Some Of It Is Just Really Dumb

Year: 2009
Director: John Putch
Cast: Bug Hall, Kevin M. Horton, Eugene Levy
Run Time: 1 hour 33 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

Have I fallen behind on my American Pie Presents marathon? Yes, absolutely. Did I do this because I got distracted by other, better marathons? Certainly. Do I still feel an urgent obligation to finish what I started, because I am a mad completist? Of course, have you met me?

My sincerest apologies to women everywhere.

American Pie Presents: The Book of Love, which is at the time of writing the final spinoff on our roster, is essentially as much of a remake of the original American Pie as its possible to be. We follow best friends Rob (Bug Hall), Nathan (Kevin M. Horton), and Marshall "Lube" Lubetsky (Brandon Hardesty) - of course that nickname had to appear at some point in this franchise, and naturally he's the only character with a foregrounded last name in order to facilitate this - as they navigate tricky high school relationships. Also floating around them is another Stifler they pulled out of a hat. This one is called Scott (John Patrick Jordan).

They discover the fabled Book of Love in the school library, but only after it's severely damaged by a flood. They have a lot of sexy hijinks trying to interpret what it says, but eventually they decide to reconstruct it with the help of its original creator. And guess just who that might be...

If they had made any more of these, we'd be learning that Eugene Levy was the inventor of the pie, or the first person in history to masturbate, or something.

The Book of Love is neither the worst or the best of these four movies. Of course, the whole spinoff quadrilogy exists in the very narrow strait between 3/10 and 4/10, so these rankings are entirely relative. It benefits from being stretched across the structure of the original film, which has the built-in finale of the young men discovering how abhorrent their behavior up till now had been. Naturally this is a pale imitation with even more questionable content, but that inevitable end point drags it up a point by the skin of its teeth.

Unfortunately, the hijinks this time around - when they're not being hideously offensive and perpetuating the idea that women need to be tricked or cajoled into sex - are just plain boring. This entire film is a snoozefest, which is perhaps exemplified by that obligatory Eugene Levy cameo. His stuff in these spinoffs hasn't been funny, but the previous entries at least had the decency to include him in something that wasn't just an endless montage that eats up what feels like a quarter of the run time and is chockablock with the best, most dated cameos a direct-to-video sequel could pull in the late 2000's (see: Bret Michaels, Dustin Diamond, and... C. Thomas Howell?).

Also K-Fed plays a Canadian border agent, so their casting level is somewhere between Dancing with the Stars and Celebrity Rehab.

Honestly the only casting decision that implies they had any idea at all what they were doing is the fact that software schlock director (and auteur of Chopping Mall) Jim Wynorski plays a small role. This is an implicit stamp of approval for the film like John Waters appearing in Seed of Chucky, though the Wynorski brand is on a tier waaaaaaay lower than Waters, for obvious reasons.

As for the non-famouses we see here (there's also a lesser Arquette rattling around), they're all pretty damn crummy. The three leads are blander than vanilla-essenced white bread, and John Patrick Jordan's Stifler impression is the worst of the franchise - he just chatters flatly and loudly, punctuating his speech with hyena screeches of laughter. It doesn't help that this is by far the worst written member of the Stifler clan, with dialogue toward women that is actively evil and an eventual comeuppance that is both deeply upsetting and terribly rendered (*trigger warning* he's raped by a CGI caribou that looks like an escapee from Zoo Tycoon - why anybody thought this should be a scene in a high school sex comedy I'll never know).

The only times where the film seems to actually be aware it's attempting to be entertaining are in the rich fantasy world of one of the three characters (if you think I remember which, your faith in my attention span after four of these things is much too high). He has Scrubs-esque flashes of imagination that are usually gross but at least provide something visually distinct every now and again.

So, yes. Definitely a waste of time. Don't see any of these movies, but especially don't waste your time getting all the way to the end, because you will not be rewarded.

