The Mutilator 2

 

If you're and avid 80's slasher fan like me, you've already seen the original Mutilator flick by now. Probably, most likely, more than once. I've sat through it two different times and I have to say that even the first entry is pretty okay considering it's contemporaries-it has a pretty sad and wicked plot involving the death of a boys' mother at the beginning of the film where he accidentally shoots her with one of his fathers' shotguns because he's cleaning it for him before he comes home from work or wherever the hell he was at, and it sets him off about twenty something years later wanting to 'mutilate' his own son and his friends when they party at his dad's beach house. It encompasses some nasty kills with a giant fish hook among other things, and it has become a pretty solid cult classic of sorts among horror fans these days, especially after Arrow Video put it on blu-ray. Before I ended up selling about 95% of my horror collection fairly recently, I myself had a copy of it on blu-ray and I did enjoy it for what it was. I always liked the whole thing with the Fall Break opening as opposed to just the regular Mutilator one and it presented itself almost as some kind of a lost 80's sitcom or something that needed to be preserved for all time. Look-if you've been here for awhile and have read most of (if not all) my bullshit on this website, you already know that I always try to seek some kind of a balance with any sort of horror flick (hell, just movies in general) where I don't even care if all of the girls are hot or cute, there needs to be a decent story to keep things going. If the movie is fucking boring as all hell, at least garner some gore or solid kills to have something for the audience to grab onto. Because I'm here to let you know right here and right now that The Mutilator 2 is fucking abysmal. It doesn't have any of the energy, any of the flair or any of the staying power that the original had. It just fucking doesn't. And quite frankly, what did I expect? I actually received pretty much what I was expecting-a selfish, meta, re-tread of the first film with no garnish and no extra ketchup. The Mutilator 2 is a giant basket of hand cut french fries that are under cooked, lazily chopped and half seasoned. There was absolutely no reason for Buddy Cooper himself to attempt making a comeback with this hog snot, and he would have just been better off either wallowing in his 80's horror obscurity or just directing and writing something completely new for the fans of his that he's lassoed in after all of these years with the original. What is the biggest, cardinal sin that this new movie of his commits? I already mentioned it, but it's so damn boring. It's a drag fest, and I'm not meaning an actual drag show with dudes dressing up as chicks-I mean this thing just has no substance and no character. The actors Chaney Morrow and Anna Clary from the film Late Checkout are both here as main people, and I would be hard pressed to find out if they starred here for anything more than their paychecks. Also (and I didn't even realize this until the very last time you see him) the horror film collector and reviewer on Youtube named Pizowell makes a cameo here too, and I honestly thought that was pretty cool. I always enjoy seeing implements in these pictures like that. But none of that makes up for how manically laggy The Mutilator 2 ended up being. With all of that being pointed out, the kills are pretty good special effects wise and they are for the most part pretty brutal-but it still just isn't good enough. You do see most of the cute girls' boobs at some point peppered throughout here-but it just isn't worth it. It just isn't. So if you're a bigger fan of the first Mutilator film than most and were and or are still excited to watch this 'sequel' if you will, I warned you. I fucking warned you. If you even make it half way just to see what happens, I'll applaud you. You'll never know it, but I'll clap in pure jeer just for you. And you'll probably never want to watch this ever again.   

Las Vegas Bloodbath

 

