I could watch Jeremy Sisto all day. As a matter of fact, I just binge watched the ABC series, “Wicked City” where he plays a detective trying to solve a series of sunset strip murders while facing his own demons. I had little hope that “The Thirst” was going to be a quality vampire movie, but it was in the clearance bin, and I like both Sisto and Clare Kramer.

This wasn’t the first or last time that I asked myself “How bad could this possibly be?” I should probably stop at some point, yet I am continuously compelled, and I have put this off long enough.

Our direct to video story begins with red close ups of a coffin being handles by a lace cuffed hand and a blond woman walking the city streets past motels until she finds something especially skeezy. I would have run once the lights started flashing red over the opera music, but that’s atmosphere, right?  Up until her client decides to show himself as a vampire to possibly protest that her prices are a bit much for the services, or that he wants to shove a lampstand down her throat while drooling profusely.

Our next shot shows our recovering addict hero, Maxx (Matt Keeslar), complaining about his user girlfriend, Lisa (Clare Kramer) possibly stripping and using drugs at his NA meeting. As it turns out, Lisa has cancer, and it isn’t improving despite aggressive treatment. She can’t tell Maxx for fear of messing up his recovery. Lucky for her, Lisa has attracted the attention of a ‘shrink’ by the name of Mariel….who likes to come in her hospital room at 3 in the morning….and bite her while drooling.

I know that some hospitals are very underfunded, but this is ridiculous.

After the scare, Lisa calls Maxx and tells him of her illness. He is angry, storms out and turns to a friend, Macey, who comes on to him. When he tries to see her at the hospital, they learn that she left with Mariel. He returns home to find that she killed herself, but there is a little more to it. After a mourning hermit period, Maxx sees Lisa dancing at a goth club despite his friends’ insisting he’s crazy. Lisa is alive after a fashion, and she turns Maxx into a vampire. They join a coven of much older vampires led by Darius (Jeremy Sisto) and turn their addiction from hard party drugs to blood.

Let the grown up after school special begin!

Good gimmick to treat vampirism as one would treat drug addiction, but bad acting, and bad follow through. It’s different that the vampire characters are drooling as opposed to sparkling, but that was far too much red lighting for one movie.

I guess they want to emphasize blood….blooood…..BLOOOOOD!

And about that blood,  I think I saw better blood effects with Kool-aid. Nevertheless, Sisto’s first scene where he rips open a bouncer’s throat, drinks and later get’s his coven to follow suit with overly dressed cyber goths once he enters the VIP lounge had its humor. Jeremy Sisto, who I think is a good actor, phoned that role in a bit. I can’t blame him, though I wish the Eastern European accent was consistent. There was a less than star turn from Adam Baldwin as crazy redneck vampire Lenny. The mannerisms suggest the Lenny character from “Of Mice and Men” might have been a loose inspiration, but probably should have left John Steinbeck out of this. Those vampires might have drooled over prospective victims, but this movie left me pretty dry.

There was a time when I had cable. Real premium cable with channels such as TNT, TBS and On Demand services that allowed free movies from HBO, Showtime, Starz and Cinemax. Nowadays, I rely on streaming services, but I remember On Demand pretty fondly. I was able to find some interesting gems, and some interesting stinkers.

One such stinker was Hideaway, based on the novel by Dean Koontz. Koontz, as it turned out, hated the adaptation and wanted his name removed from the credits.

I didn’t quite know this factoid, nor did I read the original novel when I looked at the movie blurb. I selected play upon seeing Jeremy Sisto in the cast.

Don’t judge me. I know I am not the only one that watched a movie good or bad due to having a crush on one of the actors. I liked Sisto in Law and Order, and I watched a bad movie because the man is not only hot, but delivered a good performance. That said, I will pass this love on to you, dear readers, in review form.

The opening credits greet me with industrial band, KMFDM’s “Go to Hell,” a very promising indicator to the soundtrack, with the camera panning to a shirtless Sisto as Vassago.  That would be pretty damned good, except Vassago is a Satan worshiper who had sacrificed his mother and younger sister to the devil in the supposed safety in their suburban home. The camera pans to him at his altar where he kills himself with that same knife to further ensure the damnation of his soul.

Meanwhile, a family consisting of father Hatch Harrison (Jeff Goldblum), mother Lindsay (Christine Lahti) and teenaged daughter Regina (Alicia Silverstone) are out on a drive. A car accident ensues and even though Lindsay and Regina escape with superficial injuries, Hatch is pronounced dead.

All is not lost. Specialist Dr. Jonas Nyebern, played by Alfred Molina, is able to revive him. The drawback to this miracle is that he begins to see through the eyes of a serial murderer of women. After one too many news clips reporting these women as ‘missing’ and a trip to a psychic, Hatch comes to learn that the murderer is Vassago, the devil worshiper who killed his mother and sister before turning the knife on himself. Wait a second….isn’t he supposed to be dead? Well, let’s overlook the rubbery nature of the knife he falls on (you don’t have to look that hard, plus imdb points this out in the goof section). Vassago’s real name is Jeremy Nyebern, and his father is the same doctor that revived Hatch. Too bad Vassago kidnaps Regina and takes her to his abandoned amusement park hideout as the ultimate sacrifice….

This movie had a good cast, and a fantastic soundtrack for you goth/industrial fans including acts such as Miranda Sex Garden and KMFDM. Godflesh even makes a cameo appearance in the nightclub scene where Regina (who snuck out with a friend) first meets Vassago in darkly gorgeous yet creepy as hell glory. The story was solid on its face, but a few things seemed a bit needless and overall, it fell flat as did some of the acting. Part of me wonders if Alfred Molina took some of his Dr. Nyebern character to his later performance as Doctor Octopus in Spider Man 2. I really wanted to like this movie, but it was tedious, and the ending showed a needless twist that fell flat with the rest of the story. It’s a solid rental if you want a psychic twist to a horror movie, or if you have a thing for goth guys and Jeremy Sisto, who is an appealing villain, but I can understand some of the Rotten Tomato reviews.

Movie blurbs describe this as a ‘cautionary’ tale featuring a fictionalized and ‘highly exaggerated’ take on marijuana smoking.

Highly exaggerated isn’t the half of it. This movie was so over the top that it became more funny than cautionary. When a very well done, but equally hammy musical featuring Neve Campbell gets the green light nearly seventy years later, how seriously can you really take this?

Back in the days when the world’s lumber barons shit paper wads over the prospect of the mass paper making potential of hemp, a scare film such as “Reefer Madness” was probably necessary to protect all interests. If the populace were unfamiliar with any potential dangers of any drug, I guess, it needed to be exposed whether the danger in question was real, imagined or fabricated.

Back then, it appeared that parents all over the country feared that their children will become addicted to drugs, alcohol, promiscuous premarital sex, and jazz music all the while attending unsupervised house parties.

On its face, this is a valid fear, especially since the parties in question center around a house party thrown by a pot dealer that is all about profiting and seduction in every form. The woman he lives with shows a little more of a conscience when it looked like truly innocent teenagers might get mixed up in something that they can’t handle. But, lo, for all her arguing she caves to that big strong man and his stash, even as a wholesome couple meet up for a little party after school only to fall prey to pot, sex, addiction and later death topped off by a poorly done but somehow plausible frame job.

“Warn your children” the movie blurbs.

This is one of several period propaganda films preaching the dangers of whatever illicit drug that scared the masses on that particular week. The melodrama of the story and actors is what sets Reefer Madness apart from the herd. It has everything, noir, protagonists so sweet that their image on the screen even to this day adds to a risk of diabetes, a jazz pianist that falls to utter insanity and a frame job. You are drawn to this film, even though it is more funny than scary. It might drive you to smoke more, but this film not only survived the cult test of time, but it was Rifftraxed with Mike Nelson, Bill Corbett and Kevin Murphy to some acclaim. Also, how many of these were made into musicals?

Oh, Mill Creek…..
I first discover the magic of Mill Creek Entertainment while at a friend’s birthday party. I picked up a DVD compilation pack of low budget exploitation melodramas. Most of these films preach the dangers of drug abuse, but there are a couple pertaining to sexually transmitted infections among other societal ills. They feature an innocent young girl that meets the wrong man, takes the wrong turn and falls to ruin, addiction, unwanted pregnancy and loss of reputation.

