And Now A Few Words From Our Sponsors....

Double Bill! The Velvet Vampire (1971) w/ Scream Of The Demon Lover (1970)

Velvet Vampire

Directed by Stephanie Rothman.

Starring Michael Blodgett and Sherry Miles.

IMDB


Scream of the Demon Lover

Directed by José Luis Merino.

Starring Erna Schürer.

IMDB

A great double-feature trailer from two obscure early-70's cheapie horror films.

Scream of the Demon Lover was a European film called Ivanna brought into American distribution by Roger Corman's New World Pictures and Velvet Vampire is a largely forgotten American film produced by Charles Swartz who was the head of production at Corman's company.

I'm not sure of the origins of this trailer but seeing that they were both Corman entities, these two films were probably screened back to back at some drive-ins at the time.

Humanoids from the Deep (1980)

Directed by Barbara Peters.

Starring Vic Morrow.

IMDB

Another bizzare entry from the extensive Roger Corman-produced catalogue that revolves around pollution created fish-men rising from the water to mate with human women!

Barbara Peters, who directed another Cult Trailers favourite "Bury Me An Angel", was fired from this movie by Corman after she refused to shoot additional footage of the monsters attacking some young women in an effort to get more nudity in the film.

Vic Morrow would go on to star in two movies by one of my personal favourite directors, Enzo G. Castellari, in "The Last Shark" and "1990: Bronx Warriors" over the next two years before being killed in an accident on the set of the "Twilight Zone" film during a segment being directed by John Landis.

Popcorn (1991)

Full Movie


Directed by Mark Herrier.

Starring Jill Schoelen and Dee Wallace.

IMDB

The Stuff (1985)

Directed by Larry Cohen.

Starring Michael Moriarty and Garrett Morris.

IMDB

A product of its time, the 80's, when mass advertising and the tide of junk food began to take over. This is a truly fun and subversive dig at the plastic Reagan 80's by Larry Cohen, who was also responsible for a similarly themed It's Alive in 1974 (although the Stuff turns out to be an all-natural substance from the core of the earth!!).

One of the first "consumer culture gone wrong" horror films (besides the original Dawn of the Dead), The Stuff pays homage to classic films like The Blob and Invasion Of The Body Snatchers while still packing in all sorts of 80's strangeness that makes this a nice piece of memorabilia.

Among my group of friends when I was a young kid, this movie was a video store favourite because it was harmless enough that the parents didn't really care and gross enough to get us our kicks.

The Pink Panther (1963)

Directed by Blake Edwards.

Starring Peter Sellers, David Niven, Robert Wagner, Capucine and Claudia Cardinale.

IMDB

This is not the type of film usually featured on this site but I wanted to show it simply because you never see trailers like this anymore.

Animation and quirky title sequences were abandoned in the early 90's with few exceptions so watching something like this is an obscure experience in the post-ironic age of modern comedy.

It also doesn't hurt that the Pink Panther is a near perfect comedy that never gets old.

The Funhouse (1981)

Watch the entire movie here!


Directed by Tobe Hooper.

Starring Elizabeth Berridge and Shawn Carson.

IMDB

I've seen this film many times over the years and am always struck by its Saturday afternoon throwback style. Despite its rather gruesome poster, The Funhouse was fairly tame for the period that it came out in and is filled with old-fashioned scares.

Hooper would hit it big with Poltergeist the next year, further removing him from his counter-culture past as the helmer of the iconic Texas Chainsaw Massacre in 1974.

Reform School Girls (1986)

Directed by Tom DeSimone.

Starring Linda Carol, Wendy O. Williams and Sybil Danning.

IMDB

This film could very well be held up as the definition of trash cinema. Yet this had major studio backing and grossed a respectable 2 million at the box office.

Just as the trailer indicates, this film is totally over the top and it's hard not to have a good time watching the likes of Williams and Pat Ast snarl their way through ridiculously campy performances.

80's Metal Movie Tie-Ins

Dated?

Uh, a little. But horror movies and bad hair metal had a thing going on in the 80's and here's a few samples of some of those glorious train wrecks.

