I Eat Your
Skin (B&W, 1964) AKA Zombies, Voodoo Blood Bath
The first time I saw this was late night on a cable superstation under the
title Zombies, and it was a while before I realized that what I'd seen
was actually the infamous second half of the legendary I Drink Your Blood
double-bill. A smart-aleck writer of pulp fiction is dragged by his agent
- along with a complaining pampered annoyance of a woman - off to Voodoo Island
to investigate reports of walking dead (and native virgins). On the island
they find zombies with faces like a nutritious breakfast: oatmeal skin and
fried eggs for eyes. They don't eat your skin, but at least you could probably
eat theirs. One machetes the head off a local man (but his head looked kinda
loose, anyway) and that's as close as you get to gore (I Drink Your Blood
had to carry most of the "blood horrors to rip out your guts" claims from
that pairing, as well as all the footage in the trailer, since this
one's not in color). While the writer romances a professor's daughter, the
natives do voodoo dances, presided over by a guy in fringed sunglasses. But
despite all the voodoo, the zombies are actually people who've been injected
with radioactive snake venom, in research for a possible cancer cure. Considered
pretty bad, but I've always liked it in a kind of pulp-horror way. Went unmarketed
and unreleased until they needed a second feature for I Drink Your Blood.
-zwolf
Ilsa, Tigeress Of Siberia (C, 1977)
AKA Tigeress
The third and last real Ilsa movie (Ilsa She-Wolf of the S.S. and Ilsa,
Harem-Keeper Of The Oil Sheiks are legit - Ilsa The Wicked Warden
is just some other sadistic movie that had Dyanne Thorne in it, so they retitled
to capitalize). Here the sadistic bitch (played by the always lovely-yet-threatening
Dyanne Thorne) is working for Stalin - she runs a gulag in Siberia with an
iron fist. Anyone who tries to escape is hunted down, brought back... and
decapitated messily with a giant mallet! The blood drains into a pit to feed
Sasha, her pet tiger, who also gets live victims once in a while. By night,
Ilsa dances and has sex with the two guys who win the brawls everybody has
over the right to bed her. Meanwhile, her comrades try to make political prisoners
develop a higher opinion of Stalin by shocking them, dunking fevered prisoners
in freezing water, or making guys arm-wrestle over chainsaws (this includes
a graphic dismemberment scene that's missing from most tapes - pretty nasty,
ya'll). Then Stalin is assassinated, the gig is up, and the sicko-fun part
of the movie is over, 'cuz Ilsa kills all the prisoners (except this one revolutionary,
Chakrurin, who gets away), and escapes. She ends up running a brothel in Montreal
in 1977. And it's downhill from there - the modern Ilsa looks goofy (red hair,
styled like a combo Farrah/helmet, and she wears ball gowns) and the torture
techniques have no gore - she just wires people to a machine and shows them
slides to determine their phobias, which are then exploited using holograms.
Enemies she puts in barrels and sinks into a freezing lake. She does a slow
shower scene, which is good... until you remember that the character would
be pushing sixty at the time, and that kinda kills it. The plot - she finds
this Chakurin guy again and tries to break him, while agents are trying to
track him down - starts to drag. Ilsa puts Chakurin in chains and has sex
with him. A guy gets ground up in a snow-sweeper. There's a neat (if implausible)
trick with a gasoline-filled waterbed. Then a hit squad comes for Ilsa just
as she's going to castrate Chakurin with an eggbeater (!) and she makes an
escape... but, since this is true to the Ilsa formula, she gets her just desserts
anyway. I didn't know Pinto made snowmobiles... She shoulda bought higher
quality equipment - after all, she had money to burn... Good first half, but
the second half is blah. But, it's still better than Wicked Warden.
-zwolf
I, Monster
(C, 1971)
Amicus version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde with Christopher Lee as Dr.
Marlowe (the Jekyll figure) injecting himself with chemicals as part of an
experiment to separate good and evil. He first tries the formula on a cat,
who becomes so crazed that he immediately has to kill it. Utilizing Freudian
concepts, he psychoanalyzes a girl and then gives her an injection that turns
her into a wanton slut. He injects an aggressive bully who becomes a frightened,
childish coward. When he finally tries it on himself, he becomes a grinning,
sadistic loon. He starts calling himself Mr. Blake, wears a top hat, gets
in razor-fights in the street, and becomes a bit more bestial-looking with
each injection. His friend Peter Cushing tries to figure out what's going
on and lands himself in trouble. Solid version of the horror classic is rarely
seen; I first saw it once Saturday afternoon on a local TV station around
1980 and didn't manage to track it down again for over 20 years (it's now
on a DVD available from Sinister Cinema). Luckily, it's as good as I remembered,
with a menacing performance from Christopher Lee and atmospheric direction.
