The TSL’s Horror Grindhouse: Sorority House Massacre II (dir by Jim Wynorski)

Posted on October 29, 2017 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Some movies just force the viewer to ask, “What would you do?”

I mean, just consider what it would be like to be in the scenario that’s presented to us in the 1990 film, Sorority House Massacre II. You’re a college student. You’ve got your entire future ahead of you. The president of your sorority has just purchased a new sorority house and she wants you and three others to spend the weekend helping her fix the place up.

You arrive at the house and you discover that it’s literally on the verge of collapsing. There’s no electricity. There’s no telephone. (And remember, this is back when people just used landlines.) There’s no hot water. Soon after arriving, you’re informed that there’s two reasons why the house was being sold at such a cheap price.

First off, there’s the neighbor. He’s a creepy, kinda pervy-looking guy named Orville Ketchum. When Orville comes over to meet his new neighbors, he announces that he has the keys to the basement. He reaches into his pants to retrieve them. Ewwww!

Secondly, it turns out that the house isn’t just any deserted house. It’s the old Hockstadder Place! Years ago, Mr. Hockstadder killed his daughters before dying. Orville witnessed the whole thing. As he tells the story, you might notice that the flashbacks are lifted from a film called Slumber Party Massacre, despite the fact that you’re starring in Sorority House Massacre II.

Despite all of that, you still enter the house. A storm is rolling in and, whenever you look out the window, you see the same lightning stock footage that has appeared in a countless number of cheap horror movies.

When you and your friends decide to explore the basement, you find a Ouija board. You know that Ouija boards can be dangerous but everyone else wants to run upstairs and use it. Someone suggests that maybe the board can be used to contact the spirit of Hockstadder. After all, according to Orville, Hockstadder swore that his murderous spirit would never leave the house and would possess anyone who tried to move in.

At this point, you have two options.

Do you say, “Okay, obviously, it’s not a good idea to contact the spirit of a murderer — especially one that said he would possess anyone who tries to contact him — so I’m going to go ahead and leave now?”

Do you light some candles, strip down to your underwear in front of a bunch of open windows (despite the fact that weird old Orville is right across the street), sit on a filthy floor, and try to communicate with the spirit of a homicidal maniac?

The smart option would be the first one so, of course, the characters in Sorority House Massacre II do the exact opposite. Then again, nobody in Sorority House Massacre II appears to be that smart. For one thing, they’re all in their 30s and they have yet to graduate college. Trust me, I wish I could have stayed in college forever but, at some point, you really do have to either graduate or drop out. Tuition’s not cheap.

Anyway, Sorority House Massacre II is one of those movies that just amuses me to death. There’s absolutely nothing subtle about it. It’s such a blatant exploitation film that you can’t help but admire it for not pretending to be something that it isn’t. (At the same time, it’s rather tame when compared to the movies that we’re used to today. Whenever someone is killed, obviously fake blood is squirted on a wall.) This may be a stupid movie but it’s very sincere in its stupidity and there’s something to be said for that.

Add to that, Peter Spellos is memorably weird as Orville. The way he delivers his lines makes Orville into the neighbor that everyone would dread having next door. In the end, though, it’s a good thing that Orville was there.

Finally, there is one surprisingly effective moment. The movie starts with the “final girl” huddled in a dark room, begging the unseen killer to remember who they are. The movie then flashes back to that morning, with the girls standing in front of the house. The abrupt cut from darkness to the bright and sunny morning is surprisingly effective and feels almost dream-like. Though one gets the feeling it was probably unintentional, it’s still works far better than you’d expect.

Val’s Movie Roundup #5: Dogs Edition

Posted on July 27, 2015 by Valerie Troutman

Beethoven’s Big Break (2008) – Some months ago I watched a SyFy movie called Lake Placid vs. Anaconda (2015). During, or shortly after, one of the actresses named Ali Eagle reached out to me on Twitter. As a result, I added several of her films to my queue. I just happened to get around to this one recently. That’s her above. As for the movie, I grew up with the first two Beethoven films and have not seen the third, fourth, and fifth films that come before this one. The family from those films isn’t here. Now we get an animal trainer whose son finds a Saint Bernard and names it Beethoven because of it’s affinity for classical music. The father is helping another animal trainer who unbeknownst to him kidnaps the dog star of a movie in order to extort money from the production company. Problem is that they haven’t actually shot one scene with the dog. As a result, upon seeing Beethoven, they simply recast. What follows is possibly the largest collection of tired, overused, and old jokes I have ever seen in one film. It’s obviously supposed to be a parody in some ways of the Beethoven movies while also being a reboot, but it doesn’t work. There is no reason to see this stinker. I will probably see the other Beethoven sequels, so we can hope that they are at least a little better.

The Adventures of RoboRex (2014) – You know your Transformers movies suck when a children’s film about a good robotic dog and an evil robotic cat is better. This movie is about a kid whose mother passed away and left him with a crystal. He doesn’t know it’s importance until a capsule arrives like The Terminator with an evil robotic cat named Destructo Cat inside. Soon after, a good robotic dog called RoboRex shows up to help the kid. The cat is sent from the future by Professor Apocalypse to instruct and help his younger self get the crystal. What follows is a slow but sure trajectory toward a final battle. In between we do get a nice little fight between the cat and dog that is more exciting than anything in the 4,076 minutes of Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014). I definitely recommend this one, but two things kind of bothered me. Ben Browder is in this and although it’s only been about ten years or so since Stargate, he looks like he has aged quite a bit. The other part is that they never explain how RoboRex ends up at Ben Affleck’s place in Gone Girl (2014).

C.H.O.M.P.S. (1979) – This movie has stupid characters and plot, but the dog is awesome! It’s like The Terminator (1984) and Superman (1978). It literally rips off the roof of a car with it’s paws. And you can see from the picture above that it’s a small dog. The movie is about a guy who works for a home security company. Instead of trying to make your standard security system, he looks to nature’s home security system and decides to improve it. He first thinks of creating a robotic Doberman, but probably realized that people had already seen Dobermans rob banks in earlier movies and just copied his own dog instead. The movie basically has three things going on. First, the dog is on an endless rampage to catch these two criminals that might as well have stepped out of Home Alone (1990). Second, the guy and his girl are trying to sell the company on the idea of a robotic dog. Third, is this big black dog that occasionally pops up whose thoughts we can hear. That dog has some mouth on it. It says, “Up your poop, granny” and “Shit”. With Hot to Trot, that makes two talking animal movies I’ve seen recently where the talking animal says “shit”. If you can put aside the problems and just focus on the cool dog, then this one can be fun. It’s a little weird to see the dog’s eyes light up and the head get removed though.

The Amazing Wizard of Paws (2015) – This is a movie that would have the Cinema Snob saying “What the fuck!” The script is a mess. The movie begins with what looks like Snape cornering Gandalf against a tree. Gandalf is holding a book. That book will be important…sort of. Next a dog meets up with a kid who has lost his father in a car accident. Snape visits him in the backyard, but doesn’t seem to do anything. Then we jump seven years into the future. That’s where this movie starts to just go wherever it feels like. It sets things up that the dog can talk, the book is magic, and the kid is supposed to protect it using magic. However, despite this evil wizard who wants the book, the kid spends most of his time signing up for talent shows in order to get money so his mother can keep the house. You will find yourself saying, “And the wizard went where? What happened to him wanting the book?” I can’t recommend this movie at all. A total skip. It’s sad because I really do like the dog.

The Things You Find On Netflix: The Scorpion King 4: Quest For Power (dir by Mike Elliott)

Posted on January 8, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Believe it or not, The Scorpion King 4: Quest For Power is a historical footnote. It is the first 2015 release to be available for viewing on Netflix streaming! That’s because The Scorpion King 4 was a straight-to-video release and Universal Pictures doesn’t seem to have much faith in the film’s commercial prospects. In fact, if not for my love of historical footnotes, I probably would never have even watched the film.

But I did watch it, mostly because I didn’t like the idea of The Woman In Black 2 being the only 2015 films that I had seen up to that point.

And you know what?

The Scorpion King 4 is cheap, silly, and often times impossible to follow. But, when taken on its own terms, it’s also a lot of fun. At the very least, it’s more entertaining than The Woman In Black 2.

As for what the film is about … well, that’s a good question. To be honest, I’ve never seen any of the previous Scorpion King films. I know from Wikipedia that the character was spun-off from Brendan Fraser’s old Mummy film and, while I’ve seen bits and pieces of it on cable over the years, I’ve never actually sat through that entire movie. However, I do know that the Mummy was Egyptian and apparently, so was the Scorpion King.

So, you would assume that Scorpion King 4 would take place in ancient Egypt. And indeed, the opening scene is set in the desert and involves the Scorpion King, also known as Mathayus (Victor Webster), and his partner Drazen (Will Kemp) storming a fortress that feels vaguely Egyptian. After a lengthy battle, Mathayus and Drazen steal an urn that is covered with hieroglyphics. However, Drazen double crosses Mathayus and takes the urn for himself.

Okay, I thought, we’re obviously in Egypt.

Except, of course, in the very next scene, Mathayus meets with his employer, King Zakour (Rutger Hauer). King Zakour explains that Drazen is the son of a rival king (played by Michael Biehn, who makes little effort to hide his Southern accent). Zakour also explains that the urn hides mystical secrets that, if deciphered, could allow Drazen to conquer the world. Zakour sends Mathays to the rival kingdom, ordering him to deliver a peace treaty.

And, while Zakour delivers all of this exposition, it’s hard not to notice that he appears to live in an ancient Roman villa and he has a rather cheap-looking crown perched on his head.

Okay, I thought, the film has moved to the Roman Empire but at least I know we’re still in ancient times…

Except then Mathayus rides his camel into the rival kingdom and it turns out to look a like the set from a community theater production of Spamalot. As soon as Mathayus arrives, he is captured by Drazen’s men and ends up in a jail cell next to Valina (Ellen Holman), a revolutionary who is wearing a green, prison bikini top. After Mathays is framed for the king’s death, he and Valina escape from the prison and run into the wilderness, where Valina changes into a battle-worthy bikini top.

They reach the house of Valina’s father (Barry Bostwick) and it turns out to be a Dutch windmill! So, within the first 30 minutes of the film, we’ve gone from ancient Egypt to the Roman Empire to a medieval village in England to Renaissance Netherlands. Eventually, our characters will end up in another village, one that happens to feature a temple that looks a lot like a left over set from Hercules in the Haunted World…

What’s surprising is that the film’s refusal to settle on a definite setting or time period is actually oddly charming. As soon as that windmill showed up and a feather-covered Barry Bostwick flew across screen (Bostwick is an inventor who has filled the windmill with blueprints for cars and airplanes), I knew that this was a film that was at peace with being a mess. And you had to respect the film’s no apologies attitude towards being incoherent.

Trying to keep up with the plot is exhausting so I suggest that, if you should find yourself watching The Scorpion King 4, you ignore the plot. The best thing about The Scorpion King 4 is that it doesn’t take itself all that seriously. All of the dialogue is either intentionally melodramatic or anachronistically humorous and all of the actors seem to be having fun going over the top. Some of the fight scenes are exciting, some of the scenery is pretty, and some parts of the film are better than others.

In the end, The Scorpion King 4 is pretty forgettable. But it’s still better than The Woman In Black 2.