Census Flashback: Everything But Rich

On our Fright Flashback/Census Bloodbath crossover, every week this summer we'll be exploring an 80's slasher film that is in some way a spiritual precursor to the weekend's upcoming blockbuster.

In anticipation of Crazy Rich Asians, I'll be reviewing a movie that is both crazy and Asian: the Japanese slasher Evil Dead Trap!

Year: 1988
Director: Toshiharu Ikeda
Cast: Miyuki Ono, Aya Katsuragi, Hitomi Kobayashi
Run Time: 1 hour 42 minutes

When one thinks of Japanese horror cinema, the slasher genre is not what rises to mind, and for good reason. J-horror has been dominated by ghostly visitations and ethereal folk tales long before The Ring brought them to American shores in the early 2000's. Oh, but no corner of the world was unaffected by the 1980's slasher craze. It was the box office boom heard round the world, and when Japanese director Toshiharu Ikeda (of 1980's Sex Hunter) got in on the fun in 1988, he found a way to blend an extremely traditional slasher structure with some of the weirdest J-horror sh*t you ever did see.

Pictured: the slasher genre trying to escape after reading Takashi Ishii's script.

In Evil Dead Trap AKA Shiryō no wana, fluff news reporter Nami Tsuchiya (Miyuki Ono) gets sent a mysterious video of a woman being tortured and, smelling an opportunity to actually report on a real story, takes her team to the location where the video was shot. You know, as you do. But you gotta get your tray of meat to the spooky isolated location, which in this case is an abandoned military base infested with vermin that seems to be actively falling apart while they explore it.

Also in typical slasher fashion, the Meat here is a heap entirely indistinguishable women who don't have two personality traits to rub together: sound engineer Masako Abe (Aya Katsuragi), make-up girl Rei Sugiura (Hitomi Kobayashi, at the time a massively famous Japanese porn star), scripter Rie Kawamura (Eriko Nakagawa), and the token man - assistant director Kondô Akio (Masahiko Abe). Also wandering around the base is Daisuke Muraki (Yûji Honma), a man who is looking for his brother Hideki. Over the course of the afternoon, one after another of the crew members meets their untimely end at the hands of several different killers (the most prominent wearing a mask that makes their face look like a crumpled heap of laundry - it's scarier than I'm making it sound) and traps that have been set up around the area.

See? Spoooooky!

That basic plot synopsis is the only place where Evil Dead Trap can be remotely compared to a generic, run-of-the-mill slasher. It does draw influence from quite a few slasher films (the structure of the kills - with a lot happening all at once then giving way to an extended Final Girl sequence - is certainly reminiscent of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre), and the style of the kills quite vividly emulates the best of the Italian giallo, especially Dario Argento's Suspiria. But Evil Dead Trap has a lot more on its mind than that.

For one thing, it steals the careening, unmotivated POV shots and two-thirds of the title from The Evil Dead, and a major death is a direct riff on Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí's Un Chien Andalou. And I don't want to spoil the movie necessarily, but let's just say the plot turns out more Frank Hennenlotter than Tobe Hooper.

A lot of this material is really fun and totally bananas. The kills are an overwhelming melange of rapid editing, black-and-white surrealism, hyper-gory effects, and Kabuki makeup that jolt you like a cattle prod. It's like an experimental film gained sentience and set out to destroy your corneas. From the Evil Dead II-esque moments where blood spurts all over people's mouths to the very Japanese approach to the setting, which is constantly exploding, catching fire, and flooding for no reason whatsoever, Evil Dead Trap has a live wire energy that grabs you by the shoulders and shakes you around mercilessly.

And as much as it's drawing from the traditions and tropes of a lot of Western horror films, it's thoroughly Japanese, using an approach that couldn't possibly be emulated in any other filmmaking culture. Just take a look at certain choice images from the film and tell me you've seen anything like it anywhere on this side of the Pacific.

Right?

Right??

Right???

Right????

The only unfortunate thing about Evil Dead Trap is that it's not all horror sequences, and everything that isn't directly engaged with murder and terror is fabulously boring. The characters are identical paper dolls that just exist to be slashed open, and the structure of the narrative leaves a lot of lead time between the last body count kill and the bonkers finale. These sequences mostly involve Nami and Daisuke slowly limping down endless tunnels and having conversations that think they're being cagier about the nature of the plot twist than they actually are (in fact - and this may just be an issue with subtitling - a certain line during a deplorable exposition-via-rape sequence gives away the ending, or at least the general gist of it).

Plus, the score is both a useless riff on The Exorcist and an unbearably repetitive insult to the ears. They clearly wrote one and a half music cues and are hopelessly devoted to making sure we get to hear them again and again and again.

But when Evil Dead Trap is great it's spectacular. The closing fifteen minutes are some of the most bonkers effects-driven cinema of the 80's, the horror sequences craft infinite disturbing and uncanny images (my favorite being a stack of televisions all showing the same image of Masako's face while she's being imprisoned and screaming for help). The expansive setting also allows for some truly bizarre interiors, including a factory-esque floor that looks like the vast expanse of Hell in The Beyond and a Crimson Peak-esque hall of falling objects.

The fascinating thing about Evil Dead Trap is that as much as I'm constantly thinking of other movies it reminds me of, it still has its own indelible personality, and a truly strange one at that. I wish the non-scare sequences were a lot better, because if that were the case it would absolutely be a masterpiece of modern horror cinema. As it stands, it is a hidden gem, but less like a diamond and more like an opal or something else cool to find but not life-changingly valuable.

