Doom Asylum + Extras (Arrow Films)

For Saturday Screamers this week we're tackling Arrow Films' blu-ray re-release of 1987's Doom Asylum.  As always, thanks to Arrow Films for sending us a copy so we can do this review!

So the official description of Doom Asylum is: "A demented coroner uses autopsy equipment to kill off the teenagers who trespass on the long-abandoned asylum he inhabits. Filmed on location in an actual abandoned asylum."  I address this because I had no clue what I watched, but I loved every second of it.

Doom Asylum is a b-movie with a capital "B."  When a coroner and his girlfriend are in an accident, with a comically long lead-up, he awakens hideously deformed and deranged.  A group of the most absurd teens(?) go to sunbathe by an abandoned asylum.  Also present in the asylum is the greatest all-female experimental noise band which might as well be the b-film version of The Misfits from Jem.  Lead by Tina (Ruth Collins), they are this film's greatest asset.  The final presence in the asylum is the coroner ghoul that ends up killing these teens in random ways, except for Tina that somehow accidentally turns herself into a meat cube,

This movie is the absolute definition of The Dio Effect: It's so cheesy and bad that it is amazing!  It's also self aware of how bad it is.  Although, when your big draw to the film was "We have a Penthouse Pet and a Playboy Playmate in our film," you know you're not swinging for the fences.  The practical effects are pretty decent despite finding out in the extras that half of them didn't work as planned.  The acting is... well... overacting and you'll hear the same cover version of House of the Rising Sun about 20 times.

EXTRAS:

Like most Arrow releases, they got together some of the cast and crew to do individual interviews to talk about their time with Doom Asylum.  We get Ruth Collins doing one and she is like the scream queen aunt you didn't know you wanted.  Cinematographer Larry Revene lets you know all the issues with the film during its production.  He doesn't talk shit though. Instead it can be seen as someone looking back and working with fresh faced amatures and where they under or over extended themselves.  The final interview is with special effects artist Vincent Guastini (who worked on my favorites The Devil's Carnival and The Devil's Carnival: Alleluia!).  He talks about his early process starting out and working on this while pulling ideas from Tom Savini books he keep with him.

We do get an older set of interviews with the director, producer, and someone else but it was about 2 A.M. when I finally got to those and wasn't in the mood, so I'll end up watching those later.  I also definitely want to revisit this film with the commentary track on.

I think that's the best sign for Doom Asylum.  I want to revisit this movie.  It's Friday night with your friends campy fun.  It's also 1h 17m and moves quickly so you have no worries about people getting bored.  Pick this up if you like 80's cult classics, schlocky horror, or just want to see a very nice pair of breasts thanks to Ruth Collins.  I'm not even trying to be a pervy jerk here because I am of the homosexual persuasion and I can admit that those, well, they're just swell.

If you want to pick up a copy of Arrow Films' Doom Asylum then you can click here to get it from Amazon.  It's currently at the $29 mark for this blu-ray but the joy it brings is free... and $29 in order to purchase the disc to bring free joy.  The free joy is included in the $29.  Just buy it!  Also, buying it from that link helps out 30 Days of Plight with domain fees and caffeine!

Thanks again to Arrow Films' for a review copy of this film!

9th Cut Starts! The Lost Boys (1987) 1h 37m

When I was in college I took a course on vampire lore.  One of the first things the professor asked us was "why are people interested in vampires?"  After the typical collegiate round of answers she finally just yelled "it's because they're sexy!"  I think that this film really makes that ring true.  Sure, there were the Hammer films of the 70's which were just shy of (or just were) porn coming before this.  But this, this is 80's leather jacket sex on legs... and a possibly queer Corey Haim with his sexy Rob Lowe poster on the wall, camp style clothing, and a beaver hidden in his closet.

The Lost Boys takes place in Santa Carla, California where Michael, Sam, and their mother move in with her father.  Michael instantly falls for a girl that hangs out with David (Kiefer Sutherland) and his gang of assholes which includes Bill (Alex Winters) from the Bill and Ted franchise.  Sam ends up befriending the Frog brothers at the local comic store and they give him a comic about vampires that they say may save his life.  Michael gets turned into a dhampyr by David's crew, Sam freaks out, the Frog bothers want to kill all bloodsuckers.  So we get this rag-tag group of dorks trying to find and kill the head vampire all to one of the best soundtracks to ever exist.

This movie is a classic.  You can't hear that dark synth and child chorus singing "thou shall not want" without getting hyped immediately.  When the final fight happens we get some great vamp kills, including the infamous "death by stereo."  The casting and acting are all spot on.  Kiefer is pretty much the only one in the vamp gang that has real lines and his presentation plants him firmly in the realm of "this dude is a badass."  My big question mark for this film is that as one of the Frog brothers, I have no clue what Corey Feldman's voice is supposed to be.  I don't think he even knows what it was.  It's like he was possessed by a 70 year-old chain smoking grandma. "Read this comic and pick me up a carton of Reds!"

