Revenge of 3-D: A*P*E (1976)

In 1976 Paramount and Dino de Laurentiis decided the time was right for a massive rebirth of RKO’s gargantuan sacred cow, King Kong. The film had an all-star cast of Bert I. Gordon proportions, including Charles Grodin who you’d think would be your first casting choice for a giant ape movie. Don’t get me wrong, Grodin is the man and SEEMS LIKE OLD TIMES (1980) is one of my favorite comedies of the era, but ummmm… King Kong? Really? Also, at the time it seemed like the height of technical wizardry with the massive ape actually destroying the pavement when he fell from the, now eerily ill-fated, world trade center. It also grabbed the imaginations of audiences, though not so much their wallets. The film weighed in at a massive $24 million, but only brought in $7 million on its opening weekend. So much for being “the most exciting original motion picture event of all time” as the tag-line proclaimed. Like I said, it grabbed the imaginations of the public and made giant apes a hot commodity. So, I hear you say, where do we go from here? Italy! Ummm, no. Japan! Well, that was in 1962, so again, no. I know, I know, this is a tough one. Get the kimchi ready, we are East bound and down, takin' a trip to Korea!

Thrown together by South Korean filmmakers to cash in on the popularity of the concept (if not the film) and inexplicably shot in 3D, this film actually managed to beat KING KONG (1976) in to theaters by a couple of months. It’s a smart move as anticipation was high and billfolds were ripe for the plucking. Originally titled THE NEW KING KONG, RKO slapped a lawsuit on the producers for (at the time) a suitably colossal $1.5 million. You’d have to multiply the budget of this film an awful lot to get it anywhere near that number, so the American distributors opted for the title A*P*E which, believe it or not, is a parody of M*A*S*H, which was, as you know, also in Korea. Get it? Phew!

During the opening credits there is a thank-you to the US military, leading to the question, how in the hell did they get the co-operation of the US military?! Are the guys in green so freakin’ bored that you can just call up Col. Henry Blake and say, “hey, we’re shooting a movie about a giant ape, can we borrow some tanks, men, jeeps and maybe an officer or two?” Maybe they ran it past Radar O'Reilly first.

Imagine Bill Rebane went to Korea and made a movie about a giant ape… Got the picture? No? Then I guess I’ll have to fill in the details.

The film opens with the captain of a freighter having a conversation with a mate about the “big guy” they have below decks who was apparently caught in Harlem (umm… since when are the Empire State Building or the World Trade Center anywhere near Harlem? If they are referring to his fall off the Empire State Building he would have had to have fallen 6 miles horizontally!). No sooner than you can say “are these actors delivering their lines under hypnosis?” than a *ahem* giant ape fist (or a the cheapest paper-mache ape fist imaginable), rips through the deck of a cheap miniature ship and so begins the rampage through Seoul. Err… well, sort of. First he needs to get in a brawl with a dead shark. Yes, I said “dead shark”. In an attempt to errm, “ape” the famous Kong vs. Alisaur scene in the original film, a dude in the cheapest ape suit imaginable “brawls” with a painfully obviously inert opponent in what is possibly one of the most jaw-droppingly bizarre scenes that I can think of. The shark just flops around as the “ape” really badly pretends to wrestle it (or maybe wash it, it’s hard to tell), finally tearing its jaws open to defeat it. From there it’s an attack on a military base where the ape throws tin cans painted up to look like fuel drums. But wait! There’s more!

The meat of the plot, such as it is, concerns a famous American actress Marilyn Baker (Joanna Kerns) who comes to Korea to make a film that seems to be entirely about her being sexually assaulted in historic Korean locations while comic music plays on the soundtrack (don’t ask me, I don’t know). Her amorous boy-friend Tom Rose (Rod Arrants) is a reporter who decides to take a job in Korea so he can annoy the crap out of her. You can see where this is heading right? Yeah, the famous actress is snatched up by the ape who seems somewhat less pre-occupied by her than is her stalker boyfriend. That doesn't mean Mr. Ape doesn’t hunt her down like a bloodhound on the Scottish moors! Would you believe a short-haired terrier in a suburban tract home? Our nameless ape lazily smacks around buildings, poking his nose in windows, disrupting family dinners, pool games and a hooker with her greasy, chubby American john. Why do I get the feeling Asians in the ’70s thought all Americans were fat, horny and shellacked with brylcreem? C’mon, we don't use brylcreem! Erm... anymore.

For whatever reason, the filmmakers decided that this movie demanded 3D effects and at no point would you ever want to see them more than in a scene in which a group of kids go to the most pathetic, deserted amusement park ever (titled “Familyland” in Disney script) and play on the see-saw. Hell yeah brother, you heard me right! 3D see-saw action! My life is complete. Actually I have to hand it to them with one 3D scene. Cut to a pastoral scene in which a group of martial artists are practicing with all manner of weapons and suddenly a “giant ape” attacks! Or rather is in a completely different place being shot by a second unit crew. Hell, what am I saying? These guys couldn’t afford a second unit crew! Still it’s pretty damn funny seeing them try to edit the martial artists fighting back against the ape, particularly in the miracle of 3D! The first half of the movie is pretty much a pastiche of scenes like these that are pretty damned amusing. In one scene a US military grunt is driving his Jeep along a road and WHAM! a wooden beam that is apparently growing out of a Korean Square Branch Tree that was planted in the middle of the road, slams right through his window (and of course into the audience). The soldier then stops, jumps out of the vehicle and looks around in complete bewilderment at the destroyed US base that he was just driving through completely intact! Unfortunately the second half descends into some slightly tedious destruction of cheap miniatures and some really painful intentional camp added by the US producers. After a farmer finds a giant footprint, some heated phone calls are made to the local US military outpost where the captain says “this is Korea not Scotland, the Loch Ness Monster couldn’t make it over the Berlin Wall!” Phew!

On the other hand, there is plenty of stuff to be entertained by:
- There is plenty of dialogue about how great certain famous Korean landmarks are, but never actually go to them or even show them.
- We discover that in Asia, it is Americans that can’t drive.
- “Scientific phenomenon? Bullshit!”
- The extras show far more enthusiasm than the ape.
- Korean kids are so poor they can laugh for hours at a marionette having what appears to be an epileptic sezure.
- Toy tanks can make giant apes vomit blood.
- You can destroy Korean tanks by throwing rocks at them.

I may not know this for a fact, but I’m pretty sure this is Kim Jong-Il’s favorite movie. I mean, what movie would a megalomaniacal, 5’ tall, platform-shoe wearing “supreme leader” in North Korea find the most arresting? Why a movie about a giant that destroys Seoul of course (I was going to make a joke about giant monkey’s and spankage, but as you know we’re too sophisticated for that)!

In the end this film is appropriately malnourished with some of the sloppiest editing I have ever witnessed with the ends of dialogue sequences being shorn of their final words. Even so, the rather uninspired final half and the American inserts that desperately try to salvage the film by trying to make out that it’s intentionally bad, kind of make it miss the mark. I’d love to see the original version, but that’s probably not going to happen any time soon.

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Tobe or not Tobe: SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION (1990)

Tobe Hooper’s career is certainly a wild ride. Starting with THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, he carved out a period of distinction (1974-1986) where he made 8 films. Some were excellent, some were very solid, and none of them were bad. Yes, I even dig his INVADERS FROM MARS remake. All of them had an assured sense of style, deft direction and enough wild stuff to make them memorable, which is why his theatrical decline beginning with this film hurts so much. SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION is a great film…a great film if you want your friends angry at you. Just ask my buddy Jon Kitley. He still has friends who hold it against him for dragging them to see this in theaters.

The film opens in 1955 as Brian and Peggy Bell (Brian Bremer and Stacy Edwards) are preparing to be the human experiments in Project Samson. They are going to be inside a fallout shelter to test both its effectiveness and an anti-radiation drug they are injecting. The test goes off without a hitch and they soon discover they will be three as Peggy is pregnant. Nine months later, their son David is born, but the joy doesn’t last long as both parents burst into flames in the maternity ward. They both died from S.H.C. (Spontaneous Human Combustion) says Dr. Vandenmeer (played by HOUSE OF WAX helmer Andre De Toth). But the military brass don’t care as all they want to do is figure our how to replicate what happened.

Cut to present day and David Bell is now Sam (Brad Dourif), a college professor who is always running a fever. Sam has no recollection of his parents, their history or the pyrokinetic powers which lay dormant inside of him. He is about to find out though because today is his birthday and Sam is going to start – as Buster Poindexter said – feeling hot, hot, hot. Everyone seems to be annoying him and people that do tend to burst it to flames. Thankfully he just happens to tune into a radio show discussing the effects of spontaneous combustion and, since everyone else in the city apparently listens to this as well, gets in touch with a woman (Melinda Dillon) who can offer him information about his past. What he doesn’t know is that everyone around him from his ex-wife to his surrogate “father” to his new girlfriend Lisa (Cynthia Bain) is aware of Sam’s history and they’ve been monitoring him for this very moment.

Sounds like a pretty decent premise for a film, right? Well, stop that optimism right there kiddo! In order to achieve any modicum of success with that plot, you need the budget to pull it off and Hooper definitely doesn’t have it here (roughly $5 million). To put it in perspective, Universal’s FIRESTARTER had a budget of $15 million some six years earlier. SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION is one of those flicks where the stills look great. My hopefulness for the film was built on by some killer pics in Fangoria. Hell, look at the fiery frame grabs in this blog. Looks pretty damn cool, right? Well, check them out in motion and you won’t be as impressed. Hooper seems content to do 75% of the fire effects with poorly done composites. Bad move. And it isn’t just the effects that are poorly done. Check out some of the embarrassing sets too. Everything is so cheaply made and, for some odd reason, uncomfortably crammed. Behold the café (which boasts of “classical dining”) which is four tables jam-packed into what looks like the landing area of a stairwell. Did the company just stand around in the hotel lobby and say, “That looks like a good place to shoot!”

The film’s other major problem is the screenplay. This is Hooper’s second screenplay credit (he also co-wrote TCM, but I credit the success there more to Kim Henkel) and it shows a disturbing lack of focus. Co-written with Howard Goldberg, the script is a completely muddled mess. First off, they make the criminal sin of having two fire deaths occur off screen. Now these are both important moments that show us Sam has this power. Instead, we hear both of them from characters relaying the information. It is like someone tore the pages out at a budget meeting. Second, there is some really terrible dialog. A perfect example is when Dr. Vandenmeer arrives to examine the burnt bodies of the parents. He walks in and says, “The body burns from the inside with fury and the sound, the sound is like angels screaming” and “fire from heaven is settling here today.” Does this guy have a PhD in Histrionics? And why is he so happy to carve out someone's skull?

