"Don't Go In The House"(1980)d/Joseph Ellison

Let's skip the whole "I'm baaaaack" stuff this time around,shall we?We all know how many times I've stomped off in an inebriated and otherwise altered mental state and left you cold like Fair-weather Frankie when the chips were down.We were pluggin' right along with regular reviews during the summer(ha!remember those days,bastards?)and it looked like,for once,the Wop would post an epic number of entries here in the 1-0,but partying and old legal wounds took their tolls on yer favorite Italian,and in admirably self-destructive fashion,I took the low road and bailed on my responsibilities to you dearest readers.Things didn't look promising for another return,as my glassies viddied the opinions of varied idiots throughout the interwebs,giving praise to shit movies,blowing smoke up the asses of studios that churn out manure sequels and remakes at an alarming rate,but then,a funny thing happened.When I logged in to check the site's hit statistics,expecting to see a barren wasteland,I saw an increasing number of hits daily that dwarved anything during my regular entry period.So,with you,more stubborn than even I,in mind,let's play some catch up just in time for Hallowe'en,shall we?
If you happened to wonder what Lustig's Maniac(1980) would look like with a different Italian playing the nutbag(in this case,Dan Grimaldi aka/Patsy Parisi from The Sopranos taking the reigns),a different fetish killing style(burning instead of scalping),and disco bitches,director Joseph Ellison's Don't Go In The House released that same year,fits the bill.That uneasy sleaze factor is ceiling level here,with decent FX and familiar "chicks only" cruelty that genre films gleefully delivered in the golden age of splatter.Then there's Grimaldi,who goes above and beyond to deliver a uniquely twisted performance as the cranially fucked abuse victim with a penchant for flame-charred flesh,and really adds to the aforementioned unease the movie's laden with.It certainly fits pretty comfortably next to similarly sick 80's fare like Don't Answer the Phone while mirroring its Psycho-esque roots in the same instant.It also has a distinct late seventies reek about it,with its dated polyester fashions and discotheques,and compared to what passes for pop culture today,that's never a bad thing,believe you me.The world could always use some more boogieing.

Over the flame,you bubblehead,like a marshmallow.Someone should revoke your child abuse license.
Donnie Kohler(Dan Grimaldi)never had a chance.As a child,his mother spoiled him rotten,roasting his arms over the open flame of a gas stove like a pair of pink chestnuts,she did.No space heater to the small of the back for Donnie,no siree.Is it any wonder when she turns her toes up that her abused offspring flips his wig for good and all?I mean nevermind the homicidal voices in his head telling him he's the master of the flame and all that,what about him jumping up and down on the furniture and playing full blast disco in the house?His mother'd flame broil his mitts for that outburst.Instead,her voice spurs him on to do some shopping at a store that looks as though it caters to the Bundys,Fishes,and Geins of the world,stocking nifty knives,Nazi war helmets,and a full flame-retardant suit in its front window.After he panels one of the rooms in his house's walls with flame-resistant metal and picks himself up some happening new disco threads that'd make Tony Manero blush,he's ready to start chaining him some naked bitches to the ceiling in said room so he can torch them alive with a flamethrower,afterwards dressing their smoldering remains in clothes and propping them up in his mother's bedroom so they can keep her corpse company.Donnie is to sterno what Ed Gein was to sewing machines.After standing by and watching a co-worker cook like a chicken for like ten minutes,he becomes increasingly despondent and introspective on the job to the point that he ceases going to work altogether,preferring to haunt the discos and burn bitches in his homemade fire room instead.The cackling caucophany of char-broiled floozies yapping away in his head forces him to try and snake some holy water from the local church,but he gets caught by the priest,who naturally,attempts to proselytize our resident sicko,before coming on to him a little bit.

