Rock's Cheapo Theatre of the Damned

For reference.

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In your defense, the plot is very much difficult to describe and seems to forget itself as the movie progresses.

A lot of times when you’re tackling a low budget regional horror film, the temptation is there to offer what might sound like backhanded praise. The movie looks good for its budget. The acting is better than you’d expect, given the budget. Those things are fair to comment on, as can be harder to do those things well with less money. But at the same time, the production circumstances can colour the movie in more interesting ways, and that’s certainly the case here. This was shot on-and-off for a period of several years, sometimes with different film stock, and it definitely shows in the finished product. Characters age and de-age by years in between cuts. Conversations are had between actors who were very much not in the same room at the same time. These things might make it seem disjointed, but also handmade and textured. Sometimes its easier to warm up to something when you can see the work that went into it, and you can respect someone coming back to the same movie over years to fill in this missing pieces so they can finish it, trying to find ways to light and frame each scene with a little bit of style along the way. Low budget gumption colours every frame.

What’s even more impressive is how well it holds together. Maybe not in a pure technical sense, but the movie has a nice sense of momentum, some pretty entertaining scares, and better acting than you’d expect. Nobody here will win any Oscars, but the hero has a nice, textured stoic quality to him, while another character goes from Murray Hamilton in Jaws to Martin Short in Clifford and is pretty effective in both modes, if a little goofy in the latter. The scenes between the protagonists have a nice chemistry, as if these actors might have been friends in real life, and helps some of the goofier writing (a character obsessed with vintage nude mags, another who keeps asking people if they’re homosexuals) go down more easily. I’m still working through the special features, but there’s an interview with Simon Barrett where he singles out a scene where the hero talks about giving up his dreams and moving back to his small town as one which felt both poignant and self-reflective, and I do think this is one of the movie’s real grace notes.

And there is at least one area where the low budget works in the movie’s favour, and that’s the special effects. The movie has a combination of gnarly if chintzy gore scenes and creative stop motion creature effects. The title makes it sound like there’s just one monster, but actually there are several, all distinct in design and movement, and there’s a charm and energy to the scare scenes. (The title also makes it sound like this is set in the winter, which does not seem to be the case.) Anytime one of the monsters tore a character’s head off, and it looked like someone mangling their G.I. Joes, I couldn’t help but smile. And when you stage this against the backdrop of the wilderness, well, as Herzog alludes to with his talk of the “voodoo of location”, a certain atmosphere seeps in from the realities of the setting. That’s one thing money can’t buy.

It's pretty OK except for all the versions of the monster. They're pretty bad even with the $10,000 budget.

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It's what you learn after you know it all that counts. - John Wooden
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lol I liked the monsters

A few years ago I watched a documentary about giallo whose name escapes me, and one of the few things I remember from it clearly is Umberto Lenzi griping about how Dario Argento got all the credit for inventing giallo when Lenzi’s entries in the genre preceded him. I wasn’t gonna challenge Lenzi’s claim about the historical record, but still found it amusing that he was taking shots at Argento, given that from my experience, his body of work was nowhere near as strong as Argento’s. Granted, at the time I’d only seen Nightmare City (fun, but dumb as hell) and his cannibal movies (varying degrees of terrible), and since then I’ve seen at least two poliziotteschi movies from him (The Tough Ones and Almost Human) that suggest he could actually make genuinely exciting movies. (Interestingly, the looseness and arguably slapdash construction that I found so off-putting in his cannibal movies is actually a boon in his crime films, rendering them almost free-associative exercises in cop-vs-crook brutality.) So finally I decided to watch one of his giallos, and while I still don’t think he’s in a position to be taking shots at Argento, I did enjoy the movie.

To an extent, it’s tough for me to meaningfully review giallos. They are almost by definition is stylish and sexy, so the fact that a movie falls in the genre means that I’m going to get a bit of enjoyment out of it. This one is definitely stylish, thanks to the handsome widescreen cinematography and the Spanish locations that situate the movie somewhere between rustic and decadent. And it’s not just nice to look at, but atmospheric too, like a nighttime scene where a character runs down a starkly lit street. It’s maybe a little less sexy, in that there isn’t any onscreen funny business. In fact, it’s a pretty tame movie in other ways, in that there isn’t much onscreen violence either, aside from gruesome bullfight footage that the movie keeps pulling out. I would be in the right to knock it for that reason, but quite frankly I like spending time in the worlds of giallo enough that I didn’t mind that we weren’t getting too many jolts, it was nice enough to traipse through these cobblestone streets, drive down the beautiful countryside and relax in these cozy looking villas. From a genre identity standpoint, you can actually see some pretty pronounced strains of influence. A scene in a cemetery where a character runs in a cape foregrounds the kind of decadence inherited from gothic horror, while the appearance of the heroine played by Carroll Baker very much brings to mind Hitchcock’s blondes. There’s a neat sequence late in the movie where the characters reenact their actions prior to a murder that would very much feel at home in a Hitchcock movie.

