THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE: A FAMILY PORTRAIT (1988)

This never really seems like a proper documentary but is in actuality just a bunch of interviews edited together with the actors who played the cannibalistic, psychopathic family in the original TCM.  It's a really low-budget looking thing with the guys just sitting around and bullshitting for about an hour.  It was probably way more interesting to people back when it came out then it is now since most hardcore horror fanatics have probably seen at least a few of these people at one of the ten-thousand horror conventions that take place every year.  There's only so many times you can hear someone tell the same stories before it becomes tedious.  That being said though this does give anyone who might not know everything about this film a good look behind the curtain at what it was like to shoot in a house full of rotting meat in the peak of a Texas summer.  Doesn't look like much fun really but what they created will live on forever(or until we all blow ourselves up anyway) so I guess it was worth it for that.  This is probably kind of obsolete now since there are better-made actual documentaries on a few of the releases this movie has received on DVD but back in the VHS days I thought it was kinda cool.

THIS LADY IS A TRAMP (1980)

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THE DUNWICH HORROR (1970)

Produced by Roger Corman and made by AIP studios this is a tale of ancient monsters in a small town.  The movie isn't a complete waste of time but it is really slow in getting to anything good.  The good bits are the weird 60's style psychedelic scenes and the really silly tentacled monster, at least those parts are entertainingly bad.  There's also some brief, fleeting nudity when our monster rips the clothes off one of it's female victims before killing them.  I think that's very nice of him and as a viewer I thank him.  The rest of the movie is filled with lots of talking about the Necronomicon and other HP Lovecraft-inspired stuff. As with most Lovecraft adaptions this one is apparently not very true to his original story.  Star Sandra Dee is a weird choice for this film since before this she was known for starring in GIDGET and other all-American wholesome roles like that. I really only knew her from being mentioned in that song in GREASE.  Here she seems kind of stupid but I think she's supposed to be a sort of naive tool of evil or something along those lines.  The video box I have of this talks about her having a nude scene but I musta missed it because all I saw were some scantily clad scenes.  It's also a little weird how the VHS box makes it seem like it's some kind of Devil-worshiping movie cuz it isn't at all.  There's been a few other DUNWICH remakes over the years but I've never seen any of them and would imagine if they're similar to this, but without the groovy 60's vibe, I can skip them.

AMERICAN BOY: A PROFILE OF: STEVEN PRINCE (1978)

 Besides all the well known, super successful, mainstream movies director Martin Scorcese has made over the years he's also made a bunch of interesting oddball short films and little documentaries on various subjects.  This one is about the guy who played the speeded-up gun/drug-dealer in TAXI DRIVER.  If you're as obsessed with that film as I am this is an interesting look at the actor behind that role.  This guy has led some life from being a road manager for Neil Diamond to being a junkie to just getting into all kinds of general strange hi-jinks.  He seems like the kind of guy you would want to hang out with and have a few beers.  In the movie's most insane bit he tells a story about blowing a guy away with a 44 Magnum that's really unforgettable.  It's also interesting to note that Quentin Tarantino stole the scene of Uma Thurman being shot up with adrenaline to the heart from this guy's real life.  Has that guy ever had an original thought?
     In 2009 there was a sequel to this by another filmmaker with something titled AMERICAN PRINCE but I've never seen that one.

This movie was considered lost for many years but apparently a bootleg was floating around because it's out there now:

MEMPHIS HEAT: THE TRUE STORY OF MEMPHIS WRASSLIN' (2011)

 There was a magical day I recall from when I was maybe 7 or 8 years old when, thanks to my dad, I first saw a Professional Wrestling match on TV.  Already being a huge fan of comic book superheroes and monster movies this seemed like the most amazing sport in the world to my young mind.  Some of these wrestlers seemed like true monsters to me back then.  Guys like George "The Animal" Steele, "King Kong" Mosca, Andre The Giant and Killer Khan sure didn't look like any actual human beings I ever encountered in real life.  Growing up in the New York City area in the 70's and 80's I was really only able to see the WWF programs and didn't get to watch stuff from other areas until we got cable later on.  I did know about Memphis and the other promotions from all the magazines that were around back then but never got to see much of them.  It was a different world before the internet made almost every obscure little thing accessible. As the 80's went on wrestling became more of a cartoon and it lost whatever credibility it had for me from those early days but sometimes it's fun to look back and remember how awesome it all seemed at the time.  It's funny how the 80's were also the decade that horror films became excessively cartoonish.  I guess it was something in the air.
 This documentary is a really well done look at a local promotion that was more popular in that area than anything else at the time and I think even if someone doesn't know much about wrestling they would enjoy it for some of the insane stories that are told.  Going from the 40's up until modern times it hits on such disparate things as the carnival days, race relations back in the old days, insane wrestling fans, greedy promoters, midget-wrestling, Andy Kaufman and tons of other wacky stuff all told by the people who went through it.  If you are, or ever were, a wrestling fan this is something you will want to check out.


