Friday, January 31, 2014

Ilsa She Wolf Of The SS


Ilsa She Wolf Of The SS Directed By Don Edmunds, Starring Dyanne Thorne (1975).
There are a handful of Nazi films in the DR catalog and after the rising popularity (according to the stats on the blog) in one of the most reviled films in the subgenre, Gestapo's Last Orgy, I decided to re-visit one of the most depressing films in an already miserable catagory that I am not that thrilled to see again. Why am I punishing myself for your amusement? I have no idea (and for any skinheads attracted to this blog, get cancer of the rectum and die)! I guess it's safe to say that Ilsa is the "Gone With The Wind" of Naziploitation epics, its legacy is infamous and it's appallingly tasteless!   
  Don Edmunds and an incognito David Friedman (under the pseudonym Herman Trager) had a brilliant idea to take real life monster Ilse Koch: The Bitch of Buchenwald, a sadistic female Nazi and turn her into a man slaying, buxom Aryan superwoman with Russ Meyer sized tits, all filmed on the set of Hogans Heroes
I'm so happy I could shit!
   The original film, which is abysmally grim, launched Dyanne Thorne into cult superstardom, as the Ilsa saga continued up until the forth film! Ilsa-mania swept the nation for awhile (there was a spin-off flick by Jess Franco called Wanda The Wicked Warden). Thorne is frighteningly convincing and seems to relish every ounce of pain inflicted on her captives (maybe that's the reason no man can please her, she's so turned on by human suffering). The actress must have had a shit ton of fun because she risked never having a career again, once you play a sexy Nazi dominatrix, that's the final nail in your acting coffin. Years later she did show up as a crazed inmate in Hellhole with Mary Woronov, but it was a very minor role.
   She Wolf Of The SS begins with her taking out her sexual frustrations on a poor sap, who slept with her for a chance at freedom as she gleefully castrates him with a jagged surgery saw!!! Right away they establish what a heartless tyrant we're dealing with as she lies to her prisoners and takes on the false persona of a trust worthy doctor! Everything will be not be kosher over at the infamous "medical camp 9"! 

Two blonde assistants in jackboots follow her around and torture the prison girls, who all have ginormous mounds of pubic hair (one girl spazzes out when a nurse tries to shave it off)! Ilsa's crooked surgeon Binz is played by Back To The Future and They Live star, George "Buck" Flower. They split the camp up by sex (male and female) as Ilsa picks out various specimens in the men and infects half of the girls with disease carrying maggots. Kata (Nicolle Riddell) whose face is half sunken in and mutilated has a wicked case of syphilis (she looks like a 60's doll with Toxic Avenger syndrome courtesy of Joe Blasco's  superior make-up effects). 


Get me some industrial strength Clearacil!

   Blasco later opened up an over priced make-up school and created the look for Homey The Clown from In Living Color, among other things. The females suffer through some of the most grisly torture because at medical camp 9, all the "research" is apparently to prove how indestructible the women are (even though they all die slow painful deaths).
 The Ilsa sequels got increasingly more fun (if you can believe that!) as the Nazi elements faded into the background, the original really shoves the gulag sexploitation angle in your face and it's very depressing. All the "prisoners" are never separated by race, only sex which is kinda strange for a Nazi film, since none are rounded up into ethnic categories (these are some sort of gender prejudiced Nazis). 
   There's a beer soaked sweat drenched fuck-fest that's extremely unpleasant that segue ways into a hair-raising naked cat o' nine tails lashing (a male and female are beaten to death then strung up like cattle).
   The worst part about this film is how all the Third Reich antics have zero consequences since Ilsa and her wenches are the "good guys". I doubt I'm giving away any shocking spoilers here, but when she gets shot in the face at the end it's very unsatisfying, she of course returns for all the sequels.
   Ilsa chews up men then spits them out, and none of them can sexually satisfy her. Kata, the girl with syphilis whispers in an overly exaggerated way (she's my favorite character) as they plot their own escape.

Let me send you to Heaven before your own private Hell

The electrified dildo scene is completely ridiculous as each girl is put to the test. You're never allowed to become aroused by the girl's naked bodies, they are boiled, burned or covered in copious amounts of gore. Although if you are watching a Nazisploitation flick for a masturbatory advice you are most likely a serial killer.
   The reason Ilsa can't get off with any men is because she gets the most pleasure from blissfully torturing women (who all over shadow the male actors). The men in the film look like they were inserted from another movie and have the most wooden acting skills imaginable (one looks like a 70's mannequin). A Nazi officer with really rotten teeth, makes a special visit and asks if they are giving anesthetic to the ripped open women while operating and Ilsa replies "we don't give caviar to guinea pigs"! These scenes are some of the most repulsive and stomach churning (infected maggots and one girl's entire body is broken and battered, her eye is gouged out). The most demented and decadent scene is something out of Blood Sucking Freaks, as a girl is hung by her neck and left on a melting block of ice, as the fascists enjoy their dinner while she struggles.
After dinner like an Austrian R. Kelly, the Nazi visitor gets peed on by Ilsa and she makes a hilarious groaning face.
What kind of shampoo do you use Selsun Pink ?
   The prisoners actually get to retaliate and start slitting Nazi pig throats, in a pleasant turn of events! It's all for naught though and left a bad taste in my mouth, not that I didn't want them all to die-- but its just really executed in an unsatisfying sort of way, like the ending of Savage Streets where Linda Blair's testicles drop off and she whimpers around like a victim. In that film after shooting fatal arrows into the last punks knee caps, she could have finished the job but stalls and becomes weak. A better ending for me would be if they roasted all the Nazi's over a flaming pit and ate them with some sriracha then high-fived each other, as the credits roled over a paused gaggle of gleeful cannibal girls filling their bellies with human flesh! 
   Make it happen Rob Zombie once you're done boring us with Bullshit like Lords Of Salem and actually make Werewolf Women of The SS, you long haired hippie pansy!


Watch here
What deodorant do I use? Zklon BO of course

You're singing is magnificent, you've been selected for Auschwitz Idol



Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Unhinged

Unhinged Directed By Don Gronquist starring Janet Penner (1982).
This film is another example of how many terrible film makers were raking in barrels of cash, based solely on "being banned in the UK" for managing to get on the hypocritical "VIDEO NASTY" List. TOG prides itself on suffering through all the tortures of the damned (or watching shitty flicks in the Deep Red Catalog and the VN list, so that you don't have to)!
   I watched this completely sober and with no medicinal enhancement (I did lean on the fast foward mouse during scenes that were too dull to bare, did I cheat alittle during this review, maybe, but I had to see the big pay-off (which now that I think of it sort of stole from Paul Bartel's Private Parts)! The main psycho maniac's voice slows down in a transgendered way, you'll see what I mean if you attempt to watch it, just make sure you are sufficiently baked, don't make the same mistake I did! 


The Unhinged crew were most likely baked

   The score by Jonathan Newton is exceptionally freaky and kicks off this Psycho inspired, "Oedipus complex flick" off to a good start, it may be the only likable thing about this film. 
   A blonde hops in the shower and then hits the road with some other gals, who all chatter in a suggestive generic way, they are on their way to a concert. The synth heavy score follows the car around overhead (slightly reminding me of The Shining). They hit a ditch in the road during the rain and the screen blacks out, BANG, they all ended up in an accident! 
   The blond awakens to find two siblings (one named Norman and the other Marion) that look like rejects from The Waltons, they both fear their tyrannical mother. Everyone sounds like they are reading and all have monotone voices (the acting is one notch above The Room). The mother rants and makes everyone uncomfortable (like all certain family members you wouldn't mind if they dropped off the face of the earth)! I'm sticking this one out, because it's in the infamous catalog and it's so dreadful, that I can't turn it off!


My mouth is waking up, shoot me with more novocaine

   Before the girls go to bed, they have more forced, wooden dialogue about that evening and find a human tooth under the bed that creeps them out. The girl's emote to each other so unenthusiastically it looks like they were just given novocaine injections before filming.


My hair is trying to slither off my scalp!

One girl hears some heavy panting in the dark and says it sounds like a guy "doing himself"! A few minutes later they both hop in the shower as his yellow eyeball is seen warbling around through a peephole.
Get Off the course I'm trying to golf!

   The killer wears an outfit fashioned from trash bags and carries a giant sickle. I almost feel like Don Gronquist saw The Burning and decided to make his own ripoff (with the same Rick Wakeman-esque score) and gathered his terrible local theater acting troupe and put on a little slasher dinner play.
   The crazy grandma could act circles around Bea Arthur, and comes off like Laurence Olivier in this piece of shit, two bit slasher flick.