Killer: Hideki
Final Girl: Nami Tsuchiya (Miyuki Ono)
Sign of the Times: It seems that the "teased hair so big you could use it as an umbrella" craze reached Japan at the very same time the slasher did.

Best Kill: Rya's death, because it is completely impossible to describe, and the one that most replicates the surrealist style of Argento.
Scariest Moment: Rei accidentally steps on a snake and must stand stock still while it decides whether to kill her or not.
Weirdest Moment: After watching her friend's head get pulverized with a machete, Name is chased out of the room when the killer shoots fireworks at her.
Champion Dialogue: "Stop talking about your penis, we're supposed to be working now."
Body Count: 7

1. Video Lady gets her eye gouged with a knife.
2. Rei is impaled with spears from all directions after triggering a trap.
3. Rapist is impaled with a spike,
4. Rya is dragged over a van with a lobster snare.
5. Kondô is decapitated offscreen.
6. Masako has her head split down the side with a machete.
7. Daisuke falls from a great height and basically disintegrates. 

TL;DR: Evil Dead Trap is a bizarre and beautiful film that blends Japanese horror with the Italian giallo and the American slasher, but is too much a slog in the middle third to truly love.
Rating: 6/10
Word Count: 1308

Census Flashback: Questionable Puns

On our Fright Flashback/Census Bloodbath crossover, every week this summer we'll be exploring an 80's slasher film that is in some way a spiritual precursor to the weekend's upcoming blockbuster.

In anticipation of The Spy Who Dumped Me, a movie that seems like it should have come out in 1999, I'll be reviewing a movie with an equally questionable pun title: Gore-met, Zombie Chef from Hell!

Year: 1986

Director: Don Swan

Cast: Theo Depuay, Kelley Kunicki, C.W. Casey 

Run Time: 1 hour 7 minutes

MPAA Rating: N/A

As I keep noticing, the unofficial theme of this summer's Census Bloodbath project is seeing if slashers with awesome titles actually live up to the promise of said titles, and I can finally put an end to that feverish discussion with Gore-met, Zombie Chef from Hell. It's not the most excruciating movie I've ever had to watch for this project, but it's certainly up there. Hooray for knowledge! Now can I please stop?

Alas poor Yorick, he got to escape being in this terrible movie.

So, the titular character is a genial middle aged dude named Goza (Theo Depuay, who pulled double duty as this film's make-up artist), who was excommunicated by a warlock cult 600 years ago. His curse is to devour human flesh every day lest his body rot away, and boy oh boy do I wish it slipped his mind and he missed a day, because we're treated to an endless conveyor belt of annoying customers being murdered offscreen and turned into really unconvincing prosthetics. That's pretty much the whole plot of the movie, and even when the warlock cult shows back up, they can't convince me there's any kind of narrative thrust going on.

It's hard to thrust when your plastic leg has been severed anyway.

Gore-met is something that so little resembles a narrative movie, it might technically qualify as an experimental film. When I said that nothing happens, I wasn't just talking about onscreen. It seems like a literal found footage movie, like someone accidentally abandoned a camera on a tripod in a crummy bar and this is the result. The camera barely ever leaves a wide shot, and when it does, it's a horrifying extreme close-up that's ill-framed and poorly lit.

That's not to mention that the death scenes are largely offscreen (the biggest sin a slasher movie can commit), and where they are shown, they're so incoherent it feels like they still weren't even in the movie. Most of them don't actually show the killer making contact, they just smash cut to a weapon embedded in a person covered in red tempera paint, as if they spontaneously grew it out of their own bodies, Annihilation-style.

But how could I have expected more from a movie that murders a character named Stella, then introduces her and her boyfriend getting engaged, shows them going into a restaurant, then cuts to the fiancé alone trying to find out where she went, in that exact order. It's like they filmed every draft of the script and just threw every version in at random. Though I thoroughly doubt there actually was a script at any point in this process.

There IS, however, a five-minute long scene of characters with no names performing an excruciatingly repetitive blues song, so that's fun.

No matter how deep a layer you cut into, Gore-Met comes up short. The characters [sic] are exquisitely irritating, shrieking at one another until they get their way, the actors underplay every line like they're deep in the final stages of falling asleep, scenes end many seconds after the dialogue and action has concluded, and even the obligatory silly topless scene is an exercise in crushing boredom that features a disco song composed of maybe five notes played on endless loop. Plus, the characters keep insisting that there's a pool in this dive bar (??), but the movie doesn't have a budget for a pool, so they just pretend they're staring at people swimming (???).

The weird magic cult angle could have been interesting (and I do kind of love how the costume choice for them is a hoodie sweatshirt pulled tight around their skulls), but it doesn't permeate enough of the film to leave a lasting impression. This movie has a lot of the outsider-cinema, microbudget DNA of a Psychos in Love, but none of the charm or effort. It doesn't even hit the subterranean bar of a Herschell Gordon Lewis picture. 

I will applaud the film for being so completely unaware of its trashiness that it has the balls to reference A Streetcar Named Desire in a bizarrely unmotivated, poorly acted (duh) sequence that comes out of nowhere. That's one of the few moments where Gore-Met felt like the kind of bad-good experience that I delight in instead of a 67 minute movie that felt like it took 67 days to watch.

So no, the title does not make the movie. I don't know how I could more conclusively prove that fact.

Killer: Goza (Theo Depuay)

Final Girl: N/A

Sign of the Times: The fact that anyone allowed this movie to be made at all.

