Sid Haig Week: House of 1000 Corpses

Well hello there and welcome back to Day 5 of Sid Haig Week.  I thought we would end our week on a generation gap for newer Sid Haig fans.  As many of you are aware there is more than 40 years of films and TV to contend with so it is only logical he would naturally gravitate back to exploitation and this time it is horror. Bounced around for three years from Universal to Lionsgate Films, our feature was a Halloween based horror film clearly influenced by Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Wes Craven's The Hills Have Eyes.  This is House of 1000 Corpses.

Bozo the Clown: After Dark.

Otis: It's all spoiled.  The bogeyman is real and you found him.








Two couples  Jerry Goldsmith (Chris Hardwick of Shipmates, Jane White Is Sick & Twisted, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, Spectres, The X's and Halloween II) Denise Willis (Erin Daniels of Action, One Hour Photo, Boomtown, Wheelmen, Justice and The L Word) Bill Hudley (Rainn Wilson of Blue in Green, Six Feet Under, My Super Ex-Girlfriend, Juno and The Office) and Mary Knowles (Jennifer Jostyn of The Brothers McMullen, Milo, Deep Impact, A Perfect Little Man, Maximum Velocity and Rancid) are hitting the road writing a book about those out of the way roadside attraction when the lot of them when to a ran down gas station/museum where our foursome encounter Captain Spaulding (Sid Haig of The Big Bird Cage, THX 1138, Foxy Brown, Jackie Brown, Kill Bill: Vol. 2 and The Devil's Rejects) a crass clown that tells the lot of them about a local legend known as "Dr. Satan" a doctor that experimented on wards of the state torturing them and pushing their thresholds of pain and anguish.  

The town rose up and hung him from a tree.  Fascinated by the story our couples head out to find the said tree and document it when they encounter a hitchhiker with nickname Baby, (Sherri Moon Zombie of Toolbox Murders, The Devil's Rejects, Halloween, Halloween II, The Haunted World of El Superbeasto and The Lords of Salem) a bubbly blonde that seems to be vapid and vaccant with a hint of something sinister behind the eyes.  She asked if they could drop her off at her family home a few miles away when the car's tire pops and Baby leads Bill to her family home and her half-brother Rufus (Bill Moseley of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, The Blob, Silent Night, Deadly Night III: Better Watch Out!, Carnivale and The Devil's Rejects)  grabs a ride to pick the rest of the passengers back to the house.

Thank God, they're just burning bodies and not books.

 After introducing the family to our now disturbed couples, offering dinner and putting on some strange play praising Halloween Baby starts hitting on Bill and Mary takes offense to it and lets Baby know it.  Mother Firefly (Karen Black of Five Easy Pieces, Nashville, Family Plot, Repo Chick, Double Duty and Better People) insists they leave because their tire was replaced and shuns them from the house.   Otis and his mongoloid brother Tiny attacks and mutilates Bill in a warped modern art, Mary is bound tight in a barn while Denise is dressed up for the appreciation of Halloween.
Denise's father gets the police to check out the house when all hell breaks loose.
Will our survivors get away?  Will they summon courage to get revenge?  Will this nightmare ever cease?

A chuck full of tidbits about the movie now.  Universal Pictures refused to release the film believing it would be rated at NC-17 via MPAA.  This was Rob Zombie's first directorial debut.  The title of the movie is coined after a same named song on Zombie's second solo album The Sinister Urge.  Karen Black was due to play in the sequel The Devil's Rejects but demanded a salary increase that Zombie didn't have and Leslie Easterbrook replaced here.

The family house is the same one used for The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas which is commonly seen for the Universal Studio tram ride and Universal shockingly enough refuse to stall the tours causing delays in filming many of the scenes.  Rob thinking about how to appease Universal was filming two versions of the more violent scenes to make the rating boards not lose their collective crap.  

Lick of paint and trash hauled and it still would look creepy.

