Choy Lay Fut
C.I.D.
Cold Sweat
Come and See
Condemned to Live
Contamination
Contraband
The Creature with the Blue Hand
Curse of the Devil
Cannibal:
The Musical (C, 1996) AKA Alfred
Packer: The Musical
Trey Parker and Matt Stone of South Park fame directed
and starred in this silly and ridiculously gory musical about the legend
of real-life old west cannibal Alfred Packer. Not really know where he's
going, Packer (Parker) and his beloved horse Leanne (which is named after
a finance who left Parker shortly before this film was written; he named
the horse after her to get revenge. Which may be why
the horse farts a lot) lead some miners into Colorado in search of gold,
meeting some unfriendly trappers, a Confederate "cyclops" who keeps spewing
pus out of his empty socket, and some Indians (who are actually Japanese...
but they do have teepees!) and occasionally breaking into hilarious-but-catchy
songs (TOO catchy, damnit - I can't get them out of my head and they're
STUPID! You've been warned!), such as "It's A Shpadoinkle Day," "Hang
The Bastard," and "Let's Build a Snowman" (which includes a tap dancing
break unfortunately hidden by waist-deep snow). And mixed in it all is
some pretty extreme (but comical) eye-gouging, neck-biting, arm-tearing-off,
meat-eating (but not BUTT!), exploding head, cleaver-in-the-face-ness.
This went largely ignored until South Park became a hit, and then
it got popular and even got a theatrical release. It's pretty funny, and
if you get the DVD you also get the infamous commentary track where Trey,
Matt, and several of the stars get completely 'faced on booze and start
making fun of their own movie. The commentary track alone has sold a lot
of copies of this puppy. I usually hate Troma but this is worth getting
if you get a decent price on it. -zwolf
Carnival of Blood (C,
1972) AKA Death Rides a Carousel
This movie has a terrible reputation. And it fought tooth and nail for
it, don't get me wrong, but it's not really boring like some people say.
The pace is pretty slow and it's pretty talky, but the ineptness of the
filmmaking keeps it fascinating. It's a Hershel Gordon Lewis-type gore
flick, but as bad as it is it's not quite as inept as HG's stuff. Anyway,
obnoxious, nagging, blabbermouth women are getting butchered on Coney
Island. First a girl is decapitated in the spook house. Then another is
disemboweled under the boardwalk. Then a woman has her tongue and eyes
inexpertly torn out, and her head is smashed in with a brick (which is
shown in point-of-view shots of a guy swinging a brick at the camera...
even though a POV shot is ridiculous in this situation since both her
eyes have already been torn out! D'oh!) Who's doing the killing - the
stressed-out D.A? The bald guy with dark circles around his eyes who runs
the throw-darts-at-balloons stand? The gyp-sy gypsy who never quite finishes
telling anybody's fortune? Or is it Gimpy, the scarfaced hunchback (played
by Adrian's brother Paulie from the Rocky movies!)? Or, is it...
someone else? The movie's not so hot at building suspense so I won't ruin
what little it has by telling, but I will let you know that the gore effects
are bad but quite graphic, and the camerawork and editing look like the
work of a mental patient... and that kind of works for it, since the defiance
of all common sense and logic of how-to-make-a-movie adds weirdness and
kind of a bad dream quality. It looks like they shot a few scripted scenes
and then weaved them together with a patchwork of unplanned wandering-around-Coney-Island
stuff. The teddy bear stuffed with human entrails is pretty inspired,
though, and the soundtrack of strange, incomprehensible music (that stops
and starts as different footage is edited in) makes it even more schizophrenic.
Yep, it's bad, but it's worth watching, and not just a borefest. You'll
stay awake just trying to figure out what the hell they were thinking.
-zwolf
Carnival of Souls (B&W, 1962)
Very weird film following the shadowy, haunted life of one Mary Henry
(Candace Hilligoss) following a car wreck in which she and her friends
fell off a bridge into a river. Three hours later, while the police are
searching for the car, Mary walks out of the river, acting cold and remote.
She leaves town to take a job as a church organist in Salt Lake City,
but she isn't very friendly and ends up alienating everyone around her.
Worse, she sees a pasty-faced dead man (director Herk Harvey) following
her. Also, she feels a compulsion to visit an old abandoned amusement
pier near the lake. After suffering episodes where people can't see or
hear her, she goes to the pier and wanders through the lonely old dancehalls
and attractions. After being followed by more and more zombies, she returns
to the pier again, where a dance of the dead (who rise from the lake)
is being held... and Mary finds out she belongs there because, y'see,
she died in that car wreck after all... A low-budget art-horror film that
sometimes looks cheap, sometimes looks like Bergman or Cocteau (which
was Harvey's aim), is sometimes hokey, and sometimes genuinely creepy.
A unique film that slipped through the cracks for a while before being
given a second life in the late 80's by a big re-release, and now is given
privileged treatment on a nice dual-DVD set containing both the 78-minute
theatrical version (which was timed to fit on double bills with The
Devil's Messenger) and the 83-minute director's cut, as well as documentaries
on the film and outtakes. The pace is sometimes a little slow, but it's
definitely essential, atmospheric viewing, best saved for late at night,
when it'll seem more dreamlike. Might make a good double-feature with
Night Tide. -zwolf
Case of the Bloody Iris (C, 1971) AKA Erotic Blue, What
Are Those Strange Drops of Blood Doing on Jennifer's Body?, Perché
quelle strane gocce di sangue sul corpo di Jennifer?
Italian giallo film with a typical masked maniac (he looks nearly identical
to the killer in the granddaddy of all giallo, Bava's Blood and Black
Lace) is going around killing women. He stabs one in an elevator (which
gets a really mild reaction from the people who discover her body) and
later drowns a girl in boiling water, after terrorizing her with tape
recordings of her own nightclub act, where she wrestles men from the audience.
