Ninja Dixon

Don't Play with Fire (1980)

2012-01-26T22:43:00.001+01:00

Tsui Harkmight be some legend inside the fanboy-community of Hong Kong movie-nerds, but most (not all) of Hark's work has left mecold and uninterested to see more. I really love We're Going To Eat You andTwin Dragons with Jackie Chan is a great action-comedy, but all of hishistorical stuff - except Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame -is boring and on autopilot. But I'm willing to change my mind if there'ssomething that attracts me with the project, and Don't Play With Fire seemedlike something in my taste, mostly because it's early Hark and also belonged inthat dirty, gritty crime genre that always looks so good when shot in Hong Kong.

Threenerds, trying to be cool, is out one night and accidentally runs over a man. Hedies directly and the boys flees the scene. But a weird young woman, Pearl (Chen Chi Lin)witnesses their crime and forces them to help her in her crazy ideas, involvingbombs and scams. One day they steal Japanese bank papers belonging to someforeign criminals. Soon the Triads knows about the valuable papers and aftertrying to take out the cash the police takes interest in the boys. But it'salso Pearl'solder brother Tan (the brilliant Lieh Lo) is the police leading theinvestigation. An innocent night out just turned even uglier...

Don't PlayWith Fire is a sensational movie. It feels as fresh today as it must have feltin 1980. The ONLY bad thing with the movie is the two scenes of very, very,very unnecessary animal cruelty - first towards a mouse and then a cat (even ifI think the cat-scene seem fake, just clever editing - but what the hell do Iknow?). So skip those scenes when you see them coming. My pathetic retelling ofthe story up here just doesn't make the movie justice. This is such a complexstudy is characters and fuck-up's that it deserves every fucking prize everymade just because it shows a world so bleak, cynical and brutal - withouthesitating. Don't expect any happy endings here boys and girls, this is it.

Hark andhis crew shows the backstreets and rougher neighbourhoods like I never seen itbefore. The directing is filled with energy and creativity, far from thesoul-less spectacles he directed later on. This is human, this is funny andvery black. It makes a quite good double bill together with Chatrichalerm Yukol'sGunman, another ultra-realistic crime-drama from Thailand starring SorapongChatree (read my review here), but Hark's movie is way more darker and nastier.

Even if thestory aims more at drama and some black comedy, it has a lot of graphicviolence and action - but not the spectacular Hong Kongaction of course, but realistic and bloody. Never trying to make it beautifulor seem harmless. If you get a beating in this movie your face swells up like ablood-filled balloon and a shot in the belly makes you suffer. The final, onsome kind of graveyard, is among the best I've seen with fantasticcinematography, edgy action and nasty surprises. I also likes how thefilmmakers just fucks the idea of who's gonna die first. This is very far fromtraditional filmmaking-conventions.

Don't Play With Fire is a friggin' masterpiece, andthis time I really mean it. Close your eyes during those animal-scenes, butwatch the rest and be stunned how effective and well-made this movie is. Fromnow on it's up there among the ten best movies ever made in Hong Kong.

The Bloody Judge (1970)

2012-01-25T21:54:00.002+01:00

It's hardto beat a classic like The Witchfinder General, and maybe somewhere The BloodyJudge was planned to be a rip-off of Michael Reeves near perfect classic, butin the end it's a very different movie that focuses more on the politics andcharacters around the actually witch-hunt and comes out as a fairly interestingdrama with a few scenes here and there of graphic nudity. It's a seriousFranco, maybe too serious for some, but I kinda liked it.

Most of thestory tells us about "The Bloody Judge" himself, Judge Jeffries(Christopher Lee) who's clearly a coward. He judges innocent men and women totorture and death but never witnesses the violence himself. Instead he actslike the hand of god and being the perfect puppet master of the stupid peasantsaround him. After ordering the execution of Alicia Gray (Margaret Lee) Jeffriesmore or less signs his faith, because her sister Mary (Maria Rohm) has no plansto let Jeffries go free and he must stop her before she becomes to much trouble...

The BloodyJudge is a slow movie, slow for being Franco - which means it's extra slow. Iwould say it's even to long for it's own good, and it would have been a muchmore powerful movie if it lost 20 or so minutes of talking and walking. I'm notsaying it's a bad movie, it's actually very well-made and presents a wholebunch of interesting characters, specially Jeffries, but never live up to thedirectors legendary sleazy-factor. Sure, there's nudity and blood and a goodbattle scene with some nice stunts and pyrotechnics, but too much of the timeis spent with talking heads and "suggestive eye movements" (to quotethat famous religious movie site).

In a fewscenes the true Franco comes alive, most notably the short sequences when Marystands looking at the forest, hears the battle in the distance and sees thesmoke slowly coming at her through the trees. It's a quite moment and onceagain shows the visual poetry Franco loves to treats us viewers. He surely knowhow to put the camera, and the whole movie look gorgeous and is very stylish.It reminds me of a Hammer-drama with less budget and more nudity.

For the youhave problems with slow movies, the cast is well worth watching the movie for.Sir Lee is of course great, but watch out for the wonderful trio of Maria Rohm,Margaret Lee and Maria Schell, all excellent. Howard Vernon drops his suits andgood manner and gives us a wonderful, almost cartoonish, hangman with a hugebelt and a black hood. Leo Genn has an advanced supporting part and also do anice job.

The BloodyJudge is a good movie with slow pacing. Franco is a pro and gives the bestmovie I could have directed during these circumstances, but it's also a moviefar away from his favourite themes and lacking his usual acting ensemble. Butit's worth watching, just don't expect something out of the ordinary.

The Diabolical Dr. Z (1966)

2012-01-23T22:25:00.002+01:00

Me watchinga Jess Franco movie often ends in a huge amount of superlatives. I always seenFranco has a master storyteller and depending on the budget the visual style ofthe movie differs from century to century. The sixties was a fantastic periodon Franco's career. He churned out semi-gothic classics, kitchy spy adventuresand sleazy dramas like there was no tomorrow. The Diabolical Dr. Z veryeffectively follows his adventures with Dr Orloff and Baron Von Klaus, feelslike a spin-off to Orloff - the character is mentioned and his scientific workas a surgeon is used in one of the twists. But Franco pulls off a great and original twist, worthy of Hitch - andbeware of spoilers - Dr Z is just a MacGuffin, it's his daughter that we shouldfocus on.

Yes, theDiabolical Doctor Zimmerman (Antonio Jiménez Escribano in a deliciouslyover-the-top yet sensitive performance) dies quite fast, just after showing usone brutal human experiment. His daughter Irma (Mabel Karr) decides to takerevenge on the people responsible for his death and fakes her death and useshis technology to take control over her maid and a serial killer the gooddoctor earlier took control of. But the final masterpiece is Miss Muerte (EstellaBlain), an exotic dancer with long sharp nails who can lure the stupid men intoIrma's trap!!!

There'sabsolutely nothing bad with this movie. I've said it before, way too manytimes, but when Franco had the resources he created something very similar toperfection, without getting pretentious and boring like Kubrick. He mixed hisfavourite exploitation themes (female revenge, surgery gone bad, Orloff) with astunningly beautiful and arty thriller. The set-pieces is nothing short ofspectacular and the kills are similar to what the Italians did in theseventies, but not as gory of course. Shadows and light, rapid editing and aclever use of music makes this one stand out from the rest of the bunch. Themost impressive sequence is the fist-fight between Philippe (Fernando Montes)and Hans Bergen (Guy Mairesse), which stats in the basement in a fantasticone-take fight through a long corridor, and then cuts and goes up into themansion. If I ever make a movie again I will steal that idea, and it will makebe rich sooner or later.

I oftenhear complains about the acting talent of Franco. As usual, because I'm Fredand I'm Ninja Dixon at the same time, I can't agree on this. Here Franco has aquite big part, as one of the polices trying to solve the murders and makes agreat team together with composer Daniel White as Inspector Green. Boy, theyseem to have a lot of fun and it shows - both on them and the resulting movieand wonderful jazzy score.

Masterpieceis a word I use all to often, and I'm gonna use it again here. Because TheDiabolical Dr. Z IS a masterpiece, (another) one of Franco's fantastic moviesfrom the years that some people claim was his best. I can't agree on thateither - that the sixties was his best - but this is a masterpiece.

See, I used "masterpiece" no less thanthree times in that last paragraph. It's worth it, believe me.

The Horror Show (1989)

2012-01-21T15:45:00.003+01:00

The HorrorShow was, in some parts of the world, released as House III - which isextremely stupid. Expect the producer Sean S. Cunningham they have nothing incommon, except genre movies of course. What this movie is could be described asa better, for the time, film in the Nightmare on Elm Street-franchise. Like Shocker, thisalso managed to much more interesting and violent than the lazy sequels churnedout from New Line Cinema.

Lance"The Man" Henriksen is Detective Lucas McCarthy who finally, finallyafter many years manages to catch the brutal serial killer Max Jenke (BrionJames). Many lives has been lost and now's the time for Jenke to go to hellwith the help of the electric chair. But Jenke has been a good boy and learnedblack magic - and suddenly he comes back as a demon killing everyone in hispath to take revenge on McCarthy and his adorable all-American family!

The HorrorShow is so much darker and violent than the Elm Street-movies from the same time, andmaybe that plus the stupid title-change to House 3 scared away thehorror-starving audience. I watched the R-rated version, and even this one isreally violent and graphic with some fantastic and gory special effects thatoutdoes Mr Krueger in every way possible. It would have been very easy to makethis a horror comedy, or include pointless one-liners, but The Horror Show is anasty treat and much of the nastiness comes from the intensive performance byBrion James as Jenke.

Anotherfine reason to watch The Horror Show is the stellar performance by LanceHenriksen. First of all, he's a god damn powerhouse of acting and giveseverything, at least at this time, in the parts he's playing. Here he's takingover the screen, from softer family moments to action and horror. It alsostrikes me what a body he has - up there with Charles Bronson, carved in stoneand loaded with a very manly, but without being macho, energy. Watch out forthe excellent Terry Alexander (Day of the Dead) in a smaller part asHenriksen's partner. But he's afro-American, shows up in the beginning andbites the dust faster than you can say "stereotypical ending for a blackcharacter". A pity.

The goreand Freddy Krueger-esque (for example the chicken/dinner-sequence) effects isvery fine, but they are clearly shortened for this R-rated version (becauseobviously MPAA think us grown-up's can't handle rubbery effects and fantasyviolence). The DVD I have is the Scandinavian release, but I'm gonna get myselfthe cheap Hollywood DVD release from the

, still available and morecomplete.

The Horror Show is an underrated horror flick fromthe last trembling moments of the eighties, well worth seeking up for you whoactually can ignore the incompetent review-ramblings of people who have no cluewhat they're doing.

Mr Bond (1992)

2012-01-18T21:52:00.000+01:00

AkshayKumar is Mr Bond, the best detective in India! He's more than a detectiveof course, he's a one man army, a Schwarznegger-wannabe without the muscles andwith a sillier hair cut. He's here to save Indiafrom yet another master criminal, the dangerous Red Dragon (Pankaj Dheer) whokidnaps little children and forces them to work for him in his palace outside Bangkok! If they make onesingle mistake - they die!!!! He also has an army of Ninjas on motocrosses,which make this movie slightly better than it deserves to be.

Ninjas canmake a movie stand up proud, and Mr Bond proudly showcases a whole bunch ofincompetent Ninjas for Mr Bond to kill, one after another. Do you noticesomething? Yeah, I'm trying to avoid going into more details in the storybecause the DVD didn't include any English subtitles! So I had to guess most ofthe stuff in-between the action and sometimes even the action itself. Mr Bondis not a masterpiece and it's more of typical eighties action flick than atypical James Bond-rip off. Sure, it has the super agent, a evil villain, lotsof action - but the atmosphere is more Michael Dudikoff than Roger Moore.

The storyis simple and quite naive, and it's truly not involving enough for Mr Bond tosave a dozen kids in Thailandfrom the white-haired, evil mastermind. We the audience doesn't care enoughabout this adventure. Give me a "I'm gonna take over the world" orsomething more Bondish and it would have worked better. Now we're mostlytreated to Kumar looking "sexy" - including a hilarious dance numberin a gym, almost more graphic than if they shot a real sex scene. Think"Perfect" with John Travolta and Jamie Lee Curtis, but even lesssexy. Most of the music sounds like something banging it out quickly on a cheapkeyboard and the action sequences is slow and not especially goodchoreographed.

I washoping for more excitement when story moved to Bangkok, but all we get is a fun - but badlydone - final battle between Mr Bond and the Ninjas plus a hysterical chase insidea recreation park which ends with Mr Bond and Red Dragon compete with each other on twoseparate water slides!!! Yeah, it's silly and anticlimactic.

If youwanna see a Bollywood movie with that eighties action vibe, watch the 1988 Bollywood classic Commando instead. It delivers action and also has Ninjas plus the wholeending is stolen scene for scene from Where Eagles Dare! That's a masterpiecein trashy action!

Yeah, it might sound that I hated Mr Bond. No, Ididn't. But I expected more, especially after the first scene that reminded mea lot about the villa-sequence in Mark Lester's Commando. Lots of shooting,throwing knifes and Mr Bond in camouflage outfit. This was just OKentertainment for the moment and something only fans of cheap action couldappreciate to the fullest.

ZÄRTLICHKEIT (2012)

2012-01-16T20:36:00.002+01:00

Few indiefilmmakers stop me from doing what I'm suppose to do and makes me gets stuck infront of the computer. Alex Bakshaev is one of those. Earlier I reviewed isexcellent feature from Naked Trip, and now I just had the honour to watch hislatest production, ZÄRTLICHKEIT, a short movie shot with a cheap consumerdigital camera and with natural sound taken with the camera's internalmicrophone. It's fifteen minutes long and it's gay drama. Not the usual stuff Ireview here at Ninja Dixon, but I never say no to a great movie. ZÄRTLICHKEITis a very Fassbinder-esque drama about a German man coming to Russia to findhis mother, a woman he hasn't seen for many years. But he never dares to meether. Instead he wanders around in this unknown city, clutching her letter. He getpicked up by a guy at one of the cruising areas and they talk, have sex andtalk again...

That'sabout it, but as usual with Alex work it's a fantastic atmosphere withsensitive acting and excellent writing. The pacing is slow, but never boring(which very few people handle, right now I can only say Franco and Rollinexcept Bakshaev). The dialogue is stylish and simple - but tells more aboutlife and the characters than a lot of the unnecessary words that filmmakers havea tendency to force upon us, the viewers.

It's amature piece of work, and I could easily follow these people in a ninety minutelong movie. The only complains I have is the sound in the first scene, wherethe quality took away my concentration from the acting and dialogue. Maybe it'spossible to clean up?

ZÄRTLICHKEITis not out yet, but if you're interested in short movies who dares to makesomething more in the no-budget area of filmmaking this is a movie for you. AlexBakshaev shows us that filmmaking is easy and relaxed and that a good story canbe told with the simplest means possible.

The Sinister Eyes of Dr. Orloff (1973)

2012-01-13T23:17:00.003+01:00

Probablyshot over a weekend, The Sinister Eyes of Dr. Orloff is one of the cheapestproductions I've seen from Franco from this period. I'm pretty sure there'sother movies on the same budget level, but this is more or less a couple ofpersons walking around a nice villa in daylight, in the night and some drivingaround in a car as a bonus in-between. Personally I think this is a good sign,because Franco always do good stuff when he has a small cast and crew and don'tneed to move away from the set so much.

Young MelissaComfort (Montserrat Prous) is haunted by nightmares where she's killing people.In real life she's paralyzed since childhood and can't move around without thehelp from her sisters (I think). Thank heavens Dr Orloff (William Berger)arrives and starts to take care of her, but because he's Orloff he also hassomething sinister in his... eyes and that's greed! He can make Melissa, withmind control, walk around killing those that Orloff wants dead, and this timehe wants revenge for past love-related injustices!

TheSinister Eyes of Dr Orloff is a pretty simple movie. No real twists, but asusual a very interesting dreamlike quality. Much of Franco's work is based onmood and atmosphere, and here he makes a fine job with not much money at all.Like a lot of his movies it boarders to something arty, like an arthouse moviemixed with some gentle sleaze (but this movie actually has very little nudityand sex) and violence. It's all about the feeling that Franco creates, and thismovie is all about that.

While hersisters are the usual dangerous broads, Montserrat Prous makes a sensitive andedgy performance as Melissa, easily the highlight of the movie. William Berger- and Edmund Purdom in a very small and quite pointless part - is good, butBerger can't live up to the fascinating character Howard Vernon once createdand continued to do until his death. His cameo as Orloff in Faceless stillmakes me get goose bumps. Another weird cameo is Franco himself, playingsomething I thought was a rapist/child molester in the beginning, but now Ican't honestly understand the inclusion of that character. Probably a line Imissed that explained his presence, or maybe some of my readers can make itmore clear?

When Francois doing fine he's creating masterpieces. When he's slumming he's doing theworst movies ever made. And then we have this, when he's doing a job and havingfriends around for a couple of days without to much trouble, he makes goodmovies like The Sinister Eyes of Dr Orloff.

It's out onDVD from InterVision. Pick it up.

Why don't watch an exotic Friday the 13th movie?

2012-01-13T07:28:00.000+01:00

Today is Friday the 13th and that means that legions of horror nerds sits down with their friends (and some maybe alone...) and watches one or two or three or more Friday the 13th movies. Nothing wrong with that, I'm a big fan myself and have them all in my collection. Why don't surprise your fellow nerd friends and watch the Bollywood Friday the 13th or the Indonesian "remake"? Yes, the first movie actually exists in more exotic and bizarre versions, none of them including a Jason - but are more or less identical regarding plot and murders! Check out my reviews and thank me later for making your friends disappointed for watching a treasure hunt and singing dancing instead of the typical plot devices of Friday the 13th!

Jigar (1992)

2012-01-11T22:10:00.001+01:00

To takecare of Ninja Dixon also means I need to suffer through a lot of movies thatmany of you never gonna way anyway. Jigar is one of them. Not that it'sespecially terrible, not more than usual, but an almost three hour longBollywood remake of Kickboxer takes its toll. It took me three days to finishit, but that does not mean it's bad... just very lengthy.

Ajay Devganis Raju, a young man who's brother is a famous martial arts fighter. When he'scrippled after a very unfair match Raju swears he'll take revenge. When hissister also is sexually abused by the same people, and takes suicide, he goesover the edge and is almost killed himself. When he wakes up he focuses more onthe training, and becomes a pupil of a famous "karate instructor",who teaches him a lot of Kung Fu-related moves and to fight without being ableto see. Yeah, something like that.

Yeah, I'llconfess. It's hard to keep up the concentration when the movie almost clocks inon three hours and most of it just is people dancing and singing. I havenothing against either of these details, the basis of a Bollywood-movie, buthere it often disturbs the story, the suspense and it makes you just sit andwish for non-stop Thai action instead. Most of the storyline is borrowed fromKickboxer, but I can swear I've seen some scenes in Hong Kong movies - for example the training scene with Raju and the"karate instructor". He learns who to catch eggs without breakingthem and shit like that.

It alsotook me until I started writing this review that Ajay Devgan is the same guyplaying Singham. They sure had a similar face, but when the Singham-Devgan ismuscular killer-machine, Jigar-Devgan mostly looks like a wimp who needs ahaircut. But he can fight, nothing wrong with that ability. The action scenes,quite few, a are well-made and violent - and quite bloody. It's a lot ofslow-motion and round-kicks, exaggerated sound effects and melodrama that lastslong after the movie has ended. When the action sets in, this is a very entertainingand cool movie. It also boasts a couple of nice motocross stunts, always awelcome sight in any kind of movie.

It's just apity the boring songs and uninspired dance numbers destroys the feeling of asolid movie. They effectively stops the flow and it has a hard time startingover after each time a song- and dance-number finishes. Except the action, themovie is saved by brilliant and over-the-top bad guys with big moustaches. Theevil Evil EVIL martial arts-baddie also looks like Gene Simmons in a mullet,which makes every scene with him even better.

Jigar is an unimportant film, but a must for usavid collectors of odd fighting movies from all over the world.

Cyclops (2008)

2012-01-10T22:12:00.000+01:00

This blogneeds more reviews of SyFy Originals, ain't that true? So why don't kickstartthis year with yet another classic from the masters of TV-movies! Cyclops isone of the better productions to come from this controversial channel, and it'smostly because it's produced by Roger and Julie Corman, written by hislong-time collaborator Frances Doel and made with using left-over sets from acancelled TV-series about ancient Rome.A classic Corman-idea, use something old to make something new. Cheap anddirty, and very effective.

KevinStapleton is Marcus, a soldier for the Roman Empire.He's given the mission by emperor Tiberius Caesar (Eric Roberts) to catch theviolent and man-eating Cyclops who just eaten one merchant to much in the forestssurrounding Rome.He do so, but when he's back he quickly falls into disfavour from the emperorand is sentence to be... a GLADIATOR! Hooray, because we all love gladiators! (Joey,do you like movies about gladiators?). Anyway, of course the Cyclops isinvolved in the fun and happy gladiator games and this is also the chance forMarcus to make revolt against the tyrannical Tiberius Caesar and his hordes ofsleazy henchmen!

To be fair,it's not much of a story, but Doel certainly fills the story with action andviolence and a few corny dialogues here and there. Not bad and it works,because you never get a chance to be bored. The direction by Declan O'Brien isslick and professional, which is surprising because I was very disappointed byhis other works in the same genre, Savage Planet and Monster Ark.Cyclops seem to have a slightly, but very slightly, bigger budget - but thatcould also seem so because they had the chance to use the sets of anotherproduction (with a lot bigger budget). Like every other movie shot in Sofia, Bulgaria,this also features the local talents of Velizar Binev and Raicho Vasilev. Goodactors and nice familiar exploitation faces.

I also lovegood actors slumming in low-budget movies, and Eric Roberts is no exception. Helook a bit tired and yes, even bored, but do his classic bad guy routine and givesthe cast some extra weight. A fun detail is that the Bulgarian cast mostly isdubbed with voices of some heavy English accents, which is nice because oftradition a lot of English actors has acted in big historical epics, often hasRomans.

Cyclops isalso one of the gorier movies to first be released on the SyFy Channel. We'renot talking advanced stuff, but quite well-made and blood spurtingdecapitations, ripped of legs, chopped of heads + some violent bites from theCyclops himself (who by the way looks ridiculous, in a very uneven CG animated version). But ithas enough of the red stuff to make me happy.

For fans of TV-movies, Corman-productions and EricRoberts sleeping through his paycheck. Don't we all love stuff like that?

Shikari (1963)

2012-01-06T22:32:00.001+01:00

One of mymany goals in life is to collect every single King Kong-related ever made. Itcan be official Kong's or just good old rip-off's from all over the world. Ihaven't succeeded yet, but I'm getting damn close. The latest movie in my collectionis Shikari, a 1963-hit that manages to combines King Kong, Mighty Joe Young, DrCyclops and the atmosphere of the old poverty row cinema but in colour and withlots of singing and dancing. Shikari means big game hunter, and this is alsothe central theme of the movie: to catch King Kong!

A greedycircus owner decides to go to some faraway country (Singapore is mentioned, but I'm notsure that's where they're going) to catch King Kong. They actually use thatname, until they're there and the natives instead calls the big ape forOttangu. They meet up with their guide, a famous hunter with - as usual - abeautiful daughter, who lives in the jungle. They find a totally destroyedvillage and our heroes wants to get the police and doctors there, but thegreedy circus owner shoots the messenger and wants to catch Ottangu first! Somescenes in the print is missing, but a while later they're discovering that thefamous Dr Cyclops has a secret lab in the jungle. It's he who created the bigape and now he's - in the name of peace - continuing the experiments. He canshrink people, transform to gorillas or just throw them down in his snake pit!What will happen to the good part of the circus crew? Will they survive... orwill the wrath of Ottangu punish them?!?!?!?

Shikari,who clocks in at 130 minutes, could be a considered a bit talky for anun-experienced viewer of Bollywood cinema, but the fact is that it doesn't feelboring at all. There's a lot of musical numbers, but they are easy on the eyesand never too long. The biggest charm is the shameless atmosphere of matinee.It's just a very unpretentious movie. The bad guys are bad and the good guysare good. The monsters are monsters and it has jungle, hut-destruction, a veryuncalled for ice-skating number and all the men are a bit to chubby to actionheroes. Just the way I want my Bollywood-adventure.

It's hardnot to dig the fine combination between not less than three of Ernest B.Schoedsack's classics. The mad doctor in Shikari even calls himself Dr Cyclops.Shikari more feels like a homage to Ernest B. Schoedsack and Merian C. Cooperthan a simple rip-off or a "Bollywood remake". Like Spielberg andLucas did with the Indiana Jones franchise, this movie is rooted in the nostalgiaof older American adventure movies.

King Kong,or Ottangu himself is a fun creature. One of the more creepier giant apes outthere. Mostly because the actor inside the suit choose use a very spastic,weird, almost zombie/monster-style of moving around. There's not smooth movementshere, and it just looks wicked! Like Ottangu is a fucked-up robot-ape! The badthing is that there's only one destruction scenes, when Ottangu attacks avillage in the end. This is well-made and looks cool, but it would have beennice with more ape-action. As a bonus, under Dr Cyclops lair, we also meet avery odd monster. It's some kind of mutant, played by a man in suit, who'sgigantic and chained to the wall. Pity we didn't see him fight with Ottangu!

Shikari isa fun adventure-romp that entertained me. Don't be fooled by the monsterlesscover, this is way more cool than you might think.

Clouds (1984)

2012-01-01T12:24:00.001+01:00

When thenew year just arrived and poured myself a Whisky and sat down to watch Alapaap,aka Clouds, a Filipino horror movie from 1984. And I watched it all through,which is some kind of record, because I rarely can keep my eyes open after 23:00in the evening! I never heard about it before, but when I found a bootleg andread the description I felt it could be something for me, which doesn't meanshit - because my taste in movies are crap anyway.

A guy is waking up after a serious overdose. Hisfriends are waiting for me, with love and support. A short while after they'regoing out in the countryside to shoot a short movie, but when they arrive theyfound out that the house they wanted to rent room in is not available anymore.After some discussions with the owner they can rent rooms, but something iswrong in there. The old man still mourns his daughter that was killed and rapedsome months before nearby and something seem to lurk in the shadows. Soon theyfind themselves under siege with the ghost of the raped daughter hunting themdown, taking over their bodies and killing them!

Clouds is actually a good movie, even if the few online comments I found saythe opposite. In parts it feels like an arty version of Evil Dead, but with alot more sex. Yeah, the sex-part is so prominent that it was shown in seedycinemas the years after, and there's enough female breasts and male asses foreveryone. But I can't say it's sleazy or shallow, the sex and nudity feelsnatural and the whole erotic atmosphere reminded me of Silip - Daughters of Eve.The movie starts of very corny, and it felt to be one of those wacky, crazyeighties horrors with the tongue firmly placed in the cheek, but thanks to thetalent of director Tata Esteban and screenwriter Rei Nicandro it never goes inthat direction after the crazy beginning. The script is low-key for being aFilipino horror movie and gives us a couple of impressive ghostly set-pieces.

During a few scenes it also gets creepy and the atmosphere makes up for theslightly thin script. Don't expect much gore, even if it has some juicy make-upeffects and violent deaths - but I can guarantee you that death by hairdryerisn't as spectacular as you might believe. The ghost effects - movingfurniture, a weird statue following one of the characters etc are nicely doneand works good with the slick cinematography. I have to say that the actinggenerally is very fine also, with an interesting realistic touch to it.

