Census Bloodbath: Boringhouse

Year: 1982
Director: John Wintergate
Cast: John Wintergate, Kalassu, Lindsay Freeman
Run Time: 1 hour 38 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

Boardinghouse, which is a cult film according to all its own promotional materials (so why wouldn't I believe them?), is also one of the very first horror films to be shot on video, to be transferred to film for projection while keeping the budget low and the film prepped and ready for the fledgling rental market. It certainly was a watershed moment that set the standard for all SOV horror flicks to come, which are also very very bad.

Though I'm sure there are some great ones waiting in the wings for perusal as we head deeper into the 80's. Nervous laughter.

Boardinghouse is the twisted vision of John Wintergate (who had a bit part in the also bad Terror on Tour in 1980) who directs (as Johnn Wintergate, apparently a typo), writes (as Jonema), provides special makeup effects (as J. Wintergate), and stars in two roles (as Hawk Adly, definitely a typo because the story goes he wanted to be called "Hank"). His character Jim Royce (he also plays the unnamed gardener, billed as "Gardner" because why not at least be consistent) has inherited a large Los Angeles home from his uncle, which he converts into a boardinghouse in the hopes of attracting a bevy of aspiring actresses and models to come live there for cheap.

His dreams quickly become a reality, and he's lounging around dressed like Hugh Hefner while being massaged and flirted with by at least 8 beautiful women whose numbers seem to randomly fluctuate. The only ones who have any bearing on the story are Debbie (Penthouse model Lindsay Freeman), who has an untraceable accent and a dark secret, and Victoria (Kalassu, Wintergate's real life wife, with whom he has an annoying New Age music group that made music into the 2010's), who seems to rise to the top as lead contender for being his love interest. Also two of them are named Cindy and Sandy because maybe the film actively hates us? Jim studies telekinesis, and gets some of the other girls into it. And wouldn't you know it, but people around the house start dying in strange paranormal accidents.

Don't you just hate it when that happens?

Legend (and the two-disc DVD release) has it that the original director's cut of Boardinghouse is 2 hours and 40 minutes long, which actually explains several things. Distributors lopping an hour off certainly accounts for a lot of the subplots that either go nowhere or slam into the movie out of the clear blue sky (literally at one point a Black boarder appears out of thin air - and trust me, if she had been there before I would have noticed her in the writhing ocean of pallid flesh this movie calls a cast). But that level of sheer self indulgence the original run time belies (even the 1 hour 38 minute run time we got theatrically is needlessly indulgent) points to the source of every single sin this movie commits: John Wintergate, for whom auteur theory is doing no favors.

Calling Boardinghouse the The Room of the 80's slasher genre would be doing a huge disservice to that cult masterpiece, but Wintergate is certainly the Tommy Wiseau of his era, down to the psychological profile (he also claimed this film was an intentional comedy after a heap of bad reviews). He's a man who was starting to age out of Hollywood and likely overcompensated by putting a huge amount of work into his physique (his body is ripped, and I know this because he spends at least half of the movie with his chest bared, and at least half of that time in nothing but teeny tiny briefs). He seems to have found the means to create his own movie out of the twin impulses of positioning himself as a movie star and hiring people to be his friends and lovers. 

This film is creepy not because of any horror content, but because of Wintergate himself. Boardinghouse does itself no favors by making constant jokes about the casting couch, because it seems like every woman was hired just because he wanted to make out with them on camera. It's repulsive to watch on the surface level of its plot (no landlord should pick up a tenant and carry her into the shower, even if she is covered in yogurt), but it's downright skin-crawling the more you learn about the director and the making of the film.

There's exploitation, and then there's using a film starring your wife as a personal dating service.

Beyond all that, every other aspect of Boardinghouse's construction is dodgy. The acting is dreadful, of course. The female characters are all goggle-eyed sex vixens and the men range from hollow to "I'm legitimately worried he might be having an episode." The cinematography has that grimy shot-on-video glow of course, but also a heap of misguided camcorder zooms and shoddy colorful video effects slathered on top of everything. And the special effects are uniformly terrible. You can see the hands tugging along quite a few of the objects in the telekinesis scenes, the cinematographer loves to catch himself in mirror reflections, and for an electrocution scene, the effect is achieved by shining a flashlight into the man's mouth from off camera.

At the very least, the scare sequences have some solid vision, even if they're never achieved properly. I could see a lot of the imagery used here actually having an impact in a good movie, especially the scene where corpse hands burst from a woman's bed to grab her, or the material using a bloody pig head that grabs at people (there's a lot of grabbing in this movie). And some of the kills are even a little fun (we have a cheeky hand-in-garbage-disposal moment, for one thing). What's weird is that almost none of the people who die (and there are a lot of them) are actually the boarders. They're mostly just random side characters who wander into the movie. 

Not that I'm advocating for female characters to die specifically, but if you fill a house with babes with no personalities in a slasher movie, you murder them. That's just how it's done. Failing to accomplish that makes the movie more confusing (usually it's easier to tell what indistinguishable white woman is which in a slasher film once several of them have been killed off) and provides more evidence that Wintergate is making this film for the wrong reasons (see: the scene where a terrified woman tries to escape a shower by pressing her breasts into the glass over and over again).

At the end of the day, Boardinghouse might be a cult film for some, but those people have to be a loooot more interested in the naked female body than I am. And I do concede that there are plenty of people who fit this description. If you want to watch an incoherent, choppy story where a bunch of nobodies do nothing, and then get pushed into pools (or any suitable body of water that renders sheer garments see-through), then have at it. But for me, this film has an automatic "go to the bottom 5 slashers of 1982 list free" card.

Killer: Debbie (Lindsay Freeman)
Final Girl: There's plenty of them, and none of them matter. Although I guess Victoria (Kalassu), because she's the last one we see.
Best Kill: There's a part where a woman squeezes out her own eyes which has some aggressively dreadful cuts, but the fakey effect at the end is actually super gross to look at.
Sign of the Times: I know that making the rent cheap was meant to be the enticement to fill the house with babes, but even if you were doing that in 2020 (which you shouldn't), you'd charge more than $100 a month. Inflation's a harsh mistress.
Scariest Moment: After What's Her Name is scared in the shower, she sees herself as a pig-headed, male-pattern-balding monster in the bathroom mirror.
Weirdest Moment: When two of the women get into a playful, sexy splash fight in the jacuzzi, one tries to drown the other, and then gets her top ripped off in retaliation.
Champion Dialogue: "Hey, what is this gun?"
Body Count: 12; but perplexingly only 3 of them are the boarders.

1. Don Hoffman drowns in the pool.
2. Mrs. Hoffman gets her hand caught in the garbage disposal and dies somehow.
3. Nurse Sherry hangs herself.
4. Orderly rips out his own guts.
5. Harris is electrocuted.
6. Cindy drowns herself in the ocean.
7. Pumpkin the Cat is hit with a hammer.
8. The Black Boarder is shot.
9. Detective shoots himself.
10. Gardener is impaled on... something sharp, I guess. It's hard to see.
11. Sandy plucks out her own eyes.
12. Agent is telekinesis-ed to death.

TL;DR: Boardinghouse is a horrible, dreadful slog with some random pockets of imagery that is interesting in concept but not execution.
Rating: 2/10
Word Count: 1504

Census Bloodbath: Kiss Of Death

Year: 1980

Director: Don Edmonds

Cast: Rick Styles, Chip Greenman, Rich Pemberton

Run Time: 1 hour 24 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

When will I learn to never trust slasher movies with cool titles? 

Friday the 13th, Halloween, A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Burning, The Initiation... All great titles for great movies, but their names are low key in the grand scheme of things. But give me a Christmas Evil, To All A Goodnight, or Memorial Day and things get down in the dumps pretty quickly. Can you guess which camp Terror on Tour falls into?

If you guessed the former, you're just as optimistic as me. And just as stupid.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

You see, Terror on Tour was produced by Alex Rebar and Sandy Cobe, two slick types who also perpetrated To All A Goodnight earlier in 1980. Add in the ingredient of director Don Edmonds' history of producing trash like the notorious Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS and you've got the perfect recipe for a crap sandwich. Luckily, this film doesn't descend to quite the level of nuclear suckage that that might imply, but it would take a gentler soul than I to find anything substantial to praise about it. 

This film tells the story of The Clowns, a rock and roll band played by real life band The Names. Their show involves over the top KISS style costumes, makeup, and the murder of a mannequin onstage. Classic stuff, really. Their tour, which takes them to exotic locations as far and wide as this one rinky dink theater in middle America to.... the same rinky dink theater in middle America. 

But let us not get caught up in the minor crappy details when there's so much major crap to deal with. The band consists of Fred (Rick Styles), a real hit with the ladies; Ralph (Chip Greenman), who is succumbing to the lifestyle and battling a drug addiction; Henry (Rich Pemberton), the drummer with a heart of gold; and Cherry (Dave Galluzzo), who is a real sensitive type who doesn't really like the drug and violence addled personas they have had to take on to appeal to the crowd. I made those four sound much more interesting than they actually are.

