Chainsaws in 3D

The seventh in an uneven horror franchise, Texas Chainsaw 3D arrives in theaters on January 4, 2013 – provided the Mayans don’t blow up the world come December 21, 2012. Not sure we need another Texas Chainsaw movie, especially one without the word “Massacre” in the title, which gave all the other ones some zing. Be that as it may, almost any movie that features a chainsaw is probably worth at least one viewing while drunk.

So the plot of this one revolves around some chick who discovers she’s related (a cousin in fact) to Leatherface, the iconic chainsawer from the first movie. On a road trip with friends to uncover her roots, she finds she is the sole owner of a lavish, isolated Victorian mansion. But her newfound wealth comes at a price as she stumbles upon a horror that awaits her in the mansion’s dank cellar.

The plot is kind of a reach, but the word “dank” accurately describes a lot of bars I’ve been in and continue to patronize.

According to some soundbites I found on the Internet to make this blog sound fully researched and official, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, released in 1974, is considered “one of the greatest – and most controversial – of horror films, and a major influence on the genre. The Times listed it as one of the 50 most controversial films of all time.”

Not nearly as gory as the title suggests, here’s what went down in the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre that put into motion over four decades of “meh” sequels and craptacular remakes…

A bunch of teen friends road trip it to the cemetery where their grandfather is a permanent resident of Dirt Hotel. The kids are investigating reports that the graves have been dug up and the creamy goodness inside defiled. Just writing that is making me sick to my stomach and… OK, I’m over it now.

They end up at a house that’s owner-occupied by cannibals, as indicated by the human bone furniture. (You can get the same stuff at Ikea for half the price.) Leatherface, (great name), a chainsaw wielding butcher in a human skin mask, answers the door – and from that point on, horror history was made.

Bodies get strung up on meat hooks and put in freezers. (Makes sense, given how fast people burgers spoil at room temperature.) Score card: four previously living TV dinners, one surviving dessert. The rest is a chorus of screaming and revving power tools, though the movie title is far more suggestively graphic than the actual human butchering. Still, one of the best horror movie titles ever. It just makes you wanna scream hysterically it’s so good.

Golden Age Golden Vampires

As cool movie titles go The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires (1974) is right up there with Butts 3: Double Occupancy (1989). Peter Cushing returns as Van Helsing, now in Japan, pushing his “vampires are everywhere, man” agenda. No one believes him except a guy with six brothers and a hot sister and a rich socialite.

Cushing is asked to come to the man’s village, which is plagued by seven golden vampires. OK, they’re not quite golden. Their faces look like bee hives and they wear gold masks to cover their f’d up facial area. Also, each is sporting a cool gold bat necklace. If removed, steam shoots out of the vampire. If you happen to be a vampire, escaping steam is NOT COOL.

The kung fu battles at the resting cave and village are loaded with great butt-slugging moves and action, with the vampires calling up the dead as gangsta back-up. These skeleton zombies, though, are all wearing the same clothes. I suppose in late 1800s Japan there was only one JC Penney™ from which to buy casual battlewear.

Even though the man and his brothers are all experts with knives, swords, axes, arrows and face-punching, they’re out-numbered and soon get killed in half. The sister, though, is captured by the last remaining vampire and taken to the castle where Dracula, his employer, lives.

When Drac shows himself, he and Van Helsing do a little reminiscing: Dracula: “I am the Prince of Darkness…Lord of the Underworld…the Ruler of the Damned…” Van Helsing: “Prove it.”

A fight ensues and once again Van Helsing gets his point across, in this case the pointed end of a sword. Dracula folds like fresh laundry. What a letdown; the undead zombies were more of a pain in the ass to deal with.

For a flick made in the Seventies, The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires has a lot going for it: a bunch of excellent bare boobs, gooshing blood, punch ass kung fu fighting, international intrigue… Even the DVD cover is cool: “Black Belt vs. Black Magic.”

I wish I was a golden vampire with kung fu skillz, a bee hive face and some bitchin’ bat bling.

