theater of guts

Don't forget to pick up your official Axe coloring book!

Axe (or Lisa Lisa, California Axe Massacre) Directed by and starring Frederick R. Friedel (1977).

The last Harry Novak film I watched was one that I'd been warned about by the Severin Films special edition DVD, it would either zonk out my eyesight or fill my brain with enough nightmare fuel that I'd never recover. That film was The Sinful Dwarf, straight from the sausage fingered charnel house. I opted for the non-hardcore insert version so I was spared some of the misery and I'll never make that mistake again (which I'll refer to as The Invitation To Ruin hot tub sex-travaganza)!

Novak had a short lived Epcot style amusement park

Axe is nothing compared to that other Novak produced monstrosity, but it's still worth checking out. It ended up on the UK "Video Nasty" list, which gave it more notoriety and attention. Censorship always has the reverse effect on keeping it out of the clutches of the underage public and creates a serious demand. Even if it weren't on the list, the film is still a decent independent schlocky crime thriller.

Alan "Skipper" Hale Jr. in the swinging 70's

Three mobsters hideout in a dingy motel, one man (played by the director) looks like a 70's wolfman doll with brillo hair. They beat a gay dude named Aubrey to death with a doll, he dresses like Glen Campbell meets Tiny Tim. The three calloused hit men even put out a lit cigar on the victim's tongue to establish the unrelenting punishment they will inflict later. That never actually happens with these inept saps, though there are three deranged well dressed creeps, this is not even on the same psychological "Last House" torture level, you might assume Axe would evolve into.

I know what you're thinking, is that patchouli or wolf's bane

The three characters resemble gangsters but it's never actually established. Lomax and the crew head over to a small town, where the people seem like they have zero backbones. Through out the film, the score is slightly reminiscent to the Colin Towns one for The Haunting Of Julia and there's a bass thud that periodically happens.

A poor cashier at a grocery store with no security, is forced to take off her dress by gunpoint and they shoot apples off her head.

Clean up on aisle me

Meanwhile down at a farm a woman feeds her catatonic grandfather raw eggs from a chicken she just beheaded with a hatchet. This is the intimidating murder weapon advertised on the poster, a puny baby sized hatchet! It reminds me of that Kids In The Hall sketch, were Dave Foley goes into a suburban housewife's abode to borrow a bigger axe, here's a clip of that (LINK).

Do you really have to eat chicken for breakfast?

Lisa (Leslie Lee), who sort of looks like Susan Dey attempts to slash her wrists with a straight razor, but is interrupted by the wolfy looking fellow who they call Billy Boy.

During a late night rape scene, loud screams are heard, but Lisa's mouth never opens (a minor production slip up). There's some loud neck sawing as she hacks through one of the gangster's trachea. Lisa erases the crime Zoe Tamerelis style by butchering the corpse in the bathtub--I mean she is a farm girl after all.

Why does your beard smell like Cumin?

Billy the wolfman is an idiotic pushover and helps her carry the dismembered corpse in a treasure chest up the stairs as poster paint looking blood leaks all over the floor.

Everytime she murders someone, the wolf guy asks, what happened, then Lisa says "I dunno they left"! Billy must be the dumbest character in history or is subconsciously glad his pals are dead. That's the equivalent to a serial killer saying "I accidentally found them that way".

My eyeballs! everything is so drab and 70's

Axe has some of the most hideous fashions (look out, you may catch a polyester eye sore) and doesn't have to try to be entertaining, because I was immediately captivated. The camera work and shots are effective, but there's little to no carnage. I question if it should even be considered a horror movie, it's more of a psychological thriller.

MORE 70's THAN SUPERTRAMP RIDING ON A MACRAME CHIA PET ON THE WAY TO A GAS CRISIS!

Cannibal Mercenary

AKA The Jungle Killers

Directed By Hong Lu Wong

Starring: Lek Songphon

Review by "Machine Gun" Kristin

The opening credits to "Cannibal Mercenary" show us an alternate title and a mixed bag or real and fake sounding names (Alan English?!). This film is a frightening vision on what seemed like a Thai war against the Viet Cong, filled with sad flashbacks and horrible present images. Each step main character, Sgt. Wilson takes in the very beginning has this massive delay sound. It's a wonder how these guy's asses he's kicking can't prepare for this guy coming around the concrete corner.

I had a hard time watching this movie, trying to piece everything together. I probably thought about it too hard. Many visuals torment Wilson as he fights his way across Thailand (or Vietnam?) with his gang of comrades trailing behind. He constantly thinks about his daughter who has Polio and her doctors voicing their bleak diagnosis. At one point his daughter exclaims in an overdubbed middle aged woman's voice, "Pa, why can't I walk like other kids?" Ah man, cue the water works!

The pacing on this film is a little slow (maybe it's more fun watching with friends), but the final half of the film makes up for it with its gritty harrowing scenes of gore. I wonder how close this film is to any war related situation in real life, past or present. Certain scenes of this movie are filmed at seemingly different times of day. One moment, we see Wilson walking with his buddy on his back in broad daylight and then all of sudden he's in this blueish tint of evening sky. I don't know if this is a simple continuity problem, or it's some sort of intentional hiccup to further prove the mental instability of Wilson and the rest of the cast.

This movie has an eerie score which from what I read, was mostly lifted from "Dawn Of The Dead" (which I haven't seen in awhile). Some music portions actually reminded me more of the opening from "Last House On Dead End Street", where its lead character Terry talks about "lousy drugs". Incidentally, Wilson is offered $500,000 (by a grunting old man who sounds like he's chowing down on a delicious cheeseburger) to fight through the jungle to kill off a drug lord and his flesh eating cronies. Then he's supposed to meet someone named Jumpa who'll tell him exactly where to go from that point. Throughout his journey, Wilson kills a man with a boot to his throat, pressing as hard as he can so his eyes start bulging out. The first lady he picks up in the jungle isn't Jumpa, but a pregnant spy (?) who sexually teases one guy and then cuts his wienie off. This is the first of many penis related annihilations. Another happens with a swollen faced gang whizzing on the poor soldiers. I guess don't tell a stranger you're thirsty next time. This is when the movie just gets weirder and it finally earns it's title as things start to escalate. A particularly realistic, gruesome sight is a knife being hammered into one's head then being devoured.

I couldn't really find much information about the director or cast online. Maybe one of you TOG-devotees knows? There's apparently a few different versions of this movie, cut and uncut otherwise. One review I read stated that a cut version of the film had different scenes and was somehow totally rewritten. I wonder if it was anything like the TV version of "Cheech And Chong's Next Movie" where the entire film is completely different from it's original version. Planet Ass anyone?

You can watch "Cannibal Mercenary"HERE

You can purchase it HERE

I have no button made for this film at this time, but please feel free to check out what I've got in stock at the moment. As always, lots of random weird movies and more!

Avenged (Deadbeat, Getting Even, Tom Cats) Directed By Harry Kerwin, Starring Chris Mulky (1977).

I've seen a lot of rape/revenge movies, this is one of the most repugnant misogynistic films to come along in awhile and that's really saying something. Like Gestapo's Last Orgy or A Serbian Film, it crawls its way into your psyche and once you've seen it, that's more than enough.

The strangest part of all is how they sold the film, just check out the pro-rape connotation this trailer for Tomcats (or Avenged) has. (LINK). That's none other than the "Real" Don Steele doing the voice work for the trailer of Rocknroll High School, Death Race 2000 and tons of other cult flicks. I don't usually get all up in arms about women being objectified, violently raped then murdered--but this film got under my skin. I mean it's still "only a movie" but an all around exploitive and repulsive one in an equal opportunity manor. For a rinky dink 70's grindhouse flick directed by Something Weird Video alumni Kerwin (whose brother was in all those classic H.G. Lewis staples) to bother me this much, it's very effective and worth seeking out.

Just don't say we didn't warn you, if you're a woman, there's nothing for you to enjoy (we don't even get the satisfaction of a climactic death for the redneck rapists). You might have to take 30 showers to feel clean again!

Bobby Brady over there is our Matthew (from I Spit on your Grave)

The film has the production values of the spicy meatball Alka-seltzer commercial. Down at a greasy spoon, four hillbilly degenerates take turns viciously raping a poor waitress then murder her in cold blood.

A swampy fat guy is the only witness (he was heavy breathing behind a large tree, one that doesn't even hide his girth) and he's so drunk he can't even read the plates on the rapers get- away car!

Wendy the waitresses' brother Cullin (Chris Mulky- later on Twin Peaks) and his girlfriend are distraught by the slaying and it turns out they are both related to the police captain, so there will certainly be some avenging later.

Sir, you're being arrested for severe flatulence

This film tries to turn you off to sex forever, there's some pasty assed white people dropping trough, with a side of forced entry. During one "pleasant" scene the gang rapers cackle as the married guy in their group forces his wife to blow him in front of his pals!

Later on the porky gentlemen witness is found and questioned at the station by non other then William Kerwin the captain from Blood feast (who's also the director's brother)!

Shit! not another one of those long hard ones.

If you like women being beaten and humiliated then murdered in some of the ugliest Miami Florida locations you'll eat up Avenged! Or maybe you felt The Ladies Club was tame and reserved, than this flick is your new best pal, I have to hand it to Code Red (whose output I'm not much of a fan of) they put out a nice double disc with extras that includes Kerwin's previous hixploitation film God's Bloody Acre.

WOOT WOOT! These Wise Potato chips are salty

The same hillbillies are out serial raping every waitress in the boonies and worst of all never pocketing enough money in the register, but what do they expect from knock off Stuckey's or Waffle Houses, high class Cracker Barrel loot? These hicks are cut from the same toothless cloth as the slack jawed boys from I Spit on your Grave, but possibly worse!

Welcome to the South

It turns out the crackers have a pretty smart lawyer and on a count of a technicality they all get off... so to speak! After the judge lets them go, Wendy's brother Cullin has a plan to exterminate the yokels (who pin him to a car door and smear their ice cream in his face)!

you made me drop my organic sea-salted caramel ice cream

Every woman in this film is not only assaulted but treated as if they're human garbage it's extremely unpleasant. They really push the eye for an eye barometer as far as it will stretch.

