Scary season’s greetings, and a warm but wicked welcome to HalloRe’ewind ’23, aka In Violent Agreement, The Rewind Movie Mêlée, The Great Big HalloRe’ewind Ding-Dong!, Filmic Fisticuffs, Kino-Clash, Motion Picture Punch-up, Flick-off, Feature Film Fracas, Cinema Scuffle, Quartet Quarrel, etc.
It’s The Rewind Movie Podcast’s inaugural, choose your own adventure, HalloRe’ewind evening of duelling quadruple bills! Two mini-marathons of 4-film blocks, as 6pm, 8pm, 10pm, and midnight screenings. Arduous curation criteria (more like unofficial guidelines) insisted we include something funny, something super entertaining, something disgusting, something legit unsettling, and at least one trashy new discovery.
Devlin aimed for gooey extermination with his Gloop! Slugs, Sludge and Slime foursome, meanwhile Matt made What Ever Possessed You? his quartet of sleazy demon offerings.
DEVLIN’S PICKS
My usual go-to vibe for Halloween movie season tends more towards ghostly tales, ones that exploit the permeable membrane ‘twixt the living and the dead, as I think I once pretentiously put it in an earlier Hallore’ewind missive. Folk stories, handed down and embellished over centuries that interpret deep-rooted ancient fears of our subsistence-level ancestors as they navigated a harsh and hardscrabble world, haunted and stalked by the spectre of death, processing the onrushing darkness and danger of the long hard winter via fantastical myths that seek to make sense of the brutal chaos that is existence, to alternately chill and comfort with the idea that life is not contained solely in the grimily tactile years from birth to death, but that aspects of something more like eternal echo throughout the ages as warnings, lessons, messages, and sometimes vengeance long-delayed. But this year, I thought it would be funny to watch a film where slugs blow up a greenhouse.
Gloop has a history in horror movies – there’s an instantaneous, visceral repulsion at the thought of feeling something sloppy, sticky and slimy touch our precious, dainty skin. To reach out a hand and feel not a trustworthy solid surface, or welcoming embrace of a fold of fabric, but something viscous and inconsistent, that clings to us, clings to anything that touches it, stubbornly and stealthily filling the most intimate crevices in our dermis until it almost becomes part of us, no matter how we scrub. Special effects maestros eventually cottoned on to how this thought would fire an unconscious shudder up our spine, and used it to amplify the impact of their handiwork. The team who brought H.R. Giger’s Alien design to life ushered this to the forefront of the medium, appropriately using barrels and barrels of ‘personal lubricant’ K-Y Jelly to slather the suggestive, threatening shape of the xenomorph. This layer of mysterious slickness lent a believable, awful tactility to what could have otherwise looked like an impressive but plasticky special effect, making us feel the invasive and intimate presence of the horrible star beast all-too substantially.
As that landmark film’s influence took hold through the early 80s, it became de rigueur to slosh this sex gel onto your creature designs, for a variety of reasons – it helped cinematographers, allowing for higher contrast as the shiny surface glistened with reflected light; it covered the seams of moulded props and makeup effects, smoothing out rough edges and disguising the prosaic foam rubber and plastic materials; it gives believability, an imperfect and messy substance that diverts audience attention away from the intentionality of the effects. But more than anything else, you just know it feels gross. It’s one thing to be torn apart by a hellish, ungodly, maniacal monster. It’s another to get the ick when it slimes you first. From Rob Bottin’s glorious, sticky, shapeshifting Thing, through Steve Johnson’s hallway gag-turned-animated mascot Slimer in Ghostbusters, to Sam Raimi blasting Alison Lohman repeatedly with a variety of sloppy miseries in Drag Me to Hell, I had no shortage of candidates for a fearsome foursome of mucilaginous movies for this marathon. To narrow them down, I followed the guidelines that Matt and I concocted for this year – to try and curate this collection to contain something entertaining, something funny, something disgusting, and something genuinely scary or shocking – preferably, with at least one new discovery. I’ve allowed the borders to blur a little, but I think I’m happy with what I came up with. There’s a mix of tones, enough variation to ensure that despite the central conceit, you, the viewer, don’t get goo-exhausted. Come slide with me, then, into this macabre, mucoid mire…
6pm
Night of the Creeps (1986) 88m
THRILL ME. We’re kicking off my 2023 Quartet of…Quorror(?) with Fred Dekker’s smart and likeable genre mashup Night of the Creeps. Inspired by our (very flexible) rules, I usually like to start a Halloween marathon with something relatively easy-going, entertaining, kinda accessible, and for all the grimy gore and disgusting intergalactic slug monsters, there’s something oddly wholesome about this self-reflexive spin through a whole video store shelf-load of subgenres that fit the bill. A year before his Goonies-meets-the-Universal-Monsters tween horror picture The Monster Squad, Dekker again takes a popular, mainstream 1980s staple – here, the geeks-versus-snobs campus comedy – and uses it as a framework to graft on elements taken from 1950s intergalactic creature features, Red Scare-era alien imposter paranoia, hardboiled gumshoe detective fiction, Romero-esque zombies, psycho-on-the-loose axe murder urban legends, and much more, all within 88 fast-paced minutes.
Debuting director Dekker’s nerdy credentials are baked in up front – pretty much every character in the film is named after a prominent horror director, mostly Dekker’s would-be peers in the American and Canadian horror firmament of the 80s. The film opens as a pair of weird little rubber aliens chase one of their crewmates through the hallways of a rickety spaceship, as blasters shower the set with sparks. The rogue alien sends a canister off into the depths of space – a mysterious experiment that the other aliens warned could not be released. Down on Earth, we’re in a late-50s, black and white-photographed college full of clean-cut, sweater-clad guys and gals, grooving to Paul Anka and heading off to the local necking spot in their vast drop top cars for some over-the-shirt groping. One young couple spy the canister crash-landing in the trees near the highway, and, despite the warnings from a local cop who seems to have a history with the young woman that there’s a loon on the loose from the local mental hospital, her eager new date is determined to check it out.
“What is this? A homicide, or a bad B-movie?”
Detective Ray Cameron
Just as the two potential plots ramp up to their grisly denouement, we’re thrown forward in time to Pledge Week, 1986, at the same college, as meek young student Chris Romero and his motormouthed, physically disabled roommate and best/only friend James “J.C.” Carpenter-Hooper foolishly agree to participate in a prank on behalf of a frat led by a Nazi-coded bully – Chris naively believing this will impress sorority hottie Cynthia Cronenberg, not realising that she is, in fact, the frat leader’s girlfriend – in order to gain membership. The boys are supposed to dump a Med School cadaver on the lawn of a rival fraternity house, but end up thawing a corpse from a very retro-looking cryo chamber that inadvertently unleashes a slimy peril that has lay dormant for decades: BRAIN-INVADING SPACE SLUGS!
Into all this stumbles the film’s undoubted highlight, Halloween III: Season of the Witch’s Tom Atkins as booze-sodden, depressed, sardonic ball of detective cliches Detective Ray Cameron, greeting the uncanny mysteries unfolding, and the prosaic incompetencies of his subordinates, with the same whiskey-breathed sigh of resignation. Before too long, we’re awash in shambling zombies (human, canine, and feline varieties), exploding heads, flamethrowers, and desiccated resurrected axe-murderers, all executed with the tangible glee of a young filmmaker getting to throw all his favourite disreputable influences at the screen at once – yet pulling it all off with a remarkable amount of control and accuracy. Sure, our lead character Chris is a bit of a sulking proto-incel who still gets the girl despite his overwhelming uselessness and concomitant sense of entitlement, but in a way, that just plays into the mega-genre in-joke. And he’s more than counterbalanced by J.C.’s irreverent, genuinely fun sidekick schtick, one of the least annoying 80s wingmen I can remember. Mining all this madness for something approaching pathos, before turning on a dime into flippant comedy, then back to splatterful horror nonsense, Night of the Creeps synthesises its influences into a deliriously fun cocktail that serves as a perfect aperitif for a night of sluggy, slimy fun. Oh, and Dick Miller is in this one, too!
