The Attackfants are here!

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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...

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