A Zed & Two Noughts

A Zed & Two Noughts Directed By Peter Greenaway, starring Frances Barber (1985).

Reviewed By Kris Gilpin

After Peter Greenaway's first major film (The Draughtsman's Contract, shot on 16mm), his second feature was 1985's 35mm A Zed & Two Noughts (aka ZOO), a fittingly morbid rumination on death and decay.

It begins with the deaths of two women in a car crash, wives of zoologists (though I never saw any guests visiting the zoo throughout the film) who then become obsessed with the deaths and death in general ("I can't stand the thought of her rotting away!" "The wives of two zoologists die in a car driven by a woman named Buick, after being attacked by a swan on Swan's Way?!"). They later shoot time-lapse films of dead fish, dogs, crocodiles, swans (a swan caused the deadly car crash), etc. rotting away, while also watching old documentary footage on the origins of life.

OK, Now according to Little Black Sambo, if you run fast enough, I should have some delicious butter for my pancakes

This film features Greenaway's frank use of full male and female nudity (as with his The Baby of Macon, Prospero's Books, etc. Over 30 years later, Hollytrite still doesn't have the maturity to make films like this!), including the sexy Frances Barber as Venus de Milo, who's kind of like the zoo's resident hooker (?). There are also running references to symmetry: the brothers are twins named Deuce, played by real-life twin actors, the two late wives, pairs of amputated legs, twin newborns.

Alright now just poop toward the middle so I can tie them in a knot

Using very few close-ups, Greenaway's beauty photography (his D.P. is Sacha [Greenaway's 8 1/2 Women, The Pillow Book, and Drowning by Numbers] Vierny) utilizes lots of colorful tracking shots. And P.G.'s straight ahead focal point, head-on shots and busy frames always reminded me of Kubrick's camera-image style, though Peter G. offers long takes of smart, humorous, "exaggeratedly realistic" dialogue here, too.

And the lighting in ZOO (a Zed & 2 Naughts--get it? ;-) they based on the painting style of Vermeer. Together they came up with 26 different ways of lighting their scenes, using moonlight, candles, flashing light bulbs, car headlights, starlight, etc.

The beauty music is by Greenaway regular Michael Nyman, whose catchy keyboard-based, repetitious, almost meditative musical themes remind me of my beloved early Philip Glass pieces. Nyman also worked with the director on other films, including the great Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover. A separate song which also reoccurs in the film is the kid's classic, "The Teddy Bear's Picnic." (!)

ZOO was narrated by David Attenborough (ha), who would later go on to narrate tons of popular British TV series. It is a slow-paced but always fascinating, offbeat film and well worth seeing, as is all of Peter Greenaway's best work...

I beat off to that decomposing animal footage and then used it to clone dinosaurs!

Images

Images Directed By Robert Altman, Starring Susannah York (1972).

Here at the TOG coven we like to branch out arthouse independent style and get snobby, I mean as I've mentioned before in the realm of Deep Red, Herzog and Deodato are connected, that's just how it goes-- accept it. I mean yeah, one auteur has mellowed out considerably and just made one of the soft-balliest documentaries about the Internet that I've ever seen in my life and the Italian grampa is doing his version of Wal-Mart greeter, but whattya want anyhow? People get old and their brain deteriorates, it's even happening to me and I'm only 40.

This film has been on my radar ever since I saw 3 Women, loved it and wondered if Altman was capable of pulling off a decent horror film. I got what I wanted out of this one and more, it’s a thoroughly fascinating psychological horror drama that scared this shit outta me at 2 in the am! I suggest you watch it during the day or don’t hang with The Rutles at one of those fancy tea parties while it's on.

it's all there in black & white clear as crystal, legalize fizzy lifting drinks!

Almost everything about it shouldn’t be frightening at all, like the fictional realm of unicorns, seeing yourself naked holding a cute dog, Rene Auberjonois, the guy from Benson/ Deep Space Nine and most effective of all John Williams and Stomu Yamashta's music. When has E.T. or Yoda’s main fanciful music dealer ever accomplished the fear and dread that permeates this tale of a woman’s rapidly dissipating sanity. Sometimes the score gets frenetic and reminds me of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre one, with the terrifying clanging and banging.

