This April 16-25,
Fantastic Fest presents
EIGHT HUGE NIGHTS of
white-hot exploitation thunder at some of the finest screening venues in the west!!! Austin's Original Alamo Drafthouse
Weird Wednesday programmer Lars Nilsen and
Terror Tuesday curator Zack Carlson will bring the rampaging Cinemapocalypse road trip to the Pacific Coast, and will be presenting rare and absolutely unseen treasures from the American Genre Film Archive's top secret subterranean 35mm archive, each film destined to peel the hair from your eyeballs, scorch the skin on your cortex and make you sterile for ninety weeks. From manic hicksploitation epics to bloodthirsty shoestring goreblasts, each movie is a railroad spike through the heart of limp modern cinema. Join us in shattering the wall between you and
THE BEST TIME OF YOUR LIFE!!!Special thanks to American Genre Film Archive for making these screenings possible!Fantastic Fest takes place from September 24 through October 1 in Austin. If Cinemapocalypse is your cup of tea, Fantastic Fest is a whole pot of it.
S C H E D U L E :Thursday April 16PSYCHOSEXUAL MANIACS Triple Feature!at the
New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles
JULIE DARLINGDir. Paul Nicolas, 1983, 35mm, 100 min, R - NOT ON DVD!
I’ve never had kids and I never will. I’ve watched enough movies to know they’re bad news. Even if they aren’t possessed by the devil, they still learn to hate you and all you stand for - even as they eat all your food and wreck your sex life! If I ever waver in my determination to remain child-free, I’ll just thread this movie up and feel my testes retract. In this cinematic curio - kind of a cross between a Lifetime Original Movie and a Spaghetti Western, an actress named Isabelle Mejias gives a performance to remember as a daughter with a serious daddy hang up. There’s not a huge volume of physical violence in the film but the spriritual violence wrought by the cunning and manipulative teenager is hellishly intense. Starring Anthony Franciosa as the lucky dad and Teutonic Amazon Sybil Danning as the girl’s unlucky new step-mom. It’s only appropriate to warn you that the wrong-meter goes into the red here several times, which is just where I like it! Director Paul Nicolas also made CHAINED HEAT, my pick for greatest Women In Prison movie of all time. Be here! (Lars)
POOR PRETTY EDDIE a.k.a. REDNECK COUNTY RAPE
Dir. Chris Robinson & David Worth, 1975, 35mm, 92 min, R
This goodtime backwoods holocaust is both an exploitation masterpiece and a searing assault on all races, genders, social classes and good taste. Respected singer/actress Leslie Uggams dives deep into the cinematic netherworld as road-weary celebrity Liz Wetherly who stops off at a rural hotel for a little R&R…which in this case stands for Rape and Revenge. After being violated by the psychotic Elvis-obsessed hotel handyman, Liz finds little sympathy from the sheriff (DR. STRANGELOVE’s Slim Pickens) or the assorted colorful locals, including Shelley Winters, consummate hillbilly Dub Taylor and Ted “Lurch” Cassidy. Unable to break free of the community’s filth-caked grip, she spirals ever deeper into the tangled web of paranoia, hatred and mental illness that the entire local populace feeds on like an anguish buffet. Most notable is the film’s inevitably brutal climax, a perfectly composed extermination of the human spirit like nothing you’ll ever experience again. (Zack)
PSYCHO FROM TEXASDir. Jim Feazell, 1981, 35mm, 94 min, R - NOT ON DVD!
Already a cult favorite among the most discriminating hicksploitation connoisseurs, this cheap, sleazy slice of lone-star low-life is finally poised to infect the rest of the country. All Texans are familiar with this film but the very mention of its title is oddly taboo. It's a little like the mentally deficient cousin with the weird ears who lives in the basement and eats bugs. We just don't talk about it. Well, maybe now's the time to start because there's a lot to love about this movie. The titular psycho, Wheeler, is one of the most memorable characters in regional filmdom. John King III deserved an Oscar for his performance as the mommy obsessed killer with the weird laugh and the unorthodox fried chicken eating technique. But it may be Tommy Lamey as Wheeler's toothpick-worrying sidekick Slick who provides the most memorable moments in the film, notably a long foot chase that takes up probably a third of the run-time and provides laughs galore - as you'll see. PSYCHO FROM TEXAS features more scummy dialogue, K-mart fashions, mean rednecks, continuity lapses, incongruous BOING sound effects and country cuties than any film you can name. Do not miss! (Lars)
New Beverly Cinema
7165 West Beverly Blvd.
Los Angeles, CAwww.newbevcinema.com* * * * * *
Friday April 17BARREL OF MONKEYS Double Featureat the
New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles
SURF 2 - END OF THE TRILOGY25th ANNIVERSARY SCREENING!
Dir. Randall Badat, 1984, 35mm, 91 min, R - NOT ON DVD!
One of the supreme party romps of the genre’s defining decade, here is a No Rules celluloid powerhouse that doubles as a 300-fisted beachfront avalanche of insanity! Honestly, this greatest-mohawked-surfer-zombie-comedy-ever-made is best summarized by writer/director Badat: “Menlo Schwartzer - the geekiest mad scientist of all - wants to rid the world of surfers by transforming them into garbage-ingesting zombie punks! But no way dude can he stop their most awesome party!” SURF II (no, there was not a SURF 1) packs more early ‘80s drive-in mania into one movie than even a brain in the final stages of rabies can handle. Drooling undead new wave boneheads, valley girls, electronically transgendered geekazoids in underwater fortresses, the guy who played everyone’s favorite corpse in WEEKEND AT BERNIE’S, spazztastic video game combat and an appearance from actor Fred Asparagus as “Fat Boy # 1”! Speaking of the stellar Z-caliber cast, this picture sports a career-best lead performance from Supreme Alpha Nerd Eddie Deezen, as well as surprise roles from Ruth Buzzi, Carol Wayne and BLAZING SADDLES’ Cleavon Little. Combine with the pogo-inducing soundtrack by Oingo Boingo and The Circle Jerks and you have the most entertaining IQ-remover The Video Age ever shat out! Totally retardular!!! (Zack)
CARNIVAL MAGICDir. Al Adamson, 1981, 35mm, 85 min, "G" - NOT ON VHS, DVD or ANYTHING ELSE!
Alright, it’s time to get serious. Very serious. Because this is possibly the rarest movie on the entire planet. As far as we can determine, only one print exists of this thing and we’ve got it. And we’re going to share it with you. If you’re a fan of the cinematic badlands, you’ve seen some pretty strange things. But unless you’ve guzzled embalming fluid on the moon with Bigfoot you’ve never seen anything quite as awe-inspiringly jacked-up as this “inspirational” kids’ movie from the director of SATAN’S SADISTS and BLACK SAMURAI. Why anyone thought this was appropriate for children we’ll never understand. Granted, it might be educational for kids to see the lion tamer gratuitously slapping his girlfriend around or a teenage girl apparently giving an ape hand-relief (we didn’t believe it at first either), we don’t know if we’d be prepared to field Junior’s many questions about the unsavory goings-on in the cheapest, most depraved carnival this side of Tod Browning’s FREAKS. (Lars)
New Beverly Cinema
7165 West Beverly Blvd.
Los Angeles, CAwww.newbevcinema.com* * * * * *
Saturday April 18Yerba Buena Center For The Arts in San Francisco
MR. SCARFACEDir. Fernando Di Leo, 1976, 35mm, 85 min, R
One of the most entertaining Italian crime movies ever made, as should be expected from neglected auteur Fernando Di Leo. Di Leo made some of the toughest, funniest crime movies ever. He was the master of tasteless ultraviolent comedy. He also had a sense of story and characterization that even Howard Hawks would envy. Usually his films feature a tough hombre who gets caught up in a struggle between two mafia factions and gets over on the mobsters using superior intelligence and nerves of steel. Along the way, Di Leo creates brutal and hilarious poetry among the bloodshed. Here, Jack Palance plays a bad, bad man who runs a neighborhood crime syndicate in Rome. But when a series of small outrages escalates to an all-out war he proves no match for a couple of nervy slacker kids with a dune buggy and an over-the-hill consigliere (the great Vittorio Caprioli) who still remembers the old days and the old ways. While not a comedy as such, this film contains more laugh out loud scenes than all but the very best comedies. But it also delivers shocking, intense violence and a pungent ambience redolent of sleazy pool halls and greasy hair tonic. I can't recommend this movie highly enough. Pulp art at its very best. (Lars)
CHAINED HEATDir. Paul Nicolas, 1983, 95 min, R - NOT ON DVD!
The best women-in-prison movie in the history of the world. Spend an hour and a half locked in a squalid cage with a few dozen sweaty bad girls! Sound like fun? You bet it does! This is pure women-in-prison exploitation with all the catfights, steamy shower scenes and deviant sexuality you can handle. Maybe more! Linda Blair plays the new fish on the cellblock. With ubiquitous '80s Amazon Sybil Danning and CLEOPATRA JONES star Tamara Dobson as warring inmates. Kinky Stella Stevens cracks the whip as the captain of the guards and scuzzy John Vernon plays the warden (who has a hot tub in his office). Sharp-eyed viewers will also recognize the great Henry Silva. Others may disagree but I think this is a great first-date movie (but be sure to bring enough for her cabfare home just in case). Either she'll love it or she'll flee. What better way to separate the wheat from the chaff? After all, who wants to get stuck with a good girl? (Lars)
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
701 Mission St (at Mission & 3rd)
San Francisco, CAwww.ybca.org* * * * * *
Sunday April 19TUFF Quadruple(!) Featureat the
Midnites For Maniacs series at The Castro in San Francisco
VIGILANTEDir. William Lustig, 1983, 35mm, 90 min, R
In the post-DEATH WISH era of action exploitation, many a hard-working everyman was given the chance to set things straight using every firearm within reach. Of this rich array of middle-aged homicide fantasies, this raw, feral streetwar collision is the most teeth-grittingly severe. Directed by top-drawer NY scum specialist William Lustig (MANIAC COP) and starring Fred Williamson (BLACK CAESAR) and Robert Forster (ALLIGATOR, MEDIUM COOL), who puts in a genuinely incredible performance as a troubled blue-collar schmoe pushed to the brink of human endurance. When he finally lashes out, no lowlife is spared from his four-wheeled, double-barreled, white-knuckled wrath. This one’s for the toughest, leatheriest, ass-kickiest score-settlers out there, so don’t come cryin’ to me when the sweat and blood get in your eyes. If you can’t enjoy watching a 4-year-old kid take a point blank shotgun blast, that’s your hang-up. (Zack)
RAW FORCEDir. Edward D. Murphy, 1982, 35mm, 86 min, R - NOT ON DVD!
Once this show is over, you’ll be tearing your eyes out of your head and setting them ablaze. Because you have NEVER seen such a brain-blasting bonesmasher as the epochal omegawave that is, was and always will be RAW fucking FORCE!!! If you think you’ve been entertained in the past, here is a white-hot scholarship to FUN SCHOOL!! Let’s open this sucker up and see what’s inside, goddammit. Blue-skinned undead samurai? Check! Cannibalistic rump-chasing monks? Yes sir!! Drunken kung-fu yacht party? To the max!!! Wall-eyed flesh-trading seaplane pilot with a Hitler moustache? Man ohhh MAN!!! In absolute honesty, all this is just the tip of the trashberg! Blowtorches blaze, teeth fly, bullets zing, dialogue is botched and cages full of virgins are sent to their heartless demise! So packed with action, you’ll have to blink every 3 seconds to keep your eyes from catching on fire! The legendary Cameron Mitchell (THE TOOLBOX MURDERS) semi-stars in this Filipino/American co-production that would have brought the world to its knees if it wasn’t 200,000 YEARS AHEAD OF ITS TIME! If you see just one movie in your entire life, it better be here, now, tonight: RAW FORCE! If you’re blind, deaf and comatose, only one film will STILL kick your ass through the wall: RAW FORCE!! Look, I don’t care if you’re reading this at a funeral...scream it out loud right now: RAAWWW FORRRCE!!! (Zack)
ESCAPE FROM NEW YORKDir. John Carpenter, 1981, 35mm, 99 min, R
Snake Plissken is the ULTIMATE Sci-Fi Male. Why? Because he's played by an Ultimate Real Life Male named Kurt Russell, who was at the height of his effortlessly steely machismo when he teamed with ultimate filmmaking Badass John Carpenter for the first (and many say greatest) of several flawless collaborations. So if you love BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA and THE THING - and you sure as hell do - this is the unshaven, post-apocalyptic blowtorcher that started it all! The year is 1997 A.D. Cold-blooded criminal Snake has 24 hours to enter the lawless, bloodthirsty prison island known as "Manhattan" and rescue the nation’s president (HALLOWEEN's Donald Pleasance) from the clutches of a crazed gang leader played by the late, great Isaac Hayes! Along for the explosive destruction, mayhem and grit are Harry Dean Stanton, Lee Van Cleef and Ernest Borgnine. A beautiful '80s sci-fi masterpiece absolutely slampacked with testosterone-fueled violence and tough guy rage. Watching this movie on the big screen will make you a man, even if you're a woman! (Zack)
LADY TERMINATORDir. Jalil Jackson, 1988, 35mm, 87 min, R
White people have been too stupid to notice, but the nations of the South Pacific have provided the world with some of its most neck-snappingly exciting movies. This isn’t a recent development…Filipino and Indonesian exploitation films have held a firm grip on these nations’ entertainment industry and output since the glory days of Eddie Romero, the bold auteur responsible for the Blood Island trilogy and fistfuls more of the finest South Seas exports. These movies have a unique, magical ability to forego logic and feasibility in a relentless drive to distill maximum entertainment, and in no film has this impressive approach triumphed more wholly than Lady Terminator. After a man steals a snake from a sex witch’s vagina, she threatens to exact revenge on his great great granddaughter. 100 years later, a scuba-diving female anthropologist is violated by the same naughty snake, causing her to unleash a wave of shirtless, lazer-eyed homicide in a kill-crazy goddamn rampage. And it’s not all white hot bulletry; Lady T’s favorite non-firearm method of execution involves a hearty chomp from her carnivorous vagina. In fact, genital terror is expanded to new dimensions throughout this film. Male crotches are riddled with bullets, mangled, eaten and worse. Would you believe this vicious she-demon even pauses to give a gunned-down corpse a kick in the dingle? What a totally cruel supernatural tramp!! (Zack)
The Castro Theatre
429 Castro St.
San Francisco, CAwww.castrotheatre.com* * * * * *
Wednesday April 22Grindhouse Film Festival at the Hollywood Theater in Portland, OR
Cinemapocalypse VS. Grindhouse Film Festival in
TRAILER WAR!!!
We're setting our most violent, reprehensible and ungodly 35mm explosives for the absolute supreme Battle of Celluloid Insanity. Portland's beloved Grindhouse Film Festival kingpin Dan Halsted will be going head-to-head with the visiting exploitationeer duo of the Cinemapocalypse Tour to present a dehumanizingly fierce barrage of classic film trailers featuring the very excruciatingest horror, kung fu, scifi, prison, nudie, cannibal, manimal, exploitation, hicksploitation, blacksploitation and sploitationsploitation! These miniature bursts of mankind's most twisted and unhealthy brainwaves are destined to transform you into the next stage of human life after dyn-o-miting you through the back of the theater. Make no mistake...this show will pummel your fragile reality right in the nuts!
