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Released by: Full Moon Entertainment
Released on: December 6, 2011.
Director: Bruce Hickey
Cast: Michael Conte, LeeAnne Baker, Jacquie Fitz, Andrew Bauselli
Year: 1987
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The Movie:
The one and only film directed by Bruce Hickie, Necropolis was released by Empire Pictures before hitting VHS by way of Lightning Video (and then later Vestron). Now, by way of Full Moon Entertainment's Grindhouse line, the movie, like its lead character, lives again!
When the film begins, we're magically transported back in time to Salem where a witch named Eva (LeeAnne Baker) shows off her A-cups and does a magically evil dance routine as some sort of tribute to her dark master, Satan. Though this is supposed to be the eighteen hundreds, Eva is sporting discount store lingerie that screams mid-eighties trash - it's quite a site to see, as the rest of the cast do appear in what at least sort of resembles period garb. At any rate, Eva uses her evil witch abilities to fuck with a couple on their wedding day, slitting the brides throat - something that understandably causes the townsfolk some stress. They lynch her and cut her stomach open and as she bleeds to death, Eva swears revenge.
Cut immediately to the New York City of 1987 where Eva has puzzlingly returned as a New Wave Hooker style biker chick with platinum blonde hair and bad makeup. Her first order of the day? Hit up the local pawn shop and harass the foreign counter clerk for 'The Devil's Ring!' When he's unable to produce what she wants (we never really learn why she thought it would be there in the first place) he offers to take her to Atlantic City for some fun, but no dice! Eva uses her evil witch powers to find out that his greatest fear is losing his hearing. At this point, she gets inside his head and bombards him with white noise until somehow this kills him. Weird.
From here, Eva sort of cruises around the city causing problems. She makes a junkie kill himself, steals the ring she was looking for from a weird priest who had it locked up in a safe, and she kills a guy who looks like skinny Danzig after stealing him from his poofy haired girlfriend who whines about not getting into a club. A few of these victims turn into zombies which, after she does another strange Satanic dance routine that allows her to grow two extra pairs of devil tits, she may or may not be using to do her bidding. For some reason, the zombie slaves all have runny noses, there's snot all over them. It's gross.
At any rate, a proud Italian detective named Billy William (Michael Conte) who talks like John Travolta's character from Welcome Back Kotter is trying to figure out why people are turning up dead. He gets some help from an English chick named Dawn (Jacquie Fitz) who is a radio host and who knows the weird black priest. Billy likes to show up at Dawn's place unannounced with a six pack and talk about his soft lips - a strange tactic for scoring with British chicks, but it does the trick here. They inevitably team up with the priest to take down Eva and her very small army of snot zombies before she… I dunno. Kills more people I guess.
Highlighted by a ridiculous synthesizer score, Necropolis could have used more sex and gore but it does offer up some pretty bizarre imagery and a couple of good kill scenes. The effects work isn't half bad here, highlighted by the extra boobs scene and a bit with a crawling hand, and though the film gets bogged down with the romantic subplot, there's enough unintentional hilarity throughout those scenes that the film is pretty consistent in its entertainment value. It doesn't wind up making a whole lot of sense but Baker does at least have an interesting screen presence. Her trashy faux-punk aesthetic and lithe features make her quite striking. Though she pops up in a few other mid-eighties B-movies like Bad Girls Dormitory, Riot On 42nd Street, Psychos In Love, Breeders and Mutant Hunt this film is the only one in which she gets to play the lead. She would appear in Galactic Gigolo, also in 1987, and then sadly fade into obscurity.
Video/Audio/Extras:
The fullframe presentation, with all of the original cropping intact, has been sourced from a VHS tape that has seen better days. The image is soft throughout and there is color fading aplenty. Macroblocking pops up fairly often as do random compression artifacts. The picture is generally pretty murky looking, and this is especially problematic during the film's many night scenes during which it's actually fairly difficult to see just what exactly is going on.
The audio is slightly better than the video. Though the Dolby Digital Mono English language track on the DVD is somewhat flat and prone to background hiss, at least most of the dialogue is easy enough to follow and understand. No alternate language options or subtitles are provided.
Extras include an introduction from Charles Band, a promo spot advertising the Full Moon Direct Grindhouse line, trailers for a few other Full Moon Entertainment properties, menus and chapter stops. These extras seem to be duplicated across the line so far.
The Final Word:
Necropolis isn't really very good but it is a whole lot of bizarre fun. Definitely a product of its time it offers up enough sex and gore to satiate easy to please fans of sleaze and provides ample amounts of unintentional hilarity as well. The DVD doesn't look very good, but it's priced right and until a better option comes around, this is the only game in town.
