Halloween Horror Challenge OCt 11: VAMPIRE GIRL VS. FRANKENSTEIN GIRL

VAMPIRE GIRL VS FRANKENSTEIN GIRL (2010)
D. Yoshihiro Nishimura, Naoyuki Tomomatsu
Sony
HD Video

From the directors and F/X teams behind the 2008 hit TOKYO GORE POLICE comes this outrageous gore, monster, comedy that, frankly, I don't even know how to begin to review. Is it a good movie? No, not really, but it IS a constantly inventive one. Watching VAMPIRE GIRL VS. FRANKENSTEIN GIRL you are sure to see things you have NEVER seen before, and a few things you probably never will want to see again. Every frame of this movie is jammed packed with color, movement, texture and lots and lots of spraying gore. If ever there was a movie that was practically begging you to pay attention it is this one. It is NEVER boring, every second pops something new for you to lock your eyeballs onto. But Jesus, at some point it almost becomes sensory overload.

The movie opens with a crazy, crazy scene of our lead Vampire Girl (Yukie Kawamura) facing off with a trio of doll faced school girl monsters. She dispatches them them gorily, stripping their skin off in long spirals and popping their skulls out, stacking them on the beach before her boyfriend Jyugon Mizushima (Takumi Saitô) begins to narrate the tale ahead of how they met. Jyugon is the only real available boy in school and he is cornered by Keiko (Eri Otoguro) the pushy hot girl in class and soon he is her boyfriend. But the new transfer student Monami sets her eyes on him and gives him a chocolate candy with her own blood in it. Before he knows it he is craving blood and wanting to be with Monami the Vampire Girl. What none of them know is that the hot school nurse and school assistant principal are doing experiments in the basement. The two girls are out to fight each other over their new boy toy until he becomes a vampire too and Mizushima ends up with her head blasted open on the pavement. Soon she has become the experiment of the school staff and the nurse is murdering the best students of the school to collect the parts to recreate her as the best fighting monster possible.

This write up doesn't even begin to do justice to the complete insanity of this thing. From the opening scene of over the top of comedic slaughter to the scene in the classroom where we meet the students which is the most racist thing I have seen in a movie since THE ETERNAL JEW. There is a subplot about a group of girls who have remade themselves a faux Black girls by wearing make up and fake afros and big cup lips and giant spears and every other horrible stereotype and racist thing you can think of. I guess I can reason it out as to be a commentary about people trying to go to extremes to be people who they are not. But my god it is terribly extreme and offensive. I guess that is the point.

There is also another subplot about ritual cutters, a group of teenage girls who cut themselves to be part of a group. They end up in a competition of who can cut themselves the most and best, complete with a trophy. The girls are all anemic and eat cabbage to keep up their strength.

But the meat of the movie is the battle between the girls. It becomes a big F/X battle with body parts switching places, blood becoming solid becoming actual weapons. It really is the epic battle the directors set out to achieve, even if it is kind of stupid. With severed arms becoming spinning rotors to make people fly and things like that. Frankly this movie would probably work a lot better if you were really really high. I rarely say that since I am not a stoner, but in this case, well it fits.

I was a big fan of TOKYO GORE POLICE because with all the insane imagery, way over the top gore, and bizarre psycho sexual set pieces, there was a strong political and social subtext tying it all together. With VAMPIRE GIRL VS FRANKENSTEIN GIRL it is almost like they set out to make some really weird teen movie and are only lightly touching on any kind of social context at all. The stuff that makes that other movie hang together is mostly missing here,and that is a shame.

I'm not a fan of the new Japanese insane cinema like MACHINE GIRL or ROBOGEISHA with cute girls with machine guns pupping out of their assholes and thousands of gallons of blood. That shit is amusing for about a minute but then the twelve year old in me starts asking for a context for it and gets severely disappointed. TOKYO GORE POLICE had the whole package. This movie almost has it, then goes back to the candy colored insanity. It is never boring for sure, but it is pretty empty unfortunately.

Review © Andrew Copp

Day #27 All hail the Malformed MEN!!!

HORRORS OF MALFORMED MEN (1969)
D. Teruo Ishii
Synapse Ent.
2.35

This surreal, sometimes hard to penetrate, dramatic horror tale was banned for many years in Japan. One of the only films to ever get that nod on the big island. so for this movie to have finally gotten it's DVD release was a very special treat to cult film enthusiasts all over the world. I snapped up my copy from Gerry and Don at the Synapse table at Cinema Wasteland as soon as it was available and sat down that very week to watch it. But then within five minutes fell asleep and never got back to it until now. No fault of the movie mind you, I just get easily distracted sometimes and that week was one such time. But I am glad I finally got back around to it, because as I had long suspected MALFORMED MEN is a little gem.

The very complicated story revolves around Hirosuke Hitomi (played by Teruo Yoshida) who awakens to find himself in the loony bin one morning inexplicably. But this is one strange Mental ward where all the women seem to be on drugs and naked. The guards use whips and cat o nine tails to get the all female inmates back into cells, and one angry bald man sits in a corner scowling at him as if he wants to kill him. As night falls Hirosuke is drugged and awakens to the bald man on top of him trying to do just that. But he overpowers that chump and kills him, managing to escape the mysteriously unguarded facility. Once outside he recognizes a lullaby being sang by a teenage girl as one from his dreams and talks to her. After she smacks him(!) they make friends and realize they are both orphans and remember the tune from their childhood. But before much more info beside a memory from the seashore can be revealed someone plants a knife into her and Hirosuke is blamed and on the run.



Along the way he discovers a wealthy business man named (also played by Genzaburô Komoda KomodaTeruo Yoshida) has died. Weird thing is that they are identical, right down to the weird engraved scar on the bottom of their foot. So Hirosuke pretends he is the resurrected corpse of Genzaburô Komoda and ingrains himself into his household in an attempt to solve the mystery of his blank past, as it seems it is deeply intertwined. What he discovers is that Genzaburô Komoda was a sex machine, fucking both his wife and one of the maids, so Hirosuke has his hands full. But there is also someone stalking the household and a group of mutant weirdos playing home invasion that look a lot like Japanese versions of the kid from DELIVERANCE. This is only the first half of the movie!!!


In the second half Hirosuke manages to get to the island where Genzaburô Komoda's Father has isolated himself for the entirety of his son's life. Here he discovers that this man has created a disturbing utopia filled with naked women being used as slaves, furniture and pretty much anything else. Also populating the island are hundreds of mutant and deformed people, many that seemed to be surgically grafted and created. For example women that are surgically grafted to the ass end of a horse. It turns out that Father was spurned by his beautiful wife because of his own natural deformities and went more than a little crazy. So he spirited her away to this island and held her captive for her sins. While he punished her, he got busy creating his own "master race" of "malformed men" that would eventually go devour and mate with the normal society thus seeking revenge for anyone who was ever different. He wants Hirosuke to do more adventurous surgeries since he is a surgeon and the secret of his past is of course tightly woven with this island.


This is really just scratching the surface of this deeply twisted movie. Based on the works of famed Japanese author Edogawa Rampo who is considered the greatest horror writer of Japan. Apparently this is an amalgamation of many of his stories, which explains the car crash style of the narrative which throws in everything including the kitchen sink. By the time the movie gets to the incest driven fuck it all climax, your jaw will be on the floor. But oddly enough, it is all rather tragic and surprisingly touching. For all the deformity, blood, skin and bad taste, the final couple of images and lines of dialogue illicit a lot of humanity and heart through all the chaos. There is a message about the human condition hiding in this madness, something about forgiveness, accepting people for who they are and their ability to love, not their outward appearance.



But as a cult/exploitation movie viewer it is the crazy imagery that will stun you, and this movie is chocked full of it. Lazy and jaded viewers on the IMDB called this boring. While there are slow parts of the movie, there is more than enough involving madness to pull you through the quieter scenes. The early scenes in the mental institution are quite the opening grabber (if you look ever so closely one of the woman has a close up of her breasts and a bead of milk can be seen dripping from her nipple). The flashback (and later shown as part of the narrative) of the Father crawling out of the sea side rocks towards the camera in all his madness is simply incredible. The Mother eating the crabs that have in turn ate her lover. The kidnapping psycho warden in full drag torturing a busty young lady just for fun. The lazy boat ride up river where we first see the inhabitants of the island, consisting of nude women painted silver and gold, wrapped in bandages, bolted and belted to poles, boats and sewn to animals. All of them dancing, swimming and crawling in an inhuman manner. These are all stunning moments in a film full of them. All the denizens of the island were played by Butoh dancers which enabled them to move like no other humans on the planet could. A technique that direct Teruo Ishii would use throughout his career.

Then there are the malformed men themselves, some achieved with just crusty make up, others with more explicit prosthetics, some just contortionists. Some of them just look like blobs of human flesh lying in cages, while others are elderly people with mesh covering their faces being fed by tubes. One guy in the background has elephantitis of the scrotum, but it is seen to fast that I doubt most people notice it.

It is these scenes that in fact relegated the film to the status of being banned. For many years after World War Two deformities were a touchy subject in Japanese culture thanks to the dropping of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The damage caused by those left many people, for several generations, damaged physically. It was considered extremely poor taste to show those kinds of deformities in entertainment or art after that for a long time. Even if Teruo Ishii was perhaps trying to make some commentary on that very thing with the film. The movie was banned for several decades only showing up in late night revival screenings and film festivals until this DVD.


Which is gorgeous by the way. The widescreen photography is breathtaking and looks fabulous. It always amazes me to look at genre films from other countries around the same time frame to see that many of them look lower budgeted and sometimes cheap (the Italians were doing well at this point though). But Japanese films, always look incredible. There is photography and imagery in this film that is simply impossible to dismiss. This DVD allows Asian cult cinema fans and exploitation fans in general to finally fill that gap in their education. An essential purchase.



Reviews © Andy Copp

Day #8 There is something in my guts

For Day number eight I took in some low budget D.I.Y. horror goodness

TAPEWORM (2009)
D. Brian Hirschbine
Abortion Bin Productions
S.O.V. 16 X 9

Thank god there are creative people left working in the D.I.Y indie horror scene today. For a little while there it was beginning to look like it was all getting washed up in the tide of who could make the most "extreme" stuff to out do each other, regardless of things like plot, story or characters. Then along came people like Andrey Iskanov, and over here stateside Brian Hirschbine, to prove that low budget horror film making is still looking to break barriers that are more than just gore. These are young turks willing to push their very concepts to the limit, regardless of the tools at their disposal, reminding us that ideas are the most important thing.

TAPEWORM basically takes the image from VIDEODROME when James Woods gets the betamax tape jammed into his guts to reprogram him and runs with it. Take equal parts Cronenberg body horror, TETSUO mutation psychosis, and a huge dollop of Neo film Noir and stir it all around into a blood cocktail of pseudoscience laced with a bullet written with snuff and you have a close proximity of what this movie is aiming at. The movie follows a P.I. named Frankie who gets a call from a fellow P.I. in trouble. But when he finds her it's too late. She's just a nude corpse in the woods, gutted and filled with audio tape. Quite literally - the stuff is spilling out of her wounds along with her guts. He even finds a mini cassette jammed in her mouth. In his investigations, a Panda-faced mutant attacks him and shoots him up with some drug, which causes him (or perhaps the viewer?) some flashbacks of a nude killer (in a furry panda mask) raping and killing a woman. This continues throughout the movie and gets progressively more vile with each flashback, until she is literally a pile of guts on the floor. Soon, Frankie is mutating with cables exploding from his arms and circuit boards becoming exposed on his body. A hole opens on his abdomen, with all these wounds suppurating and spewing his old body's contents at every turn. He goes to his "company's" mechanic who knows what this is. It's a "recording virus" used to monitor people and record their thoughts, and whereabouts. The mechanic does a nasty surgery and removes the parts and miles of magnetic recording tape that has developed inside of Frankie. But soon a doppelganger of the other Female P.I. manages to infect him again and he's on the run as he discovers he's much more intimately linked to this whole situation that he ever imagined.

The movie is WAY more complex than even that quick paragraph makes it sound, with twists, turns, and lots of characters coming and going, turning out to be doubles or not who we think they are. The whole time the main character is mutating into a flesh/machine hybrid for some higher purpose dealing with audio and video tapes that seem to have replaced actual human interactions for some secret cabal of people. As he mutates he still stumbles around on the job until the final reveal brings it all into focus in a fairly disturbing way.

