April Exploitation/B-Movie Challenge 2016- Days 23-27

Time to catch up! I apologize for falling behind on coverage here but I'm here now and ready to catch up!

Day 23 started with ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE a DVD sent to me courtesy of Wild Eye Releasing to view specifically for this challenge. It's a modern exploitation film, filled plenty of things  I like and dislike about modern exploitation films. This demon biker movie is funny without too many "in jokes" or winks and nudges to the audience and has a genuinely sleazy sensibility to it with lots of violence and forced nudity. The special effects are a bit hit and miss but aside from CGI blood splatter I'm okay with them. The acting holds up a decent script so I can get passed the things I don't like such as artificial scratch filters to make it look like an older film ala Grindhouse. It's a trend that annoys the piss out of me but ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE is good enough that it didn't make that big of a difference.

I followed that up with THE CURSE, a 1987 adaptation of HP Lovecraft's The Color Out Of Space. I wasn't aware of the HPL ties until seeing the film so that was a pleasant surprise and the movie ended up being a pretty solid 80s horror style work on the story. It has plenty messy gross out effects work and latex effects makeup. Wil Wheaton stars a young boy who's family is changing into vicious monsters after eating and drinking produce and water that is tainted from a strange alien orb and he's quite good carrying the film.

Day 24 started and ended with THE CURSE 2 which has nothing at all to do with the first film. Subtitled THE BITE, this one follows a young couple, including the gorgeous Jill Schoelen, as they're on a road trip and travel through an old bomb testing site that is overridden with snakes. When the boyfriend gets bitten on his hand he slowly transform into a hyper aggressive and violent version of himself and undergoes bizarre physical changes as well. THE CURSE 2 was good, but had it let the major payoff occur earlier in the film and let the snakeman monster run amuck on the town this could have been a true masterpiece of horror cheese.

An overdue viewing of KING KONG ESCAPES was next - A well known Kaiju film from Toho that I had never seen. It's King Kong vs MechaKong. Need I say more? We have a giant gorilla fighting the robot version of himself in Japan. A solid script that is deeply rooted in the original King Kong allows the movie to have fun with the giant beast and robot while maintaining an air of seriousness that allows the campy film to still be a pretty good movie.

The next night I tossed on ISLAND OF DEATH - A Greek exploitation film from 1976 that found itself on the Video Nasty list a few years later. Director Niko Mastorakis made this film after seeing the financial success of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre as a way to cash in. With no artistic desire to make the film he made it anyways and he certainly made a film filled with deplorable acts and ideas such as rape, goat fucking, murder, racism and homophobia. From an exploitation film standpoint it's entertaining, and competently made for the most part aside from our two main characters essentially being on this Greek island for no other reason than to be bigots and kill people they don't like. ISLAND OF DEATH's biggest problem to me is that any and all likable characters are quickly killed off and the movie is over 100 minutes long which is far too long for a movie with nobody to root for. If this movie was 75-80 minutes long I'd like it more.

EXTRAORDINARY TALES was the follow up - This animated anthology of E.A. Poe tales was an interesting watch. With voice over work from the likes of Christopher Lee, Bela Lugosi, Roger Corman, Guillermo Del Toro and Julian sands it gave each short, which featured a unique art style, it's own atmosphere. Some segments were better than others, and I don't see myself rushing back to watch the film again as I'd rather sit down and watch the various feature film adaptations of the stories but it was well done and I recommend it for any Poe fans.

This update comes to a close with a movie I've long seen floating around on VHS but it had never crossed my path until recently - THE ANNIHILATORS. This vigilante film is set in Atlanta where a gang has a section of the city under siege, forcing them to pay unfair "protection and insurance" taxes, and raping and murdering those that don't agree including a man running a mini market who was paralyzed in Vietnam. His squadron reunites to help his father, and his neighbors regain control of their neighborhood in a film filled with shootouts, flame throwers, food carts filled with heroin and a school bus filled with kids in the line of fire. THE ANNIHILATORS isn't the best vigilante style film and the cast isn't amazing but it remains an energetic, action packed exploitation romp of a good time.

Today's Rundown
All Hell Breaks Loose - 6/10
The Curse - 7.5/10
The Curse 2 - 6.5/10
King Kong Escapes - 6.5/10
Island Of Death - 6/10
Extraordinary Tales - 6/10
The Annihilators - 6/10

BLUE ICE - VINEGAR SYNDROME (Blu-Ray Review)

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April Exploitation/B-Movie Challenge 2016 - Days 11, 12 and 13

Three days to cover so lets just get down to it - A revisit of the original MAD MAX left me feeling underwhelmed and confused. I apparently remember almost nothing of the original film. Granted, it has been a number of years since I made an effort to actually sit down and watch any of the original trilogy but apparently all of my memories have been formed by The Road Warrior and Beyond Thunderdome. MAD MAX isn't a bad movie but I was expecting to revisit something different, something more in line with its sequels and knockoffs that I have no shame in saying I enjoy quite a bit more on the whole.

BUNNI was next - a 2013 production recently released on DVD by Wild Eye Productions. This is a slasher film geared for the gore hounds as there are a number of bloody and messy kill sequences. MINOR SPOILER: Castration and feeding the severed cock to it's victim has officially become a theme this month SPOILER OVER. The film is short, and lightning paced once things get rolling. The abandoned building that the majority of the film takes place in is inherently creepy and the effects are pretty well done. The acting isn't offensively bad but the direction and photography is shall we say, uncomfortable. I don't mean that the direction is scary or unsettling, it's not that type of uncomfortable. I mean that there's something in how it was filmed that makes everyone look the slightest bit jittery at all times. Movement just looks off, almost if it was shot at an awkward frame rate that doesn't quite look natural. I can't say exactly what it is and it's difficult to describe without seeing it in motion but it's a major distraction throughout. BUNNI ends up being a passable indie horror flick.

