“When being stalked by a psychopath, it’s always good etiquette to neatly organize your stabbing knives.
Remember chest stabbers always go to the left of the salad fork.”

If you’re as old as me… and I know I am then you may have seen a creepy little TV show back the 1980’s called “Bossom Buddies.” It’s where two guys disguise themselves as women to live in the one apartment they can afford. That is until one stormy night when Tom Hanks while listening to the voice of his dead mother stabs Janet Leigh in the hotel shower and…. oh wait that was another cross dresser. Anyways little did people realize that the curly haired nice guy actor would later on become a super mega Oscar winner and the voice to a computer animated cowboy. I have better memories of his earlier rolls in great 80’s hits like The Money Pit, Splash, Dragnet, and who can forget him in the required movie for every early-pubescent boy’s VCR, “Bachelor Party.” Now that was Academy worthy material.

What truly started him on path to stardom was his first acting role in a slasher film called “He Knows You’re Alone” or as I refer to it “He Knows he’s David Copperfield” because the killer, Ray Carlton, has an amazing skill of appearing and disappearing whenever he wants and even is accompanied by his own Halloween inspired theme music. Amy is our virginal hero and she’s is on a mission to get married to Phil, a dull man who wears a suit. Amy appears doped up on goof pills most of the time and is not totally convinced that Phil is her one true love. Soon she’s secretly stalked by not only a killer who hates the Billy Idol song “white wedding” but her ex-boyfriend Marvin the marvelous Mortician who wants to marry her instead of Phil. Anyone remember the guy who played Marvin? Yup that’s Don Scardino the pasty white boy from the killer worm movie “Squirm” as seen on Mystery Science Theater 3000 (watch online here). What Marvin lacks in looks and charm he makes up for in hair thickness. His appeal to Amy is anyone’s guess. Perhaps it’s his alien-like feathered hair that seems to defy the laws of physics or his pressed stain resistant shirts that protect his translucent white skin from the harmful rays of the sun.

In any case the killer has a chip on his shoulder since he too was previously dumped but instead of annoying his ex-girlfriend like Marvin does, he stabbed her on her wedding day (he should have just bought them a toaster for a wedding gift like everyone else.) So now he’s out to murder every other soon-to-be-bride he can find. The groom at the time of the wedding murder was a rookie cop and is now on a manhunt to find Ray and bring him to justice just as soon as he’s done drinking and having emotional outbursts. The killer magic elf ninja quickly appears and takes out all Amy’s dimwitted friends and even her cigar smoking tailor. But don’t tailor’s deserve a beating anyways…I mean with all their adjusting, measuring, and hem pinning (see now I’ll get hate email from tailors.)
Thrown into the mix is the short cameo by Tom Hanks as a jogger and rookie philosopher who mainly showcases his 80’s hair-fro and fluffy big coat for some brief on screen time. Can you already sense his Oscar worthiness? There’s also the teacher from The Breakfast Club who plays another moody cop only minus Molly Ringwald and Emileo Estevez so he’s even more boring than usual. Man that guy just needs to not talk and he might land some better roles.

One thing that struck me odd was Amy’s friends behavior. I’m not sure if they were drunk or on some sort of medication because they acted strangely obnoxious throughout the film and always inappropriate to the situation. Hard to feel much sympathy for them as they practically dive onto the knives of the killer. Amy finally discovers her friend has been feeding the fish with her entire skull and is chased by Killer-Ray into the morgue where it just happens that Marvin works the night shift. The cop who has been 5 steps behind them through the whole film also finally catches up and confronts the killer. This is all leading up to a sort of weird interpretive open ending (hey anybody remember to actually arrest the murderer in the basement? anyone? think someone should go check that out? anyone?? no? okay then…let’s move on.)

While not really a good slasher film, the characters are entertaining in their strange pod-people like behavior and there’s a few good gotch-ya moments with a car chase. I’d say check it out if you’ve got nothing better already sitting in the old VCR… hey what year is it anyways?

So grab some popcorn and don’t forget to feed the fish.

Keep an eye out for…

- thinly padded theater seating
- head shaped aquarium figurines
- teachers from the breakfast club
- Tom Hanks jogger tripping
- death by stereo
- student morticians with 2×4’s
- bi-polar cops
- extreme hair feathering
- car-roof carpooling
- Halloween soundtrack ripoffs

Tom Hanks anxiously awaits reprising his oscar worthy role in Turner and Hooch 2: Electric Booga-drool.

rated 7.1 out of 10 for the movie

Check out the trailer for He Knows You’re Alone

“The original Big Bird was actually a struggling pimp living on Sesame Street in Harlem“

Pam Grier plays Flower Child Coffin “Coffy”, a hospital nurse with a hippie name and a vengeful spirit which doesn’t really lend herself to a profession in bedside care. Her little sister got hooked on heroin and is a kids detox so she goes on a mission to find the dealers and anyone remotely related to the drug bosses that got her sister hooked. Blowing holes through drug dealers heads, junkies, shooting Italians in swimming pools, and stabbing goattee bodyguards in the neck. It’s all in nights work for a nurse. I think Coffy needs to ease up on the caffeine before she takes out a bus of nuns with a bazooka.

