Choice Things:Updates,Overhauls,and Accolades

I realize I've been churning out reviews at breakneck speed over here,but in between that and organizing lungs v ciggie bare knuckle matches on the side porch,I came to the realization that it was high time I dragged my feral child by its leash from its dogbowl full o'yummies and tried fitting up the bastard with some new threads.The sidebar has resembled Ted Kaczynski's shack for too long.I've had some blog links on that puppy that are,frankly,more lifeless than the Spear of Longinus itself while watching the Barbara Streisand sex tape(not that I'd ever submit my peepers or my goodies to such an ordeal,mind you),outdated pictures,and just a hot mess in general.Well,all that's about to change for the better,my little street-dwelling waifs n' urchins.For anyone with a website,blog,review site,podcast,or whatever-the-hell-you-may-have-yourself,genre-related or otherwise, that wants to link via rss feed,send me the hyperlink to your pages either through Facebook offline message,or via e-mail,and we'll connect all professional-like,in a platonic sort of way.Remember,there's no unreciprocated love here at the Wop,so if you do me,I do you.As proud members of the same online cult/horror/exploitation community,we should support each other,afterall.
The same goes for indie filmmakers,fire me off your handiwork,and I'll gladly slide it under the wop-roscope for you.And it's okay if you've made a dogshit movie,because even abysmal WOPSPLOITATION scores translate into viewer interest,as history has shown.As a heavily tattooed Libran with a bad attitude,my scales do not tip in favour or against any film that does not deserve every word it gets.Unless you're Italian,of course.

Some new I,Candy for you bitches out there.
On a somewhat unrelated note,I stumbled across an interesting net-surf moment tonight while in the midst of nicotine bliss and a killer Alice Cooper Band mp3 rockblock.I've been used as a film reference on WIKIPEDIA for Joe Giannone's Madman(1983),one of my favorite low budget slashers of the eighties.Of course,I'm flattered over here,guys.Let's do dinner at Benito II during San Gennaro Feast this year,or something.I'll buy you an Asian knockoff AC Milan jersey afterwards.Anyway,getting back to business,we're writing the latest chapter in this technological age and introducing genre films to new generations with our websites,so let's do it together,shall we?Hit me the fuck up,people.You know where to find me...

Onward!~
B.W.

R.I.P. Dennis Hopper 1936-2010

"Clawed:The Legend of Sasquatch"(2005)d/Karl Kozak

Bigfoot usually makes for some entertaining(if not always,good) genre fare,as we've seen in the past here at the Wop.Not this time,unfortunately.This movie stinks like two shit-covered skunk apes lighting each others farts on fire atop a sulfuric heap of rotten eggs.We've taken on some Bad-squatch before,but the levels of ineptitude usually translated into hilarity,whereas what we have here is the cinematic equivalent of what it would be like if you drank a barium milkshake over the course of eighty five minutes,without choice esophagus or duodenum x-rays to look at afterwards.Kozak's movie,originally titled "The Unknown",is like a mash up of Jaws(1975),and Grizzly(1976),only without the suspense or entertainment value.Hell,there's barely even any Bigfoot in the damned thing.I was left so flat afterwards,I was nearly rendered a "carpenter's dream" and pondered reviewing something else,only deciding to go ahead with this,so as to warn you against wasting time or money on it.Let's put it this way.When I'm culling screenshots from a dvd,I'm usually left with about fifty decent ones to choose from,which I whittle down to what I think are the four best ones,the ones you see here when the post is finished.By the time the end credits rolled here,I had seven.And picking four decent ones out of those was nearly as hard as it was to sit through the movie in the first fucking place.

Bigfoot's cutting throats these days.Who gave him the knife?
An abrasive redneck tool(Miles "Tarzan" O'Keefe,paying his electric bill here)and his buddies are out poaching bear on Echo Mountain,a peak steeped in historic folklore and mystery,when his fellow lawbreakers all eat Bigfoot-inflicted throat lacerated death after the wild man of the woods KTFO's him for stumbling upon a camoflaged grave...or maybe it was the hootin',hollerin',and gunfire.We may never know.Ed(Isn't that a great hayseed name?Two syllables down south...Ay-uhd.)comes back around,and naturally blames it all on the Indian forest ranger,vowing to gather up the remaining goobers he knows and take revenge.After some cheap beer and a few games of pool,of course.Back in town,the sheriff and the mayor are closing down the beach,errr,ummm,blaming the deaths on a rogue grizzly bear in hope that the negative press doesn't evaporate the tourist dollars.Tourist dollars?The local barbershop and five and dime have a busy season?At the high school,the local obnoxious meathead Jay(Brandon Henschel)is being forced to partner up with the local brainiac nerd/Bigfoot buff Richard(Dylan Purcell) on an endangered species presentation over the weekend,or they both get ffffff....ailed.Jay gathers up two eager young pieces of trim(Chelsea Hobbs,Casey LaBow),some brewskis,and a video camera,taking his impending school failure as seriously as horror buffs should probably take Karl Kozak.

Even the grizzly bear is yawning out of boredom.
Way up on Echo Mountain,you can hear the tires spinning,maybe catch the faint scent of burning rubber,but things have kinda stalled out.Richard gathers firewood and comes face to face with a huge grizzly,but it lumbers off,balking at the thought of having to lick its own balls to get the taste of dork off its breath,the same way I had to dull my taste buds with a half pack of smokes to get the taste of the movie outta my mouth.Ed's redneck posse starts falling prey to the Pissed-squatch,one by one,but off camera is no way to stage deaths when you've got an elaborate costume to show off.Back at the crazy drunken sex-crazed teen party camp,it's much the same.Jay narrates an episode of "Douche Jock in the Woods" into his camera,Richard relates the folklore of the surrounding mountainside in a limp campfire tale,complete with equally flaccid black and white flashback sequence,and when Bigfoot finally muscles in on their boring weekend(through pov camerawork and growling,mind you),they all run off in different directions.When Ed finally loses his last marble,using the Indian as bait,shooting the last of his egghead buddies himself,and taking one of the girls hostage,Bigfoot finally...well...finally does nothing.In the aftermath,Jay manages to get some footage of the elusive creature,and the boys turn it in as part of their presentation,which the teacher tries to cash in on,instead having the film called a hoax,and being called a fraud of the lowest caliber by the whole community.Ironically,calling this production a "horror movie" is the biggest fraud I can shed light on here.

This is the only bobbler shot in the whole movie.
Kozak went on to direct Skid Marks(2007),a comedy about ambulance drivers,after dropping this full deuce two years earlier.I never thought I'd see a Bigfoot feature with less payoff than Ivan Marx's two jokumentaries,but I was wrong.Seeing his poor wife shuffle around in animal skins was far more rewarding than anything showcased here,which is a shame,because most of the elements are in place:a decent looking suit,ignorant Buford poachers,teenaged campers;the potential bodycount is pretty high,obligatory indians who know what's going on,and some really epic scenery,but in the end,it's all wasted here.You may have to actually wait for my third screenplay in line for a satisfactory Sasquatch story.That's all I'll say about that.None of the unknowns in tonight's entry really went on to do anything of note either,unless you count bit television roles or dancing extras in forgettable movies.Even Miles O'Keefe hadn't worked in film for five years afterwards.I can't give it a zero,due to the slick production values and nice cinematography on display,but still,avoid this one at all costs.

I see you hiding in there,Mask-uatch,and you oughta be.

"The Manitou"(1978)d/William Girdler

Normally I wait three risings of the sun to take on a review of this magnitude,but Misquamacus will have it no other way.We ring the weekend in here at the Wop with William Girdler's ninth and final film,his personal Star Wars,if Star Wars had a topless Jewess on a hospital bed floating in space shooting laser beams out of her hands at an Indian midget in front of a blue screen in it.Huh???Oh yeah,The Manitou asks the viewer to take in a whole helluva lot before it's over.Adapted for the big screen from a novel by Graham Masterson,the film boasts of quite a cast of characters,including Girdler regulars Jon Cedar and Michael Ansara,who turns the Indian up to eleven here,free of the ethnic jabs he faced from Leslie Nielsen in Day of the Animals(1977),Burgess Meredith,Stella Stevens,50's tv sweetheart Ann Sothern,Susan Strasberg,Tony Curtis as a psychic(!!),and Felix "Twiki" Silla as a reincarnated Indian medicine man foetus(!!!).Girdler's largest budgeted picture was also a big hit in theaters,apparently.I didn't go to see it back then,I wouldn't have appreciated the monumental levels of hokum found here the way I currently do.Make no mistakes,this movie sucks,but in ways no movie has ever sucked before or eaten the big one since.

See you in the fall,Mrs. Herz!
Harry Erskine(Curtis)is a two bit psychic chiseler with a fake moustache and Merlin robe who cons gullible old ladies with his Tarot deck,fifty bucks at a time,when he's not boogieing to disco,pouring beers incorrectly,or butchering the tongue of native American tribes.An ex-flame,Karen(Strasberg),calls him with a problem she's recently developed at the base of her neck.Well,it's less of a problem and more of a malignant tumor.Actually,it's not a tumor,it's a foetus.But it ain't just your average,ordinary,everyday neck foetus,it's a four hundred year old Indian medicine man trying to be reborn into the world.Erskine finds this out after Karen whispers "Pana witchy salatu!" in her post-coital sleep,and one of Erskine's geryatric rubes repeats the same phrase before doing a makeshift raindance,levitating herself down the hallway,and doing a head first flopper down the steps,killing herself.Karen's doctor,Hughes(Cedar),finds this out when he tries to surgically remove the lump which psychokinetically forces him to slice his own hand with the scalpel in the operating room.Erskine holds a seance with his occult buddies,and an Indian head rises out of the coffee table,speaking through Mrs. Karmann(Sothern),a medium."Pana witchy salatu!" again,or panny witchy solutu,if you listen to Erskine.The psychic and gang then turn to anthropological expert Dr. Snow(Meredith) for answers,and the scatterbrained old gent points them towards hiring an authentic Indian medicine man to fight the red-skinned burden growing on his lover's neck.

After seeing rushes of the final effects sequence,Karen(Strasberg) screams her fool head off.
Erskine turns to John Singing Rock(Ansara),who normally waits three risings of the sun to do a job like this,but signs on immediately after berating the white man with the Brooklyn yiddish accent,and the promise of tobacco.After sprinkling sand around Karen's hospital bed and knocking some feathery bones together,the foetus tells Singing Rock through Karen that he is indeed Misquamacus,the most powerful medicine man ever,or Mixmaster,if you listen to Erskine.After pulling himself out of some latex on Karen's back,we see that not only is he the most powerful shaman to ever live,but he's an adorable midget with two different colored eyes,just like David Bowie!No wonder Shorty's got such an attitude.Through ancient Indian rear projection techniques,the mixmaster calls forth a giant lizard/man-in-a-lizard-suit-on-all-fours demon to bite Dr. Hughes on the hand,which he rushes to wrap in gauze,and looks moderately painful.That'll fucking show him who he's fucking with,huh.The pint-sized Pocahontas is just warming up though.He freezes the whole hospital floor(and a nurse),tears the skin off an orderly,then turns Karen's room into a sort of groovy seventies planetarium with some psychedelic throbbing plasma projected behind him.Oh yeah,that's the Devil.When Singing Rock's feathery bones prove no match for the little guy,the "Holy Fuck!" sequence of the movie kicks in.Erskine's love for Karen causes the manitous, or spirits of all the computers and man-made machines in the hospital to attack Misquamacus through Karen,who happens to be floating topless on her hospital bed.Indian magic and the Devil just don't measure up when they're up against kosher bobblers and hand-emitted laser beam effects.Titles then tell us that a boy grew a foetus on his arm somewhere in Asia back in 1969.Arm-foetus?Big fuckin' deal.