The only bad thing is the ending, which belongs to those endings I hate themost. Sure, it tries to make it a little bit better - but it's still shit andtakes away the power of the story. I think we can blame it on lazy writing. Butthe rest, not bad at all. If I knew who owned the rights I would try to buy 'emand release it on a legit DVD!

The Devil (1981)

2011-12-31T20:38:00.001+01:00

So are youone of those that enjoy watching movies where people are vomiting worms andsnakes over and over again? Well, then The Devil is something for you! From atime when Asian horrors was really extreme and happily crossed the borders oftaste and morality, here's a classic that I haven't seen before. Directed byTaiwanese master Ren-chieh Chang, this might not deliver anything original, andis far from perfect. Still it delivers good entertainment and a verystraight-forward story.

A charming,handsome man is arriving to a small town and checks in at the local hotel. Theyoungest son works his matchmaking-magic and sets him up with sister andeverything goes so well that they actually marries! Everyone is happy... untilthey realize who the devil is, him. He's just a rude and violent con-man whowants to make a quick buck with selling the hotel and taking the family money. Butan older woman who practices black magic puts a terrible curse on him as arevenge. But he's not the last, because one after another of the local thugsare being killed off in this brutal fashion: being eaten alive from the insideby snakes and worms!

The Devilis, like many of these movies, a bit confusing and the final twists just mademe even more confused. What's clear is that someone is killing off men in thevillage, who is it? Because our con-man is just interested in the hotel? Issomeone taking revenge on the woman that gets beaten to death with a stone inthe beginning? I'm not sure, but it's still nasty little Taiwanese horror moviewith some very gruesome scenes of people having these creatures crawling outfrom the mouth, belly and other parts of the body that might be unprotected atthe moment. It's more black and green slime than gore and blood, even if it'squite graphic and not for the sensitive viewer. For example, in the beginningwe see the witch save one man with opening his belly and removing the snakes inAndreas Schnaas-esque close up's!

What Ireally like with the story is how the con-man very skillfully transforms from anice hunk to a greedy and sleazy bastards, and how the family reacts to this.I'm not sure, but it seems like our heroine's cousin think she's hot and wantsto marry her before the con-man takes his place. This is a fun detail, and Iguess - like in Sweden -that marrying a cousin is very legal in Hong Kongalso. Why the f**k am I writing about the cousin-thing? I have no idea, but Ineed to fill this review with, as we say in Sweden: Ordbajs.

The Devil is not out on any official DVD, but I got myself a widescreen bootlegdubbed to English. Worked fine for me and a movie the deserves a good, qualityrelease. Maybe one day we'll see snake-vomiting in HD? I hope so!

It's Alive (2008)

2011-12-31T12:12:00.001+01:00

I'm a bigfan of Larry Cohen. He's one of my favourite screenwriters and directors andoften revisits his old and new classics with the same happiness as before. ButI need to say that one of his most famous movies, It's Alive - and the twosequels - are the weakest in his career. They have brilliant ideas, but areboring and talky and never take off into that awesome Larryland we love somuch. According to me, a humble and slightly stupid film nerd in Sweden atleast. But on the other hand, I love movies with killer babies and that's why Ifinally sat down and watched the remake of It's Alive, with the same title,shot in Bulgariaand with Bijou Phillips and James Murray as the parents of the monstrosity!

Lenore and Frank are a young couple who's finally having their first baby. Butsomething goes wrong at the hospital and when Lenore wakes up again the doctorand the nurses are dead and the police is search the area for the killer orkillers. But the baby are ok, they think... A little while later Lenore startsfinding dead, half-eaten, animals around the house and she slowly understandthat it's her infant son, Daniel, who's responsible. Like all good mother shedoes everything to protect him, but soon he also start to attack people andFrank is suspecting something is very, very wrong...

Except thebeginning of the movie, It's Alive is more closer to the excellent 1991 killerbaby-movie The Unborn and never goes further into the territory created byCohen in the seventies. This is a sad thing, because I always loved Cohen'sideas and a movie like this could always get better when using more radical,edgy twists. But the new version is also way more fun and completely lacks theendless boring scenes of talking heads that plagues the original film. Sometimethe easy way out can also be the best way to go.

It took me a while to get used to Bijou Phillips odd acting style and her evenweirder voice, but after a while I realized that this was a very good choice ofactress - because she feels very innocent and when the shit finally hits thenfan she turns dark and nasty to a twisted little bitch. I'm impressed. JamesMurray's job is mostly to look good, but he and Bijou fits together and theyare a convincing and cute couple who have to face their worst fears. This is amovie shot in Bulgaria, sothat means most supporting actors and extras are not so American-looking andthe locations look both like something from the Eastern Europe, but with an interesting American flair. The house whereour family lives in looks hilarious, like an abandoned country-themedrestaurant out in nowhere. A very odd choice of location.

One nicedetail is that the same kind of stroller used on the original movie postermakes a cameo later on in the movie. I like that.

The gore? Yeah, it's mostly bloody - but has some graphic and fun violence. Ilove how the baby acts like a piranha when he chews the legs off people! Butmostly they filmmakers focused on spraying a lot of blood, almost like from anold Samurai movie, whenever the baby attacks a poor victim.

It's Alive is a fun, violent and twisted movie. It lacks the originality, butit wins when it comes to entertainment and gore.

El Asesino Está Entre Los Trece (1973)

2011-12-30T19:20:00.003+01:00

TheSpaniards didn't to be left out of the game and produced a couple of very Giallo-esquethrillers during the seventies, a few of the involving the great Paul Naschy inbigger or smaller roles. A Dragonfly for each Corpse from 1974 is one movie,but my favourite is the violent 1971 sleaze-classic Seven Murders for ScotlandYard, where a less fit Naschy plays a drunk ex-trapeze artist like only Naschycould do it. In 1973 this little known thriller game, El Asesino Está Entre LosTrece (literary: The Murderer is among the thirteen) and gives AgathaChristie's The Little Indians a nice spin with just pretending to go thatroute, but then turn out quite different.

Thirteenpeople gathers in a remote Spanish villa, after an invitation from the widow ofa rich businessman, Lisa Mandel (Patty Shepard). All of them had someconnection with her dead husband and she suspects, and claims have proof, thatone of them killed her husband! With the help of her mechanic/gardener (PaulNaschy) she sabotage their cars and they just can't leave (if they don't walk,but you know how lazy rich fuckers are!). After intrigues, affairs and lots oftalking one after another of them is getting killed by a murderer in blackgloves...

El AsesinoEstá Entre Los Trece might not revolutionize the mystery-genre, but if youignore the negative reviews out on the web this is a surprisingly effectivelittle thriller. The main bulk of the movie is a talky, soapy story about abunch of rich people sitting around in a big house, drinking, smoking andfucking. But believe it or not, this makes the last half hour even stronger andwhen the murders set in they are gory and bloody and very effective. Violentstuff, but without being to much (which of course is sad, we all want "tomuch" in a giallo) and with a nice, semi-ironic ending that actually livesup to one of the most used jokes about mystery-stories ever. 'Nuff said!

Paul Naschyas a quite small part, but makes a good performance of the little time he has.The rest of the cast is really good, and it's always to such veterans as JackTaylor and Simón Andreu sleazing around in an obscure Spanish genre movie(something Tayloris good at, but this is the first time I've seen Andreu do that). The charactersare well-written and has personality, so much of the entertainment comes fromthe actors and the charisma they have.

While thegore isn't overly graphic, it's well-made and hidden with clever editing. Oneof the cast gets and axe in his head and the clip where he get's it is SO shortthat it's almost too short. The other stabbings and throat-slits are nicelydone, but we're not talking Carlo Rambaldi or Gianetto De Rossi exactly.

A slow-moving but still entertaining Spanish "giallo".

Intensive Care (1991)

2011-12-28T21:46:00.001+01:00

Around10-11 years after it was hot and trendy to make a slasher, Dorna van Rouveroydecided to make the most generic European slasher ever. So generic it's reallyno difference between this one and any other slasher made between 88-89 in the US, home of theslice 'n' dice cinema. Armed with a script that three people worked on and apointless, five minute cameo by George Kennedy (who during this time signedevery contract handed to him without looking at the script) and some of the mostridiculous post-eighties haircuts ever. Yes, this is Intensive Care. One of themost butchered Dutch movies ever made.

Doctor Bruckner (George Kennedy) is a very angry and bitter man, with highthoughts about himself. When a less important doctor implies that he's donesomething wrong at the operating table, the good doctor just stabs the insideof the patient a couple of times and let the younger doctor solve the problem.Then he leaves, drives away in his car and.... hits a truck! An accident that sendshim in a coma (where he get's shorter and very much slimmer)!

Seven yearslater and some wacky nurses decides to have fun with the comatose patients,puts funny masks on them - which obviously awakens Bruckner, grumpier thanever! He kills the staff and then goes out for a killing spree at a nearbytown...

That's about it. Sure, we follow some meatbagsliving in the houses, among them the girl-favorite no. 1 from that time, KoenWauters as the saxophone playing Peter. He looks like a Romanian transvestite,sick of tuberculosis. I guess that was the fad at that time. He, his girlfriendand her annoying little brother also plays some music for us. Terrible.

The biggest sin of Intensive Care is that it's so awfully nothing-special.There's nothing that differs it from the American counterparts. Nothing, exceptmaybe the ugly actors (but we're talking Europeans á the early nineties here,so it's kinda normal) and the music number. Bruckner wakes up, looks completelydifferent than Kennedy, kills people and then he dies in the end. Happy happyjoy joy.

But this generic feeling of boring crap also makes it quite entertaining, likea lot of the poor slashers being made the years before this one. It's quitegory and bloody and the effects are decent. We're treated to a throat-slitting,a knife in the eye, a drill to head and some stabbings and stuff like that. Themovie looks OK, but with the cinematography of a Scandinavian family movie andmusic from a German Scheiße production. The editing is surprisingly good withsome effective moments of violence and chases. Not bad actually, I'll give themthat.

Intensive Care shares more than a few names with the Dick Maas classicAmsterdamned, but where the latter one is witty and well-made, Intensive Carejust is unintentional funny and unoriginal. But the gore and the entertainmentvalue is still quite high. I recommend it for you who have nothing left towatch...

Ninja Killer (1974)

2011-12-28T17:39:00.000+01:00

I'veincluded the wrong year of this production, because Ninja Killer was probablyreleased in the early eighties, but the movie it uses the main bulk of footagefrom was released in 1974 under the awesome title Karateciler istanbulda,starring the one and only bad-ass Cüneyt Arkin! Karateciler istanbulda wasprobably bought cheaply by Filmark who then shot new footage with Carter Wongand Bolo Yeung. Contrary to what the rumours say, Godfrey Ho was probably notinvolved in this (or what I know, any of Filmark's productions) and thedirector of the new scenes could have been a nobody with the name Victor Lam ormaybe it just was an alias for Tomas Tang himself. I'm pretty sure we willnever know.

The story is, for a Filmark production, quite straight-forward and the newfootage fits in quite good to the Turkish movie. It's something about Hong Konggangsters who smuggles antiques out from Hong Kong to Turkey, and the Honk Kong police sends a cop toassist Cüneyt Arkin catch the smugglers and at the same time some gangster bossin Hong Kong wants to take revenge on BoloYeung, who I think is a cop also... or maybe a gangster or... hey, do you knowwhat? Just read Teleport City's ambitious try toexplain the story here.

I mustconfess I never even tried to understand the stories in many of these flicks.I'm just waiting for the next cool action scene and that might explain my lackof ambition when it comes to this boring part of explaining the storyline.Because Ninja Killer is actually a very cool movie, and highly recommended.First of all, which we all knew deep inside: the Turkish original footage isWAY more cooler than the newly shot Hong Kongfootage. The fights and random action performed by Arkin is extremely cool,very violent and with frantic fight scenes. The Hong Kongstuff is quite ok, but Bolo is fighting sideways like he's Doctor Zoidberg(they kinda look like each other to actually) and there's not love, no passionin the fighting. But it works and it's never boring.

Karatecileristanbulda also looks like an Italian cop-movie, with the same colourfulcharacters and creative directing - except it has tons and tons of kung fu.Arkin is pretty good in what he does, and kills one baddie after another withconvincing movie-kicks and a nice bitchslapping-attitude.

The final action scene is on top of roofs, and it reminded of a smaller versionof the Jean-Paul Belmondo vehicle Fear Over the City. It looks quite dangerousin parts and I can't see any silly stunt doubles helping Arkin out when herolls towards the edge of the roof or kicks the shit out of the bad guys.

Anotherfine thing with Ninja Killer is the fantastic soundtrack of electronic music.One of the tracks is, for example, something by Yellow Magic Orchestra. The useof a synth version of Flight of the Bumblebee is, to quote Teleport City,"really not much different than if they’d just slapped “Yakety Sax” ontothe soundtrack".

Ninja Killer is out on a cheap-DVD in the UK, from InstantVision Ltd (IVL).The quality is really fine. Fullscreen, but clear and crispy (I always wantedto use the word like all the other home cinema nerds out there) and a lotbetter than I thought it would be. Probably taken from a digibeta mastersomewhere.

I movie I think most of you readers of Ninja Dixonwill love and it's both cheap and easy to find! You know what to do!

The Top Ten Genre Favourites of 2011!

2011-12-26T10:22:00.000+01:00

It's damnhard being the creator and father of Ninja Dixon to make lists like this.Mostly because I often takes me a few years to watch a new movie, even if it'sextremely good and getting rave reviews from friends (just ask Jocke aboutthat!). But this year I've been trying to watch some new stuff, just to be ableto join what others are discussing.

Whatstrikes me with this list is how mainstream it is. With the exception of a fewtitles this is big movies, distributed everywhere in fancy schmancy cinemas andin some cases even big successes. This goes against my secret agenda of onlywatching movies that other people don't understand, misunderstood productionsthat will be hailed as masterpieces in the future - but not now.

Here's a list in no particular order, because I can't stand putting one moviebefore the other. Some of these was probably released earlier, in one case itwas out in festivals in 2009 - but I've chosen them because they got their bigbreak/release in 2011, and therefore are new and fresh productions.

The Skin ILive In
- Could this be the most hyped movie of 2011? Yes, but it's also one of the fewhyped movies that could stand the test of the audience and critics anddelivered one of the most original and stunning genre-blending in years. Don'tlisten to fucked up critics who claim this movie is cold, this is the hottest eurocult-moviesince Alejandro Amenábar's Tesis in 1996. And a good advice, don't readanything about. No spoilers. Just watch it and thank me later.

Inbred
- The surprise-movie of the year! Not released on DVD or BD yet, but we caughtthis highly entertaining British backwoodshorror at the Weekend of Horrors in Bottrop, Salbau. So fardirector Alex Chandon's most polished movie, with a brilliant cast of characteractors and some insane gore scenes during the second half. Unpredictable, funnyand engaging. Can't wait to own it! My review!

Tucker andDale vs Evil

- It took afew years for our new favourites Tucker and Dale to reach a wider audience, andit's strange why it took so long. This is one of the finest examples of a"horror-comedy" since Shaun of the Dead with characters you trulylove (very fine performances by everyone) and a nice amount of blood and gore.The witty script, an original take on the tired slasher-concept, will surpriseall of you.

Wake Wood
- I'll admit this is a very uneven movie, mostly because the budget seemed onthe low side and it probably had a bit hurried shooting-schedule. But I likedit and mostly because of the fine cast and the presence of a truly weird localmagic. The movie itself reminds me both of The Wicker Man and Pet Sematary, butin some parts even darker and nastier. The ending is a bit rushed and it's noperfect, but still a movie I recommend.

Troll Hunter

- Much hasbeen written about this Norwegian mockumentary and even if some lessintelligent

critics never understood it (hey, it's our traditions, not yours - keep an openmind please!) it's still beats the shit out of most American movies this year.Once again, this proofs that a good movie becomes even better if thescreenwriters invest time in the characters and stop worrying about what otherpeople will think about their project. Do I need to say that the CG effectslooks absolutely stunning? A classic!

TheInkeepers
- How to follow up a classic like House of the Devil? Well, director Ti Westreally succeeded with making a movie as far as possible from his last, anddon't believe the rumours - this is not a movie with an eighties feeling. Thisis just a very calmly told ghost story focused on characters and not onlyscares. It's a brave move, but it's captivating all the way through and has oneof the most solid casts this year. I'm sure you will sit and discuss it with yourfriends afterwards, it's one of those movies...

Sint

- FromDutch filmmakers Dick Maas comes one of the funniest and most well-madeChristmas-horrors I've seen in many years. This is not the fat bastard Santawrecking havoc, it's the superior Sinterklaas and his demon-army of Black Peteswho decides to take revenge on mankind! Much in the same feeling as The Liftand Amsterdamned, with the same visual flair and black comedy. And blood andgore. A top-class horror-comedy from a master of the macabre. Can't wait to seewhat he gives the world next time!

Ratline
- One of the most unique and interesting genre-fuckup's during 2011. Is itdrama, is it horror, is it thriller? Is it just the work of Eric Stanze? Onething is for sure, it has some fantastic gore, a well-written script andtop-notch acting from Stanze's usual suspects. This also proofs that whatformat you shoot a movie has nothing to do with the quality. Nothing tires meout more than pretentious filmmakers who actually are so stupid they believe moviesonly can be real movies if they're shot on film. Bah! Humbug! The story,acting, the director always comes first - after that you should be able toshoot your movie with a VHS-camera and still be brilliant. If you can't dothat, you have no fucking talent. My review!

The Thing
- Oh no! So politically incorrect of me! A scandal! ;) No, seriously. Thisremake/prequel was one of my finer experiences with genre cinema this year. Iactually love how they went for both options and still managed to connect thedots and give the torch to John Carpenter's original (itself a remake) from1982. Good actors, excellent direction and some amazing special effects (evenif I can agree that the final monster is a but uneven). In the House of NinjaDixon we fell in love with The Thing 2011!

Lunopolis
- And of course, just until a couple of days ago, Lunopolis was out of myreach. Then suddenly I found it in a store in Stockholm and I saw what's probably one ofthe finest mockumentaries made in a very long time. A mix of every absurdconspiracy invented by mankind, but put together with so much love andintelligence. It has one of the most satisfying endings I've seen in a whileand is an example of true and pure imagination. Indie-production when it's atits best! My review!

I also liked an enjoyed Final Destination 5 (a movie that should have a specialprize for being superior than the mediocre part 4), Jason Connery's charmingTV-movie 51, filled with rubbermonsters - always a pleasure to see and finallySuper 8 of course, near-perfect family-entertainment in the vein as The Gooniesand The Monster Squad.

I still haven't seen ChromeSkull: Laid to Rest 2, Attack the Block, Dear GodNo!, Red State, The Theatre Bizarre, Chilleramaand The Woman, all who seem very interesting and in some cases really good. Butone day, I just can't promise when, I'll see them and might give them a reviewif they're not to hip and hot!

Open House (2010)

2011-12-26T00:46:00.000+01:00

The themeof home invasion is it's own little sub-genre inside the thriller genre andit's mostly a successful way to create tension. Just the idea of takingsomething so close to us, the ultimate safe-house, and make it a place of terrormakes the storytellers go a little bit further. There's never fun when ourprivate space is invaded my someone (or something) that doesn't belong there.Funny Games, Inside, Hard Candy, Straw Dogs are four movies that in verydifferent way tells us the story of a home being a house of terror, and one ofthe latest examples is Andrew Paquin's Open House, starring his sister AnnaPaquin in a small part together with her fellow colleague from True Blood, StephenMoyer. But they are just minor characters in something much bigger.

David (Brian Geraghty) and Lila (Tricia Helfer) aretwo psychopaths and serial killers taking over a nice house outside Hollywood. They kill thepeople inside, but David keeps one of the - Alice (Rachel Blanchard) alive insecret, hiding her in a small space inside the wall of the laundry room. Alice is very jealous,but still they aren't living like lovers. She brings more people to the house,David films them with a camcorder and kills them brutally. Alice, who wants tosurvive, starts manipulating David to make him her friend. But it's not easywhen Lila, who controls David completely, always is nearby. Will she, or theyboth, break free?

It's hard to say that Open House breaks new ground, because it doesn't. What itsucceeds in is creating suspense and being a competent thriller with someexcellent acting. I like how easy and smooth our "heroes" takes overthe house and gets rid of guests and new friends (and the bodies are stashed inthe garage, in tiny, tiny pieces). It's cold, brutal and quite bloody - andnone of them are moving an eyebrow when blood spurts and people screams. Realpsychos. Sometimes the cold American Psycho-style (overrated movie by the way)can be annoying, and Open House almost goes that way, but keeps the humanity byhaving Alice in the show, a character who reacts maybe more normal when she'sin shock than many other similar characters. She understands that to stay alivelonger she needs to be friend with David and respects him because she won'ttake any unnecessary risk. She wants to get out alive.

Open House is a good thriller with some nasty scenes of carnage, but it failsto be really engaging. We've seen it before, we can almost guess how it willand the characters are nothing new. When watching it I found myself thinkingwhy this movie was made? It's not bad at all, really well-made, but how couldit attract investors? When I movie can't offer anything new it has to rely onthe actors, and I'm 100 % sure that the presence of TV-hotties Anna Paquin and StephenMoyer made the investment-deal come through.

I sound negative, but really, I'm not. Open House is a fine little movie thatwill deliver what you want to get from it. Just don't expect to be surprised.

Open House has recently been released by Njuta Films in Sweden and ispossible to buy everywhere.

The Pack (1977)

2011-12-25T22:28:00.000+01:00

RobertClouse had a very interesting career as a director. More or less, it seems, agun for hire but still with a very edgy and radical style without abandoningclassic filmmaking. He's only considered to have directed one major classic, theBruce Lee flick Enter The Dragon. It's probably the only movie he will beremember for, but his career outside this kung fu adventure has a lot to offer.The Ultimate Warrior, with Yul Brynner and Max Von Sydow - a movie clearlybefore its time, has always been a favourite of mine. Gritty and violent andvery stylish. In 1977 he entered the so popular genre of killer animals and theresult was The Pack.

Joe Don Baker is Jerry, a marine biologist livingon Seal Island together with his new girlfriendand their two (one each) sons. The island is a typical wildlife spot fortourists, but this is the end of the season and the last guests arrives to staythere over the weekend. It's a businessman and his family and staff, among themthe bored son Tommy (Paul Willson, immortalized much later through his part inOffice Space) and the secretary, who's gotten orders to try to seduce Tommy.Anyway, Jerry spots a straw dog on the island and soon he understands thatthere's at least a dozen, maybe more, starving and probably with rabies - andnow they turned to human flesh to survive!

I would say that The Pack is up there together with Grizzly, Day of the Animalsand The Prophecy (and Night of the Lepus, but for different reasons) as thebest ever made in the genre. A bold statement, but that comes from a man thathave seem them all and knows what to expect of a killer animal-movie. Thedirection from Clouse is intensive, and seldom have I seen so realistic andgruesome dog-attacks as here. Not especially graphic, but the dogs looksfucking pissed and the attacks are cleverly edited to look even more violentand ferocious! The Pack was made under the supervision of The American HumaneAssociation and the dogs trained by one of the best in the biz, Karl LewisMiller, but I can guarantee that you never seen anything like this. Even I feltuncomfortable watching those beasts with drooling jaws jump at the actors andstuntmen, looking like they are going to rip every throat in sight!

Joe Don Baker, lets take a minute or two discussing this man. I always felt,especially after watching this movie, that I've been a bit unfair to him. Morethan once I've been joking that it was only in the seventies a man like himcould have been a movie star, a sex-symbol. But I've always seen him as thefatty he became later (still a brilliant actor of course, I love him!) but hereally looked good in the seventies and even in The Pack his sex appeal shinesthrough. More respect to Baker! The rest of the cast (and the character they'replaying) are good and likable, and it feels like real people. Even themumbling, silly blonde secretary/cook (Sherry Miles) has a lot of character andthe scenes between her and Paul Willson is excellent. Willson was the PhilipSeymour Hoffman of his generation, both playing similar character and sharing alook only a mother could love, but sadly Willson never became the big star hedeserved to be.

The Pack finally out from Warner Archive and it's a fantastic movie, probablyTHE best movie Clouse directed. For you who are interested, in 2006 The Breedwas released. It's a very similar movie but with a 100 % young and attractivecast. It's actually quite good, but never reaches the quality of The Pack.

Lunopolis (2011)

2011-12-24T22:46:00.000+01:00

Themockumentary is a genre that expects us to believe in the impossible in thedisguise of the possible. History are filled with, I would say, mostinteresting productions. It's like the genre itself makes the filmmakers extracareful with details, acting and trying to stitch together a script that willstun the audience. From Zelig and Cannibal Holocaust to The Blair Witch Projectand The Last Broadcast, to modern movies like Survival of the Dead to TrollHunter. Lunopolis was released this year, and so far - and I've seen most ofthem - this is one of the most powerful and intelligent mockumentaries made.The budget is low and some of the effects (like manipulated photos) aren't thebest, but it makes everything come together in the end like never before.

Could thestrongest idea with Lunopolis be that they took the most absurd idea, the mostwacky storyline every conceived and made it look like something possible? Yes, the basic idea is that a somefilmmakers discovers a strange machine deep down in a secret underground base.It's an electronic device that nearly kills one of them. Everything leads themto The Church of Lunology (who bears more than one resemblance withScientology) who believes people are living on the moon! The deeper our heroesgo the more complicated the plot becomes and soon the day that some peoplebelieve is the end of the world arrives, the 21st of December 2012...

Lunopolismixes every lunatic (sorry) conspiracy theory into one tight script. We haveeverything from ancient astronauts, hidden structures on the moon, the 2012doomsday, UFO's, ghosts and sects mixed like never before, and hell yeah, itworks! The footage of the crew investigating the leads and sooner or latergetting themselves in danger is inter-cut with extremely well-made interviewswith experts of mythology, religion, time and space. These are so realisticthey could have been take from anything produced by the History Channel. Butit's fake and it's so well-made I can't believe it.

What really takes me out of the story whenever it happens are a few not so goodmanipulated photos and two occasions when a characters draws a gun, which feltboth unexpected and not really necessary becomes it suddenly feels like a cheapaction movie. But that's my only complains. The rest is a very convincing andentertaining conspiracy-thriller with sci-fi elements. The acting is good,especially from the "experts" and I'm very impressed by the work MatthewAvant and his team has done with finding locations - from the secretunderground base to the impressive headquarters of The Church of Lunology.

One of the highlights is actor Dave Potter, playing David James, a"moon-escapee" who wants to tell his story. His performance isexcellent, worthy of very price in the book, and reminded me a lot of theequally brilliant performance by Raymond J. Barry in Interview with theAssassin, one of the best mockumentaries ever made. The director, Neil Burger,went on to bigger projects like The Illusionist and Limitless, but his firstmovie is still the best he made.

The moonhas been a source of mockumentaries before: Alternative 3, Dark Side of theMoon, Apollo 18, but Lunopolis is the best. Without a doubt.

Matthew Avant will probably have a similar career,a successful one, but I hope he will stay closer to the ground and make movieslike this - or better - in the future... or maybe he already done better moviesin the future, or... right now?

Glen or Glenda? (1953)

2011-12-24T00:19:00.000+01:00

I first sawEd Wood's Glen or Glenda at a bad movie festival in my old hometown, Östersund.The salon was packed - like with all the movies - and the audience washysterical. Everyone loved the movies and laughter and applauses filled thehouse. This was years ago, before Tim Burton's brilliant biopic about Mr Woodor easy to find DVD releases of his work. So it was time to watch it again andit's now I fully can appreciate it for being what it is, not a bad movie - buta very silly and confusing movie getting the facts wrong, but still with it'sheart at the right place.

It'sbasically a docudrama about transvestites, telling the stories of three men andtheir road to happiness... or death. One of them, Glen, is played by Ed Wood himselfand his real-life girlfriend Dolores Fuller is playing his girlfriend. This isalso the part that takes up the bulk of the movie and dives in to some trulysurrealistic and experimental sequences that goes from weird striptease andS&M to classic fifties kitchen-melodrama.

And... it'sfirst now I put everything together. This movie was released in 1953! Somehow,in my imagination, I always felt it was made later - maybe in the end of thefifties or very early sixties, but imagine - 1953, a crazy, wacky movie dealingwith transvestism! Not that it ends on a truly positive note. Glen learns tocontrol his "Glenda"-character and becomes a happily married man.That never happen in real life. Dolores broke up with him, he got into heavydrinking and he never stopped wearing women's clothing. Glen or Glenda was hisfantasy, his good old happy American fantasy about living his life as arespected man. Or what he thought was a good way of living.

Even of Glen or Glenda is full-blown exploitation it's made with a heart and apassion, with a few iconic images. The scene where Dolores gives Ed his angorasweater, or when Ed is sneaking around the stores spying on the mannequins inthe windows. This has forever been imprinted in modern pop-culture, not only becauseof Tim Burton's movie but because they are strong images worthy to beremembered.

But even more iconic is the odd footage of Bela Lugosi, like a God-characterwatching over the life's of these transvestites, rambling immortal lines. I'mnot sure what the purpose was, but it's still an essential part of anexploitation-classic. Let's finish this with the words of Bela Lugosi, the scientist...

Beware.

Beware ofthe big, green dragon that sits on your doorstep.

He eatslittle boys, puppy dog tails and big, fat snails.

Beware.Take care.

Beware.

Ratline (2011)

2011-12-21T23:30:00.000+01:00

The truthbe told, I don't want to tell you anything about the story of Ratline. First ofall because it's an original story that actually is original for real, and notinspired by countless other genre movies. Second, it's far to complex to justwrite down a few words about. It's so much more than gore and nudity, butRatline includes both of these fan-favourites - without being juvenile andtalentless like for example the movies from another famous indie-director,Andreas Schnaas. I'm very new to the work of Eric Stanze, the director ofRatline, but last week I saw Savage Harvest - his first movie - and now hislatest. What surprises me is how similar they are in atmosphere. Stanze has avery distinct style, and now it's more mature, more or less fully developed. Ican't wait to see the movies he made in-between.

Nazis + Occultism = instant interest from me. And I'm not alone in that. It's ashameful fetish most of us enjoy reading about, watching movies based on andjust spending a couple of hours on the web reading fucked up site aboutconspiracy theories about the occult nazis can keep me awake all through thenight. Richard Stanley's The Secret Glory is a must-see documentary about thesubject. The McGuffin in Ratline is the infamous Blutfahne, stained by theblood of the early Nazis during the Beer Hall Putsch in 1923. An object said tohave enormous powers, especially in combination between ancient occult ritualsand quasi-science. It's here we meet Frank Logan (Jason Christ), a man with onesingle goal, to find the flag and continue the that was started in the 1940's.This leads him to a small mid-western town where he instantly gets interestedin Crystal (Emily Haack), a lesbian on the run after a drug-heist gone wrong. Andfrom there everything just goes downhill...

Ratline isan interesting and unique mix of horror, thriller and drama - but to be fair,it's mostly a very intelligent and emotional drama with touches of gore, nudityand Nazi iconography. Don't let this scare you away, because 105 minutes goesvery fast, mostly because of engaging characters and a very unpredictablescript (written by Christ and Stanze). Thenaturalistic acting and realistic locations gives Ratline an aura of theAmerican seventies, or the realism of Larry Clark and Harmony Korine, butwithout even wandering over the border of pretentiousness. John Cassavetes alsocomes to mind, with the similar themes and the same actors refining their worksfrom film to film.

Talkingabout the actors, they're all very good. From Jason Christ to Joseph R. Engel,but the shining star is Emily Haack. She's an amazing character actress, whoplays a character that feels 100 % realistic. She never fools us that this is amovie, she tells us that this is real. And for me, that's god damn real acting.

Ratline can be purchased directly from Wicked PixelMedia, and it's also signed by director Eric Stanze. I'm pretty sure you won'tregret buying it, because it's a movie you will revisit sooner than you think.Ratline makes you think, makes you react. This is not a horror movie for lazyviewers, it's a horror movie for us who loves to jump-start the brain afterbeing force-fed with mainstream bullshit.

The First Power (1990)

2011-12-21T18:41:00.000+01:00

I admit to be a strong and stubborn opponentto religion, and maybe specifically Christianity - because I was raised in thatreligion and saw some very dark sides of it that some people might not knowabout. Once when I was at a Christian camp for teenagers I was reading Whitley Strieber'sThe Wolfen and one of the pastors saw me and asked if that was good for me. Ireplied: "It's just a book". The same evening the same pastor got amessage from "god" that someone (guess who?!) read books that wasn'tgood for him. For me it was the last nail in the coffin and I left religion andnever turned back.

So what hasthis to do with The First Power? Well, every time I scream about the stupidityof religion Jocke at Rubbermonsterfetishism points out to me that with outnasty religions we wouldn't have so many fun horror movies based onChristianity! Well, he's right about that and that's one of the reason we havethis Lou Diamond Phillips thriller from 1990. I remember how me and my dad rentedit and I liked it, but I haven't seen it for at least twenty years and tonightI had the pleasure of watching it again. No, not a masterpiece - but still agood thriller.

A serial killer, Patrick Channing (the great Jeff Kober) is stalking LA withritualistic murders involving occultism and devil worshipping. Lou is thetwelve year old super-cop Russell Logan who finally catches him and watches himdie in the electric chair. But some time after the killings starts all overagain and Russell sees and hears visions of Patrick. A psychic, Tess Seaton (TracyGriffith) helps him, because no one else believes in Russell's visions. Yes,Patrick is back from the dead and he's using the bodies of drug addicts tocontinue his killing spree!

Lou DiamondPhillips wasn't twelve years old when he shot this movie, but in some takes hesure looks that age. Anyway, The First Power is one of those slick, well-madethrillers that plagued Hollywoodduring the nineties. And friggin' love them all! Why? Because they look good,have nice neat little scripts, some violence, good stunts and a couple ofaudience-friendly twists and turns. Hardly original, but good entertainment. Thelevel of violence isn't especially high, but the stunt-work is often fantastic.In this movie there's a couple of crazy stunts and action sequences, and I theymust have been a blast to watch in cinema.

One of the best scenes - and the only one I remember from when I first saw it -is when the killer is taking control over a ceiling fan and chases our heroesout from an old building, climaxing in a nicestuntman-hanging-on-to-a-car-stunt that looks very dangerous.

The FirstPower is a good old occult thriller mixed with a nineties cop-movie. LouDiamond Phillips might look very young, but he's good and handles the actionand drama well - and shows of his hairless chest a couple of times. But JeffKober steals every scene he's in as usual, and that's fine with me. He makeseven the most boring movies a little bit better. The First Power can be a bit troublesome(or more correct, expensive...) to find nowadays, but I found an Australian R4release which looks good and are in fullscreen (not sure if it's open matte ornot).

That's allfolks!

Mask Maker (2010)

2011-12-21T12:35:00.003+01:00

Over andover again filmmakers are trying to recreate the good old days of slashermovies. They claim to bring back the gore and grittiness of the golden days,but the truth be told the only slasher-style movie who I consider really grittywas The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and that one almost completely lacks gore. Andthere's very few of the other real slasher classics who actually are so gory asmodern filmmakers claim. I mean, Hatchet 1 and 2 are extremely gory compared tothe movies they claim to have been inspired by. That's why I was surprised bythe quality of Mask Maker (aka Maskerade) from director Griff Furst. I readsome comments on the dreaded IMDB and people complained about the lack of gore,but I'm not sure they're understand what they're talking about. This is by farthe most retro-realistic of the new slashers I've seen.

Jennifer and Evan are a young couple trying to stay together, to survive theeveryday problems of having a relationship. But Evan has a big surprise for Jennifer,a house! A real vintage American gothic house. Sure, he got it very cheap, butwith a little bit of renovation it will make good business in the future. Whatthey don't know is that outside in the nearby shrubbery, a killer is buried. Akiller with a mask made of human skin. He's been kept there, dead, for yearswith some ancient native American magic - but of course some fool breaks thisspell and now he's back in business, trying to take back what's his!

Yeah, Mask Maker is very generic - but what it overcomes that weakness withbeing well-made and having a very good cast of both newcomers and veterans. Thenewcomers, especially the leads Nikki Deloach and Stephen Colletti, areinteresting enough to care about and are portrayed with charm and wits by theactors. No Oscars here, but better than many of the bigger budgeted genremovies I've seen recently. But the veteran cast is really the highlight, fromTreat Williams in flashbacks to Terry Kiser (yes, Bernie from Weekend atBernie's and the nasty Dr Crews in Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood).But the best of the bunch is the brilliant Michael Berryman who is typecastedagainst his usual screen persona as a nice, gentle, smart and kind man. He'svery good and it's so much fun to see him doing something different.

So, what about the gore? First of all, which is even more important, Furstreally handles the murder-set-pieces very well. They are intensive and looksgreat. Clever editing that enhances the brutality on screen. The gore isn'tthat much different from any Friday the 13th movie from the eighties. Notmega-graphic, but it delivers some gore, blood and violence of good quality. Leonard,the name of the killer, is basically a mix of Leatherface, Myers and Voorhees,but kinda come off as creepy himself even if he's not that original.

Mask Maker is out from Njuta Films and it's a recommended buy!

Finale (2009)

2011-12-20T23:01:00.000+01:00

Avidreaders of Ninja Dixon knows I can be a very enthusiastic reviewer. I ratherlove moies than hate them and can find something good in almost everything everproduced. That's just my style and I just don't want to waste time with writingabout bad movies. I mention this because John Michael Elfers Finale is probablyone of the most visually stunning indie movies I've seen in years. I'm surethere's few other movies in this budget scale and with such a small crew andshot over a length of two years that can rival the visuals in this one. It'sfar from a perfect movie, but it so well-made that it's hard to not love it inone way or another.

The oldest son of Helen (Carolyn Hauck) and Peter (James Johnson) takes suicideafter having a nervous breakdown. Their only daughter, Kathryn (Suthi Picotte)tries to cope with the loss of her brother and handles it much better thanHelen, who's convinced foul play is behind her son's death. Kathryn joins thedrama class at school and is offered the lead in a play, but something is notok with the group - at least that's what her mother thinks. Soon Helen startsto see stuff, something demon-like in every reflection in the house - and likeher dead son she starts painting everything black to stop this evil force fromreaching her. But is she mad, or is she just getting insane because of hersorrow?

Eh, no. There's real supernatural stuff going on in this movie and makes iteven better. No pretentious stuff about "it's all in her mind" orcrap like that. This is the real deal.

The story is actually more complicated than this, and Elfers fills the moviewith atmospheric scenes of both intelligent drama and strong horror. The scaresthemselves might not be that new, I've seen it before and after this movie, butit's made with so much talent and imagination that it stands out a lot from therest. Most effects are done in-camera, just like "the good old days"(which I despise, the story is everything - not how you shoot it), but becausethe whole movie has a vibe of European genre film from the seventies andeighties (some reviewers has gone so far as compare it with Argento, Ipersonally wouldn't go so far - the style is very different) and it helps thatit's shot on film and not digital video (which I have no problem with, believeme).

The theme of the movie is also very retro. Asatanic cult, demons, conspiracy, a young woman who enters the world of theatre- this feels like something from 1979 and not 2009. The acting is alsotop-notch and it never, not once, feels like a smaller production with lessexperienced actors. There's no way to tell that the whole movie was shot overtwo years either. Finale is just a very well-made horror movie. However, don'texpect any gore. Blood and violence, yes, but the lack of graphic violencetakes away one thing that Finale would have been even better with. It just fitsthe story and atmosphere, and the few blood-spurts and beatings wasn't enoughfor me. Here Elfers could have gone more Argento.

Don't be fooled by covers and reviews, this is neither a slasher or aArgento-esque movie. It stands on it's own two legs and is one impressive pieceof American indie film history.

Amy's in the Attic (2011)

2011-12-19T22:42:00.001+01:00

Let's seenow. What the hell should I start? It's not often I review short movie and Amy'sin the Attic is the first in a very long time. I really don't remember the lastshort I wrote about, and even watched - except one or two on YouTube of course.But that's something completely different. A short movie can sometimes be theonly way of telling a story. There's often no need for feature movies and to behonest, most of those being made have a story that, at the most, would last thirtyminutes without the boring stuff in-between the money shots. It's just filling,everything is just filling. That's not the case with Amy's in the Attic, thankheavens.

Six peoplehave gathered for a night of drinking, flirting and yeah, it's a damnswingers-party! But the party drops dead and Alucard (Matthew Saliba) comes upwith a great idea, according to him at least. They will choose one of theguests for a special game, by writing down the names on pieces of paper and letchance decide who's gonna be the "lucky" person. Amy (Kayden Rose) ischosen and the game is that she must submit herself to all guests specialfetishes...

Inspired by the Italian thrillers and sexploitation dramas from the seventies,Amy's in the Attic goes all the way to give the illusion of being a rareunknown movie from the past. From the beginning text explaining how it wasrestored from the last surviving negatives to missing scenes, scenes suddenlyhaving an Italian dub instead of English. It's the classic, so popular, grindhouse-concept.

Well, that's all fun and games. So who does the movie work as a movie, as astory? I watched it twice to be able to notice the small details, theunderlying themes. The love for the genre that director Saliba so obviouslyhave. At a first glance it more of a fetish short than anything else, butslowly creeps up on you as something quite nasty. Even if I seen worse scenesof bondage in other movies, there's some disturbing details in what you seehere - and when the twist comes, which is simple enough, everything comestogether as a strong story. It's not extremely spectacular, but it's insteadone of those twists that works more when you think about it and that's one ofthe reasons I re-watched it.

Saliba makes a fine job with the directing, and the only thing that maybe takesme out of the story is the slightly to modern language being used, or maybemore how it's delivered by the actors. I guess it was a budget thing, but abigger space for the bulk of the scenes would have been awesome. Now it's a bitcramped and it lacks the visual depth in the master shots. If you know what Imean? I just wanted the set to be a big Italian villa with seventies modern artcovering the walls.

But enough with the whining. The movie looks great and it's a damn fine pieceof mini-cinema from Matthew Saliba and his fellow filmmakers. The DVD is packedwith bonus stuff. The extra short movies is of great interest, both becausethey're pretty good and how it's possible to watch the development of Saliba asa director. I haven't listen to the commentary track, but the eight mini-docsabout the making of the movies are recommended watching. And finally, thank youall, these are short and effective. No twenty minute long ramblings aboutnothing. This is what it is, not to short, not to long. Most of them are around4-5 minutes long. Let this be an inspiration for other bonus-producers.

It's available on Amazon and remember that even if Saliba claims in the creditsthat he doesn't Tweet, he nowadays do. Go and get him! :)

Don't Open Till Christmas (1984)

2011-12-18T22:10:00.001+01:00

Dick Randall, thehyperactive jokester in exploitation cinema. Few men has delivered so muchinsanity to our screens, tapes and nowadays discs like Big Dick. Don't believeme? Just watch these movies and you will come crawling back on your bare kneesfor forgiveness: Death Dimension, Crocodile, Supersonic Man, Challenge of theTiger, For Y'ur Height Only, The Clones of Bruce Lee, Pieces, Horror Safari, SlaughterHigh and countless other classics from Europe and Asia.I have a feeling that Mr Randall just had a blast with his investors money. Heknow what sold and used the budget to entertain himself - and the actors - to amaximum. I think we all can agree that none of his movies are 100 % serious.It's exploitation in EVERY way possible.

A psychotic killer is murdering every person dressed in a Santa Claus-outfit inLondon. Crankyold inspector Edmund Purdom investigates while there's a murder every tenminute or more, including an unhealthy dose of tits and ass.

Yeah, there's some silly sidestory where Belinda Mayne and her boyfriend isgetting in trouble. Something like that. And it's not really important either.

Don't Open Till Christmas was a very troubled production. Purdom starteddirecting it, but after realizing this would probably kill every other chancehe had to direct something he quit and two years later two other directors plusa new writer cobbled everything together to the mess we all learned to loveover the years. Mind me, it's neither a boring or a bad-looking movie, but thescript is all over the place the atmosphere is so f**king seedy and sleazy.There's lots of backyards, alleyways, prostitutes, public toilets, drunkensantas, breasts and thick RED blood all over the place. The murders areprimitive when it comes to special effects, but the nasty way they're handledmakes them more powerful. There's an sense of pure sadism over these sequences.

It's easy to see that the story was put together in chaos. The style differsfrom each scene and sometimes the focus is anywhere near the target. Most ofthe drama, the typical social realistic scenes that made the UK so famousstill looks good and works most of the times very good, but cut together withextremely colourful bloody murder scenes makes the movie even crazier. I haveno idea, but it feels like Purdom directed the drama and some other talentedsprayed the blood later on.

The DVD from Mondo Macabro looks - yes, I'm not hyping it - stunning. At leastcompared with earlier DVDs and tapes out there. It has a nice natural grain,but it's very sharp and clear and everything you wanted to see in a movie aboutsomeone killing santas you can see here without rubbing your eyes every fifthminute. Even the dark footage looks gorgeous, and one scene that really comesout as great-looking is the weird ghosthouse/museum/whatevah set-piece.

Mondo Macabro never failed to bore me with their releases and Don't Open TillChristmas is not exception. Buy it before you get your dick cut off in a seedy London toilet!

The Sinister Urge (1960)

2011-12-18T18:45:00.001+01:00

I'm prettysure the enigma of Ed Wood will live on forever. If his little b-movies fromthe fifties and sixties still getting released and appreciated, even in a badway, until today it mean he was something special. He almost created his ownkind of cinema, with hilarious dialogues, fifties kitsch and special effectsfrom hell - but still surprisingly consistent quality. Maybe not THE bestquality, but his it shows that he had a specific style and that he tried torefine his storytelling more and more. The Sinister Urge was his last"real" movie, what I've heard anyway, and it's an interesting and notthat bad trashy thriller-melodrama about "a smut racket" and a serialkiller who lurks on innocent women!

Gloria Henderson (Jean Fontaine) is a cold-hearted and greedy business womanwho owns a pornographic film company. Her right-hand man Johnny (Carl Anthony)lures naive women to star in their seedy productions (often against a beefy Hawaiianguy, Henry Kekoanui, with a big moustache - kinda hot actually, if he shavedthat facial hair and didn't rolled his eyes like a cartoonish rapist all thetime!). This is of course just a small-time business, but everything is ownedby a big even seedier company in the background. Anyway, every time one oftheir actresses is causing problem, they're calling in their expert - a serialkiller named Dirk (Dino Fantini) who takes care of them in the most violent andnasty ways! Will the cops stop them? Will Ed Wood get a chance to include a manin drag? The answer is yes on both questions, what did you expect?

The Sinister Urge has all the ingredients we learned to love from Mr Wood:goofy cops, teenagers dancing, men in drag, long dialogue scenes behind desks,tits, fist-fights, over-acting and superb melodrama á la random daytime soap.But here, finally, all of this comes together in surprisingly even mess. It'sclearly one of Wood's finer moments as a director and he easily mixes sleazewith a couple of well-staged thriller-sequences. The murders, especially, arenasty and violent and I didn't really expect full frontal boobs, but hey - thismovie has it all. I also like the quirky humour, like the porno director whoonly has an exotic "European" accent when he's directing, but not inprivate.

Ed Wood always created pure cinema, and there's no chance you ever will believehe's trying to create a reality. This is always set in a very special crazyuniverse, much like John Waters filmography or much of Ken Russell's cinematicworld. An office without anything on the walls could be from any bad moviedirector, but when the actors start to talk and the storyline becomes moreclear it's impossible not to guess that it's the work of another director thanEd Wood. More colour and much of the material could have been written byWaters, but lacking the seriousness that Wood wrote with.

Better than you would think, at trashy, sleazymovie who uses the word "smut" more times than explosions in a Michael Bay blockbuster. When I come to think ofit, "smut" could be the perfect drinking game when watching thismovie. So go ahead, have fun - and send Mr Wood a thought please.

I've started a new Thai movie blog!

2011-12-18T10:26:00.000+01:00

After some thinking I've decided to start a another blog, only specializing in old and new Thai cinema. I'm slowly moving over the Thai reviews from Ninja Dixon to The Mee Noi Thai Movie Review, and will also focus on writing new and fresh texts about the fantastic cinema of Siam.

I will of course continue with Ninja Dixon, but everything Thai will be on the new blog. I think the world needs a specialized on this subject, especially just reviews and with a focus on genre films.

Hope you like it and if you want to, spread the link to everyone interested!

The Unborn (1991)

2011-12-17T16:41:00.002+01:00

I neverunderstood movies that somehow should reflect real life horrors, a demonic babyto symbolise the fear of pregnancy, an serial killer dentist to makes us fearthe dentist even more. When it comes to killer babies and related subjectsthere's a lot of movies to choose from, but I've always found it very silly toactually think that Rosemary's Baby or It's Alive could scare future parents.In the first case it's because Satan don't exists and it's hard to be afraid ofa mythological character the second, a quite overrated movie, focuses to muchon the baby as a pure monster. There's a monster baby in The Unborn also, butthe main bulk of the movie is spent on the horror of having something unknowninside you... and it want to get out...

Virginia (Brooke Adams) and Brad (Jeff Hayenga) is a successful couple who thelast five years has been trying to have a baby. Through a colleague of Bradthey get a chance to try one last time at a specialist, the awfully nice DrRichard Meyerling (James Karen). He enhances the sperms of Brad so the babywill be stronger and handle the complicated birth process. Pregnancy succeedsand the young couple is preparing for their new life. But soon Virginia starts to feelweird, she seem to be controlled by another force (which the poor catexperiences...) and a new friend of hers, also a pregnant woman with the samedoctor, stabs herself repeatedly in the stomach with a big kitchen knife.Something is wrong and Virginiais the only one understanding that both her own and others lives are in danger!

Well,forget It's Alive! The Unborn is for me, from now on, the only killer babymovie worth the name. Not only does it deliver some truly macabre scenes ofcarnage, the atmosphere is genuinely creepy and the script tighter than Scottishcatholic nun! First of all, Brooke Adams is a good competent actress - not toyou either - that actually gives everything she's got to make this movie feelrealistic, or at least very, very dramatic. There's no subtle acting when she'sgetting crazy and ripping her dear house away, or sitting in a chair screaminglike a madman. She obviously understood the genre and respected it, somethingvery few actors do I think, especially if they are at a low-point in theircareer and just trying to pay the rent.

Another fine performance comes from veteran James Karen, a bloke I've alwaysfelt have a problem with over-acting, but here does his way-to-fake-nice doctorperfectly balanced and with a cold, calculating under-the-skin psychopathic persona.

Staying away from sleaze and nudity, which would have dragged the fun scriptdown actually, the story focuses more on some light gore (well-made, but notthat graphic) and the descent into madness for poor Virginia, and here we haveeverything from a very violent fight between a lesbian couple (involvinghammers), a down-and-dirty backstreet-abortion and of course the final monsterbaby (created by a simple but effective animatronic).

The Unborn is a violent, dark movie which is many notches above the usual DTVcrapfests. Recommended!

Closed Circuit (1978)

2011-12-16T15:44:00.002+01:00

Sometimes you see a movie that you never have heard of before and have no expectations about, and many of these movies turns out to be a lot better than I ever could imagine. Why? Maybe because no one have hyped - or hated - them and they stayed fresh because of the lack of interest from the cult movie community. Closed Circuit is a TV-movie from 1978, and even if some people call it giallo I'm not so sure I would consider it one. Sure, a giallo in Italy is a thriller/mystery with none, one or several murders. Even if Closed Circuit actually has three deaths and at a first glance is a thriller, it's more of an absurd black comedy with a healthy dose of Twilight Zone and Ray Bradbury.

It's time for cinema! A spaghetti western matinée with Giuliano Gemma and William Berger in the leads, I Giorno Dell'Ira (not to be confused with the 1967 classic with Van Cleef and Gemma). The audience is gathering. We have the young couple, the dirty old man spending more time on the toilet than watching the movie, a man and a woman having a secret affair in the darkness, a hysterical man who don't want to be disturbed by anything, two gangsters waiting for a "business companion" etc. Everyone from every part of society. During the last act, the dramatic duel, a man in the audience gets shot exactly when Gemma shoots first. He dies and within seconds panic strikes. The police seals the cinema very fast and keeps the whole audience locked up, while they're trying to figure out who's the killer is and where the weapon is hidden... but soon a second murder, identical to the first, happens right under their nose and the police gets more and more perplexed...

Closed Circuit is first of all a celebration to cinema and how the movies can work as a second reality that can affect us in the same way as real life. The movie is filled with movie posters, which is natural because it's set at a cinema, but it's only genre posters. A huge billboard of Paul Leder's insane A.P.E (under it's Italian title Super Kong) adorns the outside wall, the lobby has a gorgeous posters of Tentacoli and in the room where the police interrogates everyone Mimsy Farmer looks down from a very nice poster of The Perfume of the Lady in Black. The movie on the screen is a fictional western made to look like the real deal (but I suspect that some of the footage comes from California, a western with Gemma and Berger from 1977). The mystery becomes even more a mystery towards the end, but is not the most important thing in the movie. What's strong about Closed Circuit is it's fantastic gallery of characters, all with their own secrets and agendas and how some of them starts to enjoy being prisoners in the cinema, demanding food, cigarettes, 12 different TV's (one for each channel). The most fascinating character is the first victim, a character we know very little about, but somehow creates the situation with his almost absurd interest in the moving pictures.

Don't expect blood and nudity in Closed Circuit, it's still an Italian TV-movie quite far away from the budget and spectacle of the cinema thrillers from the same time. But it's also a damn fine and intelligent movie, original and almost spooky. It has one sequence that gave me goosebumps because it was so intense, so magical and so macabre with very small means. It's not out on any official DVD what I know, but a TV-rip is able to download and is also used at the bootleg I have, from ZDD Visual Media.

Sauna (2008)

2011-12-10T21:08:00.002+01:00

It started a year ago. Maybe later actually. Jocke over at Rubbermonsterfetishism saw Sauna and said to me - more than once during a short period - that this was something I should watch. And he told me it more and more times, he called my mother, he stalked my grandma... he even claimed to be my son to be able to infiltrate my workplace to tell me to watch it. When he started to put photos of us together, torn into a million pieces, into my mailbox I had to confront him. But it got worse.

And then, a couple weeks ago, we had a booth at the Scandinavian Sci-fi, Game & Film Convention in Stockholm, selling The Killer Elephants on DVD. Everything was calm until he suddenly disappeared and came back with the Njuta Films release of Sauna. I tried to avoid it for a week, but this morning I sat down and watched it...

The year is 1595, a delegation of Swedish and Russian officials travels through Finland to divide the country between the states. It's been a long and hard trip and the war isn't far behind them. Erik, the older brother, is plagued by the memories of those he killed - but continues to behave like it's war. The younger one, Knut, gets more and more worried of his brothers behaviour, but tries to keep out of his way. Soon they come to a big swamp, and according to all sources no one lives there - until they find a whole village in the middle of it. Soon a girl, that Knut thought Erik killed, starts following them and soon they realize that something is terrible wrong there. Or maybe it's that weird sauna, standing out in the wilderness, that haunts them all...

While Sweden still is a desert when it comes to genre cinema our neighbours churns out classic after classic. Denmark has been a force of cinema since many years, and Norway and Finland is there with them creating imaginative genre movies which aren't afraid of being bloody and commercial, but still stands with both feet in the Scandinavian mythology. Sauna is clearly one of the best. A meditative trip into the wilderness of our minds darker areas. Don't expect hyperactive editing and typical jump scares, this is so much more and with an amazing ambition to create something unique and genuinely scary.

I love how the camera sets in on a character and stays there. Reads the facial expressions, the eyes and the charisma of the actor. With no hasty cuts, director Antti-Jussi Annila gives us time breath the characters, feel the story and let the atmosphere creep up on us. Some people say it's impossible for someone from another country to judge if the actors are good or not. That's of course bullshit. An experienced, thinking viewer have no problem reading the actors of the most exotic origin and Finland is just next door to Sweden and I'll tell ya, this is some magnificent acting going on. Ville Virtanen and Tommi Eronen is of course perfect, but the biggest surprise for me was to see Viktor Klimenko's name in the end credits - and I finally could put a name on that familiar face. Klimenko was, and is still, a famous Finnish singer with a Russian heritage. Damn fine singer to and with some of the most outrageous "manly" album covers ever. In the beginning of the eighties he got a religious experience and turned his career to gospel and religious songs and the last I heard of him was that he claimed to be something of a prophet, telling the future and having a close contact with that absurd being called "God". So I thought he was lost - but obviously not, because starring in a very dark horror movie is quite a different career for a former preacher...

Sauna, which is the only good title, is also known as Evil Rising - but don't be fooled by that. This is a lot more than a simple supernatural horror movie. This is a Finnish masterpiece.

Ghostwatch (1992)

2011-12-09T10:55:00.001+01:00

I love when people get upset. I just f**king love it. Why? Because I’m one of those that can be quite easily upset because of nothing, and I know violent stream of energy, power of live, that flows through your mind and body during such a thing. But I also learned to be very critical and not believe everything I see, read and hear – which sometimes borders to paranoia. That’s why I love mockumentaries. It mixes a genre I adore, documentary, with fantasy, imagination – stuff that boring people people without humor hate. When you look at Ghostwatch today I’m quite sure it wouldn’t fool so many, except the very naïve, but that’s of course because TV has changed a lot since then. But what still a fact is that Ghostwatch is a damn fine TV-drama made to look like a live broadcast starring the one and only Michael Parkinson.

From BBC's studio Michael Parkinson and paranormal expert Dr Lin Pascoe (Gillian Bevan) leads the investigation of a haunted house at Foxhill Drive. In the house they have reporter Sarah Greene who’s there to check all the weird stuff happening and outside is comedian, actor and TV-host Craig Charles (more known from Red Dwarf and Robot Wars) interviewing the neighborhood. The family, consisting of a mother and two daughters, has been terrorized by an unknown entity for several years and now is the time to prove what the hell is going on. From the start everything is cute and cuddly, a bit funny, innocent – but everything takes a turn when one of the daughters is caught faking a haunting – but then it takes another turn, and it’s all for the worst…

Ghostwatch is a fantastic example of how to manipulate the audience. Every turn, every part of the dialogue is there to create the viewer’s road to complete belief. Just when something seems a bit too far-fetched, the filmmakers add something that will bring us back to that this could be the reality. What makes it stronger is the presence of Michael Parkinson as the TV-host, sitting there being fatherly and friendly, a bit neutral in the chaos, and this nice old man is slowly getting drawn into pure hell! The actors are also very good, and the dialogue never gets to hammy or unrealistic. Sarah Green and Craig Charles is also friendly, loved, TV-profiles, which makes it even harder watching them being scared shitless by the ghost known as “Pipes”.

To add to the paranoia created by BBC, the ghost makes several cameo appearances during the show, and all of them are ignored – or not seen – by the hosts and witnesses. A British family, spellbound by what they see on the telly, would probably react, discuss and maybe even call to the hotline telling what they’ve seen. By planting one of these ghosts in the beginning everyone knows that they should look out for more.

If Ghostwatch had been an American production we would have seen a classic happy ending. But here’s no such thing. The show just breaks and leaves the audience alone… at least until the credits comes and tells everyone this is just a bluff.

Paranormal Activity might be more famous, but if you want to see the beginning of it all, buy Ghostwatch on DVD and watch it during one of those dark winter nights together with the rest of the family. You won’t regret it.

Black Widow - Sleeping With Demons (2011)

2011-12-05T20:34:00.004+01:00

I was raised with music, heavy progressive, pulsating, weed-smelling Brit-rock from the seventies. That and psychedelic pop, coming from my youthful obsession of Beatles, The Move and much later American legends The Beach Boys. But my heart has always been with the progressive movement, especially if the played on atmosphere and with songs longer than ten minutes. It's been an adventure rediscovering these classics but one group that stayed hidden from me until quite recently was Black Widow, the notorious "Satanic" rock group that shocked the audiences with staged rituals and occult lyrics. I fell in love with Sacrifice directly, a brilliantly written and performed satanic saga. Even if Black Widow III drastically departed from the satanic way, I appreciate it as much because of it's psychedelic pop - and King of Hearts has since then become one of my favourite compositions of Jim Gannon. I actually thought that was everything, that the demons of Black Widow never would unleash themselves on the earth again...

...until the cinematic nerd-genius Jason sent me an MMS with a photo of a NEW Black Widow-album, Sleeping With Demons. I hurried to the iTunes store and bought it within minutes. Now, I'll admit that this could have ended up in something very bad. Imagine yourself a couple of old farts getting together and pretend to be young again. But that's the good thing with Black Widow. That wasn't even that modern and "fresh" at the time, they stayed away from that bullshit and did their own stuff so far away from the normal crap being released on vinyl. So what we have here is an album that sounds - with a few minor problems - like it should sound: satanic 1970.

The album consists of 15 song, and I can honestly say that there was just of them I didn't like. Even the Devil Gets the Blues is one of them, which is a bad embarrassing because it has original Kay Garret doing the singing - which is awesome, but I'm just not that fond of this kind of blues. I'm sure others will like it more. The second is Party time for Demons, mostly because it's silly. I was thinking constantly of Spinal Tap (which, by itself, is a good thing). I'm sure the band glanced at Spinal Tap once or twice during the making of this album, which just makes it even better - but Party time for Demons is just a bit to lightweight for me. To much rock & roll the bad way.

BUT the rest of the album, wow! Black Widow has gone back to their roots for most of the songs, but isn't afraid to send out some winks to the modern audience. The first track, with Tony ‘The Cat’ Martin doing guest vocals is a perfect, powerful start filled leading to the catchy track Sleeping With Demons. My favourite track so far is Portal To Hell, but prepare for an album filled with theatrical singing, occult references for the whole family, dramtic interludes, nods to the original albums and last, but maybe most important, a lot of pure love and respect for their own past.

There's a sense of "what the fuck", which both includes a small dose of self-distance and a goal to make something that the fans want without pretending to be twenty five again. They succeeded, which very few bands to after such a long time. This is not Sacrifice, but it wasn't the plan either. This is Sleeping With Demons, take it or leave it! I just wish this means them going out on tour, because I - and many others - would love to see them in Stockholm!

Visit their homepage, feel the atmosphere and then go and buy the album at the nearest store or through iTunes!

Il était une fois le diable - Devil Story (1985)

2011-11-30T21:53:00.003+01:00

From Sheep Tapes comes Devil Story, which probably is the weirdest and stranges horror movie ever to come from France. Or horror, it's hardly scary. Just filled with odd scenes directed by Bernard "One Take" Launois, bound together with the thinnest red thread I've ever seen. It's pure insanity and the best way is describe this movie is to use that word and make everything so much clearer:

Incredible strange.

Not enough gore, but still OK.

Shabby editing.

A man shooting at a horse for half the movie?

Not especially smart story.

I never got bored.

Total madness.

You need this movie!

Yeah, you need it. Buy it here or barf blood for three minutes! And if you want to barf blood for three minutes and still don't want to buy the movie, I predict your thumbs will jump to the wrong side of the hand. Like in the movie.

Have a nice day.

Nothing But the Night (1973)

2011-11-27T12:18:00.002+01:00

I love finding horror movies that surprises me and that somehow stayed out of my life after all these years. Nothing But the Night is a smart and original horror-thriller produced by Christopher Lee's own company and directed by one of the best, Peter Sasdy. Why I love Sasdy's work so much is because his will to over and over again visit the really dark subjects about humanity, and Nothing But the Night is no different from that path. It was a big flop, I heard, when it was released and not be honest, I don't understand why. Maybe it just took the twisted ending to far in combination with a very grey, typical British beginning on the verge on social realism - but hey, that's what's so unique with this movie and makes it even more surprising.

Christopher Lee is Colonel Bingham, a good old chap who investigates a couple of very odd suicides and accidents. This leads him to a girl, Mary Valley (Gwyneth Strong) who have strange violent dreams - and who lives at an orphanage connected to the people who died. Her real mother, played intense by Diana Dors, is a disturbing ex-prostitute with a taste for black magic and who wants her back. So after committing a crime at the hospital where her daughter stayed after an accident, she now goes after her to the secluded orphanage to bring her home. Bingham brings his friend, Sir Mark Ashley (Peter Cushing), with him in the investigation and... well, let me say there will be some surprises along the way!

I watched the movie for the first time today and before now I had NO clue what it was about. I never read about it, didn't check the reviews (except facts about quality), and didn't ask around for options from friends. This probably helped me love this movie even more, but it's hard not to love a movie with such a clever build-up anyway. I mean, this movie is almost to normal until the last half hour. It has some murders, some social commentary about the media, very good acting, very grey and realistic - but then shit hits the fan and everything turns around - and it's one of the finer twists I've seen. Maybe it's been done before, but here it's just so well-done. It even made the hair on my arms stand up because I like these kinda surprising twists that completely takes another dramatic turn than I expected from the beginning.

Like always, the relationship between Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing is the highlight of the movie. They where friends, and together their connection as actor comes close to perfection. It might not be as fantastic as Horror Express, but this is a very different story with a even more different atmosphere. The whole thing is built around a slightly boring case of a mad mother wanting her daughter back, but this was obviously the plan - and if you have no problem with a slow start you will be treated with some fine shocks towards the end. I'm not the first or last that will compare this movie to The Wicker Man, but this is a movie that stands on it's own legs and delivers the quality we wants from a seventies UK production.

The whole movie is filled with good British quality actors, but Diana Dors has always been a favourite of mine and here she's both scary and excellent as Anna Harb - mother, whore and fortune teller. If you think about it afterwards, she's a quite smart character - maybe someone who really can "read" other people. Diana was also quite an original character herself, and to really experience this weirdness, watch Who Got Diana Dors' Millions from 2003, a documentary trying to solve her last riddle...

Another nice part of the movie is the soundtrack by Malcolm Williamson, compositions that almost imitates the work of Basil Kirchin. The same almost dreamy jazz-influenced pieces that Basil did for the Dr Phibes movies and 1974's The Mutations. Good stuff.

I'm sure most of you would appreciate this thriller, so buy it now!

Samurai Avenger: The Blind Wolf (2009)

2011-11-26T14:40:00.001+01:00

I first heard of Kurando Mitsutake's indie-production Samurai Avenger: The Blind Wolf a couple of years ago. I remember I saw a teaser trailer and some artwork, but then I kinda lost track of it and didn't think about it until I found a massive luxury BD/DVD release at the Weekend of Horrors in Bottrop. So I bought it and a couple of weeks later I finally got time to sit down and watch it. Honestly, I had no idea what to expect because I never got a chance follow the production and the purchase was just because of pure luck. It's a good way to watch a movie, and in this case I would say the absence of hype just was perfect.

Before Blind Wolf (Kurando Mitsutake) became Blind Wolf he was a normal, nerdy, Japanese man who witnessed his whole family get slaughtered - or at least he heard it, because the bad guys gave him a choice: poke out your eyes and we're not gonna kill your wife and daughter. Guess what happens? Anyway, Blind Wolf sets out for revenge and as a Japanese man with no name he takes his sword and goes after the sleazy baddie, Nathan Flesher (a brilliant Domiziano Arcangeli) who's responsible for it all. But Flesher knows he's being hunted and sends out seven assassins to stop Blind Wolf. During his trip, Blind Wolf meets The Drifter (Jeffrey James Lippold), another man out for revenge...

There's a danger with making modern Grindhouse films. A danger of making fun of classic cinema and somehow claiming that the movies they are inspired by are bad movies, tacky and corny productions. It's a very fine line between just being silly and making a serious tribute to the films of yesterday. Samurai Avenger manages to stay on the right side of filmmaking with a serious approach both to the story itself and the references to numerous samurai and western movies. Like with a good parody the fun comes from respecting the original productions. Mel Brooks once made brilliant parodies of movies and genres that he loved, but once he started to make fun of Star Wars and Robin Hood - productions he never cared for - his productions became cold and stiff.

Kurando Mitsutake, like the true indie-director he is, stars as the main character Blind Wolf, directs and writes the movie - and amazingly enough he carries the story and seem to take his acting as serious as the directing. Even if Samurai Avenger has an episodic feeling, which often happens with movies that could be considered road movies, this is far from a bunch of weird scenes put together to make a cult movie. Storytelling is no. 1 and everything hangs together. Our hero is meeting seven assassins, but something that could have been repetitive becomes interesting and have it's place in the story. Even more absurd stuff like the Zombie Mistress and her three zombies fits so well into the surrealistic atmosphere. This movie could be set in another dimension, an alternative reality, where the prison is a small shack out in the wilderness and people are bleeding liter after liter of ultra-red blood. There's not one second of realism in the story, but a lot of depth within the characters.

There's a lot of gags referring to the Grindhouse-aspect of Samurai Avenger. Blind Wolf is dubbed by a much manlier voice, there's a few sequences that looks to been taken from a more worn out print and from time to time a narrator tells us about details in the story, mostly related to samurai traditions. This could have been forced and stilted, but works very fine.

Like all good samurai movies the blood flows in huge amounts. Most of the gore and effects is well-done and echoes both the Japanese cinema from the seventies, but never becomes to realistic either. This is a fun movie and the gore is mostly there to entertain than to disgust someone.
Samurai Avenger: The Blind Wolf was a nice surprise and I hope that Kurando Mitsutake and his team will bring us more stories in the future. I, for one, welcomes more of this kind.

To quit or not to quit?

2011-11-19T13:47:00.002+01:00

I have no idea. To quit or not to quit? To stop blogging about movies or continue? Everytime I watch a movie it feels more and more meaningless to write about it. Everyone has written everything about every movie. And the rest just don't care.

Blood Tracks (1985)

2011-11-15T22:13:00.004+01:00

"From the makers of A Nightmare on Elm Street" said the advertising material belong to Blood Tracks when it was sold in Cannes in the middle of the eighties! This came from the fact that it was distributed by New Line Cinema, who also distributed Mats Helges earlier hit movie The Ninja Mission and with the money from that one produced the first movie with legendary horror icon Freddy Krueger. But Blood Tracks is very far from the glitter and glam of Hollywood. Shot in the south of Sweden and a few scenes in Funäsdalen, this is a small but interesting piece of trash from the annals of Swedish trash cinema.

Easy Action arrives to a small village up in the mountains. They're gonna shoot a new music video there, as publicity for their new upcoming hit album! The director quickly finds an abandoned factory and the team decides to do some location scouting there. But an avalanche stops them from going back to civilisation and soon they're hunted by a murderous inbred tribe of crazies, the left-over's from a family that fled up there after a murder and never looked back! Now they want to protect what's theirs and they're very, very bloodthirsty!

Blood Tracks is basically a Swedish version of The Hills Have Eyes, but with more snow and more gore. I've seen this many times on tape and I never seen it as bloody and graphic as this version. Legendary for being hard to find in a complete version, this DVD from CMV Laservision could be the longest ever. It's far from perfect, but the full frame presentation is decent, but has a few cropping issues that blocks out nudity (not all, just one scene - I think the rest is complete). The Japanese version has always been considered the longest and a few alternative scenes, just based on the cropping, is included on this DVD and sourced from the Japanese tape. But the rest, yeah dammit, this could the best most uncut version so far.

The added gore really boosts the entertainment value of the movie. Mats Helge uses buckets of blood for a graphic impaling, stabbings, a burning, a ripped out eye and other nasty surprises. We're not talking Tom Savini quality here, but still - it's not bad at all. The most infamous scene, mostly because it's been cut everywhere, is when a woman is ripped apart (just like in Ruggero Deodato's Cut and Run and Fulci's Conquest). In every version I've seen you just see blood on her face and then cut to another character watching, but here you actually see her get ripped apart. The effect is primitive, but it's there and it's bloody. Other effects is also more visible, for example the cut of arm and another shot of a woman laying on the ground with a pipe through her chest.

Blood Tracks is very cheesy, cheap and silly, but finally it lives up to it's promise as a real, bloody and nasty slasher. I'm not saying it's a masterpiece, because it's not - Mats Helge was most of his career a very incompetent storyteller - but this ranks as his best together with The Ninja Mission.

The German (or Austrian?) DVD is released under the name Shocking Heavy Metal and it's a must for collectors of Swedish cult and gory slashers!

And because I'm so nice I'm sharing the uncut body ripping-scene (in German language, by mistake) with you, enjoy! I see now that she's not getting ripped apart, she's cut in two pieces by the rope!

The Killer Elephants in stock again!

2011-11-14T21:45:00.002+01:00

After reading yet another fine review, this time at Mondo Digital, I hope you all feel inspired to go to Diabolik DVD (the only solution for you who don't live in Scandinavia) and buy a copy of Attackafant Entertainment's release of The Killer Elephants! Here's the direct link!

Attackafant Entertainment is a small company, very small. Every sold DVD means that we can get closer to release even more DVDs in the future. The next will already arrive in January, the fantastic monster movie Thunder of Gigantic Serpent. Our focus is at movies that's hard to get and even of many of them are lost we try to dig up the best possible version - in these cases we used digibetas directly from the rights holder in Hong Kong.

If you live in Sweden you can buy The Killer Elephants at, for example, Discshop, Ginza, Webhallen, Megastore and many other places. If your store don't have it, ask them to order it!

The Supernaturals (1986)

2011-11-13T13:14:00.002+01:00

My relationship with director Armand Mastroianni is odd. I'm trying to find every horror/thriller movie he made and every time I find one I realize that it's not really that good. Sometimes even boring, or just lacking "it". But why the hell do I continue to seek up his work? There must be something in what he does that attracts me. Maybe he has good ideas that never reach their full potential? I have no idea. The Supernaturals is a zombie movie made when horror movies started to fade out from mainstream culture, which means it's low on gore and terror, but has a childish approach to it's themes that's more connected to movies like The Gooniss and The Monster Squad, but still not suitable for kids.

Nichelle Nicolas, the female afro-american version of Cameron Mitchell (just look at those eyebrows!) leads a troup of soldiers for an exercise out in the deep southern forests (I have no idea if it's the south, but it sounded good!). What they don't know - as usual with these horror romps - is that the area is cursed and underneath the ground awaits a small army of civil war zombies to kill them and take revenge on their deaths!

That's it. And it takes some time to get going. My reaction to the first half was that it was flat and uninspired. Like Mastroianni just didn't care for either the flashbacks or the normal life of the soldiers. I can agree, because that's the least interesting in the whole movie - and it never works as a good set-up either. But when the night finally falls and the zombies awake and becomes more active I would say that this becomes a good little zombie movie. I love how the zombies has tunnels underground and sets out traps for the soldiers, which also generates a couple of the very few bloody scenes in the whole movie. I'm not sure if it was edited for violence, but it could have used some more to really make up for the boring first part.

Maybe it would have worked better with more defined characters. Right now I can't remember any of them, except Nichelle Nichols - but that's because she's famous from Star Trek and it's fun that she of all people plays the officer in charge. The characters seem to melt together, and in the end it's the nice zombies who takes the lead. Yeah, almost forgot, Maxwell Caulfield plays one of the main characters and he's good. Weird that he didn't became a more popular mainstream hunk, instead of slumming in DTV movies and soap operas after this.

I can understand all the negative stuff I've heard about The Supernaturals, but it a few fun scenes here and there and the zombies and night-time locations was nice enough for me. Watch it on your own risk!

X-Ray (1982)

2011-11-13T10:53:00.001+01:00

I'm sure the distributors never knew what hit them. It was suppose to be an ordinary slasher, and it turned out to be the almost surreal cheese-fest X-Ray. No, I'm not negative at all, this is prime cheese with a storyline so simple even Andreas Schnaas couldn't have failed with telling the story. Directed by legendary Boaz Davidson under the protective shield of Cannon's even more legendary Yoram Globus and Menahem Golan. In front of the camera they trusted Barbi Benton, the former Playboy model and ex-wife of Hugh Hefner (and also a productive recording artist) and the result is the silliest slasher ever made.

Susan Jeremy (Barbi Benton) goes to the hospital for a routine check, but something is not right and soon they're are keeping her there much longer than needed. At the same time a man, dressed in a surgeons outfit, starts killing the staff of the hospital one by one! Could it be the crazy boy that killed Susan's best friend by impaling him on a coat-hanger 16 years earlier? How the hell should Susan know that? She's still waiting for the doctor, not realizing that someone is fucking with her files to make her stay longer at the hospital...

This must be the first and only time a story is built around long waiting times at the hospital! I can imagine how the screenwriter experienced something similar, short visit that ended up four hours later and with less answers than before. It's basically Halloween 2 mixed with My Bloody Valentine with a couple of splashes of very soft porn and a slasher parody like Wacko or Student Bodies - but unintentional. It's like the filmmakers didn't even try to make it scary, they just had a big hospital set and a couple of actors walking around without any real purpose and decided to toss together the next slasher hit.

I guess it didn't became a hit and the silly plot and absurd twist probably helped. But I'm not saying this is a bad movie. It's flawed and silly and stupid and retarded and more stupid, but it's also entertaining and has a nice body count and Barbi Benton being quite effective in the lead. And she show's her tits in one long and gratuitous sequence, for those who like that. Barbi looks like a TV-actress, and the visual style of the movie echoes any soap opera set in a hospital, but that's a neat combination - especially with bloody (not gory) murders happening around every corner.

X-Ray is out on DVD in Germany. I have no idea if it's a bootleg or not, but it looks OK in it's fullscreen presentation, probably taken from a Betacam SP master (just a guess, because I think the terrible quality a VHS would offer) and seem to be uncut.

A nice addition to the slasher-collection!

Don't Wake the Dead (2008)

2011-11-12T21:13:00.002+01:00

Because I have nothing intelligent to write about Andreas Schnaas Don't Wake the Dead I'll just share my comments on Facebook, who I wrote while watching the movie. Please don't hurt me, Mr Schnaas!

Ok, let's talk about Don't Wake The Dead...

First of, Schnaas has a career in movies. I don't. So that gives me full right to hate his movies.

Is this a porn movie or a daytime soap?

A movie always becomes better if you use the camera microphone to record the sound - NOT!

Of lord! And people complain about the digital effects in The Asylum's movies.

Nice location. Can't whine about that! But I would like to!

Aha, the hired a dwarf with an oversized hat. Or maybe he's just a short German guy?

They couldn't even put energy on a decent painting of Hitler. Oh, it's not Hitler. Just a random Nazi.

For being a famous gore-director he's totally incompetent in filming effective gore-scenes!

Oh no. The band. And the act like a bunch of catholic priests at a summer camp for girls: not at all.

A woman is talking loud to herself while stumbling around outside the castle.

Is she being raped by the zombie monks? No, just by the dialogue.

‎"Hello! I'm 38 and pretend to be 19!"

Yeah, to speed up footage to make something look faster is always a brilliant idea.

But seriously, I would give a lot to be able to have a career like Schnaas. The difference is that I would make better movies.

The composer obviously just fed his cat with Chili and locked it in the closet together with his synthesizer.

"This is totally ridiculous!" - both a line from the movie and my opinion about it.

Why do people taking all the time, telling us EVERYTHING they do?!????

An actress tries to act shocked. That or she's having a minor attack of epilepsy.

I guess the zombies can't get in the house because they didn't have permission splash blood inside?

There's no furniture in this castle.

I hope someone mercy-killed the cast and crew afterwards.

A headless body suddenly has a head, and the only thing the camera man had to do was to turn the camera one inch.

It would be more powerful if the woman playing a leather-zombie could stop smiling.

On the positive side, I'm not bored! Which according to my rules means this is a good movie. But rules needs to be broken from time to time.

WTF! A fucking concert!

I guess the members must be from one of those classes for "special kids". They act like that anyway.

Andreas Schnaas gives eurocult a bad name.

The singer of the band sounds like a twelve year old boyscout who needs to take a dump.

Modern Talking is better than this band and Dieter Bohlen and Thomas Anders even look like real zombies, but with more surgery.

Accidentally killed by a broken wine bottle... She fell on it. Just like that.

Another thing I like: the zombies as dry powder blood and the humans as wet blood.

One nice kill now, with realistic prosthetics. First time in this movie.

I'm starting to get bored now. To much talking.

Most of the gore is quite fun, but badly filmed.

God, I HATE this concert scene!!!!!!

It's over!!!! I can tell ya one thing, if Schnaas called me now and said how much he hated me but at the same time told me to come down to Germany and do small role in his next movie to see how fun it is, I would do it without hesitation!

That's it folks!

Zombie Apocalypse (2011)

2011-11-12T18:54:00.002+01:00

Between 2-9 of November American Film Market had it's annual convention where a lot of movie deals are done. I would love to go there someday, just for window shopping and getting free candy and pens from the booths belonging to every hopeful distributor on the planet. Anyway, I heard somewhere - and I don't know if it's true or not - that around 250 zombie movies was for sale this year! Seems like the market is a bit over-saturated with the living dead. I'm not saying it's 250 BAD zombie movies, but I'm sure the majority of these are utter trash. Therefore I decided to check out what TV had to offer, and I felt SyFy's Zombie Apocalypse was the way to go. Produced by controversial company The Asylum, a gang of people who proudly make professional low budget versions of big budget blockbusters. Zombie Apocalypse was probably, somewhere along the road, inspired by the success of The Walking Dead, but that's about it. This is it's own universe, and believe me or not, but it works quite good.

A couple of months after the zombie epidemic wiped out 90 percent of the earths population, and the governments - trying to stop the spreading of the virus - bombed us all to hell with electromagnetic pulse bombs, we're completely fucked. We join a couple of old friends, wandering aimlessly outside on the countryside. After one of them bites the dust by the hands of zombies, another gang of more professional zombie-hunters saves them and together they continue a city where a boat will meet them and take the to the Catalina Island. But the road there is dangerous and the zombies are slowly getting smarter and more vicious. There's several kind of zombies to look out for, both running and walking - and then we have the animals... Will they make it?! I won't tell you of course, but come on, this is a SyFy movie!

