Cove Coven

Jerry and Linda, freshly married and wanting to break out of the rat race (he does, she doesn’t), buy a house on the idyllic island of Bay Cove, a small community full of scenic views, apple trees and  a sacrificial witch coven.

 The coven needs to offer some non-witch blood during a full moon on the eve of something or rather, and they’ve chosen Linda as their donor. This will allow their pact with satan to stay in place for another 300 years.

The clues as to the island residents’ evil background come in the form of a sparse cemetery (hardly anyone dies), a pet dog and pet best friend being killed (they were both to close to THE TRUTH), and a black mass with formal black robes, incantations and burning torches.

More along the lines of housewife horror, Bay Cove (1987) a made-for-TV yawner has only one good scene: a church full of coven members being blown sky high by lightning. So yeah, no broomstick flying, no conjuring, no eye of newt in the soup of the day. ’80s witches were so boring.

Nice Night For A Moon Beast

High on a mountain in the Arizona desert, a man, trying to get him some ’o that sweet Southwest skank action, is struck in the facial quadrant by a meteorite fragment while watching a meteor shower caused by a comet slamming into the moon and bouncing off in Earth’s direction. NASA refers to this as “lunar pinball.” Suffice to say, though, a real mood bringer-downer. Thus is the plot architecture if the 1976 cheesy sci-fi movie, Track of the Moon Beast.

Over the following days, he’s prone to headaches and blacking out. All this without the assistance of sweet alcohol. His new girlfriend tells her boyfriend’s best friend, a college professor called John Longbow (great porn name). Longbow looks like a Native American version of Bobby Goldsboro and got his name, not from the gals he used to date, but rather his adept skill with the bow and arrow.

At night when the moon’s anointing rays light up the maniac switchboard in the meteor man’s head, he’s turned into a huge lizard-esque creature with three things on his mind: die, kill, bleed. By morning the man is “normal” again, but still having health issues. The cops don’t know dick about lunar metamorphosis as they fumble around looking for a hypothesized animal with a taste for human blood.

Several more nighttime killings and it’s soon apparent who’s doing all the die-kill-bleed. The police finally corner lizard/meteor man and fire bullets into his scaly hide. Like that’s gonna work. Longbow, who earlier had prudently fashioned an arrowhead out of the fallen meteor, fires one off into L-Man’s chest. The counteracting polarities of the magnetically-charged minerals causes the TV screen to flash orange and black, while Lizzy stands there and wiggles his claw arms.

This special effect is meant to indicate Longbow’s positive efforts in bringing the monster’s illegal activities to a grinding halt. This also leaves the door wide open for John’s other longbow to nail his new target, the still screaming and freshly-single girlfriend. It’ll help with closure.

Monsterland

Monsterland is either a new horror movie scheduled for release on June 7, 2016, or a scheduled reality that exists between my ears. Turns out it’s both.

The horrors that occupy my thought bubbles are far too socially not cool for any movie screen/smart device. But Monsterland (the movie) could be right up your skirt:

“Amidst a bloody backdrop of chaos and carnage, one panicked, lowly survivor of the Monster Apocalypse takes shelter in a movie theater to buy himself a few extra moments of precious life. Little does he know, he’s taken a flying leap out of the frying pan and smack dab into the fires of hell by attending the last movie marathon he’ll ever see.”

“Welcome to Monsterland – terrifying place where savage beasts, carnivorous creatures and grotesque abominations are the new normal, and the human race is now at the bottom of the food chain.”

The way my mind works, all I heard is “grotesque abominations.” So I will shell out as many fun coupons as needed to see Monsterland – because anything else would be socially uncool.

Sucking Succubus

A couple of spoiled rich dudes go to Cabo (though they later tell police it was Cancun), where they score chick after chick with some of the worst pick-up lines ever uttered.

One such chick is so hot as to be a Succubus, a demonic entity that has humpty hump with you and then kills your. sex drive – permanently. The guys bail the next day without even saying, “Well it was certainly nice to have unsafe intercourse with you, Ms. Succubus – hope you don’t have to wait long for that succu-bus to take you home.”

