LIVE FROM THE COUCH / Greg Walton

SPASTIC PLASTIC

You can’t intentionally make a cult film.

You can’t intentionally make a cult film. Like farts, they have to happen naturally. Which brings us to two new DVDs with spastic colons: Brutal Massacre: A Comedy and Forbidden Zone: In Color.

Featuring an all-star cast of horror has-beens like Gunnar Hansen, Ken Foree and David Naughton, Brutal Massacre (Anchor Bay, 95 minutes) is a bathroom BJ for the Fangoria set. (It even includes a mail-in rebate for 40% off an annual subscription.) But no matter how hard writer/director Stevan Mena’s mockumentary tries to mine the horror genre for yuks, it comes off as amateurish rather than endearing. Naughton plays a hack horror director with one last shot at low-budget redemption. His too-cutesy crew is made up of a clueless assistant director (Brian O’Halloran, Clerks), an over-qualified line producer (Ellen Sandweiss, Evil Dead) and a pint-sized Hindu director of photography with a taste for rough sex (Gerry Bednob, Walk Hard).

Crowds might eat this shit up at a horror convention, where the anticipation of ogling Linnea Quigley’s ass pushes everything to a fever pitch. But watching the Brutal Massacre shoot unfold at home is as painful as actually being there. Comedy is tough, no matter how effortless those Fresh Prince repeats make it look. And at least Mena’s last effort, the John Carpenter knock-off Malevolence, gave straight-up horror the old college try. Brutal Massacre is so eager to bend over that it loses your respect from the word “gore.”

Produced as a showcase for the theatrical noodlings of the brothers Elfman (Richard and Danny), Forbidden Zone still barely registers as a blip on the midnight movie radar even after nearly 30 years. This release (Legend Films, 74 min) might change all that, despite the fact that it’s been colorized at the behest of director Richard Elfman, who originally planned to have the negative shipped overseas and hand painted. The result is a pharmacological fantasy world, blending ‘20s silent cinema and kinky peepshows with a Rocky Horror aesthetic. It doesn’t hurt that little brother Danny contributes the musical score, including a couple of numbers that would feel right at home in Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas.

In fact, the whole production shares the Burton’s penchant for two-dimensional backdrops and animated interludes. There is some genius at work here. There’s also a lot of dry-humping performed by bearded Jewish wrestlers. Forbidden Zone often gags on its own quirkiness, but there’s an honesty and authenticity to Elfman’s bizarro universe that earns his film a free pass. Just hearing Herve Villechaize deliver the line, “I love feeling your nipples stiffen when I caress them,” earns this one a piece of cult film history.  

Straight outta the third most dangerous city in America—Saginaw, Michigan—Greg Walton writes from a basement bunker. His only window to the outside world is a sweet surround sound set-up and 65" inches of hi-def glory.