"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.

"Don't Answer the Phone"(1980)d/Robert Hammer

We're gettin' so close to Hallowe'en here at the Wop that it's bound to file a Protection From Abuse Order against us.We didn't hit you, Samhain, you fell down, you got that?!!Now where's my Hungry Man Buffalo chicken strips, you ingrate!If you're into movies about beefy, balding, misogynist Vietnam Vets who look like Divine out of drag, strangling helpless half-naked women and getting into heated psychotic arguments with the friggin' mirror, (and really, who isn't)then tonight's review will fit you like a glove.Sleazy with a drawn out s, this one, showcasing the dramatic chops of one Nicholas Worth, who scored himself a Sitges Award for his memorable study of murderous sociopathic behavior here.He manages to pull off one of the more entertaining on-screen psychos I can recall seeing, while being given a veritable landscape of hookers, junkies, and otherwise useless broads to choke the fuck out, aided, in part, by one of the more bumbling investigative teams ever committed to celluloid.Hell, even the female lead protagonist, as portrayed by Flo Gerrish, is vulnerable as all Hell and needs a man to save her ass.No, I did NOT write the screenplay for this one, in advance, smartasses.Phone's relatively bloodless for an eighties stalker pic, but what it lacks in graphic violence, it more than makes up for with shameful levels of seedy filth, making it perfect as a minor exploitative classic of the day; kind of a gutter level psychodrama ripe with stereotypes and epithets, and reeking of stale sweat, cheap perfume, and even staler cigarettes.Not something I'd recommend to everybody, but certainly nasty enough to fit the specialized bill for genre madmen(and women) out there.If you're hunting it down, remember, you're gonna want the rare Bci / Eclipse uncut version disc(which I've seen go for thirty bucks or more), and not the more recent Rhino release that has more than its share of disgruntled buyers complaining about the expurgated cut within.Forwards!

"Why, yes.Yes, I do happen to love the nightlife and boogieing on the disco rooouuuuund, oh yea."
Enter Kirk Smith(Nicholas Worth), a bulky, sweaty, balding Vietnam vet-turned-photographer whose multiple deep seated neuroses and psychoses spur him to use his trade to locate nubile and helpless young victims; Kirk digs raping and strangling chicks with a coin in a nylon stocking a lot.He's also got an affinity for tearfully arguing at great lengths and out loud with his deceased abusive stepfather and sounding like a bull getting a prostate exam while he's meatheading it up on the weights in the mirror.All of Kirk's victims seem to be patients of local radio personality/psychologist, Dr. Lindsay Gail(Flo Gerrish), who he frequently phones himself, to halfheartedly confess his many mental shortcomings and sexual manias to, usually in a hispanic accent so phony it'd make Tony Montana sound like an indio.Investigating the sordid sex crimes are Lt. McCabe and Sgt Hatcher(James Westmoreland, Ben Frank), the two washed-up-on-the-beach detectives morally bankrupt enough to stand a chance of cuffing the cretin.On the side, Smith slides pervy photos to plenteous publisher and purveyor of pornography, Sam Gluckman(Chuck Mitchell) for cash, while keeping his juicier crime scene snuff shots for his own...ahem, personal use.Kirk baits a cheap hooker into a fleabag hotelroom to indulge in some quality vein candy of the speedball variety, calling Dr. Gail and forcing her to be an auditory witness to his crime when he slays her afterwards, brutally bottling her black pimp in the dome in escaping in the nick of time.Hatcher and McCabe correctly surmise that Gail is their big connection in cracking the strangler case.Meanwhile, Smith flexes shirtless in the mirror with a beer, ramblingly mocking the defeated pimp in a derogatory black accent and proclaiming himself the best(!).The cops sieve through the seedy underbelly of the redlight district, searching for the wounded pimp who's seen the strangler's identity, but when they raid his brothel(where whores are dressed like schoolmarms and nazi officers scolding a john wrapped in plastic!) they inadvertently feed him bullet-death in the ensuing coke-soaked fire fight, effectively wiping out their lone eyewitness.Doh!

