Aquanoids, or Aquanooooids, like Johnny Depp would have said it, is a silly Z-grade amateur-hour creature/feature flick where we have a sea monster that looks more like a rejected, drunk band member of Gwar who’d fallen into the ocean, and just decided to stay in the water and kill everyone who comes near him.
The film starts in the year 1987 in Santa Clara Island, California, where a couple is having a swim. Guess what happens. They get dragged down the water and killed by an unseen monster as a random guy is watching the “traumatic“ incident through his binoculars. And, of course, this random guy will be important later. Much later. Sixteen years later, to be precise, in the present day (2003) where a coastal town in sunny California is celebrating the 4th of July. God bless America. As the town is in full festive mode, the young girl-next-door, Vanessa, actually has far more important things to do. Because she’s an environmentalist, you see, and would rather spend her time to save our green planet by diving into the ocean to pick up trash. Greta Thunberg would be impressed. As she gathers her good karma points, she gets a glimpse of our sea-creature. Ooh, scary. She hops on a water scooter and heads straight to the town’s mayor, Frank Walsh, to beg him to close down the beaches. Because the aquanoids are back, she says, despite we’ve only seen one. Dream on, honey. Haven’t you seen Jaws, or if you dig a little deeper, Humanoids From the Deep? Here we also meet Clifton Jefferson, a mafia-looking guy who does some dirty work for Mayor Walsh, and who also looks like a Joe Pesci cosplay from Goodfellas. And if Mayor Walsh talked like Kermit the frog, I wouldn’t doubt for a second that he was played by Jordan Peterson.
Anyway, as Mayor Walsh won’t do shit because he’s exactly what he looks like: a super-shady bad guy, Vanessa and her roommate are handing out warning papers while they shout dangerous waters! dangerous waters! No one believes them though. The only one who does is Ronald Jackson, the random guy we saw at the beginning. And no, he’s not played by Eric Roberts. He’s the one and only witness of the aquanoid that killed 17 people back in 1987, and is just seen as the town’s crazy person. He now spends most of the time at the local bar being a traumatized alcoholic, and just wants to be left alone. The news and rumors of the aquanoids start to spread, and suddenly the local Hard Boiled News (yes, really) pops up to have a quick chat with none other than Jackson. Poor guy doesn’t get a break. Mayor Walsh and Joe Pesci, sorry, Jefferson, don’t like that the rumors of the aquanoids are spreading to the public, and that’s for more than one reason. The “plot“ here is thrown all over the place, and there’s just too much to spoil (or maybe not), but let’s just say that you’ll be more shocked than anything by how corrupt this Mayor is. And I also bet that he’s on a certain client list.
Aquanoids is directed by Reinhart ‘Rayteam’ Peschke. Rayteam who? He worked primarily in the Camera and Electrical Department on films such as Volcano (1997), The Usual Suspects (1995), and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III (1993) With Aquanoids, you’d get the impression that Rayteam one day went through some of his old and forgotten childhood stuff in the attic, found some tapes of a home-made horror movie he made with some friends, neighbors and uncles during some summers in his early teens, and said to himself: I want to release this hidden gem on DVD. This is also the one and only film he directed.
The title, screenshots and the trailer speak more or less for themselves. If you’re familiar with these kinds of retarded, zero-budget home-made turd movies, you know what you’re gonna get. It’s amateur-hour from start to end (with a short and welcoming runtime of 1 hour and 13 minutes) with a dumb plot, bad acting, absurd dialogue, cheesy music, a series of WTF-moments, an unexpected and “shocking“ twist, and of course some cheap gore.
The highlight of Aquanoids is actually not the monster itself, which we barely get a clear glimpse of, but our two goofy antagonists, Mayor Walsh and Jefferson, as these two actors try very hard to act dead seriously. If Walsh looks somewhat familiar aside from Jordan Peterson, he’s the guy who had the deadly handshake with the Joker in his most-known-for-movie on IMDb, Batman (1989). And I’m not surprised if the one who looks like Joe Pesci has auditioned for all the Martin Scorsese films, and in his all-boiled-up frustration tricks people into believing that his most-known-for-movie, Aquanoids, is actually an alternative title for Jaws. And enough schadenfreude for today.
Director: Reinhart Peschke Writers: Mark J. Gordon, Eric Spudic Country & year: USA, 2003 Actors: Laura Nativo, Rhoda Jordan, Edwin Craig, Ike Gingrich, Laurence Hobbs, Suzan Spann, Robert Kimmel, Christopher Irwin, David Clark, Doug Martin IMDb:https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0338726/
Nathan Sands is a geneticist (or just a mad scientist, if you will) who has been hired by the U.S. Navy to create a new weapon. Together with his daughter Nicole, they have created a large intelligent shark with the tentacles of an octopus, because that sounds like an excellent idea where nothing can go wrong. A sharktopus, in other words, but for some reason they have decided to simply call it S-11. They control the creature by using a device on its head, which gives electromagnetic pulses. Because an attachment to such a creature’s head which is the entire means of control over it sounds like the greatest idea ever, right? Well, as can easily be imagined, the S-11 gets rid of the annoying device, and swims along to Mexican waters to create some mayhem and perhaps enjoy some human burritos. Sands and Nicole must find someone that can help them capture the monster, and meets up with a cocky dude named Andy Flynn who is apparently the most suited for the job. The catch is: the monster must be captured alive. Easier said than done! As Nicole and Andy tries to follow its tracks, a pesky news reporter called Stacy Everheart and her henpecked cameraman Bones starts pursuing the story of the year.
Sharktopus is a SyFy horror film produced by Roger Corman and directed by Declan O´Brien, which later sparked a franchise. And ohhh boy, could this one have been a total rotten fish of a stinker if it wasn’t for the obvious tongue-in-cheek approach and the self-awareness displayed here. It’s made as a “so-bad-it’s good“ movie, and that is a much harder achievement than one might initially expect. Few movies that aim for this setup manages to pull it off, but Sharktopus is one of those exceptions. It delivers exactly what it promises, and you’d have to be an idiot if you were to take it seriously for even a split second. It’s yet another movie where I’m glad we have badges instead of ratings here on Horror Ghouls…
The setup is pretty simple: crazy scientist creates monster, monster runs amok, heroes must stop it. The characters are pretty bland, with Eric Roberts as Nathan Sands being the most decent of the bunch. That being said, the over-acting and clunky performances from several of the actors here is what offers some decent laughs, plus the hilarious kill scenes mixed with bad CGI effects. Not to mention campy lines like:
– Oh no, not like this! Arrrgghhhhhh! (while attempting to convince the viewer they have really been caught by those crappy CGI tentacles)
– Damn you Sharktopus!
– You can stop staring at my rack. They’re just boobs. They’re not gonna get up and dance or anything.
– That guy was killed in front of us inches away. Inches away! Gosh. He was kind of a nice guy, you know? Smell a little funky, but he was okay. Now he’s dead.
Yeah…if I haven’t made it pretty clear already, Sharktopus is indeed a horrible movie, but for all the good reasons. It’s a lot of stupid fun, and a nice watch for the shark week!
Also, in 2023 the movie actually had a remake…from China, of all places. And to be honest it looks more like they tried to make a remake of Deep Rising. Currently not available officially anywhere outside of China…but as of now, there’s YouTube…and here’s a link to the trailer.
Director: Declan O’Brien Writers: Mike MacLean, Stephen Niver Country & year: USA, 2010 Actors: Eric Roberts, Kerem Bürsin, Sara Malakul Lane, Sara Malakul Lane, Héctor Jiménez, Liv Boughn, Julian Gonzalez Esparza, Blake Lindsey, Peter Nelson, Maija Markula IMDb:https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1619880/
This Italian-produced Predator ripoff starts in the midst of a full-blown bulletstorm mayhem in the jungle of the Philippines, and a group of commandos are sent to the green inferno to see what the hell is going on. We meet the four trigger-happy testosterone-filled walking ballsacks with the colorful code names Killzone, Blood, Papa, Diddy Bop and Quiang. And together they make the team called BAM, which stands for (yeah, you already guessed it) Bad Ass Motherfuckers. Can’t get more 1980s than that. They stumble upon fresh-fried corpses as they explore the territories. They rescue a damsel-in-distress from getting chased by a group of horny guerrillas. She is a young, blond nurse who goes by the name… Virgin. Sounds like she’s in the wrong movie, no?
Anyway – As they go deeper in the jungle, things start to smell more cheesy, as they’re getting hunted by an alien-looking killer robot, called Predator Omega One. He’s a high-tech renegade humanoid who shoots the deadliest lasers through an arm cannon and wears a silly costume where a biker helmet was used to give him the flair of RoboCop, another well-known film you’ve maybe heard of. Instead, we have just another thick layer of cheese. Now it starts to smell. And his appearance is as intimidating as…someone who has dressed up to attend a Halloween party at the local gay bar. To build up some suspense and tension, we see from his POV perspective through his lousy, low-pixelated sensor while he mumbles gibberish like a demented Indian scammer on crack cocaine. So, come get some!
Robowar is directed by schlock maestro of Italian Trash Cinema Bruno Mattei (here under his most used pseudonym as Vincent Dawn), written by the couple Rosetta Drudi and Claudio Fragasso. Fragasso also got the honor of playing the RoboPredator, which made him faint two times during the shoot due to the extreme heat. Claudio Fragasso also did the most Claudio Fragasso thing to shoot a random sequence without zero context to the rest of the film. Of course. Robowar was originally meant to just be a Vietnam-war film, inspired by Apocalypse Now (1979), shot in the hot n’ sticky Philippines and all, but when Mattei saw Predator during a lunch break, he did what he usually did: put in elements of said film to cash in on its current success. And we can only imagine what the film would look like if he had also played Contra. That being said, Mattei had already made the war film Commando Strike the year before, also in the Philippines, where I guess the leftovers of ammo, cheese, testosterone and set pieces to blow up were enough to fill Robowar. Mattei also made Commando Strike 2 the same year, aka Trappola diabolica. So yeah, Signor Mattei sure got to make his epic war films, one of which by coincidence became a Predator ripoff, and one of the mockbuster films I bet that The Asylum wish they had made some 30 years ago. And that alone says it all.
Some quoteworthy (white) lines:
– Fuck it, Diddy. Quit moving around like you’re jerking off, you’re making me seasick.
– Why do they have nicknames?
– You should know what the group is called. “BAM”.
– BAM?
– Big Ass Motherfuckers!
– Drug addicts and fags. I bet they got AIDS too, huh, Quang?
– Technology hasn’t got feelings! (I bet that Jason Blum does not agree on that one, bwhahahahaha…!)
