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Beauty Queen Butcher (1991)

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Usually a lost slasher finally getting released makes a few headlines but here’s one that has gone mostly unnoticed. The S.O.V. Beauty Queen Butcher, filmed way back in 1991, wasn’t released until 2007 by Camp Motion Pictures as part of their Retro 80s Horror Collection. Phyllis Loden (Rhona Brody) is a rather hefty girl tricked into entering a beauty contest by the evil Muffy (Kathryn Mensik). In an attempt to drive Phyllis out of the contest, pageant director Betty Prunish (Jim Boggess in drag) orders Muffy and her friends to make Phyllis’ life a living hell. After Loden’s cat suffers death by microwave in a prank gone wrong, Phyllis swears revenge against everyone connected to the pageant.

Camp Motion Pictures tries to sell Beauty Queen Butcher as a cross between Carrie and Prom Night and promises the film “rips a bloody page from the book of high school horror.” It’s easy to trust Camp’s false claims because the other entries in their Retro 80s Horror Collection are absolute gore fests. Camp should have said “bloodless” instead of bloody. The only thing “shocking” about Beauty Queen Butcher is the film is one of the tamest slashers ever made. It would have struggled to earn a PG-13 if it had been released back in 1991. See that scary goth chick holding the ax on the dvd cover? Well, she ain’t in the film and nobody gets hit with an ax. The only thing that gets butchered during this film is the viewer’s brain cells.

Director Jill Zurborg and co-writer Shane Partlow handle Beauty Queen Butcher as a campy parody of the slasher genre rather than an out right slasher film. Sometimes the jokes work, the nerdy Cameron (Steve Kollin) steals every scene he’s in and the misadventures of a female report covering the murders are pretty funny. Other bits will make you want to claw out your eyes and shove sharpened pencils into your ears. Rhona Brody keeps flashing her panties in one stomach churning running gag. The talent portion of the beauty pageant features a young lady who’s singing voice sounds like a cat being strangled with piano wire and another contestant murders a musical instrument. She blows, fellas, but not in a good way.

There are two major factors keeping Beauty Queen Butcher from being a so-bad-it’s-good entry in the S.O.V. slasher sub-genre. First, there are too many subplots that bog down the story and cause the film to move at a snail’s pace. At 130 minutes, the film is just too long and slow to keep the viewer’s interest. Second, Phyllis Loden is an unsympathetic character. Scenes of Phyllis eating tubs of ice cream and bags of chips or smearing bile colored eyeshadow across her face make Loden look like a slob instead of an underdog.

Fans of S.O.V. slashers will get the most enjoyment from a viewing of Beauty Queen Butcher but the average slasher fan will find the film damn near unwatchable when the pace really slows down. The picture quality of Beauty Queen Butcher is amazingly clear and crisp considering the age of the film. You can actually see Jim Boggess’ five o’clock shadow creep in during his scenes as Betty Prunish. The only extra, other than trailers for Camp Motion Pictures other releases, is a grainy home video shot during the making of Beauty Queen Butcher. The home video ends with a teaser for Beauty Queen Butcher 2.

SOV Month Becomes SOV Summer Becomes SOV YEAR!!!

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Let’s celebrate the upcoming autumn equinox correctly, shall we?

Due to some unforseen things – like life – I was unable to complete my obsessive SOV retrospective (or OSOVR) in the high style I would have liked. There are at least three films left I know I want to cover and probably a couple of more I don’t even know I want to see yet (and maybe one interview if the gods are smiling). Although the schedule looks bleak for writing, I am going to carry on with my wickedly-evil-and-so-much-fun nostalgia trip through the rest of this year. So bundle up, rake the leaves and stop by for a little more video bloodshed!

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SOV Summer: Boardinghouse (1982) Review

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*Note: I wrote this review before Code Red’s release of this incredible film.

For those of you unaware of who exactly to blame for the shot-on-video sub-genre, look no further than director David Wintergate who made the first SOV flick, Boardinghouse. It would be easy enough to attack the poor Mr. Wintergate for creating such an ill-conceived movement, but I’ll be damned, Boardinghouse is good stuff.

vlcsnap-2009-08-06-21h50m30s17Of course, you’ll have to forgive its many faults, including the awful opening sequence, which features a very primitive word processor delegating information to the audience regarding the house in question. After a few minutes of obnoxious beeping, I thought I was through with this cheap backyard slasher, but then came the real movie, featuring Wintergate as Jim (looking a lot like Michael Des Barres) practicing the art of telekinesis in his underwear at his office! We soon find out that Jim has put out an ad for tenants, women only no less, to live with him in his large but rather bland house. Being the 80s – which means tons of women with loose morals – the house fills up quicker than a bar on bottomless beer night. In fact, there are so many women, it’s almost impossible to keep track of them all. I ended up calling them “Blonde Floozy” and “Hot Blonde British Girl” just to identify them.

Things are sexy, fun and pretty mild until some sort of unseen force starts slicing its way through the estrogen. Luckily, before each gory scene Wintergate threw in a hallucinogenic warning sign so we can cover our poor, virgin eyes if need be. One of the girls, Victoria (Kalassu… that’s right, simply Kalassu), an up and coming rock star (and the only girl with a discernable personality) also has the touch and during a house party, the couple go toe to toe with the menacing force, which frankly was never that menacing to begin with.

vlcsnap-2009-08-06-22h03m01s87Boardinghouse is a movie that has to be seen to be believed. But be forewarned, you must have the constitution of a true horror hound with a taste for the totally absurd to watch it all the way through. Luckily, I am that person, so this was as good as ice cream on a hot summer day. I don’t think I could exactly pinpoint what was so bewitching about this mess of movie, but I laughed the whole way through and I just simply enjoyed the moxey of Wintergate. Plus Kalassu does show some real presence as an actress and a singer and gives the disgruntled audience one character to hold on to.

Since its original release, Boardinghouse has been relegated to the dusty back shelves of video stores, which is unfortunate, especially in this day and age where we’ve reached a new pinnacle of SOV madness. Few of these newer films can hold a candle to Wintergate’s extremely flawed but effervescent sleaze fest. I hope Wintergate is aware of the lunacy he’s unleashed on genre fans across the globe and I hope he’s smiling.

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I Spit On Your Vengeance: The Donald Farmer Interview

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1993’s SAVAGE VENGEANCE is one odd duck. It’s supposed to be a merely a tribute to the classic revenge film I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE (1978), yet it has the star of that film Camille Keaton reprising the same “Jennifer” role and vaguely referencing events from that film. With that in mind, I finaly got a chance in 2006 to speak with the director, the prolific Donald Farmer (who also took an acting role in the movie).

Why did you decide to make Savage Vengeance?

This project was the idea of Mel Lieberman of the Canadian company Lettuce-Entertain U. He has been the Canadian distributor of my earlier movie CANNIBAL HOOKERS, and he had the idea for SAVAGE VENGEANCE and put up the seed money.

How did you get the project up and running?

It was made back to back with another movie I did called SCREAM DREAM, and the two movies used the same projection crew and studio facility. Rick Gonzales, who had worked for Tom Savini on DAY OF THE DEAD, did the effects make-up on both movies, also.

How did you get Camille Keaton to star?

I’d met Camille when I lived in Los Angeles and she was working as a hostess for the Amtrak train line, after just breaking up with her actor boyfriend (who had starred in the cult horror movie CHILDREN SHOULDN’T PLAY WITH DEAD THINGS). At the time she hadn’t done a movie since CONCRETE JUNGLE, so I tried to look around and help find Camille a new movie to do. About a year after meeting her, I was hired as projection manager and casting director for a 35mm theatrical action film called NO JUSTICE (which played theatres and drive-ins in the southeast in 89/90). One of my jobs was to cast a couple of names, so I called Camille and offered to fly her out from L.A. to Tennessee where NO JUSTICE was shot. The other names in NO JUSTICE were Cameron Mitchell, Bob Orwig (from PLATOON) and Susan Ashley Pohlman (who was the female host for one year on Adam Sadler’s MTV Game Show REMOTE CONTROL).

Instead of showing footage from I Spit On Your Grave when Jennifer talks about her past, you shot your own flashback footage – what was the reason for that?

This wasn’t an official sequel to I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE. . .just a movie in the same genre. . .so obviously no footage from that movie could be used.

What were the limitations and/or benefits of shooting on video?

Since I’d just worked with Camille on the 35mm theatrical film NO JUSTICE a few months before starting SAVAGE VENGEANCE, we obviously no nowhere near the production value of NO JUSTICE by shooting on video. But the meager budget promised by Lieberman (which he never fully came through with) didn’t afford enough to shoot on film. The next year I found a little more money to do VAMPIRE COP with, so that was shot on 16mm.

How was distribution worked out? It seems to pop up on many budget labels and compilation packs.

All of the distribution has been with only one company, Magnun Video. They created the poster art of the girl in shadows holding a chainsaw, and they put it out on DVD under their separate DVD division called Eden DVD. But it was all the same company, really.

Some consider your movie to be the a valid semi-official sequel to I Spit On Your Grave, others dismiss it as a homemade tribute movie or remake. How do you see it, all these years later?

It’s definitely not a sequel to I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE, but a movie inspired by that earlier film. I didn’t even want to make a movie in the rape-revenge genre, but Liberman insisted that was a requirement for his backing the movie (and then he only came up with a small amount of the money he promised). That’s why the movie was never distributed by his company, but went to Magnum (who also agreed to become the American distributor of CANNIBAL HOOKERS, even after Lieberman got his Canadian edition of that title into a big chunk of U.S. video stores in the late 80’s.

As an interesting side note, years later Camille was reported married to Sid Luft, the father of Liza Minelli’s half sister, Lorna Luft. So in a strange way, Camille is now part of the Liza Minelli family!!

Donald Farmer: MySpace

SOV Summer: Las Vegas Bloodbath (1989)

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Las Vegas Bloodbath was one of my first introductions into the bizarre world of shot on video mayhem. I am from Sin City and this movie was floating around my fair weather town back in the early 90s, thanks to the infamous Mascot Video Store, which was owned by the even more notorious Ray Dennis Steckler. My friend gave me a copy (I would not venture into Mascot until some years later) and, well, it was something to behold. The upshot is that I can promise you there is a literal bloodbath, so truth in advertising pays off!

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Ari Levin is Sam Butler, and slightly reminiscent of a stretched out Nic Cage (and just as over the top). After scoring some big business deal, he heads back to Vegas to spend some time with his wife, Ruth (Elizabeth Anderson in a horrifying blonde Tina Turner wig). Only upon his unannounced arrival, he stumbles across wifey and her other lover. It takes Sam about five seconds to realize that justice can only be found at the end of his revolver and he kills the couple. Fully charged on anger and vengeance, he then proceeds to decapitate Ruth and take her head along for his upcoming massacre. Sam kills everyone from bartenders, to daytime whores (my favorite bit) to oil wrestlers to pregnant oil wrestlers! I mean, Ruth really pissed this guy off.

The second half of the film deals mostly with the ad-libbing oil wrestlers who sit around and talk smack and eat donuts. Then they watch about 20 minutes of one of their matches and then order pizza. Then they die. By that point you’ll either be moved to tears from boredom or laughter. It really depends on your tolerance for these kinds of regional efforts. Myself, I was pleasantly surprised by how tolerant of this film I was. I mean, it’s no Woodchipper Massacre. Not even close, but it is enjoyable if you love schlock or if you dislike daytime whores. And who doesn’t?

vlcsnap-749818Las Vegas Bloodbath is still a hard movie to recommend. It will be an endurance test for even the most seasoned gorehounds, but at the same time, man, is this film audacious. The scenes in the second half of the pregnant wrestler and her unborn baby are kind of worth the price of the rental. The first time I saw what he did to her, I remember sitting there in absolute disgust. This time I laughed. I also wondered a bit about this woman who is most absolutely pregnant (and sometimes topless!). She was either a great sport or hard up for drug money. Who knows, all that matters is… wow. Just wow.

And I guess that’s best thing that can be said about Las Vegas Bloodbath. Wow. Just wow.

Shot on Video Month becomes Shot on Video Summer!

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Thanks to a mini-computer breakdown, I wasn’t able to continue as I would have liked with my SOV Month. So, because I think it’s just that important, I’m extending SOV Month through the simmering summer! YAY! I have a couple of tricks up my sleeve and should have a new review up in a couple of days.

My name is Amanda By Night and thank you for listening.

SOV Month: Woodchipper Massacre (1988)

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I have to admit mild trepidation when I decided to make Shot on Video Month a reality. I mean, most SOV movies are POS, you know? And I’m watching a lot of films I haven’t seen before. I was taking a big chance and although I’m famous for being a big adventurer John Huston style, I was still afraid of what I’d be putting myself through.

Luckily, I made a great choice when I picked Woodchipper Massacre as a must see SOV selection. Made in 1988 for around $400, Massacre might not have a ton of blood and guts (or rather none at all), but it does have a lot of heart and a wonderful sense of humor to make it much more than simply bearable. Can we say love? Yes, I am in love with this little homemade regional effort and I’m not ashamed to say so.

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Massacre is about this single parent family. There are three kids: Jon (Jon McBride who also wrote and directed): the happy go lucky teenage brother, Denise (Denise Edeal): the lovesick tween with a fancy mullet and Tom (Tom Casiello): an adorable redheaded kid with glasses. Their Dad (Perren Page, reminding a bit of a sedated Lloyd Kaufman) has to leave town on a business trip and invites Aunt Tess (Patricia McBride, Jon’s mom who must be an incredibly cool lady) to oversee things. At first she seems like a semi-senile but sweet old lady. However, once Dad splits, the shit hits the fan. Aunt Tess is a bitch! She sets about making the kids’ life hell, even telling Tom he has to give up his Rambo knife which he just got in the mail. Needless to say, it ends in a scuffle and only one is left standing… and it ain’t Aunt Tess! Mildly upset by the killing of their Aunt, these spunky kids devise a way to get rid of her and it involves the nifty woodchipper out back. After they dismember and freeze her, they feed her remains to the woodchipper and then go about their chores and lives as normal. I mean, these kids bounce back fast!

Things are looking up for this Brady-kids-on-crack brood until Cousin Kim (Kim Bailey) shows up, straight outta the pen and desperate to find his mom so she can help him with a money “issue.” Bring out the woodchipper, kids…

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Jon McBride was a youngin’ when he wrote, directed and starred in Massacre. That same year he also made something called Cannibal Campout, which is on my To Watch pile, and I for one can’t wait. Massacre is far more engaging than it has any right being, considering the budget and mostly inexperienced cast. Yet, it all works. McBride has a keen talent for comedy and the kids have a great flair for delivery. There’s also a bit of technical prowess to be had and the Casio sounding score is so much fun! Plus Denise’s mullet… well… I just can’t put it into words. Oh yeah, and there’s air guitar!

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