80's American Horror Part Seventy-Seven

HANGING HEART

(1983)

Dir - Jimmy Lee

Overall: WOOF

An incoherent, homoerotic fever dream thinly disguised as a trashy slasher film, Hanging Heart is quite the singular entry and not in a complimentary way.  The first of only two movies of any kind from South Korean filmmaker Jimmy Lee that unsurprisingly never found proper distribution in the US, the rambling, arbitrary structure of scenes is fascinating to a point as if all of the footage was tossed up into the air and then the editor was held at gunpoint to put it all together before the sand in an hourglass expired.  Lee, (also the screenwriter), not only has no grasp on how criminal law or police policy works, but he also seems just as oblivious to the laws of attraction or genuine, natural human behavior.  The lead protagonist is lusted after by nearly every woman and man that he encounters no matter how many times he seems to be the logical suspect of multiple murders and he gets let out on bail throughout his on-going trial.  Meanwhile, another lunatic randomly pops up now again to do mentally unhinged things, (and shoots heroin into his arm because that is what bad guys do), yet nobody seems to pay him any mind.  Not that there is any room for said character in the already bloated, hour and forty-three minute running time since that would mean that way too many other haphazardly tossed together moments would have to be either logically omitted or reconstructed into some semblance of intellectual deciphering.

 

THE ZERO BOYS

(1986)

Dir - Nico Mastorakis

Overall: MEH

The third straight, genre-starring vehicle for 80s scream queen Kelli Maroney, The Zero Boys is another dull snooze-fest of a slasher movie that is indistinguishable from the several other thousand that came out that decade.  Greek filmmaker Nico Mastorakis was no stranger to garbage, (as his 1976, juvenile, exploitation, anti-masterpiece Island of Death can attest to, just to name one), and he lays the sadism on sufficiently enough here where Joe Estivez embarrasses himself as usual, playing a mostly unseen, knife-wielding lunatic that likes to tie women to chairs and film himself cutting them up.  Of course because slasher movies, he also likes to needlessly play cat and mouse with his victims and defy the laws of physics at regular intervals, all while nobody can make their car start, keep the lights on, or get the phone to work when they want it to, though of course Estivez has no problem getting the phone to work whenever he wants it to.  Adding to the list of lazy as ever cliches to check off, it features sexually promiscuous bimbos and mimbos held up in an isolated log cabin, just to insure that anyone familiar with such derivative tripe can multitask without missing a beat while watching.  On the plus side, the third act slightly breaks up the formula by going full jungle survival mode, the music by Hans Zimmer and Stanley Myers is decent, and Mastorakis stages some ambitious tracking shots on occasion.

THE DEAD NEXT DOOR

(1989)

Dir - J. R. Bookwalter

Overall: MEH

 

Considering that it is essentially a home movie, J.R. Bookwalter's debut The Dead Next Door is impressive for what it manages to pull off.  Shot over four years on Super-8 film, it amazingly looks better than most SOV trash heaps and Bookwalter even swings a few cinematically ambitious shots here or there, including a zombie attack on the White House, (or at least the gates of the White House).  While the pacing is agreeable in the sense that it is not padded with people merely sitting around and talking, the fact that it is instead peppered with gore sequences every three minutes still renders it as monotonous.  The story is moronic and barely worth paying attention to, throwing religious nonsense and George Romero plot points together in a laughably silly, (and at least partly intentional), tongue-in-bloody-cheek manner.  With Sam Raimi serving as a financier and Bruce Campbell dubbing two different character's voices, (all of the voices are ADRed actually, all terribly, and all of the dialog relentlessly stupid), the movie is merely a shameless, low-rent homage.  Just to slam home the point, one guy is shown watching The Evil Dead and going on and on about how cool it is, plus most of the characters are named after notable horror directors and whatnot, a nod used both before and since in other films.  It has nothing unique to offer besides being kind of innocently fun for what it gets away with, but that is probably enough.