The world of exploitation film ripped open and laid raw for you to experience. From 70's grindhouse to current underground, it is all here. So ripe you can practically smell it.
Showing posts with label Exploitation Film. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Exploitation Film. Show all posts
TRAPPED (1982) D. William Fruet Code Red DVD 1.77 Anamorphic
This backwoods liberal college boy learns the true meaning of violence pot boiler really came out of left field and hit me between the eyes. I had never heard of it before and truthfully bought it blind solely on the strength of trying to support the efforts of CODE RED. Though it does star Henry Silva so that was a big plus in the movie's favor, but I honestly had no clue what to expect from this movie at all. The trailer which was on several other CODE RED releases sold the movie hard though as a balls out, backwoods massacre action film with some real bite. The movie on hand does not fail to deliver on that promise.
I'm Henry Silva host of "Bullshit or Not" and today I will be torturing and killing cityfolk!
Perpetual badassHenry Silva gets a lead role here as Henry Chatwillthe head crazy in a small backwoods mountain town in rural Tennessee. The kind of town where there are about five houses, one store, no cars and everyone is probably related in some way or another. The movie opens with Henry in the hills putting the moves on a huge breasted teenage girl, that unbeknowst to him, two teenage boys are watching. When he discovers this he sets about trying to kill them. When he chases them back to town he discovers that his equally young and gorgeous wife Amy(DanoneCamdon) is fucking a dude from the city while he was away. He goes absolutely apeshit, dragging the man into the center of town, beating the shit out of him and his wife and eventually taking the man hostage after shooting the tires out of his car. This is when we learn that Henry is the "law" of the town and that this man has broken the law. Henry makes it sound as if this man has raped his wife, when it is clear to everyone he has not. But the town elders, all the men folk in the town, are not cool with an outsider coming into town and making it with the lone hot to trot chick, so they go along with it. They all decide this dude must pay for his crime and set about tormenting and torturing him, including a brutal tar and feathering with boiling tar and a hunt into the woods.
Just a little hill folk hospitality in action.
Meanwhile a group of very liberal college students have decided to go hiking into the caves that surround this area. The lead of the group Roger Michaels(Nicholas Campbell) is severely anti-violence. So much that when we have met him he is in a deep debate with his philosophy teacher about how it is NEVERright to kill another man, even when pushed to the absolute limits. So right then and there we know he is going to be be pushed to the absolute limits and find out just how far someone can be pushed towards violence. In the 70's and 80's there was a whole sort of sub-genre of exploitation film that was basically the "liberal learns what it is like to kill" plot. Everything from DEATH WISHto all kinds of rape/revenge films fit the bill. This movie fits neatly into the framework, but also fills out on several other levels as well. But this group of fairly likable twenty somethings are our liberal heroes for the movie. On the other side of that fence in the mountain town we get Henry's sister Miriam Chatwill(Barbara Gordon in a terrific performance) who is the lone voice of reason in the town and morally opposed to the crap her brother is selling. But being that this is a man's game she is basically pushed to the side at every turn and ignored. It is only a matter of time before the kids end up meeting up with Henry and his gang of thugs, which happens to be right after they have murdered the outsider that was banging Henry's wife.
Rule #1: Never, ever have an affair with Henry Silva's wife and think you will get away unscathed.
From here it becomes a very tense suspense movie as the stakes rise and rise. Clearly Henry wants to kill the kids because they know what is going on. He is using his status in the town as a reasoning for it. The townsfolk are starting to turn on him though, as they see no real reason to kill these kids as they had nothing to do with what happened earlier and are starting to suspect that perhaps Henry has killed some folks previously over some frivolous shit too. When Miriam's boyfriend finally steps up and tries to free the kids (Right as Henry's right hand man is arriving to rape one of them) he is caught and brutally killed setting the whole town on edge and putting in motion a true battle of wills.
Take a large helping of backwoods action such as GATOR BAITand weld it to the revenge type Liberal baiting genre mentioned earlier and you get close to what this movie is. But what makes it so damn good are two things. One is that the script is surprisingly well oiled and effective. The characters are far more clearly drawn than this type of film usually is given. The kids, though occasionally a little grating, are more or less likable, and are not the cookie cutter, out to get laid and high norm of the era. But the townsfolk are are pretty much full blown characters that seem to be really the kind of people you would encounter in a place like this. Not the caricatures that we often see in the wake of DELIVERANCE, but real life hill folk who simply live a different existence. Unfortunately that place is under the thumb of a psychotic tyrant. The second thing that makes this sing is the performance of that psychotic tyrant by Henry Silva, who is always a delight to watch in anything he does. But here he is allowed to go completely free and doesn't just chew the scenery, he rips into it with his teeth and tears it to fucking shreds in every scene he is in. He cuts one of the most memorable villain characters of that exploitation era, so when he gets his comeuppance it is very satisfying.
Rule #2: No matter how hot that blond little hill tart is, no matter what she tells you. Her husband WILL find out and THIS WILL HAPPEN TO YOU!
Director Fruet did the underrated DEATH WEEKENDpreviously (not available on DVD) which I liked a good bit, but not nearly as much as I liked this one. His direction is sharp and focused, but never over orchestrated or showy. He's the kind of director that allows the movie that is going on to unfold in front of you, not forcing his own style into the forefront in place of what is happening. He's a story driven director, which is the direct opposite of many directors working today.
Unfortunately the DVD is basically a bare bones job, though the transfer is solid and looks fine as is the soundtrack. There is that exciting trailer and of course the reel of upcoming CODE RED releases (BRUTE CORPS and GANG WARS!!!) but nothing else on here. How awesome would it had been to snagged a Silva interview or a commentary from Fruet? I know those CODE REDguys are operating a super tight financial ship and for a title like this that is a risk to even release at all. So that any bells and whistles are probably too costly to even hope for at this point. But it still would have been great to hear what those guys thought about making this movie. But don't let me discourage you from picking this up in any way. In my opinion the quality of the movie itself makes it an essential purchase.
Day Four and five of the Halloween Horror challenge... I was out of town for Friday October 2nd, so I had to watch two movies on Saturday October 3rd to catch up. Here is the results my kiddies...
THE HILLS RUN RED (2009) D. DAVE PARKER WARNER VISION 2.35 After making the still unreleased (but very funny)STOP IT YOUR KILLING ME (2009)and the moderately successful THE DEAD HATE THE LIVING (2000) Dave Parkerfell into directing the shit out of promotional videos for studio pictures like X-2 and SHOOT 'EM UP. His name is all over the SPIDERMANmovies, or more specifically the DVD's special features. He also is known for writing Uwe Boll's first American Horror film, the roundly hated HOUSE OF THE DEAD (which I have still not seen). Say what you want, but Parker is known far and wide for absolutely loving the the horror genr, so it is no surprise that his latest horror film is about film students making a homespun documentary about a long lost/forgotten horror film and it's director.
The movie follows a film student named Tyler (Tad Hilgenbrinck) as he sets off to find a legendary filmmaker and his rarely-screened film named THE HILLS RUN RED. Seems the movie only ran a select few times and freaked people out so much that it vanished into obscurity along with the director himself. A trailer exists, and some promotional materials, but that is all. So Tyler sets out to find the daughter of the director and make a documentary along the way. Meanwhile his best friend and girlfriend are fucking behind his back because they are both tired of his obsessions with the movie. He finds the daughter, Alexa (Sophie Monk), stripping in a club and hooked on heroin. He shacks her up in a hotel and helps her kick and in return she agrees to help him find her dad's lost film. But someone else is following them that they are not aware of: as his best friend and girlfriend join them as crew, someone in a baby doll mask is in the woods with them. Just like in the movie THE HILLS RUN RED.
It is a fairly standard slasher movie set up, and for the first half of the movie it's pretty much that, plus a lot of film references - some of which normal fans will get (the TWIN PEAKS stuff) and others will not (a majority of the set up seems to me to be a reference to LAST HOUSE ON DEAD END STREET and now sadly departed Roger Watkins mysterious life for many years that film was know). But at the mid point of the film, once the killer is revealed, it takes a turn toward harder-edged territory, and the story twists around quite a bit into something a lot more dangerous and thoughtful. The last third of the film is downright mean-spirited, ugly and nihilistic, but also contains some very poetic images, and moments of outright horror that really manage to shock. The twists that come in the second half manage to be fairly surprisingly and successful as long as you do not think about them too hard, since a lot of the logic in the film will start to fall apart if you do. But for the most part, this is solid and fairly daring stuff with a boatload of startling, shocking imagery. Far more effective than the standard slasher movie it originally looks to be.