The Hollywood Theater
4122 N.E. Sandy Blvd
Portland, ORwww.grindhousefilmfest.com* * * * * *
Thursday April 23HICKSPLOITATION Double Featureat the
The Grindhouse Film Festival at the Clinton Street Theater, Portland
GATOR BAIT - NOT ON DVD!
Dir. Ferd & Beverly Sebastian, 1974, 35mm, 88 min, R
Picture yourself on a state highway in the rural south in 1974. In the distance an apparition flickers on a drive-in screen. It’s a beautiful woman with long red hair and skin the color of mother’s milk. She lifts a 12-gauge to eye level and squeezes the trigger. It’s not a hallucination. It’s Claudia Jennings, a common sight on drive-in screens throughout the country in the 70’s and that rarest of things, a genuine female action star. The movie is GATOR BAIT, a huge hit that kept drive-in audiences coming back again and again. Like most movies that made it big on the chitlin’ circuit, GATOR BAIT really delivers. The story of a sexy swamp rat named Desiree who’s half woman and half savage, it features the scariest inbred hillbillies outside of the TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE and a revenge plot that builds to a thundering, foot-stomping climax. As an actress Claudia Jennings doesn’t have a great deal of range, but then neither does a sawed off shotgun. Under the right circumstances both can be devastating. Jennings, who was a Playboy Playmate of the year, had an outstanding career in low-budget exploitation films before dying in a car crash at age 29. There’s never been another one like her. GATOR BAIT is a true drive-in classic. Don’t miss it. (Lars)
PSYCHO FROM TEXASDir. Jim Feazell, 1981, 35mm, 94 min, R - NOT ON DVD!
Already a cult favorite among the most discriminating hicksploitation connoisseurs, this cheap, sleazy slice of lone-star low-life is finally poised to infect the rest of the country. All Texans are familiar with this film but the very mention of its title is oddly taboo. It's a little like the mentally deficient cousin with the weird ears who lives in the basement and eats bugs. We just don't talk about it. Well, maybe now's the time to start because there's a lot to love about this movie. The titular psycho, Wheeler, is one of the most memorable characters in regional filmdom. John King III deserved an Oscar for his performance as the mommy obsessed killer with the weird laugh and the unorthodox fried chicken eating technique. But it may be Tommy Lamey as Wheeler's toothpick-worrying sidekick Slick who provides the most memorable moments in the film, notably a long foot chase that takes up probably a third of the run-time and provides laughs galore - as you'll see. PSYCHO FROM TEXAS features more scummy dialogue, K-mart fashions, mean rednecks, continuity lapses, incongruous BOING sound effects and country cuties than any film you can name. (Lars)
The Clinton Street Theater
2522 SE Clinton St
Portland, ORwww.clintonsttheater.comwww.grindhousefilmfest.com* * * * * *
Friday April 24PSYCHOPATHS UNLEASHED! Triple Featureat the
The Grand Illusion Cinema in Seattle, WA
VICE SQUADDir. Gary Sherman, 1982, 35mm, 97 min, R
A highly recommended descent into the sulfurous pit of hell known as Hollywood. Direct-to-video action god Wings Hauser burst onto the scene with his intense, over-the-top performance as the psychotic killer pimp Ramrod. Seething and ranting, a homicidal twisted nerve, Hauser is incredible. This is his show all the way, he even sings the theme song, "Neon Slime!" Along the way, Hauser jumps the fence from villain into full-on monster territory, making VICE SQUAD not only one of the most exciting films you'll ever see, but one of the scariest as well. In this truly grim urban fairy tale, a hooker named Princess (Season Hubley) must make it through a long night in a very dark forest (the streets of L.A.) without being gobbled up by the big bad wolf (Hauser), who himself is being chased by the mighty hunter (the LAPD detective who earlier allowed him to escape.) Pure entertainment from the gifted director of RAW MEAT and DEAD AND BURIED. (Lars)
NIGHT WARNING a.k.a. BUTCHER, BAKER, NIGHTMARE MAKER
Dir. William Asher, 1983, 35mm, 96 min, R - NOT ON DVD!
