A prequel to ‘How the Grinch Stole Christmas’ made 11 years AFTER that film and despite being known as ‘Halloween is Grinch Night’ there isn’t a single mention of Halloween anywhere in this thing.

Instead we have the story of a young boy named Ucheria who, while on a trip to the bathroom during a sour sweet smelling storm ends up being blown directly into the path of The Grinch! Who’s heading down to Whoville while the storm rages with a ‘Paraphinalia wagon’ to unleash Untold horrors on Whoville. (Apparently he can only do this on storm days)

Honestly? It’s kind of middling. I don’t think it’s objectively bad, and it has that much loved Dr. Seuss style well and truly in tact in terms of visuals ans art direction.

But it’s just kind of a ‘nothing’ story. The Grinch isn’t particularly grumpy here, in fact he’s delighted for the most part, there’s a lot of repetition, the pacings kind of on the slow side…it feels like a book that shouldn’t have been adapted to TV…and that’s because it WAS a book originally that ended up being adapted for ABC.

It’s not interesting enough as a plot to really hold my attention and when the credits rolled I legitimately was like ‘Well…that was 30 minutes’. If it disappeared tomorrow I don’t think I’d be that bothered.

The performances are okay enough, not as good as the first film, they don’t really animate their voices all that much, it sounds ‘off brand’ to me. I think Karloffs absence hits this thing quite hard.

As does the lack of a *spark* behind the soundtrack. It sounds like ‘Grinch who stole christmas’ and that’s the problem, it sounds like a sound alike. Like a score TRYING to capture the success of the original. And as such it all comes across as ‘samey’ and uninspired.

I was surprised that this thing even existed quite honestly, but having seen it, I don’t think I’ve missed out on anything over the years. We have a time killer of a script married up to some colourful and solid cine and direction. But this thing feels wholley unoriginal. It’s nothing more than a vibrant Yawn.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/halloween-is-grinch-night/

I’ve had a soft spot for ‘Monsters Crash the Pajama Party’ ever since I first heard about the film way back in 2009 when I caught James Rolfe discussing it as part of his ‘Monster Madness’ series. This was the first film I ever imported from another country because it’s release from Something Weird Video was something really quite next level. a smogesboard of clips, extracts and hidden gems scattered across half a dozen ‘clickable’ pages all hidden as easter eggs. The combined sum offering a MORE than in depth exploration of the old ‘Spook Shows’ which ran from the late 1920’s through to the late 60s.

This short film is an element of the spook show experience and would have mainly been used to give the performers time behind the scenes to change costumes, prepare props or just generally set up their next live act. It was also designed to help set the tone and vibe for whatever act was coming next.

This is a short but sweet horror comedy piece about some sorority girls spending a night in a *supposedly* haunted house that was formerly home to a mad doctor who used to kidnap teenagers and turn them into animals…Only, it transpires that there actually IS a mad doctor in the basement who HAS turned a teen into a giant Ape and he’s looking to kidnap the girls to continue his experiments. Scooby Doo level hilarity ensues.

And…This absolutely isnt a particularly well made film. Cheap and cheerful is probably the best way I can describe it, the scripts super basic. it’s all melodramatic padding all the way through because the main plot of the film is basically “girls creep around a haunted house while being slowly picked off and taken to a lab by the Ape”. As such all the dialoue is fluff pieces just designed to help set the mood and tone, but nothing thats ACTUALLY said has ANY bearing on the plot.

It’s basically all here just to build to a moment in the closing minutes of the film where, had you been watching this in a theater. The mad doctor would send the Ape out into the audience to cause trouble and kidnap a planted ‘stooge’ who’d then get dragged out of the theater and *seemingly* into the movie. Thats it. Thats the whole point of the film. it’s a build up to a physical happening, and its designed to be filler for the live acts. It’s not ‘The Godfather.’

Directions basic, but functional, it does have a bit of a style about it and pretty much all the elements work together about as well as they could do. Cast directions almost non existent. I believe the director may have told the cast what he wanted, but I dont think it was much more nuanced than ‘Your a mad doctor, be crazy and over the top’ What im saying is, I dont think the director had nuanced conversations about actor placement, prop usage and motivations.

The cine is actually pretty impressive for a low/no budget feature, they’ve dressed the set spaces effectively given their budget and everything is dusty and cobweb ridden, as such they use that musty/dusty quality to their favour by keeping things low lit, moody and as such it gives the film a bit of a smokey quality. they also surprisingly use coloured lighting gels. Im certain the blue lighting used is only to show that it’s nighttime outside and that no more thought was put to it beyond that. But because it absolutely DOESNT look like that, it actually gives the film a bit of a faux arty quality which is pretty decent.

Oranges, Blues and Pinks are the flavour of the day, the whole thing doesnt look amazing. but for low budget cinema, its not terrible.

The performances are hamtastic. this is a big goofy dumb 30 minute schlocky comedy horror movie. and barring our sorority girls and their boyfriends who are considered ‘the foil’ here, the mad doctor, his henchmen and the ape are all full on scene chewing, melodramatic ham machines. they are SO over the top its almost overwhelming and I absolutely loved it when they were on screen. Camp to the nth degree, I found them SO watchable.

The soundtracks weird too, it’s plinky plonky early synth sounds, it doesnt suit the film at all, but weirdly I find it kind of charming. and absolutely a throwback to a much more experimental era.

All in all, this really isnt a great movie. I dont expect anyone to stand up and bat for this thing. But I personally thought it was just big goofy campy fun and a fine enough way to kill 30 minutes. I’d have loved to have seen it played out, as intended, as part of a bigger live production. But even isolated, I thought it was charming and charismatic despite how short it was. If you get 30 minutes and want a kooky, spooky campy 60’s spooky time. Check this one out. its…SO weird.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/monsters-crash-the-pajama-party/

I dont know if I just wasnt in the right headspace for this movie or what, but I just…didnt really get anything out of it. The bulk of the film is around a group rehersing a play for some kind of grand opening, theres a thriller element that comes in late at the end. The films top heavy on Oral and the sex scenes dont really do anything out of the ordinary on the direction or cine standfront. I didnt need to see Ron Jeremy have sex with a blow up doll, while commenting on the aesthetics of the blow up doll.

All in all, This was just a fairly standard erotic flick to me. It isnt the worst the 80s had to offer, in fact i’d say it was maybe a little above average for early 80’s adult features. But the direction is kind of flat and textbook, the cine was a little drab and uninspired, there wasnt much cast direction seemingly and other than a couple of zany moments, this film just kind of came across as a bit ‘mid’ to me.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/liquid-aets/

Another film widely to be considered one of ‘Full Moons’ better offerings ‘Head of the Family’ has two things going for it. It’s practical effects, and our core casts performances. Other than that this is, in my opinion I might add, one of the most mysoginistic movies i’ve sat through in a LONG time.

The basic plot seems to revolve around diner owner ‘Lance’, and his ‘bit on the side’, ‘Loretta’. Loretta is married to a big scary biker feller, but has been having a longstanding affair with Lance for a while. When big scary biker man decides he wants to get into racketeering and basically starts trying to threaten the diner for protection money. Lance realises that by getting rid of said biker, he could not only be free of intimidation, but he could also finally go ‘official’ with Loretta.

Fortune smiles on Lance when, one night while out driving with Loretta, the pair happen upon members of the ‘Stackpool’ family. a reclusive and eccentric family who’re known for their shady dealings in the town. The pair see the stackpools usher an unsuspecting pickup into their swamp based aboad, but think nothing of it…that is until the owner of said pickup turns up missing.

It turns out the Stackpools have been experimenting on random townsfolk and the literak ‘Head’ of the family, a chap byt he name of Myron, is about to recieve a visit from Lance with a blackmail laced offer that the Stackpools literally wont be able to refuse.

‘Throwback’ movies have been popular now for a very long time, the idea of trying to recapture the vibe of 70’s or 80’s exploitation cinema is nothing new. But I figured we’d left the kind of writing thats featured here back in the 1960s honestly.

NON of the female characters in this film are written with a shred of dignity. Literally every single one of them is only there seemingly to get naked, have sex, be ridiculed or put on and tormented/tortured, and thats it. Loretta as a character gets a couple of moments to act smarter than the guys in this film, but she always comes unstuck and always winds up worse off for it.

I dont think 10 minutes goes by in this movie without a scene of Loretta or Ernestina Stackpool getting fully naked or having sex. by the time of the end credits I was pretty convinced that i’d seen some backroom 70’s grimey porn flicks with more dignitiy and respect for women than this film shows across it’s entire runtime.

I mean, non of the guys exactly get off lightly either, but at least there are allusions to them getting the upper hand of a situation, of having respect to lose. The women in this film feel almost commodified and it’s deeply upsetting, awkward and just plain weird to sit through. The fact this came out in 1996 blows my mind quite honestly.

Other than that the scripts adrift. We have a basic plot about a love triangle where one of the parties tries to get rid of the other via nefarious means. Honestly though; that all takes a back seat to the softcore sex scenes, random nudity and abuse of women. it comes to something when you could actually chop the main plot of this movie OUT of this movie, and it would still more or less make sense as a work, theres that little ACTUAL plot in this thing.

Pacing is a little slow going, it’s incredibly repetitious and while a 3 act structure is obeyed in principle, you do have to squint to really see it. The dialogue, for what its *trying* to do, isnt half bad. but I feel a bit like the equivilent would be praising a klansman for his creative use of racism. Like, yeh…I guess you CAN be elequent in hate, but thats nothing to be proud of.

The direction, for Full Moon at this time is about the norm. in broad terms its nothing to write home about, a technically competent work that just about does the job, in Full Moon terms. it’s in the upper middle levels of quality, Not quite as good as their peaks (Puppet Master 1-3, Trancers) but by no means a poor offering.

Cine is much the same. We have a very styalised production that uses the cine effectively to really push the practical effects. composition is solid, this is arguably the “peak” of Full Moons creative ability on the cinematography front, the point where the feeling of care within the company was still very much there, right before CGI really became a prominant force and basically drowned the art of cine from the company entirely.

The performances are literally the films only other redeeming quality Blake Adams as Lance plays a quick talking, snake oil salesman southern type fantastically and really sells the sleaziness effectively. I feel bad for Jaqueline Lovell as Loretta here for giving her absolute best to a performance for a character that was written with only disdane in mind. She honestly deserved better because the one or two times she got to shine on the dialogue front, she REALLY knocked it out of the park. and I’d love to see her have a more meatier role in future.

Credit also has to go to J.W Perra as Myron. The big brained mutant with malicious intent is classically devious and helps pull the film up quality wise by quite a bit. He ooozes gross across the runtime, and easily has some of the most memorable parts within this thing. I’d be more than interested in seeing the character pop up again or at least to see J.W try this style of acting again under different circumstances.

The musics by Richard Band…yadda yadda yadda…seen one full moon features movie, you’ve heard his entire repetoir, yadda yadda yadda. Im not a fan.

I’ve been meaning to get around to this film for a good long while and I can only say that I was left with the feeling that while I out and out didnt hate this thing, I sure as hell didnt love it. it does have some elements going for it, and at least this full moon film actually HAS action happening in it (i’ve sat through WAY too many of these that amount to 90 minutes of 2 people in a room talking intercut with 10 minutes of violence at the beginning and end). Not one I’ll be back to in a hurry. I cant recommend this one in good faith.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/head-of-the-family/