Those filthy people in Serbia!!!

LIFE AND DEATH OF A PORNO GANG (2010)

D. MLADEN DJORDJEVIC
SYNAPSE FILMS
DV

LIFE AND DEATH OF A PORNO GANG is undoubtedly going to be one of those films that gets knocked around as a challenge for viewers. A movie so extreme that it practically is spitting in your face to watch it. Or so the hyperbole will go, invariably comparing it to the “other” Serbian made horror/porno/snuff movie that made everyone loose their lunches. But the big difference here is that PORNO GANG is actually a very thoughtful, albeit downbeat, film that trades on a lot of interesting characters. It is violent and gory, and extremely sexually explicit, but it is the fact that the movie bearing those traits is so damn well done that makes it memorable. 

The movie opens with film student Mark (Mihajlo Jovanovic) realizing that he is not exactly going to have his dream of making thoughtful art films, or horror movies with political overtones. He quickly is sucked into the world of porno and before he knows it a year has passed, he is now jaded beyond belief and owes money to the mafia. He blew their money trying to make a politically charged horror/porno hybrid. To get out of town he bands together a group of misfits to make a traveling porno carnival and heads into the mountains and back roads of Serbia. A few shows go ok, but they are not making money. Soon he is approached by a secretive old man who wants the gang to start shooting snuff movies. Only with people who want to die and have some money to give. The gang is reluctant at first but after a nasty gang rape, they find themselves motivated enough to kill. 

PORNO GANG takes a long hard look at how things like lack of opportunity, war, and poverty can mold one’s vision of life. The particular detail that makes the movie work is that the people they are killing are willing to go. Making the gang executioners, Dr. Kevorkians in outrageous outfits. The film is careful to outline these scenes to make both the “victims” and the “killers” sympathetic. For example there is a scene where a Soldier is brought out for them to kill and he confesses his horrific war crimes on camera. The horrors of war are what specially drove this man to end up here. But interestingly enough after they kill him they end up on a slippery slope themselves ultimately succumbing to the same depressive evil. The movie makes a strong connection between being a Soldier who carries out war crimes to the band of outcasts carrying out snuff murders. Both degrade your humanity and shatter your soul.

There is another interesting scene where they are asked to kill an old farmer. When they arrive he tells his story so we find out his grand daughter has radiation poisoning, as does his livestock from the  bombings. He wants to die on camera to get enough money to save his family. Once again war and politics have driven the characters to the ultimate degradation.

PORNO GANG treats the violence and loss of life with a straight face. The most memorable scenes are the quietest, such as after the young, cute, chubby girl has killed the soldier she disappears. They find her standing alone in the forest in the rain just trying to rid herself of what she has done. The act of killing has weight in this film. 

So LIFE AND DEATH OF A PORNO GANG is always interesting, shocking and deeply heartfelt. Approach with caution, but for those who can stomach it, this is a fine film.

The Blu-Ray release that I reviewed here comes with a goofy behind the scenes featurette, some largely unneeded deleted scenes, trailer and the most interesting a feature length documentary on the Serbian Porno world called MADE IN SERBIA. This documentary is structurally somewhat similar to PORNO GANG as it follows a filmmaker who once dated a porno star as he travels through the underbelly of the Serbian Porno world half-assedly looking for her. That is the bare thread of plot that movie has laid on it, what it really does is interview all kinds of people from that world from shop owners to film producers, all of whom think Serbian Porno is crap. 

Interesting side not for me personally: On this blog is a review for what I called THE WORST PORNO EVER MADE. I had no idea what it was when I watched it, or where it came from (you can read the review HERE) and had thankfully forgotten it. Well low and behold during MADE IN SERBIA we meet a porn director and his wife who stars in his films. And sure as shit as we go behind the scenes of one of the shoots I don’t recognize her and the outdoor location they are shooting in! Turns out that terrible porno I saw a couple years back was a classic piece of Serbian erotica! Yikes!

MADE IN SERBIA is overlong at 101 minutes but it is still pretty fascinating stuff. Getting to look at how smut is looked at and made in such a remote place is interesting, though at the end of the day everyone’s reasons for doing it all end up being the same.

The DVD version does NOT have MADE IN SERBIA on it as an extra. 

