April Exploitation/B-movie Challenge 2016 - Days 6 and 7

Cirio H. Santiago is showing up quite a bit early on this month with his wonderfully trashy post-apocalyptic action flicks and THE SISTERHOOD is yet another. This 1988 film adds in a fantasy element to our normal armor and leather clad testosterone fueled battles in the barren wastelands and adds a bit of a feminist angle as well. THE SISTERHOOD features a powerful group of women who all have distinct special abilities from reading minds to being able to shoot laser beams from their eyes. They're small in numbers but legendary amongst the wasteland and quite powerful. THE SISTERHOOD isn't my favorite of the Santiago movies I've watched this month but it's still an absolute blast.

PSYCHOMANIA is a movie I've had my eye on for a while and I finally popped this weird cult horror, undead biker gang movie. Thankfully this movie doesn't get super cheesy with brain eating zombie bikers and makes our undead bikers very normal looking after being resurrected by an old ritual. The gang begins to run amuck and create all sorts of having across the city. PSYCHOMANIA has some great ideas and visuals but it never reaches its full potential. The undead bikers create some havoc but it's short lived and much of their time spent undead is wasted by being snarky and rude instead of really getting down and dirty. I rarely say this but I think this movie could benefit from a remake given the right team behind it. 

I rounded out the night with CONGO. The point of CONGO was to be something I've seen a hundred times and didn't need to give my full attention to while I got some writing done. I have loved this movie since I was a child and continue to love it with each repeat viewing. No, it isn't a good movie but it's cheesy, funny and has those scary white apes. Oh, and Tim Curry. 

Day 7 started with DRIVEN TO SUCCEED a new movie from a local Maryland group called Dire Wit Films. They've done films such as Mutantis, 7th Day, and Isle Of The Damned. Their films frequently have a strong sense of raunchy humor with their tongue planted firmly in their cheek. This is their first straight forward comedy and I nearly turned it off by the 30 minute mark. I found it to be painfully unfunny and it was honestly a chore to sit through. Then something shifted and I found myself enjoying things a bit more. It still wasn't great but it felt like the actors hit their stride in their roles and the writing had a better flow to it. Comedy isn't easy and this ended up being a respectable effort.

The first spaghetti western of the month was next - A LONG RIDE FROM HELL starring Steve Reeves as a man who is hellbent on revenge for being falsely imprisoned with his brother who died while incarcerated. There's plenty of shoot outs and fights and the scenery is nice but there's absolutely nothing that sets A LONG RIDE FROM HELL apart. The score is not memorable and wasn't even notable while watching. Music is a major part of the spaghetti western genre and the emotional drive could have been much more. The scene in the jail was short and only one fleeting scene showed any sort of real hardship and mistreatment. Had the film spent more time in the prison and let the audience get to know the brothers a bit more the film would have meant more and would have had less time to plod around the 2nd act almost aimlessly at times with too much useless side story shit. It's decent but nothing more.

The 70s provided a ton of bigfoot material including THE LEGEND OF BIGFOOT, a 1976 documentary that can be summed up easily. 50% random nature footage, 30% driving around to various regions and hearing about the local bigfoot legends and 20% fake bigfoot footage all narrated by a man that sounds like he's doing a voice over for an old claymation Christmas special. It's boring, really boring.

Today's rundown
The Sisterhood - 6.5/10
Psychomania - 6/10
Congo - 9/10
Driven To Succeed - 5/10
A Long Ride From Hell - 6/10
The Legend Of Bigfoot - 3/10

April Exploitation/B-movie Challenge 2016 - Day 5

I was long overdue to visit the earlier films of John Waters so I did just that. I started with MULTIPLE MANIACS which features Divine in the lead role where she runs the Cavalcade Of Perversions with her group of freaks including homosexuals, junkies and fetish acts to exploit the audience for their cash or down right murder them for it. It's all in a day's work! Then there's the "Rosary Job" scene with Mink Stole as she turns Divine into the lesbian that she wasn't a few minutes before. There's a 15 foot rapist lobster, there's more murder and drugs perversion and everything that is trashy and wonderful. MULTIPLE MANIACS would easily have the cult following that Pink Flamingos has if it would only get an official DVD or Blu-ray release. What a fantastic film.

I then took a step further back, one year further back to be precise to Waters' 1969 film MONDO TRASHO which is nearly a silent film aside from some voiceover work creating very sparse narration and dialogue. This film is referred to as The Gutter Movie as it was literally filmed in gutters, alleys, and abandoned places around Baltimore. I didn't have the love affair that I did with MULTIPLE MANIACS but it was great to see Waters' and his crew of Dreamlanders really beginning to mesh and get their chemistry together, especially Divine who seems to just be dipping her toes in the waters that she would jump into head first a year later and then years later become a drag and cult film icon. There's plenty to like here but it is a lot of experimenting with ideas and styles that would later become fully realized by the God of trash cinema.

I finished the day with EQUALIZER 2000, another Cirio Santiago post-nuke film taking place in the barren and blistered wasteland that was once Alaska. Now a desert but still rich with oil, it's a wild blend of car chases, shoot outs, fire, mountain people that look more like the Fillipino actors they are than the native Alaskans I assume they're supposed to be. There's a lot of bad acting and cheesy dialogue and I eat up every second of it It's not quite the great time that Wheels Of Fire was but I still highly enjoyed it up to the very end where in celebration everyone throws loaded guns into a fire to signify their new found peace... I can only laugh at how bad of a time they had seconds after the film cut to credits and live ammo heated up and began going off.

Today's Rundown
Multiple Maniacs - 8/10
Mondo Trasho - 6/10
Equalizer 2000 - 7.5/10

April Exploitation/B-movie Challenge 2016 - Days 3 and 4

It was tough to find time these last couple of days. The 7 hour shitfest that WWE called Wrestlemania 32 took up most of day 3 and day 4 became unexpectedly busy as well. I managed to squeeze in a film each day starting with Cirio Santiago's action packed ride through the post-apocalyptic desert wasteland, WHEELS OF FIRE. This Roger Corman production is packed with car chases, shootouts, fist fights, beautiful women, leather, nudity, rape, flamethrowers, subterranean sand people, space cults and more. It's cheesy in all the right ways and I love it.

Then came a re-watch of THE STRANGE VICE OF MRS. WARDH, a film I've watched a couple times in the last week to refresh my memory of it for a visit on the Astro Radio Z podcast which focused on gialli this week. If you were to look up "giallo films" in a dictionary THE STRANGE VICE OF MRS. WARDH could very well be pictured. It's a textbook example of the genre complete with stylish direction, exotic setpieces, a black gloved killer, red herrings, and a twist ending. It stars Edwige Fenech who is one of the most gorgeous women to ever grace the silver screen along with leading man George Hilton and the brilliant character actor Ivan Rassimov. This is a perfect movie.

Today's Rundown
Wheels Of Fire - 8/10
The Strange Vice Of Mrs. Wardh - 10/10