BOGGY CREEK (2010)

My recollection of the original 70's THE LEGEND OF BOGGY CREEK, from catching multiple TV showings about 30 years ago, is a little foggy but I do recall it being a sort of pseudo-documentary thing about a Bigfoot monster in a swamp in the Southern U.S.A. Sort of a feature length episode of IN SEARCH OF... without Leonard Nimoy's great narration. It was sorta spooky and atmospheric, at least from what I remember as a kid watching it. This movie here doesn't seem to have anything to do with the original recipe. It's not a remake and it's not a sequel(there already was a sequel in the late 70's). I guess it's what the cool kids call "a re-imagining"(which means they just stole the title). This movie basically plays like a crappy slasher flick complete with uninteresting characters that you don't care about. I do generally love slasher flicks and I also do generally love Bigfoot movies but this mash-up isn't what I hoped it would be(NIGHT OF THE DEMON still holds the crown in that mixed-up genre). I noticed one of the young fellows in this just seems to be here to show off his 6-pack abs and dreamy good looks(too bad I don't know any 14-year old girls into horror movies I could recommend this to). Our featured crazy-psycho slasher is a tall hairy monster with sharp fingernails. He also likes to eat people but only a little nibble(to show who's boss I guess). Also he doesn't kill women, he takes them back to his secret Bigfoot lair to screw and make more Bigfoots. I'm not sure what the lady Bigfoots do but this movie isn't worth thinking that much about. It's also probably not worth wasting your time on watching unless you prefer horrible pop music, shitty modern editing(shaking the camera a lot) and boring kill scenes to go with your slasher/monster flick. Another thing that pissed me off was the non-ending where nothing is really explained. I would give this movie one star for starring an actor named Texas Battle. That name is awesome! I gotta go back and re-watch the original sometime to forget about this.

INSIDE DEEP THROAT (2005)

The most profitable and arguably the most important film in the history of X-rated cinema is looked at in this really well done documentary that cost about 80 times what the original film did back in 1972.  It features commentary by people like John Waters, Larry Flynt , Al Goldstein as well as just about everyone who had something to do with DEEP THROAT.  Also you get all the insane voices of the morally righteous who are so assured of their superiority that it's amazing that anyone ever did(and even more amazingly still do!) take people like this seriously.  Overall I found this movie to be actually pretty depressing when you realize that the high point of cinema is so far behind us as a culture and all that is being produced today(whether you're talking about mainstream or adult movies) is recycled garbage with not even the first inkling of an original idea involved.  On the flip side I guess you could say that the adult industry is a whole lot safer to be involved with nowadays since it's a legitimate business without the criminal element that was such a big part of it back then.  Unfortunately it doesn't produce anything worthwhile to anyone with half a brain these days.  As is pointed out in this film the dream that hardcore cinema would keep growing and take over the mainstream died with the infiltration of cheaply made VHS movies but maybe(hopefully) they just had it backwards and eventually Hollywood would keep getting raunchier and raunchier.  It's too bad 39 years later we're still waiting for the day to come when filmmakers have real artistic freedom.  There's an R-rated and an NC17-rated version of this out there.

CANNIBAL! THE MUSICAL (1993)

Before SOUTH PARK became a super huge mainstream hit TV show, that you can't avoid if you try, Trey Parker and Matt Stone put out this wacky gory musical comedy version of the Alfred Packer story. Just like that show that helped popularize that sort of brainless one-note comedy that all the kids love, in shows like THE FAMILY GUY, this movie is just a series of ridiculous events strung together with a stupid story-line. It's about a group of gold prospectors who get lost in the wilderness and end up eating each other. It starts out with a bloody tongue-getting-ripped-out-of-a-head cannibal attack scene and then gets sillier from there on out. You get a wacky tribe of Indians played by Japanese folks, a Southern Confederate Cyclops monster and unnatural love for a horse. The team's later movie ORGASMO was probably a bit funnier to me but this one is still worth watching if you're not completely sick of this style of random anarchist humor yet. Most of the musical bits are as awful as you would expect but I'm sure that's the whole point. This was distributed on home video by TROMA and I will say it's way more entertaining than 90% of the shit released on that label.

