Abyss-Mal Cinema: MONSTER SHARK (1984)

Growing up in the shadow of greatness must be a complicated thing. On the one hand, they get to be a neppo baby and work in the notoriously difficult to enter Hollywood film industry in their youth, get their first film made and distributed in their 20s and deny any nepotism to the press, saying things like "I worked hard to get where I am and it wasn't easy." On the other hand, having to constantly be compared to the towering public image of your legendary parent has got to be a real pain in the ass. I'm not a fan of Nick Cage, but I do appreciate that he didn't use his famous family name of Coppola to get his foot in the door. Sure, you can argue that, like Emilo Estevez, not using the famous name is really only a minor handicap. Because of the insular nature of Hollywood, everybody knows who you are, even if some of them don't realize it until after you show up at the audition.

As an American who did not grow up with the internet, the paltry info that I could get on Italian genre filmmakers came from books and sometimes magazines, most of which took a pretty dim view of Italian genre cinema right out of the gate. It still feels a little bizarre to walk into my local art-house theater and see the ticket taker wearing a Dario Argento t-shirt or even just hear young people rave about horror movies that aren't American. Back in the day, cult movies were in fact, cult movies. Because of this, I had no idea of how Lamberto Bava fared in his father's immense shadow in Italy, but I suspect it wasn't easy. Probably even less easy because no matter how much I enjoy Lamberto's works for what they are, he really can't hold a candle to his pops, Mario. But then again, who can?

Fair warning: Thar be spoilers ahead.

Styled more like a giallo than a traditional horror movie, we have a lot of plot, a lot of characters and their story arcs are intercut around the threat of an aquatic killer. Opening with a Florida coast guard chopper discovering half of a boat and half of a man in the water, two scuba divers jump from the copter to rescue what's left of the sailor. They do this while screaming "aaaaaaaaaaaaahhh!" as I'm sure you are taught to do at the Coast Guard Academy. Meanwhile, Dr. Bob (Dino Conti) and his Budweiser can are patrolling the sea in the Seaquarium research vessel. Suddenly they are assaulted by some weird shit that crashes into the ship and sets off his sensors. Back at what appears to be an ocean park (according to Sopkiw, possibly University of Miami in Key Biscayne), Dr. Stella (Valentine Monnier) is feeding her Disney-named dolphins when they abruptly go berserk and start thrashing around in the water. When Flipper starts flippin' out you know shit is going down.

The coroner informs Sheriff Gordon (the great Gianni Garko) that the guy that the coast guard fished out of the ocean has bite marks far too big for a shark! This news seems to make the sheriff concerned. As if that wasn't bad enough, Dr. Bob discovers that his audio recordings of whatever it was that attacked the Seaquarium ship are now blank! This means one thing: "only Peter can help" says Dr. Bob. "Peter?" says Dr. Stella, echoing audience sentiment.

Peter (Michael Sopkiw), the local electronics expert, is all set to escape to New York for his vacation, which is weird because he just fought George Eastman there and I wouldn't think he'd want to go back. Fortunately for him Dr. Stella remembers and shows up begging him to stall his trip for one day to make a special kind of "converter" that would pick up the strange sounds that they believe to be at a frequency that their current equipment cannot record. Peter folds faster than a Silicon Valley startup and has to tear his assistant Sandra (Iris Peynado) away from a game of Activision's "Sea Quest" in order to get cracking on this new piece of tech. Damn, where was this girl when I was a teen? Oh yeah, making out with Michael Sopkiw...

Meanwhile, marine scientist Dr. Davis (Lawrence Morgant) is working in the lab, late one night... on the boss' wife Sonja (Dagmar Lassander). The pair are seen by lab assistant Florinda (Cinzia de Ponti) who happens to be walking past a window causing Sonja to panic. After a man with a particular style of watch calls Florinda and she tells him that he can't get away with "it" and that she is going to go to the press, she starts to pack up her clothes and calls a taxi to get out of town pronto! Apparently she realized that she was on dangerous ground, as a man named Miller (Paul Branco) breaks into Florinda's home at strangles her in seconds flat with his... fists? Is that an Italian thing? Being the crafty dude that Miller is, he sets her body in a bath with a hair dryer to make it appear to be an accident. Since this is an Italian production, it makes sense that the screenwriters would think that the cops would just ignore the bruising on the neck and obvious signs of suffocation and just chalk the whole thing up to an accident. Err, did I not say this was essentially a giallo?

