Return of the Evil Dead

Return of the Evil Dead (Attack of the Blind Dead, Mark of the Devil 5) Directed By Amando de Ossorio, starring The Blind Dead (1973).

After suffering through Night of the Seagulls and Horror of the Zombies, I never wanted to see another chapter of the crab god worshiping, flesh eating Spaniard klansmen ever again. But then I just got a Shudder trial (thanks Kristin) and figured I'd turn on a background movie and do some more important shit while it was on. I was flabbergasted and compelled to stop everything and watch!

We see the Templars with beards and this time covered in human flesh, pissing off villagers who shove torches into their eye sockets--so that's how they went blind! As far as sloppy and brief storylines go, I'll take this over speculation on how they got this way. The effects were so appallingly bad that I was locked in its shitty Eurotrash tractor beam. Bad dubbing, wacky dialogue and hideous actors--of course it was irresistible!

this Medieval Lasik eye surgery is top notch!

There's a creepy village idiot with Bell's Palsy who seems like the Knights of Templar's version of Renfield. He's eagerly awaiting their return and does their bidding. The Blind Dead have no loyalty of course, just like those cartoon Christian Chick tracts that show Satan cackling as his followers cry and burst into flames.

Whatever babe, unibrows are making a come back!

Oh man, my favorite part, which is a stroke of genius is when a blonde who just narrowly escapes a zombie attack hops onto one of their dead horses and splits the scene! I heard David Mamet ghost wrote the script, I guess that's why it's so clever this time around.

I'm actually kind of shocked that this unassuming sequel is just as good as the first (which I dug like a makeshift Jimmy cross--get it dig)? What am I the Cryptkeeper now?

features I Want My Baby Back by Jimmy Cross.

The crusty knights must've had a busy schedule or something because they seem to usually be shot in "day for night" style and at one point the sun just rises up out of nowhere, Ed Wood would think "don't worry, no one cares, it's fine" and bitch about the 711 ruining the neighborhood (read "Nightmare In Ecstasy" to appreciate that reference).

Hey Leggo my Chili Cheese Taquito! 

Vivian, who is one of the strongest female characters I've ever seen in a trashy Euro flick looks kind of like Franca Stoppi or Isela Vega, the girlfriend in Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia. The scene where the blind horsemen crash the party is almost as good if not better than Nightmare 2!

Their horses keep changing from white to brown, I think the continuity advisor was tanked, but who cares this entire movie is a barrel of laughs! To be fair, they had an inch thick of VHS cobwebs to obscure the fuckups that nobody noticed at the time. I doubt Amando de Ossario thought anyone would bother turning this into an HD quality transfer. There's still lots of ambiguous mystery surrounding their origin and folklore but you may find yourself not caring as much especially since the entertainment barometer is off the scale!

A FUN SEQUEL, BETTER THAN A HOT POKER IN THE EYESOCKET!

mummified beach blast!

Manhattan Baby

Manhattan Baby (Evil Eye, Eye of the Evil Dead, Possessed) Directed By Lucio Fulci, Starring Christopher Connelly (1982).

The career of Lucio Fulci is such treacherous territory, once you've ventured beyond The Beyond, Zombie, Gates of Hell (which I still have trouble calling City of the Living Dead), it all gets super wonky! I remember thinking "Hey I kind of liked this movie" the first time I watched it, it wasn't so bad, but oh how wrong I was! Sometimes sitting through a Fulci flick is like going into a maggot and broken glass infested funhouse or an insufferable dinner at Waffle House and making it back without severe stomach trauma. That's the deal with this director, most of his later work is trash, but it's very enjoyable for those that can tolerate it. I also had the lowest expectations possible viewing MB so that helped. I'm always fascinated by the scholarly approach to Fulci's career with books like Stephen Thrower's Beyond Terror or the recent Splintered Visions by fellow Monster writer Troy Howarth, how do they make him look so classy? The maggot maven is an extremely fascinating figure more so in my opinion than Argento. I gotta plunk down 30 bucks for each book to see if they try to make some semblance of Dardano Sachetti's nonexistent script.