The main potential victim is the scream queen of giallo, Edwige Fenech
from Bava's Five Dolls For An August Moon and a bunch of Sergio
Martino flicks). The killer may be her husband who was a member of a sex
cult she belonged to, the symbol of which was an iris. Or it could be
a pretty (almost a lookalike for Fenech)-but-sinister lesbian, or the
crazy burn-victim son of an equally-crazy widow next door. Or even possibly
George Hilton, who's got a phobia about blood. Or maybe none of 'em. The
script was written by Ernesto Gastaldi, who also wrote Torso and
The Whip And The Body. This isn't the best but it's not bad. -zwolf
Cathy's Curse (C,
1976)
Exorcist-inspired horror with a little girl becoming possessed
by the evil spirit of a girl who died in a car wreck years before. Moving
into an old house, young Cathy finds a dirty old doll with taped-over
eyes, and becomes attached to it and starts demonstrating telekinetic
powers, playing car-wreck games with her friends (and trying to poke their
eyes out!), and getting cranky! She makes food rot instantly, gets old
relatives drunk, summons snakes, rats, and spiders, causes blood and leeches
to fill the bathtub, and her face gets covered in mud. There's not a lot
going on plotwise, and characterization is negligible, but there's pretty
much a constant barrage of supernatural activity right from the giddy.
A lot of it is pretty silly, and there's a resolution that explains absolutely
nothing, but if you're in the mood for grade-B 70's possession hijinks,
this'll do. -zwolf
Cat O' Nine Tails (C, 1971)
AKA Il Gatto a nove code
Dario Argento's follow-up to Bird With The Crystal Plumage (and
the second of his trilogy of unrelated animal-titled movies -Four
Flies On Grey Velvet was third) stars Karl Malden as a blind
man who makes crossword puzzles for a living, and James Franciscus as
a two-fisted reporter. Malden overhears a discussion about blackmail and,
later, a break-in: someone stole a file from a genetic institute. Then
one of the guys involved in the blackmail conversation gets pushed in
front of a train. A newspaper lab worker developing pictures of the incident
is strangled and slashed. Malden, his little niece, and Franciscus try
to solve the killings, which involve a maniac who has the XYY chromosome
(indicating a predisposition toward criminal behavior) and is trying to
keep that fact suppressed. This leads to mayhem... which isn't as gory
as some of Dario's later stuff but it makes up for that by being brutal
and wince-inducing. This isn't one of Dario's better-regarded films -
it's early and doesn't have the smoothness to the flashy style yet - but
if you give it a chance without expecting Inferno or Suspiria,
you might be pleasantly surprised by how good it is. Interesting score
by Ennio Morricone. -zwolf
Cauldron Of Blood (C, 1967)
AKA Blind Man's Bluff, Children of Blood, The Corpse
Collectors, Death Comes from the Dark, The Shrinking Corpse,
El Coleccionista de cadáveres
There's usually a certain charm to any movie with opening credits as cheesy
as the cartoon skeletons and colored-gel-lit skulls that open this Spanish
horror film, but you can't always trust that... Boris Karloff appears
in one of his final roles, playing a blind sculptor who stays in a wheelchair
most of the time, and who wears dark goggles. An obnoxious reporter (with
even more obnoxious drunk friends - god, this one guy is just a total
asshole, I mean, there are repeated shots of him jiving around and laughing
and just being an asshole) charms his way into Boris's house. Boris's
wife has a cabinet full of SM paraphernalia and has nightmares about whipping
people, and Boris's (hilariously fake) head decaying. She also kills people,
boils away their flesh, and gives the bones to Boris to use in his sculptures.
In his defense, he thinks she gets them legally, from unclaimed cadavers.
At a costume party she dresses up in an SM-type uniform that makes her
look like The Green Hornet's sidekick, Kato. Then some running time is
killed with conga lines before she kidnaps a girl (with some help) and
prepares to boil her alive. The only real horror is that an actor as great
and classy as Karloff had to end his career with total snoozefests like
this. Very dull, with no payoff for your patience, other than a lame molten-arm
gag. Perfect MST3K material. -zwolf
Challenge Of the Lady Ninja
(C, ?)
Absolutely great kung fu/exploitation film. A talented female ninja has
all kinds of cool skills, such as being able to spin around until her
clothes change into a skimpy pink bikini to make opponents forget about
fighting. Hey, it'd work on me - this woman is beautiful. A man in a rubber
skull mask helps her fight villains such as a guy with blue tattoos all
over his face. She forms an all-girl army to fight and seduce the enemy.
Funny and sleazy training sequences include stretching bikinied girls
over ropes, and mud wrestling. The camera always takes crotch or cleavage
shots, sometimes so obviously it's hilarious. Ludicrous dialogue and fantastic
stuntwork (with help from wires 'n' such) add to the greatness. No nudity,
but it's about as sleazy as you can get with clothes on - catfights, hot-oil
wrestling, and whores fighting over customers. Recommended. And if you
like this, you'll probably want to check out Deadly Life of a Ninja,
which has some of the same cast and attitude. -zwolf
Champ Against Champ (C,
1983)
Dragon Lee is a wandering spaghetti-wester type kung fu master who gets
attacked for no reason a lot. This means more fight time with less pesky
plot considerations! Plus it helped everybody keep warm, because this
must've been filmed in a really cold area since you can see everyone's
breath. Everybody's plotting resistance fighting against an evil tyrant
and hiding a wounded rebel leader (who sounds just like Grandpa Simpson!).
Mostly it's serious kung fu, but occasionally funny things happen, such
as when one guy starts dancing with one of his opponents and a Strauss
waltz swells on the soundtrack. The dubbed dialogue is more ridiculous
than usual, with many variations on the classic "you must be tired
of living!" line, and lots of hilarious insults. Dragon Lee gets
hit by a poison dart and his process of dying is so bad that the moon
appears in the middle of the day. Luckily a Chinese hermit (with a Texas
accent) amputates his leg and saves his life. He's depressed about it
for a while, but then he remembers a famous fighter called Steel Leg.
