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Bartholomew (Tommy Rettig) hates taking piano lessons from the odious Dr. Terwilliker (Hans Conried) so he takes a nap instead of practicing.  When he wakes up, Bartholomew is horrified to discover that he is being held prisoner by Dr. T in his fortress.  Dr. T’s big plan is to kidnap 500 kids and force them to play endlessly on his big ass piano.  Bartholomew wants no part of that and with the help of a kindly plumber (Peter Lynd Hayes), they plot to escape.

The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T was co-written by Dr. Seuss and as a result, it’s the only live action Seuss film that actually “gets” Seuss.  It’s much better than say Ron Howard’s abominable Grinch movie.  The art design is awesome and the film looks like a living breathing Dr. Seuss book.  Because of that, it’s highly recommended. 

Story-wise, it’s very similar to The Wizard of Oz in many ways (it’s all a dream, people from the kid’s life appear in the dream, etc.).  I personally think it’s better than Oz, but that’s just me.  The reason is that Tommy Rettig gives one of the best performances by a child actor ever.  He’s quite likeable and doesn’t go overboard with trying to act cute.  Conried also puts in a quirky turn as the megalomaniacal Dr. T.

The flick has it’s share of problems which prevents it from being a true classic.  Nearly all of the musical numbers go on too long and aren’t very memorable.  The story is also stretched too thin for too long but these are all rather minor qualms and won’t get in the way of your enjoyment.

This was a big flop and subsequently, it took five decades before another live action Seuss movie was made.

AKA:  Crazy Music.

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A guy sees his hot daughter (Abigail Wolcott) get killed by unruly bikers in the 50’s and gets revenge by chopping them up with an axe.  Later, he finds a magic crystal that has the power to bring dead bats back to life (as well as make turtles and goldfish explode).  Naturally, he uses that hunk of rock to resurrect daddy’s little girl.  Forty years later, the dead daughter goes around picking up hitchhikers and lures them back to her father’s tourist trap western-themed ghost town.  Four college kids make a wrong turn and wind up in the ghost town and the sexy succubus sets her sights on turning the ringleader (Ron Palillo, Horshack from Welcome Back Kotter!) into her new loverboy.

Hellgate’s narrative is clunky because it keeps hopping back and forth from the 80’s to the 50’s.  It has a lot of good ideas but director William A. (Blackenstein) Levey doesn’t make too many of them stick.  Still, how many movies do you know of feature exploding turtles and goldfish?  Wolcott gets naked a lot and the gore (decapitated heads, axes into the skull, etc.) is passable, so there’s always something to keep you interested.

You know, I was going to deduct One Star from this movie because it showed me Horshack buck ass naked.  On second thought, I decided not to since very few horror films are actually horrifying.  And let me tell ya something folks; seeing Horshack naked is the true meaning of horror.

Palillo also starred in Levey’s Skatetown, USA.

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“I wouldn’t do anything to hurt you… after all, I’m only twelve!” 

So says Jamie, the hero of The Pit.  He’s a psycho kid who has a talking teddy bear with glowing red eyes that orders him to throw people into a giant hole so they can be eaten by hairy troglodytes.  When he isn’t out doing that, he’s trying to get a glimpse of his babysitter’s tits or blackmailing the foxy librarian into taking off her top so he can snap Polaroids of her boobs.

You know, this Jamie kid reminds me a lot of myself at that age; except that I never had a possessed teddy bear and fed assholes to troglodytes.

Anyway, after Jamie disposes of a good half dozen people, he decides to show his babysitter the pit.  She promptly falls in and becomes Troglodyte Chow.  Having just lost his object of lust, Jamie gets all Emo and gives up tending to the monsters.  He allows them to escape and they run rampant eating skinny-dippers until being shot down by a lynch mob.

The Pit suffers from a disjointed plot and an inconsistent tone (it veers from humor to horror with mixed results) but it’s loaded with enough random weirdness to qualify it as a minor classic.  I’ve never seen a movie before or since that combines killer kids, talking teddy bears, and carnivorous cavemen so effectively.  The highlight of the flick was the hilarious scene where Jaime kidnaps a wheelchair bound old lady and gives her the old heave ho into the pit.  Coming in a close second was the part where Jamie ogled over the pictures of the naked librarian with Teddy. 