TL;DR: American Pie Presents: The Book of Love is a pale imitation of American Pie, but American Pie was a pretty good movie to be a pale imitation of.
Rating: 3/10
Word Count: 829
Reviews In This Series
American Pie (Weitz, 1999)
American Pie 2 (Rogers, 2001)
American Wedding (Dylan, 2003)
American Pie Presents: Band Camp (Rash, 2005)
American Pie Presents: The Naked Mile (Nussbaum, 2006)
American Pie Presents: Beta House (Waller, 2007)
American Pie Presents: The Book of Love (Putch, 2009)
American Reunion (Hurwitz & Schlossberg, 2012)

Census Bloodbath: Thank You, Have A Nice Day

For the crossover review of this film at Kinemalogue, click here.

Year: 1986

Director: Jim Wynorski

Cast: Kelli Maroney, Tony O'Dell, Russell Todd

Run Time: 1 hour 17 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Over the course of my romp through slasher history, I've run into some incredibly strange premises. Together, we've battled a killer scarecrow, a possessed mirror, a demonic computer, the ghost of a prom queen, and the angry spirit of a Native American medicine man. We're no strangers to strangeness, so don't take it lightly when I tell you that the Jim Wynorski picture Chopping Mall -produced by Roger Corman's wife Julie in 1986 - has one of the downright weirdest slasher premises I've ever encountered.

And I don't just mean that fact that we're supposed to suspend our disbelief and accept this implausible hairstyle.

Chopping Mall has the perfect slasher setup. A group of friends parties together in a mall after closing, only to find that they're trapped inside with a crazed killer. Only instead of a masked psychopath or territorial mountain man, the particular threat they're facing is... a trio of security robots that have gone haywire following an electrical storm. Seriously.

While we let that sink in, let's Meet the Meat. Our midnight revelers include Ferdy (Tony O'Dell), a nerdy young man whose uncle owns the store where they're holding the party; Allison (Kelli Maroney of Night of the Comet), a sweet young waitress who has been set up with Ferdy by their mutual friends; Suzie (Barbara Crampton of Re-Animator and From Beyond), Allison's party girl best friend; Rick (Russell Todd of Friday the 13th Part 2 and He Knows You're Alone) and Linda (Karrie Emerson), a married couple who own a mechanic shop together, and who for some reason are equally enthused about this mattress party/teen orgy; Greg (Nick Segal), who exists and is dating Suzie; Leslie (Suzee Slater), the bubble-headed shop owner's daughter and thus Ferdy's cousin, though this is never explored; and Mike (John Terlesky), a douchey stud muffin who chews gum in literally every scene and whose hairdresser I dearly wish was included in the body count.

This haircut should be included on the list of capital punishment-worthy offenses.

As my previous two captions may have informed you, Chopping Mall is urgently, endearingly 80's. The cast, the genre, the fashions, and the dialogue are unrelentingly entrenched in the cultural battleground of 1986, and it's an indelibly fun treat throughout. 

Like nearly all Corman pictures, the film is an extremely chintzy, thin affair that values ass shots and waggling breasts more than story and character development, but director Jim Wynorski squeezes every ounce of cinema magic out of the circumstances as he possibly can. This might sound like scant praise considering that the man also directed Sorority House Massacre II, but Chopping Mall is Wynorski's magnum opus, making the most out of its low budget, silly special effects, and ludicrous villains. 

But let's begin with the most pressing topic of any Chopping Mall discussion: The Killbots. By all accounts they should be a campy, cheesy mess, but if we're going to be completely honest (which I know we all hate to do, this being the Internet after all), they're really quite remarkable. Their creation is the oldest trick in the book: slap a motor on some shiny plastic boxes, tack on some lights, and call it a day. But the old tricks were used for a reason: they worked.

The Killbots, through the surprisingly professional methods with which they are framed and coordinated, are an utterly believable menace. There's hardly a crack in the special effects (largely because they are so simple), lending to the sense that these robots are acting of their own volition. They have purpose and agency, roaming the mall with specific, calculated, and (dare I say) character-driven movements.

Also their little tank tread feet are adorable.

Chopping Mall also boasts a surprisingly sophisticated lighting plan. The mall itself is full of heavy shadows, complemented by tickles of gaudy pinks and blues in the corners, reminding the audience of the cheery, commercial nature of the setting as it's plunged into a surrealist hellscape of killing and laser beams. Oh, did I mention the robots have laser beams? The only thing that could make this film more 1986 is an Alice Cooper cameo.

