Fraternity Massacre at Hell Island

Year of Release: 2007
Genre: Comedy / Horror
IMDB Rating: 4 / 10
Level of Awful: High
Breast-O-Meter: 1 / 5

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

Here at the B-Horror Blog myself and the many voices in my head are dedicated to human rights and equality for all. Now, I’m sure many of you must be thinking, “but with a Breast-O-Meter, surely this site is dedicated more to objectifying women than it is men?” I myself thought that this may be a problem, but with such fine movies as Dead Boyz Don’t Scream, Bite Marks and Vampire Boys joining the illustrious ranks of The Crypt I feel that we are making great strides towards equality in objectification.

The job of ensuring equal objectification, however, is a monumental one and one that cannot fall to a single person. To this end I needed to find someone who is just as passionate about human rights as I am, and I knew just who to call. I hadn’t seen My Friend The Killer Clown Movie since we drank manly lattes and discussed Killjoy back in October. Thankfully my instincts paid off and he told me that he had starred in the perfect movie that would help in my goal of achieving objectification equality among the sexes. After convincing his wife that our relationship is purely platonic we agreed to meet at a romantic little bistro for a candlelit dinner and he would tell me about Fraternity Massacre at Hell Island.

This is what happens when you watch too many Days of Our Lives episodes.

After a nice glass of red wine, soaking up the atmospheric music and commenting on the enormous bread sticks at the table My Friend the Killer Clown Movie got down to business and told me about this film. He warned me that I would have to pay very careful attention or risk becoming a bit lost in amongst the many people talking to themselves, the gay Star Wars fans and the murder soundtrack that’s initially awesome but quickly becomes irritating. I agreed to try and keep up. So the story begins on a little island where a little stage quartet, who have an incredibly high opinion of themselves considering their shitty act and the fact that they’re performing in a dingy bar, are cursed by a gypsy woman for not allowing her grandchildren to be their understudies. They are now doomed to repeat this act for all eternity unless they can find four unsuspecting strangers to take their place on the stage and pass the curse onto them.

If he had manners he'd look the guy in the face while fantasising about his penis.

While we shared a plate of linguine with a creamy sauce My Friend the Killer Clown Movie explained that we must put this plot (which took place in 1984) aside for the moment and come back to it a little later. In 2007 the pledges of Zeta Alpha Rho are preparing for the final act of their initiation: Hell Night. They will be locked on the same island as the four gypsy-cursed ghosts and made to perform a number of ridiculous acts before being admitted into the fraternity. So now I was thinking that this was a ghost movie, but I was wrong. At the same time a lunatic from a mental asylum has escaped and presumably made his way to the island. This lunatic was also once a pledge for Zeta Alpha Rho but went mad on Hell Night and is now out for revenge on the fraternity that made him lose his mind.

Killer clowns: Now available for threesomes.

With the red wine now giving me a delightful buzz and a dessert of Italian kisses on the way My Friend the Killer Clown Movie elaborated a little more on this already strange plot. It would seem that, while one person has actually escaped from a mental institution, the majority of the characters have all the qualities of a mental patient. Jack, our main guy, is sleeping with one of the fraternity’s more senior brothers. This guy frequently speaks to himself like Gollum. Jack also has a roommate who was not chosen to be a pledge for Zeta Alpha Rho and, in his anger, frequently speaks to a clown figurine they have in their room. The president of the fraternity has a girlfriend who, in her anger because he’s always ditching her for frat stuff, frequently breaks into Kate Roberts inspired monologues. Finally there’s the Dean, who had to be blackmailed into allowing Hell Night to go ahead (he’s sleeping with the college’s cheerleaders), who suffers from debilitating headaches and then begins speaking to his long-dead mother.

So much wasted strawberry jam...

Perhaps it was a combination of the red wine and the intoxicating aroma of My Friend the Killer Clown Movie’s cologne, but I was struggling to see a story actually happening in amongst all of this strangeness. Despite my reservations I was assured that one was, in fact, taking place and that you just need to watch very closely to see it. The pledges on the island will have to contend with a number of things out to get them, including their fraternity brothers trying to play stupid jokes on them, a lunatic in a clown costume trying to kill them and the four ghosts trying to trick them into an eternity of crappy performances. Along the way Jack will learn the meaning of survival, having a great gal pal, the power of love and the truth about his upbringing in an orphanage.

So after a wonderful evening me and My Friend the Killer Clown Movie got up to leave. Walking down the street hand-in-hand with the smell of Autumn in the air and a gentle buzz in my head we both agreed that we had taken the fight for equality to the next level. After a tender makeout session we parted ways and agreed to meet up again should injustice ever need a severe ass whipping.

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• ‘Theatre’ is a very loose term that can be applied to singing in a shitty bar in a swamp.
• Queens in New York classes as an old country to the gypsies.
• Threesomes are more fun when you do it in front of a catatonic mental patient.
• Technology means that blackmail can be spread across any number of useful mediums.
• Pizza followed by a little dyking out is a great way for two girls to spend an evening.
• Frat brothers often discuss how good they’d look in the cheerleaders’ dresses with each other.
• The world needs working class cabana boys.
• There’s nothing better than ferris wheel sex.
• Not killing gay people is the sign of a broad-minded serial killer.

FRATERNITY MASSACRE AT HELL ISLAND TRAILER

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Blood Sisters

Year of Release: 1987
Genre: Horror / Thriller
IMDB Rating: 2.7 / 10
Level of Awful: High

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

To kick off my blast from the past 1987-themed movie month I felt that I should go all out and watch something that was both cheesy and filled with 80s ideas of promiscuity, prostitution and poltergeists. Thankfully everything I wanted was to be found in Blood Sisters, a delightful tale of a sorority initiation gone wrong bundled up in a wrapping of bad hair, chunky accessories and outfits that will make your eyes bleed. It’s one of those typical movies that couldn’t quite decide on whether it wanted to be a paranormal thriller or a slasher movie so it just throws both things together and explains neither.

The Ku Klux Klan's Women's Guild holds its weekly baking circle.

Deep in the forest, far away from the highway or the distractions of modern life, there exists a place where you can just get away from it all and forget all your worries: the local whore house. Here dozens of women wearing horrible undergarments and covered in so much makeup it would take a demolition crew to take it off are ready and willing to serve your every need, so long as the price is right. There are women for every man’s taste, so long as he doesn’t like them attractive. Business is thriving and the hookers are having a blast in their little hideaway, but somebody isn’t nearly as pleased with the fine work they do for their community. One day, in broad daylight, somebody sneaks into the house armed with a shotgun ready to put an end to this house of giggling delights. With the hookers dead and the local sex economy in a slump, the events of that day gradually begin to make their way into the local annals of urban legend and, it is said, that should you go into the old hooker house deep in the woods the spirits of the women still wander its halls in their trashiest finery, looking for young virgins to take as otherworldly lovers.

Even the mannequin wasn't prepared to put up with 80s fashion anymore...

When a whore house standing alone in the middle of the woods was once the scene of tragic events, both during its occupants lives and their untimely deaths, the place is virtually begging to host a sorority initiation. The local sorority made up of Greek letters thrown together at random has just finished shortlisting its very long list of pledges and is now ready to allow a new group of girls into its hallowed, bitchy halls. To prove that they will support one another as sisters and to prove that they are stable and mature individuals they must spend the night in the old abandoned whore house which the head sorority sister will have booby-trapped to try to scare them half to death and run out of the house like a banshee into the night. Test of maturity? Yeah, about that. So after a night of what looks like a primitive form of clubbing that takes up a good ten minutes of the movie the girls are blindfolded, put in a van and driven into the woods. From here they need to unpack, get comfortable, hear the story of what happened in the house and then go on a scavenger hunt to prove their allegiance to their would-be sorority house.

Mirrors are known to broadcast lesbian memories from the Other Side.

So now the house has been rigged up by a team of drunken jocks with a variety of things to scare the girls during their scavenger hunt: tapes of women screaming, babies crying, fake axes, a fake gun and so on and so forth. For a while everything is going fine as the girls go about finding random items on their lists. But then things start to get strange and the girls start seeing things, ghostly things. Strange women are wandering the halls while mysterious and sexy memories begin to play in the house’s mirrors. When it becomes apparent to the girls that the sounds that they’ve been hearing are just coming from things planted in the house to scare them they become more relaxed, but it certainly doesn’t explain the things that they’re seeing around them. When they start to be picked off one by one and cry out for help nobody comes looking for them, thinking that it’s simply another trap that’s been set off to scare them. The question to be asked, however, is what exactly is in the house with them? Are they really becoming the victims of hookers from beyond the grave or is something more sinister, more alive, stalking this old house with them?

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• It’s hard to distinguish between a cult meeting and sorority sisters just getting together.
• Health food not only helps you to lose weight but it will also reverse the effects of degenerative eye disease.
• Women find the memories of ghosts having sex with their favourite client highly arousing.
• Ghostly memories are always accompanied by circus music.
• The presence of ghosts is always accompanied by the sound of bell chimes ringing backwards.
• Sarcasm and fear have no place in a haunted whore house.
• Prostitutes who don’t give good head risk having the police shut their brothel down.

BLOOD SISTERS TRAILER

Necrosis

Year of Release: 2009
Genre: Horror / Thriller
IMDB Rating: 3.3 / 10
Level of Awful: Medium

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

Right, let’s start this review off on a good note: the views from the filming location were spectacular! OK, now that that’s out of the way, we can get on with the movie itself. It wasn’t the worst thing I’ve ever seen, and I think I understand what it was aiming for, but nothing pulled together nicely. The ghosts were quite nicely done, but you see them so rarely that they don’t really make much of a difference. The characters are a little grating on the nerves and seem incapable of communicating through any form of cohesive thought process, choosing rather to throw little fragments of speech at one another and hoping that somewhere along the line the pieces will fall together in some recognisable pattern.

Pinhead: The early years.

Like many horror movies before it, Necrosis (a.k.a. Blood Snow) tries to build a story around the tragic event that was the Donner Party. Of course historical accuracy is thrown out the window and what was once a story of human tragedy and the desperate lengths people will go to to survive becomes a short 3 minute introduction that portrays the Donner Party in what resembles a frenzied blood-lust. Satan’s hoofs are also thrown in for good measure. As usually happens when an area has experienced terrible horrors the story has passed into local folklore and the ghosts of both the victims and the murderers of the Donner Party are said to walk in the woods, both trying to lead unknowing victims to their frozen dooms.

Needs salt!

But who cares about some gruesome local history and an approaching blizzard when you have a rented cabin on top of the mountain where there’s no cellphone reception or way back down if things were to go wrong? So along come our 6 friends / victims: couple Michael and Karen (Tiffany!), couple Jerry and Megan and singles-who’ve-been-bet-on-to-hook-up Matt and Samantha. There are the obvious hints that Matt’s been brought along by Michael to help him get over some recent emotional setback and nobody likes Jerry. Apart from that, the generator not working properly or the caretaker turning up frozen in the snow a few hours after the group arrives, this should be a lovely, relaxing weekend where the assembled company can get away from the hustle and bustle of the concrete jungle. Which is why they chose to go somewhere with no cellphone reception. Far away. In a blizzard. Clearly no one in this group saw The Shining, because we all know how well that worked out…

Santa Claus when job dissatisfaction really kicks in...

Soon after arriving and finding the frozen caretaker the group begins to experience some very vivid nightmares (well, one features cannibalism and the one features a topless woman who later resorts to cannibalism, so I’m not sure if it’s a half-and-half nightmare). Jerry’s also beginning to behave very strangely, convinced that he is seeing the ghosts of the Donner Party coming after him and his friends. These visions aren’t helped by the fact that the body of the caretaker just disappears from the snow (the group thinks it was probably an animal that dragged the body away but, while the characters didn’t seem to notice this, there are no marks in the snow to indicate that the body was dragged anywhere). Michael and Karen also went off a while ago to try and get help from the nearest town but Jerry is convinced a ghost has shown him their dead bodies. The problem with all of this is that Jerry has a history of mental ‘episodes’ for which he is on strong antipsychotics, and this forms the basis of the last 25 minutes of the movie. You know, the 25 minutes where something almost happens?

Again, I see what the director was going for, but it just didn’t quite pan out. So many elements are introduced to try and make the audience wonder whether the ghosts are real or if the group themselves are slowly descending into madness, and these certainly succeed at adding some confusion to an otherwise boring movie. But heed this lesson dear aspiring directors: if you introduce plot elements, you need to try and resolve them and not just leave them hanging in mid-air when the end credits roll round.

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• Store bought possum just doesn’t compare to one that’s been freshly caught.
• A foosball table turns a bland, ordinary room into an amazing game room.
• Going exploring on a mountain you don’t know alone while it’s snowing is a fantastic idea.
• Cannibalism is OK because humans taste like chicken.
• Peeing someone’s name in the snow is a sign of true love.
• If you owned a Mustang at some point in your life there isn’t anything you can’t fix.

NECROSIS TRAILER

Death On Demand

Year of Release: 2008
Genre: Horror
IMDB Rating: 3.3 / 10
Level of Awful: Medium

THIS POST CONTAINS STRONG ADULT CONTENT

WHAT IT’S ABOUT:

I was determined to break the recent spate of so-so horror movies that I’ve been watching (Flu Birds provided a nice little respite) and stumbled upon this little gem. Death on Demand is perfect b-grade horror: college jocks, slutty co-eds, bicurious emo nerds, ghosts, abandoned houses and a so-so storyline to tie it all together. It’s a little bit slasher, a little bit mystery, a little bit softcore porn. There’s nothing at all original about the movie and the horror aspect really only serves as an excuse for women to run around topless and in leather skirts, but if you’re a fan of that kind of thing and a good b-grade piece of cheese, Death on Demand is just for you!

Porn star Ouija Board delivery at your service!

20 years ago father-of-two Sean McIntyre went off the rails and murdered his sherpa while on a hiking trip up Mount Everest. Delusional with altitude sickness he mistook the sherpa for a Yeti and brutally murdered him in what he believed to be self-defense. Back at home thing’s aren’t going much better for him: troubled by the unintentional murder and slowly losing touch with reality he snaps during a Thanksgiving dinner and murders his wife, 2 daughters and his mother-in-law before hanging himself. 20 years later college student Richard Sachs is planning on having a little fun on Halloween. In a manner very similar to Halloween: Resurrection (minus the iconic Michael Myers) Richard is setting up the old McIntyre house with cameras and daring 3 couples to stay in it on Halloween night with the winning couple winning a $5000 reward. ‘Cause nothing can go wrong when you spend Halloween in a house that was the scene of a tragic mass murder, right?

So, do you just wanna talk or....?

So into our little haunted suburban house wanders Darla and Biff, our sympathetic and likeable couple. What Darla does with her life is left unanswered but what we do know is that she’s handy with a pack of Tarot cards and knows her way around a Ouija board. Biff is a likeable jock who’s recently been kicked off the local college team and is taking part in the webcast in hopes of winning the money to replace his scholarship. Our second couple is Tammy and Brad, the standard muscles and no-brains combo. Tammy is blonde, constantly horny and protective of her man in a Jerry Springer, white trash kinda way. Brad, big and jockish, is having problems in the bedroom after he took a direct hit from Biff during a game. To round the group off is Haydn, an emo nerd with lesbian tendencies who speaks out of her nose. Her partner couldn’t take part in all the fun so in her place is Velvet Luv, a porn star who’s not shy of anything. Richard offered her a $500 bonus for anyone she manages to have sex with. You know, to liven things up a little.

Breast cancer awareness was taking a strange turn at this point...

The rules of the game: each couple will be given different clues scattered around the house and the first couple to find all the clues and find the key to the front door wins the $5000 prize. But it’s Halloween and they’re on the internet and there’s a porn star in the room so, to liven things up, the group whips out a Ouija board and conjures up the pissed off spirit of Sean McIntyre. Still in the confused state he was in when he died the remarkably solid spirit begins to roam around the house looking for the Yeti that’s determined to stop him from reaching the peak of Everest. Armed with all the necessary ice climbing equipment he manages to make quick and gruesome work of the kids he comes across. Of course it’s quite easy to find a victim when they handcuff themselves to the bed and make loud and strange comments while banging in the bathroom. Can Darla use the small print in hell’s contracts of the damned to save the group? Can Velvet keep herself in her top for more than 5 minutes? Can Richard break even on this little venture with his group being killed off one by one? All will be revealed by watching Death on Demand.

LIFE’S LESSONS LEARNED:

• Sherpas are only 4 feet tall.
• A simpler name for a Ouija board is a Talking Board.
• Ghosts are completely solid and subject to pain like normal humans.
• Say ANYTHING bad about a man’s penis and he’ll think you’re calling him gay.
• Webcasts will bring out everyone’s homoerotic fantasies.
• Lesbian sex will bring an entire campus together in a way that nothing else could.
• Ghosts see things in a kind of greyish blue.
• Everyone on a football team is stone-cold gay. Porn stars are doing their best to fix this.

DEATH ON DEMAND TRAILER