When he tells his girlfriend about Steel Leg, she happily announces "He
was my grandfather!" and gives Dragon access to all of Steel Leg's
secret kicking tricks. After building a steel leg and practicing with
it, he can kick down trees, and so he sets out on the vengeance trail...
which is filled with clowns who whip him with ribbons and then turn into
girls who can turn invisible. So, for a while, you get to watch Dragon
Lee standing there jerking around, pretending somebody's hitting him.
To make up for this awful "special effect," they bring in a
guy who blows a continuous stream of fire out of his mouth; I'm not sure
how they did that one but it's really dangerous-looking and impressive,
no kidding. Then Dragon and another guy mystically project flaming flowers
at each other and really bring down the house. It's all very strange...
but it's interesting, you gotta give it that. Dragon Lee movies tend to
have strange quirks in them... -zwolf
Changing Lanes (C,
2002)
Ben Affleck (perfectly cast as a self-serving, superficial yuppie lawyer)
has a fender-bender with Samuel L. Jackson (cast against type as a guy
who doesn't say "fuck" very much) and doesn't take the time to do things
the right way, because he's in a hurry to get to court. He just leaves
Samuel stuck on the highway and says "Better luck next time." But Samuel
was in a hurry, too - he lost his wife and children because he was late
for a custody hearing, so he isn't too predisposed to return a file that
Ben dropped. But Ben needs the file; without it he may not only lose a
case, but serve jail time. And so the two proceed to spend the day ruining
each other's lives as much as possible, breaking all the unspoken rules
that separate society from chaos. This will either destroy them... or
do them both some good. Gets a bit "Hollywood" in its resolution, but
pulls strong performances from the two leads and even though things get
out of hand, they still seem plausible. Definitely worth checking out,
and would probably make an interesting double feature with Falling
Down. -zwolf
Chappaqua (C &
B&W, 1966)
Do ya like the LSD-trip scene in Easy Rider? Do ya? What if it
was stretched to a feature-length film, would you still like it? If so,
look for this beat-hippie relic starring William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg,
Ravi Shankar, the Fugs, Moondog, and the director-producer-writer, Conrad
Rooks. Rooks plays a recovering alcoholic and drug addict trying to detox
in Switzerland. There's a constant, Beatles-"Revolution 9"-ish
barrage of images. A pretty girl in leather pants throwing LSD sugar cubes
at the camera and then stomping on them while our protagonist grovels,
licking up the crushed sugar 'til he's crosseyed. Neon Coca Cola ads.
Allen Ginsberg and some other silly fuck taking up sidewalk space chanting
some idiotic bullshit that must appeal to pretentious goons while Rooks
chases joggers. Car and plane travel. Color and black and white footage
(in various degrees of distortion) alternate, and there's also a lot of
crazy editing and superimposition and stuff, to reflect Rook's alternate
mental state. But it's also a smokescreen of sound and fury to cover the
fact that there's very little story. William S. Burroughs - tricked out
like an undertaker - is the head of the clinic. Rooks imagines he's in
a coffin, and in a gangland-slaying vision, Burroughs and Fantasy Island
midget Herve Villaches get gunned down. He imagines going into surgery
after a motorcycle wreck and becoming a vampire. And a lot of other weirdness
that becomes stultifying after a while. It's all punctuated by lots of
jazz and Ravi Shankar music which I'm told are really good, but you can't
tell it by me because I hold both of those forms of music in extreme contempt.
But, if you like that stuff, there's plenty of it, knock your lame ass
out! And if you like this movie you'd love Awakenings of the Beast
by Jose Mojica Marins. Anyway, this isn't without some interesting moments
and has some nice cinematography, but it's mostly pretentious and dull.
-zwolf
The Child (C, 1977) AKA Kill
and Go Hide, Zombie Child
In what appears to be the 1940's, a young lady goes into the backwoods
to look after an evil little girl named Rosalie. Her family is a little
eccentric: her crotchety old dad laughs his ass off thinking about poisoned
boy scouts, and her brother is strange and quiet. But Rosalie... she's
easily the black sheep of the family. She's a brat, but she still has
friends - corpses raised from a nearby cemetery that she's raised with
her telekinetic powers. These moldy dead lurk in the foggy woods, killing
pets and anyone foolish enough to defy the well-known local custom of
never going out after dark. And if you get on Rosalie's bad side, even
staying in won't help you, because she'll send her friends to "hurt
you, hurt you bad!" One night everybody in her house gets on her
bad side... Very creepy and atmospheric Box Office International film
is effective but a little frustrating because some of the camerawork is
murky and the editing is bizarre; it's disjointed, but I don't know if
that's because the editor was bad or if it's intentional, to make things
more jarring. The zombies are barely glimpsed at first, staying in the
dark or peeking through the bushes, but by the end they're right out there,
and the makeup's good. There's a decent amount of pretty well-done gore,
and overall this is the kind of flick that makes you miss drive-ins...
-zwolf
Chinese Hercules (C, 1973)
Chan Wai Man kills his girlfriend's brother in a brawl, so out of remorse
he smashes one of his hands with a rock, vows never to fight again, and
takes a thankless job as a laborer to punish himself. But the bosses at
his job are cruel and abuse and oppress the workers, so he wants to rebel
against the injustice... but just can't ever seem to get mad enough to
actually fight. The problem is, he always starts to, then quits
and lets them beat the hell out of him. Despite the lack of help from
Chan the workers give the bosses enough trouble that they bring in their
enforcer, Bolo Yeung. Bolo's huge and scary, but he only shows up in the
last half hour of the film and isn't even around all that much then -
certainly not enough to claim the title of the movie. But without him
they'd probably have to call this The Swinging Arms of Kung Fu!
or something, because the fights aren't very good... and you can't really
see them, anyway, because the DVD isn't letterboxed and the pan-and-scan
man apparently fell asleep early on, because the walls and ears get a
lot of screen time, while most of the actors are off the edge of the screen.
