31 DAYS OF HORROR 2021 -Day 21 - THE GREEN SLIME (1968)

Before ALIENS, there was...THE GREEN SLIME!!!

For kids who grew up in the Tri-State area and were blessed with THE 4:30 MOVIE, THE GREEN SLIME was one of the most beloved classics when the show ran Monster Week or Science-Fiction Week (it easily fit into both and thus saw double-duty). I hadn’t seen it since the late-1970’s but I know plenty of folks my age who still talk about it with great affection, so in the interest of this blog’s frequent rustling up of old flicks I’ve hankered to sit through it again and review it. That quest was thwarted for years thanks to the film not being available on home video, a state I found confusing thanks to all manner of far lesser shit being readily obtainable, but at long last it's out on DVD, so I finally got to see it again.

THE GREEN SLIME is a Japanese/American co-production that falls into a category I lovingly call “movies that would have happened if a ten-year-old boy had the means to make a feature film” and it’s bizarre for a number of reasons, chief of which (for me) is the look and feel of a Japanese movie of its period only featuring an entirely Caucasian cast. The story involves a space station becoming infested with man-sized, multi-eyed tentacled wigglies that replicate at an incredible rate, feed on energy and can electrocute anyone who comes into physical contact with them, a situation that eventually results in the need to evacuate the station and blow it up so the monsters don’t reach the Earth and inevitably wipe out mankind.

This dire situation plays out as viewers bear witness to an awkward love triangle between the station’s commanding officer, Vince Elliot (Richard Jaekel), his hot redheaded fiancée, (THUNDERBALL’s pouty and oh-so-mouthwateringly Italian Luciana Paluzzi playing — now get this — “Lisa Benson”) and higher-ranking Commander Jack Rankin (Robert Horton); back in the days, Rankin and Elliot were best friends and Lisa Benson (*snicker*) was in love with Rankin, but she dumped him in favor of Elliot once she twigged to the fact that Rankin was a major control-freak and towering asshole, an aspect immediately noticeable to anyone who spends even three minutes in his noxious presence.

  Commander Rankin (Robert Horton) and "Lisa Benson" (Luciana Paluzzi). Sorry, but I couldn't resist putting up a shot of the unmitigated Pastaland fineness that is "the Looch."

Before the shit with the alien monsters goes down, Rankin is sent on an unrelated mission to Elliot’s space station and given total command, much to Elliot’s undisguised displeasure, so from the moment he arrives the bad blood boils and it’s a childishly macho Alpha Male pissing contest with Lisa caught in the middle. (This triangle and the way it’s written/played feels like an examination of complex adult emotions as interpreted by a guy who’s never had a romantic relationship, such as a ten-year-old boy.)

The relationship subplot really doesn’t add anything to the story other than to continuously provide examples of what a fucking douche Rankin is and point out Elliot’s questionable qualifications for commanding anything, let alone a space station, thanks to him being “too nice” and having problems with those who outrank him (although, to be fair, I can’t think of anyone who wouldn’t want to knock Rankin’s teeth out of his smug, smirking face). I suppose the subplot was left in the international cut of the film in order to give the grownups who took their kids to the matinee something by way of “adult” content, but from what I hear the Japanese cut is around thirteen minutes shorter and totally eliminates the love triangle stuff, thus allowing full attention to focus on what put asses in seats in the first place: creepy, nasty wigglies with flailing tentacles and the laser rifle-equipped spacemen who fight them with extreme prejudice.

But, soap opera histrionics notwithstanding, THE GREEN SLIME is good fun and will most likely be enjoyed by your kids if you expose them to it. And no discussion of this film would be complete without mention of its hilariously inappropriate and ultra-psychedelic theme song, a tune that fans of the film will break into at the drop of a hat. I mean, how many “acid rock” tunes can you name that combine all the most clichéd elements of that musical genre with vocals more suited to a lame Las Vegas number and mention of “Greeeeeeen Sliiiiiiiime?” Sheer insane brilliance, plus you get that hot-assed Luciana Paluzzi — unfortunately it’s a kid’s movie so no low-cut gowns, leather motorcycle gear or foxy swimsuits — so it’s a cheesy win/win.