I was paroozing Youtube and beyond this afternoon to try to stumble upon something shitty to ingest because I was in the mood for some junk food film, when all of a sudden a gem fell into my lap that I had never heard of or seen before-Las Vegas Bloodbath. I won't lie here zits and zombies-I was about to just skip beyond it because how entertaining could an S.O.V. from 1989 with that generic of a title possibly be? Well, there's plenty that have bland titles who end up being glorious mantle pieces which end up on display to sicken our family and friends, and now that I've sat through Las Vegas Bloodbath, it's a new entry to join the crowd. It's actually been quite awhile since I've really dug my toes into something in this universe because I unfortunately don't have as much time as I used to (or as much as I would like to) indulge in searching for and discovering new ground in the do-it-yourself category of crappy horror flicks from the 80's and 90's because a lot has changed in the last 5-6 years, but that has nothing to do with my experience viewing Las Vegas Bloodbath. I'm going to state right off that bat here that this was wildly great, surprising and highly entertaining because it has a no nonsense attitude about it with our main man Sam flying off the handle after he finds out that his wife Ruth is cheating on him with some loser sheriff/cop dude that looks like a z-grade version of Iceman from Top Gun. Yeah. Also, Sam himself also looks like a hard mix of Nicolas Cage and Jerry Seinfeld if they were in their mid twenties and were partying together briefly after both of their careers took off around the same time. It's fucking hilarious. Want to know what else is hilarious that takes place in Las Vegas Bloodbath? There's a scene where Sam is driving the red sports car he bought for Ruth through town after he brutally murders her and sheriff boy, and some random asshole drives up to him with his middle finger out of the window saying "hey asshole, why don't you get off the road, you don't know how to drive!" to which Sam responds by shooting the dickheads finger off and yelling "try picking your nose with that!" Jesus, this shit is hilarious-I literally almost fell off the edge of the couch when this scene first happened because I was laughing so hard. I rewound it and watched it a second time, which for me is a rarity these days. There's also a scene that happens before the middle finger incident where Sam has a prostitute with him in his car in the middle of the day (he calls them "daytime whores") to which he stops the car in a random alley that has some kind of piping on the side of the building and he ties her up to it. This is also the first time that we see that he has Ruth's severed head in a bag with him throughout the rest of the film-but he gets Ruth's head out of the bag, sets it next to the street girl and ties only one of her legs to the back bumper of the car. He then picks up Ruth's head, puts it back in the bag and into the trunk, only to start driving away while yelling "are you keeping up?" as the woman's leg gets torn off and gets drug down the street. Sounds brutal, but when you see how it is in the movie in real time, it's everything hilarious and nothing gruesome in the slightest. All of this crap takes up basically the first half of Las Vegas Bloodbath because the second half (this flick is 67 minutes by the way) is him figuring out where the Beautiful Ladies Of Oil Wrestling live or hang out or whatever this town house looking place is supposed to be-because he isn't done rampaging over what Ruth did to him yet. Oh no-there's more women to kill and more brutality to be had. I'm not going to go into supreme detail here zits and zombies if you've never seen this piece, but pretty much the rest of the last 30-something minutes comprises of Sam tying up said Beautiful Ladies and performing nasty things on them like cutting out the fetus of the pregnant woman's unborn baby and tossing it in the corner of her room or literally tearing one of their arms off as they stare at Ruth's head or him burying a claw hammer into the chest of one of them after he gets them into the bathtub. This film really does ramp up in the third act very quickly and by the time it's over the way the bathroom looks in this place is pretty much reminiscent of the cover art of a Cannibal Corpse album or something. If you're on the prowl for an S.O.V. from the late 80's that is sort of like the try-hard younger brother of Truth Or Dare?: A Critical Madness, you've found it. Just don't tell anyone that I told you to watch it. Actually, yeah, do that. Maybe I'll get more traffic here on my website if you do.  

 

Sick For Toys

 

Sick For Toys is a holiday/Christmas themed horror flick which consists of the characters Roy, Jason, Kate, Emelia and Edward. There are others that fill in some persona gaps too, but these five are the main hams in the oven. I really didn't know what I was going to receive as a gift from Sick For Toys when I decided that that was what I was going to watch this morning for a review-and to be honest, I was hoping it was going to be some kind of horror comedy type of flick because that's really what I was in the mood for this morning. I'll look harder next time. This film is basically the opposite of that and has no joy for the holiday spirit at all. This truly was being sick for toys, and it's a slow burn. The pace here was actually done really well as far as I was concerned and never felt like I was rushing to get to the endgame from it being a slog. I thought that the delivery of everything that took place in this flick felt right and the way it was supposed to happen, and as demented as a pair of siblings Emelia and Edward are, what they were involved in and their psychosis never swayed or made me feel like I was being drug (heh) through the mud. Our baseline for Sick For Toys is this-we have our main jock/jackass/narcissist in Jason who already has a girlfriend, but thinks like every other one of these kinds of assholes and tries to eat his pussy and have some on the side too. We only get to imagine this happening through our imaginations because of some later exposition, but he ends up being Emelia's newest "toy" because he ran into her at the local pharmacy and they started talking. One thing led another, and boom-his ass is drugged, tied up and starved in the siblings' basement for Emelia to play with. Which basically just means that she lays with him on the floor with his arms around her for a period of time and she rapes him while he lays there and isn't able to do anything to stop her. I guess karma's name for Jason is Emelia. While that business is happening, we get to focus on Roy who is Jason's best friend (and has a thing for his girlfriend Kate) and after a couple of crappy dates, meets up with her to talk to her about Jason being missing for a few days. She sort of just dismisses it because he said he was going to go on some "off the grid" trip or some nonsense. Roy ends up meeting Emelia because he found her number on a napkin and calls her a few times. They end up having a coffee date and she eventually ropes him into coming over to her and Edward's house. Even after she tells him everything about their parents dying and how they have been living in their house for decades now, Roy likes Emelia a lot and goes over there anyway. Things start getting really fucking weird while they are having Christmas dinner, and of course-I'm sure you guessed it by now-Edward put some shit into Roy's soup. I don't know if he roofied it or put acid in there or LSD or what, but you can slowly start experiencing with Roy that their voices keep going higher and lower, he keeps looking at the ham while Edward cuts it and it gets bigger and smaller. Everything is distorted to a degree, and then Emelia sort of guides Roy into the garage where Jason is to start doing the same shit to him that she's been doing to Jason the last few days. But even in the state that he's in, Roy starts figuring out who's in the room with him and finds his phone and everything and then Edward stabs his ass. This is when things start getting really gory and really messy. I won't go any further in case after all of that you'd want to watch Sick For Toys, but I will say this-ultimately, it's not a great film. There are a lot of great elements that make it a whole package, but this flick is the very definition of a purgatory film. I already know that I will never revisit this one ever again, and if you do ever track down Sick For Toys to give it a shot, you'll probably feel the same. I'm just going to say zits and zombies that if you're that sick for a toy, you could do a lot better-but you could also do much worse. I hope that you get a lot of cool toys and that you never become sick. Have a great Christmas. 

The Chill Factor

 

To finish off this frozen duology, I decided to dive into another snow themed slasher from yesteryear titled The Chill Factor. When I was starting to reach the edge of not wanting to collect physical copies of horror films anymore, this was one of the last ones I was interested in purchasing considering that Arrow Video had put this into print on blu-ray, it looked like a cool addition (pun intended) to hang out amongst the rest of what I had already accumulated at that point. In the same vain as being a fan of more obscure sub-genres of horror such as SOV and spa/workout horror and heavy metal horror, I also really like this less traversed hallway in the corridors of terror-snow or winter centered fright films. I don't what it is-maybe it's the whole aesthetic of everything being isolated because of the massive amounts of snow everywhere, or just the bitter cold you can feel coming off the screen as our main characters fumble around while getting annihilated, but there's something special hidden in the DNA here for me whenever I sit down to watch an entry in this arm that not a lot of horror fans seem to gravitate towards. When it comes to The Chill Factor in particular, there isn't anything that special about it as an individual film-but once it's sitting amongst it's peers like Iced, Shredder, Dead Snow and anything else in this ilk-it's a pretty solid and fun entry to jab your icicle into. If you want a basic breakdown, it's pretty much a mix of The Evil Dead, The Exorcist and, well-Iced. Yeah. So pretty much what takes place in The Chill Factor is that a group of friends are really into motorized sledding to the point where that's their only mode of transportation to get anywhere. They end up at some local bar in the middle of iced-over nowhere, and right when the film starts we are presented with some racist redneck bullshit that hates one of our main guys' fiancée's because she's black and he's white. Really, who even gives a shit about that. But I guess back in 1993 it was still a thing to hate people with different colored skin. I'm pretty much on the same level with remembering all the characters names as I was when I was watching Iced, so all I'm going to do is be as generic as possible to get the story across. Or come up with my own names. After the black girl fiancée gets made fun of for a second just because she has a darker skin pigment, her male fiancée comes around, says some shit to this dumbass about how he was just drafted to the Minnesota Vikings, and proceeds to dispose of the loser quickly. They all sit down to have some beers because it's another one of the guys' birthday in the group, and the main woman that runs the place starts telling them about Black Friar Lake. It's sad when I remember the name of the lake more than the names of the main characters. The birthday boy and Tom (I only remember his name because of certain events that I'll get to soon) decide after a lot of drinking that it's a good idea to race across this frozen over Black Friar Lake to see who's sled is faster. Of course, the race ends up being a disaster because Tom goes flying head first into a tree and the birthday boy just falls off his at some point. Minnesota Viking and one of the ladies in the group find some abandoned religious camp ground that's all boarded up, and break into it for warmth and to try and get some medical help for Tommy Boy. One by one they become unalived in various ways-especially after they find this ridiculous, oversized, hand-made Ouija board with what looks like a human eyeball in the middle of it where the spinner is anchored. They do a shitty séance, a dark spirit that was trapped there takes over Tommy's body, he miraculously heals, has sex with all but one or two of the girls in the group (the black girl is dead by this point) and it turns from a fun, half anxiety filled urgency for Tommy's health into a possession based Exorcist type deal with a finale that I honestly wasn't fully expecting. I'm going to ramp it up zits and zombies and say that I think that if you even remotely have any interest in frost layered terror, give The Chill Factor a shot. It doesn't matter if you bought a new designer winter jacket or a motorized sled or any of that crap-it only matters if you know how to have fun and are in the mood for winterized devil worship and seeing a black woman's head being brutalized by a ceiling fan. That happens here. Factor in some chills-before winter is over.  

Iced

 

