USA UP ALL NIGHT LEFT OVER: FOREVER EVIL

Forever Evil. Directed by Roger Evans (1987).

Review By Mike Hauss

What a not wildly fresh premise this film had. A group of friends go to a cabin in the woods for a weekend to celebrate their last weekend at the cabin, which is slated to be sold. Supernatural forces attack and brutally kill all but Marc Denning, who escapes to a busy road. But as he stands battered and bruised celebrating his narrow escape, he is hit by a car. Marc awakes a week or so later in the hospital, with broken this and fractured that.

The re-animated corpse of Ebenezer Scrooge just in time for Christmas.

This film is not very good, but it does build a bit of suspense here and there, but for a film that technically looks like shit to clock in at a mind-ripping one-hundred and fifty-minutes is a grave mistake. If a capable edit of the film had been made, to shore twenty to thirty minutes off it, the film would have been a tighter affair and the fast-forward button wouldn’t have been so prevalent in my viewing experience. A grizzled old detective named Leo, Marc Denning and a young lady named Reggie, who also survived an attack by these dark forces, all band together to try and defeat the assailants, which includes zombies and creatures that shoot laser beams.

Lovecraft Schmuvcraft!

What the story revolves around is a cult who are making sacrificial murders in the goal of bringing the ancient god Yog Kothag back to earth, from which he was banished eons ago because of his evil. Obviously, the writers involved in this film borrowed a bit from H.P. Lovecraft and his creation Yog-Sothoth, along with Evil Dead in its cabin in the woods, supernatural attack forces. The acting is so bad that its almost hypnotic in its deconstruction of a craft. The first twenty minutes or so are so cheesy stupid, that it makes the viewer take notice and keeps one eyeing the power button to turn this film off at any moment. Like noted above the film does build some suspense here and there, but it does not know how to sustain it or to reach a proper payoff. For a film with this large of a scope to tread forward with bad actors, bad production values and an over inflated runtime really destructs any hope that the film had of being a cult classic, it was obviously aiming for. And what sets this apart from that other noted low-budget cabin in the woods film, Evil Dead... is talent!

WATCH ON YOUTUBE OR DON'T SEE IF I CARE!

USA UP ALL NIGHT WEEK: Night Patrol

Night Patrol (the Unknown Comic movie) Directed By Jackie Kong, Starring Linda Blair. (1984).

You know Murray Langston, the famous unknown comic with the paper bag over his head, this is his big movie. Throw in Linda Blair (who gets topless) and retches when she hears curse words, wacky dubbing, the director of Blood Diner, man this flick has got it all. It's especially funny if you hit up your local dispensary or your favorite beverage / valium combo. Murray plays Melvin White, a mustachioed cop out on the beat, it's all very Naked Gun, Police Academy-ish only a lot more silly and retarded. I guess you could say they were aiming at hitching their rinky dink wagon to the Copsploitation trend but that never really took off. Plus no one really gave a fuck about the Unknown comic besides really geeky people I might be scared of.

Burt Reynolds style centerfold

Billy Barty is the police chief, if only he ended up in an Amir Shervan vehicle as yet another angry grizzled boss yelling at the Samurai Cop or Hollywood Cop. Barty was great in Being Different a mondo freakshow that just showed up on Amazon Prime, check it out before it's gone.

"Ready for that mustache ride!"

Andrew Dice Clay shows up too as a Travolta clone, this was years before he became the misogynistic comedian that we all know.

John Revolta 

Pat Morita gets raped and talks like a girl, I can't make this shit up folks! It's somewhere treading on a sea of stupidity and mediocrity and some bad poetry. I loved it maybe more than King Fart! Many of the actors here went onto do voices for The Rugrats for some odd reason like Pat Paulsen, who plays the officer tagging along with Murray, he also was on The Smothers Brothers as The Jolly Green Giant. Skunkape as a little primate saw this on cable and his parents made him close his eyes during the steamy parts.

Guy with bag on head gets kicked in the nuts.
The scene that inspired a young ape.

Another Unknown Comic now takes the 5th grade talent show by storm!