Best Kill: Really it's the only coherent kill in the movie, but the short order cook gets his head punched straight off, which is more than a little hilarious.

Scariest Moment: When Goza's body begins to deteriorate, he pulls off his own arm skin.

Weirdest Moment: When the title card right after the credits reads "the year 1386." Wasn't expecting that one!

Champion Dialogue: "Are you sure? It looks a little evil in there."

Body Count: 7

1. Health Inspector gets a knife across the mouth.
2. Stella is killed offscreen.
3. Beau is stabbed in the gut.
4. Prostitute is killed offscreen.
5. Short Order Cook has his head punched off.
6. Job Applicant is killed offscreen. 
7. Priest is force-choked to death. 

TL;DR: Gore-met, Zombie Chef from Hell is extremely difficult to endure, a vastly tedious, goreless, poorly made slog through an incoherent series of out-of-order sequences.

Rating: 2/10

Word Count: 1001

Census Flashback: Globetrotting

On our Fright Flashback/Census Bloodbath crossover, every week this summer we'll be exploring an 80's slasher film that is in some way a spiritual precursor to the weekend's upcoming blockbuster.

In anticipation of Mission: Impossible - Fallout, I'll be reviewing a movie that features a hallmark of the spy movie genre: exotic European locations. See if you can guess which city this one takes place in: It's Amsterdamned!

Year: 1988

Director: Dick Maas

Cast: Huub Stapel, Monique van de Ven, Serge-Henri Valcke

Run Time: 1 hour 54 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

I feel like this summer I've been testing the limits of how far the title of a slasher movie title goes in terms of making the film interesting. Where Mountaintop Motel Massacre and Slashdance have awesome titles that immediately go bust, Phantom of the Mall: Eric's Revenge and Psychos in Love are only improved by their wacky monikers. Amsterdamned is probably the best title yet, so it'll have to be the cornerstone of whatever thesis I can prepare at the end of this. Let's see if it lives up to that promise...

So far so good.

In Amsterdamned, the canals of Amsterdam are being stalked by a maniac in a scuba suit who drags people into the water, never to be seen again except as scraps of bloody chum dredged up the next morning. It's up to detective/single father Eric Visser (Huub Stapel) to discover the killer's identity and capture him, under mounting pressure from the tourism-obsessed Jaws mayor. During the course of his investigation, he meets and falls in love with (or at least into bed with) sexy scuba student Laura (Monique van de Ven) and rebuilds a bridge with his old friend John (Wim Zomer), a member of the River Police force.

All while wearing sunglasses and a rad leather jacket.

I have seen my fair share of European slashers for this project, but the bulk of them hail from Italy, which has a very strong national cinematic identity of stylish, black-gloved slashing and incomprehensible murder mystery plots. But that title isn't just for fun. Amsterdamned hails straight from the Netherlands, and is certainly the first Dutch slasher I've ever come across. It's similar to an Italian giallo in certain ways, but the differences in culture and presentation are extreme and delightful.

For one thing, the film is an extremely effective tourism ad for Amsterdam (which, upon reflection, might not mean it's a terribly scary horror movie), highlighting its beautiful canals, bridges, and restaurants inside windmills with loving caresses every chance it gets. And with the culture being so inherently tied with the water, it only makes sense that that's the arena the killer would be able to do the most damage. It's the Amsterdam version of the guy who hides under cars in the mall parking lot to slash your ankles. The other major difference from an Italian giallo is the wacky joie de vivre that's ever-present in the film's atmosphere, from the komedy kop who tags along with Visser, dropping everything he ever touches and tripping over his own feet, to the bizarre subplot involving Visser's daughter Anneke (Tatum Dagelet) and her schoolmate Willy (Edwin Bakker), who is a straight-up psychic who can detect the killer's whereabouts. This plot line is given as much credibility as the romantic subplot, as if this were just a thing that happens in Amsterdam every other day.

All of this interplays with some pretty brutal horror elements, all things considered. An autopsy sequence which reveals that the killer stabbed his victim with such force that the tip of the knife literally broke off inside her will send chills up your spine. It's not particularly gory (a huge minus for me: the killer's scuba outfit is a great iconic costume, but his M.O. of dragging people into the water and killing them offscreen neuters some of its potential as a slasher rather than a police procedural), but certain moments of implications are just as rough.

Especially this scene, where she's hanging onto a banister that literally begins to break apart because of how strong the killer is pulling on her ankle.

Also living up to the European standard for horror, Dick Maas crafts some truly indelible images here. The discovery of the first body, where a woman's corpse hanging from a bridge slides across the top of a glass-ceilinged boat full of children and drops down through a skylight wouldn't be out of place in an Argento masterpiece, and a moment where the killer's eye mask is shot, instantly turning his already unreadable face into a web of cracks and shattered glass, is unspeakably beautiful.

So there really is a lot to like in Amsterdamned, and maybe I'm being a baby for growing increasingly weary of it thanks to its run time that brushes dangerously close to two hours. If you're not going to deliver on the gore, you at least need to have a murder mystery plot that keeps you guessing, which this film patently does not. You will never guess the exact nature of the killer because - guess what - it's a character we've never met before (my favorite outcome of a mystery! so satisfying!), but the twists and turns the movie takes along the way are as predictable as an episode of Law and Order.

The third act of Amsterdamned drags on, overstaying its welcome by a kilometer. It sucks out everything good and satisfying about the film and all you can do is focus on its flaws and how tired you are of watching it. But at least there's an awesome boat chase, I guess!

