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I click over to B Movie tv just in time for the opening credits...essential on a channel that has no schedule and that runs movies where, in order to figure out what they are if you miss the credits you end up googling things like:

"1970s slasher apple peeler eyeball"

In this case I made it just in time to see the magic words:

Rutger Hauer

I'm in.  Sadly the next two words were

BONE DADDY

Which as far as I can tell is much more appropriate a name for any of the following than for a serious movie:

 

- a barbecue house in San Antonio

- a professional poker player

- a voodoo priest who wants to kill James Bond

 

Here are some blurbs about BONE DADDY that come directly from THE OFFICIAL RUTGER HAUER website!!!

Remember...this is the official Rutger Hauer website, on a page called "See what fans are saying!":
 

 

"an adequate thriller on the whole"

"not a memorable film by any means"

"pretty watchable I guess"

"I can't say that I liked it very much"

"Bone Daddy will be on air next week in Russia too.  TV helps to spare cassettes!!!"


I am not optimistic...What it is is a by the numbers late 90s "psychological thriller" where everyone is either
- an author of books about serial killers or
- a serial killer

 

The killer keeps his victims alive while he takes bones out of their body and then sews them back up which...ok, horrifying I guess but not actually a very workable thing...like, it doesn't make sense at all...It also means that most of the movie consists of people finding a bone and like being upset about it.  Like, there are a lot of bones in the human body, so this goes on foreeeeeeever....
 
also

 

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WHAT DID THEY PUT ONTO RUTGER HAUER'S FACE!!!?!?!?

They've turned Rutger Hauer into Murray Hamilton.  

I have never seen an actor less interested in standing in front of a camera than Rutger Hauer is in this.  Which is not good because 80% of the movie is people just standing and slowly talking or sitting and slowly talking.  It's like an entire movie made out of transition scenes.

 

I'm 26 minutes in and literally nothing has happened. 

 

The IMDB of the guy who directed this is an amazing compendium of 90s syndicated television based on other things:

 

ROBOCOP THE SERIES

M.A.N.T.I.S

KUNG FU: THE LEGEND CONTINUES

HIGHLANDER THE SERIES

F/X: THE SERIES

STARGATE SG-1

TOTALL RECALL 2070

POLTERGEIST: THE LEGACY

 

Oh my god this movie was written by Thomas Szollosi who co-wrote THREE-O-CLOCK HIGH!!!!

 

That's two people this movie has ruined.

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That mustache: better or worse than the one he had in Buffy the Vampire Slayer?

And yeah, yeesh, didn't we get a LOT of really terrible serial-killer thrillers in the 90s? The were basically just giallo films with less style and more characters sitting around in wealthy houses while reciting endless psychobabble. Silence of the Lambs had SO many lousy, lousy copycats which just went on forever and ever; so much so that they actually spawned serial killer SUBGENRES, like all the Basic Instinct clones and all the Se7en wannabes. Even straight-up slasher flicks got in on the act, with Scream and its horde of knockoffs all pretending like they had to have some kind of psychological depth behind the killer's identity and went through the motions of being an actual who-dunnit mystery. We got so many of those damn movies that a show like Dexter actually feels plausible; because for all the serial killers Dexter keeps coincidentally bumping into, we've seen even more of 'em in various movies for over a decade.

And, poor Rutger Hauer. He shouldn't have been stuck in Dolph Lundgren's career like that. There's not many actors who are legitimately as greatly talented as this guy is, who have been kept in such a terrible direct-to-video ghetto for so damn long. In between The Hitcher and Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, did he make a single film which was actually, genuinely GOOD? And I don't mean in a "hey, Surviving the Game is pretty fun if you're totally drunk while watching it late at night" or even a "I'm the one guy who say Mr. Stitch and I remember it being decent" kind of way. I don't demand that everything the man does must be a masterpiece on the level of Blade Runner, but it'd be nice if even half of his output was anywhere near as fun as Hobo with a Shotgun was. Even poor bastards like Lance Henriksen had an infinitely better overall decade in the 90s than Hauer did.