Lizzie Borden: Frequently Axed Questions

You know how expediently it takes one to fart when you have one loaded in the chamber? That’s how long it took to come up with the plot for Lizzie Borden’s Revenge, a dumb and dumber way to cash on history’s most infamous axe murderess: “A group of sorority girls are having a slumber party at their house. One of the new sorority girls is Leslie Borden, a descendant of the infamous Lizzie Borden family.

“They believe that they are holding a harmless séance to conjure the ghost of Lizzie. But, they get locked in the house with an evil, vengeful spirit as Lizzie Borden returns to wreak havoc with her axe. One by one, the girls are murdered as they try to figure out how to put an end to the return of Lizzie Borden.”

Anything for a buck these days. You need to watch The Strange Case of Lizzie Borden (2005), or better yet, The Legend of Lizzie Borden (1975), which took a simple double axe murder and turned it into one of the most engrossing gross stories to ever be shown on 1970’s television.

In the 19th Century (whenever that was), the “single adult but still living at home” Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her mother 40 whacks. When she saw what she had done, she gave her father 41. Or so the prosecuting attorney would have you believe. They tried this spinster psychopath mostly on circumstantial evidence: A bloody axe. (Yeah, right – like women in the 19th Century walked around with those things in their purses.)

It was demonstrated in a horrific “Crime of the Century” trial that Lizzie (played by Bewitched’s 1964 sexy witch, Samantha Stevens) was not only emotionally detached enough to hack her parents into moist sections, but that her hand could actually wrap around the axe handle. It was a perfect fit. (What axe handle isn’t easily held in any hand? They make ’em that way!) They even brought out Lizzie’s dad’s split skull (without a face, eyeballs or other stuff that would make it someone’s head) and put the axe blade into the gash to demonstrate it was indeed the murder weapon.

But if Lizzie had done this messy crime, why weren’t her clothes all bloody? A clue lies in flashbacks as we see her take off her pantaloons, grab the axe, and go chopping for new parents. Then we see her get in a wash tub and rinse all of her troubles down the drain, put her clothes back on and act all “Oh, nooooo!” when the bodies were discovered.

Fairly dang bloody and gruesome for a 1975 made-for-TV movie. I just wish they hadn’t put it on right before my cartoons when I was a kid. Now I’m, like, all traumatized ’n stuff.

A Werewolf In Love

If you’re a chick, the last thing you’d want to do is make out with a werewolf. Sure, there are advantages, like not having to shave your legs on date night. But by and large, sticking your tongue in the mouth of a lycanthrope will lead to nothing but big trouble.

Take the new Japanese movie A Werewolf Boy. A chick, now an old woman, encountered said teen wolf in the woods outside her so-called peaceful village. Like Jane to Tarzan, she was drawn to his wild ways and jungle muscles, and decided she must tame this animal for future smoochings and feeling ups.

She taught him to eat using her uptown city manners. She taught him how to wear clothes (probably purchased from Wool-Mart). Speaking, writing and other disgusting human traits were also instructed upon. (Just like a woman to want to change a fella.) And through all of this they fell in love. Yuck.

But cross-species romances are frowned upon within the Republican-controlled village, and this Sally had to leave her Hairy so that he wouldn’t be hunted down and made the lunch special at Royal Pitchfork Buffet.

Before cutting the ropes on their relationship, she promises that she’ll come back for him. That’s just great. Now she’s old and looks like a raisin and smells like Vicks Vapo-Rub™. What werewolf would want her now? Regardless, she gets a phone call all these years later and decides she must stop knitting and go to the beast that won her heart.

So yeah, A Werewolf Boy is a love story. Movies about werewolves should never be romance novels adapted to the big screen. They should be violent and gory or pornos. Werewolves that emote are no good to anybody.

Giant Retro Lizards

In 1959’s The Giant Gila Monster, a 70-foot poisonous lizard kills two 1950s teenagers looking for a place to park, smooch and touch each others’ “spots.” Talk about a mood kill. This lizard, grown to airplane proportions is a real reptile – the cars, trains and bridges he bangs into are fake. Why go to all the trouble of making the set smaller when they could’ve used one of those giant lizards they sell down in Mexico?

A local teen with a hot rod and a singing voice that’ll melt your heart if not eardrums, assists the sheriff in finding the lizard, that, up to this point, has only left a debris field and maybe some poo in its wake.

The monster, hungry for something softer to eat than cars, sets his taste buds on high and goes after a barn full of teenagers. They were in there doing one of those teen dance gatherings. (They often called ’em “sock hops” back in the ’50s because everyone had to take their shoes off so as to not scuff the basketball court on which they were doing The Twist, The Jerk and the spine-cracking Hully Gully.)

Gila crashes the party and the teenagers scream like Elvis just bashed his face through the wall. The sheriff shows up and shoots the lethargic lizard eight times, but the bullets, like the chocolate milk punch bowl, have no effect.

Leave it up to Chase, the singing car mechanic, to race back to his shop, grab six bottles of nitroglycerin (they were marked “XXX” to indicate its dangerousness), and zoom back over bumpy back country roads to the scene of screaming teens. Hitting the gas, he jumps out at the last second, letting his sweet ride crash into the monster and blow up everything.

This was a disappointing end to the creature as there were no gila guts splattering the freshly-scrubbed teenagers. Therefore I cannot recommend you buying nitroglycerin and trying to explode a 70-foot lizard yourself.

Four-Legged Shark Attack

Gosh double darn dang it – Gyo: Tokyo Fish Attack, releasing August 2012, is not a real person monster movie, but an anime. I hate those things. Giant cartoon sharks eating people needs to be real and not drawn with e-pencils or digital crayons. This double sucks as the plot sounds awesome…

“A devastating, disgusting ‘Death Stench’ is spreading across Japan, creating deadly mutant fish as it covers the land! The country is being invaded by ferocious fish with sharp metal legs, hell-bent on death and destruction!”

I ask you, what sentence doesn’t spring to life with the words “death stench” in it?

So four legged killer sharks and machine driven squid. Had this been a real movie I would have given them all my money. But I won’t give any more than my two cents worth for a friggin’ cartoon.

Note to filmmakers: Make Gyo: Tokyo Fish Attack a real movie and I will give you all my money.

Of Sea Monsters And Muscle Men

They’re often referred to as “sword and sandals” flicks, but really, when you cut right through the cheese, the mid-’60s to late ’70s era Hercules movies – loaded with cyclops, demons, witches and moon men – are full on horror fantasy with thinly-veiled homo-erotic overtones. I’ll say this about the appeal of Hercules and his Speedo™ toga – he has massive broad appeal, and by appealing to broads, is easily the Tarzan of his era.

One the more entertaining of Herc’s work is Hercules Vs. The Sea Monster (1965), also known as Hercules and the Princess of Troy. That title blows. A virgin or “woman of virtue” is sacrificed to the one-size-eats-all sea monster in order to keep the silly thing from coming on shore. (Kinda makes you wonder why everyone isn’t out gettin’ in a booty call.) Well, heck – once Hercules hears about this, he valiantly vows to smoosh that floating fart-face.

And while we’re on the subject, if you quit feeding it, that dang monster wouldn’t keep coming around and there’d be no need for for dreamy muscular men in handkerchief-sized swim trunks. For that job, anyway. Ahem.

Without a sea monster, however, certain rulers might get their pink slips. The temp King of Troy wants his job to be permanent, so he does everything he can to chump Hercules, like throw him in a pit and laugh at him. (Romans can be so NOT COOL sometimes.) But it’ll take more than a Greek hole to keep Hercules from strutting around on the beach in his bulging toga.

Herc’s posse, worried that he hasn’t shown up to punch crab, are beginning to freak out. It’s always “We MUST save Hercules,” “We MUST” rescue the princess, “We MUST remember to wipe our sandals before entering the castle.” Doesn’t anyone use the word “gotta” anymore?

They finally find and save Hercules, who gets to the action without a moment to spare, and battles that beachin’ monster on the same public waterfront where people are sacrificed and/or relax on their day off. Even though the sea creature is XXVIII times bigger than our burly hero and looks like a giant Kootie™ potato bug, Herc nevertheless wrestles and yanks on it for a while before stabbing it into brunch-sized servings for all.

Hercules could’ve stuck around and got him some princess action (she was practically putting it on the plate), but he decides he MUST get back on his boat with a bunch of sweaty guys and go in search of, um, “adventure.” Gotta hand it to Hercules – his oars row both ways.