I've seen more than a few zombie flicks during the last years, or related - like mutated people, people with an aggressive illness etc. I guess this one falls in-between, because the zombies (which they are called) both shows signs of being dead and having a virus of some kind. I guess they die fast and then become living deadheads! Some have been stinkers, some have been good and some a little bit of both. UK-African co-production The Dead was a disappointment and I can't recommend it at all, Serbian Apocalypse of the Dead was trashy fun, the Mattei-flicks was cheap and great, I dig the Resident Evil-franchise... and even if some people says the opposite, I would say that Nick Lyon's Zombie Apocalypse belongs with the good one's. But this is still a TV-movie, made on a fairly low budget and extremely generic. If you can handle those facts, you're in for a treat.

The script is pretty straight forward, which could have been a failure - because no one likes a boring zombie movie. But the story is built up with a good amount of tension and likable characters. You have zombie attacks every ten minute or so, but they never get repetitive. There's a point with every attack, from killing of a character to introduce the characters to a new adventure. It helps that the zombie make-up is good (I was a bit worried when I saw the behind the scenes-stills at The Asylum's homepage, but you can't compared unprocessed stills with the finished product) and the dialogue is down to a minimum. Because I HATE when people talk just for the sake of talking, and in low budget movies that means that the script isn't good enough. Here they talk when they need to, and usually say good stuff. Most importantly they made the world, or the US, look deserted and post-apocalyptic, which is very impressive considering the budget, and adds to the atmosphere.

Gore? Well, this is a movie made for the SyFy Channel, but it could be the bloodiest SyFy production I've seen. True to The Asylum's traditions the gore is digital, but it's used in such a frenzy that it works fine. A lot of heads is being chopped off, body parts and blood spurting and a high body count - and an even higher zombie count. I'm not sure if the SyFy version was edited for violence, it usually happens on that channel, but if so I hope there will be an even bloodier version on BD as soon as possible!

The Iguana with the Tongue of Fire (1971)

2011-11-12T13:58:00.001+01:00

Riccardo Freda, the man who started it all, always had a hard time with the newer fans of eurocult. Maybe the productions he made later in his career wasn't as polished as the work of Dario Argento and Mario Bava and the script's was a bit sloppier. But isn't that part of the grindhouse-tradition that we love so much? Should a movie be perfect to be considered as a good movie? I consider both Tragic Ceremony and Murder Obsession flawed but very interesting pieces of eurocult and well worth re-evaluating for those who once upon a time decided they where inferior works of a very talented man. I been wanting to see The Iguana with the Tongue of Fire for a long time now, and after picking it up at Weekend of Horrors in Bottrop I finally got the chance to see it.

I really don't want to go into the story, which is a complex mess of a lot of characters and red herrings, and even in the end I wasn't totally sure WHY the killer attacked all those people, but it works good as a fairly bloody and nicely acted giallo. Much of it evolves around an ambassador and his family, all of them are suspects in the case of the mysterious killer slicing the throats of beautiful young women. But the main story, and the best, is that of ex-cop John Norton (the great Luigi Pistilli), who can't stay away from the police-business. Both because he's a highly original character but also because his former colleagues understands that he's too good to be ignored. He lives together with his slightly confused, and crime-interested mother, and his teenager daughter. These scenes are great, filled with a fine chemistry and somehow it feels like Freda invested a lot more in this storyline than all the others trying to find their place in the script. It's understandable, because it's best written part of the movie.

Iguana gets a bit to talky and convoluted for its own best, but it's a pleasure seeing all the great actors and colourful characters trying to take over every scene. From Pistilli, of course, to genre stalwarts like Werner Pochath, Dagmar Lassander, Renato Romano and Anton Diffring doing excellent work. Also watch out for a cameo from legendary laundry facility The Swastika Laundry, with a nice juicy swastika as the logotype. It was located in Dublin from 1912 to 1987, and it's name and symbol of course referenced the ancient culture of India and nothing else. But it's a fun detail.

Freda is handling the direction very well, and he uses the Dublin and Irish locations very well. The look of the movie is a lot more interesting than many of those based in Rome. Sure, everything in the production is rough around the edges, but for me that just adds to the charm and grittiness of the story. Because, even if it's giallo with beautiful ladies and a complex plot, it's also a surprisingly violent and cynical story. The gore, while not in any huge amounts, are very bloody and sadistic - mostly graphic throat-slits and the killer throwing acid in the faces of his/hers victims. The attack on one characters family is also very cruel and violent. Plenty of nudity for those who likes that, and more red herrings than you can count.

The Iguana with the Tongue of Fire is not perfect, but still an entertaining and violent giallo set in a great location and with a solid cast. I liked it, which of course doesn't mean anything if you look at the history of my taste in movies.

Roaring Fire (1982)

2011-11-09T19:06:00.004+01:00

Last day at Weekend of Horrors in Germany. Tired, broke and just wishing I could be back home in my own bed and with a less aggressive native language around me. On the second floor, just inside the "No one under 18 years"-section, I looked down and saw... a cheap Josefine Mutzenbacher-box and thought of Jocke directly. But that's not the point with this story, the point is that not far away, maybe a meter away, I saw a small "hartbox" with the title Diamentenauge, starring Hiroyuki Sanada and Sonny Chiba. I froze. "I need this!". Sonny is one of the coolest actors ever and Hiroyuki is quite a hottie. That's how I came to own ROARING FIRE!

This might be a bit confusing: as a baby Joji (Sanada) was kidnapped, without reason, by a man and moved with him to Texas. There he grew up to be a phenomenal cowboy and a friend of the nice native Americans. On his deathbed, the man he thought was his father, tells him that he has a twin brother in Japan! BUT what none of them knows is that his twin brother, Toru, became a Hong Kong gangster and just days before got shot to death, in a very bloody way!!! Joji goes back to Japan and goes directly to his family's house where he finds a small army of half-naked women swimming in the pool. Some of them topless! But here's the deal: his uncle is really evil, he's a Nazi and has an American boxer in his basement to torture people! He also has an army of evil Chinese henchmen (something I never seen: Japanese actors with make-up to look Chinese!) and I think all of them are out to kill Joji (and his blind sister, which I forgot to mention) and also find the legendary diamond that's hidden somewhere...argh, something like this. Anyway, this is one FANTASTIC flick! Really!

Oh yeah, Sonny Chiba shows up in an extended cameo as Mr Magic, an undercover cop who works as a magician at a cabaret in the evenings. Wattya say about that?

Roaring Fire is pure insanity. I had no idea what to expect from the movie when I bought it, but it exceeded every expectation I had. From the colours and wacky music, to the bloody squibs, the presence of veteran wrester Abdullah the Butcher (playing a character named Spartacus!) and the non-stop action. Ok, there's a few scenes with comedy and talk, but then Hiroyuki kicks a lot of ass - and it's even better when Sonny show what he's made off! Someone on the net compared the final reel to a video game, and that's not far from the truth. Wave after wave of bad guys for our heroes to fight!

The light mood of the movie reminded me of the Lucky Stars-movies, but it's much more violent and has more deaths and some nudity. The stunts are really well done, especially one scene when Hiroyuki is fighting baddies on top of a double-decker.

Roaring Fire almost gets surreal in places, with absurd comedy and a bizarre scene when ten samurai killers on bicycles chase Joji and his friends all over Kyoto (I think it is), including a spectacular stunt sequence when everyone is squeezing themselves up between two tall buildings standing very close to each other. Hard to explain, so see this movie please.

The Germany DVD looks absolutely stunning. It has English subtitles and a crystal clear Japanese audio track.

I'm hyping it now, but Roaring Fire is an extremely entertaining movie, and from now one one of my top ten movies from Japan!

Inbred (2011)

2011-11-04T21:39:00.006+01:00

After many hours at Weekend of Horrors in Bottrop we sat down outside, Jocke lit a cigarette and the only thing on our minds was to lay down in our soft hotel beds and sleep the eternal sleep. Thanks heavens Jason woke us up and with the last powers we had we decided to watch Inbred, a new horror movie from Alex Chandon. Alex, armed with a fresh version - only four days old - introduced us to a truly demented piece of horror cinema, and I can say that no one of us in the screening room regretted watching this superb movie!

It began like so many other movies (almost, I refuse to spoil everything): a bunch of people in a minivan going out on the countryside for a weekend of learning to cooperate and maybe even be friends for life. Lead by two social workers, having responsibility over four troubled youths. They arrive to a small village, where they rented a house, and starts to clean up the place. But something is of course terrible wrong with this charming place, and it starts with the colorful clientele at The Dirty Hole, the local pub...

Oh boy. Inbred is clearly one of the best, funniest and goriest black comedies I've seen it a very long time. No, I won't compare it with Shaun of the Dead or Tucker & Dale, because Inbred are in it's own brilliant league. It's darker, gorier and has a Monty Python-esque Grand Guignol atmosphere. I'm of course to young to have experienced real Grand Guignol, but I'm sure Inbred is pretty close to that once was the hottest entertainment in Le Gay Paris.

Every good movie lives its life because of good characters, and Inbred has a phenomenal cast. I'm writing this now without the luxury of Internet, but just google the movie and check out the cast! Our heroes has truly depth, with enough personality to make us care when they finally bites the dust. Even the antagonists are written with love and they are so superior to similar "inbred rednecks" that it would be any problem to write another story only focusing on them.

The gore is just stunning! It's, according to Alex, 99,9 % practical effects with a final digital touch. We're treated to a couple of ultra-gory scenes of extreme carnage, lots of violence against heads, stabbings, body-slicing! Inbred has every kind of kill you can imagine, and it never takes away the focus from the story! I'm surprised how such - at the first glance - generic story can offer something more, but Inbred actually manages to do this.

Currently looking for distribution, but Inbred is a must in your DVD or Blu-ray collection when it's out. Personally I can't fucking wait!

Off to Weekend of Horrors in ze Germany!

2011-11-03T12:08:00.002+01:00

I haven't written so much lately, mostly because I've a new job for the moment and it's a lot of stuff to take care of regarding Attackafant Entertaiment and Oddbooks. Today I will leave Sweden and go to Weekend of Horrors, together with this bloke and this dude. Gonna be fun! We're staying there all three days, so if you see me/us, say hello!

If I'm not too lazy I will bring a few copies of The Killer Elephants on DVD, if someone wants to buy directly from me - or if I find someone at the conventions who want to sell it for me.

Watch for photos and nerd-stuff after the weekend!

Night of the Demon (1980)

2011-11-02T22:30:00.002+01:00

Together with Ryan Schifrin's Abominable, Night of the Demon could be the best Bigfoot movie (or Sasquatch Schamsquatch) ever made. No kidding, it's a promise. I'm not sure you would agree with him, but remember that a Bigfoot movie must be entertaining and not even close to pretending to be some crappy, overrated wannabe-nature show with someone filming firs for ninety minutes. Night of the Demon is good old exploitation, close to be a slasher - but with a grotesque monkey-man instead of masked serial killer.

The story is as simple as my mother's taste in men (she likes them bald with a beard): a team of students go out in the forest to examine a Bigfoot-sighting, and during the way they are telling stories about the attacks - who show in graphic details - and then finally meets a satanic sect and the monster itself in the end. It's very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very simple writing, but believe it or not, it's competent made and with some interesting visual solutions.

First of the all, the title sequence is awesome in it's simplicity: if I ever make a creature feature myself I WILL steal the blood-runs-into-bigfoots-footstep, which both is a stroke of genius and a great mood-setter for the rest of the movie. Night of the Demon is a gritty, cheap and cheap (did I mention cheap?) movie, made just to show the gore, blood and shocks. It has tits, gore and blood - and a monster. What more to expect from a good movie?

Even if the story is very episodic it's also effective, and the constant flashbacks makes the movie fly by like a Catholic priest on his way to a Justin Bieber concert. Sure, some of the actors can't act themselves out of a wet paperbag - like the sheriff in the beginning and end of the movie - he looks like a scared rabbit in front of the camera, and some of the female talents probably never even thought the same morning that they would appear the in a movie. My favourite being the lady in the van who seem to go through all the screams in her meager acting-register.

The effects are very cheap and very bloody, so just don't expect any fancy schmancy Tom Savini-style effects. This is down and dirty, bottom-of-the-barrel effects which works very good and fits the movie perfectly. I love how the filmmakers focus on the effects and lets the camera linger on the prosthetics or pumping blood long as possible.

The DVD from Code Red is probably the best the movie ever looked, and I'm quite sure it will from no one be the best version ever released. Not perfect by any means, but people who actually complain about a movie like this not looking perfect has a special room in hell next to people whining about 3D movies and still paying to see them every time and those who actually claims "the only movies being made today are remakes".

Amuck! (1972)

2011-10-29T17:59:00.001+02:00

One of my favourite ways of storytelling is putting a bunch of people in a secluded area and make things happen. I adore good writing, and because of the setting and very few actors, the writer has to make it interesting during at least 90 minutes. Amuck is one of those movies, even if it has some scenes set in more populated areas, but most of the time it's just three actors playing a mind game with each other on a small island, motherf**king wow what a good little movie this is!

The lovely Barbara Bouchet plays Greta, a secretary hired by the wealthy author Richard Stuart (Farley Granger). He lives with his wife Eleanora (Rosalba Neri) on an island with just a few locals living on the other side. A perfect place for an author who needs peace and quiet to write his masterpieces. But Greta is not only there because she needs a job, her best friend Sally (Patrizia Viotti) worked for Richard earlier, but has now disappeared without a trace and Greta wants to find out what's happen to her. She slowly realizes that Richard and Eleanora lives a special life, a very "open-minded" sexual life, and when she sees Sally in an home made porno she understands that something has happen on the island, but who is behind the crime?

Amuck is a perfect example of a simple yet very effective storyline. With the concept director and writer Silvio Amadio gets the opportunity to show us an effective chamber play with everything from mysterious flashbacks, home made sex movies, the always reliable idea of what's fact and what's fiction, murder and paranoia. It's not a bloody movie by any means and the body count is very low, but the impact of the story is so good that it's impossible to stop watching it. Intelligent use of red herrings makes the movie good and not absurd and in the end it unfolds in a very satisfying way.

Former American movie star Farley Granger had a nice career going for him in Europe during this time, and gets here a chance to play a complex character in a very rewarding on-screen relationship with the talented Bouchet and Neri. You never know where you have him and the idea of him and his wife having such an open relationship feels actually very fresh and modern, with no visible jealousy. Another excellent idea is that the flashbacks is told like Richard is writing a book, with maybe not that realistic re-enactments of what could have happen - so basically the flashbacks is the imagination of Greta's mind!

Teo Usuelli composed the music and this is the first time I've noticed his work, but what a fantastic score it is! Erotic, atmospheric, almost dreamlike, often with the same tones pulsating heavily in the background, almost like it's something from behind the walls - like the neighbours is having an orgy or something.

Amuck (or Amuck!) is out on a bootleg from the since long dead company Eurovista. It's a fullscreen VHS-rip, but the quality is OK - especially the sound, and except a few damages on the tape it looks fine. I hope this Giallo will get a good release sometime, because it's worth reaching a wider audience.

Esmeralda Bay (1989)

2011-10-28T17:36:00.001+02:00

After a series of hardcore movies and obscurities that never seem to have seen the light of day Jesus Franco was on the go again with several movies with bigger budgets and bigger stars, Faceless, Fall of the Eagles and finally Esmeralda Bay. Eagles and Bay is typical Eurociné productions, but with a more ambitious feeling. Maybe they had a richer financer in the background somewhere, who also demanded more for the money. I know "real" Jess Franco fans tends to dislike Franco's more commercials projects, but I think they are excellent proof for what an excellent storyteller Franco was. Sometimes mainstream is needed to show us that part of a filmmakers talent.

It's actually quite similar to Fall of the Eagles, but set in the fictional country of Puerto Santo. We follow businessman Wilson (George Kennedy), who deals weapons with the local rebels and Robert Forster as Madero, the leader of the military police on the island. In the middle is the good-hearted banana republic-president Ramos (Fernando Rey) and the rebels, among them Ramon Estevez and Brett Halsey, all fighting for their own cause. The Americans want the military crushed and have planted their own under cover agents in the middle of this little war, and everything leads to the battle of Esmeralda Bay...

I have to admit that it's a bit boring in the beginning, but as soon as the intrigues starts Esmeralda Bay becomes an involving thriller-drama with some nice stock footage action at the end. In smaller parts we have Lina Romay (and she's excellent as the pathetic mistress of Madero), Antonio Mayans and Daniel Grimm, all doing great jobs with the material they have. George Kennedy is a pro, and so also Forster (who works together with his name-nemesis, "Robert Foster" - aka Antonio Mayans) who have a lot fun and energy has the intensive military leader.

Franco is an obvious hired gun here, to lead the ship to harbour in time (which he also does in the movie, in a cameo as captain of a boat) and make the producers happy. But with the time and money he had, and a great cast, he also delivers a good - if a bit generic - war drama with gorgeous cinematography and - for once - real squibs (Eurociné have a tendency to prefer non-squib shootings in most of their movies). There's really no depth in the story, but it's easy to see where Franco put his talent - in the drama parts. Few other movies can have so boring dialogues and still be interesting to watch.

Esmeralda Bay is out on a good-looking Spanish DVD, fullscreen and with English dub. It's cheap and worth buying.

"The Killer Elephants is about fucking shit up"

2011-10-28T08:35:00.001+02:00

"The Killer Elephants is all killer and no filler. There isn't a moment that goes by in the film that could be considered boring, it moves at lightning speed and works with maximum efficiency, leaving exploded cars and building in its wake. There is some semblance of a plot about good guys and bad guys and a good cop who got framed and some drugs and some other stuff, but it isn't about all that. The Killer Elephants is about fucking shit up. Whether that shit is a jeep or a house, it doesn't matter. Blow that mother fucker up!"

Yeah, another amazing review, this time from Twitch! Read the whole text here!

And I will be back with reviews soon, it's just been a very busy week with other things. Just keep your eyes open, I think I can feel a Jess Franco coming up sooner or later...

The Killer Elephants - now at Diabolik DVD!

2011-10-27T21:32:00.002+02:00

Yes, now it's possible to buy the Attackafant Entertainment DVD of The Killer Elephants at Diabolik DVD. Get it here!

Prepare for trashy fun! Just watch the trailer!

You wanna read about Mark Dacascos and exploding helicopters?

2011-10-26T19:25:00.002+02:00

Then I suggest you head over to Exploding Helicopter ("Celebrating the cinematic art of helicopter explosion") and read my guest review of DNA, the amazing DTV-classic starring Mark Dacascos and Jürgen Prochnow... and Pong Pong. Read all about it here!

The Coroner (1999)

2011-10-26T16:03:00.002+02:00

Many years ago I was hanging at a video store in my old home town. I knew the owner and also a lot of the nerds running around there. One of the movies that the nerds talked about was a little production called The Coroner they said it was incredible bad! I never saw it, but a couple of years ago I found Shadowbuilder (with Michael Rooker ya know) on DVD in the bargain bin at my local supermarket. It was one of those ultra-cheap discs with several movies on, and one of them was The Coroner. So today I actually decided to watch it and it more or less lived up to the legend of being bad: it's very bad. But still kinda enjoyable in a freaky way. But it's hard to write about movie that's so incompetent, so empty and so stupid. What could I do? Well, I did what every normal person would do: grabbed my copy of The Satanic Bible by Anton LaVey and consulted The Nine Satanic Sins, and here's what I came up with:

The Nine Satanic Sins

1. Stupidity
- Oh, stupidity is the biggest sin in The Coroner. I love how the police department refuses to investigate a suspect just because he's THE coroner in town, even if there's tons and tons of physical evidence against him. This is just a small stupidity compared to the whole movie, but I need to choose something.

2. Pretentiousness
- The Coroner is guilty of pretentious flashback-moments, and use of even more pretentious flashforwards.

3. Solipsism
- The whole movie is based on solipsism, that the only thing that counts it's the main characters own experiences, reasons and opinions. She hits a person in court just because she think he's wrong, she also - someone tells us - once called a dog to the witness stand because the dog is a better witness than a human. She's bitch, to use a more frank word.

4. Self-deceit
- The Coroner, because of it's pretentiousness actually think it's an important piece of thriller. A good thriller, a good drama with some intelligent satire. Eh, it's not. And I guess self-deceit also includes not noticing how the concrete wall bounces around like a cheap whore when someone is banging a head in it.

5. Herd Conformity
- Yes, following the mainstream is a good thing sometimes. But not when you complete lack talent to do your own Silence of the Lambs and Seven.

6. Lack of Perspective
- Obviously a film team that forgotten than they can't make movies. They just don't have "it". Very painful, indeed.

7. Forgetfulness of Past Orthodoxies
- They made bad movies 100 years ago. Why make a bad movie again?

8. Counterproductive Pride
- Pride made the makers of this movie continue, and it destroyed them in the end. Sure, it's nice that the movie was made - not many people make a movie - but why didn't they realize no one involved had any kind of talent?

9. Lack of Aesthetics
- The Coroner is so ugly. SO UGLY. And no one involved seem to understand it. SOOOOO UGLY!

The Coroner was actually distributed by Roger Corman's New Horizons, but I doubt he ever saw the movie itself. The director, Juan A. Mas, was a long-time collaborator with Corman, mostly as second-unit. Maybe he should have stuck with filming inserts of feet getting out of cars, close-up of hands and those exciting scenes of airplanes landing and taking off that someone always need to shoot for ever darn movie.

Many words about a crappy movie. But I'm unemployed and kinda borded, so I'll blame it on that.

Frightmare (1983)

2011-10-26T11:04:00.002+02:00

Non-graphic murders in horror movies like strangulation, drowning and gassing should be forbidden. A badly executed graphic murder scene is still a graphic murder scene. Frightmare does not have any scenes involving drowning, but are still guilty on all accounts of skipping gory deaths. This is of course a sin as big as any other cinematic sin when it comes to making a genre movie less attractive for a bloodthirsty audience. It's a pity, because Frightmare is quite good and ambitious compared to others in the same sub-genre.

Ferdy Mayne (what kinda name is that anyway, Ferdy?) plays Conrad Radzoff, an aging horror star stuck in crappy TV-commercials and making appearances at film festivals and conventions. That don't stop him from suffer from extreme megalomani. After collapsing at a university, during a Q&A, he retires to his home and decides to take revenge on his old director, and then he dies. A couple of the students from the university attends his funeral and decides to kidnap his corpse and party with it all night long, which is of course a very bad idea. With the help of some black magic Conrad Radzoff comes alive again and starts hunting down the kids having fun with his dead body!

Director and writer Norman Thaddeus Vane creates a good-looking movie with a story similar to the better and bloodier 1987 oddity Bloody Movie. In one of the parts we see a very young Jeffrey Combs, who got cast because he had the same hair-colour as the fake head being used in a not so interesting decapitation later on in the movie. It's easy to see that he got himself a long career, charisma all the way and a lot of talent on display.

I love movies, especially horror movies, set in the world of horror movies. It's always a pleasure and gives the filmmakers opportunities to make references to good movies, actors and other filmmakers. I guess that was the plan with Frightmare and Vane really makes a good job with the visuals and some sly in-jokes. Conrad Radzoff seem to be based on the legends: Cushing, Lee, Karloff and Price and Mayne makes a good job both spoofing and celebrating their careers and personas. The scenes are filled with fog and smoke, spooky staircases, a big mansion, graves and nicely lit night scenes - but something is missing. First of all, it's hard to understand why Radzoff wants to take revenge. He might be crazy, but obviously has some sense of humour and would probably never be that angry if someone stole his body. The other thing is the lack of creative kills.

I never understood the point of making a bloodless slasher. Why the f**k would someone want to do something like that? Even of the murder-set-pieces are nicely done, they are weak and has no power at all. A tongue-ripping is obviously cut and the decapitation is sloppily edited and filmed in complete darkness. The rest is non-graphic kills: strangling, gassing, someone getting hit by a coffin and dies that way, etc etc.

With some gore and blood Frightmare would have been a lot better, a lot more entertaining. Because you can never fool fans, slashers aren't high art - they are Grand Guignols of teen angst.

Fall of the Eagles (1989)

2011-10-24T16:39:00.002+02:00

I'm a man of emotions. I can't stand people who actually know something more about a filmmaker than the filmmaker himself. When it comes to Jess Franco there's an interesting and recurring opinion that some of Franco's movies are not Franco at all, but just something he did because he got a big pay check. Well, fuck you all. Franco has always mixed an artistic sensibility with crass commercialism. Why do you think he zoomed his camera to every pussy in the frame? He probably liked it himself, but he (and his producers) also knew that pussy sells tickets. It's that simple. So when Franco directed some of his more mainstream productions, like Bloody Moon or Faceless (both excellent movies, especially the latter) certain fans just couldn't stand that he did something that even a normal horror fan could appreciate. I tell you know and for the first and last time, Franco's style hasn't changed much at all. Faceless is as much Franco as The Awful Dr. Orlof, and even Franco considers Faceless to me a full-blown Franco-movie! That brings me to Fall of the Eagles, a Eurociné-produced WW2-drama released in 1989. A movie that has been blamed for not being Franco enough for years. Let me tell you, that's as wrong as it can be.

Not that the story in Fall of the Eagles is something special, but it has a few interesting ideas. First of all, it's set in a storyline where Germans are the "heroes". I mean, there's good Germans and there's bad Germans as usual, but even the baddies has a lot of character and are multi-layered in a way that an American filmmaker never could have done it. Like several of Umberto Lenzi's WW2 movies this is also about the war coming and splitting up friends and enemies all over Europe, and how they deal with the war, love and politics. The main patriarch is the old businessman Walter Strauss (Christopher Lee) and his talented daughter Lillian (Alexandra Ehrlich) who decides to do her duty for the Fatherland and joins the much to the dismay of her father, who are a convinced Nazi, but don't want her to sacrifice her life. His best friend is an open-minded woman, Lena (Teresa Gimpera) who maybe, maybe not, transforms his life when something is happening. Lillian is in a love-triangle with the young and optimistic soldier Karl Holbach (Ramon Estevez) and SS officer Peter Froehlich (Mark Hamill), but ditches them both to do her part in the war....

Like always, Franco is a drama-director and he's not that really interested in the war itself, only what it can do with people. And to my surprise, because I was fooled by the negative words, this is a very nice drama, directed with Jess Franco's same talent for subtle character-developments and gorgeous cinematography by Jean-Jacques Bouhon (who also shot Faceless). I love how Franco let the faces talk, for example the last ironic scene when Lillian is staring empty in front of her while the cigarette smoke of American soldiers caresses her face. Fall of the Eagles is just one part silly WW2 film, but the bulk of it is traditional European arthouse-drama with an intelligent deconstructing of the German family, not necessary in a negative way, because we're talking humans here. Not Spielbergian stereotypes.

Another interesting detail is Captain Anton (Daniel Grimm), a gay Nazi officer who actually is damn nice and wants to make good - but fate wants something else. His homosexuality is discussed very shortly and he's a bit upset that a woman calls him queer, because he's can't approve of such a degrading word of what he is. "I'm just a nice guy pretending to be bad because no one respects a nice guy." Another tragedy of war, but in a smaller scale.

There's not nudity, but if you aren't lazy and willing to dissect the movie you will find it's a lot of Franco-esque undertones. From the frail love-triangle, the father that refuses - not something you would see in a Hollywood-movie - to abandon his believes in the Arian race, the deathbed-marriage, the nightclub-singing and a lone Nazi playing organ in a church. Just those small poetic moments that Franco is a master of. But this is also commercial war-movie, but I think all war-scenes are lifted from other movies (among them scenes that also showed up in Franco's Oasis of the Zombies), but are edited into the newly shot footage in a good way. If you're not used to European exploitation or having basic knowledge in film stock and editing you would probably never notice the change of quality or rhythm in the editing.