Director: Bruno Mattei Writers: Claudio Fragasso, Rossella Drudi Original title: Robot da guerra Country & year: Italy/Philippines, 1988 Actors: Reb Brown, Catherine Hickland, Massimo Vanni, Romano Puppo, Claudio Fragasso, Luciano Pigozzi, Max Laurel, Jim Gaines, John P. Dulaney, Mel Davidson IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096000/
Octaman, or Octamaaaan, like Johnny Depp would have said it, is exactly what you think it is – a mutated, cheesy-looking octopus humanoid who shuffles around and kills people, played by a poor actor who can barely see shit through the costume. Yep, it’s one of those films. This is the type of vintage Z movie amateur campy schlockfest that could easily be mistaken for a lost Ed Wood film. And if you get some strong Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) vibes, you’re not wrong. Octaman is written and directed by Harry Essex, who also was a co-writer of said film.
The plot is something like this: we follow Dr. Torres as he goes on an expedition with a small crew to a primitive Latin fishing community in Mexico to uncover some atomic radiation. And they, of course, encounter Octaman, who’s actually credited in the opening sequence as Octaman, not the actor, just to add some extra flavor of mystique. It worked with Boris Karloff with Frankenstein way back in 1931, but here, though, with the cheesy costume and all that doesn’t even fool a blind person, it’s just comical. Anyway… Octaman starts to stalk and kill people one by one.
Octaman goes pretty fast into the monster action. And I’m using the words “monster action“ very loosely here, because there’s nothing much to get excited about, except for having some laughs at its overall incompetence, as the action has the impact like a pillow fight in your sister’s bedroom. The way Octoman attacks its victims is pure retarded slapstick comedy. He leaves his bodycounts with open wounds and an eye that almost pops out of some poor dude’s skull, yet he only slaps them like a drunk bitch with his overlong rubber suit tentacles as he also struggles to not lose balance. He’s as intimidating as, well, Octaman. Fun stuff. The monster costume was designed by the one and only Rick Baker, who later became one of the most prominent effect makers in Hollywood. This was his very first gig, and… we all have to start somewhere.
Writer and director: Harry Essex Country & year: Mexico/USA, 1971 Actors: Pier Angeli, Kerwin Mathews, Jeff Morrow, David Essex, Jerome Guardino, Robert Warner, Norman Fields, Read Morgan IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067515/
– She has the power…to terrorize. And to make us laugh.
This amusing French/Canadian-produced little clown show starts with a father and his daughter, Laura, who learns that the mom has left them and taken Laura’s brother, George, with her. Your mother is a bitch. She’ll pay for what she did to you, says the dad. Oki-doki. As they’re driving through the woods at the night, a white rabbit suddenly crosses the road that makes the dad lose control and crash. Dad and Laura get stuck in the car as it sets on fire where they get burned alive. At least, the rabbit got away unscathed.
Then we jump to present time (1977), where George, who’s now a middle-aged man, his wife Vivian and their young daughter Cathy, are moving into the house we saw in the opening sequence. George hasn’t been in the house since he was four and does his best to act emotional. Vivian has some mental and paranoia issues after she had a nervous breakdown and has some extreme mood-swings. Another one who suffers from sudden mood-swings, plus some late stages of dementia, is the film itself, because nothing here, absolutely nothing makes sense. As Cathy explores the house, she finds herself in the cobweb-filled attic where she picks up a ragdoll with both eyes stitched shut. Cathy then looks at a picture of the ominous girl we see at the movie poster, and Cathy gets possessed. Why? Not even the three screenwriters knows.
The film is all over the place with random stuff that just happens because the messy script just says so. A medium visits Vivian, a woman I almost mistook for Mr. Bean’s girlfriend. She holds an old picture of Vivian’s husband’s father, the guy we saw in the beginning. She sees flashes of the car accident as she talks in a cheesy demonic voice. Nothing here builds up, things happen sporadically just out of the blue. Cathy suddenly has telekinesis Carrie powers so she can make random objects in the house explode. In one scene, Cathy has breakfast, served by a nanny. Cathy throws a bowl to the floor, just randomly, with both hands to demonstrate that the bowl flies across the kitchen. Nanny acts like it was just an accident. After she picks up two pieces of the shattered bowl, she smiles and says: There, it’s all done. Ok, if you say so. I guess the screenwriters thought they did a great job here to not insult the viewers’ intelligence.
Another memorable scene, for all the wrong reasons, is where Cathy starts to teleport herself around the house to scare her mother. She acts way more irritated than scared, because none of the three scriptwriters would even imagine that anyone would shit themselves if they witnessed such a thing. Vivian must have some serious brain damage or some skills in pills, or maybe both. Cathy then makes the whole house shake. This movie is more tone-deaf than Yoko Ono. And, of course, I have to mention the classic scene where Cathy makes an old drunk geezer freeze while he sits by the kitchen table. And while he just sits there, stiff frozen, a snake and some spiders suddenly appear and crawls at him. And we have some stellar dialogues here:
– Old bitch. Fat whore. Fat dried up whore. – Go on, you filthy female cow. Make us laugh! – All women are bitches.
The eye-catching poster reminds me of the poster of James Wan’s Insidious. But don’t let that fool you. Cathy’s Curse is not even close. It’s barely close to even being a horror movie. I even doubt that the three screenwriters, that also includes the director, was never under the same roof during the writing process. I’d guess that all three took elements from The Exorcist (1973), Carrie (1976) and The Omen (1976), with the same idea of “children scary“ then tossed it together and maybe just hoped for the best. The messy and incompetent writing is just one thing, we also have some weird music choices, primitive effects (even for a 1970s film) and bizarre editing. In one scene the camera zooms slowly into a door with some ominous music, just randomly. We don’t see much of that door again. The acting goes from wooden to laughably bad. The “big star“ here is the child actress Randi Allen as Cathy. And she’s no Linda Blair, just to make that clear. This is the one and only film she appeared in, and said in an interview once that she only took the role to financially support her single mother. To add some extra quick cash, her brother, Bruce Allen, also had a small role in the film.
Cathy’s Curse is a nonsensical mess that only leaves questions rather than answers, and is as scary as My Little Pony, but the overall inept absurdity makes it a fun watch.
Director: Eddy Matalon Writers: Alain Sens-Cazenave, Eddy Matalon, Myra Clément Country & year: Canada, 1977 Actors: Alan Scarfe, Beverly Murray, Randi Allen, Dorothy Davis, Mary Morter, Roy Witham, Bryce Allen, Sonny Forbes, Robert V. Girolami IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075820/
I’ve seen some terrible, mind-boggling, retarded and fascinating amateur shows over the many years, but nothing could prepare me for this little Canadian shiny turd of a film called Things. And in this case, that is something I can appreciate. I’m always searching for the next best-worst movie, since I’ve always had a weak spot for these kinds of films, and this one belongs somewhere deep down of the horror movie iceberg. It’s impossible to review Things in a conventional sense, and is one of those that you just have to experience for yourself. Visually, to use that word very loosely, it’s something like Manos: The Hands of Fate meets Violent Shit, filmed in an obscure fever dream in the skull of Jörg Buttgereit.
The film starts right off like something that looks like some cursed low-fi video from the dark web. And to be fair, the same could be said about the whole film. It’s all shot by a Super 8 with the overall technical skills of two drunk cavemen, so that speaks much for itself. We’re in a basement where a mysterious woman (Jessica Stewarte) in a weird devil mask undresses in front of a sleazy-looking guy, named Doug (Doug Bunston), who says: I want you to have my BABY! My wife and I tried to have a baby, but we could never get one. Now it’s up to you. My true fair love.
And yeah, the acting is as goofy as the dialogues, which already sets the tone of what to expect. What makes this scene icky, for whole other reasons, is that this masked woman was/is a real-life prostitute, and probably did this short appearance just to scramble some quick cash for her next fix. The filmmakers tried to track her down to include her in the 2008 DVD release, but she could not be found. We all wish her the best. Anyway: two minutes in (yes, two minutes) and the film is already an unbelievable wet, bloated brainfart where there’s a lot for the senses to digest. The acting, the editing, the sound mix, the bizarre goofy music, the sheer level of pure and raw amateurishness… It will drain your sanity and good luck getting through the rest without some booze. The masked woman already had his baby, she says. Ah, good news then. And when she hands it over to Doug, the baby appears to be some sort of a monster that bites his hand. This was just a dream, by the way, as Doug wakes up on a couch in his living room.
After the opening credits, with the fugliest fonts ever put on film, we meet Don (Barry J. Gillis) and Fred (Bruce Roach), who pays Doug a visit on a late night. Yep, Don, Fred and Doug. These are the guys we’re supposed to root for. All three reeks of bad vibes a mile away, if the film didn’t smell bad enough already, where the youngest looks like a ticking school shooter while the other two have the charisma of the types of serial killers who would bury their victims in a basement crawlspace. We even have a dude here who pops in at the end (Dr. Lucas) who could be the twin brother of Jeffrey Dahmer. It’s hard to comprehend what’s going on here, but they find a tape recorder in Doug’s freezer and a diary of Aleister Crowley. Don puts his jacket in the freezer because it’s hot, they drink some beer, talking about paintings…
It’s pretty creepy up here. Why don’t you put something on TV, Don says.
On TV we have pornstar Amber Lynn, here dressed in a ridiculously dated outfit as the very least believable news anchor. She cuts in and out during the film to give some vague and unrelated plot details, or whatever, as she clearly reads straight from cue cards. Her background is randomly stacked with some cheap TVs and VCR’s that looks like anything but a news TV studio. Amber Lynn got paid $2500 to be in this, (the whole budget, I’d fairly guess), and spent a quick hour to shoot her few scenes. Director Andrew Jordan was at least clever enough to approach her with a 16mm camera to look more professional. You can’t see much difference though. And the biggest shocker is that she does the best acting here.
We have a random torture scene because the plot suddenly said so. Or maybe because the filmmakers had just seen Guinea Pig: Devil’s Experiment and thought it was cool to just throw in a quick eye-gouging moment. Yes. there’s gore here, but don’t expect much. It’s cheap amateur slop and combined with the blurry image quality, you’ll spot more clearly gory images from a Rorschach test. And there’s also some zombies here, because why not.
Doug finally shows up, so the main plot can go forward. And he’s irritated because Fred and Don didn’t bring any food. He opens the fridge and says after he gives a loud burp:
What the fUUUck? There’s a six day, or a six month old bread in here. Maybe I can make myself some kind of a sandwich. Eh.
They eat some sandwiches, drink beer, burps, farts and have a good time, I assume. And then we have the classic scene where they put a dead bug in Don’s sandwich. There’s also a dog here, who only smells bullshit and clearly doesn’t want to be in the film. Can’t blame him.
Around the 25 minute mark, Doug’s bedridden and pregnant wife, Susan, screams. Yes, she’s pregnant. Forget the masked woman we saw at the beginning. That was just a premonition nightmare. As if the film isn’t already a nightmare. A puppet creature with big sharp teeth crawls out of her stomach. Susan is dead. RIP.
