Dr. Gore

The Body Shop/ a.k.a. Doctor Gore. Written, Produced and Directed by J. G. Patterson.

Reviewed By Herbert Strock.

(Crank here, so we did it, we sent the call out for new writers and one person sent in a response-- soft clapping sound. This film has become an overly priced SWV DVD, which has been lampooned on Reel Wild Cinema, Cinema Snob, every other schmo with a YT channel's account as dreadful. The director apparently killed himself directly after this release but this is according to Chas Balun. Beyond the DVD extras you'd be hard pressed to find any info on the "greatest magician's demise of Don Brandon). So let's welcome our newest film critic (who also writes under a pseudonym like me), take it away Herb. 

I remember seeing the big box VHS at video stores back in the 80's and 90's.  J.G. Patterson, a former magician and TV horror host wrote, produced and directed this interesting low budget gem. The basic plot is Dr. Don Brando (J. G. Patterson under the pseudonym Don Brandon) loses his wife Anitra in a car accident, so he and his hunchback assistant Gregory start experimenting with reanimation of corpses, but when this doesn’t work out, they resort to murder. The Dr. begins luring young women with his hypnotic powers to their death. Procuring various body parts from these victims in order to rebuild the Dr.'s version of a perfect mate--a new Anitra.

It's a full bird stuffed with ham, topped with gorgonzola.

J. G. Patterson worked for the great Herschell Gordon Lewis on a few films such as Moonshine Mountain (actor / asst. director), She Devils on Wheels (asst. to producer) and The Gruesome Twosome (associate producer). Patterson's time with Lewis definitely shines through in this film.  The gore scenes are extremely similar in execution and style to any of H. G. Lewis gore film. Dr. Don's use of hypnosis on his victims recalls Fuad Ramses from Blood Feast (1963) and especially Montag in The Wizard of Gore (1970). The showmanship style of the film also seems very much a holdover from Patterson's time working for Lewis. The film's humor is similar, as well. A scene has the Dr. running his finger along the blade of a scalpel seeming to test the blade’s sharpness, then he suddenly begins using it to clean out dirt from under his finger nails.  Another scene has the hunchback Gregory cleaning up around the lab, he decides to take a break and opens a cold storage unit used to preserve the victim's body parts and reaches into it. Instead of pulling out a body part, he pulls out a bottle of booze, which he proceeds to take a drink from.

Zack Galafinakis and Meathead made love and produced me.

Despite what some reviews have stated about the camerawork consisting of the point and shoot variety, I have to disagree. There are some very interesting shot compositions throughout the film including a shot from inside a woman's arm as the Dr. slices it open with a scalpel. This shot reminded in Lucio Fulci's New York Ripper, where the shot is made to appear inside the victim's throat as it is slit open. The eye removal scene has some inventive compositions with the Dr. looking down towards the camera lens, plucking an eye ball from the left side of the screen, and holding the container for the eye on the right side of the screen.  The romantic montage between the Dr. and his new creation has some very artfully framed shots, one with a light post, a few others with various trees composed like a painting within the frame.  

Reynolds Wrap seals in the juices.

    

Underneath all the gore and absurdist humor is a film about mistaking control for love. A film about controlling another human being under the illusion of love. The desire to make someone into who you want them to be. Throughout the film, the Dr.'s interactions with females, victims or otherwise, has a feeling of cold emotionless detachment. The Dr. has a narcissistic, “all about me”, view of relationships / love, as expressed by the lines he says to the newly created Anitra , " You will have every desire to follow my every bidding. Your pleasure will come from doing what I ask you, things that will make me happy."   He seems totally unconcerned about what his mate wants, thinks, or feels.  He is, as he says, " Excited to be able to teach her how to think."  Total control is the name of the game.  The DR. tells his assistant Gregory that he will isolate his new creation from other people, even the assistant himself.  Gregory eventually is killed by Dr. Don, when Anitra comes onto him.

I took the PHYSICAL CHALLENGE!

