PROMETHEUS (2012)

When Ridley Scott's ALIEN hit in 1979, it was a game-changer for the genre of cinematic science-fiction and earned classic status overnight for its blend of visually realistic and believable deep space adventure and outright horror. It also spawned a number of sequels, the second of which also quite rightly became a classic, and its creatures — known as "xenomorphs" — and their horrific life cycle became iconic, terrifying touchstones for the post-STAR WARS era. Having been sequelized to ever-diminishing returns (especially in the case of the execrable ALIENS VS. PREDATOR flicks), it was only a matter of time before Hollywood's mania for re-imaginings/reboots/remakes got around to the whole ALIEN thing, so now we get the ambitious PROMETHEUS, helmed by the director of the original ALIEN, and it's definitely a re-imagining/reboot/remake and possibly the most anticipated of this summer's potential blockbusters.

Opening with an archaeological discovery in the year 2089, PROMETHEUS details an expedition to a distant planet whose location was determined from ancient cave paintings and stone carvings found all over the world, crafted by completely unrelated cultures. The two archaeologists who discovered the imagery believe it to be an invitation for the inhabitants of Earth to go and meet the depicted giant spacefarers whom the archaeologists believe to be the creators of the human species. Upon arriving at the planet in question, the expedition discovers the derelict spacecraft from ALIEN, only it's buried so they think it's just some sort of underground crypt. The place displays the bio-mechanical visual tropes established in the first film and features a couple of rooms housing thousands of upright containers filled with an ominous oozing black glop that the expedition's obligatory artificial human/robot sneakily obtains a sample of. The presumed crypt is also littered with the bodies of dead giant aliens — dubbed "Engineers" by the archaeologists — so the head of one is brought back to the ship for study. As expected, all hell eventually breaks loose and very bad things happen to the crew as a number of suspicious aspects of the voyage's agenda begin to crop up. Why is the ship's medical pod only equipped for male patients? Why is a representative of the corporation that funded the mission along for the ride and why are her quarters a large and luxuriously-appointed self-contained escape pod? Why is the ship's artificial human/robot committing very questionable acts that completely violate Asimov's Three Laws? And exactly why did the Engineers seed the Earth with their DNA (which is an exact match with human DNA) and what are they doing with all those containers?

As previously stated, PROMETHEUS is a series reboot, and it takes the ideas and basic universe of the ALIEN films and plays with them in a number of ways, but for me it came off as a visually stunning hollow shell that failed to grab me. I did not connect with or have even the slightest interest in any of the bland scientist characters that meandered about during its running time, and more than once I looked at my watch and wondered when it would all finally end. In fact, about a third of the way through the film I was so underwhelmed that I seriously contemplated getting up and leaving. I'll try to stay as spoiler-free as possible, but here are the pertinent points:

• For an attempted reboot of the franchise that pretty much defined the blended science-fiction/horror genre, there is absolutely no suspense and only the most minimal horror.
• We do get creatures that are intended to be scary, but these re-imagined versions of the larval and adult versions of the xenomorphs and what looks like a fused proto-version of a facehugger and an eel fail to deliver in the scares department. There's also a creature that starts out resembling a sort of four-tentacled octopus wiggly (a "quatropus," if you will) and ends up as the biggest goddamned kinda-sorta facehugger you've ever seen. It would have been right at home in a Sinbad movie.

An Engineer ends up on the wrong end of an encounter with the biggest face-hugger ever.

• And speaking of the quatropus, it's the end result of a ridiculous and dire Caesarian surgical procedure in which the previously-infertile female archaeologist (Noomi Rapace) finds herself in an advanced state of pregnancy after getting it on with her husband following the artificial human slipping him a sample of the black alien glop while he was on a booze-fueled bender. (pauses to catch breath) The terrified mom-to-be hauls ass to the aforementioned automated medical pod, dopes herself up and straps in as the unit carves her open, removes the wildly squirming quatropus and seals her gaping abdominal wound with surgical staples.

Apparently, having just endured an automated C-section to remove a rapidly-gestating extraterrestrial horror does nothing to hamper one's ability to take care of business.

All suited up, running away from imminent disaster and confronting extraterrestrial mayhem with a firefighting axe while traipsing about with a gut held together by surgical staples.

Literally at the moment this procedure is completed, she leaves the med-lab and spends the rest of the film running around in a full spacesuit and getting bumped about and bounced off of very hard surfaces and objects like she hadn't just had an unnatural horror ripped from her womb not even a half hour earlier. I can suspend a hell of a lot of disbelief for a science-fiction story, but I just couldn't buy that.

• I may be looking at this from a cynical point of view, but this reboot appears to me to be a convenient way of ditching the majority of ALIEN visualist H.R. Giger's designs in favor of more predictable and generic creatures in a concerted effort to not have to pay or credit the groundbreaking Swiss artist for his indelible contributions to the look and feel of the franchise. The creepy and slime-laden look of Giger's concepts are utterly stripped away and the xenomorph eggs have even been reduced from fleshy oversized "footballs" to mass-produced, character-void containers. I'm guessing the prestige name of Ridley Scott will attract droves of ALIEN fans in hope of rendering this a hit and thus generating sequels to be passed off to any convenient hack director and equally hackish designers, and that prospect just fills me with inertia.
• Among the many nonsensical examples of how people act put forth in the film's script, the most egregious are the numerous times wherein professional scientists proceed in handling what is the most important scientific discovery in all of human experience with not a lick of common sense or anything resembling considered procedure. There's little thought given to possible contamination from previously un-encountered micro-organisms on A GODDAMNED ALIEN PLANET other than a couple of token decontamination sequences, which are either forgotten about or not, depending on what the sloppy script calls for. Needless to say, this stupidity comes back to bite this crew of alleged professionals on the ass on several eye-rolling occasions. There are also several examples where no caution whatsoever is exercised in handling various extraterrestrial remains and compounds, and anyone with even half a brain will be astonished by those lapses.
• The black goo that occupies the containers on the Engineers' ship is inconsistent in its effect on those who come in contact with it or ingest it, a fault that should have been dealt with before the final shooting script was approved. It causes different "cool stuff" to happen as the script dictates, and this occurs with no rhyme or reason.
• The film utterly wastes beautiful and talented Oscar-winner Charlise Theron in the thankless role of the aforementioned corporate rep. She turns in her most lifeless performance since the title character in the live-action adaptation of AEON FLUX (and bad though that film was, it was a lot livelier and more visually imaginative than PROMETHEUS). She does have one fun character bit with ship's captain Idris Elba (aka Heimdall from THOR), but it's one minuscule moment of personality in a desert of ciphers.
• The sole character that I gave a shit about was David, the ship's artificial human, well-played by Michael Fassbender.

He pretty much performs the same plot function as Ian Holm's Ash in ALIEN, but he's far more charming and sympathetic because he's essentially a slave who's got no choice in his actions.

• Never show excerpts from a much better film in a mediocre movie, since that could serve to remind viewers of how there's much better fare out there to be had. In the case of this film, they unwisely and unnecessarily included a sequence from David Lean's LAWRENCE OF ARABIA that made me think of how much I would have preferred to be watching that instead.
• Perhaps most dishearteningly, PROMETHEUS is highly derivative of a good number of science-fiction stories found in books, television shows and films, not just what came before in the ALIEN franchise, and as a result there's nothing here that we have not seen done somewhere else and usually in a much more interesting/engaging fashion.

The audience opinion at the screening I saw was hotly divided, with some declaring PROMETHEUS "a science-fiction masterpiece" while others disappointedly groused and one patron loudly exclaimed "BOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!" when the credits rolled (with a hearty Bronx cheer thrown in by Yours Truly). I've certainly seen worse movies but I was hugely disappointed and occasionally bored by PROMETHEUS, though your mileage may vary. If all you're interested in is great special effects and production design, you'll do just fine. (I did not see it in 3-D, though I've been told that the 3-D is exceptional.) Those who need more than that may end up feeling gypped, so if you're in that camp I suggest you see it with your expectations kept as low as possible.

No, this isn't Melody, Alan and Josie in a live-action re-imagining/reboot/remake of JOSIE AND THE PUSSYCATS IN OUTER SPACE (unfortunately).

SHARK ATTACK 3: MEGALODON (2002)

Before I do my usual intro/back info bit, I'll cut right to the chase: SHARK ATTACK 3: MEGALODON is an unmitigated piece of shit, but what a glorious turd it is. I went into this one having stumbled across a clip from it on YouTube, and if ever there was a clip that sold me on a movie, it was this one:

Wasn't that exactly what one wants to see in a shark movie?

I'm a lifelong lover of sharks (especially Great White sharks), creatures whose forms are about as perfectly suited to what they do as is possible for any living being, those activities including swimming, eating, and making little sharks (to paraphrase Hooper). You enter into their territory and you may end up a case of "today, a robust scuba diver; tomorrow, shark shit," and there's no malice intended; you just happened to be within reach and of a size to fit into the shark's gaping, razor-toothed maw, and dem's da breaks. Consequently, these ravenous fish have held humans in a state of simultaneous fear and respectful awe, making for ideal MacGuffins in any number of true-life nautical accounts and fictional concoctions, the most famous of which is undoubtedly JAWS (1975), the classic film made from Peter Benchley's bestselling and rather unremarkable novel.

Once JAWS lucratively tapped into the audience's primal fear of the implacable force that lurks beneath the waves, it was a given that there would be a swift succession of sequels and crappy knockoffs, each likely to earn back their makers at least some cash, provided there was lots of onscreen carnage involving screaming idiots who were too fucking stupid to get out of the water. Most of these films brought the flesh-and-bone-rending violence and gore to audiences with a sub-R rating, meaning lots of shrieking, crimson-clouded water and the occasional bonus of a rubber leg or head slowly sinking to the ocean floor, but this was all driven home quite effectively through sound effects and editing, along with our innate identification with the characters — read generic "shark fodder" — getting sloppily devoured. But no matter the level of gore, the shark attack genre keeps occasionally resurfacing nearly forty years years after JAWS set the standard, but its bastard progeny have mostly chosen to ignore anything resembling quality filmmaking and have turned the shark into a straight-up sea monster out to eat people while acting as some sort of deep sea understudy to the Grim Reaper. Which (finally) brings me to SHARK ATTACK 3: MEGALODON, in which the shark is not just a monster, but a balls-out, "Holy motherfucking shit, that thing is big" giant monster. Not IT CAME FROM BENEATH THE SEA huge, mind you, but big enough to count.

IT CAME FROM BENEATH THE SEA (1955): the biggest goddamned tentacled wiggly ever to terrorize San Francisco.

If you've seen JAWS you already know the basic story: a big-assed shark menaces a beach resort that's kept open by a corrupt official even after the local authorities and a marine biologist urge him to close it, resulting in a bunch of intrepid worthies setting off to kick its ass while accompanied by a score that's just a note or two shy of outright copyright infringement. That's it really, but this time around it takes place in Mexico, has way more cursing and gratuitous nudity, and there are two sharks, one at a scale comparable to the windup critter in JAWS, and another that's supposedly close to seventy feet in length, both of whom growl. These fish are Megalodons, gargantuan ancestors to the awesome Great White, so by making the monsters in this flick ultra-ginormous, the awesomeness factor is increased considerably. Well, in theory anyway, since this production is too cheap to afford much by way of effects, so a good 98% of what we see of the sharks comes from stock Great White footage probably culled from Discovery Channel "Shark Week" outtakes that are slowed down somewhat to convey ponderous size, with the remaining 2% featuring either cheesy puppets or borderline-bogus CGI representations. Fortunately there's a fairly high body count comprised of people we just don't care about, coupled with lots of terrific set pieces that make the most of the sharks' enormity. I mean, what's not to love about a shot like this:

The whole film wallows in being an idiotic, shameless ripoff, and therein lies its charm: it knows exactly what's it's doing, and it simply doesn't give a fuck who notices. The story's a total joke, the performances bite the big one, and you'll sit there smacking your head every five minutes while watching it, but it's an enjoyable time waster that's the cinematic equivalent of a six-piece order of Chicken McNuggets. It ain't necessarily good, per se, but it's fun while you're ingesting it.

Oh, and another added bonus is seeing a pre-DOCTOR WHO and TORCHWOOD John Barrowman — aka "I'll fuck anything that breathes" Captain Jack Harkness on those shows — as the Roy Scheider stand-in utter one of the greatest from-out-of-nowhere lines in film history. How his co-star, Jenny McShane — who looks not unlike a white version of the mouth-watering Leila Arcieri — , kept a straight face during that scene is beyond my ability to process.

Bottom line: it's crap, but it's more entertaining than any number of big-budget Hollywood blockbusters, so if you're in the mood for something completely ridiculous, TRUST YER BUNCHE!!!

31 DAYS OF HORROR-DAY 18: ABBY (1974)

Perhaps the most infamous of the many EXORCIST ripoffs/cash-ins — and that's really saying something — this film only remains in the public consciousness due to it being the blaxpolitation genre's answer to THE EXORCIST and also for the fact that it was such a shameless ripoff that it was taken out of theaters and general distribution when the major studio makers of the film it so blatantly cribbed from threatened easily followed-through and winnable legal action that rendered it unseen in legal screenings or on legitimate home video for around thirty-five years. Well, now ABBY is available on DVD for all to experience and both the wait and the DVD transfer were not worth it. Seriously, both the movie and the print from which it was culled simply suck ass. In fact, I firmly believe that the print is the same gut-bucket, scratched and faded one that I obtained on VHS from Times Square's infamous haven for "gray market" VHS martial arts and blaxploitation flicks, the now long-gone 43rd Chamber, and that print was appalling.

