Torre Do Medo

To me, I know what to expect when I see a video box that has a woman on the front cover wearing a bra and holding a machine gun, along with a 4-Star Rating from Joe Bob Briggs. It always amazes me that people rent this stuff, apparently expecting Bergman or something, and THEN decide they have to write negative reviews denouncing the overall silliness, bad acting, cheap production values and amount of nudity and/or violence. To me, HARD TO DIE delivered exactly what it promised on the box...action, blood, babes, machine guns, Corman references (this is, after all, a New Horizons video) and loads of cheesy fun.

Five scantily-clad young women (Gail Harris, Karen Mayo-Chandler, Deborah Dutch, Melissa Moore and Bridget Carney) are hired to work a temp inventory job at "Acme Lingerie" in a closed down for the night high-rise. They all get naked in a touching group shower scene that alludes to the powers of female bonding (HA!), try on the new Fall lineup of underwear, then accidentally open a "soul box" containing the spirit of Hockstetter, the notorious "sorority house killer" (last seen in Wynorski's similar SORORITY HOUSE MASSACRE 2). Someone in the group becomes possessed by the evil spirit and starts killing the others with a hook. Thankfully there's an armory shop in the same building, so the surviving girls get to defend themselves with high-powered machine guns! Big Peter Spellos returns from SHM2 as hulking Orville Ketchum, who is mistaken for the killer and outlives a dozen or so knees to the crotch, stabbings and gunshots (not to mention a fall off the roof!).

If you decide to take these zany proceedings seriously, that is your choice, but approached in the right state of mind, it's often hilarious. There's B-movie ingenuity at work here in this silly time-waster. It is action, nudity and in-joke packed and the ladies are all all pretty fun and energetic, so it's fine viewing for the audience intended. If you do not like these films, simply do yourself a favor and stop watching them.

This mountain of melted cheddar is dumb, dumb fun. Director/producer Wynorski (who also helmed the raucously cheesy Chopping Mall) proves himself to be the unsung B-movie hero. Wynorski's films win because he creates schlock that believes in itself. This production doesn't have an air of superiority. It carries its ludicrous premise with a conspicuous joie de vivre and at a boisterous pace, all while avoiding the doldrums of self-parody. Wynorski also succeeds in that his intentionally funny and over-the-top ending is actually funny. He thus accomplishes the rather difficult task of creating a film that people will laugh at AND laugh with.

This film is actually the third entry in the Sorority House Massacre series, but stands just fine on its own (I've never seen the two preceding SHMs). It may be the best of the trilogy, downplaying the derivative slasher element that defined the first two films and instead taking an exuberant action-horror-comedy slant (the title, in case it wasn't obvious, is an obvious spoof of Die Hard). Just the image of our trashy-lingerie-wearing, bloody-breasted heroines brandishing automatic firearms is enough to alight the predilections of any cult film fan.

(*1/2 out of *****) In a cross between Die Hard and the Slumber Party Massacre (and Sorority House Massacre) movies, a deadly spirit is released into a high-rise office building while a group of pretty female co-workers who work for the ACME Lingerie Company are staying late doing inventory on one of the upper floors (as well as showering and trying on the merchandise). As in Sorority House Massacre II (which was filmed and released roughly the same time as this one and which, with the exception of the building setting, basically follows the same plot), one of the girls becomes possessed by the demon and starts butchering her scantily-clad friends before they even get the chance to have a pillow fight. Luckily, the remaining gals find a crate full of automatic weapons and, next thing you know, bullets are flying, blood is splattering, and breasts are bouncing. I won't lie to you, T&A can often carry an otherwise lousy movie a long way, but that's hardly the case with this one (still, I went ahead and gave this turkey an extra half-star solely for its wall-to-wall display of frilly teddies and lace panties.) Orville Ketchum (as `Himself') appears as the same character he plays in SHMII, and he even narrates a near-identical flashback sequence lifted from the original Slumber Party Massacre. As a testament to the bad writing and Wynorski's equally bad direction, the tiresome and ridiculously indestructible Ketchum pops up around corners every three or four minutes and just stands there looking stupid -- a very bad idea. Seriously, he's one of the most annoying characters in B-movie history, and if he's meant to provide comic relief, it doesn't work. Joe Bob Briggs `LOVED' this movie, and it admittedly does have its charm, but not enough of it to cover up the wretched acting, writing, and directing. Low-budget and horror movie cameo king Forrest J. Ackerman has a lengthy role as Dr. Ed Newton, who sits in his office the whole time. The back of the video box shows pictures of scenes from an entirely different movie. Wynorski has the honor of being responsible for some of the worst drek the slasher genre has to offer.

Lowlight: The death scenes are laughably staged -- one girl gets pulled off-camera from behind by somebody with a hook, and then an obvious bucket-full of fake blood is splattered against a concrete wall. Stupid, stupid stuff.

Hard to Die (1990)

** (out of 4)

Unofficial third film in the SORORITY HOUSE MASSACRE series features most of the same cast as the second film, although they're all in new roles (obviously). The story is pretty simple as five ladies dressed in lingerie's must fight off a killer while trapped inside a skyscraper. HARD TO DIE is a pretty silly and over-the-top film that is quite campy from the first scene to the last but what else would you expect from director Jim Wynorski? Like the previous film, this one here has a few confusing moments dealing with a completely different series. The Orville Ketchum (Peter Spellos) character from the previous film is introduced here as the "suspect" from the "previous events" but when he tells the story of what happened that night, instead of using clips from SORORITY HOUSE MASSACRE II they instead use clips from THE SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE. I'm not exactly sure why this was done as the story here perfectly concludes what happened at the end of the previous one but oh well. As for HARD TO DIE, it's a fairly entertaining movie as long as you don't take it too serious. The five actresses obviously all have big boobs and they're constantly shaking around throughout the 78-minute running time. The actresses are all good for what they're asked to do and this includes one of the most obvious "shower scenes" in the history of horror movies. Forrest J. Ackerman has a brief bit as does Wynorski who plays a porn director. Spellos is a lot of fun as the suspected killer who is constantly scaring the girls no matter what he's doing. There's a long-running gag dealing with him scaring the girls, which is pretty funny and we get an even longer running gag dealing with his constantly being shot, beaten, stabbed and yet he can never die. The gore level isn't all that high and you never really see any deaths on screen as we usually just hear a scream and then blood being splashed on the wall. The film eventually runs out of steam and especially when you consider this is pretty much just the previous movie only just set in a skyscraper. Either way, fans of trashy and silly direct-to-video movies should get a few laughs out of it.

Jim Wynorski's movies are, frankly, beyond criticism. They don't pretend to be anything other than what they are--an excuse to see beautiful women naked. That's it. Nothing else. No messages, no points to ponder, no pleas for peace, love and brotherhood. Just gorgeous women in varying and frequent stages of nudity. Wynorski, unlike many directors of this type of flick, actually has a sense of humor and salts his films liberally with it. This one is a bit different than usual, but not much. It has great looking women, nudity, guns, nudity, blood, nudity, a fat guy, nudity (not the fat guy's, thankfully), and, on top of all of that, nudity. If that's what you're looking for, this film delivers. The girls aren't good--or even competent--actresses, but then again, they're not supposed to be. They're there to giggle, look scared, run around in lingerie and take their clothes off, and they do all that quite well. You rent a Jim Wynorski movie pretty much knowing what you're going to get, and he seldom disappoints. Wynorski's films deliver what they promise--a characteristic many films nowadays fail to follow through on--and you can't ask for much more than that.