Eat your heart out Rue Maclanahan!
   Marion, the stuffy spinster sits the blonde girl down and mentions her brother Carl is the unhinged psycho path. They treat him like a stray dog and keep him outside, its all explained in the most self serving way possible over lots of tea.
   They spend five bucks on a rubber axe and a squib to achieve this cool hatchet in the forehead effect (this is the only gore scene in the entire "slasher" film)!!!

We spared no expense on these effects
   Unhinged is the kind of film that dares you to do some housework while it's on in the background and get menial chores finished while something, anything happens, it's that riveting!
Mary Whitehouse reminding you to clean your room while boring Video Nasty movies are on

Don't miss the ending because it's slightly interesting, but only slightly! There are lots of reviews of this film on other sites, the only reason being, was that it was apparently a video nasty!! What were Mary Whitehouse and her cronies smoking when they incriminated this stupid movie and gave it more attention! Then again that's the whole point of that hypocritical list. The whole she-bang was filmed in Portland so maybe someone will end up on Portlandia?  
Here's an interesting update on the director Don Gromquist . On a sort of unrelated note, The Angry Samoans have a cool song called "Unhinged". 
Completely worthless! Skip this and watch a better U-titled film like The Unseen!

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Gator Bait 2: Cajun Justice


Gatorbait 2: Cajun Justice, starring Jan Mackenzie, directed By Ferd and Beverley Sebastian (1988).
From The IMHO Dept. of Kris Gilpin

Somehow released on Paramount Home Video (in the States at least), this is an obvious direct-to-vid, quickie sequel (the video titles confirm this) of the Claudia Jennings sleaze classic, Gator Bait, made by the same team of Ferd & Beverly Sebastian. I suppose the reason for making part II 13 years after the original is because the Jennings (a beauty who has since died in a car accident) flick must have done well on video last year. Have the Sebastians done anything else between now and then and, if so, what?
Janit Baldwin in the original film

   It starts with a young Cajun man and his pretty blonde "city gal" getting hitched in the Bayou (no known name actress here; at least the first film had Janit (the laffable Ruby) Baldwin and Bill Thurman, an old fave of mine). Five Cajun scumbags crash the wedding, though as one of them had gotten his balls cut off Claudia before (she's the groom's sister). These scumbags manage to get drunk by guzzling light beer throughout the flick (real bad dudes, these guys are). Fisticuffs follows before before the couple take off in a boat, on the side of which someone has written "Pop that cherry!!" Since there're five of these fellows and since they're exceptionally obnoxious (the best kind of villains) I thought this might be a good revenge flick; sadly, it just aint so.


Carrot top with a twelve gauge

   Cajun teaches his busty bride how to shoot and fight during their honeymoon (never know when this'll come in handy) and its frivolities (she kicks him in the balls, then runs, saying "I'll kiss it and make it better"; later, they tilt up from the couple in bed to a tall-standing reed in the water outside their honeymoon shack, the Bayou Hilton). Eventually he goes out for some morning trout and the baddies snatch her and shoot him (while singing "What I did for love") when he returns. They tie him up for the water crabs to eat him, and take her (Angelique, played by Jan Mackenzie) in a boat to a woodsy area in the swamps, where four of them terrorize and rape her and one of them actually lets her go. It looks like there are a couple snipped seconds of skin and blood during the proceedings which, of course, makes no sense in a release like this; maybe they were just bad splices?
   At this point things get incredibly dragged out, and when the actresses and the editing cut around her nudity you know you've already been ripped off. Though they've made her get in a hot white corset the pace is Slow City, and it's ridin' the Fast Forward button from here on. She gets away, of course, and there's the same loose-shirt-in-the-wind shot in the film that Claudia made so memorable before, though here we're talkin' cleavage only (do I sound a bit perverted by now? Oh well, now you know). She drives back to the shack and grabs a rifle, the snake cage and a shovel (?); meanwhile, Hubby's body is missing--lunch for the crabs (gee, I wonder)? Now she's Instant Cajun Woman; eating,driving and dressing like a native as she goes back in the boat for the kill. The little blood that flows is poorly done; it's barely there when one scumbag (a simpleton names Geek, gets a bag of snakes over his head). And sometimes, when characters scream in each others faces and during fight/rape scenes, some shots are out of synch and focus. This production was so cheap that they didn't even spring for exploding squibs, they just cut to people with a little catsup on 'em.

