Schlocktoberfest 666: Recap of the Beast!

More like reCRAP of the Beast! We vow to never, ever, ever do a whole fucking month of one Schlock theme. We had two really rough years in a row and we can’t do it anymore.

In order from best to worst score:

Evilspeak (9)
Prince of Darkness (8) *(5.5/5)
The Devil’s Bride (7.77)
Hellraiser: Bloodline (7)
Demons (6.76)
Satan’s Cheerleaders (6)
Demons 2 (6)
Highway to Hell (5)
Devil Times Five (5)
Mark of the Devil (5)
Satan’s Slave (4)
The House Of The Devil (4)
Fear No Evil (4)
Blood Cult (4)
Midnight (3.5)
Beyond the Door (3)
The Unholy (3)
The Godsend (3)
Teenage Exorcist (3)
976-EVIL (2.5)
Look What’s Happened To Rosemary’s Baby (2)
Devil (2)
To The Devil A Daughter (2)
End of Days (2)
A Bell From Hell (2)
Revenge (Blood Cult 2) (1.5)
Messiah of Evil (1.5)
The Demons of Ludlow (1)
The Devil’s Rain (1)
The Church (1)
Satan War (-666)

Brad’s Thoughts

I’m re-reading our last year’s Recap of Terror for our month of Rock-centric Schlock and I can’t believe we tried the whole month theme again. Well, anyone who has a devil may care attitude about watching supposedly known bad movies shouldn’t be surprised that we’re masochists and our site here is testament to that. But we just couldn’t pass up the 666 theme this year. In retrospect, by the looks of it we could’ve just done a week since most of these movies are complete duds. As usual. But we were hoping that this sub-genre was at least broader or the very least more in tune with the horror genre and could have some hidden “gems.” Yeah no. More like hidden waste. Don’t expect a whole month theme ever again or any time soon.

Most Pleasant Surprise: This is sad but I have to say Highway to Hell. Sad because it was a horror-comedy-action flick. But it was entertaining in a very home-sick-on-the-couch-HBO-afternoon-movie. It could’ve been better but it also could’ve been way way worse.

Most Disappointing: For a Hammer Horror flick starring Christopher Lee, there should’ve been no excuse for such a terrible unwatchable piece of excrement as To The Devil a Daughter.

Favorite Villain: However, I’d still have to give Lee’s Father Michael Rayner in To The Devil A Daughter best villain. It’s Christopher Lee first of all and second, out of all the other villains there’s not much to choose from.

Least Favorite Villain: Herbert Lom’s Lord Cumberland in Mark of the Devil is my least favorite villain since we really wasn’t that evil. Sure he’s responsible for 100s of innocent deaths because of the witch-hunts but in his mind he thinks he’s doing God’s work and even in scenes of the film he has some compassion and a sense of justice.

Best Kill: The two major deaths in Satan’s Slave are still highly regarded as something worth seeing to me. The boyfriend’s plummet back to solid ground and Stephen getting his eye pierced were both very well done and in perfect poor taste.

Worst Kill: Hmmm. Looking back, I’m still baffled at how Royce fell on his sword that was on his back as he fell off his motorcycle in Highway to Hell. And it happened off screen conveniently. That was terrible. But I’ll also give discredit to Udo Kier’s lame death scene in the finale of Mark of the Devil.

Best Devil/Demon/Evil Force: I’d have to give most Satanic credit to Mr. Gabriel Byrne from End of Days. He seemed like he had the most fun playing Old Scratch out of all the other “demons” I watched this month. He surely pales in comparison to other high-profile flicks that had a personification of Satan like, say, Jack Nicholson in The Witches of Eastwick or Al Pacino in The Devil’s Advocate but for what this month’s worth, Byrne could’ve been way worse.

Worst Devil/Demon/Evil Force: Satan War. Satan War. SATAN WAR!

SCHLOCKTOBERFEST 666 – SEVEN DEADLY SINS:

Envy: I’m insanely jealous of Brian’s review of the Demon franchise. I watched the first one with him and I couldn’t believe how insane and, well, stupid it is and it was a perfect “So-Bad-Its-Good” type of flick. I’m jealous of Jim’s review of Hellraiser: Bloodline. Mostly because I’ve only seen the first two Hellraisers and I stupidly forgot about that franchise going into this Schlocktoberfest. There’s like 5 more Hellraisers I could’ve chosen. Plus, from his review, it also looked like a decent watch.

Gluttony: I wished I could’ve had some of the pizza that Eddie Deezen brought over to gang in Teenage Exorcist. Plus he mentioned Calamari, Cannelloni, Cannelloni and Cacciatore. I didn’t mention this during my review but he says he has a side order of those but all he’s holding is 5 pizza boxes.

Greed: I could’ve been more generous with my Hammer-produced Christopher Lee-starring movies this month.

Lust: Well I did have some decent video-paused moments because of Satan’s Cheerleaders. Also Brinke Stevens wearing a thong with fish-net stockings and a leather bra for the last third of Teenage Exorcist. I also had a thing for Candace Glendenning in Satan’s Slave.

Pride: I’m totally Barry-Horowitzing myself about having endured and martyred myself with watching the unwatchable Satan War. This is easily the second worst movie I ever saw (Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny is going to be real tough to beat) and I didn’t think anything would beat Things. And then I thought nothing would beat Heavy Metal Massacre. I’m afraid what Schlocktoberfest 7 will torture me with.

Sloth: I actually watched 6 other “Satanic” themed movies this month but I was too lazy to write reviews for them. And some were better flicks than what I reviewed. In fact, I was going to do a huge Exorcist prequels review but I just went limp with the interest to do so.

Wrath: If I didn’t mention enough, Satan War was such an abomination in the annals of filmmaking that for the first time in Schlocktoberfest history I fast-forwarded the last 15 minutes because I hated it so much and I didn’t want to suffer much longer.

Brian’s Thoughts

We hope you enjoyed the very last of our fully themed Schlocktoberfest. Finding decent devil movies was surprisingly difficult, and like Donovan at the end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, it got old fast. I can’t fully speak for my friends here, but just look at the list of scores above—nearly everything was a god damned hellish chore. Although so was last year’s metal theme, but for whatever reason that was a lot more fun. So let us officially announce that we’re going back to our roots next year with no overall theme except for schlocky horror with “Schlocktoberfest Episode VII: The Schlock Awakens.”

Most Pleasant Surprise: Oof. I suppose it would be Blood Cult. I was expecting something completely abysmal. And I got that. But I got more. A lot more. Well, not really, but it was fun for the most part, mainly because it was shot with what seemed like the same VHS camcorder my grandpa had, the one where you had to carry the heavy VCR in around in a bag over your shoulder so it could be hooked up to the camera to record.

Least Pleasant Surprise: The Church is what happens when you have dozens of amazing ideas for a religiously themed movie and execute zero of them well.

Most Disappointing Movie: Revenge, which took all of my good will toward Blood Cult and sucked it dry like Caninus at his water bowl.

Favorite Villain: Even though he never actually appears onscreen (actually he might at the end of Revenge, it’s not really clear) you’ve gotta love Caninus the demon dog and god of death from Blood Cult and Revenge.

Runners-up: The little boy demon from Demons 2; the satanic incest family from Midnight.

Best Kill: The motorcycle mayhem scene from Demons:

Runner-up: The first shower dismemberment from Blood Cult; the horrible-looking decapitations from Midnight; the jackhammer through the chest from The Church.

Worst Nightmare: John Carradine’s fingers in Revenge.

What in Caninus's name?? His fingers look like they were brined for a week and then a pack of dobermans with bad teeth mistook them for Snausages.

His fingers look like carrots from a farm near Chernobyl.

Favorite Character: Oh no question the pimp from Demons. Do I really need to go into reasons?

Runners-up: Lawrence Tierney. Also, the octogenarian sheriff from Blood Cult, who only wanted Arby’s and a nap, in that order.

Least Favorite Character: Hands down Jeff from The Video Dead. Yeah that was five years ago but I still hate him. This year, I’ll say any group of punks from the Demons series because they’re all as useless as tits on a demon bull.

Best Achievement in Casting: Lawrence Tierney as the molesting stepfather/hero of Midnight.

Runners-up: Bobby Rhodes as Tony the Pimp in Demons and Hank the Gym Pimp in Demons 2; Egg Shen as Professor Howard Birack (?) in Prince of Darkness; John Carradine as himself in Revenge; Juliet Mills as Jessica in Beyond the Door; Stephen Geoffreys in ~~Butt Blazers~~ 976-EVIL.

Best Achievement in Special Effects: The growth of demon teeth in Demons and Demons 2.

Worst Achievement in Special Effects: The garbage bag demon wings in The Church.

This costume looks like something a frat guy would throw together the morning of a Halloween party. And he'd still get laid just like this!

Garbage day!

Best Line: “God damn it, I forgot my book.” – the 10-year-old daughter from Beyond the Door.

SCHLOCKTOBERFEST 666 – SEVEN DEADLY SINS:

Envy: I envy Brad for having a new least-favorite movie of all time with Satan War (and a new popcorn maker, although it’s possibly haunted and/or cursed). I envy Jim for getting to see a Clint Howard shower scene in Evilspeak, and also for fully enjoying a movie he watched this month.

