Death Valley - Ralphie Runs For His Life!!!

Death Valley
1982
D: Dick Richards
W: Richard Rothstein

S: Paul Le Mat, Catherine Hicks & Peter Billingley
Rated R     -     Approx. 87 Minutes
Cinema VII

Taglines
 - Welcome To Death Valley

 - Not even a scream escapes...

Alternate Titles
Pesadelo no Vale da Morte (Nightmare in Death Valley)  - Brazil
El valle de la muerte (The Valley of Death)  - Colombia
La Vallée de la Mort (The Valley of Death) - France
Dolina smierci (Valley of Death) - Poland
O Vale das Sombras (The Valley of Shadows) - Portugal

Küçük Kahraman - Ölüm Vadisi  (Little Hero - Death Valley)- Turkey





"Billy, the phone's ringing......it's for you."
                                                                 -Hal

I love it when a movie comes out of nowhere and endlessly surprises me.  I hadn't heard of Death Valley before Scream Factory released their Blu Ray/DVD double disc.....though the cover did look oddly familiar.  Perhaps I glimpsed it at a video store in my youth and then forgot about it, who knows.  The point is that this was a blind buy for me.  I knew I had to buy it as soon as I saw Peter Billingsley was in it.

"HOLY SHIT!  RALPHIE'S IN A HORROR MOVIE!" I shouted to no one in particular.

I bought it and there it stayed in the movie vault for some time.  Then the whole nearly getting shot in the head thing happened, we packed up and moved in the the wilds of New Hampshire and I forgot all about it until I was searching through my film library this evening looking for some rainy night entertainment and I came face to face with this magnificent cover again.

"BINGO!"  I yelled.

"What?"  The Mrs jumped in her chair.

"I've got the perfect movie!  Just wait until you see what I've got!" I giggled like a mentally handicapped ape.

"Oh boy."  The Mrs. was not looking impressed.

That's when I popped in the Blu Ray and without a word ran the trailer for her.  Her eyes widened.

"Ralphie's in a horror movie!" She perked up!

"HELL'S YEAH!"  I yelled.

"Ssshhhhh"  She hushed me.  "I can hear you, I'm right here."

I tend to get a little too excited and boisterous sometimes.  My bad.

And thus or cinematic adventure to Death Valley began.  Little did I know in those first moments before the credits even started how awesome actors are in this thing!  Catharine Hicks (who of course was in Child's Play) is Ralphie....er....I mean Billy's Mom.  His Dad is played by none other than Edward Herrmann!  You know him....we was Max in Lost Boys!  SYEAH!  As if that wasn't cool enough, we've got Wilford Brimley playing the Sheriff and Paul Le Mat (from Strange Invaders!) as Mike, Billy's Mom's boyfriend!  It was a total 80's overload of awesome.  Seriously, I was that excited.

It's Ralphie.....er....Billy!

Say.....could that be the infamous Black Bart?

Death Valley is also a surprisingly good flick.  Not quite a slasher (the body count is only around six....which is more than some slashers, I suppose....but the kills are rather sporadic), it falls more into the suspense/thriller category.  See, Billy's out in Arizona on vacation with  his mom and her boyfriend when he unwittingly and unknowingly steps into a murder scene.  While he doesn't find the bodies of the victims, he does find an unusual golden frog medallion.

I love boobs as much as the next guy, but I think I would notice that dude grabbing a knife.....

.......and that's what happens when you only pay attention to boobs.

The killer, finds out that Billy has the medallion and is afraid that he will be able to ID him, so he begins to pursue him, trying to kill him in various places.  What works so well for a large part of the film is that we the audience know exactly what's going on.  Billy and his family have no idea and we cringe as the killer tries multiple times to kill Billy, including a close call in a tourist attraction called Frontier Town, where the killer is disguised as an old west gunman with a bandanna over his face.  Billy thinks he's just one of the actors at Frontier Town and engages him in what he thinks is a make believe gun fight in the trinket museum.

It ain't no Red Rider BBQ Gun, but he still pulls off some sweet trick shots while watching a western!

Why do psychos always end up on the roof with a shotgun?

The last act of the film is intense as the killer comes for Billy at night when his mother and her boyfriend leave him with a babysitter while they go out on a date.  As you would expect in a flick like this, the babysitter gets offed and Billy is left to fend for himself.  It's a cat and mouse game as the killer closes in on him.  The ending was a bit rushed, but all in all it was a pretty good flick with a bit of a twist ending that you will probably see coming (though I didn't.....which kinda surprised me).

Gore:
We've got some red stuff spraying here as our friendly neighborhood psycho does his deeds.  What I especially loved is the fact that they use the melted red crayon style blood.

T&A
We do get to see a rather firm pair of breasts early on in the flick!  They're not there for long, but hey beggars can't be choosers!

Creatures Featured
What we've got here is a certified psychopath!  He's pretty damn creepy too.

Final Thoughts
I had fun with this flick.  It's got it's share of problems (in particular....as a larger fellow, I didn't care for the way they treated hefty people!  Sure, us big folks like our food just fine, but we're not going to die if we're not eating every five seconds.  I mean seriously....(SLIGHT SPOILER) the babysitter is killed because she got baited with free soda after eating a bunch of chocolate, corn chips and is on the way back to the room with a banana split. Sheesh.) but all in all, it's a good time and I do believe I now know why Ralphie in A Christmas Story has fantasies about facing off with a bandit called Black Bart!  Total reference to this flick!

