Drill Of The Night

Posted by TD

I'm relatively certain I saw this at some point in the 80's, but didn't remember much of anything about it. There is no way something like this would have not been chosen as a rental back then. Half naked women on the cover cowering under a killer holding a drill? Sounds like the stuff of a 10-year-old-slasher-film-loving boy's dreams.

Or, in this case, the dreams of a Feminist Activist writer named Rita Mae Brown, along with Director Amy Holden Jones, who were aiming to send up the Slasher genre 14 years before Scream stabbed its way into theaters. The results of that somewhat bizarre concoction are definitely mixed, especially since the producers chose to film it as a straight Slasher flick, but there is some fun to be had here for Slasher fans.

Trish (Michelle Michaels) decides to throw a slumber party for her friends while her parents are away. They sit around talking about boys and smoking pot... with shirts optional. Most choose to let "the twins" hang out nearly the entire time. I had to ask my wife if this is really the way these slumber parties really happened! (She said no, by the way,) Obviously it only happens this way in the minds of horny teenage boys and a writer who is sending up the gratuitous nudity in the genre. Unfortunately for them, there just happens to be a five cans short of a six pack killer named Russ Thorn who has escaped from prison, on the loose armed with a power drill. He manages to find their little party, and it's time to let the drilling killing begin!

The main enjoyment for me in this one was poking fun at the cast. We have two of the girls' boyfriends who appear to be more into each other than any of the girls. The "little sister", Courtney (Jennifer Meyers), who I would have guessed at approximately 29, but was attempting to play 15. Quirky things like that will make this one fun to revisit at some point in the future.

It's not all cheesy laughs though. Russ Thorn (Michael Villella) is actually quite the creepy killer. He doesn't wear a mask, and isn't necessarily that scary looking...until he talks, which was somewhat unusual for a Slasher Villain in '82. Freddy Krueger and his wisecracks didn't come along until '84. There are a few genuine scares, with the pizza delivery guy death being a particular favorite of mine. That being said, I do miss seeing a killer who actually LOOKS scary without even doing anything. Even though we all know "normal looking" people are usually the scariest monsters of all in real life, in this kind of film, I want some sort of creepy mask or hideous facial deformity in my monster.

The budget of the flick was about $250,000, according to Wikipedia, so I guess they did a decent job with what they had to work with. A few memorable scenes, boobs galore, and plenty of Karo Syrup spillage to satisfy fans of 80's Slasher flicks. This one won't make me forget about titans like the Friday The 13th or Halloween series, but was enjoyable enough that I'll pop in the sequel at some point in time to see what other blood and boob soaked adventures The Driller Killer went on after his first night of fun in '82.

Click here to see the trailer for Slumber Party Massacre.

2 JAWS Barrels Out Of 5

Format: DVD

"Vicious" Is Ambitious...ly Bad

Posted by Boo

This weekend the hubby and I decided to give the movie Vicious a try. I found the flick at a local used record/DVD shop here in Minnesota called Discland. I wasn’t expecting much from Vicious, but it had both Tom Savini and Bill Mosely on the ticket, so really, how bad could it be?

Answer: Don’t ask.

Tom Savini plays some kind of mysterious government agent – or maybe ex-government agent, I’m not sure – that uses a group of campers as bait for his vicious beast that is a failed government experiment.

It’s an ambitiously bad movie, with the only real redeeming quality being Tom Savini. If the director, Matt Green (also a good friend of Savini’s), had been smart he would have recognized Savini’s entertainment value and stuffed the movie full of Savini in his Rambo-type ass kicking character. Instead, he opted to assault us with a barrage of benign office scenes with many people talking, yet not really saying much of anything.

We have Matt Green and Martin L. Kelley to thank for this movie’s ineffective dialogue. Dialogue which, frankly, makes George Lucas look like a dialogue master. I almost found myself yearning for those awkward conversational moments between Anakin and Padme while watching Vicious…

No, I’m sorry. That’s going too far.

But the dialogue really was not good here. And an unfortunate victim of this dialogue disaster is Bill Mosely. Mosely plays the cliché, high ranking government official that bullies his subordinates and makes the self-serving decisions that leads to the monster-riddled disaster in the movie. Mosely looks the part, with those unnerving, predatory eyes of his, but as soon as he starts speaking, desperately trying to give the empty dialogue some kind of substantiality, the magic is lost.

Movie, you know you’re bad when even Bill Mosely can’t save you.

We’re halfway through the film at this point, and I’m getting some serious douche chills watching the great Mosely struggle with his dialogue. I really just wanted a vicious beast to start killing people, because after all, that’s what the movie is promising! To my delight, people start dying, some blood starts flying, and my movie spirits are lifted…

And then we see our “vicious” monster.

Folks, I’ve see some bad digital monsters in my day, but none worse than our old pal Vicious. It literally looked like a digital draft of the monster, crude and unpolished, as though they were in the middle of the production and ran out of money. This, I learned from IMDB, was exactly what happened. They apparently had an animatronic monster that was only half finished, and had to resort to a hastily compiled digital monster to get the movie finished.

I’m sure in hindsight this crew realizes they should have subscribed to the less-is-more theory regarding movie monsters, just stuck with the animatronic head that they did manage to build, and abandon the “full frontal” views, so to speak. The up-close shots that utilize the animatronic head aren’t so bad. They do work, and Green should have focused more on creative ways to use that head, rather than crow-barring those digital full body shots into the film. 

The last fifteen minutes of the film, though, we finally get some substantial Savini. Yay! Savini’s character worked, because there wasn’t much dialogue for the character. Green was letting Savini use actions, not words, to be smarmy and kick some vicious monster ass. And it was exactly what this movie needed.

I have many criticisms of this movie, but none as important as this: not enough Savini. But really, couldn’t this be said of any Savini movie? After all, there is never such a thing as too much Savini…

The Cabin In The Woods - It's Not What You Think!

Posted by TD

This one starts out just like the approximately nine thousand other "Bring A Group Of Teens In The Woods And Slaughter Them One By One" films you've seen before. You have The Jock, The Slut, The Stoner, The Brain, and The Virgin all taking a trip to a creepy looking cabin that looks as though it was lifted right off the set of Evil Dead II (one of the first of many homages to classic Horror flicks, and no surprise when you have Peter "Evil Dead II" Deming as your cinematographer), and assume you know exactly how this is all going to pan out.

Until it turns everything you think you know about these kinds of films directly on its ass.

What writers Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard (Buffy The Vampire Slayer creator & screenwriter, respectively) have done here is nothing short of remarkable. They have taken a well traveled genre staple, created something completely fresh and unique with it, while still managing to give the gorehounds what they want with all of the carnage one expects from the type of film it is initially expected to be. That alone puts their efforts (as Seth Gecko would say) "in my cool book." Without giving anything away, I absolutely think they took one line from Ghostbusters and turned it into an excellent plot device. Sometimes that's all it takes!

Great performances across the board, with Fran Kranz delivering what I can say with 100% confidence is my Favorite Horror Film Stoner Of All Time. There is also a rock star cameo at the end of the flick that is sure to please every fan of the genre.

The only real criticism I have regarding the film would be the way it was marketed. I'm not really sure they knew what to do with this one. I'll fully admit it wasn't until reading about it in Fangoria, coupled with some great reviews from fellow Horror fans, that I got my butt in that theater chair. The previews certainly didn't do it. Then again they probably didn't want to spoil the film's many surprises, so I guess I can't fault them too much for that. I ruined a big one myself simply by looking at the cast list on IMDB before seeing it. *Hint* Don't do it!

I would recommend this film to all fans of the Horror genre. It is easily my early contender for Best Film Of 2012. Intriguing plot, excellent set design, creative kills, and one of the best CGI monsters I've ever seen chomping his way into my heart towards the end. I can see this one being a mainstay in our PS3 for a long time when it is released on Bluie. I for one, will be counting the days until that happens. Catch this one in the theater before it is yanked, Horror Fans. This is definitely one that is best seen for the first time on the big screen in all its genre bending glory.

Click here to see the trailer for Cabin in the Woods.

Rating - Four ½ JAWS Barrels out of five.

Format - Theatrical Screening