StageFright

STAGE FRIGHT (Aquarius, Bloody Bird, Deliria) Directed By Michele Soavi, Starring Barbara Cupisti. (1987.

It's been along time since I've seen this euro-trash mound of extra cheesy lasagna loaded to the gills with saxophones, dancers and an axe hacking, chainsaw welding killer owl on the loose. A bunch of stage actors are all set to put on a magical show that's Cats, West Side Story and Spiderman the musical all rolled into one with birds of course! What's the deal with killer birds and Italians anyway? New York Ripper had a phone terrorist with a duck voice, there was that Zombie sequel, I want an answer damnit! Italian exploitation was "putting a bird on it" long before Portlandia!

It's a full bird stuffed with ham, topped with gorgonzola

   There's so many prolific talents involved like George Eastman--using his pen name "Lew Cooper", John Morghen, Simon Boswell and Argento protege Michele Soavi. It's like an Italian horror fanatics wet dream. When Skunkape and I were in TV Production school epochs ago, he used to edit clips together of Soavi's work on a special episode you can even check out on Youtube. Click this link to see Direcor's Chat (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNO5F106lFo). I let him borrow my Deep Red Alert with the Soavi interview and the rest is history. 

   The film starts off with the most mozzarella drenched gorgonzola scenes of overly made up actresses, choreographed moves, John Morghen in a body stocking wearing a giant owl headdress and people fussing over a play called The Night Owl. I would love to see the cast of It's Always Sunny recreate this musical as The Night Owl Cometh, but that's just ridiculous.

   The team of Eastman and Soavi, don't seem to give a fuck, they are a vital force of extraordinary trashiness, even if you don't like interpretive dance! Down at a mental ward, where the lobby has a giant aquarium with a lion fish they establish that a former actor named Irving Wallace became homicidal and chopped up 16 people. Gee--I wonder if someone from the institution might break out and start hacking the actors to bits? StageFright is an Italian slasher movie after all, but then again it's so much more!  

   The plotline of a maniac wearing a creepy mask escaping from an institution during a torrential downpour is patterned after Halloween, only the instruments of death are far more creative. The first female victim receives a pick axe face hit that goes straight down her throat!

I'm burning your bed with my cigarette from here!

   Something sinister is also going on with Peter the douche-bag stage director (played by Caligula The Untold Story's David Brandon), he's a coke fiend on a total power trip. He won't let any of the actors leave and promises them money and fame if they stay and work on The Night Owl. He was also genius enough to hide the key to the studio, so everyone is trapped for the night.

I'm good enough and smart enough and goshdarn-nit people like me

   John Morghen is hilarious as Brett, his dubbed voice almost sounds like Snagglepuss. Stagefright is campy and fun in the best way possible. The name Irving Wallace sounds more like a guy who manages a deli than an escaped lunatic in an Owl mask but what do I know?

One of the cops eating a donut while waiting in the car is played Michele Soavi (Mr. Demon mask). Willie, the friendly caretaker is played by the voodoo priest in Zombie 4.

Did you put Exlax in my donut again?

There are some technical downward shots in this film that are nice and stylized of brutal murders (well Soavi learned from the best)!

   While a male actor is strangled to death through a door, a drill tunnels through his bowels and a girl screams "Don't stand there do something"! I felt that it was the 80's fatigue of slasher movie female victims not lifting a finger to help and just screaming or basically awaiting their slow deaths. It was a subtle touch that made it seem as if Italians are bringing something new to the genre, which of course it's true, they are constantly innovators.

Is that an erection or are you just being impaled by an killer owl?

   The way Peter is always shining a spotlight on the killers ghastly murders, it seems as if he admires his work. I wont spoil the way he dies, because it's so fucking great!

Irving finally gets what he wants in the final act, sitting like a king among his "human trophies", petting a black cat as feathers drift around the stage.

The last time I rented Stagefright from Netflix, I remember half liking it, but after revisiting it, I have no idea what I was thinking because this one is incredible and an essential Italian slasher film! Here at TOG, we are very excited that Blue-Underground is planning on releasing the film on Blu-Ray with new extras that feature interviews with John Morghen and Michele Soavi!

I must have those shoes!

I'm not Winslow Leach, I'm Irving Wallace!

HAHA! I knew these white pants were stain resistant!

Owls and Cats are best buddies


THEATER OF GUTS
Tribute Trailer
It's a Whoo done it!

BUY IT HERE

Death By Invitation

poster taken from Mondoexploito.com/

Death by invitation Directed By Ken Friedman, starring Shelby Leverington (1971).

