20 horror movies for $5; what could possibly go wrong?  Part XVIII of XX — home stretch.

Well this was unexpected.  Keepsake is actually a pretty good movie.  Had the run time been cut by tightening up the last half, the film’s other assets would have made this a solid film.

Sunny La Rose as Janine is pretty in a non-Hollywood way and is able to carry the movie.  The score is worked to great effect in several scenes.  The director mostly stays out of the way, but that’s not a bad thing.  There might have been one too many plot points which bogged the movie down along the way.  Ultimately, it is a torture / revenge movie and the baggage did not add anything.  It was well intentioned, though, and I found myself appreciating the effort.

Janine Burns is picking out a CD, and it is not clear what happens.  You can’t really see anything, but the windshield looks like a bird hit it — hardly her fault.  If it was a bird, why show the CDs?  Startled, she drives the car off the side of the road.  She is calling a tow truck, so something else must have been damaged.

She calls for a tow, although it is not clear where she got the number.  A couple of nice southern gentlemen in a pickup stop by and gallantly offer their services to a lady in distress.  OK, they were pretty scuzzy.  I can imagine that would be a threatening situation for a woman, but she handles it well, edging back to her truck, but not showing fear.

The tow truck shows up soon driven by a mute man with no tongue.  He can’t speak, but his uniform says, “Earl.”  He is credited as TTD which I assume is Tow Truck Driver, or possibly Tongueless Towtruck Driver.  He puts her car on his rig and they leave.  She asks him a few questions, but he has a pad with a pre-written message that says to only ask him yes-or-no questions; a tactic I plan on adopting.

She looks for a pen to sign the bill, and in the glove compartment finds a drivers license with Earl’s picture, but he is a black man.  Realizing this couldn’t be the driver even in a DMV photo, she tries to get out of the truck and he slugs her.  When he stops at a gas station, she bolts from the truck.  He catches her and roughs her up

He throws her in the restroom, and handcuffs her to a urinal as a police car pulls into the station.  Somehow taking off her shirt enables her to disconnect the pipes.  I’m no plumber, but I’m not sure what happened there.  Mind you, I’m not complaining either.  Maybe if she took off the bra, she could have used the pipes as a radio.

TTD jumps the cop, takes his gun, shoot him, and just wails on him.  just as Janine escapes, TTD catches her and injects her with something to knock her out.

Title card:  DAY 1

Janine wakes up and TTD puts a metal collar around her neck that he can use to send electrical shocks through her via a remote.  TTD finds something interesting in a notebook in her car which she tries to trade for her freedom, but we don’t learn more for another hour.  He throws her in a pit below the floor of the barn.

Now the hallucinations begin.  They start out promising, on a beach with a topless girl that seems to be Janine’s lover, but turns out to be her sister Alice.  Now to really make this interesting . . . er, but I digress.

She awakens to see dismembered and rotting corpses in the pit.  TTD goes down to check on her and she brains him with a 2 X 4 and tries to run.  He zaps her electric collar ring.

While unconscious, Alice tells her that everything they went through as kids was preparing Janine for this moment.

He gives her a note that says: “30 days.  Show me.”  Thus starts the 2nd series of hallucinations, this set featuring the rotting corpses reanimating.  Frankly, they could have cut out this recurring plot point (or at least have had better looking zombies).

DAY 3

He makes her strip, hoses her down naked.

DAY 15

Another hosing down.  He gives her an extended shock, and then a new dress.  She has another hallucination of the animated bodie, and another hallucination of her sister.  Apparently their father abused them as kids.

He takes her in the house where there is another girl.  they eat, she starts, he slaps her from not waiting for the prayer.  She says she won’t go back in the box, calls him a freak.  He beats her unconscious so she sees her sister again.  Alice is hitchihing and despite Janine’s protests, leaves Janine alone to face her ordeal.

TTD brings home another girl.  We now enter the torture porn portion of the show as he de-tongues her and slices her Achilles tendons.  Presumably so she won’t be running her mouth.  TTD kills her, launching Janine into another hallucination but at least she didn’t have to get knocked out for this one.

Of course, tables are turned, there is a twist, and not everyone lives happily ever after. They could have easily lost the zombie hallucinations and kept this in the real world; and closer to 90 minutes.  Otherwise, I have no complaints.  It looks good, it sounds good, the heroine is a real woman (not gorgeous or performing kung fu).  Easily the best of this collection.  I could imagine it being a hit on the festival circuit.

Post-Post:

• The title doesn’t really work.  I assume the titular keepsake is the photo Janine takes at the end.  But it is really introduced way too late for that to be used for the title.  Maybe the plural Keepsakes to refer to the entire photo album.
• Not really sure what happens at the end.  Is that her own car she drives off in? Didn’t it require a tow 30 days earlier?  Did TTD thoughtfully fix it?  The tow truck uniform was stolen, so I am baffled by this.

20 horror movies for $5; what could possibly go wrong?  Part XVII of XX (ithinkicanithinkicanithinkican).

This is only the 2nd film in this collection wherein I have never seen a single actor in anything else.  This was not a good omen for Teenage Zombies, but at least that had the excuse of being 54 years old and uber-low budget (or is that unter-low budget).  And it still managed to have cover art online.

Part of the problem with this collection — admittedly a small part of the problem — is the transfers.  The quality here is just as bad as with Curtains; and in both cases, the movies had some good qualities that were suffocated by it being such a chore to even look at.  Not to say the movies would have been good if better preserved; but certainly watchable.

The unlikely named G-Jo Reed plays Tucker, a convict getting out of prison today.  He comes out with that great American 2nd chance,  clean slate, never going back, cleaning up his act attitude — dressed in camo, flipping off a prison clerk, being met by some low-life pals driving a flatbed and getting a gat in his hands within 2 minutes of leaving the facility.

His pal knows where the first stop will be.  Under the credits, we see some great images of the snowy Utah mountains as they drive.  Not that they are well-photographed, mind you.  It’s just that in certain areas like this or the Grand Canyon, it is so amazing, that it is almost impossible to take a bad picture.  See Adams, Ansel E.

They arrive at the home of Sheriff Steve — seriously, that’s how he credited — just as he is leaving for work.  Tucker puts 2 in the sheriff, causing blood to gush from his mouth.  He straddles the downed sheriff and puts 2 more in him at close range.  This is not going to look good at his parole hearing, especially with Sheriff’s Wife — seriously, that’s how she is credited — standing 2 feet away from him as a witness.

Just an aside — I don’t know if the ol’ “black stuff on the binoculars / telescope gag” has ever been once been pulled in real life, but it will always get a laugh out of me on-screen.

Next they encounter a couple in the classic wrong place at the wrong time whose truck has broken down on the highway.  This has a couple of fun shots of them driving off with the couple’s snowmobiles and leaving them tied up.  Not great, but there is a spark.

A yuppie couple’s ATV breaks down, and they trek to a cabin.  As in all movies, no one answers the door, so they just walk right in.  As in Axed, it turns out that the man has planned the whole thing and has a bottle of wine waiting for them.  Unlike Axed, he does not kill his wife.  However, like Axed, he does use an axe — but to chop wood.

Seriously, Utah in Winter? Wouldn’t this have required a backhoe?

Unfortunately, this was to be the gang’s hide-out.  They barge in and begin roughing up the couple until the man drives a knife through the foot of one of them.  They don’t see the humor and bury him up to his neck in the ground.

The wife manages to grab Tucker’s gun.  In a random act of violence equivalent to Vince Vega’s shooting of Marvin, she causes a snowmobile to run over her husband’s head.  Although, to Vince’s credit, he did not waste 4 bullets doing it.  The wife is distraught and points the pistol in her mouth.  It is admittedly funny when one of them ways, “Honey, don’t make a mortar of yourself.”  She pulls the trigger but those had been the last 4 bullets.  As they wrestle her to the ground, she accidentally falls on her own knife.

The gang takes off on the snowmobiles and quickly get lost.  If only snowmobiles left some sort of track that could be followed back.  As the brain-trust stops to assess the situation, a sniper begins firing at them.  The rest of the movie is the unknown sniper tracking the men across the Utah landscape.  Just as in First Blood or Southern Comfort, the men get picked off one by one.

Turns out the sniper — SPOILER– is the Sheriff who had been wearing a bullet-proof vest in the first scene.  Although I would have thought the blood gushing from his mouth indicated otherwise.  And I guess the off-screen 3rd and 4th shots were not head-shots.

I’m all for these vermin being exterminated, but it seems a little extreme.  He ain’t Josey Wales — they did not kill Sheriff’s Wife or Sheriff’s Son (as he is credited).  But it’s hard for me to care — good riddance. Plus, it was revealed that this guy was in jail for killing a dog.  Is that really motivation to murder the sheriff who busted you?

The ending is basically Sideshow Bob stepping on rakes.  Well, the logical end, not the actual end.  This movie is like Return of the King — it just won’t stop.  It goes on for about 7 minutes after it should have gone dark.

Definitely a low-budget joint, but probably watchable with a clean print.  I’m not going to be rewatching or recommending it to anyone, but it had it’s moments and the acting was not uniformly horrible.

Post-Post:

• Who is the girl snowboarding behind the car during the interminable ending?  It looks like the  yuppie girl, but her jacket is slightly different and that couple was on an ATV not a car.  Plus she is dead, and it is a different guy.  At first I thought it was an outtake, or behind-the-scenes footage, but then the movie continues.  Baffled.

20 horror movies for $5; what could possibly go wrong?  Part XVI.

I actually had some hope for this one going in.  It is still in print as a stand-alone at Amazon, although I’m not sure what it means that the DVD cost $3 more than the Blu-Ray.  Usually it would be a case of supply and demand.  But is anyone really demanding this, in any format?

Unfortunately, the transfer is this collection is god-awful, making it impossible to properly evaluate the film.  It has quite a few decent reviews online — ranging form not half-bad to calling it a gem — so I’m willing to blame the transfer for my boredom.

It gets off to a cheesy start with Samantha Eggar holding a gun on an unseen man as she yaps on and on.  The credits roll over the scene like it is a TV episode.  The camera draw back to reveal that she is an actress on stage performing for John Vernon.

Vernon and Samantha go to see a doctor Pendleton.  During their meeting, she freaks out and tries to stab Vernon.  When alone, they laugh as this was a ruse to get her admitted to the sanitarium to research a role.  She is no R.P. McMurphy as the residents bring her down rather than her enlivening them.

Also unlike McMurphy, she escapes from the institution — after hearing that Vernon is auditioning other actresses for the role she is researching.  Six women are invited to Vernon’s house to audition.  Of course, they start getting picked off, even before they get there in one case.

Probably the best kill is of the aspiring actress who is supposed to be a pro ice skater.  She can skate, but her movements and tiny leaps make it clear that the director of this movie did not hire a pro ice skater as an actress.  An old hag, or maybe a hag wearing a hag mask, begins skating toward her with a scythe.

There are more auditions, dead bodies, a head in a toilet  The conclusion has an interesting wrinkle.  Really, though, my copy is so awful, it is hard to care.

Post-Post:

• Director Richard Ciupka asked to have his name removed from the credits.  The director credited on-screen is John Stryker — the name of John Vernon’s character.
• Writer Robert Guza, Jr. shows up for the 2nd time in this collection (along with Prom Night).
• Samantha Eggar was nominated for an Oscar, and won a Golden Globe for The Collector.
• John Vernon was inexplicably snubbed by the Academy for his work as Dean Wormer in Animal House.

20 horror movies for $5; what could possibly go wrong?  Part XV.

I guess a better man would have watched Amazon’s $4.71 DVD which has all 9 Puppetmaster films on it.  Thank God that ain’t me.

Puppetmaster (no The) immediately gets off to a good start.  It has a bouncy score that seems perfect for the puppetmaster’s workshop, but also maintains a dreamy slightly dark and dangerous vibe.

The fun-meter takes a dip when the first face we see is William Hickey who can be incredibly grating.  He is working in the Bodega Bay Inn in 1939, on his puppets, which already show signs of life.

Blade

We get a nice low-level puppet-POV tracking shot as one of his creations returns to his hotel to warn him that  Nazis were looking for him.  Much like Gingerdead Man, he seems to be able to roam around with impunity, none of the hotel guests noticing this 15 inch freak running around.  At least GD Man could turn 90 degrees, and be only 1/4 inch thick.  I don’t know what the puppet’s secret is.  Just before the Nazis bust in, Hickey hides his puppets in a secret compartment and kills himself.

Back in the present day, or at least 1989, professor Paul LeMat is having visions.  Although, being a professor at Yale, his grasp of reality was already tenuous at best.  Elsewhere, a carnival fortune-teller also begins experiencing visions.  Actually, she has a vision sitting right in front of her in the form of the lovely Barbara Crampton.  It is actually a pretty funny scene, well played by both.  Her mullet-headed boy-friend doesn’t contribute much, but the girls are great.  In a research lab, a Peter Stormare doppleganger and his hot assistant both get the visions.

Neil Gallagher has been researching Egyptian methods of giving life to inanimate objects.   His psychic outreach has summoned all of these people to the Bodega Inn where Hickey did his original puppet animation.  When they get there, he is already dead and they are welcomed by his wife Megan.    The puppets then begin picking off the psychics.

When Paul LeMat figures out what is going on, it turns out that Neil was only mostly dead, and has used the Egyptian secrets to give himself eternal life.  Two problems with that: I don’t see any ancient Egyptians walking around today, and he’ll be dead in a few minutes.

In the course of giving the standard Goldfinger / 007 exposition speech, he tosses aside one of the puppets.  That’s all it takes to drive them into a murderous rage.  Well, they were already killers, this just put a target on Gallagher’s ankles.

The puppets are excellent.  There is a cheese factor, but it only adds to the movie’s charms.  The transfer is so terrible on the disk, that screen-caps do not do them justice.  Google Tunneler, Pinhead, Jester and Leech Woman to see the great designs.

The human cast does not equal their wooden co-stars.  Paul LeMat always seems like a good guy, but he’s not much of an actor.  He has only one IMDb credit in the last 10 years, so I hope he is doing well.  Neil Gallagher’s wife who is set up to carry on the tradition in the sequel (but does not) is terribly miscast, having no screen presence at all.  not-Stormare just distracted me with his resemblance.  And I kept thinking that his assistant, while certainly cute, should have been played by Barbara Crampton.  Hickey’s role is small enough that he is tolerable.

The stand-out for me was Irene Miracle as Dana the fortune telling psychic.  Her scene with Crampton was charming, and she was intriguing throughout the film.  10 years before Puppetmaster, she won a Golden Globe for New Star of the Year in Midnight Express.  No idea how her career got derailed, but she deserved better — no IMDb credits after 1997.

Post-Post:

• I was disappointed to find I misread IMDb and Megan Gallagher was a character name, not the hot 80’s actress.
• I see Paul LeMat has a few books available at Amazon.  Not many reviews, but suspiciously, every review is 5 stars.
• Shockingly, he won 2 Golden Globes.  One was for New Star of the Year, same as Irene Miracle’s award.  This award must be like the Sports Illustrated Curse.  It was retired in 1983.
• Story credit to Charles Band who was a producer on the Gingerdead Man movies.  He also directed Trancers, making him the 1st 3-peater in this ignominious collection.  On the plus side, he directed the movie with the best title in history, Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn.