Posted Jul 14th 2008 6:02PM by Matt Bradshaw
Filed under: Classics, Comedy, Comic/Superhero/Geek, Killer B's on DVD
With
The Dark Knight making its debut this Friday, I thought the time was right to take a look back at this jaw-dropping
Batman parody from 1966.
Rat Pfink A Boo Boo was the brainchild of
Ray Dennis Steckler, the B-movie auteur behind
The Thrill Killers,
The Lemon Grove Kids Meet the Monsters and
The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies (the latter of which would have me muttering "cha-ching" right about now if I was paid by the word). Released in 1966, the same year the
Batman TV series debuted, the film actually doesn't focus on costumed hero buffoonery until nearly the half-way mark. Apparently Steckler decided that the earnest but incompetent crime thriller he had been making wasn't working out, so he decided to do his own take on Batman, a character he had long admired. The resulting film is a disjointed mess unlike anything you've ever seen before, making this the
Plan 9 From Outer Space of super hero films, and if you're the type who can find enjoyment in amazingly bad cinema then you just have to see this.
Continue reading Killer B's on DVD: Rat Pfink A Boo Boo
Posted Jul 7th 2008 7:02PM by Matt Bradshaw
Filed under: Comedy, Independent, Killer B's on DVD
I've always felt there was something oddly compelling about public access television. Essentially, the FCC requires cable companies to provide training, equipment and air time for pretty much anyone (Wikipedia has an in-depth explanation of the practice
here). I guess I just like the idea of a medium that has practically no standards. With everyones expectations set at zero, things can only improve, right?
T.V. The Movie is a low budget indie that appears to have grown out of
The Adam Bomb Show -- a public access program inspired by
The Tom Green Show featuring interviews, comedy sketches and local bands -- which broadcasts on Comcast Channel 25 in Santa Maria, CA. The film is so below the radar that, as of this writing, it doesn't even have an entry on IMDB. I'm unclear on what Rapscallion Films hopes to do with this movie, whether they're looking for a distributor or perhaps hoping to market the film themselves. I think the former might be a bit difficult as they use a guy dressed like
Sesame Street's Elmo throughout the film, and at one point he brandishes a gun during a drug store robbery. I can see where that might turn distributors off. Further complicating matters is the fact that
T.V. The Movie is also the name of a completely different 2006 movie starring Steve-O from
Jackass.
Continue reading Killer B's on DVD: T.V. The Movie
Posted Jun 30th 2008 7:02PM by Matt Bradshaw
Filed under: Comedy, Horror, Killer B's on DVD
I first discovered this slasher satire (recently released to DVD by
Legend Films) during one of its many runs on cable in the early '80s. I recall liking it at the time, but I was a college kid with a fondness for beer, so I probably watched it through a hop and barley flavored filter. There's an obvious
Airplane influence, though the laughs never flow as freely and the premise runs out of steam early on. The film's nostalgia appeal is probably its biggest selling point these days, and viewers watching it for the first time will probably wonder what all the fuss was about. Still, I'm glad I had a chance to reacquaint myself.
Since it was released in 1981, it's interesting to see how many of the sub-genre's cliches were already in place. The horror begins on Jaime Lee Curtis's birthday, as a randy young babysitter named Judy receives threatening phone calls from an asthmatic-sounding character who calls himself The Breather (voiced by
Richard Belzer). Soon her boyfriend arrives and both of their fates are sealed when they decide to have sex (this IS a slasher film after all). The two are done in by the clever and deadly application of a paper clip and a garbage bag. Like all good slashers, The Breather has a trademarked look, though the green rubber gloves and galoshes just don't have the same impact as a goalie mask.
Continue reading Killer B's on DVD: Student Bodies
Posted Jun 23rd 2008 9:02PM by Matt Bradshaw
Filed under: Horror, Independent, Killer B's on DVD
There's a lot to be said for truth in advertising, and few people could come away from a film called
Blood and Sex Nightmare (due for release on August 5 from
Bloody Earth Films) with the outraged cry: "I was expecting a carefree romp with Sandra Bullock!" Yes, this one delivers on its promise of blood and sex (often at the same time), but is that enough?
