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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!

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

GOLDEN KILLAH (1977)


 Re-titled with a stupid hip-hop name in order to be released as part of the Wu-Tang Clan's kung-fu movie line which was big in discount stores cheapshit VHS bins back in the 90's, GOLDEN KILLAH goes by a few different titles including GOLDEN MASK, BAD NINJAS WEAR GOLD and DRAGON VS. DRACULA(I don't remember seeing Dracula anywhere in this.  There is a ghost though so maybe he's supposed to be Dracula).  There's really not much that makes this one stand out from your typical kung-fu flick except that the main bad guy wears a gold mask  Watching a few of these shitty old chop-sockey movies just makes me appreciate the films of the Shaw Brothers studios even more.  In their movies you actually care about the characters and the fights mean something.  In badly done movies like this it's hard to even figure out why people are fighting half the time and you really don't care who comes out on top.  I can't imagine that The Wu-Tang Clan really had anything to do with this line except giving the OK to use their name and cashing a check after that.

Our smarmy hero beating up a Buddhist. Way to go dickbag!:

NINJA TERMINATOR (1972)


Not to be confused with the Godfrey Ho 1985 NINJA TERMINATOR this one here is directed by someone named Lo Mar and is a pretty good example of a completely forgettable and disposable kung-fu flick. I know that movies like this weren't really intended to be seen outside of some shitty theater in 1970's Hong Kong or someplace like 42nd Street but this one survives thanks to cheapo dollar DVD's and that sort of thing.
It all starts out with various people kung-fuing each other over what sounds like an instrumental version of Simon & Garfunkel's El Condor Pasa which I don't think is originally a Chinese song but I could be wrong.  This song gets played over and over again until you're sick of it.  After this opening we get a pretty basic revenge plot about this guy who was screwed over by some mobsters/gangsters that he used to work for and sent to prison for a while also his girlfriend left him for one of the bad guys.  The head baddie has a really sweet John Waters mustache so you can't really blame her too much.  More weird music shows up including lots of funky disco soul tunes played in bar scenes which seem a bit out of place and finally a bunch of pretty boring fight scenes round it all out.  The only ninja that I saw was on the box cover of the VHS this came in so don't expect them if you ever get stuck watching this which you most likely won't unless you're into really cheap crap movies on DVD or VHS. The only information I could find online says this may have been originally titled BLACK LIST which would make a little more sense. Other aliases may or may not include NINJA EXTERMINATOR, NINJA BLACK LIST and KUNG FU BLACKLIST.

This other NINJA TERMINATOR looks way better!  Gotta check it out sometime:

Monday, February 27, 2012

AMERICAN PIE (1981)


  Not to be confused with that shitty over-hyped Hollywood garbage comedy movie from a few years ago this AMERICAN PIE stars Eric Edwards and Randy West as 2 criminal types who team up with Lee Carroll and decide to kidnap some rich guys daughters(Arcadia Lake from DEBBIE DOES DALLAS plays one of them) for some big bucks in ransom money.  The plot sorta reminded me of that grind-house classic THE CANDY SNATCHERS but it goes in a few different directions towards the end that you don't see coming and this one is set in the 50's which gives it a whole different feel.  The soundtrack consists of cover versions of popular 50's hits by a band called Rebel Rouser which is a little odd.  Cool to watch if porn with an actual plot is something you're into.  Also if you're into seeing chicks in 1950's style dresses getting banged this one's for you.

Sunday, February 26, 2012

THE ZODIAC KILLER (1971)


 Made shortly after the actual events it was based on this film is like a low-budget, way goofier version of that big 2007 David Fincher film.  In fact one of the scenes is almost identical except the killer here clearly has a rubber knife and instead of stabbing anyone he just seems to be smearing red paint all over them while they badly act like they're dying.  The whole thing starts out like a mystery where we meet a bunch of anti-social clowns who might be our killer then somewhere about halfway through they give up on that idea and just show us the guy who's responsible.  One thing I couldn't help but notice is that this film sure doesn't give truck driving men a good name since the trucker fellow here seems like one of the biggest asshats I've seen in a movie in a while.  He's a fat, pill-taking, gun-packing abusive ex-husband and father who hangs out in shitty bars wearing the world's most ridiculous wig and somehow this fucker gets four chicks to hang out with him?!(and one of them is even an Asian-lady which I give him extra-credit for).  How the fuck does he pull that shit off?
 An entertaining time-waster if you want to see one of the sillier proto-slasher flicks and the ending is neat since ol' Zodiac just taunts the audience and gives the big "fuck you" to society in general.

THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTED (1980)


 Jean Rollin is up there with Jess Franco as one of my favorite European cult directors.  I find that his movies work best when viewed at 3AM while in a half-awake state probably due to the dream-like qualities that exist in them.  Most of his films deal with vampires or zombies or something supernatural.  This one really doesn't have any of that stuff going on but it does still have that other-worldly sensibility that his best films do.
 The story concerns a woman(Brigette Lahaie) who escapes from a hospital and gets picked up by a lucky fellow who takes her home and bangs her all night.  It seems that Brigette can't remember much of anything that's happened to her and also repeatedly forgets everything after a little while over and over again, sort of like that movie MEMENTO but without all the bullshit Hollywood trappings of that one.  She eventually gets taken back to the hospital and we find out what it's all about.  Some of the patients here do act like zombies(without any of the flesh-eating antics) so I guess that's why it's usually shoe-horned into that category.
  Most of the reviews I've seen of this compare it to an early Cronenberg film and that's pretty accurate.  Former French porn-star Lahaie looks amazingly hot as usual and we gets lots of nakedness from her.  You also get a bloody bit where a bald rapist guy gets a hammer to the skull and someone commits suicide by jamming scissors into their eyeballs which seems like a terrible way to off yourself.
 This one's worth checking out if you want to see a more down to earth realistic example of a Rollin flick with  a mystery/drama plot mixed-in with the horror elements.

Saturday, February 25, 2012

RITES, BLACK MAGIC AND SECRET ORGIES IN THE 14th CENTURY (1973)


 This Italian Satanic/witch movie starts off with some chick being stripped and then sacrificed to some pasty-faced demon lady named Isabel.  The cult of men doing this look like they took their fashion tips from THE GREATEST AMERICAN HERO.  While all this naughtiness goes on you hear a bunch of dogs barking and howling incessantly in the background.  From there a woman is attacked by angry bats and has her heart ripped out by some maniac.  Meanwhile those fucking dogs keep barking!  After about 20 minutes of this craziness they shut up and it all sort of starts to make sense as a group of folks take up residence in a spooky old castle and spooky shit starts to happen. This fools you into thinking there's some kind of a plot here which is not true.  It turns out our pasty demon goddess was just some lady burned at the stake for being a witch.  There's also a gory scene where she has her heart rammed through with a large stake.  So she's back for revenge or something like that but then some vampire stuff happens.  Overall this movie is a real mess but you do get lots of evil groping going on, a little lesbianism, bloodsucking, flashing colors/psychedelic freak-out scenes, a woman buried alive, hot naked European ladies cavorting about and lots of creepy devil-worshiping guys acting creepy and not much of that makes any sense.  Mickey Hargitay from BLOODY PIT OF HORROR is in there as Isabel's boyfriend.  There's a few alternate titles for this including THE REINCARNATION OF ISABEL and THE GHASTLY ORGIES OF COUNT DRACULA(yes Count Dracula is thrown in there also).  For advanced fans of off-the-wall Eurotrash who can handle a big helping of total weirdness.

Thursday, February 23, 2012

EL CAMINANTE (1979)

               "Good Lord! How could you give your life for these pigs? I don't understand."