As a horror fanatic with a fondness for falsely accused women of the middle ages condemned to death by a mob of church folk, you may think I'd seen every "witch burning" movie under the sun and then at 3am, a movie I'd never heard of called Death by Invitation shows up on TCM (licensed from the fine degenerates over at Vinegar Syndrome). This is writer/ director Ken Friedman's start as a film maker, he would later switch to a screenwriter for gentle fare like Cadillac Man with Robin Williams and harder edged stuff like Johnny Handsome (which I sort of enjoyed). This is another Something Weird Video repackaging by VS, like Evil Come, Evil Go (which was a lot better than this). Vinegar gives you more bang for your buck because if you hate one movie, there's a chance you may like the next one!

   A soiled mob of angry sex obsessed puritans catch a young girl and plan on burning her alive. One of them looks like Paul Reubens in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Another chubby fellow with a dirty face goes into a whispered angry diatribe about the woman's naked writhing body-- tempting him-- oh my!

you thought you'd seen the last of Vampire Pee Wee Herman?

The style is SF Brownrigg-ish (Don't Look In The Basement ), though I'm hoping the film is more enjoyable! 

   In a flashback, Lise (Shelby Leverington who later appeared in Michael Bay's The Island), the accused witch seems like a slutty hippie, her father (the whispery chubby fellow) doesn't approve of her hanging around what he calls "way-out people"! Doesn't he know that's where the fun is, Way Out?

The Way Outs!

   The locations are ugly with wood paneling and green curtains--they remind me of suburban basements I've seen in Long Island, during my childhood.

   The music in this film is horrendous it's the kind that only dogs can here.

An oily fellow takes a cab into the big city to get laid and finds Lise working in in a torture dungeon.

The dominatrix goes into graphic detail about an orgiastic hunt--I guess some people pay good money for a sexy story-- but this is a waste of time in my mind.

SNORE, Oh My God this story is so sexy

   The dad's extremely hammy delivery is my favorite part (he makes it almost watchable) and all the men have that mutton chop Mersey beat hairstyle. Sometimes there's an audible projector sound for no reason.

   I get the feeling that Vinegar Syndrome was set up to showcase porn oddities and off shoot SWV nonsense that no one else would touch with a ten meter cattle prod to quote Dan Ackroyd.

Death by Invitation soon unravels into a 70's showcase of awkward sets and weird haircuts. That's not really enough to hold anyone's interest. At one point the library music blasts over the actors and the father can't even hear them and says "What? I can't hear you"!

There's a lot of office and dinner table scenes. This movie makes "Touch of Satan" look like a riveting thrill ride!

   But then sometimes reserved and mellow is good, I mean just watch one of those Alpha Blue Archive satanic porns and tell me you wouldn't beg for mediocre bullshit! I appreciate what VS is doing, but don't understand the appeal of half baked softcore crap. Eventually they will put out something decent and are still a company to watch out for (I mean who else is left in the DVD realm, not repackaging the same product over and over again in a Ray Kroc fashion).

WATCH RERUNS OF MATLOCK OR WALKER TEXAS RANGER INSTEAD!

available from Vinegar Syndrome 

Ti tian xing dao: Sha xiong AKA/ Brother of Darkness (1994) d/ Hin Sing Tang

Brother Of Darkness (Ti Tian xing dao: Sha xiong) Directed By Billy Tang, Starring Lily Chung (1994).

Review By B.W. Head Honcho over at WOPSLOITATION.

Ciao, Theatergoers and proponents of entrails alike, I'll be your guest reviewer for the evening. It's safe to say that Alan Alda didn't write the screenplay for this 1994 Cat III Hong Kong sickie. For those of you unfamiliar with the Category III rating, no one under eighteen is admitted, whether they've got a parent or guardian present or not, much like the American early eighties parallel with the same rating (stricter yet, with a seventeen age restriction that I never once listened to, for the record) preserved for movies like Dawn of the Dead(1979), Maniac!(1980), and Fulci's Zombie(1980). Tonight's review is an unsettling little slice of domestic abuse from the man who brought you things like Red To Kill and Dr. Lamb. It kinda unfolds like this...

This guy's smoother than 20 grit sandpaper.

At the outset, Wong Kuen To (Hugo Ng) is slumped dead, having been brutally beaten and wearing a television set hat to boot, as his brother Kuen Wah (Ka Kui-Ho) is led off in shackles by the authorities. At his trial, Kuen Wah relates stories of his childhood to the jury that could possibly justify his homicidal outburst in some people's minds...As a young boy adopted into the family, Wah gets treated like a wet food stamp on a fairly regular basis by To, who's in and out of jail and manhandling his wife (Pu Kei-Chan) like a receptacle for his throat yogurt in front of their terrified, elderly parents when he isn't kneeing his younger brother in the hangbag or chucking him out a second story window into a back alley full of trash. This guy makes Krug Stillo look like Dick Van Patten.

"Pouuuur the wiiiine, liiiight the fiiiire, girl, your wish is my commaaaaaaand..."

Years pass, Wah has grown into a polite and gracious young man, a tae kwon do practitioner with a sweet lil' piece of arm candy named Jenny (Lily Chung), while To is still an intolerable dick-in-the-face to any and all who make his acquaintance, stealing beer, holding his own mother hostage at table leg-point for drugs, booze, and brothel funds, putting cigarettes out on his son's back, and we've already seen that it's no bed of roses for his wife, either, and nothing remotely resembling a pleasure cruise. To make matters worse, To's earlier kneeing has forced Wah to add two wah's in bedroom matters (as in wah wah wahhhh, you're impotent, baby!), leaving a frustrated Jenny as the next meal for To's hungry organ. Yeah, where's that television set hat, this guy's begging to be fitted.

"Where's the stick, mama? Who's got the stick? You want the stick???"

There's verbal abuse, beatings, torture, violence, misogyny, and softcore sex abound here, and with unintentionally hilarious subtitle translations like "My organ must eat something!" and "Let me touch your nibbles.", it all makes for a pretty bizarre viewing, like the Hong Kong version of Farrah Fawcett's Burning Bed on P.C.P. Some of you jaded Cat III fanatics may find it weak in comparison to some of the director's other work in the genre, but it's still moderately mean-spirited and nasty, at any rate. I found it engaging enough, like passing a twisted wreck on the highway, to lay three of my trademark Wops on it. Check it out if you've got the guts!

You know what this look is missing? If you said "television set hat", give yourselves five points.

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!

GETEVEN aka Road to Revenge

-Reviewed by Skunkape-

Directed by John De Hart and yes GetEven is one word!

GETEVEN is the biggest little action movie you never did see. But if you did see it, you're one of the lucky ones. The film is another so bad it's good affair but what makes it a cut above the rest is that its got so much "Hart", John De Hart that is! De Hart plays Rick Bodie the film's star. He also wrote, directed, and provided some of the music in the film. So who is Bodie going to get even with? Lets find out!

Kung Fool

Our hero and his best friend and partner Huck Finney ( Wings "Ramrod" Hauser ) are about to bust up a drug operation in a remote trailer. Lt. Normad ( William Smith ) is in charge and recklessly gets Huck wounded in line of duty. Normad takes full credit for the operation and gets promoted. He then frames Bodie and Huck for drugs and gets them kicked off the force. This lieutenant is as corrupt as they come.

The Evil Normad

"Yes Huck, you suck at darts."

Life is rough for the two ex-cops. Bodie drives a limo and Huck drinks constantly while his wife cheats on him. She's even banging the evil Normad who is now the top judicial official and pretty much runs the town. The reasons for revenge keep piling up! While Bodie and Huck are drinking at their favorite bar on "cowboy night", Bodie runs into one of his old flames named Cindy. ( Pamela Jean Bryant ) He dazzles her by getting on stage and singing with the house band. This is the money shot of the film. He croons out a country tune of epic proportions that will probably stay with you for the rest of your life called the " Shimmy Slide".

"How about the Shimmy Electric Slide? Boogie Oogie?"

Now things really start to heat up! On Bodie and Cindy's second date she reveals that she was part of a satanic cult for a while and witnessed the sacrifice of a baby. A little later we find out that Normad is not only the justice system in this town but he is also the sect's high priest of Lucifer worshiping loonies. Normad's goons are after Cindy for abandoning the cult and that's when Bodie has finally had enough and decides to GETEVEN!

"Pull my Finger."

"Hail Satan!"

"Mr. De Hart..how much are you paying me again?"

Some reviews have called this film a vanity project by John De Hart playing the lead but I call it a masterpiece. He may not have the required acting skills to be a leading man in any real Hollywood production, but his laid back cowboy/ macho man performance works nicely with William Smith, who is totally hamming it up as the villain and Wings Hauser, who is way way over the top, giving a very eccentric performance as his best buddy.

More like Dingleberry Finn!

Hauser's character Huck Finney goes slightly mad from the trauma of the past and his slut wife. So he starts his own religion based on the passages of Huckleberry Finn. Sound crazy? However, I would surly sign up for "Huckism" before Scientology any day!






Now an attorney in central LA, Mr. De Hart is back where he belongs.(not acting) He did leave his mark in film and made cinematic history when he Shimmy Slid his way right into this review's heart forever. GETEVEN is a gem waiting to be discovered by bad movie lovers everywhere. I hope that one day in the near future I can see it at a midnight screening in a packed theater where everyone is singing along and dressed in overalls celebrating "Huckism". That would be awesome! Hot Damn!

"LA Law" for real

Theater of Guts

Tribute Trailer

"There's only one man who can travel the Road to Revenge."

I "De Hart" Radio

Avenged

Avenged (Deadbeat, Getting Even, Tom Cats) Directed By Harry Kerwin, Starring Chris Mulky (1977). 

I've seen a lot of rape/revenge movies, this is one of the most repugnant misogynistic films to come along in awhile and that's really saying something. Like Gestapo's Last Orgy or A Serbian Film, it crawls its way into your psyche and once you've seen it, that's more than enough. 

   The strangest part of all is how they sold the film, just check out the pro-rape connotation this trailer for Tomcats (or Avenged) has. (LINK). That's none other than the "Real" Don Steele doing the voice work for the trailer of Rocknroll High School, Death Race 2000 and tons of other cult flicks. I don't usually get all up in arms about women being objectified, violently raped then murdered--but this film got under my skin. I mean it's still "only a movie" but an all around exploitive and repulsive one in an equal opportunity manor. For a rinky dink 70's grindhouse flick directed by Something Weird Video alumni Kerwin (whose brother was in all those classic H.G. Lewis staples) to bother me this much, it's very effective and worth seeking out. 

   Just don't say we didn't warn you, if you're a woman, there's nothing for you to enjoy (we don't even get the satisfaction of a climactic death for the redneck rapists). You might have to take 30 showers to feel clean again!

  

Bobby Brady over there is our Matthew (from I Spit on your Grave)

   The film has the production values of the spicy meatball Alka-seltzer commercial. Down at a greasy spoon, four hillbilly degenerates take turns viciously raping a poor waitress then murder her in cold blood.

   A swampy fat guy is the only witness (he was heavy breathing behind a large tree, one that doesn't even hide his girth) and he's so drunk he can't even read the plates on the rapers get- away car!

Wendy the waitresses' brother Cullin (Chris Mulky- later on Twin Peaks) and his girlfriend are distraught by the slaying and it turns out they are both related to the police captain, so there will certainly be some avenging later.

Sir, you're being arrested for severe flatulence

   

   This film tries to turn you off to sex forever, there's some pasty assed white people dropping trough, with a side of forced entry. During one "pleasant" scene the gang rapers cackle as the married guy in their group forces his wife to blow him in front of his pals! 

Later on the porky gentlemen witness is found and questioned at the station by non other then William Kerwin the captain from Blood feast (who's also the director's brother)!

Shit! not another one of those long hard ones.

  

If you like women being beaten and humiliated then murdered in some of the ugliest Miami Florida locations you'll eat up Avenged! Or maybe you felt The Ladies Club was tame and reserved, than this flick is your new best pal, I have to hand it to Code Red (whose output I'm not much of a fan of) they put out a nice double disc with extras that includes Kerwin's previous hixploitation film God's Bloody Acre.

WOOT WOOT! These Wise Potato chips are salty

   The same hillbillies are out serial raping every waitress in the boonies and worst of all never pocketing enough money in the register, but what do they expect from knock off Stuckey's or Waffle Houses, high class Cracker Barrel loot? These hicks are cut from the same toothless cloth as the slack jawed boys from I Spit on your Grave, but possibly worse!

   

Welcome to the South

   It turns out the crackers have a pretty smart lawyer and on a count of a technicality they all get off... so to speak! After the judge lets them go, Wendy's brother Cullin has a plan to exterminate the yokels (who pin him to a car door and smear their ice cream in his face)!

you made me drop my organic sea-salted caramel ice cream

   Every woman in this film is not only assaulted but treated as if they're human garbage it's extremely unpleasant. They really push the eye for an eye barometer as far as it will stretch.

   Culin, Wendy's brother is supposed to be a collegiate pacifist, but has guns in every kitchen drawer (I guess it's a Florida thing). He hunts all the bastards down one by one, but for some reason I never felt satisfied. I mean when it's Linda Blair or Charles Bronson I'm clapping my hands like a mongoloid, so what's wrong, why am I wrestling with my psyche? The film has this earthy down home quality and unpleasantness that makes it disturbing and yet still enjoyable.

  There's no fantasy element just primitive ugliness and it all ends like a bad cop show on a CHIPS style pause under the credits!

   I felt let down by the vengeance, but if a low budget revenge flick can force me to consider why I've enjoyed so many other rape/revenge fantasy action flicks, than it's an impressive piece of work.

DISGUSTINGLY MISOGYNISTIC, BUT HIGHLY RECOMMENDED! 

Be gentle and don't skimp on the Astroglide!

I'm fixing the place up for Gordon Ramsay

When you're in a sticky forced entry situation, always reach for Vaseline 

I lost my contact again