"Cannibal Ferox"(1981)d/Umberto Lenzi

After you guys hit the Wop for a best ever record week, I've gotta put some tainted candy and an extra razor blade apple in your treat bags for the effort tonight, kiddies.And what better reward is there, than to cover the granddaddy of grindhouse movies from the Italian potentate of poor taste, Umberto Lenzi.A movie so multitudinously rotten that it embarrassed Johnny Morghen, an actor who had no problem amorously coddling a blow up doll on screen for Lucio Fulci, and known for suffering ultraviolent deaths in genre movies.In tonight's review, also known as "Make Them Die Slowly"(the title I caught it under at the drive in back in the eighties), Lenzi goes easy on Johnny, chopping his hand off, removing his dick with a machete, and extricating his brains after truncating his skull with said blade.Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for animals that appear in front of Lenzi's lens here, as he certainly doesn't shy away from the sadistic cruelty that often befell wildlife in the cannibal subgenre in its heyday.If that sounds too heavy for your karma, you'll probably want to stop reading here and wait for the next review.Also succumbing dilatorily here are Italian genre vets Lorraine De Selle, Zora Kerova, Danilo Mattei, and Robert Kerman, aka/ seventies porn dick, R. Bolla, who seemed to turn up in every one of these pictures back then.Lenzi's screenplay is chock full of marvelously insane dialogue, set to a dated-yet-funky soundtrack provided by Donati and Maglione, while the abundant on-screen splatter is deftly handled by maestro Giannetto De Rossi.The original advertisements boasted of the film's being 'banned in 31 countries', though you'd be hard pressed to find it censored anywhere these days(besides tolerant Britain, of course), let alone being outright banned.Call it what you will, but it definitely rates as a cult classic.Man, I can still remember the queasiness in my stomach from the front seat of my old man's '79 Impala like it was just last night...

After 100 grand of their dope money disappeared, Pigface gets a different type of shot than the one he was looking for.
At the outset, we see a junkie whose quest for horse leads him to the Manhattan apartment of one Mike Logan(Johnny Morghen), only to meet verbal abuse and roughhousing at the hands of two mobsters who Logan has cheated out of a hundred grand("A hundred grand!OUR hundred grand!From OUR dope!") before skipping town.The gangsters issue a message of impending retribution to Logan through "Pigface" that he'll never receive, seeing as how they shoot "Shitface" dead in his tracks before he can ever pass it on.Meanwhile in Paraguay, Rudy and Gloria(Danilo Mattei, Lorraine De Selle) are two siblings planning an excursion with their friend Pat(Zora Kerova) into the green inferno of the Amazon River basin to prove Gloria's theory that cannibalism not only doesn't currently exist, but in fact, has never existed among the primitive tribes; a European myth perpetuated to justify colonization of the region by covetous land barons.After one of the guides chews a phony-looking butterfly on a wire(a bad prop and a bad omen at the same time), a jaywalking iguana causes Rudy to get their jeep stuck in a nearby bog(naturally blowing the engine) forcing them to hoof it through the perilous rain forest.After stumbling across a couple of dead booby trapped savages, the group arbitrarily bumps into two desperate westerners, Mike and Joe, who claim they've been set upon by cannibals.Joe's been shivved by one of the angry primitives, while Mike is blowing through cocaine like Stevie Nicks at Eric Clapton's housewarming party, as he relates the sordid tale of how they ended up in such a predicament after their get-rich scheme of panning for emeralds with a Portuguese guide turned sour and their guide ended up bound to a stake, having his genitals removed and eaten by hungry practitioners of anthropophagy.Looks like man eats man isn't bullshit afterall, is it, Gloria?

"...A hot-pussied little whore, who arrived down here looking for freedom, a victim of Puritanical breeding, seeking release for strange new feelings."
When Gloria goes missing, Rudy stumbles upon a small village of indios where the group is forced to hole up due to Joe's infected wounds, worsening by the minute.Mike shares his nostril candy with the formerly puritanical Pat, and after balling her, suggests that making an indio girl might be a kick she could really groove on.When she refuses to cut the frightened young native, the coke-raging pusher plants some hot lead in her himself.In the throes of a fever, Joe confesses to Rudy and Gloria that Mike's wild yarn about cannibals wasn't exactly accurate, and that Logan killed the Portuguese(really one of the local tribesmen) himself, while zooted on Bolivian marching powder, causing the natives to resort to brutal aggression in retaliation.Rudy and Gloria realize that the indios won't split hairs when it comes to their vengeance, and every white will pay for Logan's drug-fueled misdeeds.Mike and Pat sneak off on their own as the males of the tribe return to find Joe's lifeless corpse and soon splay his innards into a raw feast.Eventually, all of the group is captured and locked in a bamboo cage(that Logan had used earlier to instill fear in the locals) to watch as the tribesmen seperate the drug dealer from his third leg via machete and one of the cannibals pops it into his mouth and chews it like Bubblicious(!).After they cauterize his cock-stump(!!), they move the prisoners to another village where Rudy makes a break for it, hiding in a swampy pool from the hunting party until some ravenous pirahna nibbling his open wounds give him away.One poison dart later, and then there were three.An indio-with-a-heart-of-gold(how cliche'!) tries to help the girls, but Logan digs his way out of the bamboo prison and cuts their escape rope before bounding into the jungle.He's almost able to flag down a plane containing a rescue team, but he's abducted again, and his hand is chopped off for his troubles.The cannibals force Gloria to watch as they suspend Pat in mid-air via tit-hooks(!!) to bleed to death and remove the top of Logan's head using a primitive brain-surgery table, eating his brains afterwards(!!!).Gloria barely manages to escape into the dense undergrowth thanks to the aforementioned kind indio(who eats booby-trap death for his troubles) and is rescued by a pair of trappers.Back in New York, Gloria has written a book called Cannibalism: End of a Myth, effectively covering up all the horrors she'd witnessed.

Johnny Morghen loses his organ.
I had six or seven new horror reviews laid out for you guys, to end Wop-tober with an appropriately horrific bang, but alas, my busy social life(...you know, like people on television always seem to have) seems to have temporarily gotten in the way of my good intent.You know me and my sex, drugs, and rock n' roll.Fret not, kids, I'll work them in sometime during November.As is the case with most entries in the cannibal subgenre, pre-PETA, tonight's review is laden with a lot of unnecessary animal cruelty and death that'll turn off a lot of individuals.From a tech standpoint, Ferox is a pretty rotten movie, as evidenced by the single Wop rating, but it remains a grindhouse legend none-the-less, and one of my favorites at that.The ridiculous dialogue and over-the-top gore'll have you rolling in your seats.Grab the Grindhouse Releasing extra-packed deluxe edition disc.Oh, and Happy Halloween, as Dan O'Herlihy so memorably said back in '83...

Pat(Zora Kerova) has had it up to the tits with cannibals already.

"Spider Baby or, The Maddest Story Ever Told"(1968)d/Jack Hill

"Screams and moans and bats and bones, teenage monsters in haunted homes. The ghost on the stair, a vampire's bite.Better beware, there's a full moon tonight!" as crooned by horror icon Lon Chaney, Jr. during the title sequence of tonight's review is but a mere hint at the lunacy in store for viewers who sit down to this cult classic, as directed by the man responsible for such jazzy numbers as 1966's Blood Bath and Mondo Keyhole, as well as later grindhouse black-taculars like Coffy(1973) and Foxy Brown(1974), the one and only Jack Hill.Shot for just over sixty grand in twelve days at the Smith Estate in Los Angeles four years earlier(the original producer went belly up somewhere along the line), Baby boasts of a stellar cast comprised of a drip-dry Chaney, Jr.(a rarity if you pay any mind to the old stories), Carol Ohmart, soap opera regular Quinn Redeker, bug-eyed comedian Mantan Moreland, and cult fave Sid Haig in an early turn, among others.Don't let the black and white film stock fool you, woprophiles, this one's crazier'n droppin' blotter acid in Manhattan on Halloween with Gary Busey chaperoning over you.For serious.Interestingly enough, the film was 'rediscovered' in recent years, spawning a modest three year tour as a musical(!) whose soundtrack was the last project recorded at the late, great Buck Owens' Bakersfield recording studio.An independent remake of the film was planned in ought-seven, but never seems to have gotten off the drawing board(you know how I feel about remakes in the first place, so yeah, good!).I think I first got turned on to this one as a surprisingly entertaining mid-week shot in the dark back in the VHS rental days, though I definitely frowned upon the keeping of mutant relatives in the cellar.Mine lived directly across from me...Ba dum bump.

Girls out there who play "Spider", give yourselves +2.
Living in a bedraggled estate on the end of town are the three adult progeny of the Merrye family, the sole bloodline cursed with a genetic disorder that causes one to mentally and socially regress rapidly down the evolutionary ladder the older they get, as evidenced by the cellar full of inbred cannibalistic mutants sentenced to darkness and shadows, that the children call aunts, uncles, and cousins.The Merryes make the Addams Family look like the fucking Patridges, is what I'm saying here.There's Virginia(Jill Banner), who's sixteen going on six, nicknamed 'Spider Baby' for her affinity to eat bugs and tie people up like a spider's prey with ropes and slash and stab them repeatedly with two sharpened kitchen knives.Whenever she plays 'spider', some sorry son of a bitch meets his maker.Elizabeth(Beverly Washburn) displays a child-like innocence side-by-side with tartareous brutality while her mute brother Ralph(Sid Haig) uses the dumb waiter for transportation and is a sexually aggressive baldheaded moron(I've heard one or two brawds describe me the same way, no worries).The siblings, who's dead father's remains are kept upstairs in a bedroom(Virginia gives him goodnight kisses!) are looked after by the oafish Bruno(Lon Chaney, Jr.), a chauffer/chaperone who vainly tries to keep their madness to a minimum.One day, Bruno returns from his errands to find the slumped body of a black messenger(Mantan Moreland)suspended in the window, Virginia's latest 'spider' playmate.He chastises the unhinged teen like a toddler in the sandbox before relating the news of the impending arrival of two distant relatives claiming to be the rightful heirs to the Merrye legacy.You know, I'll just bet that some hilariously disturbing hijinks are about to ensue...

Tocar!Tocar!Quien es? Tiny fucked a stump.
Peter(Quinn Redeker) and Emily(Carol Ohmart) arrive at the mansion, with a lawyer(Karl Schanzer) and his assistant(Mary Mitchel) in tow, to assess the property, insistant on staying, despite Bruno's best warnings about the family's dangerous mental illness, convinced the siblings' lunacy is merely an act to drive them away.Shoulda listened to the big goon while you had the chance, folks.After sitting down to a delectable dinner of mushrooms(only the non-poisonous variety, handpicked, of course), spiders, bugs, and grass(!), with the main course provided by Ralph, who killed a local stray cat just for the occasion(!!), Emily does her best to maintain a cool exterior unmarred by the contents of her stomach, while Peter incredibly puts forth compliments on the delicious meal(!!!).Everything really goes to Hades in a handbasin when Bruno leaves the 'kids' to their own devices so that he can run an errand.Really, Bruno?The dead messenger's disembodied ear in a matchbox kept by Spider Baby wasn't screaming "Watch these psychopathic lunatics like a hawk!"?The girls murder the lawyer, dumping his corpse in the cellar to be devoured by their even further deranged relatives, while Emily shows off her figure in a black neglige, which sets off Ralph, who's been peeptomming her, to chase then make shithouse rat-crazy love to her(!), bringing her own case of Merrye's to the surface and causing her to go homicidally nympho in the process.Bruno returns home to find the bloody aftermath with cellar-dwelling relatives running free, and realizing the family's terrible secret will now go public, his control of the siblings forever lost.He sets off some dynamite and blows the entire estate, himself and all crazy Merryes included, to kingdom come, with only Peter managing to escape the blast.As at the outset, he smugly relates his horrible tale to the camera, boasting that the mental illness known as Merrye's Syndrome was never seen again thereafter, though his daughter, who more than resembles Virginia, is seen lovingly admiring a spider in its web.A question mark appears on the end title card.

"It isn't nice to hate." quips the caretaker, Bruno(Lon Chaney, Jr.).
It's pretty rare that a film with a mordant storyline successfully handles it with such humorous delight and twisted flair, but tonight's review is surely one of them.Even the more gruesome moments are executed with an off-camera class, probably adding to the deliria abound in the movie.Chaney, Jr. is genuinely warm and likable as Bruno, giving the best performance of the latter half of his film career, I'd argue.The pixie-esque Jill Banner was tragically killed in a car accident by a drunk driver in 1982 at the tender age of 35 while developing scripts for Marlon Brando.I'm somewhat embarrassed to admit knowing Redeker spent long years portraying Rex Sterling on Young and the Restless, but it is what it is.Ohmart you'll likely remember as Vincent Price's treacherous wife in 'House on Haunted Hill'(1959), but she had a long running career on television, as well, also appearing in 1974's Spectre of Edgar Allan Poe.Haig, long a cult celebrity and familiar antagonistic face in b-movies and television, has been in damn near everything and has no less than five new movies in production at the time of this writing.Well, shit the bed!Spider Baby stands as a cult classic of the ages, and optimum viewing for genre fans as All Hallow's Eve draws ever nearer.On the scale, three solid Wops and a strong recommendation.

Would aaaaaaand...would.Yes.

