(1981)
Dir - Charles Reynolds
Overall: WOOF
The only film from the writer/director team of Tom McIntyre and Charles Reynolds and one of several regional oddities from producer Earl Owensby, A Day of Judgement is a colossally boring Southern Gothic drama with a, (very), small handful of macabre vignettes to also classify it as a horror movie. Done on a noticeably non-existent budget where the set decor is sparse and the acting is front-to-back pedestrian, the story concerns a hillbilly town full of morally dubious people who go about their petty squabbles for roughly ninety-three solid minutes with about three minutes left over for the Grim Reaper to show up and murder a few and/or show them some haunting nightmares of their doomed afterlife if they do not change their sinful ways. Thankfully, the later moments are garishly striking where the cinematography actually breaks from just being completely flat and lifeless, with eerie blue and red light, hands coming out of the ground, flashes of a scythe, and the Reaper's cheap Halloween makeup creating some low-rent haunted house atmosphere that is genuinely fun. The rest and overwhelming majority of the film is unwatchably dull though, plodding on and on in its rudimentary attempt at being a morality tale with a Christian slant.
(1982)
Dir - Greydon Clark
Overall: MEH
A slasher parody via absurdist boner comedy, Wacko is as stupid as stupid movies get and with every intention of being so. Boasting a recognizable cast and directed by genre-hopping Greydon Clark, it goes for non-stop nyuck nyucks and only hits about one out of a hundred of its attempts, which is at least better than hitting zero out of a hundred of its attempts. There are endless shout-outs, (mostly blatant yet some subtle), to more famous movies and every character seems controlled to some extent by their genitalia, as even George Kennedy creeps on his teenage daughter, (eeewww), and Joe Don Baker gets to partake of a steamy make-out session with an Elizabeth Daily who is half her age. Other players include Stella Stevens, Julia Duffy, Anthony James, Charles Napier, and a twenty-five year old Andrew Dice Clay doing a watered-down version of his soon-to-be-famous shtick, playing a high-school greaser with an special ed level IQ that barely registers as lower than any one else's. The whole thing gets by to some extent on its frenzied, obnoxious charm as well as everyone on screen embarrassing themselves with such shamelessly juvenile material, plus cinema's most ridiculous chest-buster homage this side of Spaceballs is always appreciated.
(1987)
Dir - Guy Magar
Overall: MEH
The first independently made full-length from television filmmaker Guy Magar which he apparently struggled for several years to gain financing for, Retribution has some inventively campy supernatural sequences and nasty violence yet is otherwise a bloated mess. Though the performances are melodramatically acceptable, Dennis Lipscomb is awkwardly miscast in the lead. Playing a schlubby painter who lives in a dingy apartment and becomes possessed by the evil spirit of a murdered gambler is all fine and good, but when he is also involved in a romantic relationship with a foxy prostitute who is head-over-heels into him and has to make sinister, bad-ass faces when in his villainous form, the movie loses several ounces of verisimilitude. The plotting meanders and pads up the running time at least twenty-odd minutes over what it should be, plus Alan Howarth's dated synth score is hardly one of hist best and also hardly ever shuts the hell up. Still, Magar makes it a ghastly spectacle here or there, utilizing his modest budget for some styled freakouts full of wailing wind, unnaturally vibrant colors, brutal gore, and some gnarly monster makeup.
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