New Year's Ninjas - NINJA III: THE DOMINATION

I’m a positive person.  I try not to dwell on the losses and the setbacks.  There are good things that happen every year, hopefully more than bad, but focusing on the good gets you over the rough patches.  I have to be honest though, 2016 has been a real dickhole.  I have been punched in the gut too many to times to maintain my upbeat opinion of this year.  It cannot end fast enough for me.  So I’m focusing all my positivity on the new year.  I don’t know if it’s realistic, but I’m expecting there will be battles won, changes made, people brought together, and not so much death.  Therefore, I’m welcoming 2017 with the most heartwarming and joyous thing I can imagine: ninjas.  Not just any ninjas, 1980’s ninjas.  Not just any 1980’s ninjas, but the craziest, most balls out, most ‘80’s 1980’s ninjas around, Cannon Films’ 1984 classic, NINJA III: THE DOMINATION.        

The Capsule:

A lone ninja with no name (David Chung) assassinates a yuppie scientist on a golf course.  He also kills about half of the Arizona police force.  They come at him with motorcycles, police cars, helicopters, golf carts, nothing can stop him.  Finally, after being shot several hundred times, he slips away from the cops and transfers his spirit into a telephone linewoman named Christie (Lucinda Dickey).  At first, nothing seems to change for Christie.  She aerobicizes, mercy dates the pathetic cop who’s been stalking her, and beats up a bunch of muscle heads who are harassing women.  Just a normal day.  Things get complicated when her ninja side takes over and starts rubbing out the surviving cops from the golf course.  Meanwhile, badass Yamada (Shô Kosugi) comes to town on the trail of the ninja who killed his master and threw a shuriken in his eye.  Christie’s loser cop boyfriend Secord (Jordan Bennett) becomes worried that Christie's increasingly strange behavior and zombie like appearance might be connected to all of his friends getting ninja killed.  Can Secord and Yamada figure out how to exorcise the evil spirit before it kills every single person in the movie?

There are few things as pureheartedly stupid as ninja movies.   They don’t care about plot, or drama, or realism, they just want to make you happy.  They are like puppies, in that way.  Big, dumb puppies with throwing stars and explosions.  The phenomena came about in the 1980’s as America’s answer to the Kung Fu craze of the 1970’s.  Except that ninjas are based in Japanese tradition, the main producers of ninja films, Golan and Globus, were Israelis, and the star of the first one was Franco Nero, an Italian, but other than that, completely American.   As with most Cannon films, the action was clumsy and hokey, but they made up for it with glorious excess.

The opening for this film is the stuff of legend.  The Black Ninja, who must be named because of his mood, since he never wears black, enters his secret ninja cave somewhere in Arizona.  He takes a moment to lovingly gaze at his back lit stash of swords, knives, and many, many shurikens.  Then he’s off to assassinate some hoity-toity golf loving scientist for reasons never made clear.  Sure, the Black Ninja could have just shot him with an arrow and slipped away without anyone noticing, but that is not his style.  Instead, he walks up in broad daylight, slaughters a half dozen bodyguards, the scientist, and the scientist’s girlfriend.  Probably the caddie, too.  Next, he goes after the scores of cops racing to the scene and decimates them in varied and spectacular fashion.  He punches through a car roof, leaps from a tree onto a helicopter, and throws a ninja star with his foot.  This is all in the first ten minutes.  

The message here:  if you are looking for an inconspicuous way to assassinate someone, DO NOT hire this guy.  

The police finally put enough bullets in him to put him down.  At least until the cops get close enough for him to pop back up and kill a half dozen more of them.  After a quick smoke bomb disappearance, he staggers away into the desert.  Fortunately for him, he runs into Christie and transfers his soul to her, CHILD’S PLAY style, before giving up the ghost.

Lucinda Dickey was hilariously inappropriate as a break dancer in BREAKIN’ (also from Cannon Films), and she is equally inappropriate as a ninja.  It’s not a total miscast, though.  She is athletic enough to believably pull off some basic ass kicking.  For instance, she wipes the floor with a whole gang of ‘roided out scumbags from her gym who were threatening to rape her.  Scenes like that are always welcome.  This one comes with an extra pinch of Cannon oddness since there is an entire group of bystanders watching the whole thing.  They jeer the thugs hassling Christie and cheer as she beats the crap out of them.  There is even a cop in the crowd.  Thanks for the emotional support, guys.

Once the real ninja action gets going, though, almost all of Christie’s fights are handled by a stuntman.  Since she wears the suit and mask every time the ninja takes over, it should have been an easy deception to pull off.  Cannon, however, does not give a single shit about continuity.  There is even a scene where Christie leaps—unmasked—out of a window, in slow motion.  Plenty of time to verify that, yep, it’s a dude with bushy black hair.  At least he didn’t have a mustache.  Even stranger, Christie is shown in the background driving away from the scene, and it is still the stuntman.  

Dickey’s best scenes are ones that have nothing to do with fights or stunts.  Christie is far from a feminist role model, but she does have some admirable traits.  She is bold, opinionated, and she comes off much more competently than her whiny cop boyfriend, a man who tries to woo her by stalking and then arresting her.  When she finally breaks down and brings the loser to her apartment, she is the one making all the moves.  She pours V8 juice down her chest and makes him lick it off.  Yeah, I know, her seduction technique could use a little work, but he doesn’t complain.  Not that she would care if he did.

It should also be noted that her favorite way of dealing with stress (and possession) is to launch into a FLASHDANCE style dance routine.  At least it is until the glowing floating sword that is haunting her apartment slices the hi-fi in half.  

Christie’s apartment, by the way, is possibly the best character in the movie.  It's as if the ‘80’s was compressed down to its essence and used to decorate a loft.  It has neon lights, a framed picture of Duran Duran’s Rio cover, a payphone on the wall, and a full sized video game cabinet (Bouncer).  There are also weird touches like some kind of stone Buddha head in a birdcage and a tuba hanging from the wall.  There is a creepy mannequin wearing a trench coat and motorcycle helmet lurking by the front door.  I had hoped it would become animated and attack someone, but that went unrealized.  The video game machine does play a major factor, though.  The spirit of the Black Ninja shoots a laser show from it to hypnotize Christie.  It’s good to see he’s staying up with the times.

Dickey does do a decent Linda Blair.  Her wussy boyfriend, Secord, worried about her strange behavior, persuades her to see an Asian mystic.  This is after a medical doctor pronounced her completely normal, aside from some slightly elevated extra-sensory perception (ESP is not considered unusual in Arizona, apparently).  Christie plays along and goes to see Miyashima, who is played by the great James Hong.  As soon as he has her completely restrained (standard practice for all mystic consultation), her ninja half takes over completely.  She becomes ghostly pale and does circle flips around her chains.  Miyashima immediately freaks the fuck out and does everything not to piss off the spirit.  He gets telekinetically pinned against the wall anyway.  Secord looks on with his standard reaction of mild confusion.  After the craziness dies down, Secord asks Miyashima how to get rid of the evil spirit.  He dramatically tells him, “Only a ninja can kill a ninja.”

Which begins one of the best segues ever, Yamata literally popping up from the bushes.  Shô Kosugi was in familiar territory here, having been in Cannon’s previous two ninja movies, ENTER THE NINJA and REVENGE OF THE NINJA (he played a ninja).  Pick any high profile ninja movie in the ‘80’s and Shô is likely to be in it.  He’s the quintessential ninja, confident, mysterious, and an excellent martial artist.  He seems too cool for this movie. Yamata is probably my favorite of his roles.  He is so dope that he wears a sword hilt for an eye patch and conceals a mini-blowgun in his empty eye socket.  That is really making the most of a disability.  

He takes it easy on the innocent non-ninja who get in the way of his revenge.  Cops are incapacitated with acupuncture (probably feeling relaxed and refreshed when they wake up).   He also takes out a couple of security guards by bonking their heads together, Three Stooges style.

Yamata also wants to curtail the Black Ninja’s from-the-grave cop murdering spree without harming Christie.  He tells Secord to bring her to the old Shaolin temple in the desert (Arizona is famous for its Shaolin temples).  He fails, of course, because he’s Secord, but Ninja Christie comes anyway.  Yamata manages to return the Black Ninja’s spirit to his body, leaving Christie unharmed, but now he has a super powered zombie ninja to deal with.  Seems like the Black Ninja would have gone with this option in the first place, what with his love of relentless killing and all.  It would have left much less time for aerobics routines, though.

