Night Train To Terror - Vinegar Syndrome Blu-ray Review

Directors: John Carr, Phillip Marshak, Tom McGowan, Jay Schlossberg-Cohen, Gregg C. Tallas

Stars:  John Phillip Law, Richard Moll, Cameron Mitchell,  Mark E. Ridley

Video: 1:85.1
Audio:

Studio: Vinegar Syndrome

Region: ALL 

 Discs: 2 (1 Blu-ray, 1 DVD)

Buy it directly from Vinegar Syndrome
Buy it from Amazon

As I'm trying to get this site back up to speed, I was looking at some of my old unpublished drafts and I realized I had never actually posted my review of this one despite the fact that it was mostly finished. Which is a shame because this movie rules. And since this movie is included in their sale, it'll currently only cost you $12.50 now through the 26th. So here you go, 4-years later.

Night Train to Terror is a 1985 anthology film that was Frankensteined together using three separate films; Cataclysm from 1980, Death Wish Club (aka Gretta) from 1983 and an unfinished 1981 film called Scream Your Head Off.

The wrap-around story tying the three segments together follows a spooky night porter's walk through an equally spooky train. He passes through a car filled with the most shit-tastic band you can imagine, playing a shit-tastic song called Dance With Me. Before I go on, I should mention that you'll hear this song for roughly 12 minutes throughout the duration of the film, so if you don't like the first 10-seconds of this, you're in trouble. In between each of the story segments we are treated to more footage of this same band playing this same exact song. They cut to these guys 5 times in a 90 minute period and it's still that same song every time. These guys aren't one-hit wonders, they're one song wonders. Never mind hits, these guys never got around to writing a second song.

After exiting the music video portion of the train we find two men, God and Satan sitting at a table having a philosophical discussion. The night porter enters the car and Satan asks him for the time. (Wouldn't you think Satan would just know what time it was? And if not, couldn't he just manifest a watch or something?) After the time check, we then watch three stories unfold as God and Satan decide the fate of these unfortunate souls.

Story the first; John Phillip Law is Harry, a guy who is sent to an insane asylum (are there any other kind of asylums?) for accidentally killing his wife after Carnival of Soulsing his car over a bridge. The story is actually a bit hard to follow on this one, but basically the Thunderbirds-faced Harry uses his marionette-like good looks to lure women back to the asylum, where Otto (Richard Moll, Night Court) strips the women, fondles their naked bits, then hacks their bodies up. Once the bodies are hacked the parts are haphazardly strewn about the inside of a cooler, and eventually some other dudes who aren't important enough to have names show up, sort the parts and illegally sell them to medical schools.

The second story tells the tale of Gretta, a beautiful young carnival worker with musical aspirations who is wooed, and forced into porn by an older man. A guy named Glenn attends a smut party (which is like a circle jerk, only minus the circle and the jerk) and catches a glimpse of Gretta in the night's porno screening. He instantly falls madly in love with her and decides he must track the girl down. Luckily it's not considered stalking if the girl you're stalking finds you attractive, so the two begin a relationship.

This doesn't sit well at all with the gigolo who still considers Gretta his property, so he forces Glenn to join a "death club". A death club is basically a club where the members sit around in a circle and perform various Russian Roulette style games (though they never actually play Russian Roulette). For example, during one of their club meetings the club members lie on the floor in sleeping bags while a 1500 pound ball on a rope spins around a room with a saw slowly cutting the rope on each rotation. Once the ball falls, whoever is under the ball gets to be killed by the ball. That's it. That's the game. And every game they play is like that. Every game ends with a person dying brutally. It's not a very well thought out club, but I assume the membership fees are on the low side.

In the third story, we are introduced to an old Jewish man named Weiss who is convinced that Olivier, the Nazi who killed his family is still alive and well 30 years later. Sure, it's possible for a Nazi to be alive 30 years later, but here's the thing, 30 years after the war, Olivier is still a young man in his 20s, which doesn't make any sense unless of course, he is an immortal servant of Satan. Weiss enlists the help of a professional Nazi Hunter lazy cop (Cameron Mitchell) and published atheist James Hansen (Richard Moll, again) to track Olivier down. When the cop is unable to help Weiss, the old man decides to take matters into his own hands. This is when this movie goes from weird-as-shit to full-on insanity.

