Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Horror House on Highway 5 (1985)

This is one crazy, crappy, shot on VHS movie.  A killer in a Richard Nixon mask breaks into a random house and chases a woman down the hall, where she falls straight through a large glass coffee table.  Why?  How?  It's her house!  The lights are on in the hall!  What does she have to do with the rest of the movie?  Nothing.

Cut to an extremely awkward professor who is mostly concerned with keeping his face towards the camera.  Sally, Louise, and the Pothead are assigned to do research on Frederick Bartholomew, a German rock scientist sought in connection with a series of unsolved murders.  The professor tells Sally she should interview Dr. Mabuse.

Creepy Dr. Mabuse knows things no one else knows and is willing to tell Sally, who might actually be the worst actress I have ever seen.  She makes everyone else look good by comparison, but they're not.

Mabuse tells Gary, his mentally challenged assistant, to drug Sally.  Then they can take her back to Bartholomews house, which has a groovy record player. Gary likes listening to music, so isn't that great?  Sally's not so happy about it since she's chained to a radiator.

Sally's partners go off in a van to test some rockets or something.  Louise's glasses fall off and the lenses break. What is she, Velma?  They've got a bunch of chemicals in the back of the van, which don't really figure that much into the rest of the movie, but it does give us the classic line, "What'd you do? Run over something? The chemicals... we could've been exploded!"

Sally and Gary do so much talking in their horrible stilted voices that you'll forget there's a killer in a Nixon mask running around.

The soundtrack is good if you like surf and garage music, which I do. It features Dick Dale, Link Wray, the Surfari's and The Count Five.  There may be more but I can't remember.  Also interesting is that the only music credit in the film is for the Dictators, which I don't remember hearing, but I'm guessing they must have gone rogue regarding licensing all the other songs.


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