Anyway, as if news of the terrible print used for the DVD were not enough to steer you away from this movie, the fact that the plot is a flagrant ripoff of THE EXORCIST as filtered through a low-budget but over-the top Richard Pryor-esque sensibility (only minus the genuine and intentional laughs) should do the trick. The main difference between this and the original is that this is the all-black version and that its protagonist is an ultra-churchified adult woman rather than an apple-cheeked pubescent, and while allowing the possessed grownup woman to become a literally foaming-at-the-mouth slut is pretty damned funny, the movie itself is as turgid and dead in the water as a floater in your toilet bowl. To tell the truth, the main reason I included ABBY on this list is to warn you not to rent or buy it because ABBY is a world-class ripoff in every sense of the term and you will have missed nothing by not sitting through its non-existent and wholly derivative "shocks." Bottom line: Richard Pryor's famous "The Exorcist II" parody sketch from his classic 1975 SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE show is one-hundred times better than this mess, plus it's genuinely and intentionally hilarious. Watch that instead.

The so-called "black exorcist edition," whatever the hell that may mean (or not). Avoid this shoddy transfer like it was unshielded plutonium.

31 DAYS OF HORROR-DAY 15: SHRIEK OF THE MUTILATED (1974)

Hoo, boy, the weed in the '70's must have really been somethin' to get people to voluntarily pay money to see this turd on the big screen...

When I first heard of this film I was nine years old and in the article I read about in THE MONSTER TIMES, it was alleged to be a followup to the ultra-low-budget and wholly ludicrous INVASION OF THE BLOOD FARMERS, so I'd been quite curious to see it for a very long time. One of my aims in doing this 31 days of horror project is to both refresh my memories of some favorites and share them with you, but I also wanted to see some films I'd never sat through before, this being one of those. Now that I've seen this howler of a train wreck for myself, I fail to see any sort of connection between it and its alleged predecessor.

SHRIEK OF THE MUTILATED involves a needlessly convoluted plot in which a bunch of groovy Brady-era college students are lured by their professor on a country field trip in search of a Yeti — a Yeti in rural America? Ooooookaaaay... — that turns out to be a ruse in order to kill them as fodder for a cannibal cult's annual feast, with their murders being committed by a cultist in a pitiful (yet kinda charming) Yeti Halloween costume (see above). It would be simple enough to drag a group of college kids off to some remote area to murder them — this was the Seventies after all and everyone was stoned, so all kind of fucked-up shit happened and went unnoticed — especially if the locals and the cops are in on it, so why go to the trouble of having some goofball run around in a tatty Yeti costume?

(LONG PAUSE)

Why the fuck am I even bothering to question what is plainly and simply a cheapjack horror time-waster that's best (barely) enjoyed with a gut-full of cheap beer? When all is said and done, all that remains is one very stupid time-waster that offers zilch in terms of scares. Great title, though.

Poster for the original theatrical release.

31 DAYS OF HORROR-DAY 12: THE VULTURE (1967)

THE VULTURE is a film that made a huge impression on me as a very young child — I was five when I first saw it — and it held me riveted from start to finish. Seeing it again some forty-one years later, all I could ask was "What the fuck was I thinking?" It's ridiculous concrete proof that just because a Horror film is British in origin, it won't necessarily be as good as even the weakest entry from Hammer Studios.

Taking place by the seaside of Cornwall, THE VULTURE opens with a great and very spooky scene in which a woman on a bus is warned by the superstitious driver not to take a shortcut through the local graveyard when she gets off, advice she chews the guy out for. Of course when she ignores his advice, she walks through the graveyard and witnesses the earth near a grave pushing upwards as though something buried there was fighting its way out. Well, guess what? Something was under there fighting its way out, and from the sparse visual clues we're given, it's quite big and it can fly (we only see the woman's horrified reaction to it, and not a glimpse of the creature itself). The woman is of course driven instantly insane by the sight, and ends up in a mental institution.

That sequence was terrific and still holds up, and it led me to believe my fond memories from just over four decades past were accurate. Too bad for me that from that point on the film takes a precipitous nosedive straight down the cinematic toilet in a maelstrom of boredom and narrative stupidity.

Anyway, the local authorities believe the grave had been broken into instead of broken out of and in no time at all a series of bizarre murders begins, each targeting the Stroud family. A couple of centuries previous, the Strouds were responsible for burying alive an evil Frenchman who was found guilty of practicing witchcraft, and along with him was buried his supposedly satanically-tainted treasure of gold coins and his pet vulture (?). As the dirt was piled atop him, the evil Frenchman cursed the Strouds and vowed eventual vengeance upon them, so the modern day murders look to be a centuries-old curse in all-too-gruesome action.

I'll spare you the rest of the tedious story and simply tell you that the monster turns out to be an aged descendant of the evil Frenchman who happened to be a nuclear scientist dabbling in teleportation experiments in hope of transmitting himself into his ancestor's grave and absconding with the gold. What he didn't count on was the presence of the pet vulture's corpse, so for some idiotic reason his molecules fuse with those of the dead carrion-eater, and thus is born a pissed-off giant vulture with the fully-functioning head and mind of an old bald dude, plus it's big and powerful enough to carry away full-grown adults to its cliffside cave lair.

Is she registering terror or sheer hilarity?

So what we have here is a would-be horror-mystery that ludicrously cribs from THE FLY (1958) and doesn't even give us the courtesy of showing us the monster in full. Considering how feeble the rest of the film is, would it really have made much of a difference to have crafted even a cheesy marionette of a buzzard with a bald old man's head on it? I think not and I say we got gypped, bigtime. To put it bluntly, this is exactly the kind of thing that Count Floyd would get stuck with running on MONSTER CHILLER HORROR THEATRE. So much so that I could practically hear him grousing about its shoddy quality throughout its running time.

Damn, I wish Count Floyd had been on hand for this mess. Then there would at least have been some kind of excuse for it.

