Mill Creek Must See: Devil Times Five, aka Peopletoys (Seriously! PEOPLETOYS!)

I have something to say, and it might not make you happy but here goes:

I’m mad at you.

All of you. 

Specifically, any one of you readers who knew about Devil Times Five--also known by the far superior title Peopletoys--and didn’t tell me about it. (For the record, the one and only Wayne Kotke of Dead 2 Rights and Thomas D of Cinema Gonzo are excused from my vitriol.) This is a movie that features homicidal children, snow, the maid from Troop Beverly Hills, bear traps, kids in drag, farmer tanned naked buttocks, catfights, Boss Hog, and death by piranha.

People: I’m 30 years old. Do you know how many times I could’ve watched this movie by now had I known about it earlier? 

I hate you all.

Quick Plot: While transferring five violently insane children, a schoolbus crashes on a snowy mountain road, releasing the preteen terrors upon a gaggle of very ‘70s adults doing some sort of work/vacation/drunk/surly/thing. 

No seriously, I don’t really get it.

There’s the best named character of all time, Papa Doc, a wealthy but miserly grump with a sexy girlfriend named--not kidding--Lovely, who would rather be seducing the slow-witted caretaker Ralph. 

And really, who wouldn't?

Lovely’s ex Rick is now dating Papa Doc’s daughter Julie, keeping the group closely connected in a rather weird way. Last is Dr. Harvey Beckman (Sorrell Brooke) and his hilariously alcoholic wife Ruth (Shelley Morrison). 

I love movies with funny drunks. Well, to be clear, I love ‘70s movies with funny drunks. Especially when the other characters do nothing but roll their eyes at said lush’s antics or shout lines like “Listen you boozed up old broad!” It just makes life better.

Playing on the other team is a quintet of demons with various ticks. There’s Brian, the boy obsessed with military speak. Sister Hannah, a wannabe nun who would terrify my mother. Like any wacky sociopath, Susan loves fire and her little sister Moe, well, Moe is just odd. Leading the group is David (Leif Garrett), a competitive little jerk who doesn’t take kindly to losing, especially not to HARVEY BECKMAN!

After the kids fake a sob story to the adults about their accident, it doesn’t take too long for the killing to start. I should rephrase since the first murder goes on for about as long as Birth of a Nation. Perhaps that’s an exaggeration since Devil Times Five is only a 90 minute movie, but when everything happppppeeeeeennnnnnnnnns iiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnn slooooooowwwww moooooooosssssssshhhhhhhhhonnnnnnnnnnn, even a pitchfork stabbing, hammering, and beating over the head scored to the sounds of an angry giraffe getting a massage feels like eternity.

But hey, I can’t complain when we’ve still got a woman getting eaten by piranhas to enjoy! Not to mention the fact that even BEFORE the 9000 year killing, we got a random catfight complete with spy music and messy slapping. AFTERWARDS, we get axings, people set on fire, military booby traps, constant utterances of the words “Papa Doc,” and crazy stock 1950s UFO whistling to establish the fact that something is amiss. 

It’s all so much more wonderful than these words here are possibly describing.

High Points

Everything. No really, everything

Low Points

Nothing. Nothing at all. This is perfection on your screen

Lessons Learned

Lousy maniac drivers don’t deserve medals

Continually telling a sour child that he chops wood like a little girl might not be the best way to not make him want to chop your head off

In tennis there is a term called ‘following through’

Bath Alert

“No, YOU sit here and relax! I’m going to go take a bath cause if I don’t, I’m never going to make it to morning.”

Ahh, the adorable naivety of a woman in a genre film who would dare to believe sitting in a tub wouldn’t kill her

The Winning Line

“Have you laid her?”

Yeah. She asked in that way.

Rent/Bury/Buy

Available on Mill Creek’s 50 Chilling Classics pack or streaming on youtube like many a fine public domain title, Devil Times Five is crammed from beginning to end with things designed to make me happy. The kids are genuine little monsters who take sadistic pleasure in torturing entertainingly unlikable grownups. It’s occasionally unnerving (I don’t want to die as a human snowman) but more often than not, cheesily wonderful. Whether credit goes to listed director Sean MacGregor or the mysteriously uncredited (except on IMDB) David Sheldon I don’t know, but everyone involved in Peopletoys deserves a cake. Or a medal. Or a loaded gun irresponsibly hung on a wall in a roomful of damaged children. Whatever your candy is, take it. You deserve it.

