USA UP ALL NIGHT WEEK: ONCE BITTEN

Once Bitten directed by Howard Storm 1985 

Reviewed by Goat Scrote 

Today we delve into something truly disturbing: A 1980s vampire sex comedy starring Lauren Hutton, Cleavon Little, and a rubber-faced young unknown named Jim Carrey. It's very much a product of its era. That means problematic attitudes about gender roles, relationships, race, and sexuality. It's rated PG-13 because of the sexual themes and a little bit of nudity (mostly male). Unfortunately, it's too tame to be sexy, too bland to be funny, too toothless to be scary, but it still wasn't as bad as I feared. It's a middle-of-the-road bit of '80s nostalgia that I mainly recommend to Jim Carrey fans and vampire-movie completists. 

Caution, this movie sucksssss

The Countess (Lauren Hutton) is a vampire with a problem. Apparently, in 1980s Los Angeles, there is a shortage of her favorite morbid beverage. She needs the blood of male virgins who are over the age of consent to maintain her youth and beauty. Going in to this review, the only thing I could remember about the movie is that the Countess must bite her virginal victims on the inner thigh, close to the source of their untapped sexual potential, rather than on the neck. 

Campari or artery juicey juice?

She is served by Sebastian (Cleavon Little), an effete manservant. Twice they make the same joke about Sebastian coming out of the Countess' closet. Still, Sebastian pretty much steals the show and Cleavon Little is clearly having a good time hamming it up.

 She also has an entourage of previous victims, frozen in time. Her minions continue to dress in clothes from the periods they died in. They aren't given a whole lot to do, which is fine. They are supposed to be quirky and cute, I think, but they're just sort of groan-worthy. You may recognize actor Stuart Charno from "Friday the Thirteenth Part 2" among other places. 

Get my agent on the phone pronto!

Dominick Brascia, Joey from "Friday the Thirteenth: A New Beginning", makes a brief cameo at the drive-in theater, where everyone is getting laid except Mark Kendall and his girlfriend Robin (Karen Kopins). The next day he and his two friends lament their continued virginity. They decide to go to Hollywood to try to pick up women in Mark's ice-cream truck. 

There's a montage of weird sights that they see around Hollywood, interspersed with the minions of the Countess chasing the ice cream truck for no clear reason. Why has the Countess has been having so much trouble, since her followers can apparently sense virginity from a distance?! 

where's Captain Kronos when you need him?

The trio of ultra-virgins arrives at a singles meet-up place where you can phone other tables and talk to the people there. It's basically Tinder but for the rotary-dial age. Here the Countess makes her move and picks up Mark. His friends, meanwhile, get caught up in shenanigans involving a jealous husband and a gun. 

Dial-a-Duhhhh

Back at the Countess' home, she quickly seduces mark, and he yelps "ouch" as she goes offscreen to bite his thigh. He awakens the next morning feeling tired and heads back home. His friends and parents soon notice that Mark is behaving oddly: Sleeping in a trunk in his room, dressing all in black, wearing sunglasses indoors... 

don't look over my shoulder, there's titties.

Robin finds out about the infidelity and the young lovers have a spat. Later she seems to forgive him when he comes by the clothing store where she works to make up. He is trying on clothes when the Countess appears in his dressing room and goes in for round two. She only needs to feed on Mark one more time, the next night, in order to maintain her beauty and make Mark her undead servant forever. If she fails to drink by midnight, however, it will mean disaster! 

At the Halloween Dance that night at Mark and Robin's school, the Countess shows up and tries to take Mark away. What follows is a fairly epic dance-off over the fate of Mark's body and soul. Robin is the winner, and the Countess is forced to leave, temporarily defeated. 

I want to drain your main vein

Later Robin asks Mark's two virgin buddies to check his inner thigh for bite marks. This leads to a scene in the boy's locker room shower where they grab Mark and try to look at his crotch, which leads the rest of the boys to scream "fags!" and flee as if they were in deadly danger. Sigh. 

Now that I picked up the soap allow me to scrub your taint

That night Robin is abducted into the Countess' limousine right in front of Mark and his friends. They head after them to the Countess' mansion and break into the basement. They find Robin tied to a chair and free her, then start looking for the way out. They are intercepted by the vampire minions, and the trap is sprung. They are all taken captive. 

 Mark is strapped into something like a gynecological exam chair and strapped in, sans trousers. The Countess is determined to have her third drink. Robin breaks free and threatens the vampires with a cross. The Countess laughs and says that she's an atheist. When threatened with fire, however, the vampires back off. Robin and Mark make a run for it while the two buddies cover their retreat. This leads to a zany chase around the mansion, which is built more like a funhouse. 

Take your coffin nails and leave my casket!

The two buddies hit on a couple of the female vampire minions, who promptly get naked and (presumably) take their virginity. Meanwhile, Mark and Robin end up in the room full of coffins where the vampires sleep during the day. 

When the vampires burst in they don't see anyone at first. Mark and Robin are hiding inside one of the coffins in the vampire lair, and let's just say, "If this coffin is a-rockin', don't come a-knockin'". Mark has lost his virginity and is no longer of any use to the vampiress. As midnight chimes on All Hallow's Eve, he Countess begins to age rapidly and ends up an elderly lady. Her minions all abandon her, except for loyal Sebastian, who assures her that they will find another virgin somewhere "...like Kansas, or Nebraska." Rating: 3 out of 5 raw meat patties.

The Devil's Rain (1975)

The Devil’s Rain (1975, dir. Robert Fuest)

Review by Goat Scrote

     We imps at TOG Laboratories have been busy preparing the way to Armageddon for quite some time now. To commemorate our 666th article, we’ve summoned a slice of 70s Satanic cinema so ripe n’ cheesy you’ll think you’ve landed in one of the moister, smellier crevices of Satan’s underpants. “Devil’s Rain” is a stinker but it’s got a ridiculously excessive finale which is worth seeing just for the jaw-dropping amount of slime involved.

Mork calling Orson.

     If you don’t have the patience for the slow pacing and laugh-inducing "action" sequences characteristic of the 1970s, you should still tune in for the fun splatter of the climax starting around the 74 minute mark. You don’t need to understand what’s happening plot-wise to enjoy the best things about the finale. It's a gooey rainbow of B-grade horror silliness as eyeless cultists dissolve into puddles and a regular dude wrestles with the devil. If they’d made the slime red instead of green, this might have been an R-rated grindhouse classic. As it is, it’s a mostly-bloodless 70s PG with a lot of melting zombie-flesh at the end. The effects department must have gone through hundreds of gallons of goop for that oozing, dripping, drizzling payoff.

Insert obligatory semen joke here.

     At the high point of his career, director Robert Fuest made two psychedelically schlocky Vincent Price classics, “The Abominable Doctor Phibes” (1971) and “Dr. Phibes Rises Again” (1972), as well as a couple of other cult classics. “The Devil’s Rain” was such a rancid flop, however, that it killed Fuest’s film career deader than an unbaptized virgin goat at a Black Mass. Fuest was banished ever afterward to the land of TV. Yes, the wretched stink of this movie was so severe that it canceled out the pleasing patchouli aroma of both of the super-swingin’ Dr. Phibes films.

Don't they sell these at Spencer's Gifts?

     Then there’s the curious fact that the filmmakers consulted with the actual Church of Satan while making this film. I imagine they did this partly to stir controversy for attention, and partly to pretend that there was some kind of legitimacy to the supernatural story which the writers had cooked up. They even gave cameos to Anton and Diane LaVey, self-proclaimed High Priest and Priestess of Satan's ministry on Earth at the time. I’m sure the LaVeys were very happy to collect their paychecks and soak up the free publicity on top of that, because why the Hell not? I can't help but imagine Anton LaVey casually reeling off inane occult nonsense with his trademark grim and frightening theatrical demeanor, then laughing cheerfully all the way to the bank.

Leaked! You'll never believe who they've cast as Dr. Fate
in the upcoming Justice League sequel!

