When I heard the Duke of DVD and the Vicar of VHS were holding a Paul Naschy Blogathon, I jumped at the chance. It was not merely because Mad Mad Mad Mad Movies is one of my favorite sites, but also fortuitous since I had come into possession of a long awaited  Naschy film, A Dragonfly for Each Corpse [Sp: Una libélula para cada muerto], thanks to my good friends at Cinema de Bizarre. This Spanish entry into the Italian Giallo genre intrigued me instantly when I saw the title, but once I found it starred everyone’s favorite Waldemar, Mr. Naschy, and Kill, Baby, Kill babe Ericka Blanc, I knew I had to check it out. However, I did wonder if I would just be waiting for the moon to change and for Paul to be in desperate need of a Schick.

Naschy stars as Inspector Paolo Sarsaparilla a hard as nails cop who only shows his tender side when at home with his fashion designer girlfriend Silvana played by Erica Blanc. Paolo is called in to head up the investigation into a string of killings known as the “Dragonfly” murders targeting prostitutes, homosexuals, drug users, and other “deviant” groups. The killings got their catchy name from the only clue, a figurine of the insect left at each murder, but when Paolo discovers a second clue, a “high fashion” button, it draws Silvana into the investigation. When one of her friends becomes a target, she takes a much more active interest. Namely, staying up late into the night, nude and examining pictures with a magnifying glass. On the streets, Paolo continues to find bodies (and finds time to his ass kicked by a Nazi gang.) all of which leads him to believe that the killer is someone he knows.

This is what I would call one of “those” gialli. There’s plenty of sleaze, with numerous Spanish actresses (and Erica Blanc) shedding their clothes. There’s murders a plenty. The body count is high with the killer racking up thirteen kills before it’s all said and done, and the gloved fiend seems fond of everything from axes to sword tipped umbrellas. There’s so many red herrings that you could make an incredible Swedish stew. There’s also no reason to worry about why one of the suspects makes his escape on a roller coaster. Most importantly, Dragonfly for Each Corpse is one of those gialli which upon close examination and rapt attention to the plot makes not a damn bit of sense. This drives some people to distraction, but I was generally so distracted by the film’s oddball set pieces to care who the killer was going to end up being.

Naschy, barrel chested and cigar clenched in his teeth, instantly obliterated all memories of his Werewolf films, and despite the spurious dubbing, I really enjoyed his performance. His loose cannon cop at first (until the murders get personal) seems to condone the killers choice of victim delivering lines like “He’s cleaning up the city.” like it was a good thing. The other delight of the film is Erica Blanc. Her character acts as a more undressed version of Nora to Naschy’s far from suave Nick, and her storyline really keeps the second half of the film from being something more than just a stack of bodies. The rest of the cast, comprised of a generally solid group of Spanish actors, keep the film interesting with a variety of imaginative if not always perfect performances.

Prolific Argentinean (by way of Spain) director Leon Klimovsky, who worked with Naschy on eight occasions, paired with cinematographer Miguel Fernandez Mila, Martino’s lensman for All The Colors of the Dark. I could never accuse Dragonfly as having the same stylish notes as one of Sergio’s giallo, but this Naschy giallo manages to be sleazy, but well shot sleazy. (Though the print, ripped from an early ‘80’s VHS, could use some serious love,) Dragonfly for Each Corpse wins a prize for one of the more evocative names in the giallo genre, but it doesn’t quite reach the heights of the Italian films it seeks to imitate. That being said, I found it to be entertaining, a tad comical, and chock full of enough good flourishes to encourage others to check it out. While Paul Naschy will always be known as the king of Spanish horror, Dragonfly proves that he is an actor full of surprises, and if you don’t believe me head on over to MMMMMovies and check out all the entries to Blogathon. There’s been some amazing stuff, and even more to come!

This past Horrorhound Weekend yielded many things. I met a ton of new friends, met the fabulous Jill Scholen, got called “one sick mother” by Malcolm McDowell, and pretty much had one of the best weekends ever. It also allowed me and my blogging cohort Emily from The Deadly Doll’s House of Horror Nonsense to do our monthly swap of films for review in person, and we even got pictures to prove it. Coming from South Carolina (via a purchase at Papa Jazz in Colombia a couple of years back), I brought Ms. Emily the flick Bone Sickness. It had sat unwatched for a couple of years and not even the blurb from Uncle Creepy could convince me to check it out. From the Bronx, She brought to me (clad in the case for bizarre Russian cartoon Ax, Aioaioka!) the Australian slasher comedy Cut starring Molly Ringwald. When I sat down to watch, I expected something of a Scream clone and I wasn‘t wrong, but Cut actually took some turns to distinguish itself from similar movies like Final Stab (2001) and Hack! (2007).

Back in the ‘80’s actress Vanessa Turnbill (Molly Ringwald) was set to star in the slasher film Hot Blooded, but when the actor who played the film’s killer Scar Man went crazy and killed the director (Kylie Minogue); Vanessa was the one that stopped him. As the years went by, the unfinished film became the subject of rumors and many began to believe it was cursed. This doesn’t dissuade film students Raffy (Jessica Napier) and Hester (Sarah Kants) from trying to complete the movie despite the protestations of Professor Lossman (Geoff Revell) who was a production assistant on the ill fated feature. Luring Turnbill back with the allure of publicity for her vanishing career, the crew set out to finish the film, but someone is out to finish them first.

Without being too spoilery, I want to go ahead and get into where Cut scored for me. I expected the film to follow the formula set down in Craven’s film, but when I expected it to zig, it zagged veering the film into the deeply unexpected area of the supernatural slasher. I hesitate to say more than that and still keep the film’s essential twist under wraps, but suffice it to say I was surprised with how the film delivered. Australian director Kimble Rendall made his feature debut with Cut in 200, but since then he’s gotten work as a second unit director on such high profile films as The Matrix Reloaded, I, Robot, and Knowing. He is currently working on the film Bait set for release in 2011. It stars Julian McMahon (Nip/Tuck, Fantastic Four) as one of the survivors of a tsunami trapped in a supermarket and fending off tiger sharks. Needless to say, you can go ahead and sign me up for that one as well. While the film isn’t flashy or all that visually clever, Rendall pulls off a few nice tricks, and the last few frames of the film should garner his eye kudos is nothing else.

As far as acting goes, this is where I was really surprised. Apart from Ms. Ringwald who effectively hams it up as the preening, washed up has been who never really was, the film is packed to the brim with stars of Australian film and television. Jessica Napier is well known from several Aussie TV shows such as McLeod’s Daughters, Wildside, and The Alice, and the deeper you look into the cast the more times the ubiquitous down under soap Neighbors pops up. Kylie Minogue’s cameo appearance is brief, but it will please both fans of the singer and those who wish she’d never sing another note. There was a general quality to the acting that I enjoyed, and it all served screenwriter Dave Warner’s script to life. As an added note, Dave Warner was once is Aussie pub band From the Suburbs which gained a cult following and compliments from Bob Dylan. He has since continued to write both for Australian TV as well as penning a number of crime and Australian Rules football books.

To compliment the solid acting and clever screenwriting, Cut features some really solid effects thanks to special effects work by Katherine Brown (Ghost Rider, Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith) and Paul Katte (The Matrix, Man-Thing). Their creative effects really sold the execution of a number of clever kills that well balanced the film’s comedic tone without resorting to slapstick notions. So over the man miles this DVD has traveled from North to South, it has ended up being an appreciated title which surely will only get better on repeated viewings. I can’t thank Emily enough for getting this title to me, but I wonder if Emily will feel the same about her film. Head on over to The Deadly Doll’s to see if she got down with the Sickness, the Bone Sickness that is.

Hey everyone. I was so busy at Horrorhound I didn’t have time to get around to everything I would have liked to, but thanks to my dear wife, I get to hear all about the screening and Q & A held by Maniac director William Lustig. Not only that, but she also stood in line to get my DVD autographed for me. If there’s ever any question as to why I adore my wife so much, please direct yourself back to the beginning of this paragraph. Well since she had so much to share with me, I wanted her to share it with you folks too.

William Lustig take Questions from the audience after a screening of Maniac.

Here’s a really good question. How can a bunch of people watch Maniac at 12:00 in the afternoon? This question was posed on Saturday afternoon at Horrorhound Cincinnati as William Lustig sat down for a showing of his film. I had seen Manic before, but this was my first immersive experience with the movie. I don’t mind saying, some things are just creepier in the dark. First of all, I have always been afraid of mannequins. My husband likes to blame this on Kim Cattrell, but the truth is anything that looks that much like a human and with interchangeable parts, well, it’s suspect at best. By the time Joe Spinell was staple gunning his victim’s scalps to the lifeless heads I had the heebie jeebies. If I had been at home, this would have been the point were I kissed my lovely husband on the head and went to the other room to work on songs.

However as the movie progressed, I could look past my phobia and appreciate the complexity of the story.  Frank Zito warrants no sympathy at first glance but as the movie unfolds I was torn between villain and victim. When asked if Zito was based on a particular serial killer Mr. Lustig responded that he was more of a composite of several of the popular killers of the late ‘70‘s and went on the muse,” whatever happened to those guys?” I had never really thought about it before, but it does seem to be a higher percentage of a crazed killers on Meth now rather than in the '70's when dogs bossed killers around.  In a way it seems that Maniac captures a particular time in American crime history.

 I also found it very interesting with the high female body count in the film, the truly gory deaths were saved for the male. I really did mean to ask if this was intentional or not, but the combination of time restraint and my fear of public speaking would not allow it. The absolute weirdest thing to me about the screening was comparing the audience reaction to mine. More than once there was a disconcerting amount of giggling, only some of which could have been attributable to nerves, and add to that the crying of children that were bought to take in Maniac. On the same hand I have to admit that I am not the bravest viewer of horror films, and Lustig’s film skirted the threshold of what won’t give me nightmares.

Lustig called Manaic “lightning a bottle I don’t think I ever could or would do it again.” It seemed incredible that it was even possible to have made such a daring film on the resources he had.  Every story sounded like  the crew had to push the envelope to get what they needed for the shot. When asked if he had worked from storyboards, he simply said “No.”, and then went on to talk about the scene in the subway. They only had permission to go the gates of the turnstile and no further. It was all shot on the fly, and I found that to be really impressive as it was one of the most beautiful moments in the film.

   As he spoke, I got the impression William Lustig was a really good guy who just happened to make films. He never seemed self important. In fact, about half way through he took a call, waited patiently for room to talk after saying hi and in a calm voice say, “Honey, I'm doing a panel in front of 100 or so people, I’ll have to call you back. “ I don’t mind saying that this was the first time I had the opportunity to watch a film and then hear the director discuss it, and thanks to William Lustig it was another great Horrorhound weekend.

I Could Not Resist Putting Up One Shot of the Horrorhound Weekend Cincy 2010 Crew: Night of the Living Podcast, Movie Meltdown, Family Movie Night,The Deadly Doll's House of Horror Nonsense, Chuck Norris Ate My Baby, The Gentlemen's Guide to Midnite Cinema, and Paracinema Magazine all representing along with me, the ever loving blue eyed Bugg,  my lovely wife, "cruise director" Randy (though the quotes are there for Christine), and the man who "paid $14.00 and he's going to take it all" Vishnu!

Hello everyone. Thanks for coming back for the third course of Thanksgiving with Alejandro. While Fando y Lis was a collection of impenetrable images which Jowderowky learned to temper with traditional plot points in El Topo, The Holy Mountain (1973) may well be the director’s artistic high point, but as far as clarity of vision, it might have been a step back. Thankfully, for me, the subject matter kept me entirely enthralled in the proceedings. Well, not entirely, but we’ll get to that later. Where El Topo had been brought to the film market thanks to Beatles manager Allen Klein, this time Alejandro made his film directly for Klein, a decision that lead him to make the most expensive Mexican film production in the English language. The Holy Mountain is a film, but it is also a spiritual journey that even thirty seven years later allows the viewer to join cast an cast and crew on their spiritual journey.

Unlike Fando y Lis, which I found hard to synopsize, and El Topo, which was easily summed up, The Holy Mountain has a deceptively simple plot that wouldn’t take more than a single sentence to explain. The alchemist (Jowderowky) assembles representatives from each for the solar system’s planets and together they go on a journey into the spirit. All this is to ignore the opening scenes of the Christ-like thief (Horacio Salnas) as he finds the business of religion, survives being a false idol, and get thrown out of a church that doesn’t recognize his divinity. It is also not to bother to explain about the seven other companions that join the thief and the alchemist, all of which represent various decadent aspects of their world.  A cosmetician, a millionaire, a toy weapon manufacturer, and an art dealer all become part of this group, but after delving into their stories, the film changes. As The Holy Mountain winds down to a conclusion, Jowderowky brings his visual film into reality and gives us a peek into a very real spiritual catharsis.

To prepare for the film, Alejandro spent a week with no sleep studying with a Zen master. His crew of actors lived communally, breaking themselves down and preparing for the film’s dramatic cinema verite denouement. Unfortunately, for all their spiritual undertaking, the last third of the film is the portion that works the least. Jowderowky breaks out a feast of symbols and images to begin his spiritual epic, delighting in mixing Judeo-Christian imagery with Tarot, Buddhism, and the mystic teachings of the Kabbalah. He draws from a rich color palettes filling up the screen with a depth that requires more than one viewing to really take in everything he and (for the third consecutive film) cinematographer Rafael Corkidi achieved. However in the last third when Alejandro brings it back to the real world, the movie falters stumbling toward an unsatisfying meta end.

Other than the director who once again took a central role in his own film, the rest of the cast was made up with actors who were unknown to an American audience or non-actors. However, once of the best stories surrounding The Holy Mountain was who was almost cast in the role of The Thief. After seeing El Topo and reading the script for Holy Mountain, Beatle George Harrison had a meeting with Jowderowky about taking on the role. Harrison had one small problem though. The scene in which the Alchemist would bathe out The Thief’s anus. Later the director would regret not taking it out and casting a star who would have certainly gotten his film huge exposure, but at the time, he declined to change his script and Harrison, not interested in getting his ass scrubbed on a 50 ft screen, opted out of the part. So it appears that while you can’t buy me love, you also can’t pay enough money to get a Beatle to show off his soapy ring piece.

Speaking of musicians (that is what we were speaking of, right?), one of the real improvements over his first two films was Jowderowky’s choice of soundtrack.  Hiring avant guarde funk/fusion/jazz musician Don Cherry, the score springs to life with an urgency and a pop sensibility that was missing in his other features. He may be inundating you with bizarre images, but you were going to be tapping your foot as well. The sound effects in the film were equally impressive as they were improvised by Gonzalo Gavira whose work so impressed William Friedkin that he was hired onto the Foley team assembled for The Exorcist.

I’ve stayed away from injecting my personal religious opinion into this review of The Holy Mountain, but I will say that even as an atheist I found both Jowderowky’s indictment of organized religion and quest for spiritual awakening to be compelling themes. I also think that the film could be many things for many people. Depending on the viewers’ background there are many layers of understanding and symbology waiting to impact upon personal experience, and perhaps the only way to completely decode the film would be to spend a lifetime as a divinity scholar of some sort. While El Topo is still the most successful of the Jowderowky films I have watched, The Holy Mountain is a film I could see myself taking pains to explore. Perhaps that is part of my spiritual journey, and that’s something that Alejandro would surely understand.

Next week, it’s Thanksgiving, and that means the final installment of Thanksgiving with Alejandro. So after you eat your fill of turkey, come read about the last film I’ll be covering Santa Sangre (1989).

It’s Tuesday so you know what that means. It’s time once again for Instant Terror Tuesday, and today I might be stretching the definition of terror just a tad. The 1973 Michael Crichton film Westworld was several things, a hit, an action movie, and well received. Three years later the fine people at American International made the sequel, Futureworld, and it didn’t share any of the qualities of the original. Instead of gunfights and robots running amok (seemingly lead by Yul Brenner’s Gunslinger), the plot of the sequel centers on paranoia and international conspiracy by hijacking a “body snatchers” type style. Futureworld didn’t fare that well with the public, but I had only watched it once years ago and couldn’t remember what it was like at all. So I thought why not take a step back from the hardcore horror films I’d been watching lately and check out this ill remembered sci-fi thriller.


With almost none of the cast from the first film returning, this story of the Delos resort picks up with journalist Chuck Browning (Peter Fonda), the reporter who got the scoop on the tragedy in Westworld, and television anchor Tracy Ballard (Blythe Danner) being invited to the grand reopening of the resort. This time in addition to Romanworld, Westworld, and Medieval world, vacationers can choose to go to walk in space and ski on Mars with a visit to the new Futureworld. That’s not all that’s new either. From top to bottom the resort has been retrofitted with new robots and new safety features that would prevent anything from ever going wrong. However Chuck and Tracy eventually uncover a plot to replace all the world’s leaders and tastemakers with organically grown duplicates.

Where Westworld was a Man vs. Machine film that got a boost from great action and Yul Brenner’s creepy cowboy, Futureworld was taking much more a cue from the popularity of the 1975 film The Stepford Wives and expanding it to international politics. At the same time Peter Fonda seems to be doing his best to channel Robert Redford in All the President’s Men. Adding all this up with a script by Mayo Simon (Phase IV) and George Schenck (Escape 2000) made for a film with a decidedly different tone from the original. The only returning cast member was Yul Brenner who appears here in his last performance before succumbing to cancer. Strangely, while he appears as The Gunslinger, instead of going crazy, he is the object of Blythe Danner’s sexual fantasy. It was a strange turn for the cold blooded android killer, but it just goes to show that the director, Richard T. Heffron (V: The Final Battle, North and South) and the folks at American International were to keep their rather tenuous connection to the original film.

Danner and Fonda do their best with the weak material they are given, but there is next to nothing for them to do. Even when they break into the bowels of the Delos complex, all they get up to is chatting with one of the last humans still on staff. Does it serve to move the plot forward? It sure does, but what it didn’t move forward  was my interest. What did spark my interest is a little bit of trivia I dug up about the film. While none of the robot effects were anything special, I did wonder about the short moments of CGI graphics, and I came to find out that this marked the first use of them in a feature film. Not only that, but the scan of a hand featured in the film belongs to future Pixar president Ed Catmull. If for no other reason, that early leap forward in film technology is enough to make Futureworld worth a watch even if the sum of its parts doesn’t add up to much.

With the specter of Westworld hanging over Futureworld, the film never lifts off much less gets into orbit, but the beauty of Instant Watch is that I don’t feel I’m out anything beyond the 100 minutes it took to watch the film. There was a good idea at the core of Futureworld, but the execution didn’t deliver. Even little things that should have paid off like the faceless robot helper that Fonda’s man on the inside played cards with. How the hell did that never turn out to be The Gunslinger? It was telegraphed throughout the film yet never resolved. How could Blythe Danner’s double read her mind while Fonda’s seems to be easily tricked? What the hell did they mean by it being an organic android? The questions could go on and on, but what it really boils down to is that Futureworld didn’t take the time to ask them and viewers will find themselves both bored and frustrated by the end of the flick.

Hello and welcome back to the second course of Thanksgiving with Alejandro. Today we will be feasting on his second film, El Topo. Now last week I had a spot of trouble getting through the artsy and vaguely pretentious film Fando y Lis, but this week I had no such trouble. I had long heard of El Topo’s reputation as one of the seminal midnight movies, but as so many things go, I figured it wouldn’t live up to everything I had heard about it. I was dead wrong. I spent two hours being enthralled visually, having a few laughs, and yes, still scratching my head a bit. It is kind of a wonder that El Topo ever even made it to a cult circuit. Had not Ben Barenholtz booked the film at midnight in his theater The Elgan, John Lennon wouldn’t have seen it there, and Beatles manager Alan Klein wouldn’t have ever distributed the film across the country. With only a few minor things happening differently, I might not even be talking about Alejandro today. The fact that El Topo did reach its audience, well, if that’s not something to give thanks for, I don’t know what is.

The film begins with the gunfighter El Topo (Alejandro Jowderowky) and his son (Brontis Jowderowky) traveling across a desert where they find a whole town brutally massacred by the corneal and his band of outlaws. After tracking down the perpetrators, El Topo leaves his son in the care of a band of monks and convinced by Mara (Maria Lorinzio), the coronal’s former slave girl, He sets out on a mission to defeat the four greatest gunfighters and become the best. He accomplishes his task only to be betrayed by Mara and a mysterious woman in black (Paula Romo). A group of deformed people living underground who nurse him back to health takes in the wounded gunslinger. When he awakes, he forsakes his old life promising to deliver his benefactors to the surface even if it means degrading himself before the cultish townsfolk that live above.

Getting right to the heart of the matter, there is a very easy reason that El Topo worked for me better than Fando y Lis, despite all the arty, symbolic scripting and visuals, El Topo does have a narrative thread. Taking cues from both classic Westerns and Spaghetti Westerns, Sam Peckinpah’s ultraviolet shooters, Fellini’s art house, and   El Topo is the freakiest of the “acid” Westerns (a sub-genre that also contains movies like Four of the Apocalypse and Zachariah), but one portion of the film which is either overlooked or dismissed is the humor. There is both biting satire (generally of religious or conservative groups) as well as some downright absurdity. To me it brought to mind everything from Chaplin’s sly political comments to Monty Python’s zaniness (the Pythons were the favorite of another Beatle, George Harrison). As often as I was shocked, disturbed, enthralled, and confused, I found myself smiling and laughing at the film’s sharp humor.

The film is rife with symbolism, and it leaves itself open to a wide array of interpretations. However, I think that El Topo could suffer greatly from overanalyzing. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar or as Roger Ebert so expertly summed up, “If you have to ask what something symbolizes, it doesn't.” Jowderowky definitely had something to say about religion, politics, and once again gender politics, but I think it is way too easy to get caught up in overhanging the minutia and miss out on the larger themes in the film. It would also leave precious little time to enjoy how stunning El Topo looks. Rafael Corkidi, who also shot the similarly beautiful Fando y Lis, worked with Jowderowky to create a world both inspired by the Western genre and still part of the art world. Similarly, the soundtrack by Alejandro and Nacho Mendez contained a definite nod to Morricone and traditional “Western” music with a twist thrown in. I also could not think that El Topo’s flute playing as being similar to the Harmonica’s eponymous instrument in Once Upon a Time in the West.

As if penning the script, directing the film, and writing the music wasn’t enough, Alejandro does a fabulous job in the lead role of El Topo with my only gripe being the sudden and jarring change in appearance of the character. Perhaps I was focusing too much on some other portion of the film, but it did leave me momentarily confused. Maria Lorinzio and one time actress Paula Romo both deliver great performances that were more expansive than women in Jowderowky’s first film were though their roles suffer from his unsavory characterization of women. The real stars of the film were the people who had only a few lines. From the armless man with a legless man strapped to his back to the scoundrel Corneal to the hordes of townsfolk, El Topo is packed to the gills with fantastic small character performances. Each of the gunfighters he meets (Martinez, Gurrola, and Fosado) also provide excellent performances in some of the strangest and most symbolically interesting moments in the film.

Overall, I didn’t just end up liking El Topo. It has quickly become a film I intend to watch many times in the future. Balancing the artistic flourishes with a conventional narrative and, let’s face it, gunfights, makes the film move along at an entertaining clip. At the end of El Topo, unlike many other art house films, I didn’t feel stupid because the film was as much Sergio Corbucci as Stan Brakhage. Well, that about wraps it up for the second (and slightly delayed) entry into Thanksgiving with Alejandro. I will be back in just two short days with my next review, the 1973 film The Holy Mountain.

(Hey folks. Due to packing and generally not being able to concentrate on writing, I didn‘t get El Topo finished up so look for that to plop next Monday instead. I‘m sure I‘ll update the site with Cinnci madness if I have time, but if not, I‘ll see you folks when I get back. And if you‘re going I‘ll see you there!.)

Hello everyone and welcome back to Instant Terror Tuesday. Today, I wanted to delve back into slasher films and after milling though many good choices I landed on the late Eighties flick Intruder. The name that caught my eye first was Renee Estevez, who I love as Molly in Sleepaway Camp 2, but clicking through I found names like Bruce Campbell, Sam Raimi, and his brother Ted. Plus, it was directed by their buddy Scott Spiegel. Needless to say I was already sold, but a quick little trip to IMDB turned the film into pure gold when I found the alternate title, Night Crew: The Final Checkout. (The generic name was apparently slapped on by producers who wanted a harder hitting “slasher” type title.) I’ve seen slashers at camp, in the snow, in a toy store, creeping around old houses, or sleazing around in big cities, but I had never seen a maniac go to supermarket.

Just as the Walnut Lake Market is getting ready to close for the night, cashier Jennifer’s (Elizabeth Cox) ex-con ex-boyfriend Craig (David Byrnes) busts in the place trying to make trouble for her. The night crew there to stock the shelves ejects him from the store, but when people start going missing, Craig is the first suspect. With news of the store’s permanent closing in the air, perhaps someone has another motive for murder. Everyone from Randy the Butcher (Sam Raimi) to Produce Joe (Ted Raimi) to co-owner Bill (Dan Hicks) has to watch their backs or they’ll end up like new low, low prices…. slashed.

Synopsizing Intruder is kind of difficult because for the first half of the film not much happens, but then after the 45 minute mark the bodies start falling fast and furious. Speigel front loads his film with an array of interesting camera angles (the menacing POV shot from within a grocery cart is my favorite), stock character development, and a few bright spots of comedy mostly thanks to the brothers Raimi. When the blood started flowing, I expected the film to get a real boost, and it probably would, just not on Netflix. For all my glowing praise of their Instant Watch catalog, they went and did me wrong. The cut available to stream runs 83 minutes, which is apparently the original running time, but a 88 minute director cut was released later. What was cut you might ask? All the good bloody bits. Doing some reading about this film, I was quite distraught to find out that I missed out on meat hook murders and a head being sawed in two. I already had a suspicion something was up because every time it was about to get good, and it was maddeningly frustrating to watch.

The lead actress, Elizabeth Cox, ranks up there with one of the least engaging final girls out there, and it’s a shame that Emilio’s little sister was relegated to a supporting role. The bright spots in the film really come from Ted, who is always such a good understated comic actor, Sam, just because it’s Sam acting, and Dan Hicks (Maniac Cop, Evil Dead II, My Name is Bruce) who shines as the distraught co-owner. While the box art and posters for Intruder often tout Bruce Campbell as a headlining star, the reality is that he and producer Laurence Bender show up as cops in the last two minutes of the film. For some, that will be the highlight cameo of the film, but not for me. The first set of cops that comes to investigate the disturbances at the supermarket are played by Alvy Moore and Tom Lester, both veterans of the classic sitcom Green Acres.

Intruder came late in the slasher cycle, and it is one of the lesser entries in the genre. That being said, the marquee cast and (apparently) grisly murder scenes, thanks to the boys from K.N.B Efx house, will keep people looking in on this one for years. My advice is to check it out, but if you can see it somewhere other than Netflix Instant, then you might want to take that option. That’s just how it goes sometime when you dial up Instant Terror. Sometimes it will come out a little under-time and under-cooked. That about wraps it up for this week, but I hope you’ll come back next Tuesday to check out another Instant selection. Later this week, I’ll have another Jowderowky film coming up on Thursday, and then I’ll be taking off a few days for the city of Cincinnati for Horrorhound Weekend!