One of these cinematic red flags is the 1935 remake of a silent film, “The Cocaine Fiends/The Pace that Kills” directed by William A. O’Connor and starring Lois January. The movie starts with a police chase. Drug dealer and no account hoodlum, Nick is on the run. He stops at a cafe, and sweet talks a young waitress named Jane (January) who is helping her mother work to send her little brother to college, into a cover story as well as a chicken dinner. In return, he promises marriage, an exciting new life in the big city, parts in ‘a show’ (what kind if show is anyone’s guess, but by golly she’s sure pretty enough to be in one) and a little pick me up he just calls ‘headache powder.’

Jane starts to get a lot of headaches since meeting Nick. When she runs off with him, she is locked in a room located at a seedy nightclub. She’s later informed by a jaded looking nightclub fixture played by character actress Fay Weldon that not only will Nick not marry her as promised, but that he fed lines to a score of others and by the way, that headache powder she needs is really dope.

To fill in the rest of the movie, there are a few subplots that seem to scatter throughout the film, making the pacing a little awkward to watch. They include Jane turning to club girl Lil and becoming more of an addict and a long suffering one at Nick’s hands as her mother spends day after day for over a year looking for a letter from her daughter. Her brother Eddie drops out of college after he is introduced to cocaine by a girlfriend. He later gets her pregnant after turning into a full on junkie or ‘hophead’ that can’t keep jobs or pay rent let alone go out on the town as they did. One young girl starts to run with a bad crowd, much to her father’s dismay, but while she does drink and stay out, she only dates casually and does not fall into the ‘hophead’ category. She still gets kidnapped and ransomed by Nick, who is always looking for that quick dollar.

Overall it is a story about Nick, his mules and the people he turns into addicts just as much as it is a story about the Janes of the world that fall from grace and eventually end up in jail for shooting Nick. There is a happy ending for one of the characters, despite her partying, which belies the anti-drug end of the propaganda. Not unlike a Shakespearean tragedy, the majority of the characters fall to death and despair on account of that demon dope which could get you and your children at any time!

Don’t do drugs, ladies and gentleman and don’t think of little things like plot holes and pacing if you want to enjoy this movie!

Welcome to the first of what will be a small series of cult movies focused on drug use. I’m going to review Roger Corman’s “The Trip.” When I rented it, I was under the impression that this film was going to be a horror movie where Peter Fonda faces some pretty interesting and literal demons when he opts to take his first hits of LSD.

This does turn out to be the case, but this film showcases the dreamier aspects of his trip, what happens when he decides to go out while high off his ass, and how he faces his own faults.

Peter Fonda plays a television commercial producer that is devoted to his job marketing perfume and other consumer products. His workaholic ways take him to the point where he misses his own divorce hearing. His soon to be ex wife pursues him on the set to sign papers. At that point, shit gets real to use use the Orwellian terminology.

Somewhere, in all this mass marketing, he finds the time to smoke grass and try his first hit of acid for a mind altering experience. He experiences a series of strange psychedelic images, some of which involve his trial, crucifixion and a walk through the forests…while he is in a major metropolitan city.

The horror element is his own demons and doubt, some of which centering around his soon to be ex wife. The camera work was fairly solid and the visuals very colorful and dreamy. The dream like and surreal elements made the movie hard to follow and I had to watch it twice to really get the point of the movie.

I didn’t see too many negative effects of the drug use. Fonda, while fearful of the police, did not get arrested, even when he broke into a stranger’s house and spoke to the little girl inside. It doesn’t end in his ruin or real redemption. There is no horror that you might expect, even though the drug use makes it possible.

Overall, it’s pretty cool even as anti-drug propaganda. It’s worth a rent if you have spare time.

As I’ve mentioned in previous blogs, horror movies touch upon our own fears. “Cheerleader Camp” addresses the flip side of the popular image of the pretty, perky, popular and by some turns, snobbishly unattainable cheerleader in many a teen movie in the 1980’s and later. I was interested in renting this movie because I was a former cheerleader. I was on my squad in the sixth grade and the junior varsity team in the tenth grade. This did not increase my status on the popularity food chain in either case, and my rigid and nasty coach in the sixth grade was a horror movie unto herself!

Needless to say, I was looking for a little bit of a karmic body count!

It delivered to a degree. An isolated wooded town holds a small camp was deemed a perfect place to host a cheerleader retreat where teams from different high schools compete for the honor of best squad, best team mascot, and Cheerleader Queen. As there were no reports of any serial killers, or deranged men in hockey masks and a supernatural claim to the camp site, our heroes and staff felt safe to go. I’d be concerned over the dirty old men on the staff and the former cheerleader hostess not allowing mascots to remove their masks when they are trying to eat the cafeteria food provided, but no one does much about this.

Our heroes are a ragtag team of mostly snobby cheerleaders, their shy misfit mascot, their randy assistant coach and I guess a choreographer/photographer who is a worse pervert than the assistant coach. There is one nice cheerleader in the bunch, namely Allison, who is plagued by an intense anxiety dream in the opening sequences of the movie. She is alone in the locker room trying to find her uniform only to find herself late and booed when she finds herself without a team on an empty football field. She is eventually attacked by her pom poms and about to be stabbed and gored by tinsel as she wakes up in a van with the rest of her team teasing her.

I was never given pom poms during my brief cheerleading career. I think I’m realizing why…

Anyway, on top of what appear to be recurring nightmares where she either witnesses or kills other cheerleaders and the pressure to win the camp competition, Allison is confronted by her assistant coach boyfriend hitting on other girls both on and off her squad, leers from middle aged male staff and their pervert photographer. The cherry topping this drama llama deluxe sundae is the snooty nastiness from the camp coordinator, judge, master of ceremonies and overall foil to all that don’t kiss her ass. I’m thinking she was a bit of a queen bee in her own cheerleader days and desperately wants to hold onto the spot in adulthood.

Allison’s only comfort comes into the form of Corey, a shy, unassuming and less popular member of the pecking order as team mascot. No matter as there is a killer picking off cheerleaders, focusing mainly on Allison’s squad, and Allison’s dreams are getting more premonition-esque. Seems that if she dreams of a rival getting knocked off, it starts to happen….

Did I mention that this camp is located in a wooded area?

I have to say, that this movie was a little formulaic, and did not need the dream premonition sequences. It could have turned the cheerleader image on it’s ear with better choreography and acting….but that fell through. On the other hand, Leif Garrett was a good philandering creep of a boyfriend who turned to other girls when Allison refuses sex on account of dreams and anxiety. The identity of the killer was a little too obvious, but it did derive a chuckle from me at the end of the movie nevertheless. Overall, a decent rental.

I don’t remember how I came across my copy of “April Fools Day” exactly, but it was part of a two pack and two sided DVD with the original “My Bloody Valentine.” One gets what they pay for and I didn’t pay very much for this set. If it was part of the horror movie grab bag from the Tower Record closeout years back (and I think it was), I paid next to nothing.

Either way, I was expecting a little more from a horror movie that built its premise around a holiday synonymous with pranks and practical jokes. You’d expect to see any and every manner of killer traps and jokes, right? Maybe a twist on the whoopee cushion? Maybe booby traps that would make early Wes Craven gems such as “Last House on the Left” and “A Nightmare on Elm Street” seem a little tame? It is, after all a 1980’s slasher movie entitled, “April Fools Day.”

There were all the bad hair, fashions, soundtrack and gratuitous sex jokes and scenes that are part of that genre, but it did not deliver. Cute and perky Muffy St. John, played by Deborah Foreman, invites her college friends to her family estate located on a small island for Spring Break.

The trouble starts with a ferry accident, and shaken but still blase, maybe drunk or stoned given the performances of some of the actors, our scooby gang enters the estate, drink some top shelf booze and find little jokes like a dribble glass here, heroin supplies there and randomly scattered articles about accidents and the possibility that sweet Muffy may be a touch insane.The group dies off one by one, but in pretty ordinary ways.

I was expecting a gory twist on April Fools Day and not only did it fall short in that department, but the ending was all too inane and goofy. I will say that Amy Steel was a decent Final Girl, but she did a much better job in “Friday the Thirteenth: Part 2.” Overall, great gimmick and premise, but terrible follow through.

Welcome to another “It Came from the Queue” review. I came across the title “Cut” and the name, Molly Ringwald. My first thought was, could this be “Ducky’s Revenge” or some strange slash-tastic sequel to “The Breakfast Club?” I read Comcast’s synopsis and it looked to be the back drop to a true slasher movie, gimmick and all.

Hmmmm

It did not disappoint. Ringwald played a B- actress in a horror movie that was started at some point in the late 1980’s but never finished due to the untimely death of the nasty pitbull director, played by Kylie Minogue. Ringwald’s character, the pretty teenaged lead actress, and a P.A. witness an actor, recently fired slashing up the director with the garden tool weapon his killer character used and turning to attack them. Ringwald, panicked, manages to stick him in the neck and electrocute him.

One would think that the film would get a dose of bad publicity and higher box office sales due to morbid curiosity. It might have, if they were able to finish the film. Funny thing; anytime anybody tried to finish the movie, people got killed.

Twelve years later, the P.A. man went on to teach and a group of his students attempt to finish the movie as a final project. Traumatized, their instructor warns them against it, and sets the viewer up to the back story of the film as well as what happens to the hapless souls who try to finish it.

Do they listen? It is slasher movie land, so they get the rights to the film for next to nothing, hire Ringwald to play the mother of her teen character, and go back to the old set where a figure dressed as the movie killer hacks and slashes his way through the cast and crew, as well as a throwaway pervert character.

I liked it, formulaic as it was. It had a Crazy Ralph stock character who warned certain doom, coitus interruptus by sharp objects, and while the villain in of himself was generic and derivative, an interesting plot twist gave him a little extra dimension. All and all, this film stands strong on its own and the final scare can open up an interesting sequel.

When I first viewed the opening credits, one of my initial thoughts was, “this stars the guy in those commercials that steals your stuff when you fall asleep at your desk at 3:00?” My next thought was, “Nope-that’s Robert Goulet and Robert Vaughn played a bipolar public official on “Law and Order” and plugs a law firm.

All actors have to start somewhere. The camera first pans to a girls’ dormitory where a petite brunette packs a bag and looks over her shoulder, clearly about to run away. She is met by a friend, played by Nia Long, who gives the girl a switchblade for the journey ahead. After a few scares, shots of sleeping girls in various stages of undress and a shadow walking past, she finally makes a bid for freedom…and the hitchhiking, truck stops etc. that go with it.

Not to be! She is met by a mysterious man in what looks to be a Ronald Reagan mask, attacked and chased down a trap door, a rabbit hole if you would. She screams her way down the tube into a dark pit where she is dragged into a pit by our masked man, strapped into a straight jacket, even though she is fighting her solitary attacker and slowly but surely bricked into her little pit stall.

Enter a newly hired doctor by the name of Janet who suffers from strange hallucinations. She is starting her first day at her dream job working at a troubled girls’ clinic under a shrink named Gary, played by Mark E. Salomo-I mean, Robert Vaughn (he means business either way). She holds him in high regard and wants to please him right away.

Did I mention that she was blond and beautiful? If he wasn’t impressed by her credentials, he was all over her assets, as was the creepy assistant doctor, played by Donald Pleasence. If you thought that Pleasence was obsessed with Michael Myers to disturbing degrees in the Halloween movies, then you will be very creeped out by the way he follows Dr. Janet throughout the hospital grounds!

He does not turn out to be the only creepy admirer in Janet’s life, as the viewer will soon see, but the immediate problem for Janet is getting lost in the kitchen area. She bumbles in to find a group of tough, loud, and at many turns scantily dressed teenage girls looking her over as the new authority figure while grinding meat. Some girls bathe, do their hair, and primp in the kitchen as well. I can’t explain why the girls’ beauty rituals take place where food is prepared, but this is a mental hospital…

The girls’ while having a gang like mentality, are not above spats and fights among themselves. Janet walks into such a dispute, and raises the ire of the ringleader, Debbie, played by Ginger Lynn. Debbie starts a conflict with complaints of laziness, and blows it up to a full on brawl. One girl starts to garner delusions of persecution from the staff, other girls, and the beloved Dr. Gary.

A little mischief might be the norm, as this is a school for troubled girls, but going overboard, or not responding to Gary’s brand of therapy in the way he’d like has bad results for the patients. One is flayed by an electric beater as she uses it as a curling iron, and more find themselves bricked into pits, which turn out to be located in an underground basement area where some of the girls sneak boys, drugs and other party favors.

All the while, Janet asks Gary about the missing girls, harbors hallucinations of hands trying to break through a brick wall, accompanied by voices while being peeped and followed by Donald Pleasence. I, for one don’t need the job or the money that badly. However, she views Gary as a mentor, even when it looks like he is trying to undress her half the time. You really see how obsessed he gets when Debbie complains about Janet and threatens to have the rest of the girls boycott her science class focusing on ants. Gary thanks her for being honest to her face, but when Debbie sneaks out to meet a boy about some grass, trouble ensues. When Janet finally finds the tunnels and starts to see what kind of therapy Gary and staff have planned for the worst of the problem girls, rotting skulls and all, she’s in real trouble, especially after she turns down Gary’s marriage proposal.

I had fun with this movie, despite some of the plot holes. It did have a women in prison exploitation feel to it, especially with a shower initiation scene, but it had solid performances from Nia Long as the concerned friend who wasn’t going to know what was happening until the end. The standout performance was Donald Pleasence as patient experiment turned creepy staff. We all have that one coworker we’re never quite sure of, less so if that one has a crush on you! It touched on the fears of patient experimentation and being bricked into a small room within an enclave swarming with ants. I don’t think it was too faithful to Poe, but it was entertaining to watch, ants, electric mixers, presidential masks and all.

The best present one can give anybody is a DVD set of after school specials. I was fortunate to find such a set for my friend’s birthday one year.

For all the classics of the After School Special and Made for TV epics, the “Tough Girls” the “What are Friends Fors” or even the “Faces at the end of the Worlds,” there are those that might not make the cut, or the DVD sets shaped like a school bus starring those 70’s and 80’s sitcom staples.

I have a funny feeling that for all of its Made for TV madness and the small part of a young Helen Hunt as the younger and prettier, or at least thinner sister, The Spell is not going to get its own little short bus in those DVD sets of fond memory.

Horror movies touch upon our fears. The Spell touched upon a fear that haunts me well into adulthood. That fear is being the fat kid in the class. Our heroine, Rita, played by Susan Meyer and not really all that heavy, is picked on by her much thinner classmates. The beginning shots show these girls taunting Rita, puffing out their cheeks, trudging to mock her walk, which indicates Rita is trying especially hard to avoid these other girls.

It gets worse when she tries to climb the rope in gym class. The gym teacher shows more sympathy to Rita than her own sister, played by Helen Hunt. You really could see how Hunt was trying to fit in with the pretty girls….even when the worst of them falls from the top of the rope in an accident…

Soon, strange things start to happen to Rita’s family. She is found chanting, reading strange things, and after the sister starts being spiritually terrorized by among other things, an out of control clock, you start to get the feeling that Rita is using occult means to get even with mean classmates, a father who harps on her weight and generally acts like he would be much happier with only one daughter to a point where he wants to send her away and a sister who is equally mean and taking attention away from the one sympathetic parent Rita has…well, Mom is sympathetic until she figures out what Rita is up to and who she hangs out with at night anyway. Most moms would be wary of those occultists that keep their teenagers out late at night.

I can’t say I enjoyed this. Rita was not as awful as she was built up to be, as a matter of fact, it turned out a completely different person was doing the worst of the casting in a badly drawn surprise ‘twist.’ My guess was that the networks did not like the prospect of a vengeful and murderous teenager in the TV movies. No way would Carrie White have put up with that kind of nonsense in school or at home!