Who Knew Too Much) falls into work at a curiously idle brothel run by the matronly Mrs. Brown (Miriam Hopkins, 1932’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde). Not only is the place staffed with girls not up to up to Meyer’s minimum standards of pulchritude, but Fanny is amateurish to the point of virginal. That hymen won’t stay intact forever.

Being a sex comedy with no sex shown is one of many reasons this version of Fanny Hill remains noteworthy. Others include Fanny’s true love being played by future Boogey Man director Ulli Lommel, and that the pushy producer is Albert Zugsmith (Touch of Evil). For all those asterisks, however, the movie isn’t any good — just a largely lifeless farce that would be all tease if it contained a libidinal pulse. It’s for Meyer completists only, and even that’s questionable. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

Random Genre & Cult Movie Reviews