A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (The Last Drive-In)

Film Year:  2014
Genre:  Romance, Horror
Director:  Ana Lily Amirpour
Starring:  Sheila Vand, Arash Mirandi, Mozhan Marno, Marshall Manesh, Dominic Rains

The Movie

I don't get to review many art films on this blog.  I probably shouldn't, because I'm nowhere near smart enough to comment on them.  It's that old saying:  "I may not know art, but I know what I like."  A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night is a more abstract and expressive than your average monster movie, but I'm mainly watching it because it's a monster movie.

But hey, it's a well made vampire romance story.  Who'd have thought that could have been done?

Ignoring the elephant in the room, if you know what I mean and I think you do...MOVING ON!

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night is the story of a vampire girl who haunts the streets at night and preys upon bad people or just people who piss her off in general.  She finds herself attracted to a boy and resists the temptation to feast upon him, and begins to feed on those who wrong him.

This movie was apparently funded through Indiegogo on a budget of $56,000, it was filmed in the US, but takes place in Iran and it's spoken language is Persian.  Filmed in glorious black and white (how I love black and white!), I actually enjoyed taking the time to watch this film.  It's slower and more thoughtful than your traditional vampire flick, but it's sort of unspoken romantic tension will glue certain viewer to their seats, while those with a love for creature features will be pleased with how well done, moody, and tense the vampire sequences are.

If I were to say something against it, I feel sometimes the movie lingers too long after the audience has already let a sequence's point sink in.  Scenes can sometimes drag because I suspect the director wants to revel in them even more and assumes the audience does as well.  I've always preferred more efficiency in films I watch, but that's not to say that those won't admire what's being done here.  It's just a tad too meandering for my taste, even if it is well done.

And then there is the balloon scene.  I...don't...get it.

But for those looking for a different kind of vampire movie, closer to Let the Right One In than Salem's Lot, could do a lot worse than A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night.  You just might find yourself sucked into it.

The Drive-In

"How do you know when a vampire is in love?  When she has a whole neck handed to her on a platter and she just wants to snuggle."

I imagine there are some out there who don't want to see Joe Bob showing art films without exploding heads, but if you can accept that A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night is being featured on this week's The Last Drive-In, you may find that Joe Bob has some great material for it.  These are probably some of the best bumpers Joe Bob has provided the show yet!

Joe Bob in particular has a fascination with director Ana Lily Amirpour, and enjoys sharing her quirky personality.  One of the best segments of this episode is just Joe Bob reading a list of quotes by Amirpour on her film, and each is weirder and more mind-boggling than the last.  He talks about her claims of "living like Bruce Lee" and having said she leaned directing by watching the music video to Thriller.  It's like she's this enigma that he's trying to figure out.

He has a few cast notes, but he mostly likes to comment on the film itself, with little "only Joe Bob" notes on how the vampire love story plays out, including pondering whether vampires can have sex.  He also gives little noted details, such as the pimp in the film having a face tattoo that says "Pussy Stretcher," which Joe Bob then tests Shudder's censors by repeating as much as possible, then stating he's probably going to get in trouble for it.  Luckily he doesn't work for TNT anymore.  Of course, all Joe Bob fans on social media exploded with #PussyStretcher in the aftermath of this segment.  It was worth it.

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night may not be a typical Joe Bob offering, but it's one that I think I'll find myself revisiting down the road because it features Joe Bob at his most hysterical.  From rants on nunchaku to trying to address the balloon scene, but giving up before saying a word, this is a must see episode.  I'd dare even say it might be my favorite so far.

Okay.  One for the road:  #PussyStretcher

Joe Bob's Rating

⭐⭐⭐

Contamination (The Last Drive-In)

Film Year:  1980
Genre:  Science Fiction, Horror
Director:  Lewis Coates (Luigi Cozzi)
Starring:  Ian McCulloch, Louise Marleau, Marino Mase, Siegfried Rauch, Gisela Hahn

The Movie

Starcrash director Luigi Cozzi follows up his Star Wars knock-off with an Alien knock-off.  Contamination finds the military investigating giant green eggs that explode and then make the people who have come into contact explode too.  They follow the trail to Columbia, where they find an alien squid cyclops that is plotting to destroy the entire human race.

