MONDO TRASHO (1969)

The first full length John Waters movie to get shown publicly and it probably would've worked better as a short film instead as this does drag a bit.  There's very little dialogue and the story is mainly told through the use of 50's and 60's pop songs played over some quite trashy and distasteful scenes.  I guess this movie was underground enough that Waters didn't have to worry about all the copyright infringement going on with taking music from stuff like THE WIZARD OF OZ and that sort of thing.  The movie starts out with a bang as you watch a hooded executioner chop the heads off real live chickens then you get some foot licking for the fetishists out there followed by weird antics by "glamorous" cross-dressing Divine including some blasphemous fun in a church and then some wacky surgery hi-jinks.  Divine also shows up as a man in one scene.  The use of old records to convey a narrative is done really well but one of the coolest things about Waters movies is the absolutely insane dialogue which is missing from most of this movie and I think that's what brings it down for me a bit.  Check it out anyway though to see the beginnings of one of  the most absurdly entertaining directors in cinema's history.  

"dingle-berry":

CRUCIBLE OF TERROR (1971)

An English made giallo-style movie.   When the movie starts out you think it's going to be a rip-off of Roger Corman's BUCKET OF BLOOD but then it goes in a different direction.  The main story is about a strange artist who doesn't treat his models so nice and is part of an equally strange family that consists of a fat annoying alcoholic son, a slightly off-kilter weapons collector guy and a mom who wears pigtails, dresses like a 5 year old Shirley Temple, carries baby-dolls around and is probably the creepiest of all.  People get turned into statues and get murdered in various ways while we try to figure out what's really going on.  Most of the reviews I see of this thing online are completely negative but I didn't think this was that bad at all and would recommend it to fans of 70's British films or Italian giallos in general.  Modern-day horror fans aren't going to get it, of course, but what makes for an entertaining film to them I have no clue except I think it has something to do with cartoony special F/X that make everything look like a Playstation game, so fuck them right in the eyes.  A straight razor shows up, you get the gloved killer plus a twist ending that comes out of left field.  Everything except the J & B whiskey really.  Me Me Lay who went on to appear in Italian cannibal movies shows up briefly.      

NIGHT TRAIN TO TERROR (1985)

Nutty-ass 80's anthology film that seems to have been made by deranged lunatics.  As a general rule I hate stupid 80's flicks but this one here is an exception.  It's just too insane not to love.  You get three stories with wrap-around segments on a train where God and Satan(played by an actor billed only as Lu Cifer) are haggling over souls while what must be one of the world's lamest bands is playing the same song over and over again dressed in aerobics outfits and break-dancing. The three interwoven stories are created by taking three movies and editing them down to make them fit into the 90 minute running time.  This works in the films favor in one way because everything keeps moving along quickly almost like a trailer but it takes away in the "making any fucking sense" department.  The first segment(in the version I saw, some versions have these stories switched around) is taken from an unreleased/unfinished film titled SCREAM YOUR HEAD OFF a.k.a MARILYN ALIVE AND BEHIND BARS.  It stars John Phillip Law as a drunk driver who ends up in an insane asylum where Richard Moll(credited as Charles Moll for some reason) works and likes to fondle and hack up female inmates for kicks.  This part makes the least sense out of anything we see since it's all edited so strangely with blood flying and stuff seemingly happening randomly and it's how the movie starts out.  By this point you're not sure what the hell to make of this movie.  But it's entertaining if nothing else.  The next segment is from 83's DEATH WISH CLUB a.k.a. CARNIVAL OF FOOLS.  It's the sweet love story of a guy who hires a prostitute and then gets all jealous when she gets a boyfriend so he invites the whore's new love interest to join his group of Russian roulette playing wack-jobs.  Not regular old Russian roulette though, these guys are way more creative than that.  They use an automatic electrocution machine, a wrecking ball that drops on someone's face and a super-deadly claymation insect to play their little "death wish" games.  This parts my fav.  You get a Jimi Hendrix lookalike who gets all sorts of messed up, another guys face explodes, and a head gets smushed by a wrecking ball.  Good times.  Finally you get Cameron Mitchell investigating an eternal Satanic Nazi character in clips from 1980's CATACLYSM a.k.a. THE NIGHTMARE NEVER ENDS a.k.a. SATAN'S SUPPER. Richard Moll also comes back as an atheist author but he's so much better as a psychopath.  This one's great just for the insane claymation used throughout.  Not only do you get clay monsters but when they attack someone the person turns into a little clay guy also.  Just brilliant stuff. 

MONSTER (1979)

Generic forgettable title for a generic forgettable monster movie.  John Carradine shows up as a priest and pollution gets blamed for creating the giant, man-eating lake monster.  Besides garbage, people also blame sharks for the deaths!?  Yes, sharks in a little lake.  It just shows you the thought put into the script for this thing.  Some kids figure out it's a monster while all the adults are dumb.  Then Carradine burns a witch at the stake for some reason which seems like it belongs in another movie entirely and then some stuff blows up and it's all really drawn out and boring.  They have the nerve to put a "based on a true story" blurb before the movie.  I find it pretty unlikely that a big dinosaur/Loch-Ness monster-looking beast actually hangs out in South America munching on folks but maybe that's just me.  This might have been better if it was made back in the 50's when they wouldn't have been trying to emulate JAWS so much and failing so miserably.  A.K.A. MONSTROID(what the fuck is a monstroid???)


"An unholy horror!!":

THE LAYOUT (1969)

Long Island sexploitation filmmaker Joe Sarno was sort of like a more serious and slightly artsier version of a Dave Friedman or a Doris Wishman.  His movies were more often than not set in very Long Island-like suburbs.  In this romp he sets up some nice looking shots here and there and shows us some attractive, bee-hived hair-do wearing women getting it on in mostly lesbianistic sex scenes.  Except for the black and white scenes of ladies humping and diddling each other with an old-timey huge vibrator this movie has little of interest and plays out as a really boring soap-operatic drama.  There is one strange scene where some lesbo-ladies are drinking wine out of huge wine glasses and that's how I drink my wine so that was something.  While I'm sure this was all a whole lot more controversial at the time it came out there are surely a lot more enjoyable sex-filled epics of this era.



Sarno talks about his films( I think you could argue about his films having good acting or good plots, especially this one):

ANOTHER STATE OF MIND (1984)

If your any kind of fan of 80's punk rock/hardcore music this is something you need to check out for a time capsule of a couple of bands in that time period.  The documentary follows the bands Social Distortion and Youth Brigade on a tour of the U.S. on a shitty old bus.  Everything doesn't go as planned, people fight, the bus breaks down and loud music ensues.  Things I learned from this: punk rockers in Canada are extra crazy, you can practice stage diving in a swimming pool and Goth chicks were confused with punkers back in the 80's.  My favorite band in this whole thing are Minor Threat who get their microphones taken away but still go on with the show anyway just shouting the lyrics extra loudly with help from their fans.  That sorta summed up the whole unity idea to me.  Going to any show like this today I can't imagine too many people having as much fun as they did back in these days or even getting into it as much.  It all seems like a stupid retro fashion show nowadays but what the hell do I know?  Everything looks better when you throw some nostalgia on it.  I've never been too much into the idea of group-thinking anyway but I suppose if you have to pick a group to belong to, one that at least espouses the ideal of individuality seems better than some.  Then there's a segment with Christian punks that seemed really baffling to that whole idea and made no sense.  THE DECLINE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION is a better made film in the same genre with much better bands overall but this one's still worth viewing for a quick snapshot of slamdancin' history.

GIRLY (1970)

Director Freddie Francis was probably best known for his British horror films made for Hammer and Amicus studios.  This one is not really horror although people get murdered by a deranged family it all plays out more like a black comedy.  Almost like a classy version of the superior weirdo 60's flick SPIDER BABY.  The story concerns two women, Mumsy and Nanny and their "children", Sonny  and Girly.  The "children" appear to be at least in their 20's and sleep in cribs like babies.  Titular Girly dresses like a schoolgirl and tempts unsuspecting men back to the house of her unique family to play some bizarre games.  The bad part is that there are lots of rules to follow and if they're not followed precisely the men get "sent to the angels".  Worth a look for something out of the ordinary that takes the piss out of the concept of a "happy" family although it might be a bit too stuffy and English for American wankers like me.  Interestingly any film prints of this were thought to be lost forever and the VHS was really obscure so it wasn't until 2004 when some version showed up on the internet that it was easily available. AKA MUMSY, NANNY, SONNY & GIRLY

CRIPPLED AVENGERS (1978)

I love old school kung fu flicks and this is one of the best of them by the legendary Shaw Brothers studios. I don't remember catching this on any of the numerous Saturday afternoon Drive In kung fu movie showings on Channel 5 here in New York but that might be because it would have to have been edited quite a bit before airing. The movie starts off before the credits are even done with a mother getting her legs chopped off and her young son getting his hands whacked off! Pretty damn strong opener! From there we see a bunch of people get crippled in revenge for this atrocity which includes a guy getting his legs sliced off, a guy getting his eyes poked out, one fellow gets turned into a moron by having a band tightened around his head and another guy gets hands clapped on his ears which makes him go deaf. Then all those guys get together learn some kick-ass kung fu and seek bloody revenge. It's a god-damned revenge filled cavalcade. There's some awesome weaponry on display which includes iron hands that not only extend like Inspector Gadget but shoot little iron fingers into you like bullets, iron legs that can kick through a man, a big ass hammer and a mace on a chain. This one is probably more commonly known as THE RETURN OF THE 5 DEADLY VENOMS although it's not a sequel to that movie and it was also released as MORTAL COMBAT but it has nothing to do with any video games.

