The C. Dennis Moore Horror Movie Guide, Vol. 1

By C. Dennis Moore

This collection features reviews of the Hellraiser, Pulse, Feast, Leprechaun and Boogeyman franchises, as well as classic horror films like Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things, Keep My Grave Open, Beast of the Yellow Night, The Vampire's Night Orgy, and more.

• Language: English
• Publisher: C. Dennis Moore
• Release date: Oct 26, 2015
• ISBN: 9781519996763

C. Dennis Moore

C. Dennis Moore is the author of the Angel Hill novels, the Monsters of Green Lake series, as well as the Holiday Horrors, among others. He lives in St. Joseph, MO with his wife, Kara. They have seven children and three grandchildren.

Book preview

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Grindhouse Double Shock Show:

Keep My Grave Open * Beast of the Yellow Night * Bloody Pit of Horror

Gorehouse Greats:

Blood of Dracula’s Castle * Blood Mania * Terrified * Nightmare in Wax

The Devil’s Hand * The Madmen of Mandoras * Stanley * Terror

Satan’s Slave * Trip with the Teacher * Prime Evil * Brain Twisters

Devil Worship Collection:

Horror Hotel * The Devil’s Nightmare* The Pyx

The Vampire Collection:

The Vampire’s Night Orgy * Werewolf Vs. the Vampire Woman

Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things * The Thirsty Dead

Blood Thirst

Blood Feast Collection:

It Happened at Nightmare Inn * Pieces * The Undertaker and His Pals

Leprechaun:

Leprechaun * Leprechaun 2 * Leprechaun 3

Leprechaun 4: In Space * Leprechaun In the Hood

Leprechaun: Back 2 tha Hood

Boogeyman:

Boogeyman * Boogeyman 2 * Boogeyman 3

Feast:

Feast * Feast II: Sloppy Seconds * Feast III: The Happy Finish

Pulse:

Pulse * Pulse 2: Afterlife * Pulse 3: Invasion

Rest Stop:

Rest Stop: Dead Ahead * Rest Stop: Don’t Look Back

Boneyard Collection:

Manje * Bleeding Rose * Asylum Night * The Sorority

4-film Collection:

Octopus * Crocodile * Octopus 2: River of Fear * Blood Surf

4-film collection:

Dracula’s Curse * Bled * Dracula’s Guest *  Fangs

Killjoy:

Killjoy * Killjoy 2: Deliverance from Evil * Killjoy 3

Hellraiser:

Hellraiser * Hellbound: Hellraiser 2 * Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth

Hellraiser: Bloodline * Hellraiser: Inferno * Hellraiser: Hellseeker

Hellraiser: Deader * Hellraiser: Hellworld * Hellraiser: Revelations

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

All of these reviews were originally published online at www.epinions.com

For encouraging the collection of these reviews into book form, I have to thank my friend David Bain.

INTRODUCTION

I sort of fell into reviewing by accident.  About 17+ years ago, I was in a local literary guild and I was helping put together the monthly newsletter when I got the bright idea of including reviews of books for writers, like The Elements of Style or Zen in the Art of Writing, books like that.  I had just finished a book about breaking into the comics industry, so that was the first review I ever wrote.  Eventually I had worked through all the books on writing I had, but the literary guild and its newsletter were still going, so I kept reviewing, shifting to whatever book I happened to be reading at time.  The focus of those early newsletter reviews was the benefits to the Writer in reading these books, what did I as a writer learn from each particular book.

After a few more years, just as the literary guild was winding down and the newsletter was no longer an issue, a friend of mine, Mike Swope, said he wanted to put together an online review site, and he asked if I’d like to be in charge of the book reviews.  That sounded like the perfect opportunity to request free books, and I do love free books, so I said okay.  And I started getting free books.

