Really Awful Movies: Ep 374 – Malatesta’s Carnival of Blood

~ reallyawfulmovies

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 21:01 — 24.1MB) | Embed

Subscribe: Email | RSS | More

Step right up folks, right this way. Take in the incredible, the stupendous, the monumental, the astonishing…feats of courage, strength. Be amazed! It’s carnival time, Malatesta’s Carnival of Blood, to be precise.

What’s this you asked? It’s an obscure early-mid 70s effort, directed by Christopher Speeth. And it was largely forgotten, until Arrow gave its fortunes a boost with a re-release. And boy are we glad they did.

This is a very odd duck indeed. Part Euro, Gothic, regional, vampire, Malatesta’s Carnival of Blood is at times Warholian, and just plan weird. Check it out, and subscribe to the podcast.

Really Awful Movies: Ep 373 – Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama

~ reallyawfulmovies

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 25:38 — 29.3MB) | Embed

Subscribe: Email | RSS | More

Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama. What a title, right? This is a wonderful, cheeky, low-budget effort that’s a creature feature and based around the infamous short story, The Monkey’s Paw.

Some nerds and some sorority pledges have to bust into a bowling alley to steal a trophy to prove their mettle. While inside, they encounter an imp, but not just any imp: a wish-granting imp!

And this imp, ain’t no wimp. Soon, some of the sorority sisters are turned into rapacious she-demons and all hell literally breaks loose. Good times, good times!

Genre heads will get a kick out of the cast, which includes Scream Queen Linnea Quigley, but also Robin Rochelle, who starred in Slumber Part Massacre and American Ninja 4 before her untimely, young passing.

Tune into this one, which was distributed by the legendary Charles Band, whose book I’m reading now.

Really Awful Movies: Ep 372 – Last Night in Soho and Saint Maud

~ reallyawfulmovies

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 24:51 — 28.4MB) | Embed

Subscribe: Email | RSS | More

On this episode of the Really Awful Movies Podcast, we head across the pond to London, but also seaside England for two different, though in some ways similar productions Last Night in Soho and Saint Maud.

Last Night in Soho is about a sheltered wallflower who is accepted into design school in London, leaving her quaint bucolic confines to tackle big city life and all its pressures. Finding she can’t handle the party-fuelled dorm atmosphere, she rents a flat which turns out to be…a portal to another dimension! During her sleep, she is transported to swingin’ 60s London, that Carnaby era of high fashion, Twiggy, The Who and Matt Helm…grooooovy baby! Unfortunately, not all is as it seems. Edgar Wright directs…so you know this is gonna be good. After all, Shaun of the Dead, right???

Saint Maud, by contrast, is a brooding look at a PSW caring for a terminal ex-Broadway star. The two bond, and one, the personal care nurse is conflicted by her recent conversion to the Catholic faith. The terminal star, however, resolutely is not, and the two lifestyles are almost pitted against one another. Turns out, they have more in common than you may think.

This is a very dark film, both literally and figuratively. But it inches along at a snail’s pace, with…not much in the way of a captivating narrative. Still, the tone is good, the visuals are there, and the performances are dynamite. And it’s good in its own right.