Once again, Mondo Macabro gives us a taste of what they call "the wild side of world cinema" with this Indonesian scare-fest from 1979 that streets on May 27.
The wedding of a town leader's son in Indonesia is marred by what is believed to be black magic. The bride is overcome by nightmarish visions of skeletons, snakes and walking corpses and falls into a fevered state of dementia. Kohar, the groom, suspects that a woman named Murny is responsible, claiming that she loved him but he had no interest in her. What Kohar does not tell the angry mob is that he had seduced Murny, taking her virginity and promising to marry her, only to wed another. While Murny certainly has motive, she knows nothing of black magic -- but Kohar and the mob burn her house down and throw her off a cliff just the same. Her life is saved by an old hermit who encourages her to take revenge on those who tried to murder her. Since they accused her of black magic, the hermit figures "let's be all ironic and stuff" and trains Murny in the dark arts.
On Drainiac's audio commentary, writer/director Brett Piper explains that the original 2000 DVD release of this film was essentially unfinished. This new version, which arrives on DVD from Shock-o-Rama on June 24, is newly derived from the original negatives (yes, this baby was shot on 16 millimeter film) with sound and special effects enhancement. Since so much effort went into making this nearly unwatchable revised version, I have to suspect that viewing original imperfect release might very well be lethal.
One of the first clues to the disaster that is Drainiac is the box cover. It's a pretty cool illustration of a slimy creature crawling out of a sink drain and reaching for the viewer, though it's obviously not a photo and doesn't represent anything actually seen in the film. Furthermore if you've ever seen any other movie from the Shock-o-Rama catalog (like Piper's other flick Bacterium, which I reviewed here), you know darn well they could never afford to do this kind of creature effectively.
Sick Nurses, just now hitting DVD from Magnolia Pictures, is a Thai film known in its homeland as Suay Laak Sai. Directors Piraphan Laoyont and Thodsapol Siriwiwat are obviously familiar with recent Asian horror cinema as this one is very much in the image of The Ring,The Grudge and others. Production values are quite good, and some of the scares rank pretty high on the creep-o-meter, though the story is a cookie-cutter tale of ghostly revenge.
A group of nurses and Dr. Taa have a lucrative business selling bodies from the hospital they work at (a hospital, incidentally, that never seems to have any actual patients). One of the nurses, a girl named Tahwaan is engaged to Dr. Taa, but she catches him having sex with her sister Nook. When Tahwaan threatens to expose their corpse selling business, the others murder her to keep her quiet. As Ae points out, legend has it that the dead return for the one they love the most seven days after death. True enough, Tahwaan is soon back from the grave sporting that emo hairdo on steroids that all Asian ghosts seem to have these days and greenish black skin. The first time we see her in her spectral form, she quite memorably comes crawling out of a handbag.
Laura Gemser appeared in a long string of Italian softcore films as Emanuelle. Note that the name is spelled with a single "m" to differentiate the character from the one appearing in the official Emmanuelle films that began in 1974 and originally starred Sylvia Kristel (though Gemser appeared in a small role in the original series' sequel Emmanuelle 2). Gemser's Emanuelle films were often from the seamier side of the exploitation spectrum. Emanuelle in America, for example, saw the title character investigating the production of snuff films and featured scenes of hardcore sex (without Gemser) and a dalliance with bestiality that makes the donkey show in Clerks 2 seem Disney-esque.
Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals (a.k.a. Trap Them and Kill Them) saw the softcore porn series crossing over with the cannibal film craze of the time, and the film we're here to discuss today, Women's Prison Massacre, brought the character into the women-in-prison genre. This entry in the series is directed by Bruno Mattei, a man of staggeringly little talent. Admittedly, his ultra cheezy post-apocalyptic epic Rats (for which he used his frequent pseudo name Vincent Dawn) is a guilty pleasure of mine, but other films of his like Virus (a.k.a. Hell of the Living Dead and Night of the Zombies) sap my will to live.
Years ago when I first read about 1974's Barn of the Naked Dead I thought "this is the greatest title ever conceived anywhere by anyone in the history of cinema and I must see it," so I was a bit disappointed when I eventually tracked down a VHS copy and found that it was then traveling under the name Nightmare Circus (which in fact was the original release title). This new DVD version from Legend House restores the salacious but sadly inaccurate (only the briefest of nudity here) title by which the flick is best known.
Three showgirls on their way to a job in Vegas break down in the desert. As this is an exploitation horror film, one need not be a rocket scientist to deduce that the nice young man named Andre who stops to help isn't very nice at all. Andre is played by Andrew Prine and despite his numerous film and TV credits, I remember him best as the villain in the unsuccessful Wonder Woman pilot movie from 1974 that featured Cathy Lee Crosby as the amazon princess. Andre has issues with women stemming from his mother's desertion. He deals with this by collecting women and chaining them up in his barn (no naked dead folks, but we do get a barn), and trains them to perform like circus animals. Picture Norman Bates with a flare for the theatrical.
The Oozing Skull is the first release from Cinematic Titanic, a project that reunites the original cast and writers of Mystery Science Theater 3000 as well as writer/performers from later in the series. Series creator Joel Hodgson is joined once again by Trace Beaulieu, Frank Connif, Mary Jo Pehl, and J. Elvis Weinstein (with a special guest appearance by Dr. Stephen Hawking). MST3K was perhaps the greatest TV show in the history of the medium, at least as far as this B-movie buff is concerned. Each week the program would show a schlocky old flick with the cast, shown in silhouette in the bottom right of the screen, constantly tossing jokes at the screen. Cinematic Titanic does very much the same thing, with all five of the writer/performers appearing on screen and riffing in a style reminiscent of MST3K. Not every joke hits its mark, but there are so damn many of them, you'd have to be inhuman not to find something to laugh at here.
It's My Party And I'll Die If I Want To is a low budget horror flick looking for a distributor, though you can still buy the film directly from the producers at Scotchworthy Productions. This $15,000 flick is so far below the radar right now it doesn't have an entry on IMDB, and for some reason an IMDB search for the title yields a completely unrelated porn movie which is both hilarious and not safe for work. Director Tony Wash met his crew while attending Tom Savini's Special FX School, though the film did not shoot until after he had graduated, so Wash insists this is not a student film. Indeed it isn't, because despite the rough-around-the-edges look (the body double in the shower scene, for example, has freckles that don't match up with our leading lady) that would be impossible to avoid on such a miniscule budget, this is one of the most ambitious and downright fun gorefests I've seen in awhile. If this one doesn't find a distributor soon it will be a travesty.
Sometimes you need a film with multi-faceted characters, clever dialogue and an intricate story with many layers, but other times you've just got to let the entrails fly. The Rage very much falls into the latter category, giving us buckets of gore over substance, and doing it beautifully.
Mad scientists used to be a B-movie staple. These days not enough guys in blood-caked lab coats are trying to conquer death/raise the dead/cure gingivitis, and mad science is becoming a lost art. Russian scientist Dr. Viktor Vasilienko (Andrew Divoff from Lost) is hard at work in his secret laboratory hidden in a junkyard, of all places. His true motivations are saved for the third act, but he's infecting his very unwilling test subjects with a viral form of rage (obviously someone has seen 28 Days Later and probably Dr. Butcher M.D.). Aside from being slightly healthier than your average horror movie zombie (meaning they're not actually dead) , these infected have all the standard anti-social traits including cannibalism and bad skin. One of the test subjects breaks free and takes several bites out of the good doctor before lurching off into the outside world.
Easily the most noteworthy aspect of Tragic Ceremony (recently released to DVD by Dark Sky films) is the participation of Camille Keaton. The great niece of silent film star Buster Keaton, Camille appeared in a handful of Italian films in the early 1970s. Eventually she became best known for starring in the grisly U.S. made rape/revenge film Day of the Woman which is now known under the re-release title I Spit On Your Grave.
Four young people are spending several carefree days sailing and camping. Bill (Tony Isbert) is the only one in the group from a rich family, and his friends Fred (Giovanni Petrucci) and Joe (Maximo Valverde) have no problem taking advantage of Bill's wealth, even going so far as to conning him out of money on a rigged bet. Bill has eyes for Jane (Keaton) who may be involved with Joe (this is never made clear). Bill gives her a string of pearls he had bought for his mother who turned them down after hearing about the curse that supposedly comes with them.
I have a new favorite bad movie, and it's called Winterbeast. When director Chris Thies agreed to send me a screener copy of his 1991 opus (now available on DVD through Amazon.com or the film's official site), the last thing he said in his email was "brace yourself." I took this for mere hyperbole, a director trying to talk up his creation. For the record, he was not exaggerating, and should you also attempt to watch this one, I would take things a step farther and suggest you gird your loins and perhaps assume a crash position. This isn't just a bad movie, this is the holy freakin' grail of bad movies, a film whose badness is so epic that the works of Ed Wood look downright competent by comparison, and I'm not ashamed to say I loved every minute of it.
Apparently there was an actual script at some point, but based on info in the disc's extras, much of the story was made up on the fly. Our main character is a forest ranger named Bill Whitman, played by Tim Morgan, whose stiff and uncharismatic performance is made up for by a mustache whose behavior can only be described as magical. It changes size frequently, often in mid-conversation, and I half expected it to leap off his face and claim a victim or two of its own. Whitman is told by Deputy Stillman (Mike Magri) that one of their men is missing. Despite the raging storm we hear during this scene, and the fact that the movie is called Winterbeast, there's not a speck of snow on the ground once the movie ventures beyond the confines of the cheap sets. There are monsters in them thar woods, and Whitman and his people must do their best to protect the public at large. We've got totem poles with skeletons tied to them, giant monsters wandering around the woods, a mummy and the titular Winterbeast who is saved for the film's climax.
I discussed the trailer for this Australian action/fantasy flick awhile back, and I was surprised it never had any kind of theatrical release in the states. Now that I've seen the film (just out from Sony Home Entertainment), it falls just short of feeling like an A picture and with no recognizable faces in the cast I can see where distributors might have been hesitant to pick it up. Still, this is a nice little slice of dark fantasy, and I can still see it finding a following even as a direct to DVD release.
Purgatory, or at least the Purgatory of this film, is a dank urban sprawl populated by people who have earned neither heaven nor hell. Control of the city is currently in the hands of The Fallen. While the words "God" and "devil" are never used, you don't need to be a theologian to figure out whose side they are on, and as a result the city remains in perpetual darkness. Gabriel (Andy Whitfield) is the latest in a series of Archangels who have been sent to reclaim the city for the forces of light. While in Purgatory, Archangels and Fallen alike must assume mortal forms, a very unpleasant transition, which provides ample opportunity for martial arts and automatic weapons fire when the two forces clash.
I never had the pleasure of visiting The Deuce as New York's 42nd Street was called during its heyday as a venue for exploitation cinema. On the one hand it sounds like it was one scary ass neighborhood, but if some rundown theater was running all of the Ilsa Films back to back or maybe a Sonny Chiba marathon, or perhaps an Andy Milligan retrospective, I might have been tempted to take the risk. For a fascinating history of films on 42nd Street I highly recommend Bill Landis and Michelle Clifford's book Sleazoid Express, and I have to say 42nd Street Forever, Vol. 3 - Exploitation Explosion recently released by AV Maniacs and Synapse Films also makes for a great introduction to the exploitation films of this period.
I've collected tons of trailer compilations over the years, and this is easily one of the best. There's a whopping 47 trailers here, some of which will have B-movie buffs scouring Ebay and Amazon for the film itself while others will leave you shocked and appalled that anyone would waste film stock on such an atrocity. The deal is sweetened by the addition of a handful of TV spots, some of which cover the same films as the trailers. But the highlight of the disk is the audio commentary, a feature I've never seen on a trailer comp. Edwin Samuelson of AV Maniacs, Fangoria Managing Editor Mike Gingold and Film Historian Chris Poggiali provide some fascinating background. What kind of movies are we talking about here? The trailers are grouped by sub-genres covering every category from martial arts to horror to dopey Porkies-inspired comedies.
At long last, here's the second half to my review of the Grindhouse Experience 2 collection. Finding time to sit down and watch ten movies turned out to be harder than I thought. If you missed the first installment you can check it out right here. Yes, we've got ten more obscure B-movie oddities, covering a wide range of genres. These are all public domain films from various countries and have all been released under numerous titles. Here we go: Disk 3 - Side B - Car Chases Renegade- 1987 Of all the movies in this collection, this one least fits the definition of a grindhouse flick, but it's an entertaining little bit of B-movie shenanigans. Renegade Luke (Terrence Hill) is an amiable shmoe, traveling the American southwest with no particular destination in mind, making his way by pulling some low level scams, notably selling his horse for gas money knowing that the critter is smart enough to return to him once the transaction is complete. An old army buddy named Moose is doing time for vehicular manslaughter, and he asks Luke to take custody of his obnoxious 14-year-old son Matt (played by Hill's real-life son Ross, who tragically died at the age of 17 just three years after this film was released). Despite some initial friction, Matt fits in well with Luke and his horse Joe. As the trio make their way to Matt's home they are set upon by bikers, truckers, and thugs with machine guns. This is an Italian production, though it was shot in Arizona using many American actors. No Oscars here, but the characters are likable and the action is plentiful.
I am of two minds on Deadly End (which IMDB is still listing under its original title Neighborhood Watch), just recently released by Full Moon Direct. On the one hand we have a well produced indie flick with strong acting and a story that pulls you in, at least at first. On the other hand, we've got a movie whose sole reason for existing is to test the viewers gag reflex, and yes mine got quite a workout here. The latter ultimately wins out, making for a singularly unenjoyable viewing experience. We're not talking about your standard horror movie gross-outs, of which I've seen nearly every variety, but something else entirely.
Bob and Wendi Peterson are a young couple who have just moved into their new house on Wormwood Drive. If the name of the street wasn't enough to warn them away, the neighborhood should have done the trick since their new home is smack dab in the middle of what appears to be a suburban ghost town. The houses nearby appear to be long abandoned, with toppled trees and collapsing structures everywhere and someone at work explains to Bob that his company was responsible for a toxic spill that has left the area unlivable. The area Bob and Wendi's new house is in is only slightly better, with burned out lawns littered with trash, and Christmas lights that look like they've been up for years.
For those of you expecting the second half of my review of the Grindhouse Experience collection (click here to see the first installment), my apologies. Finding time to watch all ten of the remaining films proved to be a problem, so I'll have that for you next week.
This week, though, we've got an interesting little double feature from Tempe Video called Kingdom of the Vampire, which offers two interpretations of the same story. We have the original shot on video tape version directed by J.R. Bookwalter in 1991 and a 2007 remake directed by and starring Brett Kelly (who, incidentally, also directed and starred in My Dead Girlfriend, which I reviewed here). Both are modestly budgeted to say the least. According to Bookwalter's audio commentary, his version cost in the neighborhood of $2,500 which, even in 1991 dollars, is pretty amazing. While neither film dazzles, they both manage to entertain and it's interesting to see not only each director's interpretation of the story but also the differences in technology available in each film's respective period.
