Opened 40 Years Ago: THE HOWLING (3/13/1981)

 

THE HOWLING opening in Toledo, OH 
on 4/10/1981

In Theaters/On VOD: NIGHTMARE CINEMA (2019)

NIGHTMARE CINEMA
(US - 2019)

Directed by Mick Garris, Alejandro Brugues, Joe Dante, Ryuhei Kitamura and David Slade. Written by Mick Garris, Alejandro Brugues, Richard Christian Matheson, Sandra Becerril, David Slade and Lawrence C. Connolly. Cast: Mickey Rourke, Richard Chamberlain, Elizabeth Reaser, Annabeth Gish, Sarah Withers, Faly Rakotohavana, Maurice Benard, Zarah Mahler, Mark Grossman, Kevin Fonteyne, Belinda Balaski, Mariela Garriga, Adam Godley, Ezra Buzzington, Orson Chaplin, Daryl C. Brown, Lexy Panterra, Chris Warren, Eric Nelsen, Celesta Hodge, Reid Cox, voice of Patrick Wilson. (R, 119 mins)

Even in their Amicus heyday 50 years ago, horror anthologies tended to be mixed bag with stories of varying quality, and the format in the modern era, popularized by the like of the V/H/S and ABCs OF DEATH franchises, is even more inconsistent. But they remain favorites with the horror crowd--arguably the easiest lays in fandom--and NIGHTMARE CINEMA comes virtually rubber-stamped as the next Horror Insta-Classic (© William Wilson). Overseen by Mick Garris (best known for his Stephen King TV adaptations THE STAND, THE SHINING, DESPERATION, and BAG OF BONES), and dedicated to Tobe Hooper, Wes Craven, and George A. Romero, NIGHTMARE CINEMA plays a lot like a big-screen offshoot of Garris' Showtime series MASTERS OF HORROR and its NBC follow-up FEAR ITSELF. He corralled some horror pals who would probably turn up on a new season of MASTERS--Alejandro Brugues (JUAN OF THE DEAD), the legendary Joe Dante (PIRANHA, THE HOWLING, GREMLINS), Ryuhei Kitamura (VERSUS, THE MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN, NO ONE LIVES), and David Slade (HARD CANDY, 30 DAYS OF NIGHT, and episodes of HANNIBAL and BLACK MIRROR)--with each contributing a segment with the Garris-helmed wraparounds taking place in an abandoned movie theater (played by the Rialto in L.A.), where a sinister projectionist (Mickey Rourke, also one of 22 credited producers) entertains five doomed souls by running a film that shows what horrific fate their future holds.

First up is Brugues' "The Thing in the Woods," where Samantha (Sarah Withers) sees herself in what appears to be the climax of a slasher film as she's relentlessly pursued by a shielded maniac known as "The Welder." It starts out as a winking riff on body count thrillers with a wicked sense of humor (a blood-soaked Samantha seeking refuge in a house and screaming "It's not my blood...it's Lizzie's, Maggie's, Tony's, Carl's, Jamie's, Ron's, Stephanie's..."), but soon switches gears and becomes something else entirely. It's wildly unpredictable, genuinely inspired, and the strongest segment overall. The best thing Dante's done in quite some time, "Mirari" finds insecure Anna (Zarah Mahler), self-conscious about a facial scar she got in a car accident when she was two years old, being talked into cosmetic surgery by her seemingly well-meaning fiance David (Mark Grossman). He takes her to Mirari, an exclusive facility run by renowned miracle worker Dr. Leneer (Richard Chamberlain), who allegedly did wonders with work on David's mother. Kitamura's "Mashit" isn't a complete success, but it's a well-crafted homage to a specific type of Italian horror film, blending elements of Lucio Fulci's early '80s gothic horrors and Bruno Mattei's THE OTHER HELL. It's set at a Catholic boarding school where a priest with some dark secrets (longtime GENERAL HOSPITAL star Maurice Benard) and a nun (Mariela Garriga) with whom he's having a secret fling face a reckoning in the form of a demonic entity called "Mashit," who possesses the children and drives them to suicide. It doesn't quite come together in the end, but it has some vividly Fulci-esque vibe (tears of blood a la CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD) and a score by Aldo Shllaku that's seriously indebted to Goblin and Fabio Frizzi.

