It's hard to pick a favorite when it comes to the annual events at the Mahoning Drive-In. VHS Fest and Camp Blood are at the top of the list. Remake Double-Take, Zombiefest, Reel Rumble, and Weekend Of Terror are also a hell of a lot of fun. Although they don't happen every year, Godzilla-palooza and Tarantino A-Go-Go are definitely in the running as well. However, if you forced me to pick a single of these yearly events to call my absolute favorite, I think I'd have to go with Schlock-O-Rama.
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The movies that were selected for Schlock-O-Rama VIII were a bit different than they have been in previous years. Although there have been the occasional films that were exceptions to the rule, the vast majority of movies that have been screened at this event since we started coming to the Mahoning in 2021 have been from the 1950's. This year, all eight films were from the 1970's.
My wife was not at all happy about this since 50's drive-in schlock are one of her favorite genres, but I was good with the change. I've always seen Schlock-O-Rama as being sort of like the grandfather of VHS Fest in that they're the kind of movies that probably would have gone straight to video if they were released in the 80's and 90's, but they were made prior to the widespread adoption of home video and found a home at small grindhouses and drive-in theaters across the country. I wouldn't be disappointed to see this event widen its scope to include films from the 50's, 60's, and 70's going forward. There are a lot of great movies that would fit the tone of this weekend.
The Mahoning Book Club met at 5:00 on Saturday. We discussed the 1904 H.G. Wells novel The Food Of The Gods which was adapted for the big screen in the second film that was shown on the previous night. I think this was my least favorite book that we've read so far. I've enjoyed the other works of H.G. Wells that I've read and the movie that's based on the novel wasn't bad, but the book was a snoozefest.
One of the coolest part of the Exhumed Films weekends are the trailer reels that are shown before each of the films. My friend Keith made a list of all of the trailers that were shown at Schlock-O-Rama VIII. This year, the trailers that were shown included The Incredible Melting Man, The Cremators, Schlock, The Cars That Eat People, Food Of The Gods Part 2, Frogs, Night Of The Lepus, Prophecy, Eye Of The Cat, Ben, Blood Mania, Ssssssss, The Boy Who Cried Werewolf, The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant, Army Of Darkness, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Evil Dead 2, Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III, The Blood Splattered Bride, I Dismember Mama, Night Of The Cobra Women, Women And Bloody Terror, I Drink Your Blood, I Eat Your Skin, I Spit On Your Grave, The Vampire Beast Craves Blood, The Legend Of Boggy Creek, The Man With Two Heads, Curse Of The Vampires, Carnival Of Blood, and Curse Of The Headless Horseman.
Attack Of The Killer Tomatoes / The Food Of The Gods / The Corpse Grinders / The Night Of A Thousand Cats
The first movie of Schlock-O-Rama VIII, and the only one of the eight films that I had seen before, was the 1978 horror comedy The Attack Of The Killer Tomatoes. I've got a lot of happy memories of watching this movie with my grandfather when I was a teenager. The whole movie is a rapid fire of puns and visual gags that had the two of us laughing like a couple of lunatics in the living room from start to finish.
The first movie of Schlock-O-Rama VIII, and the only one of the eight films that I had seen before, was the 1978 horror comedy The Attack Of The Killer Tomatoes. I've got a lot of happy memories of watching this movie with my grandfather when I was a teenager. The whole movie is a rapid fire of puns and visual gags that had the two of us laughing like a couple of lunatics in the living room from start to finish.
The second movie was a film that was loosely based on this month's subject of the Mahoning Book Club. The 1976 film The Food Of The Gods is a hell of a lot more fun than the novel on which it was based. The movie only covers the first third of the book and it takes quite a few creative liberties, but I'm of the opinion that every change was a good choice by the filmmaker. Unlike the source material, the titular food is something that is discovered in the ground, sort of like The Stuff. A farming couple on a remote island feeds this to their chickens, but it is accidentally consumed by rats who take over the island and try to eat a group of humans who find themselves gathered together on the farm.
Whereas the first two movies of Friday night featured people being eaten by mutant tomatoes and giant rats, the third and fourth movies involved cats who ate human beings. These cats were not giant or mutated. They were just ordinary housecats who were put on a homosapien diet by the villains of the film.
The first of these two movies, and the third movie overall, was the 1971 horror flick: The Corpse Grinders. This tells the story of the struggling Lotus Cat Food Company who discover that they can save a lot of money by digging up dead bodies and grinding them up to turn into cat food. Unfortunately, this leads to the cats developing a taste for human flesh, which leads to unfortunate consequences for their owners. This movie is absolutely twisted from start to finish, and I loved every minute of it!
The fourth and final movie of Friday night came from south of the border - the 1972 exploitation flick: The Night Of A Thousand Cats. The movie stars Mexican film Hugo Stiglitz. If you haven't seen any of his films and think that you recognize that name from somewhere, it's very likely because Quentin Tarantino named a character in his 2009 masterpiece Inglorious Basterds after the actor.
Hugo plays a wealthy psychopath who flies around Mexico City in his helicopter to pick up women to fly back to his estate. He seduces and has sex with these women, then decapitates them to preserve their heads in a glass jar, and he grinds up their bodies to feed to an army of housecats which he keeps in a pit.
It's tough to say which is the weirdest film of the weekend, but this is definitely a top contender. It seems like it was the result of filmmakers who had access to a helicopter, a Mexican castle, and a hell of a lot of cats, and they wrote a film that maximized the use of each of these three things. I'd estimate that at least a quarter of the runtime is either ariel shots taken from the helicopter or shots taken from the ground of Hugo flying around in search of women. It's definitely not the kind of film that everyone is going to enjoy, but if you like watching movies that are batshit crazy, this one will be right up your alley.
Night Two - Saturday, July 27
The first movie of Saturday night was the 1972 Filipino horror flick: The Twilight People. It's a fun sci-fi/horror flick that features Pam Grier in one of her earliest roles, though you'll have a hard time recognizing her under all of the human panther makeup.
The first movie of Saturday night was the 1972 Filipino horror flick: The Twilight People. It's a fun sci-fi/horror flick that features Pam Grier in one of her earliest roles, though you'll have a hard time recognizing her under all of the human panther makeup.
This movie is so similar to The Island Of Doctor Moreau that I assumed it was a lower budget ripoff of the famous Burt Lancaster film, but The Twilight People was actually released five years earlier. It is obviously inspired by the same HG Wells novel that served as the source material for The Island Of Doctor Moreau film, but it's interesting to see a different take on the story of a mad scientist who creates human/animal hybrids on a remote island.
The second movie of Saturday night, and the sixth movie overall, was the 1973 film Invasion Of The Bee Girls. It's a very fun sci-fi/horror detective story that could have been a sexed up episode of The X-Files if it came out a few decades later. It's about a woman who works as a scientist in a research lab who uses a mutated bee serum to transform herself and other women into deadly Bee Girls which allow each of them to seduce and kill men during sex.
The 35mm print that was shown at the Mahoning was from the movie's 1981 re-release which, for some reason, was renamed Graveyard Tramp. This alternate title makes absolutely no sense at all. Not only does the original title perfectly describe the film, but I think there might have been one scene that took place in a cemetery and it had nothing at all to do with the plot.
The leader of the Sangroids is the dorkiest horror villain I have ever seen. The character's name is Creton, who was played by Paul Craig Jennings. He has long blonde hair, thick sideburns, and a pencil thin moustache, and his lines are delivered with all of the passion and cheese of a kid from a high school drama club trying to impress a girl in the audience. This character reminded me so much of Ward Rackley from the King Of The Hill episode The Witches Of East Arlen that I half expected to hear him say "resplendent" every time I saw him on screen.
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The last movie of Schlock-O-Rama VIII was the 1970 vampire horror movie The Body Beneath. I wish I could tell you more about this movie. I'm pretty sure that I didn't fall asleep, but I was so tired by this point in the night that I barely remembered that it was about vampires. It didn't end until around 4:00 am and I had been operating on about four hours of sleep a night for the past two nights, so the fact that I made it this far is a testament to the power of sugar free Monster energy drinks. It seemed like a pretty interesting movie, so I'm going to have to circle back and watch it again after a decent night's sleep.
And that's a wrap on the 1970's edition of Schlock-O-Rama. It was a hell of a fun weekend, but for as much as I wish that it was a three day event this year, I'm kind of happy that it wasn't. I need some sleep!