Sid Haig Week: House of the Dead 2: Dead Aim

Welcome back for Day 4 of Sid Haig Week and I thought we might skip ahead into Haig's current body of work.  So what is more fun than watching a video game themed movie?  Well reading a book, working out, going out with a member of the opposite or same sex. Yeah loads of things are vastly better than a video game based movie.  Watch yourself, get an ax because it is bound to be a trick.  This is House of the Dead 2: Dead Aim

The Betty Ford Clinic gone dark.

Spoilers make no noise.










Writer Mark A. Altman (Free Enterprise, House of the Dead, All Souls Day: Dia de lost Muertos and Room 6) Director Michael Hurst (New Blood, The Baby Juice Express, The Darkroom and Room 6) have collaborated in TV as well as film many a time decided to drive us to drink with this demented little soap opera of a horror movie.  A demented professor (Sid Haig of Koffy, House of 1000 Corpses and Devil’s Rejects) has been experimenting with the dead by killing students that no one will immediately miss and attempting to re-animate them.  Must be the Herbert West guide to immortality he was reading from.   So the prof’s creature is loose and we go through a flash sequence of screen shots, credits that look made of a MAC, stills and a quick story telling idea to establish the campus has clearly been overrun with the undead.  Hey photophobic folks, you may want to fast forward a bit. Zombie U!  The curricular is murder.

Doctors with guns.  Yeah that can only end well.

Lieutenant Ellis (Ed Quinn of Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation, Eureka, True Blood and Behemoth) and his A.M.S. team are prepping from a previous mission and a little dialogue hints to a poorly planned mission. Alexandra ’Nightingale’ Morgan (Emmanuelle Vaugier of Saw II, 40 Days and 40 Nights, Supernatural and Far Cry) is called in from a lesser date to a possible outbreak of zombie infection at an alarming rate and will be escorted by Special Forces leader Sgt. Major Dalton (Sticky ‘Kirk Jones’Fingers of Blade the Series, Flight of the Phoenix, Once Fallen and Burn Notice) and he is channeling his inner Apone.  His team is the atypical Colonial Marine archetypes filled with sexist and racist morons, dumb rookies, seasoned jerks and at least one resident psycho that can allegedly shoot.

Dalton’s second-in-command Lieutenant Henson (Victoria Pratt of Mutant X, Cleopatra 2525, Brotherhood of Blood and Journey to the Center of the Earth) keeps the boys and girls playing nice. They need a blood sample of a first generation zombie in order to create a proper vaccine and a missile strike is due in 12 hours.  Her character was at least feasible but only because she has actually gone through weapons training.

I think the biggest complaint I have overall were the film flubs and the inconsistency.   Ellis loses and gains blood on his face during a poorly edited chit-chat with Morgan.  Continuity director fell asleep there.  Zombies are either moving at a fast clip or they travel at the speed of curdled milk.  They sneak about or they bum rush.  Pick something and stick with it.  The power is supposed to be out and all but some areas are too well lit and others almost pitch black.

The elite special ops team is co-ed for some reason but my biggest issue is the overweight or more specifically out of shape comic relief O' Conner (Steve Monroe of Austing Powers: International Man of Mystery, Cast Away and Miss Congeniality) whose weight limit is barely allowed for basic infantry but special forces?  Sticky's character whips around with his flashlight to check on O' Conner but the flashlight is still attached to his weapon... with live ammo... and his safety was off.  Big tactical no no that any armed forces member is screaming foul.  My other pet peeve is Sid's screen time or lack there of it dammit.

Guess Sci-Fi Channel (I refuse to type it the current spelling) didn’t bother with a weapons and tactics trainer because the Special Forces team look as threatening as a group playing paintball.   No direct correlation with the previous film so this is sequel in name only.  Save yourselves!... from wasting any time devoted to this "movie".

Zombification is now classified as Beiber Fever.

Sid Haig Week: Warlords

Welcome back for Day 3 of Sid Haig Week.  Hey, let's get away from the women in prison subgenre because... well there is so many implied violence on women my stomach can endure.  Yeah, I know I lost the better chuck of the male readers but so be it.  Instead how about a nice slice of post-apocalypse instead?   Where might makes right, governments and police are gone and the weak will be stomped on.   Sounds far more wholesome by comparison.  This is Warlords.

*hic* Line Please!

First off our motion picture is brought to us by Corman protege Fred Olen Ray so expect jiggly girls, nudity, pointless sex scenes and a very low budget.   When a class act director's collection hails from film as: Evil Spawn, Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers, Alienator, Dinosaur Island, Bikini Drive-In and Attack of the 60 Foot Centerfolds, expect panache.    Well I'd rather have five teeth pulled out of my head but let's get this pain started already.    The world has ended according to the stock footage of nuclear testing, scale models with stills of wreckage and mayhem and only a few will survive.  Most died in the cities, few have retreated to the desert (where it is cheaper to film and you can drag in some thrashed cars) for the simpler life.   We catch up with a very paltry car chase scene in which we met Danny (Dawn Wildsmith of Evils of the Night, Prison Ship, Commando Squad, Surf Nazis Must Die, Future Force and Alienator) a harsh woman with well manicured fingers, make up looks spot and and hair is 80's frizzed.  

The secret Tusken Raider slave trade.

She deals with these raiders in short working order, steals their car and is on her way when she meets Dow (David Carradine of Shane, Kung Fu, Death Race 2000,  Thunder and Lightning, The Serpent's Egg, Deathsport, Circle of Iron, North and South, Future Force and Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat) causally strolls into shot, armed to the teeth.  They tootle around in their stolen rust heap Nova until the radiator hose gives and then it's on foot and let me tell you have not seen such chemistry since Spencer Tracy and Kathrine Hepburn.     Sorry, I meant you haven't seen such lack of chemistry since Bossom Buddies.
 
Our tiresome twosome wander into the hills as a band of marauders, excuse me mutants (decked out in German gas masks and leftover Tusken Raider apparel) scoop up a couple of bimbos with obvious saline jobs brought to the Warlord by Beaumont (Ross Hagen of  The Hellcats, Speedway, Daktari, Sidehackers a.k.a. Five the Hard Way,  Gunsmoke and Dinosaur Island) a crafty man that knows where the power is in this region of the states and that is the Warlord (Sid Haig of Galaxy of Terror, The Aftermath, Fantasy Island, Commando Squad, Kill Bill: Vol. 2, Halloween and Brotherhood of Blood) and he supplies him with women and guns.

Sid Haig: Lord of the Apocalypse.

Dow reveals to Danny that he has a disembodied robot head as a early warning device, navigation and more than a few weapons when he cannot get close for hand-to-hand with his martial arts.  He is searching for the Warlord that took his wife (Brink Stevens of Slumber Party Massacre, Tales from the Darkside, The Jigsaw Murders, Spirits, Bad Girls from Mars, Teenage Exorcist, Roots of Evil and Illicit Dreams 2)
Will Dow find his wife and claim his revenge against the Warlord?  Will Beaumont be given his just desserts?  Can they find a car that lasts more than 2 miles?

Here some trivia on our amazing moving picture.  This flotsam was shot in ten days.  The demolished tank in the opening credits sequence was a MBT-70, a joint West German/American prototype of the late sixties, early seventies that did not make it past the initial creation.

Once again our cinematic creation was filmed on location via Vasquez Rocks Natural Area Park in Agua Dulce, California because this means you require very little in the way of props to show a post-apocalyptic film.  Miles of desert in all direction except where the plot should be.

Stock footage... OF THE FUTURE!!!

Sid Haig Week: The Big Doll House

Well hello there folks and welcome to Sid Haig Week and what say we start this off right and classy??   So of course as we should kick this week off with a women in prison flick of course.  Yes the delights of a tropical locale of unknown origin, lesbian forceful guards, corrupt warlord and the horrors of addiction and political affiliation.   This is The Big Doll House.

Girl, you know I'm foxy.

Grear: You son of a spoiler! This is for Bodine,  You're rotten, Harry.  You know why?  'Cos you're a man.  All men are filthy.




This film is typical one of the cliche filmed in the Phillippines and yet held in some republic in South America.  Collier (Judith Brown of Threesome, Women in Cages, Slaughter's Big Rip-Off, Willie Dynamite, A Woman for All Men, International Assassin and House Calls) arrives to the prison with four other women as she is in for killing for her husband.  With the different personalities, cultures, and races there are constant fights during dinner which constantly tortured or disciplined lead guard Lucian (Kathyrn Loder of A Cry of Angels, The Big Doll House, Night of the Witches, Foxy Brown and Far Out Space Nuts) and Miss Dietrich (Christiane Schmidtmer of Stop Train 349, Ship of Fools, Boeing, Boeing, Scream, Pretty Peggy, Airport 1975, The Specialist, Half a House and The Giant Spider Invasion) the head warden couldn't be bothered to care one iota.

Damn girl, why ya gots to be cruel?

They have had enough of the abuse.  Her cellmates Alcott (Roberta Collins of Women in Cages, Sweet Kill, The Unholy Rollers, The Roommates, Wonder Women, Caged Heat, Three the Hard Way and Alias Big Cherry) and Bodine (Pat Woodell of 77 Sunset Strip, Petticoat Junction, Bunny and Claude: We Rob Carrot Patches, Class of '74, The Roommates and The Woman Hunt) agreed to help break out.  They need the aid of Grear (Pam Grier of Women in Cages, Cool Breeze, The Twillight People, Hit Man, Black Mama White Mama, Coffy, The Arena, Foxy Brown, Bucktown, Miami Vice and Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey) to coerce the other guards and use these two men who brought market produce and Fred (Jerry Franks of Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice and The Big Doll House)  and Harry (Our boy Sid Haig of Forty Days of Musa Dagh, The Fall Guy, Misfits of Science, Commando Squad and Wizards of the Lost Kingdom II) end up reluctantly helping them escape with arms.

A few comments to make at this time.

Jack Hill brings $125,000 as a budget and managed to gross over ten million dollars and amusingly 3 million in VHS rentals.  This was Pam Grier's first big acting role.   Because Brooke Mills (Harrad of The Big Doll House) was a trained ballet dancer. Hill added a dance sequence just to capture her on film.

 The infamous line "Get it up or I'll cut it off" line was improvised by Jack Hill and Robert Collins making this psychotic glance in her eye wielding a knife and nailed it. The line that is.

Hey, I am talking to you!

Sid Haig Week

Welcome and hello ladies and gents.  I have noticed a decline in reading and a few commentaries about the subject matter.  By all means, give me some suggestions.  I can always use them.   This week we read up on a few fellow from California bitten about the acting bug and attended the Pasadena Playhouse for two years and made his way to Hollywood and cut his first teeth in a student film by Jack Hill called The Host.   Jack Hill found a certain charisma in this man as well as an actress Pam Grier and proceed to appear in five of his films and made his way into TV series and even  A-list films and this fellow himself states after 40 years of carrying a gun he was finally acknowledged for something other than a thug or gunsel and Quentin Tarantino and Rob Zombie both grew up on this man's exploitation films and found him to be clever, far more intelligent than he was perceived.

I am a wild and crazy guy!!

This actor standing at a menacing 6'4" almost sullen look about him is Sid Haig.   He landed more than its fair share degree of Westerns, Science Fiction and Cop Dramas since 1959 and has been considered landmark programs such as: Batman, Star Trek, Mannix, The Six Million Dollar Man and Police Woman.   Almost 75 years of age he has survived in TV and movie for more than 50 years as he had been an assistant director, worked over 350 TV series and more than 40 films gives testament to a career.  Does he view himself as a successful actor?  No but he has a work ethic.

The Manson Family outing.

Brotherhood of Blood...

Alright back again with an award winning film that touched the hearts of millions and filled songs deep within their souls…oh wait I am reviewing another vampire movie.  Crap.   Well strap in kiddies because this bronco will do more than buck.  It will probably stomp a new mud hole in you.

Spoiler Alert!   There will be critiquing and outright scene explanation as well as bashing of said movie

Now before I bring the hot pokers to this movie, let me be clear in saying I love Sid Haig and Ken Foree.   Sid Haig made his bones with TV shows such as Gunsmoke, Get Smart and even a few Mission Impossible episodes.   The first film I saw him in was Coffy starring Pam Grier.  He was playing this sick cat named Omar and just a vicious but calm mother.   You younger viewers know him better as Captain Spaulding of House of a Thousand Corpses and The Devil’s Rejects.   Ken Foree on the other hand starred in the original Dawn of the Dead as Peter and later as the Reverend in the 2004 remake.  I have seen him in TV as far back as a Hunter episode but my favorite character of his is the ground pounding PFC (Private First Class) Large from Babylon 5.  Smoking a cigar in a barrack that isn’t even his and telling his rookie bunkmate war stories.   Hell, Victoria Pratt from Cleopatra 2525 and Mutant X is in this so what could go wrong?   Sigh.  

Well enough back pedaling, here we go.  Directors/Writers Michael Roesch and Peter Scheerer co-wrote and directed Alone in the Dark 2 and House of the Dead 2) brings us this festive little romp.  We encounter our band of vampire hunters and it would seem not all is well as one of them is bound in chains; the other tied to a chair getting slapped around for information by vampires.   Maybe they are on the set of the last Bruno Mattei’s Woman in Chains flicks.  Always be concerned when your flick has vamp fangs made of wax and not veneer jobs instead.   The sound quality seems to be off or maybe it was just the DVD copy I had rented but I swear the actors do not sound like they are miked at all.  Our fearless vampire huntress has a heated discussion with one of the lead vamps as she picks her locks.  Hmm heightened senses must be off.   Sid Haig, a.k.a. Lord Pashek takes conference with his right hand man Fork.   Yeah I kid you not. Fork is his name.  A wandering nit wit human stumbles on an ancient burial ground in Romania and gets scraped by an ancient vampire corpse and is infused with Satan!!!   HUH?!  Oh and the accents that are attempted are to die for.  I heard so many half assed European attempts it was just painful after a while.

This film is interspersed with scenes not being in a sense of chronological order.  The story is laid out as a series of flashbacks from L.A. to Romania to San Pedro to L.A. and a rough narrative overshadowing the story and trying to bring everything tied in.  Nicely done but this HD DVD hand held steady cam; while great for those tight zoom shots and able to whip back and forth from character to character just does not give it a good 35MM feel and hey this is coming from a guy that remembers Super 8 films.   Maybe they were going for a Pulp Fiction/ Less Than Zero feel.   The HD gives it an updated home movie look and while the picture is crystal clear it feels like their budget could not be strained at all.

Our fearless vampire killers…say that would make a great…oh crap already been done.   Ahem our courageous vampire hunters sound off!    Carrie! (Victoria Pratt) Keaton! (Jason Connery) Jill! (Rachel Grant of Die Another Day and The Tournament)    I was slightly disturbed the vampire hunters chained Ken Foree to a table and not because the effects showed them cutting off circulation or the chains had crosses and holy water placed on it.  Nah it just felt like some avant-garde bondage performance art piece that no one gets.   Actually I have yet another spoiler here for you all.  Foree spends most of his scenes strapped down.   They find out with a little bit of torture that the vamps are terrified that Satan has taken human form and now roams the Earth but they call him Vlad Kosay and the greatest trick Vlad ever did was to prove he didn’t exist.  If the sets weren’t so minimum and poorly lit…well who am I kidding?  It would still suck.   I never saw so much fog in a flick outside the Fog. The narrative is unnecessary, the pace is slow and the performance is barely memorable.  Our action scenes were sketchy at best and the gore or violence was tame.   Move on gentle readers. This is a turd in your cereal bowl.