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.
THE CURIOUS CASE OF THE CAMPUS CORPSE (1977) aka THE HAZING D. Douglass Curtis SHREIK SHOW/ CODE RED 1.85 The potboiler released by Code Red is an unusual beast indeed. Billed as a horror film in some circles and a comedy in others, it really is neither. It is a bizarre attempt at a campus based thriller with a twist ending.
The movie follows rising track start Craig Lewis (Jeff East, the spitting image of William Katt) as he starts at the best school on the continent. He foolishly agrees to pledge the big frat house, The Delts along with his new friend Barney (Charles Martin Smith, the "name" involved here since he was hot off of AMERICAN GRAFFITI). But during their hazing in which they are forced to run across country in their jock straps, Barney is badly hurt. By the time Craig returns, Barney is dead leaving the fellas to hide the body and come up with a plan to fake his death. Naturally none of it goes quite as planned.
This older drive-in style potboiler
is one of the releases from Code Red that features ex-wrestler Maria
as a host. Seems that most of the movies she hosts are really bad.
Some so bad they are great like NIGHT OF THE DEMON or MARDI GRAS
MASSACRE, but others like this one leave you wondering why they
bothered to put it out at all. Even she comments after the movie on
how futile and pointless it all was.
The story begins promisingly enough
with a very well acted prologue. An Indian maiden is stripped bare
and set off on her horse to die. Turns out the soldiers and townsfolk
all conspired to kill her and lied about the charges she was
sentenced over. Cut to modern day and the town has become a
dilapidated tourist trap. Resided over by an old man (Aldo Ray) his
psychotic wife (Virginia Mayo) and his two sons. Seems the lady of
the house never got over an affair she had with old Aldo's brother
when they were all much younger and has driven herself insane with
the good memories of loving this man. This man she can never have
because he up and vanished one day. The kids hate their father and
disrespect him at every turn. Into this mess comes a young woman (Ann
Michelle) who sets the delicate balance of the house askew. The
eldest son decides to put mom into a nursing home and sell the land.
Meanwhile mysteriously a phone booth has been installed in the
cemetery next door. A phone-line to talk to the dead.
The problem with HAUNTED is that it is
slow. People talk a lot, and the town has a weird atmosphere
to it. But as for action, there literally is none. Nothing scary
happens until well past the one hour mark and then it is so little
that you are shocked when the movie is over.
HUMAN EXPERIMENTS (1980) AKA - BEYOND THE GATE D. Gregory Goodell VHS (Supposedly Coming on DVD From Code Red - Some day)
Linda Haynes plays a country western singer who ends up running afoul in a small redneck town and gets blamed for a particularly savage multiple murder. Because of this she ends up doing a life sentence in a women's prison slash sanitarium where the warden is doing bazaar behavior modification experiments using the inmates.
After a truly gripping opening ten minutes where Haynes stumbles on the house filled with fresh dead bodies and a teen boy waiting with a shotgun that she is forced to kill in self defense, the movie slows down and changes gears. There is some really unsettling scenes when we first get into the prison establishing how far degenerated several of the clearly experimented on inmates are as well as a humiliating bit of preparation by the guards and nurses. But after that it is really dull going for a looooong stretch of time. Nothing scary happens, and nothing sleazy really happens either for a good half hour, making this neither work as a horror film or a women in prison flick. Not until a prisoner hangs themselves at the 45 minute mark and then Haynes masturbates with her own tears about ten minutes later does the movie hit any kind of peak. After about the hour mark that great low budget bugaboo the crappy performing band makes an appearance, this time no name band called SATAN AND THE LUCIFERS! I also forgot to mention the creepster opening moment when bar owner Aldo Ray tries to get her to make it with him and she refuses and he calls her a cunt. Super classy guy.
A lot does need to be said for Linda Haynes performance though as she is quite good with the limited material going for the slow burn breakdown. Geoffrey Lewis is creepy as shit as the doctor running the joint too, with lots of scenes of his eyes filling the frame as he looks through the metal slats that peek into the doors on the solitary confinement rooms or or as he talks about his entomology hobbies.
Unfortunately the movie feels endlessly padded with lots of scenes of the women eating in the mess hall, or working in the fields, or sleeping. Yes we get it, they are in prison but the movie needs to get on with the storyline , not lingering around waiting for something to happen.
