Really Awful Movies: Ep 67 – The Big Doll House

Entering women’s prison territory in this week’s episode.

The Big Doll House is a 1971 American women in prison (WiP) film, produced by the one and only Roger Corman and starring the incomparable Pam Grier.

Filmed in the Philippines (one of our favorite locales) and directed by the talented Jack Hill (Coffy/Foxy Brown), Big Doll House also features the amazing Sid Haig (The Devil’s Rejects).

The plot is about as skimpy as the inmates’ attire: an inmate, Collier, is found guilty of murdering her husband and introduced to the joint. Therein is a cadre of some of the more beautiful jailbirds you’ll ever see – forget the gritty realism of Orange is the New Black. Collier’s cellies include a political dissident and an addict in the throes of heroin withdrawal. And this motley crew, which includes the domineering Pam Grier (as Grear) plots their escape with help from two dim-witted males inexplicably granted prison-wide access to deliver fruit.

Because this is a WiP, there’s a sadistic prison guard and inmates are hosed down, some would say unnecessarily (we won’t). Corman and Hill basically wrote the rules of the WiP genre with this one. Great stuff!

 

 

Really Awful Movies: Ep 66 – Nightmare City

Nightmare City, AKA, City of the Walking Dead is an Umberto Lenzi sleaze-fest with a great soundtrack and some very gory kills.

In this 1980 outbreak movie, a TV reporter (played by Tarantino fave Hugo Stiglitz) investigates what’s turning townsfolk into hideous creatures. Turns out it’s radioactive materials from a nearby reactor.

Soon, the city is overcome by irradiated ghouls.

Few films combine utter zaniness with such inventive and disgusting gore.

Some critics have likened this to a “zombie action film” as the undead here run like sprinters, wield axes, knives and guns, and can even be convinced to board a plane to create havoc in other time zones.

Tom Savini is in the process of remaking this one. Wonder if he’ll retain the loopy ending of the original.

Welcome to….Nightmare City!

Really Awful Movies: Ep 65b – Dead Alive

Dead Alive is bloody. Very, very bloody, and the brainchild of the one and only, Peter Jackson. This Kiwi production is a bloody good time.

A soothsayer foretells the pairing of a cute bodega worker Paquita and a middle-aged nebbish Lionel.

The latter’s overprotective mother Vera Cosgrove (Elizabeth Moody), spies on their date as they visit the Wellington Zoo, which features a very special exhibit: a Sumatran Rat Monkey.

The monkey is a hybrid creature, the offspring of invasive rat species getting it on with monkeys. Anyway, one of the creatures bites the overbearing mom, turning her into a crazy zombie.

Lionel tranquilizes her and keeps her in the basement, but not before she’s bitten and transformed others into mindless zombies. Soon after that, ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE.

A critic in Entertainment Weekly said, “Horror films used to be primordial spook shows, tapping midnight-dark fears. Now they tap bodily goo: rivers of blood, dripping limbs, eyeballs that go pop in the night..”

The climax is one of the bloodiest things we’ve ever seen. Check out Dead Alive. It’s one for the ages.