This makes Succ-y mad. So she follows them back to L.A. and becomes an mega psycho bitch and kills those whom the “dine-n-dash” lover is close to. Interesting premise, but any guy with a psycho-ex is quite familiar with that kind of horror.

Problem #2: Succubus: Hell Bent (2007)  was written and directed by a chick, which means nudity is extremely limited.

Problem #3: They really shouldn’t let the actors write their own dialogue.

Problem #4: Way too long at an hour and a half. Then again, it’d be way too long at six minutes.

Problem #5: The director put her favorite band in the club scene and gave them way too much screen time. They suck more than the Succubus.

Problems #6 through #43: The special effects. (Succ Succ’s wings are so obviously wax paper, they have to blur them out so you don’t notice) are horribly outdated (think Netscape 3).

Lorenzo Lamas, David Keith and Gary Busey (as a heavy metal demon fighter) have bit parts, but watching them is as painful as watching this movie. They should’ve made Busey the monster because he’s scarier than anything to come from the depths of Hell. And that’s a compliment.

They Call Him Mr. Vampire

Mr. Vampire (not his real name) and his Two Stooges assistants, dig up an ancient tomb, looking to steal its contents. They find a vampire husband, wife and child, who all come back to life, thanks to the bumbling antics of the two assistants who need a solid front kick to the rice bag.

That’s pretty much it for Mr. Vampire 2 (1986). Stupid comic bits, over-choreographed kung-fu fights and pratfalls, and those dumb hopping vampires.

Throat-ripping and blood? Not a severed vein or crimson neck leak to be found. Mr. Vampire, you are hereby relieved of your duties.

The Pain In Spain Falls Mainly On My Face

A sub-titled Spanish psycho-drama, Abre Los Ojos (aka, Open Your Eyes/1997) involves a young, rich guy who is so handsome, he could be my doppelganger. More or less.

A car accident leaves his photo framing-worthy mug horribly scarred and eventually warps his mind to the point where he’s having trouble sorting out reality from his fantasy world in which he had his face repaired and is compromising his best friend’s girlfriend.

All things being equal, he ends up killing a chick while horizontally dating her, just to make sense of his nightmare, the poor guy. But that’s just the beginning.

Where this incredible gem throws its knockout punch is near the end, which is a twist of biblical proportions. That the boobies are perfecto and are but a mere bonus; the story is quite riveting. Sci-fi, horror, suspense, naked stuff, Abre Los Ojos is mucho grande.

P.S. Abre Los Ojos/Open Your Eyes was remade in as Vanilla Sky in 2001 and stars Tom Cruise, who is pretty much my doppelganger.

Slash and Burn

Cropsy — if that’s his real name — is an alcoholic and double-mean groundskeeper at Camp Blackfoot who uses over-sized cropping shears to trim that which needs trimming. No indication as to how he got his nickname, though.

Playing a prank to get back at him for being such a dick, a bunch of teens accidentally set Cropsy on fire. Toasted ’n roasted is he. So badly is Cropsy barbecued, skin grafts won’t take. In fact his face looks like those melting Nazis in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981).

Fast forward five years into the future (1981), and some of the kids responsible for the 1st Annual Cropsy Cook-out are now counselors at Camp Stonewater, just a melted marshmallow’s throw away from Blackfoot.

Just like Jason in Friday the 13th (1980), Cropsy exacts his revenge on his victims in the most inconvenient of times, like during sex with boobs swinging to and fro. The slaughter is gruesome and swift, but it’s the infamous finger-shearing scene that got this barn-burner in trouble with uptight British censors. P*ssies.

Scissors perforate throats and life-sustaining counselor fluid leaks out. In an unforeseen twist of fate, Cropsy gets to “sing around the campfire” one more time, if you smell what’s cookin’. All told, The Burning (1981) is old school slasher action, but somewhat more graphic. I just wish I knew how Cropsy got his name.

20,000 Fathoms of Fun

Atomic bomb tests in the Arctic Circle defrosts a gigantic reptile creature-o-saurus (official name: Rhedosaurus). This monster is nearly 100-feet long, walks on all fours, has buzz-saw sharp things on his back, is several stories tall, and judging by his diet — shark, octopus, lighthouse, diving bell, roller coaster tracks, humans — is not a picky eater.

Hibernating in ice for 100 million years, the thawed beast travels towards Manhattan, stopping off in Nova Scotia to eat a lighthouse as though it were a sugar cookie. Once in the city, Rhedosaurus wanders Times Square and takes a hole to the neck via a good ’ol United States Army bazooka. (Way to treat tourists, New York.)

Red’s blood emits a virulent germ that contaminates the very streets where people used to live, litter, and now die. Rhedosaurus scorecard: 180 dead, 1,500 injured, $3,000,000 in collateral damage. Scientists determine that if a radioactive isotope can be fired into the monster’s open neck hickey, that might stop him from racking up more kill points.

The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms (1953) is THE monster movie that inspired Godzilla (1954), coming out a full year before Japan copied the hell out of us. Good thing Godzilla was so cool, or else we’d be armed with more than an isotope, if you catch my drift.

Japanese Girls vs. Tokyo Zombies

A meteor crashes into Tokyo Bay, the resulting stink steam fusing with unknown heavy metal compounds and Hello Kitty™ energy drinks and creates Cosmo-Amphetamine, a chemical agent that revives the dead.

Since the meteor just killed a city’s worth of people (6.5 million to be exact), Capt. Fujuka is tasked with keeping people from coming into Tokyo and zombies from leaking out. Thanks to grade-school special effects, he fences off an entire city in a few hours flat. That’s why they made him a captain.

But Fujuka is ill-intent, experimenting on survivors, using Cosmo-Amphetamine to create a squad of military zombies that squirt green liquid when split open. Someone needs to clean up this mess, but who? How about the easily-pronounced K-ko, the hot daughter of Colonel Kirihara, who is working on the problem from outside the quarantine zone?

You’d think she’d have her hands full, what with 6.5 million zombies and Fujuka screwing around. But there’s hardly any living dead encounters, and the fight scenes are so bad as to be nothing more than dance moves with chin kicks. Not a lot of gory undead gunk, either. Oh sure, a few rotters are made into sandwich bread slices, but hardly anything that satisfies a deep hunger for black gut stuff.

If you’re gonna title a movie Battle Girl: The Living Dead in Tokyo Bay (1991) then you should have way more violent gore and ninja moves than, say, a chick flick. This felt like a snack when it needed to be all-you-can-eat.

The Wrongs of Dracula’s Rites

In The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1973) D’s plan is to introduce a new strain of the Bubonic plague to wipe humans off the face of the Earth. I don’t think Dracula was thinking ahead on this one. I mean, aren’t humans his grocery stores?

It’s the Eve of the Sabbath – and not the day before Black Sabbath releases a new album. Nope, this is the Sabbath of the Undead, kinda like spring break for those sorta not living. This does not meet eternal foe Van Helsing’s eco concerns, so he confronts Dracula at the very same spot they locked crosses two years earlier in Dracula A.D. 1972. Van Helsing comes prepared with a silver bullet, but AS ALWAYS can’t get the shot off in time before Dracula enunciates and throws a hissing fit.

The place catches on fire, so the fight spills over into the woods filled with Hawthorn bushes – he only other thing besides silver, garlic, pure running water, holy crosses, biblical scripture, altar boys and daylight that can defeat Dracula and make him soil his cape. Getting a sort of “crown of thorns,” Dracula gets tangled up, giving Van Helsing enough time to impale the evil outdoorsman with a fence post. As with every movie starring Dracula, he disintegrates. (Why can’t he explode just once?)

In all, Dracula shows up for a sec in the beginning of the movie and a few minutes at the end. Maybe he had other necks to do in the meantime. Bogged down in long stretches of back-story dialogue, there’s no room left for toothy action. Republican meddling once again. But when you rent a movie with the words “satanic” and “ritual” and “Dracula” in the title, you expect serious evil flavor to go down. Alas, it does not meet your eco concerns.