Brutally Violent & Wonderful

Tobe Hooper's EATEN ALIVE (1977) - A Nasty Little Bastard

2011-11-04T15:14:00.000-04:00

During a drunken night of watching the blu-ray version of the original THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, I got so caught up in the moment that I made an erroneous (drunken) declaration. "Every movie Hooper made after this is shit!". This is obviously not the truth and the TCM sequel alone is proof of that! The always honest Mighty Shlogg from Shlogg's Horror Blog was quick to point out the fact that I was talking out of my ass by reminding me that SALEM'S LOT was amazing as well and that I really need to go back and take another look at THE MANGLER. And, of course, POLTERGEIST. But while my statement may have been a vodka-induced exaggeration, I can say with a clear sober head, that the majority of his films are uninspired, forgettable shit. I decided however, that I would take a look back at his catalog to reintroduce myself to some of his films. Maybe my memory is steering me wrong? Have I even seen everything he's done? I recently revisited THE FUNHOUSE and it reinforced my opinion. While it started off pretty strong, about halfway through it just bored the fuck outta me and ultimately seemed incomplete. I saw LIFEFORCE in the theater when I was a kid and haven't seen it since, so that one's definitely due for a rewatch.

One of Hooper's films that, for one reason or another, has always eluded me is EATEN ALIVE. Well, now that Netflix has replaced their 20 minute version with the actual film, I finally got to see it last night.

Hooper and Henkel return with a movie based on serial killer Joe Ball, aka "The Alligator Man". Written by two other dudes, Tobe and Kim re-wrote most of the script and began filming. They filmed the majority of it but producer interference caused them to walk off before the movie was finished. It's a shame too, because as much as I loved it, we'll never see the real vision that Hooper had for this movie. I can't wait to get my hands on the actual discs so I can get some more insight as to what really went down behind the scenes.

So, here's the story. A crazy old man runs a dilapidated hotel/alligator farm in some middle of nowhere Texas bayou. An assortment of guests come through to stay the night...a runaway whore, a young couple (Marilyn Burns as the wife) with a little girl, a father and daughter looking for their missing family member, and horror icon Robert Englund who plays the anal-sex obsessed redneck, Buck. Matter of fact, this movie may have one of the greatest opening lines ever! "My name is Buck, and I'm rearin' to fuck"....classic, just ask Tarantino. Anyways, the guests are greeted with either the warmth of Old Man Judd's scythe or the loving embrace of his crocodile's jaw, and in most cases...both.

While we know Judd is a mentally troubled war veteran, his character is never fleshed out enough to really get a hold on why he's doing what he's doing. Constantly babbling about instincts, numbers, letters and other nonsensical bullshit, the only reason we can see is that he's absolutely fucking nuts. Neville Brand does a good job and has a great creepy look as Judd, but the character screams for something more.

Visually, the film is crude and dark like it's predecessor, but it's combined with ridiculously unnatural cardboard structured sets that rival the sets from the TV show TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE , any porn from the 80's or even a grammar school production. But while these terrible sets and Ed Wood inspired crocodile prop prevent it from even coming close to capturing that raw terror that scared the shit outta the world in TCM, when combined with the dark tones and grittiness, it does add this great bit of charm to the overall feel of the film. There's also a great emphasis on colors which not only helps to mask the shittiness of the sets, but also adds a ton of personality. The highlight being the look of the exterior of the hotel throughout the night. It's consumed by this dark, burnt orange which is even seen through the windows during the interior shots. The color combined with the fog create an incredible atmosphere.

In between the marathon of honkytonk heartbreakers blaring from Judd's AM radio is an insane score by Hooper and Wayne Bell. There's this one sound in particular that pops up during tense scenes that sounds like a scream but then fades away. Imagine the famous flash bulb sound from TCM, just replace it with a woman's scream....pretty fucking brilliant!

EATEN ALIVE is an atmospheric, crazy, violent and bizarre little bastard of a flick that must've been amazing to see at the drive-in. It's a great blend of claustrophobic dread, perversion and sick humor. You'd do yourself a great favor if you watched it without using THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE to measure it's quality. This is a unique film that deserves to stand on it's own and not be judged by what it should've been, but by what it is.

So getting back to my feelings towards "post TCM" Tobe Hooper, he wins this one...big time!

Oh, and it was also on the UK list of "Video Nasties" under the title DEATH TRAP, so I might as well kill two birds with one stone here...

BOTTOM LINE:

THE THING (2011) A Remake, A Premake, A Whateverthefuck

2011-10-19T19:35:00.000-04:00

Remakes...can't live with 'em, and apparently U.S. "mainstream" horror can't live without 'em. And whether we love 'em or hate 'em, they usually cause quite a stir in the horror community. Some remakes cause such a controversy and breed such a seething response that they can cause people to reach into the darkest depths of their soul, forget that they're human fucking beings and start wishing cancer on people who appreciate said movies. (A reader actually commented that he "hoped I got cancer" on my positive review of Rob Zombie's HALLOWEEN 2 ...comment deleted).

Then there are the remakes that garner all types of praise and, dare to say, are considered by some to be superior to their original source material...LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT (strongly disagree), THE HILLS HAVE EYES (agree) or DAWN OF THE DEAD (great shit, but disagree) and STRAW DOGS (agree).

But somewhere in between the "shit and shinola" lay the remakes that just ARE. They aren't necessarily good or bad. They don't offer anything fresh and new to the franchise and on the opposite end, they don't disrespect the original material enough to spark an all-out fanboy riot. The end result of these types of remakes is simply allowing a whole new generation of horror fans to be introduced to some of the classic horror movies that the rest of us grew up on. They're just introduced in a shiny new package that the kids love these days! I guess that's not necessarily a bad thing...if it helps keep horror alive.

THE THING is that type of a remake...of a remake. It's respectful to the source material, and but doesn't do much to add to the mythology of it either. I didn't get the urge to walk out, but at the same time I couldn't wait for it to end. The whole time I watched, I longed to see icicles hanging from Kurt Russell's beard or hear the soothing sounds of Wilford Brimley's voice. I'm not mad at it for being what it is, but having grown up on the original (remake), I have no reason to watch this version ever again. But if this movie helps get the next generation interested in the Carpenter classic, and horror in general, than it has served it's purpose. The only thing that really bothered me about this movie is that every time actor Eric Christian Olson was on screen, all I could think of was THIS piece of shit movie!


Olsen in DUMB AND DUMBERER

I can't sit here and be one of those film purists who shits all over remakes, because they've always existed and they always will. Let us not forget CAPE FEAR('91)...THE FLY('86)...INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS('78) and, of course, the greatest of remakes John Carpenter's THE THING('82)!! We just have to hope that if "they" are gonna remake, premake, or what ever the fuck they're gonna do to our beloved classics, that they, at the very least, don't fuck them up.

AMER (2009) - It's Not What You Think It Is...It's BETTER!

2011-10-12T17:03:00.000-04:00

While AMER may be an "homage" to 1970 Giallo masters such as Argento and Sergio Martino, it is NOT, by any means a giallo itself. Sure there is the brilliant use of colors that screams SUSPIRIA. There's also the undeniable influence of the psychedelic sexuality of ALL THE COLORS OF THE DARK. Of course there's a pair of black leather gloves and a straight edge razor. Shit, it even has songs lifted directly from old giallos! But what isn't present is the murder mystery that giallos are known for. The only mystery we have here is the mystery of what is going on inside the sexually frustrated and tortured mind of our main character, Ana.

The story of Ana is told in three segments that follow her as she grows from a scared child to a curious teenager and finally to a grown woman who's sexual desires and fears seem to have gotten the best of her. And all the while, we're never really sure if we are watching Ana's reality or some sort of hallucination.

The first segment is dark and unsettling. A frantic Ana running from room to room, a corpse on a bed, eyes peering through keyholes...no real explanation as to what exactly is happening. What we do know is that Ana has witnessed something that will change her forever. Amazing composition and a fantastically creepy atmosphere. But when the second segment begins, the tone of the movie switches gears.

Now Ana is a teenager dealing with the confusion and fear of her own sexuality. It is here that we begin to explore how the incident that happened in her childhood has completely fucked Ana up. By the time we get to the third segment, Ana's inner turmoil escalates to a full on psycho-sexual hallucinatory nightmare.

AMER has got to be one of the most erotic and sexually charged movies I've ever seen that isn't a smut flick. It doesn't rely on constant nudity and sex scenes...matter of fact, there's only ONE shot of a woman's breast in the entire film! It creates it's sexual tone through great camera work and sounds. And with very little dialogue in the film, it relies heavily on the sights and sounds to tell the story and set the tone. Sounds of soft breathing and sighing float through the background as the camera zooms in on sensual body parts...the neck, the thigh, lips and and the eyes. Even mother nature adds to it, as the wind "has it's way" with Ana, vines and thorns caress her and a tree busts his nut just from her touch. The sexual tension slowly builds with every breath, whisper and close up until it finally erupts in a satisfyingly violent end.

AMER walks a fine line between brilliant film experience and pretentious art house film study. While the filmmakers do an amazing job of applying every technique that goes along with the giallo experience, at times they get a bit overindulgent...sometimes to the point of annoyance. The close ups are very effective in creating sexual tension, but after about the 100th zoom in of the eyes (second segment), I wanted to smash my TV. It was starting to remind me of the Lanyard Gates film within the movie POPCORN! But ultimately, AMER ends up on the right side of that thin line as a pretty amazing film experience.

Having read or heard nothing except the whole "ode to giallos" thing, AMER was not what I expected AT ALL! And that's a good thing, because it turned out to be so much more than I could've hoped for. A loving tribute to one of the craziest film genres ever, with a unique twist of it's own.

MULBERRY STREET - The Start Of Something Great?

2011-09-05T17:24:00.000-04:00

Part of the overwhelmingly awful "8 Films To Die For" film festival (2007), MULBERRY STREET is one of the only films that actually rises above the company that it keeps. I initially ignored it upon it's release for the simple reason that it was associated with the festival. The reason I decided to go back and check it out is just as simple...STAKE LAND. Writer, director, editor Jim Mickle's hugely (and deservedly) hyped apocalyptic vampire/road trip movie left me wanting more. So as soon as I realized that he was responsible for MULBERRY STREET, I was all over it.

Tenants in a run-down apartment building in NYC are about to be evicted, as their building has been purchased by some big-shot developer with plans to clean up the neighborhood. But just when they thought that living in the streets was the worst of their problems, all hell breaks loose. Disease infected rats start attacking the good people of NYC and turning them into, well...disease infected RATS!! Not your average "sniffin' around for cheese and feces" kinda rats...these are psychotic, blood thirsty, nasty rat bastards! The infection spreads so fast and so violently that, in no time at all, NYC is put under martial law and the tenants are not only fighting for their homes, but fighting for their lives.

So here we go again. Apartment building + infection = same old shit. Well, yes and no. I am definitely fed up with this formula, but this movie was released 3 years before RAMMBOCK and THE HORDE and in the same year as REC. So, it can't penalized for being a dick-rider. The first and most obvious difference is the whole "rat thing". New twist, but really, the same results...crazy fucking creatures running around tearin' the fuck outta people! So the whole "rat thing" can only hold so much weight. The major difference between MULBERRY STREET and those other movies (with the exception of REC!!!) is that the talent involved and the quality in the film-making is leaps and bounds above them.

Mickle creates an interesting world inside the apartment building. We learn just enough about each character and their relationships with one another to make them a bit more than just a bunch of victims of the rat bastards. Instead of pushing us right to the violence, he takes his time in introducing us to everyone. Considering the running time is under an hour and a half, that's a pretty impressive feat...and it's also what makes the movie work. Because as soon as he's done establishing all of this, he rips it to fucking shreds! Nick Damici, who played "Mister" in STAKE LAND (and also co-wrote both scripts with Mickle), plays a father awaiting his daughter's return from war . Damici is fantastic in both of these movies and I hope his career takes off like it should.

Mickle's filming and editing style create such a tense and frantic atmosphere that I felt like I was actually there, running through the streets and up the stairs, trying to reach the door before the rat bastards got to me. There's this amazing slow mo shot in the cab of a pickup truck involving the father and daughter that totally blew me away...don't want to spoil, watch for it!! The colors are dark and dirty just like the rats that the movie is based on and I could almost feel the filth as I watched it.

If you've read my review for RAMMBOCK, than you know that one of the things that annoyed me about that movie is how the characters used light and camera flashes to fight off the zombies. Well, in MULBERRY STREET, they do the same thing...except this time, it's justified. The creatures here are rats, rats hate light...makes sense right? RAMMBOCK, what the fuck?!

While this may not be all that important to some movie fans, for me, music has the power to make a scene or absolutely break it. Here, even the music is great. The Walkmen's "The Rat" and Love's "Dream" are just a couple of cool tracks that help add to the overall atmosphere of the film.

Now...before you go accusing me of being a Mickle "fanboy", all is not perfect with this movie. The problem lies, as is the case in TONS of horror movies, in the ending. An obvious nod to one of the greatest horror films of all time, it seemed a bit lazy. And I don't really know how I would've preferred it to end...I just know that I wish it didn't end like it did.

So while the formula may be all too familiar, the technique and style in which it was done elevate MULBERRY STREET to a much higher level than it's "apartment building/infected fuckers" counterparts. An impressive debut and I can't wait to see what Mickle does next. If he continues growing as a filmmaker, as he did from this film to STAKE LAND, I have to think that this could be the start of something great.

MULBERRY STREET is currently available on Netflix Instant.

Judson Scott's T IS FOR TWIG: The Best 5 Minutes Of My Week

2011-09-02T18:55:00.000-04:00

Drafthouse Films is putting together something pretty fucking interesting. Instead of me explaining it, I'll let them do the splainin'........

"Animal attacks. Beheadings. Cannibals. Etc. Twenty-six individual chapters that showcase death in all its strange and brutal beauty.

Twenty-six directors will participate from all corners of the world: Australia, United Kingdom, Serbia, USA, Japan, Thailand, Chile, India, Denmark, Indonesia, Finland, Mexico, Belgium, Mexico, Spain and France.

Established filmmakers and emerging new stars will make up the diverse roster of creative talent that will showcase these tales of termination, beginning alphabetically with the letter A and eradicating all life right through the letter Z.

Each director is assigned a letter and every letter represents a word that acts as a springboard to tell a short story about death. A linking device will open, connect and close.

This unique anthology will be a celebration of death in all its forms, from the shocking and exotic to the humorously droll. It's up to each director to interpret the letter they are assigned as creatively and outrageously as they see fit. " - Drafthousefilms.com

Up and coming filmmakers have been encouraged to submit their films into a competition that could not only throw $5000 their way, but also have their short film included in the feature film THE ABC's OF DEATH. So with that being said, I'd like to introduce you to writer/director Judson Scott's sick little flick, T IS FOR TWIG.

Watch it, dig it, VOTE FOR IT!!!

RAMMBOCK: BERLIN UNDEAD - It Is What It Is

2011-08-04T20:42:00.000-04:00

Germany's entry into the "rage-infected/zombie" genre seems to be known more for the fact that it's German than for anything else. And after finally getting the chance to see RAMMBOCK, I found out why.

After being dumped by his girlfriend of 7 years, Michael heads to her apartment in the middle of Berlin to return the keys to her apartment with the hopes of winning her back. So he rehearses all of the smooth lines he's going to use to woo her back and heads off to Berlin. Unfortunately, when he gets there, his plans are thrown completely out the fucking window! It seems that his ex-lover's apartment building, along with the entire city itself, is swarming with homicidal, raging, infected lunatics. So now it's on to "Plan-B"...find her and get the fuck out of Berlin.

Michael eventually finds himself hooked up with a few other survivors in the apartment complex. As he struggles with his broken heart and continues to look for his lost lover, he also takes on the role of the "man with the plan". But will his plan get the group out of Berlin alive?

Now, I don't mind being beat over the head with the same old ideas (in this case, rage-infection), but at least come with something new to offer to the genre. And while it definitely creates a tense and claustrophobic atmosphere, haven't we done the apartment building thing a few times already? QUARANTINE and THE HORDE are just a couple of recent ones. We even get the "crazy old bitch" attack scene straight outta QUARANTINE.
Let's face it, if anyone ever tried to make another zombie movie that took place in a mall, they'd be crucified!

Any great zombie/apocalypse movie isn't complete without the small group of people struggling to survive while overcoming inner turmoil and personality conflict. To me, the zombie (or any apocalyptic themed) genre's strength isn't really about the zombies themselves, but about the characters that are forced to work together to survive. It's a mirror of our society and exposes that, even in the face of impending doom, people will ruthlessly fuck each other over in order to take care of themselves. I'm a total gore hound but what separates the bad from the good from the great is characters. It's ALL about the characters. This is what puts THE WALKING DEAD leaps and bounds above all other modern zombie genre entries. With RAMMBOCK, we get the small group but never really get to know anyone other than our broken-hearted nice guy of a main character...and it's just not enough to carry the movie. Cliches are always excusable when there's interesting characters doing the cliche-ing.

There are a few new ideas brought to the table, but they're definitely not gonna be turning the genre on it's head. There's this whole Gremlin's "bright light, bright light!" thing going on. The idea that bright lights could fight off the infected is just a lazy way of giving a weapon to a group of people who wouldn't normally be walking around with machine guns and whatnot. There's also the idea that a sedative could be taken to keep the rage infection subdued. This is really just a way to keep the main character around for the whole movie. Without that, we don't have the whole "I know I'm dying but I need to find my love and save these people because I'm a good dude" storyline...which seems to be the point of the movie.

Don't get me wrong, RAMMBOCK has some really cool shit going on in it too, so it isn't a "bad" movie, it merely is what it is. And the biggest thing that it is, is incomplete. A lot of it's shortcomings may have to do with the fact that it's running time comes in at a whopping 60 minutes! This would've played better as an episode of MASTERS OF HORROR than as a feature film.

SUCKER PUNCH - Zack Snyder...RESPECT!!

2011-07-17T17:01:00.002-04:00

Based on the relentless beatdown that this movie took when it was released, and for all the reasons it took said beating, I should have hated it. And despite being a fan of everything Snyder has done (including DAWN OF THE DEAD) I EXPECTED to hate this movie. But in an unbelievable twist of fate...I didn't! 2 Hour Spice Girl video? Slow motion overdose? Questionable ending? Probably "yes" to all of these, but I don't give a fuck!!

The imagery was stunning...the music was awesome...Bjork's "Army Of Me" alone is enough to bring this shit to the next level (which didn't work for TANK GIRL)...and there wasn't a second of this film where I was bored.

I'm a HUGE fan of WATCHMEN. I was whacking off to that graphic novel since '92 when I got it for my birthday along with FAITH NO MORE's "Angel Dust" CD...best birthday ever!! And while everyone, including my best friend and fellow WATCHMEN fan, was busy hatin' on the movie and everything it got wrong, I was one of the guys sittin there saying..."Could anybody have done a better fucking job?! SERIOUSLY?!"

And all of us hardcore Romero "Zombie Trilogy" fans were just waiting for the Dawn remake to come out so we could hate the fuck out of it, but running zombies or not, he did an amazing job at re-imagining one of the most beloved genre films of all time.

And 300? Holy fuck...that movie!!

Zack Snyder is a visionary. And while he may not be the best storyteller in terms of his writing skills, he is making fantasies (especially comic books) come to life like no other director! He hasn't been afraid to take on some of the toughest challenges that most directors would run and hide from...and as far as I'm concerned, he's succeeded with all of them.

RESPECT!!

GET TO THE POINT!! - Trolls, Devils, Wookies & Leguizamos!

2011-07-11T19:39:00.000-04:00

I haven't had a whole lot of time to write full reviews lately some I'll just blast off some quickies for ya! Here's some of the shit I've been watching...

TROLL HUNTER

The "found footage" sub-genre is tired as fuck and I can't take it anymore...unless of course it's TROLL HUNTER! A Norwegian flick about a group of students who follow and film a government employed "troll hunter" as he races along the countryside to investigate and cover up various troll incidents. Not scary, but tense at times and straight up entertaining. It's original, has a great sense of humor and is easily one of my favorites so far this year!

Check your local cable for VOD availability.

I did squeeze a full review of this gem at Mr. Movie Fiend

BLOOD CREEK

Although I'm not a fan of Joel Schumacher (but how can you NOT love D.C. CAB?!), I gave this one a shot anyhow. Glad I did, because while it's not amazing by any means, it's the best Satanic/Nazi/Monster/Family Trapped In An Isolated Farmhouse/Revenge film I've ever seen. Michael Fassbender (as the Satanic Nazi Monster) just keeps on proving that he is the fucking man! There's also an appearance by Shea Whigham, who plays Eli on BOARDWALK EMPIRE and the shithead sniper in MACHETE. He's also in THE LINCOLN LAWYER, but I can't speak on shit I haven't seen. He's got a great presence and I expect him to become one of the next decade's great character actors.

