Month: October 2020

KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park (1978)

KISS MEETS THE PHANTOM OF THE PARK (1978)
Article 5009 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 12-5-2015
Directed by Gordon Hessler
Featuring Peter Criss, Ace Frehley, Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley
Country: USA
What it is: Rock star superhero exploitation TV-Movie

A mad scientist at an amusement park seeks to replace the members of KISS with robots, but not if the members of the group can use their superpowers to defeat him.

I was in high school when KISS became popular, so naturally I was embroiled in the whole “KISS rules/KISS sucks” controversy; for the record, I was in the latter category. I think the reason this band had the controversy in the first place was because they had a gimmick; they all wore heavy makeup and had distinct personas on stage, with Gene Simmons’ fire-breathing tongue-wagging demon character merely the most prominent. The controversy mostly had to do with whether they were anything more than the gimmick itself. At any rate, the controversy means little to me now; though I still don’t think they were a great band, at least their music didn’t annoy the hell out of me like some bands I really dislike.

However, there doesn’t seem to be that much a controversy about this attempt to turn them into movie stars; the band itself hated the movie, and if it does have any fans, I suspect it’s more due to the concert footage than for the story. Granted, the group was told that the movie was going to be like a cross between A HARD DAY’S NIGHT and STAR WARS. Well, it does star a rock group and features special effects, but that’s about as close as it comes to that description. Perhaps a more apt comparison would be to say it’s like a Santo Mexican wrestling movie, which I’m pretty sure wouldn’t be seen as a compliment. The story is pure silliness, giving the group dumb superpowers and a ridiculous “mad scientist” plot. I’m tempted to say that one of the problems is that the members of the group can’t act, but the truth of the matter is that it’s hard to tell; one of the members was perpetually missing from the set and had to be replaced by his stunt double for most scenes, another missed the dubbing sessions and had his voice replaced by another actor, and all of Gene Simmons’ lines are either done with an echo box or consist of lion roars. Still, Simmons was the only group member here with enough stage presence to make an impression. Anthony Zerbe is a good choice for the villain, but his character is silly and tiresome. My favorite scene in the movie is the opening credits, where the group members appear as giants towering over the rides in the amusement park, and my favorite line in the movie has to do with someone mistaking the word “apocalypse” for the name of a rock group. Beyond that, unless you’re really into KISS concert footage, there’s little of interest here.

0 CommentsLeave a comment

A Coffin for the Bride (1974)

A COFFIN FOR THE BRIDE (1974)
aka Kiss Kiss, Kill Kill
Article 5008 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 12-4-2015
Directed by John Sichel
Featuring Michael Jayston, Helen Mirren, Michael Gwynn
Country: UK
What it is: Episode of UK TV Series “Thriller”

A modern-day Bluebeard (a man who marries and kills rich women for their money) is on the loose, and a lawyer, who suspects the truth but can’t prove it, vows to catch him.

The whole “Bluebeard” plot is only marginal horror; though they are serial killers of a sort, they have a clear motivation for their actions, which to me tends to deemphasize the horror elements. This particular version of the story certainly plays more like a crime/mystery thriller than a horror movie.

That being said, I can nevertheless attest to the fact that this is easily one of the best episodes I’ve seen from that somewhat uneven TV series from which it comes. The script is solid and never quite shakes out the way you think it’s going to; my only problem is that sporadically it gives the serial killer those “meaningful to the audience but ambiguous to everyone else” lines that strike me as self-conscious and phony. Still, what really anchors this one is an excellent performance by Helen Mirren, though it may take you until the end of the movie to fully appreciate it. Michael Gwynn is also memorable as the lawyer; I only wish he were in the story more often than he is. Michael Jayston is solid as well; in fact, the whole cast excels. Anybody who wishes to catch this series at its best would do well to start with this one.

1 CommentLeave a comment

Pray TV (1980)

PRAY TV (1980)
aka KGOD
Article 5007 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 12-3-2015
Directed by Rick Friedburg
Featuring Dabney Coleman, Archie Hahn, Nancy Morgan
Country: USA
What it is: Satire

A small-town TV station is failing financially, but a new manager is hired who changes the format so that all of the shows have religious themes. However, the manager is a lot more interested in money than in religion…

If the fantastic content of the movie isn’t readily apparent from the above plot description, there’s a reason. The only content that pops up is that a news show covers an exorcism as one of its stories, so we get a short parody of THE EXORCIST. It’s played very broadly, as is the whole movie.

On its own terms, I have to say that those who cynically use religion to make a buck are ripe and relevant targets for satire, but a truly worthwhile exploration of that topic would offend a lot of people and step on some very powerful toes. This is not to say that this movie won’t offend some people; I don’t underestimate the almost bottomless capacity that exists for some people to be offended. It’s just that this movie plays for wacky and silly comedy, and most of its satire is so diffuse that it fails to hit any target at all. The plot itself seems almost thrown away; the movie mostly consists of parodies of TV shows. All in all, I really only enjoyed a few things about the movie; I liked a musical number featuring a Hare Krishna quartet, and I was delighted to see Dr. John and Devo show up as musical performers. Outside of that, I did take notice at the presence of actress Marcia Wallace (“The Bob Newhart Show” and “The Simpsons”) and Paul Reubens from his pre-Pee-Wee Herman days. Other than that, the movie is a lazy and not very funny mess.