Maybe I expected more Alien in my Alien rip-off, but Contamination disappointed me.  There are more than a fair few elements of Alien here:  an alien, some alien eggs, exploding chests, acid goo, ect.  The problem I'm having is that they're jumbled up and they're being used in ways that don't really play all that well.  Let's talk about the eggs, which one would normally assume is a reproductive cycle, which is not only what it is in the film Alien, but what an egg in general typically is.  Here they don't seem to serve any sort of reproductive purpose, but are rather time bombs that just explode and make people gooey.  Okay, so they're not reproductive.  Fair enough.  But if they're a weapon of some sort, one would think the explosion of the egg itself would be harmful by itself.  Instead the movie decides that just having the egg explode isn't enough, but the egg goo needs to make the people it touches explode too so we have a string of gooey explosions.

This is one hell of a cycle.  It's no wonder I don't like eggs.

But yeah, you can totally see Cozzi taking the Alien concepts and running with them in a budget friendly direction.  Budget friendly is the key word here, as he sets the film on modern day Earth, and it's a bit of a dull setting.  What I wouldn't give to see Cozzi try and do Alien in the style of Starcrash, but one shouldn't fault a film for wanting to be different.  Or as different as a copy can be.

I'm not too enthusiastic about Contamination.  I thought I would be, but it doesn't have much of an energy.  There are times where it's unintentionally funny, as the alien itself is funny enough and there are some hazmat suits in the film that resemble the Black Knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.  There is also a silly scene in which the female lead is locked in a bathroom with an egg, though why the bathroom locks on the outside, I'm not sure.  These moments are about the only things worth mentioning about the film, which is by no means as entertaining as Starcrash.

The Drive-In

Probably the highlight of the episode are the Drive-In Totals, which is one of Joe Bob's longest lists yet and full of interesting additions.  Even he seems surprised, as he faces the crew about two thirds of the way through and says "This movie is better than I remember it!"  But as we get to the end, we receive his restrained two-and-a-half star rating, and we have to accept it may not be as awesome as it sounds.  And it isn't.  Boy that Drive-In Total should have been for a full on four star movie.

Joe Bob takes the time to discuss Italian rip-offs in general.  He goes into the history of Italian cinema, where they became the "masters of dubbing" (wouldn't know it from this movie), and utilize techniques that allow them to have the actors recite their dialogue in their native tongue and just dub over them.  He discusses their attempts to boost their popularity of their films by taking the concept of the latest Hollywood blockbuster and rehashing it for quick money, like Contamination and Alien, Starcrash and Star Wars, and Devil Fish and Jaws (all these Italian knock-off films that Luigi Cozzi worked on).  There are also a few words mentioned about giving these films US settings, even though they're all shot in Italy.

As for crew, he tends to discuss Luigi Cozzi the most in-depth, and lists off his career and how he wanted to do sci-fi, but the film companies wouldn't let him, though he used the popularity of Alien to get Contamination off the ground and then just made a pair of Hercules movies in sci-fi settings.  Joe Bob also relates that Cozzi wanted Starcrash actress Caroline Munroe to play the lead, but was disappointed that the studio forced him to hire someone "old and ugly" instead (note:  I disagree With his assessment of Louise Marleau).

We conclude with a visit from Darcy the Mail Girl, who actually unknowingly met Cozzi at his bookstore in Rome with her son.  It's a swell note to end on, though I must profess I had hoped Joe Bob would at the very least get to play with a flamethrower by the end of this episode, of which he professed an admiration for early on.  After all, he is like all of us and never tires of the line "Call in the flamethrowers!"

Joe Bob's Rating

⭐⭐1/2

Re-Animator (The Last Drive-In)

Film Year:  1985
Genre:  Horror, Science Fiction
Director:  Stuart Gordon
Starring:  Jeffery Combs, Bruce Abbott, Barbara Crampton, David Gale, Robert Sampson

The Movie

This cult classic stars Jeffery Combs as a medical student who is working on a formula that can reanimate the dead back to life, but he can't get them to return to their original state instead of mindless, grunting zombies.  Renting a room from a fellow student, he confides in his roommate in his discovery, but they find themselves spiraling in a domino effect of reanimated corpses and a growing obsession with perfecting the formula.