It is in this latter portion of the film that the Dr. and the new Anitra's relationship takes on a controlling parent and overly compliant child with strong and disturbing incestuous overtones. Using gender stereotypes, rigid gender roles and expectations, he attempts to indoctrinate the new Anitra to do whatever he wants.  The final moments of the film where Anitra hooks up with a variety of men comes across as a cautionary tale.  The compliant child, the new Anitra, has become like her controlling parent, Dr. Don, cold and emotionally detached, using others to fulfill her selfish desires.  An over the top gore fest with an interesting subtext, I highly recommend The Body Shop / Doctor Gore.  That is my opinion, yours may differ.

our dressings tonight are vinaigrette and contempt for the human race.

Did you ever suck the jelly out of a jelly donut--simply marvelous.

DEEP RED CATALOG LIST

Toe Tag Joe tape that William Wilson of Videojunkies alerted me to.

This is just a promo post for those not on all the social media brain tendrils bullshit circuit (aka smart people). I added practically all 507 titles of the bootleg catalog for everyone to enjoy and seek out. There are a few I couldn't figure out how to add like Endurance (which is available here), the comp tapes that only Skunkape can find, the real autopsy videos and The Devil (Hong Kong 1981). We'll be back with the usually wackiness in a few days, in the mean time check out this list!
https://letterboxd.com/goofygrapeape/list/list-of-films-in-deep-red-bootleg-catalog/

Obvious Men Behind The Sun fan.

House of the Living Dead

House of the Living Dead, Starring Mark Burns Directed By Ray Austin (1974).

The triple bill ghoul also appeared on the cover of Liquid Cheese #28.

This film is like an endurance test of excruciating patience, it kept making me scream at myself, "JUST TURN IT OFF AND GO TAKE A NAP" or get those chores done that've been bugging you. The worst part is, I already completed them and had no choice but to suffer through this dreck, poor me, right? Shudder offers the Vinegar Syndrome version on a double feature with another turd I'm afraid to watch, CRYPT OF THE LIVING DEAD. They got it all wrong though, it's the ORGY OF THE LIVING DEAD triple bill trailer that's supposed to drive you mad, where one is guaranteed free internment to the state mental hospital for the rest of their life according to the Mad Ron trailer. They should've recreated the triple feature of REVENGE (or MURDER CLINIC (1966) /CURSE (AKA Mario Bava's KILL BABY KILL) and FANGS (or Malenka by Amando De Ossorio), not HOUSE AND CRYPT. Get some insurance for this film however, just in case you zonk out from boredom and crack your head on the coffee table--it's that insufferable!

COME ON FEEEL THE NOIZZZZEE, GIRLS ROCK YOUR BOYS!

Shudder has House and Alien Zone, which is also aka House of the Living Dead. How do you decide between two shitty films, it's as if someone handed you a maggot eaten apple fritter and another stuffed with razor blades. Which one must you choose Gozer the Gozerian? Be forewarned, if you are an animal rights person or like me and don't want to see a poor drugged ape. This film is all shades of harsh red and diarrhea brown with South African accents. The baboon that the mad scientist captures and experiments on is the real deal, I hope when the sedatives wear or off, it ate his face off. Why Chas had this available to watch is confusing, it has zero redeeming qualities. The film punishes you with inept lighting as well. Mark Burns, the lead actor looks kind of like Terrence Stamp or Willy Wonka.

stop with the fucking Willy Wonka Memes already!

I hate this movie but I'm going to power through because it's literally the fifth time I've tried to sit through it. There is a witch and a gypsy subplot that was pretty weak, but then again, I think I've hated every film about a gypsy I've ever seen, THINNER is one bad example that comes to mind. 

The background score sounds kind of like Twilight Zone stock music. It's cinematic Klonopin, I could drink 50 cups of coffee and I'd still be lethargic. There's an old lady who reminds me of Great Expectations but I only know this reference from the South Park. The Terrence Stamp clone wears jockey pants and it's really gross and unnecessary. Sometimes the film greasiness reminds me of an S.F. Brownrigg production, only this is less interesting. I will put it in that section of terrible movies just lying around that would be worth making a few quick beer money dollars off of for the Balun fund. It seems very Victorian, what the fuck am I watching?