One of the screenwriters Bill Osco is responsible for one of the most traumatizing flicks I remember Skunkape torturing me with in TV Production school Gross Out. That fuggin monkey even had a home made T-shirt based off the VHS artwork, which I remember seeing at Video Waves, a porn and cult movie store I used to frequent. Osco's biggest claim to fame is handling the production on Flesh Gordon (1974), which is incredible that basically a soft porn parody of a kitschy, camp masterpiece was even noticed by anyone but that was the 70's, everyone was wacked out on something!

"Is that a Twinkie in your lunch bag or you just happy to see me?"

"I like cops, comics, and polish vampires."

live action Dr. Katz

"This is my audition for the role of Bilbo "Bag"gins. HA!

The Lift

The Lift Directed By Dick Maas starring bunch of chuckleheads (1983).

By all logic and reason a killer elevator movie should be as criminally inept as a bed that skeletonizes it’s victims aka Death Bed: the Bed That Eats People, but for some reason I was totally entranced in this movie. Maybe it’s the euro trash stink and irresistible dubbed weirdness, not sure but I am way into it. I remember an early issue the Fangoria I saw a review for this 1983 flick from the ubiquitous Dr. Cyclops, which could've been any writer under that alias. I've been meaning to check it out ever since. 

Damien in the Omen part 2 used his demonic brain powers to control an elevator and make it slice up Meshach Taylor, the flamboyant fellow from Manniquin one and part two respectively, into bite-size pieces. The Lift has an elevator with a mind of its own and murders anyone who innocently steps on.

Felix (Huub Stapel) the elevator handyman seems like a bad parent. Dick Maas (which sounds like a Gay Pride Xmas celebration), the director who made this film has one of those phobias that Lucy from Charlie Brown would diagnose and really he must enjoy seeing people fall to their  death from the result of an elevator crash.

Everyone in this movie is seriously unlikable it’s like a virtual forrest of all ugly branches.

I’m expecting people from the White House to show up any minute and excuse the elevator for the death toll.

During the hilarious decapitation scene, the head mouths something as it plummets to the bottom. I know my friend Rob Fletcher should include it on his next severed head celebration post on FB.

The factory that Felix works at reminds me of that Rainer Werner Fassbinder film Fox and His Friends. It’s all very German or possibly Dutch at least they don’t pretend like it’s US.

In 1983 a cinema snob had waay more options on films to watch, so I’m glad I waited this long to see this film. I always think about how I could go into one theater and see Return of the Jedi the same year this came out and another theater and see something better that’s why it pays to wait it out sometimes. 
Felix at one point rolls a cigarette like an old Timey cowboy or maybe it's a joint, who knows? He gets pretty close with this one attractive reporter though and it upsets his wife.

The weirdest part of the movie has nothing to do with an elevator. When the science guy goes into detail all about computer chips, it reminded me of once again of Idiocracy where in the future you have to be set up with the barcode or remain scannable.

The pacing gets really slow and not very rewarding but stick it out anyway. I was yelling just die already like Elaine did during the forced viewing of the English patient, maybe you will too there’s something to look forward to!

HIGHLY AND BEGRUDGINGLY RECOMMENDED.

In Harry Canyon voice: when she looked at me like that sheesh!

Please don't hurt me Mr. Elevator.

The Devil's Rain (1975)

The Devil’s Rain (1975, dir. Robert Fuest)

Review by Goat Scrote

     We imps at TOG Laboratories have been busy preparing the way to Armageddon for quite some time now. To commemorate our 666th article, we’ve summoned a slice of 70s Satanic cinema so ripe n’ cheesy you’ll think you’ve landed in one of the moister, smellier crevices of Satan’s underpants. “Devil’s Rain” is a stinker but it’s got a ridiculously excessive finale which is worth seeing just for the jaw-dropping amount of slime involved.

Mork calling Orson.

     If you don’t have the patience for the slow pacing and laugh-inducing "action" sequences characteristic of the 1970s, you should still tune in for the fun splatter of the climax starting around the 74 minute mark. You don’t need to understand what’s happening plot-wise to enjoy the best things about the finale. It's a gooey rainbow of B-grade horror silliness as eyeless cultists dissolve into puddles and a regular dude wrestles with the devil. If they’d made the slime red instead of green, this might have been an R-rated grindhouse classic. As it is, it’s a mostly-bloodless 70s PG with a lot of melting zombie-flesh at the end. The effects department must have gone through hundreds of gallons of goop for that oozing, dripping, drizzling payoff.

Insert obligatory semen joke here.

     At the high point of his career, director Robert Fuest made two psychedelically schlocky Vincent Price classics, “The Abominable Doctor Phibes” (1971) and “Dr. Phibes Rises Again” (1972), as well as a couple of other cult classics. “The Devil’s Rain” was such a rancid flop, however, that it killed Fuest’s film career deader than an unbaptized virgin goat at a Black Mass. Fuest was banished ever afterward to the land of TV. Yes, the wretched stink of this movie was so severe that it canceled out the pleasing patchouli aroma of both of the super-swingin’ Dr. Phibes films.

Don't they sell these at Spencer's Gifts?

     Then there’s the curious fact that the filmmakers consulted with the actual Church of Satan while making this film. I imagine they did this partly to stir controversy for attention, and partly to pretend that there was some kind of legitimacy to the supernatural story which the writers had cooked up. They even gave cameos to Anton and Diane LaVey, self-proclaimed High Priest and Priestess of Satan's ministry on Earth at the time. I’m sure the LaVeys were very happy to collect their paychecks and soak up the free publicity on top of that, because why the Hell not? I can't help but imagine Anton LaVey casually reeling off inane occult nonsense with his trademark grim and frightening theatrical demeanor, then laughing cheerfully all the way to the bank.

Leaked! You'll never believe who they've cast as Dr. Fate
in the upcoming Justice League sequel!

     “Devil’s Rain” has campy performances from a reasonably well-known cast which includes Ernest Borgnine, Eddie Albert, Ida Lupino, Keenan Wynn, Tom Skerritt, and extra-large douchebag in human form William Fucking Shatner. Spoiler alert, in this one Shatner gets his punk ass whupped severely, and I found that ass-whuppin’ profoundly spiritually satisfying. Is that wrong?

I love my seventies porn collection.

     Even though Ernest Borgnine plays the villain, he is the real hero for me because he seems to be the only person on screen trying to make a movie which is not boring. He knows he is making a bad movie, for sure, but he still does what he can to make it an entertaining bad movie. I like his hammy, melodramatic performance as the manipulative cult leader who can shift from politely folksy to gleefully wicked to quietly sinister whenever it suits him. It's not nearly enough to counteract all the boring parts, but any time Borgnine is chewing scenery the movie is a lot more fun.

Anyone who sold their soul for this movie
is definitely entitled to a refund.

     I've saved the biggest star for last. This pile of eviscerated sun-bloated hog bowels disguised as a film holds the distinction of debuting an unknown young actor named John Travolta. He doesn’t speak and you never even get to see his whole face, so don’t get too excited. You may also be interested to know that the set of “The Devil’s Rain” is where the larval actor had his first introduction to the cynical money-making machine which calls itself Scientology. That's two, count 'em, two separate real-life cults with connections to this movie!

Can you spot the Travolta hidden in this picture?

     The opening credits roll over close-ups from paintings by Hieronymus Bosch (c. 1450 - 1516 CE) depicting vast hellscapes full of creative and awful torments. If only Bosch had made horror movies. His paintings prove that he was very good at crafting disturbing, surreal, gory, and grotesque religious imagery. He was also good at straight-up vicious torture porn. Whatever he filmed it would have been better than the shit I’m watching today, I just know it.

"Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Very, Very, Very Beginning"
A Hieronymus Bosch Joint

  The story begins with a fierce thunderstorm lashing a house out in the desert. Inside, frumpy and anxious Mrs. Preston (pioneering director, writer, singer, and actress Ida Lupino) is dressed in what appears to be a pink checkered tablecloth. Don't let her role fool you, she was one of the toughest, most determined, and smartest people in Hollywood during the 50s. Mama Preston frets about her husband, who is many hours late. Her son Mark Preston (William Fucking Shatner) returns from a search empty-handed. Moments later his father returns on his own, but all is not well.

This is what I get for adding
Bill Shatner to an overpopulated world.

  Papa Preston (George Sawaya) has misplaced his eyeballs and his face is slowly melting. He delivers a message from a villain named Corbis, who is waiting in a nearby ghost town. Corbis wants the family to turn over a book of Satanic power which is in their possession. Then Papa Preston praises Satan and melts into sludge. I wonder if they shoveled him into a bucket for a funeral later on, or if they just let his remains soak into the mud for fertilizer? The movie sort of implies the latter.

This book of alien space wisdom has cured me of gay!

     Mark is drawn away from the house by a ruse and returns to find Mama Preston has been kidnapped. The aged family retainer (TV regular Woody Chambliss, who also played old Sgt. Pepper in the 1978 Beatles film) has been tied up and beaten senseless. This character is forgotten almost immediately after being introduced.

     Mark grabs a pistol and an amulet of protection, jumps in his station wagon, and heads out to do battle with the forces of darkness. He arrives at the ghost town and Jonathan Corbis (Ernest Borgnine) pops up out of nowhere to have a friendly chat.

Borgnine starts the hoodie-and-medallion look.

     Corbis wants the book and demands to know where Mark has hidden it. They have a faith vs. faith challenge inside a creepy old boarded-up church. Within is a Satanic altar and some robed bozos chanting evil hymns to bad organ music. Cap’n Kirk prays his butt off to Jesus and friends, while Borgnine offers adulation to the ruler of the Bottomless Pit. Their competition over who can overact the hardest ends when one of the robed cultists reveals herself to be Mama Preston, now eyeless and enslaved to Satan. Mark loses his cool and shoots one of the minions. Green gloop oozes out and Borgnine makes fun of him for putting his faith in a mere weapon.

The power of Kirk compels you!
The power of Kirk compels you!

     Poor gun-happy Mark has lost the metaphysical battle, so the cultists strip him of his amulet and half his clothes, take him captive, and torture him for the location of the book. The cultists apply an extreme version of good-cop, bad-cop. Corbis torments him a while, then trades places with a seductress. She passionately kisses a willing Shatner… until he realizes that he’s actually slipping tongue to the eyeless, slime-filled, undead shell of his saggy-fleshed elderly mother! Ewwww, on so many levels... Judas Priest! I wish films and TV wouldn't have forced so many innocent people to kiss Shatner. He clearly doesn't get the basic concept and it's fucking embarrassing.

MISTER TAMBOURINE MAN!

     Meanwhile, at the lab of Dr. Sam Richards (Eddie Albert), he believes he is about to "unlock the key to ESP".  Tom Preston (Tom Skerritt) is the Doctor’s assistant and the youngest son of the Preston family. His wife Julie Preston (Joan Prather) is the subject of the psychic experiment. She has visions of bad shit going down involving the Satanic church in the ghost town. The Sheriff (Keenan Wynn) is busy with the aftermath of the big storm, so Tom and Julie are forced to investigate what happened to his family on their own.

Okay, I'll do the movie as long as I'm not in any
scenes with You-Know-Fucking-Who.

     Tom and Julie arrive in the ghost town toting a rifle. The church is dark inside except for the light from a stained-glass window which looks like a prop from a super-cheesy 80s heavy metal video. (That actually makes the window well ahead of its time, I guess?) That’s the only clue Tom needs to figure out that the whole mess is about devil worship. He's a genius. They find his brother's shirt in the church, then their car explodes in a fireball outside. When they run out to investigate, someone driving Mark’s station wagon tries to flatten them. Tom shoots at the car and it crashes, then he chases and fights the psycho cowboy who was behind the wheel.
     This movie has really unexciting action and unconvincing fights. Behold the magic of cinema.

HEAVY \m/ METAL

     Meanwhile, courtesy of Julie's psychic powers, we flash back to the olden days. A bunch of Satanists dressed like pilgrims in a Thanksgiving school play are plotting secret evil stuff. Shatner is one of the cultists. Corbis bitches about the lost book even back then, hundreds of years ago. The other cultists must be really sick of hearing about that shit by now.

Gee, honey, this B&B looks really... inviting.

