Cannibal Ferox

Cannibal Ferox (Make Them Die Slowly,Women From Deep River) Directed By Umberto Lenzi, Starring John Morghen (1981). 

Against all my better judgement I decided to rewatch Cannibal Ferox (or better known in the days when video stores existed on Thriller Video as Make Them Die Slowly). Why you ask, because it just showed up in HD form on Huluplus! Every time I watch this wretched film, I get a combination of nausea and guilty enjoyment because it's extremely ugly, racist and so offensive that it becomes surreal. The main reason to see it at all, rests on the shoulders of actor John Morghen. His lines, which are so wildly offensive have to be heard to believed, who else would throw the word "twat" in every other sentence or call every body shit face-- than this guy! Frank Von Kuegelgen does a great job dubbing Giovanni Radice (or Morghen), his performance is my favorite and usually in other films he's appeared in they always give his character a very effeminate voice.

If you have a degree in Fulci-economics than you'll be overjoyed to see half of his bit actors (from Gates of Hell aka City of the Living Dead and some Italian crime flicks) and similar nonsensical situations tossed in like a clump of maggots in a kale salad. But there's so much more to be excited about, we've got a piranha attack, underwater bamboo cages and racial dominance all in the sake of too much cocaine. 

I heard that there's Candy Apples on Monkey Island

Three collegiate chuckleheads venture down the river to a village named monyoka (some fictional jungle which is really Columbia) to do something something so idiotic as to prove that all History concerning cannibalism is just racist bullshit propagated by the history of colonialism and conquistadores. Anyone who's read about The Conquest of Spain knows that The Aztecs did eat people in their rituals and colonialism had nothing to do with gut munching. The scriptwriter (who's apparently Mr. Lenzi) obviously coked out of his mind, possibly just hates anthropologists and is condemning them with this film because they all come off like sub moronic turds! So yeah, dropout of college and get a job at Burger King would you or just invent facts ala-Foxs News, which makes this film slightly prophetic. 

You're saying this fuggin movie was ahead of it's time, excuse me while I die!

The HD quality magnifies the haze of grain on Lenzi's original vision (who would've dreamed that this would ever make it beyond VHS though). My favorite parts about this film are the silly lines spouted by the all dubbed cast like "Hey there's a jay walking igunana!" and other quotable favorites. This is a genre I detest and yet am thoroughly fascinated by.

The most heartless aspect of the film, which Skunkape and I saw long before the Deodato one is that it's basically Cannibal Holocaust on training wheels. Lenzi goes out of his way to copy that flick with the same senseless animal violence and just like Dr. Butcher used some of the cast of Zombie to exploit that film, some of the same actors from Holocaust re-appear. The first sign of trouble just after the tragic mongoose death (which is really uncalled for) is a googly eyed stomach eater hiding behind some leaves. Skunkape mentioned that the snake was full, so the mongoose didn't really die. Then Ferox gets really good as Mike Logan (Morghen) one of the most offensive but hysterical anti-heroes shows up, he carries a little sack of nose candy around his neck and pretends that cannibals tried to attack him and his "asshole" buddy Joe (Walter Lucchini).

Whatever I'm fine, is my hair OK?

They all kind of bond over all being New Yawkers(sic) on vacation and what led Mike to Columbia are emeralds and snow but Gloria (Larraine De Salle) and her crew never mention the retarded reasons they're there. Mike's bottom teeth pop out consistently as he talks about how cannibals ate his pals balls off and then Gloria hears the sentence echo in her mind. There are so many metal and hardcore bands that have sampled that choice line of dialogue --too funny! Pat (Zora Kerova) sleeps with a Mexican dude and post coitus says "Take a shower some time will ya?" Now here's another bit of uncalled for racist bullshit sprinkled throughout an all ready overstuffed shit sandwich--get ready for more, that's nuthin'!   

Everyone is super sweaty and grungey looking (they might look even worse in high def). I must commend Grindhouse Releasing for really packing on the extras into this shit flick classic (to steal a Gilpin-ism) and my favorite parts are the new psychedelic audio moments and overly loud gunshot sounds--the audio engineer went hog wild!  

