Since I’ve recently added them to my collection, it’s time to look at 3 that take us from the mid-90s to the turn of the millennium.
MOSQUITO (1994)
If you’re a fan of 1990s big bug film Ticks but haven’t seen 1990s big bug film Mosquito, what are you waiting for?
It’s pure big bug cheese, with real creature effects for the most part—and I wouldn’t even call the really bad graphic bug moments CGI. It practically looks like bad animation…and kind of reminded me of the locust scenes in the Exorcist II.
Anyway, after a hokey spaceship crash scene, the big mosquitos begin attacking…and the first victim is some redneck dude chased out of an outhouse with his bare ass bouncing in the breeze. Yay! There’s also a sex scene in a tent featuring boobs and some hints of man butt. Yay!
However, it’s this flannel and jeans daddy bear that was my eye candy throughout the film.
The kills are deliciously gory, and the mosquitos literally suck the life out of victims, so this is a visual horror treat.
The group of main characters that runs around the woods trying to get away from the mosquitos includes original Leatherface Gunnar Hansen.
There are major mosquito attacks as they try to escape in an RV and after they hole up in a house, so the pacing delivers on loads of mosquito action. And even the “high-def” Blu-ray of this film has a bit of a fuzzy VHS picture quality, so it’s a total nostalgia treat.
SORCERESS (1995)
After a series of classic 80s and 90s horror and cult films (Chopping Mall, Not of This Earth, Return of the Swamp Thing, Transylvania Twist, Sorority House Massacre II, 976-Evil 2), director Jim Wynorski began moving into skin flick territory, and this is somewhat of a gateway flick.
Julie Strain performs a ritual to kill Linda Blair’s husband, mostly letting her tits do the talking. She tries to shut them up by squeezing them with her fingers a lot, but that just seems to embolden them. Then Julie’s husband comes home and she accidentally gets killed, but swears vengeance for her death.
Linda’s husband ends up in wheelchair, Blacula is their lawyer friend who works at the same firm as him, and Julie’s husband also works there. Basically, this is a film in which Julie haunts her hubby from the grave as women throw themselves at him in between him having flashbacks to all the great sex he had with Julie, including a threesome with another woman.
Adorable leading man Larry Poindexter has amazing hair, a furry chest, and gets his ass kissed by one of his women, which is basically the highlight here. It’s just not fair when you realize the actress got paid for that opportunity.
There are a few kills, mostly with gun, and Linda Blair dabbles in some ritual magic for a moment, but she’s really not the star here. The sex scenes are the star.
GHOSTS OF MARS (2001)
By 2001 it was like John Carpenter didn’t have anywhere left to go with horror…so he went to Mars in the future. Ugh.
In retrospect, the cast is pretty cool. Natasha Henstridge of Species stars, along with Jason Statham, Pam Grier, Clea DuVall, Joanna Cassidy, and Ice Cube, who, when we look back at his performance here, reminds us that the character he always plays is probably just Ice Cube.
The plot involves an intergalactic police crew sent to a mining operation on Mars to transport a prisoner. They explore the very red and abandoned location for a while, things seem off and creepy, and then they get attacked by what are basically Mad Max baddies on Mars with a Subspecies vampire clone as their leader.
Ghosts of an ancient civilization have possessed all the miners, creating a violent tribe of killers. If the police kill one of them, the ghost jumps out of the body and has to possess someone else. But there’s a mysterious drug that just might help the police escape the planet, as long as they team up with some criminals.
A painful mashup of various subgenres, the film lacks suspense, scares, likable characters, or gore, and even the action battles leave something to be desired. Ghosts of Mars feels more like a pre-Scream 1990s horror movie, when directors were trying to do any ridiculous thing they could think of to make a horror movie story that wasn’t a slasher. In other words, it might as well have been a bad direct-to-video movie from 1994.
