Scarlet Moon – review

Director: Warren F Disbrow

Release date: 2006

Contains spoilers

Just because a film is released on the Troma label does not mean to say it will be dreadful. It’s likely but not a guarantee. For instance, take South African movie Pure Blood – it is far from perfect and yet it is interesting and not the bottom of the cinematic pile. This preamble makes little difference to Scarlet Moon, however, which bucks no label trend and is dreadful.

Something, however, strikes me. I have read descriptions of Warren F Disbrow as being an auteur (also, in the introduction Lloyd Kaufman describes him as the “Fellini of Tromaville” – an insult to Fellini, one feels). Let me say this, being an auteur is neither a good nor a bad thing, it just is. If a director is an auteur and their vision is artistically myopic then the resultant film is still going to be a blurred mess.

The film starts with a naked woman playing with glowing orbs in an occult orientated room – we know it is occult orientated because someone has reproduced Eliphas Lévi’s Baphomet on the wall. She gets naked and sweats. Some credits come on that are interspersed with images of the main vampire character, Andreas (Dominic Gregoria), hitting kids with baseball bats and some nude shots of plot unconnected women and then we get the backstory delivered via voiceover.

Said voiceover tells us about Satan sending three glowing orbs to earth, and the fact that they landed in ancient Egypt where Queen Tara (Denis Marie Kubis) got hold of them. Before I go on, can I just mention that, the unlikely named, Tara is possibly the only ancient Egyptian to have nipple bars and a Brazilian. Anyway the orbs conferred immortality and mystical powers, but their primary function was to give sexual stimulation – think the orgazmatron in Woody Allen’s Sleeper. Eventually, however, she killed herself for no adequately explored reason. That was 3000 BC, it is now 2030 (though if that hadn't been mentioned we would have assumed that the film was contemporary).

A Satanist group led by Edward Crowley (Guy Camilleri) have recreated Tara’s temple (the room with Lévi’s Baphomet, published 1855, is an exact replica of a temple from 3000 BC…) but are missing one element that will give them the power they seek. A giant red diamond called Scarlet Moon.

Now the Satanists have a couple of vampire henchmen, the aforementioned Andreas and the drug addled Smoke (Colin Reynolds). Andreas is not exactly loyal to the Satanists. He wants Crowley’s woman, Muldavia (Francesca Chirelli), who cannot stand him, and wants the power of Scarlet Moon for himself. He also has a vampire friend called Satanya (Annie Donato), a flower child who was turned and has remained an artist.

Now, at first I wondered at the white powder that adorned the faces of Andreas and Smoke – was this really bad makeup effects for the undead. It seems not, it is just an affectation of the characters as the other vampires in film do not have the same makeup. We see no fangs, and whilst we see a turning – which I’ll get to – the point of them being vampires is minimal.

Anyway, Andreas goes to the prostitutes Slash (Jennifer Wilder), Slice (Amy Buzin) and Dice (Maggie Willard) to find where the diamond is. The Satanists obviously haven’t looked too hard as they are able to tell him, so long as he turns them – Satanya has it. He slits their throats with a knife. Later he goes to a morgue and revives them as vampires and the mildly interesting point is they can be turned posthumously. He can’t attack Satanya, she’s family, and so starts a convoluted and very boring attempt to gain the diamond that culminates in him going in her house, when she’s out, finding it and stealing it.

Meanwhile the Government, represented by the General (Forrest J Ackerman), pull one Professor Herz (Warren Disbrow Sr) out of retirement to take on the vampires. Through him we discover they fear crosses, allegedly – and this introduces us to one of the more original ideas. A vampire named Keiler (Robert Uhrman) actually met Christ (John Furey) and has a house adorned with crucifixes, only drinks animal blood and goes to church. As I say original but actually fairly throwaway. We also disover that Satanya paints in blood, not the newest idea, and literally taps into a live victim for it - an idea (in respect of the tap) already seen in the portmanteau movie Vault of Horror.

This looks dreadful – for a disc that purports to be an “unrated director’s cut special collectors edition”, and Kaufman claims is digitally re-mastered, we gasp at the poor transfer. The filming quality was low; Disbrow’s auteur vision didn’t include good lighting it seems and, for a film shot when it was, the film seems to have been recorded to tape, rather than digitally. A glitch within film seems to say that to me, at least. I guess I could watch the feature length ‘making of’ to find out for definite, but the film was painful enough.