There were two modern sequels made to this film.  I'm not sure why.  I haven't seen them so I can't say.  I doubt I will ever willingly sit down to watch one of them by my own volition.  This movie didn't need a sequel.  All of the loose ends are tied up so to me it's like looking at something like the Mona Lisa and deciding it would look good to copy it but just make her have a big cartoon dick behind her.  Big ol' floppy purple wang flappin' in the breeze.

I give The Lost Boys 5 unnecessary Zombie Peter Pans out of 5:

The Black Room (2017) 1h 31m

There had to have been some house, empty since the mid-80's, that was getting renovated and they found this script hidden in the floorboards.  The only catch is that it was written by some 14 year old boy that was sexually repressed and this was the closest he would ever get to woods porn.  Then this cursed script found its way to a director who adjusted himself and decided to make it come to life!

The Black Room has a traditional horror premise: house has a demon in it, new couple moves in, demon attempts to use them for his evil purpose.  The difference here is that the demon is hyper-sexual in order to create a human/demon hybrid child.  So think Amityville Horror meets Species.  You know, two films you never thought you'd hear compared in the same sentence.

I feel like this would be one of those VHS tapes I would see for rent as a kid and the cover would scare the shit out of me. It looks so 1984 horror.  The entire film had that vibe, just under a modern lens.  The old school rotoscoped lightning effects existed with modern practical effects and make-up for a good blend.  I will say that The Black Room had a few sloppy moments with such things as showing a full hand after the fingers just got cut off or, and this is more of a personal gripe, a brand new GBH patch on the goth/occult girl's bag.  Seriously, she's not listening to GBH.  Fuck, I'm not sure anyone still listens to GBH and that includes people that were in that fucking band.

There are also unexplained elements that aren't important to the story but still confusing.  Did this couple buy the house fully furnished and just moved in?  Are they not creeped out by that?  Who has a giant Tibetan Buddha statue when you walk into your house?  Why would you not cement over that door in the first place?  Scorpion tail dicks?!

I give The Black Room 2.5 Mortal Kombat Scorpions out of 5:

Under the Shadow (2016) 1h 24m

War is hell.  Ghosts might be from hell.  Therefore, Ghosts might come from War?  Oh shit!  Things got too real in this intro...

Under the Shadow is an Iranian film set during the Iran-Iraq war of the 80's.  A family is split up when the husband is sent to be a medic on the front lines and the wife stays behind with their child.  After a series of unexplained incidents and strange behavior from the daughter, the mother begins to believe that the building may have a spirit haunting them.

I have the reoccurring complaint that a lot of horror films have poor pacing.  While this film is guilty of crawling to the supernatural elements I feel like it's a conscious decision by the writer/director.  The supernatural horror is such a small piece of the greater horror that surrounds the mother and daughter.  Cultural misogyny, the fear that comes with living in a war zone (a missile actually crashes into the building at one point but doesn't detonate), parenthood, losing direction as a person, all of these are the anxieties that people can face and I think the ghost or whatever here is just a physical manifestation of these.  We get a brief description where it says these spirits come on "the winds" where there exists a lot of fear, anxiety, and trauma so why would that not exist in corporeal form?

I think that if you want just a surface spooky movie then this probably isn't going to be the film for you.  It took me a bit to recognize the deeper thread running through it and I was ready to just let this one fall off.  I'm glad I didn't but Under the Shadow is kind of a one-and-done.

I give Under the Shadow 2 clip art bombs out of 5:

Beyond the Gates (2016) 1h 24m

Netflix was broken for some reason and only loaded 27 movies when I looked up the horror section.  This sucks because I rolled 113 as far as what film to watch.  Being the resourceful person I deny being but really am, I chose one that looked the most 80's: Beyond the Gates.

Are you old enough to remember VHS board games?  Ones like Atmosfear/Nightmare?  If you weren't then what it consisted of was a board, pieces, and a VHS movie you interacted with while playing.  I own Nightmare, and thanks to a friend burning the VHS to a DVD for me I've played it dozens of times.  I also have the sequel but haven't played it out of laziness.  A majority of the time is just rolling the dice and moving your piece while collecting things, but every so often you would get screamed at by some old guy in shitty make-up about calling him "Gatekeeper" or being banished to the black hole.  You know, stuff you pay people on the internet to do now.

So why am I bringing up weird nostalgia you don't care about?  Beyond the Gates is a horror film based around a VHS game with the same name.  After their father goes missing for months, two brothers are left with emptying and closing down the family video store.  They end up finding the game in the locked office and the tape in the VCR.  The brothers watch the start of the tape but then bring it home to show one of the brother's girlfriend-wife-person-thing.  The woman on the tape tells them that the only way to save their dad's soul is to play the game.  So the game ensues...

This was a fucking rad movie.  I still had 15 minutes left and I was already on Amazon buying the blu-ray of it.  It has its b-movie moments but I feel like they knew what they were making.  Nods to the 80's, including some sweet synth score work, combined with a well thought out plot and some great gore and kills.... fucking stellar.  Also, I didn't realize this while choosing it, but the cast has some clout (at least to me).  One of the brothers is Chase Williamson who plays Dave in John Dies at the End, David Bruckner who directed V/H/S and Southbound has an appearance, and Jesse Merlin who does the voice of Fang in Street Fighter V (okay, less horror, more geek related) has a small roll.

I give Beyond the Gates 5 mac n' cheese spiral boxes out of 5 (because I ate too much of it while watching this:

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Day 5: Sendero (Path) (2015) 1h 25m

You know, I was really excited to get back into doing this cut.  The holiday was over, I got my shit sorted, so I turned to Netflix in hopes that it would just feel the motivation and child-like energy I was ready to put back into this blog.  Then it gave me Sendero.  A film that moved slow and tried sooooooo hard to be edgy that all I could do was fart on the couch and count the minutes until I could play video games.

Sendero is set in Argentina and exists in some sort of time warp where I can't tell if it is the 80's or if it's modern times and this section of Argentina is so far behind that 80's style only just arrived.  We meet a group of 20-somethings getting together for a road trip.  For all horror films, this plot is fucking dead!

The group eventually encounter a woman sitting in the road, bleeding from multiple wounds.  Another vehicle shows up and the two guys inside get out and wreck our co-ed New Kids tribute act.  From here we meet the "family" of the two guys and some sort of mother-ish figure.  I'm not really sure what she is because she seems close to the same age, if not younger, and just dressed older.  This is where the ultimate fuckery begins.

We're treated to some confusing dialog, unnatural and excessive props (such as a web of chains keeping a guy chained to what I assume was a free standing window frame), and hyper-aggressive sexual displays.  It's like they saw an Eli Roth film and thought "we can do that," and then got drunk while coming up with ideas of what's edgy.

Here's a great example.  The guy chained the window is getting checked on by one of the two "family" guys.  The family guy eventually whips his dick out and starts jerking it in front of the chained man.  The other family guy, comes in and makes a scene about how the prisoners "aren't ours" and to never do that again, but then proceeds to bend the first guy over a chair and butt fuck him in front of the chained guy.

It's such a "man, this is fucked up, but let's make it more fucked up!!!" scene.  It was things like this that made me roll my eyes.  Add the fact that the subtitles were 1-2 lines behind what was being said onscreen made this film a goddamn knife to my eyes!  I rolled my eyes right into a knife, then rolled knives around my orbital cavities!

I give Sendero 0 Argentinian flag out of 5... but also a million couch farts:

Day 22: The Barn (2016) 1h 36m NEW ORLEANS HORROR FILM FEST SPECIAL EDITION PART 2 of 2!

Continuing with our special New Orleans Horror Film Fest edition of reviews here at 30 Days of Plight, I bring to you an 80's throwback film entitled The Barn.

Every town has their ghost stories.  Where I grew up we had one about "Becky's Grave," which was a grave set back on some farm property.  As I got older there were other ones I found out about as you moved further out.  There's the underwater ex-town of Livermore, PA, or the child's grave in the basement of the Lawrenceville Library in Pittsburgh, PA.  In case you can't tell from that I lived in Western PA a long time.  Why do I bring any of this up in a review about a film?

The Barn focuses on one of these handed down ghost tales.  The story is that if you knock on a specific barn three times and say trick-or-treat then three spirits from hell come to kill you.  The first being the Boogyman, who dresses like a miner because he helped the devil create a tunnel from hell and some miners came across it.  I'll actually buy that story for this film.  The second being Pumpkin Jack who reminds me a lot of Samhain from the Real Ghostbusters cartoon.  He apparently works as the lookout for the trio because he can enter any pumpkin or jack-o-lantern to watch or take form.  The final is the Candy Corn Scarecrow, who feels like the most random of the bunch as he has candy corn teeth and bites the fuck out of people.  I forget what his role is specifically.  Our group of teens just so happen to be heading to a concert and come across the barn without knowing that it is the barn.  Shit, of course, goes down, and following the rules of Halloween may be the only way to survive.

This film had some great cameos in it, such as The Legendary Hucklebucks playing the Halloween Hootenanny and Ari Lehman of Friday the 13th fame plays the TV/radio personality Dr. Rock.  I also feel like there are some references to other horror classics.  The combination of the skull mask, the witch mask, and Pumpkin Jack made me think of Halloween 3: Season of the Witch.  There's also an Evil Dead moment with some vines, and a more modern bit with a vibe of Tucker & Dale VS. Evil.  The only issue I had with this film at all was despite the relatively normal length, it felt like it was dragging a bit in the middle.  I thought this film was closer to two hours until I looked up the time.

If you want to check out more info on The Barn then visit their Facebook at facebook.com/TheBarnmovie/
Also if you want to check out the New Orleans Horror Film Fest you can do so at nolahorrorfilmfest.com/

Overall I give The Barn 4 copies of the Replacements album Hootenanny out of 5: