7 Hellish Reviews
Yikes, been a while. Well, I intended to watch a horror movie every day in October and ended up only watching 7. I think I overloaded myself just tracking down and finding out about stuff, so the discussion alone and skimming through possibilities ended up burning me out. Blah. That and I was busy. It’s not my fault! As Lando/Han would say.
Anyway. You can click on More and get yerself the reviews for those 7 films.
EDIT: For those joining us from my Facebook (i.e. Baha’is) - do be warned these films are not tame. You have been warned! o_o
THE DEVIL’S NIGHTMARE
Very good early-70s gothic devil flick, involving 7 tourists getting stuck at a castle with a family curse that brings a succubus around every so often. The flavor is a strange mix of sleazy, judgmental, and bitter. Artistically it’s nothing too much to look at, the lighting’s pretty plain for the most part (aside from good work during the “scare” sequences), though the set design of a couple of areas (the drawing room and the attic) is pretty good, with a sense of flow that feels logical and realistic. Like something you could walk into and interact with, basically, rather than a stagey old-timey piece like many of the Hammer films and Hammer wannabes were like. (don’t get me wrong, Hammer’s fantastic, but the backdrops could sometimes get pretty static)
The main thing that made it very cool, however, was the second half of the movie, where the killing starts and barely stops for even 15 minutes before the final scene, and the sequences are very well-executed. Not too long, not too short, with the right dose of sinful decadence that shows why these people got wasted. Greed, Lust, Jealousy, and Gluttony are the ones that pretty much get used, the other sins not getting too much (a shame - Pride and Sloth would’ve been fun). So you get people getting wasted based on sins, you get some well-staged hunting, a super hot babe (even when she’s in Succubus make-up that does make her look pretty freaky) doing the mayhem and leading people to their deaths, Italian eye-makeup, some good cases of gore, use of an Iron Maiden and a Guillotine in the same sequence, and quicksand gold.
To top it off, the ending is surprisingly good. VERY surprisingly good. It’s a typical “devil” film/Christploitation ending where the devil wins because the pious are not pious enough, but it’s done with a smirk and a laugh. Kind of a “hah, got you!”
THE MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN
As it turns out, Comcast’s FEARnet (despite being lame most of the time) got this as an exclusive from Lion’s Gate after the company essentially dumped the film like a stinking turd into $1 theaters in small communities across the country. Many thought it was poor treatment of a film that didn’t deserve it and some said it was just an “okay” film, but being a Barker and Kitamura fan, I really wanted to give it a shot.
And boy I’m glad I did.
I can assure everyone here that Midnight Meat Train is finally a breath of fresh air as a horror film, despite using some older 80s cliches in the storyline and plot, which utilizes a great use of visual style to tell the story (although Kitamura does go a little nuts in the final sequence and during every gory kill scene), fantastic cinematography, and not much excess fat. There’s a few cliches and stereotypes here and there, a few jokes that fall flat and a couple of scenes that don’t work. The main thing I’d say is a problem is the “twist” of the ending doesn’t segue easily but I think this is due to the fact a certain effect didn’t work as well as expected and so they had to improvise and change things up from the original story. That’s unfortunate.
Speaking of the original story, it’s not completely faithful and takes a huge amount of liberties to expand the old tale which really lasts about 60-90 minutes real-time essentially. But due to the fact both the screenwriter Jeff Buehler and Ryuhei Kitamura are fans and scholars of Clive Barker’s old 1980s work and they consulted heavily with him about the making of the movie, there’s a lot of homages to his style of writing that come off well on-screen. The use of sensuality, relationships (especially the sappy hopeless romantic stuff), the slow-motion to accentuate splattery violence and the gnarly sense of grisly viscera, the sharp contrasts in the lighting and colors that has the same snap as Barker’s adjectives. So on. For me, it did a really good job of capturing how Barker’s stories “feel” which is not an easy task to do. Describing visuals is much easier than bringing words to life.
Actor-wise, it’s good. Not great, but really good. The hero is a little too dense at times and there’s some issues with heroics in the third act that don’t fly too good. He does, however, fit well in his transformation when he gets to the end of the flick. The girl is still “the girlfriend” for the most part but her getting involved in the third act and put into peril is handled far better than most films of this type, so I’m glad I wasn’t cringing the whole way. Vinnie Jones worked great as the bad guy, mostly because he never speaks and it allows the audience to focus on his face and how well he’s trying to carry himself as the Mahogany of the story who was an old-school American working man, just a business man whose business was death, butchering, and keeping a secret. A couple of side performances grate on the nerves a bit, but it’s not that big a deal. Cops are always annoying in horror movies and the artsy gallery types are meant to be disliked in this movie anyway. It’s all good by my count.