Amy (
Julia Morizawa) has just returned to her boyfriend Nick (
Andy McGuinness) after traveling to Japan for her father's funeral. Despite having been together for some time, the two have not had sex yet because Amy doesn't feel ready. Nick suggests they spend some time at Pleasure Mountain Adult Retreat, a getaway resort for couples (or any number of people) looking to spice things up. The retreat is a simple affair consisting of small cottages, but the other guests are an entertaining bunch with one couple doing bondage photography and a threesome acting out a bizarre sitcom fantasy complete with canned laughter.
Continue reading Killer B's on DVD: Blood and Sex Nightmare
Posted Jun 17th 2008 7:02AM by Matt Bradshaw
Filed under: Comedy, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Killer B's on DVD
For a movie that's taken this long to make its
bow on DVD way back onto DVD after being out of print for years, 1996's
Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie is a disappointingly barebones disk without so much as a trailer for an extra.
MST3K without extras, however, is still
MST3K, and for this B-movie junkie that's something pretty special. The film was, of course, based on the then current TV show running on Comedy Central which eventually jumped over to the Sci Fi Channel where it ended its 10 season run (11 if you count "Season 0" which ran in Minneapolis only) in 1999. Basically, you take a guy, strand him in space and stick him in a movie theater with two robots to make fun of cheezy old movies. More often than not, hilarity would ensue.
Continue reading Killer B's on DVD: Mystery Science Theater 3000 -- The Movie
Posted Jun 9th 2008 7:02PM by Matt Bradshaw
Filed under: Horror, Killer B's on DVD
I'm not certain that this DVD's release was intentionally planned to come so quickly on the heels of the latest
Indiana Jones film, but this horror flick from 1965 (just out from
Legend Films)
does deal with skulls and stars not one, but two future denizens of the
Star Wars universe (anyone recognize Grand Moff Tarkin and Count Dooku in the picture above?). I suspect it's more coincidence than anything, but there are enough elements present to make fans of classic horror utter "why, what have we here?"
The Skull was directed by
Freddie Francis and stars
Peter Cushing and
Christopher Lee, with a brief appearance by
Michael Gough (Alfred from the Tim Burton
Batman movies), all of whom were veterans of Britain's Hammer Films, the studio that set the standard for gothic horror from the mid 1950s through the early 70s. This is not a Hammer film, but is in fact a product of Amicus Productions, another British studio that is best known today for its anthology horror films like
Tales From the Crypt and
The House That Dripped Blood.
Continue reading Killer B's on DVD: The Skull
Posted Jun 2nd 2008 7:02PM by Matt Bradshaw
Filed under: Horror, Thrillers, Killer B's on DVD
As they say (or at least they should), there's always room for
giallo. No, it's not a gelatinous dessert, but an Italian film genre generally identified by its use of gory murders, mystery/police procedural elements and strong sexuality. "Giallo" is Italian for yellow, and the genre draws its name from a series of lurid murder mystery novels that sported yellow covers.
Delirium (Delirio caldo), which was recently released by
Blue Underground, is a modestly interesting example of the form made downright fascinating by presenting the drastically different Italian and U.S. cuts on the same disk.
Starting with the Italian version, this 1972 film stars
Mickey Hargitay, former Mr. Universe, ex-husband of
Jayne Mansfield and father of actress
Mariska Hargitay. Hargitay plays Professor Herbert Lyutak, a psychologist aiding the police in their investigation of a serial killer who has strangled several women, or that's what Lyutak wants people to think. In reality he
is the killer, with his violence against women serving as an outlet for his rage and frustration over his sexual impotence. His wife Marcia is played by the stunning
Rita Calderoni, an actress I've seen in a handful of films, though I'm just now noticing a striking resemblance to a slightly older Anne Hathaway. Marcia still loves her husband despite his sexual inadequacies. She offers to let him strangle her as a form of gratification and she is given to graphic sexual dreams/fantasies involving other women, her husband and a dungeon. Meanwhile, there's a copycat killer on the loose, murdering women in the same fashion as Lyutak.
Continue reading Killer B's on DVD: Delirium
Posted May 26th 2008 5:02PM by Matt Bradshaw
Filed under: Horror, Independent, Killer B's on DVD
Now here's a dubious distinction: 1982's
Boarding House ("Where the rent won't kill you, but something else will"), just out from
Code Red DVD claims to be the first horror film to be shot on video, and this little oddity actually played theaters for a time. If you've never seen old school video tape blown up to 35 millimeter and projected on the big screen, you would be surprised at just how hideous the final product is. I saw the Rolling Stones documentary/concert film
Gimme Shelter which was transferred this way, and I was amazed how grainy and washed out the image was. Code Red has made a smart decision going back to the original video materials rather than using the version that had been transferred to film, as was done with the old Paragon Video VHS tape (a release that the filmmakers insist was done illegally). The video version isn't perfect either, but this is probably the best this film will ever look.
