directed by jim wynorski
concorde pictures/trinity pictures
It’s a shame SPACE RATS has this capsule format, because the old me could’ve written thousands of words on the sociocultural implications of this classic. (The old me was a blast at parties.) That being said, it must be allowed that this is very nearly the perfect schlock horror creation. It’s a little too knowing, but it was produced by Julie Corman, husband of Roger, and if your producer’s last name is synonymous with the genre – having more or less invented it – that may be hard to avoid. To be clear, this isn’t really much of a “horror” picture, either, and the revamped title (it was initially called “Killbots” for theatrical release) is wildly misleading, as no “chopping” occurs. The rogue security robots, however, are a delightful mixture of Battlestar Galactica Cylons and the Stern Electronics arcade game Berzerk, and a clear precursor to elements soon to be seen in RoboCop as well. The acting is wooden at times, the dialogue obvious and stilted, the continuity questionable and the FX often hilarious, but when the day is saved by … explosive paint? Well, you’ve got a cult smash on your hands, and deservedly so.
why did i watch this movie?
I’ve had it for at least a decade, so it seemed overdue.
should you watch this movie?
By all means.
highlight and low point
- Festooning the restaurant with Roger Corman movie posters and having two of the characters watching Attack of the Crab Monsters might have been a bit much
- As a former janitor, I couldn’t get over the fact that the mall is partly carpeted, as that is a terrible idea
- “House of Almonds” is a hilarious retail concept
- The Sherman Oaks Galleria also starred in Fast Times at Ridgemont High
Let me say right up front, there’s no morgue or mausoleum in this picture, so I clearly had not paid careful enough attention during my film search. Thus prepared to be disappointed, I instead was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed this slasher flick – especially as it wasn’t very promising at its onset. The sophomoric sorority subplot dissipates, however, and the family intrigue heightens, all while an amusingly amateurish sidebar screams out that the action is set in the mid-eighties. What really recommends this film, however, is the joyful overkill of the death scenes, replete with extra stabbings, copious blood, and a lot of screaming that is hysterical in whichever sense you prefer. To top it off, the SHOCKING ending is disguised cleverly enough that right as you’re about to put your finger on it, it’s standing right in front of you. And in addition, I’d bet the makers of 
This not terribly creative small-budget independent slasher-type horror feature is compromised by a few serious issues. One is that it is highly reminiscent of My Bloody Valentine, which wouldn’t be so bad except that it came out nine months later than that flick. The other, which is probably more severe, is that its reveal of the mystery killer isn’t acceptable, being not only illogical but improbable. While I acknowledge that one may not always be able to deduce the slayer’s correct identity in these types of pictures, it’s gotta make SOME kind of sense to support the conceit. And this one just doesn’t. Granted, the conclusion doesn’t even bother to explain anything in the aftermath – which is admirable to some degree – but after dwelling on it for about four seconds, I realized that a number of other details also don’t add up to anything. (One in particular makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.) A false-shock ending is thrown in for additional kicks. I will concede that the song title “Disco Blood” (“Original Rock Music Composed and Performed by NOWHERE FAST”) is A-1.
So, when you and your pals have tricked your girlfriends into accompanying you to a spooky abandoned house on All Hallow’s Eve – and boy are they MAD, having expected a “jet set party” – naturally, what you next propose is to bring a dead person back to life. Oh, sure, they’re doubtful, until you reasonably explain that the first step is to acquire a dead body from the morgue, at which point you all pile into the car. Does a downpour stop you from performing the ritual, i.e. reading from “the black book”? Of course it doesn’t. But once you’ve successfully revived Devlon – Devlon! – HE sure stops you, i.e. kills you. Up until this point in this generic Mexican flick, it’s reasonably entertaining, but once its focus switches to a group of children stranded in the graveyard, it becomes reminiscent of any random Scooby-Doo episode – then turns into the most blatant ripoff of the “Thriller” video imaginable, albeit with a much smaller budget. So blatant one of the kids sports a jacket with M. Jackson’s famous visage painted on the back. (Also spotted: “Pepsi Free.”)
Some – okay, most – reviewers are going to tell you this movie is terrible, but I must point out that Macabra: La mano del diablo and its similars just may be the raison d’être of this website (not to mention a significant contributing factor to its proprietor’s joie de vivre). Following a prefatory flashback scene, the story proper begins in an old mine complete with self-propelled skulls and tremulous native workers. Then it’s off to Vegas, baby! Before consulting a priest, of course, which naturally involves the police. Yes, the devil’s (left) hand has many functions, which does not prepare us for when it has been lopped off the arm of the cop whose arm it has commandeered, grabs his gun and shoots a nurse in an extremely tight and low-cut uniform. “The Hand will kill again!” intones our female lead. Can THE HAND be stopped? Will THE HAND be destroyed? Could I not stop giggling while enjoying this presentation? A must-see.
By almost any reasonable measure, this straight-to-video extravaganza isn’t any good. And yet it manages to project a kooky kind of charm, possibly because some aspects of it are just so … off. Unlike some of the other bad films I’ve denigrated herein, the filmmakers involved in this venture seem to have known what they were doing, but just do not appear to have been very proficient. Take the editing: the cuts interspersing glimpses of the characters’ domestic lives with the mounting terror, etc., are so ham-handed it’s jarring. The dialogue, meanwhile, continually interjects minutiae into random conversations. And then there’s the music, which at a certain point reaches a kind of lunatic insistence that is sorta breathtaking. On top of all that, the SHOCKING twist almost could work, but for anyone who for some reason is paying careful attention, one line rings a few too many bells, even with the painstaking misdirection involved. Classic ending, too. Oh, and one extremely minor character disappears during the climax, never again to be glimpsed or mentioned.
Yikes. Given this dreck, your intrepid movie guide is almost inclined to reconsider his grades for some of the other terrible films in this compendium, because this disaster is so awful that it makes duds such as Blood Harvest and Island of Blood seem like minor missteps. This stinker comes across like the result of an experiment: take components one normally associates with horror movies, blindfold somebody, and have him, her or it try to assemble said parts into a coherent whole. Hint: It “helps” if the actors cannot act, the vast stretches filmed in darkness are unlit or poorly lit – a “technique” one may remember fondly from “Scared Alive” – and the so-called “script” … may or may not exist. (Sample: Character leaves house, gets killed. Repeat with next character. ) Speaking of things that may or may not exist, this putrid mess has an honest-to-Pete score that disappears for much of the second half, making me wonder if the filmmakers forgot about it along with pacing, continuity, editing and cinematography. Body By Jake is the inexcusably aggravating PCP-addled killer in this terrible waste of time, and wow, I haven’t even mentioned the (presumably) KISS-inspired character appropriately named “The Mistake.” An embarrassment.
Sometimes, I watch a movie and I just wonder how it ended up exactly the way it did. Take this flighty little number: It plays essentially like a PG-rated family comedy, but it also includes some vaguely gory killings, flashes of nudity, a mislocated but frightening hallucination, and, unexpectedly, the band Sic F*cks. And Jack Palance, and Martin Landau, gleefully overacting as two deranged asylum escapees. Fans of the original NBC-TV series The A-Team will be glad to see “Howlin’ Mad” Murdock as the patriarch of the family in peril, and general film aficionados possibly will enjoy Donald Pleasence’s turn as the loopy, stoned head of the psychiatric institution turned porous by a power outage. Amusingly, the family never actually seems to be in the dark, thanks to the marvels of movie lighting. (Hardly anyone’s alone at any point, either.) Overall, a strangely effervescent experience given the subject matter.
While it technically may be true that I’ve never personally been assaulted after hours in a mausoleum by psychokinetically controlled corpses , I think I safely can say that it wouldn’t seem as threatening in person as it does to several of the characters in this ’80s trumpery. The reason I state this with such confidence is that the dead (which appear to be wax dummies) are not reactivated or anything, they’re just being propelled slowly across the floor. That they apparently somehow manage to kill two people – by, uh, falling on them? – is a special bonus. The preposterous tale of a proponent of “psychic vampirism” experimenting in the manipulation of “bio-energy – the electromagnetic force in all living things,” this picture would be a complete failure if it weren’t so utterly absurd. As it is, it’s passable as kitsch … barely. The presence of Adam West helps in that regard, as does the fact that the dramatis personae largely are supposed to be portraying high-school students, which is patently ridiculous.
This delight’s got a little bit of everything. It’s got a weird Satanist family cult, it’s got a teenage runaway from Troubles At Home, it’s got Lawrence Tierney, it’s got a road-trip film contained within it, it’s of a visual quality usually associated with home movies from the dawn of time, and it’s got a fabulous theme song that is completely out of place in its grim milieu and sounds as though it’s from the wrong decade besides. Midnight is also strangely paced and edited, and could be a Christian message movie in disguise. Let’s see, what else … travel montages, black characters that seem as misplaced as the title song, a blatant ripoff of Psycho, and an extremely abrupt and unlikely ending involving rescue, redemption and revenge. Oh, and more of the rebarbative laughter à la the goons from Death Weekend. All told, an entertaining exploitation picture – and based on a novel! Which I cannot WAIT to read. The auteur was a colleague of George Romero.
SPACE RATS From Outer Space 