Night of the Demons (1988)

Directed by Kevin Tenney
Starring Mimi Kincade, Linnea Quigley, Alvin Alexis
Rated R
USA

"Eat a bowl of fuck. I am here to party."

Night of the Demons is one of the most instantly memorable 80's shlock-horror hits. Released just before Halloween in 1988, it was a very modest theatrical hit, but once it hit VHS shelves a year later, it became a cult classic, and remains a Halloween staple for horror fans to this day. Demons was directed by Kevin Tenney, who had just scored a surprise hit with his directorial debut, 1986's Witchboard. Much like that film, Demons uses a séance as the springboard for the ensuing Satanic antics, only this one is more firmly rooted in the slasher genre, peppering the typical teenage sex n' death motifs with a bizarre superimposed latex demon who makes a couple of brief and pointless appearances throughout the film. Aiding and abetting this gory monstrosity is a cast of over-aged adolescents, including then-reigning scream queen Linnea Quigley, who provides the film with its most alarming moment (it involves her left boob and a tube of lipstick). Kevin's brother Dennis provided original tunes for the eye-rolling soundtrack, and the cheapjack gore effects were by Steve Johnson, Quigley's one-time hubby. For all intents and purposes, it was an all-star 80's horror event, and like most things in the 80's, the results were chintzy, brainless, and frequently hilarious. Sometimes even on purpose.

Angela (jazz choreographer-turned actress-turned dog whisperer Mimi Kincade) is a sour-faced, black-laced high school goth girl who decides to throw a Halloween bash at one Hull House, the local haunted-place-no-one-ever-goes-to. There was some sort of massacre there many years ago, and no one knows exactly what happened. You know how that goes. With a little help from her saucy friend Suzanne (Linnea Quigley, way over the teen-vamp age limit), she manages to shoplift a sack full of booze and party favors, and proceeds to Halloween-ize the already spooky old joint.

Eventually, a handful of 80's stereotypes show up for the party, including a fat stooge named Stooge (Hal Havins, Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-o-rama), a skittish, possibly gay black dude in a pirate outfit (Alvin Alexis), a virginal good girl (Cathy Podewell, Dallas), a heartless cad (Lance Fenton, Heathers), etc. Things go pretty good - lots of drinkin', dancin', and neckin' ensue - until they decide to mess with forces from the beyond. Utilizing a full-length mirror and some of Angela's goth-girl mumbo jumbo, they accidentally summon a demon from his sleep chamber in the basement crematorium (did I mention Hull House was once a funeral home?), who summarily takes over their bodies one by one, using them to attack, murder and mutilate the others. Can anyone escape this Night of the Demons?

Well, sure. All they really have to do is jump over the fuckin' fence.

Night of the Demons is virtually plotless, woefully miscast, and often resembles little more than a walk-through tour of a rickety state-fair haunted-house attraction. That being said, the film still succeeds as a wildly entertaining period piece. For one thing, the atmosphere - especially in the opening scenes - is wonderfully thick. In fact, Night of the Demons captures the sights, sounds, and smells of Halloween better than any other 80's film I can think of. The soundtrack is frequently amazing - Dennis Michael Tenney's song about computer dating has to be heard to be believed - and roots the film firmly in the high 80's, as does Angela's uber-goth get-up and Stooge's punk-slob persona. Casting a 30 year old Linnea Quigley as a hot-to-trot teen was also a brilliantly wrong-headed move, and she makes the most of it, flashing her ass and wildly over-emoting at  Every turn. And of course, the infamous lipstick-in-the-nipple scene is still as effective as ever. Sure, Night of the Demons is garbage, but it's tasty, brightly-colored garbage, full of dimestore gore, obnoxious characters, a smattering of nudity, and a whole haunted house full of dumb fun.

Two by-the-numbers, straight-to-VHS sequels soon followed, and a still-unreleased remake (starring Shannon Elizabeth and Tiffany Shepis!) was shot in 2009. Don't bother with any of them until you've seen the original.

-Ken McIntyre

Flavia the Heretic (1974)

Directed by Gianfranco Mingozzi

Starring Florinda Bolkan, Maria Casares, Claudio Cassenelli

Unrated

Italy

"Running away, huh? What happened to all that masculine arrogance?

As a young child, Flavia (played by Florinda Bolkan), witnessed the beheading of a Muslim warrior during a battle with Catholic soldiers. Shortly thereafter, her father sent her to a convent to live the remainder of her life.

During her long years at the convent, Flavia becomes fixated with a wall painting of a saint. Flavia sees this saint as the Muslim warrior she had witnessed beheaded as a youth. She sees him as a great and brave man. The mother superior just thinks that she is confusing her feeling of affection for this painting for her lust for flesh, but Flavia wants to hear nothing of it.

