THE BERMUDA DEPTHS

THE BERMUDA DEPTHS is a late-70s TV movie directed by one of the Rankin-Bass stopmotion guys. It is a live action horror fantasy about a mystery woman who just walks out of the ocean and all the mystical hoo-hah that entails. I do not know why this film got under my skin the way it did. The tone is a little slow and off, and the music is weird in a way that only 70s soundtracks could be. It feels like the ultimate hang-out-on-the-beach movie, with a strangely violent climax. I would not call it a good movie, but it mystified me in a way that more legitimately good movies never could. I was able to watch it all on Youtube before it was unceremoniously removed due to stupid things like copyright law. If you ever get the opportunity, check it out and get lost in the strange rhythms of this singular film.

GHOST TOWN

Not this film.

GHOST TOWN
2009
Directed by Todor Chapkanov
Written by Andy Briggs
Starring Billy Drago!

Eek.

WHA’ HAPPENED?

A group of idiots are stranded in a magical Old West that is haunted by cowboy spirits. Everyone splits up, because they’ve never seen Scooby Doo. They get killed a lot, because DUH, and then the survivors have to figure out how to stop the town’s curse so they can leave.

ISN’T THAT SPECIAL?

This movie was on Syfy Channel during Halloween weekend. I was visiting my parents at the time, and this was a film that my dad and I enjoyed together. We had a great time MST3King the entire thing, especially the obligatory barn sex death scene. It was a total bonding moment. And that is why horror movies are single-handedly bringing families back together.

SHIRTS AND SKINS:

Is there nudity? Yes, male and female, but it was edited for television, so none of it was awkward for my father and me to watch.

BLOOD AND GUTS:

Unlike the T and A quota, this film’s gore factor is particularly high. A lot of the blood spatter is CG, and the zombie faces are never as terrifying as Billy Drago’s actual face, but a few of the beheadings were effective. In particular, there was a scene ripping off The Hitcher that I quite enjoyed.

FINAL THOUGHTS:

This article might be rose-tinted because of the fond memories I have watching it with my father, but I think my experience with this film is indicative of the unique awesomeness of these kinds of movies. People from any walk of life—gay or straight, old or young—can catch movies like this on television during a lazy Sunday afternoon and have a freaking great time. This movie isn’t good—at all—but it is a great unifier. Someone should start broadcasting this wonderful garbage in the Gaza Strip.

GOBLIN

GOBLIN
2010
Directed by Jeffery Scott Lando
Written by Raul Inglis
Starring Gil Bellows (the brain tumor guy from Ally McBeal)

Goblin is a Syfy Channel movie, meaning it is chock-a-block full of slumming actors, simple plots, and bad CGI-effects. However, the CGI is never obtrusive and distracting—as it often is in movies like Sharktopus—because the titular monster is usually just a creepy figure in a cloak.

Close, but think smaller and cheaper.

Personally, I find this much more effective than seeing the goblin in the flesh, which you do during the film’s truncated climax. Call this the Poltergeist II trap. The entire movie uses a fairly effective villain for most of its run-time, but then turns him into a mass of computer-generated garbage for the last few minutes. It’s disappointing and ill-advised.

Look at this guy. Does he need computer effects?

That said, this film is a pretty effective tale of a small town ravaged by a baby-crazy fairy tale monster. Most of the townspeople act like Pumpkinhead-II-level idiots, but they get the job done. And they get killed a lot, so there’s always that.

WEREWOLVES: THE DARK SURVIVORS

I could not find a poster for this film,

so I decided to use the greatest poster ever made.

Werewolves: The Dark Survivors is the weirdly racist account of all the African American contestants on the CBS reality show Survivor. Actually, it is the equally ill-advised two-hour special on Animal Planet about the true story of werewolves. It’s a mockumentary, or at least it tries to be.

Basically, the special is a combination of fake interviews and werewolf reenactments from the channel’s stable of reenactment actors. Unfortunately, the kind of actors that are believable in five-minute intervals as snake victims and crocodile wrestlers don’t exactly emote well in two-hour stories about blood curses and family rivalries.

But the biggest problem with Werewolves, its fatal flaw, is that it doesn’t fully commit to the mockumentary format. The entire thing is narrated by one of the main characters, a werewolf who ends up dead by the end of the film. He’s meant to guide us through the angsty world of werewolf drama, but it’s not emotionally engaging enough to accomplish anything. This doesn’t work as a fake documentary, or a real fictional narrative. It’s meant to be able werewolves, but its format is closer to the miss-matched hide of a second-rate Frankenstein knock-off.

Werewolves: The Dark Survivors has turned into a sort of perennial Halloween time-filler on the channel, but it mercifully hasn’t spawned a series of narrative features for Animal Channel. Check it out if you’re a car-crash-rubber-necker. Otherwise, avoid it like a curse.

The trailer is pretty thrilling, though.

Too bad the movie itself was fifty times longer.

INVITATION TO HELL

STATS:

Invitation to Hell

1984

Directed by Wes Craven

Starring Robert Urich, Joanna Cassidy, and Susan Lucci

WHA’ HAPPENED?

Robert Urich and his family move to a new housing community where TV-appropriate weirdness starts happening. The neighbors act suspiciously, his secretary tries to warn him about things, and it seems like everyone wants them to join a shady country club called Steaming Piles Springs.

Oh, and did I mention that the country club’s logo looks like three turds sitting on a plate?

Robert's family joins without him, and they complete an initiation that involves walking into a sauna (whilst fully clothed) and pledging their undying loyalty to the country club. At this point, I realized the movie was a hard-hitting exposé of Scientology.

From then on, Robert's family starts acting just as strangely as their neighbors. His wife starts using kitchen knives, his son plays his video games or something, and the daughter… I don’t remember. None of it really seemed all that suspicious to me. That is, until the attempted dog murder, which is a pretty horrendous thing to do.

Robert realizes that his only recourse would be to go to the evil country club and sneak into the sauna. Thankfully, he steals a spacesuit from his work. It can withstand extremely high temperatures, it can shoot lasers, and it can sense whether something is human or not. And where does Robert work, you may ask. Answer: Office Max.

He uses his spacesuit to infiltrate the magic sauna, which looks like this on the inside:

Yes, inside the sauna is a matte painting. But that’s not all. See that cliff that defies the laws of physics? He jumps off it and lands in a magic purple world where his family (or at least the good parts of their personalities) are trapped. Robert has to struggle through the psychedelia and save the day.

Does he? You’ll have to watch to find out. Actually, please don’t.

WHAT YOU SAY?

"Now it's time to sleep with the angels, my little pookie."

"Made you jump, Mr. Winslow."

"The club is a special place. Very special."

"Do you forsake all for the club?"

"I'm just making love to you, honey. That’s all. I’m just making love to you."

"You’ve been a bad bunny. I've got to punish you."

ISN’T THAT SPECIAL?

So why is this film of interest to gay audiences? One reason: Susan Lucci.

Actually, two reasons: Susan Lucci and her many hairstyles.

During the climactic Halloween party (Did I mention there was a climactic Halloween party?) she comes dressed as the scariest thing she could think of: Susan Lucci.

With weird cheekbone glitter.

SHIRTS AND SKINS:

For a movie revolving around an evil sauna, there is so little nudity it’s almost a crime.

BLOOD AND GUTS:

This is a TV movie, so we get very little of anything. A bunch of stuff happens off-screen (car accidents and whatnot), and a few people get shot by lasers. Basically, this is the kind of film that wrings scares out of wacky neighbors putting on gorilla masks and leaning against windows.

A screen capture from Saw IV.

That said, the movie opens with Susan Lucci getting run over, jumping back up, and melting the driver with her magic finger. If ever there were an opening scene tailor made for my sensibilities, it would be that.

PLOT HOLES AND CRAZINESS:

Um, I honestly didn’t understand the ending. So his family was trapped in the magic sauna, but their evil personality traits were walking around in the real world? Or were those people just impostors? And what happened to everyone else who was abducted by the sauna? I’m sure some, if not all, of these questions were answered somewhere in the film, but I was under whelmed by everything after that kick-ass teaser that I guess things flew past me.

RANDOM THOUGHTS:

How do we know Susan Lucci can’t be trusted? Because the space suit labeled her "Non-human Malignant."

So this is the game that the little boy (the kid from D.A.R.Y.L.) was obsessed with through most of the film:

Ladies and gentleman, this is Astro Bomber. Personally, I think that this might have too much math to make for an interesting game. It’s like playing Calculus Blasters 101.

OK. IS IT GAY?

Well, there are no gay characters and very little bromance (even though I hate hate hate that word).

And like I said, there is absolutely no nudity worth mentioning…

But then again, Susan Lucci…