     A bunch of villagers show up with torches, led by the Reverend of the town (Claudio Brook). Shatner is one of the Satanists, and his wife, Aaronessa (Erika Carlsson) has betrayed the cult to the Reverend on the condition that she and her husband be spared. The Reverend double crosses her and burns both husband and wife at the stake with the rest of the cult. Corbis is not impressed and talks Satanic smack to the crowd while the auto-da-fe proceeds. He isn’t tied to the stake, but he just dances around the pole and stays in the fire anyway. What a fun-loving kook! I don't care if he is evil incarnate, I bet Corbis is fun at parties. As long as no one mentions that dumb book.

     Back in the present, Tom and Julie take the station wagon to get away from the ghost town. On the way out Tom has a crisis of conscience. He decides to go back on foot so he can fight the magic-wielding cult single-handedly and rescue his brother. Did I write that he was a genius earlier? What a reckless idiot, that’s what I meant to write.

Driver, get me to the set of Phantasm!

     Julie drives on to fetch the Sheriff, but the mother-in-law from actual Hell takes a break from making out with her son to magically appear in the back seat. She abducts Julie with embarrassing ease.

     Night falls and the cultists march with torches, dragging a shirtless Shatner toward the altar. Tom is disguised in a cultist robe to infiltrate the evil ceremony. At the big Satanic altar, Corbis holds an evil freestyle hip-hop poetry slam. Check out his hype lyrics: “Let us behold the Father, the Ram of the Sun, the Moon, the Stars! Hail O Deathless One!”

Sucker MCs better watch their step.

     See, this is what happens when real Satanists write your Hollywood rituals for you. If you actually say that last bit out loud you could turn into an evil Satan-possessed goat-person, just like Borgnine does on camera, and just as I did many years ago. Ernest could afford the plastic surgery to cover up his mistake. I personally can't. You’ve been warned!

     Anyway, they finally break Shatner’s spirit and he turns into another eyeless goon. Tom gets spotted by his zombie Mama but he escapes to fetch more help, in the form of Dr. Richards.

This church-sponsored Easter egg hunt is a little "off" somehow.

     Dr. Richards and Tom explore the church and underneath the floor they uncover a giant Faberge egg with golden ram horns. It turns out the egg is full of souls captured by Corbis. The Sheriff appears again, now an eyeless drone, and Tom fights him hand to hand even though both men have guns. Tom wins, of course, but he and Dr. Richards are forced to hide from the other minions. One of the cultists sees that the magic egg is gone, but the heroes have left the Satanic book behind. WTF, idiots? You had one job, keep that stupid book away from Corbis! The cultist (John Travolta) runs off to give the prize to his master. The bad guys are super-psyched about this turn of events.

The golden fleece prepares to devour Oedipus,
just as it was foretold in the Necronomicon!

      The minions prepare to work their magic on Julie, but Tom jumps into the scene and brawls with anyone in a robe. Dr. Richards threatens to crack the eggy thing, which we learn is called the Devil’s Rain. Why in the world would it be called that? Zombie-Shatner gets his hands on the egg. Fortunately for the forces of goodness, Cap'n Kirk is able to overcome his Satanic enslavement and crack the Devil's Rain open.

Oh, you handsome devil.

     The roof blows out at the same moment, I guess because of the souls escaping. Actual rain, which is apparently not the Devil’s Rain, pours down from the sky. That just seems confusing, to have a movie called "The Devil's Rain" in which the only rain that falls is not the Devil's, because "rain" in this case refers to a magic blue egg full of dead people. Hey, don't look at me, ask Anton LaVey's corpse what the fuck this is about.

Give Uncle Satan a big wet kiss, Tommy!

     The rain melts the cultists and since this scene is where most of the budget went, the director spends a lot of time on the gooey, wailing deaths. Satan/Corbis is pi-i-i-i-iiiissed, but the rain melts him down even as he struggles with Tom. Then the Prince of Darkness falls into a hole and explodes because... um... reasons. Eventually the whole church explodes with no apparent provocation. It’s a sludgy mess of an ending. Then as a stinger, Julie turns out to be possessed by the spirit of Corbis and we are treated to a creepy scene of Ernest Borgnine hug-molesting Tom Skerritt.

     Whew, this movie sure does suck a lot! I still have fun watching most of Ernest Borgnine’s scenes, and of course I like the way it ends. If you're interested in this flick you might enjoy the Joe Bob Briggs commentary about it.

Should've gotten a flu shot, stupid.