"KEEP BUSTIN'."

Posts Tagged ‘Michael J. Pollard’

Sleepaway Camp II: Happy Campers / Sleepaway Camp III: Teenage Wasteland

Friday, October 27th, 2023

Many years back I wrote about SLEEPAWAY CAMP, a unique and noteworthy slasher sleazefest from two-time East Coast indie filmmaker Robert Hiltzik. I also reviewed his only followup, the lesser known but similarly crazy RETURN TO SLEEPAWAY CAMP. But until now I never returned to the two odd sequels from the late ‘80s, from the production company behind BLOOD RAGE and some Frank Stallone movies. Because they were new when I came of horror age they actually made way more of an impression on me growing up than the grimier original did.

These ones have a totally different feel, much more tongue-in-cheek, but still pretty befuddling. They were shot back-to-back (you know, like the BACK TO THE FUTURE or THE MATRIX trilogies), and you can tell, though they kindly switch up the premise slightly. Both are directed by Michael A. Simpson (FUNLAND) and written by Michael Hitchcock (WHERE THE DAY TAKES YOU) under the pseudonym Fritz Gordon. (read the rest of this shit…)

Split Second

Thursday, May 26th, 2022

“Are you telling me there’s some thing running loose in this city ripping the hearts out of people and eating them so he can take their souls back to Hell?”

“Looks that way.”


I think you will be surprised to hear that I never saw SPLIT SECOND until now. Released against LEAVING NORMAL and NIGHT ON EARTH on May 1, 1992, I guess we could say it was the first sci-fi or action movie of Weird Summer. It’s part of that brief, beautiful phase when Rutger Hauer could be the protagonist of action movies (see also WANTED: DEAD OR ALIVE, BLIND FURY and THE BLOOD OF HEROES).

He plays Harley Stone, an infamously burnt out London homicide detective in the futuristic year of 2008. His first line of the movie is “Police, dickhead,” said to a barking guard dog while flashing his badge. Later he’ll call the dog a dickhead again and accuse him of knowing something about a murder. So he’s a pretty good action hero.

(read the rest of this shit…)

Toxic Crusaders

Tuesday, March 8th, 2022

Murakami Wolf Productions was an American animation studio founded in 1967 by Jimmy T. Murakami and Fred Wolf. Murakami was an animator at the UPA studio and then co-directed the live action Roger Corman films HUMANOIDS FROM THE DEEP and BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS in addition to animated features like WHEN THE WIND BLOWS and segments of HEAVY METAL; Wolf had been an animator on The Alvin Show and The Flintstones before directing such hippie era TV artifacts as The Point, Free to Be… You & Me and Puff the Magic Dragon. In the late ‘80s the toy company Playmates hired Murakami Wolf’s new satellite studio in Dublin to produce a mini-series based on a culty black-and-white comic book to test the waters for a possible line of action figures. It was called Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and you may remember the hubbub – cowabunga, fight for rights and your freedom to speak, Michelangelo is a party dude, etc.

Several years later, after the entire world had been shaken to its core by the effects of Turtle Power, I guess it seemed to some of those guys like any weird underground shit could be magically turned into a massively lucrative, completely inexplicable pop culture phenomenon. According to Lloyd Kaufman’s book, an agent named John Russo asked if he’d ever considered making his unrated gore and boobs franchise THE TOXIC AVENGER into a G-rated kiddie cartoon, and introduced him to Buzz Potamkin, Emmy-nominated producer of the Berenstain Bears cartoons, the Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue anti-drug PSA and Hawaiian Punch commercials. Potamkin and Murakami Wolf proposed turning THE TOXIC AVENGER into a kid friendly cartoon – an idea that became one 13-episode season of The Toxic Crusaders, which aired in syndication between March 1st and May 20th, 1990. (read the rest of this shit…)

House of 1000 Corpses

Saturday, April 19th, 2003

Well this is the long delayed horror movie from first time writer-director Robert Zombie. Let’s face it, that’s probaly not the dude’s real name. But I like it better than “McG.” Apparently Mr. Zombie is some sort of rock and/or roller who directs his own videos and draws his own album covers, and my guess is that he’s better at the artistical stuff than at the actual rock n roll.

Everything I know about Rob Zombie I know from this movie. I know that he likes brutal ’70s horror movies, in particular THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE but also probaly THE HILLS HAVE EYES. I know that he is fascinated by gaudy roadside attractions, tasteless t-shirt slogans, phoney sideshow curiosities, serial killer legends, spookhouse rides, scary rednecks, Bela Lugosi movies, Zacherly-style TV horror hosts, iconic Halloween decorations, oversized paper mache masks, gimmicky cereal boxes, old video footage faded to the point of abstraction, violent satanic rituals. He also has great taste in b-movie actors judging by the cast which includes Sid Haig (SPIDER BABY), Bill Moseley (TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE PART 2), Tom Towles (HENRY: PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER) and Karen Black (everything). If you cram all of those motifs and influences so that they barely fit into one movie, this is what you get. Or to put it another way, you take the first two texas chain saw movies, and you put an episode of Pee Wee’s playhouse in between em, then you smoosh it together like a peanut butter sandwich and keep it in your pocket for a while. like that imaginary sandwich the movie is kind of sticky and messy and doesn’t really work but it’s got a lot of good shit in there. I’m not sure why the hell you would put a sandwich in your pocket though, that’s kind of a weird analogy. what the hell man. (read the rest of this shit…)