"Zombi Holocaust"(1980)d/Marino Girolami

We've got a real fucking gem for you, the eagerest of woprophiles, to feast your glassies upon tonight, kids.An Italian exploitative classic and original BBFC-certified 'video nasty' as helmed by Enzo Castellari's dad(!), that mixes two subgenres(cannibals and zombies, though the powdery, Moe Howard-wigged natives do all of the glorious gut-munching here) with often hilarious results.In a mad rush to emulate Fulci's Zombi 2 and Deodato's Cannibal Holocaust all the way to the bank, the film's producers hastily slung together some mind bogglingly uber violent, cheap-looking gore(as provided by Maurizio Trani and Rosario Prestopino), naked thrills(as frequently served up by Alexandra Delli Colli), some identical shooting locations to Fulci's earlier film, and a cast comprised of regular genre names like Ian McCullough, Donald O'Brien, and Sherry Buchanan around a slapdash Fabrizio DeAngelis script(?) and Nico Fidenco score.Two years later, Aquarius Releasing slapped two and a half minutes from an unfinished 1977 anthology project entitled 'Tales That'll Tear Your Heart Out' onto the beginning, re-edited the film for pacing, replaced the score, whipped up a gloriously demented one sheet based on a photo of Salvador Dali(!), and changed the title to the familiar Dr. Butcher, MD, and the rest, as the late, great Chas Balun would say, is chunk-blowin' history.I remember picking up the Paragon VHS at the long gone General Radio outlet in Wilkes-Barre and thinking to myself, "Look at this, this has to be a fucking masterpiece!" as I greedily drank in the screenshot of the split-wigged cannibal on the back of the box while my father coarsely grilled one of the salespeople about a non-existent porno section.We Monteforte boys know how to live, that's for sure.

Apply more chicken gizzards to this patient's midsection, nurse...
After various body parts start disappearing from cadavers and turning up in the hungry gullet of a local immigrant hospital worker, who, upon screeching discovery, makes with an impromptu swan dive out an upper floor window only to break an arm off on the concrete below like the cheap mannekin he was, no doubt, in life.It just so happens that one of the morgue assistants, the oft-nakies Lori(Alexandra Delli Colli) just happens to be an anthropology buff(what are the chances.), and as such, she pinpoints the origin of the late heart-chewin' rascal to be Asian(Molucca, to be precise), and with the crack detective work of Dr. Chandler(Ian McCullough), the duo unravel the mystery of some primitive symbolism found at the anthropophagal crime scenes, which have extended past their own place of employment and into any surrounding hospitals that have unfortunately hired on any Moluccans of late.They enquire about the term 'Kito' to Lori's colleague and top anthropologist, Professor Stafford, who relates that it's not only the name of an island where the mythical cannibal god of the same name existed, but also the residence of a primitive tribe who comprise the 'Sect of Kito' that worships him through blood sacrifices and cannibalism.Lori finds her pad rummaged through and her ceremonial Kito dagger's been ruthlessly ganked.Call the cops? Meh, call the tourism agent.I'm sold, book the flight, baby.Joined by Susan, George(Sherry Buchanan,Peter O'Neil), and a dusty Jeep-driving guide, they track down Dr. Obrero(Donald O'Brien), a world famous surgeon who's apparently content playing doctor for the natives in a jungle Hell, and who assigns the aptly-named Mulotto(Dakar) and four bearers to Chandler's expedition into the green inferno to Kito, at the opposite end of the archipelago.Lori, shagged from the flight, strips down to knickers n' tits for a refreshing shower, unaware she's being spied upon by a powder-pussed cannibal in a Moe Howard wig, who's cruel, primitive, and absolutely unwilling to accept any form of civilization, just outside her window.Cue annoying, dated 80's synth stab.

"You call that an eye gouge, you turkeyneck? Wait'll I get ya in the ring!"
Lori returns from her shower to find a maggot-ridden human head and Kito symbol scrawled in blood under her bedsheets.After finding a well-mown patch of lawn grass in the dense jungle to set up camp in, one of the bearer's screams interrupts the party's campfires that night.The next day, Susan shriekingly stumbles across his mutilated remains in the grass, a Kito symbol spraypainted on a nearby tree.These mugs don't muck about.One of the porters tries to make a break for it, but unwittingly springs a bamboo spear trap on himself, as the approaching cannibals slit his throat, drinking the arterial spray, before gutting him longways and eating his innards raw.That night, Lori's forced to split the wig of a peeping cannibal outside her tent as the last porter takes a fatal bamboo harpoon to the labonza.The next day, the wily flesh-eaters lassoo a screaming Susan with a red satin sash-lariot and carry her off into the bushes.In the melee, George gets fish-gutted against a tree, as hungry natives pluck both his eyes out and eat them.The others are about to suffer the same fate, when an oatmeal-faced zombie with soundstage echoed groans appears and scares off the gut-munching primitives in the nick of time.The three survivors make it to Obrero, who points them to a rubber dinghy that's guarded by another cheap-looking zombie, who Peter de-face-ifies with an outboard motor(!).Afterwards, he and Lori find another zombie wearing Susan's bloody scalp like a toupee.Meanwhile, the scalpless Susan is about to have her jugular vein opened by Obrero, who's been secretly creating an army of mindless zombies by placing the brains of the living into the bodies of the recently dead all the while.It figures, man.When Susan's incessant screams annoy the good doctor, he removes her vocal cords(!!).His mad dreams of playing God are rudely interrupted by the cannibals, who have declared Lori their queen after stripping her naked and painting juvenile hippie flowers all over her and placing her naked ass in a primitive stone spreadagle-contoured fuck table, descending upon the doctor and his zombies in a climactic orgy of bad makeup and cheap ultraviolence as flames engulf his crazed work and credits roll.