It was originally begun as a 3-D movie. -zwolf
The Incredible Kung Fu Mission
(C, 1982)
Hong Kong variant of The Dirty Dozen. A top fighter (John Liu) is given
a nearly impossible mission and five unruly recruits to train for it. They're
arrogant and undisciplined, but he's a top notch leg fighter, and if anyone
can make a team out of them, it's him. One is a coffin-maker, one's a sex
fiend, one's a juggler, one's a carpenter, and one's a professional fighter.
John Liu starts training them immediately, making them run miles with rocks
in their pockets, running them over obstacles, getting them in brawls in brothels,
and teaching them kung fu. He manages to whip them into shape pretty quickly
and then it's off to rescue a revolutionary from an albino warlord's prison.
They disguise themselves as acrobats (and one woman!), but still get in constant
fights, hand-to-hand and with weapons like swords and umbrellas. Finally,
reduced in number, they try to infiltrate the fortress. Some great fighting
sequences and enough plot where this one might even appeal to people who don't
usually like kung fu flicks. The Dirty Dozen plot was used a lot in
kung fu movies, and another notable example is Deadly Strike with Bruce
Li. -zwolf
The Incredible
Petrified World (B&W, 1959)
John Carradine stars in this old sci-fi flick. A diving bell sent to explore
extreme ocean depths breaks loose and the scientists on board are trapped
at the bottom, running out of air, until they discover some caves... caves
which, like everything else in a Jerry Warren movie, look incredibly cheap.
There are two guys and two girls (one of whom is bitchy). They discover an
old man who's been living in the caves for fourteen years because there's
no way out. While they're adjusting to the idea of live in the caves, John
Carradine is on the surface planning another dive mission. This brings the
movie to a screeching halt - not that it was just eat-up with momentum to
begin with. Back in the cave, they're learning that the old man is homicidal
and isn't really wanting company, plus a volcano is active. And there's nothing
petrified in the whole blamed movie. Cheapo '50's B-flick is pretty bad but
kills an hour well enough if you're in the mood for such things. -zwolf
Incredible
Shaolin Thunderkick (C, 19??)
Godfrey "Oh no!" Ho directed this comedic kung fu flick, but it's not as bad
as some of his work - i.e. it isn't patched together from bits of other films.
A goofy young martial arts student makes a living by hauling water around.
He's trying to romance a pretty girl but has an ugly one after him, and his
kung fu teacher is a lazy old slop who makes him steal food offerings from
the cemetery. As his training progresses, he learns that the white-haired
killer who murdered his father is back in the area, and he and his henchmen
kidnap the waterboy's girlfriend. He tries to rescue her and gets beaten up,
and then they smash his genitals and cut them off. He becomes a woman for
a while, but then his teacher helps him regain his manhood through acupuncture
(it works in kung fu movie logic, just as the idea that the guy gets stronger
by drinking gallons of water - just stop thinking, damn ya!) and then trains
him to get revenge. Turns into an okay kung fu movie after they decided not
to make a comedy after about 1/3rd of the way in. The Saturn DVD is really
muddy and suffers from some digitizing of the picture. -zwolf
The In-Crowd (C, 2000)
A teenaged girl named Adrian, who has mental problems involving sex manias
(and is a dead ringer for Christina Applegate) is released from an asylum
to try to resume a normal life. She's given a job at a beach resort where
there are a bunch of horny rich kids. So... we've established early on that
this is a dumbass movie and gotten that out of the way. She mixes with this
completely detestable crowd of bitches and brats and one girl
named Britney (who looks like a mid-morph between Tiffany-Amber Theissen and
Yasmine Bleeth) befriends her, but appears to just be setting her up for something
because Adrian looks like Britney's sister, who Britney was jealous of...
possibly insanely jealous! When another girl tries to warn Adrian
about Britney's plot, someone rigs the girl's motorcycle to crash. Turns out
Britney's got dangerous mental problems of her own, and it all turns into
a Betty & Veronica comic book gone horribly wrong, and people who cross
Britney start ending up dead. Adrian, whose insanity-streak is now way outclassed,
has to try to save her ass while holding on to her job (if she get fired then
she gets sent back to the nuthouse). It's pretty standard suspense-horror
stuff, fairly well-handled and not boring even if it's familiar. Then again
I could be being lenient because I have a thing for Christina Applegate, Tiffany-Amber
Theissen, and Yasmine Bleeth, and was kind of squinting my eyes a little and
pretending these actresses were them. Try that, it can't hurt.