     “Devil’s Rain” has campy performances from a reasonably well-known cast which includes Ernest Borgnine, Eddie Albert, Ida Lupino, Keenan Wynn, Tom Skerritt, and extra-large douchebag in human form William Fucking Shatner. Spoiler alert, in this one Shatner gets his punk ass whupped severely, and I found that ass-whuppin’ profoundly spiritually satisfying. Is that wrong?

I love my seventies porn collection.

     Even though Ernest Borgnine plays the villain, he is the real hero for me because he seems to be the only person on screen trying to make a movie which is not boring. He knows he is making a bad movie, for sure, but he still does what he can to make it an entertaining bad movie. I like his hammy, melodramatic performance as the manipulative cult leader who can shift from politely folksy to gleefully wicked to quietly sinister whenever it suits him. It's not nearly enough to counteract all the boring parts, but any time Borgnine is chewing scenery the movie is a lot more fun.

Anyone who sold their soul for this movie
is definitely entitled to a refund.

     I've saved the biggest star for last. This pile of eviscerated sun-bloated hog bowels disguised as a film holds the distinction of debuting an unknown young actor named John Travolta. He doesn’t speak and you never even get to see his whole face, so don’t get too excited. You may also be interested to know that the set of “The Devil’s Rain” is where the larval actor had his first introduction to the cynical money-making machine which calls itself Scientology. That's two, count 'em, two separate real-life cults with connections to this movie!

Can you spot the Travolta hidden in this picture?

     The opening credits roll over close-ups from paintings by Hieronymus Bosch (c. 1450 - 1516 CE) depicting vast hellscapes full of creative and awful torments. If only Bosch had made horror movies. His paintings prove that he was very good at crafting disturbing, surreal, gory, and grotesque religious imagery. He was also good at straight-up vicious torture porn. Whatever he filmed it would have been better than the shit I’m watching today, I just know it.

"Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Very, Very, Very Beginning"
A Hieronymus Bosch Joint

  The story begins with a fierce thunderstorm lashing a house out in the desert. Inside, frumpy and anxious Mrs. Preston (pioneering director, writer, singer, and actress Ida Lupino) is dressed in what appears to be a pink checkered tablecloth. Don't let her role fool you, she was one of the toughest, most determined, and smartest people in Hollywood during the 50s. Mama Preston frets about her husband, who is many hours late. Her son Mark Preston (William Fucking Shatner) returns from a search empty-handed. Moments later his father returns on his own, but all is not well.

This is what I get for adding
Bill Shatner to an overpopulated world.

  Papa Preston (George Sawaya) has misplaced his eyeballs and his face is slowly melting. He delivers a message from a villain named Corbis, who is waiting in a nearby ghost town. Corbis wants the family to turn over a book of Satanic power which is in their possession. Then Papa Preston praises Satan and melts into sludge. I wonder if they shoveled him into a bucket for a funeral later on, or if they just let his remains soak into the mud for fertilizer? The movie sort of implies the latter.

This book of alien space wisdom has cured me of gay!

     Mark is drawn away from the house by a ruse and returns to find Mama Preston has been kidnapped. The aged family retainer (TV regular Woody Chambliss, who also played old Sgt. Pepper in the 1978 Beatles film) has been tied up and beaten senseless. This character is forgotten almost immediately after being introduced.

     Mark grabs a pistol and an amulet of protection, jumps in his station wagon, and heads out to do battle with the forces of darkness. He arrives at the ghost town and Jonathan Corbis (Ernest Borgnine) pops up out of nowhere to have a friendly chat.

Borgnine starts the hoodie-and-medallion look.

     Corbis wants the book and demands to know where Mark has hidden it. They have a faith vs. faith challenge inside a creepy old boarded-up church. Within is a Satanic altar and some robed bozos chanting evil hymns to bad organ music. Cap’n Kirk prays his butt off to Jesus and friends, while Borgnine offers adulation to the ruler of the Bottomless Pit. Their competition over who can overact the hardest ends when one of the robed cultists reveals herself to be Mama Preston, now eyeless and enslaved to Satan. Mark loses his cool and shoots one of the minions. Green gloop oozes out and Borgnine makes fun of him for putting his faith in a mere weapon.

