Natural Enemies

Natural Enemies Directed By Jeff Kanew. Starring Hal Holbrook (1979)

   I'm reviewing this forgotten flick because Kris Gilpin mentioned that it had an orgy scene and Elizabeth Berriage from Tobe Hooper's Funhouse. It's got two people that later worked together in Creepshow and it was directed by the same guy who made Revenge Of the Nerds. I plan on showcasing different non-horror films that he mentioned for later reviews, but don't worry gore freaks, there's still most ghastly nightmares to be reviewed.

   Paul Steward (Hal Holbrook) is a mentally unstabled prick who says all men think of killing their families and he has a definite plan and a loaded rifle. He methodically loads his rifle, why is he suicidal? He lives out in the country in a pretty cottage and the location and film stock reminds me of that quarry rock cereal commercial from 70's SNL. So why do down Charlie Brown? 

Quarry Cereal film stock

   His wife is Nurse Ratchet or Louis Fletcher, she O.D's on ritalin and says romantic shit like "did you enjoy the sex, while I was asleep"? The narration is all Holbrook talking trash about his rotten family that he can't wait to murder (and apparently wants to screw his daughter played by the Elizabeth Berriage from Tobe Hooper's Funhouse). He says the family slaying will take the same amount of time as an orgasm. His silent family has no lines and just watch cartoons as he secretly talks smack about all of them. The media violence and monotony is pushing this unstable jerk to the breaking point. His negative introspection and hatred toward himself and his family make him a perfect candidate for psychotherapy. He blames his marital entrapments and anger toward himself on his children and wife's mental illness. All the melancholy and depressing shit made me feel better about my life.

   

I'm still depressed

   His life has lost all meaning because he has to care for his mentally ill wife (why doesn't he hire a nurse)? Holbrook is a magazine publisher, who acts like an amateur psychiatrist as he talks to holocaust survivors and astronauts. The survivor tells him what the audience is thinking "why don't you just divorce your wife". Since he's fantasizing about the murder of her and his children, he should check himself into a psychiatric hospital, instead he visits a whorehouse! He has an orgy with five girls and then later subjects them to more of his dime-store psychology. The whores even mention "why doesn't he talk to his wife"? The film flashes back and forth to moments of his wife's insanity, why they sleep in separate beds and when they both really checked out on each other. 

Boo Hoo, I'm still sad

Speaking as someone who's completely anti-gun and not wanting to bother to get preaching on here, insanity and guns don't mix and people that hate each other should get divorced, no matter what, especially if there's no shred of compassion or intimacy left. This film hates marriage, but it does have a good point about divorce (just leave don't prolong it or have fantasies about murder). Later on the holocaust survivor tries to change Hal's mind, who says nothing matters "because we're already dead" and quotes Nietzsche, if this were the 80's, Hal would be wearing eyeliner and have Robert Smith hair!  Viveca Lindfors shows up and argues for a nuclear war! Which is funny because growing up during that time period with Reagan that's all I feared!     

The 70's bleakness and isolation reminds me of The Ice Storm (although that was fake 70's). The resurgence of that alienation is happening now, but there's wonderful advancements in psychiatric medicine, ha! Gun nuts are more present then ever (or have they always been lurking around)? I guess things are still basically just as shitty! The film is really fascinating, thought provoking and grim, but has no connection to Deep Red, it comes off more like a lost tv movie. I wonder if George Romero saw this when he casted Creepshow and thought, "too preachy, needs a crate monster and a zombie who wants a cake".This whole film in a nutshell is like that Patton Oswalt breakfast treat joke about marriage. Breakfast Joke Link. I would have been more satisfied if all the violence was shown instead of implied and its definitely overly talky.

WATCH HERE

Hitchhike

Hitchhike (Autostop rosso sangue, Death Drive) Directed by Pasquale Festa Campanile. Starring David Hess (1977)

   Sometimes I wonder who’s taken more cinematic abuse John Morghen or Franco Nero? I mean sure Morghen has been mutilated, castrated, tortured, drilled through the head and had his brains eaten out by savages, but I ask you readers which is more humiliating? To die a memorably horrific death or constantly being bitch smacked, pummeled, betrayed by fake friends (in Street Law) getting your hands smushed by horse hooves (in Django), butt fucked (in Fassbinder’s Querelle), having your wife slowly raped in front of you, while tears stain your giant frankfurter mustache? Nero is constantly suffering and getting humiliated and the torture never ends as he is forced to push all the trauma down into his intestines until it turns into cancer and destroys from the inside out! I’ll admit it’s far fetched, but how else can I pad my review of Hitchhike?

   David Hess gets picked up by Nero, whose wife convinces them to stop, they drive around, then he abducts him and his attractive wife played by Devil’s Honey and the Story of O’s sultry babe Corinne Clery and berates and insults the couple, who’s marriage it on the rocks. That’s an understatement, because just before, scumbag Walter secretly had his wife in the crosshairs of his rifle and teetered on the edge of blasting her in the face and throwing her in the back of his truck! Maybe he deserves all the punishment after all!

what is this salty discharge emitting from my eyeballs?

   The premise is that Walter Mancini (Nero) is an alcoholic writer, bored to shit by his dull marriage and while on a roadtrip with his wife, makes a stupid mistake and picks up a sociopathic hitchhiker that affects both of their lives in a shitty way. David Hess (playing Adam Konitz), is always great in the gleefully sadistic heavy role, it’s almost like he just shows up and delivers slight variations of the Krug character, especially in all of these Italian exploitation films. He turns it up full throttle in House On The Edge Of The Park, but in this film it’s sort of a level 7, irritating and deadly, but nothing compared to what you’ve seen before. The emotional and mental games are inflicted more than bloodshed. Here’s a nice interview with David Hess (R.I.P.) http://www.terrortrap.com/interviews/davidhess/02/

OK which one of you farted?

    Adam is a bank robber on the lam, who keeps calling Mancini, Martini!(ouch those are fightin words)! His new mission besides annoying him incessantly is to force Walter to immortalize Konitz in print with a nice juicy story for his crummy novel. After Adam gets fresh with his wife, Walter punches him out, but his will to fight quickly dissolves enough later for Adam to get his way. The tension and monotony is infuriating in this flick! Hess lies Eve down by the fire and proceeds to violate her, and she doesn’t really struggle (and technically its not forced because she seems to enjoy it), as Walter helplessly watches and cries like a bitch! If that isn’t shitty enough, Adam slaps him around and giggles maniacally in his face. Franco’s arm is in a sling because in real life he punched out a horse on the set of Keoma (like Mongo in Blazing Saddles)? He also broke his nose in real life (this guy needs a better fight choreographer)! 

a more reserved and mellow Krug Stillo

Eric Estrada blown away

   Morricone is slumming it up here with this jaunty “sing songy” score that goes “Let’s fly, Let’s Fly, Let’s Fly, I smile…” The goofy contrast reminds me of “The Baddies Theme” ragtime shit in Last House! In the film however it’s played by a dopey campfire band of hippies and later used ironically. To add insult to injury, Eve grabs a rifle while completely naked and it seems like even she doesn’t want to give her husband any mercy either! There’s a good amount of tension and chemistry between the three actors and some choice gunshots during a cop shooting spree on the freeway, but ultimately a watered down effort with capable talent and enough Franco abuse to keep it afloat, for Hess and Franco completists only.   

Am I having a good time, you decide!

Click to Buy

Interview with Kris Gilpin of Deep Red

Howdy everyone! Crankenstien here again, doning the skinned carcass of Mike Wallace and doing my journalistic impression. Today I am interviewing another esteemed member of the Deep Red magazine crew, Mr. Kris Gilpin, the man with the spectacles and the awesome handlebar mustache! He wrote many informative articles, reviews and got to hang with horror film celebrities for DR and personal heroes like the great Monte Hellman (pictured below). Later on he ventured into the world of children's cartoons as an editor, check out his IMDB page here.He will also be included in the Xerox Ferox book by John Szpunar.Be sure to support this amazing book and all Deep Red alumni by purchasing a copy. 

Kris and Monte Hellman

1.How did you meet Chas Balun?

I can't exactly remember, but I believe I mailed him some old interviews, told him I loved Deep Red and all but begged him to let me in. He said, "Sure!" (he was an incredibly nice soul!) & that was it.

Kris with Schlockmeister: Larry Buchanan

2.What are some of the worst films you had to review for Deep Red?

 I had to check the old issues to remember them! I did see a unique play in L.A. once, Frankenstein: Playing with Fire, which I did review for DR. It was an interesting but OK play, too much talk and the scariest moment was when a character walked to a door in silence and, when he touched the knob, a huge scream came over the theater's sound system, scaring the shit out of everyone. I reviewed Autopsy for him, which was a fun, sick "Shit Flick", plus it starred Mimsy Farmer, who I always thought was lovely. & I did Nightflyers, too, which I cannot even remember now! I said it pretty much sucked though, at least it had the lovely Catherine Mary Stewart & the gorgeous Lisa Blount in it. & I said Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night 2 was bad, but Michael Ironside was in it. Chuck Vincent, who made porn, made If Looks Could Kill, an attempt at an R-thriller, I thought it sucked (so to speak) and Jaime Gillis (puke) & beauty Veronica Hart were in it. 

Mimsy Farmer in Autopsy

I reviewed The Killing Time, with Beau Bridges & Keifer Sutherland, I said it was just OK, which is why I can't remember that one now. I got Deathstalker II, too, a weak Jim Wynorski (I never liked his stuff very much) flick, John La Zar (Beyond the Valley of the Dolls's Z-Man) was the bad guy here & it had the gorgeous Monique Gabrielle in it, too. 

Z-man in Death Stalker 2

I reviewed Natural Enemies with Hal Holbrook, can't recall it (duh, guess I'm gettin' old now), I said it was a good idea but basically all talk, with an orgy scene in the middle of it & a cameo by Funhouse's pretty Elizabeth Berridge. & Steve Railsback's Blue Monkey was a forgettable monster movie. Buster and Billie was an above-average rape/revenge film, with Robert Englund in a small part. The Curse was actor David Keith's first directorial effort, a campy contamination flick with lots of maggots in it. The Rosary Murders with beauty Belinda Bauer was a bland thing. Katt Shea Ruben's Stripped to Kill was a sexy little number (lots of skin, little blood) with Kay Lenz in it. The Mind Snatchers was a good brain-manipulation thriller with a wonderful, introverted Christopher Walken & an extroverted Ronny Cox. Hunter's Blood was a worthy, good but talky Deliverance rip-off, with a rednecky Clu Gulager & some good bloodletting. Gator Bait is, of course, a sleaze classick with adorable, sexy Claudia Jennings & I was always happy to see Larry Buchanan regular Bill Thurman show up in any movie, too, this one had a shocking shotgun-to-a-female-crotch scene which caused disgusted walkouts in its day. And Night Force was a shitty Richard Lynch "thriller," a waste of time.

Claudia "Gatorbait" Jennings

3. I read your interview with Tiffany Bolling, which was great! What did you think of The Candy Snatchers?

 Thank you, so glad you like my interview (it's also online now at TempleofSchlock.Com). I loved Candy Snatchers, I thought it was great, funny, sexy, stupid sleaze. Tiffany (who was very sweet & lovely to meet in person) didn't like any of her nudie films by that time though I told her that was a fave B-movie of mine. We're both Christians & we exchanged Christmas cards for a couple years after our talk. Growing up in Florida (& fucking hating it!), the Miami Herald dogged the film out of course & I always remembered the nasty blurb above their review: "Candy Snatchers: Deaf Mute Has Best Lines!" HA!!

Candy Snatchers mute kid

4. I was exposed to The Hunting Party through the Deep Red catalog, what are some lesser known genre films that gore fans should know about?

 I wasn't interested in Hunting Party for some reason when it first opened, though I love Westerns & again, the blurb in the Miami Herald simply stated disgustedly, "Hunting Party: Blood Orgy" so I ran out to it & couldn't believe it, a great "Shit Western" with Candy Bergin (who gets her crotch shotgunned out!), Oliver Reed & Gene Hackman as a good prick. The flick's idea of comic relief (which I've always hated in a dramatic film!) was to have Reed slurp peaches into his mouth like a kid, as Candy giggles (!). Brains blown out, it was fun shit!

Hackman taking names and blowing out crotches

   Other "semi-rare" sleaze (& I use that term in my most beloved, affectionate, respectable way possible!) include these K.G. faves: Possession, Cook Thief His Wife and Her Lover, A Better Tomorrow II, The Killer, Hard-Boiled (with maybe the greatest, 45-minute shootout climax ever on film!), Black Magic Rites (great, sexy Italian sleaze!), Caligula (the only film to feature Sir John Gielgud--& a close-up blow job!!), Dogtooth and Klown (great, twisted Eurosleaze), Forbidden World, Going Places (a fave French-sleaze road film!), El Topo, Santa Sangre, the original Humanoids from the Deep, Perdita Durango (hopefully uncut), 1900, Rolling Thunder, the original Straw Dogs, Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch and Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (the atmosphere constantly drips with sleaze!), Super, Tokyo Gore Police, Suicide Club (a fave), Machine Girl, The Woman, A Zed & 2 Naughts, my fave Euro zombiefest: Zombie Holocaust, Branded to Kill, Salo, Spirits of the Dead (the Toby Dammit section), The Addiction, Blood for Dracula, Flesh for Frankenstein, Brain That Wouldn't Die, Cutthroats Nine, Combat Shock, Dust Devil (love it!), Deranged, Doom Generation (esp. uncut), Female Yakuza Tale, Heavy Traffic, Hickey & Boggs, The Mad Bomber (a fave rave!!), Sonny Boy, Stacy, The Devils, Crimes of Passion (Tony Perkins's sleaziest part ever!), Up!, Supervixen, Cherry Harry and Raquel,  La Grande Bouffe, Aguirre the Wrath of God, Sonatine, Tale of Two Sisters, The Untold Story, Visitor Q, Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble, Desperate Living, Fireworks, Violent Cop, Boiling Point & You Light up My Life (O, I kid, I kid!).

Overrated? someone had to say it!

5.I heard in an interview that you think Fulci is very overrated, what in your opinion are his top five worst films?

 I actually haven't seen a ton of Fulci, but what I've seen feel the same way to me: great gore, sloppy scripts & overrated, they're fun "Shit Flicks", but not great filmmaking. The best horrormeisters in my humble opinion are good with direction/FX/story/actors/editing, etc., the whole whole. But of course it's only my opinion, which doesn't (& shouldn't) mean shit to anyone on earth but me.

Please! for fuck's sake, turn off that Whitney Houston Song!

6. I heard that you were close with Nicholas Worth, please talk about him.

 I was working in the Universal Film Shipping dept. & I walked in one day & the boss was talking/laughing with this friendly big guy & I thought, "NO!" & when they took a breath I said, "Nicholas Worth?!" He & the boss smiled that I knew his name (& NW was a Christian), and as time went on, he was happy to talk to me for some fanzines, and we became close friends, he'd always say, "Call me Uncle Nick!" & every time I saw him would always ask how my ex-wife Mary was doing. I asked him once in an interview, "What do you say to the people who give you shit for being a Christian and a bad guy in films?" And his voice would raise & he'd say, "God has granted my prayers and made me an actor, and if I play a bad guy and have to kill and cuss, I'll be the best bad guy I can be, and my naysayers can kiss my ass!" ;-) he was a great, very sweet, fun bear of a guy (like Chas Balun) & everyone will wanna get 2013's Xerox Ferox book to read Uncle Nick's hilarious comment about Whitney Houston's screeching "And I Will Always Love You" song ;-)! & if you wanna see/hear an aged (& sadly thinner) Nick Worth as himself, watch his interview in the special features of Scorpion Releasing's (Katarina's Nightmare Theater) Don't Answer the Phone Remastered Edition DVD.

the adorable bloodthirsty electric knife wielding Lynn Lowry

7. I like your interview with Lynn Lowry (in The DR Horror Handbook) where she mentions; an actress in "I Drink Your Blood" who fluffs up her pubes, what is she talking about, do you recall?

Thanks again, buddy! I was pissed because the only actresses I couldn't meet in public to talk with were Lowry & the ethereally beautiful Rainbeaux/Cheryl Smith, who looked like an angel, what a sad, tragic life and death she had to lead! She also signed her questions to me with little smiley faces on the pieces of papers we mailed to each other, whatta sweetheart ;-)! Anyway, I don't recall which actress Lynn was talking about, but checking Mr. Skin, it would seem to be Iris Brooks, who also appeared in the sexy underground comedy with Buck Henry, Is There Sex After Death?, and Streisand's Up the Sandbox.

Mark Of The Devil

Mark Of The Devil Directed By Michael Armstrong, starring Reggie Nalder(1970)

If you hate religious persecution and enjoy watching innocent people humiliated and tortured in the name of hypocrisy then you’ve got problems like I do (because I love witchburning flicks)! This one was made in Austria by Adrian Hoven and Michael Armstrong to capitalize on the success of Michael Reeves’ film Witchfinder General. That film wasn’t gruesome enough, so Hoven and Armstrong packed it with some of the most repulsive violence against women ever committed to film. If you are a genre fan though, it’s difficult to say if this would really offend you, the violence is pretty strong though. Hallmark (the same people who created It’s Only A Movie campaign for Last House On The Left, dredged up the "V for Violence" gimmick and also the free stomach distress bags)! According to The Last House On The Left book by David Szulkin, even Ann Landers lashed out and devoted a 1972 column to the “immorality of Mark Of The Devil’s ubiquitous ad campaign”. Devil made truckloads of money according to David Whitten (the man responsible for the barf bag idea) and it secured the new box office trend of mixing sex and extreme gore in the 70’s, soon after Last House would arrive. The music in this, like in Last House threatens the contrast between cornball music placed over images of violence, resonating with inappropriateness (this one is exceptionally smaltzy)! The title song of Mark Of The Devil was recently featured in Hobo With A Shotgun.

   Reggie Nalder (Salem’s Lot, Zoltan) is Albino, a terrifying local town horndog/witchfinder, who's supremely ugly with a skull like face covered in burnt flesh and those are his real life features! 

Steven Tyler: Witchfinder

   The citizens fear him, because they too could be accused and tried as witches, but encourage the cruel punishment because they are very delighted by the medieval version of reality television (hangings and innocent people burnt on ladders) and even mention how they find the sermons too boring! These people demand entertainment! He accuses the first female victim, Vanessa (Olivera Vuca) of witchcraft because he tries to force himself on her in a bar and she refuses his slimy advances.

Hand me that trademarked airsickness bag

   Christian (Udo Keir) and his henchmen disapprove of Albino’s abuse of power, but soon a more heinous and intimidating presence will show up in the form of Herb Lom (Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Pink Panther) who plays the impotent Lord Cumberland. He is more hypocritical then Albino, basically because he hides behind religion. All the levels of hierarchy and throat cutting religious hysteria is the part I find most intriguing about all of these films. Udo and his relationship with the accused witch Vanessa is similar to the one in Witchfinder General, but the film is slightly more sadistic, but not a complete rip off, it stands on its own as a good euro trash exploitively unpleasant film. According to IMDB, Reeves was supposed to direct this, but unfortunately died and his assistant Michael Armstrong took over.

   The notorious scene with an overly beaten and abused girl's (Gaby Fuchs) tongue being ripped out by the roots with pincers is ordered by Lord Cumberland, very nonchalantly, almost like he’s ordering off the dollar menu at Wendys! 
   Mark Of The Devil gives the audience the impression that all men are corrupt power mad, sexually frustrated rapists, who enjoy inflicting torture, with a calm demeanor in the name of religion, saying "never weaken when doing the Lord’s work". Or just drooling morons following orders. Udo ends up sending his witchy girlfriend to the torture dungeon (sorry it’s nothing personal) and says if she is proven innocent by God, then obviously she won’t end up burnt alive! Ha! There is an underlying political context as Albino talks about how they really use the guise of the witchfinder job as a means of getting laid and robbing people, their true nature is a seething lust for blood and power. This film conveys the ignorance of authority by showing a few henchmen visiting a children’s puppet show and arresting a puppeteer and his whole family for witchcraft! They give the puppeteer the Chinese water torture treatment as one of the oppressors tries to invent a puppet out of popsicle sticks and string tied to a rabbit! The hypocrisy concerning law boils down to whoever is guilty, must be tortured until the maniacs holding the wrenches and pliers have gotten off enough to end with the innocent deaths of all who’ve been charged of heresy. This is the only film where I can tolerate Udo Keir’s anglicized voice (he’s been dubbed many times). It's been sampled by many 70's doom metal style bands like Cathedral, Electric Wizard and other Sabbath tribute bands. Highly Recommended for those with a strong stomach (but in just in case, there's that handy-dandy barf bag to use)! Available through Fandor.  
  

WATCH HERE

Who ordered the free range organic tongue sandwich

LSD from The Producers water torture cameo

Death Smiles On A Murderer

Death Smiles on a Murderer Directed by Joe D’Amato (1973)
   D’Amato is such an awful director that he’s perfect for softcore nonsense like Laura Gemser’s Emmanuelle films. The gore (and snuff) elements help sleaze up an all ready bloated bounty of flesh. Death Smiles is a semi Giallo, and I find at least 90% of those to be seriously dull.
   In the first half of the film I actually started doing chores  and walking in and out of the room. I came back in to see a woman being shot in the face with a raw hamburger gun (they really had a crack FX team handle this one). I think it was the same people who handled the chop meat coconut smushing effect on Porno Holocaust! There is some kind of incest subplot with an over sized baby man with play-doh colored hair, he sort of resembles a humanoid version of Jimmy Wichard from King Of The Hill! His dead sister Greta Von Holstien (Ewa Aulin from Terry Southern's Candy), keeps coming back to life and when her face rots she resembles a Mercer Mayer monster character.

 This is Joe's attempt at Poe like imagery (there is a walled up tomb and a black cat even escapes the wall). D'Amato's sloppy effort to get classy, comes off pretty stale and flavorless! He's tried to branch out many times and tackle other genre's, but always falls back on his career as a pornographer and is great at it! So why change? Keep in mind a few years later he would re-invent the Emmanuelle series, but before that he directed Emmanuelle's Revenge with his trusty work horse/main star George Eastman.  Death Smiles is one of his early films and he wasn't yet the big time slimeball of porn/gore yet, but he would soon make a name for himself! The DVD has a double feature with The Torture Chamber Of Dr. Sadism (which to me is incredibly more entertaining then this dreck)!
  Klaus Kinski was one of the main reasons I thought it might be fun to watch, but he barely sticks around. His character acts like Bunsen Honeydew from The Muppets as he mixes vials of colorful liquid. Toward the end of the film an audible record needle is heard for at least 20 minutes and doesn’t let up. This would be some kind of film recorded embarrassment for anyone else, but for Joe it's a mild achievement! just chalk is up to art for arts sake? you figure it out. Skip this and watch the other film on the DVD.There's a link on Youtube to watch this, for insomniacs only who need some rest!

pardom moi, have you seen my assistant Beeker?

ZZZZZZZ WATCH HEREZZZZZZZZ

Creature Features Week: Goke, Bodysnatcher From Hell

Here at TOG we like the horror blog community and appreciate the opportunity to network and help other horror critics, that's why Crankenstein jumped at the chance to hop on board this Creature Feature week, so please check out the links at the bottom and discover other cool horror blogs and pals of Theater Of Guts and support them as well!

Goke, Body Snatcher From Hell Directed By Hajime Sato (1968)

Out of the Shochiku factory studios came a host of Alien invaders who took over the mid 60’s, infecting the youth with monster-itus and space herpes! Films like X From Outer Space, The Living Skeleton and even Kinji Fukasaku’s Green Slime. Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell, is my favorite out of the group, it features a menacing space bloodsucker who oozes blue lava out of his forehead, the 60’s Mod style lighting is very psychedelic and features a cheap looking model airplane cast against a blood red sky (Tarantino would later steal this intentionally for Kill Bill). Mario Bava's cinematography and lighting schemes were a major influence on the look of Goke. The passengers are all Asian accept for one white lady (who they talk shit about behind her back). They start out gradually getting more paranoid of each other, then eventually, the tension reaches a boiling point, the suspiciousness of each other seem influenced by Rod Serling! ("The Monsters Are Due on Main St". comes to mind). The signs that Japan is becoming more dangerous are conveyed through assassinations in newspapers read on the plane by lurid businessmen. In fact most of the characters are unhinged and at each other's throats aboard the aircraft hurtling toward doom and destruction.

I took too many hits of Orange Sunshine

Suicidal crows dive-bomb into the sides of the plane and creating a harbinger for more foreboding dread to come later. A suave dapper passenger with cool guy shades and crazy amounts of mascara in a turtleneck sweater is the first victim of the space virus. He infects all the others by way of a space hickey, that character is played by Hideo Ko, who a few years later, played one of the freaks lurking in the background in Horrors of The Malformed Man. He pulls a gun and takes a few hostages, simultaneously as an alien spacecraft intercepts the flight and shuts off the wires, forcing it drop thousands of feet down into an emergency landing. The plane hijacker moves toward a cavern flooded with magma and becomes hypnotized by the ominous light which hides an oozing mass of blue liquid erupting from the UFO that creeps toward his face and slithers its way into his brain cavity, his face seals it in. The passengers have now gone into panic mode and bicker at each other for awhile, pulling  the blame game and trying to point the finger at each other as they run out of food and rations. The film is not only a good UFO space rabies flick, but also has political context that involves Vietnam trauma (Kathy Horan, star of Green Slime plays the white woman, whose husband was killed in Nam) and the suspicions about each other’s motives could be an allegory for Mccarthyism. There’s more depth in this film than just a typical rubber monster movie. The eyeliner hijacker criminal comes back for help, but is carrying an alien host in his skull that sluices out and infests others, turning them into catatonic vessels, the alien blob has a slowed down warbled tone of voice! Sometimes it resembles a blue puddle of intergalactic vomit. It talks through a girl named Noriko ontop of a hillside and mentions it’s race is the Gokemidoro, whose objective is to exterminate the human population.

Lend me some more mascara or I'll blow your face off

The film offers no hope and shows how in a moment of heightened paranoia and terror, people become viciously selfish and do not work together to fix a problem. They take their chances in a split second, when the chips are down, they save thier own ass! I find this cynical view on humanity refreshing and it makes Goke seem ahead of its time, combining alien invasions, war metaphors and distrust of our fellow human beings into a nice doom laden bombshell of a good creature feature! The film has less nudity then other Asian horror flicks (mainly the Shaw Brothers catalog and Shochiku film maker Oshima Nagisa), but don’t hold that against it, remember its still the 60’s and these film would get more debaucherous as they moved along through the decades almost too much in fact. It's totally worth seeking out, because you get a douce of nihilism with your MechaGodzilla. Check it out! Criterion put this out a few years ago in a nondescript boxset and it’s available to stream on Huluplus.

Please check out all the links over at Candy Coated RazorBlades as they become available! Thanks to Bob Mallett and The Incredibly Strange Horror Bloggers Network for involving me in Creature Features Week!

WATCH HERE  

Selsun Blue for your cranium

Selsun Grey for your skullbucket

can you introduce me to the guy in the bear suit from The Shining?

I knew that white bitch was crazy!

Deranged

Deranged Directed By Alan Ormsby & Jeff Gillen. Starring Robert Blossum (1974)
   Alan Ormby is a fascinating character that gets stranger the more information I find, he wrote Deranged, Death Dream, acted in and wrote Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things, created Hugo The Man of 1000 Faces; the inspiration for The Love Butcher and invented the peanut butter blood recipe (that no one really uses, so strike one)! I had his incredible book on Monster movie lighting and effects in elementary school (click here). It really goes into cheap lighting and creepy make-up two attributes that really make Deranged a fun time!
   Ormsby is not really that highly regarded or cared about, mostly Tom Savini and Bob Clark get all the credit for Deranged (I’m even guilty of that, I mean the effects in this are phenomenal)! Ormsby gets eclipsed, especially in the light of super talented genius' like Clark and Savini, but he's no slouch either!
   Deranged is one of the most accurate portrayals of the Ed Gein story (nothing is obscured or loosely based on, it’s the real deal), like on Dragnet though, only the names have been changed to protect the cannibalistic. There’s a Rod Serling type narrator played by Les Carlson (Black Christmas, Videodrome) who oversteps his boundaries and even shows up wedged in between Ezra and his mother’s corpse at one point.

Does anyone have any Febreze?

   Robert Blossum (Christine, Escape From Alcatraz) does a top notch job of playing Ezra Cobb, the mother-fixated grave robbing, skin wearing butcher of Woodside. There’s a disturbing level of black comedy that borders on the ghastly, often erasing some of the gags that half work. The reality of Ed Gein is worse than anything all copy cat films could have put together combined. Read the hideous details in the Harold Schechter book Deviant, it's a nice companion piece to this film, because it really illustrates the madness that went on in the kitchen, (collected skull bowls,earlobes and dried out genitals) and Gein’s warped mind.
   Ez is pretty much an insane retard with the mind of a child and would boast about his grave robbings, telling all the dumb farmers about his crimes, but of course no one took him seriously. His domineering fanatical Christian mother quickly dies right in the beginning as Ezra shovels pea soup down her gullet, she looks like the withered corpse of George Washington. I had a certain level of sympathy for Ezra Cobb (for some godawful reason,)! as he helplessly watches his mother croak.   There’s an eerie moment as he exhumes his mother’s grave and is relieved to find her cryptic smile in the blackness, staring back at him, then moments later he is repulsed as the reality strikes and her decaying flesh pulls away like melted green soap.

suddenly I'm gettin a hankering for some Quaker Oats

   It gets progressively weirder from then on and all sympathy that I may have had shuts off like a tourniquet, as Ez begins his gleefully murderous rampage! Cashiers, waitresses and chubby psychics fall victim to this redneck dressed in the sewn up butchered skin of his mother (his flesh suit looks oddly familiar to the Bill Moseley character later seen in House Of A 1000 Corpses, to me at least)!

Do I smell like limburger or headcheese, I can't tell?

   The same theme of all women are sluts and should die horribly because “Jesus approves” is the message conveyed and carried out by Ezra and the rotten corpse of his self-deluded and crazed religious fanatic mother. There’s a dinner scene Leatherface would be proud to attend with all of Ez’s victims present as a poor waitress in her underwear is tied to a chair, this film mixes a little Chainsaw Massacre in with it’s Norman Bates. This one predates Chainsaw, but I doubt there was an influence, I think it was purely coincidental. Deranged attempts to cover all bases and is sinister in a fun, campy, ghoulish manner and to me is one of the best portrayals of the Ed Gein story. Bob Clark produced this uncredited and it was filmed in Canada (most of the cars have Ontario plates). The trailer is great too! This was a film swallowed up by the vortex of Netflix Stream-aggedon, but thankfully its available on a cheap DVD double feature that includes Motel Hell.
Plaidstallions info on the HUGO puppet.

Get a room!

Escape From Coral Cove

Escape From Coral Cove (Tao Chu Hu Hai) Directed By Ga Jan Cheung 1986

   A group of Asian templar knights attend a seaside funeral, the coffin is lit on fire and then submerged, where it crushes a waterlogged zombie's hand. An instrumental version of Jan Hammer like keyboards playing "In my House" by The Rick James backup singers group is blasted during the credits as Alex and his foxy chick drive around. The white on white subs are pretty excruciating, Alex threatens to unleash his "Pink Panther" on the girls. They all stay in at his house (the production design makes it seem like no one lives there). One girl finds a secret experimental chemistry lab and a levitating wicker basket (is an Asian Belial not far behind)? Sadly no! 

Maybe the crummiest Asian horror monster of all time

   A mysterious swamp creature seems to be lurking about in the shadows (it's not the Oily Maniac though). This behemoth preys on drunks urinating in graveyards and their wives. The picture quality is so shitty during the night that its hard to make out the beastly invader. 

  Then it goes from hard to see night footage to bright daylight, as the crew aboard The Pink Panther (that's a boat apparently not a penis reference) frolic! The film might as well not be subtitled at all, because half the letters get scrambled by the white on white subs or get cut off all together. Some exciting elements include a crushing cup contest (Dreyfuss vs. Quint Jaws reference?) and some water jousting.

Your move Asian Robert Shaw

  Escape From Coral Cove is basically someone's home movie sloppily strewn together, why am I watching it? Skunkape was nice enough to find it for me! There are two Escape titles in the Deep Red catalog (Escape From Hong Kong and just plain Escape). I was sad to figure out that this one is neither of them as I first thought when I went ahead and reviewed it. There's a character graphic in the left handcorner throughout the film (its from a VCD). If you are expecting a typically exciting or gruesome Asian funfest like I was, you'll be miserable like I was! But if you like dull home movies with a hidden sea monster that barely shows up, then by all means seek out this piece of shit! I couldn't wait to escape from this movie! All the ingredients that make Asian horror flicks stand out from the rest are missing, there's no nudity and minimal amounts of blood. Total garbage, don't waste your time! 

Totally Sucks! (on the Deep Red Gore score this would get a Dog rating)

not enough beer on the planet to make this tolerable

Sexy Nights Of The Living Dead

Sexy Nights Of The Living Dead Directed By Joe D'Amato, starring George Eastman (1980)
   This is one of those Joe D'Amato films that should start with a warning; keep your pants up while viewing or you may end up puking on your own crotch! This cinematic morsel tries to mix hardcore porn with hardcore gore and comes up limp in both genres!
   Joe is a master when it comes to an all out tropical vacation with doses of snuff,animal antics and an infamous traveling manipulative slut (I.E. The Laura Gemser Emmanuelle series). That's were he's an accomplished director and Laura is even featured in this one, plus other welcome or unwelcome stars show up, it's all tedious and uneven. Although the ending is worth writing home about and morphs into a cross between Zombie and Last House On The Left, so take this warning to task that I give you (make sure you fall asleep, then set your alarms for the climax, because its a gusher)!
EWW, Ahem..... Ok so back to the review (wait let me put on my hazmat suit as I write this, I don't want any ball wart germs or jungle rot)! 
   Pluto Kennedy (or Marcello Giombini) busts out with an Italio-disco ripoff of the Fabio Frizzi Zombie theme as we meet Larry (an unhinged and horny) George Eastman. This film dares to involve heavy concepts like "is it all a fantasy? Is this scenario in a fenced in asylum/ industrial laundry room foreshadowing? It's a headscratcher that Eastman actually wrote himself, I'm thinking so he can excuse those D'Amato random sex scenes and non-sequitors.
   A sexy nurse humps Larry (Eastman) as a 70's Donald Sutherland impersonator comically wacks off (already we are on a Benny Hill-esque Italian trainwreck)! As I mentioned before in D'Amato's world there are no explanations or set ups for what goes on, people just do shit, one minute they are on a boat, the next on land (just go with it Maaan)! Could it all be in the mind of Eastman, I'm not telling, I suffered through this dreck and now its your turn!
   Thankfully (I mean unthankfully) Mark "Ball Warts" Shannon joins the expedition to "Cat Island" but first this Italian Magnum PI impersonator has a threesome in a shower, these graphic sex scenes add nothing to the story and as far as I can tell they were edited out when aired on Showtime or Cinemax in the 80's. After that revolting spectacle we are treated to another as the two hookers flee the scene and a sultry woman joins Mark for some champagne and a second helping of chlamydia (Uck)! Get me out of here!

Here's to Herpes

   Finally a cannibalistic ghoul shows up and attempts to make it tolerable. This hulking figure looks like John C. Reilly as The Tenacious D Sasquatch in a monk robe, he takes a chunk out of the neck of Mark's travel agent. Laura Gemser Jr.  or the actress from Porno Holocaust shows up to bone Larry for a few minutes then disappears. Then he runs into a zombie that looks like Kramer from Seinfeld with maggots oozing out of his eyesocket, Larry chucks an anchor at his face! They make it out to "Cat Island", where Mark has plans to build a resort, but doesn't tell anyone yet. Why is it called Cat island? Who knows, why does Candy Apple Island have giant apes? Same reason!
   Next we are treated to a champagne swallowing beaver in a disco, beavers on the sand and lots of humping on the boat. I'm starting to sprout a cold sore just from this review! It turns out Laura Gemser and her grandfather are expecting their arrival as a loud cat meows in an echoey tone by the cemetery (scared yet?, me neither). But wait! it does make sense, because the famous cat of "Cat Island" shows up, this spooky cat patrols the island. MEOOWWW!

My sand, my beach, Go home!

   Grampa has a giant gumball growing out of his forehead and doesn't like Shanon's plans of building a hotel on sacred ground! It turns out Gemser is a bi-sexual ghost and haunts the panties right off of Larry's woman, then bangs Larry in the water (he keeps his jeans on, Ouch)! The mysterious old man hands Larry a "Greg Brady" Tiki idol for protection as zombies begin to emerge from behind the palm trees, this is where the movie stars picking up momentum. The soundtrack sometimes sounds like the begining of Cars by Gary Neuman. Ole Warty balls goes to look for Gemser to molest, but instead gets attacked by zombie monks (who looks like a cross between Star Wars sandpeople and the Blind Dead). It gets worse for him though, because after a triumphant battle with the undead, he unfortunately gets the Fred Lincoln treatment from Laura (think Lorena Bobbit too).

Sorry Gemser but that wad of meat is also your paycheck!

   The last 18 minutes make up for the first hour or so, because it gets really gruesome, maybe it was worth the torture. Do Larry and his beach babes escape? Find out for yourself! I'm gonna take a nap! 
Slightly Recommended 4 out of 10

toasted mummies

Tusken Raiders on Nyquil

BUY IT ON DVD (no streaming)

Theater of Guts 

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