Review: Pieces

Pieces (1982)

College campus terrorized by a serial killer, cops cant find out who it is as they try to track down the murderer. This one of the movies that I feel helped built this cliche, and its as fun as a movie about this should be. Plenty of gore and sex, and enough goofy dialogue in between. The whodunnit aspects of the movie are fun as well with enough red herrings that I actually kept guessing, mostly as to how much credit of originality I should give the movie. The version I watched had some awkward dubbing, but I think it helped my experience of the film. The killer in the movie is going after young women specifically, and in a rather sexual manner because of a crazy event in his childhood which the movie opens with. I clearly was inspired by other early slash movies like Halloween and Texas Chainsaw Massacre. This is really fun movie that should be in anyone's short list when discussing 80's slashers. I cant really say too much more about it because I kind of want to keep this review relatively spoiler free and there are some pretty awesome bits towards the end when the movie comes together.

Lets get ripped up for this shlocky romp with an

Absolute Chainsaw

1/2 oz Absolut Vodka
1 oz Wild Turkey
1/2 oz Jagermeister
1 can Natty

Pour the three douchey liquors into the nearest red solo cup and pour the douchey beer on top, because we need to get wicked drunk for this bloody rager, don't forget to pop your collar and lube your chainsaw.

Review: Chopping Mall

Chopping Mall (1986)

Chopping Mall basically combines several things that were popular in the 80's: Robocop, slasher movies, and shopping malls. This shopping mall has purchased a set of new security robots to patrol the building at night, that will incapacitate any intruders. They have safety features that should prevent them from coming after mall employees, but of course they get hit by lightning and that control system malfunctions; of course, they go on a murderous rampage. This rampage happens to occur whilst a group of teenagers that work at the mall decide to stay overnight and have a party at a furniture store. The movie follows some of the general cliches after that--the janitor (albeit he was white) gets killed first, the kids drink and have sex (thereby calling down the old testament judgement of the slasher movie gods), and the really nerdy couple that does not hook up at the party end up living. The movie also is reminiscent of Dawn of The Dead, since the group ends up smashing lots of windows in the mall and there are lots of scenes in which they gear up to try to fight the robots. The heroine shows plenty of competence with firearms and definitely holds her own against the robots, which was fun to watch. There is also a great head explosion, a couple good one-liners, and the robots actually look pretty cool. The soundtrack is really great--the perfect kind of 80's synth but with a manic, goofy quality that really fits the mood. It's a really fun movie that combines lots of elements of other 80's movies and is definitely worth a viewing or two.

Boom! Head Shot!
dash grenadine
1/2 oz 151 Rum
1/2 oz Grand Marnier
1/2 oz Midori

put booze and ice into shaker, strain in to shot glass, violently dash in grenadine being sure to spill some on the bar. then throw it back hard, like a laser from a robot exploded your melon all over the place. optionally, throw the contents of the shaker at someone's face and pretend it exploded (read: cheesy effects).

Roger Corman sci-fi triple feature!

Yesterday I got to see the classic Ridley Scott's Alien on the big screen, digitally restored in all it's glory. It was an amazing viewing experience, I know that sounds corny but it was true. Out of movies I have seen in theaters vs on a tv, this has easily been one of the biggest differences I have experienced. The scope and detail of the sets is astounding, the sound of the ship filling up a dark theater, it was something else. It is still playing at The Plaza Theatre in Atlanta until after this Thursday, 7/10/14 so if you can GO SEE IT! It is easy to see then when this movie first came on the scene how people would flock to copy it and make a buck, so without further or do lets look at a couple of attempts via the king of cheap cheese: Roger Corman, who made a couple of sci-fi movies heavily inspired by Alien in the early 1980's.

Battle Beyond the Stars (1980)
Ok, so this is a rip off of Star Wars primarily, and doesn't really have a connection to Alien, but I wanted to talk about it anyway. Predictably it starts off with a long shot beneath a huge space ship, which actually looks pretty good. The interior... not so much. The big ship is full of ass holes, which apparently have nothing better to do than be all empirey and conquer people who don't appear to have anything worth taking. The wizard of oz head booms our that he is gonna take this dirt planet's harvest, because EVIL. Oh wait, the poor agrarian people are going to get some mercenaries with hearts of gold to defend themselves from evil bastards who want their crops? Never seen that one before. They actually titled the Spanish dub The Magnificent Seven in Space, and Robert Vaughn was basically the same character in both this and Magnificent Seven. The main character reminds me of Sheldon from Big Bang Theory so I hate him. But its made up for by Hannibal from the A-Team being a literal space cowboy. As they mosey around they just about trip over people who want to help fight against the evil Sador, seems like if everyone hates him they should have kicked his ass already. In addition to Hannibal and Robert All-Business Vaughn they end up with a nerd girl who fixes things, some weird white dudes, a sexy viking chick with a ridiculous helmet, and a sleestak. Its pretty cornball, but there are some nice spaceship porn shots of the exteriors. The interiors are more Flash Gordon or Star Trek OS than gritty Ralph MacQuarry or HR Giger looking. Although one looks like a flying ball-sack. Not even joking. Or maybe they're boobs, it's right there on the poster. The movies is pretty damn ridiculous, and I am not entirely sure how much of it is intentionally goofy but you will definitely laugh at something.

