The Sawyer Massacre (Steve Merlo/2022)

 

As a fan of the franchise overall (even though a few entries are questionable) and the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre being my favorite fear flick of all time, I have to sit here and say that I really enjoyed Steve Merlo's Sawyer Massacre. The psychotic mess with the family is here, Leatherface being himself is here, Grandpa is a sick bastard as you would entirely expect-it's the full tilt package when it comes to any kind of addition to this universe of perversity, cannibalistic hunger and humans being hacked up for barbeque. The Sawyer family is stocking up for the winter, and there's a lot of free range meat walking around. Time to put that apron on, gas up that chainsaw and listen to people scream for the better part of ninety minutes and this truly is a solid work that deserves to be sopped up with a dry sponge to get all of that southern grit, glucose and plasma stuck between your teeth. There are of course production and acting flaws as you would expect (and a lot of the time those things make the overall experience abysmal) but in the case of The Sawyer Massacre, I personally think that those things add to the charm here. I'd say there's two main things that just weren't implemented either for time or maybe no one could figure out how to do them properly, but there's no dinner scene and Leatherface didn't have his signature chainsaw dance that we've all come to know and love at the end of all of the entries-and I really would have liked those to be in here. But, even with those major points being missing, I can accept the fact of what I stated earlier being possible reasons for their exclusion, but also this is a fan made prequel, so maybe Leatherface just hadn't thought about doing a spinning, non-sensical jig with a heavy-assed piece of forestry equipment that's supposed to be used for chopping up trees and wood. But hey, even artists like him have a process. He just hadn't fully developed his craft yet.

 Three guys that are close friends end up going on a trip to get away from it all, and they end up going to Jimmy's Uncle's cabin in the middle of nowhere. Brent is the pretty boy, Jimmy has a broken heart and Gene kind of just felt like the glue in between them. Jimmy goes off by himself to think about some things that happened in making them go on the trip in the first place and to just be alone for awhile. He stumbles upon the house where Loraine and Allison live and I will say that I think Allison was perfect as this film's version of Sally, although I would have liked a lot more blood-curdling screams bellowing from her because I though she had the lungs for them. Other random people get led astray by Rex to the Sawyer house because people love to end up at their gas station for some reason and the family needs food for the winter. A family of two daughters and mom and dad, a local black woman and a young city couple all end up on the menu and get fucked up by Leatherface in various ways-and I honestly think my pick for the most brutal is probably when Brant's face gets filleted with a knife by Leatherface. There isn't an overabundance of gore here, but there's still enough to satiate the bloodthirst when the time comes to make some pulled human, I mean pork. The original Texas Chainsaw Massacre achieved everything it needed to with no gore at all, but what's here in the visceral department is great and doesn't bog the pace down one bit for what it's going for. There were a couple of times where I actually did physically cringe as well so just for that alone makes this an experience that every Texas Chainsaw Massacre fan should check out.

An ordinary day always becomes a nightmare.

No man, I think she's dead. Like you are now.

Road kill for food-I was thinking the same thing.

My God, that hideous wallpaper reminds me of the wallpaper from The Last Slumber Party.

     He's going to scare away the customers? I think the shit paint job on the sides of your building is already doing that.

There's nothing wrong with that nomadic spirit.

Right now I think I'd rather stay in Texas than go to Canada.

I'm expecting this kid to start kicking the air and yell "pancakes!" sometime soon.

You guys are going to be the bbq. Just letting you know.

Heeeeeerrrrreeee's Bubba!

I didn't think I would identify with any of these characters, but I had a similar pain in the past Jimmy. Close to the heart.

Upstairs is weird? Wait until you go downstairs.

He wants to wear your face, pretty boy!

A lot of life left in that house? That's a good one.

They're vegetarians? More like they're not cannibals.

Zits and zombies, all I can say is that if you are a fanatic about the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre (or just the entire franchise regardless of the insane turns that it's made over the years) The Sawyer Massacre lives up to being an unofficial prequel. I personally think that Steve Merlo and his crew did a fantastic job with putting in the work with this one, and it really shows. Like I said, I wish there was a dinner scene and Leatherface's chainsaw dance, but hey-you can't always get what you want in life. Or death. But what we did get here is a solid representation from an indie perspective of the Sawyer family doing their wicked things and producing their annual food for winter stasis and survival. I can't say that I blame them, but I'd rather go to the grocery store and spend the money. It's a lot less gross, there's no yelling and screaming (unless people have their unruly children there) and you don't have to waste any gas revving up the chainsaw. You can also buy real meat there instead of that 3-D printed bullshit. Now there's something that scares me. Meat from a printer. No thank you. Maybe I will put in my order for some human flesh chili. Hey Bubba, give me a gallon of that shit. I have a full family to feed here. 

