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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, January 30, 2014

SNOWBEAST (1977)


 This abominable snowman creature takes on skiers at a resort. They don't show the monster too much so he actually looks pretty decent (pretty closely resembling the Wampa from EMPIRE STRIKES BACK). He does pretty good in the murdering department also up until he runs into Bo Svenson who ends up being pretty bad-ass when he's done sulking about some athletic loss of some sort. This was a TV-movie so there's not a whole lot of blood, it's not really all that scary and it's about average for these 70's Bigfoot-type of movies but you can find it on cheap-o DVD's or online for free which makes it at least worth one viewing if you dig crappy Bigfoot romps.
 There's a 2011 SNOW BEAST with John "Bo Duke" Schneider that looks like a pile of garbage.


Wednesday, January 29, 2014

PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID (1973)


 This is not one of my favorite Sam Peckinpah movies. It's definitely no WILD BUNCH but explores some of the same themes including the old west dying off and is still an OK watch for an American western. I think one of the main problems I have with this movie is Bob Dylan. Clearly Dylan is not an actor and why he's in this I'm not really sure. Luckily he's not a main character. He also does the music for the film and even that I'm not so sure works all that great and feels out of place at times. Kris Kristofferson is good though as Billy The Kid and there's a great scene where he breaks out of jail and kills a Jesus freak in trademark Peckinpah slow-motion. Worth a look for western fans.
 There's a few different cuts of this. The originally released 106-minute version which cuts down some of the violence and sounds like a terrible choice to watch. A 1988 uncut 115-minute version, which is the one I watched and a 2005 re-edited 122-minute version that changes some of the scenes and adds a bonus scene.


Tuesday, January 28, 2014

BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS (1970)



 This might be the most perfect movie ever made. I mean as far as musical/sex/drama/horror/comedies go this has got to be the best one. Probably also the only film that has that many elements and isn't a completely muddled mess. This has to be Russ Meyer's best made film and when I think of Meyer and Roger Ebert  I find it hard to imagine the two of them writing a story together but somehow in the faraway land of 1969 they came up with this insane tale that makes me think "what would happen if you dropped JOSIE AND THE PUSSYCATS in the middle of a drug-fueled, sex-crazed Hollywood?" And what happens includes decapitation, abortion, lesbianism, bloody murder, suicide, transvestism and all sorts of nutty behavior. I imagine if you don't dig 60's hippie music by bands like The Strawberry Alarm Clock this will not be as much fun but that's your problem. Pam Grier has her first role in this but it must be very small because I never even noticed her.
 I've never seen the original VALLEY OF THE DOLLS and I can't imagine it measures up to this one all that well but maybe I'll check it out one day.




Monday, January 27, 2014

BARON BLOOD (1972)


 This is not my favorite Mario Bava film but it's still an OK flick from the first master of Italian horror. It's a pretty straightforward horror flick about an evil fella who was fond of torturing and murdering folks until a posse of townsfolk kill him viciously. So of course, this being a Bava movie, one of the evil Baron's descendents bring him back from the dead as a murdering zombie-looking monster. There's also some witches and witchery involved. A lot of stuff happens that doesn't make much sense but it's all filmed really well and looks pretty great. AKA BARON VAMPIRE and THE TORTURE CHAMBER OF BARON BLOOD.




Punk rock!:

Wednesday, January 22, 2014

BECAUSE OF THE CATS (1973)


 This movie starts off pretty good with a gang of upper-class hoodlums breaking into a house, graphically raping a man's wife right in front of him and forcing him to watch. From there it turns into a police investigation story where this one cop becomes obsessed with bringing these spoiled rich kids to justice and that's not exactly my favorite type of movie. There's also a girl gang, called The Cats who get involved in a murder, some cats get wacked and some crazy cult stuff goes on. Sylvia Kristel who would go on to become EMMANUELLE the next year gets very naked here as do pretty much all the females in this. Maybe worth a watch but the whole movie doesn't live up to it's crazy opening bit. AKA THE RAPE, C.A.T.S. and BRUTALIZATION.
 This was based on a 1963 book that I'm guessing they couldn't film back then since it was so graphic.

