John’s Horror Corner: The Granny (1995), ugly crusty-faced demons and nice boobs populate this raunchy horror comedy.

MY CALL:  This is middle-of-the-road schlocky fun. Boobs, blood, demon faces and weak death scenes. You could do worse. But you could do way better. MORE MOVIES LIKE The Granny: Well, for more murderously demonic geriatric horror, go for Rabid Grannies (1988). Another potion of eternal youth-gone-wrong B-movie delight would be The Rejuvenator (1988).

In the space of just a few minutes, director Luca Bercovici (Rockula, Dark Tide) sets the raunchy atmosphere with a gross bang. There’s a Night of the Demons-ish (1988-) smuttiness to be found as a demon-possessed woman gauges a priest’s eyes and jams his face into her… ummmm, yeah. While not terribly graphic, there are some very perverse scenes.

The sloppy special effects and rigid soap opera acting are readily forgiven when just below the ugly crusty demon faces, we find perfect boobs. Yup, of course. This is exactly the kind of movie that 14-year-old me rented and thought this was the best thing ever back in 1995.

Granny (Stella Stevens; The Terror Within II, The Manitou, Monster in the Closet) has invited her whole greedy, loveless family for Thanksgiving. They’re morally bankrupt people and they all want her dead so they can collect the insurance money.

Like Death Becomes Her (1992), Granny is given a potion (of youth or immortality or something) of great power and great consequence. But when the potion is corrupted, her cat is the first to change. The cat undergoes a laughable yet awesomely bad gory transformation as its skin peels back to expose the gnarly monstrosity beneath.

The death scenes are done cheaply, but they remain entertaining. A plastic surgeon gets cut up, a mink-obsessed heiress is torn apart by the animated minks of Granny’s coat, a horny uncle gets his member scissored off (off-screen) and a teenager gets a pro-wrestling death. Then the whole family is raised as ghouls along with a hilariously puppeted Grandpa who gross-kisses Granny. LOL

Our fiendish Granny toys with her victims and cackles just like Freddy Krueger in a way that feels really quite deliberate but even hokier. There’s a lot of goofy shenanigans. So this is an extremely obvious B-horror comedy.

There’s really no reason to recommend this movie. But if you enjoy a deliciously bad movie from time to time, you could do a lot worse. I enjoy how silly it gets, but wish it had a little more budget to throw into its gore and death scenes. I was also very disappointed we didn’t get a monster cat attack a la The Kiss (1988). I mean, come on. You don’t make a monster cat in Act 1 unless it’s going to attack someone in Act 3—Chekhov’s Monster Cat, right?