April Exploitation/b-movie Challenge 2016 - Days 8 and 9

The last 2 days each featured a pair of movies. Day 8 started off with THE SINFUL NUNS OF ST. VALENTINE. I think a bit of Nunsploitation was overdue for this challenge but unfortunately I didn't pick a great one. The film revolves around an unsolved murder and one of the girls at the convent is accused of it. It starts out entertaining enough with a good bit of lesbian and naked nun action but before too long the plot starts to run thin which causes the film to drag. There's bit and pieces sprinkled throughout that I like but in the end it tries too hard to replicate the madness and beauty that Ken Russell's The Devils perfectly captured a few years earlier.

That was followed up by one of my favorite viewings of the month - WILD BEASTS. Franco Prosperi, director of Mondo Cane takes his penchant for staging shocking violence in the world of Mondo films and uses them to create an awesome killer animal flick as a European city is under siege from the animals who have escaped their zoo cages after drinking PCP contaminated water making them highly aggressive. Nobody is safe from the tigers, lions, rats, elephants, cheetahs and bulls. The deaths are bloody and gruesome and the movie is immediately one of my favorite killer animal films of all time.

Day 9 started with a big disappointment. The old west slasher A KNIFE FOR THE LADIES sounded like it had to be entertaining. A Jack The Ripper style slasher set in the old west... It had to be ripe with gory murders, shootouts, and the sweaty, dirty desert, right? Ha. Haha. No. No it wasn't. The murders are all off screen, letting us only see the aftermath, the acting aside from the top two or three characters are laughably bad and it's unfortunately predictable.

BIGFOOT VS ZOMBIES finished day 9. This is a new indie movie released by Wild Eye Releasing. This movie is incredibly low budget, with a cheap Bigfoot suit (somehow not the worst I've ever seen) and really poor zombie makeup. It's actually the simpler zombie makeup effects that look better than the cheap attempts at masks that hang off the actor's face. As you can imagine this movie is intentionally campy and has its tongue planted firmly in its cheek. Movies such as this can go one of two ways: They can be charming or they can be down right awful. I found BVZ to be charming with a good sense of humor that had some genuinely funny jokes and scenes. The acting was better than expected for the most part and it was fun to see Bigfoot, who seemed to barely crack 6 feet tall, get into it with some undead ghouls. Bring the beers for BIGFOOT VS ZOMBIES and enjoy the silliness.

Today's Rundown 
The Sinful Nuns Of St. Valentine - 5/10
Wild Beasts - 9/10
A Knife For The Ladies - 3/10
Bigfoot vs. Zombies - 5/10

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

AXE / KIDNAPPED COED - Severin Films (Blu-ray Review)

USA/1974, 1976
Directed By: Frederick R. Friedel
Written By: Frederick R. Friedel
Starring: Jack Canon, Leslie Rivers, Leslie Lee
Color/142 Minutes/Not Rated
Region FREE
Release Date:
Blu-ray/CD

The Films
AXE is the debut film from Frederick R. Friedel and is a classic example of drive-in era exploitation horror. In the film three men are on the run from the law for murdering a man and end up at a secluded farmhouse where a young girl named Lisa lives with her disabled grandfather. The gang decides to stay there where they humiliate the girl and her grandfather until she takes her revenge on the gang.

AXE is a simple idea that is executed quite well. All of Friedel's films were region productions with local actors and locations. The main cast is good enough and Leslie Lee who plays Lisa is unsettling in her role as victim turned killer. Clocking in at under 70 minutes AXE does exacty what it sets out to do without wasting any time or energy. The film has an underlying creepiness to it that our villains play no part in. Lisa and her grandfather are weird enough on their own before we give the girl reason to start offing people. This is highly enjoyable stuff.

With his first feature film under his belt Friedel quickly followed it up with KIDNAPPED COED which feels much bigger in scope and more seasoned. This film which also stars Jack Canon, is a road trip film as a man has kidnapped a wealthy man's college student daughter in an attempt to extort ransom money from him. Their trip is full of perils and pit stops and takes some unexpected turns as the girl falls for her captor as hell falls for her and it isn't the Stockholm Syndrome.

KIDNAPPED COED is great. Not only is it a bigger picture than AXE but it is more polished and more mature. The writing is well rounded with actual character development and a dark sense of humor. It's not a perfect picture as it is still a regional production of an exploitation film in the mid 70s. It's flawed but excels in spite of those flaws and makes its imperfections work for it. I'm a big fan of KIDNAPPED COED.

