Sometimes, you just want to watch a bunch of crappy lost 80s horror movies that have been transferred directly from old VHS tapes to DVD and sold at ridiculous budget prices. These four flicks are so worthy of this special treatment.
DREAMANIAC (1986)
It appears the shitty 1991 flick Shock ‘Em Dead totally stole the plot of this early film by homoerotic pseudo horror director David DeCoteau. If only DeCoteau had stayed on this path, he might still be making halfway decent crap horror films. This one blows away Shock ‘Em Dead.
The general plot is similar—some dude wants to be a rock star, so he sells his soul to a demon and in exchange, she needs the blood of humans. Thing is, that simple plot is barely detectable. All I really got was that a guy in a Def Leppard T-shirt has a party with a bunch of his friends, and some hot demon chick shows up to kill them.
Despite being a sloppy mess, Dreamaniac is drenched in 80s goodness. The synth score sounds like an 80s pop rock record. There’s loads of neon light, plus continuous thunder and lightning to establish classic 80s horror atmosphere. The kids’ fashions rock, plus sex and kills abound.
There are two final girls, and there’s actually some pretty good gore, especially when a drill comes on the scene at the end.
If only the demon/succubus chick actually looked like a demon. She’s simply a skanky hot 80s chick. She should at least get gnarly teeth the two times she chomps off dicks during blow jobs (yep, twice at one party—what a demon slut). At one point, one of the murdered boys becomes a re-animated corpse, but instead of playing up that angle and having all the dead return, the film keeps it as a one-off situation.
Since this is a David DeCoteau film, most important is that he makes sure—even in 1986—that teen gay boys are just as stimulated by horror as the straight boys. The movie opens with our main guy walking through smoke machines in his undies.
Pretty much all the guys get down to their tighty whities, and when one is tied up and electrocuted, the camera angle is from down below and aimed right up at his crotch. Awesome. And there is one rather geeky boy who totally reads as gay.
MUTANT HUNT (1987)
Speaking of homoerotic horror directors, Mutant Hunt comes from Tim Kincaid, also known as gay porn director Joe Gage.
In this piece of trash, cyborgs that were apparently developed to be sex machines (from what I could follow) are turning into killing machines.
This cyborg definitely has something up his sleeve.
He’s also very popular in the fisting community.
These male cyborgs shoot laser guns and also tend to have meltdowns—literally. All the gore in this film pretty much comes from the cyborgs being melted and mutilated, which actually makes them more frightening than their human appearances.
Meanwhile, this hot dude (Rick Gianasi) is having sex when cyborgs bust into spoil his fun. This begins a long fight scene of cyborgs against Gianasi in his tighty whities. Best scene in the whole movie.
Anyway, Gianisi and his friends spend the entire movie going around a very b-movie version of a low-life city in the 80s. Eventually, an 80s skank with an evil plan creates the ultimate male cyborg.
After feeling up his big muscular back, she sets him lose on Gianasi and friends for yet another street fight. While Gianasi isn’t in his undies this time, a female team member does randomly rip open her blouse in the middle of a fight. I guess she was trying to distract the male sex cyborg? Just watch this one for the gory cyborg faces and hottie Rick Gianasi and his adorably 80s sidekick.
WARRIORS OF THE WASTELAND (aka: The New Barbarians) (1983)
Those homoerotic horror directors are wimps. Warriors of the Wasteland is where all the gay perversion is at. I’m shocked the Christian crazies don’t show this post-apocalyptic flick as a cautionary tale, because it plays right into their predictions about gays taking over the world.
It’s 2019, and the planet has become a desert. There’s a band of religious folk just trying to survive. However, a nasty gang of Bible-hating gay bikers is determined to annihilate them and wipe out the human race.
Meanwhile, a sexy dude named Scorpion is determined to stop the baddies, also known as the “big bad queers,” as Fred Williamson of From Dusk Till Dawn calls them. See, whenever Scorpion gets into an action-packed racing battle with the gay bikers and it’s more than he can handle, Fred shoots them with arrows that blow up their heads. I won’t comment on the racial sexual politics of that metaphor.
Eventually, the big bad queers abduct Scorpion and we get the sci-fi version of Cruising. As neon rainbow strobes flash, the lusting men strap Scorpion up, circle him, and crank a special machine that forces him to bend over. Then their master rips open the ass of Scorpion’s pants, unbuckles his own pants, and “initiates” Scorpion.
Scorpion takes it like a man—but he does end up wearing leather chaps and see-through chest armor for the final battle against his enemies. However, he gets his revenge on the master, literally drilling him in the rear during a car chase. From the look on the master’s face, it’s clear he’s strictly top.
In the end, heterosexuality wins. Scorpion’s new woman moves up to his left side, and the annoying as fuck brat from The House by the Cemetery and Manhattan Baby moves up to his left and takes his hand, making them an ideal family unit.
Sure, it’s a seriously homophobic plot, but the fact is, the gay bikers want to annihilate the religious folk for a reason—they are the ones who caused the apocalypse. Yes, Warriors of the Wasteland really does seem to be predicting the future.
PRISONERS OF THE LOST UNIVERSE (1983)
I’m not sure how I never saw this one on cable as a teen, but if I had, I would have watched it a million times. Yes, it’s that bad.
Richard Hatch of Battlestar Galactica is just minding his own business, fixing his car on the side of the road, when the amazing Kay Lenz drags him into a scientist’s teleportation machine, which lands them in a barbaric dimension.
There’s hokey comedy, cheesy action, a tribe with blinking red goggles, a creepy water creature in the lake, a big scary goon in a loincloth, a green faced good guy, Richard Hatch’s tight 80s jeans, and John Saxon as an evil Warlord, looking sexy as hell.
The water creature should have had a bigger part, because this one turns into ridiculous 80s fluff. Hell, the water creature should have gotten his own movie.
Rock on! I used to have Mutant Hunt on VHS.