Heh Heh I'm so high right now

Susie (played by the lifeless Brigitta Boccoli) is the subject of this film and while on vacation in Egypt with her archeologist parents, weird shit starts to run amok. The little girl that plays her is instantly unlikeable and awkwardly smiles a lot in a vacant way. My favorite of most LF's work is the score and I love Fabio Frizzi's funky soothing track complete with chimey magical sounds and Scooby Doo like breakdown. And what the hell, throw in a little Gates Of Hell music while we're at it. Later on the soundtrack basically turns into a best of Frizzi mixtape and it's never a good sign when a current film would rather emphasize the music from his own film catalog (ahem, excluding Tarantino's rampant use of scores ganked from other movies, that's called on homage right)?

A scary looking foreign lady with those uncomfortable scratchy looking white eye contact lenses hands Suze an Osiris medallion in a tomb where all the trouble begins. Meanwhile her dad played by human Gerry Anderson Super Macromation puppet come to life Chris Connelly, veteran of a bazillion 70's TV shows and Raiders of Atlantis, falls into a pit and narrowly evades sharp impaling spikes (his guide was not so lucky)! Connelly has Thunderbirds like features and had more personality in the biker fish flick than he does here.

Fulci obviously hates Egypt and made this film to deter people from visiting there, otherwise why would he make it seem like blue lightning bolts will shoot into your eye sockets and random earthquakes just happen out of nowhere.

Holy Shit! This lasik surgey is oddly very soothing

So, Suzi's Dad (Connelly) goes blind temporarily from the mysterious bolts which is unintentionally hysterical. Don't get too comfy though because shit head Bob (Giovanni Frezza) from House by the Cemetery shows up as the brother! At least that middle aged woman that dubbed his voice is gone and he sort of sounds like he's dubbed by a child.

I'm here for my Geordi La Forge audition

Connolly looks so stupid with Giant white bandages under his glasses and fumbles around for coffee (is he gonna call in "blind" to his job). Suzi's mom Emily (Laura Lenzi, no relation to Umberto) works in an office with Carlo De Mejo the bearded a-froed dude from Terror Express and Gates who must be a clowny fellow because he wears Groucho glasses. The lightning storm that happens as the two kids sleep is a blatant Poltergeist rip off. I like how as the girl walks down the hall, they just throw in the best of Lucio mix tape, making you well aware that his best work behind him.

Will Ferrell back with another wacky comedy nobody wanted

Suzi's eyes light up with blue lasers as her brother messes around with a Rubik's Cube then steps into an ethereal doorway (maybe he's going to the Beetle Juice's waiting room). Even though all this weird shit goes down, none of it is spooky, it all registers as silly and off the wall retarded. Oh yeah and Lucio does one of his Hitchcockian cameos again, playing a guy named Dr. Forester, like the one from MST3K.

I forced TV's Frank to swallow sheep guts too, that's the only way I can feel happiness

A cobra shows up to bite Emily's mom and oh yeah, their closet door teleports to The Egyptian desert, which I guess is some more of that creative Poltergeist theft. I've heard that the Charlton Heston mummy trash flick The Awakening from 1980 may have influenced the director as well, I've never watched it though. The only Spielberg influence I can think of is that Fulci took the "door way into another dimension" aspect and made it a gateway to Egypt, sounds like a Dio song. There's an elevator death scene with an African American actor that reminded me of the one in the Omen 2 (which is better than people give it credit for). The storyline doesn't even make the slightest sense and the whole thing is a train wreck. 

But if you're familiar with Fulci you won't really mind and I've even developed a craving to watch dubbed people be nonsensical for an hour and a half its just entertaining for some illogical reason.

SUPER DUMB, BUT WHAT DID YOU EXPECT?

YOU PAID HOW MUCH FOR THAT MUFFLER?

The Trail

The Trail (Jui Gwai Chat Hung) Directed By Ronny Yu, Starring Kent Cheng (1983).

Here's a Golden Harvest epic directed by Ronny Yu that is not in the famed Deep Red Catalog, but it got such a high rating in the underground Hong Kong video trading circuit, that I paid Skunkape in grape hubba bubba (which is street level primo weed) to procure a copy for your benefit, we're just doing you readers a favor so don't forget to tip your dealer. 

   Yu is the now lame-o director who used to churn out magical shit like Bride with the White Hair, since then he took over the later Chucky sequels and Freddy Vs. Jason (try to scrub those out of your subconscious right now or you will get a preconceived opinion about his work)!

   I recommend viewing this slightly sober, because there's a rich tapestry of storyline that you may accidentally overlook. Ricky Hui and Kent "Fatty" Cheung (from Mr. Vampire and Run and Kill) show up at a village that shuts down very early for some odd reason. They play the Ennio Morricone score from John Carpenter's The Thing periodically throughout the film. 

Oh Shit, is that the Wicked Witch of the West with a flaming broom coming toward us?

   Meanwhile at a separate village, people are up late partying and singing songs. It's not all chow and fun as an evil Master played by Miao Tan forces a girl to strip naked as he drowns her boyfriend in a fish tank. 

   Captain (Kent) warns his buddy Ying (Lau) as they dine, not to eat too much because he might get hemorrhoids! They are both monks who get recruited to cure leprosy by a guy who resembles a monkey/catfish and the sadistic bastard who drowned his servant for perverted reasons. 

Blazing Saddles 2: A Fistful of Yen 

   They find a rag tag group of ner-do-wells and take a hike through a misty forest. One fat galoot in their crew named Bo (Cheng Fu-Hung) almost drowns in quicksand but gets rescued soon enough. There's "Indiana Jones" style boasting hijinks and comedic timing as they defeat some marauders in facepaint.  

We're both up for the role of Short Round

   Later on something sinister comes bubbling up from the swamp, it starts killing animals and people with lightning fast precision. After a few more slapstick scenes, the team figures out that a zombie (or Mummy) is responsible. Their methods to deal with it are strange to say the least, they are: yellow paper, a net and virgin urine! These weirdos make every boy in the village piss in a pot so they can use the pee to fight evil, lets see an American filmmaker take that bit of pedophilic weirdness to their Western Hong Kong remake! I actually would hate to see that happen!

Can you direct me toward the set of John Carpenter's The Fog?

   The creature hides in a spooky tower and they all wear garlic around their necks as they search. This is the first time I've seen garlic used to ward off a monster in any HK film, so it's slightly unusual. They don't even bring it to a fight in any of the hopping vampire films.

The syrupy looking dribbling beast quickly shows up and picks up a huge pig, draining it like a chili dog. It nearly kills Fatty, but he somersaults off the ledge and falls into a net on the ground.

  The next day, they return to the castle for more "Temple of Doom-ish/ Golden Child" type shenanigans. The monster is shown mostly by way of shadows, with only that pustule arm sticking up. 

Oh man I love those Chinatown knock-off light sabers

Fatty and his pals are totally fucked, that is until they find a helpful wizard with an eyepatch. This film has no sympathy for its dying characters and once they're gone, the other people have no reaction or use it as a slapstick device! 

   The evil Master who drowned that innocent man in the fish tank from the beginning, takes over as the villain during the last 10 minutes. It turns out he's somehow responsible for the zombie's trail of vengeance. Maybe that's why it's called the trail, who knows?

Can you please cover my anus/face with Tucks medicated pads?

  When they finally show the Mummy's face it looks like a gaggle of hemorrhoids with long hair, bleccchhhhhh. Make sure you stick around for a surprise Exorcist joke that's a really howler!

The Trail is a little shaky, inept but a lot of fun and very original, I think it's worth seeking out.

NO LINK

Yogurt the wise? No, Don't make a fuss, I'm just plain ole Chinese Yogurt!