Killjoy (2001) His Brother Killroy Wasn't Here.

This certainly didn't kill my joy, but I can't say it enhanced it. Urban horror flicks are a varied lot with Candyman, a story mined from a British author, sitting atop a heap that includes Blackenstein, an installment of the Leprechaun series, and at least two films featuring Snoop Dogg. Suffice it to say that the bar is set pretty low. So perhaps that's what makes Killjoy, a serviceable slasher with an all African American cast, seem like a diamond on the rough. In actuality, it's more like costume jewelry. If you were missing it after a party you'd be mad about it, but you wouldn't frisk your friends and neighbors to try and get it back. Killjoy tries to make all the right moves, but it’s like seeing a clown hit someone with a pie and thinking it’s hilarious. It’s funny, but it’s been done to death.

The Dead Want Women (2012): The Living Want Chicken and a Nap

Mars might need ‘em, Mel Gibson might claim to know what they want, and Neil Diamond might know that a girl will be one soon, but when it comes to women, the dead want ‘em. That is if you take the title of the newest Full Moon feature at its word, and if you cant trust a paragon of virtue like Charles Band, then I don’t know what this world is coming to. I suppose it's coming to be the kind of place where you can go out on a sidewalk and rent Full Moon’s newest feature, The Dead Want Women, exclusively from a movie vending machine with a rather color specific name. I’m still not completely sold on the concept of DVD vending, but striking an exclusive deal with a rental company like this is exactly the kind of forward thinking that has kept Charles Band making and producing movies for years. Are they all good? Rarely. For every Parasite Band has directed or Re-Animator he’s produced, there’s three Evil Bong films (seriously three?), a Leapin’ Leprechauns, and a Beach Babes 2: Cave Girl Island waiting to fill the void. What I had to know, on this week where we’ve all been watched over by the “super moon”, was if Full Moon had done something super or if this moon was waning.

Tourist Trap (1979): Mannequins, Murder, and The Cleanest Bathrooms In the State

To kick off Spring Slashers, I thought I would see if there was someone’s first film that would fit the bill. I found just what I was looking for in the premiere feature from David Schmoeller, future director of Puppet Master, Netherworld, and Crawlspace. With a career filled with both cult classics and complete misses, I knew that Schmoeller’s first film could go either way, but I had heard things about Tourist Trap (1979). Good things mostly, but I’d also been told it used a slasher formula that was tired even by late Seventies standards. However, I had to see it because no one loves a tourist trap quite like I do. No matter if an attraction boasts a two headed snaked, cavemen hanging with dinosaurs, a weird cave, or a giant statue, you can sign me up because I will go. After watching House of 1000 Corpses, the thought of crazy people inhabiting a tourist trap never strays far from my mind when I pull into one of the invariably dusty parking lots, but it wasn’t quite enough to make me stay away. What might do the trick though is mannequins and The Rifleman, and that’s not a combination I would expect.

The movie does start formulaically with a group of teens and their broken down car. One goes up the road to get help (never to return) and the others soon run into Mr. Slausen (Chuck Connors), proprietor of Slausen’s Lost Oasis, a wax museum. The stranded teens (including future That 70’s Show MILF Tanya Roberts) hitch a ride with Slausen back to his place. While the group’s lone guy, Jerry (John Van Ness) and Slausen head back to try to fix the car, three girls are left at the Oasis and warned not to venture out due to coyotes. The real danger is Davey. As the girls start to venture out exploring the creepy old house behind Slausen’s tourist trap, they soon encounter the doll faced Davey and his telekinetically powered killer mannequins. The girls are soon picked down to one, the sweet and wholesome Molly (Jocelyn Jones) who discovers the true nature of the slasher’s secret.

So, Tourist Trap sounds like a stale, crusty, hackish slasher, but the first few minutes disprove that notion. The film starts out like a DIY version of Herbie Hancock’s Rockit video plus blood, and sets the film’s strange tone from the get-go. Judging from David Schmoeller’s other film, the man has an offbeat sense of humor and it’s on full display here. Not only does the killer alternate between incredibly creepy and neurotically hilarious, the situations that the film presents appear deliberately broadly portrayed. There is a subtle spoof going on under the surface at all times, and Schmoeller has rarely been more in command. With Dolomite (and frequent Graydon Clark) DP Nicholas Josef von Sternberg behind the cameras and a supremely eerie score from Italian maestro Pino Donaggio, the whole feeling of the film keeps the viewer off kilter. Tourist Trap is the type of film where I felt like I knew what to expect, but the result was something more erratically charming.

With all the great people at work behind the camera, the real magic for me happened in front of the camera. Chuck Connors, a.k.a TV’s Rifleman, landed in several cult and genre films late in his career, but I’ve never seen him be better anywhere than in Tourist Trap. The sad thing is that I can’t talk about the complete greatness of his performance without spoiling parts of the movie, and the sadder thing is that just saying that is a spoiler unto itself. So I’ll leave it at this, if you like Chuck Connors, this is THE Chuck Connors movie to see. The supporting cast is not anything to write home about, but they all serve their purpose as grist for the eerie, weird murderous Davey. I do have to take a second to mention Tanya Roberts’ miniscule tube top barely containing her assets. The replacement Charlie’s Angel does get a chance to show off some of the ditzy adorable humor she would tap into again in the ’90’s, and she far outshines female lead Jocelyn Jones (The Great Texas Dynamite Chase). The other two characters, played by Jon Van Ness and Robin Sherwood, do prove themselves utterly disposable, but the kills are so strangely imaginative their deaths were indispensable.

I will always take a chance on films from a director like David Schmoeller. Even his lesser efforts have some kind of attraction to them. Sure Netherworld is a piece of crap, but just try and resist the crap-tacular wonders of the flying stone hand. Tourist Trap needs no such defense. As a first film it captures something that Schmoeller would flirt with in every film of his I’ve seen, horror as tone. There are moments of Tourist Trap that feel like Mario Bava was let loose in Charles Band’s backyard. Even though there were many dark laughs, Tourist Trap also served up more than its share of disconcerting moments equaling anything in better known slashers. If I were going to compare Tourist Trap to a roadside attraction, I would have to say it was the kind that draws you in from the highway and shows you something incredible that might also make you throw up in your mouth a little. In other words the best kind, and for that it gets the first five Bug rating of 2011.

Bugg Rating

The Deadly Doll's Pick: Dolls (1987)

Hey folks. First off, you might have been wondering where I’ve been this week. Well, I was on vacation from work so I had to take care of a lot of things that have been building up around The Lair. With October and wall to wall horror coverage coming soon, it was going to be my last fall turned my thoughts to ghosts and goblins. Today is actually the second full day of fall, and already there is crispness to the air down here in the South that tells me that soon all the green leaves around me with start fading to brown, orange, and gold. That first hint is all it takes for me to be ready for October and Halloween to get here. To quench my thirst for horror, today I have the selection for the film swap that Emily, from the Deadly Doll’s House of Horror Nonsense, and I have been doing for the past few months.

Warwick Davis Ruins the Wedgewood in  Skinned Deep

So far I’ve had a great time with this watching Baxter, We Are Going to Eat You, and Popcorn while choosing for her viewing pleasure Squirm, Hot Wax Zombies on Wheels, and Motorama. This month I chose for her the Fangoria produced hunk of schlock known as Skinned Deep starring the star of Willow as a plate throwing psychopath named ‘Plates’. Yeah I’m sure she’ll have a few choice words about the film and perhaps about my pick as well. For me she first chose the 1985 film Rumpelstiltskin, but either Netflix has lost all of their copies or people were compelled to keep it because they didn't know its name.So in its place, The Deadly Doll picked one of her favorites Stuart Gordon’s 1987 film Dolls, a film I had not seen before.

Now Stuart Gordon should not be an unfamiliar name to most genre film fans. With films like Re-Animator, From Beyond, Fortress, and Robot Jox to his credit, his name has been listed as one of the greats of horror cinema. However for each Gordon film that I love there’s a Castle Freak or a King of The Ants waiting around the corner to dash my image of the director’s catalog. So even though Emily had given this one her seal of approval, I approached it with some trepidation. That feeling only increased as the opening credits rolled revealing that the film was produced by Empire Pictures and Charles Band. Speaking of someone with a hit and miss career, Band seems to actively try to produce all levels of material. Sometimes you get Puppet Master, and sometimes you get Netherworld. Add to that the fact that Mr. Band’s track record with killer small things (Demonic Toys, Shrunken Heads, Ghoulies, etc.) contains more than their share of poorly scripted or acted films.

So I waited for the next hundred minutes for the bottom to fall out, for the script from Troll writer Ed Naha to run out of steam, for Gordon to take a departure into complete camp or total perversity, but it never happened. Instead what I received was one of the most enjoyable horror films that I’ve seen in the last three months at least. Dolls stars young Carrie Lorraine as Judy, a girl on a road trip with her asshole father (Ian Patrick Williams) and shrewish stepmother (played by Stuart Gordon’s wife Carolyn Purdy-Gordon). When they get caught in a sudden thunderstorm, they take shelter in a nearby house inhabited by a doll maker (Guy Rolfe) and his wife. The family, along with a pair of skanky punk rocker chicks and nice guy Ralph (Stephen Lee) are all invited to spend the night to ride out the storm. When Judy sees “little people” drag one of the punk rock girl’s away, the young girl tries to warn everyone, but no one believes her except Ralph, who is quite young at heart himself. When the two begin to investigate, it soon becomes apparent that their genial host‘s creations are something more than just innocent toys.

Dolls was filmed two years before 1989’s Puppet Master, with its script from Charles Band, made its way to the video shelves, and there are enough similarities here to think that Mr. Band might have been a bit inspired by the flick and enough differences to keep you from feeling sad about director David Scholar’s film. The real difference is this. Where Puppet Master contained some degree of origin for the creatures and a cast of characters that you felt good about getting torn apart, Dolls doesn’t bother with back-story (because who needs it, the titular glass eyed dolls are creepy as heck, I don’t care where they come from) and actually contains characters that you can feel good liking.

From her very first scene Carrie Lorraine melted my heart as the precocious Judy. I mean to the point to where this itinerantly childless writer had a passing thought that was something in the realm of, “if I could get one just like that”. I usually have the same reaction to child actors that I do of children in general. They’re ok if they’re not around much. Lorraine not only carried the film, but managed to be cute and precocious without being tiresome and irritating. Her performance was only enhanced by character actor Stephen Lee as Ralph. Lee is the type of actor whose face is so familiar that it will bother you for days on end thinking about where you know him from. It will distract you from work and your loved ones. You could make lose your job and life savings and end up on the street selling pencils for a dime out of a tin cup. It could make you so despondent that you lose touch with reality and start watching a "Jersey Shore" marathon. Before it does any of those things, I recommend just looking on IMDB where you’ll quickly find that you’ve probably seen him in a dozen things from his role as The Big Bopper in La Bamba to TV roles in “Nash Bridges” and “Bones” among dozens of others to his upcoming role in the Cher/X-tina epic Burlesque. As solid as his performance was in a film like Dolls, it’s a shame that Lee hasn’t gone on to more prominent roles.

The rest of the cast, her diabolical dad, devilish mother, and seemingly out of place and time British punk rockers (who looked more like they would rather be listening to the Material Girl than The Buzzcocks), are all suitably easy to hate. So while the film maintains a great light tone with Judy and Ralph, the rest of the cast get dispatched in a series of very unappealing fashions. Ian Patrick-Williams, who plays Judy’s dad, gives a great performance in the final moments of the film leading to a conclusion that is both extremely entertaining and a satisfying way to end the film. I do wish that Guy Rolfe, who I loved so much in William Castle’s Mr. Sardonicus, had been given more screen time. Though I do think that his turn as Gabriel the Dollmaker would lead to him being tapped to take over the role of Andre Toulon the Puppet Master in many of that series’ sequels.

Now, I’ve been praising Dolls pretty highly, and I don’t really have much negative to say. Some of the supporting cast (especially Mr. Gordon’s wife Carolyn) grated on my nerves a bit, but it was just all the better to see them get bumped off later. The doll effects could occasionally be a tad campier than the overall tone of the film, but they had such an intrinsic creepiness to them that it kept the idea of killer toys firmly in check. While I may enjoy Puppet Master more, I do think that Dolls is the better horror film of the two. Where Blade and company have a campy appeal, I just couldn't see myself wanting to be in a room with any of Dolls titular characters. It has definitely made the shortlist of films I am sure to revisit again and again. So if you’ve never seen it or seen it a hundred times before, it seems like the perfect little eerie gem to help usher in the fall season and Halloween's impending presence.

So I have to give a big thanks to Emily for the great pick this month. Don’t forget that you can check out her review of Skinned Deep today at The Deadly Doll’s House of Horror Nonsense, and both Emily and I are now also writing for The Gentlemen’s Blog to Midnite Cinema to hop over there and check that out as well. I’ll be back tomorrow with my second entry into Blog Cabins’ 30 Days of Crazy Blogathon when I keep the season change theme going and start Falling Down.

Bugg Rating

Zone Troopers (1985): Victory on E.T.-Day

Recently I was going through a box of VHS tapes at a flea market pushing aside the numerous copies of Beverly Hills Ninja and Urban Legend II when I pulled out a particularly ragged looking copy of Empire Pictures’ Zone Troopers. The cover was partially ripped, it had an odor one doesn’t usually expect from video tapes, and it felt like the set in mildew might latch onto my hand. The actual tape however looked pretty nice, and I knew that the sci-fi WWII tale had long been out of print, and so tattered, smelly, nasty cover, and all; I brought it home with me. I’m so glad I did. Zone Troopers is a true VHS classic. After a short, and extremely limited, theatrical run in 1985, the tape was released by Lightning Video, the same fine folks who brought Hands of Steel, Manhattan Baby, and Massacre in Dinosaur Valley to video store shelves, and I could not help but love watching this long out of print gem in its prime format.

Zone Troopers starts out with a few familiar faces to anyone familiar with Charles Band’s productions, Tim Thomerson, Art LaFleur, and Biff Maynard, who all also appeared in Trancers together. Joining them is Timothy Van Patten, Dick’s half brother, and the foursome make up the core of an American combat unit that we are told is “somewhere in Italy”. Caught behind enemy lines after a series of mysterious events, the squad stumble across a downed UFO and its pilot, a bug eyed alien. When the Nazi’s catch wind of the discovery, they bring their full force down to capture all the evidence as well as eliminate the U.S. forces. From there you get all the laser blastin’, fuhrer punchin’, World War II action that you can handle until it leads up to all out battle where the aliens will decide the fate of the war.

There are a couple of things that Zone Troopers really has going for it. The sheer pulpiness of the story combined with the performances from Thomerson, LaFleur, Maynard, and Van Patten really sell the whole film. Thomerson especially stands out as The Sarge. His character and performance seem inspired by actors like Lee Marvin and Gene Evans in Sam Fuller’s war movies. The tough guy bravado definitely works for Thomerson, and while the story doesn’t revolve around him, the action scenes certainly do. Van Patten has some of the film’s most memorable scenes that display his character’s naivety without resorting to stock situations. His Joey is still quite the kid, acting out the World Series with baseball cards and worrying that he’d cracked up when he discovers the alien.  He makes the character sweet without ever turning saccharine. The other actors get their own high points with Maynard as a war correspondent who gets a little too close to the action, and I can't forget LaFleur’s character Mittens, the scene where he clocks Adolph Hitler is cause enough for repeated viewings of Zone Troopers.

This was director Danny Bilson’s first film, but he knew several of the cast members from when he had penned the script for Trancers. While nothing in the film is shot with mind blowing skill, Zone Troopers is a solid film that uses its low budget to its advantage. Bilson keeps things small, and the only outlandishly bad effects come via the aliens. Yeah, the lasers look shoddy and the alien makeup (other than for Bug Eye) is just a light glaze that makes them look bluish (funny, they don’t look it). Keeping it simple fir entirely with the pulpy feel of Zone Troopers and definitely added to my enjoyment of the film. Bilson would go on to write films like 1989’s alien gladiator film Arena as well as 1991’s The Rocketeer. He also produced and directed some episodes of The Flash TV series, penned a few of the most recent James Bond video games, and was a consulting producer for the videogame The Sims. His film career never took off past his second film, the 1989 comedy The Wrong Guys starring Richard Belzer, Louie Anderson, and Richard Lewis as former Cub scouts on a reunion camping trip, but if he never did anything other than Zone Troopers he’d be OK by me.

Sitting down to Zone Troopers is not like sitting down to an episode of Masterpiece Theater, meaning you won’t be bored to tears and want to claw out your eyes, but for a cross between Critters and The Big Red One, it’s not bad at all. This is a film so strange it is tailor made for cult film status, now if MGM, who owns the rights to the film, would get off their ass and release it to DVD, it might just get there. The trouble with Zone Troopers now is that I would love to tell you all to go out there and grab it, but if you don’t want to get a VHS or track down a grey market copy, then you’re out of luck. However it is worth the effort, and taking a bit if inspiration from the cover, 'I Want You' to check Zone Troopers out.

Bugg Rating

Parasite (1982): The Bugg Catches Demi Moore (or Vice-Versa)

There are a few directors whose names seem to stand on their own as a descriptive. Ed Wood and Lloyd Kaufman, I’m looking at you. There’s another name that always conjures similar images in my mind and that is Charles Band. The Full Moon head honcho has been involved in so many things over the years with a fair share of hits and misses to show for it. In the past, I’ve looked at a couple of Full Moon productions before, but I haven’t got around to talking about Mr. Band the director. With 1982’s Parasite, I finally get my chance. Band got his first chance to direct when he made the 1973 Last Tango in Paris parody, Last Foxtrot to Burbank following that up with the demonic car film Crash! in 1977. For the next few years, he produced a few exploitation titles, but when he was drawn back to directing, it was for a post-apocalyptic, 3-D, monster movie filled with splatter, and co-starring a young actress named Demi Moore.


Dr. Paul Dean (Robert Glaudini) thought he was just creating a new kind of parasite for the government, but when agents from ‘The Merchants’ come to steal his experiment, the doctor becomes infected by his own parasite. He escapes with a silver cylinder containing the rest of the parasites. Stumbling across a small desert town, he rents a room to serve as a laboratory. While trying to figure out a way to stop the menace growing inside him, Paul runs afoul of Ricus and his gang who steal the cylinder away. The Doctor, along with local lemon farmer Pat (Demi Moore) and the town bartender Collins (Al Fann), must try to recover the parasites, find a cure, and keep them out of the hands of Wolf, the agent for ’The Merchants”.

When I was browsing through some DVD’s and saw the yellow banner proclaiming Parasite as “Demi Moore’s Feature Debut”, I knew I had to check this one out. The addition of producer/director/composer Charles Band only served to seal the deal. I’ve been a big fan of Moore ever since I saw her opposite John Cusack in One Crazy Summer. Since then she’s made quite a few films I like, The Seventh Sign, Striptease, and Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, as well as a few like Ghost and Indecent Proposal that I just can’t stand. (And she’s even bucked the Catherine Zeta-Jones Effect and married a dumbass and remained hot.) Moore has been a criminally underused actress, and even as far back as Parasite, she’s the best thing in the film. Sure, she might be playing an orphaned Lemon farmer in a pair of high waisted shorts, but she does the absolute best with what she was given. There are a few moments when her inexperience shows, but compared to the rest of the cast, it’s easy to see why she went on to greater success.

The top-billed star of the film is Robert Glaudini. He’s one of those character actors whose face seems familiar, but more than likely it’s not. He’s had small parts in mainstream films like Mississippi Burning and Bugsy, but his highest profile parts have been in films like Grunt!: The Wrestling Movie, Cutting Class, and Parasite. As Dr. Paul Dean, Glaudini isn’t really bad, but he’s definitely not afraid to take it way over the top. With kind of a Peter Weller-esque lankiness, he sweats and very over-emotes his way through his scenes in a most entertaining fashion. The scenes he shares with gang leader Ricus, played by Luca Bercovici, are the most fun to watch. Bercovici, who does for foreheads what Robert Z’Dar does for chins, really entertains with his After School Special by way of The Warriors performance. Along with the equally hammy James Davidson as Wolf ‘The Merchant’, they really give the film a kind of watchable cheesiness that I appreciated. There's also a small role played by Cherie Curie of the band The Runaways. So producers take note, if this gets remade, you're going to need Dakota Fanning.

At some point in its original run, Parasite was shown as a 3-D film, and I’m sure like James Cameron, Charles Band had a vision that was at least days and days in the making. Watching the film in a 2 dimensional format, I could not figure what was supposed to have been the impressive 3-D visuals. The special effects are about on par with anything you would expect to see in a Full Moon film though a few of the gore scenes really shine due to the liberal use of splatter. Gorehounds will likely see at least a few things to like here, but they are rare. When the parasites start getting large enough to crawl about on their own, or its own I should say, don’t expect a plague of giant leeches, the slug-like crawler sports the necessary gooey look but without much menace.

I didn’t consider that this review would come out on April 1, and I hope that doesn’t make anyone think I’m pulling their leg. No April Fools, I promise. It was not a modern classic, and not even up to par with some of the best offerings of Band’s work as a producer. However, it was a well-paced, slice of sci-fi/ horror schlock that gets a well-deserved bonus for starring Demi Moore. Parasite is not a film that I would claim to want to watch repeatedly, but I could see watching it a couple more times with friends. So check this one out, it may not be the best thing you’ve ever seen, but it might just get under your skin.

Bugg Rating

Netherworld (1992)- I Wish It Has Been Called Never-See-It-World

When you put in a DVD and the Full Moon Pictures logo comes up, you generally know what you’re going to get. Sure, occasionally there’s a Puppet Master or Trancers, but just as often, you end up wondering why you’re watching Evil Bong II or Mandroid. Now I’m not saying their movies are all bad, but their track record is not astoundingly brilliant. Still, I was cruising the virtual racks of Netflix and came across David Schmoeller’s 1992 film Netherworld, and I decided to give it a shot even with the Full Moon label on it. After all Schmoeller had made two of my favorite Full Moon flicks with the aforementioned Puppet Master and the Kinski in lipstick classic Crawlspace. I also have a soft spot for films set in Louisiana as long time readers will know. So I put it in the queue, I moved it to the top, and I awaited the red envelope with a strange mixture of high expectations and dread. At least I had one of those emotions was right.

Netherworld is the story of Corey Thornton (Michael Bendetti), a typical early nineties guy with a typical half mullet full of L.A. Looks gel. When his father dies, he inherits dear old dad’s massive home located in the backwaters of the Louisiana countryside. From the moment he arrives and is greeted by lawyer Beauregard Yates Esq. (Robert Burr) who is dressed in a powder blue suit paired with black leather fingerless gloves, Corey starts to get a strange feeling. Arriving at the house after meeting the caretaker and her jailbait daughter, Corey receives his father’s diary from the lawyer. When he sits down to read it, he discovers that his father had become obsessed with a prostitute named Delores (Denise Gentile) who has the power to bring people back to life and works at the nearby bar, Tonk’s. The elder Thornton wants to bring himself back after his own death with her powers. Corey quickly becomes obsessed with Delores, and he goes straight to Tonk’s. There he meets a variety of oddball characters, and even though people are being murdered by a mysterious flying stone hand and people all but tell him, Corey doesn’t seem to get the drift that the whorehouse is actually a front for a coven of witches.

The script for Netherworld was written by Schmoeller and Charles Band, head honcho of Full Moon, and it just could not have made less sense. At different points at the film I debated if this movie was supposed to be horror, a tongue in cheek comedy, or intentionally terrible. In the end, I never could decide. It’s hard for me to believe that Schmoeller, who has done some great things, and Band, whose has had his share of good ideas, would have intentionally put together a film in such a slapdash way. This is the kind of film that makes Plan 9 look like Citizen Kane. Netherworld started strong, and its first 10 minutes intrigued me. The big haired prostitute Delores was being raped and the flying stone hand kills the crap out of the rapist. Sure, the effects were bad, but it was atmospheric and pretty effective. The problem is that the rest of the film didn’t have the same tone at all. There was a good idea here, but somewhere between either the idea stage and the page or the translation from page to screen something went horribly wrong.

The acting really was not helping matters. Michael Bendetti is best known for his year run on 21 Jump Street as Officer Mac McCann, but unlike his Jump Street co-star Johnny Depp, Bendetti left the show to do Netherworld and a couple episodes of Red shoe Diaries before fading into obscurity. There’s nothing in Netherworld that is going to send anyone into fervor for a comeback. Bendetti seems to have two expressions, confused and “huh, is the camera on?” and neither impresses. I wish I had more to say about Mr. Bendetti, but he really leaves very little mark on the film, but I bet that with all that gel in his hair he leaves quite a mark on his pillow.

The rest of the cast fares little better. As the large haired mystical hooker Delores, Denise Gentile definitely looked the part, and she is probably the best actor in the film. Not that that’s something you would want to brag about. Twenty six year old Holly Floria who plays the caretaker’s “jailbait” daughter was terrible casting to say the least, but at least she was not terrible. Floria even ended up with a job after Netherworld when she landed a role on the syndicated TV show Acapulco H.E.A.T. The few other characters that seemed interesting at all didn’t get enough screen time to make a difference. Robert Burr’s lawyer with the deformed hands and strange fashion sense, I wanted more of him. George Kelly as town drunk/ psycho Bijou, I wanted a whole film about that nutter. I would have even settled for more time with Billy C., the bottle-twirling bartender played by director Schmoeller.

Just a couple more things, and they're more questions than comments. How can you have a movie about witchcraft wielding hookers that contains no nudity? Also, if you're going to have a woman playing a prostitute who claims to be Marilyn Monroe brought back to life, can't you hire someone who doesn't have a face like a foot? I'm just saying. Netherworld is bad. Not the worst film I’ve ever seen, but it’s definitely going to get a solid ‘1’. Unless you have a desire to work yourself though all the Full Moon releases, this is one you never need to watch. I would seriously recommend Evil Bong II and Mandroid before I would this one. So enter at your own risk. You may not end up in the Netherworld, but you will wish that you had spent the last 90 minutes in some other dimension.

Bugg Rating

Puppet Master (1989) Really Pulls My Strings

There’s a fine line between stupid and genius when it comes to horror comedy, and perhaps no one was more willing, able, and crazy enough to ignore that line than Charles Band. Over the years Band has worn many hats, producer, director, writer, and been involved with many great films in the genre, like Re-Animator, Trancers, and Ghoulies just to name a few. However, there is one series of films that stands head and shoulders above the rest to be remembered as Charles Band’s legacy. No, I’m not talking about the Gingerdead Man, not The Erotic Time Machine, and not Prehysteria either. Just in case you didn’t read the title up there, I’m talking about Puppet Master.

The year was 1989, and after the demise of his company Empire Pictures, the outfit responsible for some of the greatest horror cheese of all time, Charles Band returned from Italy to form a new venture, Full Moon Productions. Band signed a contract to distribute direct to VHS films via Paramount Home Video, and his first release would come from director David Schmoeller. If you’ve been a long time reader for The Lair, you might remember Mr. Schmoeller from his film Crawlspace where Klaus Kinski got tarted up a bit. (His experience on that film spawned the very awesome short film Please Kill Mr. Kinski. If you haven’t seen it, hop on over to the review of that film and give it a watch.) Schmoeller came to the film world with quite a pedigree. He had studied with Jodorowski and Luis Brunel, was nominated for an Academy Award (Best Student Film which he lost to Robert Zemeckis, and then he adapted Band’s story into the film that would become Puppet Master.

As the film begins, the setting is a 1940’s California hotel, Bodega Bay to be exact (that place just can’t catch a break), and we meet Andre Toulon (William Hickey) who has discovered a way to bring puppets to life using an ancient Egyptian scroll. Unfortunately for him, Nazi’s are after his secret, and instead of being captured, he hides the puppets in the wall of his room and shoots himself in the head. Years later, the secret is discovered by Neil Gallagher, and he sends for his four psychic friends to join him at the hotel. Before they arrive, Gallagher kills himself, but the psychics stay to unravel the mystery of his death. The first night in the hotel they find themselves menaced by a coterie of puppets who use knives, drill heads, leeches, and anything else they can find to dispatch the nosy intruders.

Each time I watch this film, I get constantly surprised how quickly its 90 minute running time slips by. While it takes a moment to get going, the whole of the second act speeds by with one puppet attack after another, and the puppets are so damn interesting to watch. One would think with the low budget Puppet Master had that the animation on the little fellows would be cringe worthy. Strangely, their movements are pretty fluid, and this fluidity is what really makes the film. Each of the puppets is an amusing little character while still managing to be a bit disturbing. I’m sure everyone has one they like best, and it always seems that Blade is the perennial favorite. It should be noted that Blade was modeled off one of Schmoeller’s favorite actors (and massive pain in his ass) Klaus Kinski. It had never occurred to me until I read it recently, but now it’s all I can see when I look at his beady little eyes. I’m not sure I can pick a favorite though. Leech Woman’s power is so gross that I find her very interesting, Pinhead is no doubt the funniest looking one, Tunneler constantly reminds me of the Snow sisters from Freaks, and Jester puts Man-E-Faces to shame.

The stars of this film are the puppets. I’ve seen this film a dozen times or more, and except for character actor William Hickey in the opening scene, I generally can’t recall any of them until the next time I see them. All of the psychics are played pretty broadly, and each of them gets what they deserve. I barely recognized Paul Le Mat as the lead character Alex because of the massive mullet he rocks, but fans of American Graffiti might know him better as John Milner, the hot rodder who faces off against Harrison Ford’s Bob Falfa. Irene Miracle, who appears as Dana the flakiest of all the clairvoyants, got her start in the Aldo Lado exploitation film The Night Train Murders. While she gets violently raped in that film, she merely gets beat up by a thuggish puppet with a tiny head in this film. None of the other actors had anything really interesting on their résumés, and honestly they were there to get leeched, drilled, and otherwise pummeled by puppets.

If the stars were the puppets then a special nod has to go to puppeteer David Allen, who was Academy Award Nominated for his work on Young Sherlock Holmes. Using a variety of rod controlled puppets, stop motion, and stunt puppets, the film has a seamless quality to the marionette mayhem. Some of this might also be credited to cinematographer Sergio Salvati, perhaps best known for his work with Lucio Fulci. Salvati also previously worked on Crawlspace where he created a dense, claustrophobic feeling for Schmoeller’s film. With Puppet Master, Salvati crafted eerie dreams, shadowy corners for the puppets to hide in, and, working with David Allen, constructed shots that enhanced David Allen’s puppetry.

I feel like I might have shortchanged Mr. Schmoeller, but I certainly don’t mean to. Not only is this film endlessly amusing, it also created the most successful franchise Full Moon Productions would ever see. This film was a technical challenge, but it also presented another challenge. The puppets were going to be funny to look at, but they needed to be maniacal little bastards too. Schmoeller took Charles Band’s story and made it into a film that perfectly encapsulated what Full Moon would become. It’s a campy, bloody, silly little film, but one I will go back to time and time again.

As a little reminder, you know what Puppet Master has? A shit-ton of sequels, eight of them in fact. Maybe you love some of these sequels or maybe you love other Full Moon follow-ups like Gingerdead Man 2: The Passion of the Crust. No matter which ones you love, I want to hear about them. There’s still plenty of time to be part of Halloween Top 13: The Sequel. All you have to do is tell me what your favorite sequels are. For more info and my e-mail, check out the top of the sidebar on the left.

Bugg Rating

The Grab Bag: Groom Lake (2002)

With Star Trek making its rebooted debut on screens over the weekend, my readers who caught my month long “You Don’t Know Shat” event might wonder what I thought. Since tons of other folks are airing their opinions at the moment, I will reserve mine for a later time, but suffice it to day I had no complaints. If you’d like to peruse a post that adheres pretty closely to my own thoughts, then check out Ryan’s post over at The Realm of Ryan. However you know I love a good tie in, so I thought I might check out a film that boasts not only a Trek connection, but throws in a little J.J. Abrams for good measure. So for today, let’s leave the stars behind and take a travel out to….

Groom Lake (2002) starring Amy Acker, Dan Gautier, William Shatner, Dick Van Patten, and Tom Towels. Directed by William Shatner. 

A young woman, Kate (Acker) and her boyfriend Andy (Gautier) travel into the Nevada desert to spend some time under the stars. Kate has been diagnosed with a fatal illness, and she wants to travel to an area where UFOs have been sited to give her reassurance that there is life in the universe. The couple only finds misfortune in the desert, but when they witness an object ascending from a nearby military base, the couple is drawn into a conspiracy involving a secret government base and once scientist’s experiments with alien technology. 

The Bugg Picture

Groom Lake, it seems, is a drained lakebed that is situated next to the legendary Area 51 installation. I don’t think I need to go into what Area 51 is, but in a nutshell, it’s where the feds keep all the crazy alien hardware. So who do you think the government might put in charge of a facility like that, well, William Shatner of course. At least that’s who’s in charge when The Once and Future Kirk gives this film the Edward D. Wood Jr. treatment as he writes, directs, and co-stars in Groom Lake. 

While I personally never have a problem with Shatner’s acting (after all you can only expect Shatner to act like Shatner), other facets of his artistic life are more suspect. When it comes to directing, while his T.J Hooker episodes might not have been any worse than the rest of the series, I think it is widely accepted that Star Trek V, which he directed, is the worst of the lot. Then there’s Shatner’s writing. As an avid reader of Star Trek novels, I can safely say that his series (which of course brought Kirk back from the dead), is a collection of tales so dreadful they almost made me forget about the one TekWar book I read. Joined here by TV scribe Maurice Hurley, Shatner either puts together one of the most hackneyed science fiction scripts seen since the 1950’s or a half assed homage to the same. 

To decide which of these might be the truth, I had to look pretty deep into this flick. The first thing I would say is that this is a movie that does not benefit from being picked apart. The logic of the characters, or the plot for that matter, rarely makes sense. That being said, Groom Lake was executive produced by Charles Band, of Full Moon Productions, so that in and of itself is enough to clue many genre fans into what kind of film this is. As with most Band productions, it doesn’t take itself too seriously, but it does have its moments when Shatner’s heavy handed story comes though. 

I can forgive a bit of the sappy “love never dies” storyline as Shatner was still grieving for the loss of his wife in 1999, but thankfully the story never gets too bogged down in emotional development. Thankfully, Amy Acker does not make her terminally ill character a sappy mess. The young actress, who would star as Fred on Joss Wheadon’s Angel and Kelly Payton on J.J. Abrams’ Alias, makes her character empathetic, but the scenes come unbalanced due to Dan Gautier’s Tom Cruise-esque delivery and manner. I’ve never seen Gautier in anything else, but I have to wonder if it was a conscience decision to channel the Top Gun star. Either way, in the broader adventure scenes it’s tolerable, but in the emotional moments, it’s maddening. 

The film also contains some appearances from some strange folks including Dick Van Patten as Shatner’s cohort in alien experimentation, character actor Dan Martin as the poorly named Captain Morgan, and Duane Whitaker, star of the most excellent film Eddie Presley, appears as a town doctor. Tom Towles, who is perhaps better known to horror fans as Otis from Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, gives an interestingly over the top performance as a would be abductee. No one from the stars to the supporting cast is very good. I know the stilted script is partially to blame, but some of the line delivery was just the worst. 

After I watched the film, I checked out the 28 minute interview with Shatner, and it seems even Shatner, in his own veiled way, admits that this film was a turd. It’s interesting to hear him talk about

 choosing a special effects company and admitting that they were not even close to what he wanted. We all know Shatner is not a good director, but I feel like his heart was in the right place on this one. Unfortunately, his skill could not rise to meet his ambition. 

So was Groom Lake a nod to the science fiction films of a bygone era ? Probably not, in the near half hour that Shatner talked, nothing of the sort ever came up. Instead it was just quite bad, it was Shatner, and I had to check it out. This is a film I could only recommend to hardcore Shatnerphiles, but for those of you out there, I have to say check this one out for the interview portion of the disk if for nothing else. 

Bugg Rating