With 13 Days of Shot On Video I’ll be reviewing a new shot-on-video horror film every weekday for the last two weeks of October. You can view all entries HERE.
I’ve said this many times before, but SOV horror movies are not for everyone. One of the biggest factors in deterring the average viewer is the overall aesthetic: bad editing, even worse acting, junky sound, and just a general aura of cheapness. Redneck Zombies
With 13 Days of Shot On Video I’ll be reviewing a new shot-on-video horror film every weekday for the last two weeks of October. You can view all entries HERE.
For me, Sledgehammer
With 13 Days of Shot On Video I’ll be reviewing a new shot-on-video horror film every weekday for the last two weeks of October. You can view all entries HERE.
In my opinion, Video Violence
With 13 Days of Shot On Video I’ll be reviewing a new shot-on-video horror film every weekday for the last two weeks of October. You can view all entries HERE.
For the uninitiated, shot-on-video (or “SOV”) horror films were a genre of movies that made their debut during the VCR boom of the early- and mid-80s. VCRs had been readily available since the mid-70s but didn’t really take off until home rentals (via mom & pop video stores) became popular in the early 80s. Around the same time, camcorders had become available to the public. Fledgling, optimistic directors who aspired to make names for themselves seized this opportunity to make their own products and get their videos on the shelves of local and national video stores. Through pure chance and desperation on the part of these emergent video shops (who at the time, had little rentals to offer), these home movie maestros were somehow able to get their analog features on the rack right alongside big Hollywood productions. It was an amazing and exciting time for cinema and home video. Continue reading CANNIBAL CAMPOUT – 13 Days of Shot on Video! (#9)
With 13 Days of Shot On Video I’ll be reviewing a new shot-on-video horror film every weekday for the last two weeks of October. You can view all entries HERE.
In terms of sheer unintentional lunacy, Black Devil Doll From Hell
Even by SOV (shot-on-video) standards, Black Devil Doll from Hell is one of the lower-tiered releases. Abrupt cuts, continuity jumps, and audio issues abound. But again, Turner saw the production through to the end — ponying up $8000 of his own money to complete it — and that takes dolls. I mean balls! Balls. It takes balls. Not dolls.
The movie opens with a painfully long credit sequence: we get your standard white type on navy background, set to some weird proto rap-rock tune whose lyrics do us the service of laying out the entire plotline (kind of like a James Bond film from Hell.) For almost seven minutes the repetitive song drones on, though to be fair it does include some killer guitar solos. Mind you, most films don’t even have opening credits anymore, and the ones that do are usually set to some sort of kinetic motion or action, so the length of the opening is particularly noticeable.
And speaking of music: the music throughout the rest of the film (composed by Turner, naturally) takes on two different vibes. There are these upbeat instrumentals that sound like they came from a Wesley Willis demo tape; oddly cheerful and wonderfully out of place in such a horrifying movie. And then there is this high-pitched stabbing synth sound that almost has a John Carpenter feel to it, but it’s so loud and shrill that it oftentimes overpowers the dialogue. Needless to say, if musical variety is your thing, Black Devil Doll from Hell has you covered.
So, as the movie plods along, we find out the lead (bravely played by Shirley L. Jones) is a church-going good girl who frowns upon promiscuous behavior and shuns men who only show interest in her for her body. However, she makes the regrettable mistake of buying a possessed (and extremely horny) doll from a thrift store and then showering in front of it. She plops it down on the toilet, says “these are the only eyes that’ll see me naked before I’m married”, and then gets in the shower. It’s like the puritanical version of saying, “I’ll be right back” in a horror movie. Anyway, while she’s in the shower, she starts fantasizing about having sex with the doll. And this pattern continues for the next couple scenes: she showers, she fantasizes about dummy sex. It’s surprisingly pretty graphic, too: the camcorder-look and homemade vibe make it feel even sleazier and realistic.
Eventually the doll actually comes to life, knocks her out and ties her up, and then, y’know, rapes her repeatedly — all the while insulting her, exhaling some mysterious smoke, and shouting “bitch!” more than Freddy Krueger could ever dream of. And yet the most insane part of it all is that she’s supposedly deriving pleasure from the whole thing. It’d be offensive if it weren’t so goddamn insane. Ratcheting up the insanity: the doll was modeled after Rick James. No, I’m not joking.
So now that she’s experienced, y’know, puppet penetration, she seeks out the real thing. But she finds that her human suitors don’t quite live up to her plastic partner. No one can please her quite the same way the Black Devil Doll from Hell does. So she pleads with the doll to do the horizontal mambo with her one more time, only this time the doll has apparently had enough of Jones, and gives her what I can only describe as a “deadly orgasm” — at least, that’s what it looks like.
Soon enough, the doll makes his way back to the thrift store and is purchased by yet another innocent, unsuspecting young woman. And so the cycle begins again. And just like that, the barely-70 minute runtime is up and it feels like you’ve been watching this thing for 3 hours.
As I said earlier, Black Devil Doll from Hell is pretty bad even by ’80s SOV standards. Not the worst I’ve seen, but pretty close. Of course, I mean all of this in terms of its technical achievements. When it comes to originality and the always appreciated “what the hell did I just watch?” sensation, Black Devil Doll from Hell knocks it out of the park. It’s vile, and strange, and moralistic, and misogynistic — but you’ll also be laughing while shaking your head in shock.
Turner may only have two films to his name — Black Devil Doll from Hell (1984) and the equally-treasured horror-anthology Tales from the Quadead Zone (1987) — but he’s still lauded among the tapeheads and celluloid collectors, like some VHS version of Dalton Trumbo or Herk Harvey. Watch if you absolutely must (and you must, naturally) but have a bar of soap ready to wash the dirt off afterwards.
With 13 Days of Shot On Video I’ll be reviewing a new shot-on-video horror film every weekday for the last two weeks of October. You can view all entries HERE.
Woodchipper Massacre
Woodchipper Massacre is directed by and stars Jon McBride, a name which even first time shot-on-video consumers should immediately recognize; McBride was instrumental during the late-’80s and mid-’90s shot-on-video wave. (In fact, I already reviewed one of his movies for 13 Days of S.O.V.!) It also stars Tom Casiello — the redhead, bemulleted, brace-face with glasses — who would go on to win several Emmys writing for soap operas as an adult.
The movie sees a trio of youngsters (McBride, Casiello, and Denice Edeal) left alone for the weekend when their father goes out of town on a business trip. For whatever reason, the dad decides these kids need adult supervision (despite the fact that Jon McBride is clearly in his late-20s), so their Aunt Tess comes to watch them while he leaves on business. It’s clear from the get-go that Aunt Tess comes from an old-fashioned, more regimented upbringing — one she intends to enforce on the indifferent kids.
Later on in the movie, Aunt Tess’s son, Kim, shows up to the house, fresh from prison and in search of some money. The group, feeling threatened and unsure of when the dad will return, decide to put the woodchipper in the front yard to good use.
Now, Woodchipper Massacre is a hard to categorize film. It’s nowhere near what I would consider a “horror” film. And while there is a lot of humor, most of it falls flat or sometimes goes completely unnoticed because of how low-budget the presentation is; I found myself thinking many times, “Was what I just saw supposed to be intentionally funny, or was that just bad acting and poor production?” The one thing I can assert is that it definitely gave off a sitcom-style vibe: the kids left alone for the weekend, the single father, the older brother, the annoying aunt, her creepy son who pops up in the third act. They even have sitcom-style credits at the end, which just further solidified my feelings about it. I’d go as far as to say Woodchipper Massacre has invented its own genre: Sitcore. (Bleh, forget it. I’m not tryin’ to coin that.)
While I’m sure there’s no definite correlation, Woodchipper Massacre seems like it inspired a few films (or at least, a few film scenes) that came after it: Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead, Fargo, and The Mangler — all share plot points very reminiscent of what goes on in Woodchipper Massacre.
My complaints about the movie are typical of any shot-on-video horror flick I’ve seen: mainly shoddy writing combined with terrible, terrible acting. Everyone in the movie is basically just yelling their dialogue, rushing through their lines. Cousin Kim looks like some deranged combination of Gene Wilder and Jeff Daniels’ character ‘Harry’ from Dumb and Dumber. He’s so incredibly over-the-top, it makes me wonder: surely he had to know, right? Wasn’t he ever compelled to scale it back just a notch? And Aunt Tess — who looks like she could be their great grandmother (dear lord, that awful wig) — speaks mostly in antiquated aphorisms, idioms and proverbs. Half of them sound made up. “Sleep is good for the soul”, she says at one point. Who has ever said that? No one, because it’s not a phrase.
However, Woodchipper Massacre does have one strong suit: incredible, incredible music! I mean, really, truly. The opening theme recalls influences from Harold Faltermeyer’s Fletch score. From there, the soundtrack bounces between weird video game sounding music to toe-tapping new wave style instrumentals. The closing credits sound like an Oingo Boingo demo — it’s amazing. All of it is surprisingly listenable.
Before I wrap this up, I wanted to point out two things:
If’n you ain’t seen Woodchipper Massacre, I suggest it for the music alone. But I’m sure you’ll get a kick out of the hammy acting, too. Just don’t expect any gore: the movie may have a brutal title, but much like its equally-brutally-titled inspiration, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre — it’s fairly bloodless.
Camera Viscera 