But I digress. The lighting uses the power of suggestion to expand upon its sparsely decorated sets (which largely consist of blank white walls with a handful of Corman posters tacked to them, not even in particularly good condition), most notably in the diner scenes. As visible in the first photo of this review, a false window casts shadow over the actors, cementing in the idea that they're hiding in a restaurant, and not a parking garage hallway. There's also some tremendously fun gags using silhouettes, but I'm not here to replay the movie, I'm here to sell it.

Not that it needs the help.

Chopping Mall is also remarkably funny, rife as it is with the typical 80's gags and guffaws. But there are moments that transcend the expected, especially in one admirably well-placed editing gag that will have hawk-eyed viewers nursing a stitch in their side. The cherry on top is that all the characters have generally intelligent reactions to their predicaments, almost never resorting to Dumb Horror Character antics, save for some truly, epically insane moments where the film briefly converts into a testosterone carnival of gun-totin' action.

But here I go acting like Chopping Mall is the second coming of Craven. It's certainly no grand classic of horror cinema, merely a shockingly decent turn for a trash auteur. The acting is bottom of the barrel (Russell Todd especially fails to make any attempt at an actual performance; only Barbara Crampton escapes the fray, bringing Suzie to vivacious life and igniting some terrific chemistry with everyone around her), the characters are exceedingly shallow, and the fun - while genuine - is ephemeral.

It's a cotton candy delight, tantalizing the taste buds for 77 short minutes before completely dissolving as if it were never there. It may be considerably more well made than other Corman/Wynorski films, but the fact remains that it's a Corman/Wynorski film, and that's a pretty dreary place to be at the best of times. I stand by Chopping Mall as a beacon of pure light in the B-movie community, but its charms only go so far. You have my blessing to seek it out and have a rollicking great time, but it won't change your life.

But sometimes, we don't need a film to radically change our perspective on the cinema. We just need the Killbots. And Chopping Mall is worth breaking out the jelly bracelets and borrowing daddy's credit card, if only for one night of fun with your friends.

Killer: The Killbots

Final Girl: Alison Parks (Kelli Maroney)

Best Kill: Leslie's head is exploded with a freaking laser. I love the 80's.

Sign of the Times: It's genuinely astonishing that Barbara Crampton has the mobility that she does, weighed down as she is by a pile of crimped hair and about 8,000 jelly bracelets. Oh, and she says "bitchin'!"

Scariest Moment: Alison hides from the final robot in a pet shop. When it destroys some glass cages, snakes and tarantulas crawl over her, but she must keep quiet to avoid detection.

Weirdest Moment: The robots reveal that they can shoot laser beams in the middle of the film, when up until that point they've just been using flimsy little claws.

Champion Dialogue: "I guess I'm just not used to being chased around the mall in the middle of the night by killer robots."

Body Count: 9

1. Marty is choked to death by a robot arm.
2. Marty's Friend has his neck broken with a grappling hook.
3. Janitor is electrocuted in a puddle of mop water.
4. Mike has his throat slit.
5. Leslie has her head exploded with a laser.
6. Susie burns to death.
7. Greg is tossed off a balcony.
8. Linda is shot to death with lasers.
9. Rick is electrocuted.

TL;DR: Chopping Mall is pure campy fun, with a surprisingly masterful aesthetic for a film out of the Corman stable.
Rating: 7/10
Word Count: 1361

Delta Theta Die

Year: 1992

Director: Jim Wynorski

Cast: Robyn Harris, Melissa Moore, Stacia Zhivago

Run Time: 1 hour 17 minutes

MPAA Rating: N/A

90's horror often gets a bad rap, despite enduring successes like Scream, The Blair Witch Project, Silence of the Lambs, and The Sixth Sense. But if there's any year that most fully exemplifies the post-apocalyptic bleakness that many associate with that period, it's 1990 (the year this film was produced, though it wouldn't receive its ignominious direct-to-video release until two years later). '89 was the year that the subgenre died its most unambiguous death (like supernatural killers and comic book characters alike, slashers would soon return from the grave afresh, but at the time it seemed like an outright impossibility), but slashers kept plugging along, unaware, dying off one by one in the following years much like their typical slate of victims. Even the strongest franchise icons petered out well before Scream's 1996 debut.

But where there's a will there's a way. And where there's a hormonal teenage audience there's Jim Wynorski. Perhaps best known for his terrifically campy Chopping Mall in 1986, Wynorski quickly found refuge in exploitation cinema in the waning light of the 80's. The discovery that altered his career rivals even Einstein's in cultural significance: Teenage boys will pay money to see boobs no matter how crappy your movie is.

So this is where we find him at the turn of the decade. At the helm of a sequel to a film that had no earthly reason to be revived, 1986's Sorority House Massacre, which, if you remember, was already an alarmingly shoddy piece of work buoyed only on the strength of one gut-splittingly hilarious dress-up montage.

The 80's are very important to me.

Sorority House Massacre II is a cash-in plain and simple, such a desperate little dirt grub that it was willing to rake in even the infinitesimal amount that could be garnered from following a film that was hardly a smash at the box office. Written in a week and filmed in probably less, SHM II is a triumph of slasher depravity. With a bucket of karo syrup, enough softcore actresses to fill out five lace nighties, and an empty house ready to go, Wynorski set out to make hisself a movie.

The plot goes like this. Five members of an unnamed sorority set out to spruce up a house in which a man murdered his family several years ago. These nubile young ladies are Jessica (Melissa Moore), a leggy blonde who is dating a guy named Eddie (Mike Elliott), who only appears in one scene when he drives the girls up to the house and yet receives an inordinate amount of fanfare in the credits; Janey (Dana Bentley), a mischievous type with a bob so large and thick it could only have been harvested from the Sheddings Bin at a Cher concert; Linda (Robyn Harris), an Australian girl who is marginally smarter than the rest; and Suzanne (Barbii) and Kimberly (Stacia Zhivago), two sets of breasts with women reluctantly attached.

After attempting to contact the man's spirit with a Ouija board (they do exactly zero work on the house during the course of the film - but with so many showers to take, tequila shots to drink, and shoulders to massage lovingly, can you blame them?), they begin to die one by one. Is it the ghost of Old Man Hockstedter? Or is it the creepy neighbor Orville Ketchum (Peter Spellos), who eats raw meat out of a bucket and likes to breathe loudly onto things?

Alright, I'm warning you now. I ask you humbly to please not take out your rage and anger on my blog or upon my person, but... I am going to spoil Sorority House Massacre II. The ghost did it.

Parker Bros. strikes again.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about Sorority House Massacre II is that there is a distinct lack of sex. I know that's not usually a concern during in-depth analysis of cinema, but here it is certainly a curiosity. This is a film that performs the dazzling feat of displaying all five main characters' breasts in a span of less than three minutes, yet doesn't include a single male character that sticks around long enough for them to bang. In fact, it's almost distinctly asexual, its preferred mode of exploitation being watching a group of "pretty" girls going through the motions of a routine horror picture, but without the added protection of clothes.

For the entire second half of the film, the entire cast prances around the house in bras and underwear - or, in Janey's case, a gossamer jumpsuit so tight you can see her endocrine system.

Her body is so constricted, all the extra mass had to go to her hair.

In this regard, if you can overlook the sleaziness of objectification, the film is actually quite charming in its sheer desperation to titillate. The only survivor of the previous massacre is now a stripper and we are forced to sit through her entire dance before she gets a chance to speak. Girls flash one another as punchlines to jokes. A staircase is placed exactly right so we can see each girl's butt as she flounces into the attic. And - my personal favorite - when the girls realize they're in danger, dialogue along these lines occurs.

Vixen #1: "Oh no! We left our clothes upstairs!"

Vixen #2: "There's no time! We'll have to go without them!" 

They then proceed to do absolutely no escaping because it's raining outside and Wynorski certainly isn't paying them enough for that.

An actual photo of the SHM II casting call.

Overwhelming tawdriness aside, the film has absolutely nothing else to recommend it, at least from a technical standpoint. From a good-bad movie standpoint, however, it's almost inimitable. Each element of the film's mise-en-scène is crappy to a hilarious degree, though perhaps not an eminently watchable one. Let me explain the full spectrum of crapiness that penetrates Sorority House Massacre II to its very core with a quick breakdown.

