Turkeyshoot (1982) - Revisiting an Ozploitation Classic

Turkeyshoot, or Escape 2000, is one of Brian Trenchard-Smith’s classic Ozsploitation films, along with Dead-End Drive-In (1989), before he started directing Lifetime movies. Turkeyshoot is really composed of two parts. The first half is a Cruel, Futuristic Prison movie, like Fortress (1992) or Riki-Oh (1991), and the second half is a Most Dangerous Game movie. The staples of both types of movies are hustled through with enthusiasm and imagination, rarely missing a beat or dragging. There are a few missed opportunities, but this is balls-out fun with the manic barbarism Trenchard-Smith excelled in.

Steve Railsback and Olivia Hussey are snatched up in what looks like some sort of middle-class gift shop for the crime of—I dunno. Railsback pissed someone off and Hussey made the mistake of saying, “Hey, stop kicking him in the ribs repeatedly.” For her trouble, she awakes in the back of a truck with a slutty blonde and is carted off to the prison of her dreams.

The prison is, of course, run by a sadistic warden. When are these prisons not run by sadistic wardens? It’s part of the job description. Sadistic Warden II, must have advanced experience in sadism or equivalent education. This fella’s named ‘Thatcher,’ because nobody liked Margaret Thatcher. His personal goal, he decides, is to break Steve Railsback. Because Railsback is the peppy, defiant guy we’re going to like. Sadistic wardens hate those guys. So much of the torture goes to him.

The prison guards are known as ‘toads,’ we learn, and have all been castrated and/or dismembered because it’s supposed to make them meaner. Despite this, they repeatedly try to rape Olivia Hussey. She spends a lot of time running and screaming, when she’s not getting pep-talked by the blonde and Railsback, or avoiding the co-ed shower room.

The beatings, torture, and attempted rapes are all the usual fare you expect in the first half of a prison movie. Usually I don’t like the first half of a prison movie. The whole point of the first half of a prison movie is to make you swell with resentment and splenetic fury as the heroes are helplessly oppressed. It’s just the build up so you can enjoy the hero kicking the ever-loving crap out of the sadistic warden. With Turkeyshoot, it’s hit-and-miss. Railsback’s tortures are kinda lame, Hussey is never really in danger of getting raped, and the worst that happens is a young woman is punched in the face and another prisoner offers to bury her alive.

The catch with Turkeyshoot is, instead of getting a second-half of warden-killing, it turns into The Most Dangerous Game (1932). During the prison scenes, Trenchard-Smith sets the ground for the hunt to come. We meet Thatcher’s rich, powerful friends as they prepare. The lady with exploding arrows, the gay guy with a bulldozer and beastman (who may or may not be his lover--it's the subtlest thing in this movie), and the fat, old politician with a shotgun. Cool villains, except for the old guy. Once Railsback pisses Tatcher off enough, he decides it’s time to go a-huntin’.

Each of the villains pick out a prisoner they want to hunt, torture, and kill. Thatcher’s is Railsback. The old guy gets Hussey. The archer gets the slutty blonde. The hunting sequence is fun and suspenseful, like most human hunt movies. It’s really the wacky villains that elevates it above the average, however, almost like Class of 1984 (1982). They each get to perform a kill, showing off their unique style of playing with their victims.

Turkeyshoot’s reputation as an exploitation gem is largely due to its wacky, anything-goes approach and the general sense of being over-the-top. By today’s standards, it certainly seems to be far from the top, however. There is little gore to speak of. The nudity is swift. The villains have a sense of cruelty, but they could be much worse--compare to the Hostel movies. Trenchard-Smith’s direction also tends to be aloof. There’s little in the way of stylistic innovation or Hitchcockian manipulation. A flat, transparent presentation of the action is his approach and that’s probably not the best for the hunt sequences.

Hussey’s character was another major, missed opportunity. She spends most of the movie cowering, shrieking, and gazing in terror like a tipped cow. She never fights back, though she’s awfully good at fleeing behind Railsback. I’m not even sure why she’s in the movie, other than the be the tantalizing piece of ass to motivate Railsback. 