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Oh, it was ALSO a horrifying vomitorium of brutality so nihilistic that even the film's various characters repeatedly admitted out loud that they had no idea how to do anything in life except for murdering each other; but it was so goofy and over the top, with the violence often stylized in such a Troma-like fashion, that I'd argue "fun" was to be had at least part of the time.

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Oh, it was ALSO a horrifying vomitorium of brutality so nihilistic that even the film's various characters repeatedly admitted out loud that they had no idea how to do anything in life except for murdering each other; but it was so goofy and over the top, with the violence often stylized in such a Troma-like fashion, that I'd argue "fun" was to be had at least part of the time.

I'm hit-n-miss with Troma's stuff, so I guess this one falls on the "miss" side.

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The very first thing we see is Michael Berryman leaping out of a river and biting into a man's neck....and then oddly gesturing to Richard Lynch in a helicopter.

 

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The next thing we see is him do a secret whistle which leads to an army of loincloth-wearing Amazonian dudes jumping out of the same river and shooting blowdarts through everyone's throats, cheeks, and eyeballs.

....and then they stake a woman down to the ground by putting spikes through her shins and begin to rape her...

....soooooooooooooooo I'm about to turn this off because I don't truck with shit like that...but...something pops up that freezes me...

First of all, we're watching CUT AND RUN, directed by Ruggero Deodato, who of course directed the infamous CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST...so that's the world we're in.

You know what words you don't expect to necessarily see after watching a scene of brutal Italian mondo/sexual violence?
 

 

"starring Willie Aames."

 

Willie_Aames.png

This is destabilizing and hypnotizing.  Willie Aames is not a person.  He is an mythic image of everything that is sparkly and crackling about the Reagen era go-go-pepsi-generation.  He is basically a stuffed animal filled with a bizarre mixture of wholesome whitebread energy and gross hormonal desire. 

 

buddy1.gif

 

He's Teddy Ruxpin with a  perpetual boner.  His world is safe and made up of striped shirts and beach parties and cocaine parties funding the Contras.

 

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So taking Willie Aames and putting him into the Heart of Darkness that is the cannibal holocaust genre is quite a trip.  It's like Spielberg's camera panning across a pile of bodies in Schindler's List to reveal Spongebob holding a machine gun.

This is not an accident, and to drive it home, Willie Aames is wearing a Mickey Mouse shirt throughout.

It's also a rather clever and telling mixture of two different but equally gross manifestations of two different eras.  it's basically a mixture of the 70s cannibal movie with the 80s "Americans go to third world country and shoot the shit out of it because USA!!!!" action movie.

 

Cut_and_run_1985_Movie_3_327x500.jpg

Take the world in which we're used to seeing Arnie's group in PREDATOR or Stallone in RAMBO 2 sneaking around the jungle and drop them instead into Guyana to fight with cannibals and you've got a weird collage of genre images, both designed to titillate and repulse with violence.  

 

If nothing else, it certainly changes the odds and by sheer body part count, the cannibals will always have an advantage.

This is...surprisingly smart and forceful as an idea in 1985.  Deodato does nothing if not hold a mirror up to us and show us our grossest selves.  But the question is, which will win?  The walking tall, rip your shirt off and grab a gun, pilgrims, 80s American version of the world or the cover your eyes, everyone dies, you're no more important than that roadkill in the establishing shot 70s Italian verison of the world?

In terms of gore, about an hour in and the Italians are winning.  Most of the slaughter is like the photo-negative of Rambo...in the sense that it is brown skinned "natives" (and Michael Berryman) sneaking around a camp of white people taking them out like Ninjas (if Ninjas paused to eat the guts of their victims).  But all along we're told that some American general is somehow involved in all of this and or intrepid Americans (who keep lapsing into Italian) will have to machine gun their way out!!!

The dual identity is reflected in the movie's numerous titles.  The Italian title "Inferno in diretta" reflecting the cannibal titles "Living in Hell" (maybe?) while the American title "Cut and Run" could literally be any movie starring Michael Dudikoff and Jim Belushi as mismatched cops on the run (probably from Richard Lynch, you know) in Rio with a soundtrack by Billie Ocean.