Poster for the American theatrical release.

31 DAYS OF HORROR 2021 - Day 20: ATTACK OF THE 50-FOOT WOMAN (1958)

A blatant example of false advertising.

It’s funny how one’s perceptions change as one gets older.

I first saw the infamous ATTACK OF THE 50 FOOT WOMAN (1958) when I was about ten years old, already aware of its status as one of the supposedly worst films ever made, and at the time I couldn’t help but agree. The dialogue and acting were ludicrous and overwrought even by 1950’s B-movie standards, several scenes meant to take place at night were clearly shot in broad daylight — a “technique” made immortal in Ed Wood’s masterpiece, PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE (1959) — the special effects were the polar opposite of anything resembling special, and the awesome gigantress depicted on the poster didn’t go on a city-destroying orgy of destruction. In short, everything that your average kid would find disappointing in a giant-monster-on-the-loose flick.

The film continues to be maligned to this day and in many ways deserves the derision so gleefully heaped upon it for nearly half a century, but having just seen it again last weekend for the first time in over thirty years I have to say that my adult tastes have caught up with its cheapjack charms. I fucking love bad movies, and in every way ATTACK OF THE 50 FOOT WOMAN stands as one of the more intriguing examples of the whole misbegotten genre.

Kind of a WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLFE? by way of THE AMAZING COLOSSAL MAN, the story revolves around boozy heiress Nancy (Allison Hayes) and her flagrant failure of a marriage to equally boozy adulterous douchebag Harry Archer (William Hudson), a nonchalant heel who’s only in it for access to the wife’s fortune. Apparently Nancy's had a history of psychological problems and has recently returned from a stint in the local rubber room, supposedly okay enough to function in society but still a bit nutso around the edges. Her shaky mental state isn't helped in the least by her constant 1950’s-style drunkenness, or her husband’s totally in-her-face affair with the town pump, the gloriously sleazy Honey Parker, played to fantastic bad-girl extremes by the too-hot-to-handle Yvette Vickers.

Honey and Harry, vile 1950's adulterers and gold-diggers of the lowest order.

Harry’s such a prick that he hangs out with Honey in an open booth at Tony’s — apparently the town’s only bar & grill — all the while guzzling from highball glasses brimming with scotch and engaging in public lip-locks that look like the two of them are trying to suck each other’s innards up their necks.

It’s pretty smarmy stuff for the fifties and is still rather torrid even by today’s standards, evoking the feel of cheap bus station pulp fiction paperbacks replete with tough guys getting it on in smoky hotel rooms with easy floozies (an ambiance augmented by a great score that knows when to turn on the swelter).

One night while driving aimlessly (and kind of bombed) about some back roads, Nancy encounters a spherical spacecraft that houses a bald giant who makes a grab for her.

Eat your heart out, ILM!

The famously phony fake hand jiggles and wobbles as it attempts to pick her up, causing Nancy to shriek, abandon her car, and haul ass straight into town. When she arrives she seeks out Harry, but he’s too busy getting a bit of stink-finger so he asks the sheriff’s deputy to cover for him, saying that he wasn’t at Tony’s. An hysterical Nancy then convinces the cops to drive her back to the site of her close encounter, but when they get to her abandoned car there’s no trace whatsoever of a five-story Telly Savalas. Pissed that the cops don’t believe her, Nancy returns home to find comfort in good old booze.

When Harry finally returns home Nancy confronts him about where the fuck he was when she was freaking out, but he simply pours himself a drink, lies about his whereabouts, and slips her a sedative. The drug acts swiftly, coupled as it is with about three stiff drinks, and in no time Nancy’s about to pass out. Harry carries her up the stairs and puts her to bed, undressing her and tucking her in while her altered state of consciousness allows the deep hurt that she feels to roll forth undisguised by anger or false bravado, revealing a wounded and vulnerable woman who admits that she desperately needs Harry. As she fades into unconsciousness, his name pathetically on her lips, he removes her lightbulb-sized diamond, the Star of India, from around her neck, fondles it like it was his own nutsack, and drops it into his pocket. He then calls a doctor to evaluate Nancy’s mental state, the first step in having her re-committed, thereby gaining control of her wealth. After that Harry hightails it back to the bar to face the wrath of his mistress, a fit of pique that immediately cools once she sees the Star of India. The two then plot Nancy’s downfall in earnest before practically fucking the shit out of each other in their favorite booth.

