the ’90s

The Crawlers aka Creepers aka Contamination .7 aka Troll 3 (1990)

/ billy peppers / Leave a comment
Directed by “Martin Newlin”
FILMIRAGE

Grotesquely inept in all regards – I cannot think offhand of another film in which so many lines are flubbed – and graced with some of the most overwrought, overacted death scenes imaginable – especially given that in most cases, the victims are clearly flailing the unconvincing props about themselves – this Italian-produced eco-terror is a truly marvelous experience. Listing all the hilarity would take far too long for this allotted space, but suffice it to say this flick stands proudly, incoherently proclaiming its action/adventure “credentials.” (Among these,  “Costumes” are credited to Laura Gemser, who played “Emanuelle” in roughly 213 softcore flicks in the 1970s and early ’80s, and who was a longtime associate of producer/co-director Joe D’Amato.)

Why Did I Watch This MOvie?

I was idly browsing the selections at Tubi and this description caught my attention: “The trees are alive with a taste for humans after they soak up toxic runoff from a local nuclear plant, forcing villagers to fight for their lives.” A quick peek promised nearly unparalleled shoddiness, and there you have it.

Should You Watch This Movie?

BRIAN: Listen, maybe we can call the Environmental Protection Agency. Look, they’re the only ones who’re even remotely qualified for this kind of situation.

TAYLOR (“SCIENTIST”): No, no, we don’t have enough time … we get involved with people from Washington, no telling HOW long it’ll take.

MATT’S DAD: He’s right.

BRIAN: Look, it is the only way!

MATT: No – it’s YOUR way, but it’s not the only way.

Highlight and Low Point

The death scene of the hired killers sent by the polluting corporation’s nefarious executive to eliminate no-good busybody Taylor is phenomenal, but the toxic dump cleanup takes the cake, as the townsfolk take no precautions whatsoever for handling any materials.

Rating From Outer Space: D−

Innocent Blood (1992)

/ billy peppers / Leave a comment
Directed by John Landis
Lee Rich PRoductions

It’s a good thing I’ve recently reviewed a couple other productions that engendered my wondering about classifications or motivations, because they may have helped prepare me for this doozy. Part vampire flick, part mob/police drama, part comedy of manners, part romcom, Blood is hampered sporadically by an insistence on hammering home its farcical elements, but this Pittsburgh-set tale of an ancient huntress and the special agent who stumbles onto her trail after infiltrating the local crime family is highly rewarding at times, too. It’s also drenched in frankly unintimidating gore, liberally sprinkled with nudity and “sexual situations,” and its most assaultive moment features Don Rickles meeting his fate. All in all, It is somewhat hard to envision why or how the producers thought this endeavor would be successful. (Note: it very much wasn’t.) Oh, and there’s a recurring motif of famous monsters of filmland being screened in various locales, along with cameos or other appearances from revered horror directors.

Why Did I Watch This Movie?

Somebody mentioned it in an online discussion of something completely unrelated, and I felt compelled to look into it due to that commenter’s unbridled enthusiasm.

Should You Watch This Movie?

It IS basically a farce, so if you feel like watching a bloody, violent farce about vampires and the mob, you’re all set.


Highlight and Low Point

Anne Parillaud commands attention throughout this romp, and not just because she’s frequently unclothed and her accent is inviting. Her character, Marie, probably deserved a more compelling vehicle, one absent some of this affair’s more cartoonish elements. That may be a shade too critical a stance, but this flick doesn’t seem focused enough to know what it’s trying to achieve, and frequently undercuts itself to boot.

Rating From Outer Space: C+

Stephen King’s Sleepwalkers (1992)

/ billy peppers / Leave a comment
Directed by Mick Garris
Ion Pictures/Victor & Grais

In case you thought the problem with movies made from S. King novels and stories was the difficulty in translating to the silver screen either their length and heft (IT, The Stand, The Dead Zone, etc.) or their sometimes dodgy supernatural motifs (Christine, say), I have bad news to report. This budget B flick was written FOR the cinema, not adapted from a story, and it, too, has some serious issues preventing it from being taken very seriously. I’m not even talking about the $2 FX, either, although those don’t help out a whole lot. And I’m not even talking about the army of darling kittycats that wind up being the main oppositional force to the, um … the quasi-vampire things. (Diehard King aficionados, oops, I mean “Constant Readers,” will recognize the energy-sucking conceit later employed by Doc Sleep.) Hack director Mick Garris – King’s handpicked fave – takes a tale with promise and lets it devolve into gimcrackery over its latter third. Consider (blame) the source, I guess.

Why Did I Watch This Movie?

Cats and the oeuvre of Stephen King: two things for which I have a soft spot in my heart (if not my head).


Should You Watch This Movie?

Look, I just don’t know what to tell you. I mean, I watched Stephen King’s The Night Flier, too, you know.


Highlight and Low Point

My notes for this picture – yes, really – include that the “deputy sheriff” cruises around happily singing Garry Lee and Showdown’s immortal “The Rodeo Song,” which I first heard about from a friend in, like,  fifth grade, disbelieving such a song could really exist until he proved it. My notes also indicate that apparently one can blow up a cop car by merely shooting it.

Rating From Outer Space: C−

Pale Blood (1990)

/ billy peppers / Leave a comment
Directed By V.V. Dachin Hsu
Noble Entertainment Group

I was completely shocked when the credits rolled on this baby and the copyright read “1990” … though perhaps that’s just the result of my own myopia. See, Agent Orange is in this film, for no particular reason that I can discern, and since the tunes they’re playing are all from their 1986 release This Is The Voice, I presumed it was a little older. (To be fair, it was lensed in ’88.) In a way, that only heightens the weirdness of this little oddity, a vampire flick with several shifts in motive and narration (and incrimination) – one of which was completely unforeseen, at least for me. This was apparently a straight-to-video picture, which makes sense when viewed from the perspective of its production values, but doesn’t much jibe with its fairly accomplished narrative. (In its own way, it’s a hardboiled noir story – just with, you know, immortal bloodsuckers.) I could see this film having been fairly successful with a few alterations and a big-screen existence. Of course, Agent Orange probably wouldn’t have been involved then.


Why Did I Watch This Movie?

Although I dearly love the early portion of Agent Orange’s career, this was just a happy accident – another one from that endless Internet Archive vid haul.



Should You Watch This Movie?

Even if late-’80s nostalgia doesn’t interest or inspire you, it’s worth a look-see. I don’t even think you’d necessarily have to be all that impressed by vampires, though it couldn’t hurt.


Highlight and Low Point

The tone of this picture varies unpredictably, as it contains significant amounts of basically deadpan humor interspersed with dismal pathos and the like. Wings Hauser’s filmmaker character contributes to the furtive ’80s vibe, and Hong Kong apparently stands in for L.A. at times.

Rating from Outer Space: B

M.D.C – Maschera di cera aka La Máscara de Cera aka The Wax Mask (1997)

/ billy peppers / Leave a comment
directed by sergio stivaletti
Cine 2000/mediaset/france film international

Dedicated to Lucio Fulci by its production team, due to some convoluted backstory (“Dario Argento Presenta”), this very mannered extravaganza boasts a visual sheen not quite in keeping with its turn-of-the-20th-century period setting, and spins a tale that, while engaging enough as it unspools, is somewhat undermined by a gaggle of absurdities at its center. The enigma that compels it doesn’t stay very mysterious for very long, despite the labored attempts by virtually everyone in the cast to vamp it up as much as possible, and the sumptuous costuming is somewhat hilariously at odds with what one must term the futurism at its core. (Were one inclined to be unkind, it could be called anachronistic, but as it’s a horror fable, what would even be the point.) At heart, it’s just kind of silly, another victim of the genre’s inability to stop rewriting stories that weren’t that interesting the first time around. See, it takes place in a WAX MUSEUM, would you believe. And what’s more!

Why Did I Watch This Movie?

I’d have to guess at this point, but it’s most likely the release date, and maybe the intrigue underlying its production. (Argento wanted to help Fulci make a film, but Fulci died before filming began.)


Should You Watch This Movie?

It’s nearly interesting at times.