I was digging the whole Raymond Chandler meets Cronenberg thing in TAPEWORM a lot, but I wasn't digging the snuff film like flashbacks with the guy mutilating and raping the girl. I just felt like that was an angle every other underground horror films has done to death. But then the climax of this movie comes full circle and makes it all make sense, turning the premise into something different. Or a different take on the idea I should say, presenting something fresh and really thoughtful on those ideas that made it all work well. I was duly impressed and suddenly understood how the movie couldn't have worked without those scenes. This is one of the most ambitious D.I.Y. movies I have seen. In plot, structure, and in effects, as well. Many of the effects obviously could have used more money to pull off, but they are still startling and impressive in design. There is a richness of imagination here from script to screen that is rare in this day and age.

My only complaints with the movie are the pacing. I realize that in going with the noir thing, that a certain methodical pace is required. But the movie sits at close to two hours and there is a lot of excess around the edges of scenes. Just extra shots, or shots that run too long, making it feel like it drags in places, when it should be moving along. And, damn, what is with all those cigarettes? Everyone smoking all the time was literally making me sick! I know it is a noir thing, though.

One more thing: J.C. Howe isn't in it enough. She was so terrific in BLACK ICE that I was sad that her part was so small here. Hopefully the next one she'll be on screen more.

Thank god for movies like this that show the indie underground to be alive and kicking ass. I've only seen two movies from Hirschbine and company and they both were quite good. This one was a huge step up from the already good BLACK ICE. So I look very forward to what they do next!

I couldn't find a trailer for TAPEWORM so here is the trailer for Hirschbine's previous movie BLACK ICE.

Challenge Day #3 The Parasite is a Pussy!

Day #3 of the Halloween Horror Challenge we go to the land of the Rising Sun...


KILLER PUSSY aka SEXUAL PARASITE (2004)
D. Takao Nakano
Diskotek Media
S.O.V.

The madman behind the EXORSISTER and PLAYGIRL series struck an international chord with this twisted tail of a flesh eating vaginal parasite that finally made a splash in the USA. Basically it made its way into cult circles on the strength of the outrageous title alone as the actual quality of the movie is pretty low. But then anyone who is familiar with Nakano's work knows not to expect big budgets, good special effects, top notch acting or coherent story lines. What they DO expect is naked girls, cat fights and bit tits. Lots of big tits. He's sort of the Russ Meyer of Japan in that way, and KILLER PUSSY is right in line with his other work. The movie is equal parts Peter Jackson, Russ Meyer and V.D. scare film.

The movie opens with an expedition in the Amazon where a group of scientists have found some monstrous slug and have it in a Styrofoam crate. A stereotypical witch doctor appears from nowhere to warm them of their impending doom, scaring the female scientist so she sits on the box. One of the other scientists/ actors is fighting really hard to keep a straight face in every shot. The monster burrows through the bow and into her warm love tunnel, thus starting the movie. We get a quick on-screen explanation of what "Vagina Dentata" is then cut ahead a couple of years to a van load of annoying teens who are broken down in a forest. They are the typical teens, a couple of dorky guys and three sex pot girls, differentiated by the size of their sweater globes and the boots they are wearing. Apparently two of the girls had an affair at one time, but it has cooled as the bustiest of the bunch wants nothing to to with the lesbo games anymore, having moved onto man meat now.


They find an old warehouse that clearly says "do not enter" so they do anyway and begin to party inside when the only phone they find doesn't work. While investigating they let loose a frozen gal (the woman from the opening) and the parasite inside of her begins to crawl into the females in the cast, when then begin to fuck their way through the others. From here it's set pieces of sexual gruesome explosions such as the girl who walks down the hallway with oatmeal like cum dribbling down her legs and the dorky guy following her getting turned on. And yes, he eats her out when he catches her - wouldn't you?! Then there's a female on female oil/human blood naked wrestling match that has the women groping and rubbing each other furiously until the parasite slimes its way out of one gals vagina and into the others in the movie's one very effective CGI shot. Not to mention the scene of someone being strangled with their own intestines, or the several bloody castrations while fucking by the nasty, toothy beastie. The creature keeps spawning as well, making the women puke up tiny little versions of itself that are actually like fishing lures that you can buy at any bait shop for about a dozen for a dollar. They wiggle around while being pulled by a fishing line. I'm surprised some carp don't jump into frame and swallow the suckers.

The music is all "borrowed" from other sources. Either Japanese garage and punk rock (which is a lot of fun) or just soundtracks from Italian cult films, blatantly ripped off such as the theme of DANGER DIABOLIK used in several places, as well as the canned music from NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD.

This is cheap jack, nerd out film-making to the max. I am tempted to call it exploitation film-making by the numbers, except that Nakano really has a love for what he is doing, unlike some American no-budget filmmakers who do this kind of shit. Nakano is obviously in his element here and very happy to do it, and he's delivering exactly what he wants to with this movie. Sure, he is pandering to his audience, but only in that he's pandering to his own sick and juvenile interests, too. Nakano is making the movies HE wants to see. They happen to have cheap monsters, lots of bad special effects and blood, and huge tits. I don't think he sits and says "this formula is successful, I will continue to do it". I think he just likes this kind of crap. And for the right price and in the right frame of mind you very well might, too.

Halloween Horror Challenge: Day #2

Day two of the Halloween Horror Challenge:


VACATION OF TERROR (1989)
D. Rene Cardona III
BCI/ Eclipse
Full Frame

This 1989 Mexican low budget chiller is part of the now out-of-print Horror from South of the Border Vol #1 box set from BCI (which can be found at some close out stores such as Half Price books for under $10 as of right now. But it's sure to sky rocket to astronomical prices soon, so snap it up while you can, brothers and sisters!). Directed by the grandson of the great (well, to some) exploitation filmmaker Rene Cardona, who dazzled us with films like NIGHT OF THE BLOODY APES, and then Rene Cardona Jr who fascinated with the likes of SURVIVE and TINTORERA. While those movies were cheap, sometimes nasty, silly, and always effective, this movie is cheap, never nasty, always silly, and never ever effective. Robert Rodriguiz talked a lot about the Mexican thrillers and action films he watched growing up that inspired him to shoot EL MIRIACHI and how thy were shot on shoe strings. This film must be the horror equivalent to those. Made exclusively for the South of the border market, this is a seriously impoverished production, but kinda charming in its own cheap and clean way.

