"The Beguiled"(1971)d/Don Siegel

I'm not gonna sit here and blow chocolate kush smoke up Eastwood's turd cutter.He's had a lifetime's worth of praise from tough guys n' skirt-wearing Sallys alike.He's gotta be sick of hearing it.As much as I like to bask in positive acknowledgement for my work,when the compliments start creepily multiplyin' and I find myself standing alone on the main drag in Uncomfortable City,the only feasible remedy is to start throwing bombs like a younger,heavily tatted up,better looking Philo Bedoe until my ears are once again filled with the sweet whimper-music of the broken and conquered.Clint's always been one of my favourite actors.That's all you get,Eastwood.I don't wanna bake you a cherry pie,get a headache listening to that awful jazz you seem to like,or ever see Firefox again.You got a problem with that,you old punk,I'll gladly hold the door for you,showing respect for my elders,before I feed you a mouth fulla Wop knuckles and check your eighty year old ass into Hotel Zzzzzzzzzz.
Now if you asked me about my favourite Eastwood vehicle,you might be surprised to find that it wasn't a Leone western concerning a mysterious gunman or a Siegel drama centered around a cop that marches to the beat of his own drum.My favorite Eastwood movie is tonight's review,a dark,moody period piece about deception and what happens when you scorn those of the fairer sex,a mostly unsuccessful film whose promotion was thoroughly fumbled by Universal Studios who had less idea on how to market its release than Rod Marinelli had on how to coach a professional American football team in 2008.They tried passing it off as tempest in a teapot fare,played out in a conservatoire,even misleadingly posing the action star with a gun in the one sheet(above).They even tried rewriting the ending,but director Siegel and Eastwood both balked at the idea,preferring to remain truer to the 1966 novel,"A Painted Devil" by Thomas Cullinan,on which the screenplay is based.The film comes with my highest recommendation,of course,but be forewarned,this isn't the typical punch 'em up/shoot 'em up Eastwood you've come to know and love.This is an amazingly sombre film,brilliantly executed by all involved,and a must see for all lovers of great cinema.You'll have a hard time driving it from your mind after the final credits roll.

Amy(Pamelyn Ferdin),who's not too young for kisses,saves the life of Union Corporal McBurney(Eastwood),who's not too wounded for treachery.
Towards the end of the American Civil War,Union Corporal John McBurney(Clint Eastwood)is seriously wounded while fighting on the wrong side of the Mason/Dixon line.He is rescued by 12 year old Amy(Pamela Ferdin),a young student at an all-girl academy in Louisiana,while she picks wild mushrooms in the forest.Back at the school,the girls unanimously agree to nurse him until he's healthy enough for the passing confederate soldiers to pick up and haul off to jail.As he slowly recovers his physical prowess he also wins the trust and subsequent lust of the schoolmistress(Gerladine Page),who's brother(brother-plus,these two are a little more than siblings.Blech.) is off fighting for the stars and bars.It isn't long before the silver-tongued Yank is weaving a tapestry of flattery and deceit around everything with a petticoat(or even a hanky wrapped around her head).He resists the headmistress's carnal advances in favor of the mousy,younger schoolmarm(Elizabeth Hartman),sparking the brother-fucker's jealous wrath.The younger,sexually experienced Carol(a deliciously sexy Jo Ann Harris)soon takes on the persona of an alley cat in heat,ultimately sneaking off to McB's room for that he might break himself off a piece,igniting the scorn of the wallflower/teacher.Hell,he even introduces the pre-teen Amy to the world of lip fu,after which she confides to her pet turtle that he loves her.McB,yer a dog,spelled d-a-dubya-g.

McB fancies the alluring young siren,Carol(Jo Ann Harris).East would,and so would I.
He even manages to get flirty with the negro servant while she shaves his face and pines for her slave husband,but horny confederate enemies passing through make his games of the heart seem almost tolerable to the lonely southern belles,until the schoolmaster's jealous rage sends the corporal tumbling down the steps towards a compound fractured leg,which the vengeful femme amputates at the dining room table with a hacksaw(!).Awaking to life as a cripple sends the salacious soldier into a drunken,vitriol-laced bender,where McBurnley holds the school at bay with a pistol,announcing that he'll have any woman that wants him with no more resistance from them,his life now mirrored by a blackbird the girls have tied to an upstairs window railing by a string.As a final act of intoxicated aggression,he hurls the twelve year old's pet turtle to the ground,effectively destroying the last semblance of feelings any of the women might have had for him.A more reasonable clear and sober head at the dinner table finds the corporal apologizing for his earlier actions,announcing plans to quietly marry the young Edwina and start a meager life together,but alas,it is too late to extinguish the fires of hatred he's ignited in the hearts of his captors.His rapidly blurring vision and the girls aversion to the bowl of wild mushrooms during the meal suggests that innocent little Amy may have indeed mistakenly picked the wrong type of mushrooms earlier that day,leading to the grimmest of downbeat finales imaginable.Bravo.