Garden Tool Massacre

 

Garden Tool Massacre has plenty of enthusiasm, it just lacks the energy. The laziness of the production here drags this thing's feet across the barren asphalt that it sits on and doesn't have the overall strength to pick itself back up to start running. Or to even slightly attempt to take a brisk walk. I'm a big fan of SOV horror and I wanted to enjoy Garden Tool Massacre, but it lobs it's own genitals off before it even gives itself a chance at reproducing. That's a sad and depressing wave to layer on top of this shot in the dark from 1997, and darkness is no stranger to this flick. Pretty much every scene here is so freaking black you can barely see what's happening, and on top of that (which is the worst part here) is the audio. Sweet Moses is the audio ever horrendous. I honestly had no idea that this was a British offering until the first two nit wits you see onscreen after the opening start flapping their canker sore infested mouths about some guy named Mike coming over to the house and surprisingly, the fat guy doesn't want to eat any toast. Or anything for that matter. Actually, I don't think I saw him even go near any food at all which also made me push this down further into my blackened bathtub of muddied water. If there's a fat guy in your movie, he needs to eat something. It feels awkward if he doesn't. Besides that nonsense, there's an astonishing amount of kills that are on screen here with some decent gore and even a random guy that has no dialogue, sitting on the floor playing Duke Nukem 3D on some console. You can never clearly see it, but he's playing it on the t.v. in the living room and does get killed by the garden tool killer dude. His actual character name is Charles Scavolini, but let's be real here-in an SOV titled Garden Tool Massacre, names of people don't matter. The gore, nudity and specific charm do. 

Charles Scavolini decides one night to stand creepily outside his own bedroom window while his wife is sleeping soundly in their bed-steps inside slowly after an insanely strong lens flare blinds the cameraman, and proceeds to stab her repeatedly. After he kills the dumbest orderly and security guard ever hired by a mental facility, he's back out to kill the young dumbasses that have started to rent or buy (or whatever) the house that him and his wife used to live in before he decided to slay her with a knife instead of his penis. Yeah, I said that. The fat guy and the other guy throw the absolute lamest party I would have ever walked out on after playing some Duke with the guy sitting on the floor because fuck getting my head chopped off with either an electric hedge trimmer or manual ones. Normally I really dig awful SOV flicks like this, but this one just doesn't have it. It doesn't live up to it's names full potential like it should and that is seriously disappointing. There is eventually a Garden Tool Massacre, but it's not as gory or as graphic as I hoped it would be. The cover art kicks ass though. I'll give it kudos for that.

     Wow, what a lens flare.

Don't get turned on, just stab her!

Aren't you going to scream?

C'mon Melvin, keep moppin' that floor.

Yeah, um-so, how do you knock a guy out just by holding his head up against the wall?

The phone never rang and yet you pick it up and start talking to someone on the other end. Ooookay.

So far, no one has been killed by any garden tools. Only kitchen knives.

I'm surprised the fat guy doesn't want any toast.

When did British guys start wearing sombreros?

Let's look for bottles of liquor in the garage-in real time!

I hope you guys get slaughtered with shears and an electric hedge trimmer so this movie can kind of live up to it's name.

That ring tone sounds like Solid Snake's radio in Metal Gear Solid.

Zits and zombies, as much of a fan of SOV as I am, I still didn't get into this one to much. It doesn't have the pizzazz of the Video Violence films and certainly lacks the gore and kills of something like Killing Spree or on the more extreme side of things-Black Past or The Burning Moon. All of those films are above and beyond anything that you would expect a filmmaker that has no budget and no idea what they are doing going to be able to pull off, and that's ultimately why I'm going to make Garden Tool Massacre sit in the corner facing the wall instead of joining the rest of the kids for recess because unfortunately, it's the child that no one wants to play with. Sure, it will gain some friends out of pity and poor taste, but it's not climbing to the upper echelon of this group and it's certainly getting picked last to be on anyone's kickball team. Hey teach, where's the hall pass? I gotta take a piss and maybe wank for a minute. These strange feelings are building up inside and I have to let them out. This boy is searching for something better.   