Fly right into my heart, you crazy killer.

Killer: IDK, some guy (Door van Boekel)

Final Girl: This is a cop thriller, so we don't really get one, but technically we do have a female survivor, Laura (Monique van de Ven)

Best Kill: The underwater stabbing is not only one of the few kills we actually get to see, it's a cool concept that I don't think I've ever seen before.

Sign of the Times: Obviously, the prostitute's Debbie Harry wig and giraffe-print dress belong in the 80's horror outfit hall of fame.

Scariest Moment: After Laura knocks out who she assumes is the killer, the real killer lunges at her from the water.

Weirdest Moment: While driving to a crime scene, Eric stops a bakery robbery, slamming the culprit's face into a cake, which the man then begins to eat.

Champion Dialogue: "Does your mother-in-law have an alibi?"

Body Count: 8

1. Prostitute is stabbed.
2. Hendrick is decapitated and his head is impaled on an anchor.
3. Kees is stabbed in the ankle and dragged into the water.
4. Salvation Army Girl is dragged into the water.
5. Floatie Lady gets stabbed in the crotch.
6. Drunk drowns in his own boat.
7. John is stabbed to death underwater.
8. Maniac kills himself with a harpoon.

TL;DR: Amsterdamned is a solid wacky foreign slasher that slowly drains itself of potential with an exhausting run time.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 1172

Census Flashback: Musical Theater

On our Fright Flashback/Census Bloodbath crossover, every week this summer we'll be exploring an 80's slasher film that is in some way a spiritual precursor to the weekend's upcoming blockbuster.

In anticipation of Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, I'll be reviewing a slasher movie with its fair share of dancing. In fact, it's in the title: 1989's Slash Dance. Yes, this is a real thing.

Year: 1989

Director: James Shyman

Cast: Cindy Ferda, James Carroll Jordan, J. Buzz Von Ornsteiner

Run Time: 1 hour 23 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

I have actually learned, my friends! I went into this movie not anticipating that it would be great based on that crazy title, and I was not disappointed! I've had some fun with a couple 1989 slashers, but let's never forget that when we venture this deep into the decade, the death rattle of the slasher subgenre had long since wheezed into quiet decrepitude. So that's one point for me and progress, but I still sat through this entire movie, so let's talk about it I guess.

"Graphic design is my passion."

So, here's the plot of Slash Dance, insofar as it has one, which I'm not entirely convinced it does. Undercover cop Tori Raines (Cindy Ferda, an actual real life GLOW wrestler - who appeared on the show as "Americana") investigates crimes against women, much to the chagrin of her power-hungry boss who so transparently wants a promotion that he mentions it in literally every scene he's in and practically every shot he's in. He wants to avoid a scandal, because one time a topless picture of her leaked while undercover as a prostitute. We can't fight crime if there's boobs! Remember misogyny?

Anyway, so there's a struggling performing arts theater in Hollywood where people showing up for auditions are being murdered violently, so Tori poses as a dancer to investigate. The fact that she doesn't know how to dance doesn't hinder her, because nobody in this movie knows how to dance. There are a dozen anonymous women involved in the dance rehearsals, but the important figures are, naturally, men. Slashers!

So, keep an eye on the lusty director Logan (James Carroll Jordan), the car-strapped theater owner Oliver (William Kerr), stage manager Rupert (John Bluto) who is somehow both coded as foppishly gay and a trenchcoat-wearing flasher, and Oliver's brother Amos (J. Buzz Von Ornsteiner, who is now a semi-famous forensic psychologist) who is simultaneously playing an extra from Grease and a severely mentally handicapped Lennie-esque character.

This movie contains multitudes.

If Slash Dance were only its first act, it would number among my best bad-good new discoveries. It's a completely nuts genre mash-up where the gay flasher is just the cherry on top of a lot of weird decisions. This portion is surprisingly committed to the loose-cannon cop angle, with a lot of dialogue about "cleaning up these streets" that you don't normally get in a hack-'n-slash picture, and some of it is actually funny. Note that our designated comic relief (more GLOW castoffs in the form of steroid-abusing street rats Repo and Mavis, played by Dee Booher and Kelle Favara - "Matilda the Hun" and "Beastie" respectively) is mostly unwatchable, but there are some brilliant moments like a mid-strangle auditioner shouting, "but I have an appointment!"

It's like a Miss Congeniality movie, if it had awkwardly staged fight scenes, a honking komedy horn on the soundtrack, and periodic flashbacks to a backstory that never comes up again, performed in a misty white void while soap opera melodrama dialogue is read with all the inflection and emotional commitment of a third grader reading their first book report aloud in front of the class.

Plus, there's something almost charmingly straightforward about the kill sequences, which - one after the other - feature random women wandering into a dance studio, loudly announcing their full name, then being murdered almost immediately. 

Sometimes meat and potatoes is the way to go.

Unfortunately, Slash Dance isn't just its first thirty minutes. There's a full hour to go (the audacity, by the way, to make a movie called Slash Dance more than 81 minutes long), and that hour gets increasingly more tedious and stilted once it goes along. For one thing, the kills, as un-gory and lame as they were to begin with, dry up for what feels like 45 minutes, but the worst sin is that the many, many interchangeable dancers we meet aren't even on the chopping block. Why introduce a crop of young nubile women that don't have two character traits to rub together and not include them in the body count? It's ludicrous and lazy, and what these characters get up to in the meantime when they refuse to be murdered is some of the most stultifying padding you ever did see.

