Bloody Nightmares #15: The Dead Live (2006)

"If you want to know how to make films, then just go out and do it." I hear this (or a variation of this) all the time in interviews with established filmmakers, and it's an ethos I strongly agree with. We thankfully live in an age where digital video and editing suites are available to the average person regardless of talent or ambition, and thanks to the distribution options available via the internet there are literally hundreds of films in circulation that are basically training exercises. They are fascinating in their own way, but an interested viewer must keep their expectations in check before delving in. However, there are also times when even these lowered expectations seem to be beyond the filmmakers abilities. I introduce you to The Dead Live, a zombie film that is completely inane, totally wrong-headed, and somehow still completely fascinating.

After a credits sequence over static, we're introduced to our protagonists in one of those awful fake newscasts which have become a regular feature of this collection. Front and centre is Alex Travis, an ambitious female reporter covering a SWAT team hostage situation which ends with a shambling attacker biting one of the SWAT members. Following the story to the local morgue, with a requisite bawdy coroner and some surprising full frontal nudity, Alex and her cameraman are attacked by a corpse and find themselves at the mercy of a group of the living dead.

Now, at this point you may be excused for thinking that this film could actually be fairly entertaining - and you would be right, though certainly not because of the quality of the plot. Literally everything about this production is deeply flawed, from the acting (amateur), sound (alternately quiet or totally incomprehensible), sets (the coroners office is a treat), special effects (sometimes achieved by what appear to be MS Paint filter effects overlayed), and often baffling writing and direction where characters enter and vanish into the plot at random. And all of these, and plenty more, are already evident in the first 15 minutes.

Back to the plot: After her cameraman is bitten, Alex is rescued by Evans (Mike "Joe Joe Little" Jones), an undercover police officer. The two soon run into Lucas (Tom Hughes), a threatening redneck, and the shy Dawn (Brandy Patterson), before the four head toward an abandoned church and hide out in the basement. The group have to make their stand against a rampaging hoard of zombies, while dealing with infighting and a series of secrets amongst them.

Director Darrin Brent Patterson obviously has a love for zombie films, evidenced by rather transparent references to (George) Romero, (Tom) Savini, and (Sam) Raimi, but this reverence unfortunately doesn't stretch to borrowing plot structure or character development from their films, and his work here ranges from barely adequate to bafflingly bad. While i'm sympathetic to the budgetary limitations, the constant issues with sound - which mostly seem to be the result of using the built in camera microphone rather than a boom mic - are simply inexcusable. I had to constantly be changing the volume simply to be able to make out what was being said.

But this is just the tip of the iceberg. The acting is uniformally terrible, with Mike Jones likely being the best of a bad bunch, though he doesn't make a very convincing police officer. Continuity between shots is a real problem, with clothing and background noise changing on a constant basis. The zombie attacks are often incomprehensible, with choppy editing making the action very difficult to follow.

Let me take a moment to discuss the film's special effects and make-up, which reach a new depth of incompetence. Zombies range from having a few minor appliances (with blood around their mouths), Halloween masks, or often no make-up at all. There are a few identifiable zombies, including a cheerleader and schoolgirl, but they exist almost totally outside the plot. Gunshots are produced by obviously superimposed muzzle flashes, and head-shots are done in a similarly unconvincing way, or out of frame. One attempt to create a car explosion is just ridiculous.

After the film's closing credits there is, in my opinion, a rather tasteless and pretentious dedication to those who died in the World Trade Centre on September 11th, 2001. Yes, it's a zombie film - from 2006 no less - dedicated to the victims of a horrific terrorist attack, with a rather unfortunate comparison of the zombies to the terrorist attackers. I'm sure the motivations were admirable, but it's baffling in practice.

Coming from a DV source, the film shows a surprising amount of artifacting, particularly when there is any significant movement onscreen. Even the opening credits are garbled by the movement of the static, though I doubt that blame should go toward the filmmakers in this instance. There are also dropped frames and other various video problems which make watching the production an extended chore.

I can only imagine that Darrin Brent Patterson learned a ton in the making of this truly awful film that would hopefully help him in any future film productions. There are so many gaffes, weaknesses, and mistakes that his next effort, if it ever comes, would have to be infinitely better. If that's the case, then good luck to him in the future. I would hate to have The Dead Live be his final word on film.

Bloody Nightmares #13: The Veil (2005)

It's fair to say that in the last five years there has been a low-budget zombie boom. Spurred by the DIY attitudes that brought us The Evil Dead and Bad Taste (along with a bit of get rich quick thrown in), every young horror fan with a group of friends and a camera have tried to make their own Night Of The Living Dead, with the results being of wildly varying quality. Thanks to the success of 28 Days Later and the remake of Dawn Of The Dead, video store shelves are littered with dozens of these films (with literally hundreds available online), with more coming all the time, meaning it's as difficult as it has ever been for film-makers to distinguish themselves. To that end, Richard Chance's The Veil is something a bit different. Filmed over a four year period on a nothing budget, shot almost entirely in black and white and running over two and a half hours, it shows a level of ambition and dedication rarely seen in low budget film-making. This ambition can come with a price, however, as The Veil is often as bloated and frustrating as it is frequently inspired.

An airborne virus has been accidentally released on a British town, turning all of the occupants into lumbering, flesh eating zombies. A group of Special Air Service agents are sent in to investigate, but rapidly find their numbers dwindling and radio contact cut off. The three remaining men; Green, Anderson and Weston, hold up in an abandoned house while zombies surround them on all sides. Fighting off claustrophobia and infighting, they have to keep it together and find their way to safety before the shuffling masses rip them to pieces.

The Veil is, if nothing else, a significant achievement. While most microbudget horror is short on suspense and struggles to reach the 90 minute mark, Chance and crew tell their story effectively while pouring on significant amounts of atmosphere. Aided by a terrific soundtrack, and some smart, punchy direction that rarely lets things slow down, the film works on a level that even hollywood productions sometimes have trouble achieving. The crew was obviously unwilling to cut corners during production, and their efforts pay off in creating something unique

The choice to film in B&W was likely one of necessity. Different cameras and lighting set-ups likely created an inconsistent look to the film that is evened out by the lack of color, though even if it was planned from the beginning it ends up being a smart move. This doesn't feel like a hand-held Blair Witch knockoff, but like a real film that evokes memories of Romero's original Night Of The Living Dead while still feeling modern. One scene has a character shooting out the lights, bathing a room in darkness as some zombies approach. The only lighting comes from some persistent lightning outdoors and the muzzle flashes from the guns, and though it's a simple effect (and goes on a little long) it's very effective and a highlight. Even when the lighting is less effective, it's generally not difficult to tell what is going on, which is helped by some great editing which takes advantage of the numerous camera setups which increases the cinematic look of the proceedings.

Unfortunately, while the editing of the individual scenes is well done, the editing as a whole is where the film runs into trouble. It's just too damn long. Forty-five minutes could easily be shaved from the runtime without losing anything significant, particularly from the sometimes endless scenes of the soldiers mowing down zombies as they enter the house. While these scenes increase the sense of danger that these men are living with, they also are simply too frequent and become tiresome. We're also faced with several flashbacks throughout the running time, and while they effectively serve to illuminate the backstory and give the film a few more settings, the transitions into the scenes are often confusing.

Speaking of confusing, the other major flaw of the film is having the three main cast members spend almost the entire film wearing gas-masks. While i'm sure this decision was made out of necessity (since the actors played multiple parts and are also crew members), it also serves to make distinguishing who is who virtually impossible. While this may be by design, it makes for an irrirating viewing experience, particularly when combined with difficulty in understanding much of the dialogue in the film. The actors all have strong British accents, and it appears that little of the dialogue was dubbed in afterward, so we're left with a lot of lines that are difficult to make out. There is little dialogue in the film as a whole, and it never gets to the point where things are too confusing, but it does make some of the twists and turns in the plot difficult to keep track of.

The acting of the three leads is fine, though again hurt by the muffled sound, but I was quite impressed with the zombie acting in the film. Some effort was made in making up the zombies (though, it sometimes vears into "oatmeal face" territory), but it's their ability to lurch around and lunge when close to their victims which make them most effective. Add to that a wide variety of looks (and the near constant moaning on the soundtrack), and it isn't difficult to believe that the house is being surrounded by throngs of the living dead.

