Episode 50

                                         

                                                                     

Anyone who knows me can tell you I am not a fan of found footage films. Apart from the original Blair Witch Project, The Poughkeepsie Tapes, Grave Encounters and one or two others I find them a waste of time and effort. Cliches, headache inducing camera work and an ending you know before you hit play all combine to make the genre a tough sell for me.

So when I picked up Episode 50 in a pack of 4 films for $5 I wasn't very hopeful, but the back cover offered up an interesting twist on the cliched premise of skeptical ghost hunters finding actual ghosts. This time around the skeptics are forced to work with another team, this one being evangelical Christians who see God and Satan in every strange occurrence. This led me to hope it would have a bit more depth than most similar films with some actual debate between the two teams about science, parapsychology and faith. Sadly there's just cliches and hyperbole, much of it sounding like Christian propaganda.

There's also multiple problems with the film itself, its supposed to be the footage shot by these two crews but much of it could obviously not have been shot by them. This hands throughout the film and keeps pulling the viewer out of the film. Other films have survived one or two scenes like this, but they've been much better films and it's not until afterward that you realize what has happened. Episode 50 is so dull you notice it right away.

Also after all the build up about how haunted the asylum is, the climax takes place in an entirely different location, basically negating everything that was said before. I just deflates any atmosphere or tension that the film has managed to build up. And the climax is so damn awful, it has the worst portal of hell ever put on film, it makes the one from 1977's The Evil look good.

So basicly we have a film that is a collection of cliches and plot devices from other films, (even the reason they're there has been stolen from The Legend of Hell House), poorly redone and what few original ideas it has actually hurting things even more. A disappointment as I was hoping this would manage to rise above it's genre and deliver something at least a little different.

Countess Dracula's Orgy of Blood

                                            

For those of us of a certain age the name Donald F. Glut conjures up memories of trips to the library to get such thick scholarly tomes as “The Dracula Book” or “The Frankenstein Legend”. To those a few years younger he was a writer of many comics in including Captain America and Savage Sword of Conan. And to a more recent generation he's known as the director of several T& A horror and fantasy films. And that's where this review fits in...

Back in the old West, or at least California 1897, settlers had to deal with worse threats than wildlife and Indians, they had to contend with silicone enhanced female vampires making out and even running off with their womenfolk. After one such attack leads to Lord Ruthven and his assistant Diana being staked we flash forward to present day Los Angeles.

From here the story, (calling it a plot is giving it to much credit), involves resurrected vampires, lost loves, strip clubs, soft core girl/girl action and lots of fake boobs. It does have the occasional flash of inspiration like one of the vampires having to drink blood that's been filtered through another vampire's system due to an infection or Dracula's concern that his revived friend is making himself to noticeable but they're few and far between.

Having seen a couple of Glut's earlier films such as Blood Scarab and Dinosaur Valley Girls I had an idea what to expect here. Unfortunately this falls a little short of the mark compared to those films. The plot is pointless and convoluted in the extreme. While his previous efforts weren't exactly serious at least the plot somewhat made sense. This time it's like they didn't even try, all that mattered was getting the women's clothes off.

And the women are quite attractive, if you like the silicone Barbie type, (not really my thing), although Glori-Anne Gilbert is starting to show her age and seems a little over implanted. And it seems that every few minutes their getting undressed and engaging in some softcore antics with each other. After a while I was hoping for some plot or at least a male/female scene to spice things up.

This was Spanish horror icon Paul Naschy's first American film and that makes it worth a watch for his fans. Despite the top billing, he doesn't have all that large a role. The minimal effects are provided by John Carl Buechler who's done effects for and/or directed plenty of genre efforts over the years.

So what you have here is a harmless, if brainless softcore romp. It's not bad but neither is it anything out of the ordinary. It's an ok diversion, even more than that if you're the type who can trade a lack of plot for an abundance of bare breasts. And judging by the success of films like this, there's plenty of folks who can.

Monstry (1993)

                                                                       

There’s always been this idea of Russia as a country getting by on old technology left over from previous decades. And Monstry is the cinematic proof of that, using effects that were dated in the 50's when Bert I Gordon was using them in movies like King Dinosaur and The Beginning of the End and laughable when Bert I Gordon resurrected them in the 70's for Food of the Gods and Empire of the Ants. Monstry uses them in 1993, using real animals on miniature sets in a tale of radiation induced cases of gigantism.

The plot is about as simple as it gets, a team of scientists and military types are sent to investigate reports of strange goings on in the general vicinity of a damaged nuclear reactor. They run into giant critters, two of the team fall in love and a lot of other people die. The plot is as much a refugee from the 1950s as the effects are and this could have been a nostalgic throwback to those old, (often Cold War themed), films but unfortunately it's awful. It doesn't have any of the charm or silly thrills of those films, just a bad script played very straight faced. The fact the copy I saw had subtitles of unknown origin probably didn't help matters, but given the weak plotting and horrible effects I can't see the dialogue saving the day either.

The film's highlight, if you want to call it that, is a giant tortoise slowly lumbering into battle with a tank and crushing it. It then chases our heroes into a building, where an obvious puppet head menaces them through a window. Speaking of windows, there's a scene where a tentacle comes through a window and drags one of the scientist's to his death. Now we never see the rest of the creature so I have no idea what it was, but as far as I can tell there's no tentacled land animals in Russia...

As far as I know this film has never had a legit US release, indeed IMDB lists no release dates at all for it, even in Russia, so I'm not sure if this was released or escaped. You can find copies of it floating around the internet and it is on YouTube at the moment. I can't really recommend it, but it is a genuine oddity for the curious.