Grimly Fiendish

Anyone have a copy of this?

2011-01-20T20:14:00.001-08:00

I've been looking for this for ages now, and I'm so desperate that I'm actually asking the blogger community for help. PLEASE, if anyone can make me a copy of this...!

Hitcher In The Dark

2010-09-30T14:32:00.000-07:00

Umberto Lenzi directed this late 80’s slasher/giallo using American production values and actors. The story involves a young good-looking psycho killer named Mark (played by Joe Balogh) who has some serious abandonment issues and goes around in a mobile home picking up hitch-hiking girls and murdering them without any remorse. Going around, doing his thing, he falls for a young blonde named Daniela (Josie Bissett from Melrose Place) who just had a fight with her boyfriend, Kevin (Jason Saucier). At first they look like they might hit it off, but soon Mark shows his true colors, and Daniela is forced to use her body, and her brains, to fight off this psycho killer who has just become infatuated with her.

Lenzi is on top of his game here, being able to create a movie that doesn’t feel cheezy at all (the way that Nightmare City and Cannibal Ferox feel) and goes back to his giallo days when he made films like Orgasmo and Seven Blood-Stained Orchids. You can see he had a nice budget to work with as well. His two leads are pretty damn good as well, with Joe Balogh being able to sell me well with his rich, good-looking playboy half and also with his psychotic mommy-loving serial killer side. He’s the original Patrick Bateman! Josie Bissett is also great here, being able to have a lot of beauty and smarts, and her actions and emotions feeling very realistically. I really felt for her predicament, man! She’s beautiful too and when she shows off that movie-star body, I sure as hell take notice.
Sadly the ending sucks. After a great reveal featuring his wealthy lifestyle, a *SPOILER ALERT* main character comes back from the dead and takes care of the killer. It’s sloppy and ridiculous, and takes away from the power of the original true ending. In the movie’s extras, Lenzi discusses how this could have been his masterpiece, and I believe him, until the producers decided to tack on that obligatory happy ending. When will the money-men ever learn?

All in all, this is a really damn good exploitation thriller, with some genuine thrills and solid scares, and it’s nice share of gore and nudity to please exploitation fans.

The Devil's Wedding Night

2010-09-30T14:27:00.000-07:00

Mark Damon (who was in a bunch of spaghetti westerns) plays an 18th century scholar who believes he's found the ring of the Nibelungen, probably named after the Wagner opera, which holds great power, conveniently located at Castle Dracula. His gambling twin brother takes off before him, and naturally finds a countess who invites him to dine. Later that night, the more scholarly of the brothers arrives. Coincidently, it's the Night of the Virgin Moon, a night that falls every fifty years and draws five virgins from the surrounding village to the castle not be heard from again. Our hero sets out to protect his brother, find the ring, and rescue any of the women, who naturally disrobe for the festivities.I don’t know what can say about this movie, since everything you would like to know about it is right there on the small synopsis. It’s your typical European gothic horror movie trying to cash in on the Hammer horror craze, which was also going down by this time. It’s a very old-fashioned scarefest that also happens to have it’s fair share of horror and sex. The performances are rather ho-hum, although I have to give a lot of love to Rosalba Neri, the most perverted and brave actress of the European horror scene during the early 70’s. In movies like this one, Lady Frankenstein and Slaughter Hotel (where we get to see her masturbate full-frontal, yay!), Neri goes completely for the gold, giving an uninhibited sexual performance that makes the hairs of any men and women stand up in admiration.
Other than the sex, I really liked the gothic atmosphere in the film. But other than these two things, there’s not much to recommend here. It comes and goes, just like taking a dump. You live it while you drop it, but after that, you just flush it down the toilet.

Doctor Mordrid

2010-09-30T14:22:00.000-07:00

One of my best friends, Eugene, is a complete Full Moon nut. He keeps recommending me movie after movie from this infamous low-budget studio, but I have to admit I have only seen a handful, my favorites being the original Puppet Master and their version of Poe’s Pit & The Pendulum, which is one of the greatest horror movies from the 90’s. One of the movies he kept recommending me was Dr. Mordrid, which is more of a fantasy/superhero film. I’m not much into fantasy movies but I do like superheroes, so I decided to give it a shot.

The story deals with a sorcerer, Dr. Mordrid, played by Jeffrey Combs of Re-Animator fame. He has been waiting for centuries for the return of an evil sorcerer named Kabal (played by the guy who played Shao Kahn in the Mortal Kombat sequel). With the help of a spunky policewoman, he tries to destroy the evil force, even though he seems to be getting more flack from the police than help. Kabal associates himself with cheesy Satanists and the culminating battle in the museum is something that must be seen to be believed, as dinosaur bones come to life and fight to the death.It’s hard not to like this movie, even if it is flawed. The best part of the movie are the acting and the effects. Jeffrey Combs and Brian Thompson are great, being able to make us believe there is truly an age-old rivalry between them, and their individual scenes are just excellent. I’m amazed how serious they are with their roles, considering how silly the script is. The end sequence with the dinosaurs fighting is excellent. Nothing beats old school stop-motion animation, man! Sadly, the screenplay is very clichéd and by the numbers, and there aren’t really any surprises here. I also found it weird that the movie doesn’t seem to know what tone to go for. It could have easily been made into a superhero/fantasy family film, but for some reason Charles Band decided to add a nude sequence with one of the Satanists. It’s weird, and completely out of context with the rest of the movie. Still, like I said, it’s hard not to like it. It’s like junk food, or The Lost Boys: they’re not great, but they’re fun, and you have to discover them for yourself.
A little bit of trivia for you: the movie was originally meant to be a Dr. Strange adaptation. Yep, the Marvel Dr. Strange. But Full Moon lost the rights, but they decided to go ahead anyway, with a few changes, of course.

Der Todesking

2010-09-30T14:13:00.000-07:00

Jorg Buttgereit’s horror films are something of an arthouse mutant. Sure, they have a lot of grotesque elements, from serial killers to necrophilia, but they do have a sensitivity and style that is more akin to Ingmar Bergman than to George Romero. His two Nekromantic films are masterpieces in my book, so I was anxiously awaiting to get to see this, his sophomore effort after the original Nekromantic.
The story is that similar to an omnibus, or many stories in one film. It deals with a chain-letter about Der Todesking, or the King Of Death. Everyone who reads it and responds it, goes on and commits some sort of murder/suicide. And sadly, for the most part, this movie bored the hell out of me. A lot of the stories just drag on and on, particularly the first one about the fish lover, and the guy who rents the Nazi exploitation movie. The last one however was the worst, with the bad actor repeatedly slamming his head against the wall until he gets brain damage. For stories so short, they just didn’t move quick enough.
There are some things that I liked, however. I thought the Wednesday story, about a man who meets a woman in the park during a rainy day and explains how he murdered his wife, is pretty damn interesting, mainly because of the intense performance of the lead actor. Sadly, I wish I could have actually seen the story instead of just hearing it from the mouth of the actor. However, my favorite story by far is the one featuring the psychotic, murderous camerawoman. She sticks a camera to a steadycam strapped to her body and goes on a killing spree in a rock concert. Hell, I could watch a whole movie about this character.
Another interesting aspect of the film are the sequences with the rotting corpse that pop up in between the stories. It looks like a real corpse decomposing. I’m pretty sure they used a latex dummy full of real meat inside and just let it rot, but the effect is amazing.
So I wouldn’t say this is a great movie, nor is it one of Buttgereit’s best, but it does have it’s interesting moments nonetheless.

Adventureland

2010-09-30T14:09:00.000-07:00

From the moment I heard the opening sequence with The Replacement’s Bastards Of Young playing, I knew that I would love this movie. Greg Mottola made one of my favorite teen comedies a few years ago with the great Superbad, so I was really pumped to see his follow up film.

The story deals with a young man named James (Jesse Eisenberg), who has just graduated college and wants to go to New York. Sadly, his parents are strapped for cash, so his dreams of visiting the big apple are cut shorts and he is forced to work at Adventureland, a theme park where he’s forced to work on the ‘games’, which is as miserable as it gets. Here, he makes new friends and goes through great experiences, including finding a new love with a pretty but troubled rocker girl (played by Kristin Stewart).

The main strength of the film is in it’s writing and it’s acting, which is not surprising since this is, in it’s heart, a romantic comedy. But to me, this was so much more. You see, I also remember my lives in shitty jobs, particularly my many years at the airport, and having to go through much of what the character experienced. Hell I even met my first girlfriend while working at the airport. So this movie definitely spoke more to me than it would to most others. Jesse Eisenberg does a great job, even if he is basically playing the same character he plays in every single movie he’s ever been (similar to Michael Cera). He’s very believable and funny, and realistic without being extremely on-the-nose. I also loved Kristen Stewart. Stewart gets a lot of flack since she got into the Twilight series (and with good reason, they’re terrible), but he does a great job here, playing a very flawed and emotional character and being able to handle it like a trooper. How can you not fall in love with a girl who listens to Husker Du? Come on! Husker Du, dudes! We also get really good supporting performances by Bill Hader as the nutty boss and Ryan Reynolds as the cool, sensitive rocker guy who likes to sleep around. And props go to Margarita Levieva as Lisa P, the perfect whorish 80’s chick.
There’s not much else I can say about this film, I just really loved it and related to it’s story in ways that I’m sure many people won’t. It’s funny and it’s romantic, and it’s one of my favorite films of the last 10 years. No kidding.

The Collector

2010-09-30T14:02:00.001-07:00

A lot of my friends had recommended me to watch The Collector, a 2009 film by the writers of the last few Saw sequels. And to think, I first thought they were talking about a remake of the 1960’s Terence Stamp psycho-thriller (so you can tell how much of a lifeless nerd I am). The fact that it was made by the same people who made the last Saw sequels didn’t help much either, as I saw part IV and didn’t like shit about it and haven’t seen any since. But after all the discussion, I finally decided to give in like the wimp that I am and gave it a watch.
The story is simple enough. It deals with an ex-con who is desperate for money to help pay his ex-wife’s debts. Arkin (Josh Stewart), our ex-con, decides to rob the high-tech security house of his current employer, who he thinks is out on a vacation with his family. But when he gets there, Arkin discovers that the house has been targeted by another criminal, a psychotic serial killer known as The Collector (Juan Fernandez) who has set up the house full of deadly traps. Now it’s up to Arkin to try and save himself, and the captured family, from this particularly nasty serial killer.
For the first half-hour of this movie, I was nearly moved to tears. The movie was plagued by the problem of Mtv video editing, full of the quick cuts and montages that plague most modern horror films today (the Saw series in particular). I was almost desperate, even considering shutting the movie off. But then, something happened. We get to the house and we meet our serial killer, and then the movie turns a complete 180.

The character of The Collector is simply the greatest, and most interesting horror movie monster since Tony Todd scared the beejezus out of me in the original Candyman. Every time he’s on-screen, he owns the movie. His look, his body language, his androgynous physique which makes him look both like a man and a woman, and his dark, amphibious eyes. You could see his mind ticking, and he’s quite a frightening character. Few slasher killers are this interesting.
Then there’s the traps. The movie is full of them, and I’m not surprised since the film is so linked to the Saw series. However, the traps here, to me, are much more grotesque and frightening than anything Jigsaw ever constructed. A particularly nasty moment with a needle on the phone made me cringe. I don’t want to give anything away, but they are very bloody and gory. And thank you, filmmakers, for giving me a nice piece of gratuitous t&a thanks to the beautiful breasts of Madeline Zima (Californication). Gratuitous nudity is something that is sorely missed in horror movies today.
So to finish, I highly recommend this film. The first half hour is pretty boring, but once the horror starts, the movie becomes a tour-de-force slasher film with tons of suspense, gore, tits, and a serial killer that will give anyone the willies. Go check it out!

The Expendables

2010-09-30T13:57:00.000-07:00

A group of kick-ass mercenaries stand together and pull off their fair share of suicide missions in order to take care of some pretty ugly baddies. These mercenaries are The Expendables, and they just got themselves a new mission: taking out an evil dictator in an island in the Caribbean that are being manipulated by a tyrannical American businessman (played by Eric Roberts). Only strength, bullets and testosterone can take care of this.

I’ve been waiting the longest time for this. I had become a big fan of Stallone once again after seeing the double-punch of greatness known as Rambo and Rocky Balboa, and I was ready for more. What I got was a movie that not only put him back on the top of the action world, but one where he shared the spotlight with other kick-ass action superheroes, past and modern. Jason Stratham, Jet Li, Randy Couture, Terry Crews, Dolph Lundgren and Mickey Rourke play the good guys, with bad guys being composed of Eric Roberts, Steve Austin and Gary Daniels (yes, THAT Gary Daniels, Fist Of The North Star Gary Daniels!).

Anyway, enough of my own dorky fanboy-ness. Is the movie any good? Well, it is actually. The script is pretty tight for an action movie. It follows the typical 10-minute beat, which means it has a kick-ass action scene every 10 minutes, with the last half hour being a non-stop action sequence. And it’s in the action sequences that the movie gets damn good. We have some epic match-ups over here, dudes. Jet Li vs. Dolph Lundgren, Steve Austin vs. Silvester Stallone, Randy Couture vs. Steve Austin, really awesome shit.

Sadly, there were some flaws. For the most part, the performances were damn good. Stallone, Dolph Lundgren and Jason Stratham were excellent, but the movie clearly belongs to Eric Roberts and Mickey Rourke. Roberts plays an excellent cheesy bad guy, while Rourke is just a cool guy with a great emotional moment that will remind everyone of his best moments in The Wrestler. Sadly the rest of the cast are basically glorified cameos, even with the two female performers. And while it was nice to see Willis and Schwarzenegger, it was basically just a throwaway scene. There are also some scenes that could have easily been a part of another movie, that had nothing to do with the film itself, main one being the sequence where Jason goes after the guy who beat up his girlfriend. This scene adds nothing to the story and could have easily been a part of a Transporter sequel. There’s also a lot of CGI gore, and CGI gore always sucks.

Even with it’s flaws, this movie is exactly what it’s trying to be, a very entertaining, explosive action film, a thrill ride that everyone with a sweet taste for shit blowing up will enjoy to the hilt. Go check it out.

Best Worst Movie

2010-09-29T20:08:00.000-07:00

Movies are quite odd sometimes. There are movies that are given all the care in the world, all the world in the world, have the biggest budgets and the greatest talents, both in front and behind the camera, and never get any sort of recognition that they deserve. Kick-Ass comes to mind. Then there are those weird films that are just bad on every sort of artistic and technical level, yet are still able to make an impression and reach an audience that the people involved never dreamed of reaching. Plan 9 From Outer Space, Manos the Hands of Fate, Robot Monster, The Room, all these movies fall under this category. And so does Troll 2.

Now, I have previously reviewed Troll 2, and called it for what it was: bad, but entertaining. But it turns out there is quite a love affair for Troll 2 out there, and this documentary is made to document such a phenomenon. It was directed by Michael Stephenson, who also played the lead role of the boy who wants to save his family from a town of vegetarian troll monsters. The documentary centers on actor/dentist George Hardy, and their search for what happened to everyone involved in the production.
George Hardy is quite a guy. He’s friendly as hell and funny, and seems to be enjoying the fuck out of his sudden fame. We see him having a blast in the screenings, recreating the scenes with the other actors, and freaking out at the people who go to horror conventions. It’s also fun to see Claudio Fergasso, who directed Troll 2 (and is more famous for all his remakesploitation films he made with Bruno Mattei). He believes he made a truthful piece of Americana/rural gothic, which talks about the problems American families face. It’s interesting, if a little hilarious, to see someone talk about such a bad movie in such high regard, but you got to respect such a conviction from a man like this.

The movie does have it’s downer moments, though. Mainly the scenes involving actress Margo Pray, who played the mother. She has become a total shut-in who takes care of her mother. Seeing her in her botox-covered glory really bummed me out. There’s also Robert Ormsby, who played Grampa Seth, talking about how much he wasted his life.
Still, this is quite a great documentary. It’s informative, hilarious and entertaining as hell, and gives you both an entrance into the world of misfit filmmakers, and the misfits who love their movies. I wish every bad movie had a documentary like this.

Coming Back Soon

2010-08-10T00:20:00.001-07:00

Man, it's been a long time since I had regular reviews in here. When I started this blog, I used to put up about 9 reviews every two or three days! Damn, I had a lot of time to watch movies. Well that all changed, for better or for worse, since I've been finishing my first full-lenght film, Bloodlust, and now I'm getting my old full-time job back (I've been unemployed since 2008). I'm hoping to start work on my second film by the end of the year, Snuffed, a film about snuff films that's actually a full-lenght remake of one of my earliest shorts.

But soon I'll get back to my reviewing mode, simply because I really love doing reviews. So to anyone who cares, there you go.

S&M, Kink and Surreal Goofyness: The Cin(Sin)Ema of Matthew Saliba

2010-06-18T19:40:00.000-07:00

I first heard of Mr. Saliba while looking at the Severed Cinema website, and reading these reviews of a couple of short films by some canadian guy. I was captivated right away, in part by the beautiful lighting and composition in the photos, and because they were done in photographic stills instead of the usual film/digital way, similar to Chris Marker’s classic La Jette. But most of all, I was captivated by the beautiful nude ladies. That was it, I had to watch them. I tried looking for these shorts but didn’t have much luck, so I decided to just contact the filmmaker point blank, to see if he could offer me his films in exchange for a review on this blog nobody watches. Curiously enough, he said yes. Since then I’ve been able to have small conversation with Matthew, and have noticed he’s a guy that takes his work seriously, but not himself, which is a good trait in a filmmaker (so many of us have such fragile egos).

So I got the package in the mail last Friday with five films by Mr. Saliba (which means drool in Spanish, btw) and started giving them a watch. First, we have two early short films, The Manipulator And The Subservient and Pandora’s Paradox. They were both shot in a familiar manner, and have a very ‘film school’ vibe to them, which isn’t a bad thing. The problem with these two shorts is that we can see a filmmaker trying to find his own style, but not getting there yet. On the plus side, the acting is pretty damn good, frenetic and energetic as the story dictates. Pandora’s Paradox goes for a surreal David Lynch vibe that I can kind of understand, but for the life of me, I couldn’t stop laughing. I found the movie to be a surreal black comedy, and I hope this was Saliba’s intentions. From the woman giving birth to the giant toe, to the crazy S&M between the parents and the goofy-looking doctor, I couldn’t stop giggles.
After these two shorts came She Was Asking For It, and boy, here we really started cooking. The story involves a man who is raped and abused by a duo of women, so he decides to take revenge against them with a giant dildo. This is where Saliba’s photographic style began, at least based on the films I received. Saliba is style and substance, as he is able to show in a short film what a lot of people wish they could achieve in feature length films. The colors are vivid, with many gels and surreal tones adding to the dark images. Not only do they reflect the darkness of the story but o f the psychology and revenge of the characters. Many people would probably think ‘Argento’ first, but I have to say that he reminds me more of another giallo filmmaker, Sergio Martino, particularly All The Colors Of The Dark. The only flaw in the film, for me, is the music. Most of it comes from the Lost Highway soundtrack and it’s more distracting than mood-enhancing. Still, this is a great short film.
Even better than She Was Asking For It, was his second short in the photographic style, known as Vampyros Lesbos. Now, before you hit the brakes, yes, I know that this is the title of a Jess Franco film. My favorite Franco film, personally. It doesn’t surprise me that Saliba would do his own re-envisioning of Franco’s work, as both filmmakers share similar themes, particularly the stuff Jess made in the late 60’s/early 70’s (Venus in Furs, Succubus). The story deals with a female vampire who seduces Saliba’s girlfriend and steals her for himself, so Saliba decides “I’m staking these bitches”.

This is the best of Saliba’s films. It takes the promise of She Was Asking For It and takes it to the higher level. Not only is the story better and more complex, but so is the style. You see, as much as I liked She Was Asking For It, the way it was made makes it very self-aware. Here, the style isn’t as noticeable and blends better to make the story easier to follow. There’s also a ton of nudity in this film. As beautiful as the homicidal and vampiric as Isabelle Stephen and Kitty Daly are in their roles, my favorite has to be Kayden Rose as Morpho. I wish the Morpho in the Franco films was as beautiful as the one here.
Matthew has said in many of his interviews that his movies are mostly about creating a mix between horror and sadomasochism, a sexual lifestyle that I must admit that I take no part in. Not my thing. But Saliba’s films have to be applauded for making their approaches to sadomasochism in a very realistic and truthful way (before the murders happen). It’s a relief from the typical use of s&m as automatic comic relief (if you want proof, watch Tomboys or Euro Trip). So search out his films as soon as possible, his profile is in both Myspace and Facebook. He’s a nice guy and will gladly share his art with the world.

Come back soon for my review of Frankenstein Unlimited, a five-part film omnibus produced and created by Saliba!

The Ten Best (and Five Worst) Movies to be featured in MST3K

2010-06-11T17:25:00.000-07:00

When I was a young guy, Mystery Science Theatre 3000 pretty much ruled my life. Before my passion for horror or filmmaking or anything, it was MST3K that gave me an education in bad cinema and cheesy comedy. Looking bad on it, it’s still hilarious. The writing is great, the characters have a lot of chemistry, Clayton Forrester is a hilarious villain, the robots look great and the props are cheesy. Hell, I even love Tom Servo’s singing voice. But hey, not ALL of the movies they featured were that bad. These are my 10 favorite movies to appear on the show.

