The Lift

The Lift Directed By Dick Maas starring bunch of chuckleheads (1983).

By all logic and reason a killer elevator movie should be as criminally inept as a bed that skeletonizes it’s victims aka Death Bed: the Bed That Eats People, but for some reason I was totally entranced in this movie. Maybe it’s the euro trash stink and irresistible dubbed weirdness, not sure but I am way into it. I remember an early issue the Fangoria I saw a review for this 1983 flick from the ubiquitous Dr. Cyclops, which could've been any writer under that alias. I've been meaning to check it out ever since. 

Damien in the Omen part 2 used his demonic brain powers to control an elevator and make it slice up Meshach Taylor, the flamboyant fellow from Manniquin one and part two respectively, into bite-size pieces. The Lift has an elevator with a mind of its own and murders anyone who innocently steps on.

Felix (Huub Stapel) the elevator handyman seems like a bad parent. Dick Maas (which sounds like a Gay Pride Xmas celebration), the director who made this film has one of those phobias that Lucy from Charlie Brown would diagnose and really he must enjoy seeing people fall to their  death from the result of an elevator crash.

Everyone in this movie is seriously unlikable it’s like a virtual forrest of all ugly branches.

I’m expecting people from the White House to show up any minute and excuse the elevator for the death toll.

During the hilarious decapitation scene, the head mouths something as it plummets to the bottom. I know my friend Rob Fletcher should include it on his next severed head celebration post on FB.

The factory that Felix works at reminds me of that Rainer Werner Fassbinder film Fox and His Friends. It’s all very German or possibly Dutch at least they don’t pretend like it’s US.

In 1983 a cinema snob had waay more options on films to watch, so I’m glad I waited this long to see this film. I always think about how I could go into one theater and see Return of the Jedi the same year this came out and another theater and see something better that’s why it pays to wait it out sometimes. 
Felix at one point rolls a cigarette like an old Timey cowboy or maybe it's a joint, who knows? He gets pretty close with this one attractive reporter though and it upsets his wife.

The weirdest part of the movie has nothing to do with an elevator. When the science guy goes into detail all about computer chips, it reminded me of once again of Idiocracy where in the future you have to be set up with the barcode or remain scannable.

The pacing gets really slow and not very rewarding but stick it out anyway. I was yelling just die already like Elaine did during the forced viewing of the English patient, maybe you will too there’s something to look forward to!

HIGHLY AND BEGRUDGINGLY RECOMMENDED.

In Harry Canyon voice: when she looked at me like that sheesh!

Please don't hurt me Mr. Elevator.

Because of the Cats

BECAUSE OF THE CATS ( Brutalization, THE RAPE) Directed By Fons Rademakers, Starring  (1973)

Skunkape and I rented some random big box video and a trailer for this particular film came on, in a drunken stupor, we both jumped up and said what the fuck is that, I must watch it!

Maybe it was the stupid title that distracted our attention, we're more Laura Gemser and less Sylvia Krystal fans. From the trailer I couldn't tell what kind of film I was in store for and I sort of forgot about it for a long time.

   Well, thanks to someone on Youtube, I'm able to finally watch this Mod sex / Clockwork Orange clone. Everything about it is naughty "After Dark eurotrash" and it was filmed in The Netherlands. 

   An ear slapping rock number joyfully blares on the soundtrack, it goes "Everybodies feeling, everybody's dealin', cuz tonight's gonna be the night"! The title track which sounds a lot like The Sweet, doesn't really set the mood at all, because it's clunky and way too excited about what depravity is about to unfold. The song is even on a NEDERGLAM compilation, which is a musical subgenre that's totally alien to me. I'd prefer to listen to a 60's dutch beat compilation with The Outsiders than peppy glam bubblegum. 

   Apparently tonight is the night for rape and vicious assault, perpetuated by a gang of creeps who resemble The Mentors (or The Rip Offs) if they dressed for a fancy prime rib dinner.

Oh, Why did I call The White Buns Busters?!!

   Bob the slob's very sexy wife is gangbanged by all the blokes, it's handled in an erotic way, unlike the uncompromising ghastly way the rape is shown with Alex and his Droogs-- nothing can top that stomach turning display.  

   We see the street thugs later in jeans and t-shirts target practicing on cans of Stella Artois (fucking snobs)! 

Lager for Twats Only!

   The story settles into a subplot about a British vice cop named Van der Valk played by Bryan Marshal (BMX Bandits, The Punisher), who we get the unfortunate treat of seeing his wedding tackle, as he cavorts with a blonde prostitute. 

YAWN! I'm so bored

   There's a fascinating scene in an "Ice Cream Disco" with kids playing pinball, it turns out to be the gang's hideout, they have a pet raven that says "Squawk, Look out it's a cop"! This is where the detective puts all the pieces together on who the thug rapists are. Most of them turn out to be blue blood twerps (the hoity toity beer can target scene should've been the red flag, that these masked dudes are rich and love to smash things). None of these Dutch dudes have any presence and the set at times, kind of looks like 60's Batman. Even when it gets slightly tedious, the production design makes it bearable. 

They don't call us "Rape-Rock" for Nuthin'

   The cop starts illegally questioning various kids about "The Cats" and the rape of a 40 yr old woman, it's sort of odd that he would risk his job in order to take down an entire gang because of this assault, but that's the premise here. I've never read the novel but it seems that in swinging London (or The Netherlands) adults were threatened by this new breed of mod hooligans. They slightly had reason to worry because eventually Mods would become either Skinheads or leave the scene all together, forced out by nationalist politics.  

   The jazzy incidental music in CATS sounds like an intermission time snack bar jingle, it's abnormally square for a 70's film. The Ice cream disco manager is a lurid Nedercreep who dresses all in beige, once he gets wise that gang members have begun to squeal, bad shit starts to go down, like a poor mutilated cat who gets disemboweled.

insert Austin Powers joke here

   It's difficult for me to side with the policeman, because in the "Charles Bronson fantasy scenario" the punks are there to rape and kill without remorse and the old codger exterminates them, but he's usually involved on a personal level, psychotic and has a grippe against these kids. The cop in this film is jealous of the youth and should just let it go, he stirs up too much trouble for one single rape. We hardly even see what the victimized couple from the beginning are up to, who he goes completely out of his way to protect, making it his "generation gap vendetta" against The Cats, which is kind of stupid! 

   Silvia Krystal finally shows up as one of the girls who swims naked and drowns one of the gang members, who had just received scuba gear for his birthday.    

 This film doesn't have the brain power of a Clockwork Orange, so they hurl whatever political ideology the gang has into a ridiculous kung-fu training montage. They even sacrifice another cat! 

 The momentum is a total drag, but there's enough eye candy and strangeness to keep it mildly entertaining. 

I'd give it 2 STARS ON THE CULT-O-METER, nothing special. 

WATCH HERE

OK turn to the left, here are your driver's licenses

INAGADAADD-DA-VID-A BABBAAAYYYY

   

The Johnsons

The Johnsons Directed by Rolf Van Der Berg. (1992)
It starts off with the volcanic looking inside view of a c-section birth, seven mutated brothers are delivered. The sleep deprived doctor puts on a magic ring and stops off at the side of the road, then goes into a pond and smears his face with yellow excrement. He yells incantations at the moon as a sinister bubble baby (or Xangadix) rises from a pool of flames. A female journalist's daughter Emalee Lucas is having blood drenched nightmares about seven bald mutant children as they paint fetus' on the walls. She has yet to get her period (I'm only referencing this because they keep bringing it up and there's a stupid dance number where she drops a tampon into a glass of water).
     Later on Professor Keller a leading expert on demonology sees a film strip with clay masked natives. The same natives visit the daughter again in a dream and gang rape her. Keller is told by a detective that the mutant children from the beginning are psychopaths that went on a murder spree and have to be stopped, they are all now 21. Chas Balun really oversold this Dutch train wreck, which had three people writing it (one being Street Trash director Roy Frumkes) and it doesn't really add up to anything all that cohesive. Skunkape kept warning me not to bother, but I had to check it out for myself. The seven brothers end up in a Super Max style prison, they attack a prison guard and refuse to speak thier only form of communication is to paint those pesky fetus's on the wall in human blood. Read about the behind the scenes randomness on The Temple Of Shock blog
it doesn't seem like it was supposed to be this confusing! 
      It's kind of a shame because there are some decent camera shots and gore scenes (but they are wasted on this clunky mess)!
      There's is tons of padding (Ha! get it Pad?) and the mother and daughter go camping almost like in a Maxi pad commercial! The seven brothers are related to Emalee and plan on having an incest baby with her that will destroy the world! The head chopping,bath fighting,electric knife wielding mayhem doesn't start till the last forty minutes and you don't really need to sit through all the b-movie chatter, just fast forward up to that point. Luckily the brothers show up one by one and can easily be dispatched by a teenage girl (did they really need to be in a maximum security prison then)? The evil baby is more pathetic then a soggy cabbage patch doll and The Manitou would pummel it in a fight! 

WATCH THIS JUNK HERE