The acting in the film is average to exceptionally good with the always welcome William Saddler taking the roll of the legendary director. Sofie Monk, who is an Australian pop star (with lips that rival Angelina Jolie), is surprisingly good. I had no idea who she is, but after looking her up in IMDB it found out it is a huge deal that she is naked in this movie. And she is naked a lot. A whole lot. In fact it is surprising just how much nudity is in this movie for an R rated studio release. With that said it is also intensely violent and perverted, as well. How this got picked up by DARK CASTLE/ WARNERS is a mystery. But it has made it, so the movie can be seen by a much wider audience and hopefully Dave Parker can get in the position to make bigger movies. He's one of the real guys out there who loves the genre. So more power to him.
THE BOY FROM HELL aka JIGOKU KOZO (2004) D. Mari Asato Unknown S.O.V.
This short shot-on-video feature is part of the HIDeSHI HINO'S THEATER OF HORROR series that I am not entirely sure was made for DVD or TV in Japan. For those unaware, Hideshi Hino is one of Japan's most renowned horror comic artists who did such amazing works as HELL BABY and PANORAMA OF HELL. He is most known here in the United States for being the mastermind behind the initial GUINEA PIG series.
This movie begins with Successful Surgeon Setsu (Maria Yamamato) and her son Daio (Misuru Akaboshi) being driven around the countryside by their butler enjoying the afternoon. Daio is hanging his head out of the car like a happy dog. When his hat flies off he doesn't notice an oncoming Semi truck and gets his head knocked right off, much to the horror of his mother. At his grave site she is approached by a decrepit old woman (apparently Japan is filled with these crazy magic spewing old biddies) who tells her she can raise her son from the dead if she slits the throat of another child over his grave with a magical tooth that she proceeds to give Setsu. So Setsu kidnaps a kid from he hospital, hogties him over the grave and does just that. But the problem is that Daio comes back as a bug-eyed, cannibal monster (played by a midget) who eats the old woman! Setsu being a good mother still takes him home and tries to cure him (with multiple brain transplants!), but he continues to sneak out at night and eat the locals.
This is a weird little movie with much of the grim nastiness you would come to expect from Hino's work. No one is spared. Women, kids, old people, everyone is fair game to be gutted, torn apart and killed in this universe by the mutant cannibal boy from hell. Yet like all of Hino's work the monster is really the soul of the piece and given a good amount of sympathy. The monsters in his work usually don't want to be the way they are, and that is the case here. Daio is driven to do what he is doing, but he cannot help it. We get flashes into his soul that show him being tormented in a hell scape where hundreds of other tormented souls scream around him in agony, and he has to silence them. These scenes are visually arresting and brilliantly done. Though shot on video, they are still some of the more intense things from Japanese cinema for a while and why we watch the cinema from across the sea in the first place.
The rest of the movie vacillates from being intense and well-shot to being weirdly goofy, with weird pacing. Some shots like all the moments at Daio's grave are composed like paintings are incredible, while some of his attack moments remind one of Monty Python sketches. Yet the whole thing still manages to be weirdly touching in the end.
This is largely due to the very good performance of Maria Yamamato who is really incredible. She limits her performance to much of a physical one, using a great deal of facial impressions to convey her angst and heart break as it dips into madness. Her serene beauty just crumbles as the movie goes haywire, she really keeps the movie anchored as it goes really wonky around her.
While the movie is cheap, and that hinders it (the Goblinesque, DAWN OF THE DEAD rip off score is for one a little annoying), it's still effective and I look forward to the other entries in Hideshi Hino's THEATER OF HORROR.
The Black Panther (1977) D. Ian Merrick Unknown VHS O.O.P
This British lensed True Crime pic is easily one of the most clinical and cold films ever put to celluloid. While not as good, it ranks up there with the German film Angstin cold blooded depiction of crimes.
The Black Panther tells the true tale of one Donald Neilson (formerly Donald Nappey in real life who had changed his name because of the bullying he took over the last name because that is British slang for a diaper) who was responsible for the deaths of several burglary victims and ending with a 17 year old heiress he kidnapped. This film wasted no time getting to the screen as the case has just wrapped up literally the year before in 1976.
The film opens with Neilson in the woods performing what appears to be survivalist duties. But it turns out to be is his woods bound hideout for a robbery attempt. But this attempt sets the stage for those to come as he bungles it when someone finds him rummaging about and he flees without any of wares. Though back in the woods he does an admirable and thorough job of dismantling his campsite so there is no trace of his presence.
We soon see that he has a wife and teenage daughter that he treats horribly. Commanding them around like he is a drill Sargent in the army and they are his recruits. Even the tiniest infractions are met with his disdain. he spends hours alone in his room pouring over blue prints and photos from the city plotting his next robberies. When he is not doing that he is remembering his time in the war with pictures and warm memories.
But his robberies never go as planned. He dons a black hood and manages to show some skill getting into the places (usually post offices or general stores) but he always has to go that extra step and get keys or what not from people who live attached to the places and ends up facing off with unexpected people. He doesn’t set out to kill anyone, but they meet his shotgun anyway.
The press label the murderer The Black Panther because the surviving family members describe a man in a black hood. When he sees a newspaper article about a teenage heiress who recent was awarded a huge amount of money in the death of her parents. He sets his sights higher for some kidnapping and extortion. He finds a storm tunnel underground that is rarely used and makes that the place where he will store his captive. Unlike his other adventures, this one goes off without a hitch. He gets the girl and gets her into the drain, ties up and she cooperates. his complex plan of leaving notes, having her family makes calls and set up meetings is put into motion. Naturally the family call the police, which is what screws it up and things do not go as planned.
As I stated before this is a cold, calculated movie. It isn’t really a character study as you don’t get much characterization from anyone, especially the lead. This film is much more interested in laying out the facts as they happened. And from what I understand it does so as close to reality as possible. Donald Sumpter plays the lead role (he can most recently be seen in David Cronenberg’s crime drama Eastern Promises) and is chilling. He plays this guy as a wound spring. Tight, rigid and waiting to blow. But he only blows in small fragments, just long enough to make a mistake and kill someone. Then he heads right back into his shell and is rigid and rock solid again. he’s living some sort of paramilitary superman fantasy that we never are really clued into, but it is clearly there in the performance.
The version of this I saw was from a well worn VHS that I got from a bit torrent site. So I have no idea where it exists. I keep thinking this might be in one of those 50 pack DVD sets, but I may be getting it confused with another film called Day of the Panther.
Andy Copp
Screen caps and ripp from empoapes at cinemageddon
DEADGIRL (2007) D. Marcel Sarmiento & Gadi Harel Dark Sky Films 2.35 DV
This extreme and intense indie flick is a caustic, smart and VERY disturbing sexual horror film that turns the zombie myths on its rotting head. The movie is deep with themes of gender roles, sexuality, sexual politics etc., but never gives easy answers to the very tough questions it raises. Taking typical teen roles that most are familiar with in horror and layering them with emotion and political discussion, Deadgirl stands well above the pack.
The movie starts out with pretty boy high-schooler Rickie (Shiloh Fernandez) making pouty faces at raven haired beauty JoAnn (Candice Accola) until his trouble-making buddy J.T. (Noah Segan) convinces him to skip school with him. They cut out and talk about girls, sex and other normal teen boy talk until they get to an abandoned metal facility on the edge of town. After going inside and partying as much as two boys can, they explore and find a bound, nude, teenage girl, whom at first they think is dead. When she moves, they are shocked. Rickie's first reaction is to go to the cops, but J.T. has other plans when his libido takes over. The boys get into a scuffle and Rickie leaves his friend there to rape the girl. The next day Rickie confronts J.T. only to discover that J.T. has killed the girl, but she is not dead. J.T. kills the girl AGAIN to prove his point and she still doesn't die. The boys are now faced with having an undead sex slave who will be able to do anything that can be dreamed up, since she cannot fight back, and there is technically no accountability for their actions. Soon other teen boys come into the fray and things get even weirder.
Some may accuse the movie of being misogynistic because of the material, but it isn't really. It is a film ABOUT misogyny. A film about how boys (and men) objectify women as sex objects to the point that they become nothing but meatholes to be passed around for fun. The movie asks a lot of questions about how this can come to be: whether it is the nature of masculinity? Peer pressure? A bonding experience? Acting out of latent homosexuality? Trying to prove oneself? Or just emotional power-playing? Rickie is the only boy in the film who manages to withstand the elements, clearly having feelings for someone, but that presents its own set of complications.
Another interesting element to the film is the complete absences of parents in the film. We see Rickie's Mom's boyfriend twice, trying to give Rickie some advice on how to be a "Real Man", but we never see his mother at all. No other parents appear. This lack of parenting, or any other adults for that matter, shows the vacuum these kids live in, and what creates these kinds of attitudes and lost kids. Most, if not all of this can be attributed to Trent Haaga's brilliant script that refuses to answer the questions, or even better, gives you "rules" to go by. The girl is never even called a zombie in the movie, she just "is" with no explanation given. The script is all about character and the degeneration that they fall into. It should be mentioned that Trent Haaga also wrote the shot on video zombie movie FEEDING THE MASSES, and that some of the ideas that are presented here obviously got their start in that movie as well. Nowhere near as good, but some parallels are visible.