Oddly enough, it's from the director of Pet Sematary. -zwolf
Indian (C, 2001)
Sunny Deol, who is kind of like the Sylvester Stallone of India, stars in
another over-the-top cops vs. terrorists action flick. He's a cop who's so
tough that aspiring cops carry his picture in their wallets. And he's involved
in more mayhem and destruction than a whole division of regular cops. First
there's an insane car chase (a wrecked car rolls over his and he just keeps
driving... plus, he's doing all kinds of stunts in an SUV and it doesn't roll
over, which is really amazing). Then he breaks up a brawl by
kicking the crap out of everyone involved, and then he stomps a corrupt official
into signing a confession. But his worst problem is dealing with a terrorist
leader that he already has in custody. Even though the guy's in a special
isolated cell, he still manages to orchestrate actions on the outside. Sunny
gets in real trouble, though, by killing his wife's father when he finds out
the man was a traitor in league with terrorists. Then he finds out that one
of the richest men in India is also a terrorist-supporter, and has to overcome
a high public opinion of the guy (he's a big philanthropist, so everybody
loves him) to bust him. He also has to take on about 20 guys in a brawl that
has some inventive, Jackie-Chan-like mayhem ('cept in this case it's special
effects and stuntwork, not skill - lots of Sunny's punches pretty obviously
miss by a foot or more). Eventually Sunny gets enraged and does some not-exactly-kosher
rule-breaking to settle things. Call him Dirty Raj. Typically unbelievable
Bollywood actioner with so-tough-he's-comical-already Sunny is much kick-ass
fun and entertaining, much like Farz. The musical numbers are pointless
and distracting but well-done nevertheless, if you like that sort of thing.
It's long - about three hours - but you shouldn't have much trouble sticking
around to the end, which features the craziest bus-driving since Speed
and The Gauntlet. -zwolf
In The Heat of the Night
(C, 1967)
A land developer is killed in 1960's Sparta, Mississippi, and a black detective
named Virgil Tibbs (the great Sidney Poitier) is unlucky enough to be vacationing
from Philadelphia (the one in Pennsylvania... there is one in
Mississippi, y'know), so the racist cops accuse him of the crime. When he's
cleared, he gets asked to stick around and solve it. The local cops - especially
the sheriff (Rod Steiger) - don't like him because he's too good at his job
and doesn't let them just "solve" the case by finding scapegoats. Eventually
Tibbs's guts and intelligence - as well as the scummy behavior of some of
the white locals - changes Steiger's mind and teaches him respect for Tibbs.
And, oh yeah, the case gets solved, too. American classic and very well-done,
with career-highlight acting from Poitier, Steiger, and Warren Oates (as a
deputy). Spawned two sequels (They Call Me Mister Tibbs! and The
Organization) and a hit TV series. The first PG-rated film to win a Best
Picture Oscar. -zwolf
In The Line of Fire (C, 1993)
Suspenseful and engaging thriller starring Clint Eastwood, which was tailored
to his advanced age (he was 63 at the time). He plays a secret service agent
who, thirty years before, had failed to protect JFK. And now a disgruntled
CIA assassin (John Malkovich) is planning to kill the president, and wants
to make Clint a two-time loser at his job. He calls Clint on the phone to
talk about their weird "friendship" and the "game" they're playing, and Clint
has to figure out a way to stop him. Some have called this "the ultimate Dirty
Harry movie" bit's it's not really Dirty Harry-like, but Clint's character
is pretty cool and a bit obnoxious, and the action he gets involved in is
credible for his age (as long as he's one physically fit old man). I avoided
this for a while because I haven't liked a lot of Clint's newer input and
I hate political thrillers in general, but this isn't like that Tom Clancy
movie crap, and I'm glad I finally gave it a chance. Directed by Wolfgang
Petersen, of Das Boot fame. -zwolf
The Invincible Barbarian (C, 1983)
Incredibly stupid and boring sword and sorcery junk, made in Italy. One of
a pair of twins has to battle the evil leader who killed his parents. He was
raised by Amazons because they knew he was a predestined gift from the gods.
