I Dismember Mama

I Dismember Mama Directed By Paul Leder, Starring Zooey Hall (1972).

This is the first feature in one of the most dynamic trailers of all time, I'm talking of course about "The Giggly Guy" coming attraction from Mad Ron's Prevues From Hell! 

That trailer with fictional newsman Howard Scott, the Up-Chuck cup and a John C. Reilly look-a-like is legendary to all of us here at the TOG Headquarters. It made a theatergoer go berserk down at the Bijou Theater! We tend to mention it whenever the chance arises and Skunkape and I will sometimes prank call each other using Happy Goldsplatt's voice or chuckling in that warped deranged creaky giggle.

It scared the piss outta the old lady!

   I count this as the dud of the double feature. Only a grindhouse huckster could dredge up such a clumsy double bill. This one is a pedophiles wet dream, while Blood Spattered Bride is some high brow Karnstein bloodsucking lesbian splatter. Vicente Aranda directed that artsy piece of vampiric cinema and is still working today, before he made "Bride" he directed The Exquisite Cadaver (see Chris Poggiali's review here).
   The two films have little to nothing in common but I Dismember Mama was directed by Paul Leder, whose daughter Mimi went Hollywood and churned out some of the most big budgeted wretched popcorn cinema like Deep Impact, Pay it Forward and the recent HBO show The Leftovers. Paul made this a few years before My Friends Need Killing (review here), right after APE. 

   I remember seeing that video box with the scary goateed fellow pointing a switchblade (with his next victim in the reflection). It was in a lot of videostores in that glorious era and I never bothered to rent it until I saw the trailer on the "Mad Ron" tape. They tried to sell this thing with all its various titles like "Don't open the door", which sounds almost exactly like that Ramones song "you should never have opened that door". 

The Night Stalker copied my style

  Albert (Zooey Hall, who sort of looks like Richard Ramirez) pines for the affections of an underage pre-pubescent blonde and the film wants you to be on board with their twisted relationship. Here's a strange fact-- in reality Annie (Geri Reischi) the underage girl Albert stalks, went onto play Jan Brady on the Bunch's Variety Hour!

I took Albert to my audition and he slugged Eve Plumb with a led pipe!

 We first meet the ferret-like Albert at a mental ward, the actor who plays him does a good job of being disturbing and creepy, they use the most inappropriate music while he almost strangles a nurse to death. He's institutionalized for trying to stab his mother and can't wait to get out so he can kill again, because he believes "all women are whores".

I challenged Fonzi to a knife fight and kicked Richie in the nuts

Albert is a rich conceited bitchy fellow who thinks he's the cats pajamas, this actor went onto alot of TV shows like Happy Days and Barnaby Jones (going by David Hall). Maybe he was afraid this movie might effect his wholesome career.   

   After stabbing a hospital worker he slips out and is now loose on the streets. His doctor, who doesn't even bother to toss pills at him, has given up. 
   Down at the Yum-Yum Tree plaza the escaped psycho hot-wires a cadillac and plans to pay his frightened mom a visit to "finish the job". 

out of all these choices which one will give me diarrhea the quickest?

   The slap happy Big Band music is wildly ridiculous as he strolls around in clumsy fitting hip clothes and a giant hat that is in danger of popping off his giant mane of werewolf hair. At this point I should mention I vomited alittle over the shitty music, good thing I had my patented Up-Chuck-Cup!

Fasten this cup to your face now! 

   He humiliates his mom's busty red headed friend and makes her strip, just before he stabs her to death. Then her daughter Annie (who becomes the object of his unhealthy fixation) shows up and he lies to her like a child molesting Grinch.

   None of this matters because they relate to each other immediately as children and she even runs away with him. Their relationship takes up the majority of the film, they also have a quaint mock wedding! The montages start comin fast and furious as the theme song "Poor Albert" plays. The criminal couple make a whole day of it, they go for a boat ride then on a trolly and have a picnic! The sleaziest part of the film is their twisted relationship and in his sick mind, he cares about her because in his words she's "undefiled". Excuse me, BARF WRETCCCCHHH!