Continue reading Killer B's on DVD: Boarding House
Posted May 20th 2008 7:02AM by Matt Bradshaw
Filed under: Horror, Killer B's on DVD
When people talk about killer vehicle movies (and they do), John Carpenter's 1983 adaptation of Stephen King's
Christine usually heads the list, with
Maximum Overdrive and maybe even
Killdozer making their way into the discussion at some point. Plus I've always suspected there was some kind of demonic motivation behind Herbie in
The Love Bug. Personally, I remember seeing
The Car before any of these. The TV spots tantalized me during the film's 1977 release, and I eventually caught the movie on television in the early '80s. Now we've got a brand new DVD from Universal to fill the void left by the out of print version from Anchor Bay.
James Brolin stars as Wade Parent, a single father who works as a cop in a small southwestern town where the only type of criminal you usually find is a jay walker. He's been romancing a local school teacher named Lauren (
Kathleen Lloyd), and he's just about got his two cute-as-a-button daughters (one of whom is played by
Kyle Richards, who played Lindsey Wallace in the original
Halloween) convinced that it's about time Dad got hitched again. Now, however, we've got bodies piling up, thanks to a mysterious black car of indeterminate design (although one poster over at IMDB reports that it's a modified 1971 Lincoln) with no license plates and opaque windows. The first victims are a pair of bicyclists and a hippie with a French horn who's so annoying that, despite being run over four times, could easily have done with a few more swipes.
Continue reading Killer B's on DVD: The Car
Posted May 12th 2008 6:02PM by Matt Bradshaw
Filed under: Horror, Independent, Killer B's on DVD
Once again,
Mondo Macabro gives us a taste of what they call "the wild side of world cinema" with this Indonesian scare-fest from 1979 that streets on May 27.
The wedding of a town leader's son in Indonesia is marred by what is believed to be black magic. The bride is overcome by nightmarish visions of skeletons, snakes and walking corpses and falls into a fevered state of dementia. Kohar, the groom, suspects that a woman named Murny is responsible, claiming that she loved him but he had no interest in her. What Kohar does not tell the angry mob is that he had seduced Murny, taking her virginity and promising to marry her, only to wed another. While Murny certainly has motive, she knows nothing of black magic -- but Kohar and the mob burn her house down and throw her off a cliff just the same. Her life is saved by an old hermit who encourages her to take revenge on those who tried to murder her. Since they accused her of black magic, the hermit figures "let's be all ironic and stuff" and trains Murny in the dark arts.
Continue reading Killer B's on DVD: The Queen of Black Magic
Posted May 5th 2008 6:02PM by Matt Bradshaw
Filed under: Horror, Independent, Killer B's on DVD
On
Drainiac's audio commentary, writer/director
Brett Piper explains that the original 2000 DVD release of this film was essentially unfinished. This new version, which arrives on DVD from
Shock-o-Rama on June 24, is newly derived from the original negatives (yes, this baby was shot on 16 millimeter film) with sound and special effects enhancement. Since so much effort went into making this nearly unwatchable revised version, I have to suspect that viewing original imperfect release might very well be lethal.
One of the first clues to the disaster that is
Drainiac is the box cover. It's a pretty cool illustration of a slimy creature crawling out of a sink drain and reaching for the viewer, though it's obviously not a photo and doesn't represent anything actually seen in the film. Furthermore if you've ever seen any other movie from the Shock-o-Rama catalog (like Piper's other flick
Bacterium, which I reviewed
here), you know darn well they could never afford to do this kind of creature effectively.
Continue reading Killer B's on DVD: Drainiac
Posted Apr 29th 2008 7:02PM by Matt Bradshaw
Filed under: Horror, Killer B's on DVD
Sick Nurses, just now hitting DVD from
Magnolia Pictures, is a Thai film known in its homeland as
Suay Laak Sai. Directors
Piraphan Laoyont and
Thodsapol Siriwiwat are obviously familiar with recent Asian horror cinema as this one is very much in the image of
The Ring, The Grudge and others. Production values are quite good, and some of the scares rank pretty high on the creep-o-meter, though the story is a cookie-cutter tale of ghostly revenge.
