Ninja Zombie (AGFA/Bleeding Skull! dvd)

If you're a fan of SOV or just completely useless garbage in the cinema world, AGFA and Bleeding Skull! have been doing God's work when it comes to unearthing movies that pretty much no one remembers or has been totally lost to the ripples of time. Their track record so far has been phenomenal including the likes of Heavy Metal Massacre, The Soultangler, Scary Tales and Blonde Death among others-and I really hope they keep this frame of heart and quality up for weirdos like you and I. We need strange films like this in our lives because we don't want to watch stupid mainstream crap like Harry Potter or Twilight-we want to watch movies that have been made in someone's basement for $100 because that's the type of people we are. We want our films to be fun and different. It's not pertinent that we see eighteen year old boys with no shirts on that sparkle and shimmer in the moonlight either. We want them to either be decapitated or burned in a furnace in someone's utility room. Ninja Zombie doesn't deliver any of those examples, but it does however hand off a hilarious script, lower than the dust on your crawlspace's floor acting and some of the greatest choreographed fights between an undead martial artist and some Duncan MacLeod looking dude that sports terrible make-up of a red spider around his right eye. I could sit here and say zits and zombies that I paid attention to what little plot there is here, but in all honesty there's no reason to. I wasn't in this zone for a solid story-I was here to see a zombie with a black belt beat up on members of the foot-clan while eating chicken noodle soup and deep fried mushrooms.

This dirty, full framed print is classic.

Holy shit! Five dollars!

I've never seen anyone get killed by a spurred boot before. It's glorious.

Hahahaa-martial arts are hilarious!

In this corner we have "resting shit face", and over in this corner we have "1980's feathered hair Fonz"-Round 1! Fight! 

Sting is an awful tennis player.

Grave robbing... at two in the afternoon!

Watching an undead man with a mullet practice kung fu with a bo-staff is pretty gratifying.

Every urn from now on needs to be filled with Sprite or 7-UP.

Marty Friedman has a cute, zombified sister.

All I have to say here zits and zombies is that you can get away with not even paying attention to what's actually going on in Ninja Zombie. All you need to focus on is the fact that you're going to watch a movie from 1992 that has someone who was a martial arts master rise from his grave, beat the shit out of people dressed up like they are taking orders from Shredder along with a side plot about Jack's fiance' being upset that he was killed. Other than that, have a great time, stay up past your bedtime and give the finger to all the mainstream remakes and reboots that keep cluttering the theaters-these are the films that are truly fun to watch. Maybe I'll have another bowl of soup. I'm kind of in the mood for it.      

Christine (VHS)

Whenever horror and/or film fans in general have a discussion about some of the greatest directors of all time, almost every conversation should include John Carpenter. His legacy really has contained some of the best, if not the best string of films that anyone from any section of taste can absorb and at least get pulled into to instantly become a fan. In The Mouth of Madness, They Live, Halloween, Big trouble In Little China, The Thing-you could go on for weeks naming off his core offerings as a legendary director, but there are also some "in-between the cracks" movies that he has helmed over the years that are just as great that no one really seems to talk about. I believe Christine to be one of them. It is first and foremost an adaptation of a Stephen King novel, and it has Carpenter's fingerprints all over it. That is absolutely a great thing because I don't think anyone could have procured this piece any better than him. It is mainly about a 1957 Plymouth Fury that comes off the assembly line with a fiery red paint job while all the rest of them bore a bland khaki/eggshell color to them which should have automatically signaled everyone that something is up with this particular machine. And it did-which leads to a man dying and another one getting his hand smashed by the hood. Christine gets her name from a former owner who ended up killing himself in the car at some point, and then it is found out later that "she" made him do it. Arnie and Dennis are driving home from school one afternoon, Arnie becomes overly obsessed with it and buys it from some weird old guy without consulting his parents or anyone about it. He ends up getting together with the school's newest hottie, Leigh, and basically pours all of his teenage angst and energy into restoring Christine because that's what "she" wants. What a jealous, jealous little car.

Turn of the key-the hum of the engine.

George Thorogood? Hell yeah!

   Ashing your cigar in a newly built car? The hell is wrong with you?

That's noise pollution? You don't know the half of it, lady.

"You've got nothing to lose but your virginity."

Shut up and take your Bon Scott looking ass to the office.

"He was so mean, you could have poured boiling water down his throat and he would have pissed ice cubes."

Side strategy-I like it.

Cars just don't "come back"-oh, okay. I get it.

Just when parking it was getting good.

Oh boy-Arnie isn't going to like this.

Buddy and his boys end up completely destroying Christine in the restoration garage that Arnie stores her in (human feces on the dash and all) and this is where us as well as Arnie get to see her actual possessive powers-as well as her ability to restore herself from basically being a mangled heap of metal and glass. Not only is this a story about a demonic car that can do all of that and possess it's owner, but it's also about a lost teenage boy that wants to be on top and break free from his tyrannical parents. Christine is basically a metaphor for any angry male in their high school years latching onto something to make their reality better and more viable. Every guy during that time in their lives wants to feel number one-a hot babe and a hot car? You can't do any better than that, really. Unless you end up having to crush it with a damn bulldozer.   

Graduation Day

Having a slasher flick starring Vanna White is definitely a means of pulling curious horror fans into wanting to see what she could possibly do in that type of setting-particularly because all she really has been known for is the main woman on the game show Wheel Of Fortune for as long as anyone can remember. Her character is pretty minor in all honesty as really the main focus of Graduation Day is Patch Mackenzie and Christopher George, and the way this film flows really makes you bounce around about who is killing everyone on the track team throughout. This picture is loaded with red herrings and you can never really fully figure out who is doing the killing until the very end, and it's actually someone you wouldn't expect. Probably my favorite aspect about the kills themselves is that the person doing it has a stop watch and sets it for thirty seconds each time someone is going to die, because at the beginning a runner on the track team named Laura suddenly dies once she wins a thirty second, 200 meter race. So it could be anyone-the coach, Laura's sister, Kevin (Laura's boyfriend) and other various characters sprinkled within to make you zits and zombies scratch your head to put it together and find out who's doing it. That's really part of the fun in Graduation Day (apart from the cheesy campiness of the dialogue and acting) as well as how creative some of the kills themselves end up being, and I was presently surprised and satisfied with this entry at the end. Even though I do wish that Vanna White had a bigger part to make it just that much more of a novelty, she's still better off spinning vowels with Pat Sajak than starring in a slasher outing. 

This is the most 80's high school sports montage's ever cut together.

  Yeah, Laura! Thirty seconds!

Hey fat-ass, besides being to aggressive with the lady there, how about buying some shirts that actually fit. That looks like one you kept from fifth grade or something.

Why can't all chicks that go jogging have some metal in their headphones?

Should have stayed in Guam.

The feedback on your mic is terrible good sir.

No, Kevin's not beautiful-you are Ms. Ramstead.

I don't know what's going on here, but I think the coach is getting a little to excited about Sally being on those gymnastics bars.

Alright-I guess teachers have been banging their students longer than I realized.

"George Michael's wood working"? Now that's funny. 

 Once the moon rises and the sun sets, Graduation Day is a fantastic slasher film. It fits perfectly from the era it was born from, and boasts perfect pacing, kills that couldn't have been better within the context and a hefty "whodunit" layer because of all the red herrings it offers. Zits and zombies, if somehow you let this one pass you up after all these years like I did (unfortunately) go back to high school and re-live Graduation Day all over again. Just skip the four main years, buy a stop watch and start picking off the people on the track team one by one-just don't make it a sequel. No one has time for that non-sense.