This is a really screwed up film... on many levels. Wow, where does one start? First of all this film looks like it was filmed with a home camcorder, the characters are beyond surrealistic and totally unbelievable, the concept is really weird, and the acting is some of the worst ever caught on celluloid. Anyway, the story is about how Satan discovers the amazing qualities of a popular modern item we all know as a DVD. He creates a monstrous cartoon character (mostly played by a guy in a costume) called Dr. Carnage and his sidekick, a ravenous monkey named Max Assassin, and places them on DVD's and drops one in everyone's mailbox (I guess since AOL always did that, he thought could too). Some weird chick with breasts big enough to be classified as weapons of mass destruction, that also looks 35 years old but acts like a 6 year old, finds one in her mailbox and decides to play it out of childish boredom. Meanwhile, her parents (consisting of an obvious man in drag with a voice like John Wayne) are going out of town for the weekend and put her older sister in charge. Somehow as if planned, the "older" sister looks much much younger than the "younger" sister. Anyway, the older sis invites some friends over, some boys, some liquor, what have you, and has a party. Little sister with boobs so big they have separate zip codes, is watching what looks like a stupid cartoon about a mad doctor and his rabid pet monkey. Suddenly, Dr Carnage and Max Assassin leap from the TV and extract very cartoonish (and strikingly gruesome) ways of killing everyone. All the cartoon cliches are used... safe dropped on the head, sawed in half, spine ripped out, TNT explosives, etc. Live action is mixed with cheap cartoon overlay and computer effects, some of which are truly hilarious and deserve really good drugs. As expected this movie is extremely colorful, being about cartoons and all, but this is as gory as can be expected when a safe falls on your head. In a real cartoon, their head came out flat, they blew on their thumbs and everything pops out into place. But here, when a safe falls on you, you're squashed beyond recognition, your guts are coming out and brain matter is staining the wall. All through the night, everyone gets it in a different way. Monday when "Mom" and Dad return, they find the house a mess and body parts everywhere. The drag queen mom goes into a totally hilarious spastic fit that was so side-splittingly funny that it was almost worth sitting through this cheap piece of crap! And, I serious stretch the word "almost".
Yet another "video nasty" filmed in Greece that has been relatively unknown for years (at least in english), until a recent DVD release. There aren't many gore scenes, but when you get to them, they are extremely effective and worth waiting for. The story is for the most part is a psychological thriller dealing with the results of the disintegration of a decent family man into a cannibalistic monster. Generally, the story is this... A young couple are seen on the beach of a Grecian island, the girl goes swimming while the boy starts jammin' with his headphones. The girl comes across what looks like a boat adrift with no occupants. Upon inspection, she lets out a horrendous scream and is attacked by something under the water. Subsequently, her boyfriend has his head split open with a machete by an unknown wet, blood dripping entity. Meanwhile, on a cable car ride, a young girl named Julie (played by Tisa Farrow, Mia Farrows sister, I'm not for certain, but their likenesses are so close that I would bet money on them being identical twins) makes friends with a group of young people touring the Greek Islands. She explains that she babysits a Greek couples blind child during the summer and in return the couple pays for her vacation. She asks if she can tag along since some friends of hers are missing (the young couple that were slaughtered on the beach) and she doesn't have a ride to the island. Since the group's tour will bring them in close proximity of the island in question, they happily agree to help her get to her destination. A woman in the group named Carol is a Tarot card reader and quickly discovers that danger lurks ahead. A pregnant woman named Maggie gets her cards read, only to find that she has all blank cards (no future). carol also predicts that death is imminent if they set foot on this island. They arrive at the island. Maggie sprains her ankle and has to stay on the boat and rest, the others leave to explore the island which seems totally deserted with the exception of a mysterious woman that warns them to go away. Meanwhile, on the boat, poor Maggie pulls a bucket of water from the side of the boat, only to discover that it contains a severed head, she screams and is dragged away by "someone". After finding the island deserted, they inspect Julie's friends house. It also seems deserted, but upon inspecting the cellar, they find the couples daughter Ariette hiding in a wine barrel, stabbing at anything that comes near. She talks of her parents being killed and that she knew where "it" was because "it" smelled of blood. As the others are looking for signs of what happened, the guy watching Ariette is attacked and has a chunk bitten out of his neck by an unknown monster. Upon exploring the island, the group comes across a large house that belonged to a prominent family on the island. Flashback sequence: a man, his wife, and their child are in a lifeboat that has gone adrift. The child has died from exposure and dad begins to see him as dinner. The mother is repulsed by the idea, the father loses it and kills her. We are lead to believe that he eventually ate them both (this is no doubt what the female swimmer in the beginning of the film was screaming about). They find a diary about the incident written by the father's sister who has gone insane because of "what happened" (we are given hints that "what happened" isn't necessarily the boating incident where her brother ate his family). Mystery woman hangs herself from the top staircase of the large house that the group is now taking shelter in, we soon learn that the mystery woman was actually the sister that had written the diary. Julie and Ariette decide to stay at the house while the others go check on Maggie. Julie continues reading the diary and reads how her (the nutty sister) brother became "the beast". Apparently, after having to eat his wife and child he went completely insane and once rescued and returned, he began to kill and cannibalize the entire island. His sister who has now become quite a nut too, has tried to hide her brothers depravity by hiding all the victims (only some are partially eaten, most were drained of blood) in the large house. A reference made in the diary hinted that the bodies were hidden in the foyer of the house. Julie finds a large mirror that seems to be covering a door. She smashes the window and finds a room containing the dead population of the islands occupants. On the search for Maggie, the group discovers that she isn't on the boat. They spread out looking for her. Maggie's boyfriend finds her hiding in a cave and she tells him about the severed head she found in the water. While in the cave, "the beast" descends upon them and pushes Maggie to the ground, reaches up her skirt, rips out her baby and takes a bite out of it (very effectively achieved with a skinned rabbit). After killing most of the group, He (the beast, the man who ate wife and kid and then proceeded to continue with his newly found taste for blood and insanity) chases Julie and Ariette up into the roof. Stupidly thinking