31 DAYS OF HORROR-DAY 4: CREEPSHOW (1982)

When CREEPSHOW was first announced, it seemed like a horror fan’s dream come true. It united legendary director George A. Romero — the genius behind the original versions of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD and DAWN OF THE DEAD, among other films of note — screenwriter Stephen King (if you have no idea who he is, did you just fly in from Iskandar or something?) and popular gore makeup artist Tom Savini (who did the shocking gore work for the original DAWN OF THE DEAD and then shot the slasher genre into cultural prominence with his groundbreaking effects in the first FRIDAY THE 13th, MANIAC, THE BURNING, and many others), and the film’s format was to be an anthology of five short stories, like a cinematic analog to an old E.C. horror comic (the kind that served to inspire King during his childhood). All of the high schoolers in my hometown who were horror addicts made sure to be there on opening night and what we got was a very mixed bag that has somehow come to be considered something of a classic, and for the life of me I cannot figure out why.

The film’s framing device involves a look into the household of a little boy whose asshole Alpha male dad reacts to his son’s interest in comics with the foaming-at-the-mouth rage one would expect if he’d caught the lad buggering the freshly butchered corpse of the neighbor’s daughter. The father rails against his son’s latest comic book acquisition, a copy of the titular CREEPSHOW, and throws it into the trash in spite of his son’s anguished protests. Once relegated to the trash, an eerie wind causes the pages of the comic to turn and the audience is shown five short stories of varying degrees of terror and/or interest:

“Father’s Day”

It’s a gathering of various relatives of a rich old bastard who was awful to his descendants while he was alive, and now, seven years after his death— murdered by his long-suffering daughter — they all congregate at their yearly Father's Day dinner. What they don’t expect is the rotten old fuck clawing his way from the grave as a moldering and malevolent zombie who wants his “goddamned cake.” If you’ve ever read any given vintage issue of TALES FROM THE CRYPT, THE VAULT OF HORROR, or THE HAUNT OF FEAR, you already know where this one goes.

An ending like something straight out of TALES FROM THE CRYPT.

This segment could have benefited from a much tighter edit because it’s simply too long for a yarn this slight that only exists to get to its none-too-surprising or scary visual punchline.

“The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill”

This segment is widely hailed as the weakest in the film and that’s not an unfair assessment, but it’s a damned shame because the core premise had potential. Dumbass hayseed Jordy Verrill (played by Stephen King to painfully broad and screechingly unfunny effect) finds a crashed meteor in his yard and makes the mistake of touching it. In no time, Jordy is covered with aggressively proliferating weeds of extra-terrestrial origin, and all they want to do is absorb moisture and continue growing.

Jordy Verrill or Alec Holland? You decide!

Jordy ends up looking like the trailer park answer to Swamp Thing and finally blows his own head off with a shotgun, but the weeds have grown all over the place, utterly infesting his house, fully taking over his yard and begging to spread beyond and down the road, and the TV weather report announces that the area is due for a massive rain storm… King’s performance is sub-HEE-HAW!-level and is painful to endure, a situation not at all aided by the segment’s unnecessary over-length.

“Something to Tide You Over”

A not bad infidelity revenge yarn starring Leslie Nielsen and Ted Danson (long before I knew who he was) that features a nasty bit of slow-death torture by burial up to the neck in the approaching high tide, a demise that leads to its victims returning as zombies to take out their tormentor.

If only Sam Malone could have been a zombie for a few seasons on CHEERS...

“The Crate”

The only genuinely scary segment, this has to do with a college professor (Hal Holbrook) who’s had it with his marriage to his embarrassingly boozy, sleazy harridan of a wife, Billie (Adrienne Barbeau), and the out that fate offers him when he discovers a crate beneath a forgotten stairwell in the basement of one of the college’s wings. The crate has been there and padlocked since around 1865, and it contains a vicious, ravenous monster with more razor-sharp teeth in its head than a Great White shark. After it savagely eats a couple of people, the professor sees the unexplained beast as the perfect way to dispose of his wife once and for all, so he sets in motion a plan to lure her into the creature’s grasp…Looking at this segment some thirty years on, I was struck by how the wife was indeed boozy, henpecking and annoying, but her behavior and words showed that she did love her husband in her own way (her booze-fueled outburst about his failure in the bedroom notwithstanding). I guess a film of this E.C. Comics-style nature did not have time to examine the complexities of such a relationship, but I now find the story’s treatment of Billie to be rather too simplistic and unfair. What she really needed was a good twelve-step program and some therapy, not to end up down the gullet of some toothy, insatiable Muppet.

“They're Creeping Up on You”

In which a rich neat-freak asshole (E.G. Marshall) discovers the hard way that his hermetically sealed and supposedly roach-proof home is anything but. Simply put, if you have any sort of roach-related phobias, avoid this segment like the plague. It’s not scary, per se, but its under-the-skin willies factor is perhaps unbeaten in cinema history.

So what CREEPSHOW ends up being is a conglomeration of a goodly amount of talent that came up with an overlong (at two hours) R-rated bigscreen spook-out that’s not as good as anything found on the HBO television series of TALES FROM THE CRYPT. I was very disappointed by this film when it came out and just after seeing it again for the first time in about twenty-five years, its waste of potential only serves to sadden me. Your kids might enjoy it — provided you have no problem with them sitting through the film’s R-rated language and gory stuff, which really isn’t all that bad — and, if truth be told, I like the cheaper, shorter CREEPSHOW 2 a hell of a lot better. I say let this stale chestnut remain an historical genre footnote and move on. I certainly won’t be returning to it.

31 DAYS OF HORROR-Day 1: NAIL GUN MASSACRE (1985)

During the infamous age of the "slasher" film, the 1980's, there were tons of movies released in the wake of the success of FRIDAY THE 13th (1980) that were merely excuses to showcase gory murders, most usually of teenagers who'd had the temerity to drink, smoke weed and have sex, and the avalanche of such films continued for most of the decade, regardless of the fact that most of them were utter garbage and not scary in the least. They were dirt-cheap to make and more often than not turned a profit, so bargain basement auteurs sought ever more theoretically interesting scenarios in which to turn the screen into an unabashed charnel house. The initial wave sought to ape FRIDAY THE 13th's calendar date motif and in no time about the only date or holiday that did not have a slasher film connected to it was Boxing Day, so once those had been used up the filmmakers turned to whatever else might work, including naming their movies after favored murder implements.

Perhaps the most viscerally-titled of that second slasher wave was NAIL GUN MASSACRE, a cheapjack Texas-lensed bodycount flick that, more so than most of its bloodthirsty brethren, almost totally dispensed with plot particulars and common logic to allow more screen time for the gory stuff. I'd heard about it since it came out but never saw it because, to the best of my recollection, it never played at either of the theaters in my home county that counted as grindhouses, County Cinema and the infamous Norwalk Theater. I'd pretty much ignored it because after having seen a few dozen cookie cutter slasher flicks, the vast majority of which completely sucked, I figured I had missed nothing. But, oh, how wrong I was!

The Red Queen: the individual responsible for convincing me to see NAIL GUN MASSACRE.

My friend the Red Queen is a fellow horror addict who also shares my love of bad/inept movies, and one day while discussing such cinematic fare, she asked me if I'd ever seen NAIL GUN MASSACRE, which she stated was a favorite of hers. I told her I had not seen it and when she found that out she launched into a heartfelt pitch to get me interested in the film, and as you've obviously guessed, the Queen totally convinced me. (I've learned over the years to listen when beautiful redheads make suggestions.) She stated how the movie was so bad that its ineptness in acting, plot, effects, and damned near every other element that goes into crafting a competent film was so severe that the film crossed the line into unintentional comedy of the type that is dear to bad movie connoisseurs, making it kind of the PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE of the slasher genre. I took her word for it and ordered the film from Amazon, after which I did some online checking and found her opinion to be one commonly held by several reviewers. Thus I anticipated untold anti-glories and when the movie found its way into my DVD player, I found myself the polar opposite of disappointed or ripped off.

WARNING: HERE THERE BE SPOILERS!

The film opens abruptly with a shot of a construction site and six burly workers hauling a struggling woman named Linda, later revealed to be one of the site's foremen, onto a pile of sand for a gang rape in broad daylight. Thankfully, the main event takes place off-camera and after a jump cut, we're in the misty/smoky backyard of one of the rapists as his dumpy hillbilly-looking wife hangs laundry (in the smoke, I might add) while their barefoot toddler meanders about. As the brutish husband rants and raves in the house and demands his wife's presence, who should step through the back door but a camo-suited, voice-altered, helmeted assailant with a nail gun. As of that moment, NAIL GUN MASSACRE steps over the precipice into bad horror flick immortality and does not stop to look back.

The exact moment when the glory commences.

Literally two minutes in and it already seems obvious that the killer is that woman who got violated right at the start of the film. The killer's figure is slight and the movements (and butt) are obviously those of a female, the altered voice of the nail gun-wielder sounds like Darth Vader's road show understudy, plus the motorcycle helmet's visor is about 95% obscured with duct tape so one cannot see the face of the person within, so what else are we to think other than that it's the rape victim? Anyway, the obnoxious rapist good ol' boy soon finds himself festooned with house-building nails, thus making him the first of a surprisingly high body count for one of these films.

The movie swiftly (further) devolves into a predictable suspense/scare-free escalating series of nail gun murders that take care of all the rapists, plus the killer moves on to murder random people for no reason whatsoever. It's eventually revealed that the killer is Bubba, either the brother or husband of the rape victim (I'm not sure which), and while his wish for vengeance on behalf of Linda is totally understandable, his sudden transformation into a bad one-liner spouting one-man murder factory is not. And once we know Bubba's the killer, the helmeted nail gun-wielder is no longer played by a woman. Ed Wood would have been proud.

I could go on in considerable detail but let it suffice to say that NAIL GUN MASSACRE is a triumph of awful acting, writing, and gratuitousness, all accented with a complete and utter lack of suspense/scariness in what is supposed to be a scary movie. Some of the finer points:

• As of 6:54 into the film:

Nice clearly inhuman boob job, honey. This picture does not begin to do the gravity-defying boobs in question justice and we get a very good look at them, more than enough time to determine their total un-relation to anything akin to actual mammalia. Instead they appear to be some kind of ad for then-futuristic skin-covered polymers.

• As of 7:45 into the film, the acting is already on par with that of a '70's-era shot-in-a-trailer-park porno, a la the incomparably wretched BAT PUSSY, so I was already quite amused.
• NAIL GUN MASSACRE contains more terrible one-liners than a fusion of that era's garden variety Arnold Schwarzenegger and Freddy Kreuger movies, and that's really saying something.
• It also features one of my very favorite elements of crappy /80's movies, namely truly bad songs written and performed for the film's soundtrack. Anything heard on the radio in the movie is cringe-worthy. (The greatest example of this trope would be "Dance with Me," as heard in the legendarily terrible NIGHT TRAIN TO TERROR, which I highly recommend.)
• There's a doctor character investigating the murders who could not seem any less interested if he tried, and when the doctor questions the daughter of a random guy who got killed by his swimming pool while cooking on a grill — that the portly victim ends up on top of and we see his supposedly dead body make the effort to grab a railing in back of the grill so he doesn't topple over — he refers to the killer as "her" before the possibility that the killer may be a woman is even brought up.
• The script tells us that after Linda was checked out by the doctor — who verifies that she was gang raped — and she reported the incident, clearly identifying all six of her assailants since they were all co-workers whom she saw every day at the construction site, so why were no arrests made? Also, I very much doubt she would have gone back to work at that site with those animals and continue to do so for some six months (stated in the script) after her ordeal, especially after the police failed to do a goddamned thing. Ridiculous.
• When the killer goes after a pair of annoying lovers on the hood of the driver's car, note that the woman registers no emotion of any kind as she re-does her bra while held at nail gun-point.

No fear, no curiosity, no surprise, no anything. It's a fascinating tour de force. Meryl Streep can suck it!

• I love how when that douchey doctor hauls Linda into his car and tells her what's going on regarding Bubba's rampage, we can't really hear what he says because his words are drowned out by the sounds of the car.
• The reveal that Bubba was actually the killer when all through the film the killer was very obviously played by a woman was a cheap cheat, therefore that much more amusing.
• The stirring car chase between the doctor's car and Bubba's hearse...WOW. I've been involved in more suspenseful races to the toilet after a meal at Texas Chili in Portchester.

And going back to Bubba turning out to be the killer, I get and agree with Bubba exacting vengeance on the actual rapists, but why kill innocent people as well? At the beginning of the film, we clearly see Linda being attacked by exactly six men. I went back and watched the movie again in fast-forward mode and excluding the six absolutely guilty parties, Bubba murders several people who had absolutely nothing to do with Linda's rape. The total body count is fifteen, which includes:

• the six rapists (all very visible at the beginning and absolutely guilty)
• a random hitchhiker whose only crime was flipping the bird when the hearse initially did not stop to give him a lift
• a girl found in a drainage ditch who we'd never seen before and whose murder we don't see, but the nails in her body proclaim the killer; we have no idea of the circumstances that led to her murder
• two lovers who hump against a tree in the woods (which looks incredibly uncomfortable, especially for the actress playing the woman; she looks like her back was likely shredded by tree bark)
• the friend who goes to look for the lovers in the woods
• the lovers on the car hood
• two girls out near the barn where Bubba apparently regroups between murders

So, other than the obvious answer of "in order to pad out the running time and add more kills," why did he kill the nine extra people? We get virtually zero screen time devoted to Bubba in the first place, so we know nothing about the guy or his mental state, but it is safe to assume that he was not some balls-out generally kill-crazed loon. His goal was to get revenge for what happened to Linda, so after that was done did he just go completely insane? The script offers no answers to any of this, which only gains it points on my ludicrousness scale.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

BAXTER (1989)

Once again I braved the realms of French cinema, and once again I got fisted up the ass.

I checked out BAXTER when it became available on DVD thanks to an intriguing trailer I saw for it some eighteen years ago in an "arthouse" movie theater, a setting that should have clued me in to exactly what kind of flick it would be. I've read about it having attained cult status for its offbeat concept, a narrative told from the point of view of a sociopathic Bull Terrier, so I was curious to see if it was as creepy as I'd been lead to believe, and now that I've finally seen the fucking thing I can honestly say that it wasn't worth the wait of nearly two decades.

Baxter (voiced by Maxime Leroux) is a dog whose head is filled with dark, anti-social, and just downright fucked-up thoughts, and we get to hear him go on and on about how much he hates everyone around him and how he wants to kill some of the people he lives with in various stages of the tale. His whispery French voice is admittedly kind of creepy, what with its cold delivery and all, but after about three minutes it becomes increasingly pretentious and I swear I wanted to put on a pair of pointy-toed cowboy boots and kick the annoying son of a bitch square in the batch.

We meet Baxter when he's given to an old lady as a present and he immediately takes a dislike to her, endlessly grousing about his unhappiness at being under her thumb at all times. But then things take an unexpected turn when the old lady goes insane for no apparent reason, suffers a hip injury, and refuses to venture past the first floor of her house or leave the place at all. When she tries to make the dog get into the bath with her he's spooked by how creepy it all is and bolts from the tub, causing the old nutjob to give chase and fall down the stairs to her death.

When the old lady's only remaining friend breaks into the house to see if she's alright, Baxter uses the opening of the front door to dart to the house across the street and move in with the horny young couple who live there. Finding welcome and companionship, Baxter is happy for a time, but then the young woman becomes pregnant and turns her attentions to her impending baby, neglecting Baxter in the process. Not comprehending her condition, Baxter assumes that she's sick — her scent has changed — and starts bemoaning his fate again. When the baby is born, Baxter works out a scheme in which the parents will leave the child in his care, and while they're off getting their hump on the baby will crawl into the backyard fountain and drown, after which Baxter will get their attention just a little too late for them to prevent a tragedy. But Baxter is, after all, just a fucking dog and not a homicidal mastermind, and he shoots his own plan in the foot (or paw) by barking too soon, thereby allowing the baby to be saved and sinking a potentially creepy subplot that we wasted our attention upon.

Haphazardly shoehorned into all of this is an ongoing look at the doings of an adolescent boy (Francois Draincourt) whose own family is crumbling from lack of communication and his father's adulterous adventures, leaving the kid with little in the way of parental attention or guidance. We witness the lad snipping pictures of Hitler and pals from vintage magazines, and we soon realize the boy is fixated on Nazis, fascism, and Hitler's last days in the bunker with Eva Braun. Obviously not right in the head, the kid spends most of his time in the makeshift replica bunker he's built in the local dump/junkyard, allowing his Third Reich fantasies to consume him. This aspect of the film could have gone somewhere incredibly dark and creepy, like the territory explored in Stephen King's excellent novella APT PUPIL (from the collection DIFFERENT SEASONS), but instead the film pussies out and the subplot ends up dull and pretentious.

Anyway, the kid ends up as the next of Baxter's owners, the young couple giving him away so they can concentrate all of their attention toward their baby, and at first it seems that Baxter has finally found a master more in line with his way of thinking.

A douchebag and his dog.

The kid puts the pooch through a regimen of exercise and attack dog training, greatly pleasing the beast and fulfilling its need for an "Alpha" in its life. The boy also puts the moves on a cute classmate, actually winning her over by comparing her beauty to that of Eva Braun (???), a move that actually gets him laid in the bowels of his bunker. Baxter also gets some poon out of the deal when the girl brings over her asshole dad's in-heat purebred bitch, whom Baxter slips a length and impregnates. When the pups are born the girl gives them to the creepy kid, and in no time he kills them just for the fuck of it, an act that Baxter greets with indifference. But after Baxter tears apart another dog who dares to enter his junkyard territory, the kid realizes Baxter's potential for savagery and destruction and begins to fear his pet. Baxter twigs to this and after his master commands him to attack a classmate for no reason, Baxter plots the murder of the Adolph-loving adolescent. You see, Baxter has no problem with killing if it has to do with defending one's territory or something like that which would make perfect sense to any dog, but being ordered to kill someone for no reason offends the beast, a character point that makes absolutely no sense when we recall all of the boring kvetching the fucking dog does about wanting to kill throughout the movie. Inevitably, Baxter goes after his boy in the junkyard, but when the terrified kid orders him to stop, Baxter obeys, his training taking over and natural subservience to his Alpha kicking in. The kid then picks up a nearby lead pipe and plays the drum solo to "Inna Gadda Da Vida" on the dog's head. As the camera pulled back to show us the dog's inert corpse and I readied myself to mock the screen with a cry of "I'm glad you're dead, you pretentious fuck!" the narration continued despite the dog's demise, proving conclusively that a character can continue to be a pompous, condescending bore even after death.

Often described as a horror movie, the film is neither scary nor creepy, and if anything it can best be written off as a failed attempt at black humor. It's well-made, but the whole thing comes off as sort of an anti-Toonces the Driving Cat in that it's an amusing idea that gets old very quickly but, unfortunately, doesn't provide the laughs one gets from seeing the unbelievably crappy hand puppet that played Toonces on SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE.

Toonces the Driving Cat: played-out, but still more entertaining than Baxter's pretentious ass.

Actively choosing to misrepresent the film as something with a real and visceral edge, Lionsgate plays up the "horror" angle with suggestive cover copy and an image of a snarling pit bull that looks like it's deep in the throes of 'roid rage (it's the image seen at the top of this post). That's no surprise considering how the dog in the film is actually a cute Bull Terrier of the Spuds McKenzie variety and not a Pit Bull Terrier of the Michael Vick variety, prompting the DVD to fudge the beast's bloodthirsting attributes rather than present the actual poster image from the film's theatrical release:

"One of the best films of the year," my beige ass!

This pussified image would have turned off anyone looking to see people getting their nuts ripped off by a slavering hell-hound, and those who had never seen the original poster will be none the wiser. But not you, dear reader. Now you know the score, and know not to waste either your time or money on this — please forgive me, but I can't resist — utter dog of a film. And knowing is half the battle! G.I. JOOOOOOOE!!!

TRUST YER BUNCHE!!!

PLANET OF THE VAMPIRE WOMEN (2011)

As you've probably gathered after reading enough of my reviews, I'm a tough audience and that critical eye certainly extends to the cheesy stuff I sit through. I love low-budget/B movies, provided they entertain me and provide me with something fun to sit through. In the case of PLANET OF THE VAMPIRE WOMEN, I did not think it was terrible, but I cannot say I enjoyed it or that I would recommend it.

The plot follows a crew of infamous space pirates who rob an orbiting casino/brothel of cash and an antique space cruiser, and what befalls them when they are subsequently pursued by a dogged police officer (Jawara Duncan). After unnecessarily spending a half hour leading up to the heist and providing viewers with a bevy of nekkid titties, the pirates head to a mysterious planetoid where their captain (Paquita Estrada) is possessed by a strange parasitic entity that turns her into a vampire (which is convenient since she already looks like a Goth dominatrix, only she's black). After killing one of her crew (who subsequently rises as a vampire minion), the captain escapes the ship and heads for the mysterious ruins on the planet's surface, where evidence of an advanced but extinct civilization reveals how disembodied vampiric presences wiped out the indigenous populace. More vampirism ensues as the remainder of the crew pursues the captain and eventually discovers the secret of the parasitic entities and realizes that the creatures must not be allowed to venture from the planet lest they spread throughout the universe.

That setup is rife with promise and could have made for quite a memorable little bit of fun, but the key problem here is pacing that redefines the word "lugubrious." The first half-hour was padded out to a merciless degree and considering the setup of the heist and the need for exposition on who the characters are, all of that stuff leading up to and including the crash-landing could have been accomplished in ten minutes rather than thirty. Gratuitous nudity is always fun and chase scenes can be entertaining, but not when they're so clearly being used to cover up the fact that nothing is going on in the narrative for long stretches.

Once the crash has happened, it was yet more drugged-Brontosaurus pacing that went nowhere. That was a shame because even with the minimal exposition and characterizations, we were given enough info about the main characters to get that they could have been much more interesting if they had been served by a tighter script. A movie like this could get by with having its characters engaging in interesting/clever dialogue while running around on that hostile planet, but what there was of the dialogue was too sparse and did nothing to alleviate the drag factor. The only characters who truly generated interest were former-Marine Maldonado (Liesl Hanson, looking very butch-cute), cyborg Automatic Jones (Keith Letl), drug-addicted and officially disgraced Doctor Calaveras (Stephen Vargo) and Astrid Corvair (Stephanie Hyden), a smart and sunny pleasure-clone with the ability to change her appearance with a suggestive flick of her hips (whom I liked rather a lot, despite her being a less-gratuitous and comparatively non-violent Cutey Honey knockoff), and the four of them could have easily carried a whole movie without having to resort to the whole staler-than-stale vampire trope. For example, when questioned about displaying what seems to be an uncharacteristic and considerable amount of knowledge about alien archaeology, the bubbly Astrid, who up to this point seemed to be little more than a dumb blonde stereotype with a gimmick, cheerily replies, "There's a lot of down time between all the fucking and sucking. I read a lot." If only the rest of the script displayed such wit.

Exploring the mysterious planet.

I could go on, but I won't. The effort that went into it was all there on the screen and its low-budget in no way detracts from its potential. In fact its DIY qualities added to its charm, giving it a feel like a gene-splicing of PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES, ALIEN, RED DWARF, JASON OF STAR COMMAND and the third season of LOST IN SPACE, with acres of tits thrown in for good measure. So basically my problems with it all come down to terrible pacing and a script that needed a lot more work. When seeking to overcome budgetary limitations, a script for a story like this needs to either be as serious and taut as a heart attack, or else it needs to be flat-out funny, and this script did not have enough of either to fully work for me. But, as previously stated, I'm a tough room and I am also not clairvoyant, so I can't predict how well PLANET OF THE VAMPIRE WOMEN may work for you.

KUNG FU FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE (1982)

I first heard of this one while watching the fight scene highlights videotape THIS IS KUNG FU with a bunch of equally-stoned friends back in 1989, and we simply could not fucking believe what we saw when the tape opened with the literally jaw-dropping trailer for this flick. Along with all manner of bizarro Chinese mythology-specific creatures and weirdness, the trailer featured tag lines that mangled the English language to an alarming degree (example:"Ghost seeking revenge evils are deadly scared!" and "Human heart annoying both spirits and human!), and my friends and I watched the trailer over and over in disbelief, vowing to someday find and watch this surefire classic of lysergic chopsocky madness.

Packaging art for the Ocean Shores VHS release from the '80's, a tape that took me four years to track down.

I finally found the movie about four years later in a cheesy hole-in-the-wall video store that was going out of business, a victim of the Disneyfication of Times Square and it cost me around ten bucks (about five bucks too much for a beat-up used copy), but I finally had the object of my relentless quest. The wait was worth it, because the martial arts were pretty good and the script is a ludicrous dialogue fan's wet dream.

Starring Indonesian martial arts cult figure Billy Chong — who starred in the rather similar, though way more coherent, KUNG FU ZOMBIE (also 1982) — the film chronicles the young hero's quest for vengeance against the rat bastard who murdered his father, a quest instigated by the pissed-off ghost of the hero's dad. The murderous rat bastard is played by none other than Lo Lieh, star of the film that kicked off the 1970's kung fu movie boom, the classic FIVE FINGERS OF DEATH (1971, released in the U.S. in 1972), but here he's playing one of his many, many outright villains and it's always a pleasure to see him be just plain unabashedly evil. Realizing that the son may come after him and hand him a well-earned ass-kicking, the bad guy hires an evil kung fu priest/sorcerer to handle things for him, and the evil sorcerer gets up to a shitload of black magic and suchlike over the course of the film, including one of the most memorable (to say nothing of ludicrous) moments in the entire history of cinema. The prize goes to a scene wherein the villainous sorcerer realizes he's about to get his ass kicked, so he throws some spells into the air and screams "Count Dracula! Come to my aid!" The second he says this, the sky turns to night, the full moon pops up, a wolf howls and then from out of nowhere fucking Count Dracula himself — the only white guy in the entire film — swoops from out of the sky screaming "I'M COMING!!! HAHAHAHAHAH!!!"

The justly infamous Count Dracula sequence.

And don't ask how the hero and the eerie aides he gathers finally defeat the sorcerer (hint: it involves the aid of a bunch of prostitutes who are experiencing "monthly women's concerns"). To say more would give away shit that you just won't believe, so I leave you to rent this and discover its ultra-bizarro wonders for yourself. Illegal smokables and alcoholic beverages are recommended for maximizing the fun, and it's a real crowd-pleaser/baffler when shown to a roomful of willing attendees. A unique cinematic experience, TRUST YER BUNCHE and snag this one as soon as possible.

Packaging art for the most recent DVD release. You'll note they got the title wrong.

EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC (1977)

A portent of impending scares, or an invitation to yucks? You decide!

 

One of the universe's greatest truisms is that whenever anything is successful, a sequel is inevitable, so when William Friedkin's adaptation of William Peter Blatty's THE EXORCIST (1973) raked in the samoleons at the box office (over 66 mil in early-1970's dollars, and that ain't hay!) it was only a matter of time until a followup graced the screen. But any sequel to THE EXORCIST would have been a daunting task. How to follow an instant classic that shattered onscreen taboos regarding language, religious improprieties (Ouch! That crucifix!) and truly creative cussing while maintaining the high standard of quality set by the original would have proved daunting to any writer or director, and as per the nature of sequels one would assume that the general public would have been expecting more of the same, perhaps with the blasphemous ante being cranked up a notch or two. So what to do in order to meet the public's expectations and make an assload of box office at the same time? The answer to that question cannot be found in 1977's EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC, a literally unholy mess of a film whose reputation as possibly the single worst sequel in major motion picture history seems pretty much set in stone. 

Helmed by world-class oddball director John Boorman, the guy who gave us DELIVERANCE (1973) and the jaw-dropping Sean Connery vehicle ZARDOZ (1974), EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC unwisely chooses to focus on the possibility that Reagan McNeal (Linda Blair, reprising the role that made her famous) may still harbor memories of the excruciating details of her exorcism some three years prior to the events of this film. Sent by the Vatican to dig up all the necessary dirt while investigating the death of the priest who performed Reagan's excorcism — Father Merrin (Max Von Sydow, reprising his role as a much younger version of his character in the original film) — Father Philip Lamont (Richard Burton, looking and acting like he's in the midst of a week-long bender) journeys to Manhattan where a high school-aged Reagan lives and volunteers at a bizarro clinic that helps the mentally ill/challenged. The place is run by Dr. Tuskin (Louise Fletcher, here pulling a total one-eighty from her Oscar-winning role as Nurse Ratched in ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST), who breaks out this trippy-looking strobe light and bio-feedback headsets that looked like something you'd have found in a head shop at the time and uses it to hypnotize Reagan into remembering her forgotten experience of demonic possession. That turns out to be a bad idea because the second Reagan's fully under she starts sounding like Lucille Ball during her autumn years, her face gets all evil and fucked-up-looking, and the demon identifies itself as Pazuzu, a malevolent ancient Assyrian wind spirit and "one of the lords of the air." 

Whoa, dude! Trippy! But not scary.

  

As of that point the film nosedives into a nigh-incomprehensible mess of questioned faith, misguided attempts at psychedelia, bullshit psychobabble, flashbacks to Father Merrin's first exorcism, all manner of bizarre mystic visions and mumbo-jumbo, accented with Linda Blair performing in an utterly awful chorus line production of "Lullaby of Broadway," and the unforgettable sight of James Earl Jones as an African holy man in a ridiculous locust costume. It all culminates in a confusing fistfight between Father Lamont and Pazuzu in the form of Reagan's evil twin, a bout settled when the good Reagan arrives and fends off a swarm of demonically-controlled locusts by imitating the movements made by Jones' character during his youth as he used a bull-roarer to drive the evil bugs from his village, all while father Lamont literally tears out Pazuzu's heart.  

Now this is what the audience craved to see: Linda Blair battling locusts.

  

A lot more crazy shit happens, and if any of this sounds coherent, let me assure you that it isn't. 

When I first saw EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC during its network television premiere — the night after THE EXORCIST, so the edited-for-TV version of that was fresh in my mind — I watched it with my mom, and the two of us nearly laughed ourselves to death. To this day we can still crack each other up with random quotes from the film ("Pazuzu will help me find Kokumo!!!"), and while it is an unmitigated turd storm, I must confess to finding it entertaining as hell, and loaded to the gills with visuals that bring to mind Alejandro Jodorowsky in his more accessible moments. Boorman's visual imagination was given free reign, and the film is replete with beautiful and bizarre imagery and gorgeous cinematography. Too bad there wasn't a script good enough to properly complement Boorman's vision. Perhaps the saddest thing about EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC is that when it is carefully examined, there are the building blocks for what could have been a genuinely good and scary film that could have used the original flick as a starting point and really run with some of the story's themes. My two major points on this are as follows:

• The first thing they should have done was lose Reagan entirely; she was successfully rid of demonic influence at the end of the first story, and not much the worse for wear thanks to having psychologically blocked out the entire hellish experience. By bringing her back when her arc was clearly over and done with for audiences who demand more of the same — or at the behest of studio execs who can't think beyond the immediately familiar — , the film renders Father Merrin's heroic efforts and sacrifice, as well as Father Karras', without meaning or impact, pissing all over the power of Catholicism that supposedly saved Reagan's soul. And when we find out that demons like Pazuzu run around possessing folks like Reagan because they are so pure and good that they have what amounts to superpowers, it throws a cheesy X-Men kind of vibe over the proceedings.
• The film should have focused on Father Lamont's investigative efforts and his own crisis of faith in the face of the returned Pazuzu (who, by the way, was not identified in the original, but was implied to be the Devil himself; by having Pazuzu turn out to be pretty much just a badassed grasshopper, his terror level is considerably diminished). Lamont's tracing of Kokumo, the kid long ago exorcised by Merrin, could have gone down many fascinating and potentially terrifying avenues, all of which could have been well served by Boorman's imagination. The interaction between the Christian, specifically Catholic, powers that be and their opposite numbers has fueled horror stories from day one, and it wouldn't have taken too much effort to have come up with a great Campbellish "hero's journey" for Lamont that would have seen him lose his faith only to have it restored in the aftermath of the throwdown with Pazuzu. The long-running Vertigo comics series HELLBLAZER pulled off many such stories as a matter of course, so there's really no excuse, especially when tons of money are thrown into such a project (yes, I know HELLBLAZER was bastardized up the ass for the awful CONSTANTINE movie, so I won't even go there).

So, yes, EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC is a spectacular misfire, but there's too much good material to be found amidst this cinematic dog's breakfast to fully write it off as one of the worst films ever made. I've certainly seen far worse, both from low-budget schlockmeisters like Al Adamson and from the major studios, and unlike many other bad films, at least EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC entertained the crap out of me, something I cannot say about would-be blockbusters like SKY CAPTAIN AND THE WORLD OF TOMORROW, PEARL HARBOR, or LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD. Give EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC a second chance, and this time while you're laughing take note of the cool shit it possesses (sorry) and grieve for what could have been a glorious entry in the horror genre.

Poster from the original theatrical release.