When you catch a spring cold, nothing’s more important than staying home and getting lots of rest on the couch…while drinking plenty of Cherry Cola and watching bad horror movies nonstop. And no one’s a better magnet for them than me. I watched so many dang films I’m breaking this into two separate blogs, beginning with the comedy/dark comedy/exploitation stuff.
THE SASQUATCH GANG (2006)
Goofy flick The Sasquatch Gang isn’t even a horror comedy, but I’m covering it because it’s about a hunt for Bigfoot…and it’s totally 80s.
I’d describe it as Napoleon Dynamite meets Stand By Me. In fact, Napoleon and Uncle Rico both appear in the film, so it’s clear the goal was the same style of “nothing really happens during a day in the life of small town rednecks” humor.
A trio of geeky friends hangs out doing totally 80s stuff like going to the video store and the arcade and listening to a boom box…
Then they find piles of poop in the woods that they believe belong to a Bigfoot.
Meanwhile, Justin Long and Joey Kern (Big Bear, Cabin Fever) are their redneck neighbors and enemies, and pretty much steal the comedy show, especially Kern. There’s even a lot of flirtation with him being hot for Justin Long, but it’s never fully confronted.
Other familiar faces include Mr. Action Jackson himself Carl Weathers, Ray Santiago of Ash vs. Evil Dead, and Jeremy Sumpter (Animal, The Culling, Excision) as the lead character.
If you’re a fan of Napoleon Dynamite, definitely check this one out.
DEAD MOON RISING (2007)
Indie horror king Jason Crowe is the lead and narrates this zomcom, sort of Zombieland style.
Don’t feed the bears…
He also carries the movie with the comic duo help of his boss at the car rental place.
Once they realize there’s a zombie apocalypse outside their store door, they hit the street, fight zombies that stay mostly faceless in fast clips to hide the lack of makeup, meet a crew of other survivors, and hole up in a warehouse.
Sure, it’s low budget and follows the typical zombie flick plot, but there’s plenty of gut munching, girl-on-girl action, and mockery of conservative values that applies more than ever today.
Plus, Crowe whips out an awesome funny zombie gun at the end, and, there’s a fricking Tommy Tutone reference slipped in.
NO SOLICTORS (2015)
When this film began with chipper music and footage of a charming suburban neighborhood…then cut to a bound woman getting her clearly fake boob (and I don’t mean implants) sliced off, I got the sense I was in for a cheesy good time.
That feeling continued for a while. Eric Roberts is a doctor.
His campy wife (Beverly Randolph’s first role since Return of the Living Dead in 1985) and grown daughter and hot son help him harvest body parts to sell…while they eat everything not used.
They have “patients” tied up in their basement, including Felissa Rose.
They torture and mutilate them with extremely graphic precision. Kincaid from Elm Street 3 makes a disappointingly brief appearance.
However, while some bad movie plots circle the drain, this film can’t even find the drain. It just goes on and on with no real point or story arc. And the fact that it’s almost an hour and forty minutes makes it even more grueling to get through.
But if you stick around until the end, there’s suddenly a new killer in drag tossed in. Don’t ask me why.
HOOKER WITH A HACKSAW (2017)
If you can’t figure out what you’re getting based on the title of this film, then you’ve really labeled yourself a diehard fan of the wrong genre of film. So what are you getting? A film that looks like it was shot on a camcorder in 1985 in the director’s hometown.
We get right to it, with our main girl watching a dude using a hacksaw make lewd gestures…which ignites her desire to grab the hacksaw and go to town on his head.
She gets a call from a John and goes to his house…where he makes her ride a skull’s face while he jerks off.
And then she has a run-in with Jason Crowe (of Dead Moon Rising above), gets away, and spends the rest of the film hacking up his goons in various ways.
Needless to say, phallic death scenes abound. It’s over the top special effects and 1980s style low budget horror music throughout.
Eventually our hooker faces off against Crowe. In other words, he has less screen on time in the movie than a fan would hope for.
SOFT MATTER (2018)
It all begins with a really bizarre and cheesy low budget sci-if experiment as scientists try to discover the key to immortality…and create a human/fish head in a bucket in a cleaning closet…
Meanwhile, two artists break into the lab, assuming the building is abandoned. You would hope for a good old killer creature feature and a body count, but nothing of much interest happens until near the end, when human fish head finally turns into a full human fish person…that can shoot cheesy 1980s laser effects from its fingers.
I would have been able to totally get into the human fish creature shooting cheesy 80s lasers if it had more camera time and more kills throughout the film.
But it all happens at the end, concluding with a battle in the dark with just black light makeup and lasers creating a very cartoonish sequence set to a techno beat.
