The Last House on Dead End Street (1973)

 

Director: Roger Watkins

Screenplay: Roger Watkins

Cast: Roger Watkins as Terrence "Terry" Hawkins, Ken Fisher as Ken Hardy, Bill Schlageter as Bill Drexel, Kathy Curtin as Kathy Hughes, Pat Canestro as Patricia Kuhn, Steve Sweet as Steve Randall, Edward E. Pixley as Jim Palmer, Nancy Vrooman as Nancy Palmer, Suzie Neumeyer as Suzie Knowles, Paul M. Jensen as the Blind Man and Ken Rouse as The Whipper

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)/An Abstract Film Candidate

 

This makes you look just like a vampire... that's what we are...

One year in prison for drug possession, and Terry (played by the director Roger Watkins) is sick of it all, deciding a course to making ritualistic snuff movies as a response, this beginning one of those true one-offs in that Roger Watkins' film came, seemingly vanished, and returned in its battered form as a strange piece of cinema history heard of in speculation and infamy for years. The story of Last House on Dead End Street began for me with an actual official release, not a bootleg, with the 2006 Tartan Film DVD release in the United Kingdom, part of their failed "Grindhouse" label series. Barring some Jess Franco double bills and obscurities like Bloody Malory (2002), it was not a success and was near the end of their existence when they closed their doors in 2008. Considering they, since the VHS era, were important in cult and art cinema, including their sub label "Tartan Asian Extreme" being a huge part of the push for the likes of South Korean cinema in the 2000s, the Grindhouse label was a fascinating idea, but LHoDES was an idiosyncratic choice even back then. Not helping was its messy preservation as a film heard of and not seen despite the whispers about it, even having to use video footage to include the entirety of one of its goriest scenes, at a time before cult physical media releases emphasised preservation even of films which just survived being lost. Even in terms the decades after, Vinegar Syndrome included it as an extra to one of Watkins' adult erotic films Corruption (1983) as an extra on the Blu Ray, requiring one to search for it as an Easter egg, but they merely had plans for a proper restoration for its own release.

The irony is how, under eighty minutes, not a lot actually transpires in terms of elaborate plot but so much is clear in the little character interactions, with what is witnessed being incredibly striking. It has to be factored in that, in the lore of its production, Roger Watkins with this his first film made a much longer production, called The Cuckoo Clocks of Hell, originally from 1973 and based loosely on the Charles Manson cult¹. A maelstrom of issues came as time passed - including a lawsuit from one of the film's actresses, battles with producers and distributors, and the film being out its creator-writer-lead-editor's hands² - and as the film I know it as, as for everyone else, was released officially in a truncated form in 1977 with a title clearly sold on the back of The Last House on the Left (1972) and its notoriety.

What plot is still here can be summed up as thus: Terry's work crosses paths with Mr and Mrs. Palmer, Mr. Palmer a struggling pornographer who cannot get his work sold, as his distributor does not what sensual "art" but something more extreme. Thinking Terry's work is faked despite the truth, they cross paths in selling the latter's work and becoming the next stars when Terry feels he has been ripped off.  Shot in a verité form, it also evokes the adult films which Roger Watkins reacts in film, in mind as well that the plot of this develops meaning knowing his career would enter adult cinema too.  Before his career went to making films in the format of adult cinema, something feels pertinent to how, in the context of this world onscreen, there are conversations about stag sex films not selling anymore and everyone becoming desensitised to extreme content, loaded in meaning here. There is the tone of the films talked of and seen film with film, including a sex scene which feels like porn without any explicit shots and barely any nudity baring the prominent close up shots of buttocks, but this subject matter emphasises the sense of ennui on the material, where shot after the end of the sixties and when the wave crashed miserably, this feels like the ideals of love have horrifyingly died and decayed. One scene, one of the most notorious we will get to, involving Mrs. Palmer participating in an extreme ritual for her sexual gratification is contrasted against her husband, at complete ill ease, alone in a room grimacing as he hears her at the party in the next room. It turns out to be one of the moments, surviving in this truncated form, that manages to hold power as a quiet moment, the sense of a man struggling in a career which is devolving in more and more immortal sleaze against his will as the films are no longer selling.

This is a rare moment in what becomes a discomforting production in content and tone, where its battered existing versions add to its disconcerting mood. Large portions of the production are the actors voicing over the footage, LHoDES nihilistic and weird whilst contrasting its series of ritualistic murders to the sense of alienation felt by the cast, from Terry falling into his most violent fantasies to one of his female followers coming from a dull, unhappy marriage with a man that will lead her to willingly join this cult in senseless murder. The cameraman is initially angry Terry has returned into his life and, after the horror he is shown having recording a blind man being strangled, he will eventually become a willing participant to the atrocities. Within the ritual recordings themselves, Terry has his crew and he wear masks, from transparent ones for the women which distort the face to one Terry and others share which is a full plaster piece from ancient Greek theatre. There is also emphasised repeated dialogue especially in the murder sequences that, post-dubbed, add more to inherently disturbing moments. Already the film is unsettling before it gets to the finale, an entire prolonged string of murders involving mock surgery and deer hooves which made the film's legacy.

Where this gets more strange and infamous are the scenes which are bizarre even next to other horror films. One is a scene you would never be able to get away with now, that aforementioned ritual at their party where Mrs. Palmer "performs" for the guests and for her kinks, involves putting on black face makeup and being whipped in front of her guests, a scene where there is no way around this and it cannot be comprehended. It exists now as a scene which you cannot defend but is so weird that, after rightly criticising it, it feels bizarre even next to the rest of the film, as if it just appeared in the film reels without warning, and inexplicable once the discomfort is experienced. The other involves deer hooves, a sexual subversion scene where a man is forced to go down on a woman with a severed deer hoof in place of anatomy in her jeans, which is not problematic but is so out there, with loaded sexual debasement and scumminess, it will not take the power away from the scene even talking of it. This is not even factoring in that, without these scenes, this is still a discomforting film to witness. The scene which involved a VHS copy to preserve its full gore in the UK DVD, a surgery without anaesthesia, is what you expect in terms of post-Herschell Gordon Lewis in terms of gore and real animal organs being used, but alongside even a scene of a blind man being strangled off-screen, the entire tone to LHoDES is disconcerting from the use of voice over for dialogue to the lo-fi production shot in New York among rundown buildings and improvised props. It feels legitimately grimy and evil in tone though I know this is fake.