Culin, Wendy's brother is supposed to be a collegiate pacifist, but has guns in every kitchen drawer (I guess it's a Florida thing). He hunts all the bastards down one by one, but for some reason I never felt satisfied. I mean when it's Linda Blair or Charles Bronson I'm clapping my hands like a mongoloid, so what's wrong, why am I wrestling with my psyche? The film has this earthy down home quality and unpleasantness that makes it disturbing and yet still enjoyable.

There's no fantasy element just primitive ugliness and it all ends like a bad cop show on a CHIPS style pause under the credits!

I felt let down by the vengeance, but if a low budget revenge flick can force me to consider why I've enjoyed so many other rape/revenge fantasy action flicks, than it's an impressive piece of work.

DISGUSTINGLY MISOGYNISTIC, BUT HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

Be gentle and don't skimp on the Astroglide!

I'm fixing the place up for Gordon Ramsay

When you're in a sticky forced entry situation, always reach for Vaseline

I lost my contact again

-Reviewed by Skunkape-

Directed by John De Hart and yes GetEven is one word!

GETEVEN is the biggest little action movie you never did see. But if you did see it, you're one of the lucky ones. The film is another so bad it's good affair but what makes it a cut above the rest is that its got so much "Hart", John De Hart that is! De Hart plays Rick Bodie the film's star. He also wrote, directed, and provided some of the music in the film. So who is Bodie going to get even with? Lets find out!

Kung Fool

Our hero and his best friend and partner Huck Finney ( Wings "Ramrod" Hauser ) are about to bust up a drug operation in a remote trailer. Lt. Normad ( William Smith ) is in charge and recklessly gets Huck wounded in line of duty. Normad takes full credit for the operation and gets promoted. He then frames Bodie and Huck for drugs and gets them kicked off the force. This lieutenant is as corrupt as they come.

The Evil Normad

"Yes Huck, you suck at darts."

Life is rough for the two ex-cops. Bodie drives a limo and Huck drinks constantly while his wife cheats on him. She's even banging the evil Normad who is now the top judicial official and pretty much runs the town. The reasons for revenge keep piling up! While Bodie and Huck are drinking at their favorite bar on "cowboy night", Bodie runs into one of his old flames named Cindy. ( Pamela Jean Bryant ) He dazzles her by getting on stage and singing with the house band. This is the money shot of the film. He croons out a country tune of epic proportions that will probably stay with you for the rest of your life called the " Shimmy Slide".

"How about the Shimmy Electric Slide? Boogie Oogie?"

Now things really start to heat up! On Bodie and Cindy's second date she reveals that she was part of a satanic cult for a while and witnessed the sacrifice of a baby. A little later we find out that Normad is not only the justice system in this town but he is also the sect's high priest of Lucifer worshiping loonies. Normad's goons are after Cindy for abandoning the cult and that's when Bodie has finally had enough and decides to GETEVEN!

"Pull my Finger."

"Hail Satan!"

"Mr. De Hart..how much are you paying me again?"

Some reviews have called this film a vanity project by John De Hart playing the lead but I call it a masterpiece. He may not have the required acting skills to be a leading man in any real Hollywood production, but his laid back cowboy/ macho man performance works nicely with William Smith, who is totally hamming it up as the villain and Wings Hauser, who is way way over the top, giving a very eccentric performance as his best buddy.

More like Dingleberry Finn!

Hauser's character Huck Finney goes slightly mad from the trauma of the past and his slut wife. So he starts his own religion based on the passages of Huckleberry Finn. Sound crazy? However, I would surly sign up for "Huckism" before Scientology any day!

Now an attorney in central LA, Mr. De Hart is back where he belongs.(not acting) He did leave his mark in film and made cinematic history when he Shimmy Slid his way right into this review's heart forever. GETEVEN is a gem waiting to be discovered by bad movie lovers everywhere. I hope that one day in the near future I can see it at a midnight screening in a packed theater where everyone is singing along and dressed in overalls celebrating "Huckism". That would be awesome! Hot Damn!

"LA Law" for real

Theater of Guts

Tribute Trailer

"There's only one man who can travel the Road to Revenge."

I "De Hart" Radio

All Night Long Directed By Katsuya Matsumura, Starring Yoki letomi (1992).

Demented nerds snapping and turning against society for no reason, it's an all too familiar theme that moves in a constant cycle of violence. It's an uncomfortable subject rearing its ugly face in reality lately with mass shooting by stupid idiots like James Eagan Holmes (the Batman theater machine gun killer) and Elliot Rodger (a rich disgruntled virgin and also the son of an assistant Hunger Games director). He uploaded his manifesto to Youtube just before committing mass murder and suicide. The pressure of fitting in becomes suffocating, parents and the media reaches out its pointy finger to pin the blame on something--anything! The mental health industry's ineptitude and no consequences for easy access to assault weapons are responsible in my estimation. Than again certain people just have a psychotic edge and will eventually crack anyway--they have to constantly be doped up at all times--so they won't randomly attack people (just like the tag-line of the series says; Human Beings are Garbage).

Some critics have compared the All Night Long series to Guinea Pig and gore hounds expecting the same shot-on-video style snuff film will be disappointed. This one has more of a plot unlike GP, but eventually the sequels get more plotless. The youth gone insane aspect from Dangerous Encounters seems to be the influence here, although this film is very mild compared to the Tsui Hark landmark film. I am kind of grateful and don't feel like watching more cats get tortured for the sake of shock value!

For some reason All Night Long (which is not the life story of Lionel Richie) has been very difficult to find (it's in eternal save mode on Netflix). The first movie and it's sequels are available on separate DVD's from Tokyo Shock on Amazon for 6 bucks each. All the IMDB reviews are trashing the shit out of this rare demented shocker from the land of the rising sun. Maybe people were expecting too much, or are too jaded,--in the DR catalog--the film is described as a grueling experience, so let's hope we don't land in boiling water then have our freezer burned limbs stripped of their flesh (OR THE 731 special).

The passport shots of metropolitan youth already forces Battle Royal to spring to my mind. The three protagonists are Shinji Saito (Ryosuke Suzuki), who is going to vocational school to learn a trade as a mechanic and can sort of relate to girls. Kensuke Suzuki (Eisuke Tsunoda), who is a rich frat kid that collects guns and has a fantasy about being murdered on the beach with a shotgun. Tetsuya (Yoji letomi), a "Mclovin looking geek" feeds his green snake a hand full of maggots (that squiggle in loud detail).The typical pressure of school, career goals and fitting in starts to gradually effect Tetsuya the worst and his pals sort of ignore him and do their own thing. What this film needs is a Fast Times At Tokyo High style Galleria for the boys to score chicks at!

Hey Trainspotting's on, where's Ewan Mcgregor?

The three thrill killers in All Night Long quickly become unglued after witnessing a random stabbing of an innocent girl by a maniac with a butcher knife while waiting for a train to pass. After watching the senseless murder, instead of going to the police, they all get tipsy on some red wine and seem to relish the details of the shocking incident. It's unclear to me if that incident would instill any sort of violent reaction, but since its the only trigger this half written script has to offer then that must be the reason, (here I am pinning the blame on something as well).

Why so chipper?

Director Katsuya Matsmura seems influenced by 1st Kind's nihilistic dejected youth hellbent on destruction. There's zero authoritative presence and these kids are never caught or learn from their reprehensible actions, it's all very bleak and existential. The film vaguely preaches Social Darwinism (one slovenly fellow with a bowl haircut says "The weak must not inherit the earth").

Only the grossly obese and mentally challenged shall rule the earth

Each character attempts to fit in somewhere within the social order and adolescent bullshit is the trigger that sets these kids off. It's too weak of an excuse, it seems to me that these sordid characters would eventually start killing anyway, we're not really given a valid reason as to why they all end up on a murderous path.

unless my hand is dressed up like Hennifer Hlopez

That same before mentioned chubby creepo with a bowl haircut and a members only jacket sits with Tetsuya and skeeves him out when he talks about how he likes to abuse women. He starts an odd friendship with the fat weirdo because he thinks he has game and can possibly get him laid.

Saito is on a career path to becoming a airline mechanic and is clearly the only mentally stable person in the film (but his marbles soon fall out of his head).
Although for Suzuki the rich kid, it's not all champagne and sports cars either. After he picks up a psychotic bitch, she handcuffs him to a chain link fence and kicks him in the balls then afterwards she insults him by saying he smells like wasted sperm! I'm thinking her and the fat mongoloid kid should hook up,they are perfect for each other.

Ted Nugent said this is great for hunting humans and clearing up sinuses

Tetsuya gets more pathetic after he attempts to find a date for the big dance and gets so queasy that he barfs. Meanwhile Saito's breaking point happens in the park when some random street thugs rape his girlfriend and beat him up. The same thugs (who seem to pop up out of nowhere) are at the party, which is a total freakout, complete with dildos, Nazi flags and foosball, FOOSBALL!

(the excellent photo was taken from Alan Cribbs and John Hayes on foosball.com)

The end is kind of an all out plotless free for all and I've read that the All Night Long sequels get increasingly more sleazy and random as they go on. According to Jay Mcroy's book "Nightmare Japan" there is no revenge aspect as claimed in the description of the DVD case, it's more of the characters shared humiliation that causes them to reassert their masculinity and ruthlessly attack not only those that deserve it, like the punks, but themselves and anything they care about. You could spend a long ass time deciphering this complex film or you can just enjoy it for what it is, a deranged story of senseless destruction perpetuated by idiotic youth with too much time on their hands and no sense of remorse!

If the Nazi flag doesn't frighten you, we brought along a tiny phantom

There should be a deleted scene where the town's water supply was contaminated and high levels of mercury ended up in the sushi, that may explain why everyone is at each other's throats!

EXTREMELY DEPRESSING, WATCH ONLY IF YOU WANT TO FEEL MISERABLE!

Brother Of Darkness (Ti Tian xing dao: Sha xiong) Directed By Billy Tang, Starring Lily Chung (1994).

Review By B.W. Head Honcho over at WOPSLOITATION.