Wop's diagnosis:Wind knocked out.
For years I made do with the German Dragon dvd release, which includes a nifty inlay card with meaty collage and 53 movie filmography for Girolami spanning 30 years (layed out over a shot of Delli Colli in the fuck table, mind you), extended/deleted scenes, and a trailer, until I stumbled upon the recent Media Blasters/Shriek Show disc(superior transfer for such a piece of shit, bravo, boys!) for less than what I'd pay for a pack of smokes in Manhattan, at a video clearance outlet.That's really what tonight's movie is, folks, eight bucks worth of Italian exploitative goodness that's sure to please gorehounds and genre nuts alike.If you're going in for substance or quality, you're bound to be highly disappointed.Still, the American one sheet has to be considered one of the best of the fabled era, so give yourself +2 if you've got it framed on the walls of your digs.On the scale, of course, Holocaust is another one Wopper, but when has that ever stopped you from checking it out?Track it down...

Don't worry, sweetheart, it only hurts sliding in the first time...

"Cannibal Campout"(1988)d/Jon McBride, Tom Fisher

Ah, the good old days of shot-on-video slasher movies.You could shoot the genre equivalent of America's Funniest Home Videos (except Tom Bergeron would be fifteen to twenty gallons of stage blood, and the larfs are mostly unintentional) with a cast of non-actors(translation: buddies) and a budget that entails one vhs camcorder and little else, and still find your completed work on a horror shelf next to J.G. Patterson's Dr. Gore and Don Dohler's Nightbeast in some out-of-the-way Mom and Pop video rental store way back when.Whenever things like Boardinghouse(1982) or The Ripper(1985) found their way into my antediluvian top loader, I knew better than to boost my expectancies beyond cheap laughs and nudity, phony gore, and maybe a quotably smelly line of dialogue or two if I was lucky.More often than not, these z-grade cheapies were an insult to viewer intelligence and a shameful embarrassment to every person involved in the production, especially anyone in front of the camera, since not only are you visible to any sorry sprig-frigger who watches the movie, you're mostly likely doing it dressed like an extra on fucking Silver Spoons to boot.
Independent film director Jon McBride, who helmed tonight's review, was just such a visionary cat of sorts.He had four hundred bucks, he had a camcorder, he had wooded Connecticut locations he could guerilla some lame-yet-passable scenes in, and he had friends willing enough to help him out in seeing his project come to fruition.After six months of production, the spoiled fruit of his labours could be found on the shelf at Gateway Video, where I first stumbled upon it, in the days when chicks dressed like Wild Bill Hickok and styled their hair like they'd just been electrocuted.That very night, my glassies were assaulted by electron beams that told a story that went like this...

fragstache(frah*g*stash)n. a moustache of little acclaim.Usually detrimental to the wearer's grill.See:above screencap.
After a witty-ish disclaimer, a Guidette flashdancer(Nancy Sciarra)with a New Yawk accent that's thicker than Kirstey Alley post-feeding frenzy at a Krispy Kreme goes for a jog where she's suddenly brained by an axe-wielding oaf in a pilot's helmet.Jon(McBride himself), Ray(Ray Angelic)(a fat zits/braces kid in a bleached jean jacket with Cro Mags back patch!), and Carrie(Carrie Lindell) discuss the upcoming camping trip to Redston, where a family has recently vanished, leaving an empty blood-splashed station wagon in their stead.With Chris(Chris Granger) and Amy(Amy Chludzinski...all the characters are named after the actors, I get it, I get it) on board, the quartet sings along to some country tune and blow the dust off of a stale 'dead baby' joke as they drive vertiginously towards isolation.Jon finds the narrow dirt road blocked by a pimp era Lincoln Continental, occupied by two noncompliant hayseeds who noise up the campers and pull a knife, signalling a brief skirmish in the woods.Together with their silent sibling, Joe(Joseph Salheb, who also handled the makeup), who wears a pilot helmet, they comprise a family of backwoods cannibals whose food supply has run dangerously low.Rich(Richard Marcus), the gimpy pigeon-toed loudmouth, is only worried about pussy.They harken back to a great hunting experience of yesteryear when they eighty-sixed some hairpig bimbo with a machete as the goober in farmer overalls makes a Krueger-esque wisecrack while he licks the blade.At the campsite, the boys need to leave the girls behind and make a wood run, despite being four feet from a dilapidated cabin.The girls prove there's more than enough wood in both of their performances.Meanwhile, Ray and John plan an epic scare for their friends that night, involving a dimestore hockey mask, while resting back-to-back against the same tree(weirdos).Joe shows up with machete in tow and cleaves John's face with it.Cue: dated synthesizer stab.