The special effects are equally impressive, and feature some great gory fun, particularly a chainsaw attack which owes a bit to the work of Peter Jackson. Gunshots are achieved usually through camera tricks and a few unconvincing digital blasts, but there also appear to be actual replica guns and blanks utilized in a few scenes. There are plenty of vicious headshots and spurting blood (though these are not Romero zombies which go down from a destroyed brain), and while not a gorefest the film-makers never appear to be holding back.

A mention must be made about the terrific soundtrack which features music from the bands Halo Ego Trip, Quartet, and incidental music from the director. Reminiscent of both John Carpenter's minimalist scores as well as the atmospheric soundtrack to 28 Days Later, it serves to maintain and build the film's tension while rarely overwhelming the action onscreen. It's quite memorable, and deserves a release in its own right.

Mill Creek/Pendulum Pictures were right to only squash four films onto the third disc of their Bloody Nightmares collection, keeping The Veil from devolving in a pixelated mess. The film is presented full-screen, and while the image is sometimes dark and grainy, it's only in the final twenty minutes that things get a little difficult to see. As with many films in this collection, I noticed a few digital glitches throughout, but it's nothing that can't be ignored.

A flawed but excitingly ambitious entry in the zombie genre, Richard Chance's The Veil may be a bloated & unwieldy mess, but makes up for it with sharp direction and interesting visuals. Casual viewers may be scared away by the black & white photography and epic running length, but for patient genre fans there is a lot to love here. Worth checking out.

Bloody Nightmares #12: I Dream Of Dracula (2003)

There are many things painfully wrong with Jim Haggerty's no-budget vampire horror-comedy I Dream Of Dracula, but perhaps the most crippling is that it simply isn't the least bit fun. Technical and performance issues aside (and there are plenty of both), the horror portions have no sense of suspense or tension, and the comedy is almost totally ineffective. Characters are presented as broad caricatures that barely resemble human beings, and the humor is so broad it feels like the audience is being bludgeoned with a shovel. I'm not going to criticize someone for tossing a fart joke into the mix, but the comedy here wouldn't elicit guffaws from even the most simple minded teenager. It's a plodding 75 minutes, occasionally spiced up with nudity, that is totally forgettable.

The plot centers around Priscilla (Michellina Shaffranski), a young woman who has been having dreams of vampirism and has started to believe that she is a reincarnated vampire named, um, Prunella. Her husband Roger (Jae Mosc) suggests that she see her psychiatrist friend Jeanette, but secretly Jeanette and Roger are having an affair and are hoping these dreams could lead to Priscilla being locked away for good. Eventually some gothy, usually naked vampires show up (while occasionally hanging out with Satan, who apparently spends most of his time in a tent) to kill random folks or talk awkwardly with plastic Halloween fangs in their mouth. Things sputter to a close with Priscilla staring awkwardly with her mouth open for eternity before everyone dies. The world's laziest police investigator decides to close the case and Prunella goes off into the night. Good for her.

Even for fans of low-budget cinema, this one is a little tough to get through and the fault has to be laid at the feet of the director. Haggerty gives one of the film's most amusing performances at the promiscuous Gunner, but as writer and director he's rather lost. Any camera movement is rare, and when it happens it's either shaky hand-held, or irritatingly jerky pans (someone should have greased the tripod a little). There are several scenes with a visibly dirty lens, which is particularly distracting during some of the endless dialogue scenes. I will give Haggerty credit for putting in a judicious amount of nudity, but vampire babes are no substitute for a coherent plot. And, I have to be honest, the female vampires are nasty looking. Even unclothed.

Acting is pretty poor across the board, though Shaffranski is obviously trying hard in the lead, and Jae Mosc hams it up effectively in a role that consists entirely of having a funny wig. The vampire ladies have to battle against fake teeth when giving any dialogue, so i'll cut them some slack. Anastasia Bosakowski-Chater gets the prize for most irritating actress for playing a bed-ridden Van Helsing who shouts nonsense throughout. She does get a surprisingly long vomit scene however.

Lighting and sound specs are decent, but special effects amount to some fake blood slathered on a few necks. Michael Keller provides a reasonable, though unmemorable, score.

Image quality looks fine, though again there are compression artifacts in any scenes with movement (of which there are few). There are dropped frames and glitches in a few places, but nothing particularly distracting.

I Dream Of Dracula certainly features dreams (in fact, the opening dream is shown in its entirety twice), but unfortunately Dracula is nowhere to be found. Hopefully Haggerty used this film as a learning experience, as in recent years he's been very productive in indie horror. Few laughs and no scares make for a dire viewing experience, and this one is definitely better ignored.

Bloody Nightmares #7: Catholic Ghoulgirls (2005)

It's fully possible that i've never seen a film that is so much less than the sum of its parts. Catholic Ghoulgirls squanders whatever goodwill it may have built through absolutely pitiful direction and editing, leaving very little worthy of praise. Director Eamon Hardiman proves to be an incompetent filmmaker, even compared to some of the meager talents featured in this collection. From lighting, to sound, to make-up, to acting, to writing and nearly everything in between, this is simply a poor effort.

Now I certainly didn't go into this film looking to beat up on it, so let's start with the good. I was impressed by the soundtrack throughout, composed almost entirely of local licensed punk music. In particular the opening credits song and a fun cover of The Ramones' "I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend" make welcome appearances. Also, one character kills a hipster zombie for wearing a Thundercats t-shirt despite not growing up in the 80s, which I took as a fun comment on the Hot Topic crowd. Unfortunately, this is just the beginning of the film straining for pop culture credibility by making superfluous references to G.I. Joe, The Littles, Turbo Teen and Stephen King's The Dark Tower which come off as sad attempts at geek legitimacy and have no relevance on the plot.

And speaking of the plot? Kasey, Becky and Maria are three Catholic.. umm.. Ghoulgirls who wear the requisite garb and hang around in alleys while their male friends sit around debating pop culture until they are attacked by zombies. Kacey's boyfriend Jake escapes and picks her up in his car suggesting that the two leave town because of the unexpected living dead problem. She's hesitant at first, but he gives her until sundown to prepare before dropping her off at her house. She gets a samurai sword somehow, and they all eventually end up at a bar (with a visible advertisement looking for zombies for this very movie in the background) until the boys get eaten and the girls end up in a basement. Please God make it stop.

Now I know what you may be thinking. Catholic schoolgirls with swords killing zombies? Sounds great! But let me assure you that incompetence reigns over even the cheapest thrills in this film. Dialogue is a garbled mess, often being drowned out by the soundtrack music or even ambient noise. The editing is so bad that there are visible black frames between cuts that appear throughout the entire duration. The action scenes are totally inept, the gore is non-existent besides some terrible fake blood, and the photography looks like someone's last known photo. It rings completely of a filmmaker relying on a concept and a title to do his work for him, and there's simply no excuse for this level of laziness.

And I haven't even mentioned the tasteless "satirical" Jew-bashing opening to the film (featuring the worst looking newscast since A Candle In The Dark) which makes no sense in the context of the film, as is never mentioned again. I suppose it may be some connection to Escape From The Dead, apparently the precursor to this film, though i'm not exactly chomping at the bit to check it out. Hardiman may have been aiming for the unabashed bad-taste of a Troma film, but comes off instead as simply hateful and ignorant.

Also, I just noticed that the title card at the end of the credits has the film's title spelled incorrectly. What a piece of garbage.

Catholic Ghou(l)girls is presented in a terrible looking full-screen transfer, but I can't imagine it's Mill Creek's fault. This thing just looks and sounds awful.

There are chapter stops included. I recommend skipping through them as quickly as possible.

Catholic Ghoulgirls is the worst sort of trash, preying on fans of genre cinema looking for some fun and putting in as little effort as possible to provide it. The cast are obviously game, but the production work is so poor that it ends up being nearly unwatchable. Stay far away from this one.

Bloody Nightmares #6: The Crawlspace (2006)

It's the Chris Schwartz show, starring Chris Schwartz! The Crawlspace is a cheapie riff on Saw, but more impressively it's almost entirely a one man show. Chris Schwartz directed, wrote, produced, edited, starred, did the make-up and effects, and even scored the film. Luckily, far from being an awful vanity project, Schwartz has made a slow but reliably entertaining horror flick that makes the most of a minuscule budget.

And it really is watchable. While the script is shaky (and sometimes a bit pretentious) and Schwartz's acting can be a little much, the simple concept makes for some easy suspense and, despite a few missteps, the camera work is quite solid. Shooting in such a confined space must have been a logistical nightmare, but for the first time in the collection it feels like some scenes were actually planned in advance. They might not always come off perfectly, but the preparation pays off.

The plot should sound familiar enough to modern horror fans. Mike (Chris Schwartz) wakes up to find himself trapped in a dank, disgusting crawlspace that is littered with junk. A phone-call reveals that Mike has been captured, and is now being watched, by the torturous "director", who gives him several challenges to perform in order to stay alive. The final challenge is a one on one confrontation between Mike and The Director, if he can manage to live that long.

Running only a little over fifty minutes, The Crawlspace never really gets a chance to wear out its welcome. While there are plenty of scenes of Mike wandering around in the dark, talking to himself, and crying out in pain, the action moves along nicely until the rather abrupt and unsatisfying conclusion. I won't spoil it, but the final confrontation misses the mark, though I was happy to see that there wasn't a twist shoehorned in at the last second.

The photography is consistently dark and filled with noise, though this can likely be blamed on a combination of bad lighting and bad equipment. While the grain actually adds to the atmosphere of the filthy interiors, the problems persist in the few outdoor scenes and the unnatural colors seem out of place.

I was actually quite impressed by the film's score (composed by Chris Schwartz. Duh). It's mostly moody guitar screeches, but it fits the tone of the film and underscores the many scenes of minor action without ever overpowering dialogue. Unfortunately the film's sound effects are more distracting, particularly an unfortunate phone static noise that is irritating throughout.

The full-screen video quality in The Crawlspace is occasionally glitchy, and certainly dark, but the lighting issues don't hurt the film significantly. As long as the film stays in the crawlspace audio tends to be fine (outside of the sound effects issues), but outside scenes run into some muffled dialogue.

We have chapter stops, again with no separate menu for them.

Quite an accomplishment considering the resources available, The Crawlspace keeps its aims low which leads to a much higher success rate compared to other films i've watched in this collection. While still quite flawed, and obviously plagued by the appropriate comparisons to Saw and the like, Chris Schwartz shows a lot of potential and i'm certainly interested to see what he has in store in the future.

Bloody Nightmares #3: Nightmare Asylum (1992)

An entirely unpleasant viewing experience, Todd Sheet's Nightmare Asylum strongly resembles a particularly violent high school play being performed in a haunted house, but with little of the entertainment value that might suggest. Every line is shouted, punches miss by a foot, and generally everyone just seems embarrassed to be involved. Sheets has spoken of his affection for Italian horror directors like Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci, but this effort is artless and (even worse) tedious despite its hour running time.

To create the proper nightmare atmosphere for his film, Sheets has made a conscious choice to nearly completely avoid a plot. We follow Lisa (Lori Hassel) as she wanders from room to room in a demented funhouse (with wax museum!), occasionally being pestered by a creepy family (and their son Spider) or terrorized by a group of killers who are intent on dispatching people in the messiest way possible. There's plenty of corn syrup and organ meat on display, and it frankly gets to be a tad nauseating. Eventually, the big baddies (think a really talkative Leatherface with long blond hair and his mullet zombie sidekick) drag everyone to the zombie pit (not as fun as it sounds) before we're treated to not one, but two shitty fake-out endings.

According to the credits, Nightmare Asylum was filmed at The Devil's Dark Side Haunted House. It looks like a lot of fun. It has a wax museum ("Look, it's Pinhead! Cool, Linda Blair from The Exorcist!"), and a creepy morgue and all sorts of gory fun. However, it is not a movie set, and while Sheets gets plenty of mileage out of colored lights and fog machines, the rest of production is painful to sit through. While the cast is obviously speaking as loud as possible, it's only occasionally intelligable which makes long scenes of dialogue (much of which seems to have been made up on the spot) a garbled mess.

There is plenty of gore, including a severed tongue, guts being strewn about, and a stick being shoved up an ass and out a mouth, but it's all ineptly filmed or sabotaged by choppy editing. Occasionally a scene will be broken up by a seemingly random shot of a part of the haunted house, but such moments (along with the predominance of lit Exit signs) tend to remind the viewer of just how cheap looking the production is.

