The "Nevermind, Rewind" Turd Of The Week

How many cats is too many cats?  Let's say you met someone at a bar, bistro or Barnes & Noble, head back to their place for a night cap (meaning intercourse or a movie, depending on your religious beliefs) and that person happens to live alone and own FOUR cats.  Is that enough to be off-putting?  What about SIX cats?  Is six cats the line you draw in the cat sand?  I suppose everyone is different, but for us at TEC, it's two.  Two is too many cats for a single person to own.  If you don't agree, then you don't realize how bad your apartment smells every time we come over.  It's gross.  What if your hypothetical new found friend owned 1,000 cats?  Like an entire outdoor prison-like courtyard of screaming cats that he/she presided over in a silk bathrobe while his/her crusty butler massaged his/her toes?

What's that you didn't say?  This no longer sounds like a hypothetical real-life scenario, but instead the scripted plot of a Mexican-sploitation horror movie?  Well, then you'd be fairly right.  Some time in 1972, director, Rene Cardova Jr. asked himself this very same cat question and not only did he come up with possibly the least reasonable amount of cats to own, but an entire horror movie plot surrounding this imagined king cat creeper of all cat creeps!  That's right, Enemaniacs.  Get your inhalers ready, for tonight is, THE NIGHT OF 1,000 CATS !  No, really.  If you are allergic, some of the scenes in this movie will make you itch.  You have been warned. 

"Why does it smell like tuna and cat pis... 
ooh, did you say wine?"

With a title and premise like, THE NIGHT OF 1,000 CATS (LA NOCHE DE LOS MIL GATOS), this film clearly and initially and understandably had butt-loads of promise.  Made in glorious and rustic, 1972, but released in the United States in 1974, the plot revolves around a young millionaire playboy named Hugo, who picks up beautiful women and brings them back to his sprawling, ancient estate only to murder them and feed their corpses to his collection of carnivorous cats.  With a story like this, what could go wrong?  He is aided in this nightly endeavor by his face, his helicopter, his sweet motorcycle and his hump-backed, google-eyed old Torgo-esque butler named..."Dorgo," (possibly).  I'm sure there is some sort of metaphor there, but who cares.  When the film opens, Hugo is flying back to his castle in his helicopter with a lovely lady at his side.  This helicopter ride is somehow important to the plot, I'm assuming, because it lasts 12 MINUTES LONG.  We get it.  He has a helicopter.  The woman seems pretty impressed by the helicopter and even more so by the mansion (once they finally land there), but becomes immediately put-off by the mutant butler.  What is he deal and who grows humps anymore?  She inquires about Dorgo and his hump, to which Hugo replies:

Hugo: "...Dorgo is an excellent butler.  He's as obedient and faithful as a cat."

Wait, "obedient" as a cat?  Is that a thing?  Hugo then begins to blabber about his "special" and "unique collection" that will surpass that of all of his ancestors who he refers to as having "...had a mania for collecting."  This is probably when his female guest should be wondering if that collection involves pretty lady skin suits, but sadly for this lady, Hugo is just way too charming and the wine is just way too tasty and beautifully aged so she soon overlooks the clear warning signs of a maniacal murderous millionaire (i.e, a deformed servant, a barely inhabited ancient castle, the mentions of an "unusual collection," the sounds of a beast horde howling for flesh somewhere on the castle grounds, etc.).  Good wine is good wine, you guys.

A couple of sips later, Hugo's guest inquires as to whether anyone else lives in the mansion.  Hugo responds:

Are your eyes itching yet?

Hugo: "...Some very charming and silent guests.  You'll meet them after we've had dinner."

This turns out to be a lie for at least two reasons.  One, she ends up meeting a guest during the dinner, rather than after, when the charmer literally flies out of nowhere and punches her boobs with it's paws, promptly scaring the shit out of her (this scene is mostly hilarious).  Two, "charming" and "silent" are inappropriate and misleading adjectives for a large outdoor cage of 1,000 feral cats.  Of course, our poor dinner guest never does get to meet the cat crew formally.  Instead, she's strangled by Hugo and dismembered, then presumably ground into hamburger meat and thrown off a balcony to be eaten by Hugo's courtyard of scratching, screaming, roommates.  This part of the movie involves the very first cringe-worthy Milo & Otis animal cruelty moment, when Hugo picks up a cat from the ground and CHUCKS IT HARD off of the balcony.  We are shown a long and drawn out Million Dollar Man slow motion scene of a cat, attempting to land on it's feet, but is most likely falling to its death.  Thanks, Mexico.  Afterward, we're treated to another helicopter cat food run that involves Hugo flying over women's houses and backyards, deciding whether or not they would make adequate short lived dinner dates before he makes them dinner...on that date...that he takes them to dinner...just forget it.

