September 2012 Mixed Bag of Viewings

Before we jump feet first into Halloween horrors, here's a little bit of September bookkeeping to take care of. I felt like I watched more last month than I actually did, though that's probably due to stretching a couple of these flicks over multiple days (something I'm usually loathe to do). Anyway, it's a pretty mixed bag of action, horror, action-horror and Eurotrash.

PRAY FOR DEATH (1985)

Sho Kosugi actioner with the martial arts legend playing a peaceful immigrant who just wants to run his family restaurant but gets sucked into a war with some local mobsters. Schizophrenically shifts gears between ass-kickery and juvenile comedy courtesy of the Kosugi kids who play, er, Kosugi's kids. Best known for that scene where Kosugi leaps over an oncoming car.

THE COLLECTOR (2009)

Torture trap horror isn't usually my cup of tea but I dug this heist-flick/horror mash-up from the guys behind the FEAST flicks, PIRANHA 3DD and a bunch of SAW entries. A shady handyman/thief discovers that the house he's broken into is rigged with booby traps and inhabited by a masked killer named The Collector.

GOOD GUYS WEAR BLACK (1978)

My Chuck Norris Edumacation kicks off (get it?!) with this leisurely-paced actioner starring Chuck as a 'Nam vet turned professor/race car driver (?) who discovers that the remaining members of his elite military squad are being hunted down by an unknown killer. Highlighted by Chuck (or, probably his brother Aaron) jumping through the windshield of a speeding car.

CASABLANCA EXPRESS (1989)

It's Martino Time! Jason Connery and Francesco Quinn star as WWII operatives assigned to protect Winston Churchill from the Nazis as he makes his way from Algiers to Casablanca in 1942. The Indiana Jones-inspired action-adventure flick is light but entertaining with occasional flashes of Martino's trashier roots.

THE NIGHT EVELYN CAME OUT OF THE GRAVE (1971)

I'd been hoping to see this for some time but was pretty disappointed it was much more of a run-of-the-mill giallo than supernatural Eurotrash. Alan is a crazy aristocrat haunted by the death of his redheaded wife Evelyn. He stops his hooker/stripper-killing ways and marries after a quick fling, only to find that the hauntings and ghastly goings-on are increasing. Convoluted and over-plotted but highlighted by some fabulous 70s Eurobabes.

WOLVESBAYNE (2009)

Puffy Jeremy London stars in what feels like a pilot for a SyFy channel tv series. When a douchey land developer is bit by a werewolf, he's enlisted by a descendent of Van Helsing to help stop a re-animated vampire queen from enslaving the world. Yancy Butler hams it up - and saves the flick from itself - as the queen and Mark Dascascos wears dialogue-obscuring prosthetics as a kung fu vampire.

DEVIL (2010)

With a story by producer M. Night Shyamalan you get pretty much what you expect from this mercifully-short, set-in-Philly horror flick. A group of strangers trapped on an elevator get picked off one by one by the Devil while a cop tries to figure out what's happening. Predictable but not horrible time-waster plays like a film school version of NIGHT GALLERY.