Worst of all is Hooper seems completely at a loss at how to stage any of this stuff. I had to laugh when Sam leaves a house and, as he pulls away in his car, the camera lowers down to reveal the bad guy (who Sam already knew) sitting in a car literally 5 feet opposite from where he was parked. Sam didn’t happen to notice the guy who tried to kill him earlier? WTF? Also witness Sam’s emotional transformations. His out-of-nowhere declaration of his love to Lisa as they drive to the hospital as fire erupts from his arm is hilarious. Later, he goes from nice guy to angry guy voicing how he will use his gift to seek revenge in about two seconds after listening to a radio preacher (voiced by George “Buck” Flower). Now Dourif is a pretty good actor, but even he can’t make some of this slop sound good. And who the hell keeps George "Buck" Flower off screen?

And don’t get me started on the film’s ending, which is so poorly staged that it makes absolutely no sense. Hooper spends an inordinate amount of time talking about this nuclear power plant going online at midnight. First off, Hooper seems to have no idea how to subtly play this as the first modern day scene on campus has everyone wearing anti-nuke armbands and posters on every other wall. Second, in the end Sam is confronting the man behind the experiments at midnight and they both burst into flames. Do we just assume he combined with the nuclear plant? I ask because it is never actually shown. We then hear how there was a disturbance in the area (over the radio, naturally) as electrical bolts from the plant stream down the power lines to Lisa’s apartment. She is then attacked by the bad guys before a now burnt Sam literally walks into the scene, kills everyone, and tells Lisa he can take her power (she's a flamer too) before he disappears into a burst of blue light. WTF? The film then cuts quickly to the credits with whispers of “Thank you…goodnight!” and Hooper’s “I’m outta here” in your head.

So, yeah, SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION still sucks. I’m glad I wasted the time 20 years later to find that out. And for a film that marks the beginning of the end of Hooper’s career, it couldn’t be more aptly named. Believe it or not, things actually got worse for Hooper after this, more on that in other blogs. Hooper reached such lows in the ensuing years, in fact, that when he made a semi-decent movie (THE TOOLBOX MURDERS remake), that folks were declaring it a return to his heyday form. No, it wasn’t. It just didn’t stink as bad.

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Hell in the Jungle: HEATED VENGEANCE (1985)

In the middle of a firefight during the Vietnam war our hero Joe (Richard Hatch) is hit with enemy bullets while trying to save a chubby kid who didn’t want to run to the bunker like Joe told him too (see what happens when you don’t mind your elders?). Joe is loaded into a chopper while his “foreign national” girlfriend is left on the ground. Flash forward some 10 years later and cue up '70s crooning on the soundtrack while Joe lands in Thailand once again. This time it’s not war, but love that brings him to Asia (can you hear the crooning?). Joe is going to try and find his long lost love, and in the process run headlong into elements of his past that he wasn’t looking for.

Naturally, Joe starts looking by hitting the local red-light district for a refreshing beverage. After bellying up to the bar, Joe meets Charlie (Dennis Patrick), a toilet salesman in an Alec Guinness suit knockin' back the imported stuff (Olympia in a can), with a Pinay in each arm (yes, Filipinas in Thailand). Charlie is a straight-up silver fox as evidenced by the introductory exchange he has with Joe:
Charlie: “Listen, I bet you’ve seen our trademark right on the side of those cisterns!”
Joe: “No, no I haven’t.”
Charlie: (leering at one his bar-girls) “She has! She’s sat on ‘em!” (grabs girl’s ass) “Haven’t ya honey?!”

Obviously after this introduction Joe has no choice but to open up to Charlie, telling his story about the war, saying “it was the best year of my life, and I got wounded and it was all over.” Ummmm… except, I’m assuming, for the machine gun fire, mortar fire, the killing, the dead kids and the getting shot and all that stuff. I always heard that most people didn’t like it too much, but what the hell do I know? When it ended I was just a Godzilla-obsessed kid with a Bruce Lee hairdo. Anyway, Joe goes on to tell Charlie that he has discovered that his former girlfriend, Michelle, is a widowed doctor with a son named Joseph who was born nine months after he was wounded! What do you call “cyber-stalking” before the invention of the internets?

Meanwhile in the same Thai village, a drug deal is going down. The leader of the drug dealers is one Larry Bingo (played with amusingly deranged fervor by Ron Max), an ex-US soldier who stayed on after the war and as it turns out is using the old army base in Laos to manufacture an unnamed white powdered substance. His posse is a collection of wingnuts, including Mills Watson, Bruce Baron and Michael J. Pollard (as “Snake”!), who are also war vets who decided to run drugs in Thailand rather than go back to the states. Of course it is a small world because literally minutes before getting shot, Joe was sending Bingo off to be court-martialed for beating and raping a 14 year-old girl. As a testament to Joe’s professionalism, he is remarkably detached and almost at times seems a little too unconcerned with the rape and more concerned with the girls bruises. Bingo is hauled off to a waiting chopper kicking and screaming, only to conveniently escape during the ensuing firefight.

