Rating: 3/5
Cult Movie Challenge 2016 | 2/52 | Fred Olen Ray
The story you are about to see is true. Nothing has been changed. These are the actual people who lived this great adventure and this is exactly the way it really happened. I truly believe this. — Fred Olen Ray
Thunder crashes in front of a stately mansion. A cloaked figure (David Carradine) approaches holding the Necronomicon, which tells him to follow his conscience. He goes to the basement, finds a noose, and wraps it around his neck.
“You lose,” he tells the book as he jumps. The book disappears, swearing to return.
My close personal friend Dick Miller pulls up to the mansion in a white van, dropping off four college girls to clean the house and make $100 each.
The rules: no hanky panky, no monkey business.
The house has a long history of mysterious stories — people vanishing and whatnot.
Down in the basement, they find a trunk with an inscription in Latin — it shows the audience that it says never to open the chest. So, they open the chest.
Opening the chest brings back David Carradine and the book. He gives the book to the women. The book summons…
EVIL TOONS.
The movie is silly and winking to the audience. Our four heroes know all the haunted house tropes.
It’s also total sleaze, but it never pretends to be anything else — three of the leads were in the porn industry. The fourth was the director’s girlfriend at the time.
Still, the movie is surprisingly funny and fun at times. It’s dumb as hell and has no budget, but it has a consistent plot and developed lore, so I’m not mad.
Thoughts/Spoilers
- The tagline is: “This dude is rude!”
- Reading a book about Frankenstein and moaning like Frankenstein’s monster
- “Do any of you guys read foreign languages?”
- When Roxanne tried to open the wine with her teeth, I got so stressed
- The evil toon is an “awoooga” wolf that shows up for 90 seconds before morphing into Roxanne.
- It’s interesting how the scenes with the cartoons are not remastered. I guess their process would mess with the animation.
- “What are you doing? We heard screams, and now you’re naked and covered in blood!”
- Dick Miller, watching A Bucket of Blood. “How come this guy never won an Academy Award?”
- — “Is it worth a mere 100 bucks to be implicated in a murder?” — “Yes!”
- When Megan screams, her ponytail stands up on end.
- David Carradine has never been more useless