It begins with Susannah York’s character babbling about unicorns and bullshit and she’s abruptly interrupted by what sounds like her own voice on the phone. York played Superman's mother in the first two films and won an academy award for They Shoot Horses Don't They and even best actress for this film, tragically she died of bone marrow cancer at 72. 

There’s an undercurrent of Lynchian mindfuckery that just made my skin crawl and it seems to have slightly influenced Lost Highway, years later when Robert Blake’s ghostly figure tells Bill Pullman's character to call his house to see if he's on the phone.

call 555 SLUT, I hear she puts out

The whole film is really unsettling and makes you anxious (and I’m on all kinds of meds so this film isn’t good for me)! This film was never in Deep Red Magazine, but just like The Beguiled, it has a heavy amount of eeriness hidden in an unassuming way and that film was covered before in a chapter by Steve Bissette. It has this foreboding dread like Don't Look Now, which I think would make a snazzy double feature.

thanks Bravo's 100 scariest moments for ruining this ending and fuck you Andy Cohen.

Cathryn rolls down a beautifully lush hill, the location is a majestic and yet dreary Ireland, as the camera focuses in on a dangling ornament on the rearview mirror, she drives forward completely asleep at the wheel. That image seems to deliberately nail it—right? I mean the car is driving but no one is behind the wheel, it's like a beautifully shot pun.

I hate when my Uber driver nods off

The spooky French man played by French Connection actor Marcel Bozzuffi who haunts her, often transforms out of her husband mid conversation or once while they’re kissing. Is he real, a former boyfriend or a figment of her eroding sanity, this figure does mention that he’s a ghost and she attempts to kill him a few times. I love when she hits him in the forehead with a rock (it looked uncomfortably real to me) and he bleeds all over the kitchen.

The last film that creeped me out this way was The Entity, which always makes me uneasy and weirded out. The moments when Hershey’s character resigns to the fact that this paranormal force will never leave her side and can’t be stopped or trapped left me with a cold unnerving feeling. Another level of madness that's very subtle is that the actors and characters names are switched around, for instance Cathryn is the real name of the little girl who plays Susanna (and Susannah is called Cathryn in the film). Altman seems to wanna drive me crazy with that sentence!

you think that's distressing, here Dr. Phil is wearing an Altman mask!

One character, named Marcel who’s a supposed friend of her husband is a lecherous rapist and constantly paws at Catherine. Often you can tell when her hallucinogenic madness gets to more of a boiling point because the music gets scarier and the mysterious French man leers behind the people that are physically there. At certain moments it’s hard to tell which one is really there or if it's an image from her mind. It's never revealed until the end but your brain starts to connect the dots. You can never really trust what’s happening and it makes you suspicious of everything--it made me incredibly anxious. The book "In Search of Unicorns" was published on its own, wouldn’t that be great if some kid at a thrift store got a hold of it and wanted to see if there was a movie and involuntarily delved into the world of arthouse Criterion snobby shit via Altman? Let's hope that actually happens. There are many theories as to what occurs and which metaphors are present or invented but those are usually a drag to read. I suggest you don’t listen to what the critics have to say before hand and go in with zero expectations. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

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Panic Beats

Panic Beats (Latidos de panico,Frantic Heartbeat, Nightmare House), starring and directed by Paul Naschy (1983).

Be forewarned, there are zero werewolves in this movie, so very sensitive readers with a lychanthro-fetish may leave the auditorium at this time!

Are they gone, OK on with the review. I'm as shocked as you are that I seriously dug this film by the Spanish Wolfman! My sister (Machine Gun Kristin) mentioned that it was on YouTube and it's bat shit crazy, so even though I'm not the biggest fan of the Nasch-man I was down! What's up with that title though, all these things came to mind: Panic Beats by Dre? Panic at the disco, the beat kids segment from Wonder Showzen? How bout you just put it on and don't let the title scare you away, let it absorb you like a pad of butter and syrup soaking into a stack of pancakes! 

