Deathbed

Hey folks. Back again and hopefully dealing better with headaches. I thought we would look at some more Stuart Gordon (Re-animator, From Beyond, Castle Freak, Fortress) and the sheer bizarrity of today's movie. This time around he is producing the cinematic opus rather than writing and directing. The infamy based around the film, is based on the 1977 film Death Bed: The Bed That Eats but hopefully is better. This is Deathbed.

You fart one more time, Jerry.  I swear I'll slice it off.

The director helping our flick is one Danny Draven (I, Vampire, Horrorvision, Aliens Gone Wild, Hell Asylum, Cryptz, Dark Walker and Ghost Month) who can establish it can't rain all the time. No wait, that's Eric Draven. Apologies. Our film is in the setting of a red brick apartment with an amazing view of the Hollywood sign and ambient lighting.

Our young and naive couple Karen (Tanya Dempsey of Shrieker, Dead 7, Witchhouse 3: Demon Fire, The Coven, Demon's Kiss, Hell Asylum, Flash!, Guardian of the Realm and Timeline)and Jerry (Brave Matthews of Visions, Birth Rite, Cake: A Wedding Story, A Song for the Dead and Starf*cker) decide to check move in and all is well with them, their relationship and current abode until... dun dun dun! Karen hears screams, pleas for help coming out a nook or attic. Unlike typical horror characters, she actually calls for help but in the form of the landlord. Lady, 911.

Landlord/former Vietnam Vet Art (Joe Estevez of Terminal Exposure, Soultaker, Werewolf, Fatal Pursuit, Rollergator, Samurai Cop 2: Deadly Vengeance and Fangs Vs.Spurs) pop the door to discover a vintage bed from the 1930s so naturally call "Dibs!" and so how that works. Naturally no woman is found, Art and Karen take it downstairs to clean it up and she wants to keep it. Um there was dried blood on the foot rest. Call me a prude but this thing doesn't look particularly safe.

Hellraiser remake or porn shoot?  You decide.

Jerry is at his photo shoot which given the amount of refracted light I think his client is Hustler. Recess light and natural lighting, dude. So Jerry gets back after a grueling few hours to Karen in her bra, thong and see through nightie. Hmm, pretty sure she has the evening planned. Holy God there were enough candles in there, lit to start a brush fire. It's a dry state, people. About an 8 minute sex scene that...kinda drags. Also really got tired of Jerry's albeit tone but very pale butt.

Karen starts having rape scenarios in her head, losing her mind as it were and her art projects of the bed are completely different from what she drew prior. So because of this Jerry and Karen agree she need therapy and some hypno-regression. Yup, Karen got bad touched as a child. What does this add to the story?   Not a damn thing.   Well thanks, movie.   Appreciate that.

Joe springs into action!!

Jerry was as sensitive as a sandpaper condom about Karen's repressed memory and we are treated to a girl with a pixie cut waiting to have Jerry. Well, the wife's away. I see nothing bad happening here.

Karen and Jerry both see the girl separate times and gasp! She's not alive and could possibly own the bed. Look, the original Deathbed: The Bed That Eats was not brilliant by any means but at least it was striving for a plot. Kinda. Somewhat. Okay not really but dammit it tried.

Karen goes to alert Art about her findings to found him somehow strangled to death with his tie. Annnd now your prints are all over the body, Karen. Smooth.

Our doofus duo decide it's time to leave but will they ever escape the bed's grasp?

Normally I try to give a fair shake and given how much I love Stuart Gordon's work I thought this production would be worth his time.   However, the pace is slow, there is not real action, the sex scenes are fairly vanilla and the acting comes off a bit wooden. With some decent FX, a few well timed jump scares and some gore for the climax, it isn't going to escape your attention that for the first hour NOTHING HAPPENS.

So if you need some tired horror tropes, a few cheap scares and splatter material, this is your movie. If you need characters, plot, a story arc or maybe even just motivation for the people being there, this very well may not be the film you're looking for.

Hopefully tomorrow I will have my interview with the very lovely and talented Christine Nguyen. Yeah branching out. I can't just watch schlock films for you all. That's what the YouTube channel is for.

Best Family Circus EVER!!!

Horror I Missed: Re-Animator

Hello all and welcome back to the week. Things are moving a bit hectic around here. Trying to get funds together to get Rotten Ramblin' On to Sound Cloud so everyone can enjoy them including our earliest stuff when we didn't understand stuff like dialing back decibels or compressing files so they sound clearer. At any rate, Rotten Reelz is back with more Horror I Missed. Now to clarify by that I mean Horror films that genuinely had a scary premise, a more or less original story or something tapped into by a good writer. Today we explore the dark and disturbing storyline of one Dr. Herbert West, his gruesome experiments and the impact this H. P. Lovecraft novella had on the screen viewers. This is Re-Animator.

Jeffery Combs or Morrisey in this light?

Based loosely on the horrific novella, Herbert West: Re-Animator and brought to us by veteran Director Stuart Gordon (From Beyond, Dolls, Robot Jox, Daughter of Darkness, The Pit and the Pendulum, Fortress, Castle Freak, Space Truckers, Dagon and Stuck) comes the well paced Sci-Fi/Horror/Comedy that launches so many questions and sadly turned more than a few stomachs with its practical effects, gore gags and slapstick comedy in a dark enviroment. In the University of Zurich Institute via Switzerland, Herbert West (Jeffery Combs of Frightmare, The Man with Two Brains, From Beyond, Dead Man Walking, Freddy's Nightmares, Robot Jox, The Pit and the Pendulum, Trancers II, Doctor Mordrid, Love and a .45, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Enterprise and Voodoo Moon) brings his teacher back from the dead but with horrendous side effects screaming to the authorities he brought him back from the dead.

Wow finally a companion for Jan in the Pan!

So with impending expulsion looming over his head, West makes his way back to the states and enrolls his further studies to Miskatonic University in New England. He rents a room from a medical studen Dan Cain (Bruce Abbot of Tag: The Assassination Game, Velvet, Command 5, Summer Heat, Bad Dreams and Dark Justice) and asks to convert the basement into his own laboratory. Cain feels a bit put out by these requests but really needs the money agrees to this conditions. West demonstrates the effect of the formula with Cain's cat Rufus who "died under mysterious terms" as he is brought back from death.

Heads up! Hehe if I had sides they would be splitting.

Cain's fiancee Megan (Barbara Crampton of Love Thy Neighbor, Body Double, Chopping Mall, From Beyond, Puppetmaster, Robot Wars, Guiding Light, Space Truckers, The Bold and the Beautiful and The Lords of Salem) already creeped out by West witnesses this experiment and freaks out. Dan tries telling her father who is dean of the university but he will hear none of this, convinced they are both cuckoo for coco puffs, the dean bars them from the hospital so Cain and West have to sneak into the morgue and re-animate a corpse. The dosage reacts differently with different people so now we have a zombie with a pre-psychotic rage. If he was a necromancer I would tell him to raise an army like that and go forth and ruin the realm. The dean walks in on all the crazy but he himself gets killed by said zombie causing West to kill it with a bone saw.

With madness piling up, Cain and West have to figure a way to resolve this, publicate the findings and prove that tampering in God's domain is not only possible but very feasible.

Will the boys succeed? Is this experiment possibly unethical? How much karo syrup is Gordon out of pocket?

For a nine hundred thousand dollar budget, Re-Animator pulled in over $2 million making half of its money on opening weekend via 1985 on October 20^th. The special effect department spent over 25 gallons of fake blood during the shoot. That had to be fun to clean up. What director Stuart Gordon and writer Dennis Paoli (Re-Animator, From Beyond, Castle Freak, Mortal Sins, Body Snatchers, Dagon, The Dentist and The Black Cat) were trying to create was to be true to the source material ended up a gross parody of Frankenstein.

This has spawn a cult following to the likes of Evil Dead and Dead Alive fans to the point of making two additional sequels.  For me as a Stuart Gordon fan, I always love that a shovel ends up being used as a weapon at some point in time of the flick. Still love the fact the name Hans Gruber is used in this movie and immediately I think of the late great Alan Rickman in Die Hard.

 

Maybe they're playing "Hide the Soul", like Chucky does.

Obscure Italian Horror: The Beyond

Welcome back everyone for another helping of Obscure Italian Horror. Once again I am most annoyed as this is another Lucio Fulchi film, the second in the unofficial Gates of Hell trilogy and it really steams my clams when...I really have nothing to bitch and complain about. I simply refer to this trilogy as Messing with Actress Katherine MacColl. Because she was in all three movies as different characters and...I'm thinking you didn't need this review to be that meta. Yeah this flick is warped, demented and damn creepy so no complaints about special effects, acting or camera angles. This is The Beyond.

