BA_Harrison

Rubbery mutant monsters; a desert cult led by a voodoo priestess; a vibrating cactus full of tarantulas: just some of the entertaining nonsense to found in The Terror Within II, the directorial debut of Andrew Stevens, star of the first film. Stevens also reprises his role of David, survivor of a world-wide plague that has wiped out most of humanity and which has resulted in hideous genetic mutations.

While on a mission to find the ingredients necessary to cook up an antidote to the plague, David rescues a beautiful young woman, Ariel (Clare Hoak), from a mutant; Ariel shows her gratitude by shagging our hero. Unfortunately, David isn't the only one to have a go on the young lady: while staying at the camp of a religious cult, Ariel is offered to a mutant as a sexual sacrifice, the creature mounting her moments before David arrives to see off the horny beast. The combination of David's sperm and the mutant's sperm results in a hybrid baby that Ariel gives birth to soon after the couple arrive at the fortified laboratory where scientists are waiting to create the plague vaccine. When the baby is born, it grows rapidly into a hideous monster, and before you can say 'yet another Alien rip-off', it is running loose, killing off the humans one by one.

Stevens keeps the pace lively, filling his film with plenty of action, a touch of gore, and some gratuitous nudity. It's all very cheap and cheerful, but the cast give it their all - even R. Lee Ermey, who apparently only took the part so that he could pay for his house. Stevens' real-life mother Stella (Miss Purdy from The Nutty Professor) appears as one of the scientists, and Burton Gilliam (you might not know the name, but you'll recognise his face) is also fun as Dewitt, another of the survivors.

Lower your expectations before watching (if you've seen the first film, that should go without saying) and you'll probably have a good time with The Terror Within II. 6.5/10, rounded up to 7 for IMDb.

God of Pain might have worked as a series of short webisodes, but as a full-length feature it is extremely repetitive, with virtually nothing in the way of plot progression, making it quite the tedious experience.

The film is set in the near future: murderers and sex offenders are taken to the 7th terrace, where an injection in the eye transports them to another realm to be punished by Algea, The God of Pain (Jason K. Wixom), who forces them to relive their crimes (shown in flashbacks) before making them suffer for their sins.

This set-up is repeated several times over, getting more and more tiresome with each subsequent instance. In an effort to switch things up a bit, writer/director Jd Allen has two of the prisoners vindicated, one compensated for his trouble, the other offered the opportunity to work alongside Algea as a punisher, but it does little to improve matters - it's still very mundane.

Rather than eliciting a feeling of pure terror, Algea is a rather laughable specimen - a scrawny fellow wearing a cheap-looking Halloween mask, who talks in a very silly voice. And he has large rubbery hands. There's a bit of splatter for the gore-hounds, but nothing particularly remarkable.

My rating is 3/10.

Poor John Carradine: in Ted V. Mikels' The Astro-Zombies, the horror icon is reduced to tinkering with cheap-looking laboratory gadgets while spouting ridiculous technobabble to his mute assistant Franchot (William Bagdad).

I saw The Astro-Zombies over the course of two evenings because watching the whole thing in one sitting would have been too much of an ordeal. It's a shoddy z-grade sci-fi horror from the '60s that rivals the work of Ed Wood in terms of sheer ineptitude.

Carradine plays mad scientist Dr. DeMarco, who is creating super humans who can be controlled via thought wave transmission. Tura Satana, buxom star of Russ Meyer's Faster Pussycat... Kill! Kill!, plays villainous Satana, who wants DeMarco's secrets. Meanwhile, a pair of government scientists and a redhead lab assistant try to solve the mystery behind several grisly murders. Or at least I think that's what the film is about: the plot is so poorly written and the direction so sloppy that it's hard to tell. Or care.

The acting is terrible and the pacing is very uneven, with some scenes that don't know when to end: DeMarco messing with a piece of equipment, Franchot draining the blood from a body, a topless dancer in body paint gyrating to a bongo beat in a nightclub.

Fans of really bad drive-in schlock might find that there is just enough trashiness to make it worth a go: Mikels delivers some cheap titillation, his Astro-zombies tearing off women's clothes; Satana hams it up a treat as a sadistic killer; a sexy babe in a bikini is strapped to a gurney in DeMarco's lab; and the ending gives us a smattering of gore, as an Astro-zombie goes berserk with a machete. But be warned... as much fun as all of this sounds, the sheer shoddiness of proceedings makes it tough to sit through.