Next up was the first of three Jess Franco directed women in prison films - 99 WOMEN. This is almost a paint by numbers WIP film and it would have been perfectly enjoyable had it been but Jess Franco throws his "Francoisms" as I like to call them, all over the place. "Francoisms" refers to his awkward, and downright shitty directorial techniques like panning the camera side to side until whatever action is off screen or random zooms that often go so far as to turn the picture into a total blur. Hey, I'm okay with zooms on bush and butts as much as the next guy but I don't need to feel like a fucking parasite crawling up in there.

Then we get WOMEN BEHIND BARS - this is pretty much the slightly more enjoyable version of 99 WOMEN in that we get less of Franco's nonsense and more Lina Romay. There's a better plot, though it's messy, about stolen diamonds and undercover agents in the prison. And there's Lina Romay. There's also some shoot outs and it's fun enough.

I took a break from Franco for the next film and watched OVER THE EDGE, a 1979 teen rebellion movie dripping with a punk rock attitude. My main thoughts about this movie are how in the blue hell did this movie never get brought to my attention? How have I never heard of it? This is the story of a dream like community that ended up being a hell hole to grow up in with nothing to do but be left to your own devices. Partying, drugs and fights were normal. So was shooting out cops windows on the highway. Parents barely cared and the kids would have their say. I love this movie after a single viewing and know I will frequently revisit it. It's well made top to bottom and gets some great and natural performances out of a group of kids in junior high and high school. It also has a wild finale that isn't to be missed.

We close things out with Franco's best, or at least most interesting women in prison film that I've seen to date and without a doubt his sleaziest. SADOMANIA lives up to its name in a film where a pair of newlyweds drive into an off limits area of a women's prison and they take the wife prisoner while letting the husband go. The husband now fights for his wife's freedom and tries to break her out of this strict facility ran. That paper thin plot provides an excuse to show everything from topless women performing hard labor, lesbian sex, bestiality, homosexuality with Franco himself, murder, fights to the death, human hunting, and human trafficking of these women with the mention of selling girls as young as twelve. Yeah, this one goes the distance. It's not perfect but I had a blast seeing just how far SADOMANIA would go.

Today's Rundown
Mad Max - 6/10
Bunni - 4/10
99 Women - 5/10
Women Behind Bars - 6/10
Over The Edge - 8/10
Sadomania - 7/10

PIGS - Vinegar Syndrome (Blu-ray Review)

USA/1973
Directed By: Marc Lawrence
Written By: Marc Lawrence
Starring: Marc Lawrence, Toni Lawrence, Jesse Vint
Color/81 Minutes/Not Rated
Region FREE
Release Date: March 29, 2016
Blu-ray/DVD

The Film
Upon arriving in a secluded California town, Lynn takes a waitressing job with Zambrini, a retired circus performer who now runs a small cafe with a large pig pen out back. A local legend says that his pigs only eat human flesh and that he has been murdering drifters to feed to them. Now the sheriff and the locals have grown suspicious of Zambrini and his pigs along with trying to protect the new girl in town.

PIGS is not at all what I expected it would be and it was for the best. I'm all for a movie about killer pigs running wild on a small town, perhaps in some sort of vengeance for being harvested for their meat. Mmm killer bacon. PIGS is not that movie. PIGS is a fever dream of a horror film, steeped in sweaty, hazy atmosphere. It's highly psychological and mythological. There's also plenty of that supremely weird 1970s vibe that can't be faked. It's sleazy, but not to be self gratifying. It only goes as far as is necessary to make the psychological horror aspect to the film work.

The film succeeds so well because the screenplay is crafted to be suspenseful and hallucinatory and doesn't give in to excess that would only serve to cheapen the overall experience of the film.

The Audio & Video
Vinegar Syndrome gives PIGS a full makeover and facelift. It's like this Blu-ray came straight from the salon! The 16x9 anamorphic widescreen transfer is sharp and highly detailed. Colors are natural but keep the film's natural sweaty haze. Dark scenes have a bit more graininess than day time scenes but the black levels are quite deep and have no issues with blocking or compression. A DTS-HD Master Audio mono mix handles the audio and it sounds fantastic. Free of any distortions and background noise, the simple mix gets the job done with sparkling clarity and a natural crispness. Nothing gets lost with the dialogue and score complimenting each other. An overall fantastic HD presentation.

I must note that the new 2K scan has been taken from the 35mm Interpositive with select shots taken from theatrical prints due to missing or severely damaged elements. Vinegar Syndrome makes not of this before the film starts to clarify the shifts in quality - I didn't notice any dramatic shifts in quality and couldn't pick out when the theatrical prints were used. That's just another example of the quality work Vinegar Syndrome does.

The Extras
This release packed, stacked and certainly doesn't lack.

-Featurette with star Toni Lawrence
-Featurette with composer Charles Bernstein
-Audio Interview with cinematographer Glenn Roland
-Alternate "Exorcism" opening sequence
-Alternate "Daddy's Girl" opening sequence
-Alternate "Daddy's Girl" closing sequence
-Original trailers
-Promotional Artwork Gallery
-Reversible artwork

The Bottom Line
This may be the best non-porn release from Vinegar Syndrome to date. They've taken a rather obscure horror title and given it the royal treatment and packed it with extras. As far as I'm concerned this is an essential release.

PIGS is available HERE

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