Padded with lots of stock footage, stuff stolen from other movies, and astounding
overuse of slow motion. Sucks, and sucks hard. -zwolf
Iron Monkey (C, 1993)
AKA Iron Monkey: The Young Wong Fei, Siunin Wong Fei-hung tsi titmalau
Donnie Yen stars in this wire-fu epic that rode the coattails of Crouching
Tiger Hidden Dragon into American theaters, but didn't make quite as much
of an impact even though it has more action. The plot involves a masked Robin
Hood figure who fights oppression in turn of the century China, and your viewing
experience will be aided by having some knowledge of historical Chinese hero
Wong Fei Hung, who appears as an adolescent here. Even though Wong Fei Hung
is supposed to be a little boy, that's actually an extremely talented young
girl named Sze-Man Tsang playing him! One thing making the movie too confusing
is that they picked actors who look too much alike and then gave them the
same clothes and hair. With characters having secret identities in the first
place, and then all that flying around and spinning in the air (my oh my do
they love the corkscrew plancha) you lose track of who's who and, subsequently,
interest. That I'm not major fan of wire-fu doesn't help, either, but this
does have great editing, special effects, and production values, so if wire-fu
is your thing, this can be considered essential. -zwolf
I Vampiri (B&W, 1956) AKA The
Devil's Commandment, Evil's Commandment, Lust of the Vampire,
The Vampires
This was the first Italian horror film since the silent era and the start
of two important careers, Ricardo ("Horrible Dr. Hitchcock") Freda
and Mario Bava. Freda directed mostly and Bava did the camerawork, but he
directed some as well. Because horror was out of vogue in Italy, they set
the film in Paris to add interest, and it's about a killer who uses needles
to drain girls (all of them the same blood type). The police and a journalist
are obsessed with catching him, not suspecting that a mad doctor is draining
the blood to revitalize an old countess, making her young and beautiful again
so she can seduce the son of her former lover. But as usually happens in these
situations, the change isn't permanent, so they have to get more and more
girls... It's not all that scary, because most of the evildoing is kept off-screen,
but it does have some atmosphere and lots of historical importance. -zwolf
I Walked With
A Zombie (B&W, 1943)
One of the front rank of Val Lewton horror films of the 40's, directed atmospherically
by Jacques Tourneur and based - at least superficially - on Jane Eyre.
A spunky nurse comes to an island in the West Indes to care for the catatonic
wife of a moody plantation owner who's hiding some terrible secret. A calypso
singer warns her of misery in a song, but she insists on trying to cure the
"zombie" wife and drags her through the sugar cane fields to a secret voodoo
ceremony. On the way she meets Calaphor, one of the creepiest figures in horror
filmdom. He's a tall, thin, silent black man with staring eyes that never
move or blink. Totally nightmarish. A quietly-eerie film with a lot of effective
use of shadows. -zwolf
Jacktown (B&W, 1962)
Stark, low-budget J.D./prison drama in which a young hoodlum named Frankie,
who was possibly "born to be bad" (the movie starts with his birth!), gets
caught with some jailbait and is sentenced to a couple of years in the world's
largest prison in Jackson, Michigan... known to its inmates as Jacktown. The
other prisoners hate Frankie because his morals charge is "against their religion,"
so they make his life hell. Then his friend on the outside gets killed in
a robbery and Frankie goes a little nuts, and the warden takes pity on him
and lets him work in his garden during the day... which gives him access to
the warden's daughter (Patty McCormack, who was "born to be bad"
in the classic The Bad Seed). The warden's not crazy about a statutory
rapist making nice with his daughter so he finds Frankie some other work,
but Frankie makes an escape to be with Patty. It's not badly done and moves
pretty fast at a running time of just under an hour. Sporadic narration gives
it somewhat of a Twilight Zone feel even though the themes
don't. The finale costs it some of its grittiness. -zwolf
The Jade Claw (C, 1979) AKA Ji
Zhao, Crystal Fist
Charismatic Billy Chong shows up at a kung fu school wanting lessons and gets
sent to work in the kitchen with good ol' Simon Yuen, who gives him the classic
Simon Yuen hard time. Simon's being hunted by a Phoenix Eye master (a style
that utilizes an extended foreknuckle to strike pressure points) and his bumbling
sidekicks, Blind Man and Deaf Man. Simon trains Billy (in typically torturous
fashion) and he beats up a Russian boxer and attracts the attention of the
Phoenix Eye enemy, who recognizes the moves and knows that Simon must have
taught him. He beats Billy up and burns one of his hands, and Simon figures
out the Phoenix Eye master also killed Billy's father, so he trains him in
Eagle's Claw so he can get revenge. Some truly amazing skill is well-displayed
here, and it's one of the best. This is comparable to Drunken Master,
although Billy Chong is too often called a "Jackie Chan imitator," which I
don't think he is; instead, he's another highly-skilled, comedically-gifted,
acrobatic actor with a style all his own, not a rip-off of anyone. -zwolf
The Jar (C, 1984) AKA
Charon
A friend of mine who trafficked in disturbing movies paid good money for this
and then taped over it because it bugged him so much. It is pretty
weird... The intentionally-freaky and surreal (and mostly plotless) movie
is very cheap - it looks shot on video and has a Casio-home-keyboard music
score. An awkward and clumsy-acting guy picks up a bum on the road and brings
him home... and the guy disappears, leaving behind a jar with a creepy little
monster fetus in it. From that point on, things get crazy: the bathtub fills
with blood and children come out of it, the floor's covered with razor blades,
lights change color (or the film goes to black and white), he imagines spears
through his guts, falls into a cave under his shower, finds himself crucified
in a dumpster, and crickets swarm in his sink. Luckily for him, there's a
woman down the hall who puts up with him so he at least has someone to talk
to. He can't seem to get rid of the jar, however, so he ends up watching penitents
in the desert and having Vietnam flashbacks. In spots the movie's creepy,
but overall it's boring (man, I hope you like shots of a guy drinking water,
that's all I can say). Somewhat reminiscent of Combat Shock and
Desecration but without plot or payoff. It's hard to fathom what they
were thinking... or taking... -zwolf
J. D.'s Revenge (C, 1976)
In 1942 New Orleans, a black gangster named J. D. Walker is gunned down for
the razor murder of his wife, but he didn't do it. Cut to modern day New Orleans,
and a cabdriver named Ike goes to a hypnotist show with friends. While under
hypnosis, he sees visions from J.D.'s death that plague him the rest of the
night. He buys a hat like J.D.'s and sees J.D. in the mirror, so he sees a
doctor, who tells him to relax and smoke some weed! He roughs up a woman who's
riding in his taxi, then he goes to a revival put on by preacher Lou Gossett,
who was an enemy of J.D. back in the day. J. D. wants to use poor Ike as an
instrument of revenge, ruining his life in the process. He konks his hair,
tries to rape his girlfriend, and starts hanging around bars as J.D., attacking
people with a straight razor. He challenges Gossett to a fight on the slaughterhouse
killing floor where J.D. was gunned down, and Gossett wants to try exorcizing
the evil spirit out of him instead. When they meet, dark secrets are revealed.
Pretty good blaxploitation horror with a fair amount of blood, including some
real stockyard footage that gets repeated a few times. -zwolf
Joe (C,
1970)
A rich white advertising executive named Compton kills the drug-dealing hippie
his daughter (a young Susan Sarandon) has been living with, because he got
her hooked on drugs. Afterward he needs a drink and goes to a bar where a
right-wing working stiff named Joe (Peter Boyle) is ranting about how much
he hates minorities and liberals and commies and hippies... a perfect dittohead
before his time. Joe doesn't have much to do but listen to his wife talk about
soap operas, clean his guns, drink beer, and watch the news, so when he figures
out that Compton killed the hippie he sees a chance to make a friend and starts
buddying up with him. Compton goes along with it, partially amused by Joe's
primitive nature and partially to stay on his good side, since he knows The
Secret. Compton's daughter runs away and he takes Joe along to look for her...
but Joe has some ideas that aren't so amusing or funny anymore, and the movie
shifts gears suddenly with shocking effect. One of the cornerstone movies
of the early '70's, and still packs a wallop. Joe was partially the pattern
for Archie Bunker, although even Archie would stop short of what Joe does.
-zwolf
Johnny Firecloud (C, 1975) AKA Revenge of Johnny Firecloud
A bunch of idiot rednecks in a backwoods Southwestern town entertain themselves
by hassling, humiliating, and beating up Indians. When they push a war hero
named Johnny Firecloud too far, he gets violent - like the atomic bomb that
was tested on the day he was born (hence his name). The cops hassle him on
the road, they make fun of his drunken grandfather, and they kick Johnny out
of his job and then flog him when he visits his white girlfriend, before booking
him on false rape charges. But then they lynch Grandpa, and Johnny breaks
out of jail and goes on a killing spree, scalping and planting hatchets in
heads and dynamiting and rattle-snaking and eye-gouging and taking the concept
of the movie's probable inspiration, Billy Jack, to unheard-of extremes.
Several of the Ilsa movie team are on hand - the actor who played the
general in She-Wolf of the SS, producer David Friedman, and - most
importantly for our purposes - makeup effects man Joe Blasco, who provides
some pretty extreme, nasty gore. Ralph Meeker is brutal as the racist town
boss. It's about as simple as it sounds, but is fairly well-done drive-in
fodder. -zwolf
The Johnsons (C, 1992) AKA De Johnsons, Xangadix
Netherlands horror with a weird plot. A professor is hired to study seven
unspeaking septuplet psychopaths who, when they were seven years old, murdered
a bunch of people and used their blood to draw weird symbols on the walls.
Even though his father tries to stop him from learning anything, the professor
discovers it's a symbol of the Mahxitu Indians and represents the fetal god
Xangadix, which lives inside a crystal. The psychos are supposedly the god's
seven sons, which are supposed to impregnate their sister with a child that
will destroy the world. Meanwhile, a mother is taking her daughter out into
the marshes of Holland to research herons. The daughter has (for some reason
I can't imagine) been anxious to get her first period, and she's been having
weird dreams about seven little boys painting the walls in blood... And then
the seven psychos break loose from the asylum, which just happens to be situated
in the marshes of Holland... This has gotten some really horrendous reviews
online, and it does have plenty of drawbacks (too many very-convenient coincidences,
a ridiculous scene where a girl takes the time to splice the electrical cord
of a carving knife to use it on a psycho that's attacking her mother, and
some other cliches and implausibilities), but it also has some creepy scenes
and an interesting plot. Too bad it didn't live up to its potential. As is,
it's still at least as good as most of the modern horror dreck it unfortunately
emulates too often. -zwolf
Journey to the Center of Time
(C, 1967) AKA Time Warp
Journey to the center of my ass - this is just 82 minutes that you'll never
get back! Most of the movie is shots of a screen that's showing stock footage
from other films, so it's basically watching people watch TV. I don't know
if Mystery Science Theatre 3000 ever covered this one, but watching
a guy and two robots watch people watch a TV might create some kind of vortex.
There's a lot of hard-sci-fi babble about time concepts that the characters
can't even keep track of themselves. A team of scientists accidentally go
5000 years into the future and watch animated explosions around a model rocketship.
Lyle Waggoner from the Carol Burnett show comes in wearing a padded jumpsuit
and takes them to talk to some aliens who tell them that Earth is destroying
itself in a big global war (started by a fool named George W. Bush! Nah, just
kidding... maybe...). The aliens are under attack by the Earthmen, who want
to get their alien weapons. The scientists are told to return to their time
and warn their people that catastrophe awaits if they keep waging war, but
they go too far back in time and get attacked by dinosaurs... or
at least one dimestore lizard in miniature surroundings. Then they return
to find everyone at their lab frozen in time, so they have to get out before
time catches up with them and they collide with their past selves. This re-runs
footage from earlier in the film and things really stop making sense,
so they just end the movie. Austin Green plays what seems to be Hugh Beaumont
if he hadn't died. Total and complete mess that takes place mainly in a couple
of sparse laboratory sets, padded heavily with "historical" film clips - WWII,
Civil War, Romans, etc. Might entertain hardcore sci-fi geeks but to most
it's pretty stultifying. -zwolf
Junk
(C, 2000) AKA Junk: Shiryô-gari
Japanese zombie-gore-action epic. While a scientist is raising the dead at
a research facility, some Yakuza gangsters hold up a jewelry store. They're
supposed to fence the goods at an old military base... but that's where the
cannibalistic revived dead are being quarantined, and pretty soon soon some
pretty good imitations of Lucio Fulci's filmwork are happening... and I mean
that literally: they seem to be re-creating scenes from Zombie. The
gangsters don't fare too well against the gut-chewing dead, who are slow but
numerous (and nice 'n' creepy). One pretty girl makes good headway, though,
with some two-gun Chow Yun Fat style mayhem. The military send in a couple
of guys to clean up, but they're in trouble, too. Plenty of gore, some of
which is pretty extreme, makes this a solid and respectable zombie fest that
can hold its own with its Italian forefathers, despite some points being lost
to derivativeness. No explanation for the title, though. -zwolf