Save me a wing,girls.
16 years after the production was released,two of the female stars,Geraldine Page and Elizabeth Hartman died within three days of each other,Page by heart attack,Hartman,a suicide.Also on board here is a very young Melody Thomas,who would later find genre success in Pirahna,before snaring a long-running part on soap opera,Young and the Restless.Though Siegel and Eastwood were eluded by deserved kudos from fans and critics alike for tonight's entry,they would find enormous success working together on their next motion picture,involving a hot dog devouring character named Callahan with a large handgun and a propensity to fire it before asking questions,the following year.For my money though,this review solidified Eastwood's place among the top actors of the day,and even,all-time,for that matter.You really owe it to yourselves to hunt down a print of this one and give it a shot,you'll be pleasantly surprised,especially if you enjoy dark,creepy atmosphere in movies the way I do.Oh by the way,I was,indeed,smiling as I wrote that bit in the top paragraph,Blondie.Keep those hands outta the poncho,where I can see 'em.Four wops,and your humble N's highest recommendation.

"Great Caesar's ghost!I've just overdosed on tragic mushrooms..."

"Friday the 13th Part V-A New Beginning"(1985)d/Danny Steinmann

One year after the "Final Chapter" of the lucrative Friday the 13th franchise had come to pass,we were promised "A New Beginning",but served up a regurgitated,poxy load of the same ole formulaic cobblers trying to pass itself off as a psychological gialloesque endeavor instead.Yuen Biao would tear a ligament making all the stretches this film's producers expect of its audience.If Jason Takes Manhattan or Jason Goes to Hell were never made,this entry would stand as my least favorite of the series.There's all of one decent splatter piece,the horny machete fodder is less likeable than usual(there's at least six characters here that give Shelly from Pt. Three in 3D a run for the annoying samoleans)forcing the audience to pray for quicker,more inventive suffering and death for all of them which never comes due to the gunshyness of the studio after four movies worth of brutal censorship at the hands of the MPAA,Barry Cohen's screenplay is weaker than six granules of tea mix in a high school swimming pool,and director Steinmann's ineptitude is so glaring that even if those other factors were somehow remedied,I doubt he'd be able to pull the whole thing off(or find his own asshole without a search party,fpr that matter).I've heard some people claim to dig this one,in some cases more than the other releases,but frankly,that's just crazy talk right there.The fact that apart from a few dream sequences,Jason is almost entirely exempt from this dramamine in celluloid form doesn't even enter into it for me either.

That wasn't just some fat,obnoxious chocolate-pussed waterhead,that was my boy!
A twelve year old Tommy Jarvis(Feldman on weekend loan from The Goonies)witnesses two grave robbers boneheadedly ressurect Jason Voorhees(you REALLY musta dug this part,eh,Part Six?)only to turn out to be another nightmare in Tommy's shellshocked subconscious.Only the bespectacled twelve year old special effects nerd with a mean machete hand is now a bespectacled seventeen year old buff near-mute whose mask-making skills seem to have greatly diminished(No Savini,and it shows)while apparently teaching himself martial arts(?).Hey continuity,who needs ya,ya bastihd.Tommy's on his way to to a mental health facility with a laissez faire policy for young people who all seem to suffer from obnoxiousness and/or nymphomania.Chocolate-gobbling fat retarded orphan(Dominick Brescia)bickers with new wave headphones-wearing robot mime girl(Tiffany Helm) and sleeveless bitter loner chopping wood with an axe until an obnoxious white trash mother-son team pull up on a sidecar motorcycle to complain about two young loons caught fucking on their property.Afterwards the loner snaps from the fatso's pestering and buries his axe repeatedly into the chocky chewer,and when the ambulance arrives on the scene to clean up the bloody pieces,the paramedic Roy(Dick Wieand)'s facial expression screams out,"That's MY fat retarded kid mutilated under that sheet,and though I may have put the kid into foster care because I couldn't be bothered to raise him myself,I'm enraged enough to dress like Jason Voorhees while committing multiple copycat murders over it."But,nah,that couldn't happen.Afterall,Tommy is exhibiting strong signs of potential sociopathic behaviour carried over from the last movie,so when the bodies start hitting the floor,it's gotta be him.

Why,I'll be Grandpa's rocking chair in the woodchipper if'n ignorant,dirty hayseeds ain't funnier than Chris Reeve facedown on a conveyor belt.
Then the bodies start hitting the floor.Two throwback greasers get snuffed,and Roy's face pretty much confesses to the crime afterwards.Couldn't be.Then a Frank Oz-lookalike with a penchant for booger sugar that works at the halfway house and his waitress dame are made to be dead.Then the young sexaholics get whacked after a tryst in the forest.Then Pam(Melanie Kinnaman),a home supervisor,takes young black Reggie(Shavar Ross) who be's hangin' out,you know, because his grandfather is a stereotype...uhhh,janitor at the home,to see his ridiculous older brother Demon at the trailer park he drops anchor for his conversion van at.Yeah.A black guy who looks like Michael Jackson and Boogaloo Shrimp collided at high speed and lives in a trailer park.He dies,his girlfriend dies,the hayseed sidecar son gets beheaded,then his batshit crazy ma eats a meatcleaver.Back at the home,J-j-j-jake the stuh-stuh-stutterer(Billy Ba-ba-Babbitt anybody?)stuh-stuh-strikes out with Robin and eats the same meatcleaver.Robin gets skewered from under the bed like so many other kids in the series.Violet's too busy listening to Depeche Commode or some equally annoying gay synth pop practicing her robotics and mimicry when she gets shanked in the labonza and choked the fuck out.Lil' homebody discovers the growing pile of bodies,then faces off against what appears to be Jason Voorhees,back from the dead,with Pam.While cornered in the barn,they're joined by Tommy who gets slashed across the breadbasket but still manages to knock the would be Jason out of the top of the barn onto a bed of spikes that conveniently lies below for when farmers,you know,wanna impale somebody on spikes or somethin'.It was Roy the ambulance driver all along.Son of a bitch,how didn't I see that coming.Afterwards,Pam visits Tommy at the hospital,but he's gone and the window's open.Oh wait,he's poised behind the door,wearing Roy's hockey mask(how'd he get his hands on that,by the way)and ready to take up the Voorhees mantle from here on in.Or not,you know,whatever you idiot movie patrons wanna do with this,it's cool.

What's that you say?Something wrong with her eyes?I hadn't noticed for some tits...uhh,reason.
Director Steinmann had a better time keeping Linda Blair in the frame in 1984's Savage Streets.You'll remember Shavar Ross from the time he and Arnold Drummond had the paedo party at the bike shop in Diff'rent Strokes.This movie is probably a more painful memory for him.Dominick "chocolate bar" Brescia went on to 1988's Evil Laugh,and that's about it.The aptly named Debisue Voorhees also appeared in 80's exploitation fare like Avenging Angel and Appointment with Fear.Tiffany Helm who plays the spun out new wave mime,Violet,went on to Reform School Girls.Tiff and Debisue have the dubious distinction of sharing the J.V.I.L.F.(Jason Victim I'd Like to Fuck)Award for this entry.Neither one's a Marta Kober,I'll say that much.Miguel Nunez who planted his genre flag,looking equally ridiculous and dated,in Return of the Living Dead,went on to Carnosaur 2 and the hilarious Black Dynamite.The best thing to come out of this sequel,is that the huge profit it returned virtually guaranteed the next movie in the series,one of my favorites,which we'll examine here soon.If the scale had a half wop,this movie would deserve it.As it stands though,one is the score,and that's mighty generous.

"Great,now you show up,after an hour and a half of audience cries and/or snores!"

"Holocausto Porno"(1979)d/Aristide Massaccesi

"Inent(sp) of Porno holocaust is to astonish women eventually." says movies.syl.com about tonight's movie.They also say,"Good characters struggle as awfully as donkeys.",and "Dramatic scrimmage is crank in this nonsense."Now,I'm not sure if exploitation sensation Joe D'Amato was aware just how crank his scrimmage was this time around,but it was obvious to the cats over at that site,I guess.Nevertheless,I think random words cut n' pasted to form nonsense into a movie review(they aren't the only ones guilty doing it either,I've read some other blogs)might have been the optimum way to tackle tonight's offering from Papa Joe.He handled porn masterfully,he handled horror well in one or two instances.When he mixed the two together,the result was always the same.Something like this.Nico Fidenco's disco pop soundtrack doesn't make this one any easier to get through.The cast,which includes Annj Goren,who you'll no doubt remember from dick jerkers like Sesso Nero(Black Sex)and Due sessi in uno(Two Sexes in One),Mark Shannon,Dirce Funari,Lucia Ramirez,and the Grim Reaper himself,Luigi Montefiori(he also wrote the cough,cough...screenplay),have themselves a whole lotta on-screen sex here...Apart from Montefiori/Eastman,who wisely keeps his cazzies off camera.And awaaaaay we go...

