"Patrick vive ancora"(1980)d/Mario Landi

Tonight's review is an unofficial Italian sequel to Sitges award-winning Australian director Richard Franklin's 1978 cult classic film, Patrick, dealing with a young comatose man who uses psychokinetic powers to influence his nurse to fall in love with him, killing anyone who stands in his way.Italians must've loved Patrick, a film they'd re-score with Argento soundtrack regulars, Goblin, before going the familiar quick buck cash-in formula/ route with the ahem, tribute, as directed by Mario Landi, of  Giallo a Venezia(1979) infamy, and produced by Gabriele Crisanti, who you've probably been trying to forget from such high brow genre experiences as Andrea Bianchi's Le notti del terrore(1981) and Mario Bianchi's La bimba di Satana(1982).Ancora is a head-scratchingly silly rip-off, piled high with extreme sleaze, cleavage-heavy reaction shots, and cheap gore, low on production values and continuity, but high on unintentional laughs and over-the-top shocks.Landi even throws in a tinge of stylistic Argento-esque flair, with his use of purple and green lighting whenever Patrick's cranial power is in use, that a neo-expressionist like Enzo Cucchi might momentarily admire if had he seen it, and perhaps briefly forgotten what sick mutt of a movie he was watching in the first place. In other words, a foolproof companion to that rainy mid-week movie night for you and your genre nut intimates, all of which, might well be bowled the fuck over by the time this exploitatively nasty little number comes to a close, yourself included.

"...è paralizzato anche il tuo cazzo?Anche se i strofinare la mia figa sulla spalliera del letto?"
We first see Patrick(Gianni Dei) as he and his father, a professor named Herschel(Sascha Pitoeff), have broken down just south of Motuo County, China, where Patrick's attempts to flag down a passing car for roadside assistance earn him a chucked bottle upside his mush for his troubles.Next, in the operating theater, we see a surgeon in a mad dash to save the young man's life.Yeah, from that bottle in the face I just mentioned, as likely as that fucking sounds.The emergency surgery is successful, if by 'successful' you really meant 'left in a vegetative comatose state for an indefinite amount of time'.I guess the upside would be the mysterious psychokinetic powers Patrick inexplicably develops, the mental flame fanned by Herschell's other patients at his private clinic(you know, the one from Burial Ground? ).Meanwhile, the professor has somehow discovered the identities of six possible vessel-heaving suspects, inviting them all to his clinic for a few days that may or may not include violent retribution at the murderous mind of his soporose son.That they're all repugnant commoners, booze-soaked and belligerent, and ready to dash off their gear and prance around nude-ski's at the drop of a hat only helps the audience finetune it's growing hatred for the disposable characters and groove on the horrible, berserk death they're all about to eat for supper...

Peter North ha visto alcuni giorni migliori.
First to go is a politician named Cough, who Patrick abruptly boils alive while he goes for a late night swim in the pool; his blistery corpse explained away by Herschell to the other guests as 'alcoholism-related'("Were you swimming in the moonshine still again, Cough?") and these bourgeois clodplates buy it.Davis is next, neck-hooked and hung over a well, before being discovered by Stella(Mariangela Giordano), who later discovers a flayed cat in the fridge, and later still, a medical pole in her vagina(Understandably, she says "No! No!" to the concept) that peskily impales her before exiting out her mouth.Next, Patrick uses his mental abilities for more conventional ends: forcing Lidya the secretary to strip nude and masturbate for him against her will.That she later ends up among those suspected of flinging flagon only adds to the complexity of the father and son's vengeance-fueled dilemma that is wholely ignored by Landi and co.Bel lavoro, ragazzi!A broad loses her dome to a car window-guillotine, while another servant gets her throat bitten out by her Shepalutes.Does any of this get Patrick any closer to the true identity of the bottle-throwing bastard that has left him in such a low somnambulistic state?Of course it doesn't, but it makes for a hilariously twisted  ninety-two, if you know what I'm saying here.

"Minchia! Che un palo!"
Besides tonight's feature, which would be his last, and the aforementioned Giallo, Landi mostly worked on television projects, directing 1979's Supersexymarket and 1980's Il viziaccio, both with genre reg Femi Benussi, before passing away in 1992.Dei, who has appeared in things like Angelo Pannacciò's Sex of the Witch(1973), La settima tomba(1965), and Delitti(1987), also earned a credit in Landi's Giallo, as well.Crisanti's wife, Mariangela Giordano has had a prolific film career spanning over fifty years, with many genre credits to her name, such as Malabimba(1979), Giallo a Venezia(1979),  Le notti del terrore(1981), and Jesus Franco's Killer Barbys(1996), to list just a few.Besides his memorable turn in Argento's Inferno(1980), you can also catch the late Sacha Pitoeff in things like Donkey Skin(1970) opposite the delicious Delphine Seyrig, Anastasia(1956), and 1968's The Golden Claws of the Cat Girl(1968).On the scale, Ancora merits an anemic single Wop, though it's appeal to fans of genre-sleaze of the lowest order is undeniable, indeed.Approach accordingly...

Un altro cliente soddisfatto.

"The Party Animal"(1984)d/David Beaird

Is it fucking June again already?Tonight's movie first turned up for me as a VHS new release on the shelves at D's Video back in '85, the choice of the evening for one of the more iniquitous neighborhood guys who'll remain nameless here, for reasons well known to all in attendance that summer afternoon, all who unanimously thumbs downed the inauspicious sex comedy amidst cries of "biased opinion" from the film's chooser-cum-champion, and as far as I had thought for twenty years afterwards, probably the only one in existence.I recently stumbled across the MGM dvd on a three dollar shelf at Big Lots(along with the Dimension Mother of Tears(2006) disc that had been eluding me for a minute, and a couple of others, really a Howard Carter/King Tut buried-in-his-jammies kind of excavation, reminiscent of my glorious far reaching VHS hunts of yesteryear) and knew instantly that too many years had passed since I last screened it, and my evaluation at the time was borderline unfair due to aforementioned circumstances.One thing you'll learn about Libras, we demand a balance of justice in everything we get our mitts around, or it'll pick at us like a pair of woolen unter-knicks until the state has exhaustively been achieved.Once ample haze had been vigorously puffed up, and the film had run it's brisk seventy-seven minutes, I found my recent suspicions about it to have been well-founded, indeed, with several snicker-worthy segments, a killer alt. soundtrack with mint Buzzcocks, Chelsea, and R.E.M. tracks and a memorable live performance by righteous L.A. mod outfit of the day, The Untouchables, and I haven't even mentioned all the eighties-licious headband babes and their respective bra-buddies that are broken out along the way, all in the name of lunkheadedly libidinous teen larfs.Onward.

Pondo(Matt Causey) wants to park his yap in some three-finger gap.
The ridiculously-named Pondo Sinatra(Matt Causey) is a twenty-six year old backwards Confederate Flag-wearing bumpkin who's arrived at college in the back of a turnip truck and whose abrasive Southern drawl and neanderthal approach to women seemingly leaves him jinxed from ever scoring a slice of hair pie, to this dismay of his collegiate chum with equally ridiculous name, Studly(Tim Carhart), a guy who never has any problem nailing any number of compliant feather-coiffed campus-dwelling quims, who give angry, documentary-style testimonials to the camera concerning Pondo's lovemaking ineptitudes.We see him get head-scissored between the thighs of an unwilling fully clothed cunnilingus recipient on a lover's lane car date and sends a whorehouse full of hookers off screaming in terror.Studly sends his friend to Elbow(Jerry Jones), his own personal sifu in the ways of women, a jive-talking black cat who urges Pondo to be a "houuuuun dawg" that's "gonna eat dat pussay!", but he only manages to crash a black party decked out in seventies pimp gear, slinging ethno-jive and offending everyone until a gaggle of statuesque homeboys converge on him and set his honky ass straight.A wrongful makeover leaves Pondo a hunchbacked 'n chained up mohawk punk with spikes through his cheeks that's chased by a lynch mob through town before he cries out, familiarly, in agony:"...I...am...not...an animal!" "Bullshit! That's an animal!", one of the posse replies.

"...Hounnn dawg gon' eat dat pussay!"
Pondo, desperate to see his dreams of being cool enough to sing the title track in a pair of Wayfarer sunglasses on stage become reality, crashes a party with comically oversized amounts of illicit drugs, rolling himself a Led Zeppelin of a jibber, eating sloppy mounds of reefer with fistfuls of prescription drugs and a whole sheet of acid before dumping a sack of cocaine on the table, cutting elephantine lines with a meat cleaver and burying his face in the mess before being led out by the disbelieving police.Several half-baked attempts at developing a new aphrodisiac leave the local females bald and disfigured.Faced with expulsion from college, Pondo stumbles upon the formula for irresistibility in some sludge he's dumping out in the lab workshop, transforming himself into the titular 'party animal' whose mere presence sends any nearby woman into a sexual frenzy, but soon finds out being desirable to the opposite sex can be a frustrating, exhausting predicament, as well, when several overweight women at the laudromat are suddenly struck horny, sending the hayseed to a premature grave.Studs notices a rabbit in the backyard that bears the same stars -n- bars patch in his back fur as his deceased friend used to wear, and calls out to the animal, knowing that his goofy pal has managed to get reincarnated in the perfect guise...

Hey Untouchables, how many mods does it take to screw in a lightbulb*?
Causey would also turn up in the Beaird vehicle, My Chauffeur(1986), while the director would continue to helm successful comedies and theatrical productions after debuting with this minor cult hit.Carhart would land roles in things like Witness, Desperately Seeking Susan(both 1985), and even Pink Cadillac(1989).Jerry Jones had previously appeared in several Rudy Ray Moore flicks, like Disco Godfather(1979), The Human Tornado(1976), and '75's Dolemite.This is probably the most even-handed performance I've ever seen him give.Robin Harlan would appear in Hollywood Vice Squad(as 'Hooker #4', of course) the following year, before moving on to a successful career behind the scenes as a foley artist on over two hundred movies.Despite it's occasionally strained approach in delivering the comedic goods, Animal turned out to be a pretty nostalgic trip back to the outset of the eighties for this guy, and mostly unworthy of all the negativity I'd been chucking in it's direction for the past two decades.Two big ones on the scale.Check it out for yourselves, if you feel compelled to do so.

Xenophobia Rabbit sez, "Git offa mah lan', g'wan git!!"



*Fourteen, by my estimates.One to change the lightbulb, one to book the Northern Soul n' Rocksteady bands for the scooter rally afterwards, and twelve to run down that dirty grease merchant rocker and kick 'is fahkin' 'ead in, roit?!!

"The Dead"(2010)d/The Ford Brothers

Let the record show that tonight, another matchless evening of proto-metal, high grade disorientation smoke, and new horror flicks for the kid over here, I stand partially corrected about a movie sub-genre for probably the first time since Leonard Nimoy first fell in love with ugly polyester blazers and turtlenecks.Partially, I say, because despite going into the Ford 's foray into flesh-eating ghouls-on-film blind, and still zombie dyspepsic from Romero's last impecunious harvesting off an already depleted reanimated teat, with expectations lower than Prince Randian's ballbag, the British siblings still managed to deliver a pretty standard zed word effort that offers nothing particularly innovative about the subject, and yet somehow entertained the hell outta me, just the same.The filmmakers display solid technical prowess in soaking their frame with atmosphere and dread while showcasing the savage beauty of the dark continent of Africa, where voodoo, zombies, and the like seem right at home, though they wisely choose to avoid ever hanging the living dead plague within on the black arts, or any other hastily slung together expository roots, knowing full well that genius often lies in simplicity.Partially, I say, because despite such a pleasant suprise as 'The Dead' turned out be, I stand adamantly behind my prior assessment that the cinematic zombie needs reinterment for a period of no less than a decade or two(you guys can also hold off until after I'm unanimated myself, too, I won't complain, really.), unless we're talking about a movie like this...

Jam goes on the toast, not the chest.It isn't Vicks' Vapor Rub, ferchrissakes.
Lt. Brian Murphy(Rob Freeman) is a U.S. military engineer looking to reunite with his family, aboard the last evac flight out of an African continent that has become overrun with re-animated, flesh-eating corpses.When it fails to take off properly, the plane is forced to crash land just off the coast, with Murphy being one of two uninjured survivors in a mad scramble for the cover of the treeline as a beachload of ghouls shamblingly converge upon them, while an immobilized remnant is devoured alive.It's soon apparent that travelling on foot across the scorching plains is a near impossibility; though the silent zombies shuffle along aimlessly baby step by baby step, they are relentless in their pursuit of human food, which can be set upon by a magnitude of white-eyed flesh-eaters in a moment's time, as Murphy learns, getting himself surrounded, and ultimately saved by Sgt. Dembele(Prince David Osei), an African soldier who has absconded from his unit to rescue his wife and young son from a nearby village, only to find the aftermath of a bloodbath: his wife, dying, has been partially eaten by the zombies and his son has hitched a ride aboard a military transport headed north.Murphy and Dembele agree to travel together to the northern base in a hastily repaired Jeep, increasing their infinitessimal chances of survival with numbers.

"Medical aid? We're here for the free Philadelphia Yankees t-shirts."
The odds progressively stack on top of the unlikely duo, sacrificing much of their canteen water to keep the rickety radiator from overheating, and ultimately barrelling breakneck into a shuffling corpse along the way, leaving them no choice but to make the rest of the perilous journey on foot amidst a silent, growing army that's seemingly only moments away from wherever they choose to rest and collect themselves.After a lengthy, expository stay at a proud village determined to battle back the mortifying menaces, Murphy is forced to go it alone when Dembele gets himself bitten, chewed, and swallowed by a roving pack of ghouls one night, when neither man manages to awaken to the makeshift tin can/string/rock zombie alert they've set up around the encampment.Murphy close calls his way through miles of treacherous terrain, often packed with patrols of pustulent zombies that he's forced to hide in ditches and up trees from, dodging a gory demise one last time when soldiers from the nearby base give some surrounding shamblers a lead lunch.Murphy is united with Dembele's son and gives his father's pendant to him before they turn to face the approaching shadow of a zombie horde in the African sun.Credits.
 
"I found the problem!My femur is puncturing the gas tank..."
Apart from directing commericals and appearing in Pervirella(2002) as  the Statue of Liberty(!), Howard J. has also directed Mainline Run(1994) and 2000's Distant Shadow, while Jon served as cinematographer on both productions.Freeman, who portrayed Ryan's son in Saving Private Ryan(1998), also appeared on shows like X-Files and Millenium, while scoring another genre credit in the made-for-tv Pumpkinhead:Blood Feud(2007).Osei also turns in an effective performance here as Sgt. Dembele, and I look forward to seeing him in more things in the future.I like that the Fords' zombies move like the classic Romero variant rather than the Boyle sprinting variety, but more closely resemble an update on Fulci's, circa Paura nella città dei morti viventi(1980), to me.That the tension remains thicker than a lung fulla Sour Diesel throughout a slow zombie production at this stage of the supersaturated living dead ballgame is just one more tribute to the filmmakers' blatant abilities, and let's not forget they did it without relying on a silly titular prefix like "Continent of..." or some such shit, eh.I hope one or both of them choose to remain in the genre game for at least a few more movies, though it's apparent they're destined for bigger things in the industry, for sure.One or two KNB-style zombie chowdowns away from perfection, methinks.Still, it rates :
 
If you let this chap with the Farrah smile shamble into your personal space, you're a Ghana...errr, goner.Sorry.