Movie Recap: Atom Age Vampire

People talk about the “vampire craze” ushered in by the publication of the Twilight books, but this movie (filmed in Italian in 1960, dubbed into English for some sinister purpose) proves that the vampire craze is as eternal as the actual vampires.

Speaking of actual vampires, though, this movie doesn’t have any. What it DOES have is a handsome mad scientist who creates a sinister serum and then has to murder young women to harvest their “glands” for complicated reasons.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

 

• Script Quality: For all I know the Italian script was brilliant. The English one, not so much. It’s serviceable. 5/10.
• Acting Quality: Also serviceable, and I think the stripper/heroine and the lovesick assistant-to-the-doctor were having fun with this. 5/10
• Overall feeling afterwards: I feel so much better right now about my extensive collection of skincare products, none of which required me to murder anyone.
  

1313: Giant Killer Bees!

We already know (from previous painful experience) that there is no sex in a 1313 movie.

But today we learn something new: there are very few bees in a 1313 movie. There are a few seconds here and there (literally about one minute tops if you add all the scenes together) of bad CGI, but that’s it. On a happier note, there are zombies for some reason.

I know, I know. Just…stay tuned.

“For girls.”

• Script Quality: There are at least two or three funny lines in this.
• Acting Quality: There weren’t enough actors available, but a random group of underwear models stepped up. Bless their hearts. (Honestly, Charlie and Redwood and Lewis aren’t bad at all.)
• Overall feeling afterwards:  Viewer Beware! You’re in for Excruciating Boredom.

Movie Recap: The Horror of Party Beach

This movie occupies that spot on the Venn diagram of B movies where “teen beach movies” overlap with “monster movies.” Also, the monster is so clearly a rubber suit that it’s entirely possible he’s a metaphor for condom use.

Why I’m Watching: It’s summer! Sort of. It’s that dreary, chilly end-of-summer when we all desperately try to cram in a few more summer activities. This is one I can do indoors, conveniently pretending it isn’t too cold to sit on the deck tonight.

For your protection. I see.

movie recap: Ouija

The Blurb: How far would you go to make contact with someone you lost?

Why I’m Watching: I impulse-bought this at Walmart because I literally cannot be trusted with a credit card when there are movies with Ouija boards on the cover right there in front of me.

Recap: The movie opens with the camera looking straight down at a Ouija board on a carpeted floor, and eventually we’re there with two little girls, one of whom (Debbie) is persuading the other to use the board. She lists out some rules: you don’t use it alone (I remember fervently believing this when I was ten, and quite honestly, it’s not something I’d do now either); you don’t use it in a graveyard (I’ve never heard this one); you always say goodbye (yup, this was also part of the mythos when I was a kid). Also she claims you can SEE ghosts through the hole in the planchette, which is a nicely terrifying addition. So the more timid kid tries it and screams when a third girl (her kid sister, I think) shows up. Ha.

1313: Boy Crazies

The blurb: Trent thinks his dream of becoming a top model is about to come true when his agent relocates him to a modelling house in L.A. But his dream quickly becomes a nightmare when his male model housemates turn out to be a band of insatiable vampires led by the ruthless and powerful queen vampire Sheila.

So this will be the movie that answers the burning question: can even David DeCoteau’s powers render “insatiable vampires” tedious? We all know the answer to that, because this is a 1313 movie, but what the hell.

Apparently these are vampires.

Movie Recap: Dead Sushi

• Could have been called: Buffy-san the Sushi Slayer
• Script quality: Uh. I’m not sure what to say here. It’s both ridiculously juvenile and utterly entertaining.
• Acting quality: The lead (Rina Takeda) is great, and so is the hotel’s hostess. Everyone else is playing along with the general insanity of the script, so…5/10?
• Overall feeling afterwards: Brain completely disengaged. Also, hungry.

I don’t usually remember to do warnings, but in this case, if you are emetophobic, just look at the pretty movie poster and then leave, okay? Below the cut there are spoilers and also zombies vomiting rice. And a thing with an egg that nearly made me vomit.

Movie Recap: Horrors of Spider Island

Since spiders are something that a lot of people are phobic about (not that anything resembling a spider appears in this movie, but we’ll get to that), I’m going to put up the American non-spider poster above the cut, and am also including a clip of the most memorable two minutes of the film above the cut. So even if you want to avoid spiders, you can safely look at anything above the fold.

Horrors of Sexist Island

• Script quality: 4/10, but maybe it’s better in the original Klingon. The “it’s a hammer” speech is pure gold, though.

• Acting quality: 4/10. Gets the job done, especially when the job is “stripping and catfighting.”
• Overall feeling afterwards: I don’t even know. Maybe there’s a German word to sum up the feeling you get from watching muppet-spiders and women in their underwear, but no English word seems adequate.

Now go watch this. I’ll wait.

WARNING: Spiders ahead. Get out while you still can.

Movie Review: SPRING BREAKERS starring Selena Gomez, James Franco, Vanessa Hudgens

• Script quality: 1/10, because I’m generous.
• Acting quality: 3/10, almost all of which is for Gomez.
• Overall feeling afterwards: I need to check my vaccination records.

If you’ve ever seen a movie by Harmony Korine before now, you already have some idea about how this whole “whoo-hoo spring breaaaaaak!!!” thing isn’t gonna turn out very well. Nothing that Korine touches ever turns out well. For the characters, for the box office, and, most importantly around here, for the viewer.

[ Watch the red band trailer for “SPRING BREAKERS” here. Eugh. ]

Just basing your opinions on the poster and trailer would be acceptable in the case of this, uh, “film,” but if you’re in need of further justification as to why you shouldn’t even pirate the damn thing, I’ve come prepared. I took notes while watching. It was the only thing that kept me going.

We open on a typical beach scene during Spring Break in Florida. Lots of topless young women who may or may not be of legal age, scenes of all of those funnels and such that spruce up the binge drinking experience, frat boys with backwards baseball hats groping every breast in sight while dancing badly to awful music. We then cut to a darkened college lecture hall (at first I thought it was high school, which would’ve fit Korine’s sensibilities more closely, but I guess he wanted this to get a wide release, so he opted for 18+ girls this time around), in which two snotty white girls are ignoring the lesson about civil rights in favour of drawing phallic doodles and passing notes back and forth, all of which are saying something about SPRING BREAAAAAAK!

In what is probably one of the more confusing cuts of the movie, we watch as the screen in the lecture hall becomes the focal point, and instead of getting footage of American history, we find ourselves suddenly inside the actual prayer group in which Selena Gomez’s character is participating. She’s playing a girl aptly named Faith, and she looks bored as hell as her painfully stereotypical Awesome Preacher Dude gets his teenage flock to join in some sort of God-affirming pop song, sitting in a circle on the floor and swaying, Kumbaya-style. As they leave the church basement for the night, Faith’s bible-thumping friends warn her against going away for SPRING BREAAAAK!!! with “those girls,” saying it will be spiritually dangerous for her, because “those  girls” are bad. Faith half-heartedly defends them, saying they’ve known each other since they were little kids, and that it’ll be fine. Her thumper friends sigh and let her leave, but not without calling after her, “Pray while you’re in Florida, Faith! Pray hardcore!” I kid you not.

Next we meet Candy, played by Vanessa Hudgens, whom we’ve already seen naked online so nothing that happens with her will be terribly revelatory. Candy is a bottle-blonde, trashy-looking young lady who’s shown binge drinking alone in a filthy kitchen, wobbling around and spraying vodka down her throat via a squirt gun. It’s pretty sad.

So, great! We’ve now met our four heroines! (…that would be more accurate if I removed the “e” in the average Harmony Korine movie, but whatever.) These are the girls who are raring to go and desperately want to do something epic for SPRING BREAAAAAAK!

For no apparent reason we’re again treated to a montage of partying college kids, a basement bong-fest full of half-naked coeds, all of whom are drinking everything in sight, snorting various substances, gambling… The only thing missing is a giant neon sign flashing over their heads declaring them “BAD KIDS.” It’s impossible to tell if any of our four heroines are at this party, but it’s also impossible to care. The impression is that this is all the fun our girls will be missing if they don’t get their sh*t together and do something epic for SPRING BREAAAAAAK!!!

It’s here that we’re treated to the first of literally dozens of random gunshot sound effects as the scene changes to the girls’ dormitory. I guess it’s Korine’s auditory equivalent to a swipe-screen or something.

Movie Recap: Land of the Minotaur

I’m going to start this recap with a confession: I have no idea what this movie is about. I mean, from the title one would think it was a monster movie, with a Minotaur, but…no. The only Minotaur is a stone statue that the Greek villagers worship (I guess there wasn’t a lot to do in rural areas).

Donald Pleasence’s character, an Irish priest named Father Roche, thinks it’s about Satanism. That is, he thinks the pagan villagers are under the sway of an ancient evil older than mankind itself, or some such drivel. I can agree that murdering tourists and young archeologists is evil and all, but it does the plot no good to just casually conflate…everything, and hope the resulting jumble is scary. It’s not coherent enough to be scary.

Just to confuse things further, Peter Cushing’s character is Baron Corofax, a nobleman from Carpathia, and since one of his followers appears to come back to life after being hit and dragged by a car, I guess the director thought, “Vampires. Chicks dig vampires,” could take the place of a consistent mythology.

Confused yet? Good. Then we’ll begin.

• Script quality: I suspect they made it up as they went along.
• Acting quality: Horrible, although Pleasence does his best, bless him.
• Overall feeling afterwards: There was a lot of bull here, but alas, not the scary monstrous kind.

Warning: half-man half-beast does not appear in this film.

Movie recap: Carnival of Souls (1962) starring Candace Hilligoss

This is one of those rare and peculiar things: a film that scares me. Like, really scares me. I spent ten minutes sitting in front of the television bracing myself to start the movie, because even after a break of several years, the mere memory of watching it makes me jittery and prone to screaming and jumping when local political candidates ring my doorbell unexpectedly.

• Script quality: it SHOULD be silly, and instead is disconcertingly terrifying.
• Acting quality: amazingly effective.
• Overall feeling afterwards: That’s okay, I didn’t need to sleep tonight anyway.

It’s IMPOSSIBLE to discuss this without spoilers for the ending, so everything (even the overly informative movie poster) beneath the cut is a potential SPOILER.

This is officially the worst day of Mary’s life.