Nightmare Sisters

Nightmare Sisters (Sorority Succubus Sisters)

1988

Director- David DeCoteau

Cast- Linnea Quigley, Brinke Stevens, Michelle Bauer, Richard Gabai, William Dristas, Marcus Vaughter, Dukey Flyswatter

           
    The film opens with a worried wife seeing a fortune-teller (played by Dukey Flyswatter who appeared in two other Linnea Quigley films that year, Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers and Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama). He summons up the spirit of her deceased husband but something goes awry and he is killed by an evil spirit within his crystal ball.

            
     Fast forward to three sorority girls (Quigley, Stevens, and Bauer) who have their sorority house all to themselves for the weekend. The girls are “homely” and don’t have dates or boyfriends. There is an attempt to make the girls less attractive with fake buck teeth, glasses and rather unflattering clothes, but come on, who are we kidding. A Ferrari with a bad paint job is still a Ferrari. The girls throw a party and invite over their opposite numbers, three nerdy, loser frat boys. Meanwhile another trio of douche frat boys is planning to spoil their night. The girls and their dates, for fun, have a séance using the same crystal ball seen at the beginning of the film.

            
    Evil spirits possess the girls turning them into sexual fantasies come to life. Brinke is a bratty, lollipop licking schoolgirl, Michelle is a bikini clad jungle girl, and Linnea is a trampy punk rocker.  They join each other in a rather lengthy bubble bath that leaves nothing to the imagination. The girls then set about stalking the douche frats, seducing and killing them. The three nerd frats then try to find an exorcist to help get rid of the evil spirits.

           
   

    I think the term “gratuitous nudity” was invented just for this movie, or at least it might as well have been. The  trio is fully on display, especially in the bathtub scene. Scream Queens, in their various cultural incantations, have always been a part of horror. In the 80's though, there was a trend toward making horror movies more fun. As a result, the nudity in these films seems less prurient and more playful, like something Bettie Page might have done.

     Nightmare Sisters is a low budget movie that existed in obscurity for years but is special and interesting for a few reasons. Nightmare Sisters is one of only two films to feature all three members of the holy trinity of 80’s Scream Queens, Linnea Quigley, Brinke Stevens and Michelle Bauer (the other film being Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama which was also shot by DeCoteau immediately prior). It also has an interesting story behind its making and legacy. David DeCoteau made it with left over cast, crew, and resources from Slimeball Bow-O-Rama. The film was shot in 4 days for about $40k. However, the company distributing the film went under and only a few thousand VHS cassettes went into circulation. As a result, the film fell immediately into obscurity. Over the next few years though, as the notoriety of Quigley, Stevens, and Bauer increased, awareness of the film, and demand, grew making it a cult classic.

            

    Now this is a low budget film, there’s no doubt about it, and its obvious selling points are not in the artistic area. However, it is fun and it has an energy that you only find in low budget, independent films. Fans of Quigley, Stevens, or Bauer should own the film, but also anyone interested in the phenomenon of the Scream Queen. The film is basically “a best of” all by itself.

Quigley, Bauer and Stevens in their "homely" forms.

The trio transformed.

Devil Girl

Devil Girl

2007

Director- Howie Askins

Cast- Jessica Graham, Joe Wanjai Ross, Vanessa Kay, C.J. Baker, Ruben Terrones

           

   Fans of the artist Coop have probably already seen this movie. If you’re not familiar with Coop’s art, it’s a mixture of cheesecake, rockabilly ,retro sci-fi and horror done in a cartoon style that is immediately recognizable and of course, his beautiful devil girls; voluptuous, naughty, satanic nymphets. This movie is pretty much his art come to life.

            

   Faye (Jessica Graham) is taking a trip through the American west via Route 66. Faye makes her way by beating people at pool and winning drag races in her muscle car. She crosses paths with a psychotic clown (Ross) and gets stranded in a tiny town in the middle of the desert, populated with weird and menacing characters out to do her harm. She gets a job at the town’s strip club, The Burning Bush, to pay her way until she can get out.  Faye and the clown continue to cross paths with each other as well as the sexy Devil Girl who sometimes appears to help, sometimes to tease and sometimes to torment.

            

    The movie seems to take inspiration from Natural Born Killers and House of 1000 Corpses in so far as its frenetic, hallucinatory style, though it’s not nearly as menacing as either of those films. This isn’t really a horror movie, but if you had to place it in a genre, horror would be the one you'd pick.

            

    Graham is very down to earth and believable as the stranded protagonist and Ross plays a humorous, enjoyable, psychotic clown. He’s less like Sid Haig’s Captain Spaulding and more like a page from Naked Lunch come to life. The main attraction is Vanessa Kay as the titular Devil Girl. She has the soft, voluptuous curves of a 1960s pin-up girl and looks very much like a Coop drawing come to life. Whether clad in black leather or completely naked, she is a sight to behold. The scene of her sitting naked upon a church alter to torment the town’s perverted minister is worth the price of admission.

            

   The movie is filled with muscle cars, go-go dancers, rock music, iconic imagery and beautiful women. Not a movie for those seeking a scare, but if you want to feel like you’ve been dropped into the middle of a psychobilly song come to life, you’ll enjoy a date with Devil Girl.

The Devil's Nightmare

The Devil’s Nightmare 

1971

Director- Jean Brismée

From Belgium

Cast-  Erika Blanc, Jean Servais, Daniel Emilfork, Ivana Novak, Shirley Corrigan, Jacques Monseau, Lucien Raimbourg

From Belgium

            

      The film begins at the end of WW2 with a German officer killing his newborn daughter. Fast forward 20 years and we find out that the officer is the latest descendant of a cursed family where all of the girls are destined to become succubi.

           

      A group of tourists become stranded in the family castle during a storm. They are a motley crew that don’t get along, well except for the ones who are having sex with each other. The fun really begins when Lisa, a beautiful lone read head, turns up. Unbeknownst to all (except for the viewer) she is a succubus who intends to kill each person in a state of mortal sin, thus condemning their souls.

            

      The movie then becomes a sort of morality play with each person being brought down by their weaknesses; the glutton is seduced with a sumptuous feast, the greedy wife with the promise of gold, the unfaithful couple with sex. The plot gets a little lazy when the succubus takes one victim, with no obvious desires, and just tosses him out of a window.

            

       Of course the best reason to watch the film is for Erika Blanc (A Dragonfly for Each Corpse, Mark of the Devil Part 2, The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave). With her red hair, lithe body, and skimpy outfits, she would have made a good choice if they had ever made a movie of Marvel’s Satana.

The Devil's Rock

The Devil’s Rock

2011

Director- Paul Campion

Cast- Craig Hall, Mathew Sunderland,  Gina Varela, Karlos Drinkwater

From New Zealand

            This is one of my favorite movies in the genre because it combines so many things I like; WW2 commandos, evil Nazis, and a hot demon!

            On the eve of D-Day, a pair of Allied commandos sneak on to a Nazi controlled island with the intention of creating some havoc in preparation for the invasion. What they find is an underground bunker filled with some rather gruesomely killed German soldiers and screams echoing through its darkened tunnels.

            The Nazis, in an attempt to find a magical wonder weapon, have summoned a succubus from hell. The demon gorges herself on the flesh of the German soldiers. A détente is called as the surviving Allied commando and the surviving Nazi occultist agree to team up to defeat the demoness,  Neither one trusts the other and to complicate things, the succubus has assumed the appearance of the commando’s dead wife.

            There are many things besides just the occult plot that make this movie scary. The setting, an underground bunker with lots of confined spaces and dark corners, creates a tense environment.  The lack of trust between the two protagonists increases that tension. Of course, the real attraction here is Gina Varela as the seductive demon. The make up for the succubus is both simple and excellent. 

            A fun, scary and unique movie, I highly recommend it.

Pumpkinhead

Pumpkinhead

1988

Director- Stan Winston

Cast- Lance Henriksen, Jeff East, John D'Aquino, Kimberly Ross, Joel Hoffman, Cynthia Bain, Kerry Remsen, Florence Schauffer, George Buck Flower

           

    Lance Henriksen plays Ed Harley, a hardworking man scraping a living together for him and his son in the backwoods. A group of young “city folk” disrupts his simple but happy existence when one of them accidentally kills his son while drunkenly riding their bikes.

     Ed visits an old witch who gives him the means to exact vengeance. She says that for each of man’s sins, a demon exists, and the demon of revenge rests not too far away in an old cemetery.  After bringing the witch it's desiccated husk, the witch summons Pumpkinhead, who sets out to kill the youngsters.

Although the “city folk verses country folk” is a tired convention over used in horror films, the rural, Appalachian setting is needed for the dark fantasy to work. It feels very much like a cautionary fairy tale. Someone makes a bargain, not really contemplating the cost and when they get what they asked for, they realize it’s not what they wanted and the price is too high.

Lance Henriksen, who usually turns in fine supporting performances, gets to steal the show in the lead part. This was probably the best time in Henriksen’s career. He made Terminator in' 84, Aliens in '86, Near Dark in '87 and Pumpkinhead in '88. That’s  a damn good 5 years! Stan Winston, who was used to working behinds the scenes on special effects, makes his debut as director with Pumpkinhead. Made without CGI, which usually doesn’t age very well, the creature effects still look pretty good all these years later.

In a decade best known for its slasher films, Pumpkinhead  was an original and entertaining monster movie that works as both entertainment and allegory.

Virgin Witch

Virgin Witch

1971

Director- Ray Austin

Cast- Ann Michelle, Vicki Michelle, Patricia Haines, Neil Hallett, Keith Buckley

            

   Two sisters, Christine and Betty (played by real life sisters Ann and Vicki Michelle) are young and beautiful and hoping to make it as models. Christine auditions for a rather sexually aggressive agent, Sybil, who lures Christine out for a weekend shoot at an estate in the country, with her sister Betty along for the ride.

            

   Christine attracts the attention of the photographer who finds several flimsy excuses to get her progressively more naked.  The sisters discover that the Lord of the estate and Sybil are witches. They initiate Christine into the coven under the auspices that they practice white magic.

           

     Sybil, the High Priestess of the coven, “fancies birds” and has her eye on the sisters and wants to initiate Betty into the coven. Christine, who seems helpless at the beginning of the film, actually turns out to be pretty conniving and ambitious. Christine has psychic powers (that are evidenced throughout the film but never explained). She puts a whammy on Sybil so that she can take over the top spot.

           

    This was more of an exploitation film than a horror film. It serves mainly as a vehicle to see the beautiful Michelle sisters naked. The character of Christine is more complicated than the movie allows, though Ann does a good job of playing a manipulative schemer masquerading as a naïve ingénue.

           

     Apparently the Michelle sisters were not too happy with their involvement in the film. The film had trouble getting released, probably due to its copious nudity. The version out now is unedited. The film has an original idea that doesn’t have the opportunity to realize itself. On the other hand, the Michelle sisters are really beautiful and worth the price of admission.

Dreaming Purple Neon

Dreaming Purple Neon

2016

Director- Todd Sheets

Cast- Jeremy Edwards, Eli DeGeer, Millie Milan, Grant Conrad, Jack McCord, Nick Randol, Antwoine Steele, Ricky Farr, Jolene Loftin, Ana Rojas-Plumberg, Stacy Weible. Jodie Nelles Smith, Dilynn Fawn Harvey, Daniel Bell, Glen Moore

            

   In a genre where about half the movies have the words “devil” or “exorcism” in the title, you will never forget a title like Dreaming Purple Neon. Nor or you likely to forget this film. The title refers to a drug being pushed by a Satanic cult that is trying to summon the demon Abaddon, in this film presented as a demoness. Through arcane techniques everyone who uses the drug will be subject to the Demon Queen’s will, once she is summoned.

            

   Through a series of coincidences, a group of disparate individuals end up in a dentist's office; pair of drug dealers looking for their stolen stash ,a prodigal son returned to town trying to meet his lost love, and some poor schmucks that get caught up in the middle. Unfortunately for all involved, the basement of the building is not only the manufacturing center for the drug, but the meeting place of the cultists.

            

    The cult decides to use these interlopers as sacrifices in their rites and what commences is a trip through a house of horrors as they try to foil the Satanists and run for their lives. What we get to see is non-stop insane visuals with tons of gore; beheadings, dismemberments, cannibalism, a baby sacrifice, a demon woman bursting through the chest, full grown, from a victim, a torture machine turning a poor dudes rectum into macaroni and a generous portion of nudity. Good news for the ladies, the nudity is equal opportunity with lots of full frontal men (though let’s be honest, is anything less inspiring than a flaccid penis?).

            

   The film feels like a Tarantino homage that transitions to something akin to House of 1000 Corpses. The director seems much more adept at handling the horror elements though.

           

   This a low budget, probably sub-B, movie and you get what you’d expect; armature acting (though some of the performances are pretty convincing), awkward editing, cinematography that is sometimes distracting and other frequent reminders of its low budget status. But you also get things you’d never get from the studio system with its movies by committee. Low budget films often offer a purer vision and take chances that larger studios would never imagine. Check out Dreaming Purple Neon if you want an occasionally funny, frequently gory, and thoroughly original film.