Vengance of the 31 Days of Cheese - Day 4 - Mansquito

Lurid DVD cover.

Yes, I know I’m behind – I’ve been busy okay?

Back in the days when people went to the movies every week, the demand for product was massive especially as theaters all showed double features – actually, the standard was a newsreel, a cartoon a short a b-picture and the feature.

B-pictures were simply things to have on the screen while folks went to the concession stand before the beginning of the a picture.  As a result they didn’t have big budgets and ran about 70 minutes or so and were pretty much forgettable except to film maniacs (like myself)

Anyway the tradition of b pictures taking up time is still going strong with the Syfi cannels made for TV films – they are cheaply done and don’t make a whole lot of sense.

An example of this is 2005’s Mansquito.

Now with a title like Mansquito, you can’t really be expecting a lot of originality but here the writers of the film seem to have gone out of their way to stuff every cliché possible into the film –

The back-story is given in a crawl there is a variety of the west Nile virus that is much more deadly than the current version and massive attempts are underway to find a way to control mosquitoes.

We start with our very first cliché – a psychotic killer is being transported in a prison bus and we notice that he has the standard homemade handcuff lock pick.  I was wondering if maybe Hannibal Lector hands them out.

Meantime Cliché #2 we have the Hot  Scientist we know she is hot because when she takes off her biohazard suit she’s wearing a Ripley from Alien style wife beater t-shirt.  She is angry at the head of the chemical company who she works for because he’s trying to rush the cure for the virus because it will be a gold mine. (Cliché #3) she then says we haven’t even tested this on humans yet (#4) and the company chief says “not yet. (#5) explaining the transporting of the psycho killer.

Now just a side bar here

You know just once I would like to have somebody say you know that maybe using a psychopathic killer in the prime of his life as medical suspect is not a good idea considering how dangerous he is, couldn’t we just test this on the old guy who poisoned his wife? (I understand we don’t do this sort of thing anymore – at least as long as Trump isn’t president)

Anyway in addition to testing a vaccine for the virus – the Hot Scientist is also trying to reduce the number of misquotes that can carry the virus by exposing them to radiation (#6) I mean what could possibly go wrong?

Well of course, the killer escapes – (#7) kills a bunch of people (#8) and then is both covered in the formula and exposed to radiation (#8) and then screaming in pain escapes the lab via the sewers underneath the lab (#9).  In addition, the Hot Scientist is also splashed by the goo but it doesn’t seem to have affected here.

Meantime Hot Scientists boyfriend is a cop (who is also narrating the action of the film) who is on the case of the killer – who as we watch is painfully transformed into the Mansquito – he then goes on a blood-sucking rampage (#10).

The film continues like this – turns out that having turned into a Mansquito he now wants to breed and it’s the Hot Scientists (HS) is his only potential mate as she is slowly turning into what I suppose you’d call the femsquito –(#11)  while telling the boyfriend (who is dumber than a bag full of hammers) (#12) that “he’s more mosquito than man”.

As side note, his skin or exoskeleton is bullet proof – but nobody thinks to maybe try poison gas? I think in this  one case using DDT might be allowable.

More stuff happens until at the end the HS realizing that her transformation is not reversible sacrifices herself to kill the Mansquito.  (I stopped counting by this point in the film).

HS is dead and the cop boyfriend is left to finish the report and then write something weird about how there is always a new day in an odd attempt to attach a positive spin to a movie that mostly featured bodies.

No good but lacking the madness that the best bad movie  this is the film version of pasteurized process cheessefood.

Enjoy with popcorn and artificial theater butter. 

The vengeance of the 31 days of cheese – Day 3 - Tromeo and Juliet

 

 I sort of missed out on the whole Troma pictures era – I suspect I was just a bit too old or out of the loop when they started their run – I do remember vaguely seeing The Toxic Avenger and thinking well this is odd – and other than being intrigued by a trailer for Sgt. Kabuikiman nothing really sang to me.

Anyway this is revamped version of Romeo and Juliet setting it in New York in the 90’s and adding lots of gross out humor and dick jokes along with nudity.  it is I have to admit very entraining and keeps up the energy – and things happen here – maybe not the most effective things or things you’d want to see but things do happen:   Car Crashes, fights , body parts being removed, women kissing, a penis monster – you have to see the film to understand that reference) and mutants.

All of this madness is given a sort of structure by the speeches of the chorus who is played by the late Ian Lemmy Kilmster who obviously did his work in one day in one setting (hanging out early morning near what looks like 42^nd street but things have changed in this city so much that I can’t be sure. Anyway what you have at intervals among the mayhem is Lemmy in that thick midlands accent he had reciting bits from the Shakespeare play – as a final little surreal touch he’s wearing a WW2 German officer’s coat (probably from his personal collection) while doing this.

They add a little bit love across the tracks here as well as the Capulets are portrayed as rich (and in the case of the father insane) while the Que’s (Troma’s shortening of the Montague) live in squalor after some mysterious business between the two families which is explained at the end (no this time I’m not spoiling it)

Things happen – then funny things happen then disgusting things happen – women take their clothes off and people die in disgusting ways – yes there is a Tybalt and a  Mercutio and the Tybalt guys kills the other guy – who does not get angry at everybody before he dies – and there is the Count Paris character who is slated to marry Juliet – who is now the heir to the most disgusting meat packing company I think I’ve seen on film – and I’ve seen the short ‘This is Hormel’ which  not only will make you give up meat but will just make you give up.

This does not end in tragedy as the Shakespeare play does. Romantic love, especially in the young,  in the Elizabethan age was regarded with great suspicion.  It was noble or exulted and made you crazy things and the humpy hump dance and leads they thought to tragedy. It’s mindset that exulted other loves as being far more pure and worth pursuit - marriage was simply for making heirs and such.  Looking back even further is was considered very bad form for an ancient Roman to display affection in public for his wife. It just wasn’t done.

Anyway the story ends with the head of Capulets (the main heavy) being killed and the lovers united in happiness and mutation.  The change does make sense as the tone and structure of this cheesy gross out fest of a movie simply wouldn’t be able to handle the death of the two leads

Well worth seeing if you have a taste for the gross and bizarre. (Which alas will not be the case with a lot of these films so enjoy when one like this comes by.)

Enjoy with veggies and dip but really you won’t snack much watching this film.                                                                 

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The Vengance of the 31 Days of Cheese - Day 2 City of the Dead

We open with a witch being burned in a backlot – the town is Whitewood, Massachusetts, but It looks rather English –which is not a surprise as this was filmed in England – as the witch Elizabeth Selwyn (played by Patricia Jessel – best known I think for being the wife in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum) is being burned she and a guy in the crowd call upon Lucifer to help them (it does seem a little late in the day to ask but well so be it) which he does by sending along rain while the crowd cry burn witch burn.

Cut to

Christopher lee in close up saying the same thing with glee in his eyes – this is apparently a course on witchcraft being given at a university (not named) and they are now going on a two week break – a pretty young girl named Nan is very taken with the subject and is going – at the professor’s suggestion – to Whitewood to do some on the ground research on witches and their history – Nan’s Boyfriend is not happy as one suspects he had other plans for nan over the break – he also thinks the whole thing is hooey as does Nan’s brother Richard who is a professor at the college as well. He is the lead really, but right now he comes across as smug jerk – which to be honest he pretty much stays that way until the end.

Anyway promising to come back for a party Nan heads off to Whitewood – is almost warned off by the gas station guy who says nobody goes to whitewood anymore – (and just how do you manage to say in business then?) she then pics up a creepy hitchhiker who also heading for Whitewood (it’s the guy in the crown in the first scene run girl run!) and of course there is fog – tons of fog, acres of fog, more fog than you can shake a stick at.

So Nan arrives at the creepy named after a raven – which isn’t going to get you a good yelp review at all – she after being told there is no room says that she was sent there by Christopher Lee. She is then given the dead meat room.

Creepy things happen – people stare at here – the blind priest in the ruined church (seriously anybody with the sense god gave a rabbit is gone by now) the guests act weirdly.

She meets one friendly face a young woman who is a grand niece or something of the priest she runs the local bookstore which just happens to have all sorts of witch books – Nan takes on loan and then after reading a bit while the music of a swinging party is going on outside her door decides to join the party which vanishes just as she finishes getting dressed. (Again I am so outta here at this point)

I have to say that Nan getting dressed is a real weird beat in this film – she takes off a standard nightgown to reveal she’s wearing a lace corset looking thing and stockings – and well wow – it comes a bit of a shock after all the New England drabness.

Well to back track a bit Nan reads to a clearly bemused landlady (it’s the Witch from the first scene run! run!) the details about how the witches would sacrifice two victims a year at the stroke of 13 – and then well course all things that the book lists happen – so instead of running the hell always she ends up finding a hidden passage and then instead of running the hell away she goes down into the passage and is of course captured and sacrificed.  Mr. Lee attends.

I must say I have my limits and to be honest when no less than three spooky things happen that would cause anybody - I say this again - with the sense that god gave a rabbit to hightail it out of this town I lose all sympathy for the unfortunate Ms. Nan.

Cut to a party with Nan’s Brother Richard and boyfriend (Bill) are drinking and looking worried because Nan isn’t there yet – and no she doesn’t show up.    Alan decides to talk to Mr. Lee about Nan. We cut to Lee, who we see killing a pigeon for Satan. I have to say the prince of darkness is pretty easy to please – if all you have to do is kill a pigeon – hell half of New York would be Satan worshipers if that was all it took.

Well Richard and Lee talk a bit and as they are talking the niece of the reverend shows up as well she was given back the book she had lent Nan she’s a bit upset about all this   Both Richard and Bill deicide to head to Whitewood.

Both Bill and Richard (with niece in tow) have similar encounter with what must be a very lonely gas station owner  - Bill ends up getting in a car crash and we don’t see him for a while after that.

Meantime Richard and the niece arrive get the same sort of weird ass treatment that Nan had gotten (oh yes there is a subplot where the hotel has a deaf mute maid who tries to warn both Nan and Richard and is killed for her troubled)

Moreover, it turns out the witches need another sacrifice and the niece is it – Richard and the blind reverend are unable to stop her from being taken but as he is dying (of course), he says the only thing that will kill the witches is the shadow of the cross.

Richard attempts to rescue the niece but proves as utterly ineffectual as his sister in this sort of thing – he ends up a prisoner of the witches being forced to watch the sacrifice – they are doing in a cemetery rather than underground this time – why? I don’t know everything really.

At this point Bill who is pretty badly hurt shows up – Richard tells him that only the shadow of the cross will kill the witches – so Bill pulls up the biggest cross he can find and starts staggering towards the witches who are burnt up one by one by the shadow – they can’t flee until the clock strikes thirteen you see .

Joshing aside this is why you should see this film it’s an amazingly shot scene almost German Expressionist in its visuals – why Bill had to pick the biggest cross around well who knows – he wasn’t well at the time.

Anyway in the end all the witches including Mr. Lee are killed except the main witch who manages to flee but as they didn’t meet their dead girl quota – Richard and the niece find her dead in the hotel looking like she had died many many years ago.

It’s actually a rather well done spooky little film – we may not able to say that about everything that we see and it does have Mr. Lee in it.

Enjoy with Vermont cheddar.

The Vengance of the 31 Days of Cheese - Day 1 - Blood Orgy of the She Devils

Anyway in movie land it’s Oscar season where Hollywood celebrates itself and well that’s about it really – TMC is of course running it’s 31 days of Oscar and I thought it was time to go back to the bottom of the barrel and unearth some more cheese from the dream factory and elsewhere.

Well I’m off to a late start for the 31 days of cheese – I’ll need to either do more than one review a day or just start now and finish sometime in March

However, this is no concern of yours dear reader – and so for the first film I present – 1973’s Blood Orgy of the She Devils.

First, there really isn’t an orgy.

Nor are there really she-devils.

There is blood but not as much as you would think.

Let me explain – the film comes from the fever dreams of one Ted. V. Mikles, a cut rate Roger Coreman – think about that for a second if you will – best known for his series of very silly Astro Zombies films or The Girl in Gold Boots that was heckled without mercy by the guys at MST3K – sometimes they will give folks a break but not this time.  Anyway Ted was always had a knack for titles – Astro Zombies being a good example . Titles were not a problem. The rest however was.

We open with a sort of witches Sabbath being preformed – there are women in halters looking tops (in case one is wondering nope no nudity here boys – sorry it was just on the cusp of the idea of having topless women in a horror film became required) and the chief witch for some reason I want to call her Sabrina but she isn’t  it’s Mara is leading a service – one distinguishing feature is a guy who is tied to a table – considering he’s tied to a table he seems rather mellow about the whole thing – at lot more that I would be I must say.

Table guys lack of anxiety notwithstanding the women begin to dance about to the beat of a guy on the bongos – we don’t see him except here and later in the climatic witches Sabbath so maybe he was just part time – still as  what seems a trope in these sort of films he’s wearing a loincloth – as I think about it I rather like that he’s just a normal guy who gets a call every now and gets his bongos out and gets on his loin cloth and drives over to where ever he is called to go – one day a witches Sabbath the next a voodoo ceremony the next sacrificing to a man eating plant; it’s a living.

So the ceremony continues Mara says potent gibberish ‘as I will so mote it be” which is actually something said in modern pagan circles at least the so mote it be part. Ted said that he did a lot of reading of occult lore before he wrote the screenplay – maybe I think he rather skimmed a bit and noted things here and there – which I can understand, occult works are very tough slogs to read – they can’t help it, it’s the nature of the beast.

So the dancing goes on then a little guy with an absurd fur had and a big mustache – it was the 70’s – who was in Girl in gold boots as well as a minor thug – says get the spears – so the dancing girls get the spears – then he says kill – and so they do – stabbing the guy on the table who exhibits no emotion when hearing the words get the spears. It’s rather odd

After that roll credits – and we then find Mara being asked by two foreign looking types is she can use her black magic powers to kill this diplomat or some such.

But first we flash to the male and female leads – Lorraine (one Leslie McRae who was in Girl in gold Boots as said girl in gold boots actually the second one) and Tom Pace who played per MST3k the icky elf character Buzz in Girl who beat some poor guys head in with a tire iron by the end of the film (here he is called Mark) – so they are in this film a couple – with all the chemistry of – well something totally without chemistry an exact analogy fails me at this moment. Leslie is going to see Mara to do some past life regression and then attend a séance and she convinces Mark to attend.

First Lorraine has a past life regression – wherein she experiences the end of that past life – it’s violent – in fact all the past life regressions in this film feature only the ending of that past life and they are all violent.   My suspicion is that there was not enough things happening in the film itself so Ted inserted the violent scenes to keep the audience’s attention – it doesn’t quite work however.

We then witness, the second most racist séance scene I’ve seen in movies – first prize remains the one in the Wild World of Bat woman – but this is pretty awful – Mara summons one of her spirit guides a native American who speaks like an extra from a 1930’s western “Me need speakum first squaw.”  And goes downhill from there.

Meantime Mara kills via black magic the target she was given, however after that the men who hired her decide that It’s not a good idea to keep you hit witch hanging around and try to kill her and her assistant – one of her coven or whatever she has gets caught in the fire as well and apparently all are killed – still one wonders if they hired someone to kill the diplomat why not hire someone to kill the witch? I suspect the films budget has something to do with that.

However is seems witches are not easy to kill and Mara recovers and resurrects the assistant with the disturbing mustache – the young woman is left dead. They then take their revenge on the two men killing each of them via a form of voodoo.

And then that subplot ends – and is never mentioned again – actually that might have made a nice little horror anthology ½ story but it just feels like it put into this film because there isn’t enough story in the main plot to make the film feature length (a problem we will encounter more than once as we go on here.

Meantime Lorraine and Tom are talking to Dr. Helsford who is an expert on the occult and magic – you wonder how many university chairs of magic and occult studies there are – Burn Witch Burn has Christopher Lee as a wild-eyed professor teaching magic and witchcraft at a university. Moreover, he seems to have tenure as well – that must have been an interesting meeting – “so what about X do we give him tenure?” “Well while I don’t necessarily believe all the things he’s talking about, I think prudence would suggest that we grant him tenure, just in case” “true – I’m not hip on waking up as a frog”.

My mind is wandering – anyway Dr. Helsford talks – and talks and talks about how the young people of today are moving away from traditional morals and are seeking meaning in things like magic – which he says is the same black or white it is the motive of the user that counts.

Uh-huh.

Well after that to be honest not a lot happens – Tom is show his past life – tied to a tree and shot by Native Americans. Really why would you do this? What possible benefit, even if this was true would you get from learning how your past life ended? Sense this makes not.

Still – after some tooing and frowing – there is a second Witches Sabbath – this time Tom is there as well as Loraine – Mara says that we must be free of our restrictions and Tom takes off his shirt – the rest of the cast remains dressed. …sigh…Tom as was shown earlier being fed drugs – which explains the passive approach of the fellow in the first Sabbath. Anyway, it all starts again this time with Loraine dancing up a storm completely independently of the other women.

Meantime outside Helsford has summoned three comrades – fellow professors apparently – and where did they come from Miskatonic University?  They all set up at the four cardinal compass points and attempt to disrupt the ceremony inside – Helsford says Tom and Lorraine are in deadly danger and this is the only way to save them.

And surprise, surprise they manage to disrupt the energy – as shown by cheesy lighting effects and inside the house all hell breaks loose and then instead of simply stabbing Tom, the she devils and Lorraine all start stabbing each other and the guy with the mustache, Mara screams in distress.

And outside, moving like they are trying not to be too early to a cocktail party, our four professors come to the front door of the house and open it – and discover a scene of carnage including the dead bodies of both Tom and Lorraine. It’s hard to read their expressions I’m not sure if they are bored or hungry – because they surely are not reacting to what is front of them.

As a last piece of business, Mara has turned herself into a bat and one of the professors a) spears said bat and then b) tosses said bat on fire. A cheesy ghost effect appears and disappears implying that Mara is no longer with us but available for the unmade sequel.

Even for a short 73-minute film – this one has a lot of padding and not a lot of forward momentum. In his better (and this is grading on curve) films like Astro zombies there is an energy that keeps the absurd engine moving forward. Not so much here.

Enjoy if you must with a cheese sandwich.