How would you reshape your body?

MODIFY (2005)

d. Jason Gary, Greg Jacobson
Comitted Films
Full Frame

Modify seeks to explore the lives of those who modify their bodies, from the simple to the extreme. But what it really does is bring the mondo film into the 21^st century. With the various montages extreme plastic surgery, slicing flesh, insane piercings, suspensions and implants of every sort, this is a gore show of the highest order masquerading as a serious look at a lifestyle documentary. 

The movie starts off with a small thesis that modification can be anything from tattoos, to extreme implants and piercings to body building and plastic surgery. We then spend some really unpleasant time with some surgeons who seem like nice people, but their comments are made moot because theyare played over a long montage of outrageously gory surgery footage. Scenes of breast implants, eyelids being cut off, liposuction, labia being construction, huge stomachs being removed and just flesh being cut, torn, sucked and rendered endlessly.

 "Here Kitty Kitty. It's time for my next procedure..."

The next big section deals with extreme piercing and body suspension. A theme that seemed to have really took hold in the era this documentary was made around 2005. I remember seeing the troop covered in this movie first on the extras of the movie HELLRAISER in 1999, but from then until this doc it seemed to exploded. With hundreds of suspension performers the lifestyle seems to have a permanent foothold these days. Though certainly not to the extent the gentleman in the movie claim where he says there are hundreds of thousands of people in American doing it. 

We meet a young man who has started modifying using his artistic vision as a sculptor and his biology background by doing implant work using Teflon and silicone. He also shows off his surgical tools he has sculpted himself. Seems that he is a real life version of a character from a Cronenberg movie.

Once the movie moves into the mid-section of the discussion of modification mutilation a lot of the interviews take a nosedive with man of the participants dropping in I.Q level. Up to the point 95% OF the interviewees have been very intelligent folks. But suddenly we get some people who claim to work the sideshows who say things like “I am a cynical nihilist, but I really don’t know what that means. I heard Flea explain it once though”. The opinions on what equals mutilation against modification seems to vary wildly from each person, but all of them seem to agree the line is drawn where people can’t really decide for themselves of it the modification will impair the lives of the person in some way.

"They may have not fully understood what she meant by a lace up the back dress"

We spend another uncomfortable amount of time with a fully tattooed dude as he pushes beads into the flesh of his cock in a bloody mess of a scene and then meet several other people who have sliced up their wieners into strange positions. Interestingly enough most of the modified people admit that their lifestyle is an addiction and openly discuss that thy feel that want it more and more. A doctor has a cockimamee explanation saying it is some defeating fear bullshit. But most of them seem to understand it is a endorphins rush combined with a need for something more extreme. A natural high. The extreme plastic surgery cases obviously have something bigger going on though. 

There is a short interview with groundbreaking modifying Fakir Moustafir who was the original person at the ground floor of the movement. He discusses a lot of the so called spiritual sides of things involved in this. He also goes into a rant about how if people are willing to modify themselves they are radical enough to take to the streets and effect change I the world and that is why society thinks they are dangerous. Which is why they try to legislate these sort of things. I think he is overstating things more than a little bit.

In the last third of the movie we get to see a tongue split into two halves, a cock split in two halves a a full sexual reassignment surgery all in the discussion of how modification is being legislated in weird ways. But this is more of the big time Mondo footage and some of it REALLY hard to get through. The tough split it especially hard to watch and actually doesn’t go a long way towards the discussion that the procedure shouldn’t be regulated. 

The discussion of religion comes down tot pretty much only Jim Ward of The Gauntlet only comes off not sounding like a prentious dufuss. Everyone else sounds like a typical artshool airhead with too lofty self-importance on the subject. Which is why it probably shouldn’t have even been asked in the first place.

Naturally it all ends with another music video montage of the best and the nastiest moments, with a song called “Unforgettable” playing. The sound bytes try to convince us that the bottom line is about having an open mind and not judge people. Which is all nice and good. But the bottom line is REALLY we just saw a major gore filled freakshow of modern day epic proportions that something like FOX wish they could get away with showing if the censors would allow all the bleeding sliced open breasts and split cocks on TV. 