Addendum

On the night that I watched Devil Times Five, I woke up at 4:46 AM from a fairly awesome nightmare. It starred a young, skinny, and BLOND Delta Burke (although it looked more like Joan Collins circa I Don't Want To Be Born but everyone kept referring to her as Delta Burke, so the details of dreamland are hazy) as she ran through the woods to flee a horde of nasty little children. Like Devil Times Five, the kids were groovy. The details are foggy, but one key detail involved a bratty little blond picking up a chainsaw but resorting to using sticks when he realized how heavy that machinery was. See, even the DREAMS that happened after this movie were super. 

Throw Out the Manipulating Night Trains From Harlem! aka The Return of Mill Creek Madness

It's that time again...

For the uninitiated, Mill Creek Madness marks the not at all monthly post wherein I review an entire DVD from the magnanimously cheap Mill Creek 50 Packs. Up today: Disc 9 from Drive-In Movie Classics.

1. Night Train To Terror, aka Shiver

Year: 1985...extremely 1985

Warp Speed Plot: The most enthusiastic ‘80s dance party ever tells us that Everybody’s Got Something to Do (Everybody But You) and engages in all sorts of crimes of Reagan Era fashion, including, but not limited to the following:

Head bands

Acid washed jeans

Puffy pants

Pastels

Primary colors

Half shirts

Half shirts over whole shirts

Gloves

Fingerless gloves

Leg warmers

One earring

Off the shoulder sweaters

Streaks

And they’re just the framing device of a framing device as Mr. God (a man with a dangerous resemblance to Colonel Sanders, proving where the filmmakers’ sympathies lie) and Mr. Satan (think Christopher Lee’s Hammer Dracula put through dry cleaning) discuss three short stories in order to decide who gets to claim whose soul. This may very well be the best anthology setup of all time. Anyway, the stories are as follows:

1- A man gets in a car accident and ends up in a hospital that specializes in lobotomizing male patients, raping the females (I think; ‘rape’ may be a subjective word better defined as pawing and shaking back and forth) and dismembering the remains to sell to medical schools. I think other stuff happens but it’s incredibly not clear. Still rather awesome though, plus heads in a jar!

2- A very active narrator tells the story of Greta, a struggling musician with an aversion to pants, who leaves her job selling popcorn in a carnival to star in porn films under the patronage of a millionaire. When a frat boy falls in love with her, Greta’s life gets complicated, leading her and her two paramours to start attending game night at the Death Club, where a random assortment of folks engage in Russian Roulette, Saw style. People die in hilarious ways. The story ends.  It involved this:

which is fine by me.

3-A lot of stuff happens, some of which involves Nazis, Satan, doctors, and the best stop motion animation since Pee Wee’s Playhouse. An extended scene is scored to Holst’s classical piece Mars, the Bringer of War, which just brings me back to high school band. I actually have no idea what this segment was about, but it happened and I think I watched it.

Celebrity Cred: At this point, seeing Cameron Mitchell in a Mill Creek film is hardly noteworthy, but Night Train to Terror redeems itself with TWO appearances by Richard Moll (who can also be found on the hilarious Mormon propaganda epic Savage Journey) as a rapey orderly in the first story and a doctor (I think) in the third.

The Winning Line: 

“The electrocution death was the turning point for Greta.”

Now if that’s not a dealbreaker, I don’t know what is

Verdict: An abominable movie, a fantastic time. Apparently the three stories were culled from half-finished unreleased films, which is appropriate and wonderful. The effects are about on par with a second grade art class project and the acting, a smidgen better than  the film on the disc that follows it. Satan is played by Lu Sifer, God is played by Himself. My conclusion, therefore, is as follows: If you don’t see this movie, you will go to purgatory.

2. The Guy From Harlem

Year: 1977

Warp Speed Plot: I temporarily wonder if I was accidentally fast-forwarding through the entire film when it opens with a credit reel. All of it. I can’t tell you how happy I am to know the names of the actors that played Man #1 and Man #2 before I even know what the movie is going to be about. Talk about innovation. 

