Amateur Porn Star Killer (2006) - 1/4

Amateur Porn Star Killer. I like that title. The cover depicts a beautifully sculpted female back, her hair up over her dog collar and her hands bound at her buttocks. One assumes she’s one of the amateur porn stars to be killed by a maniac hell-bent on working through the agonizing memory of his father’s death at a porn star’s hands after a blizzard of cocaine. Of course, it’s not fair to judge a movie on whether it matches my expectations. It is fair to judge it on whether it’s even a real movie.

I received a signed copy of this non-epic from director Shane Ryan and I’m saddened to dislike it so much that I’ve shifted my dislike onto the director—who seems to be a very nice young man. I just don’t see evidence of that in his movie. The plot is really provided by the text at the beginning and end of the movie. A serial killer named 'Brandon' (Shane Ryan himself) smooth-talks sluts into motel rooms where he browbeats them into taking off their clothes and sucking his dick. For their efforts, he kills them. The catch is that he records the murders on store-rented VHS tapes. But only the most unrented, forgotten movies, like Meet the Deedles (1998), so the murders takes forever to get discovered. 

I think that’s a hilarious idea. I’d love to see Robert Patrick’s multi-layered performance in Double Dragon (1994) interrupted by a snuff movie. But that’s not really what we get in Amateur Porn Star Killer. The real action of this movie is this: Brandon picks up an underage girl, talks to her from behind his camera for fifty straight minutes until he finally gets her out of her clothes and onto his dick. Then he kills her. To keep us from getting bored, I guess, footage of him screwing some blonde girl keeps getting superimposed over the footage of him trying to screw the brunette.

This is actually how a lot of semi-amateur porn starts. Some douchebag picks up a girl in public, takes her back to a room somewhere, and talks down to her for a few minutes. With real porn, they cut the crap and get her naked as quickly as possible. Ryan drags it out, but the result is the same. He really does pop his dick out on camera and she really does suck it on camera.

The problem here is the ambition to make anything more than just amateur porn. There are attempts to make this gritty, like the snuff footage in 8mm (1999). Of course, this is supposed to be shot on VHS, so it makes no sense to digitally add celluloid deterioration. Magnetic tape does not deteriorate like that at all. Moreover, the superimpositions of the other sex footage suggests that it’s being recorded over something else. But, again, this is supposed to be recorded over Weekend at Bernies II (1993), not his home sex tapes. The other sex scene, incidentally, does not even end in murder!

The worst offense of all for any attempt at pseudo-snuff is that the murder doesn’t actually happen on camera. What kind of self-respecting snuff film doesn't have the murder happen on camera? Ryan has no problem getting his dick sucked on camera or fucking this girl on camera, but when it comes to splashing around a little stage blood, he gets squeamish.

Amateur Porn Star Killer seems like an excuse for Ryan to bang co-star Michiko Jimenez and show it to his friends. Judging from the interview included on the DVD, I think he put in way more effort than was probably required. Amateur Porn Star Killer 2 and 3 are more of the same. And, like the first in the series, Ryan credits the girls he screws as co-writers. In the third, moreover, his co-star is Regan Reece, of Cum Drinkers 3 (2006) and Stairway to Anal (2010) fame. The point is that this is really just poorly-lit home sex tapes with some text thrown in to tie it into some vague plot. It is amateur porn. It’s more Max Hardcore than Vincent Gallo. There’s nothing wrong with that, other than most of it is chit-chat and not actual porn. If you want to make porn, just make porn.

 Shane Ryan has what it takes to be a true pornographer, both in front of and behind camera. He seems to have that personality and he’s photogenic enough. He’s missing his calling by disguising his real interests and abilities with these pretenses.

Uncharted (2009) - 1/4

There are two basic schools of horror filmmaking. By no means are they mutually exclusive in practice, but it is fruitful to distinguish them in concept. One school recommends showing. The monster, the violence, and the gore is displayed to the audience. The other school recommends suggesting. The filmmaker hides the monster, the violence, and the gore, leaving the full scope of the horror to the individual imaginations of the audience. The Dead films of George Romero are clear examples of the showing school. Val Lewton's films are the apogee of the suggesting school.

There have been debates over which form is superior. The suggesting school is perceived as more artistic and intellectual, the showing school more exploitative. After making Val Lewton's greatest horror pictures (I Walked with a Zombie and Cat People), Jacques Tourneur made another classic, Night of the Demon. The film is infamous for showing the titular demon, a lupine puppet surrounded by smoke. The demon was the producer's decision. Tourneur protested vehemently against showing the demon. This is a neat microcosm of the debate. Tourneur believed showing the demon ruined the subtlety of the film, that the audience should be left in uncertainty and in the realm of possibilities conjured by the imagination. The producer thought of heightening tension. Both Tourneur and the producer are attempting to manipulate the audience, but to slightly different ends. Similarly, both the showing school and the suggesting school are trying to manipulate the audience, to horrify the audience. There are great films in both schools. Night of the Demon itself is still a masterpiece, employing both schools effectively. The demon bookends the film as a constant threat, while the middle of the film deploys the tactics of suggestion. The success of either approach depends on knowing how much to show and how much to suggest. Suggestion tends to be more unsettling and is ultimately less cathartic, leaving the audience disturbed after the film is over. If the audience is not given sufficient material to work with, however, the film is simply 'not delivering the goods.' It is more difficult to keep the attention of the audience with negation than with affirmation. The filmmaker must feed the audience suggestions. Showing tends to be more suspenseful and disturbing, but is ultimately cathartic. The audience usually leaves with the object of the disturbance resolved. If the audience is shown too much, there will be no tension but only a blur of concatenated make-up effects. This is an admittedly terse and monochromatic approach to the schools of horror filmmaking. I simplified the possibilities within each school for discussion's sake.

I mention this dichotomy because the inability to settle on either suggesting or showing is a major problem with Uncharted. Writer John Fuentes and director Frank Nunez make Uncharted a bit of both and fail on both counts. This indecision is related to another indecision, which I'll get to. Uncharted starts with a documentary crew crashing on an island in the Gulf of Mexico. Leading the crew is Laine (Elizabeth Cantore) a beautiful, female David Attenborough sort of adventuress and Greg (Demetrius Navarro) her cinematographer. Laine and Greg gradually realize they are on a very dangerous island as they are stalked and harassed by mysterious creatures. Except for late appearance of the plane's pilot, Uncharted is basically a two-person story. The rest of the crew is vanished before the film begins. What we see of them is in found footage. This is the other indecision. It seems Fuentes and Nunez couldn't decide whether to make a mockumentary horror film like The Blair Witch Project or not. They compromised by incorporating unnecessary found footage within the narrative.

I want to look at how these two indecisions are linked. The Blair Witch Project is one of the great suggestion horror films of modern times. One never sees the threat in Blair Witch, but only its effects. The mockumentary format means all we see is what is captured by the handheld camera of the documentarians. In the climactic night scene, the camera captures the panic as they flee into the woods haphazardly in order to escape a threat. All the audience needs to see is how threatened this people are. The threatening object is itself withheld. The mockumentary format gives an oblique, refracted perspective on the object of terror, a perspective filtered through the effect it produces. In its found footage moments, Uncharted struggles to accomplish what Blair Witch does. This even includes an homage to the famous nostrils scene. But the filmmakers don't seem to have grasped how Blair Witch earned its power. There is no build-up. The found footage interrupts the main action of the film. We see the documentary crew introduce themselves. They seem like nice people. One lady kindly flashes her large breasts to the camera. Unfortunately, these people are not a part of the story. Eventually Greg finds their camera and discovers their fates. Without any time alotted to build tension, they immediately wander offscreen, scream, and their bodies are found. The last victim drops the camera in such a way as to reveal furry hands pawing his torso. If the filmmakers wanted to show, they should have at least invested in showing well. Suggestion requires build-up. This is a part of the film that needed more and better showing.

Blair Witch also immerses the viewer in the filtered experience of the handheld camera. There is no external perspective. Most of Uncharted, however, is filmed regularly. The found footage tends to undermine the Laine-Greg section. The Laine-Greg section is the most successful. Initially the creatures appear as silhouettes against the tent in the night. They appear as black blurs placed behind and beside Laine without her realizing it. This technique gives the creatures a sense of being physical, but still nebulous, mysterious, like creatures from a Lovecraft tale. This is good. The material is given and the suggestion is earned. Then the discovery of the footage undoes much of what is earned. The furry paws contradicts the ratlike creatures the silhouettes made me imagine. The paws are more suggestive of a cheap ape costume. In this Laine-Greg section, where the attempts at suggestion are successful, it was important that the monsters and the gore be withheld. Unfortunately the filmmakers chose to do the showing in the Laine-Greg section. The film's final shot is a punchline reveal of what the creatures really are. I realized then that many of the film's mistakes derive from the desire to deliver this punchline. It's not a very good punchline.

It also amazes me how a film about serious people in a serious situation can still find ways of presenting the few female characters as spectacle. There are only two women. One is seen briefly in the found footage segments. She flashes her breasts at the camera a few times. She remarks how proud she is with her "new boobs," though they look real to me. Her boyfriend is also pleased with them. Laine, too, despite being a serious presenter of nature documentaries, finds time to get drunk and deliver a belly dance at the film's center. The belly dance is nice, but out of place. Unlike The Pit and the Pendulum (2009), there is no motif of body-appreciation. Unlike the virgin dance of the double chainsaws in Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers, there's no sense of inventive fun. Unlike the great erotic dance Debra Paget dances in Fritz Lang's The Tiger of Eschnapur, the belly dance serves no purpose for the audience, the characters, the story, or even for its own sake. The breasts and belly dance are presented in the most cynical way possible: because it's supposed to be there.

Uncharted is a film that does everything half-heartedly and cynically. There's no spirit of enjoyment. But perhaps that's uncharitable. Perhaps the hearts of the filmmakers were in the right place. Perhaps they copied the form but not the spirit of better horror films, not understanding that a good bellydance, a good gore scene, and terror are all things that must be earned.

Cut (2010) - 1/4

In my review of Hush, I write that a new subgenre of horror film has developed throughout the 2000s. That is the terror film. The terror film creates a limited situation, usually located at an isolated house in the country, places a group of "real" people inside the situation as protagonists and then sends a siege of murderous humans as 'monsters' against the protagonists. The motivation doesn't matter. What matters is that the protagonists have a limited number of options and the monsters have a seemingly infinite number of options. This renders the protagonists extremely vulnerable. Each of their decisions will result in terror for the audience, because each could result in death or injury. The result is unpredictable due to the semi-omnipotence of the monsters. The best and purest example of the terror film is The Strangers. Vacancy and Funny Games are also decent examples. Hush and Joy Ride combine the terror film with the road chase film, Joy Ride being the superior of the two. One comes to appreciate the art of these terror films when one is faced with an inferior terror film like Cut.

There is no question that Cut is recycling the ideas of The Strangers and Vacancy. The monsters have painted faces in the style of Vacancy. The setting is a house in the country in the style of The Strangers. The structure of the film is a by-the-numbers terror film. There is the tantalizing ringing of the doorbell at the beginning. It was a knock in The Strangers. In The Strangers, it was paced well and the girl was left alone. In Cut, there are other people upstairs and the pace is just off. The ringing comes too early and too frequently, or perhaps the problem is that the door is too close to the living room and, well, unlocked. Soon it goes beyond a ringing doorbell to breaking something. In The Strangers, a window is broken, if I recall. In Cut, it's a garden gnome or two. There's something vaguely silly about that, but it gets the point across. Eventually, a monster must make an appearance. In The Strangers, one is seen in a patch of deep-focus negative space. No attention is called to his presence; one's eyes are simply drawn to the negative space and one is shocked to discover something there that shouldn't be. In Cut, a startling sound effect tells one, "Look what we have here!" There is no thrill in discovering the danger for oneself. Then the cat-and-mouse game begins. Mostly a cat game, as the monsters seem able to slip in and out at will, just as in The Strangers. The smaller size of the house and the clumsy, roving camera makes these monsters appear as much like actors told to run down the stairs at the moment as like dangerous thugs with knives.

Then there is the issue of "real people." The terror film thrives upon giving us real people. The terror film's vision of 'real people' is nearly always people in the midst of a painful situation that involves much drama. In Vacancy it's a divorce. In The Strangers it's a shot-down marriage proposal. In Hush it's a break-up. Michael Haneke was more clever with Funny Games and gives us people who do seem real without contrived conflict. Cut put a bunch of humanizing or "realistic" character traits on a wheel and spun: a pregnancy here, a career man there, a guy with loan shark troubles, a guy trying to write a cliche horror film script. And they are all very dramatic people. They make the characters in Romero's Day of the Dead seem sedate. They never listen to one another and are yelling from beginning to end. If the "real" people in The Strangers and Vacancy with their bickering and communication problems are annoying, imagine six of them all in a small house together. Two of these characters actually managed to be decently enjoyable, due to being the least dramatic and due to the actors' screen presences. Those are the loan shark guy, Michael (Dominic Burns), and the career man, Jack (Zach Galligan, of Gremlins fame). Of those Michael is the most enjoyable. We first see him telling an uncomfortable story about a public homosexual rape with ambiguous conviction. Let's hope we see more of Dominic Burns in the future.

As always, the dominant attitude of the terror film seems to be that the major problems of our lives that seem so important are in fact so very trivial. In the face of absolute terror, in the face of the absurd threat of having one's life stolen away for no good reason in a purposeless universe, our quibbles melt away and the sense of a life unlived overwhelms. I'm reminded of the John Donne passage Val Lewton cites in The Seventh Victim, "I run to death, and death meets me as fast,/And all my pleasures are like yesterday." It is the inverse. Running from death, all one's missed pleasures are held out of view in a possibly unreachable tomorrow. Careers, pregnancies, money, sex are all such trivial things compared to survival. At least, this is what terror films imply. It's what Cut implies.

Cut also undermines its own implications by implying more, however awkwardly. There is no good reason for what happens. But there is a reason. More of a reason than in The Strangers. The tagline, No second chances tells you so much. In life, unlike in a film or game, one can't rewind or restart. One bad choice can put one up against the aforementioned absurd threat. In Vacancy and The Strangers, there is no bad choice: the threat truly is absurd. In Cut, there is more responsibility, literally and figuratively, on the part of the victims. Cut hates its own protagonists as much as I did. In fact, I probably hated them because Cut did. They had it coming. Even though they didn't, really.

As much as I try to find something worth pondering in all the films I review, as much as I try to support first-time directors, Alexander Williams's Cut offers very little to consider. Aside from Michael's story of homosexual rape and a brief movie-in-a-movie scene, there is almost no extra-narrative material to enjoy and no worldview on display. Cut briskly and single-mindedly enacts its formula; its characters and settings exist for that formula. And that formula has been enacted much better in the other films I mention throughout this review.

Necrosis (2009) - 1/4

A group of friends head out to a cabin in the very mountains of the infamous Donner Party massacre. The creepy stories and/or spiritual energy of the place combined with their friend's failure to take his anti-psychosis medication leads to a murderous rampage.

Necrosis (AKA Blood Snow) is a film that tries to be a character-based drama with lots of build-up until the explosive moment. I like to support the little movies out there and Necrosis can be praised for trying to do something different, but the idea of 'build-up' here is an on-going argument about whether "Matt" will get to bed "Megan" punctuated by a few jumpscares courtesy the hallucinations of "Jerry." That might not be so bad if these people weren't so bland. They are every phony, mugging yuppie you've ever met at a party you really didn't want to be at. It's not even the actors' faults here: they're probably playing their characters right. And y'know what, I sympathise with Jerry. If I had to spend a few days in a cabin with these people, from his shrewish girlfriend to her inauthentic yuppie friends, I might stop taking my medication too.

Jerry, incidentally, is the only non-Caucasian in the cast, making this film seem a tad xenophobic. The role of Jerry is the most complex and the top actor in the cast is Asian James Kyson-Lee (from some TV series called "Heroes"), so it's normal he'd have the role. It still comes off as xenophobic. And that's not even getting to the punishment meted out to the sick Jerry at the end, which we're supposed to cheer, I imagine, as the white survivors embrace.

The editing and cinematography are somewhat subpar, but the writing isn't bad, insofar as flaky yuppies is what the writer wanted to capture. These people are pretty vapid, but they don't deserve to die or anything. And I will admit, since I was expecting a cheesy supernatural thriller, I was surprised by the turnout. It's a worse film than I expected, but a better film than the first thirty minutes led me to believe. Cameos by Michael Berryman and Mickey Jones are nice, but not enough to save the picture from being as vapid as its yuppies. Ultimately, avoid Necrosis, as there are much better 2009/2010 b-movies, like The Graves, which I recently reviewed, and Red Velvet.

Nevertheless, if you wanted to read a theme into Necrosis, the Power of Place would be a fascinating one. Places do resonate with their history, to some extent; the way they're treated influences the way others will come to treat them, and so on, until they develop this aura. The aura is, of course, in the minds of people, but so is the notion of 'place' as opposed to 'space'; placehood is defined by human perceptions of space. The sense of place combined acted as a catalyst to Jerry's psychosis, you see. So there you go. If you've seen the film, the least you can do is read something into it to justify having wasted your time. It's what I do.

The Possessed (2009) - 0/4

For the first time since I've been reviewing films, I have left a film before it was over. The Possessed immediately strikes one as a harmless documentary in the style of "Unsolved Mysteries", with reenactments and real interviews intercut. The more one watches, however, the more one is assailed with morally objectionable material until I became too offended to watch on.

The story itself is an interesting one and I had previously read about it on the rather entertaining website www.mysteriouspeople.com. Mary Roff, a disturbed woman subject to seizures and quasi-religious mania dies in her adult years. Lurancy Vennum, an unrelated girl who was two-years-old at the time of Roff's death later begins exhibiting similar behaviour and claims to be Mary Roff. The film debates over whether it is possession or some sort of retroactive reincarnation. The title tells you what side the film falls on.

That the documentary falls on any side at all is the first of its problems. The filmmaker/interviewer is Christopher Saint-Booth, a bizarre-looking hippie who dresses like a cowboy resembling Johnny Legend circa 1985 sans coolness. He buys into all of this crap, unsurprisingly. This might not be a problem for me in a harmless haunting documentary, but this documentary is dealing with troubled people--almost all young ladies--who need help and that help is certainly not the Catholic Church nor a Crystal Healing Bed!

You see, for Saint-Booth to make his points, like a lawyer of sorts, he references related cases as if these precedents are solid proof. He references the case of Anneliese Michel as if it's a proven precedent of possession. Actually, the case of Anneliese Michel went to court and the exorcists were charged with manslaughter![1] And here's the moral crux: Saint-Booth also references the cases of some still-living people who believe they were possessed. They used to cut their arms, were obsessed with their own blood, and sometimes tore their own skin away. The fact that Lurancy Vennum also did this, Saint-Booth concludes, shows that she too was possessed. Actually, it shows they all had the same psychological issues and they were in desperate need of real treatment, not wackjob charlatans. Unfortunately, Saint-Booth encourages their manner of reasoning and that is what makes this documentary thoroughly objectionable.

He began to interview a young man who had been exorcised by his mother, a religious fanatic who clearly had seen The Exorcist way too many times, because the exorcism she videotaped showed her speaking lines from the film verbatim. That's when I turned the documentary off. This is an ignorant, irresponsible, morally bankrupt documentary from which you will learn nothing you can't read online.[2] The parallel cases are somewhat interesting, as they were recent and I'd never heard of them before; but they were sadly mishandled by an agenda-driven believer.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anneliese_Michel
2. http://www.mysteriouspeople.com/Lurancy_Vennum.htm

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.

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!

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

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

Sorority House Vampires from Hell (1998)

Hey! It's the '90s again! If you didn't like the '90s, not a chance you'll like Sorority House Vampires from Hell, because it's steeped in '90s. Bimbos, 90210 references, Keanu Reeves references, surfer-speak. The filmmaker, Geoffrey de Vallois, much like his name, draws upon European influences to craft a catalogue of the phenomena of his age, showing the social awareness of the French New Wave.

So, as you might guess, this is a Buffy cash-in, except in this film the blond, ditzy heroine is named--oh no, wait, she's named "Buffy" too. The plot is that there's this demon in a UFO. I didn't know he was a demon until I read the back of the box. But he's a demon. In a bold move, the filmmaker only shows us the inside of the UFO, showing his film is all about what's beyond the surface. Wanna see the inside of the ship? http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2658/4085492994_1babc0c33f.jpg Those CGI tentacles are the demon, I guess. And I forgot to mention the UFO is full of busty, naked chicks who sometimes dance and sometimes get penetrated by the CGI tentacles. It's good to be a UFO demon.

And this demon's plan for world domination is to awake the only two vampires on earth, Vlad and Natalia. Vlad is the comic relief and mostly does accident-prone slapstick in a single room. Natalia is a scrawny, pale broad who makes zombies by biting people on the neck. She has to make nine zombies before some comet passes, she tells us.
Here's Natalia: http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2548/4085493036_ce66c3dbbd.jpg

So Natalia begins gradually turning the busty, fit sorority girls into zombies one-by-one while inside the sorority house some lame hazing commences. The hazing sequences parallel the efforts of Natalia in cinematic rhymes making one wonder, "Who are the vampires in this world really? Do we not suck self-esteem from one another to build up ourselves?"

The runtime is a full 90 minutes, so it's padded out with a lot of wacky comedy. Like rednecks with laser guns trying to shoot a man wearing antlers.
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2731/4084733973_d7cf7795a5.jpg
An impromptu fashion show.
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2681/4085492906_3e89ed0b88.jpg
An impromptu infomercial. An impromptu music video. Subtitles, self-conscious references to subtitles, surfer dudes who speak so righteously jargon-heavy they require said bogus subtitles, an over-the-top New Ager who, naturally, is also a vegetarian and environmentalist and who gets in a lengthy conversation about the value of religion with Natalia. And, strangest of all, many references to the current economic state of the US in 1998. de Vallois's social consciousness is clearly doing for American cinema what Godard was doing for French cinema with his Dziga-Vertov Group films of the '60s; he is calling for revolutionary action, by comparing his vampire queen to the profiteering oil companies sucking our earth dry.

There are also lots of penguin plushes:
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2696/4084734029_0793f9e0ba.jpg
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2557/4084734045_6049633722.jpg
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2596/4085492974_03bd9e5aab.jpg - Me too.

The film culminates with Buffy, whose total lack of expressive powers reveal her to be the doom-filled personification of this generation's indifference, attacks the vampire queen who has already killed Vlad herself and become human again and the UFO demon turning to his back-up plan of Y2K.

You know what the problem is with a lot of these ZANY shot-on-video releases? It's not the production values or the amateur actors and directors. It's that it's generally a bunch of people together amusing themselves by making a movie, but not worrying at all about amusing the audience.

Sorority House Vampires from Hell looks like it was a lot of fun to make, but it's not really all that fun to watch. It made me laugh in a few places, only twice with well-earned jokes (one involving a Monty Python reference, oddly enough). This is toward the end of the film, when they've built up some steam and in-jokes. But mostly the zany, anything-goes approach is tedious. I have to admit they found some pretty cute girls with nice tits, though. Not that it helps much. This film is way too tongue-in-cheek for its own good.

And I leave you with this:
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2441/4084733997_8ab33b0145.jpg - Here the director has symbolically removed the tops of his actresses' heads, making a point about the mindlessness of youth. His care to keep the soft, be-pantied rump and purple-bra-cupped breasts in shot reveal much about his cinematic style.