Review © Andrew Copp

Rest in Peace in Babylon Dave Friedman

I haven’t done one of these eulogies in a while on this blog. There have been plenty of important people pass away, people I should have written about, but I didn’t feel qualified to write anything. Tura Satana passes recently but I couldn’t really put anything to say together to could do her legacy justice. I had the chance to meet the lady once, but actually didn’t get the nerve to do it. Which is probably for the best, I wouldn’t have known what to say anyway.

But today I woke up to find out that legendary exploitation kingpin David Friedman had passed away at the age of 87. This man’s impact on the film world, cannot be underestimated or undersold in anyway. I did however get the chance to meet Mr. Friedman on a couple of different occasions and he was as bold and jolly as he appeared in every piece of film you have ever seen him in.

Dave Friedman got his start working doing marketing for Paramount pictures in the 30’s. A job that taught him the importance of the salesmanship when working with movies. But he was not entirely happy working in the studio system so he teamed up with his friend from the Army and began to work in the Roadshow industry, along with Krogar Babb and Dan Sonney. Here he learned the all important art of the Ballyhoo. The putting on a show, dog and pony act of pulling up a tent and selling a picture to the people. He perfected this to a “T” and opened his own company in the fifties and began to produce “nudie cuties” often pushing the edges of obscenity laws all around the country. Before long he had created new genre’s of film with “Roughies” and along side H.G. Lewis the “gore” movies.

Before Friedman hung up his film cans in the 70’s he had produced literally hundreds of movies, mostly sexploitation. He steered away from the “open wound” style of pornography because it left nothing really to sell. For Dave the fun and the challenge was the the actually bringing of the crowd by thrilling them with what they MIGHT see. Porn left nothing to the imagination and therefor wasn’t a big part of the game. Though he stayed on as part of the Organization Of Adult FIlm Makers.

My first interaction with Dave Friedman came at the 1995 Chiller Theater Convention in New Jersey. It was the first convention I had ever went to and it was back in the day before every Tom, Dick and Harry with a warehouse threw conventions. It was a special treat to be in a room with so many of your heroes and fans all together in one space. It was a BIG DEAL still at that point. Dave was at the Something Weird booth selling his tapes and signing autographs. He was gregarious and open and took time to chat with everyone. He talked me into buying a tape of just his trailers by doing imitations of his sales pitches from his trailers. It didn’t take much as those pitches are legendary and seeing the man doing them right in front of me was truly a sight to behold. He signed my tape for free too. I DARE you to find a celebrity now that will do that. It is unheard of in the convention circuit now. Seemed to me he was just loving meeting people.

Later he was on a panel talking about classic exploitation and spent a lot of time talking about his work with H.G. Lewis. Finally I asked him why his name wasn’t on ILSA SHE WOLF OF THE SS. Something that at that point wasn’t a well known fact. I’m pretty sure that Chiller Theater was one of the first time he publicly talked about not having his name on the film.

Flash forward many years later to Cinema Wasteland 2009 and Dave is a guest there as well. He is much older, but you would never tell by his mind, as he is still on the ball with the stories and fan interaction. By some stroke of luck, well having good friends actually, I had ended up on the Grindhouse discussion panels several years in a row, and this year was no exception. So I ended up on the panel with Dave Friedman. As per usual I didn’t get to say a whole lot, but it was an honor to sit with such a luminary that day.

If you need to be reminded just how much of an impact Dave Friedman had on the film world I cannot recommend enough the films MAU MAU SEX SEX, SCHLOCK THE SECRET HISTORY OF AMERICAN MOVIES and SEX AND BUTTERED POPCORN all three of those will open your eyes to the real world of American roadshow, exploitation cinema and what an incredible character he was. And for god’s sake read his book YOUTH IN BABYLON about his years growing up in the carnival and Roadshow business. Truly an amazing read as well.

We are losing the greats too fast these days. Friedman was one of the last of the original wildmen.

© Andy Copp

Real action for the Men of the house!