Meanwhile a cop friend of hers named Carter Brown decides not to go the corrupt route like the rest of the police force who has made a deal with mafia and drugs dealers. This results in him getting beaten like a piece of ground beef in his apartment by some masked henchman while Coffy is over visiting. Didn’t he watch Godfather? The mob doesn’t kindly to non-team players.

Coffy also has her own sugar daddy, Howard “the shrapnel tummy” Brunswick, a congressmen on the take along with the police force (eesh do they all get some sort of mobster group discount?) He’s been working back street deals to get a big cut of the drug profits and gain more control of the city. Coffy who is still on the trail of the drug dealers dresses up as a prostitute from Jamaica to try to get employed by a local big league Pimp who calls himself King George. His dressing attire makes no doubt of his occupation as any low flying planes in a dense fog could spot his bright yellow jump leisure suit for a safe landing. It’s sort of a super pimp outfit. Coffy easily passes the job interview using her “assets” and “references” and later that night switches out George’s heroin supply with some powdered sugar (in case George needs to make some laffy taffy.) Upon returning to a mobster dinner party where all the big league dealers are schmoozing she starts a cat fight with some of the other hookers. It’s all broken bottles, torn dresses, tossed salads, and stained cocktail gowns. She does some sweet kung-fu moves and ultimate fighting pile drivers on her hooker co-workers and even hides a straight razor in her afro causing some nasty paper cuts. An Italian Mobster named Petroni enjoys the super hooker smack down and wants Coffy to come over later to play hide the salami at his apartment. Coffy attempts to take him out via a stuffed animal with a .44 magnum in it but is caught by Petroni’s goons just before she can pop him right between the pepperonis.

When interrogated via some vicious indian burns she rats out that King George actually sent her as a hooker hit girl (everyone always blames the pimp). This results in King George getting forced into some imprompto speed boat rafting. Well excepts there’s no boat or raft, and he’s tied behind a car by his neck. Not a very popular outdoor sporting activity. There’s more double crossing, double barrel shoguns, and double D’s than you can count in this film.

After seeing Pam Grier in the film Jackie Brown, I knew she was one bad ass foxy mama (look out I’m breaking out my jive talk) So I was looking forward to seeing what is hailed as one of her best films. I definitely agree it’s a great grindhouse film filled with plenty of sex, violence and leisure suits. And doesn’t that pretty much sum up the 70’s? So definitely check it out. I ain’t talkin’ no jive turkey so can you dig my rap? My mama didn’t raise no fool….ugh.. sorry I can’t help myself.

Keep an eye out for…

- banana suit pimps
- sugar daddy politicians
- stuffed lions packing heat
- razor blade hair clips
- mobster bodyguards dressed as gay pirates
- extreme pimp dragging
- roadside neck stabbing
- bad Jamaican accents
- diner party cat fights
- hooker shotguns
- salad bowl body slams
- sugar shoot-ups
- lounge dinner strippers

Coffy is in no way endorsed by Juan Valdez or any of the coffee union members

rated 8.4 out of 10 for the movie

Check out the trailer for Coffy

“I just don’t know if I have enough pockets to stop them all, but I’ll try!”

Oh Italian zombie film makers how I loath thee. Zombie 4 “Oletre la morte” which I believe is Italian for “warning this movie may cause you to poke your eyeballs out” or “I put too much garlic in this meat sauce” is your typical Italian horror zombie film. Loads of gore and absolutely no resemblance of a plot broken up by moments of poorly dubbed dialog. It’s a sort of Madlibs of movie making. “(name) please don’t touch the zombie. It will turn your (body part) (favorite color)”

From what I could tell a group of scientists that believe there’s a cure for death setup camp on a Caribbean island (where all the anti-death people go for vacation.) A local witch doctor’s daughter dies from some unnamed cancer and so he opens the door to hell for vengeance on the scientists. Usually Hell is only open weekends and fridays. Then his wife who has a strong resemblance to an early 80’s Whitney Houston has some sort of epileptic dancing seizure and turns a major PMSing she-demon with bad dental work. She wipes out the whole island, a lot of whom are packin’ heat but have slower reflexes than a senior citizens at a dodge ball game. Most of them getting easily wiped out except for a little blonde girl, Jenny, who somehow escapes just as her parents get munched on. Those toddler survival classes really did pay off. Then we leap forward 20 years and she’s all grown up and heading back to the same island on a speed boat with her own A-team wanna-be mercenaries! uh…why? who knows.

Cut yet to another scene (head spinning yet?) and a whole other group of scientist lead by some corporate adventurer extremist are cave exploring and stumble upon a book of the dead. Like most typical guys reading appliance instructions he reads them out loud and doesn’t really pay attention to what it says unwittingly unleashing the walking dead. Just a warning out to all us guys If you find a book of the dead on an abandoned island in a evil cave…don’t read it out loud or your stomach might end up as a snack pack.

The mercenary group holds up in a poorly constructed hospital as zombified islanders start to surround them. You know as soon as you see a zombie it might be a good idea to just get back on the boat and go home, but this brain trust decides the ramshackled hospital with it’s open windows and doors would make a much more fortified last stand. At least the hospital had the standard issue emergency kit and crates of machine guns and hand grenades. Now that’s a way to unionize a nursing staff.

Well I thought I had seen the worse of the worse and this definitely ranks up towards the top. The dialog reminded me a bit of “Demons” …another Italian horror film I reviewed a while back. The difference is that was a fun campy horror film and this is more along the lines of waterboard interrogation. So watch with caution and only tell them your rank and serial number.

Keep an eye out for…

- a lady with her eye out
- G.I. Joe zombies
- gratuitous use of candles
- face gouging
- shoulder chomping
- stomach ripping
- demon dental work
- zombie islander skeet shooting
- beam balancing
- ill-timed romantic moments
- leisure boating

The Mario Brothers movie was scarier than this, and by far more Italian.

rated 3.1 out of 10 for the movie

Check out this well acted scene from Zombie 4

“You know what this room needs? An evil clown statue. Oh wait…“

The town carnival was always a place of fascination for me. A sort of mobile caravan of weirdness. The row of games where you can loose your teenage life’s savings while trying to win a $3 stuffed Tweety bird for your girlfriend. The buckets of assorted fried meats you can gorge yourself on before they have to jump start your heart, and then there’s the unsavory combination of smells around every turn. When you put an assortment of porta-potties, open garbage cans and a few hundred tons of corn dogs a few feet from each other you’re bound to create some sort of toxic sludge. That might explains how they keep those creepy carny workers alive, a netherworld chemical of food by-products thereby reanimating their lifeless corpses for another day of work much like office coffee. I’d also question some of the rides safety testings. Ever notice the small single rusty bolt that holds your creeky cart precariously to the metal octopus arm?…at any moment snapping and sending you into the parking lot like a homemade turkey catapult? Well now you will…and you’re welcome. Fortunately most people make it out alive in the face of these carnival dangers.

In the horror film “the funhouse” some carnival patrons aren’t so lucky. Amy our lead virginal hero is going out with her friends to check out the arrival of the carnival. We know she’ll survive because she’s a virgin and as we all know they can create forcefields around them from evil (or drunk frat guys whichever they encounter first.) After a Halloween inspired shower-scene attack by her perverted little brother she decides sideshow freaks would be a welcome change of pace. They check out the mutant cattle show, get mild whiplash on the bumper cars and visit a fortune teller who freelances as a hooker. Will the fun ever stop? They even stop at a girlie strip show tent hoping to get a sneak peek. I don’t recall seeing that particular attraction at my local town fair when I was a teenager. The closest to that was the 4H melon contest next to the farm animal petting cage. It sure would have increased tickets sales though.

Amy seems to be mysteriously drawn to a creepy funhouse at the outskirts of the carnival and her friends decide it would be a great idea to actually stay the night inside. The funhouse is a massive structure with a winding track of riding carts that tour through a variety of creepy displays and animatronic weirdness within it. There’s also a creepy robotic fat lady who sits on top of the building laughing mockingly at any bulimic teen that walks by.

Once inside, the teenagers ditch the carts and frolic in some poorly made evil forests that seemed to be constructed by the same people that build cheap floats for town parades. Things go from bad to worse when they inadvertently witness the killing of the fortune teller hooker (fortune-hooker!) who just gave a quickie to some guy dressed as Frankenstein. Frank didn’t feel he got his money worth so he kills her instead. Business transactions never go well between mutant beasts and gypsy hookers, but she really should have predicted that.

The kids are soon discovered and Frank who actually turns out to be some sort of real life freak mutant is stalking them along with his equally crazy dad. With only 4 teenagers total, the body count isn’t going to get too high but mutant Frank is all about quality kills not quantity. There’s surprise lynchings, axes to the head, impalements, trapdoors, air duct maulings, and some torso/gear grinding action. All this making up for a great popcorn b-movie but I’d have to say that the main star of this movie really has to be the funhouse itself. It’s creepy, icky and filled with the stuff of nightmares and yet consistently out-acts the actual cast members. I say give this one a spin in your DVD player and save an elephant ear for me.

Keep an eye out for…

- little brother perverts
- carnival bag ladies
- gypsy hookers
- carney choking
- mutant cattle shows gawking
- rope a nerd lynchings
- accidental sword impalements
- freak carney grinders

funhouses, carnies, and a live performance of the Oak ridge boys? Stop the horror!

rated 9.1 out of 10 for the movie

Check out the trailer for the Funhouse