Who wouldn't suck down a free
chardonnay from this guy?

This next long helicopter ride of aerial shots and close ups is really where I gave up on this thing.  I was hoping to maybe hold out for the possibility of a large mutant momma cat, genetic cat experiments or perhaps learning what the cat-alyst (ha!) was leading Hugo to a life of cat-related crime, but between these long unnecessary helicopter rides and artsy attempts at cocktail framed face shots like the one to the left, I was reminded why I've always preferred dogs.  If you can make it through this one, let me know if Dorgo turns out to be some inbred-dog-DNA'ed mutant who eventually turns on his master when he falls for one of the kidnapped women who teaches him life isn't meant to be lived on your knees and sacrifices himself when fighting the cat horde to the death to save her and finally destroy his master?  Though that ending would be sexist somehow, I'll be sad if I miss it.                        

The "Nevermind, Rewind" Turd Of The Week

Some kids don't like the real world.  This is a valid thought process, especially for a nerdy youth in the 1980's when the real world was pretty shitty.  In order to cope with the limitations of reality, a lot of nerds retreated into fantasy worlds.  Some of those fantasy worlds involved breaking things and hurting puppies, but for "normal" nerds, their fantasy world was full of ogres, dragons, thieves and rogues.  Yes, I am in fact giving a slow introduction to the fantastical and legendary role playing game, Dungeons & Dragons.  Since some people in the 1980's still believed in God, those weirdo fanatics decided that D&D was harmful to kids and would lead to the warlock witchery corruption of their white youth.  To capitalize on this conspiracy, several straight to video fantasy/horror films were made at the time using the fear of table top gaming and computer game corruption.  Tom Hanks was even in one.  This genre is full of enjoyable cinematic turds.  Unfortunately, turns out, 1983's SKULLDUGGERY is not one of them.

GRAPHIC PHOTO: D&D in play!

The general plot of this film involves a group of English theater nerds from different age ranges that regularly meet for a table top medieval style game, similar to D&D, but that comes equipped with a giant castle on the board and larger than usual gaming pieces.  Clearly the script writing work of some asshole that has no idea what people really do when they play D&D.  One of the players, a guy named Adam, comes from a long line since medieval times of cursed people.  When a warlock or whatever "curses" his far off ancestors in the opening bit, he basically murders them.  I'm not sure how this lends to a long family curse of the people capable of boning and continuing this blood line are magic murdered, but whatever.  Fantasy.  Anyways, so during the course of the first twenty minutes, Adam and presumably his girlfriend, a fellow and attractive gamer (lies) starts complaining of being so wrapped up in the game, that she hallucinates that she's playing ALL the time.  Like, when they walk down the street and see some kids in knight costumes playing with wooden swords, she imagines she sees knights fighting with swords!  Freaky shit!

More stuff happens introducing character backgrounds and the theater they are a part of, ALL BORING.  Adam starts having visions related to the warlock and some creepy puppet jester that was in the theater.  Then he starts killing people, seemingly possessed by either the warlock or the jester puppet.  I'm not sure and at this point, I didn't care.  The movie doesn't explain much related to this whole "curse" thing and I'm not sure why we're supposed to fear the possibility of role playing possessing us to murder since all we have to do is not be the descendent of a line of English people cursed by a warlock.  Seems easy enough.  Also, the characters are so dry and boring and the kills suffer from theatrical music, but no b-movie gore.  This movie clearly attempted to be good, as in Masterpiece Theater episode good.  Just one of it's many downfalls.  I'm sure there were more, but I turned it off.            

Nevermind, Rewind Movie Of The Week

This movie had so much promise.  Of course, most of that promise was based on the cover alone, but seriously!  Look at that shit!  The premise is fairly simple...after the apocalypse, the gritty hard up survivors making it in the wasteland start participating in a new version of pool where losing means losing a finger.  Then of course the titular loner character comes in and shakes things up by being really good at pool.  Okay, I knew this was going to be stupid, but I still thought it had the chance to be stupid good.  Unfortunately it's the worse kind of bad as far as shitty movies go which means it's extremely BORING.

If I hadn't read the back description, I wouldn't know what the fuck is happening at all because the apocalypse is never explained.  The film just starts rather abruptly without credits and shows the main character, Harry (played by quasi-popular Australian actor Steve Bisley from MAD MAX and other stuff), shuffling down a train track with a chihuahua in a papoose.  Eventually credits began rolling and the viewer is treated to the sight of this guy walking through a distillery.

What sort of Godless hell is this place of the future?

I guess this is the part where we assume bombs have been dropped here before because like seriously, where are all like the shopping malls?  At some point Harry walks by a store front that has, holy shit!  Graffiti!  Clearly, lawlessness and anarchy are rampant!  The graffiti, which I guess stands as the opening text or narration that most post-apocalyptic movies have, is actually just a tag that reads "George Orwell".  You know, because remember that book he wrote about the future?  It's about this point that the film starts to lose me.  Harry eventually walks into an abandoned bar of some kind where he runs into old friends.  Words are exchanged, but I can't understand most of them through they're thick Aussie accents.  What does become understandable is that Harry is hugging the bar owner a lot and the bar owner at some point becomes agitated and asks Harry to show him his fingers.  Harry obliges and very slowly reveals each finger on each hand one by one.  He even does a little fake out with his last pinkie.  That Harry, such a card!

"Off with his tip!"

After talking with his mates for a bit, Harry decides to cross the street to a dingy pool hall and watch some shady guys play a few rounds.  This is when it looks interesting, for a second anyway.  One of the guys brings out a device which is placed on the pool table.  It's the finger cutting thing promised in the plot line!  Yes!  Action!  The losing player places his finger in the device and BAM!  It's cut off!  Well, it's not that cool really.  The camera pans away from the device so the finger cutting is not actually shown.  Boo!  The loser of said finger then wraps that shit up and keeps on playing.  Harry schemes his way into the action at some point and the game is on!  Except here's the problem...even in the post-apocalypse, watching two dudes play pool, is still watching two dudes play pool.  It's fucking boring!  After what seems like an hour, the game is finished, Harry is the winner, collects his finger blood money and no one loses a pinkie.  Yeah.  BORING.  Unless you're really into dreads and cue balls.  I say, pass on HARD KNUCKLE.  Then again, if you are really into those things, you are probably a fairly boring individual and in that instance, this movie has the perfect plot holes and pacing for you.     

Nevermind, Rewind Movie Of The Week

None of these people or these things are in this movie.

This might be the most out-right scandalous post on TEC yet to date, Enemaniacs!  I know some shit and I'm calling people out.  Turns out, there exists an even shittier take on the story that is 1996's JERRY MAGUIRE which means that Cameron Crowe may have ripped off the entire idea for that Oscar-winning film from whoever wrote 1986's BODY SLAM!  This might be fact but probably not!  BODY SLAM which stars not Tom Cruise, but Faceman from the A-Team also known as a guy named Dirk Benedict and tells the story of a douchebag agent who owes some angry people a lot of money and is constantly looking for anything he can promote in order to make the money back, but of course in truly movie-like style, he fails several times in alleged humorous ways, finds a beautiful girl that believes in him for no reason and eventually realizes the clients he's cared the least about save him in the end.  See!  It's totally that other movie!  The trailer itself isn't online, but it is attached to a string of trailers at the end of some VHS movie someone posted on YouTube, so enjoy the BODY SLAM trailer along with a bunch of other gripping trailers by CBS Home Video below!

"You had me at purple suit."

The possible plagiarism by a better movie is the least thing wrong with this movie though.  First of all, the VHS cover is totally misleading.  There are no naked boobs in this movie nor is there "sex" or "rock n' roll".  What this tag line incorrectly refers to is the fact that the main douchey agent character, M. Harry Smilac eventually stars to rep for a couple of pro wrestlers, "Rowdy" Roddy Piper and another dude.  When both the shitty band he works for and the wrestlers are barely making money, he comes up with the idea of "Rock n' Roll Wrestling" which just means he has the shitty band, The Kicks, play their shitty music during wrestling matches and the kids go nuts for it! 

A Down and Out in Beverly Hills rip off. CLEVER!

In the end, the clients who believe in Harry even though he doesn't give a shit about them end up saving his ass and he starts to appreciate them.  I assume this anyway, I didn't get to the end.  The jokes were stupid, the stereotypes weren't even amusing and most importantly, there was no SEX or ROCK N' ROLL.  There was barely any wrestling and Rowdy Roddy keep his rowdiness to a minimum.  BORING.  If I had seen the film's poster, I probably could have figured out the sleazy Hollywood 80's comedy turd this was and avoided it all together.  Which you, dear reader, absolutely should.         

Nevermind, Rewind Movie Of The Week

This movie came out of a suggestion from a customer at the video store I work at.  That by itself isn't very convincing to me usually, but this guy seemed to have a decent general knowledge of horror movies and went on for awhile in detail how "surprisingly good" the movie turned out to be.  The minute I got this turd home and it started running on my DVD player, I was very aware that this customer was most likely some alien in a person-like meat suit filled with bullshit and lies and/or a human man who goes around video stores and suggests the shot-on-video "movie" his cousin made.  2006's TWO FRONT TEETH promises to be about a vampiric Santa Claus (Clausferatu) who has gone rogue, is attacking some small town with an army of elf zombies and the only one who can save the day is a trash journalist that has been raving about such Christmas conspiracy from the beginning.  What ACTUALLY happens is the marital problems of a neurotic plastic-faced rag writer and his wife (what's the deal with straight to video actresses from the 2000's always being plain-faced white ladies with highlights and rum raisin lipstick BTW?) who is getting banged by some other dude she works with at "X-Mart" and some pointy-eared, devil-faced gimps that bite people.  Or at least that's as far as I got. 

This movie suffers from a lot of the bullshit that most straight-to-DVD movies from the late 90's and general 2000's have.  It TRIES to be shitty.  Listen, when you already have a piss poor budget, one set and four actors who are clearly just your friends, your movie is already SHITTY.  You don't have to try to make shitty happen where shitty is born.  I'm all for not taking your movie seriously, but if you don't have enough money to make computer generated gun shots, than DON'T.  Just use fake blood and prosthetics like everyone else.  It looks better and there is a lovable/laughable aspect of honest attempts at good when turd is all that can be achieved.

That general statement to HD-Camera owners everywhere aside, the big mistake of this movie that made me hate it from the start is that it shows the elf/gimp/vampire people (which is clearly where any budget money went other than accessories from Claire's Boutique) are shown in the opening credits and then constantly there after.  Did you assholes never see Jaws or anything ever with monsters or creepy things as the antagonist?  Basically this shit fest blew it's load all over my face in the first five minutes and rather than hand me a sock or something, it just expected for me to sit there and let it dry.  No thanks TWO FRONT TEETH, I'm a lady.  Sorry.  I've never been very good with analogies.   

Nevermind, Rewind Film of the Week

I did not go into 1988's The Brain with high expectations.  All I really expected was to see a giant alien brain puppet eating people.  No more, no less.  That is exactly what I got.  What I didn't expect was one of the most obnoxious group of characters possibly in any movie, ever.  Not obnoxious in an entertaining way either.  The kind of people that you are just rooting for to die.  The only people I actually wanted the brain puppet to eat, it doesn't.  The plot is fairly simple and exactly like somewhat similar to Invasion of the Body Snatchers.  A pseudo-psychiatrist in a small town, creepy Dr. Blakely (played by Re-Animator's creepy decapitated doctor, David Gale)  hosts a popular public access show called ironically (that will make sense later), Independent Thinking.  Many of the town's parents send their wayward teens to Dr. Blakely's research facility in the hopes of curing their waywardness.  What they don't know, is Dr. Blakely isn't curing shit.  In fact, he's housing a giant killer alien monster brain that he's using to control every one's brain waves through his television show!  Not only that, but (SPOILER, not really) Dr. Blakely himself is in fact an alien made of slime and worms disguised in a human meat suit!  So far, so good. 

Where this goes awry is the main characters/heroes of the film.  It's your standard teenage couple, Jim, the wise-talking sex-obsessed James Deanesque boyfriend and Janet, the squeaky clean, I'm waiting for college, screams all the time and gets easily captured girlfriend (what part of STAY HERE do these bitches not understand?!?).  Smart-ass Jim gets in trouble in school and is forced by his parents to see Dr. Blakely for his behavioral problems.  This is when he finds out the good Doctor has a hot European assistant with nice boobs and oh, he's not really a doctor.  The rest of the film involves he and Janet trying to convince other people in town that Dr. Blakely is not what he seems, but unfortunately they have both been framed for the murders committed by the monster brain so no one really listens.

Here's where the mildly entertaining moves into incredibly infuriating.  These two assholes have to be the fucking stupidest fugitives of ALL time.  First of all, they never feel the need to actually run from anything or at least not a very accelerated speed.  Although Janet has seen the killer brain eat a guy with her own two eyes, she refuses to believe that the brain is actually controlling minds.  Is that really too far fetched at this point?  She decides to call her Dad, an avid watcher of Independent Thinking after Jim explicitly tells her not to.  Obviously, this leads the doctor's ONE goon directly to them.  Oh yeah, so Dr. Blakely has a giant alien brain to do his bidding, but only ONE fucking goon to do all his killing. 

Then the two lovers decide to hide out at their high school which I guess Jim has the keys to, it's never explained.  Then they decide to bone just in time before the goon shows up.  Janet starts watching the show on some monitor in a classroom and turns on Jim.  He is CONFUSED by this and isn't sure why she's turned against him even though he caught her watching the show and he was the one that theorized this is how Dr. Blakely is controlling people's brain waves.  AHH!  After a slow speed highway chase, Jim actually shakes the fuzz and Blakely's goon.  He escapes into the woods only to RETURN to town where EVERYONE is looking for him and just walks around busy streets wondering why people are starring at him.  He even goes to Blakely's facility which I guess makes sense since he obviously thinks he should destroy the killer brain, but while there he enters a room full of Independent Thinking watchers and is once again, surprised why they don't listen to reason.  I know horror movies are full of stupid people.  If they weren't, the movie wouldn't last an hour, but seriously, the dumb things this couple does and says is beyond horror movie stupidity and just moves straight into mental disability.  I made it up to the end, but does it really matter?  Guess what, Jim destroys the giant brain puppet on a dolly and the couple stays in love and goes off to college.  Meh.            

The Nevermind, Rewind Cinematic Turd of the Week

The Nevermind, Rewind movie of the week was actually recommended to my heterosexual roommate/romantic partner by a friend/video store employee.  Generally this friend and I have similiar cinematic taste, except for maybe the extended diner dialogue scenes of Quentin Tarantino, but on that we'll just have to agree to disagree.  Anybut, the movie this week that I failed to finish was 1986's America 3000, directed by David Engelbach, the writer of such classics as Over the Top and Death Wish II.  America 3000 was Engelbach's one and only film in the director's chair, the rest of his resume includes the aforementioned films and an episode of MacGuyver.  This movie seemed to initially have a lot of potential, it is set in the post-apocalyptic world of Colorado, 900 years into the future after the future American nuclear holocaust.  Humans live nomadic existences in tribes ruled by "Amazon" women.  Apparently the female tribal leaders are totally bitchy and the men are mostly stupid, kept as slaves or "couplers" which I guess are the decent looking ones with attractive penises.  Hopefully they keep track of this genepool and don't later accidentally bone their sons.   Apparently there are two characters who are averagely smart and decide to break free and hope to teach the women to love again so they can put thoses bitches back in the kitchen I guess.  Sounds pretty good so far, right?  Of course, this information is all from the description on the back of the tape. 

The actual movie does involve girls with whips and dim-witted slave guys that are separated in groups of "slaves" and "couplers," but other than that, I really had no fucking clue what was going on in this thing.  The set blew major coupler cock and the almost all the scenes just draaaaaggg on.  This is the post-apocalypse assholes!  Where's the action?  At least put on some rollerblades or build a Thunder Dome or form a rape gang or something.  I got about twenty minutes deep into this one before I turned it off.  It could have been my fatigue and or the alcohol, but I was less than entertained.  It seems to have potential though so maybe I'll revisit this one in the future just to be sure, then again, it will most likely be on a night when I'm tired and drinking (also known as every night).    

The "Nevermind, Just Rewind" Cinematic Turd of the Week

Okay, so there are two things that may or may not be obvious about me.  One, I have really bad taste and two, a short attention span.  Also, a limited vocabulary.  Okay, so that's three things.  Even so, there are some shitty movies that even I, a bargain bin and basement box cinematic connoisseur if you will, have my limits.  Some B-movies are just so goddamn awful I can't make it to the end.  I like to think of these as, Nevermind, Just Rewinds.  For my first example of unwatchable B-movie badness, I give you 1981's The Boogens.  Cheesy name?  Check.  Interesting VHS cover art?  Check.  A glowing review from Stephen King?  Um, I'm not sure that matters.  A decent sounding plot?  The story is basically about a small mining town who blow an old mine and inadvertently release a beast/creature/demon (who may have possibly just been a creepy old man) who then wreaks havoc on all it's residents.  And by all it's residents I mean mostly the attractive naked female ones.  So, decent sounding plot?  Check!  What actually happens involves a whole lot of character establishing dialogue, snow, a discussion of the "perfect breasts" of one character who then never shows us them, one bad ironic twist and the 80's.  Not urban 80's like day glow and Madonna, but small town 80's where everything was still the late 70's.  When the action eventually starts, involving some beast-like creature who (might just be an old guy) begins attacking the snowed-in cabin of an attractive woman in a towel, it's hard (pun) to be scared or aroused when you CAN'T SEE A FUCKING THING!  The whole film is so goddamn dark and most of the beginning involves scenes at night.  I gave up on this one after thirty minutes.  I don't know if it eventually get's good, but I doubt it matters since you won't be able to see any of the good take place anyway.  I guess I'll just have to wait for the Blu-ray edish.  Here's the trailer below.