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.

A documentary that fails to mention it's a hoax?

Alien from Area 51: The Alien Autopsy Footage Revealed
Starring: Ray Santilli and Gary Shoefield
Director: Philip Gardiner
Stars: One of Ten Stars

In 1994, Fox got huge ratings with "Alien Autopsy: Fact or Fiction", a Jonathan Frakes-hosted documentary that purported to show genuine footage of an autopsy performed in late the 1940s, supposedly on the corpse of an alien that crashed his/her/its ship in Rosewell, New Mexico.

In 2006, the men who once claimed to have purchased the alien autopsy footage from a retired U.S. Air Force cameraman, Ray Santilli and Gary Shoefield, admitted that the footage was hoaxed as part of the promotional efforts surrounding a fictional comedy based on his efforts to market the material. He named names of other hoaxers involved, explained processes, and claimed that the original footage HAD at one time existed but had been degraded so he was forced to "recreate it" with a phony alien body and phony doctors in a phony laboratory.

Now, in 2012, along comes "Alien From Area 51", a documentary that promises to reveal information about government cover-ups and the Santilli/Shoefield film. Directed by Philip Gardiner (who was also two films I've recently reviewed over at Terror Titans, and both of which narrowly avoided being reviewed here) this is a film that will benefit viewers who were too young to have seen the alien autopsy footage Back In The Day and those who don't want reality to creep into their conspiracy theories about world governments covering up alien visitations and alien invasions. Because this is a "documentary" from the Michael Moore School of Documentary filmmaking, in that it offers one-sided views of the topics it covers, offers assertions rather than facts, and recreates reality to fit the narrative the filmmaker wishes to present.





"Alien from Area 51" seeks to reset the clock to 1994 by letting Santelli and Shoefield spin a tale about the history of alien autopsy footage that completely disregards the 2006 revelations and even parts of the original narrative about the pair supposedly came by the material. In the interview with the producers here, the footage is no longer a "recreation" using a prop body and actors in an apartment, but a pain-stakingly detailed restoration of salvageable parts of the decaying original that had been made by taking still shots of the individual frames and reassembling them into the movie that was the basis for the Fox program.

That, along with Santelli and Shoefield's ideas about whether aliens exist and questionable anecdotes of visits from Chinese government officials to their London offices, make up the bulk of the film. It opens with a basic primer on the Roswell, New Mexico, UFO crash story (augmented with manipulated outtakes from "The Dark Watchers"), and it closes with Santelli and Shoefield's supposed find in its restored glory. There are no counter viewpoints here, nor is there any explanation for why the narrative here doesn't match Santelli's 2006 account.

I'm not entirely sure what Gardiner was trying to accomplish with this film, nor am I sure that anyone should bother watching it other than the hardest of the hardcore UFO enthusiasts.... and then only so they can know the latest "truth" about the supposed alien autopsy footage. It would have made a fantastic bonus feature on the DVD of Gardiner's "The Dark Watchers" (which contains many of the themes touched on in this film) as the two films would have complemented each other, but as a stand-alone product it is not worth most people's time or money.


Rent the film online, or order it on DVD.



(Full disclosure: This review was based on a distributor-provided screener copy that most likely did not completely reflect the final edit of the film. For example, the version I watched had an obvious opening titles sequence but the text had not been placed.)

A Franco foul-up that's kinda saved by unintentional comedy

Neurosis: The Fall of the House of Usher (aka "Revenge in the House of Usher" and "Zombie 5") (1982)
Starring: Howard Vernon, Robert Foster, Lina Romay, Jean Tolzac, Olivier Mathot, and Françoise Blanchard
Director: Jess Franco
Rating: Two of Ten Stars

Dr. Alan Hacker (Foster) travels to the castle of his old professor, Dr. Usher (Vernon) where he quickly learns that his old teacher has gone mad. Aside from claiming that he is 200 years old, Usher is obsessed with resurrecting his dead daughter by giving her blood transfusions from girls he’s kidnapped.

With "Neurosis" (as the film was called in the on-screen titles even though the DVD case told me I was going to see "Revenge in the House of Usher"), Jess Franco manages to make himself look worse than usual. Not only does he do a half-assed job of adapting the classic Poe story "Fall of the House of Usher" but he uses 15-20 minutes of footage from one of the few good movies he's made--"Awful Dr. Orlof"--as a flashback sequence so the viewer can compare what he did in 1964 with what he did in 1981. 1981 Jess Franco does NOT look good when compared with 1964 Jess Franco.

The fault in using the old footage is embodied first in the character of "Morpho", Dr. Usher's blind (one-eyed?) assistant who is more in love with Usher's semi-undead daughter than even Usher. Morpho's make-up in the 1981 footage is pathetic when compared with the 1962 footage... when it should have been the other way around, given the improvement in the art in the two decades that passed between the production of the two films. Secondly, the old footage is simply better over all cinematography-wise. The shots are better composed and framed, more interestingly lit, and just more dramatic over-all.

As for the film overall, there is no logic to the story and the scenes appear to be strung together almost as random, with characters dropping in and out--like the horny stable boy; or important characters being introduced out of the blue in the third act--like Usher's wife, who may or may not be a ghost. We never do find out what she is or how she managed to creep around the castle without Usher's loyal housekeeper and would-be lover Helen seeing her (if she wasn't a ghost).

Speaking of Helen... if someone can explain her character arc to me, I will bow down to you as the superior reviewer. She becomes a completely different character all of a sudden. I could chalk it up to delusions on the part of Usher, but Dr. Hacker was the one who was primarily involved with her inexplicable transformation.

While watching the film, I actually did wonder on more than one occasion whether it was a satire of gothic horror films that misfired rather than a serious attempt at making a horror movie. If viewed as such, it suddenly becomes a mediocre movie instead of a terrible one. Certainly, the bad acting on the part of the men dubbing Robert Foster (as Dr. Hacker) and Howard Vernon (as Dr. Usher) gives rise to much hilarity... and the people responsible for voicing Lina Romay and the rest of the cast are almost as effective with their comedic stylings.

But I doubt this was intended as a comedy, so the film ends up here, with the rest of the cinematic trash. There are actually a few well-done scenes of horror sprinkled here and there throughout the film, but overall it's another cheap-jack Jess Franco Failure, with another of his trademark botched endings. (Free advice to filmmakers: If you're going to adapt "The Fall of the House of Usher" and you're going to have a building collapse... for God's sake, budget some miniature shots or buy some stock footage, because the way Franco does it here is a textbook example of what NOT to do.)

That said, the bad voice, the incoherent storyline, and the outrageously random behavior on the part of the characters also make this movie the exact right kind of trash for those who enjoy riffing as bad movies unfold. With the right group of friends, this movie can be a lot of fun.

Very little story to get in the way of the gore

Recycled Parts (2010)
Starring: Girstin Bergquist, David Dartt, Joe Duffy, Brandon Brendel, Lisa Gail, Michael Dias, and Larry Sands
Directors: Larry Sands, Erick Vega, and Bradley Young
Rating: One of Ten Stars

Three unlikeable college friends (Brendel, Gail, and Dias) and two stupid ones (Bergquist and Sands) become victims of a madman (Dartt) who is abducting people and harvesting their limbs and organs for sale on the black market (or something like that).

First of all, this turned out not to be my kind of movie, so maybe I'm unable to appreciate its strengths, but sitting through this movie was a miserable experience. Regular readers know that I can't stand "torture porn" movies... and there's really not much else to this movie that gory deaths and screaming victims.

The best thing about "Recycled Parts" was that it was that it was so to the point that it lasted just one hour.

But during that hour, you get to see just about every variety of incompetent filmmaking you can imagine--from bad dialogue to bad characterization; from amateurish Foley work to uneven sound levels and inaudible dialogue; from badly lit scenes to badly framed shots, this film has it all! Hell, it even has a textbook example of the moronic "shock twist ending" that is so bad it actually ends up being one of the worst parts of the movie.

The only reason I'm not rating it Zero, is that the filmmakers did manage to creep me out with te Christmas-themed lair of the psychotic doctor's assistant Einstein (played by Joe Duffy). Then again, with three directors and five cinematographers, one would expect them to get SOMETHING right. Unless, of course, each director and cinematographer was brought in to work on a part of the film that didn't play to their strengths....

Perhaps if you're really, REALLY into films with less substance and class and creativity than the "Hostel" series, you might like this film. Everyone else should probably stay away.





(Full disclosure: Distributor Midnight Releasing provided me with a screener of this film.)

Day of the Turkey Review: Skyggen

Skyggen: The Mind of a Killer (2005)
Starring: Jemshaid Ashraf, Ralph Ferraro, Bianca Cheng, Michael Nahajski, and Gino Evans
Director: Jemshaid Ashraf
Rating: One of Ten Stars

A serial killer (Ferraro) is cutting a bloody swath through England's windswept North Country. Only Max (Ashraf) has lived to tell about him... but that's only because the killer is going to great lengths to frame Max for his rampage.

"Skyggen" plays, for most of its running-time like an inept homage to "The Hitcher" but ultimately transforms into something more like "Identity".

The best part of the film are the first few minutes, even with the bad sound. After that it's all downhill, with badly framed shots, badly chosen angles, badly lit scenes, and some pretty bad acting. This was star/writer/director's Jemshaid Ashraf's first movie, so maybe he should have cast someone else in the lead and focused on getting the film's other aspects right?

BTW, that mysteious word in the title is Danish for "Shadow." Why a movie made in England, by English filmmakers, and starring English actors speaking English in an English setting has a Danish title is beyond my meager ability to comprehend.

The Russian poster for the English movie with the Danish title.

Day of the Turkey Review: Slaughtered

With my eyes mostly recovered, I decided to expose them to some movies I had low hopes for in order to do a gimmicky impromptu Thanksgiving Turkey blog-fest between here, The Charles Band Collection, and Terror Titans. Welcome to Day of the Turkey!

The first selection, however, was far worse than I had imagined.

Slaughtered (2008)
Starring: Chris Smith, Arlisha Fogle, Aschleigh Jensen, Rebecca McQuen, and Cheri Lynn
Director: Anthony Doublin
Rating: Zero of Ten Stars

Harold (Smith) is a psychopath who murders nude models and posts gory images of his crimes on a pay/members-only website. As he goes about his business of booking small-time models and murdering them, the world's worst detective (Fogle) is hired to locate one of Harold's victims. But something else is closing in on Harold--the restless spirits of his victims. Is he truly being haunted, or are the ghosts just a figment of his deterioriating sanity?

"Slaughtered" is a movie so bad that the only good things I can say about it is that it's well-lit and the camera is in focus at all times. And I'd be appalled if those weren't quality, given that the writer/director of this should-have-been cinematic abortion is a well-established lighting technician and cameraman with several regular gigs on television series to his credit.

But as a director and a screen-writer, he is completely incompetent.

We have a central character--I can't bring myself to call him a protagonist--who is both loathsome and uninteresting, whose only defining characteristics is that he wears too much eye-liner and likes to kill women. Oh... and he's also a peeping tom who likes watching his models undress via a webcam before he... makes them undress and kills them. We never learn anything about Harold... who he is, why he is doing what he's doing, or any other stuff that might make him a little interesting. He never becomes more than a crazy goth in too much eye-liner.

We have a character who should be the hero, but who is so irrelevant to the plot that by the time she arrives at Harold's house, the movie's over... his last victim has freed herself and ghosts have exacted gory revenge on him. (Yeah, I just spoiled the movie. If you had watched it, you would have wished I had and saved you the misery.) She's also, as I mentioned in the teaser summary at the top of the review, the world's dumbest detective; while working on her missing person's case, she calls up the local police station and offers sexual favors in exchange for open missing persons cases. I've no doubt she's real popular around the squad room, since those sorts of things are not under lock and key... the police are trying to find those people. A Google search might have given her the same information as those files. And then there's the fact she spends much of the movie in her office (which looks like it might be a nook in her kitchen) trying to "hack" Harold's members-only snuff-port site. Why didn't get herself a pre-paid Mastercard, billed to her client, and just sign up for the site under a fictitious name?!

Of course, the police in the area of California where the film takes place--Santa Barbara? I think it was mentioned at some point, but my brain was starting to turn off by that point, so I'm not sure--aren't much smarter. Nude models are going missing... nude models who are contacted via their promotional web sites, via email... nude models who have computers and email accounts where correspondence is stored. It seems to me that it wouldn't take more than a couple of vanished women with emails from Harold in their inbox to make the police interested in him and his little web-venture. That and the fact that he disposes of their bodies, fully intact, in dumpsters. Neither Harold, nor the cops, have apparently watched even one episode of "CSI". Or "Quincy, M.E.". Or even "Columbo." Hell, the world's dumbest detective looked at the email account of one victim and zeroed in on Harold.

Some of the laziest writing I have ever seen in a film that was supposedly made by a professional is on display here. The cipherous nature of Harold. the idiocy and plot irrelevancy of the character who should be the hero, and the absence of any apparent thought devoted to how Harold can be getting away with his serial killing are only the worst sins among a multitude.

Moving onto the direction... words fail me. Either Doublin managed to make scenes of girls getting undressed boring, or I need to have my testosterone levels checked. We're treated to three scenes of girls getting undressed and then getting dressed (before undressing again and being murdered), and the next one is duller than the one that went before. Even the kill scenes are boring, with only the first one having even the slightest impact, possibly because it was a bit unexpected. Usually with films like this, I'm disgusted or irritated--I do not like movies whose central and only theme is the brutalization of women and other innocent victims--but with "Slaughtered", each murder brought a greater degree of indifference.

Perhaps it has something to do with the acting, which was almost as universally flat as the direction. The fact that Doublin is a seasoned professional probably helped him keep the "playing to the back row at the community theatre"-style performances that usually plague movies of this kind. The actors here all seemed comfortable in front of a camera and aware of how to play to it... but one can also easily understand why very few of the cast have credits beyond this picture, or other films directed by Doublin.

"Slaughtered" is lurking inside several multi-packs from Maxim Media's Pendulum Pictures imprint. Wherever you find it, save it for last... or, better yet, don't bother with it at all. The only reason to watch it is to gain a greater appreciation for Mario Bava's excellent "Hatchet for the Honeymoon" and Robert Hammer's "Don't Answer the Phone". Those films have many elements in common with Slaughtered... only they were made by directors who understand how to put a movie together.

No posts on any of my blogs this week.

I am having really bad eye trouble. Hopefully, tomorrow's trip to the doctor will start to make things better.

I hope you'll check in at some point in the future.