The movie starts off about two hundred years ago with a witch being burned at the stake. While the locals all damn her to hell (and interestingly keep calling her a "wicked blond" though she clearly has dark hair. I wonder if the subtitles were just wrong?), the town elder arrives with a rather sinister looking doll and curses it. He throws the doll and all her belongings down a well and then sets her ablaze as she vows revenge. Cut to modern times as we see a young man named Julio being told this story by a man from whom he is trying to buy the amulet that was used in the story to curse her soul into the doll. Julio, being a student of the occult arts, trades the guy a Walkman for it and is on his way. Later we meet Fernando, his bitchy pregnant wife and three kids: two twin boys and sullen, single expression daughter Gabby. Seems he has just inherited a summer home and they are off to check it out. They pick up his sexy niece (she and Fernando exchange a couple of not very family-like glances once in a while) and her boyfriend, who is, you guessed it, Julio. After lots of bitching and complaining from the grumpy-ass wife about what a wreck the place is (and it is: THE MONEY PIT has nothing on this place) one of the twins climbs a tree and can't get down, because "the tree wont let him!" Soon Gabby's dumb ass falls down the well and finds the possessed doll and the action begins. Sort of.

The action consists of Gabby looking at the doll, the doll's eye moving to the left or right and the sexpot niece screaming at the top of her lungs. A lot. Occasionally someone with a slingshot from off screen will break glassware dangerously close to cast members heads to approximate the doll's wrath. Then the niece gets locked in a room with a bunch of snakes and rats! Remote control cars and toys crawl around on their own! Julio gets knocked down by nothing at all! Julio gets chased by his own truck, driven by a guy clearly hunkering under a blanket! The mom's unborn baby has a spastic fit that looks like a couple of cats are fighting under her shirt! Julio clearly tells his girlfriend how the amulet will stop the demon doll but the dumb bitch is too busy screaming to listen to what he is saying and he gets dissolved into the mirror! She has crazy poofy 80's hair and bright purple lipstick that for some reason I found kinda hot (flashbacks to my 10th grade year, I think). No one ever thinks to just bitch slap the little girl carrying the doll and then stomp on the damn thing.

Clearly made for about forty dollars, this must have been a hit because there was a sequel before the year's end! The weird thing is this is a completely safe horror movie. No gore, no nudity, not even any bad language. Nothing objectionable happens in the movie outside of Julio getting stabbed a couple of times when the demon doll tosses some knives his way. Kids could easily watch this flick. It is really too bad that someone like K. Gordon Murry isn't still selling packages of Mexican movies to local TV stations for things like Shock Theater afternoon TV because this would fit the bill perfectly. Silly, fun, not offensive and a horror host intruding once in a while would only add to it. But times have since marched on, so stop the DVD once in a while and pretend your favorite horror host has broke in with some funny anecdotes.

I could not find a film clip of this trippu nightmare anywhere, so we have to live with the trailer for Rene Cardona Jr's true crime sleaze masterpiece, GUYANA CRIME OF THE CENTURY instead.




Andy Copp

Halloween Horror Challenge 2009!!! entry #1

Here it is Halloween again and time for a challenge. Last year here at EXPLOITATION NATION I made an attempt to watch a horror movie every night for a week leading up to the evening of Halloween. It was great fun and a nice way to catch up on my viewing. But now I'm upping the stakes, brothers and sisters. It is September 29th and I want to make a bigger commitment this year. So I am challenging myself to more. this time I am undertaking the EXPLOITATION NATION HALLOWEEN HORROR CHALLENGE and plan to watch a horror film every night until Halloween. That is one night for the entire MONTH. To make it even more difficult I will only watch horror movies I have NOT SEEN BEFORE!!! God knows I have enough of the damn things in my collection alone to keep me busy for years to come, so this is not that difficult really. Finding the time to actually watch them will be the bigger challenge. Will I alienate friends and loved ones? Push myself past the brink of sanity? Become a blob of undulating jello on the couch who forgets all the important things in life? We shall see, but I think it will remind me of why I loved these things in the first place. And it will also serve to jump start this blog that has been on life support for a while in the process.

I invite you, dear readers of this blog (that I have neglected for far too long), to get in on the challenge and watch movies, too. Make sure to post comments on what you have watched, as well! It could be a load of fun. Just remember the rules: they have to be HORROR movies and ones you have NOT seen before. So I started this evening with a crazy ass bit of hokum that I've heard about for years, but had never actually laid eyes upon, called WINTERBEAST.


WINTERBEAST (1986)
D. Christopher Thies
Winterbeast Entertainment Group
Super 8mm

Extremely cheap, shot on super 8mm low budget labor of love from the 80's that has found new life on the DVD format. Originally released on the Tempe label on VHS in the 90's this one achieved a small amount of cult status before falling into little seen status. What sets it apart is that it takes the old school approach of using stop motion monsters instead of the (then) very popular gore/ slasher style of horror. In the mountains of some unnamed state, several forest rangers have gone missing in the area surrounding Wild Goose Lodge, which is also happens to be on the land of a former Indian Burial ground. Seems that a lot of people have disappeared over the years in the area. Turns out that a whole small army of stop motion monsters are grabbing up people and eating them up at any chance they get. There is a giant wood monster that looks like a broom, another that is a totem pole monster with multiple arms, a giant chicken monster ( I freakin kid you not!) and finally the Winterbeast himself, which is a man in full demon make up, shot to look like a giant - well, a guy shot to look about seven feet tall actually - all of whom have been unleashed by the owner of the lodge, a cackling old gay man who is like a low rent Malcom Macdowell (Charlie Perkins)from local Dinner theater. In one scene the movie stumbles ass backwards into something truly terrifying as this dude puts on a clown mask, starts up a ancient kids record of nursery rhymes and starts dancing around a room full of corpses. It's genuinely startling and creepy as hell, and really, really gets under your skin. Where the rest of the movie is just a silly, fun, monster mash, this is the stuff nightmares are made of.

The movie is bad, but in such a beautiful way that you cannot help but to fall in love with it. From the very first scene of a stop motion monster killing some locals in a cabin (with one of the victims fingering his own innards for no good reason at all), and then another guy out in the woods giving birth to a demon-headed snake monster (neither of which incident seem to be related), you know you are in for some whacked out no budget adventures in insanity. Then the dialogue starts and you realize that things are on another plane altogether. To call the acting wooden is an insult to Formica, but yet it fits the mood of the piece in a funky way. The dialogue is intensely overwritten, with people often repeating things they have just said as if to fill time until the next person could remember what to say. The comic relief character seems to be in a homosexual panic for most of the movie as he cites DELIVERANCE on more than one occasion, and make tons of gay comments at every turn. He also never, ever, at any point in the movie takes off his sunglasses, no matter what time of day or night the scene may be.

Yet, the movie has charm to spare. Watching this, I was transported back to a time when no budget movies were shot on FILM, and sought to be more than smarmy references to movies that came before them. There is nothing in this movie that is relying on the fact that you have seen dozens of other horror film for you to "get the jokes" or just throwing tons of blood and tits on screen to hide the fact that there is nothing going on worth watching. There may be a painful lack of budget here, or arguably a lack of talent (though I don't really want to go as far as to say that), but there is a strong urge to entertain present. Every single frame of WINTERBEAST seeks your approval and strives to win you over. This is not a film that is slapping you in the face to prove to you how clever and smarter than you it is. This is the shaggy, stray dog that wants to make you happy, not the pissy and whinny wolf in a sheep's clothing that just wants to win your favor long enough to move on to better things like many of today's indie horror offerings often are. So embrace the WINTERBEAST, it will put a smile on your face.

http://www.winterbeast.com/


And the only really scary moment of the film, Sheldon's "dance"

Enough With the freakin Torture Porn Bullshit!!!

The following article originally appeared on my Facebook profile but the varied discussion, plus the fact that people are STILL calling MARTYRS torture porn, has moved me to throw it up here as well.

So I'm cruising through borders today to buy the book WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE for my friend's kids cause every child should own it (especially before the new movie comes out). And I stop to look at the new horror magazines. The new RUE MORGUE had a cover story on the new French horror film MARTYRS (See the review elsewhere here for my thoughts on this film) which I thought was cool. I dig when magazines spotlight foreign or indie horror. But right across the front of the mag is the headline "Transcendent TORTURE PORN punishes NORTH AMERICA" written with that exact emphasis and capitals. I immediately just put the magazine back down in disgust.

Come on people it is time to stop with the fucking term TORTURE PORN.

Rue Morgue you're better than that. The term TORTURE PORN is a lazy bullshit term developed by the American right wing news media at the height of the popularity of the SAW and HOSTEL films that was supposed to denigrate the genre. Using it when describing genre movies plays into that mindset and insults not only the movies you are writing about, but the fans and the genre itself. Horror films are NOT pornography. Nor are they torture, no matter if that is what they portray. No one is being tortured for real, it is all special effects. JACKASS would be closer to something that you might want to call TORTURE COMEDY maybe (but I don't even subscribe to that idea).

Tony Timpone editor of FANGORIA magazine (who has been at the helm of that mag for over twenty years now. Who is ever the Editor in chief of a magazine for that long?) has said in some recent interviews that he thought the recent French horror film FRONTIER(S) was nothing but, wait for it, TORTURE PORN. He wrote and editorial 2 years ago slamming the film CAPTIVITY (before he even saw it) for being, you got it, TORTURE PORN. (Granted CAPTIVITY sucks the gas from a dead donkey's ass, but that is beside the point). Now Tony, FRONTIER(S) is actually a pretty prime example of the tried and true backwoods massacre/survivalist horror film (HILLS HAVE EYES, TEXAS CHAINSAW, ring any bells?) and yes CAPTIVITY does cater to the torture elements of some modern horror films, but as bad as it is, it also hearkens back to the sexual obsession type films of the early 70's such as THE COLLECTOR or even PETS. And guess what? None of those older films are even remotely TORTURE PORN!!! (But god yes CAPTIVITY sucks)



You want to see some actual TORTURE PORN? Then here is some... Try the German series SLAVE SEX from the 80's. Shot on video XXX S+M videos that ran at least into 30 volumes or more that showed things like women hung by their breasts by rope, burned with blow torches, steel skewers and needles pushed through their breasts, labia nailed to the table etc. Men with hooks through their penises with buckets hanging off them, their cocks sewn INTO their scrotum, pubic hair set on fire, scrotum nailed to boards etc. Or the other famous German underground porn series FORCED ENTRY that ran into the 40 volume range that centered on simulated rape and not so simulated torture? Then we can travel to Japan for the BUSHIDO tapes that are rumored to have been made by the Yakuza and are pretty much just woman being sexually tortured by heavily tattooed underground mafiosotypes with ropes, hooks, speculum, whips, rods, canes, needles and anything else they can get their hands on. Or what about the TOSHIHIRO RARE FETISH series where women are tied up and have various viscous liquids poured into their eyes, nostrils and other orifices and then are covered in cow and pig guts before being sexed up? And I'm not even going to tell you what happens in the SQUIRM FEST tapes.

This stuff is actually TORTURE PORN. Two things make it fulfill that term. 1) It is actually pornography. The goal for these tapes is to arouse and get the person watching off. There is no plot, no story construction, no characters, no fancy camera work. Just you are there watching this SEXUAL stuff happening for the benefit of the the camera and therefore YOU the viewer. And 2) There is actual TORTURE going on. Granted the participants are getting paid (at least I would hope so, though some of the shit they go through makes you wonder if they are just repaying some Yakuza debt, or drug habit and sometimes they sincerely don't look like they want to be there. But I'm sure that is all part of the frisson of these as well) and are taking the abuse the same way a boxer would a twelve round fight.) But in the most outright obvious, clear explanation of the term, these are actually TORTURE PORN.

Movies like HOSTEL, SAW, MARTYRS, FRONTIER(S), INSIDE, CAPTIVITY, HAUTE TENSION, or any other recent horror film are NOT. Because not matter how much you may or may not like the material they are NOT pornography. No one is in the theater jerking off to them. There may be a few sickos who do, but then there are lots of sickos who jerk off to Disney cartoons too and that doesn't make them Pornography either. The intent of these films is not sexual gratification and release. The intent is to horrify, scare and provide catharsis. To take the viewer on a ride through a series of complex and unpleasant emotions and fears, that by the end will hopefully allow them to release some aggression and terrors. Also the so called TORTURE on screen is never under any circumstances real. The violence is acting and special effects. Even a film as questionable as say MURDER SET PIECES, where it is arguable that the director is putting the actresses through the paces for his own sexual gratification, is still at the end of the day, phony. These are effects, camera trickery and people acting out scenarios for the service of a story to be viewed by an audience that is here for no other reason but to enjoy a horror movie.

But to call horror films TORTURE PORN is to put horror films in the same ghetto as porn. Now I have nothing against porno at all. I watch my share, hell, I even know a porn actor or two. I've nothing against the genre. It is as legit as anything else. But this term is being used to degrade. Porn is generally seen by the public as something bad or to be kept in the shadows and fought against. That it is somehow poisonous to good people. Yet it is a multi-billion dollar industry, so we know the people who say those things are liars. But to label the horror genre with the porn tag is to put it into bed with the porn genre and say it is also something bad, something to be ashamed of. Something unhealthy and evil, that will corrupt the family and normal people of the world. And that is a dangerous precedent to set. The right wing media was setting out to do just that when they started throwing around the term TORTURE PORN several years ago. The aim was to scare middle America into thinking horror films were the equal of the hardest most unsettling pornography that were scarring the youth of the nation. The Bill O'Reilly's of the world (who openly admitted he had never even seen the movies discussed) was happy to throw the whole horror genre under the bus. Now we have the genre itself walking right out in front of the bus willingly, saying "yep we are TORTURE PORN. Our genre is made of SHIT and we are gonna keep saying it!"

TORTURE PORN is a bullshit term made up to hurt the genre and scare idiots who watch too much TV. Lets stop hurting the genre by bandying it around and start being more creative and smarter than those we would like to see the genre fail. Let's stop using the distinctions created by the media that degrade our precious genre and in the process stabbing ourselves in our own hearts.

Andy Copp

Trailer for FRONTIER(S) (this trailer sucks BTW..

Positively the last house over there

Last House On The Left (2009)
D. Dennis Lliadis
Rogue Pictures
1.85

It is really hard to go into a remake of a classic (well kinda classic) film with an open mind. There was a movie critic here in Dayton that a friend and I were talking about recently, that I also had as a teacher a long time who was very wise when it came to reviewing films. People would often talk to him about how a movie should have done this, or been this way or that. But his theory was that have to review the movie presented to you, not the movie you wished you had seen. He called it the movie "within the frame". I'm terrible for that sometimes because being a filmmaker I tend to want to reconstruct things I feel are not working, or in cases like this one, when they are remakes I almost cannot help but to flashback on the originals for a comparison. This was exceptionally difficult while watching the remake of LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, because a) it is such a seminal and groundbreaking work in the horror genre, and b) it is a film that I have int he past thought about how I would remake myself. But about midway through this film I found I was able to turn off my brain and find the film "within the frame" and appreciate it for what it was.

The movie at hand is not substantially different from the original LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT. The tale is about two teenage girls who end up abducted but a gang of criminals, abused, raped and killed. Then by twist of chance (well not so much in this version) end up spending a night of refuge at the home of one of the girl's parents who figure out what has happened and exact revenge for their daughter. That's the general idea anyway. Well that is really the plot synopsis of the original film, here the movie is about two teenage girls who are captured by a gang of criminals, one is killed, the other is raped and left for dead. Through clever maneuvering on the girl's part it turns out the atrocity took place literally in the woods behind her house. Because the car they had stolen is wrecked the gang go to the first house they come to for help. Not knowing it is the parents of the girl they raped and think is dead. She makes her way back, the parents figure out what has happened, but are basically trapped in this remote summer home with these psychopaths who have hurt their daughter and killed her friend. So they take action. Somewhat in revenge but just as much in defense.

At the end of the day the movie is surprisingly compelling and well made. The trailers that everyone say made the movie look much more cheesy than it actually is. everything is played super straight, with no bullshit humor or over the top theatrics. There is some terrific acting from Tony Goldwin (remember him from GHOST?) and Monica Potter as the parents. The gang isn't bad either though I think Garret Dillahunt was Krug was cast more for his hunk good looks and chiseled chest than anything else. He's fine in the film, but I always felt like he was acting like a badass instead of was a true horrible badass. The girls fare a bit worse, Sarah Paxton is the focus of the film as Mari Collenwood and she basically is a blank slate to me. Martha MacIsaac is most recognisable from her role in SUPERBAD plays the best friend Paige and is much more spunky and identifiable as a character, but is so woefully underwritten that she barely registers at all too. In fact both girls characters are underwritten to the degree that when the bad stuff starts happening I felt less tension than I should have for them. I do however give props to the producers for hiring young actresses that look like actual people and not some cattle call for some WB drama. On that front I liked both girls. They just needed a bit more meat to chew on before their ordeal started. Riki Lindhome as Sadie is basically the sex appeal of the movie as she several times shows her boobs, but she has a unique look to her face that is rather odd and appealing. Once again her character is not really very defined (one minute she is into the rape and killing, the next she seems not to be, but not much is ever said or done with it) which is unfortunate. Though her topless fight scene is appreciated.

What the movie has going for it is that it is a well oiled machine. It gets from point A to point B, to point C economically and swiftly. When it is time to get mean and dirty it doesn't pull too many punches. The pivotal rape scene that the movie should hinge on (more on that in a moment) is there and present and suitably ugly and repulsive. There were 3 walkouts in the theater tonight, making me wish I had went and saw this the weekend it came out in a theater packed with unsuspecting teenagers who thought the wretched FRIDAY THE 13TH remake was the height of terror. I would have righteously enjoyed watching crying teenagers crawl out of the theater because they couldn't handle what they were watching. I give this movie big props for not succumbing to the a post modern, goofy approach to the material. Only once in the final minutes of the movie does it go over the top in a way that most modern films like SAW or HOSTEL do and the scene is clearly something that was added to appease either a studio or test audience who demanded more gore and a more resolute finale. It clearly doesn't fit the tone of the rest of the film at all and in some ways deflates a lot of what has come before it.

So does the film work on its own "within the frame"? Yes actually it does. It is not a great horror film. The characters are a bit too thin, and in my eyes it isn't mean enough. It is meaner than most modern horror films even think about being. But...