The acting is terrible, though Matthew Lewis as Spider at least seems to be trying, even if what he's trying to do is annoying. The nastiest of the baddies (Blonde Leatherface and his Mullet friend) have intolerably long scenes together, and the rare occasions when you can understand what's being said ("Oh, your aching banana! Well, my aching cumquat you piece of dookie!"), may make you long for the times that it's incomprehensible.

Make-up is mostly of the white face-paint variety, and the special effects are what you would expect from a Halloween haunted house. We get a few zombies at the end, but by then even viewers with the strongest fortitude will be crying out in pain.

Nightmare Asylum appears to have been shot on a camcorder, and it has a comparable image quality to low budet porno of the era. The Bloody Nightmares DVD transfer appears to come directly from a home video release, even including the FBI warning at the beginning. There are a few small glitches throughout, but considering the awful production as a whole it would seem petty to pick on them.

Almost the entire soundtrack is taken up by what seems to be a ten second loop from a quite familiar piece of soundtrack music. It's invasive, and seems to have been placed at random. There are some other original pieces of music that appear throughout composed by Enochian Key or Sheets himself, but it serves mostly to drown out dialogue. Thankfully.

On his website, Todd Sheets refers to himself as a "master of splatter". I respectfully disagree. From looking at his filmography, it seems like the films of Mr. Sheets appear again in this collection. After watching Nightmare Asylum, i'm suddenly starting to worry about what i've gotten myself into.

Oh so very bad.

Bloody Nightmares #2: Demon Slaughter (2003)

Now this is more like it. High in ambition but low in production values, Ryan Cavalline's Demon Slaughter has the good sense to hide its shortcomings under layers of gunplay, gore and strategically placed nudity. Of course it all looks terrible, but it's never boring and it certainly looks like it was a lot of fun to make.

Meet Jimmy. He's a complete dick of a gangster looking for a way out of his life of crime. After killing his mistress (and some hired goons), he heads to the crime-bosses' hideout (aka A Bar) and blows everyone away before demolishing the place with a grenade. Unfortunately the bossman thought this might happen and dispatched a few thugs to kill Jimmy's wife before he got there. He finds her in a pool of blood and takes a moment to mourn before being beaten senseless by a couple of baddies. Somehow getting away, he high tails it to a cabin in the woods where he starts going a little wacky and meets a Satanish gentleman. Apparently he wants to recruit Jimmy to his army of the dead. We get the requisite low-rent Evil Dead references before the place is overrun (actually, around seven) with zombies who have messy faces but surprisingly clean shirts. Jimmy blows them away before axing Satan who melts away in a nice computer effect. But Satan has a surprise! *spoiler* The goons who murdered Jimmy's wife actually killed him as well, and it looks like being attacked by zombies in a run-down Cabin is actually his eternal damnation. Uh oh, spaghettiOs.

While Demon Slaughter wears its influences (and its flaws) on its sleeve, there are still a number of irritating things that shouldn't have slipped by even in a low budget effort. The gunshot sound effects get particularly repetitive, and when you have as much gun-play as this (thanks to a combination of airsoft guns & really fake looking muzzle flashes) it's hard not to notice. It would also have been nice if the gunshots appeared to do damage to the surroundings. The gunfight in the bar features hundreds of bullets being fired, but the place still looks pristine afterward. Just a little bit of faked damage could have gone a long way.

But the biggest flaw may have nothing to do with Ryan Cavalline's production. Several times throughout the film the sound drops out, sometimes for several minutes, with dialogue, music and sound effects becoming totally inaudible. This could very well be an issue with the DVD mastering, so it may be unfair to hold it against the movie. It's definitely distracting, however, and takes away from the experience.

The acting is, as usual, a mixed bag. While he swears ridiculously frequently, Adam Berasi as Jimmy does a serviceable job in the lead, though he fares much better at being a gangster than at the sillier horror elements in the film's second half. The make-up is equally inconsistent, with the demons (like our red friend above) looking quite decent, while the zombies look like they were thrown together a little too quickly. There's plenty of blood on display, but the gore is mostly shown in flashes and i'm pretty sure I saw some halloween rubber eyeballs in a pile of goo. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

The camera work is fine when sticking to handheld shots, but when trying to do anything more complicated (like aping the Evil Dead "shakycam"), things look a bit more ragged. There is also an overreliance on flashy transitions, particularly when moving into the dream sequences or flashbacks, that look amateurish. The film is almost entirely shot in daylight, which thankfully helps to avoid many of the lighting problems which plague other low budget productions.

The Bloody Nightmares DVD set presents Demon Slaughter in what was likely its original fullscreen aspect ratio. Any significant movement brings a lot of artifacting onscreen, and there's often significant pixelation, but it's all completely watchable. Outside of the mentioned issue with sound drop-outs, the dialogue and sound effects come through reasonably clear. The original music for the film is quite good, and the film also features a few song contributions for the scenes of carnage.

No extras except chapter selections, though they do not get a seperate menu on the DVD.

Fun, though shoddy, low budget crime/horror/comedy that makes for an enjoyable hour for fans. The effects are plentiful, though rough, and there's blood and a bit of pixilated nudity in a brief dream sequence. Certainly not scary, but offers a few thrills for less discriminating genre fans.

This trailer shows all the most fun effects. Enjoy.

Hot Wax Zombies on Wheels (1999)

PLOT:

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A body waxing business opens in a seaside California town, run by the evil, cape-wearing Yvonne (Gwen Somers). Apparently, a side effect of the waxing is becoming a mindless, sex-crazed zombie, which starts cutting into the business of lingerie store owner Sharon (Jill Miller) and barbers Mick (Jon Briddell) and Sven (Trevor Lovell). After Mick visits the waxing salon, it's up to Sharon and Sven to travel to Beverly Hills and stop Yvonne's maniacal plot to take over the world (or at least California).

PLOT:

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Hot Wax Zombies On Wheels is a pitiful entry into the already bloated horror/comedy field, and will elicit groans from the audience for both the juvenile humour on display (often in the form of wacky sound effects) as well as the technical ineptness that fills every frame. It's the film version of a wacky morning radio show, and the result is simply annoying when it's not flat out boring.

It's difficult to not be hard on a film which obviously had the resources, meager though they appear, to be better than it is. While the acting is amateurish, the production values are fine in a straight-to-video soft-core porn kind of way. It's the lame script and often incomprehensible plot which really drag things down, as well as a director who seems to honestly think fart noises and Bennie Hill-style sped up film are the height of comedy.

On the commentary, Jill Miller mentions a scene where her character is simply having a conversation but appears to be staring into space. She's right to question it, as the choice is both bizarre and distracting and, despite some awkward explanation from director Michael Roush, seems indicitive of the problems with the film as a whole. The best low budget films turn their obvious liabilities into strengths, while this one seems to desperately be trying to convince the audience that obvious errors or weaknesses are on purpose.

It also makes the usual error of spending it's (scant 80 minute) running time winking at the audience in recognition of its badness. From the lurid, drive-in title to the hammy acting from the leads, it's obvious that nobody is meant to take this material seriously, but it serves only to push away those who might be lured in by the title. There are no zombies here, only people wandering around mumbling about getting rid of "pesky body hair". Gore is completely non-existent, and the only real exploitative element is the copious amounts of nudity. However, even that is ineptly included as the director shot most of the scenes after the fact, tacking them in randomly throughout.

Miller gives a competent performance as the lead, and while the execution of the plot is pitiful, there's no doubt that it's at least original. In fact, in more capable hands a similar plot might have been massaged into a decent satirical horror film. The few gags that do work in this film work in spite of the direction, often because of the efforts of an obviously game cast.

The film is presented by Pathfinder Home Entertainment in a perfectly watchable full-screen transfer. Most of the film was shot in a single house, and though the settings are generally bland they look fine on the DVD.

The DVD features a Commentary with director Michael Roush, actress Jill Miller, actress Catherine Brewton, and actor and producer Bill Blum. It's good natured, featuring some fun stories from the cast, but everyone involved seems to be under the impression that the film is better than it actually is. Miller states at one point that she interprets the film as a feminist statement, and I may have missed the last twenty minutes from the constant eye-rolling caused by this remark.

Also included are cast and crew bios, as well as a short photo gallery.

If you're a fan of the genre, you've seen many filmmakers do much better with much less available to them. Hot Wax Zombies On Wheels is not fun, not scary, not entertaining, not gory, and not worth the time of anyone who might think of picking it up based on the title.

Horror Of The Blood Monsters (1970)

PLOT:

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You may have to take my word on this one. Vampires are attacking people all over earth (aka a single dark alleyway), so five astronauts (including John Carradine!) head into space to find the cause of the vampire plague. Trouble with their spaceship lead them to land on a planet similar to earth, except that radiation has tinted the atmosphere various colors. After some quick brain surgery, they bond with a cave-girl (Jennifer Bishop) who tells the story of her tribe (the Tagani), who are battling with another saber-toothed tribe (as well as cave-bat-men and crab people) before she leads the crew to some crude oil. John Carradine distills the crude oil, and the astronauts blast off back to earth, leaving the cave-people to their radiation-filled doom.

REVIEW:

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A history lesson up front. Al Adamson (Dracula vs Frankenstein) purchased the rights to a filipino film called Tagani in 1965 with the hopes of releasing it in the US. Tagani was an odd caveman picture with monster movie elements like snake-men and bat-people, and Adamson thought it would appeal to the drive-in audiences. Unfortunately, by the mid-60s drive-in audiences were looking for color films, and Tagani was made in black and white. Oh well. Back to the drawing board, right?

Not quite. Adamson instead directed a number of (ultra low budget) framing color scenes featuring American actors, and proceeded to tint all of the Tagani footage (which now was presented as taking place on a different planet) red. Bingo. Color film. Except, once he brought it to producer Sam Sherman the whole thing was made unwatchable by the fact that the red tinting naturally tired the audience's eyes, sending them to sleep. Oops!

So. Sherman decided to tint the Tagani footage (as well as the footage of the astronauts on the planet) a variety of colors and wrote a few more scenes explaining "spectrum radiation". Adamson then filmed these scenes in 1970 (four years after filmed the initial color scenes, and five years after the initial purchase of Tagani) with a couple of the original actors, and tossed in a futuristic sex scene for good measure.

It's enough to make Godfrey Ho (tinted) green with envy, and the film proceeded to gross big numbers across the country thanks to a lurid title and an ad campaign featuring art from comics legend Neal Adams.

And the financial success of Horror Of The Blood Monsters is a triumph, because while the footage from Tagani is interesting, original, and shows reasonable production values, the Adamson footage is awe-inspiringly bad. Footage of the spaceship landing on the alien planet is simply a shot of a model being lowered onto some rocks (with an awkward tilt when it lands). The Mission Control set appears to be three seconds of stock footage from another film with close-up talking heads of new actors awkwardly edited in. The film begins with some shots of vampire attacks that were obviously (and admittedly) included just to have more color footage and some scenes to throw into the trailer.

Carradine hams it up as the irritable Dr. Rynning, but even his wide-eyed silliness can't mask the serious flaws that have made this film a favorite of the so-bad-it's-good crowd. It's almost a shame that Tagani, which looks to be a fun film in its own right, is best known as the center piece of this bizarre (though original) cash grab.

The DVD from Image Entertainment features a full screen print of the film which definitely shows its age, but perfectly serviceable. The tinted scenes can be a little difficult to watch at times (particularly the blue tints meant to represent night), but details are never hard to make out.

We're treated to a really informative commentary from producer Sam Sherman who relates the quite fascinating history of how the film came to be, and shares a number of interesting stories about the filming (and post production) process. Sherman fully recognizes the film's flaws, and spends a good portion of the commentary poking fun at them, but he also recognizes that the film has a wide fan-base and doesn't believe that it accurately represents Adamson's film-making talent.

We're also treated to the film's original theatrical trailer, an original trailer for Tagani (which appears to have eventually gotten its own release), a neat "House Of Terror" live horror show promo, as well as a selection of trailers for Mad Doctor Of Blood Island (1968), Brides Of Blood (1968), Beast Of Blood (1971), Brain Of Blood (1972, also from Adamson), Blood Of The Vampires (1966, called Curse Of The Vampires in the trailer), and The Blood Drinkers (1964).

Certainly inventive, but also unequivocally bad, Horror Of The Blood Monsters is definitely entertaining, from the bizarre monsters of Tagani to the low-budget charm of Adamson's footage, and the bizarreness of the computer and flashing lights-assisted love-scene. Fans of drive-in fare will eat this up, and the extra features add some much needed perspective, but those looking for coherence best look elsewhere.