Full Moon Features has earned a place in almost every horror-loving heart, and for good reasons. It’s not that any of the movies are particularly scary, or even that they’re incredibly well-made. Full Moon movies just have that unnamable x-factor…the perfect mixture of cheesiness, otherworldly villains, and just enough storyline to keep a viewer from feeling insulted. When I look back on my developmental years when I first started to love horror movies, I always remember Full Moon Features and Charles Band.
Fortunately, Chris Alexander's Necropolis: Legion, the second film in Charles Band’s Deadly Ten (see previous article here), captures the charm of some of the better Full Moon movies. Part of what grabbed my attention from the get-go was the poster art, which shows a semi-nude woman with the worst case of inverted nipples I’ve ever seen. I assumed this was going to be a villain the movie would build up to and maybe introduce in a trippy dream sequence, but I was completely wrong.
The movie starts out with a sexually-charged ritual in which a villain named Eva (who, of course, has fanged mouths instead of nipples) sacrifices a naked woman by biting this woman’s nipples with her own nipple-mouths. I mean…ouch? I’m not sure where this act falls on today’s spectrum of modern sexuality, but it certainly earns points for originality.
And you thought titty twisters were bad…
Anyway, Eva (Ali Chappell) is quickly dispatched by her husband, who catches her performing this evil and sexually confusing deed, and then the present-day story starts. An occult writer named Lisa (Augie Duke) is warned during an in-store book signing that she should forego her plans to move into the haunted farm where Eva was murdered, because it’s haunted and bad things will happen and stuff. To be honest, the whole encounter doesn’t really make much sense, and it didn’t really do much for me as a viewer. Anyway, Lisa completely disregards this advice and moves into the farm, determined to discover the truth about Eva’s death and capture the story for her next book (sorta like 1408, if, instead of John Cusack, the main character were a scantily-clad woman in a see-through t-shirt and underwear).
I won’t go into any more of the plot because, to be honest, there really isn’t much. And I’m perfectly cool with that. Like I said, I don’t watch Full Moon movies for the storylines, and I’d put money on 90% of the audience being at least a little high while watching Necropolis: Legion.
It wasn’t my favorite Full Moon movie, and it probably doesn’t even make the top twenty (there are over 100 Full Moon movies, I believe), but that’s not to say it doesn’t have high points.
For starters, I really liked to super-trippy camera work and editing, which really embraces the movie for what it is. Necropolis: Legion only clocks in at one hour, which is somewhere between a short film and a feature, and the dreamy atmosphere paired with the chick with mouth-tits made the whole thing feel like an early Cradle of Filth music video.
There’s some nice over-the-top acting from Lynn Lowry (Shivers, The Crazies) in this movie, which makes the campiness all the more charming. This past decade has been a renaissance for Lowry, especially on the horror indie film scene, and she seems to be the kind of actress who loves these crazy movies that are made purely for love of the genre. Most geriatric women chew soft food, but Lowry prefers to chew scenery…and I loved every scene she was in.
Also, I really liked the obvious nod to Clive Barker’s Hellraiser during Eva’s blood-fueled rebirth. This might rub some people the wrong way, because some horror fans don’t care much for homage, but I for one thought it worked well.
The ending’s no good, but not so terrible that I felt I’d wasted my time with the rest of the movie. We spend the first fifty minutes or so getting to this point…and then we’re given a bunch of expository dialogue and a resolution that doesn’t make much sense. Also, I feel like the final scene was meant to be a twist, but it didn’t really stick the landing.
If you’re in the mood for something strange and sexy (or if you’re tired of not finding “Mouths for Nipples” on PornHub), check out the latest film in Charles Band’s Deadly Ten, Necropolis: Legion.
I give this movie 6/10 Mouth-Tits.
Necropolis: Legion is now available on Amazon Prime and Full Moon Features.
