After the enthusiastic response to the screening of Idle Hands, Event 8 was picking up steam, with the crowd clamoring for more. Admittedly, I wasn’t prepared for a fourth movie that night. Fortunately an extensive DVD collection saved the day yet again with a copy of Evil Toons!

Any fan of crap-tastic cinema knows they’re in for a show with good ol’ Fred Olen Ray. Occasionally working as a “T&A specialist” for low-budget, direct-to-video flicks (as-in they hired him to inject more nudies), his ability to find excuses to have actresses strip down in movies is unparalleled, even by Paul Verhoeven. He’s made over a hundred movies, and what can I say? They’re fun, if just for the simple fact that its easy to see that the guy loves what he’s doing.

Well, that and they are so. Incredibly. Dumb.

Take this particular picture, where 4 college girls (Madison Stone, Barbara Dare, Monique Gabrielle, and Suzanne Ager) take a weekend job cleaning up a creepy mansion for a more than slightly pervy Dick Miller, only to have the ghost of “some guy” (David Carradine!) appear, give them a flesh-bound demon-book, which they promptly set down to read-thus unleashing the titular animated demon.

The fact that 3 out of 4 of the girls in the picture were either actively, or were about to start, working in the porn industry at the time the picture was made, is a pretty clear indication of where the movie’s gonna’ go. Before the bad-book even makes an appearance, four breasts already have. And when the demon-who for the record, is only seen in the picture in full animated form for about 39 seconds-initially attacks, it performs one of the funniest bits of sexual harassment ever committed to film, carefully yanking off the top of his intended victim in full view of the camera…with his tongue.

He then, conveniently for the budget, assumes her blood-covered-yet-still-topless form, and continues stalking the rest of his prey (who all also achieve various stages of undress before being eaten). Between all of this we get scenes of bad Three Stooges-style skits of varying lengths, and some daffy cameo-ish appearances by Arte Johnson as yet another pervy old guy. All-in-all, a fun-filled ride for the whole family!

Words cannot begin to describe how much this film warms the cockles of my heart. Not only that, it was a perfect closer to Event 8, with the crowd really getting into how bad it was, all while still appreciating the film’s…other qualities. If we’d stuck with the last two movies of the night, the Halloween event would easily have been remembered as one of the best.

When both the slow stalking pace of Halloween and the deliberately studied atmospheric feel of Pumpkinhead failed to energize the crowd for Cavalcade Event 8 and frankly, I was getting worried. Fortunately, the crowd was willing to step once more into the breach… and I had just the picture.

Featuring Devon Sawa, Seth Green, Vivica A. Fox, and Jessica Alba’s ass, Idle Hands tells the tale of Anton Tobias (Sawa)-a teenaged slacker who’s primary daily concern is how little can he do, and how stoned can he be while doing it. Life is good for Anton, especially since his parents haven’t been bugging him lately about silly things like going to school and what he plans to do after graduation. Of course, this is most likely because they’ve been killed and stashed away for the last few days.

In short order, we find out they’ve been murdered by his right hand while he was asleep. Apparently Anton is so lazy, the devil got into his right hand and did what the devil does-no, not masturbate-commit bloody murder and play mind games with the protagonist.

Meanwhile, Anton’s buddies Pnub (Elden Henson) and Mick (Green)-also fine upstanding citizens stoners-are doing much the same thing in their basement, though they’ve been clued-in to the fact that somebody’s been going around killing a bunch of people. They find out it’s their good buddy Anton (well, his hand) fairly soon, right around the time he stabs Mick in the face with a broken bottle and chops off Pnub’s head with a saw blade. But they don’t hold it against him when they come back as zombies (because heaven was, to quote “really far!”).

All this, and we haven’t  gotten to Vivica A. Fox’s throwaway role of the Druid chasing down the evil hand. I say “throwaway” because she’s only in the movie to say the best line in the picture, and walk off again. It’s barely more than a cameo. Oh, and did I mention Jessica Alba’s ass? I don’t usually go on about something like this, but the Director was obviously fond of it, because he essentially gave it star billing by carefully angling every shot she’s in to showcase it. Seriously, it should get its own credit in the picture.

This move is, simply put, brilliantly idiotic. It is not a good movie by any stretch of the imagination, save for our purposes, where it’s perfect. It moves quickly, doesn’t take itself seriously, is competently filmed (a rarity in our more recent selections), and has as many shots of Jessica Alba in cute little outfits as they could possibly fit. After getting such a slow start, this movie revamped Event 8 enough that we went for an unprecedented 4th feature: Evil Toons!

When I initially started doing the Cavalcade of Schlock, I didn’t necessarily intend to only show craptastic movies. Rather, I’d hoped to show off crowd-pleasing movies made in the style of the Grindhouse/Drive-in. As time’s gone by, we’ve become more focused on the bottom of the barrel, to be sure; but in the beginning we had 28 Days Later! Aliens! An American Werewolf in London! Each a modern classic, and each a successful screening.

So when it came time to do the Halloween event, my first thought was to screen another modern classic in the original Halloween. The first time I saw this movie, it scared the living hell out of me, and that was on video with a tiny television. When the film first came out in 1978, audiences were completely terrified, and they loved it. In many ways, Halloween kicked off the slasher-craze that went on through the 80’s, and launched the careers of both the Director (John Carpenter) and the “last girl” (Jamie Lee Curtis)

You all know the story by now: Halloween night 1963, six-year-old Michael Myers (Will Sandin) murders his teenage sister Judith (Sandy Johnson) with a kitchen knife at their home in Haddonfield, Illinois-before being found by his mother and father in a trance-like state. Fifteen years later, he escapes the asylum, and heads back home to finish the job by killing Jamie Lee Curtis. Because…well, because of a fairly unbelievable plot-twist, that’s why.

This film is filled to the brim with suspense. Unlike later slasher movies that would turn a lot of this movie’s events and dialog into clichés by shamelessly lifting them, Halloween is not a splatter-fest with a body count in the dozens. Only people who get in Michael’s way tend to suffer death most foul-well, and people who are related to him…or happen to be having pre-marital sex nearby. But other than that, you’re fine. No, this film is all about Michael hunting his prey, hiding behind bushes, doors, or driving creepily slow down the street in a station wagon, and generally being…like an average paparazzo.

Yeah, exactly. Not the most exciting thing for a Cavalcade Event. Sadly, all of this “suspense” translates to “not a whole lot going on” when sitting around with a group of people charged and ready for action. It was at this event where we started to really learn what makes for a good “Cavalcade movie”. Even when we jumped to the action-packed finale… it was more stalking in a dark house waiting for the killer to strike.

Being a fan of horror movies, I love the original Halloween. It’s as creepy, scary, and intelligently put together as a horror movie can be, and is the perfect kind of scary movie to watch on a date. But for a rip-roaring party, it’s just too slow-paced. For a movie to succeed here, it doesn’t have to be bad, it just has to move.