Evils of the Night (1985)

What do you get when you combine the plot of a bad ’50s sci-fi alien invasion movie with the visual aesthetics of a backyard slasher film and add just a dash of early-’80s porno sensibility? A terrible mess, naturally, but a strangely compelling mess for those not overly offended by others’ incompetence.

Evils of the Night features John Carradine, Julie Newmar and Tina Louise as alien doctors sent to our world to harvest “platelets” from healthy teenagers in order to help keep their population young beyond their years (which leads us to believe that Carradine must be a million years old by this point).

Despite their noble attempts to harvest these platelets without killing their unwilling donors, many of the kids die as a result of the harsh methods employed by their chief kidnappers, two mentally deficient mechanics (Neville Brand and Aldo Ray). The fact that we don’t actually care if any of these kids survive does have a somewhat negative impact on the movie’s overall tension.

Its brief running time is padded with a couple of spliced-in softcore interludes featuring well-known era porn stars Crystal Breeze, Amber Lynn and Jerry Butler, which — along with the minimal clothing worn by most of the female cast — makes the movie feel far sleazier than its plot requires. By the end, the (unintentional) joke does wear thin and it becomes hard to resist the temptation of your fast-forward button, but until then, Evils of the Night is just too awful for any bad movie fan to resist. —Allan Mott

Buy it at Amazon.

9 Deaths of the Ninja (1985)

When 9 Deaths of the Ninja hit theaters, I was 14 and, thus, too young to get in. I was visiting family in Kansas City, Mo., at the time, so while my cousin went to this, my younger brother and I made do with F/X elsewhere in the multiplex. Afterward, we asked how Ninja was, and all he could talk about was seeing this woman have her bikini ripped off underwater. He was a horny virgin at the time.

Now that I’ve seen it, the nudity is about the last thing I would impart to others, because this Philippines-lensed Crown International affair is among the decade’s hokiest action spectacles. Good ol’ Shô Kosugi plays Spike Shinobi, the strong, silent type of ninja. The James Bond-style credits sequence depicts a shirtless Kosugi slinging his sword as three ’80s skank hussies do interpretive dance around him and a cloud of dry ice.

Anyway, a tour group to Volcano Island is taken hostage by nondescript bad guys doing the bidding of the aptly named Alby the Cruel (Blackie Dammett), who’s confined to a wheelchair, wears fingerless gloves and strokes his pet monkey. His hostages — “such a pitiful group!” — include a Congressman, a girl on heart meds, and Kosugi’s two real-life sons, one of whom lights a would-be rapists’ ass on fire.

With the help of two American agents, Spike tosses his stars to take down all the villains, including the Amazonian woman named Honey Hump (Regina Richardson). There are a lot of whores in this movie, too (“My girls are sanitized, sterilized and lobotomized,” promises one madam), but no sex. Spoiler alert: In the last scene, Alby is thrown from his wheelchair, only to be trampled by horses during a polo match, then everyone enjoys lollipops. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny & Girly (1970)

Oh, those wacky 1960s, a time in which it seemed theater and film could go way out, man. Way, way out. Maisie Mosco’s play Happy Family — which, if there is any justice in the world, wasn’t a success onstage — became a movie in 1970 that redefined the word “obscurity.” Hammer horror buffs will recognize the name of its director, Freddie Francis, but Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny & Girly is no Hammer. More of a bent, rusty nail, actually. When Britain’s National Film Theatre sponsored a Francis retrospective season, no one could locate even a videotape copy of this one.

The four title characters live in a decaying mansion somewhere in England. Sonny and Girly, both in their late teens or early 20s, go on the prowl at the local playground and pick up homeless men, drunks and hippies (remember them?); bring them home; and force them to become “New Friends” or even members of the family. When the current New Friend tries to escape, he is killed as part of The Game. Despite their chronological ages, the siblings act and talk like pre-adolescents. Mumsy and Nanny are so stereotypically pre-war Brit, they’d make Mary Poppins puke a spoonful of sugar.

Also known as simply Girly, it sounds creepy, and could be if the movie weren’t trying so hard to be mysterious in a zany sort of way. My guess is that the play was long on black comedy in the absurdist manner so popular at the time, and Francis’ tendency, naturally enough, was to play up the horrific aspects, and the two approaches to the material do not mix well at all.

The movie has a good cast of Brit character actors, led by Michael Bryant as the newest New Friend. Vanessa Howard is a very sexy Girly, in a creepy she-wants-to-cut-my-head-off kind of way. Oddly enough, my guess is that everyone involved thought they were making an art film. No cigar. —Doug Bentin

Buy it at Amazon.

Random Genre & Cult Movie Reviews