As one might expect, we're treated to a lot of dance sequences, but this ain't no musical. We are privy to dance rehearsals, which show us watching the same women perform the same sequence of moves dozens of times over, counting "five-six-seven-eight, five-six-seven-eight" with no musical backup. And they're not even good. It's just minutes upon minutes of vague gyrating, practicing for a show that we never find out anything about, though it couldn't possibly be good.

These are intercut with guerrilla street footage of the Hollywood streets, the audio track removed because they probably knew having a boom mic would be too suspicious and they were either too lazy or too cheap to get the most basic of foley cityscapes. It's mind-numbingly bad, whereas the first third was sort of cheerfully inadequate. There was enough good and bad-good in that opening act to prevent me from hating the experience of watching the movie altogether, but you could easily shut it off an hour before credits roll, not knowing who the killer turns out to be (who could care - there are barely any killees), and be perfectly content with your life.

Killer: Logan (James Carroll Jordan)

Final Girl: Tori Raines (Cindy Ferda)

Sign of the Times: At one point during the endless city footage, we see a movie theater marquee playing A Fish Called Wanda.

Best Kill: Amos' death - when he wants to stage a suicide with a prop knife that has been unknowingly replaced with a real knife - actually has a modicum of tension and irony. And for some reason, it provides a stellar life insurance windfall for his brother, though lord knows why anyone would have insured Amos in the first place.

Scariest Moment: The killer briefly appears in a creepy black gimp mask.

Weirdest Moment: A biker is preparing to attack Tori, so he removes his eyebrows.

Champion Dialogue: "Rupert is the name, a poet as free as the ocean wind. And like a chiseled rock, I shall reveal my cock!"

Body Count: 5

1. Alice Ryan has her throat sawed.
2. Misty Rivers is strangled with a rope.
3. Amos accidentally stabs himself in the gut.
4. Oliver is shot.
5. Logan is slashed in the face with a saw.

TL;DR: Slash Dance is a waste of a hell of a bonkers first act.
Rating: 4/10
Word Count: 1186

Census Flashback: High Altitude Terror

On our Fright Flashback/Census Bloodbath crossover, every week this summer we'll be exploring an 80's slasher film that is in some way a spiritual precursor to the weekend's upcoming blockbuster.

In anticipation of Skyscraper, which is about The Rock jumping around a tall building with robot legs (?), I'll be reviewing Mountaintop Motel Massacre, another film about the terrible things that can happen to you when you're high up in the air.

Year: 1983

Director: Jim McCullough Sr.

Cast: Bill Thurman, Anna Chappell, Will Mitchell

Run Time: 1 hour 35 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

It probably says something about how deep into this project I am that one of the big titles I had yet to tackle was Mountaintop Motel Massacre. And yet this is a title I've been looking forward to for a long time, and yes I do mean title. Because not a single thing about this movie is good other than what it's called, and when will I freaking learn, you guys?

This is what slasher marketing does to me every time.

I'm about to hit you with a plot synopsis that could actually be spooky and effective if it was in the hands of someone who had heard of the word "atmosphere." So, a group of unrelated strangers show up at the Mountaintop Motel in Arkansas one stormy night, not realizing that the proprietor Evelyn (Anna Chappell) is a former mental patient who just snapped and murdered her own daughter Lorie (Jill King).

Of course she goes around killing them, and that's pretty much the whole plot, so let's Meet the Meat real quick. There's the drunkard Reverend Bill McWilley (Bill Thurman of Innocent Prey), who is by far the most well-rounded character in the movie, which should tell you something; newly married couple Vernon (Gregg Brazzel, who actually went on to have a substantial career as a stunt coordinator on projects as varied as Road Trip, Texas Chainsaw 3D, and Movie 43) and Mary (Marian Jones); token black handyman Crenshaw (Major Brock); and hitchhiking cousins Tanya (Virginia Loridians) and Prissy (Amy Hill, who is also credited with the costumes, so you know this movie had a budget), who are picked up under false pretenses by the lecherous businessman Al (Will Mitchell).

This would be a great setup if they could afford a light!

As a person who loves both good and bad movies, the greatest sin a film can commit is being boring. And Mountaintop Motel Massacre is boring as hell, so boring that it leached all the energy out of me to the point that I couldn't get out of my miserable pile on the couch to set it at 1.5x speed and get through it that much quicker (a blessed trick I have employed on certain of the worst of these flicks). 

The bulk of the plot involves these ill-defined characters constantly wandering from one cabin to another identical cabin, having a brief conversation, then going back to the original cabin. All of this scintillating nonsense (that, come to think of it, probably just used the same cabin set over and over and over again) is constantly intercut with Evelyn doing something nefarious in the tunnels beneath the motel, but it's usually too dark to see and very rarely involves actually murdering someone. Mostly it just involves putting cockroaches or rats in someone's room, because Yelp didn't exist yet so you could just do something like that.

And when she does finally get down to the murder business, it involves a lot of cutaways and smears of ketchup blood on body parts that don't quite match the action of the scene. If being boring is the greatest sin of any movie, having boring kills is Original Sin for the slasher, a mistake so bad it goes on to negatively affect every single other element in the film.

She puts the "Eve" in "Evelyn."

