Notes from the Turkeyground II: Another Month of Bad Movies

November is always a month my wife and I look forward to. Sure, for us horror zonks, October is the Halloween month. And we always watch a series of good movies. But sometimes we get bored of quality. We don't take it for granted--we get bored of it. Quality is always the same and all too stable, unless it's accompanied by a genius like Roman Polanski. But 'bad' movies are unpredictable, bubbling over with the unconscious, and capable of achieving greatness even without genius--or perhaps it's just a different kind of genius. That's where the November Turkey Challenge comes in. Hosted by Mr. Zombie CPA on the IMDb horror board, the Turkey Challenge is a race to watch as many 'bad' movies (rated lower than 4.5 on IMDb) as you can in a month.

My wife and I deliberately began the challenge on a risky note. We tried Dying God, a poorly-rated film from a new director. All we knew to expect was Lance Henriksen. What we got was a perverse, gritty detective movie about an Amazonian demon that rapes women to death. All the detective and monster-rape cliches are there in abundance and they come together to make a fairly entertaining SOV movie. As always, we asked ourselves, 'Why is it rated so low?' That our first movie raised that question boded well.

From there, we moved on to some 'turkey' favorites, namely, Roberta Findlay, Fred Olen Ray, and David DeCoteau. Roberta's movies are always bizarre, incoherent, and in a world of their own, but peculiarly entertaining. Blood Sisters, the only of her horror films we hadn't seen, proved her worse, however--and that was the end of our Findlay for the month. The Oracle and Lurkers still come recommended, though.

DeCoteau came to our rescue with his series of made-in-one-day-in-his-personal-mansion-with-a-series-of-moderately-attractive-twinks-in-their-underwear movies, 1313. Cougar Cult was the first. We were dazzled by the resurrection of scream queens Linnea Quigley, Brinke Stevens, and Michelle Bauer, and asked ourselves, 'Which one aged like fine wine, and which like an abandoned grape in a Frenchman's underpants?' Quigley seemed to have had some work done--I don't recall her canteloupes being quite so...canteloupey. Weren't they more like peaches before? They all looked good. I can't pick. I couldn't--I was distracted by the incredible werecougar transformation sequences. Who needs elaborate practical effets when you can just paste an non-animated gif image on screen, riht? Screw American Werewolf in London. Watch Cougar Cult.

Fred Olen Ray, however, was more our savior. He is every year, really. His Paul Naschy epic, Tomb of the Werewolf (2004) was a delightful fusion of two very different aesthetics, namely Ray's b-movie, T'n'A-fests, and Naschy's bonkers werewolf movies. My wife loved it. I just enjoyed it. I enjoyed Phantom Empire a lot more--a rewatch for me, but a very pure Fred Olen Ray film: it follows likable, goofy characters thrown into a confusing adventure-horror-sci-fi-fantasy plot that they joke their way out of while exposing plenty of tits along the way. Witch Academy followed. While a very enjoyable film, particularly Robert Vaughn's portrayal of the devil, it's one of those films from the end of Ray's really creative movies, closer to Evil Toons than to Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers.

I, however, gave myself a mega-dose of Ray's creative, '80s epics on my own. As my wife slept, I ingested The Tomb (1986), Scalps (1983), Alienator (1990), Bad Girls from Mars (1990), and my favorite, Beverly Hills Vamp (1989). Watching Beverly Hills Vamp, I realized it was one of those few films that gives me true joy--a desert island movie, a cheer-up movie, a watch over-and-over movie. Whether it's Eddie Deezen's flailing-arm approach to emoting, the 'this isn't going to be a habit with you' woman, the bizarre masochistic butler, the sexy vampire babes, or the unique vampire hunting team of Deezen, Robert Quarry, and Jay Richardson, I don't know--but I love it.

I would also be remiss not to note another 'savior' of 'bad' filmmaking, Mr. Jim Wynorski, the truest disciple of Roger Corman. His career followed pretty much the same trajectory as Ray's. I'm convinced Fred Olen Ray's creative arc started downward just when he teamed up with Wynorski, actually. Fred just couldn't do titty movies the way Wynorski could--Wynorski's somehow more convincing. Not of This Earth, a Corman remake, is one of the best b-movies ever made and watching it thrilled me. The made-for-SyFy epics, Bone Eater and Pirahnaconda were just silly fun. Cleavagefield was rubbish, but amusingly so.

What really makes the Turkey Challenge, however, is not revisting old budies like Ray and Wynorski. It's meeting new friends. And if there's one I did make this challenge, it was definitely Jeff Leroy. I knew nothing about this filmmaker before last month--though I had heard of Werewolf in a Woman's Prison--but I gave him a shot entirely on the basis of--well, I liked the title of his movie, Creepies. It's fun to say. Creepies. Creepies turned out to be a fun, ambitious, giant insect movie. Anyone with Leroy's budget wouldn't have tried the giant spider vs tank warfare he went for, but he did--and it works mostly due to his enthusiasm. Creepies 2 was pretty much the same thing, just a lot more, with pretty much the same budget. It's a fantastically fun homage to Harryhausen, Godzilla, and giant insect movies. Werewolf in a Woman's Prison is also an homage to various b-movie subgenres, but is ultimately a much more mature work. Like An American Werewolf in London crossed with Caged Heat, it's every bit as exciting, salacious, and enjoyable as the title promises, with great practical effects and some nice tits--especially on this one Mexican girl. Leroy keeps her in the movie a lot longer than justified, bless him.

Some other interesting acquaintances were Jeffrey Scott Lando, whose Alien Incursion, rated a whopping 1.9, is actually a pretty fun alien-beasts-attacking-idiots-in-the-woods movie. Bill Rebane, the outdoorsman-cum-b-movie auteur who made the apocalyptically boring Monster-a-Go-Go--a film not unlike getting one's face dragged through mud--turns out he made a good movie about an old American town with a haunted past, Demons of Ludlow--check it out. Richard Friedman. We started by watching Dark Wolf, his werewolf epic made in the 2000s. A sensual, arty, and meandering werewolf movie that's overlong and tries hard to create its own mythology. It has its moments. We were plenty surprised to find his career began in the '80s with the extremely goofy Doom Asylum--like a National Lampoon horror movie made for $500. We also watched Phantom of the Mall, which is somewhere between Dark Wolf and Doom Asylum and is every bit as uneven as that sounds. It also contains ample Pauly Shore.

A somewhat less interesting acquaintance is James Nguyen. The kind of acquaintance you snub on the street, because he'll just keep talking to you about his haemorrhoids, even though you just told him you're on your way to your little girl's first dance recital. You might know him as 'the Birdemic guy.' Because he made Birdemic. A very bad boy-meets-girl movie, involving the blandest, most robotic human simulacra, that gets interrupted by some terrible animated gifs of eagles he found on google image search. The movie ends when Adobe Premiere crashed. You can learn all about it in my upcoming interview with Jimmy N., "Nguyen Nowhere: The True Story of Birdemic."

But the excitement of the Turkey Challenge, unfortunately, does peter out about halfway through the month. The unconventional starts to become the norm, I start craving a good western, and my wife insists we play a video game instead. We still enjoyed a few Charles Band movies--The Dead Want Women and Evil Bong II being recommended--and the frustratingly bleak Wrong Turn 4 and 5 movies--why are those damned inbred hicks so invincible? shouldn't they have trouble standing up? They can't learn multiplication tables to save their lives, but they can rig elaborate Saw-esque traps? Shouldn't they spend all day biting the callouses that formed a natural boot over their feet? I dunno, maybe it's just me. But the challenge did end on the pleasant note of Haunted High, a Jeffrey Scott Lando made-for-SyFy haunted highschool movie. Best part of the movie? The fat computer nerd. Can't get enough of that guy.

As always, we come out of the Turkey challenge renewed, refreshed, with a new appreciation for quality, genius, animated gifs, and tits. Anyone who hasn't done the Turkey Challenge yet, I invite you to participate, see with new eyes--it's an education and a fun, unpredictable ride. For those who have participated, thank you for being my Comrades-in-Arms.

Until next November, stay hungry!