"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.

"Cannibal Girls"(1973)d/Ivan Reitman

This was an extremely hard movie for me to come by for years, having only the excellent one sheet and trailer as a gauge of its immense genre possibilities.With Ivan Reitman, whose late seventies/early eighties comedy output was second to none, at the helm, and with Eugene Levy, who I grew up laughing at on SCTV on a regular basis, and Andrea Martin, who's strangely dreamy and sexy here(it must be because she's in a horror-comedy)in the cast, how could it fail?I wouldn't know for sure until a bootleg VHS landed in my lap years later; only then did I know the disappointing truth.This was Reitman's second full length feature(he wouldn't take the chair again until his 1979 hit, Meatballs with Bill Murray), made painfully apparent by his choppy editing, pedestrian camerawork, and crypto-script(did one even exist?).Reitman plays the whole thing for laughs rather than screams, and achieves neither for the most part.The majority of gags within range from snickeringly silly to embarrassingly stupid, and Levy and Martin hadn't quite put it together themselves either, though Levy's wardrobe and hairstyle merit an honorable mention at the very least on the All-time Most Outrageous in Film category.There's some fairly satisfying exploitative-level splatter, though it comes with little suspense to compliment it.If the poverty cheese block budget didn't glare through in certain sequences along the way(along with an extremely photogenic boom mic), well, that might have helped a little, too.Blame Canada, I guess.

Hey Match-head, I hear if I pass three of you in the street in Poland, I'll win the state lottery...
A couple spreads out their best make out blanket on a comfy snowbank for to lie down n' make out upon.Only in Canada.A skirt-wearing ginger with a pickaxe moseys outta the woods and bloodily nullifies both of them.The local sheriff, who sounds more than a little like Flatface Frog from the Courageous Cat cartoons(or Edward G. Robinson, for you purists), acknowledges the latest deaths with a familiar apathy.Meanwhile, new couple, Cliff and Gloria(Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin), have an initial weekend of sin in the blustery snow-covered outskirts of nowhere planned, until the car breaks down outside of Farnhamville amidst some forced attempts at humor(Gloria hits the horn instead of turning over the engine, Cliff hits his head on the hood, you know the type).At a nearby motel, the antediluvian proprietor acquaints the young would-be lovers with the local mythos concerning three young girls who lived on the outskirts of town with their mute hunchback, and their unorthodox eating habits.After picking up wayward travellers at the tavern with the promise of good eats and fleshy treats, the girls, cannibals all, would slay the men and procure their meat, as we're about to see in a plebeian flashback involving three stereotypical meals:a parade organizer, a dork in horn-rimmed glasses, and an ice cream man(!).The first gets a good,sharp pair of scissors introduced to his neck, the second gets axed by a titular cannibal girl stripped down to her unmentionables, and the third, handcuffed to a bed and believing he's about to experience some memoir-quality group sex, gets special sauce administered to his body via gravy boat and is eaten alive, screaming, by all three girls like hogs at a trough/hogs at Old Country Buffet(take your pick).

Was the Gene Shalit look really popular in Canada in the early 70's?
Of course, the house still stands, and wouldn't you know it, serves as the town's only gourmet restaurant these days.You can't really blame Cliff and Gloria for wanting to check it out and groove off the anthropophagical vibes there.No, really, yeah you can.At the restaurant, we're introduced to Reverend St. John(Ronald Ulrich), a hippie decked out in a top hat and tails and red satin-lined cape with the subtlety of a Boris Karloff impersonator, who treats the guests to the house specialty(the only menu item,btw)as served by three young ladies(You know, I've got a hunch that those are probably the cannibal girls themselves...) and invites them to stay the evening.He shows them their room where the previous occupant, Aunt Priscilla, died("...poor thing, burned at the stake.Oh well.") then bids them a good night, and his Aunt Priscilla, too.It turns out that St. John is a practitioner of the black arts, who indoctrinated his stable of titular meat eating bitches(and eventually the whole town) into occultish ways, using the consumption of human flesh to obtain magical powers and immortality.Unsuspecting male tourists end up on the menu, while females who are easy on the eyes are given the opportunity to buy into the unholy meat-masticating circle.As you may have guessed(in like fifteen seconds or so), the reverend has ulterior plans for Cliff and Gloria.Will Gloria end up as a main course or as the newest member of St. John's oft nude harem?Will somebody explain how thunderstorms occur in the middle of winter?Could you possibly endure another sexual allusion about meat?All these questions will be answered when you screen "Cannibal Girls" for yourselves.

After a talk from Mr. Furley, Janet and Chrissy reduce their rent by a third.
A warning bell(more like a car horn in my estimation) sounded in the theaters just before a scene of eroticism or terror would begin; the gimmick has been restored to the print in the dvd release, though paying more than the price of a pack of smokes for it would just be dumb.Even dumber than the movie itself.Reitman, whose only other genre credits would comes as producer of both Ilsa the Tigress of Siberia(1977) and Death Weekend(1976), went on to enormous success directing comedy classics like Meatballs(1979), Stripes(1981), Ghost Busters(1984), and even Kindergarten Cop(1990).Andrea Martin would follow up her appearance here with a role in Bob Clark's slasher opus, Black Christmas, the following year, before going on to enjoy a rich career of comedic roles in television and movies,as did her co-star, Eugene Levy.This is simply a movie whose potential was never reached due to time and budgetary restrictions, and with the right director, could be re-envisioned to much greater success.A nominal cult classic worth a look for Reitman completists and 70's exploitation nostalgists only, anything more might leave the viewer with some serious indigestion.Two wops.

Whoever said "Good things come in threes" forgot about the other three good things on display here.

"Raw Meat"(1972)d/Gary Sherman

You'll have to wait for my "Mind the doors!" pun 'til later on in the post(with Doors fans acknowledging and respecting my personal opinion,thanks), since most of you already know it's coming before we start.For years this title remained a rarely seen, admittedly dated little number indeed, until that marvelous new vista in home entertainment(digital versatile disc,natch) made it readily available for the horror-starved masses looking to finally screen c.h.u.d.'s British predecessor for themselves, myself included.What followed is a twisted little dittie with surprising levels of early gore as the U.S. title promises(released as "Death Line" in d.o. Blighty), that occasionally plods along just like its minimalist synth-heavy score as provided by Wil Malone, and examined in-depth by the L.I. Ripper on one of his glorious blogsites.Despite its pacing troubles, the movie offers interesting character studies by long-time cult fave Donald Pleasance as a skeptical-yet-street smart Cockney cozzer with no hatred for the drink, and genre maestro Christopher Lee in an enjoyably smarmy cameo, all directed by American Gary Sherman, whose other work we'll also come back to later in the entry, if that's alright with you lot.Tube filming(for you Underground historians and factual hairsplitters) took place at Aldwych station, which was in a state of disuse at the time, and Holborn, which was still up n' running, despite a disused Museum tube in the movie, mentioned by name.All-in-all, not a bad way to burn an hour and a half for horror fans hoping to catch something relatively unique in both story and tone.The story goes like this...

Cannibalistic British Underground Chappies: One man's cadavers are another man's(Hugh Armstrong) vittles.
After a political suit's attempts at procuring a bit of weathered-looking krumpet in a mostly deserted area of the tube go sour when they haggle over prices(she knees him where lemonade is made), he is suddenly attacked by an unknown assailant, who is interrupted by an incoming train that lets off Alex and Patricia(David Ladd, Sharon Gurney), an American collegiate and his British squeeze, who come to the man's aid, but when they return with a nearby bobby, the bloke's pulled a bloody Houdini, hasn't he?Enter Detective Sargeant Rogers(Norman Rossington) and Inspector Calhoun(Donald Pleasance), the salt-of-the-earth duo responsible for the investigatory procedures that follow the ensuing report, only to be visited by a mean-spirited MI5 agent named Stratton-Villiers(Christopher Lee) who matter-of-factly tells the policemen that their services are no longer needed for this particular case(in more sarcastically brilliant terms).Calhoun tells Stratton-Villiers that he and his partner will continue the investigation despite the agent's words(well, he tells him to fuck off, actually).Though the lawmen seem content to merely harrass the American student and his girlfriend to no end, even though they're the pair who brought the disappearance to light in the first place(what is it with cinematic cops and young people anyway?), the real reason behind the vanishing is much more convoluted and sinister...

Inspector Calhoun(Donald Pleasance)tells Stratton-Villiers(Christopher Lee) to "fuck off".Not very nice at all, is it, now?
The last surviving cannibalistic descendants of a small group of miners subsisting in a sealed off section of the Underground(trapped when a turn of the century mine collapsed upon them and the mining company simply gave up in retrieving any survivors and/or corpses as they went bankrupt) previously content to only eat each other as they grew old and sick, has taken to venturing out into the surrounding subway tunnels in search of the titular life-sustaining meat.One sickly pregnant woman, and one scabrous hulk of a man(Hugh Armstrong), neither of which would classify as "healthy-looking" under the medical scrutiny of many practitioners of such.The man resembles a Led Zeppelin roadie after one seventies acid trip too many, forever shambling after a tour bus that's long since been retired to blocks.Their subterranean digs are peppered with both the decaying remains of family members the man honours by showering gifts pilfered from recent victims upon, and the victims themselves, hung on hooks as morbid future food supplies, surrounded by scavenging rodents, and dimly lit by Victorian era gaslights.Bleech.When the man's vile mate finally expires due to disease(unidentified, but really, just pick one and you'll probably nail it), he takes it upon himself to blag Stephanie to replace her(when he isn't biting the heads off of rats, that is), leaving it up to Alex(who proves to be just as violent-prone as our sore-laden antagonist...who's the real savage,I say!) to pull off an exciting rescue at the finale.Mind the doors, indeed.

A different brand of 'terrifying':Lee playing a squirrelly MI5 agent with an unnerving smile.
Director Sherman would go on to helm the cult classic Dead and Buried in 1981, as well as Vice Squad, Wanted:Dead or Alive with Rutger Hauer, and Poltergeist III.Pleasance moved on to Tales That Witness Madness, The Mutations, and From Beyond the Grave after finishing this one.Christopher Lee?He only followed his cameo up with roles in The Satanic Rites of Dracula and The Wicker Man, while Norm Rossington appeared in the telefilm Frankenstein:The True Story, and later in my favorite tv series of all-time, I, Claudius.David Ladd was a seventies tv staple, while co-star Sharon Gurney disappeared off the radar after this film, despite her volcanically hot chelsea-esque hairdo within.Hugh Armstrong went on to a long career in British television, and an appearance in Don Coscarelli's 1982 sword and sorcery nod, The Beastmaster.Seek it out, give it a chance, and you'll most likely find yourself entertained by the final credits, if not feeling a bit peckish yourselves.Two wops.

"Mind the doors!"(I don't mind them, actually.They're okay, if not slightly overrated and very overplayed.)

"Cannibal"(2006)d/Marian Dora

At the start of the last decade,Armin Meiwes took social networking on the internet to a disturbing new level,when he posted that he was "looking for a well-built 18 to 30 yr old to be slaughtered then consumed" on a site called The Cannibal Cafe,which distinguishes the difference between reality and fantasy in a disclaimer,which upon meeting Bernd Jürgen Brandes,he apparently skipped over somehow.The awful details of what followed have been well-documented in film and music,and tonight,we'll be taking a look at director Marian Dora's version.Now,I've always been fascinated by true crime,and apart from a few understandable instances which I won't go into here,I've always taken pride in my iron stomach.Up until last year,I haven't been physically nauseous from watching a movie in probably twenty years.Well,all that changed once I closed the dvd tray with tonight's entry in it.Dora doesn't flinch in showing the viewer every detail in the disgusting case,and I'd imagine even watching the infamous,tightly guarded two hour video tape the two men made in real life couldn't be much more disgusting than Dora's movie.That being said,I have to elaborate a bit here on the subject matter in question,as it wasn't really any of the gore,as ultra-realistic as it was,that made me sick,but all the explicit gay on display was pretty unsettling(I spared you screenshots,you can thank me later).Do as thou wilt is my creedo,and if that's what stirs your pasta,then have at it,by all means,but I turned away on more than one occasion during the ahem...getting to know each other section of the film.The splatter that follows only heightened that uncomfortable feeling I was overcome by,and by movie's end,I was in pretty bad shape.

What's grosser than gross?This.Period.
A mother reads Hansel and Gretel to a small boy in the brief opening montage,which segues into an adult man(credited as "The Man",and played by Carsten Frank) scouring over books dealing with the subject of cannibalism.Enjoy that dialogue,it'll be the last for something like twenty minutes or more."The Man" meets several people(and even a woman) in attempts to find his holy grail:a submissive victim who's cool with being killed and then devoured.Frustrated,"The Man" posts his secret desires publicly on an internet forum,and receives a response from another man(credited as "The Flesh" and played by Victor Brandl)who honestly wants to be devoured.The two men exchange several sexually charged messages dealing with eating and being eaten before setting up a meeting.Once they meet,there's a whole lot of man-on-man ham-slammin going on."The Man" packs "The Flesh"'s fudge."The Flesh" pushes "The Man"'s stool in for him.Etcetera,etcetera,etcetera.This type of thing goes on forever,until they both collapse exhausted on the floor.I think Liberace would probably think they overdid it with all the gay sex.Finally,"The Flesh" says,"It's time",which is naturally code for "Bite my dick off.",which "The Man" cannot bring himself to do(although he sure tries)."The Flesh" suggests that if he were sleeping,"The Man" might be more readily able to bite his dick off,so he swallows a liberal dose of painkillers,passing out.When he awakens,he finds "The Man" huddled in the corner of the room,naked and crying.Angry that "The Man" has yet to eat his genitals,"The Flesh" demands a ride to the train station,but when the two twisted fucks arrive,he has a change of heart and decides to give the cannibal-in-theory one more chance. Once they return to his house, they both realize that there's no turning back from the inevitable,titular cannibalism.Hey,at least they aren't gonna fuck each other's asses anymore.

"Yeah,officer,I lost my underwear in his thoracic cavity,and I was just digging them out..."
"The Man" then cuts off "The Flesh"'s dick with a knife,and when "The Flesh" is unable to eat his piece raw(!!),"The Man" kindly fries up the whole thing on the stove a la Molto Mario or something while "The Flesh" howls in pain and leaks blood like a kosher killed hog.He feeds his dickless pal his portion,but he's obviously in too much pain to enjoy it(!!!),so he fills the tub with water,and puts his heavily tranquilized meal in,to die.When "The Flesh" doesn't seem to be dying fast enough for "The Man"'s growling stomach(in real life,Meiwes sat reading Star Trek books for upwards of three hours while Brandes,high on painkillers,sleeping pills,and schnapps,moaned away,bleeding to death in the tub),he kisses him goodbye,then stabs him in the neck,which finally does the trick.He strings the corpse up,upside down,drains it of blood,removes the head,peels the skin,cracks open the ribcage,removes all the organs...yeah,you get the idea.He then sits down to a self-prepared meal with "The Flesh"'s head propped up on the other side of the dinner table like some macabre centerpiece from Hell.And YOU thought your fetishes were weird...

Next week on Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares....
As a gross sidenote,Meiwes took 10 months to eat over 20 kg of his butt buddy's meat,storing body parts under pizza boxes in his freezer,and even trying to grind his bones to use as flour.He buried the rest in his yard,and was only caught after fishing for ANOTHER meal on the internet and openly bragging about his previous one.In 2004 he was convicted of manslaughterand given an eight and a half year sentence(because,get this,CANNIBALISM was NOT illegal in Germany at the time),which was later changed to murder after a retrial on prosecutors appeals,earning him a permanent home in the stripey hole,where he now resides as both a member of the Green Party and...are you ready?A vegetarian.I couldn't make this up if I tried,really.A brutal horror movie hiding behind the guise of an art film;I'll probably never watch this fucking thing ever again,but the lone time I sat through it,I was pretty fucking sickened,so,congratulations,Dora,you succeeded in thoroughly disturbing this guy over here(who's seen his fair share of sick shit,fought many a good fight,and slept with many a good woman in my day),which is no easy task,and for that alone,I give your film a Wopsploitation score of:

Remember,a good table centerpiece can pull the theme of your meal together.