10. King Of The Rocket Men
OK so I’m cheating a little here, as this is more of a serial than an actual movie, but for a whole season MST3K used to open with this short before moving to it’s main bad movie. And to be fair, this is a pretty cool serial, with a cool superhero (well, kinda) and pretty inventive special effects sequences. Some of it didn’t make a lick of sense, but it’s very entertaining. And what a fun costume!

9. Robot Monster
What can I say, this movie is bad, but I love it, it’s hilarious. I already spoke about this is in a previous post, so I’m not going to go into detail. I can only say that I wish I had the Ro-Man’s costume.

8. Godzilla Vs. Megalon
Even though this poster makes ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE, this is one of the most ludicrous of the Godzilla film series, and that’s saying a lot. The monster with chrystler buildings for hands that burps red eggs is a true triumph of cheesyness, and Jet Jaguar? Well, what can I say about Jet Jaguar that hasn’t been said before.

7. Parts: The Clonus Horror This is a movie that definintely suffers from being in MST3K, since the movie has nudity and explilcit violence that was cut from the show. Still, the movie is a damn good scifi-horror film that was recently released thanks to the guys from Mondo Macabro, and comes highly recommended.

6. The Brain That Wouldn’t Die
A quasi-feminist horror/sci fi hybrid from the 50’s has some truly surreal moments, even though it’s got some of the lowest budgets in the history of the movies to be featured in the show. With guys with deformed arms, a sexist doctor looking for the perfect body for his old wife, and a female head which shares a psychic power with a giant made out of spare parts (I have no idea), there is no way that this movie couldn’t be entertaining.

5. Gamera
I love Gamera as much as I love Godzilla, but I can’t say I’m a fan of the old series. After all, they’re all cheesy kids movies who couldn’t appeal intelectually to anyone older than 12. Still, the first Gamera movie is still pretty damn good, has a lot of kaiju action and the monster itself is pretty cool. Still, the series didn’t get as good until Gamera: Guardian of the Universe came out in the 90’s.

4. Revenge Of The Creature
I was actually shocked when I found out this movie was in the series. I mean, this is a 30’s MGM musical compared to some of the no-budget monstrosities the show has shown. This movie continues the adventures of the Gill Man, trying to terrorize people and falling in love, this time with a blonde. The first half of the plot takes place in a marine park, pre-dating Jaws 3D by about 20 years. Man, Jaws 3D should have been on this show, that movie sucks.

3. This Island Earth
I’m breaking the rule a bit for this one, since it was on the MST3K motion picture that came to theaters for like, 2 days in the mid 90’s. Even if the jokes the guys make are hilarious, the movie isn’t that bad, as far as 50’s sci fi flicks go. And I really like the Metaluna mutant’s design.

2. Squirm
This is one of the best eco-horrors of the late 70’s, featuring mutated earthworms killing people. The special effects are pretty creepy and gory and the acting is damn good. It almost sours the fact that Jeff Lieberman was really angry that his movie got parodied in the show. Get a sense of humor, dude.

1. Danger: Diabolik One of the best of the spy movies from the 1960’s, and directed by the master Mario Bava, this movie has it all: pretty girls, amazing sets, kick-ass action sequences and one of the most badass anti-heroes in the history of cinema. I fucking love this movie.

But it’s not all fun and games; after all, this movie is KNOWN for bad movies. And for me, these 5 almost made me want to shoot myself when I saw them without the MST3K riffing. I am convinced there is no way anyone can stay sane watching them in their normal way.

5. The Final Sacrifice
This Canadian backyard production was quite a woozy, with some amateur production values and villains that are as threatening as a recently-born kitty cat. The only good thing about this flick is ‘professional adventurer’ Rorsdower.

4. Eegah
Watch out for snakes! One of the most popular films in the series is quite a migraine when you watch it without the riffing. Jaws from the James Bond films goes around trying to get a girl and fighting Arch Hall Jr. and his cheesy, bad rockabilly music.

3. Beginning Of The End
The wooden acting of Peter Graves fights badly-rendered giant locusts. What more can I say?

2. Monster A Go-Go.
A half-produced film that was hijacked by Herschell Gordon Lewis and turned into some cheesy sci-fi horror hybrid has some headache-inducing voice over and some of the worst audio in the history of cinema. It drags at a snails-like pace and nothing really happens with the exception of a ‘monster’ walking around and people reacting. Awful.

1. Manos: The Hands Of Fate
Oh boy… this movie. If you don’t turn this off before the first 15 minutes, you’re a brave soul like me. You might get some hilarity from the soundtrack and the infamous Torgo character, there is truly nothing there to recommend. The only movie you’ll see made by a fertilizer salesman.

Teaser poster for my new film, Bloodlust

2010-05-20T01:51:00.001-07:00

Greetings, fiends! Just thought you might like to see the teaser poster for my newest film, Bloodlust, a movie about a woman in her 30's dealing with the degenerative, and homicidal, effects of vampirism. It's going to be our first feature film, and the 15th film I have directed, after a ton of short films, trailers and mixtapes (if you wanna see some of those, go to our page http://ironfiendproductions.wetpaint.com/) Pre-production for Bloodlust began in June 2009, with principal photography starting in October 2009 and ending in March 2010 (there are some pickups shots left, but that's another story). Editing begins...next week!

The poster was designed by Puertorrican underground comic book artist Juan Lapaix, who has been quite a supporter, while some extra photoshop work (mainly titles and logo) was done by my good friend Christina M Rodriguez. I hope you all like the poster, and I'll keep you updated in case you give enough of a shit to want to see the film

RIP, David E. Durston

2010-05-09T10:29:00.000-07:00

David E. Durston, the director of I Drink Your Blood and Stigma, has passed away.

Satan was an acid-head!

My Favorite Female Directors

2010-04-15T11:55:00.000-07:00

It’s very interesting to watch films from a female perspective, as most of the time you can see a sensibility that is missing in most male-directed productions. This is a personal list of female filmmakers that I consider the best. Now have in mind that these are simply my own personal opinions, so don’t get your vagina in a twist if you don’t find your own personal favorites. It’s completely based on my own personal tastes.

Leni Riefenstahl
In my opinion, the greatest female filmmaker to ever live. I know it’s a controversial pick, considering that her most famous work was the propaganda documentary Triumph Of The Will. And I’m no Nazi sympathizer either, I hate the fuckers, but at the same time I love Birth of a Nation, and DW Griffith was by all accounts a full-blown racist. A great film is a great film, even with it’s political ideology, and Triumph of the Will has influenced many films that have come since (just look at Starship Troopers). But because of her association with the Nazi party, Riefenstahl will probably never get the recognition she deserves as a filmmaker. And if the montage and production levels of Triumph Of The Will aren’t enough to convince you, why not look at her other works like her famous Mountain films like The Blue Light, which is a beautiful artistic achievement of the German silent era, or her documentary Olympia, on the Munich Olympics. Riefenstahl was a true pioneer of every technical aspect of the motion picture, and hopefully one day she will get the credit that she deserves.

Catherine Breillat
Catherine Breillat is my kind of filmmaker: she’s got the energy of a teenager and isn’t afraid of being shocking or confrontational. Pictures like Fat Girl and Anatomy Of Hell show us a bleak, destructive world where sexuality can be just as dangerous as it is appealing, and the film’s content can really make us question the line between art and pornography. In this viewer’s opinion, however, it is unquestionably art.

Allison Anders
The female version of John Cassavettes, Allison Anders’ pictures have been able to show us a world where different but troubled characters are able to interact in a very realistic but disfunctional enviroment. Her punk debut Border Radio is heavy on the influence of Cassavettes, but she was soon able to find her own voice in pictures like Gas Food Lodging and Grace of my Heart. Why she isn’t as famous as Scorcese is beyond me.

Kimberly Pierce
Pierce has not made as many films as some of our other filmmakers on this list, but her two main films, Boys Don’t Cry and Stop-Loss (a very underrated film), are truly breathtaking works of art, showing us an ugly world with ugly consequences, where hatred rules above all, but in the end there is always a feeling of hope. She is a true artist, only making the movies she wants to make instead of going from one job to aother, kind of like a female Kubrick (only not as dull). I hope she gets to make more films in the future, I absolutely love her work.

Kathryn Bigelow
She’s recently become more famous thanks to the fact that she became the first female director to win an academy award for direction (over her ex husband, no less). However, film fans who know better have known her since the early eighties when she became, and still is, the best female practicionar in the action film genre. From having the best vampire movie ever (Near Dark) to an intense police drama (Blue Steel), a powerful action film about robbers who surf (Point Break) and a bleak cyberpunk future (Strange Days), the woman has made truly edge-of-your-sear experiences, and now that the rest of the world is finally catching up to her, is funny imagining what the future will look like, and the great films she’ll be able to produce. Go Kathryn!

Agnes Varda
In the French New Wave, Agnes Varda was one of the few females creating films on the genre, with Cleo From 5 to 7 to Le Bonheur. However, it’s Vagabond, the story of a young woman who lives in the wild streets, that really makes her shine as an artist. She’s not very known around the world except to fans of arthouse cinema, but I urge anyone who is into daring but subtle material to take a look at her films.

Ida Lupino
She might be known as a beautiful and glamorous actress from the 40’s in different film noirs, but her true talents shined as a director of low budget films, showing material that almost nobody dared to show. Outrage was the first mainstream film to deal honestly with rape, while The Hitch-Hiker predated the Rutger Hauer thriller The Hitcher by almost 40 years. The Bigamist showed a man who was married with two women, and Hard Fast and Beautiful showed the theme of a mother living through her daughter’s career. As you can see, these are all very confrontational subjects, and done during the 40’s and 50’s where movies were more ‘safe’. Ida Lupino was a true maverick.

Penelope Spheeris
Although she’s more famous for silly comedies like Wayne’s World and The Beverly Hillbillies, it’s her “Decline Of Western Civilization’ series that put her on this list for me. The three films are excellent, particularly the first and third ones. While the first one showed us the LA punk scene in it’s beginnings, it’s her third entry, showing us the group of punk rockers who live on the streets, that truly made the strings of my emotions sing. They’re shocking and not easy to watch, but that’s what great documentaries are all about, aren’t they?

Maya Deren
Maya Deren was an experimental filmmaker during the 40’s until the 60’s, making movies outside the mainstream and being some of the only truly independent films to be made at the time. Her short “Meshes in the Afternoon” has influenced many of the modern surrealist filmmakers like David Lynch, a work of truly nightmarish logic that gives us the limits of what film can do. She also made THE most interesting documentary on Haiti, The Living Gods Of Haiti.

And that's it! A special mention has to go to Doris Wishman, who made some of the most interesting, if not downright insane exploitation films of the 60's and 70's, Marguerite Von Trotta who made the great Lost Honor Of Katharina Blum, Mary Harron of American Psycho, I Shot Andy Warhol and Notorious Bettie Page, and to Catherine Hardwicke, who made the great Thirteen and Lords of Dogtown, before she fucked it all up with Twilight.

Justice League Of America

2010-04-12T23:01:00.000-07:00

The 90’s were a sad, sad time for comic book adaptations. With the exception of the Batman and Superman animated series, we swam in a river of low-budget superhero flicks (the previously reviewed Fantastic Four, Captain America) and bad tv shows like Night Man. Many tried to make the cut, but almost none of them did. But there is one legendary pilot that is known for being way too goofy for it’s own sake, and that’s the Justice League Of America pilot. First of all, there is no Superman, Batman or Wonder Woman on this lineup, so don’t get your hopes up. The story involves Flash, Green Lantern (Guy Gardner), The Atom and Fire as they go about their superhero business trying to save the city from the evil Weather Man (really the Weather Wizard, but apparently that’s not realistic enough, right?) and having a new member join the group named Ice, who can create, well, Ice.
The main problem with this film is that it was written for television, so it’s full of really bad humor and the acting never rises from your typical sitcom type of performing. The actors are bland and forgettable, the saddest being Miguel Ferrer (who was in Robocop) who’s a genuinely good actor and is just wasted in this crap.
The only saving grace about this is the costumes, which look cheesy and hilarious. I’m very afraid of what the Green Lantern and Flash movies are going to look like after watching this, since I’m not sure just how convincing you can make them look on film. But nothing will prepare you for when you see the pudgy Martian Manhunter, who looks like he’s made out of hamburger meat. No wonder this thing never got beyond it’s pilot stage: it’s badly written and terribly acted and is nowhere near as cool as the source material it came from. Avoid.

La Rebelion De Las Muertas

2010-04-12T22:43:00.000-07:00

Paul Naschy was a true legend, and a real inspiration for yours truly. While he worked mostly in horror, he made every kind of movie possible, and he made them his own. He’s kind of an auteur in a way, as everytime you watch one of his films you feel like you’re watching something exclusively by him, and not just because he stars in most of them. But well, that’s what I thought until I saw this wacko, bat-shit crazy bonkers of a horror movie.
The story is simple: Naschy plays two roles, that of a Hindu guru named Krishna, and his deformed psychotic brother Kantaka (I’m dead serious) who are fighting over the soul of a pretty young woman named Elvire (played by Romy, and yes it’s one of those one-name actresses). While Krishna uses the powers of good, Kantaka uses the powers of evil, which include an army of female zombies. You know they’re zombies because they’re wearing blue paint. Duh.
As I said, this movie is ridiculous. The story is basically a mystery over the Naschy character and whether or not it’s him or his twin, even though we know from the beginning that it’s Kantaka who’s doing all the evil stuff. There is some nice, gory death scenes and some ample nudity, but the most memorable aspect to it are the surreal Satanic sequences that Romy goes through, where we see Naschy, dressed as a grinning satyr, doing the spells. This is both creepy and hilarious, but you can’t really stop watching it.
Watch it on drugs.

Orca The Killer Whale

2010-04-12T22:29:00.000-07:00

In the wake of Steven Speilberg’s mega-budget blockbuster and film classic Jaws, it seems that every producer under the sun decided to make a movie about a killer animal, be it a bear (Grizzly) or giant rats and chickens (Food of the Gods) and everything in between (Day of the Animals). But none of these exploitation rip-offs are as legendary, nor as strangely obnoxious as Orca The Killer Whale, made by Dino de Laurentiis, the same man who gave us Flash Gordon and Max Von Sydow in a Fu Manchu moustache.
But the movie is actually not bad. It’s story deals with a group of fishermen, led by the always-ready-to-overact Richard Harris, who accidentally hit a killer whale. They are able to capture it, but then the killer whale decides to give birth and abort it’s baby, a latexy fetus which the characters decide to hose away. The scene is pretty awful and disgusting, but it still makes you laugh in a morbid sort of way. Everything was watched by the whale’s ‘husband’ another killer whale, who we’ll call Orkey, who decides to go Charles Bronson on their asses and go on a rampage of vengeance.
It’s very interesting that everything about this movie even goes on, as they could have easily gone to live in the city and forget about the whole thing. But no, they live in a fishing town (of course), and Orkey seems to have the power of God behind it since it causes all sorts of disasters and explosions just to get the character to ‘face him’ in the sea. And this is where the silliness of the film comes into play. In Jaws, the shark was just that, a shark, a killing machine who, sure, could jump on boats, but still it pretty much was a dumb eating animal (until the sequels, that is). Here, the Orca is some sort of sacred cow who has a conscience and is able to think like a man, something that is repeatedly drilled home by the film’s hot lead, played by Charlotte Rampling. Frankly I listened to her more when she was dancing around half naked and in Nazi uniform, but hey to each their own.
Rampling is very good, but it’s Richard Harris who steals the show. He over-acts as always and takes the movie to an almost hallucinatory level of ridiculousness by how serious he takes everything, just like the script does. The special effects are also pretty good, and I wasn’t able to distinguish between the real and mechanical killer whales, just like in Jaws. So yeah this is a rip-off, and it’s also really ridiculous, but I think it’s a pretty good adventure movie and I recommend it nonetheless.

Shock O Rama

2010-04-12T22:16:00.000-07:00

I am not the biggest fan of the Seduction Cinema crew. Not that what they’re doing is bad or anything, but after taking a peek at the tits, there’s really little to nothing to recommend about them, since most of their attempts at humor are just, well, horrible. They do have a lot of good-looking women however. Misty Mundae, AJ Khan, Julian Wells, Caitlin Ross, they’re all here, and they’re all memorable in this omnibus film that actually tries to be different from the norm.
Yes, it’s an omnibus, which means it’s different stories in one movie. The central story deals with a group of low-budget exploitation filmmakers trying to find a new actress to get naked in their latest opus. Here they begin to watch different movies, and it’s from these movies that the stories come from, with the exception of Misty Mundae’s story, Zombie This, which features her character, Rebecca Raven, fighting a zombie in a woodshed ala Evil Dead. The first story is by far the best, Mecharachnia, which features an alien visitor who takes over a car dump and creates a giant robot monster using the parts. I love it mainly because of it’s use of stop-motion animation, on the alien and on the monster truck (literally).
The third story, Lonely Are The Brain, is the longest and has the most sex. It’s very interesting, and puts out some good ideas. It’s cool to see the typical lesbian antics of AJ Kahn and Julian Wells go on full display with a better written horror story than your typical SC film. The ending, featuring an evil brain, is hilarious and the effect is top notch. It doesn’t have the imagination of Mecharachnia, but it’s still pretty cool.
Add to that a funny script, top notch cinematography and of course, a ton of lesbian sex, and you got yourself a pretty damn good horror omnibus film. Highly entertaining and highly recommended.

Twisted Nerve

2010-04-12T22:05:00.000-07:00

Hywel Benneth plays Martin, a rather disturbed young man who lives with a very endearing mother and a stepfather that he really hates. He’s wealthy, he’s young, you’d think he’d have it all, but the one thing he wants is Susan, played by Hayley Mills (who was in those awful Parent Trap movies). He can’t just go and talk to the woman, no that’d be too easy. He decides to take a cue from his mentally-challenged brother and decides to act like a disturbed retard in front of her. For some reason Susan finds this very endearing, and soon Martin creeps into her life. But Martin is very jealous, and will stop everyone from trying to stop him from being with Susan, even if it means committing murder.
This nearly-forgotten British thriller is now mostly known by it’s main theme song. written by Bernard Herrmann, which was featured in Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill Vol. 1, during the sequence where Darryl Hannah walks in the hospital dressed as a nurse, ready to kill The Bride as she’s in a coma. It’s easy to see why he’d use it, as it’s very effective, from it’s beginning whistling to the loud bombastic and suspenseful build-up. But besides the music, this movie is very damn good.
The script and direction are very basic, and it’s no different than most psycho killer movies about disturbed young men that came out during the time, thanks to Psycho. However, Hywel is very memorable in the role, mainly because he’s so charming and good-looking, you’d never think of him as a psycho if you saw him in the street. Hayley Mills does fine, but my favorite character was her mother, played by Billie Whitelaw. She seems to be the only smart character in the film, noticing from the beginning that Martin is something of a nutbag, and in the end she sadly pays for it.
So if you want to watch a top-notch psycho-thriller that, while not offering something new, is still pretty cool and memorable, I recommend you watch this film. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go whistle the main theme now.

Creep

2010-04-12T22:02:00.000-07:00

I’m a big fan of Tim Ritter, as I have said in my older review of Twisted Nerve. His Killing Spree is one of the greatest no-budget horror films of all time and it’s a movie that I constantly go back and watch again everything I get sick of filmmaking and need to get inspired. His movies are original, interesting and psychological, even if they have little to no budget. Creep in particular is very no-budgeted, but it still has some interesting points to it.
The story involves a real asshole named Angus Lynch (played by Ritter regular Joel D. Wincoop), who is just about the biggest asshole you’ve ever met, going around killing people and treating them like shit. He meets up with his stripper sister Kascha (played by 90’s sex scandal celebrity Kathy Willets) and both go on a killing spree, all the while a tough female cop (Patricia Paul) is trying to get to them both.
The movie’s main claim to fame is the fact that it does use Kathy Willets, who in the 90’s appeared in all the talk shows and was in a scandal for sleeping with some senator or something, I don’t know and I don’t care. She’s actually the movie’s biggest flaw, as her acting is non-existent and not even her stiff-hard fake breasts are able to make her interesting, which is a sad thing because the angle of a brother/sister incestuous killing team was the movie’s most interesting aspect. If Ritter had used a better actress, I’m sure this movie would have been better. But everything else is just cool. The murders are as over the top as always, and Joel D. Wincoop steals the show, playing one of the most unlikable but entertaining psychopaths in screen history. The ending’s twist is also really badass and completely came from left field. Touché, Mister Ritter, I had no idea it was coming.
So yes, this is a very low budget film, and suffers from a celebrity actress who really shouldn’t be there, but the film is really damn good and very well worth watching. Recommended to horror fans everywhere.

Dead Doll

2010-04-12T21:48:00.001-07:00

I have a lot of instances where I go into a movie not really expecting anything, and end up really enjoying the picture. Case in point, Dead Doll. I wasn’t really interested in watching movies about killer life-size dolls because I find the idea a little uninteresting, and had already seen good examples of this type of film like Love Object, a very underrated film.
The film is basically a re-hash of a Frankenstein/revenge story, only with a sex doll. A temperamental artist gets a less-than-enthusiastic response to his latest sculpture from his girlfriend. Her harsh words cause him to fly into a rage, and he kills her. In order to hide the body, he crafts a sexy life-size doll and hides her remains inside. Her spirit begins to animate the doll and as the doll is passed from one owner to another, she lures men into using her for pleasure and then takes bloody revenge against them.
The acting and production values are pretty good for this kind of film, although I would be lying if I told you I didn’t find some flaws in the technical aspects once in a while. The idea of a doll who makes different people go insane is a good one, although to be honest I would have liked to have seen more women become obsessed and psychotic with the thing. But everything about this movie means nothing compared to our lead actress, played by Romi Koch. She is hot and is constantly naked, and kept me guessing her accent all the way through. Is she German? Romanian? Austrian? She really does look like a sex doll. Talk about perfect casting.
So yes, I enjoyed this picture, but I do have to give it it’s own warning. It’s not scary nor suspenseful, and most of the comedy falls flat on it’s face. But it is entertaining, and I guess we can’t really ask more of it, can we?

The Killing Of America

2010-04-12T21:35:00.001-07:00

I am not a big fan of ‘death’ or mondo videos. If you don’t know what those are, they are basically compilation tapes featuring footage from other sources, mostly deaths and bizarre behavior. It was a genre created by the Italians in the early 60’s with Mondo Cane, and there have been many notorious titles, from Africa, Addio which features real executions and sickening footage of animals being hunted for the movie, to the infamously fake Faces of Death series, to the ones that came out on the 90’s which is basically autopsy footage set to really bad death metal music. I’m sorry but it’s very hard for me to watch this shit. You can only stand watching R. Budd Dwyer’s suicide so many times before it just gives you the urge to shower.
To that degree, I just saw a mondo film that could be considered art. That’s right, art. That film is The Killing Of America, which you probably figured out since you’re e reading the review right now. It was compiled by Leonard Schraeder, who is Paul Schraeder’s brother, the same man who gave us the script for Taxi Driver. Basically this is a filmic study of why the United States has become such a violent place, and why there is more gun violence on the US than in any other place in the world. We begin with the Kennedy assassination, which Schraeder sees as the match that lit the fire, and we go down onto the ranks of notorious incidents such as the Charles Whitman sniper shootings, the Manson Killings, serial killers like Ted Bundy, political assassinations, and random footage of people going nuts with guns, the most memorable being a man who takes prisioner a banker/stock broker (I think) and parades him around for three days with a shotgun beneath his chin. Talk about having a bad week!
If you feel the message of the film sounds familiar, yes, this movie will remind everyone of Bowling For Columbine. But the thing is, this was made 20 years BEFORE Michael Moore’s documentary, so it really shows how things haven’t gone better at all, they’ve gotten worse in fact! This is a very engaging film, and I recommend everyone who has a strong stomach and an interest in history and culture to watch it. But be warned: the movie is violent and we see everything in very explicit details. A powerful work of art.

Easter Bunny Kill Kill

2010-04-12T21:17:00.001-07:00

Slashers involving holiday murderers are a dime a dozen, hell even I wrote a script called Easterkill, so if you’re going to do it, you better make something worth a crap. It has to have something of an original twist to it to diferentiate it from the long sea of Halloween and Friday the 13th imitators. And that’s exactly what you get when you watch this film, the brainchild of young auteur Chad Ferrin. That twist? This is a positive family movie! Along with all the bloodshed and gore, of course.
The story involves a retarded kid named Nicholas (Ricardo Gray) who loves Easter and his mother. The person he doesn’t love however, is his mother’s boyfriend, Remington (Timothy Muskatell). Remington is an asshole and a murderer who tells vicious shit behind Nicholas’ back, without the mother knowing. But that all changes when a killer, dressed in a bunny mask, starts killing people in the house after Remington brings along a wheezing fat pedophile and a group of hookers. All of the events are over-seen by a street bum (Trent Haaga, from Terror Firmer) who may or may not be more to the story than meets the eye.
Chad Ferrin is able to make a lot with a small budget. For starters, his film seems very personal, and the script takes it’s time to let us know the characters fully and let us really hate the bad guys, making their untimely demise even more fun. The acting is top notch. Gray is pretty good as a retard, and I especially loved his interactions with a bunny that the bum gave him at the beginning of the film. I was kind of thinking that Remington was going to kill the bunny at any moment, but that didn’t happen. I guess the director thought he was enough of an asshole. Special props go to Charlotte Marie, who plays the mother, not because she’s a very good actress, but because she looks like one of those hot black women you see in the Big Booty porn videos. Damn what a beautiful woman!
All joking aside though, this was a very solid, interesting slasher film that dares to be different from the norm. In a genre that is so full of imitators and cliches, it’s nice to see something that isn’t a ripoff and is able to stand on it’s own. Highly recommended.

Luchadores De Las Estrellas

2010-03-17T13:37:00.000-07:00

If you know me or have seen my blog in any way, you know that I have an undying passion for Mexican wrestling movies. I love the fantasy stories, I love the superhero aspect to them, the romance, the monsters, the wrestling movies, everything. After the death of El Santo in 1984, the films began to go down heavily, but once in a while they would come back, not exactly in their old way. In the 90’s, the wrestling films became grittier, more realistic, such as Lucha A Muerte and other films like that. But one of them decided to go against the mold, and try to be a family-friendly kiddie fantasy. It didn’t really work.
The story concerns a female wrestler named Larossa, played by Gloria Mayo, who is an alien princess in disguise. One day, an alien spaceship arrives containing a huge intergalactic vampire and three alien midgets who are on the search for this woman, probably to kill her. With the help of two athletic wrestlers, Misterioso and Volador, she fights against this evil creature. That’s the basic plot. Sadly, it wasn’t enough. The problem with this movie isn’t that it’s a badly made film. After all, when you watch a Mexican wrestling film, you’re not expecting Ben Hur or anything like that. The problem with it is that it’s boring, very very boring. The heroes are bland and dull, carrying no personality whatsoever. When Blue Demon made a cameo, all I could wish was that he had been the lead wrestler, because he’s so damn cool. Misterioso and Volador are just not up to par with the classic wrestlers, and the bad guy, played by the gigantic Nitron, over-acts like hell and is as scary as Grampa on Halloween.
The movie does have one thing where it shines, and that’s in the wrestling sequences. In the old movies, these where some of my least favorite scenes, but not here. They’re shot with a lot of energy, and the wrestlers display their movies quite well,, doing high-flying stunts and kicking ass all over the place. Even the lead, Gloria Mayo, does a good job wrestling, unless it was a double. It reminded me of the TLC matches between The Dudley Boys and The Hardy Boys back in the start of the millenium: just a lot of cool moves and stunts. But as I said, those are the few rays of light in a very dull film. Maybe it’s not always good to be in the fantasy world. Maybe once in a while, you should be more realistic, like in the fighting sequences. Pass on it.

Emanuelle In America

2010-03-16T19:36:00.000-07:00

Laura Gemser stars as Emanuelle, a black version of the famous literary sex icon, and an investigative reporter and photographer who lives in New York. When she’s not working on photographing naked women, she goes to investigate different sex rackets all over the world. When she poses as a high-class hooker (basically), she discovers a home where rich people go and have sex, and realizes that these people are actually working on a network of snuff films. Now it’s up to Emanuelle to put the lid off this network of evil, no matter who might get pissed off, or who she might have to fuck.
This was directed by Joe D’Amato, one of my favorite directors in the exploitation genre. His movies range from the awesome (Buio Omega), to the mediocre (Porno Holocaust), and everything in between, including high-class porn. Emanuelle in America is probably his best film, as it features everything that the guy truly made great. He really hit gold when he found Laura Gemser, a tall, black, nubian goddess with an incredible body and a very interesting face, and willing to do everything short of hardcore. Here we see her in full glory, having sex with everyone, including the hot as hell Lorraine De Salle (Cannibal Ferox). Gemser would go Around The World, into the White Slave Trade, to an island of Lost Cannibals and into a Women’s Prison Massacre, and she always managed to get naked and have sex.
There is a lot of explicit, pornographic sex in this film, and boy do they do it with gusto. This isn’t like Porno Holocaust, where we see a woman sucking on a flaccid penis, here it’s pure hardcore and shot beautifull, by the way. We have interracial threesomes, s&m/abuse, just a lot of kinky sex. The king scene of course, is the woman masturbating the horse. You’ll either be grossed out, or aroused. That woman sure haves fun playing with that gigantic pink and black dick!
The movie gets really good when the snuff subplot pops in, and are the best sequences in the film. Gemser’s reaction to watching a snuff film are really interesting, as she seems to be both being repulsed, and being aroused at the same time. It makes for more interesting watching, instead of seeing Nicolas Cage in 8mm groaning and making faces and showing us yet again why he’s such a bad actor. The snuff film itself looks surprisingly realistic, with lips being ripped apart, backs and bodies being mutilated, and more disturbing of all, a woman being impaled by a giant, spiked dildo. Ouch! The makeup is incredible and disturbingly realistic, and even made me cringe. Sadly, the movie goes downhill when the snuff subplot ends, and the ending is completely ridiculous. Still, this is a great exploitation movie, one of the best, and is D’Amato’s best.

Robot Monster

2010-03-16T16:55:00.000-07:00

The 1950’s was the Atomic Age, a period in cinema where we were afraid the governments were going to blow the shit out of each other and the fear of nuclear war. Since people didn’t know much about nuclear power, the shit could manifest itself in any way possible, including the arrival of an alien race that has a power that is superior to nuclear power. That superior power came on film, in 1953, thanks to one particular movie by a young eccentric named Phil Tucker. That monster is the Ro-Man, and that film is Robot Monster.
The story is simple: the Ro-Man wipes out most of the earth’s population, with the exception of a small group of people. Hiding out in Bronson Canyons with his television/interstellar phone, and a bubble machine, this creature terrorizes the family until he realizes he has the hots for the young woman in the group (played by Claudia Barrett, who looks a lot like Lynn Carlin from Cassavettes’ Faces). Why do all the monsters get the hots for women? Oh well. This movie gets a lot of flack as being one of the worst science fiction films of all time, and if you judge it as a sci-fi film, then yes I agree, this movie is terrible. But as a monster movie, this is really damn fun. The acting isn’t that bad, and the music score, by Elmer Bernstein, is really impressive. Bernstein would go on to make the soundtracks for The Great Escape and The Magnificent Seven. Technically speaking, the film has a lot of bizarre elements, particularly with it’s editing and use of special effects. You can see the black-gloved hand in the plane sequences, and the inter-cutting with dinosaur movie footage really makes you say ‘what the fuck’. I guess the bad reputation this movie has comes from the titular monster, the Ro-Man. Besides having a ridiculous name, he has a ridiculous look, akin to a gorilla with a diving helmet on. John Brown performed as the beast, and most of the time the film features the guy either coming in and out of the cave, or going up and down a mountain, cut in between his bizarre ravings (“Fool humans! There is no escape!”) and occasional murders. Poor John really seems to have been very tired on this thing, as once in a while he looks like he’s about to fall on his face. But to it’s credit, the monster is very memorable and I doubt that the movie would be this entertaining without it. So stop with the Ro-Man hate, discover this little monster movie gem and you’ll find yourself laughing and having fun at something really unique. Phil Tucker, there was no reason to try to kill yourself.

Blaze Starr Goes Nudist and Nude On The Moon

2010-03-16T16:49:00.000-07:00

Doris Wishman was a very peculiar filmmaker. She was this nice little old lady who would also make these sexploitation movies, going from your innocent nudie cuties/nudist camp films, to the roughies, and before making her most notorious work in the 70’s with Deadly Weapons, The Amazing Transplant and Let Me Die A Woman, merging into the porn business and then ending it all with the surrealistically horrible slasher film, A Night To Dismember. But she is mostly remembered for her nudie cuties, and we’re going to talk about two of the most famous of her films. Blaze Starr, the “famous” burlesque/striptease artist from the 50’s and 60’s, stars as herself in this particular production, where Blaze is supposed to be a famous actress who is truly stressed about her job. She decides to get away from it all and join a nudist camp, where she finds true happiness with a true love, while still able to hold a career. Nude On The Moon features a more ambitious plot. A duo decide to finance a trip to the moon by themselves and when they arrive, they discover that the moon looks like a Florida nudist camp, and is populated by male and female nudists. Hey, why the fuck not? Both films are very interesting, to say the least. They are romantic fairy tales, as we now know that they were made by a sad and mournful filmmaker so that she could escape the sadness of her husband passing away. You can see in these films the fact that she was trying to recuperate from something very sad, as they are both about escaping some sort of complacent, conformist universe and being able to find a better life, and a better love. But who am I kidding? The only reason you have an interest in this film is nudity, and there’s plenty. But this nudity is surprisingly unsexy. Blaze Starr is very beautiful and has a very voluptuous body, aka big tits and big ass, but other than showing it off, there is really nothing sexual about it. It’s the same for the rest of the camp. They do things like play volleyball, shoot arrows, row on a boat, swim, and dance, all in the nude, and all in positions where we don’t get to see any of the downstairs areas. So in many ways, it’s very innocent. It can also get very boring, like most nudist camps are. But the two films have interesting stories, even with it’s budgetary flaws and obvious lack of direct sound. My personal favorite would have to be Blaze Starr Goes Nudist… but I blame Blaze’s figure on that.

Requiem For A Vampire

2010-03-16T16:46:00.000-07:00

Categorizing the films of Jean Rollin are a true waste of time. He is one of the most unique filmmakers working in horror, doing his own artistic way and being different from what the genre expects, whether you like him or not. He mostly dealt in the erotic vampire genre, although he did deviate once in a while, in some cases good (Grapes of Death, Night of the Hunted) and in some cases bad (that awful, awful nazi zombie film Jess Franco had to complete). This is one of his best films, and it’s not hard to see why. The movie begins with three robbers, one man and two women, who are being chased by the cops after what we believe to be is a botched robbery. The two girls, dressed as clowns, escape and roam around the countryside, stealing food, avoiding getting raped and escaping being buried alive, until they find an abandoned castle. After a night of lesbian sex (of course), they find that the castle is inhabited by vampires. The vampires turn the young girls into the living dead, but soon their vampirism starts getting in the way of their friendship, and it’s up to them, with the help of an elder vampire, to be able to keep that lesbian friendship while at the same time not getting eaten alive by the older female vampires. As you can see, the erotic and horror angles are well balanced. There is also a lot of great production design. The castle looks gothic as all hell, mirroring anything that Hammer could have made, while at the same time looking less fantastic and more down-to-earth. We know this is mostly because of budget restrains, but still. The actors here are very natural, particularly the two leading girls, who act as if they were real lovers. There is a lot of sex appeal between the two and it transfers well outside the screen. That’s actually as far as I can say when it comes to a Jean Rollin film. It’s like junkfood: it can’t be recommended, you have to taste it yourself and tell me what you think. But if you like the mix of the erotic, the surreal, and the gothic horror, I doubt this will disappoint.

La Endemoniada

2010-03-16T16:34:00.000-07:00

We all love Amando De Ossorio here in the Grimly Fiendish blog. After all, he gave us the Blind Dead films, one of the best of the horror series, as far as I’m concerned. We even love his shitty monster movie from the early 80’s, The Sea Serpent, which was reviewed recently, right here on this blog. But even the people you love do pieces of shit once in a while. For every Brazil, Baron Munchausen and Time Bandits that Terry Gilliam puts out, there is also The Brothers Grimm, and for every Alien, Blade Runner and Legend that Ridley Scott puts out, he also puts out crap like, well, everything after those three. So yes, every filmmaker makes a bad movie once in a while, and De Ossorio did one of his bad movies in 1975 when he decided that the best way to go to deviate from his Blind Dead films was to release a truly terrible Exorcist rip-off. The story involves a young girl who gets possessed by an evil gypsy, who wants to kill everyone in the family after being accused of killing a child in a satanic ritual. The problem is not that this is an Exorcist ripoff. After all, I’ve seen many of them and they’re pretty sleazy, like Antichrist from Italy and Exorcism from Spain. The problem with this particular film is that it doesn’t go far enough. Sure, there are some things that might make you giggle once in a while, like when they sacrifice a baby (offscreen, sadly) and the young girl possessed castrates a guy (offscreen, again). You never see them because of Ossorio’s unusual restrain, but jus thinking about them sure made me grin. Sadly, because De Ossorio decided to use a young girl instead of a beautiful woman like most of the ripoffs do, we don’t get enough perverse sex and violence, which is what we look for in these kinds of films. You get a lot of cursing, but if you saw the first one, it’s nothing new. Along with all this, we get a pretty dull cast of nobodies, and by nobodies I mean that you don’t remember any of them as the movie goes along, their faces and performances are as bland as it gets. The production design, which is where this movie should have shone, is pretty flat and looks more like a catholic school’s rendition of what a satanic ritual might look like. Add to that the boredom of the story and lack of sleaziness, and you got yourself a pretty forgettable, dull movie. I don’t know what happened to De Ossorio, considering how sleazy his Blind Dead films are, and Night of the Sorcerers is, but I guess he needed to pay the lights, because this movie has zero creativity, and zero scares. Pass on it.

Yes, I know, Corey Haim is dead...

2010-03-13T23:25:00.000-08:00

But at least Corey Hart is still alive.

Don't mess around with the main in the shades, oh no... oh no

Naked Blood

2010-03-13T14:28:00.001-08:00

Some movies are cool because they are genuinely good, others because they have a certain atmosphere. Others however, are just cool because of how far they are willing to go, and will show you things that you have never seen before. Naked Blood is one of these movies. Directed by Hisayasu Sato, the film deals with a young scientist named Eiji (Sadao Abe) who develops a new vaccine that creates pain into sexual pleasure. She injects this new vaccine into three willing test subjects. And while two of them react to them violently, one doesn’t seem to be affected by it at all. Eiji investigates, and soon discovers there is something darker than he might have liked to find find out. The story is obviously a little more complicated than that, but I can’t really say much without revealing what makes this movie so damn special. Director Hisayasu Sato was one of the filmmakers that re-introduced the Pinku Eiga genre into a new generation of Japanese filmmakers, but with this film, he stretches out the themes of the pinku into darker places. Yes, the elements of nudity, obsession and dark sexuality are still in there, but the violence is taken to levels that most Pinku films would never dream of. The characters who mutilate themselves, the two women, do so matching their own personalities. For example, the girl who loves to eat decides that nothing is good enough anymore, so she decides to eat herself. First she fries her hand and eats it off, then her nipple, her vagina and finally, her eyeball. She literally eats herself to death, and we see it in all it’s explicit glory. The other girl, a model, begins to see imperfections all over her body, so she decides to destroy herself by stabbing and piercing herself, mutilating her body until it has no more blood. Again, we see it all in all it’s explicit and gory detail, and it’s really fucked up. But not as fucked up as the third act, where the third girl, Rika (played magnificently by Misa Akika), reveals her deepest secrets about who she is to our young scientisst. I won’t give it away but it’s deeply disturbing and made me lose my lunch when I first saw this at the beginning of the millenium. This is a movie that should not be missed by anyone, a perfect blend of sex, violence and gore, with a story that would have made Hitchcock proud. Instead of wasting your money on that horrible new Alice in Wonderland movie, go watch this.

King Of The Lost World

2010-03-13T04:12:00.000-08:00

Oh, The Asylum, will you ever learn? This movie has the balls to say it’s based on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic adventure story, The Lost World. Yeah, and I’m a Japanese anorexic albino. Truth is, this is The Asylum’s answer to Peter Jackson’s King Kong, which I happen to like less than this particular film (worship the original, though). A plane crashes in the middle of a dense tropical island, where the survivors are forced to live from the land and try to survive, not only from each other, but from different dangers such as giant animals and a giant gorilla.
As you can imagine, this movie doesn’t take just from King Kong, but is also inspired by Jurassic Park and the tv series, Lost, which I’ve personally never seen an episode of. The story is not that different from your typical adventure yarns from the 30’s and 40’s, so if you enjoy those like I do, there is no reason why you shouldn’t like this movie. Acting wise, the movie is populated by the familiar faces, if you’re familiar with the films from The Asylum, such as Jeff Denton, Christina Rosenberg (who was in The Telling) and the beautiful Sarah Leaving, who was in such ‘classics’ as 666: The Child, The Hitchhiker and Invasion of the Pod People. They are all good-looking and they all do a good job. Steve Railsback also shows up, and again, he looks like he’s on coke. Sadly, the movie has one huge flaw, and that’s the monsters. It's CGI all the way. And not good CGI. We get a big spider, some big scorpions, some flying dragons, and of course the giant gorilla. The CGI critters are all pretty unconvincing and detract from the film. Also, there's just not much monster action, and most of what little there is takes place in the third act. The CGI gorilla, which we don't see much of at all, doesn't so much look like a CGI gorilla as it does a CGI man in a gorilla costume. Pretty disappointing, but still, the overall film is not that bad, I mean, it’s The Asylum. I’ll take their movies over Roland Emmerich’s any day.

Truth Or Dare double feature

2010-03-13T04:05:00.000-08:00

I am a big fan of Tim Ritter’s films, in particular his ‘masterpiece’, Killing Spree. It’s one of the movies that has inspired me more than any other, and these are also pretty famous, as far as his filmography is concerned. I was able to track down some copies for the first two films in the series, and I have to say I found them surprisingly interesting, in more ways than one.
The first Truth Or Dare deals with a man named Mike Strauber (John Brace), a mentally disturbed man who goes over the edge when he finds out his wife is having an affair with another man. He reverts to his youth where he would play perverted games in truth or dare, and so he becomes a cold-blooded insane psycho killer who ends up in an insane asylum. There he scars his face (again, playing truth or dare) and escapes with a gold mask, and starts killing people again.
This is essentially a slasher film, but I have to give it some credit for being more ambitious than most. It takes it’s time to be very psychological, really letting us get into the psyche of our character and showing how rejection can turn a normal man into a monster. The deaths are very original as well, although on a very small budget. John Brace is really good in the role, and I actually ended up giving a crap about the guy, even if he was something of a psycho.
A few years later, Ritter made the sequel, Truth Or Dare 2: Wicked Games, or as my copy says, simply Wicked Games. Again, the film explores the theme of rejection as it’s main driving force, this time featuring three different characters: a guy with a badass mullet who loses his wife, a policeman, and a doctor. People around them, including random sex workers, get themselves violently murdered by a psychopath wearing a modified gold mask, similar to the one worn by the original killer. Is it the original Mike Strauber, back to kill some more, or is there something more sinister going on?
The movie’s death scenes are sadly more disappointing and generic compared to those of the original, with the exception of the sprinkler death scene. Yes, the sprinkler death scene, something so ridiculous I give credit to Ritter for having the balls to film it in something that takes itself so seriously. The women look like skanky porn stars, which isn’t a bad thing in my book, but their acting talents are not very interesting. Neither is the acting talent of our three leads, who don’t shine nowhere as much as John Brace.
There is a third film in the series, but I haven’t seen it yet. In the end, however, both movies are very good, very interesting and very original slasher films. Sure, they have some faults, but most of these are budgetary, not in it’s imagination, and they come highly recommended.

Cindy & Donna

2010-03-13T03:39:00.000-08:00

Cindy (Debbie Osbourne) & Donna (Nancy Ison) are two very attractive sisters with two very different mentalities. You see, Cindy is the virginal type, afraid of sex and what it changes it gives to women. Meanwhile, Donna is a full-blown whore who will sleep with everyone with a pulse, and does. Cindy keeps watching Donna up to the point where she even sees her having sex with their teenage-starved father. Now that’s what I call loose! Donna, being the good sister that she is, introduces Cindy to sex, and all kinds of kinky sex, from posing in photos to having group sex. As you can imagine, everything ends in tragedy. Yes, this is your typical moralistic sexploitation movie you seem to get in the late 60’s and early 70’s, showing how sex can turn families into skanks. So that angle gives it a more hilarious angle. I also have to give it credit for the cinematography. For a movie that was made in 1970, I was surprised by how good this film looks, as it looks more like it was shot in the late 70’s. Sadly, there’s not much to recommend in this movie. The acting is atrocious for the most part, done by actresses who were never able to get out of the sexploitation genre. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but considering Nancy Ison’s other movie is the dreadful The Stewardesses, I’m not surprised. Thankfully most of the young actresses get naked, a lot, and very explicitly short of showing us her vagina. Speaking of nudity, there’s a young actress who plays a 17 year old stripper who has sex with the girl’s father. Who is this woman? She is incredibly hot! So yes, this movie is good if you need to pull your pud, but it’s got no energy our soul, but you’ll definitely get entertainment value from it’s high moralistic tone.

Malibu High

2010-03-13T03:30:00.001-08:00

Jill Lansing plays Kim, an attractive high schooler who looks surprisingly in her 20’s who lives your typical high school girl’s life. In other words, it’s a pain in the ass. Her mother nags her all the time, her grades are going down, she has no money, and worse of all her boyfriend has left her for a rich girl. What’s a girl to do? Why, turn into a hooker, of course! At first she gets hired by a lower-ring pimp, but her oral and sexual talents move her on up into a top prostitution ring. But soon her talents are used to less reputable uses, such as blackmailing her teachers into giving her good grades for sexual favors. It’s no surprise that her interests turn her into a contract killer.
This movie is one of the most famous sexploitation movies of the 1970’s, and it’s pretty easy to see why. It’s a very sleazy film, and it’s hilarious in a very good way. What makes the film so interesting is the story, which is ludicrous in most ways possible. You get your teenage prostitution ring subplot, and you get your weird third act change, where the lead turns into a trigger-happy contract killer. It kind of reminded me of a cheesier version of The Cheerleaders, a recent film that just came out. The title, however, is incredibly misleading. The film should have been called “I Was A Teenage Thrill-Killing Prostitute”. Hey, that’s a good title! I should copyright it and make a movie with that title.
Jill Lansing’s performance carries the film. She’s sexy and has some down-to-earth good looks, with tan lines that could kill a cow. It’s too bad she never seems to have done anything at all, before or after, at least based on the Internet Movie Database. Does anybody know what happened to this trigger-happy whore? I’d love to know. This movie is pretty memorable and very fun, and comes highly recommended. I hope it gives you as many boners as it gave me.

Mega Shark Vs. Giant Octopus

2010-03-09T14:13:00.000-08:00

There have been many unanswered questions about life, great mysteries that are never going to be resolved. Where is the Ark of the Covenant? Will we ever find the Holy Grail? And of course, what would win in a fighting death match, a giant octopus or a megalodon. The real answer is, who gives a shit? And of course, it’s those good old boys from The Asylum who decided to give us the answer. Now, unless you live under a rock, the Asylum is a direct-to-DVD video company which basically rips off popular films and make unabashed ripoffs on a lower budget. In their defense, this kind of exploitation filmmaking is as old as film itself, hell Hollywood does it all the time, and not all of the Asylum’s films are crap. And this one has it’s moments of greatness. The story involves a nuclear explosion that frees the two prehistoric beasts from a frozen glacier and unleash them onto the world. They go around killing people and destroying cities, until scientists composed of Americans and Japanese make a plan to get the two beasts together and have them have their ultimate death match, and finally kill each other off. The casting is pretty interesting, and inspired to say the least. Debbie Gibson, or shall I say, Deborah, plays our lead scientist. You might think this is silly, considering the last time I heard of her she was singing Shake Your Love. We also get Lorenzo Lamas, aka Renegade, as a government guy. Neither of them are particularly great, but they do their jobs finely.
But who cares about the actors, when we have two gigantic, prehistoric monsters? The two are mostly made of CGI, but it’s such terrible CGI that you just have to marvel at the balls the studio had in the making of this film. Both creatures have their center pieces of disaster, with the giant octopus taking out the oil rig, but sadly for the octopus, the shark gets the best scenes. We have all seen the photos of the shark taking out the San Francisco Bridge, but nothing compares to the awesomeness of seeing the mega shark jump out of the water, more like the great whites do these days, and take out a plane. This sequence is worth the price of the film alone. So yes, it’s cheesy, derivative, and full of cliches, but it’s hugely entertaining and has cool monster sequences. Why wouldn’t you want to watch it?

Killer Tongue

2010-03-08T23:16:00.001-08:00

If El Dia De La Bestia is the heavy metal equivalent of a Spanish horror movie, then Killer Tongue is it’s glam rock derivative, being shiny and interesting to watch, yet it’s music rocking and easy to swallow. Our story involves a woman named Candy, who is sent to a convent waiting for her criminal boyfriend to get out of jail. When he’s about to get out, she leaves the convent with a group of dogs and a cool car. But this doesn’t last long, as a meteor with a weird lifeform possesses her and turns her into a weirdo monster with a giant tongue with a mind of it’s own. And the dogs get turned into fags.
I really don’t know what to make of this film. When I was a kid I would always see it in the horror section, but never got myself the courage to buy it because it’s original cover looked scary. I know, it’s ridiculous but hey, what can I say I was a kid. Now that I’ve finally watched it, I wonder, what the fuck was I thinking? It has horror actors in it, though. Doug Bradley from Hellraiser, Robert Englund from the Nightmare On Elm Street films, and even the drop-dead-gorgeous Melinda Clarke from Return of the living Dead III, who is mostly naked and wearing bodypaint. Yummy.
But no, this is not a horror movie. This is a comedy, and a surprisingly entertaining one at that. The three horror actors are put to the test of stretching their acting muscles and doing comedic work, and you know what? The three of them are really good! Englund in particular is hilarious in the role of the asshole police warden, and Clarke is surprisingly sympathetic and beautiful. But none of them are as funny as the tongue itself. It has a personality similar to Chucky from Child’s Play, and like Chucky, it’s funnier when it curses. Sadly the third act kind of loses me, with it’s lead turning into an evil monster and our hero turning her back on her for no other reason than to fuck a nun, I just didn’t dig it. Still, the movie is colorful and funny and never takes itself very seriously, and neither should you. Go check it out.

Barbara The Barbarian

2010-03-08T23:12:00.000-08:00

By The Deformed Dicks of Cronos, this is a bad porno. I mean, it features some of my favorite porno actresses of the 80’s, like Barbara Dare, Nina Hartley, Erica Boyer and Jeanna Fine, but it sadly wasn’t enough.
The story involves a barbarian queen named Barbara (Barbara Dare) who goes to war to rescue her little sister, who is also a hot porn star-looking barbarian. That’s basically the plot, as the story is padded with intensity with some pretty short but non-eventful sex scenes. And I also had a problem with the way the film was produced. We start off with women living in a cavegirl-like existence, meanwhile the bad guys live in what looks like a rejected stage play of Arabian Nights, with frilly costumes and expensive-looking rugs. I know this is a porno and I shouldn’t give a shit, but for some reason this really bothered me. I actually preferred the cave settings, since they looked like they were made in paper mache and I’m always a sucker for cheap-looking crap.
You’ll definitely get a boner from the actresses in the film, and I guess that should be enough, but I normally defend 70’s and 80’s pornography, but this title is just not worth defending. It’s not great like Femmes De Sade or Through The Looking Glass, that’s for sure.

Bobbie Jo And The Outlaw

2010-03-08T23:07:00.000-08:00

I love Lynda Carter. I have the entire Wonder Woman TV series and I even watch that stupid movie, Sky High, just because she’s in it. She’s tall, she’s voluptuous, she has the best tits of the 70’s and her big blue eyes are simply bewitching. No wonder it’s so hard to cast the WW movie, I’m not surprised that they can’t find a good substitute! When I heard she made a movie in the 70’s where she showed her beautiful naked body, I had to hunt it down. Surprisingly enough, I stayed on after the nude scenes, and was really surprised by how good this movie is.
The film is basically a rip-off of Bonnie & Clyde, having the same basic story. Marjoe Gortner plays Lyle, a good-looking rebel who gets himself on the wrong side of the law by accident and goes on the run. On the way she meets Bobbie Jo (Lynda Carter), an aspiring country singer who wants to escape the small town life and go-nowhere existence with her mother. Turned on by crime, she decides to join in, and soon the two become a regular pack of criminals, forming their own gang and going out robbing banks. Of course, the law is in their tails not long after that.
Even with it’s derivative plot, the movie is very interesting. Marjoe Gortner and Linda Carter both share a lot of chemistry and are good as the gang of criminals, and the rest of the supporting cast is believable, not being too good-looking to upstage them and for the most part looking like real people. The movie also shares a good deal of action sequences, and very well-made robberies. The last stand-off, in front of The Alamo, is very well staged and even if the ending is predictable, it kind of leaves you with a sense of tragedy about what might have been. Lynda Carter looks great of course, but I have to admit that her acting talent is definitely not very good, at least not here, she got better on Wonder Woman. Even so, this is a very entertaining caper flick and features one of the most beautiful women in the history of film in the nude, so what do you have to lose?

Action Jackson

2010-03-08T23:02:00.000-08:00

The 80’s was the great decade of action, in my opinion. It was the decade where people like Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, Dolph Lundgren and Chuck Norris made their best work during this era. But one of them seems to have gotten lost in the shuffle, and it’s sad because he’s actually pretty cool. This lost action icon is Carl Weathers, who kicked ass as Apollo Creed in the Rocky films and ruled as Dillon in Predator. So some people seem to forget his biggest role as “Action” Jackson.
The plot involves Action, a good guy cop who gets himself into a lot of trouble for using too much violence. Kinda like a soul-brotha version of Dirty Harry. When an old nemesis, Peter Dellaplane (played by Craig T. Nelson) returns to his life and frames him for the murder of his wife, Jackson must pair up with former Dellaplane drug whore Sydney Ash (played by singer Vanity) to clear his name and fight the evil Dellaplane before he continues wiping out his competition.
I don’t know why the hell this movie didn’t become more of a cult hit, it’s awesome! For starters, the cast is spot on. Carl Weathers is badass as already mentioned, and Craig T. Nelson is surprisingly slimy as the bad guy, and looks like he’s having a helluva good time. Sharon Stone and Vanity are also great, since they’re very attractive and get naked enough times to get me turned on. Yeah, too much information. The action sequences are all pretty badass, and we get a lot of extreme stunts and explosions. It’s obvious that Jackson was meant to have his own franchise. I guess the movie didn’t make any money, because we never saw any.. It’s too bad, because there was the potential to make something really special, at least based on the first one. It’s got kick-ass stunts, car chases, gore, and nudity. Highly underrated, check it out!

Shock 'Em Dead

2010-03-08T22:59:00.000-08:00

Stephen Quadros plays Martin, a true loser who can’t seem to get his life in check. Girls laugh at him, his landlord is giving him shit, and his dreams of becoming a rock star with the band Creeping Flesh are not going anywhere. So, he makes a deal with the devil, and turns himself into a guitar-shredding soul-sucking psychopath named Angel Martin. Things are looking good, committing violence and getting laid with a trio of evil assistants, until his affection for band manager Lindsay Roberts (Traci Lords) begins to bring tension into the band, and soon they discover that things aren’t quite right with their talented guitar player.
A friend of mine recommended this film after I told him I had an interest in heavy metal horror films, like Rocktober Blood, Trick Or Treat and Hack O Lantern. So I hunted down a copy and finally saw it, and this is definitely the least interesting of the genre I have seen in a while. The music is goofy as hell, the kind that would make Nitro sound like Led Zeppelin. The script is truly ridiculous, and has so many plotholes. The way the characters change personalities and inconsistency in their performances really made it kind of hard to understand, and some are so over the top, like the singer, that you have to laugh. If he’s in a metal band, why is he dressed like a Loverboy reject?
Not even Traci Lords can save this. Sure, she’s hot, but she can’t act and she doesn’t get naked so who gives a fuck? I preferred her when she was in porn. So yes, this movie is bad, but if you like cheesy flicks, you might find this entertaining. In it’s defense, I never found the movie boring at all. I laughed a lot, even if it was more at the movie than with the movie, but I can’t complain, it gets the job done. So even with it’s faults, I recommend it for being hilarious. Watch it high.

Syndicate Sadists

2010-03-08T22:55:00.000-08:00

Thomas Milian stars as Rambo (yes, that’s his name, believe it or not), a tough biker and probable Vietnam vet who arrives in Milan smack in the middle of a gang war between rival crime families. Rambo wages a war of his own when his brother, a member of a kidnap investigation, is maliciously murdered. Rambo plays a dangerous game, pitting the two families against each other, backfiring with the brutal murder of his girlfriend. Consumed by anger and rabid with revenge Rambo sets ut to viciously take the families out one by one.
I have to say that I was very disappointed by this film. I was expecting a badass crime film by Umberto Lenzi, the violent master of cinema responsible for classics like Cannibal Ferox and Nightmare City, but I wasn’t really given something as exploitive as those. This film is very much like a straight action film. There are things to recommend, though. I really loved the cast. Thomas Milian has always been good at playing a badass, especially in his more classic spaghetti westerns like Django Kill, Companeros and Four Horsemen For The Apocalypse. He’s gruffy and takes no shit from people, but I guess I was wishing him to be more like the Stallone Rambo, more of a tough psychopath. Hell, I think Milian would have been great in the John Rambo role. I was also pleased to see Joseph Cotten, one of my favorite actors from the 1940’s, although to be honest, his role is kind of wasted in this film.
There are a couple of action sequences but none of them are really memorable, and the villains are all forgettable for the most part, none of them standing out of the pack. I’m sure a lot of people will have an appreciation for this film, but other than the great acting of Thomas Milian, Syndicate Sadists was, sadly, not sadistic enough.

Punk Rock aka Teenage Runaways

2010-02-27T15:51:00.000-08:00

I love 70’s/early 80’s pornography. It’s just awesome, seeing this stuff being filmed on 16/35mm stock gives it a real air of authenticity. Not that there’s anything wrong with watching the newer gonzo stuff, but the gonzo stuff is more for private moments. These I can actually share with a girlfriend and give her the excuse that we’re watching something artistic…. That is, if I had a girlfriend. Plus, there’s a real air of sleaze to the proceedings, not to mention really nice, bouncy breasts and more body hair tan a chipmunk and women with more hair on their vaginas than I do on my hair. It’s excellent. This film involves a private dick named Jimmy Dillinger (Wade Nichols) who gets himself framed and his young lover kidnapped. So he goes after her in the grimy streets of New York, and gets himself mixed up with the oh-so-dangerous punk rock scene, which is there solely to kidnap young girls, get hooked on drugs and sell them into white slavery. Weird, I was a part of the PR punk (and metal) scene for the longest time and I never heard of any white slavery rings. Yes, this movie isn’t exactly made to be an exact account of the punk rock scene in New York. In fact, there are no punk rock bands on the movie. There is one called The Squirrels who wear platform shoes and look like members of the Bay City Rollers. And the music? Forget it. The cast in the film is pretty good. Wade Nichols is surprisingly funny and realistic, and his NY accent is cool. We also get Robert Kerman (from Cannibal Holocaust) playing a police detective who really hates our hero Dillinger. And last but not least, I’d like to talk about the cute Jean Sanders, who plays Nan. She’s cute and very young looking, and her fucking talents are excellent. Hell, the best sex scenes in the movie are the ones that involve her, the others are pretty forgettable (even the pinball one). This is her only credit on IMDB, which is sad because I would love to see her fucking in other movies. This film was directed by the great Carter Stevens, who made such classics as Bizarre Styles and my personal favorite, Teenage Twins (featuring real twin sisters, yum!). This is a pretty damn good, funny porno film with a lot of great sex and a surprisingly good script. Make sure you hunt down the 77 minute porno version, you won’t be disappointed.

2010-02-26T21:11:00.000-08:00

A drunken sea captain (Timothy Buttons) loses a boat (and a couple of crew members) to a gigantic sea snake, who we find out at the beginning of the film that it was created by a nuclear explosion. Or was it woken up from the deep? Who knows, they don’t explain. So he’s accused of drinking on the job, but another person witnesses the snake (Taryn Power), so he decides to unite with her by making her escape from a mental hospital. With the help of some dinosaur expert played by Ray Milland, they decide to go on a manhunt to kill the giant serpent.
I don’t know about this movie, man. It’s given me something of a bad taste in my mouth, but I can’t say I completely hate it either. It was directed by Amando De Ossorio, a really talented filmmaker from Spain who made the great Blind Dead films and The Lorelei’s Grasp, which I love as well even though so many people say it’s crap. But this movie… I dunno. I guess I was hoping for something very atmospheric like the previously mentioned films, but nope, not in here. We get a Japanese-style monster movie, but it’s script doesn’t really make sense. I already mentioned the dubious origins of the sea monster, but the thing that really peeves me about the story is that it has the most ludicrous coincidences in the history of cinema. Our ‘hero’ is accused of driving a ship while drunk and sentenced to jail, but he goes walking scott-free right after his sentencing. This is a dubbed version, did I miss something? Then he helps the nutty girl escape, right in front of a horny orderly who recognizes the girl only after she’s inside an elevator. Then they return to a hospital (!) to talk to another survivor. You’d think there’d be security ready to see two excons hanging around, but I guess not.
Now, the film has a very talented task. Timothy Buttons is a great actor who appeared in the great Last Picture Show, and Ray Milland has appeared in hundreds of films, many of them classics like The Lost Weekend, Dial M For Murder and The Thing With Two Heads, although sadly his behavior is similar to his character in The Lost Weekend, slurring and almost falling over thanks to what looks like an over-use of the sauce. But the best performance is given by the Sea Serpent itself, a sock puppet modified by special makeup that makes Reptilicus look like the beast from Cloverfield. So those are my two cents on this, De Ossorio’s weird bastard child. I didn’t love it, I didn’t hate it, but it’s still a lot of fun…. If you’re high.

The Alien Factor

2010-02-24T15:21:00.000-08:00

When I first started this blog in 2009, one of the first films I reviewed was a documentary on the life of backyard filmmaker Don Dohler from Baltimore, a guy who made no-budget monster movies until his death from cancer. That documentary meant a lot to me, since I was a big fan of Dohler and his flicks, especially his earlier ones. I decided to finally give him his dues and review my favorite movie of his, the underappreciated classic known as The Alien Factor. Our story involves a trio of aliens, two bad and one good, who crash-land on a small town and cause havoc wherever they go. It’s up to the police department, and a mysterious scientist, to help them stop the evil aliens and get to the bottom of what’s going on. That’s the whole movie in a nutshell, ladies and gents, and it’s more than enough. The script is an obvious tribute to the 50’s monster movies that Dohler loved so much, with your law-abiding heroes and police officer heroes, supporting characters from all over the town and of course, the aliens themselves. The three aliens are different but they’re very interesting. The first one, the good one, is just a guy wearing some kind of monster suit and jeans. It looks pretty cool. The second one is the giant, a dude wearing another cool monster suit but with legs so long it’s obvious he’s wearing some stilts. Every time I see him I giggle, although I also worry since it looks like he’s about to fall at any minute. The third one is stop-motion, a creature that looks like the gecko from the Geico commercials, only full of steroids. Now, to be fair, the movie isn’t a perfect one. The acting is atrocious for the most part, and Tom Griffith makes the most unconvincing hero in film history (although he got worse in the ‘sequel’, NightBeast). Also, the effects aren’t that convincing, particularly the stop-motion one which looks like a dissolve effect. Still, they look great, and this movie has more heart and energy than any big budget science fiction piece of shit any day. I’ll take this movie over 2001 A Space Odyssey and Transformers any day of the week. All hail Don Dohler!

Curse of the Vampires

2010-02-24T15:11:00.000-08:00

The Philippines is not a place known for creating high cinematic art. Hell, every movie I’ve seen from there is an exploitation film, and for the most part, they’re the ‘so-bad-they’re-awesome’ kind. From low-rent monster movies to women in prison films, they seem to jump in on every genre, and I guess gothic horror is no exception. Taking it’s cues from the Hammer films, the story involves the Escodero family in Mexico, a family that is cursed with vampirism, particularly the mother. When the eldest son Eduardo (Eddie Garcia) gets himself infected, he decides to turn everyone in the house, including her sister, into vampires. Now it’s up to the ghost of Eduardo’s sister, Daniel Castillo (Romeo Vasquez) to destroy the curse. Only problem is, he’s a ghost! Yep, the plot sounds pretty ludicrous, doesn’t it? I mean, just when you realize you’re watching a Philippine movie that’s set in Mexico during the 1800’s, you already start feeling suspicious. But to my surprise, this is a very good, and very interesting old school kind of horror film. The best part of the film are the sets, which are very well designed and will remind everyone of the Roger Corman Poe films, particularly the later ones like The Terror and Tomb of Ligeia. The concept is also interesting, with a ghost fighting the undead, bringing a level or originality to the already tired vampire subgenre. There are a lot of interesting themes, like the honor of family, and the conflict between Catholicism and medicine, nothing new to vampire films I know, but still very interesting to watch. Now, this movie is not without it’s flaws. I can’t say anything about the acting because the version I’ve seen is dubbed, very badly I might add. I can still see that the acting is not very good, particularly Eddie Garcia who doesn’t make for a very convincing evil vampire. Christopher Lee he isn’t. Also, I know this probably shouldn’t bother me so much, but a lot of the cast members are Philippine women in blackface. All I could think of was “Minstrel show!” every time they showed up and it really took me out of the film. In the end, however, this is a very interesting, if flawed, gothic horror film and still comes with my recommendations.

Dynamite Brothers

2010-02-24T02:54:00.001-08:00

Stud (Timothy Brown from MASH, of all places) and Larry Chin (Alan Tang) are a black guy and a Chinese guy that are paired together through a series of bad misunderstandings, mainly a Chinese crime syndicate (led by James Hong, from Big Trouble In Little China), a bunch of black criminals, and a corrupt cop (played by Aldo Ray) in one mish-mash of kung fu and blaxploitation that is so pointless it must be seen to be believed. Yes, this is the story of the Dynamite Brothers, also known among MST3K and Cinematic Titanic fans as East Meets Watts. I hate Al Adamson’s films. I’m just going to start off the review with that little bit of phrase. I’m pretty sure the guy was cool when you got to know him, but his movies are abominable. If you’ve ever seen his productions, you know what I mean. First the constant re-editing of Psycho A Go Go into Bloody Pit Of Horror into the Fiend with the Atom Brain and then to Fiend With The Electronic Brain, I mean how many versions of the same movie are you going to make? He also gave us Dracula Vs. Frankenstein, which has the worst Dracula in the history of film (and he has an afro). His movies are like 50’s cornball horror made in the 70’s for no reason or point other than to be outdated for the drive-ins. And hey, he made a fortune! This is one of the few movies of his I’ve seen that seem to be ‘current’, and by current I mean that they were made during the appropriate time. Like I said before, it mixes two popular types of films, with blaxploitation and martial arts. The problem is that the movie has no way of pulling it off in a competent manner. The movie begins as a new version of The Defiant Ones, with the two men going around handcuffed, jumping from one red pick-up truck to the next. Yes, there’s a lot of running around time used for padding in this movie, so get used to it. There are a lot of action scenes as well, but these go half and half. The traditional stuff is badly staged and so badly lit you can’t really tell what the hell is going on. However, the action stuff, performed by Bruce Lee’s action stunt team, is pretty damn good. Alan Tang is no stranger to kung fu flicks, and even looks a bit like Bruce Lee. But sadly, it’s not enough to salvage this film. It’s better than most of the Al Adamson films, and if you get drunk with a bunch of friends, you might get a kick out of it, but other than that, you’d be better off just watching a jackass video.

Syngenor

2010-02-24T00:55:00.000-08:00

A company named Norton Cyberdine (yeah really original name there, dudes) have created the ultimate super soldier, the Syngenor (Synthetic Genetic Organsm), a creature that is perfect for surviving in desert enviroments. Sadly, these ‘ultimate soldiers’ are still uncontrolable, and when one of them escapes, things get pretty hairy for the company. Soon people start getting killed, and the people in the company start dying in violent ways, and not just from the beasts. It’s up to a reporter (Mitchell Lawrence) and a hot chick (Starr Andreff) to get to the bottom of it. This film was meant as a sequel to the 1980 William Malone film, Scared To Death, since it features the same monster. In truth, other than the monster, it has nothing to do with the original. It’s more of a cliched action/scifi monster film, with very little originality to be had. The acting, for the most part, is just terrible. It’s as cliched as it gets. The only exception is David Gale (Re-Animator, The Brain) who plays the boss of the building where these creatures are being created. For the first half of the film, he’s just an unstable, uncomfortable dude who keeps injecting himself with some green shit ala Re-Animator. But when the second half breaks in, the dude turns into a true psychopath, shouting and acting like a crazy buffoon, trying to protect the Syngenors. Gale really over-acts but seems to be having a ton of fun in the process. It reminds me of a crazy Vincent Price performance, only nuttier. The creature effects are also pretty good. They look like a more humanoid-like Gillman, but hey it’s not as good or as memorable as the Universal fishman. You’ll never be fooled as it being a man in a costume. They drink spinal fluid, which is kind of cool. What I was very disappointed about is that the film just doesn’t have the energy, nor the gore, of either Re-Animator or The Brain. I guess when I saw David Gale, I expected this film to be very crazy, but it just wasn’t. In fact, it gets kind of boring. There are sequences that are completely ripped off from Aliens, with a group of soldiers going after the Syngenors (In the worst soldier costumes in history). And the ending is just insane, with the Syngenor/girl hybrid and David Gale going to it like they're in love. Sadly it all ends in crap. So yes, the monsters and David Gale are all great, but this movie just isn’t. The script is weak, the pace is slow and there’s very little to recommend, other than the previously mentioned. Watch it with a buddy. Or drunk.
By the way, the Syngenor's only weakness is water. Do you think M. Night Shamalama-ding-dong saw this while writing Signs? I think he did. This is better than Signs though, sad but true.

Shockheaded

2010-02-23T12:46:00.000-08:00

Noble (Jason Mauer) is a private investigator that is hired by a weirdo-looking pale man to look for a particular girl who has been appearing in weird, secret signal pornographic videos that have been appearing on secret signals across television. As Noble investigates, he gets himself involved with a weird pornographic company, sex clubs, and slowly becomes obsessed with the girl in the video (played by the beautiful and talented Debbie Rochon). Soon, he will know the secret that plagues the video, and his nightmares, and it ain’t gonna be pretty.
This movie was written and directed by Eric Thornett, one of the most interesting filmmakers in the indie horror scene right now, and this is probably his most interesting film. It’s a part of the ‘snuff’ subgenre of cinema, a kind of horror movie that was first begun by Peeping Tom in 1960 by Michael Powell. The script is clever and has a lot of surreal mystery. You really never know what the hell is going on for a lot of the film, almost like you have walked into a different world. It’s obvious that Thornett is a big fan of Cronenberg, as the plot has elements of Videodrome (the secret snuff channel), and David Lynch as well, particularly lost Highway, like the creepy pale guy and the white-masked slasher looking dude. Hey I don’t blame him, these are the best films by both directors and it’s great to see the influence. The movie also plays a little like Angel Heart, particularly with the way the main actor behaves. Sadly this movie isn’t without it’s flaws. With it’s creepy, film noir vibe also comes a very slow pace, and this wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t for the fact that the film needs some serious editing, especially after the reveal of the ‘snuff’ angle. After that particular revelation, you just don’t care about anything that happens next. Nothing has the impact, nor the strength. The acting isn’t very good either, although in her defense, Debbie Rochon delivers as usual, proving once again that she’s the best actress in indie horror today. I would love to work with her someday. So in conclusion, this is a pretty damn good film, especially considering it’s budgets. It proudly wears it’s influences on it’s sleeve, and has the potential to be creepy. I look forward to see more of Thornett’s work in the future

An American Hippie In Israel

2010-02-22T15:55:00.000-08:00

Mike (Asher Tzarfati) is an American hippie, going around, bumming about the world trying to escape his nightmares from his time in Vietnam. He gets a ride from a pretty girl who wants to be a hippie, and soon they get together with other hippies to have a crazy commune. Sadly this commune doesn’t last long, as a duo of killer mimes in suits shoot the hippies down in a hail of gunfire. Mike, his girl and another couple survive, and together decide to go to an island where they can live their ‘totally free’ lifestyle. They get there and have paradise for the first night, but soon things go from bad to insane, and in less than a day the hippies begin to try to kill each other and act like cannibals. I first heard of this ‘masterpiece’ in 2002 when a trailer was included in the Grindhouse Releasing DVD of I Drink Your Blood. From the get-go, me and my friends were obsessed by it. It looked like such a wacko picture, like something that was too insane to be believed. I was finally able to hunt down a copy, and everything I believed was completely true. This is a grindhouse exploitation film that was produced in Israel, of all places. The screenplay obviously tries to make something in the veins of Easy Rider, trying to create a portrait of why the hippie lifestyle is destined to fail. The problem is, this film was made in 1972, so it’s outdated by two years before it even got the chance! So the film takes itself way too seriously, and this creates a wave of hilarity that it’s almost hard to believe. Even with its ‘message’, the movie doesn’t make a lick of sense. The previously-mentioned killer mimes are apparently a part of Mike The Hippie’s past, but we don’t really elaborate on it. I guess they’re supposed to be the angels of death or something, but who the fuck knows. Then there’s this weird dream sequence where our hero is running up a mountain with a giant hammer and starts smashing what look like humans with cassettes for heads, playing chess in a globe-shaped table. What the fuck? As you can imagine, nothing of this is explained, it’s just there to be weird and ‘psychedelic’. The third act, in the island, starts off normal, but gets nuttier by the second. For starters we get the fakest-looking sharks in the history of cinema. Even Bruno Mattei would spit at these things. Then there’s the sequence where Mike argues with his hippie friend, but nothing happens because the other guy can’t speak English. By the end they start behaving like animals and screaming and drooling, and I just gave up on this thing. It’s completely ludicrous but if you want a laugh, you should seek this out.

The Wind In The Willows

2010-02-22T10:32:00.001-08:00

Ah, the Wind in the Willows, a classic children’s story first told by author Kenneth Grahame, first published in 1908. The most famous incarnation came from the late 40’s thanks to the Walt Disney Company, who released a double-feature film with The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow. But few people remember this animated film from the early 80’s, produced by Thames Television and using the process of stop-motion animation. Now, I never saw this film when I was a child, but I did see the long-running animated series, which was also in stop-motion, because they used to play it on PBS once a week.
The story is known to all who have read the book: It revolves around four friends: Mole, Rat, Badger, and the eccentric and wild Mr. Toad, who spends his time going from one obsession to another. When Toad gets himself arrested for stealing a motorboat (no kidding!), and the country weasels (who look like 50’s juvenile delinquents) crash on Toad Manor, Mr. Toad’s country estate. Toad is able to escape prison by dressing as a washing woman, and together the four friends go and have a fight with the weasels to take Toad Hall back. Yep, the story is very faithful to the original book, with its themes of English society permeating over to the countryside, from the point of view of the animals. The voice casting is great, particularly David Jason who plays Mr. Toad, and laughs just like Pee Wee Herman. But the main draw to the film is, of course, the stop-motion animation. It’s just awesome, being able to make the characters interesting to look at, while keeping a fantasy vibe intact. The best sequences involve the Weasels, particularly the three main scenes. When Mole gets lost in the woods, and later when they attack Badger in Toad Manor, the Weasels are made out to be really scary creatures, and they behave in an almost inhuman fashion. The way these movies are cut, with quick edits and claustrophobic close-ups and tilted shots, give the sequences real suspense and terror, and they’re pretty intense for a children’s film. The third sequence involves the third act itself, where our four animal friends fight against the weasels in Toad Manor. The animation is flawless, being as frantic and energetic as a cartoon, only with the stop-motion, it’s given a whole new dimension in awesomeness. Sadly, and this is going to piss off the arthouse types, I actually like the Disney version more. Not that this is a bad film by any means, it’s quite excellent. The problem is, I’ve never thought that the story lent itself to the long film format, I believe it works better as a short. The Disney film has great pacing, and sadly this movie does not, sometimes feeling like you’re being dragged on. The story of Wind In The Willows has been told and retold many times in film, sometimes even using live-action actors instead of animals. How boring. This is one of the best, and I recommend it for it’s great music, great voice acting and top-notch animation. I wish I had toys of these four characters.

RIP Jamie Gillis

2010-02-21T10:41:00.000-08:00

Good night, you dark prince of porn, you!

For those who are uneducated, Jamie Gillis was simply the best actor in the history of classic pornography. He starred in such classics as Water Power (as the enema bandit!), Private Afternoons of Pamela Mann, The Defiance Of Good, The Story Of Joanna, The Opening Of Misty Beethoven (a personal favorite!), Barbara Broadcast, The Ecstasy Girls, Neon Nights, Dracula Sucks, Ultra Flesh, and the illegal-to-own New Wave Hookers, alongside the then underage Traci Lords. The man always gave great performances, from scary to funny, and was always entertaining to watch.

His last film was the underrated zombie comedy Die You Zombie Bastards. He will always be fondly remembered by fans of trash cinema and classic porn.

Rolling Thunder

2010-02-19T14:47:00.001-08:00

William DeVane plays Charles Rane, a Vietnam veteran who has spent the last years of his life being tortured every day in a prison in the jungles of Hanoi. But all that’s over, since he’s returning home with his friend Johnny (Tommy Lee Jones) and returning to his girl and son. But Charles finds civilian life hard to return to, being unable to get some sleep, showing little emotion, and worst of all, his girl has fallen in love with another man. All he cares about is his son, and even that is taken away from him when a group of robbers enter his home and torture and mutilate him over a suitcase of silver dollars he was awarded for his services. The robbers kill his family and leave him for dead, but he recuperates pretty quickly, even if he has to use a hook for a hand now. But that’s not the end of it for Charlie, as now he’s going on a manhunt, to capture the men who killed his girl and son, a manhunt that takes him to El Paso, Texas. Joined by his friend Johnny, they’re going to make them suckers pay in a very bloody way.

This film was written by Paul Schraeder, the same man who gave us the excellent script for my favorite movie, Taxi Driver, and would direct films like Hardcore. You can see in this film many of the themes that would pop up around Taxi Driver, from the protagonist who’s a disgruntled, insomniac Vietnam vet and his quest for vigilante justice, to the way he views his world around him as ugly and rotten. William DeVane is no Robert Deniro, but he’s still a pretty good actor and is able to make the character of Charlie as a very realistic Vietnam veteran. Many people might see this movie and think he’s being wooden and uncharismatic, but that’s the point. As the son of a Vietnam vet and grandson of a WWII vet, I can tell you that war kills emotions, and DeVane’s lack of display of them works perfect for his character. Tommy Lee Jones is also great in this film, even in this being one of his early roles. He’s also the quiet type, but he really comes alive during the ending’s vengeance sequence, as he smiles and giggles at the process of going into battle. I also have to give credit to the beautiful Linda Haynes, who is able to carry the role of the girl who loves Charlie very well. She’s really the emotional heart of the movie, considering how much macho stuff is going on. It’s too bad she retired in 1980 to become a legal secretary, she had a lot of talent and it’s on full display here.

Sadly, this film has ssome flaws that I have to address, mainly the character of Cliff (Lawrason Driscoll). He’s the cop who wants to marry Charlie’s old girl. Just by what he did, you don’t like the fucker one bit, and the fact that screen time is taken out to force us to watch this guy hunt down Charlie and then get shot down by the same people Charlie is trying to kill makes you wonder what the fucking point was with that subplot. Thankfully the rest of the film is damn near flawless. John Flynn, who is famous for doing great thrillers like The Outfit, does a great job and the end sequence, where our two leads go into vengeance mode with shotguns into a hotel, is fucking awesome. You REALLY want tos ee these guys get it. I can’t help but think again to Taxi Driver, which has a similar ending, and while I don’t consider this to be as good as Taxi Driver, it’s still pretty up there. Hell, even Quentin Tarantino agrees with me, he named one of his distribution companies after it. So check this movie out, it has everything a revenge thriller should have, and it’s a near-perfect film.

Red Dawn

2010-02-19T14:39:00.000-08:00

In a futuristic modern day American South, the god-damn commie governments of Russia and Cuba join forces and actually invade the United States. Yep, the Cold War happened, and they start shooting everyone in sight. But while all the battles are going on, a group of high school students are able to escape into the woods. With help from older people living in the country and remembering the survivalist training given to them by their parents, brothers Jed (SWAYZE) and Matt (Charlie Sheen) teach the others how to survive and fight back against the evil commie governments. Sadly, like all wars, there will be casualties.

Wow, what a movie. This is one of my favorite movies of all time. I’ve been watching it again and again every since I first had it on VHS back in the early 90’s. It’s just so damn cool! For starters, let’s talk about the cast. We have a lot of young talent from the early 80’s in this one, and they all more than do their share of good acting. Swayze is great as the leader, Charlie Sheen is surprisingly restrained and non-psychotic, and C. Thomas Howell actually plays the most disturbed and mentally deranged psychopath in the movie. I mean, it’s not like he goes crazy in an obvious way, but after drinking deer blood, he turns into a truly soulless mercenary, and even has what can be called either the most badass or the stupidest death in the entire movie. But my favorite performance comes from Lea Thompson, who plays a traumatized young girl who learns to become a badass. I think she’s a very underrated actress and it’s sad that she’s mostly known for goofy comedies like Howard The Duck or The Beverly Hillbillies. She should be as big as Nicole Kidman. We also get some really cool cameos from people like Harry Dean Stanton, Powers Boothe and Ben Johnson.

I give most of the credit to why this movie is so bad to director John Milius, who also directed Conan The Barbarian, although I prefer this one. Milius shows his obvious knowledge of film language and history and showcases a lot of sequences that seem like tributes to more classic films. The skylines will remind everyone of the films of John Ford, and the sequences on horseback will remind you of David Lean’s film Lawrence of Arabia. I also like that he’s able to give the Russians a more human aspect, instead of making them generic evil characters without redeeming qualities like Steven Speilberg would have done. This is just a great action movie, with a lot of great scenes, great acting, and a great script. One of the best.

Planet of the Dinosaurs

2010-02-19T14:35:00.000-08:00

A group of astronauts dressed in different multi-colored spandex jumpsuits crash-land on a strange and desolate planet. They go around and try to find something to help them survive, and soon find out that they’re not as alone as they probably hoped. Nope, there are dinosaurs all over the place, and they are all pissed off. Wow, where to start about this movie? It’s either the worst or the funniest dinosaur movie in the history of time, and that’s saying much since I like Prehisteria. Let’s start off with the script. It’s corny as hell and takes itself too seriously, not to mention it’s plagued with these long sequences where the characters start longing about returning to Earth. The acting is atrocious, and the actors look more like 70’s porn stars who wandered into the wrong movie. One of the actors is shirtless throughout, and a lot of them don’t leave much to the imagination thanks to their tight spandex suits. And the weirdest part of all? The soundtrack. It seems like it was either written and performed by some experimental prog-rock band like Emerson, Lake & Palmer, or it was recorded off an old video game from a Calico computer.

But there is one mayor saving grace: the dinosaurs. They don’t show up as much as I wished, but when they do, they’re in complete stop-motion glory. It’s like a stop motion gift from the gods, thanks that they break for the monotony of the ‘heroes’ talking bullshit and walking around aimlessly. We get stegosaurs, that triceratops with only one horn, I dunno it’s name, dilophosaurus and of course, the mighty T-Rex. These animals kill our heroes and every time it happens, it’s hilarious. So yes, this movie really sucks, but it’s pretty hilarious in how much it sucks and it does feature cool dinosaur effects. Recommended with a bunch of friends and a hell of a lot of beer.

The Planet Of The Dinosaurs Drinking Game! Take a shot when:
-the group walks around aimlessly
-A dinosaur shows up
-A dinosaur eats someone
-the characters are building thankless chores
-the shirtless guy flexes

The Little Shop Of Horrors

2010-02-19T14:27:00.000-08:00

Seymour is a geeky loser who works for a flower shop named Mushnik’s Shop, where he pines away hoping to fall in love with the girl of her dreams, Audrey. His dream includes creating a new kind of plant, a plant that can not only talk, but has a big taste for human flesh and blood. Soon Seymour sees himself selling his soul and committing crimes for the devil plant. Will he be able to destroy the creature, or will it destroy him first?
It’s a little sad that this movie has now been almost completely overshadowed by it’s 80’s musical comedy, which is now as big a part of the culture as Ghostbusters or other mayor 80’s films. But in all it’s defense, this movie is a very good comedy film, even if it is low budget. The actors are all great. Jonathan Haze is great as the geeky Seymour and Jackie Joseph (who was later in Gremlins) is very pretty and is less annoying than the actress that appeared in the musical remake. I also prefer the actor who played Mushnik, Mel Welles, just because he looks like every time he talks, he looks like he’s about to have a heart attack. We also get a lot of good cameos, the most memorable of course is Jack Nicholson as a masochistic client in the dentist’s office, who really loves getting dental torture. His character would later appear in the guise of Bill Murray in the remake. This one also has a very funny cameo by Dick Miller, who is a Corman and Joe Dante regular, as a guy who eats flowers.
Roger Corman once boasted that he was able to make this movie in three days. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but if it shows on something, it’s on the plant itself, the gigantic Audrey II. Because of the budget, the creature is definitely a letdown. It doesn’t have any of the personality or evil attitude of the creature in the 80’s remake, but it’s forgivable because of it being a different time and, to be honest, an independent production. The script is still solid as hell, it’s simply very funny, has great acting, and has a pretty good Dragnet parody (and I love me some Dragnet). This movie comes very well recommended, especially if you’ve only seen the remake.

Rad

2010-02-19T14:20:00.000-08:00

The eighties were a time where you could make a family movie out of everything, and bike riding definitely became a part of it. Our story involves a local bike-riding high school student named Cru, who can’t seem to go down the street without doing crazy bike stunts. When a bike-riding competition gets to his town, he decides that he has to be a part of it. But it’s not going to be that easy, since the competition features some of the most talented riders from across the country, not to mention that the owners of the Mongoose bike company want their guy to win, no matter what the cost. You know this movie is going to be a ball full of cheese the moment frame one starts, with it’s cheesy soft 80’s music playing to kids doing tricks on bikes in slow motion. It’s all cheese here when it comes to the music. The best sequence to prove this is the one in the high school gym, where Cru and his new girlfriend (played by Full House’s Lori Loughlin) have a ‘bike-off’ to the tunes of Send Me An Angel by Real Life. Speaking of this scene, it’s amazing how they try to pull off the ‘where’s the stuntman’ routine. I mean, Lori Loughlin doesn’t look like she can ride a bike with training wheels, let alone do stunts on them. The other most cheesetastic moment is the ‘love montage’ where they go down a waterslide. Hilarious!

Surprisingly enough, the movie has a pretty solid cast. We get solid performances by veteran actors like Ray Walston (Fast Times At Ridgemont High) and Jack Weston (The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street), but more surprisingly, Talia Shire. Yes, THAT Talia Shire, from The Godfather and Rocky franchises. Her role is small, but they still manage to give her the worst lines (“You defied me!”), even if she’s still able to deliver them with some kind of dignity. Yes, this is your typical, clichéd 80’s drama/family film, but still, there’s a certain appeal. It’s just really fun, something that a lot of movies today just don’t have, and it’s very entertaining. I suggest you give it a try if you haven’t, or haven’t seen it in a long time, since it hasn’t been out on DVD yet. You won’t regret it.

Nightmares

2010-02-19T14:13:00.000-08:00

In the early 80’s, slashers were everything, and they came from all over the place. Australia was no exception, as legendary exploitation filmmaker John Lamond showed us in this 1980 production. The story involves a young actress named Helen (Jenny Neumann), who saw her mother die in a car accident, along with her mother’s lover. She has become an actress and has landed a role in an Oscar Wilde-style comedy. But soon, everyone in the set is starting to die in very violent and gratuitous ways, and Helen may, or may not be, the killer. But if it isn’t her, who could it be? Someone from the past? A disgruntled PA?

Yeah that joke was stupid, but so is this movie. This is possibly the least interesting slasher I have seen, even worse than Nightmares in a Damaged Brain. Now, let me first say that there are two things that are really good about this. For starters, all the murders start with glass being broken, and all the murders are committed with a broken piece of glass. This is pretty cool and an original addition to the “trademark murder weapon” tradition of slasher films. And the murders themselves are pretty damn fucked up, with some of the most painful-looking stabbings I’ve seen in the movies. The mixture of the gore and the sound effect used really makes me feel the skin rip. And second, there is a lot of explicit nudity involved with these murders. Yes, we get two full nude scenes, and one of them is surprisingly explicit, even for a slasher film. The second one looks especially painful, however, since the woman gets herself a slash in her buttcheek. Ouch.
Even with all of this going on, however, the movie cannot be saved. The script is atrocious beyond belief and the acting for the most part is atrocious. There just isn’t enough character development in the script for me to care about anyone in the script, so the movie gets boring pretty quick, with the exception of the murder sequences. Also, is it just me, or do the scenes of the play just show what could be the worst stage play in the history of mankind? Really disturbing, in a bad way. However, I will say that if you like slashers like I do, you should hunt this film down, as it has a ton of great murders and pretty good nudity/sex. Just don’t hope for much else.

Nightmare Sisters

2010-02-19T14:06:00.000-08:00

This is one of the most that epitomizes the insane popularity of the scream queen during the 1980’s. There is no doubt, back in the day you could sell a horror movie just on their name being on the credits. This film features three of the biggest in the scene: Linnea Quigley, Michelle Bauer and Brinke Stevens, as three nerdy girls who are giddy about having a get together with three fellow male nerds. The thought that these three beautiful babes would have problems getting dates is kind of a joke, but this is a comedy. Because of a crystal ball that Brinke Stevens buys, the three girls get possessed and turn into mega-hot-babes, possessed by a succubus. The three possessed women eat the geek’s fraternity jock brothers, then go after the geeks. The geeks decide to call an exorcist to fight the succubus and free the girls so that they can get laid.

I knew I wasn’t gonna love this movie from the moment I saw the first scene, with a bad comedian doing a bad Indian accent. But soon after the film got rolling with it’s three leads, I realized that this isn’t really the kind of movie that I should take seriously. It’s a comedy, and a goofy one at that. The film I can compare this to the most is another DeCoteau film, Sorority Babes In The Slime Ball Bowl-O-Rama. It’s stupid, but it’s entertainingly stupid.
But let’s face it, as bad as the script is and as unfunny and stupid the comedy is, it’s all saved thanks to our three leads. The three women are beautiful as ever, and they have great comedic timing and chemistry together. There are many long takes in the film, and the first noticeable one is the one the three share as their ‘geek mode’ after Stevens brings a box of stuff she bought at a thrift store. You see that scene and it’s one long take of the three women talking, and they are really fun and don’t make it boring at all. They also share a bathtub scene, which is really interesting because of the chemistry together. These women look like they’ve had sex with each other in real life! I know, I’m a pervert, but the point is, these three women are great actresses that got stuck on a niche, which is kind of sad but hey, at the same time, they had a career and in a world like the one we live in, it’s hard to have a career in anything, particularly in a career that is so fun and beloved. But this film isn’t really recommended, unless you just want to see these three great women. Other than that, stick with Sorority Babes.

Night Call Nurses

2010-02-19T14:01:00.000-08:00

This is a very simple film, as it’s basically a day-to-day account on the lives of three nurses, told in an exploitation way. These three nurses are the mentally-unstable Barbara (Patty Byrne), the sexpot Janis (Alana Stewart) and the black political revolutionary Sandra (Mittie Lawrence). All this in the change of the 60’s, as Barbara has to deal with trying to fall in love with her hippie psychiatrist and not fall victim to a stalking nurse, while Janis falls in love with a trucker addicted to speed and Sandra is trying to sneak out a black revolutionary from the hospital she works in.

This movie starts off promisingly enough, with a naked woman throwing herself off a window. Instead of her body falling to the ground, a doll does, breaking into pieces on the ground. From that opening sequence, I thought I was about to watch a long-lost giallo or something, But nope, this is basically just an exploitation film, and not a very good one at that. Not that it’s not entertaining, mind you, but it’s just has so many faults that it’s kind of hard to take it seriously. For starters, the movie is dated as hell. Just like Rebel Without A Cause and Easy Rider, this is a product of it’s time. The problem is that this movie is nowhere near as good as those previously mentioned. This comes to a particular light during the ‘group therapy’ session Barbara attends, where the psychologist asks the group to strip off of their clothes so that they can feel what real freedom is like. In our ridiculously PC world, where people will sue you for sneezing on their shoes, I couldn’t imagine something like that passing. I can’t get women naked to work in my movies, I can’t imagine something like it in group therapy.

This particularly bad storyline goes into even crazier territory as it’s revealed that the stalker nurse is *SPOILER* a transvestite! The transvestite attacks the doctor and Barbara, and then Barbara convinces the transvestite to help save the doctor’s life… AND THAT’S ALL THAT THEY MENTION ABOUT IT! For no reason they just forget about this particular plot and move on to the most entertaining part of the whole movie, a sequence where Sandra and Janis bond together and rescue the political revolutionary in the hospital. This rescue leads to one of the most ludicrous car chases ever, with some of the worst continuity I’ve ever seen in my life. It goes from day on the exteriors of the truck to night on the interior shots of the truck. And even more ludicrous, they get chased by cops. One of the black dudes throws a bunch of dinamite stuck together, enough to blow up a house, and it explodes under the car. The explosion only causes the front of the car to blow smoke and the cop to come out in black and give the finger. I guess I would expect the guy to get turned into KFC, but I guess I was wrong.

Wow I’ve written a lot, considering this movie clocks under 80 minutes, with one of the cheesiest happy endings ever. Like I said, the transvestite subplot does not get resolved, and when they finish rescuing the revolutionary, it just goes into a montage of the three nurses posing happily. What the hell? Did they just give up and decided to take Polaroids? So yeah this movie is bullshit, but it is entertaining, and I can’t think of any single moment where I was bored. So watch it if you want to watch an average exploitation movie, just don’t expect high art.

Over The Top

2010-02-15T16:05:00.001-08:00

What do you get when you remake Rocky, only this time with a child custody plot replacing the “I love Adrian” plot and arm-wrestling instead of boxing? Well, you get Over The Top, the classic Cannon action flick from the 80’s starring that icon of muscle and curved lips, Sylvester Stallone. Stallone plays Hawk (or Hawks, depending on who’s calling his name), a trucker who has just agreed to take care of his spoiled, homosexual son, Michael (David Mendenhall). Not everybody is happy about that, particularly the kid’s grandfather, Jason Cutler (the well-tanned Robert Loggia). Meanwhile, Hawk has to worry about an arm-wrestling competition in Las Vegas where he’ll get the chance to win a brand new truck. Oh, the drama! I never understood why so many people consider this film to be cheesy. Well, I do actually, but I blame it mostly on two things: first, the music. It’s fucking terrible, as bad as 80’s music gets. Particularly bad is the Kenny Loggins song, which is played not once, but twice, almost in it’s entirety. Makes me feel like I’m digging shards of metal into my nails. Anyway enough about the music, the other thing that makes this movie cheesy as fuck is the kid character, Michael. I know he’s supposed to be spoiled, but I’ve never seen such a whiny, unlikeable child in my life. Well, the only one I can think of that’s just as bad is the one in Phantasm III, but yeah he’s pretty bad. I particularly hate the scene where he’s looking at his father’s sent papers and has that awkward smile… just weird. He shares no chemistry with Stallone, and most of their scenes come of awkward as hell. I’m not surprised the kid ended up doing “Going Bananas” with Dom DeLuise.
Even with these two negative factors, I really love this movie. I’ve loved it since I was a kid. I can’t think of any other movie that signifies what people call “guy flicks”, well this and Road House, but I actually know women who like Road House. I’ve never met a woman that likes Over The Top, and it doesn’t surprise me. It has no interest in being sympathetic toward women, it’s just a flick about guys getting together and sweating until they have nuclear armpits.Stallone is great. He plays the Rocky type yet again, being a sensitive good guy, but his best moments come when he decides to arm wrestle, when he turns his hat around and makes his crazy, pumped face. He’s either crazy or he’s constipated, I’m not too sure. The final half hour, where Stallone participates in the arm-wrestling contest, is fantastic. The dudes in this thing are incredible, they look like Hulk Hogan’s inbred backwoods brothers. And the main antagonist of the match, Bull, is a beast. He looks like he’s the size of a house and his muscles are as big as my torso. He was played by Rick Zumwalt, who would later play the tattooed strongman in Batman Returns. He blows up in that one, sadly. This movie is simply badass, and even though it has it’s flaws, it’s incredibly entertaining and Stallone is great in it. I’ve watched it like fifteen times, and I’ll watch it fifteen more in the future.

Next Of Kin

2010-02-15T15:59:00.000-08:00

In this Australian thriller, Jacki Kerin plays Linda, a woman in her late 20’s who has just inherited an old folk’s home that used to belong to her mother. From the moment she gets there, weird stuff starts happening. from an old person who dies, to visions of herself when she was younger playing with a red ball. Soon enough she discovers there’s something evil with the house, and the more she reads into it, the weirder things get around the house. Soon she discovers that someone from her past is living there with them, someone who wasn’t very right in the head, so meone who could be family. I was very surprised by this film. Most Australian genre films are really out there, full of gore and exploitative elements. But this one is surprisingly restrained, more interested in creating suspense and terror than going for the gross-out. The acting is excellent, particularly from the lead, Jacki Kerin, who is very sympathetic and real-looking. Her face is the face of someone who’s lived, and that adds to her character, particularly during the third act where things get very hectic. We also get a good performance from John Jarratt as the young lead. You might recognize him from other horror films like Wolf Creek, and the two Australian giant croc movies, Rogue and Dark Age. The movie reminds me a lot of The Shining, the book not the movie, in that there are a lot of whacked out things that you don’t know if it’s really happening or not. Scratch that, I actually prefer this movie more than the Shining, which I’ve always considered an over-rated piece of tripe. There are two great sequences that will stick with my mind forever though: the sequence where our heroine stabs the villain in the eye through the door and has the most dramatic run-down-the-hallway scene in the history of cinema. The second scene I will always remember is the fountain of blood that reveals a dead body in the water. These two sequences are terrifying but beautiful to look at the same time. The ending has been written about in many other blogs and even in the great Ozploitation documentary that came out in 2008, and with good reason. It’s an explosion that’s only seen from halfway through, as the first part is seen only in the glow of a sign. It’s been revealed that it was an error, but every filmmaker knows that errors can be the friend of the director. This is a great thriller from the land down under that is just begging to be rediscovered by horror audiences. Comes highly recommended.

Crossroads

2010-02-15T15:51:00.000-08:00

This movie is more boring than church

Monster Of Frankenstein

2010-02-15T15:48:00.001-08:00

I have to admit that I don’t watch as much anime as I probably should, but I blame it on an ex-girlfriend who used to drive me insane with crap like Ranma, Naruto and Hellsing. I got to the point where I couldn’t stand to watch Japanese animation. Still, there is some of that stuff that I enjoy, particularly the works of Hayao Miyazaki, and individual films like Akira and Perfect Blue. Hell, a few months ago I gave a review to an anime adaptation of Marvel’s Tomb Of Dracula that was pretty damn cool. I also like the Vampire Hunter D stuff, and when I found out that there had been a Frankenstein adaptation in anime form, I hunted it down as quickly as I could. What I got was this, a very disappointing movie that nevertheless has things to recommend about it. For starters, the story. It’s nothing new here, with the doctor Victor Frankenstein creating a monster that craves vengeance against his creator. We get very familiar elements, such as the blind man that is in most incarnations, the little girl, similar from Ghost Of Frankenstein, and the creature looks like the Karloff monster on steroids. Seriously this damn monster is almost fifteen feet tall! And like the Universal films, it’s the monster that’s the center of the story. Of all the characters in the anime, his is the only one that goes through a change, first starting as a bloodthirsty killing machine, and slowly becoming more and more friendly when he finds the little girl. It’s a nice twist on the story, since normally he’s either a monster or a creature of sympathy, but never really both. The animation style is very similar to Vampire Hunter D, with some very realistic artwork and backgrounds. Sadly that’s all that I can recommend about this particular film. The thing that hurts this movie the most is it’s pacing. We start off great, with a very original and well-done ‘birthing’ sequence for the monster, but when the plot kicks in the story drags to the pace of a snail. It gets especially slow when the monster starts getting civilized. By the third act we get a cool action sequence involving a forest fire, but by then the main focus of the story seems to go apeshit. Seeing the doctor on the shoulder of the monster screaming it to hurry up reminded me more of Gigantor than any Frankenstein story. The voice acting is pretty bad too, but you can already expect that from 80’s anime. In total, this is an interesting new take on the Frankenstein story, and I’m sure a lot of people will get a kick out of it, but I’m not one of them.

Maniac 1934

2010-02-15T15:45:00.001-08:00

Have you ever seen a film where, halfway through, you start questioning reality and wonder what the fuck are you on? I know a lot of people who suffer from these experiences while watching the films of David Lynch and Alejandro Jodorowski. Me? I have only suffered it from this 1934 production, made by the first king of exploitation, Dwain Esper, who gave us such high art as Reefer Madness and How To Dress In Front Of Your Husband. Based somewhat on Poe, the story deals with an actor who assists a mad scientist who is able to reanimate bodies ala Herbert West. The assistant kills the doctor and decides to put on a costume to make people think he is the doctor, and so he continues doing wacky experiments. Some of these include shooting up with adrenaline a guy who thinks he’s the orangutan from Poe’s Murders In The Rue Morgue (I’m dead serious) and then trying to hit it up with a chubby golddigger. Oh, and he’s afraid of cats. Like I said before, this is somewhat based on Poe, mostly The Black Cat, in the fact that the character is afraid of cats and walls up the doctor the way the guy does in the story. That’s as far as it goes I’m afraid, as this is as faithful to Poe as the Karloff/Lugosi Black Cat… actually if I think about it, this is more faithful. But that doesn’t mean it’s better, oh no. By all means this movie should be a forgotten piece of shit. It has some of the worst technical aspects I have seen from a 1930’s movie, and I know about bad filmmaker, being a bad filmmaker myself. The acting is also terrible, going to ridiculous lenghts to over-act and make the story as unbearable as possible. Add to that these weird title cards that pop up every fifteen minutes explaining to us different psychological disturbances and you feel like you’ve stumbled into the Twilight Zone or something. And that’s exactly what makes this film so memorable. It’s so weird, so surreal, that you just have to sit there, in awe, wondering what the fuck you are watching. Am I watching a real movie? Am I watching some sort of abstract play performed by members of an insane asylum? The movie also breaks some ground in that it features some light gore, but more than you could see in the 30’s, from a cat eating a heart to the mad scientist swallowing the cat’s eyeball. We also get some nudity, mostly pointless and ridiculous, but it’s also shocking just because I couldn’t even think of there being tits in the 30’s, except for those bad nudist shorts I previously reviewed (look for those, they’re fun). My favorite scene, however, must be the one with the chubby women in their ill-fitting underwear talking bullshit. One of them has the voice of Minnie Mouse and the other dances to no music. I wish all cinema was this insane.

Death Ship

2010-02-15T15:40:00.001-08:00

A group of people survive a horrible sinking at sea, only to be rescued by the film’s title, the Death Ship, a haunted SS ship that causes people to go insane and starts killing them one by one in different, violent ways. Yes, this is the basic plot of the Death Ship, a Canadian/French production. The plot, as you can tell, is no different from your typical haunted house film, although I must admit that the movie benefits from it’s creepy location. The ship where the film takes place does look like an empty shithole, and is very similar to the space ship in Alien, at least in the areas below. The other memorable aspect of this film is the acting. When I put it on I had no idea that the film was filled with known and talented actors, and I was glad to see them. The stand-out is George Kennedy, famous for playing Captain Ed in the Naked Gun films. Here, he plays a bitter sea captain who later gets possessed by the evil ghosts of the old Nazi captain. He’s an asshole when he’s normal but he turns really vicious when he gets possessed. We also get Richard Crenna from the Rambo films playing a good guy, and that’s always good. Then there’s the obligatory t&a, given to us by British actress, Victoria Burgoine. She is really good-looking and has the greatest nude/death scene I’ve seen in a long time: she drowns in a shower full of blood! If you know me, you know I’ve got a thing for naked women covered in blood, so this made me very happy. And when George Kennedy throws her over, she looks great dead. As for the death scenes, they’re hit and miss. The sequence with the shower full of fake blood is by far the best, but there are some other interesting ones. One of the sailors gets himself thrown into a net full of fish, and another is picked up by a hook then thrown overboard until he drowns. As you see, they’re not very memorable. George Kennedy has a cool death scene, however, but I don’t want to reveal too much about it. Let’s just say he loses one of his limbs in a very, very painful way. In closing, this is a very accomplished and well-made ghost story, very typical of it’s time but entertaining as well. I recommend it.

Trip With The Teacher

2010-02-15T15:37:00.001-08:00

Rape/revenge films are like junk-food: you either eat it or you don’t. Me? I love the stuff. The movies, I mean. There are few things in life that make me happier than seeing a woman taking violent revenge after going through hell. So I’ve been watching a lot of them lately, in hopes of being able to make one of my own, and in my search I got this particular piece of trash, from the early seventies. The story involves a group of girls who are going on a bus with their teacher to learn about rocks or something, who knows who cares. On their way they meet a couple of bikers, two bad and one good. The baddest one, played by softcore porn master Zalman King (The Red Shoe Diaries, Wild Orchid), a narcoleptic psychopath who kills people just for talking shit to them. They capture the bus, and start raping the girls and the teacher. But enough is enough, and the girls (and the good biker) decide to take action against the assholes. Well, you know what that leaves into. This is a grindhouse movie in it’s most basic sense of the word. The atmosphere is grimy and gritty, and you can even see the sweat fall off the face of the actors, with it’s low budget. The movie is surprisingly un-sexy, which is very rare in rape/revenge films. Of course, there’s nothing sexy about the rape scene in Irreversible, but other than that most rape scenes are pretty good to jerk off to, thanks to the fact that they look mostly fake. This movie is no exception, as the rape is actually off-screen (that of the teacher). There is some t&a but none of it is really that nice, although to be honest I thought the teacher, played by Brenda Fogerty. I wish I had good-looking teachers like that when I was in school. The main saving grace of this film is Zalman King, who is so good at playing a psychopath that it’s a tragedy that he didn’t act as much as he directs. He’s conniving, sleazy, and just plain evil, screaming and nodding, and his weird laugh just makes things even more unnerving. He would go on to play a good guy in the LSD horror movie Blue Sunshine and played one of the astronauts in Galaxy of Terror before finding his vocation in bad sex cinema. What a tragedy, he could have been better than David Hess. Although he did recently come back in the previously-reviewed Saint Francis, so I’m hoping he’ll make a full acting comeback. This isn’t a great film but it sure has it’s share of sleaziness and filthiness, and for that it comes highly recommended.

Faceless

2010-02-15T15:31:00.000-08:00

Jess Franco is one of my favorite directors, but for many reasons, he is very hated by many horror and film fans. I don’t blame them, since Franco has made a lot of bad stuff, like Female Vampire and Oasis of the Zombies. But those of us who are his fans, the ‘Franco-files’, know that the man has made some truly great films, films that are unconventional and uncompromising. One of those films is this one, a loose remake of the classic French horror film Eyes Without A Face. Helmut Berger and Brigitte Lahaie (yum) play a couple of psycho surgeons who are going around, removing women’s faces, trying to restore their daughter’s deformed face and make her beautiful again.

This is Franco’s most professional-looking film, even if the film has it’s share of plot-holes. The cinematography looks very much like a typical 80’s Hollywood film, and the use of the French locations are also excellent. But what makes the film better than most is the cast. Helmut Berger and Brigitte Lahaie are simply perfect in their roles, playing the most suave killers you could think of. Lahaie in particular shines, with her bisexual tendencies and just plain hotness. We also get small parts by such recognized actors as Caroline Munro (who plays an incarcerated victim), Anton Diffring who plays a similar psycho surgeon as he did in Circus of Horrors (hell, it might be the same character) and Telly Savalas as a wealthy businessman who’s trying to find his daughter, a victim of these two psychos. We even get Florence Guerin playing herself, and cameos from Franco regulars Howard Vernon (as Dr. Orloff!) and Franco’s muse, Lina Romay, in a small role. It’s the best cast Franco’s ever had.

But for most of us, what attracts us to this film, more than anything, is the gore. And boy is this thing gory! Believe it or not, I first heard about this film thanks to the band Impetigo, who named one of their EP’s after this film. Taking the gore from Eyes Without A Face and multiplying it by one hundred, we get to see every process of the surgeons cutting up the young women’s faces and exposing us to their grotesque, skinless faces. When it happened to Guerin, I was actually kind of grossed out. The special effects are excellent and are some of the best of the 80’s. This is one of the most underrated horror films of the eighties and it is just waiting to be discovered by fans of gory horror cinema. Don’t get turned on by the name Jess Franco in the credits, this film is excellent and comes highly recommended.

Sequel To Avatar announced!

2010-02-13T17:46:00.000-08:00

Don't expect any reviews for that particular cartoon

The Wolfman

2010-02-12T15:51:00.000-08:00

It’s the late 1890’s, and Lawrence Talbot has returned home after the mysterious death of his brother. He meets his home almost in ruins, his father acting mysteriously, and the entire village acting suspiciously towards him. Talbot, investigating the details about his brother’s death, discovers that he was either attacked by a huge beast, or a savage madman. Sadly for Talbot, he’ll soon find out that it was a bit of both, as the town is under the curse of the werewolf, and Lawrence has just been attacked and received the curse. Will true love be able to save Talbot’s soul, or is he destined to be one of the damned, a werewolf by night? Yeah you recognize this plot, as it’s been done so many times it’s almost a joke, in everything from the original Lon Chaney film to the Spanish productions of Paul Naschy. I’ve always been a bigger fan of the werewolf than the vampire, mainly because of it’s pure bloodthirsty savagery, but also for the fact that he’s also a man. Many great actors have donned the role, and Benicio Del Toro is just the newest one. This movie features a lot in common with the 1941 original. The plot is almost identical at the beginning, even in it’s most awkward moments. I mean, if you can believe Lon Chaney Jr. can be the son of Claude Rains, why not believe Benicio Del Toro could be Anthony Hopkins’? Thankfully the movie is smart enough to use the original only as a blueprint, making it’s own changes and adding new scenes, while staying true to it’s original’s spirit. We get very interesting new scenes, the best being the London stuff, everything from the insane asylum’s tortures to the Wolf Man’s rampage in the streets of London (an homage to American Werewolf?). But the ending comes full circle with the original, having the Gwen Conliffe character being chased by the Wolf Man in the dark, foggy moors. The cast is excellent. Benicio Del Toro is a way better actor than Lon Chaney Jr ever was, and is able to bring his gruff size and sympathy without trying as hard as Chaney did. And when he turns into a werewolf, boy is he scary! No longer does the Wolf Man look like a drunken Russian on a three day bender, here he looks truly terrifying, and without the wardrobe continuity! Now don’t get me wrong, I love the original Wolf Man. But you have to admit, the werewolf itself isn’t very scary. Here he is, thanks to Rick Baker’s excellent makeup job.. Oddly enough, the CGI in this movie wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be… well, it was in one part, but I’lll get to that in the next paragraph. I was really happy to see a werewolf that was all about the carnage, ripping people apart and opening them like sardine cans. This werewolf was a real monster and had a lot of fun, and there was a lot of carnage on display here. We also get Anthony Hopkins as Sir Talbot, Larry’s father, taking over Claude Rains, bringing the same class and dignity to the original but adding a sinister twist, as well. Emily Blunt is also pretty good in the Gwen role, although for me, Evelyn Ankers was more memorable (and attractive). Hugo Weaving also shows up as a cop, and is very good.This movie is almost damn perfect, to be honest… except for one thing. There’s a ridiculous-looking CGI bear that almost took me completely out of the movie. I’ve seen better graphics out of a Mario Brothers game! Yeah it’s a bit of a pet peeve but it really is terrible. If you can ignore the beat however, you will see a flawless, Gothic horror film full of scares and gore and rich atmosphere, and some pretty damn good acting as well. Don’t miss it!

Cementerio Del Terror

2010-02-12T15:47:00.000-08:00

Mexico has a long and powerful history of horror cinema, particularly from the early 50’s to the 1970’s. This, of course, not counting the mexican luchador films. Movies like La Maldicion De La Llorona, Misterios De Ultratumba, El Espejo De La Bruja and Alucarda gave us horror scares with class and gothic sensibilities that could compete with the works of Mario Bava and Terence Fisher. In the eighties, horror went into a mayor decline and most independent companies went into the exploitation gore/horror genre, borrowing from American models. This includes trash like El Violador Infernal. This movie is probably the best example of the way genre cinema went in the 80’s, as it’s a mish-mash of more successful, and better, horror films of the decade.

The story involves a group of college students who rent a cabin in the woods. There, they try to have sex, but they read a satanic-looking book which brings about the powers of darkness. Sound familiar? Wait, it gets better. The body of a killer psychopath disappears and is possessed by the powers of this evil book, and his psychiatrist insanely tries to capture him again. Sound even more familiar? Well, a group of children get involved and now these young children have to fight, not only the undead psycho killer, but a horde of bloodthirsty zombies that rise from their graves.

As you can see, the movie borrows heavily from Evil Dead, Halloween and Night of the Living Dead. Because of this, there is high camp value to be had, but don’t kid yourself, this isn’t exactly high art. The acting is atrocious and it doesn’t get better when the main characters go from bad teen stereotypes to bad children stereotypes. One of the kids in particular seems to scream instead of talk. In the movie’s defense, however, there is a lot of cool gore and makeup effects that are very appropiate for the time. I especially like the sequence where the zombies rise up from the grave, since it’s very foggy and gothic and it kind of reminds me of Thriller, the music video, only with less dancing. So if you want a brainless horror movie that will entertain you and nothing more, go check it out.

Chain Reaction

2010-02-12T15:43:00.001-08:00

In the 1980’s, fear of nuclear annihilation was always in the minds of those who knew nothing about nuclear energy and only believed what they read in the news. Sure, Chernobyl was a disaster, but those generators were complete shit so no wonder it caused a meltdown. Today we all know that nuclear energy is actually some of the safest on the planet, but there’s always that weird fear in the back of our minds, thanks to Homer Simpsons’ incompetence and the occasional mis-informed hippie protest. I mean, it’s not every day that a German named Heinrich (Ross Thompson) gets contaminated with toxic waste and instead of staying quiet and receiving medical attention, decides to escape and shack up with a couple in the woods (played by Steve Bisley and the awesomely-named Arna Maria Winchester) while the government tries to get him back.That’s the basic plot of the story. It’s very simple, but sadly it doesn’t go too far, and that’s the biggest gripe I have with the film. The movie seems to take place in between a town and a forest house, and not much else. Now this would have been fine for starters, but the story doesn’t take it far enough. I’m amazed because George Romero’s The Crazies had a similar story, yet that film was much wider when it came to it’s plague and destruction. But don’t get me wrong, I actually enjoyed this film. It has some very good acting, particularly from Arna Maria Winchester who is beautiful and shows her skin off many times. There are also a lot of Mad Max-inspired car chases that are pretty damn cool. There’s really not much more to say about the film without revealing too much of the plot, it’s just the kind of movie where you’ll either like it or hate it. I liked it, but I didn’t love it either.

Captive Wild Woman

2010-02-12T15:39:00.000-08:00

As much as I love the Universal horror films, I have seen quite a few duds from them. House of Dracula is pretty uneventful, and melodramas like She-Wolf Of London and Night Key that are disguised as horror films are always a damn disappointment, even if they have Boris Karloff in them. This is a dud as well. It features John Carradine as Dr. Sigmund Walters, your typical mad scientist type who is in love with a girl who is way too pretty for him (played by Evelyn Ankers of the original Wolf Man). Insane with jealousy, Dr. Walters kidnaps a gorilla that belongs to Ankers’ boyfriend, circus trainer Fred Mason (Milburn Stone). So he transfers the blood of a woman into the body of a gorilla which makes the gorilla turn into a woman, played by Acquanetta.As you can see, the science in this film is flawless. Acquanetta the gorilla falls in love with the trainer but when she sees he’s got a girlfriend, he reverts into her savage self again. Which is bad luck, since the boyfriend was counting on the gorilla lady to hypnotize the lions and tigers. You know what? This god-damn movie‘s plot is ridiculously complicated, to the point where I stopped giving a crap less than halfway through. Not that there is nothing worthy about it, after all, Evelyn Ankers and Acquanetta are both very attractive women, and John Carradine over-acts as always, it’s all very entertaining.One thing that I did like a lot were the animal training sequences. Seeing the lions and tigers getting angry at each other and doing the circus tricks was filmed in a very documentary-like style and it stands out above the rest of the movie. Sadly the story is pretty lame and, as you know, too complicated for it’s own good. To say that this is a horror movie is to say that Spinal Tap is a concert film, it’s just not the truth. Skip it.

Marc Bolan & T-Rex: Born To Boogie

2010-02-12T15:37:00.001-08:00

It seemed like, in the early seventies, everything was possible in the cinema. From Jodorowski to John Waters, cinema was being elevated to a higher art, mainly thanks to the influence of the French New Wave. This influence was also stretched into the concert film, which was very popular at the time thanks to the Woodstock documentary. A lot of filmmakers were involved in the genre, like Godard and Scorcese, and this particular film’s director… Ringo Starr? That’s right, this film was directed by the man who played drums for The Beatles, and I have to say he had a good eye, I wonder why he never directed much else, at least nothing as ambitious as this. He stuck to acting, and the less said about his acting career, the better. Anyone remember Caveman? Ugh.Anyway this documentary centers around Marc Bolan’s seminal glam-rock band, T-Rex, the band that gave us such great songs as “20th Century Boy”, “Bang A Gong” and “Children of the Revolution”. The best scenes, as you can imagine, are the live performances, where we get to see the band kicking ass in their most natural environment. However, the movie does cross a very weird line during it’s sequences in between songs, with bad comedy ruling the scene. Particularly surreal is seeing Marc Bolan with a top hat and clown makeup driving around with a guy in a bear suit. What the fuck am I watching? I just wanted to watch some rock n’ roll! There are also sequences that merge the weird with the performance scenes, the best being the scene where the band plays “Children of the Revolution” in a room full of mirrors and Ringo, with a camera and clown makeup, recording them. Yeah, drugs were good back in the day. Ringo joins in once in a while to play drums, which is pretty cool, and we also get a visit from Elton John in some song sequences.
Sadly, Marc Bolan died in 1979 in a car accident, and so did T-Rex. It was the end of an era, and this documentary/surrealist film shows us what it might have been like in it’s fantasy, glittery world. Definitely recommended to fans of classic rock n’ roll and weird cinema in general.

Black Metal: A Norwegian Legacy????

2010-02-12T15:34:00.001-08:00

Bill Zebub is a hero in the underground film community. Not because he’s talented or an accomplished filmmaker. He certainly isn’t and he’d be the first one to tell you. It’s because he’s able to make the sickest comedies and horror films filled with the most beautiful naked women in the underground horror scene. And indie filmmakers like me simply envy the motherfucker. He also makes documentaries, mainly about the metal scene, thanks to his involvement with the underground fanzine, the Grimoire. He’s done them about folk metal, death metal, and here we have one on black metal. Now to be fair, if you’re not a fan of black metal, then there’s a big chance you won’t give a shit about this documentary. Me? I’m a huge fan of black metal. I love the atmospheric vibe it creates and it inspires me when I’m writing horror screenplays. This documentary features some very well-known bands, like Ulver, Dark Funeral, Finntroll, Rotting Christ, Enslaved and Dimmu Borgir, among many others. There are a lot of jokes, but also a lot of history and commentary on the scene. It’s also humorous to see the rivalries that exist between the Norwegians, the Swedes and the bands from Finland and Austria. It’s pretty ridiculous but highly entertaining.On a negative note, the documentary is way too long and could have used from some editing work, mainly to focus it more so that it made more sense, instead of just people rambling and talking. The live performances are also a huge letdown, as the sound is atrocious and for the most part the only instrument you can make out are the drums. Still, if you are interested in black metal and the black metal scene, this comes highly recommended.

Turkey Shoot

2010-02-12T15:29:00.000-08:00

It’s a couple of years into the future, and a super conservative government led by the evil Thatcher (Michael Craig). Everyone who doesn’t obey is sent to a concentration camp where the most powerful men (and women) in government can take part in what they call a ‘turkey shoot’, an event where they get to hunt down the criminals like they were wild animals. This year the criminals include revolutionary Paul (Steve Railsback), goodie goodie Chris (Olivia Hussey) and a slut Jennifer (Carmen Duncan). Will they be able to survive?This is one of the most ridiculous movies I have seen in my life, and I mean that in a good way. From what I researched, the film was to be budgeted at almost four million dollars, which in 1982 was a pretty decent budget. But at the last minute, one of the investors pulled almost seven hundred thousand dollars, which means they had to get rid of the entire first act (which only a brief intro is left), leaving something of a confusing mess, since we don’t know exactly how this future got to be. And the money kept depleting during the production, not helped by the fact that the producers would go to Casinos at night and bet the money to see if they could make it bigger. I mean, what the fuck? Could you imagine this kind of shit happening today? I must say however, that director Brian Trenchard Smith was still able to make an interesting and entertaining, if flawed film.The acting is probably the least interesting part of it all. Steve Railsback and Olivia Hussey were never great actors, but even they were able to pull off competent performances in good films. Railsback in particular has shown acting gold in films like Helter Skelter and Lifeforce and even his over-acting in Barb Wire was fun. Here, he doesn’t know if he’s playing an American or an Australian, as the accent changes as much as the characters run. And Hussey? She just stays scared and gobbles like a turkey. More interesting are the villains. Michael Craig is really good as Thatcher, having both class and dignity, and Lynda Daniels is hilarious as the politically-incorrect lesbian killer with the exploding arrows. But my favorite performance comes from Roger Ward as Ritter, the warden from Hell. He’s huge, and he’s strong, and he talks a lot of smack but is able to back it up. The scene where he fake boxes in front of the prisoner, as she speaks the ‘mantra’ of the jail, and then beats the shit out of her is just vicious as hell, and very few actors are as imposing as him to pull it off.

Speaking of vicious, this movie has it in spares. This movie is bloody as fuck and it’s also exploitive as hell. They literally pull everything but the kitchen sink into the thing, from booby traps in the woods to the before-mentioned psychotic lesbians, and we even get a damn werewolf. No reason or logic, there just happens to be a damn werewolf in the film. And that’s where the charm of the film is hidden. There is no logic, there is no sense, there is only the sense to entertain, blow shit up and kill everything in sight. If you want high art, you rent yourself a Fellini film, but if you want something that’ll just kick ass, Turkey Shoot is the one for you.

Long Weekend

2010-02-12T15:23:00.000-08:00

John Hargreaves and Briony Behets play Peter and Marcia, a couple who are on the rocks that decide to take a small vacation into the outback to see a very empty beach. Along the way they can’t stop arguing, and seem to think they’ve above everything as they treat nature like it was trash. They pollute, they run over animals, they hunt, they cut down trees, everything you can imagine. But soon it’s nature’s turn, and if there’s anything you don’t do, is fuck with mother nature.This movie has a big reputation and has become something of a cult classic over the years. It’s definitely one of the most famous Australian horror films of all time, mainly because of it’s execution of the nature-run-amuck theme. Now, to the film’s defense, there are positive aspects to the story. The two leads are very good at being the most unsympathetic assholes in the history of Australian cinema. From frame one, all they do is argue and bitch and moan, and it just escalates throughout the entire movie. The way they treat nature and the animals borders on the asshole to the unforgivable, and you really get to hate them with a passion. I also give credit to the filmmakers for keeping the plot very ambiguous. You don’t know if nature is truly taking it’s vengeance on these people, for all you know they’re just accident-prone. That’s a pretty clever thing to do and to pull it off well. Sadly, this movie is just not my cup of tea. The main problem I have is that it’s too long. Yes, at ninety five minutes, the film feels like it’s longer than Exodus, with its ridiculously slow pace and sequences where people are just listening to scary noises at night. The last fifteen minutes felt like the Chinese water torture. Also, the choice of animals on display here could have been different. We get shots of Tasmanian devils, koalas, kangaroos, and eagles with scary music, and I’m sorry, these animals are just not that scary. This type of stuff goes on throughout its entire running time and it just didn’t do anything for me. There are a lot of nature-run-amuck films that are good, like The Birds, Jaws and another Australian film, Rogue, but this one just didn’t do anything for me. It is, however, a well made film, and I would recommend it to all of you to make your own decisions. On a personal level though, I don’t think I’ll be seeing it again.

Behind The Scenes de Bloodlust

2010-02-02T16:36:00.000-08:00

Photos by Miglia Arroyo, who also did the makeup, as you can see in the pictures.

So now you know why I haven't been updating this blog in a while! Yep I've been working on my first feature film, after doing short films and mixtapes since 2004 this will be my first feature lenght production, Bloodlust, an vampire movie that is also the anti-Twilight film! Production ends this weekend. Expect more pictures and news as they develop!

Hanger

2009-12-30T15:49:00.000-08:00

Debbie Rochon, that beautiful Queen of low budget horrors, plays a pregnant prostitute who gets a ton of shit from her boss, a pimp who’s such a huge asshole that he decides to give the poor woman a back-alley wire hanger abortion. He throws the mutilated baby in the trash can, but is rescued by the prostitute’s only friend, played by Don Ellis. The John takes care of the baby until he grows up to become Hanger, a mutilated freak of a huma nbeing who wants to do good, but people have treated him so bad that he just can’t adapt to normal society. Things get worse for him, as the man who killed his mother comes back and wants to finish off Hanger once and for all.

Parts black comedy, parts exploitation grindhouse flick, this is a definite step up in the productions of Plotdigger Films. Live Feed was a cool flick and Gutterballs was awesome fun, but this movie is definitely closer to a work of art than the previous two films. It’s mostly because of it’s excellent screenplay, which is able to mix it’s grindhouse ideas and goals with a really touching and humane point of view. Like Basket Case and Freaks, we’re able to feel real sympathy for the freaks in the film, even after they do some truly horrible things to each other. Must be the horror fan in me but I really liked the freak characters. The performances are also excellent, particularly Don Ellis, who steals the show here the same way he did in Gutterballs, playing one helluva mean son of a bitch who does evil shit but with good intentions. Nathan Dashwood, who played the obnoxious AJ in Gutterballs, plays Hanger, and he is able to give the character a lot of real drama and pathos, even under the heavy makeup effects. He’s also good in the vicious sequences.

Now, don’t get scared, this isn’t all sappy and tragic, after all, it’s a Plotdigger production so you get what you’re expecting. There is a ton of sick and violent gore, right from the beginning when poor Lloyd Kaufman (as a tranny) gets his cock roasted. The most cringe-inducing moments, however, are the wire hanger abortion, which is realistic to the point of being way too sick for anyone, and when one of the inbred workers starts fucking Hanger in his shit hole. That was pretty fucking nasty. We also get the uber-sexually explicit sequences that Gutterballs also included, strangely enough with the same actress, Candice Lewald. Here her sex scenes are much more erotic than they were in Gutterballs, with her staying on top of a table butt naked and masturbating with everything from a pen to a Hello Kitty vibrator. Wish I met an actress as brave as she for my movies! So yes, this movie is very explicit and very gory, but if you give it a shot, you might find something that, hidden beneath it’s mountains of grime, has a lot of heart. Another great production from Plotdigger Films, keep them coming guys!

Snow White And The Seven Dwarves

2009-12-30T15:48:00.001-08:00

It’s hard to imagine that in the world of Pixar, a movie like this could still be able to get the hairs in your arms standing up, but it could. I recently bought the Blu-Ray, since my old VHS had been rotting away for a couple of years now. Yes, I hadn’t seen this movie since I was about 8 years old. So I watched it and was ready to get some glorious cuteness, but from the first frames I was caught in. This movie is one of the greatest animated films of all time, and there are a lot of factors that add to it.

I think the main attraction for me was the animation. It seemed very realistic and life-like, and my suspicions were correct, since they did use real actors as references. Still, there are animated sequences in this film that have not been equalled in anything since. Sequences such as when the Evil Queen turns into a witch, and the creation of the poisonous apple are incredibly done. I also fell in love with the characters pretty quickly. Although both Snow White and the Prince are pretty boring and one-dimensional, the Seven Dwarves were really well-written characters, particularly Grumpy, who is full of contradictions and acts like an asshole all the time. The music is also pretty good too, particularly the three main songs done by the Seven Dwarves. Whistle While You Work and Heigh-Ho is a classic, although I think more of the Gremlins singing along every time I hear it. More interesting for me was The Silly Song, which is hilarious and the animation that goes with it is excellent.

I was also very shocked to realize how dark this damn movie is. There is a sequence where the Witch actually makes fun of a dead corpse trying to get to water, then kicks the bones around. Holy shit! The witch is pretty scary on her own, particularly thanks to that laugh of hers, but that just made her out into even more of a psychopath. Then, after Snow White gets poisoned, she is basically lynched by the Seven Dwarves. I was really distraught watching this, considering most memories you have of these films come from your childhood and you barely remember the dark and scary stuff. Dario Argento always said this film was an influence on his Suspiria, and now I get it. The ending is a fluffy happy ending, but still, this is a great fantasy film, with a very beautiful animation and delightful characters. Don’t be fooled by it’s kid’s movie look, it really is a great film. And it might just scare the living shit out of you.

Ogroff The Mad Mutilator

2009-12-30T15:47:00.000-08:00

Once in a while, a movie so terrible, so vile, so bad will come out and shatter everything that I believe in when it comes to cinema. I watch a lot of crap, as you might have noticed, but there are some things that are almost impossible to comprehend. One of these things is Ogroff The Mad Mutilator, one of the earliest slasher films to come out of France. France has become a hot bed of horror material, with films like Haute Tension, Martyrs, L’Interieur, Ils and Frontier(s). But this came many, many years before that, in the mid-80’s to be precise.

A mixture of Friday the 13th part II with the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the story involves a psychotic backwoods killer, Ogroff, who has his own shed just like Jason and goes around killing people with an axe. He’s quite the character, both a villain and a hero, as he butchers innocent people and then killing zombies. That’s right, the movie also has zombies. No real reason is given for their existence, they just pop up and start doing their business thing, although it’s Ogroff who kills them and eats them, not the other way around. There is a lot of gore to be had, a ton actually, as our killer is a cannibal and nobody is spared, not men or women or children. There is also a very funny homage to the Burning, when one of the dudes cuts off the fingers of a zombie with shears, similar to the way Cropsy took out the campers in the famous river raft scene. It’s still very hard to comprehend, however. There are five lines of dialogue in this movie, at the most. The rest of the soundtrack is composed of a very droning music score that’s just as bad as the one in Chester Turner’s Black Devil Doll From Hell, and the movie is shot in very grainy 8mm stock, with all it’s dialogue replaced over. There is no continuity at all, not in lighting or in camera angles. It’s one of the shoddiest films ever made in the horror genre, and that’s saying a lot.

Although perhaps I’m being too unfair with the film. After all, I’m a no-budget filmmaker myself, and I know I’ve done stuff as bad as this. This is so bad, however, that it’s almost entertaining. Much like Boardinghouse and A Night To Dismember, these are movies that are so damn bad that they reach an almost hallucinogenic, surreal nature. For no reason, Howard Vernon (The Awful Dr. Orloff, Delicatessen) shows up in the end as a vampire cardinal and kills our lead. What the fuck was I watching?

The Day Of Love

2009-12-30T15:45:00.000-08:00

When you think of Russian cinema, what do you think of? Eisenstein? Tarkovsky? Surely, not cliched rape/revenge masterpieces of shit! Well, every country is guilty of at least one, and Russia is no exception with this one, which is pretty by-the-numbers. The story involves a crime syndicate that is about to rob a huge shipment of trucks, but to distract the police, they decide to hold their own ‘love day’ where the teenage thugs that work for them will go on and rape every woman they can find. And so it finally happens, and they rape everything, particularly underage girls in fairs and department stores. One of the women that gets raped is you Christina, who just won a beauty pageant. As you can imagine, neither she or her family are very happy about it. Her dad and her stepfather, who have an uneasy relationship, decide to join together and commit some brutal 80’s revenge on the gang of thugs and their leader.

This movie has a lot of homages to 80’s action movies, particularly the ones of Silvester Stallone. In one scene, we see Christina and her friend watching the end of Cobra, when Stallone impales a guy and sends him to a burning furnace. Great death scene, of course, but here not only do they show it on the tv, but the parents do the same thing to the leader of the angry teenagers! I mean, is this a tribute or a ripoff? Well it’s always a ripoff unless it’s Tarantino, then the film geeks kiss his ass forever for imitating. Other deaths in this steel mill include a guy who gets choked by a machine, and another dude who has his arm crushed. Awesome stuff, but sadly that’s the end of the awesomeness when it comes to this movie. The rest of the deaths, particularly the one of the leader of the gang, is very anti-climactic and leaves you wishing for more.

The main negative point, however, comes in the rape scenes. They’re not explicit at all and, while we do get some breast action, it’s not very impressive. If there’s something that ever exploitation rape/revenge film should have is extensive nudity, and the filmmakers of this piece of crap decided to rob us of it as well. This movie is not worth recommending, as it fails in most of it’s exploitative moments, has little nudity and the violence can be seen in better detail in Stallone’s Cobra. So rent Cobra, then watch Savage Streets, instead of watching this piece of shit.

The Green Slime

2009-12-30T15:44:00.000-08:00

This is one of the most ludicrous science fiction films I have ever seen. A Japanese/American co-production, the story involves a group of top astronauts who go onto a meteor to blow it up, since it’s on it’s way to a head-on collision for Earth. Believe it or not, the way it’s handled here is better than the way Michael Bay would handle the material in Armageddon. After destroying the meteorite, it turns out that there was an alien slime that has attached itself to the ship and it’s feeding on electricity, not to mention giving birth to some really grotesque-looking creatures with some of the weirdest screams in monster movie history. It’s up to our Ken and Barbie-looking heroes to destroy the menace before it’s too late.

The American connection is definitely shown in the movie’s actors. Robert Horton and Richard Jaeckel play our leads, and try in vain to upstage each other in showing which one of them is more heroic. It’s too bad since both actors have very impressive resumes, particularly in the acting department, appearing in many westerns and genre efforts. However, neither of them are very credible and are not very good at being able to come off as intimidating or heroic. Italian beauty Luciana Paluzzi is very good eye candy, but can’t really act here either, which is too bad since she’s very good in exploitation movies like 99 Women and Tragic Ceremony.

Most of this must have come from a lack of communication between the multi-cultural cast and the director, Japanese Kinji Fukasaku. Fukasaku was a pretty good director and his last film was his masterpiece, Battle Royale, but this movie is nowhere near as good as that futuristic child-killing masterpiece. We do get to see some good use of Japanese special effects, as there are many cool rocketships and space stations that, although they look like a model, they certainly have a lot of charm. If you like Godzilla movies, then you know what I’m talking about. The Green Slime monsters are also pretty cool, with their long tentacles and electric powers, and have one of the most interesting cries in monster movie history. So yes, this movie has it’s faults, but it’s also very entertaining, and for many of us, it holds a special nostalgic place in our hearts. It’s better than Armageddon, I promise.

Ebola Syndrome

2009-12-30T15:40:00.000-08:00

Anthony Wong plays a really sick fuck named Ah Kai, an ex-con who makes the stupid mistake of having sex with the boss’ girlfriend. Trying to save his own ass, he goes and murders everyone in the house, even the almost-burning of a young child. On the run, he goes to Africa, where he rapes an African girl that gives him the Ebola virus. Strangely enough, he does not become sick from the thing. Instead, he becomes a living carrier, like the monkey in Outbreak, and goes around spreading the disease to everyone in Hong Kong, first by killing and infecting a gang of criminals and serving them as food for the restaurant, then by random casual sex. Will the police be able to get to him in time?

This movie is the epitome of the Cat III film, a rather brutal subgenre in Hong Kong cinema reserved exclusively for movies that cross the edge of bad taste. This one has it all. First, let’s start with our Ah Kai character. He’s one of the biggest scumbags in the history of cinema, a vain and self-serving psychopath who cares about nobody but his own. Anthony Wong is famous for playing sick fucks (The Untold Story, hello!) but here he goes even farther in his psychotics. Every woman he meets he sexually assaults, from the beautiful and willing, then raping a dying African girl (which gets him infected with Ebola) and then a woman who works at the restaurant he works in. It’s all in bad taste and it revels in it’s offensiveness. There is a lot of gore, if you have the original unedited version. The best examples of these are the opening when our ‘hero’ stomps a guy to death with a table, then cuts his girlfriend’s tongue out with scissors. The only scene that made me gag, however, was an autopsy sequence where the doctor is operating on a sick patient. All the guts and viscera look putrefied and rotten. Almost lost my lunch.

Of course, with a CAT III film like this, you really can’t take things too damn seriously. After all, we are talking about a movie about a guy who spreads the Ebola virus while he himself is immune to his effects. The movie has a lot of racist overtones, as most of the African people are seen as backward and idiotic, and the scenes in Africa look like they were obviously shot at a nature park. This isn’t really a negative thing, since it adds to the craziness of the material. This movie has it all: it’s un-PC, it’s violent, it’s full of sex, violence, gore and even black humor. It’s the best of Hong Kong’s CAT III horror cinema and comes highly recommended.

Tropic Thunder

2009-12-20T14:02:00.001-08:00

This movie is great because it has a lot of dick and fart jokes. That’s all I gotta say about that.

Black Sun: The Nanking Massacre

2009-12-20T14:00:00.001-08:00

I’m a big war movie buff, particularly those involving WW2, even if my all-time favorite would have to be All Quiet On The Western Front, which is WW1. I think the best war movies are those that are not interested in patriotism, but the ones that show not only what the war can do to the body, but the morality of a human being. Apocalypse Now, The Deer Hunter, and Story Of A Soldier. Well, The Nanking Massacre falls into these films as one of the most brutal and realistic war films ever made, which is strange considering it was basically made to be Part 4 of the legendary exploitation series known as the “Men Behind The Sun”, where we are previewed to the Japanese atrocities done to the Chinese during the Second World War. The first one is really good, but two and three are real stinkers. This one, part 4, is pretty damn good.
The Nanking Massacre is based on the taking of the city of Nanking in China by Japan in the late 30’s, and the wholesale slaughter and rape of the city. What makes this movie so powerful is the fact that it’s completely grounded in reality. Every fact in the film is backed up by documentary footage and even photos of the massacres going on while it happens on the screen. We are previewed to crazy Japanese soldiers raping women and children (yes, children), families being slaughtered, a pregnant woman having her stomach ripped open and her fetus extracted with a bayonet, a kid thrown into a boiling cooking pot, and a grandma who sacrifices every member of her family to the fire, killing two soldiers in the process. The most disturbing aspect to me, however, were the competitions between the soldiers to cut off the heads of the Chinese people, each ranking themselves as heroes depending on how many heads they had cut with their Samurai swords. The biggest hero had taken 300. Most of the violence is done from the point of view of children, something Sam Peckinpah used to do with his films, and in the end we see two children walking through deserted Nanking streets with nobody in sight.

There’s really not a lot more I can say about this film. Like every good war film, it’s a movie that can really upset you or even ruin your mood if you watch it in the wrong state of mind, as you are previewed to things that really happened. In it’s defense however, I will say that this movie does more in showing what real war and slaughter is all about without resorting to cartoonish patriotism of a Saving Private Ryan, Black Hawk Dawn or other pro-Military propaganda of the sort. It’s a great film that should be discovered not just by exploitation enthusiasts, as it’s a legitimate work of art.

Cannabis Cannibal 2: Exodus

2009-12-20T13:58:00.000-08:00

It feels really weird talking about this film, since in a small way I am a part of it, casting wise. But still, I feel my part is small enough that I can talk about it without feeling like I’m giving it blind praise. This is the sequel to one of the few true cult films to ever come out of my island of Puerto Rico, Cannabis Cannibal, which had it’s share of faithful audiences without the need for exposure or distribution. The story involves a group of idiots, led by Manny and El Sargento, trying to survive a zombie apocalypse where their weapons include guns, machetes and the smoke of marihuana. The sequel continues with the Manny and El Sargento character, as they continue to survive the apocalypse, meeting new people in the process.
Just like the first one, the sequel is hilarious, mostly thanks to the dialogue. I don’t know whether it was scripted or not, but it sure has an air of improvisational material that just makes it sound better than it could have, particularly coming from El Sargento who steals most of the scenes away from Manny, who sometimes seems like he’s just tagging along for no other reason than to stay alive. There are a lot of new characters but only a few of them really stand out: the “Hijos De Puta”, a Mad Max-style gang of post-Apocalyptic warriors, will bring a smile to anyone who has a passion for post-Apocalyptic movies like After The Fall Of New York and The Bronx Warriors, since they’re cut out of the same mold. I hope the director Franco someday releases action figures based on these three. The other character that really stood out was called Korintio, I believe. I’m not sure who played this person (remember, I just got back from the premiere), but he basically stole the show from EVERYONE in the film. His line delivery and improvisation is incredible and made him to be the best and funniest character in the whole movie. I could watch a whole film based on this guy! Too bad he’s in only one scene. I also have to give Franco credit for doing beautiful work of the slower scenes in the film, the stuff where we get to see the beautiful passages of Puerto Rico. Franco, you got a real eye for beauty and these are without a doubt the best scenes in the film. I’d love to see what you’d make with a slower-paced movie.

Now for some flaws. I’m not going to talk about the technical aspects such as image and sound since Franco knows they’re flawed as well. My main complaint is that the film doesn’t have the appropriate pacing the original had. Some scenes go on for far too long, and for the most part give out information that is not really necessary, the most obvious being the sequence in the car after they pick up the young woman from the religious fanatic. The scene felt like an eternity and could have used some trims. Also, what’s the logic in dropping a nuke in PR and the bomb not taking over neighboring island, Vieques? I mean, I know it’s a comedy and it’s not supposed to be realistic, but the characters look as if they don’t even feel the shockwave when they get to our little neighboring island. I dunno why but that really bothered me.
To finish it off though, this is a great comedy. It made me laugh a lot and even my sister, who hates DIY cinema, loved it. Those are my two cents, Franco, now do your part and review El Viaje! You owe it!

Singapore Sling

2009-12-20T13:55:00.000-08:00

Our story involves a nameless private detective in the Sam Spade school who, I think, speaks only Greek. He is troubled, as he is searching for his long, lost love and what happened to her, while at the same time avoiding the police, since he has a bullet in his stomach. In his travels he is able to find hospitality in a home with two women, a mother who speaks French and a daughter who speaks English, who offer to help them. Soon we discover that these two women are nowhere near as nice as they seem, they’re actually two very disturbed and psychotic women, sexually frustrated and out for some blood. They play games with the detective, some sick, disturbing games, and the detective will soon have to find a way to beat them at their own game, if he thinks he has any chance of escaping.
Wow, where to start with this movie? I mean, I was not expecting this to be nothing more than a sick piece of shit, the type that I’m accustomed to when watching ultra-sleazy European horror flicks. And for the most part, it seems to deliver. For starters we have body parts and viscera flying all over the place in graphic, almost anatomical detail. But most of the sick stuff is of a sexual nature. I mean, the stuff they do to this poor Shamus is beyond anything I’d be able to take, from masturbating with food, forcing them to eat vomit, and even erotic regurgitation. Yummy.

But thankfully, this not only is a sick movie, it’s also a very beautiful film. Greek filmmaker Nikos Nikolaidis films it on 35mm black and white, and everything looks much more artistic and classy than a film like this normally aspires to. The rain looks beautiful, the dresses and set design look like something out of a period movie, and the blood and guts look black and dark, almost like motor oil. The performances from the actors involved are all great, particularly the two women, played by Meredith Herold and Michele Valley, add a strong dose of delirium, sex appeal and insanity to the proceedings. Their weird monologues about each other, switching between love and hatred, and weird flashbacks make most of the movie work. The ending will remind everyone of the classic Cannibal Corpse song, “Fucked With A Knife”, in one of the most what-the-fuck moments in the whole film.
Granted, there are a lot of ridiculous moments in the film. When the daughter reminisces about her incestual encounters with her father, the father is represented by a mummy, like the ones that came out of the Universal series. Seeing a mummy fucking Meredith Herold just looks weird. Still, this movie is one of the best films to come out of the underground, with it’s strong mix of perverse sexuality, dark humor, intense horror and the visuals of film noir, it comes highly recommended.

RIP Paul Naschy and Dan O'Bannon

2009-12-20T10:32:00.000-08:00

A little late, I know, but there was no way I could forget
Jacinto Molina, aka Paul Naschy, passed away on November 30, 2009. He was a guy I grew up with, with his ultra bloody and erotic horror films. He was the most important figure of the Spanish horror film industry, and his most recent films, like Rojo Sangre, showed that the man still had it.

Movies I've reviewed on my blog with Naschy:

-Inquisicion

-Exorcismo

Some movies I recommend:

-Werewolf Shadows

-Curse Of The Devil

-Count Dracula's Great Love

-Horror Rises From The Tomb

-Una Libelula Para Cada Muerto

-Panic Beats

Dan O'Bannon sadly passed away as well, more recently on December 17, 2009. His influence is also huge on my life, being the screenwriter of classics like John Carpenter's Dark Star, Blue Thunder, Heavy Metal, Dead & Buried and Lifeforce, and with Donald Shusett, would bring life to films like Alien and Total Recall. He will always be known to me, however, as the man who gave us Return of the Living Dead.

Here's to Dan and Paul, hope both of you are resting in peace.