these concoctions transforms them into murderous, slime-soaked maniacs – the precursor to being pos- sessed by the spirits of Zachary and his flock. Mean- while, a ruthless mega-developer brings a private army to Slime City to eliminate the homeless so he can build condos. Considering he wrote the indie filmmaking guide
Cheap Scares!, Lamberson certainly delivers bang for his investor’s bucks, as does Shriek Show with this loaded two-disc set. Slime City Massacre was shot in HD video, so it looks fantastic. The score, by composer Mars, is simultaneously retro and modern. The story is subversively satirical, and the cast sell it with aplomb. Plus, a guy loses a leg in an animatronic stomach mouth, another sap has broken beer bottles rammed into his eye sockets, and there’s a reference to Basket Case (1982) and Street Trash (1987) – two films Lamberson crewed on – that will bring tears to your eyes!
THE GORE-MET
Scream Of The Banshee: Open up and say “duhhh.”
necessarily guarantee quality. There is some enter- tainment to be leeched from Syfy’s 200th Saturday Night Original movie, but only at the expense of its shitty script and a long list of plot inconsistencies. Set up with some historical mumbo jumbo appar-
ently founded in Irish mythology, Scream of the Ban- shee quickly falls into the mundane plodding of a bad slasher flick. A college archaeology team led by Pro- fessor Ilsa Whelan (Lauren Holly) discovers an ornate 12th-century Irish box. Locked inside is the decap- itated head of a monstrous banshee that awakens to unleash her trademark deafening wail. Everyone at the university who hears the accursed scream is then haunted and killed in an exploding, strobe-lit fashion. Yawn.
Worse, all of the characters – including Henriksen’s
nutty professor – are a composite of clichés and tropes from other genre films. The end result leaves you feel- ing like you’re watching a product that’s going through the motions of a horror flick while grabbing bits and pieces from other films that don’t quite fit together. It’s also hard to take a movie seriously when it is
marred with so many inconsistencies. For example, the banshee shows up in dreams and haunts charac- ters while they are awake but can’t seem to bust down a door; everyone spends half of the film with their ears bleeding and yet no one seems to consider going to the doctor; one character loses two fingers without missing a beat or changing his facial expression; Whe- lan leaves her daughter’s boyfriend bleeding in a car and doesn’t once think to call an ambulance, the po- lice, or any other useful character that might have re- quired another extra to be hired. Mix in some cheap visual effects, awkward edits for
where room has been left for TV commercials, the banshee’s classic Old Hag get-up (it’ll make your kid brother’s Halloween costume look like the work of Rob Bottin) and you’re left with a movie that will set your
RM 04 C I N E M A C A B R E
internal MST3Kmonologue on rapid-fire. Watch at the risk of blowing a funny fuse.
JESSA SOBCZUK MUCKTROPOLIS
SLIME CITY MASSACRE Starring Jennifer Bihl, Kealan Patrick Burke
and Debbie Rochon Written and directed by Gregory Lamberson Shriek Show
Filmmaker and author Greg Lamberson is one of
the tireless creative minds that keep the horror genre vital whenever mainstream interest wanes. While best known for his low-budget splatter classic Slime City (1988), he hardly trades on past glory. When his film- making career didn’t pan out, he turned scripts he’d written into such well-received novels as Johnny Gruesome and Personal Demons. With interest in his films subsequently renewed, Camp Video released the two-disc Slime City Grindhouse Collection, and the original film had a few twentieth-anniversary festival screenings. Out of that came this inspired follow-up. Seven years after a “dirty bomb” attack on New
York, the US is at war with Canada. Refusing to fight anymore, Cory (played by horror author Kealan Patrick Burke) deserts the army and goes underground with his girlfriend Alexa (Jennifer Bihl). They seek refuge, and anonymity, amongst the human detritus squatting in an abandoned building known as Slime City. Resi- dents Mason (Lee Perkins) and Alice (Debbie Rochon) quickly take them under their wing. While scrounging for food, Cory and Mason break into the remains of the ’50s- era soup kitchen that had been run by sex cult leader Zachary Devon (Slime City star Robert C. Sabin in flashback sequences) and make off with cases of Devon’s “Home Brewed Elixir” and “non-expirable Himalayan Yogurt.” Consuming
BIKERS VS. ALIENS
THE VIOLENT KIND Starring Cory Knauf, Taylor Cole and Bret Roberts
Written and directed by The Butcher Brothers Image
What starts off as a gritty look into the world of biker
gangs unexpectedly shifts gears midway through, à la From Dusk Till Dawn, for a bloody descent into extra- terrestrial weirdness that’ll both entertain and hurt your brain. Q, Cody and Elroy are
three young guys born into a California motorcycle gang called The Crew. On the occasion of Cody’s mom’s birthday, the guys and Q’s gift-to-the-world- hot girlfriend Shade venture to a members-only cabin for an alcohol-soaked shaker with the gang’s un- shaven, leather-clad masses. Once the party winds down, Cody’s ex, Michelle, leaves the shindig only to return drenched in blood. Her new boyfriend is found dead. Lights flicker, cellphones transmit static, vehicles won’t start and the old man next door is discovered to have blown his own head off in a shed decorated with unusual symbols and press clippings of missing peo- ple. Strangeness is definitely afoot. Michelle, seemingly possessed, abruptly bites
Elroy and bashes his face in. As Q and company try to cope with whatever the fuck is happening, the distant crooning of a ’50s torch song signals the arrival of a curious pack of rockabilly types who “come lookin’ for a good time, the violent kind.” Suddenly, this isn’t a biker movie anymore. Led by a Giovanni Ribisi look-alike named Ver-
non, the group – which also includes quiet, head- phone-wearing thug Murderball, toe-tappin’ slickster Jazz and a pair of saucy skirts named Trixie and Pussywagon – terrorize the survivors
in an unpredictable and surreal fashion that owes much to the eccentricity David Lynch drummed up in Blue Velvet. Vernon spouts loads of expository dialogue about how little the tortured understand the graveness
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