There is more use of stock footage than the average Edward D Wood Jr film – though in main it is in context, which is a bonus. When Satanya gets jetted around the world stock footage is used to indicate where they might be before cutting to pokey 3 foot by three ‘stages’ for the ‘acting’. Acting is in inverted commas because there really isn’t a good performance in the film. Plot holes, when you can spot the plot, and anachronisms litter the film, but ultimately it is so poor, who cares? The director/writer apparently didn’t.

I can’t really think of a good thing to say about this – other than the Christian vampire was interesting – and so I’ll shut up now. Avoid. 0.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Bachelor Party in the Bungalow of the Damned – review

Director: Brian Thomson

Release date: 2008

Contains spoilers

With a title like Bachelor Party in the Bungalow of the Damned, I guess really you know what you are going to get – low rent horror, filmed on a budget. And that is what you get here, really it is. A short film (some 75 minutes on PAL), with a transfer to DVD that proved to be the first time I have ever, on my PC, had to stretch the aspect ratio to watch and even stretched it left big black bands to the left and right.

Chuck (Joseph Riker) is getting married to Michelle (Trina Analee). He is going golfing for his bachelor party and she is convinced he will stray (she puts condoms in his golf bag). His best man, Sammy (Gregg Aaron Greenburg), picks him up and tells him that there is a change of plans – the party will now be in the Hamptons, at a bungalow owned by the family of a high school ‘friend’ named Gordon (Joe Testa). Sammy has him involved only because of the house and Gordon has to make his own way there. They do, however, pick up friends Paulie (Sean Parker) and The Fish (Delu Dan Rusu) – who happens to be late due to sleeping with a woman, who turns out to be Lloyd Kaufman in drag.

They get lost on route – go to a bar and Sammy shows the barman the address and they immediately get thrown out. However, somehow they find the bungalow. Gordon is there and enters the alarm code 666. There is plenty of Mickey taking out of Chuck as the others have decided that Gordon fancies him. Anyway, evening comes and the entertainment arrives in the form of Emerald (Monique Dupree, Skeleton Key 2: 667 neighbour of the Beast), Vermillion (Kaitlyn Gutkes) and Snowy (Zoe Hunter, A Feast of Flesh). Gordon is not happy and states that if they let the girls in, then the blood is on their hands… he retires to bed.

The girls give Chuck drugged drinks from some strange bottles, which puts him out of it. Snowy takes him off. Sammy suggests that the other two girls service Paulie and The Fish. They are all in rooms and they get to eating Paulie and The Fish… literally. Snowy has a good old ride on Chuck to start with and then vamps out and looks as though she has bitten him slightly. However Michelle had rung Chuck earlier (so Sammy dropped Chuck's phone in the pool) and now rings Sammy. She is on her way there.

Now let us talk plot hole. The guys had trouble finding the place. Michelle simply knows they are in the Hamptons. How the hell she knew where to go and then actually got there was a leap of faith that… Hold on, Thomson answers this in the credits with the disclaimer “Repeat after me: Gaps in continuity constitute the unconscious poetry of the cinema.” Of course that is so much BS, but at least he knew he was offering us a Swiss Cheese of a film.

Sammy gets the girls out of there and tries to get Chuck up and at ‘em, as it were. Chuck, however, seems ill. Sammy even sends Gordon to get some aspirin from a pharmacy. Suddenly the girls are back, claiming that their car has broken down. Sammy lets them in and is going to hide them when he finds the remains of his friends. They attack. Now the effects are odd, they almost seem demonic – though they are meant to be vampires. We get subtitles at one point as Sammy goes for a staking and misses (with an inaccurate view of anatomy as the heart is central). Their skin seems, at times, rotten.

Anyway Michelle arrives and Chuck turns. She then realises he had sex with one of the girls and thus we get a simile of vampirism as a std. Sammy wants to turn Chuck back and decides that killing the head vampire is the way forward. He also decides that this must be Snowy – there is no logic to his decision other than the fact that she was with Chuck. He gets her by decapitation with garden shears but Chuck is still vampirised.

