"Philosophy of a Knife"(2008)d/Andrey Iskanov

Friends, I ask you: Why bother wasting your holiday exchanging petty, inane niceties with relatives you most likely hate three hundred plus days a year(and who never shrink from tirelessly airing every last one of your failures out to the whole family around the dinner table on an annual basis) when you can enjoy an unpalatably dry Russian turkey right here with your favorite Wop?The quicker woprophile wits who invest the nearly four and a half hours necessary to endure the whole of tonight's entry will be drawing infinite parallels between the rubbery chunks of white meat on their plate and the phony latex excess lying just as dead on the screen before them.Not that revisiting the war-driven atrocities that took place inside Japanese Unit 731 is a particularly bad idea, especially when you've got a treasure trove of rare archival footage and photographs to reinforce your own cine-vision and drive the gut-punched reality home, but of course, the hands of an amateur never once sculpted a masterpiece, superlative chisels notwithstanding.If you're somehow unfamiliar with the aforementioned Imperial Japanese experimental unit's horrendous crimes against humanity in keeping up with the Russians and Germans in the chemical and biological weapon race during the second world war, that's because the Russians went out of their way to forever erase that horrific location from the pages of history.Chinese director Tun Fei Mou tackled the controversial subject with his notoriously nasty Men Behind the Sun(1988), a far superior and more effective effort than Iskanov's in every way, if you're asking me.The Russian has produced a mostly cheap-looking, longwinded, self-indulgent fap-fest that could have been a powerful, moving film with at least three hours worth of edits, methinketh.

"...in Soviet Russia, movie edits you."
At the outset, we see Iskanov in black and white, as flanked by two fellow countrymen who blow several minutes worth of flowery smoke directly up the filmmaker's ass.Iskanov foresees an unreceptive audience for his cinematic vision, unsure of whether it is based on historic fact or his own interpretation of said truth, though he's fairly sure his film isn't a horror movie, and that the two most important ideas to take away from it are simply, 'death' and 'war'.Fair enough, Andrey, I'll keep that in mind.In between exhaustingly boring interview footage of one withered old geezer who figured prominently in the Khabarosk war crimes trials that would follow, actual film and photographs of the camp and its unfortunate human guinea pigs of all nations is slapped haphazardly together with unedited-esque amateur video recreations of the experiments themselves, as acted out by a mostly silent cast of what looks to be three Asians and a handful of male and female Russian fashion model-types, and treated to closely match the grainy black and white vintage clips(doesn't work very well, either) that they're wrapped around.The withered old geezer animatedly relates his ever-changing version of the events surrounding the construction and operations of Unit 731 from his modest apartment, where he keeps his personal copier(!) under his television set.First, he's stumbling upon the camp while picking mushrooms and conversing with the guard in Japanese(apparently, being a medical student in Harbin also somehow means you're fluent in Japanese), and threateningly told by the guard to never return if he knew what was good for him, yet he later relates having casually strolled into the courtyard where victims were tied to scattered poles with no promised retribution from the security force.How's that done, eh.Oh wait, nevermind, you're a liar, you liar, you.Back to overlong segments of cheap video snow effects and expressionless closeups.And lots of 'em, by God.

Next week on "So Two-thirds of You Thinks You Can Dance?"...
In between the tedium, as described above, for those of you into cheaply orchestrated, mostly fake-looking debased cruelty as applied by one or more actors, uninterested-looking, upon one or more Russian model-types, disrobed more often than not, and equally unconcerned by the rubbery goings on being inflicted upon them, is cinematic paydirt, indeed.Unmatched scream tracks are piped in over cutaways to embarrassingly phony prop mouths, where teeth are clumsily extricated one....by....one, over...and...over...and over.Hot nude eastern bloc blondes are strapped into a chair and giant hissing cockroaches are shoved into their open vadge.Metrosexual could-be Gap models are splashed with h2o while tied nude to a pole amidst the frostbite-inducing elements outside.A prisoner is zapped with x-rays until he's deformed by the radiation.Not entirely unwilling-looking dames are given the infectious in-out by waterheaded walking std's at gunpoint(the barrel ends up getting sucked on by the victim, mid-rape, as shots of bacteria under a microscope classily flash on by).You looking for abortions, chum?Knife has abortions, abortions, abortions.Voiceover narration for a 731 nurse is provided by Dutch-German actress Manoush, who, after minutes-long pro-Imperialist dialogue with an echo attached to it, starts to sound like the mincey bastard son of Joey Grey and Udo Kier.It should also be noted, that several members of the infamous unit went on to enjoy careers in Japanese medicine and health industry, heading U.S. funded schools, or in the case of notorious camp commander, Shirō Ishii, moving to Maryland to further research bio-weaponry.Moral of the story?In some cases, people are willing to let scientific progress trump humanity and the systematic raping of said ideal.Enjoy that Thanksgiving dinner, kiddies...

