Street Trash (1987)

Street TRash (1987)

We are in Brooklyn’s decaying slums, and the year is 1987. The state of the streets is described in a nutshell by the title itself. Not a place that you’d go barefoot. An old dusty box containing the mysterious drink “Tenafly Viper” is found in the basement of Ed’s little liquor store. A green liquid from way back in the 1920s, that Fred sells to the local hobos for a buck. The one who gets the first bottle, is Fred: a runaway who lives with his brother in a small homeless community by a car wrecking yard, run by former Nam Vet Bronson. He’s a raging nutcase who’s lost his mind completely due to PTSD and severe paranoia, and have constructed the place as his own kingdom and safe space. Here he lives in his own grandiose, delusional bubble where he is the king and everyone fears him. He also shares the throne with his “Queen” Winette, a schizophrenic vegetable who constantly screams and begs him to have sex with her. Sound like a cheery place, doesn’t it. So maybe this mysterious drink will make the hellish daily life a bit easier for the poor hobos? Well, they could only wish, as the drink turns out to be a corrosive, toxic acid that melts the one who drinks the first drops, in seconds. As homeless people start dropping dead in every corner due to the liquid, a brute cop named Bill is trying to get the bottom of the source. And good luck with that.

 

On the surface, Street Trash may look like a more polished Troma film that could easily share the same universe with The Toxic Avenger. But instead of a guy running around and serving justice in a mutant costume, we get a bunch of mentally unstable hobos doing stupid, random shit. Things like necrophilia, penis severance, shoplifting and gang raping… those are some of the daily doings we get to witness. There isn’t much of a plot to be found here. It’s basically just a series of skits, more or less, that are randomly stitched together. Street Trash is based on the short film of the same name, a fun concept that worked better in a short dosage than a very stretched-out feature film where it is far between the major highlights. The film’s biggest, or fattest highlight if you will, is the guy who explodes like a big balloon. A pretty juicy and messy scene you’ve probably already seen on YouTube. The effects here are pretty inventive and deliciously gooey, to say the least, and arguably the film’s main strengths. Even though most of the effects give some exaggerated, over-the-top cartoony vibes, I have to give Street Trash an extra credit for having of the most memorable decapitations scenes I’ve probably ever seen.

 

Street Trash

 

Director: James M. Muro
Country & year: USA, 1987
Actors: Mike Lackey, Bill Chepil, Vic Noto, Mark Sferrazza, Jane Arakawa, Nicole Potter, Pat Ryan, Clarenze Jarmon, Bernard Perlman, Miriam Zucker, M. D’Jango Krunch, James Lorinz, Morty Storm, Sam Blasco, Bruce Torbet
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt0094057/

 

 

Tom Ghoul

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cellar Dweller (1988)

Cellar Dweller (1988)It’s a dark and stormy night when comic book artist Colin Childress (Jeffrey Combs) works on his horror series Cellar Dweller. He sets his final drops of ink on a sequence where a young, half-naked damsel in distress runs through the woods and ends up trapped by a satanic, hairy monster. After Colin randomly quotes some obscure phrases from a book of witchcraft, he unconsciously manages to summon both the monster and the damsel who emerges right behind his back. While Herbert West..uhm, sorry, I mean Colin, runs frightened out of his studio, the monster kills the damsel off-screen. Since the monster was summoned from the drawing paper, Colin gets the brilliant idea to set the artwork on fire, which escalates into an inferno that kills them both. The rest of his artwork manage to survive, though.

 

Then, we jump 30 years ahead in time. Colin’s house has now become an art institute, where young cartoonist Whitney Taylor checks in to continue the Cellar Dweller series. Miss Briggs, who manages the place, is not thrilled about this, and tells her that the basement where Colin died is a no-go zone. Of course, Whitney still goes down there anyway, and she comes across an old chest which includes the same book of witchcraft we saw at the beginning. The can of worms is open again, and as soon as Whitney starts drawing Cellar Dweller, a hairy monster begins to terrorize the house’s students in the middle of the night. It’s just too bad that the killings happen off-screen, and makes me wonder if the monster costume was so heavy for the poor person inside that he was almost unable to walk properly.

 

Jeffrey Combs is only featured in the opening scene before the film goes full amateur hour. To top it all off, one of the actors, Brian Robbins, has obviously used Smilex as he has the most absurdly, psychopathic grin that is just completely out of place, to a certain point where he almost overshadows the monster. A bit impressive, though. Aside from a quick decapitation scene during almost a full hour of play time, there is not much gore to find here. The drawings by the comic book artist, Frank Brunner, are gorgeous and got its time to shine, and is actually more impressive than the movie itself. John Carl Buechler (RIP) also directed Troll two years earlier, which explains some of the similarities. And if you haven’t already, then check out Troll 2, and you’ll have a perfect schlockfest of a trilogy to enjoy and laugh at.

 

Cellar Dweller

 

Director: John Carl Buechler
Country & year: USA, 1988
Actors: Yvonne De Carlo, Debrah Farentino, Brian Robbins, Pamela Bellwood, Miranda Wilson, Vince Edwards, Jeffrey Combs, Floyd Levine, Michael Deak
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt0094850/

 

 

Tom Ghoul

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Violent Shit (1989)

Violent Shit (1989)

Somewhere in Germany we see a random boy who’s playing with a ball, and gets spanked by his mom for coming home late. The boy then kills her with a meat cleaver, and our new terrifying slasher villain “Karl the Butcher” (or simply “The Butcher”) is born. Then we skip twenty years later where The Butcher is being transported by the polizei from-or-to God knows. Then one of the transporters have to take a piss, and The Butcher manages to escape as soon they stop the car, and kills them all in the worst low budget-way which is pretty indescribable. And we’re only seven minutes in, so take this as a foretaste to what the rest of the movie will be.

 

Then we’re being introduced to a nameless blonde chick who drives to a gas station, parks the car and switches to an other car to continue driving. When she arrives at the countryside and into the woods, the car dies and she yells “scheisse”, which describes this movie pretty well so far. And now that it’s gotten dark and her being all alone, what could happen? We see The Butcher from pov-view while he halts and grunts like a pig, then attacks her, and cuts one of her titties off. Make me wonder if Lars Von Trier has seen this. However, he then butches her to pieces (off camera) and eats some of her entrails. Yummy, good night.

 

Next day, The Butcher hunts for more victims in the countryside when something unexpected happens: he suddenly collapses. Maybe food poisoning from the woman’s guts he ate last night? Or maybe the actor is simply tired of this (violent) shit and realized that his performance never would lead to any Oscar Nominations, and would rather go home and play Nintendo? Who knows. Movie over? No way! We haven’t even gotten halfway through its running time. Then we meet our next victim who by a  coincidence spots The Butcher laying by the road. And, like nice and empathic people do, he checks if he needs help, which of course turns to be quite opposite when The Butcher grabs his meat cleaver and cuts his hand off. And his dick, which he don’t eat. Thank God. And in order to not waste any precious time, we’re jumping straight over to the next victim, an aggravated redneck, played by the director Andreas Schnaas himself, who yells (in German) “fucking shit”. At least, the movie seems to have a sense of self-awareness.

 

And at this point I think you know the drill: every new character who gets on camera is just set up to be the next victim and killed off as quickly as they came, like a fart in the wind. So yeah, Violent Shit couldn’t be a more blunt and fitting title: It’s Violent Shit and that’s exactly what you get. A bunch of death scenes filmed over four weeks, “directed” (to use that word loosely) by Andreas Schnaas, who is a part of the trinity of the underground horror scene from Germany, along with Olaf Ittenbach and Jörg Buttgereit. Shot with his friends and with a budget that was enough to buy some gallons of cranberry juice as fake blood, rent a low-fi Video-8 format-camera and buy a lot of Heineken. The result is something you would expect to see from some kids in their early teens made for shits and giggles in their back yard on a weekend without any goal, purpose, ambition or a script.

 

One thing’s for sure: if you’re a fan of non-budget-amateurish-splatter horror, Violent Shit won’t fail to entertain you. The witty German dialogue, which apparently are just improvised and dubbed in post-production, makes it even more funny. Also worth mentioning that Andreas Shnaaas did the impressive thing of actually managing to drag his Violent Shit to the movie theaters in Germany, but it was pulled shortly after when it got under the censor board’s radar. It eventually found its way over to the USA where it became an underground cult classic on VHS.

 

A “Five Films Collector’s Shitition” with all of the four Violent Shit-films and the zombie flick “Zombie ’90: Extreme Pestilence” is available from Synapse Films. Knock yourself out. I couldn’t find any trailer, but down below you can see a clip with Karl The Butcher in action showing no mercy.

 

Violent Shit

 

Director: Andreas Schnaas
Country & year: Germany, 1989
Actors: Andreas Schnaas, Gabi Bäzner, Wolfgang Hinz, Volker Mechter, Christian Biallas, Uwe Boldt
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt0094271/

 

Related posts: Violent Shit II (1992) | Violent Shit III: Infantry of Doom (1999) | Violent Shit 4: Karl the Butcher vs Axe (2010)

 

 

Tom Ghoul

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Poltergeist III (1988)

Poltergeist 3 (1988)Carol Anne has now moved to her uncle and aunt at the John Hancock Center in Chicago where she attends a special school for gifted children and visits a psychologist regularly. She would prefer to not talk about the past, but the shrink hypnotizes her to do so and can assure Carol Anne that talking about the past will make it go away. In this case it makes the dark forces enter her life again and a certain scary old man starts to manifest in mirrors and reflections. To quote Tangina: He’s back!

