Sunday, October 24, 2021

31 Days of Horror 2021 Day 24 Trophy Heads

 

TITLE-Trophy Heads

SOURCE-Full Moon DVD

Now I have been into the films from Full Moon since I saw Puppet Master for rent at a video store 30 years ago. But over the last 10 years I kind of lost touch with Full Moon. So when in 2014 Full Moon did Trophy Heads as a tv show on their streaming service I didn't hear about it. 

It wasn't until sometime early this year that I learned the movie existed. CodyLL,who is better known to people that watch the Asshat Podcast youtube channel,was telling me about the movie. And once he mentioned Jaqueline Lovell was in the film I had to see it. Thankfully Cody isn't a Full Moon fan,so he offered to throw the Trophy Heads DVD into the next package he was going to mail me.The package came in and the DVDs in it got added to the ever growing DVD watch pile.

Back in the end of spring I had taken to sitting out on my pier after dinner. I would sit down there and watch DVDs on my laptop as I edited video footage. Usually I was watching DVDs of stuff I had never seen. And one of those evenings I watched Trophy Heads and LOVED IT!

A middle age horror fan,who lives in the basement of his mother's home,has started kidnapping the famous Scream Queens of the 80s thru 90s. He makes them stay in jail cells he has in his home. Then one by one the Scream Queens are made to act in recreations of some of their most famous scenes. Once the Scream Queens are dead our Incelish lead male mounts their heads on his wall.

Now I figured going into this that it's start as a original series for Full Moon's streaming service and the low budget would produce a boring unfunny unscary horror/comedy from Full Moon. One that barely runs 70 minutes and that is with 12 minutes of credits. Sure the origin of this as a series of short films is obvious when you watch the movie. And the low budget hurts some of the scenes. But every member of the cast is having a blast and this energy shines through.

Speaking of the cast,Charles Band got a great cast. Most of whom I'm pretty sure have worked on Full Moon films before. All the Scream Queens are playing slightly fictionalized versions of themselves.


Brinke Stevens,my favorite of the 80s/90s era Scream Queens,is supposedly a massage therapist. Ms Stevens has always been great at comedy and in Trophy Heads she gets some of the best lines and scenes. Pretty sure Brinke's film Slave Girls from Beyond Infinity was a Full Moon movie.


Up next on the Scream Queen front is Darcy DeMoss. I had to look her up and even then still only thing I knew her from was Friday the 13th Part 6. She plays Nikki in that classic. Appears this is her first Full Moon film.


The 3rd Scream Queen is the main reason I wanted to see this film,that is Jacqueline Lovell. I first saw Ms Lovell in Full Moon's Head of the Family. She was great in that and all the other B-movies I saw her in for about a 15 year period. Then she just disappeared. I had heard rumors of her getting married. And now that she was ashamed of her b-movie past,plus she wasn't happy about her stint in softcore porn as Sara St James. First off Jacqueline looks exactly the same as she did in the last film I saw her in 15 years ago. And I looked her up. Appears I was partially right. She did stop acting after she got married and had her first kid. But saw no proof that she was ashamed of the films she did in her past.


Ya can't have a Scream Queen reunion style film without Linnea Quigley. AFAIK Linnea has never been in a Full Moon film before. Sure early in her career she was in Fairy Tales. But that film was made 10 years at least before Full Moon existed. But it did have Charles Band as the director.  Shit I forgot Linnea  was in Sorority Babes in the SlimeBall Bowl-a-rama film.Linnea is great in this cause she is playing herself,but now she is a hardcore Christian. Who goes around knocking on doors and trying to convert people to the ways of Jesus.


Michelle Bauer completes the infamous trio of 80s Scream Queens,her and Brinke and Linnea were the best known of that era's Scream Queens. Michelle has always shown that she has a good sense of comedic timing. And is given the chance to really show that skill off in this film. As a Full Moon connection Ms Bauer was also in Sorority Babes in the SlimeBall Bowl-A-Rama with Linnea and Brinke Stevens.


And our final Scream Queen is Denice Duff. I didn't know who she was when I saw her. The name sounded a bit familiar but I had no clue what I knew her from. Looked her up and she was in Full Moon's SubSpecies series of films. I was never a big fan of that series of films from Full Moon. But Denice is decent in this movie.

Adam Roberts and Maria Olsen are both excellent as the horror fan and his mother. Olsen is so good as the Mom who is doing all she can to help her grown Man Child kidnap and then kill these Scream Queens.

Now sure if you didn't grow up watching all the films these Scream Queens were in I don't know how much appeal this movie will have for you. But if you were one of us that was renting stuff like Nightmare Sisters and Creepazoid from the video store Trophy Heads is worth seeing.

Trophy Heads gets  a B-.



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