Showing posts with label movie reviews. Show all posts
Showing posts with label movie reviews. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 1, 2016

Angillas, there's something funny going on around here...

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              We're kicking off a month of reviews of films that take the path less trampled, of course, I'm talking about the realm of the Japanese Kaiju movie, of which there happen to be several sub-genres to choose from, like kaiju eiga, kaijin, and daikaiju, translated roughly as monster movies, humanoid monsters, and giant monsters, respectively. I set out to focus on the latter, most recognizable category of giant monsters, as handled by studios like Toho and Daiei with their long running Godzilla and Gamera franchises, though I'm not ruling out any movies that fall solely into the former two categories. Why pigeonhole yerself, sez I. Regardless,  eager woprophiles can expect to see lots of intricate miniatures being tail-swiped and stomped over in slow motion by Japanese gents in rubber suits, stock footage of panicked citizens evacuating cities, ineffective military units being melted by hateful kaiju death-breath, self-aware Ultra-esque robots tag teaming with giant radioactive lizards to square off against giant beetles and space bird-cyborgs with belly buttons like a table saw, and much more all June long.

              My love for such movies dates back to the Little Wop days of yesteryear, when it wasn't uncommon for my old man to pile us into his '67 Chevy Impala on the weekend and drive us to one of the plethora of  area drive-in theaters that once proliferated this valley in the early to mid-1970s, for a drive-in double bill of destruction that usually featured a Godzilla movie or one of the Sinbad series that featured the legendary stop motion animation creature effects of wizard Ray Harryhausen. As you could imagine, I wouldn't trade my memories growing up for a canister of G-cells or the keys to my own Maser tank. Anyway, we haven't covered too many of these movies to date, so we've got a long list to choose from this month. I think we'll kick off the festivities with a little Daiei number you might find interesting. Remember, Jet Jaguar always has right of way.  Let's make it!

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A retro- Kaiju (14) eye view from the top of Big Wop. You ants... look just like ants down there. Skreeeeeooonkk!!!

Tuesday, April 12, 2016

Random Thoughts from B.W.


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Just a heads up here, O Woprophiles, as it's been a minute since we last examined any films. I really haven't sat down to watch too much lately, and the way I see it, I'll probably hold off until I've done so, again. Shouldn't be too long, though, so fret not, little droogs. Maybe I'll tackle a few more favorite lists if anybody's got a request. In the meantime, here's a few random thoughts I've had recently that I'll share with you.

When I sat down to add my thoughts on the latest wave of announced horror remakes, I caught myself slipping into old, familiar, snobbish territory, sharpening my tongue in anticipation of the outrageous elitist shit that would surely flow off of it once more. And I'm not even promising that it won't in the end. Knowing me, it probably will.  Honestly though, let the remakes get made, all of them, every last one. Even when your expectations going in are set lower than an earthworm's icing bag, there's always the chance that somebody gets it right and produces this generation's equivalent of Carpenter's Thing. Unlikely, as the pungent stench of  recent Halloween, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Black Christmas, The Fog, Wicker Man, Wolfman, and countless other failed genre remakes will confirm, but even if a hundred more rotten movies are produced, with profit solely in mind and no thought of art or creativity, it's still a hundred more rotten movies we can take the piss out of right here.

Speaking of rotten, I'll probably skip Jeepers Creepers 3 altogether unless they give director Victor Salva the chop. Some people don't seem to mind that the guy is a convicted nonce, citing other film buffs' love for Roman Polanski, another notorious kiddie fiddler,  as reason enough to be excited for the upcoming movie, allegedly in pre-production at the time of this writing. Hell, Francis Ford Coppola is on the list of producers at this point. To each his own. Personally, I pass on both of their collective bodies of cinematic work if at all possible, but I'm only judge and jury over my own choices, nobody else's. Do what thou wilt.

The original Ghostbusters, which I went to see in the theaters upon release, was fucking stupid. Switching out the males in the lead roles for women won't make this new re-imagining any less stupid. No patriarchy, no male chauvinism, no sexism or institutionalized misogyny, the whole idea is just fucking insulting and ridiculous to begin with. The new trailer confirms my opinion.

I refuse to watch tv shows like Game of Thrones or Walking Dead (I caught the first season, it was good, and I left it at that, as fucking sick and tired of zombies as I was, even then). I regularly watch episodes from my numerous made-for-tv horror anthology box sets, and I try to catch a few episodes of Law and Order: SVU during the Saturday marathons on Antenna TV, as that show happens to be pretty cool. TV-wise, that's about it. Emilia Clarke is a pulse-raiser, to be sure, but I can't deal with the Ren Faire-level dialog at this point in my life, I just can't.

I'll confess to being a console peasant here. Picked up Mortal Kombat XL for my PS4 a few weeks ago, too. The draw of playing as Leatherface or the Xenomorph from Alien, or even Jason Voorhees, well, that's irresistible to a guy like me, who helped Yar get his Revenge all those years ago. I go back like a La-Z-Boy recliner, that's right. My gaming currently fluctuates from mild outbreaks to rabid marathons during creative droughts, and lately I've been immensely enjoying Godzilla, Witcher 3, Saints Row IV, GTA Online, and Madden '16 on the current gen system.

See you soon,
-Wop

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You need to treat yourself like number one, do you need to be reminded?

Thursday, October 15, 2015

Back, like the intertransversarii muscle...


       Cue your yellowed cassette of Black Francis und gang that you picked up from Vintage Vinyl after a successful weekend of card sharkin' the local so-and-so's outta their beer and spare change back in the eighties, 'cuz here comes your man (again). Personally, I've been playing the fuck outta some vintage British psych outfit,  Mandrake Paddle Steamer lately, but that's just where my head is at these days, maaaan. I go where it takes me,  at forty-six. That's right, forty-six, like the Year of the Consulship of Asiaticus and Silanus. Took the words right outta yer mouths again, didn't I?

       Anyway, it seems every time I'm ready to stop reviewing movies over here for you guys and move on to greener pastures, I end up catching slack from more than a few of you for such unthinkable thoughts. So here we are again. I've watched more than enough new and old stuff to keep you occupied, some films more notable than others, but I'll probably cover 'em all, in my own inimitable way, of course, before my next desktop's sudden fatal heart attack (I'd never attempt to lay out a site like this on anything less, like those newfangled tablets and such that you beard-kids like to play around on), along with some top ten lists, and whatever else I happen to dream up, as per usual. Within the next week or so, my dynamic new audio podcast, Project Bedlam, will also be publishing it's first episode, and there's at least one (probably two) YouTube channels in the works for mid-November. I'll give your mothers a moment to collect themselves and stop hyperventilating.