Death Rink

 

I'm reeling right now. The only positive thing I can say about Death Rink is that it made me feel a little bit nostalgic. Way back when I was 18, I worked at a skate rink around here named Skate West, and man do I have plenty of good and not-so-good memories being employed behind the scenes at that place. I never thought of all sanctions, on here, that I would even need to say something about the experiences working there, but some of the actual "labor" (if you want to call it that) that takes place in this throw away terror flick for 80% of the 74 minutes it spits in your face with is really what I had to do working there. The owner was always drunk all the time, he would always try to get in the pants of the tall, leggy blonde that worked with us off and on and his mom would show up once in awhile to yell at him in front of all of us while we were cleaning up or getting things ready for a birthday party the next day. The topper that I will never forget until the day that my empty little heart finally stops beating is the time he invited me up to his apartment where he lived upstairs above the DJ booth. Yep. There was a big, double paned window where no one could ever see into it and everyone always tried to theorize about why it was there-I found out that day. It was a literal full scale apartment with a shower and a fridge and everything-the walls and the floor were covered in this fucking atrocious 70's brown and orange carpeting that made me feel like vomiting and gave me a surreal feeling of vertigo, not being able to process the fact that this inebriated bastard that owned and ran the skating rink lived upstairs. Fucking weird, man. I would never be able to do that.

  But now that we're here to talk about how many cinematic sins in which Death Rink commits, let's start getting down to it. Because there's a lot of them. I'm going to get going with the main one and just say it-it's goddamn boring. The biggest shit stain on this film's hands is that it bores the audience to death faster than when the "kills" start finally happening, and that's when there's only roughly 25 minutes left of the 74. So the first three quarters make you agonize and writhe in your own salty tears of tedium and you'll be saying "is it over yet?" quicker than if you had diarrhea after eating a whole crave case in one sitting. That's just for starters. The dialogue is fucking flat, the score is haphazardly generic and the acting-my God the acting-is so harshly wooden that I could most likely cut through it with a chainsaw. Everyone just felt stiff and unsure of themselves most of the time which was heavily evident onscreen and weighed this production down almost just because of how abysmally boring this fucking thing is. I really can't stress enough that this might have been better off as a 30 minute short as apposed to a 74 minute one, and the reveal at the end of who's wearing the alien mask snuffing everyone out is so unpolished and full of blemishes. So frustrating. I really wanted to like Death Rink, but the ball bearings in my skate wheels weren't oiled up enough for this one.

Was this filmed at a skate rink in New Mexico? I saw a New Mexico flag.

Ooooh, roller skates with eerie music layered over them. Spooky.

That baggie doesn't have anything in it. Oh, the rest of it is in the toilet.

A pair of sunglasses, a switchblade and a dimebag. That's one helluva night at a skating rink.

"Toliet's kinda trippin."

How desperate are you that you're going to smoke a tea bag as a replacement for weed? Fucking loser.

Dude, you don't put mustard on pizza. You use ranch.

So, a kid died in the middle of the rink back in the 80's because he a had a seizure from the strobe lights and speed skaters ran him over. They didn't see him and stop to help him up or call an ambulance? What the hell?

The phone rings. Answer it. The phone rings. It's a crank call. The phone rings. It's Rachel's boyfriend. The phone rings and is anything ever going to happen in this fucking movie?

None of you girls are hot. None of you.

Zits and zombies, Death Rink just outright sucks. The majority of the film is the phone ringing and someone that works there answers it with some guy screaming "Satan" on the other end because he feels like it I guess. That plot point pretty much goes nowhere as does basically everything else in this flick. There's nothing here that prompts me to want to delve deeper into the characters populating this microcosm of a world because there's nothing here but a douche-bag named Daley that wants to bang every girl he works with (which I don't know why you would) and is so desperate to smoke something. Anything. French is named French because he dips popcorn in mustard and puts mustard on pizza so French makes sense (runs fingers very hard down the front of my face and slowly lets the word "why" out of my mouth at this moment) as well as Wendy, Cara, Alicia and Rachel who are the main ladies that are just here to be here. As cannon fodder. Well, besides one-but I still won't spoil it in case you want to waste your time with this biohazard trash can stuffed beyond the brim with pathetically radioactive tree stumps. I'm trying to say that Death Rink isn't worth the 74 minutes it takes to skate a round with. Lace those wheels up with something else.         