Slade's "This Way To Egress" details the psychological meltdown of Helen (Elizabeth Reaser), as she waits for an appointment with her shrink (Adam Godley) while dealing with the fallout of being left by her husband (a phoned-in voice cameo by Patrick Wilson). It's a black & white descent into madness as the shrink's office opens portals to a disturbing, disorienting netherworld that looks like something not unlike ERASERHEAD meets PAN'S LABYRINTH. Like "Mashit," "Egress" has some interesting ideas (and an intense, powerful performance by Reaser) and some startling imagery, but never quite coalesces into a complete piece. Last and unquestionably least is Garris' "Dead," with teenage piano prodigy Riley (Faly Rakotohavana) shot and left for dead after a carjacker (Orson Chaplin, the son of SUPERMAN producer Ilya Salkind and Charlie Chaplin's daughter Jane) kills his parents (Annabeth Gish, Daryl C. Brown) and flees the scene. A hospitalized Riley starts seeing dead people as their souls wanders the hospital halls. He not only has to contend with the spirit of his mother encouraging him to let go and join her in the afterlife, but there's also the carjacker, who keeps showing up at the hospital to finish what he started. Alternately riffing on THE SIXTH SENSE and VISITING HOURS, "Dead" is exactly that, and anyone assembling a horror anthology knows you don't put the weakest story last. Clearly, "The Thing in the Woods" would've been the ideal closer, but hey, I guess project leader Mick Garris thought long and hard about it and concluded that contributing director Mick Garris' segment was the best choice. I'd be shocked if Rourke worked more than a day on this (he doesn't even appear until 45 minutes in, appropriately introduced after the conclusion of Dante's plastic surgery segment), but true to form, NIGHTMARE CINEMA is ultimately a mixed bag: there's one great story, then a very good one, then two flawed but interesting offerings before "Dead" lands with a resounding thud. You can't help but think the whole movie would seem better by the end if the order of the stories was completely reversed.

On DVD/Blu-ray: BURYING THE EX (2015); ROBOT OVERLORDS (2015); and bonus Netflix Instant exclusive STATEN ISLAND SUMMER (2015)

BURYING THE EX
(US - 2015)

While he pays the bills and makes a comfortable living in television directing episodes of shows like HAWAII FIVE-O and SALEM and has a ubiquitous, fan-friendly presence on the internet through the Trailers from Hell web site, it would be nice if Joe Dante could get better feature film offers as he enters his emeritus years. A distinguished graduate of the Roger Corman factory, the 68-year-old Dante made his name with cult classics like HOLLYWOOD BOULEVARD (1976), PIRANHA (1978) and THE HOWLING (1981) before making it to the majors with the Steven Spielberg-produced GREMLINS (1984) and EXPLORERS (1985), and later hits like THE 'BURBS (1989) and SMALL SOLDIERS (1998). Long-praised for his twisted and anarchic, Looney Tunes-inspired humor (most apparent in 1990's GREMLINS 2: THE NEW BATCH), Dante found himself more or less blackballed after the colossal failure of 2003's LOONEY TUNES: BACK IN ACTION. Since then, he's made ends meet with TV--his politically-charged "Homecoming" was probably the best episode of Showtime's MASTERS OF HORROR--but for a beloved genre auteur, Dante's big-screen career is a shambles. He directed the wraparound segments of the dreadful anthology film TRAPPED ASHES (2008), and his 3-D '80s throwback THE HOLE (2012) was OK, but it took three years to find a distributor who only gave it very limited release. BURYING THE EX, Dante's latest attempt at a big-screen comeback, does nothing to add to his legacy. Scripted by Mark Trezza and expanded from Trezza's own 2008 short film, BURYING THE EX is yet another rom-zom-com in the vein of WARM BODIES and LIFE AFTER BETH, with a little ALL CHEERLEADERS DIE thrown in. It relies on raunch and grossout gags that are hardly Dante's milieu. Die-hards may cite the constant horror-fan shout-outs in BURYING THE EX--posters for Mario Bava's PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES and the Christopher Lee vampire comedy UNCLE WAS A VAMPIRE, several appearances by a 2012 issue of Video Watchdog, clips from movies like PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE, NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, THE TERROR, THE WHIP AND THE BODY, THE SATANIC RITES OF DRACULA, and THE GORE GORE GIRLS, and a brief appearance by the legendary Dick Miller--as evidence that Dante's back, but in the context of the film, these elements feel like desperate cries for help, like he's doing anything he can think of to put some kind of personal stamp on this flop-sweat-soaked endeavor. At some point--maybe around the time a character is covered in projectile-vomited embalming fluid or when another brags about how he needs protein after he "busts a nut"--you forget how bad the movie is and just start feeling sorry for Dante. This guy made THE HOWLING. A garbage gig like this is far beneath him.

Horror nerd Max (Anton Yelchin) has dreams of opening his own horror-themed memorabilia and costume shop, but he's also got a clingy, shrewish, domineering but super-hot girlfriend in Evelyn (Ashley Greene). A fanatical environmentalist, she forces him to eat vegan, tosses his vintage movie posters and redecorates his apartment in a way that will reduce his carbon footprint. He arranges a meeting in a park to break up with her and on her way there, she's hit by a bus and killed. Feeling guilty, Max shuts himself off from everyone until he runs into hot pop culture horror geek Olivia (Alexandra Daddario) at a New Beverly screening of I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE. While bonding over Val Lewton and a Fruit Brute malt at her horror-themed ice cream shop (called--what else?--I Scream), the pair quickly fall head over heels...until a slowly-decomposing Evelyn returns from the grave, revived by a promise Max made in the presence of a cursed piece of genre memorabilia to always be with her. No joke lands and no one is amusing, especially Oliver Cooper as Max's horndog half-brother, the aforementioned "nut-buster." The only saving grace is Daddario, saddled with playing a horror-con version of a Manic Pixie Dream Girl (© Nathan Rabin), but managing to pull it off in a way that's actually charming. Other than that, forget it. BURYING THE EX isn't scary and it isn't funny. It's the nadir of Dante's career and that's just depressing. (R, 89 mins)


ROBOT OVERLORDS
(UK/Canada/Ireland - 2015)

With ROBOT JOX-ish poster art reminiscent of Charles Band and Full Moon's VHS glory days and a structure that would seem to be in the wheelhouse of an in-his-prime Joe Dante, ROBOT OVERLORDS should be a lot of fun. Instead, it's a dull, downbeat dud that doesn't seem to know what audience it's pursuing. Set three years after an invasion of Earth by a race of alien robots who are constantly on patrol and keep humanity imprisoned in their own homes, ROBOT OVERLORDS follows three teenagers--Sean (Callan McAuliffe), his buddy Nathan (James Tarpey), and Nathan's sister Alexandra (Ella Hunt)--and orphaned neighbor boy Connor (Milo Parker), who accidentally discover that a jolt from a car battery temporarily disables the behind-the-ear tracking monitors that humans are now requires to wear. This allows them to set in motion a plot to take back Earth and overthrow the robot rulers, who are aided in their takeover of the planet by traitorous collaborators. One such collaborator is the loathsome Robin Smythe (Ben Kingsley), who only seems to be sucking up to the robots in order to give him leverage in his pursuit of Sean's mom Kate (Gillian Anderson), whose military officer husband (Steven Mackintosh) is missing and presumed dead. Directed and co-written by Jon Wright, whose TREMORS homage GRABBERS was an inspired and fun little monster movie, ROBOT OVERLORDS would seem to be aimed at kids but is too dark and violent for family audiences, and the longer it goes on, the more listless and generic it becomes. Kingsley, Anderson, and the younger actors are fine, but Wright fails to bring the energy and enthusiasm that made GRABBERS so enjoyable. You'd think it would be tough to make a movie called ROBOT OVERLORDS boring, but that's exactly the word to describe this barely-released misfire. (PG-13, 90 mins)

STATEN ISLAND SUMMER
(US - 2015)

Probably the worst thing to come from the SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE camp since the 1985-86 brat-pack season that brought the show as close as it's ever been to cancellation, STATEN ISLAND SUMMER was produced by Lorne Michaels, written by SNL head writer and "Weekend Update" co-anchor Colin Jost, and features many current and former SNL cast members who probably had better things to do between seasons but didn't want to piss off the boss and the head writer. Paramount buried this like a state secret, very quietly dumping it on VOD and on Netflix Instant, perhaps hoping that it'll trick less-savvy streaming viewers into confusing it with WET HOT AMERICAN SUMMER: FIRST DAY OF CAMP. Jost's autobiographical script follows the very bland and Jost-like Danny Campbell (Graham Phillips) over his proverbial Last Summer Before College. Harvard-bound Danny and his best buddy Frank (Zack Pearlman as Jonah Hill and Josh Gad) are lifeguards at Staten Island's Great Kills Swim Club, along with lunkheaded stud Anthony (John DeLuca), hot tomboy Mary Ellen (Cecily Strong), and beer-guzzling, chain-smoking slacker Skootch (Bobby Moynihan as Zach Galifianakis as Bluto Blutarsky), and all are in constant battle against uptight, Speedo-wearing boss Chuck Casino (Mike O'Brien). Danny also spends the summer awkwardly pursuing his one-time babysitter Krystal Manicucci (Ashley Greene, not having a good 2015 between this and BURYING THE EX), the daughter of feared mob boss Leo Manicucci (Vincent Pastore as Vincent Pastore as Big Pussy). The crux of the plot deals with Danny trying to blow off a forced Disneyworld trip with his loving but clingy parents (Jim Gaffigan and Kate Walsh) to have one last blowout kegger at the pool, which the nefarious Chuck Casino keeps trying to sabotage since he wasn't invited. There's also Gina Gershon as one of the horny, wine-guzzling housewives constantly pursuing Anthony, Penny Marshall as a cranky food stand manager, Will Forte as a paraplegic ex-biker, Jost and his brother Casey as laid-back, partying cops (in no way inspired by Seth Rogen and Bill Hader in SUPERBAD), Method Man as a pot-dealing ice cream truck driver, Kate McKinnon as another horny housewife, Jackson Nicoll basically playing the same kid he played in BAD GRANDPA, and Fred Armisen as Bill Murray from CADDYSHACK, the pool club's maintenance guy who spends the movie haplessly trying to combat a rapidly-growing hornets' nest.

Jost tries to balance mawkish sentimentality with post-Farrelly/Apatow raunch but nothing gels, and the degree to which STATEN ISLAND SUMMER rips off both CADDYSHACK and SUPERBAD is utterly shameless (even the opening credits have Danny riding his bike around town like Michael O'Keefe's Danny in CADDYSHACK--all that's missing is Kenny Loggins' "I'm Alright"). The much-maligned Jost has taken plenty of shots over his performance on "Weekend Update," and while he'll never be the worst WU anchor thanks to Colin Quinn, STATEN ISLAND SUMMER does nothing to win over the Jost detractors. Directed by Rhys Thomas, who handles a lot of SNL's filmed segments, STATEN ISLAND SUMMER is hopelessly self-indulgent, aggressively unfunny, and, in keeping with the Apatow influence, entirely too long at 108 minutes, almost like Jost and Thomas felt everything they wrote and shot was too hilarious to lose. With today's ever-evolving distribution patterns, some good movies get lost in the shuffle. STATEN ISLAND SUMMER is not one of them. (R, 108 mins, currently available on Netflix Instant)

Cult Classics Revisited: SCREAMERS (1981)

SCREAMERS
aka SOMETHING WAITS IN THE DARK
(Italy/US - 1981)

Directed by Sergio Martino and Miller Drake. Written by Sergio Donati, Cesare Frugoni, Sergio Martino, and Miller Drake. Cast: Barbara Bach, Claudio Cassinelli, Richard Johnson, Beryl Cunningham, Joseph Cotten, Mel Ferrer, Cameron Mitchell, Franco Javarone, Roberto Posse, Giuseppe Castellano, Francesco Mazzieri, Eunice Bolt, Tom J. Delaney, James Alquist, Bobby Rhodes. (R, 90 mins)

The story of how the 1979 Italian fantasy adventure ISLAND OF THE FISHMEN became the 1981 Roger Corman drive-in splatter movie SCREAMERS is one of the more entertaining examples of hucksterism in the annals of exploitation cinema.  Just out on Blu-ray and DVD in its SCREAMERS incarnation courtesy of Scorpion Releasing, the circumstances surrounding the metamorphosis of ISLAND OF THE FISHMEN into SCREAMERS are covered in great detail in the set's bonus features. Contrary to popular belief, Roger Corman didn't have anything to do with the changes despite SCREAMERS being released by his New World Pictures. It came to him with the changes already in place. Richard Kay and Harry Rybnick were two veteran B-movie producers of such titles as 1956's CURUCU, BEAST OF THE AMAZON, and both had a hand in bringing Ishiro Honda's GOJIRA (1954) to the US and its restructuring into GODZILLA in 1956.  By 1980, Kay and Rybnick were still eking out a living on the fringes of Hollywood, with their company United Producers picking up foreign exploitation fare and frequently retitling them for their second and third runs through American drive-ins and grindhouses (for instance, Pete Walker's 1974 imprisoned-fashion-models thriller HOUSE OF WHIPCORD was twice relaunched via United Producers, first as PHOTOGRAPHER'S MODELS and then as the even more lurid STAG MODEL SLAUGHTER). Kay and Rybnick acquired Sergio Martino's ISLAND OF THE FISHMEN, a bizarre aquatic Italian ripoff of THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU that blended elements of Edgar Rice Burroughs and H.P. Lovecraft, and approached PIRANHA director Joe Dante about beefing it up with some American actors and gory killings. Dante was busy with THE HOWLING at the time and sent the guys to his buddy Miller Drake, a trailer editor at New World who had been wanting to branch out into directing.  Drake took the job, recruited cinematographer Gary Graver, a longtime exploitation fixture whose main claim to fame among his friends was working on Orson Welles' shelved and never-released THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND in 1972, and assembled a crew comprised mainly of moonlighting New World staffers looking for some quick cash and some additional experience (future TERMINATOR producer and eventual James Cameron ex-wife Gale Anne Hurd is credited on SCREAMERS as "Maui location manager," even though no scenes were shot on Maui). Drake wrote and directed a prologue to be added to the beginning of FISHMEN with Mel Ferrer and Cameron Mitchell, aging warhorses who had been in the business long enough to remember the glory days of Hollywood but were now taking any job that came along if it paid enough, being stalked and killed by slimy creatures that didn't really look like the ones in FISHMEN. Drake was supplied with a $50,000 budget for the prologue and the additional footage was shot in four nights at the caves at Bronson Canyon in Los Angeles' Griffith Park, a favorite location of Corman's going back to the 1950s.

Though Dante, who paid his dues at New World and clearly had bigger fish to fry by this time as he was about to break into the big leagues after THE HOWLING, declined the offer to shoot the new footage and wanted to keep his involvement under the radar, he did help Drake out by editing the footage and overseeing the overhaul of FISHMEN into SCREAMERS. Using the pseudonym "Giuseppe Dantini," Dante worked with Drake to streamline the 99-minute FISHMEN down to its basics, cutting it down to about 75 minutes to work in approximately 12-13 minutes of Drake's footage and a couple of other changes sprinkled throughout, like the addition of one character (James Alquist) who appears briefly only to get killed by one of the fishmen, and a later shot in a laboratory where Drake and soon-to-be-revered makeup effects maestro Chris Walas (THE FLY) replaced a shot of one of Martino's fishmen in a tank with their own, more CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON-ish monster--shot in a makeshift tank in Dante's garage--and the seams barely show until they're pointed out to you by Drake in his interview segment. The film, now running 90 minutes (75 minutes from FISHMEN, 13 minutes of Drake's material, plus new credits) was retitled SOMETHING WAITS IN THE DARK, given a new English dub (star Claudio Cassinelli dubs himself in FISHMEN, Italian accent intact, but has been revoiced by someone else for SCREAMERS) and even though it wasn't a slasher film, that's how Kay and Rybnick wanted it marketed, and they began shopping it around to distributors. Because of their knowing Dante and Drake having used a number of off-the-clock New World guys, Corman was happy to take it off their hands.  And that's where things got really interesting.

Original 1979 Italian ISLAND OF
THE FISHMEN poster art.

Using United Producers' artwork and assorted promo material, Corman sent SOMETHING WAITS IN THE DARK out to ten drive-ins in Virginia for a test run and it bombed.  Refusing to lose money on an investment, he pulled the film from distribution for a marketing overhaul that was assigned to New World advertising honcho and future filmmaker Jim Wynorski.  With SCANNERS being an early 1981 hit, Wynorski proposed the title SCREAMERS and it stuck.  He devised an ad campaign that made it look completely American, with Cassinelli renamed "Charles Cass," FISHMEN producer Luciano Martino changed to "Lawrence Martin," and a non-existent "Dan T. Miller" credited as director (the original Italian names remained intact in the film itself).  Most importantly, the new one-sheet boasted "Be warned: You will actually see a man turned inside out!" and on a Sunday afternoon, Wynorski quickly shot a TV spot that featured just one quick opening shot of actress Eunice Bolt screaming from the new SOMETHING WAITS IN THE DARK scenes and no footage whatsoever from ISLAND OF THE FISHMEN. Instead, it featured Wynorski's then-girlfriend running around the still-standing sets from the same year's GALAXY OF TERROR and a quick shot of a monster thrown together by his pal Rob Bottin (soon to make his mark with his makeup work on THE HOWLING and John Carpenter's THE THING) for free as a favor to Wynorski. A few weeks later, Corman picked Georgia for the new test run, and blitzed Atlanta and the surrounding areas with Wynorski's TV spot and sent out ten prints of the newly-christened SCREAMERS and its second test run was a smash hit.  But there was a problem: exhibitors and customers were furious that there was no scene of a man being turned inside out. Word got back to Corman, who told Wynorski that the scene needed to be there. The prints were recalled, and the shot of the Bottin monster from the TV spot and a couple of additional test footage shots were spliced into the fourth reel when Cassinelli is peeking in some various doors in a hallway. More prints were struck, and SCREAMERS became a decent drive-in and grindhouse hit in the summer of 1981. Unless you saw SCREAMERS on the big screen in 1981, you've never seen the complete "man turned inside out" footage. When Corman had the Bottin monster from the TV spot spliced into the existing prints, no one bothered splicing it into the negative. The prints are long gone.  The footage isn't in the negative, and it was the negative that was used for the Embassy Home Entertainment VHS release in the '80s and the subsequent interpositive utilized for the new Scorpion release (Dante, in his interview segment, is under the mistaken impression that the footage has been restored).

"Look, do you understand that I was
in CITIZEN KANE?"

SCREAMERS is definitely an improvement over the lethargic ISLAND OF THE FISHMEN. Opening in 1891 with the prologue as broke fortune hunter Radcliffe (Ferrer) charters a boat to a Caribbean island captained by wily old sea salt Decker (Mitchell) only to have the entire party offed by rampaging fishmen in an orgy of throat-slashing, disemboweling, and decapitations, the action quickly shifts to Martino's original film, also set in the Caribbean in 1891, after the sinking of a prison ship, with a small band of survivors led by the doc in charge, Lt. Claude de Ross (Cassinelli).  They end up on the titular island of the fishmen, which is home to the fortress-like compound of the dastardly Edmund Rackham (a hammy Richard Johnson). Rackham believes the island lies over the ruins of Atlantis, and tells de Ross that the Fishmen are the amphibious descendants of the original inhabitants of Atlantis. Of course, he's lying.  The fishmen are actually mutants created from the remains of dead men by doddering, senile mad scientist Professor Marvin (Joseph Cotten), who believes he's doing altruistic work in abetting humanity's adaptation to the world's future (perhaps the insane doc was an early proponent of climate change?). In reality, Marvin and his daughter Amanda (Barbara Bach) are being held prisoner as Marvin's gill-man creations are being used to raid Atlantis--depicted in miniatures that would make Antonio Margheriti turn away in shame--for the endless buried treasures desired by the despicable Rackham.

This is the original fishman-in-progress creature discovered
in a tank in Prof. Martin's laboratory in  ISLAND OF THE FISHMEN, but
Richard Kay and Harry Rybnick didn't like the design, so
it was replaced with...

...this creature, designed by Chris Walas, for an insert shot
done by Miller Drake in a makeshift tank in Joe Dante's garage 

In its original form, ISLAND OF THE FISHMEN was a harmlessly goofy adventure with a little violence but minimal gore.  It would've easily gotten a PG rating in America, but Kay and Rybnick told Drake they wanted R-rated gore and splatter but, being the old-schoolers that they were, weren't interested in nudity (Drake says he could've easily gotten Bolt, as Radcliffe's female companion, to go topless, but the old-timers shot it down). The SCREAMERS prologue delivers splatter and then some, with Mitchell getting his gut sliced open, Ferrer's throat being ripped out, and another guy getting his head torn off in graphic detail. The biggest cuts Dante and Drake made to FISHMEN in their streamlining it into SCREAMERS was cutting out a good chunk of Beryl Cunningham's screen time as Shakira, a priestess who spends most of FISHMEN blathering on about voodoo and accomplishing little more than slowing the movie down until Martino and co-writers Sergio Donati and Cesare Frugoni finally find a use for her in the climax.

Bach may have been a minor factor in whatever success was enjoyed by SCREAMERS. It's surprising New World didn't play up her involvement a little more, considering that in the summer after John Lennon's murder, anything involving the Beatles was big news, and right around the time of SCREAMERS' release, Bach was a ubiquitous media presence thanks to her marriage to Ringo Starr after the two became an item while shooting the surprise hit comedy CAVEMAN, which hit theaters a couple months before SCREAMERS. Bach's potential breakout role as a Bond girl in 1977's THE SPY WHO LOVED ME got her the global notoriety that came with being a Bond girl, but like many of her predecessors, it evaporated quickly, and by 1979, she was back doing the same European B-movies she was prior to her time with 007, starting with back-to-back aquatic horrors with Martino, first FISHMEN and then THE BIG ALLIGATOR RIVER, which debuted in America on CBS in 1982 as THE GREAT ALLIGATOR.  At the ripe old age of 37, Bach retired from acting after she and Starr appeared in Paul McCartney's 1984 vanity project GIVE MY REGARDS TO BROAD STREET. In the early 1990s, she enrolled in UCLA to get a Master's in Psychology, and in the years since, the now 66-year-old Bach has been involved in humanitarian work for numerous charities, generally staying out of the public eye but almost always seen accompanying Starr at red carpet events. Most of FISHMEN's main cast returned in ALLIGATOR, including Bach, Cassinelli (whose tragic 1985 death on the set of another Martino film is discussed here), Johnson, and Bobby Rhodes, who appeared in FISHMEN as a servant and would later go on to cult movie glory for his roles in Lamberto Bava's DEMONS and DEMONS 2. ALLIGATOR also featured Mel Ferrer, who had no idea he'd inadvertently be part of the FISHMEN reunion in a roundabout way thanks to the SCREAMERS additions. Johnson and Cotten were both busy hamming it up in Eurotrash at the time, with Johnson also starring in Lucio Fulci's ZOMBIE the same year as the Martino films. Cotten, who appears to have been granted the privilege of live-on-set sound, really dives into his mad scientist role with the utmost enthusiasm--he only has two or three scenes, but judging from his work here, you'd think he was as invested in this as he was CITIZEN KANE, SHADOW OF A DOUBT, and THE THIRD MAN decades earlier. That's a pro.

Mel Ferrer collecting an easy
$10,000 for his work on SCREAMERS

ISLAND OF THE FISHMEN was never officially seen in its original form in the US until Eurocult outfit Mya Communication released it on DVD in 2009.  The Mya transfer is acceptable for the most part, with some very murky bits and various rough spots. Scorpion's SCREAMERS presentation essentially makes the FISHMEN DVD obsolete--not only is the quality better (except for one exterior scene with Bach offering some blue potion to the fishmen that's still quite murky, which must just be the way it was shot), but SCREAMERS, even with its patched-together nature, is the far more entertaining and fast-paced film. The Blu-ray also offers reversible artwork if you prefer the SOMETHING WAITS IN THE DARK poster design (both one-sheets can be spotted adorning the walls of the Civic TV offices in David Cronenberg's VIDEODROME). Corman knew how to make a movie play, and he obviously taught guys like Dante and Drake well, not to mention Wynorski, whose carnival barker act of an ad campaign upped the hyperbole factor past a point where even Corman was left bewildered.  In the bonus features, Wynorski talks of getting the call from Corman on Saturday morning after he received word of the Friday night debacle of drive-in owners and audiences furiously voicing their outrage at not seeing a man turned inside out.  "Jim, is there a man turned inside out in the picture?" the always soft-spoken Corman asked.  "No, Roger.  There isn't," Wynorski sheepishly replied, expecting to hear the words "You're fired." Instead, Corman told him to get down to the office so they could figure out what they were going to do to fix it. "You mean I'm not fired?" Wynorski asked.  "No, Jim.  You put people in seats.  I'll never fire anyone for putting people in seats.  But we need the inside out man."  Roger Corman:  a man who always knows what his audience wants.

On DVD/Blu-ray: THE HOLE (2012), ROSEWOOD LANE (2012), and 4.3.2.1 (2012)

THE HOLE
(US - 2012)

For much of his 1980s GREMLINS heyday working in conjunction with producer Steven Spielberg, director Joe Dante was generally considered a capable, commercial genre craftsman.  He made entertaining movies that made money.  But going back to his days editing trailers for 1970s Roger Corman productions, and with his own early directing efforts like PIRANHA (1978) and THE HOWLING (1981), Dante's work exhibited knowing winks, nods, and loving homages to his own influences from classic horror films to vintage Looney Tunes, including giving some of his favorite and still-living old-time actors some meaty late-career roles long before Quentin Tarantino made it cool.  Nowadays, critics recognize Dante's often subversive wit and anarchic style and even a film like THE 'BURBS, savaged by critics in 1989, has enjoyed a resurgence as a cult film with a lot more going on beneath the surface.  Dante films like GREMLINS 2: THE NEW BATCH (1990) and SMALL SOLDIERS (1998) have been praised for their cutting social commentary in the guise of popcorn genre fare. Now, at a still-youthful 65, Dante, like his contemporary John Carpenter, has lived long enough to see many of his dismissed films re-evaluated and to find himself considered an auteur.  And like Carpenter, Dante seems content to enjoy his emeritus status and has opted to focus more on interviews, retrospectives, and conventions rather than worrying about remaining topical and trendy in a world of cinema that's simply changed too drastically for him to be as commercially viable as he once was.  Dante was unstoppable in the 1980s.  His latest film took three years to get picked up by a company called Big Air Studios.

THE HOLE, shot in 2009 but unreleased in the US until a very limited theatrical run (in 3D) in September 2012, is Dante's first feature since 2003's troubled LOONEY TUNES: BACK IN ACTION.  In that time off, he's directed episodes of CSI and the new HAWAII FIVE-0, a short film accompanying a GOOSEBUMPS amusement park ride, two episodes of Showtime's MASTERS OF HORROR (including the acclaimed anti-war screed "Homecoming"), and the wraparound segments of the terrible 2008 anthology film TRAPPED ASHES.  THE HOLE almost feels like a GREMLINS-era 1980s throwback in many respects, probably the main reason why it took so long to find a distributor, even with being shot in 3D.  Entertaining if a bit lethargically paced, THE HOLE has single mom Teri Polo moving to a small town with moody teenage son Chris Massoglia and younger son Nathan Gamble.  The brothers and cute girl next door Haley Bennett discover a locked door in the basement floor, which leads to a seemingly bottomless pit.  They keep this finding a secret, but are soon confronted by--stop me if you've heard this one before--the physical manifestations of the things they fear the most.  For young Gamble, it's evil clowns.  For Bennett, the spectre of a ghost girl straight out of RINGU, and for Massoglia, it's a nightmarish version of his abusive, long-absent father.  As charmingly old-school as THE HOLE can be, the script by Mark L. Smith (VACANCY) is really stale, and even at 92 minutes, the film feels padded.  I thought Massoglia and Gamble both did good work, and I liked the feel of the early scenes, which really took me back to seeing Dante films like GREMLINS and EXPLORERS as a kid, but once the plot kicks in, you'll know every twist and turn, and only in the finale, when Massoglia ventures into the hole, does Dante really attempt anything unique.  Also with Bruce Dern as Creepy Carl, the house's previous owner who tries to warn them about the hole, and the venerable Dick Miller in a silent cameo as the world's oldest pizza delivery guy.  THE HOLE is a pleasant, if extremely slight film, nowhere in the vicinity of top-tier Dante, but it's nice to see a new film by him. (PG-13, 92 mins)

ROSEWOOD LANE
(US - 2012)

I can't fathom there being a more absurd, laugh-out-loud thriller in 2012 than ROSEWOOD LANE, the latest from Victor Salva, who's a long way from JEEPERS CREEPERS here.  Salva is a filmmaker known more for being a registered sex offender (I'm not going to rehash it here, check his Wikipedia page if you don't know the story), but credit where it's due:  JEEPERS CREEPERS is a pretty great horror film.  The sequel was terrible, and so is ROSEWOOD LANE, an instant Bad Movie classic that Universal didn't even bother releasing in theaters. Talk radio shrink Dr. Sonny Blake (Rose McGowan) moves back into her childhood home in the suburbs after the mysterious death of her estranged father.  It seems to be a quiet, peaceful neighborhood in a cul-de-sac on Rosewood Lane, but the neighbors live in an all-consuming fear of psychotic paperboy Derek Barber (Daniel Ross Owens).  Derek is almost immediately sneaking into Sonny's house, rearranging ceramic figurines, confronting her in the basement, calling in to her show and taunting her with nursery rhymes...and a great introductory deal on a subscription, but she better act now to save!  And he's not really making any effort to hide what he's doing.  Even old neighbor Fred (Rance Howard, Ron's dad) says "Yeah, sometimes I hear him walkin' on my roof...I seen him up on yours, too."  THEN DO SOMETHING!  During a housewarming backyard BBQ, Derek takes a leak on Sonny's on-again/off-again boyfriend Barrett (Sonny Marinelli) through a hole in a privacy fence.  But the paperboy always seems to disappear into thin air before anyone can confront him.  And no one seems really eager to deal with the issue.  Do-nothing detective Briggs (Ray Wise) says there's no evidence and questions if Sonny's just imagining all of it as a psychological reaction to being back in a traumatic environment, and since Derek's a minor (the actor Owens is 29 and looks it), they can't go after him without his parents' permission.  So, Derek's reign of terror escalates and the body count starts piling, and well, gosh darn it, there just isn't anything that can be done about it.

I have a few questions: did Salva intend for this to be a comedy? What is the deal with Derek? Where are his parents? Why do the neighbors just put up with him routinely entering their homes and terrorizing them? Why does everyone just accept the lunatic antics of this little shit as part of life on Rosewood Lane? And does he do this to the rest of his paper route? Why just this dead-end street?  Has anyone called the newspaper and asked to speak with Derek's supervisor?  Why do the cops look the other way? Actually no, I take that back. They don't look the other way. They look right at it. And do nothing. Derek even calls Sonny's show at one point and flat-out says he buried Barrett alive in Sonny's backyard...but when the cops go there, they just stand around and bitch because they can't find anything, and only notice the snorkel sticking out of a mound of dirt when one cop trips over it. No, really. Also with Lauren Velez, Lin Shaye, Bill Fagerbakke, and Lesley-Anne Down (still a knockout after all these years), ROSEWOOD LANE is professionally-made and competently-acted, but the film is almost as out-to-lunch hilarious and as off-the-charts stupid as THE ROOM. Come on, Salva. Seriously. What the hell is this bullshit? (R, 96 mins, also streaming on Netflix)


4.3.2.1
(UK - 2010; 2012 US release)

It took Universal two years to dump this occasionally diverting but overlong British crime thriller straight to DVD in the US. Written and co-directed by KIDULTHOOD and ADULTHOOD writer and sometime DOCTOR WHO guest star Noel Clarke (who shares directing duties with Mark Davis), 4.3.2.1 has some cast members that would seem to guarantee at least a limited US theatrical release, but apparently, Universal didn't see a Simon Pegg thing happening with Clarke.  Highly reminiscent of Doug Liman's GO (1999), 4.3.2.1 details the wild weekend of four young London-based women and highly unlikely friends--American expat Jo (Emma Roberts), wealthy and virginal piano prodigy Cassandra (Tamsin Egerton), street-smart lesbian Kerrys (Shanika Warren-Markland), and mousy, introverted graffiti artist Shannon (Ophelia Lovibond).  Starting on a Friday afternoon and told in four roughly 25-minute segments, we follow the path of each through the weekend--including a quick trip to NYC for Cassandra--going back after each until all the plot lines and characters converge.   There's sex, a diamond heist, Viagra, stolen cars, Pringles, a panic room, mistaken identity, a misplaced note, familial dysfunction, convenience store mayhem, club brawls, a NYC racist confronted by a large group of thugs ("Hey, come on guys...I voted for Obama!") led by Eve, and a ruthless assassin (Michelle Ryan).  Lots of familiar British TV faces and Clarke pals turn up (Sean Pertwee, Ashley Thomas, Ben Miller, Camille Coduri, and others), in addition to Mandy Patinkin and even Kevin Smith in a likable supporting turn as the gregarious Big Larry, who becomes an unexpected friend of Cassandra's in NYC.  4.3.2.1 isn't likely to achieve the cult status of GO or the early films of Guy Ritchie (another obvious influence), and it could probably lose 15-20 minutes, but it's not bad and the cast seems to be having a blast.  (Unrated, 117 mins, also streaming on Netflix)