The movie would have perhaps been a shade more interesting if it had focused on fleshing out their characters and enhancing their terror at their situation, but in that wall-to-wall 80's rock fashion, the killings this time are carried out while they're onstage and the film preoccupies itself with the machinations of the band's tour manager Tim (Larry Freaking Thomas, aka Seinfeld's Soup Nazi and the only "big" name in the entire film), their makeup artist Herb (Jeff Morgan), and their handsome roadie Jeff (David Thompson).

Oh, did I mention that the killer is decked out in full Clowns regalia?

Oh, did I mention that this regalia is comprised of Kiss makeup, a black unitard, a Phantom of the Opera mask, and an afro wig?

It had to come out sooner or later.

During the concerts and the afterparties, a whole horde of sexy young women are dispatched with a butcher knife that makes my crappy student film rubber knife look like a Ginsu. These scenes are interspersed with the copious nudity that is the trademark of these producers and this genre, but the murders leave something to be desired. It's all just people getting stabbed in the gut with a Big 'Ol Knife. Nothing groundbreaking here.

It's like the filmmakers watched Friday the 13th and pieced together that the formula for success was a high body count, crappy cinematography, and listless characters talking about nothing in particular. They even stole the CHA CHA CHA score! Unfortunately, they skipped over the magnificently rendered gore while compiling their list and the film loses a lot of the cheesy 80's impact it could have had. 

Although the costumes certainly work to make up for that.

The acting in the film is... well, what would you expect? The band members surprisingly hold their own, but the rest of the cast is pretty standard for a slasher of this pedigree. The men are too unattractive to make it in Hollywood, the women too untalented. Although ironically, the director and star of the 1982 slasher Boardinghouse (John Wintergate and Kalassu) make an appearance here as "Mod Boy" and "Mod Girl."

There are actually a surprising amount of slasher regulars in the supporting cast. Sylvia Wright, who played some chick named Carol would go on to make a name for herself in Bloody Birthday as "Girl in Van." And Verkina Flower, who played the charming "Well Endowed Girl" would go on to be a wardrobe consultant on Frightmare and Silent Night, Deadly Night, one of the very few truly good Christmas slashers.

But when that's the extent of your film's talent... Well, things aren't exactly the best. The songs are uniformly subpar, although they're not as grating as the endless slate in the same year's New Year's Evil. I already spoke of the acting. Since there's hardly any gore to speak of, at least I can't complain about its poor quality.

Although to be completely honest, I'd really rather have buckets of terrible chalupa sauce blood than nothing at all.

He gets it.

The only thing saving the film is those unforgettable costumes. Half KISS, half Juggalo, all ridiculous. The fact that at any given point, up to 75 percent of the cast is dressed like this gives the film a lot of mileage. Unfortunately, besides that and the presence of Larry Thomas who is at best a D-List celebrity, there's absolutely nothing else to recommend it.

OK, maybe there's one more interesting thing. Let's jump into SPOILER territory here. The killer, as anybody with a pulse could guess by the 30 minutes mark is, in fact, the Soup Nazi. He's killing the topless chicks for the usual reasons. They're whores, sex is a sin, he's a religious zealot, we get it. But there's an intriguing addition to this motive.

He kills them because he thinks they're morally unscrupulous and doesn't want them to bear children. Isn't that strange? I mean, it's not enough to amp up a dull, plodding final act that follows a goreless second act and a wholly boob-fueled first act, but it's certainly more creative than what we normally get in the end of these early slashers.

So it's not a total waste of time? But I wouldn't spend your time on it. Only mine. Because at least when I watch it, I can chalk it up to this Census Bloodbath project and feel productive. For you, it would merely be madness.

Killer: Tim (Larry Thomas)

Final Girl: None; Although the entire band survives, which is highly odd.

Best Kill: One of the girls is stabbed right in the boobs.

Sign of the Times: There's a character named "Mod Girl." Come on.

Scariest Moment: There is a room in the venue used exclusively for sex. It is decorated with red splatters. And a noose.

Weirdest Moment: The band members start to sing a song in the green room that actually isn't a pile of crap.

Champion Dialogue: "He's popping enough pills to put an elephant into orbit."

Body Count: 8

1. Drug Dealer Girl is stabbed in the stomach.
2. Horny Cocaine Girl is stabbed to death.
3. "Next" Girl has her throat slit.
4. Too Turnt Topless Girl is stabbed in the chest.
5. Drummer's Girlfriend is stabbed to death. 
6. Lt. Lambert is stabbed in the gut. 
7. Narc Girl is stabbed in the stomach.
8. Herb is stabbed in the back. 

TL;DR: Terror on Tour is not good, but at least it has funny outfits.

Rating: 3/10

Word Count: 1292