BLOOD CREEK is a dark and violent little quicky that's definitely worth your time. Check it out on Netflix Instant.

VANISHING ON 7th STREET

When the lights go out on 7th Street in Detroit, strange shit starts happening. The shadows are coming to get you and the only safe place is...aww fuck that! This movie is completely hollow and absolutely pointless. The fact that it stars Hayden Christensen and John Leguizamo was enough of a tip-off that it would suck, but I figured that director Brad Anderson (SESSION 9 & THE MACHINIST) would come correct with this. Instead, he put out what felt like a really bad M. Night Shyamalan rip-off. Can you fucking imagine that?!

I'm sure that, at this point, Anderson's wishing that the shadows would come creeping in and make this mess of a movie vanish off of his resume!

PELT

Okay, so this pic has nothing to do with the movie PELT. But when I "googled" it, this shit came up! Sharing this Chewbacca Golden Pelt/Chainmail is way more interesting than telling you about this awful movie...NO DOUBT ABOUT IT!!

So, a 50/50 split...can't dig em all!

MAKE-OUT WITH VIOLENCE (2008) - Festival Hype Is Bringin' Me Down

2011-06-29T08:10:00.000-04:00

I didn't know much about this movie going in to it, other than the fact that "festival-heads" were raving about it and it has an amazing title. So when it hit Netflix Instant, I queued it up. And after watching it, I can add it to the pile of over-hyped festival films that have let me down...right on top of The Butcher Brother's THE VIOLENT KIND (and a slew of others).

The Deagol Brother's MAKE-OUT WITH VIOLENCE is the story of a group of teenagers who've just graduated high school. Unfortunately, the celebration is bittersweet as they've just lost one of their childhood friends. Wendy had gone missing and eventually the police gave up the search and declared her dead. A bodiless funeral is held and the grieving gets intense...especially for Patrick, who was/is madly in love with Wendy. But emotions get really out of control when Patrick's brothers (twin Carol and little brother Beetle) find Wendy's not-so-dead body in the woods. Instead of taking her to the authorities, they do what any group of normal middle class kids would do...throw her in their bathtub!

The movie starts off as a seriously emotional piece. Teenagers, who are already emotionally fragile to begin with, dealing with the loss of a close friend. The missing girl's boyfriend. Her best friend, Addy. And of course, the devastatingly heartbroken, Patrick. And while there's a touch of humor in introducing us to the characters, overall it's heavy shit and it comes across as nothing less than that. Great dialogue and fantastic acting give it a natural, believable feel. Up to this point, I'm impressed and pretty damn excited about where this is gonna go.

But...from the point in the movie where the boys find Wendy's body, the atmosphere changes. And not the way you would expect it to. Suddenly, at a point when it should've gone to an even deeper, darker place...MAKE-OUT turns into some kinda of indie romantic comedy drama. It becomes a cluster-fuck of love triangles where one of the players just happens to be a rotting, stinking, living dead girl. This change in tone was completely unexpected and totally destroyed the movie for me.

We begin to follow twin brother Carol on his quest to break out of his teenage awkwardness, become a man, and get love interest Addy (Wendy's best friend) to fall in love with him. The quirkiness gets turned up to "11" at this point and considering what's going on back at the house, it just doesn't work for me. Cuz back at the house, brother Patrick is taking his love for the dead to a whole other level. Unable to be with Wendy while she was alive, he now keeps her in a bathtub...dressing her, feeding her and never leaving her side. As if she was alive and breathing and not some rotting twitching corpse that springs into action from time to time. It's a dark, depressing and absolutely disturbing idea. The dichotomy between the twin brother's love lives is a great idea at it's core, unfortunately the power of the idea is lost in it's execution.

If you've read any of my reviews than you know that I don't have a problem with mixing humor with horror...no fucking way! BUT, the tone that had been set in the first 1/2 hour or so was sooooo engaging, and so goddam impressive that watching it turn into some shitty rom-com mess was absolutely painful. The atmosphere was established, turned it on it's head, but as a result it crushed it's own skull. It's never funny enough to be a comedy or creepy enough to be horror. It just floats somewhere in a messy in-between.

It's a shame because there are a lot of good things that could've have been built upon that went to waste. As I said, the acting is unexpectedly competent...especially Shellie Marie Shartzer, who plays Wendy. The title MAKE-OUT WITH VIOLENCE is pretty brilliant. The idea of what Patrick is doing is my kinda thing. Not MY kinda thing...like what I would do with MY rotting object of unrequited love...but "my kinda thing" meaning...you know what I mean!

MOVIE REVIEW: THE TAINT - Rock Out With Your Cock Out!

2011-06-25T18:41:00.002-04:00

Since I turned 36 this past week, it makes finding a movie that makes me feel young again that much more enjoyable. A movie that reminds me of being 13 (before the booze and weed got me), waiting all week to stay up and watch USA Network's weekend filth-fests "Saturday Nightmares" & "Up All Night". B-Movies like THE TOXIC AVENGER (plus every other Troma flick you can think of) and MONSTER IN THE CLOSET, along with comedies like OFF THE MARK, THE LAST AMERICAN VIRGIN or HARDBODIES, helped shape me into the person I am today and I will forever be grateful.

Commander USA

So, with that being said, watching THE TAINT was like bathing in the fountain of youth. The only thing I was missing was my Megadeth "Peace Sells...But Who's Buying?" t-shirt and my "starter mullet"!

Okay, enough about me.

After a scientific experiment goes horribly wrong, a town's water supply is tainted. Any male that drinks the water becomes a horrifyingly violent, misogynistic maniac...equipped with a monstrous, raging, jizz-spraying cock and a fancy for smashing chick's skulls in.

"Men do two things exceedingly well...busting a nut and killing people. If you can't do one, you do the other. And if we're lucky, we do both at the same time." - Ludas

Offended? Well, if you are, then THE TAINT is obviously not for you!

It's early Peter Jackson (BAD TASTE, DEAD ALIVE) meets Troma meets a shit load of dick humor...the word "cock" is probably used about 1,000 times. It's gory, vile, and offensive in almost every way. Prolonged vomiting, bloody pricks, mutilated faces, and smashed out skulls are just a few of the delights that this flick has to offer.

But, funny dialogue and crazy characters make it so much more than just your average low budget splatterfest. THE TAINT is hilarious because it means to be, not because it failed at being serious. It's completely ridiculous, totally immature, and one of the funnest movie experiences I've had in a long fucking time!

So I want to thank THE TAINT's co-director/writer/star, Drew Buldoc, for bringing that old teenage feeling back again. HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN succeeded in doing the same for me, but it's tone was way darker. Matter of fact, these two films would make a great double feature!

Sound like your kinda thing?

Check it out FREE here until the end of June.

Thanks to The Jaded Viewer for turning me on to THE TAINT...he's been pumping this shit for a long time!

DRIVE ANGRY 3D - Haters Gonna Hate

2011-06-03T17:50:00.000-04:00

Maybe it's because I watched it on VOD and I missed out on the intended full-on 3-D experience. Or maybe it's because I'm not a fan of ANYTHING that Patrick Lussier has done (EVER) and I'm letting my prejudices get the better of me. No, wait...maybe it's the fact that I don't think I can stand looking at Nic Cage's freakish skull for another fucking minute! Or maybe the reason why I didn't like DRIVE ANGRY is even more simple than that. Maybe it just...plain...sucked!

There's no doubt that DRIVE ANGRY is supposed to be a "fun" movie, and I completely understand that. It's violent, sexy, rude and completely over the top and how could I not like that? I didn't go into this one expecting a mind-blowing story and Oscar winning performances...just as I don't read Chuck Palahniuk and expect Shakespeare. But I DO expect what I'm being entertained by to at least feel genuine...have some heart. Unfortunately (yet as expected from Lussier), there doesn't appear to be anything genuine or inspired about this faux grindhouse flick at all. It feels way too artificial and completely forced. Kinda like when Vanilla Ice tried to come out all "hard-core rap metal" trying to make us believe he was a bad ass...not only was there no heart or soul in it, it was just embarrassing. This feeling was way too much of a distraction for me to overlook and couldn't allow me to just sit back and enjoy the ride. It plays out like a soulless Michael Bay production. Key in on target audience...ready, aim, FIRE!!

THE LOOK

The overall look and feel of the film is completely compromised by the need ($$$) to make it 3-D. It has the same look that Lussier's (awful) MY BLOODY VALENTINE had. Ya, the kills are cool, but over-dosing on the CGI makes the gags look so fucking weak! The best looking bit of gore was a bloodsplatter across the wall because it was real special FX, not digital. There is a chase scene that ends with a character called "The Accountant" (played by William Fichtner, easily the best thing about this movie) crashing a hydrogen tanker and surfing on the side of a spinning car. Sounds exciting right? But the whole thing looks like something right out of SHARKTOPUS, or some other shitty SyFy original movie. In most of the interior car scenes, the moving backgrounds look like scenes out of the original DUKES OF HAZARD Tv show. That may have been intentional though...I hope. Then of course, there's the official 3-D movie "slow motion object coming at you through the screen" effect...which was usually coupled with some sort of MATRIX-style ducking out of the way move. Enough already!!

If your goal as a director was to make a movie that feels like grindhouse classics VANISHING POINT, TWO-LANE BLACKTOP and DIRTY MARY, CRAZY LARRY, why would you bombard it with digital effects? Effects that, just to make matters worse, look terrible!!

THE CAST

Getting back to Fichtner...he gives a brilliantly deadpan performance as "The Accountant" and is responsible for the genius and now famous, "Hey, fat ass" scene.

As for the rest of the cast?

Nic Cage - It's amazing to me that this guy is the same guy from LEAVING LAS VEGAS and RAISING ARIZONA. Whenever I hear his name being attached to a movie, I cringe and assume, automatically, that it will suck. What the hell happened to him? There's a scene in a bar where the waitress checks his ID and exclaims, "Damn, this license isn't only expired...it's ancient!!". Ya, no shit!! It's time for Cage to play his age. This shit is more embarrassing than the whole Brett Favre thing!

Amber Heard - She's hot, no doubt about it. But I'm not 13 years old and having her in this movie is definitely not gonna make me like it!

Billy Burke - Pretty flat as the bad guy/cult leader. Although I love his line,

"I'll shoot you in the throat and watch you gurgle while I eat my morning grapefruit."

They really could've done so much more with this character...casting someone else would've been a good start.

David Morse - Disgustingly underused.

Tom Atkins - Nice cameo. Again, underused.

THE BOTTOM LINE

A small part of me understands what all of the excitement surrounding this movie is about. Over the top, ultra-violent, ridiculousness is great shit. After all, PIRANHA 3-D and MACHETE were two of my favorite movies of 2010. Both of which used digital effects, they just didn't let them dominate the look and atmosphere of the entire film. What a movie is supposed to be, makes a big difference on how it is perceived. Lussier's intentions were to put out a "grindhouse" style flick, and in that case, DRIVE ANGRY fails, coming off as over-polished and insincere. It's like he took the elements of grindhouse movies but gave it the look of a Michael Bay film...taking away all of the grittiness that makes these types of movies appealing. He wanted so bad to appeal to the new era grindhouse audience but couldn't stand to let go of his modern age "digital crutches". How can a movie be naturally dirty and grimy when it's drowning in awful computer generated images? It's just not a good mix. You can't put a shine on grime. It would be like Sting producing a Sex Pistols album...who the fuck wants to hear THAT?!

I honestly think that a different director could have made this the down and dirty, bad-ass movie that I didn't get from Lussier...the movie that I had hoped for when I saw THIS one-sheet...

Next movie for Lussier to destroy...my beloved HELLRAISER...fuck the world.

SICK AND TIRED - Some Random Shit

2011-06-01T09:27:00.001-04:00

I haven't been doing a great job in the last month or so of keeping up with posts. Matter of fact, I've been pretty fucking awful. It's not that I stopped watching movies, it's just that I've been sick, busy and simply exhausted. Then there was the NETFLIX INSTANT ordeal. Almost a week of erratic service followed by phone calls, emails and a ton of me screaming "you motherfuckers!!". At the end of it all, I used my superior technological knowledge and realized that it was not Netflix's service or my AT&T wireless router shitting the bed, it was my big ass computer chair sitting right in front of the router, blocking the signal from one point to the other! Moved the chair, problem solved. I AM NOT LEGEND...I am idiot.

Anyways, I'm trying to get back into the swing of things, so here's some shit I've watched in the last month...

THE HORDE by Yannick Dahan & Benjamin Rocher

This movie is proof that even the French can fuck up a horror movie...and royally at that!! A crime-thriller erupts into a horror flick (a la DUSK TIL DOWN, JUNK) pitting cops & criminals against a horde of zombies in an abandoned apartment complex. The French apparently think that the best way to kill a zombie is MMA style...hand-to-hand combat. In one scene, a group of gangsters unload their machine guns into ONE zombie and it does nothing at all. So when the guns are emptied of their ammo, one guy rushes the zombie to "beat him up". If 1,000 screaming bullets didn't effect this thing one bit, do you really think a good 'ol schoolyard beating is gonna do the fucking trick?! It's like shooting pool with a rope...WTF?!

That's the least of this movie's problems and there are TONS of them! Awful CGI, some unexplainable character decisions and this "fast-forward fight scene thing" that annoyed the shit outta me. I'll give them credit for spending time on character development, but it wasn't nearly enough to save this mess.

HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN by Jason Eisener

I had to wait forever, it seemed, to see this. By the time I did, everyone and their sister's cousin's cat's asshole wrote a review for it and they seemed to be saying the same thing...that HOBO is an awesome movie. So while I watched it with the plan to write a post on it, I realized I would just be repeating the same shit everyone said...so what's the point?

Basically, believe everything you've heard about HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN. It's everything that it's trying to be...a funny, bloody and crazy-ass throwback that made me want to go back and watch every TROMA movie ever made.

Good times!

TRIGGER MAN by Ti West

I'm a huge fan of Ti West and am seriously fucking excited about THE INNKEEPERS. Especially after seeing this amazing one-sheet...

He has already displayed a wide range of skill, going from schlocky gore (CABIN FEVER 2) to his slow-burn, atmospheric homage to Polanski (THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL), and anytime a director can prove that he's not a "one trick pony" I'm 'bout it 'bout it!!

That being said, TRIGGER MAN (filmed between THE ROOST and CABIN FEVER 2) was a huge let down. I understand that it was made for somewhere around $10,000 but the actors, effects, locations and all the other shit that money can buy weren't the problem. The problem was all on paper...the plot, the characters and the resolution. There wasn't much of any of em. There's some great camera work going on and the acting is tolerable for a film of this budget. The writing process was obviously rushed, and is ultimately this movie's fatal head shot.

I can dig the slow burn thing, but this is just a bunch of guys wandering in the woods barely even talking to one another. Then when the conflict begins, it's "run for a little while and then walk for a little while"...repeat. Then the shit ends and that's it! No tension is being built other than the tension in my body as I struggled to not grab the remote and turn this movie off.

Sorry Ti...still a big fan!!

EL TOPO by Alejandro Jodorowsky

The world of Jodorowsky is relatively new to me. When SANTA SANGRE was re-released this past year, I finally got to see it and was blown the fuck away! I was ashamed of myself, as a fan of film, for not knowing about this years ago. And if you haven't seen it, be ashamed of yourself! It's currently available on Netflix Instant and of course DVD and BLU-RAY. Here's a clip...

Anyways, EL TOPO is an off-the-wall western that follows the main character (played by Jodorowsky) as he goes from being a man who prides himself in being the most violent and vicious bastard around to a man seeking salvation from those violent sins. There are major religious themes going on here and after seeing two of his films, it became pretty obvious to me that Jodorowsky has some "daddy issues", which was confirmed for me in the interview on the "extras" portion of the DVD. So that, of course, makes me a genius of psychology and I have already begun taking patients...contact me if you wish to sit on my couch.

While I don't think this movie reaches the heights of greatness as SANTA SANGRE (there are no coke sniffing down-syndrome kids dancing through the town), it's still pretty incredible and just as bizarre in it's own way. Jodorowsky's style is not straight forward storytelling, so if that's what you're into this may not be your thing. Instead of a simple scene where a gang of thugs savagely beat down a group of monks, he has them "dolling" the monks up with lipstick and forcing them to make out with them and do the waltz to music playing from a phonograph in the middle of the desert. Definitely not something you're gonna see in a Michael Bay production.

Let's say that movies are like hamburgers. The patties are the basic storyline. Some people like their hamburgers simple and plain...maybe a little ketchup. Some people throw cheese on it for a bit of excitement, maybe some mayo and mustard to get quirky. THEN you have the ones that take it that other level. Bacon, blue cheese, fried onions, jalapenos and some Sriracha hot sauce...all on one burger!! All kinds of crazy shit goin on! El TOPO is that kind of a burger.

Hmmmmm...burgers.

RED, WHITE & BLUE - Baseball, Apple Pie & REVENGE

2011-05-18T11:46:00.001-04:00

English filmmaker Simon Rumley's 2010 SXSW favorite is a cold and brutally raw look into the troubled lives of three people in Austin, Texas. RED, WHITE & BLUE is about the choices people make and the consequences that come along with them. It's about revenge.

Erica (who looks like a bloated, skanky JUNO) is a twenty-something girl with a sordid past and what appears to be an uncontrollable appetite for dick. One night stands, gang-bangs and screwing the entire staff of the local hardware store are just a few of her crowning achievements. She lives by the mantra that every good mother has taught their daughters - "I don't stay over, I don't fall in love and I don't fuck the same guy twice." And I can't forget the always classy, "Condoms are for homos."

But what is first perceived as just pure and simple cock-whorishness, is later revealed as a much darker and devious situation. Scenes of Erica showering after each sexual encounter give us the impression that there is definitely some sense of "shame" to what she's doing, as if she's cleansing herself of it every time, scrubbing it off of her. But the depth of that shame is much more complex than just your average regretful bar-whore waking up half drunk in some stranger's bed.

Nate (Noah Taylor) is Erica's neighbor down the hall. After telling her of his animal torturing past and getting her a job at the local hardware store, the two develop a friendship. Erica finds a rare comfort in Nate and doesn't see him as she sees all of the other men in her life. Matter of fact, he may be one of the only men in the movie that she DOESN'T fuck! And while her sexual lifestyle frustrates him, he is obviously in love with her and will do anything to protect her. An Army veteran who served in Iraq, Nate was honorably discharged (for reasons never explained) and is now at a crossroads in his life. His skill-set has landed him a job offer from the C.I.A. but he's not so sure he wants to live that life or settle back into the simpler way of living. And while we never learn why he was discharged from the Army, we DO learn a little bit about his skill-set later on in the movie!

Franki (THE LOST's outstanding Mark Senter) is a suburban punk-rock, feather earring wearing cool guy looking to strike it big with his garage band. His mother is going through treatment for cancer and he has become her caretaker, doing everything a good son should do. His relationship with his girlfriend is a disaster. Franki seems like an overall good kid trying to make it through some rough personal situations without flippin' his fucking wig. Franki also had the pleasure of being one of Erica's one night stands. And what seemed to be a harmless, never meet again, drunken sexual adventure ultimately leads to a furious shit-storm of violence and revenge that will change all three lives forever.

The first half of the movie plays out at a pace and vibe that reminds me of Larry Clark's KIDS. We follow Erica through her everyday life of mundane chores of flipping through photo albums, laying in bed, vacuuming, working, and of course fucking. Great acting and pacing make it feel all too real and allows us to connect to these characters in a way that a lot of genre movies don't give us the opportunity to. It's slow burning character development and it is the key to what makes this movie work.

The second half of the movie erupts...and without all of that character work, it would just be made up of violent acts like we've seen a million times before. Truth is, it's not even really that violent, but the set-up for it and the way we come to know the characters makes it that much more powerful and effective. It does, however, have one of the coolest suffocation scenes I've ever seen!

While there is obvious political sub-text here regarding America and war and such (sorry, I won't talk politics), this movie is about humans and how our need for revenge is a primal instinct. It doesn't necessarily make us good people or bad people, it makes us human. But in the movie world, most revenge films have a clear distinction between the good guys and bad guys in the storyline. RED, WHITE & BLUE's lines between good and bad, however, are seriously fucking blurred. It's not the harmonica playing hillbilly rapists versus the pretty city girl. It's not the father avenging his daughter's death by the hands of street thugs. There's no despicable goon to loath and there's no hero to cheer for at the end. There's just three people whose situations have led them to make some seriously bad decisions based on primal instinct and the consequences that come from making those decisions.

Instead of portraying triumph in vengeance, RED, WHITE & BLUE shows that there is never any real resolution in revenge.

So, if you're looking for another I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE type revenge flick, this isn't it. This is a slow-burn, character driven film, offering a disturbing look at the human condition.

UK VIDEO NASTY: CANNIBAL TERROR (1981) Worst...Casting...EVER!!

2011-04-28T08:37:00.000-04:00

This is CANNIBAL TERROR...

This is an old woman taking a shit in a urinal...

If you were to investigate any further, you would find that there isn't much difference between the two.

CANNIBAL TERROR holds the high honor of being the only Italian cannibal flick with ITALIAN cannibals...

Al Pacino?


Frank Zappa?

And take a look at these fucking guys...

Warriors...come out and plaaayay!

Clowns, cannibals...same shit, right?!

Even an Irishman...Bill Murray!

BOTTOM LINE -

Possibly one of the worst movies that I have ever seen!

UK VIDEO NASTY- CONTAMINATION: I Need To Buy A Dictionary

2011-04-23T21:14:00.001-04:00

Directed by Luigi Cozzi (credited as Lewis Coates), CONTAMINATION is a chest-bursting, egg hatching, admittedly blatant rip-off of the 1979 classic ALIEN. The twist however is that, this time, the alien is on Earth.

After an abandoned cargo ship floats into the New York City harbor, a group of investigators board the ship to find a gruesome discovery...the ship is not quite abandoned. Instead, it is littered with the mutilated corpses of it's crew. The ship that is known as "The Caribbean Lady" turns out to be more like "The Filthy, Bloody Whore Of NY Harbor".

Along with the bloodied piles of crew members, the investigators find cargo crates marked with a coffee brand "CAFÉ UNIVERSX", packed with some sort of mysterious green "eggs'. Glowing green eggs that make this whale-like moaning sound...a sound that made my entertainment center rattle every fucking time they moaned...WTF?! Despite the warning of an intelligent scientist, coupled with the lack of any common sense whatsoever, one of the guys decides to fuck with one of the eggs. Bad move asshole. Next thing you know, the egg explodes in their faces and all of these guy's guts are exploding everywhere.

And while the effects are pretty terrible, it's cool as shit to see all these stomachs exploding. Exploding body parts, especially the insides, are really fucking cool and YOU KNOW IT!

The only survivor, NYPD LT. Tony, is taken in, quarantined and examined in a high tech cardboard cut-out government lab that would make Ed Wood proud.

Meanwhile, some scientist decides to freeze the eggs that remain on the ship so she can examine them. After injecting the "yolk" of the egg into a lab rat (resulting in a brutally violent and wonderful end to the rat's life), female lead, Colonel Stella Holmes comes to the immediate conclusion that the eggs are a weapon that was to be used as a "bomb" to be placed in the sewers of NYC to destroy the city.

The director claims that he "wanted a gorgeous leading lady, but the producer wanted an ugly, older woman and THE PRODUCER WON!"...how fucked up is that?! What a dick?!

Even if she DOES remind me of the female Cenobite from HELLRAISER!!

Anyways, after infiltrating a shipping warehouse and talking to some scientists, the whole egg thing reminds Colonel Holmes of THE MARS PROJECT. A space mission to Mars gone wrong where everyone on the crew came back a little fucked up in the head...especially the one and only Commander Hubbard (Ian McCulloch). Hubbard claimed to have seen a cave full of green eggs that held some kind of power over the astronaut's minds. His partner, Hamilton contradicted these claims and Hubbard was eventually interrogated and his career was ruined.

Now a drunken mess, Hubbard is called upon by Holmes to help her solve the mystery of these deadly green eggs. After belittling him and making him feel like a dickless twat, Hubbard slaps the shit out of the ugly-ass Holmes "just so they understand one another" and agrees to join her on her mission. So, it's off to South America to track down the source of the alien green eggs and prevent this alien life form from destroying civilization!

CONTAMINATION is a low-budget masterpiece in every way possible.

Terrible dialogue...my original example was scratched from the post. Thank you "Anonymous", for schoolin' me in the art of the English language! I now know the definition of the word "salve". And apologies to you, Luigi, for accusing you of being an idiot...it was ME all along. But aside from all this "salve" bullshit, trust me, the dialogue is fucking terrible!

Awful effects...these are supposed to be the infamous green eggs. But they're PEAS...peas in some sort of onion blossom type shit!

A ridiculously stupid "coffee storyline" and the dreadful overdubbing (which I am a HUGE fan of). The manager of the coffee plant in Columbia looks like Lou Gossett Jr. with the accent of Yosemite Sam..."I say, I say!"...sooo wrong it's gotta be right!

And last but not least, a ridiculous "mother alien" that reminded me of a one-eyed Sigmond The Sea Monster (google it if you're under 30!).

At the end of the day, CONTAMINATION is an amazingly terrible mess brought to us by the same guy who gave us Lou Ferrigno as HERCULES.

Either way, it's a good fucking time that can't be denied!

BUT as far as the whole NASTY thing goes, this one's not even close...

GET TO THE POINT: INSIDIOUS - Am I The Only One?!

2011-04-13T07:53:00.000-04:00

–adjective

1. intended to entrap or beguile: an insidious plan.

2. stealthily treacherous or deceitful: an insidious enemy.

Example in a sentence-

The only thing INSIDIOUS is the filmmakers attempt to make me believe that I should be creeped out and actually scared while watching their film.

But I do love these one-sheets designed by THE CHURCH OF LONDON.

UK VIDEO NASTY - MADHOUSE aka THERE WAS A LITTLE GIRL (1981)

2011-04-10T10:08:00.001-04:00

Ovidio Assonitis' MADHOUSE has more aliases than Ol' Dirty Bastard...aka THERE WAS A LITTLE GIRL aka AND WHEN SHE WAS BAD aka FLESH AND THE BEAST aka SCARED TO DEATH aka PARTY DES SCHREKENS aka BIG BABY JESUS...what the fuck?!

But the original title is THERE WAS A LITTLE GIRL and is based on the poem of the same name by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:

"There Was A Little Girl, Who Had A Little Curl, Right In the Middle Of Her Forehead. When She Was Good, She Was Very, Very Good. And When She Was Bad, She Was Horrid."

In my journey through the UK Video Nasty list, MADHOUSE couldn't have come at a better time. After running through a patch of cannibal movies, overflowing with animal cruelty, I really needed a movie where the animals turn the tables. I'd much rather see people getting brutalized by animals than the other way around...and even better, in this case, it's a dog doing the deeds! But this isn't necessarily a "killer dog" movie, it just happens to have a dog that kills.

MADHOUSE is the story of twin sisters Julia and Mary Sullivan. Julia is a teacher at a school for deaf children, has a doctor boyfriend and leads an all around happy life. Mary, on the other hand, had been locked up in a nuthouse (for reasons unexplained) for years and has recently become infected with a virus that has grotesquely deformed her facial features and may be fatal. Julia has cut herself off from Mary for the last seven years, until her Uncle James (a priest) calls her to inform her of her sister's illness. So, Julia heads down to the asylum for a visit only to be attacked by Mary. With their birthday around the corner, Mary vows to "make it hurt" like she did when they were younger. She will make Julia suffer the way SHE has suffered all these years.

Ya see, it seems that these sisters had an interesting relationship, described by Julia as a "mistress/slave relationship". Unfortunately for Julia, she was the slave! Being a twin was something that Mary was never fond of and she took all of her resentment out on Julia, abusing the living shit out of her. Aside from burning matches on her skin and jabbing her with needles, Mary also used her vicious dog to intimidate and attack her sister. The abuse went on for years, yet no one would believe Julia when she would try to get help.

An Old Fashioned Game Of "Rock Smashes Face"

So you can see why Julia would leave her sister in the asylum to rot all alone, right? Well, Mary doesn't seem to understand. After all these years of Julia's sisterly neglect, the resentment is festering and Mary is ready to throw Julia her last birthday party. With the help of her loyal rottweiler, she escapes the nuthouse and begins to put together the "guest list" for the party. One by one, Julia's closest friends are murdered as the big day draws near.

While MADHOUSE is, by no means, a great movie, it does have some great things going on. For one, a killer dog. I'm all about it. Even if the he looks like Triumph, The Insult Comic Dog in some scenes. Actually, the bad dog puppet turns the dog's would-be upsetting death scene into a comical hand puppet show. In fact, overall, the effects in the movie were pretty terrible. Cat lovers beware...there is a kitty that meets the wrong end of a rope and it will, most likely, upset you.

In terms of atmosphere, the setting is a big creepy house with tons of dark shots and shadows that offer that "be afraid of the dark" feel. There is, however, a good balance between creepy and quirky which is exemplified in the fantastic performance of Dennis Robertson (DARK NIGHT OF THE SCARECROW) as Uncle James...

...and in the face of handyman, Mr. Kimura...

BOTTOM LINE -

MADHOUSE is an oddball little horror flick that has quite a bit of charm despite it's fair share of flaws. If the dog puppet wasn't so terrible and the "deaf kid meets dog" scene had actually shown the attack, I might say "nasty", but neither was the case...

CINEMATIC ALPHABET: All The Kids Are Doin' It

2011-04-06T09:41:00.000-04:00

So Rupert Pupkin started a blogger's wildfire with his CINEMATIC ALPHABET. I wasn't planning on doing one, but the lure would prove too much! For the most part, these movies aren't my favorite that the particular letter has to offer...just movies I love.

A - AMERICAN MOVIE

B - THE BUTCHER BOY

C - CEMETERY MAN

D - THE DEVIL'S REJECTS

E - ED WOOD

F - FRANKENSTEIN

G - GRACE

H - HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES

I - INSIDE

J - JAWS

K - KILL BILL

L - THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT ('72)

M - MANIAC

N - THE NEW YORK RIPPER

O - ONIBABA

P - PLANET TERROR

Q - QUE TIENEN HECHO A SOLANGE?
(Hey, it's my list...I can speak Spanish if I want!)

R - RABID

S - SALEM'S LOT

T - TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE

U - UP IN SMOKE

V - THE VIRGIN SUICIDES

W - WILLY WONKA & THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY

X - XTRO

Y - YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN

Z - ZOMBI

UK VIDEO NASTY - THE MOUNTAIN OF THE CANNIBAL GOD (1978)

2011-04-05T21:13:00.001-04:00

If you haven't seen Sergio Martino's giallos TORSO and ALL OF THE COLORS OF THE DARK then you need to get on that shit, especially TORSO. I wish I could share the same love for his venture into the "cannibal" genre, THE MOUNTAIN OF THE CANNIBAL GOD, but I can't. Honestly, this "UK Video Nasty" had me bored out of my fucking mind. I lost focus about a half hour into it after seeing all of the usual cannibal movie goings-ons...a ridiculous amount of animal cruelty, cardboard-cutout/bamboo spike traps, and all of that "same-old, same-old" shit. Now, I'm not doing an essay on the history of cannibal films so the fact that it came out before the classics CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST & MAKE THEM DIE SLOWLY doesn't really matter to me. I'm not concerned with who inspired what and ripped off who and all of that...not here, not now. I just wanted to be entertained and "nastied up"...and that wasn't happening. So, it was pretty safe to say that MOUNTAIN was gonna get a "NOT SO NASTY" vote.

But as I drifted further away and began fucking around online and driving my dog mad by making him go look for things that didn't exist, I caught something out of the corner of my eye. And that "something" changed EVERYTHING! Something so revolting that it immediately catapulted it into "NASTY" territory.

SPOILING movies is a huge "NO-NO!" but I don't really have much else to say about this one. This clip won't spoil any plot details but it will reveal one of the highlights, or lowlights (depending on your preference) of this movie. This clip may offend you or flat out disgust you. It may even make some of you laugh (that'd be me) or stand up and cheer. Whatever the case may be, here it is...the money shot!

Personally, when it comes to pork, I'll take oral over anal any day.

FMWL's MARCH MIDNIGHT MADNESS TOURNAMENT - RND 3

2011-04-03T20:53:00.000-04:00

Things are heatin' up as some serious underdogs are steamrolling their way through the tournament!

Check out all of Round 3: The Sinister Sixteen at FROM MIDNIGHT, WITH LOVE

Here's my Round 3 "Director's Cut":

ROUND 3

The Frankenstein Regional
#1 Seed – Predator vs. #5 Seed – Carnival Of Souls
“I ain’t got time to bleed!” What else is there to say about this?
WINNER - #1 Seed - PREDATOR

#3 Seed – The Texas Chainsaw Massacre vs. #7 – Seed – Ginger Snaps
This is like putting a gerbil in a shark tank.
WINNER - #3 Seed – THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE

The Myers Regional
#1 Seed – The Thing vs. #4 Seed – Big Trouble In Little China
Carpenter and Russell in a tag team match against themselves. So it comes down to one of the sickest creatures in horror history up against “Snotty” from Revenge of The Nerds pt 2.
WINNER - #1 Seed – THE THING

#6 Seed - Sisters vs. #10 Seed – Friday The 13th
The story of Jason Voorhees and his mother is just way to influential on modern day horror to be denied the win.
WINNER #10 Seed – FRIDAY THE 13th

The Hammer Regional
#6 Seed- The Abominable Dr. Phibes vs. #7 Seed – Spider Baby
Spider Baby’s is so off the wall…and I love off the wall.
WINNER #7 – SPIDER BABY
The Blob Regional
#1 Seed – Evil Dead II vs. #4 Seed – Death Proof
Apparently I’m in the minority when it comes to giving love to Death Proof, but I love it and will stand by it ‘til the end…well, at least until it goes up against EVIL DEAD II!
WINNER - #1 Seed – EVIL DEAD II

#14 Seed – Killer Klowns From Outer Space vs. #10 Seed – The Entity
The Entity is, for reasons I cannot understand, a neglected horror classic. It’s one of the few genuinely scary movies that I have ever seen. The fact that Killer Klowns made it past Maniac in the last round, just flat-out disgusts me.
WINNER #10 Seed – THE ENTITY

The Killer Klowns won AGAIN!!
Will somebody stop these fucking klowns?!?!

GET TO THE POINT!! - HIGH LANE (aka VERTIGE)

2011-04-02T09:18:00.000-04:00

If I watch a movie that I plan on yapping about on BVW and it turns out to be garbage, I generally refrain from posting anything at all and move along. I'd rather spread the good word on good films, not be a dick to people who (we could only assume) put their heart and soul into their films. But every now and then, I just have to. This time, it's the completely uninspired and "soulless" HIGH LANE, aka VERTIGE.

A group of friends go hiking and rock climbing on a closed down trail in the Croatian mountains. What these guys didn't seem to know, is that the trail was closed for a reason. This guy...

Fully equipped with a love triangle, lame characters and a rotten-toothed, overalls-wearing inbred mountain mongoloid...this is about as stale as it gets. While it started off pretty promising in terms of tension (think Adam Green's FROZEN in the mountains), this movie shits itself pretty quickly and so badly that I still haven't gotten the stains out of my mind. It's a tired, played out idea that I cannot bear to see ever again in my life! EVER!

HIGH LANE is the kind of horror movie that gets me so pissed off and disappointed it makes me take a "horror break". Then I return by watching something classic. Maybe THE EXORCIST or TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, anything old, original and amazing, to bring me back. Then I turn to something new, original and brilliant like MARTYRS, to remind me that there is still hope for the future of horror.

HARPOON: REYKJAVIK WHALE WATCHING MASSACRE (2009)

2011-03-31T21:21:00.003-04:00

Aside from vikings and Bjork, what the hell does the average non-Icelandic person know about Iceland? Not sure, but that's about all I know. But now I can add something else to that pathetically short list...HARPOON.

A "conveniently" diverse group of tourists board a whale watching ship for a day out on the Icelandic waters. A black Englishman, an American girl, a Swedish girl (who looks way too much like the American girl), a group of horny middle-aged German ladies, and a Japanese man and his "very ugly stupid wife" along with his young female assistant. Last but not least is the douchebag that fucks it all up for everyone, the drunken idiot Frenchman.

A terrible accident leaves the tour group floating at sea and desperate for help. But when a whale hunting boat shows up to "save them", they find out that this whole whale watching thing was a bad fucking idea. They board the ship and their "heroes" turn out to be psychopaths who waste no time letting the group know what's in store for them. Within minutes, one of the three lunatics (a mother and two sons) slams a hammer right into the forehead of one of the German broads. From this point on, it's utter fucking chaos with a bunch of people running around (or hanging from) this rotting old vessel.

HARPOON has a lot of the same old shit going on...tourists + crazy family = dead tourists! Same old formula, right? But it also has something going for it in terms of originality. The title is badass, the whole whale watching scenario itself is totally original.
And while the cast of tourists may, at first, seem like just a pack of racial stereotypes that serve no purpose other than to be offensive, there's alot more going on under the surface.

The "crazy family" angle has been used for years, going back to SPIDER BABY, THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE and thousands of rip-offs since. This family, however, isn't feeling the financial blow from the local slaughterhouse closing down...it's Greenpeace and the whale-hugging hippies that fucked things up for them. The banning of commercial whaling has made this family broke, bitter and ready to fuck some shit up.

Now, the tourists. This isn't your typical slasher flick group of horny little pricks, smoking weed and fucking, with some teeny bopper love triangle drama going on. We don't get the generic ensemble representing all of the stereotypical archetypes - the jock, the slut, the prude, the dork and the joker. Instead, these tourists are made up of a diverse group of people who, in this case, represent some of the more influential countries that were involved in signing the protest that would ban the commercial hunting of whaling. So in a sense, this is sort of a "revenge" flick...kinda sorta...maybe. It's an old recipe with a bit of a twist...and I like it.

One of the characters representing Japan, however, has a different angle since Japan is a huge supporter of whaling. This character does anything she has to do to serve her own best interest. It's actually a pretty interesting and original idea to apply to a played out format.

Let's talk Gunnar Hansen. Don't be fooled by the cover. His name is shown above the title suggesting that he has a major role in this movie, but he doesn't. While his character is important to the plot, he's only in the movie for small bit. And that's a good thing too, because his viking accent if fucking terrible. Matter of fact, most of the acting was nothing more than bad accents and stiff, I'm reading right from the script, delivery.

As far as violence goes, the "harpoon" scene alone is worth watching this movie.

But what would an insane Icelandic horror film be without mentioning it's most insane export they've had to offer the world...BJORK!! In a completely forced "let's remind the world that we're more than whale-killing vikings" scene, one of the girls whispers Bjork's "It's Oh So Quiet" over the loudspeaker as one of the characters lay dying in a pool of his own blood!?

At it's core, HARPOON is a great idea that just wasn't properly executed. A poor script and terrible acting bury the metaphors and leave what amounts to an impressively violent 1:20 minutes of people running for their lives. And that's not necessarily a bad thing, is it?

FMWL's MARCH MIDNIGHT MADNESS TOURNAMENT - RND 2

2011-03-30T19:38:00.002-04:00

If you missed Round 2 over at FROM MIDNIGHT, WITH LOVE...check it out!

Round 2 - Part I

Round 2 - Part 2

And here's my "Director's Cut" of Round 2 where I actually had the word "fucking" censored! Awesome! My apologies to The Mike for my filthy mouth...I can't help it!

Round 2

The Frankenstein Regional

#6 Seed - THEY LIVE vs. #3 Seed- TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE

Watching Rowdy Roddy Piper act in this movie is so much goddam fun it’s unbelievable. But TCM is so far above and beyond that shit. It’s a raw, brutal BEAST and is still being ripped off to this day.

WINNER- #3 Seed TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE

The Myers Regional

#1 Seed – THE THING vs. #9 Seed – THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL

Ti West is one of my favorite new horror directors because he has shown that he can handle an over-the-top gore fest as well as the “slow burn” tension builder. If this was Micheal Chiklis’ version of The Thing, I’d say Ti would have it no problem…but it’s not, it’s Carpenter’s.

WINNER - #1 Seed THE THING

#10 Seed – FRIDAY THE 13^th vs. #15 Seed - TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE II

While I’m not a big fan of the F13 series, I have mad respect for the first two. Even though the original was a Mario Bava rip off, you can’t deny it’s impact on US horror. But if we’re talking entertainment…a movie I go back to again and again…it’s definitely Chop Top “you dogdick!”

WINNER - #15 Seed TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE II

The Hammer Regional

#5 Seed – THE DEVIL RIDES OUT vs. #13 Seed – PIRANHA

Let’s face it…there’s plenty of “cheesy” movies out there, but there just doesn’t seem to be enough quality Satanic ones.

WINNER - #5 THE DEVIL RIDES OUT

#6 Seed – THE ADOMINABLE DR. PHIBES vs. #14 Seed – SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT

A crazy old man that’s scared of Santa or a creepy-ass doll faced orchestra? I see enough crazy old bastards everyday in my REAL life…I want to have my own orchestra in my house like Vincent Price did. That would be sweet.

WINNER - #6 Seed – THE ADOMINABLE DR. PHIBES

#7 Seed – SPIDER BABY vs. #2 Seed – THE OMEN

I’m not sure what’s worse… giving birth to Satan, or to a baby that looked like Sid Haig?! Kiddin’…just kiddin.

WINNER - #2 THE OMEN

The Blob Regional

#1 Seed – EVIL DEAD II vs. #8 Seed – THE CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF

This is probably my favorite “wolfman” film, but DEAD BY DAWN helped shape me into the man that I am today.

WINNER - #1 Seed EVIL DEAD II

#5 Seed MARTIN vs. #4 Seed DEATH PROOF

I love the fresh approach Romero took towards the vampire genre, but Death Proof has the amazing Stuntman Mike, the song “Baby, It’s You” and the most grisly car crash scene ever!

WINNER - #4 Seed DEATH PROOF

#11 Seed – MANIAC vs. #14 Seed – KILLER KLOWNS FROM OUTER SPACE

I’d like to see Joe Spinell scalp every single last one of those annoying fucking clowns.

WINNER - #11 Seed MANIAC

And don't forget to check out all of the other participant's blogs as well!!

FMWL's MARCH MIDNIGHT MADNESS TOURNAMENT

2011-03-28T19:09:00.003-04:00

For those of you who may not follow The Mike over at FROM MIDNIGHT, WITH LOVE, I suggest that you get your head out of your ass and do so...he's got a fantastic blog and he's good people. This month, being the big sports fan that he is, The Mike decided to pay homage to March Madness and the NCAA Tournament with the help of 64 horror movies (from his Midnight Movie Of The Week Posts) and some fellow horror bloggers. So, in a bracket-style tournament, 64 movies will go at it until only 1 is left standing! The winners are decided by the bloggers that have contributed. Thanks to The Mike, I was lucky enough to be one of them. It's a lot of fun being involved and to be included with a group of great horror fans. I didn't vote on every match-up because I haven't seen all the movies but I did vote on quite a few. But with so many contributors involved, it would be impossible for The Mike to post every single comment sent to him.

So...FIRST check out the 1st Round HERE. Follow the links below the picture to start from Part One of Round One and take it from there! I hope you enjoy it! While you're there, make sure to click on the links to check out all of the other contributor's blogs!

And when you're done, if you'd like, come on back and check out my "Director's Cut" of votes/comments that I made including the ones that didn't make it to the official posting.

THE FRANKENSTEIN REGIONAL

#1: PREDATOR vs. #16: C.H.U.D.

The future governor of Minnesota, Jesse “The Body” Ventura, up against the future voice of Kevin Arnold from The Wonder Years. One crippling “back breaker” move and this shit’s over! No contest.

WINNER - #1:PREDATOR

#5: CARNIVAL OF SOULS (1962) vs. #12:STEPHEN KING’S CAT’S EYE

As much as I love Stephen King’s short stories, this collection is average at best. In CARNIVAL, atmosphere wasn’t the only thing that was creepy. This movie let us know that even in the afterlife, beautiful girls are harassed by creepy drunk dudes.

WINNER - #5:CARNIVAL OF SOULS

#6: THEY LIVE vs. #11: FIRE IN THE SKY

Alien abduction with no anal probe or one of the best back alley brawls on film starring “Rowdy” Roddy Piper (also with no anal probe)?

WINNER - #6: THEY LIVE

#3: THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE vs. #14: RAW MEAT

An amazing performance by horror veteran Donald Pleasence still can’t compete with the raw ferociousness that is Leatherface.

WINNER - #3: THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE

#7: GINGER SNAPS vs. #10: MR. MAJESTYK

A young girl discovering womanhood or Charles “motherfucking” Bronson? As original an idea as GINGER SNAPS is, what kind of a man would I be?!

WINNER - #10: MR. MAJESTYK

THE MYERS REGIONAL

#1: JOHN CARPENTER’S THE THING vs. #16: THE FOOD OF THE GODS

THE THING is the greatest remake of all time. THE FOOD is the San Francisco 49ers vs. a rubber chicken. It would be great if they remade it with the current real-life coach of the 49ers, Mike Singletary, bringing his terrible team to the island to be devoured by giant gerbils.

WINNER - #1: JOHN CARPENTER’S THE THING

#2: THE HORROR OF DRACULA vs. #15: THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MSCRE 2

Cushing, Lee…so unbelievably classic. But let’s face it, Dracula has been around for over a century. Chop Top is one of the most original and unforgettable genre characters from the last 30 years. May “horror purists” condemn me to hell!!

WINNER - #15: THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2

THE HAMMER REGIONAL

#4: KILL, BABY…KILL vs. #13: PIRANHA (1978)

This is a battle of style versus cheese. Style, especially that of Mario Bava, wins over cheese every time.

WINNER - #4: KILL, BABY…KILL

#7: SPIDER BABY vs. #10: DANGER DIABOLIK

This is another battle of style versus cheese. Unfortunately, this time Bava finds himself on the wrong side. SPIDER BABY is the blueprint for ALL “crazy family” horror movies, with a style all it’s own…classic.

WINNER - #7: SPIDER BABY

#2: THE OMEN vs. #15: POPCORN

POPCORN had some creepy moments, but this one’s a blow out! Damien still has every mother checking their children for 666 birthmarks!

WINNER - #2: THE OMEN

THE BLOB REGIONAL

#1: THE EVIL DEAD II vs. #16: ATTACK OF THE 50 FT WOMAN

There’s nothing scarier than a drunk and bitter woman, especially one that’s 50 fucking feet tall. But Sam Raimi’s classic is one of the most entertaining movie “experiences” of all time.

WINNER - #1 THE EVIL DEAD II

#5: MARTIN vs. #12: THE LEGEND OF THE 7 GOLDEN VAMPIRES

A vampire who does his victims “Dexter style”, with a syringe, before he drains ‘em out. Add a cameo by Tom Savini. Do I really even need to bother mentioning the other movie?

WINNER - #5: MARTIN

#3: THE DESCENT vs. #14: KILLER KLOWNS FROM OUTERSPACE

One of the most frighteningly claustrophobic movies ever made against cotton candy cocoons and balloon animals.

WINNER - #3: THE DESCENT

#7:THE STEPFORD WIVES (1975) vs. #10: THE ENTITY

I love the idea of “reprogramming” my girlfriend to do as I say…like mow the lawn on 90 degree days or pretend that I’m at least slightly interesting. But there is something so unnerving and genuinely scary about watching a woman getting violently beaten, molested and raped by an unseen entity, or demon. Seriously intense and ridiculously underrated.

WINNER - #10: THE ENTITY

Dario Argento's PHENOMENA - Heavy Metal: I Love You, I Hate You

2011-03-27T21:33:00.001-04:00

***FOR THE FULL-ON INTENDED PHENOMENA EXPERIENCE, PLEASE PRESS PLAY AND LISTEN TO IRON MAIDEN'S "FLASH OF THE BLADE" AS YOU READ (or don't...it's up to you!!)***

Dario Argento and a monkey. The only thing that could be better is if THE BEATLES had written a song with my name in the title. But they didn't, and they never will...so I'll settle for this. And even though some of Argento's decisions could have fucked this movie completely, his brave and brilliant monkey saved the day and allowed me to do more than just "settle".

I originally saw PHENOMENA, aka CREEPERS, a while back on a double feature DVD paired with Umberto Lenzi's CITY OF THE WALKING DEAD. The quality was comparable to someone videotaping a videotaped version on their TV as they watched it...in the dark, with the dog laying in front of the camera. So, I figured it was time for a revisit.

The setting is The Robert Wagner International School For Girls...an illustrious boarding school in the Swiss Alps. But beautiful mountain scenery and fresh air don't mean shit when you have a murderer on the loose targeting young school girls. Not being able to recover anything more than the head of one of the girls, the police are baffled. So they reach out to local monkey, Inga, and her wheel-chair bound assistant, Prof. of entomology, John McGregor (Donald Pleasance).

By examining the larva and other assorted insects that have been feasting on the severed head, Inga and Prof. McGregor are able to tell the approximate time of death, which is a great help to the police, of course.

Jennifer Corvino is the daughter of famous American actor, Paul Corvino, and in a terrible case of bad timing, has enrolled in Wagner's School while our brutal school girl murders are taking place. But Jennifer ( a 13yr old Jennifer Connelly), is not your average school girl. It seems she has a unique relationship with insects, being able to somehow communicate with them...connect with them.

Her new school experience gets off to a pretty fucking crazy start, to say the least. Jennifer spends her first "memorable night" at school sleepwalking across the property, witnessing a murder, getting hit by a car, escaping an attempted rape, rolling down a hill into the woods (where she watches two ladybugs bang each other) and finally, meets our monkey...Inga. Inga takes Jennifer back to the house to introduce her to Prof. McGregor. The two hit it off marvelously as they share their love for insects and Jennifer sends a beetle into an orgasm. He explains to her that there are strange winds in the Alps that can make man and animal act a bit fucked up in this here "Swiss Transylvania", and that may explain her sleepwalking.

Eventually, after listening to him bring up some girl named Rita a few too many times (and whom we never hear of again!?), she returns to the school. Upon returning, the militant HeadMistress, concerned about the sleepwalking incident, decides that Jennifer should be sent for medical testing. And before you know it, Jennifer goes from being an innocent 13 year old girl with a sleep disorder to the ultimate evil, Beelzebub...or as the Headmistress says "Ballsyboob".

School Girl With Beelzebub T-Shirt

Whether it's sleepwalker or Satan, any way you slice it, this girl is definitely not "normal". As her relationship with her nosey-ass, cunt-wad classmates begins to suffer, her relationship with the insects around her only grows stronger...as does her relationship with Inga and Prof. McGregor. The three of them, along with the help of Jennifer's loyal insects, will begin to uncover the truth behind the brutal murders.

PHENOMENA is undoubtedly a great movie, but by Argento standards, it falls a bit short of greatness. There are a couple of things holding it back, the main one being the MUSIC...and, if you don't mind, I'd like to go on a bit about music.

The 80's were an amazing time for horror movies and heavy metal. Both shared massive amounts of success and were staples in pop culture throughout the decade. And in America, the two were inseparable. Heavy metal was the frosting on horror's cake...and for a lot of movies, it worked. 80's classics like THE GATE, RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD and TRICK OR TREAT relied heavily on heavy metal and it made sense in relation to the characters and the plot.

Playing it behind a slasher flick full of partying teens works because...fuck man, they're partying. But by the end of the decade, with movies like LEATHERFACE and SHOCKER, their relationship became nothing more than a marketing scheme (an extremely successful one) that I, myself bought into as a teenager. And so, unfortunately, did Italian horror filmmakers. Guys like Argento and Lamberto Bava saw the heavy metal/horror bus cruising along and jumped right on. The problem is, they seemed to have used it without any regard to context or atmosphere...therefore, in most cases, compromising the quality of their films.

The greatest example of this error in judgement is Argento's OPERA - a brutal bastard of a movie that is "cheapened" by the use of heavy metal and nearly stripped naked of all atmosphere whatsoever. The entire setting of the movie was an opera house...theatrical and elegant. It seemed as thought Argento tried to use heavy metal to symbolize the antithesis of that elegance by using it in the (anything but elegant) murder scenes. Not sure...but it was totally "forced" and fucked up a perfectly badass movie.

Another great example is Lamberto Bava's DELIRIUM. While the music wasn't the only problem, it was definitely a HUGE one in destroying all hopes of it being taken seriously. But 1985's DEMONS is Bava's real "heavy metal movie", and it works there...partying kids + heavy metal = death....it's the tone he was going for.

Lamberto Bava's DEMONS (1985)

Let me clarify one thing...I love heavy metal. I was born in the 70's and was raised on it. I had long hair in high school, had a few bands and I played guitar to METALLICA's Master Of Puppets and ...In Justice For All, note for fucking note. But just like everything in this world, there is a time and a place....and PHENOMENA was not the place. And if using IRON MAIDEN's Flash Of The Blade once wasn't bad enough, Argento uses it twice!! The second time being so completely unnecessary that I can't help but be appalled by the fact that he only used Goblin for half of the movie. There's also another scene with a MOTORHEAD song that is so completely out of place that I wanted to cry. Completely unnatural and an all around bad decision on Argento's part.

My other gripe is the over usage of "heads going through windows"...apparently there are a million ways to die, choose another one.

Luckily, PHENOMENA has so much good shit going on that prevents it from being ruined by some bad choices. This is easily Argento's most loopy-ass, wacko fucking film he's ever made. Monkeys, midgets, Daria Nicolodi in her "Where's Waldo" glasses and maggots that would make Lucio Fulci proud. There's this random narration that pops up out of nowhere in one scene and disappears, never to be heard of again!? Then, of course, we have the standard Argento amazing use of colors, beautiful scenery and, did I mention the monkey?

I wish there were alternate "All Goblin" versions of PHENOMENA and OPERA to prove that poor choice in music is indeed the reason why these movies don't quite reach that "great" Argento level.

Am I alone in this?

DELIRIUM: PHOTOS OF GIOIA (1987) by Lamberto Bava

2011-03-23T10:48:00.000-04:00

Life is full of assumptions. Some things however, are a bit easier to assume than others. Sometimes we're right, sometimes we're wrong. For example, when you see a physically attractive couple, you just assume that their baby is going to be breathtaking. I mean, how could it NOT be? Or how about when John Lennon was killed? Everyone thought that Julian Lennon would, in the name of his father, bless our ears with unforgettable and beautiful music for years to come. (Holy shit, were they wrong about that one!!) Or assuming that, having legendary Italian horror maestro, Mario Bava, as your father and studying under Dario Argento, that Lamberto Bava would be a force to reckon with. How could his films NOT be amazing? Right?!

Fresh off the heals of his somewhat successful DEMONS movies, Lamberto Bava's DELIRIUM is the story of former model Gloria (Gioia is the Italian translation). After the accidental death of her older, wealthy husband, Gloria was left not only with the mansion and the money, but also with their popular skin rag magazine, Pussycat. Gloria has gone from nearly being forced into prostitution, to a filthy rich bitch. From ass to class. But like Biggie Smalls said, "Mo Money, Mo Problems."

The mood is set right outta the gates as we open up to a nude photo shoot with all the right ingredients...titties, a swimming pool, water nymphs and some synth-heavy 80's tune that's more suited for a movie like REVENGE OF THE NERDS or maybe WEIRD SCIENCE. This shit screams "Skinemax" soft-core porn more than anything else.

At poolside, we meet most of our major players. Gloria's brother, Tony, is the director of photography for all of the photoshoots and has a thing for green leather pants and shoes. Roberto is the photographer. Daria Nicolodi plays Gloria's assistant/agent Evelyn. But the best of the bunch is the lonely crippled creeper next door, Mark.

Mark peers through his window with his telescope down into Gloria's backyard watching the photo shoots, but has a real hard-on for Gloria. We meet Mark as he calls her to go on about "throbbing members" and "penetrated her flower and exploding", and right away we know this guy's gonna be fun! But Gloria brushes it all off as him just being a lonely crippled creeper and let's him have his fun.

So, after our brief introduction to our characters, the shit hits the fan. Later on that night, as one of the models is leaving the house, she is viciously pitchforked by the swimming pool, in one of the most bizarre murder scenes I've ever scene. Shot from the killers point of view, the screen goes from red...

to blue...

to THIS!!

What the fuck?! The beautiful model we saw being groped by water-nymphs has an eyeball for a fucking face?! Unbelievable! Visually, it obviously has Argento written all over it, but the eyeball? And check out those shoulders! DELIRIUM is worth watching for this scene alone!

While Gloria doesn't seem to hear any of the commotion outside, Mark calls her to let her know that he saw it from his window but couldn't make out the killer's face. He tells her the body is in her pool. But when Gloria goes out there, no body, no blood...nothing. Proof, however is delivered in the form of a photo the next day showing the dead girl laid out in front of a wall-size photo of Gloria. Eventually the body is discovered in a dumpster.

While everyone around her seems to be more excited about the sales boost that this gives the magazine, Gloria is freaking the fuck out. And she should be because the killing doesn't stop there. And as each picture arrives at her doorstep, Gloria becomes more afraid for her own life, knowing that these models are just stepping stones to get to her.

But what is it that the killer is even after? Just like any good giallo, there are suspects aplenty. Mark...the wheelchair bound, peeping tom, who has a penchant for obscene phone calls and sniper rifles? Flora...Gloria's ex-employer and rival magazine owner who's bid to buy Pussycat magazine was patronizingly refused? Tony...the limp-dick brother? Roberto...the mysterious (and insinuated child-molesting) photographer?

Story wise, DELIRIUM succeeds at actually making sense throughout the entire film, which is always appreciated, but never expected, from a giallo. Stylistically, however, the movie loses major points...succeeding mostly at being a sleazy, half tittie-fest/half giallo. Any non-comedy movie backed by god-awful music that sounds like a mix of Oingo Boingo & White Lion cannot be capable of having a suspenseful "atmosphere"....there's just no way. BUT, Bava does make up for it with creative, off-the-wall shit like the eyeball chick and a scene involving a beekeeper.

There's also a "leg-humping, bathtub scene" and a nasty little "glow stick scene". Also, towards the final act, the killer begins to taunt Gloria in this crazy voice that sounds like Cooky Puss from those old Carvel commercials. Amazing shit!

DELIRIUM is a unique movie that is, at best, highly entertaining. If you haven't seen any of Lamberto's films yet, don't let your assumptions get the best of you. It took me a while to get over the fact that Lamberto has underachieved in his expectations set by his father and mentor Mario and Dario. But now that I have finally come to terms with it, I can enjoy his movies for what they are.

But, Julian Lennon STILL sucks!!

UK VIDEO NASTY - THE MAN FROM DEEP RIVER (1972)

2011-03-19T09:15:00.000-04:00

Also known as SACRIFICE! or DEEP RIVER SAVAGES, Umberto Lenzi's jungle adventure is known for being "the first cannibal movie", which seems a bit off since it's as much about cannibalism as BOOGIE NIGHTS is about dancing! But I'll get to all of that later.

This is the story of London photographer, John Bradley, played by cannibal/jungle genre vet. Ivan Rassimov. While on assignment in Thailand, John gets himself into some shit when he, in an act of self-defense, stabs a man in the stomach. He flees the scene and this is the last we hear about the stabbing whatsoever. I'm assuming this was all to set up Bradley's character as a guy willing to take action...not a spineless, sackless pussy. So our bad-ass hits the jungle's between Burma and Thailand to do his picture taking thing that he does with the help of a local guide. Taking the tour a little too far down the river, Bradley wakes up to find his guide dead in the water, and eventually gets himself caught in a local tribe's fishing net.

After being ferociously poked with sticks by a pack of angry children and forced to watch a savage tribal display of punishment, John is tied up and held captive. THIS tribe is not a cannibalistic one, so he is safe in that regard. But, convinced that he has been mistaken for a fish, due to his rubber wet suit, John begins to panic. A fucking fish?! Even the most out of touch, bug-eating, cock-piercing tribes can tell the difference between a man and a fish. They themselves are human and are sure to recognize another when they see one, no? Maybe I'm wrong, I never hung out with a tribe before. Either way, this idea was easily my favorite part of the movie...hilarious shit!

So...after convincing the tribe that he is indeed, not a fish, they put John to work as a slave. He befriends the only English speaking member of the tribe, an old woman, and with her help attempts escape. She warns him of a cannibal tribe over the mountains that he must steer clear of. So now I'm thinking that he's gonna get captured by THAT tribe and good cannibal fun will ensue...nope. He is chased down and in the battle that ensues, he kills a tribe member. But, when all is said and done, his attempt to escape fails and he is brought back to the village. NOW, you would think that the tribe would definitely have their way with him after murdering one of their own, yes? NO! In an odd twist, they actually admire his bravery and offer him an opportunity to join their tribe and no longer be a slave. And after a grueling 3 day torture marathon, he proves his worth and becomes a member of their tribe.

It doesn't take John long to assimilate into the tribe's culture and forget about his former "modern world" life altogether. After some sorta "glory hole molester fest" and some Voodoo-type rituals, John marries and knocks up the tribe chief's daughter Maraya.