Life and its issues came in, though, and that site, while fun and with great potential, never took off like we had hoped it would and I, with a handful of reviews just waiting to be published somewhere, stumbled upon Epinions.com.  I’ve been reviewing there ever since (I joined April 6, 2002) and have amassed, to date, 1088 reviews.

Over time I branched out from books and started reviewing movies and music, too, and then in about 2007 I really started reviewing the latter two a lot more heavily, working in rotation, one movie review on Saturday, a music review on Sunday, then Monday through Friday back to my regular writing, with the book reviews still coming whenever I happened to finish another book.

I reviewed my way through three 50-movie DVD sets in this manner, plus the entire three years of the Horrorfest After Dark movie series.  Then, just as I was running out of horror collections to review, a wonderful thing happened.  I discovered the $5 bins.  And these bins were filled with low-budget movies at anywhere from 5 to 12 movies in a set for only $5.  I cleaned up and over the past several years...let’s just say I have enough horror movies now to keep me reviewing one a week for the next five years at least.

As my reviews gained in popularity—one of my reviews, for the book The Shadow God, is the second most popular book review on Epinions, while the Amazon page has nearly 200 comments, all praising the review—my confidence grew, and I began to enjoy reviewing even more, so I’ve decided to publish some of these reviews for your pleasure.

This first volume collects several of those $5 bin collections like the Gorehouse Greats and Grindhouse Double Shock Show collections, as well as the Vampire, Devil Worship and Blood Feast Collections, plus a few nameless sets, packaged under similar themes.  In this case one set contains creatures from the water while another contains even more vampire movies.

These old sets are amazing, with some incredibly obscure movies like Beast of the Yellow Night, The Vampire’s Night Orgy and Stanley.  Some are lost classics like the Bob Clark movie Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things and the Karen Black/Christopher Plummer movie The Pyx.

But this volume also collects reviews of some movies you’ve actually heard of, many of which you’ve even seen, like the entire Hellraiser collection, all 9 movies, plus all 6 Leprechaun movies, the Pulse, Boogeyman and Feast trilogies as well as the lesser-known Killjoy trilogy and both Rest Stop movies.

I’ve had a blast reviewing these, even if some of them are torture to sit through, and I plan to release more review collections in the future.

Also, if you’ve seen these movies and agree or disagree with my assessments, I’d love to hear from other horror fans and discuss the merits and the failings of these Hollywood classics.

—CDM.

Grindhouse Double Shock Show:

Keep My Grave Open

Beast of the Yellow Night

Bloody Pit of Horror

Keep My Grave Open (1976):

I love a movie that makes me stop midway through and say out loud What the fuck? That’s what happened with the 1976 S. F. Brownrigg sleaze-fest KEEP MY GRAVE OPEN (also known as THE HOUSE WERE HELL FROZE OVER). It was at the point where certified nut job main character Leslie Fontaine is seducing her brother/husband Kevin, and Brownrigg plays the scene from Kevin’s POV throughout, zooming in on Leslie’s neck, ear, mouth to simulate Kevin’s kisses. And the way Camilla Carr plays it is brilliant. Then again, she carries this movie from start to finish, appearing in nearly every scene, and really committing to the character 100%. I can’t imagine KEEP MY GRAVE OPEN would have been nearly as effective without her.

The story takes place almost exclusively in the remote Fontaine mansion, just outside a small unnamed town in Texas. Leslie and Kevin live there together, alone, secluded from everyone else aside from Leslie’s few trips to town for groceries, and hired hand Robert—played by a very young (25) and fully-haired Stephen Tobolowski in his first feature film role. When the story opens, a lone hitchhiker is approaching the place, looking, we presume, for food or a place to stay for the night. He finds the house empty, goes inside, steals a handful of food, and camps out on Fontaine land far from the house. He’s cooking a steak over an open fire when a dark figure approaches from behind and kills him with an antique sword.

