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.

Undead Thailand

Thailand may think its pandemic-proof, but a SARS-infected bug says otherwise. One bite from this sick sucker and you turn into a zombie with piranha teeth. Convenient, then, that the first guy bitten lives in a fully occupied high-rise condo. No need to run around town biting people as there’s hundreds of bite-ables right here!

The condo is also the place where a small gang of criminals are holding a businessman’s amazingly hot daughter for ransom. Sending a martial arts student to rescue her, all these events converge into a splattery eat-a-thon, with a house pet anaconda getting turned into a zombie as well. (It grows to about 50 feet and swallows people whole without chewing. So much for savoring.)

Sealing off the building, the Thailand CDC sends in a supermodel doctor with a possible antidote. It doesn’t work and makes the zombies’ heads explode. But fortunately she’s wearing fishnets and leather hot pants under that hazmat suit. (Watch the movie and you’ll see why that’s an important plot point.)

 

The student makes a deal with the hostage hottie: if he can get her out safe, then she has to have sex with him. Done and done. Battling their way through a flood of zombies, the student gets bitten, and before he can turn into a biter, drinks a bunch of laundry detergent and powdered cleaning products to keep from coming back and hurting the girl. Amazingly, he stumbled upon a cure for zombie-itis as the soapy combination cured him. Now he can have sex. Whew!

After they knock boots in the condo’s romantic parking garage with zombies just around the corner, the snake shows up and swallows her. Then it swallows the student’s master. (Yeah, forgot to mention him. Forgot to mention the Stop Virus Bullet, too). But the master has the Green Frozen Sword and slices his way out, freeing the hottie and a criminal that was swallowed earlier.

Even with snake gunk all over it, his gun still works, and he shoots the hottie in the back. Before she dies she pulls off her mask and reveals that she’s a he. Good times — the student lost his virginity to a tranny.

Mixing anime with live zombie action, SARS War: Bangkok Zombie Crisis (2004) is played as a slapstick comedy, but has some really cool undead creatures. So where was the real hottie the whole time? She fell out a window wearing nothing but panties. Fortunately, a shirt hanging from a clothesline covered her shame and the soft bush below (hey, no jokes — this is a family movie) cushioned her fall. Whew!

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.

Monstrous Minnows

So the government-funded “Razorteeth” project to assist with the Vietnam war was kind of a not-so-much. The plan was to dump a bunch of “super breed” piranha in North Vietnam swimming pools and let nature take its course. (All the had to do was give a bunch of little kids all the Kool-Aid™ they could drink, put ‘em in the waterways and let nature take its course. Problem solved.)

Two horny teens, out looking for a place to get their horn on, happen across a vacated military installation, and find a pool/fish hatchery. Off go the clothes, in go the appetizers. Have you ever seen a hot dog eating contest? The teens are the hot dogs and the genetically-engineered piranha are the contestants.

Later, when not so much as a crumb of the teens can’t be found, an insurance investigator happens across the compound, finds the pools drainage switch, and empties it…right into Lost River Lake, where a filled-to-capacity resort and summer camp waits for their turn on the hot plate. If you’ve seen Jaws (1975), you know it goes from here.

Menu items include summer camp kids, pets, and lakeside resort guests… The plan, though, isn’t to stop the piranha from eating anything that sticks its pink toes and fingers into the water, but rather to keep them from reaching the ocean. (Saved for Piranha II: The Spawning/1981.) That’s the military for you. Cut your losses, think outside the box, look at the big picture.

The piranha are only seen as toothy blurs, driven into voracious hunger frenzy by tasty floaters (think oyster crackers in tomato soup). When you do get to see one up close for a second, it looks like the chest-burster from Alien (1979). Same facial expression, anyway. They’re probably cousins. Elsewhere, some token female nudity, which is pretty much required in order to hold your interest in this one-punchline joke. I liked it, though. The female nudity, not the fish.

Eat The Fish That Eats You

There’s a river in Venezuela that’s home to genetically mutated piranha – and they’re growing at an exponential rate and heading down stream to Florida. I didn’t know Florida was anywhere near Venezuela. Maybe it is. What the hell do I know? The relentlessly hungry fishies, now the size of submarines, are eating Naval destroyers and, once in Florida, will eat Naval oranges – and humans.

To get us to believe there’s some serious drama going on, a special  military agent with double muscles and ’80s pop princess Tiffany (too cool to have a last name) are sent in to make sure our orange crop doesn’t end up like so many battleships. They don’t quite know how to stop them, but I do: tartar sauce and a squeeze of mega lemon.

The giant piranha special effects are so substandard as to look like painted Nerf™ balls being thrown in front of the camera. And Greg Brady himself (of the special ops Brady Bunch squadron) appears as the muscle agent’s boss.

Not sure how Mega Piranha (2010) ended as I turned my attention to drying paint after seeing a piranha eat a hotel. Hotels.com is gonna hear about this.

Piranha Sharks

Piranha Sharks. Yet another shark mash-up, this time crossing pollinating a shark with a piranha. I’m always up for a goofy shark movie, but not really seeing the point here. I mean, aren’t piranha already mini sharks, tearing through fish flesh like gummi flesh?

Clearly the idea and plot, which was conceived in three seconds, goes like this: “Great white sharks bio-engineered to be the size of piranhas with the purpose of living in rich people’s exotic aquariums terrorize New York City when they get into the water supply and do what great white sharks do best.”

No doubt Piranha Sharks (2014) will end up on the SyFy Channel™, an exotic aquarium for all sorts of sinkers. And the b*tch of it all is I’ll watch it. It’s a sickness I can’t seem to shake.