In addition to this and REVENGE OF THE NINJA, director Sam Firstenberg went on to make AMERICAN NINJA, AMERICAN NINJA 2: THE CONFRONTATION, and as a change of pace, AMERICAN SAMURAI.  The demise of Cannon Films pretty much brought about the end of the ninja movie, though there has been a more recent resurgence with NINJA ASSASSIN and Isaac Florentine’s NINJA and NINJA II.  These are technically much better films with legitimately stunning fight sequences (particularly Florentine’s movies), but the goofy heart of the ninja will always be in the ‘80s.  

So this New Year’s Eve, put away the fireworks and break out the smoke bombs.  Let’s rock 2017 like a ninja.  A good ninja, not a bad one.  You get what I’m saying.

C Chaka

 

Hail to the King: EVIL DEAD

It’s the end of October and the final installment in this year’s DIY Halloween Horror theme.  So far I’ve written about H.G. Lewis’ slapdash birth of gore film BLOOD FEAST, Leif Jonker pouring his heart and soul and a thousand gallons of fake blood into DARKNESS, and Peter Jackson’s goofy and goo-filled alien massacre comedy, BAD TASTE.  All of these movies hold an important place in the history of cinema, but now, I come to what is arguably the most successful, influential, and defining DIY horror movie ever, Sam Raimi’s phantasmagorical, ram-o-cam masterpiece, EVIL DEAD.

The Capsule:

A group of college aged (though not necessarily college attending) friends load up into a ’73 Oldsmobile and head off for a relaxing weekend in the woods.  Ash (Bruce Campbell), girlfriend Linda (Betsy Baker), pal Scotty (Richard DeManincor), Scotty’s gal Shelly (Theresa Tilly), and sensitive, artistic fifth wheel Cheryl (Ellen Sandweiss) make their way to a dilapidated cabin deep in an isolated forest.  Unfortunately for them, the previous owner of the cabin left a few things behind, like the ancient Ka’n Darian Book of the Dead and a tape recording of him reciting passages on demon resurrection.  The passage unleashes the evil within the woods, and soon Ash’s friends are being possessed in very horrifying ways.  Can Ash survive the ordeal, or will the woods swallow his soul as well?

These days, Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson are on roughly the same level of mainstream acceptance.  Jackson has a few Oscars under his belt, but Raimi gave the world a jazz dancing Peter Parker, so it’s pretty much even.  The big difference is in their first features.  BAD TASTE holds little resemblance to any of Jackson’s films past DEAD ALIVE.  EVIL DEAD, on the other hand, has Raimi’s directing DNA all over it.  This is not just because Raimi occasionally returns to his horror roots.  Many of the inventive camera techniques and the off-kilter atmosphere he developed for EVIL DEAD still show up in his movies today.  Additionally, he has repurposed certain props over and over throughout the years, like the Oldsmobile Delta 88, and Bruce Campbell. 

Not only was EVIL DEAD distinctly a Sam Raimi movie, it was also a technically far superior film.  I don’t want to knock BAD TASTE, which is an amazing accomplishment considering the tiny amount of resources Jackson and his crew had access to, but it still feels like a bunch of (talented) friends clowning around and having fun.  As rough around the edges as it is, EVIL DEAD is a full-fledged, creative, and incredibly effective horror movie.  Raimi shows a mastery of visual and auditory storytelling right from the start.  We never need to know what the “evil in the woods” is or looks like, Raimi’s incredible swooping POV shot and the terror on everyone’s faces tells it all.  His use of pronounced, repetitive sound effects (the thumping of the swing, the clock pendulum, the sound passing over the rafters) accentuates the creepiness of the cabin.  Raimi makes the claustrophobic environment within the woods completely immersive.

The pacing is another of the movie’s strengths.  A lot of horror movies spend the beginning establishing the characters and spelling out their relationships to each other.  Raimi doesn’t waste time with that.  Everything you need to know evolves naturally as the story unfolds.  The real action doesn’t start until about half way through, but Raimi keeps an atmosphere of pervasive dread right from the start.  Even before they play the demon-raising tape recording, the cabin and surrounding woods are shown as a haunted, malicious place.  The recited passages only serve to get the evil fully stirred up.  The possessions start when the woods itself literally invades poor Cheryl’s body.  As soon as she is fully transformed, the others begin to drop like flies.  It becomes a classic siege movie, the survivors trying desperately to keep the demons out of (or stuck under) the cabin.  The security of the ramshackle walls is just an illusion, however.  The evil is capable of smashing through the window to instantly possess Shelly.  In the end [SPOILER?], it abandons all pretense and rams straight through the cabin, in full daylight, to go after a supposedly victorious Ash.  It has just been playing with them the entire time.

Incidentally, if there was any piece of Cheryl remaining in her demonified body, I can only imagine that she looked at Shelly and thought “What the fuck, dude?  I get assaulted by roots and she gets possessed through the friggin’ window?!?  She didn’t even have to go outside.  How is that fair?  This possession business is rigged!”

These days Bruce Campbell is synonymous with the EVIL DEAD films, but in the beginning there is no indication Ash will be the standout character.  This isn’t groovy Ash, it’s just Ashley.  Campbell plays him straight, with only a hint of comedy and no swagger.  Much like Ripley in ALIEN, he’s just part of the group, as vulnerable as anyone.  Even when he becomes the focus of the movie halfway in, it’s because of attrition, not heroism.  In fact, Ash comes off pretty cowardly compared to DeManincor’s more assertive (and douche baggy) Scotty.  Ash is wishy-washy, he freezes when shit goes down, and he can’t follow thorough.  He’s the last person you would think would one day have a sweet chainsaw hand.

By the way, if this had been a modern movie, the scene where he gives his girlfriend the necklace would have guaranteed his death.  Guys giving gifts, especially jewelry, has replaced people having sex as the number one indicator they are goners in horror movies.

 

While we’re on the subject, Betsy Baker does a great job as Linda pretending to be pleased with the magnifying glass necklace.  The film goes the extra step to establish what a dumbass Ash is to think, “You know what would really impress my girl, a little magnifying glass on a silver chain.”  It might have some unspoken significance with them, but I prefer the idea that Ash buys shit gifts and Linda is too nice to tell him.  It comes in handy later, though, so his poor judgment worked out for him in the end.

The movie might not be the “Ultimate Experience in Grueling Horror” as it claims, but it legitimately comes close for the time.  I always forget how rough it is because I’m more familiar with EVIL DEAD 2. I watched that one first and have seen it more often. It has a much lighter (if stranger) tone.  The first EVIL DEAD was strong enough to be labeled a “Video Nasty” in UK.  Now, a lot of films where undeservedly put on the list, but in this case, it’s understandable.  This film has a nasty edge.  As weird as it is, Cheryl’s tree rape scene is no joke.  I can’t keep from wincing every time.  The blood runs black, white, and green, but it is primarily red and there is an awful lot of it.  Demons are stabbed, burnt, hacked up into still wiggling pieces.  There is even a bit of self-cannibalism.  When Ash pulls a stick out of Scotty’s stomach, blood pours out like he’s just uncorked a wine bottle lying on its side.  The famous stop motion scenes of the decaying demons at the end are stand alone effective, but the film goes the extra step of having monster arms literally explode out of the corpses in a final gory transmutation,  While giving Raimi a reason to splash a bucket of blood in Campbell’s face again.

 

The movie establishes several traditions that continue throughout the series, including the currently airing TV show.  The Bruce Campbell abuse goes without saying, though Ash makes out better in this one than any other installment.  There is a reality bending haunted house freak-out, complete with bleeding walls, similar to scenes in the next two movies, but with its own unique tone.   Perhaps my favorite reoccurring gag is Ash taking time out to not only bury his dead(ish) friends, but build wooden crosses to mark their graves.  The Book of the Dead is present, of course, but it is not called the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis, as it is in EVIL DEAD 2 and beyond.  Here it’s called Naturan Demanto, and it looks a little grosser.  This book seems like it could really have been made out of skin.  There is a chainsaw, which Ash never uses, and also a shotgun, single barreled and not cut down like the more famous boomstick.  It’s still fun to see the humble beginnings of Ash’s Deadite killing arsenal.    

Richard DeManincor only had a couple of small roles after this film.  The ladies of EVIL DEAD have had more robust acting careers, though there is a huge gap between 1981 and 2007 when they reunited for a short doc about being the ladies of EVIL DEAD.  Bruce Campbell went on to become a legend, and is perhaps the most reliable and charismatic B-movie actor alive.  Sam Raimi went on to be an insane cult leader in THOU SHALT NOT KILL…EXCEPT and to be horribly mutilated in INTRUDER.  He has also evolved from shooting $350, 000 movies to $350,000,000 movies and has become one of the most famous directors in the world.  He keeps close to the source, though, producing the Ash Vs Evil Dead TV series and directing the first episode.  Under all the fame and success, he’s still just a man who wants to abuse Bruce Campbell. 

