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 SHOCK-O-RAMA
(Shock-O-Rama)
Horror Comedy. 90 minutes. Rated R. Brett Piper delivers the third film he
promised to Ei Cinema, and it may be the best one he’s ever done. For
those of you familiar with Mr. Piper’s career with Ei Cinema he started
with the hilarious Bite
Me! And you can never go wrong with strippers versus mutant, pot
eating bugs. Then there was his haunted house deal with Screaming Dead, which he played a
little more straight. This was a taut little gore fest with plenty of
tasty ladies showing us their goodies. Now, for this film Piper went for
the bastard child of all horror genres: the anthology flick. Most
anthology flicks tend to either drag in the middle or the frame work is
lame. Shock-O-Rama manages to
avoid both traps. The frame work is clever in that there’s this low
budget studio that has an actress (Misty Mundae) who appears in all of
their films (sound familiar?). Well, she’s getting fed up with all the
shitty movies and the studio boss is getting fed up with her. Before she
can quit he fires her. This gives her an excuse to go out to her newly
purchased home that she got for a steal because of a little devil worship
goings on many years ago. It doesn’t take long before the former home
owner rises from the grave and starts to torment our nubile young actress.
What the zombie isn’t ready for is the fact that she is sick of taking
everyone’s shit, including the undead.
Now, while she’s busy battling the undead our producer needs a
fresh new face to star in his crappy movies. That’s where we get the
other two tales in out little anthology. Like I said, clever. The first
one, Mechanoid, has Caitlin Ross and Rob Monkiewicz fighting little
aliens in a junkyard. The stop motion is clever and looks way better than
the budget probably would have allowed for. The mechanized creature that
the aliens build out of the junkyard is very cool. And Caitlin Ross is
very hot in the flick and manages to keep her clothes on. A true surprise
for an Ei Cinema flick.
The third installment is called Lovely
Is The Brain. AJ Khan stars as a young lady undergoing some bizarre
dream therapy administered by the very gorgeous Julian Wells. But, her
dreams are getting weirder every night and the other girls that have
subjected themselves to the therapy are starting to drop like flies. AJ
Khan has to find out what is behind the deadly doings.
Shock-O-Rama has a
pulpy feel to it. Even though it’s a low budget film, the stories are
interesting enough and move at a fast enough pace that you don’t seem to
mind and Director Piper manages to make his meager budget look much bigger
than it probably was. Misty Mundae is hilarious in the wrap around
sequence and her dialogue is laugh out loud funny. It kind of makes you
think a lot of what she says are things that she has been thinking in real
life for years. All the monsters are the fantastic stop motion that we
have come to expect from Piper and we get a Ei Cinema flick that really
only has one lesbian scene in and it’s not really one, just a lead in to
a shocking moment in the third act.
Shock-O-Rama is the film that could lead Ei Cinema in a new direction,
away from the lesbian soaked epics that we come to expect from them. More
quality films and possibly even theatrical distribution. I would have paid
to see Shock-O-Rama on the big
screen. The DVD extras are plentiful. You get interviews with the director
and producer, Michael Raso. There’s a behind the scenes documentary that
shows some tricks of the trade. Piper and Raso do a commentary and
there’s a Q&A with Piper at the screening of the film in
New York
. Now, for my single complaint. Misty Mundae needed to keep her clothes on
for this one. The nudity was the only gratuitous nudity in the flick.
I’m not saying there isn’t more nudity, but this is the only case of
it really being unnecessary. Add to the fact that she looked more than a
little pudgy and, well I would just rather remember my lean Misty to this
one. -Douglas A. Waltz
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