Universal Dork

Horror nerds often come with intact reproductive organs. Hence, sometimes they reproduce (albeit rare). I have personal experience. But becoming a parent doesn’t mean you must purge the filth from your video collections! Just as changing diapers are now daily routine, so must stealth nighttime viewings of those video nasties.

Yet, finding a happy medium between you, your child and your TV can be a challenge. That’s why there’s demented kids movies! The exaggerated costumes, candy colored sets, community-theater caliber acting and fantastical plots latent in these low budget bombs often congeal into scary, trippy cheeseballs of pain. You won’t soon forget the emptiness your soul will feel after watching them.

Many can be found on the underground label SOMETHING WEIRD VIDEO.

JIMMY, THE BOY WONDER (H.G. Lewis, 1966)

H.G. Lewis, Godfather of Gore, and more?

Herschell Gordon Lewis was an accomplished businessman, so the man who made BLOOD FEAST, 2000 MANIACS and GORE GORE GIRLS went where the money was and crossed genre lines to do so. Although his nudie cuties, teens-gone-wrong and (shutter) family films may seem like resume fodder compared to the squishy, extreme gore films he was famous for, he had a blanketing modus operandi; low initial budgets that yielded cult status and turned profits over long periods of time. He made only two family films and I’m sure Leonard Maltin would hate them. Yet, they endure with a strange charm that only Lewis could conjure.

SANTA MEETS THE MAGICAL LAND OF MOTHER GOOSE is nothing more than a filmed stage production with awful sound. If I remember correctly, the camera barely moves off the tripod.

JIMMY, THE BOY WONDER however, is laced with Lewis’ macabre sensibilities and full of hilarious jump edits, exaggerated acting, nightmarish visuals and horrifying songs.

Comfort bubble violation. Sound the alarm.

(more…)