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Shock-O-Rama features three low-budget horror tales revolving around a B-movie actress. In 'Zombie This' erotic scream queen Rebecca Raven is through with the typecast exploitation acting roles she gets and takes a vacation getaway to a remote house where she accidentally unearths a zombie who targets her. Back at the studios, her sleazy producer looks over two other horror films Rebecca was to appear in. In 'Mecharachnia' a hapless, deadbeat auto yard owner and his girlfriend are besieged in their workplace by little green alien outlaws who have landed on Earth and plot to take over. In 'Lonely are the Brain', a deranged female doctor submits dream experimentation in a halfway house full of beautiful women as part to a disembodied living brain, until one of the test subjects suspects the true nature of the experiments and plots to stop the mad doctor.
--IMDb
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Review by Chad
Added: July 20, 2006
It really takes a set of balls to name a movie after the distribution company behind it; imagine if Lions Gate had released a film named Lions Gate, or if Universal Pictures had sunk fifty-million dollars into a summer blockbuster entitled Universal Pictures. Now, imagine that either one of those films had turned out to be as great as, say, Gigli - the company responsible would lose all respect from viewers for years to come. Shock-O-Rama Cinema, the horror subsidiary of POPcinema (formerly known as ei Cinema), decided to take this risk... and trust me, there will be no embarrassment or loss of respect for them due to this movie.
The film begins with b-movie star Rebecca Raven (Misty Mundae) getting fed up with her career as a T&A actress in low-budget exploitation fare. She wants some more serious roles, as she explains, or at least a role in which she isn't required to be naked for the grand majority of her on-screen time. She decides to take her concerns to the studio bosses, and what do you know - they were just thinking about firing her and replacing her with a newer, younger actress with a plumper set of tits. Needless to say, Raven's timing on storming into his office couldn't have been worse, so she decides to spend a few weeks alone in her new house out in the middle of nowhere before exploring her options in Hollywood. However, unbeknownst to her, this house is home to the rotting corpse of a former Satanist who only needs a little bit of blood to be reborn as a shambling zombie that is hell-bent on consuming our former b-movie actress.
Meanwhile, the studio is scrambling to find a new poster-child for their company after the lady that they had in mind winds up in jail after offering to give a police officer head for some drugs. They look through previous films for an appropriate actress to star in their new movie, and we watch the films along with them. Mechanoid tells the tale of a New Jersey scrap-yard that soon becomes a battleground between a set of unwilling partners (Caitlin Ross and some guy whose name I missed) and pint-sized aliens. The second film is entitled Lonely Are The Brain and features A.J. Khan along with a host of other beauties who serve as human guinea pigs in a dream-research program. This program, run by the lovely Julian Wells and a mysterious partner, quickly proves that if you die in your dreams, you simply never wake up... and to make matters worse, the research allows Julian to work her way into the dreams of these young ladies.
Back in October, I was invited to attend the New York premiere of this film and attend the post-show cocktail party with the cast and crew. This was my first invitation of this type, and while I'm pretty sure that I wasn't one of "the exclusive few" who received such an invitation, it did indeed put a smile on my face to even be considered for it. Sadly, I wasn't able to attend due to timing issues, and now, after receiving an advance copy of the DVD for review purposes, I'm even more distraught over not being able to attend. This movie, quite simply, was fantastic.
Taking a cue from Creepshow by mixing horror and humor into a semi-interconnected anthology film, this is one of those rare movies that has a little something for everyone and manages to mix everything together flawlessly. You've got blood, guts, gore, zombies, horror, sci-fi, comedy, aliens, T&A, and yes, some great storylines all woven together in one brilliant package. With so many different elements to explore, I truly did not expect this film to work as well as it did; however, when the end credits started to run, I swear that a tiny tear of joy rolled down my face.
Opening with a rant by Misty Mundae (excuse me, Rebecca Raven) that featured a lot more truth than acting (just check out a few of her previous films and then listen to this speech), the film confirms early-on that this is not going to be just another cheesy gore-and-T&A fest. Not that there's anything wrong with that type of movie, of course, as even I enjoy those types of films on occasion, but it was certainly nice to see that that was not the direction we were heading with this film. After that, we then move onwards to an action-packed science fiction display, which leads into more of Raven's tale for some zombie action, move onwards to the next tale that features some actual horror and a damned interesting storyline, before wrapping up the film with the conclusion of Raven's zombie / studio adventures.
Overall, this one comes with my highest recommendations, as if that wasn't blatantly obvious by reading the review thus far. I can't think of a single thing that I didn't enjoy about the movie, and fans of fun, campy cinema would undoubtedly feel the same. 10/10.
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