Hippie Lake Monster

If it weren’t for that meteor that crashed into Oregon’s fabled Crater Lake and heated up the water enough to incubate and hatch that dinosaur egg in the lake’s muddy bottom, then we wouldn’t have had a plausible plot device for a 60-foot extinct Plesiosaur to rise up and eat people.

To accommodate its growing spurt, the beast feeds verily upon the lake’s groceries: fish, clams, boaters. Food supply exhausted and no Hot Pockets™ floating around nearby, the monster ventures topside to gulp down a few cows, which are indigenous to that Pacific Northwest region.

Most of The Crater Lake Monster’s (1977) running time is designed to get people into the water for a little plop-plop, fizz-fizz. There’s even a liquor store robber who, after being chased into the lake by the sheriff, ends up as dino-poo. The plan to get rid of Cratey is simple – lure the beast out in the open, then ram it with a front loader. Throw in a couple of comic-relief hippie hillbillies and you got yourself a nice little time waster.

The lake monster, even though it’s one of those stop-motion dealies, is pretty cool, although I’ve never understood why aquatic creatures need vocal chords. Then again, I don’t know why hillbillies and hippies all seem to want to live in Oregon. Must be because they have liquor stores and pot supermarkets on every street corner.

Demon Seed

Another vintage super computer-gone wild movie from the Seventies, Demon Seed (based on the Dean R. Koontz book of the same name) makes the logical connection of the pornographic relationship between man (or in this case, woman) and silicon (chips).

A super smarty scientist installs a super smarty computer with artificial intelligence to automate his home. Proteus IV, the machine, can run your bath at just the right temperature, make your dinner, take out the trash, cut off a head, and get you another robo-beer from the robo-fridge.

But Proteus has been watching Mrs. Scientist Wife and has logically calculates that bare boobies are a good thing. He asks her lots of questions about life and creation and boobies (they’re all tied in) and comes to the conclusion he/it desires a child.

There aren’t any happening female computers around so Proteus electronically seals the doors, windows and fridge so he won’t be disturbed when he, um, uploads his hard drive into the wife’s software. She doesn’t like this plan as the computer’s idea of safe sex is turning off the circuit breaker.

The scene where the computer knocks processors with her is the stuff they write future books about. Yes, she gets pregnant(!) and yes, Proteus is a stand-up computer and is OK with the whole child support deal. But when the kid is born…well, you gotta see it to believe it. (I love saying that.)

Demon Seed has groovy folding metal robot special effects and taboo subject matter for a movie made in 1977. I wish I was a super computer in the Seventies, what with all those liberating “free processing” attitudes and experimentation.

Monster Super Computer

Seems crazy talk to think of life without computers. They’re like ribbed condoms with raised pleasure dots – what would do without ’em? And yet, back in the Seventies, when computers were just the fevered dream of a mad man, a super computer was being made to make our lives even more easier than they are today. And the size of that thing to accommodate all its mega processing power; If he could afford it, Godzilla would have one helluva lap top.

The super computer-gone-mad movie I’m alluding to is Colossus, the Forbin Project, a tense 1970 sci-fi classic that pits man against a computer that is about to usurp our standing rank on the food chain.

Dr. Forbin has invented the appropriately-named Colossus, the world’s most kick ass super computer. As with all super computers, it becomes self-aware and starts surfing the internet for porn, even though there was no internet or porn back in the mid-hippie days when this movie came out. That’s how super this computer is.

Forbin tries to reason with it, which ain’t happening. He tries unplugging it. No luck there, either. When he needs to consult a female scientist, he has to do it under the premise of having sex with her, the only time Colossus turns off his all-seeing camera. (Slick maneuver; I’ll have to use it sometime: “Hey, baby – I really want to talk about what your cat did, but we need to have sex first because a super computer is watching my every move.”)

Colossus wants a mate, too – the equally powerful Soviet Union super computer, Guardian. It needs to have a direct line so they can plot the destruction of every major city in the world. Time to make fear pee within your science pants.

Forbin’s last line of defense puts a nice spin on this superior sci-fi film. And to think if Microsoft™ had made the software to run Colossus, it would’ve crashed a hundred times by now and we wouldn’t be having this discussion.