As I mentioned earlier, Carroll Baker plays the heroine, a mute woman who finds herself in the middle of a bunch of murders that the police speculate are by either a sex maniac or a satanist. (I assume when you look at the encyclopedia or criminal profiles under the letter S, these are the first two categories.) Italy at the time was where fading Hollywood stars would go to continue getting lead roles, and this is something that works in favour of Baker’s performance here, giving her a slight shade of disreputability, as if she might have something to hide. I’ve expressed before a slight discomfort around how movies might exploit a character’s disability, and that’s definitely something to chew over here. The lack of dialogue leaves Baker to be more overtly expressive, and you can feel the camera probing her face for microexpressions when it goes in for its eye closeups. (That’s not the only similarity with Lucio Fulci’s movies here; we also get a Donald Duck toy.) I do think Baker manages to imbue her character with a certain dignity, meaning that the movie is pretty palatable in this respect for the majority of the runtime.

Of course, if you watch this on Tubi, the description alludes to an insane twist ending. I must report that this twist undoes whatever points the movie had accumulated in its handling of the heroine’s disability, as it turns out Baker killed her singer friend out of jealousy and then regains her voice right at the end. It’s so audaciously offensive that I can’t help but be a little impressed.

I recently watched The Legend of Boggy Creek, which begins as a lovely regional portrait that soaks in the beauty of the wilderness, and withholds from giving us too clear a look at its monster. Having now watched The Geek, one could argue that it does something similar. One might suggest that this was inspired by the better known film, but you look at the release dates, and who’s to say Charles B. Pierce didn’t jack off to a Bigfoot porno? For the first ten minutes of the movie, we follow a group of characters as they hike through the woods, the camera taking in admiring views of their surroundings, although the picturesque quality is slightly undermined by the faded and damaged print this is available in. Then rather than getting to our friend Bigfoot, it ops for a number of sex scenes, the first of which is outdoors, and... man, I don’t know if it was cold, or there was poison ivy nearby, or these people just need some better skincare products, but they really should not be naked. One could argue that the horror peaks in this scene, where we a sustained shot of the dreaded under the balls angle, which zooms in and out multiple times as if to rub the viewer’s face in the performers’ pasty, rumpled asses.

Then there’s a sex scene that’s indoors and a little less lame (it helps that the girl is pretty cute), although it ends on a bizarre note of the male performer fondly remember the time he fondled and tried to bang his sister. And then we get a lot more walking through the wilderness, until we finally spot Bigfoot, who is hairy as expected but has surprisingly skinny ankles. Of course, this being a porno, Bigfoot gets it on with some of the ladies. Now, ‘70s pornos don’t have the most enlightened view of consent, but the first of Bigfoot’s mates approaches him first, and seems to enjoy the act, but then cries after, and I’m not sure if it’s just a ‘70s porno being expectedly skeevy or the movie’s pulling a Straw Dogs, but I’ve already made a dumbassed claim about its influence so I’ll add to the pile. Of course, the second girl tries to flee at first and not terribly convincingly sprains her ankle, so this situation is less ambiguous, although the skeeviness is alleviated by the fact that Bigfoot is nice enough to cuddle with her after. It’s also only with this scene that we actually get a glimpse of Bigfoot’s member, which for many will be the highlight of the movie. Then we get him weakly swatting away the men of the group in the action-packed climax, and a reveal at the end that one of the men captured Bigfoot on film. Very obviously not a good movie, but I have to respect something so pathologically unerotic, and what can I say, the wilderness looks nice.

I chased The Geek with Come Deadly, which is described as a hardcore giallo. Now, in many a giallo, we’re used to a killer dressed in black putting knives in people. What if we had a giallo where the killer puts a different pointy object in people? This being a porno, you can guess what that pointy object is. The movie is a series of low energy consensual sex scenes and slightly less low energy (but still pretty low energy) rape scenes, at one point cutting between the two in what might be the movie’s stylistic high point. It does compare favourably to The Geek in this respect, as the performers seem reasonably comfortable here (the earlier movie had them squirming uncomfortably a few times, with the obviously dubbed dialogue lampshading a break in the action), with one character interrupting a sex scene to put a blanket on the ground. Other than that, we get scenes of an acting troupe rehearsing, while a cop amongst them tries to hunt the killer. The climax of the movie is a chase scene, where the cop chases after the killer before the latter has had a chance to pull up his pants, and later identifies him by his member.

