1980s

Enemy Territory (1987)

Enemy Territory (1987)
AKA Manhattan Warriors, Terror Night – Hochhaus in Angst

Starring Gary Frank, Ray Parker Jr., Jan-Michael Vincent, Frances Foster, Tony Todd, Stacey Dash, Deon Richmond, Tiger Haynes, Charles Randall, Peter Wise, Robert Lee Rush, Lynnie Godfrey, Theo Caesar

Directed by Peter Manoogian

Expectations: High. I’ve heard good things.

On the general scale:

On the B-movie scale:

Like many great action films, Enemy Territory kinda sneaks up on you. After a dope rap song and some fun establishing shots of New York City, we’re introduced to Barry, an asshole insurance agent who’s on his last legs at his company. His boss calls him into his office and offers him one last chance to stick around. The only catch is that he’s got to venture deep into the projects to get an insurance policy signed, and if he doesn’t get back out before night falls, he may never get out alive. Of course, the shit hits the fan rather quickly and Barry is stuck on the twentieth floor of the Lincoln Tower with a bloodthirsty gang known as the Vampires hot on his trail.

As soon as the film starts, it never lets up. Within the first 10 minutes, Barry is inside the building and it’s already turning sour. 10 minutes after that and the first casualty of the evening has occurred. But during this first altercation Barry picks up a good Samaritan in Ray Parker Jr.’s character, Willy. Yes, you read that right, THE Ray Parker Jr. of the Ghostbusters theme song fame. Turns out the dude can act (although he didn’t get much work besides this), and his unlikely partnership with Barry forms the foundation the film builds from. This is a low-budget action film, so the characters are never developed more than they need to be, but they form a strong team regardless.

The Burning (1981)

The Burning (1981)
AKA Cropsy, Carnage

Starring Brian Matthews, Leah Ayres, Brian Backer, Larry Joshua, Jason Alexander, Ned Eisenberg, Carrick Glenn, Carolyn Houlihan, Fisher Stevens, Lou David, Shelley Bruce, Sarah Chodoff, Bonnie Deroski, Holly Hunter

Directed by Tony Maylam

Expectations: High, once again because this features Tom Savini FX.

On the general scale:

On the B-movie scale:

The Burning is exactly the type of movie that led me to start writing reviews. I’ve always liked the Leonard Maltin review books, and I referred to my battered copy of the 1998 edition incessantly during my film snob phase. My love of horror movies often led me to search the book for what Maltin thought of the bloody affairs I loved so well, but this generally didn’t end well. Maltin isn’t much of a horror fan and he usually rated the films much lower than I thought they deserved. I can’t fault him for disliking a genre and its sadistic tendencies, and the genre does contain more than its share of shitty movies, but it seems kind of counter-intuitive to give a bunch of low-scored horror reviews when you’re not a fan. This is exactly why you don’t see me reviewing loads of romantic comedies. Anyway, I looked up The Burning in anticipation of watching it for the first time and was surprised to see the word BOMB in bold, dark type. Maltin reserves his BOMB rating for those films he finds unworthy of any rating stars, but thankfully I knew not to fret. The Burning is excellently made, and an absolute joy to watch for horror fans, and Maltin’s dismissal of this type of high-quality genre film is exactly why I felt the need to start writing reviews. It just took me a while to get around to it.

So The Burning is an incredibly simple story. Some might say too simple, but I say it’s just the right amount of simple to allow for a fun, easy-to-digest slasher. The film opens with a group of punk kids plotting to play a prank on their summer camp custodian Cropsy. Apparently he’s a drunk asshole, so the kids get a skull with worms crawling all over it, put lit candles in its eyes, and place it at Crospy’s bedside. They wake him up, and in his flailing he knocks the skull into his bed, lighting the whole thing on fire. He gets horribly disfigured, and after five years of healing at a local hospital, he’s ready to slice and dice his way to some sweet, sweet revenge.

Maniac (1980)

Starring Joe Spinell, Caroline Munro, Abigail Clayton, Kelly Piper, Rita Montone, Tom Savini, Hyla Marrow

Directed by William Lustig

Expectations: High. Lustig, Savini, how can it not be good?

Sorry to those hoping for rainbows and unicorns, Maniac delivers manic thrills and nothing else. As long as you’re OK with that, and you’re down for some brutal Tom Savini FX work, then you should enjoy Maniac. It’s a unique take on the slasher film, and one that I won’t soon forget. This was William Lustig’s first legitimate film (after a few legitimate pornos), and it’s a frontrunner for the best thing I’ve seen from him. Maniac Cop and its sequel are both superb, and Vigilante is fun, but Maniac has a guerrilla quality to it that makes it seem just as seedy and grimy as the film’s main character, Frank.

The plot of Maniac is rather sparse, instead doing its best to deliver a character study of a madman. What this equates to is watching Joe Spinell stalk and brutally kill female victims for most of the movie. There’s no cops trailing him, or any real story to speak of. Even the dialogue scenes are all somewhat meaningless. This makes the film feel gratuitously sadistic, and it’s rather hard to watch at times. A slight story comes in during the second act, but even this is just a means to provide Frank with another victim, and ultimately bring us to the climax of the film. It does add some interesting situations for Frank, and ones that allow us to further explore his character, but the film still retains its initial structure. This might sound like it would be boring and hard to get through, but the film is incredibly watchable thanks to Spinell’s perfect portrayal of the madman, Lustig’s inspired direction, and Savini’s gory, ultra-realistic FX.