Gloria after looking at the scared natives confirms right then and there-- OK, I've seen enough let's turn around, but nope, they have to stay because Joe "the asshole", Mike's pal gets sick and keels over. Logan, whacked out on blow, gets a hankering for some ultra violence and decides to fuck with the savages who all seem afraid of the Westerners. The natives are always Latin or Asian people in wigs smothered in white mud, they meet the animal death quota of boss Umberto by killing a big turtle and a crocodile --so fucking stupid I swear! Radice who cannot stand Lenzi (check out our video interview if you need confirmation) rips him a new one in the commentary, he tried to humiliate the actor into slaughtering animals for his project I'm guessing in the name of Neo-realism, whatever! 

I like the soundtrack by Roberto Donati (otherwise known as Budy Maglione), recently released on Oneway Static Records on vinyl and cassette with some amazing artwork and attention to detail check it out here. Years before, Skunkape let me dub his copy of the Blackest Heart Media CD soundtrack which had amazing tribute songs by Rok Opera, great stuff!

Is this really necessary?

They ramp up the hatred that justifies what occurs later to Mike Logan and it basically turns into a "Just Say No" to cocaine public service announcement. Because as everyone knows, booger sugar will turn you into a raving psycho that will rape innocent people and disembowel them, obviously, that's why it's bad for you!

Logan, who's wanted in NYC by a cop named Rizzo (Robert Kerman), no relation to the Midnight Cowboy co-star or the Muppet is on the lam! He keeps questioning Logan's blonde girlfriend about her beau's whereabouts. why Kerman decided to return for another jungle holocaust film despite his unabashed distain for the genre and Deodato in particular, always gives me the giggles (he appeared in Eaten Alive/Doomed to Die as well). Even though R. Bolla aka Robert Kerman hated these flicks, he's great in them and gives off a David Hess like quality of hostility even in these good guy roles. Once a rotten papaya shows up at Rudy and the gangs hut, it's all over for the cast and the last 34 minutes are a smorgasbord or mayhem and torture, starting with Morghen getting his dick hacked off and devoured! You may think to yourself, it can't get any worse than that for the poor fucker, but you'd be dead wrong as they fasten him to a lobotomy table and whack off the top of his cranium and reach in that skull bucket for some pink slimy brain treats--yum yum, a cannibal feast, invite over Screamin Jay and the Spiderbaby clan!

I'll have you know I injected my dick with thallium, Ha! Didn't expect that did you? 

A friendly cannibal takes sympathy on the gang but waits till the absolute bitter end until he steps in to help, I mean Zora Kerova's double breast meat hooks have already been inserted and she soon dies. Mike Logan, the selfish twat almost escapes (they cauterized his ballsack, so that he doesn't bleed to death and he hauls ass out of the village, but nope, they drag him back and finish the job. The tiny cannibal who helps Gloria escape looks like Nein Nub, Lando Calrissian's Mickey Mouse-like alien sidekick with a bad wig on. 

The commentary and behind the scenes stories are fascinating, almost everyone had an awful time acting in this wretched film and you get the feeling that something was off during the production, an all around unpleasant experience. Keep that patented Howard Scott Up-Chuck Cup handy! I have no idea why I like this film though it makes no sense and maybe I should reconsider things and get my priorities straight. It's funny how I have a long history with this cannibal flick and bought it on VHS from 16000 video for 2 bucks. Recently Eli Roth has decided to jumpstart this genre with his own love letter to Deodato and I have zero interest in seeing it.  

AVAILABLE ON HULUPLUS!

Blu-ray/Soundtrack on Amazon 

GRINDHOUSE RELEASING

 Trailers that Smell & TOG's

Cannibal Ferox Trailer

Dead Snow

DEAD SNOW (DOD SNO) (2009, Un-rated, 91 minutes, Euforia Film.