You can buy it here: http://www.memphisheatthemovie.com/

99 WOMEN (1969)

While there had been women in prison movies made before this one, since the 50's and probably before that, prolific sleaze director Jess Franco has to be given credit here for making one of the first truly grimy women-in-prison flicks that set the standard for what was to come in the 70's. While it never reaches the sleazy heights of the Roger Corman produced stuff that came later like CHAINED HEAT or even Franco's own ultra slimy BARBED WIRE DOLLS it kind of sets the template for those flicks and a hundred others.  You get chicks in long shirts with no pants practicing their lesbianism, a limping Herbert Lom from MARK OF THE DEVIL as the rapey warden, a large snake getting fucked up by a pocket knife and then some gang rape happens when our prisoners escape and run into some male prisoners from a neighboring prison who just so happen to be escaping at the same exact moment.  The only thing missing is the obligatory shower scene.  These gals seem to be way too dirty for that.  Check it out for historical value or just skip ahead to BARBED WIRE DOLLS if you're a real hardcore sleaze-hound.  There is a French release of this film with hardcore sex scenes inserted and a few different cuts with more or less explicitness depending on what country it's from.
 AKA ISLE OF LOST WOMEN, PROSTITUTES IN PRISON, ISLAND OF DESPAIR, WOMEN'S PENITENTIARY XII and THE HOT DEATH

                                   "Whisper to your friends that you saw it":

TWO MULES FOR SISTER SARA (1970)

After Clint Eastwood made all those epic westerns in Italy with Sergio Leone he came back to Hollywood and pretty much played the same character here for a few years before going on to Dirty Harry and all that stuff.  Some of his American westerns were really good but this one is only so-so.  It doesn't have the down and dirty grittiness of Leone's pictures or anywhere near the stylish direction.  Director Don Siegel, who's most famous for the original INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS, does pull off some beautiful shots using the Mexican landscape unfortunately plot-wise the movie drags quite a bit during the mid-section of the film.  It seems like endless scenes of our two heroes just riding around and talking take place.  If you make it to the end there is an all-out battle scene with limbs getting chopped-off, swords getting stuck in faces and other assorted bloody fights but it's a long sit to get there.  Co-star Shirley Maclaine went on to make mainstream garbage that probably won a bunch of awards and also became some kind of a koo-koo nutso proponent of psychic-powers who claims to be able to talk to ghosts and that sort of thing.

"Mr. Action himself!":

CRITTERS (1986)

I was never really a huge fan of the movie GREMLINS but obviously a lot of people were because it was such a huge mainstream hit in 1984 that it spawned countless awful rip-off films.  Everything from GHOULIES to HOBGOBLINS to TROLL to MUNCHIES to this piece of crap were spewed out in hopes of keeping peoples interest in little stupid and/or cute monsters alive.  The main problem I have with most all of these movies is they're all just bottom of the barrel comedies thinly disguised as horror or sci-fi flicks.  This is also the problem with a large percentage of horror/sci-fi films in general cranked out in that horrible childish embarrassment of a decade known as the 1980's.  While a few of these stupid GREMLINS clones might be worth a watch for a cheap laugh or two( TROLL for it's Sonny Bono appearance and GHOULIES for being a total shameless copy of the Joe Dante flick minus the feel-good family bullshit parts) this one can be skipped without worry of missing anything worthwhile.  How this movie went on to spawn 3 sequels is astounding.  I guess it just goes to show where peoples minds were at 30 years ago.

