MAY-DE TO BE MOCKED - Paranormal Entity (2009)

 Note: Throughout the month of May I will be watching Mockbusters, those low-budget movies which are made purely to cash in on a recent successful blockbuster. I call this May-de to be Mocked! 

Paranormal Entity (2009)
Director: Shane Van Dyke
Starring: Erin Marie Hogan, Fia Perera, Norman Saleet, Shane Van Dyke
Format: AVI

Plot: A family is apparently being visited by the spirit of their dead dad/husband. But things start going bad, so they set up cameras throughout the house to find out exactly what's up.

Normally when I list the cast of a movie, I pick out the three or four main actors. But that list that you see above? That's the whole cast. Four people. Total. And one of them (Saleet) only shows up briefly towards the end and Van Dyke never shows his face.

So yeah, minimalist is the key word here. But when you're aping the Paranormal Activity phenomena, that's to be expected I guess. I couldn't find the budget for this movie (produced by mockbuster specialists The Asylum) but it can't have been any more than about $100,000. Four actors. One of those actors is the director/writer. No special effects. Shot on handicams in a house. Hell, maybe $100,000 is being generous. $50,000?

I should add that I'm an unashamed Found Footage apologist. I like found footage movies. Starting with Blair Witch Project (which blew me away when I first saw it), continuing through all the hundreds of imitators, I enjoy them.

So, the found footage gimmick isn't the reason I didn't enjoy this one very much. Whereas Paranormal Activity and its first sequel (parts 3 and 4 are best not mentioned) do a great job with a good, slow build, this mockbuster doesn't show that same patience. It tries to show things too early, and in doing so fails to build up any real suspense.

The acting is passable (Hogan is the standout as the sister/daughter/main victim). One major difference from Paranormal Activity is this movie doesn't shy away from nudity and swearing. I guess that's something.

The other major problem is that I watched this after already having seen the first 4 Paranormal Activity movies, and by now the whole concept has passed its used by date. I wouldn't say I disliked this movie - it kept me entertained for the most part - but it felt exactly like what it is, a low-budget imitation.

Demon Rage (1982)

Demon Rage (1982)
Director: James Polakof
Starring: Lana Wood, Britt Ekland, John Carradine
Format: Streaming (American Pop Classics)

Plot: Frustrated housewife Lisa (Wood) begins having nightly trysts with a tall, dark stranger who turns out to be a ghost from the other side. Thus begins her descent into dementia, as she begins to distance herself even further from her husband and kids while painting portraits of her enigmatic new lover.

As I mentioned in my last review, my Netflix is on the fritz, but I discovered another streaming service on my WDTV Live called American Pop Classics. In amongst the usual public domain stuff it offers (Carnival of Souls, Bucket of Blood etc), I spotted this one. I'd never heard of it, but it sounded interesting enough and since it has a 2.8 average rating on IMDB, and I'm a sucker for punishment, I decided to check it out.

Comedy director James Polakof (SWIM TEAM) takes a stab at supernatural horror for this early 80s effort, which is also known as Satan's Mistress, with disappointing results.

I'm not a James Bond fan (I quite like the Daniel Craig ones, but don't care for any of the older ones), but I understand that Lana Wood was a Bond girl. Apparently her character in 1971's Diamonds are Forever was called Plenty O'Toole. Eleven years later, her character here might as well be called Juggs B Free, because she sure does spend a lot of time with them uncovered.

A quick check of IMDB reveals that this is something of a Bond reunion, with fellow Bond girl Britt Ekland (THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN) playing the psychic best friend and bad guy Kabir Bedi (OCTOPUSSY) as the "demon". With his black clothes, dark hair and beard and arched eyebrows Bedi reminds me of Terence Stamp's General Zod  in the Reeves Superman flicks, but he does little more than brood and try to look evil.

While this might have some passing interest to diehard Bond fans (or 11-year-old boys keen to check out Ms Wood's ample assets), it really is a tedious affair. Weird stuff happens to Lisa, she writhes on a bed having sexy dreams about her demon lover, her husband gets angry… this pattern repeats over and over until a half-assed conclusion. By that time I'd sure had enough of hearing Wood's lusty moans mixed with the crashing of waves (her home is at the beach).

The demon also tries to possess Lisa's daughter or some crap like that, but yawn, yawn, yawn. For a horror this is not the least bit scary or suspenseful. There's a decent decapitation scene, but even that can't make up for the rest. I found myself counting down the minutes until this one was over. I can see why this public domain snoozer is an obscurity, and frankly it should stay that way.

SUMMER OF 87 #3: Hard Ticket to Hawaii

The cover of my VHS copy of Hard Ticket to Hawaii

1.50pm, Day 1:

Hard Ticket to Hawaii
Director: Andy Sidaris
Starring: Ron Moss, Dona Speir, Hope Marie Carlton, Harold Diamond, Rodrigo Obregon
Format: VHS (RCA Columbia)

Plot: Two drug enforcement agents are killed on a private Hawaiian island. Donna (Speir) and Taryn (Carlton), two operatives for The Agency, accidentally intercept a delivery of diamonds intended for drug lord Seth Romero (Obregon), who takes exception and tries to get them back. Fellow Agency operatives Rowdy (Moss) and Jade (Diamond) get involved, and a full-scale fight to the finish ensues, complicated here and there by an escaped snake made deadly by toxic waste!

- Disclosure: I haven't seen this movie. In fact, this is my first Andy Sidaris movie. I've heard a lot about his stuff so I'm looking forward to this.
- Bare breasts and gratuitous shotgun violence before the opening credits. We're off to a good start!
- Super cheesy opening credits.
- Very Toto-esque theme song by Gary Stockdale.
- Donna to fellow blonde bimbo Taryn: "Let's unload and hit the jacuzzi, I do my best thinking there". I think that best sums up the vibe of this movie so far.
- "If brains were birdshit, you'd have a clean cage". The awesome dialogue just keeps coming!
- Sledgehammer of plot: Donna and Taryn have a poster of Malibu Express (the previous Sidaris movie) in their apartment. They mention that the star of that movie, Cody Abilene, is a cousin of Rowdy Abilene (Ron Moss' character in this movie). Awkward way to tie the two flicks together.
- The acting is terrible across the board, but Rodrigo Obregon's efforts take the cake. Laughably bad.
- Speaking of laughable, the snake special effects are hilarious. More hilarious than the actual jokes, that's for sure (most are the kind of toilet humour we all told when we were 10 years old).
- Andy Sidaris has a cameo in this as a TV director.
- So apparently (according to IMDB), Sidaris made quite a few sequels to this movie, with Donna and Taryn as recurring characters.
- First moment of sheer awesomeness: Bad guy on a skateboard with a blowup sex doll(!) gets taken out with a bazooka. And then the doll too!
- Man, this plot is all over the place. For no reason there's an interview with football players that pops up mid-movie, and the sub-plot with the mutant snake is so out of place with the rest of the plot.
- Great frisbee kill!
- And nice use of a microlite.
- I never knew bamboo furniture could stop bullets.
- Despite the two leading ladies being quite attractive, IMO the hottest chick in this flick is Cynthia Brimhall, who plays Edy. Apparently Sidaris liked her too, cause he recast her as Edy in five more of his flicks.
- Woohoo, Donna used the four-barrel bazooka off the VHS cover!
- Sweet Jebus that was a crazy ending. Mutant snake, bad guy that won't die, dirtbike, bazooka, spear gun, nunchucks, samurai sword... I love it!

Overall thoughts: I can now say I've seen a movie written and directed by the infamous Andy Sidaris. And I can honestly say I need to see more Sidaris magic!
Hard Ticket to Hawaii has bad acting, lousy dialogue (full of groanworthy jokes like "She's so dumb she went home to study for her pap test"), dumb special effects... but it's so much fun! You'll groan at the bits where you're meant to laugh and laugh at bits that're meant to be cool, but the one thing you'll never be is bored.
The best way I can sum up this movie is like this: It's as if Sidaris came up with the plot for a simple "chicks with guns" movie, where two hot chicks spend half their time naked and the other half battling some bad guys over diamonds. But then he realised that would only come to about an hour's worth of film. He needed other stuff to fill it out. To do that he wrote down a bunch of random words on pieces of paper and put them in a hat and drew a few out. Whatever he drew out he would throw into the movie. And the words he pulled out were: Mutant snake, sex doll, skateboard, bazooka, microlite, dirtbike, speargun, frisbee and American football. And somehow he managed to fit it all in and make a kickass movie in doing it!

CORMANIA 2011 #1 - Barbarian Queen

12.31pm - Barbarian Queen (1985)
Our King's role: Producer
Cast: Lana Clarkson (AMAZON WOMEN ON THE MOON), Katt Shea (PSYCHO III), Frank Zagarino (the SHADOWCHASER series).

Plot: A band of Roman soldiers attack and pillage a village right before the wedding of Amathea (Clarkson) and Argan (Zagarino), taking Argan prisoner and presumably killing Amathea. But she survives and sets off to rescue her man. Along the way she collects together various other butt-kicking chicks to join her on her quest. They arrive at the Roman city and discover Argon is being forced to fight as a gladiator. Joining up with the local underground (literally) and the gladiators, these bitchin' barbarian babes seek to free the slaves and and kill the evil Arrakur.

- My wife: "You know it's gonna be a good movie when there's boobs inside the first 30 seconds". Yep, I married a good'un.
- Let the comical over-dubbing begin! Strange as this is a US production, but it was filmed in Argentina, so I'm guessing a lot of the extras were Argentinian.
- By the look of Argan, I'm expecting Skeletor and Beast Man to turn up any second.
- Nice big fight scene early as Argan proves to be a wimp. He makes a fitting damsel in distress.
- Clarkson changes from revealing animal skins and headband to a frumpy red riding hood-esque outfit. Boo!
- Oh, she's back to the revealing outfit. That was close.
- And now she's topless and stretched out on some weird torture machine. Not sure how a fake metallic hand hanging down and barely touching a breast is torture.
- Frank Zagarino's acting is hilariously bad. His emotional scale ranges from bored to disinterested.
- The harem master is all kinds of fun. A fat guy with what looks like an oversized handbag on his head, a fu manchu mustache and an overdubbed voice that is more campy than a row of tents.
- Boobs galore, some full frontal nudity and now an orgy. This movie is every 14-year-old's dream come true.
- Poor Lana Clarkson. She was able to vanquish baddies like Arrakur but real evil would be her undoing in the frail form of Phil Spector.

Overall thoughts: Man, that was all kinds of good and the perfect way to kick off a movie marathon in honour of the King of the Bs. Three words sum up Barbarian Queen - fighting, swords and boobs. And what else could you ask for in a sword and sandal adventure? Plot? Bah, go watch a drama guy, 'cause we don't need your stinking plot here bucko! Lana Clarkson sure was attractive and looked great running around in her animal skins. Damn you Phil Spector!