"You sleep with Wop, stupid girl, we stitch you up.How many times you are told this?"
There's some good cinematography in Knife, and Iskanov knows it, too.Why else would he repeat the same shots n' sequences over and over ad nauseum?I'm just not sure he knows where they are, so he chooses to draw them all out by leaving it all in there.Trying to hang a complex arthouse label on cheap exploitative H.G. Lewis-ish shenannigans is like calling said exploitation king a master of the modern horror film.Some creative editing(more of the powerful vintage imagery, less of everything else, though, I must admit the soundtrack is tits) might have warranted the film the pretentious airs it vainly tries to surround itself with.Four and a half hours is a long time, folks.And after watching an hour and a half's worth of goodies agonizingly stretched out to that blood-vessel bursting length for the sake of the website and you readers, I'm putting myself in for a Purple fucking Heart.You know how many cigarettes I could have smoked?Do you know how much sex I could have had?Do you know how many post-coital cigarettes I could have...okay, I'll stop there, but you get my point.Cut down to a reasonable running time, this could be thought-provoking four Wop territory, but as it stands, it's more boring than a Coldplay album.Or a Nickelback halftime performance.Whichever's funnier.One wop.

I was thinking about doing the same thing after the four hour mark.

"Friday the 13th Pt. VII:The New Blood"(1988)d/John Carl Buechler

When last we left the lucrative-but-erratic Friday the 13th series and their indestructible murder-minded mongo in the iconic goalie mask, they'd just laid the time-tested tongue-in-cheek sixth installment on us, turning Mr. Voorhees into a homicidal zombie via lightning rod to the uproarious rapture of Jason-junkies worldwide.With renewed popularity abound, they handed the next installment over to John Carl Buechler, the man in the director's chair on movies like The Dungeonmaster(1984), Troll(1986), and Cellar Dweller(1988), as well as special effects technician on Ghoulies(1985), Troll(1986), and The Garbage Pail Kids Movie(1987), who'll probably be remembered for putting stuntman/actor/juggalo(!) Kane Hodder behind the mask for the first time after working with him on Prison a year earlier, a role he'd reprise four times to date.Hodder, in turn, would allow himself to burn controlledly on camera for something like forty seconds straight in the production, setting an impressive stunt record that stood for years in the industry.As was the case with most of the movies in the series, the censors were merciless to Buechler's entry, excising much of the gut-busting, eye-piercing, head-pulping effects that the director had lined up for audiences in part seven, leaving a mostly bloodless, incoherent mess in their wake.To any discombobulating fans inexplicably championing this entry out there, rest easy.I'm not gonna call Pt. VII the worst movie of the series(Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan) or even the second worst(Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday), but third worst isn't at all outside the realm of distinct possibility here, while respectfully recognizing the epic levels of suck generated by Friday the 13th Part III in 3D, of which I've still got the original special goggles you can still catch a whiff off of.Onward.

See the senseless siren somniferously slain and shivved to a sapling.
We meet ten year old Tina as she bears audio witness to her alcoholic father slapping her mother up like a favorite smack vein, as the psychological damage of said dysfunctional event proves to be a catalyst for the young girl's intrinsic psychokinetic powers, also sending her mother-denting dad to an icy death at the bottom of the Crystal Lake drink in the process.Four years later, with her mother(Susan Blu) and doctor(Terry Kiser) springing her teenaged guilt-laden ass from the nut house and revisiting the scene of the crime, Dr. Crews secretly hopes to harness Tina(Lar Park Lincoln)'s mental abilities and exploit them by keeping the teen's stress levels through the friggin' roof.On vacation right next door is an eighties Benetton ad's worth of stupid kids:There's the glasses-grilled wallflower Maddy(Diana Barrows), blonde sex kitten Robin, Eddie the sci-fi dork, David the burnout, Russell the prep and his girlfriend Sandra, Ben and Kate, the token pair o' dark skins, Melissa(Susan Jennifer Sullivan) the upper crust snotbag, Michael the birthday boy and Nick, his cousin-who's-got-the-hots-for-Tina-next-door.Ya know, while an emotionally overwrought psychic is focusing her powerful mind on the lake in attempt to ressurrect her dead father, I hope she doesn't inadvertently free Jason Voorhees, who's been chained to a boulder in the murky depths, instead.Wouldn't you know it?Tina tries to explain her mentalist faux pas to her mother and doctor, but naturally, neither of those motherfuckers are buying a yarn like that.Making up for lost time, Jason's folly quickly turns to homicide.Michael and his girl get tent spiked the fuck up, while nearby campers Dan and Judy get neck snapped/ beaten repeatedly against a tree in a sleeping bag, respectively.Carrie Wh-, uhhh, Tina doubts her own sanity after having bloody visions of the murders when she sends Dr. Crews to investigate, unaware that the shrink is busy covering up evidence, concerned only with his coming fame and fortune.

