Movie Ad of the Week: WALKING THE EDGE and GHOULIES (both 1985)

The first two releases from Charles Band's Empire Pictures opened on the same day (January 18, 1985) on opposite coasts: WALKING THE EDGE in the New York tri-state area and GHOULIES in the Los Angeles area.

And don't forget, WALKING THE EDGE is now available on Blu-ray from Fun City Editions, fully loaded with exciting and informative extras including an audio commentary by Temple of Schlock's Chris Poggiali and KING COHEN producer Matt Verboys!

Movie Ad of the Week: DIGITAL KNIGHTS (1984) a.k.a. THE DUNGEONMASTER (1985)

Filmed under the title RAGEWAR by seven directors (including visual effects master David Allen, makeup and special effects artist John Buechler and producer Charles Band), the episodic fantasy adventure DIGITAL KNIGHTS opened in Newport News, VA on August 24th, 1984.

Five months later (January 18th, 1985) the film opened in Shreveport, LA and other cities as THE DUNGEONMASTER with a different campaign sometimes featuring the disclaimer "This motion picture is not related in any manner to the TSR, Inc., game entitled 'Dungeons & Dragons' or any characters contained therein."

Movie Ad of the Week: UNDERWORLD (1986) a.k.a. TRANSMUTATIONS (1987)

The first of two disappointing collaborations between author Clive Barker and director George Pavlou, UNDERWORLD opened in eight theaters in Phoenix, AZ on April 18, 1986 (The ad above is from its second week). Both UNDERWORLD and the second Barker-Pavlou team-up, RAWHEAD REX, were released by Empire Pictures.

Nine months later the movie surfaced in St. Louis, MO on January 23, 1987 as TRANSMUTATIONS with a different ad campaign.

Movie Ad of the Week: THE BEST OF SEX AND VIOLENCE (1982)

The Charles Band-produced trailer compilation THE BEST OF SEX AND VIOLENCE (1981) played midnight shows in 14 Chicago area theaters on February 5-6, 1982 as a presentation of The Alternative Film Society, a New Jersey-based organization that “four-walled” theaters for midnight movie screenings and dusk-to-dawn shows in the early 1980s. Under the title SCREAMS OF FLESH AND BLOOD, this "comic look at Hollywood's wildest moments" filled out many of the Society’s “5 Deranged Features” programs at drive-ins during the summers of 1982 and ’83 (We wrote about those here), even though it was already available on home video through Band’s Wizard Video label. Since none of the movies pictured in the ad (THE DIRT GANG, WEREWOLVES ON WHEELS, two different GINGER flicks) have anything to do with THE BEST OF SEX AND VIOLENCE, here's a list of the 28 trailers that do appear in the film: BURY ME AN ANGEL; THE DOBERMAN GANG; TUNNELVISION; THE SIN OF ADAM AND EVE; ALICE IN WONDERLAND; CINDERELLA; FAIRY TALES; EMANUELLE AROUND THE WORLD; TANYA'S ISLAND; I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE; TOURIST TRAP; THE BOOGEY MAN; ZOMBIE; THE SINGLE GIRLS; THE WORKING GIRLS; THE MANHANDLERS; DR. MINX; TRUCK STOP WOMEN; THE TWILIGHT PEOPLE; BEYOND ATLANTIS; THE DEVIL'S WEDDING NIGHT; SWEET SUGAR; TERMINAL ISLAND; EBONY, IVORY & JADE; DR. BLACK & MR. HYDE; DOLEMITE; THE HUMAN TORNADO; DISCO GODFATHER.

The Endangered List (Case File #130) - FOUND!

LAST FOXTROT IN BURBANK (1973)

Starring
Michael Pataki (Paul)
Sherry Denton (Jeanne)
Simmy Bow (Marcel)
Sally Marr (Mrs. Ketchenberg)
I. William Quinn (Tom)
with
Dennis Rhodes
and
Ron Carter

Produced and directed
by
Charles Band

Screenplay by
Bill Haggard
and
Sam Vaughn

Camera
Tom Cecato

Assistant Director
Jory Valian

Edited by
John T. Casino
[John Carpenter]

Music by
Gordon McGill

Sound by
Rocco Zomparelli

Released by
Federated Film Corporation

Running time
65 minutes (1973)
75 minutes (1974)

Rating: Self-imposed X

Over at the Rogue Cinema website, Duane L. Martin interviewed Charles Band and got the filmmaker to talk about LAST FOXTROT IN BURBANK. Click HERE to read Duane's interview!

Movie Ad of the Week: AUDITIONS (1980)

The second of three movies Harry Hurwitz (THE PROJECTIONIST) directed under his “Harry Tampa” handle -- the others are FAIRY TALES (1978) and NOCTURNA (1979) -- AUDITIONS is supposedly a documentary that was filmed with hidden cameras during the auditions for the never completed FAIRY TALES PART II, but you’ll smell the bullshit the instant Linnea Quigley and Hurwitz regular Bob Staats show up using pseudonyms when both of them had already appeared in the first FAIRY TALES under their real names. The rest of the cast consists mostly of recognizable porn stars (Rick Cassidy, Rhonda Jo Petty, William Margold, Linda York, Jennifer West) and oddball GONG SHOW types. It opened in Atlanta on May 16, 1980 with a self-imposed X rating, but producer Charles Band submitted it to the MPAA in 1982 for an official X ahead of its release on video through his Wizard label.

THE OCCULTIST (1987)

Reviewed by John W. Donaldson

When an ineffectual New York City security company is hired to protect the dictator of the Caribbean island of San Caribe, they contact ex-agent and cyborg Waldo Warren (Rick Gianasi). Warren saves the dictator’s daughter Anjanette (Jennifer Kanter) but fails to prevent the first or the second assassination of President Davalos (Anibal Lleras). The president’s wife Marianna (Mizan Nunes) is in on the plot but is killed by her mother, voodoo priestess Mama Dora (Betty Vaughn), during a Macumba ceremony. An archrival security company led by Ciprian Lane (Doug Delauder) shoots it out with Waldo but are all killed. Anjanette returns to San Caribe to run the island democratically.

This everything-including-the-kitchen-sink plot stumbles unconvincingly through voodoo, political plottings, cyborg technology, and immoral security firms with little (if any) cohesion. Thesp talent either overacts campily or is totally wooden in delivery. Director Tim Kincaid used to make gay porn under the name Joe Gage. Originally part of a production package that included MUTANT HUNT, NECROPOLIS and BREEDERS but got lost when Empire Pictures went under in the late ‘80s. Tech credits are spotty, direction is nonexistent. Originally titled MAXIMUM THRUST and then re-titled WALDO WARREN: PRIVATE DICK WITHOUT A BRAIN, this one’s barely worth watching.

From Beyond to the Cutting-Room: The Unrated Director's Cut of FROM BEYOND

by Paul DeCirce

In 1986, Charles Band and his Empire Films were squarely in the middle of the resurgent horror film industry. Churning out a long string of b-graders meant to cash in on the new VHS home video market, Band was on the look out for anything that could interest his audience. His bigger successes included THE DUNGEONMASTER, GHOULIES, TRANCERS and Stuart Gordon's RE-ANIMATOR. Based loosely on H.P Lovecraft's short-story "Herbert West: Re-Animator," RE-ANIMATOR scored big with home video viewers for its over the top, tongue-in-cheek mixture of gore and sleaze. It also severely bunched the panties of the MPAA, who never saw the film to rate it. Even unrated, the film did big business for Band and Gordon's sudden future as a horror filmmaker.

A three-picture deal was made between Empire and Gordon; FROM BEYOND went on to become the first of them. Again based on a short story by Lovecraft ("It Came From Beyond"), FROM BEYOND has developed a solid cult following as top-notch in the '80s ilk of genre horror, mostly on the legs of Stuart Gordon's flexible direction. His stylish usage of low-budget contraints and his history in theatre, mixed with the right amount of situational humor, lewd sexuality and realistic grue has set a bench-mark of what '80s horror is renowned for. His other films, including DOLLS (87), CASTLE FREAK (95), KING OF THE ANTS (03) and the excellent DAGON (01), as well as a respectable non-genre career in THE WONDERFUL ICE CREAM SUIT (98) and the recent EDMOND (05) as well as writing HONEY I SHRUNK THE KIDS have won him many fans and much respect in the indie-film industry. He's also set to direct HOUSE OF RE-ANIMATOR with William H. Macy for 2010.

But if people thought RE-ANIMATOR was too much...forget FROM BEYOND. For some reason, Gordon had to deliver an R rating for this film, and it was rejected three times. When it finally did get its rating, a number of intense and key scenes of gore, sexuality and depravity were missing, making the theatrical release a little tame and clumsy, though fans of the genre recognized it as an achievement. Little did us trolls know it would be twenty years before we'd see the film in its intended form.

And what a form it is. The missing footage has been lovingly replaced almost seamlessly and now the true power of this low-budget gem is fully in place. As Gordon himself said, "the film got its balls back." The story opens with Jeffrey Combs and Ted Sorel playing scientists making advances on the pineal gland, or sixth sense, the un-excercised muscle located in the center of the forehead. With wild tones of science fiction insanity, Sorel absorbs too much frequency from their attic-fashioned 'resonator' machine, causing his head to explode. That's in the first three minutes, folks.

Combs' character is ultimately placed in the care of psychiatrist Barbara Crampton (who is rather young and unconvincing as a doctor), who decides it best to re-create the horrific situation to discover what they'd been fooling with all along. She is soon turned seriously on by the stimulation as it reverberates to her, ahem, nether region and begins revisiting the dangerous space of the 'resonator,' until finally, Sorel returns -- apparently unharmed -- and from there the machine begins working on its own, drawing Combs, Crampton and a police officer (played by Ken Foree of DAWN OF THE DEAD) into a twisted path of addiction and destruction.

While the story seems a bit played by today's standards -- and it's an amicable job from the actors -- it's truly the special effects and tense action scenes that give this movie its legs. The disfigured creature Sorel becomes, apparently from over-stimulation of the pineal gland, is a special-effects hallmark, utilizing film-layering, puppetry, clay-mation, make-up, slime and good old-fashioned camera placement. At one point Sorel's face appears to have grown into a long worm like gland, and Gordon's usage of varying long and close-up shots completely convinces the audience there's a face at the end of this long, penis-like appendage.

After a number of close calls, Combs' pineal gland bursts forth from his forehead in grotesque fashion, like a limp little worm wriggling curiously while his eyeballs loll in his head. This leads to Combs' returning to the hospital where the film really picks up the pace and careens into a crash and burn climax of gore, explosions and insanity that ranks among the most memorable for its time.

The film, now fully restored, features a high count of gross-out scenes of perversity and gore. The sixth-dimension Sorel rudely exposes Crampton's pert breasts and rubs slimy elongated fingers all over them before dipping below screen for an inferred invasion. Combs' character does a lot more truly disgusting brain eating than the theatrical cut had, including an entire shot of him sucking the brains out of a doctors eyeball, after spitting said appendage rudely onto the floor. There's also a lengthy televised long shot of some rough S&M, featuring more breasts and violence. It's fair to say this uncut edition is pretty much packed with horrific A-level gore and slime and sleaze.

Gordon makes effective use of low-budget scenery by using a lot of purples, violets and velvety colors, skewed camera close-ups and in other places, brightly lit exposure of gore. Lee Percy, the editor, keeps the film moving at an excellent and interesting pace, and Richard Band's score uses strings and funky synth to good impact, if not a bit dated.

The complete picture draws certain comparisons to like-minded films of scientific experimentation, most accurately as a poor-man's comparison to Cronenberg's THE FLY, curiously released the same year. As an examination of the connectedness of our deeper urges of pleasure addiction with what might be right and wrong, the film succeeds in its lurid frankness. Void of morals, forgiveness or apology for its pseudo-scientific madness, the uncut FROM BEYOND successfully replaces a sense of rhythm and gut-punching that had indeed been castrated for its theatrical release.

Band has continued to be a major figure in the now booming DVD industry, most notably with his PUPPET MASTER films. While many of today's equivalent ilk lack the creativity and usage of technique and inventiveness of the '80s kind, it seems as though the B-Grade home viewing industry still remains hungry for the kind of sleaze that FROM BEYOND benchmarked. Stuart Gordon's career has veered into more diversity and he seems on the upsurge, with excellent additions to the Masters of Horror TV series, as well as highly rated features, such as KING OF THE ANTS and his most recent full-length, STUCK.

While the MPAA questioned Gordon's motivation at crafting such a disgusting and dirty-feeling film, now that it's restored, it's better to enjoy the ride and marvel at how the film manages to repulse while at the same time ask the viewer to admit the truth: they love it and they want more. Indeed a far cry from the philosophical questions raised by Lovecraft's fascination with the potential of the human mind, but by no means beyond the realm of the horrific framework his fiction created. Indeed it came FROM BEYOND, and twenty years later, it has finally arrived.