The Thirsty Dead (1974) 1h 28m

How many of these cheap horror movie collections do I own?  The answer is a lot apparently.  Coming to us from a 13 film set entitled The Living Dead we get The Thirsty Dead!  I chose this film specifically because of the description on the back of the case which is as follows:

"A stewardess, an erotic dancer, and two beauty queens are kidnapped and taken to a cave in the jungle.  They soon discover their gruesome fate: They're captives of a cult of immortals who survive by drinking blood."

That was enough to hook me but The Thirsty Dead has so much more!  Each lady is kidnapped from the city by men in red cultist robes with giant hoods.  They're taken to a boat, unbound, and paddled down to the cave.  The erotic dancer just assumes they're going to become sex slaves and she is 100% down for that, saying something like "you can make money and never leave your bedroom."  We are then shown the cultists that are dressed somewhere between original Star Trek humanoid aliens and Flash Gordon extras.  The blond female with crazy Dolly Parton hair resembles the old queen of this group and, after consulting the head in a box, they try to get her to join the cult.  Will she drink the blood potion and live forever or will she deny the prophecy and complain about just wanting to be with her "friends" the whole time?

I see you want to live forever...

There was a lot going on in this film.  The beauty queens really don't do a whole lot in this film except for complain and one eventually has a snake on her foot.  The erotic dancer exists to be hyper sexual in her comments and actions, also to have the most hilarious death which I assume was some weird 70's way of saying that having loose morals leads you to dying in a pit of bones and rats.  The cult is insane and as the film goes on more and more crazy shit get s revealed.  Initially it's just a guy in a blue tunic, then there are tons of local women, then there's a head in a box, then there's a telescope and a glory hole?  Yeah, it gets weird and stays weird. 

It probably had a decent budget as well, or at least access to old sci-fi sets to have all the matching costumes and the strange cavern lair.  Unfortunately they didn't put any of that toward the special effects make-up as the appliances are poorly constructed and blended into the actresses.  While I think of it too, for a random horror movie in the 70's I don't recall seeing any bare breasts at any point in this film.  Even when the dancer was doing her routine in a cage at the beginning she was still wearing what equates to a two-piece bathing suit.  I don't know why I'm surprised by this but it just seems like an odd staple with 70's and early 80's schlock horror to throw in some breasts.  Maybe this film thought it couldn't contend with Hammer Films and kept it covered.

All in all, The Thirsty Dead wasn't bad.  It wasn't amazing, but it was a "watch this with your friends and laugh at it" kind of fun.  My husband joined me for this watching and it definitely made the film better.

I give The Thirsty Dead 2.5 stock photos of someone drinking water out of 5:

The Black Torment (1964) 1h 25m

I don't know what was wrong with me in the past, but I definitely have made some questionable purchases in my life.  Case in point, today's film The Black Torment.  I think I acquired this under the assumption it was something else entirely and the $1 price tag from the used store ended up sealing the deal.  In truth, I feel as though I made a pact with the shitty movie devil.

The Black Torment is sent in Powdered Wig Era with Richard returning home from London with his new wife.  Upon his return a ton of people are dicks to him and there are strange rumors that he never left.  When he begins to see the ghost of his deceased first wife running the grounds and riding his horse, Richard finds himself torn between madness and the truth before all is revealed!

It is I!  You!  Now in blue!

One of my earliest notes for this film is that this is "period music and trumpets the movie."  There are some really long establishing shorts early on and they probably only exist to pad this movie to pass the hour mark.  The story isn't that bad, but in the 54 years since The Black Torment's release, the plot device and resolution is the Occam's razor standard for such a film.

This movie did lead to me learning something interesting though.  Richard's father had a stoke and would communicate through sign language.  Being curious as to if this was period appropriate I found that the first published book of sign language was released in 1620.  That's your interesting facts caused by shitty movies moment!

Unless you have a weird boner for slow period piece horror films, avoid The Black Torment.  The only thing that could've possibly saved this would've been if Richard was played by Vincent Price.  It wasn't and as such this film suffered.

I give The Black Torment 1/2 a White Zombie Black Sunshine single out of 5:

Ju-On: White Ghost Black Ghost (2009) 1h 1m / 1h

In the rivalry between the two, I prefer Ju-On over Ringu.  Maybe it's because Kayako has the additional striker of the small semi-naked child that just makes cat noises which gives her the advantage to topple Sadako, or the fact that I just find the entire concept of a Ju-On much more frightening than a well ghost creeping on you with outdated media.  Either way,  I've owned this for longer than I'd like to admit after claiming to be a fan of something.  Also, post script to this, I've had Shudder for like two years and still haven't watched Sadako vs. Kayako, but that's mainly because I watch so many horror movies for this website.

Why must you haunt me cursed ghost?!

White Ghost Black Ghost is actually two separate films.  White Ghost kicks things off with someone that I refer to as Sentai Sanata (due to his clothes and motorcycle) delivering a Christmas cake to the Ju-Oh house.  After a short time he realizes the woman interacting with him is actually acting on a loop and his investigation of the house causes him to find the bodies of a murdered family before finding the Ju-On spirit.  In this case it's an older woman holding a basketball because she's about to bring the Shaq Attack and dunk all over his ass!  Actually you find out why later but she does have a basketball each time she appears.  The rest of this film jumps around in regards to the characters and their spot in the timeline.  It leaves you a bit bewildered at first until you begin connecting the threads.

Black Ghost focuses on a young girl in the hospital.  Following in White Ghost's steps with an erratic time line, we find that after an episode where the girl freezes, screams until the Kayako noise comes from her mouth, and then face plants, her parents are concerned for her health.  Her father checks on her only for her to grab his right hand and say "you killed a woman with this hand."  It was an awesome moment.  Most of this is focused on trying to find out what is wrong with the girl but when we learn what is wrong with her and how it gets handled it makes this the far superior of the two films.

I have a ton of notes on White Ghost Black Ghost, a lot of which is me popping off at different moments with "OMFG!" or "That's fuckin' rad!"  It helps to come into these knowing the previous two films.  Kayako is absent from both but I like that since it allows us to apply the Ju-On curse to anyone that dies in a rage, not just this one specific individual.  It also prevents the staleness that can happen with the "slasher" genre where screenwriters attempt to break things up with a fake Jason or an evil Halloween mask company.

If you could only watch one of these, then I would say to definitely watch Black Ghost, but both are pretty great.

I give Ju-On White Ghost Black Ghost 5 oni masks out of 5:

Horror Rises from the Tomb (1973) 1h 28m

This comes to us from the same collection that held Night of the Death Cult.  I'm beginning to suspect that all of the films on that set are just obscure 70's horror films from Europe that they were able to purchase for cheap or compile for free.  Keeping that in mind, I might just throw this entire thing in the trash.  I haven't decided yet.

Horror Rises from the Tomb starts in the past where a "warlock" and his "witch" lover are going to be killed for their crimes against god.  As punishment, and in keeping with older religious beliefs, their heads will be severed from their bodies and buried in secret locations.  Before this sentence can be carried out the warlock and his lady friend curse the families of their accusers and threaten to return!  Now in present day, a bunch of white people think it would be a good idea to ask a psychic where the warlock's head is buried.  An intense table tipping event happens and they set out the next day to dig up a Legend of Zelda style treasure chest.  Once opened, there is just an illustration of Astaroth and a sickle.  Killing ensues, warlocks come back, and I fell asleep at some point and couldn't be bothered to care.

It's weird to watch this after watching Night of the Death Cult because the two feel very similar in their cinematic structure.  Some previous event setting up the backstory for whatever lame hijinks are now happening, and it's all incredibly boring.

Alright, let's watch zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

What was really off-putting was the story telling structure of Horror Rises.  If you've ever read Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics there is a brief section in which he outlines how sequential art works best.  In his examples he has a simple scene which is told in three parts: one using too many panels which explain every minute detail, the best paced use of panels and information, and a two panel which omits too much info.  Each still tells the same start and end, but how we get there is dependent on the information given.  Horror Rises... does the last example where we are just to draw our own lines between scenes and story progression.  What I did watch of this film left me confused because of this.

Horror Rises from the Tomb isn't worth the time you would put into it.  Unless you use that time to nap, in which case it works out well.  Otherwise do yourself a favor and pass on this.  Also, if you ever come across a 10 movie set entitled Deadtime Stories then don't buy it.  I got it for something like $5 and I want that money back from 2009.

I give Horror Rises from the Tomb 0 copies of Marvel's The Tomb of Dracula out of 5:

Play Dead (2009) 1h 28m

Play Dead came on a DVD as an extra film with Last of the Living (which I also haven't watched).  By association I assumed that Play Dead would be a horror film, but it came across as more of a thriller comedy.  The latter of those descriptors it looses relatively quick.  In truth, this is the an awkward teenager of a movie where it wants to fit in somewhere but it really isn't sure where it does so the whole thing tries to fit into a bunch of different cliques.  I could make a "horror because of Fred Durst" joke, but I'll be up front and say that he does a decent job.

Our main character in Play Dead is Ronnie.  He's an actor best known for his work in a show that wasn't quite a Power Rangers rip off, but not quite as bad as Big Bad Beetle Borgs.  So let's say a VR Troopers knock off.  After his stint as the blue one, his promising career went nowhere.  He has a breakdown after a casting interview and drives until his car dies.  He finds himself in the middle of nowhere when he meets Ledge (Durst) and is given a ride into town.  He then finds himself on the wrong side of the local drug dealer and calls in his old hero team in an effort to save himself and the town.

Y'all cast the wrong member of Limp Bizkit.

As I mentioned above, this film doesn't know what it wants to be.  The beginning has a lot of poorly written comedy scenes in it, including that Durst's character is a small town simple creep which they try to turn around to make Ledge an exploited victim of the situation.  It's a poor transition from someone that has a dead DEA agent in their bathtub to unlikely hero/sidekick.  Jake Busey is here as well, looking like the most redneck version of Josh Homme (Queens of the Stone Age) I've ever seen.

As a whole, Play Dead can just be labeled as "competent."  Everything that makes this a movie it does well enough, but it just reaches that bare minimum.  There are definitely better and worse films out there.  If you're looking for something that's horror though, this isn't it.

I give Play Dead 1/2 a opossum playing dead out of 5:

Night of the Death Cult (A.K.A. Night of the Seagulls) (1975) 1h 29m

Coming from another horror film 10-pack, but not the same 10-pack, we have Night of the Death Cult!  A film that is actually known as Night of the Seagulls but I'm told was something else.  Not only that, this is apparently an over watched VHS tape rip that is poorly overdubbed!  Yes! Get Into it!  Get into this fucking mess!

Night of the Death Cult is the final part of the Blind Dead series.  I don't know what the hell this series is but if all of these films are similar then they're bat shit crazy.  A cult of Knights Templar have been killing women and feeding the hearts of the victims to a strange frog statue.  In present day a village sacrifices seven women for seven days once a year.  The skeletal ghouls of the Knights Templar come and take the girls to continue their ritual.  A new doctor comes with his wife and the villagers treat them like shit until the secret comes to surface!  Oh, and the spirits of the sacrificed women turn into seagulls.  That's the seagull part.

Once the credits started I only had one reaction...

Honestly, this version of the film is terrible quality, but there wasn't much quality here to begin with.  I don't know if I need to watch the other films or if this is a stand-alone.  I still feel like the plot made very little sense.  Why were the Templars skeleton men that still need lady hearts?  Why did the village know of this?  Fire kills the skeletons but they can ride horses without a problem?  Why does that grocery store just have a basket of fruit and paper bags?!  FUCKING SEAGULLS?!

Don't watch this.  It's shit.  Fuck this shit!  FUCK IT SO FUCKING HARD IN ITS SHITTY VHS RIPPED BUTTHOLE!

I give Night of the Death Cult (a.k.a. Night of the Seagulls) 0 seagull dogs out of 5:

Resident Evil: Damnation (2012) 1h 40m

The fact that I love Resident Evil is the worst kept secret on this website.  I reviewed Resident Evil: The Final Chapter when it was out in theatres and talked about Resident Evil 7: Biohazard as soon as I finished the game upon release.  So when it comes to the CG films that they've put out, you better believe I own them, or at least most of them.  I didn't realize that there was a Japanese one that counts as the first one and I haven't picked up the one that came out last year.  The latter isn't in my collection because Sony and Capcom are bad at subtitling these films so you don't know which one you own.  This one has been sitting on my shelf since last Christmas.

Did somebody say "Las Plagas?"

