Exploitation Hell-A-Go-Go

Hobo With A Shotgun

2011-09-11T17:18:00.000-07:00

Hobo With A Shotgun is a movie that began life as a fan-made fake trailer that won a place in Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino’s drive-in throwback Grindhouse. All respect to the creators winning a place on a feature film, which must have been damn cool, but in all honesty, Hobo With A Shotgun only has enough story, talent, and mot importantly, fun to sustain a trailer; a feature length film is just a terrible bore no matter how many exploding heads you cram into the work.
Also, I just want to put this out there: exploding heads are passe. As far as exploitation and horror are concerned, both Scanners and Maniac from 1980 closed the book on that little gimmick. Let's find something else. I'm all for someone's dick exploding, which, ironically considering (surprise) this is a negative review, Hobo With A Shotgun does contain. So maybe it's not all bad. But it's still not good.

Not to give a away to much, but this film features Rutger Hauer as the titular hobo who not surprisingly takes it upon himself to grab a shotgun and begun mowing down all the criminals in an unnamed city. I'm going to throw it out there, but like any B-movie fan worth his salt, I love Rutger Hauer. I'm not going to wax rhapsodic about his performance in Bladerunner though, I'm not the biggest fan of that film, but I will say, unlike most, I think he's damn awesome in Split-Second. Blind Fury is pretty bitching too. I might have to do them as a double-feature review one day, if for nothing else other than an excuse to re-watch both films. I'm not going to say Hauer is necessarily good in this movie, but he's not bad, and what he does do is lend this production so much needed credibility just by being there.

The biggest problem with Hobo With A Shotgun is that it tries so goddamn hard to be a Troma movie. The unnamed city the hobo wages war against, with its corrupt cops; stupid, unsympathetic citizens; and rampant violence may as well be Tromaville: the setting for all Troma movies. I've never been a fan of Troma movies; with output like The Toxic Avenger, Class of Nuke 'Em High, and Sgt. Kabukiman have far too much of a looney, anarchic bent to be any kind of quality cinema, trash or otherwise. Troma movies have no characters or story to speak of, just endless scenes of gore. This would all be fine and dandy, but when there's no reason to care about the gore and the gore is cheap and amateurish, I find little reason to actually watch the movie.
Hobo revels in these attitudes: every character besides the Hobo or the requisite hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold are evil and sadistic and take such glee from admittedly fun-loving activities as roasting grade-school students with a flamethrower, decapitating citizens with a barbed wire noose, or cutting medics behind the knees just to watch them flop. When the citizens of the city are turned against the hobo and resort to killing all his hobo-friends, including immolating a mother and her children, we're warned that the citizens still deserve to be saved because “they're scared, they're not bad.” The movie doesn't believe and neither do I. I'm sure the filmmakers are attempting to be satirical with their portrayal both of the citizens reactions to media-inspired fear (in this case regarding hobos) as well as the Hobo's own reaction to the situation (shotgunning everyone). None of the satire rings true simply because Hobo With A Shotgun is too in love with its own excess, namely burning children and exploding heads.

The gore effects of the film are pretty fantastic, they just all come down to either a shotgun to the head or the chest. There are some novelty injuries, but I'll leave them a surprise. Not that I recommend this movie, because simply it's crap. Worst of all it's boring. Hobo With A Shotgun is just another modern movie that attempts to cull cache but copying the look and possible feel of an exploitation film from the 1970s without and of the anger or maverick sensibilities. Too slick and over-produced to be exploitation, too boring and repetitive to be good trash cinema, Hobo With A Shotgun just meanders its way through 80 minutes hoping to get by on gore effects. Been there, done that, better luck next time.

* out of ****

Hell Night: Pray For More Movie Like This

2011-09-08T16:45:00.000-07:00

“Pray for Day.” This is the tag-line for the ultimately-forgettable-but-loved-by-me 1981 slasher film Hell Night. As a demented young lad, my love of shock and trash cinema started with a little mom-and-pop video store called Magic Video. Remember those? Video stores pre-Blockbuster that had both “legit” cinema and porn? Coming of age, man. Also, on a semi-related tangent: fuck DVD and fuck Netflix; I long to a return to the halcyon days of 80-cents-a-night video rentals. VHS will live again, much like many of the antagonists in the movies featured on this blog.

