Trash Menagerie

aka Sewage Baby Dir. Francis Teri The Suckling (1990) is what happens when community theater skill and Troma-esque gonzo shock sensibility meet to deliver what appears to be heavy handed Catholic propaganda packaged in a scuzzy D-Grade creature feature. It’s like the husk of an after school special lying in the gutter after a meth bender. The story begins with a Texas Chain Saw Massacre  (1974) style title crawl claiming the film is based on true events (wink, wink). Then there’s a dream within a dream, and then finally a frame story about two very small doctors discussing the sole survivor of a bloodbath weeks earlier. Finally in the story proper, we see a dude who looks like Archie Andrews leading his girlfriend, our main character, to a decrepit house that houses a brothel/abortion clinic. There’s some cringey nudity during a scene showing one of the prostitutes with a john. It’s purpose in the film seems to be to garner a few laughs via slapstick. Mostly it’s...

aka Blue Passion Dir. Niko Mastorakis If Alfred Hitchcock and Brian DePalma teamed up to produce a film for a Pay-Per-View softcore channel, but only had a small fraction of their combined skill, and an even smaller fraction of their normal budget, the result might look something like In the Cold of the Night , a bonkers neon-noir thriller with more skin than sense. Our protagonist, Scott Bruin is living the coke-fueled, late 80’s/early 90’s American West Coast dream. He’s got a successful fashion photography studio/loft in L.A., swaths of conventionally attractive women ready to throw themselves at him, and a glowing waterbed on which to sleep with said women. The only trouble is he’s having recurring nightmares in which he murders the same woman in the same house by different means, causing him to question his own sanity and setting him on a search for this mysterious dream woman. In the Cold of the Night’s biggest issue is pacing. The running time is 113 minutes, generally...