Day #26 Bring your Daughter to the Slaughter!

SLAUGHTERHOUSE (1987)
D. Rick Roessler
LUCKY 13 ENT.
FULL SCREEN

This johnny come late to the party TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE rip off really doesn't deliver the goods. I remember reading a pretty positive review in Chas Balun's MORE GORE SCORE and kinda wanting to check it out for all these years. But ultimately outside of a couple of decent gore scenes, and one actors really weird line reading of the word "crowbar" (the dude says "Cra-BAR" emphasized just like that) I'm not so sure how much I can recommend here.

The movie is about an old coot and his semi-retarded three hundred pound son who used to run a hog slaughterhouse on their property. That is until things went mechanized and their employees went to the shiny new one in the city. Seems now that their old partners are wanting to buy the property and are offering a pretty fair deal for it. Even willing to keep them on as consultants and let them keep their house and live there. But the old man isn't having none of that new fangled city bullshit! He would never let 30% fat get into the product!
He could butcher 50 hogs by hand in the time those damn machines could do 15! (See where this is going?)

Stop you're bellyaching! Your boyfriend was messing with the pigs, so you both have to DIE!

Meanwhile his goofball son Buddy has spotted some fuckhead teens goofing around on the property tormented the hogs so he bashed their brains in with a shovel. Can't say I blame him, I mean this dude was making all kinds of noise, swinging a shovel around threatening the piggies. So fuck him! He had to die and his ho too! This just gives Pappy an idea to kill off those people who want to buy the property, so they start luring them back to Buddy can swing his ridiculously over sized clever at them or dump them in a body mulching machine. The other teens in the movie are making a scary music video and start creeping around the slaughterhouse and get caught up too.

Buddy in all his snot-faced, smelly, no hygiene glory!

There is some splashy, surprisingly effective gore, and Buddy is disgusting with permanent snot running down his face and bad hygiene. But more often than not the movie resorts to the popular 1987 cliche's of not funny one liners and teens doing really stupid things to further the plot. It was while watching this that it dawned on me while I like early seventies horror movies like SCREAM BLOODY MURDER so much. Because the gaggle of brain dead teenagers hadn't become the staple for every horror film yet. Even if it was a slasher movie, it wasn't necessary for the killer to be stalking a cookie cutter gang of obnoxious teens. That was an 80's thing and infinitely less interesting to me (and only gets worse and the nineties and two thousands pressed on).

This was obviously shot on a minuscule budget but still on film. It looks to be 16mm as the whole video revolution was just right around the corner. Technically it isn't terribly made, everything is done okay, it is lit fine, edited fine, effects are fine.It just fails to deliver anything special or that you haven't seen done elsewhere and better. Oddly enough if this had been made five years earlier it would have certainly played drive ins all over the south I am sure. The DVD is decked out with tons and tons of extras, but I must admit I did not watch them.



Reviews © Andy Copp

Day #13 finds Sugar on the hill...

SUGAR HILL aka SUGAR HILL AND HER ZOMBIE HIT MEN aka THE ZOMBIES OF SUGAR HILL (1974)
D. Paul Malansky
American International Pictures
1.85

This well loved Blaxploitation horror hybrid played the drive-in circuit for years and years before becoming a late night TV favorite well into the 80's. Being rated PG allowed it to play second bills safely and get into syndication with very little editing which made it a popular replay, plus the snappy and memorable various titles made an impact with audiences over the years. But what has stuck with people are two things: the cobweb-covered, bug-eyed voodoo zombies, where they used cut in half ping pong balls painted silver for eyes, and, of course, the titular badass anti-hero Baron Samedi, played by Don Pedro Colli, with his wide eyes, toothy grin, and joyful menacing laugh. His image seared its way into the stoned minds of many a drive-in patron all over the country, regardless of color or creed. But he's just the pawn of the title heroine Sugar Hill, one pissed off Mama out for revenge because a syndicate of honky motherfucka's killed the man she loved so they could take over the nightclub he ran. Being that she came from a family of voodoo practicing folk, that was one bad move on their part. She goes to her old Mama, a voodoo priestess who helps Sugar to raise the Baron and his zombie slaves. Literally, the corpses of slaves brought over from the old country, who died of disease soon as they set foot on the plantations of America and were buried in the swamps of Louisiana. Together they all set out to wipe the lily white scum (and one token black brother) from the face of the earth.

Marki Bey is Sugar Hill, and she's smokin' in the roll. Hot as can be, and, as many of the black actresses of the time often did, exuding an air of absolute control and power. She just shines forth as a woman not to be fucked with in her various white and blue power jumpsuits that amazingly never look tacky or retro on her. As the movie progresses her cleavage seems to take on a life of its own, becoming more and more prominent in each outfit, until those breasts are demanding their own screen agent. It all seems rather appropriate for a character who enters every room and takes charge of everyone in it. The movie is clever in how each scene sets up Baron Samedi in some way, as well: as a bartender, a cab driver, or a gardener, allowing the bad guys to walk to their doom as he watches them take the bait and suffer their fate. Laughing the whole time at their stupidity and cries of anguish.

SUGAR HILL is ripe with a thick atmosphere of genuine Southern gothic antiquity, with lush swamps and plantations and a feel of down-home voodoo in some scenes that's eerie, to say the least. The fog-basted scenes of Baron Samedi's resurrection are particularly effective.

The movie was formerly owned by MGM as part of their deal with American International's library (formerly owned by Orion), but I don't know what's happened to it since then. I believe it's shown on MGM's HD channel once or twice, but it's still not available on DVD as of this writing. Rips from that broadcast and the old Orion VHS are floating around, and either are a perfectly acceptable way to watch this fine 70's slice of drive-in horror fare. This one has now entered the pantheon of a real favorite.

Reviews © Andy Copp