Stormhouse (Brexitland, 2011)

In short: A justly forgotten slab of poorly scripted independent British horror that never manages to either rise above instantly unremarkable or maintain the viewer's interest, although it does manage to garner more than one unintentional snort — but not necessarily of laughter. 

Dull and dark and meandering, Snorehouse Stormhouse will never become anyone's "unjustly overlooked discovery" and is hardly worth seeking out. In our case, it was yet another cutout DVD bought on a whim that proved to be yet another disappointment and waste of a euro-fifty (currently, we might add, wistfully, still the exact price of a no-name beer at the local late-night corner store). 

Set in the days of the Iraq War, the narrative spans four consecutive days at a — surprise? — secret underground military installation where, somehow, the powers-that-be have managed to capture and imprison a supernatural entity. On the first day, our figure of identification, Haley Sands (an oddly miscast Katherine Flynn of The Auteur [2008 / trailer] and Once Upon a Time in Venice [2017 / trailer]) arrives, coming across more like the "Woman about to Find Love" in an insipid TV tearjerker than the "Paranormal Investigator" she is meant to be — she does, by the way, find a possible soulmate amidst the bare-boned crew of toxic masculinity manning the facility, the non-military nice-guy Aussie Justin Rourke (Patrick Flynn of No Appointment Necessary [2017 / trailer]), but as Snorehouse Stormhouse is a horror flick, the possible relationship is doomed from the start. (As are most relationships in real life, not to mention marriages.) 

Trailer to

Snorehouse Stormhouse:

Locked nine storeys below ground, Haley quickly gets on the wrong side of the man in charge, Major Lester (Grant Masters of Driven [1998 / trailer], the embarrassment that is Fat Slags [2004 / trailer] and the unexpectedly intriguing Await Further Instructions [2018 / trailer]) — a man, admittedly, that doesn't seem to have a right side. Needless to say, the whole project quickly goes off the rails. First, the entity inexplicably if briefly possesses the major and diverse non-uniformed military plebes, making them — Oh, how Scary! — sing the French song Frere Jacques (a.k.a. Brother John in English), and then, soon after we find out what the military does with captured Muslim terrorists — Hey! Did we just see a kitchen sink fly by in this movie? And when are they gonna sacrifice a Democrat? — the entity escapes and begins to "play". Unluckily for those involved, its version of "playing" is to possess one person after the other* and kill everyone off, one by one — usually off screen or in darkened spaces so poorly lit that little can be seen. 

* By the end of the movie, it even possesses a basketball! (Seriously.) 

Oddly lacking in suspense and notably uneven in the acting, Snorehouse Stormhouse is above all a mildly interesting idea set in a decent but poorly used location (supposedly a real former military compound) done in by a unsuccessfully paced narrative that has too many holes in it and doesn't really seem to know where it wants to go. Many of its payoff scenes are less payoff than anticlimactic, and the few scenes that offer a visceral shock — for example, when Minister Duncan McGillis (Andrew Hall [19 Jan 1954 – 20 May 2019] of Blood Drive [2017 / trailer] and Kill Ben Lyk [2018 / trailer]) meets his maker — are undone by questionable decisions (we were left wondering where the entity got the red lipstick to draw McGillis's clown face in a facility populated by manly men and one woman whose lipstick choice was noticeably less garish) or dank cinematography. Occasionally a scene does work — the one where Justin gets possessed actually manages to make you forget the ridiculous scene leading up to it, and Lt. Groves (Grahame Fox of Fear the Invisible Man [2018 / trailer], Eve [2019 / trailer] and The Convent [2018 / trailer] does kick a nasty basketball* — but such scenes are rare and don't really jell with the rest of the mess that Snorehouse Stormhouse is.

*  Truth be told, though, even fans of basketball "horror" will find greater satisfaction in Wes Craven's infamous basketball scene in his older, tackier but so much better Deadly Friend (1986 / trailer).

End verdict: more instantly forgettable than absolutely terrible, though it does balance precariously between being both, Snorehouse Stormhouse may have some good if feebly developed ideas to it, but nothing about the movie actually makes it worth watching. Our rating: 0.5 flat basketballs out of two.

Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks (USA, 1976)

(Spoilers.) The second film of both the "official" three-film series and the "unofficial" four-film series, Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oils Sheiks slid into the grindhouses about a year after its more-extreme predecessor, Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS (1975 / trailer).* Both were directed by the grindhouse auteur Don Edmonds (1 Sept 1937 – 30 May 2009), but for whatever reasons Edmonds was replaced by the unknown director Jean LaFleuer two years later when the Roger Corman-produced Ilsa, the Tigress of Siberia (1977 / trailer) hit the screens. That same year, the indefatigable Jesús Franco (12 May 1930 – 2 Apr 2013) released his non-Ilsa euro-production starring Dyanne Thorne (14 Oct 1936 – 28 Jan 2020),** Wanda the Wicked Warden (trailer), which has since gone through a variety of a.k.a. titles but is now perhaps best known as Ilsa the Wicked Warden. 

Heavily censored trailer to

Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks:

* "Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS (1975), [is] considered [one of] the first and also most famous movie of the Nazi exploitation genre. The movie was filmed on the prison camp sets left behind from the Hogan's Heroes (1965-71) television series. Thorne's Ilsa is a brutal buxom commandant of a German prisoner-of-war camp during World War II. She sexually and physically abuses her male and female prisoners and uses them for diabolical medical experiments. In this movie she also raped her male prisoners. Those of them who ejaculated before she was done were then castrated. Her downfall comes when she submits herself to an American prisoner who can withhold ejaculating. The film, which was banned in Germany, was notorious for its level of sadism and for portraying Nazi cruelty as sexual actions. [Boobpedia]"

** Pneumatic MILF Dyanne "Ilse" Thorne [a.k.a. Lahna Monroe, Rosalee Stein, Diane and/ or Diana Thorne, Penni Walters, Frenchie Dior and Sally Levinson,], whose illustrious career includes loads of fun sleaze and memorable grime — for example: Hellhole (1985, with Edy Williams), Wam Bam Thank You Spaceman (1975, with an uncredited Haji), Blood Sabbath (1972, with an uncredited Uschi), Point of Terror (1971 / trailer), Pinocchio (1971, with Karen Smith & Uschi), Joseph W. Sarno's Sin in the Suburbs (1964 / trailer) and his lost Lash of Lust (1962, with Gigi Darlene) —  ended her days as a non-denominational minister offering "an alternative to chapel weddings" in Las Vegas with her husband Howard Maurer, whom is found playing small parts in many of her films, including this one.

Uncensored trailer to

Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks:

While of varying caliber in some minor regards, all the Ilsa films are prime slabs of unadulterated sexploitation trash, chock full of blood and breasts and death and sex and torture and sadism and shock sequences, usually presented without the intention of making you laugh (though you just might), but nevertheless with some performances lightly dusted with a touch of camp.

Another (censored) trailer to

Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks:

Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oils Sheiks, as over the top and sleazy as it is, substantially tones down the blood and breasts and death and sex and torture and sadism and shock sequences in comparison to the extents taken in the first movie. Unlike with Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS, this time around the producers were aiming for an R-rating. Toned down or not, Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oils Sheiks should not be watched by everyone, and definitely not on a first date, as many might find the movie offensive...

All Ilsa movies pretty much follow the same storyline, though it does get tweaked as needed for the given new temporal setting and to make the given installment appear as an at least somewhat different movie. As for Ilsa, whether in 1940s Nazi Germany or 1950s Siberia or modern-day (as in: mid-to-late '70s) Arabia or whatever banana republic and timeframe Wicked Warden is set in, she and her absolutely amazing 100%-natural love pillows (37C-17-33) never age a day* — and that despite the fact that, for example, she literally gets her head shot off at the end of She Wolf of the SS.**

* Dyanne "Ilsa" Thorne is not the only female of fabulous attributes to return from the dead of She Wolf of the SS to once again bare their heavenly assets in Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks. Colleen Brennan (a.k.a. Sharon Kelly) appears uncredited She Wolf of the SS and dies in Nazi Germany as an unnamed redheaded prisoner; she reappears and dies again in Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks; likewise, the Great Uschi, who appears (uncredited) in the first film as the prisoner killed in a pressurized chamber, reappears (credited) in the sequel, like Brennan, as one of the three new kidnapped beauties added to the Sheik's harem. Unlike Brennan's character, however, Uschi's Inga Lindström — "the new Scandinavian love goddess" — survives to return home. As does the third and relatively unassuming addition to the harem, the equestrian champion, played by the uncredited Penthouse model Derna Wong Wylde (of Planet of Dinosaurs [1977 / full movie]). Wylde spent time in prison in the '90s, lost a lung somewhere along the way, and might now be living in Oregon (by way of Henderson, NV). Ms. Brennan, BTW, does not hold either of her Ilsa appearances highly. In an interview, she once said, "As evidenced by my appearance in not one but two Ilsa movies, I was not yet strong enough to pass up a part just because there was a little humiliation involved. [...] Okay, here's the rule of thumb I developed too late: Never be in a movie that strives to attract an audience with whom you would not choose to share a theater."

** In an interview, Don Edmonds mentions, "When they came to me about a year and a half after the original and said they wanted to make a sequel, I said, 'Gee, let me ask you, I may be mistaken, but don't you remember we killed the shit out of her in this first movie?' They said nobody will remember, and nobody did!"

Scene from

Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks:

A wonderfully cheap and nicely sleazy sexploitation anti-classic, Ilsa Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks is a low-rent variant of the traditional WIP film, but instead of a prison we have a sheikh's harem — the harem of nasty, paranoid and sex-obsessed El Sarif (Jerry Delony [6 Mar 1934 – 28 Nov 2017]*), who expands his harem by kidnapping beautiful women from the West. As the film opens, we see the delivery of his three latest additions (played by Uschi, Brennan, and Wylde), flown in to the Arabian deserts (of Palm Springs, actually) by helicopter; the three Babes of Yesteryear subsequently spend most of the film naked but for the smallest of gold chastity belts. 

Nasty but pneumatic Ilsa (Thorne) — she is perhaps the most-stacked woman of the movie, despite the impressive lung covers of the Great Uschi, Colleen Brennan, the Great Haji, an uncredited and barely noticeable Joyce Gibson (10 Mar 1950 – 13 Oct 2016), and the now forgotten nude-magazine staple and occasional porn-loop actress Su Ling (below on a magazine cover) — is the harem keeper, ably assisted by her two lithe, almost identical Black Amazonian assistants, Satin (Tanya Boyd**) and Velvet (Marilyn Joi). Trouble comes in the form of a CIA agent Cmdr. Adam Scott (Michael "I'm a Talking Board" Thayer***), who arrives with a military-inappropriate haircut pretending to be the assistant of Dr. Kaiser (Richard Kennedy****): Scott's such a good fuck that Ilsa can't bring herself to kill him when ordered by El Sarif, which leads to El Sarif punishing her — he strings her up and has a leprous beggar (George 'Buck' Flower [28 Oct 1937 – 18 Jun 2004]) fondle and go down on her. But hell hath no fury like a sadistic Harem Keeper molested by a leprous beggar...

* Delony had previously appeared, almost always uncredited, in a few mega-low budget flicks like Ray Dennis Steckler's poorly filmed porn flicks Count All-Cum (1971) & Nazi Sex Experiments (1973), the easily found online and uninteresting porno Harry Hard, Detective (1971), the mondo sex shockumentary Sex Freaks (1974 / full NSFW film), and exploitation king Albert Zugsmith's Violated (1975 / trailer). After Ilsa, it was a full 14 years before he appeared in another movie: he is in one of the multitudes of mini-segments strung together to make the great movie that is Richard Linklater's Slacker (1990 / trailer).

** Ms. Boyd went on to a 13-year stint on the soap Days of Our Lives, but in her day she took part some other fun films of the type we here at a wasted life like, such as the Blaxploitation nadir Solomon King (1974 / trailer), Black Shampoo (1976, with Jacqulin Cole), Al Adamson's Black Heat (1976 / trailer), and The Happy Hooker Goes to Hollywood (1980, with Dick Miller).

*** Max Thayer, as he later called himself, perhaps deserves some slack: he is dubbed in the movie, which he refers to as "A truly atrocious piece of merde." Supposedly, he was too hung-over from getting drunk with Thorne to do the dubbing...

**** Richard Kennedy (14 Feb 1929 – 1 Oct 1985) could well be playing Dr. Kaiser as a persiflage of Henry Kissinger, something possibly more evident back when the film came out than now. He also played the General in She Wolf of the SS, and Colleen Brennan, who seldom seems to have anything nice to say about people, went on the record that "As unlike his character as possible, he was a teddy bear and a great storyteller." Kennedy never fully made it out of the Bs and Zs, but aside from his two Ilsa films, his numerous projects of note include Invasion of the Blood Farmers (1971 / trailer), Fangs (1974 / trailer), Matt Cimber's Candy Tangerine Man (1975, with Marilyn Joi) & Lady Cocoa (1975 / full movie) & The Witch Who Came from the Sea (1976 / trailer), The Love Butcher (1975 / trailer), C.B. Hustlers (1976, with The Great Uschi), Mortuary Academy (1988 / full movie) and more.

Hardly as extreme as Ilsa She Wolf of the SS, which truly leaves one feeling slightly dirty after watching, Ilsa Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks is nevertheless a revoltingly disgusting slab of exploitively misogynistic gaiety, and as such makes for a great evening's entertainment. The script supplied by the possibly pseudonymous scriptwriter Langston Stafford (Ilsa Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks is his only known writing credit of any kind) is ridiculous and stuffed with grotesque and ludicrous ideas and developments, not to mention copious naked women, sex scenes and violence. The movie is basically irredeemable trash, but as such it is also amazingly amusing and blackly funny; indeed, both Ilse and El Sarif are often played with a slightly campy edge, to the advantage of the movie.

Ilsa Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks is simply vintage trash, and all its bad acting, threadbare sets, low-rent blood and laughable violence has only gotten worse and more unbelievable with age, thus making it all the more fun, not to mention shocking. Wonderfully wretched movies like this one really don't get made anymore — regrettably.

Interestingly enough, for all its heavy misogyny, the movie never actually disrespects women as much as, say, the mondo documentary Women of the World (1963). Ilsa Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks may drag many of the women through filth and violence and objectification, but unlike WoW, it is never condescending. As such, despite all the movie's sexist objectification, the women often come across as strong, independent people (with big breasts, usually exposed). The three new women in the harem, for example, have no choice about being here, and the desire to adapt so as to survive cannot be held against them — also, when finally given the chance to fight back, they and the other harem women don't flinch and retreat into a corner, like the average American Democrat when confronted by today's fascist Republicans, but fight with conviction and determination.

In turn, Haji, who doesn't really shine* in her thankless role as a belly-dancing, possibly incompetent spy, may finally cave in and spill the beans, but she has backbone and undergoes some hardcore (if not very convincing-looking) torture before she does so. (All her fortitude is in vain, however, and she meets her ignoble end as a human guinea pig when Ilsa tests her latest invention, the exploding diaphragm.)

* That she does not exactly shine is something Haji herself seems to have later felt, going by her relatively circumspect statement she made about the movie when talking to Shock Cinema: "I will limit myself as far as doing certain things, and some of the stuff they did in that film was a little too funky for me. I liked my part, but I don't think I did a very good job with it." 

As for the bad gals, they are not kick-arounds who forgive and forget when done dirty. True, Ilsa is basically fucked into her senses by her stud,* but after El Sarif tries to demean her into deference, she promptly stages an uprising — true, only for revenge and not for any noble reason, but as terrible a person she is, she is not one to let herself be walked on. 

* Max Thayer makes for one unappetizing plaything. Generically handsome and with a nicely tight ass, he nevertheless remains unappealing. His total lack of any attempt at acting doesn't help any, either. Throughout the movie, Thayer proves himself unable to convey a single emotion convincingly — he can't even make "You bitch!" sound insulting or angry. Nevertheless, in real life he had a mild career — he followed up Ilsa with Planet of Dinosaurs (1977 / trailer) and Stephan C. Apostolof's Hot Ice (1977 / song), and eventually managed to become a lead in Philippine-shot flotsam like Phantom Soldiers (1987 / trailer), No Dead Heroes (1986 / full movie), No Retreat No Surrender 2 (1987 / full movie), The Retrievers (1982 / trailer), and and and...

Satin and Velvet are perhaps the two strongest female characters of the movie, something they manage to convey even when completely naked and fully oiled. They can take and deliver a beating better than "a real man", as one sees in a scene that ends with each of them holding a testicle in their respective hands. Whether or not they are a loving couple or just almost identical-looking, loyal, ass-kicking assistants is revealed towards the end, and it almost comes across as tragic.* (Almost.)

* Marilyn Joi(above), who plays Velvet, speaks of the movie in her interview with Shock Cinema, where she reveals herself still miffed at how her big scene [when Satin is killed] was thwarted: "There's a scene in that movie — when we shot it, I had people crying on the set! Crying! In a B-movie! But when they edited the film, they chopped it up so much that they ruined it. Yes, but it wasn't just Tanya dying. I thought about my kid, I thought about my sister — I really put a lot into that scene, but they cut it all up. I run toward Tanya, and they cut away. I pick her up, and they cut away. Instead of letting me run through the room, they cut to all these other people shooting off guns! That's when I learned how important editing is. It can make or break you." That said, you still feel her pain...

Strong women or not, there is never any doubt that was never any intention on the part of the filmmakers to convey some subliminal pro-women message in Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks. This movie was meant for the grindhouses and the people who went to them, and it is truly a fine example of the late-stage sexploitation genre. We would never watch it with our women friends or significant other, but we will definitely give it a rating of Ten out of Ten Bloody Testicles! Recommended!

 

Postscript: Talk about a dream double feature! Above, at the Bellevue Drive-in in Memphis in 1982, "Elsa the Harem Keeper" hit the screen with another a wasted life favorite, Daughters of Dracula, otherwise known as José Ramón Larraz's Vampyres (1974)...

Trailer to

Vampyres:

The Haunting of the Queen Mary (Brexitland, 2023)

(Spoilers.) Not far into watching The Haunting of the Queen Mary, an earlier horror movie set in a run-down apartment building in Los Angeles came to our mind, namely Circle of Eight (2009). That film, nominally a watchable horror movie with a gratuitous breast or two, is basically an extended, misfired commercial for Mountain Dew. (Misfired in that Mountain Dew is used by one character as his favorite painting substance, which hardly makes Mountain Dew attractive as something to drink.)

That feeling of an extended commercial also pops up its large, jug-eared head in The Haunting of the Queen Mary, as the movie does exude the aura of an extended cinematic commercial for one of the diverse haunted-attraction experience tours that are given on the Long Beach-berthed tourist attraction that is the real Queen Mary, which, in 2008, Time magazine placed amongst its "Top 10 Haunted Places".

Whether or not The Haunting of the Queen Mary works better as a commercial than as a horror film might be open for discussion, but now, two years after its release, if we were to compare the movie to other haunted-ship movies we've seen and liked, this baby is put to shame by Alvin Rakoff's wonderfully tacky Death Ship (1980 / trailer) — who can forget its nonsensical development, or how Mrs. Morgan (Kate Reid [4 Nov 1930 – 27 Mar 1993] of The Andromeda Strain [1971 / trailer]) starts decomposed alive after eating some hard candy? — not to mention by Ghost Ship (2002 / trailer), with its breathtaking opening scene and/or, to go way further back, the almost ancient and far-more-creaky but narratively stronger Terror Aboard (1933 / full movie), a great-granddaddy of the bodycount film. In other words, while The Haunting of the Queen Mary ain't exactly terrible, there are better horror ships out there that: one, are not as much of a head-scratcher; and two, are far more scary (or at least suspenseful) most of the time.

Trailer to

The Haunting of the Queen Mary:

Which is a shame, for when The Haunting of the Queen Mary is on the mark — an endangered child at a swimming pool, a "madman" butchering people with an ax, the Golden Twenties-like lady playing the piano — some of the scenes are truly scary, and definitely punch hard. The problem is that not only do too many aspects of the story make no sense at all, the story is also hard to follow — all the more so since the movie involves two interconnected and crosscut narratives from different temporal periods. Worse, there are also flashbacks in both time frames, and so much info comes out only in drips and drops that one wonders what was lost in the cutting room. The Haunting of the Queen Mary truly deserts its narrative and leaves the viewer to put together too many puzzle pieces to truly enjoy the movie's often rather startling or attractive visuals. And when it comes to the eye-candy (if at times horrific) visuals of the movie, quiet often they are so cinematically pleasing that they undermine the film: the tale itself is never as strong, as convincing, or as interesting as much of what you see, and the good stuff you see only makes all the flick's faults more obvious.

A handsome traveling shot from the horizon into the troubled ship on Halloween night 1938, about two years after Queen Mary embarked on her maiden voyage in 1936, sets the tone of the movie: beautifully shot, the is-the-ship-sinking-? scene promptly does a flashback to earlier that very day. (To paraphrase Katy "Fruit Sister" Perry, the film changes its timeframe more often than a girl changes clothes.) We follow a family of three who sneak their way into the reservation-only first-class Halloween Party, to disastrous results, although the daughter Gwen (Florrie Wilkinson) does dance with [an unconvincing] Fred Astaire (Wesley Alfvin) and gets discovered by Hollywood. Unluckily, by the time she gets discovered, her war-disfigured daddy,* David Ratch (Will Coban of King Arthur: Legend of the Sword [2017]), is already possessed by the killer spirit of the man once welded under the ship's swimming pool* and, axe or surgical knife in hand, he has started to make short order of a number of people in a desperate attempt to finally get off the ship...

* Daddy's real face is one of the great shocks of the film, and easily reminds us of the horrors of war. As for the man under the pool, that is a riff on the legend of the man welded into the hull of the RMS Titanic — or was it the SS Great Eastern? Take your pick. 

Meanwhile, in Timeline Two, the now of the 21st century, troubled couple Anne (Alice Eve of ATM [2012 / trailer] and Star Trek into Darkness [2013 / trailer]) and Patrick (Joel Fry of In the Earth [2021 / trailer], Cordelia [2019 / trailer], and Rock and Roll and Fuck'n'Lovely [2013 / trailer]) show up at the docked Queen Mary to pitch a possible tourist project to the oddly unnerving Lieutenant Gibson (Tim Downie). Patrick, the world's least-observant daddy, loses sight of their son Lukas (Lenny Rush, a 14-year-old playing an eight-year-old), but he shows up later, soaked to the bone...

So far, so good: both interludes offer moments of tension and horror, all of which has the added glean of director Gary Shore's* assured visual playfulness and fine but unflinching eye. Unluckily, the ghost story that follows is a tangled and untidy mess that seldom makes sense and leaves one wanting Cliff Notes and/or seriously considering the eject button. Now and then there is an inspired shock or even latently unnerving background scare, but much like Patrick and Anne seem to run around without rhyme or reason, the narrative doesn't really go anywhere. The viewer is left on the deck of confusion instead of enjoying what initially looks like it'll be thrilling sail into the nightmarish.

* Shore's biggest movie to date is undoubtedly his feature film directorial debut Dracula Untold (2014 / trailer), which could been a contender but blew it by putting stud-muffin Dominic "Preacher" Cooper in brown face.

The Haunting of Queen Mary is far more a well-made missed opportunity than an effective horror movie. Confusing and impenetrable, moments of true inspiration arise occasionally amidst all the thick mist of bewilderment, all liberally spiced with a rich sense of aesthetics and seductive visual glow. If only for its refined sense of visuals, and for its occasionally truly bloody deaths, the movie is not a complete loss. But people who want a story to their refined cinematic style might want to give The Haunting of Queen Mary a wide berth.

Big Head Monster / Hung bou yit sin ji Dai tao gwai ying (Hong Kong, 2001)

(Spoilers.) The differences in perspective are sometimes amazing. When we first considered e-buying this DVD years ago, back when one still bought DVDs on e-bay, we looked the movie up online and stumbled upon Variety's review from 2002, which says: "Beneath its cheesy title, there lurks one of the most inventive Hong Kong psycho-thrillers of recent years in Horror Hotline … Big Head Monster, one of the very few to come close to replicating the clammy chills of late '90s Japanese pics like The Ring (trailer)." Okay, it only took us about another ten years to finally get around to popping the DVD — Mandarin or Cantonese language, English subtitles — into our player, but: Wow! One can only wonder with what the filmmakers bribed Variety's author back then to get him to write such misleading bullshit.

Horror Hotline … Big Head Monster is a truly terrible film, the kind that is so awful and (as its title indicates) cheesy that you can enjoy it as being terrible, but not as thrilling, surprising, chilling, inventive, or anything else that might tip director Soi Cheang's first horror film* (but third feature-length project) into being watchable as a "good" movie. Seriously, the movie is pure rǔshān: predictable, frightless, boring, disjointed, illogical, and even dull on occasion. It says something when poorly translated subtitles truly improve what is transpiring on the screen. 

* He directed three more horror films in quick succession: New Blood / Hayn huet ching nin (2002/ trailer), The Death Curse / Goo chak sam fong fong (2003 / trailer) and Home Sweet Home / Gwai muk (2005 / trailer). After having watched Horror Hotline … Big Head Monster, we will not be looking for them. 

Trailer to

Horror Hotline ... Big Head Baby:

Amazingly enough, despite the utter ridiculousness of most of the movie, it is presented with no humor – for that, it does engender guffaws and groans and giggles, and is impossible to take seriously. Opening with some guy named Sam (Sam Lee of Nude Fear / Jui hung 20 nin [1998], Bio-Zombie / Sang faa sau see [1998 / trailer] and tons of other stuff) who, playing paintball, suddenly starts hunting something he assumes is an "illegal" — more than once the movie shows some obvious disdain for outsiders — but, instead, ends up at dilapidated cement shack where he is confronted by the big head baby in a cage (we often see that cage, but never the big head baby — and a faceless, long-haired woman wearing what looks like a red cocktail dress. Then we meet Helen the Nurse (the beautiful Niki Chow of The Cursed / You er yuan [2018 / trailer], New Blood / Hyn huet ching nin [2002 / trailer] and Suspect / Chao yi shen tan [2024 / trailer]), who has an obviously dysfunctional relationship with radio producer Ben (Francis Ng of Devil Hunters [1989], The Bride with White Hair I [1993] & The Bride with White Hair II [1993 / trailer], Full Alert / Go do gaai bei (1997 / trailer] and so much more) and, unbeknownst to Ben, recently aborted the child he didn't know was inside her.* A film crew from the US, led by Mavis (Josie Ho of Habit [2021 / trailer], The Twins Effect [2002], The Apostles / Gui zhen [2013 / trailer], and Dream Home / Wai dor lei ah yat ho [2010 / trailer]), shows up to do a report on his popular radio show, Horror Hotline, where people call up to share their "true" ghost stories. When some guy named Chris calls up to share his experience with the Big Head Baby, and when Mavis decides to do some follow-up investigations on the story, strange and terrible things start to happen — including the disappearance (and death) of her cameraman, Mike (an uncredited Michael Clements of The Twins Effect [2003] and Naked Weapon [2002])... 

* You would think that has something to do with the plot and the big head baby. It doesn't. All it does is allow her to kick Ben in the emotional balls when she finally decides it's time to break up and move on. 

Niki Chow sings Moonlight,

from her album Pure Niki (2005):

Although Horror Hotline … Big Head Monster generally follows a normal visual structure of edited continuity, the movie often presents events as seen through the film camera of one of the characters, so the movie occasionally displays the characteristics of a found-footage movie. Arguably, the filmmakers are paying homage to the found-footage genre, which had just taken off at the time thanks to the original Blair Witch Project (1999 / trailer). Unluckily, the general effect comes across less as an artistic decision on part of the filmmakers that a desperate attempt to solve some budgetary problems. A bit more effective, even as it garners guffaws, is the not-so-oblique CGI (?) reference to the baby-in-space found in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968 / trailer), this time round with a big-headed baby. 

The movie simply makes no sense. Chris, for example, is actually dead, so why does he even call up and pique their investigative interest if they shouldn't investigate? The baby, when born, is taken away in a cage by Men in Black — are we seriously to believe they then just put the cage in an easily accessible derelict building, close to a school full of nosy kids, and forgot about it? And if they did forget about the big head baby, who brings the big bowl of rice that is always in front of the cage? And why is the mother, who died at childbirth, faceless and floating around in a bloody flowered cocktail dress (instead of, say, a bloody hospital gown). What does Sam have to do with the entire story, and why does he survive and others don't? Is the evil baby immune to all religions, or only Islam? Where does Ben disappear to at the end? And… and… and… 

Ah, hell. Just believe it: Horror Hotline … Big Head Monster is an incoherent mess that makes about as much sense as the blathering of Trump at his recent press conferences — but, to give credit where credit is due, is at least a bit more interesting and convincing. There is one effectively chilling scene in which Mavis "hears" the horrifying birth of the baby, but one good scene cannot save a movie. 

Lastly, while the DVD that we have looks official, we have to assume – actually: we hope – we were suckered into buying a bootleg, otherwise we really cannot explain the suck-ass quality of the transfer: pixelated, the colors blah, and images blurry. Truth told, however, the lousy transfer quality Horror Hotline … Big Head Monster somehow complimented the lousy film itself, which is one of the kind of movies that you should only watch in a group with a lot of beer and weed, otherwise you might find yourself getting angry. Were the film an English-language film, it would surely gain fame as a so-bad-it's-fun movie, but being a Hong Kong product it shall probably forever remain a fringe displeasure, like "fragrant meat".

As an extra, the DVD offers two endings: the original one, and an alternative one. Neither offers a decent, satisfying resolution, as they both are relatively incoherent and aggravatingly open-ended. Like the film itself, and MAGA Republicans, both endings suck.