The power of Kirk compels you!
The power of Kirk compels you!

     Poor gun-happy Mark has lost the metaphysical battle, so the cultists strip him of his amulet and half his clothes, take him captive, and torture him for the location of the book. The cultists apply an extreme version of good-cop, bad-cop. Corbis torments him a while, then trades places with a seductress. She passionately kisses a willing Shatner… until he realizes that he’s actually slipping tongue to the eyeless, slime-filled, undead shell of his saggy-fleshed elderly mother! Ewwww, on so many levels... Judas Priest! I wish films and TV wouldn't have forced so many innocent people to kiss Shatner. He clearly doesn't get the basic concept and it's fucking embarrassing.

MISTER TAMBOURINE MAN!

     Meanwhile, at the lab of Dr. Sam Richards (Eddie Albert), he believes he is about to "unlock the key to ESP".  Tom Preston (Tom Skerritt) is the Doctor’s assistant and the youngest son of the Preston family. His wife Julie Preston (Joan Prather) is the subject of the psychic experiment. She has visions of bad shit going down involving the Satanic church in the ghost town. The Sheriff (Keenan Wynn) is busy with the aftermath of the big storm, so Tom and Julie are forced to investigate what happened to his family on their own.

Okay, I'll do the movie as long as I'm not in any
scenes with You-Know-Fucking-Who.

     Tom and Julie arrive in the ghost town toting a rifle. The church is dark inside except for the light from a stained-glass window which looks like a prop from a super-cheesy 80s heavy metal video. (That actually makes the window well ahead of its time, I guess?) That’s the only clue Tom needs to figure out that the whole mess is about devil worship. He's a genius. They find his brother's shirt in the church, then their car explodes in a fireball outside. When they run out to investigate, someone driving Mark’s station wagon tries to flatten them. Tom shoots at the car and it crashes, then he chases and fights the psycho cowboy who was behind the wheel.
     This movie has really unexciting action and unconvincing fights. Behold the magic of cinema.

HEAVY \m/ METAL

     Meanwhile, courtesy of Julie's psychic powers, we flash back to the olden days. A bunch of Satanists dressed like pilgrims in a Thanksgiving school play are plotting secret evil stuff. Shatner is one of the cultists. Corbis bitches about the lost book even back then, hundreds of years ago. The other cultists must be really sick of hearing about that shit by now.

Gee, honey, this B&B looks really... inviting.

     A bunch of villagers show up with torches, led by the Reverend of the town (Claudio Brook). Shatner is one of the Satanists, and his wife, Aaronessa (Erika Carlsson) has betrayed the cult to the Reverend on the condition that she and her husband be spared. The Reverend double crosses her and burns both husband and wife at the stake with the rest of the cult. Corbis is not impressed and talks Satanic smack to the crowd while the auto-da-fe proceeds. He isn’t tied to the stake, but he just dances around the pole and stays in the fire anyway. What a fun-loving kook! I don't care if he is evil incarnate, I bet Corbis is fun at parties. As long as no one mentions that dumb book.

     Back in the present, Tom and Julie take the station wagon to get away from the ghost town. On the way out Tom has a crisis of conscience. He decides to go back on foot so he can fight the magic-wielding cult single-handedly and rescue his brother. Did I write that he was a genius earlier? What a reckless idiot, that’s what I meant to write.

Driver, get me to the set of Phantasm!

     Julie drives on to fetch the Sheriff, but the mother-in-law from actual Hell takes a break from making out with her son to magically appear in the back seat. She abducts Julie with embarrassing ease.

     Night falls and the cultists march with torches, dragging a shirtless Shatner toward the altar. Tom is disguised in a cultist robe to infiltrate the evil ceremony. At the big Satanic altar, Corbis holds an evil freestyle hip-hop poetry slam. Check out his hype lyrics: “Let us behold the Father, the Ram of the Sun, the Moon, the Stars! Hail O Deathless One!”

Sucker MCs better watch their step.