that they're safe, he rips through the roof and grabs Ariette by the hair, scalping her and tasting her hairdo. Julie makes it outside and is on the watch for "the beast". Unbeknownst to her, he's hiding in a well that she wanders a little too close too. Instead of pulling her into the well, he uses her to climb out of the well. David (the last surviving member of the group of people who befriended Julie in the beginning) comes out of nowhere and hits "the beast" in the gut with a pic axe. He looks down at his bloody guts, pulls out some organs and starts munching down, looking quite happy until he slowly died of blood loss. The End. Usually when a hard to find movie is released on DVD, one would expect it to have some improvements. Not here. It's a great story, but has some serious flaws. Not because of the story, acting (which actually wasn't that bad) or scenery, but from the sound quality which sucked in multiple forms. First of all, the original language that the movie was filmed in was Greek and in the making, didn't have a great sound quality to begin with. Second, the english dubbing is deplorable, with talking when no mouths are moving, and no dialogue at all when people are obviously having a conversation. I was also disillusioned when I discovered that the optional subtitles don't match a damn thing. The words displayed aren't in the slightest bit associated with what's being said. Oh well, very few movies can boast perfection. This film actually does have a great story line and a relatively original plot. Pretty impressive, with the exception of the audio. By the way, in case you didn't get the title, Anthropophagus is Greek for "human consumption"
This is another of those little italian horror flicks that director Joe D'Amato came out with that were very cheap to make, are extremely hard to find these days and was categorized as a "video nasty". Video Nasties were usually films that could not be rated (if so, they would have gotten an X rating which would have given it an incredibly limited release) and were usually pretty gory. For the most part, his films had a very good plot that was poorly executed with bad acting, not enough action, boring dialogue (made all the worse by the terrible english voice dubbing) and not enough gore. Thankfully, Buried Alive was re-released on DVD a few years ago under the new title "Beyond the Darkness", (which makes it a little easier to acquire, but harder to identify due to the title being changed). I've seen the VHS version and I can say for certain that the DVD release has acquired a bit more footage that wasn't on the VHS version. These extras made this film ten times better. Apparently, several minutes of gore footage was removed and then replaced for the DVD version. Well worth seeking out, now on with the story. Frank is a weird little guy who's hobby is taxidermy, who's parents have recently died, a housekeeper named Iris (who is madly in love with Frank) and his beautiful girlfriend Anna. Iris is extremely jealous of Anna, so she has a Voodoo priestess stick some pins in a doll and kill Anna with a curse, so that she can have Frank all to herself. Anna dies, Frank is deeply grieving and only has Iris to comfort him. He decides that this is not enough (did I mention that Iris looks like a horse?) so after the funeral he digs up Anna, with intentions of using his taxidermy skills to keep her near (and not smelling too bad). Unbeknownst to Frank, Anna's twin sister Elena has arrived in town to pay her respects (obviously played by the same actress). On the way home from the cemetery with Anna's body in the back seat, Frank picks up a pothead hitchhiker. The female hitchhiker gets real stoned and takes a nap in the truck. Frank brings Anna's body into his "house of horrors" taxidermy studio and proceeds with prepping her for the keep. First he pulls out all her guts (deliciously disgusting) and replaces her eyes with glass replicas. He kisses her, tongues her, and when he can't hold his passions back any more he pulls her heart out and eats it (yum, that formaldehyde goodness). The pothead hitchhiker comes out of her stupor long enough to catch Frank embalming his girlfriend. She runs, he chases her, she trips over a bucket of guts, he holds her down and proceeds to pull off her fingernails one by one with a set of pliers, then strangles her. Being the ever dutiful keeper of pretty much everything, Iris helps him hack up the body and dissolve it in a bathtub full of acid. Frank puts Anna's body in bed and leaves her there. With the fake eyes Anna looks like she has drank about 17 pots of coffee, so lying in bed looks even more ridiculous. Bored one day, Frank goes jogging and befriends a young female jogger who has just sprained her ankle. He convinces her to come back to his place where he can tend to her ankle. She comes onto him and he fucks her in the same bed that Anna is lying in. Eventually the smell reaches her, she discovers the body and freaks out. She doesn't get far before Frank catches up with her and bites a chunk of flesh out of her neck. While she lays there dying, Frank really enjoys chewing on the hunk of neck while watching the female jogger die. Dutiful Iris helps Frank dispose of the body in the incinerator. Why they didn't do that with the hitchhiker is beyond me, it just seems that an incinerator would be much less messy than a tub of dissolved guts would be, but I digress. For some reason Frank allows Iris to convince him that marrying her is the way to go. He must have at least some interest because he sure sucks on her tits a lot. Some detective comes snooping around with questions about Anna's grave being desecrated. Iris comes out from under her hangover from the previous night's wedding festivities and finds the detective looking around, so she stashes Anna in the closet. The detective eventually opens the closet, Anna's body falls out, and for some reason the detective doesn't look very surprised and whips out his camera to take pictures of Anna's corpse. Meanwhile, Anna's sister Elena shows up at Frank's house because she knows that he was Anna's boyfriend. Elena hears her sisters voice and the lights go out (either Anna's ghost calling or Iris is throwing her voice to trap the sister. I'm not sure which). Elena sees her sister sitting in a chair, so she goes over to her and Iris comes out of the darkness with a knife and intentions on killing Elena (for obvious reasons). Frank sees Iris about to stab Elena and attacks her, Iris stabs him, he grabs the knife and kills her. The detective returns and sees that Iris is dead, he goes to the basement and catches Frank burning something in the incinerator. The detective shoots and kills Frank when he sees that there are human body parts in the incinerator. He also sees a body on the table. Since they are twins, we don't know which sis was cremated but we are lead to believe that was Elena, probably to get rid of her body in the same manner as all the other victims. The movie ends when at the mortuary,when "her" coffin is about to be nailed shut and Elena pops out alive. Apparently Frank had cremated Anna. I guess since Elena (a live version of Anna) has come along, he decided that he no longer needed Anna's corpse. Of course no one knows this but Frank who is now dead, leaving poor Elena to almost be buried alive (hence the title). Sounds fascinating doesn't it?!?! For some reason, it's not. You have to watch it a couple of times to be able to completely understand what has happened, but very few people have enough patience to do that. Once you get it, it ain't so bad.