Even later that night, after being seduced by Sandra, Peter finds Miller and another man in his workshop smashing the shit out of the new sensor that he had made. This upsets him, so the two interlopers decide to smash the shit out of Peter too. The plot thickens! I would make a crack about the plot thinning, but good lord, this has more stuff going on that is not about a homicidal sea beast than Peter Benchley's 1974 novel, "Jaws". This actually works for me far better than Benchley's hackneyed Mafia stereotypes. I get that THE GODFATHER (1972) was a big hit and that Mafia angle probably sold just as may copies as the shark thing, but at least a detective-mystery plot is timeless. Seriously, if you have never read Benchley's novel, you should do it, if for no other reason than to truly appreciate how well-crafted the JAWS (1975) screenplay turned out.

After an attack on two speargun fisherman, the doctors at the hospital are convinced that it was the work of the same shark-ish thing and take a cast of one of the wounds. The result is a giant plaster tooth that is definitely not of shark origin. The sheriff is alarmed by this, though his deputy is more interested in the new waitress with the "headlamps", which leads the sheriff to comment "lotsa new things in this town recently: waitresses, sharks and a gal who calls a taxi and then takes a bath..." Later in the film, the one surviving fisherman will finally give up the ghost at which point the doctor says "He's dead." The sheriff (who would in real life probably be the local coroner) notes the cause of death: "It was fear. Fear stopped his heart." Remind me never to be a victim and end up in a Florida hospital.

Peter, Dr. Bob and Dr. Stella roam the seas and have a brief encounter with our not-shark, while two unlucky seniors have their boat attacked by a tentacled beast with massive teeth. This calls for... another doctor! Yes, as if the cast wasn't packed like sardines as it is, enter Dr. Janet (Darla N. Warner, wife of one of the movie's money men) who proceeds to lecture the group on what exactly this creature, which hasn't been seen by any living person, might be. She starts off her lecture by telling them that 320 years ago fish developed teeth. Hoo boy, we are already off to a rough start as that would be the 1600s. She continues, saying that the Tylosaurus appeared at the beginning of the "Setaceous period, about 120 million years ago" or, if you are not Luigi Cozzi, during the late Cretaceous period, about 92 to 66 million years ago. But that's not important right now, because "the true ancestor of the shark, as we know it today, was the Pseudogalacias Volta, and it appeared at the end of the Setaceous era, 60 million years ago." Wait, what?! The Fake Electric Spaniard?? Ok, so never mind what a Pseudogalacias Volta is (other than my new band name), but 60 million years ago was the start of the Phanerozoic period. Because of this, I absolutely believe her when she says that she put this information into "the computer" and it said that this creature was a living fossil. So, Mitch McConnell? Unblinking stare, destroys people's lives and has no remorse? Yeah, that checks out.

At this point Dr. Bob and his Budwiser say that it has to be taken alive! I would say that the beer can is surgically grafted to Dr. Bob's hand, except every now and then, he angrily throws one into the water. Hey, you don't know, maybe he's trying to build an artificial reef. The sheriff, because he is a sheriff, is going to stop it "his own way!" which translates to "blow shit up!" This leads to a race between the factions to see who can catch it or kill it.

Of course, this being the movie that this is, we find out that Sandra gave Peter's shop keys to Miller in order to destroy the "converter"! It is implied that they had a relationship at some point (which is just weird) and she gave him the keys, possibly out of fear, although this subplot is instantly forgotten and appears to be included only as a way for Peter to hook up with the white girl, Dr. Stella, and not come off like a womanizing sleaze. While this is going on, Professor West (William Berger) shows up and tries to get access to a computer file called Sea Killer. I mean, if you are going to set up a black ops project about an ancient octopus shark hybrid that I think was engineered in a lab for a profit-hungry corporation, isn't that project name a bit on the nose? After many attempts and a single, tiny screw being turned inside of a machine, we find out that this beast is Dr. Davis' project and that the creature's cells live only eight months before they reproduce! If they wait too much longer or if the creature gets blowed up, as the sheriff says "we could find ourselves up to our asses in monsters!" 

We get more tentacle attacks, including one in which Dr. Janet manages to survive because of a handy hatchet. Just think of those poor Japanese schoolgirls. How many could have been saved had they only had easy access to some outdoor woodworking tools. Even so, things do not go well for Dr. Janet as fucking Miller shows up to kill everyone on the Seaquarium, leading to an underwater fight scene between Peter and Dr. Stella against Miller and one of his kneecappers. Sopkiw has said in interviews that it was one of his favorite things that he's done in a movie and is a genuinely great moment, showing Lamberto's level of commitment on a shoestring budget. Any modern low-rent shark-monster flick would have those pages torn out of the script on day one.

On our way to the climactic showdown with the beast, Professor West confronts Dr. Davis who tells him that he dunnit because "our future is in the sea" and that it was his plan to use his created monster to "protect an exploitable area". Nothing about how he plans to get at the exploitable stuff in that exploitable area when it's being guarded by a very angry homicidal monster, but one step at a time, I guess. The best part about this tying up of plot threads is that West literally explains the giallo twist in a line of dialogue saying: "giving her lover the identical watch she gave her husband for an anniversary present..." So it was Dr. Davis giving the orders to Miller the whole time! For a scientist, he really didn't think this whole thing through, did he? Fortunately the sheriff was just out of sight, hears the whole confession and is able to take down the mad scientist while striking an oddly Western gunslinger pose. Weird, eh? This all leads to a showdown with flamethrowers in the Everglades (or according to Spokiw, an Italian swamp) in literally 12 inches of water. Yes, flamethrowers and water. And a giant sea monster in a what is tantamount to a shallow stream. 

Initially set to produce the movie, brothers Sergio and Luciano Martino approached the Italian genre stalwart Luigi Cozzi to write a killer shark movie set in the waterways of Venice. Cozzi wrote the script, titled DEVOURING JAWS, that both Martino's approved of, but Sergio got involved in directing no less than four films in 1983, including the classic 2019: AFTER THE FALL OF NEW YORK. This put the shark project on hold until the decision was made to retool the script for a smaller budget and hand the production duties over to veteran Mino Loy, who produced such greats as HAVE A GOOD FUNERAL MY FRIEND, SARTANA WILL PAY (1970) and EATEN ALIVE! (1980), and French porn director Max Pécas who may be best known in the English speaking world as the director of the utterly batshit insane cop movie BRIGADE OF DEATH (1985). The directorial duties were then handed to Lamberto Bava. Since the budget was sparse, Bava decided to revamp the script once again into a sort of giallo of the sea. Apparently Gianfranco Clerici, Vincenzo Mannino, Herve Piccini and the Italian genre veteran  Dardano Sacchetti helped out in this respect, which probably explains how the plot became so convoluted, particularly for what was ostensibly a simple monster movie.

Originally titled SHARK: RED ON THE WATER, MONSTER SHARK was released on US VHS as DEVIL FISH, which to be honest, is a great title. Along with the fantastic art, which was not exclusive to the US, suckered me into renting the tape as a teenager. For reasons that will probably never be known, the US distributor Vidmark Entertainment retitled and heavily re-edited the film. In addition to inserting the shots of the small monster puppet travelling through the water so that they appear many more times during the film, they took the entire scene of the archetypical Florida senior couple being attacked by the creature that appears in the middle of the film and brought it up to be the opening scene. Additionally, they cut what minor gore that there was to begin with and removed all of the nudity as well as the minor profanity (I'm pretty sure about this, but since my VHS tape is long gone and I can't pay collector's prices for another one, I'm unable to double check). This seems a really bizarre choice to make. It is entirely possible that Vidmark bought a TV print on the cheap and slapped an R rating on the box to sucker kids like me into renting a neutered product. It was a fairly common practice in the early to mid '80s and was the bane of my hormone-infested existence. At the time, I was really disappointed by the movie, particularly since I had really high expectations for Italian genre films with the likes of DEMONS (1985) getting theatrical playdates in my area and with Lamberto Bava and Dario Argento's names blazing from the posters and ads. Argento's PHENOMENA (1985) had also been released in American theaters and on VHS about the same time, under the title CREEPERS, and even though it was even more heavily censored than DEVIL FISH, it was still a jaw-dropping movie that completely refused to ape American horror cinema of the time.

