Warriors of the Wasteland (1982)

Nobody can rip off Mad Max quite like the Italians.

In Warriors of the Wasteland — taking place in a post-apocalyptic future, it should go without saying — a small band of peacenik survivors is tormented by the Templars, an evil gang that roams the desert (or the fringes of a construction site) on cool motorcycles and customized cars loaded with deadly gadgetry. They also have names like Shadow and One, sport Mohawks and mullets, and dress like George Lucas’ Stormtroopers as made over by the Queer Eye for the Straight Guy team.

Stepping up to right wrongs and challenge the Templars is Scorpio, a disillusioned former member who looks like a hunky Peter Riegert. He’s joined by a vacant female love interest, a rock-slinging, tow-headed ugly kid and, best of all, crossbow-wielding Fred Williamson and his girly headband, rightfully playing a guy named Nadir.

The action scenes are what make this movie, alternately known as The New Barbarians. People explode in slow-motion into bloody chunks, get screwed by the Swiss Army car implements and even decapitated by a slowly whirling blade on the lead bad guy’s go-cart. There are several chase scenes like this — all set to a cool Claudio Simonetti score — so you’d think the carmageddon would get old, but nope, never does! —Rod Lott

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Night of the Demons (2009)

When I popped the Night of the Demons remake into my machine, I did so with complete certainty that no matter how much it sucked, I would still prefer it to the 1988 original. Y’see, I came to the first Night late into the game, so instead of nursing fond teenage memories of that crazy film where that chick sticks a lipstick container into her boob, I instead think of it as 90 minutes spent with the most singularly obnoxious collection of horror movie assholes I’ve ever seen.

As the remake started, however, I found my faith tested. Once again, the screenwriters seemed to mistake having their characters insult each other for the first 20 minutes as a witty form of character development.

It isn’t, screenwriters. It really, really, isn’t.

Eventually, the demons appeared at the Halloween party and the characters grew less overtly hateful, and while I never actually found myself enjoying the film, it also never tortured me as much as the original. It is interesting to note that in the remake’s recreation of the infamous lipstick-in-the-tit scene, Diora Baird’s fake fake boobs look much more fake than Linnea Quigley’s original fake fake boobs, which suggests the art of fake-boob prosthesis is the one special effect that hasn’t advanced much in the intervening years.

Speaking of Quigley, she has a short cameo at the beginning. It made me sad. As did the performances of pretty much the rest of the cast, none of whom actually seem to want to be associated with the film — the worst offender being Shannon Elizabeth (completely miscast as Goth queen Angela), whose only remotely authentic moment comes in the scene where she fellates a wine bottle.

So, yeah, the terrible remake of Night of the Demons is pretty fucking terrible, but not as terrible as the terrible original, which I believe sets the terrible standard for horror movie terrible. Terrible progress? —Allan Mott

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The Headless Ghost (1959)

Producer Herman Cohen is perhaps best known for the 1957 one-two punch of I Was a Teenage Werewolf and Teenage Frankenstein, so he continued to ride the wave of teen-oriented horror as far as it would take him, which is about 15 minutes into The Headless Ghost.

The British pic focuses on three collegians — two debate team-looking dweebs and one meh Swedish girl whose boobs are so pointy, it wouldn’t surprise me if the brand of her bra were Isosceles — touring a supposed haunted castle. And it is, which they discover when they hide ever-so-sneakily past closing.

Then and only then do the spirits of the royalty leap from their paintings and converse with them. One of the ghosts is — and, oh, I do so hope the title of the film didn’t spoil this for you! — without a head. In order to bust an ancient curse wide open, he sure could use that noggin. The payoff scene finds the headless body running around like a loon as his melon hovers overhead.

The whole thing is over in an hour, yet you won’t remember much past the cartoon credits and a hot bit o’ belly dancin’. Harmless but hopeless, it’s one of those things that sets out to “wacky” and makes corny jokes. You half expect it to be laden with on-screen sound effects like ye olde Batman TV show. Actually, that wouldn’t be a bad idea. —Rod Lott

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Spring Break (1983)

Thanks to its status as a perennial late-night movie during the ’80s and early ’90s, I’ve probably seen Sean Cunningham’s Spring Break at least six or seven times during the course of my life. But despite the number of times I’ve seen it, I’m still hard-pressed to tell you what it’s actually about.

Here’s what I can remember: There are two dorks (David Knell and Perry Lang) and two non-dorks (Paul Land and Steve Bassett). The two dorks have a room at a hotel that’s fully booked, and the non-dorks don’t, so they convince the dorks to let them stay in their room in exchange for letting them hang out with them and enjoy their non-dorky adventures.

One of the dorks has an important father, so there’s some concern that he shouldn’t be spring breaking and possibly ruin his father’s image, and one of the non-dorks falls in love with the really hot singer (Corrine Alphen) of an all-girl rock band (whose presence in the film is the only reason I’ve watched this movie as many times as I have).

Cunningham’s refusal to abide such narrative conventions as character and plot would be forgivable if he presented us with an entertaining representation of the event his film was made to celebrate, but even here, he holds back, giving us a lame spring break most of us would bitch miserably about if we had lived through it ourselves.

Subdued and tame when it should be wild and raucous, there is — as I’ve already mentioned — only one reason to party during this Spring Break and I’ve thoughtfully compiled the following video to save you the time and effort of having to experience the rest. —Allan Mott

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