The question remains whether this is actually a good film or not. It feels truncated, barely any characters and barely a plot barring the themes talked of earlier, suggesting how this was clearly a longer film cut to shreds. A piece at the end tidies the plot up, [Spoilers] a voice over explaining everyone was arrested [Spoilers End], felt in this misanthropic work almost like a contrived Hail Mary to not relish the nihilism, or at least pretend to not. Even the title, whilst evocative, does hide in the shadow of another notorious work, and it leaves one with a film in The Last House on Dead Street which lingers in the mind but with its own form scarred and likely compromised by the power it may have possessed. It is a compelling piece which retains power, but you could, if not able to appreciate its virtue, easily dismiss it as a terrible film, something poignant in my first knowledge of the film, and that Tartan Film DVD, came from a British DVD review magazine which trashed this as a one star review including in its presentation for the surviving form. The legend, and what actually is onscreen, is truly unique, so it deserves its place in the history of cult film, but alongside the moments you can accuse as tasteless, it is nasty experience even if that was Roger Watkins' intentions and to be considered to view requires caution.

Abstract Spectrum: Disturbing/Eerie

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Low

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1) He knows audiences want violence, written by John Dalmas for The Journal News and published on April 18th 1973, page 10.  Retrieved 7th October 2019.

2) This Is Where It All Ends: Roger Watkins’ ‘The Last House On Dead End Street’ (1977), written by Brett Wright for Split Tooth Media and published on October 29th 2020.

Games of the Abstract: The House of the Dead - Overkill (2009)

Developer: Headstrong Games

Publisher: Sega

One or Two Players

Originally released on: Nintendo Wii

 

Until Scarlet Dawn came to the arcades in 2018, the House of the Dead franchise went dormant in terms of the main light gun game franchise from Sega, ending after House of the Dead 4 (2005) and not returning until thirteen years past. Today's title was one of two exception, a spin-off that was in the hands of British developer Headstrong Games, a subsidiary of Kuju Entertainment from London who was allowed to take their own spin on the game. Sega's zombie shooting franchise was given to them to go into a different tone, with the advantage that in the seventh generation of consoles, there was also a push for motion controls that allowed light gun genre to get resurgence. Alongside the Sony Playstation 3 having the move motion controller, which would follow on into the Playstation 4 and virtual reality, the Nintendo Wii when released in 2006 and becoming a huge success became a bastion for certain genres to be able to shine or resurface in a new generation. Even if it lead to a scourge of cheap plastic tact, it allowed for a practical way to bring the likes of this genre, or guitar rhythm games or even fishing to the console, even if something which would become abandoned over the next generation in general barring virtual reality itself.

There is also the context here, with this gorier and more adult take on House of the Dead, that for all the times Nintendo have lived up to the image of Disney in the video game world, they have had adult games on their console since the Nintendo Entertainment System, and with the Wii, this console which broke through to a wider non-gaming audience with its motion controls nonetheless brought up Madworld (2009), the first two No More Heroes games, and even Manhunt 2 (2007), an insanely controversial Rockstar Games title which, for all the issues around it include nearly being banned from the United Kingdom, managed to get a Wii release with added motion controls. Overkill itself is full blood and guts to the point, if you get your combo of kills high enough activates a "Goregasm" mode, before you even get to the number of uses of the f-bomb you would never hear from Mario.

The other thing that needs to be established, as The House of the Dead: Overkill ran with this aesthetic, is how the developers Headstrong Games decided to take influence from the "neo-grindhouse" movement in genre filmmaking. Neo-Grindhouse is a curious term, as in reality, grindhouses were just independent cinemas in the United States, such as the notorious 42nd Street in New York City, which "grinded" out films twenty four seven, and the exploitation films they showed and influenced Neo-Grindhouse was actually a variety of genres and sub-genres. It all truly stems from Grindhouse (2007), the tribute to this era of cinema which was meant to be a huge project by Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez. Originally meant to be the pair making a quick pair of fake exploitation films put together in a double bill, like those in the original era, it escalated into a large scale event which brought interesting in the idea of "Grindhouse", a three hour production with fake trailers shot by the likes of Edgar Wright and Rob Zombie. The film, when released, was not a box office success, so bad that originally in the United Kingdom the films were split off for cinema release, Death Proof (2007) and Planet Terror (2007), and we never got the original release until physical media. The issue with Neo-Grindhouse is that the genre does not really reinterprete the films which were shown at these cinemas, but the version that the Grindhouse film played with. It became its own aesthetic inspired by the history, that of the faked scratches and damages of old prints, the enticing sizzle of film trailers which promised more than some films ever promised, or as Overkill plays to in one great joke, the missing film reel concept inspired by cases where, if the film was not kept together or a projectionist cut out a scintillating section from the film prints, you got a piece or sequence missing.