And, as always, it's not like I'm promoting exploitation necessarily, but this is a slasher movie with multiple sex scenes that doesn't even have the decency to show nudity. That's the last gasp of potential interest in a movie like this, and they don't even have the balls to use the cheapest special effects in Hollywood: boobs and butts. Mountaintop Motel Massacre provides not a single reason to justify its existence, not even the relatively unusual fact that it has a female killer.

I was hoping from the poster that Evelyn would turn out to be a grande dame of crazed bloodletting like Betsy Palmer from Friday the 13th or Susan Tyrrell from Night Warning, but Chappell underplays every single line of dialogue she's given, and the blocking that has her wander around uselessly in the dark isn't doing her any favors. 

Add in the truly uncomfortable Me Too-ing of Al and the cousins, and you've got a recipe for a truly unpleasant, unbearable film. Mountaintop Motel Massacre escapes being the worst of these Census Bloodbath entries on the merits of actually having the structure of a movie (I'm looking at you, The Outing), but it's a dreadful effort that I'd only recommend to people who self-flagellate and have misplaced their cat o' nine tails.

Killer: Evelyn (Anna Chappell)

Final Girl: Tanya (Virginia Loridans), through no fault of her own

Sign of the Times: In order to find a place to stay for the night, Al uses his car phone (!) to call his secretary and ask her to check the hotel guide (!!).

Best Kill: Evelyn's death was too complicated to actually even tell what was happening, but at least there was a special effect, so... great job?

Scariest Moment: Evelyn stares at the onlookers at her daughter's funeral and imagines their voices all saying she's crazy.

Weirdest Moment: When Crenshaw sees Evelyn peeking through a trapdoor, he calmly grabs a nail and hammers the door shut without a second thought, then moves on with his life.

Champion Dialogue: "Where in the name of God's angels did rats come from?"

Body Count: 8

1. Lorie's Rabbit is decapitated with a scythe.
2. Lorie is slashed with a scythe.
3. Prissy is scythed in the face.
4. Reverend Bill is scythed in the chest.
5. Mary is scythed and stabbed.
6. Vernon is scythed in the neck.
7. Crenshaw is scythed offscreen. 
8. Evelyn gets impaled in the throat with some falling wood.

TL;DR: Mountaintop Motel Massacre is much too boring for the title it has.

Rating: 2/10

Word Count: 1070

Census Flashback: Kicking Ass... Together!

On our Fright Flashback/Census Bloodbath crossover, every week this summer we'll be exploring an 80's slasher film that is in some way a spiritual precursor to the weekend's upcoming blockbuster.

In anticipation of Ant-Man and the Wasp, which is about two romantic partners being superheroes together, I'll be reviewing Psychos in Love, which is about a married couple who just so happen to both be mad slashers.

Year: 1987

Director: Gorman Bechard

Cast: Carmine Capobianco, Debi Thibeault, Cecelia Wilde

Run Time: 1 hour 28 minutes

MPAA Rating: UR

That awesome poster may cry "too gory for the silver screen," but we should know by now not to trust slasher marketing. This is a direct-to-video project through and through, and DTV slashers are a real risk to one's sanity. Shot by amateurs on budgets that would barely cover a studio craft services table, DTV (especially SOV - ones that are shot on video, which I'm fairly certain this one is) 80's slashers are direct mainlines to the purest (usually worst) instincts of unprofessional filmmakers. Psychos in Love is quite proudly the very same, but the filmmaker in question has such an unusual and twisted imagination that it's actually a pretty fascinating experiment. Let's dive in!

It's time to really get into the meat of the movie.

Psychos in Love is a lightly mockumentary-style film, frequently cutting to confessional interviews with its two leads from an indistinct point in the future, those leads being Joe (Carmine Capobianco) - the owner of a strip club (or, at least, a bar with one stripper) - and Kate (Debi Thibeault) - a manicurist. They meet and fall in love over their common hobby - being homicidal maniacs. Their relationship plays out over the course of many, many, many killings, until they eventually face off against a third killer who we see in occasional snippets - a plumber named Herman (Frank Stewart) who murders his customers.

It's very bad for word of mouth.

Psychos in Love explicitly positions itself as a comedy first and foremost, which is a terrific decision because it is a very bad horror film. Just like last week's slasher La muerte del chacal, whose main character was a cop, the leads here are not actually in the potential body count (in this case because they're the killers themselves), preventing you from ever spending time with or identifying with their victims. This obliterates the tension, as does the endlessly repetitive series of drearily similar, mostly offscreen and bloodless slashing scenes that come shooting down the pike like chocolates on I Love Lucy's conveyor belt.

But as a comedy, it... Well, I wouldn't say "excels," but I honestly don't know what I'd say. The repetitive plot that wanders in circles across the screen like it's lost in the woods does a lot to deflate all the energy, be it horror or comedy. But the humor has a unique spark that you can't look away from. In between the killing bits are bizarre vignettes that are totally unpredictable. Sometimes they're Abbot & Costello routines with a deaf pastor or a French waiter, sometimes it's gross-out cannibal humor (in the random interludes starring Herman), sometimes it's minutes-long monologues about grapes, sometimes it's a live action cartoon that literally includes a pie-in-the-face scene, and every time it's something completely out of left field. I can't tell if it's idiotic or genius, but it's certainly captivating.

