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A mad journey into the mind of the depraved!

A mad journey into the mind of the depraved!
Recommended for devolved primates only!

Thursday, March 31, 2011

THE MUMMY'S REVENGE (1973)


Not one of Paul Naschy's best films and probably only watchable to die-hard Naschy fans.  In this one he plays a mummy who looks more like a crud-faced monster that just crawled out of a lake.  He also plays an Egyptian descendent of the mummy who serves as the resurrected mummies henchman.   A pretty slow-moving, talky experience but quite violent(especially surprising since the version I viewed was a TV print)  You get throats sliced and lots of head trauma.  Heads are squeezed to death, smashed to a bloody pulp and bashed against walls.  Apparently this mummy has a problem with heads.  It sure beats the classic mummy method of boring old strangulation.  Unfortunately that's about the only thing this Spanish horror tale has going for it.  The hero is played by Jack Taylor who is one of the most boring actors ever.  I got to see this projected in a theater otherwise I'm pretty sure I woulda been asleep pretty quickly.

                                 head smash!:


Wednesday, March 30, 2011

KURONEKO (1968)


If Akira Kurosawa ever made a horror flick I think it would look something like this.  A mother and daughter-in-law are raped and murdered by a gang of samurai soldiers and then come back as vengeful ghosts who vow to kill and drink the blood of every samurai in the world.  What they didn't count on was their son/husband returning as a samurai himself.  Also they get helped somehow by a black cat which is where the title comes from.  So you get a creepy ghost story(or are they ghost-vampires or ghost-cat people?), a samurai flick and a bit of a love story all thrown together in a really well filmed piece of Japanese cinema.  There is blood and nudity although nothing is super graphic as the film relies more on atmosphere than anything else.  Similar to director Kaneto Shindo's earlier horror flick ONIBABA.  I would say check it out if you're into older horror flicks at all.

Monday, March 28, 2011

GIRLS NITE OUT (1984)

With a title like GIRLS NITE OUT plus a poster like that you would think you might get some boobs or at least a bare ass on display.  Unfortunately, there's none of that here unless you count all the shirtless men that we get long lingering shots of as they horse around in a very homo-erotic fashion.  What you do get though is a very silly, ultra-generic slasher from the 80's.  Which, while lacking greatly in the boobs department, I still find goofy enough to enjoy for what it is and would recommend to anyone who loves these brainless teens-getting-chopped-up flicks like myself.  Where else are you going to get a slasher in a full bear suit with Freddy Krueger claws and a bow-tie slicing up semi-retarded college kids?  Plus the killer's name is Dickie.  That's just precious. 

This girl in the bed doesn't appear in the movie:

Sunday, March 27, 2011

BLIND BEAST (1969)


Japanese softcore sex flicks from the 60's and 70's (or Pink films to all you movie snobs out there) are some strange pieces of cinema.  They can either be offensive due to the submissive role of Japanese women on display or exciting depending on your perspective.  This one has a really simple plot about a crazy blind sculptor and his mom who kidnap a model and hold her in a nutty studio where all kinds of insane sexual hi-jinks ensue.  The set-design is really something to see as the studio is filled with sculptures of giant boobs and various body parts and also two giant female figures.  What starts off as simple gratuitous ass fondling leads down a weirder and more violent path as the film plays on and you get an appropriately bizarre ending to what seems like a S & M-fan's wet dream.  It is a little long for such a thin story but worth checking out for its oddity and  you should add extra points if you're into submissive fetishistic type of stuff.

Thursday, March 24, 2011

ATTACK OF THE BEAST CREATURES (1985)


O. K. so there's this island full of little homicidal killer creatures that look like that killer doll from TRILOGY OF TERROR and on the island lands some survivors of a boat wreck.  Was it the Titanic?  Maybe since they sorta look like they are dressed in outfits from the 1920's or maybe they were just in the middle of some kind of masquerade dance or some shit.  So anyway not only are there little stupid monsters but all the water on the island is acid which one guy finds out after he sticks his face in it and it melts off in a gory spectacle.  Unfortunately in between the face melting and little ferocious guys attacking there's nothing but people arguing with each other and lots of boring dialogue.  It is all completely ridiculous and still a must see for fans of watching full grown adults wrestle with dopey-looking dolls .  Any sane person would most likely completely hate this so of course I love it.

Look at those silly little fucks run!:

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

AWAKENING OF THE BEAST (1970)


While HG Lewis was grossing people out in the early sixties with stuff like BLOOD FEAST at the same time way down south in Brazil the man who would become known in America as Coffin Joe was cranking out some gore flicks of his own.  These had a more serious edge to them and a decidedly anti-religious message that seems pretty ballsy for the time and country in which they were made.  This one came along in 70 and is a sorta behind the persona look at the man behind the character, Jose Mojica Marins.  It's a unique structure because you get Marins playing himself being questioned by psychiatrists for being a bad bad man and then you get LSD experiments where Coffin Joe shows up to brutalize folks(mostly women) and things get weirder and weirder until you end up with a spaghetti slurping fat man, gratuitous ass-kicking, blatant sexism and a bunch of asses with faces painted on them.  It is quite the disjointed mess yet I still found it totally enjoyable.  In the end there's even a pro-drug message about how people's minds are way more fucked up naturally than any artificial drug is capable of doing.  Brilliantly cheesy stuff!


Tuesday, March 22, 2011

HERSCHELL GORDON LEWIS: THE GODFATHER OF GORE (2010)


Starting out with the early sexploitation days of Mr. Herschell Gordon Lewis this is a very good documentary about the film career of the pioneer of gore and other sleazy cinema atrocities.  Lovingly directed by Frank "BASKET CASE" Henenlotter you get a pretty good idea  of the state of exploitation movies from the same era in general.  You get Joe Bob Briggs, Hersch's partner Dave Friedman, John Waters and HG himself giving expert commentary on the historical significance of the man who figured out that if violence sells then ultra-violence will totally sell-out!  Full of blood, boobs and rare behind the scenes footage (even some footage of a wacky looking uncompleted film) this is worth checking out if you're at all a fan of gore flicks or just weird cinema in general and if you're not grow some fucking taste will ya!

Thursday, March 17, 2011

ELIMINATORS (1986)

I caught this crappy 80's sci-fi flick playing in the back of a bar earlier this week.  While that might not have been the optimal viewing condition the alcohol definitely helped me enjoy what is a really stupid film.  Produced by Charles Band this surprisingly doesn't feature any killer dolls or puppets but it has a whole bunch of other silly elements including a mandroid (which is a half man/half android which seems a bit redundant to me) a little robot that looks like a mini version of Vincent from THE BLACK HOLE, a stereotypical militant butch lesbian baddie(complete with flannel shirt and short haircut), a pirate Han Solo-type character, a kung fu guy, some cavemen and even a couple of Roman soldiers running around.  You would think with this kitchen-sink approach it might be more entertaining but it's really just one big comic-booky clusterfuck which was obviously influenced by a bunch of stuff like THE TERMINATOR, STAR WARS and whatever sci-fi/action movie was a hit in the late 70's/early 80's and also a bunch of comics.  I would say this is something I woulda liked when I was younger but I saw this when I was younger and I don't remember liking it much back then either.  If you like superhero style sci-fi junk maybe this will give you a cheap thrill.

SCUM OF THE EARTH (1963)


HG Lewis(credited here as Lewis H. Gordon?) sexploitation flick which tells the tale of a young girl taken advantage of by sleazy photographers who apparently make their money by selling cheesecake pics to local high-school kids.  It's kind of a mixed bag, you get some of the roughie elements(in fact this is supposed to be the first film in the "roughie" genre), you get lots of silly dialogue and a bunch of boring bits in between all that stuff.  Mal Arnold who plays old Fuad Ramses in Lewis' BLOOD FEAST here plays an underage juvenile tough guy which is a little unbelievable.  The weird thing about the film is that I don't recall any actual nudity, just leg shots, which is sorta strange for something dealing with the exploitation of young women. I guess Lewis wanted to equally exploit his audience's expectations.  Adding to my non-enjoyment of this might be the fact that the theater I saw this in didn't have the right lenses to project the film or something because it intermittently went from a clear picture to a blurry mess every few minutes or so.  I would imagine the Something Weird DVD would be of slightly better quality.  

This speech really is the highlight of the whole sordid epic:

Monday, March 14, 2011

PASTORAL: TO DIE IN THE COUNTRY (1974)


I feel like with extremely artistic films, like this one here, there's a fine line between an interesting, different perspective and a monotonous, pretentious bore.  While I wouldn't say this Japanese art experiment is particularly pretentious I just didn't find it all that interesting and wasn't sucked into the narrative very much and, besides all the very inventive shots on display, found it overall pretty boring.  It's basically a surreal tale of a young boy, who wears white-face for some reason, in a rural area of Japan who lives with his clinging mom in a house full of clocks that are constantly going off.  His mom seems completely insane, then again everyone in the whole movie comes off as completely insane so there's that going on.  There's also a midget with a mohawk who works for a circus full of weirdos and freaks.  Then a bunch of stuff happens that I'm way too stupid to follow (but I'm sure it has some deeper meaning about repressed childhood memories and such) then there's a sex scene, the director explains to the audience how the film isn't done yet and finally somehow it all ends up in the city where we see the fake sets for what they were.  All in all I would sum it up as a sort-of Asian Jodorowsky film but without the deeply thought out cosmic LSD-infused significance that he would have brought to this.  Only worth watching if you're a hardcore artsy-fartsy type of individual.

Sunday, March 13, 2011

THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN'T DIE (1962)


Great, absurd 1960's horror flick about a mad surgeon who keeps his fiancees head alive in a pan while he searches for the perfect body to replace her old one with, which was originally destroyed in a car crash that he caused in the first place by being such a shitty driver.  She keeps annoying him about her preference for death as opposed to being a disembodied head so he tapes her mouth shut.  What a dick!  He also keeps an ugly patchwork monster made up from his past experiments in the closet that the head bonds with and they form a pretty nifty tag-team of vengeance!  In one awesome and surprisingly gory scene we get a guys arm ripped off by the monster while our head laughs stupidly.  The Frankenstein-like doctor seems like such a douche-bag that it's sweet when he finally gets his comeuppance.(In the uncut version he has a chunk of his neck bitten off and spit out and there's also a nudie-scene in the international cut) A necessary viewing for any fan of cheap B-movies. 
 There's a European cut of this that has a nude model being photographed. I was very shocked to discover this version.

Saturday, March 12, 2011

PSYCHOMANIA (1973)


                                     "It's not me you're afraid of.  It's The world"

PSYCHOMANIA a.k.a. THE DEATH WHEELERS is probably one of my favorite British horror flicks.  It's got way more action than your average Hammer flick from the same period.  It's also got such a strong anti-establishment/anarchist vibe going throughout it and just the idea of coming back from the dead and being an unstoppable force of chaos is such a great fantasy(at least for me it is) that I'm surprised more films don't follow this type of storyline.  The story is about a gang of bikers called The Living Dead whose leader just so happens to have supernatural connections that allow them to die and come back from the dead as immortal zombie bikers.  There's a rockin' soundtrack(besides the one hippie folk song which doesn't rock so much), hot English chicks and a great sequence where all our bikers commit suicide in different ways and then come back to raise hell!  Good times.   

Friday, March 11, 2011

DEVIL DOG: THE HOUND OF HELL (1978)


Ah, yes, the glorious days of 70's TV movies and this is one of my personal favs.  Just for the one scene alone where a cute little puppy uses it's devilish powers to set the Spanish maid on fire it's worth checking out this oddball little movie.  The plot has to do with a Satanic group that for some reason decide to do some nutty ritual that imbues a demonic entity into a dog so that it's puppies all become little half-dog/half-demon mutts.  Then one of the little hell-pups winds up with the typical All American family and wackiness ensues.  Dad almost sticks his hand into a running lawn-mower blade, the maid gets all burned up, mom becomes a skinny-dipping slut and almost everyone ends up worshiping Satan in the attic.  Fun for the whole family!  In some scenes the German Shepherd gets horns and a lions mane made out of a black feather-boa that's supposed to make him scarier-looking.  This was originally shown on Halloween night when I was 7 years old so it gets a bunch of extra nostalgia points from me.

Thursday, March 10, 2011

VAMPIRE CIRCUS (1972)


By the 1970's Hammer films were falling on some hard times. This was their attempt to spice up the vampire genre by doing something different. It wasn't very successful and I can kind of see why. To me, with a few exceptions, vampire films are never very exciting. This one's got a clown-faced midget, a blood-sucker who turns into a panther, the guy who played Darth Vader as a strongman, kids getting killed plus an almost totally naked chick painted up like a tiger and it still manages to be pretty dull. I guess this would appeal only to hardcore Hammer fans who love any horror movie where everyone dresses up like it's 1890.

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

ANGEL BUNS (1981)


Porn flick starring the great R. Bolla, who also starred in some Italian cannibal flicks like CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST and about a hundred other pornos. In this one he plays a schmuck named Sidney who can't get laid so for some reason heaven sends down an angel named Angel Buns played by Veronica Hart who helps him with the ladies. Then there's some fuck scenes, then they both visit heaven and another angel named Angel Dick played by Jerry Butler fucks Hart in the ass to teach dumb-ass Sidney about anal sex. Then there's more ass fucking and then Bolla chases his guardian angel around trying to fuck her which results in his dick smashing through the wall into his neighbors apartment. His dick is kinda like a little Incredible Hulk cuz then instead of seeking medical assistance he immediately fucks Hart which God doesn't like so much. The whole movie is pretty absurd and doesn't make much sense or follow any logic but there's worse ways to kill 90 minutes and Veronica Hart was always one of my old school favs(although I think she looks a lot better as a brunette than a blond as she is here).

ANGELS BUNS

Sunday, March 6, 2011

BLUE SUNSHINE (1978)


"There's a bald maniac in there, and he's going bat shit!"

Is this a cautionary tale about the dangers of LSD or just a cheesy 70's monster flick that uses that as a convenient framing device?  I guess it's sort of both mashed together.  Director Jeff Lieberman who's probably best know for his killer worm epic SQUIRM and his cool(to me anyways) slasher flick JUST BEFORE DAWN here tells the tale of a group of former hippie-types (now on their way to yuppie-ville) who dropped some crazy acid that turns you into a bald-headed rampaging psychopath 10 years after you drop it.  The plot and acting is just crazy enough that you have to keep watching just to see what the hell nutty thing is gonna happen next.  The site of bald knife-wielding women who just need those X's carved in their heads to be the spitting image of the Manson girls is something to see. You get a weird scene with some puppets singing for some reason, the guy from BLADE RUNNER imitating Rodan, the Japanese bird-monster and my favorite scene where a big skin-headed football player goes apeshit  nuts at a disco and starts chucking dancers all over the dance-floor. Disco sucks indeed!  Check it out for a bit of unique 70's craziness.  

Saturday, March 5, 2011

A PROPHET (2009)


Damn, this is one long movie! 155 minutes of a French gangster flick mostly set in a prison where an Arab inmate is drawn into doing jobs for a criminal group and then has some plans of his own to take over and gain as much control and power as he can. It's a big story though with a lot of characters and told in a few languages so it takes some attention-filled viewing to appreciate. There's some brutal violence(a razor-blade neck slicing scene with arterial blood-spray particularly stands out) which is what you would expect also racism and sex and enough of an interesting plot to keep you tuned in even at it's large running time. The acting is all really amazingly realistic so it's too bad that there will probably be a dumbed-down Hollywood version of this with some terrible American actors.

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

THE BEAST FROM THE BEGINNING OF TIME (1965)


This is probably one of the more obscure movies on this blog and maybe it should stay obscure since it's not very good.  If you were to somehow travel back in time to the year 1965 and make a crappy shot on video movie it would probably look a lot like this.  This was filmed in Kansas back in '65 by a local TV-station on their TV-station cameras and wasn't shown until 1981 so the whole thing has the look of an old news broadcast or maybe a soap-opera.  It's a very-talky story of a caveman that's uncovered who then freaks out when he hears thunder and kills a few people.  One victim even winds up getting his arm ripped off which was kind of cool plus the hairy reanimated creature guy has a very bloody demise, too bad this things in black and white.  The prehistoric monster man is played by a local kiddie show host and I doubt anyone from this thing went on to be in any other movies.  Only interesting if you wanna see what a super low-budget TV-movie looked like in the 60's.

This played before they showed the movie back in the 80's on local Kansas TV:

ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST (1975)


"But I tried, didn't I? Goddammit, at least I did that."

I'm guessing this will probably be the only movie on this blog that has won an academy award(it actually won 5) or even been nominated.  It's hard to believe that at one time quality movies were actually included in an awards show that is now just a showcase for boring, over-commercialized Hollywood garbage.  What is this film about?  Rebellion? following one's own path? the corruption of authority? the subjectivity of madness?  I think it's about all that stuff and it's just chock full of amazing little scenes that add up to an overall amazing film and one of the few films from the "drama" genre that I would even bother watching.  The reason it works so well, besides the direction of Milos Forman, is the group of actors, playing the patients in an asylum, who are all pretty young here.  Besides Jack Nicholson you get Danny DeVito, Christopher Lloyd, Brad Dourif and Michael Berryman (playing a memorable lobotomized freak-show of a nut who doesn't get enough screentime).  My favorite institutionalized wacko, though, has got to be the great Sydney Lassick.  While he is not young at all, his scenes always crack me up and his acting style is beyond incredible.  If this guy wasn't truly and completely insane he may have been the greatest actor to ever live.  All the poor guy wants are his cigarettes!  It's rare that a film can make you laugh and also feel like complete shit by the time it's all over but this one does and it's another reason why the 70's era as a whole will probably never be surpassed in any genre.