In fact, the main worth of this movie is as a lesson in why letterboxing
is really so great, because the plot is one of the silliest, most ridiculous
things you'll ever see. Also features loads of continuity errors - check
out the climax where our hero walks away with his girlfriend... then passes
by her a second or two later. -zwolf
Chinese Tiger (C, 1978) AKA
Tiger from Canton
A shipment of rice is hijacked by gangsters, who replace the rice with
narcotics and murder the company foreman. A guy named Li steps in to take
charge and immediately becomes the target of assassins sent by the gangsters.
Lucky for him (and unlucky for them) he's a kung fu expert. Cops intercept
the drug shipment and Li's brother, who innocently thought he was transporting
rice, gets thrown in jail. Li goes to Hong Kong to investigate and figures
out he must be getting somewhere due to the number of fights he's getting
into. He turns up more info as he goes along and manages to infiltrate
the organization and starts making them pay. This involves fights against
gangs, a fight in a river, and a climactic stand-off at a grainery where
a shovel gets used as a weapon. This film has possibly the most un-handsome
cast since Sonny Chiba's The Executioner and obviously had a very
low budget, but it has some style (the sleazy vacant lots and alleyways
give it almost a film-noir feel), good music scoring (stolen from somewhere,
I'm sure), and solid fight scenes. They aren't constant - there's more
plot than usual - but there are still plenty of fights, including the
long climactic bout, and they do a better job with characterization than
usual (even though they do seem to have stolen some of the hero's mannerisms
from Bruce Lee). The Saturn Chinese Tiger DVD looks great; the
Ground Zero double-feature Tiger from Canton version, mastered
from a tape with tracking problems, is a shame. -zwolf
Choy Lay
Fut (C, 1979) AKA Choi Lee Fat Kung Fu
A "lost" kung fu film (the DVD is struck from a videotape with Arabic
and French subtitles and a big "VS" in the corner, and looks videotaped
off a screen). A goofy guy who was learning kung fu through black magic
rituals tries to become a student at a kung fu school, but since he's
a stranger the best he can get is a job in the school, laboring. Because
he wants to learn so badly, and because he's picking things up just by
watching anyway, the teacher agrees to instruct him secretly. The secret
gets out, though, so he's sent away, but his teacher tells him to go to
Monk Grass, who makes him walk upside down on ropes, catch fish by hand,
pick up bricks while swinging on a trapeze, and some other training /torture
I haven't seen before. It's strange because usually guys in these movies
learn these things because they have some vengeance hunt reason; this
guy just wants to learn because he's interested. Still, his skills eventually
come in handy, since the country is being attacked by revolutionaries.
Going undercover, he gets mixed up with a cross-eyed moron who has really
bad kung fu, and a really pretty girl whose kung fu is great. From this
he becomes a leader against the Chings. Good thing DVD rescued this one...
-zwolf
Christmas Evil (C, 1980)
AKA Terror In Toyland, You Better Watch Out
Yes, Jesus's birthday did bring most of the evil into this world (even
if it was actually sometime in March), but this horror flick deals with
Santa Claus instead. Unbalanced by the sight of his mom making out with
Santa Claus when he was a kid, a psychotic weirdo collects Xmas paraphernalia,
sleeps in a Santa Claus costume, and spies on neighborhood kids and keeps
records of who's naughty or nice. And he ain't even Catholic! He also
works in a toy factory, where his co-workers don't respect his zeal. Finally
he snaps, paints a sleigh on his van, glues a beard to his face, puts
on a Santa costume, and sets out to deliver toys he stole from his factory.
Because the movie's not utterly tasteless, he just gives bad kids bags
of dirt... but a few bad adults get dealt with violently, being dispatched
with toy soldiers, little toy hatchets, stars from Xmas trees. It's really
cheap but does manage an atmosphere of insanity, along with some underplayed
humor, and a very, very bizarre ending. -zwolf
The Choppers (B&W,
1961)
While posing as a "poultry delivery service," Arch Hall Jr. and his car-stripping
pals steal parts from any car left unattended for more than a few minutes.
They sell the parts to a surly fat guy named Moose, who chews cigars and
says "Punks!" a lot. While they're working, the radio plays one of Arch's
songs - "Konga Joe" - and later while they're sitting around he does a
catchy nonsense song called "Monkeys In My Hatband." See, Arch's dad was
the producer and wrote the script, because he thought his son could be
another Elvis). They're tops in their field until they start getting careless
and leave chicken feathers around the crime scenes. Which is really bad,
because by the time the cops catch up to them, they've added a homicide
to their car-theft charges... Very entertaining and not actually all that
badly done, despite being from the same people who brought you Eegah!
-zwolf
C. I. D.
(C, 19??)
Indian crime drama that seems influenced by Italian crime dramas, at least
in the look of it. After a somewhat sluggish first half hour in which
our tough guy hero, Inspector Veer (Vinod Khanna, who sort of resembles
Jack Palance), is tricked into an engagement by a bratty girl, Veer goes
after a drug lord named Roshan. Veer has a female informer in Roshan's
gang, but she gets found out, and even though she tries to charm her way
out of the predicament with a ridiculous song and dance number (only in
Indian films would you ever see such a thing happen), she ends up shot.
Veer's fiancé's parents witness the killing, and Roshan finds out
that they could testify against him, so he goes gunning for them. His
job is made more difficult by some corruption in the police department.
The parents are killed before they can testify and Veer's fiancé
will never forgive him, so he becomes obsessed with vengeance. His ruthless
actions get him suspended, and his finace - pregnant with his son - leaves
town. A nice-guy Major raises the boy and wants to marry the mother. Then,
years later, the son witnesses a murder by Roshan and Veer needs him as
a witness... but has a bad track record with the mom so he may not get
another chance at getting another of her loved ones killed while serving
as a witness. And, again, a trail of corruption leads right back to the
police department. Veer discovers this - and that the boy is his son -
and has to save him from the criminals. Enough plot twists to fuel three
or four regular movies (so what if they're all implausible?) and some
good action scenes. There's a lot of drippy melodrama (and song and dance
numbers) to sit through, but there's some over-the-top action in the climax
that makes a worthy payoff for your patience. -zwolf
City of the Living Dead (C,
1980) AKA Paura Nella Citta Dei Morti Viventi, The Gates of
Hell, The Fear, Fear in the City of the Living Dead,
Twilight of the Dead
One of the biggie Lucio Fulci gorefests and decidedly a splatter classic.
A priest hangs himself in the Lovecraftian town of Dunwich, and this act
opens the gates of Hell, allowing the dead to walk the earth, among other
sickening supernatural events. On advice from a psychic (who'd been buried
alive), a reporter (Christopher George) has to find the town of Dunwich
and close the gates of Hell before All Saints Day, or mankind is doomed!
And that should give you an idea of how scary this movie is - imagine,
the fate of mankind resting in the hands of Christopher George! Meanwhile,
the undead priest shows up to rub worms in people's faces and pull big
brain-oozing chunks out of their heads. One girl sees him, begins crying
tears of blood, and vomits up her intestines and liver in one big torrent
of innards. John "typecast as an idiot who dies violently" Morghen
gets a horizontal boring machine drilled right through his head - it's
a helluva gore effect. Walls bleed and maggots rain from the sky... and
it's not even All Saints Day yet, so things are bound to get even worse.
Effective and atmospheric and not just another zombie flick by any means.
Even though Fulci is justifiably known for piling on the gore, he does
show plenty of skill at handling atmosphere, too, creating a Dunwich of
rotting leaves, foggy wind, lonely houses, and gloomy lighting, and he
uses a powerful music score and gets as close as anyone to gore-by-sound-effect.
This, as much as worrying about how sickening the next killing is going
to be, keeps the tension level high. Not the best, but still an important
part of the Fulci canon, which spares you nothing. -zwolf
Cockfighter (C, 1974) AKA Born
To Kill, Wild Drifter, Gamblin' Man
Often considered to be Warren Oates's best film (although Two-Lane
Blacktop is a definite contender), this is a faithful adaptation of
Charles Willeford's gritty and authoritative novel about the underground
sport of cockfighting, where roosters are equipped with spurs and fight
to the death. Warren Oates is an obsessed cockfighter who once missed
getting the top cockfighting medal because he was shooting off his mouth,
so he took a vow of silence and doesn't utter a word in the whole film
until the very end. (He does, however, provide voiceover narration). After
losing his car and trailer on a fight, he sets out, flat broke, to rebuild
his chicken empire from the ground up and attempt to get that medal he's
obsessed with winning. Monte Hellman directed, and many of the actors
from Two-Lane Blacktop - including Oates, Laurie Bird, and Harry
Dean Stanton - are back. Steve Railsback also makes an appearance as a
kid who gets thrown out of a fight for sticking his finger up a chicken's
ass. That's illegal, y'know. Stylistically sleazy, and very good. -zwolf
Cold Sweat
(C, 1971) AKA De la part des copains
Second-tier Charles Bronson actioner based on Richard Matheson's Ride
the Nightmare has some old army associates holding Bronson's wife
and daughter hostage in order to force him to use his boat to help them
pick up a drug shipment, which leads to dangerous complications, including
a lot of guns changing hands and a pretty good Charlie-driving-insanely-fast-on-a-twisting-mountain-road
scene. It's pretty standard Euro-action, but is enlivened by Bronson's
screen presence. Back in the early days of video rentals, every single
store had a copy of this, and now lots of budget DVD companies carry really
skangy-looking transfers. -zwolf
Colossus of New York, The (B&W
-1958)
Otto Krueger is a designer of automation-machines. His brother Ross Martin
designs all kinds of other scientific marvels - he even wins a peace prize
for it. Then Ross gets hit by a truck and killed. His brother and his
father transplant his brain into a hulking robot, in hopes of saving his
genius for the good of mankind. But if things worked out that neatly,
we wouldn't have much of a movie, would we? The robot is an unforgettable
bulky, creepy thing with a round, Frankensteinish head, a curtain-like
cape draped around it, big metal hands, and a voice like a staticky crystal
radio. It's not too happy about being alive in that form. Even though
he wants to be destroyed, he agrees to try to continue his experiments
to help mankind. But he starts seeing visions from the future and turns
deranged. He can flash his eyes in a hypnotic pattern, so he immobilizes
his father and escapes to look at his grave. While out, he sees his son
and discovers that his brother is in love with his widow. Armed with destruction-beams
from his eyes, he seeks revenge and goes on a rampage, turning evil and
wanting to rid the world of "human trash." Excellent special
effects and a story that has a nightmarish feel to it make this recommended
late-night viewing. (The end somehow reminds me of DePalma's Scarface
- wonder if it's a coincidence?) -zwolf
Combat Shock (C, 1986) AKA
American Nightmare
You're usually safe to assume that anything released by Troma will be
absolute tripe that's not worth your time, but here's an exception. Video
boxes make this look like a war movie, but it's closer to Eraserhead
territory. A 'Nam vet named Frankie suffers flashback nightmares and wakes
up to a quieter war; he's broke, can't find a job, has a nagging, unsympathetic,
pregnant wife, and his child is a sick, unfinished puppet-thing (basically
the Eraserhead baby, but cheaper-lookin') that's the result of his exposure
to Agent Orange. His shoelaces break, his toilet's broken, they're out
of food, and they're about to be evicted from their crappy little apartment.
And the world outside's not much better: noisy trains, trash, vacant lots
full of weeds, bleak industrial grey buildings, loan sharks who want to
pimp out his wife and his infant, and tweaking junkie friends who try
pulling holdups to get drug money. He wanders through trainyards with
no hope and nowhere to go, waiting in unemployment lines for no real reason.
His friend gets so desperate when he can't find a needle that he gets
drugs into his bloodstream by tearing open old scars with a coathanger
and rubbing heroin into the open wound. Frankie calls his dad, but his
dad thought he was dead and has no money and is dying. Finally, out of
options, he gets propositioned by a 12-year-old girl, snatches a purse,
gets beaten up, then uses a gun he finds to waste some criminals. Then
he takes the gun home and has a last meal of extremely sour chunky-style
milk before cheating life out of taking anything else away. Very cheap
but well-done for the budget, extremely bleak and existential tale of
desperation. The star also provided the music score on what sounds like
a Casio home keyboard. Total downer, and therefore recommended. Would
make a good double-bill with Deadbeat at Dawn. -zwolf
Come and
See (C,1985 ) AKA Idi i smotri
Russian art film about partisan resistance against the Nazis in WW2. Fliora,
a young boy who digs up a gun so he can join the resistance, ends up separated
from his group and wandering in the woods, talking to an apparently-crazy
girl, but things get worse when concussion from a bombing raid leaves
him deaf. After this we gets some creepy, surreal scenes of a stork and
the crazy girl grinning and dancing (the whole movie is a mix of gritty
reality and completely artificial art-film strangeness, which makes for
a nightmarish overall effect) and then Fliora and the girl start wandering.
They fight through a mud-pit and to a refugee camp where a burned-up man
talks to them while people build a Hitler out of a skull and a uniform,
just so they can spit on it. Then a cow gets gunned down in a firefight,
and Fliora makes his way to a town where Germans are stuffing all the
villagers into a barn, which they then burn down; they find this highly
amusing. And Fliora just looks older and more horrified as the movie progresses.
The story (not that there really is one - it's just like a nightmare)
is kind of reminiscent of Jerzy Kosinski's horrifying novel The Painted
Bird. It's slow, and a lot of it consists of people staring zombie-like
into the camera, but it does contain some powerful, fever-dream images
that will stay with you. The film's title comes from a line in Revelations,
and the film is appropriately apocalyptic. -zwolf
Condemned
to Live (B&W, 1935)
Variation on The Vampire Bat, using the same sets, music, and director.
Vampiric killings are happening and people blame a giant bat. A saintly
professor (with a hunchbacked assistant) plans to marry a young lady,
who also loves someone else... but not more than she loves the professor,
because he's a paragon of virtue. But the professor's mother was bitten
by a giant bat on the day of his birth, and the professor's been suffering
blackouts. He figures out that he must be changing into a fiend during
these blackouts (which are brought on by darkness) and, even though the
loyal hunchback tries to take the blame to spare him, the professor realizes
his alter-ego must be stopped. Good low-budget vampire flick with all
the required torch-bearing villagers, but with a more sympathetic approach
to vampirism-as-disease. -zwolf
Contamination
(C, 1980) AKA Alien Contamination, Toxic Spawn,
Contamination: Alien on Earth
Even though this is an Italian rip-off of Alien, it starts
out as a rip-off of Zombie, with an unmanned boat sailing into
New York harbor (the captain's even called a turkey, possibly in homage
to Zombie). A team sent on board discovers that the crew is all
dead and they look like they've exploded... and they soon learn why when
they find pulsating pods which burst open, spewing green fluid that causes
the stomachs of whoever it touches to explode in just a second or two.
The whole ship's full of these cantaloupes from outer space, and, since
they ripen in heat, the quarantine squad freezes all the cargo, then takes
samples. Experimenting with them (and finding the pods are alien bacteria
colonies), they cause a rat to explode very messily. Now that they've
found out what the things do, they have to figure out where they came
from, how they got into the ship's hold, and what purpose they were intended
for. They figure out that they were brought back from a Mars mission,
and they enlist the aid of a crazy astronaut (Ian McCulloch, who seems
to be in every gory Italian horror film since Zombie made him a
hot talent) who's still a mess from what he saw in a Martian cave... even
though the other astronaut with him swore nothing happened. The investigation
(which results in a few more exploding chests) continues until they come
face-to-eyeball with a cyclopean alien couch-potato (because wouldn't
you have felt cheated if they hadn't?). Director Luigi Cozzi had intended
this as sort of an unofficial sequel to/ rip-off of Alien (his
intended title was even The Alien Arrives on Earth), and even with
some trimming it got a reputation as one of the gorier Italian flicks
that filled video shelves in the 80's (although, really, the gore isn't
that astounding - it's decent but not that shocking, and even kind of
silly since the chest-explosions are pretty pointless, since no aliens
are emerging or anything). -zwolf
Contraband
(C, 1980)
Lucio Fulci applied his ultra-gory tactics to a crime film this time,
starring Fabio Testi as a smuggler moviing cigarettes and trying to stay
out of reach of the law. But his real problems are with a rival gang who
beat him senseless, kill his brother, and kidnap his wife. In retaliation
he sets off a war of all sorts of depraved violence - slow stabbing, face-burning,
shooting (2 guys heads are blown apart, another's neck is splattered,
and another's guts fly out in chunks), and rape. The brutality is pretty
strong, and it needs to be, because the story itself is muddled and not
terribly compelling. It's a little slow to get started - not much happens
in the first half - but once it gets some momentum the killings run pretty
steady, and it's all very nasty and mean-spirited, Fulci-style. I liked
the exploding heads and all, but could have done without the sodomy-rape
scene; Fulci's misogyny got the better of him on that and it was reprehensible.
-zwolf
Corrupt (C, 1983) AKA Copkiller, Order of Death, Cop
Killers, Copkiller - l'assassino dei poliziotti
Corrupt Lieutenant Harvey Keitel is a police lieutenant with some illegal
tendencies that help him afford a really expensive secret apartment with
another cop. John Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten from the Sex Pistols, in his
only acting gig) is a twisted little creep who likes to make phony confessions,
out of some strange guilt complex he has. He stalks Keitel (thinking he
offers some sort of salvation) and tells him that he's the guy who's been
killing cops with a breadknife. Keitel doesn't believe him, but since
Lydon's found out about the secret apartment, and he doesn't want anyone
checking up on how he can afford such a place on a cop's salary, he keeps
Lydon prisoner in the bathroom and abuses him. Much to his chagrin, the
maltreatment doesn't really get through to Johnny much, who remains defiant.
Keitel's cop friend is disgusted with what's going on and tries to put
a stop to it, so Keitel forces Lydon to kill him. But then Johnny escapes,
yet comes back after awhile to continue this weird, perverse psychological
contest that he and Keitel are engaged in. Dark, well-done meditation
on good and evil that's kind of a pseudo-giallo packed with sinister
overtones. It's too bad Lydon didn't have more of a film career, because
he's creepily effective and perfectly cast. Keitel was back as another
scumbag cop in Bad Lieutenant. Ennio Morricone provides an intense
music score, although I really hope he had nothing to do with the maddeningly-bad
song that Keitel sits around listening to all the time... -zwolf
The Crawling Hand
(B&W, 1963) Creeping Hand, Don't Cry Wolf, Tomorrow
You Die
An astronaut gets blown up in the early days of the space program, at
his own request - his talking corpse (with heavy eyeliner) shows up on
a viewscreen, screaming that something is controlling him and yelling
"Kill! Kill!" Turns out some form of mutant life was formed in the space
capsule... and the big problem is, after the explosion one of his hands
fell to earth. It's found on a beach by a teen who soon becomes possessed
by it. The severed end of the arm always conveniently out of frame, the
hand starts crawling around, strangling people. Then it gets the poor
dazed teen killing people, too, which makes Sheriff Alan "The Skipper"
Hale get on his case. Then the stupid hand gets eaten by cats in a junkyard
and mercifully, this goofy ol' flick ends. Kinda dull, really. -zwolf
The Creature
with the Blue Hand (C, 1967) AKA The Bloody Dead,
Die Blau Hand
Klaus Kinski plays twin brothers, one of whom is a homicidal nutjob
who just escaped from an asylum and is possibly killing people with a
blue metal glove from a suit of armor, which has retractable bladed fingers.
The crazy one is named Dave and the sane one is Richard... unless, of
course, it's the other way around, which the movie keeps you guessing
about. Since they look identical, one can pose as the other, and it's
always possible that the killer is someone else entirely; he wears a black
hooded cloak. The murders are bloodless (which led to extra gore scenes
being filmed and inserted when this was released as The Bloody Dead
on video), but there are plenty of them and the atmosphere has an early
giallo feel to it, even though this is a German film. Based on
an Edgar Wallace mystery, and a little slow but not bad. -zwolf
Crippled Masters
(C, 1984)
One of the most bizarre of all kung fu flicks. A man has his arms cut
off (and barely bleeds at all despite getting no medical attention) by
some bad guys. The actor is a real armless man, who was apparently born
that way because he does have a small deformed stump that looks like it
has a finger or two on it. Since he's crippled, lots of very mean people
pick on him and taunt him about his inability to feed himself. He wanders,
suffering and starving, until a sympathetic farmer finds him eating out
of his pig sty and decides to teach him how to get by with just his legs.
He learns fast; he could be the world's champion hacky-sack player. Then
the bad guys deform another guy by pouring acid on his legs (it's another
real-life deformed man, who has withered, paralyzed legs). The two are
old enemies, but an old contortionist tells them that if they united,
they could get revenge against the bad guy (who's a fake deformity case:
he has a hump on his back, but it's made of iron!). So he starts training
them in kung fu, and they become very adept with the limbs they have left,
which, of course, they use for vengeance. Stumps of fury! No fingers of
death! Make up your own bad-taste titles, and they still won't quite be
in bad enough taste to fit this decidedly politically incorrect opus...
but, hey, the guys do have some pretty great skills and they're using
them to make money, so what the heck. The same two guys also made the
similar Two Crippled Heroes. -zwolf
Cry Panic (C, 1974)
John Forsythe is driving through a small town and accidentally runs over
a man on the road. By the time he can report it to the cops, the body
has disappeared. Everyone tries to convince him that he didn't even hit
anyone. He has to prove it, plus try to figure out who it was, and why
everyone's trying to cover everything up. A woman who seems to know some
of the answers keeps disappearing, and the more Forsythe learns, the more
somebody's willing to kill him to keep him quiet. Suspenseful old made-for-TV
movie, one of those tight little 75 minute numbers that they just don't
make anymore. -zwolf
Crypt of Dark Secrets
(C, 1976)
A pretty yet irresponsible-with-fire voodoo witch named Damballah (and
the beautiful Maureen Ridley was never heard from again...) dances around
the New Orleans swamps and levitates (as long as she's close to a handy
tree). A couple of guys head out into the backwaters to find out if she's
fact or fiction. There's a Vietnam vet living on her haunted island who's
seen her, but he doesn't know she can turn herself into a snake or anything.
In fact, he's pretty much out of it, and is just a really bland, dull
guy. Some swamp rats find out he has a lot of money hidden in his cabin,
so they hit him over the head and leave him in the swamp to drown. Being
an obliging guy, he does die... but Damballah dances nude over his body
and there's a whole lot of mumbo jumbo about him being part of the land
of the living dead. Then a swamp witch-woman curses the robbers and avenges
him. It's all pretty ridiculous and is dragged out even at 71 minutes,
and the acting is hilarious. Shot in New Orleans. -zwolf
Curse of the Crying Woman (B&W,
1961) AKA Maldición de la Llorona, Casa embrujada
Mexican horror movies are usually silly, but if you give this one a chance
it's actually pretty creepy. Based on a legendary Mexican banshee-like
figure, this tale deals with an ill-fated girl who visits her aunt, who
has become a "wailing witch," just like their infamous ancestor.
The aunt kills travelers in the woods to gain power, and wants her niece
to help her resurrect the original witch, whose rotting (yet living) corpse
remains impaled in the dungeon. Lotsa eerieness, with scarred assistants,
cadaverous eye-bulging monsters in dungeons, the works. The aunt also
turns into a monstrous version of herself; her eyes turn black, so she
looks pretty much like an extra from The Devil's Rain. Some of
the special effects aren't so hot, but that only adds to the surreal atmosphere.
Definitely worth checking out. -zwolf
Curse of the Demon (B&W,
1956) AKA Night of the Demon
Jaques Tourneur directed this atmospheric adaptation of M. R. James's
"Casting the Runes." Dana Andrews stars as a psychologist noted
for debunking the supernatural. He runs afoul of a devil worshiper named
Karswell, who slips him a piece of parchment with runic symbols on it.
In three days they'll summon a demon to kill him, just as they did a colleague
of his. Dana remains skeptical, but odd things start happening and he
begins to get scared in spite of himself. Even a fakey-acting medium warns
him of danger, and finally he starts seeing things, like luminous smoke
chasing him through the woods, and decides that maybe there's something
to it... One controversial aspect of the film is the demon that shows
up - the director wanted to only imply it, but it looked so scary that
they added extra shots of it. I think it was a good move, because that
demon is a more convincingly-frightening-looking thing than you'll find
in movies with more modern special effects. Demon or no, this is a horror
classic with an eerie atmosphere and some powerful scenes. Not to be missed.
-zwolf
Curse of
the Devil (C, 1973) AKA Return of the Walpurgis, Black
Harvest of Countess Dracula, Return of the Werewolf, Retorno
de Walpurgis
One of Paul Naschy's Spanish werewolf flicks, with a confusing tendency
to switch back and forth from past to another more-recent past. As a knight,
Naschy killed a Satanist and was cursed by his witch wife, him and all
his descendants. Then, in a more modern time (but still with horse-drawn
carriages) one of his descendants (also Naschy) is attacked by a young
witch who stabs him with a wolf's skull, condemning him to become a werewolf.
There's a mad killer rumored to be loose, but the werewolf may actually
be responsible... especially after Naschy kills the psycho and keeps it
a secret so he'll have a scapegoat for the killings his own alter-ego's
committing. There's plenty of decent-for-'73 werewolf scenes before the
angry villagers finally figure out what's been happening, carrying the
prerequisite torches and pitchforks. If you like Naschy werewolf flicks
(and who doesn't?) this one delivers enough blood to keep you happy. -zwolf
Curse of the Headless Horseman (C, 1972) AKA Valley of the Headless
Horseman
Another effort from those hey-let's-use-the-camera auteurs who brought
you Carnival of Blood. A good-natured overaged hippie inherits
a ranch, on the condition that he can make it turn a profit in six months.
By day, cowboys put on Wild West shows, and by night hippies put on skits
and an old coot does an awful job of singing a bad cowboy song about his
"saddle pal." Presumably wanting all this lameness off his property,
a headless horseman shows up and throws blood on one hippie, who's later
wounded when somebody replaces a real bullet for one of the blanks in
the Wild West show guns. One old guy with a really dirty face is resentful
of them all. A girl gets blood-splashed and then is hit by a truck. There's
also a scene with one of Andy Warhol's biggies - Ultra Violet - who pays
them a visit (with her Superman lunch box) and wants to buy the place...
until she's promptly scared off by Mr. Dirtyface peering in the window.
The bad filmmaking gives it a weird kinetic energy that works for it,
like it did for Carnival of Blood. They both look like movies made
by people who've never seen a movie, only heard one described, and are
trying to invent the process for themselves. And barely succeeding...
Entertaining if you like bad movies. The DVD is aided by the scratchiness
of the print; this is one of those movies that just wouldn't look right
if it wasn't pretty beaten up. -zwolf
Cut-Throats Nine (C,
1972) AKA Bronson's Revenge, Condenados a vivir
When things snowball, they sometimes go to ridiculous extremes, and back
in the late 60's and early 70's Spanish and Italian westers were a thriving
industry, thanks both to Sergio Leone's masterpieces and Corbucci's very
violent Django. As it started to peter out, they had to turn things
up a notch to pull in audiences, so something like this film was perhaps
inevitable. A cavalry officer and his daughter are traveling through snowy
mountains with a chain gang composed of the worst criminal scum the world
has to offer. They're held up by a gang of thieves and the rest of the
guards are killed and the wagons wrecked, so an odyssey of extreme brutality
commences. Brown, the officer, has to get the convicts to a fort, with
them constantly warning him not to blink an eye or they'll kill him. One
of the guys breaks his leg and they resent carrying him, so they strangle
him. Brown makes them carry his corpse, so when they get a chance they
set fire to it. Then the convicts discover that their chains are gold,
painted to look like steel - that's the main reason they were being transported.
Brown's also sure that one of the men killed his wife, so things get even
more tense. He shoots one guy through the eye and chops his leg off to
get the others to keep moving. Finally they come to a cabin and the prisoners
get their hands on an exhausted Brown and beat him up, then gang-rape
his daughter. They leave Brown tied in the cabin and burn it down, then
march on with his daughter. They get a train (which you never see - it
wasn't in the budget) to cut the chains, and continue fighting among themselves
and having senseless flashbacks of fighting Indians and shooting people
in the head. Then they go to an outpost and do things like disembowel
people and then hang them on hooks. The film wallows in extended close-ups
of meaty, gut-extruding stab wounds and ends with a nihilistic bang. Ya
gotta love this one if you're a fan of Django-style Westerns and
Fulci-style gorefests, because you get the best of both worlds. And it
may not be art, but it's not badly done, either - suspense is sustained
throughout, and formulas are broken. In theatres, a William Castle-like
gimmick (a "terror mask" to cover your face with during the gory parts)
was provided. -zwolf
