The Curator of Schlock #262 by Jeff Shuster

Hell Night

Pray for day!

I keep thinking I’ve covered Hell Night. This would have seemed like the perfect movie to review when I was a younger Curator of Schlock, all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. It’s got Linda Blair in it. She plays the final girl. This is a tried and true American slasher movie. It isn’t some stupid whodunit where I have to figure out who the killer is. Just a deformed maniac. That’s how I like it. Don’t try to make me think when I watch these movies!

1981’s Hell Night from director Tom DeSimone begins with a raucous college party hosted by the fraternity Alpha Sigma Rho. Everyone is attired in various costumes raging from Playboy Bunnies to Vikings. There’s also a bit of drinking and puking going on. This is Hell Night, when new pledges of Alpha Sigma Rho and its sister sorority must test their mettle by spending the night in Garth Manor, an abandoned mansion where a rich man once murdered his entire family after his wife gave birth to one too many malformed children. The legend goes that his youngest son, Andrew, survived and still skulks about the mansion.

The initiates have to spend one night in Garth Manor. We have Seth (Vincent Van Patten), a surfer dude dressed as Robin Hood who likes to party hardy. He also wears boxers with little red hearts on them, but that’s neither here nor there. Denise (Suki Goodwin), a sorority initiate dressed as some kind of flapper. According to Wikipedia, Denise is “promiscuous.” We won’t comment on that, but she does sneak some Jack Daniels and some Quaaludes into the mansion with her. I think I’m in love. Where was I? Oh, there’s Jeff (Peter Barton), a rich kid who’s bit of a goodie good. He’s dressed as a cowboy. My name is Jeff. Why can’t I be rich? I don’t even have a cowboy costume! And last, but not least is Marti, a studious girl from a working class family (her father is car mechanic), who’s just joining the sorority for the free room. Marti (Linda Blair), take a page out of Denise’s book, please!

The fraternity has the house rigged up with speakers that provide spooky sounds such as screaming and moaning. There’s even a projector that emits the ghostly visage of what I’d imagine to be old man Garth. The members of the fraternity are having a good time with their tomfoolery until the real Andrew Garth shows up and starts hacking them to pieces. To be fair, he doesn’t just use sharp objects. For the fraternity nerdlinger, Andrew simply twists his head around. Andrew later makes his way into the house and Denise is the first to go. Seth returns from the bathroom to find her decapitated head lying on the bead.

It’s around this point that the three remaining initiates start freaking out. Seth wants out of there. Naturally, Alpha Sigma Rho locked up the huge front gate so our initiates wouldn’t be tempted to flee Garth Manor after hearing those scary sound effects. Seth manages to climb over despite getting cut up by the sharp spikes atop the gate. Jeff and Marti make him promise to get the police over to Garth Manor pronto. I won’t say anything more about the film to avoid spoiling it for you lot except to say unless Jeff can fly like Superman, he’s in trouble.

Photo by Leslie Salas.

Jeffrey Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, and episode 284) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

The Curator of Schlock #261 by Jeff Shuster

The Prowler

Pitchforks are painful!

Yay. It’s February, which means another week of slasher movies. I suppose I’ll continue the trend of slasher movies set on college campuses. And tonight’s movie has a bit of romance going for it, perfect for Valentine’s Day.  How was your Valentine’s Day? Mine was great, just peachy.

Chrislystal broke up with me! My Canadian girlfriend broke up with me after I had driven all the way to Nova Scotia to be with her. I had even sprung for some Swiss Chalet ,and you know what she tells me as I’m halfway through my Rotisserie Beef Kaiser? “We’re not clicking.” That’s what she says. I don’t even know what that means.

Tonight’s movie is 1981’s The Prowler from director Joseph Zito. The movie begins with on old newsreel report about the end of the second World War, about all the American soldiers that will return to the women they love. Except, of course, for the returning soldiers who received “Dear John” letters. At a college graduation dance, one of these soldiers decides to dress in his combat attire and stab his ex-girlfriend to death with a pitchfork. Fast-forward 35 years later and the town of Avalon Bay is holding a graduation ball, the first one since that brutal pitchfork murder.

You know, I’m getting the impression from these movies that young people shouldn’t have any fun. If they do, some guy dressed as a clown or a World War II soldier murders them. What is up with that? You’re supposed to kill Nazis when you don that uniform, not sorority sisters! What is this guy’s major malfunction? The town sheriff leaves for a weekend fishing trip, leaving a deputy named Mark London (Christopher Goutman) in charge of keeping the peace. Right when the festivities start, a copycat killer dressed in World War II fatigues starts murdering the attendees.

These are some brutal deaths, too. Tom Savini did the special effects in this one, and it looks like the version they’re showing on Amazon is uncut. One guy gets stabbed through the top of his head right through the front of his face. A woman gets stabbed with a pitchfork while taking a shower. Gruesome stuff. What else? Oh, there was a gruesome stabbing/drowning in a pool. The person who finds the dead body in the pool gets stabbed and killed. Yeah, lots of stabbing and killing in this movie. Also, people shooting guns at each other.

What do want from me? These movies tend to be similar to one another. Like everyone at the time had the bright idea of making a Friday the 13^th knockoff, not realizing everyone had the same idea. I think they all came out between 1980 and 1982. But The Prowler has style and good effects. There’s this one scene where the deputy calls up the motel the sheriff is staying at, only to be given the runaround because the slovenly night manager is too lazy to check in on the sheriff and wake him up. It’s like the movie slows to a crawl in this scene, showing the audience that while things may be frantic in Avalon Bay, other parts of the world are nice and serene. Check it out!

Jeffrey Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, and episode 284) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

The Curator of Schlock #260 by Jeff Shuster

Final Exam

Cheaters never prosper!

Anyone out there ever have the final exam dream? It usually goes like this: it’s the end of the semester, you’ve done really well in four out of the five classes you registered for this semester, but there’s that one class you stopped going to the second week in. You slip in the last day of class, hoping the instructor hasn’t noticed your absence. But how will you get through that final exam? Did you remember any of the material from that first week? You try to glance over at the test sheet of the student sitting next to you, hoping to gleam some answers.

Tonight’s movie is 1981’s Final Exam from director Jimmy Huston, a movie that I thought would tap into that suppressed exam anxiety many of us have buried deep within us, but alas, it’s just another slasher film. Well, it’s not any old slasher. It takes place at a college. That’s kind of unique. Beats another summer camp. The movie starts out with a couple necking in a convertible, only for the boyfriend to get knifed and sliced by some random maniac. I figured this movie would be a whodunit like many Canadian slasher movies, but this is an American slasher movie so our killer is just some nameless guy. I kept thinking he was going to be revealed as the chemistry teacher, getting revenge on the students that had cheated on their final exam. No dice,

Oh, this movie has characters in it and by characters I mean victims lying in wait for our generic killer. Seriously, this guy doesn’t even wear a mask. He doesn’t speak. I don’t understand it. He just pops up, kills a college student, and disappears into the shadows. I demand more from my killers! Dress like Howdy Doody or Barney the Dinosaur or something.

Even the deaths aren’t spectacular. There a fraternity pledge who gets stabbed repeatedly in the back after the killer jumps on top of him from a nearby tree. If he were dressed like the Hamburglar, this scene would get somewhere. One kill involves the star quarterback known as “Wildman” being accosted in a weight room. He gets strangled with the cords of one of the weight machines.

Another death involves a young woman waiting to seduce her art teacher only to have her blood be added to the various canvases spread throughout the studio. At least the token nerdlinger gets killed along with the frat boys and the jocks. Remember, there is no such thing as a loveable loser.

Apparently, Final Exam was seized and confiscated in Great Britain during the Video Nasty scare of the early 1980s. Back then you could get arrested for renting someone a copy of Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead. Be proud to be an American where at least you know you’re free. Mental note: Do a Video Nasty Month at some point. Treat it like the FBI’s Most Wanted list, but for movies.

Photo by Leslie Salas

Jeffrey Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, and episode 284) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

The Curator of Schlock #258 by Jeff Shuster

Manhattan Baby

There’s no baby in this motion picture. 

We haven’t covered a Lucio Fulci movie in awhile. This is a crying shame that will now be rectified. Italy’s Maestro of Madness deserves an entire wing in The Museum of Schlock. Today’s exhibit is 1982’s Manhattan Baby. It’s a bit different. Not the usual Fulci fare. For instance, this movie is about an ancient Egyptian curse and we’ve never had Lucio Fulci featuring ancient Egyptian curses. I’m reasonably confident about that fact.

The movie begins in Egypt with an exhibition led by George Hacker (Christopher Connelly of Peyton Place fame). Along for the ride are his wife, Emily (Martha Taylor), who is a professional journalist, and their ten year-old daughter, Susie (Brigitta Boccoli), who is not a professional journalist. George decides to explore some tomb that the locals say is cursed. What else is new? Listen, George is an American living in Manhattan. This means he has a posh Manhattan apartment. The family also has an au pair named Jamie (Cinzia de Ponti) to look after the kids.  What the heck is an au pair? Oh, it’s a nanny from another country. I think. Kind of like a student exchange program, but for nannies. Anyway, au pairs must be expensive, as are Manhattan apartments. Emily’s reporter salary won’t make a dent in that. George has no choice but to plunder the tomb. I’m assuming that’s his motivation and that archaeological discovery has nothing to do with it.

One of the local Egyptians decides to follow George in. This Egyptian isn’t afraid of any curse. It’s not long before George and said Egyptian fall through a trap door. The Egyptian gets impaled on some spikes, but George escapes unscathed until some statue of Isis shoots laser beams out of her eyes, blinding poor George. I think it was a statue of Isis. I’d have to watch Manhattan Baby again to double check, though, and that ain’t gonna happen.

Meanwhile, little Susie is given an antique pendant by a strange blind woman who declares that “Tombs are for the dead.” The family heads back to New York City where Susie is reunited with her younger brother Tommy (Giovanni Frezza of The House by the Cemetery infamy). George’s doctor says his eyesight should return in about a year, which ticks him off to no end. Emily returns to work, and we’re introduced to one of her reporter friends, a guy named Luke (Carlo De Mejo), who is a bit of a practical joker. He wears funny glasses like the kind with slinky eyes. Luke is also a big fan of the snakes in a can trick. Naturally, we hate Luke and want him to die.

Strange things start happening in their Manhattan apartment building. The building security guard gets trapped in an elevator. The floor of the elevator falls underneath him. Luke gets killed when he investigates Emily’s apartment, so good riddance, but it’s kind of lame. He just disappears and rematerializes in a desert where he dies of thirst.

Where’s the gore? This is a Lucio Fulci movie. I want to see eyes getting gouged out and people throwing up their own intestines. We do see one guy get his face pecked to death by some stuffed birds. I don’t know. Not Fulci’s best. Fans of Fabio Frizzi’s score for The Beyond should be happy that he’s returned to score Manhattan Baby…by using the exact same score for The Beyond.

Fail.

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Photo by Leslie Salas.

Jeffrey Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, and episode 284) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.