Before seeing this movie I had only known Paul Naschy as that Spanish Wolfman guy and for his various other monster movie roles. This film is by far Naschy's best acting job that I've seen yet and is now my favorite of his films overall.
He plays the devil here and the story is basically an inversion of the story of Jesus with Satan taking human form and hanging out with us scummy humans. Also like Jesus things don't always turn out so well for our main character. It's also a pretty nihilistic film with some great quotes about the evil of mankind and ends with the idea that man is far more evil and devious than even the lord of Hell. There are some funny bits including Naschy stealing from a guy taking a shit in a field and carving a lovely upside down cross in a couple of asses. There's also one scene with a sped-up Benny Hill-style(or maybe it's closer to A CLOCKWORK ORANGE) orgy. You also get some man-on-man rape, nun-humping and lots of murder. To top everything off a nice helping of naked boob and euro-bush are on display cuz those are the kinds of things Satan enjoys. AKA THE TRAVELER and THE DEVIL INCARNATE(DVD title). 



Wednesday, February 22, 2012

BAD GIRLS (1981)


 A bunch of hot chicks go camping and end up in a sex dungeon.  Pretty decent flick from the early video days that takes advantage of it's outdoorsy setting and throws in the unexpected S & M ending scenes.  One of the main girls, Pia Snow, went on to change her name to Michelle Bauer and become semi-famous by starring in a million shitty shot-on-video horror movies.  This was her only hardcore flick.  John Leslie plays a guy who chops wood a lot and Ron Jeremy is a young horny boy-scout type fellow.  There's 3 official sequels and there's R and X-rated versions of this on VHS because some areas of the U.S.A. didn't appreciate the rougher dungeon stuff.

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

THE SEX TEAM (1977)

 Vanessa Del Rio and a couple of her roommates decide to invite a bunch of guys over to their apartment and have a sex Olympics to break up their boredom.  That's pretty much it and you can tell by that description that this is a really fucking stupid porn flick.  Bobby Astyr has a big role since silly porn comedies are his specialty and director Gerard Damiano appears in between sex scenes doing a TV sports announcer bit.  The movie is full of completely strange stock music while the fucking and sucking is going on.  The music bed is supplied with everything from classical to stuff you would hear on SESAME STREET which makes things a little odd but I'm sure the audiences back in the day didn't mind much. Sharon Mitchell and Robert Kerman are also in this for a little bit. Strangely the print I saw of this had no titles or credits anywhere on it so I'm not sure who a few of the other naked bodies are. This goes under a bunch of alternate titles including JOINT VENTURE, EROTIC OLYMPICS, SEX MARATHON, and COMPETITION!.  Overall this filth flick is a pretty big waste of time and their are way better classic titles out there to watch before this one.

Sunday, February 19, 2012

THE PIT (1981)


 I can't help but feel like this movie would have been at least slightly better if they had just changed some of the music in it.  The first half of the movie is fine up until people start getting killed.  Then we get this jaunty melody played while people are either tossed into or tricked into falling into a huge hole in the ground and eaten by yellow-eyed hairy monsters.  The fact that no one seems to notice this giant crater in the earth is also pretty fucking stupid.  Besides this though there are a lot of good things to recommend this movie for.  The weird little pervy kid who talks to his teddy bear and peeps at neighbor's tits is the main draw and luckily this had been made early enough in the 80's that stupid formulaic comedy disguised as horror garbage like CRITTERS hadn't quite become the norm yet.  While this is hardly the camp classic that trendy 80's obsessed VHS nerds make it out to be it's still OK for some cheap laughs and a dumb bizarre plot and would probably make a good double feature with something like GHOULIES.

Playing down at the local weirdo theater!:

Friday, February 17, 2012

CECILIA (1982)


 Oh, Jess Franco you're quite the sleazy fellow.  This epic sextravaganza is packed with the expected bare-asses, tits, and humping galore.  In addition there seems to be a strange sense of humor that runs throughout the movie.  Whether that's intentional or not I'm not really sure but either way strange shit happens.  It starts out with our title character getting gang-raped in a limo and deciding halfway through that she digs it.  From there more random banging, spouse swapping, a strange old gay fellow that Cecelia refers to as her grandmother?, and to top things off a weirdo orgy scene which includes a mother(Lina Romay) and her underage, deaf, mute son involved in some steamy incest action for everyone to enjoy.  The son inexplicably has an extra set of eyeballs painted onto his eyelids just to make things more creepy.
 Overall this is a beautifully shot sex flick and Franco takes advantage of some great scenery having shot this in Portugal and Paris.
 Check it out if you're a fan of euro-bush filled sexual shenanigans.  A.K.A. DIARY OF A DESPERATE HOUSEWIFE