On paper, these stories don't sound all that weird but strap in before taking the Night Train To Terror because you have no idea of the madness you're about to be subjected to once you hit the play button.  This was one of my favorite discoveries in years. At no point during this movie was I at all sure what was going to happen from one minute to the next. And somehow, despite the fact that this is comprised of three completely unrelated films directed by three different directors, it works, these stories all seem like they were made to be a part of this anthology. If I didn't know this wasn't a planned anthology, I don't think I would've even realized.

If you're someone who needs their movies to make sense, or you know, be good, then Night Train To Terror will probably drive you insane. However, if you're an adventurous trash fan like myself, looking for somewhere to hurl your own insults and bad jokes you must seek out a copy at once.

Things to watch for:
Satan asks a guy for the time
Headectomy
Extreme Saxophone
Claymation Dismemberment
8 Heads in a Meat Locker
Satanic Surgery

Special Features:

Blu-ray/DVD Combo Pack

 Interview with Producer/Director Jay Schlossberg-Cohen

Interview with Assistant Editor Wayne Schmidt

Commentary by The Hysteria Continues

Theatrical Trailer

Bonus film Gretta (DVD only)

Vinegar Syndrome has done their usual stellar work on this release, as you'll see from the screenshots below, the transfer on this release looks incredible. Although it's listed as an interview, this is actually an audio commentary from Jay Schlossberg-Cohen, and it's very informative about how this oddity came to be. There's also a commentary by The Hysteria Continues team which is always a welcome feature. The DVD included in this combo pack also includes the full version of the film Gretta that the middle portion of Night Train to Terror is lifted from.

As I was going through to make screenshots I ended up with around 70 shots because there is just so much cool shit going on in this movie that I couldn't stop clicking the capture button. The effects range from morbidly grotesque to mind-shatteringly terrible. On more than one occasion a character's death is depicted by Celebrity Death Match level claymation figures. If you can look at these screenshots and not purchase this immediately after, you're a stronger person than me.

Halloween Moviethon - A Taste of Blood, Cannibal Campout, Amityville 7: It's A Mirror This Time

I've already fallen way behind on keeping up with the posting here. I've actually watched probably 20 movies since I posted but I've had to start working again after a few months off, so my posting time has been limited lately. Turns out laying around watching movies for months and then jumping right back into bust-ass manual labor makes you kind of tired. But here's my thoughts on a few of my latest viewings. Try to get some more up sooner this time.

A Taste of Blood or Herschell Gordon Lewis' Dracula

John Stone receives a package from England with a couple of very old bottles of brandy inside. Like the best booze, it comes with instructions. He must toast to his ancestor before enjoying his newly inherited beverage. Long story short, this "brandy" actually happens to be the blood of Dracula, and with the unholy plasma now coursing through his veins John turns into a ghoulish bloodsucker whose white peeling makeup makes it look like he took a run through the Krispy Kreme glazer.

This is the closest to a prestige picture we ever got from Mr. Lewis. It looks like more money was spent than usual and the acting, while not good, is still quite a bit better than usual. I didn't notice any really bad line readings until that guy with the dog showed up at the end. Why was this guy in the movie? His attempts at comedy relief were pretty pitiful and he flubs a couple of his half dozen lines, including a doozy where he refers to his "beloved" dog Impy as fucking Picket.

Unfortunately at 117 minutes and with none of the patented H.G. Gonzo Gore this movie really drags ass. Not bad at all, just too uneventful to justify the epic running time. Definitely worth a look for Herschell fans, but if you're new to his work, start elsewhere. Start at Blood Feast and Two Thousand Maniacs and work your way to this one later.

Best credit: Bill Kozak as "Man Running from Tomb"

Cannibal Campout 

The best part of this movie is the disclaimer at the beginning:

WHAT YOU ARE ABOUT TO SEE IS

BASED UPON TRUE ACCOUNTS

AND CONJECTURE AND IS A

DELINEATION OF ACTUAL EVENTS

WHICH TRANSPIRED AT AN

INDETERMINATE TIME TO PERSONS

OF LESS THAN GENUINELY

EQUIVOCAL AUTHENTICITY

That opening is ridiculous, it's a nearly Monty Python level of absurdist comedy. Naturally I thought this was going to be hilarious. That little bit of text is as funny as it gets.

