The world of exploitation film ripped open and laid raw for you to experience. From 70's grindhouse to current underground, it is all here. So ripe you can practically smell it.
WE'RE GOING TO EAT YOU (1980) D. TSUI HARK MEDIA BLASTERS 1.85 This early entry from Hong Kong wizard boy Tsui Hark is full of energy, kung fu and some splashy gore. But it uses those things to mask that there is very little plot, no scares and tons of goofy comedy in the mix as well. It is as hyperactive as you would expect from this director and equally incoherent. But there is some fun to be had amidst the chaos. Norman Chu (once again as we saw him as the lead in LEWD LIZARD. No, I did not intentionally have a Norman Chu double feature!) plays special Agent 999 who is on a small island looking for a criminal from his past named ROLEX (Melvin Wong). The island is overrun by mask wearing cannibals under order of the new chief of police. They are killing and eating people and giving a little of the left over meat to the mentally handicapped and poor villagers.
While this is a set up for a no holds barred gore fest, the movie instead chooses to be a slapstick comedy with lots of martial arts. The cannibals all fight with a series of people in long, drawn out, intricate Kung Fu sequences that play more like demo reels for another film job. There is also a strange use of real handicapped and deformed people for bit parts, under most circumstances I would be fine with this, but here they are often used a comedic relief such as the giant transvestite that keeps attempting to rape the various men in the story. It just comes off as poor taste.
THE WOMAN (2011) D. Lucky
McKee Bloody Disgusting 1.85
I went into this movie fully expecting
to hate it. The trailer sort of misrepresents it as a wry, almost hip
black comedy with the indie music taking the forefront juxtaposing
the tone. I also am not a big fan of director McKee as his films as
wildly uneven in tone, usually top heavy with comedy that barely
works, and purposefully quirky characters that I find more annoying
that endearing. In fact the only of McKee's films I actually like is
the one film he was thrown off of; the adaption of Jack Ketchum's
dramatic novel RED about an elderly man's dog that is killed by some
teens and the horrific fall out that ensues.
Here McKee and Ketchum team up again writing the novella this film was based on. Which goes
a long way towards explaining the ultimate tone of THE WOMAN, because
all of McKee's quirky humor seems to be missing or at the very least
tempered here. This is very much a Ketchum film through and through
with only the style having the feel of McKee but it all gels
amazingly well.
The story is actually a distant sequel to
Ketchum's book/film THE OFFSPRING about a mutant cannibal clan the
travel the east coast. Here one of the last survivors of that story,
a lone mutant, cannibal woman is wondering a very small New England
forest town. She is discovered by the Father of a nuclear family
while hunting. He captures her and brings her home keeping her in the
cellar of the barn, making her the project of the whole family.
Intending to “civilize” her through any means necessary, but
mostly keeping her chained and tormented. It soon becomes clear that
the family that seems functional and happy on the surface is actually
extremely dysfunctional just underneath. Seething with abuse,
violence and sexual horror.
The film starts as a slow burn until it
hits a fifteen to twenty minute climax of shattering violence that
hits you in the gut. But that violence is not the most unsettling
stuff in the movie. The growing sense of unease as you begin to
realize just how unhealthy the family is gets under your skin for
more.
****SPOILERS****
As the film
progresses we realize that the elder daughter is clearly pregnant and
it doesn't take a genius to deduce that she has probably been
sexually abused by her father. Yet as the movie goes further we
realize that the young boy of the family is indeed a violence prone
monster, as he confronts the bound woman at one point and sexually
tortures her with a pair of pliers. So maybe he is responsible for
her condition. It is never really ever said. One terrible scene has
the Father sneak away in the middle of the night to finally satiate
his evil needs with the bound woman. As he rapes the woman
(surprisingly well handled, with well chosen shots that make it less
offensive than it could have been) there are two cutaways give us more
information than we get the rest of the movie. One to the eldest
daughter and another to the very young daughter. These two cuts tell
us that the Father had previous snuck away in the night to do the
same thing to his daughters as he has now done to the woman. When he
returns to bed to his wife her face tells us she also knows what he
has been up to.
THE WOMAN plays the material very
straight ratcheting up the tension as it goes, revealing more and
more about the family holding the Woman captive until we get a huge
secret in the last reel that fires off the violence. The movie works
because it manages to take a character who cannot talk, who is
essentially a savage by all intents, and makes her completely
sympathetic by contrasting her to the complete seething evil of the
“civilized” characters. The horrors we do witness are really
everyday things that are unfortunate real life things like abuse,
incest and family secrets. The ideas of passing evil along family
lines through bad parenting are very real horror and THE WOMAN
explores them thoroughly.
Some people have complained about Lucky
McKee's use of music in the film which is scored with a string of
indie rock. It is jarring at first, in fact the first instance
doesn't quite work. But from there on out the awkward juxtaposition
actually works surprisingly well. Contrasting the sterile small town
environment, it adds a level of realism.
The movie came to a lot of attention
when it played Sundance last year and an audience patron flipped out
making an ass of himself. The video of him freaking out went viral
giving the film a lot of attention. I am still not convinced this
wasn't a wrestling style work, but if it wasn't this guy certainly
was throwing a fit that was uncalled for. The film is extremely
effective and at times very hard to sit through, but to accuse it of
being anti-woman, or anti-human is to miss the point entirely. But
then to flip your shit and demand any movie be censored shows a lack
of being reasonable.
