1.9.09: Psycho Beach Party (2000)

Technically it was Terry's week to review the Killer B but since he refuses, I'll take up the mantle. (She sighs with the air of a movie martyr.) Hmmm….where to start?

"Don't give me no sass, it was a gas!"

Boy, I wish I could say that about this movie. I really wanted to like Psycho Beach Party and not because of my BtVS crush on Nicholas Brendon.

If ever there was a week to reject one's blog responsibility it was this one. Pyscho Beach Party is easily our most difficult movie to review to date. Pyscho Beach Party doesn't give a blogger much to sink their teeth into. How do you review a "cute" movie that was supposed to be a psycho killer piece? Pyscho Beach party was in fact so light on the killer narrative that I would wager that less than a gallon of red Karo syrup was used in the making of this movie.

Now, in its defense, Psycho Beach Party is a tribute to the California-surfer-beach-going-Gidget-learns-to-surf frolics of the 60's which similarly didn’t feature a lot of faux blood. But I guess we just expected more from a film whose movie poster promises "part 70's slasher flick."

We did find a few chuckles in the homoerotic shtick that included a chick played by a dude just for the sake of it (we dubbed her "Monica the Manika") and a gay dress up party. But the primary premise of the movie, the Chicklet-gets-grows-a-split-personality-and-kills-people narrative, was a yawn.

I'll give it partial props for self-awareness. Pyscho Beach Party is a B movie that set out to be nothing but a B movie. As Terry's commented as the credits rolled, "It was a good period piece."

Potential Drinking Games: One drink for every baby-oiled Grecco wrestling match. One drink for every homoerotic reference (though you're likely to end up flat on your face before the movie's over.)

1.2.09: Zombie Strippers (2008)

Let me preface this review by saying that 1) Terry picked this week's movie and 2) he had to point out to me who Jenna Jameson was. I went into it with an open mind knowing that the week's pick would very likely swing further to the stripper-side of the genre scale than to the horror side. I was only slightly off. While the naked boob to zombie beheading ratio was about a 102 to one, Zombie Strippers had enough undead action to do the horror genre proud.

Yes, Zombie Strippers featured everything you would expect from a movie starring a porn star…and a few things you wouldn't.

Female U.S. marines in full makeup running amok with gravity-defying cleavage and just f***'ed hair – expected.
Shockingly clever dialogue – unexpected.

Terrible acting by non-principles – expected.
Fair to fairly good acting by the movie's headliners – unexpected.

Fully bare breasts within the first 15 minutes – expected.
The fact that they didn't show up for 15 minutes – unexpected.

Tron-like, circa 1988 special effects – expected.
Really good zombie makeup – upexpected.

A plethora of plot holes – expected.
Witty, well-placed references to existential philosophers – highly unexpected.

Shallow, one-dimensional characters – expected.
Robert Englund (a.k.a. Freddie Kruger) as the germaphobic club owner – unexpected and freaking funny!

Scantily-clad women – expected.
Scantily-disguised political commentary on the nightmare known as the Bush administration – unexpected.

Stylized zombie chick fight – expected.
Stylized zombie chick fight concluding with an attack of golf balls shot from the zombies' lady parts – unexpected.

By the end of the film I had come to expect the unexpected from Zombie Strippers. While I would have rather shot golf balls out my own coochie than pay full ticket price to see it, Zombie Strippers was far from the complete waste of time I had expected. We laughed enough and were shocked (in a good way) enough to make Zombie Strippers worthy of our Friday night Killer B's ritual.

I'll leave you with the best line ever spoken by either stripper or zombie: "Don't you ever f***'ing call me an agnostic again."

Sleepaway Camp (1983)

(Movie description taken from wikipedia). The film opens in the summer of July 3, 1975, with a family consisting of John Baker (Dan Tursi) and his two children Angela (Colette Lee Corcoran) and Peter Baker (Frank Sorrentino) out on a lake near a summer camp. After their small boat accidentally flips, John and the children begin to head ashore, where a strange man, Lenny (James Paradise) is calling to him. As the family swims, a pair of teenagers riding around in a motorboat fail to notice them in time and hit them, killing both John and Peter. The surviving Angela is sent to live with her eccentric aunt Dr. Martha Thomas (Desiree Gould) and Martha's son Richard "Ricky" Thomas (Jonathan Tiersten).

Eight years after John and Peter's deaths, Angela (now played by Felissa Rose) and Ricky are sent to Camp Arawak by Martha. Due to her introverted nature, Angela is ridiculed and bullied, her main tormentors being fellow camper Judy (Karen Fields) and camp counselor Meg (Katherine Kamhi). During dinner, Angela, having not eaten for some time, is taken into the kitchen by a counselor to see if there is anything in there she would like to eat. Left with the head cook Artie (Owen Hughes), Angela is taken into a back room by Artie, who intends to molest Angela. Before any harm can come to Angela, Artie is found in the midst of unfastening his pants by Ricky, who flees from the kitchen with Angela after Artie threatens him. After the incident in the pantry, Artie is seriously injured when he is knocked off a chair by an unseen figure while tending to a large pot of boiling water which spills on his face and hands. Artie's injuries are deemed accidental by camp owner Mel Costic (Mike Kellin), who pays off the rest of his kitchen staff to keep the event quiet.

While in the recreation cabin, Angela is accosted by two boys who begin mocking her, prompting Ricky and his friend Paul (Christopher Collet) to get into a fight with the boys which several others join in on. After the brawl is broken up by a counselor, Ricky and the rest of the boys involved in the fight leave while Paul stays behind and succeeds in befriending Angela by telling her about misadventures he and Ricky would get into when they were younger. Later, out on the lake, Kenny (John E. Dunn), one of the boys who had mocked Angela, is drowned, his body being found the next day and his death is also ruled accidental by Mel, despite suspicion from camp employees and police. After Billy (Loris Sallahan), another boy who had bullied Angela, is killed when he is locked in a washroom stall which has a beehive dropped in it, Mel grows suspicious of Ricky, who he believes is killing those who bully Angela.

The relationship between Angela and Paul grows strained when Paul attempts to make out with Angela on the beach, causing Angela to have a flashback to her youth when she and her brother witnessed their father in bed with Lenny (the guy from the lake when her father and brother died). Confused and angered by Angela's rejection of his advances, Paul is easily seduced by Judy, who lures him away from a game of capture the flag and into the woods where the two are found kissing by Angela and Ricky. Guilty about what happened between him and Judy, Paul attempts to explain himself to Angela while on the beach. As Paul talks to Angela, he is shooed away by Judy and Meg, who throw Angela into the water. After being taken out of the lake and having sand flung at her by several small children, a clearly disturbed Angela is comforted by Ricky, who swears revenge on her aggressors. After the affair at the beach, Meg, while preparing for a date with Mel, is murdered with a knife while taking a shower, having her back sliced open.

Meg's disappearance goes largely unnoticed and camp activities go on as usual with a social being held. At the social, Angela is approached by Paul, who she tells to meet her at the waterfront after the social. Next, Judy, who had decided to skip the social, is killed in her cabin when the murderer forces a hot curling iron into her va-jay-jay. After the social, the camp is thrown into a panic when several children who had gone out camping are found hacked to bits in the woods. Ricky, who had missed the social due to feeling ill, overhears this news before being attacked by Mel, who had discovered Meg's corpse and blames Ricky for her death. After beating Ricky seemingly to death, Mel stumbles into the camp archery range, where he is shot in the throat with an arrow by the real killer.

As the counselors and police scour the camp, Angela meets Paul on the beach, where she tells him to undress, which Paul enthusiastically agrees to do. After finding the dead Meg and Mel, as well as the still living Ricky, a pair of counselors find Angela nude on the beach, softly singing to herself and clutching a large knife and Paul's severed head in her hands. Angela is revealed to be both the killer and a boy - the thought-to-be-dead Peter; through flashbacks it is shown that after Martha gained custody of him, she decided to raise Peter as a girl, already having a son and coming to the conclusion that another boy "simply would not do." It's also implied that the children were mentally affected in a very negative way by seeing their father sharing a homosexual embrace with another man. The film ends with Angela, male genitalia in full view, letting out an animalistic hissing sound.

Sounds like typical summer camp horror movie fare, right?

Wrong, so very, very wrong.

Thrown into the mix are some strange characters including Aunt Martha (who's screen name implies that she's a woman, but hoo boy, I'm still not sure), cousin Ricky (who has an almost unnatural protective streak about his cousin), a camp counselor wearing short shorts so tight you can tell his religion, an off-the-charts little bitch who really gets what's coming to her, and a gang of really disturbing dirty old men who serve as the camp's cooking crew (James Earl Jones' dad plays one of them). Also, the surreal and strange flashback action to Angela and her brother walking in on her father in bed with another man. Angela and her brother also share a bed in some of the flashback scenes, and it's not clear whether they're just playing or if there's something more icky going on...

Anyhoodle, the movie itself isn't all that spectacular. The grisly death scenes were definitely unique - my favorites being the boiling death of one of the pedophile camp cooks and the little bitch's death-by-curling-iron.

In terms of pure B-movie goodness, however, this movie rocks. Especially the ending scene.