THE MUTILATOR (1985)

The 80's were a great time as far as low-budget cheesy slasher movies being released on VHS went. You got stuff like SLEEPAWAY CAMP and SPLATTER UNIVERSITY along with a billion other titles and they were all exactly what you expected. So if you were a gore-obsessed little creep like myself these were good times to own a VCR. Looking back these movies are not as great as I may have remembered them but they're still fun enough in a bottom-of-the-barrel kind of way. This one has a guy whose wife is accidentally shot dead by his son so naturally, in a movie of this type, he has no choice but to get drunk on Jack Daniels and then go bat-shit crazy and start mutilating teenagers to death. If you watch the unrated version you get even bloodier kills including a large fishhook through a vagina scene which is pretty nasty. There's also a goofy theme song that sounds like it belongs in a teen sex comedy titled FALL BREAK which was also the original title of this flick. It shows up every once in a while in case you forget what a stupid-ass movie you're watching. It also features your typical stupid ending with the killer coming back from the dead a couple of times and a cheap "shock" finale. So all in all you've got boobs, blood and a maniac who uses a battle-axe, am outboard motor and a few other nifty marine-themed implements of destruction. What more could you want from a dumb slasher flick?




                                                            AKA FALL BREAK:

DEAD MEN WALK (1943)

Watching this movie made me appreciate how great Bela Lugosi is.  Not that Mr. Bela is in this movie, it just seems like something he shoulda starred in and I'm sure he would have done a way more entertaining job than George Zucco does.  While I'm sure Mr. Zucco was a good enough actor for the times he just seems way too much like your everyday normal middle-aged, balding white guy to be very scary.  It's like if someone's dad ran around pretending he was a vampire it would probably be more embarrassing than frightening.  The story here is about a couple of twins both played by our buddy George.  One is a doctor and the other one is an evil son-of-a-bitch vampire.  The vampire is way more interesting of course and he even has himself a dim-witted henchman named Zolarr(played by the king of crazy sidekicks Dwight Frye) which is always a good idea.  He also appears to be a ghost at certain times for no real reason.  Overall this is obviously a really cheap movie rushed out to cash in on DRACULA's earlier success and it's pretty mindless and only mildly entertaining.  It helps a lot that the whole movie runs only about 60 minutes before it's all over because parts of this are pretty slow and easily lead to boredom.  I did learn watching this that apparently burning a vampire/ghost's body during the day kills him. So that's good to know.  Check it out only if you dig the classics.

THE DRILLER KILLER (1979)

                                       "You into rock and roll head trips, baby?"

Abel Ferrara is one of my all-time favorite directors. The guy would go on to make way more polished films than this one and is probably best known for KING OF NEW YORK and/or BAD LIEUTENANT. Being a fan of cult/underground films though this one is probably my favorite of his followed closely by the also great MS. 45. I also generally love movies(like TAXI DRIVER) where the main character's life is unraveling and there's a slow downward spiral into madness.  The fact that this movie is so unpolished and looks like it was directed by a true maniac works highly in it's favor. It's sorta like if you took a slasher film and slammed it into a gritty punk rock documentary about a loser artist who's slowly slipping into madness. Like THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE the film has that documentary look and feel that makes you feel sleazy just by observing it.  It's funny how almost every review I've ever read of this points out the low-budget and ugly-look as detriments when they're really the film's strongest assets.  You get the expected killer drill scenes including an impressively done(for the budget) head-drilling, lesbian showering, gratuitous crappy punk rock music, a rabbit's corpse mutilated  and tons of bad acting.  I would say if you're hardcore into typical 80's slasher flicks this one might not be for you.  Even though it's often lumped in with those this exists in a special place above those brainless purely splatter-for-splatter's-sake flicks.  Anyone who can appreciate insane cinema should check it out.  I still need to catch Ferrara's earlier porn flick because I can't imagine what that was like.

