User Reviews

It's the closing night at the last drive-in theater in America and Cecil B. Kaufman (Richard Riehle) has planned the ultimate marathon of lost film prints to unleash upon his faithful cinephile patrons.

I had moderately high hopes for this film, and for the most part they were met. "Wadzilla" was better than I expected, and "Diary of Anne Frankenstein" far exceeded my hopes... it was, without a doubt the highlight of the film (the fake German was hilarious, Joel Moore plays a great Hitler, and Kane Hodder as a golem? Perfection). I also enjoyed "Deathification".

The problem comes with "I Was a Teenage Werebear". This is the segment I had the most hope for, and it was just boring. It slowed down the pace of the movie and made the overall film seem much too long. I appreciate the concept and the throwback to 60s beach films, but I think they blew it. I just did not find it very well developed.

I still recommend this one to all horror fans. If nothing else, watch the "Anne Frank" segment. Just downright hilarious. And see how many references to classic films you catch (some horror, some not). It is no secret that Joe Lynch and Adam Green are passionate about horror, and this film proves it.

From some of this generations most innovative filmmakers comes a film that pushes the boundaries of good taste and endeavors to bring the good ol' style of the drive-in right into your living room. Does it succeed? For the most part, yes! Segment One, Wadzilla, features star/director Adam Rifkin (Detroit Rock City)as a timid businessman who is given experimental medicine to increase his sperm count, only to unleash a monster of immeasurable horror! The effects are charmingly horrible but it is quite a funny ride.

Segment Two, I Was a Teenage Werebear is, unfortunately, the proverbial black sheep of the family. Tim Sullivan (2001 Maniacs) is a real talent but the short's taboo pressing plot line only serves to alienate this movie's target demographic (straight males). It is a rousing musical about a sexually confused young man who is bitten by a were-bear (long story) and struggles to keep his morality.

Segment Three, Adam Green's (Hatchet, Frozen)The Diary of Anne Frankenstien, is a real treat. Although admittedly a little short on the horror aspect, it is actually quite funny. The Nazi's, led by Joel David Moore as Hitler, attempt to use Anne Frankenstien's journal to build a monster to help in the war effort. This segment is shot in a sublime old fashioned style and is subtitled as everyone speaks authentic German except for Hitler himself, who comes off as quite a bumbling fool.

Segment Four, Joe Lynch's (Wrong Turn 2) Zom-B-Movie, serves as the wraparound story and as the finale and it is just righteously over the top fun enough to completely win over this reviewer. A zombie outbreak threatens the people who had to sit through the last three shorts only to be threatened by a pack of sexually charged zombies. The real highlight is character actor Richard Riehle who gets to brandish a shotgun and quote more movies then any character in history.

For this reviewer's money, this movie succeeded at becoming exploitation without falling prey to insincerity like the similarly themed Grindhouse.

This movie kinda blew it's load early with the first story being by far the best. I was laughing my ass off the whole way, definite fun.

That's where it went down hill a bit, with the second story having a very homo-erotic type of theme, the acting was pretty bad, and the storyline just wasn't there for me.

By the time the third one got going I was severely loosing interest, and it wasn't the "Troma" type of effects, again overall in the end it just felt too cheap, even for a super low budget, I've seen some masterpieces pulled off with a shoe-string budget. I gave it a five and that was mainly due to the first tale. Troma fans will enjoy, it's more of a comedy than anything else.

It's just one of those poser "horror comedies". Decent poster/cover but nothing to offer. The jokes are obvious dad jokes, but dirty. The first segment is called "Wadzilla" about a Godzilla sized sperm, and from there it does not get any better or funnier. It's as if this movie was written by grade nine students who were kept after health class for detention.

The best segment in this is Wad-Zilla. The rest is really hit or miss, especially the too-long, unfunny Were-Bear segment. The Diary of Anne Frankenstein, if it had been cut down a bit would have been way better. The end bit, with the Zombies was really quite lame and nearly pornographic. It could have been a lot funnier if it hadn't been written by people who must always daydream about sex constantly.

You know a film is going to be good when it opens with a graverobber- whose about to defile corpse- getting de-cock-itated by a zombie.