"Wake up!WAKE UP!You're gonna miss out on my flapjacks n' scrapple breakfast!"
Meanwhile Jason feeds Russell an axe, drowns Sandra naked, and when Maddy gussies herself up for some of David's attention, she gains Jason's instead, and he nails her wrists to a tree and gives her an extra mouth with a sickle for her troubles.Ben gets his domepiece smooshed, while Kate gets a noisemaker shoved headlong into her skull via the eyesocket.David gets shanked in the labonza and is relieved of his dome while Hockey-puss chucks Robin out an upstairs window.Tina and Nick are busy doing 'couple things', discovering bodies in the woods together, while Crews is bravely using the girl's mother as a human shield, eating tree saw-administered gut-splatter death himself, for his treachery.Tina stumbles upon her mother's lifeless form, then the neighbors' remains, and, to add insult to injury, Jason himself.The zombified mongoloid gets himself well clobbered by Tina's mind-driven items, including a porch(!!), but the net-minding psycho proves more difficult to dispatch than that, axing Melissa in her snobby mush, before the girl can mentally hurl the brute into the cellar, where she redirects furnace flame to ignite the gasoline she's just doused him with and set him ablaze like so many shut-off notices in Smith-tips' Bonfire of Irresponsibility.Of course to a reanimated maniac like Voorhees, this is a mere momentary setback, and he proceeds to KTFO Nick when Tina somehow manages to resurrect her dead father from the lake(!!!), and the waterlogged drunken wifebeater binds Jason in his chains and pulls him back into watery slumber, just in the nick of time.Tina later boasts of her latest quality Dad-time to Nick as they're both sped off in an ambulance.A hockey mask, broken in half, is found at the crime scene...

Lar Park Lincoln!Audiences loved her in this and House II:The Second Story(1987) aaaand uh...
This was the first Friday the 13th that I skipped out on seeing in the theaters, probably due to the impending waves of pleasure my teenaged lungs would have gotten out of the three packs of smokes I could have gotten with the ticket price, had I not gone.No-brainer, really, even back then.This would be Buechler's only Friday, as he moved on to helm Ghoulies III:Ghoulies Go To College(1991) next, seriously.Terry Kiser would follow his effort here with his career-defining turn as a partying cadaver in Weekend at Bernie's(not to be confused with the later Queers album) a year later.You may not have known that he also lent his image to Mannequin Two:On the Move(1991), but you do now.Most of the rest of the cast you could probably shell out mere sawbucks for signed 8" x 10"s and insincere Polaroids with, at the nearest obligatory horror con, if you wanted to.Hodder would portray Jason in the eighth, ninth, and tenth movies in the series, as well as roles in 2007's limp Ed Gein: The Butcher of Plainfield and Hatchet(2006)/Hatchet II(2011)'s Victor Crowley character(I've only seen the first thus far, with no great desire to catch the sequel in the near future, though Danielle Harris sure is swell to gander at).As far as Part VII goes, it's not likely to convert you into a Friday nut, but it probably won't send you running for: a)bucket b)box of tissues or c)nearest handgun with a clip fulla vengeance either.Sure, it sucks, but you knew that going in.It gets stamped with a single Wop of indifference.Flip a Wednesday evening coin.

"Whattaya mean you want your three fifty back?!!?"

"Kiss of the Vampire"(1962)d/Don Sharp

It's been a hot minute since we've sunken our pronounced canines into a decent vampire flick here at the Wop, and where better to stop our horse-drawn carriage than a gothic Hammer classic like Don Sharp's Kiss of the Vampire, chronologically the third in the studio's long line of fang-fare after 1958's Horror of Dracula and 1960's Brides of Dracula, and indeed, originally intended to be a Dracula sequel(the second without Christopher Lee) with a wild ending borrowed directly from the novelization of Brides(and one that Peter Cushing felt was out of character for his Van Helsing, as he would never resort to using the black arts of the occult to battle blood drinkers, regardless of its effectiveness) that was left out of that production due to the effects team's inability to pull it off believably for audiences at the time.Two short years later, with no Lee or Cushing in the credits, Sharp would give it the old schoolboy try anyway, and the result is an atmospheric and original ride, with lavish colors, impressive set pieces, and beautiful period costumes, that tackles vampirism as a social disease contracted by those who surround themselves with decadence.It stumbles slightly at the climax with laughable rubber bats on wires(Hammer had problems depicting the winged mammals on camera throughout their history, if you ask me), but stands as an entirely watchable cult classic from the legendary studio none-the-less, with a coherent script reminiscent of Hitchcock at times, innovative ideas concerning the vampire mythology, and haunting sequences that would influence later genre productions by accomplished directors like Roman Polanski.Forward!

"Scoff at the strike branded liquor bottle on my forearm all you want, the bitches love this shit!"
In the midst of a bleak funeral in an isolated European burg, a priest's Latin incantations are interrupted by a grief-stricken drunk who plunges a spade through the coffin lid, bringing unearthly screams and fresh claret bubbling to the surface, much to the horror of the mourners, who scatter like roaches in the light from the surreal and somber scene.Elsewhere,newlyweds Marianne and Gerald Harcourt(Jennifer Daniel, Edward de Souza)have broken down on a windy and desolate mountain road in the Carpathians, as their state-of-the-art jalopy sputters to a halt, the petrol tank bone dry.As Gerald hoofs it for some turn-of-the-centry roadside assistance, his delicious new bride is telescoped through the woods by the regal Dr. Ravna(Noel Willman) from his nearby manor.The young couple soon find themselves shacked up at a derelict inn in town, where the innkeeper's wife's constant mood swings from indifference to misery should be a harbinger of the terrible events that would soon transpire.It's not long before Ravna sends a personal carriage to the inn for the stranded lovers, who are lulled into false momentary bliss by the doctor's ornately decorated mansion and son Carl's(Barry Warren) hypnotic piano composition.Meanwhile, Professor Zimmer(Clifford Evans) watches from the wings as Tania(Isobel Black), a beautiful teenaged vampire, inspects the fresh grave of one of her latest victims only to find the drunken vampire hunter's spade protruding from the earth as he briefly captures her, allowing the undead lass to puncture his wrist with a fanged kiss in the process.Back at the inn, some impromptu detective work by Marianne reveals that Bruno has a beautiful teenaged daughter of his own, that has disappeared under mysterious circumstances...

"Use the body, now you want my sooooul, Oooh, forget about it, now say no gooo..."
The newlyweds are invited to a posh masquerade ball held at Ravna's estate, and while Sabena(Jacquie Wallis) administers a roofie-laden cocktail to George, his wife Marianne is initiated into the doctor's blood cult, stripped of her breathtaking red party gown for a see-thru white ceremonial gown and neck-bitten by the effetely sadistic fiend while cheered on by her accepting new undead kinfolk.George awakens hungover and alone, told that the gathering ruined by his uncouth drunkenness was one he attended alone, as he's roughly shown the door.Back at the inn, all traces of Marianne have disappeared from the Harcourt's room as the well-to-do groom's sudden panic is interrupted by a decidedly more sober Zimmer, who relates the similar fate that befell his own teenaged daughter and threw him on the righteous path of vampire destruction in the first place to the groggy and desperate husband.George attempts to break into the Ravna's digs, but is led forcibly to the doctor, who reveals the man's wife to be entrancedly enamored to him to the point that she spits a defiant loogie in his grill(Ptooey!) to prove her loyalty to the cult leader.Zimmer shows up in the nick of time and rescues the couple, while sealing the cult into the manor with crosses drawn in garlic upon all the entrances.While Zimmer begins a black magic ritual to return all the vampires to the dark lord, Ravna uses his hypnotic influence to try and draw Marianne back to the estate before the professor can punish the monsters with their own dark arts, but George manages to save her once again as she's sleepwalking through the forest.With the ceremony completed, the skies become black with a sea of bloodthirsty vampire bats that swoop down upon Ravna and his screaming followers, overwhelming them in a biting orgy of blood and rubber bats on wires.

"I say, old beast, would it be terribly forward of me to plant these eye teeth in the nape of your neck? Jolly good show, eh wot?"
Sharp would go on to helm such memorable Chris Lee vehicles as Rasputin the Mad Monk(1965), The Face of Fu Manchu(1965), and 1966's The Brides of Fu Manchu, as well as such genre favorites as Witchcraft(1964), with one of the last acting roles of Lon Chaney, Jr., The Curse of the Fly(1965), 1973's Dark Places with Lee, Joan Collins, and Herbert Lom, and the cult classic Psychomania(1973). I jumped all over the Image disc years back, before it went out of print, though the film has once again become available to the masses as one of the titles in the two disc region one Hammer Horrors boxset, in its original aspect ratio with no extras.Rumor has it that this is the best print available to date of Hammer's gothic classic, so you'd probably do well to snag yourself this collection the next time it makes itself readily available to you, and with all speed, at that.Gotta dole out props to Kiss for its innovation and lush watchability, as it manages to secure itself an impressive three Wops on the scale and comes recommended for all.Track it down!

"...When the cartoon bats return to Carpathia, that's the night you promised to bury meeee..."