Ciao, Theatergoers and proponents of entrails alike, I'll be your guest reviewer for the evening. It's safe to say that Alan Alda didn't write the screenplay for this 1994 Cat III Hong Kong sickie. For those of you unfamiliar with the Category III rating, no one under eighteen is admitted, whether they've got a parent or guardian present or not, much like the American early eighties parallel with the same rating (stricter yet, with a seventeen age restriction that I never once listened to, for the record) preserved for movies like Dawn of the Dead(1979), Maniac!(1980), and Fulci's Zombie(1980). Tonight's review is an unsettling little slice of domestic abuse from the man who brought you things like Red To Kill and Dr. Lamb. It kinda unfolds like this...

photo 3c57d2f1-6e5b-473f-ab4e-723e4e2fee53_zps29fc7033.png

This guy's smoother than 20 grit sandpaper.

At the outset, Wong Kuen To (Hugo Ng) is slumped dead, having been brutally beaten and wearing a television set hat to boot, as his brother Kuen Wah (Ka Kui-Ho) is led off in shackles by the authorities. At his trial, Kuen Wah relates stories of his childhood to the jury that could possibly justify his homicidal outburst in some people's minds...As a young boy adopted into the family, Wah gets treated like a wet food stamp on a fairly regular basis by To, who's in and out of jail and manhandling his wife (Pu Kei-Chan) like a receptacle for his throat yogurt in front of their terrified, elderly parents when he isn't kneeing his younger brother in the hangbag or chucking him out a second story window into a back alley full of trash. This guy makes Krug Stillo look like Dick Van Patten.

photo 13fe730a-1190-4b85-87f9-c5587aefebc0_zpsfef4f7b6.png

"Pouuuur the wiiiine, liiiight the fiiiire, girl, your wish is my commaaaaaaand..."

Years pass, Wah has grown into a polite and gracious young man, a tae kwon do practitioner with a sweet lil' piece of arm candy named Jenny (Lily Chung), while To is still an intolerable dick-in-the-face to any and all who make his acquaintance, stealing beer, holding his own mother hostage at table leg-point for drugs, booze, and brothel funds, putting cigarettes out on his son's back, and we've already seen that it's no bed of roses for his wife, either, and nothing remotely resembling a pleasure cruise. To make matters worse, To's earlier kneeing has forced Wah to add two wah's in bedroom matters (as in wah wah wahhhh, you're impotent, baby!), leaving a frustrated Jenny as the next meal for To's hungry organ. Yeah, where's that television set hat, this guy's begging to be fitted.

photo ef2c6ea2-f27f-4361-8dc3-76e0a3fc9fd5_zps88c1f4ec.png

"Where's the stick, mama? Who's got the stick? You want the stick???"

There's verbal abuse, beatings, torture, violence, misogyny, and softcore sex abound here, and with unintentionally hilarious subtitle translations like "My organ must eat something!" and "Let me touch your nibbles.", it all makes for a pretty bizarre viewing, like the Hong Kong version of Farrah Fawcett's Burning Bed on P.C.P. Some of you jaded Cat III fanatics may find it weak in comparison to some of the director's other work in the genre, but it's still moderately mean-spirited and nasty, at any rate. I found it engaging enough, like passing a twisted wreck on the highway, to lay three of my trademark Wops on it. Check it out if you've got the guts!

photo 311cf1ac-4c3d-4793-8dc9-75a1e5aa4f68_zps5fed55df.png

You know what this look is missing? If you said "television set hat", give yourselves five points.

poster taken from Mondoexploito.com/

Death by invitation Directed By Ken Friedman, starring Shelby Leverington (1971).

As a horror fanatic with a fondness for falsely accused women of the middle ages condemned to death by a mob of church folk, you may think I'd seen every "witch burning" movie under the sun and then at 3am, a movie I'd never heard of called Death by Invitation shows up on TCM (licensed from the fine degenerates over at Vinegar Syndrome). This is writer/ director Ken Friedman's start as a film maker, he would later switch to a screenwriter for gentle fare like Cadillac Man with Robin Williams and harder edged stuff like Johnny Handsome (which I sort of enjoyed). This is another Something Weird Video repackaging by VS, like Evil Come, Evil Go (which was a lot better than this). Vinegar gives you more bang for your buck because if you hate one movie, there's a chance you may like the next one!

A soiled mob of angry sex obsessed puritans catch a young girl and plan on burning her alive. One of them looks like Paul Reubens in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Another chubby fellow with a dirty face goes into a whispered angry diatribe about the woman's naked writhing body-- tempting him-- oh my!

you thought you'd seen the last of Vampire Pee Wee Herman?

The style is SF Brownrigg-ish (Don't Look In The Basement ), though I'm hoping the film is more enjoyable!

In a flashback, Lise (Shelby Leverington who later appeared in Michael Bay's The Island), the accused witch seems like a slutty hippie, her father (the whispery chubby fellow) doesn't approve of her hanging around what he calls "way-out people"! Doesn't he know that's where the fun is, Way Out?

The Way Outs!

The locations are ugly with wood paneling and green curtains--they remind me of suburban basements I've seen in Long Island, during my childhood.

The music in this film is horrendous it's the kind that only dogs can here.

An oily fellow takes a cab into the big city to get laid and finds Lise working in in a torture dungeon.

The dominatrix goes into graphic detail about an orgiastic hunt--I guess some people pay good money for a sexy story-- but this is a waste of time in my mind.

SNORE, Oh My God this story is so sexy

The dad's extremely hammy delivery is my favorite part (he makes it almost watchable) and all the men have that mutton chop Mersey beat hairstyle. Sometimes there's an audible projector sound for no reason.

I get the feeling that Vinegar Syndrome was set up to showcase porn oddities and off shoot SWV nonsense that no one else would touch with a ten meter cattle prod to quote Dan Ackroyd.

Death by Invitation soon unravels into a 70's showcase of awkward sets and weird haircuts. That's not really enough to hold anyone's interest. At one point the library music blasts over the actors and the father can't even hear them and says "What? I can't hear you"!

There's a lot of office and dinner table scenes. This movie makes "Touch of Satan" look like a riveting thrill ride!

But then sometimes reserved and mellow is good, I mean just watch one of those Alpha Blue Archive satanic porns and tell me you wouldn't beg for mediocre bullshit! I appreciate what VS is doing, but don't understand the appeal of half baked softcore crap. Eventually they will put out something decent and are still a company to watch out for (I mean who else is left in the DVD realm, not repackaging the same product over and over again in a Ray Kroc fashion).

WATCH RERUNS OF MATLOCK OR WALKER TEXAS RANGER INSTEAD!

available from Vinegar Syndrome

STAGE FRIGHT (Aquarius, Bloody Bird, Deliria) Directed By Michele Soavi, Starring Barbara Cupisti. (1987.

It's been along time since I've seen this euro-trash mound of extra cheesy lasagna loaded to the gills with saxophones, dancers and an axe hacking, chainsaw welding killer owl on the loose. A bunch of stage actors are all set to put on a magical show that's Cats, West Side Story and Spiderman the musical all rolled into one with birds of course! What's the deal with killer birds and Italians anyway? New York Ripper had a phone terrorist with a duck voice, there was that Zombie sequel, I want an answer damnit! Italian exploitation was "putting a bird on it" long before Portlandia!

It's a full bird stuffed with ham, topped with gorgonzola

There's so many prolific talents involved like George Eastman--using his pen name "Lew Cooper", John Morghen, Simon Boswell and Argento protege Michele Soavi. It's like an Italian horror fanatics wet dream. When Skunkape and I were in TV Production school epochs ago, he used to edit clips together of Soavi's work on a special episode you can even check out on Youtube. Click this link to see Direcor's Chat (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNO5F106lFo). I let him borrow my Deep Red Alert with the Soavi interview and the rest is history.

The film starts off with the most mozzarella drenched gorgonzola scenes of overly made up actresses, choreographed moves, John Morghen in a body stocking wearing a giant owl headdress and people fussing over a play called The Night Owl. I would love to see the cast of It's Always Sunny recreate this musical as The Night Owl Cometh, but that's just ridiculous.

The team of Eastman and Soavi, don't seem to give a fuck, they are a vital force of extraordinary trashiness, even if you don't like interpretive dance! Down at a mental ward, where the lobby has a giant aquarium with a lion fish they establish that a former actor named Irving Wallace became homicidal and chopped up 16 people. Gee--I wonder if someone from the institution might break out and start hacking the actors to bits? StageFright is an Italian slasher movie after all, but then again it's so much more!

The plotline of a maniac wearing a creepy mask escaping from an institution during a torrential downpour is patterned after Halloween, only the instruments of death are far more creative. The first female victim receives a pick axe face hit that goes straight down her throat!

I'm burning your bed with my cigarette from here!

Something sinister is also going on with Peter the douche-bag stage director (played by Caligula The Untold Story'sDavid Brandon), he's a coke fiend on a total power trip. He won't let any of the actors leave and promises them money and fame if they stay and work on The Night Owl. He was also genius enough to hide the key to the studio, so everyone is trapped for the night.

I'm good enough and smart enough and goshdarn-nit people like me

John Morghen is hilarious as Brett, his dubbed voice almost sounds like Snagglepuss. Stagefright is campy and fun in the best way possible. The name Irving Wallace sounds more like a guy who manages a deli than an escaped lunatic in an Owl mask but what do I know?

One of the cops eating a donut while waiting in the car is played Michele Soavi (Mr. Demon mask). Willie, the friendly caretaker is played by the voodoo priest in Zombie 4.

Did you put Exlax in my donut again?

There are some technical downward shots in this film that are nice and stylized of brutal murders (well Soavi learned from the best)!

While a male actor is strangled to death through a door, a drill tunnels through his bowels and a girl screams "Don't stand there do something"! I felt that it was the 80's fatigue of slasher movie female victims not lifting a finger to help and just screaming or basically awaiting their slow deaths. It was a subtle touch that made it seem as if Italians are bringing something new to the genre, which of course it's true, they are constantly innovators.

Is that an erection or are you just being impaled by an killer owl?

The way Peter is always shining a spotlight on the killers ghastly murders, it seems as if he admires his work. I wont spoil the way he dies, because it's so fucking great!