Fucking puppet monsters!:

SATAN WAR (1979)

Not to be confused with STAR WARS, this movie starts out with a crazy psychedelic opening sequence which reminded me of the opening of the Japanese ULTRA-MAN show and then becomes a sort of pseudo-documentary about Satan or demons or something like that and then morphs into a really awful AMITYVILLE HORROR rip-off.  It's really bad, there's no gore or nudity and the music is more grating than terrifying.  The movie is one of those so bad that it could be hilarious if it didn't go on for so long.  The film itself isn't even very long, this main segment lasts only about an hour, but it sure does feel like it creeps along.  A cross keeps turning upside down, a chair comes alive and attacks a lady, a coffee pot shits itself all over the stove, a bunch of other stupid stuff happens and finally a guy shows up in a black robe walking around with a big knife.  As terrible as this is I'd still rather watch it again than ever have to sit through one of those boring PARANORMAL ACTIVITY movies.  The weirdest thing about it all is that after this main story is over there's a whole different sequence involving voodoo dancers for no reason at all unless this was at one time a movie reenacting strange things from around the world in various parts.  I have no idea if there's a longer version out there but I don't care that much to find out.  Sally Schermerhorn and Jimmy Drankovitch, the stars of this, never worked again and the director, Bart La Rue, never directed anything else so I guess that's a good thing.

Spooky Satan-y soundtrack!:  

TREEVENGE (2008)

Before he made HOBO WITH  A SHOTGUN director Jason Eisner did this silly, but gory as hell, short about Christmas trees getting revenge for being chopped down, stuffed in people's stupid homes and decorated in a gaudy fashion.  It's filled with really obnoxious people you can't wait to see knocked off and a liberal use of the theme from CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST.  There's gratuitous eye-violence, tree on man rape, baby killing and all the things that would make Christmas movies more enjoyable to your average gore-hound.  Of course it's all really dumb and absurd but because it was shot so well it works for me.  Watch it at your next family gathering this holiday season, I'm sure they'll love it.

CABOBLANCO (1980)

If you've ever watched the classic 1940's film CASABLANCA and thought to yourself "This movie is OK but I wish there was some Charles Bronson ass kicking scenes" then this might be the movie for you.  In my ongoing quest to watch every movie with Bronson in it this one is a little odd. It's not really a straight forward action flick and it's not the typical revenge flick that we normally got from Bronson and director J. Lee Thompson throughout the 80's. It's more of an adventure/drama film with bits of action thrown in here and there where we get Mr. Bronson in more familiar sequences beating up Nazis and that sort of thing. The main thing that makes this interesting is getting to see Charlie actually act outside of the one-dimensional characters he normally got to portray. It's also the last time he would be given that opportunity since after this it was all about those Cannon films-produced DEATH WISH sequels and clones.  The downside to this particular flick is that most of it is really talky and way more mainstream Hollywood-like than anything I would ever recommend anyone watch. It exists solely as an oddity for Bronson fans like myself although I think it's probably his one film that my grandma probably would have enjoyed more than the others.

BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA (1974)

Director Sam Peckinpah was responsible for what, in my opinion, was the greatest American western ever made, THE WILD BUNCH. With that film he helped usher in a new type of violent cinema that would help propel the 70's towards the ground-breaking decade it became. It pushed the envelope and it also commented on the value of honor and staying true to your word. It also blurred the line between hero and villain. There were really only subtle degrees of morals and/or circumstances separating both groups. But that was in 1969 when the envelope needed to be pushed forward, by the time this movie came around in '74 it probably all didn't seem quite as fresh. When released GARCIA was trashed by critics and was a box office flop. That's a shame because while there are a lot of similarities between this and THE WILD BUNCH I think it's a strong film on it's own.  The Mexican/western setting, star Warren Oates and the slow-mo shoot-outs are a few of the obvious similarities. Here Oates portrays someone who, as the film goes on, slips deeper into madness as things unravel. There's also the Mexican General from BUNCH as a similar Mexican big-shot. He always makes such a great sleazy looking character and Peckinpah used him often for exactly that. There's also no real hero here just a portrayal of a man who ends up with nothing left to lose so he becomes a desperate creature. Kris Kristofferson also shows up as a rapist biker which is something you don't see every day and some of the scenes with Oates talking to the titular head in a bag are pretty humorous. While this never reaches the high points of its predecessor it still works for me as a classic piece of cinema made by a true master.

MONDO FORD (2000)

This is a short spoof of not only Mondo movies but also wacky conspiracy theories in general.  If, like most sane humans, you find people that are obsessed with conspiracy theories to be insane lunatics that should seek mental help immediately you will probably find a few laughs here.  The film is made to look like it was created in the 60's and the narration is just some snippets of a "Learn To Speak Italian" album which I think makes it even crazier.  You get aliens, Bigfoot, and even the Loch Ness Monster showing up to enjoy the JFK assassination plot goofiness.  This originally played as part of the Tromadance short film festival and is part of that DVD.  I've never seen any of the other shorts on there and buying Troma DVDs is a risky business that you should partake in at your own peril so be warned.