If I had a hammer,I'd build me a flame-resistant torture room,to burn nekkid disco chicks in,come on,everybody,sing along!
Enter Donnie's lone pal,Bobby.When most people encounter someone as obviously fucking disturbed as Donnie,they might try and reach out to them,they may try and seek some counselling for them when they notice that person's grasp on reality becoming more tentative by the phone call,or they might just invite the guy out for a night of disco dancing and random chicks,if they're this guy,Bobby.Take a guess how that works out.When her goading to the dance floor proves unsuccessful,Donnie's date tries teasingly pulling him by the arms out onto it,which triggers some nasty memories inside Kohler's subconscious of his abusive mother's pulling his arms over the open stove,and ultimately culminates in him putting a candle out in her carrot-hued hair do.No "Sorry,I'm a little too crazy to boogie with you,darling,I'll watch you get down from over here" for Donnie,no sirree.Insert your obligatory "Burn,baby,burn!Disco inferrrrrno!" reference here.Suddenly very aware of Kohler's aversion to boogieing,Bobby calls upon the priest to make a housecall with him,unwittingly saving the lives of two more she-mallows in the process,but costing the man of the cloth his own life.As for Donnie,he's attacked by the reanimated charred corpses of his victims as the house collapses upon itself,engulfed in flames,reminiscent of a similar boffo ending in a similarly twisted aforementioned Bill Lustig vehicle.Women can once again shake their collective groove thangs,free of the possibility of ever being torched while chained nude and screaming in a home crematorium.Hot stuff,indeed.

Redheads and discos don't mix.
Grimaldi,who went on to appear in countless television crime series before landing on the award-winning HBO mafia drama,seems to look back upon this,his first starring role,with fond memories,unlike some actors who'd rather bury their horror beginnings where nobody could ever see....ahem,Zellweger.In her defense,Texas Chainsaw Massacre:The Next Generation(1994)is a horrible,annoying piece of shit,and Don't Go In The House isn't,so you can't really blame her here.The snooty,chootchy face,that's all her fault,so give her both barrels on that,by all means.Personally,I dug this one a lot.Solid performances,effective makeup fx,an interesting variation on the "Psycho" turn,all make this a decent screening for horror fans out there,especially at this time of year.Two wops.

Donny Kohler(Grimaldi)hallucinates like a Jamaican smoking crack out of a tv set.

"La Horripilante bestia humana"(1969)d/Rene' Cardona

Tonight's review goes out to my boy,Dre and also to Betty Crocker,whose confectionary delights have had me zooted for the past week straight.A little different than my last few cake-based excursions turned out,a bit more cerebral and focused this time around.Still cranially delicious,by God.My benders know no limitations,as you might have figured out by now.Two nights in a row I've sit down to churn this bastard out,and two nights in a row,I've been left staring blankly into the monitor screen with Japanese noiseabilly blaring in my headphones.Get it together,you sexy motherfucker.Anyways,on to our feature presentation...
Without Mexico,the world might never have known the fusion of horror elements and wrestling in film.Of course,why anybody would take such a project seriously is beyond me,at this point,but the Mexicans sure did,by the droves.Tonight's review is such a movie,essentially a remake of sorts of director Cardona's earlier 1962 work,"Las Luchadoras contra el medico asesino",or "The Wrestling Women vs. The Murderous Doctor",as I guess he must have run out of Aztec Mummies and Robots for the chicks to battle in the squared circle.Luckily for the viewer this time around,we're not subjected to masked female wrasslers squaring off against bloody apes,as the english release title suggests,but instead an ultra corny,low budget horror movie with some great open heart surgery footage inserts,a homicidal papier-mache' faced apeman,and a masked female wrassler subplot.We'll cover some of the other...ahem...classics of the subgenre at a later date,and answer the eternal question:When a vampire,Frankenstein's Monster,the Mummy,the Wolfman,and a Cyclops are terrorizing the town,how long before Santo and the Blue Demon get called in to wrassle these bastards in a best of three falls match?You probably think I'm kidding,right?I wish I was.

Does she wear the mask when they're playing "hide the beef burrito"? That's the question.
Lucy(Norma Lazareno)is an average,everyday luchadora who wears a red devil mask and costume in the wrasslin' ring,or at least her stunt double who has thirty pounds on her and a serious case of shelf ass does.During an extremely colorful chick-off,she accidentally chucks her opponent out of the ring,inflicting some serious fractured skullage to her green-garbed foe,and when she shows concern for the comatose senorita afterwards,she's met with disbelief from her girlfriend as well as detective/beau,Arthur(Armando Silvestre).So what if you've turned this girl into a perma-veggie,you need to get on with your life,baby.Meanwhile,Dr. Krallman's son Julio(pronounced Jew-lee-o,apparently,if we're to believe the dubbers,excellent as always)is dying of leukemia.With the gimp-legged assistance of Goyo,he plans to test his theory that the heart of a wild animal transplanted into his bed-ridden boy is the only thing that'll save his life.Sounds feasible enough.A trip to the zoo yields a sedated guy-in-a-monkey-suit after setting their sights on some stock footage of an orangutan in a cage.Cue the stock footage inserts of open heart surgery that bought tonight's movie a place on the U.K. "Nasty" list,and the operation seems to have been a success,if Krallman wasn't shooting for not turning his son into a musclebound rapist/murderer with cheezy latex half-face appliances on,looking like a psychotic Charles Bronson in pajama bottoms.Cuz,yeah,that's what happens,via 1940's style "Wolfman" time lapse photography.Only it looked a lot better in the forties.

