"Dressed to Kill" (1980) d/ Brian DePalma

 From Sisters (1973) to Carrie (1976), Blow Out (1981) to Scarface (1983), Brian De Palma has done an admirable job providing genre entertainment to audiences, and his violent, sexy 1980 homage to Hitchcock, Dressed to Kill,  is another good film to check out for those interested in his work, or fans of gialli-styled psychological thrillers. This one was all over premium cable at the outset of the eighties, a decade where I was much less appreciative of Michael Caine, despite the memorably musical pop plea from U.K. two-tone outfit, Madness, that came in 1984, and fell on dead ears at the time. Despite my strong dislike, I usually tuned in long enough for the straight razor action, and Nancy Allen in garters, stockings, and a bra, in all honesty, and with no apologies.


When Angie's randy in the shower, better get yer Dickinson.
When frustrated Kate (Angie Dickinson) unsuccessfully tries to seduce her therapist, Dr. Elliott (Michael Caine), it leads to a wild, random one night stand with a stranger in a cab after some wordless flirtation at the museum. The extra-marital hijinks continue for hours at his pad, until she writes her lover a note while he sleeps, accidentally discovering a note proclaiming that he's contracted an std on his desk while she's at it. Ooofah. In the mad scramble to split, she leaves her wedding ring on the night table, and returns to recover it, only to meet sudden straight razor-death at the hateful hand of a big ugly blonde woman in the elevator. A call girl named Liz (Nancy Allen) is the first to stumble upon the body, unwittingly catching a glimpse of Kate's killer in the process, drawing the suspicions of lumpy police detective Marino (Dennis Franz) and ultimately,  the attention of the ugly homicidal blonde in sunglasses.


Once she was "Feathers" in Rio Bravo (1959). Now, she's "Cadaver" in Rio Blood-o.
Luckily for Liz, Kate's son Peter (Keith Gordon) is a tech spaz-in-training with vengeance on his mind, and he's soon rigging audio surveillance equipment and time lapse cameras all about the place for his wronged hooker pal, as they try to get to the bottom of it all. Meanwhile, Dr. Elliott receives creepy, threatening messages on his answering machine from "Bobbi", one of his former patients that happens to be furious at his lack of support for a desired upcoming sex change operation (in the days before a vocal alphabet coalition could march for zir rights...hir rights? Eir rights? We never had problems like this when there were only two genders...), having warned his/her current doctor of potential danger within his new patient, instead. It's not long before Liz and Peter manage to capture the killer on camera and both amateur sleuths are subsequently stalked by the homicidal he-she who may or may not be Michael Caine-in-drag, as horrible a conviction as that is, to hold, and even more so, to behold, as you'll find out when you screen this one for yourselves...


Shinga, momma, shinga! Fairie Tale Theater was never like this!
Liv Ullman and Sean Connery both were forced to pass on roles in tonight's film, leaving Angie Dickinson and Michael Caine to famously replace them. Speaking of replacement, Angie's sexy shower bod was generously provided by Victoria Lynn Johnson, 1977 Penthouse Pet of the Year, a doubly good double. You'll also see Brandon Maggart in there, who's not only a Sesame Street vet and Harry the psycho Santa from Christmas Evil (1980), but the father of singer Fiona Apple, as well. The voice of Bobbi was provided by William Finley, a DePalma favorite who you'll probably remember from his work in things like Phantom of the Paradise (1974), Eaten Alive (1976), The Funhouse (1981), and Silent Rage (1982). On the scale, Dressed earns itself three impressive Wops, an entertaining ride through the psycho-sexual mind. Check it out.


Fact:  Michael Caine makes a bloody awful bird.

"Found" (2012) d / Scott Schirmer

I came across this one, purely by chance, while doing my usual perusing of the horror section at FYE, where you can actually find choice shit on disc, from U.K. champions of the genre, Arrow, Criterion, Scream Factory,  or even Something Weird, if you look closely enough and the planets are properly aligned. Anyway, a blind purchase it was, since I really haven't read any reviews (of any films, really) online in quite awhile, in keeping my focus mainly on this site, the upcoming podcast I've been working on (you might not hate listening to it, I hope), and future video channels on YouTube. I'll keep you posted. Meanwhile, we've got the business of this particular independent slasher, which plays out like this...


I am gonna kill you...but first, you're getting a 'Cleveland Steamer'!
Marty (Gavin Brown) is pesky younger, horror-loving brother to the elder, Steve (Ethan Philbeck), a creepy horror-loving, metal fan/loner who every so often brings severed human heads home in a bowling bag, usually women, and usually black. Not only is he a serial killer, he's a bigoted one, to boot! Meanwhile, Marty, having a knack for discovering all of the family's deepest secrets like his father's hidden stack of porn or his mother's old love letters, stumbles across his brother's decaying keepsake while snooping in his room, yet naturally admires his older bro ( regardless of any deep-seated homicidal urges he may entertain on certain nights) as he often lets him cruise his collection of obscure splatter titles on VHS, while hanging out with an equally unpopular pal; a chunky snotbag of a kid named Trevor (Adrian Cox-Thurmond), who co-authors a gruesome comic book they often work on, together, when they aren't trespassing on dilapidated circus grounds.


"Oh Hedy Lamarr, I loved you in Boom Town... " Yeah, sorry.
While dealing with bullies himself, his buddy Trevor also takes heat for association, and when Marty winces during a brutal murder scene in a slasher movie they're watching, he defriends him altogether, until Marty offers him a look at something he's never seen before. That disembodied head in the bowling bag bears a striking resemblance to the black kid who's been bullying Marty at school, his murderous older brother drawing inspiration from a slasher he'd stolen from the local video store called "Headless", which showcases a misogynistic sadist in a skull mask doing awful things to women, and ultimately, relieving them of their respective domepieces in a gleeful orgy of sex violence. Trevor'd probably like to go home now. The family's relationship is further strained when Marty disfigures a passing bully's face in an act of defiance, leading to a dysfunctional battle royale between Steve and his father that ends in a hellacious flurry of life fluids and a finale twist that genre fans are bound to appreciate. Check it out!


Nothing diffuses a bullying situation like a good homeopathic remedy such as "a tablespoon full of your own medicine", in this case.
I recognized Kitsie Duncan from my Facebook friends list. Nice one, KD. Shane Beasley who portrayed the killer in the "Headless" film inside this one, also provided the seriously goopy special gore effects. Crazy, man, crazy. I dug the vibe this film has, with a twisted vein of gallows humor out of an E.C. comic book from the fifties, while giving a respectful nod to its eighties slasher predecessors. Though it somehow flew under my radar and the unceremonious discovery that followed, Found stands as a pleasant surprise, and a nifty tweak to a slasher sub-genre that has otherwise mostly gone the route of self-parody these days. As such, it earns an admirable three Wops on the scale, and comes highly recommended.


Which one of you bastards let Gary Busey get into the strawberry preserves!

"Welcome to Arrow Beach" (1974) d/ Laurence Harvey

This lost seventies slasher/ "Psycho" clone would be the last movie appearance for former top shelf British actor Laurence Harvey, who also directed and allegedly edited  the picture from a phone on his death bed, as he lie dying of stomach cancer that would claim his life at forty-five, six months before the film saw an official release. It would be re-released two years later, under the title Tender Flesh, and the Magnetic Video VHS of the film interestingly stands as the second horror movie ever released on the then-virgin media format. Instead of Walter Pidgeon and Donna Reed co-starring as advertised (under the working title Yellow-Headed Summer, a year earlier),  the likes of Meg Foster, Stuart Whitman, John Ireland, and Joanna Pettet appear instead, to help Harvey complete his final, somewhat bloody cinematic vision.


"This your bag of shnoz rockets, pinko hippie?", ask the tolerant cops.
Robbin Stanley (Meg Foster) is a happenin' hippie hitchhiker making her way across California, who's latest ride is a coked-out charmer in a banana yellow Model A ("Nice mams!" is his opening line) who leads the police on a high-speed chase that ends in a construction zone crash. Despite their conservative drape leanings, the cops let her go, even after finding an eight ball of coke tucked away under the eight track player. She nonchalantly wanders from the crash site onto Arrow Beach, where she skinny dips under the watchful camera lens of one Jason Henry (Laurence Harvey), who lives in a nearby mansion with his sister, Grace (Joanna Pettet). Jason takes the stray in, amid jealous protest from his sister, feeds her a juicy steak*, and gives her hippie ass a much needed bubble bath. Though Robbin is grooving on Jason's wealth and seems receptive to the idea of giving him some poonany, he louses it up when his incessant late night whacking at slabs of human meat in the basement with an oversized cleaver sends the teenager, bloody and hysterical, screaming from the premises.


Spray that brush burn with some mercurochrome or it'll scar up on you...
With Robbin laid up in the hospital with an arm she injured while climbing out a basement window, Jason reports the incident to the police, destroying her credibility with some planted leftover anti-psychotics in her handbag from a flashback stint in Korean War that he survived through cannibalism. Grace, not only his loyal sibling but also his incestuous lover (like, bleeech, dudes), helps validate his story to Deputy Rakes (Stuart Whitman, who'd seemingly scored as many police roles as Claude Akins by this point), who naturally believes her, sending Robbin out of town on the first available bus, on the promise that she never return. Meanwhile, Jason takes in a weatherbeaten old hooker (burlesque star Gloria LeRoy) who'd been raped and jacked by a biker on the beach outside his mansion, and while snapping some profile shots of her, he introduces his sizable cleaver to the shoot, and makes a real mess of things. Robbin hitches a ride back to Arrow Beach, to the apartment of a young med tech named Alex (David Macklin), and they descend upon the very basement for proof of Jason's misdeeds that night...


Cleaver-hacked old hooker for dinner tonight, again?
When the movie was picked up from Warner Brothers by Brut (Thanks, Faberge'. I enjoy slasher movies and your shaving cream...), they excised nearly fifteen minutes from the print, and most of the cannibalism elements, though it's interesting to note that Tobe Hooper released his legendary cannibal epic, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre the same year. Even more surprisingly, perhaps, the loungey-sounding title track was crooned by none other than Lou Rawls (!), putting to rest the idea I used to have that he'd only had one song, "You're Gonna Miss My Lovin' ", that he sang repeatedly, for years and years. You live and learn, I guess. Beautiful Pa. native Meg Foster and her icy blue eyes would later turn up in things like John Carpenter's They Live(1988) and Niko Mastorakis' The Wind (1986). As it stands, there's no official dvd or Blu-ray release of this one yet, and there really ought to be, as it's a tense little blood-splashed thriller that merits a respectable deuce on the scale. Hunt a print down for yourselves.


"...What a horrible picture, man, he shoulda had his f-stop much lower...and just look at that light fall off..."
*probably not steak at all.

"Naked Massacre" (1976) d/ Denis Heroux

Richard Speck, notorious for more than being name dropped as one of Divine's celebrity blow jobs in Female Trouble (1974), was also a U.S. merchant marine-turned-mass murderer when he slipped into a dormitory for nurses in Chicago on a July night in 1966, and spent the evening torturing, raping, and murdering eight young student nurses ("It just wasn't their night," he'd later chuckle) while on an alcohol and drug fueled bender, leading to a famous electric chair death sentence, eventually reduced to a twelve hundred year bed at Stateville Prison, where the unrepentant killer grew breasts, often boasted of his crimes, and spent his days blowing coke and fellow inmates until his black heart finally quit at age forty-nine. Tonight's review is just one of several cinematic dramatizations of this legendary scar-faced creep (Your humble narrator is a scar-faced goon, know the diff, Cliff), this one from French-Canadian director Denis Heroux, who'd give us the killer cat anthology, The Uncanny, the following year, chose the war-torn streets of Belfast at the height of it's political unrest as the backdrop for this rarely-seen exploitation dittie.


"No Brady has ever planted a car bomb, Marcia, and you can be darn sure that no Brady ever will. Pardon my language, Alice..."
We see an awful lot of Richard Sp...uhh, Cain Adamson (Matthieu Carriere), a Vietnam Vet drifting his way back home to the States, aimlessly wandering the streets of Belfast amid spray-painted I.R.A. slogans and patrols of British soldiers, where the psychological burden of an abusive upbringing, the horrors of war, an unfaithful wife, lack of funds, etc, etc, take an irreparable toll on the man's fragile grip on sanity, finally leading him to break into a nearby building rented out to some student nurses with intent to burgle, or so he'd lead the terrified young women to believe, just before he convinces them to tie themselves up in one of the bedrooms, from which he calmly leads them, one by one, to a fate of degradation, sexual assault, and violent death. Just like he promised he wasn't gonna do! Joke's on you, girls. You showed kindness and trust to a transient sociopathic Robert Reed lookalike with a "Born for Hell" tattoo and an inborn hatred for women. That's never a smart move in a movie like this...


Not to detract from the horrific murder or anything, but check out that woolly lap-mammoth.
As predicted, things rapidly go Andy Milligan for our heroines. One aspiring care-giver gets the wind choked out of her, and another gets stabbed, while a third takes the knife from Adamson and fatally shanks herself in front of his eyes, rather than submit to his imposed sexual fancy, which doesn't happen to exclude outing a pair of closeted lesbians in a forced horizontal pair-up that ends in...anybody? If  you quick-witted readers at home said "violent, humiliating death", give yourselves... one of those puffy re-released Ugly Stickers (not "Charlie" though, he's my fave, and you'll have to work a lot harder to snag him, I don't mind tellin' ya), I dunno. Believing he's exhausted himself of potential rape/murder victims, and having confessed his incestuous relationship with his sister along the way, along with various other little-known personal tidbits that I'm sure these chicks appreciated hearing about just before being brutally murdered, and famously forgetting "the one under the bed", our reverse-feminist opens his wrist in the end, only to be denied closure by the authorities.


"...but I haaaaate salmon without a couscous side."
Among the unlucky nurses are Carol Laure, who you'll recall from the wild Sweet Movie, and Ely Galleani, an Italian actress who's worked with everyone from Fulci to D'Amato.I scored the C & F Services bare bones disc for a couple of bucks used at an FYE a while back, and it seems like a pretty fair trade to my best assessment, as I don't foresee any sudden mad collector urges to upgrade to a hardbox or mediabook release ever happening. If you're looking for a cheap fix of grainy ( bordering on downright murky in spots) blood, tits (thankfully not Dickie's),  woofin' seventies-tastic bush, and enough uncomfortable-looking misogynist torture and rape to make Krug Stilo step away for a momentary reflective stoagie of penance, then this one might just whet your appetite, briefly. On the scale, Naked scores a deuce, as the closest portrayal I've personally seen to the actual crimes themselves. Worth a look.


"Pour some crimson in me, Jimson."

"Non ho sonno"(2001)d/Dario Argento

If you're not currently preoccupied with the manner in which that horny mummy in the corner is drinking in the seam lines in your girlfriend's bodacious Harley Quinn costume, then what better way to wrap up a solid spine-chilling and satisfying Italo-ween season this year, than to cover one from the undisputed platinum standard in gialli, the 'Italian Hitchcock' himself, Dario Argento, in the form of his recent, glorious return to sadistically violent form, 2001's Non ho sonno aka/ Sleepless, after having mostly floundered in unfamiliar waters of mediocrity with Trauma (1993), The Stendahl Syndrome (1996), and 1998's Phantom of the Opera, in the years following his blood-splashed magnum opus, Opera (1987). Phew...and Gabriel March Grandos thought his sentence was lengthy.


"Esplodere barattoli di marmellata??!! Chi e' il ragazzo saggio!"
Moretti (Von Sydow) is the police detective assigned to the brutal 'Dwarf Murders' (you hear that, Skittles?) investigation in Turin, promising a young motherless boy justice, after the wee lad sees the woman being force fed her own wind instrument, mind you. Moretti follows a trail of  paper animal cutouts left at the gore-splattered crime scenes to a nursery rhyme by a local reclusive author of children's books known as 'The Dwarf' ( the rhyme itself was actually written by Dario's rather fetching daughter, Asia, who we all should be well familiar with, by now) who's driven to commit suicide by the allegations, effectively closing the case when the slayings cease afterwards, or so it would seem...


Heyyyy, I found a clarinet in the meat sauce...
Only, seventeen years later, a woman is horrifically snuffed on a train in an identical manner to the past slayings, leading Giacomo (Stefano Dionisi) , who's now grown up enough to face his childhood demons and return to the old neighborhood in Turin from Rome on the suggestion of an old school buddy named Lorenzo (Roberto Zibetti), to seek the assistance of the retired sleuth in solving the latest crimes that include an agonizing wall-smashed facepiece and a beheaded ballerina(!), which have the former detective wondering if his deceased dwarfish adversary was responsible for the original murders in the first place. I'll leave the mind-boggling finale for you to experience for yourselves.


"...we'll return to 'Maroon 5: Behind the Music' after these messages..."
Though Sleepless doesn't quite measure up (most of Von Sydow's supporting cast, and some artificial-looking CG effects come immediately to mind) against the vintage Argento gialli forever carved into the memory of genre lovers worldwide, like Profondo Rosso(1975), it's far and away his best effort in ages, a Halloween treat bucket that's overflowing with enough confectionery goodies like black-gloved psychopath hijinks, genre-friendly red herrings deftly woven around some (seriously) exotic murder set pieces by Stivaletti, the usual bang up score from Goblin perfectly complimenting the maestro's signature lush visuals, to bring the viewer back to those glorious eighties, when stuff like this wore the crown over everything. Three wops....oh, and, uh......Happy Hallowe'en.


Ha portato un coltello per una sparatoria...

"Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde"(1971)d/Roy Ward Baker

With another Valentine's Day in the rearview mirror and guys everywhere teary-eyed at the sight of the smoldering pile of ashes formerly known as their self-respect and vacuous hum of empty wallets(hopefully it got you laid, at least), there's no better place to get back to what's fourth best in life(genre movies and the lamentations of your enemies' women are neck-and-neck at the time of this writing) than here at the Wop.Here's an interesting little number from the folks at Hammer, a thought-provoking twist on Robert Louis Stevenson's historic take on duality, Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, with Hyde taking the form of a sinister seductress, as portrayed by the lovely Martine Beswick, and unsung Hammer lead Ralph Bates as the masculine Jekyll with good intentions, as always.As well as the gender-bender angle, the film's producers managed to amalgamate two historic criminal cases, Jack the Ripper and the Burke and Hare murders of Edinburgh, into the plot, handled with a dark wit, and a seeming undercurrent of debauchery just off-camera, making for a highly enjoyable viewing experience to be had, indeed.In the chair for tonight's affair, was the prolific Roy Ward Baker, who handles the potential for graphic depiction with reservation and class in adding another minor horror classic to his flourishing genre credentials late in his career with Hammer and a year later, Amicus.I always thought Bates was quite good during his tenure with the studio, and he's once again strong here as Jekyll.Beswick also exudes an aura of danger about her, during her scenes, chewing scenery in every frame.Gore fanatics will be pretty underwhelmed(pretty tame stuff considering all the whore-rippin' goin' on), as per usual with Hammer, but find solace in all the implied violence within.Pressing ahead....

Distressed by the blade at her breast, this working girl's laid to rest.
Jekyll(Ralph Bates), faced with the harsh reality that his research towards a cure-all for mankind's ailments might take decades to come to fruition, sets his sights considerably lower for the time being: an elixir of eternal youth, created from female hormones as extracted from the corpses of dead prostitutes.Makes sense.After extending the life of a common housefly past hours and into days, Jekyll finds himself visiting the likes of Burke and Hare for his "materials" when they become increasingly harder to come by through natural means.Dodging the advances of lovestruck upstairs tenant, Susan Spencer(Susan Brodrick), he tests his formula upon himself, physically transforming into Hyde(Martine Beswick), a beautiful brunette woman who introduces herself to his neighbors as a widowed sister, after first playing with her tits in the mirror and laughing maniacally.My kinda dame.Naturally, Susan's brother, Howard(Lewis Fiander), is instantly taken by the alluring beauty(and not impressed at all by Jekyll, if he only knew who he'd be kissing later on...), who has already begun taking over Jekyll's personality, as evidenced by the number of gowns and frocks being delivered to his apartment.Must be how Eddie Izzard got his start, eh.Unable to resist the urge to change and low on whore-bits, Jekyll receives another wrench to his experiments when an angry mob sets upon Burke and Hare for their fiendish crimes, lynching the former and blinding the latter, forcing the good doctor to frequent the Whitechapel area at night himself for his...ahem, supplies, when Susan remarks about the needs of the many outweighing the suffering of a select few.

Fanky set o' malloons for the homicidal half, Sister Hyde(Martine Beswick).
When Jekyll's old friend and colleague, the womanizing Professor Robertson(Gerald Sim), begins to suspect that he's responsible for all the Whitechapel ripping, Henry is forced to loose his sociopathic feminine side on the streetwalkers.Of course, this is an unpleasant means to an end for Jekyll's progress, while the cigar-smoking Hyde takes sadistic pleasure in the killings, which are carried out with surgical precision.Hyde finds her power over men and women alike very intoxicating, with Howard and Robertson vying for her affections and various nameless hookers dying under her surgical implements. Jekyll finds it increasingly difficult to control his female outbreaks which occur at the least opportune times, having finally tuned in to Susan's romantic vibe(I'd imagine one of your hands going feminine while you're entertaining female company's gotta be right up there with sprouting a 16 oz facial pimple on prom night).After seducing Robertson, who's still got the notion that his old chum has blood on his hands, she erases him from the equation, and, with unbridled lust for Howard, she plans on removing Susan, as well.Though Henry manages to stymie sister Hyde in killing his love interest, he realizes he must kill again to regulate his chaotic transformations, but the constabulary interrupts him, acting on a statement from the blinded Hare that draws upon the similarity between Jekyll's experiments and the recent rash of murders.Cornered like a wild animal, Jekyll finds himself precariously dangling from the rooftop of a high building when he's suddenly gripped by a metamorphosis into Hyde, who's simply too weak to hold on, and plummets to her end on the pavement below, her face showing masculine and feminine features in death.Credits.

Cor!You ought to wear a bib when you get into the preserves like 'at.
Ward Baker would direct such Hammer classics as Quartermass and the Pit(1966), Scars of Dracula(1970), and Vampire Lovers(1970), before helming Asylum(1972) and Vault of Horror(1973) for Amicus.Bates, who portrayed Gaius Caligula on BBC's The Caesars series(no wonder I like the guy), would also star in Taste the Blood of Dracula(1970), Horror of Frankenstein(1970), Lust for a Vampire(1971), and Fear in the Night(1972) for Hammer, before succumbing to pancreatic cancer at the age of 51.The Jamaican-born Beswick made a name for herself in two Bond films, From Russia With Love(1963) and Thunderball(1965), later starring in Hammer's Prehistoric Women(1967) and Oliver Stone's debut Seizure(1974), and scoring genre credits in 1987's The Offspring, 1990's Evil Spirits, and Critters 4(1991) after moving to Hollywood.Susan Brodrick's only other genre credit was Hammer's Countess Dracula(1971), while Sim turned up in fare like Dr. Phibes Rises Again(1972) and Hitchock's Frenzy(1972) in his long career.On the scale, Sister Hyde scores three Wops, a solid all-around effort, and certainly one of the stronger late entries for Hammer.Recommended.

Rotten good luck that there's no one who fits that description 'round these parts, eh wot?

"CHAOS"(2005)d/David DeFalco

Frank Black: Peter, why are you here?

Peter Watts: The Millenium group takes an interest in certain types of cases.Copycat murders...and B-movie rip offs of cult classics. What do you feel about this one, Frank?

Frank Black: ...Obviously this is a thinly veiled take on the Stilo gang back in the early seventies.Just look at that one sheet.

David DeFalco: Hey, the original was unrealistic and hard to watch!

B.W.: What are you doing directing movies? Shouldn't you be piledriving your cousin Vinnie outside his neoned up Camaro somewhere on Dekalb Ave?

Peter Watts:"Lui che perfora tutte le madri..." He who gouges all the mothers.What are you doing here.

B.W.:Weren't you in "The Stepfather"(1987)?So this guy thinks he outdirected this guy(remember, we're talking making movies here, not a steel cage match).I'm not even a huge Craven fan really, out of his twenty-nine directorial efforts I liked all of four that I've seen: Last House, Hills Have Eyes, Deadly Blessing, and Swamp Thing(If that was a batting average, mind you, Craven'd be sent down to the minors indefinitely).I'm fully aware that Craven's film was a remake of Bergman's Virgin Spring(which was, in turn, based upon a Swedish ballad from the thirteenth century), but it was a ground-breaking cult classic, not a derivative piece of unimaginative, hardened dog shit like this mess turned out to be.Mind the stench, as we examine more closely...

Jordan Black:What's a 'steel cage match', Daddy?

Frank Black:Nevermind, sweetheart.Go upstairs and finish packing for Grandma and Grandpa's.


Phyllis and Mar-uhhh, Emily(Chantal Degroat) and Angelica(Maya Barovich) looking to score some gras...errr, Ecstacy at a rock con...ummm, rave.

B.W.:Way to dodge your parental responsibilities, Frank.She's been packing for granny's house for three seasons.You're gonna end up spending all your Millenium cash on psychologists couches for your daughter when she's a teenager.

Frank Black:Whoa.You can see that?

B.W.:Actually, I see you paying the bills in low-budget Bigfoot movies for the better part of this decade, but that's another story.

Peter Watts:In 1972, the sadistic, criminal exploits of Krug Stilo, "Weasel" Podowski, Sadie, and Junior Stilo shocked and horrified audiences worldwide; the brutal murders of Phyllis Stone and Mari Collingwood as seen through the documentary-style lens of Wes Craven have provided horror fans with an all-time favorite for forty years and running.

B.W.: Weren't you in "Pin"(1988)?"CHAOS"(2005) is the exact same story dumbed down for the next generation, with Kevin Gage as a watered-down, racist Krug with a shaved head and a taste for human nipples, Sage Stallone, forgettable as the Junior character, Kelly KC Quann as a sort of phony cheese-trash version of Sadie with badly drawn-on tattoos, and Steven Wozniak as an even more forgettable Weasel character.Instead of a rock concert, it's a rave in the woods.Instead of a bumbling sheriff, we get the obligatory white racist variety, and Emily/Mari(Chantal Degrout) happens to have mixed race parents this time around.

David DeFalco:It's the most brutal movie ever made!

B.W.:Do you look like that on purpose? The murders are realistically brutal, and choicely executed, granted.But overall, it's pale in comparison to Craven's original, and even as a straight up slasher, doesn't really break any new ground.I hate when I'm biding my time waiting for chicks to get hack n' slashed, and I found myself doing just that during this movie.But you know what really blows my mind about "CHAOS"(2005)?

Frank Black:...that I live cement, I hate this street.Give dirt to me, I bite repent.This human form where I...

Peter Watts:Who the hell is this?


Mastectomy.You're doing it wrong.

Frank Black:...wrong Frank Black.

B.W.:Come back to reality, Frank.It's never the wrong time for The Pixies.

Lucy Butler:YOU...You son of a bitch...

Frank Black:The base sum of all evil, Lucy Butler.I knew she'd turn up here.

B.W.:...base sum of all crazy stalking bitches, more like.One twenty-five minute elevator interlude five years ago and she thinks I belong to her.Hit the bricks, baby!

Lucy Butler:Won't you please come back to the house, Master?I've got a new dirty teddy and tape of muzak I want you to experience for yourself...

B.W.:Get the hook, sister.If I wanted to hang out in a locked room and carve daily notches in the wood panelling, I'da never left my parents' place.

No wonder you're having difficulty passing stool, there's a knife lodged up yer keester, young lady!

Lucy Butler:Are you sure about that?Muzak version of Hot Chocolate's "Every1's a Winner" on indefinite repeat...and the teddy's sheer.

B.W.:Well, maybe we oughta wrap this case up afterall, boys.

Peter Watts:What does "CHAOS"(2005) merit on your rating scale, B.W.?

David DeFalco:Four wops! It's so brutal!

B.W.:Shouldn't you be posing down shirtless in the LA County Morgue for the dvd extras or something?

Frank Black:I see a low score.Probably zero if it wasn't for the gore effects.One.One wop.

B.W.: This is who we are, brother.

Peter Watts:A private consortium that the FBI subcontracts out to?

B.W.:Your mother, too, Watts.

[fade to black]

[end titles]


CHAOS(Kevin Gage) wants you offa his lan'.G'wan, git.