In fact, as the movie progresses, Flavia begins to see the Christian men around her as the root of all evils in the world. During her stay, she sees a horse castrated (which I would say is the real deal), a woman raped, a group of horny hippies shunned from the convent for their wicked ways, and one of her sisters punished severely for falling under the influence of the cult that had visited.


Being sick of these horrors of man, she decides to leave the convent. On her journey, she meets a Jewish man to whom she grows quite fond of. Unfortunately, Flavia and her companion are quickly captured and Flavia is sent back to the convent.


Upon her return, Flavia is whipped as punishment for her transgresses at the command of her father. She spits at him angrily as he watches on, symbolizing her complete disgust at this man and his evil ways.


One day, during a festival honoring the Virgin Mary, an army of Muslims come in from the sea and seize the city. Instead of running away, Flavia eagerly gives herself over to the leader, seeing him as her savior.

Once she returns to the leader's castle, she asks for help in getting her revenge against her people, and he happily complies.


Flavia returns to the convent as a warrior herself and leads the troops into her once home to capture and torture the sisters and the men who led her down this path.


By taking her revenge, Flavia inadvertently becomes the very thing she was disgusted by and fighting against.


Flavia the Heretic is a compelling and shocking film. At the same time you are rooting for Flavia and her cause, you also condemn her actions, staring in disbelief at what you witness her become in the process.


You could say that Flavia the Heretic is a nunsploitation movie, which would be true, but it is also so much more. It not only tackles many moral quandaries, but also is artful, surreal and utterly hypnotizing in the way that it takes you on a journey to which you never know where you'll end up next.

Synapse Films has Flavia the Heretic in an uncut, uncensored cut and I highly recommend it to anyone who appreciates challenging cinema and has a strong stomach. Enjoy.

- Jeremy Vaca

High School Confidential (1958)

Directed by Jack Arnold
Starring Russ Tamblyn, Mamie Van Doren, Diane Jergens, John Drew Barrymore
Unrated
USA

"You got 32 teeth, you wanna try for none?"

Director Jack Arnold was a drive-in kingpin, known for his prolific output of 50's horror and sci-fi flicks - classic Cold War junk like It Came from Outer Space (1953), Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957) and Monster on the Campus (1958). Likewise, producer Al Zugsmith knew how to dole out heaping helping of cheap kicks - his resume includes classic trash like Sex Kittens Got o College (1960), Female Animal (1958), and the notorious Fanny Hill (1964). Throw in bleach-blonde sexpot Mamie Van Doren and a cast of familiar names and faces - including Charlie Chaplin, Jr, Russ Tamblyn and Michael Landon - and it would be difficult not to end up with a crowd-pleasing bit of teenage nonsense. Given the era it was created in, you can forgive High School Confidential for it's final-act reveal as a an ill-conceived cautionary tale, because for a good hour or so, it's full-on gonzo, a delectable feast of impossible beatnik slang, improbable tough guys, drug-addled rich girls. nihilistic poetry slams, and the force of nature va-va-voom of legendary man-killer Van Doren.

Tony Baker (West Side Story's Russ Tamblyn) is the new kid in town, and on his very first day at school, he threatens to knock some dude's teeth out in the parking lot, hits on the first hot dame he sees, defies the local street gang, offers the principal's secretary a joint, and pretty much defies authority every chance that he gets. It's no surprise, really. Tony's a knockaround kid from Chicago, on his 7th year of high school - he kept back three times, and had to do two years in the army inbetween. Which probably makes him about 25 at this point. Anyway, Baker means to take over the school, but to do that, he'd have to join the Wheeler Dealers, but dig, Baker don't join no gangs, the gangs join him.

Tony's first class is with pretty-but-uptight Miss Williams (Jan Sterling). Naturally, he disrupts class with his antics, but Miss Williams is not having it, so she escorts him to the principal's office. Meanwhile, Wheeler-dealers boss JI (John Drew Barrymore, father of Drew) takes over the class to reinterpret teach's lesson in Lord Buckley-esque jive-speak. Unfortunately, JI is pretty much a square, so it sorta falls flat.

Meanwhile, skull-faced Principal Robinson has a talk with young Tony, but it does no good. He tells him that if there's any trouble, he'll call the juvenile authorities, which probably wouldn't be too effective for a dude that's already drinking age.

Tony goes home for a glass of milk and gets hit on by his sexy, boozy aunt Gwen (Mamie Van Doren). So that's weird.

And then she makes out with him, which is even weirder.

Tony doesn't dig the incest scene, though, because he's got his peepers locked on a blonde kitten named Joan (Diane Jergens), who just happens to be JI's best-girl. So this is all going to end badly.

JI corners Tony in the locker room with a bunch of his goons, but Tony pulls out a switchblade and everybody scatters.

So the jury's still out, really. Meanwhile, Miss Williams runs out of gas and accepts a ride home from Tony. He takes the opportunity to hit on her. She doesn't bite.

Meanwhile, we find out a shocking fact about sweet, innocent Joan - she's hopelessly addicted to reefer! What madness! Luckily, her dad's rich, so she's working a few scams to feed her habit.

And then JI and Joan hit the local hotspot, where The Poetess (Phillipa Fallon) does some awesome beat-poetry. Pounding the piano behind her is the sinister Mr. A, portrayed by none other than Jackie (Uncle Fester) Coogan!

Later on, Joan invites Tony to a pool party. He tells her he's looking to score some weed to sell, and she points him in the direction of one Jukey Judlow. And then they make out, since she's finally got a decent connection.

But when her heroin-addled pal Doris stumbles in, Tony gets all concerned-citizen on her. So that was weird.

Turns out Judlow's small time, so Tony has to buy in bulk from JI, who reports to Mr A. It's complicated.

Also, because it's 1958, there's a hot rod race. Also because it's 1958, the original teenage werewolf, Michael Landon, is driving one of the cars. It's all good times until the fuzz shows up. Even worse, they discover the giant bag of drugs Tony just bought from JI. Luckily for Tony, Mr. A pays his bail.

Concerned for her new student, Miss Williams pays a visit to Aunt Gwen. She chases her off. And then she busts in on Tony so she can watch him change. When he brushes her off, she threatens to talk to the cops about his fledgling weed business. Tony is not concerned.

Back at the club, Joan and Tony enjoy a coupla drinks and some tunes, but they're interrupted by JI, who tells Tony Mr A wants to see him.

On his way out the door, Aunt Gwen shows up with some shmoe to make Tony jealous. Aunt Gwen might be fucking crazy. He gets picked up by Bix (Ray Anthony), who has a car phone! 1958 was like the future!

Mr. A wants Tony to shoot heroin with him (what a party!), but quick-thinking Tony shoots the drugs into a rubber ball instead. Wait, what?

Turns out Tony is just a dirty narc! But now his case against Mr. A has hit a few snags. Like, for instance, the stoned-to-her-tits teenager in his bed.

Luckily, Joan's too dulled by pot to piece together what's really going on. Tony calls up Miss Williams and gets her to come over to tend to the wayward youth.

Then there's the constantly soused Aunt Gwen to contend with. She's not psyched about any of this.

Conveniently, she passes out on the floor.

So, off Tony goes to make the bust. But has Mr. A already sussed him out? Bix picks him up at the door, but is he taking him to Mr. A's place, or straight to the cemetery? And also, which one of these chicks is Tony going end up banging? And also, how did Joan get addicted to Marijuana?

Despite its totally squaresville moral message about the phantom destructive powers of pot, everything else about High School Confidential exudes a breezy cool, from the tongue-twisting beatnik slang, to the awe-inspiring coffeehouse poetry-slam, to Mamie Van Doren's gleefully over-the-top performance as a booze-powered sexual predator. While the stark photography and stage-y camerawork grounds it firmly in the 50's, like the Jerry Lee Lewis tune that it opens with, High School Confidential still rocks like crazy. Sure, it could have definitely used a little more Mamie - she's only on screen for about three glorious minutes - but this is still a classic slice of teensploitation. And that ain't no jive, Charlie Brown.

- Ken McIntyre

The Witch Who Came From The Sea (1976)

Directed by Matt Cimber

Starring Millie Perkins, Lonny Chapman, Vanessa Brown

Rated R

USA

"Do you shave with razors, or is this all going to be agonizingly slow?"

Millie Perkins is Molly, a Miami Beach barmaid who just happens to be losing her mind.

We first meet Molly on the beach with her two nephews. The children ask her about their grandfather, who from stories told to them in the past, was a great sea captain who tragically became lost at sea and was never seen from again. Molly talks lovingly about her father as she wistfully explains that he was too good for the world, and that was the reason he had left.

As Molly ruminates, she glances over at a pair of hunky beefcakes working out on the beach. As she stares at them with a seemingly lustful eye, her vision of them shifts dramatically to become that of them being brutally killed by an unseen hand. This is the point when we see that something is a bit amiss.

Shaking off the episode, Molly and her nephews make their way from the beach and pass a tattoo parlor. Molly's eyes become transfixed on a drawing of a mermaid on the outside window of the shop. She goes onto tell the children that no decent person would get a tattoo. Suddenly, the trio are quickly chased off by a tattoo-faced man inside the shop and they continue on to the boys' house.

Upon arriving to the children's mother's house, the three of them cuddle up on the couch to watch some football on TV. As they sit there, the conversation alternates between Molly and her sister arguing about whether or not their dad really was the great man that Molly remembers him to be and of Molly rambling about how beautiful and perfect two of the players in the football game are.

That night, Molly has a dream in which she is in a hotel room with the two football players she was admiring earlier. The scene turns quickly from laughing, pot smoking, and sex to Molly tying the two up to the bed and slicing off their manhood with a razor blade.