But Railsback is already motivated by social discontent. He plays into the subtext. The warden is named after the conservative British Prime Minister. The lady with the arrows represents elitist leisure at the expense of the poor. The gay dandy with the bulldozer the culturally elite and the rich, Trump-like developer, plowing over the commoners. I don’t know enough about Australian culture and history to take the discussion much further, but it’s clearly comprised of distaste for British influence and ‘80s yuppyism.

Whatever its flaws or ambitions, Turkeyshoot is still a pretty unique film. This is the sort of movie they rarely make anymore, the kind that could never be a chore to sit through, that has intelligence, and yet can be enjoyed equally with the brain off.  It’ll continue to be an exploitation classic. And in the hands of the right director, it is certainly ripe for a remake.

Megan Is Missing (2012) - 2.5/4

Megan Is Missing may be the most warped, perverse piece of exploitation filmmaking to come out in a long time. Not because it is contains the rough, explicit sex of a Max Hardcore video—it doesn’t. Not because it contains the gore of a Rob Zombie movie—it doesn’t. Rather, it's because we have Max Hardcore videos, Rob Zombie movies, and everything in between—all readily available, and much of it mainstream—that we haven’t had a need for anything truly warped and perverse.

Until Michael Goi came along. With the lurid imagination of a pulpit-shaking preacher, Goi’s deeply repressed perversions emerge as fantasies about the depravity of modern teenage life and the hellish sufferings coming to those who partake. Ordinarily, the sexually repressed, in our modern world, are self-conscious enough to keep their twisted sexuality inside—if not their minds, at least their small circle of perverted discontents. Not Michael Goi. If he’s aware his imagination is not shared by others (or reality), he doesn’t show it.

Megan Is Missing begins by giving us a few days in the lives of two teenage girls, Megan and her best friend Amy, using ‘actual’ footage from their online chats and video blogs. Megan is popular and Amy is not. Megan goes to parties and Amy ordinarily does not. A pretty simple setup. But for Goi, Megan can’t just go to parties. She has to go to parties and blow every guy in the room while lesbian teens make out in the background. She has to tell surprisingly long, detailed stories about giving a well-endowed teen a blowjob when she was only ten. Amy, for her part, can’t just be a little shy or naïve, she has to be totally oblivious.

What’s troubling is how Goi imagines this. Thuggish teen boys are constantly ordering teen girls to suck their dicks. The girls don’t bat an eye. Totally normal stuff for Goi. He imagines teen girls, or even pre-teen girls, dutifully sucking dicks left and right. These things sometimes happen. But at the feverish level presented in Megan Is Missing, it simply doesn’t. Teenage boys, as douchey as they can be, don’t order every girl to suck their dicks. And if they do, they don’t get their dicks sucked, they get beat up by her boyfriend. Teenage girls are not all complete sluts who live for random dick-sucking, drugs, and alcohol. If it did, so be it. But it just doesn’t. Goi, undeterred by reality, imagines it does and with righteous indignation—not because it bothers him, but because it gives him a boner beneath his bible.

To be fair to Goi, he does set up a realistic psychology to take Megan and Amy through the film’s second half. As a girl who is used for sex since childhood, Megan is extremely adventurous and susceptible to the flattery and scams of internet predators. Of course, most teen girls are adventurous and susceptible to flattery and scams of internet predators. But I buy Megan’s story. Amy’s over-the-top naivety and self-loathing are similarly grounds for what happens in the remainder of the film, although it's less believable.

What happens next is Megan gets introduced to a teen boy online. He is, of course, an internet predator who quickly lures her into his trap. Amy tries to expose him, but just arouses his fury. She ends up, albeit unwillingly, in his hands as well.

This half of the film is where Goi’s repressed sexuality serves him well. He doesn’t just imagine the predator raping and killing the girls. Instead, the predator has to place Megan in a highly-degrading fetishistic setup. Amy is spared the extreme bondage, but is raped on camera for several minutes. Goi perhaps thought showing only her face would be tasteful, but it’s not. Focusing in on the pleading, squealing, crying, and finally assent to the situation is just what a deranged, sexual sadist would enjoy seeing. (The sadist, after all--the predator, not Goi--put the camera there.)

The big finale for Megan Is Missing is a seemingly interminable scene of the predator digging the girls a grave while Amy relentlessly pleads and bargains for her life. I found myself shouting, “Just bury her already!” As annoying as it was, I imagine Goi’s point was to show just how detached from empathy the killer must be. Wow, really? I would’ve never thought.

There is a degree of realism, for better or worse, to this last half of Megan Is Missing. Enough realism to earn the praise of Polly Klaas’s father. (Mr. Klaas’s letter can be found on the Megan Is Missing website.) A sexual sadist preying on teen girls certainly will be brutal and merciless. It’s uncomfortable to watch and to no real purpose other than exploitation. The extremely clumsy attempt at making the film entirely found-footage, which means we have to believe every cell phone conversation is recorded in video and stored on the phones, is Goi trying to show he's being 'realistic' rather than merely exploitational. Reality is so bent in doing so that it only exaggerates how much the recorded material is all Goi's creative choice--a choice clearly perverse, voyeuristic, sadistic, and exploitational. But this is Megan Is Missing at its best—unflinching, unself-conscious exploitation.

What I do, nevertheless, find worrying about the torture scenes is how Goi almost seems to be imagining a fitting hell for the transgressive Megan, one that is re-enacted in the body of her best friend for our education. These girls are being blamed for their stupidity. Their lives of revelry and dick-sucking, and their comfortable perusal of the internet, are attitudes that must be punished. If teens were kept in fear and trembling, the film suggests, they wouldn’t have to be raped and buried alive. A hard truth from the pulpit of Michael Goi.

Death Stop Holocaust (2009) - 3/4

There are an awful lot of films trying to be grindhouse or drive-in films. The Tarantino and Rodrigues picture Grindhouse is the most prominent and is perhaps responsible for many similar films. On the other hand, with Tarantino making the style so mainstream and his followers and fans taking it up themselves, making films of this sort stigmatizes the 'grindhouse' affectation as being just more Tarantino-ism. There are, on the other hand, original grindhouse/drive-in filmmakers still working. Herschell Gordon Lewis, inventor of the gore film, just released his latest film, The Uh-Oh Show (2009), on DVD; it is as true a grindhouse picture as 2011 will allow and it is, needless to say, a small-budget ($25,000), shot-on-video picture. Tarantino's Death Proof or Rodrigues's Planet Terror can only be wearing the grindhouse aesthetic as an affectation. No drive-in filmmaker ever had a budget near Death Proof's ($30,000,000). It's unlikely they'd ever seen that kind of money in their lives. Whatever Tarantino did to popularize the nostalgia and willful imitation of drive-in and grindhouse flicks, his stigmatized followers in the shot-on-video, b-movie market are more truly grindhouse flicks than his films will ever be.

That said, even shot-on-video flicks must affect the grindhouse style. Death Stop Holocaust is a shot-on-video picture that affects the style as unabashedly as any other. The filmmaker, Justin Russell, goes so far as to insert burning celluloid effects. We know this is an affectation, because the film was shot on a Panasonic HVX 200 (a $4000 digital camcorder). There is no celluloid to burn. Nor is there any illusion that I'm at a drive-in when I recline on my futon and watch the DVD screener on my laptop. While in most cases, the affectation, then, is all it is; it goes no further than affecting the style in reference to a style of cinema that happened to appeal to and influence the filmmakers. Call it an homage or call it being hip, it is equally limited. Death Stop Holocaust seems to me a rarity in going beyond mere affectation to making use of the style to comment upon the content. Before we get to that, the content.

Death Stop Holocaust, a title seemingly drawn from a mad lib, concerns two college girls, Liz (Lisa Krenisky) and Taylor (Naomi Watts look-a-like Jenna Fournier), taking a vacation at Liz's family summer home on a nearby island. As soon as they arrive on the island, they find its denizens behaving strangely. A man tries to run them off the road in his van, a waitress distracts them while their gas is stolen, and hardly anyone else will say a word. Before they can get to the summer home, they're being terrorized by three maniacs in creepy masks.

Naturally a movie of this sort--a movie, that is to say, so threadbare in plot that it is purely about the experience--stands or falls on the effectiveness of the terrorizing. Holocaust stands. Justin Russell has the ambition, and the talent, to strive for something more than the usual maniacs-terrorizing-babes set pieces. He's definitely experimenting in Death Stop Holocaust and the results are often quite effective. The influence of The Strangers perhaps rests a little too heavily, as the masked maniacs wander the negative space of the frame silently, toying with us as much as with the victim, but not really accomplishing much else. On the other hand, this behaviour is unsettling if only in virtue of its inexplicability. And their ability and willingness to commit upsetting violence is established before the toying around even begins. We're therefore always left in suspense as to when and what they're going to do, though there's no doubt of their being able to do something whenever they please.

Beyond the maniacs, however, is where Holocaust transcends its generic conventions and approaches the truly nightmarish. For one, the town itself appears to be held in the grip of some spell, behaving in accordance with the maniacs' goals. That the oddness of the supposedly normal people in a town where Liz has fond childhood memories is never really explained, moreover, submerges us, as in our dreams of familiar places somehow altered and decadent, in the uncanny, the horror of the familiar perverted against natural order. In fact, one of the screenplay's missteps is in having a character explain any of the mystery at all, though, wisely, not much is explained.

Death Stop Holocaust transcends not just in the narrative, but also, as I alluded to earlier, in its form. The grindhouse paraphernalia are not merely doing the work of affectation. They play a role in Liz's consciousness, in the relationship between reality and nightmare. We're introduced into the film world via the classic "Our Feature Presentation" drive-in intro. This establishes the filmic reality of the world we're witnessing as the concrete reality. At times of intense horror the 'celluloid' burns up. The first time the celluloid burns is during a rape attempt; the second time is when Liz is sedated and has a nightmare. The suggestion is that reality itself, or at least Liz's experience of reality, is compromised by the sheer horror of the situations she's in. Since this also suggests a certain subjective relationship between the form and Liz's experience, we experience with her the reality of the island as a disjointed, absurd flow of nightmare. What she experiences in sedation, a sequence reminiscent of moments in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, is an indistinguishable part of her experience of the maniacs, one no more real than the other.

Despite my praise, Holocaust is not a masterpiece debut. For all of the nightmarish effects and grindhouse allusions, it may strike many horror fans as a tame picture, representing much of its brutality elliptically. That might not be a problem if the film didn't offer us suggestive glimpses of that brutality. And the various narrative lacunae, while strengthening the mysteriousness of the events, at some points simply dissatisfies. This is particularly true of the film's conclusion, which left me a little disappointed. If the film builds up to an event, some clue in the narrative must be present to make us see that event as significant in itself; and there are no such clues in Holocaust. A nightmare, after all, is uninteresting to anyone but its dreamer unless it has a point.

However, Holocaust is still a very strong debut, showing Russell's influences to be as broad as '70s exploitation, David Lynch, and modern invasion horror like The Strangers. Some work will have to be done for Russell to make his influences work with one another, but on the strength of Death Stop Holocaust, I look forward to seeing him experiment more. Death Stop Holocaust is indeed a true heir to drive-in cinema and, thanks to Russell's adventurousness, also much more.

Short Reviews for Nov. 22, 2010: Yuzna and Russo

This is a new feature on Lair of the Boyg. Because my reviews are usually so long and in-depth, I find I don't get to write about even a tenth of the films I'd like to write about. With a Short Reviews feature, I can provide lighter, free-form, more playful reviews that cover films I either can't or don't feel inclined to write about in depth.

Three Brian Yuzna Films:

Silent Night, Deadly Night 4 (1990) - 3.5/4

Sometimes you really do find a brilliant film buried in a sequel. Brian Yuzna's SNDN 4, for instance, subtitled 'The Initiation' is a Cronenbergian attempt to deal with the man-hating popular feminism of the '80s from a reasonable man's point of view. Borrowing ideas from the history of horror cinema, the film tells the story of an underappreciated but ambitious woman who takes a news story against her boss's wishes and finds herself sucked into the trap of a coven of witches. The film poses a lot of interesting questions about guilt, resentment, bigotry, religion, and oppression; and, gratefully, it doesn't really give answers.

Clint Howard. Inadequate, half-eaten hamburger. Giant, freaky centipede thing. Cockroaches everywhere. Abrasive, ambitious overachieving chick--everyone thinks she's a bitch and they're right. Her boyfriend thinks she's a fine piece of ass, and he's right. Giant cockroaches. Vomiting in the toilet. Spontaneous combustion. Lezzy, witchy bookstore owner--I've known a few of those. Rosemary's Baby-style coven. Fat naked guy with a nose-boner. Gratuitous violence to Clint Howard. Abdominal insect penetration. Insect-vomiting. Insect-crushing. Hideous adult birth scene. Resentful, man-hating women. Women who say, "But he's a man, what does his life matter?" Men who say, "Women belong in the kitchen!" Girls who say, "Get off of me! You're like a dog in heat!" Bad beer jokes. Lots of gooey stuff. Human sacrifice. The secretary from Moonlighting playing basically the same character. Body-morphing a la Videodrome. Flame-shooting arms. Combusting legs. Gratuitous violence to a bigot. They're burning Christmas. Judaism vs Christianity. Christianity vs Paganism. Apatheism wins. How quickly children forgive. And a little romance for the lady viewers.

Nekkid: 1/4
Gore: 2/4
Icky, gooey stuff: 4/4
Humour: 2.5/4 - come on, it's got Clint Howard.

Rottweiler (2004) - 2.5/4

Yuzna's killer dog film about an American in a European country who escapes prison and is pursued by the prison's cyborg dog. Probably the most ambitious killer dog film ever made. Not that the competition is fierce.

- Hero and dog are linked on some level, destined to destroy one another.
- The loss of the hero's girl and the robotic mechanism of the dog occurred together.
- The hero hallucinates the dog, making it a spectral sort of conscience, like Francis Thompson's Hound of Heaven. Jealousy, guilt, and guilt for jealousy.
- The chase itself is really just an excuse for a dark, even morbid picaresque romp involving thieves, drug dealers, whores, female rapists, flower-picking little girls, crazy industrialists, bounty hunters, and more.
- Symbolism of the fog as our fumbling toward a destiny we can't escape.
- Symbolism of the scorpion, the cruel sting of death we can't escape.
- Dystopian world with countries run by a crazy industrialist Paul Naschy.
- Privileged thrill-seekers trying to escape ennui by infiltrating forbidden nations, getting in over their heads. At least the ennui is gone.
- The game of infiltration: infiltrating the mind and soul.
- The progress of self-realization, as the hero flees the prison of ignorance and arrives on the open shores of understanding.
- The supernatural visions, omens, hallucinations that pervade the story like fog make the film more expressionistic than realistic.

Despite some of the silliness, cliche moments, stupid writing, and sometimes-CGI, sometimes-puppet, sometimes-real dog, Rottweiler is far better than any made-in-Spain evil-robot-dog-movie has any right to be.

Nekkid: 0/4 for dudes, 1.5/4 for the ladies
Gore: 2.5/4
People the dog kills for no good reason whatsoever: 8
Humour: 1.5/4

Beneath Still Waters (2005) - 2.5/4

Yuzna ever seems to be in Stuart Gordon's wake. First with the Re-Animator series, now with heading over to Spain and shooting a Lovecraftian evil town flick. Gordon made Dagon (2001) and Yuzna gives us Beneath Still Waters (2005). How does it stack up?

Screenwriting 101: deepen characters with tragic backstories; have the male and female confide their tragedies to one another in a moment that ends in a kiss; the tragic backstory must come back to haunt the hero in the climax. Monster left over from The Resurrected or Castle Freak. Very '90s feel here. Effeminate evil sorceror. Kid-killing. Kid-eating. Jaw-breaking. Tongue-eating (is that what he's doing?!). Evil book. Evil fire. Evil seaweed. Spooky flooded town. Chained up satanists. A-hole cop. Cute Spanish girl in bikini--is she legal or isn't she? is it right to wanna plough her or isn't it? Oh, her bimbo friend looks old enough, must be okay. But her mom is young and bangable too--what a conundrum. Botoxed-out reporter. Wet-suits a-plenty. Annoying kids a-plenty. Awkward melodramatic exits a-plenty. Awkward character exposition a-plenty. Frog. Two-headed deformity. Self-mutilation. Magic mutilation. Characters who sit around watching murders. Orgy time! Titties on cake! Cake on titties ("Frosted flakes")! Man-on-man dry humping! Spanking! Whipping! Attempted screwing! Riding! Stripping! Impromptu bondage! Pretty tame stuff from the guy who gave us Society. And a little romance for the lady viewers.

Nekkid: 1/4
Gore: 2.5/4
Number of times Marcia is pronounced Mar-SEE-uh: 8
Humour: 0.5/4

Three John A. Russo films:

John A. Russo, the other Night of the Living Dead guy--kind of the 'loser brother' to George A. Romero--has had an interesting and uneven film career. Let's have a look.

Midnight (1982) - 3/4

A girl runs away from home, hitchhikes with some dudes in a van, and becomes the captive of some backwoods Satanists. Will daddy come to the rescue in time?

Religious fanaticism. Drunken stepfather. Rapey stepfather. Rendered unconscious stepfather. Takin' to the road, 1960s roughie style--with one bag n' a gee-tar. Random sexual proposition. Nice guys in a van. Sensible black guy. Fun with shoplifting. Rejected chips!!!! Preacher with a long, boring story and a cute daughter. Good samaritanism. Campin' under the stars. Random racism. "White boy!" galore--that's more racism, isn't it? Yes, black racist. Fat, cackling hick--didn't Russo steal that from Just Before Dawn? Guy with tight, stuffed pants. Gratuitous frisbee game. Satanic rituals. Talkin' to dead mother. Girls in little dog cages--is it wrong I was turned on? Head removin'. Hippie shootin'. Girl slicin'. Preacher killin'. Hick shootin'. Body disposin'. Grocery stealin'. Christian prayin'. Hick burnin'. Hick clobberin'. Blood drinkin'. And a little romance for the lady viewers.

Kind of a summary of 1970s exploitation genres: Summa Exploitica.

Nekkid: Nein!
Gore: 2.5/4
Racists: 9
Humour: 1/4

Dark Craving (1991) - 3/4

A soft-spoken physician is burned as a vampire/witch for his experiments in curing diseases, helping people, not sleeping with his brother's slutty wife and similarly sinister activities. Centuries later he emerges from a landfill alive, well, naked, and a vampire with venomous saliva. He finds friends, enemies, romance, and despair in our strange, modern world.

Accusations of sorcery, like puss-drinkin'. Genteel vampire. Evil antique dealer. Naked guy emerges from a landfill. Not only is he a vampire, he's a no-good dirty Tory! Chat with a priest about fluid exchanges. Tom Savini weightlifting. Tom Savini shooting things. 1980s American thrash soundtrack. One of the most interesting explanations for vampirism I've ever heard: superstition and the accusations themselves have transformed an innocent, victimized man into the feared monster. Antique dealin'. Museum visitin'. Accidental little girl killin'. Bikini girl assaultin'. Saliva secretin'. Street thug killin'. Catholic confessin'. Inept vampirin'. Girl stalkin'. Vampire macin'. Vampire shootin'. Priest killin'. Needless backstory for police officer. Moon Unit. And a lot of romance for the lady viewers.

Nekkid: Just that vampire guy's ass.
Gore: 3/4 - Tom Savini
Useless information about minor characters: Lots.
Humour: 0.5/4

Santa Claws (1996) - 0.5/4

A boy murders his mother and her santa-suit-wearing fat boyfriend. The detective calls this "piss-poor behaviour", but the boy is allowed to roam free to become an adult and die-hard fan of scream queen Debbie Rochon (playing Brinke Stevens, basically). But who's gonna die hard? The men who are using, abusing, and trying to take away the lovely scream queen.

Debbie Rochon's titties. Camcorder cinematography a-plenty. Lots of hot girls showing titties and pussywillow. Milf titties. Hairy, old fat guy gropin' milf. Crazy scream queen fan. Lengthy discussion about what pathetic losers scream queen fans are. The glamorous life of a tittie photographer. Creepy neighbour no-one seems able to notice is extremely sketchy. Murder with tiny gardening hook that could barely pierce a half-inch of flesh. There is a santa costume at some point. Bitchy mother-in-law. Bitchy sister-in-law. Did you contact the divorce lawyer yet? Scream queens just get no respect. Makin' out with a mannequin. Nerd dream sequence. How many times are they gonna say Scream Queens' Naked Christmas? And a little romance for the lady viewers.

Nekkid: 2.5/4
Gore: 0.5/4
Times you think, "Russo should have known better": at least 50.
Humour: 0.5/4

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

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

Blood Orgy of the She-Devils (1972)

Well, there isn't much blood and there are no orgies. There are, I suppose, she-devils. This is a coven of witches lead by Mara. She has some neat powers, like necromancy, turning into cats and bats, and giving long and boring seances. She's hired by an Indian gentleman to kill the ambassador to Rhodesia without evidence. Then he tries to have her killed instead of paying her. So she kills him. It sounds like I've ruined the plot, but actually this section has nothing to do with anything, really, except to show Mara is an evil witch. Apparently the ritual murder of the first five minutes wasn't a strong enough hint. Or maybe it was to show her powers.

At any rate, from that point on, there's still quite a bit of runtime, so something has to happen. Well, a supposedly college-aged couple (who are both in their thirties at the time) are checking out Mara's seances. The man is a skeptic and is fascinated by what Mara is able to do. So he consults his parapsychologist friend who also has psychic powers to learn the truth about Mara.

It's clear Mikels has done a lot of research for this film, because Mara mentions stuff like "the 72 demonic intelligences," "the Tetragrammaton," and "the 32 spirits of Belphegor." This may sound goofy, but it's exactly how occultists like Crowley and Mathers spoke. Oh yeah, and "so mote it be." Apparently 'mote' is a verb to witches.

It's also clear Mikels is eager to show us how much he's learned, because after the subplot with the assassinations, the film turns into Haxan. The parapsychologist gives lengthy dialogue explanations about the history of magic and witchcraft, with a salacious reenactment involving the burning of a witch. Mikels himself shows up and sticks some pins in her, then they beat her little boy in front of her while she burns. Points for gratuitous child-beating! The camera also lingers over meticulous rituals, lest we miss a move and not be able to perform our own blood orgies.
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2610/4090943306_15f90ec430.jpg - Why are they shirtless?

Finally, as the new blood orgy is being conducted with the college guy as ritual sacrifice, a the ghostbusters show up to save the day! I'm only sort of kidding. Four parapsychologists do show up with the intent of exorcising the evil demons. They're just nowhere as cool as the Ghostbusters. And instead of rushing to save the college guy, Ol Doc naturally stands around talking about witchcraft for an inordinately long time. Could he be too late? If so, I wonder why?!

I can see why Mikels is the cult figure he is. He certainly has style. The music, costumes, and choreography of the she-devil sequences have this great primitivistic quality that contrasts with the glimpses of society we get. The murky lighting and gaudy colours add to the other-worldliness, like a glimpse into the deep, dark, primitive history of mankind hidden in our subconscious. There are also some cool visual effects using greenish clouds that I found set the mood quite well.
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That's not to say it's a good film. There's lots of filler in the form of historical reenactments, totally irrelevant flashbacks to past lives, and lengthy dialogue scenes. If Steckler is very visual and includes more images than he has dialogue for, Mikels has the opposite problem. The seance scene in particular manages to be both hilariously racist and difficult to get through. For about fifteen minutes, Mara reads the fortunes of people we will never see again in the film. She also does it as the spirit of a Native American man named Tokawana. Tokawana is nearly omniscient about the past and future; his one weak-spot is English grammar and vocabulary. He says cringe-inducing stuff like, "Me warn you white squaw not take giant metal bird across big water."

Mikels does find some nice-looking ladies, though. Check out these curves: http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2673/4090176555_cacdd8346a.jpg

So there you have it, Blood Orgy of the She Devils, an epic of primitivism and spiritism in modern day society and the inspiration for the Ghostbusters. Who ya gonna call? http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2656/4090176385_be3db83b1e.jpg
Look out, guys, one's getting away! http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2739/4090943200_5a4a5e1d43.jpg