The DAN ZONE

In 1990, a year before Silence of the Lambs hit theaters, one of my favorite almost-80s ‘slashers’ hit video. Luther the Geek is a perfectly bizarre, hokey piece of trash that I love. Actually, if you let go of any preconceived notions of what makes a horror film good, Luther is a frickin’ freaky clucking, metal-toothed, chicken-head biting monster! Just look at that heinous image on the DVD cover!

But before we get to Luther, let’s talk about another freak—Troma president Lloyd Kaufman, who introduces every Troma DVD release. Now, I don’t always bother to sit through his intro (I’d much prefer Elvira’s camp) but the few times I’ve left the intro running while I was busy gathering up my popcorn and cherry cola, I’ve noticed some really ‘gay’ comments being made by Kaufman in his monologue. Well, I was once again doing my corn and cola gathering last night, and when I came back into the living room, Kaufman has two chicks on screen with him with pasties on their boobs, along with some bearded dude he is talking to about Luther the Geek. When the premise of the film is discussed, the bearded dude says…as he gets down on his knees…that he bites the head off cocks, too. WTF? Kaufman hastily suggests they not go that far but that there are other options. Cut to the pasties chicks to infuse a feeling of heterosexual maleness into the shenanigans. But then we cut back to a rear view of Kaufman, with the bearded dude’s hands on his hips, a lot of slurping noise, and Kaufman moaning and groaning as he introduces the movie. Again, WTF???

As if that weren’t gay enough, there’s even more gayness in the actual movie. Again, there are HUGE boobs, this time on the lead female character. When she showers with her muscular boyfriend, she turns him around, his palms against the tile as he assumes the position so she can ‘wash his back.’ But then we get a close-up of his meaty butt as she pokes at his crack with the bar of soap. Have I mentioned…WTF???

Anyway, onto the serious stuff. Luther himself. The film begins with a narrator telling the story of how ‘geeks’ were sideshow freaks that would bite the heads off chickens. We’re taken to 1938 Illinois where a bunch of rowdies are egging on a creepy geek in a cage…until he actually gnaws off a chicken head, at which time the men gasp in horror. A little boy who is watching, mesmerized, falls and hits his head, and when all the men leave, he reaches into the cage and rubs his fingers in the blood pooling from the beheaded chicken’s neck and licks his fingers. So immediately you’re left thinking “A-ha! He becomes Luther the Geek due to this traumatic childhood experience!”

But then the narrator comes back and says something like, ‘that’s not the kind of geek that this story is about…” Cue those three little exclamatory letters again.

The story is simple. This crazed murderer “Luther” gets out on parole. Luther is a seriously creepy looking bug-eyed guy, and although he’s not even hip hop, he has some serious grills that he made himself (sort of like Freddy making his glove in the opening of A Nightmare on Elmstreet). The supposedly rehabilitated Luther immediately hits up a grocery store, where he sucks down a couple of raw eggs before gnawing a customer to death. As a shrieking crowd gathers, Luther hops into the first unlocked car he finds, and is conveniently driven home to the isolated farm of a woman who doesn’t know he’s in her back seat.

The brutality and violence begin as soon as the woman starts unpacking her groceries. If this film were remade today, it would most likely be a seriously violent and torturous experience. There are threats of it as the non-speaking, clucking-only Luther ties the woman face-down in her bed after showing quite an interest in her crotch area. But soon, the woman’s daughter and boyfriend arrive home so Luther hides. The couple immediately takes that hot shower I was talking about, where dropping the soap isn’t what a heterosexual man needs to worry about—it’s the big boobed girlfriend wielding the soap.

This film seems intent on having every character make one stupid move after another. Daughter has a chance to untie her bound mom from the bed, and instead says not to worry first, that her boyfriend is around and everything will be okay—even after the boyfriend has just run off, chasing the freak that stole his motorcycle. Girl then has to hide under bed as Luther returns, and when he leaves again, she stays under there for what seems like HOURS (it goes from daylight to night), her mom STILL tied to the bed!!! Cop comes to house and gets annoyed with mom and tells her to shut up even though she’s screaming bloody murder. Cop then leaves mom alone in the house with dead bodies all over the place because Luther has turned on his squad car’s sirens. And that’s just for starters. Your eyes will be rolling so fast that you’ll be seeing double.

But you have to just go with all the idiocy. Because the perfect performance in this film is the portrayal of Luther. Here you have one of those men who never made another film and is genuinely freaky. Who is he??? Does he act and look like this in real life??? How quickly will I drop dead if I ever run into him in the egg aisle of my grocery store??? It might sound stupid, but when Luther goes skulking around the house clucking with his bug eyes darting around, natural lighting effects (aka: no budget) creating genuine dark shadows, you can imagine yourself in that horrific situation. Add to that some excellent gore, an 80s-esque synth score, and some bad chicken puns along the way (including a reference to KFC), and you’re really going to be lamenting the fact that they don’t make horror films this awfully entertaining anymore…they mostly just make them awful, with no soul or spirit lurking behind the nonsense. Hannibal Lecter may have scored an Oscar, but it’s Luther I turn to again and again.

An awesome cyber friend of mine landed my new book in the hands of the crew at “Night of the Living Podcast” and they did a LOL funny review. The guys make one of the girls read a really scandalous excerpt from the book! Check it out. It’s Episode # 176 at notlp.com

Coincidentally, as Lost Boys: The Tribe hit the top of my horror pile for a rewatch, we today lost 80s icon Corey Haim—well, half an icon, considering he really wasn’t whole unless he was in a movie with Corey Feldman. So, I popped in my Blu-Ray of the sequel, not expecting to be blown away, since I barely remember the film from the first time around.

But on my second viewing, I paid attention instead of doing five million other things while ‘watching’ it, as I did the first time. Sure, the film feels like vampires invading the 90210 remake at first, but if you stick with it, there are some very campy and funny lines sprinkled throughout, even if they are too sporadic for the film to fully reach its camp potential. This is also definitely not a sterile flick, because, despite the pretty faces and polished production value there is some great gore and impressive nudity.

The story is simple. A young guy and his sister move to a seaside community after losing their parents. All it takes is one party (complete with face-sucking lesbians) for them to get involved with the latest tribe of motorcycle gang vampires. Along comes “Eddy Frog” to warn them of the vampire threat, Eddy being none other than Corey Feldman. Your knee-jerk reaction will be to laugh out loud at how cheesy he sounds when he delivers his first lines in a froggy voice, but once his role gets off the ground (and if you can flash back to his character in the original film), it’s kind of endearing and nostalgic. One character even makes a reference to the great film The Goonies, a not-so ‘in’ joke for all us Gen-Xers who know that Corey Feldman was in that movie. Another nice throwback is the use of a pretty good rerecorded version of the awesome theme song from the original Lost Boys, called “Cry Little Sister,” a dark and atmospheric song that has the children’s chorus singing “Thou shall not fall.”

There are also a couple of awesome cameos. First, horror effects master Tom Savini has a nice gory cameo in the opening scene. And then, of course, the late Corey Haim makes his appearance in a short scene after the credits begin to role. Those of us who watched the reality show The Two Coreys know that Haim was not asked to reprise his role for the sequel and was very hurt over it. But by throwing him a bone and putting him in this miniscule cameo at the end, they gave Lost Boys fans what we were, um, thirsting for: the potential for a full-on Corey vs. Corey sequel. But now, sadly, that second sequel will never happen and Corey will never have his second moment in the spotlight.

The latest miserable human being I encountered was at the dog park today. It was a beautiful, spring-like day of nearly 50 degrees, with a warm breeze blowing and the sun shining. The dog park was packed with people milling around watching their dogs having fun. Suddenly, everyone began to notice these big tufts of hair drifting on the wind…and flying right into their faces and mouths! Pretty quickly, all eyes turned to a man who was standing in the MIDDLE of the dog park grooming his super hairy dog with a dog brush and simply allowing the big hair balls to run amok. And this a*hole actually kept LOOKING at the tufts blowing away and ferociously attacking the crowd of pissed off people giving him dirty looks, and yet continued to brush his dog!!! DESPICABLE.

On a much bigger level of despicable, there’s the ABC situation here on the east coast. ABC wants more money from cable (which inevitably means our cable prices will go up), so just in time for the Oscars, ABC decided to play dirty and remove the channel from our service until it gets what it wants. I’m so happy that the Oscars are fricking boring and that I didn’t get invited to one of those super gay Oscar parties. But Oscars aside, I went through my head trying to think of what shows I watch on ABC. The truth is, since ABC sux and canceled Better Off Ted and Eastwick, as well as destroying the legacy of Scrubs, and since I never dedicated myself to Lost, so no love lost there, the ONLY show I watch on the station is Desperate Housewives, which happens not to be on tonight because of the Oscars. And if I don’t have the wives back by next Sunday, I’ll just catch it on the ABC website. Screw ABC. Who needs it?

The 2003 film The Locals has a title that sounds like it’s going to be one of those grizzly backwoods torture films that are so popular today, but in reality, it ends up being more like an hour and a half episode of Amazing Stories: you know, a heartfelt tale veiled by some supernatural elements.

Two city boys, a dark haired cutie and his blond friend, hop in their car for a night of gallivanting through the countryside. As their journey gets underway, the film keeps cutting to some mysterious plaid-wearing dude digging a grave. But back to the boys. As night descends and they, of course, end up on a desolate dirt road in the mountains, they run into two females who are heading to a party—and look like they’re heading for a Madonna concert in 1985. The boys even ask if it’s some sort of 80s party, and one of the girls claims it’s going to be ‘rad’ and then expresses her interest in their car, which appears to be a make she’s never heard of. Hm….

Anyway, the boys start to follow the girls to the party, end up in a car accident, losing the girls they’re following in the process, and are soon trekking along the dark country road with just a flashlight. Gee, I think I recently reviewed another film with this same exact setup. Anyway, this begins a chain of events that has the boys being chased by ‘the locals,’ a bunch of ominous, ‘deathly’ white trash guys in a pickup truck.

The film is intriguing and keeps your attention, with some tame suspense, limited gore, and little in the way of actual ‘horror’, other than the supernatural premise that unfolds. Still, it’s definitely an entertaining viewing, and actually has a melancholy payoff, which is where the Spielberg-esque twist comes in. If only there were a swelling orchestral John Williams score, your eyes would probably well up a bit.

My only major complaint about the film is the extreme use of bright lighting in the all-outdoor location! That sure is some strong moonlight! As a result of the saturation, it looks ridiculous having the lead character running around with a flashlight. You can barely see the beam because the lighting is so bright! Ugh! I expect so much less Hollywood lighting when I watch a low-budget flick!

In the early 1970s, the zombie genre made famous by 1968’s Night of the Living Dead was in its infancy, with low-budget zombie flicks being churned out both in the U.S. and overseas. Having brushed up on most of them, I have to say that Let Sleeping Corpses Lie is perhaps one of my favorites, delivering zombie thrills without relying on the hoards of zombies present in other films. In fact, the majority of the film features one zombie…that’s right. ONE zombie.

A hip young couple have hooked up to travel the English countryside. When they stop for directions, the fun begins. The man goes off to talk to some agriculturists experimenting with a radiation machine that provokes insects into devouring one another instead of precious crops. Uh-oh! If I were the one asking these guys for directions, I’d be like, “Dudes! You’re just begging to make people start feasting on each other!”

Anyway, the woman, waiting back at the car, suddenly feels a pair of eyes on her. Excellent zombie viewpoint and raucous music/zombie ‘sounds’ accompany the appearance of the first of the living dead. A recently drowned man (it was in the local paper) turns out to be the only zombie hiding in the shadows of this desolate town for most of the movie. And yet, the tension remains high despite the seemingly limited threat. As the body count rises, the local detective begins to suspect that the couple is actually committing the murders—you know, the disemboweling and gutting. At one point, he even gets nasty with our male hero, criticizing his long hair and “faggot clothes.” Awesome. Why worry about zombies when there’s a guy with faggot clothes threatening the safety of your town?

A mandatory visit to the cemetery finds the couple trapped in a basement with the main zombie and his friends, who rise from nearby coffins to join him, including a FREAKY old lady zombie who looks like a witch. These zombies are no slouches. In fact, they’re pretty strong (they can unearth a tombstone and throw it) and they climb ladders! This scene delivers, and the director isn’t afraid to let darkness be darkness, a quality in horror films that has been lost in polished, sleek Hollywood films of the new millennium.

Quite a bit of the movie takes place in a dreary hospital, which is where the film reaches its climax and largest zombie count and human slaughter, including a totally ridiculous strip down of a nurse by the zombies. As the film nears its end, you think the director is copping out and stealing the twist right out of the original Night of the Living Dead. Think again.

This morning, the Today Show did one of their TV show reunion segments, and the focus was on the cast of Eight is Enough. And I’ll be damned if Grant Goodeve, who played oldest brother David Bradford, hasn’t become one distinguished daddy! When the show began in 1977 and I was only eight years old, I saw those blue eyes, that thick feathered head of hair, that open collared denim shirt revealing a fuzzy chest, and I was like, “I want HIM to be my big brother….” Now that I get what those thoughts were all about, I still want him to be my big brother…from another mother, of course.  Lord, Grant me one Goodeve with him!

Just finished watching the campy slasher comedy Drive Thru (2007), featuring a killer clown mascot of a popular fast food restaurant. The name of the mascot is Horny the Clown and the name of the restaurant is Hella Burger, so you pretty much know what to expect going into this one. Our killer Horny is awesome, goofy yet freaky like the clowns in Killer Clowns from Outer Space. In fact, Horny’s clown mask is modeled after the fast food drive thru intercom, so his mouth looks like a speaker you’d talk into to place your order. It’s all cheesy fun plus some pretty good gore. The actors and director don’t bother to take themselves seriously, just going with it, which really works. There’s some good Styx/AC/DC references for 80s lovers and a slight obsession with ‘wiggers’ and black street talk (even though all the main characters are white). Also, there are also extraneous political jabs at Orange County, Republicans, and George Bush. It’s oddly out of place and feels somewhat forced, even if it’s not as excessive as the political satire of David Arquette’s liberal horror film The Tripper. I know both films were released when Bush was still in office, but that’s simply not the kind of  ‘clown’ horror I want to relive again and again!

Back in the 1970s, this little movie called Let’s Scare Jessica to Death was one of many scary films I’d watch on television with my mother and brothers. Although I hadn’t seen it since the 70s, I remembered two things very clearly about it. First, it is one of those films that leaves you scratching your head because the film is purposely vague in its conclusion. The other is that there is ONE scene involving a chick in a white dress rising out of the water that used to freak me out as a kid.

Last year, this 1971 film was finally released on DVD, allowing me the chance to experience it once again as an adult. The first thing I realize about this film is that kids back then must have been a lot more attentive, because this movie stuck with me, and yet, it’s a typical 70s slow burner where nothing major really happens until the last half hour, including that scene that scarred me for life. However, attentive kid or not, it’s still easier to understand the plot as an adult.

It seems Jessica was in a loony bin for a while, and now she, her husband, and their good friend are going to live in an old house in a quiet town so she can ‘rest.’ In usual 70s fashion, this film is kind of trippy. It begins at the end, with Jessica sitting in a boat on a lake, narrating in her mind. The scene seems like definite inspiration for the final scene in the original Friday the 13^th. Next, we’re taken back to when the weirdness begins, with the trio mentioned above driving to their new home town—in a hearse, their only means of transportation. On their way, they stop at a cemetery so Jessica can capture tombstone art on pieces of tracing paper. Apparently, it’s a hobby for this nut job who is grieving the loss of her father about a year ago: a hobby her husband allows her to pursue. Jessica sees a mysterious girl in white in the cemetery, but the girl disappears and Jessica (whose head we are usually in as she talks to herself to assure herself she’s not crazy) is afraid she’s still having whatever kind of episodes got her committed in the first place.

When the trio gets to the new house, they discover some free-spirited, homeless flower child hippie chick has been camping out in the abandoned house that the trio now owns. She seems nice, so they ask her to stay—and she soon suggests having a séance! Once again, Jessica’s husband lets his crazy, grieving wife participate! And so the creepy fun begins. Is Jessica seeing things and hearing voices? Is their new female houseguest evil, or perhaps even a ghost? Why are the only people in town elderly men, all of whom have mysterious bandages on one part of their body or another? Is Jessica’s husband part of some cultish plan to ‘scare Jessica to death’? Don’t expect to have any of those questions answered if you watch this atmospheric chiller.

Well, the first four were voted off American Idol last night. Watching the boys perform on Wednesday, me and my partner knew immediately it was all over for that young kid when he spoke to the camera in his native tongue after his performance. How does everyone NOT know by now that you can not demonstrate any kind of pride other than white American straight pride on this show, especially this early in the game??? That’s why we were so surprised Adam Lambert made it as far as he did last year. He couldn’t hide his pride even if he came face-to-face with a 300 pound steroid-pumped football playing homophobe with anger management issues in a dark alley.

Meanwhile, how awesome was it when that Jim Morrison reject said that the judges didn’t give him any constructive criticism about changing up his image until after he performed for votes the first time–and they cut to Simon as he was mouthing the words, “That’s true…” Awesome. That’s like the closest we’ll ever get to Simon admitting he was wrong! And just in the nick of time, considering he’s leaving the show.