Finally in the last fifteen to twenty minutes the movie takes off and begins to move along and take shape. As Haynes character attempts to escape the prison, the film turns inside out and literally becomes a vivid horror film. She begins to find bodies of other inmates who have been part of the experiments and hallucinate her worst fears. By the end we realize the full extent o the awful things the doctor is doing to his patients and with the full cooperation of the other inmates.
By no means a successful film, but there is a mean streak throughout HUMAN EXPERIMENTS that makes it fascinating, and there is certainly pieces and parts that are undeniably effective. Too bad this is a movie that is not as strong as a whole as it is in parts. If only that midsection could be tightened up this could be a really good movie. The opening is great and the last twenty minutes are solid. But the midsection is very hard to get through.
REPO CHICK (2009)
D. Alex Cox
Industrial Ent.
1.85 (Shot HD)
Director Alex Cox returns to the well that got him cult fame by attempting a pseudo-sequel to his first hit REPO MAN. But this movie is markedly different in every way. Where as REPO MAN had a dark comic punk edge, REPO CHICK has a candy colored, post modern, almost kids movie approach to the material. All the sets and props are made from kids toys or cartoons, and put in via green screen, the colors scheme is day glow and pastels and the comedy is broad and over the top. In many ways this is the mirror image of REPO MAN and not just in the gender switch of the lead role.
The movie opens with an explanation of how the biggest growth industry in the United States and maybe the world is debt collection due to the world being own be banks and lenders. Actual companies like GMAC are name checked as having lulled the working poor into loans they cannot pay back, where as the Repossession industry has bloomed. There is also an explanation about several crawler missiles that have gone missing and probably hidden in some lost trains or cars somewhere in the USA. But don’t worry this wont really play into the plot all that much, unlike the original film. Then we meet our lead Pixxi De La Chasse (Jaclyn Jonet) a rich bitch socialite clearly based on Paris Hilton who has been disowned by her family unless she can get a job. When her car is repossessed she ends up working for the company that takes it and becomes an overnight success as a repo man because she is ruthless at taking things from other people.
Much more so than her soft-hearted bosses who have a tendency to bend the rules a little here and there. She becomes obsessed with finding a legendary lost train (that we as the audience know contains those missiles mentioned before) because the reward is a million dollars. Meanwhile a terrorist cell has vowed to eliminate Golf and plans to hijack the train. Naturally Pixxi will end up in the way, and the only possible savior of the country and leisure sports.
The movie is experimental in approach with all the actors giving stylized performances as if they are in an animated film. As mentioned before all of this takes place in front of a green screen which is less than effective in most cases. More often then not you are fully aware of the artifice of it all, (which seems to be the point most of the time) but it takes you out of the movie.
The animation, use of models and outright toys for action and props is cute and endearing for a while, but once the movie gets to about the halfway point that wears off. I found myself wanting the movie to get to some sort of point. Instead a bunch of characters end up on the train as the film drags to a crawl. Characters come and go but not much of consequence happens, even if some of the political satire seems valid.
While sometimes amusing, occasionally cynical and funny, the movie never settle sin to have enough bite to sink in and be worthwhile. Maybe worth a rental of a curiosity look but not the cult classic the original is by a long shot.
Day 18 of the September Exploitation challenge rocks us down under:
STUNT ROCK (1977)
D. Brian Trenchard Smith
CODE RED
2.35
This is a man’s film. A movie that real men can appreciate because it is about STUNTSandROCK MUSIC. The ladies might like it because of the rock music (the wommins love the rock music) but admit it, us guys love to see dudes putting their lives at risk. Australian director Brian Trenchard Smithhas the brilliant idea to have the countries greatest stuntman Grant Pageaccompany him on this cinematic journy into mayhem.
The movie has no plot, just watch asGrant Page risks his life showing us how he makes his day to day living jumping off cliffs, smashing through car windows, shooting over canyons, getting set on fire etc. But wait! Grant’s nephew is in the American rock bandSORCERY! What we now callDragon Metal, Sorcery was a Zepplinesque L.A. rock outfit that went for the full on LORD OF THE RINGS stage show in which Merlin battles Satan with all kinds of pyrotechnics and an on stage onslaught of rock and roll savagery. So the film cuts back and forth between Grant doing his stunts, and Sorcery rocking the shit out of the world to great effect.
"Action at 100 Decibels per hour!"
There is a VERY slight story about a reporter doing a story on Grant while he is on the job doing stunts for a local TV show. A minor subplot has that show’s lead actress becoming friends with them, going to the Sorcery rock shows and parties and eventually getting to do a couple of dangerous stunts herself. But the meat of the movie is Page and Sorcery doing their colorful thing.
"Who let the old guy on stage? No wait it is Merlin from the band SORCERY!"
One really horrifying stunt has Page diving down a rope at free fall, which in and off itself is a pretty harrowing stunt, but he takes it to the edge by doing it with a full burn. He calmly explains to us how the forty second delay he has worked out will keep the fire from burning throgh the ropes he is using keeping him from plummeting to the rock cliff below. But as you watch it in 400 frame per second slow motion it looks like he is going to burn alive and free fall to his death at any moment. Naturally he pulls it off without a hitch. But it is a sight to behold.
"All in a day's work for Grant Page. Or was it the Taco Bell he ate?"
Trenchard-Smith chooses to capture all of this is true seventies style with tons of split screens and super slow motion. The stunts seem like the are still in time they are so slow, so you get to see every piece of glass or lick of the flame, and the split screens feel like you are getting every angle, though sometimes it is just the same camera angle just flipped over. But it all makes for some visually dynamic stuff.
"Even the dog is a manly rocker in STUNT ROCK!"
In a lot of ways this is MTV several years before the was MTV. Or think of it as LED ZEPPLIN’S THE SONG REMAINS THE SAME without the fantasy sequences and replaced with lots of bone crunching stunt work.
"The babes of STUNT ROCK try out the Blue Man Group thing."
CODE RED’s DVD is extremely bad ass. A two disc set packed to the gills with interviews, commentarys, an older documentary Brian Trenchard Smith did called THE STUNT MEN, and tons of other CODE RED trailers. The 2.35 scope frame is the way the movie was always meant to be seen and after years of the badly cropped VHS this is a wonder to behold.
A note about CODE RED. Bill who runs that joint has announced publicly that in 2011 he plans to shut the doors. Thanks to a lot of internet bitching, and fan backlash, combined with really poor sales on amazing discs like this one, he is throwing in the towel. It is a complete fucking shame that a company that put their heart and soul into releasing great little gems is having to shut their doors and even worse because THE FANS didn’t support them. But when sales for a title are barely cracking 300 something is majorly wrong. This disc is amazing, I’m glad I own it any self respecting cult movie fan should.
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.
SLAUGHTERHOUSE (1987) D. Rick Roessler LUCKY 13 ENT. FULL SCREEN
This johnny come late to the party TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE rip off really doesn't deliver the goods. I remember reading a pretty positive review in Chas Balun's MORE GORE SCORE and kinda wanting to check it out for all these years. But ultimately outside of a couple of decent gore scenes, and one actors really weird line reading of the word "crowbar" (the dude says "Cra-BAR" emphasized just like that) I'm not so sure how much I can recommend here.
The movie is about an old coot and his semi-retarded three hundred pound son who used to run a hog slaughterhouse on their property. That is until things went mechanized and their employees went to the shiny new one in the city. Seems now that their old partners are wanting to buy the property and are offering a pretty fair deal for it. Even willing to keep them on as consultants and let them keep their house and live there. But the old man isn't having none of that new fangled city bullshit! He would never let 30% fat get into the product! He could butcher 50 hogs by hand in the time those damn machines could do 15! (See where this is going?)
Stop you're bellyaching! Your boyfriend was messing with the pigs, so you both have to DIE!
Meanwhile his goofball son Buddy has spotted some fuckhead teens goofing around on the property tormented the hogs so he bashed their brains in with a shovel. Can't say I blame him, I mean this dude was making all kinds of noise, swinging a shovel around threatening the piggies. So fuck him! He had to die and his ho too! This just gives Pappy an idea to kill off those people who want to buy the property, so they start luring them back to Buddy can swing his ridiculously over sized clever at them or dump them in a body mulching machine. The other teens in the movie are making a scary music video and start creeping around the slaughterhouse and get caught up too.