 

The idea of ​​placing the story in a large skyscraper works for the most part. It creates its own claustrophobic setting. I especially like the idea with the mirrors. Gary Sherman, most known for low-budget exploitation films, does a decent job with the technical aspects concidering the production problems caused by Heather O’Rourke’s sudden death at the age of 12, four months before the last day of shooting.  It almost stopped the production completely, and like «Poltergeist II», the entire ending sequence had to be rewritten. While it somehow barely worked in the previous film, it doesn’t make any sense whatsoever here and it just leaves a big question mark over your head. The movie starts actually pretty good and strong, but develops with ridiculous plot holes, messy editing and scenes that don’t go well together. Heather’s death in mind gives a more sad than satisfying end to the Poltergeist saga.

 

Poltergeist III

 

Director: Gary Sherman
Country & year: USA, 1988
Actors: Tom Skerritt, Nancy Allen, Heather O’Rourke, Zelda Rubinstein, Lara Flynn Boyle, Kipley Wentz, Richard Fire, Nathatn Davis
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt0095889/

 

Sequel of:
Poltergeist II: The Other Side (1986) http://horrorghouls.com/reviews/poltergeist-2-the-other-side-1986/
Poltergeist (1982) http://horrorghouls.com/reviews/poltergeist-1982/

 

Tom Ghoul

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Poltergeist II: The Other Side (1986)

Poltergeist II: The Other Side (1986)After losing the house, Steven also lost his job and the family is now completely broke, thus they have moved into Diane’s mother’s house. It’s hard times, but they do all they can to live a normal life. One day a mysterious old man named Kane, a creepy looking reverend, shows up in their life. And he is especially interested in Carol Anne.

 

The same actors are back, except the one who played Dana, who became the first victim of the so-called “Poltergeist curse”, which I will not go into here. Jerry Goldsmith composes a lot more dark and sinister soundtrack that enhance the atmosphere. But the one who steals the show here is the eccentric actor Julian Beck as Reverend Henry Kane. He completely owns the few scenes he’s in and really gets under your skin. Despite his little screentime he became such a horror icon that the thrash metal band Anthrax depicted him on the cover of «Among The Living». Unfortunately, he died of stomach cancer before the film was finished shooting. Due to this, a final sequence had to be completely rewritten.

 

Not the best sequel, it feels pretty unnecessary to be honest, but is still a fun watch with some great practical effects, some scary moments, great atmosphere and brilliant soundtrack.

 

Poltergeist II: The Other Side

 

Director: Brian Gibson
Country & year: USA, 1986
Actors: JoBeth Williams, Craig T. Nelson, Heather O’Rourke, Oliver Robins, Zelda Rubinstein, Will Sampson, Julian Beck, Geraldine Fitzgerald
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt0091778/

 

Sequel of:
Poltergeist (1982) http://horrorghouls.com/reviews/poltergeist-1982/

 

Tom Ghoul

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Poltergeist (1982)

Poltergeist (1982)The Freeling family of five, Steven, Diane and their children Carol Anne, Robbie and Dana, plus the dog Buzz, live a quiet family life in the town of Cuesta Verde. Their youngest daughter, Carol Anne, wakes up one night and starts talking to the TV in the living room while it’s on static, and strange events in the house starts happening during the next days. Their parakeet dies, furniture moves by itself, and one stormy night the dead tree in the back yard suddenly wakes to life, almost “eating” little brother Robbie while Carol Anne is sucked into the closet by supernatural forces and disappears. The family later hears her screams for help from a static TV channel, and decides to seek help from a group of parapsychologists in order to get her daughter back.

 

The family learns, among other things, from the medium Tangina that there is a portal to another dimension in the house where the daughter is trapped, and figures out a plan to go in there and find her.

 

To be 35 years old, «Poltergeist» is still holding up, much thanks to Steven Spielberg’s great input and the amazing effects of Industrial Light & Magic. Tobe Hooper (who, sadly, recently passed away) directs, and the movie mixes the style of Hooper and Spielberg pretty well. The shock values and the family aspects are very well put together, and the film spends some time to develop the characters. Many great scenes stands out here; the scene with the tree, the clown, the face-ripping scene and the crazy climax is just bone-chilling. Also great soundtrack by Jerry Goldsmith. «Poltergeist» will always have a specieal place in my heart, and is at least on my top 5-list of haunted house/ghost movies.

 

Poltergeist

 

Director: Tobe Hooper
Country & year: USA, 1982
Actors: Craig T. Nelson, JoBeth Williams, Beatrice Straight, Dominique Dunne, Oliver Robins, Heather O’Rourke, Richard Lawson, Zelda Rubinstein
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt0084516/

 

Sequels:
Poltergeist II: The Other Side (1986) http://horrorghouls.com/reviews/poltergeist-2-the-other-side-1986/
Poltergeist III (1988) http://horrorghouls.com/reviews/poltergeist-3-1988/

 

Tom Ghoul