Tuesday, May 17, 2011

"The Beast Within"(1981)d/Philippe Mora

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One of the most familiar sounds of late summer is the droning mating buzz of the male cicada, sort of a bulky, ugly, winged leafhopper-on-steroids in its final phase, which, in periodical species, doesn't come for up to seventeen years.It's easy to see how one could meld the life cycle of an ugly, loud bug and a teenaged boy coming into adulthood into some sort of shlocky updated fifties-style monster movie with the proper levels of creative flair.Paris-born artist/director Philippe Mora, of "Mad Dog Morgan" fame, attempted just that during the horror heyday of the early eighties, and the finished product, though perplexingly muddled in spots, is a mostly satisfying exercise in B-movie hokum with an unhinged final reel that had audiences screaming, as your humble N(of course, in attendance) can attest to.Mora enlisted the services of FX wizard Tom Burman in bringing the were-cicada to life on the big screen, and through the aid of air bladders and puppetry, Burman transformed this into something like this.I'll let you be the judge on whether or not he succeeded.The cast included the likes of Ronny Cox, Bibi Besch, LQ Jones, Logan Ramsey, and as the lead, then-youngster Paul Clemens, whose mother just happens to be actress Eleanor "The Sound of Music" Parker.MGM released the film as part of its "Midnight Movies" series on dvd a few years back, and you should seek it out if you get the chance. Frankly, you'll probably never see as fine a "rape-crazed were-cicada terrorizes the deep south" movie as this in your lives.
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Get yer tits out, get yer tits out, get yer tits out for the hemipterans!
The time is 1964, the place is Nioba, Mississippi(insert strains of 'Dixie' here), where the newlywed McClearys(Ronny Cox, Bibi Besch) have gotten their car stuck in the middle of some dark, desolate woods after husband Eli's ill-fated late night u-turn.He volunteers to walk the three plus miles back to the last filling station they had passed himself, leaving wife Caroline alone in the car.What's the worst that could happen to a young woman alone in a car on the side of a dark southern road through the forest(besides being raped to within an inch of her life by a horny cicada monster, of course)?Eli returns to find her bare-assed n' half buried in some wet leaves, and a makeshift posse puts the lead to local troublemaker Billy Connors for the crime, before the couple leave the whole harrowing experience behind them for a life in Jackson.Unfortunately, seventeen years later they're forced to return to the scene of the crime in search of answers when their teenage son, Michael(Paul Clemens), has suddenly been overtaken by an occult malignancy that has the big city specialists all baffled.Michael, who gets awfully sweaty and pale, has been having livid dreams of an empty old house with something unseen and awful in the cellar.Back in Nioba, they're met with resistance by the town's secretive senior officials: Judge Curwin(Don Gordon), his brother, Edwin(Logan Ramsey), and Dexter Ward(Luke Askew) the town mortician, all treat the McClearys inquiries with the disdain and indifference you'd expect from characters whose names were a silent nod to Howard Phillips himself.One more monster-in-the-cellar dream later, Michael rouses from a sweaty coma, jacks himself an Oldsmobile, and arrives at Edwin's doorstep in sync with a bag of groceries hastily dropped by a delivery boy put off by the old man's blatant homo-pederasty.In a wifebeater and jammies, the nonce fries up some hamburger peppered with boy-hungry innuendo until Michael takes a cue from the buzzing cicadas outside and bites a sizeable chunk out of the old perv's neck(gross),his feet flailing helplessly in some raw hamburger on the floor(more gross).
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Michael(Paul Clemens)is about to slip into something more uncomfortable.
While his parents seek out answers, Michael endears himself to Amanda Platt(Katherine Moffat),the angelic teenage daughter of overprotective redneck psycho-dad, Horace(John Dennis Johnston), a man that never met a sass-ending backhander he didn't like, who also happens to be cousin to the Curwin clan.Town boozehound Tow Laws(Ron Soble) relates the story of Billy Connors and his goal of immortality-through-rebirth-every-seventeen-years-via-shapeshifting-into-a-cicada-monster(heard that one a hundred times before, huh?), in between hearty bottle swigs, leading the boy to abruptly cut off a torrid makeout session in the woods with Amanda to embalm Dexter alive at the funeral parlour.The wig-laden judge, panicked by his family's sudden rising mortality rate, admits to chaining up Billy Connors in the cellar of a house in the woods, and that Connors escaped the night the very night the McClearys had their car/rape troubles.It's now apparent that Michael is the pawn in Connors' ploy for revenge from beyond the grave against all conspiritors seventeen years earlier, and as an added bonus, he gets to painfully transform into a cicada monster himself, before the disbelieving eyes of a room full of horrified onlookers (that includes his parents), head bulging and popping before comically inflating like a full-term pregnant womb for minutes that seem to go on forever.He pulls the judge's head off through a jail wall before raping Amanda on what seems like the very same muddy stretch of road he was conceived on himself, ensuring the rape-revenge cycle will continue after he's eaten some post-rape shotgun-induced death...or would continue if enough interest generated a sequel at that point.It didn't.
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Awww, ma, manburgers for dinner, again?
Besides the aforementioned Hopper vehicle Morgan, Mora also handled two Howling sequels, which apart from screen time involving Sybill Danning's magnificent bra-pups in the second, were pretty forgettable, and Communion, the Christopher Walken-gets-anally-probed alien abduction movie.Cox, as you should well know by now, has been in films like Deliverance(1972), Total Recall(1992), and everything in-between over his long, successful career.Clemens, who's done countless television roles over the years, most recently appeared in the colorfully titled, The Horribly Slow Murderer with the Extremely Inefficent Weapon, in 2008.The feature attraction here has to be the transformation effects as imagined by Burman and company; still entertaining and eye-catching despite not having aged very well over the years.Overall, this one's a good old fashioned monster movie with some potent eighties flair that you'd do well to see for yourselves.On the scale, Within climbs out of the mud and up a tree, where its proboscis siphons out two big ones.Check it out!
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"Arrgggh! Acne on the night of the Summer Social. Just my freakin' luck!"
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Saturday, May 14, 2011

"Laid to Rest"(2009)d/Robert Hall

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Let me begin by saying that if I had seen this this ultra-splatterpiece back in the eighties, the never-ending barrage of realistic chunk-blowing gore within probably would have left me in a Gene Kelly rain-singin' heel-click of approval with every spurt of arterial Ragu that FX-expert-turned-director Robert Hall could manage to serve up.That said, we're well into 2011 over here, and hundreds of cookie-cutter slasher movies have passed before my weary eyes, and the examples that rise above the standard have more to offer than the drippy red stuff, even if it is executed as magnificently as it certainly is in Laid, Hall's second directorial effort.Make no mistakes, the kills are indeed righteous.It's just when the movie has to rely on plot and pacing in-between the crimson violence and splendor that it ultimately fails to establish itself as anything more than a xeroxed lemon of little renown.Any self-respecting horror buff who's gotten through puberty will have great difficulty taking anything notable besides the gore effects from the experience.Of course, arguing weaknesses in a slasher storyline is kinda like ignoring a porno's money shots to critique the acting performances leading up to them.You aren't gonna rewind the disc to a quality dialogue exchange, you're gonna wanna see that practical lower jaw decapitation one more time.Or five.Such is life.Onwards!
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A lamentable lawman misplaces his face-piece.
A girl(Bobbi Sue Luther) with no powers of recollection and severe head trauma wakes up inside a coffin, quickly realizing she's been abducted by a deranged psychopath with an acute technological flair to go with the chrome skull mask he wears and the dual brass knuckle surgical knives he wields.After the funeral director(Richard Lynch) leaves, she manages to knock the casket over, crawling out to find the exits locked and unable to remember enough information to relay to a 911 operator.Her escape attempts are thwarted by Chrome Skull(Nick Principe), who dispatches the returning director before getting momentarily knocked out by a pesky door and allowing the girl to run into the street where she's picked up by a man named Tucker(Kevin Gage), who takes her home to a cold reception from his wife Cindy(Lena Headey) until her husband explains the weird situation as he knows it.The girl, who only remembers being put in a box, takes a shower and is given a bed to rest on until Cindy's brother Johnny(Jonathon Schaech) arrives the next morning to take her into town, as their house phone has been shut off.When she grows uneasy, Tucker comes in to comfort her, calling her "Princess" from a fleeting memory she has of a childhood doll she once owned.Upon returning to his room, he notices that his wife has disappeared, and once outside, they realize that Chrome Skull has abducted her.The mysterious killer offers to exchange Cindy for Princess, but when Tucker refuses, attacking the maniac instead, he mounts the man's wife to the house with a well-placed head-stab.The new widower waffles his assailant with his walking stick, sending him down a flight of stairs before he and Princess can flee the scene in his truck.Cindy's brother and his girlfriend finally arrive at the house, where Chromesky relieves the young man of his face and eviscerates his squeeze.
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That's not even quasi-sexy.
At Steven's((Sean Whalen) place, Tucker and Princess contact the authorities through his computer, discovering that Skull has snuffed thirty-one dames to date, filming each murder from the nifty shoulder mounted video camera he employs.After a fruitless close call at the police station where the girl gets herself slashed and Steven stabs the masked fiend, the three drive to the funeral home so that Tucker can dress Princess' wounds where Steven witnesses his own mother's corpse dragged from a hearse into Skull's digs on the side of the cadaver parlour.While Tucker returns home unaware Johnny's already been eighty-sixed, Princess enters Chrome Skull's lair for a mano a mano standoff.A new female victim is beheaded as 'Cess hides in a coffin until Tucker returns, shooting the killer twice before making a getaway in Chromesky's fancy wheels(with custom tags).In the car she watches a video of Skull being told of the Sheriff's impending interference by the funeral director, then locates the nearest store in the GPS unit and drives off while the two men are inside Steven's house.In a hearse, Chromesky syncs up the GPS with the one in his own ride so that he can track its whereabouts.At the store, all sorts of nastiness ensues as a clerk is forced to suck on his own shotgun(!), a patron gets decapitated, and Steven gets tire sealant shot into his ears until his dome explodes(!!).Tucker get labonza-shanked as Princess hides in the cooler where Chromesky has set up a video camera that reveals her identity as a streetwalker.Skull then uses what he believes to be glue to reapply his mask, only the substance is in reality acid mixed up by a pre-corpse Steven, and it dissolves what's left of his face-piece(!!!).Princess hops out of the cooler and grabs a nearby baseball bat and swings for the fences at Chromesky's goopy head-mess, effectively smashing it for keeps.She embraces a mortally-skewered Tucker who buys the farm, then hops into one of the victim's car and drives off to Atlanta.The police arrive and find a note pinned to Tucker's body revealing the whereabouts of Chrome's vics and requesting to let Steven be buried next to his mother.Sequel anyone?
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Don't even think of lifting that last AMP if you know what's good for you, Chromesky.
Chrome Skull:Laid to Rest 2 has recently finished shooting and boasts of a cast that includes Brian Austin Green and the delicious Danielle Harris.The Detroit-born Hall, whose effects feature prominently in such films as Devil, the Crazies remake, and the Terminator:Sarah Connor Chronicles tv series, promises a prequel directly afterwards.Goody gumdrops.Luther has appeared in fare like the 2009 Night of the Demons remake and Deuce Bigalow:European Gigalo.Gage has found work in genre films like May(2002) and CHAOS(2005), as well as mainstream titles like Heat(1995), Blow(2001), and GI Jane(1997).Like I said earlier, give Laid a shot, even if the threadbare script leaves you feeling empty, you'll be talking about some of the inventive gore set pieces long after you've ejected the Anchor Bay disc.On the scale it scores two big ones, not too shabby for a slasher in this day and age, eh?
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I'm acid and not glue, on the back of your mask your face is through.
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"Macabro"(1980)d/Lamberto Bava

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After assisting his father, the iconic legend, Mario Bava, on several of his films in the seventies, Lamberto Bava of "Demoni" fame, set out to make a name for himself in the cinema with tonight's entry, a strange, slow-moving gothic number with equal parts psychological and exploitative thrills for the viewer, not overly gory by anyone's standards, but surely perverse enough to delight genre fans.What makes this all the more impressive is the fact that the film's big shocker payoff is given away on most advertisements and sleeve art for the film(hint: there's a severed head involved...).Overall, Macabro is clever in its voyeuristic execution, playing reality against fantasy and daring the viewer to keep score on which is which.Bava daringly cuts between events in contrast as a lovemaking session while a murder is being committed with an eccentric sense of humour, while never losing the suspenseful angle he clearly absorbed from years around his father, throughout the entire affair.To purvey the perversity, Bava enlisted the talents of Bernice Stegers, genre vets Stanko Molnar and Roberto Posse, and oddly enough, Veronica Zinny, whose brother Karl would later appear in Bava's Demoni as prep-creep Ken of the sweater-draped shoulders, and who would not act again after her appearance here(!).The screenplay was handled by Bava, Pupi Avati and his brother Antonio, and Roberto Gandus, and according to Bava himself, is based on a small American news story from the late seventies(just how much fact remains in the finished product is anyone's guess, really).But let's not get a-head of ourselves, shall we?Sorry.Onward!
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La fica malvagità distruggendosi.Get in there, my son!
Mrs. Jane Baker (Bernice Stegers),a restless New Orleans housewife with wandering eyes, seizes a prime moment for infidelity, sneaking off for a coital liason with her lover, Fred(Roberto Posse), leaving her two children behind.Her daughter Lucy (Veronica Zinny) takes the opportunity to drown her little brother Michael in the tub(!), telephoning her mommy about the terrible accident that's just occurred afterwards(!!). Blinded by grief, Jane lets Fred drive them quickly to her home, but they miss a curve and he eats a guardrail with a side of windshield, killing him instantly and spattering the negligent adulteress with ample red stuff.Twelve months pass when Jane is finally released from the mental hospital(cue classic Suicidal Tendencies track here), returning to the very flat where she formerly got her extramarital fuck on with the currently very dead Fred. There she erects a shrine to his memory and fantasizes about his lovemaking skills, which rapidly retorverts into carnal oestrus.Downstairs resides a blind musical instrument repairman named Robert Duval(another L on that surname and they'd have made a funny) who's taken a shine to the distraught woman.Her husband has custody of the diabolical daughter, while Jane prickteases her new sightless neighbor to no end, leaving him emptyhanded while hearing the sounds of her furiously loud nightly masturbation sessions just above his ceiling.Poveretto!
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Cazzo no!Ho pomodoro sul mia faccia!
Meanwhile, when Lucy comes to visit her mother, she noses around Jane's apartment, finding the freezer padlocked for some odd reason.Yeah, that's an understatement, alright.Her daughter thoughtfully begins to leave framed photos of her dead son around the room as morbid mementos to send her old lady back to the squirrel farm from whence she came.If only she knew the horrible truth.The one 'l' Duval vainly tries to impress the object of his affections by whipping up some Campbell's chicken noodle soup.Strangely, her panties remain in place.Soon, the fuck-racket upstairs has him blindly investigating his way around the homestead, seemingly just fractions away from laying his mitts on something utterly grotesque, despite the fact that Jane never entertains any company...In divulging the gross details of the mind-blowing finale, Jane has been keeping Fred's decapitated, decaying domepiece locked in her freezer, taking it out for lengthy, foul make out sessions nightly before double-clicking her mouse, I'm not really spoiling anything here,as you'd pretty much know this within seconds of picking up the Blue Underground dvd, the earlier out-of-print Anchor Bay release, the "Frozen Terror" vhs....Yeah, you see where I'm comin' from, don'tcha.Hit the lights.
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"Rub a dub dub, io ha annegato il mio fratello nella vasca.", mocks Lucy(Veronica Zinny).
Bava used this production as a springboard into more genre fare of varying degrees of effectiveness like A Blade in the Dark(1983), Devilfish(1984), Demons & Demons 2(1985, 1986 respectively), and Delirium(1987), before ultimately growing comfortable in the television medium in the nineties.You'll know immediately if this one sounds like a good fit for your Italian horror sensibilities or not.If you're anything like your humble N over here, you'll probably dig a screening's worth alright.On the scale, it gets propped hollowly upon a bed of ill repute with a rating of two B.W.'s.Worth a look, for sure.
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"No, no, no!I said the headboard was rotten."
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