Two eccentric old aunts are having a birthday party. All the party guests are family members that are just after the old bat's money and intend to use the birthday party to both make themselves look better as well as making each other look as bad as possible. The oddball family ensemble consists of a bumbling cowardly priest, a married couple with obnoxious kids, a fat cousin with a very young stripper wife, a female cousin with her lesbian girlfriend, a horny dipstick in a Trans Am and a frigid old cousin that is so conservative she makes Mother Theresa look like a 2 dollar whore. As the aunts start receiving their birthday gifts, a knock at the door sounds the arrival of someone else. The cook's helper answers then the door and there stands a gothic looking grandma with a gift sent by the black sheep of the family, a nephew that was banned from the family and written out of the will for becoming the leader of a Satanic cult. Through the note on the gift he shmoozes the aunts by saying that he wants forgiveness, he knows his presence is not wanted but still desires to give them a unique gift for their birthday. They open the package which contains a pretty box. Thinking that it's a lovely gift, they open it and some demons come out and possess the aunts, who then begin attacking all members of the family and most of the relatives are killed off in various comical ways. The frigid cousin and the lesbian are like the only two people left. They guess that if they destroy the box that they can destroy the demons that came out of it. It works and the aunts return to normal (borrrrrrring!). The next morning police arrive and start collecting the bodies. One of the two kids (the other got torn apart by one of the aunt/demons) wants to go live with the lesbian, because even though his mother survived, she's now a basket case in a straight-jacket. In the last scene, Bertha the frigid cousin starts puking up green slime in the cab ride home, then gets all possessed looking and tears off the cab drivers arm... the end. I have to say that the first half of this movie is slower than dial up internet, almost enough to give up on it before the fun even begins. The second half of the movie picks up with some gruesome special effects and some pretty bloody murders. Well worth the wait. Don't try and make too much sense out of the story, it's relatively insignificant. The only fun in this film is watching two demons run around in flowery dresses killing people in comically terrifying ways that are very reminiscent of "Evil Dead". Ironically, despite the title, the grannies in this film are the victims of demon possession and the rabies virus is never even mentioned. An enjoyable flick... if you have absolutely nothing else to do.
LSD + Rabies + Satanic hippies + deplorable acting = I Drink Your Blood. Filmed in 1970, it earned the title of the first film to be given an X rating based on violence alone. Thankfully, it has now been released uncut on DVD, so now everyone can enjoy this piece of cinematic shit. A gang of Satanic hippies are traveling around in a van (going... somewhere?). They break down in a town with a population of like 12 people. Horace Bones, the extremely eccentric leader of this gang of total acid heads that worship Satan and vow to die and kill for Him, blah, blah, blah. No one except Horace really takes this crap seriously, most of the members are a (somewhat) normal band of misfits that are basically decent people who just like to trip out. Anyway, a young girl accidentally sees them performing a ritual sacrifice of an unfortunately real chicken (hope they ate it afterward) and screams and runs. They catch up to her and attack her. She stumbles home and Grampa vows to get revenge on these hooligans that have moved into this vacant town in a run down hotel full of "yummy" rats (Don't ask, they look frighteningly real too). A slightly younger version of John Boy Walton is part of the family of the attacked girl and beats Gramps to the punch by offering the satanic hippies some meat pies that he has laced with Rabies that he got from a mad dog he had killed earlier. All the hippies start to get sick and foam at the mouth. Unfortunately, It looks like they just sprayed whipped cream on their mouths, making them appear totally unscary and instead they looked like rejects from those "Got Milk?" commercials. The extremely diminutive population of this desolate town band together and shoot all the hippies. It's a little gory here and there... a pregnant woman stabs herself in the belly, a man is beheaded, some guts spill from here and there, nothing my readers won't enjoy. All the hippies are killed off in variously cheap ways. The acting is truly a spectacle, it's so bad that I absolutely must include this in the comedy section of Cultarama, absolutely had no choice. There's a plethora of weirder than weird characters in this film. I love the title, but the sequel title is even better, aptly named "I Eat Your Skin" I highly recommend both films, their what true cult is all about.
On the planet Pluton, a nuisance creature disposal unit vaporizes unwanted creatures and shoots them into space. Unfortunately, one of the discarded aliens has landed on Earth. More precisely, the Putterman families new satellite dish. The Putterman family is weird enough without extraterrestrial influence. Stanley and Raquel Putterman are sexual swingers and their entire house is designed to look like a porno palace. Suzy Putterman is a teenage Cyndi Lauper clone, complete with multi-colored hair and makeup that could scare a clown. Grampa Putterman is a military obsessed peddler of lizard tail jerky that lives in a fallout shelter in the basement. 12 year old Sherman Putterman is like the only halfway normal member of the family. The new satellite dish doesn't seem to be working very well, at least until the space creature lands in it. Then miraculously it works, with the exception of two channels. One just shows a googly eyed slimy alien and the other channel is a different looking alien that seems to be pleading with humankind over something. Armed with a remote the size of a small car, the Puttermans explore the wonders of satellite TV. Mom and Dad go out clubbing, Suzy has a punked out date from hell aptly named OD, leaving Gramps and Sherman alone for the evening. Soon lightening and tentacles come out of the TV and eats Gramps. Mom and Dad come home with another couple to have sex, Sherman complains about a monster and Mom gets mad about him disturbing their orgy and throws him in the fallout shelter. He calls police, they of course don't believe him. So he calls the only person that might believe him. An Elvira wannabe named Medusa, that has her own horror show on TV. She doesn't believe him either. Meanwhile the monster has eaten the entire orgy. Suzy and OD come home from their date and find the monster and thinks he's kinda cute. They at first treat him like a pet, then decide to exploit him on TV, so they call Medusa and see if she's interested in a real monster for her show. She scoffs at first, then says that she "might" come over. Unfortunately, the monster gets spooked when he sees the other alien on TV and eats OD's head (no big loss there). Armed with machine guns and grenades, Suzy and Sherman decide to try and kill the monster who is sitting in the indoor pool watching satellite TV. They throw the monstrous (pardon the pun) remote into the pool in an attempt to fry him. The other alien comes through the TV and apologizes for the inconvenience of having unknowingly transported someone's unruly pet into space, specifically into their satellite dish. Suzy and Sherman tell him about how the monster has eaten their parents. The "good" alien says that their parents DNA can be extracted from the monster upon capture, unfortunately they'll have to live in specialized aquariums from now on. He vows to help them in any way he can. Medusa shows up and sees the alien with a raygun pointed at two kids. She assumes it's an attacker and smashes his space helmet, causing his head to explode from the pressure. With good alien out of the way, the monster proceeds to consume everyone that's left alive. The last scene is a half Medusa/half monster telling her chauffeur to "C'mon C'mon C'mon, I'm in a hurry" (on the show, she sounds sexy and sultry, but in real life she talks like a Jewish harpy). Everybody dies and the monster escapes. Perfect ending to a less than perfect movie. This film doesn't have much in the way of good acting or sharp humor, but makes up for it with cheesy slapstick jokes and situations. Worth a watch, just to see all the laughable eighties cliche's.
Pieces is a great shlocky flick from the early 80's. It's spanish and (hopefully) dubbed into english. I had seen this a long time ago and thought it was great. Then one glorious day, I managed to find it on DVD and was thrilled! The sound was much better and the dubbing is only obvious just now and then. It's been restored pretty successfully and is definitely worth seeking out. Anyway, it begins with a little boy putting together a porno puzzle of a naked lady. His mom walks in and catches him and freaks out, tearing his whole room up. Little boy grabs an ax (well, doesn't every 10 year old keep an handy?) and slaughters mom. When police arrive, they assume there was an attack and kid goes free. Fast forward a few decades. A college campus is starting to have some problems with young women being butchered to pieces by some unknown maniac. We see from the killers point of view that it's definitely the kid that long ago developed a personal relationship with his ax and even still has the porno puzzle. Only this time as the pieces of the puzzle fit together, someone comes up with some missing parts. It appears that the killer is possibly recreating this puzzle in real life. Who dunnit, you ask? Well, we're given several suspicious characters to choose from. There's Willard the grounds keeper, an ape of a man, wielding his chainsaw all over the place (the most obvious attempt at diversion possible). There's a few suspicious students at the campus, there's a weird police lieutenant, a sexy tennis player, etc, etc. No real clues are ever given and it ends up being the Dean of Students, whom you rarely see throughout the movie. As a final shocker, there's a double climax at the very end. When someone leans on it, the Dean's bookshelf slides backwards revealing his human jigsaw puzzle he's been working on. Then out of nowhere, the puzzle corpse reaches up and grabs one of the students by the crotch, yanking off his beany weenies. The movie is actually pretty good and the ending alone is worth giving it a go.
Y'know, when I think of Peter Jackson, I think of a filthy rich multiple Oscar winning director. Professional in every sense of the word. But few people know that before Lord of the Rings, Peter Jackson had a taste (Bad Taste, I should say. Forgive the pun) for gore and perversion. Even Meet the Feebles, a movie with a cast made entirely of puppets was perverted and gory. Needless to say, this is a very strange film and Jackson must've been high as a kite to come up with this shit. Meet the Feebles is a hodgepodge of bizarre occurrences and situations surrounding a puppet based variety show called "The Feebles". It truly does have way too many plots to keep up with, it's more the characters themselves that make the film. The bare bones of the story is this... Heidi the Hippo is married to Bletch the Walrus. She catches him screwing Samantha the Cat. Bletch humiliates Heidi and then fires her. She freaks and goes on a shooting spree killing pretty much everybody. Along the way, while following Heidi's downfall into food addiction, suicidal tendencies, and complete and total madness (Gee, I bet she would get along great with Britney Spears) we witness the following, note the ironies between the character and the animal chosen to represent them: A gossip columnist fly that loves to take pictures of people at their worst. A perverted and rude rat that runs the show and date rapes a poodle. A drunk elephant is slapped with a paternity suit by his ex-girlfriend... a chicken. She has just given birth to a bunch of "elephickens". Bletch the Walrus pukes up a fish that he ate earlier while it was auditioning for the show. Fish asks if he got the part then keels over. A warthog and a bulldog supply everyone with cocaine. An over sexed rabbit catches AIDS and slowly gets grosser and grosser throughout the movie. There's a porno sex scene between a cow (who has multiple piercing on her udders) and an insect. Cow accidentally sits on the insect killing him, the she and the the porno director plan to sell it as a snuff film. A knife throwing crocodile suffers drug withdrawal and kills everyone that dares to get on the spinning wheel. Eventually, he throws a knife into the air and catches it with his forehead. AIDS rabbit is determined to be on stage despite his illness. He shows up all green and slimy, then pukes all over the stage. This is very much like Muppets on crack. It's bawdy, it's disgusting, it's tasteless, it's gross... therefore I totally loved it. Although, during the hippo shooting spree I was quite alarmed to find out that puppets had blood and guts. I guess all those cotton stuffed animals I got as a child were just fake knock offs... thanks for nothin' mom!!!
Although a sequel, this movie seems more like a remake. The first movie (The Evil Dead) was made to be scary and came out rather humorous. Sam Raimi decided to basically redo the movie, this time trying to make it funny but ultimately came out with a much scarier story. It's the same story as the first movie, only done in a much more professional way. Widely successful, it employed better special effects, stranger characters and a jazzed up version of the original story about finding the Necronomicon: Book of the Dead and releasing demons that can possess human flesh. Anyway, the story goes like this. Ash and his girlfriend vacation in a small cabin deep in the woods. Ash finds a tape recorder in the cellar, plays the demon resurrection chants and soon the trees attack and kill his girlfriend Linda. She becomes possessed, he chops her head off with a shovel and buries her. He soon becomes possessed himself, but the rising sun saves him from being possessed for too long as the demons are forced back into the woods by the sunlight. He makes for the bridge, but suspiciously the bridge has been mangled, making an escape out of there impossible. The sun soon sets as Ash tries to make it back to the cabin. We learn that the incantations recited on the tape recorder were made by an archaeologist and his wife. Their daughter is also an archaeologist and has the missing pages of the Necronomicon needed to dispel the evil. Linda soon pops out of her grave and proceeds to torture Ash, so he takes her to the tool shed and gives her the ol' slice and dice with a chainsaw. Now that Linda is out of the way, his own hand becomes possessed and keeps attacking him. He cuts it off and puts it in a trash can and sets some books on it so the hand can't get out. Ironically, one of the books he uses is the novel "A Farewell to Arms". Meanwhile the daughter shows up at the bridge and is met by a hillbilly couple that demand money to show the daughter a trail to the cabin. Still at the cabin, Ash starts losing his mind when all the furniture starts laughing at him (this scene alone is worth watching this movie.) The daughter and the hillbilly couple make it to the cabin and by the looks of it (blood everywhere and a bloody chainsaw in the corner) it appears that Ash has killed her parents, so they throw him down into the fruit cellar. As the daughter listens to the tape recorder, the professor states that his wife had become possessed and he has buried her in the earthen floor of the cellar. Henrietta (the mom) pops up and goes for Ash. he is rescued just in time by the people upstairs. Hillbilly wife Bobbi Jo freaks and runs into the woods... bad move. She gets attacked by the trees and dragged through the forest and smushed into a tree. Buford Butthead (Bobbi Jo's hubby) grabs the missing pages and throws them down in the cellar and demands that the others help him look in the woods for his stupid wife. When he's attacked, the others high tail it back to the cabin. Thankfully, he gets too close to the cellar door and Henrietta gets a hold of him and chows down. The missing pages are crucial in dispelling the evil, therefore Ash and Annie (professors daughter) must get into the cellar but not before having to kill Henrietta. She mutates into some long necked monster. Ash uses his chainsaw to sever her head and arms in order to get into the basement. The pages are retrieved from the cellar and evidently there are three passages that must be recited. One to make the evil appear in the flesh, one to open a rift in time and space and one to force the evil into the rift. Unfortunately, she is killed by Ash's severed hand and only gets to recite the first two passages. The evil appears and is forced into the rift, unfortunately there is no way to close the rift, so Ash and a few other things (like his car) are sucked into the rift and ends up in another time and dimension. The place he ends up looks very medieval and he's greeted by knights with swords drawn. Some evil bat creature swoops down from the sky. Ash instinctively shoots it down (he's a pro at this by now). The knights are amazed and hail him as a new king. Ash is not amused by this, but it sets the stage for the third movie titled "Army of Darkness" where Ash must fight a war against the "Deadites". Frankly, I found "Army of Darkness" to be a terrible movie that can only be enjoyed if you're really into "Three Stooges" type of humor. Stick with Evil Dead 2, it's by far the best out of the whole trilogy.