The actors are also very good, especially Christopher Lee who makes an amazing performance - maybe the best he's ever done with Franco and probably the best he did during this part of his career. A surprise is Ramon Estevez, Charlie Sheen's older brother, who makes a fine job as the young ambitious German soldier. Mark Hamill, an old favorite of me, is good to - but it makes me wonder how the hell he could go from Star Wars to Eurociné in just a couple of years? Either it was a conscious choice or he just had a very bad agent.

Fall of the Eagles is released in the Czech Republic under the title Pád Orlů, and it's a good and cheap DVD. Slightly letterboxed, often good colour and sharpness. Probably taken directly from Eurociné's master-tape. Hardly BD quality, but well worth buying (for example from here!).

Mind Ripper (1995)

2011-10-20T17:01:00.001+02:00

After watching The Hills Have Eyes part II the only logical continuation would to watch the movie that first was planned to be part III, but before shooting began changed title and was rewritten to be Mind Ripper! And it might be a story about fucking around with genetics in an underground base, but it feels so damn much Hills Have Eyes that it's hard to see it as anything else than a twisted little sequel. My memories of this has always been quite on the bad side, but during the years I've started to appreciate DTV exploitation more and more and now I can say, without shame, that this is a quite entertaining flick, especially for us DTV-fans.

Lance Henriksen is Stockton, a scientist who together with his colleagues finds a body in the desert, a man nearly dead. They fill him with experimental drugs and medicines and makes him come alive again, miraculous getting better from his serious wounds. Stockton leaves the project and looks forward to a nice summer together with his teenager children, but need to drop by his old desert-facility. But without them knowing it, shit has hit the fan and man, called Thor, has escaped and is mutating to a almost unbeatable beast - killing off everyone that enters the underground base!

It might not seem like it on my little text above, but it's a perfect sequel to The Hills Have Eyes part II. "Thor" was probably a wounded member of the family, maybe Pluto, and of course the US government want to use a rare specimen like that to transform into a killer-soldier! And then we have the camping family, but this time with a plane instead of a van! Mind Ripper is a very cheap production. It looks cheap, the directing is quite everywhere possible and there's not specific style of the movie. It does not help that the UK DVD from Anchor Bay looks like someone ate the master and puked it up before putting it on disc.

But Mind Ripper succeeds in being a fun Alien-style rip-off with a mutant instead of an alien. The cheap interiors, probably a basement in Sofia, Bulgaria, somewhere, works better than expected and the cast is a lot better than this movie deserved in the first place. Lance Henriksen is not bad at all, especially in the scenes together with Giovanni Ribisi and Natasha Gregson Wagner as his children. Claire Stansfield is good also.

The highlight of Mind Ripper is the excellent make-up effects and the gore. The latter is not in any enormous amounts, but brutal and nasty - and it's always disgusting see someone tear off his toenail by mistake! A nice eye-stabbing and a few other blood-spurting scenes makes this a fun monster-romp.

Hardly a masterpiece, but I have a soft spot for direct-to-video productions that actually deliver some bloodshed and good acting, without any pretentions of being high art. I doubt the R2UK is the best version around, the picture seemed cropped - it was probably shot with 4:3 ratio in mind, but it's cheap anyway.

I guess the only way to go now is to watch The Hills Have Eyes 2, or what do you all say? :)

The Hills Have Eyes Part II (1985)

2011-10-20T12:43:00.001+02:00

I once worked for one of the Swedish financers behind The Hills Have Eyes Part II. He also raised money, part of it from Sweden, to First Blood. That one became a huge success and made him a rich man for a few years during the eighties, before he wasted it on import wives and booze. But one thing was for sure, The Hills part II was a financial disaster and didn't make any money at all. Not that the original is any favorite of mine, it's one of Wes Craven's weaker "classics", but here Craven just took the job to make some money because he was close to bankruptcy and needed cash fast and without any hazzle. The result become on of the dumbest sequels produced - but it's still quite entertaining, believe or not.

Wes Craven proudly jumps the shark with this hilarious sequel which in a very forced way connects its story to the original movie from 1977. Robert Houston once again plays Bobby, the surviving son from the first movie. He's nowadays a motocross champion... or something... and is planning to the desert again with his friends to a competition. But just before they're leaving Bobby gets a nervous breakdown and they have to go alone - but with Rachel (Janus Blythe) as a protector. She's really Ruby from the first movie, the daughter of our beloved mutant-family! Anyway, because they're late they take a shortcut and ends up stranded in the middle of the desert and gets to meet the family once again...

Everything in this movie is SO stupid. It's hard to even imagine how stupid it is if you haven't seen it. From the legendary "dog-having-a-flashback"-scene to one of the female characters suddenly taking an outdoor shower because "she can't miss a chance like this", and this is in the middle of the night when something fishy obviously is happening around them, her friends disappearing etc. I also need to mention that the final girl is blind, but actually walks around and escapes the family over and over again like she actually can see very, very good!

It's like director/writer Craven just didn't give a shit what was going on! Why introduce an important character like Bobby just to let him go and never be seen again? The overall feeling was that he would show up and save the day in the end, but NOOOO! And how come Ruby is a flashy business-style woman involved with motocross-competitions in this movie? The mutant family obviously is masters on motocross driving also! The movie itself is sloppily edited, has one of the worst visual effects I've seen (when the dog runs away in the night, you will understand when you see it...) and has very uneven lighting! The direction goes from competent to just crap within a blink of an eye in some sequence and the ending is a very elaborate and unnecessary trap that just feels pointless.

Not everything is bad. The movie is quite entertaining and moves along nicely. Michael Berryman is as usual just fantastic and he gets more to do here. Not much gore except a nice bloody throat-slit with machete. Not bad. The best thing with the movie is the location, an old mining village. Very atmospheric place and here we see a lot of nice cinematography and some good directing and editing.

Right now I'm having a flashback to the time when I wrote a review of a better movie, probably with fewer words. So I will get a nervous breakdown and stop this now. The End.

The Killer Elephants - review by Tellusfilm.com

2011-10-16T22:21:00.004+02:00

The kind people at Tellusfilm wrote a very fine review of Attackafants first DVD-release, The Killer Elephants. You can all all read it in Swedish here, but they were very nice and translated the review to English for you non-Swedes to read! Enjoy!

The other night I put ”The Killer Elephants”, hot from the presses, into my DVD-player. You don’t recognize the title? Not that strange perhaps. It’s a relative obscure Thai action movie from 1976, nothing you will find at your local movie rental shop’s Top Ten shelf. If it hadn’t been for the newly started distribution company Attackafant Entertainment, which released this movie in collaboration with Njutafilms, we poor freezing Swedes would probably never have had a chance to see it.

The story isn’t that obvious, men honestly: if you’re going to watch a movie with the title “The Killer Elephants”, is the story really that important? That’s what I thought. But to put it short, it seems to be a cop that with more or less help from a slightly less law-obedient acquaintance tries to free a village from a terrorizing gangster. At least that’s what I think it’s about, I was busy following all the brawls and car chases. Elephants? Yup, there is some nice elephant action as well.

The first time I heard about the movie, or rather the title, I thought it was a movie about killer elephants, perhaps the mutated result of a scary experiment gone wrong. Unfortunately, that’s not the case here. These are regular elephants, albeit used as demolition artists and car crushers. Very cool (even if mutated killer elephants would have been even cooler). There’s also a scene in this movie that I’m willing to bet a few bucks will never be reproduced in another movie. Bandits knocked out cold by elephant penises are tragically underrepresented in movies, that’s all I can say.

I had a blast watching “The Killer Elephants”. It’s obvious that 70’s action from Asia not always was that different from its western counterpart regarding the actual core of the storytelling. There’s a lot of “Hey ho, let’s go”.

I was positively surprised about the picture and sound quality. Call me narrow-minded, but if someone says “Thai action from 1976” I expect pretty awful quality, in the vein of fourth or fifth generation VHS copy (if anyone out there remember those). This looked pretty good however. Sure, there are some dirt and scratches from place to place, but nothing too disturbing.
I want to send a personal “Thank you” to the man behind Attackafant Entertainment, who with this (and hopefully many more in the future) release broadens the Swedish DVD market to include more than just the latest special effects lollapaloozas from Hollywood. Knowing Attackafant’s main agenda is pure love for all thing movies rather than just making money makes it all even more admirable. That attitude renders a standing ovation in my book.

So, go buy yourself a copy of “The Killer Elephants” now. If you for some reason don’t like it, you can still stand tall and proudly proclaim “That elephant-penis-knockout-movie? Yeah, I’ve seen it.”

Snuff Trap (2003)

2011-10-15T15:25:00.002+02:00

When I first heard of Bruno Mattei's "comeback" into the old style of exploitation, Snuff Trap (aka Snuff Killer) was the first production I heard about. But I stayed away from it through the years, mostly because it seemed like a normal soft-porn film and I'm not interested in that genre. Then Mattei started to make movies with cannibals, zombies, WIP and demons and suddenly I understood what he was doing: restarting the old tradition of true Italian exploitation. So my interested turned back to Snuff Trap and especially after I realized it was partly inspired my Joel Schumacher's underrated 8MM (starting Mr Hair himself, Nicolas Cage) and just wasn't another boring skin flick.

Carla Solaro (a veteran from several Tinto Brass productions) plays Michelle, a rich French woman living with a esteemed politician. She has a daughter from a previous relationship, Lauren (Federica Garuti, I think...) who one night disappears after living la dolce vita at a fancy night club. Michelle's husband does not want her to contact the police because his political ambitions and Michelle starts her own investigation and decides to go undercover in the seedy pornographic underworld to find the kidnappers - and it leads to a downward spiral of sex, torture and... snuff!

At the first glance Snuff Trap looks like a porn movie. The digital material is not processed in any special way and the pre-credits looks as cheap and primitive as they can get. The lighting is flat and the acting suffers from being dubbed by other actors. But Mattei gets things going, and even if it's a boring mission to rip-off 8MM with a DV camera and a very low budget, he's doing a very fine job with giving the movie a nice pace and even if it's filled with a lot of footage of people walking, it's not boring. It lives it's own life and handles that well.

The basic premise is taken from 8MM, but only one or two scenes are directly taken from that movie. The rest is an "original" story that works quite well, better than it should. While it's hard to say something about the actors because of the somewhat cartoonish dubbing, their presence is not bad and in true Mattei-tradition we're treated to some gratuitous over-acting in the best possible way. My favorite actors are Anita Auer as Dr. Hades and Albert Ruocco as Roy, her slightly effeminate assistant and manservant. Here we have some over-the-top performances in a good way, from people who probably knew that they had nothing to loose and that this was a good movie to have some fun with their characters. If was a filmmaker I would make a movie only with these two sleazing around in Hamburg!

One thing that surprised me with Snuff Trap was that it wasn't as graphic as I imagined beforehand! Sure, it has tons and tons of nudity (and even some real hardcore and nasty S/M on TV-monitors) and a few deaths, but it stays far away from the worst things. I can't say it's classy product (...and it would probably offend notorious Swedish morality-protector Janne Ahlgren a LOT) but it's enough serious to be seen as a "real" thriller and not a soft porn masterpiece.

Snuff Trap is another fun exploitation movie from the fantastic mind of the late master Bruno Mattei. Oh, I wish he could have stayed well and alive and worked for another lifetime. But shit happens, so even to filmmakers we hold dear...

Attack of the Robots (1966)

2011-10-13T13:29:00.002+02:00

Here's a fine little movie, Attack of the Robots, directed in 1966 by maestro Uncle Jess Franco and starring the one and only Eddie Constantine (and a cameo from his son, Lemmy Constantine also). Made during the big spy-craze during the sixties when every company wanted their own Bond-style movie. Attack of the Robots makes references to Bond and is well aware of what it's suppose to be, but it's not only a fun Bondish action movie, it's a seriously good movie who should be seen by much more people out there, not only fans of Franco.

Eddie Constantine is Al Pereira, a secret agent and an ex-alcoholic who lives a nice life pretending not to be a secret agent any more. Until a dangerous crime organization led by Sir Percy (Fernando Rey) sends out robot-esque assassins to kill the worlds most important leaders in politics, religion and other unnecessary bastards. They aren't really robots, but controlled with an electronic device in their glasses and it's all connected to their blood type. So Al Pereira is sent to Spain to investigate, and is directly contacted - a bit brutal - by a Chinese crime organization who also wants to get the technology to control people. Soon Al is hunted by the Chinese, the Spaniards and his own bosses wanting him to close the case once and for all!

Witty and charming are two of the words I could use to describe this movie. Other words are "great looking", "funny" and "tongue-in-cheek". This is, much like The Girl from Rio, a movie that spoofs the spy-genre and do both with respect and with comedic perfection. Franco and his co-writer, Jean-Claude Carrière, plays with every cliché in the book and do it so well. My favourite scene is when Pereira is presented the gadgets, an exploding umbrella, electric gloves, exploding cigar, a flute that could crush glass with it's sound and he just looks scared, because every gadget is so damn dangerous for him also! Another fine scene is a send-up on the typical "arriving to a new country with postcard-stock footage on the beautiful city" which here ends in Pereira only finding an packed tourist-bus with extremely dirty windows, which shows us nothing for the beautiful scenery outside. It's like a scene from a Marx Brothers movie!

But Attack of the Robots it's not just fun and games, there's a lot of nice fistfights, and some more advanced fighting from the "robots", especially when they meet the Chinese in Pereira's hotel room where both gangs are set to kill or kidnap him. This also ends in a scene where our hero needs to hide dead bodies from a sexy woman trying to seduce him.

And yes, of course Uncle Jess makes a cameo as a jazz-pianist. Important detail!

The movie was shot on a low budget but looks great and has a lot of action, stunts, comedy and fun actors and it never gets boring. A very competent movie and another proof of Franco's skills as a storyteller. The only way to see Attack of the Robots, except old video tapes, is the DVD-R from Sinister Cinema. It's taken from a 16 mm print and looks good, but is heavily cropped on the sides - but it almost seems like Franco have that in mind because it still looks good even if some of the shots are a bit cramped. This is clearly visible in the credits, but except that it's a good way to see the movie.

Cinema skriver om The Killer Elephants!

2011-10-13T11:44:00.003+02:00

I förra numret av Cinema skrivs det faktiskt om The Killer Elephants!

"KILLER ELEPHANTS är förmodligen en av tidernas märkligaste filmer. Thailands största actionhjälte, Sombat Matanee’s spelar en man vars fru kidnappas av banditer. Då tar han sin flock med elefanter och ger sig ut på en räddnings action utan like. Det krossas hyddor, välts bilar och en stackars sate blir knockad av en elefantballe, något man inte ser varje dag!" - Jason Meredith

Vi på Attackafant Entertainment känner oss stolta till att ha bidragit med ordet "elefantballe" i Sveriges mesta filmtidning! :D

SS Girls (1977)

2011-10-12T23:52:00.002+02:00

This is how I see it: Gabriele Carrara woke up one ordinary boring morning. The phone rang and an intensive voice asked him if he was interested in doing a movie. "Yeah, fuck yeah!" screamed Gabriele to the unknown caller and asked for time and place for casting. No need for casting, the voice replied. We've seen you at the local theatre, and you fits perfect in this movie. Could this be a dream, could this really be happening? Our newly discovered movie star was happier than ever. He would show the world what a magnificent actor he was, finally!

A couple of weeks later and Gabriele was on location, a nice villa outside Rome. The script wasn't half bad, but he sensed that the director - a newbie named Bruno Mattei, an excellent editor but beginner as a director - didn't know what he was doing. Time for our hero's first big scene and Gabriele did, what he thought, a perfect take. But Mattei wanted "more", "bigger", "energy". So he did the scene again, this time with some extra "schwung". But that wasn't enough. "You have to act like this is your last day alive!", Bruno almost screamed at his actor. "Remember, your character is doomed and I want to see that in your performance!".

So Gabriele Carrara gave all he got, and the rest is history.

Basically a rip-off on Tinto Brass masterpiece Salon Kitty, but in a way it's maybe more entertaining, more shocking and more spectacular - but with a budget not even close to the catering budget on Tinto's movie. I don't know if this movie came first, or if Women's Camp 119 was Mattei's first big break into exploitation cinema, but SS Girls is almost a perfect nazisploitation movie, made by someone who knew exactly what he was doing.

I mean, we real fans always knew that Mattei was a master. He was a talented director and a good storyteller, but with (often) trashy scripts and bargain bin actor ensembles (nothing bad with that, just a detail). Mattei fully understood the magic of exploitation, of making a quick buck. He understood that if he took the best from other movies, tossed in more sleaze and violence, and he would have a success. But he also realized that for an exploitation movie to sell, to be appreciated by the audience, it need to be told professionally and with a story people could follow - even if the story was stolen from a big budget Hollywood movie with aliens.

SS Girls is, in-between the sleaze and nudity, an almost dreamlike experience with a lot of fascinating and beautiful scenes. Most of the don't hang together, but each scene is like a provocative piece of sleazy art with more ambition than I think the ordinary eurocult-Joe on the screen could imagine. It runs for ninety minutes and it feels like, at the most, forty minutes of well-paced melodrama. So it's a good movie, really. If you don't agree with me, give it another shot and watch it from my viewpoint.

But the main reason for watching SS Girls is the presence of Gabriele Carrara, an actor who chews the scenery, spits it out and eats it again with some extra Italian cheese on the top. I think we all can agree that this is over-acting, pure classic over-acting done the correct way. Gabriele steals every scene he's in (and he's in most of them) and plays the character totally straight - but with some excessive acting as a bonus. He loves what he's doing and it shines through to us in the audience, and that's why Mattei have him on camera almost the whole movie - because the camera loves him and he loves the camera.

SS Girls is probably the best sleaze movie I've seen. It's also, so far, the only nazisplotation I liked to 100 percent. It's out now from Njuta Films and this is something you need to own and enjoy for the rest of your lives.

The Attackfants are here!

2011-10-12T13:18:00.003+02:00

I'll get back to you with a detailed list of links where to buy Attackafant Entertainment's first DVD, Kom Akadej's The Killer Elephants! Here's the specs:

The Killer Elephants

Prepare to get squashed!

This ain't no circus! From the depths of Thai film history comes Kom Akadej’s forgotten masterpiece about cops, gangsters, a house-crushing story of love, and… killer elephants! Starring legendary superstar Sombat Metanee and a who’s who of 1970’s Thai cinema! Filled with the traditional stunts and action of Thailand, from brutal fistfights to extravagant car chases!

For the first time on an official DVD comes the international version of The Killer Elephants, a movie never before released on any home video format in Thailand. Attackafant Entertainment is proud to present this action-packed lost cult classic to a wider audience!

Special DVD features
Widescreen version of The Killer Elephants, sourced from VHS.
An Introduction to The Killer Elephants by Regis Madec
International theatrical trailer
Artwork gallery

Technical Specifications
Fullscreen 4:3
English with Swedish or English subtitles
Stereo
PAL
Region All

Porno Holocaust (1981)

2011-10-11T18:39:00.003+02:00

I'm not sure how to start this review. I've been sitting here for ten minutes trying to figure out something smart to say about Joe D'Amato's Porno Holocaust. But sorry, it's more or less impossible to write something smart. Maybe I should fill this review with comments about how much I love Anthropophagus and the brilliance of Beyond the Darkness and Death Smiles on a Murderer? Maybe some words about what an excellent cinematographer D'Amato was? No, I can't do that, because I've been strong enough to sit through this awful mix of porn and horror and I need to talk about it, I need to clean my eyes with soap and hit my back bloody with at least ten lashes of that sinful whip I have in the basement. Then I'll be pure and free again.

A bunch of nobodies goes to an island to investigate claims that a monster is running around there killing people. Then they fuck - a lot. And then the monster fucks a lot. And then some more fucking. Radioactive penis. The end.

I think that was a realistic retelling of the story, more or less. Could have cut some parts of the story for you, spoilers and stuff. But what the hell, I think you'll survive.

But how the fuck should I review this flick? I guess "fuck" is a good word because that is what people are doing a lot during almost two hour of this masterpiece. They fuck here and there, some lesbian, a threesome with two local guys with huge dicks (bigger than the monster's), some fucking with each other and finally the monster fucks around a little bit - raping I guess, but the women seem quite enthusiastic and often helps him with putting the penis where it should go. Ah yes, then the final two survivors escape with a boat and fucks out at the sea also.

The last time I saw Porno Holocaust was at a fifth or sixth generation dupe and I can swear that the porn was edited out of that version, or I was probably asleep during the more graphic scenes. Here it's very graphic, yes... hardcore, which was a surprise after all these years. Now, I kinda think hardcore porn is quite boring and especially in a horror movie. So how about the horror? If you count one black dude with a silly latex-thing in his face a monster, I guess that's horror for you. If you think it's so cool with red paint smeared over peoples faces and call that gore, I guess this is a horror movie for you.

For me it's just trash. And guess what, it's a movie you have to own! Imagine this: that boring co-worker and his wifey comes home to your place and sees the enormous cock... eh, movie collection. They are used to Swedish cop-movies and, at the most, 40 Year Old Virgin. They have never seen so much weird movies before. They ask you what you recommend to begin with and you take down Porno Holocaust from the Joe D'Amato-section and says: "This is it. The ultimate horror movie. See it together with your mother and father!".

That's the main point with Porno Holocaust, because it's not only an ordinary fuck-movie, it's a "what the fuck"-movie also - and should be treated that way. Good luck with your co-workers parents now and don't blame the upcoming scandal on me please.

This amazing movie is out from Njuta Films NOW and you better buy it before I'll convince you not to!

The Bite (1989)

2011-10-10T17:09:00.002+02:00

How about this storyline: a young couple travels through New Mexico, the man gets bitten by a radioactive snake who transforms his arm to a killer snake! Not to forgot the short stop at a gas station where the owner has a dog-monster in his basement! Wtf?! And do you know what? This is an extremely entertaining movie, totally absurd and very well-made. Why?

First of all, The Bite is boring. It keeps up the pace like a pro, never stops for any unnecessary plot-twists or romantic storytelling-roadblocks. Frederico Prosperi (who also made the wacky Wild Beasts) tells his story with frantic editing and actors who knows exactly what they're doing. It might only be Bo Svenson who seem to be somewhere else (probably longing for a bottle of whiskey and the TV at his hotel room) and just slums along to make the day go faster. Another odd casting choice is Jamie Farr as a travelling salesman, and he's not bad at all. It's like he's wanted to do something similar for a long time, and he's inspired and plays his part with both one part seriousness and one part tongue in cheek.

There's not much to write about The Bite, because it's main reason for existing is the awesome and ultra-cool special effects by Screaming Mad George! It was a couple of years since I watched The Bite the last time, but during this period I happen to forget the insanity in the effects-department. From the monster-dog, who's just in the movie for a minute or two, to the gory jaw-rippings (not one, but two of 'em!) - including one where the snakehand also crawls down the throat and rips out the heart of of the victim. The other main effects-sequence is when our hero finally is taken over by the snake-thingie and he's body is pressing out snakes, big and small! Gory, fun, graphic and spectacular. I love the bizarre scene when his head is split open to reveal a giant snake!

I mean, The Bite is not a movie filled with stuff you haven't seen before (Hmm... the head/snake thing maybe...) and is a typical cheesy horror movie from a time when this kind of movies was dying. It would have fit better as a movie from 1984-1985 than from 1989, but that makes it so damn charming to.

Give The Bite a new chance, forget about the haters and judge for yourself!

Curse of the Devil (1974)

2011-10-10T12:12:00.002+02:00

The fourth movie (fifth if you count the never released - and maybe not even existing - Las noches del Hombre Lobo) with Paul Naschy as the unlucky nobleman Waldemar Daninsky, Curse of the Devil is one of the slickest and most commercial entry in the werewolf-saga. Even if I love the work of Naschy, more than a few of his movies lacks a coherent storyline and tries to mix everything into one story, which makes them a bit confusing. Here's the story is clear enough even for me to understand.

The movie starts with Irineus Daninsky (Naschy of course) chopping the head of an enemy in a duel. The family of the now headless dead guy puts a spell on Daninsky. Cut to modern times, and the - as usual - hunky Naschy gets the spell again from a descendant of the guy his forefather killed. He befriends a nearby family and falls in love with one of the daughters, but both daughters fall in love with him (surprise!) and this complicates things of course. But even worse, the werewolf-spell now works and every full moon Daninsky is transformed into a hairy beast and soon no one is safe in the village!

Believe it or not, but the story works very fine and there's an effective love story and a lot of werewolf-attacks. As usual people claims this is a gory movie. It's not, but it's a BLOODY movie - which is a big difference. So there's not lack of the red fluid here, trust me! Just don't expect graphic throat bites and bellies ripped open in gory fashion.

The only time I reacted to something, that kinda took me out of the story, was when one of the characters goes out in the yard and stumbles over a dead body that lies on the open ground without her seeing it. It's like something from a parody, because there's no doubt she would have seen the body. But details like that is just for people who must say that a movie is so bad it's good, just because they can't stand really liking a "b-movie". Mistakes can never destroy a movie. The only bad movies are boring movies.

I think this movie really shows the charisma and talent of Paul Naschy. From the intensive and colourful acting to showing of his torso from time to time. Naschy was well aware of his interesting sex appeal, probably both aimed at a female and male audience. He's not a typical handsome man, but more of a strong, cuddly and macho guy with an impressive way of just being very likable. You would never confuse the real Naschy with characters. He seem to have been a quite soft person in real life, liberal-minded and one-woman only. Maybe his films was a way to be able to play something very different from himself and having some fun at the same time?

Naschy took famous characters, or concept, and injected them with some sleaze, gore and blood - but still stayed surprisingly old-fashioned. When Hammer started to wind down and loosing their audience, Naschy and his friends took over some of those that wanted more action and the modern violence and still old-school horrors. Curse of the Devil is an excellent example of really good Spanish horror.

Prince of Darkness (1987)

2011-10-09T09:58:00.002+02:00

Every scene, every moment of John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness is a classic, a sequence which always ends in being a Russian doll - there's a secret, a revelation within each sequence and it never ends. This movie triggers the imagination in so many ways and even after seen it time after time it always feels like a very rewarding story. Just like The Fog and The Thing. I've always been trying to figure out what makes many of Carpenter's movies so extremely interesting to watch over and over again, and I still don't know. A theory is that he weaves very interesting characters with small details, stories within stories that never stop the flow of the HORROR movie. Yes, Carpenter makes horror and he's admitted himself that he loves doing horror. There is never a boring day during the shooting of a horror movie.

I think makes movies like Halloween 3 and Prince of Darkness is the mix between fringe science and something that could be mistaken for supernatural events. The bases of Halloween 3 was constructed by Nigel Kneale, a genius of course - but slightly humourless and he loathed what became of that movie. He never really appreciated the little tributes in Prince of Darkness, for example that Carpenter uses "Martin Quatermass" as a screenwriting alias and one of the characters mentions he went to Kneale University. I think Kneale should have been proud of being in the hands of such a master - but maybe they where to alike to be buddies?

As a convinced atheist I tend to hold Prince of Darkness in even higher regard than usual. It gives a "natural" solution to the Christian myth (much like Knowing, the Nic Cage movie, did many years later) focused on an unknown being, probably from outer space or probably more correct: from another dimension. My favorite parts of the movie is when Father Loomis (Donald Pleasence) looses his faith later finds it again, even if we see how his friend Prof. Howard Birack (Victor Wong) pities him from being so naive. The first scene is when Calder (the excellent Jessie Lawrence Ferguson) cuts his throat with a piece of wood and Father Loomis is giving him his last rites - and Loomis stops, because during the chanting of latin words he realizes how pointless it is. It does not mean anything for the dying man, or for himself. This is a powerful scene, even if it seem insignificant at that moment.

It's also interesting how Pleasence acts in this movie. I love the man, one of my favorite actors ever, but he's always been fond of "giving it all" as an actor, including something that not so sensitive critics could call over-acting. I think most of them it's the opposite, because Donald probably studied how we humans react in real life and we're all over-actors in a way, it's just more visible on the big screen. But in POD Pleasence works very slowly, hardly moving (he was famous for always making movements, doing something, so it would be harder to cut him out from a scene) and even the talk and facial movements are almost like slow-motion. It's like his character is so controlled by the mighty church, maybe had problems with his faith before, that he has not energy to react. He just accept the situation and maybe even his death - which never happens, because he's (a genius stroke by Carpenter) hides most of the time during the last half hour, a very natural thing to do. He's a coward of God, so messed up in his head that fooling himself that he stopped Satan in the end gives him his faith back.

Prince of Darkness is a brave movie, one of Carpenters finest masterpieces.

The Willies (1990)

2011-10-07T17:20:00.001+02:00

My hunt for anthology movies lead me to a German release called Campfire Horror Tales. I thought it was Campfire Tales from 1991, but when I came home and took a closer look at the cover I realized it was The Willies, a kiddie-horror from 1990 instead! I was disappointed, to be honest. After reading some reviews, most of them negative, I decided to throw away all hope that this was a good movie and just watch it with an open mind. Was it worth it? Continue to read and you'll see...

The kids, one of them a very young Sean Astin, is out camping in the backyards and decides to give each other the willies with telling scary, true, stories. After a few short ones - about the lady who dries her dog in the microwave oven for example - the first main story is told. It's about a boy discovering the janitor in his school is a monster dressed in human skin and kills people who act mean against the boy. The second story is a dark tale of a fat kid obsessed by dead flies. He's in a constant war against a weird old man with a talent for growing huge vegetables with his "miracle manure"...

I'm not sure who this movie was aimed at, but it's obviously a movie for kids - if it wasn't for the very dark subjects, the mild gore and blood and some truly disturbing pieces of celluloid. But for once the story is as macabre as kids can be in real life, because if someone really think a child's imagination is just football and horses, they are very wrong. The Willies sets itself at the same level as the scary stories told by kids all over the world, but is a bit to sloppily made to make a powerful impact. The budget was obviously very low and there's a couple of embarrassing mistakes that could have been avoided. The cinematography is often very flat and the child-actors... OMG, this is among the worst I've seen. Some of them can't even walk by the camera without looking like a wax doll on wheels.

On the other side, the grown-up actors are good and James Karen and Kathleen Freeman makes fun supporting parts. Clu Gulager makes an almost pointless cameo which is more or less a role that anybody could have played. A wasted opportunity. Sean Astin is not bad either and Dana Ashbrook has blink-and-you'll-miss-him-part.

What's surprising is the violence. Not overly graphic, but there's a nasty throat-slitting (which in the movie itself is fake, but still), an exploding dog, blood-spurts and a cool old-fashioned rubber-monster (that story, I see now, is a bit inspired by The Crate-episode in Creepshow) and a couple of other scenes you never would see in a kids movie nowadays.

The Willies was a quite ok movie, better than I thought it would be. But it would have been a stronger movie with three or four shorter stories than two longer, but complaining now seem a bit pointless. Better just enjoy it for what it is.

Rest in peace, Bill...

2011-10-06T19:32:00.003+02:00

So the body of Bill Barounis, the gentleman behind Onar Films, finally took the final step and greeted the ferryman. Bill didn't need any silver coins, his legacy was enough to bring him where he wanted to go. Yesterday Bill passed away after a period of illness. A fantastic man whose life was ridden with weird accidents, illness and just plain bad luck has left us.

Yeah, Bill was famous for all the fucking weird things that happen to him over the years, but something that was way stronger than those bad things was his enthusiasm for the art of Turkish cinema, his friends, his collecting and that was something that reduced his moments of misfortune to something not even worth mentioning.

I'm not gonna pretend that we where best buddies, but we had a lot of contact over the years and I - as many others - shared his love for world weird cinema. After watching Altin Cocuk I found one of the actresses, a Swedish woman, living in the same city as me and Bill was so happy that I found her and we decided to include her in an upcoming release of the next Golden Boy-release. That will never happen now, but it makes me happy to know how happy Bill was because of this.

Like me, he was a hothead, a man who could be very upset. I'm not even sure how many times he said Onar Films was over and that he would never release another film again - but like the passionate man he was there way always a new DVD, better and more unique than the last. That was Bill. The last email I got from him was in August, and he was the same old Bill then:

"I already lost faith, courage and motivation for this shit, but I've got 6-7 films in my hands I must release as I've paid for them already."

He NEVER gave up and to the end he was preparing the next release, Zagor Kara Bela. What will happen now I have no idea, but in the end the movies was just movies. Left behind is his family, his friends and relatives. Those that meant the most for him.

I mentioned the body of Bill at the top. That's the only thing that left this world. The spirit, the mind and passion belong of Bill will always be here with us, around us, telling us to look out for Kilink behind our back, watch the skies for Turkish Superman and swing life the way Captain Swing would do it.

Love and respect Bill, wherever you are.

/Fred

Lost Voyage (2001)

2011-10-06T12:10:00.001+02:00

I'm having a Lance Henriksen period right now, Living La Lance Vita you could say. A while ago I got Henriksen's autobiography, Not Bad For a Human (of course signed by him) and yesterday I donated 100 bucks to Michael Worth's project Bring Me The Head Of Lance Henriksen, starring Tim Thomerson (and Lance of course) and deals with the subject of ageism in Hollywood. I doubt those 100 bucks was needed, because the funding was already there and the movie is shot an is now in post-production. But I wanted to support the project and get myself a unique special edition DVD as thanks.

There was a period when Henriksen made a lot of movies. He still makes tons of them of course, that's his trademark, but once upon a time he worked a lot in Eastern Europe, mostly in Romania. I think Lost Voyage is shot there (actually not, it was shot in LA - but I'll pretend I didn't read that!) and it's therefore one of his "jetlag-movies", as he call them himself. Quick and dirty and no time to get over the jetlag!

Judd Nelson is Aaron Roberts, a scientist specialized in the unknown. His main hobby is the Bermuda Triangle, where his parents disappeared without a trace many years ago. Suddenly the ship, The Corona Queen, appears again and a speculative TV-show lead by the enthusiastic Dana Elway (Janet Gunn) convinces him to join her and the team for a first visit to the boat. They get help from the grumpy owner of the shipping company who owned the lost boat, David Shaw (Lance Henriksen). Well on the boat something is of course very wrong, and soon they get killed one by one by supernatural forces!

This could be one of the cheapest movies I've seen with Lance. Maybe not as cheap as Dying God, but it's so cheap I had a hard time getting involved in the story from the beginning. The cinematography is flat and direction is TV-like and far from something out of the ordinary. But maybe it's because of the actors or the tight little script, this movie actually is quite good. I first thought this was a rip-off on Ghost Ship, but that movie came the year after and I would even say that this is the better of those two movies. Ghost Ship has a big budget and more violence, but also feels automatic and more a product of a concept than an honest try to make something scary.

It would to be pushing it to say that Lost Voyage is scary, but it's still an effective ghost story and if you can live with the cheapest digital effects ever you could enjoy this movie a lot. It's produced by UFO and Philip J. Roth, which always means a cheap look and flat storytelling, but most of their productions is very entertaining and have interesting ideas. Here we have very simple CGI-ghosts, but it works surprisingly fine and the final scenes looks excellent and dramatic.

I love when movies made with a small budget tries to look big and expensive, because then they at least try to make something special and never falls in the trap of not believing in themselves. Lost Voyage and it's actors believe in what they're doing and that's easy to see.

A nice little TV-movie, recommended.

The Human Factor (1975)

2011-10-05T19:15:00.001+02:00

Forget all the bad words you heard about The Human Factor. Ok. Are they forgotten now? Wiped out? Gone? Finito? Good, because this is a movie that surprised me big time. This is the second time I started to watch it, the first time I managed to survive a half hour or so before I gave up. It happens sometime when I was prepared for something completely different. So what the hell did I expect? I have no idea. Sure, it's shot in Italy, but that doesn't mean it would be action-packed from start to finish. It was a directed by a director, Edward Dmytryk, at the end of his career and with George Kennedy in the lead. Well, that beginning surely fooled me, because it's what the common man call a build-up. A slow one, but still a build-up...

George Kennedy is John Kinsdale, an American computer engineer who lives in Italy together with his family. One night he comes home and finds the police and media outside his house, his family has been brutally executed! The police tells him they will do their best to catch the killers, but he can't let go of it and start using databases (which he can access at his work, a military facility) all over the world to try to find something that can lead him to the guilty criminals. But he doesn't stop there, but also takes on a fake identity and befriends other parts of the investigative team. Soon he has that lead, and goes after for revenge...

The Human Factor starts of slow, and slow in a gritty realistic way. There's no beautiful sets or fancy camera movements, just Kennedy living his life in Naples together with his family and the grief after the killings. There's talking and talking... and it was a mistake to give up the first time. This is one of those movies that uses the build-up to make us really get to know John Kinsdale and after that half hour we're with him in his hunt. I'm not kidding when I say that it gets surprisingly thrilling during the way, especially when John thinks he has located the next family to be killed - forces himself into their house and threatens them with a gun, just to make them understand that someone else will try to kill them.

If The Human Factor was made today, Jason Statham would have played John Kinsdale and be an expert in MMA. That would have made the movie so much boring, because Kinsdale in Kennedy's performace is just an ordinary, unfit bloke and a receding hairline and a high blood pressure. He's the average joe with a gun and an anger that I've seldom seen in a movie. He goes from being just an obsessed computer nerd to a violent, violent man using his length and weight (Kennedy is a very big guy!) taking down the terrorists one by one.

The action is quite low until the last half hour when the shit finally hits the fan. It's impressive stuff, good stunts and bloody. The fight between Kennedy and one of the terrorist in an backyard is excellent, but that's nothing compared to the finale when he alone takes down every terrorists who has taken over a supermarket! Bloody squibs-deluxe!

In the end The Human Factor becomes a very satisfying revenge-movie which clearly never makes Kinsdale either a hero or a victim. He's just an angry man.

The DVD from Dark Sky offers a very fine interview with the man himself, The Kennedy Factor, and he seems to be a very fine gentleman, very human and intelligent. He tells about his life and also a little bit about WW2, where he was a soldier. He's someone who finally doesn't try to romanticize war. He says how it is: "War is something that kills young people, and it's aweful". Thanks George, you're the best.

Creepshow 2 (1987)

2011-10-04T23:05:00.002+02:00

I would like to defend Creepshow 2, defend as strong as many hated it once upon a time in movie history. Well, no. I haven't seen much hate for C2 (that would have been the title it was released in 2011), but many agree that it's very uneven and that the only really good episode is The Raft. I would say that in some parts Creepshow 2 is a stronger movie than the first movie, which is a masterpiece in anthology movies and one of George A. Romero's finest mainstream-gifts to the world. His movie has a five stories in total and two of them are super-strong: The Crate and They're Creeping Up on You! The others are good, but even a classic as Something to Tide You Over feels a bit forced not just that convincing. That's my opinion folks, I don't wanna hurt any feelings here. Father's Day is a bit to uneven have pacing problems and The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill is a bit to long and just plain silly (but I admit I think King does a fine job in the title role). But still, a magnificent movie.

Creepshow 2 only has three stories which I thought as a kid was a bit too few. I wanted more, but these three are also the most well-written in this short-lived series. I have one complain, and that is that the revenge-part of Old Chief Wood'nhead flies by way to fast. The wooden native American is a fantastic creature and stunningly well-made, and kinda scary also. The murders triggers more emotions and the script isn't dealing with them correctly. We, as the audience, wants a better, longer and more brutal revenge. Now it's over in a couple of minutes and that's it.

But the comes The Raft, based on another excellent short story by Stephen King. This is probably one of the best adaptations so far of one of King's short stories and the biggest difference compared with the written piece is the ending - which is a lot more effective in the movie version, more visual and a fun shock for the audience. I love the original ending, but it would have been a boring ending to a great episode.

One of the most hated episodes is the last one, The Hitchhiker, and I can't understand why! Here we have a very bloody, fun and action-packed story with a ghost/zombie/something that just refuses to die. I always loved this story and part of that is the fantastic acting by Lois Chiles who's mostly alone against the desperate hiker, killing him one time after another. She's a cool presence and carries her part with perfection. So even Tom Wright, who plays the very unlucky hiker - even if he's more unrecognizable for each time we see him.

Michael Gornick carries the Creepshow-flag with the same sense of quality as Romero, but with that premise that he had more story to work with in each episode. The first movie was a bit too long for me, but part 2 clocks in around ninety minutes and that's perfect. I hope we someday will see a real (well, Tom Savini still claims Tales from the Dark Side: The Movie is the real part 3) sequel or reboot, because King has way to many short stories that needs a treatment with a bigger budget and not drawn out to feature length movies.

Dolls (1987)

2011-10-04T00:16:00.002+02:00

I think most of you can agree on that Stuart Gordon is one of the best genre directors from the US, and he’s career is filled with excellent, macabre movies - often with a nice twist of black comedy. One of the movies that was on my not-seen list until tonight was the Charles Band production Dolls, produced by Brian Yuzna. A fine trio of interesting filmmakers where Gordon easily stands out as the best and smartest of the bunch. When Band nowadays just writes “DUDE!!!!” on his blog and Yuzna travels the world to find new money to spend on his flops, Gordon still has integrity and continues to make smart movies for a smart audience.

A family on vacation is trapped by a violent storm and is forced to seek shelter in a big mansion far out on the countryside. In the house lives an elderly couple where the husband is a famous toymaker, specialized in dolls of all kinds. Within a couple of minutes a chubby nerdy guy and two punk girls arrives, also for shelter. But the little daughter of the family notices something she calls elves, but of course no one believes her. During the night one of the punk girls goes for a treasure hunt in the house, trying to find something to steal, but ends up being brutally attacked by something small... and very violent. And soon they are all in danger!

Holy mother of Fuck! How could I miss this movie for so many years? Yeah, probably because it was kinda hard to find in Sweden and it took a long while for a good DVD to show up. But here it is, from the people at MGM. What I really think is very cool with this one is that it mixes the black comedy of Gordon with the typical atmospheric production values of Empire Pictures. This is such a cool and visual movie with tons and tons of cool scenes and probably the freakiest dolls ever portrayed on the screen. I mean, come on! Dolly Dearest, Puppet Master, Child’s Play - they’re nothing compared to these little fuckers! What we have here is a clever mix of animatronics (I guess made by John Carl Buechler) and the classy stop-motion by the late Dave Allen.

Being almost a fairy tale, it also takes the genre to another level with adding a good amount of violence, blood and gore - just like a really good fairy tale, and it’s often very well done and have a great impact on us, the viewers. But Dolls is first of all another proof of the genius of Stuart Gordon who tells the story flawlessly even if the dialogue comes out quite stiff sometime. But the script is overall very good, filled with politically incorrect details and the best vision of a child’s imagination I’ve seen, I’m talking about the bizarre teddybear-monster in the beginning. That’s a truer description of the imagination than everything Disney Schmisney cooks up for their next movie to sell at McDonalds.

If I was a father this would be the first “real” and more graphic horror movie I would show my kid. After the Universal classics and the original Godzilla of course!

Sometimes They Come Back... for More (1998)

2011-10-03T10:28:00.001+02:00

I remember reading an interview with Stephen King once in which the journalist asked what he thought about the sequels being made to movies based on his books and King replied that he didn’t care because his story won’t disappear because of that. I like that opinion, and it just shows how King sees his books and novellas as something very different than then books. They live two different lives. And I don’t buy that he says yes to sequel after sequel just because of the money, he’s so damn rich he don’t need anything more. Remember this is the man who allows directors to make films of his short stories without having to pay for it, as long as they aren’t used in any commercial way. Fair enough I would say.

It was ages since I saw Sometimes They Come Back and I have no memories of the first sequel, so to be honest I have no idea if Sometimes They Come Back for More is connected in any way with the original short story or the first two movies. What makes this movie extra interesting is that it uses a 100 % safe way to make a horror movie worth watching: snow. And that in combination with occultism and Satan and his friends, this becomes a nice little movie with a tight script and a nice location. It’s basically about Captain Sam Cage (Clayton Rohner) going to Antarctica together with his colleague Major Callie O'Grady (Chase Masterson) to investigate what’s going on out on a secret mining base. When they arrive they find two survivors and a couple of dead bodies, and no one can explain what’s happen. Soon they discover that one of the scientists has found something deep under the base, something very hot… and satanic!

As a low-budget version of The Thing but with demons and Satan instead of an alien organism this is a decent little movie with a script that uses the claustrophobic location better than a lot of other movies in the same genre (I’m looking at you, Deep Freeze). And don’t we all love movies that a are shot in narrow corridors with fake snow blowing outside the windows? Yes we do, and it’s very rarely I get disappointed with locations like this. I also like the very pulpy storyline, mixing an arctic setting with pentagrams and satanic rituals. It’s like a vintage pulp novel come to life!

Clayton Rohner is also very competent hero and a good actor. He’s not a stranger in horror movies and Tibro Takacs 1989 mini-masterpiece I, Madman and 1997’s monster romp The Relic are both worth watching. In a smaller part, but important, we find Damian Chapa, a good actor who’s slumming in the worst basement-bargain homemade movies nowadays. A pity, because he’s good! In this movie he’s a good baddie with a nice set of black contact lenses.

A good little DTV-flick that’s better than its reputation.

Children of the Corn: The Gathering (1996)

2011-10-02T22:29:00.002+02:00

I guess it won’t come as a surprise that I have a fondness for DTV and “meaningless” sequels to movies that wasn’t popular in the first place. But I see sequels, especially in the direct to home video market to be a very fine for of exploitation. Very pure, often a lot better than the originals because the often boost the violence and lowers the drama. Good old entertainment without an illusion of being anything else. When it comes to the Children of the Corn franchise I always loathed the first movie – mostly for the lack of gore and just being way to boring. The sequels are much more fun, and Children of the Corn: The Gathering is probably the best of the bunch when it comes to ambitions.

Naomi Watts (of all people!) plays a young doctor, Grace, who just returned to her hometown to take care of some family business, mostly her mentally unstable mother June (Karen Black) and her very young sister. But our favourite demon/devil is growing again and takes the shape of a young preacher boy who possesses all the other children in the town with his evil. Soon they are starting to kill their parents and it’s up to Grace to stop them!

What’s interesting here is that they actually tried to build a story, create characters to care and root for. You won’t see it in the short text above, but compared to the other movies this is a lot better. The build-up with the children acting sick, having convulsions and getting high fever is a good detail and feels a lot scarier than them just starting to act weird one day. Here everyone think they’re fine for a moment and calms down – and then the little critters attack fast and bloody!

It’s still the third sequel to a movie no one liked anyway, with a good amount of blood and gore and – believe it or not – tension. Naomi is one of the reasons the movie works so well, because she really create someone we care about. She’s a good actress and always been, and its fun to see how she can raise the quality so much by just doing her job.

The other actors are doing great to, especially Karen Black as the mother. Like almost all the other Corn-sequels this has a character actor in a minor role (the following movies have David Carradine, Fred Williamson, Michael Ironside and Billy Drago) and Karen really gives all what she got here. She didn’t have to, but she’s excellent in the part and it’s a pity she has to bite the dust without a good final scene against Naomi.

The gore is creative and graphic, from scythes through heads, decapitations, impalings, chopped of fingers, a man cut in half and so on. It’s well-made kills and gives a good story some spice. There’s really not that much to say about The Gathering, but it’s clearly the best and most successful of the sequels and it outshines the boring original movie (the SyFy version, from 2009, of the Stephen King’s original novella is a lot better by the way, skip the original and watch the TV-version instead!).

So Naomi, if you read this (come on, I’m sure you Google yourself sometime – I do!), don’t be shamed of this little horror movie. You did you best and it shows, good for you!

Hellraiser: Hellworld (2005)

2011-10-01T23:49:00.001+02:00

I once read that Lance Henriksen never accept roles as child molesters, rapists and just any kind of acting in slasher movies. Probably a very wise decision for him, because it kept him going for many years now and he’s probably gonna act until he falls down dead (which I forbid, he can never leave us!). That’s why it’s a mystery that he accepted the role of the mystery host in Hellraiser: Hellworld. At a first glance it’s a Hellraiser-movie, but it’s just slasher in disguise. Probably the most hated (until the next one of course, Revelations) sequel in the Hellraiser-series and shot back-to-back with the interesting but very uneven Deader, also from 2005. I can agree it’s a weak movie, but if you forget what it’s meant to be and see it as a silly slasher it works.

Two years ago Adam (Stelian Urian) burned himself to death in the basement after getting to involved in the fictional Hellraiser internet-game (internet was VERY dangerous in the movies once) and now his friends are getting back into their old “drug” with participating in a Hellraiser-themed party, hosted by Lance Henriksen: Hellworld. Yes, this is one of those sequels that look at the franchise from the outside (like Wes Craven’s New Nightmare for example). Soon things are starting to get very strange in the old Leviathan house, and one by one our hero’s is getting killed in violent ways!

OK, look at it from a distance and it kinda works. The story and the twist is absurd and silly and shouldn’t work, and it would have probably worked better as a pure slasher outside the Hellraiser-realm. It also has a twist which I hate and I loath every stupid fuck that uses this idea to seem smart (I’m looking at you… NO, sorry. I won’t name any other similar movie, just so you can be disappointed by yourself). Why it works a little bit better here is because it’s a Hellraiser movie, which make it seem more logic… kinda.

Because like with Deader and Hellseeker, director Rick Bota makes a very fine job spicing up rewritten scripts and adds a lot of atmosphere and some nasty violence to DTV-sequels that never would have gotten the same treatment if they belonged to another franchise. Hellworld is the weakest because the story is the weakest. It’s shallow and belongs entirely to the beautiful location, the excellent effects by Gary J. Tunnicliffe and the presence of Lance Henriksen. As you might now, I LOVE Lance, and I watch everything he’s in. He can have a tendency, especially during later years, to look a bit bored – or maybe just too used to doing lowbudget horror films. In Hellworld he’s better than in other similar projects, and seems to have fun scaring the kids and saying silly lines. Or maybe it was just a nice vacation to Romania that made him in a good movie, I don’t know. His best scene is actually the last one, where he can do a more realistic and – it looks like – do some improvisation on the set.

I know you all hate Hellworld, and I can agree it’s no super-movie. But watch it as a slasher with a little bit of Pinhead tossed in and it’s quite fun. And it looks good at least, which is better than nothing!

Hellraiser: Hellseeker (2002)

2011-09-30T23:31:00.002+02:00

After reading this hilarious comment on IMDB about the TRAILER for Hellraiser: Revelations I just had to watch one of the old sequels again and my choice fell on the one I’ve seen the least times, Hellraiser: Hellseeker. Now, I’m one of those that don’t consider any movie holy. They could have remade Hellraiser as a romcom for all I care! The original movies still exist and can be enjoyed whenever I want to. Regarding Revelations it’s probably shitty, it’s just a movie that was produced to keep the rights to the franchise and nothing wrong with that. Art is business, make no mistake. I’ve been defending the Hellraiser-sequels since as long as I can remember, and I still will do that. It’s just something with them that attracts me. Like a twilight zone in the Hellraiser-mythology…

Kirsty (Ashley Laurence) is now a grown woman and has left her terrible history behind her, living a fantastic life together with her husband Trevor (Dean Winters). A terrible accident kills her and leaves her husband alone in the world with a mind more and more confused for each day. He starts seeing visions and his paranoia starts to grow. The police think he killed Kirsty and his memory-loss gives both him and us some clues of what really happen! Soon his closest friends starts showing up dead, brutally molested and isn’t that a certain Cenobite lurking in the dark of his mind…?

Like the excellent Inferno, and the sequels after, Hellseeker is a typical mindfuck movie. What I heard all these sequels were other movies from the beginning, but was rewritten to be Hellraiser-sequels, which makes them have a distance to the Cenobite-mythology, only using it as a background to some very fucked-up characters. What’s good with them, with the possible exception of Hellworld, is that the originals scripts used are quite good. Not especially original for us who have seen a lot of movies, but more ambitious and dark than most other DTV-sequels out on the street.

But I like them, and Hellseeker - while not in the same league as Inferno – is a fun and nasty sequel, dark and downbeat and even of the character of Kirsty is not that well-written, it’s nice to connect the story back to the original movie. I mean, why not? What gives the Hellraiser-sequels more respect than for example the Children of the Corn-franchise, is that they trying to keep the stories true to the downbeat tradition of the original. Sure, Hellworld is a slasher in (a not convincing) disguise, but the rest are actually quite non-commercial for being cheap sequels produced for the home video market.

There’s not need to complain about Hellseeker, everyone else does it so well. If you can ignore the holy Hellraiser-movie by Clive Barker (and maybe part 2) and just watch it like a separate mindfuck-movie with Pinhead and his friends in cameos, I think much more of you would appreciate what they’re doing here.

If you are true Clive Barker fans, I’m sure you would wait a thousand years for a proper new Hellraiser movie, or…?

Amavas Ki Raat (1990)

2011-09-29T17:18:00.002+02:00

It’s always nice to see generic slashers from another country than the US, and this Hindi slasher, Amavas Ki Raat, don’t stray that far away from the classic template. Not a remake of any kind, but the story is so standard and everything done thousands of time before this one, so you know what to expect as soon as the movie start rolling. But of course, it has a couple of the typical Bollywood-twists and it’s a very entertaining piece of trash in the end.

A witch, I guess - or just an old crazy woman who happens to know black magic - controls a muscular, bearded man to kill innocent women by, most of the time, stabbing them or throwing them from the third floor. The police are nearby and finally they kill him, shot numerous times in the chest! The only survivor from the last killing spree is a little boy, and soon after they killer has been buried he wakes up screaming after seeing him in his dream. To prove to him that the killer is dead two cops makes the not so smart decision to dig up the corpse and show the dead body to the boy! Guess what happens, yes… the killer wakes up and continues killing everyone he sees! Now the police have to hunt a living dead serial killer!

This is as stupid as it sounds, and add to that singing and dancing and a 100% pointless plot with a couple of idiotic comedians trying to be funny by making funny faces, you have yourself a true Bollywood horror movie. If the filmmakers had been smart, they would have skipped the comedy part and they would have a fun and very generic slasher with a killer which is the total opposite to Michael and Jason, he roars like a monster and never stalks his victims. He just jumps out at them and kills them brutally. The killer also died in the beginning, so begins to rot during the movie and look quite hideous at the end.

Amavas Ki Raat is a slasher that desperately trying to entertain its audience by putting as much stuff as possible into the storyline. We have, if I didn’t miss one, at least four times when the police think the killer is dead, drops their guard and he wakes up and continue his killing spree! Four times, maybe five! That’s just awesome, and a bit tedious to be honest. But expect the idiotic comedy parts this is a fun movie, never boring and gives us enough slasher action for at least two movies. It’s not gory, but some blood is visible and it also has a very bloodless head-explosion for those who are brave to sit through the whole movie.

I think I can recommend this to most of you, but prepare to watch it without subtitles – as usual ;)

Oh, don’t worry, like all Bollywood movies from this time, it also has a Kung Fu fight in a park. Not bad, eh?