Listen up…this movie has the best opening scene in film history. Absolutely, without a doubt, no first 5 minutes of any other feature are more rip-rocious than what you'll see tonight on this screen. By the time the opening credits roll, you'll be peeling your fingernails out of the armrests. And here's the kicker: the best is yet to come! Susan Tyrrell stars in her greatest performance as a tragic, spastic auntie with a more-than-healthy appreciation for her orphaned teen nephew. When folks get too close to this happy family, heads start to roll. Enter Joe Carlson (Bo Svenson), a tough-as-rusty-nails police detective who utters the word "faggot" with practically every breath. Easily among the most perfect and underappreciated slashers of the golden ‘80s. If you don't go nuts for this one, get the hell out of my house. (Zack)
TOURIST TRAPDir. David Schmoeller, 1979, 35mm, 90 min, PG
Terror nerds are well aware that the American road holds myriad dangers. Many a frenzied sasquatch, invisible space vampire and/or cannibalistic madman has transformed our turnpikes into his personal open-air slaughterhouse, but in the great Halls of Highway Homicide, no film dares examine the darkest precipices of rural insanity like the crushingly inventive TOURIST TRAP. Rectangle-jawed screen ham Chuck “The Rifleman” Connors plays mysterious Mr. Slausen, a dubious yokel who leads a life of quiet isolation in the woods. When a couple carloads of recreation-hungry youths happen across his private property, Slausen introduces them to a bold new cavalcade of nightmares including -- but not limited to -- autonomous singing mannequins, gender-bent nutsoids and a telekinetic knife-throwing fiend. Goddamn! You may have watched a thousand car-broke-down-in-a-maniac’s-front-yard movies, but until you’ve seen TOURIST TRAP, you’re still wearing your horror Huggies. (Zack)
The Grand Illusion Cinema
1403 NE 50th St
Seattle, WAwww.grandillusioncinema.org* * * * * *
Saturday April 25at the
The Grand Illusion Cinema in Seattle, WA
THE SIX THOUSAND DOLLAR NIGGER a.k.a. SUPER SOUL BROTHER
Dir. Rene Martinez, 1979, 35mm, 80 min, R - NOT ON DVD!
We can't believe the title either. But that's why they called him Wild Man Steve. We all love Rudy Ray Moore but he wasn't the only comedian working the chitlin' circuit back in the day. Get ready to laugh your ass off at Wild Man Steve. Wild Man Steve can say anything and make it funny. He has a slow, stoned delivery that makes even the stupidest dirty jokes gut-bustingly hilarious. In a way, Wild Man Steve is the ultimate cult comedian and this is an actual WILD MAN STEVE STAR VEHICLE! It's about a midget mad scientist (with a full-sized D-cup girlfriend) named Dr. Dippy who helps the mob develop a formula that makes users super-strong, bulletproof, and, after about two days, super-dead. Obviously it's hard to get sensible people to sign up for this treatment, so the mobsters grab the nearest wino, played to perfection by Wild Man Steve. Steve is hilarious, ad-libbing like crazy, stepping all over his costars' lines. He even gives a little speech in favor of legalizing pot that's a small masterpiece of reason and logic. If you are easily offended please stay away from this theater! (Lars)
THE DEADLY SPAWNDir. Douglas McKeown, 1983, 35mm, 81 min, R
McKeown’s low-budget backyard scifi terror epic is the defining accomplishment in the mighty ‘80s Homemade Horror genre. An alien meteorite unleashes a hideous, carnivorous beast that gorges insatiably on the unwitting denizens of a New Jersey town. The massive meatmonster grows exponentially while it casts off knife-faced leechlets to further the annihilation. No one is off limits; old ladies and adolescents and everyone in between are all fair game for this unstoppable eating machine. From unbelievable creature creations to some of the best dialogue ever captured, no shoestring production before or since has contained a fraction of the fearless filmmaking on display here. Shot for the cost of a new washer/dryer combo, THE DEADLY SPAWN is a bona fide, undeniable fuck-you to major studio exploitation crammed with an impossible amount of ambition, masterful latex effects and unbridled, flesh-ripping satisfaction. (Zack)
The Grand Illusion Cinema
1403 NE 50th St
Seattle, WAwww.grandillusioncinema.org* * * * * *
...That's it for now! But do stay tuned for more developments as we ANNIHILATE THE UNIVERSE.
Love,
Lars and Zack
This guy can bring the werewolf! Yow! Buy one for your home, car or business at Mondo Tees.
I’ve never had kids and I never will. I’ve watched enough movies to know they’re bad news. Even if they aren’t possessed by the devil, they still learn to hate you and all you stand for - even as they eat all your food and wreck your sex life! If I ever waver in my determination to remain child-free, I’ll just thread this movie up and feel my testes retract. In this cinematic curio - kind of a cross between a Lifetime Original Movie and a Spaghetti Western, an actress named Isabelle Mejias gives a performance to remember as a daughter with a serious daddy hang up. There’s not a huge volume of physical violence in the film but the spriritual violence wrought by the cunning and manipulative teenager is hellishly intense. Starring Anthony Franciosa as the lucky dad and Teutonic Amazon Sybil Danning as the girl’s unlucky new step-mom. It’s only appropriate to warn you that the wrong-meter goes into the red here several times, which is just where I like it! Director Paul Nicolas also made CHAINED HEAT, my pick for greatest Women In Prison movie of all time. Be here! (Lars)
