365 Days of Horror, Tramp Stamped Piranhas, Extinct Genes

Time again for Lunchmeat Magazine’s annually-anticipated Home Video Horrors calendar. Seems like it’s been a year since they put one out. I you’re a fan of Z-grade lurid horror movies that used to come out on VHS, this paints you in a must-own corner.

From Lunchmeat’s website: “Photographer Jacky Lawrence with W.T. Scot present an all-new Home Video Horrors calendar, featuring 12 brand spankin’ new photo tributes to some of the most iconic, incredible, and eye-popping VHS covers ever to stalk the horror section of the video store. The Home Video Horrors 2023 calendar is printed on high-quality, full-color semi-gloss paper. Only 250 copies will be produced, and you can pre-order yours for $19.99 over on Lunchmeat’s website now. The calendars are expected to be delivered in January 2023.”

While we watch 2022 go down in flames and re-light the torch with this 2023 horror calendar, here are a few out now horror/sci-fi movies that may or may not last a year…

THE CRETACEOUS WORLD / Out now (VOD)

The Bermuda Triangle area has always been known as the Hell of Death. Many years ago, due to the special magnetic field and ocean current environment, a “sleeping” cretaceous island emerged from the water. The island has a large number of dinosaur genes that have been extinct more than 65 million years ago. A bizarre air crash led a group of survivors to be trapped on this island.”

At around 79 million years, the Cretaceous is the longest geological period of the entire Phanerozoic. Knowing this going in made the movie that much more satisfying.

PIRANHA WOMEN / Out now (Tubi™)

“A tender tale of a tribe of sexy ladies who keep a toothy, terrifying secret beneath their bikini tops and the young woman who is slowly, surely starting to join their ribald ranks.”

Bikini-wearing women that turn into flesh-eating fish. And they say there are no new plots.

THE SCREAMING SKY (aka, CEREBOH) / Out now (VOD)

“The world has been overrun by mind-controlling aliens called Sky Beasts. Six people hide out in an abandoned building. But when one of them is exposed to the aliens, paranoia among them proves to be just as deadly as any threat from the sky.”

Sky Beasts is what I call those %@#$ seagulls that crap all over my car. (Shaking fist menacingly) “I’ll kill you, %@#$ Sky Beasts!” 

THE DOLL 3 / Out now (VOD)

“After an accident that killed both of her parents, Tara now only has a younger brother named Gian as a member of her family. However, the accident traumatized Gian, so he chose to end his life. After the suicide of her brother, Tara decides to take his favorite toy, a child-size talking doll called Bobby, to a shaman to have his spirit reborn inside it. The doll takes on a life of its own, turning into a demonic serial killer who targets any and everyone in Tara’s life that stands in his way of completely monopolizing his sister’s time.”

Looks like somebody’s been watching Child’s Play. Three times, apparently.

Skin vs Fur – A Fashion Statement

Rotund rocker Meat Loaf stars in Pelts (2006) as a furrier who runs a sweat shop (his shirt could count as one), and gets coat-making raccoon skins from a trapper. The trapper gets his raccoons from the woods. The raccoons are watched over by an old woman who lives in a shack and hasn’t mowed her lawn in years. She’s no doubt behind the curse that befalls anyone who takes the “pine lights,” a reference to the raccoons, whose eyes glow in the dark, the only part of ’em you can see when they’re up the trees ready to jump on your head get poison all over you.

Meat Loaf frequents a strip club where he’s totally sprung on a supermodel dancer. But she won’t give up the good stuff because he’s fat and icky. He promises her a fur coat so awesome, she’ll do it with him, just you wait and see.

A call from the trapper has Meat traveling way out in the woods to evaluate this so-called “best fur you’ve ever seen.” There’s a joke in there somewhere. When he gets there, he finds the trapper and his assistant dead, one of ’em with his face severed in half…length-wise. That’s what happens when you voluntarily put your head in a bear trap.

Meat finds the fur and is simply aghast — this is indeed the best fur he’s ever seen. And he’s been to a LOT of strip clubs. (Heh.) Taking the pelts, he gets his workers busy making the coat. But during the night the curse kicks in and one worker sews her eyes, nose and mouth shut, thereby suffocating herself. Instant job opening.

Meat takes the completed wrap to the stripper. It’s the best fur she’s ever seen, and she’s danced in a LOT of strip clubs. Trying it on, she gets all fuzzy inside and offers herself to the Meat. He takes it. But he’s not done, uh, showering her with gifts. He goes into the bathroom where a meat cleaver sits. All strippers have these kinds of knives in case they get a knot in their work bikini.

With skilled precision, Meat slices into his arms and stomach and, in an inspired moment, pulls his own skin off as though it were a seamless shirt. He gives it to the stripper who doesn’t want it. (Probably not her size.) But a chase into an old elevator ends with arms and legs being severed and no one left to try on the skin shirt. Too bad — it looks like you could wear it with just about anything.

Sharks With Tan Lines

Underwater earthquakes off the coast of California release a school of prehistoric sharks hell bent on eating anything wearing a bikini. And these Goblin sharks do a LOT of gobblin’: surfers, skin divers, swimmers — anything that rhymes with food.

So what were the sharks doing for a million years while buried under the ocean? Playing cards, would be my guess. Probably Go Fish™. Don’t give me that look — that joke was gold.

The earthquakes cause a tsunami, which obliterates those suns of beaches. In a genius move four lifeguards and two beachers make it into a lifeguard stand and ride out the Big Wave. Never mind that the lifeguard stand is basically painted balsa wood that manages to take a direct hit from the wave without snapping into toothpicks, or that the tsunami crushes everything else into jellyfish.

The survivors (for now) are trapped in the shelter with Goblin sharks skinny-dipping around them. Brilliant, I tell you. The sharks, unfortunately, meet their seafood destiny at the end of a Black & Decker™ chainsaw (B&D should use that in their marketing brochures.)

Goblin sharks have cartoonish protruding snouts, which look like novelty-store noses. Only thing missing is over-sized eye-glasses and squirting flowers on their lapels. They look stupid. Malibu Shark Attack (2009) is stupid. I’m stupid. Oh, yeah? Well, so are you. So there.

Sea Monster and Swimwear

Local legend has it that the Loreley, a reptile creature with a taste for human hearts (ick), comes every seven moons (206 days) and seeks out those with human hearts. Whew — I’m safe!

The night before her wedding a hot redhead is trying on her veil and negligee when a reptile creature jumps through her second-story (!) window and rips out her heart. I’m wondering if that was the Loreley everyone’s talking about?

This freaks out the nearby all-girl supermodel boarding school, run by an uptight but seriously smokin’ hot redhead. Her eyes seem too big for her face, but it didn’t goon me out. So the mayor hires a freelance hunter to protect the supermodels.

Enter the extreme handsome, Sirgurd. Despite his crazy name, he looks like Engelbert Humperdink and dresses like Tom Jones. And he’s packin’ heat — a high-caliber rifle. A plan is implemented to go scuba diving in the Rhine in hopes to find the reputed cave the Loreley lives in. You know what this means — a chance for Sirgurd to take off his shirt.

The Loreley’s three helper chicks fight over who gets to have sex with Sigurd (wouldn’t you?) and in the process let him escape. Loreley in reptile form has really dry hands, but her nails look good. She wears a cloak to hide her face, which is similar to that of a large plastic piranha. Sirgy knows what he has to do — make stab happen and then go make out with the chicks. (Wouldn’t you?)

The Loreley’s Grasp has pretty cool gore and boobies and Sirgy action for a 1974 foreign movie with dubbed dialogue. I wish I knew where the treasure cave with three bikini-adorned helper chicks lived, though. Then I’d go visit them. Often, as it turns out. Hey, swimming is good for you. The Internet says so.

The Eeval Ded

Evil just doesn’t exist in the United States – it’s everywhere, man. Why, you can’t even go to the North Pole and not encounter pure evil. (They have satanic penguins up there that’ll kill you and drink your blood. The produce guy at the grocery store told me that. I believe him. Why the heck would he lie?)

So it comes as zippo surprise to find our brand of evil is being copied by other countries in need of an evil upgrade. Take for instance Bhayanak Mahal B (1988) and Bach ke Zaraa (2008, two horror movies made in the Republic of India. Both copy The Evil Dead (1981) to embarrassing extremes.

Bach ke Zara – unofficially referred to as Bollywood Evil Dead. In this one you have a note-for-note rendition, except they throw in skimpily attired ladies, body smooching, and a choreographed dance number featuring a mud smeared (I hope it was mud) chick and muscle-y men. (Note to India – why on Earth do you always have to put in a choreographed dance sequence in every flippin’ horror movie? What is wrong with you?)

The pronunciation-challenging Bhayanak Mahal B (you gotta say it with your throat packed with half-swallowed dry cereal), translates to Awesome Castle B. I never saw Awesome Castle A.

This one also templates The Evil Dead schtick with melty-faced demons (or it could be a vampire), suitable gore (could’ve used some more curry in the fury) and a chick in a red string bikini. (Apparently, stylish swimwear is how you combat evil in India.)

Curious to see these logic-defying foreign horror gems? They’re on YouTube™. Some versions are in bowling alley English and even sub-titled (some with their own language). But hey – free! Now there’s something worth choreographed dancing to.

P.S. If you wanna see a really goofy but still f’d up Bollywood horror movie, try Khooni Panja (1991). It’s about a an extra-marital affair gone sour, volleyball, severed limbs and demonic possession. Too bad they didn’t add, I don’t know, some sort of dance sequence. That would’ve made this thing rock.

Sun-burned Demon

In 1958’s sci-fi classic The Hideous Sun Demon (aka, Blood on his Lips), prior to that “being exposed to radiation” incident, Dr. Gilbert McKenna was just a normal kind of well-groomed and educated guy. But once an experiment with a new radioactive isotope wrecked his face and skin, Gil is definitely hideous, with the sun’s normally healthy rays transforming him into a scaly reptile fish thingy creature monster. Here’s the rub – he stays in non-beast form while indoors and out of the sun. But once he steps outside, bam! – insta scaly reptile fish thingy creature monster.

This makes him mega upset as there are so many beach bikinis left to ogle. Once given the news by his colleagues that there is no cure, Gil heads to the nearest bar to get fish stinking drunk. Excellent thinking. And it’s here he puts the sore in psoriasis. A non-sober man thinks Trudy, a glamorous gal with two really big talents performing at the club, is a hooker and tries to man date her. Gil steps in and punches the drunk sideways, grabs Trudy and heads down the ocean coast in his sweet convertible.

Gotta give it to Gil – he’s so smooth he talks Trudy into the ocean and out of her wet clothes. Of course, this is all in the dark. After they fall asleep on the beach and the sun comes out, Gil’s inner sun demon rises as well. So much for a second date.

From there it’s a lot of emoting, feeling sorry for oneself, hiding in the shadows, getting in another bar fight (and losing this time), and choking the life out of the neck of that guy who earlier beat him sideways with the help of some thug-like gangstas. No going back indoors for Gil.

Alerted to his monstrous skin condition, the police chase Sunny Jim up stairs surrounding a huge natural gas tank. By my calculations they made it to the top. You might wanna avert your eyes at this point in the movie; the camera follows Gil as he climbs and you can see a big stain on the back and front of his trousers. I found this to be quite hideous.

Mistake #1: Nowhere to go but down. Mistake #2: Firing a gun around a natural gas container. Mistake #3: Not having enough bullets. Mistake #4: Nowhere to go but down.

The cop manages to get the gun nozzle right into Gil’s chest as he’s trying like hell to strangle the hell out of the officer. Now fully air-conditioned, Gil takes the fast way down and makes a splashy exit. Emotingly, this is the end of the Sun Demon. But it still doesn’t explain why one of his shoes having been blown off by the impact, reveals a bare human foot. (Sun Demons don’t wear socks.) I guess radiation only affect oneself from the waist up.

Queen Kong: Jungle Skank

If you feel life is not precious then go ahead and waste an hour and a half of it watching Queen Kong (1976). Yeah, something that dumb can only be a comedy spoof. If only it were funny. But I’ll tell you whose laughing – the attorneys for King Kong, who got this thing tied to a sacrificial altar due to copyright squeezings brought on by King Kong (1976)/King Kong Lives (1986) producer Dino De Laurentiis. How do you them bananas?

While it only got limited release Italy and Germany, Queen Kong is so painfully painful, it’s doubtful Queen Kong would’ve had an impact on her male counterpart. They took the story and flipped genders, with the strangle-worthy British lead male in the role of Ray Fay (groan) being sacrificed to Queen Kong, who falls in love with the twit and let’s her affection get her caught and imported to London to wiggle her chain-linked boobs for profit.

If the effects, which are anything but special, have you throwing fruit at your TV (it’s not your magic viewing box’s fault), the acting – mostly hot chicks in bikinis – and the dialogue that induces reverse-eating. Example: The supermodel tribe leader chick only speaks in jungle-ese and says stuff like “Unga bunga, wanga banga.” Sounds like a Ted Nugent song.

Even with QK battling a giant paper mache dinosaur, it’s the sissy boy Ray Fay whose arrogant preening makes you wanna see a giant primate step on him. Endless shrieking and bragging, this idiot looks like one of the Herman’s Hermits and says stuff like, “You can’t eat me! I’m Jewish! I’m Irish! I’m black! I’m a leper! I’m a Jewish black Irish leper!” The death penalty would be too lenient.

Pluses: Dozens of hot chicks in bikinis. Minuses: The rest of the movie.

Spaghetti Made Yeti

Missing link movies got their start with Snow Creature in 1954. I wasn’t hatched yet, so had to wait quite a few years as DNA, then even more as an upright primate to see it. It was worth the wait as it turned me into a life-long fan of hairy creature movies.

Since then there have been hundreds of movies or “films”, short films or “movies”, cameos, TV shows and endless documentaries about the Abominable Snowman/Yeti/ Bigfoot/Sasquatch, from the wretched (Shriek of the Mutilated/1974) and wacky (Six Million Dollar Man: The Return of Bigfoot Parts 1&2/1976), to the wistful (Letters from the Big Man /2011) and wild (Schlock/1973).

One of the more mind-boggling Bigfoot type movies ever is Yeti: The Giant of the 20th Century (aka, Yeti – il gigante del 20. secolo), made in Italy in 1977. In this one a several story tall missing link is discovered encased in a huge block of ice and transported back to civilization – or “Toronto” – in the biggest telephone booth in the world, chained to helicopters. (Note to younger readers: the telephone booth was a sort of “sidewalk cellphone” you had to put physical money in to use.)

Taking his cue from King Kong, the monster dries off, breaks loose, grabs a chick, and goes all caveman on the town. This is caused in part by Jane, the only person who can communicate with the brute (she does this by talking s-l-o-w-l-y). She causes his fuzzy bikini area to get all fluffed up like his hair. With logically no chance of scoring, the only thing to do now is dismantle the city.

I could tell you what happens to Yeti/Toronto, but then you might not watch what could be the best – or worst – movie experience of your entire life. I’ll advise everyone to see Yeti: The Giant of the 20th Century, because it’s not that often a film will leave you with your mouth hanging open.

The Joi of Bigfoot

The best bait to lure Bigfoot out into the open? Gorgeous women in bikinis. Shocked that Bigfoot hunters haven’t thought of this before.

This isn’t the plot of Bigfoot, a 1970 sub-budget “horror” movie, but it should be. Rather, it’s just one part of a bigger tapestry that weaves together a horror legend (John Carradine), a supermodel (Joi Lansing), and dynamite-packin’ bikers with semi-combed hair. (What a bunch of disrespectful punks.)

Parachuting into the forest after her plane quits flying, Joi, with her flotation devices stored safely under her blouse, runs smack into Bigfoot. Elsewhere, a biker guy horizontally makes out with his bikini-clad new girlfriend, only to discover they’re  swapping spit on a Bigfoot burial ground. Guess who shows up to punch out the boyfriend (wicked right hook) and make off with the make-out girl?

The local sheriff doesn’t have time for this hair-covered nonsense, and pretty much doesn’t do much to solve the mystery of the missing women. So Biker Rick (the guy whose bricks were earlier flipped by Bigfoot), turns to hucksters for help. Some help – they plan to capture B-foot to exploit for financial gain. (“People will pay 50 cents to see it!”)

Meanwhile, the top-heavy abducted gals are tied up (!) by Bigfoot, where they hypothesize about their situation and give away a big clue as to the what lies ahead. (More than one Bigfoot, as it turns out – and they seem to be gooning out over something at the top of the mountain everyone’s partying/making out/peeing on.)

Finally, after much hippie bongo music, noisy motorcycles tearing up the woods and great one liners (“They’re practically sub-human, but they look like animals…”), the hucksters and Biker Rick (cool name) slog through the forest until they happen upon the abducted gals and the Bigfoot lair (not quite an apartment as it doesn’t even have a kitchenette).

And it’s here we get the “slap your head in astonishment” big surprise. The thing at the top of the mountain the other Bigfeet are fearful of is… I’ll just say that the hint lies in the Bigfoot creatures themselves, all of whom are female. Run with it. And the end? Has something to do with dynamite – and Joi Lansing running through the woods, barely keeping her mountainous region from popping out of her top.

P.S. Bigfoot fights a bear in this one. I thought they were friends. The bear probably owed him money. Or a honey-dipped pine cone. Man, I could sure go for one of those right now.

Ghost Shark: Bites From Beyond

2013’s Ghost Shark is memorable for a number of reasons, sub-budget special effects/dialogue/acting notwithstanding. But first you have to ignore the plot, which gives Ghost Shark its rai·son d’ê·tre.

After being fed a hand grenade thrown from a fishing boat by redneck a-holes, Ghost Shark’s corpse floats into a half-submerged cave where early settlers performed satanic rituals. (Okay, what?) It is here Dead Shark is converted into a glowing, transparent kill-beast able to trans-morph out of any body of water, be it a fire hydrant, bath tub, swimming pool, mud puddle and even a bottled water drinking fountain. And this is exactly what makes Ghost Shark’s 84 minutes of dumbassery entertaining.

GS crashes a pool party and devours teenagers. GS opens wide and swallows little kids on a Slip ’n Slide™, an unsuspecting youngster shooting down the shark’s throat as if a human oyster on the half shell. A mayor’s assistant pouring himself a cool and refreshing paper cup of thirst quenching death after GS leaves the bottled water container and is delivered to the assistant’s insides, where it splits the guy in half during the chewing out. (This scene alone is worth an Academy Award.)

Time wasters until Ghost Shark straps on the feedbag: a drunk lighthouse keeper, savaged by guilt for killing his wife in said satanic cave years ago who seeks revenge on GS. Not sure how that works. The smack-talking mayor going on a Jaws-driven balance-of-justice boat ride. (His crunchy death – being sucked down a watery toilet – as a true feel-good moment.) Tthen there’s the never-ending parade of young girls in bikinis and a really, really fat guy riding a jet ski that looked like it might get permanently lodged into FG’s ass crack on the next wave.

Back to the bikinis: Most horror films feature young gals in their 20s, probably still in community college or of X-rated movie age. Not so with Ghost Shark; The girls running around in kite string swimsuits are barely (heh) in high school. I felt somewhat dirty watching Ghost Shark make fish bait out of jail bait. I would’ve showered my shame away afterward, but hey – Ghost Shark possibly coming through the nozzle.

P.S. Ghost Shark 2: Urban Jaws (pending 2015) is not a sequel or related to Ghost Shark. It’s an indie movie (i.e., made with two New Zealand guys and a Best Buy™ video camera) that was supposed to have come out in 2010. Time to put down the Foster’s mates, and show us some of your Down Under horror. Okay, that didn’t come out right.