Misquamacus(Felix Silla) and his powerful Shamanic blue screen magic.
Strasberg,the daughter of theater director Lee Strasberg, enjoyed a long career in movies and television before succumbing to breast cancer at age sixty in 1999.Her genre films include the incredible Psych-Out(1968)and The Trip(1967),Rollercoaster(1977),and Bloody Birthday(1981).Curtis fathered genre Queen Jamie Lee during his marriage to Janet "Psycho" Leigh,and is still an active painter,no longer interested in movies.The soundtrack by maestro Lalo Schifrin isn't one of his more memorable works,in my honest two hundred lira worth.As always,Girdler accomplishes an entertaining creation,albeit a pretty horrendous one.Check it out,and you'll be laughing out loud during the finale,yourself.Believe me.One unintentionally funny BW on the scale for tonight's entry,but you'll have to excuse me,I've got surgery in the morning.They're removing what looks to be an Olivia Newton John foetus growing out of my armpit that gets bigger everytime I see roller skates or hear disco.The indians say it's a Xanadu manitou.Hey,at least it ain't Gene Kelly.

Seriously,I got no words for this one.

"Anita"(1973)d/Torgny Wickman

Call me biased,kiddies,but Anita is damn near the greatest example of ur en tonårsflickas dagbok I've ever seen.Why is that?Christina,of course.If there's a more beautiful girl that's ever walked the face of the earth,well,that's arguable.And director Wickman puts all of Lindberg's ample assets on display here,in the form of a psychoanalytical drama,the type that was rampant in the late sixties and early seventies,especially in Europe.Now if you say you're actually going into this one for a thesis on nymphomania and its causes and cures,or to sample the early acting skills of international star Stellan Skarsgard,don't be offended when I laugh heartily in your fucking face.There's only ONE reason to watch this,as displayed fantastically retro-style on the dvd case,and its name is Christina.I never get tired of looking at the perfect symmetry of her face,the innocence in her eyes,the seductive charm of her every curve.Unfortunately,sex maniacs usually look less like her,and more like this guy right here,which I suppose makes your collective mothers a glad bunch,indeed.But enough sillies,we've got a Swedish nymphette to "analyze",don't we?

When nymphomania starts looking like this,the only cure is ME.
Anita(Lindberg),is a sixteen(!) year old nymphomaniac who uses random,sometimes dangerous carnal encounters as a form of rebellion against her very life.Her father's devotion is to the military,and her mother may as well be a cardboard cutout.Her younger sister is a suckup who plays her parents for all the affection.Is it any wonder that Anita,wrought with self-loathing and self-destructive tendencies,seeks release from men?Multiple men?Any man?The only problem is the more men she fucks,the less fulfilled she is.From random dirtbag hippies she blows in public bathrooms to fat old men she fucks under a dirty makeshift blanket-tent on a roadside construction site,the growing emptiness she feels drives her to endanger herself in pursuit of more and more random,sometimes violent sexual escapades.When she and her sister perform a duet for her father's military buddies and business associates,she gives an encore;a scintillating striptease,right there in her parents' living room(!!).She masturbates with a vibrator the size of a small lighthouse,but to no avail.All of her peers,family included, look down their noses upon the tiny sex maniac,but offer no counselling,instead,caught up in their own self-importance.

Imagine the fucking D cell batteries a maglite like that eats...
Her luck begins to change when she propositions a young psych student named Erik(Skarsgard),who senses the girl's inner demons and inherent helplessness,choosing to try and help her rather than dump his eggbag and kick her backdel to the stupränna.He lets her move into a commune of artists(filthy hippie squat,more like!)that he's a member of,so that he can study her problems with the help of his colleagues and professors at his disposal.Between relating her depraved tales of fleshlust to her new pal,she hooks up with a glass sculpturist at the commune,and dumps him directly afterwards,smashing one of his works of art,and telling him matter-of-factly that she only wanted to fuck.Insert Nelson Muntz "Hah-hah" here.Finally Erik comes to the conclusion that the only way to exorcise her dick-driven demons is to give her the one thing she's never had.If you said "mind-blowing,earth-shattering,leg-quivering orgasm",then give yourself two points.He makes love to her,without his facial tentacles,so prevalent in the Pirates of the Carribean movies,and she comes violently.Anita then realizes this boy is the one she can truly be with,her days of any-cock'll-do finally over for good.Psychoanalysis-1,Nymphomania-0.The end.

Oh,alright,Christina.Twist my arm.
Lindberg went on to fare such as Sex and Fury,Love in 3D,and the notorious Thriller:A Cruel Picture(They Call Her One Eye),before taking a sabbatical in the eighties,only to return to acting last year in Ingen kom ner,which I can't say I've seen,but I'd sure like to.Skarsgard hasn't slowed down a bit,scoring a role in the upcoming Thor movie,most recently.All the psychoanalytical claptrap bogs the movie down a bit,to the point that I almost caught myself fast forwarding to Christina's next lurid sex story or encounter,but like I said earlier,you'll bury the film's shortcomings deep in the back of your mind once she fills the frame.Amazingly,she turns sixty(!!!) this year,and before you even ask,yes.Yes I would.Three wops.

Wait a second,it took fucking Bootstrap Bill to finally get you off???

"Malabimba"(1979)d/Andrea Bianchi

Just when you thought Italian sleaze king Andrea Bianchi couldn't get any sleazier than fare like "Le notte del terrore(Burial Ground)" or "Nude per l'assassino(Strip Nude For Your Killer)",he out-sleazes himself,shooting a superlative slab of cinematic sleaze so sleazy your whole body'll be itchy hours after screening it.You might even feel the need to slip an extra fiver in the collection plate on Sunday.A mostly forgotten Mediterranean paen to The Exorcist,Malabimba focuses not on the strengths of its tribute;plot and strong character study,but in a scathing attack against religious beliefs,moral fiber,and family values, pushes the envelope right to the goddamned post office.In tonight's entry the director replaces black-gloved killers and bobbler-biting midget zombies with oversexed teenaged girls,boatloads of profanity and blasphemies,and inserted penetration shots and on camera fellatio.If directors were gauged on how many shots of pubic wool they could fit into eighty-eight minutes,Bianchi'd have rendered himself Ingmar Bergman here.Where other directors might have passed on or at least gently handled sensitive,potentially shocking subject matter like this,he cuts to the chase,and rolls the fuck around in it like a prize hog in the smelliest trough.In other words,you won't wanna miss this one!

Bimba(Katell Laennec)browses her own bobblers.
Damned seances.Always shattering the tranquility of otherwise normal families,or so it seems.Tonight's story focuses on the once rich,always morally bankrupt family of Andrea (Enzo Fisichella),who can't afford his castle payments anymore.Give me some of those problems,buddy. Wracked by memories of his dead wife Daniela, he makes arrangements for a seance(Cazzo no!) to contact her spirit,but the medium (Elisa Mainardi) instead ressurects a foul,dick-crazed banshee named Lucrezia,who abruptly rents out the soul of Andrea's sixteen-year-old daughter Bimba (Katell Laennec). Andrea's mother encourages him to marry the curvaceous and sensual Nais (Patrizia Webley),a former prostitute and the wife of his bed-ridden paralyzed brother Adolfo (Giuseppe Marrocu),so they can continue to live the life of Riley on poor Adolfo's lira once the burden of his care is lifted by the Grim Reaper.Nais,a creation paste queen of the lowest order,willingly carries out the plan,blue-balling Andrea while simultaneously sexing up her shaft-on-the-side,Giorgio (Giancarlo Del Duca).Think Young and the Restless,if Satan was a recurring character...

Errr,my class ring...seem to have lost it in here...somewhere...
Speaking of young and restless,Bimba bungs her chastity down the lavvy at this point,turning into a blasphemy-spouting,junk grabbing,crotch displaying bundle of hormones.Her family's doctor slags it off as a sex disorder,but Lucrezia's in there,just like Prego sauce,if Prego suddenly made you display your hairy crotch to your guests while calling your granny an old whore at the dinner table(save talk like that for the parlour,young lady!),fuck your stuffed animal collection(I hear the Christmas elf knows how to pound a vadge),or suddenly tongue kissing your father(!) while jostling him by the berries(!!).It seems Lucrezia's spirit has a hard on for old Adolfo's nurse,Sister Sofia.You can probably figure out where this is going.After Bimba slinks into Uncle Adolfo's room,strips,shows the old boy her hairy bush and budding hardbody,she takes out the cripple's cock and sucks him off(!!!),which kills the poor bastard.After watching some appropriately hairy inserted hardcore segments with the possessed young girl,the nun does the only thing that will save her immortal soul.Did you guess lesbian sex?Give yourself a pat on the back.The horny succubus then transfers into the nun Exorcist-style,which causes the sister to chuck herself from the castle to the pavement below,rather than walk the earth forever rubbing her own fun circles,like some Madonna video.The young girl and her father reunite,and this time,nobody's junk gets rubbed.

"There's enough wool there to knit an afghan!" says grossed-out Granny.
Some of you out there might be appalled at the nakedness in a few of tonight's screenshots(frankly,they might be the first bit of womanhood some of you might have ever seen,sad effers),and really,after watching this one,you might find yourself running for the nearest bible,dildo,or both,if I know one or two of you.Tonight's entry is available through the superior Diabolik DVD,and Severin Films did a smashing job restoring most of the sleaze on display here,although the deleted scenes look to originate from a grainy video at the bottom of some pervert's underwear drawer somewhere.The optional English subs really don't do any justice to the steady stream of verbal Italian filth spewed throughout the production,so learn some Italian,dammit.You won't find Dick Smith-level possession makeups here,or any makeup,which is a tribute in part to the acting skills of Laennec,who didn't do anything else,sadly.Mariela Giordano was also in Giallo a Venezia,Patrick Vive Ancora,and of course,famously in Le notte del terrore,among a slew of other genre pics.Though the hardcore sex and blasphemy might be a little tough to get through for some(nobody I know or wanna know,trust me),and I've given the film just one BW,on a good night it merits two scented handiwipes and six or so ounces of moisture locking lotion,as well.

That ain't bragiole in those drawers.

