RASPUTIN Orgy in the Czar's Court

 -Reviewed by Skunkape-

 Rasputin aka An Orgy of Corruption (1984)

 Time for a little Theater of Guts History Lesson before we talk about this film. Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin was a wannabe monk that flunked and then became a wandering prophet thought to have had healing powers. Eventually these rumors of mystical power got him in good with Czar Nicholas the II and he actually went on to cure his son of hemophilia.

 In 1916 political rivals of the Czar plotted to kill Rasputin and began assassination attempts. First they fed him wine and cakes laced with cyanide but that seemed to have no effect. Later he was beaten and shot several times, then wrapped in a carpet and tossed into a river. Three days later his body was found and an autopsy report showed that the bullets didn't kill him, he actually drowned.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lets now meet the Rasputin in this film:

 EXTERIOR: THE WOODS
An angry man runs up to kill Rasputin with a knife.

Rasputin:Why are you so determined to kill me?
Angry peasant: My wife! You have dishonored her and given her a child.
Rasputin: (laughs)
Angry peasant: I sent her to you because she was barren, as cold as a dog's nose.You were supposed to heal her!
Rasputin: Well, haven't I?

"I put a bun in your wife's oven."

 Rasputin is Germany's answer to Caligula, a costume drama with scenes of actual intercourse. Caligula boasted a much bigger budget and more style, eighty percent of the movie focused on the story, twenty percent was padded with a lesbian scene and a giant orgy. Rasputin had a decent budget but was eighty percent porn and only twenty percent story, making it more of an adult film then an exploitation movie.

"I fuck in a hurry cause I'm Russian! Get it?"

 Alexander Conte plays Rasputin, known to many as the mad monk. Who is Alexander Conte you may ask? Well, Nobody. His only other screen credit according to IMDB is a soviet police commander in the Swartzanegger/Belushi cop buddy film Red Heat. Conte refrains from any participation in the hardcore action probably to protect his integrity as an actor but based on how much work he got after this film he should have just slipped it in.
The female leads do however partake in the sex making all the insert shots with Conte match up quite nicely. It's almost perfect aside from some on screen slow fucking with hard fucking sound effects.

"Rasputin is cooler than a Russian dancing bear."

 Much of the plot deals with Rasputin traveling to St. Petersberg. Along the way Russian soldiers fight rebels and torture them for information. All the prisoners captured are marched off to Siberia for imprisonment.(Hopefully they don't have to deal with ILSA, no not the one from the SS, not the Harem Keeper, not the Wicked Warden, yeah the other one!) The torture is not all that exciting, pretty mellow, aside from one dude getting his ear shot off. You could get ten times more torture in a witchspoitation film like Mark of the Devil. Also along for the ride is a beautiful Countess but she is really a spy. She tries to lure him on a train rigged with explosives but fails and winds up getting boned the rest of the trip in a small carriage.(she loves every minute of it) He also humps her servant too, in a hot threesome!

Another Vodka!

 When he finally reaches his destination he gains power and respect from the Czar right after he heals his young son of a serious illness. As he acquires more political influence traitors plot to eliminate him. First he gets stabbed , next day shot and beaten, and then finally poisoned but none of that phases him and he gleefully laughs and lives to fuck another day.

"Who put hot sauce in my custard?!"

Rasputin lives again!

With all the Vodka, food , and endless sex, I sure can't understand why Yakov Smiroff would ever want to leave Mother Russia.

 I love that country!

6-10 ON THE CULT-0-METER

Fun! Above average all around but way to much sex to be a classic exploitation film and if all that was removed not enough substance.

"So, you thought you could outwit the imperious forces of  "Spaceball."

A Taste Of Killing And Romance

A Taste of Killing and Romance. Starring Andy Lau. Directed By Veronica Chan (1994).

   Shanghai, dark city of lavish nightclubs and neon sleaze where cold blooded assassins on motorbikes gun down the rich and toss a lighted match onto a car oozing fuel. Ko Sua (Andy Lau), "The Judge" the same gunman from a few minutes in the film confesses to his priest, who's aware of his criminal activities. They illustrate his character with a certain amount of sympathy, he hangs out with feral cats and claims to not value the money he obtains from his kills. 

let this spray of religious fire send you to Hell

   Meanwhile a stylish waif-like psycho named Yu-feng (Anita Yuen) systematically machine guns an entire bank office. She hops into the assassin's red corvette (which they highlight like a sleek car commercial) and holds him hostage for a short while. Both male and female killers work for the same company but are alien to one another, they also value catholicism and confide in priests. The action scenes are on the John Woo level, as the gunshots pulverize flesh and bone. This is a straight up action flick and it's rare to see one directed by such a capable female director, but sadly, later it all peters out like car with two flat tires. 

I can't believe I locked my keys in the car

   There's a vicious moment that bothered me almost as much as the family rape scene in Henry Portrait of A Serial Killer. Wong Cheong (the reptilian Mark Cheng), smothers a grandmother to death with saran wrap, poisons a child and kills a dog by putting it in the dryer (the dog screeches got under my skin)! 

   It's a brief and effective scene that makes you despise Chuck from Raped By An Angel all over again, he poses as a social worker in order to murder Ko's family. 

Toshiba kills dogs dead

    Ko hangs out in arcades, where all of the games are of the sit-down Flight simulator variety. He tricks officer Tung into chasing him off a bridge onto a moving tram and then has a nightmare with some of the worst Duran Duran video toaster effects I've seen in awhile. 

America is kicking our asses in video game systems

   All the gangsters wear their hair like Matthew Perry and dress in casual attire for some god awful reason, Hey it was the 90's!

   A really cheesy karaoke duet montage takes over a romantic mall trip between the two main protagonists. The action grinds to a halt for awhile as their relationship starts to progress. The two assassins get bored with killing for profit and instead bore us to death! 

Let me filet that fish for your McDonald's sandwich

   Wong Cheong ties a poor girl up to a shower head and stabs her in the belly, this pisses off officer Tung (Waise Lee) enough to hunt down all of the criminals involved in the syndicate. He starts questioning anyone who will talk. Cheong is a unrepentant killer who actually makes the film watchable. After strangling his female boss with an exercise machine, he chops off Yu's fingers while she clutches an inhaler to treat her asthma attack. 

   You get none of the pathos or character development seen in all the classic John Woo flicks, even though Chan makes a decent attempt. The style and camera shots are over the top, but there's something very hollow about it all. 

HK Baywatch gun squad assemble

   That's the most annoying aspect of Taste, it makes you want to watch something more coherent and more exciting like say Hardboiled! or The Killer. There's zero chemistry between love interests and the ultra gun violence is cut short too soon.
WATCH HERE


Check it out if you are bored, it makes you want to watch something with more guts!

It's never a good sign, when your director signs the beginning credits, remember White Fire?

Touch And Go

Touch And Go (Point Of Return, Yi chu ji fa) Directed By Ringo Lam Starring Sammo Hung (1991).

The last Sammo Hung picture we reviewed was the notorious Panty Hose Hero, a vile homophobic oddly compelling intolerant classic. Now Sammo is back in this Ringo Lam flick, he plays Fat Goose, a man who bathes in front of his house with a garden hose like an animal. Goose involuntarily witnesses a back alley stabbing of a police officer who has secret photos of hookers doing the deed with high society people. 

   Goose has an over protective mom (or Mother Goose)! that judges his girlfriend by saying don't get her pregnant because any children you have will grow hideous smokers teeth (whatever that means)! She has reason to worry because he pays hookers to act like his "girlfriend". There's also a Hi-C fruit punch vending machine at the restaurant cafeteria where Goose works that I was intrigued by. 

   A cop named Pittbull (Ming Wan Yeung, who was also in Ebola Syndrome) takes him in for questioning and ends up in a high sped car chase with a gun toting Triad.

Rest In Piece Mr. Stuntman

   In Hong Kong, CID procedure according to the Golden Harvest mythos goes like this, you can pin a criminal to a car with a blasted gas tank that will explode in three seconds, then aim a gun at the criminal's temple with out a jury or consequences! I say let the police corruption run rampant! It turns out the guy who stabbed the CID agent in the beginning is named God Of Hell Fire (The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown's lawyers should take offense)! 

But a pile of shit has a 1000 eyes

   Fatty is very paranoid about talking to the cops (and with good reason), once they find out he's a witness, they throw molotov cocktails at his house and burn it down! 

   There's odd toilet humor and jokes that Jing Wong would appreciate, like a goldfish bowl being used to put out a fire and Fat Goose can tell if someone had eaten chicken after going to the bathroom. The fact that he has to always find a fake girlfriend to impress his mother is unfunny too. Fatty doesn't want to fight with the God Of Hell (played by Kwong Leung Wong) and tries a peace offering, but he won't let up. The God lives up to his name and his gang throw fireballs at Pitt the cop while in a backwards car chase.

Sammo Hung as the Chinese Star Wars kid

   He's a sick bastard and chains Pitt and Fatty up to two cars while shocking them with the battery. GOHF's girlfriend agrees to help them out and was a member of the prostitution ring seen in the beginning. The photos start to unravel Pitt's sense of honor and trust,because one of his superiors is caught in the pictures and he confronts him. 

   The creepiest part of the movie was the moment, Hellfire slices up a girl fatty likes with a Rambo knife and forces him to smile about it! 

   It all ends with a burning bus crash and a final fight in the rain as Fatty psychologically tortures his nemesis. Deep Red was the first place I had ever heard of Ringo Lam and this one is pretty satisfying in the action department. Sammo is always likeable and he's got a killer fighting style. Lam made Undeclared War right before this film,which was his first foray into Western territory, it had Vernon Wells (The Road Warrior) and Olivia Hussey (Black Christmas). That film was panned (I still want to see it), maybe after that disaster he needed a good luck charm with Mr. Bowlhair cut, split lip, taught Jackie Chan everything he knows.

WATCH HERE

Dracula 3D

DRACULA 3D Directed by Dario Argento. Starring Asia Argento, Rutger Hauer. (2012)BY GRAHAM RAE

Ah, the perils of boredom, eh? I subjected myself to Dario Argento’s World of Incest tonight with…(listens to whisper in ear)…hold on a second…(checks notes for name of film)…sorry, Dracula 3D, because I was/am recovering from having half a wisdom tooth removed this afternoon and needed something to do. This film was an Official Selection at the Cannes Film Festival. Not that that means much, of course, but it’s just more proof that cinematic standards everywhere are going to hell and never coming back.   Figuring that sitting with a mouthful of blood and pain might give me a better-than-usual empathetic perspective on the bloodsucker material at hand (and I’m genuinely right now eating tomato soup to continue the theme)(all my mouth can handle right now), I started it on my laptop…and became mesmerized by just how utterly appalling the film is from start to finish. The Danny Elfman-Ed-Wood-soundaliketrack right at the start didn’t help any, and neither did the monochrome tracking-over-miniatures shot exactly like the one at the start of Tim Burton’s film either.

    I chuckled. Not good omens. It was only after I finished watching the whole slow, boring film that I realized: wee Dario had just finally confessed to us that he is now a shitty hack(nslash) filmmaker, even if only subliminally, and was just inviting us to sit back and enjoy the turgid waste of expensive 3D film that this is. He doesn’t even pull anything from his bag of patented slinky showoff camera tricks to try and distract us from the crap on display: he just lets it all hang out without shame or camouflage or interest. When Coppola made a crappy Drac film, which this effort resembles in some ways, he at least made it look good.   So yeah, Incestula, eh, I mean Dracula, right, right. You all know the Bram Stoker story, right? Then we don’t even need to discuss the script for this film, because it’s just lifted pretty much straight from the book, using a by-the-numbers template invented when they first started making films about the vampire’s ire. I couldn’t believe that Argento would just do an absolutely straight-faced remake (cos that’s all it basically constitutes, a remake) of a film that Universal Pictures could have stuck out during the very early 1930s, only making it seem even vaguely contemporary by making it in 3D, by the inclusion of some heaving naked breasts, and some gore (from seasoned slimeslinger Sergio Stivaletti) ranging from dodgy to passable.

Now break out those whoppers for papa

   
   Doing an old-fashioned film that belongs to the early part of the 20th century during the early part of the 21st is one of the most utterly redundant things I have ever seen done by a (once) major director, I confess, and as such made it an all the more fascinatingly fucked-up waste of time and effort and energy by all involved. The Giallo Meister takes horror cinema back to the 20th century! Using a film based on a done-to-death-and-beyond book from the 19th! Yay! I must admit, if I was a filmmaker I wouldn’t want to be the one to be known as taking the genre backwards, ignoring nearly a century of vampsuck fangflicks, from 1922’s Nosferatu onwards, but hey – each to their own, eh?   
   
   I mean, forget all the other innovative vampire films done over the decades and the exciting and interesting things they have done, and just bring out your own, chunky, clunky, utterly outdated (per)version of something that countless other people have done so far, far better than you. Box office dynamite! You could only consider it career suicide if anybody cared much about Argento anymore. Cos well, let’s face it, who does these days?
   
   I really enjoyed not enjoying this film, which I confess, unfortunately, is my viewing agenda for pretty much any film (with the exception of the stunningly deranged and hilarious FDR: American Badass, a relatively recent discovery I keep coming back to) I watch these days: expect nothing and you’ll always be disappointed. The modern viewing experience is a metaphor for masochism at its most virulent and hopeful-hopeless.
   
   I admit, I have never been a huge Argento fan anyway, with the sole exception of Inferno, which I thought was great; I have not even seen a film of his made in the last 20 years, and from what I hear I am not missing much. So I felt no real sense of disappointment or betrayal when this hogwash and balderdash (20th century insults for a 20th century film!) hemorrhaged across the undeserving laptop monitor. I guess I should publicly apologize to my much-trash-abused machine, but I don’t want to admit the depth of my sickness to it, or indeed to myself.

Curse you Rae, for revealing my acting secrets!

   
   Performances? Uniformly bad. I must admit to enjoying Rutger Hauer as Van Helsing. Last shite I saw him in was Hobo With A Shotgun, and his method(one) acting methodology in that nonsense was the same as in this: just furrow his brow a lot in confusion, speak….halt…ingly…hestit…atingly…and just generally come off like somebody with early onset dementia trying to remember where he had put his car keys that morning (in his yogurt in the fridge, no doubt), or if he had left the oven on sometime in 1963. And no, dementia is not funny, but when you watch such a stinky howler monkey as this film you have to try and lighten and brighten the mood as you sit with a gone-tooth coppery bloodtang in your mouth that is not anywhere near as foul as the one the movie left.   If you’re wondering why I have been making incest jokes occasionally during this review, well, it’s very simple. Daddy Dario has naughty daughter Asia get naked a couple of times. The first is during a sex scene when we see her breast popping out of her gown and being massaged by a man from an overhead shot. You start to cringe. Then, later, he gets her totally naked, complete with more up-close-and-personal-interest tittyshots, as she stands in a bath. He films part of her ass from behind, then has her sit down, and has a long slow tracking shot where the voyeur camera creeps closer-closer-closer-to-close-up to her as she sits with her legs crossed and knees up.

We're working on it in daughter/father therapy OK??

   You can’t help but wince at this keep-it-in-the-family Italian (non)sensibility. Still, at least he isn’t brutally raping her, as he did in The Stendahl Syndrome (a film I have never seen for that very reason – an Argento fan friend of mine, Scanny, saw it back in Scotland when it came out, and told me about it), so maybe he’s worked a few issues out with his therapist, or through killing real women, or trampling puppies, or shooting liquid eyeliner or something.   As usual, watching a 3D film in 2D is kind of funny, as you don’t get anywhere near the full effect of things like stakes driven through hearts plunging gorily towards the camera, or eyeballs popping out a la Fulci when a head is driven onto a metal spike, but, well, really…who cares? This stuff is shite in two dimensions, who cares about a whole other dimension of Cash Flaggery? You think Jaws 3D was any better in its original audience-assailing form, or Friday the 13th 3D, or Parasite 3D for that matter?

I rest my case.

No, rest your head on these!

   
   Well, nearly. The sole redeeming factor in this film is the sumptuous, voluptuous, perfect breasts of the gorgeous Miriam Giovanelli (whoever the hell she is) as Tanja. Objectifying her? Absolutely. But only after she did it to herself, and we can all be thankful that she did. Otherwise we’d have had to make do with nothing but a comic smorgasbord of stuff like a clichéd priest screaming “EEEEEVVVVIIILLLL!!!”; a Dracula who looks like a Liam Neeson who cannot act; a crap CGI werewolf; a hilariously cheesy CGI killer giant praying mantis; 1970s vampire meltdowns; constant bad fading-out scenes; rubbish CGI flies buzzing boredly; a whimpering emo Renfield; lines like Drac whining piteously “I am nothing but an out-of-tune chord in the divine symphony!”; an annoying endlessly fainting Mina Harker; shots of rats done to a theremin soundtrack (more Ed Wood patter!); Claudio Simonetti’s epic emo goth failure end-theme tune “Kiss Me Dracula” (with the full clichéd soundtrack available from ‘Deep Red Records,’ apparently)…I could go on, but why bother? We all have lives to lead and other things to do.   Well, okay, I watched it. I’m not proud, what can I say? I waste a lot of time sometimes. As do you, which you just proved by reading this review. Argento’s career is dead and buried, c’est la vie, no-one lives forever. Nothing more to see here, move along, move along…


END
Wait! Not so fast Graham, coming soon.......

Movie Review: THE 7TH DAY (2012)

The 7th Day Directed By Jason M. Koch.

From the makers of PLEASURES OF THE DAMNED (2005) and ISLE OF THE DAMNED (2008), two frolicsome horror-gore-comedies, comes … a different sort of love story. Allen Dean (Mark S. Sanders) is a bearded dishwasher in a jerkwater town (lower middle class Baltimore) who has issues – with women. And men. And other living things. Allen is a serial killer with many interests: torture, mutilation, necrophilia. He kills chicks, he kills guys, a real swinger. He can't stand his next door neighbor, Bill (Michael Brecher). There are even people who feels are beneath him. Living in his filthy, fly-speckled home, Allen finds time to torture some poor unfortunate girl (Jessy Danner) in his basement. He dreams back to his fond family memories, where his older brother abused him sexually and his mother (Helenmary Ball) subjected him to “smother love.” Cruising around the neighborhood in his battered compact car, Allen scores drugs and casually kills the people he meets. All the while, monstrous journalists with tape recorders record his every thought and every move. Surprisingly, his confessions to these spectral beings pose more questions than they answer.
Eventually, Allen screws up the courage to ask his fellow restaurant employee for a date. It doesn't go well. 

I think you worked off that tuna platter and milkshake

THE 7TH DAY is an ingenious no-budget recreation of Hell as experienced behind the eyeballs of a remorseless psychopath. All the locations we see in the film are immediately recognizable: litter-strewn empty lots, dilapidated homes and disused businesses. Unflinchingly looking at life on the down, down low, THE 7TH DAY has quite a few tricks up its grimy sleeve. The gore on display is something we've all seen before, but done in such a way to disturb, annoy and disorient. There is lots of humor on the way – one wouldn't expect anything less from the makers of PLEASURES OF THE DAMNED and ISLE OF THE DAMNED, now, would they – but even here it carries a lethal sting.
What separates THE 7TH DAY from countless other serial killer movies is the ending. Rest assured, we expect the worst – but the filmmakers have an especially dirty trick awaiting the viewer thus far. This reviewer expects that a lot of people will get tied up in knots and angry, kicking in their TV sets in the more extreme cases. In some ways, THE 7TH DAY is a black comedy, where the joke is played on you. Runing less than 80 minutes, the film's biggest prey just may be the typical horror movie audience's expectations. Dig it. 

Harvey Pekar finds a new animator to tell his story

Zombie 3

Zombie 3 (Zombie Flesh Eaters 2) Directed By Bruno Mattei/C. Fragasso/Lucio Fulci (1988).

I've never wanted to watch any of the Zombie sequels because I put the 1979 Chunkblower gut munching classic on such a high pedestal. I decided however to break the barrier and suffer through the rest of the sequels. I have to watch everything in the Deep Red catalog at least once. Chas mentioned that Zombie 4 After Death is a personal favorite, so be on the look out for that review coming soon.

My pores ooze stinky Nilbog milk

   The stink of Claudio Fraggaso is smudged all over this one already so, I wasn't looking forward to it! It's been awhile since I've taken the Marinara plunge after wallowing in so much Chow Mien for the past few reviews. But I think its time to slather myself in Ricotta cheese and endure Zombie Flesh Eaters 2 (or Zombie 3). Why it took them this long capitalize on the super popular original film is beyond me (Heh, get it "The Beyond")? 
   They never bother to tie anything that happened in the original to this other one, so it's not really a sequel at all (just like Zombi 2 was never a sequel to Dawn Of The Dead)! You'd be hard pressed to find a linear series of Italian exploitation sequels anyway.

   From the military contamination scare to the idiotic scientists, this sequel is screaming "Bruno Mattei Was Here" (as if he carved his name on the walls)! Skunkape swears that Fulci was in the director's chair up until he had a stroke, but I'm still not so sure.

   At a scummy hotel, a plague is spreading around and causing people's appendages to drop off in a puddle of green and blood red slime! The Hazmat dudes run around the halls and find neon green zombies (that are pretty docile for the "living" dead)! 

Yarrghhh, straight out of the fridge onto your plate!

   Zombie 3 has the most inconsistent zombies, some fly, run, swim or slowly tread. You can tell all they were concerned with was that some other film was being copied in one form or another.

   They even copy Return Of The Living Dead as the cremated bodies become acid rain and threaten to restart the zombie plague all over again. 

   Three goofy soldiers with a ghetto blasters stalk an RV full of loose women. There's a disc jocky named Blue Heart who sends out ecological warnings and seems to know what's going to happen next.  

So until next time, keep your head between your knees and kiss your ass goodbye

   All of a sudden a birdemic breaks out over the rocking sounds of the Clue In The Crew (who totally suck)! The rest of the score is by Stefano Mainetti is pretty decent in a vaguely familiar Goblin/Frizzi style.
   The birds later show up in the 5th Zombie sequel Killing Birds. The fast moving undead start to show up and one even looks like distant relative of Tar man. The deserted hotel's production design looks like they just tossed ferns and hung spider plants in each corner of the room. The military decides to seal off the infected island (like they should have done on Matool). Fragasso, who wrote the script is recycling most elements from ROTLD and adding a dash of his other thieveries

   More zombies start trickling in and push one annoying girl off a balcony into some water that dissolves her legs lickity split! Crappy looking zombies that look like the ones from Zombie Lake start slopping around in the water. Blue Heart got a hold of what sounds like an economy pack of George Romero media "zombie apocalypse" scripts and reads them over the air. The best line is "If you see guys in white over-alls, run to them they will help". By that he means they will kill you!

stay still while we help you!

    My favorite zombie in the whole film is a flying severed head that pops out of the fridge and bites a couple looking for snacks. One zombie immediately learns how to talk and looks like a middle aged Filipino women in a dress shirt. 

I'm all dressed up for my interview

   The few survivors actually have flame throwers and machine guns, which I think they kept secret from the other in their group that were eaten (why I have no idea, maybe out of spite)! 

   One guy who looks like an extra from Troll 2 with a load in his pants is obliterated by the hazmats trying to catch a chicken to eat for lunch. The military hypocrisy is very typical and I recognized a voice actor from Cannibal Holocaust: The Begining! 

   The ending is really great and makes me wonder, what if Bub (from Day Of The Dead) had become an oldies DJ? As inept and retarded as this sequel is, its a lot of fun, but completely unoriginal. Pure exploitation with hokey make-up effects and generic military characters. I liked it enough that I'm going to check out the other sequels and see which one gives me a migraine, I hope you enjoy all the suffering that it may cause my brain! 

Wake me up before you Go Go...

The Deathmaster

The DeathMaster Directed By Ray Danton Starring Robert Quarry (1972).

I never thought much of Robert Quarry and always found his Count Yorga series to be the vampire equivalent to cinematic Nyquil. In The Deathmaster he's brought his cheesy vampire act to the Spahn Ranch and wears a goofy Manson costume. So if you thought Manson was some dirtbag who just made delusional acid casualties follow him around as the second coming of Christ, you were deceived, because he was always a vampire with powers of mind control!

I for one am offended by this anti-Yorga tirade!

   Here's how it all went down, a coffin washed up on the beach (Hey Wait I thought Charlie Didn't Surf)! A bleary eyed homeless looking version of Max Julien in Hippie garb strangles a surfer then drags the coffin along the shore. Hippies and bikers litter the streets, Pico (Bill Ewing) and his Pop (played by nerdy character actor John Fiedler of Odd Couple and Bad Ronald fame) run a garage sale.

  A biker named Monk (William Jordan) who looks like he was in a Bruce Dern Cycle Savages look-a-like contest, tries to fight Pico the hippie, but is deflected by his kung fu skills. After the brawl, they come to respect each other (plus there's girls and weed, so that always helps)!

We're so baked

   Everyone keeps mentioning through dialogue and song that they are all looking for direction in their lives. They are all easy prey for a cult leader to move in and manipulate them. A weed pipe that looks like a giant Krazy straw is passed around. The creepy Black hippie from the beginning shows up, his name is Barbado (LaSesne Hilton's only film credit), he only communicates through flute wizardry and bongos. 

This Mack can't get into the Players ball no more

   The lights go out than suddenly Khorda (Robert Quarry) shows up to form his own group of evil hippies or "slippies". This group looks more like The Brady Bunch and less like the one's frothing at the mouth from I Drink Your Blood.

   Monk the biker's iron cross scares the fake Manson, who seems to be the answer all these clueless losers are looking for. The biker splits the scene and says "I'm going out for steak and whiskey"! 

Care for a snaggled tooth mustache ride?

   The fuzz guitar gets cranking as one blonde hippie named Esslin (Betty Anne Ross) realizes that this cult leader is one of the undead and has no reflection in the mirror.

Then Pico and his pals try to escape the party of drugged out dancing, because they are too square for this shit! One of the bearded vampire hippies is none other than the Mr. Monster Mash himself Bobby "Boris" Pickett! I knew there was something sinister going on in that song, I need to play it backwards to see if there are any evil messages!

What ever happened to my Charlie Manson twist?

   Pico is trapped in the crypt underneath the house where Khorda's coffin lies (he accidentally sticks his hand into a bowl of leeches).It's never explained why they're there, I'm guessing Barbado left them as a hilarious prank. Pico runs back to see his dad who thinks he's on a bad acid trip! I like how the dad has a bunch of paperbacks that seem to have all kinds of helpful information!

Don't snicker at my library, it may bail out your ass one day!

   All his old friends start wearing a black magic medallion and are now slaves to "The Deathmaster". There's never a turning point where they start murdering celebrities, they just hang out in the mansion and worship the devil (pretty harmless kids stuff)!

Quarry does a pretty good acting job and has a certain amount of presence. 

All the hippies making hissing sounds with plastic Dracula teeth is a pretty goofy site! The ending is a real show stopper full of surprises, if you enjoyed Grave Of The Vampire or Psych-Out you'll definitely be into this flick!

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Calgon take me away!