How long before we finally see this kid signin' 8" x 10"s at Chiller? Kidding.
Jon and Carrie share a pensive moment alone while, elsewhere, Ray meets his maker in one of the abandoned cabins at the hands of Overalls, and Amy tells Chris she's expecting.At the cannibal abode, Rich spills his guts to a girl's severed head("that retahd gets tuh fuck all the girls...wit his undahweah on!").Carrie wanders off to smoke a butt in one of the cabins only to get machete-diced by Overalls, who ends the scene with another stilted wisecrack as the stage blood spurts everywhere.The three remaining campers split up to find the missing girl when Amy is scooped up by a continuity-free Overalls who's clean as a whistle in the same clothes he bloodied in the previous scene.With the imminent threat of Amy at knifepoint quelling any thoughts of revenge or escape, Jon and Chris are tied up by the other flesheaters.Jon is forced to square off in a continuity-free battle(his hands are tied behind his back, then they aren't, then they are...reminds me of that ol' Donovan tune) of axe v. sledgehammer with the grotesque pilot and after losing, gets pull-gutsed by the other two carnivores.Rich gives Chris a Columbian necktie and plants an axe in his grill, with a wisecrack to follow.Amy manages to break loose, wounding Rich, before running off into the forest with Joe chasing after.She de-gas masks him, revealing a deformed facepiece(saw that coming.)underneath, but his bros end her uprising, pull-gutsing her, too, for good measure.We see our cannibal killers again as colorful fall leaves blow off the surrounding trees, and Rich complains about hunger pains and their mother's disdain for fast food("The preservatives and additives'll kill you!"), with their hunt bringing them too far from their smokehouse to return for a meal.Overalls has a sudden epiphany and turns towards Rich while drawing his knife.Rich probably shoulda kept his big mouth shut.

In the yap, not on the grill, Cap'n Shloppy.
McBride has starred in a commercial for Fanta orange drink(!), and directed himself eleven direct-to-video titles to date, starting with the notoriously bad-good Woodchipper Massacre(1988),and culminating in everything from Gorilla Warfare:Battle of the Apes(2002) to Black Mass(2005), in between, and though I can't claim to have seen all of his movies, it's a pretty safe bet he's no James Cameron waiting for that tremendous cinematic break that sets him for life, though I honestly doubt that was very high on his list of goals in the first place.He's reached an international market during a highly romanticized era in genre films, and probably gets recognized for it from a small group of obscure film buffs not entirely unlike your humble N over here, and cheap cheeziness aside, that probably does him just fine in the end.On the scale, Campout merits an obvious one wop and is worth a look for nostalgic horror fans wanting to reminisce about the videotape era.Afterall, as Rich would say, it's a small, small, smaaaaaall, small, small, SMALL, smaaaaalll world....

Rich plays a friendly game of "Where's Waldo's epiglottis?" with Chris(Chris Granger).

"Cannibal Holocaust"(1979)d/Ruggero Deodato

As we take a day to honour our mothers,here at the Wop we'll be examining the mother of all exploitation films.You know you've been waiting for it.Some of you may have even been covering yourselves in dried mud,chasing your girlfriends around the apartment with foot long stone dildos in anticipation.Whatever stirs your mostaccioli,say I.Ruggero Deodato,one of my favorite directors bar none,first set foot in cannibal territory with his effort,Ultimo Mondo Cannibale(1977),but it wasn't until this entry,a tribute to the cinema verite' styles of fellow Italian documentary filmmakers Prospero,Jacopetti,and Antonio Climati,that he blew the lid off the sub-genre so effectively that he was forced to reveal his special effects in Italian and British courts proving that he wasn't guilty of murder(!),that his actors hadn't died(only their careers had!),losing his film license for three years anyway due to the real animal cruelty rampant in tonight's film.It's been cut and re-cut,banned and unbanned all over the world to date,and thirty years later,hasn't lost one iota of unapologetic kick-you-in-the-yambag potency,to the tune of over two hundred million rumored box-office dollars worth.
So what exactly do we have before us on the big screen once we've cut through the hype and controversy?A relentless,savage,unflinching look at the media and society as a whole.Though he offers no answers,Deodato asks some interesting questions.Are we as civilized as we think we are?Is "civilization" all that it's cracked up to be?Don't look at me for answers either,I'm a half-step away from a Neanderthal most of the time,especially when I'm running low on cigarettes.

"Run to the hiiiiiilllsssss!"sings Mvogo,an Iron Maiden fan from way back.
Professor Monroe(Kerman),an NYU anthropologist,leads a rescue team into the heart of the Green Inferno of the Amazon to find a documentary film crew who has disappeared without a trace.With the help of two guides and a Yacumo indian captured by a military raid,the prof first stumbles upon a Yacumo male using a stone dildo to rape his galpal on the muddy shore,then bludgeoning her to death with it,as punishment for adultery.Afterwards,they negotiate the release of their dusky prisoner in return for safe passage to the Yacumo village.Monroe senses that the prior film crew really effed things up,due to the tension among the natives,but Miguel,one of the guides,gives the savages a shiny switchblade to play with,before the men search further into the treacherous jungle.The next day they encounter two warring tribes of cannibals,the Shamatari(tree people) and Yanomamo(swamp people),the latter of which they save from certain gut-chomping rainforest death,and are invited back to the Yanomamo village out of gratitude.Monroe bathes in the river with several Yanomamo women,who snicker at and yank on his Euro-pecker,after which they take him to a makeshift shrine consisting of film cannisters and the bones of the film crew his party had been searching for.After showing the head savage how to capture himself wailing on a tape recorder,the tribesman trades him the reels of film the ill-fated crew had with them when they became so much prosciutto-in-khakis.

"Dear diary...I think Mbete hates my hat,and I'm still carrying around entrails?Is that what they call 'em?Yeah,entrails."
Back in New York,tv execs tell Monroe they'd like him to host the public airing of the footage the team captured before losing their lives.He agrees,but only after screening the film himself.They show the professor some of Alan Yates'(Carl Gabriel Yorke) earlier documentary work,The Last Road to Hell,stating matter-of-factly,that most of the executions on the screen were staged by the director himself,for more sensational results.The first reel documents the team's descent into the jungle,where one of the guides is bitten by a poisonous snake and dies.As they encounter a gaggle of Yacumo,Jack(Perry Pirkanen) shoots one in the leg so the crew can follow him without difficulty,raising protests from Monroe concerning their unorthodox methodology as the projectionist changes reels.As the second reel begins,the filmmakers force an entire village of Yacumo into their huts and burn them alive on camera,in order to stage a scene for their "documentary".He then sees native women performing a primitive abortion on a young tribeswoman,stuffing the foetus in the mud afterwards.The television execs decide to show the footage publicly,raising more protest from the professor,who beseeches them to watch the final two reels before making their decision.They witness the males gangraping a young Yanomamo girl,as script girl Faye(Francesca Ciardi) tries vainly to stop them.They kill the girl off-camera,impaling her ass-to-mouth on a wooden post,blaming it on the tribal elders as "an obscure sexual rite" on-camera afterwards.The Yanomamo then attack the film crew as revenge for the young girl,and when Jack gets impaled by an incoming spear,Alan shoots his friend so that the remaining three can escape while the cannibals castrate,eviscerate,fry up on an open fire,and finally chew on the bastard.The Indios then capture Faye,gangraping her in mid-air before beheading her,as Mark(Luca Barbareschi) films the girl's horrible come-uppance.The tribe finally locates the remaining two filmmakers as the camera captures Alan's final bloody death stare as the reel ends.Dumbfoundedly slienced,the execs wisely change their minds about airing the footage.

I know chicks who could shimmy down this post and back up again in time for lunch without batting an eyelash.
Deodato,who got his chops in the director's chair on Django as an assistant, would go on to direct genre staples such as "La Casa Sperduto nel Parco" with David Hess and Giovanni Lombardo Radice,and "Cut and Run" with Michael "Hills Have Eyes" Berryman,before scoring himself a cannibalistic cameo in Eli Roth's "Hostel:Part Two" in 2007.The maestro himself and most of the original cast make regular rounds in horror conventions,much to the delight of fanboys everywhere.Most recently,he's begun pre-production on "Cannibals",originally announced as a sequel to his masterpiece,later downgraded to "companion piece".Either way,I'll be eager to see it.I can't in good conscience recommend this amazing film to everybody,as the brutality included therein will no doubt overwhelm those of the weaker constitution,but for those who possess a love for over-the-top cinematic violence and have the cast-iron stomachs to back it up,this is an absolute must-see.The highest possible rating is well-earned in this case.Viva Deodato!

After a simple,yet primitive medical procedure,Jack Anders was finally a Justin Bieber fan.

"Frontiere(s)"(2007)d/Xavier Gens

It's certainly hotter than Bob Guccione's cut of Caligola(1979) out there this past couple of days.Perfect weather to plop your ass on the nearest couch and catch up on the latest horror movies in the comfort of an air conditioner.The parlour downstairs has no such air conditioner,so the suffering I'm feeling elsewhere in the house is just as apparent in the room where I screen movies.Insert the appropriate joke about "hot,sticky,and sweaty" here if you like,but you bastards oughta know the lengths I go to get new reviews up for you on a regular basis.I'm sweatin' like John Wayne Gacy in Boys Town over here.But...I won't let the humidity hold back today's horror hit for the ghoulish gourmets out there who hunger for all things homicidal.Let's get to it.
In the resurgence of horror recently,one nation that has proved a force to be reckoned with HAS to be France.Just when you thought the French were too busy lining up to see Jerry Lewis in Hardly Working to check out Lucio Fulci or Tobe Hooper back in the eighties,the Blue Blanc Rougers have churned out some top notch horror of late,proving they were indeed paying attention.For those of you who wondered what it would be like if you took Texas Chainsaw Massacre,set it in France,and made the killers a family of nazi cannibals,ponder the thought no further.Xavier Gens has already fleshed out your idea with his nasty little film.

You won't be throwing any petrol bombs with that hand again,will you,pinko?
Yasmine(Karina Testa)has a lot of problems.She's pregnant from her ex-boyfriend Alex(Aurélien Wiik),who along with his two pals Tom and Farid have been peacefully protesting in the streets since an unnamed ultra right wing candidate has been elected president.And by peacefully protesting,I mean petrol bombing,shootouts with the riot police,and generally making a nuisance of themselves.Is it any wonder that their left wing hijinks have gotten Yas' bro Sami bleeding out from a fatal bullet to the labonza?Alex and Yas try dumping Sami off at the hospital,planning to meet up with Tom and Farid on the frontier afterwards,but Sami shuffles off his mortal coil on a gurney while alerted constabulary chase Yas out the automatic doors.Meanwhile in the other car,jibbers are rolled and passed,virginity jokes are made,and before too long, the two socialist stoners find themselves at a hostel on a desolate country road.Didn't you guys ever see the OTHER movie about hostels??It seems the place is run by a couple of broads and a creepy muscular bald guy named Goetz who combine efforts to forcefeed their invalid mother(the slop pours out of a tube jutting out of her neck!).After small talk,casual sex,and the aforementioned gross-out dinner,our anti-heroes are questioned at gunpoint by Karl,who not only doesn't seem to like the left wing rioting going on in the city or "little ragheads" like Farid,but he's also a crack shot with a rifle,blowing Tom's hand to ribbons after Goetz swings for the fences on his chin and ribcage with a lead pipe.The two escape in their car with Goetz in pursuit,who runs the boys off the road and over an embankment near a mine opening.

If I had a Deutschmark for everytime this guy says,"Meine Ehre heißt Treue!",I could fund my own eugenics program.
When Alex and Yas show up at the hostel,they're driven by the girls to a sinister looking cottage,where we're introduced to the rest of the family,led by exiled SS officer Von Geisler(Jean-Pierre Jorris),who lectures his children in racial purity when he's not dining on untermenschen or feeding them to deformed,retarded offspring of young girls he's kidnapped for the very purpose of preserving the white race.Much man-munching,head-splattering,tablesaw bissecting,jugular chomping,neck axing,carcass gutting,and heiling hijinks ensue from this point.Do the nazis enforce their iron will upon the hapless fugitives?Do the petrol-chucking pukes manage to survive the Aryan onslaught,and if so,will they ever call a law enforcement official a "fascist pig" after facing horrible death at the hands of the REAL thing,complete with a pen full of pigs(insert rimshot)?I'll let you guys check it out for yourself to answer these and other nagging questions that may arise...you know,like the new dawn over a glorious new fatherland!

Yeah. To your domepiece.
For all the mind-blowing gore and French nazi-cannibal creeps abound in this shocker,director Gens very nearly blows it from atop a decidedly leftist soapbox,the size of which you'd only expect to encounter in a Hollywood movie these days.No matter how grotesque he makes his antagonists,between their pure blood theories,human feasts,and graphic murder streaks,his protagonists are still out in the street,rioting and causing destruction,pistol whipping cops,and being domestic terrorists.I wanted to kill the lot of them myself five minutes into the movie,so sympathy was something they weren't gonna get from little ole me.For me,I'm exhausted with the whole concept of inbred cannibal families by now,and I could go a few years without seeing more diabolical nazis,too.Don't forget to demonize scumbags like Stalin,Castro,and Guevara on the big screen once in awhile.Didn't they kill enough people for filmmakers' tastes or lack thereof?Luckily for Gens,there's enough brutality,tension,and red stuff from beginning to end here to keep the finished product satisfying.Politics aside,this one is thoroughly enjoyable,and merits a scale rating of:

She's trashed after bashing the fash,but in the government Yas(Karina Testa) has met her match.