What follows is a relatively unknown and highly underrated masterpiece of cult cinema from our fine friends at Troma.

And it does not disappoint.

Taking inspiration from Popcorn, and Dead Of Night, we find ourselves following a group of teenagers, as they take in the final splatterfest-aptly titled Chillerama- at the local drive-in.

The first sex laden feature they watch concerns an infertile male on an experimental drug regimen, who ends up producing rampageous monster sperms.

The second film is a musical about a gay teenage wrestler who has a coming of age experience after getting bit in the ass and turned into a wear bear by another gay wrestler.

This is followed by a tale about a rabbinic golem, who takes revenge on the Nazis who created him.

And culminates with a finale that starts off extremely scatological, but ends off relatively orgiastic...concluding with a shivers-style ending that leaves no room for improvement.

Pretty much everything about this film rules.

Pure cheese from the best of 'em.

Another Troma-tastic cult classic (possibly the best ever?) that you won't want to miss!

7.5 out of 10.

As my rating would suggest, I am very nearly in love with this movie. Horror-comedies can be quite fickle...very often having too many elements of one and not nearly enough of the other. Sure, you have movies like Shaun Of The Dead that get it just right, but for every one of "Shaun" there's about 15 that just don't get it. And now we have Chillerama.

From start to finish you get the impression that someone was trying to get the aforementioned mixture just right. It interweaves 3 different movies (essentially hilarious mockeries of the old grindhouse/midnight drive-in genre) with a story of what takes place in between at the drive-in where they're being shown (think of it as the play within a play from Hamlet). Mocking these types of films is certainly nothing new, but few have gone so over the top while still somehow staying true to the source material. I have to say my favorite segment has to be "The Diary Of Anne Frankenstein" if for no other reason that Joel David Moore's portrayal of Hitler. Watching him make up gibberish that was subtitled as legitimate German had me laughing my ass off.

Gripes? Only minor ones. The movie runs a bit long for this genre. Two solid hours is typically a bit more than you'd expect, but then again it doesn't feel stretched or wasted. I also kind of wished they had put a little more effort into the story of what happens at the drive-in. All in all I would (and already have) recommend it to just about anyone who enjoys a good, albeit sometimes crude, laugh.

This flick isn't made for everybody. If you do like short flicks combined in one movie and like gore then you better pick up the V/H/S franchise. This one here is just made for the fun of it. There's nothing you can take seriously.

It starts rather good as a typical fifties creature feature only the creature here is...sperm. And it grows and grows and we do have some funny situations like when it explodes a girl's mouth is full of cum, you could see that coming from miles. But from there on it's also downhill with a very gay entry, about werebears in stead of werewolves. It was directed by Tim Sullivan, so you know what you will get. The part with Hitler is sometimes funny and is the one that have a few gory scene's but done rather in a low budget style. It's only at the last segment that the drive-in, where people are watching Chillerama, that it all becomes what you were waiting for, gore and boobs. Especially when the zombies come alive and are horny as hell.

It clocks in at 2 hours and it has it flows. It changes from exploitation to musical to a cheapy to gratuitous nudity. Not for everybody but I guess when you watch it with friends you will have a laugh here and there but for me it was a mediocre flick.

Gore 1,5/5 Nudity 1,5/5 Effects 3/5 Story 2,5/5 Comedy 1/5

On the face of it, CHILLERAMA is a throwback to those horror anthologies of old, complete with a film-within-a-film vibe with a celebration of the old drive-in experience. Unfortunately, in execution it falls substantially short of the mark, having apparently been written by a group of college students with an interest in lowbrow humour and little else.

The main focus of CHILLERAMA is to offend as many sensibilities as possible with the explicit, bad taste content. One of the stories is entitled 'The Diary of Anne Frankenstein', which gives you some idea of the level of wit on display here. There are four stories in total, all of them possessing poor writing and bad acting:

The first story, WADZILLA, is a sex comedy spoof of the GODZILLA franchise, in which a guy tries a new treatment for his low sperm count and accidentally births a giant sperm which terrorises the city. It's happy to be ridiculous. The second story gets worse; I WAS A TEENAGE WEREBEAR is a gay high school comedy and as terrible as it sounds. By the time of the Nazi FRANKENSTEIN story, interest levels will be waning, and given that virtually nothing happens in this segment you can rest assured that you won't be missing stuff. The final segment, ZOM-B-MOVIE, is a straightforward zombie attack with some fun dialogue (based around quotes from old horror films) to recommend it. It's just a shame that 90% of the movie misses the mark entirely.

This movie seemed tailor-made for my conga line of odd pop-culture obsessions. Weird b-movies, special interest comic book nonsense, a film about film, episodic format with a keen eye for period specific cliches and tropes, Adam Rifkin. Bingo!

The movie starts off well enough with the beginning of the wrap-around story which introduces the characters about to sit through 4 trashy midnight movies made by 4 different directors. The first vignette by Rifkin is easily the best. It's super low-brow but quite funny and super adept at portraying and satirizing its period of schlocky horror movies and equally schlocky catastrophe movies. Rifkin knows his stuff. The way characters talk and act, the subtle misogyny, set design, music, even the dodgy effects with charming stop motion work and questionable chroma keying. It's on point. More please, I'm hooked.

Unfortunately at this point there's still one and a half hours of movie left to watch and wow does it feel long. None of the other vignettes are remotely as good and the very few jokes they have are done to death, dug up and done some more for good measure. The second vignette is already pretty painful, like a fatally deflated version of a Troma movie. If you make Poultrygeist look dignified you're in trouble. Not quite absolute zero yet. In a parallel universe it might have made for a good John Waters movie.

The third short, Diary of Anne Frankenstein, had at least a funny tasteless synopsis to go off and might have worked as a five minute internet short in the early days of youtube à la Ken Russell's "Ein Kitten für Hitler" or as a fake trailer in the Rodriguez/Tarantino Grindhouse project, but it runs out of steam head-spinningly quickly and at this point it's already become obvious none of the other directors are as dedicated, talented or cineliterate as Adam Rifkin.

Afterwards you enter the absolute abyss of comedy. A black hole where no fun can enter. It made my soul travel back in time and unlaugh at things I previously laughed at. Bad dramatic movies can be comedy gold mines but bad comedies are just dreadful. The roaring finale gets absurdly terrible, it's almost art at this point. I'm talking Vogon poetry level of awfulness. Andreas Schnaas level of awfulness. The Wayans-esque humour, the cluster bombing with unnecessary, ill-fitting movie quotes, the faux edgy attitude, it made me feel embarrassed to the very essence of my being.

I'm sure everyone involved had a fantastic time making this movie and they all seem like lovely people I'd hang out with. I love the concept of the movie and the idea behind half of the short stories but it turns out comedy is actually really hard work best left to professionals.

It is difficult to describe this movie, other than to say this is what people used to categorize as "Midnight Madness". And the shoe fits perfectly. This does not shy away offending as much as possible and will go OTT all the time. Of course that also means, you can't feel anything but real craziness and silliness. Spiced with blood and other ingredients, that might make you sick to your stomach (of course that is if you like that sort of stuff).

The movie is divided into segments and while the "quality" (if you can call it that) is going up and down throughout, it is great fun to watch this movie. I myself couldn't get behind the last segment of it, but others liked that the most. What it boils down to, is if you can have fun with something crazy like this ...

This film n Digging up .... were on my radar for a long time, saw both of em recently n was utterly disappointed. Adam Green's film r always on my watchlist. Hatchet (old skool horror film with over the top gore), Spiral (psychological drama), Frozen (claustrophobic tensed thriller), Victor Crowley (violent/gory lol). But of lately he is climbing down the ladder. Digging up the Marrow (lame n boring), Chillerama (repulsive horror comedy/spoof). It is an anthology : the first one Wadenzilla spoofing monster movies where a man visits a clinic n he is prescribed a non approved medicine to increase his low sperm count. Things turn ugly when his sperm turns into a gigantic monster. It has all the low budget effects. The second one is a musical spoof on the man turning into bear genre. Nothing good here. The third one is about Hitler trying to create Frankenstein. Lots of gibberish talks but nothing redeeming. The fourth one is about zombies which actually is the first one. Lots of blue/green blood, some gore stuff but again a lousy one. In between they have added an entire segment devoted to all kinds of poop being graphically deficated. A very repulsive n disgusting one. Richard Riehle is a bit funny with his action films one liners.

The film has not one but three hot, sharp jawline babes, Olivia Taylor Dudley, Sarah Mutch n Tania Raymonde but zero nudity.

This movie just isn't funny and reeks of desperation.

"Wazilla:" 9/10. "I Was a Teenage Wearbear:" 7/10. "The Diary of Anne Frankenstein:" 8/10. "Zom B Movie:" 8/10.

Chillerama is one great big homage to the drive-in films that were once one of the biggest ways to view a film. Now, we have midnight showings and regular movie theaters. Though the number of American drive-in theaters have decimated to almost the point of utter extinction, Chillerama proves that if this was the seventies, it would've been the main attraction.

This is an anthology film in the vein of things like Creepshow and Tales from the Crypt. It plays like true anthology goodness; several short stories and then a wrap-around story to conclude the spectacle, where all the characters come together, also making the narrative come full circle. I have rated all the segments on their own since they serve as their own mini-movie. I believe that it's impossible to give one final rating to an anthology film without rating each individual vignette and then finding the average of the numbers. Thankfully, every one of Chillerama's stories is of passable quality.

Since each short is directed by a different person and focuses on a different period of horror, it gives sort of an ambiguous presence off. We get the homage to the time period, and the director's way of establishing it showcasing his style and his way of storytelling. Our first short just happens to be the best one. The Adam Rifkin directed "Wadzilla" is a crafty, creative, and endearing short mimicking the goofiness and the cheesiness of monster movies that dominated the fifties. The story focuses on a man, played by Rifkin as well, who has been giving a pill because of low sperm count. After taking this pill multiple times, he realizes his sperm have enlarged, and after one "escapes" from his body, it runs dangerously downtown, destroying everything in its path. Its jokes at films like The Blob are noticeable, and the idea itself is so unique and witty I can't help but have an undying fondness for such a short.

The next short, while the weakest, still has plenty of flair and wit. It's "I Was a Teenage Werebear," a short that is supposed to lampoon Rebel Without a Cause, Grease, and The Twilight Saga. Funny thing is I didn't think of any of those films when watching the short. I feel this is more a homage to beach movies and quirky musicals of the sixties and seventies. You know? Where characters randomly broke out in song and danced the night away. Beach Blanket Bingo comes to mind. As well as The Lost Boys, for its use of an unlikely clan and The Rocky Horror Picture Show for its bizarre costumes. I didn't find the story all that exciting, as much as I did the little dance numbers and the overall vibe it shot through my screen. A fun little short, that's too out there to be ordinary.

After that, we have "The Diary of Anne Frankenstein" directed by Adam Green, another director I'm well acquainted with. Green directed both Hatchet and its sequel, as well as the chilling, no pun intended, claustrophobic horror flick Frozen. Green furthers his style of flashback filmmaking with this short about Hitler (Moore) who breaks into Anne Frank's attic and recovers her book about how there was a strange monster created in her family. Hitler plans to revive this monster in order to win World War II. The film is subtitled because of its German origin, and is shot in black and white. The short is supposed to remind us of strange, foreign black and white films that were popular in the twenties and thirties. This is another change of pitch for Green, and hopefully will continue his line of films that throw us back to a simpler, more involved time.

I forgot to mention that the shorts we are watching are being played in a drive-in theater in the film. There are a number of characters we become more familiar with between intermissions of the shorts. They all join together to fight a massive zombie outbreak in the closing short "Zom B Movie." The short is similar to the outbreak in Troma's film Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead, and mirroring the style of zombie films like Dawn of the Dead. This is beautifully directed by Joe Lynch, the same person who directed the great sequel to Wrong Turn.

If you've never heard of the company Troma then this film is worthless to you. You have to have a certain love for low-budget, throwback style filmmaking to develop the love for Chillerama like I did. I was rarely so involved in a horror film until I saw this and now I fear that I'll be expecting this quality next time I see an anthology film. Green, Lynch, Rifkin, and Sullivan have all proved themselves worthy of making a good horror-movie script and an uncanny talent of handling a camera. Maybe if we have a Thrillerama at one point we'll get more out of these four capable men.

Starring: Richard Riehle, Adam Rifkin, Ray Wise, Miles Dougal, Sean Paul Lockhart, Ron Jeremy, Joel David Moore, Kane Hodder, and Kristina Klebe. "Wadzilla" directed by Adam Rifkin. "I Was a Teenage Werebear" directed by Tim Sullivan. "The Diary of Anne Frankenstein" directed by Adam Green. And "Zom B Movie" directed by Joe Lynch.

This is the very reason that so many horror comedies don't work for me. It started off and I thought, well this could be a fun and somewhat clever way to kill two hours.

Boy was I wrong, dead wrong. This degenerated into lowest common denominator garbage within minutes, unfunny low-brow, sophomoric humour, utterly unconvincing as either a comedy, a horror movie or even just an actual movie.

The script, and I use this term loosely, is nothing more than a series of badly connected nonsensical vignettes. I have no problem with movies that don't take themselves seriously, but there has to be some grounding in reality for us to give a damn what happens to anyone.

Unfunny, frat-house humour that may appeal to those under the age of eighteen but certainly not to anyone expecting something resembling a real film. A shame too, since there are some really interesting names in front of the cameras. C'mon guys you all know better than this.

Maybe I'm just getting too old for this crap...

But it's always fascinating to find your own squeamishness limit. Mine was right around the start of the "Deathification" segment and pretty much continued until the last couple minutes.

This is an unabashedly campy movie, sending up horror genres and horror eras, while taking shots at various sociopolitical issues. Though much of it is in incredibly bad taste, we were warned about that going in, so it seems churlish to complain about that. What this movie does that many of the parody movies of recent times -- the "Epic Movie" and "Date Movie" sorts -- never accomplish was to take the jokes and completely commit to them. The grossness factor is never a one-off stupid joke. It's generally a long string of stupid jokes that hold together because the filmmakers are entirely aware of how stupid they are and feel no shame. The puns and wordplay were just...awful, and often hilarious because of the movie's commitment to them. The "I Was a Teenage Werebear" segment was a thing of campy beauty, and the way it treated the underlying metaphor was actually pretty clever. Still incredibly campy, but clever. And it was nice to see some familiar horror faces in the cast (Lyn Shaye and Kane Hodder being the most obvious, followed closely by Ray Wise.)

Just in case I didn't make this clear before: if you have a weak stomach for gross-out humor, this is not the movie for you. It even started to get to me by the last half-hour. But if you can deal with that sort of thing, it's actually a fairly fun movie. I'm not sure if I'd recommend it to anybody I know, but I think I would recommend it to...somebody. I just don't know a lot of "somebodies" who would appreciate watching a movie with this level of gross-out factor. In a nutshell -- if you like John Waters, this is probably your perfect horror-comedy. I'm rating it a 6 simply because (and your mileage may vary) the last part was a bit *too* committed to the gross-out camp. But it was a fun ride up until then, and even then, I never turned it off.

Each of the four segments has its moments. The tributes are appreciated and there are a few laughs to be had. The Hitler/Frankenstein segment was probably my favorite. All that said, the grossness extends to a level where you cringe and want to throw up. This film makes you laugh as quickly as you want to forget. I would never willingly watch this film a second time.

Chillarama was an absolute joy to watch, it features an all-star cast and there is absolute fun carnage going on for almost two hours. The movie includes four segments and one prologue and each story is absolutely over the top, absurd and more or less entertaining. The first segment is about a giant sperm that keeps growing and terrorizing a city, the second segment is a gay werewolf story, the third one is about Hitler in the role of Frankenstein, then there is one about poop and the Prologue includes zombies and a Drive-In Theater. The movie is gory and disgusting, some people might even think it's tasteless but I definitely had my fun with this absurd flick. It's an homage to the trash cinema of the 80s and I think the movie mostly succeeds. From those five stories being told there are two that I really enjoyed but I won't say which because you should decide that for your own. The other three were also entertaining but not as good. One minor complaint that I would have is that the movie is too long with two hours runtime I think that could have been shortened but I was still entertained mostly. [6,0/10]