The movie goes like this. Four dorky white people, including director McBride head out for a weekend of camping. While driving through the woods a couple of miles from their final destination they are attacked by a couple of bumpkins in overalls. They manage to escape, but as to be expected from something called Cannibal Campout, the woodfolk soon find the camping yuppies and the gut eating commences.

Now, these people aren't going to any specific campsite, they could've driven another 20 miles in any direction and camped there. Nope, these toolbags drive a mile or two further into the woods and set up camp anyway. Their logic being that the guys who were hanging out in the woods "probably don't even live around here". Except those guys absolutely look like people who live in the woods. Not near the woods. Literally in the woods. I'm from the South, I've known people who lived in the woods. You know who they looked like? These guys:

There are some decent enough gore effects (including an epic cleaved mullet) but I couldn't really get to into this one. I liked Woodchipper Massacre, which is considered much worse, but this one just didn't work for me. Campout is well made from a technical standpoint given the budget, but this one is actually kind of grim and depressing compared to the other SOV stuff I've seen - with friends forced to eat each other's intestines and a month old fetus sexed before being devoured. Maybe I'm softening up in my old age, but the more torture-y gore scenes here kind of left a bad taste in my mouth.

Bonus points! This movie features what might be the worst movie scene ever filmed, and I'm not talking about the fetus eating scene. When the rapebillies track down the campers after a grueling 8 minute search one of them quips "It's a small world". For most movies, after this sentence the actor might say something more, or another actor might speak. Nope. This guy repeats his line a few more times. Then he proceeds to say "small" another 20 times (literally). "Small, small, small, small..." You get the point. This whole scene goes on FOREVER. Think of the longest thing you can think of and double it. It made me yell "Oh, my fuck!" That phrase doesn't even make sense but I needed to hear something other than the word "small" - anything else, and that's what my brain and mouth collectively came up with. I haven't heard a man say the word "small" this many times since the last time I was forced to listen to the Mellencamp song at work.

Amityville: A New Generation

In this fifth or sixth Amityville sequel a mirror from the original house finds its way into the home of an art douche named Keyes Terry. Why do screenwriters love to give their characters stupid names? I spent half the movie wondering why his girlfriend was calling him by his last name like she was a college bro before I realized Keyes was supposed to be his first name. Keyes is not a name. Nobody has ever been named Keyes in the history of ever. I checked. How about Terry Keyes?

This is about on par with the post-original trilogy sequels I've seen. Which is all of them minus Dollhouse. A good supporting cast featuring David Naughton, Richard Roundtree and Terry O'Quinn (see, Terry is a perfectly acceptable first name for a man) and a few hilarious death scenes, but nothing particularly memorable. For me, the coolest thing about this movie was actually this darkwave song by a band called WILL.

Halloween Moviethon - Better Watch Out

“Set in a quiet American suburb on a snowy evening on the lead up to Christmas, Ashley (Olivia DeJonge), the regular babysitter for Deandra (Virginia Madsen) and Robert Lerner (Patrick Warburton), has to defend their twelve-year-old son (Levi Miller) from strangers breaking into the house – only to discover that this is far from a normal home invasion.”

Man, I really, really wanted to love this one, but I guess it just wasn't meant to be. On the positive side it's well shot and there's some excellent acting from Olivia DeJonge and Ed Oxenbould (reunited from The Visit). The first 30 minutes are enjoyable and pretty suspenseful, unfortunately there's a twist around this point and the story goes in a completely out of left field direction that really didn't work for me. With each new turn the story took my enjoyment dropped a little bit more. In a world of cookie cutter storytelling I really appreciate any film that tries to do something out of the ordinary and unexpected, but I just did not like how anything played out here, at all, outside of maybe the last 30-seconds. Without that last few seconds I was ready to yell "Oh, fuck you!" at my TV. The villain's plan in this movie is so unbelievably complicated and I still can't really figure out the point of their plan. What were they trying to accomplish and why? I'd say more, but, I've gotta stay vague because it's one of those movies where going into to too many specific details will spoil the movie.

I've been wanting  to see this since I first heard about it when it premiered at some festivals about a year ago. It was described as being a fun and wildly funny dark comedy. While it was fun at times in the beginning, a large portion of the remainder of this movie is people duct taped to chairs while an irritating dickhead monologues at them. "Victims strapped to chair" scenes just bore the Christ out of me, and this movie is mostly "victims strapped to chair" scenes. It stopped being fun or funny the second people get taped up and while it was fairly unpredictable I didn't get much entertainment value out of the rest of the film. I mainly just found myself annoyed by the absolutely obnoxious villain and the waste of a solid premise. I honestly think this is getting so much praise because of the scene that reenacts one of the booby traps from Home Alone. It's not even a particularly well done scene, but people really, really like Home Alone so I think this scene is somehow influencing the positive reviews. That sounds ridiculous, but I can't figure it out otherwise.

The reviews of this remind me a bit of The Belko Experiment. Not similar movies at all really, but it's another one that everyone praised as being fun, witty and funny. I saw it alone in a theater opening day and I found that one to be an unpleasant tone-deaf mess that wasn't fun, witty or funny at all. I just didn't what everyone else was talking about. I did enjoy Better Watch Out more than The Belko Experiment, which I actually kind of hated. But still, I've been watching this kind of stuff for 30-years, you'd think I'd stop letting pre-release hype pull me in, but it gets me every time. 

Definitely check it out though if you're curious, I seem to be very much in the minority as someone who didn't love this one. I read several reviews after the movie was over and Kim Newman was the only one who didn't give this a glowing review. If you are interested in watching, stay far away from the trailer though, it gives away the twist and contains a major, major spoiler.

Halloween Moviethon Day 4+5 - Meatball Machine Kodoku, Magdalena, Possessed By The Devil

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.

A picture of the kid's costumes. Bill Plympton's George Bush and, uh, Zombie Gorbachev?

Halloween Moviethon Day 3: Part II - Satan's Bed

Batas Impian Ranjang Setan aka Satan's Bed - Time to get weird here. This is not the Yoko Ono film released by Something Weird, this is an Indonesian rip-off of Nightmare on Elm Street from 1986 that halfway through gets bored and decides to go Poltergeist on us instead. This is by all counts an undeniably bad movie, but I actually really liked it. There's plenty of dull stretches, especially in the first half, but once it gets going it's pretty rewarding for fans of tacky, absurd crap. There's actually a pretty spooky atmosphere here, good - though probably swiped from better movies - music and cheap, but frequently hilarious special effects. Have you seen ever a third rate Freddy Krueger and a sexy Dutch lady pull their own heads off and throw them at a shaman? I have.

Al Lewis is The Joker as Leatherface in Al Adamson's Texas Chain Saw Massacre

Things to watch for:

• The "Freddy" character here, who is in fact "The Devil", looks like a papier-mâché Leatherface.
• The spooky Tina in a body bag scene shows up here, though in this she's called Nina and she looks more like a cellophane wrapped gift basket than a dead body from a morgue.
• Exploding coffins and levitating skeletons.
• The dolls behind this girl's bed were far creepier than anything here that was intended to be creepy:

Addams Family Season 1 Episode 7: Halloween with the Addams Family - Bank robbers are mistaken as trick or treaters in their 40s and invited into stately Addams Manor to partake in some extra spooky Halloween festivities like "Bobbing For Crabs."

Ghost Whisperer Season 2 Episode 6: A Grave Matter - This episode takes place around Halloween. It's not any more Halloweeny than any other episode of the show, but there are pumpkins and shit. David Paymer plays the ghost of a dickhead writer named Godfrey who is annoyed because his body is in the wrong guy's grave and the wife of the wrong guy won't stop weeping at (not) his grave. Long story short, Godfrey was struck by lightning and killed. Wrong guy swaps wallets with dead Godfrey so his wife can collect his life insurance money. I know it's a show, but we're going by wallets to identify corpses now? He still had a head and fingers - he was burned a bit from the lightning, but he wasn't Sergeant Howie burned.