Paul this time plays himself I guess ( his character has the same name at least). A ghastly knight stabs the shit out of a wailing blood strewn naked woman in the forest, poor lady. Then many subtitles are hurled your way, you don't have to get all the finite details or nooks and crannies to enjoy this wacky flick, so relax. Alaric (who's also the ghost knight we saw wreak havoc at the beginning is back from the grave and ready to party)! His scary portrait hangs in the house and he looks exactly like Naschy's character, coincidence? The same medieval jerk also appeared in Horror Rises from the Tomb, a previous film by the same director.

Julie, a Latina Diane Franklin looking babe played by Frances Ondiviela hears the frightening tale of the cryptic knight and scoffs at her creepy aunt. Some of this plays out like a telenovela only with Naschy getting half naked. I don't mean to pick on these people but they all seem to have gingivitis--remember to floss everyone out there. 

I just bit off Ricky Smith's tentacles

Julie slowly walks around in the dead of night wearing a see-thru nighty. She has a nightmare about severed heads and her ghostly aunt shows up with a hole in her neck and a blueish face, it's a freaky scene. 

Alaric the haunted knight is obviously stalking the house lurking around in the background, searching for fresh victims. Next, two zombie guys abruptly show up, they both have one white eye, maybe they both had glass eyes like Sandy Duncan and the mortician didn't notice? 

It gets even worse for Paul's wife played by Julia Saly, as the knight shows up again with a grinning skeleton face looking exactly like a Scooby Doo villain, he scares the pants off her and causes a heart attack all the part of his diabolical plan. What plan you're wondering, well I'm not giving it away because I've signed an iron clad contract to not spill the beans anymore you'll just have to see it for yourself. 

Zoinks, how bout a mouth watering dagwood or a scooby snack?

Once the Latino wolfman's wife dies he starts humping everything with a pulse including Julie but thankfully not her crickity old aunt Maville, that might've caused me to lose my lunch! Ladies must find him irresistible, since he's got the libido of a rabid hound dog. 

Anybody got some peanut butter to sop up these strawberry preserves leaking from my skull?

There's a gut busting scene where Julie cracks open a girls head and her entrails fall out (this pic was featured in the centerfold portion of Deep Red Horror Handbook). I wonder if Shane Dallmann had some influence on that part in the book. He's the main reason a lot of these were featured in the DR catalog. This may be one of the best PN flicks of all time even with all of the Telanovella type bullshit. More fun than a sadistically depraved episode of El Chavo Del Ocho! Mondo Macabro put this disc out and it's worth picking up. 

Jigoku (The Sinners Of Hell)

Jigoku (The Sinners of Hell) Directed By Nobuo Nakagawa (1960).

Just to illustrate how ahead of the curve D.R. were on Art House films mingling with trash ( sometimes the barriers are interchangeable) you could at the time get a rare duped copy of this Japanese film about hell way before it became a Criterion edition. I've mentioned before three years ago in Criterion Smut that Michael J. Weldon (of Psychotronic Video) described it as beating H.G. Lewis to the gore punch in the early 60s. I owe as much to that magazine as Deep Red. The film does eventually get to the gruesome spectacles and frightening demons, but you have to have patience of steel, often in a high brow Japanese flick that's how it goes--just don't ask me to review a film by Ozu (there's not enough coffee on the planet to wake me up during those circumstances).

It starts off with smoke and flames, those typical visions of Judeo-Christian Hell and then tells the story of Tamura (Yôichi Numata) and his pushover friend Shiro (played by Shigeru Amachi) who gets in a hit and run accident. Tamura is lit in a ghoulish way and carries a rose (he reminds me of the imagine of the Devil in that Tales from the Darkside episode "I'll give you a million").

The victim of the car accident is Tiger, a drunk gangster who stepped off the wrong curb and died from a brain hemorrhage. Tamura threatens his guilt ridden pal with "if I go down you go with me". The lighting and style the actors are silhouetted makes it look like a stage play and half the movie was created on a soundstage. 

Shiro's girlfriend is killed in a car crash later on (J.G. Ballard must've enjoyed this film). Shiro seems smart, but he's a total dumbass because after they get wind that he accidentally killed Tiger, a Yakuza, every stripper and angry mom is seething with white knuckle rage to even the score-- get out of town now! He does heed my warning and leaves but during this time period the film kind of lags a bit ( I've fallen asleep a few times watching this at night).

Then like an omen, Tamura shows up again to make Shiro's life literally a Hellish nightmare.

Shiro fights his enemies out in the country on a super high bridge and kills them, but of course he feels guilty when he should be relived. 

It takes an hour but we finally reach hell The two main characters meet Enma the king of Hell, he looks a lot like Roy Wood from Wizzard! He passes judgement on all who arrive (why they wait this long to showcase the cool effects is beyond me but it's worth it). This concept is based on Buddhist Hell, where Enma (or Emma-o) judges in an icy and heated region of Hades which has 8 levels, also you can escape this domain once the prayers of the living are considered and enlightenment has been attained). This lord of hell was played by Kanjuro Arashi.

Let's sing a duet about the benefits of Cold Cream!

They talk about hearing a faint baby cry which reminded me of Hellraiser, just imagine if the Cenobites stopped in their tracks and were like "OK, you can leave now, go in peace", that's just silly right?

We bring you tidings of Great Joy!

In this version of Hell, there's a pus filled mote, where thirsty zombies are encouraged to drink. Then the punishment train rolls out as various henchmen saw and flay the new citizens of sin. One guy is totally skinned and his organs are exposed. There's all this family drama (talk about a Hellish nightmare!) Shiro looks for his child and gets caught in a field of broken glass and sees a giant wheel of fire. Tamura is now a proud demon and continues to mock his old friend as he goes through trials and fields of severed heads, finally reaching the wheel his baby is stuck on. Shiro, on a spinning wheel trying to reach his child reminds me of one of those cruel Japanese game shows!
This film is seriously well crafted and brilliant but for some reason I like Nakagawa's Yotsuya Kaiden more. They are both visually amazing and ahead of their time, Yotsuya came out the year before and both are available from Criterion and you can watch them on Huluplus, I think they would make a good double feature.

Oh no! I fell just like Bugs Bunny next to that ribcage

And then baked into the center of some righteous Mac-A-Roons!

SS Hellcamp (The Beast in Heat)

SS Hellcamp (The Beast in Heat, Horrifying experiments of the SS Last Days) Directed By Luigi Batzella, starring Macha Magall (1977).

An ominous pink swastika is the backdrop for the credit sequence as the hairy mongoloid (or drooling sex baboon) of this unpleasant and dull Nazisploitation film gets an injection. Aryan women and shock troopers with "God on their side" and rapidly shifting audio dubbing are busy conducting biological monstrosities. 

   Salvatore Baccarro (otherwise known as Sal Boris or Boris Lugosi) is Italian cinema's go to gorilla, he was discovered outside the famed Cinecitta studio working as a florist, when some genius found him an agent and put him in the movies. He's appeared in spaghetti westerns, worked with Argento on Deep Red, D'Amato on Emanuelle in America, Cozzi on Star Crash, Tinto Brass on Salon Kitty and showed up in Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks! Sal had Acromegaly, the same disorder as Richard Kiel and Rondo Hatton. Not bad for a man with the features of a deformed hulking Ernest Borgnine on steroids and he gets to play the horny beast in question!

Manga Manga Ona Duh Pubes

    In this film, there are chambers full of tortured beavers, tormented balls, vats of drowning men and one scene, so ghastly that it registered as a TOG first! This scene shows pubic hair being chewed off in bloody clumps and swallowed by the King Kong man. One character is dubbed by what sounds like Baron Von Butcher, the chimp with the monocle from Lancelot Link! Jeez! There's more ape references in this review than a Pierre Boulle novel!

You sound like a monkey and you smell like one too

   Besides that mind boggling surprise, it's basically sandwiched in by dull renegade characters running around and bombing bridges. In all of these Naziploits, it's not fair that all the torture subjects are given no depth or character development and the SS come off more interesting. Most of the women in this are unusually attractive, but you can't enjoy their bodies, because they are either screwed to death (while the beast continues to pump away) or have their finger nails torn out (I like how one actress who has Gilda Radner's Roseanne Roseannadana hair says "Ouch that hurts" like she mildly stubbed her toe)!  

   Macha Magall does a shitty ilsa impression as Dr. Kratch (or Crotch) the leader of an experimental torture lab. She looks less like the glamazonian Dyanne Thorne and more like a tarted up Emily Watson or Mary Lynn Rajskub. Her plan to create a master race sex machine makes no sense at all, it only benefits the monsters libido!

   The super beast depiction is straight out a racist lurid pulp magazine drawn by the likes of Norm Eastman or Mort Kunstler. So if you go by 50's men's magazine logic then yes it's the Third Reich's plan to control our women by unleashing a cavalcade of sex starved monsters!

Put down the hacksaw, Nazi John Landis!

   All kinds of babes are thrown to her prize caveman and basically raped and torn to pieces--it's all handled in such an inept way that it destroys all the hideousness and makes it laughable! The menacing rats chewing on female entrails look more like confused guinea pigs painted black.

   There's a Howard Moon looking guy named Drago and a hippie priest who are supposed to be the heroes, they have zero presence and run around in day for night locations doing who knows what?

   I came in expecting to be offended and though I was not all together bored, the film is pretty tasteless.

If you got this Mighty Boosh reference give yourself a pat on the back!

   Some of the atrocities are on the level of Mad Foxes only not as enjoyable! After a baby is hurled in the air and machine gunned ( it was clearly a doll) and a woman is raped, she is shot point blank in the baby maker! At one point there's a shadow of the entire film crew moving on a dolly track, beat that boom mic that slipped down by accident!
   This one, in my mind, deserves to be on the infamous Video Nasty List and 77 was the year for Nazispolitation! I could image some goosesteppin' shit head had a white power party during the video age and rented the same tape twelve times, thinking they were watching different movies! I hate this subgenre and find it beneath contempt, but I felt that the blog needed a little sickness and depravity to lower the bar. Maybe I thought we were getting too classy!

Gosh we do like to have fun, us Nazi's aren't all jackboots and genital mutilation!

    There are so many in that time period and it all started with The Night Porter in 1974, the very first Nazi sex fantasy art house crowd pleaser (which has a Criterion release). Lee Frost and producer Bob Kreese's were inspired enough to go further with Love Camp 7, which launched Ilsa She Wolf of the SS and the rest is history. This subgenre is off the charts offensive and sleazy and The Beast in Heat is repulsive for sure, but it's also clumsy and hard to take seriously. Here's Grindhouse Databases list of Nazisploits http://www.grindhousedatabase.com/index.php/Category:Nazisploitation.
The only thing that makes this film stand apart from the other clones is that lucky son-of-a-bitch Sal Boris, but who the fuck wants to watch him have sex in a cage?



                                         FOR THE MENTALLY DISTURBED ONLY!

All Night Long

All Night Long Directed By Katsuya Matsumura, Starring Yoki letomi (1992).

Demented nerds snapping and turning against society for no reason, it's an all too familiar theme that moves in a constant cycle of violence. It's an uncomfortable subject rearing its ugly face in reality lately with mass shooting by stupid idiots like James Eagan Holmes (the Batman theater machine gun killer) and Elliot Rodger (a rich disgruntled virgin and also the son of an assistant Hunger Games director). He uploaded his manifesto to Youtube just before committing mass murder and suicide. The pressure of fitting in becomes suffocating, parents and the media reaches out its pointy finger to pin the blame on something--anything! The mental health industry's ineptitude and no consequences for easy access to assault weapons are responsible in my estimation. Than again certain people just have a psychotic edge and will eventually crack anyway--they have to constantly be doped up at all times--so they won't randomly attack people (just like the tag-line of the series says; Human Beings are Garbage).  

   Some critics have compared the All Night Long series to Guinea Pig and gore hounds expecting the same shot-on-video style snuff film will be disappointed. This one has more of a plot unlike GP, but eventually the sequels get more plotless. The youth gone insane aspect from Dangerous Encounters seems to be the influence here, although this film is very mild compared to the Tsui Hark landmark film. I am kind of grateful and don't feel like watching more cats get tortured for the sake of shock value! 

   For some reason All Night Long (which is not the life story of Lionel Richie) has been very difficult to find (it's in eternal save mode on Netflix). The first movie and it's sequels are available on separate DVD's from Tokyo Shock on Amazon for 6 bucks each. All the IMDB reviews are trashing the shit out of this rare demented shocker from the land of the rising sun. Maybe people were expecting too much, or are too jaded,--in the DR catalog--the film is described as a grueling experience, so let's hope we don't land in boiling water then have our freezer burned limbs stripped of their flesh (OR THE 731 special). 

   The passport shots of metropolitan youth already forces Battle Royal to spring to my mind. The three protagonists are Shinji Saito (Ryosuke Suzuki), who is going to vocational school to learn a trade as a mechanic and can sort of relate to girls. Kensuke Suzuki (Eisuke Tsunoda), who is a rich frat kid that collects guns and has a fantasy about being murdered on the beach with a shotgun. Tetsuya (Yoji letomi), a "Mclovin looking geek" feeds his green snake a hand full of maggots (that squiggle in loud detail).The typical pressure of school, career goals and fitting in starts to gradually effect Tetsuya the worst and his pals sort of ignore him and do their own thing. What this film needs is a Fast Times At Tokyo High style Galleria for the boys to score chicks at!

Hey Trainspotting's on, where's Ewan Mcgregor?

   The three thrill killers in All Night Long quickly become unglued after witnessing a random stabbing of an innocent girl by a maniac with a butcher knife while waiting for a train to pass. After watching the senseless murder, instead of going to the police, they all get tipsy on some red wine and seem to relish the details of the shocking incident. It's unclear to me if that incident would instill any sort of violent reaction, but since its the only trigger this half written script has to offer then that must be the reason, (here I am pinning the blame on something as well).  

Why so chipper?

   Director Katsuya Matsmura seems influenced by 1st Kind's nihilistic dejected youth hellbent on destruction. There's zero authoritative presence and these kids are never caught or learn from their reprehensible actions, it's all very bleak and existential. The film vaguely preaches Social Darwinism (one slovenly fellow with a bowl haircut says "The weak must not inherit the earth").

Only the grossly obese and mentally challenged shall rule the earth

  Each character attempts to fit in somewhere within the social order and adolescent bullshit is the trigger that sets these kids off. It's too weak of an excuse, it seems to me that these sordid characters would eventually start killing anyway, we're not really given a valid reason as to why they all end up on a murderous path. 

     

unless my hand is dressed up like Hennifer Hlopez

   

   That same before mentioned chubby creepo with a bowl haircut and a members only jacket sits with Tetsuya and skeeves him out when he talks about how he likes to abuse women. He starts an odd friendship with the fat weirdo because he thinks he has game and can possibly get him laid. 

   Saito is on a career path to becoming a airline mechanic and is clearly the only mentally stable person in the film (but his marbles soon fall out of his head). 
   Although for Suzuki the rich kid, it's not all champagne and sports cars either. After he picks up a psychotic bitch, she handcuffs him to a chain link fence and kicks him in the balls then afterwards she insults him by saying he smells like wasted sperm! I'm thinking her and the fat mongoloid kid should hook up,they are perfect for each other.

Ted Nugent said this is great for hunting humans and clearing up sinuses 

   Tetsuya gets more pathetic after he attempts to find a date for the big dance and gets so queasy that he barfs. Meanwhile Saito's breaking point happens in the park when some random street thugs rape his girlfriend and beat him up. The same thugs (who seem to pop up out of nowhere) are at the party, which is a total freakout, complete with dildos, Nazi flags and foosball, FOOSBALL!

(this excellent photo was taken from Alan Cribbs and John Hayes on foosball.com)

   The end is kind of an all out plotless free for all and I've read that the All Night Long sequels get increasingly more sleazy and random as they go on. According to Jay Mcroy's book "Nightmare Japan" there is no revenge aspect as claimed in the description of the DVD case, it's more of the characters shared humiliation that causes them to reassert their masculinity and ruthlessly attack not only those that deserve it, like the punks, but themselves and anything they care about. You could spend a long ass time deciphering this complex film or you can just enjoy it for what it is, a deranged story of senseless destruction perpetuated by idiotic youth with too much time on their hands and no sense of remorse! 
   

If the Nazi flag doesn't frighten you, we brought along a tiny phantom

   There should be a deleted scene where the town's water supply was contaminated and high levels of mercury ended up in the sushi, that may explain why everyone is at each other's throats!             

EXTREMELY DEPRESSING, WATCH ONLY IF YOU WANT TO FEEL MISERABLE!