Buddy in all his snot-faced, smelly, no hygiene glory!
There is some splashy, surprisingly effective gore, and Buddy is disgusting with permanent snot running down his face and bad hygiene. But more often than not the movie resorts to the popular 1987 cliche's of not funny one liners and teens doing really stupid things to further the plot. It was while watching this that it dawned on me while I like early seventies horror movies like SCREAM BLOODY MURDER so much. Because the gaggle of brain dead teenagers hadn't become the staple for every horror film yet. Even if it was a slasher movie, it wasn't necessary for the killer to be stalking a cookie cutter gang of obnoxious teens. That was an 80's thing and infinitely less interesting to me (and only gets worse and the nineties and two thousands pressed on).
This was obviously shot on a minuscule budget but still on film. It looks to be 16mm as the whole video revolution was just right around the corner. Technically it isn't terribly made, everything is done okay, it is lit fine, edited fine, effects are fine.It just fails to deliver anything special or that you haven't seen done elsewhere and better. Oddly enough if this had been made five years earlier it would have certainly played drive ins all over the south I am sure. The DVD is decked out with tons and tons of extras, but I must admit I did not watch them.
For Day #14 of the Halloween Horror Challenge I stopped back into the work/studio of Japanese Madman Hideshi Hino and his THEATER OF HORROR!!!
HIDESHI HINO'S THEATER OF HORROR: DEAD GIRL WALKING (2004)D. Kazihiru Yokoyama?????S.O.V.
Another entry in the shot for the home video market of short horror flicks based on stories by Japan's Manga comic master of the macabre Hideshi Hino (see the entry for BOY FROM HELL for details about Hino). This episode deals with a teenage girl who suddenly when morning dies without any rhyme or reason while watering her precious flower in her bedroom. the problem is that she is still mobile and moving around like normal. The local doctor pronounces her dead and her family immediately starts treating her like a pariah. They encase her room in plastic and ignore her as much as possible. But when she begins to stink they decide she is too much to bear and promptly decide to embalm her, against her will. All this does is make her mobility even worse, causing more bruising and rot to set in. So the family bonds together deciding to cremate her to get her out of their lives leading to a bedroom blood bath, that leaves her mother with one less eye and her little sister dead. Neither of which is her fault, but causes her to go on the run nonetheless. On the road she will encounter her old friends who are naturally terrified of her, an unsympathetic farmer and a charleton who wants to add her to his freakshow. All while rotting away even further. This neat little short seems to be making some commentary on inter-family relationships and how parents can't seem to relate to their children. How they only can deal with them when they are perfect in their eyes, but there is a problem they rush to get rid of them as fast as they can. The movie also seems to be making a commentary on dealing with death as well on how some folks refuse to acknowledge it. Wanting instead to immediately get rid of every ounce of the loved one, so they don't have to feel their presence anymore. Better they should be gone for good than to feel any sort of pain or sorrow. The parents in this movie, never feel any sadness or regret at their daughter's passing. As soon as she is announced dead they immediately go to shame, and then anger without passing go. Perhaps there is a very Japanese commentary in there, but of course not being from Japan, I cannot be sure on that. The end of the movie, which I will not give away, comments on the whole circle of spirit thing, with how one cannot die, without feeding the cosmos in some way, continuing the cycle. Stylistically this is very interesting. Even though shot on video, there is a lot of care in the look and feel of this episode. It starts out in color, and then once she dies, it goes to black and white and remains that way, except for one flashback and the final shot. The entire movie is from the dead girl's point of view as the world has been drained of all color. It is also shot and scored like a classic 1930's horror film. The dead girl becomes a classic monster ala Frankenstein or one of Lon Chaney's creations where she is put upon and hunted, though she is a pathetic creature who has done absolutely nothing wrong and deserves our sympathy. She is hunted for being different and suffering. Even the score reminds one of the movies from that era. Another nice touch is that she has no dialogue once she is dead. All she has is an internal monologue that we see as on screen inter titles, not unlike a silent film would use. So her world is completely alien and closed off, with only us the viewers being part of it.
The only thing that doesn't really work is the climax. I can see were it would have worked in a comic book (were I am sure this originated) but as a movie it comes off cheap, silly and out of place. the movie is clearly going for a tragic climax, then tries to go around it, and then circle back. Plus the digital effect used is sub-public access phony and takes you so far out of the proceedings that it is hard to get back in for the final bit, which is rather touching.
With this being a movie called DEAD GIRL WALKING I am sure the gore hounds are wanting to know if it delivers. There is some gore on hand as she falls apart, with her tongue and arm falling off. Most nasty is a scene where her colon and intestines drop out of her ass while she is on stage at the geek show. That even took me for a loop, though it is more sad than outright gross. The slaughter/ knife fight with her family at the mid-point has some arterial spray that you have come to expect in Japanese movies as well.
All in all a fun and fairly rewarding entry into this series. I'm looking forward to the rest of them.
This APHEX TWIN video for RUBBER JOHNNY doesn't have a god damned thing to do with HIDESHI HINO or this series. But it is super damn creepy and the deformed monster kid in it reminds me of something that would being one of Hino's comics. Since i can't find anymore clips on line from this series, this will have to do.
On Day Number Nine I took in this surprisingly faithful Clive Barker movie.
CLIVE BARKER'S BOOK OF BLOOD (2008) D. JOHN HARRISON LIGHTENING PICTURES 1.85
This superior adaptation of the first two short stories in Clive Barker's famous collection has been searching for a distributor for some time now. The reasons why mystify me, because the film is actually quite good. Maybe it's because it's a slow burner, maybe it's because it's not about a serial killer or teenagers running from a guy in a mask, so no one knew just how to market it. Maybe it's because of the fit Lion's Gate threw about the last Clive Barkerfilm, THE MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN, causing it to be a major flop and no one thought this more cerebral movie would make it in the market place. Who knows what the reasoning is in Hollywood, but the final call here is that this is a rare case of a film adaptation of a book that is both faithful and well-done.
The story is about a paranormal writer who discovers a house in which a teenager girl was brutally killed by some unseen force. This writer (Sofie Ward) also teaches at the local university and meets a young man who was famous as a teen because he had a premonition of his brother's car crash before it happened and therefore becoming a minor celebrity because of his mentalist powers. They team up to investigate the haunting in this house as well as the sexual tension between them. Soon mysterious writings are appearing on the walls while he is locked in the upstairs attic, nude, to sleep. Her and her research partner become convinced there are spirits in the house.
(SPOILERS AHEAD) But it turns out the young man is taking them for a ride: he's faking proof of the haunting to get into the pants of the woman and make himself important again. Unfortunately, the ghosts there are none too happy with his nonsense and feel no problem about taking it out on his flesh to prove a point. Hence the title of the movie.
The film is a slow-moving character piece that relies on mood, tension, and performance to get the fear across. There are not a lot of huge jump-type scares, but instead a sense of mounting dread that builds as the movie flows along. For me, it was a little hard to judge because I had read the stories it was based on (BOOK OF BLOOD and ON JERUSALEM STREET, respectively) many years ago, and even as a project in screenwriting, wrote my drafts of them in college. So I knew what was coming at all times. But I must say i was impressed with how the shorts were expanded to feature length, without dragging it out too much. There is also a wraparound story about a bounty hunter capturing the young man to skin him a live for a collector that is a pretty nice addition to the story. The finale when all the effects are wheeled out is very effective (though all pretty much CGI), the ghosts are very creepy, and the landscape representing the highways of the dead look remarkably like what I had imagined many years ago reading the books. The film also has a very adult streak of sexuality to it that is refreshing. Once again carried over from the story, it's nice to see a movie handle sex in an adult manner that is not embarrassing or juvenile. The couple of sex scenes here are rather hot and genuine, serving the story well. There is also a ton of nudity, most of it male (though a lack of penis for the ladies, unfortunately), but lead actress Sofie Ward has nipples that could poke out someone's eye. Very impressive indeed.
If I have a complaint at all, it's that in a few places the script goes all over obvious, emphasizing things far more than necessary for the dumb people in the audience. For example, the entire crux of the movie rests on the idea that the dead have "highways" on which they walk through the after life. This is explained in a bit of unneeded narration over the opening credits. Dummy narration, as I call it, that doesn't need to be there for any reason whatsoever, because as soon as the movie proper opens the main character EXPLAINS this again onscreen. In the last third of the movie, Sofie Ward's character explains it again. And then finally the last line of the movie explains it AGAIN, but with a further riff to wrap it up. So basically it is explained four different times for the dumbasses in the audience who can't grasp what's going on. Which sucks, because the rest of the movie is not that pandering.
Otherwise,the film is a pretty crisp, solid rendering of two of Barker's better short stories. Now if someone will get down to doing THE SKINS OF THE FATHERS, JAQUELIN ESS HER LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT and SON OF CELLULOID, all will be right with the world. (Okay that someone needs to be me, so someone get to financing those projects for me right now!!!)
THE STRANGENESS (1980) D. Melanie Ann Phillips Code Red DVD 1.66
This little seen gem from the 80's can now finally get its due thanks to this special edition from CODE RED. The book NIGHTMARE USAfrom Stephen Throweralerted fans to the existence of this monster mash, causing many of us to go on a frenzy looking for old VHS copies to check it out. Finally getting to see it is worth the wait. While it is not a classic, it is an incredibly fun throwback to 50's genre conventions, with an air of 80's low budget D.I.Y. inventiveness.
The story follows a group of miners-for-hire about to go into a long boarded up set of mines to look for rumored gold deposits for an unnamed corporation. Seems they want to re-open the place, if the price warrants it. Along for the ride is a busy body journalist and his sexy wife to chronicle the expedition, and a grizzled mining veteran who we are told is English but has a very Australian accent. As they make their way into the tunnels, they start to discovers remnants of former miners and other oddities pointing towards the fact that there is something very, very wrong in there. The journalist keeps telling them about the history of people disappearing in the caves. Add to that the American Indian legends surrounding the area and it all spells trouble. Naturally it is only a matter of time before a big stop motion monster starts slurping up the cast and spitting them out to eat later on.
The supplements to the is movie reveal that it was shot on a paltry $25,000 budget! Low even by today's ultra-low budget quickly standards. Take into consideration that this was shot on film (the norm for those days), had a giant monster (stop motion, which required special photography as well as a monster) and was 80% shot on sets, and the achievement here is simply astounding. The movie itself has a lot of pacing problems; to call it a slow burner is to be kind. Most of the action is located in the final third, with a lot of bickering and build up coming before hand. The acting is basically one-take community theater level, which the filmmakers all own up to, but is certainly no worse that dozens of other drive-in era movies of the time period. What really elevates the film is the cinematography. Printed too dark to even be seen on all previous video editions, this DVD is the first time the cinematography is clear enough to be appreciated for just how good it actually is. Often just lit by flares or lanterns, it is one creepy-ass looking film, made even more purposefully awkward by odd close-ups and cramped angles inside the caves. The film is quite claustrophobic thanks to the cinematography, which is mind blowing when revealed that it was almost all shot on one very cramped set. The score is also incredibly good, with a very John Carpenter ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK-like sound that lends a lot more production value to the film.
A word on the monster: though stop motion, the design on the thing is entirely unique, with it looking like a bulbous, upright, tentacled slug with a giant drooling vagina on its head. In 1980 when everyone was ripping off ALIEN and trying to do the humanoid version of HR Geiger's work, this was a nice alternative to that. And oddly enough pretty much the only suggestion of sexuality in the film! CODE RED has had this on the books for a while and finally had to put it out themselves after BCI (their former distributor) went belly up. They are now doing this with all their releases (such as STUNT ROCK,THE WEEKEND MURDERS, NIGHT OF THE DRIBBLER, TRAPPED and the upcoming, long awaited MESSIA OF EVIL and PETS). they really are a company that have had to struggle to put out some of the most unusual and forgotten films of the grindhouse/exploitation era and now their releases are harder to find than ever. So make the effort and go get them while you can. Amazon, DVD Empire, DiabolikDVD and a few other places all carry them, but the print runs are small and will be collectors items almost immediately so it is worth your time to go for it
For some reason there is no trailer for this online. so here is a video CODE RED posted of an earthquake while they were working on extras for one of their DVD's.
