THE GREEN INFERNO (2015)

 This movie was actually finished two years ago and was supposed to be released last year but didn't hit screens until yesterday so, of course, I had to get out there and see it. If you told me back in the 80's that at some point in my lifetime I would see a major release of a cannibal movie to theaters in the U.S. I woulda never believed ya but here it is. The film itself is a super-gory, fun watch if you're a fan of the 80's grindhouse Italian gut-munchers. The one real down-spot for me was the inclusion of some terrible-looking cgi-ants but besides that I can't say anything bad about this. Most of the characters here put themselves in such a stupid situation that you don't feel very sorry for them even when the most horrific things are happening to them or around them. The obvious but timely and appropriate anti-social justice warriors message comes through loud and clear which is nice. As far as where this fits in  the cannibal film genre I would say this isn't the best one but for a new movie it's amazing and it's equally amazing to me that it was made at all and is definitely worth supporting. Sadly since so many "horror" fans seem to have a personal grudge against director Eli Roth for some reason I'm not sure how successful this will be. I'm hoping it at least spawns the sequel that is promised in it's after-credits sequence.

RUBY (1977)

 This one is more of an interesting curiosity than actually any sort of a good movie. It's kinda(but not exactly) a CARRIE rip-off starring Carrie's mom(Piper Laurie) as a lady in the 1950's who runs a drive-in theater that shows ATTACK OF THE 50 FOOT WOMAN a lot. Oh and she also may, or may not, have telekinetic abilities that she uses to murder gangsters from her past who snuffed out her boyfriend back in the 30's. This part wasn't exactly clear, as many things aren't in this film, because it also may be her creepy mute big-eyed daughter doing all the killings or maybe it's just an old gangster ghost running amuck. It all gets totally insane by the end so that's something. There's also a couple of scenes with Ruby's daughter which would put this in the EXORCIST-rip-off category as well.
 I caught this at a midnight screening recently and it was tough making it to the end without snoozing but maybe it works better for folks who are more into the whole supernatural creepy thing. I will say this movie works well in creating a very spooky atmosphere if nothing else.

THE KILLER (1972)

 Not to be confused with the more well known 80's John Woo-directed Chow Yun Fat film with the same title, this is a story dealing with these 3 little kids who grow up in a circus and two of them become kung fu masters and really good at throwing knives. Oh, and the other one becomes a pretty lady and a nightclub singer. That's the backstory anyway the main plot concerns political corruption, sneaky Japanese drug smugglers and lots of ass-kicking, throwing people through walls and breaking kung fu school signs. I really like this Shaw Brothers flick mostly because for a majority of the film I was never 100% certain whose side I should be on. The main character who's presented as the hero is super honorable but at the same time he's being used by nefarious forces while his buddy that he grew up with is just trying to do his job of apprehending criminals. This leads to some conflict of course. I enjoy grey areas in these types of films. Of course I also dug all the bloody fights and samurai sword battles. AKA SACRED KNIVES OF VENGEANCE

THE TOOLBOX MURDERS (1978)

 This is a great example of slasher movie that actually came out before HALLOWEEN kick-started the avalanche of similar films. It all starts out with a flurry of bloody, graphic murders of various women, including porn star Kelly Nichols, using various implements of destruction found in your average toolbox. The first third of this film is super sleazy mixing a bathtub masturbation scene with Miss Nichols, other assorted scantily-clad females and graphic bloodletting. From there it does slow down a bit but is still a great watch thanks to the batshit-crazy acting job of Mr. Cameron Mitchell who goes from kidnapping young girls to singing silly songs about about lollipops all the while never failing to convey that he is a complete wack-job psycho barely hanging onto sanity. This has to be my all-time favorite performance of Mr. Mitchell's and I'd recommend any grindhouse aficionados check it out if they haven't already.
 I got a chance to view a slightly-aged 35mm print of this last night on a weird double-bill with the 80's nutso monster/ghost/zombie movie SPOOKIES which was quite the experience.
 The film ends with a claim that this movie is based on a true case from the 60's which I'm willing to bet is a big load of horse-crap.
 There was a remake of this, directed by Tobe Hooper, in 2004 that wasn't particularly good and was basically a remake in name only since it had a very different plot.


The 'mystery movie' aspects of this are pretty laughable since Mitchell is so bad at wearing a mask that you can see most of his face under it for a large part of the movie:

SLEEPAWAY CAMP (1983)

 While SLEEPAWAY CAMP is a fairly standard slasher-flick on the surface it does have some great goofy characters(Angela's mom being the goofiest, who seems like she just escaped from a John Waters film, but also pretty much all the adults at the camp who overact like maniacs!), original kills(beehive in the shitter, curling-iron in the vagina, pervy gross pedophile boiled in water etc.) and of course the super memorable ending which they spoofed on that ROBOT CHICKEN show. This all goes to make this one of the grimy, sleazy classics of this low-brow horror sub-genre as far as I'm concerned. It spawned 5 sequels of varying entertainment value(part IV, consisting mainly of a bunch of footage from previous films, being the worst) and there's supposed to be a remake in the planning stages which, based on almost every other remake in the last 20 years, I'm sure will suck. Stick with the original for a stupid bloody good time!

 

JUDGEMENT OF AN ASSASSIN (1977)

 The Shaw Brothers studios made the best kung fu movies. Everyone who's into martial-arts flicks(and is intelligent) knows this. They always have the best fighting, crazy stunt-work, inventive weapons and they usually throw a little blood in there also for added spice. This one has what on the surface seems like a pretty simple plot about an assassin who's brought in to stand trial for killing a bunch of folks from a rival clan. It starts off with some hooded killers massacring people and from there it spirals off and makes this simple set-up a bit more complex by adding about a billion characters to the story. It probably woulda helped if I had a scorecard of some sort to keep track of everyone and what clan they belonged to. While it's not a bad movie, since I don't think the Shaws really made any outright awful films, I feel like it gets filled up with more plot than is really necessary for a movie of this type but If you're sick of the more simplistic chopsockey flicks this might be for you.

MONDO BIZARRO (1966)

                                     "To the maggot in the cadaver, the cadaver is infinity"

 I know of director Lee Frost mainly from his early nazi-sploitation flick LOVE CAMP 7 and also THE BLACK GESTAPO, THE THING WITH TWO HEADS and a couple of other weird-o exploitation "classics". I didn't know until recently that he also directed a handful of pseudo-documentaries/mondo-movies in the 60's. This one deals with some strange rituals all over the world including a voodoo gathering, some Germans getting off watching Nazi plays, a Japanese massage parlor that uses eggs instead of lotions, a trip to Fredrick's of Hollywood to look at ass-less underwear, "peace-creep" hippie protesters and other various peeping-Tom/hidden-camera spectacles. Right from the opening shots there's tons of multi-ethnic boobs on display and each set gets it's own theme music which is nice. There's also a creepy sense of probably illegal voyeurism that runs throughout. It gets a little slow towards the end when it gets bogged down following some Arabian slave-traders and that's where I started to nod off but overall an interesting obscure curiosity that I feel lucky to have gotten a chance to see in a theater the way pervs of yesteryear woulda viewed it.
 One interesting footnote to this is the way Frost seems to use older footage from some of his other movies and inserts it here in a good job of editing. He even manages to come up with excuses for why some of the scenes are in black & white and others are in color.

This preview is pretty much the whole movie cut down to 7 minutes:

A couple of the Lee Frost mondo-flicks all mashed into one delightful preview!:

MONDO BIZARRO AND MONDO FREUDO (R. Lee Frost) from Spectacle Theater on Vimeo.

THE WAR OF THE GARGANTUAS (1966)

 This was definitely a favorite of mine back in the days when it played a bunch on Creature Feature Saturday mornings or late nights hosted by various horror hosts. Watching it now it's a super silly giant monster movie about a couple of huge ugly ape/bigfoot-like creatures named Sanda and Gaira romping and stomping around Japan and it works good as some wacky background imagery. There is a great/terrible scene of a lounge singer warbling through a horrible tune appropriately titled "The words get stuck in my throat" before getting mauled by a monster which was always a personal favorite of mine. WEST SIDE STORY's Russ Tamblyn provides the token white-faced character and main hero and a giant octopus shows up for no reason at all.
 This is technically a sequel to the previous year's Toho-produced monster-bash FRANKENSTEIN CONQUERS THE WORLD and it's original title was FRANKESTEIN'S MONSTERS: SANDA VS. GAIRA but I don't think the English-dub of this ever makes the connection between the two films very clear.


 

4 DOLLARS FOR VENGEANCE (1966)

 This is one crappy spaghetti-western directed by Bruno Corbucci. Bruno is the brother of Sergio Corbucci who was the guy responsible for a bunch of great Italian westerns like DJANGO, THE GREAT SILENCE etc. Judging by this film, Bruno was not quite the director that his brother was but Bruno did co-write most of his brother's better known euro-classics so he deserves credit for that at least.
 This whole film is really dull with not much in the way of shootouts or violence for a large chunk of it's run-time which makes for a not-very exciting viewing experience. It mostly just gets bogged down in endless dialogue about a guy who is accused of being a traitor and then our main character(Robert Woods) tries to clear his name. There's also a love triangle thing going on. It's all very hard to stay awake or get invested enough in the characters to care about the outcome. I have this as part of  a 12 Italian-westerns DVD box-set and this is certainly the worst movie on there. Also the title is really dumb. I mean was $4 ever all that much money even back in the old west days? AKA 4 DOLLARS OF REVENGE

A BETTER TOMORROW (1986)

 As far as action movies go there's not much better than 80's/90's Hong Kong. Kind of like how Italy reinvigorated the western back in the 60's Hong Kong took the standard American action flick and added a certain style and level of violence that reshaped the genre. This one here, directed by the master of these sorts of movie, John Woo, is a gangster/action movie containing tons of gun-fu and graphic bloodshed. Chow Yun Fat is featured, although he's actually not the main star here since 70's kung-fu mainstay Ti Lung has the main role. I think it's great to see Mr. Fat in a slightly lesser role and he gets to be a real bad-ass as the sidekick character. The story concerns two brothers who end up on the opposite sides of the law, one being a cop and the other a criminal. It all ends with lots of bullet holes, exploding barrels and lots of people dead. There are a couple of segments that lay a little heavy on the drama but I think the kick-ass action more than makes up for these slight slow overly-dramatic spots.
 There was A BETTER TOMORROW II the following year and A BETTER TOMORROW III: LOVE AND DEATH IN SAIGON in '89. I think I have seen both of these but I should probably re-watch them since I'm not 100 % certain. There was also a South Korean remake in 2011 that I have definitely not seen.

SINGLE ROOM FURNISHED (1966)

 This was billed as Jayne Mansfield's last movie(though technically there were a couple released after this, she did die before completing this) and that's a pretty big shame because it's so terrible. The whole thing seems like it could be a play with every character droning on endlessly about stupid crap while performing their mandatory monologue about how they feel about life. There's really no plot, just little stories about people in relationships. Most of the acting is laughable, though I guess Miss Mansfield was not actually famous for being a great actress. There's one part where she tries to pull off a Brooklyn accent which is particularly cringe-inducing. Probably the highlight of this was when Jayne calls a fellow with a shitty haircut "monkey" a bunch of times. While perhaps in 1966 some of the topics discussed might have been considered risque, i.e. abortion, prostitution, being a generally slutty lady etc., this being 2015 it doesn't pack much in the way of shock value anymore. The only other Mansfield films I've seen, so far, are THE WILD, WILD WORLD OF JAYNE MANSFIELD and FEMALE JUNGLE and those were only mildly amusing from what I recall. One of these days I should probably watch THE GIRL CAN'T HELP IT since that seems to be the film she's best remembered for.

 

CINDY AND DONNA (1970)

 I've seen quite a few artsy-fartsy movies where nothing happens but usually 70's softcore sexploitation/porn flicks at least have some kinda thin-plot to hold everything together. This one does not and chooses instead to just be a slice-of-life kinda deal looking at the experiences of young innocent Cindy as she is exposed to some sexual action thanks to her older sluttier sister Donna and her cheating incest-happy dad as well as other various fellas and ladies she meets along the way to her sexual awakening. The film seems to go on forever and ever despite the wall-to-wall nudity, lesbianism and exposed ugly underpants. Somehow they manage to sneak that 70's downer ending in there out of the blue so that's something. To make things a bit creepy I'm pretty sure most of the naked gals we see are supposed to be portraying ladies under the age of 18.
 Because the film is so dull I found myself focusing more on incidental details like that sweet Frank Zappa poster Cindy has on her bedroom wall and some of the great 70's "can you dig it?" and "it's a groove" dialogue which hardly makes this worth sitting through.
 Apparently a screening of this film in Kentucky in 1970 got a few people busted by the police for showing obscenity in a case that went all the way to the Supreme Court which is pretty shocking looking back at how fairly innocent it all is in comparison to the filth that was to come.

Even the title music is dull!:

CLICK (1990)

 So the first hour of this movie is a basic soft-core sleaze tale of a nutty photographer who likes to yell at his models. This sleazy wacko is played by Ross Hagen, who is a guy I remember from being in a few 70's biker and exploitation flicks so by 1990 he's a bit on the old side to be playing the cool trendy artistic photographer, but whatever. He surrounds himself with sexy ladies with big hair and I'm guessing this is because he was also the co-director. Then in the last 30 minutes or so it turns into a slasher flick where we get to see Hagen cross-dress in a wig as a female nurse and run amuck. It's all really dumb and I can't imagine this played in theaters anywhere but there are some boobs on display and a little bit of blood with a neck slashing. Also a lady gets tied to a cross for no reason. Troy Donahue who was a star in the 50's also shows up once in a while to act like a big creep which I don't think had anything to do with the story at all. This came on a DVD set of 12 movies with boobs in them or I'm sure I would never bother watching it. AKA CLICK: THE CALENDAR GIRL KILLER

The complete wackjob ending which is the highlight!: