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.