Let’s spoil this now as it leads to a more unusual aspect of this. The head vampire is Gordon (sunlight, crosses and garlic do not effect these vampires, hence he was around during the day). He turned after Sammy got Chuck to play a trick on him, when they were still in high school, and it was the hatred he felt because of it that made him turn. The three girls were cheerleaders at the school – that Chuck and Sammy didn’t recognise for some reason… oh yeah, that’s because of the unconscious poetry of the cinema!

Other than the bit about hatred turning someone into a vampire, which was fairly unique, this really didn’t do anything new or particularly worthwhile. It had some humour and some worked, but most didn’t. The acting was generally low grade though there was something very personable about Gregg Aaron Greenburg. There is cgi in there that is truly awful. Not a great film but it is a great title. 1.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Tales from the Crapper – review

Director: Various

Released: 2004

Contains spoilers

I have not been too complementary about Troma films – after all they are crap (though they have been known to pick up some gems from other production companies on occasion). However there is a certain something about some of them, in the right company, with the correct amount of foaming or distilled beverage imbibed. They will never be good films (generally) but they can be amusing.

This is neither a great movie, nor amusing. This is an anthology film with all the merit of a dead racoon, splattered on the highway and allowed to rot and then bake in the sun. Yes, it is that bad.

The first story – the Case of the Melon Heavy Alien Man Eater was so bad I jumped through it. This is followed by the vampire tale, Tuition of the Terror Twat. It actually starts off with a sliver of possibility, as we see a man handcuffed and a dancer who then takes his face off. It is gory, but the gore is reasonably done.

Just in case we are not sure what we are dealing with the camera then pans across his eviscerated corpse until it rests on a section of gore and arrows appear pointing to tell us “important: Vampire bite!” So there you go, the film is part of the vampire genre and so I have to watch the damn thing!

Essentially the story is that Timmy loses his college tuition and orders a stripper, Amanda (Julie Strain, Morgana and Blood Thirsty). He is so drunk he has misread the amount and can’t pay her but his friends take her home then have the idea of having a stripper party to raise money for Tim’s tuition.

The party goes ahead but, of course, Amanda and her two friends are vampires and a wholesale slaughter of all the guests is the order of the day. There really isn’t that much else to say, a whole lot of gore and nudity and nothing even floating near the area of plot. Lloyd Kaufman states (in a voice over) that plot is unnecessary where one has lesbians. That may well be true, to a degree, but this completely misses that degree.

The only other thing to mention is the cameo by none other than Ron Jeremy and Ron Jeremy spotting seems to have evolved into a new sport on the blog. There really isn’t anything else I can summon up to say about this filmic car crash.

0 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.


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Vampire Zombies... From Space! – review

Director: Michael Stasko

Release date: 2024

Contains spoilers

With the best will in the world, this film drawn like a 1950s-B should score low, it really should. However, I sat amused as I watched this. Michael Stasko and his team aimed for something straight out of Ed Wood’s playbook and totally committed to it and that commitment paid off, this should be bad, or so bad it’s good, rather I think it is actually pretty darn good.

Drawn in Black and White it starts at the MacDowell tobacco farm and mom, Bernice (Catherine Valle) sings a lullaby as she and pa, Roy (Erik Helle), put daughters Mary (played young by Elizabeth Wacheski and older by Jessica Antovski) and Susan (played young by Lauren Meadows and older by Charlotte Bondy) to bed. Later in the night the family dog, out on the porch, starts barking. Susan goes to the window and sees it run off into the tobacco fields, she follows.

spattered in mom's gore

Mary gets her parents and they look for her sister, who has been traumatised when she found the dog fed on by Dracula (Craig Gloster). In response Dracula causes his spaceship (yes, he’s a UFO flying Dracula) to blast Bernice, leaving Roy, along with the girls, spattered in her gore. Dracula turns his attention to the family but the spaceship fails and a reflection of light catching Roy’s cross causes the vampire to flee, turning into a bat.

Oliver Georgiou as Wayne

Ten years later and, a now grown, Mary is walking to school, something is in the field by her but she is distracted when a car with some guys stop by her. The majority are being sexual to her – though there is a warning about her murderous father. It seems that the townsfolk believe Roy killed Bernice, though he was acquitted. No one believes about the UFO. One of the guys, Wayne (Oliver Georgiou), is pissed with the attitude of the others and makes them drive off. They don’t see the zombie come of the field and rip Mary’s throat out – or the others that then rip her to shreds. I say zombie but they have fangs…

stake

Essentially, Dracula is going to invade Earth. His son, Dylan (Robert Kemeny) – a secret human-o-phile – created a serum that prevents their reaction to the cross (although these space vampires do not know it as a cross and refer to it as a t symbol). The side effect is that those bitten by a vaccinated vampire will turn, develop fangs but they (and their brains) rot. In other words, zombie vampires (or zompires, we would say). Like a vampire they must have the heart destroyed, not the rotting brain. There is, however, another apotropaic in the film, which the audience works out long before the characters – tobacco. It scares them off and makes vampire technology fritz out (hence the foul up at the beginning). It seems that it works fresh but tobacco smoke seems more effective.

the vampire high council

So, there is a vampire high council – not impressed with Dracula’s efforts. Unnamed in film they are credited as Vampira (Judith O'Dea, Night of the Living Dead), Nosferatu (David Liebe Hart) and Coppola's Dracula (Martin Ouellette). There is a cracking mirror bit with Dylan dressed as a soldier with a massive fake beard and only being spotted through the mirror – and it’s a moment where we can see a reflection of clothes (and fake beard) but not the vampire. There is turning into bats, as mentioned, but at one point Dracula turns into a bat to get into a mini bat-winged UFO.

clothes reflect

High silliness abounds with some genuine NSFW jokes - Lloyd Kaufman for instance appears as a character credited as town masturbator and his antics, when described, are consistently followed up with the line, “did he finish?” But the real reason this works is the absolute commitment to the aesthetic. The designs – be it the sci-fi elements or the fifties elements are bob on. There is no attempt to hide the wires. Because that fits the aesthetic. This was way more fun than I thought it would be. 6 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On DVD @ Amazon US

On DVD @ Amazon UK

Honourable Mention: Ouvert 24/7

Despite its Troma release and the presence of Lloyd Kaufman in the film, this Thierry Paya directed film from 2010 has more in common with New Extremity from its native France than the normal fare from the Troma table.

It’s a portmanteau film with a wraparound based on a truck stop with the two customers and the waitress telling stories to pass the time. It starts with a truck pulling up and the trucker ordering a beer. When he starts to tell his story, he is accused of being a drunk, and admits to it – worrying given the large vehicle he pulled up in.

the trucker

The stories include one about a pair of cannibal lesbians (not the reason for the mention, though cannibalism and vampirism skate closely together), one about a child eating ogress (or so the credits suggest, listing Marie-Pierre Vincent in that role, though there is also a hint of the character being a witch), which draws in on numerous fairytales to inform its narrative, and one about sisters who violently escape their incestuous father to head to the city to see a musical star.

standoff

It is from the ogress’ story that we get the mention – I had seen the term vampirism used regarding the film but this is not accurate. The child-eater does primarily eat children (she can’t resist chowing on an adult at one point but can’t keep the flesh down). However, it is at her home when a cop (Bertrand Patrzek) shows up and demands an interview with her that we get the mention of vampires. In a standoff, on comfy sofas, she pulls a knife and he a crucifix and then splashes her with holy water, to no avail, accusing her of being a vampire. She isn’t and so he leaves (he only does vampires) – gunning down a grey faced visitor as he leaves (the neighbour) and suggesting the ogress stake her (though she doesn't as she has a crocodile to feed the cadaver to).

A mention in passing and a vampire hunter (and credited as such). The film is interesting, though I felt the stories lacked denouement. The imdb page is here.