Like most horror films, The Pit concludes with the obligatory set-up for a sequel.  Tragically, that never happened.  It’s a shame too because The Pit is legit.

AKA:  Teddy.

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Tommy Adane (Julius LaRosa) is a crooner who hates Rock n’ Roll and only wants to sing ballads.  When his manager (Conrad Janis from Mork and Mindy) tries to persuade him to cut a Rock n’ Roll record, he refuses.  When Tommy’s record sales plummet, the dumbass still just wants to record slow songs.  Finally he meets a pretty songwriter who convinces him to sing Rock n’ Roll and naturally all the swinging teenagers buy his record.

The moral of the story is that ballads suck and Rock n’ Roll is fucking awesome.  Now everybody in the world already knows that but apparently this jackass doesn’t.  I guess you have to put up with his compulsive need to sing slow songs because otherwise we wouldn’t have a “plot”.  It’s kinda like one of those After School Special deals where everyone in the audience knows that drugs are bad except the main character and he doesn’t realize it until he gets high as a kite and accidentally kills his best friend or something. 

I think Let’s Rock could’ve been a great Rock n’ Roll movie but the main character was just so stupid that it ruined a lot of the film’s intended impact.  I’m not lying when I say that there was at least EIGHT scenes of Tommy dissing Rock n’ Roll while his manager/promoter/girlfriend tried to tell him otherwise.  These scenes will make you want to Emory board your irises off.

Luckily, the Rock n’ Roll numbers are pretty decent.  There were at least two classic songs (“At the Hop” and “Short Shorts”) in there that almost made sitting through all the plot stuff worthwhile.  We also got people I’ve heard of (like Paul Anka and Della Reese) singing songs I’ve never heard of, people I’ve never heard of (like Tony Pastor and Roy Hamilton) singing songs I’ve never heard of, and a future game show host I’ve heard of (Wink Martindale) singing songs I’ve never heard of. 

LaRosa also belts out a couple of tunes too.  It’s a shame he’s such a terrible singer because he’s not a bad actor.  I think the funniest moment in the film comes at the very end when he debuts his Rock n’ Roll song.  It’s called “Wild, Wild Party” but it’s all about kids eating hot dogs and drinking lemonade.  He obviously hasn’t gotten a hang of the whole Rock n’ Roll thing.  We all know it’s Sex, Drugs, and Rock n’ Roll and not Hot Dogs, Lemonade, and Rock n’ Roll.  Dumbass.

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Debbie Reynolds and Shelley Winters leave their small town behind after their sons are convicted of a heinous murder.  They soon set up shop in Hollywood teaching dance to a bunch of unruly brats.  After awhile, they start receiving obscene phone calls and Shelley begins seeing dead mangled corpses everywhere.  Shelley gets really agitated once Debbie strikes up a romance with a wealthy suitor (Dennis Weaver) and even resorts to murder.  Then we find out what’s the matter with Helen.  (SPOILER ALERT:  She’s fucking nuts.)

Screenwriter Henry Farrell also wrote the psychological thrillers with women’s names in the titles, Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte and What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?  What’s the Matter with Helen isn’t nearly as cool as those films.  The problem is that it’s way too tame for it’s own good.  While Charlotte and Baby Jane had a suitably nasty tone, Helen is limp and dull.  Unlike Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, Reynolds and Winters do not go over the top.  They play things more or less straight and as a result, it isn’t much fun.  I did like the part when Shelley killed some rabbits though.  (Sixteen years before Glenn Close made it hip.)

Director Curtis (Ruby) Harrington films the proceedings in a workmanlike fashion.  Nothing about the film is very memorable but there is a sequence midway through that is positively mind-numbingly terrifying.  It’s the scene where Debbie’s students perform onstage.  Their routines are all filmed in real time and the intolerable tykes impersonate everyone from Shirley Temple to Mae West.  If sitting through a kiddie talent show isn’t the true meaning of horror, I don’t know what is.  No wonder Shelley started freaking out backstage and eventually went on a murder spree.

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A rogue extra-terrestrial rocket hurtles itself around the globe incinerating everything in it’s path.  Meanwhile a scientist (Robert Loggia) is having problems with his bitchy fiancée who gives him an ultimatum:  Marry her or she’ll walk.  When the government figures out that the rocket is heading towards New York City, the wedding is put on hold until he can figure out a way to stop it.

Well, an out of control alien missile isn’t the worst concept for a 50’s Sci-Fi movie but the crummy execution is unforgivable.  Despite the promising set-up, The Lost Missile drowns in an ocean of excessive narration and an overabundance of stock footage.  If I had to guess, I’d say that The Lost Missile consists of 65% stock footage.  That’s about 60% too much if you ask me.

Now when someone like Ed Wood uses stock footage and pointless narration, he mashes it up in some insanely crazy way so that it’s entertaining. Director William (The Falcon in Mexico) Berke isn’t entertainingly inept like Wood.  He’s just inept.  He must’ve known the movie was going to suck because he died while making it.  

Loggia is quite good in the lead and it’s easy to see that he would go on to bigger and better things.  Nobody else in the cast is in the same league though.  The script, co-written by Jerome (It!  The Terror from Beyond Space) Bixby is earnest but all of the stock footage kinda ruins things.

There were one or two moments of weirdness near the end that semi-redeemed the film.  The highlight came when the malevolent missile obliterated a Canadian family while they were making a snowman.  I also liked the scene where a gang of juvenile delinquents stole a plutonium weapon and quickly died from radiation poisoning.  If The Lost Missile had a few more moments of lunacy like these, it may have been just goofy enough to work.

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A man claiming to be a missionary bribes his way onto a boat and causes the captain all kinds of problems.  When they finally get to Bali, the captain tries to ditch his unwanted stowaway but the authorities inform him that the mysterious passenger is unwelcome in their country, or anywhere else for that matter.  That means the mischievous missionary must stay on the ship where he causes the captain even more grief.

A Passenger to Bali was on my 50 Pack of Horror Movies but it isn’t a horror movie.  Heck, it isn’t even a movie!  No, it’s actually an episode of Studio One, an ancient dramatic television show filmed live in front of a studio audience.  What a gyp.

This flick…err… program is stuffy, boring, and more than a might bit stupid.  This captain guy was an idiot.  If the authorities made me keep this fucker on my boat, I would’ve thrown his ass overboard as soon as the boat left the dock.  What a dumbass.

If there is a saving grace to this mess it’s the fact that the show still has all the commercials intact.  There’s a great ad for a television set that boasts, “More black and more white for a clearer, sharper picture!”  The best commercial is the one that refers to a refrigerator as a “girl’s best friend”.  That shit was awesome.  I think if the whole hour had been taken up by nothing but old commercials it at least would’ve been watchable.

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The Aristocrats is a joke that is told by stand-up comedians to stand-up comedians.  The opening line (“A guy walks into a talent agency…”) and the punchline (“What do you call the act?”  “The Aristocrats!”) is always the same.  The middle portion of the joke is up to the comic’s imagination.  Anything goes as long as he (or she) keeps these things consistent:  The guy, his wife, son, and daughter have sex with each other.  Urination, defecation, and vomiting aren’t required but it helps.  Points are earned if the comic can come up with the sickest shit imaginable.

The joke itself isn’t funny but the execution of the middle section can be depending on who is telling it.  This is where the comedian can completely let go and say virtually anything and get a laugh.  This documentary from director Paul (Comics Only) Provenza is essentially just interviews with a 100 comedians who tell us their encounters with the joke.  Some of them even tell their version.

It’s here where the movie sorta fumbles.  I honestly believe if the whole movie was 100 comedians telling the joke, it would’ve been great.  As it is, Provenza often cuts away to other interviewees while someone is in the midst of telling the joke.  Telling jokes is an art form that requires intricate timing.  By cutting away from the comedian in mid-joke, it ruins the flow of their version.