Irving finally gets what he wants in the final act, sitting like a king among his "human trophies", petting a black cat as feathers drift around the stage.

The last time I rented Stagefright from Netflix, I remember half liking it, but after revisiting it, I have no idea what I was thinking because this one is incredible and an essential Italian slasher film! Here at TOG, we are very excited that Blue-Underground is planning on releasing the film on Blu-Ray with new extras that feature interviews with John Morghen and Michele Soavi!

I must have those shoes!

I'm not Winslow Leach, I'm Irving Wallace!

HAHA! I knew these white pants were stain resistant!

Owls and Cats are best buddies

BUY IT HERE

Black Cobra (Eva Nero, Emanuelle Goes Japanese,Erotic Eva) Directed By Joe D'Amato 1976

All aboard this Chinese/Italian manicotti barge stuffed with broken nails, shrapnel and wasted talent. I went in with zero expectations so I wasn't pissed off or anything, just alittle confused and annoyed. Bruno Mattei is the editor (never a name I can rely on) and Piero Umiliani (the Mah nam ah Nah guy) did the score, but nothing could elevate this beyond a dull soft-core flick with a dash of revenge thrown in.
Skunkape has a degree in Joe-D'Amato-nomics and is an expert on all things Emanuelle. I'm pretty sure he's watched every sequel at least three times in a row and digs the hell out of all of them. And if you're thinking this is a snake bestiality movie then surprisingly--that is for D'Amato--this time you're dead wrong!

Please don't frighten my trouser snake, It was just in the pool

Laura Gemser, the Indonesian seductress basically plays herself in every film. You know what you're getting into when you fire up a Joey D flick! This time however snuff films are not used as a masturbatory device, George Eastman is nowhere to be found and there's no cannibals or drug smuggling, only sexy Emmanuelle gyrating around with serpents.

Meh, I've seen bigger

Sound exciting?
Well if that's your bag then look out, because you also get Jack Palance as a collector of exotic snakes. This is Gemser's third unofficial Emanuelle film after replacing the white one (Sylvia Kristel) when she starred in Black Emanulle (even though she's Asian). The series didn't hit those taboos exploitation fans have come to rely on just yet. Gabrielle Tinti (Gemser's real husband) plays Jack Palance's brother. The last time I saw Gemser and Tinti was in the superior Massacre in a Women's Prison, he played Crazy Boy Henderson.

I know there's a language barrier, but this is definitely not a suppository

Palance is in full "Believe or Not" mode and like almost everyone in this film just brings whatever he has to the table, zero acting ability, only spit, grit and presence.

Jack Palance plays Judas a rich playboy lizard collector who's infatuated with Eva (or Emmanuelle) and tries to get in her pants anyway he can, but has no game at all. The rugged square jawed Oscar winner was great in The Mercenary (with Tony Musante), and spent a lot of time over in Italy early in his career doing various Spaghetti Wests and Poliziotteschis. He's not above appearing in schlock, which I respect and later on he appeared in one of my favorite proto-slasher's Alone In The Dark as an escaped lunatic who brings a handgun to a punk concert.
While all the men try to figure out how to sleep with her, Eva is busy at her job on the beaver patrol (or having lesbian sex in massage parlors).

this will help cut down our water bill

For late night Skin-A-Max fare this one is totally phoning it in, there's none of the depraved shit we've all come to expect from joltin Joe D'Amato. Eva hops in the shower with one blonde and they wash each other's bikini zones (if I was twelve this would've made my weekend). Then immediately after they feed a live mouse to a snake and it ingests the poor specimen lickity split (this is the most depraved the film gets, sorry to say).

Jules (Gabrielle Tinti) gets jealous enough to sick his brother's green mamba on Eva's lover and she dies from the bite. Everything about this film is all cheesecake and depravity handled with kid gloves, maybe they toned it down because a big time actor was on set, who knows? Snakes are used as weapons in this film, which is pretty cool, but it's not enough to recommend it. After a long career of baring it all for the cameras, Laura became a costume designer for D'Amato and Claudio Fragasso (she dressed up the Nilbogs) and as far as I know fell into obscurity. She will forever be immortalized in her role as Joe D'Amato's ingenue for his cathartic perversions, a down and dirty bisexual journalist who made the exploitation film genre a little more shocking.

NOT UP TO SNUFF WITH THE USUAL GEMSER/ D'AMATO PRODUCTIONS, SKIP IT!

Directed by Godfrey Ho, Starring Pierre Kirby (1988 Footage from King Snake 1983).

Movie Review by Greg Goodsell

This Thai-Hong Kong coproduction, as the hippies of yesteryear would proclaim, “is somethin’ else!” From its elegantly phrased English title, Thunder of Gigantic Serpent is one part berserk kiddie film that borrows heavily from Steven Spielberg’s ET: The Extra Terrestrial, one part macho action adventure film unafraid to let the “f-bomb” fly at every opportunity and one part kaiju-eiga. With the American re-imagining of Godzilla raking in dough at the box office, it’s as good as time as any to revisit it. I first caught this feature on an overseas VHS cassette with Greek subtitles, which dovetails into a sad little story of its own … but I digress.

James Bond-like villain Solomon has his eye on a secret research lab. Said mountain laboratory is being used by scientists working on a tip-top confidential plan to feed the world’s hungry by making all living organisms larger. Putting a frog in a glass terrarium – the boffins fling a switch and voila – frog becomes a giant amphibian! Ribbit! Before the researchers have a chance to put their discovery to practical use, the bad guys besiege the lab in a machine gun attack. As the white coaters run into the countryside to escape the hail of bullets, one of the scientists takes the new-fangled terrarium and hurls it from her speeding car.

Evil Caucasian Solomon.

Cut to the suburban home of lonely little girl Ting who befriends a friendly garden snake she calls Mozlar. In the manner of films of this type, Ting Ting is dubbed by an adult actress who screams her way through all her lines. “Mozlar! Mozlar! MOZLAR! (Giggling) Oh, you silly snake!” “Mozlar, Mozlar, MOZLAR, NO! Don’t eat the nice lady!” Repeat those lines ad infinitum at glass-shattering levels, and you get the idea.

The Kukla, Fran and Ting Ting show at ear-splitting volume

Keeping Mozlar a closely guarded secret from her prying parents, Ting Ting finds the abandoned terrarium by the side of the road and takes it home for a suitable case for her pet snake. A switch is thrown and – BANG WALLOP, Mozlar is now an outsized, absurd hand puppet. Even harder to hide, Ting Ting has lots of hilarious misadventures in keeping her snake away from the prying eyes of her parents.

Mozlar likes to suck eggs!

In the meantime, Solomon and his band of no-goodniks are searching for the growth terrarium. Finally tracking the terrarium back to Ting, the bad guys accidentally electrify Mozlar – who now grows to Godzilla-like proportions. Rampaging through the city, in a series of special effects scenes that are just as good or better as anything Japan was cranking out with its giant monsters, lots of people panic and run around in stairwells, the bad guys are thwarted – and Ting loses a friend. Mozlar was a GOOD snake, and didn’t mean to kill all those thousands of people and lay waste to the city, Ting says.

Good snake my ass!

PHEW! Thunder of Gigantic Serpent is a manic monster movie experience that sweeps up the viewer in its confused, juvenile story. A catchy techno score will leave you tapping your toes while you shake your head at the utter dang awfulness of it all. You won’t be bored. Director Godfrey Ho was well known for his cut-and-paste features, and lots of the scenes here don’t come together. An overly sickly sweet child’s fantasy is wedded to scenes of mass slaughter and martial arts, Thunder of Gigantic Serpent is, if nothing else, unique and highly entertaining.

Take that, you lackey of the scientific establishment!

As for my story regarding the Greek VHS – sometime in the late nineties, I was intrigued by the tape, offered for sale on Internet auction site eBay. I knew full well that I wouldn’t be able to watch it on my own equipment, and so I gave a shout-out to a so-called friend who converted overseas VHS tapes for his gray market business. I offered to give him the tape to convert, but he was adamant that I would have to pay his usual fee. He wasn’t interested in offering the film as he dealt exclusively with European trash cinema – OOOOOPS! Did I just give his identity away? Too late now!

That's some putrid hummus Mr. Ledbetter

Well, I paid my fees, got the compatible VHS copy of the film – and the guy turns around immediately and offers it in his catalog!!!!! Thanks a lot! What can I say? There is no honor among thieves, as they say. In fact, I think the rip of offed on YouTube here is from my tape! In either case, Thunder of Gigantic Serpent makes for great six pack and chips amusement. Have a nice one, Craig!

NO LINK!

A car wreck always adds production values.

Hmmmmm ... a giant snake.

The magic terrarium that figures later in the plot. PAY ATTENTION.

Glow little glow worm glow!

Did you wash your hands?

Sleepaway Camp Directed By Robert Hiltzik, Starring Felissa Rose (1983).

If you enjoy gratuitous male nudity, tube socks and Italian trash then hang onto your botched genital surgery because this one is worth revisiting! The first time I saw this was on VHS in middle school during an all-nighter at a friend's house. We stayed up till dawn watching every other Friday The 13th sequel, followed by Return of the Living Dead, Fright Night and even Revenge of the Nerds while drinking a two liter bottle of Coke (I hadn't discovered the magical effects of coffee yet)! This was also the very first time, I had seen any of these films.

The version I'm reviewing is the recently released uncut Shout Factory DVD/ Blu-Ray, they always do an excellent job with new artwork and special features. It starts off with Angela and her brother witnessing their father's off screen death by a couple of dopey teens, who sliced him in half during a water skiing accident.

Don't worry I'm a Lifeguard

You'd think after that event Angela or her brother would develop into psychotic maniacs and seek revenge by hunting down teens over at the Arawak Camp, but you'd only be scratching the surface in this gender confusing slasher cheapie from 1983.

Sleepaway Camp holds up amazingly well, especially in the unintentionally homo-erotic dept. and personally it reminded me of a lot of the freaks and weirdoes that went to my elementary school in Long Island NY where I grew up. There's alot of fun facts over at http://sleepawaycamp.wikia.com/wiki/Sleepaway_Camp.

Tube socks and ball huggers are the shit!

There are so many hairy dudes in short shorts and half shirts with tube socks pulled up to their knee caps, I seriously lost count and squirted soda out of my nasal cavity from laughing so hard (and I wasn't even drinking a carbonated beverage this time).

OK Aunt Martha there's Peanut Butter smeared on a playing card, where's my real lunch?

You won't believe the over the top performance Aunt Martha (Desiree Gould) delivers, she's part amusement park tour guide and part resident of Mortville in garish make-up. Later on everything begins to unravel as we figure out, why she's such a space cadet!

toss a ball at my mouth and win a prize!

((Spoiler Alert!)) It has something to do with homosexuality and raising your male child as a girl! I like how they illustrate the transgendered decent into madness by showing the children on a revolving bed.
Does anyone really give a fuck about spoilers anymore, I mean this ending has already been revealed and the movie came out in 83, even a bloody hermit would be hard pressed to avoid that shocker! The ending is the most alarming aspect and was basically the only thing I recalled about it from my original viewing after all these years.

The best slasher films in my opinion all have sexually ambiguous and demented protagonists like Terror Train, Night School and for the sake of including Giallos let's throw in Dario Argento'sFour Flies On Grey Velvet, Phenomena and Deep Red.

A young Kevin James looks in the field for the bottom half of his shirt

Felissa Rose and most of the cast are still pretty wet behind the ears, they all look like real middle school/ elementary pre-teens. Rose has this catatonic stare that comes off as petrified and amusing at the same time. Her cousin Ricky (Jonathan Tiersten) and his pals play the gayest pranks imaginable on each other, one unsuspecting victim's face gets buried in male butt cheeks!

There's a pedophile cook named Artie (Owen Hughes) who licks his greasy lips as soon as he sees the tikes running across the field in their "balls in a vice" shorts. He gets a well deserved boiling water bath after nearly raping Angela, then climbing toward a large pot surrounded by unexplainable mounds of corn about to be tossed in for lunch.

Can somebody get me some lemon and drawn butter for my face?

A cigar chomping senior citizen played by Mike Kellin (Just Before Dawn, Midnight Express) suspects that he knows who's responsible for the random murders that begin to accumulate. Later on he unleashes senior citizen fury on Angela's cousin out in the woods with his sinewy arms.

Angela comes off like a shy girl that just needs a friend she can trust and she sort of finds it with Paul, played by Christopher Collet from First Born and The Manhattan Project. Their relationship is kind of sweet in a way, that is until the big ending!

Any of you kids got a light, so's I can roast this bone?

Seeing kids creatively swear at each other is pretty hilarious and it seems like Hiltzik the director let the expletives fly, I bet they got a lot of rage out of their system. For an early 80's slasher there is a major lack in shower scenes, this makes sense to me since most of these girls look about 11-15 and they probably would've slapped the cuffs on the director for kiddie porn. Ed French, who I fondly remember as the make-up creature creator from Geek Maggot Bingo, Tales from the Darkside and C.H.U.D. handles the effects which, besides the explosive ending are pretty bloodless. Most of the kills are done off screen and that famous ending revealing Angela naked's body and her tiny protruding dong, looks like a bipedal hominid with lockjaw! It was the kind of ending that freaked me out so bad as a youngster that I couldn't even look at the TV! Now however, as a drunk adult watching this climactic event, I almost threw up from laughing so hard. We both made that hissing sound in unison, only I was gasping for air from hits of silent guffawing!

Seriously folks, Apes with lockjaw are a major epidemic

Make sure you plant yourself down for the genius credit song by Frank Vinci!! It sounds like a rejected track by Rick Wakeman for The Burning with a Kids Incorporated style tween, squealing overly dramatic lyrics that go "Angie, You're Just What I've Beeeeen Loooooking For"! I can't say enough good things about this movie, lately I've been revisiting films I had only seen once or thought were dull and have been pleasantly surprised by going back and seeing them again. I believe that you should always see a film multiple times because your perspective changes and there's always new things to discover and theories as to what went on. Angela in real life grew up to become very attractive and looks alot like Sarah Silverman.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED, MORE DISTURBING AND UNINTENTIONALLY HILARIOUS THAN I REMEMBERED!

BUY HERE!

Review By B.W. from WOPSPLOITATION

Hey ho, Theatergoers, here's another unrated eighties low budget gore-nucopia from the guy who lensed such horror efforts as So Sad About Gloria (1975) and The Town That Dreaded Sundown (1976), famous to me for it's indelible trailer, found at the outset of so many video cassettes I purchased and rented during that glorious era. Otherwise, it's a pretty ordinary vehicle for gory witchery and standard haunted house-ishness, with a few inventive death sequences thrown in for good measure, that might set it apart from others of its bracket, in the critical eyes of discerning hardcore genre freaks.

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If you cook a rubber head in a microwave, will half of it taste like real meat?

After a pair of teenage pranksters get done in (one's cut in half by a window, the other gets his disembodied domepiece microwaved like a Hot Pocket), we're introduced to Revs. Maier (Stacy Keach, Sr.) and Thompson (James Houghton), who are attempting to renovate the old church-owned place for the next set of victims, errr...tenants, Father Leahy and family, amid the scrutiny of a police investigation led by one Inspector Sturgess (Albert Salmi). There's a sketchy caretaker named Arlan and his witchy gypo of a mother, Elvira, living on the property and arousing suspicion when a police officer mysteriously drowns in the pond while tailing the violent mute. A strange little blond girl turns up all over the place, as a handyman lynches himself in the elevator shaft, while Maier gets impaled to his chair by a runaway circular saw blade.

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"Id cross myself, but I can't afford to lose the fingers...", gurgles Rev. Maier (Stacy Keach, Sr.).

Through Thompson's crack research skills we're treated to a flashback, in 1692, where we meet a vengeance-minded witch condemned to drown for her crimes in the very pond outside the house (jeez, that explains a lot), and a priest is later squashed in a wine press to further illustrate her seriousness. Back in the eighties, Leahy's blonde daughter swims with a severed hand, much like the one she uses to slap the sass out of her brunette sister's bitchy face further down the road. Wives get tossed around by invisible, dark forces like so much pizza dough, pretty heads get impaled on stakes, an English translation of Malleus Maleficarum turns up, as does an improbable sub-basement chamber with obligatory odorific cadaver, and of course, it all wraps up with a twist ending, just the way they used to.

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"Shut your bitchy mouth!": 500 mg of palm o' granite is a certain cure for sudden sassmouth outbreaks.

James Houghton, who had appeared in things like More American Graffiti (1979), went on to write several episodes of popular television horror anthology, Tales From The Darkside. Billy Jacoby/Jayne of "Bloody Birthday"(1981) fame also shows up here, as do Stacy Keach, Sr. and longtime television staple, Lynn Carlin, who horror fans will recall from her excellent performance in Bob Clark's Deathdream (1972). Maylo McCaslin was a soap opera star and the former wife of Willie Aimes. We'll go right ahead and call this one a two Wopper. Give it a look.

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Sheryl (Maylo McCaslin), suffering from a killer migraine, stakes out a nap for herself.

Crank here: thanks again B.W. everybody reading this, you are required to visit WOPSPLOITATION at least everyday, it's informative and searingly funny. We here at TOG are honored to have such a talented writer on board!

BUY HERE

LOST WEEKEND, a legendary San Francisco Videostore is in danger of closing and needs your help.
If you live in California or near the Bay Area, you should support them! Fuck Netflix and streaming (for now), get back in a time machine and help out one of the last video stores because as we all know they are a dying breed!
We here at TOG are guilty of being shills for Amazon (it's almost impossible to avoid) but almost half of this site has reviewed many impossible to find rare Asian films that I would've never heard of if it weren't for guys that paved the way for the lazy, spoon fed, internet zombie generation that we've all rapidly evolved into!
Here are some films that I was exposed to byway of this store, when there were zero formats available, I'm talkin exclusively on VHS ONLY!

Ladies and Gentlemen The Fabulous Stains: The only copy you could find before the ridiculous Lou Adler kept it in his vault and threatened to never unleash it.

Massacre at Central High: This title is still very rare and was the first time I'd ever heard of the concept of nerds turning psychotic and killing their own kind.

Bad Ronald: No Warner Archives existed yet, no one would touch this with a greasy rake back then, only LWV.

OK I didn't frequent the store that much but I do live in Oakland and it's a bitch to return them (I had to take a train and everything)! Those were the ones that made a huge impact on me. But I still went out of my way because you couldn't find them in uber cool California where people take everything awesome for granted. TOG is a place for cavemen and luddites to scream at the state on how the internet is destroying Video stores and Bookshops.

Lost Weekend sells T-shirts as well (I just saw a cool George Romero/Ramones parody logo) and a rare Klaus Kinski fighting Herzog shirt. So please help these guys out if you can, LWV has been around since 1997 and on WEDS everything is 2 bucks, go out and support them.
This concludes our shameless Telethon preachiness and I wouldn't bother if I didn't believe in brick and mortar videostores and hate how Netflix has monopolized everything.

STOP THE FUTURE ROBOTS

Alien Prey (Prey, le zombie venu d'ailleurs, Zombie Came From Elsewhere). Directed By Norman J. Warren Starring Barry Stokes (1978).

As a child there were certain videos on the shelf that freaked me out! Alien Prey was definitely one of them, it has the perfect ghastly VHS box. I mean what the fuck is going on-- a massacre orgy, a ravenous creature that feasts on entrails and menstrual blood? That disturbing image has haunted the dark recesses of my mind for awhile and worst of all, it was always front and center at the video store (since it's in the A's), close to Faces Of Death, Demented and other 80's taboo tapes that made me question what kind of sick depraved creeps would watch such a film. That era was shrouded in misunderstanding and Christian moral majority propaganda and as a kid, I was attracted and repulsed by the horror section. When I grew up of course, I turned into one of the sickos that enjoyed the sleaze and rampant gore. I became obsessed with everything I'd witnessed in various horror sections and made it my goal as a film snob to track down every weird oddity that scared me and see what the fuss was all about. Or just to confirm if what I had seen was more clever marketing than substance. You must remember too, there's no way you could be inconspicuous about your choice of a rental (you'd have to take the blood drenched sex porn up to the counter and face the scrutiny), or even worse, the judgement of other parents and kids, who would look down at you for watching such utter trash!

Ugh, excuse me madam I'll just put this back in the adults only shelf.

Now everyone's seedy videostore is Youtube or various streaming sites (some category III films have even been uploaded to porn sites)! You should still support vital DVD companies as well! The virtual world has none of the guilt and stress associated with visiting your local videostore and sadly, the fun is also gone. I mean I'm still flabbergasted that Netflix has monopolized and wiped every physical video store off the planet when they have no idea what they are doing! This isn't a tirade against the future (me being a luddite and all), it's my opinion on the film in question: Alien Prey, that cover has gotten under my skin for quite a while and gave me a mental rash--remind me to get that looked at!

This Jerky/ Malt Liquor flavored floss is doing wonders for my fangs

A U.F.O. has dropped a visitor that can clone people immediately, he looks like one of the dudes from The Bay City Rollers with vampire fangs. We first encounter the alien after he kills a couple making out in the woods (where else right)?

The setting is 70's London, two birds (one butch, one nubile) hear about flying saucers on the radio, all of this by the way seems very 50's to me like most space alien sci-fi.

The two main girls Jo and Jessica are vegetarian lesbians in love, who live out in a pastural countryside cottage. I know Jessica played by the adorable Glory Annen from an Ozploitation and Skin-A-Max staple called Felicity. That film opens in an erotic shower scene at a convent, I almost busted the tape rewinding it over and over, but who wants to read about that?

Just stop it Crank, you're embarrassing us all!

The being (played by Barry Stokes) has taken on the form of Anders Anderson, a turtle neck sporting guy with a mod haircut, the couple take him in and make him tea. He came up with his stupid name while stammering to think of something quick and is on a mission to chow down on some human "protein".

Jo (Sally Faulkner) seems to despise men, but Jessica wants to branch out and meet other people. When Anderson starts to show his true form, it's hilarious, his features resemble an angry teddy bear with red eyes and a black nose. As he chases down two cops and eats them, the most amateur sounding casio Intellivision type music plays.

I'd imagine on his home planet, he lives among a race of teddy bear men (or The Berbils from Thundercats).

BZZZZZ Return to your home planet for snuggles Anderson

The pacing in this film would bore some to tears, it crawls along like a melodrama and doesn't even seem like a horror film (there's that genius marketing at work, nice job). I can handle this kind of pacing and Prey is a nice little underrated film even though sometimes it tries your patience.

I'm not surprised that Salvation/Redemption re-released the film on DVD, it has similar qualities to Jean Rollin (who I'm a huge fan of), but is not even in league with that phantasmagoric style.

When Jo has a tantrum over her rabbits being eaten by Anderson it's really funny, she bleats out a shriek while having a conniption fit. Some of the best scenes are when he tries to eat random animals or downs hot tea, not knowing it will burn his mouth (so much for superior intellect, ya dumb alien)! They celebrate after he pounces on a fox that the girl believe killed the rabbits and they dress him up in makeup and give him champagne.

Ashton Kutcher?

The cover unfortunately is the money shot, so definitely stick around till the end. Had I not expected it, I would've been pleasantly surprised, but since I knew it was coming all along, it kind of sucks that they gave it away. The director Norman J. Warren came out of the British scene of 70's post Hammer and Amicus Films with auteurs like Peter Walker. Warren also made Inseminoid and Satan's Slave. According to an interview he did for Sensesofcinema.com, the knife that Jo carried was real and the black swamp where all three of the actors nearly drowned was genuine fear, because some of them couldn't swim! There's a nice plot twist at the end, besides the one you know is coming and even though you get the whole she-bang on the cover, I still recommend the film. Warren does alot with a shoe string budget, a minimal cast and its worth seeking out even if it's a little tedious.
Fandor is currently streaming the uncut pristine version,don't watch the grainy squiggled one on Youtube.

video store photo taken from a very cool site called http://www.retrontario.com/

Also Available from Fandor (get a free trial)

The Unseen (1980)

Starring: Barbara Bach, Sydney Lassick

Directed By: Danny Steinmann (also directed "Savage Streets")

Review By: "Machine Gun" Kristin

**SPOILERS! Just about everything is given away!**

"The Unseen" is a very strange, 1980s film, although the time it's set in seemed vague to me. It was made in 1980, but elements of it felt more late 80s. Then again, some other details, such as the character's clothing, felt more late 70s. The very pretty, but sometimes gaunt looking Jennifer (Bond girl and sometimes Giallo actress Barbara Bach) is a reporter covering a ho-hum story in Solvang, California she's going through a break up with her injured football player boyfriend (Doug Barr).
Her camera operator sister (Karen Lamm, who in reality was married/divorced to Dennis Wilson from The Beach Boys) and friend (Lois Young) can't find a place to stay after a hotel error, they drive further away to Los Alamos. There, they find an odd looking, non-running hotel turned museum. It's run by Ernest Keller (verteran character actor, Sydney Lassick) and his so-called wife Virginia (Lelia Goldoni) who constantly wails and moans with a low slumped sad look on her face. Ernest offers his large house as accommodations and they bravely take him up on his offer instead of opting to sleep in the car. Which of course, is what they should have done!

Mini 'Junior" type creature in background

Abandon all hope errr....right now

Pants are optional in Solvang

These pretzels are making me thirsty!

It's strange that this somewhat mainstream movie hits many uncomfortable notes. Ones such as chicken killing, peeping toms, abortion, incest, near castration and mongoloids. Yep, that's right mongoloids! Or just one anyway chained up in the basement named Junior (Stephen Furst, Flounder from "Animal House"!). He's the monster staring up through the floor vents in the house, taking the girls under with him. In that aspect, I could see similarities to Fulci's "House By The Cemetery" with its basement dwelling creatures taking their victims from the floor above them. There's also bizarre similarities to "The Goonies" (1985) character, Sloth. In the beginning of "Unseen", there's a figure in the background that actually looks like Sloth, or maybe it's supposed to be a Ray Harryhausen type creation. Was Sloth's character based on "The Unseen's" Junior? It makes you re-examine Sloth's origin. In "The Goonies", Anne Ramsey's character says that he was dropped on his head as a baby which resulted in his disfigurement. Oh really? Hmmm....

Sloth and Mongoloid Flouder: separated at birth?

This was a decent movie, I was kept guessing what the hell was going on that's for sure. It's nice that it had a good payoff and a disturbing trip to the outcome. The tone was weirdly comedic but the content was so gross and weird it was hard to laugh at much at it. I think it'd be a good double feature with "Pin", with the weird family secret type of theme connecting those two.

Scarves are a bad idea, it's not even cold out!

Ahhhaha I got my cigarettes!

I stole a ciggie from Sydney

Dated January 9, 1980

Watch The Trailer HERE

Watch "The Unseen"HERE

Check out my Etsy shop. I make and sell a lot of weird one inch buttons and also sell vintage clothes. Thanks!

CANNIBAL TERROR

(TERREUR CANNIBALE)

France / Spain, 1980

Dir: “Allan W. Steeve”/Julio PérezTabernero

Review by Steve Fenton

EL LAGO DE LOS MUERTOS VIVIENTES / a.k.a. ZOMBIE’S LAKE and L’ABIME DES MORTS-VIVANTS / a.k.a. OASIS OF THE ZOMBIES were the worst two Eurociné horror flicks ever unleashed, right? Wrong! Being of the ever-optimistic opinion that even the very worst Continental cannibal gutmunchers have at least one thing going for them somewhere – heck, even Joe D’Amato’s awful DEMONIA / a.k.a. EROTIC NIGHTS OF THE LIVING DEAD had a couple of good scenes, dammit! – I decided to give CANNIBALTERROR a friendly spin. A former associate of mine had challenged me to watch this film (“film” is a tenuous description at best): despite fair prior warnings that it was an unmitigated piece of merde that made even those aforementioned examples of sub-cinematic pond-slime look like daisies by comparison. At the very least, my ex-associate assured me, “It’s gory as hell!” Oh well, here goes nothing, I guess…

Step Aside it's time to make El Sabroso Human cracklins

The opening theme is an ear-itatin’ salsa / big band variation of “La Bamba.” This is repeated later on as an end-theme, but initially accompanies familiar tourist board-approved travelogue footage (presumably shot somewhere in either the south of France or further south down in Almería, Spain?) and an excess of actors wandering idly about or participating in mundane non-action: which includes chattering on phones, manicuring their nails and mixing cocktails ad nauseam. A ‘major’ early scene that introduces our main if positively motley cast is set in a sleazy bar where a sub-psychedelic instrumental ditty drones from a jukebox like an agitated, over-amped mosquito. The same whining chord is repeated over and over (and over and over) again, as if running on a tape-loop.

At least melt some cheese on it first, then roll it up in a burrito shell

At last, a bunch of scratchy, dog-eared stock aerial footage of jungle-heavy tropical islands (no doubt these same inserts were also borrowed by Umberto Lenzi’s cannibal opuses too) announce a jumpily edited segue into some no doubt cannibal-infested ‘exotic’ clime. Exactly where is tough to deduce. Anyway, our little heroic family of mighty whiteys drive their jimmy well off the beaten track into the wilderness. From what is presumably the closest thing to a bona fide ‘rain forest’ that CANNIBAL TERROR’s producers could scout for a stand-in jungle location on the French Riviera, ‘savage cannibals’ (note quotes) emerge, evidently hungering for human meat (or perhaps just some take-out escargot?). Basically, this film’s backdrop is a rather sparsely-wooded area – peppered with fir trees, no less – and a bargain-basement tribal village set whose anthropological authenticity wouldn’t fool a four-year-old, even if their parents didn’t have a subscription to National Geographic. The cannibal clan itself is an unlikely conglomeration of multiracial (and almost exclusively male) extras. These are usually heavily made-up with facial greasepaint, as if in hopes of obscuring the fact that Orientals and Hispanics, blacks and whites are all represented in their numbers (perhaps there may have been some details buried in the untranslated French dialogue which I may have missed). In several shots, a scrawny looking Caucasian spear-chucker sports sideburns that would have rivalled those worn by Elvis during his Vegas period. Another guy in heavy warpaint and a drop-handlebar mustache seen peeking from the vegetation looks a lot like Tom Savini!

Or Peter Criss

In spite of their unabashedly unconvincing appearance, these cannibal terrorists cart off our heroes’ native woman guide, whom they then disembowel and devour in short order without even so much as a garnish or finger-bowl in sight. Adding to this unrepentant addition to the ranks – accent on the rank– of grungy gutcruncher exploitation, we have one girl’s purely gratuitous nudie scrubdown in an outdoor washtub (a similar scene occurred in ZOMBIE’S LAKE, so you might say some sort of Eurociné oeuvre was developing; then again, you might not). After rinsing off, the starlet is dragged off kicking and screaming to be roped and raped by a degenerate scumbag in the bush. This scene is accomplished with such ludicrous phoniness that it’s hardly very offensive, as it should be, but instead is only embarrassingly inept. More so due to the actress’ dogged insistence on sobbing and wailing oh-so-professionally, as if convinced she was actually involved in a real film (presumably this starlet was ‘giving it her all’ for what she hopefully assumed would be her ‘breakout role’ or something).

have you got any floss?

Pacing (Hah!) descends to new lows of sluggishness, heavily dependent on meaningless filler. 52 minutes and counting… when oh when are those Heinz 57 cannibals gonna chow down on this uncharismatic, unlikable cast and put both them and us out of our misery? Remains of chomped-up victims are found in the ‘jungle’ as our heroes and a safari of white hunters and military types dressed in mix’n’match hand-me-down bush fatigues hunt the lost cannibals. While we are on the topic of forest fashion here, it should perhaps be mentioned that leading lady Silvia Solar opts for the more practical cotton summer dress and matching high-heeled pumps ensemble for her taxing excursion beyond the fringes of civilization.

Oh good it's time for my self immolation C-section

CANNIBAL TERROR’s nonexistent effort to convincingly create the illusion of a dense tropical locale might be considered audacious, if it was wasn’t so utterly pathetic. Badly spliced antique inserts of mismatched crocodiles and other wildlife, as well as pudgy or anorexic extras who often appear painfully self-conscious in their loincloths (and so would you if you were in their sandals). Seldom has European trash cinema looked so cheap.

I know this is an overused cliché, but CANNIBAL TERROR is assuredly one of the all-time WORST movies (n)ever made. It was fun to write about though, and sometimes that helps one to endure a film.

Faceless Directed By Jess Franco, starring Telly Savalas (1987).

If you've read enough of this blog then you may be able to tell, I don't like Jess Franco (you might say I suffer from Franco-phobia). I mean he produces some major boring shit and it's a miracle if I can stay awake through any of his films. My distaste for his work started with Vampyros Lesbos (1971), I thought there may be something wrong, there's that ultra groovy score, hot lesbian babes, so why am I so bored out of my mind? An inner struggle began that led me to believe I had probably started out with the wrong entry into the Jess Franco mythos. So I attempted to watch The Awful Dr. Orloff with similar sleep inducing results, but I finally hit paydirt with The Bloody Judge, Skunkape over-sold Bloody Moon (which I half liked) and Portuguese Nun (which was an excellent film). There's so much output in the Franco cannon that even a jaded narrow minded snob like me is bound to find a lucky egg in the chicken vending machine!

It took me 5 tries before I was able to stomach Faceless, I would eventually succumb to a Franco induced fit of narcolepsy--his movies have that effect on me. I'm still not sure if I really enjoyed this very erotic French version of The Bold and The Beautiful with Telly Savalas and Caroline Munro, but it sure was entertaining and smothered in a copious layer of sleaze!

It opens with the cheesiest George Michael ripoff stylings of Vincenzo Thoma, his abysmal tune "Destination Nowhere" is played so much throughout the film that it makes you want to go under the knife for a lobotomy.

OK Liz Renay I hope you enjoy your new face

Helmut Berger (Beast with a Gun, Salon Kitty) is the mad surgeon "Orloff" archetype, Dr. Flamand. Franco has remade his own Orloff film so many times it's hard to tell if he's stealing from himself or Georges Franju's Eyes Without A Face. While in a parking garage, Frank (Berger), his wife (Christiane Jean) and Nathalie (played by the stunningly attractive Jean Rollin regular and former porn star Brigette Lahaie) get attacked by a disfigured former patient. Acid is thrown at the doctor but it narrowly misses him and splashes onto his wife's quickly dissolving face! This becomes the major plot device of Faceless, which involves a musclebound brow-less henchman carrying a high powered brain drill, kidnappings and former Nazi's goose stepping in to help the wacky Doctor's wife achieve a full blown face transplant.

Do you know if this office has a bathroom?

Telly Savalas's fashion model daughter played by Caroline Munro is captured by Flamand's helper Nathalie, who lures the sexy drug-fiend into her limo with cocaine. Munro ends up in a rubber room and gets raped by Gordon (Gerard Zalcberg), a brainless lunkhead with no eyebrows. One patient at the clinic gets a hypo shoved into her eyeball, I was scratching my head as to how they achieved that effect, it looked very realistic!

She was like that when I got here

Chris Michum (who has his father's exact werewolf hairline and forehead) is sent on the case to track down Telly's daughter. I'm always glad to see Robert Michum's sons appear in the most decked out euro-trash, Chris's brother was even in Amir Shirvan's Hollywood Cop.

Howard Vernon makes a cameo appearance like he does in every Franco film, playing--who else--but Dr. Orloff! He tips them off to a Nazi surgeon who will perform the operation. There are some hidden nods to art-house fare sluicing around in this pile of flashy grime. The Nazi surgeon is played by the Anton Diffring from the 1960 classic Circus Of Horrors, which is a deliberate bit of inspired casting!

They pay me in Bologna sandwiches and Coffee off the craft services table

It all ends on a sour note as all the Aryan surgeons rip through innocent facial tissue and toss the used female corpses away like Der Weinerschnitzel wrappers.
We've reviewed another film, Mansion Of The Doomed that basically reinvents the Eyes With Out a Face plotline. I won't say I liked that one more than this, but at least the criminals were given their just desserts! The ending in Faceless is pretty hardcore and very cynical, all the guilty surgeons toast to their own success and get to celebrate! The people that attempt to shutdown the Nazis ultimately fail and Franco leaves it open ended, but don't look for Faceless 2: The Search for more Cocaine anytime soon!
The Shriek Show Dvd looks flawless and vibrant compared to the third generation dupe I had to suffer through in the 90's. This film was meant to be seen with all its high glossiness intact. I enjoyed it for what it was this time, a trashy slick piece of entertaining schlock.

RECOMMENDED FOR SLEAZY TRASH HOUNDS ONLY!

He's a sleep farter, it's a major problem

Once you date Joe Spinell, you're ruined for life

the illegitimate son of Jason Alexander and Lou Ferrigno

Scrape up these meat trimmings and sell them to Arby's

BUY HERE

The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue (Let Sleeping Corpses Lie, Don't Look In The Window, Don't Speak Ill Of The Dead,Breakfast at Manchester Morgue, ETC, ETC...).

Directed By Jorge Grau, Starring Ray Lovelock (1974).

Back in the days of dusty old bootlegs, Skunkape lent me a shitty dupe of this movie that was covered in a thick fog of VHS haze and Japanese subs. I couldn't really enjoy the film, which is one of the first ever influenced by Night Of The Living Dead. According to Jorge Grau, some Italian investors elected him as the man that would bring NOTLD to the world "in color" even before Dawn or Zombi 2. There's never been a moment when Italians weren't trying to capitalize on some cult hit or blockbuster and I'm grateful for that! They took the same political context of Dead only this time blaming the agricultural dept. for the zombie plague.

The version I'm reviewing is the souped up classic Anchor Bay one (back when that label meant something). Blue-Underground has since re-issued it. The print is head and shoulders above that horrid video I had seen long ago, before DVD's existed.

Holy out of date product placement Batman!

George the Hippie (played by a bearded Ray Lovelock) is first seen riding around metropolitan London on his motorcycle, as a freewheelin' streaker girl runs across a busy street. He bumps into a whiny redhead named Edna (Cristina Galbo) and hitches a ride with her through the lush countryside. They don't really get along and sort of bicker at each other throughout the duration. George is kind of a snotty arrogant prick and later on gets bitch smacked by Arthur Kennedy, who plays a grouchy hippie hating sergeant.

In the future everyone will play metal detector golf

A high pitched sonic wave meant to control parasites emits from a giant red machine and starts to jostle the dead, it even makes newborns homicidal! I love how the zombies have these zonked out red irises, which were created by Lucio Fulci's main effects man Giannetto De Rossi. That was one of the main reasons I had to track down this film, which was incredibly rare at the time. When De Rossi's involved you're pretty much guaranteed an all out splatter-rama! There's one incredible effect toward the end with a secretary whose breasts and stomach contents get pulled open and devoured like a giant sack of Taco Bell Economy Meat!

Taco Bell now serving Menudo Rojo

Manchester Morgue has the vibe of a Hammer Film and the countryside creepiness reminds me of The Blind Dead or Jean Rollin. It was actually filmed in London in the historical grave sight of Robin Hood's pal Little John.

Fernando Hilbeck is Guthrie the first lumbering corpse we see first or the Bill Hinzman (NOTLD) figure, he constantly looks soaked and on the verge of catching hypothermia.

Lane Meyer would you mind if I took out Beth now?

Another character that soon becomes a worm feast named Martin (Jose Lifante), has the gaunt features of Vincent Schiavelli and Argento. He has thick brows and a chicken bone nose. His wife has even worse problems, after she cooks up a spoon for a nice heroin shot, she gets rudely interrupted by a ravenous zombie.

After Guthrie caves in Martin's brain with a rock, the next morning the cops show up. The bitchy Irish sergeant (Kennedy) is a panic attack waiting to happen and becomes the proverbial bug up everyone's ass.

I remember being bored to tears by this film as a teenager but now after re-evaluating it, it's still a little tedious but a very intriguing film.

There's a suspicious mortuary truck filled with freezer coffins that seems too strange to ignore.

