Swapping DNA In The Shower

In Species IV: The Awakening (2007), Miranda is a supermodel quality college teacher whose alien DNA is getting restless. This means the human part of her will die and the pointy-haired alien part will come out and transform her into an H.R. Giger painting.

Her “uncle,” a scientist, is to blame. Miranda was a lab EZ-Bake Oven™ that he used to marinade her human goo with a concoction of extraterrestrial DNA strands. It worked. But she doesn’t know it yet.

A trip to the hospital to find out why she’s been blacking out results in the death of the entire staff via a long, stabby tongue that shoots out of her mouth. Time for that trip to Mexico, for three reasons. One, to escape the law. Two, to meet up with his old science partner to see if he can help stop the transformation. And three, good exchange rate on the dollar.

Forbes McGuire, no longer a practicing U.S. lab guy, has been plying his new trade: clones of dead pets and relatives. He mixes just enough alien DNA with the DNA of whatever he wants to clone, and bingo, insta-copies! He even made himself an overnight slumber party pal with Azura, a mega-hot alien gal.

Miranda, though, is dying and while a DNA stem cell swap with a Mexican hooker appeared promising, it only made matters complicado.

Miranda, driven to date, mate and annihilate, occasionally drops top and sticks her tongue in potential date’s ears. Problem is, it comes out the other ear.

All this happy stuff leads to a showdown between both alien chicks. This is done in the dark, which is incredibly annoying. Build to the big scene and then turn off the lights. Smooth move, Ex-Lax™. Uncle F*ck Up has to make things right and blows the place to confetti. He should’ve done that at the beginning of the flick, because the sex is G-rated, the boobs not nearly plentiful enough (although Miranda is a perfect 10 on any planet), and the premise about as believable as my last lie detector test.

Slasher’s Aren’t Very Knife

There’s a razor blade slasher reducing the population of strippers in New York. What the heck, man? These ladies perform a vital service to society and you wanna kill them? Messed up, dude. This sets the sex and violence mood in 1983’s American Nightmare, a low-grade/low-rent slasher flick filmed in Toronto, home of Pothole Filler Imperial Stout™.

So there she was, naked in a hotel room, about to close a business deal with a client, when the messed up dude pulled out a razor made for shaving, and cut her throat — and she didn’t even need a shave! Again, messed up.

Earlier, Isabelle (the stripper-slash-hooker-slash-slasher victim) left messages for her brother to come save her from danger. (In New York, that could be anything from a serial killer to a dirty public toilet seat). He doesn’t know he’s way too late, and searches every strip joint in town. Gotta love his methodology; hope he brought a lot of small bills — to, um, buy information, of course.

The guy (Eric) hooks (sorry) up with a dancer (Louise) and they both go on the empty-lead search. In-between all of this is LOTS of bold displays of the female anatomy set to music and an increasing bare body count. There’s even a sex scene that, back in 1983, was likely rated-X. By today’s standards and practices, it would only fetch a PG designation. But hey…ladies dancing without the muss and fuss of clothing. Like I said, a VITAL service.

The killer in this gritty slasher flick gets it in the end. Okay, that didn’t come out right. Regardless, his identity came as no surprise. What IS a surprise was the transvestite hooker. A surprise to her clients, anyway. Ha!

Metaphysical Cowpoke

A Union soldier turned ruthless bounty hunter, Jonah Hex had his face turned into a grilled cheese sandwich with a fresh branding iron after helplessly watching Old West terrorist Turnbull roast his wife and son in an indoor campfire.

Tied to a stake and about to be turned into a steak, Hex was left to be this week’s daily lunch special for the pigeons. But something mystical happened and he was caught between the land of the living and the land of the dead. These days we call it a work week. Now Hex can talk to the dead simply by touching them — and not just in the bathing suit area.

Revenge is the word of the day and Hex goes after Turnbull, who has the Nation Killer weapon in his control and plans to blow up Washington on the 4th of July, celebrating its 100th birthday. Pretty much the complete opposite of patriotic. The government needs Hex to stop Turnbull and will pay him to do it. Fight fire with fire. And grilled cheese face sandwiches.

The action in Jonah Hex (2010), pretty much the cowboy version of The Crow (1994), is frustratingly lackluster given the players and Hex getting his saddle warmer beaten more than once. And Hex’s hooker girlfriend who doesn’t undress for work is nothing short of insubordination. Whoever made this cow pie should be sentenced to clean it up.

Hookers and Demons

When a 19th Century hooker is denied a baptism for her child whom the father of is in question, the entire staff of the brothel where the woman worked many back-breaking hours renounces God and proceeds to have evil rituals. They do this by having sex with paying customers. They also cut off customer legs with axes, because all brothels should be equipped with such tools of the trade lest someone wants something a little kinky every now and again.

Fast forward to modern times and three highly stereotyped teen chicks and two guys are sentenced to house arrest at an abandoned mental institution. (That tired plot device. Again.) They have to clean the place up because sweeping will scare them straight so they won’t commit any more crimes. If they do a good job, their record is clean. If they don’t, it’s the electric chair. (Sorry, wishful thinking.)

Once inside, they start experiencing spooky things, like doors opening and shutting, people with gunk coming out of their mouths and maggots in the cookie dough. Two very convenient situations: the Day of the Dead is tomorrow, which means every dead person in that zip code gets to party. Secondly, the mental institution is built on the very tainted spot the evil brothel once stood. And if you didn’t see it coming, one of the chicks is a descendant of the evil house madam, Elodia. (That name sounds so made up.) These are what we call Lottery odds.

 Throw in two priests: one who knows the girl’s past, the other from Mexico and having only one eye. The basement floor glows red when something is about to happen. This evil-meter also emits spook smoke. One by one the teens are either possessed and ripping out spines, or screaming and running for their worthless lives. The best part of Demon Slayer (2003) other than the flagrant (but welcome) display of bare boobies: one possessed chick opens her mouth and a HUGE spider crawls out. Worst part: the rest of the movie.

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.

Classic ’70s Sleaze Horror

Hard to come up with a horror movie title more tantalizing than 1977’s Eaten Alive. Oh sure they tried, even by re-titling this Seventies lurid gem: Death Trap, Horror Hotel and Starlight Slaughter. Meh. Eaten Alive tells you everything you need to know.

And this is why it’s so cool Eaten Alive is being re-issued on Blu-ray™ with a metric ton of extras sometime in July, 2015. So why all this fuss over a low budget sleazy horror movie that barely made it to the drive-in big screens and was left collecting dust in VHS discount bins?

First, look who was involved with this thing: Tobe Hooper directed and did the soundtrack. You may remember him as the director from another forgotten little movie called The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974). Then there was a starring role from Caroline Jones, widely known as Morticia from The Addams Family cult TV series (1964 – 1966) playing a brothel owner. And who is that shirtless redneck hick trying to score with a hooker? None other than Freddy Krueger himself – Robert England. Marilyn Burns, who played the endlessly screaming survivor in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, stars as an unhappy wife. How can you ever be happy after being tormented by a chain saw?

Eaten Alive has it all – a war-damaged scuzzy hotel owner, some bare boobies, some gory deaths by way of a scythe, and a GIANT CROCODILE. Set in the Louisiana swamp backwoods, Judd, the hotel proprietor, has loose noodles for brains and keeps the aforementioned GIANT CROCODILE as a pet in the stink pond the hotel (more like a shack with several rooms) ’round back. Throw in a beleaguered prostitute, a feisty redneck, some guests who shouldn’t really be there and the GIANT CROCODILE that eats you alive, you have a movie that practically writes itself.

The re-issued Eaten Alive contains so many extras, it would take me away from watching my UFO stories on YouTube™ to list ’em all here. Of the plethora of bonus stuff, I’m visibly shocked they didn’t have an interview with the GIANT CROCODILE itself, reminiscing about what Freddy Krueger tastes like. Then again, it’s not polite to talk with your mouth full.

You Just Ate Your Date

Jeffrey is a painfully lonely young man who works as an insurance salesman schlub by day and a purchaser of professional women’s services by night. He wants female company so bad, he even asks heavily perfumed night workers out on dates. A big hell no. It appears even hookers have standards.

This until he meets Pandora, a woman who turns out to be everything he ever wanted – and a little more. She’s a cannibal, only able to eat flesh instead of bologna sandwiches or Applebee’s™ chili fries. Cheap date, so score for Jeff.

Pandora eats her clients, whom nobody seems to miss. (When you see ’em, you’ll understand why.) But Pandora starts falling for Jeffrey and they begin dating. Normally on the third date the girl lets the guy feel her up. But it isn’t until after he proposes marriage (jumping the gun – he doesn’t even know her last name) does she confesses her “nature.” “Are you Jewish?” “No – I’m an abomination of God,” she replies. “So you’re a Mormon…” That’s pretty dang funny.

No sex, though lots of boobies. Realistic epidermis munching helps flesh out (sorry) the plot, and though the premise is lurid, at its heart Skinned Alive (2008) is a feel good love story to be shared by all.

Hook vs. Hooker

Scream Bloody Murder (aka, Claw of Terror/1973) is about Matthew, a disturbed young farm boy who lost his hand in wheat/life crushing machine. (He used said machine to kill his dad, so payback). Both events contributed further to Matthew’s inability to cope with anything with more than five functioning fingers.

The kid, now a teenager with a hook for nose pickers, is being let out of the insane asylum. He comes home in time to find out mom just married a guy who has legal feeling-up privileges. Matthew, sexually repressed and carrying around a mother complex, hacks them up with a life/wood cutting axe. Needless to say, I think someone needs to be sent to their room.

Running away doesn’t keep horrific visions of rotted mom from clouding his judgment. Matthew eventually meets a red-headed hooker and is projects his mother on her. That she lets other guys touch her private parts for cash doesn’t make Matthew happy, and chops up the hooker’s repeat business.

Matthew keeps her tied up, hoping that’ll convince her to like him. (All he had to do was pay her, geez.) It may have unintentional, but the best scene happens when the hooker, with hands and feet tied, tries calling the phone operator for help, using only her tongue to dial. Funny, yet oddly erotic.

Matthew is a nice psycho, even if he doesn’t like bare boobies and all the female accessories. Then again, with a hook for a hand, it’s not like he can appreciate a hooker’s warm touch, or even that of an inflatable doll. Better to become ambidextrous and get a grip on reality.