"Truth or Dare"(1988)d/Tim Ritter

Tonight's piece is an unintentionally hilarious stroll down Memory Lane for me,dating back to movie nights in my parents' parlour during the VHS rental days of yesteryear.If I had a dime for every time I,or one of my old friends quoted or referenced this movie,I'd currently be on a hundred foot yacht in the Bahamas in the midst of a caviar and champagne-induced bender,listening to the Amboy Dukes and blowing puro shneezers off an eighteen year old model's glistening,tanned fun circles.It's pretty safe to say that nobody involved with this production is currently doing that,unless they stowed away on someone else's boat. Make no mistakes,this is one pungently rancid piece of shit,but it's a legendarily good/bad time to be had by all.Hilarious dialogue delivered straight-facedly,glaring continuity errors,a horrendously inappropriate synthesizer soundtrack that rivals Blood Feast(1963)as one of the worst(the ballad,"A Critical Madness",which uses soundbytes of dialogue and rolls over the end credits has to be heard to be believed).Where else can you find drive-by chainsaw killings,a psychiatric hospital that lets its patients work in metalshop,bumbling beer-bellied detectives burning innocent winos to death,getaway cars with an arsenal of weaponry (some medieval!)in the back seat,and mowhawked Asbestos Felt blowing his own head off with a grenade,all in the same movie??Nowhere but here,I tell you.

If I cut off mine own finger whilst playing Truth or Dare,do I not say "Ahtch"?
Mike Strauber(John Brace)comes home early from work to find his wife Sharon(Mary Fanaro)in bed with his friend Jerry.He rides off in his gold Trans Am,picking up what looks to be a tourbus groupie for Vinnie Vincent's Invasion,and decides to camp his mate's infidelity out of his system.Around the campfire a friendly game of Truth or Dare turns ugly when the stakes are raised from throwing wallets on the fire to cutting off fingers("Ahtch!"),carving open chests,and pulling tongues out.The ranger shows up to find a bloodied,disfigured Strauber by himself mumbling "Truth or Dare" over and over again.Upon release from the mental hospital,he heads straight to his ex-wife's place,where he kills Jerry,but gets carved open by his intended victim,leading him directly back to the same mental hospital he was just released from.While his doctors openly discuss his case with one of the orderlies(!),he pulls a survival knife from his hospital gown("...and they didn't even catch it.")and engages two inmates in the titular game.He dares the elderly one to cut his own arm off(which he does),then produces a hand grenade(!!)from his gown and instructs the other loonie to put it in his mouth and blow his head off(which he does,in true ridiculously fake headed splendor,after Strauber,who's just ripped his own face off,tells the orderlies to wait for the explosion).Months later,after our anti-hero has fashioned himself a nifty copper mask(that breathes a lot like latex rubber)in the hospital's metalshop for the criminally insane,an orderly stumbles across a framed picture of Sharon...somewhere...and gives it to the killer as a joke.While he berates a fellow black orderly about flapping lips and jive music,Strauber wrecks his cell,and escapes,shoving a pencil in the guard's eye.Outside the hospital,he stages a fantastic swashbuckling escape,punching and kicking guards,before driving off in a car chock full o' weapons.No,I'm not making any of this up.

Mr. Hooper looks pissed.
As Strauber lines the highway with random bodies in broad daylight(he machine guns people at a bus stop,drive-by chainsaws a random kid walking on the side of the road,and plays chicken with a drunken biker,whose car explodes,and when the road hog topples out engulfed in flames,Strauber pops out of the roof of his car with a machine gun,shooting the flaming scumbag as he crackles!!!),Detective Rosenberg already has his hands full with his podgy partner(in a cabbie and Hawaiian shirt,no less),who's just mistakenly blown up a shack with a sleeping wino in it,thinking he had Strauber cornered.You won't learn that in your Act 120 class.Suddenly,it dawns on Rosenberg that Strauber is probably out to murder his ex-wife,so he phones ahead to the doctor(makes sense,right?)before embarking on his epic showdown with copperface.Strauber pulls in at Sharon's place,knocking over a garbage can,which causes a non-stop verbal barrage from an old neighbor in a moo moo as he's arming himself with an impossible stockade of weapons from the back seat of his stolen car,which includes a medieval morningstar(WTF!) that he uses to bat the yappy bitch in the mouth with,before plodding towards his adulterous ex's digs.After noisily chainsawing the front door in half,he makes his way to the shower only to be shot multiple times by his soaked,pistol packing doctor.When the doc calls to Sharon to come out of hiding,the cheating bitch falls out,already dead(?),and Strauber dispatches him with bullet-laden frenzy.Rosenberg finally shows up on the scene,and talks the wounded killer down with a game of...what else?Yup,you guessed it.

These are the cops.Oh yes,they are.
Mary Fanaro,whose bobblers get a lot of screen time here,went on to act in television roles on shows like Miami Vice and Matlock before falling off the radar around 1999,while John Brace did one episode of Cheers.Director Ritter went on to the equally hilarious Killing Spree(1988)with Asbestos "Warty Man" Felt in the lead,Creep,Dirty Cop No Donut,and Wicked Games(1994),Screaming for Sanity:Truth or Dare 3(1998).That's right,TWO sequels,which I've got to sadly inform you,I haven't seen yet.If they're anything like the original,I'll purchase a pack of Depends and some cheddar cheese popcorn in advance.Seek this one out.It's a real pisser.

When you're plagued by mouthy old neighborhood hags while trying to get your murder on,a nifty morningstar'll do the trick.

"The Midnight Meat Train"(2008)d/Ryûhei Kitamura

Appy-polly-lodgies,droogs,I would have had this posted earlier,if I wasn't burning the midnight oils,appreciating breathtaking portrait work with certain collegiate instructors.Where would we be without art,afterall.In 2008,director Kitamura(Versus,Godzilla:Final Wars) made The Midnight Meat Train more than just another one of your mother's pet names for me,he translated Clive Barker's short story of the same name into a full-length feature.Now,before we hang this entry by its ankles on a late night subway car,I've gotta get a few things off my admittedly impressive extended chest.I'm not Anti-Barker by any means,and I enjoyed the cinematic translation of Rawhead Rex,but to say the entire Hellraiser series was fucking dull and boring is like saying Seka may have had some on-screen sex during the late seventies and early eighties.This may fog up the coke bottle glasses of some of you horror nerds out there,but it is what it is.Hellraiser sucks elephantine testicle bag one egg at a time.The fact that I feel this way pretty much put me off anything with Mr. B's name attached to it ever since.That is,until I heard that oft-red carded Wimbledon sac-squeezer and all-around diamond geezer,Vinnie Jones was playing the lead.Afterall,he's one of my favorite current actors as well as being the Juggernaut,bitch.So I went into this effort with a completely open mind,putting the foul Cenobitic taste out of my mouth for an hour and a half,and I have to admit,I was pretty well entertained despite a flagrant overuse of cheesy,phony CGI gore,which seems to be a growing,disturbing trend these days in film.I love the fact that the red,red vino is poured on here by the gallonful,but when it's lazily generated on a computer monitor,and blatantly unrealistic,it detracts,certainly,from the finished product.

CG-Eye-yi-yi...
Leon(Bradley Cooper)is a photographer who's in the habit of being in the right place at the right time,but always seems to miss out on capturing the moment.After a cold pep talk from one of his friend Jurgis' high fallootin' art seller friends(Brooke Shields),he determinedly sets out late at night into the urban sprawl in search of the photograph that will set him apart from the also-rans.In the subway,he comes across a young model being harassed by a gang of knife-wielding yo-boy thugs.He photographs the crime-to-be and saves the girl by pointing out the security cameras catching all the action from the yes y'allers.She thanks him with a passionate kiss and boards the train,only to get her head spun around by a silent hulking,well-dressed maniac wielding a huge silver meat hammer.When Leon reads that the girl he saved is now missing,he takes his photographs to the police to no avail,though their honesty and frank realism win over the jaded art critic,who sends him out capture two more of equal quality to score a place in her upcoming art show.Instead,some amateur detective work puts him in the direct path of Mahogany(Vinnie Jones),who butchers animals by day,and unsuspecting subway passengers by night,Leon believes,for upwards of a hundred years according to missing persons newspaper filmstrips at the library.While Mahogany swings for the fences on victims' domes,Leon becomes increasingly less receptive to his girlfriend Maya(Leslie Bibb),his vegetarianism,and even photography,outside of sneaking photographs of the silent killer all over Manhattan.

It's nice to see Mister Jones keeping himself busy off of the pitch.
After getting too close to Mahogany's subway antics one night,Leon finds himself hanging upside down in an abandoned subway station underneath the meat-packing plant, being violently fawned over by otherworldly reptillian claws;waking up with a missing camera and a strange symbol carved into his chest.After Maya's pleas to her obsessed beau fall fruitlessly upon deaf ears,she and Jurgis break into Mahogany's apartment to search for Leon's camera,wading through various shiny,steel implements of torture,and his bottled collection of chest tumors in the medicine cabinet(blech!).The butcher returns home,and abducts Jurgis,with Maya barely escaping.A detective,who oddly enough seems to be wearing the same symbol Mahogany wears on a ring,around her neck,advises the hysterical girl to ride the late subway train for answers,where she's about to be turned into a side of human meat,just as her boyfriend boards the train,ready to battle the butcher amidst his swinging,nude trophies.During their fight,Leon manages to knock Mahogany off the speeding train,but when it stops in the abandoned station littered with decaying bodies and massive piles of bones,a gaggle of saurian beings board to hungrily devour the butcher's handiwork.Mahogany returns for a final round,but is finally dispatched by a femur shoved sideways through his neck.The train driver then informs Leon he must carry out Mahogany's duties(which he'd grown tired of after a century),feeding this lizard race to keep them from coming to the surface for food,pulls out Leon's tongue and eats it(!!),and then cuts out his girlfriend's still-beating heart and offers it to him.The film ends with the detective handing the antique train schedules to Leon,who now is a dead ringer for Mahogany.

Oh,come on,you knew I was gonna show the dvd to my buddies...
I bought Barker's Books of Blood where the short story this film is based on was culled from, way back when but still haven't read the damned thing.He's a strange cat,for sure,as the one sex scene in the movie(involving a good late night fisting!)surely emphasizes.I'll have to revisit the other Barker movies to see if time has softened my views.Like I said earlier,I enjoyed this one.Jones does a bang up job,albeit mostly silently(he has one line),but emotes a great deal with his eyes throughout.And who said footballers can't act?There are a few cameos of note,director Sam "Evil Dead" Raimi's brother Ted(as seen losing his peepers in the screenshots),and Quentin "Rampage" Jackson of UFC/Pride FC fame makes an appearance as a guardian angel who's too stubborn to die.Kitamura must love MMA,as his Godzilla entry was also peppered with fighter cameos,as well as a starring turn from Don Frye.I loved Versus,but thought Godzilla:FW was sorely lacking in kaiju battles,but those are different entries for later dates.This one would have merited three wops were it not for the lazy gore effects,but still scores a respectable:

The driver(Tony Curran)wants Leon(Bradley Cooper) to be his valentine.

"Burnt Offerings"(1976)d/Dan Curtis

Get into your pajamas,kids,mom is popping up some Jiffy Pop.Pull up a spot on the big rug in front of the wood grain Zenith floor model television,and stop putting the Slime with Worms on your sister.The way back machine stops in 1976 tonight,and the focus is on yet another classic piece of horror by the late master,Dan Curtis.He may be remembered best for "Dark Shadows",but to sleep on his dizzying seven year horror run from 1968-'75 is criminal,and punishable here at the Wop with headphones blaring Oliver Reed's musical numbers from "Tommy" on repeat,duct taped to your domepiece until you lose your bearings,your mind,or both.Regulars here know full well the degree to which I dig all things Curtis,and tonight's offering to the gods of cinema is one of the finest examples.Winner of three Saturn Awards in 1977(Best Horror Film,Best Director,and Best Supporting Actress for iconic Bette Davis),and three more at Sitges(Best Director,Best Actor and Actress for Reed and Black,respectively),Offerings is a classic haunted house story,based on the 1973 novel of the same name,its memorable shocker ending,standard issue for most Curtis vehicles,usually comes to mind first for those who recall seeing this one,way back when.

Aunt Elizabeth(Bette Davis)opens wide to eat backbone-cracking,hallucinatory sliding coffin death.Ben(Oliver Reed),on the other hand,isn't as hungry.
The Rolfs(Black,Reed)inquire about renting a spacious Victorian mansion from the Allardyce siblings(Eileen Heckart,Burgess Meredith) for the summer.For nine hundred dollars the palatial estate is theirs,but for a few bizarre requests:they must care for the pair's mother,a reclusive old woman perpetually locked away in her room upstairs,and they must promise to love the house.Patriarch Ben is reluctant to enter into the strange agreement at first,but is soon talked into it by his wife Marian.The couple then moves in with their young son David and Ben's eldery aunt Elizabeth(Davis)in tow,a plethora of upkeep and restorative chores ahead of them.Marian is instantaneously enamored with the antique decor of the living room directly outside Mrs. Allardyce's locked bedroom,a table full of dusty framed pictures of people from varying time periods and quaint music box first on her checklist.Ben and his boy quickly get the inground pool back up to specs,but when they take a celebratory swim together,he's suddenly overwhelmed by the urge to hurt the child,violently roughhousing and holding him underwater as his aunt looks on helplessly in terror.Meanwhile,his wife spends more and more time upstairs outside the locked bedroom,tirelessly polishing pictures,and even dressing in Victorian era clothes,all while resisting her husband's late night amorous advances.Things get progressively worse as Ben is recurringly haunted by visions of a childhood funeral and uber-creepy pale,grinning hearse driver.Then,one night he is forced to break into David's room to find his son unconscious while gas dangerously leaks out into his room while the windows are jarred shut,which Marian later blames on Aunt Elizabeth and her increasing forgetfulness.The old woman,heartbroken by the accusations,sinks into a state of depressive illness,which kills her right under her nephew's nose,as he's too busy having nightmarish visions of his hearse driver slamming an empty coffin into his aunt's bed.

Marian(Karen Black)morphs into Mother Allardyce,who isn't very nice.
After Elizabeth's funeral,Ben is convinced the house is somehow responsible for the recent accidents and his aunt's death,but his wife refuses to leave,regardless of his theories.He even bears witness to the estate shedding old siding and roof tiles,and repairing itself(!),which proves too much for the man to take.When he tries to drive off the property with his hysterical son riding shotgun,the surrounding foliage physically stops his car and entwines itself around the man.During his escape attempt his injuries leave him in a state of catatonia,only snapping out of it as the pool comes to life and vast,crashing waves attempt to drown his son.After Marian sees the pool's murderous intent,she dives in and saves her boy's life,finally vowing to leave the bizarre property with her family while they're still breathing.As they're about to drive off,she stops to go back and tell Mrs. Allardyce goodbye and where the old woman can reach her after they've gone.Ben,impatient from waiting in the car with his son,goes inside afterward to find his wife,who has taken on the personna of Mrs. Allardyce upstairs in the locekd room,and throws her husband out one of the windows where he faceplants through the car windshield.David tries to flee the car himself,but is crushed to death by a crumbling chimney.The Allardyce siblings return to the estate,remarking of its restored beauty,and their mother's return.On the old woman's table upstairs,photos of Ben,Elizabeth,and David have joined all the others in her collection...

I hear that In and Out Auto Glass in Oakland does nice work.
Stephen King admits drawing heavy inspiration for his own "The Shining" from this book/movie,and it's pretty hard not to notice,revisiting it for the first time myself in decades recently.Curtis changed the ending from the novel to include the spectacular windshield faceplant and chimney avalanche,but stayed pretty faithful to the Bob Morasco book otherwise.The ten time Oscar nominated Dame Bette complained of trouble on the set with Karen Black not paying her the respect she deserved.Better act like you know,Karen-baby.If you can score yourself a copy of this little dittie,by all means,do it with all speed.If you're into unsettling haunted house-based horror,Curtis' take on the supernatural subject matter will quickly vault itself to the top of your favorites list.Overall,a satisfyingly solid effort packed with scares,that merits a Wop scale rating of:

Hey,"The Shining",are you feeling inspired yet?

"Friday the 13th"(1980)d/Sean S. Cunningham

What have we here?Why,only one of the most memorable,successful,controversial,and unfairly maligned slasher flicks of all-time.With summer upon us(and a healthy buzz upon your humble N),we should probably examine it more closely,eh kiddies?Director Cunningham,coming off the success of "Last House on the Left" with Wes Craven,looked to cash in on the popularity of "Halloween" with a stalk-and-kill opus that borrows heavily from Mario Bava's "Twitch of the Death Nerve".Phew,that's a lot of genre movie titles in one sentence.I'll have to check with Guinness(the book,not the stout)to see if that's in the ballpark for a record.I might have to get a pint of the stout down my neck while I'm at it,too.I've grown so impulsive here in the tail end of my summer years.Today's movie came at the height of Tom Savini's gore FX taking the spotlight in most cases,even over the actors or director involved,and the recently released uncut print on dvd showcases his blood-caked handiwork as well as any.The cast,comprised mainly of unknowns,does a believable enough job as sacrificial lambs to the slaughter for the sins of their square predecessors who let the kid with the big head sink in the drink years earlier.Betsy "What's My Line?" Palmer is an especially brilliant standout here as Mrs. Voorhees,her psychosis running deeper than Crystal Lake itself.Harry Manfredini's legendary score drives the tension home in the first installment,which overbrims with tension and jumpscares,I've noticed upon revisitation.Plus,where else can you watch a pre-fame Kevin Bacon eat post-sex arrowhead-through-the-neck death as he tokes a joint?Not too many places,I'd reckon.

The ole staple neck-chop can make or break a movie like this;one vote for "make".
Steve Christie is the latest in a long line of people who've tried making Crystal Lake camper-friendly since the tragic drowning of a young boy back in 1958 while the counselors were getting familiar with each other's naughty bits.Only this time,it's not mysterious fires keeping the camp out of commission,it's a mysteriously vicious killer.Annie the cook inadvertently hitches a ride to the camp,and finds out the hard way when the killer gives her a handy extra mouth across her neck.Meanwhile the other counselors arrive,with swimming,weed,and extramarital sex on their filthy little minds.There's Ned the clown,Marcie and Jack(Bacon),Bill,Brenda,Shaggy,and Scoob...or rather,Alice,and Steve,who's masterminding the whole hot mess.Local fruit salad,the aptly named "Crazy Ralph" gives prophetic warning of the doom they're all facing by remaining in the Jersey woods as machete-fodder,but they don't listen.Kids never do.Steve goes into town to retrieve some supplies after hard-selling his phallus-chalice to Alice,who doesn't rule out cock entirely.After a run-in with a snake under a cot,and the obligatory motorcycle cop who takes himself entirely too seriously,one by one,the teenagers(who are all in their twenties)get picked off by the stranger in the forest.First,Ned gets the neckslice to match Annie,who's propped up against a tree somewhere out there.Then,as a torrential downpour soaks the camp,Jack and Marcie's thoughts turn to smoking dope and fucking,which seals their respective fates;Jack gets an arrow shoved through his neck from underneath the bed,and Marcie gets her face dichotomized with a sharp axe while in the potty.In another cabin,Bill,Brenda,and Alice play strip Monopoly and smoke grass.Doesn't anyone play strip tackle Ants-in-the-Pants anymore?

Several satisfyingly sexy sanguinary set-pieces seep forth from Savini.
When Brenda braves the drenching rain to see who's been effing with the lights on the archery course,Bill decides to form a search party of one for the other counselors.Bad move,Bill.When Steve returns from his cup of coffee,slice of pie,and empty banter with the hideous old waitress at the diner,he's greeted by a familiar face,who abruptly shanks him in the labonza.Alice comes to from a pot-induced nap to find herself alone,until Brenda's beaten and tied body comes crashing through a cabin window.When a jeep arrives on the scene,she thinks its Christie returning from town,instead meeting a kindly middle-aged lady named Voorhees(Palmer),the old Crystal Lake cook, who helps her search the premises while relating the horrible story of the fate that befell her son Jason decades back.The woman becomes increasingly volatile during her campfire story,ultimately drawing a knife on the young counselor and chasing her all over creation,where Alice finds the remains of her other less-fortunate friends,all deader than Jack in the Box kid Rodney Allen Rippy's career.Mrs. Voorhees lapses in and out of a split personality,where she takes on the personna of her drowned boy,demanding vengeance,and has a nice little conversation with herself while hunting the remaining teen.On the shore of the lake,the two wrestle back and forth,before Alice gets a hold of Voorhees' machete and pops the broad's top with one fell chop.The next morning the police arrive to find the only survivor sleeping in a rowboat on the lake,but when she rouses from her slumber,a horribly deformed seaweed-encrusted mongoloid springs from the lake and drags her under.At the hospital,policemen tell her they found no boy in the lake...which means he must still be there,waiting for production to begin on Friday the 13th Pt. 2,ready to fill his mother's homicidal Hush Puppies.

Main Entry: 2over·kill Pronunciation: \ˈō-vər-ˌkil\
Function: noun
Date: 1958 1 : a destructive capacity greatly exceeding that required for a given target
Make no mistakes,this is the best of a bountiful bunch of 13th flicks,epic in its simplicity,drawing criticism from douchebags like Gene Siskel,who never understood the slasher formula,even walking out during "Maniac!"(1980),and would rather you see kiddie fare like fucking Dumbo.Luckily for me,my kiddies play with dead things,although they probably shouldn't.59 million dollars later at the international box office,this film spurred on ten sequels of varying degrees of effectiveness(we'll look at all of 'em before the summer's out),one crossover with the Elm Street series,and a remake we've already viddied here.Not bad for such a despicable series,huh.And then came the hockey mask...

Murderous mongo(Ari Lehman)menaces the maltreated madamoiselle.