MYSTERIOUS ISLAND (1961)

When you hear someone refer to movies as "magic," titles like Mysterious Island are what they mean. As children, our imaginations are enormous, and they exist without shame or fear of embarrassment. Whether it was a horde of plastic army men doing battle against Godzilla, Frankenstein, or a handful of troll dolls (you played with trolls and combed their hair, admit it), a conflict was always present. There was a threat that always needed eradication, or a problem that needed resolution. And our limitless childhood imagination always found a way to solve that problem, and that resolution usually came about in the most unexpected way. For most of us unlucky souls, that imagination shed as we aged, making room for social pressures, fear, and this terrible ailment called adulthood. But some of us grasped at this imagination with a vice-like grip, managing to drag it with us into the ether. Ray Harryhausen, a man who needs absolutely no Wiki look-up in the presence of cinephiles, is one of those lucky few. Probably the most celebrated special effects man in the history of film, his contributions to cinema have been the stuff of legacy. He proved how someone could make so much with so little. To watch 1961's Mysterious Island with 2016 cynicism is to undo everything that Harryhausen and director Cy Endfield wanted to accomplish, and with the most pure of intentions: to entertain, enthrall - to transport their audiences to a faraway land filled with adventure, danger, and camaraderie. 2016 eyes would laugh 1961 effects off the screen. They would howl as they watched someone do battle with a giant plastic crab.

And that's a damn shame.

Based on the celebrated novel "series" from author Jules Verne, this adaptation of Mysterious Island tends to wander away from its source material, most notably during its second act, but I don't think anyone would find offense at the notion that it's the creations by Ray Harryhausen which transcend Mysterious Island from movie to magic. Whether you were a kid during the 1960s, the 1990s, or the right-nows, with the right mindset Mysterious Island entertains with its creations, its illusions, and its sense of exotic and tropical danger. That the admittedly very archaic special effects are still celebrated today, having captivated the likes of John Carpenter, Sam Raimi, and Martin Scorsese, speaks volumes about the level of ingenuity on display.

Newbie parents are quick to stock their ottomans with DVDs for Disney films, adventures with the Muppets, and a few random titles from their own childhood, but it would behoove them all to include titles like Mysterious Island. Before their children's minds are eventually oversaturated with the most cutting edge, reality-defying CGI, their exposure to things of such wonder and magic won't just infatuate their imaginations, but enhance them. Mysterious Island is a fun film, and an example of allowing spectacle to overtake its story in order to thrill their audience and transport them to another world. 

SQUIRM (1976)

 

Here's something I never thought I'd say: this killer worm film needed more killer worms (finale notwithstanding). 

Still, it's a rarity when you can watch a film that's been skewered by the MST3K crew, but without MST3K, and still have a moderately enjoyable time. (Have you tried watching Manos: The Hands of Fate or Santa Claus Conquers the Martians without them? Terrible.)

The thing about Squirm is that it has killer worms. These worms can crawl out from nowhere--your egg cream, your shower head, your old neighbor's chest/stomach/entire body--and they will horrify you. All they want to do is get in your brain and make you act like a worm, aka, kind of a dick. 

Squirm was the first of only five films (so far) by celebrated cult director Jeff Lieberman (his best, Blue Sunshine, still remains his most underseen), but was a pretty telling sign of things to come in his filmography--first and foremost, a dedication to and passion for the horror genre, with an emphasis on thrills more visceral than psychological. Lieberman deserves a lot of credit for saying, aloud, "I want to make a film about killer worms," and managing to find a whole crew of people willing to go along with that. I think it goes without saying that Squirm isn't a "good" film, but it's certainly an entertaining one, containing a detectable amount of charm, strengthened by the filmmaker's pragmatic attempt at maintaining a certain air of sincerity amidst all the silliness. The added implication that one character becomes infested with and subsequently possessed by some pissed-off worms definitely adds an understandably surprising layer to an already silly film.

If I really wanted to stick my head all the way up my ass, I suppose I could begin philosophizing on the intention behind the character of Mick, scarlet-lettered with the label "city boy," bussing into the sticks to visit his Georgian girlfriend at the same time the worms get electrocuted and start going crazy. What, exactly, is Lieberman trying to say with that aspect? Will the merging of sensibilities between north and south threaten the destruction of the union? Hasn't that...already happened? Is Lieberman trying to say it could very well happen again?

I mean, it probably could, but no. Just focus on the killer worms. They get in your brain and make you act like a worm. I'm 95% certain that's all that was intended.

ATTACK OF THE KILLER TOMATOES (1978)

 

Seeing Attack of the Killer Tomatoes is like a rite of passage. It's also one of the dumbest movies you will ever see, which obviously makes up most of its charm. Mostly a spoof of the radioactive scare films from the ‘50s that saw insects or animals growing many times its size and going after all the pretty blondes on the beach, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes hedges most of its bets on comedy (because, come on, not a single one of our celebrated horror directors could make mutant tomatoes scary). Depending on your sensibilities, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes offers an extremely polarizing experience, with viewers easily existing either in the love-it or hate-it camps. It doesn’t leave a whole lot of ground for the in-betweeners. Yet, somehow, that’s where I stand.

The comedy in Attack of the Killer Tomatoes vies for Naked Gun, and sometimes it’s successful, but other times it results in something akin to Epic Movie — awkward, unfunny gags that play out far longer than we could ever want. And, sometimes, it’s…a little racist, such as the Japanese doctor being purposely overdubbed by an “American” voice, who in one scene accidentally knocks a framed photo of the U.S.S. Arizona into a fish tank. And then, out of nowhere, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes will tread that line of pure absurdism; example: the only way to kill the marauding mutant tomatoes is by playing them the newest hit single, “Puberty Love,” which is as poorly performed as you can imagine. Because of this, the film makes for a hodgepodge of different comedic styles, some of which gels, and some of which doesn’t.

Attack of the Killer Tomatoes boasts an innovative DIY aesthetic that’s to be absolutely commended, and it must've done something right, considering this goofball film is still being talked about to this day. It also boasts THREE sequels (one titled Killer Tomatoes Eat France! and one that stars a pre-fame George Clooney) and an animated television series. When a film’s a hit, it’s a hit, regardless if that success is mainstream or cult. To make something that stands the test of time is something most filmmakers could ever hope for, and — like it or not — Attack of the Killer Tomatoes is still with us.

INNOCENT BLOOD (1992)

I don’t think John Landis is capable of making an out-and-out horror film free of black humor or whimsy. And that’s not to disparage the filmmaker at all, but when you look back over his career, it’s amusing to see he’s first known as a horror director, even though he’s only made a handful in the genre, and all of them are horror/comedy hybrids. Considering he’s the mastermind behind comedy classics like National Lampoon’s Animal House and The Blues Brothers (a top-five title for me), it’s not surprising to see Landis can’t help himself but look for the absurdity in the concepts behind his horror titles and magnify them to stand head and shoulders with the terror.

Even though it has its “official” and incredibly shitty sequel, An American Werewolf in Paris, Innocent Blood feels more like the real spiritual sequel to Landis’ trademark An American Werewolf in London. Playing out like A French Vampire in Pittsburgh, Landis’ vampire romp hits similar beats: a lead character in a strange land dealing with supernatural powers and unexpectedly falling in love. (And along the way, people are viciously killed.) Gender is swapped this time out and vampire Marie is played as just a tad more villainous (she only eats bad guys, you see), but otherwise An American Werewolf in London and Innocent Blood are kismet.  

Despite Anne Parillaud’s shaky performance as Marie (the actor struggles to convey the right emotional beats through her heavy accent), she’s well cast as the vampire seductress because of how unassuming and atypically beautiful she is. Anthony LaPaglia as Joe does a serviceable job as the half-cop/half-mobster, but really, Innocent Blood is all about the bad guys, boasting mafia-film fans’ wet dream of a cast. Lead baddie Sal “The Shark” Macelli is played by none other than Robert Loggia (Psycho 2), who appears to be having more fun playing a bastard vampire than he did dancing with Tom Hanks on a giant keyboard. Joining him is the inimitable Chazz Palminteri and pretty much half the character actor cast of The Sopranos.

Innocent Blood is violent as hell — the scene with a recently-vampirized Don Rickles in his hospital room is still impressive all these years later, rivaling the infamous transformation scene in An American Werewolf in London. But despite the bloodletting and violence, Innocent Blood is often very funny — from the vaudevillian reactions to the ironic soundtrack to the most terrorized wife in all of cinema (played by Elaine Hagan). And of course it’s very funny…it’s a John Landis film.

Innocent Blood is one of Landis’ least heralded films, but it doesn’t deserve that whatsoever. Far better than some of the director’s other works (Beverly Hills Cop 3: yeesh…), it’s worthy of a reevaluation by horror fans and Landis fans alike. 

TREMORS 6: A COLD DAY IN HELL (2018)

Ever since the screenwriters of the original Tremors, S.S. Wilson and Brent Maddock, left the series following the direct-to-video Tremors 4: The Legend Begins, the Tremors series hasn’t felt remotely like it used to. It’s still surprising to me that a modestly successful film from 1990 about a series of prehistoric, blind, and carnivorous worms living in the desert of Arizona was a concept ripe enough for exploration in FIVE more films, but, if a horror franchise has legs, it will never go away. 

And if you think Tremors 6: A Cold Day in Hell will be the last word on the subject — even if it’s the worst entry so far —  think again.

Despite the series going direct to video immediately with its first sequel, Tremors II: Aftershocks, it managed to maintain at least the spirit of the original along with its sense of fun, if not its magic. It goes without saying that every sequel to follow isn’t a patch on the original, but Tremors II: Aftershocks, Tremors 3: Back to Perfection, and Tremors 4: The Legend Begins at least felt like they belonged to each other, even with the fourth film being a prequel that had Michael Gross playing an old West descendant of Burt Gummer. Tremors 6, basically Tremors 5: Bloodlines – Part 2, continues the wrongheadedness of the series by maintaining Burt’s clearly Ash-inspired irascibility and pomposity and, regrettably, keeping Jamie Kennedy’s generic son character in tow. In fact, Gross has taken Burt’s sheer unlikability to new heights — no longer just a gun-toting but lovably conservative cartoon, he’s actually downright unpleasant, barking orders and hurling insults with such forcefulness that first-time viewers to this series would wrongly assume this is what made the character so popular: being an asshole. (Burt's journey to obtaining full Ash is now complete.)

To its credit, Tremors 6 stretches its budget as much as it possibly can, keeping the Graboids and Assblasters off screen for most of the running time, instead relying on air pistons firing cascading dirt into the air or feigning shaking sets as a John Williams JAWS theme-like sign of their unseen presence. And when the prehistorics do make their appearance, the CGI is very okay — somewhere between Weta and Sharknado. Storywise, it also tries out a couple new twists in an effort to keep things feeling fresh, even if it removes a major character from the finale, rendering it a little toothless. (And finding a way to shoehorn in a character who is supposed to be the daughter of Kevin Bacon’s Val from the original film not only reeks of fan service but it’s utterly unrealistic. The script also finds ways to make jokes about how Val is/was a terrible father, none of which land.)

Director Don Michael Paul has made a career of helming direct-to-video sequels to Kindergarten Cop, Jarhead, Death Race, and yes, he also made Tremors 5: Bloodlines. His style doesn’t entirely mesh with the aesthetic that the Tremors series has established up to this point, too often relying on handheld camera to up the “tension” — you know, tension in this movie that has monsters called Ass Blasters. Though the tricks used to skirt the budget often are laudable, sometimes, they also show through. (I’m fairly certain the opening sequence that’s set on an icy, snow-covered tundra was actually just filmed in a desert and color-timed to all hell, making the sand look white and the actors look blue.)

Whether you asked for it or not, there’s now a Tremors 6 — aka the prequel to Tremors 7: Shaky Ground, and probably Tremors 8 Everyone. It offers a modicum of mindless entertainment, depending on your patience for insufferable characterization, and I’m actually impressed that a PG-13 movie has this many heads and other body parts strewn all over the ground. Besides, we all know if you bothered to watch every Tremors entry up to this point, you’ll watch this one, too. 

You're part of the problem.