The next day Harry returns the diamond figuring it’ll be his soon enough, and Nancy’s fresh as a daisy (read “sober”), demanding Harry accompany her into the desert to find the giant. He reluctantly obliges, thinking she’s finally gone round the bend, but then they spot the giant’s sphere and pull up to investigate. Beside herself with joy over not being insane, Nancy whoops and hollers, thereby attracting the giant who hauls her into his craft. Harry, after taking a few potshots at the big guy, then turns tail and leaves his wife to her fate. When he returns to town he makes up some story about Nancy’s whereabouts and prepares to run off with Honey, but then Nancy throws a monkey wrench into the works but turning up dazed but alive. Traumatized, Nancy is in no time doped up and imprisoned in her room in a state of utter helplessness while under psychiatric care, in other words the perfect time for Harry to administer a fatal overdose (a tactic charmingly suggested by his floozy).

During all of this mishegoss, the sheriff and Nancy’s gay Lurch of a butler retrace her path and locate the spaceship. There they find the Star of India amidst a hodgepodge of dime store-acquired “futuristic” gizmos and deduce that the alien wasn’t after Nancy, just her enormous bling-bling to serve as a power source for his sphere. They also figure out that while on board the spaceship she was exposed to high doses of some unknown radiation, and since this is the 1950’s you know what that means…

Finally working up the nerve to poison Nancy, Harry climbs the stairs, hypodermic at the ready, when he opens the door and finds Nancy has turned into — what else? — a gigantic mutant.

NOTE: we’re supposed to believe she’s about fifty feet tall, as per the flick’s title, but her body still somehow fits into her bedroom. But that’s unimportant since we never see any part of her while indoors except for the huge rubber hand that once represented the giant spaceman, now free of hair so it looks more feminine.

Drugged out of her mind and chained to her bed, Nancy languishes while her husband continues to sloppily cavort with Honey. Then she has the decency to awaken, flail her huge hand about the place while bellowing “HARRY!!!” and demolish her house.

Still screaming for her unfaithful husband, Nancy strides in all her bikini-clad glory into town, rips the roof off of Tony’s — which coincidentally causes chunks of masonry to topple and crush Honey — grabs Harry (or more accurately the actor walks into the giant rubber hand and wraps its fingers about himself), hauls an obviously mis-scaled doll of him through the ceiling, drops him to his death, and then commits suicide by grabbing some live power cables (the same way out chosen in WAR OF THE COLOSSAL BEAST). THE END.

If ATTACK OF THE 50 FOOT WOMAN sounds schlocky, it certainly is, but it only gets labeled as one of the all-time worst movies ever made for its admittedly horrendous special defects. The core story, space-giant notwithstanding, is a solid fifties B-picture about a fucked-up marriage, a heartless husband, and a wife’s pain over her spouse’s towering assholism. The three actors who bring life to the tawdry triangle give entertaining, professional performances in spite of a script that does everything short of shooting them in the head at point blank range to sabotage them, with Yvette Vickers owning the movie as a husband-stealing archetype.

Yvette Vickers, rockin' at the road house.

And the fifty-foot woman herself, Allison Hayes, was no slouch either, chewing the scenery as Nancy and having looks and attitude that remind me of Mariska Hargitay's earthy beauty with a touch of the porn-years Traci Lords poutiness.

I particularly like her in the scene where the looped Nancy pours her heart out to Harry and he feigns tenderness while undressing her. It’s a one-sided moment of tragic need where we see just how sad Nancy is, and how Harry couldn't possibly care less about her heartfelt entreaties for love. A small moment of realism in what is otherwise a soap opera with a couple of fantastic elements thrown in, the scene resonates to anyone who has ever been in a relationship where their lover is a taker who will just use them until they are all used up.

One-sided intimacy at its saddest.

It’s also a bit erotic, reminding me of the times I’ve returned home with a woman after some hard partying, and she wants nothing more than to go to sleep, trusting me to gently help her out of her clothes and usher her off to dreamland unmolested (we can always make osh-osh after she’s well-rested and sober). The times that I’ve done this I quite enjoyed it, savoring the intimate trust of caring for someone who’s nearly helpless thanks to inebriation, and enjoying the slow, sensuous peeling off of clothing until all that’s left is curvy, womanly skin, the primal beauty of which just leaves me speechless…

Sorry. I got a little distracted.

So now I see ATTACK OF THE 50 FOOT WOMAN in a totally new light, an understanding made possible by knowing all too well about alcoholic excesses and the agony of a broken heart. Sure it’s cheesy, but it’s a lot better than you’ve been led to believe.

Poster from the theatrical release. If for nothing else, the film should be forever remembered for this completely excellent (and utterly misleading) poster.

31 DAYS OF HORROR -Day19: DESTROY ALL MONSTERS (1968)

Undisputed classic, or the most over-rated giant monster flick ever made? 

To fans of the daikaiju genre there are a handful of films that are generally considered to be inviolate classics of the form, movies like the pre-Americanized version of GOJIRA (1954), RODAN (1956), MOTHRA (1961), GODZILLA VS. MOTHRA (1964), GHIDRAH, THE THREE-HEADED MONSTER (1964), and MONSTER ZERO (1965). But there's one rubber-suited, city-stompin' teriyaki terror-fest that is almost universally hailed as "the greatest Japanese monster movie of all time" and that would be 1968's DESTROY ALL MONSTERS, a film that would clear the streets of kids if it were known to be playing on THE 4:30 MOVIE during my early youth as part of that series' celebrated and semi-frequent "Monster Week" (the other film that could be counted on to have that affect on afterschool playtime was JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS). Many a fan of the Toho monster opuses gets a wistful look on their face when mention is made of DESTROY ALL MONSTERS — DAM for short — but, despite a lifelong loyalty to Godzilla, his colleagues in urban renewal and their far-fetched adventures, I'm here to call "bullshit" on DAM once and for all and hopefully find others who share my opinion. By the time the Godzilla flicks reached the point when DAM was ready to roll, there had been a marked shift in the function of Big G and his fellows that saw the once dreaded anthropomorphizations of the horrors of atomic radiation now being cast in the role of the implacable protectors of the Earth, and while the movies remained fun they also veered ever steadily into kiddie movie territory. In my opinion that course in content was firmly in place as of MONSTER ZERO, but that shift definitely worked within the context of that film — Godzilla's infamous "victory jig" notwithstanding — and the somewhat spare quality of the film made the threat of Devo-looking invaders from Planet X quite intimate and unquestionably dire. 

MONSTER ZERO's would-be invaders from Planet X, moments before breaking into an encore of "Gates of Steel." 

Even the film's requisite "human interest" subplot engages the audience and actually figures seamlessly into the story's conclusion, and if you ask me no original-era Godzilla movie succeeded so well from a narrative standpoint from MONSTER ZERO onward. The Godzilla films had pretty much said all they had to say, both in terms of symbolic commentary on nuclear arms proliferation and general entertainment, so any subsequent pictures would have virtually no choice but to be a re-hash of what had come before. But how to keep the series going and keep asses in seats? Simple answer: excess, excess, excess, all at the cost of the elements that made the Toho monster cycle so engaging in the first place. (That way of thinking was also exhibited in the James Bond series as evidenced in 1965's THUNDERBALL, an overblown and bloated "spectacle" outing that began the Bond films' long stretch of creatively-arrested development and repetition.) DESTROY ALL MONSTERS can be seen as a more elaborate remake of MONSTER ZERO, only one in which the interesting human elements are replaced with a dull and faceless group of space-force astronaut heroes who are virtually interchangeable, and the threat to the Earth is both perfunctory and uninteresting, marked only by the fact that the silver wimple-clad alien invaders of the piece, the Kilaaks (love that name!), are all females. 

 The Kilaaks: has a bunch of would-be world-conquerors ever looked more like they'd be right at home during a '70's-era Parliament show? 

Their plot for conquest isn't even original, what with being a bald-faced swipe of Planet X's idea of mind-controlling the Earth's giant monsters and using the unstoppable behemoths to cause catastrophic destruction on a massive scale, but in MONSTER ZERO the plan hinged on the enslavement of only Godzilla and Rodan and later the space-monster King Ghidorah (or "Ghidrah" as he's known in the West). In DAM, the Kilaaks mind control the titanic inhabitants of Ogasawara Island, aka "Monster Land" — a Pacific marine research island not to be confused with the later and better known Monster Island — and turn them loose all over the globe, which in some cases is quite spectacular (Gorosaurus' attack on the Arc De Triumphe from underground is pretty cool, and Godzilla's virtuoso atomic flame curveball assault on the United Nations building is delicious giant monster showboating at its best), but other than the expanded scale, this is very much a case of "been there, done that." 

I'd say the reason most people give this film the kind of adulation it receives has everything to do with many of its supporters not having seen it since childhood and the fact that it's got every Toho giant monster "star" in it, with the notable exceptions being the Japanese version of King Kong (as seen in KING KONG VS. GODZILLA and KING KONG ESCAPES), brothers Sanda and Gaira (from the memorable WAR OF THE GARGANTUAS), space-jellyfish Dogorah (from DOGORAH THE SPACE MONSTER) and the charmingly ludicrous giant version of Frankenstein (from FRANKENSTEIN CONQUERS THE WORLD). Unfortunately, while those critters didn't make the cut, non-entities like Varan the Unbelievable, Gorosaurus and Manda are included, along with the utterly unwanted return of Minya (or "Minilla," according to Toho's spelling), the supposed son of Godzilla, also known and loathed by Westerners as "Baby Godzilla." Minya is a character that I have never liked, not even as a child, and I have yet to find a daikaiju fan from anywhere on the globe, not even Japan, who can stand him in the least. His antics are not cute but insufferable, and I would love to see his unformed, quasi-mongoloid/tadpole-looking ass blown into showering, smoking chunks of foam rubber by a judiciously-placed Specium blast from the skilled hands of professional inter-galactic monster-slaying badass Ultraman. 

The awesome Ultraman unleashes his famous Specium beam, a weapon that blew the motherfucking shit out of damned near every monster he turned it against. If only he'd met Minya... 

Bottom line: with the exception of the sheer number of giant beasts, everything that allegedly makes DESTROY ALL MONSTERS a classic can be had to much greater effect in MONSTER ZERO — which is available on home video in a great edition featuring both the subtitled Japanese version and the dubbed US release in gorgeous re-mastered widescreen — so enough with the dubious pleasures of DAM, already! Sit your kids through the better alternative instead.

Poster for the American theatrical release.

31 DAYS OF HORROR 2018-Day 18 : GE GE GE NO KITARO: KITARO AND THE MILLENNIUM CURSE (2008)

                                    Medama Oyaji searches the internet in the yokai library.

Yokai hero Kitaro (Eiji Weitz) and his yokai friends and family return in this immediate sequel to  their previous outing, and I have to be honest and say up front that results, while not bad, are rather tepid.

                                                                      Kitaro investigates.

The plot has to do with a 1000-year-old yokai's spirit being unsealed after she was captured and exorcised via a ritual involving five sacred musical instruments, and once unleashed she goes on a rampage of soul-collecting. Her activities catch the attention of Kitaro and friends, and their investigation brings them into contact with a human teenager whom they befriend. The girl turns out to be part of the bloodline of those who sealed the angry yokai a millennia ago and she is the last of the reincarnated line, so the clock is running out for her. Kitaro and his yokai gang must collect the five sacred instruments and perform the sealing ritual before things get further out of hand, but there's more going on than just a vengeful spirit running around, and does spirit really deserve the fate that was handed to her?

