WARNING SPOILERS -
IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN ANY OF THESE AND WANT TO, DON'T READ THIS!
In no necessary order....
Dead Alive is my number one pick. Lionel meets Paquita at the local package store. Its love at first sight. She digs this dork. He digs her. His overbearing mother follows them on their first date, because she's a psycho. She gets bitten by the Sumerian Zombie Monkey at the zoo and her wound begins to puss. Lionel realizes something is not right when Mum's skin falls off and Lionel has to glue it on when guests come to dinner.
Mum's ear falls off in her soup as she slurs her speech like she has palsy. She proceeds to
consume it and her puss ends up in the soup. Her dinner guest eats it as we all take in the glory that is this "B" horror masterpiece. Mum eats everyone that comes into her path save Paquita and her greedy brother, who wishes to own her property and riches.
Uncle D*ckface Pervert discovers Mum is
dead after Lionel locks her up in the basement and injects her with animal sedatives to control her "killer" appetite. She gets a nurse who comes to bring her to the hospital to cure her of her ails and a couple of others.
A zombie romance begins between the nurse and another. An adorable baby Zombie is spawned. He's cute, see!!!
Anyway, it all ends in a blood spattered finale when Lionel gets out his rotary mower and chops all the zombies to bits and he takes care of that pesky over-sized Mum, too! Paquita and Lionel are free to love and free of Mum and Uncle Pervert.
Don't Look in the Basement (1973), sometimes referred to as "The Forgotten" is set in
St. Stephens Sanitarium, a remote residential mental hospital headed up by Dr. Stephens. He lets the patients carry on with their illnesses, hoping that one day they will just become miraculously become sane on their own. The head nurse, who is old and can't take it anymore tries to retire. She tells Dr. Stephens know she is not going to be returning.
Judge, who used to actually be a judge is chopping wood and it ends up in the back of Dr. Stephens. He's presumed dead, of course.
Harriet, who owns a plastic doll and believes it is real kills the old nurse before she can leave, because she thinks she stole her baby. She squishes her head in her suitcase while she is finishing up her packing for her departure.
Dr. Geraldine Masters is the only doctor remaining.
The new nurse Dr. Stephens hired before his demise arrives. Charlotte Beale, a young woman, who will be accepting the new nursing position is acquainted with the patients, who include the lobotomized Sam, who has the mental capacity of a child. There is also a nympho who saves the telephone repair man's dead body so she can have her way with his carcass postmortem, although she didn't kill him. Mrs. Callingham is just a creepy rambler who makes zero sense.
Dr. Masters becomes disturbed when a telephone man comes to investigate the faulty phone system at the institution. Mrs. Callingham's tongue is ripped out of her mouth during her sleep, although Masters tells Charlotte that the injury was self-inflicted. Dr. Masters does some creepy things to punish residents and we all realize, she's a patient. Charlotte also realizes Dr. Masters isn't really a doctor. Mrs. Callingham finds a way to communicate that Masters cut out her tongue so she can't tell about Dr. Masters.
Charlotte finds the telephone man (postmortem) hanging out in the kitchen closet.
Nurse Charlotte figures out what is going on and that Masters is a patient, thanks to Judge. The residents think Charlotte is a patient, too. Charlotte finds Dr. Stephens hiding in the basement and kills him by mistake, not realizing his identity. The inmates corner Dr. Masters and Judge Cameron axes her to death.
The Evil Dead, which of course, stars Ash (Bruce Campbell), who takes a trip into the woods with some friends in an isolated cabin. The cabin contains the Sumerian Book of the Dead. The book's accompanying tape is played the contains incantations from the book which releases demons.
Ash's gal, Cheryl, who goes outside to check out the noise gets rap'd by the forest's trees. Damn, the splinters!!! Get out the tweezers! They get their grove on with the ol' gal and when Ash tries to drive her to safety, he finds that the lone bridge that takes them out of the woods is no longer, uh oh!
Cheryl and then pretty much everyone else becomes possessed one by one. There is a part two and this is foreshadowed when all doesn't really end well, well...at the end.
2001 Maniacs (Lionsgate) has the best soundtrack ever! I wish the ZZ Top looking guys would come and sing songs whenever I do things. I wouldn't ever silence them! Its like when Peter from Family Guy decided to wish for theme music that time and his wish was granted, but way cooler!
I love to poke fun at the south and this movie does just that with the overly-friendly-to-the-point- that-its-creepy help of Mayor George W. Buckman, who is portrayed with none other than Robert Englund, who of course nailed the role of Freddy Kreuger in Nightmare on Elm Street and welcomes the detouring college students who took the wrong wrote to Daytona Beach for Spring Break to the annual Guts and Glory Jubilee (a mouth watering barbeque in honor of the Civil War) in their quaint and historically untouched town of the very eerily welcoming Pleasantville, Georgia.
Rest assured, there will be lots of guts. I don't know about glory, though. It was pretty glorious watching a girl be "quartered" by the town's heartthrob. The town houses residents, Hucklebilly, a young man who behaves like a child and "loves" the farm animals as often as necessary, if ya catch my drift as well as the lovely, Peaches, the town's sexpot turns into a sharp toothed succubus thing and eats Cory. Two of the towns residents are sexy blonde cousins who are, let's say overly affectionate with one another.
The armadillo that splats on their windshield on the way and the creepy stares and snickers of the hillbillies on the way when the party of students discusses taking a shortcut makes for killer foreshadowing of the cannibalism that will shortly ensue. This future classic "B" film is a remake of the 1964 film Two Thousand Maniacs, a Herschell Gordon Lewis film.
Trilogy of Terror (1975) is a true made for ABC TV classic, featuring the recently late Karen Black, who takes on four, if you count the twins as two, distinct roles in this short story film diverse film characters in the horror trilogy.
The Zuni Fetish Doll in "Amelia" is the best thing I have ever seen EVER! It has a miniature knife and relentlessly pursues Amelia, who is of course, portrayed by the ever great and recently late Karen Black until she meets her demise and turns into the Zuni Fetish Doll itself with its sharp, awesome, little angry teeth.
It kind of reminds me of Monkey Shines if it were the spirit of a Zuni Warrior instead. Its got all the persistence of the Monkey Shines monkey, that's for sure!
"Julie", appears shy and innocent. She is drugged and date rap'd by a pervy college student
with whom she is forced to carrying on a secret affair, thereafter in a blackmail ploy. He
wondered what she looked like "under all of those clothes". She wins! It was all a ploy to poison and kill this scumbag loser. One point for Professor Julie. Karen Black didn't even want to do it until Richard Burton, who was her husband signed on as the pervy student.
Millecent and Therese, the twins who were really the multiple personalities of one women were classic. The saucy blonde, Therese, used witchcraft against Millicent, the dowdy Debbie Downer and of course ends up screwing herself over, because, NEWS FLASH, she's both of them. Its very clever if you haven't seen it. I suggest it!!! I'll post the
link.