However, where the movie excels is in two areas. Kitamura’s development as a director and the gore. The main stigma about Kitamura’s work is style over substance and with the exception of the first half of Aragami and the majority of Alive I’m extremely inclined to agree. Versus was a disappointment, Azumi even more so (it’s hard to watch that film again for me), Godzilla Final Wars being fun and cheeseball but a little poorly managed, and Longinus the most irritating short film I’ve ever seen. I still haven’t seen Sky High, but I don’t expect much. However Kitamura pulls back on the fast cutting techniques to really get into what he wanted to do with this movie: return to the time period of when the book was written, in the 1980s, and try to emulate those films while bringing them forward to today. He still does some awesome camera tricks, but he uses it in one case for an amazing way of establishing geography and the other is a bad-ass way of amping up the kinetics of the final showdown between the killer and hero. Overall, however, he lets the camera be still and uses composition, lighting, color, and gentle movements to really make the scene come out well. He had an amazing DP and it helps engage the viewer in the film because it has a visually arresting feel. On top of it, the sense of “posture” is really saved for the very end of the film and although it makes a good dent in the film’s credibility, it doesn’t kill it completely. The fact he showed so much restraint makes him worthy of compliments in my opinion.
And the gore. For a movie called The Midnight Meat Train, you know it’s going to be bloody but wow. Ted Raimi gives a cameo which leads to the best on-screen death he has had in his entire career. It’s quite an eye-bulger of a scene. Overall the gore is primarily CGI for the big elaborate gags, like a headshot, faces getting smashed with Mahogany’s massive meat tenderizer, and an AMAZING decapitation scene. But otherwise there’s good throat-slitting, a nice butchering bit of a body being cleaned and ready for eating, and a couple of other splat-tastic bits of nasty that are done practically and look fantastic. The blood on this film is quite awesome and in a lot of ways reminded me of Bill Lustig’s MANIAC, so if you dug that flick’s use of gore this is something of a successor, despite using lotta CG.
Overall, I highly recommend it as damn it’s nice to see a splatter-thriller for a change rather than a typical roller coaster of jump-scares and grungy atmosphere. Breath of fresh air. Seriously.
BUIO OMEGA
I snagged this film up about 5 months ago but when I looked at the trailer with Phil the other night I realized I had to see this soon. I’ve not watched a good ol’ fashioned splatter flick in some time, was high time to do so. Following up nicely from the gore in Midnight Meat Train, this is old-school in-your-face detail-oriented guts’n'disgustingness.
The story is pretty awesome, to boot. The tale of a young man from a strange family living in a villa with his caretaker (possibly aunt or childhood friend, not very clear) goes sour from the get-go when we see him get a mysterious package from a man in the countryside and the caretaker using a voodoo priestess to kill his fiance in the hospital. After the young man, Frank, loses his beloved Anna he snaps, vowing that death will never keep them apart. So, he does what it’s apparent he does to other animals - digs up her grave, embalms her, and keeps her around the house. This leads to a series of murders and the eventual destruction brought on by too much killing and too much insanity in one household.
I mean sure, it’s a pretty flat tale, the characters have little definition, dialogue is slim, acting is a bit over the top, but it has a lot of details that are just truly bad-ass. The kill and gore stuff is some of the best I’ve seen in a while and makes this one of those movies I know I’m gonna be taking inspiration from in the future. It makes sure to give you the methodical details of what the character is doing, pulling back on the music and allowing us the ambient noise of the events taking place. There’s also dealing with disposing of bodies in sulfuric acid which is handled awesomely, and a burning of a woman who as it turns out isn’t quite fully gone yet. The violence is treated with a bleak and sickening vibe, best described I think as macabre and twisted. The director, Joe D’Amato, is really enjoying messing with the audience’s minds and sense of taste, testing how strong their stomachs are and how far you can be pushed. (the whole point of splatter in the first place! ) It works well and makes a good story into a fun and enjoyable movie.