New Wonka designed coffins

There's a hilarious bit of dialogue between George and the angry hippie-phobic Sergeant that was used for a sound clip on an Electric Wizard song. Ed Mannix (Al Cliver's disembodied voice) also plays one of the cops.

George says the dead only walk in "bad paperback novels", ironically his name is George but doesn't mention the Romero films. The zombie mythos is different in this film, they can reanimate other corpses by blood contact and die by fire, not brain destruction.

To try and prove to Edna that there is no real undead threat, fucktard Lovelock proceeds to enter a mausoleum bursting with corpses. They all spring to life of course as both main characters get locked in with the creaky, raspy groaning deceased. Aside from the zombies, the townspeople seem to have some mental problems going on with them as well.

We don't get any real gore until the last 40 minutes, so make sure you stick around for the big payoff, it's worth every penny!

Stop poking me in the ear, tiny lady on my shoulder!

I believe this film paved the way for Lucio Fulci, the undead seem too familiar for it to not be influential, this is 1974 after all. Zombie would hit the grindhouses five years later and there are a lot of elements that would eventually become the norm for exploitation films. There are a few disembowelment scenes sporadically paced to keep the momentum of the blame on the irresponsible Gov. causing the ecological problems and the finale is another major nod to NOTLD.
Ray Lovelock started off in Italian Crime films like Emergency Squad, Live Like a Cop, Die Like a Man (one of Ruggero Deodato finest moments) and Almost Human, working with Umberto Lenzi. After he appeared in this, he went onto to Autopsy with Mimsy Farmer and avoided horror roles until he wound up in Murder-Rock in 1984.
Jorge Grau would go onto to other non-horror projects but will always be remembered for this film. If this film had never been made, someone else in Italian exploitation would've certainly come along and attributed the George Romero original. I'm sure Fulci would've still gone onto what he does best. Manchester Morgue remains one of the best early examples that would inspire others to continue and create more gruesome zombie spectacles, this one just paved the way for everyone else!

OMG! These horse guts are scrumptious

Can you help me reach that whiskey?

Oooh, those stairs are very steep!

SS Hellcamp (The Beast in Heat, Horrifying experiments of the SS Last Days) Directed By Luigi Batzella, starring Macha Magall (1977).

An ominous pink swastika is the backdrop for the credit sequence as the hairy mongoloid (or drooling sex baboon) of this unpleasant and dull Nazisploitation film gets an injection. Aryan women and shock troopers with "God on their side" and rapidly shifting audio dubbing are busy conducting biological monstrosities.

Salvatore Baccarro (otherwise known as Sal Boris or Boris Lugosi) is Italian cinema's go to gorilla, he was discovered outside the famed Cinecitta studio working as a florist, when some genius found him an agent and put him in the movies. He's appeared in spaghetti westerns, worked with Argento on Deep Red, D'Amato on Emanuelle in America, Cozzi on Star Crash, Tinto Brass on Salon Kitty and showed up in Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks! Sal had Acromegaly, the same disorder as Richard Kiel and Rondo Hatton. Not bad for a man with the features of a deformed hulking Ernest Borgnine on steroids and he gets to play the horny beast in question!

Manga Manga Ona Duh Pubes

In this film, there are chambers full of tortured beavers, tormented balls, vats of drowning men and one scene, so ghastly that it registered as a TOG first! This scene shows pubic hair being chewed off in bloody clumps and swallowed by the King Kong man. One character is dubbed by what sounds like Baron Von Butcher, the chimp with the monocle from Lancelot Link! Jeez! There's more ape references in this review than a Pierre Boulle novel!

You sound like a monkey and you smell like one too

Besides that mind boggling surprise, it's basically sandwiched in by dull renegade characters running around and bombing bridges. In all of these Naziploits, it's not fair that all the torture subjects are given no depth or character development and the SS come off more interesting. Most of the women in this are unusually attractive, but you can't enjoy their bodies, because they are either screwed to death (while the beast continues to pump away) or have their finger nails torn out (I like how one actress who has Gilda Radner's Roseanne Roseannadana hair says "Ouch that hurts" like she mildly stubbed her toe)!

Macha Magall does a shitty ilsa impression as Dr. Kratch (or Crotch) the leader of an experimental torture lab. She looks less like the glamazonian Dyanne Thorne and more like a tarted up Emily Watson or Mary Lynn Rajskub. Her plan to create a master race sex machine makes no sense at all, it only benefits the monsters libido!

The super beast depiction is straight out a racist lurid pulp magazine drawn by the likes of Norm Eastman or Mort Kunstler. So if you go by 50's men's magazine logic then yes it's the Third Reich's plan to control our women by unleashing a cavalcade of sex starved monsters!

Put down the hacksaw, Nazi John Landis!

All kinds of babes are thrown to her prize caveman and basically raped and torn to pieces--it's all handled in such an inept way that it destroys all the hideousness and makes it laughable! The menacing rats chewing on female entrails look more like confused guinea pigs painted black.

There's a Howard Moon looking guy named Drago and a hippie priest who are supposed to be the heroes, they have zero presence and run around in day for night locations doing who knows what?

I came in expecting to be offended and though I was not all together bored, the film is pretty tasteless.

If you got this Mighty Boosh reference give yourself a pat on the back!

Some of the atrocities are on the level of Mad Foxes only not as enjoyable! After a baby is hurled in the air and machine gunned ( it was clearly a doll) and a woman is raped, she is shot point blank in the baby maker! At one point there's a shadow of the entire film crew moving on a dolly track, beat that boom mic that slipped down by accident!
This one, in my mind, deserves to be on the infamous Video Nasty List and 77 was the year for Nazispolitation! I could image some goosesteppin' shit head had a white power party during the video age and rented the same tape twelve times, thinking they were watching different movies! I hate this subgenre and find it beneath contempt, but I felt that the blog needed a little sickness and depravity to lower the bar. Maybe I thought we were getting too classy!

Gosh we do like to have fun, us Nazi's aren't all jackboots and genital mutilation!

There are so many in that time period and it all started with The Night Porter in 1974, the very first Nazi sex fantasy art house crowd pleaser (which has a Criterion release). Lee Frost and producer Bob Kreese's were inspired enough to go further with Love Camp 7, which launched Ilsa She Wolf of the SS and the rest is history. This subgenre is off the charts offensive and sleazy and The Beast in Heat is repulsive for sure, but it's also clumsy and hard to take seriously. Here's Grindhouse Databases list of Nazisploits http://www.grindhousedatabase.com/index.php/Category:Nazisploitation.
The only thing that makes this film stand apart from the other clones is that lucky son-of-a-bitch Sal Boris, but who the fuck wants to watch him have sex in a cage?

FOR THE MENTALLY DISTURBED ONLY!

The Night God Screamed Directed by Lee Madden, Starring Jeanne Crain (1971).

There's a shocking amount of Manson-sploitations out there that were clamoring for the all mighty dollar in the early 70's, most of them are inferior to my favorite Satanic hippie flick I Drink your Blood! The Jerry Gross company Cinemation Industries actually put this tepid, awful excuse for a "horror movie" out. I kept hoping that cool skeleton mask would show up, but it never did!

The VHS quality on this Youtube presentation is all shades of squiggly pink and brown the only place to get a better copy is thru Just For The Hell Of It (JFHI.COM).

A creepy crawly bunch of Manson-esque slippies congregate around a swimming hole, as a tripped out Steve Railsback impersonator uses a hooded figure to drown a girl he believes is a narc. I find it strange that Helter Skelter didn't come out until a few years later, maybe Steve copied this guy? Wait that can't be right because they're both copying the ultimate hammy loser and former Beach Boy! The credit sequence font in this film reminds me of A Hard Days Night!

I call the sawed off shotgun on my lap "HIPPIE SKULL VENTILATOR"

A woman named Fanny Coogan (Jeanne Crain) who works at a homeless shelter is fed up with everything- God, being broke and just ripe for some messianic wacko to jump in and brainwash her! Her ridged preacher husband scoffs at her depression and chalks it all up to God's will.

What this movie needs is "Billy Jack" or "Bibleman" to step in and crack some skulls! The hippies hassle the religious couple at a truck stop and aim to steal a pretty sweet cross they lug around in the back of a pickup truck.

Just lounging around waiting for the rapture

The rag tag cult shows up late at night while Fanny's husband is alone and they actually nail him to his own giant cross! It's all done in grainy darkness in a PG way so you don't get the ghoulish benefit.

I like how the Christ-like leader says "God's on our side, not yours" in a high whiny fashion!
I mean in this scenario if some punks snuck into an ex-evangelical president's church and did the same thing would anyone feel that bad? I guess the husband dies, because we never see him again.

Oh Fiddlesticks, now I got heartburn too!

Fanny is so receptive to mind control and has a guilty conscience that she feels bad for Billy Joe Harlan! That's right folks, the scary cult leader played by Michael Sugich is named Billy Joe! This was Sugich's last known performance in acting, I wonder what he's up to now, maybe he works at Trader Joes?

The scary hippies take a break for awhile and return later only through prank calls. Sometimes this film resembles a really dull episode of Night Gallery. Besides the crucifixion, there's little to no violence.

There's a good reason, this film isn't mentioned that often and J4HI.COM carries the only available DVD, besides them you can only find it on poor quality VHS tapes. This one is still a rarity while Death Bed is available on Blu-ray? It's a sick world I tells ya!

They should have called this "The Night the Audience Snored"! There's a twist ending that's not worth sticking around for.
This is among one of the earliest films inspired by the infamous Spahn Ranch lunatics along with The Love Thrill Murders (Sweet Savior), The Manson Massacre and The Deathmaster. Some of these are blatant portrayals of the infamous hippie cult, while others are a coincidental jesus freak or vampire sect. Then there's Lawrence Merrick's documentary with the real Family in 1973, this concludes our Manson trivia portion of the review!

Martin Landau oddly enough would do a scarier job with the fake Manson's catch phrase,"Vengeance is mine sayeth the lord!", later on in Alone in the Dark. If you really need to see this worm ridden filth, J4HI.COM has got you covered, don't ruin your eyeballs like I did.

ORDER NOW

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SS Hellcamp (The Beast in Heat)

The Night God Screamed