The next day we meet our main character Leslie as she returns home from the store and brings coffee and a new pipe upstairs to her husband Kevin. Leslie and Kevin aren’t speaking, Leslie referring to what we’re led to believe was an argument the night before. Leslie wants to kiss and make up, forget it happened, but Kevin’s giving her the cold shoulder pretty vigorously. Then Dr. Emerson shows up for Leslie’s check-up. Up until now we believe Leslie and Kevin are husband and wife, but the conversation during Emerson’s visit implies a closer relationship than that. And this is where things start to get nuts.

It’s pretty clear from the beginning that Leslie’s got something wrong with her upstairs—again, credited to Carr’s brilliant performance—but at this point we start to wonder about Kevin. My first thought was the obvious, that Kevin was dead and this whole thing was some kind of PSYCHO rip-off. Normally this is where I’d grow bored and finish the movie out of a desire to rip it to shreds in a review. But KEEP MY GRAVE OPEN was not a normal case. Because of Camilla Carr. That woman crazied up the screen in every scene. I hate the use of the phrase brought her A game, but she really did. Striding the line between seductive and proper, subtle and over the top, Carr is constantly adding layer upon layer to Leslie Fontaine.

Because it’s a horror movie taking place at a remote location with an obviously crazy main character, the bodies naturally start piling up, all attributed to Kevin because that’s what we’re supposed to believe. I don’t know how this played in 1976, but in 2011, you see the twist coming from the moment Leslie and Kevin never appear onscreen together. But that doesn’t diminish the enjoyment; Brownrigg uses the camera and soundtrack in many interesting ways to keep us focused and content.

The story came from F. Amos Powell, who had only 4 screenwriting credits, but if even a fraction of the character develop here may be attributed to him, he did have some talent, despite a plot that never really comes together in the end. You know, I’m all for open, obscure endings just as much as the next guy, but I like it when I’m able to decide for myself, based on what I’ve seen, which way I think the true ending would lean. That’s not the case here; KEEP MY GRAVE OPEN ends on such a wide open note, you’re really left scratching your head and saying Wha?

The quality of the DVD transfer is pretty bad. There are negative scratches everywhere, and several bad edits, whole chunks of dialogue missing. Everything about the look of this movie screams 1970s, from wardrobe to score to film stock, but for me that just adds to the movie’s charm. I love these cheap-looking things, especially when made by someone who’s interested in trying new things, and Brownrigg definitely fit that bill with this movie.

While normally I’d complain about a movie only running 79 minutes, in this case it probably works for the best as I felt they started to run out of story at the point where Leslie travels to another town to pick up the prostitute Robert says he goes to see sometimes, and brings her back to the house for Kevin. The motivation for it was lost on me, and felt like it was added only to pad the story and add one more body to the pile. In such a location with so few characters, you’re bound to run out of story soon, so it’s good KEEP MY GRAVE OPEN wrapped up when it did without feeling the need to stretch it even further, as anything more would have been entirely unnecessary—and yes, I say that even WITH the ambiguous ending. At 79 minutes, the story had run its course and it was time to close up shop.

I don’t know that KEEP MY GRAVE OPEN is strong enough to make me seek other Brownrigg movies (although the fact THE MICHIGAN DAILY voted his 1974 POOR WHITE TRASH 2 the worst movie ever made is very intriguing), but Carr’s performance definitely caught my eye and I’m curious to know if she’s always that convincing, or if she was the Juliette Lewis of her generation and just REALLY does crazy well. Either way, I think this’ll be a case of if I run across any more I’ll watch them, but I’m not seeking them out. For now I’ll be content in having enjoyed this one when I honestly didn’t think I was going to. It’s little gems like this that make wading through a ton of crap worth it.

Beast of the Yellow Night (1971):

Several years ago I wrote and published a short story called Plaything in which a warehouse worker discovers he’s not who he thinks he is and is, instead, the unwilling victim of a mysterious entity who enjoys plucking this anonymous consciousness out of nowhere and making it live the lives of other people. You’re whoever I decide to make you, the voice on the phone tells the man who thought he was Phillip Gordon. You’re my toy...

If only I’d known then I was basically taking the premise of a bad 1970s Filipino/American horror movie. In BEAST OF THE YELLOW NIGHT (nice racial slur in the title, by the way—I’m sure it wasn’t lost on the locals when they saw it), dirt bag Joseph Langdon is being hunted by the military in the jungle of an unnamed village. Langdon is on the verge of death, but is saved by the devil (Vic Diaz) who makes Langdon his...well, plaything, for lack of a better word. He tosses Langdon around from body to body over the years, forcing him to bring out the evil in those [he] encounter[s]. In this case, he’s been placed in the body of mangled industrialist Philip Rogers (which, when you think about it, isn’t too far from Philip Gordon; both last names serve just as well as first names) and set free to wreak havoc in Rogers’ life. He starts by dissolving the board of directors of Philip’s company, then tries to convince Philip’s brother, Earl, to run away with Philip’s wife, Julia. He knows Earl has feelings for Julia, and he knows Julia and Philip’s marriage has been on the rocks for some time. If he—Langdon as Philip—leaves Julia, she’ll go away and neither will ever see her again. But, he reasons, if Earl seduces her, maybe she can find some happiness in life again.

Neither brother nor wife go for it and so, with no other way to cause mischief, the Devil changes tactics and turns Philip into a hairy murderous beast who eats random street people. The police piece together clues, discovering that Philip Rogers is really Joseph Langdon—I’m not sure what leap of faith was taken to get to that point, I was probably daydreaming about something interesting or checking the time at that point—and they track him down and kill him.

Another connection I made with this movie is one I wasn’t the only one to see; IMDB has the 1976 crapfest TRACK OF THE MOON BEAST as one of the similar recommended titles on the BEAST OF THE YELLOW NIGHT page. And that got me thinking about plot and how similar, at a basic level, this story is to pretty much any other werewolf story. Man turns into beast and kills people, is tracked down and killed, the end. Throw in some God Vs. Satan mumbling and a plank of wood that looks like John Ashley and can recite his lines with just as much inflection, and you’ve got yourself BEAST OF THE YELLOW NIGHT.

The quality of this movie was horrendous. From the grainy quality of the film to the muffled dialogue and over-done background noise (in a funeral scene toward the beginning, the shoes CLOP CLOP CLOP over the grass as if it were hardwood), this was a pretty tough one to watch. That doesn’t even touch on the pace. 83 minutes felt like 120. For all the story that’s here, I think a good 15-20 minutes of pauses and whatnot could have been edited out and really tightened up the flow. As it is, there are more opportunities in this movie to check your watch, get a coffee refill, or just notice how the floor could really use a sweeping than there are moments when the viewer is riveted to the screen, breathless with anticipation.

Mary Charlotte Wilcox as Julia isn’t much better than Ashley, but she does show some emotion, so I have to give the best performance award to her. Unfortunately that’s not saying much. Pretty much everyone in this one stank the place up.

Eddie Romero wrote and directed this mess (interesting Romero, a Filipino, would name his movie BEAST OF THE YELLOW NIGHT), but with previous and subsequent titles like MAD DOCTOR OF BLOOD ISLAND, BRIDES OF BLOOD and BEAST OF BLOOD to his credit, I shouldn’t be all that surprised. What does surprise me is that copies of this thing are still available in 2011—and on DVD no less!

I guess I can’t rag on the movie TOO much. It’s bad quality, bad sound, and stiff acting, but, considering it’s from 1971, it does look like there may have been some money behind it. In fact, at no point during the movie did I attribute the cheesiness to the lack of budget; this is totally a product of its time. I probably would have been even more surprised if the picture had been crystal clear, if the effects hadn’t been more humorous than horrifying. So while it’s not a GOOD movie, I think it’s one of those things that has a lot of heart, even if it doesn’t exactly know what to do with it. I believe there was a message Romero wanted to convey with his movie, the redemption of the evil Joseph Langdon, but he didn’t quite hit the mark with this one.

I won’t recommend this movie, but I will give it a 3-star average rating. It’s the thought that counts, and BEAST OF THE YELLOW NIGHT tried. That’s something, I guess.

Grindhouse Double Shock Show bonus:

Bloody Pit of Horror (1965):

Bloody Pit of Horror, huh? Well, I wouldn’t go that far. The pit was a dungeon/torture chamber in an ancient castle, the horror was the spirit of a long-dead executioner, returned from beyond to continue his mission of dispatching the sinners of the world, and the blood was . . . if you count the scratch across one actress’s chest, I guess there was some blood. I hardly think that qualifies the pit of horror as a BLOODY one, but whatever.

In 1648, authorities put to death the Crimson Executioner, a hooded vigilante out to rid the world of sinners. His body was sealed inside an iron maiden, so his spirit couldn’t escape. 300-some years later, that castle is being inhabited by reclusive ex-actor Travis Anderson when a book publisher and his team show up hoping to take some photos for a new line of book covers they’ve got planned. At first Anderson turns them away, but then he recognizes one of the assistants as his ex-girlfriend Edith, and he allows them to stay, but just for the night.

Work gets under way on their photo shoot as two of the men steal off to find some decent wine, inadvertently damaging the lock on the iron maiden containing the corpse of the Executioner. The ancient spirit then inhabits the body of Travis who believes he is the Crimson Executioner, and, in classic CE style, does away with the sinners one by one, until the final five are left—it was a pretty big bunch of people, photographer, assistants, models, a writer, and the editor/publisher—at which point he’s got three of them in the dungeon/torture chamber, one tied up in an upstairs bedroom, and Edith, the ex, free to roam the house, I guess. Oh, and his 2 bodyguards are also roaming the house, killing anyone they might have missed.

The story isn’t bad, as 1960s Italian-made horror movies go. In fact, the CE’s penchant for killing those he views as sinners, could possibly even be considered a precursor to a certain 7-part series that’s been coming out one movie every year around Halloween for the past 7 years, title rhymes with FLAW. Except the CE doesn’t give his victims the chance to free themselves. Well, I guess technically he does, what with all the monologuing and scenery-chewing. In fact, his constant chatter—most of it addressing himself in the third person—gives his victims plenty of chances to free themselves. Which I’m sure they would have done if they’d not been inept 1960s Italians in a bad movie, back in the day when helpless females really were helpless. And apparently stupid.

BLOODY PIT OF HORROR starred Mickey Hargitay as the over the top Travis Anderson while a cast of Italians (Hargitay was born in Hungary) I don’t know—too many to bother naming here, really, and in the grand scheme of the movie’s characters, I don’t remember any of them anyway, except Edith who was played by Luisa Baratto—stank up the place with their one-note performances.

While the movie is based on the writings of the Marquis de Sade, the screenwriting and story credits go to Romano Migliorini (THE INGLORIOUS BASTARDS) and Roberto Natale (KILL BABY, KILL, also with Migliorini) with Massimo Pupillo directing, and maybe it was just the times or the budget or the foreign nature of the production, I don’t know, but someone should have stepped in at some point and said Hey guys, your movie is crap. Because it is. BAD effects, ridiculous dialogue, over-acting...it’s all just terrible. The castle set is pretty cool, but the dungeon isn’t. The bats are on strings, and the giant spider that poisons one of the girls to death—wow, I think that’s about the worst monster effect I’ve ever seen. And in the end the movie just isn’t frightening, at all.

If I had to find something good to say about this movie, it would be the dubbing. I liked the tones in the American voices, I thought they pulled the scenes off quite nicely, even whoever was doing Hargity’s voice. Which Hargity