'Catholic Ghoulgirls' is a sin

Catholic Ghoulgirls (2005)
Starring: Ally Melling, Vanessa Kessinger, Meghan McDowell, and Mark Brown
Director: Eamon Hardiman
Rating: Zero of Ten Stars

Kasey (Melling), Becky (Kessinger) and Maria (McDowell) are three rebellious Catholic schoolgirls who spend their days ditching class, smoking in alleys, and sneaking around with their boyfriends. So when zombies attack their town, it stands to reason that they kick monster but with swords and Kung Fu moves.

 That's a concept for a fun and trashy movie. It's the concept behind this movie, but while this is plenty of trashy, it's not much fun.

I think this film safely ranks among the most incompetent efforts I've ever had the misfortune t sit through. The story is so unfocused, badly structured, and overloaded with irrelevant characters that you'll have a hard time following it even if someone handed you a diagram and list of characters... and that's only the beginning of what's wrong with this film.

The direction is awful, the acting is so bad it can't even be described as amateurish, the camerawork is pedestrian (and sometimes out of focus), scenes are more often than not underlit or overlit, the editing is sloppy, and the sound mixing is so bad that you often can't hear the dialogue because of the soundtrack music or what should be ambient noise.

I always try to find something nice to say about a film, but I can't think of a single thing when it comes to this one. Maybe if writer/director Eamon Hardiman and executive producer James Hudnall had seen fit to have Hudnall write the script (assuming this is the same Hudnall who once wrote comic books for Eclipse, Marvel Comics, and DC Comics) at least the script would have been more coherent.

Everything is padded but the lead actress's boobs

The Bewitching (2006)
Starring: Beverly Lynne, Tezz Yancey, Lysander Abadia, Steve Reaser, and Kevin Campbell
Director: Gary Sax
Rating: One of Ten Stars

When a witch (Lynne) decides to violate the commandments of her Coven and travel to our dimension to engage in "pleasures of the flesh", three friends (Abadia, Reaser, and Yancey) are in for a night of hot sex, horror, and confusion.

What passes for the plot in "The Bewitching" is really just an excuse to string some softcore porn scenes together, primarily showcasing the very attractive body of Las Vegas-based adult entertainer Beverly Lynn (and she comes complete with a subscription-based adults-only website). The picture chosen to illustrate this review showcases the film's greatest assets.

In fact, Lynn is one of only three actors whose performance seems to approach that of professional level--the other two being Lysander Abadia and Tezz Yancey. And even so, she appears stiff when sharing the screen with Abadia, who has been a bit-player on numerous television shows... with her main acting skills revolving around the activities taking place in the hotel room and bed with various cast members. Everyone else are amateurish in the extreme.

And that may be good enough for those who are really hard up for a little light porn. Lynn is quite good at what she does, and she hasn't mutilated herself by inflating her chest to the point where her boobs are the size of her head like so many actresses in these sorts of movies have done (or like one of the ladies who disrobe in this film to display her unfortunate impants).

Unfortunately, even if what you are looking for is a little light porn, you might still find yourself bored... and possibly even a little irritated. Gary Sax is a director of very little talent and he doesn't know when enough is enough. If it's not obvious by comments made previously, Beverly Lynn is basically "my type" and I still reached for the remote to fast-forward at about the halfway point of every sex scene, because they grew repetative to the point of actually repeating the same footage more than once. Maybe if I was 15, I wouldn't mind... but I have better things to do with my time these days.

Sax also doesn't know how to start and end scenes, how to pace dialogue scenes, or.... He's basically made a movie that showcases everything you SHOULDN'T do when making a movie. And I think ultimately would-be filmmakers are the best audience for "The Bewitching"; they should check it out and take careful note of everything that's wrong with it, and then avoid those mistakes. Worse, many of the weaknesses in the film might have been fixed if a little more time or care had been spent in editing.

'Blood Sucking Babes from Burbank'... sucks

Bloodsucking Babes from Burbank (2005)
Starring: Heidi Brucker, Danilo Mancinelli, Danny Kitz, Mira Rayson, Jacqueline Anzalone, Yasmine Vine, Danielle Kreinik, Christina Caporale, and Burke Morgan
Director: Kirk Bowman
Rating: Two of Ten Stars

Samantha (Brucker) and other archeology students conduct a search for a witch's cursed jewelry box that was reported to be lost in the Burbank Mountains two centuries ago. When her boyfriend, Gary (Kitz), takes the box to spite her because she won't "put out", he unleashes a curse that starts turning innocent women into cannibalistic monsters who hunger for man-meat, preferably the fleshy part on the neck and arms.

Given my questionable tastes in entertainment, a title like "Blood Sucking Babes from Burbank" attracts me like a bear to honey (or, perhaps more accurately, like flies to a cow paddy). Unfortunately, this film doesn't live up to the promise of the title.

It may have babes and they do engage in some blood-sucking, but a film like this needs to be either concentrated comedy or full of horror-driven violence and mayhem. There is precious little comedy here, the violence is nonsensical and very, very fake, and the mayhem is non-existent. The film is a letdown in just about every possible way.

The problems with the movie stem first and foremost from its weak script. It's full of too many characters and they're all badly motivated. There's also plenty of standard bad low-budget movie padding sequences of characters driving around, walking around, and having pointless conversations that repeat plot points that have already been explained.

The padding is particularly aggravating in this film, because if the scriptwriter (who is also the film's director and producer) had written a couple of scenes that gave more details about Angela's Cursed Jewel Box or more on the history that two of the film's more interesting characters--Zack and Felicity, a young couple who are trying to find the box and destroy it, played by Danilo Mancinelli and Mira Rayson--the overall film would have been stronger. (I'm sure I understand why the attack scenes--the ones where a sexy babe transforms into a monster cannibal with badly made fangs in her mouth and starts ripping the flesh from the body of the nearest male--are as static and uninteresting as they are: The film's amateur cast and crew were obviously not up for shooting fight scenes.

However, all it would have taken would have been some comment from Zack or Felicity about how men are paralyzed by the gaze of a woman under the curse to make the attacks seem a bit more believable; NO ONE would stand there and allow themselves to be killed the way the victims do in this movie, unless some force was acting upon them. The men being killed don't even utter a sound, aside from some mewling noises in most cases.

What it lacked in violence and logic, the film could still have made up for with humor, but it mostly fails to do that as well. The only funny bits in the film revolve around a pair of cannibalistic Valley Girls (Jacqueline Anzalone and Yasmine Vine) who sit around discussing Roman sex toys while munching on a gardener they killed after being cursed. Everything else is played absolutely straight... and played badly, because the film has a cast of mostly amateur actors who are working with tinny dialogue and a weak script.

And that's really too bad. A movie with a title like "Bloodsucking Babes from Burbank" should have been something I got a huge kick out of. As it is, the best thing I can say about it is that it did keep me watching to the end (even if the "twist ending" ended up knocking the film from a low 4 rating down to a low 3 rating, due to the fact that it was first completely unmotivated and ill-considered in the light of everything that had gone before it, and it features one final example of a strangely passive victim).

'Dead 7' isn't worth digging up

Dead 7 (2003)
Starring: John Myles, Matt Emery, Tanya Dempsey, Delia Copold, and Brett Charles
Director: Garrett Clancey
Rating: Two of Ten Stars

When a deaf-mute boy is thrown down a pit by a pair of vicious meth-dealers, they and their friends soon become the center strange events and brutal killings. Is the boy's sister avenging his death, or is something more sinister (and supernatural) afoot?


"Dead 7" is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a good movie. It's badly acted; based on a script that's so bad that it manages to be predictable and incomprehensibly muddled at the same time, seeming to forget its own storyline at a couple of points; and features gore effects so ineptly deployed that they look even cheaper than they probably were. It's almost unwatchable. The movie manages to tease forth a few chilling moments (mostly revolving around a hole that exists in the woods for no particular reason, and as the meth dealer and pals are being stalked)

However, I give the filmmakers credit for decent camera work. It's the photography rather than the script and badly done effects that provide the scares in this cheap, ameuterish production. The way the camera moves during certain scenes makes the viewer want to get ahead of the lense and see what's happening. This technical aspect of the otherwise lame production earned "Dead 7" a full Star all by itself.