Kitaro in warrior mode.

This installment veers into the franchise's darker side, but its darkness is a lot lighter than its marketing would have us believe. Yes, the Kitaro franchise is noted more for its Japanese take on the macabre realm of humor in which mythical creatures encounter human beings as a part of everyday normality, and the stories featuring those elements work fine, but the franchise also often drops the wacky flavor and veers into scary weirdness. Those who study world mythology and legends know and understand the yokai as manifestations of aspects of nature and other things that affect the Japanese way of life, and to western eyes and minds they can seem more absurd than terrifying, but if one lets go of western thinking and learns to absorb the distinctly Japanese flavor of tales of the yokai, the two sides of Kitaro stories are more easily digested. Personally, speaking as a lifelong freak for world mythology and legends, Kitaro has always been up my alley, so I will always check out any kitaro manga, anime, or whatever that I can get my hands on. KITARO AND THE MILLENNIUM CURSE is just kind of "meh," which is shame, but considering how much Kitaro is out there — the franchise has been going strong for just over sixty hears, with its most recent anime series airing in 2018 — it was bound to produce a mediocre effort every now and then. That said, don't let this weak tea of a movie stop you from further exploration of the world of GEGEGE NO KITARO. It's a wondrous, creepy landscape with many, many stories to enjoy.

Poster for the theatrical release.

31 DAYS OF HORROR 2021 -Day 17: THE DEVIL'S REJECTS (2005)

“Y’know, Hoss, if I’m not mistaken I think I can still smell your wife’s pussy-stink on my gun. Hope it doesn’t rust the barrel…”-Otis B. Driftwood 

As you may have gathered from that choice piece of dialogue, director Rob Zombie’s THE DEVIL’S REJECTS is not exactly a family-friendly film. But come to think of it, it’s not really an anybody-friendly film. A direct sequel to the painfully boring and derivative HOUSE OF 1,000 CORPSES (2003), this film follows the further senseless adventures of evil clown Captain Spaulding (exploitation film veteran Sid Haig) and his murderous brood, basically amounting to a catalog of references to many other films, with the end product coming up like a Tarantino pastiche, complete with QT-style kickass soundtrack, only minus the wit. There really is no plot to recount, but here it is in a nutshell: 

A family of murderous psychopaths find themselves on the run from a vengeful sheriff who may be just as crazy as they are, and during the course of their road trip they abuse, debase and kill as many innocent people as sadistically and gorily as possible. That’s really all there is to this slaughterfest, other than a parade of genre icons who mostly serve no narrative purpose. They just show up so us uber-geeks can feel smug when we recognize actors like Debra Van Valkenburgh (THE WARRIORS), Ken Foree (the 1979 DAWN OF THE DEAD), Mary Woronov (DEATH RACE 2000, ROCK ‘N’ ROLL HIGH SCHOOL, EATING RAOUL), and more, and that’s a lazy cheat since each and every one of them could have added much-needed interest in this cavalcade of pointless cruelty. I’m no stranger to the cinema of brutality, having weathered LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, FIGHT FOR YOUR LIFE, I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE, MOTHER’S DAY, FUNNY GAMES and many others, but all of those films placed us firmly on the side of the victims (none of whom survive in this movie), while THE DEVIL’S REJECTS unsuccessfully and questionably attempts to engender sympathy for the serial killers, a truly vile lot who are themselves in sore need of killing. 

Captain Spaulding and brood squabble and bicker like every dysfunctional family, but when we have our faces bloodied by their homicidal excesses at every possible opportunity it just isn’t possible to see them as anything other than vicious bogeymen, a clannish evocation of the most unspeakable horrors that lurk among society, just waiting to lead us to an eviscerated and semen-stained demise in a dank root cellar, after which we are skinned and crafted into ponchos. How the fuck are we supposed to find them, as director Zombie states in the, I shit you not, two-and-a-half-hour making-of documentary, “loveable?” Their crimes are just too unspeakable for us to ignore, and when they gleefully hook up with some long-unseen family members at a ranch-cum-whorehouse I could not share in their celebration. These are not Robin Hood and his Merry Men. These are cold-blooded murderers who laugh in the faces of those whom they brutalize, so all I wanted was to see them get their just desserts. 