They were gonna use my heart for this scene,but microsurgery hadn't been invented yet.
So,Julio,now driven by the inner Orang voice spurring him on to rape and murder,tears some bloody latex appliances off of random gents,and bras off of some screaming floppy-titted Spanish broads before settling in to feel their cones.Errr,kill them.Lucy,on the other hand,keeps on a-wrasslin',though something seems to be missing from her victories.Pssst,Luce,maybe it's the fact you crippled that chick at the outset of the picture.Arthur spends many lockerroom scenes trying to boost his dame's morale,usually while she's sprawled out nude.Hey it beats searching for an animalistic rapist-killer on the dark streets.Ellena,the vedge-in-question,gets herself kidnapped from the hospital by Goyo,who lucks out with the catatonic cutie's bed being on the first floor and having a chair under the open window.Gimp-accessible for your convenience.Later,during a conference about the girl's disappearance,the hospital's officials slag it off as a sleepwalking incident.You know those crazy comatose broads with life-threatening brain injuries.Can't sit still for one minute.Krallman decides that maybe transplanting an animal's heart into his son's chest probably wasn't the greatest idea he ever had,and switches the monkey heart for the coma-chick's bloodpumper.Anything for Julio,really.Cue some more surgery footage.Lucy berates Arthur for selfishly wasting time tracking the killer instead of spending quality time looking at her bare ass bouncing on a lockerroom bench,so he invites her down to the park to join he and the boys on their dangerous manhunt.You've got a date,mister!Julio gets trapped on a rooftop,holding a little girl hostage while surrounded by cops and his sympathetic father,who's unconcerned that his son has just ripped his manservant's head off earlier that night.The doctor convinces his ape-boy to release the girl,in a last vestige of humanity,which is rewarded by a rain of police bullets and instant death.As we're treated to more piss-poor time lapse transformation footage of Julio's dead grillpiece from monkey back into spaniard,Arthur and Lucy philosophize over what could have driven the doc to allow so many to suffer just to prolong his son's fleeting life.You're a luchadora,baby,not Sigmond Freud.Now get in that ring and get to suplexin'!

Eat your heart out,Rick Baker.
Something Weird has released the ultimate cut of the film on one of their signature jam-packed two-fer' dvds,which you'll want to hunt down if z-grade crap like this is your cup o'tea.Hey,it's mine,too,I ain't breaking your balls over here.I'm looking for a new file-hosting site for movie screenshots,as PhotoBucket has gotten a little too puritanical for your humble N's tastes.Any suggestions would be pearly,folks.Also,I've noticed a lot of requests from filmmakers and websites in my e-mail concerning the Wop,and I'll get to you this week sometime.Partying bogs you down when it comes to business matters,it seems(in my case anyway).On the scale,Apes draws one wop,but remains some ridiculously cheap fun under the proper circumstances.

Though this expression is worth a laugh or two,it just doesn't measure up to the screenshot of boobs I was gonna post that violated Photobucket's policies before I could get the review up.Come into the new millenium already,you censor-crazy dorks.