So now I'm in for the long haul on this grand social experiment in two long dead cultural eras.  Why?  I DON"T KNOW BUT I CAN"T STOPT IT111!!!

The version of the movie they are now showing on B Movie TV starts in English, introducing an American reporter and her American cameraman... and then the next scene, when they find a bunch of similarly massacred bodies in a house they are speaking Italian with no subtitles, as are the cops who arrive on scene....then back to English.  I'm hoping this will continue.

[note: It does]

HOLY SHIT ERIQ LASALLE IS IN THIS!!! It's 1985...a solid decade before E.R. and the year after he debuted as "Ice" in Cannon's "Rappin'" which is supposedly the "sequel" to Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo.  He has graduated from rapper to full on pimp here:

 

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Like with the hat and everything...thank god for medical school!

Hey, Karen Black!  Richard Lynch!!!!  "Olga" from SUSPIRIA!!!

So, Willie Aames just ran into a friend of his who was staked to the ground with his legs tied to two ropes that ripped his body apart while he screamed (in italian) "KILL, ME TOMMY OH GOD KILL ME!!!!"

 

How did he get from this:

B0010_AN7_XQ.jpg

 

to that

WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING!?!?!?!?!? and where is Charles to take charge when we need him?????
 

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B-Movie TV @ 10pm ... please tell me this is muthafuckin' SPOOKIES!!!!!

Why the fuck has this movie been forsaken on home release? Scream Factory, Synapse, Severin ... Grindhouse Releasing? Criterion?  Fuck, Code Red??

 

https://thedissolve.com/features/oral-history/788-the-strange-saga-of-spookies/

An Oral History of This Fantastic Fucking Film

 

30 minutes in ... we got flatulating Ben Grimm!  God I love this film!

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This looks like the most important movie never made.  Dammit I'm missing it too.

 

Okay....I've got it on.

 

This is obviously the movie that you and I and every 11 year old kid would make if someone put an electrode into our brains and turned whatever was in there into a movie, right?

 

I mean, it's perfect.

 

The fact that it seems to be made with mostly props from Spirit Halloween Store makes it even more so.

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Every second I'm watching SPOOKIES I feel like I'm getting stronger.  I've never felt more at home with anything in my life.

 

Nate, you magnificent son of a bitch, I feel like the reason I was guided by the universe to start this thread was so that you could lead me to SPOOKIES.

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Every second I'm watching SPOOKIES I feel like I'm getting stronger.  I've never felt more at home with anything in my life.

 

Nate, you magnificent son of a bitch, I feel like the reason I was guided by the universe to start this thread was so that you could lead me to SPOOKIES.

 

Every second I'm watching SPOOKIES I feel like I'm getting stronger.  I've never felt more at home with anything in my life.

 

Nate, you magnificent son of a bitch, I feel like the reason I was guided by the universe to start this thread was so that you could lead me to SPOOKIES.

 

Just you wait ... the car doesn't start... then the pretend save ... aaaaaaand OOOOH SHIT THE SORCEROR IJUMPS OUT THE GRAVE FOR THE SEQUEL THAT NEVER CAME BECAUSE WE WEREN'T WORTHY!!!!

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We're undeserving.  We don't sacrifice enough in our pagan rituals to schlock.  The spider woman scene alone is worth its own chapter next to "Return of the Living Dead" or "Re-Animator" in any even halfway passable book on camp horror.  We just can't have nice things.

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I have never experienced a more disappointing discrepancy between the aweomeness of a trailer and the unbelievable boringness of a shitty movie than with VAN NUYS BLVD. (1979).

 

Feast your eyes on this:

 

 

is that not the most amazing, frenetic collection of turn-of-the-80s awesomeness you've ever seen?  The movie depicted in that trailer is pure chaos...total abandon...it squeezes every last drop of hideous life out of the rapidly decaying corpse of the 70s that one could.  If that trailer was 20 minutes i would watch it four times and call it the best movie I've seen all year.