Stephen reviews: Wicked City (1987)

Wicked City [妖獣都市, Yoju Toshi] (1987)

Starring Yuusaku Yara, Toshiko Fujita, Ichirô Nagai, Takeshi Aono, Mari Yokoo.

Directed by Yoshiaki Kawajiri

It’s time to get out of the kiddie pool and head for the royally fucked up pool. I have thus far in my reviewing career avoided the nastier areas of anime, but that had to end sometime, and October’s horror marathon is as good a place as any to head over to the dark side. Wicked City is yet another Hideyuki Kikuchi adaptation, and like Demon City it is directed by Yoshiaki Kawajiri. If I was to compare that film with Vampire Hunter D, I would have to say that Toyoo Ashida was the better director for adapting Kikuchi’s works, but here Kawajiri proves that he really can handle the job just as well, if not better.

The animation is damn good, just like all his other films that I have seen, although the beginning moments felt below average. I was initially disappointed, but as soon as the first monster shows up it amps up the quality and never looks back, matching Demon City for gorgeous and grisly visuals. There’s not much outright gore, though. It’s more about crazy nasty monsters lurking around every corner than blood and guts splattered everywhere.

The Evil Clergyman (1988)

Starring Jeffrey Combs, Barbara Crampton, David Warner, David Gale, Una Brandon-Jones

Directed by Charles Band

Expectations: Very high. There’s no way it can live up.

On the general scale:

On the B-movie scale:

The Full Moon archive is home to many unreleased films. Back in the VHS days (and earlier), sometimes low-budget studios needed to create a killer poster before they shot the movie in order to secure the necessary funding. Many of these advertised Full Moon films were never produced, or were later assimilated into other Full Moon projects in some altered form. But in the case of Pulsepounders, Full Moon’s 1988 unreleased anthology film, the film was actually done shooting and in the can. Its legend had grown so large that it seemed that it would never see the light of day. But if it was done shooting, why was it never released? I always assumed it was some sort of rights issue, but apparently the negative was lost, never to be found. But hark! In 2011 a workprint VHS was uncovered deep in the dark recesses of the Full Moon archive, and Band’s team went to work to ready it for release.

As an anthology film, Pulsepounders consisted of three 30-minute segments: a sequel to Trancers (now affectionately known as Trancers 1.5), a sequel to Ragewar (which is the most interesting to me because Ragewar itself was kind of an anthology film), and, of course, The Evil Clergyman. This film was to be a spiritual successor to Re-Animator, a highly successful H.P. Lovecraft adaptation directed by Stuart Gordon (as if Re-Animator needs an introduction). There were times when I thought this ambitious project was lost to time, and there were other, more hopeful times when I imagined its illustrious, remastered release, but I honestly never thought it would actually happen.

The Hitcher (1986)

Starring Rutger Hauer, C. Thomas Howell, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Jeffrey DeMunn, John M. Jackson, Billy Green Bush, Jack Thibeau, Armin Shimerman, Gene Davis

Directed by Robert Harmon

Expectations: High.

Calling The Hitcher a horror film is a stretch, but as it mostly trades in tension and suspense, and it features an ample amount of gore FX, I think it’s horrific enough to qualify. And let’s not forget all the wonderful explosions and car crashes, of which there are many. Yeah, The Hitcher is just as dope as everyone has led me to believe. Some stupid story elements hold it back from being pure gold, but these moments were never enough to quiet my love for the film. It’s a tense ride, and my predominant reaction to the film was, “Oh shit!” Seriously, every time I thought the main character was getting the upper hand there would come a glorious “Oh shit!” moment, and then Rutger Hauer would assert himself as the true badass of the film.

C. Thomas Howell is driving down a desert road late at night and is finding it hard to stay awake. Thinking it will help him remain conscious, he picks up a hitchhiker (Rutger Hauer) who quickly goes from nice to sadistic asshole. When Howell finds an opportunity to ditch Hauer, he takes it, and it starts a movie-long feud between the two that lasts until the bitter end. Hitchhiking fell out of favor a while ago, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this film had something to do with that, much like Jaws deterred people from the ocean waters.

The Stuff (1985)

Starring Michael Moriarty, Andrea Marcovicci, Garrett Morris, Paul Sorvino, Scott Bloom, Danny Aiello, Patrick O’Neal, James Dixon, Alexander Scourby, Russell Nype

Directed by Larry Cohen

Expectations: High. I’ve heard many good things for many years.

On the general scale:

On the B-movie scale:

As soon as I saw an old man scoop up a handful of bubbling white foam and immediately taste it, I knew I’d enjoy The Stuff. This is literally the first scene in the movie and it immediately sets the ridiculous, hilarious tone that fills the entire film. Simply put, The Stuff is one of the most consistently entertaining ’80s B-Movies I’ve seen in a while, successfully pulling off a horror/comedy/corporate espionage/social satire/action hybrid, and the finale contains gigantic, fiery explosions. The Stuff is just as intoxicating and additive as the stuff in the film that causes all the trouble.

So as I mentioned before, an old man finds some bubbling white goo coming out of the ground and once he determines that it’s pretty damn tasty, he immediately commercializes it and starts a nationwide food revolution. The Stuff sweeps the nation with a catchy ad campaign and soon the American people are eating nothing but the stuff. No one knows exactly what it is (it’s a secret formula!), but they know they want it all the time. But not everyone is taken in by the craze, so it’s up to our heroes to work together and save the day. Just watch the movie, because no sentence I can construct will be as funny and as entertaining as watching the movie.