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CALIGULA (1980).
I guess you have to hand it to Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione for having
the cojones to pull this production together. It has huge, impressive (but
theatrical and fake-looking) sets, a great cast, graphic gore, classical
music, and, most famously, hard-core sex (even though there's hardly any
and is mostly at the end in a brothel scene). Almost everyone tried to distance
themselves from the production. Malcolm McDowell (a career low) is the epynonymous
emperor, chosen by his degenerate grandfather Tiberius (Peter O'Toole, a
career low) to be emperor. Caligula sleeps with his sister (Ann Savoy),
marries a famous slut (Helen Mirren, a career high point) and generally
goes bonkers before a bloody end. There's no existential angst a la Camus'
play, or the catty fact of Seutonius, its an overlong exploitation movie
that has its moments to say the least. Typically there were a lot of Italian
rip-offs. Nice title, though not quite ultra enough.
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CANNIBAL APOCALYPSE
(1980).
This movie is a little bit more famous for all of its titles than the actual
movie itself, and there's a reason for that, because the film itself is
kind of lame (I never thought I'd be saying that about a movie with John
Saxon and John Morghen!). This movie is also known as Invasion of the Flesh
Hunters, The Cannibals are in the Streets, Cannibals in the Street, The
Last Hunter, Virus, and probably a few others as well. Hard-nosed Green
Beret John Saxon rescues his buddies John Morghen and Tony King (ubiquitous
bad-ass black guy of 80s Italian exploitation) from a pit in Vietnam, King
takes a nice bite out of Saxon's arm, and it doesn't get much better for
John and Co. Back in the world (Atlanta, GA) Saxon starts feeling a little
strange, and to demonstrate he takes a little bite out of the teenage hussy
next door who's been making moves on Saxon ("I've never been bitten
like that!" must be the line of the movie). It turns out Morghen and
King have been in the Atlanta loony bin, and when Morghen gets out he shows
how mentally sane he is by taking a bite out of a woman's neck in a movie
theater, he then takes shelter in a department store and kills a few people
before Saxon shows up long enough to convince him to give himself up. The
shrinks, who did a bang-up job the first time around drag him off to a padded
cell, and the cops don't do a lot of complaining (competency in the land
of Richard Jewel). Eventually Saxon gives in to his cannibalistic desires,
and he, Morghen, King, and a nurse take off to the fine, clean sewers of
Atlanta, where King is flame broiled, and Morghen has a bowling ball size
hole blown through his stomach, and, of course, the camera lovingly pans
up and down the wound. In the end, everyone ends up dead, but fortunately
our cannibal heritage will be preserved by the slut girl and her brother
who keep their aunt in the fridge, if you know what I mean. But now its
time to play "Pseudonym", the game of hidden identity. For $200
Lewis Coates is? Right, Luigi Cozzi. For $400 John M. Old is? That's right,
Mario Bava. And Final Pseudonym, Frank Smokecocks is? No, sorry, it's not
George Michael, its Franco Fumigali. None of these names directed this,
but Anthony Dawson/Antonio Marghetti did, and he pretty much screws it up,
never letting loose with his ridiculous concept and instead jerking off
for his paycheck, which, considering its size, he probably should have taken
that job at the pizzeria.
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CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST
(1979). In terms of on-screen violence, Cannibal Holocaust, even
contemporaneously, was surpassed by enough movies to make it unremarkable,
it is interesting then the amount of furor the film caused upon its release
and continues to cause now, more than 20 years after its release. The film
belongs to what can only be described as the apex of the exploitation genre,
which lasted from the late 60s to the first couple of years of the 80s.
Cheap equipment and film stock, tax loopholes and an increasingly jaded
public made the exploitation film a safe investment. On top of that the
rise of hard-core pornography moved exploitation away from the frolicking
soft-core romps of previous years to what could accurately be described
as violence porn. By the late 70s exploitation films had morphed into something
akin to the Western or the romance film, only much broader in tone and style,
certain directors, writers, actors, and producers worked exclusively in
what would be deemed “exploitation” under most circumstances,
and some of these craftsmen were very skilled indeed.
As others have pointed out the short-lived cannibal film genre was an outgrowth
of the “mondo” documentary, itself a genre kicked off by the
film Mondo Cane, which focused almost exclusively on the primitive
and grotesque. While these documentaries themselves had copious amounts
of faked footage, the cannibal film was more-or-less a fictional variant.
Beginning with Umberto Lenzi’s travelogue Deep River Savages
(1972) the genre generally focused on Europeans and/or Americans encountering
stone-age primitives and the trial and tribulations they endure. Deep
River Savages was virtually remade by Ruggero Deodato in 1977 as Last
Cannibal World, and Deodato himself would make this film two years
later. Upon its release the film caused a great deal of controversy, mostly
stemming from the on-screen killing of animals, and persistently bizarre
rumors that people had actually been killed for the cameras (Deodato,
it was rumored, hired drugged-up local militiamen to mutilate and kill tribesmen
for the cameras). These rumors persisted even though the violent effects
were pulled off mostly through suggestion and clever editing. It could be
that the controversy erupted due to the uncomfortable nature of the film
itself. On the one hand it casts a group of filmmakers as the villains,
furthermore it suggests that the rapacious desires of violence-hungry audiences
make atrocities inevitable. Beyond that there is the uncomfortable representation
of primitive life as it is, to some extent; hardly the denizens of a Rousseauian
playground of “natural” life, primitives inhabit the ubiquitous
world of the nasty, brutish, and short. The backwardness, brutality, and
repulsiveness on display make the modern liberal mind uncomfortable, the
founding myth of the liberal is that it is the West in its sophistication
and dynamism that is wrong, and the primitive, with his natural life, that
is morally superior. To see the primitive as he is, like us and unlike us,
gives the modern mind a sort of intellectual indigestion.
We cannot count Cannibal Holocaust as somehow ”authentic”,
it is, rather, a fictional film, sensationalized and certainly hypocritical.
The acting is generally broad, the dubbing is overly forceful, and the characters
are cheap stereotypes. Furthermore, the cultural/political points are brought
home with a sledgehammer. Technically the film’s merits are hard to
judge, most of the copies now in circulation are bootlegs, and the DVD releases
are in the European standard (PAL), the photography appears to be lush and
professional, Deodato’s direction is competent and to the point, and
Riz Ortolani’s score ranges from euphonically easy-listening orchestrations
to the disco-funk that marked most of Ortolani’s scores of the era
and much darker hues. The cast is filled with a number of minor figures
regularly featured in various Italian exploitation film of the era, including
the American actor Robert Kerman, who prodigiously appeared in pornographic
films as R. Bolla, in fact, Kerman is really the only really recognizable
face in the whole of the film (always a good rumor machine for snuff fanatics).
The plot is unexpectedly political and ironic in nature. Beginning with
platitudes about technological advances and primitives living only a few
hundred miles apart, the film’s plot is set in motion by a few random
shots of an American crew of documentary filmmakers who went missing after
venturing into the Amazon (or, “The Green Inferno” as the narrator
refers to it). To find them “New York University” sends an intrepid
anthropology professor, Monroe (Kerman) into the jungle to search for them.
He teams up with a tough guide, Chaco, and heads out in search of the filmmakers,
after several misadventures he eventually finds their remains with the particularly
ferocious Yanomamo tribe, he obtains their unopened film cans and heads
back the civilization. Hired by a TV station to host a documentary, he interviews
the friends and family of the crew then sits down to view the recovered
footage. He learns that the crew was notorious and widely despised for their
ruthless behavior, like paying off members of an African army to stage real
executions for the cameras. Upon watching the team’s footage it becomes
immediately clear that their ruthless methods have carried over to their
new assignment. Moving quickly from playfulness (filming each other while
naked) to pointless (the showing of a turtle being slaughtered in full),
the group lose their guide to a snakebite (being more interested in filming
his death throes than anything else), and finally, upon reaching a native
village they erupt into violence, shooting a villager, slaughtering their
only food, and finally (in a slam-fisted allusion to the Vietnam War) burn
the village to the ground, afterwards two of the pair make love in front
of the demoralized primitives. The crew goes on to document various grotesqueries
like a violent abortion and an impaled woman. While the TV producers see
the footage as a veritable ratings bonanza (not particularly realistic)
Professor Monroe professes outrage and demands the potential showing be
scrapped, he then shows the remaining atrocity footage shot by the crew,
showing them to descend further and further into degenerative, homicidal
mania, raping and murdering villagers, before finally being themselves brutally
slaughtered by the outraged tribes people. The documentary is cancelled,
and Monroe can only muse, “I wonder who the real cannibals are.”
The allusions are obvious, decadent Americans (its always Americans for
Italian filmmakers, ironic since the most ruthless “mondo” producers
were Italians mostly) run rampant in Amazonia, raping and pillaging, exploiting
the “savages” all the while being the real savages themselves.
Vietnam and various Latin American adventures were front and center in the
minds of the filmmakers, at least as far as the nascent political allegory
went. More than that there is the critique of the mondo film itself, that
the desire to see real violence breeds a kind of moral insanity,
and the doomed filmmakers penchant for staging real violence for
the cameras can be seen as the end result of wanting more and more extreme
violence to be easily available to the viewing public (what the filmmakers
would have made of the internet is interesting speculation). The obvious
meaning of the last line is just that, it is cannibalism to watch the destruction
of other human lives for entertainment. Beyond that even, it suggests that,
despite the “advance” in attitudes towards primitive people,
there is still, especially among good liberal Westerners, the attitude that
primitive man is not really man at all, but an animal, or at least an embarrassing
reminder of man’s origins. That the educated and ambitious documentarians
should fall so quickly to the abuse and murder of these people would suggest
that stripped of all cultural barriers, people of any background would revert
to a kind of savagery of their own. People who might never commit a crime
or act with any great violence in their own world will suddenly
erupt violently in a more primitive sphere. The raping and murder is then,
for the crew, the best chance they’ll ever have to act on their ironically
“primitive” desires. The primitivism encountered then is a strange
sort of transference, the cosmopolitan crew degenerates into savagery, while
the primitives gain moral stature, and by the end obtain all natural rights
to slaughter and mutilate the totally debased crew.
Much of this is intentional on the part of the filmmakers, and certainly
shows a good deal of ambition from script writer Gianfranco Clerici (a one-man
script machine in Italy, who continues to turn out any number of scripts
a year) and Deodato, yet there is the plain charge of hypocrisy that can
be leveled at them, namely that they are merely indulging in the oldest
shell game performed by exploitation filmmakers, that of condemning what
one is really glorifying and exploiting for the cameras. Silent morality
plays gleefully leered at the perversions and degeneracy on display only
to abruptly punish the guilty parties in the last reel, Cecil B. DeMille
made an entire career from this very technique. It is easy enough for Clerici
and Deodato to condemn the filmmakers, the audience and society in general,
yet at the same time the thoroughly mine the same ore dug out by the very
filmmakers they take to task. They both stage fake atrocities, and use genuine
atrocity footage (in the fake documentary made by the fake documentary crew),
as well as mercilessly slaughter animals on screen (which ended up getting
Deodato tried for obscenity in Italy). It seems either profoundly cynical,
or extraordinarily naïve to condemn one party with the very tools he
himself employs. For that matter, the sneaking condemnation of the audience
itself, that it is the obsession with real violence and death that would
drive these filmmakers to the lengths they go to to get their story, that
seems the most absurd, since it is the audience itself which drive essentially
commercial directors like Deodato in the first place. It is disingenuous
to say on the one hand that one wishes to rain on the work of certain
filmmakers in the strongest possible way, while on the other hand employing
similar tactics and wishing to remain above the fray. In some ways Deodato
and crew cross a greater line than do the makers of mondo films in the sense
that if a mondo filmmakers fakes footage he simply not filming with much
verisimilitude, whereas the fiction filmmaker who uses real
footage of death and violence in his film has engaged reality much
too directly and therefore defeats the purpose of fictional film in the
first place.
Yet, this is the interest that Cannibal Holocaust arouses. While
on the surface it is one of many “extreme” exploitation films
of the period (a genre that may be more accurately described, if lamely,
as “transgressive”, and which becomes more and more extreme
with each decade, the outrages of the previous becoming passé and
replaced by more gratuitous ones), it has elements that go far beyond mere
exploitation, not so much the ham-fisted political allegory, but rather
the stranger questions it raises about modern people walled off from the
primitive to the point that there is no more outlet for those desires, so
very few people hunt, slaughter their own food, even so much as get into
fist fights; the technological masterpiece of the 21st century may well
go down as the first non-human century. It seems then inevitable to have
to confront the primitive desires that spring up from time to time. While
the good Western liberal would praise the primitive at his own expense,
he is so far removed from the primitive that any sort of alternative
society would seem superior (like the American totally convince that Japan
is a far greater place than American, and even meeting a Japanese expatriate
who decries his homeland isn’t enough to dissuade him). Deep down
he is as disgusted and afraid of these primitive people, and in a voice
that even he cannot hear, thanks God each night for the fact that he can
sleep in a comfortable bed, drive a car, read a book by an electric light,
and buy already prepared meat without getting his hands at all dirty. He
walls himself off so far in fact, that he cannot do something as technologically
simple as change his own oil, fix a broken drain, or mow his own lawn! Yet
he wistfully hopes wishes for a more primitive life to call his own. Behind
all the dubious moral reasoning and wishful thinking of his movie, Deodoato’s
Cannibal Holocaust is an important document, it demonstrates
in fictional terms to danger of at once removing oneself, and becoming to
closely attached to, the primitive. The violence of the film’s final
minutes is testament to this; it is genuinely disturbing, countered by Ortolani’s
music, which alternately bleeps electronically distorted noises and lush
orchestral accompaniment, it becomes cathartic, the film crew has become
so arrogant and hateful in their persecution of the natives that their violent
deaths are richly deserved, yet, the peek-a-boo camera lends so much credibility
to the sequence that it seems both unreal—to the extant that we are
seeing something that we could not every possibly actually be seeing—and
far too real, the bodies of the camera crew dissolving into bloody mulch,
no matter how tricky the camera work and editing is, there is something
disconsolate about seeing such violence, and in some ways it is this that
is the film’s great irony, that for all the trappings of an exploitation
picture it ends up not exploiting violence and death, but rather
giving a sense of the real versus the false, that the
line between the two is not so much blurred but rather obliterated by the
technology that separates the civilized from the primitive.
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THE CANNIBAL MAN [La
Semana del Asesino] (1972).
Most Spanish genre films are pretty bad, sentimental affairs, so its nice
to see one that's rather intelligent as well as no-nonsense. Macho Vincent
Parra plays a macho slaughterhouse worker who accidentally kills a taxi
cab driver after he throws him and his girlfriend (Emma Cohen) out of the
cab and gives him a gut punch for good measure. His girlfriend tries to
get him to turn himself in, but when she doesn't listen to his Marxist ramblings
("the police will only listen to the rich") he strangles her.
Macho guys are kind of stupid, I guess, so he just puts her body under the
bed. Pretty soon everyone who comes to the house is killed by Parra in order
to cover up his crime(s), and when the bodies start to stink he's got to
get rid of them, luckily he works at a slaughterhouse…Director Eloy
de la Iglesia tosses in a lot of violence, as well as implied homo shenanigans
between Parra and a voyeuristic neighbor. Its pretty preposterous, but is
light-years ahead of Paul Naschy and Jess Franco and their sorry films.
Unless you want to see the shittiest version of this film possible don't
buy it from Video Search of Miami like I made the mistake of doing!!!
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CAPTURED FOR SEX 2
[Kankin Sei no Dorei: Ikenie 2] (1985). Without a doubt, the craziest sex
film ever made! Only the Japanese could make something like this, since
doing half the things in here would get you arrested just about anywhere.
For that matter, only the Japanese would make a real movie, complete with
production values and, could it be, film? This is no cheap-ass shot on video
abomination, this is a loud and proud theatrical release abomination. It
comes from the threesome of "Go Ijuin", that is Genji Nakamura, Ryuichi
Hiroki, and Hitoshi Ishikawa, and is an in-name only sequel to their previous
The Sacrifice, which also starred the self-proclaimed "King of S&M", Shino
Shima, a chubby bearded guy who always wears aviator shades and, in real
life, runs an exclusive S&M club. Sougi Kanehako and Rie Sano play a bickering
couple whose car breaks down in the middle of nowhere. They're helped out
by a kindly hermit, who, as Kanehako tells us, "was that man that ruined
my life…he was the devil!" Quickly our hermit (Shima, of course) ties up
the couple and proceeds to torture Sano. Eventually Kanehako begs to become
Shima's "student", and the two embark on an orgy of discomfort until Kanehako
knifes Shima and assumes his role, telling us, "no one can ever leave this
house of pleasure." Basically a long difficult to watch torture session,
heaven for enthusiasts, extremely uncomfortable for the rest of us. You've
got a lot of whipping, candle wax, pins in flesh, enemas of every kind,
more whipping, a welcome lesbian fondling scene (at least there aren't any
bruises). Plus a fascinating demonstration of various torture devises. Its
all as disgusting as it is hypnotic, as the hand-held camera records everything
as the zombie-like sadists enact their strange pleasures
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CARNAGE (1983).
If there are any real Andy Milligan fans they might say this is his best
film. It's better than his 70s films at least. Newlyweds Leslie Den Dooven
and Michael Chiodo buy a house on Staten Island, but >gasp< find it
to be haunted by the ghosts of a married couple who committed suicide! At
first things get moved around, but then there's an attempted gassing, screaming
in the basement, then the bodies start a'fallin'. A woman slits her own
throat, a couple of burglars are roughed up, one gets his hand cut off,
the other is stabbed with a pitchfork, cut open with scissors, and has his
guts pulled out, a woman is decapitated, etc. The effects range from bloody
to Milligan (watch out for that mannequin head). Typical Milligan elements
abound: bickering couples, theatrical acting, bad camerawork, but at least
its less lethargic than usual. Producer Lew Mishkin is the son of William
Mishkin, who produced some of Milligan's earlier efforts. Milligan made
a few more films before his death from AIDS, but only The Weirdo
was released.
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CHILDREN
SHOULDN'T PLAY WITH DEAD THINGS (1972). How can you not love a title like
that? The best since "Killers With Guns Run Around Killing Things That
Were Not Previously Killed". Alan Ormsby plays a character called Stock
'Twilight Zone' Villain Who Is a Fey Smartass But Gets Mad When People
Cross Him But Then Loses It in The End. He comes to an island with his
"theatre" (read: flaming) friends. I'm not really sure why, I think its
one of those "man weekends" where hairy men cry because their daddies
didn't love them except instead of manly men with hairy shoulders we have
clean shaven sorts who go antiquing in between bouts of Judy Garland singing
contests. GAY PEOPLE LIKE JUDY GARLAND. They also raise the dead using
AIDS! I knew AIDS was just voodoo. Ormsby uses a spell to raise the dead,
but they don't rise up, then they do. Didn't see that coming, did you.
Well, I should say that the first hour you must (MUST goddamnit!) suffer
through a glory hole* of lame humor and "theatrical" (read: bad) acting.
But, yes, even I must admit that the last half hour, when our dead friends
rise up and tear human flesh and growl and do the funky chicken, is pretty
damn good. Creepy even. It'll make you cry and scar you for life. Thank
you Bob Clark, not only for ushering in Freddie Prinze Jr.'s career by
making the original Jesus-I-Fucking-Hate-Horny-Teenager-Movies Porkies
but for directing this and Black Christmas which nearly makes up for Prinze
Jr.
*HOMOSEXUAL
REFERENCE
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CHINESE TORTURE CHAMBER
STORY (1994).
Tepid to say the least Category III garbage from the overly prolific Wong
Jing. Former Miss Asia (or one of the several billion Hong Kong beauty pageants)
Yung Hung (what a name!) plays a woman hired by a scholar (Lawrence Ng)
to be a maid. When she spies his wife getting' it on with someone other
than her husband the wife quickly marries her off to the local donkey dick
joke (who at one point kills a frog with his piss!). He turns out to be
an okay guy, but the wife and her lover conspire to get rid of Yung and
Ng by giving Yung's husband a killer aphrodisiac which causes his schlong
to explode, so Yung and Ng are tried and tortured for the crime. A lot of
soft-core sex, complete with a funny "flying swordsman" sex scene,
as two carnal warriors fly about screwing like rabbits. There's also a good
bad taste scene in which Yung must try to bring her hubby to orgasm manually
while a cheesy version of "Unchained Melody" plays. Between that
is something less than nothing.
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THE CHURCH [La Chiesa]
(1989).
When Dario Argento saw actor-turned-director Michele Soavi's Stagefright
(produced by Joe D'Amato!) he took the young director under his wing, which
usually destroyed directors, but Soavi came out all right. This is their
first collaboration, a mindless and pretentious, buy stylish as hell horror
film. The prologue shows the Teutonic Knights slaughtering devil worshipers
and building a church over there mass grave. Centuries later the church
is being restored, and the spirits of the devil worshipers are itching to
get out and cause some havoc. This film contains some of the most incredible
set pieces and murders one could imagine, but the narrative is so bizarre
and pointlessly confusing that it becomes a distraction, as the film becomes
so hard to follow that one might miss the visual splendor. Most Argento
efforts turn out this way, it seems, but at least John Morghen/Giovanni
Lombardo Radice is in here, playing a jerk of a priest. Besides, where else
but Italy would you have a minor American character actor (Tomas Arana,
a familiar face) playing the hero?
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CITY OF THE WALKING
DEAD [Incubo sulla Citta Contaminata] (1980).
This Italian/Spanish zombie movie copies George Romero's The Crazies more
than anything else. Hugo Stiglitz plays a reporter who comes to the airport
to cover a story just in time to find a planeload of crusty faced "zombies"
coming out and attacking people. Pretty soon the whole city is under siege,
etc., etc. You know the plot, and the only reason to watch is the gore,
which was all hacked out. Not too bad, director Umberto Lenzi keeps things
going at a chipper pace until the stupid "was it a dream or reality"
ending.
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COCKFIGHTER
(Born to Kill, 1974). Monte Hellman and his favorite actor Warren Oates
join once again for another of Hellman's unique and strangely beautiful
American films. Oates takes a vow of silence after losing a cockfight to
Harry Dean Stanton and sets his sights on winning the cockfighter of the
year medal. Like Hellman's other films, the story as such is nothing but
loose ends, Oates wins, loses, makes friends and so on, but Hellman is not
interested in making any huge statements about Life via cockfighting (or
maybe he is and I'm too dumb to see it, who knows), its a story about cockfighting
and that's that. Beyond that it is an enormously satisfying film, hilarious
in turns and sometimes moving, mixing non-actors and professionals to great
effect (Steve Railsback and Ed Begley Jr. are both featured as hick cockfighters,
and both are excellent, though I wonder if participation in this movie is
what turned him into such a weenie Liberal environmentalist). I'd imagine
that the sight of Oates tearing off the head of a live rooster will shock
many people, and the SPCA is mentioned only as forcing a cockfighting tournament
semi-underground (leading to a surprisingly funny robbery scene featuring
a timely Nixon mask); all of this probably makes this classic, genuinely
American movie unshowable today, which is really very sad. The rare Prism
video release is the original version, not the Roger Corman interference
featuring car crashes and sex scenes (Corman could be a real asshole).
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COP IMAGE (1994).
Andy Wong is probably the most watchable character actor in Hong Kong, since
he turns up in nine out of ten Hong Kong movies. This one is a silly comedy
with some excellent shoot-outs. Wong plays a traffic cop who wants to be
a detective, a la Dirty Harry, but this being an HK movie is too much of
a blunderer to become one. He meets up with a real tough cop (Bowie Lam)
and ends up with the cop's cell phone when they go out drinking and the
cop gets plastered. This being an HK movie he's got to end up in the middle
of a hard-boiled situation and has to go up against the usual sadistic mainland
Chinese criminals. Too long, but Wong is funny, bullying his way in and
out of various contrived scenes.
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CRASH (1996).
This one isn't too much different from David Cronenberg's early films: its
pretentious and unintentionally funny. James Spader plays a film director
named James Ballard who gets into a car accident that kills Holly Hunter's
husband and injures her. After they recover the pair begin an affair and
Spader meets Hunter's new friend, Elias Koteas, a pervert who lives in his
car and restages famous car wrecks. The film's straight-faced seriousness
is its undoing: after Koteas restages James Dean's fatal wreck officers
come from the Department of Transportation to chase them away. This seems
more like an absurdist satire than "serious" filmmaking. Or how
about Deborah Karr Unger's clinical pillow talk ("would you like to
put your penis into his anus?")? Or Rosanna Arquette as a crippled
freak who has a special spleef compartment in her leg brace? At Cannes this
won a special award for its "daring" but it isn't. Scenes of Spader
having sex into a vagina-like wound in Arquette's leg (like the one in James
Woods' belly in Videodrome or under Marylin Chamber's armpit in Rabid) or
Unger's semen splattered hand are just childish shock for shock's sake,
lacking even the extreme quality of an average exploitation film. Maybe
people are taking him too seriously, but something has gone wrong in Cronenberg's
head.
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THE
CORPSE GRINDERS (1971). This movie is awesome! Its like two stupid movies
crammed into one. The first movie involves nefarious industrialists who
somehow stumble upon the bright idea of using HUMAN FLESH in cat food. Great
idea, right? Which leads us to movie number two, in which cats, now with
a taste for human flesh, start to attack their owners with predictable results.
If I told you about this movie you might shrug and say "it sounds promising,
but tell me, ultra_caligula, what's the secret ingredient that makes this
delectable film cocktail work?" I would say, "first of all, stop talking
like a fucking idiot, and second of all the secret ingredient is IRONY."
Never before has a film dealt so shockingly with irony. The gravedigger
who works for our evil (but very enterprising) businessmen has a wife who
ends up shot dead and falling INTO A GRAVE. I-R-O-N-Y. One of the evil businessmen
is fed to the corpse grinder, while the other one is eaten by cats. IRONY
MOTHERFUCKER. Our hero is a doctor who comes from the Robert Urich/Bob Wagner/Peter
Strauss school of acting who is shot at the end and finds himself in need,
in need of A DOCTOR WHICH IS IRONIC YOU STUPID PUTRID FUCKER!!!!! The irony
just leaks off of the movie, as in the lonely rummy woman who is killed
and eaten by her only companion, her cat. IRONY SO DELICIOUS ITS FATTENING
YOU UGLY FAG!!!! How's this for ironic, a shapely secretary, before being
eaten by her cat, drinks Bud! I don't know what I just said or why its ironic,
therefore its IRONIC. Besides all of this irony our main villain is named
Landau and looks like the offspring of an alternative marriage between Jerry
Seinfeld and Rod Serling, so you know this guy pimps the bitches like, uh,
uh….yeah, uh, hit it. He delivers an impassioned speech after offing his
partner played, in a surprising cameo by Lyndon Baines Johnson, THE MAN
WHO KILLED KENNEDY. "You're cat food Maltby, cat food!!!!!!" Watch for a
special cameo by Martin Sheen who also, ironically plays a president on
TV who's such a liberal pussy that even tree hugging long hairs who oppose
cannibalism on grounds that "meat is murder" think he's queer. I have no
idea what that has to do with this review, but being this is the Internet
I felt it necessary to include the words "fag" and "queer" and "Negro".
Directed by Ted V. Mikels who is the greatest man in human history. He lived
in a castle with seven women and presumably had sex with many of them. God
bless you my good man, God bless us all.
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THE CRAZIES (aka CODE
NAME: TRIXIE, 1973).
One of three flop films George Romero made after Night of the Living Dead.
It's basically a remake of that movie, but with living "crazies"
replacing the undead. A virus gets into the water supply of a small Pennsylvania
town when a military plane crashes, the Army shows up to quarantine the
town and the nervous townsfolk start to fight back. Very 70s with nudity,
bloody violence, fast cuts and a very anti-military attitude. The Army is
seen as blundering and soldiers gun down innocent people and steal money
from corpses. Its over-long, but somewhat better than I expected, but pales
next to Martin and Dawn of the Dead.
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CREATURE (1984).
In the 80s Klaus Kinsky left doing bad movies in Europe to do bad movies
in America, and this blatant Alien rip-off is only one of the better-known
ones. A group of space-types are sent to a distant moon to investigate the
disappearance of a previous expedition. There they find Kinski, a survivor,
and a flesh-eating alien who turns its victims into zombies. Kinski shows
up long enough to say "this creature is sly" and "you are
not butterflies", non-chalantly munches on a sandwich, and does some
sexual harassment before being killed off (complete with an obvious stunt
double when he "returns" as a zombie). Why these movies don't
give guys like Kinski better roles is beyond me. There is a lot of violence
and Lyman Ward doing an Anthony Perkins character while playing a character
called Perkins. The ending is one of those why-didn't-they-just-do-that-at-the-beginnings.
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CRIME BUSTERS (197?).
In this age of Hong Kong-styled shoot 'em ups done at a lightning pace,
the somewhat slower, starker approach of Euro action films may seem a little
quaint and old fashioned. But you can always tell you're in for a good time
when Henry Silva is in a movie, and this is no exception, it's a top notch
Euro action flick that nobody's heard of. Silva plays an Air Force officer
who finds out that a group of criminals are using specialized machine guns
assigned only to his unit in the Air Force. He's naturally suspicious, so
he teams up with tough cop (there's something you don't hear everyday) Antonio
Sabado to bring down the syndicate. The plot is a bit daft, but I enjoyed
the film's willingness to go that extra mile, how can you not like a film
that features innocent people being gunned down and run over? Most action
films wouldn't do that, and what film would actually have Silva as a squeaky-clean
good guy? The action comes fast, with lots of car crashes, motorcycle crashes,
Silva busting a motorcycle rider in the head with a cane, and more. But
the best thing about the film is the music which is awesome 70s type stuff
complete with electric violins and flutes. Yeah, yeah, its silly (watch
out for a Silva love scene complete with soft focus!) but who cares? Better
than most Euro snooze, at any rate.
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CRIMES OF THE FUTURE
(1970). You'd think there'd be a lot of demand for David Cronenberg's early
short films, but there's a reason there isn't, since they're all unwatchable
bores. This one has something to do with a future where all the women have
died from some kind of virus. "Adrian Tripod" (early Cronenberg staple Ronald
Mlodzik, who narrates in the first-person, then the third) joins a group
of "subverts". It's a silent movie, with narration and odd sound effects.
Some of Cronenberg's later preoccupations are there, but what's the point?
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CRIMSON (1974).
Oh, boy, I'm getting that sick feeling in the pit of my stomach again, so
that must mean one thing: I've just seen another Eurocine production. For
the uninitiated, Eurocine is the French company that has consistently turned
out some of the worst dreck in the world for nearly fifty years. To give
you a good idea of where this company's head is at, Jess Franco has done
some of his worst work there. To be honest, I've yet to see a Eurocine flick
in anything other than the whitebread American versions, i.e. with all the
gore and sex hacked out. While I love gore and sex as much as anyone, I
doubt three hours of constant hard-core donking and blood-spurting dismemberments
could save the typical Euroslop. Don't worry, I'm not trying to set you
up for a sucker punch and say this is some unknown masterpiece of style
and class. No, this is a piece of shit. Paul Naschy (who manages, by some
kind of super-human non-effort, to make his other films look like The
Seven Samurai compared to this) plays a jewel thief who gets shot in
the head during a heist, so his amazingly quick-thinking friends drive out
to the local mad scientist's place. Luckily the loco doc is doing some brain-transplant
work, but Naschy's posse needs a brain to stick in his noggin, so they quite
logically snag their gray matter from one "The Sadist". Now, you
know when this movie has a character named The Sadist, they won't disappoint,
and when this guy cheats at cards and says "that's why they call me
'The Sadist', baby", suffice it to say, I thought I had found a new
definition of horror. Since mad scientists are always short on the "good
judgment" gene, Naschy ends up turning into some sort of half-assed
sadist himself. Pacing isn't one of the strong points of director "John
Fortuny", but then again neither is rudimentary storytelling technique,
as this film manages to make one of those Warhol insomnia cures look like
John Woo. In front of the camera, wolfman Naschy gives his usual "I
dare you to find any charisma with in 200 yards of me" performances
and Franco vets Sylvia Solar and Olivier Matthews give this the credibility
of a Ron Jeremy porno film. As the wise old Indian proverb goes, "There
are bad films, and then there's Crimson."
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THE
CRIPPLED MASTERS (1979). First of all, let me get this out of the way: THIS
MOVIE IS FUCKING AWESOME. Not only do we have a couple of sideshow freaks
kicking ass but this movie also owns one of the most surrealistic plots
I've ever come across. The film opens with a member of some kung-fu sect
having his arms chopped off for some reason or another. He swears revenge
and is kicked to the curb. He tries to make due in the world (oddly, his
enormous festering wounds are never treated) but is bullied and humiliated,
finally finding sanctuary with a kindly farmer. Meanwhile, Armless' tormentor,
another member of the kung-fu sect, has his legs burnt off with acid by
the group's sadistic leader, a guy with bird poop on his face, er, I mean,
a very well done scar and toothbrush moustache. Legless somehow manages
to make his way to the exact same farm that Armless is at (apparently China
is about the size of a postage stamp) and of course, Armless is more than
happy to torture Legless by beating the stuffing out of him. All of a sudden
an old guy with his legs wrapped behind his head pops out of a food basket!
He says he's there to help them, but how the hell did he…oh nevermind. At
any rate, he teaches Armless and Legless kung-fu, and they become THE CRIPPLED
MASTERS, ready to avenge themselves against Mr. Bird Poop, who is also handicapable,
he's an emotional cripple, I mean he has a hump, that grows and shrinks
in each scene he's in (and, this being a kung-fu movie, it has its own sound
effect). Armless and Legless go back to a tavern that Armless was humiliated
at and kick ass, and sure enough, another kung-fu master shows up. Now the
plot starts to get convoluted. Armless and Legless kill of Mr. Bird Poop's
two best fighters, Black and White (well, a guy dressed in black and another
guy with white clown face paint). So Mr. Bird Poop's sniveling assistant
gets the bright idea to use the just arrived kung-fu master to kill them
off. They accomplish this by having him guard some priceless treasure. Ooookay.
Well, it works, as Armless and Legless' master wants them to get the priceless
treasure for him. Why you ask? Not to liberate it for the people, but only
because their master use to own it and wants it back so he can die in peace.
Oooookay, makes sense. They steal it, and fight New Kung-Fu Master, who
lets them get away because the treasure has priceless kung-fu secrets
in it. New Kung-Fu Master immediately fights Mr. Bird Poop and gets his
ass kicked and is taken prisoner, so of course Armless and Legless to the
rescue! With that out of the way Mr. Bird Poop apparently kills their master,
so they go after him, after having learned VALUABLE KUNG-FU SECRETS. Of
course they kick Mr. Bird Poop's ass.
First of all, the heroes aren't just two guys missing their arms and legs,
no, they have deformed arms and legs. Armless has a little nub for
one arm, and Legless has two skinny, useless legs with ugly black things
all over them. But these two mo-fos are amazing once they get going. Armless
uses his nub to twirl a staff, and Legless leaps about like a monkey. And
the moment at the end where Legless jumps on Armless' back is a great peace
of mind-warping kung-fu brilliance. Never before have I seen such a disjointed
kung-fu movie, and that's saying a lot. This is the only movie where the
old man kung-fu master is just a thief, and the young dynamic kung-fu master
gets his ass kicked and has to be saved by two crippled freaks. Watching
this movie, though, I never once found myself feeling sorry for these two,
since for at least a little while here they get to dominate and beat down
a bunch of fools, no matter what their lives were like before and after
this movie, it's a lot more "empowering" than slop like I Am Sam
or any number of "uplifting" (read: bullshit) after-school specials about
handicappable people that show them as useless hunks of meat. Here
at least are two guys who obviously have garnered enough skills to star
in a kung-fu movie where their friggin' disabilities are an asset. Sure
its exploitational and a bit dubious, but who cares, I say bring on more
crippled kung-fu!! Best line: "If I broke all your bones, then you'd be
quiet!"
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CUT
AND RUN (1985). Yes, this movie is rather violent. Then again, where else
can you see Michael Berryman, Richard Lynch and Karen Black in the
same movie? Besides that, where can you see Michael Berryman, Richard Lynch,
and Karen Black in a movie directed by Ruggero Deodato with music
by Claudio Simonetti? Yes my children, here all the stars in the galaxy
gather together. Willie Ames is in it too! Where the fuck is Dick van Patten?
At any rate the slapdash plot that mixes elements from Cannibal Holocaust,
Scarface, and even Guyana: Cult of the Dammed. An intrepid
reporter and her trusty know-it-all cameraman are investigating, of all
things, drug dealing, in, is this right? Miami?
They stumble upon a massacre, but find an important clue: a picture that
has Richard Lynch in it. Since Richard Lynch is automatically sadistically
evil they look into the Lynchgate connection and find out he was Jim Jones'
right hand man! That LSD is just plain evil! Tracy and Hepburn head out
to the wilds of Amazonia to find Lynch and the terrible secret of cocaine:
one man's addiction. Unfortunately, living with a band of cut-throat drug
smugglers is, yes, Willie Ames, from 8 is Enough. Ames delivers the
performance of his career (wait, wait wait one minute, Willie Ames didn't
have a career, ok? let's just get that straight) as the whiny crybaby son
of a network bigwig who somehow ends up with these drug runners along with
an Italian bimbo who has to have sex with Gabriele Tinti. I hope the producers
sprung for a good therapist after that. After lots of killing and more killing,
and then just the right bit of more killing we find that Richard Lynch is
a meanie drug runner. The end. No, wait, he gets his head cut off. The end.
Hold on, Michael Berryman hasn't been in the movie for awhile, oh there
he is, The End. Ok, so the plot is shit, and the acting is awful, but this
is Deodato we're talking about. Ruggero is one director who takes
things up a notch. Not only does he have an opening massacre to kick things
off, but he lovingly shows wooden stakes being driving into the legs of
naked women while their raped followed by Michael "Fucking Awesome" Berryman
chopping off their heads. This is the sort of movie where a guy has a wooden
knife driven into his throat and is then disemboweled for good measure.
Gabriele Tinti has his goddamn head chopped off for Christ sake! John "Nazi
Movie" Steiner even shows up, slaps around Ames (thank you!) and in the
most incredible scene in the movie, is torn in half by a nefarious jungle
trap. Did I mention Karen Black is in this movie too? I have no idea why,
since all she does is stare at TV screens and talk about "Jimmy". Oh, guess
who else is in here, that's right folks, Dr. Benton himself, Eriq LaSalle
from ER plays a Hollywood Shuffle type pimp before being tossed
in front of some railroad tracks. I'm sure this movie is at the top of Eriq's
resume (at least he doesn't have the awful jehri curl he had in Coming
to America). Probably the best way to see this movie now would be on
the typically brilliant Anchor Bay DVD, that is totally incredible (hey,
Thomas Weisser, check this out) and was only $20! There's also an amusing
documentary on the disc with interviews from the cast and crew, where Deodato
says Ames was an asshole, and the familiar character actor who played his
dad (I can't remember the guy's name) was a drunk. Of course the weirdo
character actors are the coolest and nicest people. Lynch is interviewed
too and is pretty cool (and ugly as hell). Ten thumbs up!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Sixteen stars!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1111111111
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