The spice of life: nude strippers, stop motion demons, buckets of fake blood and washed up B movie actors. Makes me weak in the knees so here you got “Debbie Does Damnation” by Eric Brummer, its pretty much an hour long version of his short “Joanna Died and Went to Hell”. Shot on Super 8 and in black and white, the scum and sleaziness just drips out of the screen. Its low budget, its stupid, its offensive and I love it.
So the plot, well, the sound is really shitty on the version I have but from what I could gather, the Devil had his head cut off by two of his lieutenants whom he taught his secrets to, then they betray him and detach his horns which gave him his power, each one has a horn. The Devil needs an uncorrupted soul to get his horns back and Debbie is that uncorrupted soul. One chick is tested out and found wanting, oh and all the souls in hell are naked. If you are found wanting you are eaten by a stop motion, demonic reptile.
Nude chicks with swords, I am sold. Stop motion monsters. SOLD! SOLD! SOLD! So at first the devil despairs of finding the right soul until Debbie shows up, at first her guardian angel tries to keep her from falling into hell but her sins are pulling her down. This cuts from live actors to Barbie dolls, one doll has wings carrying one without. The one without wings who is Debbie falls into hell and the devil’s emissary, a skull spider, leads her to the Devil’s head who gives his instructions and tells her he’ll let her leave hell if she gets his horns. She agrees.
You want to know the ending to “Debbie Does Damnation”? Fuck up a tree and watch it for yourself down below, eat out that link. Give it an orgasm. When I first wrote my post on Eric Brummer’s insane shorts “Electric Flesh” and “Joanna Died and Went to Hell” which “Debbie Does Damnation” is an hour long version of, I had barely any info on Eric. The few points I could find were scattered here and there, that Eric went on to direct porn, which seemed like a natural evolution from this movie. But there was a “making of” that gave a shit load of info on this movie and Eric’s creative process.
Eric says he made this movie for less than 1,000 dollars, which is hard to believe, it seems chicks would want to be paid to run around nude and I mean paid good. I am just wondering how Eric got these women out of their underwear, not to mention he got William Smith, a B movie character actor in his film and I don’t think even somebody like Bill Smith would take peanuts. Maybe he meant it took under 1000 bucks to make the sets and film it, he says that he made his bricks and stones out of cardboard and paper mache, and the armor out of linoleum. He said that this was his last film on Super 8 and that he wanted to go out with a bang, he wanted the movie to cross the line and be super offensive, he also wanted it to be weird and different. He succeeded at the weird and different thing, part of that was the stop motion cut in with the live action, he said he liked the stop motion sequences the best because he was in complete control, and could take his time, he said its harder dealing with live actors who have schedules, gripes, problems etc. He said he lost interest near the end because he was going through a bad break up at the time, it didn’t show, this thing kept my interest through the whole thing.
You also get a lot of dumb dialogue, like this bit between the two lieutenants when their sword fighting each other “C’mon Jean Claude Van Damme Homo!” Speaking of dialogue, through the whole thing, the dialogue doesn’t sink up with the lips. Brummer claims this is on purpose or maybe its because Brummer is making excuses and had little money, he couldn’t go back and fix the dialogue situation. Nonetheless, an hour is a perfect running time for this movie, if it would’ve went any longer it would’ve dragged, another half n’ hour would’ve been way too long. One hour is short and sweet, this was Brummer’s swan song before he started his descent in to the wet Poon Tang rabbit hole. What a way to go!!!
So here is the sweet spot, play with it and finger it a bit (plus you get the “making of” at the end: https://www.bitchute.com/video/uP9xLT5QpFmE/
My posts on Eric’s two short films, they are must sees: https://www.noisepuncher.net/2020/12/11/short-shit-list-double-feature-electric-flesh-and-joanna-died-and-went-hell-1996-what-a-brummer/