All is good in the jungle until one quiet day by the river, as John is explaining to his new wife what a "car" is (a box that makes noise?!), the cannibals finally arrive and turn his new life completely upside down. Now, our big city boy finds himself in a battle to defend his tribe, his new family and his new primitive way of life.

From one aspect, I can understand how this movie is hailed to be "the first cannibal movie" because it introduced on-screen cannibalism and planted the seed for all of the cannibal movies that would follow, which would progressively become nastier and nastier. But the fact is, there is only ONE cannibal scene in the whole movie, so does that really make it a "cannibal movie"? I'm not so sure, but why split hairs?

The reality is, it's more of an exhibition in animal cruelty...to which I can't fucking stomach. I'd rather see a little old lady get ripped to shreds by a horde of cannibals, piece by liver-spotted piece, than watch the animal cruelty bit. Yeah, I know it's part of real-life tribal culture (most of the actors were actual native tribesmen) or nature playing itself out caught on tape (possum vs. snake, cock fights, gutting alligators, monkey skulling) but whatever...I fucking hate it. Scenes like this have become a staple of jungle/cannibal flicks, but in classics like CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST, they aren't the dominating "violent factor" of the movie, the cannibalism is. Call it a double standard if you'd like, that's just how I feel.

Interesting note...they couldn't even find an actress willing to film the one cannibal scene so they had to hire a local prostitute to do it. Whores will do anything for money!

BOTTOM LINE -

This is a tough one. On one hand, I want to say it's weak as hell due to the lack of actual cannibalism in the movie. On the other hand, the cruel animal scenes make me sick...especially the monkey. So fuck it...

ZOMBIES! AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF THE UNDEAD by Jovanka Vuckovic

2011-03-18T15:58:00.000-04:00

Tracing zombie's existence all the way back to the 1800's, Jovanka Vuckovic takes us from the African slave culture of Haiti, all the way up to AMC's groundbreaking series THE WALKING DEAD in a book that's part history lesson, part cultural commentary and 100% zombie fan's wet dream.

Jamming a century's worth of history into 176 pages is not an easy feat, but she pulls it off marvelously. Touching on every area of pop culture from literature to video games and everything in between, Vuckovic starts it all off with a lesson in the origins of "real world" zombies. African Religious culture and Haitian Voodoo rituals give way to folklore, superstition and questionable eyewitness accounts of zombies roaming the fields and streets. One such story is of a man who (according to family members, medical records and matching fingerprints) returned home to his village 17 years after his death. This is a great way to start the book because in order to appreciate a zombie for everything that it truly is, you should know it's roots.

Next, we get to the real meat of the book...the films. From 1932's Haitian Voodoo themed WHITE ZOMBIE, Vuckovic takes us on an informative and opinionated tour of the good (Romero's DEAD TRILOGY), the bad (ZOMBIES ON BROADWAY), and the absolute ugliest (there's a Zombie-Porn sub-genre?!) that the genre has to offer. The classics, the remakes, the ripoffs, and the straight-up ridiculous...they're all there. American, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, Norwegian...all there. There's even Mexican wrestling zombie films! And as she makes her way through the decades, we see the "evolution of a monster" as the zombie goes from silently creeping through the sugar cane fields with no desire for human flesh whatsoever, to the speed racing, brain-devouring savages that they have become.

While I obviously appreciate the MASSIVE amount of movies that Vuckovic presents in the book, it's her personal insight and honest opinions that allow this book to be soooo much more than just a "catalog" of zombie titles. When I saw that George Romero was writing the foreword, I couldn't help but think that this would be an "all hail George!" type thing. But even "King George" takes a few shots (well deserved) on the chin in regards to his obvious missteps in his recent projects. But let's face it, with "zombie credibility" on the line, she HAD to!

She bashes RESIDENT EVIL for all of it's utter shittiness, yet she is quick to give it credit for breathing new life into what was, at the time, a struggling genre. She also puts the idea out there that DAY OF THE DEAD may possibly be the best of the DEAD TRILOGY...to which i say...

...yup!

ZOMBIES! isn't some dry, clinical book compiling a list of movies with IMDB type descriptions, it's a horror fan (who obviously knows her shit!!) talking horror...more specifically, zombies. This makes it a quick and thoroughly enjoyable read. On top of that, it's jam-packed with tons of amazing one-sheets, screenshots, artwork, photographs and enough viewing suggestions to keep your ass on the couch for a long time. I had my notebook next to me the whole time, writing down movies that I'm gonna have to go hunt down.

So whether you're a long-time fan or a zombie newbie, this book is a must. A book that you will reach for every now and then, to take a peek at a picture, help you figure out the next movie for your Netflix queue, or to reference zombie facts to end an argument. It's definitely not a dust collector.

Consider ZOMBIES! AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF THE UNDEAD the new Zombie Bible.

Don't be a cheap bastard, BUY IT here!!

BLOOD AND ROSES (1960) - Family Reunions Will Never Be The Same

2011-03-14T12:15:00.001-04:00

Last month, I was lucky enough to be included in Final Girl Stacie Ponder's FINAL GIRL FILM CLUB, the movie of the month being Adam Green's FROZEN. This month, it's a movie that I have not seen yet, up until now...Roger Vadim's BLOOD AND ROSES aka TO DIE OF PLEASURE.

Originally presented to me as a "lesbian vampire tale", which is apparantly what the source material (the novella Carmilla by Joseph Sheriden le Fanu) is, I was expecting to see a ton of good ol' gothic style cleavage and a whole lotta blood. But instead, I got an atmospheric, slow moving tale of a woman on the brink of madness...OR the tale of a vampire's spirit out to reclaim lost love, that's for you to decide.

The Karnstein Castle in Italy is soon to be the setting for the wedding of Leopoldo Von Karnstein and his fiance, Georgia. And while everyone is celebrating, it seems Leopoldo's visiting cousin, Carmilla, is having some issues with the whole thing. We are first introduced to Carmilla as she tells the story of their ancestors as she stands in front of a painting of Millarca Von Karnstein, whom she eerily resembles.

The Karnstein family have an interesting history. 200 years ago, driven by paranoia and fears that they were a family of vampires, the peasants of the village marched up to the castle's cemetery and drove stakes through the hearts of every corpse. But one vampire survived, Millarca. She died on the eve of her wedding day and her body was removed from her tomb by her husband to be (and cousin!) Ludwig....saving her from the slaughter. Ludwig swore his love to her forever. But as he went on about his life, he was to marry three different woman, all who mysteriously died before the wedding day.

We learn that her looks are not the only thing that Carmilla has in common with her ancestor Millarca, as she too is in love with her cousin. But Leopoldo belongs to Georgia now. This hurts Carmilla so much that she can't even attend the engagement celebration. Instead, she stays in her room, drunk and dancing by herself. Meanwhile, everyone around her is concerned for her mental state.

So, drunk and alone in her room, the whispering begins. The voice of the long dead Millarca begins to lure Carmilla to her tomb. So she puts on Millarca's long-saved wedding dress, freaks the fuck out of the party guests, and heads down to the tombs. What happens next is either some type of possession or a drunken hallucination. The next morning, they find her passed out in Leopoldo's bed.

When Carmilla awakes, she seems to be a bit worse off than she was in the first place. She scares a horse and is pained by the sun. The whispering continues, this time telling her that she NEEDS blood. So she starts creeping around the castle's late night, foggy grounds in Millarca's wedding dress, scaring the shit out of the servants who live in a cottage separate from the castle. And just like the villagers from 200 years ago, the servant's begin to think that they are being haunted by some sort of vampire...the question is, are they?! Is Carmilla possessed by the spirit of her vampire ancestor, ready to ruin the wedding plans of her one true love? Or is she simply a crazy woman, wandering around in a dead woman's wedding dress?

While we are given clues to indicate that Carmilla is indeed a vampire, there is also the sense that she is just a fragile young woman who cannot come to terms with losing the love of her life (her cousin!) and is spiraling into absolute madness. It's ambiguity reminded me of watching LET'S SCARE JESSICA TO DEATH. There's something to be said for a movie that let's you decide what you think is going on. In both cases, the minute the movie ended, I went back and watched it again. Interestingly enough, I found out that marrying your first cousin is legal in 20 states, mine (Connecticut) being one of them! My next family reunion is July 16th...I'll let you know how I make out.

BLOOD AND ROSES has some fantastic cinematography and is rich with atmosphere that only really stumbles once throughout the movie. About halfway through, there is an incredibly awkward and completely cheesy scene where Carmilla and Leopoldo are sitting at the piano. As she plays, Leopoldo entertains us with a charade-type interpretation of him fishing on a boating. I understand that it was meant to demonstrate the relationship between the two, but it seemed like something more fit for a Bob Hope/Bing Crosby movie, or something Charlie and Grandpa Joe might do in WILLY WONKA.

But that's okay, because there is a scene not too long after where Carmilla becomes enraged and smashes her wine glass against the table and with broken stem, takes a drink from the glass, lays it down letting the rest of the wine spill out across the table. That scene gave me fucking goosebumps. Since I watched it on Netflix, this is the best I can do for ya...

Sip

Smash!

Sip (no stem!)

Spill

Brilliant!

Then add an out-of-nowhere, surreal nightmare scene...and with that, the Bob Hope/Willy Wonka jam is all but forgotten!

While it wasn't the lesbo-vamp fest that I was expecting (only one scene of two girls kissing), I'm so glad that this movie was brought to my attention. BLOOD AND ROSES is a tastefully sensual and ultimately tragic tale of the broken-hearted and how love and madness, a lot of the time, go hand in hand.

UK VIDEO NASTY - VISITING HOURS (1982)

2011-03-11T20:23:00.000-05:00

After a woman is convicted of shooting and severely injuring her husband, hard-nosed TV reporter, Deborah Ballin, verbally abuses the prosecuting attorney on her show claiming that the woman was a battered wife acting in self-defense. Flexing her highly opinionated feminist muscle not only gets her in trouble with her producer, Gary (William Shatner), but also with TV station "maintenance man" Colt Hawker, played by the always entertaining Michael Ironside. Colt has an opinion of his own, and he's about to let Deborah know all about it. But instead of debating about their differences, Colt's gonna let his knife do the talking.

So, after her verbal ass-whippin' on the lawyer, she returns to her apartment to find a cross-dressed Colt jumping out at her with said knife. She escapes, but not without suffering some surgery-requiring injury and is taken to the hospital. Meanwhile, Colt is on the loose. Apparently, Deborah isn't taking her lunch breaks with the janitors at work, because she doesn't recognize Colt whatsoever.

Let's talk about Colt. Colt isn't a big fan of people. Blacks, Jews, Mexicans...he hates em all and has his a strong opinion on how these "problems" should be handled.

But most of all, Colt hates women. More specifically, strong minded and opinionated women. Women who stand up for themselves and their independence? No thank you. So when Deborah defends the alleged "battered wife", Colt decides he needs to shut her up before she spreads more of her feminist propaganda any further on National TV.

So it's off to the hospital, where the majority of the movie is set. Colt, needing to finish off the kill, gets onto the patient's floor disguised as a flower delivery man. Matter of fact, most of the movie is Colt creeping around the hospital, in various disguises, killing everyone else in the fucking hospital except for the woman he's hunting down in the first place!

Let's take a look at the master of disguises in action...

Flower Delivery Man

Orderly

Doctor

EMT

A Patient

Ya see, it's all about accessories! A bouquet of flowers, a pair of glasses, a different colored shirt or a bloody arm are enough to make any psychopathic killer blend right in...at least five different times in the same fucking place!

But despite the brilliant subterfuge, every time he's in the hospital, he can't get to Deborah because of her "watchdog" nurse, Sheila. Sheila is, like Deborah, a strong independent woman. A single mother, a provider and protector. One failed attempt after another and we begin to see that these women are getting the best of Colt and this seems to be the theme of VISITING HOURS. Women's Power taking on the misogynistic male viewpoint.

What happened to Colt to make him hate women so much? A traumatizing childhood experience that would be enough to turn any "normal" boy into a hateful killing machine, that's what! Tickle fights, mud wrestling and beer guzzling with Dad out on the lawn go sour when his mother, not exactly turned on by Dad's drunk and violent sexual advances, throws a pot of boiling oil in his face.

Now a grown man, Colt visits his lonely, disfigured father in a nursing home. His mother has apparently left them after the incident, never being punished for what she did to his father. So now do you understand why he hates these women? Kinda? No?

There are some things that I really liked about VISITING HOURS. Michael Ironside is fantastically fucking creepy, unfortunately the script didn't do him any favors in taking his performance to that "next level". I also appreciated the time spent focusing on our killer's character, kinda like the way MANIAC did...we really get a look into this guy's life.

Unfortunately, there's just too many things that I didn't like. Why would he kill a nurse who never even saw his ass, let alone his face, but not kill the young nurse who looked him dead in the fucking eyes?! Sure, he stalks her afterwards, but with no one around at the time, don't you think he would've stabbed the fuck outta her right then and there? Why risk her going to the cops?! Ironically, she's Sheila, Deborah's nurse and protector...the one who's making it impossible for Colt to carry out his murder. He should've killed her when he had the fucking chance!

Another issue I have is with the "bell necklace" that Colt wears around his neck. It serves no purpose whatsoever and is an obvious forced plot device.

But I don't want to get caught up in all of that nit-picking horseshit because, after all, this IS a slasher flick. That being said...I just don't think it's a very GOOD slasher flick. Through the entire movie, half of the people that our killer actually kills are defenseless, life support-needing, wheelchair-riding hospital patients. Kinda "easy prey" if you ask me. So while Ironside comes off as extremely creepy, he's not very scary. There's never any real sense that he's powerful whatsoever, especially when he's rockin' this leather "wife-beater" (how ironic).

But I guess that's kinda the point. Women's Power, not Creeper's Power.

There's not much in terms of blood and gore and, overall, it's not very suspenseful.

With a better script, Colt Hawker could've been Michael Ironside's role of a lifetime, but instead, VISITING HOURS will always be known as "that Canadian horror movie with William Shatner in it".

BOTTOM LINE -

UK VIDEO NASTY - CANNIBAL MAN (1973) All Man, No Cannibal

2011-03-09T17:56:00.000-05:00

If translated from it's original Spanish title LA SEMANA DEL ASESINO, the title would be THE WEEK OF THE ASSASSIN or (the original title) THE WEEK OF THE KILLER and would make a lot more sense in regards to the plot. But somehow along the way, the title was, unfortunately, changed to CANNIBAL MAN. It's unfortunate because it misleads us into thinking that this story is somehow, someway actually about fucking cannibals! It's not.

But, that's okay, because with a DVD cover that looks like this...

...the movie MUST be absolutely brutal! It's not. That right there is about as brutal as it gets unless you count the cows in the slaughterhouse. Who would've thought that BLUE UNDERGROUND would give away the bloodiest scene right on the goddam cover?!

So if this movie isn't about cannibals, what IS it about? That's a good fucking question!

CANNIBAL MAN is the story Marcos, a poor, uneducated butcher at the local slaughterhouse. He lives in a rundown shit-shack of a house that is surrounded by brand new, top dollar high rise apartment buildings. He enjoys sitting around half naked, smoking cigarettes and listening to jazz. Unbeknownst to him, his creepy neighbor likes watching him do all these things from his fancy high-rise apartment...especially the half naked thing.

But Marcos doesn't swing that way. He and his girlfriend Paula are planning on marrying when he gets his shit together. While taking a taxi home one night, the two love birds start gettin' it on in the backseat. The cab driver gets offended and tells the two perverts to get the fuck out of his cab. An argument breaks out. One thing leads to another, the cab driver starts pimp-slappin' Paula around and his skull finds itself on the wrong end of a rock from Marcos' hand.

Marco and Paula flee the scene, only to read in the paper, the next day, that the cab driver has died and the police are on the hunt for the killers. After what appears to be some extremely painful sex, Paula tries to convince Marcos that the right thing to do is turn themselves in. They'll plead self defense...after all, the asshole was attacking HER too! What kind of a douche-bag hits a woman?! But Marcos doesn't trust the odds of a poor man in a rich man's system and he no longer trusts Paula...so he says "fuck that shit!" And in a final kiss goodbye, he chokes the life out of her.

Not long after, his brother Stephen returns from vacation and Marcos confesses what he has done. After Stephen threatens to go to the police if he doesn't turn himself in, Marcos takes a wrench to his face...solving that problem. So he piles his body into the bedroom with the other one. He will kill whoever he has to in order to keep his secret safe. Trouble is, as soon as one person goes missing, another one comes looking for them...so everyone that stops by his house in the next week becomes another corpse added to the pile. Despite his attempts to disguise the smell with deodorant and perfumes, the house begins to stink so bad, all the wild dogs in the village start gathering around it, sniffing out "dinner".

Marcos decides that he must dispose of the bodies and what better way than to take them to the slaughterhouse and put them through one of the grinding machines with the rest of the meat...later to become ingredients in soup.

Is it really any different than eating Chef Boyardee?!

In the meantime, his creepy neighbor keeps popping up and he's not holding back when it comes to letting Marcos know that he wants a piece of him...coming at him with shit like "Are you a muscle man? I need some exercise!" and inviting him go swimming. Marcos takes him up on the "swim date", but as it turns out, it's not the kind of swimming that your average heterosexual skull-smashing murderer is into.

So, now the movie takes on a whole new twist as Marcos finds himself a bit confused about his sexuality. CANNIBAL MAN goes from being (I assumed) a movie about cannibals to (actually) a movie about a man covering up a murder with more murder to (unbelievably) a story about a creepy upper-class homosexual peeping tom who finds himself infatuated with a lower-class, uneducated man who got himself caught up in some murderous shit.......got it?!

The dialogue is hilariously fucking absurd. At one point, the "creeper" says to Marcos, "If I were curious, I would ask you what was bothering you...but I'm not curious." So what the fuck are you saying anything for?! The dubbing is so bad at times (and I love dubbed movies) that I was expecting Godzilla to show up and start torching and smashing the fuck outta the village!!

I can't really say if I thought CANNIBAL MAN was a "good" or a "bad" movie. I can only say that it's an interesting movie that was nothing like I expected.

I really don't know WHAT writer/director Eloy De La Iglesia is trying to say, but he's obviously trying to say something! Something about the influence of upper-class over the lower-class and the part that the poor play in our society? Something about how hiding your true sexuality could lead to mental anguish and ultimately deadly repercussions? I have no fucking clue! So please, watch it and tell me what YOU think.

Damn...all I wanted was some fucking CANNIBALS!!!

BOTTOM LINE -

I don't know for sure whether CANNIBAL MAN was banned for it's violent content, it's homosexual theme or both. But no matter the reason...

UK VIDEO NASTY - FIGHT FOR YOUR LIFE (1977)

2011-03-05T10:12:00.037-05:00

Most of the movies that were deemed offensive enough to make the UK VIDEO NASTY list were there due to their intense violent content. While FIGHT FOR YOUR LIFE has a bit of violence, it is the only movie that made the NASTY list due to the fact that it's a total racial "hate-fest" of a movie...and it was BANNED OUTRIGHT!! In FIGHT FOR YOUR LIFE, the hate IS the violence!

Anytime a movie opens up with the line "Where you goin' bitch, I want my smack back!", you know you got yourself into some shit.

The story itself, however, begins when a truck transporting three prison inmates crashes and they escape, stealing a pimp's Lincoln. Damn...he loses his dope and his ride all in the same day....it's hard out here for a pimp!! What's next is a crime spree that will eventually lead them to the house of Minister Ted Turner and his family. Let's meet our three deviants...

Chino Rodriguez - Puerto Rican, carries a big knife

Chow Ling - Asian, creepy

Jesse Lee Kane - White Trash, racist scumbag

Kane (William Sanderson from Bob Newhart's 80's sitcom) establishes himself as the ringleader pretty quickly as your typical white man always does. The plan is to cross the border into Canada, but not without some trouble-making along the way. While the guys are about to rob a liquor store, in walks Deacon Turner's daughter. They finish the job and force her to take them back to her family's house so they can switch to a more "fuel efficient" ride...the pimp's Lincoln is killing them on gas mileage!

Let's meet The Turners. They are a proud and spiritual black family. The father, Ted, is a deacon at the church. Dinnertime conversations include...

"The Lord said the meek shall inherit the earth." - Dad

"The Good Word never wears out it's welcome, child." - Mom

The Deacon and his wife lost their oldest son in a tragic car accident and the mother still blames the "white girl" that he was dating at the time, so the Good Word is apparently,

"Why'd you have to go and invite that white girl into our home?" - Mom

The grandmother fist pumps to "black power", and the young son idolizes Muhammed Ali.

What happens next, is pretty much what you'd expect to happen in a 70's Exploitation flick when you mix a white racist criminal with a nice black family.

While there is a brief and mild (by rape scene standards) rape scene, the murder of a child and some other scenes of violence, the real "meat" on the bones of this movie is the unrelenting racial slurs that come out of the mouth of Jesse Lee Kane. They're ALL there - "tarbaby", "turd", "black-ass coons", "Aunt Jamima", "monkeyface" and every other degrading term you've ever heard in reference to African Americans. As Kane gets deeper into a jug of whiskey, he gets meaner and nastier. He even goes as far as having them refer to him as "massa" Kane (you know, like "master") and having the father sing and dance like he's in a minstrel show.

We learn a bit about the hardships that life handed Kane which ultimately turned him into the piece of shit that he is, but I'm not so sure that any of us are gonna shed a tear for him. He's one of the most hateful and despicable characters I've seen on film. And while the insults aren't just reserved for the Turner family (Kane refers to his partners in crime as the "chink" and the "spic") and his character is an obvious white trash stereotype, the majority of the hate and racism is aimed directly and viciously at the African American family.

So, Kane and the boys carry on for awhile until the cops get involved and the Deacon, a peaceful man who has devoted his life to God, is pushed to his limit...taking matters into his own hands.

FIGHT FOR YOUR LIFE is 70's Exploitation at it's sleeziest...but there isn't enough in terms of entertainment value or moral lessons to balance out the "hate factor" of this movie. So, ultimately it's just a movie made up of one racial slur after the other and not much else. It doesn't just throw in a little hate here, a little hate there...it unnecessarily beats you over the fucking head with it.

So, while this movie may be defended as the story of a peaceful man pushed to his limit and forced into violent action to protect the ones he loved, it doesn't really play out that way to me. It's 99% racial slurs and stereotypes and 1% peaceful man taking action. And let me clarify...I don't think the makers of this movie are "promoting" racism in any way, just as I don't think Wes Craven is promoting rape in THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT. Chalk it up to being bad storytelling, but the result is the same. The racist CONTENT is so overpowering and not nearly enough focus was put on the Deacon's conflict. And while this may have helped escalate his need to act, I think the imbalance also hurt the storytelling by burying the moral of it underneath.

I grew up in a big city, surrounded by all kinds of people and all types of "ill shit", so I'm not some touchy, "how dare they!?" kind of guy. I am NOT easily offended...but if you thought SOUL MAN was a racist movie, this one's probably not for you.

BOTTOM LINE -

LET'S SCARE JESSICA TO DEATH (1971) - Damn Girl, Why You Trippin?!

2011-02-27T20:14:00.000-05:00

This review may contain SPOILERS!

Poor Jessica. After suffering a mental breakdown, she is finally released from the hospital and, along with her husband Duncan and their best friend Woody, is looking for a chance to start over. So they leave the big city and sell everything they have to buy an old farmhouse (The Bishop House) on an apple orchard in a secluded little town in Connecticut. Peace and quiet at last.

Unfortunately, things seem a bit off with this town from the very start. The welcoming committee is made up of a gang of miserable old bandaged-up bastards who don't seem to find much humor in a bunch of hippies riding around in a hearse. But there seems to be a bit more going on than just a bunch of grumpy old men.

It also becomes apparent, relatively quickly, that things are not completely "alright" with Jessica. The first thing she does when they arrive in town is run into the cemetery for some tombstone etchings like a little girl running to a swing set.

As she's etching, she sees a young girl standing up on a hill and then vanish...like a ghost. It's at this point that the whispering voices in her head begin. Mostly her own at first.

When they arrive at the house, they find a girl, Emily, who has apparently been squatting there for "ages", as she tells them. So after some dinner, cocktails and a seance (where only Jessica seems to hear the spirits of the house communicating to her), they allow the girl to stay with them.

Between the quiet fog, the old dark house and the whispering voices in Jessica's head, the atmosphere of this movie is unbelievably creepy...something that's missing from most modern horror movies.

When a relaxing day of swimming goes sour, as Jessica suddenly thinks that she's being attacked by a dead body in the lake, she fears that Duncan may think she's "losing it" again. Can ya blame him?! At this point, one of the voices in her head curiously becomes Emily's, as if she can read her thoughts...and her thoughts are definitely no good. But after a delicious dinner of hippie steak tartare (raw fucking meat!) and lettuce, they all try to carry on if nothing has happened.

On a trip into town to sell some goods for cash, they meet antique shop owner, Sam Dorker. While all of the other old men in town were vandalizing Duncan's hearse and slappin him around, Sam, a bit younger than the rest, is the only man in town who was kind to them. He tells them of the history of The Bishop House and how the young, and soon to be wed, Abigail Bishop drowned in the lake in 1880 and how her body was never found. Some folks say she still roams the countryside, as a vampire.

Not long after Mr. Dorker shares his tale with them, the young girl (ghost?) from the cemetery reappears to Jessica and leads her to Dorker's corpse in the woods. When she brings Duncan to the location, the body is gone. This only intensifies her fear that her husband thinks she is out of her fucking mind...and her fear is justified. He suggests she needs help and should go back to the city to spend some time with the doctors. Tears are shed and Emily sees an opportunity to move in on Jessica's husband.

With each incident, Jessica feels more and more alone and her paranoia begins to escalate. But what we don't know, is if these things are really happening to her or if she IS going fucking nuts! Emily's whispering voice begins to consume her mind, almost teasing her and taunting her fragile mental state...

"What do you have to live for?"

"You WANT to die?"

"I'll never go away"

So...is Jessica out of her fucking mind? Or is she already dead and this is some sort of afterlife experience? Is Emily really the ghost of Abigail Bishop attempting to drive Jessica to suicide? Is she really a vampire, seducing both men as she prepares to make all three of them her victims? Who knows?!

I'm not sure if we'll ever really know. And to me, that's one of the best things about this movie. The truth is never simply stated, but left up to the viewer's interpretation. And while a lot of horror fans may get frustrated by a "slow burn" movie with an ambiguous ending, it made me want to watch it again...and I did. The fucked up thing is that I changed my view on it the second time around.

After the first viewing, I was positive that Jessica was dead. A couple of scenes in the beginning were enough for me to believe that. At first we see Duncan and Woody sliding a big black box into the back of the hearse, but no Jessica. Then when they arrive at the cemetery gates, Jessica pops outta the back and runs into the cemetery. The imagery and symbolism was so goddam clever! She had probably gone nuts, killed herself and now she was dead...on her way to "the other side", this was all some sort of dream-like "passage" that would bring her there.

But, as I was about to write this review, I decided to watch it again. This time, it was just as obvious to me that she WAS NOT dead!! Probably still a little fucked up in the head, but definitely not dead. In a complete 180, I found myself on the whole "vampire" side of the debate. What about all of that amazing symbolism? How the fuck can this happen?! This is what makes this movie so fucking good. I probably won't watch again for awhile as not to over-do it, but I can't wait to see which way it takes me when I do.

If you can handle a "slow burn" movie that doesn't spell it all out for you, and dig on creepy atmosphere, do yourself a huge favor and check out LET'S SCARE JESSICA TO DEATH.

UK VIDEO NASTY - DON'T GO NEAR THE PARK (1981)

2011-02-25T20:33:00.000-05:00

12,000 years ago, two members (brother and sister) of some sort of prehistoric psychic tribe, are punished by the their mother (the tribe leader) for cannibalizing the young children of the tribe...the secret to eternal youth. She curses her children to 12,000 years of aging without dying! The only way to lift the curse, ironically, is to sacrifice a young virgin who is a descendant of their tribe. BUT it can't be until the 12,000th year, when the moons align with the stars in Jupiter's anus and a drunken homeless man is giving a reach-around to a donkey while a one armed man plays the banjo with his di......or something like that.

So over the next 12,000 years, the siblings stay young by feasting on kids and stealing their youth. Ready to set the plan in motion to lift their curse, the brother knocks up Linnea Quigley with the intentions of raising the baby girl with the sole purpose of sacrificing her on the "big day" mentioned earlier.

I'm not gonna waste too much time on this movie because it's pretty fucking terrible. It's TROLL 2 terrible, but without laughing. Although I did laugh at one scene where a little boy (Punky Brewster's pal) finds a teenage girl sleeping on a couch in a hideout and he starts feeling her up. She wakes up and yells at him, like "What the fuck, kid?" and he replies, "Sorry, I didn't know you were ALIVE." What!?!?! That's pretty sick...especially for Punky Brewster's pal.

The acting is grammar school play level. And not a grammar school that has a drama class. A grammar school where the English teacher makes unwilling and completely disinterested students get up on stage and make asses out of themselves. They, in turn, get revenge on their teacher by intentionally making a complete mockery of a Shakespeare classic. All the while, a mixture of blood and tears is spraying out of the teachers eyeballs because she is so furiously angry with us for embarrassing HER!! Ya see, I was Hamlet in 8th grade, my buddy John was Laertes, and we thought Hamlet needed a little bit of an idiot's touch. We read right out of the books on stage. We used HE-MAN swords...and WE SUCKED!! Just like the actors in DON'T GO NEAR THE PARK. But we were actually funny and we were trying to be. Big difference.

While this film has no HE-MAN swords, there is a big-ass peace pipe, terrible make-up, awful set designs and a dog named Starshine...yup, Starshine. On a positive note, it does have a couple flesh-eating scenes, a very young Linnea Quigley, and a scene with monkeys.

So unless you're on a mission to watch all of the UK VIDEO NASTIES, I cannot, with a clear conscience, recommend this movie to you.

BOTTOM LINE -

UK VIDEO NASTY - Jess Franco's BLOODY MOON (1981)

2011-02-22T21:52:00.000-05:00

In 1981, after a decade of smut-peddling, director Jess Franco (THE AWFUL DR.ORLOFF & VAMPYROS LESBOS) was wooed by German producers to make a slasher film. Excited by the idea of working with a top notch director of photography and musical legends Pink Floyd, who would be writing the score, Franco didn't hesitate to sign up. Unfortunately, there was no top notch d.p. and there was definitely no Pink fuckin Floyd!! Bastards!! But Franco did what he signed up to do and directed himself a nasty little slasher flick.

BLOODY MOON is the story of Miguel. Miguel has a sister Manuella and he loves her like any normal brother loves his sister. Well, maybe not...unless you consider brothers wanting to bang their sisters "normal"!? Miguel's disfigured appearance has him feeling a little unloved in the "lady department" and his sister is the only one, he feels, that truly loves him for who he is. He would do anything for her. And after being locked up for 5 years in a mental hospital for an unfortunate "attack", Miguel is ready to be reunited with the love of his life...his sister...what the fuck, right? But Manuella knows that society will only punish them for their "forbidden love" and tells Miguel that she wishes everyone around them would disappear.

Their wheelchair-bound Aunt Maria is the owner of a summer resort/boarding school of language in Spain. Aunt Maria is a miserable, old cunt of a woman who distrusts her neice Manuella and thinks that she is only hanging around for the money she will leave behind after she dies. But she makes it very clear that her plans are to leave everything, including the resort, to Miguel...so Manuella can basically fuck off.

So, not long after Miguel is back living at the resort/school, the all-girls student body (the lead girl played by pornstar Olivia Pascal) start getting butchered one by one.

BUT with all of the creepy characters lurking around the resort, it could be anyone. Paco, the imbecile groundskeeper? Antonio, the gardener and local "stud boy" puttin the wood to all the girls like it's his job? Maybe Alvarro, the language instructor, who's audio instruction tapes seem to be taking it a little too far? So many to choose from...hmmm.

Well, whoever it is, after about an hour into this shit, the killer really starts gettin busy! I was about to give up hope at seeing any exciting bloodshed go down, but I'm so glad I hung in there! Stabbings, strangulation, beheading, and even some "torch to the face" action. The killings are surprisingly satisfying for a movie that doesn't get all that much buzz these days. Definitely some crazy, bloody shit.

As far as the nudity is concerned, BLOODY MOON doesn't even come close to Franco's famous porn stylings, but it does have more than it's fair share of tits on display. And while the "styrofoam boulder" scene had the potential to make me disregard this movie completely as a "video nasty", it bounced (see boulder scene) back with a bloody vengeance!! I have to say that I'm truly shocked at how little attention is paid to this movie by today's fans and I hope the good word will spread and that will change. I highly recommend this movie to any fan of foreign slasher films.

Check out the interview with Jess Franco if you get the chance. He is a really smart and funny guy. My favorite quote from the interview was in response to his German producers...

"If you want me to do it, I'll do it my way...not your way, because your way is THE WAY OF SHIT!"

"The way of shit"...that's just fucking beautiful.

BOTTOM LINE-

AXE aka LISA, LISA (1977) - UK Video Nasty

2011-02-18T18:52:00.005-05:00

When I think of the infamous list of UK's "Video Nasties", I think that it must be made up of the most vile, reprehensible and trashy shit that you could possibly imagine. But the truth is, sadly, that it's not. While the list definitely has it's share of brutally violent and wonderful masterpieces, it also has equal amount of considerably mild films that seemed to have gotten themselves unfairly caught up in the battle between the safety of the world's children vs. evil, mind-controlling menace that is entertainment. Innocent little movies, quietly passing through the drive-in theaters only to be beaten over the fucking head for no good reason!! Kind of like Reginald Denny in the "Rodney King Riots". Guilty by association! AXE is one of those movies.

AXE aka LISA, LISA is an extremely low budget rape/revenge flick written, directed and starring Frederick R. Friedel. If you've watched PBS, you can't tell me this guy doesn't look just like BOB ROSS, the famous painter!?

Anyway...three used-car salesmen lookin' thugs are on the run after they mercilessly beat a cross-dresser over the head with a little girl's baby doll. They only dig their hole deeper after a failed attempt to "shoot the tomato off of a store clerk's head" goes terribly wrong.

So with the pigs on their tail, they wind up at an isolated farmhouse occupied by a young girl, Lisa, and her crippled grandfather. Seeing an opportunity to take advantage of young and pretty Lisa, the goons soon find out that she is at the end of her rope and isn't taking shit from ANYONE!!

If this movie had a budget, it would've been a dangerously nasty little flick...but it didn't, so it isn't. Most of the violence is off-screen, there is very little character development, and it's way too fucking short. If they ever made a rape/revenge "After School Special", this would be it...right down to the opening credit lettering.

Look...it's only 70 minutes long, so you don't have much to lose by watching it. But while the theme (rape/revenge) may be offensive, AXE definitely falls under the category of...

I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE (2010) - I'm Gettin Tired Of Shootin Squirrels

2011-02-14T22:56:00.000-05:00

As far as 70's exploitation greatness goes, Meir Zarchi's I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE (1978) is definitely the next in line behind THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, which is of course, top dog. It's a brutal, unsettling rape/revenge flick with a low-budget grime that makes it seem all too real. With no score (the only music being some hillbilly harmonica and some classical jam in one scene) the silence in the middle of nowhere makes it even more unnerving. It is a classic horror film that has upset as many people as it has thrilled.

Enter 2010...When I first heard about the remake, I wanted to puke. Another classic ruined. Why can't we American's be more like the French and make amazing original horror movies?! Why do we have to wipe our asses with the classics? Having never seen or heard of any of Stephen Monroe's other movies (OGRE or DEVIL ON THE MOUNTAIN to name a couple) I assumed he sucked and was prepared for the worst. Goddam was I fucking wrong! This is one of the few horror remakes that took what was wrong with the original and fixed it. Don't get me wrong...you can never replace the originals from that era. The look and feel and overall atmosphere of that era can never be recaptured or outdone but the story and actions can be improved upon. That's why THE LAST HOUSE remake didn't work for me. It was a fantastic thriller, but it sucked out all of the style and personality that made the original so good without even improving the story! But never mind that mess, let's talk about THIS movie!

I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE is the story of a young and gorgeous writer Jennifer (Sarah Butler) who heads up to a secluded cabin in the woods for some peace and quiet to begin working on her next novel. Stopping for gas and directions, Jennifer runs into a group of locals and after shunning the advances of one of the guys (Johnny), she inadvertently humiliates him in front of the others.

Feeling embarrassed and dickless, Johnny's blood begins to boil and is only intensified by the other guys breaking his balls. So temperatures rise and next thing you know, the guys are brutally raping and humiliating her and eventually leave her for dead. Or so they thought. Jennifer eventually returns to exact revenge on her attackers one by one. Pretty much the same story, just with a lot of cool "upgrades". If you haven't seen either movie, you may not want to read any further because I'm gonna start comparing the remake to the original...shit might SPOIL!!

The improvements upon the original are right from the get-go. When she encounters the group at the gas station in the original, it's very uneventful...she gets gas, he gives her directions, see ya later. The only reason they go after her, aside from being backwoods rapists, is to get their retarded pal Matthew laid. In the remake, this is where the whole set up goes down. Humiliation at the hands of a "big city bitch" and "cock teasin' whore" is unacceptable and Johnny's not gonna let her get away with it! Is it reason to go and rape her? Hell fucking no! At least not to any "normal" person. But she obviously humiliated the wrong shit-kicker!

The character of Matthew if a MASSIVE improvement! The original was a Gilligan's Island hat wearing imbecile and not so much "mentally retarded". He was just a goofy bastard. This time around, the character is more like Giovanni Ribisi's character in THE OTHER SISTER with Juliette Lewis...awesome!

There is also the addition of a new character, the sheriff, who adds a deeper layer to the whole "double lives" angle of our rapists as we hear him on the phone with his daughter talking about going to church...while the guys are gang-raping Jennifer in the next room. Andrew Howard is incredibly believable as the sickest dirty cop since Harvey Keitel in THE BAD LIEUTENANT.

There is one less actual "rape" scene in the remake but that doesn't make it any less disturbing. This time around, it's all being videotaped just to add even more to the humiliation factor. It's totally brutal shit and I definitely couldn't show this to my girlfriend on Valentine's Day for fear of having my teeth knocked out of my head. Speaking of teeth...another upgrade that I liked was how they kept referring to her as a show horse. The "I WANT...TO SEE...YOUR TEETH!" portion of the rape scene is unforgettably demeaning and twisted.

One of the major issues with the original is how the group relied on Matthew the imbecile to "dispose" of Jennifer when they were through with her. Why would they leave something so important up to the idiot? This time, the group follows Jennifer as she stumbles through the woods in what looks like some kind of sick "rape parade".

As Butler walks away from the men, naked and covered in dirt, she does this amazing twitchy thing with her arms like a zombie...chilling indeed. So she walks on until she falls into the river and vanishes. After searching the river, the guys assume she's floated on and died.

In the original, we follow Jennifer in the aftermath of the brutal attack as she starts to heal, begins to stalk the men and even goes to church to pray. In the update, we don't see her at all, until it's time for the first kill. Monroe was smart enough to change two of the major kills from the first. While they were the most memorable, they were also the most unbelievable. There is no way that even a shit-kickin', pig-fuckin' redneck would believe that after he savagely raped a woman that she would come back and give him a fucking bubble bath!! Even more unbelievable is that a woman, being the victim of such an atrocious sexual violation, would let the imbecile bang her only to hang him afterwards! No such nonsense here...straight up revenge...no seduction, no bubble baths and definitely no bangin'!

Sarah Butler does a fantastic job of going from sweet and pretty (I fell in love with her immediately) to victim to vicious. Except for Joey from DREAM WARRIORS, I thought the acting overall was pretty good. It was interesting to see Daniel Franzese, who usually plays the fat feminine kid (BULLY & MEAN GIRLS), play a lowlife rapist piece of shit.

While a lot of critics brush it off as sleazy rape exploitation, you can't deny the theme of woman's empowerment. We are rooting for the female lead the entire time and cannot wait to see these scumbag's get what they deserve. And what she does to them is just as humiliating, violating and repulsive...and fully deserved. Let's face it, if you're rooting for the rapists you've got bigger problems than watching fucking horror movies!!

Stephen Monroe was not only completely respectful to to the original I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE, but he respectfully improved upon it. There aren't many remakes that can pull that off.

HATCHET 2 - How I Fell Out Of Love With A Swamp Lurking Mongoloid

2011-02-09T10:35:00.000-05:00

Since releasing HATCHET in 2006, "Splat Pack" member Adam Green has become one of the hottest filmmakers in horror...and rightfully so. He brought the "feel-good American slasher" genre back to the fans in all it's gory glory and I was giddy like a schoolgirl, shoving that movie down everyone's throat!

He co-directed the effectively creepy "Hitchcockian" thriller SPIRAL with Joel Moore and showed us a more "serious" filmmaker at work. And after a slew of hilarious short films, including the new Halloween classic JACK CHOP, he delivered one of the best thrillers I have seen in years with FROZEN. Through all of his work, Green has shown not only that he has a true love for the genre, but that he is a diverse talent who understands that a good story is just as important as a fantastically gory "belt sander facial"!! Unfortunately, he hasn't seemed to figure out how to combine the two.

I understand that a movie like HATCHET II is, without a doubt, more about the gore than the story, but the flaws in the plot are too much to not be bothered by and the problems begin right from the get-go. The movie picks up right where we left off in the original. Marybeth (Danielle Harris) miraculously survives her encounter with Victor Crowley and escapes the swamp. She then winds up in Rev. Zombie's (Tony Todd) Voodoo Shop, convincing him to go BACK to the swamp to get her revenge on Crowley. Really?! You just watched an entire tour group get butchered in front of you by some mongoloid maniac and found your family's corpses in a shack and you're gonna go back for more?! The saying "cut your losses" comes to mind. After some threats of blackmail (and for motives of his own), Rev. Zombie agrees, but ONLY under one, completely fucking random condition...Marybeth brings her uncle! Not thinking twice about this strange request, Marybeth gives Uncle Bob (played by CHILD'S PLAY w/d Tom Holland) a call and Rev. Zombie puts a team of local redneck hunters together to get the mission going . This whole "uncle thing" is a major fucking problem for me. But NO SPOILERS! So...it's back to the swamp we go for another round of bloodshed!

A completely ridiculous and absolutely unnecessary chapter is added to the story of Victor Crowley's past as Rev. Zombie tells us how the half-monster was born to this world.

Expectation will always be a motherfucker. While all of the controversy surrounding this film may help it's DVD sales, I think it will ultimately hurt viewer's opinions. No "R" rating due to extreme scenes of violence...an almost unheard of "UNRATED" theatrical release...pulled from theaters within 3 days...this movie MUST BE SICK AS FUCK!!! Well, not really. While the body count has been tripled, the kills lean more towards over-the-top funny than brutal. We have a 10 ft. chainsaw, a table-top "curb jaw", and the "headless doggie-style" to name a few. There's even an impressive 30 shots to the face scene. But nothing really worthy of all of this hype.

Performance wise, the acting is all over the place. But I guess that's an unavoidable result when you cast the movie without auditions and jam as many horror vets & friends as you possibly can into your movie.

Tony Todd does a great job taking the lead male role. He gives a great over-the-top performance as the full of shit, voodoo priest con-artist. But, he really needs to shave his head.

Danielle Harris is pretty much what you'd expect from her. She has the most "serious" role in this and handles it well despite everything around her being so ridiculous.

Tom Holland is a great director...his portrayal of Uncle Bob...not so great.

The comic relief...it's not that it's "the Uncle that steals your nose" corny, it's just not that funny. Perry Shan returns as his own twin brother and becomes a parody of his own performance from the original. After reading so much about newcomer, Colton Dunn (who Green met playing HALO online) and his "chicken and biscuits and gravy" song, I expected this guy to be hilarious but he delivered one flat-line after another. It's not to say that there is nothing funny in the movie, just not as much as you'd expect from Green's great sense of humor. The A.J. Bowen "Baby Jesus" scene is an instant classic! Bowen (THE SIGNAL & THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL) is gonna be a star.

Due to he fact that I'm a huge Adam Green fan combined with all of the controversy and hype surrounding this film, I wanted and expected to love HATCHET II. It hurts me to say that I didn't. The plot was absurd and the characters were uninteresting. It seemed rushed and uninspired. And while it's still better than most of the other bullshit that's being released nowadays, it's a step back for Green. He is one of the most likable horror personalities out there, a true "fan's filmmaker" and it's impossible not to root for him. And that's what makes it so hard to not be able to gush over this movie!

BOTTOM LINE

HATCHET II proved two things to me...

1. Casting as many well-known horror names into a movie as you can, does not make it a "good" horror movie!

2. A horror character, in this case Victor Crowley, doesn't become "the next horror icon" just because you tell us over and over that he is "the next horror icon".

GET TO THE POINT!! - AUGUST UNDERGROUND'S MORDUM (2003)

2011-02-02T10:58:00.000-05:00

After recently watching/reviewing S&MAN, (an amazing documentary about pseudo-snuff films featuring Fred Vogel of Toe Tag Pictures), my desire to see the notorious MORDUM was reignited. I was never able to get my hands on it so I gave up trying. Well, I got it.

The sequel to Vogel's AUGUST UNDERGROUND, MORDUM is as offensive, vile, repulsive, and tasteless as it claims to be. It has incest, self-mutilation, masturbation, torture, necrophilia, a puke orgy and even a girl sucking on a severed penis...what more could you ask for? I know, I know...you're thinking, "No golden showers? No fecalphilia?"...don't be so fucking needy!

Apparently, at least according to Wikipedia, there's some sort of "plot" in there somewhere but whatever...who cares. This movie is about offending you in every way that they can possibly think of and they pull it off marvelously. I ran through the whole spectrum of reactions - I laughed, I squirmed, I got nauseous...shit, at one point I even wanted to get up and punch somebody in the fucking face! Through the entire movie, I was paranoid that someone would walk in while I was watching it...MORDUM is the type of movie that if everyone that loved you walked in on you watching it, you would most likely die alone.

The "pseudo-snuff" genre is based almost entirely on "outdoing" one another with gore, violence and sadism...the tones of these movies are oppressingly hateful. It's the whole "My sick and twisted movie can beat up your sick and twisted movie" type thing. I am not a big fan of the genre, but I understand it's appeal...sort of. That being said, as far as the "pseudo-snuff" genre goes, this is the "best" one I've seen so far.

NOTE: It may seem I'm being hypocritical when I beat the shit outta SLAUGHTERED VOMIT GIRLS and not this movie, but I'm not. As far as these types of movies go, VOMIT GIRLS just sucked and the director LUCIFER VALENTINE is a douchebag.

Sergio Martino's ALL THE COLORS OF THE DARK (1972)

2011-01-30T20:08:00.000-05:00

If the "big four" Italian Giallo directors were The Beatles, Sergio Martino would undoubtedly be Ringo Starr. While Starr was an important part of the greatest band ever, he was not an essential component and they could have easily existed without him. But I also believe that Ringo was a highly underrated drummer as I believe Martino is as a director. Ringo sang "With A Little Help From My Friends" and wrote "Don't Pass Me By" and Sergio gave us the amazing TORSO and this little mind fuck of film I'm about to get into. So give these guys some fucking respect, will ya?!

ALL THE COLORS OF THE DARK is a sexually charged, psychedelic heart-pounder about a stunningly beautiful girl named Jane.

Jane is having some really fucked up dreams involving a naked afro'd pregnant woman, a crazy blue-eyed bastard with a knife and this thing....

Her boyfriend, Richard, suspects the recent car accident (that resulted in Jane losing her baby) as the reason for these nightmares and suggests that drinking some "blue shit" will help rid her of these night terrors and help her put her mind at ease.

But Richard's "blue shit" doesn't help at all, and now Jane keeps seeing the crazy blue-eyed creeper from her dreams following her everywhere she goes!

Jane's asshole sister, Barbara, demands she go see her employer, Dr. Burton, to help her sort her mind out the "old-fashioned" way. While in therapy, we learn that what's really troubling Jane is unresolved issues regarding the death of her mother from when she was a kid. The good doctor tells her to stop drinking the "blue shit" and just relax, everything will be fine. But as soon as she leaves his office, the blue-eyed creeper is chasing her down the fucking street. Thanks Doc...dick.

Then Jane meets Mary...

...and after a quick chat over "tits & tea"...

...and a nice walk in the park, Mary suggests that what Jane needs to cure what is ailing her is a good ol' Satanic Black Mass! Jane doesn't hesitate, and the next thing you know, she's drinking animal blood and getting raped by this cat...

...in this sick-ass fucking castle!!

Problem solved...well, not really. Soon Jane realizes that Satanic Rituals aren't exactly the best avenue of "alternative medicine" to be taking. Because now she "belongs" to the coven and there is no way for her to escape other than death. As time goes by, Jane begins to completely lose her grip on reality and can't tell what's really happening and what's a dream...and we, as viewers, begin to feel the same sensation. Martino does an amazing job, with camera techniques and crazy editing, of allowing the audience to really experience what Jane is experiencing.

She even starts to become suspicious of the people closest to her as her sanity unravels. It seems that no one can be trusted and nowhere is safe as Jane tries to escape the clutches of the "blue-eyed creeper" and his coven.

With ALL THE COLORS, Martino puts together a truly suspenseful Giallo that has a reputation for having a smart and comprehensible story...something that Giallos are not necessarily known for. And I agree...until I got to the last 10 minutes!! Suddenly, he decides to throw all these fucking ideas at us out of nowhere and it completely lost me. Maybe I'm an idiot!? I really wish that I liked the ending because it's such a good fucking movie. I even rewatched the whole damn thing just to make sure that I really didn't like the ending, but alas, it fucked me up even more the second time around! Very depressing.

In terms of style, Martino definitely has his own "flavor" compared to the other major Giallo directors. His movies are alot more sexual than the others and he relies on the kaleidoscope effect and bizarre fish-eyed close-ups to create a surreal, trippy ass nightmare world. By genre standards, the murder scenes and gore in this film are pretty mild. Something I found interesting was his use of color. Not only the use of "blue" in the water and the creepers eyes, but color in the settings as well. Argento is famous for his brilliant use of color but this movie predates SUSPIRIA by five years and Sergio hits us up with some cool shit like this...

Not to say that Argento (THE MASTER) ripped him off, it's just interesting.

I'll still put ALL THE COLORS OF THE DARK in the top 20 Giallo List for all the good it has to offer, but the unforgivable ending kicked it right outta the top 10.

He may not be up there with Argento, Fulci or Bava...but Sergio Martino is an amazing talent whose movies deserve more recognition than they get and if you haven't seen TORSO...what the fuck are you waiting for?

Here's one of the reasons that I love Giallos...

"Always trust your instincts...OR maybe not!?"

BLOODSUCKING FREAKS (1974) Eli Roth & The Anal Dwarf

2011-01-26T17:11:00.000-05:00

Joel M. Reed's BLOODSUCKING FREAKS, aka THE INCREDIBLE TORTURE SHOW, is the story of a struggling theatre director sacrificing everything in his life so that his artistic voice could be heard. Battling through adversity, everyday is a fight for his future. But with the help of his best friend and leading lady, he finds a way to overcome the obstacles and become the artist (and man) that he knew he could be!

Well......kind of.

It's really the story of Sardu, a Grand Guignol theatre director who, with the help of his midget sidekick Ralphus (played by THE ANAL DWARF star Luis De Jesus), showcases his illustrious talent of torturing and degrading women in every way imaginable. In Sardu's "Theatre Of The Macabre", body parts are decapitated, fingers are "clamped" and skulls are crushed by an iron tourniquet. All a show of course!

While the crowd adores Sardu's display of hilarious degradation, not everyone is a fan...most notably, pretentious NYC theatre critic Creasy Silo. Creasy feels that Sardu's work is a third-rate magic show, no more than revolting trash. He refuses to write a review for it, not wanting to draw ANY attention to it at all, good or bad. But Silo isn't the only hater here...it seems that the "actresses" in his shows aren't big fans of Sardu either. It seems Sardu is involved in a bit of the old "human trafficking" racket and the girls aren't really actresses but kidnapped sex slaves! And the ones he doesn't use as "props" on stage, he uses to fulfill his sadomasochistic fantasies in his basement.

Ralphus hard at work in the warehouse!

Yearning for artistic credibility, respect and fame in the theatre community, Sardu comes up with an idea for a new show combining ballet and sadism. His plan involves a famous local ballerina, Natasha D'Natalie, becoming his main star. The only problem is convincing her to be a part of it. Luckily he's got Ralphus and his dart gun to help him do the convincing.

All they need next is a positive review from a well respected critic like say.....Creasy Silo, and Sardu is on his way to the "big time"!! Kidnapping and torturing ensue as Sardu prepares for the most ambitious production of his career.

But the walls start closing in on him as Natasha's ex-football star boyfriend, Tom, and crooked Detective Tucci are hot on his trail. And as you can tell by the looks on their faces, they're not fuckin' around!!

Will Sardu and Ralphus be able to prepare Natalie in time for opening night, or will his artistic hopes and dreams all come tumbling down?!

BLOODSUCKING FREAKS is a misogynistic, degrading, offensive and vile movie...and I mean that in the best possible way!! While it may show women being delivered like cargo in crates, locked in cages, electrocuted "nipple style", being beheaded and even being used as dinner tables...it's all in good fun!

This isn't like AUGUST UNDERGROUND or any other hateful "pseudo-snuff" film, this is all done with a wink and a smile, for humor's sake. There aren't any chicks vomiting on other chicks to a grindcore soundtrack or any other horseshit like that. And although FREAKS may share the same theme of torture and brutality, that theme is wrapped in a warm blanket of ridiculously over-the-top humor. How can we not laugh at this little midget running around drinking and playing "ass-darts"?!

It's kinda like an intentionally funny WIZARD OF GORE (Herschell Gordon Lewis) with a midget, a dildo and a "dick sandwich"! BLOODSUCKING FREAKS is a gory "low brow" horror classic that definitely isn't for everyone and may offend most women, but it should be seen (at least once) by ALL horror fans!

If you think this movie may be too much for you (or just not your style) but you're a fan of Eli Roth, I highly suggest you see this! Released on DVD in 1998, the audio commentary track is done by, a then unknown, Roth while he was a Troma employee. I didn't understand why they would have a Troma "best boy grip" or "fluffer" or whatever the fuck he was, doing the commentary track!? But then I listened to it and laughed my fucking ass off!! It still amazes me that he went on to become one of the next generation's Masters of Horror!

S&MAN (Sandman)

2011-01-19T21:00:00.002-05:00

Director JT Petty originally set out to make a documentary called THE PEEPING TOM, about a man from his neighborhood who was caught videotaping his fellow neighbors without their knowledge. But when that plan shit the bed, Petty had to move on to "plan B", a documentary on people's fascination with ultra-violent/sexual films and the mystery surrounding "snuff" films.

While examining the medical and psychological aspect of voyeurism and acts of sexual deviance through interviews with doctors and sex experts, Petty interviews filmmakers Fred Vogel of ToeTag Pictures (whose films include MORDUM, AUGUST UNDERGROUND and MASKHEAD)

, a lesser known Bill Zebub (classics such as JESUS CHRIST:SERIAL RAPIST and mom's personal favorite FORGIVE ME FOR RAPING YOU)

and Eric Rost (a series of stalker/murder flicks S&MAN).

After sitting through tales of self-mutilation, spontaneous vomiting, and masturbating to murder, a story within the story begins to emerge and Rost becomes the most interesting out of the three filmmakers. An obvious loner, living in his mom's basement, Rost spends most of the movie trying to persuade Petty into making a documentary based solely on his "S&MAN" series. And after repeated requests by Petty to meet some of the girls Rost has filmed are denied, he starts to insinuate, at first with a wink and a smile, that his whole "stalk em and slice em" thing may not be fiction after all. Real or not, his little flicks are some of the most disturbing things I've seen, mostly because of the footage of him following these unknowing victims through their daily routines and then eventually murdering them. Truly fucking creepy.

I'm not a fan of the types of movies that Petty spotlights in this film. I think it's mostly trashy, bottom-feeding blood-porn...and while it may not seem like a bad combo, it's like mixing wine, whiskey and beer...all I wanna do is puke!

BUT...you don't need to be a fan of this shitty subgenre to be a fan of THIS movie. Petty's S&MAN is a smart and truly disturbing "documentary" that does a great job of examining the urge that people have inside of them to want to watch or create scenes of sadistic, torturous rape and murder. Not only does he do a great job of balancing the expert's opinions with the filmmaker's that he interviews, but he does an even better job of kicking us in the fucking teeth when it's all over!!!

To say anymore would give away too much and wouldn't allow you to experience this amazing movie the way you need to.

So please take my advice and see S&MAN asap. It's currently available on NETFLIX INSTANT. After you watch it, please come back and let me know what you thought!

DEAD & BURIED (1981)

2011-01-18T21:18:00.008-05:00

Co-Written by horror legend Dan O' Bannon (ALIEN & RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD), DEAD & BURIED is the story of Potter's Bluff, a small seashore town where some seriously strange shit is going down.

As the movie opens, we follow a young photographer, taking still life photos along an empty beach. But in a matter of seconds (and I mean seconds!), our boy "Freddy" goes from taking pictures of barnacles and bottles to some hot blonde's "tittaaaays"! Apparently, Freddy must be pullin' bitches like it's his job, cuz he doesn't think anything suspicious at all. But just as quick as "Lisa" is givin him the "nip flash", Freddy is being ambushed by a mob of crazy sailors with gasoline and cameras. How could he have known that his burning corpse would be the last picture his camera would ever take? Poor Freddy...stupid ass.

Speaking of Freddy, this movie features a pre-FREDDY Robert Englund as a pretty irrelevant character...always cool.

Anyways, the other Freddy's body shows up in a burning car and while it looks like an accident, our mopey and insecure Sheriff Gillis knows something isn't right.

Though Freddie has no lips, he miraculously survives and is laid out in the hospital, a nurse (strangely resembling beach slut "Lisa") pays him a visit and takes care of that...

So the sheriff goes to Mr. Dobbs the town mortician (played by Grandpa Joe) for help,

but he's fucking useless as he's a strange bastard obsessed with making the dead bodies look perfect in their caskets and making Charlie burp. Things get even more complicated when Gillis suspects that his wife may have been having an affair with the (now identified as a tourist) corpse. So he's pretty much on his own for this one!

And when more tourists start showing up dead in some suspicious way or another, and "supposed" dead people are pumping gas at the local gas station, Sheriff Gillis knows he's really in trouble. But after he hits a townie with his truck and watches him pull his own severed arm out of his radiator grill and run away...he knows he's FUCKED!!

The sheriff soon gets to the bottom of what has happened to his once quiet and peaceful town and his life(?) will never be the same again!

While DEAD & BURIED is pretty mild in the gore department, it's got incredible atmosphere...sometimes reminiscent of THE FOG. This shot of the "townspeople" is fantastically fucking creepy if you can imagine seeing this in your rear-view mirror coming at you!

DEAD & BURIED is a cool little joint that plays out like an hour and a half version of a TWILIGHT ZONE episode and is highly recommended!

I'm not sure what's better though, the fact that I liked this movie so much or the fact that I mentioned "Grandpa Joe" twice in 2 months on a horror blog!!

"Burp Charlie, Burp!"

BOTTOM LINE -

NIGHT TRAIN MURDERS (1975) - Last House On The OTHER Left

2011-01-09T22:24:00.007-05:00

Aldo Lado's 1975's Italian Exploitation film and Official UK "Video Nasty", NIGHT TRAIN MURDERS owes so much to THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT that it might as well have been called THE LAST HOUSE ON THE OTHER LEFT.
A group of horny, junkie goons humiliate, rape & murder two young girls and in an uncanny twist of fate, wind up in the house of the parents of one of the victims. After discovering the truth, the parents exact their revenge and make the psychos pay. Sounds a little familiar right? So what, it's a great fucking movie!

Margaret and Lisa are two innocent teenage girls who are about to go on Christmas vacation to visit Lisa's parents in Italy. The only brush with the dark side these girls have had is when they stole a couple of packs of cigarettes to smoke on the train ride. Margaret is the "wild" one (since she had sex with some dude named Helmut) and Lisa is, of course, the virgin prude with terrible taste in ties and an odd poster collection...THE GODFATHER next to a poster of horses!? Did she even see THE GODFATHER?! I have a feeling if she really loved horses, she wouldn't be a big fan of Don Corleone!! I'm just sayin. And I think that's a guy making out with a dog next to the window.

Anyways, as our two girls are sneaking cigarettes and giggling about sex, these two clown-ass wanna-be criminals, Blackie (Daniel from Suspiria) and Curly (just Curly), are havin' some fun of their own...mugging a drunk Santa and slashing an old rich bitch's fur coat for starters.

And as these two jerk-offs are doing their thing, this mysterious lady on the train is spilling her bag of big-dicked orgy photos all over the train.

Soon fate will bring all of these people together. After some seriously heated political debating, "mystery lady" (played brilliantly by Helga Ulmann-Profondo Rosso) heads to the bathroom where she is cornered by goon Blackie. While he's expecting to rape her, things take a bit of a turn when he realizes that she's into it! So between the cock pics and now this, we realize that this chick is a fucking freak! Cool.

And then there's Curly. Between this movie and I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE, I'm beginning to wonder if the harmonica is the official instrument of rapists all over the world. What the fuck?!

In the middle of their train ride, a bomb threat forces the girls to switch trains. "Mystery Lady" and her new found goons, Blackie and Curly, also decide to switch to the less crowded train. Not really sure why only these characters were allowed to switch trains, but...whatever!

So aside from this creepy guy..

this transvestite...

and a drunken work crew, the train is empty. This gives our group of thugs the perfect opportunity to have some fun.

I thought for sure, that Blackie was gonna be the instigator of all the violence that was sure to follow, but in a surprise twist, it's actually "mystery lady" that's pullin' the strings here. While she is sexually manipulating Blackie, Curly's heroin problem has him all fucked up and easily agitated, which she exploits to her delight. The torment starts off innocent enough with a little, "you watch him finger bang me" type shit.

But when Curly comes back from shootin' up, something makes him snap and the violence begins to escalate. This doesn't really make sense to me though. Junkies usually snap when they need a fix, not after they just get one.

It seems like they combined two characters into one with Curly. The junkie and the violent guy shouldn't be the same guy! I don't know why they didn't make Blackie the "violent, raper bastard" like Krug in LAST HOUSE and Curly the reluctant "comatose junkie" watching it all go down. The character profiles are confused a bit...or maybe I am.

Anyways, the lights go out and the shit hits the fan. The use of color is great in this sequence and shows that even though the story is a TOTAL ripoff, the visual style is undeniably fantastic and makes for a fair trade off. On the first train, we see the girls laughing, bright sunshine coming through...life is good! On the second train, things don't seem so bright anymore.

In the context of the movie, this shot is so fucking creepy...

Things go from bad to worse to completely fucked and eventually night turns to day. Now it's time for the two groups to go their own ways.

The thugs get off at the station in Italy, while the girls take a more interesting exit off the train. In true LAST HOUSE fashion, the thugs wind up at the parents house and revenge is ready to be served.

The climax of the movie is bit of a let down as it goes out on a whimper. Since we all know how this will end, we can't help but think throughout the movie of how these goons are gonna "get it". When the kills finally come, they are sadly unimpressive and not creative at all. As with any 70's Italian horror/giallo, there are moments of complete absurdity (mostly involving Lisa's dad)...but as far as I'm concerned, they only add to the charm of it all.

There are two major LAST HOUSE ripoffs...CHAOS and this movie. CHAOS (originally slated to be a remake) stole the story and focused entirely on being as shocking and graphic as possible and lacks any originality at all. NIGHT TRAIN, on the other hand, is a perfect blend of brutality and style...Aldo Lado took Wes Craven's gritty, documentary-style film and added style, some amazing cinematography, some Italian horror movie star power and a great score by legendary Ennio Morricone.

How could you pass that up?!

BOTTOM LINE -

Mario Bava's LISA AND THE DEVIL vs THE HOUSE OF EXORCISM

2011-01-04T21:03:00.013-05:00

First, the story behind it all...
In 1972, producer Alfredo Leone hired Mario Bava to direct a film and gave him carte blance. The film that came out of this deal was the highly ambitious, yet flawed LISA AND THE DEVIL. After being a financial flop in Italy and having an extremely hard time finding US distribution, Leone decided he would cash in of the commercial success of THE EXORCIST and re-edit LISA and include a "possession" storyline. This version was released in the U.S. in 1975 under the title THE HOUSE OF EXORCISM. Luckily, the DVD has both versions...so let's do this shit!

LISA AND THE DEVIL starts off as what seems to be another "of all the houses our car breaks down in front of" movie but turns out to be something completely unexpected.

Lisa, a beautiful American tourist (Elke Sommer) in Spain, who after seeing a painting of the Devil, wanders off from her tour group and finds herself lost. A kind stranger (who coincidentally looks like the Devil in the painting) and his mannequin(?!) offer her directions.

Next thing you know, she's picked up by a couple and their chauffeur, the car breaks down and the group finds themselves stranded at a mansion full of crazy-ass secrets and some creepy-ass mannequins!

Telly Savalas appears once again as Leandro, the eccentric butler of the estate belonging to the tough as nails blind Countess (Suspiria's Miss Tanner) and her whining pussy of a son Maximillian.

As the Countess is feeling up Lisa's face, Max is feeling up every other part of her...and next thing you know, people are getting whacked off! Max wants Lisa for himself, Lisa wants Max AND some guy with a moustache who keeps turning into a mannequin, and Leandro just wants to be a creepy motherfucker!

But as the story begins to unfold, we learn that all is not what it seems in this "happy home". Through dream-like flashbacks, we learn of a love affair gone terribly wrong involving a woman who looks just like Lisa named Elena, a man named Carlo and Max (the countess' son). And it's made very clear that Max winds up getting "the fat end of the fuck stick" as Mom used to say.

But things become even more complicated as it becomes hard to tell what's past, present, reality or fantasy. As characters wander through the gorgeous mansion, we see the interior go from stunningly luxurious to completely dilapidated as if no one has lived their for 100 years. Lisa is chased by Carlo, who becomes a mannequin, who becomes Carlo again?!?! A "corpse bride" is laid out in a bed in some sorta fucking jungle room in the middle of the enormous mansion. There is definitely some fucked up shit going on here!

So instead of a tale of a group of stranded victims it appears that, after a second viewing, there is soooo much more going on here than we ever could've imagined! It seems that this story is about an adulterous couple who was murdered, yet their souls escape the hands of the devil. Somehow, their souls are led back to the place of their deaths and the Devil is ready to take what belongs to him. So Telly Savalas is the Devil? Do the creepy mannequins represent souls? Lisa and Carlos are dead the whole time? Did Miss Tanner have buck teeth is SUSPIRIA?!

LISA AND THE DEVIL is an interesting mess. The idea is fantastic but the execution is the weakest of the Bava movies I've seen. A few too many characters in the beginning throw the plot off course and get it all fucking confused. There's not a crazy amount of violence but there is an amazing "man run over by car" scene that makes up for it. Not one of his best, but Bava's style, humor and some interesting characters definitely make this movie worth watching. I found that as I was writing this post, I began to realize that I liked it more than I originally thought!

"3 times the charm!!"-

THE HOUSE OF EXORCISM, on the other hand, is nothing but Alfredo Leone wiping his ass with Bava's movie. A sell-out exploitation of THE EXORCISM craze, Leone re-edited LISA and inserted scenes of Lisa being possessed by the devil. So now we have her spitting up green shit and even fucking with the priest's guilty conscience. Except this time, it's an ex-girlfriend he watched die and not his mother that he neglected. When Lisa talks in the growling demon voice, she talks from the point of view of herself, not from the demon that is possessing her, makes no fucking sense?! Next thing, she's puking up toads and talking about horse cocks!

Now, I've never been one to frown upon a good "horse cock" mention, but this is so ridiculously forced, it's unbearable to watch. This shit has NOTHING to do with the original movie and is a total kick in the balls to Bava. He even re-edited the opening music from this cool jazzy number to some PSYCHO ripoff frantic violin shit. Absolutely shameless shit! On a less violating note, there's an added scene of a shopkeeper and what's supposed to be the back of Telly Savalas' head, but it's obviously a "head double"...hilarious and so terrible at the same time!

So, while LISA AND THE DEVIL is by no means Mario Bava's masterpiece, it definitely didn't deserve to be completely raped and mutilated like it was by Leone and his greedy ass! He should recite one of his own lines that he wrote for the "possessed" Lisa in THE HOUSE OF EXORCISM..."I am the asshole of the world!".

CEMETERY MAN (1994) - MY Catcher In The Rye

2010-12-30T22:35:00.002-05:00

Directed by Argento understudy Michele Soavi and based on the novel DELLAMORTE DELLAMORE (by DYLAN DOG writer Tiziano Sclavi), CEMETARY MAN is the story of Francesco Dellamorte (Rupert Everett), caretaker of the Buffalora Cemetary. Dellamorte is a young man made miserable by being in the constant company of death. Aside from his assistant Gnagi, an oafish imbecile of a man whose only words are "n'ya" along with some whimpering, and his "phonebook friend" Franco, Francesco doesn't have much happening in terms of human interaction. Unless you consider the corpses rising out of their graves all around him! It seems that the bodies buried in Buffalora are rising from the dead on the 7th night after their death. "Returners" as he calls them. So armed with his pistol and Gnagi's shovel, they do what must be done to put the dead back in their holes. This simply becomes part of his "job". Out of fear of losing his job and home, he keeps this a secret from town officials...this is all he has and he's not even sure if life even exists outside of the cemetery gates.

"At a certain point in life, you realize you know more dead people than living." - Dellamorte

So he carries on with his grim existence only to be rescued from his misery by a young grieving widow only known as "She" (gorgeous Anna Falchi)...the most beautiful woman he has ever seen. After giving her the grand tour of his ossuary, an underground skeleton pit, she can't help but throw herself at him! Really, what beautiful young girl ISN'T brought to her melting knees by the sight and smell of human remains?

So one thing leads to another and they find themselves making love right on top of her dead husband's grave.

Of course, this doesn't sit well with her rotting corpse of a husband and he does what any betrayed husband would do...claws his way outta his grave and kills her. So now, for Dellamorte, it's back to black as they say. Loneliness and misery awaits.

"I'd give my life to be dead"-Dellamorte

Luckily, he's got a pile of dead bodies to keep his mind busy. A bus full of boyscouts collides with local stud Claudio's motorcycle gang and everyone is killed...including the mayor's daughter, Valentina, with whom Gnagi has a puke-inducing crush on. At the funeral, we hear a gut-wrenching rendition of the funeral classic, "Never should have gone to the boyscout picnic, never should have left my room." So now he's got a cemetery full of walking dead boyscouts, bikers and a nun (who meets a lovely face-smashing end).

So, as Gnagi begins his love affair with the head of Valentina's corpse, Dellamorte begins to really unravel when "She" returns from the grave and he realizes that HE is the one who's responsible for her death. The only woman he ever loved. He cannot tell the difference between the dead and the living anymore and after taking some bad advice from The Grim Reaper himself, decides it's time to go on a mission...kill the living instead of the dead. But time is running out as dip-shit cop (Mickey Knox) is catching on to his crimes...or he is? I mean, he really is a dip-shit! Prostitutes, space heaters and a hilarious hospital scene all lead up to Dellamorte making a startling discovery about life.

I first saw this in '96 when it was released on VHS. I had graduated from high school a few years earlier and was wondering what the fuck I was gonna do with my life. CEMETERY MAN is the story of a young, cynical man struggling to find a connection with the world. A man on a journey to find the meaning of life, wondering if there even is one at all... and I connected with it immediately. While everyone else had CATCHER IN THE RYE, I had CEMETERY MAN! But aside from all of that, there are sooooo many things to love about this movie!

The characters and the casting are absolutely perfect. Rupert Everett as Dellamorte...a dismal, brooding, impodent(?), miserable bastard. This is not the "Julia Roberts Rupert" that America knows...brilliant work! The spaghetti and bananas loving Gnagi, played by Francois Hadji Lazaro, is a fantastic side kick. Since he doesn't really "speak" through the whole movie, he relies on his facial expressions and body language and does an amazing job. Gnagi's last shot in the movie is priceless. Mickey Knox as the clueless cop is spot-fucking-on...I laugh out loud every time I watch this because of him! And Anna Falchi x 3...do I really need to explain?

Filled with terrific violence, tons of laughs, and an endless supply of amazing quotes, CEMETERY MAN is a movie like no other. And while it may not inspire you to go forth on your journey through life, I hope the pure "amazing-ness" of it will at least make you shit your pants in excitement.

GET TO THE POINT!! -SLAUGHTERED VOMIT DOLLS (2006)

2010-12-29T18:23:00.015-05:00

"GET TO THE POINT!!" -no nonsense, no babblin'...straight to the point.

This "movie" is a complete and utter pile of shit. Disgusting junkie pigs (or girls depending on how you look at it) puking, screwing and passing out on toilets only made worse by annoyingly, incomprehensible slowed down dialogue. It's one of the few movies I rented that I turned off before it was over. Not because I was offended or shocked...I've seen all types of sick shit. It didn't make me wanna vomit or even make me laugh at it's ridiculousness! I turned it off because it SUCKED!!! It made me bored, annoyed, and mad that I wasted a Netflix movie on this! I still can't believe Netflix even has this!?

Now, I'm a huge fan of all arts & always keep an open mind. Respect for artists shouldn't be solely based on whether or not you like their particular "work", but on the fact that they are sharing a part of themselves with us and are contributing to a very important part of our culture. But since this is NOT ART, I can easily say that I have no respect for the guy who put this uninspired bag of shit together.

If you wanna see just how big of a douche-bag the director Lucifer Valentine (ewwww, how clever!) really is, check question #2-

"Although the extremely grisly murder scenes..." on this link...

No Talent Ass Clown

In reality, I'm a probably a dick for even writing about this garbage at all!
Have YOU seen this?

Mario Bava's SHOCK (1977) - aka BEYOND THE DOOR PT.II, aka NOT REALLY BEYOND THE DOOR PT.II

2010-12-27T20:37:00.000-05:00

SHOCK, aka BEYOND THE DOOR II, is NOT the sequel to Ovidio Assonitis' 1974 BEYOND THE DOOR, but IS the last movie that Italian horror legend Mario Bava directed before he passed away in 1980. While it may not rank high on most people's list of Bava's best work, it has a certain charm that can't be denied. Since I am more of a Fulci & Argento guy, and still discovering his work, I am not held down by any prejudices or high expectations when it comes to Bava's films. But, I did know that he co-directed it with his son Lamberto and was co-written by Dardano Sacchetti (a long-time writer for Fulci), so I knew SHOCK would have a different tone than Bava's other movies. I love Italian horror movies and all I was hoping for was what I would expect in all good ones...blood, bad acting, terrible dubs, great music and an "all-over-the-place" plot. I am happy to say, I got it all with SHOCK!

Seven years after her junkie husband commits suicide, Dora (Argento-girl Daria Nicolodi) moves back into the house where the horrific incident took place, with her son Marco and her new husband Bruno. Now I'm no master of 'feng shui', but this can't be a good fucking idea! But anyways, they move in and everything starts off lovely. First, Bruno puts up a tree-swing for the whole family to enjoy. Then, Dora finds this awesome hand statue in the couch cushions...

...which is a good thing, cuz a few hours later, Bruno's bangin her on said couch and no one wants a giant hand statue accidentally jammed up their ass! Well, I shouldn't say no one. Unfortunately, young Marco doesn't enjoy his new dad bangin his mom as much as he enjoyed the tree swing. He hears them from his bedroom and begins to chant like a boy possessed, "Pigs! Pigs! Pigs!".

At this point we begin to wonder if he is just a child acting out, unable to understand the death of his father, unable to accept his mother's new husband and their relationship...or is there something more sinister at work here. But after declaring, "Mama, I have to kill you.", it becomes pretty clear that this kid is really fucked up! And when Marco peeps in on his mother taking a shower and then steals her panties from her drawer, we're either on some Lil' Ted Bundy shit or he is obviously possessed by his dead father's evil spirit!

So while Marco is spiraling out of control, Dora, a former mental patient/shock treatment recipient, is having some mental problems of her own! Psychotic dreams & hallucinations of corpse hands, bleeding walls, laughing pianos (think Evil Dead), heroin needles, and floating box-cutters have her questioning her sanity and whether or not the house itself is haunted.

After finding her torn up panties in his dresser, putting her own issues aside, Dora decides it's time to take Marco to the doctor. After thoroughly examining THIS drawing...

...the doctor decides that any artist responsible for this "beautiful tree, merry and laden with fruit" is obviously sane and puts the blame on Dora and her past mental problems. Apparently our good doctor didn't see THIS drawing...

So, is Marco possessed by the evil spirit of his dead father or has Dora's guilty past come back to haunt her and drive her out of her fucking mind? Or...BOTH? Personally, I blame it all on Marco's Michael Jackson doll!!

The only real "problems" with SHOCK are exactly the things that I like about it...it's all over the fucking place! So many ideas are thrown at us that the movie gets a bit schizophrenic. Is it a ghost story? An evil kid flick? A psychotic hallucination trip? Well, I guess it's all of these, and that's alright with me. Also, some things are introduced for no reason at all. The whole "white hand statue" thing...it seemed to be so important in the beginning, but never really turned out to be anything at all?! Or was it a statue of Michael Jackson's white glove? Hmmmmm. Another thing is how Marco gains psychic powers! I've seen the "possessed" fling shit across a room or knock people on their ass with their mind, but not attempt to crash a plane that's hundreds of miles away with some "tree-swing voodoo doll"!?

The score is by could-be Goblin cover band 'I Libra' and it's amazing! Not only do you get your Goblinesque "psycho-jazz", sickass bass-slidin' jams, but you get one of the creepiest and under-appreciated horror movie piano themes EVER!!

While SHOCK can't even come close to classic BAVA films like BLACK SUNDAY or TWITCH OF THE DEATH NERVE, it is fun and has some really great moments. If you like Italian horror movies it definitely deserves your attention.

Brutally Violent & Wonderful

Tobe Hooper's EATEN ALIVE (1977) - A Nasty Little Bastard

THE THING (2011) A Remake, A Premake, A Whateverthefuck

AMER (2009) - It's Not What You Think It Is...It's BETTER!

MULBERRY STREET - The Start Of Something Great?

Judson Scott's T IS FOR TWIG: The Best 5 Minutes Of My Week

RAMMBOCK: BERLIN UNDEAD - It Is What It Is

SUCKER PUNCH - Zack Snyder...RESPECT!!

GET TO THE POINT!! - Trolls, Devils, Wookies & Leguizamos!

MAKE-OUT WITH VIOLENCE (2008) - Festival Hype Is Bringin' Me Down

MOVIE REVIEW: THE TAINT - Rock Out With Your Cock Out!

DRIVE ANGRY 3D - Haters Gonna Hate

SICK AND TIRED - Some Random Shit

RED, WHITE & BLUE - Baseball, Apple Pie & REVENGE

UK VIDEO NASTY: CANNIBAL TERROR (1981) Worst...Casting...EVER!!

UK VIDEO NASTY- CONTAMINATION: I Need To Buy A Dictionary

GET TO THE POINT: INSIDIOUS - Am I The Only One?!

in·sid·i·ous

UK VIDEO NASTY - MADHOUSE aka THERE WAS A LITTLE GIRL (1981)

CINEMATIC ALPHABET: All The Kids Are Doin' It

UK VIDEO NASTY - THE MOUNTAIN OF THE CANNIBAL GOD (1978)

FMWL's MARCH MIDNIGHT MADNESS TOURNAMENT - RND 3

GET TO THE POINT!! - HIGH LANE (aka VERTIGE)

HARPOON: REYKJAVIK WHALE WATCHING MASSACRE (2009)

FMWL's MARCH MIDNIGHT MADNESS TOURNAMENT - RND 2

FMWL's MARCH MIDNIGHT MADNESS TOURNAMENT

Dario Argento's PHENOMENA - Heavy Metal: I Love You, I Hate You

DELIRIUM: PHOTOS OF GIOIA (1987) by Lamberto Bava

UK VIDEO NASTY - THE MAN FROM DEEP RIVER (1972)

ZOMBIES! AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF THE UNDEAD by Jovanka Vuckovic

BLOOD AND ROSES (1960) - Family Reunions Will Never Be The Same

UK VIDEO NASTY - VISITING HOURS (1982)

UK VIDEO NASTY - CANNIBAL MAN (1973) All Man, No Cannibal

UK VIDEO NASTY - FIGHT FOR YOUR LIFE (1977)

LET'S SCARE JESSICA TO DEATH (1971) - Damn Girl, Why You Trippin?!

UK VIDEO NASTY - DON'T GO NEAR THE PARK (1981)

UK VIDEO NASTY - Jess Franco's BLOODY MOON (1981)

AXE aka LISA, LISA (1977) - UK Video Nasty

I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE (2010) - I'm Gettin Tired Of Shootin Squirrels

HATCHET 2 - How I Fell Out Of Love With A Swamp Lurking Mongoloid

GET TO THE POINT!! - AUGUST UNDERGROUND'S MORDUM (2003)

Sergio Martino's ALL THE COLORS OF THE DARK (1972)

BLOODSUCKING FREAKS (1974) Eli Roth & The Anal Dwarf

S&MAN (Sandman)

DEAD & BURIED (1981)

NIGHT TRAIN MURDERS (1975) - Last House On The OTHER Left

Mario Bava's LISA AND THE DEVIL vs THE HOUSE OF EXORCISM

CEMETERY MAN (1994) - MY Catcher In The Rye

GET TO THE POINT!! -SLAUGHTERED VOMIT DOLLS (2006)

Mario Bava's SHOCK (1977) - aka BEYOND THE DOOR PT.II, aka NOT REALLY BEYOND THE DOOR PT.II