Author Archives: Steven Lewis

Evil Arachnids from Space! Spiders review!

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Spiders creep me the hell out. Eight legs, hairy, lots of black eyes, fangs – Spiders are frightening creatures of nature especially if you’re an insect. Spiders can hunt probably better than any human can as they can spin a web to capture their pray, dig holes to create traps for passing by prey, and can inject poison to paralyze their soon to be meal. I’m so fascinated (and frightened) of spiders that I had to review a copy of Tibor Takacs film simply
entitled Spiders.
SPIDERS
A disabled Soviet Union space station once harvested alien DNA that would only combine with the genes of spiders. The station was abandoned and 20 years later, the station orbits earth until a crumbling meteor slams into the station breaking off portion and sending the space junk into the atmosphere and crash landing into New York City’s metro underground. The mutated spiders lay eggs inside their prey and grow six inches every hour. A massive military cover up exposes the greed behind a rogue colonel’s intentions and its up to a metro controller and his estranged ex-wife, a city health inspector, to bring the surface the truth of the colonel malicious reign and to stop the mutant spiders from taking over the city.
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Director Takacs isn’t new the giant spider genre as he directed the 2007 TV movie Ice Spiders which didn’t fair too well with audiences, but who doesn’t love man-eating monstrous spiders? 2013’s Spider’s feels like David Arquette starred Eight Legged Freaks with the terror among the community in an old fashion creature feature, but Spiders does stand on it’s own eight legs by making the spiders alien in origin. Adding the once softcore porn actress Christa Campbell doesn’t hurt either. Campbell is accompanied by Patrick Muldoon who might remember from another arachnid type sci-fi movie Starship Troopers as the fleet pilot Zander. Muldoon also appeared in Ice Spiders – the guy has a thing for spiders.
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Takacs surprises me with the quality of Spiders and his other recent work. The story and the effects are okay and passable, but not as creatively outstanding as 1987’s The Gate – the film that had boosted his career as well as Stephen Doriff’s. These computer generated spiders are awkward when crawling and their razor-teeth filled mouths are even more awkward when stretched out to devour the next victim. However, Takacs knows how to keep an adventure and the action going and continuous, but seems to lack character motivation at times. I struggle to comprehend and begin to question our hero’s (Muldoon) and heroine’s (Campbell) choices in handling the spider chaos and the military’s cover-up. Also, I’m finding difficulty understanding that Muldoon’s character can outwit a giant Queen spider which is three stories tall while an entire military force can’t even handle the baby 4 foot tall male spiders.

With Spiders you will have to stretch your imagination beyond the limits of logical thinking, but with most creature features, you kind of need to and with that said, Spiders fairs well among the latest in the monster spider genre which has been severely neglected over the last five years. Spiders is also available in 3D if you have the capabilities! Thank you Millennium Films and Nu Image productions for a terrifying arachnophobia experience.

Evil Dead. RIP Jess Franco.

Posted by Steven Lewis on

I’m sad to say that yesterday, April 2, 2013, one of the greatest Spanish Sexploitation director passed away at the grand ole age of 82. The grandfather of horror and sex cinematic gold directed over 200 films and directed famous stars such as Christopher Lee (Count Dracula) and spreading his skin films across the international board.

While most of the time the money was no available, Jess Franco made movies that entertained and captured people interests using three important components – sex, blood, and horror. The cause of death is still unknown.

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Evil Gets Sleazy! Sexcula review!

Posted by Steven Lewis on

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Alright! Vintage horror porn! Well, maybe not vintage, but definitely retro porn! Director John Holbrook directs his own horror spoof Sexcula in 1974 nearly 40 years prior to the more recent spoof entitled This Ain’t Dracula XXX. Neither flick will scare your pants off, but somehow your pants will still come off especially with Debbie Collin’s as the sleazy Countess Sexcula!