Some people actually get to tell their version of the joke with minimal to no interruption and it’s hysterical.  George Carlin, Bob Saget, and Sarah Silverman are among them and each one of them had me in stitches.  Drew Carey gets a special mention for doing a little hand motion at the end to accentuate the punchline as does Kevin Pollack who performs it while impersonating Christopher Walken.  Martin Mull tells a clever variation on it that is very funny as well.

The Aristocrats (the movie not the joke) loses points thanks to the sloppy editing.  Still it’s funny and fast moving enough for me to recommend it.  It’s definitely a treat just seeing all these great comedians (Robin Williams, Whoopi Goldberg, Don Rickles, etc.) in the same movie.

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Here’s a creaky cheapie murder mystery that’s instantly forgettable.  It’s all about The Phantom, this master criminal asshole who escapes from prison and then holes up in a mental institution.  The Thing, The Phantom’s freaky assistant kidnaps the daughter of the DA who sent him away so he can give her a lobotomy.  Luckily, her lunkhead boyfriend shows up in the nick of time to rescue her.

I usually like these old school mystery movies but this 50 Pack of Horror Movies I bought recently is making it tougher and tougher for me to enjoy them.  The Phantom is basically just like every other murder mystery on the pack (it features a gruff District Attorney) with a touch of the Old Dark House genre (there's a mansion that has a bunch of hidden passageways) thrown in for good measure.  Even at 61 minutes, it still gets severely bogged down. 

However ragged the bulk of the film is; I have to admit that I was at least partially amused.  The Phantom’s crazy ass assistant who looked like a cross between The Shadow and Mr. Hyde was pretty cool as was the final confrontation in the mental institution.  It’s still not enough for you to waste an hour of your time on.

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Ninja Assassin is pure unadulterated Ninja porn.  Plain and simple.  There is a plot but it is completely unnecessary.  With a good porno, you can fast forward through all the plot stuff just to get to the action and it would still have the same effect.  Ninja Assassin is the same way.  Except instead of boobies and buttholes, there are Ninja stars and swords.  That is to say, it’s awesome.

Let’s talk action.  Let’s talk Ninjas.  This movie has so many damn scenes of Ninjas slashing the shit out of each other that it will make you just grin ear to ear.  The Good Ninja is played by Rain, who has to be the best actor named after a meteorological phenomenon.  He fucks everybody up but good.  The Bad Ninjas don’t stand a chance.  They even have the benefit of CGI to aid them in their Ninja-ing.  (No smoke bombs are necessary when you have computer effects to blend you seamlessly into the background.)  This Rain guy doesn’t care.  He slices and/or dices and/or cuts off every major appendage the bad Ninjas have.  There are more severed limbs in the opening sequence of this movie than you can shake a stick at.  The standout is the scene where Rain chops off PART of a guy’s head (otherwise known as a “half-decap”).

The director James (V for Vendetta) McTeigue films all of this with unabashed glee.  Although he goes a bit overboard on the Shaky-Cam stuff in the middle section; the rest of the film contains some of the best Ninja action these eyes have ever seen.  Who knew that an Irish guy named McTeigue could direct a movie about Japanese Ninjas?

Ninja Assassin isn’t the best Ninja movie ever made but it’s arguably the goriest.  It’s basically like a big budget Golan-Globus movie.  I can’t think of higher praise.  I mean Sho Kosugi came out of retirement to star in this movie.  If that isn’t a reason to rush out and see Ninja Assassin, I don’t know what is.

Ninja Assassin slashes it’s way onto The Video Vacuum Top Ten for 2009 at the Number 3 spot; putting it in between Chocolate and Crank:  High Voltage.

theljstaff

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thevideovacuum

Japanese gangsters start disappearing left and right, leaving only their clothes behind.  A bimbo nightclub singer witnesses one of the thugs dissolving but of course, the cops don’t believe her.  Eventually we learn that a giant slime monster (a product of the H-Bomb) is on the loose and going around melting folks.  Scientists scramble to find a way to stop the creature and finally come up with the bright idea of flamethrowering the shit out of it.