It’s tempting to say that giallos are inherently entertaining, and certainly the genre has a high hit ratio from my experience. From that perspective, watching this movie is an educational experience, in that you learn the importance of lighting, framing, cutting, timing, pacing, music, acting and all kinds of other filmmaking basics in making a giallo entertaining. You also learn to appreciate that the killer can be scary when completely clad in black and kept out of clear view, and that the killer is not so scary when he’s bareassed or has his dick dangling from out his trousers, or shuffling around awkwardly in plain sight as he stalks one of his victims. That being said, the movie’s total absence of style keeps it from being too grimy, and I chuckled a fair bit, so maybe this is worthwhile too.

Congrats for finding a 70s Bigfoot film I have no interest in seeing. Didn't think that was possible.

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Captain's Log
My Collection

Pretend all you want, but the draw of flaccid Bigfoot peen is too great to resist.

Ray Dennis Steckler has traipsed in and out of genres of varying reputability, but he’s a director I can’t think of as having a single mean bone in his body. There’s a certain good cheer and affection that fills his better movies. And even his horror pictures, which certainly feature their share of people getting killed, don’t sting quite as much. (That might be a bit of a backhanded compliment, as from my experience he’s not always the most...potent practitioner of the genre.) So it was to my shock that this featured a few murders that felt harrowing and cruel in a way his work never has to me before. There was an implied agreement here, that these movies are fun and games, and we’re just having a good time with Uncle Ray, Aunt Carolyn and their friends and family. In The Thrill Killers, that contract is breached.

The first one is a roadside killing. A character we’d been introduced to as a hardworking family man (we even spend time with his kids, who show up in a few other Steckler movies) makes the mistake of picking up a hitchhiker, and is left for dead on the side of the road. That hitchhiker later picks up a woman and goes to a motel and kills her. Neither of these are the kind of scenes we’d get in a “fun” horror movie. The first murder lingers on the aftermath, the body left beside the road in a stark composition full of negative space. The second builds suspense with a flickering light outside the window, and the room goes black with each plunge of the knife, amplifying the sense of cruelty. And the fact that the killer is played by none other than Uncle Ray himself maybe adds a certain charge. Steck seemed like such a nice man. Why’d he have to go and kill those people. (Steckler is maybe not the most accomplished actor, but he knows that he can get a nice jolt from the audience by turning his glare at the camera. Heck, it’s the image they used for the cover of the box set.) And the fact that the plot proper hasn’t even really begun yet just compounds the senselessness.

Things maybe look up when Carolyn Brandt shows up. I’m ready to declare her the First Lady of Movies because she’s never not brightened up the movie anytime she’s shown up, and **** you, it’s not a democracy, I can appoint whoever I want. Here, she and her beau visit what you might call a fixer-upper, and take a pleasant stroll through what a decrepit shithole it is, and whaddya know, it even comes with its own noose, and... Uh oh, it looks like three violent psychopaths have escaped and are hiding out here! They’re introduced with a bang (a severed head figures in the scene), and proceed to terrorize Brandt and her beau, and maybe the brightness is dimmed somewhat. Most of this is shot in the usual frantic low budget thriller style, with lots of exciting music blaring on the soundtrack. But then we tune into an eerie radio broadcast, and the camera traps us in canted angles, and a certain coldness and brutality set in.

This is probably the “best made” movie I’ve seen from Steckler. It’s consistently shot with a good amount of style, there is at least something nominally thrilling happening at all times. But it still has that amorphous, anything-goes quality of Steckler’s best movies, throwing plot ideas in on the fly, culminating in a climax where the heroes and villains chase each other on the hills and maybe Uncle Ray kills a cowboy and steals his horse. Which seems like a fun thing to happen in a movie, but the conscious genre bending plays interestingly in light of the movie’s bookends. Before we meet the aforementioned family man, who is unable to escape reality, we spend time with an aspiring actor, who is consciously living in fantasy, both in terms of the movies he’s trying to make and the facade of splendor he must maintain to impress producers by spending beyond his means. Arch Hall Sr. and George J. Morgan of Morgan-Steckler productions play Hollywood fatcats who knock the actor’s latest picture, and maybe this movie is a flip of the bird to the Hollywood ranks Steckler would never break into. Hollywood movies are expensive and safe. Here is a movie that’s lean and dangerous.

But this is not an exercise in pure nihilism, and maybe Steckler is really a big softie deep down. I’d hate to spoil the ending, but let’s say our hero gets a little help from his friend Miss Transylvania.

Bringing some class back to this thread after Bigfoot peen and bare-assed giallo killers.

There’s only one scene in this movie that’s actually pleasant to look at, and it’s at a restaurant with a topless dancer. There are two reasons for this. Reason number one: there are boobs. (I guess this could be both reasons.) Listen, I hate to sound like a creep here, but I’m gonna summarize the rest of the review here and say that the movie doesn’t have a lot going for it, so yes, the fact that this scene gave me something to latch on to (that something being boobs) automatically makes it the best scene. Reason number two: there are colours. With an S. For plural. As in, there are multiple colours in this scene. Not only that, but there things like contrast, brightness and all sorts of other things that sound like settings on your TV and you probably take for granted in most movies. Outside of this scene, this is remarkably unpleasant to look at. I don’t know if somebody told Ted V. Mikels that it would be cheaper to process the film at the lab if he used fewer colours, but the whole thing is shot in a singularly unappealing mix of brown and beige. The average bowel movement has a more distinct colour scheme.

The plot here is... I dunno. I think it had something to do with espionage. Something about astro-men, although that term is wildly misleading. Listen, I do not have the best recollection of the particulars of the plot. In large part, it’s because the movie was excruciatingly boring and I was tuning it out as a result. But I also suspect that my brain was angry with me for subjecting it to this movie, and started burning off brain cells in retaliation, because if I’m gonna waste them on this, I might as well not have them in the first place. If any reviews I write in the future are noticeably dumber, this is the reason. There are movies I affectionately refer to as boring garbage where nothing happens (Manos was a recent viewing in this category), but in those cases, the movies at least move interestingly. This is gruelingly inert, just scene after scene of characters standing around talking to each other in ugly rooms. Maybe the only distinct narrative element here is that the people of colour cast in this movie predominantly play villains, which sounds tempting to chalk up to the dearth of good roles for minority actors at the time. But then you realize that by virtue of playing bad guys, they have hints of personality traits or at least distinguishing qualities, so maybe it’s a win for representation after all. I’m sure somebody somewhere has written about racial dynamics in Mikels’ work, and I”m sure it’s a lot more interesting a read than sitting through this movie.

Now, one of the reasons I watched this is for the presence of Tura Satana, who was so memorable in Russ Meyer’s Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! And watching this movie, you realize what a crime against cinema it was that Satana and Meyer never worked together again, because whatever reasons they had for not reuniting, Mikels does not have the same strengths in directing actors as Meyer. Not just in a pure visual sense, in that Meyer knew how to shoot her for maximum oomph, but that he brought out a certain forcefulness in her presence. (”You won’t find it down there, Columbus!”) She gets in a few good sneers, but for the most part is disappointingly understated here, with the only interesting part of her presence being that she wears a bright pink dress in some scenes and a bright green dress in others, singledhandedly doing more to broaden the movie’s colour palette than anybody else in the movie.

The other reason I watched this can be inferred from the title. There’s a pretty great Misfits song that takes its title from this movie, and if you listen to some of the lyrics, they suggest something pretty epic:

With just a touch of my burning hand
I send my astro zombies to rape the land
Prime directive, exterminate
The whole human race
And your face drops in a pile of flesh
And then your heart, heart pounds
Till it pumps in death
Prime directive, exterminate
Whatever stands left

Now look at the title more closely. I stressed the importance earlier of distinguishing the singular from the plural, and I’ll do so again. Astro-Zombies. With an S. Which is just egregious false advertising, because for most of the movie, there’s just one astro-zombie. (A second one is present in the final scene, but hasn’t been awakened.) Even worse, if you looked at the poster and thought it would at least look cool, I regret to inform you that it’s just a guy in a brown jacket with a shitty mask, and that he’s not onscreen for like ninety percent of the movie. So, even on the bare minimum level that garbage like this is supposed to deliver, the movie drops the ball. Towards the end, the astro-zombie does run around holding a flashlight to his head like a kid pretending to be a unicorn, and does lop off some poor sucker’s head (like Satana’s dresses, the bloodletting at least adds to the colour palette). But by then it’s too little, too late.

On a more positive note, here's Carolyn Brandt giving a copy of Severin's release of Lucio Fulci's The Devil's Honey to its star Brett Halsey. Apparently they live in the same neighborhood.

I, too, would like to see a movie adaptation of The Misfits song that was adapted from the title of this movie.


That song is primary reason I'm curious to go back and check out the movie. Every time I watch the trailer, I think, "this is not what the song is promising me."

Looks like Mikels made a bunch of sequels to this in the 2000s and 2010s and Tyra Satana is in some of them, as is Brinke Stevens. I mean, the snippets I saw looked terrible, but I can respect that he kept on trucking.

I think I watched Astrozombies twice. Why, I have no idea. It might be one of the least engaging movie experiences of my life.

My presumption of the sequel names:

Astro-Truckers
Trucker-Zombies

Ass-tro Zombies

Also, for whatever reason, high school age Rock thought the Keep on Trucking cartoon was the funniest thing ever.

Ass-to-what Zombies?