The Curator of Schlock #267: Fist of the North Star

05 Friday Apr 2019

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in animation, Anime, Film, The Curator of Schlock

The Curator of Schlock #267 by Jeff Shuster

Fist of the North Star

Welcome all my friends to the show that never ends.

My MacBook Pro power cord died on me again. This happens from time to time. Maybe I need to hang it up and buy a PC. So I’ll be wrapping up Anime Month today even though it’s April. Tonight’s feature is 1986’s Fist of the North Star from director Toyoo Ashida. This movie is guaranteed to blow your head apart. Sorry. I’ve got Emerson, Lake & Palmer on my brain. Maybe because I saw so many brains exploding out of heads in Fist of the North Star. Fist1 This might be the most violent animated motion picture I have ever seen. Hell, this might be the violent motion picture I’ve ever seen. Fist of the North Star begins with the world being nuked into oblivion. Must have been the Soviets. Or maybe it was Matthew Broderick. At any rate, you see the full horror of that nuclear fallout, people stumbling around as their skins melt off. The aftermath leaves the world a wasteland reminiscent of the Mad Max movies. Only the strong survive in this cruel, new world.

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Enter our hero, Ken (voiced by John Vickery), a martial arts master with the title of Fist of the North Star. While traveling with his fiancé, Julia (voiced by Melodee Spivack), he gets challenged by the Fist of the South Star, Shin (voiced by Michael McConnohie). Shin is Ken’s best friend from childhood, but he wants Julia for himself so he challenges Ken to a fight. One thing to note about many of the men in this film is that they’ve got muscles upon muscles upon muscles. Arms and legs shaped like tree trunks. I wonder how these men can pack on the muscle when food is so scarce in this post-apocalyptic world.

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Ken loses the bout and is left for dead. Shin and his gang of hooligans make off with Julia. Fast-forward a year. A gang of marauders is chasing two kids named Bat and Lin. I think Lin has some psionic powers because she summons Ken from the wasteland. Ken fights the marauders and knocks a couple of ruined skyscrapers over. This movie is kind of a blur to me. Maybe it’s because I can’t keep track of whose head exploded when and where.

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Yes, Ken has a martial arts technique where he touches pressure points on another guy’s head resulting in his opponent’s brain exploding from his skull. People get killed in all sorts of ways in this movie. Some get crisscrossed into chunks. Others spill their guts all over the ground. It’s all really quit nasty. Still, if you look past the carnage, you’ve got a movie that champions love, honor, and the restoration of the Earth to a green paradise. I think they released a Fist of the North Star video game last year. You get to explode men’s heads in the game. It’s amazing what they can do with technology these days.

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 #266: Twilight of the Cockroaches

22 Friday Mar 2019

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The Curator of Schlock #266 by Jeff Shuster

Twilight of the Cockroaches

Not to be confused with Grave of the Fireflies.

The VHS cassette box for Twilight of the Cockroaches, a live action/anime hybrid movie, has a quote from Richard Harrington of The Washington Post. He says, “Could do for cockroaches what ‘The Secret of NIMH’ did for rats.” Now I know you kids have never heard of the Don Bluth animated masterpiece, The Secret of NIMH. It tanked at the box office leading Don Bluth to spend his energy making the arcade game Dragon’s Lair. You remember Dragon’s Lair, don’t ya? It was featured on that Stranger Things show that you guys love so much.

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Anyway, we’re not here to talk about The Secret of NIMH. Tonight’s feature is 1987’s Twilight of the Cockroaches from director Hiroaki Yoshida, a movie that proves that cockroaches are people too. The movie centers around a pretty, young cockroach named Naomi (voiced by Rebecca Forstadt) who’s engaged to a boring, yet stable young cockroach named Ichiro (voiced by Stephen Apostolina). They live an idyllic life with their community of roaches in the apartment of a Japanese bachelor named Saito (Kaoru Kobayashi), who gave up killing roaches when his wife and daughter left him. Saito lets the roaches roam free in his apartment, letting them eat whatever they want.

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What on Earth am I watching here? Twilight of the Cockroaches is an interesting production in that it combines live-action acting with animation not unlike Mary Poppinsor Who Framed Roger Rabbit. The technique is rather neat, featuring animated cockroaches against a backdrop of real life images such as Nike footwear and Heinz Ketchup bottles. While the movie does feature human characters in the form of Saito and his eventual girlfriend, Momoko (Setsuko Karasuma), the story focuses on the cockroaches, kind of like the latest Planet of the Apes movie. Except the cockroaches get their butt kicked in this movie.

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A young woman named Momoko lives in the apartment across the way from Saito and she hates cockroaches. She buys all kind of sprays and traps, trying her damnedest to eliminate every cockroach in the vicinity. As a result, the tribe of cockroaches living on her property is a warrior tribe. One of these warriors is a handsome cockroach named Hans. He even has a cleft chin. After an excursion, he finds his way over to Saito’s apartment and Naomi falls for him instantly. Hans recovers and returns to his tribe, but Naomi follows him. They begin a torrid affair. Oh, along the way, Naomi runs into a talking turd. The talking turd is done with clay animation. What on Earth am I watching here?

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Saito and Momoko also fall for each other. She moves into Saito’s apartment. so we know what that means. What follows is truly horrifying, a genocide of a race of creatures who just wanted to live peacefully with their human hosts. The warrior tribe of cockroaches comes to aid of the soft, yuppie tribe, but they get wiped out too. Naomi survives, pregnant with the next generation of cockroaches, immune to the poisons currently used by humans. This will force the humans to create deadlier poisons that will lead to even tougher cockroaches developing immunity to such poisons. Such is the fate of the cockroach as decreed by the god of the cockroaches. What on Earth am I watching here?

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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 #265: The Professional: Golgo 13

15 Friday Mar 2019

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in animation, Anime, The Curator of Schlock, Uncategorized

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The Professional: Golgo 13

Sex & Violence: The Motion Picture

I was on a James Bond kick around the same time I started getting into state of the art Japanese animation. Naturally, I wanted these two interests to converge in the form of an anime that resembled a Bond film. Eventually, I would discover Lupin the 3^rd, a series of television shows and movies about the world’s greatest gentleman thief. I believe I wrote about them years ago on this blog, no doubt overflowing with sentimentality for Lupin and company. But when I first looked for a Bond-style anime, I discovered The Professional: Golgo 13, a deeply depressing movie about an international assassin.

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1983’sThe Professional: Golgo 13from director Osamu Dezaki is a journey into a nihilistic hellscape. Duke Togo (voiced by Greg Snegoff) is a contract killer known as Golgo 13 who always sees the job through no matter the damage or consequences. Richard Dawson (voiced by Michael McConnohie) is the richest man in the world since he’s the president of a huge oil conglomerate. At Richard Dawson’s 62^ndbirthday party, Golgo 13 shoots and kills Richard’s son, Robert Dawson, right as Richard is about to hand over the reigns of Dawson Oil to his heir.

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Thus begins the hunt for Golgo 13. Richard Dawson has operatives from CIA, the FBI, and the United States military at his disposal, all with one mission: the tracking down and killing of Golgo 13. During the movie, we get to see how Golgo 13 operates whether he’s assassinating a Mafia Don in Sicily or shooting en ex-Nazi SS officer in a New York City high rise. Golgo 13 spends his time between missions bedding beautiful women, drinking liquor, and smoking Parliaments. Golgo 13 also has allies that supply him with information and equipment to aid his assassinations.

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Dawson’s subordinates attempt to kill Golgo 13 time and again, only to have him escape or worse, actually retaliate and waste them. Duke Togo is an expert and sniping and close combat. Dawson’s thirst for revenge grows with each failure. He sacrifices what’s left of his family on this mad quest for vengeance, teaching his eight year-old granddaughter how to shoot a handgun so she’ll have a chance to assassinate Golgo 13 when the time is right. He also employs demented psychopaths in his mission to destroy Golgo 13.

One such psychopath is the Snake, a gangly man with serpent like eyes and teeth that resemble snake fangs. The Snake agrees to help Dawson if he’s allowed to have his way with Dawson’s daughter-in-law. Dawson reluctantly agrees, locking her in a room with the Snake, and a disturbing scene follows. The Snake manages to kills some of Golgo 13’s allies, sinking his blades into this one guy’s torso causing him to shower the room with blood.

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Richard Dawson convinces the CIA to release a couple of death row inmates known as Gold and Silver, former assassins driven insane after being dropped in a jungle in South America with no provisions and no weapons. They survived, slaughtering 2,000 guerilla fighters, but were driven insane by the experience. The CIA doesn’t like this idea, telling Dawson this doesn’t serve the public interest like when he ordered the CIA to assassinate President Kennedy.

Eventually, this all leads to a showdown with Dawson Tower, with Golgo 13 fighting off demented assassins while avoiding gunfire from several attack helicopters. This is a movie about evil people doing terrible things to one another. By the way, I learned years later that Takeo Saito, the creator of Golgo13, actually wrote James Bond comics for Japanese audiences. This makes me wonder if Takeo Saito saw James Bond as an assassin, no better than a man like Duke Togo.

Jeffrey Shuster 3 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 #264: Lily C.A.T.

08 Friday Mar 2019

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in animation, Anime, The Curator of Schlock

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The Curator of Schlock #264 by Jeff Shuster

Lily C.A.T.

Not for kids.

Streamline Pictures was instrumental in bringing state of the art Japanese animation to the United States back in the early 90s. It wasn’t marketed as anime like it is now. There was no existing audience for Japanese animation like there is today. A man named Carl Macek brought features stateside for distribution under his Streamline Pictures label. These features were often dubbed in English and released on videocassette. On cassette cases you’d often find a “NOT FOR KIDS” sticker fixed to the box featuring a caricature of a confused, freckle-faced young boy. These stickers always disturbed me, my mind conjuring images of young children being irrevocably scarred by witnessing animated sex and violence. NOT FOR KIDS stickers also elicited my feelings of guilt over not watching something more wholesome, but I couldn’t turn away from the exotic nature of these curiosities from Japan.

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Which brings us to tonight’s feature, 1987’s Lily C.A.T. from director Hisayuki Toriumi. How does this film earn the “NOT FOR KIDS” label? Well, it’s basically an Alien knockoff with a little bit of John Carpenter’s The Thing thrown in. And we can forgive the movie for this since Alien basically ripped off It! The Terror From Beyond Space. The movie begins with members of the Sincam corporation getting ready for cryostasis aboard the starship, the Saides. Sincam employs people from all over the world. The crews mission is scope out some planet that’s twenty light years away, meaning the crew will be away from Earth for about forty years.

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That’s a long time. Heck. If you do two missions, that will be eighty years. Think about all that could change. You’ll come back to Earth, ask for a cool, refreshing Coca-Cola Classic only to discover that New Coke has made a triumphant comeback. Talk about a waking nightmare.

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Crewmembers have different reasons for wanting to leave the Earth for forty years. One blonde-haired jock type wants to use the money he earns from the trip to do some serious damage when he gets back while he’s still young enough to do some serious damage. Nancy Strauch (voiced by Julie Maddalena), the daughter of the President of the Sincam corporation, is taking the journey so she can get revenge on the best friend that stole her boyfriend. She’ll show up back on Earth all young and pretty when her friend is old and wrinkly. I don’t think Nancy thought this out. Captain Mike Hamilton (voiced by Mike Reynolds) keeps going on these trips because he’s too out of step with the times whenever he comes back to Earth.

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There are also a couple of “time jumpers” mixed in with the regular crew. Time jumpers are fugitives that board starships hoping to hide out from the law for forty years. What else? There’s an alien bacterium absorbing members of the crew into a monstrous mass so that’s creepy. There’s also an evil robot sent by the corporation that’s disguised as a cat. So the crew of the Saides has a lot to worry about. Will they survive? I’m sure at least one of them will. That’s how these Alien movies tend to go.

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 #263: Alita: Battle Angel

01 Friday Mar 2019

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The Curator of Schlock #263 by Jeff Shuster

Alita: Battle Angel

I liked it.

I’ve got nothing prepared this week. Digging up schlock from decades upon decades of film is hard work. I took a break and went to movies, went to check out the latest James Cameron milestone, Alita: Battle Angel. Not that James Cameron directed it, that duty fell to Robert Rodriguez, but whatever. I’ve liked his movies, too. He directed Planet Terror, a movie that spoofed that much-revered classic, Nightmare City. Without Planet Terror, there may not be a Museum of Schlock, so kudos.

But Alita: Battle Angel isn’t schlock, but perhaps it has schlock origins? The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines schlock as “of low quality or value.” Certainly Japanese animation was at one point considered to be of low quality or value. Maybe it was because Japanese animation studios toiled under greater budgetary restraints than that of their American counterparts. Maybe it was because they didn’t hit the number of frames per second that their American counterparts strived for. Maybe it had something to do with anti-Japanese sentiment that was still rampant in the 1980s, a holdover from World War II. I used to hear the term “cheap Japanese cartoons” being tossed around when I was a kid, no doubt intended to discourage kids like me from watching Robotech or The Mysterious Cities of Gold. It didn’t work.

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But being into Japanese animation was strange. Heck, being an adult who was into American cartoons was considered strange, but being into exotic cartoons from the Land of the Rising Sun? Forget about it. There were no fandoms back then except for Star Trek fans. No conventions or cosplay–except for Star Trek fans. I didn’t have Internet access until 1995. There was no connecting with people of similar weird interests. You got little exposure to things outside of the mainstream, having to rely on word of mouth and friends brave enough to fork over money for expensive VHS tapes featuring the latest in state of the art Japanese animation. One day, a friend loaned me a VHS tape titled Battle Angel Alita.

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Battle Angel Alita was what was known as OVA in Japan. It’s an abbreviation for Original Video Animation. This was animation produced solely for those purchasing it on VHS or Laser Disc. These were usually limited series featuring animation of a higher quality that what was made for television. OVAs are notorious for being unfinished. In just two 30-minute episodes, Battle Angel Alita introduced me to a teenage girl cyborg fighting for justice and survival in a scrap-heap city lorded over by a city of elites that floated above them in the sky.

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I think it was after Titanic got released that James Cameron said he was going to make a movie based on a Japanese comic book titled Alita. While I appreciated that Cameron was a fan of this underground comic, I never expected this project to get off the ground. Never in a million years did I expect an adaption of some VHS Japanese animation I borrowed from a friend in the mid 90s to be turned into a movie with a huge budget, state-of-the-art special effects, and an all star cast. And the movie is great, the best blockbuster of the year. Stop reading and go see it. I want a sequel.

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And we will be covering anime features from the 1990s for the rest of this month. Until next week.

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 #262: Hell Night

22 Friday Feb 2019

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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!

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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.

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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!

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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.

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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: The Prowler

15 Friday Feb 2019

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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^thknockoff, 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!

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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: Final Exam

08 Friday Feb 2019

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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 #259: The House on Sorority Row

01 Friday Feb 2019

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The Curator of Schlock #259 by Jeff Shuster

The House on Sorority Row

Don’t throw your KFC in the swimming pool!

Back in October, I partook in a special screening of The House on Sorority Row at my local Regal Cinemas. I wanted to know what it would be like to see an 80s slasher movie for the first time on the big screen. What drew those original audiences to see these movies? Is there something about the big screen that changes the way one views them? Are they more suspenseful? Are they more terrifying?

Nope.

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I don’t get the allure. Maybe one had to be alive at the time when these taboos were being broken. This is not to say 1982’s The House on Sorority Row from director Mark Rosman is a waste of time. Any movie that features a fight between a final girl and a maniac dressed like a jack-in-the-box can’t be that bad. Said final girl is Katey Rose (Katherine McNeil), a pretty, but boring college grad, ready to say goodbye to her sorority house and sorority sisters of the past four years.

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The sorority plans to throw a graduation party to celebrate, a rollicking romp featuring a live band in the form of 4 Out of 5 Doctors! Any of you go to their reunion concert at the Jammin Java Club in in Vienna, VA? I did. Jealous much?

Standing in the sorority’s way is Mrs. Slater (Lois Hunt), their house mother and a real battle axe who’s no rock n’ roll fun. She screams at the girls for drinking champagne in the house and won’t allow them to throw their going away bash. When Mrs. Slater catches one sorority sister named Vicki (Eileen Davidson) getting intimate with her boyfriend in a waterbed, Mrs. Slater takes her cane with the metal tip in the shape of a bird and punctures a hole in the plastic mattress. Mrs. Slater calls Vicki trash and Vicki vows to get even with her.

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Vicki convinces the other sorority sisters to help her with a prank. She’ll fill her boyfriend’s gun with blanks and pretend to shoot Mrs. Slater, giving her the scare of her life. This plan would have worked out well if one of those blanks hadn’t turned out to be a bullet.

The girls panic, wrap Mrs. Slater up in a blanket, and dump her in the murky waters of sorority house pool, which hasn’t been cleaned for ages. Oh, well. Time to forget about the murder and enjoy the party, right?

Nope.

The sorority sisters are all nervous and distracted during the party, worrying about getting caught. What they should be worried about is the psychopath about to stalk and murder each one of them.

Do you know what this psychopath does to one of the girls? Cuts her head off and sticks it in a toilet bowl. Really? That’s just in bad taste.

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Talking anymore about this will spoil the picture for those inclined to solve the mystery of who the killer is. If you get Showtime, you should be able to catch this flick on there. Oddly enough, the small screen works to this film’s advantage. Maybe a decapitated head in a toilet loses its impact when it’s too large.

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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: Manhattan Baby

25 Friday Jan 2019

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Film, Horror, The Curator of Schlock

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.