Years later I got to see an import version of what we now know as MONSTER SHARK and my opinion changed. Sure it's still not as good as it could have been, but I think it's a pretty damn entertaining film in sometimes the wrong ways, but also in the right ways. The monster itself is actually really impressive for a couple of reasons. For one, it's a full size puppet and in my humble opinion looks far better than the usual stock shark footage or simple shark head found in other similar films. Unfortunately we don't get to see much of it in the film as Lamberto wasn't as impressed and found it unmanageable, regulating it to glimpsed flashes of it's teeth, an eye, a tentacle, here and there. Secondly, the design of the head is actually based on some archeological research. While I made fun of Dr. Janet's history lesson, someone was paying attention in pre-history class because during the late Devonian period (382-358 million years ago), we got an aquatic nightmare that made a Great White look like a King Prawn: the Dunkleosteus. Among its sphincter-clenching specs, these fish had dermal bone armor and their jaws, instead of teeth, were all bone and acted as shears that could open twice as fast as the blink of a human eye, had the strongest bite force of any animal on earth and could easily slice through skulls and armor plating. If you look at the fossils and artist renderings of the Dunkleosteus and it's kin, you can easily see where the creators of the Monster Shark got their ideas. Additionally, I give it bonus points because in 2010, to my eternal shame, Roger Corman's New Horizons made a knock-off for the SyFy Channel titled SHARKTOPUS. Because it's the modern era where nobody takes shit seriously, we got a cheap CGI monster sporting the front half of a shark and the back half of an octopus. I know it was popular enough to spawn sequels, but c'mon after seeing that, I give huge props to the unsung heroes who put together a life-size Monster Shark puppet that actually drew upon the archeological record for inspiration instead of slapping some shit together on what looks like a Silicon Graphics Workstation. Rog could do better. We all know that.

I also feel the need to point out the amazing cast, although I strongly suspect that if you are visiting this website, you know exactly who these folks are. In addition to Michael Sopkiw in one of his mere four movies made under the same contract, you have Valentine Monnier, who appeared with Sopkiw in 2019: AFTER THE FALL OF NEW YORK; the legendary Gianni Garko, veteran of giallos, westerns, crime and even some peplums and comedies; William Berger, a veteran with an even more varied career in practically every genre you can name; and Dagmar Lassander, yet another Italian veteran with giallos, horror, soft-core, comedies, crime and so on. Even if the giallo plotting of the movie turns you off a bit, it's pretty damn cool to see all of these legends in one movie. We even get Iris Peynado, probably best remembered by genre fans as the striking beauty in WARRIORS OF THE WASTELAND (1983). 

Bava said in a 1987 interview that the use of the pseudonym was used for projects that he was hired to direct, not his own personal projects, which puts to rest the old saw that he was embarrassed of the films that bear his pseudonym. That seems to be a North American sentiment that may have originated from the old "Alan Smithee" nom de plume that the DGA allowed to be used on films that had ended up outside of the director's control and credit was unwanted. The general public took this to mean that it was an indicator of shame and an inferior product. And really, unless you are a hard-core contrarian, you have to admit that Lamberto manages to work in some great camera setups that modern low-budget movie makers would never even bother with. As it is, I find that in the old-man-shouting-at-cloud phase of my life, MONSTER SHARK is a fun little movie. I mean, you could do a hell of a lot worse. Have you seen Blumhouse's WOLF MAN (2025)?

Read More

Giallo Pudding: MADNESS (1994) aka EYES WITHOUT A FACE

I know that anyone tuning into this website doesn't need a refresher course on Bruno Mattei. If you do, I will sum up by saying that he is a one of a kind Italian genre director who has made some wonderfully off-kilter, low-budget horror films that back in the '80s, '90s and even 2000s were frequently written off a junk and if you met another person who also liked Bruno Mattei movies, there is no stronger bond of friendship. These days with the internet providing all sorts of oddities that are amplified by social media and physical media companies releasing all sorts of things that used to be cult films in the strictest sense of the word, there are plenty of movie buffs who know Mattei's work. However, if you have only seen the films that have been released on blu-ray, you are missing some of his admittedly lesser, but none the less, entertaining movies.

Back before Dario Argento reinvented the Italian genre staple of the giallo with his "animal" trilogy that kicked off with THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMMAGE (1970), the giallo film could be a little stodgy and perhaps even dry, to some. Argento took a genre that is somewhat analogous to the British and North American mystery genre and made it stylish and exciting. This offended some purists, but was hugely successful at home and in the international marketplace. Even after Argento met his muse in Daria Nicolodi, and merged the giallo with the proto-slasher film following the success of Mario Bava's gory trendsetter, A BAY OF BLOOD (1971), there were still some folks who liked the old fashioned, more grounded gialli, where there is a puzzle to solve, the pacing is deliberate and stylistic flourishes are kept to a minimum. Who knew that Bruno Mattei would be one of them? Or maybe he was just broke and couldn't afford all of the bells and whistles. Cue Bruno spinning in his grave.

Opening with a head-to-toe black clad killer with a zip up balaclava pursuing a child at a go-kart racetrack, we quickly find out that he is not after the kid, but in fact, the child's minder, an attractive young woman who is freaking out trying to find the damn kid. Unfortunately for her, this lands her straight into the clutches of our growling, and presumably thermoplegic, killer who whips out a dual-bladed stiletto and promptly gouges out one of her eyes. Not content with that, he also smashes a bottle and uses the broken glass to stuff her eye sockets. So, yeah, this chucklehead is probably not going to get much out of a telehealth visit.

Later, at a press conference, the publishing and creative staff of a popular fumetti titled "Doctor Dark", take some flack from the attendees. "Doctor Dark" is about a professor of Paganism who is moonlighting as a serial killer (presumably because teaching doesn't pay shit) who collects his victim's eyeballs. A reporter named Calligari (Fausto Lombardi) of the Fox News variety, jumps to his feet and lambasts the artist Giovanna (Monica Carpanese), accusing her of actually causing the killings by producing such reprehensible entertainment. "If I had my way, I'd burn them all - all this violent subcultural trash!" To which the audience wildly applauds. Dude's probably pen pals with Tipper Gore. To pacify the audience, the publisher, Binelli, accuses them all of a "moral lynching"(!!) which, naturally, causes everyone to relax and line up for autographs. As one would expect.

Just to make things worse for the already frazzled Giovanna, police inspector Callistrati (Antonio Zequila) butts in with his own accusations that the comic is inspiring the killer, to which Giovanna replies in the calm, collected way that you would expect from an Italian, "if the killer used an electric drill, I suppose you'd take it up with Black & Decker!?" This goes on while Binelli hits on his secretary Emy (Emy Valentino), because... you know, Italians. Giovanna decides to go home, ditching her boyfriend/writer along the way, only to get a creepy phone call and finds a pair of torn out eyeballs on her mantle piece!

This leads to a surprisingly convoluted plot in which everyone is a suspect and red herrings run rampant. Surprisingly, because, aside from the opening scene with the graphic eye-gouging, this feels like an old-school giallo with a heavy emphasis on keeping the audience off-balance, constantly second guessing who might be the killer.

Much of the movie bounces around from various locations on land and sea where Giovanna is trying to escape the lurking killer while the police fumble about with almost too many clues. At the autopsy for the first victim, inspector Callistrati rants about how the killer carved out her eyes and stuck a stiletto up her nose "just like the ancient Egyptians!" Wait, so 31BC Nubians were riding around on suped up donkeys shaking down merchants with their switchblades? Were was Maurizio Merli when you needed him?

At one point Giovanni gets a call quoting her comic "In the mirror I have seen the dark side of my being and while my eyes watched it, it watched me." This is said after showing the killer get dressed in front of a surprisingly elaborate mirror set up in which the outline of the killer (with hat!) is on the mirror and some bleeding eyes are reflected in the wall on the opposite side of the mirror. Clearly the killer doesn't have a day job. We also discover that the killer is... the conservative reporter! This is a swerve that I'm pretty sure is a nod to Argento's TENEBRAE (1982). The reporter is shot by the police, at which point he wildly rolls his eyes, grins manically and says "they are all so beautiful" referring to the comics, before passing out. He manages to recover in an asylum, presumed to be the killer until the killings start again.

There is so much oddball stuff going on in this movie, I can't even begin to catalogue it all. In one bit the murderer finds the secretary Emy at work late and after a struggle manages to make her death look like the most contrived suicide ever, with her corpse slumped backwards over a table, holding a syringe in her own throat and a letter next to her body claiming to be the killer. While the police are doing their forensic duty, Giovanna and her boyfriend (who could also the be the killer) are brought into the middle of the crime scene so that Giovanna can be totally traumatized by the sight of Emy being in a state of dead. After she completely freaks out, the inspector says "You better leave this room. You might smudge prints or destroy other evidence." Why did you bring them in then?! Later the inspector basically recites to the camera the entirety of the events that lead up to Emy's death as if he was reconstructing the crime in his head, at the end of this long, definitely not padding, scene he discovers that Emy wrote the killer's name on a sticky note. We know this is the identity of the killer and not just a random note to draw a co-worker's attention to something innocuous because... Emy has ink on her fingers! Iron-clad proof. At which point the inspector turns to the camera and says "OH. MY. GOD." I swear this is probably the funniest thing I've ever seen and possibly made the movie worth watching all by itself.