Anyway, back to the *story.* Loye Hawkins plays Al Connors, the guy from Harlem who I assume spent his Harlem days as a banker. Now, however, he spends his days protecting attractive women (sometimes ones married to powerful African politicians) from kidnapping and murder schemes, then shagging them, much to the chagrin of his wife/roommate who has a constant overnight bag for those typical sleepovers. The oddest thing about this marshmallow textured blacksploitation is that the film seems divided into two complete plots, almost as if The Guy From Harlem was a failed television pilot. 

Celebrity Cred: Skimming through the credits on IMDB, I can't seem to find one actor with more than two other film credits to their name. It's quite shocking.

The Winning Line: “Okay. Let’s get this over with.”

...says the man about to sexually assault a kidnapped woman. Has there ever been a more reluctant rapist? As his would-be victim, how does your self-esteem recover?

Verdict: When the actors are lucky, the best they do is step on each others lines. At other moments, entire scenes are just looped so that we literally watch a conversation happen three times, cut at different points in the discussion to make us think we are indeed watching an actual scene (was this THAT much easier than just reshooting two minutes of dialogue?). The movie is awful, but...you know...kind of great. Great in the way that our hero rumbles with a shirtless bad guy--whose sole character trait was that he lifted weights in every single scene--as his friends/coworkers/enemies stand behind, look at the camera, and alternate cheering based on cues. With liquor, this movie becomes Citizen Kane. Without...a damn good time.

3. The Manipulator, aka B.J. Lang Presents

Year: 1971

Warp Speed Plot: Mickey Rooney is B.J. Lang, a Hollywood makeup artist on the edge. As he prances around a soundstage with stuffed animals and mannequins (don’t judge, that’s what I call a typical Friday night), we soon learn that he has kidnapped a young actress named Carlotta in order to make her reenact scenes from Cyrano De Bergerac. What follows is essentially 90 minutes of Rooney trying every single trick in a book about insanity to act insane, with the cameraman following suit by speeding up the reels, slowing down the reels, filtering the color, reusing the same shot in a quickly edited montage, and eventually, just flashing back to what he’d already done. 

Celebrity Cred: Rooney, naturally, making us forget his horrendously offensive performance in Breakfast At Tiffany’s by donning blue eye shadow and being scary.

The Winning Line(s): ”Please don’t die. I hate you, just die! Please don’t die.”

Sweetheart, I know being kidnapped and starved is stressful, but realize that your manic pleas are only confusing your manipulator.

Verdict: As experimental avant garde cinema goes, The Manipulator isn’t without merit. At the same time, when you’re actually watching 90 minutes of aggressive electronic music that makes the soundtrack of Irreversible sound like Beethoven, the effect is just kind of annoying.

4. Throw Out the Anchor!

Year: 1974

Warp Speed Plot: A single dad PR fella heads to a swampy community where he quickly falls for a resident and decides to save the town by protesting the crooked local government and their polluting happy ways. I think. 

Celebrity Cred: A classy Dina Merrill and an aight (is that how the kids spell it?) Richard Egan

The Winning Line: “You’re quite virile looking when you’re asleep.”

Use it. It will never fail to get you into someone’s pajama pants.

Verdict: I have to blame myself more than the movie in this case, as it took me three days to get through this 80 minute family-friendly film. Part of it was a subject matter that just couldn’t keep my eyes opened, while another part comes from the simple fact that Throw Out the Anchor is just a dull tale. Unless you’re incredibly environmentally conscious or have an attraction to stereotypical sea captains, there’s really no need to give this one a try. Watch Summer Rental instead.

Cumulative Lessons Learned

Just cause a gal’s bored doesn’t mean she’s hot to trot

Always keep a supply of bloody marys on hand when city folk stop by

Harlem is the experience playground of all people interested in becoming detectives

Being a great actress with a Brooklyn accent is a huge turn-on for short little psychotics

Women who don’t wear bras are very into women’s lib

Everybody’s got something to do, everybody... but you

Mill Creek Madness!

Back in November, I vowed to take on Mill Creek’s 50 packs to deliver full disc reviews every month.

I lied.

Not intentionally, of course. I never wanted to break my promise, particularly when I later declared it my  New Year’s resolution (screw weight loss!). It's just that I'm a really bad person.

Apologies aside, today marks the triumphant return to my Mill Creek project as we tackle the Tales of Terror 50 Pack and it's electrifying Disc 5.

Side A

1. War of the Robots, aka Reactor, Robots, Stratostars (I dare you to say the last one ten times)

Warp Speed Plot: Somebody decides to cash in on the success of Star Wars with laziness, spandex, and a convoluted plot involving space travel and sexual harassment in the workplace. That sounds far more awesome than the film, which is notable solely for the decision to dress evil henchmen with blond pageboy haircuts.

Celebrity Cred: Antonio Sabato. And lightsabers. Make of that what you will.

Verdict: This should have been tacky goodness to the extreme, but War of the Robots ultimately felt like a neverending story akin to space purgatory. It’s colorful and has moments of laughable joy, but to actually devote its 99 minute running time is something that should only be done when punishing small children.

2. Hands of Steel, aka Fists of Steel, Atomic Cyborg, Arms of Steel, Return of the Terminator

Warp Speed Plot: In the near future, truck stops remain happening joints and the government is investing most of our tax money into creating cyborgs based on Sylvester Stallone’s lead in Over the Top. Paco (Daniel Greene) is its best experiment and has been dispatched to assassinate a scientist. Cursed with a moment of conscience slip, he leaves the would-be victim alive and heads to a dingy rent-by-the-hour bar and motel where nightly arm wrestling matches take place. Shootouts happen, trucks crash, and I keep giggling.

Celebrity Cred: John Saxon snarls and George Eastman sweats, all under the restrained directorial watch of one Sergio Martino. What more do you need?

Verdict: This is the kind of ridiculously amazing extravaganza that makes these 50 packs worth that $15 price tag. Over the top action, non sequitur dialogue, and simple cinematic gluttony (arm wrestling is fun; arm wrestling where the loser’s arm releases a poisonous viper=awesome) make Hands of Steel simply smashing. I was inspired to watch this film after the Gentlemen’s Guide to Midnite Cinema (a podcast you all should be listening to) gave it one of the most entertaining discussions I’ve heard in some time. This is by not means a great movie, except that it is. 

Side B

1. One Frightened Night

Warp Speed Plot: An elderly millionaire decides to split his vast estate amongst a random assortment of soon-to-be murder suspects, all because the only person he’s ever really cared about is his MIA granddaughter. Naturally, the long-lost young lady returns home just in time for the signing of the will, but things get rather complicated (we’re talking jowls shake as the camera zooms in complicated) when a second woman shows up claiming the same identity. Oh oh, but complication reigns SUPREME when the first lucky lady gets murdered and one night of mystery gets rolling.

Celebrity Cred: Charley Grapewin, better known as Uncle Henry in a little film about a girl from Kansas who isn’t afraid of scarecrows or little people.

Verdict: At just 66 minutes long, One Frightened Night is decent enough for background entertainment when cleaning or toaster or doing your taxes (note to self: do your taxes). Fans of old timey whodunits might enjoy this early mystery, but others will probably prefer a more stirring round of Clue.

2. Vampire’s Night Orgy, aka Grave Desires, Orgy of the Vampires, and the more grammatically correct Vampires' Night Orgy

Warp Speed Plot: A random assortment of dull travelers end up stuck in a quaint little village clearly run by a cult of lazily sensuous vampires who really like Shakespeare and hospitality. People die and orgies don’t happen.

Celebrity Cred: Jack Taylor. No, I don’t know who he is either, but IMDB credits him as “Priest” in Conan the Barbarian, so he must be awesome.

Verdict: I enjoyed this one for tis occasionally cheeky humor and amazing overuse of complicated translations in dubbing. It definitely lacks the all-out trashiness the title suggests, but anyone who gets a kick out of poorly transported vampire films might have some fun. If not, just flip over the disc and rewatch Hands of Steel.

Cumulative Lessons Learned

You’ll never own a man until you control his heart

In the 1930s, nights were capable of being frightened

Surprisingly enough, Snuggies will be popular amongst space emperors sometime in the distant future

Asking “No, please don’t do that” will not stop raiders from tearing your shit apart

Your bus driver dying at the wheel is a disagreeable situation

If you’re blond and the female protagonist in a 1980s film, there’s a more than likely chance your name is Linda

If you’re blond and somewhat attractive in a a 1970s Italian vampire film, there’s a more than likely chance that every single male character will hit on you

The meat of a human leg is quite tender

Lastly, when costume designing a film set in space, think realllllllly hard about how plastic hair wigs will age 30 years later