Alabama's Ghost

Alabama's Ghost Directed By Fredric Hobbs (1973). Starring Christopher Brooks.
  As someone who lives in Oakland I think I know alittle more about what strange transformations occur when you cross over the bridge to San Francisco, this might be the reason why people are baffled by Alabama's Ghost and also the reason people bitch about crossing the bridge!
  Christopher Brooks played Black Jesus in The Mack (which was filmed in Oakland), but when he ventured over the bridge (to Frisco) he turned into Alabama "King Of The Cosmos", all of this will be revealed or just blamed on heavy drug use in our feature tonight.
  It starts off with a newscast from the archives of the mysterious Dr. Caligula, Hitler's expert in robot technology. You might think your ears are deceiving you as you listen about Carter the Great and a potent form of wacky tobac-ee (or an intense form of hasheesh or cartoon cackee)! Has this movie lost its mind already, you can never tell! but what can you expect from the Fredric Hobbs, the man who previously directed The Godmonster Of The Indian Flats?
  Turk Murphy a dixieland jazz band in an old people dive bar called Earthquake Mcgoons (a real place in SF). It was closed when Turk died in 1987, they also named a street after him in the Tenderloin. Hopefully the band might clear up some things about this movie.They sing the title song as the credits roll by (has the film ended already? was it an acid flashback, what is going on)? Turk hops off stage and wakes up Alabama from his cat nap on the bar then he hops onto a forklift and rams it into a wall.

Feed Me Seymour!

  He travels further into the pit of the club and hears a strange voice, it leads him toward a magic cabinet where he finds a pirate get up. The scary voice is only a record player.Whew, is everything gonna return to normal?
    Alabama decides to cross a rickety bridge (it's suddenly daylight) and confront a creepy man dressed in a granny outfit (with vampire fangs) who is guarding Carter's magicians trunk. They both smoke the cartoon hash which inspires Alabama to proclaim himself "King Of The Cosmos".

Eugene Levy Untamed!

He uses Carter's spirit cabinet to resurrect the dead and surrounds himself with a hippy entourage. He gets increasingly more psychedelic (what's more 70's then an acid soaked magician like Doug Henning)? He drives around in a giant wagon with a gargoyle face and paper mache demons hanging off the side. His hippy group plays monotonous flutes before a Monterey Pop style crowd (magic is apparently really popular among the stoned)! they sort of sound like Sly & The Family Stone too. 
  Then it all goes wrong during the saw trick and Alabama mentions that he's afraid of Carter's ghostly fish eye placing a curse on him!
  Even though he's spooked, this doesn't stop him from dabbling in the black arts! Then it gets worse as he is confronted by a wizard with an exposed bloody heart.

  Alabama went into a transformation chamber and his hippy girl friend seems to be dousing him with acid behind his back. Carter's ghost shows up while he's trying to get laid and Alabama accuses him of racism then an earsplitting vampire scream happens as gnarly fangs jug out of his girlfriends mouth! Good thing she didn't give him head!

Ouch! Careful with those teeth!

Alice Cooper/ Alabama Sex Scandal

He runs screaming to his mother and soon a voodoo witchdoctor has entered the picture!  As if this movie couldn't get anymore bat shit crazy! After the ritual which includes a lot of chanting, pounding and live snakes, he drives back in order to get primed for his television appearance. The vampire granny shows up again (without a costume) playing a wheelchair bound nosferatu named Jerry.   

  Alabama plans on making an elephant disappear, but Carter keeps showing up and bothering everyone! It turns out the beginning plot point wasn't thrown away (or maybe the scriptwriter just woke up) and Dr. Caligula is working with Jerry and his crew of vampires (some of them dress like witches). All this information is never tied together and everything is consistently bizarre, but never dull, it just doesn't really make sense. It all ends with a free Altamont style concert with a band called The Loading Zone?! and a clone of Alabama shooting vampires on motorcycles!! There's a little of everything in this strange movie to enjoy and its so warped and freaky that even if you can't believe how bad it is, its still a fun and a watchable psychedelic mind trip. 

FREAKOUT!

My Friends Need Killing

My Friends Need Killing (1976) Directed By Paul Leder. Starring Greg Mullavey

  Paul "Leadfoot" Leder wins for the greatest title in exploitation history for this epic. It's a bargain basement namploitation flick that astoundingly everyone involved went on to mainstream shit! His daughter directed one of the dumbest flicks of all time, Deep Impact and star Greg Mullavey went on to alot of TV like (ICarly, Charles In Charge and Automan, so there's that). 

Gene plays a disturbed vet haunted by Nam flashbacks (stock footage). After seeing a lot of these psycho war vet flicks I noticed a pattern, almost all of them start off with an easy listening country song, (both Rolling Thunder and The Exterminator). This one has a jaunty, mildly irritating Hellen Reddy style number (which sets up some unpleasantness to come later)! The title song was actually sung by Meredith Mccrae. All of Gene's army buddies are nervous for some reason? Gee I wonder why? 

  His first victim is tied up on a bed and left to slowly bleed to death out of a tube sticking out of his arm, he tells him about all his plans of murder. He wants to track down all his buddies in Nam and kill them one by one for their crimes of legally sanctioned murder. He flies out on a plane as that bouncy 70's flute music plays (everything in this film takes place in bright sunshine)?! Why is it so happy? 

Laugh now, pay later

  One of his pals gets too drunk and talks about a gangbang that happened during Nam with a girl named Leena the Laughing Hyena! When the slappy cornball music is shut off it's replaced by very loud room tone. All of his friends know that he flipped out in Nam, but none of them suspect he is planning on destroying their lives. 

  The most disturbing part of the film happens 30 minutes later as Gene beats the shit out of his pal and then rapes his wife (fully clothed by the way). The awkward jolly music is pumped in again, extremely loud as Gene and his other soon to be murdered friend sight see around Sausalito, Ca and the Golden Gate bridge. The back and forth between happy and depressing is unnerving. It starts to get strange again and slightly homo erotic as he forces his pal to perform Macbeth for him and convinces him to drink wine and pills and then die. In the last few minutes an army buddy plays into his flashback by enacting a scenario that they already went through together (which seems dangerous). It all ends with Gene delivering a baby and his own suicide (which is featured on some box covers)!

With friends like these, who needs friends

  The psychotronic review of this was very negative and Weldon talks about how sick and depressing this film was to him, I didn't find it any worst then any run of the mill excessive 70's TV movie. It is pretty effective and convincing for such a minimal budgeted film. The anti-war message is a timeless one and once again, the mental health industry and the government create victims out of soldiers that fight and die for the American myth.   

WATCH HERE

Door to Silence

Door to Silence (1991)    Directed by Lucio Fulci

How do you say "that's all folks" in Italian? Door to Silence is Lucio Fulci's (the maestro's) swan song. The last film he completed before his fatal heart attack. Sadly I can't say he went out on a good note, because the film is absolute crap. That being said this film may have also been the inspiration for M. Night Shyamalan-a-ding-dong's 6th Sense!

It says "Party here tonight, People are just dying to get in"

The movie stars John Savage. A very bloated John Savage, he really commands this role, lighting up screen in a tour de force performance. The same type of performance Alec Baldwin gave in "Cat in the Hat".
Right off the bat Melvin Devereux(Savage) is attending his wife's funeral, the couple were also business partners in the real estate game. When he leaves, a strange women says hello and that they are well acquainted, but Melvin can't recall how. She shows up mysteriously throughout the movie, turning up just like a bad penny.

Tim Heidecker?

Pardon me, do you have any grey poupon?

For the rest of the movie Melvin is pretty much driving and driving and driving. While driving, a hearse won't let him pass and is constantly trying to run him off the road. With all the driving in the film this starts happen all to often and the film starts acting as if it's trying to be Spielberg's "Duel". Except having limited budget all the action is sped up fast forward style.

95% John,   5% Savage

On the road again!

At one point the hearse is pulled over at a bar and when Melvin investigates what's in the back he discovers a casket with his name on it!!! You see where this is going? He endlessly pursues the hearse looking for an opportunity to bust it open and take a look inside. Along the way more and more strange things start to happen.

Damn! This bar has no peanuts.

The Happy Hearse Driver

Who pulled my chair out from under me?

Even if this is a stinker Fulci's body of work trumps his final effort. We all know he has quite a few snooze fests in his resume. But in my humble opinion even Sweet House of Horrors is far superior to this!

1/10 ON THE CULT-O-METER

USE IT AS A COASTER

Much like the car chases in the film, I wanted to fast forward this one.

BEEP BEEP!!!!!!

Theater of Guts

Tribute Trailer

The Love Butcher

Love Butcher (1975) Directed By Donald M. Jones/ Mikel Angel starring Erik Stern

         A gentle theme (I almost expected Peter Criss to start singing Beth) comes out over a garden credit montage, but it's not all lovey-dovey because a girl is found pitch forked. Caleb the gardener seems to be the likely murder suspect, is it because he looks like a raving loony or a pervy Ray Dennis Steckler? Looks can sometimes be deceiving.

         There's a talking wig named Lester that berates Caleb and calls him a mental cripple (they flash spooky red lights over the wig). Then Caleb places the magic wig on his head and like Jerry Lewis in The Nutty Professor gets the nerve to kill ladies, not win them over with his charm! The Master of Disguise plot point reminds me of the 70’s doll: Hugo the man of a 1000 faces, if they decided to make it into a psychological slasher.

         Meanwhile unpredictable news man, Russ is having problems with his fiancé, will their problems be solved by coffee, not sure.

Love Butcher children's doll sold separately

         Lester, Caleb's alter ego is a literal lady killer and he goes to some irrational (could only happen in the 70's) lengths to sneak into girl's houses. He has a huge array of wigs and costumes (Puerto Rican guy, Fake Dick Cavett and regular goony Caleb). This film ended up on the British Video Nasty list and makes Mary Whitehouse and her cronies look like fucktards (maybe they thought the title was lewd enough to put it on the list). Then again I never would have bothered to watch The Love Butcher if it wasn't on that sinister list. So how is this film anyway? It's got that Eating Raoul John Waters style of 70's weirdness and the actor that played Caleb/ Lester (Erik Stern) went on to play a commander in War Games. It's very entertaining and has that Jekyll and Hyde type psychology with a dash of Three Company. Lester eventually assumes Caleb's identity and starts stabbing various women in the neighborhood and almost all of the idiotic women let him in to their houses and offer him drinks. There's a very disturbing swimming pool murder with a cute girl in a Ramones haircut, Lester takes a garden hose and hooks it up to her face and turns it up full blast (I thought he was trying to inflate her like a human water balloon)!

Jealous?

         Lester's wig at one point smokes a cigar and mocks Caleb as he curls up into the fetal position, this wig has an over inflated sense of self and refers to himself as an Adonis! Lester repeatedly says "But Of Course", are people asking him if he has any Grey Poupon Mustard? His personalities start battling each other and he threatens to stab himself.

Russ the newspaper man becomes a one dimensional character who shows up later only to get stabbed with giant hedge clippers. Erik Stern is a surprisingly talented actor, he carries this film and the scenes with him arguing with himself or his wig are priceless! I'm convinced Dana Carvey was a huge fan of this film and used its premise for his ultra retarded Master Of Disguise (only there's no Turtle alter ego)!

         There's a huge reveal at the end that brings all the psychological confusion together and I wouldn't dare give it away! Highly Recommended! 
  

 CLICK TO BUY

Que Pasta, Me IIamo Chico

You Brute, you vicious brute!

The Mad Butcher

 Mad Butcher (Meat Is Meat) Directed By Guido Zurli. Starring Victor Buono (1971) 
  It starts off with some drive-in huckabuck music and a Willy Wonka style credit montage, but instead of dripping chocolate it's a knife slicing through meat. Victor Buono plays Otto, a butcher in a Vienna madhouse who's discharged after 3 yrs, his doctor lets him out and back in the care of his wife. The film quality reminds me of the Alka Seltzer "Spicy Meatball" commercial. Otto returns to his butcher shop, the counter is as high as a judge's podium. The theme song vaguely sounds like Bobby Darin's Mack The Knife (probably intentional).
  To save a few bucks in the face of looming inflation, Otto does something ghastly (it seems pretty obvious). While watching naked girl silhouettes across the next apartment, his tiny wife tries to put a stop his lecherous eyeball. He wraps his ham hock fingers around her neck and twists it shut. 
  There are a couple of dopey Dragnet type cops, who later on threat to take over the movie. There is a lot of Victor Buono chopping, grinding and slicing meat, not too exciting.   

Here's a quarter lady, have a rat gnaw that thing off your face!

  The laughs are pretty flat and flavorless, but it may be that I've seen the worst filth ridden cannibal films imaginable and for 1971 this is tame. It's not terrible, just kind of cheesy and predictable. Mad Butcher's worst crime of all is that it lets one of the minor characters (a policeman), take over half of the storyline. Otto starts processing people into huge piles of sausages and people love them (of course)! Just another film in the Deep Red catalog that I'm obligated to review unfortunately, better luck next time.Warning, this film may cause drowsiness. 

DONT BOTHER

Chinese Torture Chamber Story 2

Chinese Torture Chamber Story 2 Directed By Kin-Nam Cho. Starring Yolinda Yam (1998)

  Due to popular demand, I bring you Chinese Torture fans what you've been drooling over, part 2! An entirely new cast is back for more period piece style punishment (that's a truckload of P's)!

What happens in this sequel? There's someone named Ma (I'm picturing Big Ma from Dr. Detroit is gonna hop out any moment for that promised sequel, the Wrath Of Mom)! 

  No wait! it's a dude named Ma, ohh I should have known, Jing Wong, you old trickster! A bunch of executioners in hoods show up, they look like a Chinese Mentors cover band and squeeze our new heroine, Lotus' tits off in an itchy net! Just like the first film, it flashes back to what led everyone into this sticky situation. 

  Three shirtless bros go fishing, one is named Wong, Wong can fish. They bring Mr. Mom (Ha! get it?) back to their hut for some hospitality and treat him like he's above them (there's that caste system at work again). Wong's wife is super horny and precedes to seductively lick a fried fish.The fried fish babe and Wong bang a gong for a long time. Even though they are poor criminal farmers, Ma forces them to pray and swear that they will never rob again, but they are awful at hunting and may starve and die. 

  Mr. Ma sails away and leaves them for a little while, but then returns to pick up Lotus. Now into the present, they show her get squeezed again in the net, while this sicko slices pieces of her flesh. Ma has a torture dungeon and henchmen who inflict pain by way of creative torture techniques. One gruesome scene has a flaming hot death dildo going up a female bandit's cooter.

  Ma is a secret sadist that justifies his actions of brain removal and perverted execution by saying all thieves are enemies of the state and should be dealt with. I think they intentionally waited 30 minutes in to bring the pain train, so that people who didn't expect it got slapped over the head, nice work Jing Wong, I'd expect nothing less. 

Mommy Don't Play That!

  Mr. Ma puts a vampire mask on the bitchiest woman in the world's vagina and even acts like a bloodsucker. There's a flashback and forward scene with genital violence in both segments. Fans of the skullcracking mercury antics of the first film should be satisfied with that amount of carnage. One poor unfortunate bastard's chompy bits are mixed with some wine and squashed like a tomato. Then they break out the swords and start dismembering. Wong ends up a human puppet with boiling oil getting poured into his ear canals and his lips sewn up Dee Snider in Strangeland style.   

  Unlike the first film, they don't establish enough sympathy for you to identify with each character, however there is enough bloodshed and sex to keep it entertaining.

  I'm not that heartless and did start to feel sorry for them toward the end. Ma ends up getting what he deserves and the payoff is well worth sticking around for! Check it out and stay classy torture fans. 

You win the prize

Red Hot Chili Pecker

WATCH HERE

Contamination

Contamination Directed By Luigi Cozzi. Starring Ian Mcculloch (1980)           

            When Luigi Cozzi made Contamination he took the poster for Alien, borrowed a little from Invasion of the Body Snatchers and went to the fridge to see what other moldy eggs or gunk stuck in there might also inspire him. Clearly eggs and people in hazmat suits are a nice chunk of the hilarity that occurs in Contamination and that Goblin score keeps you sedated and glued to the screen. It's a lot of fun and the best Luigi Cozzi film in my opinion. I actually saw his stupid Lou Ferrigno Hercules movie in the theater with my dad when it came out.

            Cozzi is a huge sci fi nerd (he also made that Buck Rogers deleted episode with Joe Spinell, otherwise known as StarCrash) and seems inspired by all the classics, consider him an Italian Forest Ackerman but with less money (and even less talent).

            I always love when Al Cliver's disembodied voice shows up (or Ed Mannix), it dubs a few people in this one, it's gotten more work then Al himself.

            An unmanned ship full of corpses is found (similar to the one in Zombi 2) but only giant green eggs are on board, they sing, gyrate and explode.

            The green eggs travel off the boat and now are hanging out at a coffee bean factory and unleash their deadly yoke in the faces of a clean up crew. It starts a gruesome chain reaction of bursting organs and a shower of what resembles a gushing overstuffed human bean burrito.

             Louise Marleau plays Col. Stella, originally Cozzi wanted Caroline Munro, but was pressured by the producers to hire this significantly older Canadian actress instead. She works at an experimental government defense lab. The score is pretty rad and sounds like heavy bass (Goblin's Fabio Pignatelli is a maniac on the instrument) played over Atari sounds. The title track sounds like the middle part of “Heart of The Sunrise” by Yes but with overdriven videogame noises.

            I'm glad they took the chest bursting from Alien concept to irrational lengths and there are tons of slo-mo shots of meaty intestines flying around. In Alien a single chest is busted open, but in Contamination the eggs cause the rupture just from being picked up.

            Two spaceman; Hamilton and Hubbard are accused of delivering the menace from Mars to Earth and sought out by the defense team of scientists. Ian Mcculloch, every gore fans favorite crispy haired bloke plays Ian Hubbard (son of old Mother). Everything in his house is plaid and liquor bottles are lying around everywhere. Hubbard is all broken up about his boyfriend Hamilton betraying their friendship and covering up the egg conspiracy. Stella bullies Ian into a trip to S. America and he slaps her full force in the face. It turns out Hamilton is running an alien Easter egg sanctuary hidden in a delightful coffee factory. Apparently in this film, eggs can only be smuggled in as coffee with no exceptions! I mean eggs and coffee are synonymous with breakfast… it’s all making sense now right?

            A big egg that looks like a glowing slimy football is dropped next to the toilet while Stella is showering. It makes slow groaning stomach type sounds or slowed down Chewbacca.

            Ian hangs out in the jungle during one scene, rambling about zombies (perhaps he wandered onto the island of Matool by accident). Instead he finds hazmat suit wearing egg farmers who use microwaves to incubate the alien spawn. The basement cyclops (or the mother alien) looks like something off a Sam Arkoff poster, it crunches Stella's spaceman boyfriend. I love Contamination, highly recommended! It's split up in parts right now on Youtube so watch it that janky way or buy the DVD.  

    

Check out Skunkape's incredible homemade trailer!

PPUHLEEZZE

I'm what some refer to as a Science MILF

Wampa's easter egg cave

Have you seen this bloated chicken McNugget?

Don't leave me hangin bro!

Making of Contamination

Cannibal World

Cannibal World Directed by Bruno Mattei. Starring Helena Wagner (2004).

  Ah Vincent Dawn what a great pseudonym, as Bruno Mattei he has carved out a nice little career stealing from other directors who stole from somebody else more talented, In past reviews I mention the concept of the pasta yacht, that's the vessel of supreme Italian success you want to be attached to and hitch your sinking rotten ship onto all the more known celebrity directors, your Argentos, Fulcis or in this case Deodato. 

  Then again why would you possibly want to remake Cannibal Holocaust? In 2004 (when this came out) Eli Roth was recommending it, The pristine Criterion style version courtesy of Sage Stallone & Grindhouse Realeasing was on all the shelves and Holocaust was more of a media darling than it had ever been in its heyday. So it makes perfect sense to try and get in on some of that cash-flow and notoriety, right? Armed with his rinky dink Fisher Price camera in order to get that lawyer commercial or "Overdrawn At The Memory Bank" film stock quality Mr. Mattei went to work, no one could blame him for trying!

  In my mind Mattei has two great films under his belt, Rats: Nights Of Terror and Virus: Hell Of The Living Dead and he's also the butt of many Cinema Snob jokes. http://thecinemasnob.com/categories/263/the-bruno-mattei-show.aspx

Cannibal World starts off with news anchor footage that looks like the same technology they used for the "You Might Think" video by The Cars as we see Grace Forsythe and Bob Manson lick their lips and gleefully watch a native woman have her baby cut out of her belly. What should be vile and impossible to watch comes off unintentionally funny, the delayed English Kung Fu style dubbing helps the comedy get off to a good start. 

  In Hong Kong some Mouths later (theres a typo on the film that's not me this time). Grace shows up and yells in another language while her english dialogue clumsily catches up. Her media trash show "Face to Face" is getting canceled by, as she puts it by "a bunch of boneless dicks" and snozzwagglers. 

  According to her network, the Iraq war has made the public increasingly more bloodthirsty and their new programs have to satisfy the audience. It's weird to me how ahead of its time Cannibal Holocaust was (even though I find that film repulsive) in that media prophetic way, it was sort of genius, but this film is embarrassing in the logic of its own time period, I mean Fox News and reality TV is even outdated by the time this film was made, they could have made it more relevant to todays media cesspool but they mangled it. I didn't expect much from this director.

  Bob Manson is stuck out in the jungle (or the "pukey shit hell" as Grace puts it), she meets him out there to offer him a million for a story about cannibalism. The bad dialogue is sometimes on par with Showgirls! 

  They made this film as a marketing ploy and its doesn't follow the story of the original Cannibal Holocaust at all, other then exploiting the same types of native cultures for media attention and using a few lines.     

  Garcia the indian guide joins them on their canoe ride, the news ladies get topless and scare him away. He also slap happily cracks open a real baby alligator to eat. 

  They find some flesh eating cannibals in the jungle and soldiers with machine-guns. One of the black soldiers has a "Peter Lorre" accent. Bob and Grace do a lot of talking to the camera and pretend to be grossed out as they show the TVN executives back in Hong Kong watching the footage. Their over enthusiasm is infectious and the footage consists of alot of broke foreigners in bad wigs eating raw pork covered in kayro syrup. The audience is supposed to believe that this cannibal reality show is a smashing success!

  Bob Manson has a slight case of morality and isn't sure if its worth it to venture further into the jungle, maybe he's the Robert Kerman of this Cannibal ripoff. They encounter a tribe feasting on various bodies and one of the crew members barfs up Nickalodeon slime.   

  There's no element of real danger when they burn down the villagers hut, it's all obviously staged. I'm grateful that they only killed one animal and the only reason to enjoy this film is to crack open some cold ones, pop some pills and laugh about it. The whole premise of the producers going through the motions and questioning whether they should air it or not makes even the dullest cannibal film smarter than this one, I think two of the TVN executives are based on Dick Cheney. They also manage to recreate the rape scene as the camera crew sexually abuses a native girl. The famous recreation of her punishment by way of a pole run through her body sticking out of her mouth, is pitifully orchestrated here. If Cannibal Ferox is Holocaust on training wheels, this one is the equivalent to an informercial on crutches. Not worth tracking down. 

A prequel?

Stay Classy San Diego 

Alligator CSI is on

NO LINK   

Theater of Guts

Tribute Trailer 

 

Centipede Horror

Centipede Horror (Wu Gong Zhou) Directed by Keith Li (1984 or 88 not sure).

            These ain't no Atari style Centipedes or human variety, these are the genuine article, the roaches wormy cousin. The narrator sounds like he recorded his dialogue in an infested bathroom and he most likely did to get some live footage of these multi-legged varmints. Two siblings go on an island vacation to South East Asia where they have roadside grass jelly(wha?) and ground coconuts you drink from, Andrew Zimmern would be in Centipede Horror Heaven!           

            The sister and her friend get some unfriendly crawly attention in the forest from the pesky creatures and are hospitalized, one even dies of a heart attack! The brother is very distraught over it and the doctors blame it on leftover atomic dust from Hiroshima! 

            Carnival barkers selling snake oil like in Killer Snakes and Calamity Of Snakes show up once again and are taken seriously for curing diseases! I only wish that was bullshit and senseless killing of animals for virility was fiction! They actually let this medicine show reject into the hospital before someone can yell SECURITY! her face breaks out into black boils and she dies. Some of the music is stolen from The Terminator, Rocky 3 and Poltergeist!!!

나는 바보 동정

            It's pretty cheesy that they would steal the music and apply it to their own emotional moments. Centipede Horror likes to use methods of fixing everything beyond science and medicine by relying on magic and nonsense!  It turns out the grass jelly salesman is some kind of evil wizard in on the centipede revenge. Another medicine man (who looks like an Asian Walter Matthau) uses invisible voodoo kids to do his bidding,who he calls little peas, this is one freaky forest! The Matthau looking priest puts stamps all over the naked girls body and plays the drums with giant meat bones all the while singing "Wacka-Do, Wacka-Do". This causes her to vomit up scorpions.
          The movie takes odd detours that add weird moments that don't connect to anything and there's hardly any centipedes, what gives?

          The old wizard has that Shaw Brothers style soiled wig and uses black magic to control the brother character, a magic amulet that he wears prevents his death. There's a bad ass wizard battle toward the end with ringing bells and a fire circle as centipedes get vomited out. 

          During the last few minutes they must have paid the bug wrangler, because the centipedes are back in action! The wizard had also possessed the brother character's girlfriend, he doesn't notice the million little critters scurrying outside his apartment because he's making out with his lady (possessed by a man). Comin up is probably the strangest shit I've seen in awhile (and that's really saying something)! A group of what I can only guess are ghostchickens returning for retaliation for being sacrificed are lazerbeamed! The wizard responsible for the whole centipede catastrophe is burned alive and things don't really go back to normal, just lots of puke hits the fan. Barforama!

Keep away from my magic donuts

Kentucky Fried Lazers

WATCH HERE

Theater of Guts

Tribute Trailer

 

Die Screaming Marianne

Die Screaming Marianne Directed By Peter Walker. 1971

          Susan George is one actress that has been on both sides of the film spectrum (classy and guttertripe), she's worked with Franco Nero in Enter The Ninja, Klaus Kinski in Venom (with a face biting snake) and most famously in Straw Dogs. Here she plays a hitch hiking go-go dancer in Die Screaming Marianne, so its a safe bet that who ever Marianne is, she ends up six feet beneath the cold ground, dying a horrible death! 

          As far as go-go dancers go, Marianne( George) wears enough gold around her cooter to choke out Mr. T! I mean her crotch just looks rich, so hang onto those dollars! 

dedicated follower of fashion

          Sebastian, a poncy hairdresser who has very forward plans on marrying her seems to have devious motives on his mind. He and his pal have girly mod hair and wear over sized frilly scarves. Susan George has that kind of white lipstick, Brady Bunch look in this film, she has no say in this awkward forced marriage. She then takes the ring and splits (all part of some elaborate scam, apparently). Some shady characters at a party show up and plan on killing Marianne (finally)! The Judge, an old geezer with sharpie eyebrows and incest on his mind gives this flick that dose of creepiness, its been lacking but then it goes back to being stale.
         Sebastian's pal Eli accidentally stabs a fat guy in the hallway. Marianne gets locked in a sauna and the Judge burns up in a car wreck. She never screams or dies, so the title is false advertising! The pacing is very thin and doesn't build up to much tension or excitement, you could take a nap and not miss much. Everyone is conniving and money hungry to get the Judge's money. It's a slow moving mildly entertaining bore. 

                                      

         

          I remember seeing the very misleading videobox (apparently this is a video nasty based solely on the cover box) for this film that had a blonde with a mouth like a trout, her neck was slit open and blood was trailing down. I would have been seriously pissed if I rented this and waited around for this awesome spectacle to show up. The film is very cheesy, but entertaining in a kind of swinging London way. If you come expecting a bloodbath, don't bother, this film is not for you. I wanted to give Peter Walker a chance on this blog, but gore fans stay away and stay tuned for more ghoulish goodies next time.    

ZZZZZZWATCH HEREZZZZZZZZZ  

Deadbeat At Dawn

Deadbeat At Dawn Directed By Jim Van Bebber. Starring Marc Pittman. (1988).

            For my copy of this flick I made a deal with Chas Balun, I’d send him a blank videotape and he’d dub me a copy. He was very generous in that way and often wrote back and answered by dopey questions, which was very cool. At the time it was pretty much impossible to find a copy, no video stores had them and the only stuff I could find from director Jim Van Bebber was “My Sweet Satan + his early shorts, including one of my favorite incomplete ones Roadkill: the last days of John Martin. That one was unfinished and there was a rumor that the actor left and a lot of commercials were never cleared of copyright infringement (one road service one that intersects brilliantly with the reality of a cannibal serial killer stringing up people to be eaten later). This one in my mind is the most accurate Jeffrey Dahmer tribute (and fuck that Jeremy Renner sympathetic Dahmer bullshit). I would read about Van Bebber’s Charlies Family (which later became Manson Family) years before it came out (in 1990), so I was eager to check out his first film.

            Deadbeat At Dawn is such a nerve wrecking tough martial arts street gang flick that has the same kind of authenticity that Combat Shock had. I also connected the two because I had been introduced to Buddy G through the Deep Red catalog and he also made the best with what he had (locations, excessive gore and a meager budget) and made some genius short films and music videos. Deadbeat is almost like an ultra low budget Warriors. They both have that grassroots working class ethic and homegrown quality that can’t be faked, Deadbeat comes from the standpoint of low life druggie burn outs, fighting for turf in Dayton Ohio.            

            Van Bebber is Goose the leader of The Ravens, in the DVD interviews, he mentions that Code Of Silence was a major influence on his character. He wanted to create a complete opposite style of character, basically a scumfuck Chuck Norris getting high instead of enforcing his conservative authority (which includes slamming a cokehead’s face into his straw). Most of the authentic street punks seem pissed off and hold a grudge against society and are at each other’s throats, Danny is the leader of The Spiders, the rival gang, he looks like an out of work porn actor and brings his Batman mask to a brawl. The gang names are all co-incidentally also garage band names.

Guts look like snakes

            Bonecrusher has the most quotable lines (most of them were used as intros for Impetigo songs). Goose’s girlfriend Christy is cute, but a horrid actor, thankfully she is killed pretty quickly and gets dumped into a trash compactor (a very cheap funeral)! Goose is a pathetic but likeable anti-hero who uses nunchucks to knock random people off motorcycles, dives off high bridges and at one point gets dragged against a brick wall as he hangs onto a speeding car. All the stunts look incredible and were authentic, Van Bebber trained out of a martial arts book and basically taught himself how to handle the majority of the stunts, special effects, while acting and directing. The gang begrudgingly joins forces toward the end after Goose wanders around, hangs out with his junkie father and pathetically comes onto an old high school crush in a bar who rejects him. An armored car heist is planned out, but turns into a vicious set up and it all takes a turn for the worse as Goose has a final showdown with Danny of the Spiders who chomps his fingers off. The gore effects are very convincing and cringe inducing (watching the thorax being pulled open, made me jump out of my skin)! If you combined the bleakness of Combat Shock with the entertainment value of the street gangs in The Warriors you’d have Deadbeat At Dawn, a bonefide classic. The nintendo sounding, moody casio soundtrack is cool too. Available for rent on DVD.
Buy a copy from Darksky Films
Here's a sort of cool interview with Van Bebber

Run and Kill

Run And Kill (Wu Syu). Directed By Billy Tang. Starring Kent Chuang. (1993)

            Surfin Bird, McDonalds lovin Chinese Grimace or Fatty (Kent Chuang) has the perfect life. He has a precocious daughter and a supermodel looking wife, what could possibly go wrong?

            Almost everything, especially if you find your wife cheating and like a sad sack instead of confronting the fuckers, you go drown your sorrows in whisky and cheeseburger grease! While our fat hero is down at a gangster bar (like in Star Wars, nothing but scum and villainy), too drunk to move, sloshing around, telling everyone he wants his wife and family dead, he is robbed. A cute punk girl steals his money and accidentally pays some hitmen to kill his entire family, this scenario isn’t very realistic, but never forget, its only a movie!

            Clearly all the mayhem that escalates can be attributed to alcohol, but this whole situation is total fantasy (or a nightmare)!

            The famous Dr. Lamb (Simon Yam), plays Ching Fung a sadistic war vet who is the wrong guy for the fat man to have on his side. He’s squeezed into a corner with nowhere to go, because one side’s idea of fun is jabbing giant straws into kneecaps and watching the victim twitch. And the alternative is to join up with an even more depraved version of Dr. Lamb in military garb. Run And Kill is a cautionary tale, warning people to not drink and hang out with killers or your family will suffer and your cute daughter will get burned up. This fat lummox is so likeable that it’s hard to blame him for causing the death of his daughter. The film gets viciously cruel toward the end as the BBQ’d daughter’s corpse is used like a puppet ("daddy I’m all burned up") and its head pops off. The punishment inflicted on Dr. Lamb doesn’t really fit the crime. The whole weak scenario toward the end reminded me of the end of Savage Streets, both protagonists had a lot of time to enact revenge and instead dragged it out, so it got very frustrating! Fatty yells," Now he’s dead, now he’s dead", over and over again ad nauseum and sweats bullets it’s a frantic sight as everything goes up in flames and it ends there with Dr. Lamb exploding. If you can find it, its worth checking out.

BURP!

SORRY NO LINK

To Watch More of Fatty's Bad Day
Watch our Tribute Trailer!

Zombie Lake

Zombie Lake Directed By Jean Rollin  (1981). Starring Howard Vernon.

            This has a reputation as being one of the dumbest, worst, most pitiful underwater zombie flicks ever made, its so bad that Jess Franco abandoned it and then Jean Rollin took over. According to Wikipedia, Rollin only had two weeks to throw together this half baked slop and was embarrassed by it, he should be! I was very confused by Zombie Lame (or Lake) and figured it might be the only French zombie film (its probably not) it does keep you glued to the screen with constant naked women though. A naked sunbather pulls up the warning sign at a remote lake and dives in (there are so many gynecological shots of water logged beavers in Zombie Lake that its at least watchable, if you are straight). 

           Howard Vernon ( Franco's infamous Dr. Orloff) has to deal with all kinds of problems and the villagers literally pile up dead bodies on his doorstep! In a flashback to Nazi occupied France, the mayor and villagers kill Nazis and throw them in the lake. Why they came back from the dead is never explained. The word zombie is said only once in this “Zombie” movie, and mostly they are referred to as ghosts. The mayor lives in a gaudy house decorated with statues and gargoyles, maybe its all the nazi gold he stole from the dead bodies. Or maybe its all those Orloff bucks he made off the sequels and action figures. Next time you see a canal beware, there might be nazi bodies hidden at the bottom, a secret conducted by your mayor. The mayor bails the town out of jams and enlists the help of a little girl who saves the town, her father is one of the nazi zombies! Her father wears lime green jello makeup and gives her a necklace. These zombies’ brains may be infested but their hearts are still affectionate and tender. They make it hard to shut off this bad movie by adding a whole basketball team of female skinny dippers and I lost the remote! Expect terrible zombies but stay for the French hair pie. Sadly I found it more enjoyable then Shock Waves and have yet to see Oasis of The Zombies.

Why I never!

WATCH HERE