(Which means that unless you want to see some interesting filming with obviously limited equipment, don't bother with this one.)

A film of Roman Polanski's Nightmares?

Terror Toons (2001)
Starring: Beverly Lynne, Lizzie Borden, and Kelly Lui
Director: Joe Castro
Rating: Two of Ten Stars

Sisters Candy (Borden) and Cindy (Lynne) are left home for the night while their parents attend a wedding. Cindy receives a DVD called "Terror Toons". When the violent, insane cartoon characters of Dr. Carnage and Max Assassin leap from the screen into the real world, the cartoon violence soon causes real blood to flow.


Regular readers of this board have probably seen me rant multiple times about filmmakers needing to be my reviews have probably seen me rant multiple times about filmmakers needing to take their budget and available talent-pool into account when conceiving and executing projects.

"Terror Toons" is exactly the kind of horror film that SHOULD NOT be made on a tiny shoestring budget. It's got an animated DVD (which looks atrocious) from which cartoon characters emerge to slaughter people in the real world (through painfully cheap effects and in costumes that look worse than the animated world they emerged from) and a need for copious gore effects (which the film's tiny budget apparently couldn't even handle).

There's also an issue with the casting. Candy in particular is problematic. I can't tell if she's supposed to be very young or simply retarded. In either case, the casting is bad, first and foremost because of the very, VERY bad boob job the actress is sporting. (And if she's supposed to be a young kid, then the sort of airbags she's sporting on her chest must mean she's the kind chick convicted child rapist Roman Polanski has nightmares about.)


The difficulty of getting a read on what the viewer is supposed to make of Candy is perhaps also a problem with the script... it doesn't seem like the writers put a whole lot of thought into her or any other of the characters in the film; the two cartoon killers seem to be the most realized characters around. And then there's Satan and his monologuing. Huh?

We can add the direction and camerawork to the to the parade of awfulness that is present in this flick, although all i can say about either is that aside from there obviously was a camera present, I'm not convinced the person running it had much in the way of an idea about how to set a scene. And the acting... it is almost uniformly awful. Lynne and Lui are the only two appearing that seem to have even an iota of talent; everyone else deserves to be murdered by cartoon characters come to life for thinking they should appear on film.

With all the negativity I'm spewing at this film, why did I give it even Two Stars? Well, I'm giving some credit for Lynne and Lui, a couple of semi-bright spots in the otherwise pathetic cast of actors. I'm also giving some credit for some nice looking sets once the cartoon characters invade the house and transform it into a cartoon-house (the place still looks like someone's basement or trailer, but at least some effort was made). I'm also giving some consideration for a neat idea, even if it was one that was far beyond the meager means and talent that were available to execute it.

"Terror Toons", despite a concept that seems appealing to lovers of weird movies, is a film that the vast majority of us are better off avoiding. However, it should be required viewing for those of you out there thinking about making your own movie. It's an illustration of why you need to plan your project carefully and realistically before you start. It's a film that the people involved simply were not able to do justice, and you can learn from their example and not repeat their mistake.

Another film that makes you wonder why

Scream Bloody Murder
(aka "Matthew", "Claw of Terror" and "The Captive Woman")(1973)
Starring: Fred Holbert, Leigh Mitchell, and Angus Scrimm
Director: Marc B. Ray
Rating: One of Ten Stars

A demented freak (Holbert) with an Oedipus complex that extends to every couple (or hooker and john) he meets, goes on a killing spree.


You have to wonder why some films get made. This is one of those movies. The acting is okay on the part of the leads, the dialogue is even acceptable in most places, but it's still one of the most pointless pieces of trash to be resurrected from the Drive-In dung-heap to the cheap, massive collections of movies on DVD.

Watch out for this one under its akas, especially if you're buying single movies. You will not get your money's worth if there isn't something else in the package that this crappy little picture comes in.