Trash Menagerie

Dir. Andrea Bianchi Bimba’s in trouble. In a gothic castle, her family has conducted a seance to try to contact her dead mother, accidentally releasing the spirit of a dead relative that finds its way into Bimba’s body. As Bimba begins to act out in a series of escalating naughty behaviors, it’s up to Sister Sofia, the family’s resident nun-in-training to free Bimba from the curse and save her soul from eternal damnation. Maybe. You’d be forgiven for concluding that Malabimba is a horror film based on the above description. Centered around a young girl being possessed by a spirit in an old gothic castle, the premise is ripe for all the sorts of Exorcist style shenanigans that only Italian rip-off artists can deliver. But director Andrea Bianchi and writer Piero Regnoli have something more important on the mind; lots of sleazy sex. This is much more a psychosexual soap opera than it is a horror film. If you’re looking for blood and gore, or ghosts and ghouls and goblins, you’l...

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...

Dir. Michael Dugan Possession is a great tool in the horror genre, ripe for any number of representations of human agony. Throughout the years we’ve seen possessions, demonic, ghostly, or otherwise stand in for (among other things) puberty ( The Exorcist [1973]), alcoholism ( The Shining [1980]), grief ( The Babadook  [2014]), and mental illness ( Hereditary [2018]).   In less “classy” films, demonic possession is mostly an excuse for a gore free-for-all, showcasing gnarly facial prosthetics, color contacts, and bodily evisceration. Here you find The Evil Dead ( 1981), Night of the Demons (1988)   , Demons (1985), Demon Wind (1990), et al. Mausoleum falls squarely in this latter camp, though there is a small glimmer of aspirations toward the former. Young Susan has just attended her mother’s funeral, where she is drawn to the Nomed family tomb by the call of a choir eerily chanting her name. Once inside, she encounters spooky green and purple lights, while...

aka The Presence Dir. Kevin S. Tenney Witchtrap is not a sequel to Witchboard (1986). And that’s a good thing. They’re more or less the same movie; a group of people get picked off one-by-one by an evil spirit and eventually the main girl gets possessed by said spirit. The evil spirits are even both played by the same dude and look pretty much identical. And while ‘ Board is arguably a better movie from a production standpoint, ‘ Trap is just so much more damn fun, thanks in large part to James W. Quinn, whom Witchboard , as its greatest sin, kills off in the first 20 minutes. There’s also no Zarabeth in Witchtrap , which is a huge plus.   The film begins with a Tony Clifton-looking entertainer type being chased around a house by swooping camera shots before getting thrown out a second story window to his death. This is a problem for Devon Lauder, who has inherited the house from his dead uncle Avery, but cannot sell the house to to a stipulation in his will. In or...

Dir. Cirio H. Santiago The theme song that plays over the end credits of this film contains the lyric, “they’re vampire hookers and blood is not all they suck,” so that’s the level of tomfoolery we’re dealing with here. And while it doesn’t need to go to the top of your Must Watch List, Vampire Hookers , directed by exploitation juggernaut Cirio H. Santiago, is still a charmingly dopey, if dated, horror-comedy that is smirk inducing and chuckle producing...and a little cringe worthy too. It’s strange. Sociopolitical insensitivity is to be expected in exploitation films usually presenting as women getting raped in service of the plot, women getting naked in service of selling movie tickets, and instances of casual racism. Maybe it’s just from years of desensitization, but these things don’t really phase me anymore when I see them in these kinds of films. While there’s no rape going on in Vampire Hookers , there is a scene where our two leads head into a bar to pick up women, st...

aka The Hunting Trip Dir. Richard Gardner The marketing of exploitation films is an art in and of itself. It is also something one must be wary of. The posters and home video cover art for 80’s genre cinema are awesome to behold; snapshots from neon-soaked universe of kinetic madness deserving of appreciation for their own sake. But more often than not, expectations are being set too high for the movies housed within, and with good reason. Most of these movies aren’t very good by any popular metric. It the covers were altered to be more accurate depictions for the films they advertise, these videos would rarely get picked up off the self, so I guess you can argue that false advertising is a necessary evil. But boy is it frustrating, making the search for solid trash boil down to what is essentially a numbers game. There are some trash movies that are as awesome as their cover art suggests, but they are few and far between. So tempering one’s expectations is an absolute imper...