BY GRAHAM RAE

Two events in recent human history have basically divested the human race of any dearly-held illusions about itself: the invention of the internet, where you can see all insane human potential spread out in a vast mad anything-goes market…and the Holocaust. The latter pogrom, the single most vile and evil event ever perversely perpetrated by the human (disg)race on itself, has produced some hollow caustic experimentation-and-extermination exploitation movies: sick, tasteless stuff like “Love Camp 7,” “SS Experiment Camp” and “Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS.” Cos after all, nothing screams entertainment like the loons who carried out the horrifying and race-despairing systematic wiping out of six million Jews and gypsies and homosexuals, eh?

I guess this human baked alaska is a bit too much!

You’d think that the whole Third Reichsploitation field had been done to death – and beyond. Which is where “Dead Snow,” the new (at the time of writing the review – Graham) Norwegian Nazi zombie movie, comes in. It’s a fresh and new twist on the whole Herrenrasse film genre, right? Wrong. There have been at least four other Nazi zombie movies made to date (there may be more, but I can’t be bothered searching Google for them): “Shock Waves,” “Zombie Lake,” “Oasis of the Zombies” (a Jess Franco anti-classic I actually own on a 50-public-domain-horror-film DVD and put off a third of the way through after my central nervous system started to collapse) and ‘Night of the Zombies’ (not to be confused with the excellent trash Bruno Mattei “Dawn of the Dead” rip-off movie). The question here is, does it bring anything new to this undeniably stupid subgenre, and do it well?

Not really.

First off: “Dead Snow”. What does that title mean? Nothing. It’s stupid to me, and pretty much as decorticated as the rest of the part-satire part-homage film. To a bad metal soundtrack, a bunch of University of Oslo students (one of whom, a medical student, is - hyuck hyuck – allergic to the sight of blood) snow-scooter to remote area of the Norwegian mountains to party in your archetypal cut-off-from-the-world cabin, indulging in some tiresome ‘post-modern’ Kevin Williamson-alike dialogue about horror movies that have had characters who go into areas with no cell phone reception as they do. Once they arrive at the cabin, they start partying when a strange old man lurches out of the snowblown night. “This’ll be the old guy to warn them they’re doomed to a horrible death, to explain the plot,” I said to my friend Elwyn, visiting me from Scotland…and I was right. Every self-respecting cheapshit splatter movie in the 80s had them.

you think this is bad, try sitting through Zombie Lake again!

Transpires that the area they are in, Oksfjord, was occupied by the Nazis during WWII (Norway, like most of Europe, was genuinely occupied, and this is apparently big in the Norwegian recent history psyche) and a group of ubermensch were chased off by the townspeople into the mountains and were presumed dead. Or not. Obviously, or there would be no movie. So the old man buggers off and gets slaughtered, illogically hanging around overnight in a tent in an area he knew to be haunted, and the film really kicks off. The kids find a treasure trove of gold stolen by the Nazis, which causes them to rise from their frigid mountainside tombs to search for their ill-gotten gains, in a move straight out of John Carpenter’s “The Fog.” Pretty soon “Dead Snow” turns into pretty much every ‘keep the undead outside and us inside’ film you’ve ever seen…and soon grows pretty tiresome indeed.

Damn it! I just can't decide what I want at Der Wienerschnitzel!

Now. I will say this. I’m getting tired of seeing old splatter movies from the 80s or so regurgitated, simply because this limited palette of sometimes-entertaining trash was the stuff the director grew up on. The minute I saw a fat ugly guy in this effort wearing a tee-shirt of Pete Jackson’s splatter comedy classic “Braindead” (U.S. title “Dead Alive”) a few minutes into the film I knew exactly what I was going to be getting; hell, even one of the posters is a direct rip from Lucio Fulci’s “Zombie.” There’s a ridiculous scene involving that horror nerd too. He’s in an outhouse taking a dump and a drunk beautiful girl comes out and fucks him (coming while he’s going, in other words), which I couldn’t caustically help thinking was sort of a splatter freak’s wet dream come true – as well as being completely ludicrous and implausible.

I suppose if you’re going to rip off (sorry, I mean ‘pay homage to a la “Shaun of the Dead”) splatter zombie movies, you could do far worse than early Sam Raimi and Pete Jackson films, whose undead lore this film is bloody drowned in. But, to me at least, that’s the whole problem. If I want to see early Raimi and Jackson films, I’ll watch the “Evil Dead” films or “Braindead” again, cos they’re great…and not just some halfass spinterpretation of them by somebody else. I love Romero zombie movies but didn’t much rate “Shaun” for pretty much the same reason: seen it all before, and far better done. Just the filmmakers recreating their youth and putting themselves in their favorite splatter movies. Which may be fun and fine and fair enough on one level, but even though we now live in an era where popular culture has swallowed its own tail and the directors who grew up on it are just shitting out the stuff they grew up on (often because they seem to have had no real lives growing up outside of watching movies)…is trying for originality, even a vague semblance of it, a completely lost cause?

You tell me.

Looking back over this review, I see it’s been somewhat jaded and negative. “Dead Snow” is certainly not a badly made film. It’s certainly of a higher production quality than some of its source inspirational material, and some of the scenes work pretty well. There’s a really creepy scene where a knocked-out woman wakes up to find herself being disemboweled by devouring zombies as the screen wobbles and fades and reddens as she dies. Wirkola can definitely direct a film, and could be a fine director if he just got some better material to work with that isn’t an irritating slavish imitation of other people’s seminal sanguinary spillage-work. There is plenty of blood and guts and chaos here for rabid splatter fanatics, so they’ll definitely get their money’s worth. Other people I know whose opinion I normally agree with and respect watched it and liked it (eh Baron?) so that basically just proves the subjectivity and ultimately pointlessness of reviewing movies.

I think I’ve said enough.

Next move’s yours.

Pointless? I'm so depressed.

Day Of The Dead (2008)

DAY OF THE DEAD (2008)

DIRECTED BY STEVE MINER

Review By Graham Rae

Well, there are some ‘remakes’ (or ‘re-imaginings,’ as Hollywood likes to euphemistically put it these days, when recycling worthless old 80's splatter and slasher flicks; a prevalent trend there in recent years) that should simply never see the light of, well, day, and this waste of digital video is one of them. This one (the original ‘Day’ is one of my favorite films) instantly joins the ranks of the world’s worst zombie movies like ‘Hell of The Living Dead’ and ‘Zombi 3’ and ‘Oasis of The Zombies’ and ‘Zombies Lake’ and ‘Violent Shit’. And that is no mean feat.

We should have known. In 2004, Hollywood ‘remade’ the 1978 satiric zombie classic ‘Dawn of The Dead,’ the movie credited with single handedly inventing the splatter subgenre, and big bucks rolled in. The reason they could do this is because original director George A Romero’s business partner Richard Rubinstein owns the rights to the ‘Dead’ films and wants to rake in as much cash for them as possible, against Romero’s wishes.

ROOBENSTIEN BUB NO LIKE, CHEAP FUCKK! 

How much he must have got for this worthless garbage is debatable, because it’s low-budget, low-rent shite from Steve Miner, the hack who brought us quality fare like a couple of the ‘Friday The 13th’ movies. The plot here? There isn’t one. Good acting? There is none whatsoever. Mena Suvari and Ving Rhames are in it (the latter only in a few small crap scenes before being bumped off), but they must have needed rent money and I can hardly believe they’re in this. Good makeup FX? None whatsoever; the zombie makeup is terrible. Gore? Very little, and the head-shot CGI-generated zombies look like they come straight out of a videogame. The social and philosophical subtexts of the original? Are you fucking kidding me?

being ball gagged and gang raped in a basement by gimps was less humiliating!

Discussing this film any further is a total waste of time and effort and energy, and to think more about it would be to put more thought than the clowns who made it put into it. I sat watching this nothing-like-the-original movie in utter disbelief, wondering about things like why the zombies could suddenly stick to ceilings and scuttle along them like Spider-Man, why…ah, tearing this to shreds is like shooting fish in a barrel. The only reason I am writing this brief review is to direct you back towards the nihilistic, humanity-escape-velocity-fantasy of the amazing original, available in a great edition from Anchor Bay DVD. Apart from that, well, forget it. I genuinely can hardly remember a thing about this straight-to-DVD lobotomy already, and I only watched it last night.

Thank fuck for having a short memory.

WATCH THE ORIGINAL DAY OF THE DEAD INSTEAD AVAILABLE FROM SHOUT FACTORY

Crash!

Crash! Directed by Charles Band, Starring Jose Ferrer (1977). 

Review by Greg Goodsell

Before he hit pay dirt with an entire motion empire predicated on tiny, stop-motion figures wreaking havoc with his Puppetmaster and related films, Charles Band began his career with some extremely grimy, unrelenting, downbeat horror pictures that more than any other defined the genre that was dubbed “grindhouse.” When this reviewer is asked what the sleaziest motion picture he has ever seen, I invariably say Band’s Mansion of the Doomed (1976). Don’t laugh – there’s something about that film that worms its way under my skin. Dark, grim and relentless, there’s something about that dime store variation of Eyes Without a Face (1960) – with its cellar full of eyeless human guinea pigs that can’t be denied. Adding to the oppressive atmosphere is the presence of down-at-their-heels Hollywood has-beens Richard Widmark and Gloria Grahame wishing they were anywhere else.

Hey Chuck you left out Mansion, but included Evil Bong, really? 

Crash!, Band’s first film, while not reaching the gory heights of Mansion still has plenty of darkness and ill will bubbling underneath. Never released to video and DVD until just recently, Crash! is beyond ridiculous and borrows heavily from the many films that preceded it – The Car (1977), especially, but maintains viewer interest throughout.

The film open with a driverless black convertible driving a hippie van off the road, whereupon a stoner dude and his girlfriend are killed in a fiery, apocalyptic explosion. This goes on for awhile, satisfying the audience’s innate need for vehicular destruction. It makes perfect sense that author J. G. Ballard penned a novel with the same name that later became the main cornerstone in director David Cronenberg’s oeuvre of psychosexual films in 1996. Ideas that are far more pungent will be visited upon the yahoos in search of Band’s film who pick up Cronenberg’s picture by mistake.

Fulci's lawyers are on the phone as we speak!

Here comes the funny part: Sue Lyon (Stanley Kubrick’s titular siren Lolita, 1962) is seen shopping at a flea market at a drive-in theater (once again tying the picture to its target audience, as well as another facet of American car culture) where she buys an ugly one-idol pagan idol keychain from horror film icon Reggie Nalder (Salem’s Lot, 1979). She returns home to her bitter, wheelchair bound husband Jose Ferrer who forbids her to leave the house. Disregarding hubbie’s directive, Lyon jumps into her black convertible – the same one seen in the beginning killing various motorists. A snarling black Doberman pinscher jumps into car (the same one used in Dracula’s Dog, 1978), and forces her off the road. Injured and amnesiac, she’s rushed to a nearby hospital still clutching the demonic keychain.


Natch, the keystone is an ancient evil spirit, which is subconsciously used by Lyon to send her black convertible on a random spree of death and destruction. The question immediately arises … why was her car going on a murder spree before she lucked into the malefic keychain? The movie certainly doesn’t say …  

I think someone stuck some microdots onto my Dunkin Munchkin

There’s not much too it from there on in. Lyon slowly regains her memory with the assistance of kindly Dr. Gregg Martin (John Ericson) and the car continues its war against humanity. Ferrer pops in and gets hip to the fact that satanic forces are being rallied against him – and in a scene quite tasteless, and therefore daring for an exploitation film – Ferrer’s wheelchair is telekinetically used to batter the Doberman pinscher to death. 

WELL, the DVD is packed with extras, the best one being a documentary on tighty-whitey auteur director David DeCouteau love affair with the film. The film’s relative unavailability – DeCouteau caught it one weekend at a crummy theater, never to catch it again on VHS, TV or DVD led to his scavenger hunt for memorabilia. Certainly, the poster is one of the GREATEST ever for an exploitation film – a veritable doomsday of colliding automobiles with scantily dressed women running for their lives ties it once again to the Gospel of Cars, Sex and Death as preached by Ballard and Cronenberg.

While the enthusiasm behind this rare film is evident on the DVD, one has to wonder what Lyon and Ferrer thought about the direction of their lives and careers at the point they signed on for the project.

BUY HERE

Smile Before Death

Smile Before Death, aka “Il sorriso della iena” Directed by Silvio Amadio, Starring Jenny Tamburi (1972).

Movie Review by Greg Goodsell

In this sleazy murder mystery, we see rich old bag Dorothy Emerson (Zora Gheorgieva) flail about on the floor of her parlor, her throat slit with a piece of jagged glass. Detectives note that ol’ Dorothy had been drinking heavily before her demise, and so they describe as an “apparent suicide.” As we learn much later, this ridiculous assumption was probably based on the fact that Dot was an overbearing old hose bag who the surrounding community exclaimed “Good riddance!” when they wheeled her lifeless body on the gurney. However, we are getting ahead of ourselves –

Dorothy’s daughter Nancy (Jenny Tamburi) arrives at the family manse, school cap, knee socks and all. In boarding school for the majority of her life, she says she only saw mom about seven to eight times in her entire life (This figures in to plot later on, takes note.) Nancy is greeted by lesbian lizard Gianna (Rosalba Nelbi), “her mother’s best friend” – HA! – and scumbag stepfather Marco (Silvano Tranquilli). Dorothy kept no pictures of daughter nancy anywhere in the house and both Gianna and Marco rarely heard of her … do we see where this is going?

mirror mirror on the wall, do I look like a porn parody version Gina Gershon? 

In no time, shutterbug Gianna has Nancy posing for a series of pictures. Beginning with relatively innocuous fashion shots, the photos sessions become increasingly steamy and more explicit. Eventually, these modeling sessions include a third party, Connie Linglus. OOOOoh, you saw that one coming, didn’t you friends?

I saw that one coming but am incapable of smiling

To cut to the chase, it’s later revealed that Cougar Woman Dorothy was a happy lush who embraced life with her Bobby Sherman-lookalike boyfriend (Hirma Keller) who was fixing to tell both Gianna and Marco to hit the road. Natch, they both killed Dorothy, and tried to make it look like a suicide by locking her up in her bedroom from the inside by using a piece of twine. When faithful house servant Magda (Dana Ghia) gets hip to the Disgusting Duo’s plans – to eventually kill Nancy to get their hands on all the loot, she is brutally dispatched by Gianna with a glass ashtray. 

Not surprisingly, Nancy isn’t who she’s supposed to be – a minor character makes a reappearance – and a throwaway bit at the beginning involving a traffic blind spot and a garden arbor likewise returns for a grisly surprise ending that will have you laughing for days!

They don’t make them like this anymore, and did they ever? Set in one location, crammed full of Seventies disco décor that fetches top dollar on Internet auction sites, Smile Before Death features a jazz soundtrack from vocalist Edda Dell'Orso, frequent Ennio Morricone collaborator. It’s a catchy tune that lasts under three minutes and is played over and over and over and over again, even when it’s not supposed to. 

Director Silvio Amadio’s previous giallo feature Amuck (1972) remains highly sought after. In the meantime, slice off some smelly Italian cheese at the black-gloved buffet with Smile Before Death!

All That Remains Are Memories by Kris Gilpin

As I'm stuck back here in Floriduh now (still hate it) and broke, in debt & basically homeless, I think about the few highlights of my life (I should've been a character actor but fucked that up, I didn't know how to go about it (duh!), I think of all the cool peeps I've met & just wanted to share these short bits with others. I don't mean to be at all pretentious here, I'll just always be a kid from boring Miami in my heart and I've never lost the thrill of meeting famous folk thru the years. That and the fact that Erok has offered me $1 a word, well, enjoy, I hope!...[Gilpin, you having one of those LSD flashbacks?! - Ed.]...

