Posts Tagged ‘Mad Scientist’

The Dead Pit (1989)

Posted: 04/11/2019 in Trash movies
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Most first time directors begin their careers with a zombie film. Why? I don’t know, I guess it’s a cheap way to make a first feature film. Shot on 35mm foralmost no money by first time director Brett Leonard  (also known for Lawnmower Man) The Dead Pit is perfect example of this claim. It features some impressive make up and effects work, especially considering the budget. Michael Hinton created the film’s optical effects, while the prosthetic special effects were created by FX artist Ed Martinez. Other than that it is complete crap with unintentional black humor.

deadpit

At an overfilled and under-staffed mental hospital, Dr. Colin Ramzi (played by Danny Gochnauer) decides to use the excess patients for his own personal experiments into death and the unknown. His evil deeds are ended abruptly when his colleague, Dr. Gerald Swan (Jeremy Slate), puts a bullet in his head. Dr. Ramzi and the corpses of his experiments are then sealed up in a mass grave beneath the hospital and forgotten. Well, only for twenty years, until a mysterious Jane Doe (played by Cheryl Lawson) arrives at the hospital with no memory of who she is or where she came from. She complains about not losing her memory but rather someone got it stolen from her. Hm I think I know where this movie leads to. Anyway, apparently Jane Doe got so upset about her memories theft that she causes an earthquake and unrest at the, until then, peaceful underground mass grave. Result of this: we get to see Dr. Ramzi gets free from captivity, leading the army of loyal zombies. And also we get to see Jane’s tits in wet shirt.

Untitled

While Jane is wandering around freely wearing only underpants and tight shirt Dr. Ramzi continues his research. So that means he needs more bodies. You can guess what comes next. Meanwhile, Dr. Gerald hypnotizes Jane where he discovers her real name is Sarah and that mother tried to take her away from her father when she was only 3 years old. Hm I wonder why? Of course, all of this is followed by inconvenient flat acting. The following night good Dr. Ramzi is back. He kills one of the lunatics and one of the staff member, whose head he later uses to scare Jane and drive her insane.

Dr. Gerald hypnotizes Jane once more. She remembered crazy surgeon experimenting on her. Dr. Ramzi somehow takes control of her body and in his own voice threaten Dr. Gerald. Ok now we got The Exorcist element here. This movie keeps expanding in a way no one could possibly expect. Dr. Gerald gets so upset about this that he throws poor Jane out of office and then helps himself with his secret stash of whisky. On the other side of asylum, Jane and some Irish madman are making a plan for escaping. Of course, that plan is foiled by Dr. Ramzi and Jane ends up captured in the dead pit. Mad surgeon raises his army of the zombies from the pit and they all together start stealing brains from mental patients. Mad Irishman saves Jane from imprisonment and they return to fight Ramzi and his ever-growing army of zombies. Meanwhile, Dr. Gerald got drunk and slept through entire chaos in his office.

They discover that holy water kills zombies (I am no shitting you here) so with help of demented nun who happens to be in asylum as mental patient (how convenient) Jane and Irish dude devise a plan to bless entire nearby water tower and blow it up with handmade bomb. Sounds bulletproof to me enough. Meanwhile, Dr. Ramzi has haptured Dr. Gerald and performs brain extraction operation on him, despite Gerald’s plea “Don’t cut my brain please”. He shows that juicy brain to Jane during their next encounter spiced with silly one-liner “Dr. Swan wants to give you piece of his mind”. Classic! And yeah, we also find out he is Jane’s father. What a twist, would you say? Anyway, mad Irishman (*cough* pleonasm) took the opportunity of this family reunion to sacrifice himself (due to his stupidity of making the fuse too long) and blow up water tower which leads us to scene of mass melting zombies, including Dr. Ramzi, which is second to none even compared to famous scene from The incredible melting man. 

