Week of July 9 to July 15

Sunday, July 9, 2006
Don’t Go Near the Park – 1981
     Another excellent disc from the outstanding new company, DarkSky Films. These guys are a rising star, heading to take their place next to Synapse, SWV, and Image as releaser’s of fun, obscure flicks.

This movie is cheap from the word go. The intro screams Ed Wood. The special affects look like they were done by Herschell Gordon Lewis twenty years earlier. It’s hard to believe that anyone was still using these affects as late as 1981. None of this, however, really detracts from the fun. And the transfer is beautiful. The colors are bright and sharp. If I have a complaint, it’s the audio, and there’s probably not much DarkSky could have done with that.

Yes, folks, that’s Linnea Quigley at 23. A very early entry in her filmography, this is really before she fell into her role as a scream queen who’d doff her top.

The more you watch this movie, the more you get the impression that it’s supposed to be homage to HGL. I mean, there’s even a scene with a newspaper that’s just like Blood Feast. The music sounds like it was written by the Godfather of Gore too. It’s even got tympani solo. Now how obvious is that?

And in the end, the dead arise to claim justice. Gotta love that.

There’s a very nice commentary on this disc with the Director and Linnea. It was excellent, but I didn’t jot down any details about what they said.

Monday, July 10, 2006
Rock ‘n Roll Nightmare – 1987  aka The Edge of Hell
     Wow, is this a hurter! An eighties big hair band goes to an abandon’d farmhouse (that just happens to have a barn with a recording studio) to practice for their next album. Too bad there’d been a demon-led slaughter of the family that lived their earlier.

Okay, first off, were these fashions and this music ever popular? Really? Well, don’t blame me. All I listen to is Progressive Rock, like Pink Floyd and Yes.

Secondly, this is the bloodless rip off of Evil Dead I’ve ever seen. And I kept thinking, especially in the big climax, that they couldn’t have meant this to be taken seriously, even though they are playing it straight. This Thor guy is a trip. The body of wrestler and the voice of Alice Cooper.

There are no subtitles, but there is a commentary by the director and Thor. They try to be funny, and fail. This one has to be seen to be believed. And they’re just made a sequel, twenty years later. Someone had more money than sense.

Tuesday, July 11, 2006 – Brentwood’s Girls from Another Planet
     Okay, first off, I’m gonna make a comment or two about this entire set. THERE’S NO GIRLS FROM ANOTHER PLANET IN THE WHOLE FREAKIN’ BOX SET!!!!! What kind of crap is that? Second off, I’m used to Brentwood compilations being all PD or cheapie independent films. But this is below the bottom of the barrel. The producers of these discs should have paid Brentwood to include them. I certainly hope Brentwood didn’t pay anything for them. The budgets of these 4 movies COMBINED had to be less than $100K.

Rollergator – 1996
     This is without a doubt one of the cheapest, stupidest things I’ve seen in years. A chubby, purple, talking alligator puppet is lost in the big city and is helped by some skating bimbos. No, really, that’s the entire plot. Shot on VHS, the crews of Low Budget Pictures and Troma would be ashamed of this mess.

There is an acoustic guitar solo going on in the background the entire time, which has nothing to do with the plot. I enjoyed the music for like the first twenty minutes, but by the end of the movie, I wanted to play El Cabong on the guy’s head.

Conrad Brooks and Joe Estevez both feature prominently in this movie. You know you’re in trouble when you see those two names in the credits really early on, like they’re stars. It is just inconceivable to me that the guy who directed this turd has 44 film credits.

Things – 1993
     Sync sound, no credits at the beginning (always a VERY bad sign), another shot on video POS. Here, we have a psycho woman who’s captured her husband’s most recent mistress, and she tells her two stories. So, it’s kinda an anthology. One features Alymer (from Brain Damage)’s retarded cousin. Neither is very good, but it’s better than the first movie (that’s truly damning with faint praise).

It does feature a line you don’t hear very often come out of a woman’s mouth. “Prostitution is legal in this state”.

Wednesday, July 12, 2006 – final two movies in the Girls (Not) From Another World collection

Toad Warrior – 1996
     From the crew and director that gave us Rollergator! This appears to be in the same universe, and even features the Swamp Farmer and the Lil Gator from Rollergator. There’s a bunch of really unconvincing sword play, and some plot to get some box back. The audio is so terrible, and it keeps jumping around, I had no idea really what was going on. All I knew was that I wanted everyone involved with this movie, cast and crew, to suffer painful boils.

More Conrad Brooks and Joe Estevez joy. Who ever told these two losers they could act?

Big Sister 2000 – no idea, no IMDB entry (ain’t THAT scary!)
     Same crew as above, but now we have Julie Strain (is this before her thousand movie appearance in Subversive Cinema releases with Misty Mundane?) Different cast, different world, same shitty editing, same shitty sound, same non-existent acting.

The only redeeming feature of this movie is the abundance of boobage.

It’s hard to believe, but this 4 movie box set is not even worth $5.99. It’s not funny, it’s not clever, and it’s not entertaining.

Thursday, July 13, 2006
Beyond the Valley of the Dolls – 1969
     Now this is more like it. If you haven’t seen this classic, run out and get it NOW. Russ Meyer’s big budget extravaganza, with a script by Roger Ebert (yes, of Thumbs down fame) and more big beautiful boobs than you can shake a stick at. And it’s wacky, it’s funny, the music is great, the acting is over the top in a perfect sort of way. This is an awesome movie. This is the high-water mark that all other sexploitation films aspire to.

And this is an awesome release. Subtitles, 2 commentaries (one by Roger Ebert himself, who is unapologetic in this love for this movie and his respect for Russ Meyers), a second disc with 6 featurettes. All excellent, all fun to listen to. It’s fascinating too to see what they all look like now (except Meyers, of course, as he died in 2004).  If I was still doing ratings, this would be another in the very rare Five Beers out of Five.

Friday, July 14, 2006
Guardian of the Realm – 2004

Beverly Hills Cop meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Not a bad little movie. Kinda looked like it could have been the pilot for a TV series. No extras on the disc, however.

Saturday, July 15, 2006
     Sorry, we had a party tonight, so it was late when everyone left, and I didn’t watch a movie.