The H-Man is a goofy monster.  It looks like a cross between The Blob and a mass of KY Jelly.  Sometimes it takes a mannish shape but mostly it just slops itself around.  Since it’s just a big pile of goo, it doesn’t have a lot of personality.  However, the dissolving people effects are kinda cool (they resemble blow-up dolls covered in liquid Dial soap) and the endless scenes of scientists melting frogs in a lab are pretty funny.

You can see where all of this may have been fun but The H-Man doesn’t have quite what it takes to be completely successful.  The big problem is that director Inoshiro (Godzilla) Honda’s pacing is so damn constipated.  I mean it takes a freaking half an hour for the monster to even show up.  Before that you have to sit through a lot of nonsense involving gangsters and detectives as well as a bunch of lame nightclub acts and dance routines.  As with most Japanese monster mashes; the ridiculous dubbing is good for a laugh or two.

AKA:  Beauty and the Liquidman.

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Gene (The War of the Worlds) Barry stars in this intriguing but talky Sci-Fi flick.  An alien who calls himself “The Alien” gives five different people capsules that have the capacity to destroy the human race.  The capsules stop working after 27 days and it’s up to the chosen few to make sure nothing happens to them before the deadline.  Of course, the Alien had to give one of the capsules to a dirty Russkie whose superiors want it use to start WWIII.  Gene, an English broad, and some stuffed shirt scientist try to prevent that from happening and save the world from destruction.

The 27^th Day is a none too subtle Cold War allegory.  (The five different people singled out by the Alien are clearly supposed to represent the nations with “The Bomb”.)  In other hands, it could’ve worked but William Asher‘s direction is static and clunky.  Asher was the guy who directed a slew of Beach Party movies, so he was obviously the wrong director for this type of picture.  It doesn’t help when the script by John Mantley is so damned heavy handed.  He also couldn’t think up a decent ending either.

The set-up had a lot of potential but unfortunately the whole thing falls apart when the Alien skips town.  Once the Sci-Fi trappings of the flick disappear, it basically just becomes a boring Cold War thriller.  And who wants to watch that shit, right?

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Apparently Damien the Antichrist spread his demon seed to a little orphan chick when nobody was looking.  An infertile couple adopts the kid and she turns into a bratty little tyke named Delia (Asia Vieira).  When she isn’t causing nuns to have heart attacks or beating bullies in the face with lunchboxes, she’s doing freaky stuff like biting the faces off Barbie dolls.  It’s obvious that this kid is nuts yet it takes her parents forever to catch on.  While Mom (Faye Grant) starts getting worried when the nanny plummets to her doom, dad (Michael Woods) stays blissfully clueless the whole time.  Mom eventually has a baby of her own and when she learns it’s an Antichrist too, she sets out to go all kinds of Gregory Peck on it’s ass.

Shoot me if you want to, but I found Omen Quatro to be surprisingly enjoyable.  While the lowered expectations probably helped (this after all went straight to TV), it still had it’s fair share of moments.  Then again, anything would be an improvement after Omen 3:  The (Not So) Final Conflict

Even though the flick was made for TV, it still had a number of decent kills.  There was a quality decapitation that was completely bloodless yet still was true to the series’ standards.  We also got an OK snake attack, death by wrecking ball, an assault with a scalpel, and not one but TWO nannies biting the big one.

Omen 4 starts off well enough but it begins to deteriorate by the time the idiot nanny (Ann Hearn) starts babbling on about the power of healing crystals.  (SPOILER ALERT:  They do not help her doomed ass.)  That’s alright because if we didn’t have her around, we would’ve been deprived of the hilarious “Psychic Fair” that the demonic Delia promptly burns to the ground.  There’s also a lot of rigmarole concerning a sketchy detective (Michael Lerner) snooping around that eats up a lot of valuable running time.

I was always smitten with Faye Grant ever since V so it was nice to see her in a rare leading role for a change.  She was strong but vulnerable; which is a good trait to have when you learn that both of your kids are Antichristes.  She also gets the best line of the movie when she says, “That freak will never rule because I’m going to kill him!”