CRIPPLED AVENGERS

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NAKED MASSACRE (1976)

There are a few movies that use the Richard Speck killings as the basis for their plots. This one is probably one of the more disturbing ones. It's only about a half hour into the film before our lonely, deranged Vietnam vet character is breaking into a nurses dormitory to torture and kill a bunch of young ladies. From there on out it's a long series of sexual degradations, attempted rape, forced lesbianism and ultimately murder. You do get exactly what the title promises, naked nurses and a massacre and that's about it. It sort of plays out like a completely misogynistic, totally bleak version of TAXI DRIVER except Scorsese's film was an artistic meditation on loneliness whereas this seems to be more of a portrait of full-blown insanity and works solely as a shock film. While it does offer enough characterization to make it watchable I'm not sure if there's much of a point to it all.

A.K.A.= BORN FOR HELL

GODZILLA VS. MEGALON (1973)

Godzilla started out back in the 50's as a metaphorical monster that embodied the nuclear nightmare that Japan, with the help of some American bombs, knew all too well. The first film was a really serious portrait of disaster and an uncontrollable loss of everything. Of course by the time you get to the 12th sequel, almost 20 years down the road, Godzilla and his cast of zany co-starring monsters have all become these ultra-goofy characters. This one is definitely one of the goofiest and stupidest of the whole series. You get a superhero robot that's an obvious copy of ULTRA-MAN or any of the other giant robots which were super popular with kids in 1970's Japan, a cockroach-looking bad monster with drill hands and another alien monster with hook hands and a buzz-saw in its stomach. Unfortunately you also get an annoying little boy with a high-pitched voice to piss you off. I would only recommend this to people that get off on men in rubber suits wrestling with each other or if, like me, these movies have a really strong nostalgia factor and you enjoy laughing at the ridiculousness of it all. Oh, and they never fight on top of the World Trade Center, or even come to America, like the poster promises.

THE LOLLIPOP GIRLS IN HARD CANDY (1976)

What do you get when you mix really bad 3-D f/x, retarded slapstick action, unattractive people fucking, jokes that would embarrass a 1st grader and an incoherent storyline?  You get this obscure 70's porno right here.  Added to those charming elements you witness abrasively annoying acting from people saying their lines like a bunch of assholes(imagine The Chipmunks having a conversation with Barney The Dinosaur), a hodge-podge of random things that are thrown at you that give everything this insane chaotic feel(where the fuck did that gorilla come from?).  In addition to the brain damage I think I may have suffered trying to follow the plot I feel I may have lost some eyesight due to the horrible double-vision ancient 3-D technology used.  Surprisingly not a lot of sex for an adult movie, of course the print I saw was in obvious bad shape so some things might have been missing.  John Holmes appears in one fuck scene that seems like it was taken from a different movie, also Joey Silvera shows up briefly but isn't listed in the credits.  While I can't give this a good review as a film I will say that I am glad to have experienced a true 3-D porn flick in a real theater if for no other reason than to say I did it.

This trailer, in true exploitation style, is way better than the whole movie:

GAYNIGGERS FROM OUTER SPACE (1992)

"Kneel down, and prepare to receive the holy gaynigger seed!"

That's got to be one of the greatest titles ever!  This is a strange short film made in Denmark that basically spoofs STAR TREK as well as 50's sci-fi flicks in general.  Features a cast of  5 gay black men on a mission to rid the universe of "female creatures" and make it safe for gay men everywhere.  According to this movie there are only about 5 women on the planet Earth that need to be eliminated before we become a perfect male society.  The film is in black and white up until the final "homosexual utopia" scene at the end.  They steal music from SHAFT and LOVE STORY cuz that's what you do when your budget is all spent on snazzy matching 70's spaceman outfits.  Yes, it is completely sexist and racist(Chinese women are especially maligned) but I can't imagine anyone taking something this ridiculous very seriously.  Check it out for something very bizarre that might give you a chuckle.  

KILLER BEES (2005)

I generally love me some nature gone amok action and I also like to ogle cute Japanese chicks in my spare time.  This movie does have both of those things and somehow it still manages to not be totally awesome.  The main problem might be that the total amount of naked boobs on display comes out to exactly zero.  No nudity, no real gore unless you count some nasty looking stings and worst of all computerized, cartoon-looking bees!  Are real bees that hard to find in Japan that you have to make a bunch of little Honey Nut Cheerios mascots?  The movie also looks way too glossy and more like a TV show than anything cinematic which doesn't help at all.  Might be slightly suspenseful if you're allergic to bees but I'm gonna say this one is a big waste of time and completely stupid.  There are at least 4 other movies with this same title.  The one from the 70's has to be better.