Umgar is a strange little German guy who loves his pet worms. He plays with them and builds them little houses and seems to be able to communicate with them. Umgar also runs a camping sight with a lake. The townspeople (the Mayor mostly) wants Umgars land so that they can dry the lake and build condos. He hides the deed to the property in the worms playhouse. Soon some German cutie named Heidi comes along and tries to woo Umgar, despite his eccentricities, because she believes that he has money (which he doesn't). She sees that he has a worm fascination and even keeps some of his worms in the kitchen cooking pots, which she discovers and runs away screaming, only to return a few minutes later a calm collected woman who actually agrees to a spaghetti dinner with Umgar and it's filled with worms (like we didn't see that coming). After eating these worms that Umgar has collected while a strange red tide filled the lake (the red tide is never explained) Heidi turns into a half woman/half worm creature. Some bitchy wife gets some worms in her room/tent service and soon Heidi has company. Apparently, during the red tide, some worms developed into half men/half worms. By the way, the bottom worm half of these dorks is so obviously fake. They look like people with their legs bound up in trash bags. Anyway, these worm men threaten to take Heidi and the bitchy wife, Umgar still wants them as pets and promises to have three other worm women for them so that they can breed and live happily in the lake. Umgar tricks some young people that have been griping that there are no hot dogs at his camp sight into eating some worm infested hot dogs. They had squirmy worms all over them, if these dumb chicks are that blind and stupid, I say they deserve to be turned into mutant worms. The worm men come back to collect their worm women. A funny turn of irony is when the worm men catch Umgar with a worm baited fishing hook and reel him in from his bed to the beach. Before going into the lake, the worm women get Umgar back by making him eat some of his own worms. Soon he changes to a worm man and is trying desperately to get to the lake before he fries in the sun like so many other worms before him. While crossing the road, a truck runs over him and he gets smushed, the end. This was a very comical movie because it's just so way out there. Though I think the main purpose for making this movie is so that they could have lots of gross close-ups of people eating and slurping on live worms. Chewing them up and letting their green slimy guts run down the sides of their mouths. It's quite obvious that they are actually eating these worms too. Not for everyone, but perfect for Cultarama fans.
I'll say it upfront, this movie is very gross and gory, even though it's much more humorous that horrifying. As far as the gore is concerned, this movie actually boasts that is has more blood than any other movie (this is actually measured by estimating the gallon per second per scene. In fact, the last scene in the movie reportedly used over 7,000 gallons of blood for the final 5 minute scene. Anyway, the movie starts off a little slow, but picks up momentum quickly. Some kind of rat bat creature from deep in New Zealand is caught and put in a zoo. Meanwhile, our main character Lionel is dealing with a very weird and domineering mother and a young girl named Paquita that has fallen in love with him. Lionel and Paquita go to the zoo on a date and of course mother comes along and hides behind bushes and shit, just to spy on her rather innocent son. Mom gets too close to the rat bat cage and gets bitten by it. Mom starts to undergo many gross and disturbing changes. Her ear falls off, her flesh is falling away and she has big pus splattering sores all over her body. Hoping to nurse mom back, he keeps her at home where things really start going wrong. Paquita comes over with her dog and the dog runs upstairs where mom is. Mom gets the dog, disembowels it and shoves the rest down her throat. Paquita exclaims with shock and hilarity "Your mom ate my dog!" and Lionel points to the dogs guts all over the place and replies "Well, not all of it". Later that evening mom seems to die and come back as some sort of evolving zombie. By evolving, I mean she gets bigger and grosser all throughout the movie. After dying she starts infecting people left and right, turning everyone that comes into contact with her into a bloodthirsty zombie. Out of nowhere a ninja priest comes to save the day but instead accidentally impales himself on a pointy gravestone. Being the ever faithful son, Lionel keeps his mom at home, along with a few of her infection victims, mostly to contain them and to keep mom company. Unbeknownst to lionel, two of the zombies get their groove on and a about an hour later a zombie baby is born. He may be an infant, but he can kill like a pro. A money hungry uncle shows up claiming to being the rightful owner of Lionel's mothers (his sisters) property now that she's dead (little does he know). The uncle blackmails Lionel for the house and five minutes afterwards has a party to celebrate his new wealth. With this precarious new situation, Lionel and Paquita decide it's time to kill all the zombies by injecting them with poison (why they thought poison would work when bullets and fire didn't, is anyone's guess). So they shoot them all up with this poison and bury them. Unfortunately, the poison they chose was some kind of animal stimulant, that creates super zombies bursting from their fresh graves, ready for some chow. They run rampant, killing everyone at the uncle's party thus turning them all into bloodthirsty zombies. Paquita gets bitten and faces becoming a zombie (fortunately for her, the guy that bit her had dentures!). After killing everyone at the party with a lawnmower, Lionel now has to face his "mother" which is now a HUGE monster with big saggy tits, claws, fangs and old lady jewelry. Lionel stands up to his mom for the first time in his life. She eats him and he manages to kill her by lawnmowering his way out of her stomach. Shockingly, this disgusting movie is brought to you by Peter Jackson, multi-Oscar winner for Lord of the Rings. Most people don't know that growing up in New Zealand, he made gore movie after gore movie. This was his zombie flick, Bad Taste was his alien flick, and Meet the Feebles was his porno-puppet flick. All of which will be discussed soon, here on Cultarama!