"See what those kids did to my club?" says Porky(Chuck Mitchell)...oh wait, wrong movie.
Dr. Gail proves ineffective in thwarting a client's suicide attempt, while McCabe succeeds by forefending the doctor's evasive approach in favor of no nonsense action hero-esque straight shooting.The bleeding heart liberal psychologist can't help but be enamored of him after a display like that.Meanwhile, Smith has weaseled his way into the home of a beautiful model(Pam Bryant) under false pretenses of a photo shoot, but the girl is visibly taken aback by some of the...more candid eight by tens in Kirk's portfolio, to which he roughly rhetorts:"You beautiful chick! You love it!", before abruptly snuffing her candle(not to be mistaken for the candle he often inserts into his victim's vagina after penetrating her post-mortem...blech).He's surprised by her housemate, whom he also speeds off to join the choir invisible, but foolishly leaves his glossies at the scene of the crime, after lumbering off to pray at his morbid apartment shrine.Armed with the incriminating photos(which Hatch takes a few of, himself, for his own...ahem, personal use), the cops put the touch on Gluckman, who fingers Smith as the photographer-in-question.The detectives then somehow raid an accountant's office by mistake(!).Smith has already abducted Gail, of course, slapping her around like an autistic alphabet reciter(wow, that was heavy) while confessing that he once killed a puppy after it dropped a deuce on the floor, and he, himself, suffered from bed wetting 'til he was eighteen years old and also, "ass problems"(I think my roommate Doc might know something about that).The cops manage to bust in, in the nick of time, and stop Smith from adding Gail to his ever-burgeoning list of victims, while McCabe empties his gun into the strangler's back, as he falls limply into the pool in slow motion(Signore Deodato, are you reading this?)."Adios, creep." he adds, as the movie ends.

"Remember, angelcakes...the safe word is 'sesquipedalian'..."
I'll be damned if this movie doesn't remind me of a cleaned up remake of the Mentors' "Fuck Movie"(1987) without the crass cartoons and executioner hoods, or Lustig's Maniac!(1980) without the gore effects.Hammer never took the director's chair again after tonight's review.Hardcore genre-erds(you like the way I combined those two for you there?) will immediately recognize Worth as Bruno, Arcane's muscle-headed crony who takes the serum and unwittingly shrinks into a midget, chasing girls around the dinner table in Wes Craven's Swamp Thing(1982).Craven also claims working with the bass-voiced actor, who made a career out of bodybuilding and playing criminal henchmen before passing away in 2007, was one of the highlights of his career(!).Westmoreland, who was once known as "Rad Fulton"(!!!) in the business, has enjoyed a long career in soap operas and television roles, as well as a turn in the 1966 underground classic, The Undertaker and His Pals.Check out Phone for yourselves, it's a step above(or below) the usual stalker flicks of the eighties, and you'll probably find yourself snickering at Worth's mirror rants as much as I do.Two Wops on the scale.I'm trying to cram as many horror reviews in before the end of the month, but with the holiday upcoming, we'll have to see how many I can rip through before I pass out in my toga, as usual.

"You'll never get any money from me, cow! Just cause you got them big udders don't mean you're somethin' special. Get the hook! Go fuck yourself for all I care. YEAH! Go fuck yourself!!"

"The Funhouse"(1981)d/Tobe Hooper

Like most genre enthusiasts, I fully recognize Tobe Hooper's crowning cinematic achievement, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, as one of the greatest horror movies ever made.It's just the erratic shit he followed it up with that I've gotta take issue with.With TCM, he took a high and outside pitch and sent it deep into the upper decks for an uncontestable grand slam.His 1981 offering, The Funhouse, which was ravenously hyped by most horror zines of the day, is closer to a sputtering ground out back to the pitcher.I've noticed a lot of people out there seem to hold fond memories of this one, but it's a fucking mutt, plain and simple.I remember coming away from my first viewing feeling betrayed by all the advance press and leaked photos of Rick Baker's special extreme cleft deformity makeup, having just endured a lethargic, scareless, and mostly bloodless turd.After a few pay-cable viewings and a half-hearted vhs rental in the eighties, I buried the lackluster experience in the darkest recesses of my mind until the technological breakthrough of dvds forced me to re-examine the damned thing, hoping I was overly critical towards it, or perhaps a different cut of the film would change my mind.An emphatic "Cazzo no!" would be the case.On the positive side of the coin, Hooper provides some decent old fashioned atmosphere and suspense in a classic carnival setting dressed with creepy vintage animatronic figures and surreal lighting that's reminiscent of Argento in spots.On the other hand, the cast leaves me pretty flat, apart from perhaps Sylvia Miles and Kevin Conway, as a skeevy fortune teller and sideshow/funhouse/stripshow barker, respectively.Also, the story, as novelized from the screenplay by horror fiction icon Dean Koontz under the pseudonym Owen West, takes something like eight and a half hours to finally kick into high gear, and once it does, it leaves me thinking there ought to have been more.More scares, more gore, more of a body count, more focus on Baker's makeups...but there isn't.

I'm suddenly compelled to whip myself up a pair of fried eggs for some reason...
After Amy Harper(Elizabeth Berridge) gets her titties rubber knifed in the shower by her prank-loving brother Joey(Shawn Carson), she not only renegs on taking him to the carnival(you know, the one where two little girls' dead bodies turned up at last year...) on Saturday, but also vows to exact memorable revenge upon his gruesome little ass for his mischief, before venturing out on a first date with a grease monkey named Buzz(Cooper Huckabee) who can't even pick her up at a decent hour, ferchrissakes.They pick up Liz and Richie(Largo Woodruff, Miles Chapin) and pass around a quick jibber, as Joey climbs out of his bedroom window, determined not to miss the carnival and a perfect opportunity to spy on his older sibling.Buzz wins Amy a stuffed animal and explains his unfunny dancing duck joke to her at the top of the ferris wheel.Amy discusses her troublesome virginity with Liz in the bathroom, when they're interrupted by a over-zealous bag lady(!) who reminds them that God is watching them.Joey gets a ride proposition from a toothy creep who points a shotgun at him.Meanwhile, inside the sideshow, Buzz marvels at a lip-licking cow with a cleft palate and another with a parasitic twin growing out of its face, no doubt, two of the 'eighteen worst mistakes that God ever visited upon man', this movie excluded.Before leaving, Richie drags the double date into a separate tent that contains a mutated baby floating in a lighted jar that momentarily puts a damper on their cannabis-based hijinks.The funhouse barker(Kevin Conway) puts a chill up Amy's spine with his monologue before the group ducks into the magician's tent, as Joey finally makes the scene, dumping a sack of change at the ticket booth.After smoking another discreet pinner(these kids know how to party) behind the tent, the group decides to check out the hooch-slugging fortune teller, Madame Zena(Sylvia Miles), who tells Amy a tall, dark stranger will enter her life amidst her friends' pot-induced giggles("Don't come back or I'll break every fuckin' bone in your body!", she later warns).Richie suggests that both couples stay at the carnival after closing, spending the night in the funhouse.Probably not a good idea, dude.

"Ewwwww, Rasputin's penis!I'll give you a buck if you take it outta the jar and tug it like a bell rope!"
Joey watches as the funhouse cars that contained his sister and her friends return to the mute operator in a Frankenstein mask outside without the prior passengers inside as the carnival shuts down for the evening.The couples notice gaps in the funhouse floorboards that reveal an office below, where the wheezing mute in the Frankenstein mask has solicited Zena(100 bucks for Sylvia Miles?C'monnnn.) for sex.While Zena administers a handy to kick off the action, Frankie prematurely pops his cookies, and when Zena refuses to refund him his money, she gets choked the fuck out for her thriftiness.While the gang beats a hasty retreat for the (locked, of course)exit, Richie jacks all the samoleans outta the office cash box, earning the masked mutant a hearty beating at his own hands(!), to the glee of his barker/father("You really did it this time, didn't ya?!You killed one of the family!"), until he rips off the latex to reveal a severely deformed, blood-curdling cleft-grill and red eyes.Richie carelessly drops a cigarette lighter through the spaces in the floorboards, alerting the carnage-crazy carnys to the intruders upstairs.At this point there's a whole lotta walking around in the dark, until finally the funhouse power is turned on suddenly, as the barker tries to goad his misshapen son into doing one last bad thing for him so they can bury the bodies and go fishin', like they used to.Richie gets lassoed with a noose and hung in front of his panicked pals as the surrounding props once again come to life, the stolen money floating down around them like so much confetti.Buzz blindly swings an axe down into an oncoming ride car, only to discover his blade planted in Richie's dome instead, with Liz hysterically chasing afterwards and falling through a trap door in the floor, later to be killed off-camera when she plants a dagger in the monster's back.After dispatching the gun-wielding barker by skewering his hayseed ass on a sword, Buzz is, in turn, taken out by the murderous freak, leaving only Amy to fend for herself against it in the dark and foreboding funhouse.Just remember, it aint over until the mechanical fat lady sings, which, in this movie's case, probably should have been directly after the opening credits...

"Sorry, kid. You must be this hideously deformed to ride this ride."
Hooper was approached by no less than Steven Spielberg to direct his E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial(1982), but was too busy working on this movie at the time.He'd team up with the director a year later on the wildly popular Poltergeist(1982), though it's been argued that Hooper had precious little to do with the finished product, as Spielberg directed the actors, designed storyboards, and cast the movie on his own, but was unable to direct another movie while still immersed in E.T. due to a clause in his contract.In between all of that, he was also replaced in the director's chair(translation:quit) by Piers Haggard on the 1981 Oliver Reed/Klaus Kinski thriller, Venom.He would eventually direct Lifeforce in 1985.Berridge would go on to play Constanze Mozart in Amadeus(1984), while Huckabee, who'd scored genre roles in The Pom Pom Girls(1976) and The Curse(1987), has enjoyed a long career in television.On the scale, Funhouse gains a single Wop, not being very much fun at all.

"Hit yerself, you ugly thing!"