The Audio & Video
Severin Films have given these two drive-in exploitation classics a loving HD debut. The 16x9 anamorphic widescreen transfer preserves both films' original aspect ratio and does so with a natural film looking quality. There's a healthy grain structure and little to no digital noise. The picture is sharp and rich with detail. Skin tones are natural and healthy. There's a bit of speckling and debris within the prints as they haven't been totally cleaned up but it keeps the natural 70s drive-in charm while making them shine for the present day. The audio features a 2.0 Dolby Digital mix that is crisp and clear without any major annoyances or background noise. The levels are stable and steady without dropping in or out or spiking in volume. I love what Severin has done with the A/V on this release.

The Extras
-BLOODY BROTHERS - This is the special feature that makes this release special - a 3rd feature film that is a hybrid of both AXE and KIDNAPPED with optional audio commentary by Stephen Thrower
-Audio Commentary on each film with writer/director Frederick R. Friedel, production manager Phil Smoot, and makeup artist Worth Keeter
-"At Last... Total Terror!" - The Amazing True Story of the Making of AXE and KIDNAPPED COED
-"Moose Magic" - The George Newman Shaw and John Willhelm Story
-Stephen Thrower on AXE and KIDNAPPED COED
-Trailers
-TV Spots
-Radio Spots
-CD Soundtrack

The Bottom Line
Severin Films gives us the definitive release of these cult classics along with extensive and heartfelt supplemental material and a soundtrack CD to boot. Highly recommended!

AXE / KIDNAPPED COED is available HERE

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

April Exploitation/B-Movie Challenge 2016 Days 1 & 2

To kick off an exploitation movie challenge I don't know if there's too many better places to start than with a Bill Zebub movie. He's made his name making movies filled with schlock, nudity and some off beat humor all on a micro budget. HOLOCAUST CANNIBAL was no different as we watch a group of Nazis struggle to survive the jungles of Argentina, which looks more like the woods behind your house than any exotic South American location. The Nazis have to deal with cannibal natives, sexy women, giant spiders and snakes. They continually get their ass kicked in slow motion. I rather enjoyed the film but found the constant slow motion editing and use of German metal for the soundtrack to become tedious. Nevertheless I'm a fan of the film and it was an appropriate way to kick things off.

ALLEY CAT is a film that I've wanted to see for quite a while as it is a rape/revenge film in the vein of Ms. 45 and Savage Streets - I knew ALLEY CAT would be right up my... ahem... alley. What I didn't get was a film nearly as mean or depraved as either of the films it is compared to. What I did get was a cheesy, karate filled revenge film with a prison shower scene that takes place in the smallest shower I've ever seen. Oh, and it's still got a good bit of that exploitative goodness to keep it just mean enough. It's not the cult classic that Savage Streets is and it isn't the masterpiece that I find Ms. 45 to be but it's damn entertaining and a really solid watch.

The final film of day one came from Frederick Friedel - BLOODY BROTHERS. This film takes Friedel's two feature films Axe and Kidnapped Coed and edits them together into a film of it's own in an attempt to make soe money from his movies after being swindled by producer Harry Novak on those films. Taking two separate films and managing to make an even somewhat cohesive third film by smashing them together is a commendable feat and Friedel manages just that. It's an interesting watch because it includes footage not seen in the final cuts of the film, notably in Axe where the market scene is longer. BLOODY BROTHERS isn't as good as either Axe or Kidnapped Coed but I respect what Friedel was able to pull off by making a presentable film.

Two movies for the second day and we start with PIGS. I'll be reviewing the brand new Vinegar Syndrome Blu-ray of this title so I won't be going too in depth with it here but I really really liked PIGS and loved that it wasn't at all what I expected.

I finished things out with Larry Cohen's feature film directorial debut, BONE. This was a tense, mean, funny and uncomfortable commentary on race and class featuring an incredible performance by Yaphet Kotto who gives the most chilling lesson on smashing roaches that you'll ever see. The writing in this film is interesting and goes unexpected ways and really draws the viewer in and the cast as a whole pull off some nuanced performances that carry the script to a massively successful place. The film is flawed but it proves that exploitation films can be both poignant and smart.

Today's Rundown
Holocaust Cannibal - 6/10
Alley Cat - 7/10
Bloody Brothers - 5/10
Pigs - 8/10
Bone - 7/10