Short Reviews for Nov. 29, 2010: Wynorski and Misc.

Three Jim Wynorski Films
Sorority House Massacre II (1990) - 2.5/4

Jim Wynorski to the rescue. If you weren't already confused, in the stunning sequel, Wynorski gives you flashbacks to SLUMBER PARTY Massacre instead of SORORITY HOUSE Massacre, which this is supposed to be the sequel to. So even the director can't keep 'em straight. No matter, 'cause Wynorski takes all that was right about Slumber Party Massacre--great titties--and gives us more, more, more. Wynorski contrives every event and every angle to show us more T&A, bless 'im.

Five bodacious babes who wear only underwear. Greatest thighs in a motion picture, Robyn Harris. Stacia Zhivago, who looks like Laura Dern as a pin-up girl--later became a doctor. Melissa Moore, a bit of a butterface, but what an amazon. Michelle Verran, the sweetest rack in the film. Dana Bentley, a raven-haired cutey with big nostrils, now surgeried herself into Pete Burns territory. Low-angle panties. High-angle cleavage. On her knees. Out in the rain just to get wet. Orville Ketchum, the man who never dies. Bridget Carney as Candy, the stripper with a booty so fine you'll cry tears of semen. Random racism from Abdul and Schmabdul. Satana the remarkably unsatanic stripper. Jealous lady cop. Random showers. Ouija board seance. Drunk titties. Angry titties. Betrayed titties. Afraid titties. Squeakin' titties. "Let's work together" titties. And of course, ass-kicking titties. And a little romance for the lady viewers.

Nekkid: 3/4
Gore: 2/4
Tequila-swillin' sluts: 5
Humour: 3/4

Sorority House Massacre III (1990) - 3.5/4

AKA Hard to Die (a much more appropriate title)

Read my review of Sorority House Massacre II? Well this is the same film cranked up to 11. Really, some scenes are lifted almost exactly from SHM2. Except this one's set in a upscale lingerie shop and not a sorority house at all. The temps are in for inventory and what kinda temps do they hire? College kids? Mike and Joel? Nope, they hire lingerie models! who wear lingerie and high heels almost the whole movie--except for when they take turns having a shower scene.

But that's not the essence of the film. No, this is an epic battle between good and evil, the great demon-hunter Orville Ketchum versus the diabolical spirit of Hokstatter, brought to its final chapter. Both are HARD TO DIE--the question is, who is HARDEST? Me, after watching these sexy babes romping around in their upscale panties with big guns.

Babes in lingerie. Titties squeak when you wash 'em. Orville still eats raw meat. Scared tits. Bloody tits. Soapy tits. Possessed tits. Gun-wielding tits. Bouncing tits. Naked tits. Wet tits. A few dead tits. Stabbing, shooting, stapling, paper-pick stabbing, ball-kicking, head-pounding, and choking. Weirdest Chinese food delivery costume ever. Burning weirdest Chinese food delivery costume ever. Babes with guns. Babes running. Babes bouncing. Babes climbing stairs. Babes moving boxes. Babes moving filing cabinets. Gratuitous porn shoot. Several gratuitous showers. Gratuitous dirty feet. And a little romance for the lady viewers.

Nekkid: 3/4
Gore: 1/4
Babes with guns: 3
Humour: 4/4

976-Evil II (1990) - 2/4

That wacky, Satanic calling service returns, this time without Sam Ritter (No? Google Image Search, safe search off, enjoy.), and unleashes more nonsensical terror. The film gives no further explanation, so why should I?

Hotline to Satan. Creepy old man. Evil creepy old man. Lecherous creepy old man. Waste of good POA. Bad Vincent Price impression. Good Vincent Price moustache. Great set piece: It's a Wonderful Life...with ZOMBIES! Death by television. Death by phantom car. Death by prop stalactite. Pizza attack. Oven attack. Daddy's little girl: nice tits and slutty, cut-off jeans. Half-wit cop. Exploding drunk. Tough guy on a bike--named Spike. Puttin' the move on Daddy's girl. Eatin' fries. Drinkin' beer. Ridin' the hog. Warnin' about the number. Breakin' n' enterin'. Scrutinizin' phone bills. Astral projectin'. Turnin' down Brigitte Nielsen circa 1990--he's gay. And a little romance for the lady viewers.