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"How you makin' out, (insert-your-mom's-name-here)?"


Thursday, February 27, 2014

Year Eight, or The Triumphant Return of Your Mother's Amazing Technicolor Dreamboat

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Hel-lo, ladies...remember me? From the discotheque.

Just a head's up to all my patient little woprophiles grooving out on life while I've been otherwise occupied, cursing another foul sow of an East Coast winter wreaking havok on my arthritic middle-aged joints, and sorting my funking life out while planning my course of global assault (once the weather breaks, Gods, I'm older than that empty Quaalude script you've got nostalgically tucked away in an attic trunk next to a big box beta copy of New Wave Hookers), which includes lots of new genre reviews by your main man here at one of  your favorite way stations of exploitation for the past eight years running. Those of you that have been reading all along should know all too well by now of my propensity to go dormant for several months at a time, to recharge mein batteries, refresh the perspective, screen some new stuff, and focus on my usual inimitable brand of pagan balls-out decadence that leaves mothers worldwide a sopping wet, trembling mass of spent sexual energy. I assure you, I've done all of these things in our time away from each other, and will continue to do so as long as it's sexy to me. And it's all still REAL sexy to me, so break that up, pack it into the glass slider, and put some fire to it, motherfuckers. Wopspl oi!oi!oi!-muthafuckin'-tation. Misogynist black gloved killers, helpless pillow-chested knife-cushions, seventies crime drama, groovy drug-soaked sex orgies and ritualistic sacrifice, ecological terrors and monstrosities, you name it (as long as it's not named Freddy Krueger, haha), we've got some for 'yer. Year eight kicks off...right now.

Wednesday, June 19, 2013

"Willie Dynamite" (1974) d/ Gilbert Moses

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Pimpy day

keepin the johns well-laid

On my way to where the macks are sweet

Can you tell me how to get, how to get to

Willie Dynamite's street?

...Yeah, sorry, I couldn't resist.

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Quit eyein' up the fabric, Henson...you ain't makin' muppets out the muthafucka!
Out of all the New York pimps, Willie Dynamite (Orman) is number two, though if one gauged a pimp's mackaframalama by the loud threads he wears or the chromed down purple Caddy he drives, then Willie D. is a pimp among pimples. Motherfucker's clothes are so loud, if you spend too much time looking at one of his outrageous get up's, you'll get a p.s.h.(permanent shift of hearing, can you dig it?). With the pigs comin' down hard on the city's players, a mackin' committee convenes over the heavy situation where the pimpin' King and Willie's main rival, Bell (Roger Robinson), suggests the flesh peddlers all share turf to lessen the economic blow, but Dynamite chooses to face the heat directly, pimpadocious cat that he no doubt sho' nuff do be.  As the old saying goes, pimpin' ain't easy, and Willie learns first hand the truth behind such a sentiment when his Caddy gets towed, Pashen (Joyce Walker), his afro-wigged trick, gets pinched, and to make matters worse, Cora (Diana Sands), the local social do-goodnik, lays a heavy moral trip on our trick-slappin' daddy, who tells her he'd rather rape a watermelon (!!) than her self-righteous ass.

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Only five of these tricks is Oscar's, the other's up in this bitch for his pet worm.
Things go from bad to "You gotta be shittin' me, Jack!" for Willie, as his whole stable of bitches get collared and herded into a box truck. Save the paddy wagon for those two bit hamburger pimps, baby. With the D on the ropes, Bell tries putting the mackin' squeeze on him, and ends up naked in the Bronx (talk about revolting developments...) for his efforts. Despite his best attempts, karma puts it's good foot straight up Willie's polyester-clad ass sideways, anyway in the end. When Willie's top money earner, Honey (Norma Donaldson) tries to muscle some of Bell's girls off of Willie's turf, she gets a neck-mouth for her troubles, and Cora gets all of D's bank accounts frozen like an old cat's stroke-ridden grill. After the local detectives chase Willie all over the Bronx (firing their weapons indiscriminately, mind you) and his bitches get arrested again, with Pashen taking a natural prison ass whooping, some of Bell's homeboys beat the shit out of the luckless player, who gets arrested himself afterwards! Finally, after his heartbroken moms keels over dead at his arraignment (!!!) and he watches a tow truck remove his pimped out set of wheels, he briefly joins in on some neighborhood kids' football toss, and walks off towards a new, less stressful future.

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"Why you escalatin' the price of cognac on a brothah, Mr. Hooper?"
Once you've exhausted all the Sesame Street and wardrobe jokes you could possibly make about tonight's effort (don't look at me, man,  I NEVER run outta cornball jokes. They say some of the things I write should end up as dialog in movies, but they're wrong, as anyone with half a mind could tell you: It all should. Haha!), you'll end up with a fairly gripping urban drama, with little if any glorification of the prostitution/pimping biz to be found within. In fact, after you're finished screening Willie, you might come to realize you didn't just watch the run of the mill 70's blaxploitation flick, and see it for the highly watchable downer it really is, well deserving of three big ones. Recommended.

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When Willie (Roscoe Orman) ain't  pimpin', he doubles as a baton in a marchin' band, dig?
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Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Evil Dead(2013)

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You’d have to think the vast majority of naysayers vs. Uruguayan newcomer Fede Alvarez’s wincingly gruesome spin on the low budget 1981 Raimi cult classic are frustrated fanboys of “The Chin” who didn’t stick around past the credits for his tidy cameo,  or perhaps the ultra-brutal tongue-bifurcating,  self-amputations by electric carving knife, and close ups of syringe needles being pulled out of eye sockets played mostly straight was too close to the spirit of the original ( to which there are a lot of subtle tributes within ) for some, and not close enough to the Stooge-esque slapstick Raimi turned to in the subsequent sequels. I thought it was a pretty respectable success on most levels,  with some genuine moments of eerie atmosphere and harrowing doom purveyed by an able cast and led by a stand out performance by Jane Levy. Gorehounds should also be at full mast at the sheer volume of spilled blood here, rivaling even Peter Jackson’s splattery zomedy, Dead Alive(1992). Behind all the blood-letting is an admirably loathsome display of practical special effects, the likes, I’m pretty sure the major releases haven’t seen in ages, executed with a hint of well-paced comedy in the form of Mercedes McCambridge-flavored demonic profanity, and who doesn’t enjoy that, I ask you. All-in-all, an enjoyable ride for horror fans to embark upon, for sure, considering the number of recent genre remakes that bite the bag.  Keep remaking horror movies like this, and you may be onto something, Hollywood. Three WOPS

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“We are sooo splitting up, tongue!”