On DVD @ Amazon US

On DVD @ Amazon UK

A Mosquito-Man – review

Director: Michael Manasseri

Release date: 2016

Contains spoilers

Science goes mad and creates a mosquito human hybrid… its actually not an unheard of trope and the madness of the science is underlined by the fact that in every example (as well as this film we have also looked at Mansquito & Weresquito: Nazi Hunter) the mosquito human hybrid is male… and male mosquito’s don’t drink blood (they actually feed on tree sap, it’s the female mosquito that feeds on blood). Ok… perhaps that is thinking about it too hard!

bring on the mad science

The other thing to note is that it isn’t always necessarily enough to make the film a fully-fledged vampire movie – Mansquito actually became essentially a giant bug, rather than the hybrid that might lend itself to be called a vampire. But in this case the creature is a hybrid and we are definitely playing with the tropes – indeed vampires are mentioned at one point (in a dismissive way).

being drained

The first thing to note about this budget film is… it's great fun. Silly, yes, but great fun. It starts in a swamp, a mosquito settling on a hunter and being splatted for her trouble. The scene really is just a mosquito moment, with no story impact. Then we are in the city and a woman, Evelyn (Jordan Trovillion), is at an ATM when she realises that two muggers (Derek Faraci & Nathanial McClure) are behind her. She runs and they chase. She manages to mace one but ends up in a blind alley. Across the cityscape runs the Mosquito-Man (Michael Manasseri, Buffy the Vampire Slayer). He sucks the blood out of the first mugger with a long proboscis that emerges from his mouth and pierces the victim's throat (similes to the vampire work of Del Toro spring to mind) and then drains the other through his forehead. Evelyn faints.

the cops

She is being removed from the alley on a paramedic’s gurney. Two cops, hard-assed Shanahan (Monty Bane, Sleepwalkers) and Bowen (Danny Mooney), have got the case. They see the coroner (Lee Thomas) who confirms the victims have been exsanguinated. Like some kind of vampire? The coroner says no – a vampire would have left two punctures not one! So more like a mosquito then. The film then folds back to earlier that day…

Jim's having a bad day

Jim (Michael Manasseri) is a nice guy. Too nice (and unobservant) to notice that his shrew of a wife, Jackie (Kimberley Kates, Kindred: the Embraced), is cheating on him – cutting her call to her lover as he walks into the room. On his way to work he picks up co-worker Evelyn – she, it becomes apparent, is in love with him. He is hoping to get a promotion at the nuclear plant he works at but his boss, Mr Kopple (Lloyd Kaufman), promotes his rival Dan (Ted Myers) instead and sacks Jim. Jim’s car has been towed from the company parking lot as he no longer works there. On the way home he spots Jackie’s car at a motel and sees her with… you’ve guess it… Dan.

hybrid

With rain falling he runs into traffic but the car heading for him stops. In it is Dave (Ricky Wayne) who takes him to a bar and gets him drunk. When Jim passes out he takes him to his lab… What I haven’t mentioned is that the world is being ravaged by a mosquito borne virus and Dave is trying to find a solution to it. He injects the insensible Jim with an experimental serum and releases mosquitoes into the room – if it works they won’t bite Jim but he is indeed, eventually, fed upon and goes into a fit and dies. His body is dumped in an alley but a swarm of mosquitoes descend on it and he suddenly revives (so, technically, he has come back from the dead). The mosquito DNA in the serum, the bites and his exposure to nuclear material causes him to mutate. He hears Evelyn scream and we are back at the scene from the start of the film. From there he starts to avenge himself on those who wronged him.

summoning the swarm

So, he is faster, stronger (he is able to punch through three inch, bullet proof glass) and at one point seems to vanish. He now sees in a compound way (his eyes have multiple pupils) and he needs to feed (and, once sated, breed). He can summon swarms of mosquitoes – sometimes, it appears, from nearby and at other times from within him. He is able to see through the eyes of his mosquito swarm. He is able to perch up walls. Much of this comes out of the vampire playbook. Daylight isn’t an issue – but in his lab Dave has a giant bug zapper! And, as I said at the start, it’s fun.

Jordan Trovillion as Evelyn

All the cast seem to be having a blast – specific mention going to Monty Bane, who is great as the hard-headed cop, and Jordan Trovillion who gives some fantastic looks and offers a solid performance. Most of all Michael Manasseri is clearly having a blast. This is not serious, how could it be, but is played with a wink and a tongue in its cheek. The film is on a budget but does great things with it, considering said budget. Its sort of a creature feature meets super (or anti) hero flick with a hybrid bug vampire. 7 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK