Two brothers open a vegetarian diner (well, it serves vegetarians, often to other vegetarians) after exhuming their sorcerer/serial-killer father and transplanting his still-living eyes and brain into a jar in order to guide them in their virgin-mutilating (and sewing back together) quest to reincarnate the five-million-year-old goddess Shitar.
Quite a mouthful, eh? And I didn't even mention the zombie-rock concert finale!
This film truly has everything. A must-see, and see-again.
* * * R A T I N G * * *
Blood Diner (IMDB)
Wince : [***__]
Flinch : [***__]
Retch : [***__]
Gape : [****_]
Beerequisite : [****_]
Pornability : [**___]
Obscurity : [****_]
Explicability : [**___]
Reality Check: Wait, the human race is HOW old again?
Character Most Likely to be Reborn as a WWF Star: Little Jimmy Hitler
Things I've Never Seen Before: Did he just cut off his own penis and threaten to use it as a weapon?
Other Notable Moments:
* Ouch! Killed by a deep fryer in the most horrible head-battered fashion!
* Who is manning that ventriloquist dummy?
* Topless Aerobics! Yay!
* Another Hitler?
* It's the build-your-own-cheerleader store!
* "The killer was last seen with a knife in one hand, and his genitals in the other."
Showing posts with label cannibalism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cannibalism. Show all posts
Monday, February 18, 2008
Monday, February 11, 2008
Szamanka
An anthropology professor obsessed with shamans begins an affair with the girl renting his brother's flat, and things end badly.
This is a fairly standard destructive-love film, with a nod to Last Tango in Paris in the beginning. Of note is the girl, known only as the Italian, who is driven purely by primal urges and adds an intensity to the film that is usually lacking. Her reaction to the anthropologist ignoring her in favor of a mummified shaman dug up in an industrial lot serves at the turning point from obsession to destruction.
* * * R A T I N G * * *
Wince : [**___]
Flinch : [**____]
Retch : [***__]
Gape : [**___]
Beerequisite : [***__]
Pornability : [*****]
Obscurity : [***__]
Explicability : [**___]
Scene I'd watch on endless loop: The teacher and his students smoking up and dancing around the mummy, chanting and pouring yellow dye on it.
This is a fairly standard destructive-love film, with a nod to Last Tango in Paris in the beginning. Of note is the girl, known only as the Italian, who is driven purely by primal urges and adds an intensity to the film that is usually lacking. Her reaction to the anthropologist ignoring her in favor of a mummified shaman dug up in an industrial lot serves at the turning point from obsession to destruction.
* * * R A T I N G * * *
Wince : [**___]
Flinch : [**____]
Retch : [***__]
Gape : [**___]
Beerequisite : [***__]
Pornability : [*****]
Obscurity : [***__]
Explicability : [**___]
Scene I'd watch on endless loop: The teacher and his students smoking up and dancing around the mummy, chanting and pouring yellow dye on it.
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
The Four of the Apocalypse
Mysteries abound. Who are the Four? What happened to the Apocalypse? Why did I rent this?
Fulci's spaghetti western is a confused, meandering film about four misfits (a gambler, a drunk, a whore, and a retard) who flee a violent western town and strike out across the desert. They meet some quakers, a peyote-loving psychopath, a town of (only) men, and all sorts of other Jodorowskyesque elements. Pretty much everyone dies, albeit not apocalyptically. And there's a standout urine scene.
* * * R A T I N G * * *
I Quattro dell'apocalisse (IMDB)
Wince : [****_]
Flinch : [**___]
Retch : [**___]
Gape : [**___]
Beerequisite : [****_]
Pornability : [**___]
Obscurity : [**___]
Explicability : [**___]
Fulci's spaghetti western is a confused, meandering film about four misfits (a gambler, a drunk, a whore, and a retard) who flee a violent western town and strike out across the desert. They meet some quakers, a peyote-loving psychopath, a town of (only) men, and all sorts of other Jodorowskyesque elements. Pretty much everyone dies, albeit not apocalyptically. And there's a standout urine scene.
* * * R A T I N G * * *
I Quattro dell'apocalisse (IMDB)
Wince : [****_]
Flinch : [**___]
Retch : [**___]
Gape : [**___]
Beerequisite : [****_]
Pornability : [**___]
Obscurity : [**___]
Explicability : [**___]
Friday, November 2, 2007
Defenceless
I knew from the DVD box that this was dialog-free, but when I saw the subtitle "A Blood Symphony" I thought, "Uh-oh. This is no Aria." And it wasn't.
The film consists of a typical rape/revenge plot set entirely to music. This is not a bad idea: with a suitable score, a brilliant choreographer, and lurid visuals, this could be quite effective. In Defenceless, though, the music is not at all choreographed to the events on-screen, and in fact rarely changes from the inane classical pieces. The acting is hammed-up and unnatural, and the violence is jaw-droppingly unconvincing. This last one is really a sore point for me in low-budget slasher films: have none of these directors seen Doom Generation? Katiebird? It doesn't take a big budget to produce convincing violence, but it does take talent.
As far as rape/revenge films go, the plot of this is fairly standard, though the events are presented in such as way as to make them unbelievable. A woman refuses to sign a contract with her three business partners (to get her land, according to the DVD box, though this is not conveyed in the film), apparently changing her mind at the last minute (I say this because a contract signing party is generally not the time to express your concerns about the deal). Her partners have her husband killed, and send her photos with a note saying "You should have signed the contract BITCH" (I'm not making this up).
Like any rational person provided with direct evidence of a murder, she tries to kill herself. Some random woman nurses her back to life, falls in love with her, gets raped and killed by the business partners who send a video of this to the main character. Again she tries to kill herself. She takes her son to the beach, is raped and murdered by her business partners who apparently throw her body into the sea (evidently this was too difficult to film).
Nine months later she washes ashore, a cannibal corpse that sleeps in a tidal pool and is bent on revenge. Sort of. After a housewife shows her the articles about the death of her and her family at the hands of her business partners who, in a really heavy-handed piece of exposition, were cleared of murder charges. She kills the three of them in ways that would be gruesome and unsettling if they were, in fact, gruesome and unsettling.
Looking at the IMDB comments for this, it seems that people are afraid to give a negative review in case they are accused of not understanding it, not being prepared for it, or not liking art-house cinema. Well, I understand it, I was prepared for it, and I do not shy away from art-house cinema, so I'll be the one to say it: this movie is BAD.
* * * R A T I N G * * *
Defenseless (IMDB)
Wince : [*****]
Flinch : [*____]
Retch : [*____]
Gape : [*____]
Beerequisite : [****_]
Pornability : [**___]
Obscurity : [***__]
Explicability : [**___]
What I would do different: This movie could probably have been saved with tight editing and a proper score.
Sub-genre concerns: Why is it that every murder/revenge movie (e.g. family killed by the Mob) has five minutes of background and 90 minutes of revenge, but every rape/revenge movie has 90 minutes of background and five minutes of revenge?
The film consists of a typical rape/revenge plot set entirely to music. This is not a bad idea: with a suitable score, a brilliant choreographer, and lurid visuals, this could be quite effective. In Defenceless, though, the music is not at all choreographed to the events on-screen, and in fact rarely changes from the inane classical pieces. The acting is hammed-up and unnatural, and the violence is jaw-droppingly unconvincing. This last one is really a sore point for me in low-budget slasher films: have none of these directors seen Doom Generation? Katiebird? It doesn't take a big budget to produce convincing violence, but it does take talent.
As far as rape/revenge films go, the plot of this is fairly standard, though the events are presented in such as way as to make them unbelievable. A woman refuses to sign a contract with her three business partners (to get her land, according to the DVD box, though this is not conveyed in the film), apparently changing her mind at the last minute (I say this because a contract signing party is generally not the time to express your concerns about the deal). Her partners have her husband killed, and send her photos with a note saying "You should have signed the contract BITCH" (I'm not making this up).
Like any rational person provided with direct evidence of a murder, she tries to kill herself. Some random woman nurses her back to life, falls in love with her, gets raped and killed by the business partners who send a video of this to the main character. Again she tries to kill herself. She takes her son to the beach, is raped and murdered by her business partners who apparently throw her body into the sea (evidently this was too difficult to film).
Nine months later she washes ashore, a cannibal corpse that sleeps in a tidal pool and is bent on revenge. Sort of. After a housewife shows her the articles about the death of her and her family at the hands of her business partners who, in a really heavy-handed piece of exposition, were cleared of murder charges. She kills the three of them in ways that would be gruesome and unsettling if they were, in fact, gruesome and unsettling.
Looking at the IMDB comments for this, it seems that people are afraid to give a negative review in case they are accused of not understanding it, not being prepared for it, or not liking art-house cinema. Well, I understand it, I was prepared for it, and I do not shy away from art-house cinema, so I'll be the one to say it: this movie is BAD.
* * * R A T I N G * * *
Defenseless (IMDB)
Wince : [*****]
Flinch : [*____]
Retch : [*____]
Gape : [*____]
Beerequisite : [****_]
Pornability : [**___]
Obscurity : [***__]
Explicability : [**___]
What I would do different: This movie could probably have been saved with tight editing and a proper score.
Sub-genre concerns: Why is it that every murder/revenge movie (e.g. family killed by the Mob) has five minutes of background and 90 minutes of revenge, but every rape/revenge movie has 90 minutes of background and five minutes of revenge?
The Hamiltons
A family of blood-swilling serial killers has moved to Petaluma, and are just trying to fit in.
This movie really has a lot going for it: the pacing is good; the acting is, well, good enough; the story unfolds nicely. Its greatest asset is probably its ambiguity: throughout the film, you are uncertain as to who is a sympathetic character, or even what the nature of the movie truly is. I was struck by the way the film shied away from gore, which is a staple of any serial killer film, but by the end I could understand the decision.
I think the directors took the film a tad too seriously, especially with the whole "we could be living next to you right now" narration at the end (not to mention the handling of Lenny), but on the whole it was a decent film.
* * * R A T I N G * * *
The Hamiltons (IMDB)
Wince : [***__]
Flinch : [**___]
Retch : [**___]
Gape : [**___]
Beerequisite : [***__]
Pornability : [**___]
Obscurity : [***__]
Explicability : [***__]
Favorite line even though I saw it coming: "Here, kitty kitty!"
What I would do different: Shot the entire thing through the younger brother's video camera, keeping the slow buildup but providing it the kind of 'found object' feel that Blair Witch tried for and making it much more personal.
This movie really has a lot going for it: the pacing is good; the acting is, well, good enough; the story unfolds nicely. Its greatest asset is probably its ambiguity: throughout the film, you are uncertain as to who is a sympathetic character, or even what the nature of the movie truly is. I was struck by the way the film shied away from gore, which is a staple of any serial killer film, but by the end I could understand the decision.
I think the directors took the film a tad too seriously, especially with the whole "we could be living next to you right now" narration at the end (not to mention the handling of Lenny), but on the whole it was a decent film.
* * * R A T I N G * * *
The Hamiltons (IMDB)
Wince : [***__]
Flinch : [**___]
Retch : [**___]
Gape : [**___]
Beerequisite : [***__]
Pornability : [**___]
Obscurity : [***__]
Explicability : [***__]
Favorite line even though I saw it coming: "Here, kitty kitty!"
What I would do different: Shot the entire thing through the younger brother's video camera, keeping the slow buildup but providing it the kind of 'found object' feel that Blair Witch tried for and making it much more personal.
Saturday, October 20, 2007
Beach Party at the Threshold of Hell
Aspiring Vice-President Tex Kennedy and his robot pals seek to free the new president, Benjamin Remington, from his fallout shelter and establish him in New America's seat of power: a powerful transmission tower in the heart of The Threshold of Hell. Said threshold has, fittingly, been located in Florida.
There's all kinds of good stuff in this movie: robots, immortals, cannibals, used car dealers, sea serpents, cigars. The acting, especially the delivery of the dialog, is spot-on and really makes the movie. The budget is low, and the story itself feels a bit cobbled together, but the overall production quality is high enough that you don't notice.
The movie is very, very similar to Six String Samurai: the future King of America battling his way across a sandy wasteland, encountering all sorts of natural and supernatural obstacles. It also brings to mind Snatch with its sheer number of larger-than-life characters, all introduced with a splash page and a brief voiceover, whose ranks swell so quickly that you know half of them are going to be killed by the end.
Very entertaining, well worth a second (or more) viewing, though a bit unsatisfying. Maybe it's the unwavering nonchalance of the characters, the unphased narrators, or the constant deus ex machina saves; by the end, you don't particularly care whether New America's founders succeed or not.
* * * R A T I N G * * *
The Beach Party at the Threshold of Hell
Wince : [**___]
Flinch : [***__]
Retch : [**___]
Gape : [**___]
Beerequisite : [***__]
Pornability : [*____]
Obscurity : [***__]
Explicability : [***__]
Most brilliant tag-team proposal: Kennedy and Castro!
There's all kinds of good stuff in this movie: robots, immortals, cannibals, used car dealers, sea serpents, cigars. The acting, especially the delivery of the dialog, is spot-on and really makes the movie. The budget is low, and the story itself feels a bit cobbled together, but the overall production quality is high enough that you don't notice.
The movie is very, very similar to Six String Samurai: the future King of America battling his way across a sandy wasteland, encountering all sorts of natural and supernatural obstacles. It also brings to mind Snatch with its sheer number of larger-than-life characters, all introduced with a splash page and a brief voiceover, whose ranks swell so quickly that you know half of them are going to be killed by the end.
Very entertaining, well worth a second (or more) viewing, though a bit unsatisfying. Maybe it's the unwavering nonchalance of the characters, the unphased narrators, or the constant deus ex machina saves; by the end, you don't particularly care whether New America's founders succeed or not.
* * * R A T I N G * * *
The Beach Party at the Threshold of Hell
Wince : [**___]
Flinch : [***__]
Retch : [**___]
Gape : [**___]
Beerequisite : [***__]
Pornability : [*____]
Obscurity : [***__]
Explicability : [***__]
Most brilliant tag-team proposal: Kennedy and Castro!
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
I Will Walk Like a Crazy Horse
Do you like Concept movies? Symbolism for symbolism's sake? A dwarf dressed in women's underwear? Homoerotic tension between civilization and nature? Pretentious scat films? Skeletons? Then what are you waiting for, rush out and see this!
Aden Rey, oedipal epileptic, has run off to the desert after the death of his mother, turning his back on civilization and the image-conscious upper-crust society he was raised into. He soon encounters a preternatural runt of a man (too tall and properly-proportioned to be a dwarf, yet abnormally short) eating sand. This is Marvel, tens of thousands of years old yet entirely innocent of the ways of humans. He feeds Aden some goat-turd pie, and we're off!
Marvel is the yin to Aden's yang, the nature to his nurture, the Abbott to his Costello. Naturally Aden, quite taken with Marvel (who apparently reminds him of his childhood), decides the best thing to do is to introduce him to society by taking him to the big city to meet chicks. A series of what should be slapstick gags ensues where Marvel predictably fails to interact with society properly. It's all fun and games until someone loses a prostitute, then suddenly the two are on the lamb and the film transitions into some kinds of Jesus-buddy-road-movie. Well maybe not so much 'buddy' as 'unconsummated same-sex love interest'.
There is no point in calling this film "pretentious"; that would be like calling Plan 9 From Outer Space "bad". All of the usual targets are painstakingly set up for abuse: society, politicians, businessmen, the Church, meat-eating, deforestation, consumerism, television, luxury living, landlords, responsible adults, etc. There was a rather unexpected strike at circuses, probably an attempt at a scathing indictment of greed and spectacle. The film is chock full of the kind of mysticism, healing, sex, skeletons, sex with skeletons (well, close enough), dream sequences, cross-dressing, excrement (all flavors), toenail clippings, cannibalism, crucifixes, genitals, goats, goats' genitals (just kidding, the film doesn't go *that* far), trigger-happy cops, and pompous windbags given comeuppance that one expects from the early 70s surrealist films.
* * * R A T I N G * * *
I Will Walk Like a Crazy Horse (IMDB)
Wince : [***__]
Flinch : [***__]
Retch : [***__]
Gape : [****_]
Beerequisite : [*****]
Pornability : [****_]
Obscurity : [****_]
Explicability : [*____]
Did you know...
... the Virgin Mary was a redhead?
... happiness is a naked boy shot by a firing squad of old ladies?
... dwarf urine and mud can heal all wounds?
... Jesus is Money?
"I didn't need to see that!":
* Genital torture makes baby Jesus cry.
* Male bonding via back-to-back crapping.
* That cleaver is uncomfortably close to those genitals
* So uh, yeh, that's a transexual right.
* Did he really need to put on his mother's lingerie? OK, maybe, but did the *other* guy?
Never seen *that* before:
* Not tongue-tied, but tongue-nailed.
* Was that a phallic candle or a candled phallus?
* Gas masks instead of bondage hoods, hmm...
* Beaten by blind men!
Aden Rey, oedipal epileptic, has run off to the desert after the death of his mother, turning his back on civilization and the image-conscious upper-crust society he was raised into. He soon encounters a preternatural runt of a man (too tall and properly-proportioned to be a dwarf, yet abnormally short) eating sand. This is Marvel, tens of thousands of years old yet entirely innocent of the ways of humans. He feeds Aden some goat-turd pie, and we're off!
Marvel is the yin to Aden's yang, the nature to his nurture, the Abbott to his Costello. Naturally Aden, quite taken with Marvel (who apparently reminds him of his childhood), decides the best thing to do is to introduce him to society by taking him to the big city to meet chicks. A series of what should be slapstick gags ensues where Marvel predictably fails to interact with society properly. It's all fun and games until someone loses a prostitute, then suddenly the two are on the lamb and the film transitions into some kinds of Jesus-buddy-road-movie. Well maybe not so much 'buddy' as 'unconsummated same-sex love interest'.
There is no point in calling this film "pretentious"; that would be like calling Plan 9 From Outer Space "bad". All of the usual targets are painstakingly set up for abuse: society, politicians, businessmen, the Church, meat-eating, deforestation, consumerism, television, luxury living, landlords, responsible adults, etc. There was a rather unexpected strike at circuses, probably an attempt at a scathing indictment of greed and spectacle. The film is chock full of the kind of mysticism, healing, sex, skeletons, sex with skeletons (well, close enough), dream sequences, cross-dressing, excrement (all flavors), toenail clippings, cannibalism, crucifixes, genitals, goats, goats' genitals (just kidding, the film doesn't go *that* far), trigger-happy cops, and pompous windbags given comeuppance that one expects from the early 70s surrealist films.
* * * R A T I N G * * *
I Will Walk Like a Crazy Horse (IMDB)
Wince : [***__]
Flinch : [***__]
Retch : [***__]
Gape : [****_]
Beerequisite : [*****]
Pornability : [****_]
Obscurity : [****_]
Explicability : [*____]
Did you know...
... the Virgin Mary was a redhead?
... happiness is a naked boy shot by a firing squad of old ladies?
... dwarf urine and mud can heal all wounds?
... Jesus is Money?
"I didn't need to see that!":
* Genital torture makes baby Jesus cry.
* Male bonding via back-to-back crapping.
* That cleaver is uncomfortably close to those genitals
* So uh, yeh, that's a transexual right.
* Did he really need to put on his mother's lingerie? OK, maybe, but did the *other* guy?
Never seen *that* before:
* Not tongue-tied, but tongue-nailed.
* Was that a phallic candle or a candled phallus?
* Gas masks instead of bondage hoods, hmm...
* Beaten by blind men!
Monday, August 20, 2007
Mad Cowgirl
Thursday's feature flick.
The fragmented and moving tale of a lovelorn meat inspector, her love of (western) kung-fu movies, her exposure to BSE, and her subsequent killing spree. A film for the most jaded palate, this one has everything: beef, leering priests, more beef, incest, cannibalism (or was that still more beef?), even a flying guillotine!
I'm sending a copy of this to every vegan I know.
* * * R A T I N G * * *
Mad Cowgirl (IMDB)
Wince : [****_]
Flinch : [**___]
Retch : [***__]
Gape : [****_]
Beerequisite : [****_]
Pornability : [****_]
Obscurity : [****_]
Explicability : [*____]
The fragmented and moving tale of a lovelorn meat inspector, her love of (western) kung-fu movies, her exposure to BSE, and her subsequent killing spree. A film for the most jaded palate, this one has everything: beef, leering priests, more beef, incest, cannibalism (or was that still more beef?), even a flying guillotine!
I'm sending a copy of this to every vegan I know.
* * * R A T I N G * * *
Mad Cowgirl (IMDB)
Wince : [****_]
Flinch : [**___]
Retch : [***__]
Gape : [****_]
Beerequisite : [****_]
Pornability : [****_]
Obscurity : [****_]
Explicability : [*____]
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