THE WOMAN is easily Lucky McKee's finest
film to date and well worth your time.
HORROR OF THE HUNGRY HUMONGOUS HUNGAN (1991) D. Richard Gardner TROMA 16mm (??) This super weird, no budget Troma negative pick up rotgut starts off this year's October 31 day Halloween Horror movie challenge with a bang. Or a wimper actually. The pre-credits sequence has a long bit of narration featuring Jack Palance explaining the title and some voodoo legend bullshit explaining the word Hungan. This leads to a guy and gal in the woods who are chased by the cheapest monster this side of my friend's backyard werewolf movies. The monster doesn't rip out the guy's guts, he just lightly pats them. The gal knocks off his Halloween monster mask head and the cheapskate graveyard of dimestore props goes up in flames. Then...
She wakes up cause it is all a dream. Yawn.
After a pretty decent Pantera rip off song over the credits the real story jump starts with a medical dorm being haunted by a voodoo "Hungan" with a dumass Security gaurd, a giant black Janitor and some weirdo Lab guys doing top secrety experiments. Turns out the yahoos at this place have ressurected the Hungan from the pretitle sequence Frankenstein style in hopes to do their bidding ("We took a federal grant to cure cancer but you used it to create a BEAST!") . Meanwhile the local kids are having a house party with a band called "Cry Wolf" where the camera sits at the back of the room or cuts the the lone black guy in the crowd but never actually focuses on the craptacular band. The Hungan lays on the medical bed for a while, gets injected and rip off John Carpenter music plays.
Finally the Hungan gets re-animated and goes on his rampage about half way through the movie and starts tearing up the preriferal cast. There is some splashing, but not convincing gore, then we cut BACK to the party with Cry Wolf complete with a Pee Wee Herman impersonator!!!
Then we are back to our teens, the bimbo who keeps dreaming o fhte Hungan and her boyfriend who sounds like he would rather be in bed with any of the male cast members then with her. In her dreams the Hungan murder her again, but we can his voice echo inside his mask.
Before long the gang are in the woods camping, which they have been talking about for the first half of the movie. The hungan has followed them there and is picking them off in long protacted stalking scenes in braod daylight. The Hungan looks like a wrinkled, haggered Rick Astley. Some unseen woman is using voodoo to control the Hungan, but is clearly not making all the guys take off their shirts and hang out together by the tents and talk endlessly about the crappy band. It all climaxes in the Hunky shirtless guy and the Hungan fist fighting in a bought of fisticuffs that rivals the excitement found in the final minutes of THE GUY FROM HARLEM'S kung fu. And in a clear nod to the Oscar worhty films of Hal Needham it all ends with a reel of goofy outtakes and bloopers!
If Rhonda Shear's UP ALL NIGHT was still on the air this would be perfect fodder for the 3:00 am time slot. I am not sure if this means if it is worth watching or not.
This highly unusual French shocker is a lesuirly paced little weirdo of a movie. But give it a chance, it is sure to win you over by the end. Fans of Jean Rollin will find the aura of madness and sexual menace especially rewarding I would think.
Pretty Isabelle Goguey plays Martine, a young woman who is thrilled to find a job at a far away nursing home in the country. Seems the job market is just as shitty in France circa 1980 as it is here in the USA these days. Her older and slightly goofy boyfriend seems more than a bit happy to let her go away for months at a time to work. He probably doesn't mind the extra income and new found sense of freedom. Once there she immediately falls foul of the headmistress Helene, a classic domineering old bitch who runs the place with an iron fist. The old folks staying within all display the typical quirky manias one expects to see in this type of move, much to the chagrin of already on staff nurse Nichole (Charlotte De Terckheim) who is more happy just to have company hear he own age. But what neither of the girls know is that the old folks are blood thirsty cannibals under the wicked spell of the head mistress using their murders as blood rituals.
Also going on, quite randomly it seems is a black gloved, giallo styled murderer that mostly we just hear about peripherally in news papers or gossip. We see that the hospital groundskeeper is a loony and possibly he could be killing these girls by sticking a giant needle in their neck. Or maybe he is just one big red herring.
The scene where he freaks out is a highlight, as Martine watches him storm about his room, reliving some past transgression with a woman, all the while mimicking his murderous and lustful rage on a non-existent participant. The other scenes of the cannibalistic geriatrics stalking through the corridors hold a particular amount of nasty horror, that is surprisingly unsettling and nasty. Maybe it is the innate fear of getting older, maybe it is that the one guy looks like Martin Short when he hits sixty and drooling blood. But the scenes are nasty and uncomfortable. The blood ritual scenes are also pretty unpleasant and horrifying with a nasty sexual edge to make them that much more uneasy. In fact the entire proceedings have this air of sexual authenticity.
Overall NIGHT OF DEATH is a curious, and fairly shocking little number with a genuine ambiance of gruesome inequity that is rarely found in modern horror cinema. The Synapse DVD is typical of their output I.E extremely well done. No extras to speak of unfortunately, but the transfer itself, and the queasy nature of the movie, should be enough for you to make an informed buying decision. Check it out.