                                 Suck that thumb mum!:

Monday, February 13, 2012

PRETTY BABY (1978)


I imagine that this movie might have been the last time that a mainstream Hollywood film would be accused of being kiddie porn. Nothing like this would ever even be pitched as an idea by anyone working within the system that currently exists unless they weren't interested in working again. It's not porn at all, of course, in actuality it's a really well-made, beautifully-shot drama about a whorehouse set in New Orleans in 1917. This movie was considered controversial when it came out due to nude scenes involving a 12 year old Brooke Shields and while the movie itself might not seems as shocking today when viewing it I think the subject matter itself would probably be considered even more outrageous due to the sick obsession society in general these days has with child pornography and how it's misinterpreted as anything involving young people and sex. This film is based on a real story and it reflects that reality really well. Is the underage nudity necessary? Maybe not but it does add to the realism and that's what elevates it to great art and not watered-down nonsense that is created today.
I can comfortably say that I didn't feel like that much of a pervert watching this as I was way more excited by the idea of Barbara Steele as a hooker than little Brooke and would have payed way more for the queen of Italian horror.
Huggy Bear(Antonio Fargas) also appears as a smooth piano-playin' philosophizer, Susan Sarandon plays Brooke's whore of a mom and you get to see lots of her and Kieth Carradine has a big role as a bit of a pervy photographer.
I know that I sound like a broken record but the real tragedy to me is that films like this that delved into uncomfortable areas and gritty truths died out in the 70's and were replaced with disposable garbage. It's too bad that we have to always look backwards to find anything worthwhile.

The trailer calls this her debut but horror movie fans know that she was in ALICE, SWEET ALICE a couple of years earlier:

Sunday, February 12, 2012

NEW WAVE HOOKERS 2 (1991)


  NEW WAVE HOOKERS was a pretty stupid movie but by the time the 90's rolled in stupid had been raised to a whole new level.  The Dark Brothers(who are really just one guy, Gregory Dark) followed up the original with a sequel which throws in a whole subplot about feminists from the lost city of Atlantis that control a whorehouse that's run by Jack Baker.  Mr. Baker is the only real tie to the first movie since they eliminated Jamie Gillis' punk character and added in a fat detective played by some horrible boring non-actor named Rip Hymen.  I did like the fact that Baker, as pimp/prophet Little Willie, reads to his whores from "the good book" which of course is PIMP by Iceberg Slim besides that though this movie is just one boring fuck scene after another with nothing to recommend it.  Madison who usually looks like a hotter Betty Page here has curly hair which looks strange, Savannah always bores me with her half-asleep junkie look and she would go on to get in a car crash and then blow her brains out which was probably the most exciting thing she'd ever done.  They seem to have forgotten to add any actual new wave music to the soundtrack besides one song that was in the first film and none of the girls look even remotely "new wave".  I guess by this point new wave would have been considered slightly dated anyway.  At least I know now that I don't have to bother watching any of the other 4 sequels after this. 




HARRY BROWN (2009)



 Will they ever stop remaking DEATH WISH?  Probably not, but that's OK cuz I never get tired of the basic take-the-law-into-your-own-hands vigilante plot.  I'm a simple kind of guy.  While Charles Bronson was probably somewhere in his 50's when he starred in DEATH WISH Michael Caine here is in his 70's and looks around 800 years old, and the character of Harry suffers from emphysema, so that's kind of a new wrinkle I guess.  Luckily he's a former military man or this movie would be really short.  It's also all set in England so our villains here are closer to the "chav" stereotype than your typical American gangster.  The story itself plays out pretty much how you would expect without many surprises.  There is a strange sequence in a drug-lab/junkies house which was the high-point of oddness.  If this movie was made back in the 70's it would have been a lot more gritty and entertaining but since it's a new movie everything looks odd about it to me.  The look of the film(do we still call them films when they're shot digitally and no film is involved?) was the main deterrent to me.  It appears to have been shot with some kind of high-end digital camera which gives everything a flat glossy look which I guess appeals to the simple-minded type of devolved humans that still bother to see new movies in multiplexes.  I can see where maybe that works for one of those shaky-cam movies but this isn't supposed to be one of those.  Maybe when I turn 70 and my eyes start to go all fuzzy this type of cinema will look better to me.    

