Tales from the Snark Side: ROCK-A-DIE BABY (1989)

Have you ever had one of those days where you just need to shut out the noise of the world and sink into a hot, frothy bath of low-rent '80s horror movie? Is it just me? This time out, wading nostril deep through the excretia of the last two years - err, I mean two weeks - I thought "hey, now is the time to watch one of the few '80s anthology horror films that I've never seen before!" What could go wrong?

Warning: Spoilers Ahead.

Opening with a scene in which an alleged rock band (billed as Danger, but not to be confused with the active Swedish band) is being harangued by their manager (writer-producer-director Bob Cook) to come up with a song for a horror movie by morning. The band, who are repeatedly referred to as a rock band, are aghast at such lowly endeavor. "A horror movie?" they groan. If you ever forgot that horror was considered a flogged horse at the end of the '80s, here's a reminder and it won't be the first, but more on that later.

We then cut to a woman in a low cut, black dress with tiger in a cemetery for no adequately explained reason, before we get the opening credits which include a bells and synth cover of... yes, Rock-a-Bye Baby. Bob Cook must have been really excited by his high concept. I hear cocaine will do that to you, but I have no proof of this.

Just when you were thinking this pre-credit sequence was the wrap-around story for our anthology, we are introduced to an half-asleep mom with perfect hair, Eva (Marilyn Hassett), and her too-old-for-this-shit 12 year old daughter Diana (Lauren Woodland). While watching NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968) on TV, Diana decides the movie is boring (What?! Go to your room! Right now!) and wants mom to tell her a bedtime story. Seriously, this is the wrap-around. Diana wants Mom to tell her an original story off the top of her head, because she's an author after all, regardless of the fact that she is way too old for that sort of thing. Mom thinks about it and decides that a story about the Viet Nam war is just the ticket for a young girl. Full disclosure, I'm not the parent of a young girl, so what the hell do I know? But I don't remember any PLATOON (1987) t-shirts at Hot Topic back in the day.

Utilizing some stock footage from the TV series VIETNAM WAR STORIES (1987-88), we are introduced to our team of four diverse soldiers who are introduced bitching and griping before the Sarge decides that they should split up for because, I guess, that the lowest unit of military forces is not small enough. Sarge and Porky (Phill Meske) spot a VC with a roll of toilet paper (because, sure, why not?) and take off after him while Hutch (Bobby Hosea) and Opie (Glenn Morshower), after admitting to a lack of heroism, investigate a tiny village that has four G.I.s all torn up in the middle of the huts. After much arguing about what happened (says Hutch, "VC don't rip nobody's arms off!"), they spot a topless local sprinting into a hut. Feeling that this is a threat that they can handle, our men in green give chase and escort her back to camp while proposing a myriad of sexual fantasies. At the camp Sarge and Porky (so named because he's way too fat to have ever made it through basic training) show off their spoils, a VC prisoner who is clearly a Latino dude, and drool over the girl. One by one the "feisty little gook" seduces, sprouts fangs and heavy eyebrows and kills the team off camera with sounds of a tiger on the soundtrack. The twist here is that another team of diverse soldiers finds the four torn up G.I.s and the whole scenario repeats, right down to the dialogue and the streaking girl.

Man, if that doesn't knock some kid into dreamland, I don't know what will! In between the stories, in addition to the wrap-around, we get more footage of the wannabe Elvira with the tiger in the cemetery with some of the band members dressed up as cheesy movie monsters, intercut with scenes of the story that we just watched all set to a song called Spooky Lady. "Spooky lay-daaaay, whatcha gonna do? Spooky lay-daaaay, she put a spell on you." Spooky lay-daaaay, what's this all about? Spooky lay-daaaay, pad that run-time out.

What, this damn kid is still awake? Yep, time for another appropriately YA story. This one is about a group of 30-something "college kids" who are predictably drunk, loud, and mean. You know they are college kids because the guys will raise their beers and yell "it's beaver time!" at random intervals. This is amusingly translated in Brazilian as "and time for porn!" After a round of strip poker in which (big surprise) Becky LeBeau's character, Joanne, is the loser, they decide to prank the nerdy, virginal classmate Martha (Lillian Byrd) by setting up a fake seance in which they plan to "bring back" their dead math teacher Old Lady Clausen who knew Martha. The big plan is to get Martha naked and scare her so bad that she will run out into the streets with no clothes on and be really embarrassed.

Yeah, it's a hell of a plan. Martha really wants to join these lunk heads, so she goes along with it, allowing her bare chest to be painted with a pentacle (not even an inverted one) while the douches knock on the table and say spooky things from a mic in another room. The big payoff is supposed to be Joanne in face cream, bursting in and pretending to be Old Lady Clausen, but instead she passes out and the real Claussen comes back from the dead and is really pissy because Martha wouldn't let her get in her pants. I guess the joke here is that the math teacher was a lesbian and... well, that's about it. Unlike the first story, this seems totally on brand for something a 12 year old would enjoy. Questionable parenting, sure, but it plays to the crowd.

Following another Spooky Lady montage, we get the third and, thankfully, final story, this one starring top-billed Dick Sargent. Yes, the same Dick Sargent whose decades-long career is probably best remembered by his replacing Dick York on "Bewitched" in 1969. Unnamed newlyweds (Sargent and Marilyn Hassett) decide to spend their honeymoon night in the back of a taxi parked over a city view. Yeah, this one has got to knock this kid out, for sure. While "comically" and enthusiastically making out in the back seat, the taxi driver notices that in the mirror it appears as if the groom is gettin' jiggy all by himself. Cut to the couple at home and after his bride says that she's hungry, the groom suggests "steak" to which the horrified wife says "WHAT?!" Hooboy, this isn't foreshadowing, it's forebludgeoning. The wife works odd hours at a blood bank (ok, ok, we get it, jeeezus!) and doesn't like going to the beach or baseball games ("because of the bats"), and nearly chokes to death on a salad that the husband made with... yep, you guessed it, garlic. Cue the muted horns. Wha, wha, whaaaa.

After dinner, the husband cuts his finger while doing dishes and the wife rushes over and sucks his finger, which he finds odd. Kids love Dracula references! Just when things are getting freaky between the sheets, the wife informs her husband that if he wants any more action, he's going to have to go shave. Then she mentions that there is a full moon out and that she has a surprise for him. He replies he has a surprise for her too and she sprouts fangs and he sprouts fur and we cut back and forth for far too long. And that damn kid finally falls asleep, as does the audience. Actually, I lie. What really happens is the mom and daughter suddenly turn to face the camera, both sporting vampire fangs. Ugh, make it stop!

Just when you thought you were finished with this mess, we get yet another Spooky Lady montage, this time with clips from all of the stories that we just watched which goes on for three full minutes. This is followed by a slow credit scrawl over outtakes of actors flubbing their lines, including Bob Cook hisself blowing his lines and then throwing a hissy and blaming it on another actor. I'm not sure why Bob would include footage of himself looking like a total jerkwad, but ok.

The usual school of thought is that horror anthologies typically have one really good story and then are bolstered by two lesser stories. Sometimes movies will buck that trope and deliver one clunker after another. While I can think of other examples of bad low-rent indy horror anthologies (TALES FROM THE QUADEAD ZONE (1987), anyone?), it's hard to think of any that sport a large number of cast members that actually went on to have successful careers. Not to mention the fact that the movie never even made it on to US shelves, ROCK-A-DIE only appearing on video in Brazil, Japan and Mexico, as far as I can tell.

1989 was a precarious year for horror films. It didn't take even a decade for slasher movies and horror films in general to go from boom to bust. As we all know, John Carpenter's HALLOWEEN (1978) ushered in, what was at the time, the modern horror movie. Inspired by Italian giallo films, HALLOWEEN in turn inspired many knock-offs that became institutions in their own right. These institutions begat sequels and other knock-offs that filled video store shelves in a time where anything and everything could be released on video and make whopping great loads of cash. At about the mid '80s, slasher fatigue set in. The success of the humor-filled gore-drenched RE-ANIMATOR (1985), which was so popular that it received an expanded R-rated version and a massively edited 59 minute version broadcast on television's USA Network, led to a preponderance of horror comedies completely taking over the horror market. In a few short years this too burned itself out leading to the explosion of "horror-thrillers" or just straight thrillers in the '90s.

In '89 ROCK-A-DIE was teetering on the edge of being obsolete before it even got before audiences and ultimately never got released in the US. Even so, this is surprising as the ravenous hunger for VHS genre movies in video stores was still going strong until Blockbuster, and to a lesser extent Hollywood Video, bought out all of the mom and pop video stores in the early '90s and began dictating what the public would be allowed to see from their offices in the conservative mid-west. This helped wipe out the horror genre for a few years until DVD started the cycle all over again. It's interesting how quickly these undulations in the market came at that time, where as today folks are complaining about "superhero fatigue" for a market boom that started nearly 20 years ago.

This one is really a bit frustrating as it could have been far more fun than it is. The comedy aspects are as joyless as the relentless padding that is required to bring the movie up to feature length. It barely delivers any horror, other than the torn up soldiers in the first episode and the cheap, but cool undead face of Old Lady Clausen in the second one. Dick Sargent's werewolf makeup is downright embarrassing, looking more like a hairy catcher's mitt than a werewolf. On the other hand, it's got Becky LeBeau topless, which is always nice and it's shot on film. Shooting on film automatically brings it up to respectability, though the estimated $375,000 budget probably got eaten up by that very thing, not to mention even as feeble as Dick Sargent's career was in '89, I'm sure he took a chunk out of what was left. This leaves little to put up on screen, but you can make up for it with some creativity. I mean, if you have any. The first story in Nam could have been pretty good with just a little bit more money for a halfway decent were-tiger costume, a bit of gore or even more scenes shot at night. Hell, I'd settle for some foley'd sound effects of automatic weaponsfire instead of the raw pop of blanks being fired, though to be fair, the weapons fire is mostly just from a hilarious moment where Sarge fires his M16 in the air while screaming and crying after finding Opie dead. You'd think the meatgrinder that was Nam would have left him a little numb, but I guess he really liked Opie. The wrap-around really should have been better, but I guess Cook was struggling to shoehorn something in to fit his concept that wouldn't cost him a bundle and couldn't be bothered to go all David Lynch and make some sort of nightmare baby with a goat fetus, which is a shame.

This was Bob Cook's first film of his own creation. He is credited as assistant director on three films prior to ROCK-A-DIE, but this was his *ahem* baby and established his mini production company B.C. Films in Florida. He has gone on to make 10 more movies, including the lamentable LYCANTHROPE (1999), which managed to ensnare Robert Carradine, Michael Winslow and Christopher Mitchum for a few days of shooting. Then there is his most recent, SCREAM TEST (2020), which I'm going to pass on because there is no way a 2020, shot on digital, Felissa Rose no-budgeter is in any way going to make my world a better place. A man's gotta know his limitations.

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Psychic Power: PATER NOSTER AND THE MISSION OF LIGHT (2024)

Hard to believe but Shocktober 2024 is upon us. To be honest, we’re still healing from our self-inflicted cinemasochism journey of Ulli Lommel serial killer flicks last year, so I figured it would take something pretty special to get me out of that slump. Well, ladies and gentlemen, that something arrived via the underground horror film PATER NOSTER AND THE MISSION OF LIGHT (2024). Kick off your Birkenstocks, light some incense, and avoid the brown acid because things are about to get trippy. 

“People come and go, but music is forever.” 

The film opens with a moody scene where a group of cult members surround The Oracle (William Christopher). Fed a black gooey substance, the Oracle lives up to their name by announcing the Dragon Flower is wilting and that a new vessel is needed to house The Aleph. “The siren’s song will call her to us,” he says before collapsing. Cut to Mary Alice “Max” Clay (Adara Starr) dancing down the street to her job at an independent record store. Following a hilarious montage of customer interactions, the plot kicks into gear when a customer brings in an ultra-rare LP to trade. Said record is “Sator” by the hippie commune group Pater Noster and the Mission of Light and Max quickly offers the guy fifty dollars in store credit to score this rare “major want list item.” Unfortunately, Max’s dreams are dashed when the store owner Sam (Morgan Shaley Renew) stakes claim on the disc for the store. 

Sensing gold in them thar hills, Max pleads with the customer to find out where he purchased this rarity. He gives her the address of a thrift store and Max soon finds herself holding four of the band’s five rare releases. The store owner mentions the hippies used to own this shop and occasionally drop off old stock. Hoping to score the elusive fifth album, Max leaves her name and number to pass along. Big mistake #1. Returning home with her LP loot, Max settles down to listen to the albums with her roommate and ex-girlfriend Abby (Sanethia Dresch). It is at this point around the 13-minute mark I knew this was going to be special as head music fills the soundtrack and the screen explodes with an insane psychedelic vision of some crazy ass stuff. “This music is drugs,” says Abby. Yeah, and so is this movie. Immediately after the vision, Max gets a phone call from the Mission of Light hoping to set up a meeting to which she agrees. Big mistake #2 

The next night Max, Abby, Sam, and co-worker Gretchen (Shelby Lois Guinn) head to see the band Lunacide with the expressed interest of talking to the band’s drummer Jay Sin (Josh Outzen, whose wig should earn a Best Supporting Actor nod), who purchased the “Sator” album earlier in the day. Jay says the group was founded by Pater Noster, who was studying at M.I.T. before falling into the ‘60s drug scene and starting the cult. Wishing to find out more about this mysterious group, Max has everyone back to her place to pick Jay’s brain. Luckily, he has the hookup as they call into the paranormal radio show of Dennis Waverly (Tim Cappello, the “I Still Believe” saxman from THE LOST BOYS [1987]), who turns out to know a lot about the Mission of Light. Waverly says the group “cultivated the greatest minds of the esoteric underground” and dabbled in everything from a GMO food called Manna to writing psychology-occult books before disappearing in the mid-70s. Most chillingly, he says, “They worship at the altar of madness.” So they’re like Trump supporters? Waverly warns Max to be careful as anyone who has owned the “Rotas” album has allegedly met with “incredible misfortune.” 

The warning goes unheeded though as Max gets another phone call from the Mission of Light offering to pick her up the next day. Big mistake #3. The following morning Max and her friends are picked up by The Driver (Stephan Jensen, channeling Reggie Nalder in BURNT OFFERINGS [1976]), who offers them some alcohol but says they must be blindfolded for the final hour of their drive. Soon the group arrives at Wunderlawn Tu and is greeted by Deja Venus (Dorothy Hadley Joly) before the other commune members appear and break out in song to welcome their visitors. Feeling the effects of the alcohol, Jay heads to the bathroom but is suddenly surrounded by two purple jacket- wearing guards, Nova (Aaron Blomberg) and Rayne (Paul Talbot, aka the world’s foremost Charles Bronson expert). In a daze, Jay is dragged to come face-to-face with Pater Noster (Mike Amason, looking like an evil Uncle Jesse from THE DUKES OF HAZZARD). The bearded cult leader wastes little time explaining his musical philosophy, telling Jay, “When it is done well, music can crack open the mind and allow another consciousness to enter it.” Noster’s female assistant mentions fear actually delivers the best energy and begins to…well, I’ll just wrap up my summary here so there are at least some surprises. Let’s just say that in the last half of the film our loveable old hippies make the Manson Family look like the Partridge Family. 

“Music is the first form of magic practice.” 

Made in the wilds of South Carolina, PATER NOSTER AND THE MISSION OF LIGHT is the third feature of writer-director Christopher Bickel. A veteran musician of the punk music scene, Bickel has taken the punk rock ethos and seemingly transferred it to film. Seriously, my man heard about D.I.Y. (Do It Yourself) and took that literally. No joke, Bickel’s credit in the final crawl mentions he wrote, produced, directed, lit, shot, edited, and scored the film. Hell, I’d wager he was probably whipping up the Manna in the kitchen for the scenes it is shown in. My litmus test for modern horror is just to show me something unique and the scenario Bickel has dreamed up here definitely did that as the last half hour has some truly gruesome and insane bits. 

That is not to say the entire scenario is filled with hippie freakouts and over-the-top gore. Bickel also takes the time to work in some humor including a recurring joke about the pronunciation of band/album names that culminates with Max telling Deja that she loved the album “Opera” and is told it is pronounced “OH-pear-uh.” And I legit let out a belly laugh in the finale where Max is running for her life, but stops in her tracks to grab a couple copies of the “Rotas” album. Shit, gotta pay that rent! There is also a nice bit of social commentary as Deja mentions how the group went into hiding, particularly because of how intolerant Christians were to the group. 

The multihyphenate Bickel uses all of the tech elements to further establish the film's uniqueness. The sound design is fantastic and Bickel and friends recorded an entire album’s worth of music for the titular group. The editing really blew me away as well, especially during the hallucinations, and there is a gruesome FX creation by Joe Castro that has to be seen to be believed. Buttressing all of these elements is a crew that I am sure worked their ass off. From the costumes to the set designs to the faux album covers, there is such an amazing attention to detail. I was legit floored when the end credits mentioned the entire thing was shot for the price of a used car (roughly $21,000 according to Bickel). 

Equal to Bickel’s ability to stretch a dollar is his ability to get the most of a committed cast. Most everyone here is a veteran of Bickel’s previous productions THE THETA GIRL (2017) and BAD GIRLS (2021), so I’m sure they knew what they were getting into, but the film’s finale features some boundary pushing that I’m shocked he got everyone to agree to it. Newcomers to this ensemble of insanity include debuting lead Adara Starr and Josh Outzen, who both do perfect turns as the final girl lead and the loveable stoner, respectively. Much like the Mission of Light itself, the troupe is in the hands of a total madman, but this one is only looking to entertain and/or gross out. Thankfully, he manages to achieve both with great success. PATER NOSTER AND THE MISSION OF LIGHT is truly one-of-a-kind and if you dig indie horror made with heart (and blood spraying from said heart), I highly recommend it.

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TV Terror: PLAYING WITH FIRE (1985)

Figured it would take something major for me to churn out a full blown review and I’ll be damned if that didn’t happen this week when someone unearthed the super elusive TV movie PLAYING WITH FIRE (1985) starring sitcom star Gary Coleman as a teenage arsonist. The NBC TV project was announced in March 1984, just a month after Coleman had turned sixteen and the world’s biggest child star wanted to expand his range beyond playing precocious children due to his diminutive size. Unfortunately, despite being supported by a stellar cast, capable crew and gripping scenario, Coleman saw his opportunity to try new things go up in flames due to a number of factors. 

Coleman stars as 15-year-old David Phillips, who is dealing with the separation of his parents Carol (Cicely Tyson) and Steve (Ron O’Neal). The script wastes little time establishing this as Carol arrives home from her doctor job and seems to ignore David while tending to his little brother. Our lead takes his anger out by throwing a basketball at the family dog, whose yelp results in the mom saying, “I wish your father had taken him instead of a lot of the other things he took.” Stopping before lighting a cigarette because she is trying to quit, Carol leaves her lighter out and David is drawn to it like a moth to a flame. It doesn’t take long for David to get his Drew Barrymore on as he terrorizes the family dog by flicking the lighter toward it and accidentally sets a coat on fire. Suddenly the frustrated David has an outlet for all of his pent up anger and a way to get his family’s attention. 

The abandon David feels at home is reciprocated at school as he is left out of a basketball game even though his best friend Mike (Tom Fridley, the metal dude from FRIDAY THE 13TH PART VI) is using David’s prized basketball. This results in David setting fire to a garbage can which in turn results in David’s first encounter with Fire Chief Walker (Yaphet Kotto). David tries to explain it away by saying a spark from a car exhaust caused the blaze, but Walker ain’t buying it. Anyway, David is soon living Def Leppard’s “Pyromania” as he sets fire to some bushes after an encounter with his dad (using the child support check as a igniter), sets fire to the school after a parent conference with the principal, and sets his own house aflame when his mother decides to go out for her first date. All the while Chief Walker is around trying to make sure the stubborn family gets David the help he needs. 

PLAYING WITH FIRE has long attracted interest in cult film circles because, let’s be honest, who wouldn’t want to see TV’s beloved Arnold Jackson cackling gleefully as he becomes - to quote noted 20th century poets The Prodigy - a fire starter, twisted firestarter! The imagination builds so much over the decades that the movie’s eventual viewing will probably be a letdown as it is a pretty somber but normal “Movie of the Week” fare. Writer-producer Lew Hunter was a TV vet by this point, having previously penned the super creepy FALLEN ANGEL (1981), which had Richard Masur as a child molester, and the “our kids are on drugs” drama DESPERATE LIVES (1982). His scenario handles the building of David’s obsession with blazes well, accurately showing the pressure slowly building in the young man. Hunter also tackles the dilemma where parents refuse to admit something might be wrong with their child and their own resistance to therapy to help. Director Ivan Nagy was also a prolific TV vet at the time and handles it all well with DP Gary Graver capturing the fire scenes with the right intensity. (Shockingly, Nagy would go on to his own criminal infamy as he was wrapped up in the Heidi Fleiss scandal and eventually segued into directing porn.) 

As for Coleman, he is handed a complex role and the young actor acquits himself well in it for the most part. The sequence where he sets his mother’s clothes aflame in a rage is probably his best work in the picture. Unfortunately, several factors hold his portrayal back. Despite it being established as an age appropriate role, Coleman still had those cute, chubby cheeks and high pitch voice. It is hard to take some of the dramatics seriously when you are trained to instinctively hear a “whatchutalkinabout?” when some family drama unfolds. The production wisely surrounds Coleman with an amazing supporting cast including legend Cicely Tyson and SUPER FLY himself Ron O’Neal. The best performance is hands down by Yaphet Kotto as the sympathetic fire inspector. There is a great scene where the family debates David’s fate with Chief Walker. “Why don’t you do something,” asks Tyson, to which Kotto sternly replies, “Why do you do something?” There is also an innocent love interest angle with Tammy Lauren, who previously co-starred with Coleman in THE KID WITH THE BROKEN HALO (1982). 

Debuting on NBC’s “Sunday Night at the Movies” on April 14, 1985, the movie actually faced pretty stiff competition as CBS debuted the 13-hour miniseries SPACE while ABC hosted the network television premiere of POLTERGEIST (1982). The James Michener adaptation rocketed to first place with a 19.9 rating/34 share of the audience. Spielberg and Hooper’s suburban ghosts and Coleman’s suburban arsonist battled neck-and-neck for second and third place though, with the former receiving a 15.4 rating/24 share and the latter a 15.3/24 share. 

Not bad for a dramatic debut of a former child star. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough. At the time Coleman was the highest paid child actor in the world, making an astonishing $64,000 per episode of DIFF’RENT STROKES. In fact, by the time PLAYING WITH FIRE debuted on television, it appears Coleman was trying to leverage it into more serious roles. He took to the press and said, “I don’t want to play kids forever” and even indicated that he was willing to walk away from the hit sitcom when his contract ended at the end of the 1985 season. Unfortunately, NBC called his bluff and the network canceled the still high-rated show. However, in a bit of television history, it was picked up by competitor ABC for an eighth and final season that spanned from September 1985 until March 1986. Coleman actually ended up taking a long hiatus after that, which was unfortunate because he was never able to recapture his past glory or parlay this interesting dramatic turn into something bigger. Coleman would eventually return on talk shows like THE ARSENIO HALL SHOW in 1989, where he would publicly plead for a serious job in Hollywood. It never happened and Coleman was soon embroiled in a lawsuit against his parents and former manager. It is a shame that Hollywood was so, pardon the pun, short-sighted as Coleman deserved better.

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Horrible Halloween: The Living Hell of Ulli Lommel (2023)

 

The plan was to cover the full run of 12 serial killer movies from Ulli Lommel and his pimp, Lionsgate. Unfortunately, these movies are even worse than we suspected. Really, I'm not kidding here. These movies suck so hard that they create a swirling vortex of darkness that swallows black holes. So, we tapped out early. "Wimps!" I hear you scream. Yeah, I know, we're getting soft in our respective old ages. We could have broken a hip or something! To be honest though, there is only so many ways that you can say "Ulli doesn't give a shit, he's just doing it for the money." Hell, if you can even make it through every review, you deserve a gold star stapled to your forehead. You've been warned.

Zodiac Killer (2005)

Green River Killer (2005)

The Black Dahlia (2006)

Killer Pickton (2006)

Curse of the Zodiac (2007)

BTK Killer (2005)

Son of Sam (2008)

Night Stalker (2009)

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Living Hell of Ulli Lommel: NIGHT STALKER (2009)

I woke up in a cold sweat. I had that nightmare again. The nightmare has been the same for a month. I was in a room, watching movies that had no budget, barely made any sense and were wrong in every conceivable way and then... I'd write about it. As if anyone cared. I was wracked with pain, both physical and mental. How could my mind come up with such horrible visions? Then I realized, it was not a dream. IT WAS REAL.

In absolute honesty, I am really hard pressed to think of anything I've seen in the horror genre that is more lazy, boring and void of artistic merit than this movie. Of course, Ulli Lommel (who loved to talk of his association with Any Warhol and Rainer Werner Fassbinder) would no doubt say that those features are exactly what makes it art. Art, by its definition, is something that is created by an allegedly sentient being and provokes an emotional response in the viewer.  The only creativity on display here is the wiliness Ulli uses trying to make as much cash as he can will as little effort as possible, and the emotion that it evokes is something similar to being gibbeted. Gibbeting, if you don't know, was a medieval form of execution, where a person was placed in a body-shaped cage which was hung from a high pole in a well travelled place as the victim slowly died of exposure, starvation and dehydration and rotted away over the heads of the general populace. Yeah, that pretty much describes sitting through this movie. Except after it's over, I can go have a sandwich and try to forget that this nightmare ever happened.

If you have been following our Horrible Halloween coverage of Ulli Lommel's serial killer movies, you may have noticed my complaint that each successive movie that I watched was worse than the last one. It's no different here. Once again, Ulli continues to strip down his movies, minimizing the amount of work needed to fulfil the basic requirements of a "movie". Or rather the basic requirements set forth by Lommel's enabler, Lionsgate. It's kind of fascinating in a way. It's kind of like an outlaw biker making a chopper, except that while the goal there is to strip off all the excess parts making the bike lean, minimalist and without distinguishing characteristics that would make them easily identifiable to the authorities, Lommel strips away everything that makes a movie a movie, making something that has no aesthetic appeal whatsoever. But it does help him avoid the law. I don't think Lommel ever paid for a filming permit in his life and I'm sure he thought of himself as an outlaw filmmaker, making anti-art that challenges the establishment. Of course, that is complete bullshit. Ulli was all about making money for Ulli and doing as little work as possible to get it.

Several of Lommel's serial killer movies have just slapped a serial killer's nickname on the box and then Ulli did whatever he felt like doing in the movie. Facts make work so much more difficult, so why bother with them at all? On the flip side of the coin, he actually kind of gives us a half-assed biographies, which while woefully inaccurate by normal standards, is pretty amazing by Ulli's. Sure a lot of the facts are wrong and a lot of the character is wrong and a lot of the setting is wrong, but he uses real dates! This is what progress looks like to Ulli Lommel. I wonder if his headstone is actually on the right grave?

Richard Ramirez, known ultimately by the nickname The Night Stalker, but also tagged with The Walk-In Killer and The Valley Intruder, was an abused child from Waco, Texas who under the tutelage of his older cousin, a Vietnam vet turned serial killer, learned how to stalk and kill people with military precision. A drug addict from an early age, he started committing burglaries and found that he enjoyed murdering the men and raping the women sometimes forcing the victims to praise Satan while he looted the house. He committed a string of these burglary rape-murders in Los Angeles starting in 1984 before moving on to San Francisco, where he continued until the then very green mayor, Diane Feinstein (who was thrust into the role after a shocking double murder), announced to the press what evidence the police had and just how close the police were to catching him. Ramirez then dumped the evidence and moved back to L.A. where he committed more burglary/rape/murders. In 1985 he was cornered by a few citizens who recognized him from his police sketch and his mouth full of rotten teeth. After a frenzied attempt at escape which included a failed carjacking, the citizens turned into an angry mob that grew to a couple hundred people. He was severely beaten by the mob before the police finally showed up to arrest him.

In the '80s, TV news and general public were already in a hysterical panic over alleged Satanists being "uncovered" hiding in plain sight, around every corner. Ramirez dumped gasoline on this inferno of idiocy by drawing a pentagram on his hand, which he held up during his massive, media blitz trial and shouting a bunch of stuff about how he worshipped Satan. He enjoyed the attention and the fear he inspired, infamously saying "see you at Disneyland" after being told he could be executed for his crimes. It was almost as a defining moment for California and American history as the Manson murders. It profoundly affected the psyche of the nation to the point where it changed the behavior of citizens and law enforcement. He is one of the primary reasons Californians started locking their doors and windows before going to bed at night. So, what better story with which to make some quick and easy cash on, amiright?

Opening with the half-conscious body of a shirtless, leather-jacketed prettyboy (Adolph Cortez) surrounded by a mob of ten people, we start at the end. In real life, Ramirez (the representation of whom, in standard Ulli fashion, is never named) was beaten by a mob of a couple hundred people who had caught him in their neighborhood after a newscast went out showing an artist's sketch of his face. Ulli can't afford 20 people, much less 200, so less than a dozen it is, with the sounds of a crowd on the soundtrack. This prompts a flashback to what brought him to this point.

Shot in Los Angeles (and only Los Angeles this time) and set in '84 and '85 (without any attempt to create that setting), Lommel kills as much time as possible with the clip-fest credits, flashing images in positive, negative, color and black and white of Los Angeles before focusing on a vaguely Latin guy with no shirt and a leather jacket sucking a Blow-Pop. You can almost feel Ulli drooling all over the camera. Of course, no Ulli Lommel serial killer movie is complete without a monotonous voice-over and this is no different with some of Ulli's most obvious writing from the gut: "Women. I never understood women. They think they own the world, with their pussies, their tits, their asses." Only 70 more minutes to go. Can I make it? "They keep hitting on me, telling me that I'm cute, and sexy, trying to pick me up. I hate their fucking guts." All of this rambling goes on while poor Richie is having two attractive young women corner him and take him home to their apartment. After being dragged back to their pad and having them do everything they can to get him to stop sucking his Blow-Pop and rise to the occasion, he jumps up and takes off while thinking "I prefer sucking my lollipop over sucking your pussy, bitch! Why don't you suck your own pussies and leave me the fuck alone!" Welcome to Ulli's own personal therapy session. And the motherfucker gets paid for it! Wily, I tell ya.

We also get flashbacks of Richie's uncle Mike (in reality, cousin Mike) ranting about committing war crimes and shooting his nagging wife (Nola Roeper) in the face, causing a blood-spattered 8 year old Richie to freak out. In reality, Ramirez, who was 12, was very calm and enjoyed witnessing the murder, though he was went through a depression and had epileptic fits afterwards. His drug use started at ten. This leads us to June 28th 1984, which is the date of Ramirez's second known murder, an elderly woman whom he severely cut up with a knife while she slept in her bed. Ulli really doesn't care about those details, and if this were a good movie in any way, I wouldn't either. Ramirez's first known murder was of an 9 year old girl in a San Francisco basement. He also raped her and hung her partially nude corpse from a ceiling pipe. Maybe I'm getting old and soft, but there's nothing about that that should be exploited in a cheapo movie. Here, Ulli decides to have Richie day stalk a young black woman back to her apartment where he peeks in her tiny bathroom window, then suddenly appears in the room and shoots her while she's sitting on the toilet. Not entertaining, but for once I'm glad that Ulli is showing blatant disregard for the facts.

This is essentially the pattern for the movie. In spite of the title being NIGHT STALKER, Richie does a lot of walking around in the California sun, while complaining about it in his head: "I hated the fucking sunlight. It was like Jesus was trying to straighten me out with good thoughts!" Uhhh, Ulli, your Freudian slip is showing. This rambles along for about two dozen minutes until Richie spies a "blonde and green eyed monster" (Elissa Dowling, as a brunette in sunglasses, who you may not want to remember from Ulli's insufferable THE BLACK DAHLIA [2006]). Richie, suddenly obsessed with a girl, contrary to his previous woman-hating rants, thinks to himself "the star of my nightmares... Mistress of the night. Beyond bullshit. Beyond stupidity. Beyond the beyond." Uhhh, what? Ulli is clearly having trouble using his words again. After the girl stops under a small, windy bridge to snort some white powder, Richie continues to follow her, sucking his ever present Blow-Pop and flashing his perfect, white teeth. Finally, they meet and say stuff to each other which, of course, the audience can't hear (Ulli would have to make that shit up!), and walk off together. Which means... we actually have a subplot! I'm guessing in his next movie, Ulli won't make that mistake again.

After Lommel entered a sharp decline in the late '80s, Lommel has had a penchant for major corner-cutting. These have become so extreme in these Lionsgate movies that there is almost nothing left. Anything that would take time or work is thrown out the window. Dialogue, characters, character names, subplots, plot twists, settings, set dressing, everything is stripped down to the bare minimum to even fall under the definition of "movie". In his serial killer movies, for the most part, law enforcement doesn't even exist. One thing that has been consistent is Ulli's penchant for shooting scenes of people endlessly walking around and scenes in the most random of (cheap) places. In THE BIG SWEAT (1991), he shot a meeting between FBI agents in a lumber warehouse around a Pepsi vending machine. Here, in these serial killer outings, a warehouse would be a massive spike in production values. In one scene Ulli actually shoots a tight shot of confrontation between killer and victim sitting at the top of a staircase that has been "dressed" with a lamp, a silver box and an unlit hurricane candle, placed in front of a door, with a rotary telephone on the first stair (c'mon, in '84 we had pushbutton phones). I can't even speculate on why he chose to do this (were the girl's parents home? Did they say "you kids go play on the stairs"?), but here we are and Ulli thinks this is fine. Astonishingly, Lionsgate did too. Or rather they didn't care either. Whatever brings in the filthy lucre is fine.

The two of them, Richie and his non-blonde, and some other random dude who is just there all of a sudden, snort lines of white powder and chant "hail Satan" in a public restroom (the same one from 2008's CURSE OF THE ZODIAC). There's your subplot. With this scene used as a cut-away, we get Ulli's favoritest thing ever: Couples Argument Improv Theater! Yep, making a grand return from CURSE, we get more improv arguments that are capped off by the killer (this time Richie) entering the scene and shooting them. The guy usually gets killed quick and Ulli tries to milk the anguish by lingering over a "terrified" girl being held at (firing pinless) gunpoint before finally getting shot and the killer smearing her blood around for a while. In one scene the girl recites The Lord's Prayer before Richie stabs her off-screen. Ulli's new gimmick this time around is having sexual moaning sounds on the soundtrack during the murder scenes. That, and what is obviously Ulli's voice, trying to sound sinister, softly muttering Spanish and Latin words and phrases like "en cristo la matardo," "postmortem" and "post Necronomicon". Whatever the fuck that means.

If you've been following along, you might be excited to see some other returning faces (seriously, there's not much to grab onto here) in CURSE's "piano fag" (Ulli's words, not mine) and "skinny girl" (that's mine). Guess who they play? You got it, an arguing couple! Here Ulli tries to get serious by having them argue about abortion. I would say it's an appropriate topic for the '80s, but apparently, 60 years later, we are still arguing about it as a nation, so uhhh... timeless, I guess? Piano Guy is outraged that Skinny Girl (Cassandra Church) had an abortion and Skinny Girl says it's her life and her body and... oh christ, wake me up when it's over. It's all the most basic arguments that you've heard a million times before over the decades. I don't care where you stand on this issue, this is fucking boring. Finally Skinny Girl stomps off to meet her death after Piano Guy yells "I guess I wouldn't want to marry a murderer anyways!" A crying baby can be heard on the soundtrack. Ulli Lommel, master of subtlety.

Ulli also gets as profound as he possibly can when we get to the "the last kill for me in the city". Richie gets a Southern girl in his apartment and while she tries to get her proselytization on, Richie thinks "Jesus loves you, they say. Then how come this place is what it is? There is no Jesus, there is no God." After sitting through hours of Ulli Lommel's verbal diarrhea, I'm inclined to agree. Fortunately, at the 76 minute mark, Richie is recognized in the streets by a handful of citizens who beat him up a little with baseball bats and then bizarrely stand back and just stare at him lying on the ground while sirens wail on the soundtrack. You know outlaw Ulli ain't going to try to steal footage of an actual cop car! Pony up for red and blue lights to flash around the alley? Pssssh! What is the color of the sky in your world?

Ulli caps things off with a text card stating "The Night Stalker is still waiting for his execution." This is actually true in 2009. Capitol punishment has had a long and convoluted history in California, before and after Ramirez's trial, and during it's on-again, off-again relationship with the courts and voters, prisoners have the right to appeal and make court motions. This leads to many delays of state executions and many prisoners die of natural causes or suicide. Richard Ramirez died while sitting on death row of cancer in 2013. I hate to get serious here, but if you've ever known anyone who has died from cancer, it is a truly horrible thing that I wouldn't wish on anyone. Even so, it couldn't have happened to a nicer guy. Anyone who is pro-capitol punishment should see cancer does to a human being. The gas chamber (the State execution method of choice at the time) is, I'm sure, a much nicer way to go.

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