Alright, no more tangents, time to get back on point. I first encountered this movie when I was 9 or 10 and perusing Magic Video for my weekend watches (Fridays me and my brothers was granted two rentals by my parental units; at a buck-sixty who could resist?), the cover art and tag-line for Hell Night grabbed me hard and refused to let go. Linda Blair, scared out of her wits, framed behind an imposing wrought iron fence and in front of a traditional horror-movie mansion all while fighting off an undead rapist. “Pray for Day” my ass, I'd be praying to get out of the situation a little earlier than that. Many a Friday night did I watch this movie with the remorseless glee that would come to define my adult life.

Time for a little synopsis. Hell Night is a complete rip-off of an H.P. Lovecraft story, “The Lurking Fear.” What, that doesn't tell you all you need to know? Alright, the similarities of the two works are such: There's an old-money rich family that more than anything else wanted some heirs to carry on the tradition of being rich; There's a problem with the heirs, namely they're all mongoloids; an insane father kills the entire family; one (or two) mongoloid sons survives through other reasons; one (or two) mongoloids sons haunts the local countryside or now-abandoned mansion kill any motherfucker prettier than them (everyone). The difference is that Hell Night strips all of Lovecraft's queasy racism from the story and includes drunken college cavorting. It's an improvement.

Hell Night was written by some people who never went to college, as none of these characters act like any college students I've ever known, but was written with a love for old urban legends. That's an improvement so I'm OK with it. The central selling point of Hell Night is to remove Lovecraft's story from it's rural setting and place it in the context of a college frat's tradition of “hell night” where pledges have to stay the night in the mansion where one (or two) mongoloid sons were spared a disappointed father's undying rage. Never in the story is it explained why, even though it's a tradition for pledges to spent the night in the mansion, the one (or two) mongoloid sons chose this moment to finally lose their shit and murder everyone in said mansion.

Not that it really matters, but I was curious while watching the movie.

So the review has been marginally rambling and even though I've been trash-talking Hell Night, it seems that I do enjoy the movie. So what's good about it? Aside from being released in the slasher mecca (1980-1982) with peers like Terror Train, Prom Night, Friday the 13^th, and My Bloody Valentine. Bonus question: how many of those flicks star Jaime Lee Curtis? While Hell Night does not star Jaime Lee Curtis, it does have another early-80s scream queen in Linda Blair. And I don't know, maybe it's me, but aside from giving a tough, confident, charming performance, she's also cute as a button. I dig Linda Blair. The other actors are fine: The douches are douches and the non-douches aren't douches and are reasonably sensible, which is fine for these movies. Horror movies are much harder to watch when the characters are bone-stupid. Great monster designs, fun effects, and a director that really understands the party/gothic/urban legend aspect of the story and Hell Night is a great, classic slasher movie mold. It does nothing new, but it delivers a solid 80 minutes of horror goodness.

***/****

Frivolous Lola

2009-04-09T04:54:00.000-07:00

Sexploitation week continues at the Hell-A-Go-Go!

If exploitation trades in sleaziness via horrific acts of violence perpetrated against its characters; sexploitation is the same, albeit replacing horrific acts of violence with copious amounts of boobies. The horror of it all! The normally omnipresent sleaziness of exploitation is ramped up. Less voyeurism and more exhibitionism; sexploitation is the attention whore of the exploitation sub-mode.

Frivolous Lola is more Italian goodness from the land of terrible movies. Actually, I'm being unfair with that statement: where Italy may be (on average) the land of terrible movies, Frivolous Lola is not one of these terrible movies. The director, fabled peddler of smut Tinto Brass has directed one of the most terrible movies ever made though: Caligula!

Lola is everything a movie like Caligula is not; namely actually erotic. Brass is a director of very specific tastes. He likes soft focus and fog (a lot); he has an obsession with posteriors as close-ups or long takes of naked female ass or liberally strewn through out the movie; also has an equally strong obsession with women wearing skirts with no underwear and either inadvertently or purposefully (usually the latter) flashing unsuspecting males; and finally, and most importantly to this film, Brass enjoys a sense of burgeoning sexuality and sexual awakening.

Frivolous Lola is a binary film; that is, composed of two very distinct parts that come together to make the whole a successful film experience. Lola (the character, not the film title) is an 18-year old girl from a small Italian fishing village ready to lose her virginity. This is the sleazy part of the two-part equation: Brass creates the character of Lola as an older male fantasy. She's the young girl discovering her virginity through aggressive seduction and copious nudity. She flashes her boyfriend often (usually by lifting her skirt to reveal a lack of panties directly to the camera and by extension the audience and Brass) and begs him to have sex with her. Sex is all she wants. She comes off as a thinly-characterized male epitome of the sexualized teenager.

