Shock-O-Rama Cinema | Buy at Amazon | Review by Sinferno
This box set chronicles the four films of independent director Greg Lamberson from the mid eighties, a time when enterprising directors could shoot unrated movies and have actually have them shown in public, back before the MPAA’s stranglehold on the industry and local papers allowed unrated films to be advertised. Oh, sweet unrated films, movies featuring characters who were arbitrarily sliced and yet the action sequences featuring said senseless carnage were deliciously uncut. This is more than a boxed set, it is a cinematic time capsule of what might have been the future of film if the rules hadn’t changed, and the R rating never became the industry standard of homogenized, safe, horror for the masses. How sweet.
When I first broke into the set, I was alarmed at how this director, who I admittedly had never heard of, had the nerve to compare his cinematic creations to the likes of THE TOXIC AVENGER, RE-ANIMATOR, and HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER, implying that they were of similar quality because they came from a similar era and featured content too hot for the seven-dollar-soda-sipping youth of today's modern metroplexes. The aforementioned three films were all well known and completely badass, each with scenes that stick in your head for a lifetime. So I feel it is a bold statement indeed to compare your work to films people have actually heard of. It seems every second-rate film school dropout has a love for a director, or a series of films and how do they proclaim their idolatry? They create a derivative work that rips off their “inspirational” work only without the budget, brains or beauty of the movies that inspired them.
I am here today, much to my surprise (and delight) that most of these films belong, in the sub-genre canon of good, plot-driven movies with disgusting action. In each of these films, the director took a limited budget, a decent premise and fused them together into something that actually delivered chills and spills you will not find in the computer-rendered carnage in the latest Jason or Leatherface outing. While each one of them will find immediate resonance with a slasher, gore or fan, I would recommend them most to aspiring directors who want to learn how to create on a budget. Granted the budgetary concerns are evident in most every scene, yet this is cult, underground film at it’s finest and if you can’t accept them, you need to go back to more Pixar films about singing inanimate objects.
SLIME CITY: Alex is a meek, mild New York man who moves into off-campus housing and discovers his neighbors are not what they seem. All too late, as he becomes a homicidal, oozing, dripping slime monster worthy of EC Comics' finest after gorging himself on too much of the local hospitality and Dr. Suess-inspired pudding. The virginal girlfriend who sexes him not, his clueless frat buddy friend and the sweet old lady who rents him the room all make this film more real, entertaining and character-driven than most other films from this sub-genre. The real caveat, the real trick of this film is the ritual he must complete in order to turn normal from time-to-time. Seriously, it’s a shtick that could easily be the main plotline of a decent big-budget horror film, and as such I will not recount it here. And while the literal blood and guts will not actually fool anyone who has ever seen CSI, the final fight sequence was equally as unsettling as anything I have ever seen in a big-budget ALIEN or PREDATOR movie. Seriously. There is talk of a sequel in 2009 called SLIME CITY. I will pay retail to see it, because budget is this movie's only failing, and it would be exciting to see what Lamberson could create with a bigger bankbook.
NAKED FEAR: Asa a boy Camden is traumatized when he sees his parents blown away by an anonymous street thug. I liked this backstory the first time I saw it, when it was called… Batman! Still, after mining the work of Bob Kane it strikes out on it’s own. Many years later Camden is a traumatized agoraphobic who is afraid of people, yet somehow lonely. So our brave protagonist and sheltered trust fund baby does what any of us would do in a similar situation, he contracts his attorney to get him a roommate, who just happens to be a claustrophobic, homicidal vigilante. With such a foundation, this could have been a black comedy, but there is nothing funny about a roommate who violently kills everyone who comes over to see you (especially not with how expensive damage deposits can be). Troubled loners Camden and Randy are two sides of the same crazy coin; one meek, the other vicious and their exploits made me realize how truly lonely a place insanity is to live. Randy is convincing as the evil co-tenant, looking kind of like Travis Bickle from TAXI DRIVER, with overtones of Bronson’s Paul Kersey from DEATH WISH (with his ultimate rationales for choosing certain victims). If the tenants would have been cast as hot female leads, it would have opened up the story to some additional tensions such as obsessions between the two (see SINGLE WHITE FEMALE), but as it stands, it’s solidly entertaining if not forensically possible. Because most of the movie takes place indoors, the budgetary constrictions are not as visible as the other works.
UNDYING LOVE: Scott, another suicidal, misanthropic, troubled, black-leather-clad loner who uses “fuck you” as a favorite social quip, ends up in the center of a vampire love triangle, coming between two undead blood suckers who have been together for hundreds of years. For the first time in his life, he finds purpose and meaning in his new obsessions for blood and vengeance, but it comes at the terrible price, his own very soul, both literally and figuratively. While this story seeks to rewrite the vampire tale with modern-day concerns such as monogamy, chivalry and the basic social laws against murder, this is indeed a tough check for a movie to write with very little make up or creature effects. Still, as every other movie in the set, this one survives first and foremost on the depth of its characters as Scott makes the ultimate sacrifice to make this circle complete and end the story almost where it began. Like any other decent vampire tale, this one makes much use of nuance and symbolism to tell the tale, as action happens in a slow, methodical fashion with artsy camera work not as evident in the other films. It breaks no new ground, in the lore or legend of our favorite Transylvanian bloodsuckers, but it isn’t afraid to go certain places that even Francis Ford Coppola wouldn't when he tackled the tale of these creatures of the night. A graphic sex scene would have gone a long way here; because the action was lacking in depth the affair needed punch, and let's face it, the story of Dracula has been so told so many times by now it’s looking a little “long in the tooth“.
JOHNNY GRUESOME: This film adapts a short comic written by Lamberson himself. It tells the story of Johnny Gruesome, a Goth Rocker outcast in life who comes back from the dead to murder his friend who strangles him with a chain, for no reason other than he wanted to steal his girlfriend. The girlfriend is played by none other than Mistie Mundae back in the day when she was known by her real name Erin Brown and still wore clothes in her movies, so collectors will appreciate it just for the rarity sake. The Goth soundtrack was authentic and integral but I just wasn’t feeling this one. It was a like a cross between a CROW film without a good guy in it and a video by Alien Sex Fiend. Thankfully for everyone it didn’t steal more than seven minutes of my life so I can be forgiving. Seriously, a Mistie Mundae movie where she doesn’t get naked? How sad, Mr Lamberson, just when I thought you were the master of squeezing the best possible movie out of your unknown cast, and limited resources.
| Yucko/Neato Factor: Kickass stuff folks, but it needed some nudity. Love stories were at the center of every one of these strange tales, and an Unrated rating is not a curse, it’s a privilege. Use it! These films broke an R rating on straight gore and some decent/indecent sex scenes here and there would have made the viewer loosen up a bit psychologically so the next bit of carnage would have seemed so much more grisly and troubling. |
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| Production Values: It gets two fingers for being cheap, but an additional finger for the art in which limited resources were masterfully used to create the most beautifully disturbing product possible. The creature at the end of SLIME was horrible, getting more unsightly with every strike and by the end I wanted him to die more than the girl he was attacking. Camera angles, motifs were also varied and switched up. |
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| Realism: In three out of four of these films, ordinary men became hideous, homicidal monsters. And not in the “normal” Ted Bundy sense of the word. |
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| Value for Price: $22.99? If it were twenty bucks I would have labeled it as “The Grindhouse/ find of “2009”. As it stands, it is well worth possessing. |
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| Plot: When all was dead and done, this boxed set lived by the strength of the plots. Fledgling directors TAKE HEED. You don’t need to make me sick to market horror to me, you just need to make me care when your characters are put in all manner of horrible physical jeopardy. |
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