VHS Additions SCORE

Here are the new additions to our VHS collection:

THE NIGHT AFTER HALLOWEEN from Magnum Entertainment. Big box. I haven't seen this one, but I'm hoping it's the Ozsploitation cash in on HALLOWEEN, which is much sought after.

DR. FRANKENSTEIN'S CASTLE OF FREAKS. Another big box, but in a clamshell.

ALIEN PREDATOR from TransWorld. I know I've heard of this one, but I need more research.

THE RIPPER. Directed by Tom Savini. United World Home Video. Another big box. Can't turn down the big boxes.

THE PACK. Warner Home Video. Clamshell. Still beautiful even in that Warner Home Video packaging. Think I know of this one as well. It's gotta be werewolves. And I love me some werewolves.

KING KONG. A gatefold! From Paramount. We have ever version of any KING KONG movie known to man due an obsession of Sam's so this is extra special!

BAD GIRL'S DORMITORY. Active Home Video (?) It's a big box and it's uncut and it has bad girls and a dorm, so it's gotta be gold, right?

MASTER CLASSICS (Kung fu). Big box. USA Home Video.

SNAKE AND CRANE: ARTS OF SHAOLIN. All Seasons Entertainment. Big box.

SEVEN BLOWS OF THE DRAGON. Warner Home Video. Big box

DUEL OF THE SEVEN TIGERS. TransWorld. Big box.

SONNY CHIBA'S DRAGON PRINCESS. A&H Home Video.

SCORE, motherfuckers! It was the perfect night. We had some amazing Thai food and then went to the old school video store. It smells all gross and good like an old school video store should. And since they ain't doing so hot business-wise, they'll sell me their VHS for cheap. And it used to not be this way. I used to have to haggle and pretend I didn't know what the hell I was talking abut. I think we got all the aforementioned for like twenty bucks plus tax. Some horror for me and some Kung Fu and KONG for Sam. It's a beautiful thing! I don't even care about Kung Fu movies but if they're in a big box, I'm salivating!

And no Cavalcade post would be complete without a cat. Here's Moochie choosing his favorite of the new additions. He's going for THE RIPPER, the Tom Savini creation, because he's heard Tom's name before and wants to go for something he can talk about later and sound like he knows what he's talking about.




Moochie's like that.

Bigfoot

This post is a reprisal, as it was presented at J. Astro's Screen Grab during SquatchFest.


BIGFOOT (1970). Sounds about as generic and unmenacing as possible, but throw in the fact that it has John Carradine as a scheming traveling salesman, was produced by Anthony Cardoza (of Beast of the Yucca Flats fame), and has a scene where a ‘squatch fights a bear and then subsequently decides to mate with a human woman! This movie alone is a SQUATCHFEST!

Let’s get started.

A beautiful blond arrives via her convertible at the airport. She mans her private plane and begins to fly out over the hills of Red Bluff, with nary an explanation. She encounters some engine trouble and her plane goes down somewhere in the mountains. She parachutes to relative safety but is almost immediately taken into the custody of a large and hairy creature intent on perhaps mating with her. At any rate, he’ll tie her up and see what Daddy has to say about it.

As our blond makes her descent and capture, two yokels, Jasper (Carradine) and Elmer are driving through the same mountains peddling their meager wares at general stores. They find their way to Bennett’s General Store deep in the mountains and run into some motorcyclists and their girlfriends stocking up for a weekend of debauchery. The bikers ride off and couple of them, Rick and Kris, take a break from the others for sexy times and bike mechanics. Kris wants to get it on, but Rick wants to work on his bike. Kris gets a little angry and wanders off bikini clad into the woods. She finds a Bigfoot graveyard and as soon as she can call Rick over to help her investigate, the creature in question has attacked! The thing makes off with a passed-out Kris and Rick returns to Bennett’s to phone the sheriff and get some help!

What follows is some crazy mad capering around the mountainside in search of Kris. Jasper and Elmer are enlisted to help the distraught lover in his quest to find his girlfriend, but Jasper seems to be in it more for the financial aspect, rather than helping any unfortunate lovely co-ed. Seriously, the Bigfeet capture the search party at one point, and tied to a tree, Jasper is still conniving on how to get a Bigfoot alive and into the carnival circuit. I gotta appreciate his tenacity, but damn.

Turns out, all in all, there’s about five Bigfeet and their Daddy, a nine foot tall behemoth who wants to have relations with a human woman. Our lovely pilot from the beginning has been tied up with this brutish clan for a moment and has come to have some astute observations about them, which she relates to Kris and her search party once everyone is captured. Seems several of the younger Bigfeet might have human mothers because they have different faces. Or something. The whole Bigfoot having sex with human women theme is here, but I wish it were explored further. Nothing says Bigfoot movie like a Bigfoot doing it with a human lady. That, and there seems to be a complete lack of female Bigfeet. They all seem to be dudes.

Then, completely out of nowhere, the Daddy Bigfoot fights a bear! And wins! I think this was for reals, too, in that a guy in a Bigfoot costume actually wrestles a live bear. And I thought a werewolf vs. a yeti was good. This was, gulp, way better. During the bear/Bigfoot showdown, the pilot blond gets loose and makes her hurried escape through the woods. The bikers arrive at the Bigfoot camp and set everyone free. Jasper manages to catch the littlest Bigfoot but also manages to loose him several minutes later. Everyone decides to leave. Roars are roared, shots are fired, dynamite is proffered, everything is blown to smithereens, except for our human characters and Jasper, always the business man, solicits the blond pilot to tell her story at carnivals, thus making them millions. FIN.

Good times. Great times, really. Bigfoot/bear showdowns, sexy times with creatures (even implied, I’ll take it!), liberal use of the words ‘varmint’ and ‘rascal,’ an over the top greedy John Carradine, Bigfoot’s use of weapons (hatchets), baby Bigfeet and Daddy Bigfeet, the fact that I get to say ‘Bigfeet’ over and over, and correlations to KING KONG. If I was feeling more scholarly, I might just have to argue this is a low budget dumbed down KONG, but I’m not particularly academic lately.

There you have it. Track it down. I believe it’s terribly difficult to find, I myself procuring it at a convention as a bootleg DVD in Baltimore many years ago. It should be an integral part of the Bigfoot canon.

Bigfoot rules.

Operation Mantis

When I learned Paul Naschy directed a James Bondian spoof containing a scene in which he himself dons a leather jacket, head to toe studs, and a neon pink Mohawk and fronts a punk band (well, more of pop synth outfit) in which he sings a covert warning to his fellow operatives, I nearly died. Thus began my very difficult search for a playable copy of this, OPERATION MANTIS (1984). Sam managed to track down a Spanish language version on R0 DVD with no subtitles and we settled in for a pretty mediocre spy crime comedy starring Paul as a luchador turned special agent of the Spanish government hired to take down an all female secret organization hell bent on unleashing a toxic agent that will wipe out all the males on the planet.

It sounds wonderful, but in practice, eh, not so much. And some subtitles would have helped, being as how my Spanish is relegated mainly to the kitchen at work. I can ask for clean silverware but I'm afraid I can't really keep up when evil masked and corseted women toting machine guns plot to take over the world.

Highlights for this viewer include:

-Paul in a cape and red tights, showing off his body-building career pecs, fighting a guy with a hook for hand!

-The aforementioned masked women toting machine guns

-Paul in sheik garb smoking a hookah

-A fish caught in a swimming pool

-A topless girl-fight in a sauna

-Paul as suave and debonair as ever, even in a stupid comedy

-Gong ringing

-Paul in chains in his luchador outfit brought to a bevy of the evil women. The best part about this is that the girls are dressed as Indians, Little Red Riding Hood, and a Gypsy, accept slutty, topless versions

-Paul sucking on a pacifier

-Paul dressed as a sheik (again) in a cologne commercial

-Paul dressed as a mad monk in a candy commercial (I think)

-Paul refusing to snort cocaine from a poison ring

-A drunk in a Santa suit for no real reason, except who doesn't love a drunk in a Santa suit?

-Paul dressed as a clown (complete with red nose) fighting a man with a blender for a hand

-And of course, the punk scene! And it looks like Paul has actually shaved is head into the Mohawk! That, or otherwise it's a damn good bald/Mohawk wig.

This all sounds completely unhinged, and it is, but it doesn't succeed like I would have liked. The comedy is sophomoric; almost like a Spanish PORKY's, without the really overt sex humor. Despite its premise, it's still completely misogynistic and as the women parade around topless and fight each other, there seems no real point to all the nudity. There's no real feminist statement here, but why would there be? The plot is sloppy and it's all just supposed to be for fun. But honestly, without Paul, this would have sucked more than anything could have ever sucked.

Naschy himself loathes the film and calls it the 'biggest mistake of my life.' It was apparently a very expensive ordeal and thusly, a box office flop. It bankrupted the production company and Paul never recouped his losses. Paul's father died shortly after the film was a financial disaster, thus beginning a great downfall in Paul's career. He is also noted describing the picture as, 'the great failure of my career; the film that ruined me and was for me a disaster, nearly fatal for the tremendous displeasure it brought me.' That certainly sums it up.

It could be viewed as ahead of its time, as a spoof, but it really does fail on all fronts. If it didn't have a damn punk Paul Naschy in it, I would have never sought it out. It was worth the price of admission based on this ridiculous scene and it's fun to see Paul out of his usual horror element. It's a testament to his talent that he can carry such a ridiculous thing all the way. Then again, I'd probably watch a tape of Paul sleeping for eight hours and not get bored, so I might perhaps be a bit biased.

Deniro

I wanted to take some cute pictures of Deniro and myself. Nir, as we call her, doesn't get much airplay on the blog because Moochie and Soap Sud always usurp her here, as they do in real life. Poor Nir - she always is the last to eat, get treats, and the catnip is always finished by the time she gets there. The photo shoot did not go so well and she tried to jump over my head. She then proceeded to get back up on the table and cleanse the human stink from her clawless paws. I love this cat. She doesn't meow - she says 'Nyang!'

MONSTER

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I don't really know shit about hip hop or Kanye or whatever, but I do know that this is is some HOSTEL meets some vampire shit meets some NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD meets some Kanye West ego mess and I would like to post it here just because. And because I can change the lyrics easily to meet cat criteria. 'Let me see some PAWS at the concert!' Enjoy!