In the spirit of living in the Midwest and being buried in snow and subzero temperatures for almost a week now, I decided that I should embrace the fact that my two favorite things can coincide with one another-cheesy, 80's slasher flicks and Old Man Winter. My favorite season of the year actually is winter because I like the solitude that freezing in your living room or basement can bring as well as the fact that indulging in being an introvert coupled with the ideal that it's just more difficult during this time of year for other folks to want to go out in lieu of chilling their asses off brings me a simpler joy that no one will bother me to want to hang out. It's less anyway. I'm way more comfortable not spending my time with others and would much rather ensconce myself in the silent beauty known as isolation. There are many benefits to having a personality and mentality like this, and I'm really grateful the universe has blessed me with such a humble existence. However, for a film like Iced from 1989, none of the characters here have a chance at participating in such a foray. This film has been on my "T.W.E." list (To Watch Eventually) ever since Cecil from GoodBadFlicks did a review of it multiple years ago as well as Ben from 80's Horror Central. They both said solid things about it and it just seemed like it had that specific, shitty 80's charm that I'm always looking for when the mood strikes me to sit through an entry like this. If you're already a fan of the Friday The 13th franchise or any deeper cuts in the slasher sea, then you're going to outright enjoy Iced purely for the energy it brings and the similarly styled kills it formulates. The plot here and the way it unfolds really does have a layer of snooze to it unfortunately-and I know this outright because I'm normally pretty good at remembering all the characters names and their purposes in whatever is going on is-but here in Iced for some reason, I had a really tough time recalling who was who and what the hell they were doing there. Mainly what gravity pulls together here in Iced is that we start with a group of friends who are really into skiing are on a trip together, there's a main character named Jeff that has some kind of mental issues that lead him in becoming jealous of his friend Cory getting naked with his other friend Trina. I guess he wanted to get with her, so they slalom/race down a mountain against one another to win her heart, he loses to Cory, gets pissed, and plans to stroll down the hallway at the hotel they were staying at to murder Cory and presumably Trina with one of his ski poles. He's interrupted by Eddie (who kind of looks like if Robert Goulet, Geraldo Rivera and Dabney Coleman had a threesome) which pisses him off even more. So he goes to ski on the slopes by himself after all the trails are shut down for the night and ends up killing himself by careening off of a snow bank and landing chest first onto a huge pile of rocks. Four years later, everyone who is leftover from this initial trip has been invited to check out some new condo establishment where they all cost $250,000 (in 80's money that's insanity) and a lot of pointless drama and bad acting build up to the point where maybe all of these characters should bite it. There are a couple of twists towards the end that I won't spoil just in case if you do want to sit through Iced, but basically who you think is Jeff making a comeback and killing everyone in this snow covered establishment really isn't. Maybe you'll be shocked by that reveal, and maybe you won't. Oh, there's something else I need to point out here-Lisa Loring who played the original Wednesday in The Adams Family is here as Jeanette, and she couldn't be more hot. She also played a raging psycho/lesbian bitch in another crappy 80's horror flick titled Blood Frenzy. I did a Youtube video about that movie-maybe I should revisit it and write a new review on here for it. Anyways, so there's that as well. I'm going to notarize this here for you zits and zombies and just state that if you're already into these kinds of funny, overacted slasher pieces from the 80's, you really can't go wrong with some fresh powder from the likes of Iced. If you're not and you're just trolling around looking for a horror movie to watch, you had better be prepared. There's someone hiding inside that snowman over there.      

Late Checkout

 

Late Checkout starts off running with a couple that consists of a very tattooed-up chick that looks like Kat Von D, and a very tattooed up dude that kind-of, sort-of looks likes Corey Taylor. They are in bed together having a good time. They rented this cabin in the middle of nowhere, North Carolina to celebrate what I'm assuming is an anniversary of some sort. But then, no-it's the tattooed girl's birthday because when tattooed Corey Slipknot Taylor is taking a shower, there's a bottle of bubbly and a card that says "happy birthday Kat" on it next to where Stone Sour Corey is getting cleaned up. Then they both end up being brutalized by an anonymous killer in jeans, a leather jacket, leather gloves and a welding helmet. There's even a red line painted under the glass viewer on the helmet letting us know if the 'welding killer' is happy or sad in the moment of murdering random people who end up renting this particular place to getaway. How thoughtful of the writers and director of Late Checkout. I would love to sit here and spout about how I did in fact enjoy Late Checkout-and in the grandiose layers of me I did-to an extent-but that sentiment didn't make it all the way. I'm kind of writing this review in reverse here by saying early that the whole reason for our main group of friends that get annihilated through the entirety of this picture have this done to them for no other reason than "it's fucking fun" is sort of callous, empty, shallow and selfish on the part of the family that is engaging in this activity. I'm not going to wholly expose who is behind all of this if you haven't sat through Late Checkout, but if you're deep into horror at all or are a big fan of slashers in general, you're going to recognize immediately who this actor is because they starred in a slasher from the 80's that's insanely iconic at this point if you're even remotely well-versed in you're slasher catalogue. But me enjoying this flick solely sat on the fact that I've seen so many of these types of films by now that I didn't even have to guess at what was happening or what was going to happen because this stuff is so milquetoast at this juncture that you'd have to turn your toaster oven on a higher setting to squeeze more heat and more flavor out of whatever meal you're prepared to consume. That doesn't mean that Late Checkout sucked. It didn't. It was solid. I had fun with it. But this isn't earth shattering or life changing cinema here-it's fun, gory, whack'em and stack'em fare that any slasher or 80's horror fan is going to adore, and that's where it's appeal lies. Also, I don't even know why, but for some bizzaro reason, I thought Drew Marvick was involved with this flick somehow. But he isn't. I thought he was the director or the writer or even the killer himself. But he wasn't. If you don't know who Drew Marvick is, he's the indie horror film director that made his debut with Pool Party Massacre which happens to be a favorite of mine in the indie realm of splatter flicks. If you've never seen that one, check that shit out. As for me having a late checkout with Late Checkout, I'm just going to leave you with the kernel that if you really dig 80's horror or slashers specifically, then this is a grave to rob. If you lean heavier towards other sub-genres of terror tides, then this flick may bore you. I have an aunt and uncle that live in North Carolina. I hope they've never met this family.    

     

The Cleaning Lady

 

I kind of-sort of remember seeing the trailer and other things being released back in 2020 when The Cleaning Lady first came out, and I don't think it resonated with me that much. It just stewed in the back of my brain for a brief period of time and then just fizzled away. Now, five years later on Tubi, I ran across the fact that it's streaming on the platform and I recalled the cover art and the title-but not much else. It's mainly because the title "The Cleaning Lady" is pretty generic and lethargy inducing at it's highest potential-and I really wasn't to excited about what this chunk of horror really could provide me with. Man, was I fucking wrong. These are the types of films that start pulling on your hair about halfway through, and before you know it you're fucking bald and penniless. I ended up really getting engrossed in what this piece had to offer because the psychology behind it is immense and intense all the same-you know right when this thing starts that something is going to come full circle. You can feel it in your blood that something is highly disturbing about some young woman that puts a bunch of rats in a blender in the opening scene, and pours the remains into a glass dinner bowl. The gums that hold your teeth in place will shake and shiver at the idea of what happened during Shelly's home life because her mother is a fucking greedy, selfish bitch. Your nails will collect more dirt than normal harboring the fact that Alice is a beautiful blonde woman that could have any man that she wanted-but she just had to have some loser that's already married and doesn't know how to let go. All of these things transmorph and coagulate into a story about how deranged a child can become with the wrong parent(s), the wrong time and the wrong situations they find themselves in. I can't stress enough how bad I ended up feeling for Shelly more than I did Alice because what she was involved in, she had brought on herself-whereas what happened to Shelly was because of her mother. I will never understand how empty and soulless you could possibly be to stoop to those levels of disgusting behavior, but unfortunately, we all know what she forces Shelly to do for money when she was a teenager actually happens in life. Christ. The first few moments of The Cleaning Lady showcase Shelly putting a bunch of rats in a blender so she can presumably (what I thought initially) have something to eat. Well, we'll get to it at some point-but the smoothied up rat guts aren't for herself. We then see Alice laying in bed with who it seems like her husband at first, but he's some other woman's husband because he's a cheatin' sonofabitch. Alice calls someone on her phone about fixing her tub because it's clogged. Out of nowhere, Shelly shows up and shows Alice that her tub was ringed up with a massive hairball and that's what was causing the blockage. The film starts grinding it's gears and moving with steam from that point on because they start to form a relationship where Alice is paying Shelly to clean her apartment and Shelly just wants some kind of human connection. Any kind. Shelly starts noticing "imperfections" that Alice garners such as smoking and being in an affair with a married man-and this triggers her and her past with her mother-whom she has chained up in a massive shipping container in the backyard of their house that used to be their home until her mother decided one day to start selling Shelly's body for cash. And you guessed it... that's who the rat guts are for. Karmic food for her mother. Oh, after Shelly's face gets burned by one of her "clients" because he threw a pot of boiling water on her after she bit his hand, she tells her mother that she hates her to her face and she runs to the kitchen to get these massive scissors to cut her tongue out. Yeah. You can see why Shelly became "the cleaning lady". I could really spoil more about what happens in The Cleaning Lady about Alice and Shelly, but I've done enough. There are so many layers to The Cleaning Lady as whole that I just recommend you zits and zombies to watch it. It will surprise the hell out of you.