This is one of the very few sequels that carry a cult status. Most sequels are completely abysmal and are only in existence because the original was a success and producers know that if the original made money, so will the sequel, by name alone (Exorcist II, It's Alive II, Texas Chainsaw Massacre II, etc). I personally prefer this movie to it's predecessor due to the improvement in special effects, the storyline is a bit quirkier and it has much more memorable characters. Like the first movie, this one also has an impressive soundtrack including artists like The Smiths, The Cult, Art of Noise, Peter Murphy and Dead Can Dance. Instead of a movie theater, this film takes place in a huge apartment building skyscraper. Some spoiled bitchy brat named Sally is having a birthday party, but spends most of the time locked in her bedroom griping about how she hates her dress, hates her hair, hates her party, etc. Meanwhile, a documentary on demons is on television. While ignoring her guests, Sally watches this documentary and a demon actually comes through the TV (a la Videodrome) and possesses Sally. Finally emerging from her room, she turns all demonic and attacks her guests which one by one, infected by her scratches, become demons themselves. A big zit of some kind erupts from Sally's forehead, leaking an acidic slime that eats through layer after layer of the building, infecting everything from kids to dogs. The demon kid is especially funny (or scary, depending on your level of dementia), especially when a gremlin-like creature bursts from his stomach like the thing in the movie "Alien" and attacks the pregnant woman (who is by the way, starting to have contractions, so she's in like the worst mood imaginable to deal with some demon/gremlin bullshit. Needless to say, she won that fight). As countless demons run amuck in this massive skyscraper, this guy and his very pregnant wife are trying desperately to survive this gruesome encounter and find a way out of this nightmare. They shimmy down the building to a lower roof and find themselves in a TV studio. So with lights and monitors watching, she pops out a kid on national television (bet that got some great ratings). A blind, half-dead and still possessed Sally manages to stumble her way into the TV studio as well. Collapsing in front of a TV camera, Sally can now spread evil through the TV like the demon that possessed her in the first place did. Husband smashes all the TV monitors, thus saving the day. Husband, wife (who casually walks out like she pops a kid out every day or something) and newborn infant walk out the front door and into the morning sun. And there you have it, a movie that doesn't know whether it's comedy or horror. It doesn't really matter, it's still a great movie! keep an eye out for writer/director Dario Argento's daughter Asia. She's the pretty young girl that asks her dad to let her continue to watch the demon documentary. If you wanna know what she looks like as an adult, you can rent one of George Romero's latest zombie flicks "Land of the Dead".
This horrific masterpiece comes from the masterminds of Italian horror cinema, Dario Argento and Lanberto Bava. Argento has been repeatedly labeled as the Italian George Romero, which is a huge compliment as far as I'm concerned. The movie opens with a strange man with a sort of "futuristic phantom of the opera" kind of mask, handing out free movie tickets, evidently for opening of a new movie theater. As the customers arrive, they notice that this movie theater is a little odd, but assume it's just promotion for the movie. In the auditorium there's a mask hanging from the statue, a woman tries it on and accidentally scratches herself on the cheek. Meanwhile people are watching the movie, which seems to be a story about the excavation of a cemetery that supposedly houses demons of some kind. People start to notice similarities between the film and reality. There's a man in the movie joking with a "demon mask", much like the woman who tried the exact one she tried on in the auditorium. He scratches himself as well and starts to become a demon. The woman in the audience notices that her scratch is starting to fester and eventually explodes in a burst of pus, deforming her face. Her friend eventually goes to the bathroom to see what's taking so long and upon finding her friend, drooling green slime and has big red eyes, freaks out and runs, but not before being scratched by her demonic friends long claws. Within minutes, her friend begins to transform into a demon too. Since merely being scratched by a demon can turn you into one, the masses of demons grows incredibly fast. The remaining humans find that despite all their efforts to get out, all the entrances have been bricked up and they are walled into the theater by forces yet unknown. A gang of coke snorting punks running from the police find a back way into the theater hoping to ditch and hide from the cops and ultimately become demons themselves (no big loss, but they did make for some creepy looking demons). Out of nowhere, a helicopter falls through the roof. The last two humans alive crawl inside and manage to figure out how to make the blades turn, resulting in the mass decapitation of dozens of demons. You'd think real demons wouldn't be so susceptible to such human mortal coils, but I guess not. Anyway, after getting a few dozen demons off their back, they use the hole in the roof to escape, but not without having to kill another demon along the way (the man wearing the futuristic looking mask from the beginning of the movie). The happy couple having escaped the demon infested movie theater only to find that the "demon plague" has already overrun most of the town. They hitch a ride with a well armed family that's headed out of town to start a new life and all seems well until the girl starts to grow claws and fangs. A kid in the front seat turns around and blows her away with some kind of M-16 or something. The ending credits just show the shock on the guys face as he sees his girlfriend lying dead in the road. Not really a happy ending, but a satisfactory one. Great italian flick (the dubbed voices are actually decipherable). Non-typically, this movie actually spawned a pretty good sequel too, one that we'll discuss soon. A side note worth mentioning is that this movie has a very surprisingly cool soundtrack, featuring artists like Billy Idol, Motley Crue, Rick Springfield, and Go West. This is very uncommon with foreign made films.
On the surface, this looks like the usual (usually boring) slasher film with a campground setting. There's so many out there that it's kind of hard to tell one from the other, but this one really stands out for the people who give it some thought and don't just dismiss it for what it appears to be. Because a lot of thought was put into this story. It's not a clean cut plot and has a totally creepy underbelly story that requires actual thought to decipher the results. This movie also boasts one of the most shocking endings in cinematic history (I totally agree). Anyway, let's get on with the story. The movie opens on a terrible boating accident in which a father and one of his two kids (a boy and a girl) are killed. Not sure which child yet. Several years later, we discover that the remaining child has gone to live with crazy 'ol aunt Martha and her son Ricky (the orphaned kids cousin). Apparently it was the little girl that survived the boating accident because it's a girl named Angela that is Ricky's cousin and Martha's niece. Ricky and Angela are off to Camp Arawak for the summer when before leaving the (very eccentric) aunt gives Ricky the papers for their physicals that are required for attendance at camp and remarks that that should "take care of everything", Aunt Fruitcake (I mean Aunt Martha) is also a doctor/surgeon (with criminal dress sense). Anyway, the kids get to camp, Ricky is out going but Angela is painfully shy and says maybe 10 full sentences throughout the entire movie. She's a little weird in other ways too. She hates the water (why then go to camp?), almost never speaks even when violently shaken and has a tendency to blatantly stare at people with the most vacant look imaginable. Being weird, she stands out immediately and is soon picked on. Her cousin Ricky always comes to her aid with a vicious and violent retort towards the people picking on her. Eventually, all the people that picked on Angela start dropping like flies. For most of the movie, you're not really sure who the killer is, but it's made painfully obvious that it's either Ricky or Angela. Predictably speaking, it would be Ricky killing people to avenge his disturbed cousin. A twist (a very simple twist though) would be Angela doing the killing because she's a little weirdo. At the end we learn it was at least one of the two and it's made to look like that person did it alone. I don't think so, I think both Ricky and Angela did it together. There is a scene where after Angela is maliciously thrown into the water that she really hates, Ricky rescues her and says "Don't worry, we'll make them pay". There's also a murder in the movie where a kid is drowned by the killer under a canoe. Angela really hates water, so how can this be? And trust me she hates water for a legitimate reason. Anyway, there is one camper named Paul that actually penetrates Angela's shyness and they sorta become an item. Eventually, he makes the moves on her and she begrudgingly let's him kiss her. While she is in this situation we are shown a memory from Angela's past when she and her brother observe their father (that was killed at the beginning of the movie) in bed with another man. She quickly refuses his advances and runs off. He continues to pursue her even after being caught kissing some snotty bitch named Judy that's been harassing Angela all through the movie. Angela finally tells Paul to meet her by the waterfront (with a crazy freakin' look in her eye) with the assumption of messing around. At the end, we see a very different Angela as she is approached by a couple of camp counselors. She seems to be naked and is stroking a naked Paul's hair. When she stands and turns around Paul's head tumbles from her lap and she is seen frontally nude. Surprise, it's a guy! It sounds quite comical, but there's a really deep creepiness about the way Angela looks. All over hairy, a dangling peter and the creepiest panting, scream shaped face you could ever imagine. Has to be seen to be believed. Left me with chills for years. Right before the total reveal of Angela as a guy, we're taken on a flashback to when her father and sibling were killed. Apparently it was the sister that got killed in the boating accident. When the boy goes to live with his nutty aunt Martha (y'know, the surgeon) aunt Martha decides that since she's always wanted a girl, she's gonna change Peter into Angela. Not sure how far she got though. When nutty aunt Martha is telling Peter that he's to become a girl, the poor kids got bandages around his head. When I saw it as a kid, I always assumed that aunt Martha gave Peter his sisters brain, so he's think like a girl. No matter how it happened, Peter had a gay father and being a man forced to grow as a woman he had serious sexual issues and gender confusion. Hitting puberty and having a boy make sexual advances towards her/him obviously just sent Angela right over the top. Like I said, it seems really contrived at first but has a nice little unexpected twist at the end. This ending made it look like Angela was the killer, but upon further inspection it's totally obvious that Ricky helped her kill. After all, he also knew about her little secret, that's gotta twist a kids mind a little.
First, there was Night of the Living Dead. Then there was Dawn of the Dead. Now it's Day of the Dead, the third entry to this (at the time) trilogy. Three separate movies that are supposed to be literally the events that occur only a day or so after the first movie. The irony being that there was ten years between "Night" and "Dawn", and eight years between "Dawn" and "Day". One simultaneous event stretched over 18 years. The differences in clothing and hairstyles are obvious and dramatic, yet the films creator George Romero makes no apologies for his continuity short comings. Frankly, the movies are so great that nobody really cares. Day of the Dead takes place in an abandoned underground missile silo, where a handful of scientists and soldiers were grouped together to help figure a way out of this horrible zombie fiasco. This film has many elements of the first movie, being that the real story doesn't have much to do with the zombie outbreak, they are merely a backdrop for a story concerning people with strong personalities and the dynamics of those relationships in a desperate situation. The head soldier, who's a total prick (and a terrible over-actor) demands answers from the scientist half of the group and as usual, gets no answers. The soldiers are all a bunch of obnoxious neanderthals and the scientists are really demented (well, at least one is). The head scientist Dr. Logan is obsessed with mutilating zombies in the effort of understanding the zombie situation. He's convinced that the key to mankind's survival is teaching zombies to be good little boys and girls by rewarding them. Finding this preposterous, the relationship between the scientists and the soldiers comes to a boiling point. And when it's discovered that Dr. Logan's "rewards" are the remains of some of the recently departed soldiers that were assumed to be buried in the makeshift graveyard up on the surface of the silo, all hell breaks loose... again. Violence and death run rampant when one of the soldiers who has been bitten and knows he's gonna die, opens up the gates to the silo, letting all the zombies in. One of the scientists, the radio guy and the helicopter pilot make it out to the surface while the rest of the soldiers are made into a zombie buffet. The soldiers were real pricks all through the movie so their very graphic dismemberment by zombies in the end was very satisfying. The three that made it out, make it to a zombie free island (I guess), giving us hope for the resurrection of humanity... or at least another sequel!
This is another "video nasty" that was banned for years and is making a comeback via new interest and DVD releases. Cannibal Holocaust is pretty convincing, and although there was a tremendous belief that the footage is real, it most certainly is not. Some of the cannibals really are actual native people though, mostly from South America. The only real and ultimately most distressful footage is of some live animal killings. A muskrat gets gutted alive, a turtle get mutilated, a monkey has his head chopped off and a pig gets shot in the head. Being an animal lover, I can say that this is the only thing that I found disturbing about this film. The rest really isn't too bad. The director of this film says that the animal killings are the only thing he regrets about this film, despite being arrested under the belief that it was a real snuff film. Anyway, the story goes as such... A team of scientists are going into the deep jungle to find and study cannibals. The two missions before them never returned, yet these snotty adventurers think they have what it takes. Two months later they are classified as missing (well, duh). A new research team is sent in to find these people. They find traces of them here and there, some of their clothes and equipment, some rotting bodies, etc. They also stumble upon the film canisters from their expedition. Upon returning to the states, the films are watched and reveal a rather stupid group of people that frankly deserve to be cannibalized. Instead of research, they use the cameras to record orgies, the raping of native women and totally disrespect the tribes in every way by eventually burning down their village. The last canister reveals them finally getting their comeuppance as they are all butchered and eaten by the cannibals. Yum!
Some idiot is driving down a dirt road smoking a joint with his dog, supposedly attempting to deliver a few barrels of toxic waste. The scene is now obviously set for a movie from Troma. Toxic waste, bad acting, and the appearance of being filmed with a home movie camera. Anyway, the guy loses the barrel, a fat redneck finds it and uses it for an an alcohol still, therefore making toxic moonshine. One by one, these rednecks start becoming toxic zombies. Fortunately for the story, there are a group of campers nearby that make for some tasty vittles. This movies starts out quite comically with the stereotypical rednecks being their weird little country selves, but about halfway through the film it just turns into outright gore. Troma movies can be pretty gross, but this one is totally disgusting. Not much plot, really. Just colorful characters and lots of gore. Absolutely do NOT invest any time trying to understand anything in this movie, for it just isn't relevant. Just sit back and enjoy the humorous zombie make-up, cheap special effects and non funny one liner jokes.
This is the infamous sequel to Night of the Living Dead. Dawn of the Dead was a bit more mainstream than it's predecessor, mostly due to Night of the Living Dead becoming such an unexpected major success. The storyline is supposedly the next day, even though it's obviously not, due to the different, more modern clothes and hairstyles. Anyway, the dead are still being resurrected for some as yet unknown reason (it was hinted as space radiation, but never confirmed) and are outnumbering the police and military, and eventually starting to overrun the planet. At a television station, people are panicking and abandoning their jobs as TV informants and are heading for who knows where. A helicopter pilot, his girlfriend, a military buddy and his friend take to the skies, trying to figure out what the hell to do next. They come across a huge shopping mall (another storyline continuation discrepancy) and land on the roof. There's a few zombies roaming around, but not many. They soon realize the benefits of staying there for a while. They rid the mall of the few zombies it has and block all the entrances to the mall with freight trucks. Finally, after getting some sleep, they milk the mall for all it's worth, which is quite a lot. Food, clothes, televisions, radios and ammunition as far as the eye can see. While placing the freight trucks, one of the men was bitten on the leg by a zombie. Three days later, he dies, then comes back, then dies again and is buried in the mall garden courtyard. All goes well for a while, then the mall is raided by a gang of motorcycle bandits. In fighting for what he has claimed as his, the helicopter pilot flips out and fights back. He ends up wounded and then attacked by zombies, dies, resurrects and comes after the only two remaining live people he knows of. The rest of the zombies follow him and bombard the upstairs sanctuary leaving the military guy and the pilots girlfriend to escape the only way possible... up. They fly off in the helicopter (thankfully, he taught his girlfriend how to fly it) and that's the end. I have to say that I was a little disappointed when it ended. There were just too many unanswered questions. Near the beginning of the movie, we find out that the pilots girlfriend is pregnant, but she's like 9 months pregnant at the end when they fly away. Also, where the hell did they go with almost no fuel left. I guess it was so that they could make another sequel (which they did, and much like this one it differs greatly in time discrepancy). The movie basically ends right where it began, so it makes a good transition between the original and part three. This movie was recently remade and unlike the great majority of movie remakes, this one is actually pretty damn good. Scary as hell.
The Evil Dead was the first movie collaboration with Director Sam Raimi and actor Bruce Campbell. It spawned two more sequels making it a trilogy. The story starts as a group of 5 young people take a vacation in a deserted cabin deep in the Tennessee woods, (sounds like the ideal getaway doesn't it). During the course of their mundane partying, they hear noises in the basement (which appears to be about three times bigger than the house itself) so they investigate. They find a tape recorder, a strange dagger and a book (Noturam Demontos, book of the dead). As they listen to the tape recorder, a man describes how the reciting of the passages of the book can awaken the evil beings that haunts the forests and dark bowers of mans domain. The man on the tape recorder recites the passages and before long the forest starts to come alive. One by one, the happy vacationers are possessed by evil demons and start killing and eating each other. The main character "Ash" is for some reason, never possessed, but has to deal with his sister, girlfriend, best buddy, etc... all getting possessed and turning into vigorous flesh eating zombies. They can't leave because the surrounding forests seem to be possessed also. One girl tries to escape and is actually raped by a tree. Poor Ash goes through hell just trying to survive the night, because hopefully the demons will recede back into the forest when the sun rises. He has to dismember and bury his girlfriend (which doesn't really work). He gouges eyes, chops up friends, and gets lots of blood splattered everywhere. When he becomes the only non-possessed, non-dismembered person there, and it's almost dawn, he thinks he's gonna be alright. ...I don't think so.
This is one of H.G. Lewis' better movies. The acting is slightly better (but still pretty bad). The jokes are actually funny and the characters have more depth than most of his other movies. This is my personal favorite among H.G. Lewis' films because of the incredible amount of humor poured into it. Go-Go Girls are being mutilated all over town, one gets her face smashed into a vanity mirror, one gets her butt pulverized with a meat tenderizer (a very effective use of red jello, I might add) , y'know the usual. An overzealous reporter seeks out one of the snarkiest and most sarcastic detectives of all time to help her solve the case of the Go-Go Girl killer. This film gives a whole new meaning to "Live Nude Girls"! After all, they're a lot more fun than all those dead nude girls that permeate this movie. Watch for the cheesy striptease contest where even the reporter gets into the act (after downing quite a few cocktails, that is). Great fun! Keep an eye out (no pun intended) for a special appearance by Henny Youngman.