Review © Andrew Copp

The Life and Death of a Porno Gang - Red Band... by ohmygore

ZOOM UP! More Japanese Roman Porno coming your way!

ZOOM UP: THE BEAVER BOOK GIRL (1981)
D. Takashi Kanno
Impulse Pictures. Synapse Films

2:35-1 / 16X9 Anamorphic

This is the fourth release from Impulse Pictures/ Synapse Films Nikkatsu Roman Porno Collection series, celebrating the 100 year anniversary of the Japanese studio. Without question this is my favorite of the releases so far. This is officially the 3^rd film in the loosely connected “ZOOM UP” series, the first being ZOOM UP: RAPE SITE in 1979 and the second ZOOM UP: RAPE APARTMENT in 1980 both by different directors and boasting different plot lines. So it makes no difference that you are jumping into the series after a couple of other entries. If the other two are as interesting as this one, I hope Impulse/Synapse has them on the future schedule.

ZOOM UP: THE BEAVER BOOK GIRL deals with a photographer for a slick skin magazine who specializes in those ever popular panty shots and upskirt voyeur pics. His newest specialty is piss pics, which seem to be the only thing that even remotely turn him on. When he comes home to find his assistant and newest model fucking wildly in the living room he goes about cooking dinner like nothing is going on. When she hungrily begs him to join, he violent pushes them both out of the way and finishes his cooking. He is clearly a man with some sexual hang ups. We get a peek at what that might be when his boss (who continually hits on him, grabbing his dick every chance he gets) mentions to a new model that his “true artistry” lies in his past as a rapist(!) but it was okay because all the girls instantly fell in love with him. 

Meanwhile a slightly older woman, maybe in her thirties, has been stalking the three leads as they go about their day of making pornographic pictures. She finally makes her way into their loft and gets in on the action in a sequence that will send piss fetishists into a blissful fugue state. We later learn from the skin magazine editor that this lady is named  Nami ( Nami is a common name used in a lot of Manga and sexually explicit films in Japan) and she was the most popular skin game model until year before when she dropped out mysteriously, taking five million yen with her she robbed from him. But he tells the photographer that if she shows back up to get her to pose again and then give him a call so he can get his money back.

Naturally she does show back up, but she is so game to do things that the other models won't do, the he does not call his boss. Instead she convinces him to go to a another remote location for a more private shoot. But we just know things are going to get weird, and they do indeed. As it turns out they have much more of a past together than he even could possibly remember. 

Much more intricately plotted than the other three Nikkatsu film released so far, this one goes from being a voyeuristic skin flick, to a weird study on fetishism, to a rape/revenge film all in the same couple of reels. It even throws in a really raw and bizarre love story at some point. Mix into that some of the most potent, edgy and down right dirty sex in the Nikkatsu films up to this point and you get a winner of a film. Of course, if off the beaten path sex is a turn off to you, you might want to consider giving this film, and the others as well, a really wide birth. But if you have some adventure in your soul, and things like S+M, or particular fetishists really catch your attention, this may be a something for you to take a look at. Just like the other films, it is really well made, has a peculiar point of view, and ends up being weirdly haunting before it is all over. 

The disc includes the short, but catch-line filled trailer, and nicely done liner notes by author and historian Jasper Sharp. Watch for his book THE HISTORICAL DICTIONARY OF JAPANESE CINEMA from Scarecrow press.

Review © Andy Copp

A Pound of Flesh for some boobs please!!!

A POUND OF FLESH (20121)
D. Tamar Simon Hoffs
Liquid Films
1.66

This flaming piece of trash is one of the most painful films I have had to sit through in many a moons. I generally do not give totally trashing reviews of flicks, preferring to concentrate on stuff I can lead people to that they may enjoy. But I got sent this one to review and thus have a duty to follow through with it.

POUND OF FLESH is about an older college professor at an upscale ivy league school played by Malcolm McDowell (who also produced this thing) who begins to pimp his lovely but bitchy female students to the lonely male staff. Problem being that those other teachers turn out to be some mean spirited bastards whose sexual problems who abuse and kill the girls leaving him to out to dry when the very cliché ridden cops come a calling. 

 I'm pretty sure these ho's aren't in the movie. But according to the website they are.