• The list of films referenced here — or ripped off, if you ask me — is long and includes those cited earlier along with THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE (to which this and the previous film owe an unpayable debt), FASTER, PUSSYCAT! KILL! KILL!, and, believe it or not, THELMA AND LOUISE, and the staggering unoriginality gets tiresome about halfway through the picture. However, unlike HOUSE OF 1,000 CORPSES, this entry moves briskly and isn’t boring, and even has a few moments that made the flick worth sitting through: An incredibly tasteless-yet-riveting sequence where an innocent family of musicians are held hostage and terrorized by two of the killers, and a bra and panties-clad Priscilla Barnes (late of THREE’S COMPANY, and whose over-50 body puts most women half her age to shame) being squirm-inducingly molested by a gun-wielding scumbag. This bit felt as real as a punch in the guts, and the actors are to be commended for making it so believable. During the making-of documentary, Barnes even jokes to the camera “Today I’m getting a gun shoved up my twat,” her cheery face defusing the squalor of the sequence somewhat and reminding the viewer that it’s all make-believe and modern day Grand Guignol. 
• The sheriff’s explosive reaction to a “Hollywood pussy” badmouthing Elvis Presley. 
• And my favorite bit in the whole film, namely the dream sequence where Captain Spaulding gets the shit fucked out of him, cowgirl-style, by porn icon Ginger Lynn Allen. 

                                               Ginger Lynn during her 1980's porn heyday.

 Ginger Lynn Allen in THE DEVIL'S REJECTS.

Best known during the ‘80’s and 90’s as tenderloin goddess Ginger Lynn, star of such classics as COCK SUCKING SUMMER, LET’S PLAY BOLOGNA RIDE, FUCK MY FACE, UP THE BUTT, and the immortal GIVE ME HEAD! (all real titles), Allen finds work nowadays all over the place, and is welcome in exploitation flicks for her Meg Ryan-gone-ultra-nymphomaniacal look and complete lack of modesty when it comes to onscreen nudity and depictions of sweaty shenanigans. In REJECTS she rocks the Captain’s world in a red corset, and briefly reveals that she’s stopped shaving her good stuff so she no longer has that ludicrous Barbie-like effect below the waist. Good to see you again, Ginger! 

But other than those moments, the film runs out of steam, and only those satisfied with nothing more than gallons of blood and gore will find anything of real worth here. If you must see a film of this ilk, rent one of the films THE DEVIL’S REJECTS yearns to be, especially the original TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE, and bask in a real horror movie, not Rob Zombie’s idea of what one should be. And that’s another thing: I can’t take any director seriously who calls himself Rob Zombie, former rock star or not. There’s nothing wrong with using his real name, Robert Cummings, rather than the goofiest nom de screen since Screaming Mad George. So he likes zombies, I can get with that. I like werewolves, but you won’t find me changing my name to “Stevie Werewolf,” for fuck’s sake. Although that does have a nice ring to it…

Poster from the theatrical release.

31 DAYS OF HORROR 2021 -Day 16: THE INCREDIBLE MELTING MAN (1977)

 When spare ribs attack.

There really isn't much to say about THE INCREDIBLE MELTING MAN, other than to note that its main selling point was its disgusting special effects (provided by a young Rick Baker). It pretty much borrows the basic conceit of THE QUATERMASS XPERIMENT (1955) — an astronaut returns from a space mission and mutates into something horrible — only minus that film's genuine suspense and sense of impending doom and dread, and it simply bounces from scene to scene of the titular monster becoming ever more a pile of what looks like an ambulatory slurry of blood, vomit, pus, semen, and Open Pit barbecue sauce. The guy goes around devouring the flesh of random victims in a hopeless effort to stave off his ongoing liquefying while leaving pieces of himself in his wake, all the while pursued by an assortment of characters so bland, you wouldn't notice if they were replaced with cardboard cutouts. There are a couple of fun set pieces, including the melting man scaring the shit out of a little girl while her male playmates laugh their asses off, and a bit where a fly fisherman gets his head ripped off and his noggin goes bobbing down the stream, but the overall piece does not add up to much of a cinema experience.

Yeah, the only real reason to see this is for the gooey makeup effects. In fact, I would love to see a remake of this with a better script, more involved direction, and practical effects with a budget that would allow the effects team to go hog wild in their attempts at making the audience vomit all over itself. We are long overdue for a truly visually repellent effects showcase, and what better time for one than during a pandemic?

 

Early attempts at the Fleshlight were a tragic failure.

But with all of that said, the real reason why I included this film in this year's roundup was its utter hilarious disappointment of an ending. After leaving a trail of death and his own bodily components in his wake, the melting man, his mind now long-gone, simply collapses next to a corrugated tin shed on the grounds of a power plant, slowly slides down to the ground, and simply dissolves into what looks like a big puddle of vindaloo diarrhea. Once he has unceremoniously liquefied, the facility's janitor non-chalantly scoops up the goo and deposits it into a nearby trash can. There is then an announcement that another space mission similar to the one that spawned the monster is about to take place, but for all intents and purposes the story really ends with the protagonist being disposed of like the contents of a loaded diaper. After all of the film's (admittedly tepid) mayhem, I was expecting something, anything, more than what they gave us, and though it was a massive fizzled-out fart of a climax, I laughed my ass off. Sometimes an unforgivably bad ending can be hilarious — MONSTER A GO-GO, anyone? — and this one had me howling like a crazed harbor seal. It was the kind of "fuck you" to the audience that reversed itself and became an unexpected gift of sheer piss-yourself hilarity.

"I would like to thank the Academy..."

It's a passable way to waste 84 minutes on a rainy afternoon, but that ending is simply glorious. (chef's kiss)

 

Poster for the theatrical release.

31 DAYS OF HORROR 2021 -Day 15: NIGHT OF THE LEPUS (1972)

 

The only thing missing here is Count Floyd trying to convince us that this film is in any way scary.

I first saw NIGHT OF THE LEPUS when I was around 10 years old, when it ran on THE CBS LATE MOVIE on a Friday night. The ads for it obscured exactly what the story's threat was, so going in I was quite intrigued, so when I finally got to see exactly what the ravening horde of man-eating monsters was comprised of, I was utterly gobsmacked. In a throwback to 1950's thrillers about scientific testing gone wrong, what we get here are giant rabbits on the rampage, and it's a race against time to destroy them before their legendary reproductive capabilities lead to the world being overrun by fluffy-tailed bringers of death. 

Yes, you read that right. It's a horror movie about GIANT FUCKING BUNNIES.

George A. Romero's PETER COTTONTAIL. (If only...) 

Though played utterly straight, no amount of earnestness can compensate for the simple fact that rabbits just are not scary. Even when placed in scaled-down sets and shot with over-cranked film to give them the impression of scale and ponderousness, bunnies are just too damned cute to elicit anything other than "Awwwww..." from the audience, even when their adorable little mouths are smeared with strawberry syrup to simulate the blood of their victims. 

                             Can your heart and mind withstand such pure, unbridled terror???

Yeah, it's every bit as ridiculous as it looks and sounds, but the real tragedy here is that it's not even so bad that it's good. It's dull and mediocre, with the proceedings only barely livened-up by scenes of slow-mo herds of rabbits hopping through miniature sets. Seriously, who in their right mind thought this was a good idea, and who basically set their money on fire by greenlighting its production? It's simply beyind my powers of comprehension.

Worth seeing just so you can say that you've seen "the one about the killer bunnies, but that's about it. If you want to see a genuinely terrifying and savage film about rabbits, I strongly advise sitting through the masterpiece of kindertrauma that is WATERSHIP DOWN (1978).

Poster from the theatrical release. Note how it gives no indication of the fact that it's actually about killer fucking bunnies.