This campy sexcapade blends horror with hardcore, bushy pornography that includes a the horny Countess Sexcula, a buxom blonde that can’t wait to sink her teeth into the next willing male, and her cousin Dr. Fallatingstein, a saucy brunette who builds a pleasure mate with a serious flaccid problem. Sexcula is brought in to help her cousin in trying to “lift” her mate’s spirits with various seductive pleasures and other depraved methods.

Striptease Gorilla!

Striptease Gorilla!

Honestly, I’ve never heard of Sexcula so when I popped the Synapse and Impulse Picture’s disc into the player, I was pleasantly shocked that Sexcula turned out to be a full-fledged pornographic movie; once I saw the tip of the penis being swirled around the lips of Debbie Collins I knew I was in for a treat! Collin’s doesn’t just get naked, she gets naked plus performing scene after scene and perform the nasty after the nasty while a loose plot is woven in throughout…somewhere….you just have to kind of look past the sex to see the plot.

Sexcula becomes a bit kinky too. In order to get Dr. Fallatingstein’s man in working order, Sexcula conducts a striptease with a Gorilla involved! A sex-bot lies motionless on a table ready and willing to receive any throbbing member even from Orgie (prnounced Or-g) the lonely hunchback Quasimodo-type character. Also, and I think this is the most perverse part of the movie, the stick-it-to-the-institution-of-marriage porn scene where a couple can’t wait to say “I do” before a foursome madness ensues. The scene also brings a new meaning to “wife-swapping” as the bride takes on not only the groom, but the best man and the priest too!

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If the plot was given more thought and a better writing to it’s campiness, Sexcula would have been a stellar hit in porno world. I’d would have liked to have seen more horror a long with the sex, but with any porn spoof like This Ain’t Dracula XXX or Evil Head you have to unbalance the plot with more humor than horror or else the feel of the film more turn more into a snuff film. With the lushness of 1970s horror with the UK Hammer horror films and the United States’ exploitative films, the Canadians could not capitalize or even utilize the horror elements and instead focused more on peace and leave – the way the 70’s are stereotypically viewed.

I’m also disappointed that Jamie Orlando, Dr. Fallatingstein, didn’t grace us with her body. But I shouldn’t be bashing Sexcula; I shouldn’t be expecting more than what meets the eye; I should take things at face value. What should I expect from a movie named Sexcula? Just a ravaging romp of lots of hot un-condomized sex ready to spread all the love and diseases one could handle! Bring on the Sexcula and I must have SEX on the mind because I just reviewed another sex-titled filmed Sexsquatch which you can read my review of the film here.

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Evil Invades Your Holes! Sexsquatch review!

Posted by Steven Lewis on

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After numerous attempts have failed in trying to frighten audiences with using the mythical Sasquatch (Assault of the Sasquatch, 2006’s Abominable, Sasquatch Hunters, Devil on the Mountain, Boggy Creek), another release using the big footed monster has missed the mark and severely at that!

Sexquatch: The Legend of Blood Stool Creek – an intentional comedic movie where an alien Sasquatch named Stinkfist crash lands near a camp Summer home where a group of young sex crazed people are staying to have a “get laid” party for one hopeless teen virgin. Stinkfist has one mission on earth to kill and rape any living thing that walks on two legs and his intentions are based off a bet he has with another alien. I’m sure you can guess what happens next?

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I find the difficulty in reviewing such a movie because of the flick’s purposeful nature in trying to be goofy, witty, dumb, stupid, and somewhat bloody. I mean, we’re talking about high school grade humor here with Sexsquatch where sex, shit, and queef jokes are at the top of the list. The brain can only take so much and even after the short runtime of 70 minutes of this humor, I wanted my hour and half back so badly. Sexquatch is not the worst movie I’ve ever encountered, but makes the top ten list in my opinion.

Another thing – if a movie has sex in the title, shouldn’t there be some tits? Exposing some of the ladies bare essentials seemed not essential. Out of the six actresses, only two of them I’d want to see topless and reamed, but the others were…well…ugggh. No chests were exposed and the movie is called Sexquatch. Comprehension of this flaw leaves me and I can’t seem to focus on writing this review anymore. It’s like having Sex and the City without the sex, it’s like having a horror movie without a little gratuitous nudity, it’s like True Blood without vampires. Your title represents your movie and without plot justifications, your title will not be well sought!

Now I might seem a bit harsh with my review o far, but not everything is completely a misfortune for Sexsqutch. Steven Dinero, who plays Skippy in the film, has to be the only redeeming value and I’m guessing with his last name as Dinero, Skippy portrays a good impression of Robert De Niro throughout the entirety; it’s not award-winning material, but the impression relieves a little of the agony.

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Sub Rosa Studio Cinema brings you this gem and there should be no surprise that’s low-budget and no good at all, but who knows, maybe Sexquatch is your gold mine of funny jokes while extremely stoned off your mind. Like mentioned before, low-budget and you can see the Sexsquatch’s socks and tennis shoes! Haha! If you want a great and scary atmospheric bigfoot picture, see Peter Cushing in The Abominable Snowman or go classic and see Harry and the Hendersons! Not exactly horror, but still a great picture.

Reading Evil! Starship Troopers book review!

Posted by Steven Lewis on

starshiptroopersbookLike Paul Verhoeven’s intergalactic warfare movie Starship Troopers where mankind battles an arachnid army known as “Bugs?” Did you know that Starship Troopers is based off a novel of the same title and was published in the late 1950s? Well if you did not know, now you do! Written by a former naval lieutenant Robert Heinlein Starship Troopers bares little action similarities to the novel’s more recent movie counterpart.

Juan Rico decides to join the service against his parents’ wishes and embarks from a private in boot camp to non-commissioned office to finally commissioned officer. Rico’s backdrop is war; an intergalactic war with a nasty enemy known as the “Bugs,” an arachnid species that can calculate and that can strategize with the help of a brain caste pulling all the strings.

Johnny Rico getting slapped...on the ass.

Johnny Rico getting slapped…on the ass.

If you’ve seen the movie, the plot pretty much describes the movie, right? Most of the Heinlein’s novel follow’s Juan “Johnnie” Rico’s career through the trials and tribulations of Service, from boot camp to being a lieutenant, in becoming a citizen, but the action and bloody mess that was experiences on the big screen was not translated from the book as most of the Mobile Infantries whom were killed in action were described as “buying the farm.” You can’t blame Heinlein as this book was written in 1959 mentally constructed as a totally different mind set than from our generation. The words on page are seriously outdated and can be technical for the most of the novel due to Heinlein’s military background.

The novel touches more upon the power suits which make an appearance in Starship Troopers: Marauder (“Marauder” is a name of one of the many power suits). These suits give Rico and the other M.I.s a superhuman ability and give them an even playing ground with the Bugs. I rather prefer no power suits as like in Verhoeven’s film that make the bugs seem like an unstoppable force. The novel does delve a bit more into the Bug society and hierarchy as well as how the Bugs reproduce endlessly. Much of James Cameron Aliens was inspired of Heinlein’s novel in the aspects of “Bugs” and their being a Queen to produce the “warrior Bugs.”

Brain Bug and Carmen

Brain Bug and Carmen

Heinlein touches mainly on civic duty and the social norms of a military lifestyle through the confines of war. We live through Juan Rico much like we live through Johnny Rico in the movie, but don’t expect to read much about Johnny Rico’s companions. Ace, Carl, Carmen, Dizzy Flores, Sargent Zim are a few characters that you might remember from the film that are in the book, but Ace, Carl, Carmen and Dizzy are brief mentions that probably span no more than a page and half out of 260 plus pages. Zim is all through bootcamp and near the end of the novel. Instead, Juan Rico encounter various people and ranks that stem from privates to cadets to sergeants to generals.

Starship Troopers can be an interesting read for anybody with a military frame of mind or a curiosity for it. But don’t expect the chaos of battle scenes or the gore of the arachnid M.I. slaughter. Robert Heinlein’s novel will not be everyone, but a good read none-the-less.