Highlight and Low Point

Despite its efforts, this production doesn’t do a very effective job of making it appear to be 1900 – it is too obvious that you are looking at sets and costumes. (The steampunk Re-Animator setup doesn’t much help in that regard, either.) The gore and pseudogore FX are pretty good, befitting the nominal director’s usual professional pursuits. The absurdly blatant ripoff of The Terminator, on the other hand …

Rating From Outer Space: C−

Dead Girls (1990)

/ billy peppers / Leave a comment
Directed by Dennis Devine
Bovine Productions

The type of movie that’s all about an obviously atrocious “band” – dreamt up by someone who clearly has no idea how things do or don’t work in the music industry – but doesn’t feature a single moment of the “band” performing or practicing (or even any of their alleged music), this substandard wannabe slasher flick features a confused mulligatawny of checklist concepts but little in the way of convincing thespians, believable script or acceptable motivations. I will give it credit for the very unexpected ending – especially coming as it does after nearly two hours of a story that really feels as though the author kept thinking, “okay, this sort of thing happens in horror movies,” only to continually revise his opus because it just didn’t feature enough broadly sketched stock roles. Absurdly unbelievable, by which I mean “unrealistic,” in whatever sense you care to interpret that.

Why Did I Watch This Movie?

Some nefarious individual posted literally hundreds and hundreds of hours of videotaped movies to the Internet Archive, almost none of which seemed to have registered culturally – like, say, this one. I culled all the horror and horror-adjacent titles, and this is the first one I chose to “enjoy.”

Should You Watch this Movie?

I mean, I suppose it could convince you that you could make a movie, too! Why not!


HIghlight and Low Point

Not only do the Dead Girls have ridiculous names – Nancy Napalm, Bertha Beirut, etc. – only one of them looks as though she might ever consider being in any sort of band at all. Their manager is an offensive caricature, and Asian, though how much those factors are related is theoretically debatable. The “religious” angle seemed farcical, though I’m no longer so sure these days.

Rating From Outer Space: D−

The Clown at Midnight (1998)

/ billy peppers / Leave a comment
directed by Jean Pellerin
GFT/Paquin Entertainment

Purely by chance, this Canadian flick has Christopher Plummer in it (“and Christopher Plummer as Caruthers,” as his special mention warrants); I watched it shortly before he died, but I’ve been more than a little remiss posting anything lately (as you may have noticed), so I’m just trying to play ketchup here. So … there’s a collegiate acting troupe that inherits/inhabits an old theater, which just happened to be the site of an unsolved mystery involving its star opera performer … who, coincidentally enough, turns out to have been the mother of one of the students involved. (Imagine!) The death occurred following the final performance of Pagliacci, and, you know, the lore, and the urban legend, and the haunted performance space, and the deaths. You’ll probably be able to suss out most of the story before it ends, and as usual, it will help not to dwell too much upon it afterward.

why did i watch this movie?

Seriously, the title caught my eye, because it sounded odd. (“Clown at Midnight?” I wondered.) Then I saw it was Canadian, and I’m always for some reason interested in films of such origin. I suppose the credit “and Margot Kidder as Ellen Gibby” may also shed some light.

should you watch this movie?

It is really, really, really intent on breaking no new ground.

highlight and low point

A character or two has an almost-interesting quirk or two, and a not-insignificant portion of the underlying story might nag at you due to its inadmissibility. Or at least, it should, because … sheesh. I don’t wish to give away too much of the “plot,” but you will seriously begin questioning how the production team had the gall to stick with its story, so to speak.

Rating From Outer Space: C+

Mute Witness (1995)

/ billy peppers / Leave a comment
written and directed by anthony waller
a buchman/claus/soentgen/waller production

A suspense-driven exercise in communication problems, this picture is in Russian and English, and its title character spends a lot of its duration desperately trying to stay a step or two ahead of what appear to be some murderous thugs and maybe a criminal conspiracy. Ah, but see, the main players here are all working on a film set, and can you really trust what you’re seeing? Or whether people really are who they say they are? Et cetera. Mordantly funny at times, and a little better than it deserved to be. Maybe the language barrier(s) helped?

why did i watch this movie?

The time-honored setup of the observer of a crime who cannot for one reason or another convince anyone what she’s seen, along with a recurring trend often encountered here of late, ye olde picture-within-a-picture gimmick, I suppose.

should you watch this movie?