Neo-Grindhouse was a genre I hated back then, and whilst I may be softer and may be able to appreciate the genre now, I will still argue it is entirely a period of cinema, though films were still being made afterwards, which felt to exist in the midst of Grindhouse's hype and into the early 2010s. It became the concept where fake grain effects were digitally included even on micro-budget films as much as it led to the likes of Hobo with a Shotgun (2011) or Bitchslap (2009), a sub-genre which never came to the mainstream cinema barring Machete (2010), which was a fake trailer by Rodriguez himself which he expanded into a full feature with a sequel. They are not really recreating the old films, and Overkill copies this with the bombastic trailer announcer per cut scene, with levels set up like individual films around the same characters, an Agent G from the franchise's AMS team of heroes paired up with an African-American cop from a Blaxploitation film named Isaac Washington, the later on a revenge mission against Papa Caesar, the crime boss who has gotten hold of a superhuman formula that turns people into monstrous zombie-like entities, that G wants captured alive.  There is as well with this genre the ironic sense of political incorrectness without skirting too far over the edge, as gore is one thing, whilst a few of this genre skirted around edginess but with a sense of ironic distance, such as this opening before the game starts with live action footage of fully dressed pole dancers gyrating to music, or how it plays to its more transgressive jokes such as who the actual end villain is and his relationship with his mother being beyond Oedipal to even being too much for Sigmund Freud in the sexual tension.

The Neo-Grindhouse aesthetic is the aspect which will likely age Overkill the most, as the genre’s ironic streak, based on around perception of exploitation separate from the reality, is going to either be off-putting for not taking anything seriously or something you can appreciate as a very eccentric touch. This is more the case as, played seriously, the original Japanese developed House of the Dead games are ridiculous, but with the factor that the cast of these games care about the potential necropolis Armageddon that they are under threat of. Even for arcade lightgun games, it adds so much even if, by Scarlet Dawn, a set piece involves a literal ladder of hundreds of zombies pulling a helicopter down in the first level transpires and throughout the franchise, including English dub performances, the absurd has been as much part of the games. Thankfully a lot still lands, such as Agent G refusing to say what "G" stands for, the constant use by his improvised partner Washington of the f-bomb and their love-hate relationship, and how there are great moments possible as you can have longer cut scenes for a console game, such as when they are forced to commandeer an ice cream truck to hunt down Caesar, arguing about country music at the same time. Where the ironic side shows some cracks the most, due to how she never really plays a part beyond cutscenes in the original Wii version, is the sole female character Varla Guns, the stripper stereotype in scantily clad clothes and yet a badass which the neo-grindhouse genre toyed with, such as Rose McGowan as the go-go dancer Cherry Darling in Robert Rodriguez's Planet Terror with a machine gun leg. In this case, the problem is less the scantily clad stripper archetype which is the issue, but that she contributes very little, [Huge Spoiler] and her fate is literally to become a brain in the jar, the game even poking at the depiction of their strong female character in a fourth wall breaking moment [Spoilers End]. It would only come to the updated version of this game called the Extended Cut (2011) for the Playstation 3 to flesh her out, with levels where she is the lead with another female character as player two, but here she is only a side character out for revenge for the death of her disabled younger brother, the first boss of the game when mutated under the evil machinations of Caesar, and really does not get to be a character you have fun with like the bickering bromance of our central male pair.  

As a light gun game, this keeps the bar high for the series, so Overkill does not feel like a detraction of the franchise but a more lurid and deliberately absurd take on the solid foundations. Only a few concessions are made as a console-first title, that you can spend points for continues, or how when certain enemies can grab you, the player needs to shake the Wii controller side to side to avoid them taking health. Most of the game instead is Headstrong Games, with real praiseworthy credit to them, taking what has been a constant in the franchise and fully succeeding with their own stamp on the proceedings, including what adds to the replay value. Between the ability to upgrade weapons, mini-games, and the "Director's Cut" versions of levels, there is a lot here to work with. And honestly, even as a game you could beat in around two hours on one run is not a bad thing. The main story, the seven levels, is only more longer than most light gun games but nothing feels pointless. Even with the ability to add "extra mutants", as this jokes that "zombie" is a dirty word, it is nice to have a game which never feels padded and the extras are what bring you back alongside trying to improve your runs. Even when it’s abruptly introduces the real villain later, the real cause of the mutant contagion a literal mommy's boy wanting to switch his mother's mind into a younger body, it feels like the deliberate swerve for a joke than a disjointed story choice.

If this had been longer, the tone would have gotten annoying, and issues that exist like a female lead who feels underutilised would have been more an issue. As well light gun games unless you can innovate in making a version for a longer play length could easily become overloaded in repetition, more so as this, despite its broad tone, is also playing to its own ghoulish take on the premise which plays into a grimier artistic palette. The franchise was already macabre and morbid in its form, but this is as mentioned its own gorier take, where tropes and ideas from the franchise, such as its style of boss battles, come with the sense of a Western developer taking them in their own over-the-top tone of monstrous, with a lashing of blown up heads and blood split when you hit the targets, an aesthetic that could have gotten tedious if the developers did not thankfully create a game long enough for it to instead. Arguably the only thing that feels amiss with the game play itself, not the plot and aesthetic this is wrapped up in, is that two of the bosses are awkward to fight, the female banshee in the second hospital level feeling like an endless loop if you are not already aware of the mechanics, and sadly the final boss being not as good as it should be, with mini-guns brought in, when this for a title originally released on a Nintendo console, whilst not showing it, has the mother of eyebrow raising moments to end a game when someone literally crawls back into the womb. The rest is thankfully completely memorable, going through tropes of horror like the aforementioned hospital, a prison, a swamp, and arguably the best level, a circus which is just an excuse for zombie clowns and running through carnival stalls where everything has gone to hell. This was a project, from its tone to the very idiosyncratic soundtrack, riffing on music from Robert Rodriguez’s own film scores to psychobilly music, which clearly had love put into it as it was being developed, and it succeeds very well.

Tragically Headstrong Games really did not make many games after this, until they became defunct in 2017, this being one of their most well known games of their whole career between being originally known as Kuju London to being Headstrong Games, not making many games after this and almost all licensed titles. This is sad to say alongside the fact that, once the bubble burst for the resurgence of light gun games in the seventh generation of video game consoles, the genre outside of arcade releases have struggled in their number being made or in terms of re-releases of older titles. A shame as, notwithstanding the remake of the original 1996 House of the Dead by Polish studio MegaPixel Studio, this franchise has not had the ability to continue on consoles. Thankfully, after the Extended Cut version which added new missions, one of the franchise's more idiosyncratic touches was continued and is the way you can more easily play the game. The Typing of the Dead (1999) was a very idiosyncratic spin-off which reinterpreted the original House of the Dead 2 (1998) into a typing teacher for the arcades, the light gun replaced with keyboards and having to type words above enemies' heads fast to slay them. It became its own beloved aspect of the franchise, as a sequel and re-adaptations followed over the years, leading to 2013’s Typing of the Dead: Overkill. Based on the Playstation 3 version with the added levels, downloadable content also allowed you to have to type out Shakespeare quotations or pure obscenities, like "pickled pork sword", among the words you had to type, so thankfully even this plays as more additional humour to the material, alongside the fact the original version of House of the Dead: Overkill is also included as a bonus.

For Sega, this entire project has to be admired for a tangent out of their own company, one which yet befits their eccentric history of creative left-turns and inspired decisions even as publishers only, where they were also the ones who published MadWorld for the Nintendo Wii too. It took, sadly, a while after until Scarlet Dawn, and whilst that was a welcomed returned, it is an arcade only title and the franchise is mostly unavailable as so many light gun games are. The exception that I mentioned early in this review in the first paragraph, also coming out in 2009, was Loving Deads: The House of the Dead EX (2009), tragically a Japanese only arcade release which made zombies the leads, a male and female one who went mini-games which brought in a foot pedal for the players alongside the light guns. Games like this are as enticing to consider, and it really the sadness that, in the market place which developed from the 2000s onwards, it was less practical for Sega to indulge in their well regarded franchises in ways like this than focus on those like Yakuza and Sonic the Hedgehog which sold well. Games like Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing (2010) thankfully reference the company's rich history, but it I find myself finally reaching games like this they let outside developers work on, and succeed in, and wishing that even as lower budget titles that they let other developers take stabs at some of their cult hits and older franchises, and see if some of that magic came from the experiments.

Cruel Jaws (1995)

 

Director: Bruno Mattei

Screenplay: Robert Feen, Bruno Mattei and Linda Morrison

Cast: Richard Dew as Dag Soerensen; David Luther as Francis Berger; George Barnes, Jr. as Samuel Lewis; Scott Silveria as Bob Soerensen; Kristen Urso as Susy Soerensen; Sky Palma as Glenda; Norma J. Nesheim as Vanessa; Gregg Hood as Bill Morrison; Carter Collins as Ronnie Lewis; Natasha Etzer as Gloria Lewis; Larry Zience as Larry; Jay Colligan as Tommy

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

Cruel Jaws is talked of in the documentary Sharksploitation (2023), about the lineage of shark movies before and especially after the cultural shockwave of Steven Spielberg’s Jaws (1975), as truly one of the most infamous ones, probably with Shark Attack 3: Megalodon (2002) right behind, if only for a final line to rival Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot (1959) for iconic memorability. Bruno Mattei was a man behind mondo films, a shameless and proud reinterpretation of Aliens (1986) named Shocking Dark (1989), infamous titles like Hell of the Living Dead (1980), and buddies with Claudio Fragasso of Troll 2 (1990), and he will at least have a place in my heart for a film like Zombi 3 (1988), the Lucio Fulci film he and Fragasso helped on when Fulci fell ill mid-production, which I have unapologetically fallen for as late era Italian cheese. Here with Crawl Jaws, long past the golden era of Italian genre cinema, infamously the film “borrowed” footage from other Italian Jaws rip-offs, including Enzo G. Castellari‘s The Last Shark (1981), but even from the Jaws franchise. This, for a complete lack of politely language, gleeful waved its dick precariously close to fire of copyright as a result of this, such much so that, when Shout Factory in the United States attempted to license the film for physical media release in 2017, on a double bill with post-apocalypse film Exterminators of the Year 3000 (1983), they decided to just release the later film by itself¹ due to these copyright issues. It makes it amazing now, with hindsight, that for our United American friends the film managed to be finally cleared by Severin Films in 2020². This is more so as there was even music from the the Star Wars franchise, or even in the version you can see so close it suggested the shark would fly in like a Tie-Fighter at one point.

They also provided the “Snyder” Cut, a joke which has actually aged faster than the film, as factoring in how Italian producers and filmmakers did try to sell their films as if they were American productions, Mattei took the pseudonym of “William Snyder” for this production. By the time Severin Films got the license, they were banking on a trend in that year over an online campaign to release Zack Snyder's original cut of the DC comic book adaptation of Justice League (2017), the four plus hour re-cut from 2021 its own subject to unpack, but now the most esoteric thing of this weird movie which has enough already to consider, including the fact that “Snyder Cut” joke on the promotion connects to them having access to the Japanese release cut for that release with more gore. As well with these films, co-productions and/or alternative releases of films existed, this presenting the dichotomy with Cruel Jaws that, in most scenes, this would be the Jaws rip-off you could show on Sunday afternoon television, family friendly enough were it not for the gore that occasionally appears, but could not be shown because of the amount of swearing and bizarre (and lurid) sex comedy dialogue you get throughout this schismed curiosity.