Day 18 of the September Exploitation challenge rocks us down under:

STUNT ROCK (1977)

D. Brian Trenchard Smith

CODE RED

2.35

This is a man’s film. A movie that real men can appreciate because it is about STUNTS and ROCK MUSIC. The ladies might like it because of the rock music (the wommins love the rock music) but admit it, us guys love to see dudes putting their lives at risk. Australian director Brian Trenchard Smith has the brilliant idea to have the countries  greatest stuntman Grant Page accompany him on this cinematic journy into mayhem. 

The movie has no plot, just watch as Grant Page risks his life showing us how he makes his day to day living jumping off cliffs, smashing through car windows, shooting over canyons, getting set on fire etc. But wait! Grant’s nephew is in the American rock band SORCERY! What we now call Dragon Metal, Sorcery was a Zepplinesque L.A. rock outfit that went for the full on LORD OF THE RINGS stage show in which Merlin battles Satan with all kinds of pyrotechnics and an on stage onslaught of rock and roll savagery. So the film cuts back and forth between Grant doing his stunts, and Sorcery rocking the shit out of the world to great effect. 

"Action at 100 Decibels per hour!"

There is a VERY slight story about a reporter doing a story on Grant while he is on the job doing stunts for a local TV show. A minor subplot has that show’s lead actress becoming friends with them, going to the Sorcery rock shows and parties and eventually getting to do a couple of dangerous stunts herself. But the meat of the movie is Page and Sorcery doing their colorful thing.

"Who let the old guy on stage? No wait it is Merlin from the band SORCERY!"

One really horrifying stunt has Page diving down a rope at free fall, which in and off itself is a pretty harrowing stunt, but he takes it to the edge by doing it with a full burn.  He calmly explains to us how the forty second delay he has worked out will keep the fire from burning throgh the ropes he is using keeping him from plummeting to the rock cliff below. But as you watch it in 400 frame per second slow motion it looks like he is going to burn alive and free fall to his death at any moment. Naturally he pulls it off without a hitch. But it is a sight to behold.

 "All in a day's work for Grant Page. Or was it the Taco Bell he ate?"

Trenchard-Smith chooses to capture all of this is true seventies style with tons of split screens and super slow motion. The stunts seem like the are still in time they are so slow, so you get to see every piece of glass or lick of the flame, and the split screens feel like you are getting every angle, though sometimes it is just the same camera angle just flipped over. But it all makes for some visually dynamic stuff.

"Even the dog is a manly rocker in STUNT ROCK!"

In a lot of ways this is MTV several years before the was MTV. Or think of it as LED ZEPPLIN’S THE SONG REMAINS THE SAME without the fantasy sequences and replaced with lots of bone crunching stunt work. 

"The babes of STUNT ROCK try out the Blue Man Group thing."

CODE RED’s DVD is extremely bad ass. A two disc set packed to the gills with interviews, commentarys, an older documentary Brian Trenchard Smith did called THE STUNT MEN, and tons of other CODE RED trailers. The 2.35 scope frame is the way the movie was always meant to be seen and after years of the badly cropped VHS this is a wonder to behold.

A note about CODE RED. Bill who runs that joint has announced publicly that in 2011 he plans to shut the doors. Thanks to a lot of internet bitching, and fan backlash, combined with really poor sales on amazing discs like this one, he is throwing in the towel. It is a complete fucking shame that a company that put their heart and soul into releasing great little gems is having to shut their doors and even worse because THE FANS didn’t support them. But when sales for a title are barely cracking 300 something is majorly wrong.  This disc is amazing, I’m glad I own it any self respecting cult movie fan should. 

Review © Andy Copp

Erik Estrada teaches us life lessons

Day sixteen of the September Exploitation Challenge saw my buddy Nick and I really taking the plunge with an Erik Estrada Double Feature! Hell Yeah!

CAGED FURY (1989)
D. Bill Milling
????
1.66

Now there are two movies with this title. One is from the early 80’s and was a shot in Manilla women in prison flick. This was made later and is also a WIP movie but is filled with B-movie actors, then current scream queens and low level porn stars and a skimming the surface level of scumminess that is satisfying, but never truly ugly.  Call it WIP light for the fans just discovering the sub-genre.

Roxxanne Michaels stars as Katie Collins a young and fairly stupid woman who wants to go to Los Angels to be an actress. Naturally against the wishes of her tight assed Father played by Michael Parks. But her world wise sister Tracy (Elenda Sahagen) convinces Pops to let her go. 



Now in the opening scene we have already seen a really nasty all girl prison in which the women are all forced to live in their skimpy (and sexy) lingerie. We have seen one try to escape and she is hunted down and done in by big bad Paul Smith. So we just know that it is only a matter of time before these two worlds are going to collide. 

 "Seriously, when you are done taking out my trash I want you to help me get INTO prison!"

Katie meets up with a streetwise hoebag named Rhonda who in turn introduces her to her boyfriend who is an amateur photographer. He claims he has gotten the girls “auditions” with a big time movie producer. But as it turns out that big time producer is a low life nudie movie scum bag that makes those in the old H.G. Lewis movies look sedate. The girls try to do auditions where they are put through some mild seduction scenes, but balk at getting nekkid. They are roughed up a bit and the cops get called. But it is the girls who are hauled away, taken to court and then to prison for propositioning the old dudes! Doh! They are off to the prison in the beginning!


Oh yeah I forgot to mention that Katie also met a former cop played by, wait for it, Erik motherfuckin Estrada! And his muscle bound Hulk like side kick. These guys kick and entire bar’s ass when they try to dip some skin into Katie’s love pond. And when I say kick the bar’s ass, I mean every person, stick of furniture, wall, brick and bottle of booze in the place. Nothing is left standing when muscles boy is done. And naturally old Erik is the one who gets the bonus love for the hard work. 

 "Someone told me I could find eager babes with low self esteem in here for my new movies..."

So naturally these two guys aren’t happy that their new squeeze has disappeared. But at the prison they are clever. Yes sir. They force Katie to call home and tell pops that she is away in Mexico filming a blockbuster for the next two months. But no one believes that shit. Soon Traci has gotten herself thrown in the pokey too trying to find her sister. Before long they have been given prison requisition white  negligees and are taking looooong hot showers with the other inmates. Naturally the warden is a hot horny lesbian (played by super hot Ty Randolph and the character’s name is Sybil Thorne if that tells you a thing or two about where the filmmakers are coming from) who prefers nice baths with the new inmates. Then there is the guard named Spyder played by porn actor Scott Cummins who loves nothing more than to torment the girls and take them to the “quiet room”. 



It all leads to Muscle guy literally tearing his way into the place while the girls are being auctioned off to the highest bidder and doing his thing. His thing being literally beating the holy shit out of every atom of physical matter on screen.  This includes Ron Jeremy in a cameo appearance. If you blink you might miss then super hot porno babe Janine Lindamoulder as a dancing bar babe too. 


This is pretty much typical late 80’s prime sleaze. It doesn’t make a lick of sense, and never tires too. It is filled to the overflowing point with nekkid babes, implanted boobs, incredible aerobacized butts and poofy 80’s teased hair. Almost every scene has a blue filter on all the lights. When ever things threaten to get really nasty in a sexually violent way, something happens to stop it, so none of the women are ever really abused. So while it is typical misogynist WIP stuff, it is never as nasty as say, some of the Italian import ones. Plus it has Erik Estrada in pink shirts trying to be a tough guy. That takes it up a notch right there.  

NIGHT OF THE WILDING (1990)
D. Joseph Merhi
Universal Home Video/ PM Entertainment
Full Screen


This was the second feature in our Erik Estrada Double feature on Saturday night. (Oh yeah we WENT THERE!) As produced and directed by Joseph Merhi and Richard Peppin I expected this to be a much more action packed and sleazy ride into street wise dementia. Turns out it was that duo's attempt at doing a “straight” courtroom thriller. But it still has a very sleazy, nasty, opening act, and a ridiculous finale. 


Based on the “Wilding” scare of 1989/90 where teens went crazy in New York and Sacramento going on violence and rape sprees just for the kicks and fun of it. This was one of the topical scare movies so popular on home video in that era. Erik Estrada plays a sleazebag lawyer who typically gets the worst of the worst criminals off on technicalities. When the movie opens he has just gotten a mob hit man off on a murder charge the whole world knows he actually committed.  That same night three rich kids try to kill a security guard at a local small town grocery store and follow the cashier home. She is having a small birthday party, so they easy convince her sister to let them in claiming to be friends from work. Once inside the beat up the sister’s boyfriend with ball bats, gang-rape the sister And eventually rape (off screen) the girl. The girl never hears any of the mayhem because she is in the shower. the whole scene is played for the ultimate in skeeziness as it should be nasty and shocking, but keeps cutting back to the teen girl in the shower soaping up her breasts, over and over, clearly trying to wedge in as much skin as possible. Knowing full well there will be no other opportunities for nudity in the rest of the flick. 

The boys are arrested inside the house and the rest of the movie is a court battle between Estrada and his former wife turned Sates attorney who is fighting against him. It is fairly standard stuff, except we get to see some dirty tricks Lawyers do like making the accused get community volunteer jobs to look like better people. Eventually the little dregs snap and decide they gotta start killing witnesses, and eventually each other, leading to a foot chase, out of no where, spectacular car crash, and twist ending. 

 "The hot Kathryn Lautner plays Estrada's long suffering ex wife."

Over all it is okay. The acting is never that bad, except for Joey Travolta who is over acting his way out of his sibling’s shadow. But once the nasty first act is over it settles into TV movie of the week stuff without much need to go beyond it. The Merhi/ Peppin combo usually went for loud, brash and hyper violent exploitation movies straight to the tape market, but this appears to have been their attempt to go legit. They were better off when they were being outlaws.

Review © Andy Copp

This is not a trailer for the movie NIGHT OF THE WILDING but another flick that came out around the same time with a similar plot that was also exploiting the whole WILDING craze. I'd LOVE to get my hands on this one!!!

A Camp For Girls you probably do not want to visit!

Day thirteen of the September Exploitation Challenge:

SS CAMP 5: WOMEN’S HELL (1977)
D. Sergio Garrone
Media Blasters/ Exploitation Digital
1.85

This late entry in the Nazisploitation sub-genre is fairly tame when compared to some of it’s brethren like THE BEAST IN HEAT or even the first ILSA film. In fact the first hour or so of SS CAMP 5: WOMEN’S HELL is actually kind of dull despite the fact it is chocked full of shower scenes and naked ladies. The pacing is just kind of lackluster and languid, never really bothering to grab a forward motion. All the elements are there, the Lesbian warden, the shower scenes, the Nazi experimentation. But the film just is too staid and lush to really have the nerve it needs to be truly aggressive.

"Apparently it was all dancing on the table and fun during WWII."

This in spite of the fact that it opens with a really tasteless succession of photos of real holocaust images with the credits super imposed. So the first images we see are piles of human bodies being pushed into pits or ovens reminding us this is a reality based thing. then next we meet a group of women played by actresses all way to healthy to actually be prisoners of war in an actual concentration camp. These gals are being hauled it to be trained to be prostitutes for the Third Reich including a feisty black gal who will become the hero of the story. We also meet a trio of scientists, including one Aryan soldier/doctor who will take a shine to the Black gal, one die hard German scientist and a Jew who is there as a prisoner with his beautiful Daughter (who looks a lot like Anna Paquin). The typical stuff happens. several girls plot an escape attempt that you just know is going to go wrong when they mention the escape route is through one of the ovens that has a crack on the other side. 

"This gal made for an impressive hero by the end of the movie. Even if she did do a seductive dance with a banana."

The Black gal seduces said Aryan Scientist with a Booga Booga Jungle dance with a banana tied to her nude waist and he is instantly in love (no I am not making this shit up!). They talk racial politics before and after they have sex, explaining how he feels his Aryan pride because he feels like he is owning her until he will have to kill her  on “Victory Day”! Eventually the really angry Soldier (who looks like a cross between Kojack and Vic Diaz from those Filipino movies) tortures a bunch of girls who he thinks helped mastermind the escape attempt. This scene is especially nasty and brutal and really turns the movie around from what was basically a slow going and silly sexploitation movie to a really crunchy, ugly exploitation flick. Heads are crushed, a gal is gutted with ninja claws, fingernails are pulled out and the last girl has her tongue pulled clean out of her head after being whipped! Suddenly we are in the land of no return as This dude starts tearing through the cast, raping/impregnating the Jewish daughter, and causing general mischief. 

"This guy is not going to make it very long for crossing this boundary! You can kill thousands

of Jews, and commit genocide, but perform Abortions and your days are numbered!"

Then suddenly the movie takes a shard right turn into Right To Life land as the daughter wants an abortion and her Daddy tries to talk her out of it with a speech about spreading the blood of the righteous to everyone in the world (that doesn’t sound all that different than the propaganda the Nazi’s were selling pops!). When he walks in on her getting an abortion he goes apeshit and tries to kill the doctor! Whoa, I think I know where he goes to church at!

 "Suddenly Max Hardcore takes over the directing of the movie."

It all boils to a head with a revolution and the Russians invading, and we get a bit of a history lesson AND a big gunfight too. 

 "I think this is actually a shot from my friend's basement..."

So all in all, though it starts off rocky, SS CAMP 5: WOMEN’S HELL gains it’s footing in the second half and is worth taking a look at for the fans of this low on the totem pole sub-genre. It is not the best of the bunch by any stretch, but one could do worse too. The disc from Media Blasters certainly looks nice, and has an fun interview and some other Nazisploitation trailers. 

Review © Andy Copp

Who okayed Rape on TV?

Day twelve of the September exploitation challenge takes me into the woods and on TV.  

REVENGE FOR A RAPE (1976)
D. Timothy Glafas
Made For TV
Full Frame


Probably not the most common storyline for a made for TV movie, this outdoors drama follows a Travis Green (Mike Conners) and his wife Amy (Tracy Brooks Swope) as they go into the woods to go fishing and take pictures of nature. Low and behold they didn’t think about it being hunting season and every yokel with a gun and a six pack being out there with them. We know from the opening frame of the movie bad things are going to happen because some shitheel hunter in the local store looks down the sights of his gun and this is what he sees...

If that freeze frame doesn’t set up a film, then you are deaf dumb and blind! the couple are your typical Liberal natural loving peaceniks too, so you just KNOW they are going to learn some hard lessons on this trip. Very soon we learn that Amy is pregnant as well (the movie just keeps laying it on thick and saucy) and that Travis has a hair trigger temper when some bumpkin makes a crack about her being a hot piece of ass in the local grocery. By the afternoon’s end Travis is out fishing and tree faceless goons have cut their way into her tent and gang raped her (off screen as this is a TV movie after all).

After a hair raising trip to the hospital through town, where Amy spots the three guys and Travis gets in a fight with some cops trying to get to them, she ends up at the hospital where we learn that, not surprisingly, she has lost the baby. Even worse they damaged her to the point she will not be able to have anymore kids. Naturally the men folk decide she doesn’t need to know this fact for a while. 

 "She's just out in the woods, strutting her stuff for all the nasty hunters to see..."

Meet the Sheriff played by TV favorite Robert Reed. When I saw his name in the credits I was hoping he was going to play one of the rapists. I mean what a career turnabout that would have been for Daddy Brady to play a low life sexual scumbag. But no such luck. Instead he plays the laziest cop in TV history. He tells Travis that his wife was raped at “a very bad time” and that “the guys will most likely never be caught”.  While he swigs back a beer at his desk. So naturally Travis ends up doing what any sensible and angry husband would do. he follows the scuzz buckets into the forest to try and take matters into his own hands. 

 "After The Brady Bunch you actually expect me to get off my ass and find some rapists?"

**SPOILERS**

He tracks the three goons and commences with some cat and mouse shenanigans that end up feeling more like DELIVERANCE than I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE. But after he has killed the fat man, the movie pulls a curve ball on us (though one you can see coming if you have paid attention) and the Sheriff turns up at the hospital to see Amy and has her identify three dudes who turn out to be the REAL rapists! Oh Snap! Travis is out killing three innocent dudes, he thinks are the guys! Never mind that the Sheriff never got off his ass once to actually find these guys.

