In short: Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama (1998)

A sadistic, bottom-paddling sorority chieftainess (Robin Still) sends her stupid little club’s newest pledges (Brinke Stevens and Michelle Bauer) out to steal a bowling trophy from the local Bowl-O-Rama. Three local nerds (Andras Jones, Hal Havins and John Stuart Wildman) have to accompany them as punishment for peeping on the girls.

Awkwardness, a bit of demonic possession, violence, and “ironic” wish fulfilment ensue when our protagonists accidentally free a demonic imp (the voice of Michael Sonye working under the nom de plume of “Dukey Flyswatter”) who was trapped in the trophy (don’t ask). One of the nerds manages to team up with roving punkette Spider (Linnea Quigley keeping her shirt on for a whole film, believe it or not) – only there to rob the bowling alley – improving his chances of survival to no end.

Once you’ve called your film Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama you have made yourself practically critic proof, for whatever criticism anyone could throw at your film you can easily answer by crying “Look at the title! What the hell did you expect!?”. Ironically enough, this core text of the Scream Queen horror comedy subgenre that mixes Porky’s style “sex comedy” (not to be confused with comedies actually about sex, the quotation mark version is about showing tits) is not quite as bad as all that.

Now, don’t get me wrong, the film’s jokes fall flat at least half of the time even when you try to approach them with the mind-set of a fifteen year old heterosexual boy, the script is barely there, as is the gore, and the nudity is of that “naughty” style which seems so embarrassed by itself you want to pat the people involved on the head and tell them it’s okay. However, the other half of the jokes is sometimes somewhat funny, the actresses seem to approach whatever goofy crap they are supposed to be doing in any given scene with a wink, a smile, and the sort of bad acting that comes over as likeable rather than bad. Plus, for something directed by David DeCoteau, this is surprisingly fast-paced and decently shot, with sets that are somewhat larger than the tiny wardrobes most of the guy’s later films seem to be shot in.

What Sorority Babes completely lacks is a cynical side. The nudity – at least from here and now – is used so harmlessly the word “innocent” comes to mind to describe it, and while this is in theory a sleazy movie exploiting a bunch of young actresses’ willingness to undress in front of the camera, it’s all so clearly harmless and in good fun, criticizing it seems mean spirited at best. And, after all, I’m watching a film called Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama, so I have nobody to blame but myself, right?

Three Films Make A Post: For 500 years the secret lay dormant... Until now!

Ghost Town (1988): There’s a lot about Richard Governor’s only film (as finished by its DP Mac Ahlberg) Ghost Town that should make it an easy recommendation: the charm of its ghost town, how courageously it aims for the dream-like and the ambiguous, and more than one clever idea. But all that gets buried by a film that never actually finishes anything it starts, a plot that meanders all over the place without rhyme or reason, a big bad who never can shut up spouting his horrible, pseudo-creepy monologues and the damn one-liners, and a lot of the wrong kind of tedium.

Spooky, Spooky (1988): Tedium isn’t something happening in this Sammo Hung-directed horror comedy from Hong Kong, on the other hand. If you’re familiar with the genre, you know what to expect: characters with the emotional life of children, slapstick, martial arts, some mildly icky stuff, Chinese folklore, utter weirdness, a whole load of blue light, and a film philosophically and ethically set against being boring. This one actually starts a bit slow, but once it gets going, Spooky Spooky doesn’t stop anymore until it’s time for the credits to roll. On the way, Hung also somehow manages to include slapstick and martial arts based suspense scenes that are as tight as the ones in more earnest-minded films would be and teaches us the best use for a watermelon.

Creepozoids (1987): But let’s not end this post on too much of a high note. So who better to come to my help there than David DeCoteau, carrying an early epic about some non-entities played by non-entities and Linnea Quigley’s breasts wandering through a warehouse for fifty minutes or so. There’s some business about a virus that makes you allergic to food in the worst possible way, an adorable giant rat, and more tedium than you can expect from three movies of this sort. Why, even the big finale is a long slog. A long slog, that is, until the film’s horrid monster suit births a monster baby. Then, it’s ten minutes of hilarity during which one guy (seriously, using actor and character names would suggest an individuality that’s just not on screen) pretends to get attacked by the monster baby thing by shaking the doll around, repeated as often as necessary to get this thing on sort of feature length.

Puppet Master III: Toulon’s Revenge (1991)

Welcome to backlot Berlin in 1941. Mild-mannered maker of living puppets Toulon (Guy Rolfe) and his beloved wife Elsa (Sarah Douglas) are putting on anti-fascist puppet plays for the little ones. Note: if your brain already starts to dribble out of your ears now because of historical idiocy, do not continue with the film.

Not surprisingly, this does awaken a degree of interest in the Toulons from Nazi circles, who also quickly cop to Toulon’s puppets actually being alive by virtue of Toulon haven’t mastered the skill of hanging up curtains. Toulon’s puppet science is exactly what one Dr Hess (Ian Abercrombie) needs to perhaps lead his project of creating viable Nazi zombie soldiers to success, so Hess would really rather get Toulon alive; GESTAPO Major Kraus (Richard Lynch) on the other hand – in the film’s most historically accurate element - just wants to kill everyone. During the resulting Dramatic Developments™, Elsa is killed by the Nazis.
Toulon manages to escape and starts on a plan to murder as many of the Nazis with the help of his puppet buddies.

Puppet Master III is a much more entertaining film than it has any right to be, more often than not managing to surmount a cornucopia of flaws by the sheer power of dubious yet awesome ideas. The main strike against it is of course that it is directed by David DeCoteau, a guy who could not and still can not shoot anything decently, like the living return of William Beaudine. There’s the expected aura of vague disinterest surrounding every scene that is certainly not helped by the fact DeCoteau can’t even squeeze in any of his trademark as-much-as-possible nudity of extremely vapid looking young men, which usually are the only times when his films come alive. Not ideal for a purported director of horror films.

As is his wont, DeCoteau does his best to drag down even the most exciting bits of the film through the sheer power of visual blandness, an impossible number of needlessly cramped shots (as if this thing were exclusively filmed on one meter by one meter sets), no clue about atmosphere and so on, and so forth. Just imagine a film made by someone without any visual imagination or much of a sense for drama or fun, and you get the drift.

Additionally, there are also flaws DeCoteau isn’t responsible for: the budget of a Full Moon production of 1991 just isn’t one that could provide for a decent period piece, so everything looks even cheaper and shoddier than a comparable Full Moon film taking place in the then and there would have; the script neglects to truly capitalize on some of its great ideas and tends to add meandering to the direction’s dragging; I’ll grant the thing its historical stupidity for being made by Americans and only aiming for a pulp Nazi thing anyhow.
After this list, I’m rather surprised by how much I did in fact enjoy this thing. But then, what the film’s got going for it is easily understood. For one, it’s the sheer pulpy fun of the killer puppet versus Nazis plot, something whose basic weird energy even DeCoteau’s direction can never completely sabotage – too huge is the power of seeing our favourite killer dolls shooting, slicing, leeching, drilling and so on and so forth Nazis, too ridiculously over the top is Richard Lynch doing the naziest of all Nazis. There’s a delightful sense of the weird and the perverse running through many of the film’s details (which ironically are also the parts of the film I wish the script had done more with, but you take what you can get). This does, after all, feature a scene where our perhaps ever so slightly mad hero uses the life force (soul?) of his dead wife to turn the doll he gave to her to commemorate their love into a leech vomiting (while making sex noises) killer puppet with a much better hairstyle and dress sense than before. That isn’t just Weird but also the kind of potent metaphor for the failings of the human heart you can only do in films as this which are absolutely not beholden to good taste, sense, or sensibility. Toulon’s explanation of the origin of his other dolls as housing the souls of his Nazi-murdered friends fits nicely in there too, and even though the film is too dumb to ever realize how horrible and sad this idea actually is, it’s still there, and for my taste strong enough to make up for many of the film’s failings.

Your mileage may of course vary, but I find myself drawn to the film’s shameless – and at this point in the Full Moon puppet world still blessedly untouched by irony – strangeness, its pulpy nature (even if it is pulp with hugely reduced energy thanks to its director), and perhaps even the all-around tackiness of much of the production.

SyFy vs. The Mynd: Grizzly Rage (2007)

Four dudebros (one of 'em's a girl, making it three dudebros and one dudebronette I suppose) celebrate their graduation (I dare not speculate what they are graduating from) by communing with Mother Nature. Which is to say, they drive around in a four-by-four after ignoring a no trespassing sign and cutting a chain. Not surprisingly, this doesn't end well, for they run over an innocent grizzly bear cub.

Mama Bear is displeased, so soon it's time for our protagonists to face her…grizzly rage. Of course, idiocy leaves them stranded in Mama Bear's realm but that goddamn animal really takes its sweet time killing them.

It is never a good sign when a film produces wistful thoughts about William Girdler's Grizzly in a boy, and that's exactly what David DeCoteau's film at hand does. Trying to articulate everything that's wrong with the it would waste too much of my time, after watching the film has already cost me enough of my life, so I'm just going with a few highlights here.

How about the film's insistence on providing his characters not with  a single discernible character trait, again producing wistful thoughts in me, this time around remembering the awesome complexity of slasher archetypes like The Jock, The Slut, The Virgin, The Intellectual; at least those you can tell apart.

Then there's DeCoteau's complete inability to make the few shots of grizzly the film actually contains even the least bit threatening. In fact, the director shoots the animal in ways bound to undermine every possibility of threat from the get-go. Seldom has a bear in a horror movie looked this small.

Last but not least, I also have to complain about GR's soundtrack. It's not enough that it attacks the ears with the usual SyFy and co synthie non-music music (seriously, that stuff is clearly not composed but generated), it also has to add about half a dozen horrible "alternative" rock tracks by bands whose great ambition in life seems to be to become just like Nickelback.

So yeah, avoid this at all costs.

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