When it comes to reviewing, there are two categories that things fall into – those movies that you simply can't wait to watch, and then those films that you simply feel it is your duty to review. And today I shall be throwing myself onto the sword of reviewing once again, as it's a return to the world of Chester Novell Turner, director of the staggeringly atrocious Black Devil Doll From Hell. The only slight note of relief here is that Tales From The Quadead Zone is the only other feature from this director, although there have been numerous rumours of sequels to both of these offerings given the cult following they seem to have developed.
 
Oh, before I move on, if you happen to have this on VHS, it's probably worth over £1000. I couldn't think of a worse way to spend that kind of money if I put my mind to it...

Anyway, Tales From The Quadead Zone is effectively a Twilight Zone knock-off, starring Shirley L Jones of BDDFH as a mother reading stories from the eponymous book to the ghost of her dead child, Bobby. Now, Quadead might imply that there would be four stories here, but there are three – which might be a blessing in disguise. Apparently Black Devil Doll From Hell was meant to be the fourth installment of this, but that grew into a cinematic bomb of its very own.

Our first tale, 'Food For ?', seems to run for little more than five minutes and is a truly bizarre tale of a family that don't have enough food to go around. This leads to one of the family shooting numerous of the others to ensure there is sufficient grub for everyone, followed by a rushed (why the hurry? It's not exactly overlong) conclusion with a host of text on screen concluding the piece. This one is horribly quick and badly acted, and really misses its mark.

This is followed by 'The Brothers', which conversely feels about twice as long as it needs to be. The story of Ted and his deceased brother Fred sees Ted laughing an awful lot about the death before dressing the corpse up in a clown outfit (no, I don't really get it either) and proceeding to dig his brother a grave down in the crawlspace. But it's not long before Fred is back to life and turning the tables. This one is horribly slow and badly acted, and really misses its mark.

The third installment is effectively a tie to the framing device, with Bobby's mother being confronted by her abusive husband (ex-husband? It's not immediately apparent) whom she kills in an extended struggle. It's not long before the police come by – in fact that seems to have weirdly rapidly – and rather than facing leaving her son alone, she decides to cut her throat and join him in the afterlife in a distinctly yellow conclusion. You'll know what I mean when you see it.

In all honesty, I can't look you in the eye and say this is any improvement on Black Devil Doll From Hell. In fact it might be even worse, because this one contains very little of the inadvertent humour that permeates its predecessor. Anyone connected with any iteration of The Twilight Zone would be ashamed to see this one and think they had some hand in inspiring it. The dreadful Casio keyboard music is present again – all too often drowning out the dialogue – and it's layered over some terrible acting and laughably thin 'stories'. For me, the only reason to watch this would be if – like me – you feel you owe it to your audience. I suppose you might also consider it as some sort of slice of horror history as well, and if you're an absolute completist you might seek it out to satisfy your strange curiosity. Then again, if you happen to see it on video for a couple of quid on your travels, I'd very much suggest picking it up...

RATING: 0/10. I can't say I take much relish in dishing out zeroes for films, but then again based on past experience with this director I wasn't really expecting anything that was going to be hitting the heights. I suppose much of what constitutes to Chester Novell Turner style – or lack thereof – is present here as it was in Black Devil Doll From Hell, including a soundtrack that has to be heard to be believed, amateur acting – literally and figuratively – and threadbare 'plots' that barely hang together and don't really work as individual pieces or a complete whole. Nothing to like for me, so I'm afraid this one earns itself nada out of ten.

Australia is not a country we visit often here at Film Gutter, but it's certainly not unheard of. In fact I tend to associate that neck of the woods with dark, wry horror-comedies in the vein of Body Melt or The Loved Ones. Sure, they pack in the gore and the shock, but there's plenty of humour to boot, which can be a welcome relief from some of the more unremittingly bleak content that I engage with on these pages.
 
Funnily enough, Sheborg follows on in much the same vein.

I do a lot of blundering about at random looking for movies to watch – there are plenty I've got on a long list that I want to check out at some point, but now and again a movie just stands out on the power of the title alone. Sheborg sounded like it should be an awful lot of fun, and it lived up to those initial impressions.

The story itself follows rebellious friends Dylan and Eddie, who want nothing more than to fight the system and 'city hall' – although unfortunately Dylan's dad is rather high up in said 'city hall'. However the youngsters' lives are about to take a surprising turn when an alien cyborg crashes to earth just outside a puppy farm (??), and it's not long before this 'Sheborg' sets about a rampage of death, destruction and assimilation. Numerous of the staff at the farm find themselves converted into human-alien-cyborg hybrids, carrying out the evil bidding of the Sheborg as she prepares to bring more of her kind to Earth to take over.

Dylan and Eddie, along with rocker Josh (who's trying to get together with Eddie), decide that they have a duty to rescue the puppies from the puppy farm, but of course don't fully realise what they're getting themselves into, soon enough finding themselves under attack from the minions of the Sheborg. Cue plenty of kick-ass action, surreal moments of humour and general excitement and adventure as the girls look to not only defeat the cyborgs in their own town, but try and save the whole planet in the process.

Sheborg certainly qualifies as a very entertaining piece, and there were a good handful of genuinely laugh out loud moments from the unusual ensemble that makes up the cast. All of the actors and actresses involved seem to be really enjoying themselves and throwing themselves into it, which makes it a lot easier for you to enjoy it as a viewer. It feels like it's fairly low-budget, but it doesn't really show that much in the way that it looks or is shot, cleverly using what it has to best effect. The plot isn't anything spectacular, but presents enough to keep you going and whips along at a good pace as a whole.

My reservation is that I think there's just a bit too much time devoted to action here, and for me those scenes ultimately just become a bit too repetitive and overdone. There's nothing wrong with them per se – they look decent enough, and again are laced with a chuckle or two in the way that our human cast overcomes the alien threat. But I'd have liked to see a bit more character development and more exploitation of some of the comedy chemistry between the cast – it's undoubtedly there from what we do see, and I'd prefer more of that and less of the fighting we encounter.

With all that said, that's not a huge quibble and this one certainly earns high marks for being extremely watchable, for some solid comedy performance and for a generally chaotic, anarchic feel that felt very genuine. If you're into horror-comedies then this one could well be worth checking out – although if you hate the idea of anal probes, this may not be the movie for you...

RATING: 7.5/10. Sheborg doesn't achieve classic status, nor is it really shooting for it in my opinion. But I feel as though it does aim to be a future cult favourite, and it might just go on to achieve that. It's funny, it's energetic, it's well-delivered and has a great style to it. Maybe there's a bit too much action for my personal taste, when there could have been more made of the comedy timing and interplay that we see elsewhere, but that aside there's plenty to like here and a lot of laughs to be had.

Oh yes, it's time for more shot on video goodness – and today it's time to visit some familiar territory...

I keep telling myself that I won't got back to the works of Nick Philips, one of the most notorious directors of cheaply made slashers throughout the 80s and 90s. It's like saying you'll only watch one more TV show on your box set binge, or that you're only going to have more sweet out of the share bag. You know it's not good for you, and you know you shouldn't really, but you somehow can't help yourself.

In the first six months of the year I had the pleasure of checking our four other Philips features – Criminally Insane 1 and 2, Doctor Bloodbath and Satan's Black Wedding. One of many pseudonyms for director Nick Millard, who also worked on a host of sex films and action movies, the Philips moniker is likely the best-known and notorious for shot on video slashers. All four of those offerings were terrible in varying degrees, and in the bad habit of 'recycling' clips from each other to pad out the already short running times, which begs the question even more... why I am back here? I can only put it down to a morbid sense of curiosity.

Which brings us to Cemetery Sisters, the story of two young sisters who grew up in with their father working in a mortuary and as such developed an unhealthy obsessions with death. Their living these days is hooking in unsuspecting men from the dating sections of newspapers (way before your online dating here), marrying them, killing them and copping the money and goods that they owned. That's established in about the first three minutes, so that's no spoiler – what is strange is just how quickly this process seems to happen, with the ladies looking like they have a new victim each week. Anyway, the real trouble begins when the girls' aunt comes to stay, and the girls have a body upstairs in the bedroom they haven't gotten rid of just yet...

Cemetery Sisters has so many of the Philips hallmarks that there's something weirdly comfortable about it – a familiar cast of actors (including a lady whom I now realise is Mrs Millard playing auntie, as well as having been in Doctor Bloodbath), lame-looking death sequences, some really hokey performances and of course the reuse of footage from other movies, with flashbacks to one of our leads watching Criminally Insane and Satan's Black Wedding as a kid. Honestly, if I had seen those two as a youngster, I think it would have disturbed me just the same...

Then part of me started to speculate that maybe Philips had jumped the gun on Marvel by developing his own Philips-verse, with the actors who occurred in multiple films actually playing the same character. Why couldn't auntie here also have been the wife of the mass-murdering doctor in Doctor Bloodbath later down the line? Many of the stories take place in the very same house – maybe it's been passed from one serial killer to another because it's actually got some kind of curse hanging over it? Maybe the sister who also appeared in Doctor Bloodbath was really the same character, and met her grisly end there after this movie?

OK, maybe it's coming to a point where I've seen too many of these films, but you have to find some way to kill the time while this hour of your life is burned away for absolutely nothing. As is almost invariable, there's little here to redeem this one. It looks cheaply made – in no small part because it is cheaply made – and as always feels so rushed in how it's put together that you wonder why there was sometimes such a big gap between Philips offerings. You could be charitable and say this was an era where slashers were often turned out cheap and quick, but Cemetery Sisters does little to improve on any of the previous offerings from the director. It's actually weirdly and eminently possible the director made money on these, because it's hard to think they spent much putting them together before they went to market...

RATING: 2/10. I'll concede that this is not the worst of Philips' slashers, nor is it the best – that honour still remains with the 3/10 awarded to Satan's Black Wedding. The lead actresses at least look like they're having fun with the material, and there are a couple of moments that made me chuckle, deliberately or otherwise. Again it falls into the category of 'has to be seen to be believed' rather than being 'must watch', with a poor 2/10.

Of all the unlikely statistics I could think of, this is the third horror film to date I have watched about sex dolls. There was the actually very good Love Object – which I'd heartily recommend taking the time to check out if you haven't seen it yet – followed by the fun if slightly cheap and nasty The Bitch is Back. I'm sure there are more about there – I'd welcome any more weird and wonderful suggestions, of course – but completing the trio here is The Sex Doll She Bitch, which distinctly leans more on the comedic vein. Thankfully this is a relatively short offering – and I can tell you that sometimes in the world of extreme horror reviewing you're grateful for something short and sweet...

What is it about sex dolls that keeps coming back into the horror consciousness anyway? I can only think there's some sort of uncanny valley connection about them, them looking so human but not actually being human, that makes the thought of them coming to life in some way at least a little unnerving to at least some viewers. Or maybe the sexual connection makes them ideal fodder for the horror-comedy angle?

The story on this occasion – such as it is – follows an abusive, philandering husband who goes home to his wife after a night of drinking and having sex with a prostitute in this car. There's actually a few genuinely funny moments in this opening, with some truly absurd dialogue being delivered. But honestly it gets even more ridiculous from there, as we discover 'her indoors' happens to be a sex doll, and whose baby is also a regular doll. He's none too happy that his dinner is not on the table, and when he turns abusive his plastic spouse replies in kind – by killing him. But this is merely the start of a murderous spree that she launches into...

You might sense from my tone that there's nothing too heavy here, but that's not to say that there's nothing to like here. Much of the comedy hits its mark, and there were a number of laughs throughout, certainly enough to keep you watching as this short movie wears on. And while I feel like it slightly falls apart in the finale, where the characters are not quite as strong as some of the earlier ones and it maybe just pushes the elements of surrealism too far, it's made with enough pace and acted with enough verve to keep you entertained. It's scarcely high-brow cinema, but that's fine in some cases, and I feel it's absolutely fine here. I doubt it'll live long in the memory, but if you're up for a few chuckles and have half an hour to spare you could certainly do worse.

RATING: 6/10. I almost feel inspired from the back of this one to see if I can dig up more obscure sex doll horror movies, but then again maybe three is enough for one lifetime. Maybe if I can find enough there could be a sex doll horror monts? Anyway, back to topic, there's nothing much wrong with this one per se, but there is almost an in-built limitation with this sort of low-budget comedy-horror. While six out of ten may not look like much on the surface, it probably puts it above many of the movies you might compare it to, and – in the eyes of this hardened extreme horror reviewer at least – this is a harmless bit of fun.