"Day of the Woman"(1978)d/Meir Zarchi

Rape is an ugly word that draws varying responses from the populace upon mention,the cowardly act of taking that which is not given unto you willingly.I've known a few rape victims over the years,and they were certainly not deserving of the traumatic experiences and nightmarish flashbacks that were forced upon them in an unguarded moment.Your game was too weak for conventional courtship methods so you felt it necessary to go full on douchebag to patch up your wounded ego,destroying a person or persons forever in the process.Pathetic and sickening.There's a fine line between a real man and a caveman that often gets lost in translation by those of few firing neurons.A real man is a stand up guy you can depend on when the chips are down,and a gentleman when it counts.Despite my sometimes crass descriptions and ludicrous sense of humor,I open doors for women,say "Thank you" and "please" when the situation merits,and even relieve myself of my bomber to ensure a little lady's warmth on a cold night out.Old school chivalry,motherfuckers.Women shouldn't have to fear a guy,kinky roleplay not withstanding.Women still dig real men,so be one.
Tonight's review focuses on the highly controversial 1978 Zarchi vehicle,which was later re-released as "I Spit on Your Grave" two years later,under heavy censorship and critical scrutiny over the touchy subject matter,but few films wear the cult classic banner as proudly as Day does,with a ferocious fan base,and a Philipines-based sequel and upcoming remake under its belt.If you thought Boorman might have shown you a little too much rape in Deliverance(1972),then you're definitely not up to the marathon rape session in this movie.El Duce of The Mentors would have probably said "Enough is enough!" after twenty minutes went by,but the whole excrutiating sequence exists to pit the audience against the trashy criminals responsible,and to cause them to cheer on their violent comeuppances later on in the movie.It's really a simple,basic affair,with an undercurrent of gritty realism that works here.I can't see it being on anyone's "favorite" lists(yes,I can),but it still stands as one of those necessary evils you've gotta see at least once.

Summer journal:Day 6,Today was kind of a bummer.
Jennifer Hills(Camille Keaton) takes a vacation from her New York magazine writing gig to focus on her first novel out in the scenic countryside,away from the metroplitan distractions.A pod of local Jethros,unaccustomed to her modernity,takes it upon themselves to harrass the leggy redhead at every juncture,disturbing her peace and quiet with motorboat-by catcalls and late night racket.One afternoon while chillaxing in her canoe,she is towed to shore by two of the hayseeds,where after being chased around the forest by two more Bufords,she becomes aware that the whole thing was a set up for their retarded Paul Schaeffer-lookalike,Matthew(who's got no lenses in his nerd goggles,btw),to finally drop cookie batter on a human female of the species.Once they've captured her,they take turns raping her...a lot.You could probably let the dvd play while you hit the late night McDonald's drive thru and when you got back,they'd still be punching her up and dicking her down.Humiliated,dirty,and sodomized,she crawls on her belly back to her cabin where she calls the authorit-nah,they're there to rape and beat her some more.Matthew,who the rednecks have been feeding booze to,tries to get it on with the broken piece of womanhood,but can't tap his nutbag with the other bozos viddying the action.The good ole boys tear up her manuscript and mock it aloud,finally demanding that he snuff her candle with a pocket knife,stabbing her in the heart,which the seventies Gilligan clone can't bring himself to do,either,so he dips the knife blade in some of the girl's readily available blood and fakes it to the fellas,who believe he's just eliminated the evidence.

"A mint Blue Snaggletooth??!!Zounds!I'm about to expulse in my slacks!"
After a few days of healing her contusions and abrasions,and patching up her novel and fractured psyche,she visits a church to ask forgiveness for the violent retribution she's about to rain down upon these ignorant hosers.First up to taste the vengeful fury is nerdy moron,Matthew,who she lures back to her spot,seducing him under a tree then hanging him with a rope just as he's popping his stones off in her panty purse.She dumps the lifeless MMORPG ancestor's corpse in the drink afterwards.She then tricks the second rapist into her car,where she pulls a piece on him,ordering him to strip down to the buck,while he argues that he and his pals were justified in their lurid crime because she asked for it with her suggestive flirting and Daisy Dukes(!).This causes her to drop her gun and invite the scumbag back to her place for a bath(!!),where she confesses to killing his retarded buddy,all the while yanking his meat and sawing it off under the soap bubbles(!!!).The dickless wonder screams for his mommy as she locks him in from the outside,forcing him to bleed out.The last two antagonists converge on her place by motorboat,wielding an axe,both of which end up in Jennifer's possession somehow,and both used to dispatch her attackers:she sinks the axe into the back of number one,then reprises the second's own words("Suck it,bitch" or something to that effect)before disemboweling him with the outboard motor.She speeds off over the water with a relieved smile on her face.

Q:What do this guy's dick and Hunter S. Thompson have in common? A:They're both Gonzo's.
Those of you who are Horror con haunters can easily meet Ms. Keaton these days,as she regularly makes appearances at all the major ones around.Her husband at the time,Zarchi went on to direct the equally eye-catching Don't Mess With My Sister in 1985,before most recently writing and producing this year's Day remake,I Spit on Your Grave:Unrated,which stars Sarah Butler in the Keaton role.As with Aja's Piranha 3D,I may find myself screening it in the near future.Not making any promises,though.The original,on the other hand merits two wops on the rating scale.

Jennifer(Keaton)axes for a little respect,dadgum it.