The film is very low budget, but is shot beautifully, directed really well by the duo of Marcel Sarmiento & Gadi Hareland edited great care. It only falls down slightly with some acting that is a little weak from a couple of newcomers that are clearly not quite seasoned enough for the tough material. The kids have been in some other films but usually in supporting roles, and at times here feel like they lose their feet on occasion. Especially Noah Segan as J.T. who slips into over the top mode now and again, trying to put on a country boy accent for some reason, as well.
Easily, this is one of the best horror films I have seen in a long time, indie or otherwise. It is doing a few select theatrical play dates around the country, midnights and such, so try to get your local art house to book it.
HEADER (2006) D. Archibald Francrastin (aka Michael Kennedy) Synapse Ent. DVD 1.66 DV
Based on Edward Lee's short story, and then in turn graphic novel of the same name, this striving-to-be-gore classic fails on nearly every conceivable level. Though throughout the running time of the film my buddy, Nick Williams, continued to tell me, as though it was a comfort, that the movie was truly faithful to the source material, all this did was reinforce that I no desire to read any of Edward Lee's material.
The story as it were deals with a fresh out of prison hillbilly named Travis Tuckton, who comes home to his elderly and disabled grandfather. His clearly insane "Paw" regales him with stories of how all the townsfolk did Travis' Pappy wrong over the years, causing him and his "Maw" to die in a car crash. Pappy also tells him with stories of "headers" the greatest sexual experience known to man, and how, since he is now legless and old, he cannot do them anymore, he'd like to watch his grandson perform them on those who wronged the family. So without wait, they are kidnapping slutty bimbos who just happen to be walking down the sides of the lonely backwoods road, taking them home and cutting holes in their skulls. To fuck. Yes, to fuck. That's the whole joke of the title folks. A Header is to cut a hole in the top of someone's head and skull fuck their brain while they die.
Yes, this sounds really sick and twisted, and even the kind of material you could make a really underground disturbing movie out of. Instead, the movie takes the approach of an over-the-top hillbilly David Mammet, with the (bad) actors droning on and on, spewing forth terrible dialogue - all of which could be considered forced on a generous day. To their credit, they keep their backwoods accents intact for the most part. The film, however, is played as a broad comedy, inviting us to laugh at the absurdity of all of it, and that would be fine if there was a director behind the camera who had the gumption to make it work. ButHeader just piles each scene of ludicrousness on top of another scene of brain-numbing dialogue, until you literally hurt.
There is a Jim Thompson-styled Noir subplot about an ATF agent, gone rogue because his wife is sick and he needs money for her unnamed illness, who crosses paths with the head-fuckers. But the conclusion that this is going towards is sooooooo obvious that it becomes a moot point after about three minutes, especially after the wife starts spouting medical facts so incorrect everyone should know about.
The climax almost works as it gets a bit more intense and grim, but it comes out of left field, as if it's from a different movie altogether.
The presentation here is fine, especially considering this looks to have been shot on DV. But the movie itself is poorly shot and edited, with rather odd choices for sound work as well. Seems the under the line level of writing and directing continued right into the tech aspects of the film, too.
Sysnapse gives the film the special treatment with a whole host of extra features for those who want to dig in further. Personally, I didn't feel the need to bother with it. A let down for sure.
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 skankywould 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, unconvincinglesbian 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/grindhouseroughies 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!!!
The following review is an old one from my previous site. I was talking to my girlfriend about this movie last night about how both of us pretty much didn't like this movie and I wanted to dig up this old review to see what my thoughts had been about it. I actually was easier on it than I remembered. Though I still stand by my opinions on the negative comments, I do not even remember ANY of the positive things I mention, which is weird.
On with the show...
A.I. D. Steven Spielberg Dreamworks
I must state up front that if you plan to see this film then do not read this review until after. In the process of explaining my decision regarding this film’s worth I will give away major plot points and even the ending. Regardless of my opinion, you as an audience member deserve to make up your own minds and see a film with it being spoiled by a critic. So if you want to see A.I. stop reading now.
This much anticipated adaptation of Stanley Kubrick’s former project by his supposed buddy Steven Spielberg has polarized audiences from coast to coast. The film could easily be summed up with a new title of "DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC TEDDY BEARS" as it shamelessly pulls plot ideas and situations from Phillip K. Dick’s story DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTIRC SLEEP which went on to become the seminal Sci-Fi film BLADE RUNNER.
For those who don’t know A.I. stands for Artificial Intelligence. The film is about a robot boy played by Haley Joel Osmett (of THE SIXTH SENSE). He is real in every way (well almost but we’ll get to that later). He is placed into a home of a family whose son has been in a coma for a long time and looks like he will not be coming home. The experiment is too see if human’s can learn to love something that is not human, and can it love them back.
The first 50 minutes of the film cover this quandary in the typical Spielberg fashion. Which is to dump the robot kid into as many jeopardizing situations as possible to pull at your heart strings. Actually interesting arguments such as whether or not it is a good idea to play god by creating an artificial person are left by the wayside so the film can be packed full of tearful interludes as the parent’s begin to fear the robot because he doesn’t understand their world. Essentially it is E.T. with a robot kid. Much is made early on about imprinting the robot kid’s memory with emotions. Only the Mother can do this and it is made very clear it is irreversible. The mother spends the first few minutes of her screen time appalled by the very idea of the child robot. But after spending a day with him annoying her she decides she does want to be his real Mommy and imprints him. No reason is given for her change of heart. She just does it to set the plot in motion. Almost immediately the Father begins to resent the little light box of a kid, even though it was his idea to bring the thing home and keep it in the first place. These are just examples of emotional inconsistencies that are present only to further the film into the area of forever flowing audience tears.
Next the child who was in the irreparable coma (the child we have not scene since the beginning of the film) is magically okay and moves back home. He immediately begins to destroy the family life the robot kid has made and instills the very easily planted seeds of dissent in the parents.
The climactic moment of the first act (the movie is very carefully structured in the Hollywood blockbuster acceptable three act screenplay) is the Mother abandoning the robot kid in the forest cause she simply cannot live with his robotic menace anymore. She loves him, but her real child is back, so it’s the highway for Haley the Roboboy.
The remainder of the film (nearly two hours) is the kid’s journey to get back home and to become a real boy just like Pinocchio (which is hammered so far into your skull that you want to go back in time and murder all involved with Pinocchio just so you never have to hear it referenced in the movie ever again!).
Then the movie really begins with roboboy’s journey to discover who he is and what being and Android is all about. But lets stop a minute and look at the first third of the movie. The crux of the rest of the film hinges on the idea that the kid wants to be reunited with his flesh parents and be a real boy. These are the same people who favored sending him back to the factory to be killed (the Dad wants that) and the Mom who can’t deal with the guilt of that act so SHE ABANDONS HIM! Its okay though because she can’t die he’s not a real boy! So as an audience we are supposed to take the next two hour journey with this character to find something that is pretty much reprehensible. The movie really could have taken a turn here and made some statements about child abuse and learning to be an adult. But it doesn’t.
Instead it becomes a typical action, sci-fi extravaganza that on a purely visual level is actually very entertaining. The next hour of the film sets up a very believable future full of sexual overload (though this is only hinted at really) and burnt out cites where destroying robots has become sport and competition. The scenes in the flesh fair (sort of Robot Gladiatorial challenges) are some of the best stuff Spielberg has done since RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK. Too bad we had to sit through not one but two faked death scenes of the robokid before getting there (and don’t worry there are more in the film to come!)
This is also where the film introduces Jude Law (who I find to be an immensely annoying screen presence anyway) as the Android sex machine who gets framed for murder in the second scene he is in. I’m sure in the original source material this character played an integral part, but not anymore. He is in the film to guide the kid around from point A to point B. The biggest reason he is in the film (and the reason he is framed for murder by characters we never meet again) is so there can be a climactic tear jerking scene where he is carted off to prison after befriending the kid. There is no reason what so ever for him to be a sex android in this final version of the film.
Here in lies the film’s biggest problems. Whenever a real issue with relevance or importance rears up Spielberg deflects it in his constant barrage of smaltz. Why bother telling a story that makes comments on child Abuse, the idea of Humans playing God, the inability of mankind to communicate emotionally and sexually, when you can have some kids throw the little robo-bastard in a pool so you think he might die. At least then you’ll gasp and maybe shed a tear in relief!
Once again do not read further if you intend to see the film!
In the third act the film literally bends time, space and reality to make sure the kid can be briefly reunited with his bitch flesh Mother. But this has to be the ultimate tear jerk moment, so instead of just letting the kid find his mother (cause then they would have to actually deal with some of the above issues mentioned) they jettison him into a future where he is found by Aliens who can clone his mother but she will only be alive for a day. That way they can spend a perfect day together, she can kick the bucket and everyone walks out bawling. Except it doesn’t work because the Mother has done such a heinous act in abandoning the kid that we feel no sympathy for her.