Oh my gOOOd…! SUSAN, Doug yells. Poor Doug. He really must have loved Susan. Because the acting here is just that convincing. We then learn that Susan was a part of a failed impregnate experiment of Dr. Lucas.
After it’s been established that a killer creature now lurks around the house, plus some other ant-like monstrous Things, we cut to a news break where Amber Lynn informs us that the legendary filmmaker George A. Romero is once again taking his copyright case to the Supreme Court of the United States. Because pirates continue to distribute thousands of copies of Night of the Living Dead. OK, good to know. Where’s the weather report? As our three protagonists now have to survive in a cramped basement full of monstrous Things, the guy with the beard, Fred, suddenly vanishes, as if he was cut out of the movie. What the fuck? Where’s Fred?, Don asks. To give some logical explanation, we’re told that (and I’m not making this shit up) he was trapped in a mouse hole (!) that brought him to the third, fourth and fifth dimension. And if I dared to break down more of the “plot“, I’d probably be sucked into a mouse hole myself.
On the surface, Things look like something made by a group of ten-year-olds, just for pure fun and shit’s n’ giggles, as they were only goofing around with a camera with no more thought behind it. The whole film, except the ending, was shot in the basement of Andrew Jordan’s parent’s house in Ontario, Canada. His parents were also confident and wholesome enough to finance the principal shooting and pre-production, which I still guess was $2500 to only afford some quick scenes with Amber Lynn to boost the sales. Because director Andrew Jordan and co-writer/actor Barry J. Gillis had actually some high, grandiose ambitions with Things other than just show it to embarrassed family members and friends on a drunk Friday night. They wanted to distribute it all the way to Canadian Television. Because why not. And I just assume that they also saw the Hollywood signs far in the blurry horizon. The closest the film got to the mainstream was at the video rental shops, where it reached the historic milestone of being the very first film shot on an 8mm to get a VHS distribution in Canada. Andrew Jordan’s parents must have been proud, and cheers for that. Doug Burston’s parents, on the other hand, forced him to get a real job. And they might’ve had a point, considering that he was mostly drunk during filming (wow, what a surprise), and beer was a requirement for him to act in the movie.
The dialogues here is the most bizarre shit I’ve heard in a long, long time:
– They’re eating me! Take me to the hospital! They can rebuild me there! – I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I …! – All I see is blOOOd — and guts! – Ah, the blood is dripping like maple SYRUP! Oh, oh, so much blood! – My dog… my cute little bloody dog! – Listen, ah geeh ah, I’m gonna die! I feel like it, but I’m saved!
While this sounds bad enough on paper, just wait till you hear the delivery. It’s Zombie ’90: Extreme Pestilence level of bad, or maybe even worse. I refuse to believe that even a single line of dialogue was written here, aside from the scenes with Amber Lynn. The dialogues were overdubbed, since the original recording was useless, and Andrew Jordan spent months torturing himself in post-production to polish his masterpiece. He was high on cannabis during the whole process, which surely explains a lot. But even the most expensive sound mixing studio couldn’t save this. He also hated the experience of making the film, which finally begs the big question why he made it in the first place, and on top of that, distribute it on VHS for all to see. The mental state of these guys raises some speculation, because the more you dive into it, the more it sounds like a miracle that this bizarre, inept clownshow was actually completed from start to finish, and released. The entire project sounds more like something Andrew Jordan was forced to make at gunpoint, like some sort of a humiliation ritual. In that case, mission accomplished, as the film has garnered a cult-following over the years, for all the wrong reasons.
Actor and co-writer Barry J. Gillis is still very proud of the film, and said in an interview with Sins of Cinema that he would love to make a sequel to Things, and I’m quoting: only if there is a fan out there with access to an investor with a million or more dollars we could make a great sequel. And he also would love to have Bruce Campbell on board.
… and we can’t wait to see that. Just make sure to have Mike Flanagan as an executive producer so that Neon picks it up for distribution. Things is available on DVD by Severin Films/Intervision, and is also on our favorite streaming site, Tubi.
Director: Andrew Jordan Writers: Barry J. Gillis, Andrew Jordan Country & year: Canada, 1989 Actors: Barry J. Gillis, Amber Lynn, Bruce Roach, Doug Bunston, Jan W. Pachul, Patricia Sadler IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0183881/
Extra Terrestrial Visitors. Yup, this movie actually exists, and no, this is not a very long-delayed mockbuster from The Asylum. Extra Terrestrial Visitors was originally meant to be a straight-forward horror film with an Earth-stranding alien who goes on a murder rampage. Sounds just like in the right alley for the Spanish director Juan Piquer Simón, who had just made the ultra violent Grindhouse classic Pieces.
Then came the global megahit E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and the producers demanded to have the script rewritten and add a storyline with a boy and a friendly alien and cut as many horror elements as possible. Not a good idea, to quote Tony Stark. In the UK, the film was released on VHS with the shamelessly fake clickbait title E.T.: The Second Coming. So what we have here is probably the most pathetic and desperate attempt to squeeze out a cash-in within the last minute. The producers who were confident enough to think that this kind of director was a good fit to piece together a mainstream, family-friendly E.T.-ripoff with zero to none resources, except an overuse of smog machines, must have snorted too much cocaine. Trumpy took the rest. Trumpy who? He’s a friendly, furry alien who has a big trunk like an anteater. More about him later.
A meteor crash lands in some rural forest landscape. Two poachers are out hunting and one of them sees a red gloving cave while the fog machine already works on overtime. As he goes into the cave, he enters a room filled with some large alien eggs. After he smashes them with his rifle, except one, he gets attacked and killed by an unseen entity. Mommy alien, we can guess. The last remaining egg gets later picked up by the boy, Elliot Tommy, who brings it home and hides it in his room.
Then we have a rock band, of some sort, who are in the studio recording. I can’t remember a single name, but what we have are two guys and four chicks. The melodrama is all over the place where it’s hard to give a single fuck. Here we also get some of the worst, retarded and hilarious dubbing I’ve heard recently. And the written-on-a-toilet paper dialogue with the amateur acting makes it all better. It’s already easy to see why this was picked up by Mystery Science Theater 3000.
The rock band drives out into the woods to have a picnic. They start to argue over some bullshit that makes one of the girls leave them and go into the smog-filled woods. And speaking of fog, I’d guess that this film has the world record for using smog machine. She stumbles upon mommy alien somewhere in the thick fog who makes her fall from a cliff and die. The rock band carries her body to the nearest house where they get to seek shelter. And yes, the same house where Tommy has hidden the alien egg in his room.
Suddenly, the egg hatches, and out comes a little cute alien who Tommy feeds with nuts and milk in all secretly in his room. And the faster he eats, the faster he grows until he’s as tall as Tommy. The alien is, assumedly, played by a kid in a cheap, funny costume that looks like something you’d see in the background of the Star Wars cantina just to fill some empty space. He has, as mentioned, a big trunk which he eats through and gives some blank, empty stares with stiff emotionless eyes. As hard as Tommy tries to act excited, there’s zero chemistry or charm here. It’s just unsettling and off-putting. To put the golden raspberry on top, he names the alien Trumpy. And he’s here to Make Earth Great Again. Or maybe not. Trumpy also has telekinesis power, and trust me, it’s cinema magic at its finest and will blow your mind.
And if you thought the dubbing was bad, you’ll have some serious brain farts when you hear Tommy. Trumpy’s alien mom goes on a rampage and body counting, because this was, after all, originally meant to be a horror film. Alien mom kills its victims by slapping and shoving them where they die instantly, one-hit-death Alex Kidd style. Lousy stuff. How does this turkey show end, you ask? Do we get an emotional goodbye scene like we did in E.T.? —Spoiler warning— After our two friends have a run in the woods, Tommy tells Trumpy to fuck off. I hate you Trumpy, he says. Uhm…OK. Poor Trumpy, I guess? And since there wasn’t any budget to make a cheap-looking spaceship to pick him up, Trumpy wanders into the fog-filled woods to never be seen again. The End.
Well, that was… something. Making Contact (1985) comes to mind, only this one is far more tone-deaf and completely inept in all aspects. To Juan Piquer Simón’s defense, he had no control over the final product as he was fucked over by the producers. Showbiz is brutal. Extra Terrestrial Visitors is still a fun, amusing trainwreck to watch for all turkey lovers. It’s available on Tubi and on Blu-ray from Severin Films.
Director: Juan Piquer Simón Writers: Joaquín Grau, Juan Piquer Simón Original title: Los nuevos extraterrestres Also known as: Pod People Country & year: Spain, France, 1983 Actors: Ian Serra, Nina Ferrer, Susana Bequer, Sara Palmer, Óscar Martín, Maria Albert, Emilio Linder, Concha Cuetos, Manuel Pereiro, Frank Braña IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086026/
The director, Jerry Warren, woke up one day and saw some hot air balloons from his window. He picked up his potato camera, pushed the rec-button, and maybe hoped he could use it in some future project. And so he did. C o o l.
Then we cut to a group of middle-aged men who have crash-landed with the balloons on some island. After some exploring, they stumble into some natives who only consist of young, slim ladies. They only cover their tits and asses with some leopard-bikini-clad. And they seem to have easy access to shampoo. Welcome to the wildlife.
You are pretty, one of the ladies says. And no, this is not really a porno, this is supposed to be a Sci-Fi horror film, if you haven’t already figured it out. They have some weird ritualistic dances as if they were high on bath salt while our group of men drools at them. Every man’s wet fantasy seems to have come true … or maybe not. Because there is a shocking secret to be revealed about these ladies later. One of the ladies gets suddenly kidnapped by a goofy-looking guy in jeans and a beanie who looks pretty much like the twin brother of Bubbles from Trailer Park Boys.
It’s impossible to try explaining what’s really happening here. The film is so bafflingly absurd that anyone would get a serious brain fart if trying to find a breadcrumb of logic.
Our men get met by two other dudes who just randomly pop up behind some bushes – one old bearded grandpa with a cane and a guy with a pirate patch. And both of these guys look like two hardcore alcoholics who have zero business being on a movie set. The strong odor of piss, sweat, booze and old spice really reeks. The one with the patch laughs all the time, drinks from every bottle he can find, and I would assume that the guy was completely hammered for real during the filming. Oliver Reed would be impressed. Because there is no freaking way that any actors near this production could act drunk so naturally as we see here. There’s also a scene where he seems to black-out as he sits by a table and the camera just keeps rolling in case he wakes up. Spoiler alert: some ten moments later he wakes up, just barely.
400 words in, and I haven’t even got to break down the premise. Maybe because there hardly aren’t any. But like in a crowded bar somewhere in Wisconsin on a Wednesday night, a lot of unpredictable shit is bound to happen. And if a celluloid can get drunk, here you have the result. It’s incoherent, messy, absurd, bizarre and out-of-control all the way to the very last pub goer who refuses to leave after closing time. Just one more drink. One more. Burp. Okay then: We have a cheap-looking lab where an old and-ready-to-die Dr. Von (yes, with an o) Helsing lies in a hospital bed, looking confused. Who could blame him. We have some random silly scenes with more Trailer Park Boys-looking weirdos who swing with the cheapest Halloween Devil Fork the budget allowed to spend. We see a glimpse of some creepy mannequin, just because, some drops of acid-trip images, and, of course, we have Dr. Frankenstein, the man of the hour himself. Here he’s played by John Carradine, where he only pops up randomly as a hologram while he’s rambling a string of demented and nonsensical words. If his lines weren’t cryptic enough, they always end with The power… The power… The power… The power…!
Man, this movie…
And yes, we actually have a Frankenstein monster shoe-horned in here, just to put the little, golden raspberry on the top. He pops up randomly just in time to join the classic fight scene in the laboratory. And this fight scene is something else, where the retard-o-meter goes all up and even through the ceiling. It’s even worse than the catfight scene in Manos: The Hands of Fate. The best way to describe the insanity is as if there was a blind dance coordinator on the set instead of a stunt/fight coordinator. The monster also keeps arm-swatting constantly as if there was a fly in front of his face that wouldn’t leave him alone. I wouldn’t be surprised if he accidentally smacked several of his co-actors. And the legend says that he’s still to this day trying to swat that fly.
The film is written, directed and produced by the same mastermind who made Teenage Zombies (1959), The Wild World of Batwoman (1966) and other public-domain classics. The most amusing thing here is that Frankenstein Island was made after Jerry Warren took a ten-year hiatus from filmmaking. And during those ten years, plus five years prior, he didn’t watch a single film and had zero sense of the pulse of the horror movie business – other than he had heard rumors that horror films were profitable again (thanks to the rise of the slasher genre). The guy clearly lived in his own small bubble, completely out of touch deep in a fantasy world where the only movies that existed were his own, and thought that a film like Frankenstein Island would rise his ego. Never heard the term zeitgeist either, I would guess. The even more amusing, if not just tragicomic, is the matter of fact that Frankenstein Island looks like something from the 1950s alongside with Teenage Zombies, produced by Ed Wood. It’s so hilariously and just painfully dated, almost to an impressive level. Without knowing any of this beforehand, I’d rather believe that the Earth is flat than that this was made the same year as Halloween II.
Warren also wanted to make a sequel to Frankenstein Island which he described as “more up-to-date, not so campy and old-time.“ I would even pay a hundred bucks to see that film, but unfortunately Warren died in 1988, two months before John Carradine. Double RIP. The one and only DVD release of the film is out of print and very pricey. It’s also available on Tubi.
Writer and director: Jerry Warren Country & year: USA, 1981 Actors: Robert Clarke, Steve Brodie, Cameron Mitchell, Robert Christopher, Tain Bodkin, Patrick O’Neil, Andrew Duggan, John Carradine, Katherine Victor, G.J. Mitchell IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082410/
For those familiar with Andreas Schnaas’ epic Violent Shit saga, and just add Nikos the Impaler to the list, know pretty much what to expect: Amateur-hour overkill extravaganza all the way through. And his remake of Joe D’Amato’s Antropophagus isn’t much different. It’s Violent, it’s Shit, and lots of tasteless, inept fun.
The film starts with a group of Interpol agents who have discovered a cave with human skeletons. One of the agents spots a diary which he takes a further look into to maybe get some answers. Then we flashback to a family of four on a boat-trip: dad Nikos (not related to Nikos the Impaler) with his younger daughter and pregnant wife (UH-OH). Shit happens when they get hit by a storm which leaves them stuck on a lifeboat where Nikos goes insane and eats his whole family. Since then, he’s paddled himself to the mainland to some remote village where he’s eaten up most of the people.
Our first body counts are a young couple who are about to have sex in a tent. We’re a few minutes in where the cinematography is non-existent and the overall quality reeks of amateur homemade porn. And don’t expect it to be any better. However, Nikos is soon about to pop up where he deletes them both with an ax and rips their faces off.
We jump to a train station where we meet our main characters (or just body-counts, if you will), a group that I’d guess were some middle-aged Anonymous Alcoholics, gathering for an intervention. It’s less serious than that though, as they’re here on vacation. The place is supposed to be in the countryside of Italy, yet the only post listed on the IMDb trivia section tells us that the film was shot in Austria. Whatever.
They continue the trip with an RV where they struggle to find the destination, a town called Lorenzo (if I remember correctly). They ask a local for help, a hobo, who strongly warns them to NOT go near Lorenzo. The pregnant woman pukes straight at the hobo’s hands, which he slurps and smears over his face. Uh.. OK.
It’s pretty straight-forward from here on with the same plot points as the original. The pregnant woman mysteriously disappears (and we all know what lies next for her), the body counts enter an empty village where they stumble upon (what is supposed to be) cadavers. Don’t let the cheap Halloween props fool you. This is the real thing. They get spooked and surprised by a blind screaming lady in a basement. The classic fetus scene is of course here, and instead of using a skinned rabbit, we actually have a real baby. Just kidding, they used an animatronic baby doll.
We also have some new fresh ideas with a quick side-plot of a gay couple hiking in the local woods, only to amp up the pace and kill count. And instead of the obligatory taking-a-piss break, we … are having a smoke. Because Andreas Schnaas tried to go for a far more serious tone with this one, if you can even imagine – and it falls completely on its face on all fronts. If the acting wasn’t bad and amateurish enough, with the same juvenile and frantic backyard-filmmaking approach as his previous films, the film is also shot on video. A fugly combination that never looks appealing. So don’t look for any visuals or atmosphere like the original.
That being said, Anthropophagous 2000 doesn’t fail to entertain. It’s a fun retarded so-bad-it’s-good trash fest that could exist in the Violent Shit universe. I said the same about Nikos the Impaler. Just replace the killer with Karl the Butcher, and there you have it. It makes zero difference. The gore is over-the-top, messy and comical, as Schnaas is known for. Some look decent while others look fake, like a plastic turd. Also watch out for a Cannibal Holocaust reference. Andreas Schnaas plays, of course, the cannibal, where he acts more like a cosplay version of George Eastman. It’s like watching a mouse trying to be an elephant. But as always, he seemed to have a jolly fun time playing yet another boogeyman.
Director: Andreas Schnaas Writer: Karl-Heinz Geisendorf Country & year: Austria/Germany, 1999 Actors: Oliver Sauer, Cornelia De Pablos, Andreas Stoek, Sybille Kohlhase, Achim Kohlhase, Andre Sobottka, Britt B., Andreas Schnaas IMDb:https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0202233/
It’s Shark Week and all, and since I’ve already talked about the modern classic that is Ouija Shark four years ago, now it’s time to take a look at the sequel.
Ouija Shark 2 opens with a quick summary of the first one where Anthony (John Migliore) sacrificed himself to save his daughter from getting eaten by a ghost shark. Anthony (John Migliore again) has since gotten stuck in a cheap green-screened Hell as a twisted parody of Dr. Strange where he’s getting chased and fighting against… gorillas. Of course, what else did you expect.
Anthony’s supposedly grieving wife (played by Deborah Jayne Reilly Smith) gives an emotionless speech with some crocodile tears, standing by his gravestone and swears that she will bring him back. She visits the fortune-teller who helped Anthony crossing over to the other side, in order to whack the shark and get some answers. The crystal ball tells us what we already know: that he’s in Hell. We can’t leave him THERE.We have to SAVE him, Anthony’s wife says with the emotion of a flat google voice. It’s not gonna be easy, the fortune-teller replies. It’s gonna be a barefoot trip to the park, don’t you worry.
Because after a quick meeting with The Grim Reaper (played by a dude with some cheap white paint on his face), Anthony gets some assistance from a ghost alligator which will help him finishing the evil shark. And just out of the blue, as expected, we have a musical number here where a goofy Satan and his TikTok brides show Taylor Swift how you make a catchy song (and that was not irony). Meanwhile, in the land of the living, Anthony’s wife is in the local woods to ask the mom of the fortune-teller for help. She’s a hermit and not interested. Shove off, she says. Can’t blame her. She changes her mind, though. But who cares. Now we want some shark mayhem, as the poster teases us with.
And the poster didn’t lie. If the film wasn’t amateur-hour already, just wait for the last thirty minutes – or as Satan himself says: You’ve seen nothing yet, folks! Here we have a series of random nightly cityscape shots where the ghost shark and the gator boss fight each other. Both creatures are, just like in the first film, ultra-cheap looking cute puppets that toddlers would have in their bed, and it looks as epic and cinematic as you’d expect. The gator spits out yellow-glowing puffy CGI balls while Satan controls the shark with a ouija board as he’s laughing and having a blast. The military chimes in and fires some missiles. The shark zaps them by shooting force-lighting through its eyes. Lots of buildings get destroyed, even a nuclear power plant (!) Oh, the mayhem, carnage and destruction! Roland Emmerich would eat his heart out. Really intense stuff, in other words. We see a handful of extras who run left and right in front a black, foggy background, all of which I would bet is super proud to be a part of Ouija Shark 2. And don’t blink if you wanna catch the two-second cameo by Lloyd Kaufman.
Ouija Shark 2 is written and directed by the main protagonist himself, John Migliore. And he goes all in for a crazier tone than the first one with a script that must have been co-written by a group of eight-year olds who just made it up as they went along. While the first had a whopping budget of 300 (yes, three hundred) Canadian dollars, I’d guess this one is slightly higher (50 dollars extra maybe), which gives us a few more green screen backgrounds rather than just the local woods and the director’s backyard. The acting is, of course, a big factor here, which is as strong and solid as you’d see in an elementary school play. But the one who takes the golden raspberry here, is Deborah Jayne Reilly Smith. She’s so stiff, lifeless and ridiculously robotic that she makes Mark Zuckerberg actually look like a normal human being. That in itself quite impressive.
So, whats next for this epic franchise, we may wonder? How about Ouija Shark 3: The Harpoon Made Me Do it, just to spitball an idea.
Writer and director: John Migliore Country & year: Canada, 2022 Actors: John Migliore, Deborah Jayne Reilly Smith, Kylie Gough, Simon Wheeldon, Lena Montecalvo, Jay MacAulay, Sabrina Migliore, Emmalene Pruden, Nicholas Migliore IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt21409958/
Aquanoids, or Aquanooooids, like Johnny Depp would have said it, is a silly Z-grade amateur-hour creature/feature flick where we have a sea monster that looks more like a rejected, drunk band member of Gwar who’d fallen into the ocean, and just decided to stay in the water and kill everyone who comes near him.