The whole thing wraps up with a surprising (I keep using that word), rather nihilistic ending that apparently was partially cut for the Italian release. Although I was not able to get ahold of the Italian version, apparently Mattei decided to not only trim some of the grimness from the ending, but also chose to insert and replace some of the deaths in the movie with bits from A BLADE IN THE DARK (1983). Not that Mattei has never clumsily inserted mismatched footage from other films, not at all, he took the old trick of Cormanizing to a whole new level. I just can't imagine how they would fit in at all. They are extremely different and to be completely honest, what is here is fine for what it is.

Some of those British movie "experts" have gone on record lambasting this movie with their usual, "it's not high-art, therefore rubbish" attitude. I aways enjoy Kim Newman popping up on what seems like every UK special edition saying, in a sneering tone, variations of "It's enjoyable schlock, if you like that sort of thing". This serves two purposes. One, to denigrate the film in question as not being of an acceptable standard for his sophisticated tastes and two, to distance himself from the film implying that there are some subhumans who may enjoy this, but clearly not him. If you find it impossible to see the craft in LET SLEEPING CORPSES LIE (1974), why bother to be interviewed on the SE disc for the film? Troy Howarth upbraided MADNESS on several levels, one criticism being that the acting was "wooden". I honestly wonder if he has seen the film as the acting is clearly playing to the cheap seats. It's Italian actors acting like Italians. Every discussion is a shouting match, every misfortune a calamity. Giovanna's reactions to her predicaments are so wildly over the top and hysterical that it becomes pretty damn funny, but "wooden"? Nah, man. Not even close.

Is MADNESS high art? No. Is it as good as DEEP RED (1975)? Of course not. Does that mean that it is not even worth seeing? Also no. If you can enjoy Italian genre films for both the highs and the lows, there is a lot that they have to offer. This is particularly rewarding if you enjoy getting in the weeds on a particular genre, or a particular director, or both. I still have a few more obscure, what appear to be SOV non-horror, Mattei movies to check off my list, but this is such an odd entry in his career that it is interesting and surprisingly entertaining. If nothing else, it moves along at a fast enough pace and throws enough weird stuff at the wall that it's never boring.

Read More

Book Drop: These Fists Break Bricks (and so will this book!)

We rarely do this, but sometimes something comes along that we really want to shout out to the three people who still follow our cinematic ramblings. This is NOT a paid promotion (though I was gifted a copy), we do not get a red cent from any links. The only reason we may promote products, is because we love them and want to get the word out. I know, I know, this is not how the internet works, but fuck it, we're rebels!

If you are familiar with a lot of the folks who have been digging through obscure movies for decades, you will undoubtedly know the Elder God of obscure genre cinema, Chris Poggiali and his fantastic website The Temple of Schlock. Loaded with rare minutia about even rarer films, Chris knows his shit. This is why we wanted to mention his new book, which has now been revised into a stunning 374 page hardback monster of a tome stuffed with info, photos and poster art for a wide variety of beloved and rare martial arts films from the '60s, but mostly '70s and '80s. Right in the sweet spot of grindhouse cinema and "Kung Fu Theater". And not just the movies, but the movie poster artists, performers and more! It's even got a forward from hardcore kung fu fan RZA of, obviously, Wu-Tang Clan.

Weighing in at nearly three pounds, you could used this book for self defense during your next subway ride, protect yourself from rubber bullets at your next protest march or simply read it on the sofa to escape the heat. Seriously, though, if you have a yen* for martial arts movies of all kinds and the history of cinema, head over to the official website https://www.thesefistsbreakbricks.com/ and pre-order for a July 8th release. Hell, Chris is such a nice guy, he even offers an audio book for the literate challenged (sadly not narrated by Michelle Yeoh).

* I apologize, you don't want to know what the tariffs are on good puns these days.

Read More

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 mask 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.

Read More

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.

Read More