The B-Masters Cabal

Here’s a terrible thing to contemplate: for the past eight years, the B-Masters Cabal has sat silent and unprotesting as a blatant act of discrimination was committed in its midst. For eight years, one of our number – there’s no need to mention names – has devoted one month a year to the Undead….but not just any Undead, ohhhhh no: zombies only need apply. No welcome at the country club for you, Mr Vampire! No seat on the bus for you, Ms Mummy! Well, it’s past time that we balanced the ledger; and that’s why the next Roundtable will be—

Month Of The ALTERNATIVE Living Dead

Join us all through November as the B-Masters pay belated tribute to – the other dead meat!

Didn’t anyone in medieval times have access to soap? Everyone in Flesh + Blood looks like they and their clothes and homes could use with a good wash. I know I get irritable when I don’t have clean clothes and my daily shower, so this may explain why everyone in this movie is doing so many nasty things to each other. But it does result in this movie having some prime exploitation material, and that alone makes it worth a look.

Unintentionally, I again came up with two movies for the final installment of Month of the Living Dead that share an additional theme.  This time, it’s “Movies that can only be compared to Troma.”

Chopper Chicks In Zombietown (1989) was distributed by Troma, but was produced independently.  As such, it doesn’t try so gosh-darned hard to be willfully campy and, you know, Troma-esque.

Zombies Gone Wild (2007), on the other hand, finally answers the question, “How Troma-esque does a movie have to be before even Troma won’t distribute it?” (I’m making the assumption that Troma was approached before the filmmakers finally went with Westlake Entertainment Group.)

Seriously, some of this stuff Severin has sent me I’ve been hunting for years.  See if you can spot which are the screeners:

Cannibal Terror (1981), in which the dumbest criminals ever hide out in an Amazon jungle that bears a striking resemblance to the Pyrenees Mountains, and get slaughtered by Indians who bear a striking resemblance to a bunch of white guys from France…

Devil Hunter (1980), in which Jesus Franco decides that he needs a Porno Holocaust of his own…

Legend (1985), in which the devil really isn’t fond of unicorns, but likes Mia Sara just fine…

Papaya, Love Goddess of the Cannibals (1978), in which Joe D’Amato can’t see anything wrong with making a porno movie about anti-nuclear terrorists on a Caribbean island who are also a human-sacrificing Inca voodoo cult…

and…

The Plague (2006), in which the latest crop of Midwich kids take a more pro-active approach to the problems posed by their still-human elders.

THE DUNWICH HORROR
I imagine that Lovecraft’s tendency to devote more words to telling his reader how scared he or she should be than to describing the thing to be feared posed a problem to those filmmakers initially assigned the task of bringing his work to the screen. After all, until the advent of modern J-Horror — whose sensibility is pretty much right in line with Lovecraft’s — the common wisdom would have been that you were supposed to scare your audience by showing them something scary, rather than by just showing them a bunch of people being scared, or, even worse, showing a bunch of people talking about how potentially scary some vaguely defined thing might be if it it actually existed. Furthermore, such filmmakers might understandably conclude that a film whose every character was in a constant state of near-wordless cowering for no clear reason might quickly forfeit audience interest.

HEED YE THIS WARNING!! STRIP YOUR HOUSE OF ALL APPLIANCES LEST SATAN FIND AN ENTRANCE!!!!

Giving up the fight to think of something new for Long Island’s most famous piece of architecture to do, the screenwriters of the next set of Amityville sequels took a tip from author John G. Jones and packed up their troubles in an old piece of furniture. 1989’s Amityville: The Evil Escapes sees “Three Centuries Of Evil” on its way to the west coast hidden inside – [*snicker*] – a demonic lamp; while three years later, the same Evil (or is it??) takes a similar journey embedded in the workings of an antique clock, in Amityville 1992: It’s About Time. The results aren’t exactly terrifying, but they might make you think twice before you give into that urge to redecorate.

This week we venture to far-flung Hong Kong, where Romereoesque zombies gather some local flair in Bio-Zombie (1998)…

…and then to far-flung Kansas City, Missouri, where Todd Sheets does what he does best* in Zombie Bloodbath 2: Rage of the Undead (1995).

*Possibly the cruelest thing I’ve ever said.

HAUNTED PALACE
In 1960, AIP’s go-to director for cheap, quickly produced science fiction and horror double bills convinced the powers that be to gamble on letting him make a stand-alone film, in color, with double the production time and more money. Granted that, compared to other studios, this still meant an incredibly lean budget and an incredibly short production schedule. The result was Roger Corman’s Fall of the House of Usher, a landmark film in the history of American horror and one of the best Gothic horror films from any country. With the runaway success of House of Usher, Corman found himself free to direct a rapid succession of follow-up films that all relied on the same basic formula. In 1963, flush with success and probably more than entitled to do so, Corman asked if he could do something just a little bit different.

For some people, prison sure looks like a swell place to be. You get a roof over your head, three square meals a day, and free medical care. But the movie Felon argues otherwise. Among the many horrors it depicts about prison life, it points out that your cellmate may turn out to be a famous Hollywood actor who now has a fat face. Well, it turns out to be more respectable work than doing voiceover work for an action-adventure TV show. Guessed who it is yet? If not, read the review!