8pm
Slugs: The Movie (1988) 92m
From space slugs from above, to radioactive slugs from below, as upstate New York (and Madrid, which unconvincingly stands in at times) is infested from the sewers with slithering flesh-eaters in this utterly baffling adaptation of a 1982 British novel. Spanish director Juan Piquer Simón, who scored a cult hit with the grimy giallo Pieces in the early 80s, marshalls a picture that oscillates between repulsive effectiveness, and some of the most inexplicable line readings and scene constructions you’ll come across this Halloween season. Right down to its gooey core, this is a gloriously misbegotten venture, a belated Jaws riff with a bloated cast that integrates no-name American actors with Spanish locals who’ve been given horrible dub jobs. Its effects range from the truly comical to the inordinately explosive, and earned the film, bemusingly, a statue at Spain’s 3rd annual Goya awards.
We first meet Mike Brady, health inspector (played by Michael Garfield, a middle-aged actor whose prior experience consisted only of an appearance as a background ruffian some 9 years earlier in Walter Hill’s The Warriors), as he and Mrs. Brady suffer through an awkward bar night with a stiff-necked business guy (Emilio Linder, a prolific Argentinian star of Spanish-language smut with titles like El orgasmo y el éxtasis) and his lush of a wife before making their excuses. On his way out, he runs into old pal and sanitation chief Don Palmer (Philip MacHale, another total unknown who resembles a puffy long-lost Osmond Brother), not yet aware that a local derelict has been eaten to death by atomic superslugs that have been brewing in the stagnant waters of the old chemical waste dumping ground on the edge of town. Cue Mike slowly cottoning on to the danger at hand, to the chagrin and disbelief of the local authorities who, among other things, are trying to keep a sweet deal to build a shopping mall on track, and roping Don in to help him execute a slug extermination plan cooked up by a local high school science teacher with a gloriously conspicuous British accent dubbed over his gurning performance.
“Brady and I are going to go kill some man-eating slugs. But I tell you what, when I do get back, how about if we get naked and get crazy?”
Don Palmer
In between expository speechifying and grotesque montages of big fats slugs writhing in the dark, we take time out to check in with some of the locals – an elderly couple who hate each other where the old fella ends up hacking his own arm off before inadvertently detonating his massive greenhouse in a genuinely awe-inspiring fireball; a horny young couple whose arse-wobbling, conspicuously graphic sex scene is interrupted by gooey death; our aforementioned business guy’s face exploding in a shower of worms in an Italian restaurant after accidentally ingesting an infected slug salad; a miserable teen Halloween party where young idiots in double denim stand awkwardly around a couple of puny pumpkins before at least two of them try to do a sex crime. Mike jousts with the standard issue hardass Sheriff, the mayor, and a third guy in a suit whose job title I didn’t catch but who ends up being murdered by toilet slugs anyway. A rubber slug puppet tries to bite Mike’s finger, in the most celebrated and daft visual of the whole feature.
The film proudly boasts in its credits sequence that the score was performed by the London Symphony Orchestra, a pretty highbrow and definitely very intentional bid to confer some sort of prestige on the venture. Alas, they must have been paying by the minute, because you quickly become cogniscent that every one of the film’s many, many sequences of non-descript saloon cars methodically and with a distinct lack of dramatic urgency arriving at a succession of grey locations, wherein Mike will plead with yet another Jaws mayor stand-in to take his insane theory seriously before the whole thing goes slugs up shortly afterwards, are scored with the exact same sample of music that most closely resembles an over-dramatic nightly news theme tune.
Despite being released in 1988, the murky visuals and drab location makes it looks at least half a decade older than that. Its chilly, autumnal, clapboard suburban setting absolutely qualifies this as a Halloween feature in my eyes, as does the requisite deployment of some zealously nasty special effects. You’ll laugh, you’ll cringe, you’ll shudder involuntarily at the sight and sound of a writhing mass of actual, real life slugs, and you’ll marvel at the existence of this phenomenal oddity.
10pm
The Oily Maniac (1976) 84m
That concludes the slugs portion of the evening, and sliding into my new 2023 discovery, the slimy, 1976’s Shaw Brothers oddity The Oily Maniac, was just too wonderful to resist. The basic story is an adaptation of a Malay folk tale that has apparently been filmed several times before, although I doubt with such blouse-ripping crassness. While better known for their groundbreaking kung fu pictures, by the mid-70s (after the death of the genre’s signature star Bruce Lee) the studio was trying to branch out into other easily-sellable genres, so a swing towards horror made financial sense. But did it make narrative or tonal sense? If the answer to that was yes, then this film probably wouldn’t be the absolute madcap joy that it is. Thankfully, it remains a total headscratcher of the best variety.
Prolific screen star and future Inframan Danny Lee, who would crop up over a decade later in John Woo’s seminal The Killer, stars as meek young solicitor Shen Yuan, his legs affected by childhood polio, who stumbles into a routine contract signing that turns sour when local gangsters try to take ownership of a coconut oil plantation – sending the current owner, his uncle, into a rage that results in the somewhat inadvertent killing of one of the ruffians with a machete. Well, I think it is his uncle – the man’s daughter, ‘Little Yue’, is Shen Yuan’s not-so-secret, unrequited crush, and also his first cousin. Maybe it’s a colloquial use of the term? Hopefully?!
As you can see, we’re already off to a hell of a start, one that only improves once his probably-uncle calls him to his prison cell, where within about 6 seconds of screentime, he has been sentenced to death. His last act is to bequeath to Shen Yuan, via the medium of the younger man tracing a large tattoo from off his back, a spell that will grant him the tremendous strength to protect Yue, as long as he chants the secret incantation and digs a massive hole in the middle of his house. His reward for this? To be temporarily transformed into a hulking, sentient oil creature, capable of wreaking slippery revenge on evil-doers – as long as he never allows himself to use his powers for evil or to selfish ends. Well, that pledge doesn’t last very long. Oscillating between the misunderstood antiheroics of mossy lookalike Swamp Thing, and the skull-thumping brutality of your standard rubber-suited monster movie villain, Shen Yuan finds increasingly inventive ways of slathering himself in various oils in order to trigger his transformation, choosing his targets based on a labyrinthine plot that involves the coconut oil gangsters, his sleazy lawyer boss, and a variety of sketchy characters they embroil into some tawdry blackmail schemes. He kills one of them by twatting him with a bike before scampering off and reverse-footage flipping up to an impossible rooftop-level escape. It is excellent.
The reappearance of the crude monstrosity, looking like an oozy, severe burns victim Mr Blobby, is always accompanied by the same excellent sampled scream, and as he stalks his prey, a budget knock-off of the previous years’ Jaws theme squelches onto a soundtrack that more often comprises some funky wah-wah pedal shenanigans. The Oily Maniac’s newfound powers also allow him to melt into a very poorly rotoscoped oil puddle that slips around walls and ceilings, even, in one remarkable sequence, dripping from a rooflight down to an operating table in a shady plastic surgeon’s clinic while a poor young woman is stirruped up waiting for a hymenoplasty at the behest of her skeevy pimp, before clumsily smashing up a few dozen glass bottles and clubbing everybody to death.
There’s a very 70sploitation undercurrent of casual, and in some cases extremely uncasual, misogyny, which you will have to navigate depending on your own sensitivities. It’s a firmly bad taste anomaly to guide us towards the midnight hour – one that you can say with absolute certainty is a true original (despite, y’know, ripping off the Jaws score). Curses, the world’s worst boob job, vendettas, cousin lust, betrayal, middle-aged couples strangled during roadside trysts, a man jumping into a barrel of tar at a roadworks in order to activate his latent superpowers… it may not be traditionally spooky, but I firmly believe you can find some space in your Halloween season for something this utterly bewildering and entertaining.
12am
The Blob (1988) 94m
The Blob provides a nice bookend to this sloppy cavalcade – a turn away from the amusingly ramshackle middle portion and back towards something of a spiritual cousin to Night of the Creeps. Both are gleefully gruesome updates of classic 1950s horror tropes given a jolt of 80s high fructose youthful energy, made by imaginative, upstart creatives in their 20s who sought to simultaneously indulge and subvert material that was probably already considered hokey by the time they likely encountered it in their formative years. Director Chuck Russell, fresh off franchise high point A Nightmare on Elm Street III: Dream Warriors, brought along his co-writer Frank Darabont for producer Jack H. Harris’ reimagining of his tame, but fondly-recalled, Steve McQueen teen drive-in classic of three decades prior.
There was a real sweet spot in this era, where movies like Night of the Creeps and The Blob were canny and cineliterate enough to be metatextually satisfying, to ping pong between irony and sincerity and cherrypick the best of their filmic forebears while playfully inverting audience expectations and conventions where necessary, but we hadn’t yet reached such a level of addled media hypersaturation that the filmmakers couldn’t just allow the audience to authentically relax into and enjoy the films on their own merits. They present their work as a standalone entity that is marinated in genre convention, rather than self-reflexively pre-empting or second-guessing the audience beyond the confines of the film experience itself. There’s true joy and authenticity in them, a near-perfect mixture of naivety and savvy. And, of course, they were made in the latter stages of the golden age of practical horror effects, where even a moderate budget could potentially bag you some beautifully crafted make up, prosthetics, and animatronics. Where they diverge is in The Blob’s grotesquely graphic deployment and willingness to push the nastiness to the fore when needed. The influence from John Carpenter’s The Thing looms large in sequences where the titular space goo starts assimilating the townsfolk, its pinkish-purple pulsating mass studded with malformed limbs and faces that meld into a hideous, terrified whole, or in the impressively rendered, horribly deformed faces of the unfortunate victims.
Again, as with Night of the Creeps, the tone is as much sci-fi as it is horror, a synthy score setting an eerie tone as the movie’s credits play out over shots of a small, shabby town that seems to have been completely abandoned. The images become increasingly stark until we end up overlooking a dour graveyard, until a strange, hushed roar pulls the camera’s attention away, to the left. It erupts into a rousing cheer as a high school football game plays out, the townspeople seemingly all packed into the open bleachers in support. It’s the first of many carefully calibrated reveals in an adaptation that knows perfectly when to deviate from the source material, rather than slavishly stick to some sort of iconographic fan service. A wonderfully handled opening sequence lays out our cast of characters – in the stadium, nice guy football team wide receiver hero Paul (Donovan Leitch, son of the Sunshine Superman himself), his cocky quarterback Scott (soap opera lifer Ricky Paull Goldin essaying an excellently skeevy horndog), and picture-perfect cheerleader Meg (a first starring role for Shawnee Smith, embodying a goody-two-shoes teen that the audience actually wants to root for). Crosscut with the razzle dazzle of the game, bemulleted bad boy Brian Flagg (Kevin Dillon, stepping into his big brother’s leather jacket from Rumble Fish) loiters on the dirt edges of town, contemplating jumping his motorcycle over a broken-down bridge. The football crowds’ chants of “GO! GO!” cheer Flagg on until a motor malfunction sees him skid to an ungracious flop down the ravine, much to the amusement of a passing hobo – Russell’s witty editing is an absolute joy throughout.
I feel like the one-legged man in an ass kicking contest.
Sheriff Herb Geller
That same October evening (seasonally appropriate!), as the football fans file back into town and we fill out the rest of our tight ensemble – meeting Meg’s parents; glimpsing a tentative flirtation between the local café owner and the stoic Sheriff – the hobo sees a fireball streak across the sky and crash into the distant woods. Investigating, his arm is seized by a gelatinous globule of pink mucus nestled in a smouldering crater, and he sets off sprinting through the trees in terrified pain where only Flagg, out to retrieve his trashed bike, attempts to come to his aid, inadvertently chasing him into the road. Paul and Meg, setting out on a first date, hit the escaping old man with their car, with all three youths taking him to the tiny clinic that passes for a hospital. The mayhem escalates quickly from here, with an ingenious and genuinely terrifying illustration of the destructive power of this horrific intergalactic mass. The Blob itself is a masterpiece – its undulations like the underside of a hideously pale and swollen tongue, it is utterly repulsive and believably powerful, as it, and the film, take no prisoners in its slithering path of destruction.
The temporal containment – who doesn’t love a one-crazy-night film? – is mirrored by the charmingly backlot-bound production design that makes this little burgh feel like the middle of nowhere. The crackerjack performances (including small parts for David Lynch favourite Jack Nance and future Baywatch babe Erika Eleniak) help to sell both the authentic horror, and the precision-tooled sense of bad-taste fun to be had with it. Over the course of its snappy 94 minutes, Russell manages to involve us in his characters, shock us with some truly brutal death scenes, and divert the story into a whole different, anti-authoritarian direction. Classic set-pieces abound, including a fiery sewer-set near-finale that calls to mind the mad magic of our man Don being stripped to his bones and sinew by corrosive subterranean gloop in Slugs, as Meg and two terrified tweens find themselves trapped between a slop and a hard place – and the film up until this point has shown us no reason to believe anyone is safe, no matter how young or central to the story.
The film notoriously flopped upon release, as did so many later-recognised classics of the genre in the era – perhaps, like fellow 80s reimagining of a 50s classic The Thing, it just went too hard and strayed too far into pitch-black-darkly comic territory that more delicate viewers of the time may have mistaken for pure, vicious nihilism. Perennially touted as an underrated, underseen gem, it somehow still remains as such to this day, but that streak of dreadful ruthlessness has aged this film better than most, retaining its shock value along with its impressive visuals. It’s the perfect mixture of scares, laughs, and shudders of revulsion to close out our marathon. Unpleasant dreams, Rewinders.
Only available in the UK on imported Blu-ray – either from the US on Shout! Factory, or from France in the correct region code
MATT’S PICKS
I find these marathons dead complex—much more difficult than compiling a musical playlist, for instance. There are so many fluctuating tones to films that make them trickier to juxtapose with one another in a complimentary fashion. Here, I sacrificed cover all bases diversity for a loose (and at first, unintentional) theme, which allowed my tetrad to feel as if at least some of the movies may have taken place in the same bonkers universe. I was keen for them to be of the same ilk somehow; the same flavour—like similar songs on a compilation album; four jigsaw puzzle pieces, or one of those pizzas with four different toppings—yet somehow they each belong. I also realised during the frankly exhausting curation stage that they’re all arguably possession pictures. It was purely trial and error, and in a sense—dumb luck that they all fit together end to end like daft dominoes, and are even almost all technically the same possession-meets-haunted house sub-subgenre—except Army of Darkness, which is honestly a last minute substitution for the superior, Evil Dead II—which would have perhaps worked even better here, but I’d sadly already picked it for an earlier HalloRe’ewind, and had to kill my darling—them’s the rules! All I initially did was try to find films in the same key, and unwittingly unleashed a sleazy dead buffet; a quad of sexually deviant possessors, and the lewd and lascivious possessed.
As pondered in our earlier HalloRe’ewinds, I was searching for those elusive movies with exactly the ideal Hallowe’en tone, and rejected many pictures on my journey as they were too dark, too dismal, too camp, too silly, or not pitched precisely right. It’s safe to say, the quality of my picks deteriorates, and gets progressively and intentionally dumber—and for the sake of momentum, shorter in length (I didn’t quite manage this entirely), as you also (I hope) get drunker, more altered, and full of the appropriate tricks and treats. My final three films are tacky in the same way those slip-on witch’s fingers you can buy in Whitby joke shops are. I wanted viewers to almost be able to smell the cheap rubber masks of their youth when they watch my assortment. I have to chuck you a caveat, and say the picky need not apply here. If you’re looking for exceptional films in a traditional sense, you may not find them in this quadruple bill, but you will find Hallowe’en-appropriate “vibes picks,” as we describe them, and with any luck, that nostalgic scent of charred, hollowed-out pumpkin—or turnip jack-o’-lanterns for me, will flood back to haunt you this All Hallows’ Eve.
6pm
Beetlejuice (1988) 92m
“Hands vermillion, start of five. Bright cotillion, raven’s dive. Nightshade’s promise, spirits strive. To the living let now the dead come alive.”
Otho, Beetlejuice
Grab your Handbook for the Recently Deceased—it’s Tim Burton’s batshit comedy/horror, Beetlejuice. Tonally, this is perfection for most Hallowe’en hang-outs—pretty much nailing the seasonal scares of lighter fare such as The Addams Family features, but neatly negating their softness with an edgier, more off-kilter vibe. Beetlejuice has been on the periphery of my Hallowe’en party picks for years, but this particular mini-marathon set the necessary standard, spirit, and represented the specific eighties/nineties era I was looking to delve into, and chain together complimentary movies.
I feel as if I’ve had the necessary, rigorous training in the quirky, nonsensical humour of Burton all my life—from Pee-wee Herman to his Batman films. Here, charming newlyweds, Adam and Barbara Maitland, take an unfortunate tumble off a bridge in their car and perish, but in lieu of a peaceful, endless slumber, they find themselves negotiating a bureaucratic afterlife full of peculiar waiting rooms and paperwork—where even in death, poor souls are subject to arbitrary, administrative red-tape. Making matters worse for the previously happy couple, a pretentious family of oddball artists move in, and disrespectfully begin to rejig the Maitlands’ previously happy home. Seemingly only the madcap, loony antics of the smutty and salacious “bio-exorcist,” Betelgeuse can shoo the invasive tenants. I often consider the film’s smart satire. Its attractive theme of the villainous business-minded, versus the kind and thoughtful creatives speaks to me—as does the deader-inside-than-the-actually-deceased living ignoring the valuable, innate qualities of the strange and unusual to their own detriment.
“Are you gross under there? Are you Night of the Living Dead under there? Like, all bloody veins and pus?”
Lydia, Beetlejuice
It’s an all star affair. Geena Davis—just two years after Cronenberg’s The Fly, is in lovely form, and in light of the recent Alec Baldwin fiasco, my viewing was coloured slightly darker, but I still love their endearing relationship as the tragically drowned Maitlands. I mean, wouldn’t it be a right laugh—although in death, to assume scary guises, and frighten folks with your better half? I appreciate how maternal Geena is to Winona here as Lydia, and the shot of her unsettling, mournful crumbling as the aged Barbara in her wedding gown has never left me in all these years. There’s an overt romanticism here too, as recognised and honoured by prolific alt-country troubadour, Ryan Adams—once upon a time beau of serial-dater, Winona circa his Heartbreaker/Gold heyday, who wrote a song entitled, “This House is Not for Sale,” about the events and characters in the film. “My whole life is a dark room; one big, dark room,” oozes goth princess, Winona Ryder—just 15 when filming in ‘87, and 17 on the film’s release in ‘88, lookin’ like something between Edgar Allan Poe’s daughter, Robert Smith, and precious Mr Echo, Ian McCulloch, or perhaps one of the Jesus and Mary Chain.
The possibly insane (certainly insanely talented) Home Alone mum and Christopher Guest improv regular, Catherine O’Hara’s vibrant visage—paprika hair, scarlet lips, and coruscating blue eyes, pops throughout. Dick Cavett and Robert Goulet each have brief executive producer cameos. Problematic performer number two—after the doom-laden Baldwin, is the pedo-principal from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, who pops up periodically to harsh our mellow.
“I’m the ghost with the most, babe.”
Betelgeuse, Beetlejuice
That brings us to the oddity that is Michael Keaton. Cruising Dante’s air-conditioned “Inferno Room” full of hookers, we’re ceremoniously introduced to the most eligible bachelor since Valentino; the cockroach-eating pervert, Betelgeuse—I can only assume this original spelling caused a ruckus in the marketing department as no one could pronounce it. I could see Keaton doing a full stand-up show as Betelgeuse, but it would more than likely go sideways like a Bobcat Goldthwait special where you quickly get sick of the shtick. In my youth, I found the anticipatory mystique surrounding the character of Betelgeuse fascinating. I recall waiting to see him, and relished all of his disgusting appearances. I vividly remember the moment where he honks himself and hollers, “Nice fucking model!” as it was always cut for television.
Only a visionary could imagine the otherworldly quirks of Harry Belafonte tunes working so well here. Beginning with his “Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)” accompaniment to the table possession, and eternally sealed by the levitating Lydia dancing—now inseparably and iconically accompanied by Belafonte’s “Jump in the Line (Shake, Senora).” These calypso tunes are shrewdly scattered throughout, much like Cat Stevens was in Harold and Maude. Speaking of Hal Ashby’s peculiar and profound picture, the deathly appearances of the Maitlands even echo Harold’s faux suicides, revealing what was, I’m sure, an influence on Burton.
“I’ve seen The Exorcist about 167 times, and it keeps getting funnier every single time I see it!”
Betelgeuse, Beetlejuice
Where else could you possibly witness an attractive, suicidal, green Miss Argentina receptionist, a charred (literally smoking) Marlboro red shaky man, a run over flat guy, a little preacher with an alien head, skeleton office workers, a shrunken headed chap, a blue lady with separate legs and torso, a three fingered typist, a dumb dead football player, and a very dumb dead football player?
The crackers dénouement is lifted tenfold by Danny Elfman’s grandiose, raucous score—elevating the kooky picture on more occasions than I could count. The way that opening tableau tracking shot seamlessly and mysteriously merges into the giant tarantula trick miniature is an example of the meticulous skill and dexterous design at hand—from finger candles, to mirror gags, and levitation rigs—even the way Catherine O’Hara’s sculptures mirror and match Winona Ryder’s fringe feels intentional. In retrospect, although the shoddy rear projection of the sandworm segments plays kitschy in 2023, it’s somehow softened by the charm of the crude, yet appealing handmade stop motion animation.
Beetlejuice is available now on 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray.
Beetlejuice Drinking Game
Now, please join hands, and enjoy (responsibly) this doom and gloom Beetlejuice drinkalong. Simply sup thine pint, or bevoir of choice when…
- Goth angst is expressed—predominantly by Lydia
- Somebody says, “Betelgeuse”
- Calypso music plays
- A Sandworm appears
- The Handbook for the Recently Deceased is seen, or consulted
- Afterworld admin—the bureaucratic red-tape of the hereafter is negotiated
“Let’s turn on the juice and see what shakes loose.”
Betelgeuse, Beetlejuice
8pm
Army of Darkness (1992) 86m
“All right, you primitive screwheads, listen up!”
Ash, Army of Darkness
Once upon a time, I had this UK horror/fantasy film magazine—kind of like Fangoria, but not. The name escapes me, but it featured a run down of the practical effects work in Hocus Pocus—the guy’s mouth sewn shut, and Army of Darkness, with its various Deadite designs, Evil Ash, etc. I’ll have been no older than 10, and those images seared into my brain and stayed with me. I didn’t see Army until a “bootleg version” inexplicably titled, Bruce Campbell vs. Army of Darkness, wrapped in phony brown paper bag DVD packaging, arrived on region 1 US DVD circa the early noughties. As a Brit, I didn’t grow up watching Raimi’s beloved Three Stooges. In fact, I’ve still never seen anything in full, but as a child of the ’80s, I did religiously absorb Blackadder, The Young Ones, and Bottom, which all helped prepare me for its slapstick elements. Speaking of the genius, Rik Mayall, there’s a hilarious Drop Dead Fred-esque face-stretching incident in Army when Ash picks the wrong Necronomicon.
Love is blind, and I love Army of Darkness. For all its faults and flaws, inconsistencies, and glaring mistakes, it’s a joke that I am happily in on. Is horror/fantasy Allhalloween appropriate? For me, unequivocally yes. Although it has crones, thunder and lightning storms, and howling at the moon, I was still slightly concerned whether a magic spells, swords and sorcery story would be the ideal tonal fit for Hallowe’en, but it really plays. Army of Darkness—the ultimate experience in medieval horror—what is essentially Evil Dead III, aka The Medieval Dead is my daft as a brush, skeleton-packed, off-the-wall faux-epic pick to keep you cackling after 8pm.
“Oh, that’s just what we call pillow talk, baby, that’s all.”
Ash, Army of Darkness
The year is 1300 A.D. and our ol’ mate—the long tormented (mostly by Sam Raimi) sap stranded in, or out of time, Ash—after being sucked through a mind-bending vortex along with Sam’s trusty Oldsmobile at the climax of the previous picture, finds himself a shackled, pilloried, and whipped prisoner. After impressing the primates with his twelve gauge Remington “boomstick” from the sporting goods department of S-Mart, the peasants begin to hail “he who has come from the sky,” laying on a harem of wenches who feed him grapes as he scoffs chicken legs like he’s Henry VIII. However, the foolishness and spinelessness of Ash means disaster is always just around the corner.
Evil Dead II is a cinematic bible to me, and I completely adore KNB’s (Kurtzmann, Nicotero, and Berger) practical puppetry, make up, and Army of Darkness Deadites, especially as they were working 24/7 on a measly $800 a week for this non-union shoot. How folks can say these effects aren’t masterly is beyond me. Army is incredibly cinematic—whether it be the forest of bendy rubber trees, Introvision front-projection composites, force perspective miniatures, matte paintings, the “she-bitch,” or the flying Green Goblin Deadite attacks. 86 minutes really flies by.
Earmuffs, “Ringers,” but the final flurry castle raid is arguably better than the battle for Helm’s Deep, and for my money, any Game of Thrones episode. Does The Two Towers have a squadron of talking crossbow skeletons? Nope. Does GoT have a ginger-bearded, bony bagpipe band with a femur flute soloist? Don’t think so. I easily get battle fatigue during these kinds of lengthy clashes, but the theatrical cut of Army pitches it just about right. Elements of a personal fave, 1991’s Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves also leapt out, including throwing the ladder down, Ash cutting the rope and flying up the castle side, and impaling an attacking witch with a spear using her own momentum to skewer her.
“I got a bone to pick with you.”
Evil Ash, Army of Darkness
Campbell continuously moans that Army should be a PG as opposed to an R, but having said that, censorship when done right isn’t simply the arbitrary exclusions of sex, violence, and cussin’—it’s about eliminating potential mimicry. Yes, this is a film that features loquacious skellingtons and a spurting blood geyser, but a man also skillets his face off a hot stove, and pours boiling hot water down his throat, which (crucially, as far as censors are concerned) doesn’t burn him—and perhaps most egregiously, the movie features a quite disturbing, gropey sexual assault of Sheila in the presence of the newly resurrected, exhumed, skeletal Army of the Dead.
Bruce Campbell antagonist and director of Army of Darkness, Sam Raimi, can be witnessed wearing a French beret, barking theatrical directions into a megaphone like a certifiable Cecil B DeMille. Raimi allegedly briefed youthful cinematographer, Bill Pope (Darkman, The Matrix, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Baby Driver) on his ways of working prior to hiring him, saying words to the effect of, “So, buddy. I’m gonna tell you exactly where to put the camera, how high to put the camera, what lens to put on the camera, where I want the camera to move to, how fast, and what speed.” When Pope agreed to those terms, Raimi conceded, “Actually, I have no idea about lenses, or light, or any of that stuff. I was just testing you to see if I could push you around.”
There’s something mechanical, almost clockwork about Raimi and Pope’s palpable, creative cinematography here—the nonstop intricate ballet between the camera operator, and Bruce, with the precision of the moves contrarily retaining a handmade feel. It’s brilliantly shot and lit, and without doubt, one of the most visually inventive films I’ve ever seen. The classic “force” POV splitting tree trunks in half in its wake, the swaying camerawork eliciting feelings of queasiness and vertigo, and that incredible tracking shot with all the characters turning camera left, and ending on Bruce, as everyone eyes Ash is a real sight for sore bones. Traditional film grammar aside, this is a movie that expresses itself using every kind of shot you could possibly imagine, but it’s also fluent in cinematic punctuation—the communicative way moments are emphasised and underlined. Raimi’s kinetic skills always shine though, no matter how absurd it gets.
“Well hello, Mister Fancypants! I’ve got news for you pal, you ain’t leadin’ but two things right now: Jack and shit… and Jack left town.”
Ash, Army of Darkness
Whether he’s in a Hitchcockian shirt and tie, smoking endless cigarettes, calling everyone “buddy,” tormenting Bruce by making him flap his arms and squawk like a chicken, or run around with his foot nailed to the floor, Raimi abuses his directorial authority in the most mischievous of ways. Some directors acquire positions of power to get laid—Raimi just wanted to chuck dummy skeletons at Bruce from off camera. He has an uncanny knack for filling his frames meticulously and unsparingly—creating, at times, an overwhelmingly detailed sensory experience. Take the fantastically immersive nature of Army‘s Skywalker Sound mix. Raimi’s crash zooms are accentuated by the clanking of cast iron hits during Ash’s gearing up. I adore the Army of the Dead’s ADR ad libs—it’s all so dense, and when the skeletons start chattering away, that’s some of my most treasured stuff. The film editing credit, “R.O.C. Sandstorm” was actually a Sam Raimi pseudonym, as after the his previous picture, Darkman was recut by Universal against his wishes, he had to boldly, and covertly tinker with the movie a mere 48 hours before release. Sam resolutely did not want history to repeat, so opted to infiltrate his own edit room undercover with support from long-time collaborator, Robert Tapert.
Personally, I could watch exploding skeletons all day long. Alas, Dino De Laurentiis would disagree. “Let’s have two skeletons blowing up instead of five,” De Laurentiis would dictate, as a method of slashing Army‘s run time down. Sam’s half of the movie—the bits he edited, ended up quite lengthy and less disciplined—some may argue, overindulgent. Raimi allegedly said to his editor, “Dino is old, and he won’t remember his notes, so you don’t have to follow them.” Then Dino would become enraged because he did remember, and after making specific requests, there were still five exploding skeletons instead of two. The “I slept too long!” ending with Joseph LoDuca’s enormous, booming score (Danny Elfman’s involvement was limited to a single “The March of the Dead” cue) was legitimately disturbing back in the day. In spite of Army being an overtly daft film—same with Evil Dead II, which I saw aged 15 or so, and was horrified by Ted Raimi’s sweet Henrietta, then found myself suddenly laughing along with my school mates, Rob and Phil, and then secretly scared again. It was, and still is, the perfect balancing act of humour and horror. Army teeters more on the precipice of silliness, and occasionally stumbles and plummets over the edge, but in the interest of sheer Hallowe’en spirit—enjoyment and laughter as well as terror, it fits the brief.
This alternate, Planet of the Apes-esque conclusion from the longer cut definitely has its tragic merits, but I much prefer the action-packed, upbeat, heroic, S-Mart-set, hideous horror hag ending from the truncated theatrical—sans the former’s spliced back in, lower quality scenes. It’s (I believe) canonical in terms of what followed, although I’m not proficient. The Evil Dead films are very much a closed loop trilogy to me. As Gali often says, the series has “grown arms and legs.” The 86-minute theatrical also boasts the, “Come get some,” and “Hail to the king, baby,” zingers that 1996’s Duke Nukem 3-D so shamelessly stole, as well as Robbie Hart’s jilting fiancée from The Wedding Singer (in the Van Halen T-shirt), making out with Bruce. Mournfully, the edit room floor eradication of Charles Napier as Ash’s boss is, I’m sure, one of cinema’s greatest tragedies.
“Lady, I’m afraid I’m gonna have to ask you to leave the store.”
Ash, Army of Darkness
Army of Darkness is a complete oddity in the sense that Universal, and De Laurentiis forked $11 million in the first place to produce a picture with a deliberately dislikable and contemptible coward as their lead protagonist. Army is, in a way, the pinnacle of the Evil Dead series in respect to the character of Ash, but it’s not as representative, harsh, or as darkly visceral and frightening as Evil Dead II. Bruce Campbell is Buster Keaton in Dead By Dawn—plate smashing and body flipping, but here he’s Elvis Presley. Campbell is comedically adept, physically fit—in peak condition, and dare I say devilishly handsome—to the degree that we are forced to ponder why he wasn’t a bigger commercial star.
Having said that, in the longer bootleg cut, the contentious slapstick windmill segment is twice as long as the theatrical, and feels thrice as long. Although a tad long-winded and annoyingly broad—and featuring the obnoxiously goofy mini-Ashes, it’s essentially another nifty Bruce Campbell one-man show. His solo second act here is admittedly hard to swallow at times, as the more compelling and comical moments revolve around Ash interacting with the medieval folk. Let’s just be grateful the fabled deleted sequence, in which Ash gets caught up in a can-can line of dancing skeletons was vetoed, as that may have represented the crossing of a tonal line in the sand. Although, I still don’t think I’d hate it.
Of course, Campbell is not entirely alone here. There’s the striking Embeth Davidtz (Schindler’s List), with her truly creepy pallid transformation into Evil Sheila, “Chop Top” Bill Mosley (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, House of 1000 Corpses, The Devil’s Rejects), a bafflingly brief Bridget Fonda cameo (she loved the first two movies), as our third different Linda, and loyal brotherly stalwart, Ted Raimi pops up in count ‘em, four roles—Cowardly Warrior, Supportive Villager, S-Mart Clerk, and Brave Fighter.
“Hail to the king, baby.”
Ash, Army of Darkness
Mixed and middling reviews, meshed with a strange marketing ploy to sell the film as if it were somehow detached from the beloved Evil Dead series, as opposed to the essential, climactic third part of a trilogy, sent Army hurtling into the cult classic category like a catapulted skull. Those primates, Siskel and Ebert—like stuffy grandparents were never willing or able to understand Army of Darkness, and that suits me just fine, cos who’d want to glance around and see those two critics’ corner squares at your happenin’ Hallowe’en gathering? Miserable bags of bones.
With the kind of inane nattering that would be more at home at a bus stop than on a film criticism TV chat show, America’s dumbest critical duo barely scratched the surface of anything they reviewed on At the Movies, and Raimi’s sequel was no exception. Their primitive intellects wouldn’t understand alloys and compositions, and things with molecular structures, slapstick coughing skeletons, botched incantations, or flying Deadites. In Gene Siskel’s unsurprisingly smug, joyless, sarcastic, condescending faux-analysis, he whinged that Army of Darkness didn’t have the wit of Back to the Future. Only a soulless, movie-misunderstander such as Siskel would view this highly humorous, film-literate homage as “a rip-off of Ray Harryhausen’s (Jason and the Argonauts) stop motion skeletons,” and cruelly remark that, “They’re more compelling than any of the humans in the film.” I mean, what is wrong with this geezer? At least Roger Ebert praised the film’s effects, and felt Raimi was making The Naked Gun of horror by spoofing medieval warfare films—which isn’t quite on the money, but not a million miles from the truth. He also stuck up for Bruce by saying Campbell does exactly what the role calls for.
Army of Darkness (Collector’s Edition) is available now on 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray from Shout Factory.
10pm
Night of the Demons (1988) 90m
“It’s Count Dingleberry, the flaming asshole of Transylvania!”
Max, Night of the Demons
Right. It’s unquestionably time to put the brood to bed, and anyone squeamish, or overly concerned about nudity can step out now, too. From Kevin Tenney, director of Witchboard, comes, “a slasher film with no slasher.” Don’t scoff any razorblade apples, whatever you do, because we’re entering the closet belonging to our acid-head mother for a movie I wasn’t familiar with until researching this saga—1988’s Night of the Demons. This film had its original title of Halloween Party blocked by the Michael Myers Halloween franchise overlord—Syrian-American movie mogul, Moustapha Akkad, who threatened a spoilsport lawsuit for infringing on his beloved cash cow.
This one is set on Hallowe’en night, so that’s a promising start. The opening shot of Night of the Demons is rock ‘n’ roll blaring from a teenagers’ car somewhere in the suburbs, with a pumpkin stuck on their roof, and a fat bloke half-arsedly dressed as a pig, calling his female friend a bitch and yelling, “Happy Halloween… asshole!” at a curmudgeonly pensioner. That paints a pretty accurate picture of what will follow. The adolescents sack off their lame-o high school dance in favor of bohemian misfit, Angela’s gothic gathering at Hull House—a now abandoned crematorium by the cemetery where the funeral parlor owners just happened to go full maniac at Hallowe’en years before. As the teen bozos party into the night, Angela’s sexy séance transforms the snarky dudes, and dudesses into hideous demonic creatures of the night, who begin to kill and devour one another.
“Do you guys have sour balls?”
Suzanne, Night of the Demons
As her crude, wisecracking little brother, Billy would put it—nice gal Alice in Wonderland with the “bodacious boobies” or “big cha-chas,” Judy is our prudent female lead. In addition to this “pretty little piece,” the malleable-mouthed, lipstick boob artist and doll faced, Suzanne is played with saucy relish by an arse-out Linnea Quigley (Nightmare Sisters, Savage Streets, the aerobic spoof, Linnea Quigley’s Horror Workout, Assault of the Party Nerds 2: The Heavy Petting Detective, Girls Gone Dead) who—Meet Me Halfway bonus edition—is introduced to us properly bent over, perusing Tide detergents with a full screen upskirt of her pink-pantied posterior. Which is how she spends the majority of the movie, actually—flashing anything and everything, front and back, in a frilly pink dress—distracting convenience store employees whilst Angela robs booze and snacks.
Linnea quite confidently owns this role, yet in spite of Night of the Demons only being 3 years later, she doesn’t hit the mindbogglingly bewitching physical heights of the equally nudie, Return of the Living Dead. A stand out gross out moment for her is when future Quigley beau and special-effects dude, Steve Johnson’s effects (Ghostbusters, Fright Night, Dead Heat, A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master) aid her inexplicably, but quite seamlessly with a Cronenbergian body horror technique, as Suzanne stuffs her lipstick inside an invisible nipple cavity.
“Maybe I’m in the mood for pork tonight.”
Suzanne, Night of the Demons
Night of the Demons feels kind of porno-sleazy; a bit naughty, and the gore is legitimately repulsive at times. It revolves around perversion, and screwy characters who just want to fool around. They talk about cute boys, and the bros are awful to the chicks, with a plethora of insults and awful behavior—especially the fat, John Belushi-aping, pig-man slob, Stooge—whose abusive language eventually meets its match with Angela‘s tongue-gobbling, feminist revenge. But even the so-called nice guys like Jay, whose jock head is turned at the slightest attractive female presence, leaps at the chance to ditch his date, Judy.