Whew, Ok I'm back now! He carries all this warped lust inside and murders a random blonde to fulfill his craving to rape Annie. Pedos do the darndest things!

That's OK Officer, we're fine

OK, I'm glad I got that free distressed stomach cup (which is getting pretty full).

A detective (who's kind of stupid) follows them around, but is never on the right track. That character is played by Gerald Mullavey the psychotic Nam vet from My Friends Need Killing. This film is unpleasant on many levels and to me it registers as half good (I'd give it a sideways Ebert/ Siskel thumb). 

SLIGHTLY RECOMMEND FOR PURE TRASHINESS THAT MAKES YOU UNCOMFORTABLE!

    

The Night God Screamed

The Night God Screamed Directed by Lee Madden, Starring Jeanne Crain (1971).

There's a shocking amount of Manson-sploitations out there that were clamoring for the all mighty dollar in the early 70's, most of them are inferior to my favorite Satanic hippie flick I Drink your Blood! The Jerry Gross company Cinemation Industries actually put this tepid, awful excuse for a "horror movie" out. I kept hoping that cool skeleton mask would show up, but it never did!  

   The VHS quality on this Youtube presentation is all shades of squiggly pink and brown the only place to get a better copy is thru Just For The Hell Of It (JFHI.COM). 

   A creepy crawly bunch of Manson-esque slippies congregate around a swimming hole, as a tripped out Steve Railsback impersonator uses a hooded figure to drown a girl he believes is a narc. I find it strange that Helter Skelter didn't come out until a few years later, maybe Steve copied this guy? Wait that can't be right because they're both copying the ultimate hammy loser and former Beach Boy! The credit sequence font in this film reminds me of A Hard Days Night!

I call the sawed off shotgun on my lap "HIPPIE SKULL VENTILATOR"

  A woman named Fanny Coogan (Jeanne Crain) who works at a homeless shelter is fed up with everything- God, being broke and just ripe for some messianic wacko to jump in and brainwash her! Her ridged preacher husband scoffs at her depression and chalks it all up to God's will. 

  What this movie needs is "Billy Jack" or "Bibleman" to step in and crack some skulls! The hippies hassle the religious couple at a truck stop and aim to steal a pretty sweet cross they lug around in the back of a pickup truck.

Just lounging around waiting for the rapture

   The rag tag cult shows up late at night while Fanny's husband is alone and they actually nail him to his own giant cross! It's all done in grainy darkness in a PG way so you don't get the ghoulish benefit.

I like how the Christ-like leader says "God's on our side, not yours" in a high whiny fashion!
I mean in this scenario if some punks snuck into an ex-evangelical president's church and did the same thing would anyone feel that bad? I guess the husband dies, because we never see him again.

Oh Fiddlesticks, now I got heartburn too!

   Fanny is so receptive to mind control and has a guilty conscience that she feels bad for Billy Joe Harlan! That's right folks, the scary cult leader played by Michael Sugich is named Billy Joe! This was Sugich's last known performance in acting, I wonder what he's up to now, maybe he works at Trader Joes?

   The scary hippies take a break for awhile and return later only through prank calls. Sometimes this film resembles a really dull episode of Night Gallery. Besides the crucifixion, there's little to no violence. 

   There's a good reason, this film isn't mentioned that often and J4HI.COM carries the only available DVD, besides them you can only find it on poor quality VHS tapes. This one is still a rarity while Death Bed is available on Blu-ray? It's a sick world I tells ya!

   They should have called this "The Night the Audience Snored"! There's a twist ending that's not worth sticking around for.
   This is among one of the earliest films inspired by the infamous Spahn Ranch lunatics along with The Love Thrill Murders (Sweet Savior), The Manson Massacre and The Deathmaster. Some of these are blatant portrayals of the infamous hippie cult, while others are a coincidental jesus freak or vampire sect. Then there's Lawrence Merrick's documentary with the real Family in 1973, this concludes our Manson trivia portion of the review! 

  Martin Landau oddly enough would do a scarier job with the fake Manson's catch phrase,"Vengeance is mine sayeth the lord!", later on in Alone in the Dark. If you really need to see this worm ridden filth, J4HI.COM has got you covered, don't ruin your eyeballs like I did.

                                                       ORDER NOW

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!

The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue

The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue (Let Sleeping Corpses Lie, Don't Look In The Window, Don't Speak Ill Of The Dead,Breakfast at Manchester Morgue, ETC, ETC...). 

Directed By Jorge Grau, Starring Ray Lovelock (1974).

Back in the days of dusty old bootlegs, Skunkape lent me a shitty dupe of this movie that was covered in a thick fog of VHS haze and Japanese subs. I couldn't really enjoy the film, which is one of the first ever influenced by Night Of The Living Dead. According to Jorge Grau, some Italian investors elected him as the man that would bring NOTLD to the world "in color" even before Dawn or Zombi 2. There's never been a moment when Italians weren't trying to capitalize on some cult hit or blockbuster and I'm grateful for that! They took the same political context of Dead only this time blaming the agricultural dept. for the zombie plague. 

   The version I'm reviewing is the souped up classic Anchor Bay one (back when that label meant something). Blue-Underground has since re-issued it. The print is head and shoulders above that horrid video I had seen long ago, before DVD's existed. 

Holy out of date product placement Batman!

   George the Hippie (played by a bearded Ray Lovelock) is first seen riding around metropolitan London on his motorcycle, as a freewheelin' streaker girl runs across a busy street. He bumps into a whiny redhead named Edna (Cristina Galbo) and hitches a ride with her through the lush countryside. They don't really get along and sort of bicker at each other throughout the duration. George is kind of a snotty arrogant prick and later on gets bitch smacked by Arthur Kennedy, who plays a grouchy hippie hating sergeant. 

In the future everyone will play metal detector golf

   A high pitched sonic wave meant to control parasites emits from a giant red machine and starts to jostle the dead, it even makes newborns homicidal! I love how the zombies have these zonked out red irises, which were created by Lucio Fulci's main effects man Giannetto De Rossi. That was one of the main reasons I had to track down this film, which was incredibly rare at the time. When De Rossi's involved you're pretty much guaranteed an all out splatter-rama! There's one incredible effect toward the end with a secretary whose breasts and stomach contents get pulled open and devoured like a giant sack of Taco Bell Economy Meat! 

Taco Bell now serving Menudo Rojo

   
   Manchester Morgue has the vibe of a Hammer Film and the countryside creepiness reminds me of The Blind Dead or Jean Rollin. It was actually filmed in London in the historical grave sight of Robin Hood's pal Little John. 

   Fernando Hilbeck is Guthrie the first lumbering corpse we see first or the Bill Hinzman (NOTLD) figure, he constantly looks soaked and on the verge of catching hypothermia. 

Lane Meyer would you mind if I took out Beth now?

   
   Another character that soon becomes a worm feast named Martin (Jose Lifante), has the gaunt features of Vincent Schiavelli and Argento. He has thick brows and a chicken bone nose. His wife has even worse problems, after she cooks up a spoon for a nice heroin shot, she gets rudely interrupted by a ravenous zombie.

   After Guthrie caves in Martin's brain with a rock, the next morning the cops show up. The bitchy Irish sergeant (Kennedy) is a panic attack waiting to happen and becomes the proverbial bug up everyone's ass. 

   I remember being bored to tears by this film as a teenager but now after re-evaluating it, it's still a little tedious but a very intriguing film. 

