Horror On The Lens: The Little Shop of Horrors (dir by Roger Corman)

Posted on October 30, 2013 by Lisa Marie Bowman

So, guess what?

Originally, we were going to feature an Italian film called Dawn of the Mummy today. It’s the world’s only zombie/mummy hybrid and you guys would have loved it! Or maybe not. I have to admit that I don’t really love it. It’s actually a pretty bad movie but, at the same time, how many times do you get to see a movie that features both a mummy and zombies?

However, last night, the YouTube account that was hosting Dawn of the Mummy was deleted.

AGCK!

So, instead of showing you Dawn of the Mummy, we’re going to show you the original Little Shop of Horrors. It’s true that we featured Little Shop last Halloween but, oh well. It’s a fun little movie, especially when you consider that Roger Corman filmed it in 3 days. Jack Nicholson gets all the attention for playing a masochistic dental patient but I think the best performance is given by flower-eating Dick Miller.

From 1960, enjoy the original (non-musical) Little Shop of Horrors!

(However, speaking of the musical, I was in a community theater production of Little Shop of Horrors when I was 19. I so should have been cast as Audrey but instead, I was just a member of the “ensemble.” Bleh! Anyway, our director showed us the original Little Shop of Horrors and I was the only member of the cast to understand that Corman’s film was superior to the musical version. That said, I still tear up whenever I hear “Somewhere that’s green.”)

R.I.P. Richard Matheson

Posted on June 24, 2013 by Arleigh

News hit the internet today that legendary author Richard Matheson passed away at the age of 87.

Matheson has been instrumental and influential in horror and dark fantasy pop culture of the 60 or so years. Stephen King and George A. Romero, undoubtedly two of the most recognizable masters of horror of their generation, has called Matheson a major influence in their work. Where would the zombie genre of today be without Matheson’s groundbreaking vampire novel, I Am Legend, which gave Romero the idea to make his Night of the Living Dead. It is also this very same vampire novel whose influence could be seen throughout King’s own classic vampire tale with Salem’s Lot. Even King’s own foray into a zombie novel, Cell, would be dedicated to Matheson.

Yet, Matheson’s influence wouldn’t just be felt in the literary world. He would pen some of the best Twilight Zone episodes and would also provide Roger Corman with screenplay adaptations of Edgar Allen Poe’s short stories and novellas. He would also provide Hollywood with screenplays based on his own stories that would become classic horror and dark fantasy films in their own right.

There’s no way to quantify just how many people Richard Matheson has touched and influenced with his work, but one would be hard pressed not to find someone who hasn’t come across something that had Matheson’s fingerprint whether it was one of his stories, films based on his works or a tv episode that he didn’t have a hand in writing. Then there’s those who have seen or read something that had been influenced by his work.

Today the world has lost of the giant’s in his field of work. Yet, as his best known work says as it’s ending, Matheson will survive far longer than he had lived: HE IS LEGEND.

On a personal note, I count Matheson as one of the biggest influences in my life. Everything he has done or touched have had a hand in showing me the power of the written word. Much of what I watch and read has been influenced by his work. Where would horror and dark fantasy be without him to set the path for future writers and filmmakers. Whether they care to admit it or not they, just like myself, owe Richard Matheson a debt of gratitude for work in the field.

A giant of a man has passed into legend and it’s now up to us, his admirers and fans, to continue on his work of providing the world with quality genre entertainment.

The SPM Trilogy Revisited : “Slumber Party Massacre III”

Posted on February 26, 2013 by Ryan C. (fourcolorapocalypse)

What the heck, let’s wrap this up, shall we?

While the appearance of Slumber Party II may have surprised some being that it came five years after the original, it’s safe to say that when Roger Corman unleashed Slumber Party Massacre III on the direct-to-video market in 1990, nobody was shocked in the least.

Shot primarily at one beach location and one residential home for exteriors, and with all the interiors being filmed at Corman’s Venice, California studio, the third installment in the SPM series cost a grand total of $350,000 and took somewhere in the neighborhood of one week to get “in the can,” as the saying goes, so yeah — it’s cheap , quick stuff we’re talking about here.

That being said, that certainly doesn’t mean it’s bad. What starts as a pretty bog-standard tale of stereotypical SoCal bimbo Diane (Brandi Burkett) and her friends ( a crew that features a few young-at-the-time ladies, such as Hope Marie Carlton, Maria Ford, and Keely Christian, whose faces — and other parts — you may recognize from similar early-90s “slasher”/sexploitation fare) playing volleyball at the beach and then returning to Diane’s parents’ place for a weekend slumber party, where they are set upon, in turn, by their prankster-ish boyfriends, a voyeuristic “nosy neighbor” type, a mute Albino creepy dude, and finally a pyscho killer with a power drill, actually morphs somewhere along the way into a flick with a pretty wickedly sadistic, even black-hearted, sense of humor — with a pretty heavy dose of the misogyny you’ve come to expect from these things thrown in, of course.

As a brief case in point, instead of the standard bathtub-electrocution with either a hair dryer or toaster, in SPM III one of the nubile young co-eds is dispatched in the tub by means of a vibrator gone haywire! Nasty stuff, to be sure, but clearly not something that takes itself too terribly seriously while it’s dishing out its feminist-unfriendly — hell, female-unfriendly — goods.

As with the previous two entries in this series, Corman again opted for an all-female writing and directing team here in order, one would assume, to help deflect any criticism this one might bet from the usual quarters (not that very many people were paying attention by this point), with those duties falling to Catherine Cyran (one of his regular screenwriters at the time) and Sally Mattison (a semi-veteran of Hollywood’s low-budget fringes best known for her work as a producer), respectively, and while it’s fair to say that this film is the most “seems-like-it-coulda-been-directed-by-a-man-ish” of the bunch, given that it ups the ante a bit in terms of its misogyny and plays it much “straighter,” if you will, than its predecessors in terms of sticking to the standard and much-maligned slasher formula, at the end of the day it’s still a pretty tongue-in-cheek affair that’s just a bit more self-indulgent and gratuitous in terms of the T&A and overall mean-spiritedness.

To their absolute, credit, though, Mattison and Cyran, while carrying over the blatant phallo-centrism of the whole power drill thing, at least decide to throw in a bit of “whodunit?”-style mystery into the proceedings vis a vis their killer’s identity. Yes, folks, for the first time in a Slumber Party Massacre movie, the psycho might actually have some motivation for his murder spree here!

Or, ya know, he might turn out to be just some random stranger after all. I guess I won’t “spoil” anything in case you haven’t actually seen it. I will say, however, that the mystery angle isn’t a particularly involving one — but hell, at least it’s there. We’ve already firmly established that “take what you can get” is the order of business with these things, haven’t we? The same — ahem! — “philosophy” applies here.

All in all, though, you do get the sense that everyone involved here is giving it their best go on what they’ve got — which admittedly isn’t much in terms of time, talent, and money — but I’d rather watch so-called “D-listers” actually try than “A-listers” sleepwalking through yet another mega-budget production any day of the week. Slumber Party Massacre III may not be particularly ambitious stuff by any stretch, but it’s put together and performed by people who gave an honest day’s effort at the office. That’s worth a little something right there, and after the absolute clusterfuck of wanna-be “trippy-ness” in the second flick, the “return to roots” sensibility in this one is very welcome indeed.

As always, the third and final outing (to date) in the SPM “oeuvre” is available on DVD from Shout! Factory packed together with its older celluloid sisters in a two-disc set under the heading “The Slumber Party Massacre Collection,” part of the “Roger Corman’s Cult Classics” series. It’s presented full-frame with 2.0 stereo sound — and while if there’s been any remastering done with either it’s certainly minimal, the whole thing looks and sounds generally decent enough. Extras include a good little “making-of” featurette, a feature-length commentary with director Mattison, the original trailer, a few trailers for other titles in the Corman series, a poster and still gallery, and a liner notes booklet by Slumber Party Massacre fanatic/filmmaker Jason Paul Collum. A very comprehensive package well worth your time.

Look, who are we kidding? This isn’t a movie out to set the world on fire — hell, it’s not even out to set the DTV slasher world on fire. It’s there to give two distinct parties their money’s worth — Roger Corman and you, the viewer. It manages to deliver on both fronts, even if just barely. That doesn’t mean it’s necessarily worthy of a ton of respect, but it’s not worthy of any sort of scorn, either. Don’t expect too damn much, and you’ll walk away satisfied.

Not, I suppose, that anyone who might be inclined to “expect much” as far as their entertainment choices go is even watching this in the first place.

The SPM Trilogy Revisited : “Slumber Party Massacre II”

Posted on February 23, 2013 by Ryan C. (fourcolorapocalypse)

By 1987, I’m not sure that anyone was expecting Roger Corman to trot out a sequel to The Slumber Party Massacre. Sure, the movie had gained something of a cult following thanks to the VHS rental market (it did rather middling business at the box office upon its initial release), but it had been a few years and since most “slasher” sequels at the time tended to pop up within a year or two of the first flick (heck, that’s pretty much still the case), I think it’s pretty safe to say that the general feeling at the time was that SPM was a one-and-done deal.

We all should have known better, or course. When you’ve got an ultra-simple premise that can be filmed cheaply and quickly using just a couple of different locations, and the original turned a profit (however modest), then there’s no way Corman’s not gonna go back to that well at some point. And so it came to pass that, five years on from its progenitor, Slumber Party Massacre II saw the light of day.

Needless to say, times had changed in the half-decade between the two films. While not strictly a straight-to-video release since Corman was still pulling together limited theatrical runs for all his product at the time (mostly in the Southern California area), those were really just a clevver way to essentially pull “focus group” test audiences together (and have them pay for the privilege of being guinea pigs rather than vice-versa!) to make sure the end result more or less had the effect on folks that it was supposed to. Pretty much all the action for the second Slumber Party Massacre was going to be on home video, and ol’ Roger knew it — hence a smaller cast, fewer sets, and, I’m willing to bet, probably an even smaller budget (at least in terms of adjusted-for-inflation dollars). Heck, this thing even clocks in with a slightly shorter run time than its predecessor, if you can believe that, at a paltry 75 minutes!

One thing about the SPM modus operandi that Corman didn’t change, though, was hiring a young, relatively fresh-outta-film-school woman to direct the thing, his hire in those case being one Deborah Brock, who also wrote the script.

To Brock’s credit, she tried to do something a little bit different — and, dare I say, maybe even a little bit more ambitious — than the average low-budget, essentially-DTV slasher sequel allows for with this movie. To her discredit, what she tried doesn’t exactly work. To wit:

Our story here centers around a young gal named Courtney (Crystal Bernard, who would go on to star on the long-running TV sitcom Wings), who just so happens to be the younger sister of the “final girl” from the first Slumber Party Massacre flick. Courtney fronts an all-girl rock band (gotta vary it up from the high school basketball team premise at least a little bit) that’s headed to a rental condo for weekend of fun n’ semi-naked games with their boyfriends. There’s just one problem, though — she’s also been suffering from horribly vivid nightmares involving things like refrigerated whole chickens coming to life and her friend’s acne boiling, pulsating, throbbing, and eventually exploding all over the place. The one constant in all of these bad dreams, though, is an unnamed “devil rocker” (he’s referred to in the credits only as the “Driller Killer” and is played by Atanas Ilitch, who looks more than just a bit like a young Andrew Dice Clay) who terrorizes Courtney and her gal pals with a murderously-retrofitted guitar that’s equipped with a long, uber- phallic (again) power-drill for a neck.

Needless to say, once the weekend revelries get going, things don’t go quite as planned, and Courtney, her fellow girl-group rockers, and their fellas are soon experiencing a very violent reduction in their numbers at the hands of the “driller killer,” who turns out to be very real indeed.

Or is he? And that, my friends, is the crux of Slumber Party II‘s problem in a nutshell (besides the fact that the “real” killings don’t start taking place until just after the halfway point of the flick). At first, the whole “is this the real life, is this just fantasy?” (sorry, Freddie!) gimmick is kinda neat, but it definitely starts to wear on the average viewer’s nerves after awhile, and Brock’s decision not to delineate in much of any way what’s actual from what isn’t ultimately makes for kind of a confusing experience. Still, you figure that in a genre this (for the most part) cut-and-dried, things are bound to make sense by the end, right?

Well, not so fast. Brock throws us not one, not two, but three rapid-fire concluding twists that never end up leaving us with a satisfactory explanation as to whether or not the events we’ve just witnessed “really” happened or not. When we finally learn that Courtney’s locked up in a loony bin, three distinct possibilities emerge — either it was all a dream-within-a-dream in her disturbed mind, or she killed all her friends and this “driller killer” is some alternate persona she’s created in order to absolve herself of any guilt, or it all actually happened, she survived, and the ordeal drove her over the brink. And when the “driller killer” pops up again right before the credits roll, this time in the sanitarium with Courtney, Brock doesn’t in the least bit clue us in as to whether he’s there in the flesh or only in her erstwhile heroine’s admittedly traumatized psyche.

Some folks might find this lack of anything even resembling a concrete resolution interesting, maybe even a bit exciting. Hell, we all like to think for ourselves, right? Unfortunately, Courtney and her cohorts are such a largely uninteresting lot that most of us can’t really be bothered to care all that much about solving this film’s wanna-be-mind-fucking puzzle. And the “driller killer” himself is so OTT, and stripped of any pretense of motivation for his murder n’ mayhem, that he never seems “real” enough to make the purported “mystery” all that involving. The whole thing rings both flat and hollow to this wannabe-critic, at the very least.

Like the other pics in this soon-to-be-concluded little mini-round-up we’re doing here, Slumber Party Massacre II is available on a two-DVD set from Shout! Factory entitled, appropriately enough, “The Slumber Party Massacre Collection,” which is part of their larger “Roger Corman’s Cult Classics” series. It’s sporting a nicely-remastered widescreen transfer, has good 2.0 stereo sound, and there are extras aplenty including a fairly comprehensive little “making-of” featurette, a full-length commentary from writer/director Brock, a poster and still image gallery, the original theatrical trailer, some trailers for other flicks in this series, and a liner notes booklet by SPM historian Jason Paul Collum. While I may not consider this a great movie by any means, this is certainly a great DVD package.

Still, ya know what? Flaws n’ all, I’d still go so far as to say that the film itself is at least worth a look. I do admire Brock for her willingness to break the mold and think outside of the usual slasher box. Her intentions for this flick strike me as being pretty solid, and as almost-innovative as her budget would allow for — she just fails in her execution. And let’s face it — a slasher movie that can’t execute properly is saddled with a problem it can never overcome.

The SPM Trilogy Revisited : “The Slumber Party Massacre”

Posted on February 19, 2013 by Ryan C. (fourcolorapocalypse)

Ah, the folly of youth. When we’re young, we’re so determined to prove we can “make it on our own” that we’ll turn our backs on opportunities that might serve us better in the long run just because they would mean answering to “The Man” in the short term. A hot-shot young chef (a nauseating demographic which our nation is currently, and quite literally, under absolute fucking assault from) will bypass the chance to apprentice under a master of his craft in a popular and established kitchen in order to go start up his own restaurant that will be lucky to last out the year. A promising young journalist will eschew the opportunity to work as a “beat” reporter on a local paper in order to start up a “cutting edge” news website with “attitude” that folds when they can’t get any advertisers. A way-too-full-of-himself young lawyer will say “no thanks” to a “lesser” offer from a major, established firm in order to start his own personal injury practice before realizing that there are already 10,000 other guys in town doing the exact same thing. There’s no doubt about it, my friends — we don’t know jack shit when we’re young, but we know we know better than anybody else.

All of which is to say, I guess, a couple of things : one, that I’m older and wiser now and will gladly give up the “freedom” and “total control” I have over my own website in less than a goddamn heartbeat in order to go work for somebody who actually pays me to write this shit; and two, that back in 1982 a semi-recent USC film school grad named Amy Holden Jones, who was considered something of an up-and-comer behind the camera in Hollywood at the time, turned down the chance to be Steven Spielberg’s cinematographer on a little something called E.T. in order to direct a much littler something for Roger Corman called The Slumber Party Massacre.

I’m sure she’s not kicking herself too badly over that decision today.

Corman, of course, as he always seemed to, had an angle figured with this one, as well — in order to deflect, or at least try to deflect, some of the rampant feminist criticism that was just starting to be directed at the “slasher” genre back then, he’d take the largely (okay, entirely) symbolic step of hiring women to both direct (Jones) and script (Rita Mae Brown) his latest girls-take-off-their-shirts-and-get-butchered-for-being -“slutty” opus, therefore “proving” that he, himself, had no problem with the fairer sex —only his movies did.

To their credit, both Jones and Brown obviously knew full well what they were getting into here (hell, how could you not?) and decided to play the whole thing up for all it was worth by indulging in blatant self-parody at more or less every turn. Their escaped-from-the-loony-bin killer, one Russ Thorne (Michael Villella) is given essentially no motivation whatsoever and goes after his victims with the most overtly phallic power drill ever conceived of; he’s thrust into the middle of a high school all-girls’ basketball team slumber party (hence, ya know, the title) by the most contrived set of circumstances possible; and every one of the nubile young targets of his kill-spree is a paper-thin, less-than-two-dimensional cipher rather than being anything like an actual, proper character.

As far as any kind of plot synopsis goes, that’s probably all you really need here, if not more — after all, you know the drill (sorry!), right? The party’s hostess, Trish (Michelle Michaels), despite being listed first in the credits, isn’t gonna be the last girl standing (or limping, or writhing, or crawling), that honor goes to picked-on-for-being-aloof-quiet-and-too-much-better-at-basketball-than-the-others (she’s even a new girl at school, to boot! How many different ways can you say “virgin” without just blurting it out?) Valerie (Robin Stille). All the proceedings here follow the typical cut-and-dried formula more or less to a “T,” with a heavy dose of self-awareness being basically the only wrinkle added into the mix, apart from “keep your eyes open for an early turn by future ‘scream queen’ semi-star Brinke Stevens.”

None of which is to say that I didn’t enjoy The Slumber Party Massacre — the fact of the matter is, this one of those flicks that I always kinda turn to when I want to turn my brain off. It’s solid, if unspectacular, tongue-in-cheek fun, leaves a pleasant-enough grin on your face, and keeps you reasonably involved for its brief-but-just-right-all-things-considered 77-minute run time. If ol’ Russ was as smart and efficient at his job as Holden was at hers, he might still be running around sticking his power drill in high school girls today. And yeah, I realize that last sentence sounded every bit as unsubtle as this movie is, that was kinda the — errrmmm — point (damn! Just can’t help myself).

Being that this movie and its two sequels (part two being even more OTT farcical than this one, part three being something of a “back-to-basics” straight-to-video affair) have a semi-sizable cult following, Shout! Factory made the wise decision to release ’em all together in one collection on (two-disc) DVD and (single-disc) Blu-Ray. Since I’ll be going to the “effort” of reviewing ’em all here in the next few days, I’ll just take it one at a time with the technical specs and extras. The Slumber Party Massacre is presented in a 1.78:1 widescreen remastered transfer that looks pretty damn stunning, and the remastered mono sound is perfectly serviceable, as well. There’s a really good little “making-of” featurette included , a photo still and poster artwork gallery, and director Jones is on hand for a full-length commentary track. The original theatrical trailer, a smattering of trailers for other titles in the “Roger Corman’s Cult Classics” series, and a solid set of liner notes by Jason Paul Collum round out the package.

If you don’t have the time, money, or inclination to break new ground — and let’s face it, Roger Corman never had any of the above — you could do a lot worse than to tread the same ol’ familiar territory with a little bit of style, self-deprecating wit, and a quick little wink to the audience. The Slumber Party Massacre certainly delivers on each of those counts, and while I’ll never be fully on board with those who view this thing as some sort of “classic,” it’s definitely a good — if thoroughly predictable — time.

I’m older and wiser now, remember? I’m perfectly happy to take what I can get.

6 Trailers To Welcome 2012

Posted on January 7, 2012 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Hi there and welcome to the first 2012 edition of Lisa Marie’s Favorite Grindhouse and Exploitation Trailers. Today, I come offering Danish subtitles, Japanese monsters, a grindhouse icon, and tomcats. Lots and lots of tomcats…

1) Tomcats (1976)

Let’s start off 2012 with this trailer for a low budget, drive-in film called Tomcats. It’s also known as Deadbeat, They Deserved It, and a few hundred other titles. The trailer is memorable for its light-hearted narration but the film itself is pretty dark (and kinda stupid, to be honest). By the way, this trailer features more than a little nudity and is definitely not safe for work.

2) Smokey Bites The Dust (1981)

This trailer was apparently used to advertise this Roger Corman production in Denmark.

3) Terminal Island (1973)

This is a landmark of feminist exploitation cinema. (Scoff all you might but there is such a thing and if you don’t believe me, go and read the best thing I’ve ever written, Too Sordid To Ever Be Corrupted.) Much like Smokey Bites the Dust, this trailer is in English but comes with Danish subtitles. It’s also NSFW.

4) Terror of Machagodzilla (1975)

And now for something completely different…

5) Across 110th Street (1972)

Who doesn’t love this film’s title song?

And finally…

6) Enter The Dragon (1973)

Yes, Enter the Dragon is an exploitation film. Just because it’s now considered to be a classic and it’s shown in film school (the first time I saw it was in film class) doesn’t change the fact that this film is pure grindhouse exploitation.

Welcome to 2012! Let’s make it a good one, just in case the Mayans were correct.

6 Trailers in Tribute to Roger Corman

Posted on December 17, 2011 by Lisa Marie Bowman

On Thursday night, my twitter timeline briefly exploded when it was reported that legendary filmmaker Roger Corman had just passed away. I immediately jumped over to Wikipedia and I saw that Roger Corman was officially listed as being newly deceased. Quickly, I jumped back over to twitter and I tweeted, “R.I.P. to one of the most important figures in American film history — the legendary Roger Corman.” I then sent out another tweet in which I pointed out that this meant that two of the men who has played senators in The Godfather, Part II — G.D. Spradlin and Roger Corman — had died this year and within months of each other.

Immediatly, one of my twitter friends tweeted back, “If only real Senators would die as quickly.”

“Agck!” I thought to myself, “how do I respond to that? If I get all offended or humorless, I might lose a follower. If I say yes, that’s a good point, I might end up getting put on some sort of super secret government list…”

Even as I worried about my future as a subversive, I was thinking to myself that the best way I could pay tribute to the late Roger Corman was to devote my next edition of Lisa Marie’s Favorite Grindhouse and Exploitation trailers to his memory. Yes, I decided, the next edition would have be all Corman, a celebration of the man, his life, and his movies…

And then it turned out that Roger Corman wasn’t dead. Turns out that some idiot journalist named Jake Tapper tweeted that Corman was dead and that’s what set off a chain reaction of false assumptions and early tributes. However, Roger Corman is still alive but you know me. Once I get an idea in my head, I have to see it through. Letting things go is not one of my talents.

So, with that in mind, here are 6 trailers in tribute to Roger Corman, who is not dead.

1) The Trip (1967)

In 1967, Roger Corman directed this film in which Peter Fonda plays a tv director who drops acid and ends up having a really bad trip. The script was written by Jack Nicholson and Dennis Hopper plays a random guru guy. Bruce Dern is in it too. As far as drug movies go, The Trip is actually pretty good though it does indulge in some of the standard Renaissance Faire imagery that all movies seem to use whenever attempting to visualize an acid trip.

2) St. Valentine’s Day Massacre (1967)

I recently saw this movie, Roger Corman’s first “studio” film. I have to admit that I thought it was a little bit slow but it had some fun performances and Jack Nicholson gets a memorable cameo where he explains why he dips his bullets in garlic.

3) The Intruder (1962)

In 1962, Roger Corman and William Shatner teamed up to make this look at racism and the people who exploit it.

4) The Raven (1963)

This is one of Corman’s famous Poe films.

5) The Wild Angels (1966)

Peter Fonda again. In this seminal biker film, Fonda again costars with Bruce Dern. Fonda’s girlfriend is played by Nancy Sinatra who, by the way, is one of the few celebs on twitter who will not only follow back but who will also actually respond to her followers.

6) It Conquered The World (1956)

Finally, let’s end things off with some truly old school Corman — It Conquered the World! This was Corman’s 3rd film as a director and his first major success.

Here’s to you, Roger Corman! Thank you for the movies and congratulations on still being with us.

Horror Film Review: Bucket of Blood (dir. by Roger Corman)

Posted on October 30, 2011 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today, being Halloween Eve, seems like the perfect time to offer up one of my favorite public domain horror films — Roger Corman’s 1959 horror/comedy Bucket of Blood. Featuring an iconic performance from Dick Miller (playing a character with the perfect name of Walter Paisley), Bucket of Blood is the story of an untalented artist who discovers that the best models are the dead ones. Speaking as both a lover of the old school Beat Generation and the proud owner of a largely useless degree in Art History, I love Bucket of Blood for all of its camp and satire. Dick Miller deserved an Oscar.

Horror Film Review: Little Shop of Horrors (dir by Roger Corman)

Posted on October 26, 2011 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Hi! Good morning and Happy October the 26th! For today’s plunge into the world of public domain horror films, I’d like to present you with a true classic. From 1960, it’s the original Little Shop of Horrors!

When I was 19 years old, I was in a community theater production of the musical Little Shop of Horrors. Though I think I would have made the perfect Audrey, everybody always snickered whenever I sang so I ended up as a part of “the ensemble.” Being in the ensemble basically meant that I spent a lot of time dancing and showing off lots of cleavage. And you know what? The girl who did play Audrey was screechy, off-key, and annoying and after every show, all the old people in the audience always came back stage and ignored her and went straight over to me. So there.

Anyway, during rehearsals, our director thought it would be so funny if we all watched the original film. Now, I’m sorry to say, much like just about everyone else in the cast, this was my first exposure to the original and I even had to be told that the masochistic dentist patient was being played by Jack Nicholson. However, I’m also very proud to say that — out of that entire cast — I’m the only one who understood that the zero-budget film I was watching was actually better than the big spectacle we were attempting to perform on stage. Certainly, I understood the film better than that screechy little thing that was playing Audrey.

The first Little Shop of Horrors certainly isn’t scary and there’s nobody singing about somewhere that’s green (I always tear up when I hear that song, by the way). However, it is a very, very funny film with the just the right amount of a dark streak to make it perfect Halloween viewing.

So, if you have 72 minutes to kill, check out the original and the best Little Shop of Horrors…

The Daily Grindhouse: Inseminoid (dir. by Norman J. Warren)

Posted on March 19, 2011 by Arleigh

The latest daily grindhouse comes straight out of the UK from the early 80’s. It’s a sci-fi horror flick which came about as part of the exploitation wave of Alien rip-offs and imitation of the past several years since Ridley Scott’s scifi-horror masterpiece stormed through Hollywood. While it’s director, Norman J. Warren and it’s producers do not think it’s grindhouse or an exploitation film of any stripe I beg to differ.

Inseminoid (renamed for a U.S. release as Horror Planet) screams grindhouse right from that title alone. It’s a film about a group of scientists landing on an unknown and desolate planet in search of evidence that an alien civilization existed once upon a time on the planet. The whole thing was either filmed inside a studio-built spacecraft set or in a cavern complex near the studio in the UK. It’s once one of the scientists (as always with grindhouse horror it happened to be a female scientists) has become impregnated by a remnant of the planet’s long-dead civilization that the horror truly begins.

It’s that very scene of rape and alien impregnation which got this film labeled as a “video nasty” in the UK which made it’s release on video near-impossible to make without editing out that pivotal scene early in the film. That scene also got the flick compared to another grindhouse scifi-horror released the same year by low-budget auteur Roger Corman called Galaxy of Terror. Outside of both films using a rape scene by alien means the two films really had nothing in common plot-wise so I think the filmmakers of Inseminoid and Galaxy of Terror just happened to think of a similar idea at the same time.

This film is not great or even good, but like all true grindhouse the people involved in the film took their roles and task seriously to try and make the best film their budget allowed them to. It’s not a horrible film and when seen now it’s actually quite a fun little scifi-horror flick that showed a glimpse into an era of cheap, exploitation films that would last well into the late 80’s.