 

So when the actual movie finally popped up on B Movie tv I was stoked.  Well, so far is that most of what is most awesome in that trailer turn out to be establishing shots and then little snippets of things that are streeeeeeeetvhed out forever to make a movie.

 

So far I've watched

 

- a full 4 1/2 minute roller coaster ride...all to lead to a joke where a guy throws up in the bathroom

- a six minute disco number

- 10 minutes of a girl slowly talking a potential rapist/cop into handcuffing himself to his car for the big payoff joke of him standing there in his boxers screaming

- a 6 minute disco number (Do you all remember how goddamn long disco songs were?)

- two of the most excrutiating "makeout" scenes ever.

- About I don't maybe three weeks of people driving go karts around a track...all just for the joke of the person who breaks the track record taking off their helmet to reveal it's a little old lady who then chases a guy who breaks her record and hits him with her purse

- Did I mention FUCK THIS MOVIE!!!!!! yet?

- An air hockey game

 

The most interesting thing so far is the quick jumps between various pinball machines and Superbug

346236344.jpg

 

Oh God we're back at the Go kart track.  The old lady is back to do a callback joke where she flips someone off and yells "Up yours!"

 

Why couldn't Three Mile Island have been in Malibu?

 

We keep cutting back to handcuff guy for very long scenes of him being sad in various ways.

 

A guy just went up to a van and opened the back door releasing a pig.  We now get the central action setpiece of the movie, which is a pig running around on a crowded beach while people try to get out of the way.

 

which leads directly into what I guess I can only call "The scene where a guy makes a sandwhich so big the guy who tries to eat it gets his jaw stuck."

 

The nurse at the hostpiral won't help him because he can't say the words "My mouth is stuck."  This scene, by the way, takes roughly 17 thousand mintues.

THIS IS FUCKING BAZOOKA JOE LEVEL WRITING!!!!!  THIS IS SIX LEVELS BELOW THE AVERAGE DAGWOOD AND BLONDIE!!!!!

 

FUCK THIS FUCKING MOVIE FOR RUINING THE GREATEST TRAILER IV"E EVER SEEN!!!!

 

Okay hold on.  Let me try to describe what's happening now.  A girl sneaks a boy into her room for the ngiht by dressing him in a wig and makeup so her parents think it's like a sleepover.  We don't see them planning that.  We just cut to them in bed and figure it out.  Then we cut to the parents...the "mom" is asleep and so the "dad" sneaks out of bed, into his daughter's room where he starts trying to molest her friend...who is actually a guy who is right at that moment on top of the guys' daughter fucking her...

 

the punch line?  The "mom" walks in to find her husband biting the ass of a boy who is fucking her daughter...

 

 

Yep.

 

 

 

yeeeah.

 

This experience had made me realize how actually not terrrible, on the relative scale of potential for terrible, a movie like PORKY'S actually is.

 

special note: Someone just said the words "Go hug your precious van!  You care more about it than you do me anyways!!!!"

This is a line that could not have been written at any other time in human history than between April 1977 and November 1980.

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The movie says it is directed by Vincent Dawn.  Now that is obviously not a name a  person has.  It is a fake name used by Italian Schlock-maestro Bruno Mattei who is responsible for ZOMBI 3 (part of it I guess) and ZOMBI 4, not to mention JAWS 5: CRUEL JAWS

 

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[note,  I don't think you should be able to just call something that, right?  How does he do that???]

 

 

 

THIS MOVIE IS ON "CRYPTIC TV" Roku channel RIGHT FUCKING NOW!!!!!

 

It is amazing.  Cruel Jaws is attacking everyone in the local windsurf regatta??? We haven't seen Cruel Jaws yet but I anticipate he's going to be great.  I mean so far its just footage of people swimming around yelling while intense music plays and HOLY SHIT CRUEL JAWS JUST LITERALLY HEAD BUTTED THE BOAT CARRYING THE SHERRIFF 30 FEET INTO THE AIR AND GOBBLED UP THE SHERRIFF!!! (or at least a very convincing mannequin wearing the same clothes)

 

And here's a guy who looks very much like Robert Shaw saying that only he knows how to find a kill a great white...I wonder what gave them a neat idea like that? (actually if I'm being honest he looks a crazy amount like Vic Morrow...enough that I actually had to look it up to see if it was somehow him).

 

The difference between the shark hunting scenes in JAWS and the shark hunting scenes in JAWS 5: CRUEL JAWS can be summarize thusly:

 

Brody didn't take nearly enough hot Italian ladies with him with Quint and Hooper.  That, in retrospect, was a huge oversight...and I'm glad that Bruno Mattei totally-American-director-who-is-a-real-person William Snyder sought to rectify it.

 

Also note that Cruel Jaws' mouth does not appear capable of closing, which slightly undermines the terror.  Like he kind of needs to swim you into his mouth and hope you don't swim back out before he can swallow...and even then you've probably got a puncher's chance.

 

Wow.  A scuba diver just escaped Cruel Jaws by swimming into a reef cave...Cruel Jaws responded by head butting the reef until the entrance was blocked by rubble so the scuba diver would die trapped inside the cave.

 

HE TRULY IS A CRUEL VERSION OF JAWS! 

 

Like, kind of a Dick Jaws too.

 

There seems to be two versions of Cruel Jaws.  One a half-length rubber shark whose mouth can't close and the other a Styrofoam snout for closeups where he actually needs to be nibbling on things.

 

Cruel Jaws just ate the mayor (and the helicoptor he was in).  Yet another problem with Jaws that is fixed in JAWS 5: CRUEL JAWS.

 

Not enough main characters get eaten.  I mean, why even have a mayor or have Brody have a family if they're not going to get eaten?  Come on, Spielberg, figure this shit out!

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Cryptic TV follows up JAWS 5: CRUEL JAWS with a 1970 biker/karate movie called MASTER'S REVENGE (AKA DEVIL RIDER).

tumblr_m93zntu03_F1qiaxizo1_500.jpg

It's so creepy because it's shot on Super 8 so it looks like found footage from someone's vacation home movies put into police evidence after their murder/suicide. But they spend a lot of time just driving around what looks like Florida in 1970. I cold actually watch that all day. Like...a lot of time. It's hypnotizing.

The plot is:

- Girl is bored with her boyfriend because he's too square and does karate all day

- Girl hooks up with cool biker gang guy who is way more groovy

- Biker Gang guy starts abusing her and pimping her out

- Square Karate guy gets...MASTER'S REVENGE! on the DEVIL RIDER!!!

so see, both titles make sense, it just depends what side of the fence you fall on.

Whatever the countercultural and morality tale, however, what it really boils down to is the age-old conflict between dudes who do boxing (Biker dude) and dudes who do karate (karate dude). That eternal struggle is the true heart of this film.

This is one of those movies where the set for "suburban house" consists of a big curtain with a table and chair in front of it. There is a great scene with the now missing girl's parents like that that is a microcosm of 1970s middle class America:

husband: It's your fault. You care more about what they think of you at the salon than about your daughter!

Wife: Me? You spend all your time at that damned office!

Husband: That's so I can afford all these things!!!

Wife: Oh God, what have we become!!!

counterculture!!!!!!

It's like 1:00 a.m. and tomorrow is a Monday so I can't keep watching this...but it's sooo good. I really feel that if I watch this enough I could go into a deep 1970 phase. Not a 1970s, phase, mind you. A 1970 phase.

Because I can't continue, enjoy this trailer for MASTER'S DEVIL REVENGE RIDER!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dperbVOZlK8

And if even that is too much of a commitment for you, enjoy instead these strategic screencaps:

Screen_Shot_2016_02_15_at_12_57_03_AM.pnBRUTAL VIOLENCE TURNED ON BY COOL CHICKS AND BURNING RUBBER!!!

Screen_Shot_2016_02_15_at_12_56_52_AM.pnTHE CYCLE JUNGLE OF HOT STEEL AND RAW FLESH!!!!

Screen_Shot_2016_02_15_at_12_56_33_AM.pnTHE GUTS STORY OF OUTLAWS ON WHEELS!!!!

(please take a moment to note that in the trailer the word "wheels" has little movement lines on it so it looks like it's driving. THAT IS HOLLYWOOD (Florida) MAGIC@!!!!!!)

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But ... but ... "the Chooch" didn't elevate "Van Nuys Blvd"?!??!

It's the fuckin' CHOOCH!!!!

Did you see "American Drive-In?" A masterpiece by comparison.

 

There is not enough murder in this world one could inflict on Chooch that would exhaust my hatred of Chooch.

 

And they showed American Drive-In in the slot before Van Nuys BLVD!!! and I missed it!!!

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This needs to be pinned. This is like a public service, especially to folks like us that lost so much great stuff that was on VHS...

 

Robot Ninja with Burt Ward

Lady Terminator

Deadbeat at Dawn

Last Orgy of the Third Reich

Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-a-rama

Texas Chainsaw Hookers

 

Such classics, all sadly gone now...

 

The DVD of Deadbeat at Dawn is really great. All of Van Bebber's stuff has been released in really loving versions. That guy is a real rare bird. 

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Up until he went bizzonkers and started talking shit about Severin (the ones that helped him get funding for his films and did the distribution). That's why "Deadbeat by Dawn" is OOP. Severin had just released the Blu of "Manson Family" when Van Bebber went all Wiseau on them, but I imagine when the sales have cooled, it's going OOP too.

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Aw man, Van Bebber got on the drugs again? Shit. 

 

At least he left us with this classic moment in cinematic (and musical, if you count Impetigo's "I Work For The Streetcleaner") legacy:

 

 

I swear I showed this to my best friend and he actually recorded it off the TV to use as his answer for voicemail one time. He's far more responsible nowadays.

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B Movie TV has surprised me yet again.

First I see a bunch of Italian names...ok...pretty normal so far...JOHN VERNON!!!!

This could be greatOHMY GOD THE TITLE OF THIS IS:

AFGANISTAN: THE LAST WARBUS

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Wow.  Two out of those four words are not actually words in English.  If you think maybe the translation is off and it can't possibly mean "warbus", the original Italian title is L'Ultima bus di guerra)

If you think maybe they aren't really talking about a bus going to war in Afganistan...well...

I GOT TWO WORDS FOR YOU

WAR

warb.jpg

BUS

afghanistan_the_last_war_bus_49884_29533

 

John Vernon just appeared.  He mouthing English but because they I guess didn't even bother to try and shoot audio on set someone else is doing his lines.  Roughly 57% of what made John Vernon great was vocal.  That is a painful disappointment.  [note: 15% is having the same forehead as Dean Ambrose].  Basically John Vernon was flown to Italy to pantomime a couple of scenes.  But you know what?  This is 1989 and 27 years later having his name in there roped me into watching this absurd movie....so these Italians KNOW WHAT THEY"RE DOING!!!!

This movie also stars the guy who was in ESCAPE FROM THE BRONX, which MST3k did under the title ESCAPE 2000.

 

1990_the_bronx_warriors_scene.jpg   THIS FREAKIN GUY!

So far, though, this is a perfectly acceptable movie if you see it as basically a retro (1989) Spaghetti Western set in Afghanistan.

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A little gem some of you may already know about because it was an early SUPERSTATION regular:

 THE ALIEN FACTOR (1978):

alien_factor_poster_1978_01.jpg

That great, detailed, and loving poster is just the beginning of what is amazing about this movie.  It was made by Don Dohler, the guy who started CineMagic as an amateur Do-It-Yourself movie zine back in the early 70s

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and someone who's movies make John Waters look like big budget corporate productions.

 This is the kind of no-budget "local movie making" that people love to make fun of...and, yes, it is terrible for a lot of reasons.

- Typical b movie terrible sets...that thing where there is just a table with a phone on it in front of a blue wall with like a map and some guns haning on it all = Police station

- And of course terribly wooden line readings by locals pretending to be actors.

- The inability to light location scenes like a gross B-Mo hick bar which makes the whole scene look like it was shot with a polaroid flash.
Screen_Shot_2016_02_17_at_9_13_38_PM.png Welcome to Baltimore, hon....for real.