Then there’s the pirate, Alvin Alexis as the not so jolly Rodger—with his (almost) perpetually, glum expression—breaking new ground as perhaps the first African American slasher secondary to live through to the completion of a horror film (don’t check that, it’s likely spurious). Although, I did discover a few comments from people of colour appreciating that Rodger made it to the end—albeit as the result of cowardly, sensible decisions and logical, rational choices, bordering on scaredy-cat tactics—such as spending a chunk of the film hiding in a car. Rodger really represents the audience here as he’s arguably one of the only likable characters.
“Happy Halloween… asshole!”
Stooge, Night of the Demons
Night of the Demons racks up the nudity, and the fake-out jump scares with a multitude of boos, woo-hoos, and ooga-boogas. There’s skulls and sarcasm, wrong turns, low-lying mist, pratfalls and pranks, candelabras, strategically placed pumpkins, and characters in costume—Max and Frannie as a doctor and, I assume, his patient, brewskis, dirt bags hiding in coffins, doors slamming of their own volition, broken down cars, and broken mirrors—speaking of which, the Pat Benatar Best Shot Award goes to the bit that cleverly captures and neatly frames our entire ensemble, if you will, in the shattered shards of glass, framing everyone perfectly. Technically speaking, it’s a marvellous composition. Along with the Beetlejuice-esque finger-candles gag, and wild contra-zooms, Evil Dead fans will instantly clock the demon force POV—although clearly a rip-off, it’s homaged stylishly with shameless bravado. Night of the Demons‘ dynamic, mobile camera feels firmly in the vein of Raimi—as is the spurting eye-gouge, and over the top, Kewpie doll makeup, which is seemingly pinched from Linda in the 1981 original.
“Eat a bowl of fuck! I am here to party!”
Stooge, Night of the Demons
This pick comes with caveats—the score is cacophonous and a bit maddening with its naff, intermittent keyboard stings—honestly, there’s a fraction too much snarling and gurgling in dimly lit hallways, but perfectly executed camera moves like the 90° rotation during the mortuary make out between Judy and Jay, the 360° Angela and Stooge smooch, plus the harsh barbed wire wall climb, which is cringily visceral, and in contrast to the bloody theatrics of what has come before, actually gets under your skin. The motion control, double exposure-showcasing title sequence is also certainly a visual highlight, but it’s unquestionably Angela’s provocatively-possessed, cheeky full moon-flashing, “Stigmata Martyr” spinning and twirling fireside waltz that really takes the cake. Her Cleo Rocos-esque, bendy grind n’ crawl, and strobed strut in fingerless gloves—arched almost supernaturally in black lingerie, marks Night of the Demons‘ second exposed derrière, and much like movies such as Vamp, or From Dusk Till Dawn, it’s a strategically-placed, seductive segue, which serves to transition audiences into the gory second half of the picture.
Night of the Demons (Collector’s Edition) is available now on 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray from Shout Factory.
12am
Evil Toons (1991) 90m
“The story you are about to see is true. Nothing has been changed. These are the actual people who lived this great adventure and this is exactly the way it really happened. I truly believe this.”
Fred Olen Ray, Director of Evil Toons
The midnight hour is upon us! First, they undress you, then they possess you. It’s time to turn in, or turn on! I may be a total creep for picking it, but this sleazy slot belongs to Fred Olen Ray’s Evil Toons—the dumbest, shortest, sleaziest horror I could exhume from my psyche. My rationale was, you’re probably feeling a bit silly by now—your brain is almost certainly kaput, you’re probably sloshed, cream-crackered, or just plain sick of horror movies. So send the weans to bed, and all sane-minded or sober companions home. The stage is set for Evil Toons—a lowbrow, spoofy send-up of haunted house films with one seemingly original conceit—human-on-drawing commingling. This particular kink went public in the weighty commercial wake of Cool World, Space Jam, and most notably, 1988’s tantalising Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Olen Ray leapt on the bandwagon, and chucked a pervy, animated wolf that’s on screen for a mere one minute and 30 seconds into his campy slasher. And yes, there’s just the one titular “evil toon”—rendering the title itself a bald-faced lie. The composite photography, animation, and rotoscoping isn’t half bad—there’s just barely any of it.
Made for the HBO/Showtime market before the scream queen movie bubble popped with 1995’s Witch Academy, and shot simultaneously with/overlapping Olen Ray’s Spirits from 1990, Evil Toons was purportedly shot in just eight days for $140,000. I thought Night of the Demons was my proud, new trashy discovery, but this takes the cheese biscuit—a spooky, erotic, fantasy horror-comedy with a murderous hell house softcore porno plot. From the director behind Hollywood ChainSaw Hookers, Scream Queen Hot Tub Party, Attack of the 60-Foot Centerfold, Bikini Frankenstein, and Harlots of the Caribbean: Dead Girl’s Chest. I’m uncertain how many of those are “legit” films, and how many are merely softcore porn. Here, Gary Graver’s Halloweeny photography occasionally pops, Sherman Scott’s (actually writer/director Fred Olen Ray’s pseudonym, as he didn’t like seeing his name appear too many times in the credits) dumb as a rock—yet admittedly self-aware screenplay leaves an awful lot to be desired, and Chuck Serino’s music peculiarly seems to play at wrong, inopportune moments. Inexplicably, monotonous score music drones over what would’ve otherwise been fairly effective jump scares. It’s almost as if they rushed this through post-production! Of course, when the tit-mad Olen Ray does miraculously carve out a moment of suspense, the telltale, soon-to-be animated wolf effects shots have decreased in quality to such a massive degree, that the moment is robbed of any real tension or unease—we instantly twig that the monster is about to pop out.
“I’m too scared, my brain won’t work!”
Megan, Evil Toons
You won’t be shocked to hear there’s nothing particularly clever going on—ever, but Evil Toons does have the retro, clunky charm of a scene from the video game Night Trap, or the gentler aspects of countless slashers of the day. The acting resembles an average episode of Baywatch, and is about as intellectually challenging. It’s about as scary as Scooby Doo, with hokey horror tropes such as exaggerated, hysterical screaming, constant thunderstorms, Mr Hinchlow’s lame jump scare, terminal hickeys, bloody nighties, demonic shape-shifting, ancient incantations, and kissing Beelzebub’s butt. However, it’s acutely genre-referential in a tongue-in-cheek fashion, and self-aware to the point where the gals actually reference it directly. For example, there are pre-Scream, genre-savvy lines like, “It’s a dark, stormy night and we’re four young, attractive girls in a big, spooky house all alone. If we don’t go downstairs one at a time, how will we ever get bumped off without the others knowing about it?” and “How come every time you stay in an old, spooky house it has to lightning and thunder?”
Burt, played by the eternally-welcome Dick Miller (The Terminator, Gremlins)—who, hilariously for some reason, doesn’t know what a contortionist is—arrives in a white van creeper-mobile, resembling something Buffalo Bill might pop to Sofology® in, but chock full of hot, consenting coeds—these sorority chicks are set to score 100 bucks a piece if they can clean the house, stay overnight, and get picked up the next day with a spick and span home ready for the new owners to occupy. Burt calls these lasses “kids,” but if I’m generous, the youngest among them probably looks around 28, and as for the eldest—plucky, maternal cougar, team leader, and Olen Ray squeeze, Suzanne Ager (Inner Sanctum, The Bikini Carwash Company, and Buford’s Beach Bunnies) as Terry, could, in all honesty, pass for mid-to-late 40s—or older, depending on the camera angle and lighting. Of course, you’d never suspect it from the director’s male gazey, caboose-showcasing, reverse angle of her bent over backside as all the ladies’ arced, lined-up rears are boldly pointed skyward whilst retrieving cleaning products from Burt’s van.
All is going well with our motley crew of porno actresses and low-end scream queens until creepy bloke, David Carradine (Kung-Fu, Bound for Glory, Kill Bill) delivers a book with a face on it—a Kandarian warlock’s demon spells from late 17th century England, brought to America by Gideon Fisk in the early 1930s, and the pesky source of all the problems plaguing the house. Another 40-year-old college “kid,” Biff Bullock isn’t the only thing that’s turning up around midnight—expect some hair-raising company, and a bit of soul eating, as it captures fresh souls to go to hell (providing they’re tangy, but not too tart).
“That did not sound like the ecstatic coupling of young lovers to me!”
Megan, Evil Toons
Alongside bird-woman, Terry, is the shy, smart girl, and “little miss egghead,” Megan—our bespectacled, sweatpants-adorned, preposterously well-endowed, virginial yet self-admiring redhead lead, played by 1982 Penthouse Pet, Monique Gabrilelle (Emmanuelle 5, Amazon Women on the Moon, Deathstalker II, Silk 2, and maybe most memorably to some, Bachelor Party—yeah, she’s that girl in the bedroom with Tom Hanks). A most diverting game to play during Evil Toons is closely watching Megan’s screams to detect if she’s actually stifling laughter—which is a lot of the time. Oddly, I didn’t mind at all, because it just shows how much of a laugh they’re all having making this daft movie. Gabrielle‘s ponytail even stands erect at one point to illustrate her petrified terror. In a film such as this, why there is no payoff for Megan’s apparent carnal cravings to be a promiscuous, sexually-liberated young woman is anybody’s guess. Perhaps the chaste must live on in horror—but that being said, everyone does anyway in this preposterously-plotted picture.
Adult film actress, Madison Stone is arguably the star—she’s on the video box cover, and makes for an interesting Google if you don’t mind clearing your history afterwards. Madison plays the raven-haired, spandex-clad, Roxanne—a Kathleen Hanna-esque, Pamela Adlon-y, sorta Shannon Doherty-alike, whose klutzy shenanigans—including bizarrely alluring, ditzy yet determined wine bottle opening techniques that inevitably result in upended legs, and whose striptease twerking pulled the football captain, made her a firm favourite—just don’t ask what she’s doing with that butter. The possessed incarnation of Roxanne is incapable of pouncing on and devouring any of her gal pals without first ripping their tops open to expose their chests, before gnawing at their throats—classic deployment of the jugs before jugulars rule. Jan may struggle to eat sandwiches, but still, the early ‘90s feathered hairdo’d blondie, Stacy Nix, is another fave, and is—prepare to go incognito, trivia fans, also a porn actress, subsequently renamed, “Barbara Dare.”
“You’re nothing but a doodle.”
Megan, Evil Toons
As much as an enlightened, modern gent can get a kick out of the audacious, abundant T and A on display here, I’m not sure I could’ve justified picking Evil Toons without the sheer movie presence of the male supporting cast—namely the aforementioned Dick Miller, and David Carradine. Kill Bill Carradine turns up looking like a cross between a dirty Doc Brown, and the 1990s incarnation of WWF superstar, The Undertaker. In a bit of future Bangkok, fishnet-wearing, bondage in a closet foreshadowing, Carradine—who filmed for perhaps a day or two, but is peppered throughout the entire movie, hangs himself in the opening moments *insert sadomasochistic, auto-erotic asphyxiation joke here.* The ham and cheese-flavoured Carradine plays Gideon Fisk—lurking and loitering aimlessly, clutching pretty much the exact Necronomicon—the smirking, human flesh-bound book from The Evil Dead—if it was sold on Wish.
There’s a commendably meta moment where “that guy” Dick Miller is watching himself lose his cat in 1959’s horror/comedy, A Bucket of Blood—no doubt because it’s public domain, whilst smoking one of his trademark cigars. Before his inexplicably attractive girlfriend—the lingerie-clad scream queen, Michelle Bauer (Café Flesh, Tied & Tickled, Night of the Living Babes, Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama, and Assault of the Party Nerds Part 2: Heavy Petting Detective—I could go on) cameo helps sell a half-decent sex toy jackhammer gag. I’d watch Dick do almost anything—even read the Transylvania yellow pages, but the scene here, in which he is fellated by a fanged Roxanne, and caterwauls, “Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy… oh my Gooood!” hilariously like he’s in a pervy pantomime, really pushed that rule to its limit. I’m lying—it’s probably the best bit, and in my mind, is now way up there with Miller and Schwarzenegger’s gun shop interaction in The Terminator.
“How come this guy never won an Academy Award?”
Burt, Evil Toons
Granted, there’s not enough of the Roger Rabbit-style, live action and animation blending, and what does exist is fleeting. Evil Toons lures us in with the (crossed fingers) broken exploitation promise of sexually deviant cartoon characters running wild, and delivers very little of it. Hoodwinked by a title! The somewhat shrewd writer/director, Olen Ray pulled the ol’ bait and switch, substituting toons for titties. The twisted yet tempting potential for sexual liaisons between alluring ladies and raunchy renderings was the uniquely kinky kicker required to pitch and sell the movie, but we only get one such encounter, and it’s actually a frankly unpleasant and violent assault. When it finally arrives, there’s nothing titillating about the scene—we watch aghast, and then it promptly passes.
If anything’s unsettling about any of the films I picked, it’s Evil Toons, as the juxtaposition of childlike animation, abundant female nudity, and toon-rape are all employed amidst an amusingly scored softcore sequence. The monster is essentially just a rubbish Tasmanian devil; a dirty talking, ravenous cartoon wolf. He’s generic, but he’s a killer. Of course, when the perverse pangs of guilt inevitably hit us, we can rest assured, the cast are all in on it—everyone involved in this movie knows exactly what kind of film it is, and presumably, as long as the cheques clear, they’re all A-OK with it. This is neither the most misogynistic, nor exploitative motion picture these women have chosen to endure in their careers. What rescues Evil Toons from unforgivable seediness is, the girls are having as much fun as the audience, which makes it charming, comparatively gentle when compared to -other slasher films, and unadulterated, campy fun with an all’s-well-that-ends-well ending—in which the ghostly Kill Bill declares the demons never existed, and neither did he, before vanishing in a cloak of electric lightning.
“You little bitch! I’ll get you in the sequel for this!”
Monster, Evil Toons
Evil Toons is another Evil Dead-adjacent, book of spells come down, and has quickly become the guiltiest of all my guilty horror movie pleasures. It’s the kind of zero effort pleasure you may take from meditation—just zoning out; the kind of film you wish you’d caught on late night telly when you were 12 or 13, and beyond. Can I, in all good faith, recommend it? Yeah, go on then. Evil Toons exists solely as a silly, naughty nudie romp—a delicious, brainless cheesecake, perfect for a midnight unwind—and not once was my brain used! If you’re still uncertain, what are you chickens waiting for? Just heed these wise words, “Remember, in times of trouble, let your conscience be your guide.”
Evil Toons (25th Silver Anniversary Edition) is available now on Blu-ray.
Carefully plucked from our archive of Rewind Movie Podcast picks over the years, we also bring you a special Letterboxd The Best of Hallore’ewind: Tricks + Treats 🍬 31 indispensable HalloRe’ewind go-tos to last you an entire HorrOctober! 🎃
Time is now our enemy, and as the dusty old grandfather clock of The Rewind Movie Podcast‘s haunted mansion strikes 2am-ish, we must bid you a freakish farewell. Feel free to travel back through the ages to Matt’s 2022 marathon essay, our exhaustive, inaugural 2020 iteration, and Devlin’s 2018 all-dayer. Until next time, so long, Rewinders.
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