Conclusion: Zombies, mad scientist, body possession, holy water, exorcism, tits, wide open heads, this movie has it all, you just name it. I haven’t seen such  concentration of madness since Beyond Re-animator (and believe me, that movie is so fucked up). As for the acting, it isn’t heinously bad, for the most part, but you’ll still wince from time to time. The zombies actually look fairly decent. With Brett Leonard, when you look at his earliest picture, all you can really see are hints of the mediocrity that would spell out his career. The Dead Pit isn’t a bad movie, it’s just very forgettable. At least, it provides some nice gore so it is worth watching.

The Surgeon aka Exquisite Tenderness (1995)

Posted: 22/03/2018 in Trash movies
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When I discovered A-Pix entertainment for the first time I didn’t know by then how blessed I am. While rummaging through a list of their titles I noticed quite few we have already watched (such as Jack Frost, Werewolf). With my eyes sparkling with glee at the assortment of nefarious titles in front of me, my gaze fell upon the one with Malcolm McDowell’s name on the cover and smile appeared on my sweaty visage. I present you my treasure of the day: The Surgeon!

The story begins in the 1950s in a sequence filmed in beautiful, crisp, black and white. A family has rushed their son to a doctor’s home, where the doctordecides that the boy is in need of emergency surgery, which he performs in a back room. The doctor doesn’t take necessary precautions and he botches the surgery and “accidentally” kills the boy. The boy’s brother is nearby and sees his brother dead on the cold, metal table. There’s also a bit of poeticimagery here involving an actual lollipop while the song “Lollipop” plays in the background, silly as that may be in the grand scheme of things.

That’s our prologue, and it quickly cuts to the present, where we see a beautiful physician Dr. Theresa McCann (played by Isabel Glasser) begin a very bad day as she arrives for work at a hospital. She runs late to a lecture by Dr. Stein (played by Malcolm McDowell), who is demonstrating an experimental technique on a baboon. The baboon goes nuts in the middle of the lecture then dies. We find out Dr. McCann has been protesting Dr. Stein’s experiments with hospital administration, but we soon learn that something much more sinister is going on.

It is funny because it is true

After this incident Dr. Theresa went to check out the patients with her medicine students. We notice there are a lot of black people among sick ones. There are young Whoopi Goldberg (though it is not actually she, this girl here is hot) and some old fat black lady. While Theresa and students were on entourage some mysterious doctor sneaked into one of the patient’s room and injected her some sort of toxin which made poor woman’s body melt down. And here is the clue for the viewers: He left a lollipop on the desk next to patient’s bed. Dr. Theresa couldn’t be there in time to save her so she went back to her officewhere she found a note left for her by one of her top students Dr. Hendricks (played by James Remar, known for his role of gay Rayden in awful Mortal Kombat: Annihilation). Even despite being a witness of horrible and painful death of the one of her patients Dr. Theresa smiled when she saw a drawing of bare ass in the note. See, even doctors are not immune so such kind of low-brow jokes.

A Valentine card

Theresa went to meeting hospital director Dr. Ed Mittlesnay (played by Charles Dance, best known for his role of Tywin Lannister in HBO’s Game of Thrones) who gave her suspension because of tempering with other doctor’s patient. Knowing that something odd is happening there Theresa and Dr. Hendricks sneak into hospital. There they find Dr. Stein’s corpse. There goes their top suspect. Malcolm McDowell surely looks like a murderer, especially with that deranged look of his. But if he isn’t the killer, then who it is? We found out that soon since killer got into the fight and ended up incapacitated by Dr. Hendricks.
Later we find out that he is Dr. Julian Matar (played by Sean Haberle). Apparently he got fired 3 years ago because he was conducting unauthorized procedures on patients. Back then, he ended up paralyzed after trying to escape by jumping through the window. And now he is back! Somehow.

 

Julian manages to escape this time again. And now he is heading to the hospital, dressed like a doctor, to take what he came for (whatever that might be). Remember fat black lady Milly (played by Mother Love) from the beginning? Well, she is our good doctor’s next target. Being cranky as she is she saw through
his mask and went out looking for the help. As it is custom in such kind of movies they searched the room but no one could be found. And of course head nurse wouldn’t believe her. But the moment Milly went back to bed Julian, who btw has much resemblance to Serbian actor Ivan Bosiljcic (though Ivan Bosiljcic is a pathetic looking guy), jumped down onto her from the ceiling. The rest of the scene is left out for our imagination.

 

Now do you remember young Whoopi Goldberg? Thats right, she is the next victim. Her name is Lisa (played by Juliette Jeffers) and she ended up in the hospital with the broken leg after car accident. But broken leg doesn’t stop her from having a sex with her boyfriend in her own hospital bed while
surrounded with candles! What kind of hospital is this? Patients are being murdered every now and then while some other patients are turning their room into a brothel! Anyway, Lisa’s boyfriend needed refreshment after hard work so he went to the bathroom. And thats Julian’s time to strike. At first, it looked like boyfriend is going to overpower him but eventually Julian gave him enough injections to put him down for good. She moved onto Lisa, and not in a way her now late boyfriend did couple of minutes before. Julian poisoned her with gas and then injected her the same substance he gave to his first victim.
Meanwhile, Theresa and Hendricks were having some naked fun in the pool when they received a call from Lt. McEllwaine (played by Peter Boyle, who needs no special introduction). They arrived just in time to find Dr. Ed being killed by Julian. We learn that Julian is blaming Ed for loosing his license so he
stapled Ed’s mouth shut. Poetic justice. In the meantime, Julian is tasting his own medicine. What he is up to now?

 

The hospital is now under full police protection and they are using Dr. Theresa as a bait. Of course, that didn’t stop Julian from dispatching them all, one by one, and pinning Theresa to where it all started – the surgery table. He wanted Theresa to be the last ingredient for his cure – a substance that regenerates tissue even after you die. They had some sweet talk giving her enough time to shock him using a defibrillator. And that was the cue for the entire police force to bust in and shower Julian with rain of bullets while Theresa was still behind him! Yup they made a Swiss cheese out of poor Julian, who just needed to be loved. What a stupid ending!

 

Or is it? As you can see in the scene above, Julian has taken the advantage of their moment of carelessness to inject himself some more of his juice. He woke up in the mortuary and killed fat pathologist. And now he is going to finish what he had started. Surprisingly he manages to kill Dr. Hendricks while he was in bed with Theresa. Theresa then finished him in a more stupid way then a previous one. I am tired of bullshit and don’t want to waste any more words on this plot so you can check for yourself below.

 

Conclusion: Directed by Carl Schenkel, The Surgeon aka Exquisite Tenderness is a film with German roots (to add to the confusion, it is also known as The Beast in the White Smock and Infernal Torments in German, although it was filmed in English). I will try to watch this again because I still can’t believe a movie with Malcolm McDowell, James Remar, Peter Boyle and Charles Dance in it could be this bad but it’s bland and uninteresting despite their competent performances. Were all of them totally broke? That must be it right? I don’t know. Another thing that’s very noticeable about this movie is its above-average use of make-up effects. The blood and gore effects were done right and might even cause some viewers to cringe. AS for the plot itself, many films have explored the uses of the Pituitary region of the brain for its possible regenerative properties. Yeah this is very funny movie to watch but personally I would rather always recommend you this and this. To me Jeffrey Combs is the only true mad scientist.

Carnosaur (1993)

Posted: 17/01/2013 in Trash movies
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In 1993, just one year after the legendary Jurassic Park world famous B- Movies maestro Roger Corman had an answer for it. Adaptation of  John Brosnan’s Carosaur (although the final product shared only the title with the book and almost nothing else). Brosnan was first approached to write the screenplay by Roger Corman’s wife Julie, who formalized the deal at Brosnan’s drinking club, and drew the contract on a bar napkin to seal the deal! You know you’re getting something legendary with a start like that!

See, from a dawn of time man wanted to solve the mystery of dinosaurs. The problem is that they are extincted and bones give you only a limited pool of information. So, why not clone them? Ok, I can dig that.  But cloning them using a chickens is absolutely idiotic!!!  And that’s just what the evil corporation EUNICE (we know it’s evil since they got ‘infinite’ sign under their logo) does! Their employees drive around the trucks full of chicken. But those aren’t an ordinary chickens. No, those are MAD chickens!!! Something is clearly bothering them. Not surprising when we learn that the chairman of EUNICE is some insane old woman (interestingly the mother of the Laura Dern, the Jurassic Park actress) . During the unloading  of trucks one  mutated chicken brakes loose and starts the rampage. By breaking loose I mean on exiting it’s eggshell and attacking truck driver in orgies of blood. I believe we got the answer on question that had been troubling scientists for centuries – what is more lethal: the chicken or egg?

Escaped hatchling disappears into the desert. Local cowboy, who happens to be black (?!) finds the body of disemboweled truck driver. While investigation stands still, mutated chicken strikes again!!! This time victims are 3 drunk and horny teenagers. They were on their picnic in the desert (I guess infinite sight of sand and nothingness really turns them on). They made a quick stop on some sand hill in order to start another orgies (regular orgies this time, not in blood). While some guy and his girlfriend had their share of hot sun in the car, the third one went out to take a piss and finish his last beer (and i mean really LAST). He throws away empty beer bottle and starts emptying his hose. It turns out that the mutated chicken has been really pissed off by such negligence towards nature environment since it attacked our boy and bit off his wang. Let this be a lesson to you kids – always recycle or you could end up dickless. Mutated chicken is still hungry after previous sausage feast so it decided it’s time for main course. Yes, that’s right. Our lovers will have honor to satisfy our friend’s hunger. As it always happens to be, they got attacked on a highlight of their “socializing”. More orgies of blood, guts and some boobs. On it’s way home our pet sweetens the meal with an extra- two cops.

      ” Hello, I am  John Carl Buechler and this is  my friend, the Carosaur…”

We are back to EUNICE  quarters. It seems that chickens production is nothing else than a cover. A bad cover if I might add. Apparently EUNICE is secret government company who are also the leaders in biological research. We see secret room with a lasers and one full grown dinosaur who’s size rapidly changes from scene to scene. Dino-disco as we call it. Insane old woman apparently knows about this case even more than a her bosses from government. In the meantime police had found a bodies of teenagers and their colleagues. Blood and guts everywhere, disemboweled bodies, torned off body parts – and their main suspect is bobcat!!! How original!!! They might as well close the case.

The Prime Suspect!

Now back to killing. Despite the recent murders, a couple of hippies tied up themselves in a desert as part of their protest against nature pollution and EUNICE experiments. Of course, mutated chicken , which is now full grown dinosaur, didn’t  want to offend hippies by rejecting such an open invitation for another feast and attacks them in the worst stop motion attempt of all times!!! Those hippies will never learn.
Something is rotten in this town. We are now in cowboy’s house, when he tries to prepare his breakfast. One egg after another – all bad eggs. But not an ordinary bad eggs….these one are green and their stench is poisonous. One even had a dino- hatchling inside. One of insane woman coworkers (our main hero, btw) comes to investigate this. After series of tests he came to conclusion that he doesn’t know a shit about this so he decides to confront his boss. She told him that she developed a special virus which makes women to give a birth to dinosaurs (as can be seen in following scenes)!!!

Giving birth to a dinosaur, not an easy task!

Why then testing it on a chickens, you may ask. Beats a hell out of me if I know!!! Anyway, she claims that humans have destroyed nature order and that she just tries to restore a balance to nature. How can this be true? Dinosaurs are gone long before humans even existed. A smart person shouldn’t be this dumb. She meets her end after giving a birth after she previously infected herself. Well, that’s a dedicated scientist.
But it seems that her plan works. Women from all over the town are giving a birth to hatchlings after which they die. How did they become infected remains a mystery to me. By eating a bad eggs, perhaps? Hm, never mind that. In this moment, town has been occupated by US army, who have come to kill a chicken. Says enough about US army skills, don’t you agree?
Outside, cowboy is fighting an escaped hatchling. He got deadly wounded but manages, with his last strength, to shoot a dino in the head with his shotgun. A bloody end for the both of them. But this is not end of troubles for good people in this small town. Not by far. Remember a laser room? A genuine dinosaur (something like T-rex) had escaped by breaching a thick steel wall with it’s head (?!). Our main hero had come just in time for the final battle. He sits in a bulldozer toy. In following 10 minutes we observe a fight between bulldozer toy and dinosaur toy.

The Eternal struggle between a Dinosaur and a Bulldozer!

The winner is scientist since he managed to impale dino with buldozer forks for a several times, ending it’s existence with the most ridiculous catchphrase of all times “I hate wildlife”. He got rewarded for all of his troubles. He was firstly riddled with bullets and then torched! No good goes unpunished it seems!
Verdict:  The Government decided to destroy all evidence of the dinosaur invasion, if only they  destroyed this movie too this world would have been a happier place.  

The Atomic Brain aka Monstrosity (1964)

Posted: 01/09/2012 in Trash movies
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This movie makes no sense even in 60s when there was so many fresh and crazy ideas floating around. Ok, we know digital technology and other fancy stuff didn’t exist back then but that’s not excuse for putting 0 effort in filming. Follow me now in my step-by-step manual of how to avoid watching this abomination. You’ll thank me later.

It’s about some rich old lady who doesn’t want to give her fortune to anyone so she funded a mad scientist in his research to develop a machine that will be able to transfer her brain into a body of young and hot girl. Scientist had some experiments before that with freshly buried bodies which he has personally stolen. First of those was putting a wolf’s brain into his apprentice so he ended up making some kind of brain damaged werewolf. Oh yes, and he named it Monstrosity. How original. Anyway, being encouraged by that his following experiments are cadavers of 2 young girls. No one explained how so many young women died at all but i guess directors didn’t find it relevant. First girl became a zombie (not an evil zombie unfortunately), and second one became a crippled cat- lady ( her body has been merged with the brain of scientist’s favorite cat). Those two last experiments made scientist to come up with conclusion that cyclotron ( yes, that’s the machine name) is ready for it’s evil use so selection of victim can finally start. To make long story short, one perfect girl had been selected to host a brain of some old geezer.
Now, here is a twist! Are you ready? The chosen girl seduced old lady’s servant named Viktor (as in Viktor von Frankenstein) who is even older than his master and was occasionally used to sexually satisfy the old rich bitch. Oh, did I mention that every single person in this movie had to do same thing (even the Monstrosity; especially the Monstrosity) ? I didn’t ? Oh well, call me a spoiler guy. Viktor got afraid that in case of successful transfer his master won’t require his sexual services no more and that he’s gonna lose his job. So he made a plot with young girl to screw up old lady and share her fortune between themselves. Details of that plot  remained unknown and no one had spoken about it again.
The savior of the day was no one else than scientist himself who decided in very last moment to spare a girl and put a brain of old lady in his already used cat (no point in wasting a perfectly good material). Reasons for this decision also remains the mystery to us so we only can take a guess. Did he fall in love with young girl or he just wanted to do a right thing eventually? It turned out that that wasn’t a smart idea since cat managed to kill him while he was cleaning a cyclotron (?!). The girl ran away followed by a cat with plans of revenge on her mind. How scientist managed to put human brain into cat’s small head is another mystery of this movie. Ah so many mysteries.


Sinister looking cat. DO NOT PAT!!!

Another thing that adds an extra smell onto this garbage is lack of dialog.  Over 80% of movie is a pure narration! As if actors were too dumb to learn a script. Or too ashamed to speak. If  a reason is number 2 then I  can’t blame them at all.