I KNOW WHERE YOU HIDE THINGS

The will of the lord continued to bring me down the other week, when my AC unit flooded my den, which is also where I built my in-house video shop. I entered one morning to the awful sensation of icy, soggy carpeting squish up between my toes -- only slightly less unsettling than feeling warm animal barf under your foot pad. So, I immediately called maintenance over to deal with the problem after moving some furniture out of the way so they could rip up the carpeting. One of the main problem areas was a wall with built in book cases. Beneath these cases are built in cabinets, which I actually keep blocked off with a bar which houses all my glass ware, as I am a tremendous alcoholic. Anyway, I’ve never really paid much mind to the cabinet, but that day I had to move the bar and actually open the cabinet to clear some of the water out. And much to my surprise, the cabinet was not empty. In fact, I found a cluster of VHS tapes tucked away along the top shelf, safe from potential water damage. This was a bizarre batch of fortune.

The first tape in the batch was the Sinister Cinema copy of the incredibly luscious spaghetti nightmare “The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave.” This thing drips morbid mood.

The next was a big box PRISM copy of “Girl in Room 2A,” which I have actually never seen before. The plot has something to do with a young girl on parole who moves into a house run by a murderous cult.

Yet another major surprise, a pretty sweet copy of New World’s “Reform School Girls,” starring Wendy O. Williams from the Plasmatics. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this movie uncut. However, the Unruly Gent recently stole this on DVD and seems to remember there being much more nudity.

I haven’t seen “Assault of the Killer Bimbos” in years, but I remember being pretty depressed by it. By the names and the packaging you think you're going to get a balanced ratio of tits, shitty jokes, and violence. Instead, you get a brain damaged "Thelma and Louise." The YouTube trailer contains a brilliant comment from user ctdsnark: “to all lovers of trash cinema: SKIP THIS – there’s no “assault” and they don’t “kill” anybody. There’s barely any nudity. The biggest disappointment since 'Nice Girls Don’t Explode.'" This is an insult to the year 1988, but I'll take it. But for some reason, some people will pay a lot of money for this piece of shit.

And lastly, I was most excited to find “The Baby,” a super fucking bizarre movie about a family that’s stunted the development of one of their members, thus keeping him in an infant state even though the dude is 21 fucking years old. Sounds crazy, sure, but shit like this actually occurs once in a while. In 1970, California authorities discovered a child known as Genie who’d been isolated for most of her 13 years. She was pretty much still in an infant stage of development when they found her. I always thought that Genie’s story had some influence on “The Baby.”

This movie does go out of its way to be sensitive, but it winds up making some really fucked up stuff more accessible. Usually, movies of this nature are poorly made, either by virtue of incompetence or because someone is rushing to complete the project. "The Baby" is probably one of the most technically sound fucked up movies I have seen. The film also features strong performances from its cast, most notably from Ruth Roman, who absolutely slays in the role of Baby's mother, Mrs. Wadsworth.

Check out this bizarre clip:

Truly an odd batch of films to find tucked away in some obscure part of my home, and also strangely relevant to me. I can almost forgive the previous tenant for leaving a giant turd in the toilet when they moved out.