Frankenhooker

After his fiancé Elizabeth was run over by a remote-controlled power mulcher and turned into a “human tossed salad,” the grief-stricken Jeffrey Franken, a New Jersey electrical repairman, vows to put her back together. (In his spare time he dabbles in reanimating body parts – a brain with an eyeball – although he failed several medical exams and doesn’t quite have a degree in medicine.)

Since her head was the only thing left undamaged by the lawn mower, he browses through 42nd Street hookers for the most desirable additions to rebuild his girlfriend. He hires seven prostitutes and pays them to “play doctor,” where he pretends to get his freak on by measuring their body parts.

The girls, though, discover a bag of Super Crack™ in his medical bag and proceed to party. Tops and bottoms come off, although hooker work uniforms don’t have a whole lot of fabric to begin with. Here’s where this 1990 gem turns into legend: smoke begins leaking out of their orifices and kaBOOM! – exploding hookers all over the place. Now Jeffrey has the body parts he needs.

Successfully reanimated (with purple mini-skirt, purple purse and purple boobs), Elizabeth picks up where she left off…looking for guys to “party” with. Clearly, the hooker DNA has kicked in and she heads back to 42nd St. to make an honest living.

The guys she “hooks” up with – a fat and balding mayonnaise salesman – also explodes during sex due to the transference of the electrical impulse embedded in her body. You’ll have to ask Jeffrey for the schematic to see how this works.

Zorro, the pimp who employed the working girls, sees his mark on Elizabeth (a scar tattoo that’s pretty cool) and follows Jeffrey and his segregated soulmate back to New Jersey where he discovers the truth. It gooned him out.

These last few moments of Frankenhooker (1990) are outright genius and it involves ALL the remaining body parts kept alive in a freezer locker, immersed in estrogen-based blood serum. (Jeffrey’s formula can only reanimate females).

To spoil the ending would just be cruel, so send me $5 and I’ll tell you. Or you could spend $2.99 and rent the movie and find out. I prefer the $5 scenario, though. That said, Frankenhooker is right up there with Lassie Vs. The Loch Ness Monster and Dracula’s Crazy, Crazy Weekend.

Ghost Warrior

Ghost Warrior (1986) was/is also known as, (or “aka”) as Swordkill. I’m religiously partial to Ghost Warrior, but you have to give it up for the “to the point” efficiency of Swordkill.

It was one of the movie’s several kicker lines that suckered me into taking the bait: “Forgotten by time…awakened by science.” Eleven syllables that sum up my entire life.

Yoshimitsu, a frozen Samurai who just celebrated his 400th birthday is discovered/defrosted by scientists who stick a tongue depressor up his ass, thereby turning him into a Japanese popsicle. So much for maintaining the dignity of an elite warrior. (They do this in Los Angeles where that kind of thing goes on in cocktail lounges all the time.)

Rudely rousted from his chill, popsicle butt, uh, popsicle Yoshimitsu, is in no mood to do any man-hugging. That sword of his cuts like a knife. And it does – a lot, mostly on street gangstas and assorted breakers of the law. Think Death Wish II (1982), but with a katana popsicle stick and a nodachi sword.

Not too gory, but enough for you to close your eyes and softly imagine.

Zombie Train

If you’re a professor of anthropology and are bringing a missing link fossil back from the frozen meatlockers of Europe, you’d have to do it via the Trans-Siberian Railway™. That way the fossil can come back to life and kill everyone on said mode of transportation. This is why it wouldn’t work if you took a plane or a cab.

But the artifact isn’t your run-of-the-mill missing link fossil – this thing has an eye that glows bright red and sucks not only thoughts and knowledge out of your head, but turns your eyes white and makes them bleed. Wham – you’re cooked.

Where Horror Express (1972), a decidedly inventive and taut thriller, pulls out all stops is when the creature reanimates an entire platoon of dead Russians to overtake the train. This is a pant-moistening sight – all these zombie ghouls with white eyes and drips of blood coming to get you, Barbara.

There’s even an autopsy scene with a hacksaw (someone just happened to have one) as its applied to the cranium. But it’s the needle-in-the-eye poking that made me shift uncomfortably in the formerly-dry chair I was sitting in. I can handle missing links and thought sucking, but eye stuff just goons me the h*ck out.

House of Evil Fun

If you’ve never seen a Japanese schoolgirl eaten by a piano, today’s your luck day. This slice of entertainment happens when a group of young schoolgirl’s go to one of their dead aunt’s house. It’s more of a cabin, really, with an enchanted cat, hot tub, the aunt (who alternates being dead and alive), and the previously mentioned hungry piano.

Each girl is nicknamed after their innate abilities/traits. For instance, Prof (teacher), Melody (pre-eaten piano player), Kung-Fu (she kicks you in the nuts), Gorgeous (stuck on herself), Mac (as in Big Mac™, as in eater of all things hamburgers)… Six in all. And one by one they are killed in a fantastical way that probably gave Freddy Krueger some ideas.

Severed hands and heads, attacking bed mattresses, bodies trapped in clocks, possessed chandeliers, rooms turning into swimming pools of blood… It’s like a Jagermeister™ wonderland.

The aunt, whose sole job is to eat the girls, has her soul trapped in the cabin, a place she’s been waiting in since her husband went off to fight in WWII and never came back. (Probably met a non-cannibal and after briefly dating, moved in with her and never looked back.)

So upside down is the story line and cheap but strangely mesmerizing visuals, House (1977) goes from comedy to fantasy, to musical to horror, sometimes at the same time. Truly, one of the most bizarre horror fantasy films you’ll ever see, sober or otherwise.

Prom Queen Demon

In 1957, Mary Lou would be considered Hamilton High School’s resident slut, going ALL the way with boys. In today’s terms she’d be referred to as your ex.

At the school prom, she slips backstage to have a one-off with a willing and visibly eager classmate. But her boyfriend Bill catches them mid-clinch and gets all gooned out. His plan for revenge is sweet – throw a stink bomb at her as she’s being crowned Prom Queen. That’ll teach her. Like most stink bombs, though, this one accidentally catches Mary Lou on fire and she burns into a crispy cream in front of the entire school.

Jump into the future where it’s 1987 and Bill is now the Hamilton High’s principal. But on this 30th anniversary of Mary Lou’s scorched porch, some strange things are happening. Vickie Carpenter, the school’s wallflower mouse, is dressing a lot sexier, talking a lot sexier and tongue kissing her own dad a lot sexier. That she takes off her clothes means she’s like, double sexier.

You guessed correctly – Mary Lou has possessed Vickie so that she can rightfully claim her Prom Queen crown, and needs a hot young naked female body to do it. I just love plot twists such as this. In a nice touch, Fifties rock ’n roll plays every time Vickie/Mary offs one of the students.

Bill guesses correctly that Mary Lou has returned from beyond –and knows what he has to do…MORE STINK BOMBS! OK not really. But that would’ve been my strategem. Mary Lou’s transition back to her former sluttiness comes complete with a half burnt face and a ghost-like voice indicating she’s evil. She’s so hot (sorry – no pun intended) I wouldn’t care if she had a voice like a pro wrestler.

The plot may be Horror 101, but something – perhaps the nudity and burning (sorry, again) sexuality of Mary Lou – make Hello Mary Lou, Prom Night II (1987) a flaming (sorry, I’m unable to stop myself) winner.

Non-Stick Indestructible Man

Butcher Benton, a career criminal, certainly lived up to his name, leaving a trail of bodies so wide, he might as well have given directions to his whereabouts to the police. For that he’s sentenced to the gas chamber (kinda like a lethal injection, but for your nose), but swears revenge from beyond the gas.

An independent cancer research doctor obtains Benton’s carcass and revives him with Frankenstein™ brand electricity. Benton wakes up feeling fresh as a cooked potato. He’s also even more insane, super strong, and impervious to things like bullets, bazooka artillery and bee stings. On the downside, he’s unable to say simple phrases like, “I’ll kill yooouuu!” Hard to speak when you’re tongue has been meatloafed.

Benton’s goal: get his former partners who, along with his attorney, plotted to claim his ill-gotten gains, of which there is a lot. (The movie doesn’t say, but I’m guessing one hundred billion dollars.) Benton’s also ticked because his ex-girlfriend is now dating the cop who busted him. Ooh, snap!

The Indestructible Man (1956) is loaded with clunky action, a jumping story line, and an impervious dude who looks more like a cooked potato than a revenge-seeking monster from beyond the grave. While it all ends badly – again for Benton (and a few deserving others) – you can see why he was justifiably motivated to do what he did. I’m sorry, but that’s just the way I feel.

Giant Leeches Suck – Literally

Attack of the Giant Leeches, made in 1959 back when such radiation-created creatures were prone to showing up on drive-in movie screens, is/was also known as Attack of the Blood Leeches, She Demons of the Swamp, Demons of the Swamp, and lastly War of the Giant Leeches. Why so many alternate titles? Sometimes you try polishing a turd over and over before you figure out it can’t be done and just push the handle.

Those icky/sticky leech bug things are what paramedics in previous centuries used to rid the body of bad blood. Imagine if a leech was the size of a football player and was affixed to your face? That could really suck. (Heh.)

Leaking radiation into a stink swamp from nearby Cape Canaveral, the wacky substance turns the popular watering hole’s leeches into what I described in the fourth sentence. Why leeches were the only things mutated, I don’t know, man – ask a forensic entomologist or someone wearing a clean lab coat.

The mutant leeches (two that I know of) have a cool underwater lair, where they store humans, sucking out the blood-flavored Jell-O™ as needed for sustenance and TV snacks. Nobody cares about the missing people until the leeches make off with a centerfold hot chick. That won’t stand in this muggy Florida Everglades community. Nor will it stand with the local game warden, as the centerfold is/was his new girlfriend.

The leeches wouldn’t pass a Halloween costume inspection, looking like guys dressed in Hefty™ garbage bags with inside-out bicycle tires for suckers. Dynamite ends all our pain. Cool movie title, though. That might count for something and… Nah, it doesn’t.

Killer Snowman

It’s blizzard-y outside and a truck carry experimental genetic goo slides/crashes into a serial killer’s state-chauffeured ride to the electric chair and a well deserved high-voltage enema, drenching Mr. Criminal in the unpredictable slime.

And like all experimental genetic goo, you can’t predict what effects it’ll have on one’s DNA. In Jack, the killer’s case, though, it turns him into a maniacal snowman with icicle fangs. You can guess what becomes Jack’s new weapons: Christmas lights (for choking), sleds (for decapitating), melting and re-freezing (for fast getaways).

When Jack makes sexually reluctant friends with a supermodel in a bathtub, you could’ve seen the quip set-up a mile away: “Oops – looks like Christmas came a little too soon this year!”

Only two things can stop Jack in his icy tracks: A hair dryer and/or some anti-freeze. Jack Frost (1996) is more or less a cheap-o knock-off of Child’s Play (1988), wherein the serial killer’s soul gets trapped in a doll made for boys. Don’t say it.

The special effects aren’t as plot-riveting as the bathtub boobies, but how often can you say you’ve watched an evil snowman have sex? Non-explicit of course, but you could still see his…snowballs.

Don’t give me that look.

Man Bear Pig

Based on an H. G. Wells story, The Island of Dr. Moreau started out in 1933 as Island of Lost Souls. Generic, but serviceable title. Then came the 1977 version (see below). Then came the laughably horrendous remake in 1996. I have yet to see the 1933 adaptation, but I will get to it as soon as I finish eating this here lettuce wrap.

For decades women have been calling men “pigs.” An eminent physiologist with a knack for vivisection, all Dr. Moreau did was run with that concept and turn pigs into men. And baboons and pumas and hyenas into men as well. No man-giraffes, though. Hard to find a collared shirt big enough to fit.

Moreau genetically engineered a cultured society of beasts – half man/half animal – on his jungle island refuge. That was the easy part. The challenge was getting them to behave like humans. Difficult when all they want to do is rip open someone’s throat to get to the joy inside.

As these “manimals” learned, there was a price to pay for breaking Moreau’s Law – and that was an escorted visit to the House of Pain, or as I like to call it, a bar. Moreau, acting more like a cult leader than a hybrid specialist, had a reinforcing litany he taught his creations: “His is the hand that makes. His is the hand that hurts. His is the hand that heals. His is the House of Pain. He who breaks the Law shall be punished back to the House of Pain.” Geez, what a hard ass.

It wasn’t enough to get the hybrids house-broken. Now Moreau expects his experiments to strive for civility and act like human beings. As history illustrates, though, man excels at behaving like animals. Moreau’s argument: “How does a cell become enslaved to a form, to a destiny it can never change? Can we change that destiny?” The answer, of course, is not so much.

So what exactly goes on in the House of Pain? For starters, you’re forced to listen to rap music. No wonder the animals reverted back to their hard-wired instincts and went shopping for fleshy groceries. In the end, Moreau discovered the animals were acting like men the whole time.

King Konga

Dr. Drecker, on a botany exploration, didn’t die when his small plane had a problem with gravity while flying over Africa. Presumed dead for a year, Drecker suddenly returns to his native zip code with a suitcase full of exotic plants and a monkey. So much for the Flora/Fauna Act of 1988, which clearly prohibits agriculture and primates from cross-pollinating our borders. (Yeah, I get that Konga was made in 1961 and the FF Act had yet to be implemented. That’s no excuse for breaking the future law.)

The doctor uses a serum on Konga, his little monkey friend, which makes the sprite chimp growth spurt all over the place. Soon, Konga is the size of a shaggy football player and does Drecker’s bidding, which is to eliminate boyfriends of hot female student interns so Drecker can, like, mack on ’em and stuff. This makes Margaret, his “aging but still got it” assistant freakin’ upset as she wanted Drecker to mack on her.

Margaret injects Konga with a full dose of grow juice and the ape expands to bell tower height. Konga, not able to reconcile his hormones and the fact that he keeps outgrowing his fur every two minutes, chucks Margaret aside as if a chew toy, busts through the roof of Drecker’s three-story house and takes the lascivious doctor for a walk downtown.

The military shows up and lays down some serious firepower. Konga just stands there and rolls his exercise ball sized eyes as most of the artillery, shot from right across the street, misses him. (The Army needs more target practice.)

Don’t know why they were shooting at him as Konga, only wrecking one building the entire movie, did nothing to provoke the attack. I weep for Konga because no one else will. In all, fun but goofy flick. I think Konga is really a guy in a gorilla suit. Need to watch it again to be sure.