Dir. J. Christian Ingvordsen, Danny Kuchuck Mark Trex has no chill. But you can’t really blame him. You’d have no chill either if you were a convicted serial killer, recently escaped after spending 10 years in prison and on a quest to open a gateway to Hell by murdering the members of the death metal band you loved when you were a kid. Or something like that. He also has frequent hallucinations in which he’s attired in a loin cloth and battling a sword-and-sandal demon knight to the death. So Mark Trex really doesn’t have anything to be chill about. He’s the villain of Blue Vengeance , and he’s a shining star.   Essentially a police procedural with slasher elements, the story is pretty standard fare; maniac escapes from prison to continue his reign of terror and the cop who put him away the first time has to track him down again and take him out for good. But it’s the weird details that makes Blue Vengeance stand apart and in particular, Trex’s over the top char...

Dir. Jim Mallon The hooks in Blood Hook are pretty much regular sized hooks. And that’s a little disappointing. With a name like “ Blood Hook ”, I was expecting a big hook. Like an almost comically oversized hook. The killer has a big bobber, or maybe it’s a lure (I don’t know shit about fishing) covered in hooks, but the hooks are a pretty standard size, maybe slightly above standard, but certainly nothing to write home about. It’s a little bit of a let down. Though fortunately once you get past that, Blood Hook showcases a fun little twist on the well worn slasher formula with a lot regional charm.   It’s summer 1986 (I assume it’s summer; it’s sunny and people are fishing) and Muskie Madness reigns supreme in a rural Wisconsin town as the locals vie for the biggest catch during the annual fishing festival. Crashing the party is city slicker Peter van Cleese and his Gen X buddies so that they and the locals can make each uncomfortable across the generation gap. Pet...

aka  Soul Vengeance Dir. Jamaa Fanaka Welcome Home Brother Charles is a film that is unfortunately as relevant and resonant today as it was when it was released over 40 years ago. In its racial politics at least. Not so much in its sexual politics. But more on that later. It is also unfortunately a little bland, rarely giving up any exploitation goodness until the final act. The second feature of then UCLA student Jamaa Fanaka, best known for the Penitentiary trilogy, Brother Charles is a meandering and disjointed film with a few surreal artistic touches that make it a worthwhile viewing if you can temper your expectations. Brother Charles ’ opening credits play over a dark void in the middle of which is what looks like the Zuni Fetish Doll from Trilogy of Terror if it were designed by H. R. Giger. Accompanying this image is a theme of creepy dissonant horns, priming the viewer for some kind of horror or dark fantasy. However what we’re first presented wi...

aka Alien Prey, The Destructer Dir. Norman J. Warren What if the alien from Under the Skin walked out of that movie and into a Lifetime Original about a dysfunctional lesbian couple? And was also a handsome British man instead of Scarlett Johansson. Prey (aka Alien Prey), that’s what if. A carnivorous alien being named Kator lands in the English countryside on some sort of reconnaissance mission from his home planet and assumes the identity of an unfortunate lug called Anders. Very shortly after he is taken into the home of the naive, free-spirited Jessica and her domineering, jealousy-prone partner Josephine, who assume the man to be lost and injured. Jessica welcomes the prospect of a new man in her isolated life while Jo is immediately wary and hostile toward the stranger, because all lesbians either just a). need a good dicking, or b). hate all men entirely.  Soon Anders/Kator’s presence begins drive a wedge between the two lovers, as Jo becomes more and more angr...