FULL MOON;S NOIR DOUBLE FEATURE:
HEAD OF THE FAMILY (1996) / HIDEOUS (1997)
HEAD OF THE FAMILY Get ready to see the 'Stackpool' family like you've never seen them before: in terrifying, monochromatic BLACK & WHITE! Howard is the meanest, nastiest thug in town, a Harley riding criminal with a hot wife Loretta. Loretta's problem is she's having an affair with Lance, owner of the town diner and Howard's getting suspicious. Driving back from one of their nightly flings, Lance witnesses the local family of weirdos dragging a man from his truck and into their house. Seeing this as an opportunity, Lance discovers the Stackpool's terrible secret. Nothing you've seen will prepare you for the lunacy of HEAD OF THE FAMILY: NOIR! HIDEOUS ! From the wild mind of Charles Band comes this spastic, sexy mad science and monster mash masterpiece, now recut as a slivery, shuddery BLACK & WHITE "film noir"! Dr. Lorca, an eccentric collector of biological oddities - has just "acquired" his greatest specimen: a horrible mutant born of toxic sewage...but the creature's rightful owner wants it back. Now the collectors' clash is cut short as the FBI joins the fight and the sickening specimen comes to life, re-animating an angry, oozing little army of ferocious freaks. Buckle in for this orgy of skin and scares, "noir" style!
HEAD OF THE FAMILY (1996)
Label: Full Moon Entertainment
Region Code: Region-FREE
Rating: R
Duration: 82 Minutes 28 Seconds
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.78:1)
Audio: English Dolby Digital 5.1, Dolby Digital 2.0 (No Subtitle)
Director: Charles Band
Cast: Blake Adams, Jacqueline Lovell, J.W. Perra, Bob Schott, Alexandria Quinn
In this weird 90s entry from Full Moon we have a local diner operator named Lance (Blake Adams, The Killer Eye) who is having an affair with a married woman, a scrumdiddlyumptious slice of white trash hotness named Loretta (Jacqueline Lovell, Lolita 2000). The problem is that Loretta is married to a long-haired biker thug named Howard (Gordon Jennison Noice, Virtuosity), a brute of guy who is trying to muscle in on Lance's business as a silent partner-type. Howard is scary but not too bright, and the two lovers manage to carry on with the affair right under his nose, and he seems none the wiser, early on they hook up in the employee bathroom at the diner while Lance finishes his meal.
On their way home from one of their nightly sex-flings Lance and Loretta observe something strange on the road home, discovering that the local weirdos the Stackpoole's are abducting people right off the highway and experimenting on them for nefarious purposes. Lance uses this tidbit of info to blackmail the Stackpoole's into making Howard disappear on his behalf, in addition to extorting them for $2000 a week, but as you might expect crossing the Stackpoole's is just a bad idea.
You see, the Stackpoole's are a family of quintuplets, the family is headed up by Myron (J.W. Perra, Mystery Monsters) who has a tiny wheelchair ridden body with an enormously deformed head, he's the brains of the family, of course. He has the ability to mind-control his other siblings who are a bit on the tiny-brain side. We have the wide-eyed Wheeler (James Jones, The Dark Mist) with eagle-sharp vision and an enhanced sense of smell and hearing, the brainless strongman Otis (Bob Shott, Vamp), and sister Ernestina (one-time underage porn star Alexandria Quinn, Scooby-Doo! Curse of the Lake Monster) is just a sexy vixen. Through them Myron is able to perform his oddball experiments in his basement dungeon, where he hopes to transplant his evil-genius brain into a normal sized person's body, he also puts on stage shows for his own amusement from time to time.
Head of the Family is a fun watch, if you love the weirdness and silly humor of Full Moon stuff I think you will have a good time with this one, just put that thinking cap aside for about eighty-minutes and you're good to go. The characters are fun, Myron is a creepy Southern mad doc of sorts with a giant head with the psychic ability to control his mindless drone siblings, it's a fun conceit. Lance and Loretta are also a fun pair as they fornicate and conspire to do away with her pesky husband, doing both at the same time usually, ninety percent of their conversations are had while having sex! Blake Adams plays Lance as a fast-talking hustler, full of charms and cheap charisma, while Loretta as played by Jacqueline Lovell comes of as a trailer park version of Scarlett Johansson, she's easy on the eyes and kindly sheds her clothes to reveal her top-shelf assets, which is always appreciated. For his part J.W. Perra gives the character of Myron nice Southern evilness, the make-up effects used to create his bulbous deformed head are impressive, and there's a drool-filled nipple licking scene with Loretta that was just so icky to watch, this movie certainly has it's moments.
The movie doesn't have a lot of atmosphere unfortunately, which would have escalated this one a bit, but it does have a peculiar softcore-horror feel that was at least fun, with some goofy humor and campiness, but the lack of atmosphere and that quick wrap ending brings it down a bit, but if you're a Full Moon fan there's plenty to enjoy about Head Of The Family, and seeing it in black and white in this "noir" version does oddly enhance the Southern gothic/noir vibes of it all.
HIDEOUS! (1997)
Label: Full Moon Features
Region Code: Region-FREE
Rating: Unrated
Duration: 83 Minutes 12 Seconds
Audio: English Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.78:1)
Director: Charles Band
Cast: Michael Citriniti, Rhonda Griffin, Mel Johnson, Jacqueline Lovell, Tracie May, Jerry O’Donnell
Charles Band and Full Moon has always had a soft-spot for tiny-terror films, low-budget movies that involved little things doing bad stuff, killer dolls and puppets (Puppet Master, Demonic Toys), galaxy travelling little people (Dollman), and even half-sized versions of the Universal Monsters (The Creeps), and Hideous! (1997) is yet another slice of miniature monster mayhem.
The movie opens with a scenario that feels more akin to Troma than Full Moon, with a trio sewage plant employees skimming the cesspool with long-poled nets, looking for unwanted chunks of whatever horrid stuff might plug up the works. The more senior of the trio relates to the newbies how he's found everything from a diamond ring (which he proposed to his girlfriend with) to a kilo of heroin, and even deformed mutant babies! As luck would have it he fishes out another deformed mutant newborn and carries it away to his car in the parking lot, apparently he's been selling these deformed babies he finds to an unscrupulous business woman named Belinda Yost (Tracie May, The Game) who in turn sells the freaks to the highest bidder for a massive profit. The two main collectors of hideous deformed babies in the area are are Dr. Lorca (Michael Citrini, Goodfellas) and Napoleon Lazar, played by Mel Johnson Jr., the mutant cabbie Benny from Total Recall!
When it is revealed, by her own dim-witted secretary Elvina (Rhonda Griffin, The Creeps), that Yost short shrifted Dr. Lorca in favor of Lazar in regard to the sale of her latest deformed acquisition, the angry Lorca sends his sexy female assistant/thug Sheila (Jacqueline Lovell, Head of The Family) to retrieve the latest mutant freak for his own private collection, she does so topless and wearing a gorilla mask in the dead of winter, fun stuff, completely nonsensical, but awesome in a schlocky what-the-fuck, why not, sort of way. As I said in the review of Head of the Family I definitely have a thing for Lovell, looking very much like a trailer park version of former adult film star Traci Lords and Hollywood's Scarlett Johansson.
Angry that he's been stolen from, Lazar along with Yost, Elvina and a newly hired private eye (Jerry O'Donnell, TV's Mad Men) head to Dr. Lorca's Gothic castle to confront him about the theft, but what they don't anticipate is that the new baby freak is somehow still alive and has re-animated three of Lorca's other prized baby freaks, which he keeps in a jar full of formaldehyde, which causes a bit of a mayhem for the six people at the castle.
As a tiny-terror entry Hideous! has it's moments but is bogged down by the fact that the tiny-terror action is slow in the coming and doesn't pay off too well, the freaks, designed by Mark Rappaport, (Zombeavers), are kept to a slime-covered minimum, and there's way too much talking and not enough terror. It helps that the lovely Jackie Lovell drops her top for a bit and spends the entire film in a pair of hot shorts and a leather vest that only just barely covers her top-drawer assets, and that both Citrini and Johnson are gleefully chewing up the scenery having a blast, but it was a let down that the deformed babies are kept mostly in the dark, caught in very fleeting glimpses, and even those are a bit under lit.
I also loved Tracie May as the deformed baby-broker, she has no scruples and is sort of sexy, too. She looks a bit like a femme fatale from a 40's noir movie, and her shit-for-brains secretary is fun, too. A ditsy dame who at one point has her nipple nibbled on by one of the mutant babies, it's a fun scene, but for the most part the freaks do not have a lot to do, which is a shame, and as a result this one loses points, but is still a fun watch.
This is a 90s Full Moon tiny-terror entry that doesn't rise to the level of cream of the crop of the Full Moon catalog, but this is absolutely on par with Head of The Family (1996) as a fun, low-budget, slice of Full Moon schlock. If you dig Full Moon's 90's output like Head of The Family and The Creeps (1997) you will probably dig this, if you're not a fan of FM or those film this won't change your mind, it's hokey and goofy, but it's also entertaining in a trashy sort of way. Again, I really dug the monochromatic "noir" version, it made for a interesting re-watch, I while I still prefer the color version this is a pretty interesting alternative viewing option.
Audio/Video: Both films arrive in Blu-ray from Full Moon in 1080p HD framed in 1.78:1 widescreen with lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo audio, there are no subtitles options for either, which is pretty standard for Full Moon. The only extras are a pair of Intros by Charles Band, and Noir Trailers, which advertise future Noir-ified Full Moon flicks like The Dead Want Women, Puppet Master III, and Skull Heads. Notably, none of the extras from the original Full Moon Blu-ray releases in color are carried over on this release. The single-disc release arrives in a standard keepcase with a single-sided sleeve of artwork.
Special Features:
- New Intros by Charles band: Head of the Family (1:37), Hideous (2:28)
- Noir Trailers: Head of the Family (1:09), Hideous! (1:20)
Taking a note from big-budget films like The Mist and Mad Max: Fury Road which offered monochromatic alternatives viewing experiences Charles band and Full Moon follow suit, mining their back catalog and offering alternate black and white versions of films, and I am here for it, I think the black and white noir-ification of these films in particular have been well chose, accenting the noir, retro sci-fi, and Southern Gothic elements, and while neither would be what I consider definitive editions of either films, it's a cool alternate viewing choice, and I like that they're presented as a double-feature as well, making this more budget friendly.
Screenshots from the Full Moon Blu-ray:
Extras:
Buy it!
#ad
