Watch Out For Snakes!

I've been having an MST3k marathon while stuck at home, hiding from the hoards of toilet paper zombies here in Rhode Island as we wait out the Corona Panic of 2020. Anyway, being the film geek I am, I thought I'd share some not so fascinating factoids that nobody cares about and which will never come in handy. For anything. Ever.

Episode #819: Invasion of the Neptune Men - Space Chief, aka the muffiny-haired, chicken headed bachelor who saves Japan from the Bullethead family reunion, is actually Sonny Chiba.

Episode #518: The Atomic Brain (aka Monstrosity) - Mrs. March, the gabillionaire bitch who is not-so-subtly plotting to have her brain transplanted into the body of a jiggly young sexpot in order to live forever and boink as many studs as her money can buy, was played by Marjorie Eaton, a hook-nosed dead ringer for the Wicked Witch of the West. One of Marjorie's final roles before her death in 1986 was as Emperor Palpatine in The Emperor Strikes Back. Buried under heavy makeup and dubbed by Clive Revill, she was all but unidentifiable.

Episode #1112: Carnival Magic - Director Al Adamson ended up being murdered by his live-in contractor, who then stuffed his body under an indoor jacuzzi.

Episode #413: Manhunt In Space & Episode #417: Crash Of Moons - Scott Beckett, the dweeby, monkeyboy sidekick Winky to stolid Space Ranger Rocky Jones, was a full blown psycho hellraiser in real life. Arrested numerous times for assault, robbery, drunk driving, drug dealing and attempted murder, Scotty - who started life as a member of Our Gang of Little Rascals fame - was an abusive asshole who terrorized his wives, engaged in a shootout with Mexican police and attempted suicide twice before finally succeeding at age 38.

Episode #706: Laserblast & Episode #704: The Incredible Melting Man - Cheryl Smith played the roles of Kathy and The Model, respectively, in these two cheeseball sci-fi flicks. Cheryl, also known as Rainbeaux, was also a member of The Runaways and started her acting career as Lila Lee in the cult vampire film Lemora: A Child's Tale of the Supernatural.

Episode #704: The Incredible Melting Man - Late in the movie, an expendable young couple stumble into the film for no other reason than to provide fodder for the Melting Man of the title to kill/terrorize. The guy - who ends up getting murdered to death - is Jonathan Demme, who would go on to win an Academy Award for The Silence of the Lambs, one of the many films he directed before passing away in 2017. The woman - who gets terrorized in her dingy kitchen for a while - was played by Janus Blythe, who starred in the original The Hills Have Eyes as reluctant cannibal girl Ruby, and made out with a pre-Freddy Krueger Robert Englund in Eaten Alive.

Episode #1011: Horrors of Spider Island - Barbara Valentin (aka A Bra Bra Navel Nite) who played the smoldering role of Babs, exotic dancer, pro-wrestler and fullback for the Lions, was a very close friend of Freddie Mercury, and lived with him for a time in an apartment in Munich. She was also a huge champion of both gay rights and HIV research following his death.

Episode #811: Parts, The Clonus Horror - Early in the film during big dumb George's going away party before he is sent to "America" he slips away for a few moments with his lobotomized girlfriend to say goodbye. The girlfriend is played by Eileen Dietz, who had a tiny role in a little film called The Exorcist. Specifically, Eileen played the role of Pazuzu; it is her face we see painted in the quick flashes and nightmare sequences, and it is her we see backhanding the doctor and puking on Father Karras.

3 From Hell

By Versipellis (Thanks for taking a bullet for us, Versi!)

3 From Hell starts off where The Devil’s Rejects left us, with Captain Spaulding (the late Sid Haig), Otis Driftwood (Bill Moseley), and Baby (Sherri Moon Zombie) driving their car into a hailstorm of bullets, which against all common sense and reality, all three survive the onslaught.  Clips of the survivors in the hospital overlap with news footage about the Devil’s Rejects Cult(?) beating the odds and facing criminal charges for mass murder, while also featuring their followers chanting “Free The Three!” with more than a subtle nod towards the Manson Family. We witness The Three entering the courtroom, and then prison, as sentences are handed down.  Only Captain Spaulding is given the Death Penalty, but we get to see Sid Haig in interviews before his death. Looking rather fragile and smaller than we last saw him (after having suffered a fall and significant hospital time off screen), Sid still commands the screen and stands fierce as Spaulding, even with the corny dialogue scripted by Zombie, he gives a memorable, defiant performance.  Sadly, he only gets a few minutes of air time before his character is executed.

We then are shown Otis and Baby in prison, fresh with jailhouse ink (which surprisingly looks authentic) and are introduced to warden Virgil (Jeff Daniel Phillips, another Zombie regular), as well as a sadistic prison guard, Greta, (played by a nearly unrecognizable Dee Wallace with short black hair and glasses).  Baby comes before the parole board and of course, is denied parole, after which she breaks Greta’s nose and is brought back under control. We later see Greta escorting Baby to a secluded area of the prison, where she is attacked by two female inmates (in stereotypical exploitation style), but, of course, Baby kills them and writes a love note to Greta in their blood on the floor.  Even though she was handcuffed. And shackled. And the others were not. And they had weapons.

Otis is then shown shackled and riding in the back of a pick-up truck, on a chain gang with other inmates, the most notable being Rondo (Danny Trejo). While they are digging their ditches (but not burning through the witches), Otis keeps eyeballing Rondo, even after the guards warn him to stop.  Suddenly, a man shows up with a shotgun and succeeds in taking out all the guards. We are introduced to Winslow Foxworth Coltrane (Richard Brake), who is referred to as Foxy, and evidently the half-brother of Otis. Otis kills Rondo, after which the men leave, but remain close to the prison so they can hatch a plan to free Baby.   The brothers decide to go to the home of Warden Virgil, where they detain the Warden’s wife.  When Virgil arrives, the men restrain him, and inform him of their plan to liberate Baby. The Warden obeys their demands, and manages to smuggle Baby out of the prison in a female guard’s uniform (which miraculously worked, even though she is the only guard under 50, with long blonde hair, full makeup, and that ever annoying laugh) and reunites her with Otis and Foxy.  Thus begins their bloodbath, starting with the Warden and his wife, and the trio is once again on the run.  Baby comes up with the brilliant idea of going to Mexico, where she is certain no one will recognize them, after killing a man she meets by a soda machine (brief cameo by Sean Whalen, whom I always enjoy see getting screen time), who happens to be dressed in a sombrero and wearing a fake moustache and blanket.  The brothers agree, and they are off to Mexico.

Mexico is, of course, presented as a complete shithole, and we are introduced to the Estrella de Motel’s Manager, Carlos Perro (Richard Edson).  The “star of the motel” (which is what the name of the hotel translates to) is a sleazy opportunist who brings The Three to their grande suite, the highlight of which has an old turntable and a toilet.  He invites them down to party that night, being it’s the Day of The Dead (I am guessing since everyone in town is painting their faces as sugar skulls. Even the men. Or maybe its another Zombie touch to add to stereotypes).  They discuss missing Spaulding, and Baby says she feels alone. Otis states it’s still the two of them, to which Foxy gets angry, and Otis begrudgingly acknowledges that he is now one of them. Baby dons her stolen Native Headdress and grabs her bow and arrows she took from the Warden’s House,  and somehow gets an Indigenous-esque revealing dress to complete her look of cultural insensitivity and appropriation. I guess those dresses are in high demand in Mexico. In rural Mexico. In the ghettoest dive bar in Mexico. Edson makes a call to Aquarius (Emilio Rivera), the head of a Satanic killing squad consisting of men in white polyester suits, pointy boots, and luchador masks with pentagrams on their foreheads.  Aquarius also happens to be Rondo’s son, and seeks his revenge on The Three. Edson informs him they are at the motel, and he tells him to make 3 coffins. The Three arrive at the bar, and commence to drink and hook up with sugar-skull painted prostitutes (of course), while Baby goes outside and challenges two men to a knife throwing contest.  Which she wins. Of course. The only one who can throw a bullseye while barely glancing at the target.

The next morning, we see Otis in bed with two of the women, reading a comic to them, (one of Zombie’s, naturally), which is exactly what one would do after a night of debauchery with prostitutes.  Foxy, meanwhile, wakes up with another sugar skull painted lady of the evening, and is watching the original Hunchback of Notre Dame on television. The woman has never seen it, and Foxy explains it to her.  She says she has always wanted someone to take her away from this shithole, to which Foxy replies that he is her knight in shining armor. Or a ratty blanket I suppose. True love indeed. Baby wakes to a knock on the Presidential suite’s door, and it’s Sebastian (Pancho Moler), a little person with an eyepatch, who has brought her arroz con frijoles for breakfast, which fascinates Baby (of course it does), as she cannot understand how “they eat this for breakfast here”.  She invites Sebastian to stay as she eats, telling him he reminds her of her brother, Tiny (who died in the previous film, and was actually a giant), and they form a bond over this. Baby looks out the window to see Aquarius and his henchmen, and dons her Native American gear once again, while Sebastian goes to inform her brothers of the arrival of the scary Satanic luchadors in polyester suits.

More bloodshed ensues, as the henchmen kill the prostitutes, and are taken out one by one by Baby’s bow and arrow skills to the accompanying soundtrack of In A Gadda Da Vida, while Otis kills Edson for being a rat.  Foxy, unfortunately gets captured by Aquarius, as well as Baby, and are tied up and used as bait to get Otis to come forward from hiding. A duel of machetes ensues between Otis and one of the henchmen, while Sebastian shows up to free Foxy and Baby.  He is rewarded for his efforts by a bullet through his skull from Aquarius. Eventually, The Three take out all the big bad Satanic wrestlers, and place Aquarius inside one of the coffins meant for them. Otis burns him alive, while the film fades to the three leaving the city. I really wanted to enjoy this film.  I do enjoy some of Zombie’s films. I loved Lords of Salem and House of 1000 Corpses.  I enjoyed parts of Halloween and even the loathsome 31. But this was just so tedious and filled with ridiculous concepts and dialogue, that I quickly grew bored.  I felt he could have really expanded on Baby’s further descent into madness, especially after losing her father (Spaulding). But instead we are shown her imagining a dancing woman wearing a kitty mask, and begging her to returnn so she isn’t alone anymore.  And Foxy’s character had potential, but was sadly just another lame attempt to replace Captain Spaulding, with no further character development. He is a great actor, and I have seen him play roles fantastically, but he did fall a little short in this role.

Unlike his previous efforts, there are no real memorable lines here, and not very memorable moments.  I enjoyed a lot of the brief cameos more than the actual film (Clint Howard as Mr. Baggy Britches was entertaining), and it was enjoyable seeing Sean Whalen and Bill Oberest Jr. appearing as well.  But overall, I was yawning throughout most of it and glad when it ended. The gore is rampant, and there is some gratuitous nudity throughout, and while it was wonderful to see Sid Haig, and Bill Mosely was enjoyable as Otis, it just felt like it was thrown together quickly and was a real hot mess.  I rate it 3 out of 10, for Pancho Moler’s performance, the mugshot of Foxy smiling while wearing a Disco Sucks t-shirt, and for Otis showing his buttcrack while peeing in the House of Ill Repute.  Watch it if you want to see poorly coordinated exploitation, or Bill Mosely’s buttcrack. Otherwise, I would advise you to watch something else.

Hollow (2011)

I know it may sound strange to many of you, but not only was I looking forward to watching a movie about a tree, I was also expecting it to be rivetingly entertaining. You see, I automatically expect non-American films to be way better than those made here in the same way that I expect items purchased at Harrods to be superior to the cheap shit they sell at Wal-Mart. 

But yeah. The Hollow is a movie about a haunted tree. A big, spooky looking hollow tree sitting all by itself in an open field. For hundreds of years, the locals have shunned the tree, believing its hollow interior to be haunted by Something Evil. Over the last four hundred years or so, many a young couple in love have been found swinging from the tree’s sturdy branches for no apparent reason. The history of the old hollow tree contains many gruesome myths and legends but no solid facts, save one: an exorcism was performed on the tree by the local Vicar, who soon after died from an “accidental” overdose of his own medication. One year after his unfortunate demise, his granddaughter Emma comes to close up the old house, bringing along her fiance Scott, her best friend James and James’ slutty blonde girlfriend Lynne. 

And here’s where anything even remotely promising about the plot – as atmospheric up to this point as any of Arthur Conan Doyle’s many perilous and fog-haunted moors – comes crashing down with a sound like a million douchebags herp-derping in terror, and not being silenced as soon as they should have been.

Emma, the prim, proper brunette of the bunch, may be forgiven for being a tad uptight – she’s the granddaughter of an English Vicar, after all. However, her choice in men roundly sucks as fiance Scott quickly establishes himself as a typical popped-collar frat boy fucksock who fancies himself quite a bit more than anyone else does. He belittles James, he makes misogynistic statements directed at Emma, he brings a bulging baggie of coke to the party and is quick to suggest a round of strip Monopoly. He’s also keen on Lynn’s skanky ass, and being the one-dimensional vacuous cokewhore that she is, she really doesn’t mind. Apart from it all sits James, filming everything and just waiting for Emma to wise up and dump Scott so he can move in and pick up the pieces. 

Unfortunately, it takes forever to happen and every last minute of that endless forever is captured on film and guess who gets to watch it? Seriously, this was the longest 4 hours of my life, and I was only 35 minutes in.

Finally, they all get coke-blasted and shitfaced and remember that there’s a haunted tree nearby! And hey, lets run out into the dark and investigate! Great idea! Drama ensues, spooky noises happen and slowly – VERY slowly, over the course of a very dusty and leaden 24 hours – the gang decides they need to leave. Except they can’t because James goes missing. So they have to go looking for him in the dark, all alone. And their cell phones won’t work. And the car won’t start. And the nearest call box has been vandalized. And there’s a dead fox. And Scott no longer loves Emma. And Lynn is still a whore. And the battery on the video camera is getting low, so lets keep shutting it off and then turning it back on every five minutes so we can film NOTHING AT ALL. Great, keep doing that for the last half hour of film time. “Did you hear that? I’m going out there! No, don’t! Okay, I won’t! We have to get out of here! SSSHHH! Did you hear that?” It’s a mobius strip of a movie, coming from nowhere and going nowhere. You already know what’s going to happen as the end was revealed in the films pre-credit sequence, so can we just FFW to the end already please? 

This could have been a good film. Maybe even great. It had a nice spooky atmosphere to work with and some genuinely good ideas. Unfortunately, it didn’t utilize either, and comes off looking like one of the many, many, MANY ripoffs of the Blair Witch Project that all of us were sick to death of ten years ago. 

I have a friend who lives in Suffolk, not far from Dunwich, where this movie was set and filmed. According to him: “(the area is) right next to the sea, and hundreds of years ago the village used to be a lot bigger but half of the cliff it was on just sunk below sea level. Apparently at low tide you can sometimes see the old church spire. Could conceivably believe it to be the home of some Cthulhu-like eldritch monstrosity.” 

Now THAT would have been an awesome film! And the tree still could have been incorporated somehow. It’s a cool looking tree, no sense in letting it go to waste. But no. Instead we get over an hour of drama queens and douchebag kings, filming each other naked and acting like…well, like Americans. I could have spliced some footage from The Evil Dead into an episode of Keeping Up With the Kardashians and been more entertained. 

Please, England – don’t be like that, baby. I know you can do better.

Megan Is Missing (2011)

There wasn’t no innernet way back when I was a stupid teenage girl in the long ago 1980s. Back then, if you wanted to meet one o’ them seckshul predators, you had to get on a bus and go all the way to the mall! Why I can’t even tell you how many times I went out walking with my friends – uphill, both ways, barefoot, in ten feet of snow – and not one single serial killer tried to lure us into his windowless van with the offer of illicit candy. Goddamned kids have it so easy nowadays with their chat rooms and their Wifi’s and their 4chans and stuff.

For the first hour of its runtime, “Megan Is Missing” is a spectacularly stupid chronicle of the lives of two Hollywood teenagers. Megan – she of the ominous title – is the popular slut whose mother hates her and whose dark past of molestations committed by stepfathers and camp counselors alike drives her to be ever more promiscuous, attending parties where she drinks too much, smokes too much (without actually inhaling) and blows any popped-collared douchecanoe who snaps his fingers. Her best friend Amy is her utter antithesis; sweet, virginal, plain, unpopular, still called “Princess” by her doting daddy. The inexplicable bond between these two seems to stem from their bottomless low self esteems, a thick glue of worthlessness that holds them together more powerfully than 3M Scotch Weld.

Megan’s life is at an all-time low when, lo and behold, a new guy pops up just in time to make her feel pretty and special. His name is Josh. He hangs out online a lot but, goshdarnit, his webcam is conveniently broken so Megan can’t see what he looks like. He sounds super cool though and he’s really nice, so Megan agrees to meet him behind a slummy diner in about 20 minutes. Sounds totally legit, right? When Megan fails to show up for school the next day, Amy knows that something is terribly wrong. No one else seems too concerned, until the one day turns into several, and then the days turn into weeks. The MISSING fliers go up. The local news is all over the story like flies on shit. Security cam footage turns up, showing Megan being led away from the diner by a strange man. But Megan herself has disappeared without a trace.

Amy has an idea about what may have happened and stupidly logs online looking for Josh, and finds him…or has he found her? The cool, sweet veneer is gone: Josh is a sick fuck, and while he doesn’t admit to having taken Megan, he assures Amy that the same thing – or worse – can happen to her if she doesn’t keep her big fucking mouth shut. Wisely, Amy reports this to the police. Not so wisely, she wanders around the lonely hills and wooded areas of LA by herself. Apparently, the scene in which Amy’s short term memory is surgically removed from her brain was cut from the film’s final reels. It’s the only thing I can think of that would explain Amy’s fucking idiocy in wandering off alone after having been told by a faceless psychopath that he is constantly watching her.

Amy disappears, but unlike Megan, we know who has her and exactly what’s happening to her, because the final 20+ minutes of film is an excruciating video diary which reveals – in sickening detail – Amy’s harrowing ordeal. What started out as a slightly racy (and, quite often, badly acted) After School Special about the tragic results of Stranger Danger, veers right the fuck off the road and slams headfirst into torture porn land. If Audition and Hostel had a baby, and aborted it, and then sewed its corpse onto the ass end of an episode of 90210, it might look a lot like this movie. It’s a filthy, grimy, ugly surprise at the bottom of a moldy box of cereal. I’ve seen worse – Jin Won Kim’s “The Butcher” and “The Poughkeepsie Tapes” come to mind – but this is pretty fucking unpleasant. Rolled in sugar and spice, then deep fried in diarrhea. Okay, I think I’ve exhausted the gross metaphors for now – you get the idea.

This film claims to be based on a true story, although I have yet to learn what that true story is. Sadly, there’s too many true stories to which this movie can be compared: Polly Klaas, Amber Hagerman, Adam Walsh, etc. Maybe I’m better off not knowing. As a cautionary tale, “Megan Is Missing” is both stereotypically shallow and graphically extreme, giving us the Grimm Fairy Tale version of online predator danger: completely devoid of common logic and parental supervision, then wallowing in the unsanitized, unDisneyfied world of the real Grimm’s tales, where nothing ends happily and no one – no matter their intentions – escapes the monster.

Bleak and depressing. Let your teenage daughter watch it at her next slumber party if you can’t be bothered to supervise her online habits. The bills for her psychotherapy will be astronomical, but I can guarantee you: she will never leave the house again.

Low (2011)

“A-ha! The timeless wonder of the English countryside.” ~ Rik Mayall

True horror doesn’t always bloom within the darkest shadows of the night, nor does it require the ominous herald of a thunderstorm. Sometimes, the most harrowing sidesteps into horror occur beneath the bright light of midday, when there are no shadows in which to hide and everything is spotlit to the point of overexposure. We all think we’re safe out in the open, under the sunlight. Bad things don’t happen during the day, out in the open, where anyone can see. Surely, evil waits until sunset before throwing on a trench coat and fedora and furtively sneaking out into the alleys to conduct its sinister deeds.

Horseshit. The bulk of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre takes place beneath a burning Texas sun. So too the climactic scene in The Wicker Man (1973 – bitch please, I refuse to even acknowledge that such a thing as a remake of that film ever even passed the zygote stage). And so begins the tale of Low, beneath a bright June sun in the lush green hills of England. 

It seems straightforward enough, a classic fairy tale set-up really. Pretty young girl, all alone, opens the wooden gate to an ominously named park and ventures within. Is she taking a shortcut to Granny’s house? Will she happen upon a gingerbread cottage? Well no, of course not. This is the 21st century after all. But as she strolls over hill and dale, lost in a melancholy world of her own, a wolf does indeed cross her path. Granted, he’s a wolf in geek’s clothing. His name is Edward and at first glance he seems about as menacing as a frosted fairy cake. He’s 40ish, bookish, terminally nerdy in his button down shirt and spotless khakis. Nevertheless, our pretty young Alice immediately senses that this guy is one dark, wormy rabbit hole that she’d rather not fall down into. Wise girl, she obeys her instincts and turns abruptly on her heel. But Edward, a sharp wolf indeed despite his dorky exterior, smells blood and follows, overtaking Alice on the wooded path.

Immediately attracted to the dark and tragic girl, Edward forces her to accompany him on a deeply disturbing gambol through the woods, seeing her not as a hostage but rather a kindred spirit. Edward has done things – terrible, bloody, unforgivable things – but he knows Alice will understand. Because Alice has come out into the bright June sunshine to commit her own terrible deed and bury a dark secret that Edward will ultimately expose. 

Straightforward and simple. So the story seems at first. But as it unfolds, it becomes hideously intricate, almost allegorical. But who exactly is Jacob and who is the angel here? 

It’s not difficult to figure out what’s going on here, but figuring out where it’s going and how it will all end is another matter entirely. The tension screws up tighter than a stressed out virgin. Several unforeseen plot twists pop up like a sharp punch to the face. The film is a mere one hour long, but it’s an exhausting hour: tense, nerve-wracking and emotionally draining thanks in no small part to the powerful performances delivered by David Keyes as the ultimately pitiable and pathetic Edward and Amy Comper as Alice, an empty, broken vessel of a girl forced to glue herself back together. In less capable hands, this story might have fallen to pieces, another farfetched slasher story with asinine motivations and zero character development. Keyes and Comper not only sell it but make you give an actual shit about both of them in the process – not an easy task. 

Horror tales told in the dark are all very well and good, but a multitude of sins (and flaws) can be hidden in the shadows. Beneath the bright summer sun, Low plummets to the depths of the human soul at the lowest point in our characters lives and turns a million megawatt spotlight on it, exposing the infinitesimal workings of pain and suffering in the harshest detail. 

I couldn’t help but be reminded of another severely underrated and brightly lit psychological horror film whilst watching Low, and that would be Adam Rehmeier’s “Jonas” and not just because David Keyes bears a stunning resemblance to Gregg Gilmore. Somebody run these films on a double bill. I see a future for a “Sunwashed Horror Fest” in the near future.