The Trailer Dump, Issue No. 17

Well, holy hell! I've got some delicious fare for you this week. There's something for everyone here, including sexy 70's babes, horrific gore, delightful drive-in fare and nostalgia aplenty. Enjoy!

 

Chuck Francisco is a columnist for Mania writing Saturday Shock-O-Rama, the weekly look into classic cult, horror and sci-fi. He is a horror co-host of two monthly film series at the world famous Colonial Theatre in Phoenixville, PA (home of 1958's 'The Blob'): First Friday Fright Nights and Colonial Cult Cinema.You can delve further into his love of all things weird and campy on his blog, The Midnight Cheese or hear him occasionally guesting on eminent podcast You've Got Geek.

 

The Trailer Dump, Issue No. 16

Greetings and salutations my macabre minions! I bring you tidings of goodness and joy (if you derive goodness from bad ass black bikers and joy from zombie flesh eaters). I've been scouring Archive.org for all things drive-in nostalgia flavored, tossed it into a mixing bowl with some wacked out trailers and set the machine to frappe. I hope you enjoy the gore soaked hell out of it; please hit me with some feed back so I can better enhance your viewing pleasure.

 

There are a few quick notices I wanted to bring you up speed on. I'm going to be scaling back to two weekly 'Cheese updates. The reason for that is because I've been so involved in other projects that you wouldn't be getting the best from me and I love ya too much to give you the scraps, dear readers. The good news is that you can catch both writings and rumblings from me in these other projects as well as here at The Midnight Cheese.

My weekly column on Mania.com, Saturday Shock-O-Rama, should tickle your midnight fancy and is updated every Saturday morning. This past week's piece is on the gory Kung-fu slapstick flick, Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky.

Cinedelphia.com features new movie reviews from me. Here's my piece on The Woman in Black. My musings on Men in Black 3 should be up on Friday.

I'm also a sometimes personality on the excellent podcast, You've Got Geek, which is released weekly and has all your nerd needs covered.

 

The Trailer Dump, Issue No. 15

Greetings and salutations dear readers. Like Iron Man's armor, the Trailer Dump has leveled up and taken a massive leap forward. It's now a self contained entity, encapsulating all the good that you've come to expect, including cheesy trailers, intermission bumpers and solicitations to visit the, sometimes frightening, concessions stand. I've assembled all this on one platform: my iPhone (damn I love technology). Still a work in progress, I'd appreciate feedback.

 

I'm also writing a new weekly series for Mania entitled Saturday Shock-O-Rama. You can find my first go around right here: Count Yorga, Vampire

See you on the flip side.

 

The Trailer Dump, Issue No. 14

I love when witty subtitles are playfully and abusively applied to the main event's moniker. Serving as a supplemental dipping sauce, they're poised to enhance your full feature flavor. And so today's unfolding is entitled: The Trailer Dump XIV: 'Sploitating the Shit Outta You Sucka! There, that's more comfortable. Let's get this show on the road jive turkeys.

 

Hell Up in Harlem - (1973)

 

 

Sugar Hill - (1974)

 

 

Black Mama White Mama - (1973)

 

eX-Fest II: The Revenge in Retrospect

I'm awake.
I'm have a knock knock Neo, down the rabbit hole kind of morning, where coffee offers little solace and small gains toward awakening. I've survived eX-Fest II but not without first having my brain scooped out to marinate in a jar of the tastiest cast off juices that 70's revenge celluloid has to offer. Being the flavor of the day, vengeance belonged to whomever had the biggest balls and baddest ass, regardless of gender. Let's talk a walk , you and I, down my sequence of yesterday's events while I regale you with what whimsies struck me and wreak vengance upon the lesser members of the accompanying audience.

The No Mercy Man

• 1973. AKA: Fire in the Wind, Trained to Kill, Vietnam Soldier.
• Genre fave Sig Haig looks really good and is absolute slimy bad ass here as Pill Box, the leader of a biker gang.
• Society's condemnation of interracial relationships among carney folk leads to breaking and enter, theft, murder and a bad ass biker on soldier gun battle sequence.
• Hardened Vietnam veterans of the highest training often high five in 80's action broseph style after RPG'ing a truck rather than taking cover to avoid submachinegun ventilation.
• If your son comes back as a highly decorated veteran with PDST, the best way to help him is smug disregard, urging him to fist fight you and making him live in the shed. No harm can come of this.
• All it takes to snap a commando out of PDST is the brutal beating into unconsciousness of his father. And the near crucifixion of his mother. And the rape of his sister. Oh, and the rape of his other sister. Make it that far and it's game on for the no mercy man.

Fear is the Key

• 1973.
• Barry Newman, John Vernon and Ben Kingsley - Oh my!
• This film is absolutely boss bad ass for the first thirty minutes while Barry Newman is beating up cops, escaping from court, enjoying hard liquor on Sundays and leading Lousiana state police on a really fucking sweet 20 minute car chase.
• After that half an hour, it takes a shovel to the noggin and begins to believe that it's a second rate James Bond flick.
• I never wanted a 1972 Ford Gran Torino before the first third of this film. If I'm not mistaken, Lousiana state police have an excellent car budget; affording a good number of Pontiac GTO's to wreck at will.

The Man From Hong Kong

• 1975. AKA- The Dragon Flies (get it? With the hang gliding and- nevermind)
• An honest to goodness Ozsploitation Kung-Fu film. Kick arse!
• Relations between Austria and China were not comfortable in 1975. Inspector Fang Sing Leng looks to change all that. With his dick. One Aussie babe at a time. He's a dick-lomat.
• George Lazenby should have played Ron Burgondy by way of Tom Selleck's mustache.
• Hugh Keays-Byrne plays the aptly named police detective Grosse. You might remember him as Toe Cutter, the main antagonist from the first Mad Max film. Lucky for him his role as a police detective didn't require a more conservative haircut, just a slightly smaller dangly earring.
• Watching fat guys in spandex shirts run up Australlian mountain sides should be a god damned Olympic sport.
• I never want to watch hang gliding again. Ever.

Death Weekend

• 1976. AKA- The House by the Lake
• Under the oily thin vaneer of a rape and revenge romp lies the true heart of this film: it's really Yuppiesploitation. I hated Doctor Black the perverted peeping tom womanizer; the elitist consumerist; the purchasing power braggot; on the same level that I hated the gang of alcoholic murderous thugs (bravo film makers!)
• If wanting to add brevity to any diabolical life or death situation, just show quick cuts of the hated dead yuppie's shutgunned face as it ackwardly gets in the way whilst our heroine attempts her mad dash escape.
• Helplessly alcoholic gas station attendants are hysterical. This is especially true when their crippling addiction prevents them from coming to the rescue even when they realize something is amiss through their inebriated haze.
• There was audience appluse during the revenge killings of three of the four gang members. Incredibly strangly the most elaborate comeuppance, involving a boat house, gasoline, a flare and a well hidden valkyrie of vengance, received little fan fare.

Wipeout!

• 1973. AKA- The Boss
• I fucking love Henry Silva! He only has one facial expression, but it's a classic: Wax museum Chevy Chase. He pimps the hell out of that look, no matter the circumstance. Killing dudes with a grenade launcher? Wax Chevy Chase. Banging a girl he loathes? Wax Chevy Chase. Taking a phone call? Wax Chevy Chase but with raised eyebrows! Genius.
• The theme in this film is a hard rockin' bit of guitar and vinegar piss. I felt 13% more awesome everytime it kicked in. (if you know where I can acquire a copy of it, please contact me)
• Nick Lanzetta hates skin flicks.
• Main heavy and over all dick Cocchi heavily resembles Bruce Campbell during the second half of The Man With the Screaming Brain (which was also screened by Exhumed Films).

Vice Squad

• 1982.
• A more fitting title would have been "Inept Police Squad". Seriously: a pimp named Ramrod in a bright blue satin cowboy shirt and on the run from the law manages to be a more effective dectective then all the members of Vice Squad combined.
• I might have mistook this for the early 90's. The only excuses I can bring to bear are exhustion and failing memory.
• The Johns manage to be a slimy collection of harsh truth ground into the patina of the Hollywood prostitute lifestyle (glamorous as it must certainly be).
• If a chauffer hires you on behalf of his master and goes to elaborate pains for the fantasy's illusion, bitch don't you that ruin shit by talking when you see the old man in the pine box waiting to bang you. You're a Hollywood hoe, how much stranger can this possibly be over your normal day to day?
• I really wanted the main cop as protrayed by Emilio Estavez, especially after his star rose at the last Exhumed Films marathon event: the annual 24 hour Horrorthon.

Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS

• 1975.
• While seriously jazzed as the preemptive red backed warning made it's how-do-you-do on screen, as the film proceeded my jubilation escaped me. The situation is simply to close to reality to be entertaining overall. The sequels are much more campy and fun. I'm missing the point though, as exploitation is not always supposed to be fun, infact it rarely can be considered as such.
• This is a nessisary experience on the exploitation spectrum (which is like a much slezier autism spectrum) and anyone who left early is now substantively less whole then they otherwise could have been.

And so the second eX-Fest drew to a close. Overall I would have to say that I had more fun with last year's selections. This is not to say that I didn't enjoy what I witnessed yesterday as it was much more in line with what I'd expect from an exploitation festival. It was sleazier and the price of admission included a small part of what remains of your soul. I'd prefer a healthy mix of the exaggerated sleaze and the over the top fun, but I would by no means complain about the film selections. They were all excellent and they all fit into a day of vengenace laden fun. Yet another bill of entertainment from the fine fellows over at Exhumed Films.

Before I close the book on twelve plus hours of my life, I would be remiss in avoiding some ugly truths.

To the rectal pieces of human refuse who decided that your need to know the time, the hockey score, what your friends were up to or that anything else on your cell phone out weighed everyone else's right to not be sucked out of their movie going experience need to step into traffic. You're incosiderate to the extreme, likely irredeemably so and I respectfully request that you spend your time doing something other than burdoning the planet's population with your continued existance.

To those sitting in the middle section, most notably near the top, it is your responsibility when moving to and fro not to obstruct the projector's radiant beams. If that means you have to bend further forward while moving, by all means do so. I understand that as a sweaty neckbeard film nerd, this might classify as exertion beyond your normal means but by all means attempt to exert anyway. I can literally see you getting fatter as you obstruct the reason why everyone is tolerating being in your presence in the first place.

To the back row, center section folks (most of whom are guilty of the previous two cinematic war crimes) your taste in alcoholic beverages is fucking abismal. Everyone gets one go on this rotating rock around the sun and you're wasting yours drinking fucking Four Loko? I know that you don't know how to properly select what to pour into your mouth hole because despite numerous requests that you not do so from the fine folks of Exhumed Films, you entitled pricks left a bevy of garbage in your wake.

Which brings me to my last point: Hey you entitled nerdbodies who left your trash behind, go fuck yourselves. These guys put on a great show of rare goods to entertain you yet despite that you can't pick up your soda bottle as you exit? Your massive corinary can't arrive soon enough to remove you from our presences.

The Trailer Dump, Issue no.12

I've got a few ideas tumbling around in my think-matter and these trailers were conspirators to steal my concentration (such as it is). I'm starting you off today with a taste of that which is lost and missed very dearly- late night horror hosts. So enjoy the opening to The Vampira Show followed by a smattering of trailers as variable as my tastes seem to be.

Dig in kiddies.

Pumpkinhead


Deep Red


Journey to the Seventh Planet

The Trailer Dump, Issue No.11

Today's taste of trailer torture comes courtesy of Hammer Films. As you might recalled, I'm exploring my Hammer Horror Blind Spot.  As with ,any contemporary trailers, the voice over work is powerful and inspires dread, even if the outlandish claims may not hold true for audiences of today.

Enjoy my friendly fiends.

The Horror of Frankenstein

The Scars of Dracula

The Werewolf vs. The Vampire Women

The Trailer Dump, Issue No. 10

Oh boy do I loves me some cheesy trailers. The menacing voice over, the focus on action, one liners, scares and nudity. It's a whole 80 minute bad movie with the 50 boring minutes having been stripped out, leaving us with a bombastically edited look at the remaining awesome bits, made from concentrate. Enjoy.

Deathsport - 1978

Leprechaun in Space - 1997

Demonic Toys - 1992

Undead - 2003

The Trailer Dump, Issue No. 9

Friday night I attended a rare 16mm double feature of StarCrash and Yor: The Hunter from the Future. It was a fantastic night of cheese, thanks to Exhumed Films. And so, along with Yor this week's Trailer Dump includes some choice fantasy cuts. Enjoy.

Yor: The Hunter from the Future

Wizards of the Lost Kingdom

Dungeonmaster

Youtube is full of wonderfully cheesy, low budget fantasy. See what you can come up with and I'll see you next time.

The Trailer Dump, Issue no. 7

The Ice Pirates

• What a cast! John Carradine, Ron Pearlman, Angelica Huston and Robert Ulrich!
• The wide shots of the domed city is actually footage from Logan's Run.
• The sport the pirates watch over their lunch is footage from Rollerball.
• This is only Ron Pearlman's second film after A Quest for Fire.
• When I first subscribed to Netflix streaming, this is the first film I watched.

Galaxina

• Actress Dorothy Stratton, who played the titular (har har) Galaxina, was Playboy's Playmate of the year, 1980. Sadly, she was killed by her jealous husband in a murder/suicide. She was only 20.
• Laser sound effects were lifted right out of the original Battlestar Galactica tv show and shipboard door effects taken right from Star Trek.
• Received a Blu Ray release this past March as a double feature with Crater Lake Monster.

Ator, The Fighting Eagle

• This film contains a lot of O'Keeffe. How much O'Keeffe? Miles O'Keeffe. (sorry, couldn't help it)
• This is the first in a series of 4 films featuring Ator by occult director Joe D'Amato.
• The second film in the series was spoofed on Mystery Science Theater 3000 under it's American title, Cave Dwellers.

Until next time, here's hoping you spend Saturday night at the movies, who cares what you go and see.

The Trailer Dump, Issue no. 6

We're going to try a slightly different format for you on the trailer dump. There will be fewer trailers but I'm going to share some interesting tidbits on each one. Let me know what you think of the format. Without further ado and with no more guilding the lilly.

Scalps - 1983

• Written AND Directed by Fred Olen Ray, who also directed the absurd Evil Toons, so you know this will be awesome (and likely full of nudity).
• Was released as a double feature on VHS with The Slayer and also on DVD in the early 2000's but it is currently out of print.
• This was shot on a ranch that is now owned by Alice Cooper. Perhaps he's a massive Scalps fan?
• The director claims that the reason this film makes no sense is because the distributor took his finished product and reedited it, disrupting the continuity and adding overlaid shots of a Native American chanting. Yeah right Fred, the distributor did it.

Savage Streets - 1984

• This is a who's who of 80's cult films: John Vernon, Linnea Quigley and Linda Blair!
• That killer 80's jam, which is queued by Linda Blair's cleavage, is called "Justice for One". I believe all cleavage should come equipped with an awesome 80's soundtrack. Sadly the soundtrack for this film and that awesome song, where never released.
• The special edition DVD, released in 2008, is out of print and currently selling for $100 on Amazon. Arrow releasing just put out a UK only release with a boat load of special features.
• The tagline on the poster reads: "They killer her sister and raper her best friend. An eye for an eye." What? Does that mean Linda Blair is supposed to go on a vigilante rape spree?

The Forrest - 1983

• Man oh man. Prism home video. Anyone else remember Prism? Anyway, this trailer has my absolutely my absolute favorite thing: a manly, brooding narrator advising on what to bring and what to watch out for. Love it.
• The poster has two tag lines. "If you go into the woods today...you might not get out alive" and "Daddy's gone hunting". I suggest you wait until tomorrow to go into the woods.
• This was directed by Donald Jones, who went on to direct Project Nightmare in '87 and not much else.
• This DID get a recent (2009) DVD release as a double feature with Don't go in the Woods.

Happy hunting.
Don't forget your backpack, sleeping bag and knife.

The Trailer Dump, Issue no.4

I've watched quite a wide assortment of trailers in my day. Happily, there is always something dwelling beyond the realms of most sane human's imaginations waiting to blow my mind. I'm not just talking about this issues' throwback intermission bumper, which probably is awesome and sensical if you're high. Instead I'm referring to the two selections from the land of the rising sun. The trailer for Hausu is excellent, just as the full film is. The trailer for Big Tits Zombies is...unknowable. I included it incase one of you can make sense of it for me, because I sure can't. Enjoy!

Dead and Buried

The needle scene really sticks. with. you.

Creepshow 2

I won't lie, the thing in the lake scared the shit out of me as a kid.

Hausu

Hausu is equal parts Evil Dead 2 and Hello Kitty and must be seen.

Intermission!

I missed out on drive-ins and oddities like this.

Troll 2

Hello early 90's Cinemax flashback!

Big Tits Zombies aka Kyonyu Dragon

What the fuck did I just watch?

The Trailer Dump, Issue no.3

It's that time of the week again; the time to tuck in and focus on the movie appetizer sampler that is The Trailer Dump. This week's focus is a little more early 90's cheese as recommended by Noel, with one or two surprises thrown in by me. Bon appetite!

Dead Heat

Good cop Dead cop.

Night of the Creeps

If you scream, you're dead!

Arena

See how many Deep Space Nine alumni you can spot.

Intermission!

Aged cheddar? Ew

Slumber Party Massacre 2

(mildly NSFW)

A real Rock 'n Roll nightmare

Captain America

At least it's not Nick Fury: Agent of Shield!

Which one was your favorite this week?

The Trailer Dump, Issue no.2

Welcome back to The Trailer Dump, honoring all that is glorious about the corny coming attractions of yesteryear. I've dug around the 'net for some of the choicest cuts of meaty cheese, just for you. I've also included the classic intermission bumper, please don't be ashamed if you find yourself singing along with it (I did). One quick warning, the trailer for The Arena is slightly NSFW, with a couple quick nipple slips. I saved it for last, Pam Grier in a Roger Corman sexploitation combat flick.

So without further ado allow me to present:

The Mercenary

What won't he light a match off of?

The Warriors

Can you dig it?

Hands of the Ripper

A Hammer classic.

Intermission!

Why don't you get yourself a car-bon-ated so-da?

The Story of Ricky

Ya got a lotta guts, Oscar!

The Arena

Pam Grier, defiant and untamed!

Check back next week for more schlocky trailers at the Midnight Cheese!