Short of the Week #73: Girl In The Hallway

Valerie Barnhart's Girl in the Hallway, a short film that basically slayed all in attendance when it screened at Fantasia has now been uploaded to Vimeo. Enjoy is likely the wrong word, but here it is.

NYG.

Geez, I wish I lived in New York - at least in October - so I could catch this screening of Black Gloves and Razors at Brooklyn's Spectacle Theater. Once a legendary bootleg tape of the gialli's greatest hits cobbled together by musician Sam McKinlay, it has now been digitized and ready to stain the walls of the Spectacle red. Here's the sizzle reel.

I don't often succumb to FOMO - because frankly my own city has an embarrassment of riches - but DAYAMMMMM. Black Gloves and Razors plays the Spectacle Theater Oct 5th and 31st.

More Frankenstein Than Dracula

With the recent passing of Sid Haig, I dived into his early career for this week's pick. Since I posted about Spiderbaby – the obvious choice – back in 2010, I went with 1966's Blood Bath.

A string of disappearances in a seaside town may have something to do with an eccentric artist named Sordi (William Campbell) known for painting portraits of “dead red nudes”.

At just over an hour long, Blood Bath was an entertaining enough slice of cult Americana. It featured all the hallmarks of Roger Corman & Jack Hill's sixties oeuvre, along with sprinkles of House of Wax and H.G Lewis' Color Me Blood Red, the latter of which was released a year previous. I also detected perhaps the finale may have inspired Bill Lustig when it came to end his seminal flick Maniac. Additionally, I was struck by the scenery and locale that I later learned was Yugoslavia. This was one of the few times that I have wished a black & white picture was filmed in colour.

I found it funny that even in the sixties, people were making fun of the art world's latent pretentiousness. It was amusing to watch and you can tell they were having fun with it. However, I cannot fail to mention that a good chunk of the movie is scantily clad women running around on the beach. Because, you know, it is a Corman/Hill production. Those swimsuits on Lori Saunders were hanging on for dear life, but truth be told what made more excitable was watching her try to cut bread.

I was a little taken aback when the vampire showed up, as it seemed to come out of nowhere. Of course, I found out later that this picture was really three movies in one. Originally, it was an unreleasable picture from Yugoslavia called Portrait of Terror, for which Jack Hill then shot new scenes (including the stuff with Sid Haig) and became Blood Bath. Then, Corman employed a director named Stephanie Rothman to add in all the vampire stuff. This all resulted in it being a somewhat disjointed, yet still watchable affair.

Sig Haig (2nd from left) in Blood Bath.

Short of the Week #72: Waterborne

SotW returns with this 2014 Australian effort called Waterborne from Ryan Coonan. It's sure to tickle the fancy of zombie and marsupial lovers alike!

R.I.P. Sid Haig 1939-2019

I heard the sad news today that veteran actor Sid Haig past away a few days ago. He was 80. Haig was a genre giant with a career that spanned six decades in film and television. Over that time, he worked with directors like George Lucas, Jack Hill, Quentin Tarantino and Rob Zombie.

Sid Haig at Festival of Fear in 2008.

I would best come to know him as Captain Spaulding from Zombie's ouevre, but back when I worked at the video store I remember Haig's screaming face greeting me from the cover box of Spiderbaby every time I walked by my horror section. I met him at the Festival of Fear in 2008 and he struck me as a very warm guy and a great storyteller.

Rest in peace, Mr. Haig.

Brought To You By The Letter M.

This week I watched a pair of eighties slashers, Joe Giannone's 1981 flick Madman and Buddy Cooper's The Mutilator from 1984, the latter of which I had never seen before.

Madman was technically a re-watch, but I remembered little past the antagonist named Marz and the opening where the inevitable dickhead screwed over everyone in the movie by doing the thing that they're not supposed to do. I recall this being decent when I was a kid, but it did not hold up well. I just have so many questions.

This was supposed to be a camp for gifted children, but there are only five and half of them looked as old as the people watching over them. And by “watching over them”, I mean they stuffed them in a cabin so they could go drink and screw. You know, usual slasher stuff.

Gaylen Ross in Madman

Gaylen Ross was in this movie - under the assumed name of Alexis Dubin - and God bless her because she's one of the few bright spots. I wonder if she was as confounded as I was while doing that awkward, awkward hot tub scene that went on forever.

Madman does have two other points of interest. I realized this movie was the root of my phobia about car hoods falling on my head while I'm leaning in to check the fluids – that rod is so flimsy, I don't trust it! Then, there's that classic scene where Ellie (Jan Claire) panics and hides in the refrigerator.

And the most ridiculous thing is that it worked! She'd have been fine if she'd just stayed in there for more than thirty seconds. Lastly, I think the main detractor was that the ending sooooked. It's super frustrating seeing the Final Girl get smoked at the zero hour, but the guy who'd been wandering around the woods alone almost the entire movie – stumbling into the killer's cabin twice I might add – somehow managed to get picked up at the end. Unacceptable!

Moving onto The Mutilator which had somehow eluded my eyes until now. This had a slightly less annoying bunch of good looking people, including Matt Mitler, star of such unclassics as Breeders and Deadtime Stories. In typical slasher form, they go to a remote location, engage in some drinking and fraternizing and then get picked off by a guy who likes to sleep with his axe.

Speaking of fraternizing, this one also has a weird sexy water time sequence, made so by music that would've been more at home in some seventies TV police drama. Sadly, The Mutilator committed the cardinal sin of killing the hottest girl (Frances Raines) first. In slow motion, no less. Actually, Imdb tells me that was a last minute change because they couldn't get their original gore gag to go. Also, they put milk in the pool to make it cloudy. Gross.

So the killer – who it's not a reveal to say is Mitler's dad – was hella pissed. In an unnecessarily nasty scene, he jabbed a giant fish hook through a gal's groin before beheading her. I have to ask, why so furious? I get it, your kid accidentally shot your wife, but you know what? You could've also locked up your arsenal of loaded guns. Just saying.

The Mutilator featured better gore – two sizable continuity errors notwithstanding – so I'll give the edge to this one over Madman, but they are both definitely second-tier efforts.

Nailed It!

There's a new episode of The Rewind Zone up at Rue Morgue TV. This time host Yasmina Ketita regales us about her love of the awesomely awful 1985 slasher Nail Gun Massacre.