MESSIAH OF EVIL (1973)

I've tried watching this movie a couple of times and fallen asleep very soundly. Having finally endured the whole thing I have to say this is probably one of the worst horror films made in the whole decade of the 70's.  Things just sorta happen throughout the movie with only a half-assed explanation given.  There's a town full of pretty well behaved zombies that work as a team.  They do eat their victims but we never actually see that on screen.  We never actually see much gore at all just a little blood that comes out of peoples eyes for no reason and a nice throat-slitting pre-credit sequence.  There's a zombie guy that looks like he stepped out of THE OMEGA MAN who shows up everywhere.  The most memorable scene is that fellow biting a mouse's head off and drinking it's blood but I feel like I've seen that in way better films also.  This was shown last night on a double bill with THE DRILLER KILLER and the difference between those two films is like night and day.  D.K. is a loud in your face movie filled with energy and there's always something fucked-up going on.  It's also not hard to follow whereas this thing is just a muddled mess that's not worth trying to decipher.  It's sort of like if you took your typical nonsensical 1980's Lucio Fulci gore film and removed all the gory bits and added an annoying voice-over.  That would be fucking awful and that's what you get here.  Multiple AKA's include DEAD PEOPLE, REVENGE OF THE SCREAMING DEAD, RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD, NIGHT OF THE DAMNED, DEAD SWAMP and my personal fav MESSIAH OF THE EVIL DEAD

ITALIAN STALLION (1970)

"I'll be velvet-mouthed on your shank of love."

This would be a totally forgettable soft-core porn flick if it wasn't the debut film of Sylvester Stallone. I've only seen this re-edited version so I can't say if the original film(titled THE PARTY AT KITTY AND STUD'S) makes any more sense than this. This here is just like they filmed a bunch of crappy loops and loosely strung them together to make something that plays for about an hour. You get to see Sly's limp Italian sausage throughout the movie and I don't blame him for that since nothing is really all that sexy that's on display. There's some lesbianism, a flasher, a little s & m action and it all ends with a big orgy which consists of ugly hippies wiggling around on each other and playing ring-around-the-rosie while awful music plays. I think the weirdest scene is when Stud(played by Stallone) punches a mirror and Kitty licks the blood off his hand all sexy like. Only worth watching if you're some kind of Stallone fanatic.  Anyone else will be instantly bored.

CHAINED HEAT (1983)

"Don't you walk away from me, you chalk-faced whore!"

This is probably one of the best of the whole women-in-prison genre of sleaze-fueled epics.  It's got so many great elements to it including the mandatory exploitation ones that include your basic boobs, blood and beasts.  It also has probably the best cast of any of these sleazy caged chick flicks.  You got Linda Blair playing the basic, boring, goody-goody role.  She's supposed to be the person who the audience empathizes with but I pretty much hate her and think she makes terrible decisions throughout the whole movie.  Also she has a crappy haircut which may have also made me not sympathize with her as much as I would have normally.  The real star to me is the great Sybil Danning as the leader of all the white convicts.  She's awesome as usual as the main bad-ass.  There is one scene where she wears mom jeans that I didn't care for but besides that she's fantastic!  Who else could stand up to Tamara "CLEOPATRA JONES" Dobson as the leader of the black gal gang?  I did notice on my latest viewing that her gang seems to consist of a grand total of about 4 people which seemed a little lopsided in whitey's favor here.  As far as beasts go there's Sybil's sidekick, the butt-ugly Spider, who appropriately enough gets killed while hanging out on a crapper. There's also Dean Wormer from ANIMAL HOUSE himself as our ultra-scummy porn-making warden here.  This guy has to have the most amazing office in the history of wardens.  I especially dug the stuffed jungle cat with light-up eyes and the luxurious Jacuzzi in his office/swinging bachelor-pad.   Henry Silva plays a drug-smuggling prison employee in a subdued role for a guy who you always see being quite intense in most of his other films.  He does get to smack Blair around a little which reminds you of some of his more typical tough-guy roles.  There's also a ton of other memorable characters with names like Boots, Grinder and Bubbles.  Mix all these characters into a cartoonishly stereotypical world of trash and debauchery and it's exploitation movie gold.  You get rape, a black chick sliced up with razor blades,  gratuitous showering, lots of cat-fights, lesbian make-outs, a new-wave chick, death on the toilet, an 80's strip-tease show and just about everything a lover of lowbrow cinema could want.  I was lucky enough to view an actual film print of this one last night and it made me appreciate it just that much more.  In addition to a slew of unrelated movies that were re-titled as sequels there was an "official" Part II to this that starred Bridgette Nielsen and came out ten years later but I'm pretty sure that has nothing to do with the original.

3 SHOTS OF A WINCHESTER FOR RINGO (1966)

This movie is known under a few different names; THREE GRAVES FOR A WINCHESTER, THREE BULLETS FOR RINGO etc., but whatever you want to call it, it's pretty awful. The plot is a messy convoluted one about a deed and a family battling over something or another. For me there were two memorable scenes in this whole thing. In one we see a young boy screaming as he's being pulled slowly towards a fire to get information out of someone and in the other a woman is hung up, with her arms spread all Jesus-like, high above a town while a shoot-out takes place. That's about it. Mickey Hargitay who is great in BLOODY PIT OF HORROR is just really bland here as is most everyone else. Both Hargitay and Gordon Mitchell were in HERCULES-type films before switching over to Italo-westerns like this.  I would say skip this one unless you dig lots of talky-talk and some really badly staged, illogical shoot-outs.

THE WITCHMAKER (1969)

I have to admit that this movie isn't really very good.  It's full of lots of talking about witchcraft and devil-worshiping and the action is pretty stretched out through the running time.  But that being said this was a movie that I used to catch on New York's channel 9 Chiller Theater, or maybe it was the 4 o'clock movie, every once in a while back when I was a kid and I remember it scaring me.  So just for the sentimental value alone I rate this one higher than it realistically should be.  Being shot in the swamps of Louisiana I feel the movie does do a good job of creating a good spooky atmosphere throughout the whole film.   It also features a performance by a large fellow in a furry vest who's a warlock or "a berserk" as they refer to him and this guy used to give me nightmares so I guess if you were a monster obsessed kid in the 70's he crept around in your head for a while at night when you were trying to sleep.  Of course the movie also features Alvy Moore who was a familiar character on GREEN ACRES which kinda kills the scary tension that mighta been built up.  There's also a lack of nudity from all the hot-looking witches and their victims and that's a damn shame and seems very strange since there's almost a naked lady right there on the poster.  My DVD of this film is titled THE LEGEND OF WITCH HOLLOW and for some reason that sounds really silly to me.  Probably cuz it reminds me of that stupid SLEEPY HOLLOW story.  I can't really recommend this one unless you have a fond child-hood attachment or maybe you have a fetish for girls hung upside down before being sacrificed to Satan. AKA THE NAKED WITCH

THIS MAN CAN'T DIE (1968)

Guy Madison was a big cowboy actor back in the 1940's and also made a few of those Italian swords'n'sandals flicks before heading into starring in this spaghetti-western.  The fact that he was an old time American western star really stands out when you compare him to someone like Clint Eastwood who was so good at portraying the flip-side of what those characters represented.  He's also not a particularly compelling character in this movie.  The plot is about as basic as westerns get: a guy's family is murdered: his sister is raped and then our man Guy shows up for revenge time.  Notably the only nudity you get is not in the love scene but whenever a female is violently attacked.  Way to titillate sleazy viewers Italy.  The most realistic thing in this whole film, and the only thing that really separates this from more common U.S.-filmed westerns at this time, is the way many of the evil gang is offed by our hero who takes many of them out by atypically shooting them in the back and sneaking around in the shadows.  Besides this though there's really not much to make this stand out from a million better Italian shoot-em-up movies.

Silly theme song, "Life is too marvelous for you...":

DR. TARR'S TORTURE DUNGEON (1973)

This movie has a great title that unfortunately is never lived up to by the actual film.  It sounds like we're in for something along the lines of BLOODSUCKING FREAKS but what you get is a lot more of a subdued tale of inmates running an asylum.  It's barely even a horror film despite being marketed that way.  The movie was made in Mexico by director Juan Lopez Moctezuma who also was a producer on EL TOPO.  This movie has sort of a similar feel to that epic but in a very watered down way.  Sort of a surrealism-light situation.  You get a pretty mild rape scene thrown in, a little nudity, people acting crazy(including an amusing chicken-man) and endless scenes of talking which make this mostly a big snooze-fest.  This has also been released under the title of THE MANSION OF MADNESS which is apparently uncut but I've never seen that version and can't say if it's any gorier or more exciting than this cut American release.