     See, this is what happens when real Satanists write your Hollywood rituals for you. If you actually say that last bit out loud you could turn into an evil Satan-possessed goat-person, just like Borgnine does on camera, and just as I did many years ago. Ernest could afford the plastic surgery to cover up his mistake. I personally can't. You’ve been warned!

     Anyway, they finally break Shatner’s spirit and he turns into another eyeless goon. Tom gets spotted by his zombie Mama but he escapes to fetch more help, in the form of Dr. Richards.

This church-sponsored Easter egg hunt is a little "off" somehow.

     Dr. Richards and Tom explore the church and underneath the floor they uncover a giant Faberge egg with golden ram horns. It turns out the egg is full of souls captured by Corbis. The Sheriff appears again, now an eyeless drone, and Tom fights him hand to hand even though both men have guns. Tom wins, of course, but he and Dr. Richards are forced to hide from the other minions. One of the cultists sees that the magic egg is gone, but the heroes have left the Satanic book behind. WTF, idiots? You had one job, keep that stupid book away from Corbis! The cultist (John Travolta) runs off to give the prize to his master. The bad guys are super-psyched about this turn of events.

The golden fleece prepares to devour Oedipus,
just as it was foretold in the Necronomicon!

      The minions prepare to work their magic on Julie, but Tom jumps into the scene and brawls with anyone in a robe. Dr. Richards threatens to crack the eggy thing, which we learn is called the Devil’s Rain. Why in the world would it be called that? Zombie-Shatner gets his hands on the egg. Fortunately for the forces of goodness, Cap'n Kirk is able to overcome his Satanic enslavement and crack the Devil's Rain open.

Oh, you handsome devil.

     The roof blows out at the same moment, I guess because of the souls escaping. Actual rain, which is apparently not the Devil’s Rain, pours down from the sky. That just seems confusing, to have a movie called "The Devil's Rain" in which the only rain that falls is not the Devil's, because "rain" in this case refers to a magic blue egg full of dead people. Hey, don't look at me, ask Anton LaVey's corpse what the fuck this is about.

Give Uncle Satan a big wet kiss, Tommy!

     The rain melts the cultists and since this scene is where most of the budget went, the director spends a lot of time on the gooey, wailing deaths. Satan/Corbis is pi-i-i-i-iiiissed, but the rain melts him down even as he struggles with Tom. Then the Prince of Darkness falls into a hole and explodes because... um... reasons. Eventually the whole church explodes with no apparent provocation. It’s a sludgy mess of an ending. Then as a stinger, Julie turns out to be possessed by the spirit of Corbis and we are treated to a creepy scene of Ernest Borgnine hug-molesting Tom Skerritt.

     Whew, this movie sure does suck a lot! I still have fun watching most of Ernest Borgnine’s scenes, and of course I like the way it ends. If you're interested in this flick you might enjoy the Joe Bob Briggs commentary about it.

Should've gotten a flu shot, stupid.

Guinea Pig (1985)

Guinea Pig: Devil's Experiment (1985, dir. Satoru Ogura)

This "Guinea Pig" series reboot is a great idea!

Review by Goat Scrote

     Yes, this is the first one in the series that got Chas Balun in all that hot water with the FBI! 

     Although there are several repulsive scenes, “Guinea Pig” doesn’t even come close to living up to its reputation as an extreme shock classic. The entire thing is only 43 minutes long and there is no story to spend time on, yet it’s halfway through before actual blood flows. Since this movie seems to have no purpose for existing other than to showcase blood and guts, that means there is a whole lot of purposeless violent filler occupying screen time. With no context for the violence it just seems like a meaningless exercise in misogynistic torture fantasy. If that sounds like your thing, you may dig it. My personal reaction to "Guinea Pig" was boredom and distaste (not a good combination), except during the brutal finale which features artfully disturbing imagery and an outstandingly horrifying gore effect which is a must-watch for gorehounds and practical SFX nerds.

     Three men torture a woman, and she dies. There it is, the complete plot, in every detail. The abusers are anonymous and the victim never says anything. No one in the film is individualized or made into an actual character. There’s no explanation except that the project is claimed to be a series of experiments exploring the limits of suffering. Each “experiment” opens with a title card hinting at what kind of punishment they will inflict this time. This film is genuinely nothing but torture porn (and I use the term without malice), although they actually leave a lot of the worst of it out of view even during the gruesome and explicit final scene. They sacrifice quantity of gore for quality, which is usually the right trade-off.

     The movie presents itself as something which was obtained illicitly and redistributed, in a “Blair Witch” style marketing maneuver. Most of the time the perpetrators faces aren’t shown, which further lends to the feeling that we’re watching something we’re not supposed to be seeing. I suspect it was these facts combined with the plotless pseudo-porno presentation which confused certain drug-addled celebrities into mistaking “Guinea Pig” for a real snuff film.

Part 2: Flower of Flesh and blood was the tape that freaked Charlie Sheen out enough to alert the FBI. Here's what Dennis Daniel said about the embarrassing event after he lent out the tape. Well, when I finished with it, I sent it to my pal Chris Gore at FILM THREAT. He ended up lending it to a friend who watched it with Charlie Sheen, of all people!  Sheen thought the shit was REAL!!! He contacted a friend of his in the FBI and before you know it, I got a call from an FBI Agent saying that it was a federal offense to send snuff films through the mail! We’re talking 20 years in prison!!!!  I had remembered that Chas told me there was a tape called THE MAKING OF GUINEA PIG, so the FBI said I had to give him the contact info for the person who sent me the tape and they needed to send that “MAKING OF” tape as well. So, I had to call Chas and tell him all this. Needless to say, he was not pleased. I actually called him on his birthday and he was having a fucking grand old time till I called him with the info. Remember, Chas was a California hippie dude of epic proportions…the fact that I gave “the man” info about him was not too cool…but I had no choice. He was my only hope to prove it was fake. It all worked out in the end but it really sucked at the time.

     It begins with a woman handcuffed to a chair and several men dressed in black beating her. They rub salt in her eyes. They club her with a bag full of coins while one dude chills in the background casually enjoying a soda. Some time later, they throw her on the ground and kick her while verbally abusing her. Next they torture her with pliers pinching and twisting her skin. The most absurd torture arrives when they spin her around a whole lot on an office chair. After way too much time lingering on that, they force Jack Daniels down her gullet, and spin her around some more until she pukes.

     The second most absurd "experiment" is when they torture her with headphones roped to her head, playing something which sounds like a perfectly ordinary Merzbow recording. This goes on until she is a drooling wreck. Around 22 minutes into the runtime it starts to get gory as they pull out her fingernails. She is tied up and asleep when they start pouring boiling oil on her arm with a cringe-inducing sizzling sound. That’s one seriously fucked up alarm clock.

     Next up is the maggot torture. They pour maggots on the burns and sprinkle a few on her face just for the hell of it. She seems to be unconscious through it all. Maggots are pretty fucking gross, and the thought of them eating the dead flesh on her arm is unsettling. The entire maggot scene is about getting under our skin with psychological creepy crawlies.

     For their next amazing trick, the torturers throw raw meat and real animal guts on the woman. The guys, mostly off-camera, giggle and breath heavily like masturbating morons. She is unconscious, and the gut-throwing goes on and on for what feels like a really long time. Finally she wakes up and screams. Again, it’s pretty gross to have guts all over you, but mainly I am bored at this point in the movie. If you've cooked chicken or turkey in your kitchen, you've handled things just as gross as this. Like the maggots, it's something a quick shower can take care of..

     Things get drastic near the end. They move on to surgical incisions and smashing her hand with a sledgehammer. It does look pretty realistic. For the finale, they chain her head down and shove a long needled into her eye socket sideways. The eye socket floods with blood and the eye is skewered until it pops right out. Fulci and Bunuel would probably approve. It closes with what appears to be her corpse, dangling inside a net in the woods.

     After it was over I felt all the emotional involvement of having watched a practical f/x demo reel. It was very hard for me to connect with this movie, since I couldn't see any purpose beyond serial-killer stroke material or showing off their gore effects prowess. I would've liked it better as a five-minute short, and I don't think anything significant would be lost that way. I know that they were doing their very best to present something deeply disturbing, but other than a handful of short sequences, I had to fight to avoid letting my attention wander.

Recommendation: Only watch the ending, unless you are a huge fan of torture porn and fake snuff.

Winterbeast (1992)

Winterbeast (1992)

Review by Goat Scrote

     This movie is a reality-melting batshit insane piece of outsider art, and I love it. Imagine if "Hausu" and "Equinox" had a funny-looking little kid who was very sweet and tried very hard but was just really, really dumb, and maybe a little chemically unbalanced like his mother. That kid is "Winterbeast". And yes that analogy seems oddly specific.

     A few scenes were filmed in 1986, the rest was filmed over two days in 1989, and it was released on video in 1992. A couple of the props were recycled from a Dokken video. It’s one of the most badly-crafted movies I’ve seen in a long time, and also one of the most fun.

A photo of my reaction when I saw Greedo shoot first...

     "Winterbeast" is one of those amazing and truly special crap-fests which is massively entertaining despite no budget, no Rifftrax, and no one involved having had any concept of how to make a movie. Even though almost everything about it is wrong, this movie is certainly not a dull experience. After I finished watching it the first time I wanted to watch it again just to confirm that this bizarre film really existed. I needed to know that those memories weren't the feverish hallucinatory product of my crippling addictions to toad-licking and gasoline-huffing.

...and my eyeballs bursting into flames upon first viewing "Phantom Menace"

     "Winterbeast" was written and directed by Christopher Tiesen. Really, Mr. Tiesen? You're trying to convince me that there was a script for this? You're trying to tell me that this movie was directed? I may be dumb, but I'm not stupid, buddy! It stars some people that I don't recognize and neither will you, unless you're a relative. I don't want to research this one, people, I just want to let the good vibes flow off the claymation and soothe my aching mind.

Rejected Masters of the Universe concepts: Hentai-Man

     "Winterbeast" makes no sense at all. Half of the scenes don't seem to connect to anything else in the movie and there's hardly any attempt at a coherent explanation of what is going on. The dialogue and acting is on par with the storytelling, although the prissy, scenery-chewing resort owner is fun to watch. This extremely camp villain dresses in loud plaid suit-coats and similar garish couture. His fashions are eye-punishing.

What happens when a Sleestak fucks a chicken?

     I tried not to analyze what was happening too much because I was afraid that might cause a brain hemorrhage. It all has something to do with a cursed Native American something-or-other, evil totem poles, and the effeminate white guy who is, I guess, summoning monsters to kill people for, uh, some reason? Or maybe that's not what happened at all. It's hard to be certain. There are two guys investigating what’s going on and they clash with the evil resort owner over whether to close the lodge down because of the danger, unaware that he is involved with the sudden appearance of the monsters.

This is what bath salts will do to you, kids.

     Lots of really weird and harmful shit happens to random characters about whom we know nothing, and everything else just seems to be there to string us from one bizarre monster attack to the next one. The hilariously crude stop-motion creepy creatures come in all shapes and sizes. There's a blue-skinned zombie, a house-sized reptile, a giant birdlike monster, a wooden Gumby lookalike, a silly four-armed living totem pole, and more. Each monster appears, kills some people, then just wanders off forever. I suppose they all retired to a life of peaceful contemplation and were never seen again?

Free hugs! 

     There is really no point in giving much more of a plot summary of this movie. It's an accidental masterpiece of surrealist filmmaking. Okay, not really, but that sounded pretty good, right? For fans of schlock who want to turn their brain off and be mindlessly entertained for a while, I cannot recommend this highly enough. The screen shots from the film ought to give you a pretty good idea whether you're going to be into this or not, so I will let the pictures speak for themselves. Peace out, or whatever the kids say these days.

Recommended!

Damn! Okay white man, you win, your pit stench is totes fiercest.

When did this turn into "Nightmare Before Christmas"?

Am I colorblind, or simply mad? I'll never tell!

Oh no! Mr. Bill!

Bye folks! 

Oh, what the heck, one more for the road.