First up, Dokken does the main theme song for 1987's Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors. This brings me back to my youth when I took stuff like this quite seriously. I wonder what's more scary to main star Patricia Arquette - Freddy Krueger and his minion of creepy girls skipping rope or Don Dokken's poodle haircut?





Somehow, this one is worse. Alice Cooper continues his embarrasing 80's slide by penning this keyboard driven drivel for 1986's Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives.

Yet the video itself is entertaining as hell. The theatre setting is great and there are some truly bad special effects, such as Jason ripping through the screen and Alice inexplicably trying to scare the patrons by breaking a glass bottle over his forehead. Oooohh scary!





I have to include this one even though it's not really a music video. It's one of the climactic scenes of 1986's Trick or Treat, one of the best heavy metal themed films from that era.

That's actor Tony Fields as rock demon Sammi Curr but the music is really by Fastway, a second-tier act that included a former member of Motorhead and a guy from U.F.O.

This film also had Ozzy Osbourne in a great cameo as a preacher who railed against heavy metal lyrics and musicians, lampooning the PMRC and Tipper Gore who were in the midst of their metal witch hunts at the time.

The best part of this is when the guitar goes flying through the air and someone randomly yells "Rock and Roll!!".

If you can't stand the Fastway stuff, fast foward because there is some hilarious shenanigans towards the end and a ripping guitar solo straight from hell that could have been the inspiration for Will Ferrel's classic Satan and Garth Brooks sketch from SNL.




And while we're going there, I might as well bring this one out. A scene from 1988's Black Roses.

The context of this scene is that a metal band called Black Roses is playing a small town and the local parents and authorities are concerned about the effects on their kids. They sit in on the first song to make sure that nothing is going on and the band do their best to fool everyone with a vanilla sounding soft rock song. Soon the parents leave and the real metal begins!





Now, the best for last. This is a clip from 1985's Hard Rock Zombies. It's not a metal song, but there's a bunch of long hair bangers doing choreographed dance moves in the film's big montage scene and even some miming. Completely retarded and great.



Had enough yet? This is another clip from Hard Rock Zombies. This is quite possibly the most ridiculous scene ever put on 35 mm film. The band have been killed earlier in the day and then rose from the dead, making sure they still turn up to do their soundcheck for that night's show! This is some kind of love song for the main girl Cassie in the movie. Oh unrequited love!

Sssssss (1973)

Directed by Bernard L. Kowalski.

Starring Strother Martin.

IMDB

Brought to you by the Universal producing team of Zanuck and Brown, the two who would bring us Jaws just two summers later.

Sssss is a bit of a warm-up for that movie which would take drive-in B-movie fare mainstream and make millions of dollars with it.

This trailer has some great voice-over work with lines like "Don't say it, hiss it!" and "Touch your skin. It's scaled. Look for your legs. They're gone. Feel your body. It's cold."

Or how about this classic, "King Cobra versus Mongoose! Or is it man against man?"

Amazing.

The Dungeonmaster (1985) Full Movie!!

Directed by Charles Band and various others.

Starring Jeffrey Byron and Richard Moll.

IMDB

I only got the chance to see this film a few years ago on a specialty cable channel here in Canada, and I've been trying to find it ever since.

This is not on DVD (and may never be) but someone posted the entire film on You Tube and here it is in all its 80's "dawn of computers" glory. This is filled with too many laughs to recount here but it is a memorable experience with roles for people like Richard "Night Court" Moll and an appearance by 80's B-Grade metal band W.A.S.P.

A lot of you probably don't have the time to watch a full film on someone's blog but if you want to waste an hour, have fun with this one.

The Dungeonmaster (1985) Part 1



The Dungeonmaster (1985) Part 2



The Dungeonmaster (1985) Part 3



The Dungeonmaster (1985) Part 4



The Dungeonmaster (1985) Part 5



The Dungeonmaster (1985) Part 6



The Dungeonmaster (1985) Part 7

Cruel Jaws (1995)

Directed by Bruno Mattei.

Starring David Luther.

IMDB

A mind-blowing rip-off of Jaws that actually uses footage from Steven Spielberg's movie as well as Jeannot Szwarc's sequel Jaws 2. What's even better is that this re-uses a ton of footage from Enzo G. Castellari's "Great White" from 1980 which was even more of a rip-off of Jaws than this one. In fact, "Great White" was pulled from distribution after Universal sued.

So this is a second-generation rip-off I guess. It was actually marketed as "Jaws 5" in some regions. Genius.

Mattei was responsible for other great Italian schlock like "Hell of the Living Dead", "Violence In A Women's Prison" and the unheralded dystopia film "Rats".

There are many great moments in this trailer, such as when the little girl in the wheelchair is accidentally dumped into the water and the various re-enactments of scenes from Jaws like the little dog who is the Italian version of "Pippet".

Try and figure out how much footage is actually from Jaws (there is a lot).

Thrashin' (1986)

Directed by David Winters.

Starring Josh Brolin, Robert Rusler and Sherilyn Fenn.

IMDB

A classic from my youth and for awhile, the only skateboard movie worth watching (and probably still is). The trailer focuses a lot on the corny romance sub-plot but there are so many great lines and moments in this film that the trailer doesn't really even come close to giving you the glimpse you need.

The trailer does have the awkward and hilarious quote that paraphrases the famous Brando line in "The Wild One" but my favourite will always be the stoner dude coming out of the house and saying "Oh look, it's the Ramp Locals!" in that 80's Cali-skater accent. Priceless.

I once knew a guy in Montreal who had been in a band called Cory Webster, named after the Josh Brolin character.

One Down, Two to Go (1982)

Directed by Fred Williamson.

Starring Fred Williamson, Jim Brown, Richard Roundtree, Jim Kelly and Joe Spinell.

IMDB

This film brings back three of the stars of 1974's "Three The Hard Way" and adds Richard "Shaft" Roundtree as well as the always great Joe Spinell who, of course, starred in the iconic slasher film "Maniac" as well as other great movies like "Walking The Edge" and Bill Lustig's "Vigilante".

This is also the first film Fred Williamson directed since "Mr. Mean" in 1977 and he would go on a bit of a run by directing 3 movies in the next year including "The Big Score" which would bring back Roundtree, Spinell as well as genre all-stars John Saxon and the late D'Urville Martin.

The tagline for One Down, Two To Go was "Forget the A-team. This is the kick-ass team!"

Be sure to hear one of Williamson's all-time great lines near the end of the trailer.

Tweet

Shock 'Em Dead (1991)

Soundtrack - I'm In Love With A Slut



Continuing with our possession theme, Shock 'Em Dead is a late entry into the short-lived Heavy Metal horror genre but it's a memorable one. It was made in the 90's but its heart is in 1986. This of course stars ex-porn star Traci Lords right after her successful stint in John Waters "Cry Baby".

This trailer has all the elements and goes for the gold right away with a shameless breast exposure. Also watch for nods to the Exorcist and the classic quote, "When you make a deal with the devil, there's always a catch".

If you like fare such as Trick Or Treat, Black Roses or Rock and Roll Zombies, you'll dig this.

Shockingly, this hasn't been put out on DVD yet so you'll have a hard time tracking it down.

Directed by Mark Freed.

Starring Traci Lords, Troy Donahue and Aldo Ray.

IMDB

People Freaking Out Over The Exorcist

This is some footage from 1973 showing various audiences reacting to the then hardcore scares of the Exorcist. I can't think of any film that could be released today that would cause the same reaction. This is fun stuff.

Beyond The Door (1974) aka The Devil Within Her

A Euro-Trash classic and, along with the blaxploitation film "Abby", one of the most unapologetic rip-offs of the mega-succesful "The Exorcist". This has Gabriele Lavia who was also in other great Italian horror films like Deep Red, Inferno and Zeder.

In my opinion, the head-turning scene in this film (as seen in the trailer) is creepier than the one in the Exorcist.

This film made a lot of money in America and it's success made the distributors of Mario Bava's unrelated film "Schock" to release it as "Beyond The Door 2" in North America.

Directed by Ovidio G. Assonitis and Robert Barrett.

Starring Juliet Mills, Richard Johnson and Gabriele Lavia.

IMDB