Ladies Hostel (1990)

2011-09-28T20:58:00.001+02:00

I’m quite sure most of the eurocult aficionados out there are familiar with 100 Days, the Bollywood-remake of Lucio Fulci’s masterpiece The Psychic. Even Fulci was aware of it and seemed quite proud of have being remaked in India. But I’m not sure he – or many of his fans – is aware of Ladies Hostel, a Bollywood horror from 1990 which is a scene-for-scene remake of Aenigma! Nowadays it seems like a quite odd movie to remake, but in 1990 it was still quite new and had probably left its mark on the home video market. I have no idea if it ever went to cinemas in India. Even if I think Aenigma has a few flashes if brilliance (very short ones) it’s still one of Fulci’s weakest movies from the time and is terrible slow and have a pace worse than Dances with Wolves. It just goes on forever!

The story is basically the same; a girl is exposed to a cruel prank and gets seriously wounded after getting hit by a car. At the hospital she’s paralyzed, probably in some kind of coma, but has developed a telekinetic power that she uses to take revenge on the students that caused the accident. One by one they are killed in spectacular fashion until a brave doctor gets too involved to let it continue…

I don’t remember the details of Aengima, but it feels like the same movie just in a different language and… much better! Yes, here the remake really boosted the quality of the story and made it a lot more fun. It’s a clearly superior film compared to Fulci’s vision. No, there are no snails in the Bollywood version, but the statue is there and the rest of the murders – very different ones – are shot with a lot of style and with cool special effects. My favourite scene is when the walls of a house is ripped apart, the camera flies in and we witness a girl getting take from the bed by an invincible force.

I think Ladies Hostel is a bit longer and also contains a couple of song- and dance-numbers it also has a lot more energy and power, and here we actually feel involved in the movie, in the thrills, without looking at the watch wishing it would end as fast as possible. It’s a very eighties movies and the students looks like they are at least 35 years old, but it adds to the charming corny feeling of the movie and the entertainment value surely grows with such a bizarre cast. Not a bad cast by any means, but they hardly look like young students.

Ladies Hostel is a Bollywood horror movie worth seeking out. What I know it’s only out on VCD with no subtitles, but if you have seen Aenigma there’s not problems following the storyline.

The Marsupials: The Howling III (1987)

2011-09-28T10:18:00.002+02:00

The Howling is like the slutty cheerleader of horror franchises, everyone who want’s to fuck her can do it without much work or pay. It seems so anyway. But for a person like me who are very fond of trashy unrelated sequels this is of course a godsend. The Howling III is one of the least loved parts in this long series of failures, but I like Philippe Mora’s often very outrageous viewpoint at his source material. His movies are often over-the-top (just watch The Howling 2, probably the craziest sequel ever produced) and injected with an interesting tongue-in-cheek approach which both can been seen as very stupid… or brave.

This movie starts in something claimed to be Siberia, which is just a place with very little snow and an Asian dude in a fur coat. He’s killed by a werewolf and suddenly we cut to Australia were a woman is found in a park by a young man, a filmmaker. He falls in love with her directly, gives her a part in the movie (“Shapeshifters part 8”, which is kinda ironic because soon Howling Reborn, part 8 in the series is being released on DVD and Blu-ray). But soon she’s kidnapped back by three werewolf nuns to her tribe in the backwoods and a ballet dancer also finds herself called out in the wilderness. The government wants to kill them all, but a friendly scientist understands that they are humans like us, just a bit hairier…

First of all, as you might understand when you see the title, this is not werewolves, this is weresupials (complete with a pouch on the belly and everything) based on the Australian animal species. One of the characters is a Tasmanian Devil for example, which is kinda cool. Second of all, this is by no means a scary movie. It’s mostly a very absurd take on the werewolf-myth, and to be honest, if it wasn’t for the Howling-title this would probably have gotten a bit better reputation over the years. It’s quite original, have an off-beat humour and a couple of very cheap and unconvincing transformation scenes, but the sheer amount of twists and absurd characters makes it more entertaining than I expected at first. Just don’t expect any gore or violence; this is something very different from the other movies in the series.

I’m sure this movie came to existence in this way: someone realized they could make some good money by producing a movie in Australia, something with tax returns or… well, something like that. They gave Mora the mission and he just decided to have fun with it, just be silly. Partly a send-up on other Hollywood-movies, maybe satirizing the concept of Hollywood and silly sequels and at the same time make something closely connected to his home country. A former painter and involved in the art circles of Australian, I’m sure that affected his work as a filmmaker and gave him the confidence to do something far-out every time he got the chance. Right now he’s making Dali 3D with Alan Cummings, examining the art of Salvador Dali… in 3D of course.

But back to Howling III, watch it on your own risk and don’t blame it on me if you don’t like it!

The Nest (1988)

2011-09-27T20:05:00.002+02:00

Terence H. Winkless The Nest most be one of the most forgotten creature features ever. Produced by Concorde Pictures and with Roger’s wife, Julie Corman as producer, this is a small but ambitious killer insect-movie in the same tradition as Slugs and Squirm. I guess it was dumped to video directly, which probably made it less known than the titles above. Not that The Nest is a masterpiece, but it has an overall feeling of “fun” and “goo”, and I’m sure most readers of this blog like that.

A fishing village is invaded by roaches, first just irritating bugs like they always been, but soon they start to eat flesh – human flesh. They are also, of course, mutated! So soon more bizarre creatures show up, and attack our hero – the brave sheriff and his girlfriend, the daughter of the man who brought the secret testing facility to the town! Melodrama! Well, what more can I say? The story is all what you expect from a typical killer insect-movie!

I admit it looks a bit flat and the budget was propably spent on a few of the more spectacular effect-heavy scenes, but The Nest is just good old-fashioned monster-fun. First of all, the key to all good monster movies, a good cast: Franc Luz as the sheriff, Robert Lansing as the patriarch, Lisa Langlois as the girl and Terri Treas as the bad mad scientist responsible for the mayhem. Everyone do their best and even an old pro could have chosen to sleep through his part, but do a nice performance that ends in an awesome sequence when he… well, I’m not gonna reveal it to you, but like the restaurant scene in Slugs this is as least as memorable.

While the story is standard and offers nothing new, the fun and likable cast puts of a good fight against thousands of cockroaches and a couple of cheap but very gory and slimey monsters. The cat/roach mix is a fun monster and the Lansing-creature is very good, the final monster is the best. It’s a bit stiff, and don’t move so much, but it’s very inspired by the last creature from The Thing mixing body parts and with animals and a nice gory sequence with the bad guy gets what she deserves, in blood-spurting fashion!

The Nest might be a shallow little movie, but filled with love and atmosphere, monsters, blood and gore. It’s out from Corman’s own company and possible to buy from them via eBay. My wish is that it would come out in a remastered edition, because I think the flat look of it would disappear if some work was invested in the movie and if they made a new master from the original negatives.

Not a classic, but a must for fans of good old monster films!

Killer Rats (2003)

2011-09-25T20:21:00.001+02:00

Oh boy, Tibor Takacs, I just love you. Really, but I guess you – and most of your enemies - never would believe that. Sure, you made The Gate, a very fine Canadian mix between family movie and monster flick, and the equally entertaining and underrated The Gate 2. Not to forget I, Madman, a slow but gorgeous looking (and original) horror movie. But the biggest love you get from me is because of your proud career as a DTV-director, churning out movie after movie about spiders, snakes, rats, earthquakes, volcanos and yeah, every kind of threat towards mankind we can imagine. Many of them produced by Nu Image or similar companies, but always a step above the rest of the crap being released direct to home video each year. Killer Rats might not be one of your more famous works, but even if it’s a bit slow, it’s fantastic piece of ratsploitation with Ron Perlman doing a great job as usual.

Set in Philadelphia, but shot – as usual – in Sofia, Bulgaria, this is the story about a home for troubled teenagers (and dwafs, because I see one at the end). Jennifer (Sara Downing) is the latest one, and she’s taken in because of depression and just being a typical young woman without hope for the future. She’s taken care of by Dr. William Winslow (Ron Perlman), the Chief Psychiatrist at “The Brookdale Institute for the criminally insane”. But he’s not just a typical doctor, he’s a mad doctor but don’t know about it yet – because his work has created hundreds of rats, hungry for human flesh, and they are lead by one nasty big rat who happily takes a bit from everyone that comes his way!

Director Takacs creates, with a meager budget and a cast of unknowns, a lovely little movie. Slow at times, because the script is thin and Takacs always loves to squeeze some atmosphere out from every shitty script that comes into his hands. I’ve seen worse stories, and the characters are OK and most of the actors do more than what was probably expected by them. Ron Perlman, a true trooper when it comes to cheap exploitation, does what a real pro does: his best, and gives everything he’s got. I always respect that! Another fine performance comes from always reliable Michael Zelniker as the slow-minded janitor who has some form of telepathic connection with the rats (something that makes this movie a bit similar to Willard).

And I’m no one is kidding themselves to believe this is big art, so how about the effects, the rats, the gore and action? There are plenty of rats, both real, rubber and computer generated rodents. Something for everyone! The big CG rat looks quite good in some scenes, but is very uneven effects-wise. The rubber-version just looks a rubber-version being shaked so it would seem alive. The gore, nah – not that much really, but you got bloody aftermaths and some limbs here and there. It’s not a dry movie when it comes to the red stuff, but never goes to any extreme hights.

I really enjoyed Killer Rats, maybe more now the second time. It’s a well-made and good-looking rat-movie, another excellent DTV-piece by the one and only Tibor Takacs!

Terror in the Midnight Sun (1959)

2011-09-25T15:52:00.001+02:00

The original Swedish title, Rymdinvasion i Lappland, is actually the title I prefer, but for your sake I will us the British title Terror in the Midnight Sun and not the very silly and un-stylish “Invasion of the Animal People”, which was a different cut anyway. I first saw Terror at a bad movie festival in Östersund and it was an enormous success. But I think it’s important to realize that even if some parts are bad, it doesn’t mean that the whole movie is bad. It’s just so easy to laugh at everything on the screen when you just watched someone trying to imitate the Sami language. In comparison with other similar movies from the same time it’s not that bad, it’s just the script that’s very weak and a few absurd details here and there.

A UFO has landed (or maybe crashed) in the northern regions of Sweden, Lapland, and a team of fifties stereotypical scientists are sent there to investigate. The handsome scientist Erik Engström (Sten Gester) falls in love with the daughter to one of his colleagues, and she’s of course a famous Olympic figure skater played by Barbara Wilson who likes to shower. Up in Lapland they find out that it’s only a strange UFO creating tension, there’s also a huge hairy Chewbacca-type monster roaming the mountains attacking the Sami’s and eating their reindeers! What a life!

Terror has a lot of stupid stuff going on, but it’s also short and keeps a good pace from start to finish. Even of the Stockholm-scenes are a bit talky and stiff, the fun starts fast when they arrives to Lapland. A quite unexpected shower-scene and a performance by legendary Swedish singer Brita Borg (not at the same time of course) and the fantastic locations make it a unique old school sci-fi. Not much seem to have been shot in sets either, so it has plenty of fantastic sceneries. I mean, I hate skiing – but this movie makes me wanna ski! The snowy landscape and place of the UFO also reminded me of The Thing, both Howard Hawk’s and John Carpenter’s, but a lot cheesier.

The aliens themselves are just pale, big-headed guys wearing anoraks but their pet, the Chewbacca-monster is quite impressive. Without a doubt one of the best looking creatures from the golden era of monster movies. The sequence when the monster attacks the village is really well done with more than excellent miniatures being trashed by the beast. I think one of the reasons it looks so good is that it was shot on location with natural lightning, because details like that helps a lot creating more believable effects.

What makes this movie weaker than it should have been is the sudden ending, explaining absolutely nothing! I don’t demand explanations, but here it’s just no reason for the aliens to come to earth. They hang around for a while, their pet escapes and then they go away again. No actually communication occurs between the humans and spaceman and in the end everything leads to nothing and another movie is over.

Terror in the Midnight Sun is not bad, it’s very uneven. It’s worth watching for the cool monster and lovely locations, so if you’re into fifties sci-fi I think you could appreciate this classic co-production between Sweden and United States.

Baltic Storm (2003)

2011-09-22T23:28:00.001+02:00

I’m very fond of conspiracy thrillers, especially if they are based on a true story. One of the rare thrillers in this specific genre is Reuben Leder’s (son of Paul “A.P.E.” Leder) Baltic Storm, based on the journalistic work by Jutta Rabe and Henning Witte. It’s easy to claim that conspiracy’s always to be in the mind of some paranoid wacko, but remember that many of our legendary assassinations and military ops more or less is conspiracies because they involve two or more persons who’s conspired to do make it happen. Why conspiracy theories always come up when something like this happens is of course because no one wants something to be totally pointless.

The Estonia disaster that claimed more than 800 peoples lives the 28th of September 1994 is filled with some interesting facts that never have been explained or commented by authorities, for example the rescue of captain Avo Piht, who without a doubt was alive after the disaster according to several official sources, but later was announced dead together with his passengers. This was way before the conspiracy theories started to grow, it was a just a fact that he was alive and that they were going to interrogate him. Baltic Storm delivers another explanation for his disappearance, but it feels more of a cheap Hollywood knockoff, with out any direct proof – just an idea tossed out in a mediocre script.

We’re following German journalist Julia Reuter (Greta Scacchi) and Swedish survivor Erik Westermark (Jürgen Prochnow) in their search for justice, Erik mostly because his son died in the disaster and he wants a real answer from the Estonian and Swedish governments. But soon their hunt for the truth is being sabotaged by everyone from Julia’s employer to shady and sleazy Swedish government officals and somehow, somewhere the Americans and Russians is lurking trying to hide their part in the disaster…

Because I’m one of those fools that think something was fishy with the disaster (Remember Scandinavian Star, which is still under investigation for insurance fraud – so if that disaster can have a conspiracy behind it, so can M/S Estonia) I’m also very interested in what a movie could offer. Not much, but it could have been a really interesting piece of conspiracy thriller. This is the second time I see it since it was released on DVD ages ago, and it still feels like a very cheap TV-movie, produced by newbies at some local TV-station with to much budget for actors. The script itself is a mess, and feels very amateurish and worst of all, the character of Julia Reuter (obviously based on Jutta Rabe herself) feels like the least believable journalist in the world. Prochnow is better, but he also has some emotions to work with and not a silly superhero-journalist that’s way too glamorized to feel realistic. What Donald Sutherland is doing in this movie is a big question, but he’s slumming around and having a ball, probably crying all the way to the bank.

The Swedish DVD of Baltic Star is worth buying because of one reason, it’s a 2 DVD edition and on the other disc there’s a fairly interesting documentary about the disaster and Jutta Rabe’s theories. This is actually more interesting and thrilling than the movie itself.

Baltic Storm is a lost opportunity, which is a pity. Maybe one day we’ll see this story told in a much more talented way.

The Night Flier (1997)

2011-09-21T15:43:00.001+02:00

Sometimes I think it’s more of an old moldy tradition to claim that there are so few good screen versions of Stephen King’s work. Like it’s so easy to say that movies with computer animations only exists to show the special effects and not tell a story, which of course it’s just absurd compared to all the shitty effects-movies being made before computer graphics became normal. It’s just a safe thing to say because most people would agree and it’s easy to step on a person’s opinion with pulling the safe cards: Maximum Overdrive, The Children of the Corn franchise and of course Tobe Hooper’s The Mangler. “The iconic three” of bad examples, even of they are quite OK if you take of those pretentious glasses and just look at them as something separate from Stephen King. I mean, it’s just movies – not something that actually means something in real life - just simple entertainment. One movie that flew (no pun intended) under the radar was Mark Pavia’s The Night Flier from 1997. Here in Sweden it came directly to VHS and that was the last I heard of it until it disappeared into the depths of DTV-hell.

When watching it again after so many years I suddenly find myself watching one of the best and original vampire-movies made during the last 20-30 years. It’s up there with Innocent Blood and Fright Night when it comes to originality and the talent involved. Why? I think it’s because it takes an absurd premise and make it totally serious and casts Miguel Ferrer in one of his few leading parts.

A vampire is using small sport airplane, flying from field to field, killing and ripping victims apart. The government is hiding this from the mainstream news, but a small speculative magazine, Inside View, sends one of their most experienced journalists – and also the most revolting and unethical – to tell the story about the airborne vampire. It’s the semi-alcoholic Richard Dees (Miguel Ferrer) who unwillingly takes the job, just to get his face on the cover again. But the vampire, or serial killer, is noticing the interest and starts to warn him, something that makes him even more interested in solving the case…

Produced by Richard P. Rubinstein, the many behind many of George A. Romero’s work and co-produced by the Italians, lead by Alfred Cuomo, The Night Flier is a surprisingly stylish and well-made production. It’s really a big shame that it didn’t catch on to the big audience, because this movie actually succeeds in bringing us an interesting story and maybe most important, a fascinating lead that even if he’s an asshole, can be something we can relate to. My romantic view on journalism probably made me watch him in a more kind way, because a dream would to be working as a journalist specialized in the supernatural and weird.

I was mentioning Innocent Blood and Fright Night above, but the atmosphere reminds me more of Silver Bullet: Small towns, deep forests and odd local folks getting killed, minus the annoying kid and the silly wheelchair-thingie of course. The Night Flier also boasts a lot of excellent and graphic effects by KNB and a fantastic vampire-monster that shows its freaky face at the end. It’s not overly gory, but still has enough blood and fun for the whole horror-family.

This is a very well-made flick and it deserves a bigger audience. It’s easy to find on cheap DVD on ebay or, I’m sure, your favourite web-store. There’s something called a “director’s cut” out there also, which has a few seconds of extra gore – nothing that extreme though, you would probably not notice the difference.

The Exterminator (1980)

2011-09-20T12:11:00.005+02:00

James Glickenhaus is the man behind three of my favorite action films from the eighties: The Soldier, The Protector and McBain (okey, it’s from 1991 – but it feels like something from the 80’s) and strangely enough, The Exterminator has never been a favourite of mine. Maybe I expected something else when I first saw it, but even later when I saw the unrated version on DVD I felt it missed something, that famous “it”. Not that it’s boring, I can recommend it to 100 % to those that appreciate exploitation like this, but it just lacks that famous Glickenhaus-energy.

After a spectacular and gory ‘Nam-flashback that sets up the relationship between best buddies John Eastland (Robert Ginty) and Michael Jefferson (Steve James) we jump to 1980 and a gritty and equally violent New York, at that time home to every pervert on earth (according to the movies anyway). After Michael is attacked and left paralyzed only surviving with the help of the hospital staff and machines, John sets out on a tour of revenge, not only for the thugs that attacked his old friend, but for every bad guy out on the streets – from pedophiles to robbers. After him is the street-smart detective James Dalton (Christopher George), a man who won’t stop for nobody!

It’s more or less a rip-off on Death Wish and all the other revenge-movies from the same time, just shot with less style and more focus on slow-motion and wild stunts. Not counting the decapitation in the beginning, it’s not an overly gory movie either, but of course violent, bloody and with a sleazy atmosphere that most of the times stays a bit distanced to the story, a bit forced if I might say so. As you can guess, The Exterminator isn’t a perfect movie by any means, but it’s a must to own on the new BD from Synapse. It goes on for 100 minutes and is never boring, the New York locations are great as usual (I always felt that NY is the best city in HD) and a good cast consisting of Christopher George, Robert Ginty and Samantha Eggar makes it worth watching.

Ginty is still a quite odd choice for a leading man. He always looks a bit confused, but not in that dangerous cool movie Vietnam veteran way, and has a facial look that resembles a weird huge baby girl. He kept is baby fat quite long, but got a more mature look later. But he’s a good actor, but I never really been able to see him as an action hero. I was also happy to see the excellent actor Tom Everett as the hotel clerk. It must have been one of his first parts, ten years before his iconic turn as Alfred in Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III.

I’m not the one that complains about stuff like this, but it’s interesting to notice that this version of The Exterminator actually is censored. It’s nothing special, just some nudity – but this time it’s a dick (or maybe not, it’s very hard to see) and I can promise you that if it was a nude woman there would be “Boycott The Exterminator blu-ray”-groups on Facebook and stilly stuff like that. Glickenhaus was forced to censor a nude photo on a wall because the MPAA thought it looked like an erected penis, and just used some Vaseline to censor this dangerous piece of nudity. The earlier Scandinavian release of the director’s cut is complete. Here are photos as a comparison taken from the new Synapse BD and the old unrated Scandinavian DVD, a technology failure prevented me from take proper screenshots today:

But this is of course not important, just a small detail, The Exterminator BD is still a fantastic release with very nice picture quality and some good extras. Get it!

Phenomena (1985)

2011-09-19T23:15:00.001+02:00

Spoilers, if you haven’t seen it – don’t read this. But I do recommend you to watch the movie.

How to you write a review of a movie that has been dissected and analyzed thousands of times the last couple of years? I always wanted to avoid movies that has been written a lot about, but Phenomena is such a unique movie that I can’t stay away from it. Maybe it’s because of the wonderful new UK Blu-ray which made me see the movie in a new light, realizing that it’s probably Argento’s most coherent thriller – just masked as a chaotic and uneven supernatural giallo. William Fawcett, NerdoCulto on Twitter wrote something that I now can agree with: “has always reminded me more of a fantasy film than a horror film, but with more violence...” – and yes, it is – but it’s still one of the most original and bizarre giallos ever made.

I’m really not interested in writing about the story, but a killer is stalking schoolgirls in a small Swiss town and Jennifer Connelly, who can communicate with insects, befriends an old wheelchair-bound Donald Pleasence who has a monkey with a fondness for razors. And somewhere something or someone is chained to a wall, wanting to get out for more blood!

That’s all you need to know and believe me, in the end it will feel like the story comes together to a satisfying ending. Italian horror movies often are compared to dreams, at least those made by Fulci. But Argento, when he goes into supernatural territory often produces a very dreamlike state of filmmaking and Phenomena is the one movie that forever will feel like a dream to me. Just try to explain the story and it’s like fragments of what you dreamt last night: a scary child, a monkey, insects, a spooky school, big forests and deep valleys, slow-motion, heavy metal, dreams-within-a-dream… it’s almost like Argento wanted to go the Fulci-route, but it ended up with Fulci doing his own similar movie, the extremely uneven Aenigma (a movie with some flashes of brilliance). It’s still, in the end, a classic giallo but packed with so many weird ideas that it stands on its own easily.

I know it’s been debated over the years, but I think the use of metal/rock in the films of Argento is brilliant. It adds to the surrealism, to the off-beat genius of the thrills he’s creating. The oddest use of metal is in Phenomena, when Jennifer slowly is reaching into a thorn-filled bush trying to reach a glove belonging to the killer. The music is not there to build up tension, it’s there to create awesomeness. And that what makes Argento so damn cool.

Okey, this is something I will get shit for, but the hell with that. Argento can sometimes borrow stuff that he likes, for example the ending of Opera – which is totally copied from Thomas Harris novel Red Dragon from 1981. In Phenomena he borrows from a source that might be weird for those that don’t want Argento to be mixed up with lower forms of horror culture: Friday the 13th, yeah, the one where Mrs Voorhees runs amuck at a camp killing horny teenagers for fun. Why? Ok, let’s see: we have in both movies the crazy mother with a retarded and disfigured child, the latter living like an animal and the mother being very nice and polite until she’s pushed over the edge. In the end the final girl flees out to a lake, gets on a boat and gets attacked by the freaky monster-son. There’s also a final scene at the beach where in Friday the 13th the mother gets decapitated, but in Phenomena the character of Morris gets it the same way. This might seem like small details, but next time when you watch the ending you will notice the similarity. Actually, the ending could have been from a later Friday movie from the eighties. It’s both very cheesy and brilliant at the same time.

Except a few of the girls at the school the acting is nothing to complain about. Donald Pleasence is unusually low-key and Jennifer Connelly is excellent in the lead. I can’t see anyone else playing that part. Daria Nicolodi is good too, one of her best performances in an Argento movie. Talented Patrick Bauchau is wasted in a boring part. Keep your ears open and you will also hear Nick Alexander as the real estate agent and if you keep your EYES open you will see Michele Soavi in two parts, both as a cop and as the killer when Donald Pleasence bites the dust!

I’ve done it and now it’s time for you all to revaluate Phenomena as the horror classic it actually is. If you already done that; good, but I’m sure there’s many lost sheep out there in need of guidance and support in this matter…

Blood and Black Lace (1964)

2011-09-19T11:25:00.002+02:00

First of all, I still think that Mario Bava or his producers saw Arne Mattsson’s 1958 classic Mannekäng i Rött and became inspired to make Blood and Black Lace. I know very few agree with me, just because Mario Bava is such a predecessor, a creative genius, when it comes to give us new, unique movie experiences. The first time I saw BABL was on a cut Greek VHS tape, and that kinda put me off to watch it again. Many years later I got it on DVD, maybe the first DVD VCI released, and now I gave it another spin in the 2 disc “unslashed” special edition. Like the two first times I just can’t get into the movie, which doesn’t mean it’s a bad movie – just not perfect.

Everyone knows the story, but for you who have no clue what this is: a masked person with a black coat and hat, attacks and brutally murders models at a fashion house. It’s managed by the sleazy Max Marian (Max Marian) together with the wife of the former owner, Countess Cristiana Como (Eva Bartok). The always Peter Lorre-esque Luciano Pigozzi slimes around the place and so a bunch of other suspicious characters. And soon we realize that most of our stunningly beautiful super-models have a lot of dark secrets up their sleeves… and all is prepared to step over each others dead bodies to keep ‘em secret!

Let me first complain, so you can stop reading for a while and throw darts at a photo of me and then come back to read the rest. The script for Blood and Black Lace is absurdly generic even for it’s time. It borders to being almost 100 % predictable in the same way as Transformers 2 or any John Wayne western you choose. This is not always a good thing, ‘cause a giallo lives on the mystery and BABL don’t have so much a mystery. It’s quite easy to guess who is the killer is and when it’s revealed it’s like “Huh, ok…?” and nothing more. The dialogue is mind-numbing and stupid and performed with almost robotic tendencies from almost all actors. What’s good with the story compared to Mannekäng i Rött is that it lacks the heavy-handed and not so funny comedy. This is serious shit and I like it that way.

Blood and Black Lace are all about style over substance, but lack the emotional power to makes the viewer involved in the story. In this case the style aren’t substance, it’s just style and what a fantastic stylish movie it is! I can complain as much as I want about other details, but the looks of the movie is stunning (which not even the lousy DVD from VCI can’t hide) and Mario Bava clearly knows where to point his camera to make even the most boring scene interesting to watch. Everything in this movie is loaded with details and colours, from the sets to the clothes and the behaviour of the characters. It’s just gorgeous.

What makes BABL even more unique for it’s time is the ferocious violence! It’s not that graphic, but boy, it’s a very mean-spirited killer we have here, slapping around his victims like there’s no tomorrow! In one long scene he kicks the shit out of Peggy (Mary Arden) while Bava seamlessly switches the actress to a male stunt-person in drag. Bava goes for the throat and never looses his grip until the ending.

The only questionable visual solution I will complain about is when the killer disappears in a very annoying jump-cut. I guess it was meant that he would be gone in the flickering of a shadow, but right now he’s just standing in the light and disappears like that darn priest in City of the Living Dead, in a bad and primitive special effect.

I like it more the third time around, and I must agree that Blood and Black Lace is a wonderful early giallo with a highy bodycount and nice murder set-pieces. But I hope it will get the released it deserves, sooner or later. It feels like it was made to be released in HD!