Gluttony: There is no clearer choice here than the cafeteria scene from Blood Cult. Runner-up: The completely unnecessary stealing of groceries for a day trip in Midnight.

Greed: I feel like I hoarded the Demons series for myself, which is a genre Jim probably would have been much better with.

Lust: Hmm, slim pickings in that department this year. Let’s go with the daughter from Blood Cult, whatever her name was. I know she’s not a classic beauty, but she seems the right amount of crazy that would be beneficial in intimate times. Runners-up: The inbred satanic cult daughter from Midnight, who was more attractive, but more the wrong amount of crazy. Maybe I have a thing for cult chicks. I hope my wife isn’t reading this. And I guess I’d better also say the woman who looked like my wife a little in Prince of Darkness. Also, the succubus from The Unholy was somewhat mesmerizing. Honorable mention: Lawrence Tierney from Midnight.

My wife gives me the same look when I take too long to do the dishes.

Pride: My digression about werewolves during my 976-EVIL review:

This pile of fish semen (milt, now you know) has completely lost my interest, so let’s discuss something else for a while. How about this, at what point during the day of a full moon do werewolves transform? A lot of times you can see the moon in the sky during daylight hours, so is that all it takes? Can a werewolf transform at 3 p.m.? In every werewolf movie the full moon is shown lighting up the night sky right before the transformation. Does it have to be like directly overhead? And almost always when the shot of the full moon is shown there are some clouds just rolling away from the moon. Does the full moon have the same effect on a cloudy night? If the full moon is totally obscured by cloud cover, does it have the same effect on a werewolf transformation? Maybe it’s the moon’s rays that trigger the transformation, and they have to be at peak shininess for a transformation to occur? Kind of like Superman getting power from the sun. Which I never fully understood, either. But I’m not a big comics reader, but from every Superman movie I’ve seen, the sun doesn’t seem to play a big part. Except when Nuclear Man is created, of course. What if Nuclear Man was a werewolf? When there’s no sunlight, he powers down, but if there’s a full moon and he transforms, would he have power then? He did fight Superman literally on the moon, would that give him both werewolf and sun powers? If an astronaut was a werewolf, would he be a werewolf full time on the moon? I think this may have been addressed in a comic book, like a Spider-Man villain. Let me look… ok, so I was thinking of John Jameson, who was Man-Wolf (super-creative moniker), but that seemed to do with a magical jewel and had nothing to do with him being an astronaut. Missed opportunity, if you asked me. That would make a cool movie, where the moon has been taken over entirely by werewolves, who are so powerful on the moon that they’re unaffected by the lack of atmosphere. They build a new society and also a doomsday weapon that they plan to destroy Earth with, and any attempt to send a team of soldiers to eliminate the werewolves is unsuccessful because obviously the werewolves can see them coming so they just shoot any spacecraft down. So Earth has to build their own doomsday weapon to destroy the moon, but obviously that will have a catastrophic impact on Earth in return. So it’s either get destroyed by the werewolves, or destroy the moon before the werewolves can destroy us, but then dooming our own planet. I’m loving this idea. Of course, I guess it doesn’t really have to be werewolves, could be just aliens or evil humans who go to the moon, but the werewolf idea is much better. But what do they eat on the moon? Werewolves are bloodthirsty carnivores, it’s not like they would be satisfied with growing crops. I guess they could bring human slaves with them to build their society and then eat, but that doesn’t seem sustainable in the long run. But there’s no evidence in werewolf lore that they need to eat people to survive, so maybe they could survive on plants and vegetables. I did cover some of this ground in my Neowolf review last year, but it bears repeating. Well, it’s still a good idea, just needs refinement. I’ll call it MOONDOOM. Anyway, where was I? Oh, shit, 976-EVIL…

Runner-up: My world-class frisbee and boomerang jokes from Midnight:

45-minute scene of two teens playing frisbee. Is the frisbee satanic? Possibly. I was a little confused why the frisbee kept getting bigger and bigger as it flew through the air, then it hit me. If only the frisbee had razor blades in it.

I also had a pretty good joke about boomerangs, but I forgot it. Oh well, it’ll come back to me.

Sloth: The Unholy was the most boring slog I sat through this month, with no interesting characters or anything interesting happening until the last 10 minutes. Runner-up: The Church, which is actually a lot like The Unholy but at least it had some special effects and nice shots. Third place: Devil, which was impressive in its efforts of not making me care about any of the characters or anything that was happening.

Wrath: I was a bit surprised that I hated The Church as much as I did. Revenge was really bad but my expectations were as high as Hillary Clinton winning Alabama. 976-EVIL and The Unholy were also wastes of time, but at least they had plots. Fuck The Church and the demon it rode in on.

Best Writing Partners: Once again, Brad and Jim, who are my brothers in Caninus’s army.

Jim’s Thoughts and Satanic Prayers

Yay, let us begin my recap of the sixth festival of Schlock with a quick blessing from St. Michael of Python:

Now that the sermon is out of the way, may I have this danse?

Most Pleasant Surprise: I’d have to go with Hellraiser: Bloodline. It has been awhile since I’ve revisited this series, and this was the one with the 2^nd worst rating so I of course went for it guns a-blazin’. I am happy to report that after the smoke cleared there wasn’t much damage to report.

Most Disappointing Movie: A Bell From Hell. Granted I wasn’t as disappointed as the director of this obviously was, but I did have the unique pleasure of being able to simply turn this shit-fest off.

Favorite Villain: Mr. Ulman as portrayed by the incomparable Tom Noonan. He played it cool, calm, and smooth like a very expensive single malt scotch. Love this guy and he deserves some kick-your-ass devil metal.

Favorite Final Girl: I don’t think there was one this year. Not a favorite, I don’t think there were any final girls. Lemme look back. The only one who fits the category is Samantha from The House of the Devil. Well, just like Steven Bradbury I guess she gets the gold by default.

Ms. Schlocktoberfest 2016: Anitra Ford from Messiah of Evil. I don’t give a shit how old this makes me look – the classics are called such for a reason.

What’s with these homies dissing my girl? Why do they gotta front?

Best Kill: Megan’s face being blown off from The House of the Devil. This was old school in-camera gore like Savini’s work in Maniac and Dawn of the Dead, and was the only saving grace for this movie.

Worst Kill: Sorrell Booke’s half-assed demise at the hands of Leif Garret from Devil Times Five. Maybe because a kid couldn’t get enough power in swinging an axe for a clean decapitation; poor Boss Hogg basically got a fatal axe wound to the neck and then ended up being a snowball target.

Best Nude Scene: I only had six movies with some skin this year, and none of them were on par for what I would consider a nude scene in the classic sense. That being said, I guess I’ll go with Leif’s mom from Devil Times Five, and Ms. Friedemeyer from Evilspeak.

ANCENSORED.COM

evilspeak-nude

Most Deserving Death: Frank the “ca-ca” cynic from Prince of Darkness. Bursting with insects like he was Violet Beauregard then falling apart in chunks like he was a guy who… fell apart in chunks. The simile well has gone dry yet again.

I Shall Wash, But I Shan’t Be Clean: Fear No Evil. Satan’s rebirth/avatar/son/whatever the flying fuck, running around in lingerie is just plain silly.

SCHLOCKTOBERFEST 666 – SEVEN DEADLY SINS (with musical accompaniment):

Best Pride: My review for The House of The Devil. It wasn’t as vile as the one I did for You’re Next, but I think this one was funnier and more gooder.

Best Envy: Brian’s review of 976-Evil, and Brad’s review of Satan’s Cheerleaders.

Best Wrath: Giving Look What’s Happened To Rosemary’s Baby what for. A shit quasi-sequel with shit actors, a shit plot, shit effects, and shit on top of shit with more shit.

Best Gluttony: My recurring use of the phrase:

itsthe80s

Best Lust: Ms. Friedemeyer’s shower scene with those darned Satanic pigs. She may have stolen things, she may have not been nice enough to Stanley, she may have tried to mess with Satan’s diary – but Jiminy Cricket, with a caboose like that all is forgiven sister.

She’s wearing a thong, she’s not nude. The gif of the demon banging the chick from The Church is more explicit.

Best Sloth: Messiah of Evil. I wasn’t kidding about cooking while watching it – I was literally poking my head out from the kitchen whenever something that sounded interesting happened. Nothing did and I overcooked $35 worth of scallops due to my laziness.

Best Greed: Finding myself at the end of the month with the least amount of comments on my reviews. There should have been more. I won’t forget that.

Biggest Regret: The fact that I couldn’t squeeze the video for “Sister Christian” into one of these categories.

Benediction: If I read all of our reviews correctly, these were probably some of the worst movies we have ever watched. Some would say that is quite fitting if you choose to dedicate a whole month to the Dark Prince – but as always I enjoyed the last 31 days immensely.

Counting the leftovers I posted along with the reviews I did this Schlocktober, everyone should know that my texts and emails will be no longer than two sentences for the foreseeable future. I haven’t written this much since I bull-shitted my way out of every essay question during finals in high school.

Schlock 666: Catch the witness, catch the wit, catch the spirit, catch the spit.

My rookie year was 2011, and now I’m in the Big League Chew.