Auntie Lee's Meat Pies

 

If you've ever seen the movie Microwave Massacre, you know that cannibal flicks have the potential to be goofy and over the top. Hell, any kind of film can be that way if it chooses to be. Auntie Lee's Meat Pies chose to go that route and then some considering how many tonal shifts that it holds onto during it's duration. 100 minutes for a movie like this sounds like a long time, but I somehow didn't find it to be a chore or a grind to get through. The overall pace was pretty quick, even with the bizarre filler in between to carry the viewer where it wants them to go on this journey of Pat Morita as the only cop in an entire town (literally) Michael Berryman playing the mentally challenged grounds keeper for Auntie Lee's property, and Karen Black as Auntie Lee herself. On the surface here for about the first hour it's a pretty strong, off-center cannibal movie with some truly awful ADR, cinematography and dialogue, smoking hot ladies portraying Auntie Lee's nieces (particularly Ava Fabian as Magnolia) and very serial killer-esque glints here and there of all of the women in the house shoving and stuffing various body parts through out the kitchen and all over the house in general. Towards the end after the detective that's looking for Bob Evans shows up at the front door (yes, there is a guy in this flick where his character's name is Bob Evans) Magnolia lets him in and distracts him to the point of not noticing any of the severed limbs in the cabinets and the fridge as they are talking and she is pouring them some red wine. How grotesquely classy. But right around the hour mark, this thing gets really fucking weird after this metal band gets the tires shot out by two of the girls and have no choice but to follow them to Auntie Lee's house. Sorry guys-your band sucked anyway. That demo you played was atrocious.

Every girl has their own room in the house and each one is more strange than the next. The first one you see though is for "Baby" which is a fucking chick in her twenties, acting like she's a few months old or something, and they bring her down to the dinner table in this gigantic stroller. Gnarly. She also drinks from an oversized baby bottle that has no business existing and every inch of her room has all of these random naked girl dolls with their arms and legs intertwined with the chain link fencing that makes up her walls. With black lighting behind them. Now that I think about it, all of their rooms have black lighting in them. The craziest one of them all though has to be Coral's room. The room has an altar with these gigantic snakes on either side of it and a glass case in the middle with a relatively large rattlesnake living in it, just waiting to eat. Anything. Her and one of the idiot band members goes in there, she pulls a white rat out of one of the snakes mouths, feeds it to the real one, and then does some body painting on the guy before these massive, mostly off screen snake fangs come down from what seems to be the ceiling and gorges him in the fucking chest. What a wild goddamn movie.

Karen Black and Pat Morita? This is going to be quality.

 That gun that just shot out your tire had no recoil at all.

This dude with the cigar looks like Sarge from Quake III.

A sexy brunette with a lever action in the trunk? My kind of girl.

That was the worst rooster call I've ever heard. Oh wait, it's a donkey. Nevermind.

His name is Bob Evans? C'mon now.

"The only ties I've ever had, I donated to Goodwill."

What?! How often do these girls lead men into the pantry that it's booby trapped with a decapitation machine?

I'm pretty sure the fertilizer she uses is made from dead men's body parts somehow.

Good morning, Magnolia-my third arm is saluting you right now.

Zits and zombies, I don't know what to ultimately say about Auntie Lee's Meat Pies. I enjoyed watching it for this initial run, but I don't think I'll ever have a reason to come back to it. Let me say this-I was going to blind buy it on blu-ray from Vinegar Syndrome, but I'm glad I watched it on Tubi first because now I probably won't. It is pretty weird and fun to see Pat Morita of all people in a film like this because he really doesn't strike me as an actor that would want to be in an insane cannibal movie where he gets his hand ground up in a garbage disposal, but hey-he probably needed work and money at the time and he did star in a couple of Andy Sidaris flicks as well so maybe he did have a taste for human flesh, hot lead and heavy bewbs. He was a man after all. And so am I. Auntie Lee's Meat Pies is a really bizarre, fun time if you're in the specific mood for a nutty cannibal film from the early 90's, and like every other movie like this it has a cult following, but I won't be joining and worshipping this piece with the rest of them. Oh, Karen Black is a satanist here too which is why she makes the meat pies in the first place. You can't have any pudding if you don't eat your meat.    