Rated X in England!:


REDNECK (1973)


 I like the idea of a team-up of Franco Nero and Telly Savalas as a couple of criminal types on the run from the law but I don't think it's done all that well in this film. The main drawback is the tone of this movie, which is all over the place. It goes from hard-driving crime film where people are getting gunned down by Savalas(who's playing the title character as a real over-the-top nutjob) to an almost-slapstick comedy with goofy music playing over wacky car crashes until finally becoming basically a drama. There's also some kinda message in here, I think, but I'm not sure what it is except maybe that kids are influenced by adults bad actions. Which might be one of the most simplistic and stupid messages of anything I've ever seen. On the plus side young kids get shot and murdered which is very rare in American films. On the weird side there's a scene where Franco Nero shaves his face while standing in front of a mirror completely naked while a 14-year old boy stares at his bare ass and crotch?? So that's something you probably won't see again.
 The version I watched of this felt like it might have been cut since whenever things started to get too nasty(a possible rape scene, a dog getting shot etc.) it cut away, which I'm guessing isn't the way it originally played so the full version may be a little more disturbing.

This movie starts out in a pretty awesome way before getting lost in its psychological drama trappings:




Monday, January 20, 2014

FIVE ELEMENT NINJAS (1982)



 This is has always been one of my favorite kung fu flicks. I used to have a huge poster for it hanging on my wall and I used to watch it pretty frequently on UHF stations back in the 80's under the title of SUPER NINJAS. I was always really into it for the variety of weapons used and also the variety of different ninjas. You get metal ninjas with crazy hats that shoot knives, fire ninjas who shoot fire and red smog at you, water ninjas who use hooked spears, underground dirt ninjas who spear you in the crotch and ninjas hiding in trees that use claws. There's also some regular ninjas that use a whole slew of different things including Wolverine-claws, throwing stars and grappling hooks. Now on the TV-version I used to watch they cut out some of the more graphic scenes but in a recent theatrical viewing I finally got to see the full gore-filled spectacle which includes a guy getting ripped in half, an even more unlucky guy getting pulled completely apart, a decapitation, a guys intestines hanging out and other not so happy bloody endings. They even throw in a hot ninja gal in a fishnet body suit for some nice eye candy. Definitely one of the best Shaw Brothers flicks there ever was. AKA CHINESE SUPER NINJAS

FANTOM KILLER 2 (1999)


 When these FANTOM KILLER movies first came out there wasn't a lot known about them and they were supposedly made in either Russia or Poland. From reading a little about them there's also some suspicion that they may have been made in the U.K. except that doesn't explain why everyone speaks Polish throughout the movie? Well, wherever they're from this was just a really awful shot-on-video piece of crap. The only appeal would be that we get lots of totally nude women with fake boobs and hardcore porno fondling of vaginas. There's also this Fantom character killing women in very unconvincing murder scenes. The plot is pretty slim and the whole thing plays like masturbation material for snuff-movie fans which makes for a pretty dull experience if this kinda stuff doesn't get you off. Even though the run-time is pretty short fast forwarding from breasts to breasts is the best way to view this.
 There are 4 of these FANTOM KILLER movies, I think, and a totally porn offshoot series called FANTOM SEDUCER but I think I will spare myself from watching any of these.

Sunday, January 19, 2014

BUDDHA'S PALM (1982)


 I enjoy a good ridiculous kung fu movie as much as anyone else, and probably more than most people, but there's a point where a film can go over that line from being an awesome wacky martial arts film and become an absurd comedic fantasy film with some fighting in it. This one definitely goes over that line into overly wacky territory. You get a light-saber, people shooting colorful rays out of their hands, a guy with a giant extendable foot, high-speed Benny Hill-esque running ninjas and worst of all a big muppet who looks like a Chinese version of that stupid flying dog from THE NEVERENDING STORY. On the plus side there is a kid who shoots acid out of a giant zit on his face and that is something I have never seen or even ever thought of before. Also while this feels very much like a kids movie they don't skimp on the violence with people exploding and getting bloodily stabbed pretty frequently. Check it out if you can deal with the over-the-topness of it all or you're a little kid.
 I saw this on a double bill with FIVE ELEMENTS NINJAS and while that movie also has some pretty crazy parts it's way more based in reality, not a comedy at all and is a much better overall film which made this one look even weaker by comparison.


THE CASE OF THE BLOODY IRIS (1972)


 I had this movie as part of a giallo box set(along with THE BLOODSTAINED SHADOW, SHORT NIGHT OF THE GLASS DOLLS and WHO SAW HER DIE) until it, and all the other DVD's I owned at the time, was stolen by a junkie. I still miss it since it was such a cool set with every movie being at least a decent watch but this one is definitely my favorite. I was able to replace all the films except this one but I have found it online. Re-watching it I can recall why I originally dug it so much. It starts out with a slashing on an elevator and then goes into the whole murder mystery thing involving some sexy models and a bunch of red herrings. There's crazy strip club sequences and a masked killer who dresses in total black and looks like the chainsaw maniac in PIECES. I think this one comes very close to the Argento-level of quality of films from this genre. AKA WHAT ARE THOSE STRANGE DROPS OF BLOOD DOING ON JENNIFER'S BODY?, EROTIC BLUE and SHOCKINGLY TRUE...EROTIC BLUE

Saturday, January 18, 2014

MOTHER'S DAY (1980)

              
                                             "Punk sucks!" "Disco's stupid!"

  I've seen this 80's slasher dozens of times and it's always been one of my favorites. Directed by Troma's head goofball Lloyd Kaufman's brother, Charles, this is technically only a slasher movie if you consider stuff like TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE a slasher flick and I do. It also benefits from coming out early enough in the 80's that all the slasher rules weren't set in stone like they would be later on. There aren't any teenage campers here, they're all independent adult women, but it does take place in the woods and similar to that classic this features a family of wacko's who do away with anyone that stumbles across their path. This family consists of a mom and her two semi-retarded offspring Ike and Addley. These two guys are really what makes this film stand out as they bicker about important issues like punk vs. disco and get into fist-fights with each other for fun. There's also quite a bit of rape and a dummy gets decapitated. Amazingly, since this came out in the 80's, there were no sequels even though the ending does leave it open for further forest-based murderous adventures. A classic VHS-era horror.
 There was a horrendous remake of this in 2010 that starred Rebecca De Mornay that I somehow was able to watch before I realized everything new is a complete waste of my time.

Thursday, January 16, 2014

LADY SNOWBLOOD: LOVE SONG OF VENGEANCE (1974)


 There's really no reason for a sequel to LADY SNOWBLOOD. The first movie is complete and nearly perfect all by itself but being that it was successful in Japan they made another chapter the very next year. And like what they did with the STREET FIGHTER and SISTER STREET FIGHTER series the sequels never measure up to the originals. This one makes the mistake of injecting a bunch of politics into the movie involving some anarchists who want to topple the evil Japanese government and, just like in real life, politics makes everything less fun. There is some eye violence and the black death gets passed around liberally but overall this really pales in comparison to the amazing original film.




Wednesday, January 15, 2014

INVASION OF THE LOVE DRONES (1977)



 Sci-fi porn mix that starts out with a guy doing a creepy Rod Serling voice-over, then a penis-shaped spaceship shows up near Earth and beams down some sexy ladies who bang porn star Eric Edwards who turns into a "love drone", whatever the hell that means. He goes around and turns other people into fellow drones which just means that everyone acts like sex-crazed nymphos and talk like robots. Then all this sex-energy is stored up to help make more alien-queens(a bald chick painted white who also fucks Mr. Edwards). Or at least I think that's what was going on. It's all very dumb. There's one gang rape scene that isn't very realistically shot.
 Apparently some of the sex scenes were shot a few years before this came out. AKA HEAVENLY PLEASURE GIRLS

Monday, January 13, 2014

ISLAND WARRIORS (1981)



 I first saw this, back when I was a young fellow, on Rick Shaw's Takeout Theater which was a segment on USA's Night Flight program that was hosted by a comedian who looked like Super Mario and showed really crappy kung fu flicks. This one stood out from the garbage because it was one of the weirdest martial arts films I had seen up until that time. I didn't recall the name though until I recently found this cheap DVD in a supermarket. The reason it sticks out amongst other kung fu movies is that it's the story of an island of ass-kicking women who have a nasty habit of castrating men who stumble across their island. Now this castration involves using a large hook to rip out testicles and amazingly enough this thing played on basic cable back in the 80's. I'll assume they cut out some of the blood but it still was very traumatizing to a young me. Watching it now I can't help but feel it comes off as much goofier then I remember thanks to the strange choice of new-wavey tunes that sound like they belong in a teen-sex comedy playing while our island ladies do their constant wacky aerobics dancing/exercising. Also one guy gets castrated and immediately turns into a cross-dressing homosexual! The story is pretty basic, the women battle some pirates and there's also an opposing island of kung fu men. Without it's sentimental value though it might be a little dull for the average fu fan since there really isn't all that much interesting fighting going on. There are some boobs though and if you wanna see something strange check it out. AKA WARRIOR WOMEN, WOMEN WARRIORS and THE COUNTRY OF BEAUTIES.




Sunday, January 12, 2014

LADY SNOWBLOOD (1973)



 The theme here is revenge. In this case it's revenge of a woman who has had her family murdered in front of her eyes and if that wasn't bad enough she also gets raped and beaten over a few days time. Her vehicle for this vengeance is her daughter who is the titular messenger from the underworld trained her whole life for this mission. This is an equally beautiful-looking and super-violent film filled with plenty of sword-fighting, severed limbs and spraying geysers of blood. This was an obvious inspiration for Quentin Tarantino's KILL BILL. He used some of the music and the snowy setting for that film but check out the original for some great Japanese samurai bloodshed cinema.
 There was a sequel the next year and there were a couple of remakes of this including one in 1977(BROKEN OATH) and one in 2001(THE PRINCESS BLADE) .



MS. 45 (1981)


 This goes down in the annals of rape/revenge films as one of the best in my opinion. It's the story of a mute gal(Zoe Lund) who has a really shitty day, gets raped twice and becomes a man-killing vigilante. The echoes of films like DEATH WISH and I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE are clearly present here and there's even a gang that looks like they stepped out of THE WARRIORS.
  I know there has to be some sort of feminist message here but being very far from an expert on feminist theories myself I'm still not sure if it's pro-feminism or anti-feminism or maybe both? I mean the main character starts out as a very sympathetic type and you can basically understand the things she does for the most part(perhaps phoning the police instead of chopping up her attacker in a bathtub would have been a more logical choice) but as the movie goes on she spirals out of control and starts blasting away at men just for being men. As with most great works of art, director Abel Ferrara leaves the interpretation up to the viewer. I think in my twisted, deranged mind I get the idea that feminism can serve a purpose but taken to it's extreme endpoint serves no better purpose than any other radical idea put into action but since I was born with a penis I'm sure my thoughts are meaningless to the masses of hardcore sisters intent on dismantling the evil patriarchy. AKA ANGEL OF VENGEANCE


Thursday, January 9, 2014

ATLAS IN THE LAND OF THE CYCLOPS (1961)


 I kinda feel like in order to properly review these swords and sandals films it might help if you're a homosexual fellow. I am not currently but will do my best. This one is about an evil queen who keeps a giant hairy cyclops in a pit. There's a raid on a village then this muscular Maciste guy(Gordon Mitchell, why they call him Atlas in the title I have no idea) has a slow sexy scene where he wakes up from what I'll assume was a long night of disco dancing and perhaps some leather bondage. After showing off his supple body he meets up with the queen and later on our one-eyed monster. Lots of feats of strength by Maciste also ensue including wrestling a lion to death with his bare hands and grappling with a very buff black man. Pretty standard stuff from this genre but at least there's a monster at the end also unexpectedly a guy gets ripped in half like a wishbone by the giant which isn't really shown very graphically since this was 1961 but still pretty nasty stuff for one of these films that I'm assuming were made for kids since they're basically super-hero movies. AKA MACISTE IN THE LAND OF THE CYCLOPS, ATLAS AGAINST THE CYCLOPS, MONSTER FROM THE UNKNOWN WORLD and MACISTE VS. THE CYCLOPS.
 The version I viewed of this was sorta in color but super washed-out and was mostly just tan and white. This was Gordon Mitchell's first strongman epic. He would go on to make a whole bunch more. 


Tug O War, Maciste style:

Tuesday, January 7, 2014

ORIENTAL BABY SITTER (1977)



                                     "I would suck a man's penis with dignity and total love."

 This starts off with Linda Wong playing a 15-year old babysitter who gets raped by her employer(she's clearly older though so I don't have to be arrested and branded a pedophile for watching this). SInce this is an X-rated movie she enjoys this and from there she tells us stories about other sexual encounters. There's one creepy lesbian scene where Linda and a white lady get it on while a guy sits there and stares like a mongoloid, besides that this is a pretty dull porn flick. The sex scenes seem to go on endlessly and the background music is particularly dull. There's also not really any kind of a plot so it just plays out random sex scenes. There is quite a bit of hair on the genitals here so if ya dig that kind of thing this might be for you.


SKID ROW (2013)




 This was directed by a friend of mine and I even appear in the fucking thing for a split second! Usually when people review movies made by their friends they're super polite and positive not wanting to hurt anyone's feelings. Not being a hypocritical asshole I will not be that guy. Honestly though I did not completely hate this movie as I much as I expected to. Being a fan of 70's cinema and automatically despising anything remotely new, this is definitely not something I would seek out or recommend to anyone but at least there's a sleazy rape scene, a castration, decapitation, torture with a chainsaw, frolicking lesbianism and a couple of references to DEATH WISH. These are all good things, of course the problem with newer movies referencing older movies is that it just reminds me of how much better everything was back when they actually made films on film. There are a couple of celebrity rapper appearances here with Schooly-D and R.A. The Rugged Man and the Stallone promised here probably isn't any Stallone you've ever heard of before. Finally, to be fair, the version of this that I viewed was apparently not complete so I imagine it will be more spiffy when it gets an official release.


Monday, January 6, 2014

MACON COUNTY LINE (1974)



 If you took the movie AMERICAN GRAFFITI and set it in the South, threw in a couple of violent murderers, some racist cops and other redneck/hicksploitation elements you would get this. This was written by and features Mr. Jethro Bodine from THE BEVERLY HILLBILLIES himself, Max Baer Jr. as the sheriff but he's not the main character. Those are a couple of brothers traveling about and generally goofing off before joining the army. They end up in the wrong place at the wrong time and without ruining the whole movie I'll just say some bad shit happens. The movie tells us this is all based on a true story but being a 70's exploitation film we all know that is bullshit. Still it makes for a good watch even if it takes a while for stuff to really start to happen and there's a very powerful ending. Also this was a huge hit in drive-ins back when it was released so that's good enough for me.
 There was a sequel the next year titled RETURN TO MACON COUNTY which wasn't really a sequel in any way besides the title. There was also a MACON COUNTY JAIL made in the 90's but that was a horrible women-in-prison flick from a decade of terrible movies.






Saturday, January 4, 2014

THE GODFATHER'S DAUGHTER: MAFIA BLUES (1991)



 What you get here is a Hong Kong version of a mobster flick complete with kung fu scenes, crazy car chases, Jackie Chan-like acrobatics and lots of John Woo-esque gun-play. Yukari Oshima is our titular character and she's pretty awesome here with one particularly acrobatic fight scene involving some gym equipment. My favorite sequence here though involves a guy who's fighting with a samurai sword, gets it stuck in some wood then gets swung around and decapitated by his own sword. That's some well-choreographed mayhem! Not the best or worst Hong Kong action flick of the 90's but it's an OK time-killer.

Friday, January 3, 2014

IL BOSS (1973)




 The final chapter in director Fernando Di Leo's mafia trilogy which includes MILANO CALIBER 9 and MANHUNT and just like those films this one is pretty awesome. It stars Henry Silva in what has to be his greatest role ever. From what I've seen of his movies Silva is always cast as the crazy villain playing second fiddle to some action hero or whatnot. In this he's our main character but he's also a completely psychopathic hit-man making his way up through the ranks of the mob. So while we don't really cheer him on we can at least understand his motivations for surviving in the violent world that he exists in. Before the credits even role we get Silva using a rocket-launcher to take out a whole crew of guys in a theater watching some dirty movies. From there the film is loaded with double-crosses, hits, a nymphomaniac gal and lots of explosive action. Gianni "Sartana" Garko is also very good here as a corrupt cop. They also set this up for a sequel which, unfortunately, I don't think ever happened.
 From what I've read Di Leo used newspaper accounts of actual organized crime scenes for some of the murder scenes in this which seems like a pretty ballsy thing to do.
AKA THE BOSS, WIPEOUT! and MURDER INFERNO(coolest disco-sounding title ever!).

This trailer mixes all 3 movies together:

Wednesday, January 1, 2014

YETI: THE GIANT OF THE 20TH CENTURY (1977)



 This is basically an Italian take-off on KING KONG with a giant Bigfoot instead of a gorilla. Just like with KONG our giant monster finds a gal he likes to carry around but in this he also becomes pals with a little boy(who I think is the same boy from those Italian White Fang movies) and his dog and battles some kidnapping criminal-types. If you've ever seen a giant monster movie this one pretty much follows all the same beats that you would expect but it's just a little stranger. There's one part where our giant monster gets his nipple rubbed and they show it getting hard, the ending is very odd also where the lead gal just yells at Yeti-man and tells him to go home. Maybe the oddest thing about this though is that the Yeti gets a disco theme song sung by a group called The Yetians which I'm sure was a big hit. Check this out for some wacky laughs. It would make a great monstrous double-feature with THE MIGHTY PEKING MAN.

Yeti enjoying some nipple-play:



THE TOUCH OF SATAN (1971)


 This movie is not very good. It does have some pretty decent atmosphere but the damn thing moves so slow that it's very sleep-inducing.
 It's the tale of a fellow who meets a young lady who turns out to be a witch from the 1800's whose made a pact with the devil to keep her sister alive. Her sister, who looks more like her grandma, is a shriveled up old lady who goes around killing people which gives this a little bit of a slasher movie feel. It's too bad they couldn't edit this movie in a way that moved the plot along a little faster or it mighta been a lot better. To be fair I've only seen the Mystery Science Theater 3000 version of this and not the unedited version and I have no idea what's missing so maybe the uncut one is a little better but I kinda doubt it's all that amazingly different. AKA NIGHT OF THE DEMON, CURSE OF MELISSA and THE TOUCH OF MELISSA





 Played on a double bill with Jess Franco's COUNT DRACULA:

NEW YEAR'S EVIL (1980)



 As far as holiday slasher flicks go this one is pretty ordinary and kinda dull. It lacks any real gore and has a very simple plot about a guy killing women at the stroke of midnight in each different time zone across America. One the plus side there is a ridiculously metal theme song, a bunch of pseudo-punk bands play, Pinky Tuscadero from HAPPY DAYS stars(not sure if this one is really a plus or not) and they give the killer a dumb Stan Laurel mask but that's not until the very end. They also set this up for a sequel which I'm pretty sure never happened since this was a big flop when it was originally released.




 There's one scene in this where are murderer goes to a drive-in and watches a trailer for a BLOOD FEAST (not the H.G. Lewis one) and BLOOD BATH double feature that looks just delightful: