Thriller

Hit Lady (1974)

Leave a comment

The Black Hole beauty Yvette Mimieux stars as Hit Lady Angela de Vries, a blonde assassin-for-hire in this Aaron Spelling/Leonard Goldberg made-for-TV movie. Before the opening credits, she’s summarily dispatched of an oversexed cowboy with ease, but when her boss (Clu Gulager, The Return of the Living Dead) gives her another assignment, she starts wanting out of the game to enjoy life with Doug, her poor shutterbug boyfriend, played by Dack Rambo (Good Against Evil).

Angela is given a few days to kill union boss Baine (Joseph Campanella, Ben) and make it look like an accident. Knowing he likes Mozart — suh-weet insider info, no? — she manages to run into him at a concert, and he immediately begins wining and dining (and soon balling) her. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen the ol’ gas bag Campanella shaking his rump to disco music, and once you do, you’ll want said life to end right then and there.

If you think Angela starts to fall for her mark, congrats — you’ve obviously seen a Spelling/Goldberg production before. Hit Lady is nothing if not all about predictability; the most shocking thing about it is that it was written by Mimieux herself. Who knew she could write? Hell, who knew she could spell?

It ends with Doug being somewhat of an hired gun himself. His mark? Angela, of course, and it serves her right, the two-timing bitch. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

Horror

Amityville 1992: It’s About Time (1992)

Leave a comment

Sixth in the Amityville Horror series, Amityville 1992 is, in my suspect estimation, worth watching at least once for four reasons:
1. Former Miss USA Shawn Weatherly gets naked;
2. Megan Ward strips to her underwear;
3. You have to admire a movie with the balls to use its release date and a pun in its title; and
4. It’s supremely silly.

Lipless architect Jacob Sterling (Stephen Macht, The Monster Squad) returns home from a work trip to Amityville with an antique clock he purchased there. I’m sorry, did I say “clock”? I meant an evil clock!

Once placed on the mantle, the evil clock screws itself put and immediately unlocks a time/dimension rift, causing the family members to do strange things. Jacob gets cinema’s nastiest dog bite and goes insane, while his goody-two-shoes daughter (Ward, TV’s Dark Skies) turns into a sex vixen overnight, yet turns her would-be fluid-swapping partner into a puddle of acidic goo.

The Macht vs. Doberman duel is something to see, especially when it ends with him stabbing the pooch with a broken glass bottle; PETA members will applaud later when Weatherly penetrates his leg with a fireplace poker. You’ve also got to enjoy the irony of the wacky neighbor lady narrowly missing getting creamed by a diaper truck, only to be impaled by the stork figure that then falls off it.

The proceedings are pretty bloody, which one expects from Hellbound: Hellraiser II director Tony Randel. However, thanks to a leaden script, you feel like the movie might be a victim of the clock’s time/dimension rift as well. But moments are moments, and the bare, sweaty, hanging bosom of Ms. Weatherly (Police Academy 3: Back in Training) certainly counts for something. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

Comedy

Monsturd (2003)

1 Comment

Do you find shit funny? What about farts? Vomit? Disintegrating bloody corpses? If you answered “yes” to any of those questions, Monsturd is right up your alley, because it’s about a walking, talking, murdering turd-man. He comes up through your toilet, kills you while you’re pooping and then writes clever one-liners with smeared fecal material on your walls. Don’t get caught with your pants down, indeed!

Monsturd opens with an escaped murderer on the loose (Brad Dosland, Retardead). He comes into contact with some toxic wasted that has been dumped by some evil scientists. The toxic waste cause his DNA to be fused with the feces in the sewer and thus is born … Monsturd! Since Monsturd does his murderous business while people are taking a crap, his killing spree threatens to shut down the town’s beloved Chili Festival. Something must be done!

For the most part, this horror spoof is played completely straight with lots of great deadpan dialogue. A lot of the humor does revolve around the deuce — and one excessively great vomit sequence — but also great writing. Creators Dan West and Rick Popko steal scene after scene in their roles as bumbling sheriff’s deputies.

West and Popko have done an excellent job of creating a high-quality and highly watchable flick on a shoestring budget. Don’t let the fact that it’s shot on video scare you away, because the production values are high all-around. There is also some gore that is plenty gruesome, but at the same time, cartoony enough to be fun.

If Monsturd has a flaw, it’s that there is almost too much going on. The movie never really slows down to give you time to associate with a central character. It opens with lots of people running around with great urgency and they pretty much keep running for the movie’s 80-minute running time.

There is nothing that is all that original about it, either. You’ve seen the toxic monster, the mad scientists, the bumbling deputies and the H.G. Lewis-style gore in plenty of other movies. But the film has a goofy enthusiasm and manic energy that helps to pack all these traditional elements into a fresh loaf. —Ed Donovan

Buy it at Amazon.

Action

The Tuxedo (2002)

Leave a comment

The Tuxedo is not the worst of Jackie Chan’s American movies — that’d be The Medallion and The Spy Next Door — but close enough.

Chan plays Tong … James Tong, a mild-mannered cabbie with a lead foot and a Hooters T-shirt who one day is hired as the driver for billionaire Clark Devlin (Harry Potter vet Jason Isaacs), a secret agent with a gadget-equipped and strength-empowering techno-tuxedo. When he’s nearly killed by a skateboard bomb, James takes it upon himself to don the tux and continue Clark’s espionage work.

Said work has something to do with the world’s water supply being threatened, but it’s so poorly explained that you won’t know what’s going on until the end. Pairing up with James is the wonderful pair of Jennifer Love Hewitt (Can’t Hardly Wait) as an agency chemist. Although she initially has the air of being miscast, she acquits herself fairly well; all the cleavage shots work toward that admirable goal.

Even if Jackie’s English were good (every time he said “Clark Devlin,” I thought he said “Cock Devlin”), The Tuxedo still would be a difficult movie to understand. I’m not sure it ever intended to tell a lucid story; rather, its aim seems to be to put him in one demonstration of physical prowess after another. The ones that are 100 percent Chan are fun; the ones that are 50 percent CGI, not so much.

And that’s the movie’s biggest problem: It doesn’t quite know how to use him, and when it does, it muddles it up with confusing editing and poor direction by first-timer Kevin Donovan. By not using its star’s massive physical potential, it might as well be, I dunno, Craig Sheffer in The Tuxedo. As with the Rush Hour franchise, the most enjoyable part comes with the end-credit outtakes. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

Reading Material

Regional Horror Films, 1958-1990: A State-by-State Guide with Interviews

Leave a comment

I’m not sure whether to be proud or ashamed that I’ve seen so many of the movies covered in Brian Albright’s Regional Horror Films, 1958-1990, a state-by-state reference guide to fright flicks made independently of the studios, major and minor. I just assumed that the titles covered would be completely obscure.

To a majority of moviegoers, I’m sure they are. Yes, they include Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead, Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Troma’s The Toxic Avenger, but those are exceptions to the rule — one populated by the likes of Zaat, Terror at Tenkiller, Dungeon of Harrow, Don’t Go in the Woods and Mardi Gras Massacre. Home video may have extended their audience greatly, but rarely so far to have penetrated the mainstream.

But before Albright gets to those, he gives a great introduction in “I Hear America Screaming,” offering a quick overview as he establishes the definition and criteria for the films covered. Why stop at 1990? Because the explosion of digital video and iMovie would have necessitated something the size of the Yellow Pages for the greater Los Angeles area. That’s a smart decision, because in my view, the luster seems to have been lost when the technology is no longer something people had to work to get.

Blood, sweat and tears inform these films — not trust funds, iPhones and Kickstarter campaigns. That’s not to say the end results are all good — heavens, no; in fact, the opposite is often the case. And it’s refreshing to hear the filmmakers admit their own faults in the 13 Q-and-A-style interviews that compose roughly half the trade paperback’s 336 pages. Among the most notable are, in order of ascending talent, J.R. Bookwalter (The Dead Next Door), William Grefé (Stanley) and Lewis Jackson (Christmas Evil).

The back half contains the state-by-state rundown (ignoring California on purpose, save for one), with the flicks presented in capsule format, but not as reviews. To his credit, Albright doesn’t pretend to have seen all of them, especially when one considers how difficult many are to acquire. His entries make me want to see scads of them.

With poster art galore, this is a reference book that horror-film fans didn’t know they needed. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

Random Genre & Cult Movie Reviews