Gregory Hatanaka – Through the Shattered Lens

2026’s Sorority House Guillotine does not feature a guillotine or a sorority house. It does, however, feature a lot of footage from Bikini Guillotine and a monologue about John Cassavetes.

The majority of the film features a group of young women in bikinis hanging out at the pool. One of the women announces that she owns the house and that she’ll be having a party every weekend. Everyone says, “Whooo!” and raises their red Solo cups. Most of the footage is lifted directly from Bikini Guillotine, but it’s also obvious that a lot of it was taken from outtakes that weren’t included in that film. There are a lot of scenes where the women clearly aren’t acting, but are instead just sitting around waiting for the next shot to be set up. Members of the crew appear in the background. The shadow of the director is visible more than a few times. The camera rig is sometimes visible. There are also quite a few scenes where the women aren’t filmed from the best possible angle, and that feels rather unfair to them.

(Everyone, regardless of how attractive, has at least one unflattering angle. I’m usually pretty happy with how I photograph, but I know that if someone snaps a picture while my head is turned a certain way, all anyone is going to notice is my nose. A good director — especially one who is directing a movie in which the entire cast is half-naked for the entire running time — doesn’t include unflattering angles in the finished film.)

Because Bikini Guillotine had a nearly incoherent soundtrack, this film handles things by just featuring voice-overs over the scenes of the girls hanging out by the pool. We hear about how, when you’re young, you don’t worry about anything. “Someone says fried chicken and everyone laughs.” We’re also told that, “Gina asks Tina, ‘Why is everything so blue?’ Tina says, ‘Because you’re looking at it too long.’ ‘No, why is everyone blue?’” Wow, that’s deep. It’s the type of weed-fueled nonsense that I thought was profound during my senior year of high school.

When the voice-over isn’t talking about life, it’s talking about the movies. We’re told that the girls are talking about Charlie Chaplin and Josef von Sternberg. Eventually, they start to talk about how much they love Deep Red and the scene where David Hemmings sees his reflection in a pool of blood. Then we’re told that one of the girls is talking about how much she loves the work of John Cassavetes because Cassavetes just captured life without any studio-imposed drama. These are not the type of things that a bunch of 20-year-old girls are going to be talking about while hanging out at the pool. When I was 20, I loved movies, but I still didn’t talk about them while I was rocking a bikini next to a swimming pool. I was usually too busy trying to make sure I was giving everyone my most flattering angle.

The killer eventually shows up about 55 minutes into this 77-minute film. As opposed to the killer in Bikini Guillotine, he just wears a medical mask and carries a knife in this one. At first, I wondered if maybe the girls had been called back to shoot all-new death scenes, but as I watched, it became obvious that the scenes were actually either filmed auditions or rehearsals for the first film. The kills are once again bloodless.

What an odd movie! For all of its flaws, I do have to admit that the out-of-place voice-overs did add a bit of a surreal edge to the action. With the frequent appearances from the film crew and the cameras, one gets the feeling that Hatanaka was either trying to say something about the filmmaking process or, even more likely, he was trying to fool people into thinking he was saying something about the filmmaking process.

This film mostly just made me want to go hang out by the pool on a nice sunny day. Maybe I’ll even talk about Argento.

2021’s Amityville Cop does not take place in Amityville.

Actually, as far as I can remember, we never learn the name of the city where this movie is supposed to be taking place. But it definitely is a city and it’s not on Long Island so we can safely assume that it’s not Amityville. It’s not even New York City, which would have at least made the film somewhat Amityville-adjacent.

Amityville Cop also does not feature the infamous house. Nor does it feature a recreation of the DeFeo murders or any conversations about the Lutz hauntings or any of the other nonsense that we typically expect from an Amityville film.

In fact, there’s really no reason for this film to be called Amityville Cop, beyond the fact that Amityville is a recognized brand.

Instead, this is yet another remake of Maniac Cop. This time, the cop in question was a rookie who was either sacrificed by a Satanic cult or who voluntarily chose to be possessed by a demon. It’s a bit hard to follow exactly what happened, to be honest. The head of the cult is played by Laurene Landon, who also appeared in two of Maniac Cop films. Her role is brief but she’s around long enough to ensure that Officer Wilson (Lovie Johnson) will come back to life as a demon who wanders around in the city in his policeman’s uniform and who kills people for the least little infraction. (“No loitering,” he says, before killing one unfortunate homeless man.)

Meanwhile, the non-possessed cops are pretty much useless. Benson (Jason Toler) and his partner, Val (Nicole D’Angelo) are both infamous for roughing up suspects. Tom (Leonard Zhang) is socially awkward and never hangs out with the other cops while off-duty because he’s always too busy taking care of his mother. Cooper (Chris Spenelli) is boring. Lewis (Craijece Danielle) is inexperienced. Detective Clawson (Lisa London) always seems like she’s more interested in going after her fellow cops than the actual criminals. And Chief Benson (Jeffrey Moon) is more concerned with throwing a New Years Party at the station house than actually solving any crimes.

Yes, the entire police force appears to be gathered at the station, partying and dancing as the New Year approaches. It kind of makes you wonder just who exactly is on patrol in the city. Then again, it is New Years Eve. It’s not as if that’s a time of the year that’s associated with people getting drunk and disorderly. Anyway, the important thing that Officer Wilson eventually shows up for the party and soon, the killings start and Tom starts to consider which side he wants to be on.

Where to start with all this? It’s not a very good movie. You probably already guessed that. The awkward dialogue is stiffly delivered, the kills are largely uninspired, and the characters themselves are not particularly interesting. Benson, our nominal hero, literally bullies Tom to the extent that Tom is willing to sacrifice his soul to get revenge but the film never calls him out on it. No one ever says, “Gee, Benson, maybe you went too far when you made fun of his mom.” On the plus side, Officer Wilson is occasionally intimidating. There was one scene where he suddenly comes running down a hallway and, for a few seconds, the film came to life. But it’s hard not to feel that, in our cultural moment, Amityville Cop missed the chance to be something truly subversive. At a time when many people are asking whether we need the police at all, this film asks whether we actually need any more Amityville films.

Previous TSL Amityville Reviews: