B-Movie Archives - Screen Wolf

Black Roses (1988)

Posted on October 12, 2024October 12, 2024 by fenrisfil

Heavy Metal Horror, “Black Roses” is directed by John Fasano. At this point in his career he was a relative unknown. Later he would gain some solid writing credits and become a popular Hollywood script doctor. Back in 1988 he had only one directing credit to his name. That was for another Heavy Metal themed horror called “Rock ‘n’ Roll Nightmare” (1987). Writing credits for this one went to Cindy Cirile (John’s now ex-wife). John was obviously a metal head and by the late 80’s that’s no surprise. This was the era where metal was mainstream. So heavy metal themed horror was inevitable and there are many examples of it throughout the 80’s.

Heavy Metal was also highly controversial in the 80’s. It was linked with the Satanic Panic and Court cases had been brought against the likes of Judas Priest and Ozzy Osbourne for allegedly encouraging suicides. In our story the band “The Black Roses” want to open their first US tour with an appearance in the small town of Mill Basin. Despite local opposition the band play a series of gigs, but they have a secret. The band actually are demons here to corrupt the youth. The only person that can stand in their way is local school teacher Matthew Moorhouse (Played by John Martin).

Ready To Rock

This is a movie I would describe as “Fun trash”. The budget for the movie was reportedly one million dollars. The directors previous heavy metal horror cost a mere $52,000 and ended up a big success. It’s notable that what made it work though was it’s trashier aspects. Many critics said it was unintentionally funny. So upgrading the budget for a similar film could have been a recipe for disaster. It’s hard to say if the film was financially successful. While it was originally due a theatrical release, it ended up going direct to video. In the 80’s however that market was booming. That inflated budget mostly went towards creature effects, which is one of the films strengths. These effects look dated by today’s standards, but they aren’t terrible.

Not all the budget was spent on effects though. A great deal was put towards providing the songs for the soundtrack. The band “The Black Roses” was made up mostly of members of King Kobra. This was former Ozzy Osbourne Drummer Carmine Appice’s band. While most of the songs on the soundtrack are by this group, there are also tracks from Lizzie Borden, Bang Tango and a few others. The movie makes sure to give you the time to enjoy each song, which makes it all the more unfortunate the tracks aren’t particularly good. Still, they do the job and the band are the villains anyway, so maybe the music didn’t need to be great!

Dirty Demons Done Dirt Cheap

When it comes to plot, this movie keeps it as straight forward as possible. It doesn’t waste much time or hold much back from the viewer. In the very first scene we see the band in full demon form (Notably different looking to when they transform later) and see the kids at the concert similarly transformed. We do get time to get to know some of the characters and while it’s very bare bones it does what it needs to. Things fully kick off fairly early (Compared to a lot of 80’s films) and they really do showcase a great variety of hellspawn. None of it really seems to have much purpose though and the truth is the kids are far more effective threats before they transform.

That is the big dilemma for this film. The creature effects are its strength but the lack of mobility for those beings really makes them seem almost comical and not a threat at all. This isn’t helped by the way Matthew manages to defeat all The Black Roses demons entirely by himself in a room full of monstrously transformed teenagers. So this is why we are back at “Fun trash”. You really have to shut your brain down a bit and just enjoy the ridiculous visuals. A few beers should make that pretty easy. I’m going to be generous here and give this one a 5.5/10. What can I say, I’m a sucker for movies that mix horror and metal!

Bad CGI Gator (2023)

Posted on November 30, 2023December 3, 2023 by fenrisfil

Yes, you read the title correctly. It’s time to dive into the world of modern B-Movie horror with this ridiculous horror comedy from Full Moon Features. If you know the name, you will know this is Charles Band’s company, so this is a studio (In one form or other) that have been making low budget horror (and some sci-fi) since the 70’s. They know how to get the most out of the budget and how to make movies quickly. That doesn’t make this movie sound any less silly of course! This feature is just under an hour in length and is directed by Danny Draven (Also taking composer duties) and penned by Zalman Band (Charlies son).

There is some controversy with this film. The makers of “Bad CGI Sharks”. Obviously they feel their idea was ripped off. It’s worth considering though gimmick shark movies aren’t exactly original either, so maybe it’s fair game maybe not. You can decide that one for yourself. There’s certainly no doubting they stole the “Bad CGI” idea, the only question is, does that matter? Personally I’m not sure, but I do know at this budget level there is a lot of band wagon jumping in general. Anyway, let’s get back to the Gator and see if it has any teeth!

A Reptile Dysfunction.

The synopsis for this one is short. It’s a 1 hour horror comedy B-movie, what did you expect? A group of friends (Well four friends, one sister and a guy dragged along apparently to set him up with the sister), head to a lakeside cabin for spring break. The nearby lake has an alligator living it, though the friends aren’t aware of this. One of the girls, a tik-tok “Influenced” wants to throw the groups college laptops into the lake for a video (Because “The college will just replace them”). After the stunt they return to their cabin, however the laptops electrocute the lakes alligator transforming it into…. Uh, BAD CGI GATOR! Yes, that happened.

It’s worth reminding you, this is meant to be a comedy, so don’t expect anything to make sense. Anyway, the now CGI Gator starts attacking the friends picking them off one at a time until only the sister “Hope” (Played by Madie Lane) and the non-friend “Sam” (Michael Bonini) remain. Sam and Hope are also quickly developing feelings for each other after Sam romantically stalked her instagram account. Between them they must find a way to escape from this gator, which by the way can also fly and after consuming a bluetooth speaker, grow in size because that’s how it works now.

Bad CGI.

Okay, so this is a ridiculous plot. But for a horror comedy it isn’t really a problem as long as the film is funny and fortunately this is. I laughed out loud several times and in a movie that is less than an hour in length that is a win. Honestly the film probably could do with being a little longer, especially as the ending is a little on the quick side. That said, something like this being too short is probably better than being too long. The effects are what you’d expect and despite the severed limbs I wouldn’t really describe it as “Gore”. Indeed the severed limbs are mostly used for comic effect and quite effectively. There’s also some nice ironic elements with the corpses, which I always approve of in horror films.

The bad CGI gator is of course bad CGI, which you would expect. One issue with this though is the quality of CGI is actually no worse than I’d expect in a low budget horror anyway and case in point, even before the alligator is transformed it is bad CGI. My criticism here is they probably could have made the transformed version a bit worse! It would have been a nice touch to have had it “clipping” into the scenery and stuff on occasion too. For example they could have had it unable to pursue people at some point because it’s tail has clipped into the ground and so it is stuck. Missed opportunity.

Spring Break.

The characters and acting is around about what you’d expect for a low budget B, but there are definitely three tiers to it. Effectively you have three couples (Though the lead pair aren’t a couple until the end) and each couple is about on par for acting talent. One pairing is notably bad, especially the girl’s dialogue delivery, but the movie helps us out here by making them the gators first victim. The next tier are actually in some ways the most fun characters in the film. Both characters are shallow college kid stereotypes, but the actors go all in on the roles and that really helps the comedy. When we are introduced to them I rolled my eyes, but since they provide most of the comedy it was almost a shame to see them killed off.

The final pair is our two leads, Sam and Hope. As actors Bonini and Lane are better than you would expect at this budget level and with the right breaks could probably go a lot further in their careers. It’s always worth remembering just how many big Hollywood stars started out in low budget horrors (Maybe not always this low, but sometimes). Demi Moore for example was in another Charlie Band produced movie “Parasite” from 1982. So they are worth keeping an eye on. Not that this was an Oscar level performance or anything, just better than I expected.

Conclusion.

So overall, this is actually a lot better than most people would expect a movie called “Bad CGI Gator” to be. The plot barely exists, there is bad acting and bad effects, but the movie is fun, funny and in it’s own B-Movie way, clever. Some of the acting is better than you’d expect at this level and some of the characters you’d expect to hate turn out to be the most entertaining. Overall, while it’s not going to get a high rating, when I put this on I figured I’d be lucky to get a 4/10 but instead it’s a high 5/10. Not the best, but higher than I’ve rated some Hollywood horror movies. If you love your B’s, you’ll get a kick out of it.

Blood Diner (1987)

Posted on October 31, 2023November 1, 2023 by fenrisfil

Well that’s it, the final review of my 2023 October Challenge. This is the low budget horror comedy “Blood Diner” from 1987. The movie was the third of four movies directed by Jackie Kong in a short career likely only made possible by the VHS boom of the 80’s. The movie was written by Michael Sonye, who has had a reasonable career as an actor but only has writing credits for six movies. This is the highest rated on IMDb at 5.3/10. His lowest is rated at 2.8 out of ten. This is one of those movies where much of the cast have only appeared in this one film and many of the ones that have been in other things use shots from this movie as their bio picture on IMDb (Or have no picture). This gives you hint of what to expect!

Bon Appétit.

The plot of the movie revolves around a pair of cannibals and their “Vegetarian” diner. Two brothers and their dead uncle (Now a brain in a jar) are planning to perform an ancient ceremony to resurrect the ancient Lumerian goddess Sheetar. To do this they have to make a number of preparations that mostly involve killing young women, preparing a cannibalistic stew that will make those that consume it turn into feral zombie like cannibals and prepare the sacrifice of a virgin. On their tail are a pair of tough yet bumbling police officers, investigating a what appears to be a serial killer targeting vegetarians.

Junk Food.

Okay, so I’m just going to say it: This is a bad movie. Whenever I review a fairly average movie I usually say “It’s not terrible but…”, well this one is terrible and there is no real “But” to that. There are some good ideas, but the execution of them is so poor that most viewers likely won’t even give it that much credit. It is poorly acted, poorly scripted, badly paced (Rushing from one joke/murder to the next without giving any of it room to breath), music that seems absent half the time it is needed and overstays it’s welcome when it is not, the gore was so comical that it lost all impact and worst of all, it just wasn’t funny.

Most of the humour falls flat. Most of the jokes are either casual but cartoon like violence or general gross out stuff. There were three scenes that were sort of funny. One was the intro, specifically the radio broadcast about the psycho. Another was where one of the brothers has to keep running someone over before he actually dies and another where a woman having seen her friend being chopped up goes to run away, but then runs back because she forgot her handbag. That was it. The rival chef’s ventriloquist dummy could have been funny in theory, but didn’t really work in practice. It felt out of place and just came across as pointless and dumb.

So Bad It’s Bad.

The acting is especially bad. I’ve watched a lot of low budget B-movies, so I have a pretty good tolerance for bad acting, but this was next level bad. Pretty much all the actors playing the police were dreadful. The worst of the bunch was Sheba Jackson as “LaNette La France” and it’s no surprise to see this is her only credit on IMDB. Max Morris was almost as bad as the Police Chief and joins Sheba in the “This is my only acting credit” department. Fortunately Rick Burks and Carl Crew, who played the two cannibal brothers were just regular bad, though the script they had to work with didn’t do them any favours. Drew Godderis also managed a tolerable performance as the brain in a jar psycho uncle, though he is helped by just being a voice actor.

I get the impression half of the joke here is meant to be that the film is really bad. This kind of thing never really works for me. Things being intentionally bad always fail to reach that “So bad it’s good” category. Most humour works best when played straight, most funny low budget movies work best when the makers treat it seriously, no matter how crazy the ideas they are working on are. Here it seemed they spent too long laughing at their own jokes. Really a lot of this plays like a series of sketches haphazardly thrown together, with most of it adding nothing to the overall story.

Concussion.

Ultimately, this is one big fail. The concept could have worked, but not with this director, writer and most of these actors. Some people may be able to get a kick out of it and I think being drunk and/or high will help. But coming in dry, it’s just plain bad. I give it a few points for trying to be fun and for the half decent concept, but the most generous I can be with this one is a low 3.5/10. On a side note, I like the trailer. It’s better than the movie. That’s all. Happy Halloween and whatever your viewing tonight (If anything), I hope it’s better that this!