A group of nurses and Dr. Taa have a lucrative business selling bodies from the hospital they work at (a hospital, incidentally, that never seems to have any actual patients). One of the nurses, a girl named Tahwaan is engaged to Dr. Taa, but she catches him having sex with her sister Nook. When Tahwaan threatens to expose their corpse selling business, the others murder her to keep her quiet. As Ae points out, legend has it that the dead return for the one they love the most seven days after death. True enough, Tahwaan is soon back from the grave sporting that emo hairdo on steroids that all Asian ghosts seem to have these days and greenish black skin. The first time we see her in her spectral form, she quite memorably comes crawling out of a handbag.
Continue reading Killer B's on DVD: Sick Nurses
Posted Apr 21st 2008 6:02PM by Matt Bradshaw
Filed under: Independent, Killer B's on DVD
Laura Gemser appeared in a long string of Italian softcore films as Emanuelle. Note that the name is spelled with a single "m" to differentiate the character from the one appearing in the official Emmanuelle films that began in 1974 and originally starred Sylvia Kristel (though Gemser appeared in a small role in the original series' sequel Emmanuelle 2). Gemser's Emanuelle films were often from the seamier side of the exploitation spectrum. Emanuelle in America, for example, saw the title character investigating the production of snuff films and featured scenes of hardcore sex (without Gemser) and a dalliance with bestiality that makes the donkey show in Clerks 2 seem Disney-esque.
Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals (a.k.a. Trap Them and Kill Them) saw the softcore porn series crossing over with the cannibal film craze of the time, and the film we're here to discuss today, Women's Prison Massacre, brought the character into the women-in-prison genre. This entry in the series is directed by Bruno Mattei, a man of staggeringly little talent. Admittedly, his ultra cheezy post-apocalyptic epic Rats (for which he used his frequent pseudo name Vincent Dawn) is a guilty pleasure of mine, but other films of his like Virus (a.k.a. Hell of the Living Dead and Night of the Zombies) sap my will to live.
Continue reading Killer B's on DVD: Women's Prison Massacre
Posted Apr 15th 2008 9:03AM by Matt Bradshaw
Filed under: Horror, Independent, Killer B's on DVD
Years ago when I first read about 1974's
Barn of the Naked Dead I thought "this is the greatest title ever conceived anywhere by anyone in the history of cinema and I must see it," so I was a bit disappointed when I eventually tracked down a VHS copy and found that it was then traveling under the name
Nightmare Circus (which in fact was the original release title). This new DVD version from
Legend House restores the salacious but sadly inaccurate (only the briefest of nudity here) title by which the flick is best known.
Three showgirls on their way to a job in Vegas break down in the desert. As this is an exploitation horror film, one need not be a rocket scientist to deduce that the nice young man named Andre who stops to help isn't very nice at all. Andre is played by
Andrew Prine and despite his numerous film and TV credits, I remember him best as the villain in the unsuccessful
Wonder Woman pilot movie from 1974 that featured
Cathy Lee Crosby as the amazon princess. Andre has issues with women stemming from his mother's desertion. He deals with this by collecting women and chaining them up in his barn (no naked dead folks, but we do get a barn), and trains them to perform like circus animals. Picture Norman Bates with a flare for the theatrical.
Continue reading Killer B's on DVD: Barn of the Naked Dead
Posted Apr 7th 2008 7:02PM by Matt Bradshaw
Filed under: Comedy, Horror, Independent, Killer B's on DVD
The Oozing Skull is the first release from Cinematic Titanic, a project that reunites the original cast and writers of
Mystery Science Theater 3000 as well as writer/performers from later in the series. Series creator
Joel Hodgson is joined once again by Trace Beaulieu, Frank Connif, Mary Jo Pehl, and J. Elvis Weinstein (with a special guest appearance by Dr. Stephen Hawking).
MST3K was perhaps the greatest TV show in the history of the medium, at least as far as this B-movie buff is concerned. Each week the program would show a schlocky old flick with the cast, shown in silhouette in the bottom right of the screen, constantly tossing jokes at the screen. Cinematic Titanic does very much the same thing, with all five of the writer/performers appearing on screen and riffing in a style reminiscent of MST3K. Not every joke hits its mark, but there are so damn many of them, you'd have to be inhuman not to find something to laugh at here.
Continue reading Killer B's on DVD: The Oozing Skull
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