Adorable Robin Sydney stole the show with her high and horny dance in Evil Bong (and the rest of the franchise, which I blog about here), so I knew I had to see all of her horror flicks. She works mostly with Charles Band and Full Moon Features, and while she’s great at comic and campy acting, I would love to see her as final girl in something more intense. In the meantime, here are three horror flicks to which she brings her charisma….
THE HAUNTED CASINO (2007)
Even with icons like Sid Haig and Michael Berryman in the cast, The Haunted Casino is totally Charles Band/Full Moon filler between their more successful franchises. A guy inherits an abandoned casino, where he and his friends encounter a few former employees of the place that are now ghosts.
Along with Robin, the rest of the attractive cast is charming, which helps. We get some sex jokes, fart humor, a blond babe posing for her hottie boyfriend’s video camera, lesbian flirtation, and a couple of ominous moments like teeth falling out of a slot machine and a toilet overflowing with blood, but essentially, nothing really significant happens at all in the movie until the last 20 minutes.
Sid Haig and Michael Berryman are the ghosts of two guys who massacred a bunch of people in the casino decades before. But they leave all the blood spilling to card dealer ghosts who make victims gamble for their lives. Everyone is pretty much offed one right after the other in the last few minutes of the movie, the main guy wins his bet, Sid Haig delivers a trademark snarky line, snaps his fingers, and he and Michael Berryman disappear, leaving the main guy and Robin to live happily ever after.
Oh. And one more thing. When the card dealers win the hand, their heads turn into typical Charles Band little critter heads for no apparent reason. So again, you have to look at the bright side. It has Robin, a cute cast of pretty people, Sid Haig, and Michael Berryman.
WICKED LAKE (2008)
Robin is the first sight you see in this exploitation flick. And she’s totally naked! She’s posing for an art class. Right after, she strikes up a conversation with a mentally challenged young man who walks her home. He’s either just shy around girls or gay. I’m not quite sure, but he seems pretty gay to me.
Once he gets home, we meet his family—they’re all men, and they all pretty much call him faggot and treat him like their bitch. The leader of the pack kisses him on the mouth then bites his lip. They’re just your typical freaky…all-male…incestuously gay…family?
Meanwhile, Robin and her girlfriends head to a house for a weekend getaway. They get all lesbian with each other. When they make a pit stop, they run into Angela Bettis, who has the most random cameo in the film. There’s an even more random appearance by Al Jourgensen of Ministry, who also happens to do all the industrial cover versions on the soundtrack (which is included with the Blu-ray).
Then the film moves into home invasion territory. The freaky family of men shows up and the physical and sexual abuse begins. It’s a pretty brutal and disturbing scenario, but it isn’t long before the tables are turned, because these chicks are no ordinary girls. I don’t know what exactly they are, but they crave flesh!
Revenge flick time with a supernatural twist. There’s some serious abuse of the men, including sticking a dildo in one guy’s mouth then eating his flesh and sticking a straw in another guy’s head to suck out his brains (we’ve seen that before!). And the girls won’t run out of flesh to eat because other men appear on the scene for various reasons!
It’s nonsensical. It’s trashy. It’s disgusting. It’s for exploitation and grindhouse completists. It’s for Al Jourgensen completists. It’s for Angela Bettis completists. And it’s for guys like me—Robin Syndey completists!
SKULL HEADS (2009)
Again, Robin is back with Charles Band. Skull Heads is straightforward Full Moon fun. All the classic Full Moon cheese is present, including a castle, a villainous plot, and vengeful little critters. And the cast is great in this one.
Robin plays a young woman who has to smuggle modern conveniences into her castle home because her abusive father doesn’t allow her to have them (he ties her to an ancient stretching torture device when he finds any!). Her mother is busy hating the maid. And her uncle has a screw loose. And then there’s grandpa, an invalid in a canopied bed. And all we see of him are his boney hands…like, really, they’re just bones.
When a trio of filmmakers shows up at the castle, hoping to make a movie there, Robin welcomes them happily—especially the cute director, who immediately shows an interest in her. But daddy isn’t very happy, and neither are “the protectors” of the castle, also known as the skull heads: little skeletal critters that hang around the castle and know the filmmakers are up to no good.
The Full Moon charm comes complete with zaniness and some sexual perversity. There’s also some good gore once the skull heads come out to play. Instead of doing all the dirty work themselves, they create a couple of zombies that really go for the guts! And naturally, we finally get to see what grandpa looks like. But the skull heads want everyone dead, so what is Robin to do about the cute young director whose only concern seems to be her well-being?
Keep the horror flix coming, Robin!