Final Rating
Three out of Five Pizza Rolls

Video Demons Do Psychotown - Psychic Slashers Stalk Students

Video Demons Do Psychotown
1989
Directed by Alessandro De Gaetano 
Written by Alessandro De Gaetano

Starring Ron Arragon, Donna Baltron, Dave Elliott

Rated R - Approx 87 Min
Troma Entertainment

Taglines:
 - You wouldn't want to live there, but it's a nice place to die!
 - WARNING:  The Psychotown Surgeon General Has Determined That Television Viewing Is Hazardous To Your Heath!!!

Alternate Titles:
Bloodbath in Psycho Town - Original Title 

"I've taken nine hours of Abnormal Psych.....I've read it all!"
                                                                                               - Eric


This took me by surprise a bit.  While I was expecting the usual kind of late 80's/early 90's fare that Troma distributed back in the day, what I got was something quite different and definitely not for everyone. Video Demons Do Psychotown is perhaps a more fitting moniker than the original Bloodbath title because there really isn't too much going on in the way of bloodshed.  Sure there's a few murders but I would hardly call it a bloodbath.

Eric and Karen are fighting before the title screen even hits!  

Wow.  That's a very artsy craftsy town sign you guys got there....

Eric, a film student, and his girlfriend Karen head to Casa Della, which is small town that is filled with witches and psychics.  Eric's father bought an old house and is renovating it to turn it into a hotel for psychics.  Eric decides that this strange town will be a good subject for his final film project for school and heads out to make a documentary about the town.

Right off the bat they get a chilly reception from the locals.  Karen is getting bad vibes and having premonitions (she apparently has The Gift as well) which Eric discounts because he doesn't believe in such stuff.  Karen's visions and feelings grown stronger after arriving at the hotel and discovering that there was a deadly accident a week before they arrived.  She starts to see walls covered in blood and a man being stabbed in the gut.

Anyone with hair that poofy has GOT to be evil

It would seem that the locals can sense Karen's abilities and they want her gone before they expose their secret.  What secret is that?  Well to be honest it's never really fully revealed, but if you've been paying attention thus far then you can pretty well figure out that they murdered fellow by the name of Packard who pretty much owned the town and was a world class douche nugget.

What we are left with is essentially a murder mystery, combined with a haunted house story, combined with a tale of psychics and witches, combined with a slasher film, topped off with some possession undertones and a general sense of strangeness.  The film is extremely slow paced, but there is also something mesmerizing about it.  Perhaps it's the bad acting.  Perhaps it's the wonky dialog.  Maybe it's the melted crayon blood that they use.

YAY!  Melted Crayon Blood is the best!

"Hey, you okay?"

Let's talk about the acting and dialog for a moment, shall we?  Eric and Karen are seemingly perpetually at each other's throats.  Either they are sneering at each other or making a snide remark to one another.  If they're not doing either one of those things, then Eric is once again telling Karen how he doesn't believe in psychic powers after she tells him that she's had another vision or premonition.  This will lead to another fight which will then lead to a really awkward sex scene.  Though one of my favorite moments is when Eric is trying to explain away all of Karen's psychic feelings and visions by saying "Maybe you're allergic to electricity!"  From that moment on, I completely fell in love with this film.

Midnight Cinephile Tally

Death Toll - Four, if you wanna count the flashback murder of Mr. Packard.  We get a couple of stabbings, one head impalement and one death by tree!

Nude O Meter - We get to see Karen's boobs and her butt a few times.  You ladies can look forward to Eric's butt and a shot that reveals that he keeps up on his.....er.....manscaping.

Things That Go Bump In The Night - While there are no supernatural monsters per se....we do get some rather foul tempered psychics (they might be witches) and we get the disembodied voice of Mr. Packard as he tries to communicate with Karen.

Nothing to see here.....

Final Thoughts
This film was all over the place.  Ghosts coming back from beyond the grave, evil psychics trying to keep a lid on the illicit goings on of their small town and a slasher in a yellow rain coat.  The film even tries to delve into the mysteries of the human mind and whether or not it is possible to communicate with machines!  Some of that was actually fairly effective.  Every time Karen has a psychic flash when she's filming with the camera, it causes an anomaly when played back.  This anomaly is a psychic imprint of sorts and another attempt at communication from Mr. Packard's ghost.  There are some decently effective scenes of the students sitting in front of TV monitors watching the tapes trying to unravel the mystery.

Cause that's not creepy having a video face stare at you while you sleep....

As I said in the beginning....I was very surprised by this film by the end of it.  What started out as slow and plodding eventually morphed into strange and surreal.  This is absolutely a film that will make it's way into my repeat viewing rotation.  You can rent the disc from Netflix or you can watch the entire film on You Tube!  If you are willing to put some time and work into the film, then you will be rewarded.  Just don't go into it expecting a non stop thrill ride!


Final Rating
Three out of Five Pizza Rolls