NIGHTMARE CITY (1980)

Okay, this one is probably even worse than DEMONS, but it’s at least FUNNY. There’s a nuclear accident, and a reporter waits for a plane to land to interview the scientists who researched it. But when the plane lands and the doors open, a bunch of mutated goons jump out and start stabbing and shooting everybody. (Most people might call these guys “zombies,” but THEY AREN’T DEAD. That kind of thing bothers me. You might also wonder how these mutated goons can fly and land a plane. This is one of life’s great questions.) The people attacked by the mutated goons turn into mutated goons, and things go all goony. They attack an aerobics/dance TV show. They use weapons (again, something ZOMBIES DON’T DO, PEOPLE). We wind up somehow up on top of a roller coaster. Then it kind of ends. The makeup is ridiculous (it all looks like masks made out of papier mache and stuck on), the violence is silly (the “flesh eating” is mostly just the goons licking people’s fake-looking wounds, and the “head shots” all seem to use the same 2 or 3 dummies), the story is stupid, and the people in it aren’t worth saving. But it’s lively! And energetic! And it’s entertaining! So I have to give it that. I never got bored, and I laughed a lot, and I’m not sorry I saw it.

DEMONS (1985)

What. The. Hell. This was co-written and produced by Dario Argento. I’ve seen some of his movies, and think he’s great. So I picked this up. It’s not directed by him, and maybe that makes a difference. Like the other movies I’ve seen by him, there’s not a lot of “making sense” going on here, but unlike those other movies, this just doesn’t work. Sure, it’s gory. There’s lots of blood, busting boils with demonic pus, weird transformations of people into demons, and all that good stuff, but NOTHING FITS TOGETHER. It’s about a bunch of people who go see this mysterious new movie in a mysterious new theater, and mysteriously the stuff in the mysterious movie happens to the people in the mysterious theater. Is the theater evil? Maybe, I guess, because nobody can manage to get out. Or maybe that’s the movie’s fault. I don’t know. There’s nobody running the projector, which is weird, but never explained. The ticket-taker at the theater seems mysterious, but she winds up being killed off like anyone else there, so there’s a wasted opportunity. Someone should have asked who hired her! It might answer some questions, maybe! So anyway, nobody can get out of this place, and people try everything. Then, for no good reason at all, a helicopter crashes into the theater. Just out of nowhere. It’s mysterious! Then we find out that the demons are all over the place outside, so you have to ask why we bothered going to the movies in the first place. Then there’s kind of a twist ending. Sort of. You expect it, though. I don’t know, man. I just don’t know.

ALIEN (1979)

You know, you think you know a movie. I’ve seen this before, and the sequels, but I forgot just how scary this movie was. The sequels tend to be a lot of action, especially the first sequel, but this one is just all tension. You know the story: cargo ship picks up a distress call, tracks it down, winds up bringing a deadly alien back with them that kills everybody one by one. There’s the “chest-bursting” scene where the baby alien hatches out of John Hurt’s chest. There’s the evil android robot guy played by Bilbo Baggins. But you forget how slowly the movie goes, but never gets boring. There’s always this atmosphere of tension in every scene, like anyone could die at any time. And then there’s the sets! I’d never noticed them this way before. The ship where they find all of the alien egg things is like nothing I’ve ever seen before. It looks like it’s some kind of living thing, like it grew. They were all designed by this Swiss guy named H.R. Giger. I looked him up on the internet, and his stuff ALL looks like this. It’s all scary, and like some cross between living things and mechanical things. But back to the movie. I know most of you have seen it before, but you really need to watch it again.

SPIDER BABY (1968)

Okay, so I went on kind of a Jack Hill marathon. This one is from 1968, and it’s completely different from everything else I’ve seen from him. All of his other movies I’ve seen are big, fun action movies with women in the lead. This is a horror-comedy that’s like if the TV show The Addams Family was a LOT more disturbing. It’s about a family that’s afflicted with Merrye’s Syndrome, a condition that causes its victims to act more like kids the older they get, until they get so old that they – and get this – “devolve to a pre-human cannibal state.” Yep. You never see people eating people, though. Mostly you see these two sisters who are completely nuts and act like little girls (one likes to “play spider” and trap people in her “web”, and then kill them!), their brother (Sid Haig again! You’d never recognize him!), and Lon Chaney Jr. in one of his last parts. He’s great! A bunch of intruders come into their home to try and get in on the family’s money, and a lot of wacky stuff happens that I don’t want to spoil. All of the acting is great, the dialogue is hilarious, and it’s all creepily filmed in black-and-white. What a movie!

THE BIG BIRD CAGE (1972)

I do not know how I managed to get away with seeing this. COFFY and FOXY BROWN have enough nudity in them to push the already pretty lenient limits around my house, but sometimes being friendly with the comic book store manager is worth it. My dad was pretty shocked when he found out I’d watched this, but he figured that as long as I’d seen it, nothing he could do would make me unsee it, so we had to have a big long talk about it. Yes, dad, I know that it’s not serious. Yes, dad, I know that they’re kind of making fun of the clichés in “Women In Prison” flicks. But it still kicked ass. Just like FOXY and COFFY, this was directed by Jack Hill, whose filmography is full of GREATNESS. Pam Grier gets herself arrested and teams up with a woman on the inside to bust all the women out of prison. Pam’s boyfriend – the always amazing Sid Haig, who is fall-over funny in this! – is a revolutionary who works from the outside to help with the escape. There’s lots of over-the-top violence, really in-bad-taste gay jokes (it was ’72, though, so I can let it slide), LOTS of nudity…and Anitra Ford, who I need to learn more about. Because she’s crazy hot! It’s not as much fun as FOXY or COFFY, but it’s still good.

FOXY BROWN (1974)

Pam is back, and once again takes on a drug ring. This should have been a sequel, since Pam is playing pretty much the same part. She’s not a nurse in this one, but when her boyfriend (who’s a government agent) gets shot down by some drug dealers, she takes to the streets once again to find the people responsible and delivery a little Foxy Justice. Wha-pow! This one is even better than COFFY, and that’s just about impossible. Antonio Fargas plays Foxy’s brother Link, and he’s AMAZING. Sid Haig (who was in COFFY) is back in this one, again playing a bad guy. He’s always cool. You can’t go wrong with this one!