A pause for the worthiest of causes...

We're gonna take a momentary break in the action here at the Wop to bring a new Facebook page to light,one that addresses two subjects very nauseating to your humble N over here,horror remakes and domestic violence.If you're linked up for Wopsploits directly from Facebook,I urge you to click the hyperlink for the page below,and then join up by clicking "like".By doing so,you'll be adding your voice to the multitudes of reasonable people who neither dig "Black X-Mas"(2006),nor the sexually confused cowards who subject their significant others to abusive behaviour.Join those of us who've evolved into higher spiritual beings here in the twenty-first century and link up with this relevant and necessary page.What's more,you'll be keeping ole Wopifex's dimples popping by doing so,and I'm not gonna go into more detail than that here,but let's just say both of us will owe you a big one.Ahem.Here's the link,spread it around like pumpkin butter,youse mugs.

Horror Fans Against Domestic Violence

Wicked as Always,
Bee-dub.

"Poliziotto superpiù"(1980)d/Sergio Corbucci

I dunno about you guys,but nothing pulls me out of the dumps quite like a good,unfunny comedy.The bigger a failure to draw some laughs from an audience a movie is actually makes it more fun to watch,in the same way unintentionally funny movies do for me,in most cases,I've found.Of course,nobody does unfunny comedies quite like Mother Italia.Terence Hill,aka/ Mario Girotti had a propensity to churn out quite a few of said films during a lull in his spaghetti western work in the mid to late seventies,and this evening's entry,also known as "Super Fuzz" and "Super Snooper"(just like the infectious theme song by disco legends,The Oceans) and helmed by Sergio "Django" Corbucci,is a splendidly laughless example of just what the fuck I'm talking about.I must have seen tonight's review fifty times back in the black cable box days on channels like HBO and Prism in the early eighties,and I really couldn't tell you why.It's really embarrassingly bad.You'll see less corn on the endless(and pointless)ride through Indiana,save for Indianapolis,of course,which I dug for the most part,thanks.Gary's particularly unsexy while I'm at it,going from The Music Man to Escape From New York in less than fifty years.My days of bopping my way back to Coney Island are pretty much over,but I suppose it's all good copy in the end for the tabloids,to which I have no comments about anything at present,just make sure you get my good side for the mugshots and allow me several marathon conjugal visits a day.

"Listen,Speed(Hill),you'd better not get us caught up in any ridiculous and unfunny adventures with your recently discovered super powers!"
Officer Dave Speed(Hill)contemplates how he ended up on death row over an assload of baked beans as a final meal,about to get the electric chair for the murder of his partner,Willy Dunlop(Borgnine).This will mark their fourth attempt at snuffing the likeable cop.You see,Dunlop sent Speed,who he's always boiling mad at for no reason at all, to the everglades to serve a parking ticket to a man who lives on a small island the same day NASA was scheduled to blow up some rockets overhead.Forget for a second that the space program would do secret,dangerous tests over an area in Florida,or that the top secret information is common knowledge to beat cops,or even that Speed has to canoe to the remote island where the offender(who apparently has no car,mind you) resides to administer the parking ticket.After being exposed to the stock footage of a rocket explosion...err,umm red plutonium,the cop soon discovers he's been given "super powers",which he often references himself,often cuing a sound byte of the disco theme whenever he uses them.He can run as fast as moving cars,catch bullets in his teeth(sideways),see through solid matter,blow chewing gum into hot air balloon sized balloons(that conspicuously have stitching as hot air balloons often do...hmmm),walk on the surface of water,and even talk to fish.The only problem is as soon as the powers come they seem to disappear nearly as fast.

The bullet is sideways.I think it's funnier that way.
Speed and Dunlop unwittingly find themselves on the trail of a counterfeit ring(One dollar bills,mind you.Nothing like small-minded master criminals,I always say),headed by the aptly named Tony Torpedo(Marc Lawrence),who looks like the bastard child of Richard Belzer(whose seventies standup comedy routine was nearly as unfunny as this movie) and dresses like the flamboyantly gay variant of the typical Italian gangster stereotype.To further complicate matters,it just so happens that Dunlop's lifelong crush,aging movie starlet Rosy LaBouche(Joanne Dru),who's just flown into town,is Torpedo's arm candy.While investigating Torpedo's ship(yeah,his operations are run from a boat...)the two officers uncover an assload of fake dough and the machine used to print it all up,but while Speed returns to the station to alert the force,Dunlop is knocked unconscious by the gangster's goons and thrown into a meat locker on the yacht,which the criminals sink.So Speed,who is framed for Dunlop's apparent murder by LaBouche and eventually discovers that the color plutonium red negates his super powers,is strapped into ol' Sparky and talks the attending clergyman to remove the bouquet of red roses sent by LaBouche in time to escape the execution,dive into the ocean,talk to a rubber fish,and swim to the sunken Barracuda,where Dunlop has been frozen for quite some time if you factor in the appeal process,frees his partner,and blows an enormous bubble that both cops float over the city on.Imagine pitching that to a studio.They collar the gangster and his moll,and Speed marries his girlfriend Evelyn,who dyes her hair red to keep her husband from using those super powers of his.Cue that disco byte one more time,man.

Super power #7:The ability to talk to a phony prop fish underwater in a swimming pool.
If you're looking for an Italian who's mastered all aspects of physical comedy,try Roberto Benigni in Il Mostro or Johnny Stecchino.Just saying.Corbucci died in 1990,working in film right to the very end.Girotti/Hill continues to work in film and television,as does the ninety-three year old(!!!) Borgnine,who voices Mermaid Man on the Sponge Bob Squarepants show.I can't even imagine me seeing forty-three.I picked up tonight's review on dvd a while back,to go with my framed original one sheet,and true to form,laughed not once.I shook my head a lot.No laughs.Just how I like it.I guess it's just one of those comfort movies that harkens me back to a simpler time in my life,and for that,it works.On the scale,one wop,but in my mind,hundreds of memories.

Damnit,you forgot to thaw out that ham(Borgnine),and now it's all frostbitten.

"Smash Cut"(2009)d/Lee Demarbre

There's no joy at the Wop this morning,as I am the bearer of bad tidings.There are certain things those of you that know me could probably bank on me never doing,and if you said "trash a David Hess movie",you'd normally be balls on.Until here and now,unfortunately.Lee Demarbre,of "Jesus Christ,Vampire Hunter" fame(A movie I had no interest in seeing before this,and even less now),sets out to direct a satirical homage to the Godfather of Gore himself,Herschell Gordon Lewis,and with David Hess on board in the comedic lead,you'd expect Krug to add scores more urine soaked trousers to his resume here,but personally,my eyes rolled back into my head more times during this eighty-six minutes than a great white about to bite a harbor seal in half.The whole production reeks of "written in a hour and filmed over a weekend at a horror convention",and after seeing the director,who looks like somebody you'd see queued up with cash in hand in a Clint Howard autograph line at Chiller Theater,you'll have a hard time convincing me otherwise.
Also among the cast of tonight's entry are Ray "Montag the Magnificent" Sager,of Wizard of Gore and Just For The Hell Of It! fame,the Hersh himself in a cameo,Michael Berryman with drawn on eyebrows and an embarrassing wig,and porn star Sasha Grey,in a non-porn role,and as poster candy,as seen above.In fact,Demarbre claims he wanted to take her "right out of the porn genre".After seeing her flex her acting chops here,call me crazy,but I'd rather watch her sing into the pink microphone.Maybe if she took her clothes off once or twice,I'd be less inclined to notice how lifeless her performance is.Hess looks like he had a lot of fun making the movie,turning in a appropriately hammy and over-the-top,scenery-chewing performance as always,but the movie itself pretty much stinks.If you're going in as a horror fanatic,you're bound to be disappointed by the deliberately Herschell-esque hijinks within.If you're showing your ticket stub to the usher expecting to do a lot of laughing,boy,are you in for a rude awakening.

She looks nearly as bored as I was watching her.
Director Able Whitman(Hess) makes horror movies that make M. Night Shyamalan's teenaged backyard movies look like friggin' Spartacus,ferchrissakes.At the screening of his latest ass-pie,Terror Toy,the disgruntled audience members chuck things at the screen and spit hateful vitriol at the director,who's on board in clown-face makeup to bear witness to the backlash,choosing to drown his sorrows at the local boobie bar,The Ass Menagerie(ha) afterwards, where he manages to smoosh one of the clothes-shedders in a drunk driving accident,discovering that her lifeless corpse will provide ultra-realistic gore effects for his next movie,boosting his stock with Farmsworth(Berryman),the studio head,in the process.When he runs out of body parts to use in his low budgeted set pieces,naturally,Whitman descends further into a state of perma-crackers,whacking everyone who ever done him wrong,from overly critical critics(I don't know anybody like that...)to his own sound man,each murder undertaken by Whitman garbed in a different ridiculous costume and character.Meanwhile,April Carson(Grey),a svelte female news personality with the help of her boss,Fred Sandy(H.G.),has hired private dick/man of hammy mystery,Isaac Beaumonde(Jesse Buck)to help her find her boob-shaking sister,who's gone missing,which is tantamount to hiring the less funny,Dollar Saver version of Inspector Clouseau.

...from money shots and DP's to bloody props and low-brow cheese.
The madly artistic director goes crazy ape bonkers,beheading chicks with sharpened clackers,harpooning pompous producers,and while hiding his blood-soaked booty in the film vaults,finds a print of a movie that incited the audience to riot the only time it was ever screened a la John Carpenter's Masters of Horror episode,Cigarette Burns.Outside the strip joint,Reverend Roscoe Boone(Sager)leads the crusade of concerned religious folks against pornography,when he isn't throat-spooging the Menagerie's girls in the back of his limousine.The ridiculously dressed,flamboyant walking stick-wielding Beaumonde convinces Carson to go undercover as an aspiring actress in Whitman's latest production to help him build a case against the director,who he believes is the murderer,which buys the girl an on-camera kiss with her sister's decaying head.There are more jokes,more primitive gore-sprinkled murders,a quality WTF moment where Whitman does some barefoot yoga on a hillside,and an axe vs. walking stick battle between the sleuth and the filmmaker on the set in the lackluster climax.Jeez,is that the time already?I really should be splitting.

April(Grey) decks herself out in the porn Jawa/Phantasm midget-slave look during her recon mission for answers.
What makes a Herschell Gordon Lewis movie unique and entertaining(occasionally) is the fact that the laughs are unintentional yet genuine.Smash Cut seems forced,and its tongue-in-cheek tribute to Lewis chokes on its own smarminess.I smirked twice during the whole screening,and I'm pretty sure both of those were due to Hess' untiring relentlessness to make the picture succeed,and in fact,he's really the only reason to watch tonight's entry since Sasha Grey,whose porn performances are solidly rad btw, has clothes on throughout.I just don't know why anyone would ever think tackling dated Hersh-esque 1960's fare in 2009 was a good idea in the first place.What's next,Johnny Morghen in a tribute to Staten Island's Andy Milligan?Come on now.I can't suggest this one to anyone,save for the hardest core David Hess fans who might be curious to see another side of the actor,the same way I was.It'll be a long time before I pull tonight's review off the shelves for any reason.If ever.One wop.

I doubt anyone's pissing their pants over this one.

"Drag Me to Hell"(2009)d/Sam Raimi

It's probably true that most of the old horror masters of the seventies and eighties,American and otherwise,have declined somewhat since their heyday,some more than others,but one of these directors has recently shown that despite his excursions into films based on comic books of late,he hasn't lost a single step in the genre that put him on the map.Of course,we're talking about Sam Raimi,the man behind the legendary Evil Dead series.Last year he made a welcome return to horror movies,in bringing us tonight's entry,"Drag Me to Hell",an original bit of vengeful nastiness blended with his trademark slapstick sense of humour and penchant for torturing actors still intact.I'm guessing Bruce Campbell was probably relieved he wasn't on the receiving end this time around.I went to see this twice in its first theatrical run,mainly because my merry band of miscreants and I got kicked out of the theater the first time around for sneaking in and drinking beers in the back.Yeah,as a forty year old,how embarrassing is that.My theory is that one of the douchebags sitting behind us was a big Tarantino fan who was offended by my vocal,mocking disapproval of the Inglorious Basterds trailer,and went to the lobby and reported us,forcing us to take the flick in a few days later at another cineplex.If the aforementioned canary happens to be out there amongst you reading this,that's right,bitch.I saw the movie despite your loose lips,and Tarantino is still a glorified copycat fanboy with a head the size of a medicine ball.But enough about that guy,we're covering Raimi here this time around,like I've been meaning to ever since I sat halfway through tonight's review the first time.I've seen quite a few reviewers snobbily pan the movie online,but make no bones about it,Drag Me is a highly original and satisfying rollercoaster ride full of jump scares,with ample laughs and gross out moments for everybody,served up in true Sam Raimi fashion.A lotta fun,indeed.

This gypsy/tramp/thief(Lorna Raver) is unlikely to sell you a bottle of Doctor Good.
In 1969,a pair of hispanic peasants desperately rush to the home of powerful medium, Senora San Dina(Chahua),their young son marked for fire and brimstone at the claws of a Lamia,a goat-esque demon called forth to drag the boy to H-E-double hockey sticks when he blags a silver necklace off of some local gypos.She fails miserably in saving his eternal soul,and watches helplessly as he is pulled screaming into the smouldering floor by otherworldly hands.Forty years later,Christine Brown(Alison Lohman),a former farm-dwelling fattie-turned-sultry blonde dish,is enjoying the spoils of her transformation;a model boyfriend(Justin "Jeepers Creepers" Long)with a silver spoon in his mouth,and a cushy bank loan officer gig where she's up for an assistant manager promotion against newcomer Stu Rubin(Reggie Lee),an unscrupulous ass-kissing rival,but the frontrunner for said spot,according to her boss,Mr. Jacks(David Paymer).As fate would have it,she is visited by an elderly one-eyed Hungarian gypsy woman named Ganush(Raver),who is pleading for a third extension on her home.In an attempt to impress Jacks,she denies the extension,and has the security guard drag the shamed granny out the doorski.That night in the parking garage,Christine is outrageously attacked by Ganush in her car,culminating in the gypsy tearing off one of the girl's coat buttons and calling down a curse upon it,before handing it back to her and disappearing into the blackness,thus damning the young woman to burn in Hell in three days,courtesy of the powerful Lamia.

From somewhere up there,you know Lucio was smiling down upon this sequence.
Tormented by chunk-blowing,gross out nightmares,and harrassed by the belligerent demon,she and her beau enlist the aid of a Hindu fortune teller named Rham(Dileep Rao)who instantly recognizes that she is cursed.She visits Ganush's granddaughter,in hopes that the woman can be persuaded to remove the hex,instead walking in on her funeral,knocking over the casket,further shaming the dead gypsy and embarrassing herself.When Rham's suggestion of sacrificing the couples' baby kitten to the spirit proves ineffective,and after showering her boss with a sprinkler level nosebleed and turning off his parents by coughing up a live fly during dinner and having a mental meltdown afterwards,Clay fronts Rham ten thousand beans to arrange for a seance held by San Dina,who is eager to combat the demon once again after all these years.Her assistant walks in a sacrificial goat that strangely resembles pot-rocker,Tom Petty,that the hellspawn is to be trapped inside and dispatched thereafter during the seance,which doesn't go so well,either,judging by the multiple temporary possessions and vulgar displays of supernatural power,which leave San Dinas D.O.A. with a heart attack on an ambulance gurney.At this point with time running out,Rham suggests that she give the cursed button to someone else,which will free her from the Lamia's pursuit,but ultimately damn whoever she gives it to,to an undeserved eternity in Hell.She takes an envelope with the button inside to the cemetery where the gypsy has been interred,digs up her corpse,and formally jams the cursed item into the dead woman's yap.After meeting up with Clay on the train platform the next morning,he pulls out an envelope he believes to house the new addition to his coin collection,revealing the cursed button instead.Shocked,Christine falls backward into the path of the oncoming train,as Clay disbelievedly looks on while his mate is pulled into the ground screaming by the familiar otherworldly hands as the train rushes overhead.

¡Qué chinga! Suddenly,without warning,Mrs. San Dina's(Flor de Maria Chahua)Joanie's Butterfly clit buzzer kicked on.
Tonight's entry began ten years prior as a cautionary morality tale entitled "The Curse"(glad they ditched that title,aren't you?) written by Sam and his brother Ivan and left on the backburner in the midst of the director's success with the Spiderman series.The spectacular effects in the movie are handled by KNB Studios and various others,and supervised by Bruce Jones.Raimi's still pretty busy as of this writing,with no less than twenty-three projects lined up according to the imdb,including 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and Evil Dead IV,no less!Of course,Raver,who supplied the excellently horrible vengeance-driven gypo,is from Pennsylvania.Rao was seen most recently in Avatar and Inception.If you haven't seen it yet,ignore the naysayers online(and even your humble N if you must) and go score yourself a copy immediately,dvds are plentiful.On the scale it scores three wops,before dragging you kicking and screaming by the leg into the fiery pit of eternal damnation,and I ain't speaking upon no Rob Zombie movie,kiddies.Highly recommended.

Neu pranse Lamiae vivum puerum extrabat alvo.