So yesterday, I told my sister that I was going to go ahead and hop in my car and make the 45-minute drive to our uncle’s place. She said, “Uhmmm….okay, Lisa Marie,” and, at the time, I was confused as to why she sounded confused. After all, we go out to our uncle’s place every Memorial Day weekend. He has a big house. He has a big back yard and a pool that’s great for laying out and working on your tan. Celebrating Memorial Day weekend at our uncle’s is a Bowman-Marchi Family tradition!
And so, I drove out there. And when I arrived at the house, I thought it was weird that none of my cousins had arrived yet. Both my aunt and my uncle seemed surprised to see me but I figured they were just wondering where my cousins were as well. I mentioned to them that I was early and then, instead of sticking around to have a conversation, I ducked into the guest room and I changed into my favorite black bikini and then I went outside and I lay out by the pool.
And I have to admit that I was a little bit frustrated. Unlike all of my sisters and most of my cousins, I am pretty much incapable of getting a decent tan and it didn’t help that the sky was full of clouds. But I was even more frustrated by the fact that nobody else had shown up yet. Didn’t they know it was Memorial Day weekend?
Except, of course, it wasn’t Memorial Day weekend. Memorial Day weekend is next week and somehow, I managed to get my dates confused. Both my uncle and my aunt were very understanding about my mistake and they were kind enough to both feed me and invite me to stay the weekend. I thanked them for their kindness, told them that I couldn’t wait to come back next weekend, and then — with my face almost as red as my hair — I went home.
Shut up, Jimmy Brooks! I’m almost done and my name’s not Ellie! Anyway, my point is that I was planning on making the latest edition of Lisa Marie’s Favorite Grindhouse and Exploitation Film Trailers a Memorial Day edition. And, next weekend, it will be. However, for this weekend, enjoy these 6 randomly and hastily selected replacement trailers, none of which have much to do with each other…
Believe it or not, today is not just Loyalty Day in America! It’s also Law Day! President Dwight D. Eisenhower first proclaimed May 1st to be Law Day in 1958 and apparently, it’s been celebrated every year since. On Law Day, Americans are meant to reflect on the role of law in the foundation of the nation and also consider its importance to the social order.
I have to admit that, as a part of my day job, I interact with attorneys on a daily basis and I have never once heard any of them mention Law Day. But, if it’s on Wikipedia, it has to be true!
(I know it’s been a while since I did one of these but, for a while, my favorite grindhouse trailers was one of the mainstays of this site. In these posts, with the help of the Trailer Kitties, I highlight 6 of my favorite old school exploitation film trailers.)
Here are 6 trailers for Law Day!
(Some of these trailers are potentially NSFW so use your own best judgment before watching.)
It’s not easy being a judge, especially when you’re one of those judges who lets criminals out on a technicality. I assume that’s what Seven Hours To Judgment is about.
3) Rolling Vengeance (1987)
When the law doesn’t do its job, citizens and trucks have no choice but to dispense their own brand of justice.
4) Night of the Blood Monster (a.k.a. The Bloody Judge) (1970)
This one features Christopher Lee as an evil judge and, perhaps not surprisingly, it was directed by Jess Franco.
5) Vigilante (1983)
“The police are powerless. The law is corrupt…” Joe Spinell is in this trailer.
6) Gordon’s War (1973)
Things may look tough out there! But don’t worry — Gordon has a plan!
(Because of the nature of the 1986 pseudo-slasher film, April Fool’s Day, it’s impossible to really talk about the film without talking about the film’s ending. As a result, this review will have spoilers. The ending will be revealed. The entire plot will be spoiled. Do not read on if that’s going to be an issue for you.)
(Did you read the warning above?)
If not for the way that the film ends, April Fool’s Day would probably be a forgotten film. It’s a slasher film that doesn’t feature much blood, sex, or any particularly flamboyant kills (though there’s a good reason for that). Compared to most low-budget slasher films from the mid-80s, April Fool’s Day does have a surprisingly charismatic and likable cast but it’s rare that anyone watches a holiday-themed slasher film for the acting. Up until the final ten minutes or so, April Fool’s Day is professionally done but somewhat generic…
But then you hit that ending and it totally changes the whole film. It’s not a perfect ending. In many ways, it’s probably one the most imperfect endings that I’ve ever seen. It requires a massive suspension of disbelief. It makes no logical sense. But dammit, I love it. Almost despite itself, it’s a great ending and it confirms that April Fool’s Day is meant to be a satire and not a straight horror film.
For the first 80 minutes or so, April Fool’s Day plays out like the 100th variation on And Then There Were None. Heiress Muffy St. John (Deborah Foreman, giving a wonderfully odd performance) invites a group of college friends to her island mansion. They arrives on April Fool’s Day and they spend the first night dealing with Muffy’s strange sense of humor. (Actually, Muffy and I both find the same things funny but I’ve been told that I have a strange sense of humor so, therefore, I assume that Muffy must have one too.) Harvey, who prefers to be called Hal (Jay Baker), smokes an exploding cigar and discovers his bedroom has been decorated with newspaper articles about a car accident that he was involved in. Jock Arch Cummings (Thomas F. Wilson) finds steroids hidden away in a medicine cabinet. Nikki (Deborah Goodrich) comes across handcuffs in a dresser. Nan (Leah Pinset), a serious-minded drama student, hears a baby crying in the distance and is reminded of her abortion, something that she believes that only Muffy knows about.
The next day, Muffy is now wandering around in a daze and her brother, Skip (Griffin O’Neal), has vanished. Kit (Amy Steel, playing a similar role to her character in Friday the 13th Part Two) and Rob (Ken Olandt) think that they see Skip’s decaying body floating under the boathouse. As the day progresses, Arch and Nan vanish and later turn up at the bottom of a well. Harvey is found hanging from a rope. Chaz (Clayton Rohner) is castrated and, while we’re not quite sure what exactly happens to Nikki, we do see that it involves a large puddle of blood. Kit and Rob discover Muffy’s head in the basement and realize that they are being stalked by Muffy’s crazy twin, Buffy.
(Deborah Foreman is great in both of the roles. As Muffy, she delivers all of her lines with just a hint of sarcasm and constantly seems to be silently laughing at a private joke that only she understands. And when she’s Buffy — well, she’s totally batshit crazy.)
Being pursued by a knife-wielding Buffy, Kit runs through the mansion and finds herself in the drawing room. And who is waiting for her but all of Buffy’s victims? No, they’re not dead! Instead, they’re alive and they’re all in a very good mood. And Buffy is not Buffy. She’s Muffy and she’s been Muffy all along.
That’s right, it’s all a huge elaborate joke! Muffy does spend a few minutes explaining how the whole weekend was a dry run for her plan to turn her estate into a resort, one that will offer a weekend of fake horror. But, ultimately, it all comes down to the entire movie being an elaborate joke. I know, just from perusing some of the comments at the imdb, that there are some horror fans who hate the ending of April’s Fool’s Day. But, really, that’s the only “honest” way that a film like April Fool’s Day could end. If the movie was called Thanksgiving, I could understand being upset. But this is an April Fool’s Day movie! It has to be a joke.
Of course, if you think about it too much, the ending makes no sense. Muffy specifically states the no one was in on the joke until the last minute. Whenever one of her friends would wander off on their own, Muffy would grab them, explain the joke, and get them to play along. When you consider the size of the island and where, at various points, the victims are in relation to the other characters, Muffy must be a very fast explainer, as well as being very persuasive. (As well, Harvey brings a gun with him to island. Muffy jokes about nearly getting shot by him but imagine if he had been successful?) Even if you accept that all of the friends — even Arch and Harvey, who are both kinda dumbasses — would be able to play along without screwing things up, you have to wonder why Muffy thought it would be a good idea to use dark secrets from everyone’s past.
If you search far enough online, you can find all sorts of rumors about the film that April Fool’s Day was originally meant to be. In the finished film, Skip is a bit of a cipher but, in the original script, he was a much more complex character. While Muffy was busy playing her elaborate prank, Skip was planning on killing Muffy and claiming their parent’s inheritance for himself. The crying baby, the drugs, the incriminating newspaper articles; all of them were originally meant to be the work of Skip. While Skip’s subplot was dropped, the dark secrets of the past were not. As a result, Muffy comes across as being a lot more cruel than was originally intended.
Originally, the film was also meant to end with Skip killing Muffy but the ending was apparently changed at the last-minute. (Reports differ on whether or not the original ending was ever filmed.) Instead, the film now ends with Muffy stumbling into her bedroom, playing with a jack-in-the-box, and then getting a knife drawn across her throat by Nan. It’s just another elaborate practical joke and, once Muffy realizes that she’s not dying, Nan gives her a quick kiss and smiles enigmatically.
(A lot of imdb commenters — mostly males — have read a lot into that kiss, obsessing on a subtext that really isn’t there. As opposed to being the homage to Blue Is The Warmest Colour that many commenters appear to believe it to be, it’s really just a friendly kiss, a way of saying, “I got you.” Sorry, guys, that’s all there is to it.)
It’s an ending that would never be done today. Today, all horror films have to end with the promise of a sequel. Muffy might still get away with pulling an elaborate prank but Nan would definitely have killed her at the end of the film. Her little smile would have said, “Wait for the sequel.” And the modern version of that ending definitely would not be as effective. In fact, it would be so expected that it would be damn near infuriating. Instead, the ending of April Fool’s Day is good-natured and likable, which is appropriate because April Fool’s Day is a surprisingly good-natured and likable film.
After Nan’s final joke, April Fool’s Day ends with a song. And here it is! Enjoy and I hope everyone had a great April Fool’s Day!
I’m writing this post while battling a nasty case of the flu, so it’s probably going to be a short one. That’s okay though, because really, what can I say about REEFER MADNESS? It’s terrible filmmaking, and dull as dishwater. There are plot holes so wide you could drive a semi through them. This little exploitation number would’ve been long forgotten after making the rounds on the grindhouse and roadshow circuits, until it was rediscovered by the stoner crowd in the 70’s and turned into an ironic midnight cult movie.
The movie itself finds stodgy Dr. Carroll lecturing the local School-Parent Group to help “stamp out this frightful assassin of youth” marijuana. He recounts what happened when some kids got hooked on the stuff. Seems this gang of drug pushers were out to corrupt American youth by turning them on at an apartment run by no-goods Mae and Jack. Sweet Mary’s brother…
See those green things in the picture above? You’re probably looking at them and you’re thinking to yourself, “Those are the biggest avocados that I’ve ever seen!”
Well, they’re not avocados.
No, instead they are green eggs from Mars. They may look harmless but if they start glowing, pulsating, and making an eerie womping noise, you might want to get away from them. When those eggs explodes, they spray out a green goo. Any living creatures that is so much as even splashed by this goo will then explode in a mass of blood and guts. It’s messy. I would not want to clean up after anyone is sprayed with green goo.
Those eggs are at the center of this week’s daily sci-fi grindhouse, the 1980 Italian film, Contamination. How much you enjoy Contamination will largely depend on how much you like old school Italian exploitation films in general. If you’re the type who rolls your eyes at bad dubbing and who demands that a film follow some sort of narrative logic, you are not the ideal audience for this movie. However, if you’re like me and you enjoy the pure shamelessness of Italian exploitation, you’ll probably have an easier time enjoying Contamination.
It won’t come as a surprise to any student of Italian or grindhouse cinema to learn that Contamination was ripped off from several films that were popular in the late 70s. The eggs are largely lifted from Alien and, whenever the goo-sprayed bodies explode, it’s reminiscent of that ugly little thing bursting out of John Hurt’s chest. The second half of the film feels like a secondhand James Bond film, complete with a sinister conspiracy, a mysterious mastermind who earlier faked his own death, and a femme fatale. The conspiracy is headquartered on a coffee plantation in South America. It’s not difficult to imagine Baron Samedi or some other villain from Live and Let Die showing up and laughing before throwing an exploding egg at someone.
Contamination opens with a seemingly deserted ship floating into New York harbor. Fans of Italian cinema will immediately think about the opening of Lucio Fulci’s Zombi 2. Just as Zombi 2 opened with the New York City police investigating an abandoned boat and getting attacked by a zombie, Contamination features the New York City police investigating an abandoned boat and getting sprayed with green goo. The only cop who doesn’t explode, a tough New Yawker named Tony (Marino Mase), works with Col. Stella Holmes (Louise Marleau) to figure out why those eggs were on that boat.
Helping them out is an alcoholic former astronaut named Commander Ian Hubbard (Ian McCulloch). Somewhat appropriately, McCulloch was also in Zombi 2. (And let’s not forget about his role in Zomie Holocaust…) I once read an interview with McCulloch (in Jay Slater’s overview of Italian zombie cinema, Eaten Alive) in which he said that he didn’t feel he did a very good job in Contamination but I think he’s being too hard on himself. Is the very British and slightly uptight Ian McCulloch miscast as a cynical, alcoholic, American astronaut who can’t even walk to his front door without stumbling over discarded beer cans? Sure, he is. But he’s so miscast that it actually becomes rather fascinating to watch him in the role. He may be miscast but you can tell he’s really trying and he’s just so damn likable that you almost feel like it would be a disservice to him not to watch the film.
Anyway, Stella, Tony, and Hubbard have to discover out why the green eggs are on Earth and they eventually do figure out what’s going on. I’ve watched the film multiple times and I have to admit that I’m still not sure what they figured out. It’s a confusing movie and I doubt that there’s really any way that it could have ever made any sort of coherent sense but then again, that’s part of the film’s charm.
So, here’s what does work about Contamination. The exploding green eggs are both scary and wonderfully ludicrous. Ian McCulloch is a lot of fun as drunk Commander Hubbard. Goblin provides an excellent and propulsive score. And finally, there’s an alien monster who simply has to be seen to be believed. To his credit, director Luigi Cozzi realized that the monster looked cheap and he uses all sorts of creative editing and employed an arsenal of jump cuts to try to keep you from noticing. Much as with McCulloch’s performance, you can’t help but appreciate Cozzi’s effort.
As I said before, you’re enjoyment of Contamination will probably be determined by how much you enjoy Italian exploitation films in general. If you’re not familiar with the Italian grindhouse, Contamination is not the film to use for an introduction. However, if you are already a fan, you might appreciate Contamination.
Contamination is in the public domain and, as such, very easy to track down.
“For my final entry in October’s Daily Horror Grindhouse, I want to take a few minutes to tell you about an Italian zombie film from 1981. Burial Ground: The Nights of Terror is not very good but it certainly is memorable. I think it’s debatable whether or not any pleasure can truly be described as being guilty but if there ever was a movie that some people might feel guilty about enjoying, it would probably be Burial Ground.”
“Is that the movie with creepy kid in it?”
“Well, yes, one of the characters in this film is supposed to be a 12 year-old boy and yes, he’s kind of creepy. But you know what? Whenever anyone tries to talk about Burial Ground, everyone always wants to talk about the creepy kid. So, let’s hold off on the creepy kid…”
“That kid really is creepy…”
“Yes, I know the kid is creepy but there’s more to the film than just the kid! For instance, I wonder how many people realize that Burial Ground is perhaps the most blatantly political Italian zombie film ever made? I mean, let’s think about it. This is a film where a bunch of decadent rich people get trapped in a mansion — the same mansion that was used in Patrick Lives Again, by the way — and find themselves besieged by zombies. And who are the zombies? They’re the former workers. They’re the servants who used to toil in the fields and who died exploited and forgotten. And now, without any explanation, they’re suddenly back and they’re determined to kill everyone. And when it comes time to get inside the house, they actually use tools. They have scythes and hammers and all the former tools of their oppression. They are now using them to kill the rich. Well, not just the rich. There are two servants — a butler and a maid — who side with the rich and therefore, have to be killed as well because that’s the way things are in a revolution….”
“What was up with that kid?”
“We’ll get to him. No matter what else you say about Burial Ground, you can’t deny that the zombies were amazingly effective. I mean, they really looked like the living dead and, even if the ‘living’ actors were never quite convincing, the zombies were scary!”
“Not as scary as that creepyass kid…”
“You know, sometimes I think that y’all spend so much time going on about the weird little kid in Burial Ground that you tend to overlook some other fun parts of the film. For instance, there’s the scene Janet — played by Karen Well — gets her ankle stuck in a bear trap and, every time that her boyfriend Mark (Gianluigi Chirizzi) tries to pry it open, he accidentally ends up letting go and it snaps back shut on her ankle. On the one hand, I was having sympathy pains for poor Janet because, as a dancer, I know how much ankle pain sucks. On the other hand, I couldn’t help but laugh because the scene just goes on for so long that it actually starts to resemble a poorly-written SNL sketch. Plus, is it just me or does Mark look like a really young Jack Nicholson?”
“That creepy kid kind of looked like Dario Argento…”
“Yes, he did. But there’s more to this film than the kid! For instance, remember how it ends with this long quote from something called The Prophecy of The Black Spider but, on the title card, they misspelled prophecy…”
“Maybe the kid wrote that card…”
*Sigh* “Okay, I guess I should just admit the truth. The most memorable thing about Burial Groundis the creepy kid. The zombies may be effective. The film may be full of blood, nudity, bear traps, and misspelled words. But ultimately, it all comes down to the character of Michael. Michael is supposed to be 12 years old. He has a small body but he’s also got this weird adult face. According to the credits, he was played by an actor named Peter Bark and strangely enough, there seems to be next to no information available about him. This has led to rumors that Peter Bark was actually a little person or that all of his scenes used trick photography to make him look smaller than he actually was. According to Wikipedia, Peter Bark was actually 25 years old but he was cast because Italian law wouldn’t allow a child to appear in a film like Burial Ground. I don’t necessarily believe that, however. All I can say for sure is that Michael is a creepy little kid and the fact that he was obviously dubbed by an adult trying to sound like a child doesn’t help.”
“That’s not the only reason that Michael was creepy!”
“That’s true. He also has a few … icky scenes with his mother. She, by the way, was played by Mariangela Giordano. Like Giallo in Venice and Patrick Lives Again, Burial Ground was produced by her boyfriend, Gabriele Crisanti. For some reason, any film that he produced featured Mariangela dying in the most gruesome ways possible.”
“Plus, that little kid sure was creepy.”
“Yes, this is true. He certainly was. Happy Halloween.”
“Happy Halloween!”
“Before we leave, here’s two trailers for Burial Ground. The second one is the real trailer. The first one is all Michael.”
Hello there! Welcome to a special Halloween edition of Lisa Marie’s Favorite Grindhouse and Exploitation Film trailers! The trailer kitties went out this morning (despite the fact that it’s been raining nonstop down here since yesterday) and they came back with these 6 horrific trailers for Halloween!
Let’s see what they’ve brought us!
(By the way, some of these trailers may be NSFW and some may contain excessive gore or even nudity so use your best judgment when it comes to watching. The TSL accepts no responsibility for the occasionally over-the-top choices of the trailer kitties.)
Whenever I watch 2012’s Smiley (and, since this is one of those films that always seems to be playing whenever I have insomnia, I actually have seen Smiley more times than I should probably admit), I always find myself hoping that it will actually be a better film than I remember it being.
Some of that, I have to admit, is because I once dated a frat boy whose nickname was Smiley. His high school football coach gave him that name because he was always smiling! (Yes, I once dated a football player who smiled a lot and didn’t really care much about literature, art, movies, history, or anything else that I was actually interested in. Don’t ask me to explain how these things happen.) His pickup truck even had a personalized licence plate that read, “SMILY.” That’s right — he wasn’t really sure how to spell Smiley. Whenever I see the title Smiley listed in the guide, I think of him and I have to kind of laugh.
Beyond that, Smiley was an independent, low-budget film and I have to admit that my natural inclination is always to support independent filmmakers. If Smiley was a huge studio production, I’d have absolutely no qualms about ripping it apart. But when I see an indie horror film like Smiley, there’s a part of me that almost feels that I have to be supportive. But the things is, it’s one thing to be supportive and it’s another thing to be delusional. I may want Smiley to be a good horror film but it’s not and I’m really not doing anyone any good if I pretend otherwise.
Finally, I always want Smiley to be better than it actually is because the film features one of the creepiest killers that I’ve ever seen. Even if the character is cheapened by a rather stupid twist, Smiley is scary looking. Smiley is presented as being the spirit of a man who, after stitching his own eyes closed, carved a permanent smile on his face. As a force of evil, Smiley is genuinely frightening and it’s unfortunate that the rest of the film doesn’t live up to the character’s potential.
As for the rest of the film … well, it’s pretty much your typical slasher. All of the characters are loathsome, the murders are neither suspenseful nor gory enough to really be memorable, and this is one of those films that relies far too much on scenes of people running into someone, screaming in terror, and then discovering that it was just one of their friends. It is true that there is a twist towards the end of the film that’s designed to make you question everything that you’ve just see but since the twist doesn’t make much sense and comes out of nowhere, it’s hard to get excited about it. The best thing the film had going for it was the character of Smiley and the twist pretty much ruins that.
(The film’s other big twist is that the cast is full of YouTube personalities, which makes Smiley the spiritual descendant of The Scorned, a similarly bad slasher film that was full of reality TV stars.)
By the way, the idea behind Smiley is that you can go on Chatroulette and, if you type “I did it for the lulz” three times, Smiley will appear and kill whoever your chatting with. Just for the record, I’ve tried it and it doesn’t work.*
——
* Well, to be honest, I got a friend of mine to try it and it didn’t work. I’ve got better things to do then watch some guy jerking off on Chatroulette.
Through the Shattered Lens