Witchtrap (blu-ray)

Every written/video review that I have absorbed of Witchtrap always makes sure that you, the audience member knows that it is NOT a sequel to Witchboard (which, of course does have an actual follow up) even though they were both directed by the same man-Kevin Tenney. This fantastic slice of late 80's horror cinema also stars scream queen Linnea Quigley in a minor role instead of her being a main focus. Basically, a man inherits a mansion that he can't sell or tear down because of zoning issues and wants to turn it into a bed and breakfast-but there's a catch. It's haunted by the previous owner who was an evil son-of-a-bitch and the film opens up with a Vegas magician getting thrown out the window by said ghost and there is blood. Plenty of blood. The worst team of police officers, detectives and parapsychologists have a meeting with the guy that owns the house, a black guy gets a woody because of Linnea Quigley and then they get their gear together and head over to the mansion. Once they have their initial "sit down" and try and contact the spirit of the evil bastard that lived in the house before he died, all hell breaks loose on our select group of investigators complete with slow-mo ghost shots in mirrors, half faded apparitions in a camera lens and a sexy redheaded medium that constantly gets attacked by the ghost pretty much every time she's in her bedroom trying to sleep or change clothing. Man the 80's were great. 

"The Presence"? I like Witchtrap better.

   I dig old victorian houses like this.

Carno? From Phantasmagoria? Is that you?

  You said that God gave her a gift, but you're an athiest-contradictions abound.

That black man has a hankering for some white chocolate.

I was wondering the same thing-why are you here?

 "You love anything in a skirt."

"You're going up against Casper the fucking ghost. You don't need a detective-you need Bill Murray for Christ's sake."

 Elwin-I thought you were Michael Anthony from Van Halen.

Contacting spirits can't be this easy.

It's okay Elwin... I have a stiffy from Ms. O'Shay too.

You couldn't get up to avoid getting run over? You really couldn't?

Witchtrap is a real treat in the land of 80's terror, and has pretty much anything you would want as a fan or a newbie. You get to see Linnea completely nude before she gets in the shower, as well as getting stabbed in the neck with the shower head after the water gets turned off. This celluloid strip also contains plenty of pentagrams, dark altars and inverted crosses pinned next to the ghost of Lauter himself physically melting onto the floor after bursting into flames as the container he was caught in busted. Amazing special effects. One hell of an ending. And the build up as such made it all the more gratifying. A final side note as well to end this review of Witchtrap-the overall atmosphere through the whole time they are in the house is actually somewhat creepy because there's barely any music and all you hear are noises from the house, them talking and clocks ticking. That's really it. Engrossing. If you've never experienced this piece, get to it already. Just don't get thrown out of a second story window.     

Bikini Girls vs. Dinosaurs

There really is no solid way to begin this review of Bikini Girls vs. Dinosaurs. I'm just going to say that my sights were set pretty damn low on this picture (if that's what you want to even call it) and sort of just went with the waves for this offering. I could tell zits and zombies that the people involved in putting this together behind the scenes had a blast doing so, even though the overall quality is absolutely piss poor-this is the type of indie or underground film that you can't even really make fun of or pull apart (unless you're just a heartless bastard) because you have to sit back and commend the creative energy and do-it-yourself poise that it took to put this 51 minute piece together in spite of everyone knowing that this may end up being a fucking horrible idea to begin with. I actually couldn't really find much about this online anywhere except for maybe that this production was originally a fan fic of some kind? I guess? I don't read fan fiction anyways so I'm not even going to bother trying to find the one that the idea for this even came from. Basically, this starts with what looks like the inside of a bunch of fighter cockpits from Wing Commander III, and the CGI thereafter is absolutely god-awful. It looked better in the original Jurassic Park and that was from fucking 1993. So you figure it out.

What the hell? Am I playing Wing Commander III on the 3DO?

 Aren't you supposed to be looking for Kilrathi? Not chicks in bikinis flying space fighters?

OMG! Blue screen of death!!

A dude dressed like that doesn't like women. I'm sorry.

Man, Deathlok really let himself go.

 A man of science? I'm pretty sure you're a woman, but..... okay.

The brunette and the redhead are hot. The blonde-not so much.

Data, Warf-hit the warp drive. Oops, wrong sci-fi series.

Have fun getting a radio signal 75 million years in the past.

Holy Jesus-the dinosaurs in Dinosaur 3-D Adventure look better than this T-rex does!

 I can't even lie about the plot because I really couldn't tell what was going on-all I know is that two out of the three bikini girls are hot and they somehow ended up going through a black hole that put them 75 million years back in the past on Earth. They karate chop one dinosaur and it falls over, they trick a T-rex into falling off of a cliff by throwing it a wedge of cheese (I don't even know where the hell they got that from) and kill a triceratops by distracting it with a spinning fridge in mid-air??? I absolutely don't get it. The point is that there isn't one. I really wouldn't recommend any of you zits or zombies to watch Bikini Girls vs. Dinosaurs because that's just it-it has no point. It was basically put together by the people involved because they could, and not because they should. Purgatory cinema at it's purest.

Caesar and Otto's Deadly Xmas

There are many things that make Caesar & Otto's Deadly Xmas a great time-it's Christmas themed, the gore is good and plentiful, the laughs aren't completely terrible and the two main characters are likable idiots who kind of just stumble through their situations. It's fun. It also has a fucking mountain of cameos from old school horror icons including Brinke Stevens, Linnea Quigley and Felissa Rose to Robert Z'Dar , Lloyd Kaufman and Shawn C. Phillips (yes, he's actually physically in this film unlike that piece of sewer cake Camp Blood 4) and even wetmovie1 (Youtube) is in it for about three seconds, and I actually pointed at the screen and yelled "holy shit, wetmovie1 is in here?! What the hell?" I thoroughly enjoyed this picture mainly because it didn't even come close to taking itself seriously and I pretty much had a smile on my face the entire run time. The guy that played Caesar and Otto's dad seriously could pass as Alex Lifeson's twin from the band Rush-his acting was few and far between and was dryer than a Walmart chicken breast, but it was still something that added to the overall feel of this flick being fun and entertaining. The plot is dumb which is to be expected with something like Caesar & Otto's Deadly Xmas, and it really just revolves around them getting a job at some shitty basement-run traveling Santa corporation named Xmas Enterprises which ends up being a front for a shitty satanic cult. Otto is obsessed with some mediocre looking chick named Allison that he randomly met fifteen years prior, and he somehow ends up finding her in their journeys passing out fliers for the Xmas Enterprise. Allison lives in a car with her kids and sells used shaving cream on the side of the road. Yeah. How does she even pay her car insurance. Who knows and who cares.

Hang'em high, injun. Hang'em high.

Yeah-she's hot if you like chicks with clown make-up.

Caesar and Otto's Thanksgiving dinner... funded by Dollar Tree.

Damn-Linnea Quigley aged terribly.

   Alex Lifeson sure went downhill after Rush retired.

 Hey, Otto-your hot friend can ride her motorcycle over me if she wants.

Caesar's grandpa is Lloyd Kaufman?! That's fucken awesome!

 You know you're talented when both of your arms have been chopped off and you can still hot-wire a car and drive off with it.

Well hello Roberta Jenkins. Say hello to my penis (ahem).... my friend Johnny.

Yes! Coolduder!

 Linnea: "I was blacklisted." Demian: "For What?" Linnea: "Turning 40."

Wow-just like Silent Night, Deadly Night. 

I know some of you zits and zombies would rather have more horror than comedy, but if you're in the mood for something that flips that idea then Caesar & Otto's Deadly Xmas was written and produced just for you. There are plenty of horrible jokes, bad puns and wicked slapstick to satiate your funny bone with as well as plenty of gore and people's limbs getting severed by Demian for the horror fiend in you too. It's this special duality that raises the enjoyment of this offering higher than it should, as well as making it feel like a necessity to check out the rest of the Caesar & Otto films once it's all said and said. I hope Linnea really wasn't blacklisted. That would be a drag.  

Sorority House Massacre

If you're a fan of really cheesy and mildly spicy nachos, then Sorority House Massacre might be for you. As another release from Concorde back in the mid 80's, this film is basically a filler between movies from another franchise put out by them entitled Slumber Party Massacre (which is infinitely better in my opinion) but the sorority variety does offer a decent time-what with the usual tropes of hot 80's chicks in their 30's playing young college bait, a killer escaping from an institute of some sort for personal revenge (a la Halloween of course) complete with mediocre acting, crappy dialogue and a layer of campiness. Now, I like my nachos on the really hot side so I would have rather there been a lot more gore and female nudity, but hey-I can't consume overly hot shit all of the time. The dvd prints of all three Sorority House Massacre films have been long out of print for awhile now and getting copies of them is a little on the difficult side, but with Youtube and streaming services like Amazon Prime Video make it easier and easier to experience such near forgotten dredge from that time period. I love the 80's. Not entirely, but there a lot of great things that spawned during that decade, and films like this are definitely in the realm of greatness for things to take in from then. There are two sequels as well which are even harder to track down, but I think once you've taken a bite of this overly salted, sodium saturated platter of corn chips, cheese whiz and bottom of the barrel quality jalapenos, you would probably be finished as well. 

This static shot of the sorority house is making me sleepy.

Yeah-it all started when you entered the house.

After a week, I'm not joining anything.

When three little girls tell you to "be careful", then I think you ought to do it.

Hi, Sara-I like your weird 80's outfit. It looks good on you.

Of course it was something at the hospital. Hospitals always make people go ape.

So does crappy sitcom music play every time chicks try on random clothes?

Grand Theft Auto-1980's style.

Spending the night in a tee-pee is a great idea.

 Sorority House Massacre is a slasher flick that I really wanted to get into more because I know what it could have been-but what it really is comes down to is high blood pressure and high sodium count. I enjoyed it, but I needed a bottle of water when it was over so I could quench myself and move on to something a little bit better. Unfortunately, a purgatory movie. Now, if I do ever find copies of the Concorde dvd's of this or any of the sequels, they will end up on my shelf just to say I have them-but it would probably be very few and far between that I would actually ever spend time with it ever again. Unless I'm really damn drunk and I want to see the girls in their lingerie again. Which, of course, why wouldn't I. Okay, I'm done. I need to go pick up the backyard now.       

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.