Continuing on with what I watched on days four and five. I started off with the 13 Nights of Elvira version of Shrunken Heads, but I really can't think of much to say about that one. So we'll skip that one and move on to...
The Robot vs. The Aztec Mummy - Mystery Science Theater version. This was the second non-KTMA episode, so it's a bit rough and the riffing isn't as plentiful, but Joel, Thomas Servo and Crow Thaddeus Robot still get in some great lines here. I've enjoyed plenty of old Mexican horror films like The Black Pit of Dr. M or Curse of the Doll People - even shitters like The Brainiac, but this movie was very hard to get into, even with the riffing. It's got a mummy, a goofy ass robot and no wrestling scenes, I'm not sure what went wrong but this one nearly put me to sleep. Still a decent episode though with riffing, but maybe an episode to watch in 30-minute chunks instead of straight through.
Magdalena, vom Teufel besessen or Magdalena, Possessed by the Devil - Sweet young Magdalena comes down with a slight case of possession. Before you know it, she's tearing off her clothes while yelling "I wanna fuck!" in a badly dubbed voice at anyone with a penis.
For a possession movie there's not much horror in this. There's a pretty gruesome crucifixion, a fun bit with furniture flying all over the place, ghost rape, and Magdalena barfing up what I think was an actual live snake (rare to find non-Hong Kong actors willing to put living creatures in their mouths for the sake of horror) but none of it is too graphic. No head spinning, levitation or pea soup like you get from most Exorcist knock offs, but it's a horror film directed by Sexploitation master Walter Boos, so going in I expected there to more emphasis on frequent nudity than pulse pounding terror. This is absolutely worth a look though because the English dubbing on this makes it one of the funniest comedies I've seen all year. I'm not kidding, I was laughing so loud at times I had to rewind to hear the next line. Especially at the "nun fucker" and "asslicker" lines. Whoever dubbed lead actress Dagmar's voice is a comedy genius. The dubbing makes this almost feel like Dracula (The Dirty Old Man) at times. The voice actor had to know she was being funny.
Magdalena is played by the ridiculously beautiful Dagmar Hedrich, who was supposed to be a teenager in the movie, but was apparently nearly 40 years old when this thing was filmed. I can't find much information about this movie but it came out in 1974 and I read she was born in 1935. She looks maybe 20 in this movie, so I can't believe 1935 is the correct year. Anyone out there know anything about this one?
Disco Beaver From Outer Space - This is a 50-minute National Lampoon "film" from the 70s that had a title so stupid I couldn't not watch it. It's a skit film like Kentucky Fried Movie or Amazon Women on the Moon, only this one forgot to include any jokes. I was shocked to see Harry Shearer listed as one of the writers because while this is watchable, it's barely funny at all. I did laugh once, but the hell if I remember what it was that triggered it. I wasn't going to include this on the Halloween list but there is one segment is called Dragula and features a gay vampire referred to as a "hemosexual". That's as clever as this one gets. Hell of a catchy theme song though.
Meatball Machine Kodoku - This is a sequel to Yudai Yamaguchi's 2005 "splatterpunk" film Meatball Machine. I saw Meatball Machine 10 years ago, but I don't remember much about it, so no idea if this is an actual follow up in terms of story. Yoshihiro Nishimura took on directing duties on this one - he was also responsible for Tokyo Gore Police, Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl and Mutant Girls Squad so if you've seen those you know what to expect.
This was a doozy. No opening credits, we jump right into it. For the first 30 minutes we follow a lonely 50 year old man named Yuji (possibly Yoji) who is dying of cancer, and about to lose his job. He's so sick of being hassled by his boss, his needy mother and even prostitutes he seems almost relieved to know that death will soon take him.
After I'd clicked the button on my remote to check to make sure I was watching the right movie for the third time since it started the title screen appeared. It takes over 30 minutes before the title of the movie shows up onscreen. I remember the Friday the 13th remake taking absurdly long before the title appears, but this is record for me. And with the title comes the madness. The movie suddenly stops dead with the character building and an alien ship appears and drops a large dome around a section the city. Like that show about that city being under the dome. I can't remember what it's called.
Several dozen people end up having parasites injected into their brains and they turn in to crazy ass murder-mutants called Necro-borgs. Yuji is also among the infected but his cancer kills the parasite. He still mutates in a Necro-borg, but he maintains his humanity enough to not turn evil. To try and save his girlfriend and the city he teams up with some sort of 4-person karate police force (one of the Karate Kops looks so much like Jackie Chan he even does some drunken boxing) and much, perhaps too much, mayhem ensues.
This movie is pretty entertaining overall, but I'll be honest, I had a headache after it was over. It's so loud and ridiculously over the top that it gets to be obnoxious pretty quickly. Some scenes are so spastic it looks like they were edited in a blender. It's also quite long at 100 minutes which is just too lengthy for a movie this relentlessly bizarre - I felt almost exhausted afterwards. Still the weirdo gore effects are plentiful and pretty well done, and mostly practical I think. I read that hundreds of gallons of blood were used and that sounds about right. Those of you experienced with this subgenre you should get a kick out of this, otherwise, probably best to steer clear.
TV
Eerie, Indiana - Season 1 Episode 5 - Scariest Home Videos - It's Halloween and Marshall and Simon are stuck watching Simon's little brother Harley. While watching classic Boris von Orloff film Bloody Revenge of the Mummy's Curse the TV goes wonky and Harley switches place with the mummy. Pretty fun episode, but it actually just left me wanting to see the full version of the non-existent Bloody Revenge of the Mummy's Curse. That looked pretty great. Episode features possibly the only surfing mummy scene I've come across.
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| A picture of the kid's costumes. Bill Plympton's George Bush and, uh, Zombie Gorbachev? |
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