I had not seen Re-Animator before this showing.  I had heard of it, most definitely knew it by reputation, but I had never had the opportunity to sit down and watch it, though it has been on the to-do list for a while.  Frankly, as crazy as I've heard this film was, I profess a tiny bit of disappointment.  I've seen many films much nuttier than this, many of which were seen in this very marathon (the previous film, Basket Case, makes Re-Animator look like Downton Abby), so very little in Re-Animator made me flinch.

But it's a devilishly stylish movie that's rooted in a rather colorful, comic book tone from beginning to end.  If there's anything Re-Animator has going for it, it's that it's fairly quick paced and always doing something flashy to keep audience interest up.  I found myself constantly intrigued as to what route the film would take and what its destination would be.  By the time it landed at its open-ended conclusion, there was a satisfying completeness to the entire experience that I'd say not a lot of movies can achieve with such an ending.

I don't think Re-Animator will become a favorite of mine, despite its best moments, but that doesn't mean I didn't enjoy watching it.  I enjoyed the performances, I enjoyed the creativity, and I thought the world of its spirit.  Even it's score, which obviously borrows many notes from the score to Psycho, is colorful enough to compliment the film itself.  I might find Re-Animator a tad overrated, but I can certainly see why people love it.

The Drive-In

Joe Bob knows he has a nutty little Frankenstein tale this week, and takes a good portion of his opening segment to lecture on the human brain, which is probably one of my favorite moments of The Last Drive-In so far.  Joe Bob gets all college professor on us, with his little chart and pointer stick, as he points out various portions of the brain and explains, in his own words, what they do.  This lecture is very important to him, because, as he points out, a lot of his fans (myself included) do not have the luxury of having this organ.

When it comes to discussing Re-Animator, Joe Bob takes the time to acknowledge what he feels is the greatest performance in horror history:  David Gale.  Gale plays a conniving professor who plans to steal the reanimation formula, gets his head ripped off, is reanimated, and then spends the rest of the film as a headless corpse lugging his own head around, which Joe Bob feels is the performance of a lifetime.  He's not wrong.  He spends most of his time praising Gale, though he has praise for the rest of the cast, including Jeffery Combs and the nakedness of Barbara Crampton.  He has some positive things to say about Bruce Abbott as well, who he feels isn't mentioned enough in reviews despite putting forth a good performance.

He shares some neat tidbits about the production, which he claims was put together by people from the theater, rehearsed for two weeks, then filmed in less than three.  He mentions the original cut to this fucker ran two-and-a-half hours long, which was cut down to 86 minutes (wisely, in my opinion).  But he laments the cutting of a subplot involving Gale's character which established that he was a hypnotist, explaining how he had control of all the corpses in the end.  Apparently the film's composer shot this subplot down, claiming one supernatural element in the film was enough.  Joe Bob thinks this is absurd, and considers the lesson to be "Never take storytelling advice from your composer."

But despite some editing choices Joe Bob doesn't agree with, Joe Bob is really enthusiastic about this movie and is really enjoying talking about it.  Plus Darcy has some amazing cosplay at the end of this episode, making it one to watch for your average Joe Bob fan.

Joe Bob's Rating

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Basket Case (The Last Drive-In)

Film Year:  1982
Genre:  Horror, Comedy
Director:  Frank Henenlotter
Starring:  Keven Van Hentenryuk, Terri Susan Smith, Beverly Bonner, and Belial as himself

The Movie

You want to get nuts today?  Well, well, well, have we got a movie for you!

Basket Case is the story of Duane, who checks into a shithole hotel with a wad of cash and a wicker basket.  People suspect that he's weird, but what gets to them is that he lugs around his basket almost everywhere he goes, leading people to wonder...

It turns out that the thing inside the box is Duane's surgically separated and deformed conjoined twin, Belial.  Together they seek out to murder the doctors who separated them and then (this part still makes me laugh) sacked up Belial in a garbage bag and threw him in the trash.  But their kinship is put to the test when Duane falls in love with a cute receptionist, and Belial grows jealous.

So...yeah.  This certainly is a movie that exists, aint it?  It seems almost unfair to critique it by the normal standards of film since it exists on its own spectrum of filmmaking.  It took me a few days to mull this movie over to finally have some sort of grasp on how I feel about it.

