Necropolis (1987)

Welcome once again to my cadaverous crypt, goofy ghoulies and cannibalistic cunts! It's good to see you again, freaks n' geeks, here at Bearded Weirdo Reviews, where men are men, women are sluts, the 80's are alive and well, shaving is illegal, and bad taste is just an acquired taste! Have a seat, and take in the scene that I'm about to paint for you, fellow fiends!

The year is 1686. The place is New Amsterdam. A settlement that will one day become New York. A beautiful woman with long, strikingly unnatural bright white hair tip-toes through the forest. Stealthily (or not), some black guy follows a few feet behind. Seemingly unaware of his presence, the white-haired vixen leads the fella right to her secret, subterranean satanic temple, where she sheds her inhibitions (and her robes) and does a dark n' dorky dance of deadly devil worship (garbed in little more than a terrifically tight, body-hugging fishnet catsuit), then slashes the throat of a pure-hearted lily-white bride-to-be as an offering to the Prince Of Lies. Before the ceremony can be completed, however, the whole shindig is broken up by an angry torch-carryin' mob of villagers led by the aforementioned African-American. In short order, the fiendish filly is executed for her crimes, but vows to return someday to continue her reign of sacrilegious terror. Then she bucks the kicket.

This is the opening prologue to NECROPOLIS (a.k.a. NECROPOLIS: CITY OF THE DEAD), a movie released in 1987 by Empire Pictures. For those of you interested in such trivial things as "accuracy," I'll tell ya right now, in the above-described scene, all attempts to adequately present a period setting are unconvincing but valiant. If you don't let yourself fall into a game of "spot the anachronisms" then it will do just fine. It's passable.

Anyhoo... fast forward to the 1980's and, sure enough, both the black dude and the wicked witch have been reincarnated. The black guy is now a troubled teen-counselin' priest and the satanic witch (who now looks a lot like legendary adult entertainment performer Jeanna Fine, back when said porn starlet went through her Billy Idol phase) is, well, still a witch. But this time she's got a nifty, punkette haircut, and an even niftier wardrobe made up entirely of black leather "tough slut" gear (you know the kind of the thing, the sort of outfit that says "I'll kick your ass, but I'm still a whore"), and, niftiest of all, a bitchin' red crotch-rocket (no, not a vibrator... this ain't that kind of movie, unfortunately... no, I'm talkin' 'bout a turbo-charged motorcycle, son).

Making their way through the urban cesspool that is 1980's N.Y.C., the chivalrous preacher and the punk rock witch-bitch clash once again, as the bloodthirsty babe is unsurprisingly up to no good, preying on the city's vagrants. The homeless. The runaways. The junkies. Jive-talkin' pimps, hookers, n' various other dregs of society. She uses their own inner demons against them, driving them to self-destructive acts of madness n' mania. After raising a cult of zombie acolytes, she beings harvesting some strange supernatural sludge from the grey matter of her victims, using the goop to freakishly feed her apocalyptic army of the undead.


All the while, she's also searching for her long-lost "devil's ring," as well as a virgin to sacrifice, so that she can re-try the unholy ritual she started two centuries ago. It's never really clear just what the goal of Miss Witchy-Poo's killin' n' ritualizin' actually is until wayyyy late in the game, but that only makes things all the more fun. It's one of those movies where you have no idea what's going on or why certain characters are doin' certain things, but you don't really care 'cause you're just havin' such a raucous, rollickin' good time.

Speaking of good times, y'know, there was once an era when just about anything and everything Charles Band's name was attached to was totally awesome. This was, of course, back before Charlie-boy developed his now trademark obsession with dolls, puppets, and various other assorted pint-sized monsters n' started churning out stinkers like DOLL GRAVEYARD, GINGERDEAD MAN, and EVIL BONG by the butt-load.

When I was a kid, something like 70% of all video rentals made by me had the Charles Band seal o' approval. Remember how cool so many of his Empire Pictures releases were? Think of flicks like TERRORVISION, CELLAR DWELLER, ROBOT JOX, CREEPOZOIDS, PRISON, FROM BEYOND, ARENA, GHOULIES, CEMETERY HIGH, ZONE TROOPERS, and SORORITY BABES IN THE SLIMEBALL BOWL-O-RAMA. That's some gooood shit right there, folks.

Back in the heady days of the Video Boom, Band collaborated more than a few times with a man named Tim Kincaid (a.k.a. gay porn filmmaker Joe Gage), and, as a duo, they managed to put together several dirt cheap straight-to-video efforts that are motherfuckin' mythic (at least in my mind) for their unrestrained, extreme levels of cheese and sleaze. Titles like ROBOT HOLOCAUST and MUTANT HUNT spring to mind immediately. Then there's NECROPOLIS: CITY OF THE DEAD, a movie not directed by Kincaid, but produced by him. Anyone who has seen ROBOT HOLOCAUST or MUTANT HUNT can easily detect Kincaid's presence when watching NECROPOLIS. He may not have been in the director's chair (that seat was reserved for co-writer Bruce Hickey), but his influence is felt throughout.

What does that mean? I'll tell you what it means. It means kick-ass video box cover art masking an unthinkably inept production, hampered by nonexistent production values and amateurish actors galore. Even still, these movies remain entertaining, and, most of the time, it's actually because of those same nonexistent production values and amateurish actors. After all, there are bad movies that are just plain bad, and then there are bad movies that are so damn bad they end up coming full-circle n' turn out to be pretty fuckin' good after all. NECROPOLIS, like most of the movies Tim Kincaid lent his name to, is of this ilk. It's one of those movies that, to use a popular expression, is "so bad it's good."

Another thing that Tim Kincaid-related movies tend to have in common is, despite the wooden performances, questionable scriptwriting, whacked-out plots, and all-too-bare bottom-of-the-barrel sets, these flicks tend to leave a strong impression on their audiences, due in no small part to noteworthy moments of engrossing imagery (such as the torn-up cyborg head in MUTANT HUNT, the psychedelic "sex scene" in ROBOT HOLOCAUST, and the eyebrow-raising "witches tits" sequence here in NECROPOLIS... trust me, I'll tell you more about it in a little while). Perhaps more charming than any other element, though, is the plucky, can-do attitude inherent in these productions.

The genre pictures produced and/or directed by Tim Kincaid are all grossly under-budgeted affairs. They typically appear to have been made for little more than fifty bucks. Tops. Yet they deal with such big budget themes as post-apocalyptic politics, futuristic drug culture, and reincarnated satanic witches waging war on humankind with an army of ectoplasm-slurping demonic ghouls. Ya gotta admire the kind o' balls it takes to pursue such ideas with such limited means, and to do as well as these movies manage despite their monetary restrictions. For all their faults n' flaws, Kincaid-overseen releases get the job done. They establish alternate dimensions and exotic locales for us to lose ourselves in. Personally, I admire the kind of tenacity, imagination, ingenuity, and blue collar work ethic that goes into making b-movies n' z-movies like this. In particular, I think those features with Tim Kincaid's name on 'em are especially good examples of this type of passionate hardworking dedication and "reachin' for the stars" cinematic idealism.

Alas, I'm digressing yet again. Getting back onto the topic of NECROPOLIS: CITY OF THE DEAD, I admit that the movie often lacks much sense of energy or oomph. Yet this lusty satanic potboiler will still be a crowd-pleaser should you find yourself in a room full of macabre braindead bad movie addicts. All others will probably turn their noses up and dismiss NECROPOLIS outright. Oh well. Their loss.

The acting here is surprisingly better than most genre projects Tim Kincaid has had a hand in. The demonic dame who plays our principal villainess (minor b-movie idol Lee Anne Baker) may look like a groupie for The Damned or The Cramps or somethin' of that nature, but she's still one sexy broad, and probably the best (or, at the very least, the most entertaining) thespian in the cast, doing a perversely pleasurable job of exuding equal parts monstrous menace and steamy sensuality, usually with more sincerity than the astonishingly awful lines she's forced to speak warrant. Considering the whole movie rests on her character's bulky black leather shoulder pads, Kincaid & Co. chose well in casting the role. If nothing else, there is one scene in particular that will certainly etch this chick's face in your cerebellum until the end of a time. I'm speaking, of course, about the notorious, hair-raising, jaw-dropping, unforgettably gonzo sequence in which said hellraising harlot grows four extra boobies (giving us a tittyriffic total of six) and feeds a coven of lecherous living dead with ectoplasm excreted from her "witch's teats" (clearly enjoying the act in an erotic sense the whole time). This is one of those scenes that (if you're lucky) you see when you're a youngster and it leaves an irremovable imprint in the center of your psyche for the rest of your life (happened to me!). This is must-see shit here, people. And the great soundtrack (stocked as it is with recycled pieces from films like TRANCERS and THE ELIMINATORS) helps sell the on-screen action whenever the acting, directing, and writing comes up short (which is not a rare occurrence, let me tell you).

Truth be told, I'm not trying to talk up this flick like it were Beelzebub's own gift to the world. As much affection as I have for this rancid cinematic cyst, even I can't deny that the acting (even it at its best) is substandard across the board, with much of the cast appearing to sleepwalk through scene after scene after scene. There's also a shockingly low amount of gore, and nowhere near as much raunch as you'd hope for from a film wherein the focus is placed squarely on a bawdy black magick bimbo with a flat-top hairdo and thigh-high stockings. In my time, I've known many an individual who found NECROPOLIS' less eventful portions to be too boring to keep their attention. Different strokes, I suppose.

Plain and simple, NECROPOLIS ain't the coolest thing ever barfed into the pop culture universe, ya dig? And it's not the coolest Video Boom curio collectin' dust on the shelf either. It's not as demented as DEATH ROW DINER, nor as gruesome as THE REJUVENATOR, nor as eccentric as DEMONWARP, nor as psychotically schlocky as THE VIDEO DEAD. Heck, it's not even the coolest thing Tim Kincaid has ever worked on. It's not as skeezy as BREEDERS, not as silly as MUTANT HUNT, nowhere near as chitzny as ROBOT HOLOCAUST, and not quite as grimy as THE OCCULTIST. But, consarnit, NECROPOLIS is still pretty neat on its own terms, man. Don't doubt that much. Don't even dare.

Tremendously tacky and caustically cornball, NECROPOLIS always seems to be about five seconds away from breaking out into hardcore X.X.X. action, though, sadly, such seeds of greatness never come to fruition. Still, what we have is nonetheless pretty friggin' groovy, damning lack of graphic sex aside. Picture, if you will, a kinky, meandering, nonsensical nightmare defined by goofy no-reason dance sequences, black magick, mulleted male prostitutes, offbeat editing, suicide, evil disembodied hands, cloak-clad zombies, lesbian seduction, splashy red decapitations, gasoline fires, endless motorcycle rides, bitchy smart-mouthed streetwalkers, a hilarious hepcat coroner (who is, hands down, the best fuckin' character in the story), spontaneous past life remembrances, bad fashion, big hair, soul-stealin', brain-suckin', and a hokey-but-no-less-killer "evil never dies" type ending. That, my friends, is the heart of NECROPOLIS. It's an oozing, festering heap of dopey D.T.V. dreck that ought to please potheads, scum-sucking crap-hounds, and seething cinemasochists of the most rabid order.

Though it still hasn't been released on D.V.D., there are always a few V.H.S. copies floating around in the cult cinema collectors' ether, oft-times easily had for a reasonable price. All in all, NECROPOLIS: CITY OF THE DEAD is funny, sexy, seriously strange, and delightfully dumb. If that sounds up your alley, then you should definitely give it a look.

Of course, I'm not unaware of the fact that some people who've already seen this mongrel mutt of a movie are no doubt chortling themselves silly in regards to my unrepentant affection for this shoddy slice of sick, psychotronic stupidity. Laugh all you want, my hoity-toity douche bag detractors. You just haven't learned to appreciated the jaundiced joys experienced by one in the service of the almighty Cult Of Kincaid. But, really, you should. With a runtime of less than 80 minutes total, what have ya got to lose? Shove NECROPOLIS into the ol' V.C.R. one of these days. Give it another shot.

C'mon. Clear your mind of all that pretentious, super-serious cineaste bile bullshit you've allowed yourself to become jaded by. Clear your mind, and go back to a time when you were just another fucked-up videophile with bizarro tastes and all the social skills of a cave-troll, tryin' to find something to satisfy your voracious appetite for boobies and bloodshed on a cold Friday night full o' clearance sale junk food n' bargain bin skin mags. Clear your mind, and join the Cult Of Kincaid.

Drink deep the Kool-Aid, my friend. Just fuckin' do it. You know you want to.

Go ahead. Tilt your head back. Open your mouth. And pour that shit right on in.

You'll be so much happier if you do. Trust me.

Until next slime...
Stay sick!
Your pickled pal,
William Weird.



Rating: 3 out of 5 improvised tree branch crucifixes
Recommendation: rent it
Best moment: witchy woman lactates satanic slime from her six tits o' terror for the satiation of a horde o' hungry hooded horrors