Is the movie terrible? No, it is not. As per usual with Spielberg’s work the design is breathtaking. The vision of the Future is still BLADE RUNNER light, but at least it is pretty to look at. The midsection of the film really picks up as it becomes a pure sci-fi movie by creating another world were new rules exist. Yet Spielberg sees fit to fill these moments with unneeded audience pleasing clutter that suck you right out of the movie such as the Dr. Know animated character voiced by Robin Williams. Or the convenient way the kid traps himself underwater for two thousand years just so he can be woke up and have his little happy moment without confronting the real issues at hand.
Ironically the best thing about the film is the one element that looks to be the most annoying at first glance. The walking, talking, thinking animatronic teddy bear (simply Named Teddy) is the film’s saving grace more than once. Why? Because it is a character that could have easily been played for cutesy laughs and smaltzy interaction, but instead is played as the brain of the film. He is cute, for Christs’ sake it’s a teddy bear, but he never over does it in a film where everything else does.
There is a lot of controversy surrounding how Kubrick would have never allowed the film to become the three hanky weepfest that it is. I believe that to be true. His last film was one were audiences flocked to see Nichole Kidman and Tom Cruise buck naked and were disappointed when they were faced with an obtuse movie that dealt with real issues, emotions and the extreme complexity within. I’m sure he would have treated the material with the same depth he showed in all his work.
Unfortunately Spielberg is not capable of that kind of depth. Even his best films are simply entertainment pictures (DUEL, JAWS, RAIDERS) that exist to entertain and little else. That is fine, people need entertainment. But when faced with material that demands more the answer is not to rework it to a breaking point so audiences can feel all choked up. It’s a problem Spielberg faces every time he tries to do something serious. Even a film as important as SHINDLER’S LIST is hurt (though not destroyed) by his overbearing need to manipulate the audience into tears and reactions. For God’s sake we are watching a film about the Holocaust, we do not need any manipulation to feel something! We don’t need the little kid we don’t know running from the Nazi’s and hiding in shit, we don’t need the light shinning down from God on Shindler as he gives a speech that explains every point you were supposed to have gotten out of the film.
I suppose my biggest complaint with A.I and Spielberg’s work is that he treats the audience like they are feeble minded by watering down actual ideas in his work and overstating the elements that he really wants you to feel. Let me feel something on my own, don’t force my attention into it. His work is the epitome of the Hollywood ideal that Audiences are stupid and have to have everything spelled out for them. Its insulting.
I also have a beef with his use of Kids in his films. Most of the time they are there simply as a focal point for the young audience. I understand that and it is fine. My problem is that he uses kids whenever he feels the need to twist an emotion out of an audience. E.T. is the worst for this as the kids are chased, threatened, abused etc. all to get the audience to cry along with the movie. E.T. himself could be seen as a big kid that Spielberg ultimately KILLS to elicit a reaction, but then back peddles and for no reason at all, brings back to life for the triumphant resurrection! I would hate to see what Spielberg would do to the Christ story!
But back to the kid thing. In abusing the kids for the audiences pleasure (and kids are very often abused in his pictures, both JURASSIC PARK flicks, E.T, HOOK and now A.I.) Spielberg shows a very sadistic instinct. Its almost as if he is inviting you the audience to enjoy the degradation of the children (in fact in JURASSIC PARK the scenes in which the little boys are threatened or hurt it is the good guys doing it and usually ends with an audience laugh). In A.I. this is taken to ridiculous extremes since the kid can’t die. There is even a scene where the kid confronts another robot made to look like him (why would the company looking to market robot children make all of them look exactly the same. Wouldn’t that make keeping track of them really more difficult that it would be worth) and he literally rips off his face and knocks off his head! But it gets worse! I find the way he handles the sexuality of children to be very creepy as well. Especially the scene in A.I where all the kids gather around Robokid and touch him repeatedly. Yes within the context of the story it makes sense, but did it have to happen by the pool so all the little boys are almost naked. Did it have to be shot and blocked so it feels like a rape scene? Did the big bully kid need to look in Haley’s shorts to see if he had a dick? Did Spielberg really need to abuse all those half naked native kids in INDIANNA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM?Was the scene where all the kids gather around and paint Robin Williams body really need to be there in HOOK? These are just questions to ponder the true meanings of.
If you catch A.I. in a theater make sure it is a matinee or second run and you probably will not hate it. But if you are like me and have a real problem being manipulated instead of honestly engaged by a film then stay away at all costs! I think I should go read some Phillip K. Dick now to cleanse my palette. (AC)
And here is a clip of Haley Joel Osmet's finest work outside of The Sixth Sense...
Part of the Maximum Action 10 pack (now out of print)
Before reading the excellent one two punch books GODS IN POLYESTER and GODS IN SPANDEX I had never heard of Leo Fong. I had maybe seen his name here and there, but never knew who he was. But after reading his recollections of making kung fu styled action films with pennies on the dollar I fond myself really fond of the guy and had to find some of his films. Then after checking out the movie movie WILD RIDERS in one of theBCI DRIVE IN CULT CLASSICSpacks there was a trailer for LOW BLOW and I was completely sold. My girlfriend and I HAD to see this movie! We become more than a little bit obsessed with seeing our first Leo Fong movie. I almost didn't get to as the MAXIMUM ACTION set that I found on Ebay never came and after a little research I found that it was out of print. I sent some emails to the company I ordered it from explaining that I NEEDED my Leo Fong fix! That I would not be a complete cult film fan until I got Leo Fong into my life! And they came through, in some dusty corner of the DVD warehouse, hiding under a million copies of GIRLS GONE WILD THE CATHOLIC YEARS was one last copy of MAXIMUM ACTION with not one but TWOLeo Fong movies in the set. Joy was about to set in my peoples!!!
We were not disappointed at all. Within five minutes of the opening of LOW BLOW it had lived up to the what we had expected. The movie hits the ground running, not unlike the vastly inferior LETHAL WEAPON 2 with the action already in progress. A thugs are robbing a coffee shop, roughing up the patrons and generally being loud pricks. The next building over is the office of tough guy Private Investigator Joe Wong (played by our hero Leo Fong) who is aggravated by the noise and ruckus. He throws on his members only jacket and tells his pretty and perky secretary "I'm gonna go see what all the noise is about!" Within two minutes those trouble makers are eating the floor with much foot being put to ass, and Mr. Wong has barely broke a sweat at all. But low and behold some nasty bastards are taking some old ladies purse outside, so they are gonna have to be taught a lesson too! But it is all in a day's work for Mr. Wong. Ass kicking is a way of life! He also has a comic relief car that only he can start by popping the hood and whacking it with a tire iron.Leo Fong's screen presence is a strange one at best, with his pinched up face that consistently looks like someone in the room has just farted, and stiff walk like he may flip out at any second. He's wound tighter than the rubber bands holding the roll of twenty's that was the budget of this flick. His line delivery, all ten of them, is fast, and to the point. Like lines are just a waste of time to get to some ass kicking. He might very well hop out of the screen and punch you at any moment.
The plot finally kicks in when a blond California bimbo is being indoctrinated into some Johnstown styled cult run by a blind Cameron Mitchell and his African Princess named Karma (played by respected black actress Akosua Busia, who actually gives a great performance here). It is never really explained what the cult is actually doing, but it is all about love, enlightenment, and digging in the fields all damn day long. At one point it is revealed they are planting, wait for it, asparagus! Evil bastards!!! Seems the bimbo is the daughter of a rich industrialist played by Troy Donahue and he wants his little girl back. After witnessing Mr. Wong whopping the ass of some Latino's who were trying to steal his hub caps he decides that Wong is the man for the job!
But wait! After some shenanigans in the camp where Mr. Wong gets mildly roughed up (and Karma is clearly enjoying herself, because her nipples clearly get hard after every bit of torture she inflicts on Mr. Wong!) he decides he cannot do this alone. So he holds a tough man contest to find some teammates to help him infiltrate the compound and get the now drugged and wigged out babe to safety. So now it is THE DIRTY DOZEN street style!
Weird thing about this movie is that it is almost family friendly in some ways. The violence (outside of one nasty head squishing) is mostly hand to hand combat kung fu stuff. The gun play is very toned down. There is no bad language or sex to speak of at all. Watching it you can't help but to feel like Leo Fong was trying to appeal as wide a base as possible. And make no mistake, this is Leo Fong's show. He wrote, produced and starred in this bad boy. He raised the financing and made it happen.
There's tons of weird moments to recommend here, like several of Karma's freak outs, the bad guy who gets thrown into a pile of cute puppies who proceed to lick his unconscious body, Leo Fong's attempts at breakfast table comedy, the REALLY out of place macho bonding casual racism that will make you uncomfortable, the muscle bound blond pit fighter chick, that head squishing i previously mentioned, or the incredible compilation worthy action scene were Fong chases four bad guys into their car. He gets so pissed he rips the cables out of the engine, beat the CAR up, smashes all the windows out with a two by four and then buzz saws the top of the car itself off just to kick them all in the ass and send them on their way! Truly it is one of the most amazing scenes I have ever seen in an action film!
So before Seagal, before Van Damme, there was Leo Fong! And he did it for the among of money those guys spent on hair stylists.
This ridiculous starring vehicle for porn starlet Marilyn Chambers starts off promisingly enough. With ENTER THE DRAGON inspired opening credits that feature Chambers performing really shitty karate moves complete with the strobing effect from that classic. But since that clearly isn’t enough to hook an audience in they have Chambers go full frontal nude as well. Then add a weird effect that has her fade to sketches of herself periodically that have nothing to do with anything. I noticed right away that she has some odd looking tits. I dunno if she had some really early 70’s implants or just oddball boobs but they sit really far apart and seem rather hard. Like they don’t want to move from the perch on either side of her boney chest. Otherwise she’s an attractive lady. I’ve seen her in recent years at conventions and she still looks really good actually. Her new boob job is much nicer in fact.
The plot has her working for a secret agent cabal that does mop up missions for the US government that are so dangerous even they don’t want to know about them. Her group is called THE PROTECTORS and she is a perfect weapon, or so we are told. Mean while Mary Woronov and her goofy dude sidekick Stephen Johnson are assigned by another secret government agency to find out who is stealing high tech microchips and why. Woronov is a nymphomaniac who will bed down anyone and anything while Johnson is a goofy genius of the “aw shucks” variety. We get to see Chambers in action when she catches an intruder played by fellow porn star Randy West and proceeds to bang him. up until now the movie has been a little silly but relatively played straight. But suddenly it becomes a slapstick comedy with West badly dubbed with a Chinese accent AND subtitled in English with subs that don’t match what he is saying at all. It is a weird joke that really isn’t funny as much as it is disconcerting an disorienting. Plus my friends and I couldn’t figure out who he was and kept commenting on how he looked like Marjo Gortner.
Eventually our leads all separately end up on an island where a reclusive genius is working on some top secret scientific mumbo jumbo, More importantly he is the spitting image of a really strange dude who comes into my work, except this guy in the movie wears silk pants and a cape. though I could see the guy from work doing that too if people would let him. Johnson and Woronov go to a disco with the dudes stacked wife, but this disco has mud wrestling and naked dancing girls. Upstairs at the disco some sort of shenanigans are going on that we never actually see but hear about second hand that deal with blackmailing of employees to steal the microchips so dude with the cape can use them in his secret schemes to take over the world. Chambers tries to get into the club and has to get all hot with a midget who looks like Gary Busey and rides her like a pony (probably the movie’s highlight). She puts a Vulcan death grip on him and gets her info, which really isn’t anything at all. Eventually all the good guys end up working together and figure out the nutty cape man is creating androids (who love to have sex) to take over the world, and are controlled by sound. turns out his sexy wife is an android and she has fallen in love with Woronov after their heated round of mud wrestling at the disco. Lots of guys in thongs and speedos prance around as androids making my friend Mike really nervous and there is a lame climax with cheap ass melting robots and bad slapstick comedy.
Intentionally bad movies are a particularly painful breed. Bad because you have no money, or no talent, or no patience for the production are all fine and good. Bad just because things didn’t work out in your favor and the odds were against you is fine too. But bad because you set out to make a movie that is intentionally stupid to try to get laughs is often just insulting and irritating. ANGEL OF HEAT is one of those movies. Occasionally it is amusing, mostly when Mary Woronov is on screen since she is always fun to watch and gives her all. But this is such a threadbare and embarrassing production that to have it all be so purposely inane makes it feel like being in a room with a friend who wants to get on your nerves.
Weirdly enough the opening credits actually read ANGEL OF HEAT: THE PROTECTORS BOOK #1 so it looks like they were wanting to launch some sort of low budget comedy/ espionage series. Clearly that didn’t happen. If they had played it more straight and went for a more action/exploitation feel ala Andy Sidaris they could have been onto something. But it missed the boat.
MY NAME IS BRUCE (2007) D. BRUCE CAMPBELL IMAGE/DARK HORSE 1.85
Once upon a time I could understand all the adulation that people heaped upon Bruce Campbell. Back in the day that seemed like a lifetime ago when he was just a working sclubb trying to make it happen while making B movies. Doing decent work in sometimes decent little movies and occasionally making those movies better. But then somewhere along the line the "cult of Bruce" developed. That vicious cycle where people begin to worship an actor just for being who they are and in turn the actor stops doing the interesting work and instead develops themselves as a commodity. Bruce Campbell stopped being a B-movie actor and started focusing on being the character of Bruce Campbell. What's funny is that he went from being a basically fun loving, gregarious guy that when you met him was decent and fun to interact with, to a caricature of himself who played up the "Hollywood actor" thing and started treating people lousy as part of his schtick. I met him once when he was in my home town to do a bit of outdoor theater and his was the sweetest nicest guy to me. He came back a year later to premier his shitfest directorial debut film THE MAN WITH THE SCREAMING BRAIN and was a dick and pretty much insulted the audience and the previous year's production. After that we started getting commercials with Bruce playing this Bruce character, and him writing a book from this point of view. It was only a matter of time before a movie would come along.
The Movie is MY NAME IS BRUCE and it is frankly a mess. In fact I wouldn't even had watched if a friend hadn't challenged me to. My Friend Bryan likes to do what he calls the "ANCHORMAN Challenge" where he makes us watch terrible comedies under the challenge that we will beak and actually laugh at some point, based obviously on the terrible movie ANCHORMAN. Well I made it through MY NAME IS BRUCE without laughing.
The story concerns a small redneck town in which a teenager while trying to impress some girl (and who happens to be the world's biggest Bruce Campbell fan) lets loose a Chinese demon from the local mines. Meanwhile Bruce Campbell, played by Bruce Campbell, is having a bad time with his career. He's a drunk, an obnoxious loser, his ex wife is banging his agent who will only get him the lousiest movies possible. He's a self absorbed idiot loser that we are supposed to think is such a schlub that he is lovable. But he is just annoying really. The kid ends up kidnapping him to fight the Chinese demon, but Bruce Thinks it is all part of some big play for a movie and doesn't realize it is real. Supposedly hilarity ensues. But you'll be groaning at the used and tired jokes you've seen before. Years ago, in movies from Peter Sellers and even he thought the sucked when he was doing them. There's an avalanche of EVIL DEAD and Sam Raimi references as if to remind you that Bruce was once in decent movies and to pacify the film geeks who would be the target audience. Oddly enough most of the jokes make fun of them too. The comedy consists of things like Ted Raimi in full Chinese make up talking with a bad accent, or Bruce with and angel and a devil both played by him arguing on his shoulders. Sad shit indeed.
The movie tries to keep it lighthearted, but the overwhelming sense of smugness keeps it from ever being very funny at all. I'm sure this whole thing is an act on Bruce Campbell's part but it is a slightly repellent one that I personally find a huge turnoff. The whole project stinks of what he thinks an audience wants from a Bruce Campbell movie, not what a good movie should be.
The only saving grace for me was the lead actress, who only shows up at the halfway point I might ad, Grace Thorsen. It's hard to say if she is a great actress or anything because the material is so weak. But my god is she hot! She has the best set of boobs I have seen in a movie in a long, long time. Though she never unleashes them, which for a project this lame, I can't say I blame her. But when she was onscreen I wasn't bored, stiff maybe, but not bored.
This blog is dedicated to the late Bill Landis of SLEAZOID EXPRESS. Without him there would be very little of what we see as exploitation criticism. And more to the point the format I plan to use today is something I am borrowing directly from S.E. in which I will write the meat of the article and then have invited various people from the exploitation film community to chime in with their opinions as well. Bill did this first in S.E. with articles about SALO and LET ME DIE A WOMAN. Both of which are worth your time to track down and read. Bill Landis
passed away in December of 2008 and left a hole in the world. He is missed.
Now, on with the show.
I was asked by a longtime reader to do a column on a couple of “extreme” movies because they wanted to know my take on them. Those movies were Cannibal Holocaust, and The Guinea Pig Series. Today I intend to explore the world of Ruggero Deodato’s controversial cannibal masterwork Cannibal Holocaust and the fallout that came in its wake.
Cannibal Holocaust is a polarizing film in the horror film community. Without a doubt it is a film that anyone who has seen it, and even many who haven’t, have intense opinions on. This is a rare film that simply grabs the viewer by the throat and shakes them relentlessly until the final frames of the celluloid have run through the projector. The film is no vicarious thrill ride; it is mean, no vicious, attack on the souls of the viewer. If there ever was a film that was out for your blood, this movie is it. To an average horror fan who was brought up on a staple of Friday The 13th, Nightmare on Elm St. and the like this film would be like gasoline pumped into their heart. There’s no fun to be had from Cannibal Holocaust, unless there is something really morbid and deranged about you. This film is out to stir up shit deep down in your soul and will stop at nothing to do just that. No depth will be too deep to go, and you will be plummeted right into the abyss with the characters on screen.
The film went into production on June 4th 1979 with a release to happen in early 1980 (though I have heard some sources say it was actually late 1979). The film was an instant hit in Italy when it hit theaters, then within two weeks was withdrawn and banned, with director Ruggero Deodato pulled into court on charges of Animal Cruelty and possible murder. More on this in a little bit.
The story revolves around a Professor Munroe (played by Porn actor R. Bolla aka Robert Kerman most known for starring in Debbie Does Dallas) who is sent into the Amazon rain forest to find a group of missing documentary filmmakers headed by one hotshot named Alan Yates (Gabriel York). Seems these young filmmakers went there in hopes of making the ultimate film about native tribes and have since disappeared. The first half of the film follows Munroe as he goes deep into native territory, witnessing the horrors of the tribes and their rituals (such as punishment for adultery, and what happens when a pregnant woman is though to have a sick fetus in utero). He eventually gains the trust of the tribe and finds cans of film that belonged to the missing filmmakers.
The second half of the film details what is on that film as Munroe and a group of TV producers screen and develop the footage for a possible documentary project about the lives of the fallen filmmakers. But what they discover is horrors beyond belief. The film shows the crew slaughtering animals, raping the natives, burning villages and doing whatever they can to agitate the natives into action for their cameras. And finally the natives strike back in a final act of savage brutality and cannibalism the ends with the crew filming their own sickening dismemberment and death.
The first half of the film is made with conventional film techniques of real camera set ups, professional edits, music etc. To put it in layman terms, it looks like a “real” movie. But once we start screening the footage in the second half things drastically change. The footage we are witnessing is supposed to be “raw” footage. Unedited by anyone and straight out of the cameras. So it is messy, hand held, filled with spots where the film runs out, or fades to white between shots. There are ragged cuts from where they supposedly shut off the camera and got a different angle or vantage point. But the brilliance of this is that of course none of this is the case. The film has been carefully stage to look this way. Manipulated to feel like raw footage so that we the audience think what we are seeing is absolutely genuine stuff.Other narrative movies used the “cinema verite’” style before. It was basically invented in Italy post WW2 in films like Roberto Rossellini’s (who Ruggero Deodato worked with) Open City or The Bicycle Thief.The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was the first to apply it to horror films. But Cannibal Holocaust is the first film to take it to the next level and make what we are seeing feel completely real by design. So many people are shocked, sickened and struck numb by the content of the film that they miss the brilliant artistry that Deodato pulls off here. The directing in this film is in a league all its own.
A big part of why we buy that what we are seeing is real though is the use of casual violence throughout the film. Some of it quite unfortunate and disquieting. The biggest controversy surrounding this film to this day is the use of non-simulated animal torture and killing in the film. This decision is without reproach a morally reprehensible one that is indefensible on any level. But to deny the power it applies to the final film would also be lying too. The film shows several animals killed on screen including a coatimundi (which most people mistake as a muskrat or ferret) being skewered, a giant turtle being totally dismembered (very slowly I might add), a monkey with his face hacked off, and a pig being shot and beaten. It is worth noting that the scene where the pig is shot, Gabriel York refused to perform it. He flat out refused to shoot this pig, so another actor was asked to do it. Actor Perry Pirkanen wept after they shot the turtle scene. The crew claim that these animals were eaten after the scenes were shot, especially by the Tribal extras who considered things like monkey brains a delicacy. But yet these scenes are probably among the most horrifying in any cinema and are tough to watch. But what they do is set up the feeling that you are indeed watching something real. That if the filmmakers are insane enough to kill these real animals, then maybe just maybe they are insane enough to kill real people too. That maybe the entire film you are seeing is the real deal. Like I said it is morally reprehensible, but it works nonetheless.As a filmmaker and artist, I most certainly would never, ever do it.
But to muddy those moral waters even worse there is actual human death footage in the film as well. There is a sequence in the film called “The Last Road To Hell” where Professor Munroe watches one of Alan Yates' previous documentaries about third world war atrocities. The footage he looks at, showing people being executed by firing squad, is absolutely genuine. Not fake at all. But to make matters worse when the footage ends and Munroe inquires about the footage the TV producers tells him it was all fake and staged for the camera! When it clearly is not.
Deodato claims his need to make this film stemmed from his reaction to the violence on TV at the time. This was during the height of the Red Brigade terrorist violence in Italy and the TV news reports often only focused on the death and destruction left in their wake. Deodato has spoken in interviews about how his young son was often exposed to this footage of death and violence on TV do to the sensationalistic coverage. It angered him to the point that he worked the themes of exploiting violence to the point of causing more violence into the film we see today.
So after two weeks in theaters in Italy the film was seized and pulled. During those two weeks supposedly none other than Sergio Leone sent Ruggero Deodato a note praising the film for its raw power, but also warned him that it will stir up trouble. He was right. In court Ruggero was asked to prove that the main actors were indeed not dead, especially the leads playing the documentary filmmakers and in particular a woman playing a native who appears in a famous scene where she is impaled on a wooden stake from vagina to out her mouth. The biggest problem facing the director was that he had put the actors under contract to not appear in any other films, plays or TV for a year to help sell the public on the idea that they were actually presumed dead. He managed to round up the leads up and had them on a talk show thus showing they were still alive. The impaled girl was harder to locate but he was able to show photographs of the girl on set as she got into the apparatus, which was simply a bicycle seat on a pole with a balsa wood prop in her mouth. The photos also showed her after laughing with the cast and crew.So the murder charges were dropped.
The animal cruelty issue was not dropped however and Ruggero and the producers were sentenced to heavy fines and the film was banned for a few years until 1984. The movie went on to be banned in many other countries as well including New Zealand, Singapore, Iceland, and Malaysia. It was available uncut in the UK on video until the Video Nasties controversy exploded
and then it went onto the banned list there, only to resurface in recent years in a heavily cut form with the animal violence and sexual violence removed.
The movie played the United States in the mid 80’s (though I’ve heard conflicting things about this, some say it played 42nd Street earlier than that, some say like 1985, all are in agreement is played 42nd Street). The film was never released legitimately on VHS in the USA. Every company that tried would fold within a few months of acquiring the title it seems. So the reputation of the film rose on the strength of import copies and bootlegs.
The film was finally granted a proper release in 2004 from Grindhouse releasing when they remastered it and started doing limited theatrical runs, then followed up with a limited edition two disc DVD set that presented the film uncut. Among the many features on that DVD was something that was unique and certainly a nice change of pace for many viewers. The ability to watch the film with out the animal violence. Thanks to seamless branching capabilities you can watch the film while the DVD skips the scenes where Animals are killed or brutalized.
There are only a few films that really touch the outer boundaries of the human condition. Films that scrape the bottom of the soul and make you feel things you probably do not want to feel. Films that work maybe the same way that terrorism might work. Pasolini’sSalo 120 Days of Sodom, In A Glass Cage, Henry Portrait of A Serial Killer, Last House on Dead End Street and maybe a couple of others. These are rare animals that only certain people can watch and have the capacity to deal with properly. Cannibal Holocaust Is among those films. There have been countless other cannibal films before and after, but none of them can match it. It is a film that almost forces you to take a stand on what you are watching in a lot of ways. But yet it is an undeniably well made, chilling motion picture that commands your attention. There will never be another one like it. And that is probably a good thing.
Andy Copp
The following are reactions from some various folks from the horror community that have seen Cannibal Holocaust. I especially wanted them to mention how they first saw the film and their reactions.
Andy Copp, Moderator of Exploitation Nation, and Filmmaker, Director of The Mutilation Man & The Atrocity Circle
I first saw Cannibal Holocaust on a bootleg I rented from Bookery Fantasy a comics store in Fairborn, Ohio when I was in college. I was a pretty well traveled extreme cinema viewer at that point and had already seen Cannibal Ferox, Nekromantik, Salo, Last House On Dead End St. and lots of others. So I knew what to expect with this one. I watched it by myself, which was not uncommon with the more extreme titles as my girlfriend was not usually game for them. The print I saw was not censored or fogged in anyway and was in surprisingly good shape. The animal cruelty was too much for me. I looked away during the little critter being skewered. I fast forwarded during the turtle (and still can’t watch that) and couldn’t then and can’t now stand hearing the pig squeal as it dies. I remember dreading the abortion sequence as I had seen pictures but it wasn’t as graphic as I thought it would be. But the sexual violence got to me. The adultery punishment was upsetting, as was the scene where they rape the native girl. Those scenes probably bothered me more than the rest of the movie (animal stuff not withstanding). The second half of the film was sickening and stressful, but I remember being in awe of how well made it was too. They way it manipulated you into thinking what you were seeing was so real really flipped my lid. I remember when the last frames of the demise of the crew rolled through feeling pumped up and really freaked out. Not too many other films had done that to me. I praised this movie to anyone who would listen. A lot of people thought I was nuts. Years later I would see it with a crowd when the remastered print would make the rounds. The crowd was about thirty or so people. You could feel the movie pour over them like a wave of wet cement. It weeded out the poseurs who were there just to goof on an old gore movie really quickly. There were a lot of walk outs. Oddly enough there was a couple of probably 20 year old girls and there bo hunk beefed up jock boyfriend there. I thought they would vanish before the thing was over. They made it to the turtle slaughter (which I walked out on, though I knew I would go back in a few minutes). To my surprise they all went back in too. But when it got to the part where they raped the native girl, the bo hunk boyfriend shot up and ran out. I went out to pee later and found him lying on a bench in the lobby looking very sick. He remained there for the rest of the movie, while the girls watched the whole thing.
42nd Street Pete. Writer, Film Historian, and all around badass and survivor of the Deuce
Cannibal Holocaust was one of those films shrouded in mystery. It was playing here at a theater called The Wellmont in Montclair NJ. It was pulled after three days due to the cruelty to animals. Didn't get to see it in an actual theater, although I tried to catch it at The Liberty on 42nd Street, but the people I was with were appalled that I wanted to see it.
According to Bill Landis of the Sleazoid Express, this film pummeled the audience into stunned silence. The usual rowdy crowd was flat lined by the film. Then it disappeared. Grainy bootlegs made the rounds of the convention circuits. Rick Sullivan peddled copies from his Gore Gazette Fanzine. Rumors persisted that some of the actual killing was real, especially the scene with the girl with the spike shoved up her ass.
I finally saw a copy off of a Japanese laser disc with all the nudity cropped, go figure. Even a shitty tenth generation bootleg would flat line a viewer. Even today, it still has that ability. Probably one of the most powerful horror films ever made as , even in today’s CG world, it has the power to shock & disgust a viewer. Chas. Balun said it best when he said the film kicks you square in the balls. Balun was also instrumental in getting the word out about Cannibal Holocaust.
Art Ettinger Managing Editor of Ultra Violent Magazine and Expert on Confrontational Cinema
I first saw Cannibal Holocaust on bootleg VHS tape in 1994. I had read about it for years and knew what it was, but hadn’t delved into the world of tape-trading yet. I had already seen other confrontational horror movies available on legit VHS including I Spit on Your Grave, House on the Edge of the Park, and Last House on Dead End Street. I also had already seen Jungle Holocaust and Cannibal Ferox since they too were easy to find in VHS rental shops. Even having already seen confrontational horror movies and having a slight familiarity with cannibal films, Cannibal Holocaust blew my mind. Unlike Ferox, Holocaust wasn’t campy. It quickly became one of my favorite movies. The first bootleg I watched was mediocre in quality, but I saw a crystal clear version shortly thereafter. I began collecting any versions I could find and did some library research on it. I distinctly remember reading various sources that claimed that the movie never played theatrically in the United States. When I found a review of Cannibal Holocaust in Variety’s Film Reviews from 1985 (hilariously located on the same page as their Back to the Future review), I realized how full of shit most genre writers were on the subject. It clearly played U.S. theaters, albeit briefly, in 1985. Right around that time, I also learned that Bill Landis covered it in a 1985 issue of Sleazoid Express when it first played NYC and that a Cannibal Holocaust marquee can be seen in the sketch comedy film Outtakes. I made it my mission to spread the word about the movie, not just to horror fans, but to other college students. I started making random people watch it, the culmination of which was a screening of it in a film class I taught while in college. Seeing Cannibal Holocaust with an audience of 50+ liberal arts students, none of whom had seen it before, was an incredible experience. Years later, when I got to see Cannibal Holocaust in 35mm in Cleveland, the movie blew my mind all over again. Even after interviewing and meeting Deodato (as well as Gabriel Yorke and Robert Kerman), Cannibal Holocaust still has a mystique about it. It’s still an amazing, “can’t believe this movie exists,” artifact of a bygone filmmaking era. Cannibal Holocaust defines confrontational cinema and remains one of the most fascinating films of all time.
Andrew Shearer, Gozoriffic Films, Film Director of Blood Witch, and Others as well as Film Critic.
By the time I actually got ahold of "Cannibal Holocaust", I'd long since composed a version of it in my head based on all the descriptions I'd read and still photos I'd seen over the years in various books and magazines. It was the be-all, end-all horror film, a legendary shocker that would challenge even the most hardcore of hardcore genre enthusiasts, an unforgettable celluloid atrocity that was even banned on planets Earth had yet to colonize. You weren't going to find this sort of thing at Blockbuster, or even the independent shops that still carried a healthy amount of rare hold-over VHS tapes from the 80's (that managed not to get chewed up in some thrill-seeking redneck's top-loader) in those beautiful, gigantic cover boxes. "Cannibal Holocaust" was something you needed a checking account or a credit card to get, because it was either going to come from a Video Search of Miami mail order catalog or Atlanta's nowlong-gone Oxford Video. Membership at Oxford also required one to be at least 18years of age, which, in the summer of 1993, I wasn't quite. However, my friend Dan, recently graduated high school senior and drummer for the punk band I was in, held more than just the keys to a giant Chevy van with teardrop windows and a side door that'd sever your leg at the knee if it closed on you. He was old enough to get an account at Oxford video, had a vehicle to take us there, and was just as eager to step into the jungles of gore as I was. So with that, we were off to our date with Deodato.
Oxford Video was situated on the ground floor of the legendary Oxford Books, a gigantic, warehouse-sized structure filled with every novel or periodical I'd ever heard of (an entirely separate building, Oxford Too, was home to the comic books), the sort of place in which people routinely spent their entire day. I'd cruised the video rental section many times, and was well aware of the selection by the time Dan and I showed up to acquire membership. Since neither of us had a credit card, I split the required fee with Dan and dashed off to take one step closer to disturbing our respective minds forever.
Our selections, "Nekromantik", "Caligula", and "Cannibal Holocaust", were certain to provide a three-course meal of all things naughty and horrifying. Looking back on it now,
I wish we'd have spread the marathon over a couple of days, chasing each film with acouple Daffy Duck cartoons, rather than douse ourselves with one unforgettably startling scene after another. We were merely teenagers looking for some dangerous fun, a time-honored rite of passage for any youth, doing so with cinema rather than drugs, alcohol or B&E.
In five years' time, I'd go on to see several more movies that had a lot in common with "Cannibal": "Trap Them And Kill Them" starring Laura Gemser, "Make Them Die Slowly" (which I witnessed on the big screen at Georgia State University), and "Jungle Holocaust". While they all feature their fair share of nudity, torture, castration, dismemberment and death, there's one important thing separating them from the notorious one I'd seen first: I'd readily view any of them again. "Cannibal Holocaust", in contrast, was an experience I don't care to repeat. There are films I watched as a kid that disturbed me, thus bringing about feelings and memories that are the opposite of those one desires to visit when seeing a movie, but this was different. By age 16, I'd seen a whole lot of bizarre and disgusting movies, surviving "Texas Chainsaw Massacre", "Dead Alive" and "Re-Animator" with flying colors (green and red, mostly).
The difference with "Cannibal" was that it so convincingly radiated an atmosphere of reality, driven home by what was most certainly real footage of animals being slaughtered, that I couldn't help but be upset by what I was seeing. Man's inhumanity to man was indeed an important subject to address, but doing so in such a graphic, unflinching way was hard to digest. What bothered me about it then, and what continued to bother me about it for years to come, was that "Cannibal Holocaust" was intended as entertainment, not an actual documentary or educational film. I'd never before seen a horror film that wanted to hurt me rather than thrill me, and it was a
difficult experience to say the least. Viewing it with Dan in the summer of '93, we joked through it and ate sub sandwiches like we did every time we sat and watched old
exploitation movies, but my drive home was much more somber, and it was the one I couldn't stop thinking about.
While certainly a visceral thing to witness, the true impact of "Cannibal Holocaust" is measured by how long the images, actors' facial expressions, music and even the quality of the film itself remain in your mind after the movie ends. I haven'twatched it in fifteen years because I don't need to. It's still there.
Fred Vogel Toe Tag Pictures, Director of Angust Underground series and The Redsin Tower.