0 CommentsLeave a comment

Feet Foremost (1983)

FEET FOREMOST (1983)
Article 5006 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 12-1-2015
Directed by Gordon Flemyng
Featuring Joanna Van Gyseghem, Lesley Bennett, Heather Chasen
Country: UK
What it is: Episode of British horror series “Shades of Darkness”

An industrialist buys a mansion which is haunted by a ghost who enters the site by asking to be carried over the threshold, and then only leaves after taking possession of someone and destroying them from the inside out.

This one is listed in the John Stanley guide. It isn’t quite the length of a movie; the print I saw ran just over fifty minutes. It’s a ghost story that works mostly through suggestion rather than shock; in fact, there’s only one scene of outright horror in the film. It’s well acted, and the script is quite literate; in fact, it gets a little dull on occasion, especially if you’re not into British drama. Still, the story ends up hinging on an interesting dilemma, and it has a satisfying ending.

0 CommentsLeave a comment

The Midnight Hour (1985)

THE MIDNIGHT HOUR (1985)
aka In the Midnight Hour
Article 5005 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 12-1-2015
Directed by Jack Bender
Featuring Lee Montgomery, Shari Belafonte, LeVar Burton
Country: USA
What it is: Halloween comedy TV-Movie

On Halloween night in the small town of Pitchford Cove, a group of teenagers play a prank by reading a ritual designed to raise the dead in a local cemetery. Unbeknownst to them, they’re successful, and though some of the dead are just looking for fun, others are more deadly…

I’d have to describe this one as a comic cross between CHILDREN SHOULDN’T PLAY WITH DEAD THINGS and AMERICAN GRAFFITI, with a common urban legend thrown in for good measure. On top of the usual assortment of zombies, we have some vampires and werewolves thrown into the mix, as well as a midget Frankenstein monster. I quite liked this one; the humor is often effective, the romance subplot is actually a bit on the charming side, and it gets positively surreal when it turns to horror, especially during a nightmarish little montage sequence in which the dead and newly dead wreck the town. To top it off, it features the voice of Wolfman Jack (and the man himself in a cameo, if my eyes don’t deceive me) and a great oldies soundtrack. It also features both Dick Van Patten and Kevin McCarthy becoming undead during the run of the film. No, it’s no classic, but it’s a lot of fun, and would make a good choice for Halloween viewing.

0 CommentsLeave a comment

Empire of Ash II (1988)

EMPIRE OF ASH II (1988)
aka Empire of Ash
Article 5004 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 11-30-2015
Directed by Michael Mazo and Lloyd A. Simandl
Featuring Melanie Kilgour, Thom Schioler, Frank Wilson
Country: Canada
What it is: Canadian Mad Max

It’s after the apocalypse, but isn’t it always? After her sister is apprehended by a dictatorial cult of religious zealots to use for breeding purposes, a woman joins forces with a mysterious loner to rescue her.

The “mysterious stranger” in this one is one of the more blatant imitations of Mad Max that I’ve encountered in the many imitations of THE ROAD WARRIOR that I’ve seen. This one has a very low reputation (3.8 rating on IMDB at the time of this writing), but I think it’s a little better than that; there’s some energetic camerawork on occasion, some of the stunt work is decent, and it has a couple of interesting ideas. However, it really doesn’t have enough of a story to sustain the length of the movie, so we get lots of scenes of the various factions of the world (the religious zealots, a set of mutants who kidnap people for their blood, groups of ordinary people) fighting with each other for no other reason than to fill out running time. Though it seems competent at times, there’s a pall of dreariness over the proceedings; quite frankly, most of the actors come across as being bored out of their skulls. The only time the movie ever becomes fun is when a couple of eccentric survivalist veterans show up; if the movie had been built around them, it would have been much more entertaining. The movie is known both as EMPIRE OF ASH and EMPIRE OF ASH II; it was released originally under the first title, and then rereleased under the second title; maybe they figured that no one saw the first release, so who’d be able to tell that the second was the same movie? There is a real sequel called EMPIRE OF ASH III.

0 CommentsLeave a comment

Eliminators (1986)

ELIMINATORS (1986)
Article 5003 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 11-28-2015
Directed by Peter Manoogian
Featuring Andrew Prine, Denise Crosby, Patrick Reynolds
Country: USA / Spain
What it is: Action Sci-Fi

When a cyborg is threatened with disassembly by a mad scientist, he escapes and teams up with a group of adventurers to defeat his enemy.

If I were to make a list of the dumbest action cliches I know of, one that would definitely make the list is the “bar brawl”; it’s a cliche as pointless as it is pervasive. Therefore, it’s a real tribute to this film that when it pops up here, I actually laughed, largely because it serves as a truly funny punch line to a great setup. In fact, there’s a few other times when this rather silly action-adventure flick brought a smile to my face, and though it has its fair share of cliches and clunker moments, it at least doesn’t come across as a mere imitation of some other movie. If the movie had been made after ROBOCOP, I would have thought that the Mandroid character here was a steal from that, but this movie predates that one, though it’s obvious the adventurer is a Han Solo type, and the flying robot is a variation on R2-D2. This cheesy movie does have a pretty low reputation, and though I can understand why, for me it gets by having just the right tinge of self-awareness of its own chintziness. In short, I liked it, so lets call it a guilty pleasure.

0 CommentsLeave a comment

Die Sage des Todes (1981)

DIE SAGE DES TODES (1981)
aka Bloody Moon
Article 5002 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 11-28-2015
Directed by Jesus Franco
Featuring Olivia Pascal, Christoph Moosbrugger, Nadja Gergenoff
Country: West Germany / Spain
What it is: Slasher, Franco style

Someone is murdering students at a women’s boarding school.

Being neither a particular fan of Jesus Franco nor of the slasher genre, I can’t exactly say I was looking forward to this one with baited breath. I can say, however, that the ending of the movie is so over-the-top that I found myself looking at the movie in a different light then I had while watching it; that is, I began to wonder if it was actually intended as a tongue-in-cheek send-up of the genre. Granted, it’s hard to tell; the slasher genre descended into self-parody fairly quickly, and I can’t exactly say I have my finger on Franco’s pulse enough to know when he’s pulling my leg (in fact, I’ve seen many of his movies where I have no idea of what he’s trying to do). But if it is a send-up, that may explain why some of the dialogue is laughably bad, or why some of the behavior by various individuals is truly stupid (example: if someone is casting a scary shadow on your wall, don’t back away from the shadow – back away from what’s casting it). It might even explain why one of the “scary” musical sounds is reminiscent of a hopping effect I heard in Rolf Harris’s novelty single, “Tie Me Kangaroo Down”. At any rate, I find it more rewarding to look at it as a parody than a straight horror film, and I do find it interesting that Franco took on a horror sub-genre that strikes me as primarily American; I really can’t think of many slasher films that aren’t either from the U.S.A. or Canada.

0 CommentsLeave a comment

Because of the Cats (1973)

BECAUSE OF THE CATS (1973)
aka Brutalization
Article 5001 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 11-27-2015
Directed by Fons Rademakers
Featuring Bryan Marshall, Alexandra Stewart, Edward Judd
Country: Netherlands / Belgium
What it is: Crime drama

A police detective from Amsterdam investigates a gang that has been taking part in a series of burglaries, acts of vandalism and rapes.

The John Stanley guide from which I culled this title speaks of a series of murders cause by a devil cult. The blurbs on the DVD package for the movie make it sound like an exercise in brutal rape/revenge drama along the lines of I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE. Both descriptions are stunningly inaccurate. Though a cult of sorts is indeed involved, to call it a “devil cult” is to imply details that simply aren’t there; it’s more of Nietzschean “power of will” cult. And though the story does involve a gang rape, and there is an ample amount of exploitation elements to the story, to call it a rape/revenge drama is to imply a story arc that is simply not there. What we have here is a crime drama, in which a police inspector tries to crack the mystery of why a gang of young men (and another gang of young women) are doing what they’re doing. Yes, there’s a political subtext, and it must be pretty obvious if even I can see it. Anybody drawn to this movie by the two previously cited descriptions will be disappointed; on its own terms, it’s a passable but slightly dull drama for the most part, though the best parts come near the end of the movie. It has its uses, but it falls very short of the sensationalism the descriptions promise. And as such, I don’t think it really qualifies as a genre movie.

0 CommentsLeave a comment

Aftermath (1982)

THE AFTERMATH (1982)
Article 5000 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 11-26-2015
Directed by Steve Barkett
Featuring Steve Barkett, Lynne Margulies, Sid Haig
Country: USA
What it is: Another movie where the description begins “It’s after the apocalypse.”

It’s after the apocalypse. A pair of astronauts return to Earth to discover that nuclear and biological war have destroyed most of humanity. They have to contend with ugly mutants and a gang of brutal killers.

The DVD package for this movie has a quote from Video Review Magazine which describes it as “The best post nuclear film since ON THE BEACH.” Uhh, no, I don’t think so. It does serve as a description of the movie’s pretensions, however. By this I mean that the movie doesn’t obviously go the route of trying to be an imitation of THE ROAD WARRIOR; rather than a stylish action thriller, it does take a stab at being something of a drama. Unfortunately, as a drama, it suffers from a weak script, indifferent acting, and characters that simply lack the complexity to make it work as such. Instead, as should be obvious from the scenes near the beginning where Sid Haig and his cohorts chase down and capture or slaughter a bunch of people, this movie’s heart is squarely in a more mundane category – the exploitation revenge action thriller. In short, any pretensions towards drama give way to sequences of bloody revenge during the last quarter of the movie, but then, what would you expect of a movie which features Sid Haig as one of the top three billed performers? There are cameos from Jim Danforth and Forrest J Ackerman to enliven the proceedings, and Dick Miller provides the voice of a broadcaster. I will admit it is rather ambitious for a low-budget independent movie, but ultimately it treads ground that is a little too familiar.

0 CommentsLeave a comment