It’s a bit of an oddball take, really, but the blurbs aren’t lying – there are extended moments of high suspense throughout. Past a certain point, exactly what the bad guys are up to gets a little unnecessarily complicated, but that’s hardly the focus anyway.

highlight and low point

I’ll tell ya what’s NOT a highlight, trying to determine who’s responsible for these multi-studio, triple-nation co-productions. The differing methods of connection used within, however, are kinda fascinating. Marina Zudina’s portrayal of a deaf-mute  is pretty convincing, at least as far as I could tell. (I was not actually comparing it with the deaf actors in either Soul to Keep or A Quiet Place, or even those playing deaf-mutes in the dialogue-free Mercury, but was instead weighing it against Jennifer Jason Leigh’s blind character in Eyes of a Stranger. Don’t ask me why.)

rating from outer space: B+

Frankenhooker (1990)

/ billy peppers / 1 Comment
directed by frank henenlotter
ievins/henenlotter

Sometime in the ’80s, someone had the following idea for a movie: “So this guy, he’s, like, a science nerd, and his girlfriend gets chopped up by this souped-up remote-control lawnmower he rigs up for her dad, see, and then he invents supercrack and explodes a bunch of prostitutes and uses their body parts to, uh, make a new body for his dead girlfriend’s head, which he’s kept in this … estrogen-rich fluid.” When people lament the elements of life that “cancel culture” and its devotees are out to deny us, they’re forgetting that creations on the order of this one would be among those deprivations. And while we’d inarguably be poorer for lack of hybrids of films like Re-Animator and those released by Troma, the most commendable feature here is that it’s played more or less straight-faced, with a matter-of-fact tone, despite the increasingly ludicrous scriptwriting. (“There wasn’t enough left of you to fry an egg with” was a particular favorite line.) I dunno if exploitative sleaze is really that crucial a societal component.

why did i watch this movie?

It occurred to me that I’d somehow skipped this essential cinematic experience. I think I used to confuse it with other flicks, none of which seemed all that compelling.

should you watch this movie?

It’s fairly diverting, though it does seem pretty dated. Then again, it was proffered under the Shapiro Glickenhaus entertainment banner.

highlight and low point

If the pimp, “Zorro,” isn’t where the creators of Aqua Teen Hunger Force got the inspiration for “Carl,” well … that’s some sorta implication of a terrifying convergence. Main character Jeffrey’s plainspoken yet unhinged manner is oddly endearing, though you may have questions about his self-trepanation. Body horror – and perhaps gynophobia – ultimately reigns.

rating from outer space: B

The Night Flier aka Stephen King’s The Night Flier (1997)

/ billy peppers / Leave a comment
directed by Mark Pavia
New Amsterdam Entertainment™ Incorporated/Stardust International Ltd./Medusa Film S.p.A

Based on an S. King short story I hadn’t read – it’s in Nightmares & Dreamscapes, the titles of which mainly don’t ring a bell, with the exception of “You Know They Got a Hell of a Band,” which I recall detesting – this archetypal B movie was financed by European concerns and tells a tale of Richard Dees and the tabloid “Inside View,” both names I will go ahead and presume you recall from The Dead Zone, by which I mean the novel, not the dreadful film adaptation directed by David Cronenberg and starring Christopher Walken. The titular “flier” – and why the heck isn’t it “flyer,” anyway? – is a vampire airman going by the meta name “Dwight Renfield.” That’s it, that’s the story. With oh-so-subtle parallels drawn to the journalistic pursuit of. Some form of the twist ending you will likely foresee.

why did i watch this movie?

I wasn’t feeling the two pictures that formerly had been slated, possibly as a result of having just watched all nine “Episodes” of the Skywalker Saga triple trilogy, but I WAS in the mood for something based on the timeless works of S. King. The Under the Dome series wasn’t doing it for me and I had yet to discover the three seasons of Mr. Mercedes, so I went with this.


should you watch this movie?

If you’re an I’m-fine-sticking-with-basic-cable-and-terrestrial-channels type, go for it.

highlight and low point

The climactic scenes are pretty gratifying, especially given how ridiculous the vampire looks when finally we see its face. Some subsequent action even manages to atone for that. The rest is pretty standard low-budget middle-of-the-road mild
horror. It’s more of a character study, really …
which, you know, S. King.

rating from outer space: b−