THE CAR (1977)

It sounds a little funny to call The Car, about a black you-know-what terrorizing citizens within a dusty, barren, sandy landscape, a rip-off of JAWS, but...that's exactly what it is. Adding to the irony, in that everything about The Car is as opposite to JAWS as you can get, is that Spielberg's previous film to JAWS was Duel, about an ominous black truck terrorizing one particular unfortunate man across a dusty, barren, sandy landscape. Much in the same way the shark of JAWS cruised the waters of Amity Island, the black demonized Lincoln of The Car cruises the sandy roads of a Santa Fe-ish town - both relentlessly looking for victims, both of a scope never before seen, and both announcing their presences with a fin and a horn, respectively. And meanwhile, two sheriffs dealing with their own shortcomings (a fear of the water and a desire to live up to a law-enforcement father) find themselves contending with the monstrous force that's come to plague their homes.

But where JAWS was a high concept, philosophical audience favorite, The Car is just dumb, lacking emotion, philosophy, or anything toward which other films wishing to make more than a visceral impact strive.

But, that's okay.

There's an undeniable enjoyment that derives from watching The Car. That it never reveals who or what it is behind the wheel adds to that enjoyment, leaving that bit of mystery to embolden the idea that whatever's driving the car is something unnatural and evil. And once the film achieves its highest Blues Brothers level of absurdity by having the titular force impossibly roll, sideways, over the two patrol cruisers pursuing it, clearly destroying itself in the process only to touch back down on the ground without a mark in the paint or some soot on the previously blazing grill, well, by now you're either fully on board with The Car or not.

The Car is dumb but absolutely entertaining. A breezy 90 mins filled with car-nage (get it?), half-baked ideas, and moments of nonsense even sillier than the nonsense surrounding it (how's a car drive itself into a garage and then lock itself in?), it's a clever-enough spin on the killer-car sub-genre and an unlikely but wholly watchable JAWS rip-off. Though The Car's originality is running low on gas, it's an offbeat title you shouldn't put in your rear-view, and other metaphors about cars.

(P.S. A very, very belated sequel was recently released direct-to-video called The Car: Road to Revenge. It's one of the worst things you could ever see, but it's hilariously incompetent.)

SLUGS (1988)

Never was a horror movie more deliciously cheesy than it was in the ’80s. To this day, I remain unfulfilled that I didn't come of age during this magical decade of high hair and synthpop, and that I couldn't make trips to the box office every weekend to plunk down my $2 (probably) on a movie ticket for delicious cheese like Slumber Party Massacre, Sleepaway Camp, and Pieces. The lucky film-goers of this era, flying blind on cocaine and Simon Le Bon mini-posters, wouldn’t know how good they had it until it was all over.

The ’80s were a time in which horror movies were allowed to be fun. They were filled with inconsequential characters whose first name you would be hard-pressed to remember as they ran from a killer with a drill, or from an animal/insect gone amok, or from what would turn out to be a twelve-year-old hermaphrodite with a freaky face and a tiny dingle thing. Plots were allowed to be wildly ludicrous and it was OK to ask the audience that they suspend their disbelief, if only for a couple hours. 

Sadly, this period of horror has come to an end, but it’s left in its wake numerous treasures, one of these being the greatest movie of all time to feature an army of slugs destroying the human race asshole by asshole. 

That movie? 

Slugs. 

Aka:

Yes, Slugs! Look at them! Watch them make merry in your body holes!

♫The slugs crawl iiinnn, the slugs crawl ooout♫, the slugs get in your body, shoot maggots out your eye, and make your face explode, and all of them are brought to you by Spanish director J.P. Simon, he of Pieces fame and all-around king of "whoops, it sucked!" '80s horror. The fact that a movie exists about killer slugs would be enough, and the fact that it's simply called Slugs is even better, but that its release title in Spain during its run was Muerte Viscosa, which translates to “Viscous Death” (haha), shows that this movie is magical regardless of what part of the universe you're from. The genesis of this production certainly informs the final product — not environmentally so much as aesthetically. The “United Nations” of killer animal movies, Slugs features a very diverse cast of different nationalities, most of whom who were dubbed into English, including one very not-British actor suddenly becoming very British.

The plot is quite simple: a small town becomes overrun with slugs. Not the sticky, slow, undeadly kind, but the sticky, slow, DEADLY kind  — and they eat meat!

These slugs first make their presence known by invading the filth-douched basement of Old Man Trash, which is filled with empty pizza boxes and other rubbish he couldn’t be bothered to, ya know, put in a garbage can. It’s this event which puts these slugs on the radar of the film’s main character and hero, hilariously named Mike Brady. Yes, the city health inspector and 1/9th of a Bunch of Brady’s will be the one in the Roy Scheider role as he tears across town trying to get officials to believe that they have a major shark slug problem on their hands.

There’s so much to love and appreciate about Slugs, and some of it’s not even ironic. Sure, it’s easy to laugh at Don for being married to someone who looks much older than him (that'd be Maria, his motherwife), and it’s especially easy to guffaw when seeing an old man put his hand into a slug-infested glove, shriek, and decide the only way to remove it is to chop off the goddamn with a hatchet. But in the midst of all this madness, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that Slugs is actually kind of well made. With this being a product of the late ’80s, practical effects were the name of the game and handily brought the slugs to life, and their victims to death. The gore gags throughout Slugs are hilarious but undeniably effective. Eyeballs hang out of sockets, faces explode, limbs are hacked off — sounds fun, doesn’t it? IT IS.

Adding to Slugs’ enjoyment is the baffling musical score, the themes of which beg comparison to the music often found in instructional videos on how to use the card catalogue, or rejected cues from The A-Team. Some even end in a triumphant crescendo that would normally complement Indiana Jones jumping off a rocky cliff for the just-out-of-reach vine (or something equally exciting), but instead is used to complement a person running hurriedly into a municipal building. Another theme actually utilizes the sad trombone/wahh-wahhhh-waahhhhhh stinger a la bad jokes from ’50s sitcoms and I love it so, so much more than I love you.

Like other films not just in Simon’s career, but general Italian/Spanish/American joint productions from the ’80s and ’90s, there’s a certain hamfistedness to their plots and a definite, tangible awkwardness to their productions. Like many other Spanish and Italian productions from this era, Slugs' cast looped their dialogue during post-production (for the uninitiated reader, it was considered economical to not worry about capturing clean audio while filming; actors rerecorded all their scripted lines during post-production in a sound booth), which offers every movie that employs this tactic a subtle offkilterness that can add either to its dreamy atmosphere (see: Suspiria) or its already cheesy execution (see: everything Lucio Fulci). And this isn’t a case of Spanish actors’ dialogue being replaced by English-speaking voice-over artists. No, English-speaking actors spoke English during their scenes, but then came back to loop their dialogue again anyway — still in English. But really, the why doesn’t matter: it’s the effect that does. And the effect is total joy.

There are different schools of thought as to what makes a bad horror film “so bad it’s good.” Some people claim to watch Uwe Boll films over and over and laugh with glee, which makes zero sense to me, considering his stuff is bottled pain. And that Sharknado nonsense, forget it. That’s not fun. Slugs is fun. Do you know why Slugs is fun? Because Slugs is trying. It’s the ones that try, but fail spectacularly, that bring about the most joy. That’s really the takeaway: you can’t manufacture bad horror without purposely descending into parody, in the same way you can’t set out to produce a film you know will achieve cult status. You — that's the royal you, attentive filmmakers — don’t decide how audiences will react to your film, ironically or otherwise, and you don’t get to decide if audiences — even a small portion of them (read: cult following) — will love and remember your film for decades after you’ve made it. That's up to us, and believe me, we'll let you know.

This is why tripe like Sharknado isn’t just unfun, but poisonous to the genre. Because Sharknado isn’t trying. Sharknado mugs for the camera and demands Twitter ask, “How crazy will this get?” It's the Sci-Fi-Channel-Original-Movie equivalent of reality TV pretending not to make fun of a cast of washed up celebrities (plus John Heard). Sharknado adds Scott Baio, throws a shark up in the air, and calls it clever. But it’s not, because Sharknado isn’t trying. Sharknado is phoning it in.

Slugs is trying. Slugs just wants to be loved. And it will crawl right down your goddamn mouth to prove it.

Real Facts about Slugs:

• Slugs can stretch to 20 times their normal length and launch themselves into your soup.
• Slugs can follow their own slime trails from the night before, just like James Franco.
• Slugs can follow other slug slime trails in order to find a slug sock hop, your butthole, or another social event.
• Slugs are hermaphrodites and we won't make a joke about that just in case I ever become famous.
• Slug eggs are in the soil just about everywhere, and also in that brownie you’re crunching.
• Banana slugs are bright yellow, can grow from 8 to 18 inches, and are absolutely fabulous.
• There are at least 40 species of slugs in the U.S. and they are all right behind you.