This is such an unbelievably sappy show, but I've always had a thing for Jennifer Love Hewitt, so this show is watchable enough for me once in a while. I find it funny that she's often dressed to show off pretty substantial amounts of cleavage while she's relaying sad messages from these dead people to their mourning loved ones. This is what she wore to a funeral in one episode:

Though, to be fair, this is what the corpse was wearing:

Cult of Chucky - Halloween Moviethon Day 3

Yesterday was day 3 of my month long Halloween moviethon. I watched a few things, but my thoughts on Cult of Chucky ran pretty long, so I thought it might as well get its own post. Plus I've gotta leave and I don't have time to write any more now.

Cult of Chucky - Child's Play the VIIth was released yesterday and it already seems to have a good share of negative reviews on several sites, but I've got to disagree with the negativity, I thought it was a blast. Certainly not perfect, but I thought it moved along at a nice pace, had some fairly inventive deaths, it was frequently funny without being too wink, wink (excluding that groaner of a Jennifer Tilly joke) and most importantly for a movie like this, it was fun. Chucky's dialog is usually a high point of these movies, and they've figured out a way to have multiple possessed Chuckys in this one so we have some Chucky on Chucky on Chucky banter which is pretty hilarious. I can see why some might not love Cult of Chucky, but I'm a bit baffled as to why many seem to outright hate it.

Cult unites lead characters from each era of the series. We get the return of Fiona Dourif from Curse, Alex Vincent from the original two and Bride and Seed's Jennifer Tilly, who, not trying to be mean here, is starting to look like a drag version of herself. Sure, Tilly and Vincent were in the last one, but only barely. Tilly's scene in Curse is about a minute long and Vincent's scene took place after the credits, so there's a good chance some people missed that entirely. Actually, come to think of it, I believe I stopped the movie right when the credits started and had to put the disc back in after I read about the post credit scene online. Both actors have more to do this time.

I watched the unrated version (why is there any other option on the disc?) and the gory highlights include a de-nogginizing, a champagne bottle evisceration, a couple of heads being obliterated by a pair of shoes and an de-tongueing. Of a person, not one of the shoes. It's the most gruesome of the entire series.

Dialog highlight: "You blood fucking morons!" I have no idea what this means. I thought I misheard it but I rewinded twice and turned on the subtitles and apparently she actually said this. See:

Like a Marvel movie this one has a fun little post credit scene, so be sure to stick around for that. While I'm mentioning that, this seems like as good a place as any for a rant. Anyone else sick of having to stay through the entire credits to see a brief scene in these Marvel movies? I always see them in the theater so there's 20 minutes of trailers, then Fathom events commercials and that Coke ad with the ice and the straw that goes on FOREVER - by the time the actual 2+ hour movie is over I've already been in the theater for 2 hours and 40 minutes. I don't live here, I've got shit to do, don't make me stay another 10 minutes watching names of people I don't know who did jobs on the movie that I don't understand (what in the fuck is a "Breakdown artist"?) to see another 10 seconds of footage.

Note: Screenshot is from the DVD, Blu-ray looks much better.
Second Note: This post holds the world record for the number of times the name Chucky appears in a paragraph.

Heavy Metal Movies: Guitar Barbarians, Mutant Bimbos & Cult Zombies Amok in the 666 Most Ear- and Eye-Ripping Big-Scream Films Ever!

Today I want to point you guys toward an amazing new movie guide that's recently come out from Brooklyn's Bazillion Point Books: Heavy Metal Movies, also known under its complete - and way more metal title Heavy Metal Movies: Guitar Barbarians, Mutant Bimbos & Cult Zombies Amok in the 666 Most Ear- and Eye-Ripping Big-Scream Films Ever! 

From the back cover:

Heavy metal and high-thrill cinema have been joined together like mutant twins since before the band Black Sabbath adopted the name of a chilling Italian horror film. The unadulterated journey of Heavy Metal Movies spans concert movies and trippy midnight flicks, inspirational depictions of ancient times and future apocalypses, and raw handheld digital video obsessions. As brash, irreverent, and visceral as both the music and the movies themselves, Heavy Metal Movies is the ultimate guidebook to the complete molten musical cinema experience.

