In the annals of Americana, few things are more universally loved than the idea of a Friday night at the local Cineplex. Popcorn in one hand, your guy or gal in the other, time to kick back, relax and take in the true art form of the 20th century - the motion picture. Never was the definition of reckless abandon so prevalent than in the drive-in movie theaters of the late 50’s. So simple and carefree a time in life that few films have come along to rival that level of wistfulness. Even the rare breed of homage piece that makes its way down the pipes every few generally fails to revive the blissful feelings of misspent youth. In today’s cynical society, the simplistic stupidity of cinema’s past only serves as fodder for generations of filmmakers to ridicule as evidence of the sheer absurdity of the atomic age.

That kind of filmmaking needed to elicit a gut response - to twitch the ancient synapses’ into firing up memories of lazy days, flipping through the big bug movies on TNT or cackling along with the uber-studpity of films like Plan 9 From Outer Space while still recognizing the sheer determination that it took to bring a film like that to light is exactly what one veteran moviemaker hopes to achieve with his sharply crafted opus - Shock-O-Rama.

A multi-hyphenate of the highest order Writer /Director/Editor/Effects Designer Brett Piper is no stranger to the cycle of B-moviedom, but his trilogy of schlock horror films for independent movie mogul Michael Raso’s EI label show Piper at the very zenith of his neo-nostalgic prowess. A veritable smorgasbord of every conceivable genre cliché and throwback, Piper even eschews all forms of computer generated trickery in favor of traditionalist methods like stop motion animation and model work. What comes across on screen is a lovingly crafted hallmark to everything both great and terrible about the classic cheese of the cold war era.

Much like his Vault of Horror predecessors, Piper has decided to fly his film under the banner of the anthology series. But, compiling three tales into one overriding film is often a thankless task, and one, which despite the most sincere of intentions generally fails regardless of talent involved. However, Piper’s film somehow manages to pull all his elements into a fantastically coherent and utterly enchanting feast. The wraparound, often relegated to the tedious status of attempting to link tales, takes center stage in this production, being arguably the most exciting of the three stories.

Rebecca Raven (Misty Mundae) is the reigning queen of a local low budget house of horror. Her oeuvre of T&A trash fests has taken the small studio to the center of the public’s consciousness and placed her persona on the tongue of every pimply faced, basement dwelling, teenage twerp this side of the known universe. But her restless unease over the control of her image and career are beginning to take their toll on the spry twentysometing. Just as Rebecca has had enough, the studio unceremoniously dumps her for a younger and shapelier beauty. Now out of work, Rebecca takes off for a weeklong retreat at her secluded country house to reevaluate her career and redefine her future direction. What Rebecca doesn’t know is that buried deep under the earth of her home lies the rotting corpse of one monster man with some pretty creepy plans of his own.

As Rebecca Raven, Mundae take everything about her own carefully polished career and turns it directly onto its oversized head. In a fearlessly self effacing characterization, Mundae takes jabs at friend and foe alike, paining her enthusiasts and her employers with the same witty brush of glittering generalization. In what may well be the final major performance of “Misty Mundae”, Erin Brown, the performer behind the famous pseudonym showers the viewer with the perfect kiss off and provides what might just be the performance of her career.

As Rebecca Raven prepares to do battle with the dark forces of the recently undead, the Studio bosses she left behind have a whole new issue at hand. It seems that that voluptuous vixen that was slated to replace Raven has just be jailed for offering to fellate a fine officer of the law. As the two bumbling execs start their search, the final acts of the film come into play – featured as a pair of video taped short films, featuring actresses that might just be willing to move into the recently vacated scream siren roll.

Mechanoid arrives as a trashy ode to all those “spaced” invader films from the heyday of the sci-fi shocker. On the run from intergalactic police, a spaceship crash-lands in the junkyard of one nearly destitute and slightly unstable property owner (Rob Monkiewicz). From there it’s all out war as out hero does battle with not only his ex-girlfriend (Caitlin Ross) and the midget aliens, but a 50-foot tall garbage monster hell bend on blasting them all to kingdom come.

The second tale – Lonely are the Brain, twists the cortex creature feature genre down perverse new roads as a seductive scientist (Jillian Wells) secretly conducts sexual dream experiments on a stable of luscious ladies. Wells steals the show in the orgasmic throws of the films…errr…climax, before delivering a spattering of insane dialogue that would have felt right at home in virtually any Sam Arkoff flick.

Both short films work so well in the context of what Shock-O-Rama is trying to accomplish that it never fails to keep the audience amused. From the verbal jousting of Monkiewicz and Ross to the incredibly over the top culmination of Lonely are the Brain, Piper’s film sings with an unholy harmony of busty beauties, gruesome ghouls and laugh-out-loud plot devices.

It’s such a rare thing to find a compilation film that works on so many levels. Certainly Piper has shown his affinity for creature features with The Screaming Dead and Bite Me, but very little could have prepared the viewer for what can only be described as the film he was born to direct. This is cinema for the movie lover, carefully sketched out to touch all the right memories, while playing with tried and true genre pieces in way that would entirely shock and bemuse their inventors. But, perhaps what remains the most outrageous thing about Shock-O-Rama is that EI Independent - the little studio that prided itself on endowing the public with a steady diet of celluloid junk food - might just have managed to produce one the best films of the year.