"He's really not doing what it looks like he's doing here." 

There are also these sugar sweet flashbacks throughout the second half in which we get to see how Travis and Amy met, got married etc. That are sure to make you more sick than any of the violence on display. you also learn that they have lived in a small mountain town for several years, so you would have thought they would have known all about hunting season, and the dumb-asses who would be out there during that time. But now such luck because they live in their own little closed off world of happy love. Yeuch. You’ll be happy when Travis picks up the hunting rifle and starts blowing people away if only because he wont be having another flashback. 

"Mannix loses his cool!!!"

So ultimately the movie is trying to make some sort of point about vigilante justice and how it never works out. About how the wrong people can just as easily end up dead and how it turns the angry into monsters. But it provides a few thrills along the way and the last act is surprisingly violent for a made for TV movie of the week. But the title is a misnomer as there really is never any “revenge for a rape” thanks to that plot twist. 

Review © Andy Copp

This kind of animation haunts only my bowels...

Day two of the Exploitation Film Extravaganza presents...

THE HAUNTED WORLD OF EL SUPERBEASTO (2009)

D. Rob Zombie

Anchor Bay/ Starz

1.77 Anamorphic

This long in production animated exploitation in joked laden extravaganza owes as much to Scooby-Do as it does to the horror and exploitation that director Rob Zombie grew up with. It unfortunately is not nearly as intelligent as the average episode of said kid’s show. The idea here is not unlike Zombie’s first feature film HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES where he just threw all his influences into the cinematic blender and hoped it would all blend into some sort of entertaining cocktail. But unlike CORPSES which entertains almost on sheer passion and love of the genre, this just becomes annoying rather quickly, not matter how many genre references are made or cartoon titties are bounced into the camera.

"Bride of Frankenstein gets a little lip to lip action from the Creature From The Black Lagoon"

What little plot there is deals with the hero El Superbeasto a Wrestling movie celebrity who moonlights as a superhero and his bodacious busty blond sister Suzi X who is the real hero of the family. Together they fight monsters, zombies and what ever the hell else happens to be sliming around. Suzi is currently trying to dig up the severed head of Adolph Hitler from the zombie army while Beasto is trying to find the stripper kidnapped by Dr. Satan who intends to use her to become some super-demon who can rule the world. Stuffed into this whole mess is every conceivable in-joke, racial stereotype, sex gag, big tit gag, boner joke, and classic monster reference you can choke down. All with pretty terrible sub Trey Parker-esque songs the tell you what is happening on screen.

"Cartoon fetishism at it's very best?"

The design of the movie is very lovely with great animation; why the movie took so damn long to produce. The backgrounds and character design are always interesting to  look at and whenever a female character takes off her top suddenly the animation seems to get a little bit better spending more time on the bouncing breasts or undulating ass. But the writing is from the loins of an eleven year old, aimed directly at that level all the way around. I’m sure Rob Zombie feels he is living it up in the same vein as someone such as Ralph Bakshi, but there is nothing in this movie that holds a candle to even the worst of Bakshi’s work. Bakshi pushed boundaries and had something of interest to say. This is just the out of control libido and fascinations of an obsessed fan boy splashed out in colorful animation.

"It is okay to masturbate to cartoons. The Japanese do it all the time!"

That is not to say it isn’t amusing now and again. Occasionally there is a funny moment such as the cat-fight that climaxes the movie and the song explaining how it is okay to masturbate to cartoons because the Japanese do it all the time. Or the big giant monster chase/ destruction scene set to “yackety Sax “from Benny Hill complete with ladies getting their dresses ripped off. But when Zombie starts trotting out his own characters from his own movies for cameo’s the small favors the movie has already gained feel really slight indeed.

"In jokes are fine, but when Zombie starts throwing in his own characters, the jokes wear out their welcome."

I’m sure this is one big labor of love for Rob Zombie and he thinks it is a riot. But as a cohesive movie this really doesn’t work. To call it a mess is being kind.



Review © Andrew Copp