- Killing time with lots of walking and/or a performance by a local greasy 70s hair band's performance, althought this gives Dohler a chance to do some quick editing and weird Woodstock style camera angles, and honestly he makes these greaseballs and their two sad local girl groupies

Screen_Shot_2016_02_17_at_9_13_53_PM.png

look like the utter distillation of hot-shit small town rockers who are like giants in the tri-county area! I think if this movie was played on IMax we might all end up back in 1978 running black lights over skull posters and sketching out future concept albums that will never happen because we live in PG county, MD.

If you need this experience, here is the entire performance:



And here is the band's bio:

Biography
Singer/Songwriter Lon Talbot recorded and gigged through the 70s as Atlantis, with various line-ups, usually as a power trio, performing original music.

They appeared in the low budget Don Dohler sci-fi/horror film The Alien Factor (1978), lip-synching their song "Maybe Someday" in a neighborhood bar in Perry Hall, MD. That song was released as a single around the same time as the film's release, and received some college radio airplay, especially on Towson State University's WCVT, along with several Talbot's other original songs.  

In the early 80s the band was known as The Lon Talbot Group, and played in Baltimore's early new wave scene in clubs like The Marble Bar.


TOWSON ST. COLLEGE RADIO REPRESEEEENT!!!!

BUT, this is not just a B movie director...this isn't Coleman Francis.  Don Dohler had no money or resources, but he was a smart, dedicated, resourceful movie and effects nerd who was the center of a DIY movement that influenced a generation of big-time moviemakers when they were kids.

The ethos flows through the movie, including a scene where an eventualy victim is shown reading this:
monsters_whos_who_cover.jpg

70s horror nerds unite!!!!  This may be a crappy movie, but it is a loving and clever crappy movie and anyone who thinks it's not worth their time is missing out.

there are a lot of nice touches and little neat things that he managed to squeeze out of the approximately $17.95 he had to spen making a feature sci-fi film.

- A great moment where the Alien monster is attacking a woman and her scream lasts over the cut to the next scene...the synthesizer soundtrack then picks up the "scream" almost mocking it.

Some of the monster costumes are pretty great.  I think there is supposed to be multiple types of alien? And they are all very different looking but all simple and effective.  He keeps it humanoid so they're just like a big hulking Jason Vorhees.
Alien_Factor_attack.gif  The Battle of the Flared Trousers has gone Galactic!


One is scaly and one is hairy/Yeti-ish and one looks like it's wearing armor.  In closeups, when the lighting is bad enough, one (who inexplicably wheres Guess jeans)

4f7071242088f.jpg
 almost looks like Jeff Goldblum in THE FLY.

But how many super-low-budget aliens-attack-parked-hicks movie directors would even bother to go to the time/cost to concoct multiple alien costumes?

The monsters basically behave like a slasher villain, popping up and crushing heads, and that lends some actual dread to all the inevitable "walking around the woods" scenes.

There are lots of neat POV shots where Dohler experiments with lighting and editing tricks to disorient the viewer.

One scene of the monster killing a guy leads to a slow motion shot over-saturated with sunligt of children playing outside that looks like one of those uplifting film reels they used to show us in grade school, or an ad for the Church of Latter Day Saints...

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until they stumble on the (really nicely made) burned up corpse of the victim.  It's kind of great. In fact some of the best moments are discovering victims.  Dohler and his crew are really good at cooking up gruesome looking desicated bodies

 This movie is like a testament to that culture of no-budget super 8 film-makers and it's kind of a great thing.

Also note the movie opens with a long logo "Cinemagic Visual Effects" and it is the greatest logo I've ever seen.

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The first roughly 20 seconds of the movie are this logo.  They Reeeeally want you to remember it.

And Look at that!  Is that two space lobsters erecting a space-granite space-monument to Cinemagic's motion picture triumph!??!?

The movie also is more proud of it's opening title graphics than any movie I've ever seen.  Don Dohler must have spent weeks on them!  

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Tapping away on his IBM in his garage!

 

 

God Bless you, Don Dohler and your magnificent subculture to a subculture!!!

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