This goodtime backwoods holocaust is both an exploitation masterpiece and a searing assault on all races, genders, social classes and good taste. Respected singer/actress Leslie Uggams dives deep into the cinematic netherworld as road-weary celebrity Liz Wetherly who stops off at a rural hotel for a little R&R…which in this case stands for Rape and Revenge. After being violated by the psychotic Elvis-obsessed hotel handyman, Liz finds little sympathy from the sheriff (DR. STRANGELOVE’s Slim Pickens) or the assorted colorful locals, including Shelley Winters, consummate hillbilly Dub Taylor and Ted “Lurch” Cassidy. Unable to break free of the community’s filth-caked grip, she spirals ever deeper into the tangled web of paranoia, hatred and mental illness that the entire local populace feeds on like an anguish buffet. Most notable is the film’s inevitably brutal climax, a perfectly composed extermination of the human spirit like nothing you’ll ever experience again. (Zack)
Already a cult favorite among the most discriminating hicksploitation connoisseurs, this cheap, sleazy slice of lone-star low-life is finally poised to infect the rest of the country. All Texans are familiar with this film but the very mention of its title is oddly taboo. It's a little like the mentally deficient cousin with the weird ears who lives in the basement and eats bugs. We just don't talk about it. Well, maybe now's the time to start because there's a lot to love about this movie. The titular psycho, Wheeler, is one of the most memorable characters in regional filmdom. John King III deserved an Oscar for his performance as the mommy obsessed killer with the weird laugh and the unorthodox fried chicken eating technique. But it may be Tommy Lamey as Wheeler's toothpick-worrying sidekick Slick who provides the most memorable moments in the film, notably a long foot chase that takes up probably a third of the run-time and provides laughs galore - as you'll see. PSYCHO FROM TEXAS features more scummy dialogue, K-mart fashions, mean rednecks, continuity lapses, incongruous BOING sound effects and country cuties than any film you can name. Do not miss! (Lars)
One of the supreme party romps of the genre’s defining decade, here is a No Rules celluloid powerhouse that doubles as a 300-fisted beachfront avalanche of insanity! Honestly, this greatest-mohawked-surfer-zombie-comedy-ever-made is best summarized by writer/director Badat: “Menlo Schwartzer - the geekiest mad scientist of all - wants to rid the world of surfers by transforming them into garbage-ingesting zombie punks! But no way dude can he stop their most awesome party!” SURF II (no, there was not a SURF 1) packs more early ‘80s drive-in mania into one movie than even a brain in the final stages of rabies can handle. Drooling undead new wave boneheads, valley girls, electronically transgendered geekazoids in underwater fortresses, the guy who played everyone’s favorite corpse in WEEKEND AT BERNIE’S, spazztastic video game combat and an appearance from actor Fred Asparagus as “Fat Boy # 1”! Speaking of the stellar Z-caliber cast, this picture sports a career-best lead performance from Supreme Alpha Nerd Eddie Deezen, as well as surprise roles from Ruth Buzzi, Carol Wayne and BLAZING SADDLES’ Cleavon Little. Combine with the pogo-inducing soundtrack by Oingo Boingo and The Circle Jerks and you have the most entertaining IQ-remover The Video Age ever shat out! Totally retardular!!! (Zack)
Alright, it’s time to get serious. Very serious. Because this is possibly the rarest movie on the entire planet. As far as we can determine, only one print exists of this thing and we’ve got it. And we’re going to share it with you. If you’re a fan of the cinematic badlands, you’ve seen some pretty strange things. But unless you’ve guzzled embalming fluid on the moon with Bigfoot you’ve never seen anything quite as awe-inspiringly jacked-up as this “inspirational” kids’ movie from the director of SATAN’S SADISTS and BLACK SAMURAI. Why anyone thought this was appropriate for children we’ll never understand. Granted, it might be educational for kids to see the lion tamer gratuitously slapping his girlfriend around or a teenage girl apparently giving an ape hand-relief (we didn’t believe it at first either), we don’t know if we’d be prepared to field Junior’s many questions about the unsavory goings-on in the cheapest, most depraved carnival this side of Tod Browning’s FREAKS. (Lars)
One of the most entertaining Italian crime movies ever made, as should be expected from neglected auteur Fernando Di Leo. Di Leo made some of the toughest, funniest crime movies ever. He was the master of tasteless ultraviolent comedy. He also had a sense of story and characterization that even Howard Hawks would envy. Usually his films feature a tough hombre who gets caught up in a struggle between two mafia factions and gets over on the mobsters using superior intelligence and nerves of steel. Along the way, Di Leo creates brutal and hilarious poetry among the bloodshed. Here, Jack Palance plays a bad, bad man who runs a neighborhood crime syndicate in Rome. But when a series of small outrages escalates to an all-out war he proves no match for a couple of nervy slacker kids with a dune buggy and an over-the-hill consigliere (the great Vittorio Caprioli) who still remembers the old days and the old ways. While not a comedy as such, this film contains more laugh out loud scenes than all but the very best comedies. But it also delivers shocking, intense violence and a pungent ambience redolent of sleazy pool halls and greasy hair tonic. I can't recommend this movie highly enough. Pulp art at its very best. (Lars)
The best women-in-prison movie in the history of the world. Spend an hour and a half locked in a squalid cage with a few dozen sweaty bad girls! Sound like fun? You bet it does! This is pure women-in-prison exploitation with all the catfights, steamy shower scenes and deviant sexuality you can handle. Maybe more! Linda Blair plays the new fish on the cellblock. With ubiquitous '80s Amazon Sybil Danning and CLEOPATRA JONES star Tamara Dobson as warring inmates. Kinky Stella Stevens cracks the whip as the captain of the guards and scuzzy John Vernon plays the warden (who has a hot tub in his office). Sharp-eyed viewers will also recognize the great Henry Silva. Others may disagree but I think this is a great first-date movie (but be sure to bring enough for her cabfare home just in case). Either she'll love it or she'll flee. What better way to separate the wheat from the chaff? After all, who wants to get stuck with a good girl? (Lars)
In the post-DEATH WISH era of action exploitation, many a hard-working everyman was given the chance to set things straight using every firearm within reach. Of this rich array of middle-aged homicide fantasies, this raw, feral streetwar collision is the most teeth-grittingly severe. Directed by top-drawer NY scum specialist William Lustig (MANIAC COP) and starring Fred Williamson (BLACK CAESAR) and Robert Forster (ALLIGATOR, MEDIUM COOL), who puts in a genuinely incredible performance as a troubled blue-collar schmoe pushed to the brink of human endurance. When he finally lashes out, no lowlife is spared from his four-wheeled, double-barreled, white-knuckled wrath. This one’s for the toughest, leatheriest, ass-kickiest score-settlers out there, so don’t come cryin’ to me when the sweat and blood get in your eyes. If you can’t enjoy watching a 4-year-old kid take a point blank shotgun blast, that’s your hang-up. (Zack)
Once this show is over, you’ll be tearing your eyes out of your head and setting them ablaze. Because you have NEVER seen such a brain-blasting bonesmasher as the epochal omegawave that is, was and always will be RAW fucking FORCE!!! If you think you’ve been entertained in the past, here is a white-hot scholarship to FUN SCHOOL!! Let’s open this sucker up and see what’s inside, goddammit. Blue-skinned undead samurai? Check! Cannibalistic rump-chasing monks? Yes sir!! Drunken kung-fu yacht party? To the max!!! Wall-eyed flesh-trading seaplane pilot with a Hitler moustache? Man ohhh MAN!!! In absolute honesty, all this is just the tip of the trashberg! Blowtorches blaze, teeth fly, bullets zing, dialogue is botched and cages full of virgins are sent to their heartless demise! So packed with action, you’ll have to blink every 3 seconds to keep your eyes from catching on fire! The legendary Cameron Mitchell (THE TOOLBOX MURDERS) semi-stars in this Filipino/American co-production that would have brought the world to its knees if it wasn’t 200,000 YEARS AHEAD OF ITS TIME! If you see just one movie in your entire life, it better be here, now, tonight: RAW FORCE! If you’re blind, deaf and comatose, only one film will STILL kick your ass through the wall: RAW FORCE!! Look, I don’t care if you’re reading this at a funeral...scream it out loud right now: RAAWWW FORRRCE!!! (Zack)
Snake Plissken is the ULTIMATE Sci-Fi Male. Why? Because he's played by an Ultimate Real Life Male named Kurt Russell, who was at the height of his effortlessly steely machismo when he teamed with ultimate filmmaking Badass John Carpenter for the first (and many say greatest) of several flawless collaborations. So if you love BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA and THE THING - and you sure as hell do - this is the unshaven, post-apocalyptic blowtorcher that started it all! The year is 1997 A.D. Cold-blooded criminal Snake has 24 hours to enter the lawless, bloodthirsty prison island known as "Manhattan" and rescue the nation’s president (HALLOWEEN's Donald Pleasance) from the clutches of a crazed gang leader played by the late, great Isaac Hayes! Along for the explosive destruction, mayhem and grit are Harry Dean Stanton, Lee Van Cleef and Ernest Borgnine. A beautiful '80s sci-fi masterpiece absolutely slampacked with testosterone-fueled violence and tough guy rage. Watching this movie on the big screen will make you a man, even if you're a woman! (Zack)
White people have been too stupid to notice, but the nations of the South Pacific have provided the world with some of its most neck-snappingly exciting movies. This isn’t a recent development…Filipino and Indonesian exploitation films have held a firm grip on these nations’ entertainment industry and output since the glory days of Eddie Romero, the bold auteur responsible for the Blood Island trilogy and fistfuls more of the finest South Seas exports. These movies have a unique, magical ability to forego logic and feasibility in a relentless drive to distill maximum entertainment, and in no film has this impressive approach triumphed more wholly than Lady Terminator. After a man steals a snake from a sex witch’s vagina, she threatens to exact revenge on his great great granddaughter. 100 years later, a scuba-diving female anthropologist is violated by the same naughty snake, causing her to unleash a wave of shirtless, lazer-eyed homicide in a kill-crazy goddamn rampage. And it’s not all white hot bulletry; Lady T’s favorite non-firearm method of execution involves a hearty chomp from her carnivorous vagina. In fact, genital terror is expanded to new dimensions throughout this film. Male crotches are riddled with bullets, mangled, eaten and worse. Would you believe this vicious she-demon even pauses to give a gunned-down corpse a kick in the dingle? What a totally cruel supernatural tramp!! (Zack)
Picture yourself on a state highway in the rural south in 1974. In the distance an apparition flickers on a drive-in screen. It’s a beautiful woman with long red hair and skin the color of mother’s milk. She lifts a 12-gauge to eye level and squeezes the trigger. It’s not a hallucination. It’s Claudia Jennings, a common sight on drive-in screens throughout the country in the 70’s and that rarest of things, a genuine female action star. The movie is GATOR BAIT, a huge hit that kept drive-in audiences coming back again and again. Like most movies that made it big on the chitlin’ circuit, GATOR BAIT really delivers. The story of a sexy swamp rat named Desiree who’s half woman and half savage, it features the scariest inbred hillbillies outside of the TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE and a revenge plot that builds to a thundering, foot-stomping climax. As an actress Claudia Jennings doesn’t have a great deal of range, but then neither does a sawed off shotgun. Under the right circumstances both can be devastating. Jennings, who was a Playboy Playmate of the year, had an outstanding career in low-budget exploitation films before dying in a car crash at age 29. There’s never been another one like her. GATOR BAIT is a true drive-in classic. Don’t miss it. (Lars)
A highly recommended descent into the sulfurous pit of hell known as Hollywood. Direct-to-video action god Wings Hauser burst onto the scene with his intense, over-the-top performance as the psychotic killer pimp Ramrod. Seething and ranting, a homicidal twisted nerve, Hauser is incredible. This is his show all the way, he even sings the theme song, "Neon Slime!" Along the way, Hauser jumps the fence from villain into full-on monster territory, making VICE SQUAD not only one of the most exciting films you'll ever see, but one of the scariest as well. In this truly grim urban fairy tale, a hooker named Princess (Season Hubley) must make it through a long night in a very dark forest (the streets of L.A.) without being gobbled up by the big bad wolf (Hauser), who himself is being chased by the mighty hunter (the LAPD detective who earlier allowed him to escape.) Pure entertainment from the gifted director of RAW MEAT and DEAD AND BURIED. (Lars)
Listen up…this movie has the best opening scene in film history. Absolutely, without a doubt, no first 5 minutes of any other feature are more rip-rocious than what you'll see tonight on this screen. By the time the opening credits roll, you'll be peeling your fingernails out of the armrests. And here's the kicker: the best is yet to come! Susan Tyrrell stars in her greatest performance as a tragic, spastic auntie with a more-than-healthy appreciation for her orphaned teen nephew. When folks get too close to this happy family, heads start to roll. Enter Joe Carlson (Bo Svenson), a tough-as-rusty-nails police detective who utters the word "faggot" with practically every breath. Easily among the most perfect and underappreciated slashers of the golden ‘80s. If you don't go nuts for this one, get the hell out of my house. (Zack)
Terror nerds are well aware that the American road holds myriad dangers. Many a frenzied sasquatch, invisible space vampire and/or cannibalistic madman has transformed our turnpikes into his personal open-air slaughterhouse, but in the great Halls of Highway Homicide, no film dares examine the darkest precipices of rural insanity like the crushingly inventive TOURIST TRAP. Rectangle-jawed screen ham Chuck “The Rifleman” Connors plays mysterious Mr. Slausen, a dubious yokel who leads a life of quiet isolation in the woods. When a couple carloads of recreation-hungry youths happen across his private property, Slausen introduces them to a bold new cavalcade of nightmares including -- but not limited to -- autonomous singing mannequins, gender-bent nutsoids and a telekinetic knife-throwing fiend. Goddamn! You may have watched a thousand car-broke-down-in-a-maniac’s-front-yard movies, but until you’ve seen TOURIST TRAP, you’re still wearing your horror Huggies. (Zack)
We can't believe the title either. But that's why they called him Wild Man Steve. We all love Rudy Ray Moore but he wasn't the only comedian working the chitlin' circuit back in the day. Get ready to laugh your ass off at Wild Man Steve. Wild Man Steve can say anything and make it funny. He has a slow, stoned delivery that makes even the stupidest dirty jokes gut-bustingly hilarious. In a way, Wild Man Steve is the ultimate cult comedian and this is an actual WILD MAN STEVE STAR VEHICLE! It's about a midget mad scientist (with a full-sized D-cup girlfriend) named Dr. Dippy who helps the mob develop a formula that makes users super-strong, bulletproof, and, after about two days, super-dead. Obviously it's hard to get sensible people to sign up for this treatment, so the mobsters grab the nearest wino, played to perfection by Wild Man Steve. Steve is hilarious, ad-libbing like crazy, stepping all over his costars' lines. He even gives a little speech in favor of legalizing pot that's a small masterpiece of reason and logic. If you are easily offended please stay away from this theater! (Lars)
McKeown’s low-budget backyard scifi terror epic is the defining accomplishment in the mighty ‘80s Homemade Horror genre. An alien meteorite unleashes a hideous, carnivorous beast that gorges insatiably on the unwitting denizens of a New Jersey town. The massive meatmonster grows exponentially while it casts off knife-faced leechlets to further the annihilation. No one is off limits; old ladies and adolescents and everyone in between are all fair game for this unstoppable eating machine. From unbelievable creature creations to some of the best dialogue ever captured, no shoestring production before or since has contained a fraction of the fearless filmmaking on display here. Shot for the cost of a new washer/dryer combo, THE DEADLY SPAWN is a bona fide, undeniable fuck-you to major studio exploitation crammed with an impossible amount of ambition, masterful latex effects and unbridled, flesh-ripping satisfaction. (Zack)
