Coming Soon (2008) - 1/4

Long-haired Asian ghost hags and jump scares are old, tired, worn out, right? Right! Which is why Coming Soon is at times embarrassing to watch; it's doing the same old tricks, tricks that kids are doing on their own youtube videos these days. If a film can't outdo a twelve-year-old's youtube video, it's got big problems.

Coming Soon has an utterly predictable story. The first five minutes are so free of subtlety I had guessed the "shocking" twist right there at the beginning. It was just a matter of waiting for its main characters to figure out. Chen, the protagonist, is a cinema employee getting into the bootlegging industry. It just so happens the one film he chooses is haunted by the ghost of the film's eye-plucking hag villain. Whoever sees a certain scene in the film ends up dead and inside the movie.

The film plays out exactly as you might expect, with Chen and his girlfriend launching an investigation, eventually finding the truth, and then realizing they must stop the film from being distributed before it's too late. There are some inventive moments in the last twenty minutes, involving a deja vu scene of sorts. I was fairly impressed and entertained by that, but it's too little too late.

While I wouldn't dare give the film credit for having a theme, because it doesn't, it unwittingly explores an issue that's very fascinating to me. That's the difference between watching theatrical gore and violence and watching real gore and violence (which some people on this board do). I don't believe there is any relationship between these activities, other than that some horror fans are confused into thinking there is. Theatrical gore is a game you play with the filmmaker: 'try your best to horrify me.' Real gore is making a spectacle of someone really being hurt and/or killed.

Unless you can't get enough of Asian oh-so-creepy ghost women jumpcutting right in front of the camera with a sudden loud noise on the soundtrack, miss Coming Soon. It is a decent idea that was in need of a good screenplay to make it work and it didn't get it.

Deadline (2009) - 2/4

I'm not sure what Deadline is trying to say or if it really earns the jarring plot twist at the end. I wonder if those who made the film even quite comprehend the implications of the end for the narrative, because it essentially leaves you at the same place as when you began the film: knowing next-to-nothing about these people.

Brittany Murphy is a troubled woman, though we only learn way in a piecemeal fashion--or do we? I can't be sure. One thing I can be sure of is that she has a friend who is on the cusp of being a lesbian lover and she's taking a week alone in a friend's Victorian country mansion to work on a script for a deadline. Once she's in the mansion, we're in Repulsion territory. She begins hearing things, her laptop seems to have been used, and she finds a set of MiniDV tapes that show a decaying marriage that might just conclude in murder.

Right there you should already be puzzled. One might expect her to find old Super8 film and see a marriage between long-dead people decaying, but no, these are Sony brand MiniDV tapes that play easily in her own camcorder. It makes her voyeurism going through the tapes objectionable: these tapes could be little more than a year old. When the possibility of murder is brought in, the film's credibility has reached breaking point: this couple disappears, but the camcorder and the tapes are just left in the house, unexamined?

Either the film is totally inept or this is all in her head. It may be a little of both. As it turns out, the script Murphy is writing is for a film called Deadline. Is everything we're seeing just what she scripted? How much actually happened in the film? The ending is one of those Tale of Two Sisters wholesale revision moments with a sinister bite, but where Tale of Two Sisters reveals more by pulling aside the illusions, Deadline leaves the viewer knowing precious little at all about these people.

Those problems with the narrative aside, the film isn't particularly frightening either, although it builds up a certain spookiness just by having a woman alone in an old house watching unsettling videos. Anyone who has watched an episode of Unsolved Mysteries alone at night knows what she must be feeling then. Otherwise, it is little more than a series of Scary Soundtrack Noises and a jumpscare or two.

The film was perhaps a valiant effort and there are signs that it was aiming for something along the lines of Mulholland Dr.. The house, for instance, is lent to her by a producer. She writes a script that's titled the same as the film we're watching. There's some sort of cinema motif being built there. However, it just about all fails. You'd think someone working on this film would have said, "Wait, this doesn't seem to be thought through properly," but clearly that didn't happen.

2/4

Red Velvet (2009) - 3.5/4

There's a moment in Red Velvet in which the two main characters, Aaron (Henry Thomas of ET fame) and Linda (Kelli Garner), are folding clothes. He folds one of her shirts casually and puts it on a pile. When she finishes what she's been folding, she casually opens the shirt he just folded and refolds. It's never mentioned by the characters and there's no cut to the action; it just happens. Not only is the film made up of such clever touches, it's more subtle than one might think.

Red Velvet is in a sense all about refolding, but of the narrative. When surly loner Aaron is accosted by his neighbour Linda in the laundromat, they strike up an uneasy acquaintanceship mostly based on sarcastic barbs, but they go out for lunch. There he, a writer, begins trying to tell her a horror story, which we see visually. Each time he tells a story she comments on a flaw, such as the tameness or the presence of cliches, and he revamps his story--the story which just happens to be about a maniac killing all of her friends at a cabin-in-the-woods birthday party she couldn't attend.

One would think there would be difficulty sticking with Red Velvet. At first it reminded me of old Superman comics from the '60s. They did preposterous things with Superman, but printed on the cover, "An imaginary adventure," implying that what was happening in the story isn't really happening to Superman--we're just pretending. One wonders, 'Then why read it?' Similarly, since much of Red Velvet is made up of a story within a story, one might wonder 'Why keep watching?' All I can say is there's payoff to those who stick with it. As the layers of the story begin overtaking the narrative, the characters find themselves in danger of not being able to get out of the story.



Of course, I didn't know that while I was watching the film. What convinced me to stick with it were the excellently written and acted characters. They're both rather rude people, but, like Basil Fawlty or Blackadder, they're very funny. Their banter is somehow both realistic and unreal; they're odd people, to say the least. Aaron's story and Linda's revisions often result in (knowingly) ridiculous moments that made me laugh out loud.

A film as self-conscious about cliches as this one is, naturally, doesn't fall into very many, except knowingly. It is a very original film, in fact. Original, yet being all about horror, the power of the imagination, and storytelling, it draws on previous horror imaginations. The style is reminiscent of Argento with some David Lynch (the title might have been a clue: Deep Red meets Blue Velvet).

Red Velvet is a witty, original, playful film that will certainly encourage rewatching with its confusing final ten minutes. It is also sometimes surprisingly suspenseful, leaving me wondering why the story within the story had any affect on me at all if I know it's fake. But then, why does any film have an affect on me at all when I know it's fake?

The Last Confession of Alexander Pearce (2008) - 3/4

There aren't many surprises in The Last Confession of Alexander Pearce. We begin knowing the outcome and, being based on a true story, we have some idea of what goes on. The pleasure is in seeing how the events came about--or at least how Pearce represents them as having come about.

A frame narrative is set up in which Irishman Alexander Pearce, a murderer and cannibal, is making his pre-execution confession to a priest in an English prison camp is Tasmania. We then get the account, in a few chunks, of how Pearce and his fellow prison camp escapees ended up eating each other until only Pearce was left. For a confession it's strangely lacking in confessing. He tends to represent himself as the one innocent one who ultimately had to kill to save himself from being killed. The one thing we don't get in confession is what we learn from the governor of the prison camp. He gives an account of Pearce being caught, returned to prison, escaping again, and eating his single fellow escapee when he had plenty of provisions.

What's strange about the film is that it takes pains to absolve Alexander Pearce of all his crimes. His killing and eating his companions is explained by the overwhelming drive of hunger and the kill-or-be-killed mentality. His killing his later fellow escapee is explained by his being driven mad from his experiences. Pearce, as far as the film is concerned, is not to blame for anything, but rather nature itself for making hunger and society itself for its inept penal systems are to blame.

The struggle through the Tasmanian wilderness is well-done survivalist storytelling and the story is a plausible reenactment, with good acting, of what might have happened. The sections with the priest and various colonists are alternately serious and satirical. Since they seem more satirical of society at the time than of now it's not really important to get the satire.

At a scant one-hour runtime, Last Confession never overstays its welcome. It does precisely what it sets out to do without much meandering. It presents a well-made account of Pearce's crimes and tries its best to exonerate him of the charge, "monster."

3/4

Love Exposure (2008) - 4/4

Love Exposure is the cinematic equivalent of post-post-modern novels like Infinite Jest and White Teeth, or the novels of Murakami: big, ambitious, sprawling, yet with an emotional core and focus. To some extent, Love Exposure is even more successful than its literary correlates. It is an epic four hour romantic tragicomedy on the themes of love and perversion told with such a sure hand and masterful pacing that it manages to mostly redeem itself of its shortcomings.

Those shortcomings develop in the first act, within which the influence of post-modern literature is most evident. During the first hour of the film, I couldn't help but think of James Wood's criticism of White Teeth and similar novels of the style he labels 'hysterical realism.' As he put it, "An excess of storytelling has become the contemporary way of shrouding, in majesty, a lack; it is the Sun King principle. That lack is the human." Within the first hour, Sono has a quasi-religious School of Upskirt Photography with its own sacred writings and martial arts techniques; a teenage boy who sins to please his dad, a Catholic priest, in confession, and can only get an erection if he finds a girl who reminds him of the Virgin Mary; this boy becomes the King of the Upskirt Photographers and gains his own disciples. This is very entertaining, but too zany, too eager to please with "showy liveliness" that hangs off the characters "like jewelry." It is not the lack of plausibility that is difficult to handle, but the lack of human emotion and relationship in these conceptual rather than emotional connections.

With the second hour, Sono begins to truly redeem his narrative. With all the elements in place from the first hour, with the characters and their histories established, he begins to delve into real human emotion. The story is surprisingly simple in its outline: a Catholic priest and his son, Yu, are both 'perverts,' the priest for having had relations with a woman while a priest and Yu for being an upskirt photographer. Koike, a female regional director for a fast-growing cult, the Church of Zero, is a puritanical sociopath who becomes obsessed with Yu and so concocts a plan to convert Yu's Catholic family as an example to others that the Church of Zero is the religion to join. The love of Yu's life, Yoko, who is the adopted daughter of the woman Yu's father is marrying, becomes the means by which Koike will dominate the family. While the damage has been done, to an extent, by the first hour, by making the connections between many of the characters so fragile, based on the mere use of the phrase 'original sin,' or on one character accidentally appearing like the Virgin Mary, the remaining three hours focus entirely on the emotions and relationships of these characters. Yu's unrequited love for Yoko and the machinations of Koike, as well as a subplot involving the Catholich Church's refusal to allow a priest to marry, give Love Exposure a very solid emotional core.

Despite the shortcomings I point out above, Sono is overwhelmingly successful with Love Exposure. Every human is different, has a distinct psychology that comes from a unique upbringing and set of experiences; how the quest for love and how love itself are expressed in each person will differ. Somewhere along the way, ideologies like Christianity restricted the ways in which love could be sought or expressed and all alternatives are labeled 'perverse.' Sono examines the category of the 'perverse,' but doesn't try to argue with the label. Rather he argues for its being embraced. What Sono contrasts to love is not perversion, but guilt; and guilt is what homogenization imposes on those deemed 'perverts.' Yu is unabashedly a pervert, embracing the category explicitly. But he's a pervert out of love: love for his mother who tells him to find a girl like the Virgin Mary; love for his father who is only fatherly when Yu confesses obscene sins; love for Yoko who prefers him in drag. So is Yu's father, a priest who wants to get married, a pervert out of love. The enemies are those who want to abolish perversion with guilt: Koike and the Church of Zero who want to crush Yu, the Catholic Church that won't allow Yu's father to marry.

Having only seen Sono's one earlier work Suicide Club, I am astonished by how much he has grown as an artist. While he was very good to begin with, Love Exposure is an outstanding achievement as both entertainment and art. Any who watch it will be engrossed and the four hours will just flitter away; and any who watch it will come away wiser, as I believe I have. It's a film that won't leave my mind for a very long while.

Endnotes
1. James Wood, "Human, All Too Inhuman," The New Republic Online (August 30, 2001). http://www.powells.com/review/2001_08_30.html

Staunton Hill (2009) - 1.5/4

Staunton Hill is deja vu all over again. It goes by like a greatest hits of sorts. It is a combination of Frontier(s) and Hostel, with hints of American Gothic and Texas Chainsaw Massacre for good measure. There's even a moment that might as well have been from Joyride.

The story is what you'd expect. A group of young, pretty adults find themselves enjoying the dangerous hospitality of a backwoods family with an interest in the organ trade. It's just a matter of when and how hard these evil rednecks are going to strike.

As such, the film is utterly predictable. The 'final girl' will be detectable within the first five or ten minutes, because the camera obsesses over her. The various slight twists that occur towards the end are telegraphed long before with very little subtlety.

Speaking of which, the lack of subtlety in Staunton Hill is a major problem. Cameron Romero (yes, George Romero's son) does not trust the audience to put two and two together on anything. Any link an audience could and should be expected to make is driven home with a flashback moment, often several, in case you couldn't pick it up on your own. The most egregious of which is that every time a character dies, flashbacks are given of the character from a few moments earlier in the film as a normal, happy person. Romero doesn't even trust his audience to comprehend how horrific human slaughter is on their own.

'Human slaughter' is the right term. This film is pretty brutal. There's a very explicit and subtlety-free moment where a monologue about the horrors of animal-butchering is intercut with one of the rednecks performing these techniques on a human. The humans are treated like meat for the slaughter, chopped up, flayed, scalped, in graphic detail. Anyone reasonably sane would pick up on this treatment right away, but Romero has to force it by giving shots of the character from earlier in the film, happy and talking.

The editing is generally that nervous, film-school-grad editing style most straight-to-video horror films show these days. There are lots of jumpcuts, MTV style intercutting, with awkward dubs that is just a few notches away from being Death Tunnel, the undisputed champion of this form of editing.

That's not to say nothing in this film works. It's just all stuff I've seen before, presented in a style I've seen before, with predictable moments and an uninspired plot. It is still horrific and at times suspenseful. The gore probably upstages everything else in this film, being quite well done and somewhat disturbing.

Staunton Hill is very much a mediocre affair. It's not bad, but not good enough to recommend. If you can't get enough of slow, predictable, backwoods slaughter-horror, then Staunton Hill is a modestly entertaining way to spend ninety minutes or so.

Bonus points:
For granny-killing action
For a television set that picks up broadcasts from the '50s
To "Buddy", for a truly creepy toy collection

Demonia (1990)

Demonia is about as confusing and esoteric as anything Fulci's done, with the possible exception of Manhattan Baby. Any real narrative coherence is localized in the dull characters; but it is essentially a series of odd happenings that aren't odd enough to be interesting.

At the heart of the story is Liza (played by the very beautiful Meg Register). She's an archaeology student who goes to seances to gain knowledge the easy way: directly from the inhabitants of the past. Before going to a dig in Sicily she has a seance that affects her in profound ways. Although she's supposed to be investigating an Ancient Greek settlement, she now finds herself supernaturally drawn to an old Catholic monastery where a group of nuns had been crucified. The more interest she shows in this monastery, the more the surly Sicilian townsfolk become hostile. And then strange deaths begin to occur.

Demonia is Fulci's approach to the Battle of the Sexes. The head of the dig, Paul, keeps ordering Liza to forget the monastery and she keeps disobeying. The Sicilian townsfolk are all men, with one exception; they are all obsessed with keeping the secret of what happened in that monastery, except, of course, the one woman, who reveals all. The nuns, as it turns out, had turned to Satan. At least, that's what this woman says; inside the convent, 'Azathoth' is seen carved into a doorway, giving the story some Lovecraftian tones. The nuns have been conducting orgies and then murdering the men. So a group of men murder the nuns. Now a woman has brought back the spirit of the nuns, or the prioress anyway, and men are being murdered again--and the woman who blabbed. One murder is particularly shocking, involving a boy forced to witness his father torn in half like a wishbone. So it's really all about these tensions between men and women; not that it matters much.

The film's problems begin with the dull characters. All these events are happening, but the characters aren't very interesting, so who cares? The mystery of the convent is spelled out in the opening scene, so the story doesn't draw one in. The supernatural goings-on are themselves not particularly inspired, either, so there's not even the setpieces to recommend. The nunsploitation angle is covered in one flashback to nun-humping action. The few gore scenes are well-done, however, and the sets/locations are very nicely photographed, with some atmosphere, though not much.

Demonia, in my view, is Fulci's weakest film. It is a failure, albeit an interesting failure for those who like Fulci's nearly-plotless late works as I do. To sum up: the story just isn't good enough, the setting has a bland feel, Fulci's inspiration stylistically and visually is lacking, and the setpieces aren't very creative.

Bonus points:
Ghost boobies
Warning: cat puppets may result in injury to the eyes
Tongue-stab
Worst Irish accent ever

Manhattan Baby (1982)

Manhattan Baby is Fulci's greatest instance of obfuscation. Beyond The Beyond, House by the Cemetery, or Sodoma's Ghosts, Fulci has placed aside coherent narrative altogether in favour of a hermetic world of occult connections expressed in visual, poetic linkages. It is a film that is analogical rather than logical.

What there is if a plot is best made out thus. An archaeologist, his magazine photographer wife and daughter are all out exploring some Egyptian ruins. The area being investigated is a temple older than the known Egyptian religion, when a cult dedicated to an evil and now forgotten god of darkness and destruction flourished. Opening this temple was a bad move, because the powers within infect the family by giving the daughter a strange amulet. They head back to their apartment in Manhattan, where strange phenomena begin surrounding the daughter.

Equal parts The Tenant and Poltergeist, Manhattan Baby thrives on the sheer lack of logic in the face of mystical powers. People disappear and reappear, scorpions and asps come out of nowhere, lasers shoot from thin air. In the midst of all these events, a finely woven tapestry of symbols reveals itself, particularly in eyes. Originally titled The Evil Eye (Il Malocchio), the film is full of close-ups of eyes, the archaeologist is blinded by lasers, the ghostly old Egyptian woman has totally white eyes, the amulet is shaped like an eye, and the symbol of the cult is an eye. Pits, sockets, and camera lenses expand the symbol. Images of scorpions and snakes, doorways and confined passageways, amongst others add to the visual motifs.

One influence Fulci pays homage to is Polanski, naming one of his characters after the villain of Rosemary's Baby: Adrian Marcato. It can be seen as an extension of Polanski's apartment horror, somewhere between Rosemary's Baby and Poltergeist III. The Egyptian motif brings to mind The Tenant and The Exorcist. And it can be enjoyed in the spirit of these films, as a perplexing and occult work, eschewing narrative coherence. However, as the imdb rating indicates, it is perhaps too obfuscating for some to enjoy at all. I thought it was an excellent and visually complex film, far exceeding its sister film Demonia (also about the dangers of archaeology, of the living disturbing the evil and dead). Manhattan Baby probably yields more on re-watching, although there probably isn't much intellectually, beneath the visually thoughtful surface. It's also fairly entertaining, if you can let go and enjoy the ride.

Bonus points:
"Bob" returns with a decent dub
Egyptians had lasers
Stuffed bird attack

Terror Toons 2 (2007) - 1.5/4

It's about as hard to review Terror Toons 2 as it would be to review a Melies film, which Terror Toons reminded me of, in fact. Is it a good film? Well, not by the conventions of a good film. Is it a bad film? Not really, because it's entertaining and original, even if highly processed through Adobe Premiere and/or After Effects. It's a film strung together of setpieces, setpieces that are best described as a fusion of Tom & Jerry with H.G. Lewis. Terror Toons is essentially an inventively violent cartoon show taking place with real flesh and blood people.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2747/4132803365_013370809b.jpg - That cat will soon be Adobe Premiered right out of frame.

The plot is pretty simple. Hansel and Gretel have been turned into a giant rat and a bug-eyed bitch. A DVD made by the devil (anyone can get into distribution these days) allows these jackass toons to escape into the real world at a birthday party, where they wreak havoc. What follows is several violent and often gory setpieces. Eventually some of the party guests leap into the cartoon world to try figure out how to stop the madness. More violent, gory setpieces ensue. They venture into hell. Gain superpowers. Then come back to do battle with a rainbowslug thingy.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2803/4132803387_fabe399395.jpg - Brinke is gonna teach Hansel und Gretel a lesson.
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2596/4133563232_7050aceff2.jpg - Hansel is a rat pfink.
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2569/4132803269_1d6d3b42dc.jpg


The setpieces are, I think, quite impressive. They're not as inventive as Tex Avery or Chuck Jones--is that even possible?--but they're as inventive as a good many of the violent cartoon shows we grew up enjoying. Brains are removed, monkey brains are installed; people are flattened, ripped apart, exploded, and often vomiting. It's a wet and wild film, to say the least.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2702/4132803297_5a1a872fed.jpg - "What has Adobe done to meeeee?!"

What I really didn't like were the bursts of reality that interrupt the setpieces. They take the time for a harrowing, sad moment after daddy is killed by a toon. Why do that? Joe Castro is a sadistic man! Also, there's way too much pleading by these annoying characters. Everybody asks the toons at least once, "Why are you doing this?!" and says "This is sick! Sick!" Just shut up and let the toons kill you already!

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2780/4133563166_f5e811c011.jpg - Welcome to chroma key hell!

I was surprised, too, to discover that Joe Castro is a married man, because unlike most horror films, we don't get any babes. The women are pretty plain and stay clothed. No, we get studs--handsome young men, or boys, rather, seeing as they're pretty young: muscular, callow youths, who are only too eager to take off their shirts and shorts.
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2690/4133563116_db630bd855.jpg
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2491/4133563146_2417dba6fa.jpg
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2628/4132803439_610555c4c9.jpg - No dignity allowed on the set of Terror Toons.

So that's Terror Toons 2. I haven't seen the first part and I won't be going out of my way to watch it. It was a mildly entertaining film, I liked the highly-processed style and the setpieces; but it's still dopey and uneven, with no sense of pacing or narrative at all. But if you want to let your inner child play fetch with your inner gorehound, Terror Toons is one of the few ways you can do it.

Bonus points:
Creepiest clown birthday song ever
Clown-killing action
Animated GIF animals

Vampitheatre (2009) - 0.5/4

Interested by the 1.2/10 rating on imdb and the involvement of Linnea Quigley, I found and watched Christopher Forbes' Vampitheatre, oblivious to the fact that I was signing up to watch a series of music videos for a The Cure-style goth band linked together by an FBI investigation with no dramatic tension whatsoever.

The first five minutes is a very creepy and well-executed setpiece that shocked me. I had been watching the film at my desk; at that moment, I moved to a comfortable chair and turned off the lights, thinking, "This is going to be enjoyable!" I was wrong. The moment I discovered Vampitheatre was really a vehicle for a band called Theatre Peace, I realized there was going to be no staking, no garlic, no crosses, no holy water, and indeed there isn't. There is, however, plenty of music videos and concert footage of Theatre Peace.

The story, if you can call it that, concerns a goth band comprised of real vampires. As they get more attention thanks to being signed by a record label the FBI notices a trail of bodies. This is because the musicians are stupid enough to drain the blood of their few fans instead of the thousands upon thousands of other people in the city. The FBI investigation consists primarily in watching a DVD of their music videos, which we watch with her. There are also interviews with the band members and the manager. There are some tensions between the members, particularly the two lead singers (Christopher Forbes himself and some chick who looks like Tracey Ullman).

It's a very boring film, especially if you don't particularly like the music--and I don't. That's not to say it's bad music. You can tell this is a real band and not one made up for the movie because they're competent and know how to play together. I just don't like that sort of music. It's also very irritating to find that it's more or less a pitch for this Theater Peace band.

The only interesting parts are the few moments Linnea Quigley is on screen as the Queen of the Dead, covered in white grease paint and dubbed with a man's voice, and the beginning five minutes when Christopher Forbes asks a girl if he can kiss her neck--that was spooky. And there's one monologue I liked, "She sucked my dick then I was out cold and I woke up and I had sharp teeth and now play in her band but I don't pay her no attention." Uh-huh.

So if you spot Vampitheatre on the shelves or whatnot, miss it, unless you really like goth music videos. There's nothing wrong with the photography, the acting, or the music; it was all just in need of, oh I dunno, A MOVIE around it!

The Cauldron: Baptism of Blood (2004) - 1.5/4

The sequel to Blood Orgy of the She-Devils is twice as boring, twice as redundant and nearly twice as long! I liked Blood Orgy of the She-Devils, despite the false advertising (no blood, no orgy, and the shes were scarcely devils). It had a certain primal force, what with its saturated, dark colours, castle setting, and bongo music. Cauldron is brighter, more pristine, lacking the primitivism that endeared me to the original.

Cauldron is to She Devils what Corpse Grinders II is to Corpse Grinders: it's a partial retread with some variations. Again, the coven of witches is introduced mid-ritual, killing an innocent man. Again, some utterly pointless subplots occur and are wrapped up in the first 30 minutes never to be referenced again, involving the killing of a man by magic. And again, a man and woman find themselves caught up in a ritual sacrifice.

The variation is that this time, the woman caught in the ritual is the winner of a talent competition. Seems one of the coven was in the competition as well and sang a soulful, but not very people-pleasing song. Whoops. So she uses a magical amulet to get revenge. And her boyfriend investigates her eventual disappearance.

I try to be generous to Ted Mikels' films, but Cauldron is the worst of his I've seen yet. It's not that it's lacking in ideas--Ted's always got lots of ideas--but that they're not well implemented. The runtime is well over minimum feature length, and yet it's still full of redundant shots. Every time someone drives somewhere, we have to see the person walk to the door, leave the house, walk to their car, get in and drive away. Sometimes we even get shots of them in the car for no good reason.

I mentioned the subplots at the beginning that are of no value to the main story. I believe the point of this is to show Mikels' research and fascination with the subject matter, just as in Bloody Orgy of the She Devils. I don't doubt Mikels did research. In that spirit, it's interesting. In fact, to be honest, I found these subplots the best part of the film. There's another moment in which two guests (one of whom is Mikels himself) on a talk show discuss the difference between 'paranormal' and 'psychic phenomena'; it's not useful, it just shows Mikels' research. It's actually my favourite part of the film.

The talent competition, which we actually get to watch on TV in-movie is quite remarkable. It's not hard to see why the character who wins does, because she's up against a witch who sings boring ballads, a ventriloquist who tells blond jokes (he's the male lead of the film!), and a female comedian who makes Kathy Griffin seem hilarious. Like watching The Office, you're torn between amusement and embarrassment. That's another fun moment.

The fun moments, alas, are too few and far between. The ritual scenes, which must take up a good twenty minutes of runtime alone, are interesting, albeit monotonous and lacking in the force of the original. They're also just as chaste as in She-Devils. Plus there's one blond girl whose skirt is on wrong and is showing only a single on of her butt cheeks. It looks silly and is very distracting, especially since the camera zooms in on it.

Another thing that really annoys me with this film is that almost no-one uses contractions. It's harsh to listen to and just makes already too-long scenes even longer.

So there you have it. Cauldron: Baptism of Blood is for Mikels fans alone--and I consider myself a fan. Mikels' attempt to fuse a damsel-in-distress plot with Haxan just doesn't work; I would have preferred something more like Haxan, in fact, since the plotless beginning of this film, with the coven performing tasks for random people, is certainly the strongest part--which isn't saying much. The padding, redundancies, and ugly dialogue just made Cauldron a very dulling experience, despite the many potentially fun ideas.

Bonus points for:
Pig demon with antlers shooting flames from its eyes!
A dummy in a horror movie that doesn't come to life
A museum full of men in Wal*Mart masks
The worst blond joke ever

Darkness Surrounds Roberta (2008) - 1/4

Darkness Surrounds Roberta is a giallo/homage to the gialli of the '70s and '80s, but drawing as its main influence Argento's oeuvre from Stendhal Syndrome onward. As such, it embraces a lot of what's wrong with Argento's latest films: unlikable characters, totally unlikable troubled women who manage to be both ice queens and sluts, a stodgy plot based around the troubled bitch no-one does or should care about, and Italian actors speaking heavily accented English.

The titular Roberta is a woman who married a rich social climber, has an obsession with drawing some odd drawings, whores herself out in order to steal jewelry on the side (for the thrill, I guess), and was once raped by two men she was using as models for her drawings. She's not an interesting, good, or likable person, but we're supposed to care that she's in trouble and someone's messing with her mind, someone who has photos of her after a theft, someone who has been committing murders all over town.

This film is supposed to be an homage to gialli of a bygone age and in some ways it is, insofar as 'homage' is inept attempt to copy. Sort of like a Star Wars fan film bears resemblance to the original. The labyrinthine plotting and cracked psychology of the killer is done well, but the filmmaker doesn't know gialli well enough: we need amateur detectives, not proper homicide detectives; and we need setpieces, not repetitive stabbing of a pillow filled with blood capsules (yep, that's the brilliant work of make-up effects artist Timo Rose--the same thing Nick Millard does in his movies). What's taken the place of setpieces are actually some softcore sex scenes. Very softcore. I don't even remember seeing a nipple. However, there are a lot of sex scenes, most of them doggy style.

Out of the repugnant characters, I supposed the blind homicide detective is the closest to likable. He starts off annoying, because every other line references his blindness--it's a belabored point, to put it lightly--but he seems like a decent person, like Kyle MacLachlan in Twin Peaks. Roberta is probably the worst of the characters, along with her husband. She's supposed to earn most of our interest, but she's irritating, shallow, and unpleasant.

The terrible dialogue and it's even worse delivery adds another layer to an already difficult-to-enjoy film. The terrible dialogue never ceases, either. The big, giallo climax, where the killer reveals her/himself and her/his motives is usually a bit chatty, but in Roberta it's a real talk-fest, with the killer explaining everything in meticulous detail, all the while posing for the camera, knife in hand. Maybe that's intention? At one point Roberta looks in to the camera and says 'Shh!' Maybe the film is working at levels way beyond me.

Or maybe it's as bad as I think it is. Darkness Surrounds Roberta is for giallo die-hards only, because it doesn't have a lot to offer. The filmmaker is trying too hard to imitate a genre he doesn't quite comprehend and the result is pretty much what you'd expect: a big miss.

Bonus points:
To the blind guy for saying, "Sandro, poke around in the trash!"
Nose-stabbing action

The Beast in Heat (1977)

Oh boy, it's Nazisploitation sleaze time! The Beast in Heat delivers on the sleaze, but in uneven doses that are good enough to wake you up if you fall asleep during the long stretches of Italian peasants vs. Nazi soldiers.

The Beast in Heat is about two things: a boring group of Italian peasants who are resisting Nazi occupation by blowing up strategic bridges and such; and the experiments of a sexy, sadistic, Nazi scientist chick who has made a neanderthal with a superpower: supervirility! What use is such a superpower for Germany, one might ask? Why, screwing female prisoners to death, of course. And what good is that? Making sleaze scenes for us. Or maybe it's symbolic of how people have lost faith in good human morals and are no longer kind to one another. Anyway, these two subplots meet up in a grand stroke of narrative when the scientist and her caged neanderthal are sent to teach the peasants' women a lesson in sharing.

A lot of dull scenes ensue discussing strategy, the religious views of one of the peasants, the mistreatment of an Italian woman who has become a mistress to the Nazi commander for information, and some shooting and conniving with Nazis. In between these are scenes of Nazis shooting old women and babies. And finally, an hour into the film, the sleaze begins, with a female Nazi raping an Italian man, cutting off a man's genitals, throwing women to the neanderthal, electrocuting vaginas with jumper cables, shooting vaginas with pistols, ripping out pubic hair by the roots, and that sort of thing.

The neanderthal himself is nothing more than a burly man who hops on the women naked and generally humps any part of them that's between his legs at the moment. Since we see everything, it's clear he never gets an erection; which is remarkable, considering he's grappling with beautiful, naked ladies. His wordless growls mid-hump resonate with the frustration of human desires. Or maybe he's just enjoying himself.

There's lots of full frontal nudity, of both men and women. With both genders, some are decent to look at and some aren't. A big problem is the positions they're put in. It's hard to find a lady attractive when her vagina is being electrocuted and she looks in serious need of a bath. It's also hard to find it erotic to see a burly man humping at a woman like a dog with a pillow.

The Beast in Heat is a dull movie, though a bona fide sleazy one. The sleaze is too stupid and goofy to make you feel that sleazy, dirty feeling, that feeling where you have to take a shower after watching the movie. It's more likely to make you laugh and cringe a little. For that matter, the movie tries to have a message about non-violence, too, ending on an emotional moment with a father and his dead daughter. This is an inept picture for die-hard sleaze-fans or Nazisploitation fans only.

Bonus points:
Neanderthal eating pubic hair

The Weirdo (1988)

The Weirdo is a very slow-moving picture, even by Milligan's standards. It concerns a young man, Donnie, who would be considered to have mild mental retardation. He is able to express himself simply and do simple tasks, and that's about it. Well, except for lusting after pretty girls, wanking, and falling in love. A girl named Jenny, who is an outcast with a spinal injury that hinders her walking, befriends the much-abused Donnie and they begin to grow close. When the people in Donnie's life--some good and some bad--begin threatening his relationship with Jenny, he gets violent.

As always with Milligan's horror films, The Weirdo is about as horrific as Hour of the Wolf. His films, or at least the three that I've seen, are character studies that descend into violence or horror, but begin with psychology. Milligan has much more in common with Bergman than he does with HG Lewis. I wonder if he only puts gore in his films to improve the odds of their getting seen.

The time and effort Milligan puts into building up the psychology of all the major characters involved and the world Donnie and Jenny inhabit pays off. They are both wounded doves; people who are vulnerable, have been abused, and never given the opportunity to flourish and really be happy. They are both coming from a milieu of abuse, broken families where they are not wanted or loved. They warrant great sympathy. For whatever reason, Milligan's pictures do affect me on an emotional level. I feel the fear, the horror, the disturbance I should feel. What's odd about The Weirdo is that you feel more suspense at the prospect of Donnie not murdering than murdering. You're always waiting for him to snap, but it takes him a very long time to do so. This earns him a lot more sympathy: he's not just a lunatic.

The dialogue I have applauded so often in the previous Milligan films I've seen is here a little off at times. He's too liberal with inserting his thematic concerns into his characters' lines. Donnie, who normally utters very simple sentences, suddenly comes out with, "Lots of people talk to me. But no-one has ever talked with me before." That's a pretty fine distinction for a man of his intelligence. Naturally it's imposed on the character by the author: Donnie could never have made that distinction. Usually the dialogue is on form and realistic, however, and is effective at pulling the audience into the psychological world of Donnie.

As always in a Milligan picture, the camerawork is peculiar. Awkward editing occurs during scenes of violence. It is nowhere near as chaotic as in The Bloodthirsty Butchers, but it's still occasionally confused. There are also the usual dutch tilts; I like dutch tilts when they're used well, and I have a feeling Milligan has a reason for using them where he does.

As I said, The Weirdo is very slow-moving and has a lot in common with Bergman pictures in that it dwells on the mounting psychological disturbances within its characters. When the violence finally does erupt, it might not be very satisfying for others. I personally enjoyed the central characters and their relationship; I had a great deal of sympathy for them, perhaps because they resemble people I know in character. This is more recommended for fans of a Southern Gothic melodrama with some revenge tragedy violence erupting in the final act than for fans of the usual b-movie horror fare.

Satan's Slave (1976)

Norman J. Warren is known for being the first, along with Pete Walker, to bring gore and copious nudity into British horror films, and he doesn't disappoint on that front with Satan's Slave.

A young woman with vague psychic powers is going with her mother and father to visit her uncle, whom her father has never seen since they were children. On the way there, a car crash and inexplicable explosion leaves her suddenly orphaned and in the care of her uncle (Michael Gough, excellently creepy as always), along with his murderous son and secretary, in a mansion with a private graveyard where witchburnings were once conducted. As she recovers and grieves, she falls in love with her cousin and is gradually tipped off that something isn't quite right (besides the incest).

The film is structured such that we already know something is wrong with the cousin: he murders women. It's not hard to guess, from the title and witch references what's going on with the family either. It's just a matter of who can be trusted, how much, and what's really going on that is up in the air. The mystery is successfully kept in a slow but elegant pace, with a shocker of an ending.

The goods are delivered in the form of some beautiful and totally naked women being whipped and abused in various ways, a graphic plunge from a highrise, and some good ol' ocular damage. Combined with the Surrey location shooting and familiar English players, this gives the film the feeling of a grizzly, intimate Hammer thriller, not unlike Paranoiac meeting To the Devil a Daughter.

Satan's Slave isn't a great film. It gets off to an awkward beginning. But once it gets going, it plays out as a very satisfying horror/mystery of the devil-cult subgenre. If you enjoy devil-cult films, Satan's Slave is a very well-made one.

The Sweet House of Horrors (1989)

The films of Fulci's late career are generally considered to be hit-and-miss-and-miss-and-miss. I've tended to like his later works, finding them more indulgent of his intuitive and experimental approach. It's easy to neglect that Fulci studied film theory and knows his avant-garde cinema and theory very well. While Fulci is stylistically on form here with lots of great ideas, I'm afraid The Sweet House of Horrors is a miss for one wretched reason: CHILDREN.

A couple, in their palatial country house, are murdered when they surprise a burglar. The murdered woman's sister and her husband become guardians of the children and move into the house. When they decide to sell the house to get money for the children's future and because the house appears to be haunted. The ghosts of the murdered don't take kindly to the notion of being separated from their children and begin some pretty tame mischief.

The gore that was absent from Ghosts of Sodom is back in full force. The couple at the beginning are murdered in the most brutal fashion, with Fulci's trademark ocular damage. A gardener is later run over by a vehicle that leaves his chest split open like a melon, gushing blood. However, the creepy, nightmarish style of Ghosts of Sodom and the hell gate trilogy is abandoned for a plot that makes more sense.

There are some interesting setpieces involving a bizarre, black-cloaked German medium, the killing of the gardener, and the opening murder. These moments show Fulci stylistically in great form; his visual ideas are always a pleasure.

However, the major problem with the film is the children. The children are, of course, in cahoots with their ghostly parents. They're snotty little brats to begin with, calling adults stupid and generally being wretched know-it-alls. Once they have supernatural forces on their side, they become insufferable. These are children who need a good beating. Even when they're crying over their parents' death, they're blowing bubbles with their bubble-gum. Maybe Fulci intended them to be despicable, for them to be the sort of villains of the picture; in which case he succeeded all too well. They're so vile they defile the film itself.

It's worth watching to see the great Fulci at work with some interesting ideas. It is, formally, a good film. But the story leaves quite a bit to be desired, and not just abundant child-beating. It's missing a certain horrific core. This is more like an Italian Beetlejuice without Beetlejuice.

Bonus points:
Phony wax hand effect
Gratuitous abuse of the disabled
Flashbacks to gore scenes of only minutes earlier
Talking, animatronic duck
Dubbing children with adult voices

Mardi Gras Massacre (1978)

Mardi Gras Massacre concerns a lunatic who worships Quetzelcoatl as an evil deity and sacrifices women he considers evil to his god. Naturally he preys on prostitutes. Meanwhile, two detectives investigate, one of whom falls in love with one of the witnesses, also a prostitute. Not surprisingly, there's a Perils of Pauline-type climax.

The film's style is pretty rough and obviously constructed as quick drive-in fare. However, there are loads of beautiful, naked girls who do some nice dances. One lovely, young blond in particular does a graceful, seductive dance at the very center of the film. There is also the gore to recommend. For '78, it's quite well done, using latex casts of the ladies' torsos. The killer uses a sacrificial knife to cut open the torsos and pull out the heart. It's shocking at first, but gets repetitive. I imagine when Mardi Gras Massacre was first put in the drive-ins, it drew some good crowds. It is gruesome and salacious enough to please.

The unlikely romance that blossoms between the prostitute and the detective is actually kind of charming and yields up a good ol' fashion montage! The police procedural is the other level of the plot and this tends to move along much more slowly, as there are really no leads until the end of the film; the chief of police accuses his detectives of being lazy and he's right, because they're useless most of the film. At least, up until their searching-for-the-killer MONTAGE! Yeah! Director Jack Weis is montage-crazy.

If you like drive-in pictures, you'll probably like Mardi Gras Massacre. It's not great, but it's a decent, if slowly-paced and monotonous splatter/crime film.

Bonus points:
Gratuitous catfight
Random police brutality
A pimp named 'Catfish' who looks like Crispin Glover in his Letterman-attacking days

A Nymphoid Barbarian in Dinosaur Hell (1990)

How much should I write about a film with almost no dialogue? I pondered writing the review exclusively in screen captures and emoticons, but the spell of Dinosaur Hell has worn off and I find myself quite literate again.

A Nymphoid Barbarian in Dinosaur Hell begins with a very goofy and poorly read introduction that you'll never have to think about during the movie. It explains that dinosaurs mutated from housepets and humans became either mutants or barbarians. The film would have been better off not explaining it; the visuals speak loud and clear and it really requires no explanation. There are dinosaurs and mutants in a hellish, post-apocalyptic landscape populated by sexy barbarians: good enough.

The plot, as it were, arises when an evil barbarian named Glon takes a shine to the female half of a sexy barbarian couple. She's hardly 'nymphoid,' except for being young and beautiful. She's actually very faithful to her man Marn--and not a wonder, as he may be even better-looking than she is. Glon, like anyone who read the title, is convinced she's a nymphoid and is keen on getting it on with her. So he beats up Marn and runs off with girl. Marn sets out to save her. In the meantime, she manages to escape and tries to find Marn with the help of a Masked Stranger. Along the way she encounters cool-looking dinosaurs, lizard people, dragons, and, of course, Glon, who keeps showing up and attempting to rape her. He's a crap rapist; he has to take some lessons from David Hess.

The lack of dialogue doesn't hurt this film at all; if you try to imagine what sort of dialogue would be found in a film called A Nymphoid Barbarian in Dinosaur Hell, I think you'll agree. It also adds to the feel of primitivism and allowed me to focus on the pure visual storytelling. I had hoped the visuals would be fascinating and fun or that there would be some moments of quiet wonder, given that the film is set in dinosaur hell and all. As it happens, most of the shots are of fights or of walking across rocky or grassy terrains. The only moment that's really fantastic is when the girl is shown a picture book by the Masked Stranger. It's a children's book, teaching the alphabet. It's a sweet moment, in which the large, innocent eyes of our nymphoid pays off. There's also a funny punchline that I'd rather not ruin for you.

So, on the one hand, A Nymphoid Barbarian in Dinosaur Hell is much better than a film called A Nymphoid Barbarian in Dinosaur Hell has any right to be; on the other hand, it's also much worse than a film called A Nymphoid Barbarian in Dinosaur Hell should be. With that title, it should be wilder, cheesier, crazier. It's a very mellow film that takes its time and passes through the dinosaur hell vistas matter-of-factly. A few striking compositions, the costumes, sets, the Harryhausen-esque creature designs, and general inventiveness recommends it for those who think they can handle barbarian storytelling: this is just what a barbarian story should be.

The Thing Below (2004)

The government's been up to some shenanigans out on the ocean and accidentally set free an ancient, extraterrestrial being from fifty miles beneath the earth's surface. This being says things like, "On the contrary, you are the bastard, for I have been on this planet for two million years, before your species even evolved." Unfortunately for this tentacled critter, a black ops ship captain (Billy Warlock) has just arrived on the oil rig and he says things like, "You bastard, you killed my friends!" Seeing the carnage in the derelict lab, he decides it's time to get the heck out of there before they all become tentaclefood.

Taking a hint from Sphere, I suppose, the tentacle beast can also read minds. Not just your surface thoughts, like in Scanners. No, this thing can scan your entire brain in seconds and figure out exactly what's the best illusion to lure you into its slimy grasp. It doesn't make much sense why some of these people fall into the traps, but, hey... do you smell that? That's the smell of setpieces!

The illusions allow Wynorski to do things that really have nothing to do with the plot. Like an Old West shootout and a sudden striptease moment. I accused Wynorski of not knowing how to make erotic scenes out of beautiful women when I reviewed Cheerleader Massacre. Now I have to eat my words. He shoots an incredible striptease sequence with a babe named Glori-Anne Gilbert. I also applauded Wynorski for only using all-natural ladies in Cheerleader Massacre. Gilbert's breasts are silicon torpedoes; ah well, can't have everything. One has to admire the sheer ingenuity with which T&A was brought into a plot and setting that doesn't really leave any room for disrobing.

Along with the illusions, there is also a subplot involving a general whose "ass is on the line here!" and loads of flashbacks. Wynorski went flashback crazy. Together, this leaves the plain narrative fractured, or like a clothesline to hang all these disconnected moments on, making the film feel a little Al Adamson-esque.

The CGI tentacles didn't bother me; I don't mind CGI. In this case, the CGI yields some creepy tentacle-coming-out-of-human imagery in the first ten minutes of the film; the rest of the film, however, gives up on this altogether.

The Thing Below is a pretty decent sea monster picture. I liked the setpieces, especially the striptease sequence. One wonders why the monster doesn't just kill these people once they're isolated, instead of providing a sexy, three-minute striptease. But I'm not complaining. It's supposed to be fun, and it succeeds in being so well-enough.

Cheerleader Massacre (2003)

Maybe I'm just getting tired of 'Turkeys' or maybe this film is actually as uninspired and wretched as I believe it to be. I'm very gentle on what some call 'bad movies,' as my reviews from the past two weeks will reveal. I never laugh because a film is 'bad'; at least not until tonight.

Some sort of sequel to The Slumber Party Massacre--a well-written and jokey slasher--Cheerleader Massacre tells the story of a group of very attractive cheerleaders getting stuck in a cabin in the mountains with three guys and their coach. At the same time, a serial killer has escaped from prison and is killing high school girls. For some reason he ends up at the camp in the woods too. The theme of serendipity is built up out of the motif of the arbitrariness of this film's events.

The holes are flecked with some plot, but don't let that deter you. The escaped killer's MO is killing women in their 40s. Yet the police still go and question Brinke Stevens, who apparently survived the locker room assault in Slumber Party Massacre, about her attack in that film. She's introduced in an overdramatic shot as a wraithlike creature, the embodiment of angst and victimhood that never forgets. So that section, which includes a lengthy clip from SPM, is a big slab-o-filler. The whole police procedural about the escaped killer is merely a red herring, though it takes up half the film. The rationale behind the murders makes no sense whatsoever and has nothing to do with Slumber Party Massacre. One can detect the influence of David Lynch in how the events of the narrative have little to no bearing on one another outside of their shared motifs of insipidity and tits.

Cheerleader Massacre is decently shot and decently edited--far better than most shot-on-video pictures. More's the pity that it's so inept and vapid an instance of storytelling. The only thing it offers is lots of beautiful girls. Every woman in this movie, young and old, is gorgeous and busty (all natural, too). This is offered for our gratification in awkward, silly moments, like the cheerleading coach's shower, which, if shot in real time, would have amounted to a full hour of a woman doing nothing but rubbing her own tits very slowly, over and over. Each symbolic movement of Irish Spring over her large aureoles, shot with the kinetic grace of Kurosawa, brings to mind Stonehenge and the Nazca Plains with their mysterious grandeur. Sounds erotic, eh? Well it's not; it's just stupid and manipulative. Besides, you know what? Most women are beautiful, unless they're fat, ancient, or inbred. You go to the grocery store any day and you'll see plenty of women who could be causing boners in b-movies. It's just not that interesting. Oh, and all the men are flabby, gormless doofs.

Nothing to recommend. Sorry, this one's a total dud. I went in expecting to like it, too. I say you'd be much, much better off watching The Corpse Grinders 2 for some shot-on-video fun.

Fury of the Wolf Man (1972)

If you want some fun, eurocamp, misogynistic horror with mad scientists, werewolves and cute Spanish babes who say, "I would die for you," then you've come to the right place. If you want good dialogue, good editing, decent pacing, and cute Spanish babes who say, "Look at my fulsome funbags," then you've come to the wrong place.

The convoluted plot concerns a college professor who went on expedition to Tibet and returned to find himself a werewolf, his wife a cheating little slut, one of his students trying to murder him, and his ex-girlfriend conducting experiments using "chemitrodes" that allow her to control certain brain functions in her subjects. How does it all add up? Up to Castle Wolfstein! (Not to be confused with the much more urbane Wolfenstein.)

Castle Wolfstein is the mad scientist's fortress, where hordes of heartless female scientists conduct fiendish experiments on the brains of captive men, animals, and plants with the hopes of dominating man. Paul Naschy ends up there with a cute Spanish girl and boy does it make him mad, you might even say furious.

This all culminates in some triumphant group raping, murdering, sword-fighting, door-busting, and werewolf on zombie-werewolf action!

Holy lord, could Paul Naschy write an insane script, or what? He totally forgot to care about little things like not introducing characters out of the woodwork in the process, as well as good dialogue. Characters say dreadfully stupid things and all love is expressed with the phrase, "I would die for you." And when they characters are not saying stupid things, they're delivering exposition or spewing out heavy-handed themes, like, "This is wrong, this is not science, this cannot be science!"

Women are, for the most part, evil, unfaithful bitches in this film. There's one exception so extreme, I'm led to believe Naschy's must have had a cheating girlfriend at one point and decided, "Evil mind-control was behind it; no free-willed woman would cheat on me." Except he thought that in Spanish.

Recommended to lovers of somewhat inept but totally insane camp. Also to any misogynists who suspect women are sneaky, manipulative, and evil. But beware: there are a few boring patches involving a reporter and a detective.

Assignment Terror (1970)

(AKA Los monstruos del terror)

Paul Naschy is one of the worst writers of dialogue in cinematic history, but he has the craziest ideas. In this film, Michael Rennie (in his final role) is an alien bodysnatcher with scientific powers of necromancy, who, with his cohorts, has taken control of some bodies that they might put into motion their plan to destroy all humans on earth and claim it for themselves. Klaatu's turned really nasty! But he has no choice; his own sun is dying and he hasn't yet discovered how to build an artificial sun. Nobody's perfect, eh?

So, what's his diabolical scheme? To use human superstition and passions against them by sending Universal monsters after them. But how is that superstition if the monsters really exist? No matter! He gets the Wolf Man, of course, Waldemar Daninsky. Frankenst... wait, wait, what? Franksalan's Monster. And a vampire and a mummy (with a 'stache). He controls all of them with his brain controlling SCIENCE. But science fails again, because the brain control isn't perfect and the human bodies begin exerting passions on the normally passionless aliens. "I feel this curious sensation," is alien for "love." Will human passions prove a stronger weapon than alien science? If every single episode of Star Trek: The Original Series is to be believed, of course it will.

DANINSKY: "Why are you helping me?"
BLONDIE: "I think...it's because... I'm a woman!"

Meanwhile the police department has its top detective on the job of bumbling around trying to figure out what's going on, going to bars and downing lots of vodka, and sleeping with pretty girls. Why does Naschy insist on having the police in his movies? They never do anything but show up at the very end.

Most of the time I have no idea what's going on in this movie. It's pretty confusing, with what seem to be important shots cut out. The monsters are not well-used. It's really only the alien villains who are interesting, and fortunately they are the focus of the film. It has a nice, poetic ending about human emotions and Rennie's defeat. It's not very significant, but it's charming. The film also gives Michael Rennie lots of screentime in his final role; by far he has the most screentime and he plays his heartless alien doctor to the evil hilt, torturing blond babes and sicking monsters on anyone who interferes with him, including his own people. Klaatu went out with a bang! (That's what she said.)

I must admit I was alternately bored and stupefied by the odd things put on screen. It's dopey, campy, European, jam-packed with zany ideas and monsters, nonsensical character decisions and emotions--women especially fall deeply in love at the drop of a hat in Naschy's mind--and dreadful dialogue; it's thoroughly Naschy, I guess.

Blood of Dracula's Castle (1969)

Glen Cannon, a photographer who looks remarkably like Jimmy Stewart, inherits a castle from his recently-deceased 108-year-old uncle and, to please his fiance and model Liz, decides to live in it. Just one problem: the current tenants are 300-year-old vampires who really don't want to leave.

That sounds like as typical a horror plot as one can get. So Adamson spruces it up some and boy does he spruce. John Carradine is the butler who worships a made-up sacrifice-demanding moon god, Luna. Mango is the 'caretaker of the girls,' a hulking, mentally impaired, deformed giant charged with feeding (and apparently shaving the legs of and applying make-up to) the women kept chained in the dungeon for vampire nourishment. Johnny is a psychopath they've busted out of prison, who must kill during the full moon, or any time he feels like it.

I have to be honest: I was entertained. Al Adamson made a film that entertains me. It's witty, moves along at a decent pace, has quite a few excellent and amusing set-pieces, especially at the end. The battles with Mango and John Carradine are great, involving a whip, a ball-and-chain, an axe, a gun, fire, and a seaside cliff.

The characters are well-delineated enough to stand out as individuals, with the campy vampire couple especially stealing the scenes they're in. Somehow Adamson manages to find some fine-looking ladies to populate his film-world, too. Too bad they keep their clothes on.

Perhaps it's the present of co-director Jean Hewitt to which the film's quality is owned, but I can recommend this film for anyone with a taste for lightly tongue-in-cheek American Gothic. Of course, this is still Al Adamson, so don't expect either blood or Dracula--just the castle.

Sodoma's Ghosts (1988)

Come the '80s, Fulci wasn't too keen on logic, internal or otherwise. Or at least, if there is internal logic, it's much more internal than anyone is likely to get; a logic that exists only in Fulci's brain, now eaten by zombies in an Italian graveyard. Sodoma's Ghosts belongs alongside House by the Cemetery, The Beyond, and City of the Living Dead for generally working on a level beyond, or beneath, logic; it has the same sort of arbitrariness to the events.

Six college students go driving through the French countryside. The driver, goofing off, takes a shortcut, which lands them at some abandoned, but strangely well-kept mansion in the woods, where, we saw in an introductory sequence, some decadence Nazis having a party with some whores were bombed into oblivion. They stay the night, as it's getting dark, enjoying the vintage wines, food, and old records; then they try to depart the next morning, but find they can't leave. The house doors seize shut, the windows won't break, and they begin experiencing hallucinations and feelings of aggression. The plot is more or less a clothesline on which to hang strange imagery (a decaying body erupting with black sludge) and suspenseful setpieces (a protracted Russian roulette game).

I'm not sure why Sodoma's Ghosts is so loathed. It's just like Fulci's hell gate trilogy, except without the gore. The various tensions and relations amongst the characters, their weaknesses and their desires, are exploited by the ghosts, leading up to the climactic moment returning to the bomb. What happens then I won't spoil for you, but it leaves a lot of questions in one's mind, much like the end of The House by the Cemetery.

There are even some moments of brilliance, such as when a Nazi lines up a shot and hits a pool ball at a woman's vulva, the house is bombed at the very moment the ball would be hitting the 'pocket.' The second explosion is also keyed to a moment of entry. This is what I mean about Fulci working at a level different than narrative logic.

Overall, I think this is quite a good instance of Fulci's later career and the unusual, intuitive approach he took to storytelling. It feels like he got his hands on the script for a French arthouse film and did some rewriting to make it a Fulci film. It won't please the gorehounds and the end will love some dissatisfied, but it's still a provocative supernatural horror.

Bonus points:
Gratuitous Wagner
Lesbian seduction using flowers
Nazi orgy
Some beautiful girls, especially Teresa Razzauti
Breasts caving in

Demon Haunt (2009) - 2/4

You've all heard me talk about it for the last year, you've seen me post this trailer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOiHMho6Muk countless times, and now the moment has finally arrived: I, like Moses, have ascended the mountain of Demon Haunt and I return to bring you, etched in stone tablets, my review.

Demon Haunt is about a woman (lovely blond, Olivia Dunkley), who just lost her husband in a car crash that also left her sister paralyzed from the waist down, moving into a house that happens to be haunted by a demon. No-one knows why the demon is there, not even Mikels, because we're never told. But I suspect a computer did it. After a particularly startling incident, blondie surfs the web and finds the name of a paranormal investigator (Sean Morelli) who specializes in 'house cleansing.' This investigator, Raymond LaCleur, is actually a down and out exorcist, which is a new concept to me; he just sits around the house and lives like a slob. A real disgrace to all exorcists. He has to find the courage and faith to take up his strange voodoo cylinder thing and fight the good fight against demon-kind once more.

With that plot in place, the film plays out exactly as you would imagine. There is quite a bit of focus on the reticence and emotional issues for LaCleur, his disputes with his exorcist father (who is a Catholic priest), and the love-hate banter with his eye-liner wearing pal. Of course he ultimately decides to help these women and there's a climactic show-down.

That's pretty mainstream, much more mainstream than I'm accustomed to from Mikels. In the meanwhile, some Mikels-esque things happen that don't affect the plot at all. Like scenes at a mannequin-filled museum involving his long-time wife Shanti as some sort of keynote speaker who needs a gaudy costume and Mikels himself as a tourist snapping photos in the museum. There's also a weird neighbour, Hank, equal part Archie Bunker and Hank Hill, who is sure the girls next door are satanists. He provides comic relief, by saying things like, "I don't throw around no suppositories." Malapropisms are always worth a laugh. I was more than a little surprised to find this comic relief actually comic. I found myself laughing quite a bit at Hank and his shrewish wife (Beverly Washburn, from Spider Baby!).

The demons are, of course, CGI. Particularly primitive CGI. As we all know, Mikels has a low budget and uses what scant resources he has. These demons were created on a home computer. They're kind of goofy-looking. As we also know, Mikels has never allowed a low budget to stop him from doing things even major studios would find intimidating. He doesn't shy away from having his exorcists shoot psychic beams from their hands, demons crash through (CGI) floors, skeletal spirits, hordes of demon imps, tentacled masses, portals to hell, hellish landscapes, and all that good stuff. I have to admire his ambition, even if the resulting images are sometimes wonky (see the car crash in the trailer above).

So that's the long-anticipated Demon Haunt. It wasn't as strange and ridiculous as the trailer led me to believe. If anything, it's too normal. The Corpse Grinders 2, for which I've been developing a delayed affection, was thoroughly odd. With Demon Haunt, Mikels chose to focus on his characters, particularly Raymond, and his development as a person, which doesn't work so well in a film of this sort. It's hard to have CGI imps shooting CGI lightening in one scene, then a heartfelt father-son argument in the next. I would have preferred more epic battles with the CGI.

Bonus points for:
Gratuitous duck-feeding
Calling a paraplegic a 'cripple'
Gratuitous eye-liner on two men
Utterly camp fashion designer
Dubbed "Oof" and "Ouch" when a girl flies from the window in a car crash
Pointless opening shots of old ladies at a graveyard
Demons soaring over the seaside in broad daylight like gulls

Zombie Lake (1981)

Cinematic stylist Jean Rollin brings us a picture in which a town must face not just their own, but all of Europe's terrible past as a menagerie of zombies arise from the local lake intent on consuming the countless naked women in the village.

The lake itself is the inviting and yet terrible subconscious of man. Therein are hidden the dark secrets and terrors of our existence, the horrible truths long-suppressed. The town's mayor explains this lake was once used in black masses to dispose of sacrificed children. The townsfolk, during the German occupation, disposed of murdered Nazi soldiers in that very lake. Now the soldiers are rising and killing, the vessels of vengeance and intergenerational guilt; the repressed truths having soured into the death drive, 'Thanatos.'

Meanwhile, Eros, the life-instinct, is represented by the hordes of beautiful, naked women, whose lithe, nubile bodies, smooth and tight, perfect for bearing the seed of man, become the food of zombies. In a startling but ecstatically true moment, Eros is victorious, for the love of one of the zombies for the French girl he fathered before he was murdered may just hold the key to their destruction.

Anyway, so this is a bad movie, but it's also a really weird movie. There's a lengthy flashback segment in the middle of the film that tells, without dialogue, the love story of a German soldier for a French woman and the tragedy that befell them. This leads to an image that must be unique to this film: a little girl walking hand-in-hand with a Nazi zombie down an old cobblestone road in a French village.

There are lots of naked girls. They're quite sexy and all skinny-dipping mad. But Rollin, dirty old man he is, shoots them skinny-dipping from underwater, giving us awkward shots of their furry vaginas as their legs flail about. As Seinfeld puts it, "There's good naked; and there's bad naked." This is somewhere in between. It's not really sexy at all and kind of stupid-looking, but they're still cute girls. It gets even stupider-looking when the zombies start grabbing.

Ultimately, all I can say is that I found myself quite bored watching the film, despite some of the interesting things to be found within. For this kind of a movie, it's way too ponderous. The best part is actually the silent love story in the center.

Horror of the Blood Monsters (1970)

Ground control, which consists entirely of a middle-aged married couple, is having FutureSex using their OrgasmoTron computer: "Sometimes I miss making love the old way," says hubby. Meanwhile, John Carradine is in a spaceship in another solar system that had to land on an Earth-like planet to make repairs. He can't leave the spaceship because he has heart problems (i.e. because Al Adamson couldn't afford him for another day of shooting). His crew, in the meantime, are outside of the spaceship running from dinosaurs, lobstermen, bat-ape hybrids and a tribe of vampiric snakepeople who are waging war with a tribe of primitive humans.

How can a movie so utterly jam-packed with stuff be so boring? I thought it was my fault. I thought, "I must just not be in the mood, because there are lobstermen, dinosaurs, sexy tribal girls, and an orgasm-computer and that all should equal a really entertaining movie." It should. But it doesn't. I'm at a loss to explain it, but I think it has something to do with Al Adamson's 'cut-and-paste' approach. He doesn't stick with any characters. It's as if he made four different movies and just fused them into one by shooting some linking exposition with John Carradine for a day.

For one, there are the tribesmen. We never really get to know any of them. We hear some names, but they're so indistinct. So when they're doing things, like facing off with lobstermen, bat-monkeys, and snake vampires, it's very difficult to care or figure out what's even going on. I don't know why most of what's going on is going on or who most of these people are.

It doesn't help that Adamson gives multiple explanations for what's going on. At first we're told, by a vampire on earth who is never seen or heard from again, that vampires exist to those who believe in vampires, but if you don't believe, they might get you anyway. Then we're told the vampires are created by something called 'chromatic radiation.' Why chromatic? Because it tints the black-and-white filmstock Adamson had to resort to when he ran out of colour one of red, blue, green, or yellow. Then we're told by John Carradine that actually it's a virus that's turned the atmosphere colours and that this virus has caused there to be mutant vampires.

I find myself strangely, perhaps inexplicably, charmed by the movie, even though I must say it's boring. Shall I go through the litany again? Dinosaurs, lobstermen, snake vampires, bat-monkeys, sexy tribal girls, and futuresex. Oh, and John Carradine, giving a good performance as the ornery, egomaniacal doctor who discovered the new solar system.

Fiend (1980)

An evil spirit, represented by an animated blob of red light, possesses the corpse of a music professor and wine lover, Mr. Longfellow. The spirit's master plan is to move into the suburbs, teach music, and drink lots of wine. However, to keep from decaying, a steady diet of the lifeforce of others is necessary.

Are you seeing the major flaw already? "The spirit's master plan is to move into the suburbs, teach music, and drink lots of wine." Yeah, so the spirit's motives don't make a lot of sense, but it does have to kill and that's all that matters, I suppose.

Longfellow's next-door neighbour, an utterly normal man with an awful 'stache, doesn't like Longfellow, because he's always playing music. He soon starts to suspect Longfellow is hiding something and that he may be involved in the recent string of strangulations terrifying the county. Unfortunately, his wife thinks he's just holding a grudge over the music thing and isn't very supportive.

I kind of liked this movie. It's obviously shot on a very low budget, the acting is a bit dopey, and the story doesn't make much sense. However, the characters are all fun and real. The hero and his wife are such normal people, who talk like real, average people, have the same sorts of interests, conversations, thoughts, arguments, looks, etc.. Longfellow, on the other hand, is a snobby bastard who oozes contempt for other people; he's only pleased when he's alone, listening to music and drinking wine. He seems bored with the rest of the world and merely has to endure the other beings that exist within it. Would you be surprised to learn he's a cat-person? Egotistical, evil bastards always love cats.

There isn't a lot of suspense for a horror movie, though, because Longfellow pretty much just walks up to people and overpowers them Tor Johnson-style. There are only two moments that go for real suspense, and only one of the works, that being the climax, when the neighbour's wife is in peril. Yeah, it's kinda predictable.

Fiend is a pretty good effort for its z-movie budget, with some odd characters to enjoy. It's not a cheesefest by any stretch, not the crazy antics you've come to expect from Baltimore thanks to John Waters. It comes closest in tone to Bob Clark than anyone else.

Talisman (1998)

The plot of Talisman is culled from a few sources, the most evident of which are Narciso Serrador's La Residencia and the Prophecy movies. The setting is La Residencia, but with all the genders swapped. It takes place in a strict boarding school for older boys/young men, where the obviously lesbian headmistress keeps her daughter from having contact with any of the boys. Enter new boy Elias Storm, who begins to notice strange things happening. As he investigates, he learns more about a mysterious talisman and it's role in opening the gateway to hell that will cause the end of the world.

If you've seen La Residencia, you can already guess who the villain is. It's just got a supernatural twist this time. Also if you've seen La Residencia, you can already smell the gender-related themes. I sometimes take cheap shots at subtextual criticism, but this is a case where it applies very well. The sexual tensions amongst the boys are just bubbling and the only girl in the school is dangled before them and, yep, killing them. (That's not a spoiler.) One of the boys, the most homoerotic of them all, is so vocal and obsessive about his desire to have sex with her that he becomes the least believable, like he has to constantly remind himself he wants her. Only the hero doesn't show any interest in her.

You often hear of a great idea with poor execution. Well this is a pretty wretched and typical late-90s supernatural horror idea given execution far better than it deserves. The interests and personality of Elias Storm are built up sufficiently for the climax to pay off and have a certain fluidity. The worldview of the villain, which she expresses at that point, is rather fascinating and totally amoral. I also liked the character of the head mistress, who says things like, "You're the worthless son of a wealthy family; and if one is going to be worthless, it is always a good idea to be wealthy." That is one well-phrased barb and Oana Stefanescu, whoever that is, delivers the line perfectly.

(I do have one complaint, and that's with the arithmetic of the scriptwriter. One character is supposed to be about two years older than another, who is 18. But the age of the older character is given as 16. So there's a mistake of four years there. It's not important, it just bugged me and I'm sort of proud of myself for catching it.)

Overall, this is a fairly mediocre late-90s supernatural horror and pretty much what you'd expect coming from Full Moon. I think of Full Moon as not unlike Hammer: you're assured a certain level of production quality when you watch their films, even if the ideas are often vapid. As to DeCoteau, he does give some of what he's become famous for: boys in their underwear. I wouldn't mind if the young men were better-looking--it's always nice to see beautiful things--but these men are callow and unappealing, save for one or two. So it's an average but decent b-movie.

Death Nurse (1987)

I began by hating what I was seeing in this film. I was thinking, "For anyone who thinks Ray Dennis Steckler makes boring, inept pictures, you must see this." I felt inclined to turn it off after the first pointless shot of a character eating icecream and the first irrational use of a zoom lense. However, I stuck around and found myself sort of entertained. That's not, however, a whole-hearted endorsement, I assure you.

The film is more or less pointless. There is very little in the way of dramatic tension. Edith is a nurse running her own clinic from what is obviously her suburban home. Ill, sometimes terminally ill, vulnerable patients are brought in and swiftly dispatched. Sometimes Edith smother's them, sometimes her slow-witted brother performs 'surgery'. It's a euthanasia clinic, except the patients aren't aware of it.

Nor is social services, represented entirely by Louise, a woman in her 80s (Millard's aunt, I guess). She gives the film the closest thing to dramatic tension, since she starts snooping. However, nobody is really keen on investigating when she's easily dispatched.

Then the movie ends. It's a series of killings with no real purpose and no gore either; so what's the point? Well, the point is that it's funny. That's when I started to enjoy it: when I realized it's a black comedy. I figured this out when one surgery set piece consisted of a heart transplant, using a dog's heart. But when the heart drops to the floor (oops, butter fingers!) Edith's cat grabs the heart and they run around the surgical table in circles trying to get the heart back.

There are a lot of pitch black comedy set pieces, involving digging up corpses, feeding rats to old ladies, surgery with kitchen knives, etc.. I have to be honest: I like Millard's sense of humour.

There is also unintentional humour. This is as low-budget as horror films get. It's filmed with a camcorder and I'm guessing it was edited using two VCRs. Whenever the brother has to bury someone, we see the exact same footage of him digging a few shovels from a little patch of earth. There are even more egregious examples of repeated footage. Louise says, "I want to see Mr. Davis!" Edith replies, "Go back to your room, you nosy old bitch." Louise replies, "I demand to see Mr. Davis!" Then we get the exact same shot of Edith saying, "Go back to your room, you nosy old bitch." Millard also makes Jess Franco's use of the zoom lens seem perfectly reasonable.

My favourite bit, however, is Edith's dream sequences. What DOES a serial killer dream about? Well, her murders from previous Nick Millard movies, for one. A lot of footage is used from Criminally Insane to pad the runtime, making me wonder, if Millard didn't have enough story for a movie, why make one? These can't be very profitable. But I digress. She also dreams of cemeteries and strolling through the park in the gaudiest, frumpiest well-dressed-fat-woman outfit available, in a sort of avant-garde montage.

It's hard to recommend such an amateurish film for average viewing. However, if you're having a get-together with some like-minded friends, it would be an amusing film to put on in the background of the party. The black humour would work very well in that context.

2/10

DinoCroc (2004)

I really had a hankering to watch a schlock 2000s horror film with CGI monsters. I know this is a perverse desire, but I couldn't help it. I had had my heart set on The Curse of the Komodo, but alas I couldn't find it. So I settled for DinoCroc. DinoCroc: Part dinosaur and part crocodile. Di-No-Croc. The name itself fascinates me. So elemental, primal; I could imagine one of our primitive ancestors, while drawing some stupid animals on the wall of their crummy caves, pointing to a drawing of a monster and saying DI! NO! CROC! and the other cavemen would be frightened for a moment, until it was time to rape their wives again.

DinoCroc concerns a CGI creature, raised in a genetic engineering lab, that escapes due to human stupidity. A family who lost their three-legged dog, the local animal control officer, her father the sheriff, and the lab's hired Australian croc-hunter (wonder who he could be based on?) take it upon themselves teach the DinoCroc a lesson in caring.

This leads up to a heart-pumping climax of frantic puppy-saving whilst fleeing the jaws of death. I'll explain better: there are several dogs, chained in a row for a good many yards, that are all in risk of getting eaten. Our animal-loving heroes, while being chased by the DINOCROC! must use a blowtorch to free the dogs before the DINOCROC! can eat them.

In between these two points, the film is surprisingly downbeat. A child is graphically eaten by the DINOCROC! Is the DINOCROC! the ferocious personification of our environmental destruction? Or is it just a hungry reptile? The harrowing emotions are explored in great detail with alarming sincerity and, some might say, incompetence, making for a draggy midsection. Fortunately, getting really drunk, kicking furniture and killing DINOCROCS! instantly cures everyone of their grief.

DinoCroc is competently made, under the watchful eye, no doubt, of producer Roger Corman. It begins with some good shooting and editing, if somewhat lacking in attention and while the inspiration dries up, the competence, at least, remains. The film speaks volumes with its irrational use of pans and crane shots, its jumpcuts symbolic of our inattentiveness to the environment. This is bolstered by the rare use of an all-choral score in a monster movie.

It had a few suspenseful moments that did the trick and I, as much as I'm ashamed to admit this, I found Costas Mandylor charming as the aussie croc-hunter. Mediocre entertainment, but much better than I expected; it made me laugh a few times and, I have to say, it does everything a film called DinoCroc should do. And it was worth watching for the puppy-saving and child-eating.

Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-o-Rama (1988)

Three nerdy college boys--one of whom is way too good-looking to believe as a nerd--just wanted to watch a sorority hazing that involves spanking Brinke Stevens' sexy ass, when, having been caught, they found themselves forced to steal a trophy from the local bowling alley. Turns out that trophy contains an evil imp who uses his magic to turn some of the sorority girls into demons and all the others into, well, demonfodder.

These characters are all dopey and mostly '80s airheads. The late Robin Stille is the sadistic sorority president. She has two appearance-obsessed sidekicks who are actually the least attractive women in the movie--naturally they become the demons. One is deathly afraid of messing up her hair, but she has the most horrendous '80s hairstyle. The guys are mostly just horny bastards, with the exception of one very serious nerd who will of course be the hero. Linnea Quigley (over)plays the part of Spider, a thief they catch inside, who has a huge attitude problem--but deep down, there's a heart of gold only a nerd can bring out. The other women are just T&A. Oh, and there's a comic-relief janitor who worries about which hand to scratch his balls with.

DeCoteau knew how to deliver the goods, which makes me sort of uncomfortable. Because I know he's gay, that he's putting in all the 'goods' for straight men makes it feel manipulative, like he's throwing seed to pigeons; I'd much prefer if he could enjoy what he was showing us. But this lack of comfort doesn't last long, because he has some of the finest '80s horror girls to put in front of his camera, including Brinke Stevens, Linnea Quigley, and Michelle Bauer. Stevens and Bauer get spanked in their panties, smeared with whipped cream, shower naked (Brinke looking like some divinely beautiful forest nymph), and Bauer is magically made topless and horny until she becomes demonfodder. Linnea keeps clothed, but wears pants that might as well be painted on.

Despite all the fun, it seemed to be lacking something, something to tie it all together. The imp just wasn't mean or active enough, didn't have enough resources. There just wasn't really enough action to fill the runtime or location with; it seems spartan, somehow. Plus, even for a movie of this sort, the exposition scenes are pretty awkward. But still recommended for some funny, cheesy '80s tongue-in-cheek horror.

Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers (1988)

"I'd stumbled into the middle of an evil, insidious cult of chainsaw worshipping maniacs. I had to wonder if we'd let our religious freedom go too far in this country, or maybe our immigration laws were just too lax." - Jack Chandler

Private detective Jack Chandler (Jay Richardson), hired to find a missing girl (Linnea Quigley), unluckily stumbles into an Egyptian chainsaw-worshiping cult that really didn't want to be found; looks like he'll have to be sacrificed to the Chainsaw of Anubis.

This film has everything a piece of exploitation trash should have, in the exact right amount, in the exact right order, in the exact right combination. This is one of the ultimate b-movie pictures. You have Linnea Quigley's perfect body, loads of blood-spattered tits, beautiful women naked most of the time, dancing babes, chainsaws, flying bodyparts, an absolutely preposterous story, and loads of funny lines. This belongs alongside Re-Animator and Evil Dead as one of the greatest b-movies of the '80s--plus it's got a LOT more tits.

It moves along at a brisk pace, doesn't waste it's time with anything and is entertaining from beginning to end mostly because it doesn't take itself seriously at all. But don't expect to write a dissertation on it. Feast your eyes on the Virgin Dance of the Double Chainsaws: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_36QoP_E-0 (isn't that the cutest butt ever?)

The Bloodthirsty Butchers (1970)

Milligan's excellent writing is on display in Bloodthirsty Butchers; unfortunately, so is the confusing camerawork and shoddy editing. Not even the offensive technical aspects can hide Milligan's storytelling ability, in this very clever take on the Sweeney Todd story, woven around themes of dominance and submission, the struggle to have power over others. Populated with a collection of selfish brutes and a very small number of decent human beings, murders are taking place on Fleet Street and nobody seems to notice, caught up as they are in their own little worlds--until they wind up murdered themselves.

There's not so much a plot as the strands of subplots involving each of these characters, woven together by coincidences of time, place, and action. The barber and his wife, the cabaret dancer he's screwing, and her boss she's screwing; the young bakery wench who's getting married, her creepy coworker who sexually harasses her, her boss and her boss' invalid husband with whom she's friends and who thinks his wife is trying to kill him--they're all connected by strands they're mostly unaware of themselves. The shocking story disturbs, as do the uncomfortable sadistic and masochistic relationships amongst most of the characters, which, having built up an atmosphere of moral squalor, makes some of the murders horrifically potent.

As I found with The Rats Are Coming! The Werewolves Are Here!, scenes of gore are chopped up. The gore is visible, but several awkward jump cuts destroy the fluidity of the moment to no good end that I can tell. Milligan's camera seems to usually be handheld, on the prowl; it wobbles, twists and turns to unconventional angles that at times are disorienting. This may be a legitimate style, but during scenes of high action, the camera is lost in a blur until a merciful cut skips over everything, leaving only the aftermath before our eyes. The awkward editing is the most unfortunate; the camerawork is tolerable and occasionally fascinating. Perhaps the producer is to be blamed for the bad edits. I can't say.

As I also found with The Rats Are Coming, Milligan is a talented writer of dialogue. He has a great sense for the vernacular and for developing his themes in what appear to be inconsequential discussions. One of my favourite bits of dialogue is when Sweeney Todd is educating his mistress about Shakespeare and tells her he had a dream in which she was Desdemona. She's obviously ignorant of the implications. That level of irony is way too superb for a film rated 1.7/10 on imdb.

Overall, an excellent story with great dialogue and well-developed themes, a little marred by poor technique.

If you plan on watching, don't read any other reviews for this film, lest a plot twist be spoiled.

The Corpse Grinders II (2000) - 2/4

This review has since become outdated. Some reviewers, like Roger Ebert, refuse to reconsider their old opinions. I'm different. A reappraisal can be found here:


http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2510/4095271198_b6452ccdb3.jpg

Unbelievable is the word that first comes to mind. I couldn't believe what I was seeing most of the time. The plot is more or less The Corpse Grinders all over again, with some bonkers subplots involving Cat People from planet Ceta who desperately need food, the Men in Black who have been charged with finding the best catfood for planet Ceta in the interest of diplomacy, and Ted V Mikels as an astronomy professor who owns a share in Lotus Cat Foods and is in the know on alien visitations.
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2615/4095271374_07b59c0817.jpg - Some cat people. Yeah, that's not embarrassing.
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2643/4095271430_ffdf5f653e.jpg - Here's another one. Ted's wife. Smelling a fish.

Oh yeah, there are Dog People from Planet Traxis. They show up briefly at the beginning to make you laugh.
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2468/4094511391_a7401c3680.jpg

The runtime of The Corpse Grinders II is 1 hour and 42 minutes. Over an hour of that is spent on the minutia of running a cat food business. The Corpse Grinders II: Cat Food Tycoon. You get board meetings about whether to sell cat food wholesale to the cat people and see all the board members, slowly, each giving their explanations for their vote, saying "Nope." Then the President of the USA says, "Give them cat food." So the board meeting scene was for nothing. We see Landau and Maltby (the owners of Lotus Cat Foods) hiring employees, discussing business plans, buying the vans they need.

In the meantime, the mysterious professor Mikels arranges to get a grant for some scholarship on cannibalism. And two doctors are attacked by their Lotus-eating cat and try to buy some catfood--successfully, without incident; it's just a red herring. Oh, and a Grey alien appears out of nowhere, causes a 74-year-old Liz Renay wearing only negligee to shriek and flail about in bed until she dies, then disappears and is never seen or heard from again.
BEFORE: http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2426/4095271312_30c76d18c6.jpg
AFTER: http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2751/4094511411_acf8a4f7c2.jpg

Almost everything in this film is a red herring, except for the business planning stuff. The whole film is basically about how to run a pet food company. Nothing happens. A big shipment for cat food comes in from planet Ceta; Landau and Maltby have to scramble to make the order in time; they do; end of movie.

The one person who figures out that they're putting people in the cat food decides to become a cannibal and flies off to planet Ceta. Sorry to ruin the film for you if you haven't seen it, but in all fairness, I think Mikels ruined it for you himself.

As drive-in moviemakers of the '60s had a certain revival of interest in the '80s and some became known as drive-in classics, a lot of them stopped worrying about the Hollywood success they probably knew they'd never get and just began making movies for their fanbase. This allowed them ample time to get weirder and weirder, because fans of such movies will eat up just about anything. This is the case with Mikels. He's been making movies since the '50s. He has his fanbase and they like what he does. This is a movie made for Mikels fans and partially by Mikels fans I bet. So there you go.

One thing I especially liked in the movie is her:
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2677/4094511469_a7eb2e4760.jpg
I think she's really pretty, and not in that assembly-line-beauty way.

And some of the lines: "On planet earth, they don't fight dinosaurs and yet they fight each other." Excuse me?
And about the Dog People: "They fight like dogs."

I'll leave it up to you the reader to figure out if this is a positive or negative review.