Halloween At Aunt Ethel's

 

I picked Halloween At Aunt Ethel's purely on a whim to watch on Tubi recently since I somehow had some extra time-and it wasn't quite as bad as I thought it was going to be. It wasn't what I was expecting, but not to bad. Not to bad indeed. It has many, many flaws even though I contemplated tracking down a physical copy when it was over, but I just couldn't get myself to dig deep enough to be convinced that it needed to be friends with the rest of what I have already. The main issue I have with Halloween At Aunt Ethel's is the character of Ethel herself and that damned ending. I really, really didn't care for the way that it just stopped abruptly after Melissa finds Ethel's cursed diary in her mailbox. There should have been at least a couple more minutes to flesh out what happened with Ethel having to send 31 souls to redeem herself because it's just so vague that it ends up being utterly worthless. To the viewer, to the universe this film resides in and to anyone who is interested. Honestly, this piece as a whole was nowhere near being bad enough to be on my worst of the year when that time comes, but for me personally this was a purgatory flick. I didn't like Ethel as the main villain here because she just was weird for the sake of being weird and not much else. She kidnaps and kills kids during Halloween to make her famous (or infamous) pickled chocolates (which sounds fucking gross anyway) and is just a goofy-assed version of the witch from Hansel and Gretel when you get down to it. That's mainly why Halloween At Aunt Ethel's falls flat for me-it lacks a lot of substance that could have made it great. Just because Mandy and Melissa are both hot doesn't mean I'm going to watch this ever again.

The urban legend of Aunt Ethel continues to live on as she kidnaps kids and makes them into sweets, treats and candies for all to eat. Say that shit five times fast. Melissa moves into the new town of whatever it's supposed to be, becomes friends with the sexy Mandy and she shows her what's going down around where they live. This is back story that isn't in the movie that I just made up. It makes sense though. When you first see Mandy and Melissa, they are already friends and are wearing the same school uniform. Mandy says hello to her boyfriend when he shows up by giving him a blow job right in front of Melissa and for everyone to see without a care in the world. What a greeting. They end up going to a Halloween party later and of course there's lots of making out, sex, alcohol and cheating. What a surprise. No one gives a shit about that though. You just want to see Ethel cut up little kids and carve their body parts to make candy. Hell, that's what I watched this mediocre slab for. She also has severed heads in the fridge like Dahmer as well. 

Of course this starts on Halloween night. There's jack-o-lanterns everywhere.

Did this guy just say he wants to do "butt stuff" with his girlfriend?

Going into a shed where a saw is going off by itself isn't smart. But hey, you thought your boyfriend's dick was a candy bar too so this doesn't surprise me.

Looks like Aunt Ethel has more candy to make.

Mandy and Melissa-I'm a fan.

Don't worry Melissa-I don't know what "putting this twerk on fleek" means either.

So Aunt Ethel is basically the old lady version of Dahmer.

  Pickled chocolates? Hell, no. Just-no.

"The balls of the feet are the best!"

Dude-Melissa is way hotter than that chick. She needs to lose that nose ring anyway.

"Doctor Dick is in the house!"

Gets pretty lonely playing checkers by yourself, doesn't it?

Zits and zombies, Halloween At Aunt Ethel's was quite okay. It's not going to blow open a new genre in the horror community or change anyone's life-it's just going to entertain you for a little while while you sit there and soak in the fact that Aunt Ethel is a damn psychopath that enjoys killing and eating little children in tandem with using their main body parts to make a horrendous sounding snack named pickled chocolates. Fucking awful. There's no redeeming qualities here to speak of unless you throw the cinematography in there because that was very solid, but overall there's nothing memorable here besides maybe Mandy greeting her boyfriend with some head and Melissa just being hot because she is. In other words, Halloween At Aunt Ethel's needed more substance to be great because all it is is a try hard M.I.L.F, lots of boobs hanging out for you to see and Ricky whacking it outside of every female's bedroom window-including Aunt Ethel's. My God. Toss this in the purgatory bin. One time for one time only. 

Hellraiser (2022 Hulu Original)

 

As Hellraiser in general has always been one of my favorite horror franchises from the 80's (even though most of the sequels are laughably terrible in multiple ways) and with the fact that I pretty much despise every remake or reboot ever done in general, I was very skeptical about a new Hellraiser being put together in the light of that stance. Some could argue that the original does warrant a remake for certain reasons, but it's a horror classic as of now whether you like it or not and it needs to be left alone just like every other property that may or may not eventually fall into the greedy assed hands of Hollyweird these days as a cash grab to prey on the old school fans of whatever it might be. Cynicism can lead to pain or pleasure, and I felt like this new Hellraiser as a Hulu original had a little of both. The new girl that tried to fill the shoes of Kirsty Cotton, Riley, was honestly okay as our lead here and I felt like she was kind of flat and all over the place. That doesn't necessarily mean Odessa A'zion  put in a terrible performance because she was very solidly cast here, I just personally didn't think her character had much to her besides being a drunken loser that pops pills all the time. I won't spoil it if you haven't had a chance to ingest this two hour piece yet, but there's a twist with her boyfriend and another big character in the third act that you could possibly see coming if you're really paying any attention. Really, at this point, I was just wanting to see the cenobites and Jamie Clayton as the new Pinhead, and she really kicked some serious ass here and deserves all the credit she's been getting for her portrayal of the hellish icon.

