SCHLOCKTOBER FEST, 2020: VOLUME I

 

Ok, here we go with another round of Schlocktober.  I almost didn't do it this year since you know everything's been falling apart.  Also, I deleted Facebook and am terrified of promoting anything on Twitter.  So, this is basically for me and maybe a few lucky souls I actually tell that I'm doing this again.  I've tweaked the rules a bit this year:

1.  31 movies but not a movie each day (my plan is to double up early so I'm not watching 4 movies on some days like I did last year).

2.  It has to be a movie I don't remember, not necessarily a movie I haven't seen (Basically, any movie that's been the 2nd or 3rd feature of a drunken movie night would qualify)

3.  And, of course, it has to be horror 

Here we go!

1.  Shivers (1975) / Director: David Cronenberg

As a pretty big Cronenberg fan I couldn't believe I had never seen his 1975 - not quite debut but basically his debut - film Shivers.  Shivers tells the story of a couple of doctors that develop a parasite that can replicate a human organ when a person's organ happens to be failing.  You know " a perfectly good parasite where you used to have a rotten kidney" type of deal.  Of course, this parasite has other ideas and spreads and spreads throughout an apartment complex just outside of Montreal.  By "spreads and spreads" I mean it infects its host with an insatiable appetite for orgiastic sex with anyone, whether they be willing or...unwilling.  So, yeah, kinda rape-y.

The movie opens with a middle aged man attacking and brutally murdering a young woman.  He then lays her on a table, slits open her stomach, and pours acid inside.  So, ok...shocking scene.  Pretend you didn't read that first paragraph, will you?  The picture like most of Cronenberg's pictures takes a very clinical, almost to the point of being detached, view of the proceedings.  At first the main character appears to be Nick who is suffering from a stomach ailment that gets progressively worse.  His, largely ignored by him, wife (Janine) finds comfort in the company of her neighbor Betts, played by scream queen legend, Barbara Steele (Black Sunday).  Eventually, the film settles on Dr. St. Luc (Paul Hampton) as our protagonist who, along with his very horny assistant (is she or isn't she infected?), Nurse Forsythe investigate the strange goings on.

All the while, the film feels like a really strange mashup of George Damiano (Deep Throat, Devil in Ms. Jones) and Stanley Kubrick.  We're just this side of things really going off the rails and full penetration breaking out.  Or, would that be on the rails?  Anyway, I liked this one quite a bit but might be the rare guy that slightly prefers Rabid.

2.  Hellmaster (1992) / Director: Douglas Schulze

3 Seconds.  It took 3 seconds for me to be annoyed with this picture.  The instant "God is Dead -- Nietzche" was slapped on the screen I figured I was in for an interminable 90 minutes.  And, well, the first 20 minutes or so is pretty damned interminable.  Students sitting in a class at Kant Institute of Technology (groan) philosophizing about the nature of evil, root of homelessness (ok, listening), etc.  This is the kind of class where the professor (who is, by the way, teaching remotely -- oooh...prescient) drops this nugget mid-lecture; " a full 90% of our graduates go on to lucrative careers in the CIA or FBI.  There is nothing more 90s than wanting to join the FBI as a young person.  Post Silence of the Lambs,  just pre-X-files.  Fuck, Keanu just a couple years earlier proclaimed "I am an FBI agent" and a generation was changed into little Hoover wannabes.  Anyway, very 90s, you had to be there.

So, once you cut through the bullshit of this one you get to a really sweet "Night of" type deal where a bunch of crazy monsters steal a bus after murdering a bible class and make their way to Kant.  The movie becomes a little bit Night of the Demons and a little bit, I don't know...Ilsa-y?  See, a former professor, 20 years back, experimented on some students in a Nazi camp type of way and then they became monsters and he (John Saxon) disappeared into the bowels of the school.  I don't know, I guess the abominations he created were detained and imprisoned in some mental institution or some shit, eventually escaping on this very night, whatever night this very night happens to be.  The monsters are in the cenobite realm, each having unique characteristics.  We got the Nun (sort of a chatterer), the little child (looking for a plaything), and the leader vaguely resembles Pinhead if you removed all the nails.  

The fodder, our students, are mostly unmemorable.  We've got the bully that's killed way too soon and the kid with the crutches who turns out to be the biggest asshole of them all (I respect that choice).  As far as I can tell, Douglas Schulze went on to make exactly zero more pictures which is kind of a shame because this one showed promise and, in short stretches, was actually almost brilliant.  Until the end where we get the battle of philosophical mind breaking world views:  "god is not dead because death is mortal and god is not mortal evil is mortal and you are evil so therefore mortal (and here...let me stick this knife in you right here....that's right...thanks)".

3.  KILLER CROCODILE 2 (1990) / Dir:  Gianetto De Rossi

Killer Crocodile 2 is a sequel to Killer Crocodile a movie where an Indiana Jones type character (named Kevin Jones) tracks down and blows up a killer crocodile that's been eating tourists and villagers down in the Caribbean.  In the sequel, Jones is absent until the last third of the movie when he is hired to rescue a New York Times reporter (Lisa) who has been sent down to the Caribbean to investigate shady business practices (i.e., a company dumping toxic waste in the jungle and away from their resorts...or whatever). Lisa, young and ambitious, deals with some incredible misogyny while doling out some homophobia of her own.  Well, it was the 70s...wait, this sequel is from the 90s!  I know it's Italian and some of these Italian pictures can be a bit rough around the edges but come on guys, learn to be offensive with subtlety.

Speaking of Italian pictures, they do love to rip off Jaws.  In this one, they re-use the Jaws POV shots while also re-using the John Williams score, like note for note.  I'm guessing the only reason this thing wasn't sued out of existence (like another Italian Jaws rip-off, Great White) was because by the time this one was released, 15 years later, no one gave a shit.  Basically, what we got here is a natural menace (laid-egg style=by the crocodile from the first picture) terrorizing and eating villagers and tourists alike while money hungry capitalists are desperate to keep operations at or above status quo.  Into the picture, comes an Kevin Jones, his aging buddy (Quint-esque) who was mauled in the first picture, and the NYT reporter who, actually, shockingly (for this type of movie) kinda holds her own.  She and Kevin also have a sex scene reminiscent, yet way more explicit, of the scene where Joan Wilder and Jack Colton sleep together in the belly of a downed aircraft (Romancing the Stone).  

In closing, Killer Crocodile 2 is probably not as good as Killer Crocodile 1 but there is a scene where the crocodile stalks and eats a bible class (2nd straight movie where bible kids are decimated -- possible 90s trope) so maybe it's better than Killer Crocodile 1, after all.  I don't know, this one's pretty good.  There's a bad guy named mosquito.  I honestly don't remember what happened to him but that name has certainly stuck with me.  He carried around some radioactive waste barrels at one point.  Seemed like an ok guy.