Back in the day some of us use to tape trade. I had a friend who had his pulse on the genre and would hook me up with all kinds of videos from Richard Kern to the Guinea Pig films. It was the late eighties / early nineties when I saw CH for the first time. I'm not sure if it was a PAL VHS bootleg but the image was pretty shitty. I remember noticing right off that the guy from Debbie Does Dallas was in it...once I got over the porn novelty the movie's content hit me harder than most. I remember cringing at the animal violence and saying to myself how can they show this also the hand held look was the perfect escape for what followed. I was watching the movie alone and when the footage of the woman impaled came on the screen I stared at the TV in amazement.... How the fuck did they do that I thought to myself as well questioning that could this be real. It can't be real Mr Greenfeld was playing the lead. This has to be fake I thought to myself. I also remember the music from the films score floating around in my head for weeks. I showed as many people I could this movie. It wasn't till the late 90's when I found it again on DVD. I bought it instantly. This is an important film that inspired me as a filmmaker and still to this day I still cringe to the films content and that doesn't happen to me very often.
Well, my initial encounter with the nefarious CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST is a rather banal account. A demon from Hell didn't materialize before me and I didn't simultaneously puke and shit myself and fall into a coma or incur any other kind of trauma. It was about five years ago now (so I would've been 21), and I had been into obscure and cult exploitation movies for a while, including the Italian variety, so of course I had heard of this movie and its reputation of infamy. Having an appetite for cinema of an extreme and depraved nature, I naturally had to see it for myself, so bought an import copy (which I of course pawned off after snatching Grindhouse Releasing's awesome Criterion-esque DVD) from DiabolikDVD. com at a rather inflated price (I wasn't so aware of the bootleg market at that point), and with a slight nervousness slipped it in my player one lazy Saturday afternoon. Now before I had seen the similarly nasty CANNIBAL FEROX and Ruggero Deodato's own JUNGLE HOLOCAUST a.k.a. LAST CANNIBAL WORLD, and had even gotten a preview of the flick with Necrophagia's music video of the song based on it, so I had an idea of what to expect. Yes, the film is rough, and I guess belongs on a list as one of the most graphic movies of all time, although I wouldn't put it at the top. So that was how I first saw it, and I'm sorry it wasn't some kind of apocalyptic anecdote.
But I will say I do count it as being among some of my favorite exploitation movies, albeit not too high in the ranking. Because let's face it, it's definitely no masterpiece - there's some cheesy dialogue and huge leaps in logic here (especially the fact that the network had planned to air the footage on national television without even glancing at first. C'mon!), and it seems to just resort to gratuitous shock value too often. But these are common flaws in most Italian productions, and at the same time those things give them their charm. Then of course there's the genuine animal cruelty - definitely an aspect I have mixed feelings about. It's always upset me, but never to the point that I find it intolerable. After all, I'm no vegetarian myself, but the Animal Cruelty Free option on the Grindhouse Releasing DVD is a nice alternative for when I'm not feeling up to it. These aforementioned gripes aside, there is also a notable level of intelligence to the film that you don't find in any of its contemporaries, mainly in its satirical tackling of the news media and how it likes to distort and manipulate reality and its comments on civilized society - which unfortunately it has to beat you over the head with in the final line. On a technical level it is also noteworthy for its solid direction and the stirring soundtrack.
One little memory of interest I guess is a couple of years or so ago when it showed as one of the midnight movies locally. The controversial title had drawn a fairly sizeable crowd. A couple of young girls were sitting next to me, I think with their boyfriends in the row in front, and it was interesting to observe their reactions throughout the show. Ironically enough, they weren't too offended by the animal killings - they just made pitiful "ohhhh" sounds. It was the gang rape of the village girl by the documentary crew that finally hit their last nerve and drove them to the lobby for the remaining duration. Granted that's a harsh scene, but I think it's odd a simulated rape would get somebody over the actual brutal butchering and cooking of a tortoise. Oh well. And I think it's bizarre people can go down to their local Best Buy and pick up this and other movies of its ilk.
My first encounter with Cannibal Holocaust came more years ago than I care to remember, back in the good ol’ prehistoric days of VHS, just before the internet came to be the household tool that it is today. I found a copy of a book of horror movie essays and one of them, by John Skipp and Craig Spector, listed “The 13 Most Disturbing Movies of All Time”. The list included such cinematic atrocities as Ilsa, Salo, In a Glass Cage, Last House on the Left, etc. Cannibal Holocaust was listed among them. And, in my post-high school years as a film “scholar”, I was determined to see everything on that list.
The problem was, of course, running the damned things down, because not everything on that list was available domestically on VHS. Fortunately, I was a member of an elite, underground group of bootleggers who sold and traded the most obscure titles. I say this proudly, now that everyone with a DSL connection is considered a video pirate. Back in these days, you needed to know people. You needed a network, not a connection. And, most importantly, you needed to own two VCRs.
Last House I’d already seen a number of times, in different edits. That was no problem. Check one. It took me years to run down In A Glass Cage and even then years to get around to watching it, and by that time, it had been released on DVD. So out went my old, deteriorating, nth generation tape.
Salo, One Hundred Days of Sodom, Pier Paolo Passolini’s final film, was considered art, so that was actually easy to find. Unfortunately, that was the one I started with.
It took a few weeks of recovery before I could watch the next one I dredged up. Which happened to be Deodato’s masterpiece, Cannibal Holocaust. After one viewing, I started to lose my taste for “film as endurance test.” Where Salo dealt with themes and a certain level of evil (Italian Fascism and coprophilia) that I wasn’t quite ready to handle, Cannibal Holocaust operated on a more surface, yet visceral, level. The gore and the cruelty to humans I dealt with handily. I’d been a life-long gorehound and I am still captivated, to this day, with the sudden and violent impalement of the young tribal girl. But the on-screen and very real animal slaughter was more than I could take. For this same reason I’ve avoided the other Italian cannibal movies as well as Mondo Cane and the Faces of Death series. I just saw no reason for the real-life butchery. One of the wonders of film is that it’s not real, no matter how realistic you can make it. If I wanted to watch animal cruelty, I could go visit a slaughterhouse.
Between the actual horrors, I find Cannibal Holocaust to be alternately dull and insipid, but those are traits I often find in Italian horror. I was admittedly intrigued by the “this is a true story and this is the footage recovered” presentation, but I grew weary of the full cast of utterly unlikable characters and the gore-for-gore’s-sake delivery. Ultimately, I didn’t see the point in the exercise. The “who are the real savages?” interior theme, I felt, had been done before and better. Finally, the film ended, with the film-within-the-film burned and I went off to do other things.
Yep, I was disturbed. It lived up to its place on the list, that was for sure. But like most of the other movies on the list, I was left with a feeling of “so what?” Beyond the iconic impaling scene, which is, indeed, haunting, what was the point of the movie even existing? And worse, what was the point of the others that it spawned?
As usual, I’m the minority opinion with regards to this movie. Mostly, I mourn the turtle
Actually watching Cannibal Holocaust wasn't a task, nor was it a terrible puke inducing experience that its reputation forced me to expect. Yes it is shocking but the animal killing infamy lead me believe that the film was absent of culture, satire and genuine terror.
I agree with the masses as far as the score goes. When I watch the tribe and their home set ablaze to the entertainment of the antagonists, all while realizing their manipulating the footage, its truly a heartbreaking moment. Forget the ritual wife killing, the manual abortion or the throat slicing of a muskrat. What damaged me was the sheer vanity of the documentary filmmakers.
The in ignorant or unaware circles seemed to be not only the real deal but thought of as real by those who didn't see it. A lot of filmgoers now days are savvy to editing and reality but back then people went about saying the film was legit. Or that’s at least what I read.
The shocks, the lead porn turned decent actor, the tribes and the fact that I believe the film to be the best edited story in the history of the genre make this a picture worth talking about and watching over and over. I dig Umberto Lenzi and all those who helped start the Cannibal subgenre but Cannibal Holocaust is by far the best of the bunch and easily a top 10 horror movie. Not for reputation, shocks or even its staying power. This film amazes me for how well structured and how it embodies true terror, horror and human ugliness.
I first say Cannibal Holocaust on VHS bootleg that my brother bought at his first convention. (Back when he wasn't so uptight about buying bootlegs at conventions). This would have been early 2002 I believe maybe 2003. This was before it was released by Grindhouse Releasing. I remember being shocked about how brutal it was and way different then the over the top Cannibal Ferox. The violence towards any living creature (man, woman, animal) had such a shocking impact that I found myself not being entertained, but more appalled by it. I had not seen too many hardcore horror films so I was a little taken aback by it's more realistic approach compared to similar cannibal film fare. I've grown to appreciate it's take and manner and I'm not quite as "shocked" by it like I first time I viewed, but it still left a impact.
I'm Henry Silva host of "Bullshit or Not" and today I will be torturing and killing cityfolk!
Just a little hill folk hospitality in action.
Rule #1: Never, ever have an affair with Henry Silva's wife and think you will get away unscathed. 
Rule #2: No matter how hot that blond little hill tart is, no matter what she tells you. Her husband WILL find out and THIS WILL HAPPEN TO YOU!