Hey buddy, this hand smell rotten to you?

So we have a mob off for a lynching and you know it's supposed to be a flashback because it is filmed in sepia filter. Also the villagers are dressed in later 1800s attire with pitchforks and honest to God torches. No one screamed, "Kill the monster!" so that was a bit disappointing. We get a voice over establishing there are seven gateways it seven cursed places...two of which I am guessing is in The City of the Living Dead and House by the Cemetery but that is also speculation. Our angry mob of 1927 does not heed the words of the warlock Schweick (Antoine Saint-John of Duck, You Sucker. My Name is Nobody, The Beyond, Ginger and Fred and Cross) that the hotel he lives at is built on one of the seven gates to damnation, Hell um take your pick and that his unnatural death may bring about destruction, brimstone and the dead rising from the grave. Pretty heavy stuff to consider, right? Eh, screw it. Let's kill him anyway.

Cut to 1981 as we go on a road trip with Liza (Katherine MacColl of City of the Living Dead, House By the Cemetery, Man Eaters, Afraid of the Dark and Mafiosa), a plucky gal all the way from New York City (NEW YORK CITY??!!!) who has inhereted the hotel and decides to turn it into a charming bed and breakfast. I can't fault her there, it is a lovely house with spacious windows, good hardwood floors and a charming atmosphere...that may open a portal to Hell.

Well, beats playing an organ and staring at Utah...(Carnival of Souls reference)

No sooner does Liza get some work done on the house, one of the painters plummets off a scaffolding causing him to spit up fake blood. Seriously though, he was less than 30 feet up and landed on his back, hitting no rocks or piping so not sure what happened. Dr. McCabe (David Warbeck of Trog, Journey to Murder, Twins of Evil, Duck, You Sucker, Sex Thief and Sudden Fury) has painter move as he mumbled something about her eyes.

Liza actually got a plumber name of Joe (Giovanni De Nava of The Beyond, The House by the Cemetery, Murder-Rock:Dancing Death and Un foro nel parabrezza)on time to deal with the flooding and strange happenings when a evil hand pops out of the dirt and gouges his eye out. The creeper maid discovers Joe's body and everyone views it as an accidental death. Even his poor wife and kid viewing his body in the morgue think so..until his wife is treated to an hydrochloric acid facial and his daughter attacked by zombies. The police seem to think there may be a pattern to this violence and bug the crap out of Liza. Typical small-town lazy cop gotta blame the newcomer to these here parts. Liza meets a blind woman with the funkiest contacts, Emily (Cinzia Monreale of Beyond the Darkness, Flatfoot on the Nile, The Beyond, The Sweet House of Horrors, Madre come te and Dark Signal) who tells her to never re-open the hotel, how Schwieck died and very cryptic on the whole Gate of Hell aspect. Personally that would be the opening argument, followed by detailed charts, graphs and testimony of spirits. Ignoring Emily's warnings, Liza investigates Schwieck's room and discovers an ancient book right out of Lovecraft, The Book of Eibon (Tales of the demented wizard claiming he plane walked other worlds, met his deity Zhothaqquah and other such crazy.), also Schwieck's nailed corpse is on the neighboring wall. She is calmed by John, who appears for whatever reason and she takes him upstairs only to find the book and Schwieck to not be there. Will the gate open? Will more have to die for the Devil's B &B?

Shot in Lazio Italy the location scouts stateside got that huge two lane stretch bridge in Lake Charles Louisiana shot about 5 in the evening giving an eerie appearance. The hotel was actually the Otis House in Madisonville, LA and it is clearly a house of the latter 1800's with gorgous staircase, double pane glass and some of the finer oak floors. Yeah I like older houses. They have character.

Deemed a Video Nasty in the day, there are about 3 different cuts to this movie. The original runs at 87 minutes but its audio is in mono, the R-rated version is 80 mins and the 82 minute version is Dolby sound but has several key scene removed because it would scare the panties off the Americans...or some such. Bottom line, get the 87 min version and just tune your stereo quad to 5.1 and you will enjoy the creepy score and hear all the screams you want. That being said, the spoilers are eye gouging and spiders crawling across bodies. Hey, I don't want you folks watching it and having an issue I didn't warn you. It's suspenseful, odd, dark and beautifully shot.

Geez, these frat initiations are rough!