Premise wise, this is Jaws, as for those who do not know that film, it is about a shark, unlike those in real life, who deliberately goes out of its way to terrorise and attack humans off Amity Island, which repeats here with a shark in Florida. The major is happy ignore warnings from his police about these attacks so the windsailing regatta stays open, these shark and Jaws rip-offs, even those about killer animals on land, emphasising a distrust on small governmental officials’ ability to protect their citizens even if unintentionally, whilst Cruel Jaws also includes a subplot of a corrupt real estate figure trying to bulldoze an aquarium ran by Dag Soerensen (Richard Dew) to put a hotel there. Also infamously Richard Dew looks like he took hair and moustache tips from controversial pro wrestler Terry “Hulk Hogan” Bollea, which is more befitting as Dew was his stand-in for two films, two TV movies called Assault on Devil's Island (1997) and Assault on Death Mountain (1999).

Imagining Richard Dew attempting to body slam the shark aside, and whether a leg drop on it would still work into water, is contrasted by the fact that, as this film continues on as a a conventional shark film in premise, playing to Jaws’ plot points as slasher films had their own tropes, he is as much part of the tonal schism too as you have a subplot about his character and his disabled daughter, a cute moppet in a wheelchair, and their trained aquatic animals for their shows, two dolphins but especially the seal, who do come from a cute animal film where they need to save the aquarium by paying the evil businessman's rent through a reward, in another film by a competition, here eventually killing a deadly shark. This is however contrasted by a film where you also have a lot of cursing, lewd comments and a dose of scuzzier teen sex comedy language with some garbled attempts at one liners, like the guy part of the villains who, with apologies to female readers for having to quote this, thinks saying he is a “pussy inspector” needing to do his job is a good pick-up line for three women on the beach.

For most its length, even with some of the more gristly moments, mostly some blood and the chewed up remains of victims, this would have been PG-13 to use the American ratings system, but the script with Bruno Mattei co-writing too completely tips the scales in a peculiar direction, from the constant use of the word “fuck”, an obsession with balls and uncalled for use of fat shaming, even to a truly evil villain, with “shit” for emphasis, really undercutting the tone in what is neither fish nor fowl in tone. This is contrasted by how Cruel Jaws as a film is pretty conventional, and even its notorious use of other films’ footage will not stand out if you were to shrug your shoulders at it. The thing which stands out is its strange tonal choices in dialogue and mood. This is matched by how misanthropic this feels despite its happy ending: were it not enough his father is an evil stereotypical businessman with shady mob connections, leading to two thugs straight out of an Andy Sidaris film appear to try to get the shark, your villain's son does a family film crime of trying to poison one of the hero’s dolphins with poisoned fish, his cronies are obnoxious teens, and even another of the lead’s girlfriends, dating a marine biologist, become completely unsympathetic by rejecting his obsession, going out for a fling cold-hearted with villainous dolphin poisoning son, than everyone forget this and for her to be eaten by said shark.

There is also a sense of this mocking US culture, the idea of a resort town where the mayor and businesses will ignore the potential shark related casualties writing itself as satire if borrowed from Jaws, but one of the legitimately successful scenes of the film is where an Australian/British family, with kids, have come to the place hoping to see a shark eat a person alive. Most of Cruel Jaws is not this, a film which feels apt for the director of films I have enjoyed like Rats: Night of Terror (1984), but I will say that, for a large percentage of this, Cruel Jaws is entirely what it says, a slightly lopsided Jaws. It has a lot of lines of dialogue, unintentionally, which stick out, and it is strange to witness, but also you can see, if you are not on its wavelength, or a fanatic of these films, including the people who made the Sharksploitation documentary, that this will just cause people to scratch their heads in curiosity in what on earth the point this was attempting. Bruno Mattei would chug along, still making films even by the time of his passing in 2007, if just before the likes of Sharknado (2013) came to be; despite the fact Cruel Jaws is shambolic in many ways, I kind of wished he was able to have made another one of these, having to use CGI than footage from other shark films, and seen what madness he would bring to life, preferably with the fuller balls-to-the-walls attitude of his eighties films than this.

 

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1) Cruel Jaws - Blu-ray Release Cancelled, written by Das Wiesel for Movie Censorship.com, and published on December 14th 2014.

2) Severin Films Releases CRUEL JAWS, MASSACRE IN DINOSAUR VALLEY, AND PRIMITIVES Today!, written by "The Vault Master" for The B-Movie News Vault, and published September 29th 2020.

Halloween II (1981)

 

Director: Rick Rosenthal

Screenplay: John Carpenter and Debra Hill

Cast: Jamie Lee Curtis (as Laurie Strode); Donald Pleasence (as Dr. Sam Loomis); Charles Cyphers (as Leigh Brackett); Lance Guest (as Jimmy Lloyd); Pamela Susan Shoop (as Nurse Karen Bailey)

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

One of the crap shoots with horror franchises, not just Halloween, is how their existence to continue a huge success, and then sustain the newly made franchise, will cause confusion in the time line let alone divided opinion on the entries' interpretation on the original premise. By the point of Part 6: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995), you are also contending between the released theatrical cut and the intended "Producer's Cut", let alone the occultists introduced to explain Michael Myers when he was a literal boogieman in the first film without need for context, and that is without the reboots of the chronology of this franchise to match the Texas Chain Saw Massacre's. Halloween II at least in its slow, glacial tone is more effecting, but alongside the confusion now between this and Rob Zombie's Halloween II (2009), there is also already from the gate even with John Carpenter and Debra Hill on the script immediately struggles with following the source film.