To put it simply, it made me feel dirty.  So very dirty.  But strangely enough I'm not unhappy that I watched it.

Basket Case is a fairly unique experience.  It doesn't adhere to basic storytelling, but I have to give it credit for working in spite of that.  I suspect it works because it's an exorcise in bad taste an stretching the audience's stomach for obscene ideas to the limit, and then playing it for laughs.  It's a crude movie about crude things with a crude sense of humor without limit to its own imagination on where to take it (even if the budget is limited.

Both the acting and dialogue are subpar, and the movie oddly seems aware of this.  It may have been even weirder an experience if these aspects were up to scratch, so let's just accept that this is the way this move should be.  Really if any aspect of the movie could be taken seriously, then there is a high probability that both the silly concept of Belial and that goofy puppet that brought him to life wouldn't work.

That's the thing, if a movie needs to be traditional, Basket Case will not work for you.  If you're willing to succumb to the ugly and nonsensical world it creates, you probably will have a good time.  I try to walk in both worlds, so I'm half amused and disgusted by it.  But I'm pretty sure it got the laughs it wanted out of me, so I'll consider Basket Case a success.

The Drive-In

There has been a slight bit of escalation going since Joe Bob has started his marathon.  We started with a simple but silly slasher like Tourist Trap, then topped that with the infamous Sleepaway Camp.  We then went hog wild with Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama and then got our hands dirty with a murder film that was genuinely about the murders, Blood Feast.  I thought we might have peaked there, but Joe Bob then pulls Basket Case out of his sleeve and I find myself questioning if there will ever be an end to the upward insanity.

In his interview with James Rolfe, Joe Bob was asked what movie he's been linked to the most, and he said Basket Case without hesitation.  He gives some context as to why here, as he claims to have seen it during ita premiere and helped it debut in American drive-ins.  Joe Bob also claims Rex Reed (who also confirms this) was attending this screening, and contributed in his own way to getting the film known.  He was asked by (unknown to Reed) Basket Case director Frank Henenlotter his opinion on his way out of the film, to which Reed responded "It's the sickest movie I've ever seen!"  Henenlotter loved the reaction so much that he put it in the advertising campaign.  I'm all for humiliating Rex Reed in any way possible, so Joe Bob's story already has convinced me this is one of the all-time greats.

The facts that Joe Bob shares about the film are fairly interesting, such as the wad of cash that Duane flashes around in the film being the movie's entire budget.  There's also an interesting story in which Terri Susan Smith actually wore a wig because she shaved her head bald.  I honestly didn't notice, or wasn't paying attention.  All 80's hair looks fake anyway.  He also has some words about director Frank Henenlotter, who not only directed the entire Basket Case series (this story DEMANDED to be a trilogy) but also films fans like us may know by name even if you haven't seen them (speaking of myself here, of course) in Brain Damage and Frankenhooker.

But there are a lot of times where Joe Bob just takes us aside to give us a breather from this little oddity, which we probably need, and he doesn't really say much except assure us we haven't seen the weirdest part yet.  In fact the climax flies so off its rocker that the filmmakers broke several laws by filming public nudity for it and had a death scene so offensive that most of the crew walked off the set.  I, personally, think the idea of the scene is more offensive in concept than I actually feel offended watching it, which is portrayed in such a silly way that I just laughed and said "Jesus Christ, movie!"

(In my defense, that rubber Belial puppet bobbing up and down just makes me laugh.  I laughed the same way when he was shaking the table idly earlier in the film.)

Even if Joe Bob is as linked to Basket Case as he feels, it seems about as good a film as any to be linked to.  It's batshit insane and there is always something unique and funny about it.  Joe Bob's career has always had a knack for bringing films like this out of the shadows.  Basket Case might not prefer to be in the light, but it's an interesting one to visit.

Joe Bob's Rating

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Blood Feast (The Last Drive-In)

Film Year:  1963
Genre:  Horror
Director:  Herschel Gordon Lewis
Starring:  Connie Mason, Connie Mason's cue cards, Mal Arnold, William Kerwin, Lyn Bolton, Scott H. Hall, a massive sheep tongue, and lots of fake blood

The Movie

Oh-boy-oh-boy.  I don't know if I found this movie fascinating or if I fucking hated it.

So Blood Feast is considered the granddaddy of gore films.  Long before Jason sliced heads off, Dawn of the Dead featured ingested flesh, and Saw showed us people removing their own limbs, there was this little sixty minute movie about a man who desired to make sacrifices to the Egyptian goddess Ishtar.  He goes around town and kills women, taking certain body parts off of each victim which he intends to turn into a cannibalistic meal for the ritual of his goddess's resurrection.

If you're trying to look deeper into the film to find out what it's really "about," good luck with that because I came up empty.  Granted I'm not the best film critic out there, that's if you consider me a film critic at all (because I don't), but as far as I can tell the movie is "about" the gore.  There is not much plot to speak of except a random string of murders in which we get to see the grisly details of.  It very much feels as if the point of the film is to see these things happen, as if an exorcise in pushing our curiosity for the taboo.  Those who are worried it might be too graphic for them might take some solace in the fact that very little of it looks real, with an over theatricality to the blocking of the film's sequences that feel embellished for the sake of shock.  The idea of the scenes is creepy, though the film's overselling of them is a bit too much.

The actors don't really sell them either.  To put it bluntly, the acting in this movie would make Ed Wood proud.  Most give very flat and lifeless line-reads, and look as if they're waiting for someone off-camera to finish writing their check.  On the other hand, the people who do perform are the exact opposite, performing with so much more gusto to make up for the actors who aren't trying.  It's a very weird effect, especially when the two sides of the coin are acting opposite of each other.

Meanwhile the music tries to give the killer his own theme, like the shark from Jaws.  Unfortunately it's a two-note drum beat that just sounds like a solemn march, and is not terrifying in the slightest.  It's like signifying danger with an airhorn.

MSTies may know director Herschel Gordon Lewis as the man who dusted off Monster A-Go Go, stitched it together, and just tossed it onto a movie screen, though the man had a deeper legacy than that film.  Most people remember him from Blood Feast and the films that he made that resulted from it.  It's clear from these two examples of his body of work that he wasn't much of an artist, but he had something of an interesting career.  Blood Feast in particular is somewhat recommendable on the basis of its legacy, how blunt it is, just how interestingly poor it's actual storytelling and filmmaking is, and because, dammit, it lives up to that title!  It's like that old saying goes, it's like a trainwreck in that you can't take your eyes off of it.

The Drive-In

"Herschel, wherever you are, this one's for you!"  We're halfway through Joe Bob's marathon, and Joe Bob plants this flag by paying tribute to an old friend, exploitation director Herschel Gordon Lewis.  Trivia about Lewis predominates this episode, as Joe Bob has a lot of stories to tell about the man, some of which he got from the horse's mouth himself!  Joe Bob knew the man himself, and even filmed intros for the Lewis's films on VHS (I'd love to get my hands on these tapes, myself).  He has a lot of info on Lewis's diverse career from his "nudie cutie" pics to his gore flicks to a lesbian western shot at the ranch of the Manson family.

Joe Bob early on insist on telling a marketing story in hopes that it makes the audience better appreciate the film, in which the marketing of the film relied on letting the audience know just how gory it was and let it be known that it starred a Playboy playmate.  He recounts Lewis's story of checking out the local theater out of curiosity only to hit a traffic jam on the way there, which turned out to be the line for Blood Feast.  It's a rather sly story that really relates that primal desire for violence that humanity seems to have.

The more interesting tales told of the cast have to do with centerfold-turned-actress Connie Nelson, who apparently couldn't memorize her lines and had to be fed them somehow throughout the film.  There is also a fun story involving the lady who played the victim who gets her tongue ripped out, Astrid Olson, and her boyfriend "The Neanderthal," both of which seemed to be under the impression she had a lead role.

This is an enjoyable episode that features a very giddy Joe Bob, because he clearly has an affection for this film and the people who made it.  It's also the shortest episode of The Last Drive-In so far, running just past a scant hour and forty minutes, which makes it pretty breezy.  The only thing is that the movie is such an oddity that it might turn off viewers who would be hoping for something more subdued.  But I'd have to ask them that if they wanted something subdued, why are they watching Joe Bob?  Blood Feast is just a Joe Bob movie from top to bottom, and really the best way to describe it is from Herschel Gordon Lewis's own words:

"Blood Feast is like a Walt Whitman poem.  It's no good, but it's the very first of its type."

Joe Bob's Rating

⭐⭐⭐⭐

For its place in history.

Wolf Guy: Enraged Lycanthrope (The Last Drive-In)

Film Year:  1975
Genre:  Action, Crime, Fantasy
Director:  Kazuhiko Yamaguchi
Starring:  Sonny Chiba as WOLF GUY!

The Movie

MSTies may recognize Space Chief himself Sonny Chiba in the title role in this film.  Chiba is a member of a clan of werewolves who gets sucked into dealing with a prostitute with syphilis who can turn into some sort of phantom tiger that mauls people by standing around and doing nothing.  This leads him into an intense battle with the Yakuza, who do what they can to kill Chiba, but little do they know that he becomes more powerful in the moonlight.

This slice of Japanese craziness is based on a manga series, which is apparently a bit more crazy.  Wolf Guy:  Enraged Lycanthrope doesn't have much of a budget, which couldn't even to turn its werewolf protagonist into an actual werewolf.  Sonny Chiba is always Sonny Chiba in this film, it's just that the moon gives him superpowers.  One wonders why bother to do a werewolf movie at this point if you're just going to make a Sonny Chiba movie, but it doesn't skimp on the action.  The action can overpower the fantasy though, which is a fun aspect of the film but is never truly explored.

Wolf Guy's plot is all over the place, as Chiba seemingly just goes from one character to another with little aim other than to beat up the men and/or sleep with the women.  It's not much on story, but it's just an excuse to see some boobs and let some blood squibs explode.  The werewolf fantasy aspect is redundant, as the film cares very little for it.  Wolf Guy is gloriously weird, but unfortunately it's also gloriously sloppy and wasteful.  It's not boring, and it's easy to watch.  How satisfying that watch is will vary on the person.

The Drive-In

Joe Bob has a gleeful twinkle in his eye this episode, because he knows he's unleashing a different offering that few people have probably seen.  He tries to describe it, but all of the words that come out of this mouth make this movie sound like the most insane thing ever filmed, which Joe Bob is trying to sell it as.  He's not exactly underselling the movie, though the film itself may be underwhelming depending on exactly how weird you expect it to be based on Joe Bob's opening monologue.  But he's right to be gleeful about it.

I do get the feeling that this movie was selected partially because Joe Bob wanted to talk about Sonny Chiba this episode, and he enjoys dropping tidbits about the world famous actor throughout, including his prolific film career, how he believed an actor needed to "train his abs," and how he tested stunts by "trying it once to see if it's dangerous."  What a fun man to talk about!  He also states that Chiba doesn't remember ever making the movie, but given how many films the man has made, that's not surprising.  Joe Bob even opens with a crew member who has actually worked with Chiba too!  There are also a few tidbits about the film's director and how he didn't care for the film, as well as the manga author who left a screening and threaten to sue the production!

When he's not glowing about Chiba, he tries to explain to the audience what they're seeing, in case they aren't picking up on how absurd it is.  Joe Bob's descriptions of the film's scenes are absolutely golden, especially when it comes to sex scenes.  He picks up on how every woman Wolf Guy meets winds up sleeping with him ("One look at Wolf Guy and the babes just drop their panties!"), and he is thoroughly obsessed with the film's final sex scene where Chiba suckles on a woman's breast while flashing back to his mother breastfeeding him.

Wolf Guy may not be the weirdest movie Joe Bob has ever shown, but it lights a fire under the man and the Joe Bob segments demand to be seen.  The episode also ends with a charity plug for seacrestwolfpreserve.org, so good things may come of this episode yet!

Joe Bob's Rating

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Madman (The Last Drive-In)

Film Year:  1982
Genre:  Horror
Director:  Joe Gionnone
Starring:  Gaylen Ross, Paul Ehlers

The Movie

During a campfire ghost story session in the final week of summer camp, a counselor tells the campers the tale of Madman Marz, a crazy hillbilly who murdered his family and was supposedly hanged for his crime but freed himself in these woods.  He claims that anybody who says Marz's name above a whisper will awaken him and Marz will start his killing spree again.  One of the campers puts this story to the test by yelling "Madman Marz!"  And indeed, Madman Marz is awoken, and he begins to murder the camp counselors one by one.