Bingo just happens to spot Joe in yet another bar with Charlie (Joe doesn’t seem to be looking all that hard for his lost sweetie) and after a bit of intimidation, and the killing of a cop, decides to kidnap him. Bingo takes him back to the old camp where he, completely amused by the irony of his own making, tosses Joe in the brig, but not before one of his machine gun toting men in what appears to be an unscripted moment, looks under Hatch’s shirt and gropes his well defined pecs. Hey man, don't ask don't tell, right? Out of all the men in his gang, Bingo decides that the perfect guy to guard Joe would be Snake! Man, you’d have to be on drugs to put Mickey J. in charge of anything! Oh wait… yeah, they are. Totally ridiculous, but highly entertaining, Pollard is given a lot of room to do what Pollard does best: act like he's in a completely different movie. While films like Michael A. Simpson’s tedious train-wreck FAST FOOD (1989) made sure that Pollard was kept on a short leash so as not to undermine the *ahem* integrity of the alleged comedy, here Pollard is allowed to run free turning even the simplest of scenes into complete howlers. Says Snake to an imprisoned Joe: “...Bingo, he’s different. He’s got feelin’s. The only problem is, he’s a little crazy, ya know what I mean? Other than that, he’s number one!” The next time I get involved in organized crime, that’s the guy I want as my lawyer!

After escaping from the brig, Joe leads the drug-dealers on a merry chase through the hills and jungles of Laos like John Rambo's mild-mannered cousin, setting up traps and ambushes on the rather easily confused druggies. In one scene Bingo gathers his posse together in the middle of nowhere and starts yelling, knowing somehow Joe would hear him. Bingo introduces his machine gun-toting “friend”, who he says is a cannibal and is looking forward to eating him! Awesome, right? Strangely after this set up for what would presumably be an amazing showdown between ex-GI Joe and a bloodthirsty cannibal, this character is never seen or heard from again! What the hell Murphy? You're playin' with my emotions! During his FIRST BLOOD-esque survival, Joe has flashbacks to making hot monkey love with Michelle, who coincidentally is being contacted by Charlie who fills her in on the story so far and admits that he feels the lavatories in the hospital are due for an upgrade. While Joe plays cat and mouse with the drug nuts, Charlie and Michelle set out on a mission to track down Joe with or without the help of the local constabulary.

While this is nowhere near as outlandish and loaded to the gills with exploitation like Murphy’s previous RAW FORCE (1982), it’s still got plenty of entertainment to offer the discriminating viewer of cinema du fromage. After Joe is flushed out of a cave and takes a header over a steep cliff, the druggies look, but no body is found. Back at the camp Bingo totally flips out while Snake tries to be the calming influence in the scene:
Snake: “He’s dead Lar.”
Bingo: (screaming) “Then why can’t we find him?!”
Snake: (shrugs) “Maybe a tiger ate him.”
Some other great bits include a quick scene in which Charlie and Michelle are having dinner in a rather posh, white linen restaurant and Charlie, deep in contemplation, says “I told myself… I’d never come here again.” Damn man, send the food back then! Also, for some reason Murphy fails to use the traditional opportune moments for gratuitous nudity. You’d think with all the bar scenes, he could get a bevy of nudie cuties in there at least, but sadly no. So desperate is he to shoe-horn some in by the end, he decides to have a few “thai” girls walk topless in front of the camera during an establishing shot of the village that Michelle and Charlie have taken the wounded Joe. While Joe wakes up in bed in a scene that cribbed straight out of the end of THE WIZARD OF OZ (1939), Charlie is making friends with the local hotties. Oh, that wacky toilet salesman!

In addition to the brilliant performance by Mickey J. (and his stunt double during the film's rather dangerous-looking fiery finale), Ron Max is somewhat spectacular, chewing the scenery with total abandon. Following a scene where Joe wrecks Bingo’s camp, after falling face first in the white powder ala Pacino in SCARFACE (1983), Max’s performance of incoherent rage is so on-point that it actually really is incoherent and could benefit from the use of subtitles.

All in all, perhaps not the follow up to RAW FORCE that I would have liked it to be, but when taken on its own merits, it’s tons of fun for fans of cheapo action flicks and a must for fans of Michael J. Pollard.

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On the Celluloid Chopping Block: Fangoria's MINDWARP (1990)

Having championed horror cinema since 1979, it seemed inevitable that Fangoria magazine would get into the business of making horror movies. And that happened a decade into their run with the creation of Fangoria Films, an offshoot that would produce one low budget horror film a year to be distributed by RCA/Columbia. Also seemingly inevitable was that whatever Fangoria Films produced would clash with the Motion Picture Association of America (M.P.A.A.), a Draconian film ratings board run by Jack Valenti that repeatedly took the scissors to low budget horror films. Hell, if you made a slightly gory horror film in the 1980s, chances were high that it got cut. And seeing as how Fangoria repeatedly took the M.P.A.A. to task in their pages, it was a forgone conclusion that whatever blood they spilled would end up on the chopping block. Such is the case with MINDWARP, the first of three films produced by Fangoria in the early 1990s.

Opening with the cliché nuclear cloud to represent World War III, MINDWARP takes place in a post-apocalyptic world that is split between Dreamers and Crawlers. Dreamers are the rich elite who spend all day in a dream-like state while hooked into virtual reality machines provided by InfiniSynth. Want to live out your dream of being a lauded star of the stage? InfiniSynth can help. Crawlers, on the other hand, are mutated humans who live underground and eat humans. Dreamer Judy (Marta Alicia) rebels from her somnambulist state and is exiled by The Controller (Angus Scrimm) into the wasteland for her trouble. Attacked by Crawlers, Judy is saved by human survivor Stover (Bruce Campbell), who takes her in before they are both captured and taken to the underground. There they are at the mercy of human ruler The Seer (Scrimm again, maintaining comb over chic post-apoc), who believes he alone knows what is best for his mutant masses (hmm, shades of Valenti?). Naturally, this means putting Stover into manual labor while Judy is primed to be a breeding vessel for The Seer to produce a pure race.

Shot in the spring of 1990, MINDWARP is a decent little entry into the sci-fi horror apocalypse subgenre. Co-writers Michael Ferris and John D. Brancato's script tackles virtual reality before it was a fad and actually seems like a blueprint for THE MATRIX in some ways (neck portals anyone?). Unfortunately, the film has a really lousy ending where – I kid you not – the lead actress says, “There’s no place like home.” Surprisingly, both writers went on to do big budget stuff including the last two TERMINATOR sequels. Director Steve Barnett was a graduate of Roger Corman’s Concorde so he gets the most out of his roughly million dollar budget. He gives the film some energy, nice photography and weird sets. The exterior wasteland location showcases his style the best.

You can tell the filmmakers wanted to snag Fangorians right off the bat with the casting of two fan favorites, Bruce Campbell and Angus Scrimm. Campbell, of course, from the EVIL DEAD series and Scrimm as the famous Tall Man from the PHANTASM films (a character he also played in a Fango TV ad). In addition, they courted the Fango faithful by hiring K.N.B. EFX Group. If Fangoria was the Rolling Stone of horror movies, than effects gurus Robert Kurtzman, Greg Nicotero, and Howard Berger were the hot rock stars at the time, same hair and everything. Anyway, like nearly every project they touched at the time, K.N.B. saw most of their gore hit the cutting room floor. The reason for a movie like this to be made is mostly for folks to marvel at the technical innovation of bloodletting. Sadly, the ratings board felt otherwise and imposed trims. A cheap-o horror film missing its gore is, as noted 80s philosopher Oran Juice Jones said, “Like corn flakes without the milk!”

Thankfully, an uncut version of the film did surface on DVD in Germany of all places with the amusing title BRAINSLASHER. First off, you have to love the German artwork (see pic). Yes, the film does contain mutants, a person with tubes on their head and a severed arm. But leave it to the Germans to combine all of that into one image that isn't in the film. Second, it contains all the gore excised from the R-rated US RCA/Columbia VHS release. Both films play exactly the same until around the 50 minute mark. After that, each and every scene containing blood is trimmed. Here is a run down:

*Stover kills a mutant guard to escape

This is the first bit of cutting. Stover discovers a Cuisinart blade in the rubble and attacks the guard hounding him. He slices his throat, the shot of blood spraying being a few frames longer. When the guard hits the ground, we get a second spurt of blood coming out of his throat that lasts roughly 1 second (see pic below; if you are man enough to handle it, that is).

*Stover fights off another mutant guard

Here we have Stover involved in one of those classic bits where both fighters are reaching for a weapon. The mutant gets a machete first and swings as Stover ducks. The blade then tears open the belly of another mutant hanging from the ceiling and his guts spill out. We are treated to a second shot of the spilling entrails and the next shot of them landing on the face of an out cold mutant lasts roughly 2 second longer. Stover then grabs a hook and juts it into the head of the last mutant, resulting in blood spraying from the head’s right side and two extra gurgles of gore that barely add up to second. See the video below for comparison.

*The first display of the Human Grinder

Truly an example of how only a few seconds truncation can alter a scene. The Seer sacrifices a young girl named Claude (Wendy Sandow) to this machine that chews up the victims and processes their blood as sacrament for the mutants. Since he wears a mask made of human eyeballs, it is safe to assume this guy has an orbital fetish and to prove it he plucks out Claude’s right eyeball with his claw hand attachment. In the R-rated version, we just get two shots of Claude’s dry mouth screaming. The unrated version has one shot of her mouth spitting out blood and the second mouth shot replaced with a shot of the eyeball being pulled out of her head. Claude is then fed to the machine with both shots of her body being chewed up trimmed to avoid the SHOGUN ASSASSIN-esque geyser of blood spraying from the entrance. See the video below for more cross comparison.

*The Seer kills Cornelia

The Seer decides to kill underground nurse Cornelia after she lets Judy escape. He picks her up and puts her onto a meat hook dangling from a track in the ceiling. He then pushes her through the room where she ends up impaled on two spikes in the wall. The unrated version offers roughly 2 more seconds of blood spurting from her abdomen before a mutant comes in and gives a quizzical look.

*The Seer meets the Human Grinder

As all good horror movies know, the villain should meat, er, meet their comeuppance at the hands of their infernal killing machine. So, of course, The Seer must end up in his flesh fraying furnishing. As with Claude’s aforementioned Grinder death, the R-rated cut trims down the jet of blood that sprays out of the machine.

So there you have it. Surprisingly, all of the bits involving the leeches that infest Stover’s body are identical, including a gory bit where he pukes blood all over Judy in the film’s climax. In total, the amount of gore cut out is less than 25 seconds. But for some reason those precious pictures of plasma were deemed not safe for US consumption. Honestly, I’m glad the M.P.A.A. was there for us on this one. Who knows how many kids would have gone all Charles Whitman had they been allowed to see that extra blood spurt lasting 1 second? Seriously, you’d almost think this ratings board had a personal vendetta against the folks who constantly challenged them in print. The amount of gore on display is freakin’ innocuous compared to the stuff folks get away with today. I mean, freakin’ R-rated RAMBO (2008) had more in the last 20 minutes than probably all of the notoriously edited 80s horror flicks combined. The only things more pathetic than this being cut down is that some loser took the time to compare the two versions and edit a comparison video. Enjoy!

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The "Never Got Made" File #20 - #23: It's alive, it's alive, it's ali...oh, maybe not!

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein has been an integral part of horror cinema. From the Edison Studio’s 1910 adaptation to Universal’s iconic films, Dr. Victor Frankenstein and his various creations have been featured in over 100 productions in the last century. With Guillermo del Toro announcing his work on a Frankenstein redux, it seems only fitting to check in on the Frankenstein monsters that were never fully brought to life. Question is, will del Toro succeed or end up adding to the list?

#20 – Willis O’Brien’s KING KONG VS. FRANKENSTEIN

In 1960, stop-motion animator extraordinaire Willis O’Brien came up with the idea for a second sequel to KING KONG (1933) that would feature the giant ape taking on a huge version of Frankenstein’s monster. The creature would have been created by Frankenstein’s grandson and the action set in modern day San Francisco. O’Brien even did some preliminary sketches to map out the size of the title beasts (see below). The project was scripted by George (FRANKENSTEIN 1970) Worthing Yates and here is where things get complicated. First, the title was changed to KING KONG VS. PROMETHEUS to avoid potential lawsuits with Universal studios. The project was then shopped around and the studio that bought it was Japan’s Toho Film Studios, home of Godzilla. Initially they had plans to change it to GODZILLA VS. FRANKENSTEIN, but the project then morphed into KING KONG VS. GODZILLA (1962). But the Japanese weren’t done yet with the Frankenstein monster as Toho eventually also made FRANKENSTEIN CONQUERS THE WORLD (aka FRANKENSTEIN VS. BARAGON; 1965), which featured a Godzilla-size monster tearing it up.  For more on the film's potential plot, check out Toho Kingdom's write-up.

#21 – Dario Argento’s FRANKENSTEIN

Following the success of his animal trilogy, Italian director Dario Argento tried to mount a Frankenstein adaptation. Little is know about the project, but here is some info offered by in the Broken Mirrors/Broken Minds book on Argento:

Luigi Cozzi, who co-wrote the screenplay with Argento, says: “He wanted to take a very classical approach, but to set the story in pre-Nazi Germany, during the Weimar Republic. The Frankenstein monster would have been kind of a symbol of the birth of Nazism. We had trouble with the Americans there [specifically Universal Pictures] – they said Frankenstein was dead, and anyway, no one who wanted to see a horror movie cared about politics.” Packaged with Timothy Dalton (now James Bond) in the lead, the project was also offered to Hammer with no luck.

Prime Dario Argento doing Frankenstein with Royal Shakespeare Company era Timothy Dalton as Dr. Frankenstein? Sign me up! Sadly, it never got made but with Argento remaking DRACULA, who knows what the future holds?

#22 – David Cronenberg’s FRANKENSTEIN

Fresh off the success of SCANNERS (1981), David Cronenberg was announced to be developing his own take on the Frankenstein mythos. According to this interview with Cronenberg at Greencine, there wasn’t really much to it other than the title. Producer Pierre David mentioned the idea to Cronenberg and he said, “Sounds good to me” even though he said he had no interest in making it. David apparently took him at his word and ran ads in Variety announcing the project. Instead, Cronenberg moved away from David’s Filmplan International and made VIDEODROME (1983) – a film infused with a bit of Frankenstein itself – instead. Thank you Dave!

And here is a little blurb from Fangoria about the death of Cronenberg's FRANKENSTEIN project (with a bonus "Never Got Made" about a cool sounding anthology):

#23 – George Romero’s FRANKENSTEIN

Like Cronenberg, Romero was fresh off the biggest financial hit of his career with CREEPSHOW (1982) when a potential Frankenstein adaptation was announced. Laurel Entertainment seemed to have a “throw it all at the wall” approach with their projects and announced at least 5 Romero directed projects in the fall of 1982. Titles including this, COPPERHEAD, CREEPSHOW 2, and Romero’s adaptations of Stephen King’s THE STAND and PET SEMATARY. None of the projects got made by Romero (although he did provide the screenplay for CREEPSHOW 2). Anyway, here is the artwork they ran for Romero’s attempt:

Since ol’ George is still churning out flicks, this is still something I’d like to see him tackle. I mean, anything…ANYTHING to get him to stop making those damn zombie flicks.

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Obscure Oddities: DEATH COLLECTOR (1988)

One of the side effects of being a Video Junkie is that you always have more movies than you can watch. It is sad, but an inevitable truth. Currently I have somewhere in the range of 500 unwatched DVDs and I’m sure just as many VHS titles. This endless supply of orbital medicine gives me plenty of opportunity to play Video Junkie’s Video Roulette. This basically involves randomly selecting an evening’s night of great entertainment (or torture) out of a box while an Asian guy yells, “Mao!” at me. Video Roulette has led me down some strange paths before, but what I grabbed last night was really odd. Not to be confused with the Joe Pesci/NJ mob flick of the same name that haunts dollar bins everywhere, DEATH COLLECTOR is truly a one of a kind flick.