Nekkid: 0/4 - Really? In a Wynorski flick?
Gore: 1/4
Times you think, "That's not what a phone sounds like": 14
Humour: 2/4

Bikini Girls on Ice (2009) - 1/4

Bikini car wash meets random killer at a rundown gas station--the title tells the rest.

Lots of girls in bikinis. Cinematographer couldn't light his way out of a paper bag. Smart girl with deep voice, reluctant to wear bikini: obviously the Final Girl. Her peppy, cute friend with a touch-o-the-slut: obviously destined to be killed in a harrowing moment. Car washing montage. Prostitution. Pointless sex scene with a bonus, "Don't touch me!" Slutty girls. Bitchy girls. Lezzy girls. Nerds with a bus. Old man with a warning. French tourists with a gas can. Killer can move faster the light--screw you, Einstein. Killer makes no sound--obviously a ninja. Obsession with ice baths--definitely a ninja. Girls keep wandering off alone--guess what happens? Dead dog. Dead slut. Dead tourists. Dead bitch. Absence of girls with their bikinis OFF. Absence of interesting kills--unless black-outs interest you. Absence of interesting gore. Stupid, stubborn victims. Stupid, unimpressive killer. Deus ex machina--we saw that coming. And a little romance for the lady viewers.

Nekkid: 0/4!
Gore: 1/4
Times a victim asks the killer, "Why are you doing this?": 6
Humour: 1/4

As a Quebecer myself, I apologize for my fellow provincemen's lack of ambition and for such a disappointing waste of a good title and several good pieces of ass.

Hack-o-Lantern (1988) - 2/4

Produced and directed by Bollywood rejects Raj Mehrotra and Jag Mundhra respectively, Hack-o-Lantern is a preposterous satanic cult/slasher hybrid about a young man groomed by his grandpa to take over his cult.

Dad wants grandpa to leave the boy alone, so he's gonna head on out there. Turns out 'out there' is just next door, where a satanic cult is practicing a ritual no-one seemed to know about--just next door!

The boy grows into a moody, muscular loser who listens to metal and works out all day. One day he listens to metal and fantasizes a random '80s music video, in which a black girl struts down stairs, sticks out her tongue, and shoots '80s lasers at the band until only the boy is left.

Meanwhile, his sister is getting ready for a Halloween party and sets her best friend up with her normal brother. Normal enough. Then her brother screws her best friend in the cemetery on the first date. The best friend tells the sister about it and, rather than be disturbed, they go back to the cemetery together to look at the spot. Don't all sisters do that? Stare at their brothers' fresh hump-spots.

It's almost at the climactic showdown when a comedian (the great Bill Tucker, remember him? He's famous for being the comedian in Hack-o-Lantern!) steps out and begins doing a lengthy impression of a one-eyed turkey. What? I don't know.

Sexual harassment. Lecherous grandpa. Very campy grandpa. Incest. Truck full of pumpkins. Graveyard sex. Sex on top of a dead body. Satanic cult. Gee, grandpa's evil, whodathunkit? Random '80s metal video. Random awful comedian. Random snake lady. Geisha. Cowboy. Scary cult of... uh, about four people. '80s lazers. Satanist vs Satanist showdown, with pitchforks. Patricide. Matricide. Infanticide. Turkey impressions. Bald beaver. A few titties. Bad jokes. And a little romance for the lady viewers.

Nekkid: 2/4
Gore: 2/4
Awful puns: 5
Humour: 3/4 - kinda in Troll 2 territory here

The Thing Below (2004)

The government's been up to some shenanigans out on the ocean and accidentally set free an ancient, extraterrestrial being from fifty miles beneath the earth's surface. This being says things like, "On the contrary, you are the bastard, for I have been on this planet for two million years, before your species even evolved." Unfortunately for this tentacled critter, a black ops ship captain (Billy Warlock) has just arrived on the oil rig and he says things like, "You bastard, you killed my friends!" Seeing the carnage in the derelict lab, he decides it's time to get the heck out of there before they all become tentaclefood.

Taking a hint from Sphere, I suppose, the tentacle beast can also read minds. Not just your surface thoughts, like in Scanners. No, this thing can scan your entire brain in seconds and figure out exactly what's the best illusion to lure you into its slimy grasp. It doesn't make much sense why some of these people fall into the traps, but, hey... do you smell that? That's the smell of setpieces!

The illusions allow Wynorski to do things that really have nothing to do with the plot. Like an Old West shootout and a sudden striptease moment. I accused Wynorski of not knowing how to make erotic scenes out of beautiful women when I reviewed Cheerleader Massacre. Now I have to eat my words. He shoots an incredible striptease sequence with a babe named Glori-Anne Gilbert. I also applauded Wynorski for only using all-natural ladies in Cheerleader Massacre. Gilbert's breasts are silicon torpedoes; ah well, can't have everything. One has to admire the sheer ingenuity with which T&A was brought into a plot and setting that doesn't really leave any room for disrobing.

Along with the illusions, there is also a subplot involving a general whose "ass is on the line here!" and loads of flashbacks. Wynorski went flashback crazy. Together, this leaves the plain narrative fractured, or like a clothesline to hang all these disconnected moments on, making the film feel a little Al Adamson-esque.

The CGI tentacles didn't bother me; I don't mind CGI. In this case, the CGI yields some creepy tentacle-coming-out-of-human imagery in the first ten minutes of the film; the rest of the film, however, gives up on this altogether.

The Thing Below is a pretty decent sea monster picture. I liked the setpieces, especially the striptease sequence. One wonders why the monster doesn't just kill these people once they're isolated, instead of providing a sexy, three-minute striptease. But I'm not complaining. It's supposed to be fun, and it succeeds in being so well-enough.

Cheerleader Massacre (2003)

Maybe I'm just getting tired of 'Turkeys' or maybe this film is actually as uninspired and wretched as I believe it to be. I'm very gentle on what some call 'bad movies,' as my reviews from the past two weeks will reveal. I never laugh because a film is 'bad'; at least not until tonight.

Some sort of sequel to The Slumber Party Massacre--a well-written and jokey slasher--Cheerleader Massacre tells the story of a group of very attractive cheerleaders getting stuck in a cabin in the mountains with three guys and their coach. At the same time, a serial killer has escaped from prison and is killing high school girls. For some reason he ends up at the camp in the woods too. The theme of serendipity is built up out of the motif of the arbitrariness of this film's events.

The holes are flecked with some plot, but don't let that deter you. The escaped killer's MO is killing women in their 40s. Yet the police still go and question Brinke Stevens, who apparently survived the locker room assault in Slumber Party Massacre, about her attack in that film. She's introduced in an overdramatic shot as a wraithlike creature, the embodiment of angst and victimhood that never forgets. So that section, which includes a lengthy clip from SPM, is a big slab-o-filler. The whole police procedural about the escaped killer is merely a red herring, though it takes up half the film. The rationale behind the murders makes no sense whatsoever and has nothing to do with Slumber Party Massacre. One can detect the influence of David Lynch in how the events of the narrative have little to no bearing on one another outside of their shared motifs of insipidity and tits.

Cheerleader Massacre is decently shot and decently edited--far better than most shot-on-video pictures. More's the pity that it's so inept and vapid an instance of storytelling. The only thing it offers is lots of beautiful girls. Every woman in this movie, young and old, is gorgeous and busty (all natural, too). This is offered for our gratification in awkward, silly moments, like the cheerleading coach's shower, which, if shot in real time, would have amounted to a full hour of a woman doing nothing but rubbing her own tits very slowly, over and over. Each symbolic movement of Irish Spring over her large aureoles, shot with the kinetic grace of Kurosawa, brings to mind Stonehenge and the Nazca Plains with their mysterious grandeur. Sounds erotic, eh? Well it's not; it's just stupid and manipulative. Besides, you know what? Most women are beautiful, unless they're fat, ancient, or inbred. You go to the grocery store any day and you'll see plenty of women who could be causing boners in b-movies. It's just not that interesting. Oh, and all the men are flabby, gormless doofs.

Nothing to recommend. Sorry, this one's a total dud. I went in expecting to like it, too. I say you'd be much, much better off watching The Corpse Grinders 2 for some shot-on-video fun.