I think there is something to be said for simplicity, especially when it comes to low budget filmmaking.  Madman is a lesson in the effectiveness of simplicity.  It's storyline isn't elaborate, it lacks extending locations away from the bare minimum of what it needs, and it just stays tight and efficient.  It's not redefining the wheel, but by not being able to embellish much of anything the film winds up being refreshingly straightforward.  For me, that is the charm of Madman.  It's a story of a campfire tale that has come true for a group of unfortunate camp counselors, and in turn it almost feels like a campfire tale itself.  Brief, to the point, and ending on that spooky note that maybe the thing that goes bump in the night will strike tonight.

That's not to say that the movie doesn't stumble, even if it is simple.  In fact, I find myself wishing that it makes itself simpler earlier in the film, because what little character work the film tries to do is pretty poor.  Acting is not great, with Dawn of the Dead's Gaylen Ross (acting under the pseudonym Alexis Dubin) probably being the only strong performance in the film.  Character development is reduced simply to who is sleeping with who, and while that might sound bare minimum enough, there are times in which the movie stretches this defining character trait to the point where you just wish they hadn't bothered.  Sex scenes are a staple in horror flicks, but the sequence in which Gaylen Ross and Tony Fish swirl around in a hot tub while Fish provides a numbing song for the soundtrack is laughable.

The movie is at its strongest when it's the bare meat and potatoes, which is very early on and when Marz begins his killing spree about halfway through.  The movie isn't convincing most of the time, but it makes up for what it's lacking with its spirit.  For instance, a certain creative kill in the film involves a woman's head being decapitated with the hood of a truck.  Then later when other characters try to use the truck later in the film, they try to start it but the engine won't turn over, though when they try to start it you hear a little squishy noise in the engine.  That's gruesome fun.

When Madman ends I find myself thinking very highly of the experience of sitting through the film.  How much of that has to do with the awesome final images of the film, I'm not sure.  The "Song of Madman Marz" is incredibly catchy, and the stylized end credits of shadowy woods against a blood red backdrop are moody as hell.  Madman isn't the best film in the world, but it does just enough to make it an interesting find in the horror genre that I think enthusiasts should give a look.

The Drive-In

Joe Bob likes today's movie, but he doesn't love it.  He slightly scoffs at the cult following that says Madman's an underappreciated slasher classic because "It had that great video box!"  Personally I don't care for the video art shown, but I kind of dug the movie, so I can't side with Joe Bob on that one.  Darcy's on my side though, so I'm team Mail Girl.  Admittedly though, it's hard to argue with Joe Bob when he decides to question the stupidity of the characters, such as when a character hides in a refrigerator, causing Joe Bob to wonder if Marz concluded that she'd either freeze to death or suffocate.  And he's dead on the money with the awkwardness of the hot tub sex scene.

Madman has a fairly interesting history to share, as it's an independent production made by film students from Staten Island who were trying to get their foot in the door of Hollywood using the independent horror craze started by Halloween and Friday the 13th.  Joe Bob gives us fun tidbits about this slight production, such as how it was originally going to be based on the Cropsey urban legend before having to change their premise after learning that Cropsey was being adapted into The Burning.

Joe Bob has fun dissecting the cast as well, and points out that most are acting under pseudonyms, including Gaylen Ross, who was already decently known in the horror genre for her role in Dawn of the Dead.  He offers real names and what became of these mostly one-and-done actors, including Ross, who became a documentary filmmaker.  Madman Marz himself, actor Paul Ehlers, is one of the more entertaining castmembers for Joe Bob to discuss, as he shares how disappointed Ehlers was in that he wasn't featured in Fangoria magazine and a little story about how Ehlers went to the hospital for the birth of his son mostly in Madman Marz makeup.  Also of note, the film's composer, Steve Horelick, composed the Reading Rainbow theme!  Joe Bob also points out that he himself was one of the few people who reviewed this movie when it was originally released.

One thing Joe Bob and I see eye-to-eye on is a love for the Madman Marz theme, which Joe Bob and some crew sing at the close of this episode, completing the sense of fun a good Last Drive-In episode needs.  Madman may not be a Joe Bob favorite, but boy is it an episode that's worth a watch.

Joe Bob's Rating

⭐⭐⭐