• Sound Design: Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if the dialogue track for the film was recorded over the phone on a stormy night. Every character sounds tinny and about a mile away from the screen. And the foley work ranges from eminently unimpressive to cartoonishly absurd. My favorite moments are when the rambunctious sound effects collide with the gaudy exploitation to create such sterling moments as a girl soaping up her butt in the shower with the sound of someone wiping a squeaky window with a rag, or a stripper (yes, there are two distinct striptease moments that take place away from the main action) rubbing her breasts on a pole with the sound of two balloons squeaking together.
• Gore: I think it's perhaps too much to ask of the film that it have its gore game together, but typically a slasher film is a showcase for the best FX artists and breasts in the business. The breasts here are so rampant that they form a massive conglomerate that dominates the film, eliminating the need for great gore to tantalize the already sated ideal audience. So what we're stuck with is an endless series of girls getting stabbed with a hook in silhouette. At least there's enough ineptitude to keep the less boob-concerned audience members going - notably the obvious shadow of a ketchup bottle squirting the blood onto the wall.
• Acting: I won't spend too much time taking potshots. It's not like the performers were hired for their talent or asked to perform at any level beyond arching their backs and saying the words on the page. But as Robyn Harris gets going, she illuminates the screen like a firework with a spastic, volcanic display of over-the-top camp. She's like a marionette of Eva Longoria with the strings cut, flopping wildly around the screen with manic intensity and perfect hair.

Pictured here, left, in a more sedate moment.

At least Sorority House Massacre II makes spasmodic attempts at humor, like in the house's address (6934 Langdon) or a series of funny newspaper headlines. It tries just hard enough to be funny that the more embarrassing elements (Orville uses a cop's gun to shoot a villain while he's still holding it; a fight scene plays more like an improv troupe pretending to sword fight) could conceivably be explained away by "oh, it's a parody." I don't buy this for one Karo syrup-soaked second, but it's a genius insurance policy.

Because the movie is far too cheap to even attempt to reach an average level of cinematic quality. This fact is belied both by the run time (of the 77 advertised minutes, 6 of them are credits) and, well, the rest of the film. A flashback of Old Man Hockstedter killing his family is just recycled footage from The Slumber Party Massacre with the names and situations changed. The facts that it's not even the same house, any person with enough love for slashers to watch this piece of crap has already seen SPM, and that they pretend two clearly different actresses are one girl are brutally ignored in favor of getting in more kills as swiftly and cheaply as possible. Nevermind that there's already a Sorority House Massacre to pull footage from. No, that's just what they'd be expecting us to do.

I haven't even mentioned the nonsensical cop subplot, which brings us to the aforementioned strip club in search of answers about the potential killer. What tipped these cops off about the new danger five years later and why they aren't actually going to the house to help the girls remains a mystery. Perhaps the filmmakers wanted to preserve ambiguity and ignite the imaginations of young home audiences, preparing them for the unknowns they will soon face in their own post-high school careers. 

Or perhaps the movie is just a piece of crap.

Sorority House Massacre II is a piece of crap.

Seacrest out.

Killer: Hokstedter's Ghost in Jessica's (Melissa Moore) body

Final Girl: Linda (Robyn Harris)

Best Kill: Jessica's death - getting stabbed in the neck - is the best both because it is an actual gore sequence and the fact that she sprays enough blood to fill a tub.

Scariest Moment: There are actresses for whom this film was their only option to have a career.

Weirdest Moment: Orville pulls the key to the basement out of his underwear.

Champion Dialogue: "No one puts a finger on my diviner."

Body Count: 8; including three kills repurposed from Slumber Party Massacre and not including Orville Ketchum, who is stabbed repeatedly, strangled with a chain, has his neck snapped, is shoved into a toilet, and shot multiple times before being possessed by a ghost.

1. Coach Jana is gutted with a drill (SPM).
2. Kim AKA "Cecily" is stabbed in the gut with a drill (SPM).
3. Diane is impaled with a drill (SPM).
4. Janey is hooked in silhouette.
5. Suzanne is hooked in silhouette.
6. Kimberly is killed offscreen.
7. Jessica is knifed in the neck.
8. Linda is shot to death. 

TL;DR: Sorority House Massacre II is not good at all, but genuinely hilarious in its straightforward chintzy depravity.
Rating: 3/10
Word Count: 1867
Reviews In This Series
Sorority House Massacre (Frank, 1986)
Sorority House Massacre II (Wynorski, 1992)