Definitely not for the squeamish but those who haven’t had the chance to see it should give it a shot, the effects are really good and it keeps you on your toes with how things are handled. Some little bits and pieces are unexpected, many predictable, but it never is dull. Pacing is really fast, lots of gore and some good nudity, twisted elements up the wazoo, and a Goblin score. What more do you want in an Italo-splat flick?
Seriously, I’m paying homage to this film somehow soon.
C.H.U.D.
So now I know both definitions of the acroynm and can say I’ve seen yet another awesome cult classic!
The thing I did not expect is the movie to have two characters from Home Alone in it, however - Daniel Stern and John Heard (the latter being the dad of the family) were both really awesome in this. John Heard, for once, was not a completely unlikable jack-ass either. Stern was easily the most likable character of the movie, however, and his transformation towards the end into the hero of the flick is well warranted. His backstory is vague in a cool way, also.
Speaking of story - I was really impressed by the story of this, the screenplay in particular, because it’s got a lot of interesting small ideas that really shine throughout the movie and make it a rich experience to go through. It doesn’t make it like a masterpiece and you shouldn’t expect Larry Cohen levels of awesome, but it’s better than you’d expected from an Infected-a-People movie.
The other surprising thing is that despite being very low budget for the majority of the movie (there’s, for instance, no visible squibs and practically every single kill is off screen), they have some amazing dead body make-up effects. I’m talking REALLY amazing stuff for this kind of budget. It helps because they put it in the right places to build tension and the movie’s suspense factor gets amped up real nicely here and there, making it pretty creepy with that “trapped alone in a bad situation with no way of getting help” sort of vibe permeating a great deal of it. That sensation of being trapped in the biggest city in the world, ya dig? And the gore helps, because it shows you the left-overs and that effect simultaneously adds exploitation but in having it as “after the fact” it adds a degree of, “whoa, I don’t want to find out what caused THAT.” Very effective use of technique and if you’re a gorehound this won’t disappoint too much I think.
The C.H.U.D. design is also cute. I love their hands and claws. ^_^
There’s a lot to dig about the movie, but really, if you haven’t seen it, any of you, I’d be really surprised. You should!
CHOPPING MALL
Oh my God this was fun on a bun. There’s some stupid stuff, the dialogue’s atrociously bad towards the end, but I love Kelli Maroney (she was great in Night of the Comet also - “daddy would’ve bought us Uzis!”), the robots were awesome, and it was SO awesome for me and dad to start cheering and laughing when the two guy’s figure out which sporting goods place to go to.
The fact Dick Miller is relegated to a teensy cameo is really depressing and for a Jim Wynorski film, I was expecting more bewbs, but oh well. But it was generally satisfying despite the lameness here and there. And Maroney was suitably adorable and fun, with a couple of nods to Night of the Comet (which may make no sense!).
A real good time of a cheesy 80s horror flick which isn’t even scary in the least (it isn’t trying, either). It’s got an exploding head, chick set on fire, people getting throws torn open, and two electrocutions - so you can’t complain too much. And the robots are superfun.
It’s hard to really go deep into this movie. Really hard. I do gotta say I dug the flick a lot and really suggest those who want a blast of a movie night should pop this on. Especially with good company.
Thank you. And have a nice day.
Then, Phil and I put on something that was…well…maybe a bad idea. I’ll be posting that review of Rock ‘n’ Roll Nightmare when I have the time to actually finish it.
Seriously. This film was pain.
ROCK N ROLL NIGHTMARE (aka The Edge of Hell)
[yes, I know, I'm late to this review and I've forgotten a lot of the movie, so I'll just be simply about it]
Okay. Imagine for a second, you have a hair metal/butt-rock band going out to a farm to record a new record where folks like “Alice Cooper” and “that guy, Stewart” and others have recorded great kick-ass albums. This place is haunted by evil spirits and a gateway to hell as shown by the opening kill that appears to have a cameo by Zuul and an oven roast that turns into a gorified human being.
Now take the idea of this movie being fun and add the idea of INSANELY BAD onto it. Then add the worst hair metal band ever, the director of Zombie Nightmare (and its lead star!), adorably stupid puppet demons, an end battle scene that I’m sure the members of GWAR jerk off to, and tons of lame-ass sex scenes and you got…ROCK AND ROLL NIGHTMARE!!!! (cue power chord)
Out of scale from 1-10, this gets 90 ARRRRRRRGHHH!!!!!!!!!!s.
Usually when I watch a movie that’s bad enough, I go into hysterics with my laughter. It’s how I survive. I did this with Sayonara Jupiter (which, if we Forsaken meet, we HAVE to watch together) and Doomsday Machine in particular. A good gauge of how bad the movie is would be the amount of time it takes before I get to this hysterical point of absolute madness.
Rock ‘n’ Roll Nightmare got me there in 5 minutes. Not kidding.
Opening with the good “family kill” scene where Zuul makes his awesome guest appearance and there’s an evil pot roast, the movie proceeds to give us a combination of Manos: The Hands of Fate, filtered through Master Ninja, and Zombie Nightmare. That’s right - it’s 10 minutes of driving around in a van, while butt-rock/hair-metal plays on the soundtrack. The fact MST3K did not do this movie astounds me, but given it has a lot of nudity and sex (which are some of the worst scenes in the film) that they’d have to cut out probably would have made it a bit not worth it. If you’re gonna razz it, gotta razz the whole thing.
After the epic driving action where every shot seems to last for about 10 hours, we find the group in the van driving up to the house where the opening kill took place. For some reason, the majority of this scene has THE VAN in the shot. I don’t know why, but the van is just…they’re really proud of it. After already becoming dead sick of that thing, Phil and myself were shouting “NOOOOO! NO MORE VAN!” and covering our eyes when cut after cut would go to the DAMN VAN. ARRRRRGHHH!!! (see, there’s another one)
So we’re introduced to Jon-Mikl Thor and his band The Tritons, which include a recently married couple, a Canadian drummer who tries his hardest to do an Aussie accent (after one line you want him to shut up for the rest of the film), a skanky whore girlfriend to the drummer, and a hang-around babe who has a “thang” goin’ on with one of the guys on guitar (given how badly they played and similar they look, I couldn’t tell if it was bass or lead). Then their skeezy manager and Thor’s wife are along for the ride.
The band has come out to this farmhouse and its recording studio barn to get away from it all and spend 5 weeks doing a new album. We’re assured there’s a barn however it appears the barn set is all interiors and one exterior shot probably at a different location from the farmhouse. Typical procedure.
Basically, things proceed as you expect from there. The band manager gets killed by a vision of the hottie who’s sexing the drummer and disappears. But nobody thinks much of it, they figure he just went out to get stuff from town.
The hilarious part about that is they open the window to look outside and see that the van is gone…YET THERE’S CAR LIGHTS NO MORE THAN 100 FEET FORM THE PLACE. I’m guessing this has to do with the film being shot near a very well-used highway, but still, come the crap on!
So eventually the people get wiped out one-by-one, there’s a cute little love story attempt which is ridiculous, the monsters take their sweet farkin’ time to show up, some groupies get lured out and murdered, there’s some horrible monster make-up, Jon-Milk Thor has sex with his woman in the shower allowing us to see (and I kid you not) THOR ASS which caused about 20 AAAAAAARRRRRGHHHHHHH!!!!s alone, some more sex, a dude’s chest exploding and a hand coming out (which was kinda cool), and eventually it turns out that Thor is a warlock who conjured up a bunch of fake victims for Satan who’s been causing all the trouble to kill, and then proceeds to take on Satan himself wearing nothing but studded speedos and lots of chest grease. And Satan’s weapon? Throwing mutant starfish at our slimy, juiced-up hero.
Holy.
Freaking.
Cow.
There’s tons of things I’d love to go into about this movie but honestly, I don’t want to spoil it. I will say, this is one of those films where you have to be completely masochistic to watch it. Phil and I sitting through to the end was stunning. And not only that, it had painful things for the both of us. It’s horrible as a movie and The Tritons are S*** as a band. Their main song they sing, “We Live To Rock” ends up sounding exactly like what Phil sang about them - “We Love The C**k.” The first thing that’ll probably come to mind is Idiot Control Now (MST3K, ftw ) and at the end you’ll just have to say to yourself and your friends watching this wretched thing with you…IT STINKS!
And speaking of friends - DO. NOT. WATCH. THIS MOVIE. ALONE. You will not survive. I think the point of this film is that strength is in numbers. You must have other people to help you survive this nightmare, this Rock ‘n’ Roll Nightmare (see what I did there?), or else I think you will probably go insane. I know I already got close to the breaking point in the first 20 minutes of the film and after a while I just had to numb out and make fun of it. It’s the kind of flick you be a smart-ass to to survive. Or else you die. YOU DIE!!!!
Anyway.
That was Rock ‘n’ Roll Nightmare.
Blugh.
TORSO!
IT SATURATES THE SCREEEEEN WITH TERROR!
Now, this film isn’t as gory as it needs to be (and that’s surprising given it’s a Sergio Martino film) but like the majority of giallo, it’s a dark thriller and not a serious hardcore horror film. It creeps you out but doesn’t throw the gore ‘n’ guts at you as severely as you may sometimes want.
However, like Martino’s other giallo-esque film I watched (The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardth - which is AWESOME), this is the kind of movie that goes in a typical path, lulling you into this is going to be the same old same old, and by around the third act something happens and you go WHOAand the rest of the movie becomes completely unexpected. Well, sort of in this case, not as much as Strange Vice, but it’s definitely out of left field to have what happens in this movie happens. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
You have the usual deal - masked killer with a trench-coat and leather gloves stalking and killing people, women victims cut up (though the details of his murders are not given out at the earlier parts of the film - which is an AWESOME surprise later on), he loves to poke the eyes out of them like a memory we see of him with a doll’s eyes missing, and he loves rubbin’ their dead girl boobs. (ewwww - but awesome, given it’s good hardcore sleazy grindhouse goodness! ) We have a group of girls being terrorized by this around a school in, I believe, Rome. It’s the same school from Hostel II, I might add.
We get the usual suspect stuff, we get the guy who knows something, we get the incriminating evidence, etc. We get an awesome hippie orgy (which Phil hysterically said in total sarcasm, “yeah this is TOTALLY what happens when you smoke weed.”) which has semi-topless girl dancing, a chick being made out with by two guys, and the lead-up to the second major murder.
Then there’s a stalker guy after one of the girls of the group and her creepy-as-hell uncle tells her to go off to the villa he owns in the countryside for a while to take a break from everything, let it all blow over. Or something like that. And so her friends go with her and obviously, stalker dude follows them.
So we spend some time hanging out with the girls, have them all sunbathing naked outside, a peeping tom from the village spying on them, and strangely enough - the most boring lesbian sex scene EVER. Unfortunately, Sergio was never into the lezzie thing and probably did this more for shock factor. It means there’s very little sensuality and the girls just aren’t into it. If this was Jess Franco, different story. (and also, I think the black girl of the pair was a tad stoned or drunk when she did the scene, coming off pretty ungraceful and silly - but that’s me, I’m picky about my lesbo sex in 70s grindhouse films) But yeah, that was pretty hilarious to see a movie that has tons of ladies, GOOD lookin’ ladies, and yet the one girl-on-girl scene has like no sizzle whatsoever. o_o
ANYWAY.
So, the murderer finally comes to the girls and strikes.
And that’s when the change happens. With essentially a couple of edits, 5 of the main characters of the film are killed instantly and removed from the story. The remaining girl is stuck in the house while the killer goes about his gig burying the bodies, but first uses a hacksaw to cut them into pieces until all that really remains is their…TORSO!!!!
Hang on….
….
TORSO!!!!!
There we go.
And so, the rest of the movie goes from there. It’s only about maybe 25-30 minutes more, but still, to have a good twist like that was pretty spectacular and it’s worth recommending the film on that alone.
The villain’s reveal and motive is horrible, as with many giallo films also (the best one I’ve seen recently was Naked You Die!), and you see it coming from the very first scene. So don’t go into it expecting to have a great mystery.
That’s another thing, the mystery of this film is so by the numbers and boring that you can actually talk with your buddy during the movie for most of the time and have absolutely no problem keeping up with it. You can just B.S. and enjoy the flick, which actually is kinda cool. You can make remarks and not miss some important piece of information because you know what’s coming anyway. Gets you to relax a bit. And then when the GOOD stuff happens, like the kills, the bits of nudity, the amazingly cool twist-a-roo, the hacking of the bodies, then you get back into the movie and groove on it. Like, “okay, cool, stuff happening.”
So yeah, it’s a tad slow, watch with a friend, but I recommend the flick to those of you who want a good serial killer/giallo/slasher flick. Best as part of a double-feature, probably.
AND THAT’S IT!
Not enough? Sorry. I’m busy with a novel so yeah. 
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