(1991)
Dir - William Cooke/Paul Talbot
Overall: WOOF
This South Carolina shot dung heap was the first of two insufficiently budgeted horror movies that the writer/director duo of William Cooke and Paul Talbot did with Gunnar Hansen, but the OG Leatherface's inclusion is hardly enough to make it watchable. Campfire Tales, (as the title would suggest), is an anthology film with a framing story set around such a campfire where mulleted bad actor teenagers sit and listen to Hansen's mysterious hobo who comes out the woods to spin some yarns. None of the stories are good, but at least two of them are borderline unique, the grimy Reefer Madness tweak "Overtook" and a Yuletide segment "The Fright Before Xmas" where a literal Satan Clause murders an asshole who kills his mother for his inheritance. The bookending "The Hook" and "Skull and Crossbones" are more trite, though the latter has some acceptable zombie makeup that comes off sillier than it deserves being shot on broad daylight. Overall, the production values are nearly nonexistent and the performances terrible, rendering this a scuzzy and embarrassing watch that just makes you feel bad for everyone involved. Hopefully Hansen at least made enough to pay some bills.
(1993)
Dir - Malcolm Marmorstein
Overall: MEH
Screenwriter Malcolm Marmorstein only got behind the lens on two movies during his long career, both horror comedies and neither worth remembering. The low stakes, vanilla-humored Love Bites was the second and last of them, one with a dopey plot that forgives its consistent comedic blunders that are more innocent than egregious. It also scored Adam Ant as the lead blood-sucker, Start Trek: The Next Generation's Michelle Forbes playing his smirking and embittered other half who comes back into his unlife right when he decides to recalibrate his digestive system into that of a human with his new and wholesome love interest Kimberly Foster. The plotting is about as logistically sound as a Saturday morning cartoon, with a handful of "Wait, what?" throwaway lines that contradict other information. At one point, Ant and Foster are watching Universal's Son of Dracula on TV, only for it to turn into the Béla Lugosi version, at which point Ant admits that Lugosi is his "favorite" after previously having established that he was asleep for a full century and would therefor have no idea who Lugosi is by 1992. This is of course a minor nitpick, but Marmorstein's script is full of such lazy excuses for lame gags. Ant is charming enough to make the lousy material work to his favor here or there, and some of the dated yuppie and health craze humor is clever on paper, but there are so many better vampire nyuck fests out there to kill ninety minutes with.
(1997)
Dir - Charles Band
Overall: MEH
Charles "the man who makes nine-hundred movies a year for about the combined cost of a ham sandwich" Band drops another one with The Creeps, a horror comedy that is mildly amusing despite its penny-pinching attributes and deliberately dopey story. As always, Band cranks out these straight-to-video B-movies so aggressively that most of his actors have no choice but to embarrass themselves with the few takes that they are given, let alone the silly material that they have to work with which only lands about a tenth, (at beast), of the intended gags. This is what makes Phil Fondacaro's portrayal as Count Dracula that much more impressive since the always busy character actor gives it his all without the use of scenery chewing, instead playing it straight and coming off as a charisma-oozing professional who seems hellbent on saving face in a turkey of a film that most other thespians would mug their way through. Some of the other monster makeup that the little people wear is effective, (why they are all smaller sized is never convincingly explained, but a gag is a gag), yet Fondacaro is the only such actor to get any dialog; a werewolf, a mummy, and the Frankenstein monster merely stumbling around at his beck and call. Frequent Band collaborator Neal Marshall Stevens' script is too stupid to delve into, the special effects are predictably lousy, and every one on screen besides Fondacaro is forgettable, but the film gets in and out quick enough with some adorable attempts at humor and one set of naked boobs, so trash fans may be able to endure it at least.
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