John Carl Buechler Movies

As in several other films with this same theme, six young men and women head out for a hike in the woods, unaware that a crazed killer is on the loose looking for victims. About 30 years earlier, a group of gypsies were burnt to death in a forest fire, except for one small boy. Now the boy, all grown up and physically disfigured by the fire, is out to vent his rage on anyone who enters the forest. With a weak script, no characterizations, and lots of padding featuring wildlife (the animal kind) in the forest, this film might only be noted for the fact that it was one of the last movies in which Jackie Coogan appears. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

Fans of outrageously bad drive-in fare from New World Pictures will find much to love in this bargain-bin science fiction weirdness -- one of several Alien rip-offs foisted on defenseless audiences by Roger Corman's legendary B-movie factory. The plot -- which, of course, is irrelevant to the action -- involves a food-research team on a distant planet, whose latest genetic product decides it would rather eat than be eaten...and boy, is it hungry. Then enters our hero, an undefined government specialist (Jesse Vint) whose dreams in hypersleep find their way into almost every scene in the film -- his apparent powers of precognition, however, are never mentioned. Vint responds to the team's distress signal and shows up with his robot pal to blast the slime-beast to smithereens -- and, of course, to engage in a little intergalactic nookie with the team's female personnel. Meanwhile, the constantly mutating monster chews its way through virtually the entire cast before one cancer-ridden scientist devises a highly original (and extremely disgusting) solution. The ever-thrifty Corman recycled sets and scenes from Battle Beyond the Stars and Galaxy of Terror to pad out this weekend wonder, making up for its threadbare production values (which include plenty of cheap scares, nudity, and graphic gore). ~ Cavett Binion, Rovi

Joe Dante's box-office fantasy Gremlins had barely left American cinemas before Charles Band's B-movie factory, Empire Pictures, rushed out this cheap knockoff. While Dante's film benefited from the director's wry sense of humor and the high-concept clout of executive producer Steven Spielberg, Band's tawdry little creature feature boasts lower production values than a high-school haunted-house fundraiser. The title monsters are a pack of obnoxious demons -- enacted by a handful of rubber dolls covered with KY jelly -- summoned up by the metaphysical shenanigans of college student Jonathan Graves (Peter Liapis) after he discovers his late father's occult paraphernalia at the family estate. Jonathan later invites a group of annoying friends to participate in an all-night party, during which he intends to perform an elaborate parlor trick -- actually a satanic ritual through which he hopes to acquire his father's supernatural powers. This doesn't sit well with Dad, who bursts violently from his grave (a nice touch) to have a chat with his wayward son while legions of ghoulies (well, four or five, anyway) descend upon the revelers. Considering the entire production revolves around the antics of the ghoulies themselves, the alleged puppetry involved is laughable -- the inarticulate puppets do little more than open drooling mouths full of pointy teeth before offscreen stagehands fling them at the heads of cast members. The film's main points of interest lie with the supporting cast, which includes Bobbi Bresee as a supernatural seductress (sporting an eight-foot tongue!) and Eraserhead's John Nance as a bizarre gardener. Somehow, this became one of Empire's top moneymakers, spawning no less than three sequels. ~ Cavett Binion, Rovi

Herbert West (Jeffrey Combs) is a brilliant medical student who has perfected a green-glowing serum for regenerating life into dead things -- or even parts of dead things. But a corrupt superior, Dr. Carl Hill (David Gale), assumes control of West's experiments and winds up, by ghastly necessity, using the stuff on his own severed head and body. West and in-over-his-head co-worker Dan Cain (Bruce Abbott) struggle to control the now out-of-control effects of the serum, but the bone-saws and zombies complicate their plans. ~ Buzz McClain, Rovi

This off-beat story combines elements of a science fiction adventure and World War II drama. A platoon of U.S. soldiers are surrounded by the enemy in Italy and are forced to fight their way back behind the lines to their troops. The platoon is populated by the usual characters: "Sarge" (Tim Thomerson) is not afraid of anything, Joey (Timothy Van Patten) has not totally left childhood behind him, and Dolan (Biff Manard) is an aggravating reporter out for a headline. When the soldiers encounter a spaceship on their way back to safety, the plot takes a 180 degree turn. Zone Troopers' novel premise is matched by the cast, who deliver good work throughout. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

Essentially a feature-length music video featuring one of the most horrendous, awful heavy metal acts in the history of hairspray and studded leather, this hilarious horror dud involves a band of hard-rockin' boneheads whose concert tour includes a stopover in a hick town where the inbred denizens are less than hospitable. After being collectively lynched by the local populace, the bandmembers manage a comeback of sorts -- apparently summoned by the spirit of oppressed metalheads everywhere -- and put paid to the hapless crackers. The filmmakers manage to throw every bad MTV and zombie-movie cliché into the pot (there's even a cameo appearance by Adolf Hitler), which helps alleviate some of the tedium, but there is nothing coherent enough to hold the wacky elements together...aside from the band's hideous musical numbers, which seem to improve somewhat after their collective deaths. ~ Cavett Binion, Rovi

A touch of comic relief adds to this otherwise predictable sci-fi actioner about a mad scientist (Roy Dotrice) holed up in a remote jungle fortress in Mexico with his time-machine and robotic know-how. He plans on zapping himself back to the Roman Empire to reign as emperor in Caesar's stead thereby ruining a certain 20th-century pizza franchise. Standing in the way is a pilot who was saved from imminent extinction when the evil doctor patched him together with mechanical body parts. Once the crazed scientist decides to do away with his "Man-droid," the 'droid-human escapes and rounds up a gang of accomplices to head back up-river and do the scientist in. Patrick Reynolds plays Mandroid. (Reynolds is the heir to the R.J. Reynolds tobacco fortune who divested his stock and leads a national anti-smoking organization.) ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

The production team responsible for the twisted cult classic Re-Animator -- including director Stuart Gordon and producer Brian Yuzna -- returned the following year with this equally depraved (perhaps more so) follow-up, based once again (and very loosely) on the pulp-horror fiction of H.P. Lovecraft. Also returning to the fray is Jeffrey Combs, here playing the mild-mannered Crawford Tillinghast, apprentice to the dangerously obsessed Dr. Pretorious (Ted Sorel) and co-inventor of an enigmatic and ominous-looking device known as "The Resonator" -- a machine designed to stimulate the vestigial sensory apparatus contained within the human pineal gland. Such stimulation allows participants to "see" the slimy creatures which occupy a dimension parallel to our own, but with some chilling side effects -- the first of which being that the interdimensional vision works both ways. When a powerful sentient force devours Pretorious and assumes his consciousness, Tillinghast panics and destroys the Resonator -- soon to find himself in a padded cell, accused of his mentor's murder. Called to the case are Dr. McMichaels (Barbara Crampton, another Re-Animator alum) and amiable cop Bubba Brownlee (Dawn of the Dead's Ken Foree), who escort Tillinghast back to the shattered laboratory in an attempt to corroborate his deranged account by re-creating the experiment. Their attempts are all too successful, and the Pretorious-thing emerges to take control of the reactivated Resonator and draw the others into its hideous realm. Also called forth are the participants' darkest sexual desires -- another interesting by-product of pineal stimulation -- and, in Tillinghast's case, an uncontrollable urge to devour human brains. Just when it seems it can't get any weirder...it does. Gordon explores this demented scenario with relish, allowing nearly every scene to go completely over the top into surreal mayhem while retaining the dark brooding sense of menace characteristic of Lovecraft's work. (It's not likely, however, that the author's dignified upbringing would have explored the psychosexual dimensions of the premise -- at least not in the kind of detail seen here.) All manners of perversities abound, accompanied by the wizardry of four dueling special-effects studios and the rich, creepy score by Richard H. Band, bringing the film to a literally explosive climax and a chillingly poetic final shot. ~ Cavett Binion, Rovi

Malcolm McDowell and Madolyn Smith star in this unusual science fiction thriller. A young woman alone in a remote cabin expects friends for dinner, but instead a man who has car trouble knocks at her door and asks her help in calling for a tow truck. She sees him the next day in the village and inexplicably takes a ride with him into the mountains. Their nocturnal romantic rendezvous turns into a bizarre night of manipulation and psychological game-playing. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi

When a pair of attractive female slaves escape from their captors, they find themselves stranded on a strange jungle-covered planet. While the girls explore their new surroundings, they discover that they are being hunted by the planet's ruler. ~ Iotis Erlewine, Rovi

Sometimes kids like to do things to gross out or shock their parents. This is only natural, but many companies exploit this tendency by creating toys to appeal to that childish joy in the disgusting. In the late '80s, a new kind of bubblegum card, the Garbage Pail kids, featuring caricature paintings, of ugly, unclean moppets with yukky names such as Greaser Greg and Valerie Vomit, Windy Winston, and Foul Phil, each with an offensive habit, found popularity. This hastily-assembled live-action film-- billing itself as a children's comedy-- was hastily assembled to capitalize on that popularity. Featuring midgets dressed up as the bubblegum card characters, it is the story of an antique collector and his assistant who find a mysterious garbage can from outer-space. The assistant ignores his boss's stern orders not to open the can and frees the Garbage Pail Kids. Now the two must somehow get the raunchy rugrats back into the can before they gross-out the world. Appalled parents found the film, even the very idea of it, so offensive that they launched a nation-wide protest that resulted in its withdrawal from circulation. You've been warned. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

Prison guard Ethan Sharpe (Lane Smith) watched as Burke (Viggo Mortensen) dies in the electric chair in 1964. Over two decades later, Sharpe is the warden, and Burke returns from the dead to exact revenge on the wicked warden when the prison re-opens. Two victims drip blood while dangling in barbed wire in a macabre dance of death, and the guards and inmates suffer at the hands of the malevolent Burke as he seeks his supernatural vengeance. The film location was the Wyoming State Prison. Built at the turn of the century, the jail became a tourist attraction in 1981. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi

Directed by makeup effects artist John Carl Buechler, the seventh in the long-running, grisly horror series was far from the last, although the climactic fate of its antagonist would seem to suggest a final send-off. Lar Park Lincoln stars as Tina Shepard, a teenager with uncontrolled telekinetic powers. As a girl vacationing at Camp Crystal Lake, Tina killed her abusive father with the use of her mental abilities. Years later, seeking intensive counseling from manipulative, greedy psychologist Dr. Crews (Terry Kiser), Tina agrees to participate in a radical therapy that takes her back to Camp Crystal Lake. Unfortunately, Tina's psychic skills rouse the slumbering Jason Voorhees (Kane Hodder) from his watery grave and, in typically bloody fashion, the vengeful spook begins dispatching the randy teenagers partying in a house nearby. As Tina attempts to stop Jason's slaughter with the use of her powers, the mass-murdering ghoul encounters his toughest opponent yet. Friday the 13th, Part VII: The New Blood was often referred to by series fans as "Jason vs. Carrie," an apropos reference to Tina's strong similarity to the main character in the horror classic Carrie (1976). ~ Karl Williams, Rovi