Upon waking, Molly soon learns that the two men she had dreamed of killing were indeed murdered that night- in the same way in which she had dreamt it.

From this point onward, we are led on a journey of uncertainties. Is Molly the killer? Is what we're seeing on screen reality or simply a scene from Molly's deranged mind? What is the true identity of her father and what does he have to do with her current state? The genius of this film is that you never feel certain of what is real and what is a delusion, even as the climax comes to fruition.

Originally advertised as a horror film, The Witch Who Came From The Sea never quite found it's audience. Hopefully, with this re-release, this film can finally be seen by those who can view it not from what they think it should be, but what it actually is: a true gem of 70's psychological drama.

The Witch Who Came From The Sea is a perfect film for anyone who thought Lifetime movies would be much better if they made you feel like you were on Quaaludes and acid, and included some penis severings and nudity to round everything out. I, for one, am that type of person - and I hope you are too!

- Jeremy Vaca

Showgirls (1995)

Directed by Paul Verhoeven
Starring Elizabeth Berkley, Gina Gershon, Kyle Machlachan
NC-17
USA

"I'm erect. Why aren't you erect?"

Created by the zillionaire writing/directing team of Joe Eszterhas and Paul Verhoeven - who had recently struck box office gold with Basic Instinct - Showgirls was meant to be an epic Hollywood spectacle filled with flesh, flash and heart-rending melodrama. Budgeted at a comfortable 45 million dollars - including 2 million that went right into Eszterhas's pocket for his screenwriting fee - the movie does, indeed, deliver on that promise. But it's so much more, as well. Basically the most expensive sexploitation flick ever made, Showgirls straddles so many genres at once - drama, pitch-black comedy, musical, satire, morality tale, softcore, 70s' style rape and revenge - that it means something different to everyone that gazes into it. It's like a reflecting pool, only with bonus vagina.

The story revolves around one Nomi Malone (Saved by the Bell star Elizabeth Berkley, acting as hard as she possibly can) , a tightly-wound spazz prone to kicking inanimate objects and shoving people. Despite her obvious psychosis, she manages to charm everyone who she collides with, including an Elvis-y truck driver who she hitches with to Vegas and a showgirl-revue seamstress named Molly (Gina Ravera), who lets her move in with her in her tiny trailer on the edge of town.

You may ask yourself why someone with a job that probably pays $70,000 a year is living in a trailer, or why she would take a stray like Nomi in - who, incidentally, puked on her the moment they met - but that's the magic of Showgirls. Much like the city it takes place in, the normal laws of physics, gravity, and common sense mean nothing in Showgirls. It exists in its very own reality, a delightfully screwy world where everybody's naked all the time, where women speak of nothing except food and their own breasts, and where men live only to manipulate and humiliate topless dancers. I know, that sounds like an awful place, but really, it's awesome.

Nomi gets a job at a sleazeball strip club called Cheetahs. Eventually Cristal (Gina Gershon), the star of a topless show at the Riveria called Goddess, and her cad of a boyfriend Zack (Kyle MacLachlan) - the entertainment director of the Riveria - get wind of this dramatic new talent, and recruit her for their show. As Nomi's ambition knows no bounds, she kicks and claws her way from background dancer to star in no time flat, and goes head to head with Cristal in the dance-fight to end all dance-fights.

That, of course, is the short version. There's a ton of crazy bullshit that happens along the way. This is really a seeing-is-believing sort of film, so mere descriptions of the non-stop outrage and excess would not do it justice. I mean, this movie has naked girls and monkeys - in the same scene. It's fuckin' bananas.

In summation: A fizzing, career-killing bomb upon its release, over the years Showgirls has been embraced by snarky critics and irony-buffs as a delightfully campy disaster. In fact, it is difficult to find a review anywhere that doesn't, at some point, called Showgirls an aggressively bad film, even while praising its many charms. I do not agree with this assessment. Showgirls is not a bad film, Showgirls is a towering, swaggering epic of tits and screaming, a life-gulping orgy of psychotic behavior, pneumatic fucking, and weird, heavy metal death-fantasy dance sequences. It is a Hollywood cocaine seizure of the highest order. How could a movie possibly be bad when it does not have any boring parts? Showgirls is all id, all snapping jaws and iced-up nipples, and Berkley and Gershon are tremendous and legendary rivals. It is virtually impossible to figure out where their characters end and they begin, or vice-versa - their whole relationship, in the film and on the set, seems fueled by mutual loathing. Also, there are scenes in this film that you will never, ever get out of your head once you've seen them. Nomi's epileptic pool-fuck will probably flash through your head in your final moments. For all these reasons and so many more - Versace! - Showgirls should be lauded for what it really is - a demented masterpiece.


- Ken McIntyre