The film opens with a particularly graphic scene of an older man, a busty young girl and a shotgun that tricks you into thinking you may be getting a sleazy little potboiler. Then the real movie begins and you realize you are getting a lazily shot, poorly acted, vanity production that has very little going for it except they could afford a name actor. The script is just a collection of clichés roped together into dialogue and boring scenes, Until finally it climaxes in a scene that feels like it is snatched out of any cop on the run flick.

But what makes it suck especially bad is the continuing voice over from McDowell that is incessant and tries to band each nonsensical scene together. Instead it just makes you want to puncture your ear drums. The voice over just reminds you that not much of anything is happening, and what little that IS happening is flat out horrible.

Easily the worst thing I have seen this year so far.

Review © Andrew Copp

Whores I tell ya!

ALL WOMEN ARE WHORES (1980)
aka. Dan Oniroku hakui nawa jigoku / White Uniform in Rope Hell

D. Shôgorô Nishimura

Torrent Sites

No Subtitles

ALL WOMEN ARE WHORES aka WHITE UNIFORM IN ROPE HELL is widely considered to be among the most offensive of the Pinku Ega films that flooded the market in Japan during the late 70's/ early 80's period. That is saying something considering the wildly offensive nature of the Nikkatsu output and films like BEAUTIFUL GIRL HUNTER STAR OF DAVID or ASSAULT! JACK THE RIPPER. But make no mistake this one is actually just as nasty as rumors have claimed. A sadistic rape fetish film that spirals into an all out horror orgy in the last reel that leaves one scratching their head about just what audience it was intended for in the first place. 

 

To be fair I watched it without subtitles so maybe I missed some overriding sense of justice or political polemic, but I kind of doubt it. This seemed to be all about the forced enema's, rope bondage, rape and what new and disgusting items could be forced into some screaming bound woman's vagina. 

 

The movie opens with two thugs in their twenties watching a pretty young lounge singer belting out a tune. They con her back to their filthy, disgusting rotting food covered apartment, where they tie her up, drug her with a huge fix of heroin and proceed to do unspeakable things to her for the first half of the film. These things include painful looking rope bondage, rape and forced enemas. This all goes on for a ridiculously extended period of time until they are found by some other members of the mob including a woman who is more sadistic than them. The movie then shifts gears to a second story with another lounge singer who this woman apparently has a huge hate-on for and the thugs help her kidnap and torture. But things start going wrong as the older and goofier of the two guys falls for the gal. Which sends the lady boss into a rage, making the torture of the first girl look like a walk in the park.

 Soon she is doing things like slicking up a real live snake with vaseline and shoving it into the poor girls vagina. Before things are over you will see a guy get his cock cut off while fucking someone and a girl get stabbed in the crotch and then then lovelorn idiot who was trying to protect her proceed to EAT HER OUT to show he still loves her. Some movies end in tears, this one ends in blood and more blood. 

 

To call this one crazy is to sell it short. To call it depressing it understating the matter. But in no way does the the English title make sense, as it should be called ALL MEN ARE RAPIST KILLER FREAKZOIDS, but I don't think that sells as well in the land of the rising sun.

Review © Andrew Copp

Introducing the EXPLOITATION NATION WEB SERIES!!!

That's right, I have gone and done it! I have started an actual on camera series! For those of you who do not know I did this for almost 8 years on public access in a very similar format with a show called NEON MADNESS, so this is not new to me. I have been wanting to revive it for a long time, and finally got off my butt. This is the test pilot, so to speak, and a lot may change, or may not. Who knows. But take a look...

I review SYNAPSE'S FRAT HOUSE MASSACRE and SOUTH OF HEAVEN, check out what is happening on the NETFLIX STREAMING with the 80's British anthology SCREAMTIME, take a nostalgic look back at MY BOOTLEG LIFE with a take called VIDEO SCREAMS, and finally sit in the VHS corner with that lovely piece of shit ZOMBIE GANG-BANGERS. So set aside 45 minutes and take a look!

© Andrew Copp

Halloween Horror Challenge Oct 6th Pt 2: ZOMBIE GANG BANGERS (1997)

ZOMBIE GANG BANGERS (1997)

D. Walter Webster
Salt City Ent aka Sub Rosa

S.O.V.

I think I am going to try something a little different this time and actually blog this movie AS I watch it.

Music by The Devout Sound System!!! For a solid ten minutes into the movie we get no dialogue and dancing, dancing, dancing! Looks like they snuck into a really lame club and were going to make damn sure they got the most use out of the footage as possible. On the positive side there is a fairly hot stripper pole dancing during the entire scene too. Towards the end a zombie attack happens... I think. It is so damn dark it is really hard to tell.

Later a teen kid comes home to tell his drunk ass abusive dad he was attacked by “mean ass zombies” only to get beat for his trouble. A drunk brings home a hooker to meet his infantile adult baby brother, and another couple breaks up because he catches his women on the phone with some dude, All lite with horrible harsh red light that makes the video bleed and bleed and bleed to the point that it threatens to blow your video screen right open.

Baby Huey and his old man just killed that hooker and now grumpy old man is humping her. So far there is no plot. Just disconnected random scenes. Stephanie Beaton has sat at the bar for at least the first twenty five minutes of the movie. Is this going to be her entire role? Why are there Zombies running around? They just attacked her. They have ate everyone else but they are trying to rape her? Guess this is why it is called ZOMBIE GANG BANGERS huh?

The songs sound like DIE KRUPPS. 

Oh Nice. She is talking to the cops talking about how she tried to fight off her attackers and just whipped out her tits to prove how much they hurt her. To show off her bruises! This movie is CLASSY!!! Now they just made a crack about how the economy is shot to shit because the president is a Democrat! And the cop just threatened to rape her himself and he just slapped her to put her in her place! Wow! Annnnnnd Now the cop is raping her too... All because she is a “whore” as it has been explained...

This would be offensive if it wasn't such a bottom of the barrel below public access level piece of shit.
I think a fifteen year old with sever problems with women wrote it though.

“You don't know what it's like to be raped by zombies!!!”

“You're a whore Alice, and now you are letting these slobs beat you and rape you. You need a good therapist!”

Professional dialogue. David Mammett would be proud.

Wait Kitten Natividad is now stripping. She's not young, but she's still got it. (obviously before her unfortunate bout with cancer. Still glad she beat that and is still with us though).

Holy shit, is that THOR hitting on Stephanie Beaton? Nope it isn't but it kind of looks like him.
Oh no. The Rapist Zombies are back and raping her again. And the fat Baby Heuy guy is one of them. And a Japanese Tourist is taking pictures too.

Seriously who makes a movie like this?

Hey the one Zombie has an afro...

It looks like the chunky adult baby one is fucking the hood of the car and not her actually.

Her friend Betty is a twat. Why does everyone keep telling her what a whore she is? Oh look a couple of dogs trying to hump in the street...

Hollywood is a fucked up place.

So now they have gone to the Hollywood mondo store to meet Dr. Mondo to have him make an “ass-kicking tough Zombie Ninja” to help them fight. She has gone through the litany of showing off her tits, ass and legs to convince him. Claiming that if her tits get any more bruised they will never be the same!

The Chroma levels on the tape are so bad right now do to shitty lighting that almost nothing can be seen through the pink and red blurring.

Oh shit. The ass kicking zombie is a rip off of Jim Carrey from The Mask by wearing a Jester outfit. Kill me now. Kill everyone now...

This has now turned into a complete and utter rip off of THE MASK but without the then ground breaking digital effects. For the last ten minutes we have has a cut rate Jim Carrey impersonator doing an ultra shitty impression of that character. This was more painful than anything else in the movie so far.

Now, more zombie rape.

Oh, no. It is ALL IN HER HEAD. She is in a mental hospital and she has been getting shock therapy the whole time!!! But the Doctor is a psycho too! Cue shock ending!!!

But wait the end credits list DIFFERENT a different director! Someone named Jeffrey Scott... What the fuck?

I bet SUBWAY is thrilled to be listed as catering on this movie!

Stephanie Beaton was kind of a hot property at the time this was made with those WITCHCRAFT movies and what not, why oh why make a humiliating piece of shit like this? The world may never know...

Review © Andy Copp

Seriously, The worst porn movie ever made...

THE WITCHES TAIL (199?)
D. By some Italian dudes who have no business making smut
Goulash Entertainment(!)
S.O.V.

The 90's were seriously the WORST decade for porn ever. The 70's were the tops with the porno chic, were people attempted real movies, had actual stars etc. The 80's got hit hard with The Meese Commission on pornography, and the intervention of the video market where porno basically stopped being "filmmaking" and started becoming a mass marketed commodity for people to peruse in their homes. Whatever story values, star system, etc the genre had was fast eroding by the 90's Add to that the addition of craptastic affordable videotape technology that everyone and their brother could get their hands on and the porn market went south in a hurry. Not that it was always great looking people doing wondrous things, but in the 90's even that became few and far between.

So when THE WITCHES TAIL got put in my hand my first reaction was, "oh boy, a porno from the 90's, this isn't gonna be good". My girlfriend's best friend's boyfriend had this laying around from a past relationship or some such confusing story or another (or something that sounds as good, that's my story and I'm sticking to it) so she passed if over to us. The cover had the typical 90's poofed hair broads in a lush green pasture, with a chick in a dime store Halloween Witch mask just like my friend would use in his backyard horror movies. The box promised an "all anal adventure" with lots of mysticism and sensuality. Somehow we knew better...

We got a kick out of the old 900 numbers with breathless narration about sucking cock and how they love to swallow cum, cut to video of girls who look like they not exactly enjoying said acts. But when the movie actually started we were shocked to discover that the flick was not in English. At all. This was an all Italian shot on video production that the American releasing company, one Goulash video, didn't bother to dub or subtitle! Now I would have been pissed if I had bought this as a consumer only to get it home to discover I had been duped into buying a movie with no English. The box was in English, the commercials before hand and the warnings were in English. Also the actual dub quality dropped a few generations as well with a huge tape crease through the picture. NOT on the actual tape, but apparently on the master tape, as it didn't appear on the 900 numbers commercials or Surgeon generals warnings, only when the actual movie started! This was bottom of the barrel stuff. At least the movie wasn't recorded in EP.

The movie starts with a huge boobed milkmaid making bread in a field (?) when a VERY middle aged man comes by on a horse. He dismounts the stead and starts mounting her nasty self. She had nice boobs but the rest of her was, well calling her skanky would be a compliment. She had one of my big porno pet peeves of several long painted fingernails and a bunch of broken/missing ones. I find this revolting to the point of wanting to puke, and simply do not understand it. You are going to act in a movie that requires you to look good. How freaking hard it is to go get that taken care of? And what porn movie director sucks so much he would allow his lead actress to look that nasty? Well a lot actually... But the dude is no better with his balding plate with a circumference of unwashed greasy hair and pony tail. It was fear of ending up with this exact hair style when I started losing my hair that made me start cutting all mine off. It is retarded looking and I seriously doubt any women (or gay dudes for that matter) find it hot, anywhere in the world. So they schtupp, it's unappealing and when you think it can't get worse her MOTHER comes out and joins them! Her boobs are alright too, but by god the rest of her is a horrific sight to see.

We were trying to be good and actually watch this sexual train wreck, but the fast forward got hit at this point. I could no longer deal with this undulating madness on screen. I stopped when a younger Blondie was bathing in a barrel in a yard somewhere. She whips out a full ear of corn and begins to rub her body with it. My girlfriend says "please god don't let her masturbate with the corn on the cob!" To which the woman on screen clearly is about to do. Then...CUT! There is an edit and the corn is gone and a super skinny girl, who looks like she just got done puking several weeks worth of lunches joins the lass in the barrel and they begin the most forced, unconvincing lesbian scene in cinema history. I'm pretty sure a mouth never touches a vagina. Then they head off into the old sandstone house to meet another sweaty guy who tries to hump and pump them both. I stress try because when ever it is his turn to climb onto the walking skeleton he instantly loses wood. Can't say I blame him, Wood was the furthest thing from my mind watching this travesty.

The fast forward came into play some more until we got to a couple of plump guys double teaming another gal on a dirt road at dusk. She had appeared to them as the Witch of the title but whipped off the mask to reveal the closest thing to an attractive woman in the film. She still had a belly of a woman who has had five kids and never recovered, but at this point one was grateful for small favors. Finally there was the promised anal adventure, as one of them plowed into her rectal highway. Both of the pudgemeisters cum and the movie is mercifully over.

We ended up having to dive into the ultra grimy world of the 70's storefront/grindhouse roughies just to cleanse our palettes after this mess. So lesson learned unless it is from Michael Ninn or Andrew Blake, porn from the 90's is to be avoided at all costs!!!