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Encomium: 2007-2013

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"Ya looka da goody, Stefano!"-David A. Hess, actor/director/singer/songwriter 

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"Wopsploitation is the word. Stefano Monteforte is the new grand master of review. Wopsploitation-the new communication. Insightful, in-depth, humorous and original."John Smith, lead vocalist of The Underground Saints

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"Beedubelhue covers quite a lot of territory in the wild world of cinema, with an emphasis on exploitation that ranges from kung-fu movies to Jodorowsky's Santa Sangre.To an extent, he reminds me of me, so if you agree with me that there's often a lot of value in exploitation cinema, Wopsploitation is a valuable reference to what's out there."Samuel Wilson, of "Mondo 70 : a wild world of cinema" blog 

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"Probably the funniest blogger I've ever read.Get someone to post bail and come back Wop!"FEARFINDER, of FEARFINDER blog 




Tuesday, June 26, 2012

"The White Buffalo"(1977)d/J. Lee Thompson

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Tonight's entry is respectfully dedicated to Rikard,a bro with similar appreciation for the tits items in life.I'm finally getting around to this one well over a year later?Better late than never, haha.When I got dragged to see this one by my old man, a Bronson freak of great reknown the world over, I was mainly interested in seeing the titular pale bison trampling cowboys and indians alike under vengeful hooves.I didn't groove on Charlie's distinctive monotone action vibe 'til I hit double digits.For a skinny little Italian kid with a penchant for monstruous creature features like I was,producer Dino De Laurentiis' mid to late seventies stretch of bombastic animals gone awry movies was the emotional equivalent of missing Thursday and Friday from school with a fever,getting couch-based TLC from the em and pee,new toys,Nugent lps,and horror movie marathons(even though I just may have been technically healthy enough Thursday night for school on Friday,I may or may not have embellished the illness' seriousness for a few hours the next morning just to add on to the upcoming weekend.Parlaying sickness into accrued kid wealth and prolonged "me" time at age eight.And to think some skeptics have doubted my genius...).Just give me some sort of pissed off animal of significant size on a human-hating hullabaloo,and I'd eat it up with a fork,no questions asked.Tonight's entry was no different,at the time.
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If there's one thing Bill Hickok(Charles Bronson) hates more than the top bunk, it's hard-charging mechanical buffalo puppets that haunt his dreams.
We meet Wild Bill Hickok(Charles Bronson) roused from the middle of his latest nightmare with guns a-blazin' towards a white bison of mythical proportions that frequently tramples through the legendary gunslinger's subconscious with the discretion of a diesel train.He's powerful opposed to such things, see, and ruinin' a feller's dreams like 'et is fixin' to get blasted, round these parts.Hickokski tracks the beast, pairing up with a cantankerous old geezer(Jack Warden) while pit stopped in a one cow town, while elsewhere, Crazy Horse(Will Sampson), the Indian, not the forty-ouncer, is having very real quandary of his own with the albino instigator, having selfishly trampled the Chief's entire village and murdered his own child just for the eff of it.Forced to repair his wounded pride and restore his tribal stature, Horse must hunt the animal himself, or forever be known as 'The Worm' to his peers, the first nation equivalent of being called a "Shirley", I'd wager.
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When he's not trampling Hickok's dreams and destroying native villages under vengeful hooves, the white buffalo also enjoys long, impressionistic gallops in the snow and the music of  Lobo.
 When the men inevitably meet, they communicate through crazy sign language, despite speaking perfect English to each other at the same time, mind you, and after saving each other's lives in ambushes, respectively, they declare themselves 'blood brothers', even though both men are blindly determined to be the one to finally bag the achromatic fucker, singlehandedly.Hickok even turns down some choice western-style trim from the obligatory hooker with a heart o'gold(Kim Novak, in one of her final roles) while sharing a bed with her(!).Talk about dedication to the cause, baby.Stuart Whitman, Slim Pickens, and John Carradine all make their contrived genre cameos, while Clint Walker does a good job in a rare villainous turn.Though the beast is seemingly immortal, and powerful enough to barrel through mountainous snow and rock walls, the unlikely duo eventually fell it, with Crazy Horse riding atop and skinning it with a knife like a feathered Ahab of the West; the shabby plastic snow and less-than-believable sets pretty much serving as a final resting place, if not for the Hollywood western(Heaven's Gate would finish the job a few years later), then definitely for the horror/western/adventure.
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Nevermind your healthy skepticism of my white skin.Lead me to your peyote, More-Ornate-Than-Wolves(Will Sampson).
Bronson was born Charles Buchinsky in the coal region of the Allegheny's in Pennsylvania to Polish and Lithuanian parents, changing his name to 'Bronson' during the McCarthy hearings because he thought his real name sounded 'too Russian'(!).Buffalo was his last picture for UA, a box-office dud that really signalled the end of his real creative ambitions in film, though he'd again work with director J. Lee Thompson on typical Bronson-fare titles like 10 To Midnight(1983) and The Evil That Men Do(1984), staying busy right up to his last feature, Death Wish V:The Face of Death(1994), before succumbing at the age of 81 in 2003.A real favorite of mine since my teens, Bronson's contribution to film, and the action genre in particular, is immeasurable, and really, he's great here as Hickok, a performance that's been brought to light since the film's recent re-evaluation by movie fans everywhere.On the scale, Buffalo earns two Wops, a very watchable exercise in exploitation.Check it out.
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With the Great White Buffalo, they gonna make a final stand in the new, magic land.
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Sunday, March 25, 2012

"Arnold"(1973)d/Georg Fenady

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One thing people aren't likely to reminisce about when pondering the late Bing Crosby's storied life and career, is much of his Bing Crosby Productions company's output in the seventies, of which tonight's review is a lesser specimen, no doubt.I vaguely remember the movie's original release, thanks to some tv spots that featured eyes behind paintings that creeped out my three or four year old ass at the time, but negative reviews and word of mouth sent the release into relative obscurity immediately afterwards.It wasn't until a video store clearance sale years later that it'd reappear on my radar in the form of a Lightning Video vhs copy, ironically the last official release of the film in any format; the same videotape I'd wisely back up to dvd with all the packaging bells and whistles, stickler for detail I, no doubt, am.Probably more effort than the film, a weird and mostly unfunny ham-off between familiar genre faces like Roddy McDowall, Victor Buono, and Stella Stevens, upon a gothic studio set, was really worth the more I think about it.Still, it's not altogether without merit, so long as by 'merit' you don't mean 'M.A.S.H.'s Jamie Farr masquerading as a badly made up Hindu with an eye patch', which, by the way, this movie just happens to have covered, thankyouverymuch.That being said, I can't see anybody going out of their way to get a new release for the film, a la certain moustacchioed gents I know with an affinity for 3D spaghetti westerns, but it may appease certain cinephiles enough to give it an hour and a half while Wednesday night-surfing Google Video, where it currently rests, undisturbed, to this very day.
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Arnold(Norman Stuart) seems to have gone all stiff at the thought of Robert(Roddy McDowall) gaffling his inheritance.
The film begins with an English caretaker and constable looking on as the funeral procession of local tycoon Lord Arnold Dwellyn(Norman Stuart) as the proceedings abruptly change to a wedding ceremony between the recently deceased and a buxom young thang named Karen(Stella Stevens)(!), much to the dismay of the congregated wedding party, comprised of Arnold's younger brother Robert(Roddy McDowall), his widow, Lady Jocelyn(Shani Wallis), his cousin Douglas Whitehead(Patric Knowles), his doting sister Hester(Elsa Lanchester), Whitehead's law partner, Evans(Farley Granger), and his mysterious Hindu(not really) manservant, Dybbi(Jamie Farr).Constable Hooke(Bernard Fox) decides to sneak a peak at the affair, only to watch the soused vicar(Victor Buono) ask a man's coffin if he takes Karen to be his lawfully wedded wife.A pre-recorded tape of the cadaver's voice piped through a tape deck in the coffin responds appropriately without cue.Hmmm, that's strange.The policeman and caretaker are invited to the reading of Arnold's will, where most of his fortune goes to his lovely new wife provided she stand near to her husband's cadaver for the rest of her life, while miserable pittance bequeathals are doled out to his other family members, and goose eggs for his brother.When the guests are taken aback by their late relative's future money plans, the cassette answers their queries as if he were alive in the room with them.The cryptic tapes continue to turn up at the manor, warning against feelings of anger and greed from his family, though, you just know the circling vultures are about to get their just desserts somehow...
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Less material, more flesh from Stella Stevens here, and I'd consider upping it a Wop, to be sure.
Arnold's widow inherits the Rolls Royce and a cosmetic company, but when she samples a facial cream, it reacts violently, disfiguring her face and doing the old girl in before she can scheme any further with Evans.Meanwhile, Karen and Robert have been discreetly planning a getaway for two, but when Arnold seemingly follows the adulterers to Robert's pad, he hurries back to the manor, where a custom crushed red velvet suit for Arnold's body has arrived, and when he tries it on, it constricts around his body until he upchucks his own innards.Karen desperately turns to Whitehead for a way out of her agreement, to which Douglas offers to help for half of the inheritance money plus fringe benefits, the old dog.Whitehead samples some of Arnold's expensive cognac to celebrate his recent good fortune, only to end up being compacted in the back of a garbage truck when the drink turns out to be drugged.Karen turns to Evans with the same deal she offered Douglas, innadvertently getting Dybbi beheaded when he searches the basement lab for Arnold's hidden fortune.After Evans and Karen get themselves crushed to death in a shower with shrinking walls, Hester reveals that she and her dead brother dreamt up the whole scheme to rid themselves of greedy inheritors, and that all of his inheritance will ultimately go to her.When Arnold's final tape begins to sound too cocky for Hester's tastes, she has his body cremated immediately.After snuffing the caretaker with a spade, she stumbles upon Arnold's secret hiding place for his riches while interring his remains in the crypt.She crawls into the secret room to gloat over the money, but a moving wall seals her in permanently as another cassette of Arnold wisecracks that expected such betrayal from Hester, and they'd be together forever now.Outside, Hester's cat traps a raven behind a tombstone as the constable obliviously rides off on his bicycle, while the bird tears the feline to pieces off-camera...
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Arnold's painting can see me sawing logs on the couch.
The late Fenady also helmed 1973's Terror in the Wax Museum for Bing, with Ray Milland, John Carradine, and much of the cast from tonight's feature, as well, and countless episodes of television shows over the years, which he was much better suited for, imho.Stevens would appear in genre fare like blaxploitation classics Slaughter(1972) and Cleopatra Jones and the Casino of Gold(1975), horror like 1979's The Manitou, and even Chained Heat(1983).If you're into genre film and you don't know Roddy McDowall by now, you're a lost cause, for sure.Grand dame Lanchester only played Frankenstein's monster's titular bride back in '35, while we're at it.If you're unfamiliar with her...alright, I'll stop.Shani Wallis sang the cheesy title song that'll make your life miserable for days after watching, as well as appearing in tonight's movie.Like I may have mentioned earlier, Arnold is a strange little flick, with a hardcore made-for-tv vibe about it, that showcases some inventive deaths while failing epically at making the viewer snicker.If you're into McDowall or any of the others, it may be worth tracking down for a screening.As it stands, it merits a wholly average two Wops on the scale.
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Elsa Lanchester looks older than the piles of cash she's surrounded by here.
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Thursday, March 22, 2012

"The Human Centipede II(Full Sequence)"(2011)d/Tom Six

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Miss me, ya bastards?Nevermind, I'm sure you did.It's just that when you've lived as charmed a life as I have, being hurled fifty yards from a spectacular car wreck(not breaking a single bone, mind you), getting walloped with baseball bats by overzealous pinkos(bones intact on that front, too, thanks), outlasting terminal illnesses, and outrunning the constabulary of nearly every major city on the east coast in my heyday, and the weather suddenly changes drastically in a day's time or so, my forty-two year old body sometimes reminds me that I'm not twenty-two anymore, and I'm hobbled for weeks at a time with osteoarthritic flare-ups that leave me totally immobilized, and unable to update your very favorite site for genre reviews, as was the case the past few weeks here at the Wop.Being an invincible Italian superman isn't all wine and roses, y'know.Fret not, wee droogies, I've got plenty of movies to scrutinize for your enjoyment anyway, and since there's no better time than now to kick it all off, we'll do just that, by the Gods.
Tom Six is back at it again, leaving behind the tact with which he handled the first wildly popular multi-segmented shocker, in favor of the level of balls-out gross most people expected from his first effort.Really, a brilliantly crafted, near Jodorowsky-scale thumbing of the director's nose towards any detractors of his previous movie as actualized from the viewpoint of a naughty six year old and emphasized with blood and bodily waste.It's definitely hard to watch in certain spots, where Six turns up the on-camera sadism and cruelty to appease the film freaks who happen to be geared towards such viscera, but I found myself laughing through much of the worst of it's excesses as they played out like a black and white Salo' torture porn update minus the politics.Though I appreciated II for what it was and had a pretty good zooted time of the whole affair, I much prefer the original's dark sense of humor to it's sequel's somewhat infantile one.Eh, we're all different.Aboard once again is game-to-endure-the-tortures-of-the-damned-a-second-time actress Ashlynn Yennie, though gone is lanky scenery-chewing Deutsch-weirdo, Dieter Laser, and in his stead, the portly pint-sized pinhead, Laurence R. Harvey, as the mentally deficient parking garage attendant obsessed with Six's first movie.
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"Excuse me, ma'am, you seem to have deposited some cerebrospinal fluid on the end of my prybar..."
You never know what you'll find lurking in an underground parking garage in London these days.In this instance, it's Martin Lomax(Laurence R. Harvey), the resident attendant whose obsession with 'The Human Centipede' has expanded well beyond feeding insects to the ravenous specimen he keeps in an aquarium or the elaborate scrapbook on the movie he keeps, complete with recreated illustrations of the...ahem, medical procedures from the film, which he watches repeatedly on a laptop in his toll booth; he's already begun clobbering unsuspecting patrons with his crowbar, hog-tying them with duct tape, and throwing them into the back of his van with designs on ultimately fabricating himself a nifty 12-segmented full sequence human centipede.As fucked up as you'd have to be to dream up such a D.I.Y. project, Martin's got his sociopathic bases covered, having been molested by his father as a child, and raised by a suicidal psycho wretch of a mother who blames him for sending her husband to prison(!).She also sends him to Dr. Sebring(Bill Hutchens), who sedates him to the gills in between inappropriately fiddling with his no-no spots, which doesn't exactly draw the brakes on his sick mania, as he clobbers all types in trying to achieve it: a young couple, a man complaining about the ATM, two clubbing dames who stumble upon him jacking his sandpaper-wrapped meat to the original movie in his tollbooth, the tattoooed baldie who lives upstairs from he and his mother who's perpetually threatening them with a kicking when they complain about his loud music, a cabbie and a cheap hooker who just happens to be servicing Sebring in the back seat(the doctor remarks that he'd rather be fucking Martin!), a rich puke and his pregnant wife, and even Ashlynn Yennie(herself), one of the actresses from the original movie, lured into Martin's web of perversion on the promise of a phony film role, and destined to be the obsessed retard's front segment this time around.Marty's got a crush, no rear segment for you, baby!
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Mother(Vivien Bridson) interrupts Martin's(Laurence R. Harvey) sexy time.
After shooting Sebring in the junk and head, smashing his own mother's skull into a pulpy mess when she callously tears up his scrapbook, and killing a guy who's leasing some particularly dark n' dingy warehouse space, Martin begins preparing his kidnapped segments for the big operation, which he, no professional surgeon by any stretch of the imagination, performs with the help of a bag of common household tools.He sloppily severs knee tendons before punching teeth out with a hammer, fishing the loose teeth out of his victim's mouths with his fingers before they can gag to death on them.Using a tile cutter, he clumsily carves open ass cheeks then attaches the next respective segment with a staple gun and duct tape, while two of his guinea pigs presumably die off during the brutal process, driving the mental midget into a frenzy of anger which sees him strip down to his undies.Yeah, thanks for that visual, Six.He uses a funnel to force-feed Ashlyn, cutting out her tongue when she sassily smacks a food bowl away and makes too much noise.He then injects each struggling segment with a syringe full of laxative, forcing them to evacuate their bowels into the waiting yap of the sorry sumbitch behind them, causing Martin to joyfully make raspberries with his tongue before he violently hurls from the growing fecal stench.After wrapping his dick with barbed wire(!!), Martin forcibly pumps the rear segment's dumper, as the pregnant woman, presumed dead, springs to screaming, bleeding life, trying to escape in the leasing agent's car as she goes into labor, spitting the fetus into the car's foot well, and crushing it's skull with the gas pedal(!!!) as she reverses out of the nightmare with the mentally challenged attendant giving chase.Meanwhile, his upstairs neighbor has bloodily torn his face free from the ass in front of him, separating the centipede into two halves, which Martin sets upon angrily, shooting one half's segments in the head, and after Ashlyn smashes his pet centipede's aquarium, setting it loose in the warehouse, he cuts the throats of the other half's segments, stopping at his obsession, who abruptly knees him in the goodie bag and shoves his own funnel up his ass(!), dropping the centipede into it(!!), before he shanks her in the grill and staggers out in agony, screaming bloody murder(!!!).We then see Martin back in the toll booth, watching his favorite movie, as if nothing had ever happened, although the screams of a baby he had left in a locked car earlier tell us different.
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Eh, look on the bright side, you still have four more than Shane MacGowan.
Six, who provides the voice of Martin's abusive dad here, is currently working on The Human Centipede 3, which he claims will make II look like a Disney production, ironically the same analogy he provided between the first and second installments.Whether or not you appreciate the repetetive nature of his pre-production hype, you've gotta give it to the guy.He delivered exactly what he promised in the first sequel, so there's no reason to think for a second he won't do the same with the third film.Personally, I'm well over the whole 'centipede' thing by now, and would rather see him move in an original and new direction.To be honest, the entire recent 'torture porn' phenomenon's incisors have lengthened in a hurry, and sitting through most of it has become more torturous than pornographic, really.On the scale, Full Sequence earns a solid three Wops, and comes recommended for hardcore gorehounds everywhere.See it.
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"If I show you a moment of compassion, you promise you won't knee me in the balls and shove my pet centipede up my ass?"
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Thursday, March 1, 2012

"Slither"(2006)d/James Gunn

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After a weekend of altered states and nautical bathrooms in Trenton, New Jersey went horribly wrong, due to the sheer volume of feline pussy snuggling up to my hyper-sensitive sinuses(I'm talking Felis silvestris catus, not the flesh-scabbard oft-waved in my face by amorous females of humankind, for once, anyway), we're facing the premature arrival of March here at the Wop with considerably more genre reviews for the month than I had originally laid out in advance.What is it that Robert Burns, Scotland's favorite son, once said? "The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men, Gang aft agley, An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain, For promis'd joy!" Yeah, I'm not exactly sure what solace that's gonna provide you genre-starved aficionados of film, but there it is anyway.With my butt securely parked in the gracious throne here at La Sala dei Giganti, let's get back to big cine-biz already.Here's a high profile sci-fi/horror/comedy debut(if you don't count his co-directorial credit on Tromeo and Juliet(1996), and really, why would we do a thing like that to the poor guy?) from the witty James Gunn, that I've been meaning to cover for quite a while, but haven't gotten around to doing it until now, sidetracked as a frontin' mothersuckah as I often find myself, on this end.When all was said and done, I was well entertained by the gobs of goopy gore(mostly practical work, the way it should be done!), the hilarious script, laden with self-referential humor and several even-handed nods to earlier work by Cronenberg as well as genre classics like The Blob(1988) remake, Invasion of the Body Snatchers(1956), and Night of the Living Dead(1968), with solid, campy performances by a cast that includes the likes of Michael Rooker, Elizabeth Banks, Gregg Henry(tops of the bunch, imho), and Nathan Fillion, and cameos from that Kaufman cat and even Gunn himself.Winner of multiple Fangoria Chainsaw awards, and publically snubbed by Roger Ebert, you can go ahead and queue this one up presently, I reckon ye'll enjoy it more'n a smidgeon.Towards...
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I don't know about you, but I caught myself scrutinizing this x-ray for that shitty pretzel Rooker gobbled in Mallrats(1995).
In the backwoods burg of Wheelsy, where the cops point their radar gun at passing birds instead of speeding motorists, a wayward meteorite slams into the rural terra, paroling a pernicious alien parasite in the process.The interstellar leech takes up residence in the labonza of local car dealer, Grant Grant(Michael Rooker), who's taken Brenda(Brenda James) into the woods for some extramarital enrichment when his voluptuous wife, Starla(Elizabeth Banks), proves less than receptive to his recent love launches.With the space slug parked at the base of his brain, Grant begins to behave more strangely and secretive than usual, slowly metamorphosizing into a sluggish, tentacle-whippin' pile o' shit himself while stowing Brenda, who's been pumped full of embryonic alien wigglies, away in a remote cabin in the woods.Meanwhile, Starla juggles concern for her own weird marriage to a homicidal space spore with suppressed feelings towards local sheriff/childhood crush, Bill Pardy(Nathan Fillion), who's been dealing with the recent rash of pet disappearances and his own belly butterflies towards Mrs. Grant.Pardy and a group of his officers follow Grant to Brenda, who now resembles a massive, dirty tit that explodes in a grue-blast shower of juvenile alien slugs upon the startled lawmen.Most of the posse is infected by the slimy little bastards and transformed into a zombie-esque flesh-chompin' legion that shares a single consciousness with the "Long One", the interstellar stowaway that's been altering Grant into a giant, slithering piaje off a Tijuana toilet lid, while sharing the human's obsession for his curvaceous wife.Then the townsfolk begin to fall prey to the slugs...
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"Book that 'sad drunk' over there for his resemblance to the guy who wrote 'Sugar Cookies'(1973)!"
With much of the local population stumbling bloodily around town and mantra-moaning in unison about Starla, the daunted task of saving the civilized world falls upon the collective shoulders of Pardy, Kylie(Tania Saulnier), a teenaged girl who has seen the Long One's sordid plot to envelop and digest all the life there is in the universe and recycle it into it's own propagating mass o'slime and razor-sharp man-splitting tendrils, the self-absorbed Mayor MacReady(Gregg Henry), and Grant's aforementioned wife, when the hive-minded drones surround their vehicle, taking Starla and infecting the wise-cracking mayor, in the process.Pardy and Kylie pursue the mind-controlled mob only to discover the hulking slime-blob that was Grant has taken to epic proportions while physically ingesting(yet still displaying, blech) all life forms around it, and it's a-fixing to patch things up with it's wife.With Starla forced to use her vampy charms to divert the gooey behemoth's attention from Sheriff Pardy's incoming grenade attack, the mass proves too cagey for such a maneuver, bitch-slapping the woman across the room, detonating the grenade in a pool nearby, and impaling the lawman on one of its tentacles.All I'll say about the boffo finale, is, that it involves propane tanks, bullets, and a whole mess o' splattery discharge; a real crowd-pleaser that's fun for the whole family.
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"Normally, I'd be at ease jes' a'hangin' out here in the field a spell, but I really gotta split(right down the middle)."
You'll no doubt remember Gregg Henry in his genre debut in Jeff Lieberman's Just Before Dawn(1981), or one of his many memorable roles in movies like Scarface(1983) and DePalma's Body Double(1984).His performance in tonight's review is not to be missed.For Elizabeth Banks' recent genre ties, you'd have to look towards The Uninvited(2009), the Dreamworks remake of K-horror hit A Tale of Two Sisters(2003), though you're probably better off checking her out in the Raimi Spider Man series.Jenna Fischer, Gunn's ex-wife, can be found all over television, in shows like Scranton-based The Office, and movies like The 40 Year Old Virgin(2005), neither of which are my bag, man.Rooker, who cut his genre-teeth in the cult classic Henry:Portrait of a Serial Killer(1986), currently appears on The Walking Dead, a show I'm a few seasons behind on, at the moment, due to a sudden outbreak of dontgiveafuckboutit-itis.Gunn has proven to be a hot commodity in these days since penning the scripts to the live-action Scooby Doo(2002) and Dawn of the Dead(2004) remake, turning up all over the place, recently judging on VH1's Scream Queens reality show.I'll be keeping an eye out for his future work, myself, as he's a talented writer and director capable of good things in the genre.On the scale, Slither earns an impressive three Wops, an entertaining blend of fifties sci-fi and eighties shlock that's good for repeat viewings.Recommended.
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Grant(Michael Rooker) balks at Starla's refusal to incorporate a "MySpace angle" for his Match.com profile pic.
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Wednesday, February 22, 2012

"Eyes of a Stranger"(1981)d/Ken Wiederhorn

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Chances are, if you saw tonight's review, not to be confused with the mint reggae-ish pop tune of the same name by The Payola$, back in the early eighties at the cinema, on cable, or on VHS after being raped of most of Tom Savini's effects work(basically everything but a final head shot) by the censors to garner it's R rating, you were probably as unmoved as I was.Of course, thanks to the advent of digital versatile discs, horror fanatics of every generation are able to resdiscover this one in all its uncut g(l)ory; a decent slasher-thriller hybrid despite it's numerous instances of deja vu to earlier, more effective genre films like Wait Until Dark, Black Christmas, Halloween, and even He Knows You're Alone, whose FX tech, longtime Savini bud and Romero regular, Taso Stavrakis tackles a nearly identical head-in-a-fishtank effect, to a much less satisfying end.Problem is, the whole thing plays like a made-for-tv drama with a bit of gore and nudity thrown in(Don't start hyperventilating, you creeps, Tewes doesn't break them out here, but Vic Morrow's daughter doesn't have a problem with doing it, if only briefly), more than a typical slasher of the day.Even still, it's not a bad hour and a half, especially if finally seeing the damned thing uncut appeals to you the way it did for this guy over here.Onwards...
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Jennifer Jason Leigh-licious.
A wildlife photographer catches the lifeless form of a half-naked young girl submerged in the mangrove swamp in his camera lens, as the rape-murder(potentially the city's third) is reported by local tv newswoman Jane Harris(Lauren Tewes) as seen on a television in a seedy bump n' grind, where a blonde waitress named Debbie(Gwen Lewis) is about to embark on a lonely walk home in the dark.At home, her screening of 'Shock Waves'(1977)(one of the director's films!) is interrupted by repeated obscene phone calls from a man who's followed her from the bar.He remarks about her bra-less cones and vows to fuck her and kill her, as well.Before the police can stop by to take a statement in the morning, her boyfriend is beheaded with a meat cleaver, and she's punched up, slapped, raped, and strangled with a belt as his disembodied head looks on from inside the fishtank.Elsewhere, Jane argues with her boyfriend about her younger psychosomatically challenged sister, Tracy(Jennifer Jason-Leigh) putting a strain on their budding relationship, before witnessing fellow tenant Stanley Herbert(John DiSanti) displaying some suspicious behaviour in the parking garage(what guy doesn't preen himself in a car window's reflection, I ask you).The radio reports the earlier murders as Tracy, blind and dumb, gropes around the kitchen for some toast then down to the laundry room.Through Jane's guilt-laden flashback, we see a pubescent Tracy abducted right in front of their house by a Russ Tamblyn lookalike.Still haunted by her inability to stop the abduction and subsequent implied trauma that followed, Jane begins to obsess about the current murders, and more specifically, her pudgy nearsighted neighbor's suspected involvement in said killings, snooping around his car in the garage like a live-action Velma Dinkley minus the tight sweater and enormous...goggles.
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"ZOMG!There's soooo much algae on the walls of this fish tank..."
Through a call to management, she discovers his identity and location in the north tower, right across from her place.Meanwhile, Stanley's threatening to stick it into Annette, a secretary for a law firm, who happens to be working late, the way chicks often do in these movies.Before she can drive to a friend's house for the night, she's grabbed up by a stocking-headed sex fiend in the back seat of her car.When Herbert dumps her violated body out in a gravel pit, he gets his tires stuck in the mud, and the incessant engine revving that follows alerts a couple making out in a car a few yards away."Hey baby, you wanna get bottomed out in the back seat at the...gravel pit, tonight?" Okay, I'll stop.The guy stifles his shirtless tongue-joust long enough to get shivved in the neck when he goes over to offer a push out of the rut.Horrified at the sight of her boyfriend bleeding out on the passenger side window, she doesn't notice Stanley as he gives her some jugular vein-tilation with his stiletto.When Jane hears about the latest bodies being discovered in mud, she races out to scrutinize Herbert's tires, which had been covered in mud earlier, but her neighbor has already been through the car wash.Jane steals the master key to Herbert's pad and rummages around inside while he's out being creepy, being forced to dangle off the high ledge by her fingers when he returns home unexpectedly.After a movie date goes stale, she returns home to repeatedly crank call Herbert, smoking a cigarette after getting a sexual charge(!) from all the excitement.Careful Jane, you wouldn't want to force the killer to target your helpless sister while she's alone in your apartment, because you're in his looking for more clues.I think we have ourselves a tension-packed finale...
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"Eegads!On the night of my reefer consortium, and out of Swiffer WetJet pads!"
To go along with the Shock Waves(1977) insert, a one sheet for Dawn of the Dead(1978), Savini's high water mark to that point, makes a cameo in the theater scene.Besides Waves, Wiederhorn directed Meatballs Part II(1984), Return of the Livng Dead Part II(1988), and 1993's A House in the Hills, as well as several episodes of tv's Freddy's Nightmares.Apart from tonight's review and The Doom Generation in 1995, the vast majority of Tewes' acting work has come on television shows like The Love Boat, Murder, She Wrote, T.J. Hooker, and Vega$.Leigh, on the other hand, would feature prominently in films like 1982's Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Easy Money(1983), The Hitcher(1986), Single White Female(1992), and Cronenberg's eXistenZ(1999).DiSanti would score roles in numerous television shows over the years, as well as appearances in movies like Hardly Working(1980) with Jerry Lewis, Hot Stuff(1979), Absence of Malice(1980), and The Star Chamber(1983)."This might seem like a crazy question...but can a cuckoo clock make music? Or does it just go 'Cuckoo!'?" With dialogue like that, and lens-dressing like Leigh and Tewes, with a few effective Savini pieces thrown in for good measure, Stranger merits a look, even if you'll probably come away from the screening with other better movies on your mind in the end.Two Wops.Worth checking out.
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"Captain Stubing...it's Julie...Gopher's trying to kill me!"
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Monday, February 20, 2012

"Il gatto nero"(1981)d/Lucio Fulci

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It's been a decalescent sixty ticks since we covered Fulci at the Wop, so I figured we'd remedy that here tonight with an underrated effort that often gets lost amidst Lucio's other films of the period, like L'aldila(1981), Paura nella città dei morti viventi(1980), and Quella villa accanto al cimitero(1981), and wrongfully so.Unlike those other titles, Gatto relies more on atmosphere and tension than perspicuous levels of grue, with an opulent gothic British setting and a cast led by excellent Irish actor Patrick Magee of 'A Clockwork Orange' fame, and supported by Mimsy Farmer, David Warbeck, and Italian genre regulars Al Cliver and Daniela Doria(who doesn't regurgitate animal entrails or get her nipples razored here).Not to say tonight's review is bereaft of Fulci's trademark violence, mind you, there's just less of it here than usual.One signature flair the maestro didn't cut back on for this production is extreme close ups of eyes, as there are numerous to be found.Maybe it had something to do with Magee's woofing eyebrows or the attempted hypnotism in the plot, loosely based on the zeugmatic short story by Poe of the same name, but I thought the peeper shots were actually pretty effective in this instance.While showing constraint in serving up bucketloads of claret to his diehard gorehound following, Fulci instead displays artistic skill in moving Sergio Salvati's camera like never before while setting up beautiful frames worth of eerie unease, and I swear there's even a choice crane shot in there, as well.Enjoying a renaissance of sorts thanks to a recent Anchor Bay release on dvd(I've never been patient enough to wait for such things, scoring the 1999 EC print years earlier), The Black Cat might not be Fulci's crowning cinematic achievement, but it's required viewing, and a satisfying one, notwithstanding.
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Worst of all, his policy didn't cover flaming heads through the windshield.
After witnessing his black cat stow away in a car to hypnotize the driver into slamming headfirst into a parked car at high speed, we meet Miles(Patrick Magee), the eccentric town psychic, as he sits at home, intently listening to weird latin recordings spoken in a whisper, before being interrupted by the aforementioned cat violently clawing his hand.We're next introduced to American photographer Jill Trevers(Mimsy Farmer) as she documents the ruins of a local cemetery, finding a small microphone at a crypt that's been broken into.That night at the pub, she overhears the locals dismissing Miles as mad for his graveyard excursions to communicate with and record the voices of the dead.She takes the opportunity to visit Miles and return his microphone, also noticing that his feline seems to despise him, savagely clawing his hands.Later that same night, the cat follows Ferguson(Bruno Corazzari), one of Miles' detractors, as he stumbles pissed from the pub, cornering the sot in a warehouse and causing him to plummet from a gangplank to a spiky death below.When Inspector Gorley(David Warbeck) of the Yard enlists Jill to photograph the crime scene, she notices the same clawmarks on the corpse's hand as on Miles'.The cat then manages to trap an amorous young couple, Stan & Maureen, in a storehouse on the docks, where they ignominiously suffocate, half-naked.The girl's mother(Dagmar Lassander) visits Miles, begging him to use his psychic intuition to locate Maureen(Daniela Doria), even offering to re-ignite their own old flame, if need be, and gets pointed towards the storehouse, where the already decaying corpses are discovered, as well as a curious set of cat tracks in the air conditioning vent.
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Accupuncture.Wait, that doesn't look right.
The cat then pays a visit to the grieving mother, knocking over a kerosene lamp and setting the room and woman ablaze, causing her to swandive, engulfed in flames, to the street from the third story window.The feline drops in on Gorley, too, clawing his face multiple times before influencing him to walk in front of an oncoming car.It turns out that Miles has been using the cat as a tool of vengeance against any and all who he feels have wronged him, and, confident that his enemies have been effectively smited, feeds his pet a sedative-heavy meal, throws it in a burlap bag, takes it out into the woods, and hangs it from a tree, causing a psychokinetic furniture explosion at Jill's place.Aware that Miles' cat has been responsible for all the recent gruesome deaths, she ties the remaining loose ends while snooping around the psychic's estate(she's even attacked by bats in the catacombs a la Fulci's earlier Una lucertola con la pelle di donna), earning her a wooden plank to the domepiece from the murderous senior with the wild eyebrows.He hurriedly packs a suitcase at her flat, then returns to brick her up in her cellar, when the local police pay him a visit with Sgt. Wilson(Al Cliver) and a bandaged Gorley in tow, still alive.After denying everything and claiming his cat has passed on, he and his visitors are startled to hear the echoed moan of a cat coming from downstairs.After pinpointing the location of the sounds, they take down the fresh bricks with a pick to reveal an unconscious Jill inside.The black cat also jumps out and stares down his master, who he's turned the tables on after having been used for nefarious misdeeds for so long, as Miles had earlier predicted he would.Credits.
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Sorry to burst in on you like that, before you've had a chance to put your face together...
Also conspicuously missing from tonight's review is Fulci's obligatory cameo, though a scene where he plays a doctor ended up on the cutting room floor.The effective soundtrack is provided by Pino Donaggio, marking the only time the composer would ever work with Lucio.Magee, who lent his presence to genre films like Dementia 13(1963), The Masque of the Red Death(1964), The Skull(1965), and Tales From the Crypt(1972), would appear in The Sleep of Death(1981) and The Monster Club(1981) before succumbing the following year at the age of sixty.Mimsy Farmer appeared in Argento's Four Flies on Grey Velvet(1971), Armando Crispino's Macchie solari(1975), and Deodato's Camping del terrore(1987) before retiring from acting, while Warbeck scored roles in Twins of Evil(1971), L'aldila(1979), Margheriti's L'ultimo cacciatore(1980) and L'isola del tesoro(1987) before dying at the age of fifty-five in 1997.Daniela Doria turned(her toes) up in Paura nella città dei morti viventi(1980), Quella villa accanto al cimitero(1981), Lo squartatore di New York(1982), all for Fulci, and even appeared in Di Leo's Avere vent'anni(1978).Though I can see hardcore Fulci-ites balking at the lack of red stuff here, this is one cat I'm not the least bit allergic to(probably the only one), and as such, it scores an impressive three Wops on the ratings scale, and comes highly recommended.Snag yourself a copy!
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"If you even think of making me into a cutesy FB meme, I'll scratch your fucking eyes out."
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