EVIL DEAD became a hugely influential film for decades to come.  Raimi tapped into the primal fear of being trapped in a place we know we shouldn’t be in, isolated and vulnerable, surrounded by forces we can’t understand.  It’s no surprise that cabin-in-the-woods movies are so prevalent in horror, leading up to and beyond the movie CABIN IN THE WOODS.  It’s more than just the setting, though.  Raimi and his crew managed to overcome their budgetary and physical limitations to make the most of every second of screen time, and they did it with nothing but determination, innovation, and lots of Karo syrup blood.  While I think Toby Hooper's TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE matches EVIL DEAD for professionalism, pacing, and atmosphere, and delivers more sheer terror, Raimi's creativity makes EVIL DEAD the benchmark for DIY horror filmmaking.  Give it some sugar, baby.

C Chaka 

Stop Explaining: NIGHT OF THE DEMONS (2009)

Terrible movies were so much more fun in the ‘70’s and ‘80’s.  These days, instead of being enjoyably awful, terrible movies just tend to be boring.  They either try too hard to be clever or they lack the weirdness or obliviousness that makes even the worst movie interesting.  There are a handful of modern, entertainingly terrible movies out there, but the numbers pale in comparison to the old days.   I have a few theories as to why this is.  

One is the SCREAM curse.  SCREAM was a great movie, but heralded the grim dawn of the self-aware film.  Characters began referencing clichés in older movies that resembled their current situation, usually derisively.  A little bit here and there is fine.  Too much and it becomes a snarky put down of the referenced movie.    The characters imply that they are smarter than the ones in those dumb old movies, although they usually only wind up making different dumb mistakes.  It mostly happens in horror movies, but it can leak out into other genres as well (Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger should have been forced to do community service for their roles in THE EXPENDABLES 2).  It isn’t always that blatant.  Some movies try way too hard to be clever.  Sometimes the script just self-consciously tries to over explain why something isn’t really stupid when it clearly is.  You can’t be in the middle.  Either write a script that isn’t stupid, or own it.  

I admit, I’m biased.  I will give almost any old horror movie the benefit of the doubt.  I recently became aware of a 1984 horror movie starring Alice Cooper called MONSTER DOG.  I will likely get this on Blu Ray sight unseen, because it stars Alice Cooper and is called MONSTER DOG.  When it comes to modern indie horror, though, I can barely get through the pop up description on Netflix before moving on.  I know I should take more chances, because some of them have to be halfway decent.  Like the 2009 remake of NIGHT OF THE DEMONS, which I bought thinking it was the 1988 original.    

Capsule:

A bunch of obnoxious college kids go to a Halloween party.  Two of them are dressed like slutty cats.  One is dressed like a goth/emo boy (not sure if it’s a costume).  One is dressed like a victim from a hospital horror movie (possibly X-RAY, but I doubt it).  One might be a zombie, but looks more like she just got drunk and fell into a rose bush.  Edward Furlong also shows up dressed as the kid from TERMINATOR 2.  The party is hosted by Angela, who is dressed like a girl soon to be possessed by a demon.  For that authentic vibe that only people in horror movies care about, the party is in an abandoned, supposedly haunted New Orleans mansion.  After the cops bust up the festivities, Angela and her pals find themselves locked in the spooky old house.  They discover some decayed bodies in a hidden room in the basement and Angela is bitten by a skeleton when she tries to pull out its gold tooth.  It’s not a reanimated skeleton, just an ordinary 85 year old corpse with a snap jaw hidden in a basement, so no one freaks out or anything.  It is enough for Angela to catch demon rabies, though.  While the other kids drink and screw around, the demon curse spreads among them through traditional methods like a bite, a kiss, or – less documented – anal sex.  As the unpossessed to possessed ratio dwindles, spunky heroine Maddie and her friends fight to survive the night.  Of the demons.

This movie does not start off promisingly.  The opening prologue is done in bullshit silent movie style, complete with sepia tone and dialogue cards.  You know, to give you the feeling you are watching an authentic film from 1925, except with more decapitations.  Then it springs into the present with an equally horrible, oversaturated, quick cut Bourbon St. party montage.  There is a cheap looking CG title, worse than the simple grindhouse title cards or even the Eighties two-tone video titles.  There is a completely pointless and embarrassing cameo by Linnea Quigley (Trash from RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD deserves so much better).  Luckily, it gets all the worst shit out of the way early.  We meet our vacant young adult crew, who are knuckleheads but not as aggressively annoying as ones from an Eli Roth movie.  They all seem to like each other and there’s not a lot of bitching and backstabbing.  I wasn’t praying for their deaths, but I wasn’t broken up when they happened.  Final Girl Maddie is played by Monica Keena, who I liked in FREDDY VS JASON and is similarly likeable here.  She keeps a cool head and gets a chance to be badass later in the movie.  Ed Furlong looks way older than he should, either to be hanging out with these youngins or just in general.  Time has not been kind to him.  He does a good job of playing a loser drug dealer, though.  It’s a good mix of world weary and desperation.  I could have sworn that one of the dudes was on VERONICA MARS, but it turns out he’s just the kind of dude who you think would be on VERONICA MARS.

My favorite part of the movie is when the few possessed partiers are still trying to play it cool and seduce the normal folk.  Apparently these demons would consider the behavior in SPRING BREAKERS to be subtle, because their technique is ridiculously over the top.  Even the horny single dude is kind of disgusted.  One demon demonstrates a neat trick of making a lipstick tube disappear through her nipple and produces it from her hoochie.  Warning to parents, DO NOT hire demon magicians for your kid’s birthday party, even if they are cheap.

The biggest problem with the movie is that it will not shut up with the explanations.  There are three separate backstory exposition dumps.  I felt like I was on a New Orleans ghost tour.  At one point Maddie reads from a bunch of gibberish scrawled on a wall.  She makes the surprising discovery that the demons who have been trying to kill them are, in fact, demons.  You can skip that part, we got it.  It’s in the title, for crying out loud.  Listen movie, I don’t need your cockamamie hypothesis on why rust hurts demons.  No one is wondering that.  “For some reason” is perfectly fine.  Any reason we the audience cook up probably makes more sense, anyway.  

The movie is at its best when it loosens up and just rolls with the insanity.  One of the characters suddenly falls through not one but three floors for no discernible reason.  Maddie shoves iron nails down the barrel of a shotgun and fires them like she was Elmer Fudd.  Everyone is trapped on the deadly property because the outer gate is locked.  It’s not an electrified gate or covered in snakes or anything, just a regular gate.  Yet no one even suggests climbing over it.  Maybe their costumes were rentals and they didn’t want to risk tearing them.  I even like the little moments of stupidity, like how the bathroom is always vacant during a party with a hundred drunken revelers.  Or how Angela charges for admission, but has spent at least twenty times the total cover on an open bar and ridiculous lighting and sound systems.  Or why Furlong’s scary New Orleans drug connection is British.  

One not so great weird thing is the way they criminally underused the N.O. setting.  They have one (terrible) establishing shot of Bourbon St. in the beginning, then it’s all sound stages.  Due to the drabness, I actually suspected it was filmed in Bulgaria, like every DTV action movie made in the last fifteen years.  I was surprised to find it really was filmed entirely in New Orleans.  

They do a much better job with the soundtrack, including an exceptional use of Concrete Blonde’s “Vampire Song”.  I’m surprised they didn’t find a way to point out the movie is about demons, not vampires, though.  Just in case we were confused.  The theme song is by 45 Grave, of RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD fame.  It’s no “Party Time”, but it’s a nice touch.  I didn’t recognize any of the other music, but the soundtrack has a handpicked quality and works thematically.  Plus, one of the bands is named Goatwhore.  I approve.

The make-up work is justifiably the highlight of the movie.  There is some CG enhanced (?) shots, but most of it is practical.   The opening decapitation is nice and blood spurty, even if it is in sepia tone.  There is a bathtub of blood, which I always appreciate.  The demons in particular are well done, with a lot of weird and asymmetric touches.   Someone gets her face ripped off and her demon form remains faceless.  There are boob tentacles.  Any movie with boob tentacles is worth your time.

So despite its self-conscious self-awareness, I found the movie charming.  It has a lot of heart.  You can tell director Adam Gierasch is really into ‘80’s horror and wanted to give it that fun feel.  There’s nothing mean spirited about it, just gory and goofy without becoming a parody.   Not a bad job.  I haven’t seen (or recognized) any of Gierasch’s other movies.  I’m not sure I’m going to actively seek them out, but if I flip by them on Netflix one weekend, maybe I’ll give it a shot.  Hopefully he’s learned to loosen up and embrace the stupidity. 

C Chaka