Aunt Jemima brings the Quaker Oats man his lunch

At 22 minutes this movie feels like it's five hours. I wish I could say, the ending was worth all the trauma, but it's only mildly interesting. The Doctor has trapped souls in glass jars (similar to the one in that Tales from the Darkside episode) and once they escape, a freaky deaky sound rings out and starts attacking people. The funniest part was a picture of a horse (who's soul, I guess, has now escaped), runs rampant and they zoom in Laugh-In style. My advice is to just fast forward to the ending and try to figure out what exactly they're trying to accomplish.

No Sir, I don't like it.

There's actually a couple of other Houses of the Dead films. The most famous version is the videogame based movie dud and one called Alien Zone that is also on Shudder. I should mention that I gave this job to Richard Glenn Schmidt of Doomed Moviethon and Giallo Meltdown fame and he couldn't stick it out. Some say he's at the mental hospital with the poor sap from the Orgy bill.

CINEMATIC BARF!

Mountain of the Cannibal God

Mountain of the Cannibal God (Prisoner of the Cannibal God, Slave of the Cannibal God) Starring Stacy Keach, Directed By Sergio Martino (1978).

So let me tell you a little story about when I worked at Goodwill, one of the most miserable places on earth! I was there one day at 8 in the morning and I always take a gander at the videos and DVDs to see what exciting things will be available at the end of the day, but the bullshit rules were that you have to wait until the shift is over to buy anything. This was one of those days when I swear to God, I saw the Blue Underground DVD of the film in question. After the end of a typically brutalizing day, I checked again to see if my prized pigeon was still there but it wasn't! I was crushed that it mysteriously disappeared, no one I knew had their eye on it and swiped it under my nose either! So what happened? Did some elderly perv get his grubby mitts on it and decided to add it to their offensive collection? On a regular basis, people would snatch up racist memorabilia like golliwog dolls and shit that should be locked away in the Black community vault never to be bought by white people.

Apparently, I wouldn't shut up about it because that Christmas, Skunkape unbeknownst to me, sent me a copy and I was overly excited! Yada, yada, yada a lot of shit happened and I forgot to review it but here we are, better late than never.

Cartoon leaves absorb the guilt.

At TOG headquarters we always poke fun at the director, Sergio Martino, as the "monkey tied to a javelin guy" and this is where that reference originated. Normally, I hate Cannibal films, (although come to think of it, I've reviewed too many of them), but this one is a very special case because it's got a bunch of famous people interacting with nobodies along with vile and disgusting animal antics. We've got Stacy Keach in a Beatles wig & scruffy beard combo. James Bond heroine Ursula Andress, who has so much pancake makeup on, it looks like her features are disintegrating. Andress was a 60's Playmate, dated James Dean in the 50's and even hooked up with Harry Hamlin when they met on the set of Clash of the Titans. So yeah, this little dirty secret apparently didn't hinder her career or anyone else's involved like so many other mondo films have done to lesser famous actors. Mountain was also placed on the Video Nasty list and its poster for (Prisoner of the Cannibal God) was featured in the episode "Dirty Movie" for The Comic Strip Presents with Jennifer Saunders and Rik Mayall.

the kitchen is ablaze but at least that poster is OK.

Oliver Onions handle the majestic score aka Guido & Maurizio De Angelis. The first time I heard of this movie was when I saw the shitty bootleg with Japanese subs that Skunkape probably bought from his dealer of choice Threat Theatre. It took a while for this film to grow on me, but I'm pretty sure I saw the cut version the first time I watched it, once you see the midget cannibal and the pig fucking scene it's hard to forget and it sort of becomes etched into your subconscious.

suck on my spinning starfish shithead!

Everyone for some reason wears tan or beige or cream colored, Duh, because it's the 70s obviously. The first poor animal to go on the chopping block is an iguana. They peel it like a banana and eat it's guts. Anyway, the "scary cannibals" are just regular dudes in Brillo pad wigs. That's one complaint I always have about these jungle misadventure flicks is that they never interview the poor fuckers who had to eat the murdered animals or chew on the raw innards dripping in kayro syrup. I'm sure they had a rough time choking them down.

brother if you only knew the bullshit we've put up with!

The locations are really cool, very tropical and nobody looks as sweaty or uncomfortable as they usually do in say Cannibal Ferox. I've never read anything about Stacy Keach's experience during this film and he never mentioned it in the Shock Cinema review. The monkey scene is so fucked up because there's literally a guy shoving the creature into the snake's mouth and his hand is covered up by some optical cartoon leaves. In the extras, Martino tries to come up with some bullshit and say that it just happened naturally, but he's a moron. I don't understand how they allow him or Deodato to just lie through their teeth about the production. Sergio mentions how terrible he feels that Claudio Cassinelli was killed in a helicopter crash during one of his other films Hands of Steel (aka Atomic Cyborg) in Colorado. That I believe though, he seems sincere enough.

 I love the Cannibal's jagged teeth helmets, they're very creative and original. Antonio Marsina, the actor who tags along with Keach and Andress looks kind of like a more haggard version of Cary Elwes, the guy from The Princess Bride, only more sinister.

If I were Cheech or Chong, I would've been asking every question about this movie to Sgt. Stedenko and nailed him to a chair Serpent and the Rainbow style until he talks, (Keach just after this appeared in Up in Smoke). There is an awesome crocodile attack scene but then again this is the director of Big Alligator River. He mentions in the DVD extras that this, Big Alligator and Island of the Fishmen were in the imitation genre or linked films that were capitalizing on successful American films (not sure which ones however--Jaws possibly)?

I was only pretending to be stoned and I hate pizza.

There's a crazy Ewok trap that oozes gore as it crushes this guys feet & rib cage. Can you imagine if the Ewoks decided to just eat C-3PO or Han Solo, I would've died laughing. During the second act they run into Manolo (Claudio Cassinelli), he's smitten by Andress' character and she kind of strings him along.

One positive aspect among the sleaze is that there's not a lot of dominating other cultures or the racist connotations found in most jungle cannibal fests. No one is from the media, trying to exploit anyone or murdering people in the name of some ridiculous cause that's the difference between this and other cannibal films. The savages just like all the other white males in the audience are lusting after those Andress titties. When they smear her with orange paint and dress her up for the sacrifice, she looks like 70's era Bob Mackie did the design. The yellow rotting corpse of her lost husband is down in the caverns and they've fashioned him into a ghastly idol with a Geiger counter heart.

milk milk lemonade, round the corner artisanal fudge is made.

In the Bay Area horror host TV show "Creepy Kofy movie time", they showed this all edited for television, but it was still entertaining to hear what they had to say. I definitely miss that show, although apparently here in Nashville they have a Svengoolie clone but I never see him, since I don't have cable and stream everything. One girl spits into a bucket, which reminds me that episode where Anthony Bourdain had to drink fermented saliva booze and piranha sandwiches--it was pretty horrifying. The same girl that makes a loogy drink gets topless but it doesn't end well for her. Whenever I see the stone age weapons that the savages use it reminds me of the Flintstones. The last 20 mins gets off the chain nutzo! It's mandatory that you stick around for that!

A CANNIBAL TREAT WITH CLASS, STICK OUT THOSE PINKIES WHEN YOU INGEST THIS SWILL!  
  

The Forest

The Forest. Directed by Don Jones. Starring Gary Kent.

Review By Mike Hauss

For this film being one of the worst films ever made, it’s actually not too laborious to sit through! I was shocked at how quickly the viewing experience was over. Then it slowly dawned on me, that when I review films, I always make notes. Sometimes these notes are rather extensive and it takes a ninety minute film, more like two hours or more, to get through, with all the stops and starts to jot things down. This god-awful flick never needed to be paused to make notes, because it was so inept... most of the movie is spent following people walking through the woods and nothing really ever happens between the few kills in it, and the plot is amazingly stupid and simple!

I am the Wicker Chair man!

Two married couples decide to go camping in the woods, but decide to leave at different times, in a little battle of the sexes, when the men think, that the women can’t survive camping without them. The girls, Teddi and Sharon arrive first and the men, Steve and Charlie, who are to follow them up before dark, are halted in their attempt, while a radiator is repaired. The girls make camp, waiting for the guys, but darkness falls first and as it does, they are visited by a mother and her two children, not of flesh and blood, but, ghost? Sharon freaks out and runs from the camp. A man wielding a knife accosts Teddi, and when she pleads for him not to hurt her, he says, “I don’t want to hurt you… but, I’m starving- I haven’t had anything to eat for days.”

Clan of the Cannibal King

The men arrive right at dusk and start out to find the girls, but become lost and wander to a cave where the man who killed Teddi, is sitting, in his large wicker chair in the middle of nowhere... he offers them a bit to eat and a place to stop to wait for the rain to stop. The same ghost children who  had appeared before the girls, also visit the men, but quickly disappear, and when asked if the children belonged to the man, he says they used to be his kids. After trying a bit of the meat roasting on an open flame, which unbeknownst to Steve is his wife Teddi, Steve has a strange sensation come over him as he chops down on Leg-o-Teddi. The cannibal king in his chair recounts to the men, how he became a loser in the middle of nowhere, and why it’s great to be king. Something to do with his wife fucking every guy in the local area, and he too stupid to realize she was screwing around on him, until he comes home early from work, to find her in bed with the man repairing the fridge. When he asks her why? She calls him damn near impotent, and she says that she got something from the other men, that he could never give her… P L E A S U R E! He does not reveal to the men, that he had strangled his wife and for good measure, smashed her fucking head into the night stand killing her off, and that he planted the face of the refrigerator repairman's face into an old, rusty saw.

Broke Back Mountain: Deliverance Style!

Charlie and Steve fall asleep and the cannibal king, instead of killing them for food, wakes them politely the next morning so they could be on their way. They find the camp the girls set up, but, the girls are nowhere to be found, so they set out scouring the area for them. After not find any trace of the girls, its decided that Charlie should head back to find help, while Steve waits for the girls. Just a few minutes into his trek for help, Charlie falls, injuring his leg, and sheds tears like a fucking baby, or an actor seeing his career flashing before him, as he makes like forty feet in a few hours span. The kids try and warn Sharon of their father and help her survive, but poor Steve is attacked by the Cannibal king and dies after a valiant struggle. As Charlie blubbers away in the woods, his wife Sharon is set on by the cannibal and if not for the ghost kids (the ghost kids killed themselves because they had to live in a cave), threatening to go away forever, leaving him alone, she would also have been killed. The Cannibal king eventually spies Charlie sobbing in the forest and goes in for the kill, but, Sharon saves the day after Cannibal king had in a tussle with the prone Charlie, dropped his knife. As grabs the knife, she attacks the cannibal king, he thinks it’s his wife attacking as Sharon plants his blade into his throat. The reunited couple fall into each other’s arms, sobbing of course!

*Sob!* There goes my fucking acting career!

The continuity issues abound throughout this film, and most of the dialogue, seems as if it was recorded in an echo chamber. All the acting is hideous, except, Gary Kent, who doesn’t turn in a bad job, even while delivering some cheesy lines. My guess, would be, that the director saw the box office returns of the film Friday the 13^th, and figured what the hell, I can make a horror film in the woods, just as good. Wrong! The scenery is not bad to look at  (filmed at Sequoia National park) and the cinematography is also at times, well handled, when not over shadowed by the continuity issues. 

Now its confession time! I have to admit, that i own multiple copies of this film on various media. I know it's bad, but, i cant help myself from watching it again every few years. I guess to a point it mirrors my life story, a story of a man lost in the wilderness, whose life is full of continuity issues and bad dialogue!

ON AMAZON PRIME

Henry Portrait of a Serial Killer

Joe Coleman's poster that appeared in The Horror Handbook.

Henry Portrait of a Serial Killer. Starring Michael Rooker, Directed By John McNaughton (1986).

Even though I love this film, I’ve avoided it for several years. It’s extremely depressing, disturbing and generally unpleasant. I decided to revisit it the other night while drunk as a skunk and it’s still a brilliant and harrowing independent film with guts to spare. The violence is ugly, unrepentant and disgusting but for some reason it picked up a buzz from some high-brow critics like Siskel and Ebert. That’s actually where I first saw a clip of it and couldn’t wait to check it out. My dad actually freaked out at me for wanting to see it, years later I taped it off Cinemax. It really resonated with the thumbs up, down guys—they defended it against the tide of irrational censorship and convinced others to watch it. These same critics, who demanded their audience boycott slasher movies in the 80’s, it seems were major fans of this John McNaughton film. They saw it as not exploitation but delivering a message more so than the typical brainless exploitation and it doesn't glorify the violence. Once the ultra- conservative Bush/Reagan era bit the dust in the 90s, it seemed as if these types of gritty realistic horror films were given more of a chance under the context of an artsy film. Of course, now it’s a billion times worse in the current society and political climate but that’s irrelevant to this review.

I'll have you know Amerikkka is great again!

In the Deep Red Horror Handbook, Chas spoke about this film in his chapter “I Spit in Your Face: Films that bite”. Balun placed it among what he categorized as “drano enemas” like Nekromantik, Deadbeat and Dawn and Last House on Dead End Street, all films that were impossible to find at time in 1989 for the average video junkie. They were the kinds of movies that got inside and ripped out your guts. He praised its low tech, high caliber acting and was unsettled by the fact that McNaughton makes Henry so fucking likeable and never indicts him.

all the girls want to know, who's the cutest boy on death row?

The two main characters are based on actual murderers like Florida’s Ottis Toole, who killed and ate Adam Walsh and even had a cannibal BBQ sauce that was listed in Mike Diana’s sick zine Boiled Angel. Also, Henry Lee Lucas and Otis’ sister Becky existed but she was significantly younger. They took these true crime figures and gave them their own spin, even though it’s biographical most of the details are rearranged or fictionalized, like the fact that in reality Henry and Ottis were gay lovers.

See I'm straight, I got a Jesus shirt!

It begins with the aftermath of different murder victims, we hear the disturbing audio of their last moments as Henry (Rooker) goes about his day. Tom Towles is in my opinion the most frightening aspect of this entire film, he’s a pervy, learing sexual predator who constantly is on the verge of a conniption fit over nothing. He doesn’t have the concept of “dial it down” and at one point kicks in a T.V., when he can’t get the rabbit ears to work. I like Siskel's theory about this scene, where Otis equates people as objects and only knows to deal with them thru savage violence or screaming at them until they comply. This leads to one of my favorite cinematic characters possibly ever, the fat-assed television salesman played by Ray Atherton. He looks like a mutant, deformed version of the Comic Book guy from The Simpsons. Atherton was not an actor but a producer of sleazy movies like FART: The Movie and Death Scenes 2, I can’t make this shit up folks!

WORST HAT EVER.

Henry (the film not the character) acts as a scared straight for the dangers of buying pot from some scumbag dealer, instead of going the dispensary route. The scene where Otis, sells dope to a high school kid and tries to molest him was most likely shown to legislatures as a reason to enforce these new pot laws—yeah right!   

The part that was seriously effective and unnerving to me occurs when Henry (Michael Rooker) and Otis (Tom Towles), “go out for a beer,” which is code for let’s go out to assault and murder an entire family in the burbs. That moment, which they capture on a camcorder is played endlessly on a loop as the slobby, perverted sister rapist Otis snoozes in his grundies in front of the boob tube.

SPRING BREAK!

This movie was shot in 1986, but remained unreleased for 3 years because of hypocrisy and censorship. There’s something viciously organic about the mutilation and graphic violence that really turns up the gas on the nightmare fuel. That aspect was why I haven’t revisited it since high school. Even though, the film is very uncomfortable, it is worth re watching and carries the fury that most serial killers movies wish they could accomplish. Rooker of course went onto super stardom with The Walking Dead and Guardians of the Galaxy. Towles played a guy who's dog had rabies and bit Elaine on Seinfeld, he appeared in a few Rob Zombie movies then died tragically from a stroke a few years ago. This director never made a film that impressed me all that much sadly, this however is his finest moment.


BUY IT HERE