Kurt Vonnegut:

The last time was in NYC (only been there twice, didn't like it, dirty and hard as hell to make a living there, and that was decades ago. L.A. is like that now) I was walking down a popular, rich street (6th Ave.? Duh...) and coming towards me was Kurt Vonnegut (!), a long time literary hero of mine. Unfortunately, he had his hands full, with lots of bags. My heart beat faster as I got the courage to say, "Hello, Mr. Vonnegut! I, uh..." He saw I really wanted to talk to him, so after a  moment he stopped, motioned me aside, tho he was obviously in a hurry, shook my hand and said, "Yes..."

Knowing I was apparently keeping him from something, I quickly tried to get out, "When I was a kid my old brother, who I was closer to than anyone, bought me a copy of Mother Night, I loved it, he later took a year to die young in pain from cancer, and I've read all your books since, and every time I read one it reminds me of him and of how, if he had lived, we surely would've written some funny stuff together--we had the same warped sense of humor--and my entire life would've been different, instead of the fucked-up mess that I've made of it by myself,"

I still don't know why, but all my nervous, then jammed-up brain could spit out was, "Uh, um, my...I think you're fantastic!"

I instantly thought, Oh no, what a fuckin idiot!!

He simply nodded politely, as if to say, Thanks, but I'm in a hurry and you're wasting my precious time here...

He then wordlessly walked away and I froze there, getting tears in my eyes. It haunted me for YEARS, until I encountered someone online who said they knew someone who knew someone who knew Vonnegut. I wrote out all the above in an email, sent it to him and begged him to send it to K.V. He said he would, and did, but of course I never heard back a word.

I don't know if Vonnegut ever did get my apology/explanation for that day, but I've always hoped that he did before he died.

Michael Ironside:

For the 22 years I was in L.A. I was in heaven, of course. On almost every street, almost every day, I'd run into people I recognized and loved.

One night my ex-wife and I were coming out of a theater on Hollywood Blvd. and in front of us was Michael Ironside, he looked and even moved like Joe Fucking Cool, no lie! We walked behind him a few feet and he actually seemed to emanate a strong vibe which I could feel just by being behind him, making me think, Holy shit, he has the Joe-Cool aura you'd expect from Jack Nicholson!

More heart palpitations before I stopped him and told him how much I loved his work in Scanners. I didn't know if he would bark, "Fuck off!" at me, but he was cool, said thanks and shook our hands. Only then did I notice the smiling beauty on his arm, and my jaw partially dropped--it was the still-stunning Kristen (R-and X-rated Alice in Wonderland) DeBell! I said, "Oh, hi, Kristen, we love you, too!" (Ironside smiled at that.) She smiled sweetly and shook our hands. "Well, I'll let you guys go, we just had to say hi!"

That's one of the few things (along with the indie-film theaters and the bookstores) I miss from L.A. I got out after all the rich, vacuous movie-studio types (who I worked for) started making me sick (another story)...

White Slave (Amazonia)

White Slave (Amazonia: The Catherine Miles Story, Cannibal Holocaust 2) Directed By Roy Garrett (Mario Gariazzo), Starring Elvire Audray.

This film which is apparently based on a true story has been on the back burner for a few years (every time I started it up though, I'd get bored or fall asleep). Let's see if I can power through this time around. I should also mention that there was no actual Catherine Miles and one of the Godfathers of Mondo, Franco Prosperi, who's no stranger to making up bullshit, claimed this was real just to create more publicity.

The derivative Cannibal Holocaust on ludes theme song that opens this flick is pretty funny considering Riz Ortolani worked for Jacopetti long ago in the 60's. Maybe Franco was pissed and wanted to capitalize on Deodato fever by using a ripped off version of the title track, who really knows? To me it seems deliberate, adding to the nonsense that this was a sequel to the Deodato controversial hit.

White Slave (or Amazonia) is the story of Catherine Miles played by Elvire Audray, a rich blonde who tells her story from a courtroom in flashbacks. She mostly scowls at the camera, but when she does smile, she has gummy baby-like teeth. She kind of resembles Sandal Bergman or a cheap knock off Olivia D'Abo.

Wait, there may be some time left to reattach my head, call the paramedics

I instantly recognized the voice of Pat Starke, who dubs Cathy from such classics as Cannibal Ferox, where she voiced Gloria (aka Larraine De Selle). Starke has been in so many Italian horror flicks such as Burial Ground and Anthropophagus, she does a nice job of elevating Elviria's stilted performance. Starke is sadly uncredited in many of these exploitation flicks, I think she deserves some kind of recognition and definitely should be as highly regarded as Nick Alexander (aka Al Cliver's dubbed pipes) and my favorite voice over guy Ed Mannix. 

Anyway back to the storyline, Mr. Miles, who looks like a bloated Barney Miller sails down the river with his daughter and wife. The family is quickly attacked by headhunters (not cannibals) with blow darts. Minutes before the incident, Cathy decides to crank up Radar Rider by Riggs (featured on the Heavy Metal soundtrack during the spaceman in the cadillac scene)! The fatal darts paralyze her for a short while and kill her parents. The Asians in awful bowl hair wigs take over the boat and decapitate her mom and pop (the fake heads are particularly lame). Next they inter-splice some footage of a real Cheetah devouring a deer, there's that famed Prosperi Mondo stink rearing it's ugly smell. 

I'm scowling so hard at you right now!

A violent tribe in white face attempt to capture the blonde damsel but one of them gets decapitated. Noone is ever eaten through out the entire film, so if you're looking for man eating savages, go look somewhere else! She's taken over to the village, bathed by the women and smeared with grease to smell more attractive to the Natives. They all barter and trade her for sex, this film totally preys into the jungle fantasy scenario--I mean she's a virgin, they all want to have their way with her, whoop-de-doo! She runs through the brush naked, looking pretty sweaty and constantly always seems annoyed, I guess anyone would be.

It gets worse for this uptight prude as she's defiled by some bloody bamboo and viola, virgin-no-more. The one aspect I like about this flick is that the tribesman (and women) are in charge and none of the headhunters are being humiliated or tortured by oppressive outsiders. I like how Cathy makes a flute out of bamboo and plays it by the river like Jen from The Dark Crystal. She always wears that "I'm not amused" face. She has a valid reason to have that attitude, considering the tribe keeps her parents severed heads as a joint trophy and have adorned their hut with the rotting corpse faces.

I got Gelfing Fever

There's a lot of naked Native girls walking around with full bushes, was Me Me Lai busy that week, why is she not in this film? In reality, after appearing in Lars Von Trier's Element of Crime, Lai stopped acting altogether.

One poor bastard as punishment for a domestic dispute is hung upside down while bugs eat his face off for a few days, it's pretty gruesome. I like how as she tells the court all the intricate details, they basically go "OK we get it, TMI"! I guess you could say I enjoyed this "Diet Cannibal Flick", there's enough going on to hold your interest and it's the least disgusting out of most others in the genre. 

It evolves into a reverse version of Man From Deep River as the female Westerner, trapped among the savages begins a forbidden relationship with one of the tribesmen. It takes half the film to get there, I'm also grateful that there's less real animal deaths than the aforementioned movie. Whenever they flashback to the court room, I like how it looks as if they shot it at a condemned DMV! Also the dude who plays the hunky Native has about as much acting ability as a cold Salisbury Steak.

Holy Shit, are you OK? Hey while you're awake, can you take out the garbage?

The village gets besieged by a helicopter flown by racist bomb dropping machine carrying maniacs. One exploding head effect looks pretty sweet! They take the remains of the natives and carry them off in a knapsack as if they were to be used later as Gordita filling. I should also mention that there is never any gut feasting of any kind (and in some circles this shit was passed off as Cannibal Holocaust 2 just like The Green Inferno)!

This becomes the first clue in how Miles parents were really murdered and she assimilates into their tribe. If you're a hardcore shock value junkie then you'll be bored to tears, but if you've seen it all and can appreciate a dopey Jungle adventure flick with a surprise ending, than give it a whirl. I (obviously) created the snazzy poster uptop because I thought this German poster for CH was just too perfect.  

WATCH HERE

Miss, would you mind clearing the room, we've got driving tests to hand out