Resident Evil: Damnation takes place after Resident Evil 4 (still the best game in the series).  Leon is sent into an area of the former Soviet Union on reports that rebels gained access to B.O.W.s (Bio Organic Weapons).  At the very start he is told to pull out but instead continues on in search of Las Plagas and the people using them.  He ends up working with freedom fighters that have learned to control Lickers with the help of Las Plagas, at the risk of their own lives and sanity.  Ada Wong is here being badass as usual and working with the government in order to gain access to a sample for a secret client.

Okay, I'm getting my biggest complaint out of the way first and it isn't even with this film, it's with the disc itself.  I had to skip through a commercial for Sony and five previews of I don't even care what before the blu-ray would even let me access the menu.  That's bullshit!  I gave you money and all you're doing is wasting your time and mine!  Cocknose.

Is that a B.O.W. in your pants?

I have no complaints with Resident Evil: Damnation.  They have Leon's Resident Evil 6 voice actor (who pretty much sounds like the original voice actor from the prior CG film and RE4).  They do small nods to things like having Leon yell "Come On" exactly as he does in the games.  It also does good fan service without going overboard.

I think that since this was a Las Plagas focused film they were smart to have this change up with the Lickers and a greater focus on Ada's doings.  The early games were never really about trying to kill everything and they kept that focus in check.

Speaking of Ada, she has the hypest fight scene in the film!  Sure, it's essentially an animated film but the entire time I was enraptured by it.  It's John Wick levels of rad hand-to-hand combat.  Also, bringing in multiple Mr. X for Leon's final fight was a definite pop for me.

Overall, I really liked RE: Damnation.  Aside from a bit of slowdown it was a solid film.

I give Resident Evil: Damnation 4 Umbrella logos out of 5:

My Sucky Teen Romance (2011) 1h 17m

I picked this DVD up from a used store not long after it was released.  That should've been my first warning.  The second warning should've been that I got it for something like $3.  Think of that scene in the first Wayne's World movie where The Shitty Beatles are playing and Wayne asks "are they any good" and we get the reply of "Oh, they suck!" and the joke rounds out with Wayne saying "Then it's not just a clever name." My Sucky Teen Romance...is it any good?

Welcome to Spacecon!

We start in the 1950's where we see an obvious vampire greaser who looks like Edward from Twilight if he was an extra in Grease.  We then flash forward to present day where a comic nerd is talking about how great Spacecon is going to be while his coworker finds him lame.  A fellow nerdy girl has a moment with him, but shortly after she leaves our Edward wannabe comes in to fuck up robbing the store.  We are then introduced to the rest of our crew and they all go to Spacecon... where there are very few people actually dressed for anything space related.  In fact, this "convention" looks like what I picture when I think of that Dashcon debacle.  The cashier from the supermarket was turned into a vampire and he accidentally bites the check-out love connection.  The rest of the film is them trying to prevent themselves from turning into full blown vampires by hunting down Greaseball Lightning.

I just heavy sighed before I started typing here so that's an idea of what's about to come.  This film is equal parts good and bad.  For an independent horror-comedy the actors and cinematography actually pull through pretty well.  On the flip side, the script and set design feels unnatural in a way that makes you think that there is some sort of continuous inside joke that you're just not privy to.  It's so self-deprecating to geek and fandom culture that rather than laughing along with the film My Sucky Teen Romance just does that awkward laugh to itself when none of the jokes really hit.

That said, there are two parts I did like.  One is when our two main female characters go to the "teen" room and it's supposed to be cool and instead they open the door to a room of awkward people and one girl just yells "LOOK! MORE TEENAGERS!"  The other is at the vampire panel (which, if you do watch this DVD, watch the deleted scene from this because its adlib is much better than most of this scene) where the obvious Twilight fangirl asks if vampires were real would a centuries old vampire fall in love with a teenage girl and they could live happily ever after and the main panelist just replies with "That's fucking gross!"

Speaking of this scene, I don't know why I never made this connection before, but almost all vampires are pedophiles (or ephebophiles if you want to get technical) as they are usually dozens if not hundreds of years old.  Just because you look 17 forever does not mean you are 17.  You're 800 and trying to pick up some 16 year old.  That's fucking gross!  See!  Now I said it too!  That makes it true!

Back to My Sucky Teen Romance... it was okay, but I must say that it's not just a clever name.

I give My Sucky Teen Romance 1 lame vampire out of 5:

Dead Men Walk (1943) 1h 4m

I chose today's film based solely on the fact that it is just over an hour and because I'm coming down with something and feel like death myself.  The disc itself is from a cheap 10-film pack which is supposed to be zombie themed movies but for a $5 set I doubt anyone was quality checking the content specificity with these choices.  That said, let's dig into today's film!

Less vampire, more sadpire.

Dead Men Walk features George Zucco playing the roles of both Dr. Lloyd Clayton and Dr. Elwyn Clayton.  Llody is a man of science and a medical doctor while Elwyn studies the occult and, by the description on the box, is a wizard.  We open at Elwyn's funeral when it is interrupted by our Deus Ex Kate.  I don't know how she knows what she knows, but she knows way too much.  Elwyn's body is collected by his servant and Elwyn rises from the grave.  He then visits his brother and tells him he is going to wreck his life.  The rest of this film is pretty much Dracula except that Elwyn is targeting his niece and Lloyd has to be the doctor and Van Helsing.

I really liked Dead Men Walk.  I thought it was going to be a very 40's matinee film but it was fun to watch.  The pacing is really weird as they squeezed a lot into such a short time.  It's essentially death, but I'm alive, Gayle is to be married, now she's sick, a vampire?! etc. etc.

What I appreciated the most with this film was the dialog.  It felt like someone reading literature to you.  It began and end with semi-poetic verse and there wasn't much in the way of filler, just advancing the story.  I think that my biggest complaint with Dead Men Walk would be that there are no roads.  It's constantly people running through the woods, in the dark, to get to their location.  Elwyn I can write off as he is a vampire, but everyone else must have cat eyes or something.

I give Dead Men Walk 3 copies of Chuck Tingle's Vampire Night Bus Pounds My Butt out of 5:

Blades (1989) 1h 41m

When I opened the case for this DVD the receipt from 2007 was still inside.  This is just letting you know how long this disc has been sitting on my shelf, unwatched.  Part of a Troma Triple Pack, with two other films that I honestly can't remember or be bothered to get off the couch to check, I chose today's film because it takes place on a golf course.  I expected the worst and was given something that transcends horrible and is ranked among the greatest tortures from Hell.

GOLF F'N POWER!

Blades takes place on some low-class course where Roy begins his new job as the course pro.  Kelly spends most of her time making awkward and confused faces all while hating that Roy took the job that was promised to her.  The course is being prepared for the upcoming televised pro-am tournament but chopped up corpses are found littered around the greens.  Investigation leads us to a sentient lawn mower with balloons tied to the back.  It belonged to the dead father of the greens keeper.  Roy ends up defeating it with the power of golf.  This movie defeated me by stealing all joy from my life.

I fell asleep with 10 minutes left and hated that when I woke up I had to go back and watch the ending of this.  Blades is like someone watched Caddyshack and thought "I can make a horror version of this," but they lacked the humor, charm, and talent.  The only thing I really found interesting was the actor that, in the right light, looked like Kurt Angle.  Not Kurt Angle now, but Kurt Angle if his life choices sent him in a terrible Coors Light life spiral instead of him winning an Olympic medal.  Let me tell you, it doesn't turn out well for alternative universe Kurt.

Fucking golf course horror movie... fuck this shit!

I give Blades  0 John Deere tractors out of 5:

Chopping Mall (1985) 1h 17m

It's that time again where I face a film that, as a kid, I used to see the VHS box on the rental shelf at the local Phar-Mor and it would freak me out.  I think it was just the cartoonesq bulging eye at the top.  I also used to be freaked out by The Howling cover but to this day I'm not sure why.  At least Chopping Mall has a bag full of body parts being held by Dr. Claw.

So, who put what where?

Remember when shopping malls used to have a million floors?  Chopping Mall remembers.  In an attempt to bring in state-of-the-art security, this mall buys three robots that are a mix of Alpha from Power Rangers and Johnny 5 from Short Circuit.  In the informative video we are shown, the robots work by slowly following a perp until they're shot with a taser and probably killed.  If you show an ID badge though then the robot will leave you alone.  When a group of twenty somethings decide to stay after work and party/fuck on the display beds and couches of their department store, they end up running afoul of our security bots.  Slow chases and laser beams ensue.

These bots are trash as fuck but also built like tanks!  They all have these spindly grabber arms that go up like they're raising the roof right before they try to kill someone.  Fire, most explosions, and bullets that hit anywhere that isn't their visor will do nothing to them.  Then we have Suzy (Barbara Crampton) and her awkward death where a robot shoots her in the leg and it apparently renders her unable to craw or roll while the bot shoots over top of her.  I thought the thing could only shoot straight ahead until it aims at a gas can next to Suzy and lights her up.  Let me tell you, she can get up and run just fine after that.

The heroes this mall needs!

You know what?  Fuck the cover of this movie!  There isn't a single rad metal robot fist or bag of body parts in the whole thing!  Well, maybe after that girl's head exploded some bits went in a bag, but these robots had lame pincer hands!  I want the batter robot from the NES game Base Wars to be the security guard!  Someone make a time machine and fix this movie to fit my desires!!

Chopping Mall is horribly dated and such a goofy premise, but in its own way it was fun.  I'm not saying it's worth going to see at some midnight showing or anything, but if you want to have a bad 80's movie night then this is the kind of thing you might consider.  

I give Chopping Mall 2 Bride of Pinbot backglass images out of 5:

 

Class of 1999 (1990) 1h 39m

To the best of my knowledge, when I graduated high school in 1999 no one was in punk gangs and none of my teachers were murderous war robots.  My principal was also not Malcolm McDowell.  If he was then I would've been bugging him all the time to tell me about being in the Tank Girl movie.

Banana in the front, party in the rear.

Class of 1999, despite coming out in 1990, explains that in 1992 youth crime became such a big issue that by 1997 all major cities had schools that were basically just gang territories.  The gangs all dress punk as fuck, wear spandex pants, and may be too into Rufio from Hook.  Cody is released from prison just in time to return to his school where there are going to be three new robot teachers stepping in to help control the chaos.  Wanting nothing to do with his old gang life, Cody tries to keep his head down until he sees the gym robot murder a kid.  After that another robot murders his friend.  It's then that these robots begin to go AWOL and attempt to hunt down and kill Cody since he discovers their secret.

This film is a dystopian cluster fuck.  It's like 1983's Suburbia and Terminator 2 drunkenly jerked each other off in a bar bathroom and this was the product of their combined shame seed.  This film is the equivalent of what old men in the 80's mentally saw when they viewed slightly unsavory youths walk by their house.  Then that man would have some sort of wet dream about being a robot and spanking them in class while making eye contact with the other students... because that's a thing that happens in this movie.  There is also some sort of punishment the robots can do named "rap knuckles" which I really just wanted to be something hip-hop related, but then realized it meant to nun wack their hand.  I'm stealing Rap Knuckles though.  That's gonna be the new mixed tape fire I bring!

I give Class of 1999 1 preschool graduation image I grabbed off of Google out of 5:

Slaughter High (1986) 1h 30m

I can't tell how fucking disappointed I am that there isn't a single skeleton in this entire movie!  I used to see this on the shelves at video rental stores as a six-year-old and it would freak me out (I had a big fear of skeletons at the time).  Not one fucking bone man... unless you could the dude that dies by electrocution while having sex.  I don't, he just kind of fell off the woman like he suddenly remembered there was cooler stuff on the floor.

Slaughter High was weird.  Some "hot" girl has convinced the school nerd, Marty, that she is going to have sex with him in the girls locker room.  In truth, it's a trick in which other maybe popular kids set up full AV equipment to film Marty naked.  When everyone gets caught in the act by the coach, all involved are punished except for our nerd.  He's staying after school to work on his chemistry project.  When both he and his project get sabotaged by our group of jags, Marty ends up terribly burned while no one attempts to put the fire out or save him.  Fast forward to five years after graduation and the group all get invites to a reunion at their soon-to-be demolished school.  Death ensues... or does it?!

I know what I watched, but what the hell did I watch?  Let's start with the music.  There is one song you're going to hear a million times which goes between hitting your dick on a synth and shitty butt-rock every twenty seconds.  Then there's a second song which appears which sounds like a bloopy cover of The Tide is High by Blondie but also changes into something else entirely different after a short time.  It's like they wrote four songs but realized they were all too short so they combined them into two songs.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN?!

There are also strange and confusing plot and scenery choices.  When everyone returns to the school for this "reunion" they all look the same but just in nicer clothes.  When Marty is in the girls shower taking off his clothes there is graffiti on the wall that says "Marty Rantzen Sucks" which he then changes to "Marty Rantzen Fucks."  First, why is that already written in the shower?  Second, the phrase "Marty Rantzen Fucks" breaks my goddamn brain.  Finally, one of the characters says "April Fools stops at noon, so we just have to make it to midnight."  Okay, first, you fucked up that line as those are two totally different times.  Next, you're ascribing a point of logic to this film which isn't true!  Midnight comes and that doesn't stop Marty!  He's not Cinderella!

If you want to destroy my sweater...

Speaking of Marty, I'm going to stick up for him here for a second.  He looks like a younger Rivers Cuomo, his body is actually pretty decent, and when you see his dick in the beginning he's got nothing to be shy about.  Yeah, he's the dorky guy, but some of us like the dorky guys.  Also, it now says on the wall that he "fucks."  "Who's Marty Rantzen?" "I don't know but I heard that he fucks!"


I give Slaughter High 1 doot doot skeleton out of 5:

Pro Wrestlers Vs. Zombies (2014) 1h 28m

I've had this sitting on my shelf since Christmas when a family member bought it from a list of DVDs I gave them.  Utterly confused on their part, they just seemed happy to get me something that I was excited for.  I knew the gist of this film from Wrestling With Wregret's review but by now I've forgotten everything and it became a good time to revisit it.

Pro Wrestlers Vs. Zombies sums up most of the premise in its title.  In true Shane Douglas form, he's a dick and kills a man in the ring with a tombstone pile driver all because Shane caught his woman having the fakest sex ever with the now murdered wrestler.  The brother of the corpse approaches the promoter and says that he wants a private show at an abandoned West Virginia penitentiary with Shane as the main person.  The promoter also offers up Matt Hardy, Kurt Angle, Rowdy Roddy Piper, Hacksaw Jim Duggan, and Reby Sky for no reason other than he was just handed about $3000.  The building is full of zombies and once inside everyone has to try and fight their way out... all because Shane Douglas is a dick.

Why am I not in this film?

Aside from the wrestlers fighting zombies and Shane Douglas being a shit bag, the remaining plot of this film gets muddy.  The living brother eats human hearts to gain power to create and control the zombies but he gets that power from some person or demon.  I'm not sure.  All I know is that if you're getting a bunch of wrestlers together for a film then your demon bad guy needs to be fucking James Mitchell!  That dude is probably Beelzebub for real.  Although, Kevin Sullivan makes an appearance at the beginning so I guess that hits some sort of Satan quota.

BFFs 5-Ever ('cause it's one more than 4)

Piper isn't quite up to his They Live level, but he stands out the most.  Matt Hardy and his then girlfriend/now wife Reby Sky literally exist just to have awkward teenage "my parents are downstairs" sexual encounters.  Hacksaw is Hacksaw.  I can't talk shit on him because I met him and he was one of the nicest dudes I ever talked to.

Overall this film is a mass of awkward pacing and clearance Halloween City zombie make-up.  Pro Wrestlers vs. Zombies is really only for fans of wrestling and super low budget movie making, but there are some inside jabs such as Shane Douglas saying "Your checks aren't going to bounce like Paul Heymen's..." which you have to know about the business to get.  Also, low fuckin' blow, Shane.

I give Pro Wrestlers Vs. Zombies 1 ECW Extreme Music CD out of 5:

The Resurrection Game (2001) 1h 31m

Welcome back for the start of our 10th Cut!  This time I decided to change things up and go to the 30DoP vaults (a.k.a. my DVD shelves) and pull out all of the random horror films and collections that I've picked up over the years but have never watched.  When it comes to horror I have the Robocop mentality of seeing something and saying "I'd buy that for a dollar!"  So I have a lot of crap.  A lot.  Lots...

On my last trip home I was able to pick today's film up from a used media store.  Filmed mostly in and around Pittsburgh, PA, The Resurrection Game was put out by Happy Cloud Pictures.  They're from McMurray, PA.  You've probably never heard of it.  Hell, I barely even known of it.

Bare with me on this plot description as this is going to be a lot of random.  Seemingly based after the initial zombie outbreak of Night of the Living Dead, the world has become a strange mix of cyberpunk retro-future tech and the 1990's.  The outbreak has become less of a threat and more of a nuisance.  Shambling zombies can just be outrun or drop kicked.  Our main characters are a private eye, a nun that is a zombie exterminator/relationship consultant that solves things via BDSM, and some goth-punk zombie exterminator.

Just glue this to the zombie's face!

When the PI is hired by a horror author to find a cure for the zombie virus (because real zombies existing hurts his book sales) everyone ends up teaming up after there are suddenly zombies with cyborg implants and possess greater strength and speed.  I think it's because the implants look like they're made from Warhammer 40K terrain pieces.  This all leads to a showdown with what I think is a corporation but the building is mostly built out of fog machines, darkness, and ominous lighting.


The Resurrection Game is a capital fucking B-movie.  Our story has a lot of loosely tied elements to it which I assume were fixed in the novelization the director released in 2002.  We get solid acting from our main characters but most of the secondary line is a bit rough to watch.  It's poorly paced as well which isn't helped by the occasional TV screen cut-ins that always bare the production company's logo.  There are also some issues with digital artifacting with the transfer of this film which take away from it.  Unless their goal was to look like a Sega CD game.

I'm assuming this was the first film put out by Happy Cloud Pictures.  Their site doesn't help with the chronology of their releases and IMDB wants me to pay for Pro to view the company page, so it's a fail on all ends.  That said, I'm definitely going to hold on to this because it's Pittsburgh.  I was born there.  A part of that city will always be with me... mainly because I'm pretty sure there's a piece of glass or metal eternally lodged in me from a punk show.

I give The Resurrection Game 1.5 Night of the Living Dead remasters out of 5:

photo credit: imgur.com user AndrewAskedall

The Song of Solomon blu-ray + Extras (2018: Unearthed Films)

 It's been a hot minute, but Saturday Screamers are back with the blu-ray release of The Song of Solomon!  Thanks to Unearthed Films and MVD for hooking us up with this disc for review.

When I first opened the plain manilla envelope and pulled this case out I got super psyched on that cover image.  How could you not?  A bloody priest straddling the body of a possessed women?  Sign me the fuck up!  Now the question is, does The Song of Solomon live up to the hype on the box?

Considered part of "The American Guinea Pig" films, The Song of Solomon focuses on the possession of a woman named Mary and the pending birth of the Antichrist.  Not too far into the film we find that the church is sending in exorcists less to remove the demon from Mary but more so to assist the coming evil.  The church spokesperson explains that once the Antichrist is born, then Christ will return seven years later.  So I guess they're looking at it as a "the ends justify the means" situation.

I really like the general plot of this film.  Maybe it's too many horror movies and black metal, but I can have that moment of "sure, the church could do something like that."  I found myself wanting more from of this story though.  Each exorcist is armed with some sort of Castlevania sounding holy relic but none of them really lead to anything.  Aside from her name, why is Mary chosen?  Why are each of these specific exorcists chosen?  The whole story is secondary to gore and mayhem, and this movie is like a Gwar concert turned up to 11 in that aspect.

Don't get me wrong, I love good practical effects, but this film is really an effects portfolio that just happens to have a plot around it.  Everything looks great but the shock and excitement get lost after the first few gallons of blood and each scene with an appliance goes on forever.  This film could've lobbed off a half hour just by editing down stuff like the priest yelling with his eyeballs in his hands.  Even the "behind the scenes" feature is just them laying out effects shots, making appliances for the shots, testing the appliances, and then shooting the scenes.  I get it!  The shit looked great but I shot my load over 20 minutes ago and I need some recuperation time before I'm ready again.

Despite that paragraph of complaining I will most likely watch The Song of Solomon again.  I think that this is the kind of movie you put on when you have someone over that thinks that since they've seen all 900 Saw films they can handle some crazy shit.  Then you put this crazy shit on and they apologize profusely for ever thinking they knew shit about dick.

EXTRAS:

I covered the Behind the Scenes above and there really isn't much more to add to that.  We do get a series of interviews with the actress that played Mary, the writer/director, and a few other people.  I watched those initial two interviews to get some insight but they were loosely structured and weren't what I was expecting.  This isn't to say that I didn't gleen some info from them, I just found it a bit hard to watch directly after having just finished The Song of Solomon.  I do plan to go back and finish the others and check out the commentary tracks as well.

Thanks again to Unearthed Films and MVD for this blu-ray.  If you're interested in picking up a copy for yourself you can pick it up here from Amazon for around $25.  If you end up buying it from the link there then 30 Days of Plight gets a bit of the sale and that goes back into paying for this site and fueling it with energy drinks.