Short Film: Zombeer (The Netherlands, 2008)

Zombeer from Blikschade Films on Vimeo.

Here’s a cute little "horror" film written and directed by the Dutch duo Barend de Voogd and Rob van der Velden that combines two of my favourite things: beer and zombies. And less to my liking but fitting perfectly to the film: Japanese tourist groups. Having been many a time to The Netherlands, and at least twice on Queen’s Day, I can easily imagine how successful a person would be who runs around telling the people not to drink the beer. I doubt you could successfully tell that to a Dutchman on any day, much less on that great day of nationally sanctioned drunken excess.

According to the omnipotent imdb, the one-liner plot of Zombeer originated at the 24th Amsterdam Fantastic Film Festival, when Mr de Voogd showed up suffering from the night before complaining about the bad beer he had had. (He must have been drinking Heineken—really, how can a country that has French fries as good as Dutch French fries and such top-notch weed have a beer like Heineken? Jeez, you might as well drink an American Bud.) Mr van der Veldon cracked "You must have drunk zombeer", and a week later the script was finished. And what is the plot of Zombeer? Well, bad beer turns people into zombies. (So does religion, actually, but that’s another story.)
Mr van der Veldon and Mr De Voogd are still waiting a call from Sam Rami requesting a feature-length version of their short, but till then, enjoy this little piece of cinematic fluff.

Bloodlust! (USA, 1961)

"Listen, Mister Balleau, fun's fun. But if you think we're gonna be the clay pigeons in your shooting gallery—you're just a little far out!"

Bloodlust! is the directorial debut of one Ralph Brooke, a non-entity agitating on the fringes of z-productions whose brief (documented) foray into film ended with his death two years later in 1963 after writing the script to the sleazy noir The Right Hand of the Devil (1963), a film described by the website Noir of the Week as rising "above its budget restrictions to reach a respectable level of artistic achievement—snugly fitting within the lineup of other harsh 60's noirs (Brainstorm [1965] and Point Blank [1967 / trailer] among them). As in those films, the atmosphere in Right Hand is thick with illicit sex, psychosis, and hair-trigger violence." (Ralph Brooke the director/writer, by the way, should not be confused with Ralph Brooke the actor; the latter, who died on 23 March 1992, is the man that supplied the famous Wilhelm Scream in The Charge at Feather River [1953].)

For Bloodlust!, which he also scripted, Ralph Brooke liberally mined one of the old faithful plotlines of genre trash: Richard Connell's famous story The Most Dangerous Game, which was first filmed in 1932 (click here for the full film) with Fay Ray, Joel McCrea and Leslie Banks as the killer count and has been (officially and unofficially) remade ad-nauseam times since. (Selected versions include: Run for the Sun [1956], The Woman Hunt [1973], Turkey Shoot [1982 / trailer], Slave Girls from Beyond Infinity [1987 / trailer], Deadly Prey [1987 / trailer], Hard Target [1993 / trailer], Surviving the Game [1994 / trailer], The Pest [1997 / trailer].)
In this version, two teenage couples—Johnny (Robert Reed) and Betty Scott (June Kenney) and Pete (Eugene Persson) and Jeanne (Joan Lora)—on a boat cruise decide to go ashore an uncharted, nearby island for clam bake when their skipper Tony (Troy Patterson) drinks too much and passes out. Onshore they wander around like idiots before being taken in by Dr. Albert Balleau (Wilton Graff, a poverty row and TV character actor whose career highpoint was playing one of the fathers in the film version of Compulsion [1959 / trailer]). Back at Balleau's mansion, the kids get introduced to his wife Sandra (Lilyan Chauvin of Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings [1994 / trailer], Predator 2 [1990 / trailer], Silent Night, Deadly Night [1984 / trailer], The Mephisto Waltz [1971 / trailer] and Lost, Lonely and Vicious [1958 / trailer]) and his drunken guest Dean (Ralf Brooke's brother Walter Brooke, of The Conquest of Space [1955 / trailer], the TV series The Green Hornet [26 episodes, 1966-1967], The Graduate [1967 / trailer] and The Return of Count Yorga [1971 / trailer]), who soon reveal to the kids that the good doctor is a psychotic killer. (Something Pete and Jeanne already know from their exploration of the mansion’s basement caverns.) In love and desperate, Dean and Sandra make an attempt to escape but end up as part of the doctor’s collection of stuffed trophies. Dr Balleau, who then reveals himself to be a windbag psychotic, soon discloses his plans to hunt the alcoholic skipper and the two youths next. During the hunt, Dr Balleau kills the skipper and some crazy dude (Bill Coontz) before letting his brutish henchman Jonder (Bobby Hall of High School Big Shot [1959 / trailer], Hell's Angels '69 [1969 / trailer] and Night Call Nurses [1972]) sink to death in some leach-infested quicksand—but he fails to nail either the two teens or their girlfriends, who have snuck out of the safety of the house to join them. The four decide that the safest place would be back at the house, where they might find weapons. Later, the good doctor, having called it a day, returns and traps them in his trophy room. As he forces them at gunpoint to test out the various positions he might have them stuffed in, he suddenly finds out that he left the side of the quicksand pit much too early...
The cast keeps a straight face throughout the film, even if their presence and skills vary. As Johnny Randall, the manly man of the two youths, future Brady Bunch daddy Robert Reed (seen in the image here as Daddy Brady) towers over the rest of the cast but looks oddly like an over-stuffed sausage in his skintight shirt and tight pants, his love-handles and gut bulging over his much too tight belt. As big as he is, he is easily upstaged by most of his co-stars, even those that never went on to do any other film. (His three teenage costars, that is: the diminutive June Kenney, who had previously had feature roles in such exploiters as the depressing Teenage Doll (1957 / trailer), Earth vs. the Spider (1958 / trailer), and Attack of the Puppet People (1958 / trailer) never did another feature-length film after Bloodlust, nor did Joan Lora or Eugene Persson.) The film is greatly serviced by the cinematography of Richard E. Cunha (the director of Dog Eat Dog [1964 / trailer], Frankenstein's Daughter [1958 / full film], Missile to the Moon [1958 / colorized trailer, sorta], Giant from the Unknown [1958 / trailer] and She Demons [1958 / trailer]), which is nicely moody during many of the cave and jungle scenes. The generic music comes from Michael Terr, a man of little note other than that he started his career working on the music for the tragic but camp classic Hilton Sisters exploitation vehicle Chained for Life (1951 / full film) and ended it with Wilbur and the Baby Factory (1970 / trailer).
All trivia aside, Bloodlust! is an interesting, at times even effective z-budget film that is, in general, given many more raspberries than it actually deserves. Hidden between all its cheese and poverty-row ineptitude is a surprisingly effective and at times even shocking thriller that could even be labeled an early attempt at B&W gore filmmaking—indeed, the flick has a lot more tasteless viscera than Hammer’s indefinitely far more artistically successful and tasteful “early gore” color masterpieces, The Curse of Frankenstein (1957 / trailer) or The Horror of Dracula (1958 / trailer). The real problem of Bloodlust! is that for all its bare-boned shocks and atmosphere, it is an oddly uneven film: the only reason the first half hour isn’t tedious is because it is so laughable, and even once the film finally moves into its horror segment, the soundstage-heavy and full-frontal filmmaking deadens a lot of the limited amount of tension the film has. (The cinematography is noticeably better in the cave and, on occasion, the jungle scenes.) Nonetheless, Bloodlust! has more than one jaw-dropping moment, and not all of them are due to unintentional humor or inane dialog. The dead babe floating in the tank (played by the director's wife, Brianne Murphy, who between directing the grindhouse non-classic Blood Sabbath [1972, with Dyanne Thorne] and the snooze-a-thon To Die, to Sleep (1994) became the first female director of photography on a major studio, union picture, the Anne Bancroft directed seriously un-funny fiasco Fatso [1980 / trailer]), the pieces of a skinned human pulled from the preparation tank, the living man in the acid bath and the blood visibly pulsating from an impaled man are all highlights of early grindhouse offal, and more than once the story swerves briefly into unadulterated verbal sleaze (like when Dr. Balleau starts waxing on how the two girls will replace his departed wife and how he is looking forward to getting to know them better).
For z-grade B&W horror, Bloodlust! is a surprisingly entertaining watch and is an easy way to waste both 68 minutes or introduce your young child to the pleasures of horror films. More than one scene is sure to scare the gee-bees out of the kids, if not get your wife pissed at you for letting them watch such warped trash. Bloodlust! is not only in public domain in the US, but is available at the Internet Archives. Going by the shared skips and rips, the print there is the same as the one used for the PC Treasures Double Feature DVDs. The film is embedded below for your viewing pleasure—or go here.

Blood Waves (USA, 2006)

"I will suck on your fuckin' cock all the way back to L.A., if we just leave now! Please!"
Rose (Joleigh Pulsonetti)

Like so many cheapies, this 2006 flick has pretty much slipped under the radar and been relegated to total obscurity. It is, perhaps, a touch too under-developed to deserve any fame and adulation (although it does have some nicely sly humor at the expense of weltfremd US Americans), but considering the sheer amount of unadulterated crap that is out there it can at least be said that fans of low budget horror can do far, far worse than Blood Waves. The flick is a bit low on the blood and gore and too high on the shaky camera and quick edit, but it does fly by quickly and, even better, director Ian McCrudden does a rare thing in that he actually manages to give the sun-baked surfers of his horror film enough personality that they become something more than mere bodycount. They might be brainless surfers, but there is more to their horror-film generic personalities (hero, girlfriend, best dude friend, slut and geek) than just their surfboard. The result: one not only sort of hopes that they'll get away but even feels slight regret for those that don't.
The title itself, Blood Waves, is totally off the mark, however; far less appropriate for the film than its original name of Trespassers. The waves never get bloody, and it is rather the beach itself than hides the danger, a danger that (illogically enough) seemingly never extends beyond the narrow confines of the shore with dream-sized waves to attack the nearby locals. But then, despite the film's initial appearance of slight wallowing in US xenophobia (similar but not even half as obnoxious as in the Hostel [2005 / trailer] and Hostel: Part II [2007 / trailer] films, the most xenophobic US film franchise of the past decade), the evil of Blood Waves is actually born of Americans and aimed at those that come to take and use—Trespassers, in other words. And as the film makes abundantly clear, there are enough out there, so it is perhaps somewhat understandable then that the evil never attacks or spreads to the locals nearby.
As the tagline explains, Blood Waves tells the tale of "5 friends. An exotic journey. A deadly curse." (OK, Baja California really isn’t all that exotic, but it isn't the US—which means it’s pretty damn exotic for most US Americans.) After drifting around the world in search of the perfect wave, the surfer Tyler (Brendan McIver Fleming) finds one the best beaches—the in real-life ecologically endangered Punta Abreojos of Baja, Mexico—relatively close to home. He calls up his brother Colin (Kaiwi "I’m an actor who surfs not a surfer who acts" Lyman, an actor well on his way to Z-movie fame with such masterpieces as Frankenstein vs. the Creature from Blood Cove [2005 / trailer], Robinson Crusoe: The Great Blitzkrieg [2008 / trailer], and Blue Movies [2009 / trailer]) in LA to join him in the party. Coming down with four friends — the good girl Ashley (Michelle Borth of Easy Rider: The Ride Back [2009 / trailer] and Komodo vs. Cobra [2005 / trailer]), the slut Rose (Joleigh Pulsonetti of Hatchet [2006 / trailer]), the geek loser Lucky (Alex Feldman of The Final Patient [2005 / trailer], Repo Chick [2009 / trailer] and The Collector [2009 / trailer]) and the buddy Javier (Jon Ada)—the five find wicked waves and the cars and bikes of Tyler and his buds, but no party or people. After a day of frolic and fun, the five are faced with the curse of El Gringo (Clayton Rohner of Nightwish [1989], I, Madman [1989 / trailer] and The Relic [1997 / trailer]), a former cult leader gone demon that converts trespassing users and takers into crazed cannibals or cannibal food. (Perhaps one could call them cannibal zombies, as they are living zombies in the sense of 28 Days Later [2002 / trailer] or the remake of The Crazies [2010 / trailer] and not dead ones as in Night of the Living Dead [1968 / trailer] or Dawn of the Dead [1978 / trailer or 2004 / trailer], but they like to eat what they kill.) Can the five fun-loving folks save themselves? What do you think?
The initial leisurely pace of Blood Waves serves to assist in identifying with the victims—even if not all of them are all that likable—and also serves to underscore the fact that they are the foreigners. It does seem odd that while El Gringo goes after the first of the five during the day, hell doesn't actually break loose until night—which is filmed as night really is, meaning that much of the action and gore once the cannibals start attacking is lost in murkiness. A rarity in contemporary grindhouse pops up twice in Blood Waves: both babes toss out a topless scene, one under the bright sun and the other in the gloom when the last couple on the run decide upon some desperate sex in the face of imminent death—but whereas the babes brave to bare, the men do not, though Lucky comes close to it during his wanking scene. The final shot of the film can be seen as either an invitation to a sequel or as saying that not only is life circular but the world is full of inconsiderate users and takers…
Hardly a masterpiece at any level, Blood Waves nonetheless has enough individuality and effectiveness as a horror film despite its mundane and generic plot to supply 1.5 hours worth of low grade entertainment. It is a shame that the film seems to be more of an anomaly in director Ian McCrudden's filmic oeuvre, for it does manage to indicate a possibly promising career in genre films.

Turbulence (USA, 1997)

Definitely a woman’s film—they all seem to like it even if the men don’t. Probably has something to do with being able to identify with the hero. The real hero of this film is a woman, and while the babes out there seem to find her resourceful, brave and admirable, men seem to find her a little bit dumb. Seeing that these type of bloody, body-excessive thriller are primarily a man-thing, it is not surprising that Turbulence wasn't the biggest of successes, but it was obviously successful enough or it wouldn't have spawned two even trashier semi-sequels, Turbulence 2: Fear of Flying (1999 / trailer) and the ultra-trashy Turbulence 3: Heavy Metal (2001 / trailer).
That the film is so flawed is probably not the fault of director Robert Butler, who has had a career specializing primarily in television series and movies but for a few kiddy comedies like The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes (1970) and Hot Lead Cold Feet (1978) and the even rarer excursion into adult fare like the laughably dated Night of the Juggler (1980). His direction is perfectly acceptable and competent, and he even manages to sneak in a few truly memorable, disturbing scenes, like when the good girl stumbles down the aisle while left and right of her in the seats all the dead men are propped up “watching” It’s A Wonderful Life (1946 / trailer), or like the murder of the unimportant stewardess (Catherine Hicks) during which Ryan Weaver (Ray Liotta) obviously gets his rocks off. But Butler, and the film’s various actors, fights a losing battle against a crappy script with some hugely implausible—if not plain unbelievable—aspects.
The first mistake is that no airplane is going to have only 12 (or so) passengers, even if it is Christmas—the flight would be canceled and the passengers bumped to a different flight. Likewise, four stewards/stewardess for 12 odd people is also unrealistic—most airlines keep their personnel “on call”, thus an empty flight would simply have fewer stewards. Likewise, even if we overlook the fact that the oxygen masks don’t fall when a window gets shot out (though they do fall later in a different scene), no way in hell is it believable that a briefcase put against the window would be a successful hole stuffer, nor that it would stay in place during all the “turbulence” that follows, including a hilariously believable 360 twirl the plane makes while on auto pilot. The most obviously laughable mistakes come later, during the first unsuccessful landing attempt. Like, get real. We should believe that the wing of the plane can rip through a (steel structure) billboard and stay attached? That the wheels of the plane can knock the top off of a cement parking structure and not get ripped off? Scriptwriter Jonathan Brett obviously decided not to strain himself when he cobbled this laugh fest together.
And the story? (If you plan to see the film, skip this next paragraph.) Accused serial killer and rapist Ryan Weaver (Ray Liotta) gets busted and, forever polite and friendly and insistent of his innocence, gets put on a flight back to LA with some other killer, a bunch of heavily armed FBI guards, two pilots, four flight attendants and a variety of unimportant passengers. No time short, both pilots and all the macho men are dead and Ryan’s nice guy act disappears. He locks everyone up in a back area and tells Stewardess Lauren Holly (Teri Halloran) that he’s killed them all. Forever alternating between trying to land the plane and leaving it to fly on auto-pilot she, of course, does a lot of stupid stuff so that the tension stays high. The two fight a lot and Lauren also wanders around the empty plane crying while it does flips in the air before she finally blows Ryan’s brains out and can concentrate on landing the plane, not knowing that it has been decided to shoot the plane down over the ocean (desert?) rather than risk the chance that she crash it in the middle of the city....
Sound familiar? Well, think of Airport 75 (1975 / trailer)—but with a stewardess without crossed eyes—peppered liberally with Dead Calm (1989 / trailer) or Ultraviolet (1992 / trailer), add the speech Dustin Hoffman gives to the pilot flying the bomber at the end of Outbreak (1995 / trailer) and you’ve got the full story.
As Ryan, Ray Liotta delivers another one of his patented psycho performances à la Something Wild (1986 / trailer) or Unlawful Entry (1992 / trailer)—something he is good enough at, but has done once too often. Though functional and believable, his performance fails to surprise or impress because it is so expectable and rather one dimensional. Still, had the film been better, Liotta’s presence might’ve not been so bothersome—Christopher Walkin’s patented psycho performance is pretty much just as predictable, but unlike Liotta, Walkin (usually) makes more interesting films, and thus the predictability of his performance is (usually) less annoying.
Much harder to stomach is actually Jim Carrey’s ex-wife Lauren Holly as Teri Halloran. The script gives her character all the brains of Betty Cooper—who Holly played in Archie: To Riverdale and Back Again (1990)—but without either the humor or personality. The little the script gives her Holly fails in any way to really add to for most of the film, and by the time she finally starts getting her shit together and takes the bull by the balls, the (male) viewer doesn’t really care.
Turbulence is a crappy thriller, but if stoned, you will probably find it a passable comedy. The babes out there probably won’t see it this way, but they would probably rather rent My Best Friend’s Wedding (1997 / trailer) instead anyway.