Saturday, February 11, 2012

VILLAGE OF THE GIANTS (1965)


Little Opie himself, Ron Howard, plays a kid scientist who mixes up a goo that makes things gigantic. A bunch of animals get giant-sized including ducks, a dog, a cat, a spider and finally some go-go dancing 60's teenagers. It's funny that out of control teens were considered so frightening in 65. This movie is pretty much the definition of an intentionally silly B-movie but it can be fun if you're in the right mood. You get the band THE BEAU BRUMMELS playing, gals shaking their asses, too-small sweaters being busted at the seams, teenage mud-wrestling and lots of over-sized cleavage to ogle. I imagine this was kind of like porn for the respectable family man at the time. The FX are awful but that really just adds to the laughs. Director Bert I. Gordon also made a few slightly more serious 50's big people flicks like THE AMAZING COLOSSAL MAN and WAR OF THE COLOSSAL BEAST and also big bug movies like EARTH VS. THE SPIDER and the gloriously goofy 70's EMPIRE OF THE ANTS. I say check them all out if you're not too serious of a person and dig true B-movies.

THE DEVIL'S HAND (1962)


 This movie plays out like an overlong episode of THE TWILIGHT ZONE.  You get a weird plot about voodoo dolls and a devil-worshiping cult that our main character(played by Alan Alda's dad) gets mixed-up in after having wet dreams about a blond chick.  The main bad guy is played by the fellow who would go on to be the commissioner on the 60's BATMAN TV show and he really does seem like a bit of a cunt in this.  In fact now that I think about it he seemed like sort of a douche-bag on BATMAN also.  The movie is mostly dialogue-heavy so it drags quite a bit even though it's only about 70 minutes long but it is available on a bunch of cheap-ass horror DVD sets so if ya wanna check out some early 60's Satanism-scare stuff, with possibly the world's dullest, suit and tie-wearing demon-worshipers, here you go.

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

TAI-CHI MASTER (1993)


I've never been a big fan of Jet Li. Maybe it's because I first saw him in big Hollywood-type films or maybe it's because I was raised on old school Shaw Brothers style kung-fu flicks but he's never really appealed to me and the fact that he is so well known is a little surprising as well.
This movie is one of those epic battle type of martial arts flicks that he seemed to always appear in where everything is on as grand a scale as possible and one guy fights an army of 1000 soldiers and doesn't get a scratch on him. These type of films are never my favorites and this one being directed by the guy who choreographed the fight scenes in THE MATRIX guaranteed that there would just be a bunch of wire-work stunts and flying superhero antics. On the plus side though the pace here is super fast and the action really doesn't stop from start to finish. I can see why so many people praise this film but like with most forms of entertainment I'll stick with the 70's era classics.

Monday, February 6, 2012

THE ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN (1957)


 This movie is a pretty boring example of a 50's monster flick. Probably the main reason for that is that it was made by Hammer films which did OK with their updating of DRACULA and FRANKENSTEIN around this same time but this one doesn't update anything and feels way older than those other monster mashes. Peter Cushing plays the good-guy scientist role and Forrest Tucker(who would go on to star in F-TROOP) plays the scummy showman who's just out to profit on capturing the Snowman/monster. They both do a really good job and are way above the average cheesy performances that usually showed up in creature features from America made in this era. Unfortunately this one always felt like a cheat to me since you barely get to see the monster(or monsters since there turns out to be more than one) and when you finally do it's pretty underwhelming. They just kinda look like big hairy old men.  Probably only worth checking out if you're a big Hammer fan and want to see one of their earlier horrors.

You probably don't need to be all that stout of heart to view this:

Sunday, February 5, 2012

THREE THE HARD WAY (1974)



 Similar to the classic Universal monster movies of years past the idea to team-up your biggest box-office draws was used in a few blaxploitation flicks.  This one gives us Mr. BLACK BELT JONES himself Jim Kelly, Fred "The Hammer" Williamson and Jim Brown.  While it's cool to see all three in one flick I always feel like Brown is the least interesting and unfortunately they make him the main dude that you follow.  But nevertheless you get a wacky plot about a group of neo-nazis trying to get rid of the whole black population in American by putting a chemical in drinking water that somehow only kills blacks, a crazy scene with three hot biker chicks who love torturing men and lots of cars blowing up in mid-air.  One big downside to this one is that towards the end section it all plays out like too much of a typical Hollywood action movie that you've seen a million times.  Still worth checking out even if just for the scene of Jim Kelly single-handedly taking out a whole police squadron using just his kung-fu badness with seemingly no legal repercussions.

Saturday, February 4, 2012

BLACK SAMSON (1974)


 As well as being a great year for horror films, 1974 was also a great year for blaxploitation films and films in general.  This story of a smooth black bar-owner named Mr. Samson is a simple yet awesome flick from the golden era of exploitation movies.  Samson runs the kind of bar you would only see in a 70's movie.  For one thing he keeps his pet lion there and the thing just hangs out with all the local drunks.  Also there's strippers and a church organ that an old black fellow plays.  I'm not sure that I would want to hang out in a place like this in real life but it somehow makes sense in the movie.  As our main protagonist we get a mafia tough guy played by Mr. William Smith who's probably best known for playing the heavy in a bunch of biker flicks and if you need a bad-ass villain he's probably one of the best you can get.  He beats his woman around for fun and even throws her out of a moving car at one point.  He's also a bit on the racist side.  We know this because he calls someone a nigger in just about every other sentence.  It all culminates in a memorable scene of black pride and unity as the community traps our evil Italians in an alleyway and rains down all sorts of garbage on them which I think might be a good metaphor for paying "the man" back for all the garbage he's thrown at us or maybe it just makes a good visual.  Either way it rocks!  Check it out if you're not a jive-ass, honky, redneck racist.
 I'm kinda shocked that star Rockne Tarkington never really had any big starring roles after this since it seems natural that he woulda went on to bigger things.  His lady in this, Carol Speed is much more familiar for having big roles in everything from the classic THE MACK to ABBY, the black-EXORCIST rip-off flick.

Thursday, February 2, 2012

SNUFF (1976)


 This is a movie I've watched several times since first being disturbed by it as a young fella watching late one night on a shitty-looking VHS.  It's attempts to simulate an actual snuff film lingered in my head for a while after viewing .  That's only the last scene though and the rest of the movie isn't very good  but for some reason I keep getting drawn back to it.  Maybe it's the Charles Manson-esque tale of a cult of biker chicks led by a kooky character or maybe it's just knowing that the fake-snuff footage is coming that keeps me watching.
  By far the most interesting thing about this film is it's history which started out as a movie called SLAUGHTER made by legendary sleaze-movie couple Michael and Roberta Findlay.  This is where all the death-trippin' biker stuff comes from.  Then in the last few minutes you get a girl(who isn't in the 1st part of the movie at all) cut up and disemboweled for the camera.  This scene seems to still be a little bit of a mystery from what I can gather.  Like who the hell are these actors?  From what I've read it was shot in porn-director Carter Stevens studio so maybe he has the answers.
 After this film was released the guy who had the idea to make this thing in the 1st place, Al Shackleton, hired some protesters to picket the film(always a brilliant plan!) and then attracted real protesters and the rest is history.  Reported in newspapers and on TV as possibly a real snuff movie now in theaters!  What better advertising could you wish for?  Whispered about from then on(mostly by people who never saw it, I'm sure, since the actual killing looks about as fake as possible!) and freaking out uptight citizens anywhere it was mentioned.
 Sadly, I think if something like this was seriously tried today the producer might end up in jail on some made-up terrorism charge.