Left Turn at Albuquerque: The Wrong Turn Franchise

When I started this project, I actually thought I hadn't seen the first Wrong Turn. Even going into it, it seemed both familiar and completely new. By the end of the film, I realized that I had not only seen it once, I'd probably seen it a good half dozen times over the years. With performances from some of my favorites, Jeremy Sisto (Six Feet Under), Desmond Harrington (Dexter) and Eliza Dushku (Buffy the Vampire Slayer), it shouldn't have been a surprise that I'd seen the flick before. What really surprised me was that such a nondescript slasher could have spawned a franchise of four more films. So, feeling pretty safe in the assumption that I hadn't seen the other four flicks, I strapped in for a work week of Wrong Turn films to see where the franchise stayed between the lines and where it took some detours onto shaky ground. 

Return from Death a.k.a Frankenstein 2000 (1991) Joe D'Amato Brings Horror to Life

Despite the fact that the phrase an "average Joe" remains in the lexicon of colloquialisms, in the last thirty years the name Joe has taken a drastic drop in popularity. It seems that the average on "Joe" just isn't what it used to be. Speaking of Joes that'd defy the average, there's one that I like who frequently has highs and lows above a median line, and that is Joe D'Amato. Born Aristide Massaccesi, the Italian exploitation master, who hid out under a number of Nom de plumes apart from his adopted moniker,  made an incredible string of almost 200 films before he died in 1999 at the age of sixty-two. While most of them ranged from soft-core to hard-core to oh, my, is it okay to film that?, D'Amato is best known for his horror movies, specifically Antropohagus, Buio Omega, and Absurd, but there was one that has somehow flown under my radar. So join me as Joe takes us on a futuristic ride, which looks like the 80s despite being filmed in the 90s, this is Return from Death (Ritorno Dallas morte) a.k.a Frankenstein 2000. 

The Other Andy: Gramps (1995)

Everyone has that one relative that they would rather avoid (some of us have many), and it could be for any number of reasons. Perhaps it's what they said to Aunt Bernice last Christmas after a few too many Nogs. It could be bad breath or the scent of Vicks and moth balls that permeates the air around them. It could be you don't like their current and soon to be ex-spouse or their political or religious bent is just too much to bear. Or still, it could be some part of their past and yours intertwined and left a stain on your relationship. Such is the case in today's made for television triumph, but the perpetrator is not an expected menace. Instead, it's Matlock. Over the course of The Other Andy series, I feel like I've made a case for the genial protector of Mayberry being able to turn in the dark side in a number of under appreciated villain roles. He even got pretty evil on The Andy Griffith Show once. Just watch Season 5, Episode 17, "Goober Takes a Car Apart", for the first glimpse of menace in Andy's work since Kazan's A Face in the Crowd. I mention that first because I believe Gramps a.k.a Relative Fear is the last time Griffith played against type. In the abstract, having Andy Taylor as your Grandpa sounds pretty good, but Clarke MacGruder might share some of the same favorite songs with "The Sheriff Without a Gun" yet he’s a far cry from anyone Aunt Bee would invite over for dinner. 

The Bigger and Badder Halloween Top 13: #10: Lake Placid (1999)

People love to go to lakes. Personally, I can't stand them. I'm not much of a swimmer anyhow, but offer me up a brackish pool of murky water where I don't know what could be lurking down there, and I'm going to pass. I've seen way too many Friday the 13th movies, and there could be a chained up maniac waiting down there for me to swim by so he can grab my leg. Paranoid? Perhaps, but I've gotten this far without it happening so I'm sticking to it. The reason I bring up Friday the 13th and lakes is that both have something to do with today's creature feature on the Bigger and Badder Halloween Top 13. Coming in at number 10, the last of the double digits, it's the late 90s horror-comedy Lake Placid. Featuring some of my favorite actors, some genuinely funny dialog, and Betty White cursing up a storm before casting Ms. White in anything was cool, Lake Placid scores across the board for me. Add in the involvement of Steve Minor, director of Friday the 13th Part 2 and 3, and a giant killer crocodile, and you've got me hooked for sure. So come  along as I take a little trip to Black Lake, Maine and take a bite out of Lake Placid.  

The Bigger & Badder Halloween Top 13: #13: Anaconda (1997)

The day has finally arrived. With only 13 days until the biggest holiday of the year (for me, at least), I've been looking forward since last year to penning this list of giant monsters, colossal critters, and enormous animals. Today, I kick off the countdown with a film that is near and dear to my heart. Way back in 1997 I watched today's flick in the theater, and instantly I knew two things, the special effects would be out of date by next week and I had just witnessed what should have become one of the new cult classics. Unfortunately, time has not been on my side of the latter argument. While I'm sure the film has found more than a few admirers, perhaps few have realized it's full potential as one of the best party movies ever made. From the insanely inspired performances to the laughable twist on Moby Dick, there's really nothing here for a cult film fan not to like. So join me, along with a rapper, an American Idol judge, a guy whose had the same haircut for 20 plus years, Angelina's dad, and Danny Trejo for a ride on the Amazon in a little something that I like to call Anaconda.

Destiny Turns on The Radio (1995) If Only I Would Turn Off the Movie.

There are many reasons that I don't normally walk out of a movie. First off, I am all kinds of cheap. So if I spring for a movie ticket, chances are good that I'm going to stay. Secondly, I can generally find something to focus on with any film that will get me through a bad one. Some actor, set designer, or a cinematographer will do something to keep involved. Lastly, there is generally a specific reason I make the trip to the Multiplex. It may be to review a film, tag along with a friend to see something I don't necessarily find to be my cup of tea, or because it has an actor I like in it, but there is always a reason. That being said, I have walked out of one film in my 36 years. Today, I'm going to relive those painful memories as I watch the film that drove me down aisle. So anchors away and fate be damned as Destiny Turns on the Radio for the second time in my life. I don't know what karmic debt I am repaying, but I should be even after one and half lifetime viewings of today's "classic".

The Hot Spot (1990): Is Located Between Jennifer Connelly and Virginia Madsen

The scorching heat of summer is truly upon us. Yesterday, here at The Lair, it reached 106 degrees, and there’s no relief in sight. However, I must count my blessings. I generally get to stay in the confines of an air conditioned area, I don’t live somewhere crazy, stupid hot like Texas, and I’m not caught in a love triangle between Jennifer Connelly and Virginia Madsen. Wait, scratch that last one. No matter the external temperature, a situation like that would surely heat me up. Though when you’re Don Johnson, riding high on the star power garnered from six seasons of the pastel hued Miami Vice, you can afford to act blasé about two of the hottest women to ever grace the screen vying for your affections. While the onscreen sexy time is only one portion of today’s film, The Hot Spot, it definitely heats up a cool noir story from director Dennis Hopper. 

Hey, Girl. Hauer You Doin'?: New World Disorder (1999)

Hello, everyone, and welcome to a new feature here on The Lair as part of April Action, Hey, Girl. Hauer You Doin'? For the next four weeks, I'll be looking at the films of every gal's biggest dreamboat, Rutger Hauer. I had the good fortune to meet Mr. Hauer a couple of weeks back at Mad Monster Party in Charlotte, and he is just as you might imagine him. With his blonde hair swept back, black unstructured jacket, paisley patterned scarf draped around his neck, and elastic waist banded track pants, he practically oozed the essence of a European actor. Apart from looking like a dashing adventurer in his way to a marathon, he was a lovely fellow, and I found it quite wonderful that he donated all the proceeds from his signing to charity. Rutger has his own organization, The Rutger Hauer Starfish Association, tasked with helping children in Africa infected with AIDS. Not only did it ease the pain if shelling out money to meet a celebrity, it also gave me even more respect for an actor I've loved ever since I first met him as Roy in Bladerunner. Today's movie is also about the future, but less of a visionary masterpiece than a half hacked miasma with a tacked on title that carried cultural cachet in the late 90s. This is New World Disorder, and the future is now... Or then... Or, what the hell is Andrew McCarthy doing here... The future is sometime, the review starts now.

Deadly Doll's Choice: And God Spoke (1993)

So often in life, it's always Marsha, Marsha, Marsha, but for this month's movie swap, Emily and I have turned that all around. It's about to get all Jan, Jan, Jan. Quite accidentally on both our parts, we each chose a movie that featured everyone's flea powder allergic Brady, Eve Plumb in my case and Jennifer Cox, who played Jan in the Brady movie, for the Doll. In a way, they couldn't have been more different films, but they had more in common than just the middle child of Carol and Mike. For my pick, I chose the action farce Poolboy: Drowning Out the Fury, a delightfully silly film starring Kevin Sorbo as the titular character. Head on over to The Deadly Doll's House of Horror Nonsense to find out if Emily thought the Poolboy's waters were just fine or if it went off the deep end. For her choice, Emily picked a mockumentary from 1993 of Biblical proportions, ...And God Spoke. So in this beginning, let me say that this film might not movie heaven and Earth, but I saw it... And it was good...well, pretty good.

Blood Games (1990):A Real American Pastime,Vengence

Since it's National Blood Donation Month and I'm picking movies with a sanguine connection, I couldn't resist checking out Blood Games, a rape-revenge flick that has balls... baseballs I mean. The Australians always have a way at cutting to the core of things, and they might not have ever hit it on the head more accurately than with their re-titling of Blood Games as Baseball Bimbos in Hillbilly Hell. That evocative title lets you now everything you need to know about the film. There will be hicks, tits, shotguns, sub-Roadhouse level redneck wisdom, and the great American pastime. In short, Blood Games is an exploitation goldmine, and there's nuggets in there big enough to make a Kanye West necklace with. This is definitely an under-seen, under-appreciated gem, and I'm proud to make it the next selection in Blood Donation Month. So sit back and relax while I tell you about a time when men struck out and women struck back... with bats and guns and buses.

Babe and the Ballgirls are a traveling exposition baseball team. Along with their coach, Midnight (Ross Hagan), they travel from town to town playing local teams while the coach makes large wagers on the team to pay off their mounting debts. In one small town, they run into a bit of trouble. The losing team of hicks doesn't take too kindly to being beaten by a group of gals, and town boss Mino Collins (Ken Carpenter) doesn't want to pay up on a thousand dollar bet. Midnight and Mino rumble in a barroom bathroom, and Mino pays off the debt. However, it has taken too long for the coach to get back to his team. Midnight's daughter Babe (Laura Albert) and one of the other girls go to look for him. Instead they find Roy Collins (Gregory Scott Cummins), Mino's son, and his best friend Holt (Don Dowe) who try and rape the girls. When Midnight shows up, he gets stabbed helping the girls and Roy gets shot in the leg. Trying to escape town, the team boards their bus head out quickly, but Roy and Holt  shoot the bus off the road resulting in Roy getting crushed to death. Mino takes no small offence at the death of his boy, and soon the town forms a posse to go after the girls and kill them one by one.

If you were sitting with me right now, Blood Games would be all I want to talk about. From the quotable lines (Mino drops bon mots like "There is no such thing as pain." and "You're fucking with the devil now boy.) to the gratuitous shower scene, slow motion action sequences, and the mere existence of George "Buck" Flower in this flick, I could ramble on about this one like Tarantino on speed. So I apologize if the synopsis ran a little long. I'd also talk at length about director Tanya Rosenberg, I have no idea who she is. She only directed one film. She's not listed or talked about anywhere. It's like she appeared, dropped this exploitation gem on us, and disappeared like some kind of cult film fairy. It amazes me that this rape-revenge flick (there is a full blown rape later in the film) came about in the early 90s, well past the heyday of such fare. It's almost unfair to call this a 90s film. The French cut panties, big hair, and neon colors the girls wear places this movie squarely in the pre-grunge era when the 80s were still stubbornly leaving their mark in a new decade.

One of the big things that Blood Games has over other wrathful women film is that there's not one woman in peril, there's nine of them (and the coach, but he's only in danger long enough to get killed). Laura Albert, as team leader Babe, is the film's center, and she holds the surviving girls together as they escape into the dense woods surrounding the town. Albert is one of the only girls who appeared in movies both before and after Blood Games though now it seems she finds most of her work doing stunts on Batman Begins, Pineapple Express, and this year's Oscar nominated film The Artist. The other standout among the gals is Donna, Shelley Abblett in her one film role. Abblett delivers one of the film's most memorable lines, "I have been pushed around by men my whole life, and I'm sick of it.", a war-cry for vengeance seeking gals everywhere. While few of the girls ever did any acting or went on to do anymore, I found each of their performances enjoyable.

Veteran actor/director Ross Hagen does a fine job as Midnight, the team's coach, but sadly his role is minimal at best. Gregory Scott Cummins (Stone Cold, Phantom of the Mall) also has a small part as Roy, the sore loser, but he impresses with rampant dickery and a certain Kevin Sorbo-esque look. He also has one of the best arm wrestling scenes this side of Hands of Steel though instead of snakes it's done over candles. More impressive is Ken Carpenter as the town bossman Mino. Carpenter, who would later appear in Hellraiser: Hell on Earth as the Camera cinobite, gives a great tough guy perfromance, and his fight with Ross Hagan in the bathroom with his pants around his ankles is surely one for the books. Don Dowe, a character actor still working today, also turns in a fine performance as Holt, the dumbest of the hunters and Roy's best friend. Something about him made me think about Bill Fagerbakke as Dauber on Coach, Except, you know, more rapey. That beings us to the film's final delight George "Buck" Flower who appeared here under the name Ernest Wall, a screen name he only used once. I hope each and every one of you knows who Flower is and can imagine how good he'd be as a hillbilly named Vern. He also has one of my favorite exchanges in the film. Holt says, "Vern, you can't beat your own meat." to which Vern replies, "I can beat it better than you can." Comedy gold.

I've seen some speculation that Blood Games was intended to be a parody of female vengeance flicks, but I saw no trace of anything that could point to that. While there are certainly some funny moments, intentional and unintentional, Blood Games doesn't seem like it was supposed to be played for laughs. Like a mash-up of I Spit on Your Grave, Deliverance, and a sports film (some say A League of Their Own, but apart from girls playing ball I fail to see a correlation), Blood Games is indeed one of the best exploitation movies of the last twenty five years. Right now it's playing on Netflix Instant Watch, and I can't recommend this enough. If you like your exploitation violent, sexy, and down and dirty with a giant dollop of 80s on the top, then you really can't afford to miss this one. This film starts with a baseball game, and it is a crackerjack. When it comes to cult fare like this, I really don't care if I ever come back. I got to root, root, root for the gals to win, and the ones that die, it is a shame, but this flick gets One-Two-Three (and a half) Buggs to count for the old Blood Game. 

Bugg Rating 

Starship Troopers (1997): To Fight the Bugg, You Have to Understand the Bugg. (Would You Like To Know More?)

Not too long back I was discussing with Emily (she of The Deadly Doll's House of Horror Nonsense,) the merits of Paul Verhoeven. It was quickly and easily decided that the devastating Dutch director may not just be a great director, he may well be the greatest director of all time. Just look at the tale of the tape. Not counting his entire Norwegian output, he directed Flesh+Blood, Robocop, Total Recall, Basic Instinct, Showgirls, Starship Troopers, and Black Book in a string of entertaining films  spanning from 1985 to 2006. In the past I've talked about Robocop, and over at The Bloodsprayer you can see my love letter to Showgirls. Today however, I want to turn my eye to a film that always makes me a bit uncomfortable. It's hard to sit there for two hours listening to people planning on how to eradicate bugs. It would be like Zoe Saldana watching Killing Zoe or Peter Dinklage watching Get Shorty. Unsettling. However, despite all that Verhoeven still manages to get me on the on his side, and by the time the credits roll even I'm ready to nuke some bugs.

Verhoeven and Robocop scribe Edward Neumeier based Starship Troopers on a book of the same name penned by author Robert Heinlein. Where Heinlein was known for his sensitive and innovative novels Stranger in a Strange Land, The Puppet Masters, and Job: A Comedy of Justice, Troopers has often been criticized for glorifying the military, fascism, and creating an irresponsible utopia built on straw-man arguments. Now, while I said based, what I actually meant is threw the book out the window, kept a list of characters, and carried on with business. Verhoeven was even quoted in American Cinematographer magazine as saying that he never finished the book as it was leaving him, "bored and depressed". Verhoeven's film does neither, but interestingly, many of the same arguments that have haunted Heinlein's book could be leveled at the film version as well... along with quite a few more I'm sure.


Starship Troopers stars Casper Van Dien as Johnny Rico. A rich kid graduates Buenos Aries high school drawn into service for the Federation when his girlfriend Carmen (Denise Richards) and Carl (Neil Patrick Harris) decide to sign on as well. After all, it's peacetime and the Federation is a path to school, business, success in life, and most importantly citizenship. While the scholarly Carl gets signed on the the intelligence service and Carmen starts on a path to become a starship pilot, Johnny gets placed in the Mobile Infantry a.k.a The Roughnecks. Johnny excels at basic training, but when his actions result in the death of one of his squad, he's on the verge of washing out. The day he's about to leave, war breaks out when the bugs attack earth wiping several cities, including Buenos Aries off the map. After a disastrous first strike by the Federation which hugely underestimated the military might of the bugs, the forces regroup. Ricco, having received a battlefield commendation, becomes a leader on the field, and soon old friends Johnny, Carmen, and Carl are brought back together to fight the alien bug menace.

On the surface, Starship Troopers can easily be seen as a mindless action movie featuring questionable acting (Casper and Denise), incoherent themes (the military is bad and scary... well, except in the action scenes where it's cool and exciting), and sensational gross out moments (Brain Bug, I'm looking at you. Or on second thought, I'm not.) However, somewhere in the gobbledygook, there actually lies a slick, sharp, satirical edge fighting it's way to be heard over the gunfire. Many of them occur in the interstitial vignettes inspired by war propaganda films such as Why We Fight or Triumph of the Will. Their constant refrain after a "factoid" pertaining to the war effort, "Would You Like to Know More?", delivers a prescient echo in a time where politics, entertainment, and online information have become inexorably intertwined. In many ways, Troopers, this late nineties film, predicted the rabid jingoism and nationalism that directly followed 9/11 and the questionable conflicts stemming from it. The problem is, as I mentioned earlier, that the film can too easily be taken for face value or worse yet have its message entirely misconstrued. A person like the character played by Jake Busey in the film (I don't have to tell you what kind of character it is, I said Jake Busey.), could easily mistake Starship Troopers as a film that film that could fit on a Tea Party Member's approved watch list.

On a final personal note, let me talk a moment about how dumb some of the characters in Verhoeven's film are. Oh, those giant blue things coming up from the bug's planet are surely just lights. There's no way that they could be highly destructive weapons. (Apparently NPH was having a Harold and Kumar moment when it came to that intelligence.) Then there's Johnny. Your love triangle is between the future former Mrs. Charlie Sheen and a future member of Charlie's Angels? That, sir, is no choice at all. These are but a couple of the bad decisions that continue throughout the film, and if you're anything like me it will leave you yelling at the screen wondering who is giving the orders in this army and what kind of basic decision making skills are people in the future capable of making? In other words, an entirely enjoyable viewing experience.

In the beginning of this article, I named Verhoeven as the greatest director due to his large body of work, and I'm being a bit felicitous, though only a bit. Verhoeven has consistently made films that that have challenged the middle American idea of what a mainstream box office release could be, has been unafraid to take chances on theme and style, and follows an artistic vision no matter where it may take him. To me, those are three major qualities that a great director must have. To diminish Verhoeven because he works in genre films or with the classic cinema conventions of sex, violence, and sensationalism, is to disregard the most important quality that Verhoeven brings to his film, entertainment.  To push play on one of Paul's film results in spending your next two hours in a world where only the rules that the director allows need apply. People don't talk or act like people in Verhoeven's films? Who said they had to. I just wish they would be a little less vocal with all the bug hating.

Bugg Rating