Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation! (2008)

I just wanna say one thing and keep it short: this is the most happy documentary I've never seen. It's so filled with love for movies, people, culture, stunts, violence, sex, boobs, explosions and more people. From the first second to the last we're bombarded by anecdotes, movie clips, cool people and so much fun information that I just wished it would never end. We're getting an exposive look through the exploitation-ages of Australia, first with sex-movies and stupid comedys, to horror and the action. Everyone is here talking, and most of them seem very proud of all the wacky movies they've been involved with. From directors, producer, marketing-guys, actresses and actors, stuntmen and fans. 

There's nothing bad to say about, except it could have gone on for a couple of hours more. And it's bad because now I have to find every single movie mentioned! And I've missed so much... and I need it all. This is a dvd you have to buy! 

Our first blu-ray, what movies do I need to buy?

My dear bf is on his way home with a Playstation 3 (slim version), which is very new technology for us. It's his first console EVER and the last one I had was a Nintendo 8-bit! :) He's probably gonna use it most for gaming, but for me it's movies of course.

So what blu-rays should I get now? Which is important to buy and to own? Help me!

Me, Thriller and the man who made it.

I don't remember how I got in contact with the director of Thriller, en grym film (aka They Call Her One-Eye), but it ended sadly and I guess that was my only chance to really know the secrets of Bo-Arne Vibenius. Anyway, we had contact a lot through email, though he really didn't tell me much. He was mostly writing about how he got fucked by the movie industry. 

By chance Mr Z (I think, it could have been his friend which I forgotten the name of) contacted me, probably through some forum. They wanted to start a DVD company (called Chrome by the way) and somehow maybe they knew that I was in contact with Mr Vibenius. One thing led to another and soon Mr Z and his business partner was in Sweden, and we was meeting the director or Thriller. 

You heard many stories about Vibenius, but I can tell you (and I think Z would agree), that he was a very pleasent guy to meet and spend some time with. A true classic swedish gentleman. We went to his apartment where he served some salmon and other swedish delicatessen, and they signed the contract. The americans had smuggled a large amount of money (six figures) through the swedish customs, and Vibenius counted them carefully. Then he said there was money missing. The americans went pale and a silence fell over the room. Then Vibenius laughed and said he was only joking. 

After this he took out a fantastic carton box with photos from his career and from the making of Thriller. There was a great photo of him and Ingmar Bergman, there was amazing stills of Christina Lindberg from behind the scenes of Thriller. He showed us a gorgeous poster of Breaking Point (I could kill for that poster) and then he also produced the only master he had of Thriller. It wasn't in good shape at all, and I could see that the americans where a bit worried about that. 

Vibenius left the room when we was watching Thriller. He didn't like it, and probably felt tired just thinking about it. But he came back later and talked a little about the movie. To us he said that he intended the graphic sex to be there all the time. It was a good way to sell the movie. He confirmed that he used a real corpse for the eye-scenes. He knew a doctor at Karolinska, how let them used a body for this. The doctor later got fired, or was forced to retired, because of mental problems. He also mentioned that one of the stuntmen later made a sex-change. Not Lars Lundgren though, who is one of the stuntmen in the warehouse-fight. I had a pleasure of working with him in one of my earlier movies, a really bad one by the way) For the slow-motion scenes he used a military camera, used for weapon experiments, something he managed to do through his contacts in the military. He claimed to have worked for military intelligence and had good connections with CIA. We where skeptical about this though, but after a while he showed us something else... More to that later.

He asked us if we wanted to see Breaking Point, and of course: who could say no to that? This time he stayed with us, and I had a strong feeling that he was very closely connected to this movie. The reason they made the movie was that another project (some art-movie financed by Roger Corman, with music by Ralph Lundsten) crashed, and he hade some money to spend (from the success of Thriller) and a crew to make a movie quickly. They wrote the script on one-two days and the director of cinematography, Andreas Bellis, took the lead. Like in Thriller, Ralph Lundsten, created the soundscape, but as we all know, there a very famous tune in it to: Anton Karas theme from The Third Man. Vibenius actually took Anton Karas to Stockholm, put him in a studio where they recorded the theme once again for Breaking Point. Anton Karas, according to Vibenius, never enjoyed this job - but took the ten thousand swedish kronor he was offered and did his job one more time. 

Breaking Point got interested from an american businessman who bough the US rights and all the material involving the movie, even the original negatives. He never released it, at least never properly, and Vibenius never saw any money. He later tried to located the material, but it was lost and rumour said it was destroyed in warehouse-fire - either by accident, or by the businessman (mafia, said Vibenius) to hide something else. 

Breaking Point is obviously a very personal project for it's director, and it's a shame that the destiny of that movie was to be a lost movie.

The next day we followed Vibenius to the home of the very nice and original Ralph Lundsten, a pioneer of electronic music. His house is absurd. And it's surreal. He showed us his studio, his sexual art, told stories about the wild seventies. A great man. We had wine in his garden, it was an experience I never forgot. I was in contact with Vibenius and Ralph a long time after this. For a couple of weeks Ralph actually worked on the music for a movie I produced, but the contract that his lawyer (aka Vibenius) offered us was so absurd and impossible to agree to, that we made the music ourselves instead. And by the help of some other groups around Scandinavia. Vibenius himself stopped communicating with me personally, instead his assistant "Otto" wrote the emails. It was obviously Vibenius himself, a man fond of pseudonyms and wordplay.

You all probably heard of the huge fight that Vibenius started regarding the DVD release of Thriller. Chrome never came to exist, what I know, and they sold the rights to Synapse that released a very nice dvd of it. I never got any credits for my involvment in this, which (to be honest) I feel a bit bitter about even today. It's a movie I cared for, and I spent some personal money on traveling and stuff to make it happen. But shit happens. But I'm glad to have spent some time with the highly original Bo-Arne Vibenius (or Fridolinski that he calls himself when it comes to everything regarding Thriller) and that I helped (a little) Thriller to be widely available. 

Ah, you wonder about the connection with military intelligence? Well, after showing us some photos and chatting nice about his movies and mentioned his intelligence work and connections with The CIA. Then he showed us an official letter. It was a "thank you" for long and honorable service. Signed by... George H. W. Bush, former president of the United States and former Director of Central Intelligence...

Over and out,

Fred

Tooth & Nail (2007)

I haven't seen many movies from the After Dark-project, but I'm still claiming that Mulberry Street is a masterpiece. I will also claim that Tooth & Nail is an interesting failure, but really nothing I will ever watch again. They year is somewhere in the close future. The gas is out all over the world and it has created a domino-effect that just fucked our dear society up. A few people is holding up in an abandoned hospital. Their leader is Darwin (Robert Carradine) and he want's to create a new nice society (much like Max Von Sydow in the fantastic The Ultimate Warrior).

One day they find a girl, she and her boyfriend has been attacked by a vicious gang of... cannibals! And soon they've tracked her to the hospital and starts to kill our heroes off, one after one!

I like the idea. It's like a Doomsday without any budget. And action. And charismatic actors. But it's still okey. Most of the story is set in the hospital, and there's very few shots outside this boring building. The directing is competent but maybe to laidback, like the director thought the story was cool enough and didn't bother to do something fun with the visuals. Acting is ok, but it's really only Robert Carradine and Michael Kelly that makes something interesting with their characters. The money seem to have to been spent on two VERY pointless cameos but two uninspired actors: Michael Madsen (he just can't act any more) and Vinnie Jones. The characters is nothing special and could have been played by my grandmother or anyone walking down the street close to the location. God knows who they ended up in this movie!

But it's not without merit. The gore is very nice and graphic and in the end there's some inspiration going on, but little is made of the idea.

I can't really recommend it to anyone, except us suckers that just can't get enough of post-apocalyptic movies.

Yes, I'm a nerd part 2.

Yes, I'm a nerd.

Dead Snow (2009)

"Ein! Zwei! Die!".

That, together with the tagline to The Mutilator, is one of the best taglines I've ever seen. It also sets the standard for Dead Snow, the new norwegian nazi-zombie-epic from director Tommy Wirkola. Not that he has made any other in the genre, but I really hope there will be a sequel to this one. If he dosen't choose the road like all other splatter-directors out there: becomes serious and making family comedies for a quick buck.

A couple of med students are going for vaction up in the beautiful (in a distance, I've been up in the fucking mountains here in Scandinavia and I hated every second of it) norwegian mountains. What they don't know is that the area is cursed! A troup of nazis got lost in the mountains and has now become bloodthirsty zombies willing to kill everything in their way to protect and find their hidden nazi-treasures. Our group of heros defend themselves, first barricading themselves in a cabin and then out in the white, cold open!

As with the boring and traditional Rovdyr this movie don't offer anything new. It's a combination between every zombie-movie you can think and even John Carpenters The Fog. But here we have a talented director and bunch of fun actor and bucket after bucket of gore and blood. And it's looks great to! There's more gore than foreign counterparts and limbs and brains a splashing over the screen. As with a lot of movies with younger characters, they are not especially interesting. Not even here. We have the stiff guy that's afraid of blood, the fat film nerd, some sexy girls and so on. We even have an "old man of warning", who really get's what he deserves. 

The locations are great and is a nice wallpaper to all the blood and gore. Have I mentioned that this movie has blood and gore? I'm not sure. There's decaptions, head-rippings... yes, every kinda way to destroy a head. And now I haven't mentioned the rest of the body! The bad thing is, as usual, that the filmmakers are very aware of what they're doing and trying to make fun of the idea of nazi-zombies. They have the boring film references that we've seen to death and it lacks the seriousness that I think would have made this movie a small masterpiece. Now it's "just" a great and fun splatter-flick that fit's perfect with a beer and some friends.

It's nice to see that Norway is helping Scandinavia to get some respect in the horror community now. Sweden is, as usual, the worst film country in the world and should be ashamed of all the lousy crap-movies that we producing. Denmark is still good, thank Buddha for that, but Norway has a special place in my heart from now one - as a relative of the great Roald Amundsen and a non-patriot of Sweden.