Death by Dialogue (1988)

At some point in time a person sat down and wrote a movie, he decided that "Death by Dialogue" was a good title. At some other point in time he pitched that movie to some studio executives and they too decided that it was a good name. Somehow none of these people decided that "Death by Dialogue" might be the most boring name ever.

Death by Flames is a much more awesome name.

Have you ever thought the idea of a killer movie script sounded interesting? Yeah, me either. Though apparently someone did because that's what Death by Dialogue is about.

Our story starts out with a man reading said script, and not soon after he's lit on fire by a woman wearing garters and carrying a flamethrower. And yet somehow this movie makes that really kind of boring. I'm not sure how you manage that but it does. After that you're instantly cut to a scene with some bad 80's music where you meet the characters in the story who might actually matter: Lenny and his friends.

Lenny and his four friends decide to visit Lenny's uncle, though I'm not entirely sure why. I'm not even really sure if it's specified in the movie why they do this... I mean besides to advance the plot. It just strikes me as odd that a bunch of people in their mid-20s would decide to vacation at one of the dude's uncle's house. I would think the beach would be a lot more exciting... and rarely do you run into any demonic movie scripts at the beach.

Either way Lenny's friend Shelly stumbles across the movie script and that's when shit starts to hit the fan. Kind of. Mostly it's after that when it starts getting kind of confusing... and stupid.

While Shelly is reading the script what she's reading is actually happening, or at least there's little hints to that. And yet when she reads about her friends dying she doesn't seem all that concerned when they're missing the next day. I would like to think that if I found a script that oddly had my friend's names in it, described the location where you were at, and then when I read that they died in the script it just so happens that they're missing the next day I might at least mention it to someone else. Apparently not Shelly though.

Maybe I'm wrong about the movie though... maybe that's not what happened. I can't tell you because this movie has parts in it that make absolutely no sense. Like the two friends who go missing that I mentioned up above. It all starts off with a sex scene where at the end the woman gets blown out a window and disappears. The man runs off into the forest looking for her only to find... an '80s hair band rocking out in the middle of the forest. I have no idea why. I'm not sure it's ever really explained. This is a total Birthday Fish moment. There's several of these kinds of moments throughout the movie. It's very difficult to make sense of a movie that has a habit of making no sense.

There were roaming gangs of hair bands in the '80s

So after a few more deaths our characters finally figure out that it's the evil script. I can't remember if they figured it out or the uncle told them... because he knew about it all along. You know, I don't think if I had a problem with "killer manuscripts" running rampant I would let my nephew and his four friends come out to my house to hang out like lambs to the slaughter. Then again, I'm not a dick.

So after they figure out it's the script killing everyone they have figure out a way to stop it. Just writing that sentence I feel stupid. They wrote a movie about it. Either way the ending is... well horrible. It contains demons and fire and... dirt bikes. Also a whole lot of confusion. It's one of those things you kind of have to see for yourself, but I wouldn't suggest it. It's as bad as it sounds.

All and all the movie was pretty terrible, had a lot of rather confusing parts to it, and also had the worst name I could possibly think of. Also a movie about a killer script is pretty lame.

One thing I would like to point out though. Look up at the top, that's a poster for this movie. I'm not sure if you can read what it says so here it is "Ken Sagoes, the kid who survived Nightmare on Elm Street 3 is back!". That was their big selling point... now you know what you're getting yourself into.

3 Birthday Fish out of 5

Squid.

Legacy of Blood (1971)

I'm pretty sure I saw this plot on Scooby Doo. So a rich old man dies but instead of leaving money to each one of his kids he's a dick. According to his will his four kids must spend the night in his mansion and whoever is left in the morning will receive or split his fortune. Guess what! Things go wrong and people start dying! Seriously if the house had been haunted this would have been a Scooby Doo episode. I'm sure the cast of Gilligan's Island would have showed up at some point.

Hackneyed plot aside this movie is awesome, and by that I mean terrible. Sorry apparently watching this movie has made me just as retarded as the people who were in it.

Before I talk about the movie let me ask you something. If someone said that you would get millions of dollars if you could sleep in a house overnight wouldn't you be at all suspicious? I mean, I sleep in a house every night and I've yet receive any sort of payment for it. Yet no one seems to wonder what the catch is and seemed somewhat surprised when shit went bad.

Do you remember The Surreal Life on VH1? Basically they got a lot of D List stars who had tons of personal problems and threw them in a house together? Shockingly crazy people do crazy stuff. Legacy of Blood is kind of like The Surreal Life, but instead of booze and STDs you have incest and LSD.

Seriously, only one of this man's four kids turned out even sort of normal. Not a great batting average there. Let's see you have Laura, the normal one. She spends most her time doing boring things with her equally boring husband. Than you have Johnny, he's the brother who I'm pretty sure slept with his sister Leslie... the movie was a little vague in that department, also he's completely crazy in an overacting kind of way. Than you have Veronica, I guess she's kind of normal too but also somewhat manipulative and bitchy. And finally you have Leslie, I can't tell you if she's normal because she slept through about 90% of the movie. Either way she was hot, they should have fleshed out that part of her story more.

On top of that you also have the spouses and the help. The only one worth talking about is Leslie's husband. He was a psychiatrist and sleazebag. While he didn't sleep with everyone who was at the house I think given the opportunity he would have. Than there's the help. Apparently if you have a crazy family you have to hire crazy ass help. We'll start off with the driver Frank. I think if I hired a driver who's room looked like it was decorated by Hermann Göring I might consider getting a new one.



Now granted all of that is from Nazi's he killed during WWII not that he was one... still I like to think that when someone you employ has a lamp made of the skull and skin of a Nazi he killed he may not be the most stable of people. Moving on you have Elga, apparently she's the creepy nanny who raised the kids. Which would explain why none of them turned out. Finally you have Igor, yes Igor. I'm not really sure what his job is other than to look like a muscular Mel Brooks and have a creepy relationship with Elga.

I loved you in Spaceballs. Now please put your shirt back on.

There's one more character, Sheriff Dan Garcia. He's the first to die so he's not all that important. He comes over to the house, only to end up as a severed head in the fridge. I only bring this up because it seems weird to include it in the movie. Seriously, no one notices that the town sheriff goes on a call and than doesn't come back for hours? I didn't know this mansion was in Mayberry.

After the Sheriff's untimely death, members of the family start turning up dead. As they wonder who is killing them off one by one you're treated to a look into the family's lurid past via flashbacks or perhaps acid trips. Really, the flashbacks are like looking at the world through Hunter S. Thompson's eyes.

Makes sense to me.

So slowly over the course of the night more and more of the family members are killed in more and more gruesome ways... and yet no one just leaves. Maybe this is some sort of metaphor for our power and money hungry lives. That these people are willing to die or witness their family die all for the almighty dollar. On the other hand it could be that the entire family is just retarded. Yeah, I'm going with that one.

3 Birthday Fish out of 5

Squid.

Dont Open Till Christmas (1984)

How good can a movie be when it forgets the apostrophe in the title card? The answer? Not very. Don't Open Till Christmas isn't exactly a bad movie, but it's certainly not a good movie. It's just there.

It's nearing Christmas and a lunatic is killing everyone in a Santa suit! Okay, I'll give you that there's going to be people who have to wear Santa suits for jobs and what not, but here's a simple way to not get killed: stop wearing it after your job is done, and don't walk down a dark alley while wearing one. Apparently no one in this movie is smart enough to realize this so you're treated to many badly dressed Santas being butchered over and over again.

Like this poor bastard

Have no fear there's a crack team of detectives from Scotland Yard on the case... and by crack team I mean they seem to kind of just be there in the background and instead the movie decides to focus on two people. Kate, her dad was the second person killed by the Santa Clause Killer and... Sherry? Cheryl? I didn't catch her name and in the credits I believe she's only credited as Experience Girl. She's a stripper* who is kidnapped by the Santa Clause Killer.

*I say stripper because I have no idea what to call her job. She sits behind glass and men pay to see her do things like get naked. I'm not really sure what that's called... but I doubt there's a job fair for that sort of thing

Neither of their stories are very compelling and are actually kind of jumbled and boring. I found Kate kind of annoying and her part seemed kind of forced and the story seemed to focus a lot on her boyfriend for no real apparent reason. While Experience Girl's part just seemed rather unneeded, it didn't really add anything to the movie. And when the detectives showed up in the movie they felt like they were just kind of there. They had a fairly big part in the movie, but most of it just felt kind of like filler.

There's nothing really wrong with this movie other than it's just kind of there. It's forgettable. I had no interest in it, and at the end of the day I don't have a lot of say about it because it was just kind of "meh".

Don't Open Till Christmas probably isn't worth your time. I went into it hoping for some kind of cheesy Christmas themed slasher that would fall into that "so bad it's good category" and would be a fun/funny movie to watch at Christmas time. Instead I got a really boring movie with a really average/boring plot. While I think that it could have been a decent slasher movie, in the end it falls flat and instead you get something that feels like it could have been better.

2 Birthday Fish out of 5

Treasure of Tayopa (1974)

Treasure of Tayopa. I'm not sure exactly what to say about this movie other than it's awful. Awful. Awful. Awful. That's four awfuls just in case you weren't clear on how I truly felt.

Treasure of Tayopa starts off with a cock fight. When I say starts off with a cock fight I mean that the first frame you see in this movie is about halfway through a cock fight. No fade in from black, no title, no credits. Cock fight. That's four cock fights just because it's a funny word. Finally we meet three of the four people you'll be seeing in this movie, all on horses talking about the treasure and the boss that they're going to meet. Finally the boss arrives by plane and... get ready for this... it's a woman! Oh ho ho that will throw a monkey wrench in the plans! I guess.

After the title you're than treated to about two minutes of various scenes overlayed over each other but all showing very uninteresting things.



See that? Actually three different shots going on there. One of just a landscape, one of the four stars riding on horses and one of... lens flare. Hopefully you enjoy watching that kind of scene because you're going to see it a lot. Especially the lens flare.

Let's talk about the six people you'll be seeing in this movie:

Kathryn Delgadillo: She's the boss. Her father told her where to find the treasure of Tayopa (I'm not sure if it's explained why he never went and got it, but I wouldn't be surprised if it never was). She's a tough woman working in a man's world of (badly) treasure hunting.

Sally: He's the crazy one. That's right, he. Maybe it's a boy named Sue kind of thing. All you need to know is that he's crazy... for no real reason. Also if I'm planning on finding hidden treasure that would be worth millions you know the first guy I bring along? The mentally unstable guy. The kind of guy who brings a crossbow along for no reason. Yeah, I want him on my team.

Tom Stoddard: He's some guy. Really, he has very little purpose and you learn almost nothing about him. Good times.

Felipe Estrada: He's the translator. He has very little purpose and you learn almost nothing about him.

Then there's some mexican dude who follows them around for the entire movie (more on him in a moment). I'm sure they might have given his name, but I sure didn't hear it.

And then there's the banditos. The banditos are only there for (bad) plot reasons. Also all of them appear to have taken fashion advice from Speedy Gonzales.

Also there's a narrator. One you see. He comes in twice and explains about the history of Tayopa a bit and that's pretty much his two scenes.

So Kathryn, Sally, Tom and Felipe are on their way to Tayopa when they come across the banditos and our mystery mexican dude. The banditos proceed to hassle the bunch... and by hassle I mean they kind of ride around them yipping and yelping before letting them pass about 15 seconds later. But that's enough to put Sally in a whiny rage. He's complains to Tom that he wants to go back and see what they're up to because of three reasons:

1) Because of what they did to Kathryn.
2) They pulled his hair.
3) They pushed his horse.

What they did to Kathryn is... well nothing. Mostly got in her way and yipped and yelped. And you never actually see 2 or 3 happen. I suppose it all happened off screen or something.

Anyway Sally and Felipe head back to check out the banditos and their leader, the mystery mexican dude(or MMD as he'll be known from now on). The MMD leaves just before Sally and Felipe arrive so the banditos think this is a good time to drink tequila and shoot a rifle into the air. While they're doing this Sally kills them all. Because he's crazy. Also they pushed his horse and pulled his hair. I would kill six people because of this as well. So Sally and Felipe head back to camp (Felipe doesn't tell anyone what happens because... I don't know) and the MMD finds his whole bandit camp slain and decides to follow the four stars for the rest of the movie. At about the midpoint in the movie he cuts the ropes and lets their horses free. They walk and buy new horses. So he follows them some more. This guy is horrible at revenge.

So eventually they get to where Tayopa supposedly is and you learn more about our four stars... and by learn about them I mean you find that the reason they brought Sally is because he's really good at working a metal detector. Apparently they couldn't find a non-psychopath who could also work a metal detector.

All the while Sally is going more and more crazy for no real reason. From here on in this review there's major spoilers. Trust me, it doesn't matter. You don't want to see this movie anyway.

So Sally finds the treasure and proceeds to try and rape Kathryn but I guess midway decides it's better to hit her with his belt a couple times which leaves her close to death. He then proceeds to shoot Tom with a crossbow and Felipe with a real gun. That's another thing, at the first of this movie they gave Sally a gun. Again, you're just asking for trouble when you give the crazy crossbow dude a gun.

Kathryn isn't dead from her five belt lashes and proceeds to smash Sally's head in with a rock. Then she wanders around the desert, kills a rattle snake and eats it raw, finds a dry well and appears to die. Then a priest comes by and gives her water. Cut directly to a narrator who talks a little bit about Tayopa some more. Fin. That's it. The priest is never explained. Frankly I was just happy it was over.

This movie is absolutely awful. Don't watch it. It's not worth the 90 minutes of your life. It doesn't even fall into the "so bad it's good" category. It falls into the "so bad it's awful" category.

5 Birthday Fish out of 5. It's awful.

Squid.

Night Train to Terror (1985)

If I had to describe Night Train to Terror in one word it would be confusing. If I had to describe it in three words it would be awesome and confusing. Night Train to Terror starts off with a great '80s song, with singing and dancing and trains.

Man the '80s sucked

Anyway after their done singing their awful yet catchy song you get to meet God and Satan who apparently travel by train. From what I gather they meet up occasionally to divvy up random souls, and with each soul you get to watch a story of how these people died. Starts off well enough, I mean all except for that godawful '80s song... but when you start to watch the three stories that's when it all goes to hell.

The three stories of the people's death? They make absolutely no sense. With a little bit of research you'll find out why. You see, most movies would film their own stories if they were going to put them in a movie... but not Night Train to Terror, it's different. You see the three stories you're seeing are actually just other movies edited down to around 20 minutes to make these stories.

The Case of Harry Billings? Actually a movie called Marilyn Alive and Behind Bars. The Case of Gretta Connors? Carnival of Fools. The Case of Claire Hansen? Cataclysm. If you add up the length of all these movies they're about 270 minutes long. Night Train to Terror is 93 minutes long. Think something might get lost in translation?

You bet ya! Night Train to Terror is like giving someone a 350 page book... except 179 pages are ripped out... and what is left isn't necessarily in order... also every 60 pages there's a bad '80s music video.

That's right, they even managed to screw up editing these movies correctly. Occasionally it's very noticeable that the scene you just watched happened after the scene you're watching now. In the second story the couple goes from hating each other and the girl having short hair to the couple being madly in love and the girl having long hair. I'm pretty sure you can't miss something like that so it tells me they just didn't care.

So here you have three 90 or so minute movies that you have to edit down to about 20 or so minutes each and try to make it at least somewhat coherent. If you were going to do that do you think you would pick two movies that didn't have THE SAME ACTOR IN THEM? Night Train to Terror didn't.

Richard "Bull" Moll

That's right, the first and third story both star Richard Moll. Seriously though of all the confusing things int his movie I don't think that even ranks in the top ten. There are so many things in this movie that confused me that I think I spent about 85 of the 90 minutes laughing and saying out lout "What the hell just happened!?"

This movie is bad. Really, really bad. So bad it's good. Hilariously good. You can't watch this movie without laughing. Confusing as hell, but so bad it's good.

2 Birthday Fish out of 5

Squid.

The Firing Line (1988)

War is hell. There's nothing funny about war. Unless it's portrayed in the 1988 Shannon Tweed/Reb Brown film The Firing Line. Then it's the most unintentionally hilarious thing you've ever seen.

The movie starts off with six minutes of what appear to be the same 10 guerrilla rebels getting killed/blown up over and over again. Finally the plot got bored of this and figured it needed to advance itself, so instead of getting blown up one of the rebel fighters gets captured... but not just any rebel fighter, no this is Rodriguez. The man fighting the good fight and leading the revolution in this unnamed South American country. Also he's the whitest rebel fighter since Luke Skywalker.



Enter Captain Mark Hardin, the hero of our movie. All those rebel soldiers that were being blown up? That was Mark doing it. Now I know you're wondering "How can he be the hero if he was the one blowing up the rag tag group of rebels in his helicopter?" That amazing plot element will be explained later on. For now Rodriguez and Mark Hardin just have an awkward, uninteresting conversation before Mark hands him over to the true bad guys in this film, the evil government official and his equally evil United States government official counterpart.

Mark then heads back to a hotel bar where he proceeds to meet and awkwardly romance Shannon Tweed... I'm going to go off topic a little bit here, but I just want to say you might hear the words awkward and hilarious a lot in this review. Why? Well because every bit of dialogue in this movie was not only written poorly, but poorly delivered. It all seems to come off as awkward and hilariously bad.

After Mark's done putting the moves on Shannon Tweed, he learns that Rodriguez was killed! I can only assume he thought that handing over a rebel guerrilla leader to the government would end well. But Mark's on the case! He's going to find out what happened! He does so by confronting the government officials, which ends about as well as you would suspect. One hilariously bad conversation and fight scene later and our illustrious hero Mark is captured, imprisoned, and tortured. Fear not good reader, because this prison is run by the world's most inept guards meaning even someone who fights as badly as Mark Hardin can easily escape.

He then has to rescue Shannon Tweed, because despite the fact they only just met the enemy thinks she may know his whereabouts. The hilariously bad scene shown above is the rescue. I'm still unsure how he knew that they'd be taking her prisoner, maybe he just happened to be passing by and noticed them about to execute her in front of her hotel. I don't think it's ever really explained, but that about par for the course with this movie. Either way she's rescued and it's hilarious.



Hi-larious.

After rescuing her they're then promptly caught by the guerrilla rebels. Apparently Mark's not very good at this whole evading capture thing. But that's okay! Because Mark's going to help the rebels fight against the evil government now! You know, the one that he was a part of up until yesterday? Because killing unknown guerrillas from the safety of your helicopter is okay, but the second you kill the guerrilla leader you've gone too far.

Since you've started reading this he's been captured twelve times

The next thirty minutes of the movie are pretty much Mark showing the rebel soldiers how to fight... and by that I mean they go from a group who look like they've never heard of a gun let alone touched one to a group who looks like they might be able to hit a target if it accidentally got in front of their gun. Pretty soon though, they're taking over bases and kicking ass because the people they're fighting are slightly more inept then they are. Seriously, I think if you gave me a baseball bat and a switchblade I could take over this country.

Eventually the movie decides that it's had enough and needs to end itself, so Mark and the rebels decide to take over some radio tower and broadcast their message to the people or something along those lines. Unfortunately they have a traitor in their group and the government knows that the radio tower is their next target. I could go into detail about how this all ends but I'll just tell you that it's the most hilarious thirty minute battle scene I've ever seen in my entire life. All ending in our hero getting shot about fifteen times, jumping off of an exploding bridge, and somehow managing to come out no worse for wear.

Buy this movie. Not because it's a good movie, but for the exact opposite. This movie is absolutely horrible, but because of this it's absolutely hilarious. I spent more time laughing during this movie than I did while watching Prime Time, and that was a comedy. You can find this movie in dollar bins and trust me, it is so worth the money.


Watch this and tell me you don't want to see this movie.


1 Birthday Fish out of 5

Squid.

Mama Dracula (1980)

I'm not even sure where to begin with Mama Dracula. Imagine taking a horror movie and crossing with a comedy movie, failing at both and then not telling your actors whether they're in the comedy movie or a horror movie. That pretty much sums up Mama Dracula.

Mama Dracula starts on a serious tone telling us the history of Countess Dracula (played by Academy Award winner Louise Fletcher) and how she ruled the countryside of Transylvania with cruelty, bathing in the blood of virgins to give her immortality. It then takes that somewhat serious tone and throws it right out the window and introduces us to Professor Von Bloed. Professor Von Bloed is a scientist who is trying to produce artificial blood... in what appears to be his basement.

Professor Von Bloed receives a letter inviting him to attend the "world blood congress" in Transylvania from Countess Dracula. Since I can only assume he spends a lot of time trying to make blood in his basement and doesn't have time to read books or watch movies, this doesn't send up any red flags. So Professor Von Blood boards a giant ocean liner and is off to Transylvania because apparently Delta doesn't have a hub there.

The Professor arrives and gets on a train, and this is where the movie take a giant turn for the WTF. This movie is set in modern time... and yet when the Professor gets off the train Transylvania it appears to be about the 1800's. For no apparent reason. It's not like accidentally got on the train from Back to the Future 3 and was transported back in time, because the rest of Transylvania is modern time as well. It's just this one village that appears to be stuck about 200 years in the past... and I'm not sure if it's ever explained, but they pop up inexplicably throughout the movie.

I could go on and keep explaining every single scene in this movie that makes no sense, but I really don't have the time so I'll just give you a brief synopsis.

Countess Dracula needs virgin blood, but in this day and age (the '80s) everyone is apparently a whore and there just aren't enough virgins to throw on the juicer so that she can bathe in their blood. So she hires Professor Von Bloed to synthesize virgin blood so that she can bathe in constantly.

Apparently before Professor Bloed came into the mix the Countess would get virgin blood with the aid of her two twin sons who look like they're wearing vampire Halloween costumes. They own a department store and when a virgin comes in to try clothes on they frighten her, she faints, and they haul her back up to the house so they can take all her precious, precious virgin blood. That's the plan, that's apparently how you get virgin blood.

Somewhere in this story there's a detective and his assistant (played by Maria Schneider) who are hot on the trail of whoever is kidnapping virgins, and by hot on the trail I mean the detective is more incompetent than Inspector Clouseau and Maria Schneider somehow manages to get herself kidnapped and imprisoned by the Countess.

And it all ends with a fashion runway show, Professor Bloed inviting artificial virgin blood, everyone having the option of becoming a vampire, and Maria Schneider marrying the two twin sons who up until this point I thought were gay. Yeah, makes perfect sense to me too.

There are little things here and there that I missed, but at the end of the day it probably doesn't matter because at the end of the day this movie is just plain awful. It wants to be a horror movie and comedy and fails at both. At the end of the day the movie is just too bad and too incoherent for it to be anything.

I really wanted to review this movie differently, I really did. I wanted to get a bit more in depth with this review... but I swear to God my brain just turned off about 3/4 of the way through. It had enough and wanted out. If I had to pinpoint the precise moment when this happens it would be at 57:13 when this happens:


I'm not sure what it is. From what I can tell is that it's some kind of fish that wanted to wish the Countess a happy birthday. That one picture pretty much sums up the movie for me.

Instead of stars I'm going to rate out of Birthday Fishes. 1 Birthday Fish being an okay movie that may actually be worth watching, 5 Birthday Fishes being an absolute mess of a movie. Mama Dracula gets 4 Birthday Fishes, and I hope not all of the movies are this bad.

Squid.