Radioactive monster or Rudy Ray Moore with a Sham Wow tied around his head?You decide,rat soup mothafuckas.
A team of scientific researchers/uber-horny rascals is assembled for a voyage by sea to a deserted island in Santo Domingo that was once a nuclear testing site to investigate strange biological mutations like massive crabs,rats,and turtles...oh yeah,and the legend of a lone family who forgot to evacuate during the bomb tests,resulting in a pasty-faced radioactive negro with an equine-sized hunk o' pantsmeat and a propensity for rape and murder.Take lotsa pictures,guys.Before they embark on their epic journey,carnally frustrated female team members orally explore each other's axe wounds,the "contessa"(Goren) checks into the nearest brothel for a round of "Jungle loads down my gullet" with a pair of oversexed tribesmen,and on the beach,Captain O'Day(Shannon)introduces Annie(Ramirez) to an eggbag so warty it resembles the Nucleon from Johnny Sokko.Once the team arrives on the island,they set up camp roughly eight feet from the shore amidst heavy breathing and some shaky monster's eye view camerawork.After Dr.Lemoir(Montefiori) takes some geiger readings on the beach,Simone(Funari) and the contessa,overcome by the sexiness of the desolate isle,take the opportunity to go Degeneres on each other again,this time upon a massive driftwood log.Annie and the Cap'n are next to explore the erotic possibility of said log.Then Simone forces herself upon her rock-preoccupied husband up against a palm tree.The horrible hanky-headed hoogan peep toms their coital endeavor,then sinks the three pump chump in the frothy drink.He then stuffs his oversized radioactive man-root in Simone's yap,killing her.Death by cock.That's a first,huh.

Rather than bother trying vainly to sneak screenshots of hardcore triple X action from the film past the nazis at Photobucket,here's a black guy with veal parmigiana spirit-gummed to his face.
The monster then dispatches a pair of assistants,sending the remaining team members into a panic,as evidenced by their slightly hurried jogging.The black beast scoops up Anniein the confusion,carrying her to his cave lair,where she discovers a journal.It's always good for radioactive sociopaths to write down their feelings,in between kill/rape sprees.O'Day,Lemoir,and the contessa stumble upon the face-fucked remains of Simone,while back at the cave,the monster brings Annie fruits to eat.Awww,rag-headed rapist,you're not so bad afterall.At the camp,the cap'n,wrought with distress over his missing love,serves up a doggie style dick-down to the contessa,who dramatically weeps as she yanks his junk out,to the dismay of Lemoir who walks off in disgust.Sure,O'Day blasts spooge on the contessa's lower back,but it just isn't the same as Annie.The cap'n stumbles upon one of the workers lying across death's doorstep,who chokes out the dastardly details of his demise before snuffing it.The monster sneaks up on Lemoir at the campsite,and chokes him the fuck out,before issuing a beastly backhander to the contessa,who had been swimming nude,assaulting her unconscious gravy boat with radioactive blast of monster mustard.The cap'n jogs back,speargun in hand,finding the contessa naked and dead with a bloody mess between her thighs.He jogs off again,this time finding Annie,and spears the horny hanky head in the labonza.The monster pulls the spear out and raises it above his head to shiv O'Day,who immediately falls to his back in a moment of passive bitchdom,but Annie orders the beast not to kill him,so he refrains,and falls down dead instead.The two survivors leave the eerie isle by rowboat,pausing for a frothy fuck n'suck,before being spotted waving and yelling(with a third passenger momentarily popping his head into the frame) by a passing cargo ship.Saved!Viewers of this atrocity are not so lucky...

Luckily,a nearby native saw Luigi choking on his Bolognese,and administered the Heimlich in the nick of time.
D'Amato,who makes an uncredited cameo here as a reporter,followed this mess up with Le notti erotiche dei morti viventi,or "Sexy Nights of the Living Dead",which utilized much of the same cast and location,with much of the same headscratching results.Mark Shannon continued his illustrious porn career,occasionally pausing for D'Amato genre fare like Le notti,Emperor Caligula:The Untold Story, and Rosso Sangue.Montefiori/Eastman appeared most recently in 2008's Grindhouse Universe.Funari would only appear in one more film,Killing of the Flesh,a few years later.Ramirez,strangely uncredited as the female lead here, was another D'Amato regular,showing up in Rosso Sangue and Le notti as well as several hardcore appearances.I can still remember my ex-wife's disgust when the German Kult Video print of tonight's entry showed up in my mailbox years ago."This is porn,you fucking pervert!"Is it porn thinly disguised as horror,though,or vice versa?Or perhaps neither.Certainly not the most enjoyable D'Amato vehicle in his long catalogue,but if inept gore,disco music,and HPV-riddled testicles are your cup of tea,then,by all means,have at it.Media Blasters released a new disc a while back,but one copy of this is more than enough for me.One wop.

Heeeey,your African is in my Italian!