Galaxy of Terror (1981)
Starting off with weird new-agey sci-fi spirituality mumbo jumbo (that barely comes into play agian through the rest of the movie) you might think this movie is gonna be a different type of shit. Actually it starts to get a lot better, especially the last 2/3rds of the movie. A weird demi god being that rules an space empire realizes one his ships found some ancient alien pyramid thing, and he wants more people to check it out. even though its evil and makes weird stuff happen. So they send a crack team of misfits with their own personal demons and some dirt between them. They fly over, fuck their ship up on the way down, explore the spooky pyramid and shit goes further south as they start to get picked off by a mysterious force that seems to play on their fears. Sid Haig plays a mute, because he hated his dialogue, and he probably gives the best performance of anyone here. Robert Englund is in this too but he was kind of under utilized, they could have had him go much crazier.There are some shots in the halls of the space ship where its really obvious that they used take out containers from McDonalds to decorate the halls. There are also some shots that look really cool and some neat effects. There are also some horribly cheesy sound effects, it is really hard to suspend your disbelief when the monster is making the same slobbery goop sound used in Scooby Doo. I really did enjoy this one, but it falls a little short of being actually pretty good which is really frustrating.

Forbidden World (1982, AKA Mutant)  Anyway the plot of this one involves a research lab on a remote planet that was attempting to genetically produce high-yield food or something. But Monsanto fucked up just like ally the hippies keep telling us and produce a damn monster that runs amok through the station and eats people and steals their DNA... or something. It is shameless in its ripping off of Alien. It does however include more gore and boobies, as a good ripoff should, also some really terrible synthesizer music. That being said there are some shots in this that are really cool, and only some of them involve tits. You may notice some similarities between the other movies I have mentioned, and by similarities I mean he recycled a bunch of shit. Particularly battle footage at the start from Battle Beyond the Stars, and the Big Mac container walls from the Galaxy of Terror set. What a forward-thinking, environmentally conscious producer! Remember, reduce, reuse, recycle! According to IMDB there during an early screening of the movie one viewer laughed out loud during a scene which Corman took as an insult and hit the dude. It's a pretty enjoyable flick, what it actually lack is a little more insanity and weirdness to push it over the edge of cult classic-ness. Its pretty straightforward bug hunt, and a serviceable vehicle for action and gore beats that only really lacks in film and sound clarity and the acting. The effects aren't really THAT bad, neither are the sets despite being partially made from take-out containers. My least favorite part is the child-like voice the android, robot guy has.

Out of the three, I think I enjoyed Galaxy of Terror the most, but I can see Battle Beyond the Stars being a more enjoyable experience for a group of friends drinking and watching something ridiculous. Galaxy of Terror was really close to being actually good, if it had just a bit more production value and maybe a script re-write.

Review: The Marsupials (The Howling III)

The Howling III: The Marsupials (1987)

An Anthropologist tries to track down werewolves in Australia, which are really Tasmanian wolves (also sometimes called Tasmanian tigers, a real species now extinct of predatory marsupial). It might be surprising to you that a movie about Australian were-supials is really weird and goofy; its also really Australian but that only accounts for part of the weirdness. Easily the most (only) terrifying thing in this movie is bizarre baby were-supial thing and the scenes involving it crawling around in it's mother's pouch, they made me a little... uncomfortable. There is a suspicious lack of gore and violence, which I'm guessing has something to do with Australian censorship. The movie is weirdly edited and paced, with uncertain jumps in time and a confusing and abrupt change in the direction of the movie in the last act. The first act is pretty awesome, full of the kind of silly 80's monster movie stuff you would expect moving at lightning pace. Lead actress Imogen Annesley also makes the movie worth watching because she's really hot, in a Natalie Dormer kind of way... at least when the movie isn't focusing on her hairy marsupial pouch. The main problem I have with the movie is instead of leading up to an intense last-stand between the fugitive lycanthorpes and the police/army like you would think, we get a rather self-indulgent set of scenes of werewolf children growing up and mostly being accepted into society. I was kind of hoping for Ozploitation version of Dog Soldiers, not really sure what I got but I think I liked it.