The puzzle box returns once again at the hands of Roland Voight, who is an insanely wealthy business investor and art collector that wants nothing more than to experience quite literally every pleasure that could possibly be felt by the human body and then some. He wants it all, and doesn't care who's blood he feeds the box with as long as he's able to gain the highest possible pleasure imaginable. But, of course, with stakes and desires that reach such limits, there's a price to pay. I won't say what that price is, but when I saw the stipulation that went along with such a figure, I said out loud as my dad and I kept watching, "I'd rather be dead to be honest". And he agreed with me. When it comes down to it, there's no amount of selling yourself that could be worth distorting your soul for the ultimate in sensibilities. There needs to be boundaries and limits, and without those, well-that's where Pinhead, and now her, cenobites come in and fill in the gaps. Their way-not your way, their way. "What's your pleasure, sir?" Nothing, I'm good-thanks. Just leave me out of it.

Pinhead cares not about money.

Solve the puzzle box Joey. You know you want to.

Voight needs blood for the leviathan, Joey. Get ripped by the chains.

There's always a rich asshole looking to make a profit.

Yes, please take the puzzle box. Just don't let the appraiser solve it, though.

"That blade was meant for you."

The cenobites are coming for you, Matt. You better be fucking ready.

Cenobites aren't angels. Roland was a fucked up guy.

Well Serena, you don't have to worry about your rotting lungs now. Being stabbed by the puzzle box and all.

Do you really think going to Voight's mansion is a good idea?

I think Matt's a little dead. And skinless.

Some guy is living in the walls. We all know who that is.

There it is, zits and zombies. I can't hold it back that I did enjoy this new Hellraiser more than I thought I would. Jamie Clayton was excellent as the new Pinhead and there were nods to a few of the older films, specifically the second one when the leviathan did actually show up and that far away view it showed of the mansion and the bottom tip of it coming down through the clouds really reminded me of the labyrinth towards the end. The land around the mansion from far away looked like a winding maze as well which also calls to that same scene from part two. If you've been on the fence about this new Hellraiser, give it a shot. You might be surprised as the production values will most likely suck you in with their amazing make-up, lighting and cinematography as well as the dazzling pain and succinct pleasure will keep you planted so that Pinhead can pierce your neck all the way through with one of the long pins from the top of her head. She has such sights to show you.

Switchblade Sisters (Arrow blu-ray)

 

I may have mentioned this before, but Jack Hill really has become one of my favorite cult/exploitation directors in recent years, mostly due to me randomly watching Pit Stop and Spider Baby on Amazon Prime, which led me to eventually getting those on blu-ray as well for the shelf. Another favorite of mine from him that I had to snag a copy of was The Swinging Cheerleaders, which I've always sort of considered to be "exploitation lite"-all the dirt and grime of sleazy people being sleazy people, but with a lot less violence and nudity. The Swinging Cheerleaders has heart, and no one could ever take that away from that film. But then here comes Switchblade Sisters. I had a feeling when I did a blind buy of the Arrow blu-ray that I was going to be into it just based on the fact that it was directed by Jack Hill, but I didn't think I would end up heralding it as one of his crowning achievements. My favorite from him up to this point has been Pit Stop, but honestly now it's a close second. Switchblade Sisters just gets everything that it needs to right and I feel like it's an all killer, no filler kind of deal where the run time and pace feels very fast and The Jezebels implode on themselves at the end for multiple reasons that just keep building up and building up to a healthy and battered climax of exactly where I thought it was going to go-and I loved every minute of it. Oh, and I thought it was amusing that Bob from That 70's Show is in here as Hook (one of the main guys in the Silver Dagger gang) when he was young, twenty and ripped. Yeah, dwell on that for a moment. Mr. Pinciotti with lean muscle and terrible 70's hair.

Switchblade Sisters focuses on the Silver Daggers, a teenage gang in high school consisting of the toughest, rowdiest bunch of dudes walking the streets and they have the Dagger Debs by their side to cover both ends of the spectrum. Dom and Lace are together forever, but when Maggie gets wrapped up in all of their bullshit after they decide to rough up a little corner restaurant that serves burgers and hotdogs, Dom takes it upon himself to thrust his loins onto Maggie in her parents apartment. I mean she is hot, but have some respect man. It all starts constructing itself into self destruction when Maggie slowly starts becoming the leader of the debs after the entire group gets arrested and they hilariously beat the shit out of the female warden and her girls in the juvenile slammer they end up in. The warden was sort of like a woman version of John Vernon from Killer Klowns From Outer Space. Nasty and just creepy. I wouldn't want her ass to strip search me either if I was a chick in prison. Maybe she was Officer Mooney's sister. It's possible. But patch keeps trying to convince Lace that Maggie is against her and she isn't her friend, and she eventually buys into it towards the end and transitions into one helluva chick fight. One of the best I've ever seen. And with switchblades. Hell yeah. 

Even bad graffiti is still good graffiti.

Sharpening a knife and putting on perfume. What a mean girl.

Trying to repo a t.v. for forty bucks. You fat, sleazy bastard.

The gang's all here. Literally.

I've never seen a bunch of girls as street toughs before, but I'm into it.

"Get your hands off the fruit, faggot!"

Did the fat warden lady just fart? In the middle of a prison fight?

He's the leader of the Silver Daggers and he's in your apartment-so you can't just kick him out?

Damn this principle is a square.

Dude, Crabs-there's no way you could ever get a girl like Maggie. No way.

Road Rash at the roller rink!

Mao-fuck that guy.

Lacey has still got it.

Zits and zombies, I stand by what I said earlier. This is my new favorite from Jack Hill until I eventually purchase and watch all of his other material. But for now, Switchblade Sisters reigns supreme in my books. Pit Stop has a similar feel to it with people being tough and rigid and fighting all the time, but Switchblade Sisters takes the cake because of the scope of everyone involved. And I just think that chicks fighting each other with knives is just a tad more exciting than Sid Haig being a dingy. Well, maybe not that in particular, but you get what I'm saying. There are more characters here to fill out everything that's going on and this flick has an armored car where a black chick blasts a .50 cal at everyone in the middle of the street and escalates the gang wars higher than I thought they would go. If you want more guns and less knives, even though the title suggests there are more blades than bullets, here's your ride. Maggie could be your escort. She's a tough broad.

The Stylist (Arrow blu-ray)

 

I've fallen away from it in the last bunch of years, but I've always had a heavy handed interest in psychology and serial killers. Maniac from 1980 is an amazing character study of sorts into the mind and actions of a repressed man with some serious mommy issues where Frank Zito ends up having sex with and scalping various women on the dirty assed streets of New York in an attempt to quell such feelings and miss-wirings of his fucked brain. Overbearing and overprotective parents can have massively negative effects on the children that they have and raise because they are just hidden from everything and it may become a release later in life to just destroy themselves. Or others. The Stylist is basically the female, hairstylist version of Maniac and I really loved pretty much everything about this flick because of that aspect alone. I already dig stronger female lead characters in general (especially in horror of course) what with my two favorites being American Mary and Excision, and I can very easily add The Stylist to that list. Claire has some very dark underlying problems that aren't entirely explained here (maybe a second viewing is warranted) but you get the idea that she may have inherited this huge house from her parents or family somehow that has a full blown wine cellar and everything else that goes along with it which lends her to having all the room in the world for her scalps, mannequins, glass head figures and anything else she hides down there to perpetuate her mental instabilities. She does tell a client at some point that her mom passed away when she was seventeen and her dad left when she was born so there's that, but the exposition never went any deeper than that.

I have to mention the score and the cinematography for The Stylist is nothing short of superb and both of them will suck you into wanting to watch this until the end. You can feel Claire's tension and anxiety when she is going to scalp or kill someone, you can feel how bizarre and disturbed she is when there is no music at all and the bright colors and giallo inspired lighting in a lot of scenes really meld a lot of different influences together to make this a fantastic psychological horror experience. The ending was pretty much what I was expecting and it kind of left things open for interpretation as to what happened to Claire beyond that, but it all builds up to her doing all of the bridesmaids hair and the bride herself, Olivia, which she becomes obsessed with because she believes her life is clean and spotless so she wants to be like her. And it gets really wrong when she breaks into her bedroom and puts one of her nighties on and proceeds to masturbate with one of her toys in her bed. Yeah-Olivia has something to look forward to after the wedding is over.

    Wine while you get your hair cut? Cooper's Hawk, take notes.

Your outside trust is probably going to backfire on you. I can feel it.

Well, now we all know that Frank Zito has a sister.

 Can't wait to see what insanity is down in Claire's cellar.

I guess we all really do want what we can't have.

Saving your life? Maybe scalping it.

If your fiancé is going to turn into a groomzilla, then he's already a beta.

Really? That's your hairstyle for your wedding? I've seen chicks with that as their regular one.

Why scalp Dawn at the coffee shop? Why not Olivia?

There's no going back now.

I'd rather kill my demons than cover them up.

My worst nightmare-a club with tons of random people everywhere and terrible music.

Zits and zombies, if you're a fan of serial killers, strong female leads, Maniac and criminal psychology, The Stylist is a great alternative route to take. I really loved everything that this tale presented and even though the run time came very close to the two hour mark, it almost didn't feel like it. The pace did burn very slowly at specific times (particularly when Claire broke into people's homes to almost scalp them, kill them or to just absorb personal things from their lives) but that's all part of the character building for her in this offering and it wouldn't be able to stand without it. Just watch it the next time you go to a salon to get your hair done-Claire might want to take a little to much off the top. 

Girls Nite Out (Arrow blu-ray)

 

I'm all in when it comes to a slasher I've never heard of-especially one like Girls Nite Out that has been mostly left on the floor to rot into obscurity. I really dug this one a lot, but it wasn't without it's flaws like many films in this sub-genre of slicin' and dicin'. It has the heavy air of a whodunnit because I honestly thought I had it pegged with who the crazy was wearing the bear mascot costume, taking chances and stabbing girls with all the rage and hatred in the world. But I was duped twice, and by the end it really wasn't who I thought it was going to be. I'm obviously not going to spoil it here because that's not the kind of reviewer I am, but I will tell you zits and zombies that when you watch Girls Nite Out for the first time, you probably won't expect who the grizzly suit donning killer is either. So at least I can say that the villain was hidden in plain sight very well with how it was written because you literally won't know who it is until the last minute-and they are fucking psychotic. I actually could feel the rage in this person's voice and the body language they were employing when the reveal came around, and that made it even more terrifying. The whites of their eyes, man. The whites of their eyes.

The basis of Girls Nite Out is really a standard college party, coming of age kind of film that takes up a heavy chunk of this piece for the better part of the first half and the pace is slow. It feels grind heavy with all of it's typical late teen, college characters populating the world that this takes place in and of course, what kind of film would this be without lots of drinking, making out and cheating. Plenty of Old No. 7 is guzzled down by the idiots filling the cast and pretty much every girl is getting some from a guy that isn't their boyfriend and every guy is getting some from a girl that isn't their girlfriend along with a scene where our main basketball team captain performs a dutch oven on his actual girlfriend while they are laying in bed together. It was unexpected, random, and it made me laugh because when you're that age, why the hell not. You'll probably never be with that person for the rest of your life after your university days are over, so you might as well fart on them during an intimate moment. I wish I could go back to those days. On second thought, I'd rather stay where I'm at and let out some gas in the privacy of my own home. For safety reasons.

It's always good to get invested in a book.

Mr. Cavanaugh pulled an Epstein!

That bear is looking for some honey, honey.

What a ball game of basket? What about a ball game of base?

Getting dumped can ruin you man, so roll your dick back up and start hunting for some new pelt.

I think every parent is wasting their money when they send their kids to college.

I believe you're a terrible radio host.

People becoming victims of a society gone berserk is exactly why punk and metal exist.

Every party has a pooper.

"C'mon Hagen, let's go drink some women."

No one will forget how much of a fat asshole you are either.

This may be the first time I've ever seen a guy do a dutch oven to his girlfriend in any movie before.

Being a cynic is great. You can never have fun anymore once you're there though.

  Zits and zombies, Girls Nite Out is a pretty decent slasher if you're a fan of the genre. It's by no means going to change the world or your viewpoint if you're not into these kinds of flicks in the first place because the pace is really sluggish and pretty much all of the kills are off screen, but it's honestly still worth your time to check it out at least once. If anything, you can see the two main numbskulls here in their underwear wearing cowboy hats chugging Jack Daniels and shooting plunger-tipped arrows into the round, sexy buttocks of some chick on a poster hanging in their dorm room. Hilarious times. Reminds me of a party I went to years ago where one of my friends literally stuffed himself into one of the cabinets of the entertainment center in the hotel it was being held at. Those memories never fade away.