*SPOILERS AHEAD*

It gets way too soft in the last third by having Mari and Justin both survive the events of the night. (Justin being the son of Krug the bad guy). the whole idea of bad things happening to good people is still there and accounted for, but the family ultimately will be okay after this. yes scarred by the incidents, but they survived it. They overcame. And by changing the focus of Mari dying to her living and the parents having to fight off the bad guys because they are more or less trapped in the house changes the film from a rape/revenge horror to a more of a survivalist horror or home invasion horror which is almost a different genre altogether. Which in turn renders the rape almost a mute point. Structurally in the way the movie is set up now there is no real point to the bad guys having raped Mari because the real reason the parents are fighting them is because they are wanting to make it through the night and get their daughter to safety. Revenge is secondary at best. If she had died and the parents sole purpose was to kill them then it becomes a revenge film with all the moral dilemmas that come with it. Which I get the feeling the filmmakers were trying very hard to avoid.

Now the real test. Does it hold up to the original film? Of course not. Though I do not consider the original film a perfect movie by a long shot. It is deeply flawed and has considerable problems. Many of which this remake gets right such as getting rid of the horrid comic relief which sinks the film on several occasions. This time they also get rid of any police characters, another extraneous detail that is simply not needed. They eliminate Krug's son being hooked on heroin. But the biggest elimination is most of the violence during the all important violation of the two girls. In the new film only one of the girl's is raped on only by Krug. The other girl is not raped or molested at all. There is no "piss your pants" moment. There is no carving of the name in the chest. No severed arm. No disembowelment or Sadie playing with the intestines. And most importantly no shots of the gang trying to wipe the blood off their hands of the incident or standing there dazed after the orgy of violence. We DO get Sadie looking kinda bewildered and then it starts to rain and maybe tears streak her eye make up, or maybe it is the rain. That is as close as we get to moral uncertainty for the characters. But there is not an orgy or horror comparable to the original. I'm not saying what is there isn't horrific. It was enough to drive people out of the theater. But comparatively speaking it is weak tea to what we got almost forty years ago.

But with that also comes the fact that this new version really isn't saying anything either. It is arguable that the original is or isn't this big message film about the death and destruction of life in Vietnam (which Craven and Cunningham claim it is). I've never bought that line of thinking. But it is clearly trying to say something on violence, the sudden nature of violence, and how it changes us. How we as humans react to the taking of a life of someone we care about and is it justifiable to react violently to that initiative? I've always found the final scenes of the original LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT to ring false when the cops come in and the parents are suddenly reminded of how vile they have become due to their revenge. Which is why I have always preferred I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE as a revenge film since it doesn't go all soft in the final reel. But I think both films discuss those impulses very well. I think this remake goes well out of its way to sidestep the issue altogether and stack the deck so it doesn't have to deal with it. Which is unfortunate to say the least.

So at the end of the day, it is a decent and entertaining, mean little film. With surprisingly good performances. I can recommend it if you can watch it with the original cleared from your head. which I know is very hard to do.



Andy Copp

What will you see if you transcend?

MARTYRS (2008)
D. PASCAL LAUGIER
Wild Bunch (Production Company)
1.85

Genre tongue waggers are calling this one this year's answer to INSIDE because it is French, gory as hell, and uncompromising. While I liked INSIDE to a certain degree I also think this movie is far better written than that one with a good deal more on its mind. A lot of genre critics are accusing this current wave of French horror directors of a game of gruesome one up man ship as it seems each film from the land of golden fries takes the gore and brutality up a couple of notches than the one before it. But to say that ignores that each film has had their own distinct feel and approach to the genre. All of them may be gory and aggressive, with a lot of bad attitude, but they each have different things going on as well. With that said this one may be the richest in depth and story of the group I have seen (INSIDE, FRONTIER(S) and now MARTYRS, I still need to see MALEFIQUE).

The film opens suddenly with a young just barely preteen girl running out of a building. She is in her underwear, filthy, bloody, her head shaved almost down to the scalp. She is bruised and clearly hurt and has been held captive. We can hear a commotion inside the building she is running out of, but she hits the sidewalk running for her life. During the opening credits we learn what has happened to her as we get a super 8 police file footage of the crime scene investigation. She was being held captive in a small room, chained to a wall with enough length to slightly move around. She had one chair to sit in, that had a hole cut in the center so she could use the bathroom in the bucket below it. She was not sexually abused in anyway, but was clearly beaten repeatedly, and malnourished over the extended time she was held captive. Otherwise the girl is not talking. We also see file footage of her in the mental asylum she has been taken to, where doctors and other children cannot get through to her. They eventually get out of her that her name is Lucie and she makes friends with another girl there named Anna and they bond. After the credits Anna is being asked by the hospital staff and police to help them get through to Lucie to find out if she can help them find who was holding her captive. Anna says Lucie doesn't know, that she never really saw them. Later than evening Anna finds Lucie in their room with deep slashes on her arms, and she begs Anna not to tell anyone. She claims she did not do it to herself. That night we see a very twisted, old, naked, female shape crawling around the floor of the girl's room and hovering over Lucie's bed and Lucie clearly sees it too. Cut to black.

Then we meet a nice suburban family, two teenagers, a boy and girl, fighting over a love note. Dad trying to get them to settle down while he gets ready for the day and Mom working in the garden digging a dead mouse out of a pipe. The family basically gangs up on the boy because he is failing out of school and wants to move in with his girlfriend, who no one really likes. Apparently she wants to come by later and the family isn't too hip to that idea either. It is clear this family is going to play into the movie ahead in an integral way.

To go any further with a plot description will only go into spoiler territory that should NOT be discussed when seeing this film. I went in blind and was knocked senseless and so should you. Suffice to say that it does NOT go anywhere you are expecting it to. One plot element does play out in a way you sort of expect it to, but then that almost leads you to think the rest of the film will play out a certain way, and then it just steadfastly refuses to play by the rules from that point on. In fact this is a movie that just throws the rules right out the window and makes them up anew as it goes. This is sure to piss people off and annoy the shit out of some viewers. Other viewers my become bored at some points of the film as it certainly tries your patience at times. But the film is rich with rewards for those who stick with it. There is psychological and theological meat to chew on for quite some time after the film has ended if you choose to look at it closely enough. But to discuss any of this I have to talk about some spoilers. So if you have not seen the films. QUIT READING NOW. Come back after you have seen it.


The first half of the film is relatively straight forward revenge fueled splatter with Lucie all grown up killing the people who tortured her as a kid. But Lucie herself is being tortured mentally by the woman she didn't have the heart to save when she escaped. So in fact Lucie has continued to the torture started by the cult well after she escaped from them. They instilled the psychological steps, but she continued it all these years later. The question being, if she had not escaped, would she have died or became a martyr? Anna on the other hand once she experiences her friend (that she clearly loves) dying, she symbolically starts the process of saving not only Lucie but the old woman Lucie could never save. When she discovers the woman in the basement/laboratory she doesn't hesitate to free her, care for her, take off her shackles and face mask. She does everything to free this woman from her bondage. Something she never really could do for her friend. Nor that her friend could ever do originally either. And unfortunately not for this woman ultimately.

Once the cult arrive in the movie it takes a sharp right turn. Pacing wise this is very, very jarring as the first half had been very fast, incredibly violent and visceral. Now suddenly we are thrust into this philosophically based interpersonal torture and debasement session that is repetitious to the extreme. The friends I watched it with were evenly split down the middle. Half saying it was horrifying and effective as showing how the psychological torture and breaking down of the psyche worked, the other half being bored at the repetition and not empathizing with Anna's plight. I think most American audiences are going to go with the latter half of my friends who tuned out as it is at first grueling but most audiences are going to miss the point of the repetition, or just not care. thus throwing themselves out for the rest of the movie, which is near brilliance.

The last third is even more brutal as Anna is skinned alive and left to hang. But she finally hits the point of transcendence where she crosses over into life after death without dying. (clearly modeled after the photo they show in the film from the book TEARS OF EROS) She becomes a Martyr and manages to come back and tell the old lady who runs the cult what she saw. We the viewer don't know what she said though. Once the cult is gathered to hear what was said, the old lady sequesters herself away and shoots herself before telling anyone.

In the annals of pure nihilism, that ending has got to be close to the top. We've experienced true horror for this lead character. Horror that is not fake, not in her mind, not supernatural. Things that are actually occurring with the whole point being that she will hit a point of transcending the pain and suffering and basically see god, or something on the other side. But the down side to that is that since she is not dead, she comes back. She is stuck in the state of horror and disrepair these people have put her in to get her to that point. She seems to not be suffering after her Martyrdom, but who is to say that will last? The ultimate irony is that it really was for naught as the leader of the cult became selfish and capped herself once she had the knowledge of what awaited her. This girl's suffering was meaningless and just a tool. Every one's suffering was meaningless and just a tool to her own salvation.

Now apply that to just about any religion that has martyrdom as part of their doctrine...

Not an easy film to embrace. Not an easy film to watch or even like at times. But the more I think about it, the more brilliant it becomes.

Naturally Hollywood is remaking it. I simply cannot see how they can do this. Even if I was okay with the idea, and I am NOT, I cannot see how the story can be pared down, sanitized, and made user friendly for US audiences. But then again FUNNY GAMES was remade pretty much frame for frame, so I guess anything is possible.



Andy Copp

Fascism and Fancy Pants

PEARLS BEFORE SWINE (1999)
D. Richard Wolstencroft
1.85


This ambitious 35mm feature from Australian underground filmmaker Wolstencroft is almost like a love letter to the work of Noise music artist Boyd Rice who also happens to star in the lead role. Rice's philosophies on fascism, racial aesthetics, cultural S+M and many other things are quite present throughout the narrative. This is a unpleasant and challenging movie, that in many ways is a breath of fresh air, even if it is trying to offend you.

Boyd Rice plays Daniel, a hitman who takes hi work very seriously. Irregardless if he is snuffing out political targets, or simply homeless people who are clogging up the Melbourne streets. Him and his two assistant buddies get a kick out of the existentialism of their work. Daniel has a live in girlfriend named Christy (the busty Lisa Hutchinson) who doubles as a dominatrix who has become bored with her work because she cannot take the clients to the ultimate edge that would be killing them. Daniel spends a lot of his free time watching documentaries about Hitler and the third Reich, ruminating about the Fetishism of the Nazi's and how the Fascism involved was something that should have been appreciated more for the sheer misanthropy and movement of will it took to achieve. He also spends much time philosophising about the S+M culture and societies need to be dominated and controlled. When he is not killing clients, he is having group sex with another couple, or debating the merits of violent movies with them. He finally gets another gig to kill an author named Morton Buggs whose erotic fiction us stirring up extreme fanaticism in the underground. Seems that is is more than just pornography but an extremely politicised tract that is causing quite a little rebellion in the way people think. As Daniel researches Buggs he starts to realize there are more questions out there than things he has clinged too, leading to a climax that is actually pretty clever.

The movie is awash in late nineties underground culture references, starting with the casting and philosophies of Boyd Rice who also does the impressive noise music score. But we also get references to Jim Goad's "Answer Me" zine as Rice wears a T-shirt that simply says "rape" on it, referencing the infamous Issue #4 of Answer Me aka The Rape issue that was banned. In case you don't get the reference Rice picks it up in a bookstore and comments on it. Morton Buggs book is called "Pure" a reference to Peter Sotos banned Zine of the same name that got him watched by the police and eventually arrested. With Bugg's somewhat modeled after Sotos it seems. The film itself fits securely within the "aesthetic terrorism" movement of the 1990's that spawned artists such as Marilyn Manson, Trevor Brown and many others.

The movie is a low budget affair with obvious limited resources. There is not a lot of camera movement making for a unfortunately static movie. The acting is also fairly dire in most cases. The only person rising to the occasion being Boyd Rice, while never being what you would call good, he is always compelling more because he is playing himself on screen. The director has a cameo as an investor in a bar that gets beat down and eventually killed. Lisa Hutchinson who plays the girlfriend is a great looking gal with a powerful set of 'lungs' but when ever she opens her mouth her acting nosedives several point. But she looks great in S+M fetish gear and that is probably why she was hired.

The movie is fairly hard to come by. It was released in a two disc set overseas at one point with the director's over feature films BLOODLUST but I believe that is long out of print now. Scour the used DVD places or grey market to try and find it.