STUDIO: Shock-o-Rama Cinema
MSRP: $22.49
RATED: NR
RUNNING TIME: 320 minutes
SPECIAL FEATURES:
• Commentaries
• Trailers
• Mini-posters
• Blooper Reels
• Making-of documentaries
• Inside Fangoria’s Weekend of Horrors
• Photo Galleries
The Pitch
Zombies, fungus, aliens, and giant ticks run around town. Misty Mundae takes her shirt off.
Mighty Joe Young’s most hilarious (but fatal) attempt at lady seduction
Cast: Misty Mundae, A.J. Kahn, Rachael Robbins
Director/Writer: Brett Piper
The Nutshell
Shock-O-Rama Horror Collection gathers four of Brett Piper’s semi-famously schlocky horror movies: Bacterium, Screaming Dead, Bite Me!, and Shock-O-Rama. In each of the films, various monsters chase Misty Mundae et al. around Brett Piper’s backyard.
White Blood Cells: The Boondock Saints 2 of the circulatory system.
The Lowdown
Shock-O-Rama is a collection for non-discriminating viewers. Feel free to confuse being “non-discriminating” with having “bad taste,” because even though most of these movies are perfectly aware of their own shortcomings, they’re still painful endurance tests.
If you insist on giving any of these a try, then go with the mercifully short Bacterium, a Blob riff set in an abandoned house in the countryside. It’s your standard organism-run-amok storyline, complete with mad scientists, quipping teens, and a rampaging blob that doesn’t look too phony most of the time. The military showdown with the monster almost redeems Bacterium’s first fifty minutes, which are plodding, but occasionally goofy enough to enjoy. The most surprising thing about Bacterium: it’s the package’s only PG-13 feature, which means less gore (which is bad), and no Misty Mundae. Obviously, Bacterium‘s lack of Misty Mundae will affect people in wildly different ways. How it will affect you in particular depends upon which side of the Misty Mundae fence you sit.
If you’re still willing to sit through any more of Shock-O-Rama, then head over to the eponymous Shock-O-Rama, an anthology horror-comedy featuring zombies, aliens, and mad scientists. Misty Mundae stars in the wraparound story as a fading horror starlet. She pokes some fun at the rest of the movies in her oeuvre, most notably Screaming Dead. What a good sport! The other three stories are all terrible, but they only last twenty minutes apiece, which means you’ll at least get to watch a variety of different poops, rather than one long, homogeneous log.
If you’re a real glutton for punishment, then be sure to give Bite Me! a try. Misty Mundae battles mutant bugs at a strip club. Every ten minutes, the movie pauses to show an unrelated striptease. This means that Bite Me! has the most boobs in the whole of The Shock-O-Rama Collection – there are seventeen individual boobs in the film, which is a total of 8.5 pairs.
When Cesar Milan fails to rehabilitate a dog, it’s not all bad, because MEAT’S BACK ON THE MENU, BOYS
Screaming Dead is just useless. There’s a killer ghost living in a haunted mansion with a creepy artist fellow and his models and some of them die. I wonder if this even qualifies as a real movie. On the one hand, it’s a series of images flickering on the screen that attempt to convey meaning, but on the other hand, Misty Mundae runs around with her shirt off, and there’s a clown-ish ghost who lives in a mirror for some reason.
Are any of these worth watching? No, not really. There are a few good gems in the Shock-O-Rama library – Greg Lamberson’s Slime City and Piper’s own Drainiac, for two – but there’s nothing worth watching here. I’m certain there’s a non-discerning market for this, though: to quote Abraham Lincoln, “People who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like.”
In addition to trailers and commentary, there are a smattering of various extras compiled with each feature, including Inside the Fangoria Weekend of Horrors, blooper reels, Making-of documentaries, and photo galleries. The box art and accompanying documentation – including a few nicely made mini-posters – are neat booby prizes.
A&E’s Hoarders accidentally re-enacts the ending to Stephen King’s Grey Matter.
3 out of 10