Setting the film directly after the first was a risk, particularly with three years passing enough to have changed the fashions, and it is felt with issues as much as there are virtues, such as a more manic Dr. Loomis for Donald Pleasance to play, as his desperation is felt and the aftermath of the first film has a psychological effect on everyone that adds to this immediate continuation. There is a perturbing sense of the film, despite having enough years to capitalise on Halloween's success, and the boom in slasher films at the time, to feel rushed. For a film which originates from Carpenter's original, which was very precise in creation, this feels more an issue than a new slasher film made at the time made quickly and trying to find its audience off the back of the likes of Friday the 13th (1980). Contextually, a huge factor to consider was that, whilst Carpenter himself did direct a considerable portion of this¹, and there is a real schism here between the film recreating the original's languid ill-ease and a visible upping of the adult content for the new slasher audience. This could have still worked as a pairing, especially s the production value is still here, where Dean Cundey's cinematography is still magnificent as it was in the prequel, the mostly if not all nocturnal setting for this film having an immense effect particularly for the isolated hospital setting, and Carpenter's music as naturally as good as his other work. There is however a sense, especially with the plot, that this was not allowed to fully flesh out the ideas in the simple premise.

More so as that simple premise works fully as a sequel, even if this should have come out quicker than it did. Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) after the fallout of the first film is taken to a hospital and Michael Myers, learning of this from a radio boom box in a moment of actual plot logic despite the absurd image, decides to finish the job. Yes, jokes have been made of Lee Curtis' wig worn in the film, which stands out, but the idea of Strode being more vulnerable, especially when already injured adds a new threat. As much as it sadly means Jamie Lee Curtis is not allowed to show the great performance she showed in the first film, having her medicated to the point of lethargy and having to drag herself around from Myers is actually a scary proposition in terms of a viewer imagining themselves in her hospital gown. That the film has the least populated hospital you can find, even at night for a small town, does however raise issues that, whilst fun as a slasher film, its struggling in a way you can pass with other slashers, where I have slowly come around to them with charm, but here shows a slip in making the premise not have logistical holes, especially as even a contrived series of reasons could have made the premise of struggling through an isolated hospital actually make sense in premise.

The little details become the things which undercut Halloween II in truth, where we will have to accept that, whilst therapeutic hot tubs are not a strange thing you would not find in a hospital, we only have one here clearly for a prominent nude scene for actress Pamela Susan Shoop, a concession to the slasher film tropes of the time, with the more absurd idea being that the temperature settings able to go up to "Scalding". Even that Michael Myers got bored and started using more creative ways to kill people, from syringes and even bleeding someone in the most patient way possible, feels less incongruous than things other slasher films from this period, the early boom, were managing to figure out like making sure you got time to like even the characters who were cannon fodder.

Spoilers have to be brought up, but the aspect of the film which does feel like the most divisive aspect is when it is revealed Laurie and Myers are siblings. It is a plot twist which would be used to good used, redeemed by the likes of Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998) in the nineties, which managed to have more power than if Myers was just as homicidal non-entity trying to finish off a surviving victim he randomly choose. In context here, when first introduced however, it is a contrived plot twist. It presents not only the issue with trying to continue franchises, and trying to explain to the viewers the back story, but as well the desire people have with real life murders wanting to know why they were committed, when many can be utterly irrational and un-explainable. The world of horror movies can deal with these real events through a safe veneer, but the fact you could write in why the fictitious killer committed their crimes can completely negate the point of such films as a healthy way to release fears about such violence. There is also the fact that in context to this, Halloween II does not really even work with this plot twist either, which makes it pointless until films decades later would begin to flesh out the weight of it.

It becomes a film which feels, when last time I came to appreciate it, less interesting as a result of me now appreciating slashers for what they are. The sense of expectation should not distort the film's virtues by itself, but it cannot be denied that, after the weight of expectations of the follow up, this feels flat than if we gotten the over-the-top ridiculous sequel instead, the Friday the 13th: A New Beginning (1985) sort of sequel. Films like Psycho 2 (1983) managed to overcome the fear of this leading to disappointment and took stock of the slasher boom, with a film decades older from its own sequel too, whilst The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986) managed to have its cake and eat it in being both a proper follow on and mad as a box of frogs even next to the slashers. In comparison, Halloween II does feel a weird way to try to continue the series, more so as this was meant to finish the story too. Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982) is its own idiosyncratic creation, the attempt at an anthology scenario with an entire different narrative story which was doomed to have been too late to begun, forcing the franchise back to Michael Myers, but in itself, this definitely feels like a letdown for the follow up. A fun one in the right mindset, but you really should not attempt to compare it to the prequel to avoid the shadow that casts.

 

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1) Halloween II: Behind the Scenes, from HalloweenMovies.com. Archived from the original on June 29, 2012.

Fungicide (2002)

 

Director: Dave Wascavage

Screenplay: Dave Wascavage and Mary Wascavage

Cast: Wes Miller as Major Wang; David Weldon as Silas Purcell; Mary Wascavage as Jade Moon; Loretta Wascavage as Mother Purcell; Edward Wascavage as Father Purcell; Dave Bonavita as  "Titus" Ignitus; Antoinette Cancelliere as Lenny; Dave Wascavage as Jackson P. Jackson

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

Fungicide is a ridiculous film, my introduction to the micro-budget world of Dave Wascavage, a Pennsylvania based figure who has been chugging away with his own independently made genre films since Fungicide itself, founding his own company Troubled Moon Films, and with this production the cinematographer and editor as much as the director and co-writer. Fungicide, about homicidal giant fungus, came as a surprise for how woozy and unapologetically its own weird thing, where the opening is intense, all harsh noise and a man in his family, in almost a trance, experimenting on a chemical composition which will have unfortunate consequences he will be happy about when it brings forth the nightmares of the title.

It is scored like a Playstation One game, atmospheric drum and bass, which knowing this is about killer sentient mushrooms, with the limited special effects at hand and CGI valley shots like a late nineties game, makes this almost befitting like you have wandered into an obscure American role playing game as a result, one set at a mountain hideaway, a resort to rest at which is doomed to fungus related terror. Ran by a nice hippy woman who however has a bad tendency to use the wrong choice of words, and turns into a Sarah Connor Terminator killer when enough is enough, it also sets up very early on in the film the eccentricities on display here. Fungicide is really peculiar, an automatic writing of a genre film at times, which is not going to be for everyone. You get this with the characters placed into the scenario: our female lead even in the face of regular grocery store mushrooms attaching themselves to people like leeches reacting to them with a blissful tranquillity, a real estate agent who is there to try to get her to sell the house, and eventually just becomes a third wheel, the scientist who starts speaking like he is actually an alien, and a random army man who appears, having wandered off a reality TV show he was a contestant of, named Major Wang. Then there is the professional wrestler, who is written like a stereotype of one and needs to unwind from his temper at the hideaway. He also has to take pills prescribed to him by a medically cleared doctor to prevent spontaneous combustion, which is now a sentence I can write and does become a major plot point eventually.

Simply tripping up a wooden step unleashes a serum capable of inhuman biological growth, and between the scientist speaking like the aforementioned alien, the music choices and stock scream effects, and the homemade psychedelic visuals, and this film became far weirder in tone than I had presumed of it even before the homemade mushroom puppets with giant teeth appear. In-between the leads just hanging out in the house in the woods, for prolonged periods which would-be frowned upon in most horror films for padding, this becomes a cavalcade of peculiar sights, where briefly a puppet literally plays a mushroom victim and is so obvious it becomes surreal. Obvious computer effects are layered onto the film in place of what Dave Wascavage could not practically pull off, be it the breaking of a glass door, to the panning shots of the valley, or the larger mushrooms, who drift around using spores to grow more, seen spawning out the graveyard at one point. The regular ones, not either the baby mushrooms as played by real store bought ones, are the puppets, which are cool and quite cute, and the actors in white sheets with a homemade toothy mouth and mushroom cap, armed with silly string projectile with acidic properties, using regular silly string, and able to grow arms.

The film knows its absurdity and guns for silly, as Wascavage filmed a scene of a mushroom attempting to eat a garden gnome, or as they learn human abilities as they eat people, one being able to drive a car and pick up a female sex worker to eat her. There is an entire dream sequence, as the scientist is delighted by the possibilities of being King of Mushroom Men, where he images himself playing video games and Go Fish with one of the puppets, which is hilarious. Mantango (1963) by Ishirō Honda this is not and you have to accept the logic is its own, alongside the padding that leads to an extended cast versus mushroom fight scene involving extensive obvious CGI and no one with clear combat technique. It does not detract from its charms, if you have basked in this region of micro-budget cinema, a film where balsamic vinegar is the solution, and is apparently more volatile and explosive than nitro-glycerine. You need to come with expectations that Wascavage's work, created visibly with his own times and resources, as his first attempt in his career is a film you could see having to be shot on weekend where the cast could get together, with members of the cast including the female lead (and co-writer) related to him. It is its own work to befuddle, admire and get a few belly laughs from, and as of yet, the threat of a sequel involving killer apples as the film ends on has yet to happen.

Mutation Nation (1992)

 

Developer: SNK

Publisher: SNK

One to Two Players

Originally released on the Neo Geo MVS

Among beat-em-ups, this SNK entry definitely does not reinvent the wheel in terms of the gameplay. What it does thankfully have is an exceptional sense of personality to compensate for how later games in the next few years after this evolved the genre, a body horror dystopian sci-fi brawler which manages to feel like a Saturday morning cartoon that has gone incredible wrong or been partially produced with a Troma film from New Jersey as inspiration. Set in 20XX, you play one of two stereotypical male leads, but with the context that, with a mad scientist creating a mutant army in a slum area of a major metropolis, and thus wrecking havoc on the rest of it outwards, your enemies are a menagerie of idiosyncratic figures. This is pretty standard for the genre, with just an attack button and a jump, which may seem dismissive as a comment but is contextually in mind that, as you get into this genre in the years around and after, up to the likes of Battle Circuit (1997) from Capcom and Guardians: Denjin Makai II (1995) by Winkysoft, you had games going further than even having a block button to combos, move sets with button combinations, and the ability to unlock new abilities per level. Mutation Nation is a game which, if it had any of these, by reliving the difficulty in lack of options, would actually gain virtue in that the challenge would be finding ways around the challenge rather than working with the limitations in controls, the hordes of strange denizens created by the mad doctor a menace for different reason than merely having a punch and kick.

Nonetheless, unless you intend to experiment, the old adage "if it isn’t broke don't fix it" is apt here, with one key difference being Mutation Nation's one gimmick where, alongside power-ups that can vary this and do not deplete the health bar, holding the attack down and charging it allows you to use a super, which can vary per the aforementioned pick-ups and adds a nice risk in using them. "Repetition" is neither a negative comment here too as , like the light gun game, there is no need to really reinvent unless you have something distinct, and this after the initial grunts immediately gives way to their mutated brethren, and what imaginative designs they have before the bosses arrive. Insectoid heads, almost android figures, flower women almost Poison Ivy like, and the absolutely strange lizard creatures with vaguely human forms and rocking denim jeans clinging to ceilings and walls as much as being very low targets on the floor to deal with. They all belong to a vibrant looking game from the 16-bit era of video games, where even if you have unfortunately let yourself be sandwiched between a group of these creatures, or take advantage of manoeuvring around the locations as in this genre in general, you can appreciate this post-apocalypse urban wasteland in its gritty look, the kind of game if not released for SNK’s own machines would have made sense as having a Mega Drive/Genesis conversion. Adding to the grotesquery, in the best of ways, is that most of these enemies barring the robotic ones will explode in pulsating chunks of goo when defeated, not as violent as the original Japanese version of Data East’s Night Slashers (1993), but evoking that idea if Lloyd Kaufman’s Toxic Avenger franchise and Screaming Mad George were combined into a PG-13 horror sci-fi martial arts game.

The bosses emphasis the tone, figures who you wish to have figures of, if just me, as obscure video game plastic statuettes to put on a shelf. It is simple as much, wanting to see creativity in my video games artistically, for just the fact they are quite bizarre, like the sole female boss who, between her jutting dancing with use of her arms, also spits mutant wasps from her stomach through a Cronenbergian orifice, or a pair of psychics in dapper suits whose heads has distorted from the growth of their brains beneath like mutant broccoli. This becomes what Mutation Nation’s best virtue as a beat-em-up becomes, this personality which can make it stand out as a gem from the era. What it does have in terms of restrictions, when the genre was going to develop far more game mechanics on the simple to grasp game play style quite soon, it compensates for with this style, sadly one which did not really get to be seen as much as hoped as this is one of the obscurer SNK games until the modern day on multiple consoles and even mobile phones. This was released for the Neo Geo MVS, which allowed gamers to bring arcade perfect games to the home in console form if it was with the caveat that it was incredibly expensive as a console, because of the cost of buying actual arcade hardware and software. The game neither got a sequel, becoming a one-off, a shame as if this had gotten a Metal Slug-like longevity, we could have seen this overcome the flaws this has and take the advantages that make this worth playing further.

Death Nurse 1 & 2 (1987-88)

 

Director: Nick Millard

Screenplay: Nick Millard

Cast: Priscilla Alden as Nurse Edith Mortley; Albert Eskinazi as Doctor Gordon Mortley; Royal Farros as Mr. Powell/Charles Bedowski; Frances Millard as Charity Chandler/Faith Chandler; Irmgard Millard as Louise Kagel/Brownie; Nick Millard as John Davis/Sergeant David Gallagher; Fred Sarra as Lieutenant Cal Bedowski

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

You son of a bitch, you got my bag!

Death Nurse is made by Nick Millard, who was one of many independent genre directors in the sixties and seventies, making films like Criminally Insane (1975) until the two Death Nurse films in the late eighties, where he joined many who saw the advantages of the shot-on-video boom in video recording cameras and making ultra-low budget films as this pair. About a homicidal nurse and her doctor brother, the film does not have to worry about a real hospital set, just the appropriate costumes and set around a rest home named Shady Palms which is clearly shot in someone's own home.

Shady is apt as they openly mistreat the patients, performing operations without anaesthesia to learn how to, smothering tuberculosis patients, which consists of coughing into a cloth, with a pillow, and burying the bodies in the back garden or leaving them in the garage for the rats to feed on. Death Nurse is not going to be for everyone, the understatement of the year even as someone who liked the film, absolutely not a film you would recommend to anyone but those open to the film's limitations or with a taste already there for films like this where you get a prolonged scene of a man getting a snack out the kitchen, where you can hear air conditioners in certain scenes and they use bread knives in place of scalpels. Baring the budget and silly tone, this does get into something uncomfortably real of medical malpractice of medical staff deliberately killing patients, sadly something even a silly movie like this is not making up the existence of, even if this is thankfully a work whose mistakes and quirks soften the reality. Here these siblings, alongside the brother wanting to practice his surgery skills, get money from having patients sent to their home they can quickly dispose of. The only patient seemingly safe is Louise (one of two roles over the two films by the director's wife Irmgard Millard), the patient meant to kick her alcoholism only to get at Edith's bottle of sherry for sexual favours with the brother she is glad to provide.

It is an absurd experience, like a John Waters premise just needing a shove in the right direction and instead just charmingly eccentric, becoming more of a rough job being a doctor who kills, especially when you need to dig out a victim from the back garden as the social worker wants to visit him. The stilted nature of the film, including an almost complete lack of music score, is potentially off-putting, but it is perversely charming, following the banality of being a killer and how boring it really would be even in mind to Death Nurse's obvious limitations, with the closest thing to a score being a brief electronic drone in dream sequences, like it is going to turn into a random number radio broadcast. These dream scenes re-use footage from Criminally Insane, with Priscilla Alden the same lead between them both, always a sign of a no-budget film with a foot into the peculiar. Considering Criminally Insane follows Alden as a woman released from a mental asylum who kills to not be prevented from eating food she wants, it presents an idiosyncratic attempt to build a new film from new footage only James Bryan and Renee Harmon topped by doing it over and over again in the eighties.

Death Nurse 2 continues as before with the issue ending the last film being swiftly resolved with a murder weapon, and keeps the tone up with a prolonged scene of making a cup of tea after murdering someone. It feels like the second half, actually, of one whole film, more so as this does extend the reuse of Millard's Criminally Insane again for an absurd repetition, as alongside new footage from that film you get the same meat cleaver scene in full from that film as used already in the first Death Nurse. It feels fully a piece from a larger work when the pair are combined, as one hour films made into a two horror one, where this escalates the problems of the leads' murder spree by introducing Brownie (also Irmgard Millard), the homeless woman armed with a giant knife in her shopping trolley, and Misha, the self styled philosopher taken off the street for ranting under the mayor's window about abolishing income taxes and the evils of socialism. It feels the same as the previous film, continues the absurdity of the previous film, such as someone being chased in circles around the couch by a homeless woman with a knife, and trying to introduce twin sisters in the plot line to bring back an actress, related to Millard. Throughout both films, the word "bitch" is the most prominent aspect of the film, used in a variety of ways alongside close-ups of as Priscilla Alden scowling. You can even hear the edits of scenes, interconnecting two different actors in conversation in the same scene, due to the traffic outside cutting in and out in time, which adds to the humour of both films.

It ends naturally on the downfall being as banal and gross as human matter being brought out onto the lawn by damn rats, and whether these films are actually watchable, as already stated, is only if you have a taste for such films. It is deeply silly, at times a slog between them, but I have nothing but admiration for the attempt.