   There's a suspicious mortuary truck filled with freezer coffins that seems too strange to ignore.

New Wonka designed coffins

   
   There's a hilarious bit of dialogue between George and the angry hippie-phobic Sergeant that was used for a sound clip on an Electric Wizard song. Nick Alexander (Al Cliver's disembodied voice) also plays one of the cops.

   George says the dead only walk in "bad paperback novels", ironically his name is George but doesn't mention the Romero films. The zombie mythos is different in this film, they can reanimate other corpses by blood contact and die by fire, not brain destruction. 

   To try and prove to Edna that there is no real undead threat, fucktard Lovelock proceeds to enter a mausoleum bursting with corpses. They all spring to life of course as both main characters get locked in with the creaky, raspy groaning deceased. Aside from the zombies, the townspeople seem to have some mental problems going on with them as well.  

   We don't get any real gore until the last 40 minutes, so make sure you stick around for the big payoff, it's worth every penny!

Stop poking me in the ear, tiny lady on my shoulder!

   I believe this film paved the way for Lucio Fulci, the undead seem too familiar for it to not be influential, this is 1974 after all. Zombie would hit the grindhouses five years later and there are a lot of elements that would eventually become the norm for exploitation films. There are a few disembowelment scenes sporadically paced to keep the momentum of the blame on the irresponsible Gov. causing the ecological problems and the finale is another major nod to NOTLD.
   Ray Lovelock started off in Italian Crime films like Emergency Squad, Live Like a Cop, Die Like a Man (one of Ruggero Deodato finest moments) and Almost Human, working with Umberto Lenzi. After he appeared in this, he went onto to Autopsy with Mimsy Farmer and avoided horror roles until he wound up in Murder-Rock in 1984.  
   Jorge Grau would go onto to other non-horror projects but will always be remembered for this film. If this film had never been made, someone else in Italian exploitation would've certainly come along and attributed the George Romero original. I'm sure Fulci would've still gone onto what he does best. Manchester Morgue remains one of the best early examples that would inspire others to continue and create more gruesome zombie spectacles, this one just paved the way for everyone else!

OMG! These horse guts are scrumptious 

Can you help me reach that whiskey?

Oooh, those stairs are very steep!

Faceless

Faceless Directed By Jess Franco, starring Telly Savalas (1987).

If you've read enough of this blog then you may be able to tell, I don't like Jess Franco (you might say I suffer from Franco-phobia). I mean he produces some major boring shit and it's a miracle if I can stay awake through any of his films. My distaste for his work started with Vampyros Lesbos (1971), I thought there may be something wrong, there's that ultra groovy score, hot lesbian babes, so why am I so bored out of my mind? An inner struggle began that led me to believe I had probably started out with the wrong entry into the Jess Franco mythos. So I attempted to watch The Awful Dr. Orloff with similar sleep inducing results, but I finally hit paydirt with The Bloody Judge, Skunkape over-sold Bloody Moon (which I half liked) and Portuguese Nun (which was an excellent film). There's so much output in the Franco cannon that even a jaded narrow minded snob like me is bound to find a lucky egg in the chicken vending machine!

  

    It took me 5 tries before I was able to stomach Faceless, I would eventually succumb to a Franco induced fit of narcolepsy--his movies have that effect on me. I'm still not sure if I really enjoyed this very erotic French version of The Bold and The Beautiful with Telly Savalas and Caroline Munro, but it sure was entertaining and smothered in a copious layer of sleaze!

   It opens with the cheesiest George Michael ripoff stylings of Vincenzo Thoma, his abysmal tune "Destination Nowhere" is played so much throughout the film that it makes you want to go under the knife for a lobotomy.

OK Liz Renay I hope you enjoy your new face

   Helmut Berger (Beast with a Gun, Salon Kitty) is the mad surgeon "Orloff" archetype, Dr. Flamand. Franco has remade his own Orloff film so many times it's hard to tell if he's stealing from himself or Georges Franju's Eyes Without A Face. While in a parking garage, Frank (Berger), his wife (Christiane Jean) and Nathalie (played by the stunningly attractive Jean Rollin regular and former porn star Brigette Lahaie) get attacked by a disfigured former patient. Acid is thrown at the doctor but it narrowly misses him and splashes onto his wife's quickly dissolving face! This becomes the major plot device of Faceless, which involves a musclebound brow-less henchman carrying a high powered brain drill, kidnappings and former Nazi's goose stepping in to help the wacky Doctor's wife achieve a full blown face transplant.

Do you know if this office has a bathroom?

   Telly Savalas's fashion model daughter played by Caroline Munro is captured by Flamand's helper Nathalie, who lures the sexy drug-fiend into her limo with cocaine. Munro ends up in a rubber room and gets raped by Gordon (Gerard Zalcberg), a brainless lunkhead with no eyebrows. One patient at the clinic gets a hypo shoved into her eyeball, I was scratching my head as to how they achieved that effect, it looked very realistic!

She was like that when I got here

Chris Michum (who has his father's exact werewolf hairline and forehead) is sent on the case to track down Telly's daughter. I'm always glad to see Robert Michum's sons appear in the most decked out euro-trash, Chris's brother was even in Amir Shirvan's Hollywood Cop. 

   Howard Vernon makes a cameo appearance like he does in every Franco film, playing--who else--but Dr. Orloff! He tips them off to a Nazi surgeon who will perform the operation. There are some hidden nods to art-house fare sluicing around in this pile of flashy grime. The Nazi surgeon is played by the Anton Diffring from the 1960 classic Circus Of Horrors, which is a deliberate bit of inspired casting!

They pay me in Bologna sandwiches and Coffee off the craft services table

   It all ends on a sour note as all the Aryan surgeons rip through innocent facial tissue and toss the used female corpses away like Der Weinerschnitzel wrappers.
   We've reviewed another film, Mansion Of The Doomed that basically reinvents the Eyes With Out a Face plotline. I won't say I liked that one more than this, but at least the criminals were given their just desserts! The ending in Faceless is pretty hardcore and very cynical, all the guilty surgeons toast to their own success and get to celebrate! The people that attempt to shutdown the Nazis ultimately fail and Franco leaves it open ended, but don't look for Faceless 2: The Search for more Cocaine anytime soon!
   The Shriek Show Dvd looks flawless and vibrant compared to the third generation dupe I had to suffer through in the 90's. This film was meant to be seen with all its high glossiness intact. I enjoyed it for what it was this time, a trashy slick piece of entertaining schlock.

RECOMMENDED FOR SLEAZY TRASH HOUNDS ONLY! 

He's a sleep farter, it's a major problem

Once you date Joe Spinell, you're ruined for life 

the illegitimate son of Jason Alexander and Lou Ferrigno

Scrape up these meat trimmings and sell them to Arby's 

BUY HERE
      

Cannibal Terror

CANNIBAL TERROR

(TERREUR CANNIBALE)

France / Spain, 1980

Dir: “Allan W. Steeve”/Alain Deruelle

Review by Steve Fenton

EL LAGO DE LOS MUERTOS VIVIENTES / a.k.a. ZOMBIE’S LAKE and L’ABIME DES MORTS-VIVANTS / a.k.a. OASIS OF THE ZOMBIES were the worst two Eurociné horror flicks ever unleashed, right? Wrong! Being of the ever-optimistic opinion that even the very worst Continental cannibal gutmunchers have at least one thing going for them somewhere – heck, even Joe D’Amato’s awful DEMONIA / a.k.a. EROTIC NIGHTS OF THE LIVING DEAD had a couple of good scenes, dammit! – I decided to give CANNIBAL TERROR a friendly spin. A former associate of mine had challenged me to watch this film (“film” is a tenuous description at best): despite fair prior warnings that it was an unmitigated piece of merde that made even those aforementioned examples of sub-cinematic pond-slime look like daisies by comparison. At the very least, my ex-associate assured me, “It’s gory as hell!” Oh well, here goes nothing, I guess…

Step Aside it's time to make El Sabroso Human cracklins

The opening theme is an ear-itatin’ salsa / big band variation of “La Bamba.” This is repeated later on as an end-theme, but initially accompanies familiar tourist board-approved travelogue footage (presumably shot somewhere in either the south of France or further south down in Almería, Spain?) and an excess of actors wandering idly about or participating in mundane non-action: which includes chattering on phones, manicuring their nails and mixing cocktails ad nauseam. A ‘major’ early scene that introduces our main if positively motley cast is set in a sleazy bar where a sub-psychedelic instrumental ditty drones from a jukebox like an agitated, over-amped mosquito. The same whining chord is repeated over and over (and over and over) again, as if running on a tape-loop.

At least melt some cheese on it first, then roll it up in a burrito shell

At last, a bunch of scratchy, dog-eared stock aerial footage of jungle-heavy tropical islands (no doubt these same inserts were also borrowed by Umberto Lenzi’s cannibal opuses too) announce a jumpily edited segue into some no doubt cannibal-infested ‘exotic’ clime. Exactly where is tough to deduce. Anyway, our little heroic family of mighty whiteys drive their jimmy well off the beaten track into the wilderness. From what is presumably the closest thing to a bona fide ‘rain forest’ that CANNIBAL TERROR’s producers could scout for a stand-in jungle location on the French Riviera, ‘savage cannibals’ (note quotes) emerge, evidently hungering for human meat (or perhaps just some take-out escargot?). Basically, this film’s backdrop is a rather sparsely-wooded area – peppered with fir trees, no less – and a bargain-basement tribal village set whose anthropological authenticity wouldn’t fool a four-year-old, even if their parents didn’t have a subscription to National Geographic. The cannibal clan itself is an unlikely conglomeration of multiracial (and almost exclusively male) extras. These are usually heavily made-up with facial greasepaint, as if in hopes of obscuring the fact that Orientals and Hispanics, blacks and whites are all represented in their numbers (perhaps there may have been some details buried in the untranslated French dialogue which I may have missed). In several shots, a scrawny looking Caucasian spear-chucker sports sideburns that would have rivalled those worn by Elvis during his Vegas period. Another guy in heavy warpaint and a drop-handlebar mustache seen peeking from the vegetation looks a lot like Tom Savini!

Or Peter Criss

In spite of their unabashedly unconvincing appearance, these cannibal terrorists cart off our heroes’ native woman guide, whom they then disembowel and devour in short order without even so much as a garnish or finger-bowl in sight. Adding to this unrepentant addition to the ranks – accent on the rank – of grungy gutcruncher exploitation, we have one girl’s purely gratuitous nudie scrubdown in an outdoor washtub (a similar scene occurred in ZOMBIE’S LAKE, so you might say some sort of Eurociné oeuvre was developing; then again, you might not). After rinsing off, the starlet is dragged off kicking and screaming to be roped and raped by a degenerate scumbag in the bush. This scene is accomplished with such ludicrous phoniness that it’s hardly very offensive, as it should be, but instead is only embarrassingly inept. More so due to the actress’ dogged insistence on sobbing and wailing oh-so-professionally, as if convinced she was actually involved in a real film (presumably this starlet was ‘giving it her all’ for what she hopefully assumed would be her ‘breakout role’ or something).

have you got any floss?

Pacing (Hah!) descends to new lows of sluggishness, heavily dependent on meaningless filler. 52 minutes and counting… when oh when are those Heinz 57 cannibals gonna chow down on this uncharismatic, unlikable cast and put both them and us out of our misery? Remains of chomped-up victims are found in the ‘jungle’ as our heroes and a safari of white hunters and military types dressed in mix’n’match hand-me-down bush fatigues hunt the lost cannibals. While we are on the topic of forest fashion here, it should perhaps be mentioned that leading lady Silvia Solar opts for the more practical cotton summer dress and matching high-heeled pumps ensemble for her taxing excursion beyond the fringes of civilization.

