HALLOWEEN HORROR CHALLENGE Movie #23 - LEWD LIZARD (1985)

LEWD LIZARD (1985) aka CHONG
D. Norman Chu
REALLY shitty bootleg

This bit of total insanity from your friends in Hong Kong is easily one of the most outrageous ideas for a movie that I have witnessed in some time. A total gross out sexploitaion horror hybrid that aims to get a retching sound out of most anyone. Anyone but those with lizard fetishes that is.

The tortured insanity that passes as plot is as follows. A young man (played by director Norman Chu) is spurned by his cute girlfriend because she has run off and married the local Mafiaso. She explains to him that she was more or less pushed into the marriage, but doesn't love his dumb ass anyway. She is much better off now. So while in a major depression our hero is hanging out on the beach and discovers dozens of tiny little lizards. No bigger than your pinky finger these guys are fast and unpredictable.  So Chu scoops them up and take a whole bunch of them home. Then suddenly he is peeping on women undressing, taking showers or hanging out at the beach. Why is he doing this? I am glad you asked because I asked the same question watching this filthy movie. He is stealing the panties of unsuspecting ladies. Stopping to sniff them to make sure they are saturated with the love juices of the women he stole them from. Soon it all makes sense as he uses the panties to concoct a potion that he then injects into the lizards (for real, yet another Hong Kong horror that PETA would love) sending the reptiles into a frenzy of pussy crazed lust!

He stalks out various women that have spurned him, laughed at him or just generally pissed him off and attacks them. Pulling off there clothes in what looks to be a vicious rape. But instead he just dumps a beaker of the lizards onto the ladies and presto! They crawl into the women's underwear and right into the baby ovens.

Soon the ladies are writing around in pleasure as the phantom reptiles go to work. But as the women screech into ecstasy the lizards begin to eat they wear further into their supple bodies. Chu eventually meets a girl he doesn't hate (during one of the earlier scenes he screams out "I HATE ALL WOMEN"!) and they spend a day of happy romance. But she finds a jar of his sex addict lizards and all does not end well for her. Eventually he gets around to tormenting his ex, but some soul searching may be in order.

Frankly the movie is terrible, terrible acting, writing, direction and even cinematography, But what it lacks in coherency or even talent, it makes up for with sheer audacity. I guarantee you have not seen a movie like this one before. If you have you have been sinking into some fetishes that you probably shouldn't. 

Review © Andrew Copp

Humping trash could give you an infection...

Day twenty of the September Exploitation Challenge (yes I have fallen WAY behind) is when I took out the trash...

TRASH HUMPERS (2010)
D. Harmony Korine
Alcove Entertainment
Shot on VHS!!!

I will freely admit I went into this wanting to hate it. Figuring I would hate it. The trailer doesn’t try to sell it for anything it is not. The movie is basically just Harmony Korine and a couple of other people dressed in cheap joke store old people mask, running around acting stupid and literally humping trash cans. To make matters worse it is shot on old school sub-standard VHS equipment, edited between two VCR’s (the play, pause and rewind on screen displays have as much screen time as some of the characters) complete with tape drop out and fucked up color balance. The whole thing is designed to look cheap, immature, and like it was done by people with no skills or talent. I suppose the argument here is that the movie is designed to be “anti-art” or “anti-filmmaking” since Korine was part of Lars Von-Trier’s whole DOGMA 95 deal back in the day, and Korine’s best film came out of his time working within those constraints (I am immensely fond of JULIAN DONKEY BOY, but generally detest the dude’s other work).  So maybe that is his point. Or maybe he was just screwing around. Who knows. 

 "One critic called this JACKASS for the Psuedo-intellectual set. I can see that being accurate."

Which ever, he managed what would have been completely impossible had any other person made this exact same movie. He got it released, put into major festivals, it played art house theaters and now is seeing the light of day not only on DVD but in some rather cool special edition packaging.  Had any other underground filmmaker made this exact same movie they would have been laughed out of town, called an idiot, and had their equipment smashed. Their career would be effectively over. But oddly enough Korine has seen some of the better reviews he has gotten in a long time. Which I think goes to show that a cult of personality can certainly get you a long long way in ths business. 

 "Trash collection for the 21st century."

But what is most important is the actual work itself. Irregardless of my wanting to hate it because of everything I state above, I actually did not. TRASH HUMPERS is far from a good movie, hell you almost cannot even call it a movie, but there is a certain quality about it that becomes mesmerizing after a while. While most of it is inane, stupid, puerile and without a purpose, once in a while there are images that stumble across the screen to grab hold of the mind’s eye and stay there. Sometimes those will be humorous such as the little bespectacled kid in the three piece suite explaining the proper way to bash a baby doll's head in. Sometimes it is just a flash of beautiful scenery or landscape. By the half hour mark I found myself wondering if Korine knew, or even cared what he was putting on screen at all, or if this was just complete randomness. Then suddenly there is a jarring shot of a nude dead body, laying in a field, just like a piece of trash the movie has been obsessing over. This feels like the filmmakers just found this dead man and shot it for the movie (though clearly they did not). At this point I became aware that the cameraman is supposed to be a character in the movie too as he is singing a little nursery rhyme about “three little devils who jumped over a wall” as he surveys this corpse. The moment is supremely haunting. Maybe because so much of the half hour leading up was so deadening, I don’t know? But it got my attention. From this point on a tiniest thread of a plot had started to emerge in which the four characters we have been watching fuck around, break shit and hump trash are also traveling around killing people. There seems to be an obsession with baby dolls going on throughout the proceedings (one of the “characters” is female it is important to note) which eventually ties in to a haunting and surprisingly, in its own twisted way, tender finale. 

 "I think she was one of my high school teachers."

The movie is still more of an art piece/ endurance test than an actual film, but in the second half it at least starts to resemble a narrative. With more of the startling and haunting moments seeming to be on purpose as opposed to things that just happened to be in front of the camera at the right time.

TRASH HUMPERS might be best described as a movie to watch once. It might be fun to see in an art theater with a crowd though. To see who it pisses off and who over pontificates it to the point of great art. Because at the end of the day I still get the feeling Harmony Korine is having a laugh at the art scene that has embraced him as much as he was just tooling around fucking off while making the movie. But to my shock and surprise his end product has something there to offer when I seriously thought it would not at all. 

Review © Andy Copp

White Slavery never look so good!

Day Seven of the September exploitation challenge:

OLGA’S GIRLS (1964)
D. Joseph P. Mawra
Synapse Ent
1.77

In the mid sixties hardcore hadn’t become legal yet, and even sexploitation could get you in trouble in some regions of the country. So to show naked breasts or sexual topics you had to couch them in other kinds of stories so you could argue before various censor boards or film commissions that the movies had "socially redeeming values". Out of this the “Roughies” were born. Hard bitten almost Film Noir movies that were basically sex movies built into crime films that usually revolved around things like prostitution or white slavery. Topics that made it so the filmmakers could easily top load the pictures with lots of gyrating naked babes, grinding and groping and heavy handed moralizing to satisfy the puritanical eyes of those above board.

Joseph P. Mawra was a master at this underground form. His OLGA films remained in film circulation well into the late 70’s even though they were shot in black and white, without sync sound, and had not a lick of hardcore sex, or even really any real simulated sex. What Mawra delivered was a seedy, dreamlike atmosphere that very little other films could match. A netherworld of busty criminal babes in black lace granny panties, stiletto heels and bad attitudes. Shot in arch black and white hues and wide angle lenses that made the already big breasts look even bigger. But his one two punch master stroke was adding a staggering level of S+M to the already heady mix and casting a model named Audrey Campbell as the lead role of OLGA the bitch Madame overlord.  These two elements are the very things that set this series of films apart from the rest and has made them favorites of sleaze mongers everywhere.

"Audrey Campbell is Olga!" 

OLGA’S GIRLS is the second in the series and finds OLGA doing exactly what she does best. The film opens with her procuring a couple of new girls from Johnny Gordon aka The Pimp. The hilarious scene has the two girls prancing themselves to and fro as Olga and Gordon haggle a price. Gordon asks for $300 but she bargains him down to a “more reasonable offer” for both girls!

It is important to mention that there is no sync dialogue in the Olga films but the actors talk as if there is. Then a narrator literally tells us what is supposedly being said. A male narrator tells us most of the story, but Audrey Campbell actually narrates her own dialogue. This device creates some moments of surrealism as things will be unfolding on screen and the narration will only mildly match up. Also it is clear that the narration was not written until well after the movie was shot, maybe even until the day they were recording it, as many times they lines will contradict themselves, stumble over, and repeat what was just said.

"The blow torch is put to rather reckless use for bra removal."

Turns out Olga is not only running prostitution but a lot of dangerous “hard drugs” such as heroin and marijuana(!) which she leaves to her girls to prepare. Often she will catch one of the girls sneaking a puff and have to drag them into the torture dungeon, where the movie really comes to life. The girls are put into chastity belts since “they will not be able to ply their trade and make money, and with no money not be able to buy drugs and get their fix!” Then whipped and tortured. Olga discovers there is a snitch among her girls and has to systematically torture all of them until she finds the one who is guilty. So we get a parade of topless girls being electrocuted, put in stocks, poked, prodded, whipped, the works.  Another girl under the stress of this “investigation” sneaks her first mainline shot of heroin and dies. Olga has the body dismembered and burned in the furnace so the Mafia bosses don’t discover it. Olga finds the girl ratting her out and has her tongue cut out. On screen.

Eventually a couple of the other girls decide that if they work together they can over throw Olga. They manage to wrestle her down and get her into her own dungeon and torture her with a weird block of wood lined with nails. So she sets her sites on finding these girls and getting revenge. 


Modern day sleaze fans may find the Olga movie’s to be too tame or easy for their tastes. But there is a mood, and a real sense of sickness to them that is hard to shake off. The feeling the Mawra was really into what he was presenting pervades the whole affair. None of it is really terribly dirty or offensive. But the way it is all so lovingly photographed and staged shows a hand behind the camera that clearly LOVES what he is showing. The shapely women, the bondage, the lingerie, the whole fetishistic nature of the beast. Clearly the man was at home. I can dig that. You should to. 

 "Clash of the basement titans!"

Check out the TEMPLE OF SCHLOCK Blog for some original Ad Mat scans for some of the OLGA films!

Review © Andy Copp