In the near future, the town of Hartford City is controlled by a ruthless guy named Hawk (Loren Blackwell). The law is represented by the Holt brothers, Jack and Wade. Jack (Frank Stewart) is the serious one who wants to carry on the family tradition, whereas Wade (Daniel Chapman) has dreams of being a singing cowboy. Problems erupt when Wade awkwardly seduces Hawk’s squeeze Annie (Ruth Collins) and Jack is fatally shot in the chaos. “Here’s a life insurance policy for $10,000. It’s all I got,” says Jack as he lies dying (really!). But little brother Wade has revenge on his mind and heads to Hawk’s corporate headquarters for, uh, revenge. He isn't very good at it apparently because he confronts Hawk, but his gun is out of bullets. D’oh!

For his trouble, Wade has his knee crushed with a sledgehammer and is then sentenced to 50 years in a prison work camp. You can tell it is the future by the prisoner’s outfits. Wade manages to hit several prison clichés (hard labor, the hot box, black friend Bucky) in five minutes before the prison is shut down five years into his run. I’m not kidding, the warden gets a phone call and all he says is, “What? Shut the prison down? Okay.” He is then on the PA system telling all the prisoners they are free. How did this happen? Seems the outside world has changed a lot according to Mr. Exposition Prison Guard. The banks have bankrupted the world with “a few changes of a decimal points” (hmmmm, sounds familiar) and Hawk has seized control by privatizing everything. And everyone in Hartford City now loooooves Hawk because he offers insurance premiums whereby you get $1 million dollars if you live in his city and hit age 35. No one seems to notice nobody has ever collected on it. But recently released Wade just wants what is his and goes goes to Hawk to cash in his brother’s insurance policy. Naturally, Hawk refuses so Wade (along with pal Bucky and love interest Annie) must become the death collector. Oh, I get it!

What...the...hell? I'm not sure how films like this exist. Shot entirely in Connecticut, DEATH COLLECTOR plays out like someone saw Walter Hill's STREETS OF FIRE and said, "I can do that" with a budget of $50,000. Seriously, like Hill’s film or Alan Rudolph’s TROUBLE IN MIND (1985), this takes place in some kind of futuristic retro land. Folks walk through rock quarries (the future!) in cowboy hats and boots, yet everyone drives around in 1950s cars. You can’t fault this low budget production for not having ambition. And director Tom Gniazdowski (aka Tom Garrett) ain't done yet. No, he adds bizarre little quirks like main villain Hawk being obsessed with bowling. How obsessed? He kills a guy who makes him 5 minutes late to the lanes. There is an entire scene in the bowling alley where Hawk is giving Annie some advice on how to throw the ball. Naturally, she sucks at it and it allows for some risible dialogue where Hawk says, “You did it, babe. You became the ball. And you ended up right in the gutter where you belong.” And this isn’t even the oddest line from scripter John McLaughlin. Later in the film Annie is talking to Wade about killing Hawk and says, “Don't try setting him on fire either. I found out the hard way, he's just not flammable.” To quote the great Jack Burton, “I don’t even know what the hell that means!”

I'm not sure this is even a good movie, but it was oddly compelling and had me hooked for an entire viewing (and if you know me, that is quite a feat). Of course, there are the low budget aspects that make it entertaining too. One thing I loved was during Wade’s first performance, two audience members shown are an old guy and a beefcake shirtless dude playing cards. After Wade spends 5 years in prison, he heads back to the same bar and guess who is in the background? The old guy and the buff dude! That must have been one hell of a card game…or sloppy filmmaking.

This is one of those kind of movies where the lead guy need a shotgun and there just happens to be one on the wall. I also love that in the future that Double Dragon and After Burner are still popular in arcades. And there is a country-esque guitar theme that is played ad nausem that you will be humming it by film’s end. Lead Chapman looks kind of like really skinny Dolph Lundgren and sings his own songs with some challenging lyrics ("You make the breakfast...I make the bed") in this one. He was also featured in PHILADELPHIA (1993) as a guy who tells his story in a clinic (where he looked much worse) and he passed away from AIDS in 1994. Ruth Collins is good as the bimbo love interest, but doesn’t do any nudity. I only mention this because she was more than happy to pop her top in DOOM ASYLUM (1987). Also look for splatterpunk authors Skipp and Spector in a one scene cameo. Like I said, all of this makes the film hypnotic and kept me watching the screen from beginning to end. The film was originally released on the RaeDon home video label. But you can find it easily in vol. 1 of Media Blasters RareFlix sets alongside the entertaining THE DISTURBANCE (1990) and POSED FOR MURDER (1989).

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Prison Prescription: THE CHAIR (1988) and DEATH HOUSE (1988)

Maybe it was something in the L.A. water, but horror movies set in prison became all the rage in the late 80s. The market was flooded with titles such as DEATH ROW DINER (1988), DESTROYER (1988), PRISON (1988), SLAUGHTERHOUSE ROCK (1988), and TERROR AT ALCATRAZ (1986). Even slasher flicks like THE HORROR SHOW (1989) and SHOCKER (1989) couldn’t resist throwing in some ol’ electric chair excitement. I’m shocked 80s Hollywood never got us a horror prison movie set underwater! Two of the lesser entries in this subgenre are THE CHAIR (1988) and DEATH HOUSE (1988).