Oh good it's time for my self immolation C-section

CANNIBAL TERROR’s nonexistent effort to convincingly create the illusion of a dense tropical locale might be considered audacious, if it wasn’t so utterly pathetic. Badly spliced antique inserts of mismatched crocodiles and other wildlife, as well as pudgy or anorexic extras who often appear painfully self-conscious in their loincloths (and so would you if you were in their sandals). Seldom has European trash cinema looked so cheap.

I know this is an overused cliché, but CANNIBAL TERROR is assuredly one of the all-time WORST movies (n)ever made. It was fun to write about though, and sometimes that helps one to endure a film.

The Unseen

The Unseen (1980)

Starring: Barbara Bach, Sydney Lassick

Directed By: Danny Steinmann (also directed "Savage Streets") 

Review By: "Machine Gun" Kristin

**SPOILERS! Just about everything is given away!**

"The Unseen" is a very strange, 1980s film, although the time it's set in seemed vague to me. It was made in 1980, but elements of it felt more late 80s. Then again, some other details, such as the character's clothing, felt more late 70s. The very pretty, but sometimes gaunt looking Jennifer (Bond girl and sometimes Giallo actress Barbara Bach) is a reporter covering a ho-hum story in Solvang, California she's going through a break up with her injured football player boyfriend (Doug Barr).
Her camera operator sister (Karen Lamm, who in reality was married/divorced to Dennis Wilson from The Beach Boys) and friend (Lois Young) can't find a place to stay after a hotel error, they drive further away to Los Alamos. There, they find an odd looking, non-running hotel turned museum. It's run by Ernest Keller (verteran character actor, Sydney Lassick) and his so-called wife Virginia (Lelia Goldoni) who constantly wails and moans with a low slumped sad look on her face. Ernest offers his large house as accommodations and they bravely take him up on his offer instead of opting to sleep in the car. Which of course, is what they should have done!

Mini 'Junior" type creature in background

Abandon all hope errr....right now

Pants are optional in Solvang

These pretzels are making me thirsty! 

   It's strange that this somewhat mainstream movie hits many uncomfortable notes. Ones such as chicken killing, peeping toms, abortion, incest, near castration and mongoloids. Yep, that's right mongoloids! Or just one anyway chained up in the basement named Junior (Stephen Furst, Flounder from "Animal House"!). He's the monster staring up through the floor vents in the house, taking the girls under with him. In that aspect, I could see similarities to Fulci's "House By The Cemetery" with its basement dwelling creatures taking their victims from the floor above them. There's also bizarre similarities to "The Goonies" (1985) character, Sloth. In the beginning of "Unseen", there's a figure in the background that actually looks like Sloth, or maybe it's supposed to be a Ray Harryhausen type creation. Was Sloth's character based on "The Unseen's" Junior? It makes you re-examine Sloth's origin. In "The Goonies", Anne Ramsey's character says that he was dropped on his head as a baby which resulted in his disfigurement. Oh really? Hmmm....  

Sloth and Mongoloid Flounder: separated at birth?

This was a decent movie, I was kept guessing what the hell was going on that's for sure. It's nice that it had a good payoff and a disturbing trip to the outcome. The tone was weirdly comedic but the content was so gross and weird it was hard to laugh at much at it. I think it'd be a good double feature with "Pin", with the weird family secret type of theme connecting those two.

Scarves are a bad idea, it's not even cold out! 

Ahhhaha I got my cigarettes!

I stole a ciggie from Sydney

  Dated January 9, 1980

Watch The Trailer HERE

Watch "The Unseen" HERE

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