And some of it is actually laugh-out-loud funny. I giggled during a gag about spiking a drink with poison that turns into an over-the-top extended sequence straight out of Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, and during quite a few of the more well-written lines that sneak in. But the thing that makes it most fascinating as a scrap of weirdo outsider humor is just how meta everything gets. There's already the mockumentay angle, but there are occasional moments where the film crew becomes active participants in the goings-on, and one moment where Joe hums along with the film's score that sorta blew my mind. I haven't seen a movie since Swiss Army Man where the musical score is so effortlessly, bizarre integrated with the actual events of the film. That takes a lot of forethought for such a throwaway joke, and it's not the only time this sort of thing happens. Sometimes, characters will seem to step out of their skins and interact directly with the script or the frame in a brain-melting, astonishing way. It shows that writer-director Gorman Bechard is a true junk-auteur and not just a money-grubbing weirdo.

Well, maybe both.

Unfortunately, there's still a lot that prevents me from wholeheartedly singing this film's praises. For one thing, good comedy needs good actors, and Carmine Capobianco's unhinged performance has a kind of anti-charisma that leaves you tasting flop sweat for hours. Debi Thibeault picks up some of the slack with a reasonably lived-in, chemistry-forcing performance, but Capobianco's terrible timing doesn't help matters one bit. Though I guess it does prove that the script is strong, because most of these scenes do tend to still be funny in spite of him. I can't say I expected good performances from my DTV slasher, but anything could happen in a film as weird and unpredictable as Psychos in Love.

Its other flaws stem from that exact same place. I've already commented on just how dull of a slog the actual kills are (especially since they're all hung on the weak-ass comic hook of how lightly ironic it is that this happy couple are also violent killers), but most scenes have aimless blocking that see the participants sort of hovering onscreen waiting for something to happen. And there's a near-rape scene that suddenly converts Kate into a victim for two grueling minutes that have no business in a film that's attempting to be a frothy, pitch-black romp.

I really don't think I can recommend Psychos in Love to anybody but the most committed patrons of weird horror, but I count myself among that number and will probably revisit it from time to time just to take a break from the rigors of reality and enter a universe that's this thoroughly, delightfully off-kilter.

Killer: Joe (Carmine Capobianco) and Kate (Debi Thibeault) and sometimes Herman (Frank Stewart)

Final Girl: N/A

Best Kill: The only decent gore effect is probably the dude getting stabbed in the eye with cuticle scissors.

Sign of the Times: Joe compliments Kate on her "small ass." Maybe this is just a gay thing, but I feel like the ideal body type - while still totally whack - has moved a bit past that particular trait.

Scariest Moment: Anytime Herman comes onscreen, you know stuff is about to get gross.

Weirdest Moment: After announcing "time for a strange interlude" in the middle of a scene, Joe launches into a non sequitur monologue about grapes and Julie Andrews.

Champion Dialogue: "Baby, you look hotter than the weather!"

Body Count: 19; 11 by Joe, 5 by Kate, and 2 by Herman

1. Pee Girl is hung in a bathroom stall.
2. Woods Girl is garroted, the wire twisted with a stick like Friday the 13th Part V.
3. Topless Girl has her throat slit.
4. Diane is stabbed in the shower.
5. Leisure Suit Dude is shot in the head with a shotgun.
6. Picnic Guy is stabbed in the gut.
7. Manicure Man has his throat slit with a cuticle knife.
8. Sauna Lady drinks poison.
9. Manicure Man #2 is chainsawed.
10. Groupie Girl is stabbed.
11. Cathy is hit in the head with a wrench.
12. Mechanic is bludgeoned in the head with a rock.
13. Redneck is shot.
14. Susan is stabbed.
15. Rasputin Stripper is shot, stabbed, has her throat slit, and is chopped into tiny pieces.
16. Hooker is stabbed in the back.
17. Weatherman is stabbed in the eye with cuticle scissors.
18. Temptress has a knife embedded in her neck.
19. Herman is killed in a blackout.

TL;DR: Psychos in Love is surprisingly funny, but its lack of focus is damning.

Rating: 5/10

Word Count: 1324

Census Flashback: South Of The Border

On our Fright Flashback/Census Bloodbath crossover, every week this summer we'll be exploring an 80's slasher film that is in some way a spiritual precursor to the weekend's upcoming blockbuster.

In anticipation of Sicario: Day of the Soldado, the most necessary sequel ever conceived, I'll be reviewing La muerte del chacal, a film that hails from that franchise's domain: the nation of Mexico.

Year: 1984

Director: Pedro Galindo III

Cast: Mario Almada, Fernando Almada, Cristina Molina 

Run Time: 1 hour 30 minutes

I don't know if you're aware of this, but Census Bloodbath is a pretty comprehensive project. In the process of watching every slasher movie the 80's ever churned out, we are gonna cross a lot of borders and oceans. The thing is... If you're watching a bootleg of an obscure foreign film from three and a half decades ago, it turns out that you can't just switch on the subtitles. So yes, I did watch La muerte del chacal (AKA Death of the Jackal) in its original language, and let me tell you - my great grades in AP Spanish don't really carry over into watching a poor VHS rip, so some nuance may have been lost in the process.

Luckily, much like with the previous film I had to watch this way (the 1980 Italian flick Trhauma), the strict adherence to slasher formula makes it pretty damn easy to get the gist of every single scene whether or not you specifically understand the lines being spoken. But I do want you to take this review with a grain of salt, because I certainly didn't watch this under the ideal conditions.

But you know what doesn't need subtitles? Screaming.

So, as far as I can tell, La muerte del chacal tells the story of The Jackal, a serial killer terrorizing the sexy young women of a Mexican town (which, through a bizarre and amusing set of circumstances and tax laws, was shot in Texas). Sheriff Bob (Mario Almada, who also appeared in the film's quasi-sequel Masacre en Rio Grande) is hot on the trail, but before he gets his man a great deal of strippers, horny teens, and various bystanders are felled by the Jackal's awesome sword cane and his two Doberman sidekicks.

Also, like most people you shouldn't trust, he lives in a boat.

Would it shock you if I told you that this film was low budget? It shouldn't, if you've been paying attention. Films made for foreign markets don't land huge sums, and slasher films never do, in any market. But brilliance can thrive in the cheapie environment, and while I wouldn't call La muerte brilliant per se, it definitely has a unique filmmaking quality that can't be denied.

It actually operates in a similar manner to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, utilizing a choppy and erratic editing structure that on the surface seems amateurish but (intentionally or not) drives an eerie chill deep into your bones with its off-kilter glory. Especially in the opening sequences, which depicts the murders of two weirdly middle-aged horny couples in a shipyard, after each kill we get a glimpse of a window closing that doesn't directly correspond to any action in the scene itself, but feels like a grim final note that gets more and more creepy. Also, exactly like Chain Saw, there are random unmotivated shots of the moon that slice through the film at inappropriate times, jamming a shot of adrenaline into otherwise routine proceedings.

Also, there's a boat chase in the middle of the movie, where the watercraft zoom along in wickedly fast motion like they're cars in Mad Max, which is just rad as hell.

I know I'm not making this sound great, but I promise it works. And there are some shots that are just plain great too, so let me make my case with those instead. There's a scene after the killer has escaped from the asylum (about halfway through the killer is caught, and the film suddenly, inexplicably becomes its own sequel), where he's standing in his hospital gown staring up at an apartment building in a beautiful shot that mimics the best of both The Exorcist and Halloween. 

Actually, the killer's appearance in general is some tremendously exciting slasher material. He cuts a striking giallo-esque figure with his black gloves and identity-obscuring Zorro hat, and his weapon of choice is utterly classy and itching to be iconic. Check it out for yourself:

 So spooky!

I can even follow the movie for the ride when it transitions from a giallo into a telenovela in the third act (although I do not know what the killer's true identity turned out to be, because I couldn't keep people's names straight for the life of me, and he was one of many identical old men in the film).

So honestly, I enjoyed a lot of my time with La muerte del chacal. But if I end the review here, you're going to be very confused about the score I gave this film at the bottom of the page. You see, as much good as there is here in terms of outsider filmmaking, there's not a ton of good as a slasher qua slashers. 

For one thing, the kills aren't tremendously impressive. Most are offscreen, and none are bloody. The weapon is neat, but we don't see it in action quite enough for it to be truly memorable. And the fact that the killer uses dogs to hunt his victims is an interesting twist on the format (albeit one used to better effect in 1981's Madhouse), but it's extremely difficult to pull off a convincing mauling in a film at this budget level.

The worst slasher sin La muerte del chacal commits is the fact that it's a police procedural, my least favorite of the sub-subgenres I've come across over the course of this project. Having the protagonist being a policeman chasing the killer prevents you from ever getting to know the victims or caring about their fates. After each murder you just return to the cop, and you only ever get a minute or two with the new victims before they're dead, so it's hard to be scared. Also, there's no denying how regressive the gender politics in the movie are, especially when there is no Final Girl to even out the score.

One last thing is that we don't find out the killer's identity through the Sheriff's ingenuity and hard work. The film just decides to show us the killer's face during a murder sequence at about the place in the plot that you'd need to find out who it was. It's a lazy storytelling technique, and one that's compounded by the fact that I could not remember what character I was looking at. 

So all in all, while I found a lot to like here (and even I can't believe I compared it to that many classics of low budget cinema), it's just not the type of film that really nails me to my seat. I'm glad I've seen it, but it probably won't stick with me for longer than it takes to post this review and have done with it.

Killer: The Jackal

Final Girl: I guess Sheriff Bob's wife? This is a police procedural slasher, which kind of throws a wrench in this section.

Best Kill: A woman in her bathrobe (I have no idea how she relates to the plot, but keeping in mind that this is a slasher movie, she probably doesn't) is stabbed through the neck so forcefully that it pins her to the wall, hanging several inches above the ground.

Sign of the Times: The secretary in the police station has a major side pony that becomes its own separate character in the scene.

Scariest Moment: A woman wanders into a room on the boat that is full of bodies hanging on hooks.

Weirdest Moment: No fewer than three women decide to explore an old rusty boat in their high heels like they're regular Bryce Dallas Howards.

Champion Dialogue: N/A

Body Count: 15; and yes, I'm including the dogs because their deaths are probably the most slasherific of the bunch.

1. Man is mauled by a dog.
2. Woman is killed offscreen.
3. Man is stabbed in the neck with a sword.
4. Woman is impaled with a sword.
5. Woman is pulled into a closet and killed.
6. Stripper is impaled with a sword.
7. Man dies in a boat explosion.
8. Captain dies offscreen.
9. Mistress is stabbed in the neck.
10. Orderly has his neck broken.
11. Security Guard has his head slammed into iron bars.
12. Mama has her throat slashed offscreen.
13. Woman is stabbed through the neck.
14. Doberman #1 is smashed against a wall and thrown overboard.
15. Doberman #2 is shot.

TL;DR: La muerte del chacal is a shabby but visually intriguing shocker with a few tricks up its sleeve.

Rating: 5/10

Word Count: 1482