Tag: horror

Summer Shlock 2026 part two

Summer Shlock 2026 part two

by plsullivan62 ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

“Evils of the Night” (1985):  Catwoman Goes to Gilligan’s Island to Meet Mad Scientist but Instead Gets Aldo Ray. Similar to an Our Time date, in other words. Gratuitous everything, with actual porn stars of the era. A very greasy movie that failed to resurrect the careers of Julie Newmar and Tina Louise. John Carradine was already deceased but everyone was too polite to mention it. Slightly better than two coils, not weird enough for three, and I can’t find the half coil photo. 

Violent City (1970): Italian production with Charles Bronson, Jill Ireland, Telly Savalas  and inconsistent dubbing. Chuck is a hit man irritated when someone tries to hit him. Revenge is on the agenda. Car chases. Foot chases. Brick wall that magically appears just in time for victim to crash into it. Long stretches with little or no dialogue, which is fine because it would only get in the way of the story. Some critics think this is an artistic flick. They could be right, it’s boring enough. Two coils.

Bride of the Gorilla (1951): Hey gang! Let’s rework “The Wolf Man” on a banana plantation! Lon Chaney’s too old to be the heavy but he can be the police commissioner!

Everything else is pretty much the same! It’ll be great! Two coils.

Karate Tiger 2 aka No Retreat, No Surrender 2 (1987): The first one had Jean-Claude van Damme, and this one has Cynthia Rothrock. I prefer the latter. Dorky American with Thai girlfriend manages to get her kidnapped by evil henchmen of sinister and thoroughly unconvincing Russian. Hilarity ensues. Pimps. Grimy hotel. Stupid hat. Maximum kung fu. Also guns, knives, bombs, RPGs, exploding restaurant table. Alligator pit. Best line: “Come on, let’s book.” Extensive survey of Thai food. No nekkidity, a grave flaw in an 80s action pic. Two coils.

Fever Lake (1997): The Bill Rebane Tradition  of making crappy movies in Wisconsin continues. This is a “Stupid People Go to Haunted House” variation on “Stupid People in the Jungle.” Teens go to lake house where bad things once happened. Teens die in mildly creative ways. Evil shawl. Badly-maintained kerosene lamps. Gratuitous Native American dispensing Ancient Wisdom. Gratuitous Bo Hopkins. Gratuitous “Don’t Go in the Attic!” No proper nekkidity, inexcusable in a direct-to-video production. Two coils.

See Beautiful Blood Island, and then return to Blood Island. When you’re done you can go back to Blood Island, in between trips to Blood Island.

See Beautiful Blood Island, and then return to Blood Island. When you’re done you can go back to Blood Island, in between trips to Blood Island.

by plsullivan62 ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Gerardo De Leon and Eddie Romero, two major names in the Filipino film world, made four “Blood Island” films between them. The first was released in 1959 and is a modest but stylish black and white horror movie. The remaining three were made a decade-plus later, and are proper CACA flicks.

Terror is a Man (1959): Strange economy reworking of “The Island of Dr. Moreau.” Strange because it has a lot of weird plot that gets in the way of the story, and economy because there is only one man-animal hybrid, and because they shot it in black and white. Good production values throughout, which is also confusing when you’re expecting dreck. Decent monster and no nekkidity, because it was 1959.

imdb.com

Terror is in fact a sort of man/cat hybrid.

The universe comes back into balance with the next film in the series, “Brides of Blood Island” (1968). Color film, very little plot to get in the way of the story, man-eating plants, day-for-night continuity problems, cut-rate Desi Arnaz, bargain basement Vincent Price, one bald henchman, mild bimbotation, comical Western notion of native chants, a bit of gratuitous nekkidity, a sex-crazed beast, mutant transformation, lengthy and regrettable dance of triumph scene, a herd of little people and nuclear radiation, which explains the art in the castle. I suspect Sam Raimi had this flick in the back of his mind for the first couple of “Evil Dead” movies. 

blu-ray.com

I’m confused! I look a little like Vincent Price, but I sound nothing like him! And why is that tree trying to eat my wife?

The Mad Doctor of Blood Island (1968): Well, here we are back at Blood Island. This time we’re looking for the cause of a strange disease that turns the natives green. Turns out it’s simple — crazy Dr. Lorca shot a cancer patient up with a rare chlorophyll strain he found on the island. (It’s just science.) Gratuitous nekkidity, green blood, dismemberment, a sort of luau/orgy hybrid, and every time the monster is about to do something the camera zooms in and out rapidly, perhaps to distract the audience from getting a good look at the shabby monster costume. Spoiler: The beast hides out in a lifeboat as the gang sails away from Blood Island, the better to set up…

kitleyskrypt.com

The chlorophyll monster in Mad Doctor of Blood Island doesn’t stand up to close inspection, so the filmmakers wisely don’t let the audience get a good look.

Beast of Blood (1971), in which the monster kicks things off immediately by blowing up the boat, perhaps in protest of the producers’ decision to drop the word “island” from the title. Dr. Lorca’s got a whole army of green mutants now, and the islanders aren’t up to much, so it’s up to Bill Foster (John Ashley) and Myra the dingbat reporter (Celeste Yarnall) to get things sorted out. Which they do, eventually, but not before there’s some highly dubious surgery, a henchman who can only grunt, the usual nekkidity, and several gallons of blood. Oh and an artificial head that talks. Almost forgot. This flick is an excellent example of the plot getting in the way of the story, but when a man sets out to watch all four Blood Island movies, he’s got to tough it all the way out.

http://www.horor-web.cz

John Ashley’s Modified Elvis was passe Stateside in 1971, but he could get away with it on Blood Island.

The Robo Vampire “trilogy”

The Robo Vampire “trilogy”

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There are three Robo Vampire movies, all directed by Godfrey Ho (I think). Chronologically, Devil’s Dynamite (aka Robo Vampire 2) is the first, Robo Vampire is in the middle, and The Vampire is Alive (aka Robo Vampire 3) completes the set.

Why is the first one called Robo Vampire 2? That is one of the great mysteries of cinema. Perhaps Robo Vampire 5 will explain it, followed by Robo Vampire 4 and Robo Vampire 7, which will explain the explanation.

Or you can just roll with it.

Robo Vampire (1988): The Bad Cinema desk first encountered this via Rifftrax, which was fine. Thanks to the miracle of Tubi, which must buy the rights to these and similar flicks by the shipload, we were able to watch it unadorned, albeit interrupted by ads for sex pills. Trying to explain the plot would take longer than the 90 minute run time. So let’s skip straight to the gist, which is: Drug smuggling. Gratuitous nekkidity, ghost variety. Intensely unconvincing robot. Assorted goo, glop, and blood. Three Stooges rip-offs. And the entire thing is enlivened by the presence of a platoon of hopping Chinese vampires.

(The hopping vampires require some explanation for the uninitiated. I have run into this in several movies, most notably the “Mr. Vampire” series. The vampires stand straight up, stick their arms straight ahead, and hop toward their victims. They go pretty fast, too. When pressed they can do kung fu. The only way to stop them is to have a Taoist priest stick a prayer written on a strip of paper on their foreheads. This renders them immobile. There’s no nonsense about holy water or crucifixes or silver bullets or wolfsbane or the rising sun or unrequited love or whether the werewolves are sexier. Got it?)

justwatch.com

The Robo Vampire vs. hopping Chinese vampires on a beach somewhere. It’s very exciting. Really.

Devil’s Dynamite (aka Robo Vampire 2, 1987): This has something to do with gold. Somebody’s got some, and everybody else wants it. An example of the dialogue that is supposed to clear things up: “Mary’s joined with Fox. And also a Yank called Ronald.” This line comes about 20 minutes into the flick, and is the first anyone has heard of Mary or Fox, never mind Ronald.

So: Hopping vampires. Black tie event, not interrupted by vampires. Very nicely choreographed fight scene, in which the gangs are color coded for the audience’s convenience.The Robo Vampire, which  isn’t a vampire at all, is a guy in a silver suit and what looks like a motorcycle helmet spray painted silver. Anti-sorcery mirror. Random poisoning.  No nekkidity that I can remember, which means an automatic one star deduction, if we gave out stars. Robo Vampire does Michael Jackson  moonwalk. Surprisingly light on the gore. Makes no sense. Spectacular.

horrorgeeklife.com

A typical, somewhat decomposed hopping Chinese vampire from Robo Vampire 2

The Vampire is Alive (aka Counter Destroyer, aka Robo Vampire 3, 1989): Starts off gently enough, with an impromptu theology lesson from a Taoist priest to two stupid Western women.

But dang it, all that guff about evil spirits turns out to be true. Many shots of feet – feet ascending stairs, feet walking along a path. Attack telephone (rotary dial). Gratuitous screenplay writing. Gratuitous “Nightmare on Elm Street” rip-offs er homages. Crossbow assassination in men’s room. Way too much plot. Lengthy scene at sea that doesn’t seem to have anything to do with anything else. Long segments filmed in the dark. Automatic one star deduction for no nekkidity.

 This is the weakest entry in the Ribo Vampire series by far. But the Robo Vampire now looks like a member of the Golden Horde. Except it’s a silver color. 

monsterzone.com

A tender Freddy Krueger-type moment in Robo Vampire 3 that is absolutely necessary to the plot yet doesn’t get in the way of the story. Joe Bob says check it out.