I spilled marinara on my best t-shirt

   With little blood and no nudity (definite liabilities for a Gator Bait movie!), this sequel is a complete waste of time and money. I have wasted mine so that you might save yours (such a sacrificer)!

Monday, January 27, 2014

Aladdin


Aladdin (SuperFantagenio) Directed By Bruno Corbucci, starring Bud Spencer (1986).
 When I first moved to Florida, my dad rented this Italian kiddie flick (I was 11 and my father looks like Bud Spencer, the Genie in this flick)! Before I revisited it, all the fuzzy memories I had of it were that the Genie seemed to play piano at a strip club during the finally and that jaunty sing-songy theme would resurface sometimes in my brain. 
   In the early 80's there were a lot of questionable kiddie flicks taking up space on the shelves for unsuspecting kids to have their minds warped by, like this and euro/anglicized beloved favorites like the Swedish Pippi Longstocking series and maybe some Mexican/overdubbed K. Gordon Murray tapes. I always saw a pattern between these and my fate with the Italian/Euro dubbed flicks that I hold so dear.
   This kind of connection between weird dubbed cult movies doesn't happen to kids now-a-days, it could only exist in the 80's where you'd have entire families renting Mondo movies along with the mainstream fair (I guess it's all done in secret on the internet now). 
It's half coincidence and something larger, why else would these films play such a role through-out my adolescence and follow me even now (I can't explain it), but I'm grateful. 
   When I saw Fulci's Zombie accidentally on video at my friend John's house, I wouldn't dare tell anyone what disturbing fictional atrocities I saw that day (but I was captivated). The cavalcade of Fulci crew members and actors are all present in Aladdin (or SuperFantagenio), we've got Fabio Frizzi, Dardano Sachetti, Two actors from Gates Of Hell; Janet Agren and the guy who plunges a drill through John Morghen's skull, Luca Venantini.
   It's a strange coincidence that all of the major dunderheads from Pastaland have consistently followed me around through-out my life and I can appreciate them, while others just shake their heads in shame and embarrassment. I had no idea that anyone from the Fulci lore was in this film at the time, until I revisited it, but it all makes sense now.
   So is Aladdin any good? Does it really matter? It's pretty terrible and can only be understood by TOG readers, who know what to expect from the marinara dumpster full of rancid meatballs and moldy lingini: top notch entertainment! 
   They used real Miami locations and even poke fun at how Florida is a gangster ridden, lawless, humid tourist trap that anyone with a shred of sanity must escape from! 
   A kid who's named Al Haddin (Luca Venantini), works at a shop called "Tony Buys It!" discovers the lamp and out pops a soggy, bloated Bud Spencer and some of the worst chroma-keyed in special effects this side of Macfatter Vocational School! 


dead mobsters are dropping like gambino flies

They make it seem like all the citizens in Miami are either drunks or in organized crime (one guy is thrown from a window for failing to pay mobsters and lands on the Genie's flying car)! Grampa Haddin (Julian Voloshin) is constantly drunk and resembles a real life Miami Golem, I warned you in that films review that they are lurking about in Florida delicatessens. 
Frodo's a fuckin bum!
According to this version of the Genie mythos, you have unlimited wishes and they get overly abused! Right from the get-go, the kid tells the genie to become invisible and visible like 50 times in a row! He's constantly getting arrested and there's all kinds of stupid police that are befuddled that he has no fingerprints! 
I taught Michael Winslow how to do sound effects


This was all directed by Bruno Corbucci, the man behind some of the grisliest westerns like Django and The Great Silence (later stolen for Tarantino's hack-job Django Unchained). Janet Agren plays Jane Haddin, little Al's mom and she looks pretty stunning in this role (I'm used to seeing her chasing cannibals or dodging maggots, with her sharp cheekbones jutting out)!
   If you didn't have a similar circumstance like I did, where it was your destiny to make sense out of every terrible or genius film involving Italian gore actors than skip it. I had to get this one out of my system, it had been hanging around my neck like a dead weight for years. I used to have all this respect for the screenwriter of Zombie and many of the best Fulci flicks, but after finding out he wrote this and Devil Fish, I'm not so sure. 
Recommended For Italian Horror Actor Completists Only


Official "I'm The Genie" hats on sale at Florida Salvation Army's

This grape soda is making my tummy erupt farts


Fats Geronimo's replacement for the new Rock-A-Fire Explosion

    

 The Story of Aladdin Theater of Gut's Style

 

Friday, January 24, 2014

Killing American Style



-Reviewed by Skunkape-
Directed by Amir Shervan (1990)


Probably the Top Three "best worst" movies most widely known are Troll 2, The Room, and Birdemic. Not quite as popular but rising fast is Miami Connection and the epic disaster Samurai Cop from Iranian director Amir Shervan. Well luckily for fans of the actionsploitation Samurai Cop another classic will be coming to DVD from this middle east maestro February 2014. It's Killing American Style!

First we meet Lynch ( John Lynch) , a beefcake giving auditions to wannabe strippers looking to work in his sleazy adult bar. While having an interview with one of the gals and by interview I mean he's about to fuck her in a dressing room, he gets interrupted by Tony Stone, fellow bad guy and business partner played by Rob Z'Dar. Tony gives Lynch the Intel on a robbery in the works so they assemble their team of thugs. This film's structure is very unusual. No hero or real main character is even introduced until about thirty minutes into the film. We watch Tony and Lynch botch the robbery, get caught by the fuzz, and then rescued while being transported by bus to prison. Tony's brother dresses in drag and plays "the damsel in distress" to get the prison bus to stop.(It's like something out of a Bugs Bunny Cartoon) The brother is shot and badly wounded but all escape to freedom.

Trailer Trash

"Where's Joe Estevez?"


They flee to a mansion/ranch where we finally meet the rest of the cast who are terrorized by the lowlifes. The hero of the film is John Morghen( No not Mr. Giovanni Lombardo Radice) actor Harold Diamond. He becomes a hostage along with his wife, son, and his wife's sister.

Harold Diamond or Harold Cubic Zirconia?

"Only my friends can call me "the Face"!


John (Diamond) is forced to kidnap a doctor that his wife's sister knows to help save Tony's dying bro. Enter the Timid Dragon, Dr. Fuji who's tricked into coming over. The doctor begins to panic as soon as he gets in the car since John's reckless driving gets them into a police chase. Luckily they succeed in losing the incompetent cops. We do find out later that Dr. Fuji does have some balls, after Tony insults his wife and calls him a gook (oh my) Fuji bitch slaps him and would rather take a bullet through the mouth than apologize.

Don't mess with the Fuji!


Highlights include a fighting match between John and another parent at his son's martial arts school, a hilarious screaming goon who gets lit on fire, and police LT. Jim Brown( I can't believe I haven't mentioned him yet) getting propositioned by a bunch of whores while investing a brothel. Another scene I have to mention is when Lynch rapes John's wife. This lady, hostage to four psychopaths actually thinks it's a good idea to take a bath. Seriously! What more of invitation would a hoodlum need to get his rocks off? More important it gives Lynch the opportunity to deliver the line, "One scream and I'll make this a Bloodbath."

The Skull Cracker's an illegal move!

I fell in a burning Ring of Fire.

"Sorry ladies my bunions are killing me."

"Want to see my rubber ducky?"


9/10 on the CULT-O-METER
I think if you compare this film to Shervan's Samurai Cop, Samurai wins due to its use of more locations and its cop buddy formula. Killing American Style is still a great deal of fun and there is plenty to laugh at. Having Robert Z'Dar is always a major plus in your bad action film, he has the power to make boring scenes interesting with his over the top performances and his jaw alone! To bad he's missing from that other Shervan production Hollywood Cop.


Check out some amazing clips in our TOG tribute trailer!



Thursday, January 23, 2014

Taxidermia


Taxidermia  Directed By George Paulson (or Gyorgy Pailfi) starring Gergely Trocsanyl (2006).
This entry is a special request from someone who works at my favorite cheese shop, they know about good movies and awesome dairy products.
   There are many scenes in this film of Hungarian symbolism drawn from their own society and history that make no sense to us Westerners. However, we can easily overlook them and still understand what's happening. This is one of the first Hungarian horror films that we've ever reviewed and like Serbia, there is a political slant to the violence and disgusting imagery, which gives it a lot more depth then usual. The whole political context about Taxidermia is referenced in European Nightmares: Horror Cinema In Europe since 1945 by Patricia Allmer, Emily Brick and David Huxley. I never heard of director Gyorgy Pailifi before this film and he's very talented, not unlike a combination of Cronenberg and Jean-Pierre Jeunet.  
spicy hot link, get' em while they're flamin!
   It begins with Morosgovanyi (Csaba Czene), a man with a hairlip, who miraculously achieves a flaming orgasm (or perhaps just the tip is ignited, at any rate this guy would make buckets of cash as a street performer)! He is a soldier stationed on a farm run by a cruel lieutenant who philosophies about the word "cunt" (which in his language sounds like he's saying peanut).
   The cinematography is masterful and the landscape and revolving shot of a bathtub is inspired! People on the IMBD message board are bickering about what really went on in this film, ignoring the symbolism and worrying if the vomiting will make them throw-up, their comments remind me of that Kids In The Hall sketch, where people in an office almost puke over talking about someone licking a stamp!
  
That IMDB message board darn near made me puke!
Morosgovanyi sleeps in a barn and has all kinds of sexual hangups (his dick gets pecked by a rooster, while trying to masturbate over two girls in an innocent snowfight). He envisions himself in a pop-up book of Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Match Girl, like a pervy Gumby, and he ejaculates into the stratosphere (as it whirls up into the stars)! 
Directly after, we are hurled into a genuine slaughter of a large pig, as its stomach is stabbed open and face is chopped into bits. He fantasizes about two women as he humps an enormous mound of pig entrails and is shot in the brain by his commanding officer.


Porkins Playboy centerfold

   Next we meet Kalman (Gergo Trocsani), a shrieking baby born with a tail, that gets immediately snipped off by his papa, possibly to erase any notion that it was spawned by the previous character's unsavory methods. They used a real pig's tail to achieve the ghastly effect that looks uncomfortably real. The tail symbolizes that he is the offspring of Morosgovanyi (unconsciously of course, because last I heard no babies were ever born out of a sexual encounter with a bath full of pig guts)! He grows up to be an obese bastard with a pompadour not unlike Huey from the Lemon Popsicle series, haunched over a trough slopping soup into his pudgy maw in an eating contest. The gruesome contest is an allegory for socialism in Hungarian history called "Goulash communism". All the tremendous gentlemen vomit in a line after the winner is selected, but I guess we all lose in this case.


But Crank, you forgot to mention what a glorious lounge singer I am!

   The nightmarish inhuman contest continues as men gorge on blocks of horse sausage meat. After a spoon swallowing accident Kalman gets the advantage, because an attractive chubby girl named Gizi (Adel Stanczel) comes to his aide and visits him at the hospital. The symbol of their blossoming romance is illustrated by a single drop of her armpit sweat landing under his eyelid.



This corn is delicious

   Nothing goes as planned (this film has a grim existential slant to it). According to Taxidermia there are factories where children are trained as champion eaters conditioned to become lifers in the eating then puking profession that's an Olympic sized sport. Gizi and Kalman's romance is very sweet and endearing, possibly the least revolting section of the film. 

No I'm not related to Dobby the house elf

   And now for the final vignette, which is actually about the Taxidermist, a creepy blonde fellow named Lajos (Marc Bischoff) who's features look like a cross between Dobby the house elf and the singer of Radiohead
   He's the caretaker of his father Kalman, now a gelatinous fat man who looks like Benjamin Franklin and Jabba the Hutt, he eats chocolate bars with the silver wrapper still on them.
BenjamifranklinHutt

 Gizi has abandoned her family and is seen on T.V. as a judge in the continued eating contests as her ex husband miserably laments on his former glory, this long running sport reminds me of how American Idol is horrendously still on the air. 
 Lajos, the taxidermist, buys food for his father and his ginormous cats, he has a crush on a cashier that never notices him. His father is gut punctured by one of the hungry cats and his son finds him dead, after coming home from the market. According to Steve Shaviro's essay on the film, " Lajo's profession of preserving dead bodies seems like a reducto ad absurdum of the commodity fetishism that drives a capitalist economy". During the grisly climax he stuffs his father and decapitates himself in a nifty suicide machine, which lops off his own head, turning their deaths into works of art to be preserved in a museum. I like the notion that two inhumanly beast-ish fellows can be preserved as works of performance art for the masses to enjoy, in a cryptic way, its kind of nice (and I'm sure it means something insidious that flew over my head in a metaphor, wait let me consult my Taxidermia cliff notes)!

Hey you got guts on my chocolate bars!

 According to Shaviro's essay on Taxidermia, "Body Horror and Post-Socialist Cinema", each character can be broken down into the messages they represent Morosgovanyi is Fascism/ War; Kalman is Socialism/ Sports and Lajos is Capitalism/Art. Like I said though, you don't need to stop what you're doing and read the cliff notes to enjoy the film, which I did immensely and its hard to believe a film this bizarre escaped me for that long. 
Highly Recommended!  

If there's hell below we're all gonna be showcased at a Eurotrash fashion museum


Tuesday, January 21, 2014

Black Sheep


BLACK SHEEP (2006, dir. Jonathan King)
Review By Goat Scrote
This ridiculously gory splatter flick is my all-time favorite killer animal movie. It’s a funny, scary, blood-soaked journey through the world of sheep-farming, New-Zealand-style. There are ten sheep in New Zealand for each human, so sheep rebellion would be very baa-aah-ad! Sorry, had to get that out of my system right away. “Black Sheep” is very much in the style of early Peter Jackson gross-out horror-comedy (“splatstick”) with deliriously fun effects by Jackson’s WETA Workshop. It’s all latex and puppets and makeup and slime, and almost entirely CGI-free. The movie freely borrows elements from werewolf and zombie movies, and isn’t at all shy about showing off its influences. There’s at least one scene that directly references the granddaddy of all animal-attack horror movies, “The Birds”, and a climactic transformation sequence that’s a tribute to “An American Werewolf in London”.
this is my RAPE FACE!
   The main character in this whole affair is Henry Oldfield, who grew up on a rural sheep farm. Henry's older brother Angus blossomed into creep-hood at a young age. He axe-murders Henry’s prized sheep Dudley and wears pieces of the carcass to terrorize his kid brother. This charming family moment is interrupted by the news that their father has died in an accident. Cut to fifteen years later, and grown-up Henry (Nathan Meister) is a serious neurotic with a crippling phobia of sheep. He has returned home because “my therapist told me to” and because Angus (Peter Feeney), who has grown up into an oily jerk, is buying out Henry’s share of the family farm.

Leatherface: The Early Years

   Meanwhile, radical activists "liberate" some biological waste from a lab which is performing genetic engineering experiments on animals. "This isn't going to turn out like the salmon farm, is it Grant?" asks the earnest idealist, Experience (Danielle Mason). "Hey! Those fish died free," goony eco-saboteur Grant (Oliver Driver) replies. The waste canister turns out to contain a lamb fetus pickled in green goo. When spectacularly clumsy Grant breaks the container, the fetus turns out to be very much alive, and... carnivorous!!! Grant gets a chunk taken out of his face but manages to escape. He wanders the countryside, delirious and gradually transforming into a wooly-soft were-sheep with an uncontrollable hunger for raw flesh. His natural human urge to eat the heads off chocolate bunnies is perverted into the urge to eat the bloody wriggling heads off real bunnies. The nasty little mutant fetus escapes too, and when it meets another sheep and bites it on the nose the contagion starts to spread rapidly through the livestock.

you bawl like the baby in Eraserhead

   Experience encounters Henry and his friend Tucker (Tammy Davis), a good-natured New Zealand country boy, in the woods. At first she thinks they have something to do with the lab and holds them at gunpoint… the scene where Tucker tricks Experience into returning his rifle cracks me up every time, they play it so perfectly. The mismatched trio soon meets a killer sheep and a human victim. The very talented Tucker fistfights a killer sheep while driving a truck at the same time, but gets his foot chomped on. The human passengers abandon ship when the sheep carjacker drives their truck off a cliff. They have to trek across the beautiful, rolling, sheep-covered hills on foot now…. Or on hoof, in poor Tucker’s case, as he has already begun to change! Elsewhere, Angus has a run-in with the rapidly-mutating ex-vegetarian Grant, and receives the bite of the were-sheep as well.

which way to the Furry convention?

   It’s revealed that Angus is responsible for all this reckless genetic tampering, so Henry, Experience, and Tucker investigate the lab directly. They find hideously sadistic experiments in progress. Angus and his pet scientists get their hands on Tucker to study the effects of the sheep bite. Experience and Henry make a run for it and are driven by a horde of mutant sheep into a gruesome offal pit, full of sheep guts and nice things like that. Luckily there is a network of catacombs under the farm that allows them to escape, and they discover that the mutant sheep have a weakness to fire… they go up like tinder! If you’ve ever been around them you may have discovered that sheep are actually quite difficult to ignite, but mad-science sheep? All bets are off when you fuck with Mother Nature, I guess! Back at the farm, Henry and Experience have a brief encounter with Grant when they follow the sound of shears and discover a towering fluffy brute of a were-sheep, grooming himself. (Best. Fursuit. Ever. Actually, it’s a giant puppet operated by a handful of people, but the giant carnivorous sheep-monster would still make a great Halloween costume.) 
   Angus goes ahead with his press conference and unveils the product he and his scientists have been working on, a superior breed of sheep. The bleating of the gengineered ewe calls a horde of killer sheep which sweep down out of the hills in a frenzy and rip everyone to pieces. This is the bloodiest sequence in the movie as the sheep mangle, munch, and mutilate their way through the crowd in gruesomely entertaining ways. They don’t bother Angus, however… he is becoming one of them. The cold-blooded head scientist, Dr. Rush (Tandi Wright) makes a cure out of sheep amniotic fluid that reverses Tucker’s transformation. On her way to deliver the cure to Angus, she gets munched by her own science projects.
I wanna hold your hoof

   Henry and Patience are rescued by kindly old Mrs. Mac (Glenis Levestam), who seems to adapt pretty well to apocalyptic conditions. The Grant-monster comes crashing into the kitchen and the heroes discover another weakness… mint sauce burns the mutant sheep like holy water. Ha! Experience uses her knowledge of acupressure to take down Grant without hurting him, sort of the hippie version of the Vulcan nerve pinch. The farmhouse is surrounded by a horde of sheep, with several nods to “Night of the Living Dead”. Angus and his prize genetically-engineered ewe are also in the house, and it becomes obvious that the two share a very… intimate… relationship. In fact, Angus’s DNA was merged with that of a sheep to create the new strain, including his special lady, which means it’s incest too!

I eat organic, free range human. it's more ethical.
   The survivors are way too freaked out to cope with these family revelations, so they get the hell out. Henry is bitten in the scuffle and afterward he finally goes into hero mode -- or maybe it’s just that mutant-sheep aggression showing up early! Henry stays to stop Angus, while Experience and Mrs. Mac go on a sheep-killing spree with the farm truck and a shotgun. Henry wears a sheepskin to try to sneak through the flock and has to deal with an overly-romantic ram (who gets stabbed in the balls). The sheep don’t attack, though, as the contagion from the bite spreads through his system.

Fisting: you're doing it wrong!

   Angus is about to board his small plane and escape with his ewe, but his transformation accelerates before he can get airborne. Henry and were-sheep Angus face off, and the sheepdog helps Henry save the day by herding Angus into the propeller of his own plane. Even that isn’t enough to stop the big mutant brute, but Tucker shows up with a healthy supply of the antidote and regular-human-Angus isn’t quite as tough. The dog (the real hero of the film?) gets all of the mutant sheep corralled in a jiffy. Horribly-mangled Angus makes one more appearance and tries to rejoin his lady love, but he’s no longer recognized as part of the flock and gets his dick bitten off. The sheep are awfully, awfully gassy from all that rich human flesh they’ve been eating, so a little bit of fire ignites all the trapped methane and blows up the entire enclosure! The surviving sheep-people are gathered up and given the antidote, and everything seems neatly wrapped up in a tidy package… until the dog starts bleating like a sheep. Nooooo… what has science done!!

Well GOOOOLLYYYYYY!!!!!

   While I’m on the subject of sheep movies, there’s another killer mutant man-sheep film out there (yes, really) called “Godmonster of Indian Flats”, which is mainly worth checking out for fans of MST3K-worthy super-cheesy sixties cinema (which was also directed by the same guy who directed Alabama's Ghost, ed). For a more high falutin’ brand of ovine cinema, I liked the unusual, understated documentary “Sweetgrass” (if you want a genuine picture of what it’s like driving sheep across Montana) and the surreal, satirical Buñuel oddity “The Exterminating Angel” (if you’ve always been curious what it’s like when your mind gets folded into the shape of a Klein bottle and, inexplicably, sheep start to pour out of it).

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