Warden Edward Dwyer (Paul Benedict, the doorman from THE JEFFERSONS) re-opens a dilapidated prison with the help some trustee inmates (including Brad Greenquist and Stephen Geoffreys). Along for the ride are psychologist Dr. Langer (James Coco) and his assistant Lisa (Trini Alvarado), who try to help the prisoners with some 80s "I'm okay, you're okay" therapy. Of course, this prison has - I hope you have already guessed - a history and there is a ghost out for revenge. Seems some rowdy prisoners executed the former warden several years before and Dwyer, a guard at the time, failed to intervene. Naturally, this means lots of innocent (and presumed innocent) folks get chopped and zapped before the warden gets his comeuppance.

Believe it or not, this is one of the few flicks produced by Angelika Films, a production company from the folks who founded NYC's famous Angelika Film Center (same logo and everything). For a group known for having its finger on the indie film pulse, they sure didn't know crap about making a viable commercial product. Actually, husband and wife industrial filmmakers Waldermar Korzenioswsky and Carolyn Swartz are mostly to blame here as they never make it horrific enough, unless you count their terrible attempts at comedy and the ill-fitting piano score and opening jazz tune. Just what the hell was the film supposed to be? And how can you waste such a good location and actors? The film ends with an on screen dedication reading "For Jimmy" as lead Coco died during filming. Poor Jimmy (in both regards).

The many stages of THE CHAIR grief:

THE CHAIR is one of those classic examples of my growth period as a teen when I learned that movies aren’t necessarily as good as the stills run in Fangoria to promote the film. I remember being impressed by the blue-hued pics of the first warden being fried with his skin bubbling as a result. Then you have Stephen Geoffreys in the mix. “Damn, that’s Evil Ed,” thought my fourteen year old brain, “He is gonna be awesome as a wacko prisoner. And James Coco, he is a respectable actor, right?” So with visions of Renny Harlin’s PRISON dancing in my head, I expected a dark prison ghost revenge tale. What I got instead was sentenced to my own video execution with a film that can’t decide if it is a comedy, drama, or horror film.

If heightened expectations were one of the reasons for my disappointment in THE CHAIR, they may be the sole reason for why my head hangs in my hands after watching John Saxon’s DEATH HOUSE. Originally profiled in Gorezone magazine, this one got built up in my brain by a certain mindset that was forever exorcised from my mind after I saw Bruce Campbell direct movies. “John Saxon is directing!?! He has worked with masters of horror like Wes Craven and Bob Clark. And tons of Italians! Surely he must have picked up something from them over the years,” rationalized my naïve 80s brain once again. And the plot sounded awesome: the Government was trying out an experimental serum on prisoners that makes them go berserk. “Wow, it will be like RE-ANIMATOR in prison,” said Will’s optimistic mind. Well, I had to wait much longer to catch this bad boy (20 years) and the only common ground it shares with Stuart Gordon’s classic is that it is in focus.

Framed by mafia boss Vic Moretti (Anthony Franciosa), Derek Keillor (Dennis Cole) ends up on death row, right alongside the mob boss' brother Frankie (Frank Sarcinello Jr.). But this is the least of Derek's problems as rogue government agent (and mob stoolie) Col. Burgess (John Saxon) is using the prison as a testing ground for a new experimental super-virus. Soon Keillor’s sole prison friend is executed and he turns into a rage filled zombie that causes a prison riot to break out. This doesn’t fare well for visiting TV reporter Tanya (Tane McClure), who just happens to also be a former biochemist (really!). And wouldn’t you know it, today just happens to be the day Warden Hagan (Alex Courtney) brought his family to visit.

This is the only flick Saxon directed during his storied career. Sure, it is low budget, but that can't excuse the stilted staging, shooting gaffes, or clumsy exposition in the first 15 minutes. Seriously, the first 15 minutes are filled with so much stuff going on that you might need a chalk board to keep track of it all. Try to follow me: Derek is a Vietnam vet who stays with an old combat buddy (SUPERFLY’s Ron O’Neal) before getting a job as Moretti’s mob chauffer. He falls for mob trophy wife Genelle (Dana Lis) by a fast glance in the rearview mirror and they are (even faster) getting it on. Derek also foils a dirty deal gone bad in a back alley, even though he just “wants to stay out of it.” Moretti then kills Genelle in the hot tub (but not before lathering her breasts) and frames Derek for the murder. He goes on trial (voiceover time!) and is sentenced to death. This all happens in the first 15 minutes! To his credit, Saxon did make it slightly gory and he works in a hilarious nude scene (our lead actually falls asleep during a prison riot only to fantasize about a female scientist-turned-reporter). Cole, who looks like a more rugged Jan-Michael Vincent, is decent as the stoic lead and Franciosa - sporting a really bad rug - gives it his all as the cliché mob boss.

In the end, DEATH HOUSE is a total mess that is still an oddly watchable mess. According to director Fred Olen Ray, Saxon fell behind schedule rather quickly and he was brought on to help move the project along. Perhaps sensing the film needed some extra umph, Olen Ray’s Retromedia released this on DVD as ZOMBIE DEATH HOUSE with the title addition not even trying to look like it wasn’t meant to be there. As for my childhood delusions, I finally got my “RE-ANIMATOR in prison” with BEYOND RE-ANIMATOR (2003). Guess what? It sucked. But that didn’t stop my stumbling brain from thinking at the time, “Damn, RE-ANIMATOR in a prison? This is gonna be awesome!”

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