Exploding with way over 666 true headbanger classics—raging with disturbing documentaries, bulging barbarians, Satanic shockers, spluttery slashers, post-nuke dystopias, carnivorous chunk-blowers, undead gut-munchers, midnight mind-benders, concert films, killer cameos—plus witches, werewolves, bikers, aliens, lesbian vampires, and vengeful vikings galore...the heaviest sin-ematic sensations of all time!

The massive tome that is Heavy Metal Movies starts off, fittingly enough, with an introduction from McPadden who explains how he first discovered and fell in love with these kinds of movies in a chapter titled Mighty Monsters, Delinquent Double Features, and Sticky Seats: My Life in Heavy Metal Movies. In an interview with Fangoria from a couple of months back McPadden explained exactly what he considers a "Heavy Metal Movie":

“First up, there are the obvious documentaries and concert films; then come narrative movies where the music is an essential subject, like THIS IS SPINAL TAP. From there, it’s films where characters love heavy metal, such as WAYNE’S WORLD, and/or the musicians appear on screen, as with Lemmy in HARDWARE and EAT THE RICH. Rob Zombie’s features fall under this same umbrella. After that, you’ve got movies that inspired band names and/or song lyrics, and soundtracks dominated by heavy metal certainly qualify—AC/DC’s work in MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE, for example. Now, past the direct, tangible connections is the really interesting stuff, where you have to say, ‘I know a heavy metal movie when I see it.’ This is the realm of aesthetic embodiments, influences and inspirations—movies that crystalize and catapult forward the spirit of heavy metal: CONAN THE BARBARIAN, THE EXORCIST, the MAD MAX and TERMINATOR series, George A. Romero’s zombie epics, Italian cannibal gross-outs, ’80s slasher films, banned ‘video nasties’—even something as beautiful as 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY.”


Following Mike's intro, we get 5 pages from Alice Cooper, himself no stranger to heavy metal movies having appeared films like Monster Dog and Wayne's World. Alice gleefully discusses his several movie appearances starting with his own concert film Welcome To My Nightmare, all the way up to his most recent appearance in Tim Burton's critically maligned (but actually not that bad) Dark Shadows.

After the Alice Cooper piece we get into the meat of the book, over 666 reviews of the most metal movies of all time. As you can tell from the bit I quoted from Fangoria's interview Mike covers a massive variety of film genres; horror, comedy, horror comedy, metal documentaries, sword & sorcery, biker flicks, disco slashers, animated viking films, post-apocalytic frog-people films - even the odd metal celebrity sex tape or two. From true classics like This Is Spinal Tap to some more obscure concert videos from bands like 3 Inches of Blood and The Obsessed all the way to delightfully daft turkeys like Howard the Duck (the best movie ever made that features a scene where Lorraine McFly fucks a midget in a duck suit), Mike has included a little something for everyone in his book.

McPadden and I seem to share a very similar taste in cinema. I've seen over 2,000 movies in my lifetime - in fact for the past few weeks I've been slowly compiling a list on IMDB of every movie I've ever seen just to see how many, no matter how awesome (I Saw The Devil), awesomely bad (Shock 'em Dead) or just plain mind-rapingly awful (Goremet Zombie Chef From Hell) - and it's amazing to see how many of the movies I've seen and loved appear in this book. I can't go a full page without finding a favorite, and better still I'm finding tons of stuff I'm dying to check out after reading Mike's reviews.

McPadden's writing is insightful and frequently hysterical which makes Heavy Metal Movies a pretty difficult book to put down once you start reading. If you enjoy heavy metal, heavy metal movies, or even if you just happen to enjoy more offbeat movie guides like Bleeding Skull, or Cinema Sewer I definitely recommend picking this book up at once. It's currently on sale directly from Bazillion Point Books, and many other online retailers like Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

Slumber Party Massacre - Scream Factory Blu-ray Review

Director: Amy Holden Jones (as Amy Jones)

Writer: Rita Mae Brown  
Stars: Michelle Michaels, Robin Stille, Michael Villella
Year: 1982
Studio: Scream Factory
Video: 1080p / 23.976 fps / 16:9 / High Profile 4.1
Audio: DTS-HD Master Audio             English         1627 kbps       2.0 / 48 kHz / 1627 kbps / 24-bit (DTS Core: 2.0 / 48 kHz / 1509 kbps / 24-bit)
DTS-HD Master Audio             English         1993 kbps       2.0 / 48 kHz / 1993 kbps / 24-bit (DTS Core: 2.0 / 48 kHz / 1509 kbps / 24-bit)
Runtime: 1:16:14.611 (h:m:s.ms)
Subtitles: Yep, English


"When Trish (Michele Michaels) decides to invite her high school girls’ basketball teammates over for a slumber party, she has no idea the night is going to end with an unexpected guest– an escaped mental patient and his portable power drill – crashing the party in the cult classic, The Slumber Party Massacre."

Shout! Factory released the Slumber Party Massacre Collection on DVD back in October of 2010, and now their Scream Factory line has given the first film a hi-def upgrade. I know I'll probably sound like a slasher amateur here when I admit this, but this was somehow my first time viewing Slumber Party Massacre. I have no excuse for this. I've seen hundreds of slashers, from the standards like the Friday The 13ths and Halloweens to off the wall obscure junkers like Hauntedween and Fatal Pulse, but this one has managed to elude me for 30 years. I'm a big fan of Slumber Party Massacre Part II, and the sequel shows many of the deaths from the first film in flashbacks and I guess I've seen the sequel so many times that I just assumed I'd already seen the original. I'm kind of an idiot, that's probably what actually happened.

After being exposed to the cheap and wonderfully campy Part II so many times over the past 20 years I was pretty surprised to see that this first film is much more serious and professionally made film. It's still a bit goofy at times, but it's actually a pretty great little mean-spirited slasher that should have a larger fanbase. If you're like me and have somehow neglected to check this one out before, this new disc from Scream is a great way to see it for the first time.

As I've stated on this site before I'm by no means an expert on A/V quality, but I think the new 1080p 24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.78:1 transfer looks great. It's definitely a nice improvement over the DVD, which you can see in the comparison shots below. DVD on top, Blu-ray on bottom. Click to enlarge

Die Monster Die - Scream Factory Blu-ray Review

Director: Daniel Haller

Writer: Jerry Sohl, based on a story by H.P. LovecraftStars:

Stars: Boris Karloff, Nick Adams, Freda Jackson

Year: 1965

Runtime: 1:18:36.837

Total Bitrate: 33.44 Mbps

Video: MPEG-4 AVC Video / 30000 kbps / 1080p / 23.976 fps / 16:9 / High Profile 4.1

Audio: English / DTS-HD Master Audio / 2.0 / 48 kHz / 1747 kbps / 24-bit (DTS Core: 2.0 / 48 kHz / 1509 kbps / 24-bit)

Subtitles: Negative
Release Date: January 21, 2014

Scream Factory continues cranking out classic A.I.P. horror with their January 21st Blu-ray release Karloff's Die, Monster, Die!


Die, Monster, Die! (which is German for The, Monster, The!) was based on Lovecraft's "The Colour Out of Space" and directed by Daniel Haller, who went on to do The Dunwich Horror, another A.I.P. film based on a Lovecraft story. The film was previously released by MGM on their Midnite Movies line and later actually paired up with The Dunwich Horror when MGM later reissued several of their Midnite Movies as double features.


The film (known as Monster of Terror in the UK) moves at a bit of a deliberate pace - like a lot of the A.I.P. stuff I've seen - but there are more than enough frights and twists to keep the film constantly engaging and entertaining. It' doesn't rank up there with the best of the genre like Pit & The Pendulum or House of Usher, but it's certainly a lot of spooky fun. With solid acting from Adams and Karloff (who performs in a wheelchair for nearly the entire film), an appropriately eerie score from Hammer regular Don Banks, and some wonderfully haunting imagery (see screens 7 and 8) make this one well worth a look for Gothic Horror fans.

Saturn 3 - Scream Factory Blu-ray/DVD Combo Pack

Saturn 3

"Some “thing” is wrong on Saturn 3"

Directors: Stanley Donen, who replaced John Barry

Writers: Martin Amis, John Barry

Starring: Kirk Douglas, Harvey Keitel, Farrah Fawcett, Hector the Robot

Year: 1980

Runtime: 97 Minutes

Video: 1.85:1 1080p

Audio: DTS-HD 5.1, DTS-HD 2.0

Subtitles: English
Discs: 2 - 1Blu-ray, 1 DVD

Reversible Cover: Nope

Studio: Scream Factory

Region: A

Release Date: 12/03/13

Adam (Kirk Douglas) and Alex (Farrah Fawcett) are two scientists stationed deep beneath the barren surface of Saturn's third moon, Titan. They live together in idyllic isolation in a space-age Eden, seeking new forms of food for an exhausted planet Earth. Their perfect world is interrupted when Benson (Harvey Keitel) arrives as Saturn goes into eclipse and cuts off communication with the rest of the solar system. Aided by his 'helper robot' Hector, James reduces life to one single purpose…survival. The robot becomes violently unmanageable. For Adam and Alex, their only hope is to flee, but the homicidal robot stands in their way. Produced and directed by legendary filmmaker Stanley Donen (Singin’ In The Rain, Charade and Seven Brides For Seven Brothers), Saturn 3 is a pulse-pounding study in sci-fi suspense!



Of all the things I've heard about Saturn 3, none of them were good. Critics panned it upon its release, even today it's currently sitting at a wimpy 4.8 on the IMDB. It flopped pretty hard at the box office and was even nominated for a few Razzies during the very first ceremony. But, I don't know, maybe my years of seeking out and viewing terrible obscure trash horror films has given me a high movie pain tolerance, but I didn't find it to be all that bad. Sure, I wouldn't call it good, it's decent at best - the acting is pretty hokey, the script is subpar with a story that doesn't really go anywhere, but it's certainly not the laughable mess I was prepared for.

Vincent Price Collection - Scream Factory Blu-ray Review

Scream Factory's long-awaited Vincent Price Collection is out this week and I can't recommend it enough to fans of Price or Gothic Horror in general. It's really an amazing collection of films featuring some of Price's all-time greatest performances. Films like Pit & The Pendulum and The Fall of the House of Usher are absolute classics, but every film in the set is wonderful and well worth owning. Even the weakest film in the set The Haunted Palace is still pretty excellent and highly watchable.

I think a lot of the seasoned horror fans out there will have already seen most, if not all of these films and if you enjoy them you'll definitely want to pick this set up as the transfers are a marked improvement over the previously released DVDs. Judging by the screenshot comparisons over at the Beav  Usher's transfer is a bit better (though Scream's includes the overture which was missing from the Arrow), but overall everything here looks and sounds really great.

 The set includes the following films:

• THE PIT & THE PENDULUM
• THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH
• THE HAUNTED PALACE
• THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER
• THE ABOMINABLE DR. PHIBES
• WITCHFINDER GENERAL

Most of the films in this set are great fun, especially The Pit & The Pendulum and The Abominable Dr. Phibes. I have to say that I didn't enjoy The Witchfinder General quite as much - not because it's bad, it's a fine film, one of the best of the set with what is possibly Price's finest (and easily his darkest) performance, but it's way more grim and upsetting than what I'm used to from Vince and it doesn't quite fit in with the rest of the set. The other films have some dark subject matter, of course, but they do maintain a sense of fun for the most part. Witchfinder General is very dark, almost oppressively so, and while it's well made I didn't find it particularly enjoyable to watch. The several scenes of torture actually got to me a bit, which I guess was the point, but I ultimately found myself feeling a little bummed out by the time the credits rolled.

The Pit & The Pendulum

Click each image for full size. Note: The posters are huge.

Director: Roger Corman

Writer: Richard Matheson (screenplay)

Stars: Vincent Price, Barbara Steele, John Kerr, Luana Anders

Video: 1080p High-Definition Widescreen (2:35.1)

Audio: DTS Master Audio Mono

Year: 1961

Runtime: 80 Minutes
Bonus Features:

• Vintage and rare Introduction and final words from Vincent Price
• Rare Prologue
• Audio Commentary with Roger Corman
• Theatrical Trailer
• Still Gallery