toyfreaks Reviews

The Drunken Dead Guy (2005 Video)

Delightfully horrible! Fans of drunk humor and zombies must have this!

[10/10 · 4 November 2008]

I give "Drunken Dead Guy" a 10, because there is nothing lower than 1 and this movie goes all the way past and back to the top again. With a VHS camcorder, free guerrilla advertising, and a lot of spunk, you can get somebody to buy your homemade movie on DVD for $15.00 and love it! I first came across John Greff's Masterpiece de Cinema when I was looking for videos of Bill Hinzman, the graveyard ghoul from Night of the Living Dead. Or maybe it was the U-Toob video titled "HOTT ANGELS B!TCH SLAP," I don't remember...

In any case, I watched the trailer and bought the DVD right away! I was delighted to receive a professionally packaged, real DVD in a case with a full color sleeve. The movie starts out with a string of horrible self-indulgent jokes and then plunges right into the action. It's unapologetically retarded and crude, vulgar and probably profane too, I'd have to ask a priest.

This is a genuine NO budget movie, with no money for sets or equipment, all you get is MOVIE! Oh... and Bill Hinzman. Yeah, these jokers got one of the great horror icons of the late 20th century to be in their little movie! I don't know what they put in the water in New Jersey, but apparently it makes people want to make movies... and makes them blind to all the reasons they shouldn't.

Kevin Smith (Red Bank represent!) put it best when he said "No, seriously... if I can do this... anybody can!" John Greff and Tom Duda, the guilty parties involved obviously heard this and went and did it! Yeah the movie is grainy and cheap and pretty terrible. But it's honestly funny as hell. Plus there are hot chicks in bikinis and drunks and zombies! What do you want for $15.00? If you think you can do better, rise the the challenge! These guys have an IMDb credit and you DON'T!

The Twilight Zone: And When the Sky Was Opened (1959) Season 1, Episode 11

Three astronauts return to a strange fate...

[6 April 2006]

This is one of my favorite Rod Serling scripts. Its "suprise ending" is known to the characters and audience almost the whole episode. Yet it is still somehow potently shocking. My gut still knots up every time I see it... because I know what is coming.

Three astronauts return from an aborted space mission. That they returned at all is a mystery which progressively unravels. As the improbability of their survival reveals itself, they begin to disappear, along with any memory of their existence.

Astronaut Colonel Ed Harrington is played in flashback by Charles Aidman, who later narrated the 1985-87 Twilight Zone series. He is the first to disappear, as witnessed by a distressed Colonel Clegg Forbes, played by Rod Taylor. Without any special effect at all, the character simply vanishes out of the story.

Col. Forbes recounts the vanishing to third astronaut Major William Gart, played by a baby-faced Jim Hutton. Maj. Gart, of course, has never heard of Ed Harrington, and the newspaper headline remembers only a two-man space mission.

Col. Forbes' detached confusion is punctuated by his own sudden departure. It is Gart's abject terror at Forbes' disappearance, and the realization that he is next, that sells the whole story home.

Director Douglas Heyes had a dynamic style that brought a Film Noir quality to television production. I will have to check out some more of his television work.

Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist (2005)

An extraordinary film watching opportunity!

[8/10 · 20 February 2006]

This is the first instance I can recall in which two directors are given a chance to make the same film with the same principal actor. So "Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist" and "Exorcist: The Beginning" count not only as prequels to the original Excorcist, but as remakes of each other!

I definitely recommend seeing both films. This is an exceedingly RARE opportunity to discover what it is about how a director shapes the fabric and flavor of a film.

Watching a sequel or prequel or remake of a film puts the viewer to the task of deciding whether the film succeeds at continuing the story line and the history of the characters.

It is the rare sequel that exceeds the original, transcends the qualities of its prequel and elevate their genre. Others fall flat and embarrass the memory of the films they are supposed to continue. Remakes, on the other hand have a different set of expectations to satisfy. A remake has to try even harder to validates its existence. Some succeed in this and not only honor the original, but stand as their own films. Others remind us of the elusiveness of a film's successful quality.

Even a shot-for-shot reconstruction like Gus Van Sant's "Psycho" hammers home the fact that you can't make a cat by pulling a cat apart and gluing the pieces back together.

Comparison:

Renny Harlin is fairly masterful at large scale action / adventure flicks, but this is what eventually undoes "Exorcist: The Beginning". The fight against evil in the end turns into a ridiculous chase / monster fight. The devil looks ridiculous and laughable, like a rip-off of the girlfriend vampire from the end of "Fright Night". I hadn't seen anything that cheesy since the giant Tequila worm in "Poltergeist II". In the end, story totally collapses on itself and ruins such a great setup.

Paul Schrader's great successes as a writer and director have been intimate, intense character studies of people under tremendous emotional and spiritual pressure. This is the great success of "Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist". It's not "BOO!" scary as much as very unsettling and creepy, although there are still plenty of suspenseful moments and surprises.

Schrader's handling of the material was far more subtle than Renny Harlin's. Which, I think, makes this film much truer to the -ahem- spirit of the original Exorcist. At the same time, there were parts of Harlin's film that I thought were very effective and I missed them in this version.

We are so invested in Father Merrin at the end that we fear he will succumb to the temptation offered by the devil. And the devil, embodied by Cheche, played brilliantly by Billy Crawford, is so dangerously seductive and sly in this version. He offers Father Merrin the opportunity to undo the event that lead to his loss of faith, but at what cost? In the end, the potential to yield to evil feels much more potent and frightening in this film. It left a stain on my consciousness that I tried to shake for quite some time.

I wish studios would keep up the practice of paying to make more than one version of a film. Sure, the marketing is a nightmare, but you would have more happy viewers.

Zombie Lake (1981)

And France doesn't even HAVE drive-ins to show this at

[5/10 · 8 December 2005]

I've been chewing through the international Zombie genre this year, learning the hallmarks of each culture's contribution. The French? All about the booty!

Zombie Lake is a 190 proof distillation of the Summer Camp Horror movie genre, with one simple rule:

You take your clothes off, you get killed by zombies... Nazi Zombies... almost immediately.

Even an accidental flash of thigh while doing your chores will get you chomped, and Zombie Lake has nudity within the first 33 seconds of the title sequence!

Oh yeah, did I mention the Zombies were a platoon of German soldiers ambushed by French Resistance fighters and thrown in the lake?

Apparently these guys hated the French so much they needed to come back from the dead and munch a bunch of their virgins. The attacks are thinly veiled rape scenarios with lots of groping and clothes tearing.

Jean Rollin is not shy about it either. He stages a Russ Meyeresque underwater ballet, shot from underneath naked swimming girls and almost drowning Nazi Zombies.

No, I would not pay to see this movie, but this is why we have Netflix, n'est-ce pas?

Dottie Gets Spanked (1993 TV Short)

What adults can't rememeber...

[6 May 2003]

This movie was a very gentle and tasteful illustration of a child's early interest in --and awareness of-- sexuality. Unspoiled by the mores and norms of his culture, little Steven Gale observes with innocent but worried curiosity some of the kinkier details of adult life in mid 20th century America. At a time when sexuality was publicly repressed, he glimpses it even in Dotty, his TV comedienne heroine and role model.

This material could have been handled very poorly in the hands of a less sensitive or apt director, but Todd Haynes' interpreted his own script with class and humor. Watch IFC's or Bravo's listings for showings of this little gem.

Millennium (1989)

I saw this in the Theater! The DOLLAR theater...

[17 July 2001]

I had the dubious fortune of seeing this roll of celluloid toilet paper during its VERY short theatrical release. It debuted at a $1.00 movie house in the suburbs and then disappeared until its resurfacing on video years later.

The fact that I only paid $1.00 to see it is the only redeeming factor of this experience.

The pairing of Kristofferson / Ladd SCREAMED "low budget has-been casting"!

The plot was so predictable, my friend and I had practically written it out by the end of the flick.

The setting of the film was supposed to be in Minneapolis, but they didn't even bother filming on location for that. I'm sure they picked some airport in Canada and figured nobody would know the difference.

The time travel / body snatchers element of "story" was mildly interesting, and would have made a good 1 hour New Twilight Zone episode.

Michael Anderson did a much better job of directing Logan's Run, which appears to be his only commercial success in the last quarter of the 20th century.

In short, if you are looking for something to show your movie-geek friends on BAD-MOVIE night, this one will make you the winner for the month (unless somebody else has an out of print "copy of KISS Meets The Phantom Of The Park").

This is one of the few flicks I actually recommend for its overwhelming horribleness!