Were this Brass' sole intent we'd have a completely capable sexploitation flick that's just as misogynistic as all the others. Although this was not Brass' sole intent when he cast amateur actress Anna Ammirati. She has no acting chops, none whatsoever, and this is not a bad thing; it lends a reality to the fantasy-like proceedings of the movie. Ammirati has an innocent look about her, a naivete towards sexuality that is endearing even as Brass films her like a leering old man, constantly shoving the camera under her skirt.

Most of the sex scenes in the film take place in Lola's head as long, drawn out fantasies regarding what her first sexual experience will be like. Dreamy and soft-focus these epic sexual misadventures play out more as child-like fantasies expressing the story-book longing of a confused and excited young girl. By contrast when Lola finally does lose her virginity, the soft-focus is gone, the shots are tight and close up, less leering as more personal; the audience is finally less in Lola's head (less up her skirt) and more privy to her experience, her sensation of sexuality for the first time. It's not a letdown of an experience either, to avoid that cliche, but vastly different from the elaborate fantasies that had been shown thus far.

To sum up, Frivolous Lola is a very erotic movie. It's actually erotic and that, in my experience, is a rarity. This eroticism is born by tapping into the sleaziness, the basic voyeurism of the sexploitation movie and tying it to the naive fantasies of a very likable if over-exuberant main character. The falsehood of the fantasies contrast the amatuer reality of the inexperienced actors and real sets to create a world of sexual awakening that honestly deserves to be in a less smutty movie sometimes. But we love smut here at the Hell-A-Go-Go.

*** out of ****

Nude for Satan

2009-04-08T05:29:00.000-07:00

Sexploitation week continues at the Hell-A-Go-Go!

If exploitation trades in sleaziness via horrific acts of violence perpetrated against its characters; sexploitation is the same, albeit replacing horrific acts of violence with copious amounts of boobies. The horror of it all! The normally omnipresent sleaziness of exploitation is ramped up. Less voyeurism and more exhibitionism; sexploitation is the attention whore of the exploitation sub-mode.

I'm not sure I can tell you anything about this movie that an astute reader would not be able to glean from the title. Nude for Satan comes from that magical land of rip-off B-movies and interminable sleaze: Italy. It's about time I've reviewed an Italian movie on this site.

A little background: For any Fellini (or watchable, it doesn't even have to be that great) film that comes out of the magical boot-like country famous for pasta and plumbers, there are at least 3,000 pieces of crap that come down the pipe. No exaggeration. Italian exploitation is definitely different from the American style of grindhouse film making that has been the showcase of this site so far (both exploitation and B-movie). Italian shock movies rarely make sense. I'm not talking about "stream-of-consciousness," "fragmented story-telling," or "non-linear plotting." I'm talking straight-up ineptitude on the part of the film makers that result in a movie that makes little to no (usually the no) sense at all. A complete break down of any sort of narrative flow.

But this is why Italian exploitation is loved.

Nude for Satan is the prototypical Italian schlock fest. I can't even tell you about the story: Four people are stranded or lost or whatever; they come across an old castle and decide to take shelter in its Gothic embrace. There they meet doppelgangers, evil version of themselves I suppose, that lead them down twisted corridors that end nowhere, entice the foursome to engage in orgies and seduction, and just generally fuck around. It's all part of some Satanic ritual nonsense. There are ghosts too. I think.

It doesn't matter; the story does not matter and should not be considered. There's no linear or narrative progression on screen: shit just happens. The entire point in watching this movie is to witness ineptitude on a scale unseen since Ed Wood movies. I'm not going to waste time going on about how the shots are bad, the boom mike makes several appearances, or the acting is non-existent. For most of the movies on this site these aspects are assumed anyway. Nope, one scene does this movie justice and encompasses the amount of ineptitude I'm describing.

Lead actress Rita Calderoni (the only aspect this movie did well was casting her; feel like watching a curvy, buxom Italian woman run down stone corridors naked? Calderoni delivers) has just been sent screaming from her bedroom after an attack by a doppelganger or something. Regardless the reason, she's fleeing down a stone corridor wearing naught but an open robe (see?). During this impromptu sprint, our Satanically nude heroine is tripped up by a trap door and tumbles head first into a gigantic spider web and is set upon by (what else?) a gigantic spider.

It's the details that make this scene really shine. Instead of a thrilling, creepy spider-web, Calderoni (I don't know the characters name, it's something Italian) finds her self entwined in what looks like large strands of yarn. The knots holding the "web" together are even visible. She's not really trapped either, instead holding on for dear life as two extras shake the web to give the impression that Calderoni is struggling. The spider is the coup de grace. It has two eyes. Not compound or multiple eyes that spiders are known for, but two eyes with two pupils and two irises. It's also made out of paper mache, sits on a stick that makes an appearance now, and again and has not eight, but six legs that look like pipe cleaners. Watching Calderoni struggle as this thing attacks her: comedy gold. I hope she got paid a lot but I'm sure she didn't.

There's not much more to say about Nude for Satan. If the above scene tickles your fancy, give this flick a rent, if not I'm sure there would be too much ineptitude to even be worth a watch. To present one last half-argument as to the quality of this pic: in the 1970s these strange exploitation films were Italy's greatest exports (not substantiated). A lot of them were produced. Nude for Satan is so terrible it only made seven thousand dollars during its theatrical run. An exploitation movie from 1974 that failed to make a profit in Italy. Hard times indeed.

** out of ****

Christina

2009-04-07T04:40:00.000-07:00

Sexploitation week continues at the Hell-A-Go-Go!

If exploitation trades in sleaziness via horrific acts of violence perpetrated against its characters; sexploitation is the same, albeit replacing horrific acts of violence with copious amounts of boobies. The horror of it all! The normally omnipresent sleaziness of exploitation is ramped up. Less voyeurism and more exhibitionism; sexploitation is the attention whore of the exploitation sub-mode.

B-movie starlet Jewel Shepard first appeared on my radar with the seminal genre film Return of the Living Dead. Admittedly, as fun as she is in that film, Shepard is largely upstaged by veteran scream queen Linnea Quigley and her famous graveyard dance. Since that movie, Shepard has gone on to star in Hollywood Hot Tubs, Party Camp, Raw Force, and Caged Heat II: Stripped of Freedom (possibly the greatest sub-title to a crappy movie ever). Winners all, I assure you. As great as Shepard's B-movie resume is, one of her earliest movies is still the magnum opus of her career, the little-seen cult movie: Christina.

I know, after Stripped for Freedom, the title to the supposed opus is a little bit of a let down but trust me, this film is so worth viewing. Just to illustrate, I'm going to let the film speak for itself; I'll present the plot as objectively as I can. Christina opens with the death of disco: funky dance music (1983, yeah!) playing in a day-glo club while our titular heroine dances with every guy in the joint (credit-sequence nudity, a mark of quality). What follows is a quick montage in the form of a newsreel establishing Christina as an heiress to a large fortune who spends her days cavorting with men and spending extravagantly. She also proceeds to flash the camera. I'm not exaggerating when I say the longest stretch in this movie with Shepard fully clothed is about eight minutes.

I digress; the plot kicks into high gear after our introductory montage: Christina engages in a high-speed Ferrari chase with a man before bedding him; in his castle she is attacked by a ninja assassin later revealed to be a member of a lesbian kung-fu order that fears Christina's sexually promiscuous ways are detrimental to all women; is later kidnapped by same ninja sect who then proceed to fight one another in hilariously inept fight sequences to win the honor of sleeping with Christina; softcore, male-fantasy lesbian sex; a daring escape from the militant lesbian ninja compound where Christina is then captured by slavers; Same slavers are revealed to be trained as respectable French chefs who cook Christina and her friends a delicious meal; Christina then beds several of them, escapes, and ends the movie where it began: in a disco surrounded by men. Empowering gender themes to be sure.

Whew. This movie is off-the-hook motherfucking amazing!

Christina one of the greatest sexploitation movies ever made. It's got a crazy, energetic, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink type of plot that does a great job of keeping scenes from becoming too redundant and boring. Most importantly though, Christina maintains a perfect tonal balance between comedy and sleaziness. Instead of insipid sight gags, the humor in the film is mostly found in the dialogue, double entendres and dry witticisms; a rarity for sexploitation films. The protagonist is not only likable and capable, but she's funny.

Jewel Shepard is a fantastic B-movie actress. She's to sexpot movies what Schwarzenegger is to action films: the key to their success is a knowing, wry sense of humor regarding the types of films that have filled out their respective niches. Shepard knows how to play a sexploitation movie; knows the tropes of these films, what's expected, and is even able to provide real charm via her performance. A charming sexploitation actress. I can't believe I wrote those words. Shepard is a real actress, and at times, better than the movie as a whole deserves.

A better sexploitation movie does not exist. Christina is the apex. The key to this success is Jewel Sheapard: she's in on the joke and the movie is better for it.

**** out of ****

Ultimate Attraction

2009-04-06T05:09:00.001-07:00

It's Sexploitation week at the Hell-A-Go-Go!

If exploitation trades in sleaziness via horrific acts of violence perpetrated against its characters; sexploitation is the same, albeit replacing horrific acts of violence with copious amounts of boobies. The horror of it all! The normally omnipresent sleaziness of exploitation is ramped up. Less voyeurism and more exhibitionism; sexploitation is the attention whore of the exploitation sub-mode.

The first movie of the week is a little-known (I'd barely heard of it) sex comedy known as Ultimate Attraction (or Body Beautiful, like any true exploitation film it has multiple, and varying, titles). Regardless of what it's called, I'd only heard of the film because it's based on a seminal erotic comic by Italian artist Milo Manera, which is about a magical remote control that can drive women to orgasm with the click of a button (hence the clever title of the comic eh? eh?). I can't imagine any premise more tailor made for a schlocky exploitative movie.

In a stirring variation of the "raise enough money to save the elder family member's home, orphanage, or youth center" film plot, Ultimate Attraction is about two personal trainer's efforts to save the humble gym where they are employed. Even though the gym (which is, as far as I can tell consists of one single white room with no mirrors, three exercise machines and a sauna and locker room off to either side) seems to consistently have people using its small space. An evil developer wants to bulldoze the gym and turn it into a parking lot because that's what evil developers do. Seriously.

The one plot device that makes this movie even worth seeking out, even as a curiosity, is the inclusion of a mysterious clicker (flushed out of an airplane crapper, frozen in a block of ice on the way down, crashed through the locker roof of the gym to land on our lead's heads as they screw, of course.) that can be used to "turn on" anyone it happens to be pointed at (or not pointed at, depends on the scene; in fact why the clicker doesn't just make everyone in the room horny as hell isn't explained as the rules of the clicker change with each scene).

But a clicker that makes anyone horny! I think some clever things can be done with this; funny, sleazy scenarios right? No, not really. Basically all the clicker does is turn each actress into a Cinemax starlet or require each actor to make a shocked face as a cheap mechanical boner prosthetic turns their shorts into a tent. Yawn. Besides providing the horny, The clicker is often used to turn lead actress Gabriella Hall (who I think is topless or in a leotard in virtually every scene she's in) into other actresses who are more willing to take their pants off for the sax-and-smoked-filled sex scenes (yes, it's a sexploitation film where the lead actresses' body double is worked into the plot of the film; this has to be illegal).

Far from sleazy, all the sex scenes (and there are a lot) are soft-focus, foggy, and completely boring. Watching two actors pretend to hump on cheap exercise equipment for a few minutes? Ho-hum. And after 8 or 9 different variations of the same? I feel asleep several times while watching this flick.

If the comedy scenes bridging the copious nude scenes were any good or provided some sort of context or cohesion, there might be interest generated for the viewer but Ultimate Attraction relies on unfunny sight gags centered around the sex-clicker or a mechanical boner prosthetic. Once or twice it may be funny or provide a grin, but the film constantly repeats itself, leaving only the naked actresses to carry the weight (what little there is) of the story. All of the actresses, especial Hall, are very attractive, but there's no backdrop to the nudity; each scene is like the end of some 5-minute mini movie. Ultimate Attraction has no cohesion and this makes for snooze-inducing viewing, breasts or no breasts.

To sum up: I had high hopes for Ultimate Attraction especially considering the source comic has the heroine, when not being reduced to a spastic nymphomaniac via the clicker, traveling to the Amazon, fighting off slave-rings, or invading a monastary of celibate men. This is ripe exploitation material on par with the Emmanuelle movies. Alas, it was not to be.

* out of ****

Street Trash

2009-03-31T15:36:00.000-07:00

I've been trying to watch this movie for a while.

Street Trash has been on my radar for a while now based solely on the supremely-cool box art which is at the top of this review. A man, mid-melt, flushing himself down the toilet; an act which then separates him from three of his limbs. And yes, this scene is in the movie. Fantastic.

Of course Street Trash can't be all homeless-person-body meltdowns. As entertaining as that may be, there has to be context for the body melting (I think). This context comes in the form of a Junkyard/toxic waste dump that acts as a town of sorts to the unnamed city's homeless population. This town is lorded over by a super-strong, psychotic ex-green beret who cares a knife made out of a human femur and appears to have superhuman strength. Whatever.

The story, whatever of it there is, entail the denizens of this homeless village coming in contact with a mysterious new booze called "Viper." The origins of this beverage are never explained: at the beginning of the movie, the local shop-owner finds a dusty old case of booze in his basement and decides to just sell it to the homeless for a buck. Why not?

Here I'd probably tell you about the story, but there really isn't one to speak of: in between scenes of the characters interacting in various ways that barely matter to the flow of the film, other characters buy and drink Viper leading to a meltdown sequence. I'm not even sure of any thematic reasoning for the meltdown scenes: no commentary on society's treatment of the homeless, just people to be melted for our viewing pleasure.

It's is to the movie's benefit that the meltdown scenes are pretty well-done. The cover scene of the man who flushes himself is a joy to behold, gross plastic pustules erupt green-, blue-, and yellow-tinged technicolor gore, the effect ending with what looks like a lumpy trash bag writhing in the toilet bowl. Another man explodes against a wall and a woman tears her breasts off mid-melt as they ooze and burst between her fingers and bra. Good and gross and very colorful.

Of course, the movie really lost me with the supposed "comedy" bits. As far as comedy is concerned much is borrowed from the Troma (Toxic Avenger, Class of Nuke 'Em High) catalog of movies. In an admission that may lose me B-movie cred, I have to admit I hate Troma movies; just not my cup of tea. A scene indicative of this involves the aforementioned green beret chopping off one man's cock as he urinates and proceeding to play a lively game of "keep-away" with it as the victim stumbles around. The meltings were funnier than that. Street Trash should stick to what it knows and leave the castrations to Jennifer Hill.

In true B-movie fashion, the only reason to watch Street Trash is for the inventive, colorful, absolutely whacked out gore and the copious amounts of female nudity: from an opening scene chase out of a burning building to the second-act homeless orgy that happens. Or gang-rape. Either way she ends up dead, but it's not a particularly sad thing in this movie. Like all bad horror movies, since the audience knows nothing about any of the characters it's impossible to feel bad when they get naked or generally melt, which is the fate of just about every character.

To sum up, Street Trash's greatest boon is it's greatest flaw. The gore is awesome, but ultimately pointless. Pointlessness is not a bad thing, but Street Trash's Troma-esque humor sequences drag on endlessly and honestly, bu the end the body meltdowns start to wear out their welcome. I know. I must be getting old or something.

** out of ****

I Spit on Your Grave

2009-03-26T10:55:00.000-07:00

Exploitation film can be a real nasty, dirty, fucked-up thing. Usually exploitation is lumped in with B-movie: some silly slasher romp through bubble-headed bimbo territory complete with too-absurd-to-be-believed blood-letting. While exploitation cinema is usually B-movie cinema, the opposite is not always the case. Earth Girls Are Easy is a B-movie; Ice Pirates is a B-movie. Neither is exploitation.

A movie like Evil Dead 2, campy as it is, is exploitation of a sort: a lighter, kid-friendly fare. I'll argue (I have and might again on this blog) That real exploitation is a mode: not a genre itself, but a collection of genres (horror, crime, science fiction, drama) that were borne out of specific temporal and cultural consciousnesses (Vietnam War era America) and is hard-pressed to be duplicated outside of this consciousness. Exploitation captures the consciousness of conflict; a cynical, realistic attitude that conflict is the natural state of the world and civilization is the abnormality.

If exploitation is about the real, the nasty, and the fucked-up: I Spit On Your Grave is one of the nastiest and most fucked up of exploitation films.

I Spit On Your Grave is about a writer, Jennifer Hill: a liberated, successful novelist from Manhattan who retreats to a cabin in the woods to write her second novel. She's beset by four locals who proceed to attack and rape her repeatedly. The attack is roughly one-third of the entire movie, with the last third dedicated to Jennifer's healing, planning, and eventual revenge. Castration is the order of the day.

The film's plot is an old one for exploitation films (Last House on the Left, Fight For Your Life, et al.), but the way in which Spit engages its audience is what makes it an exploitation masterpiece. The film punishes its audience for even wanting to see the depravity it puts on display. As I mentioned, the rape is a large portion of the actual film, even just knowing a 30-minute rape scene exists is not one aspect any sane audience would even seek out to view. The director, Mier Zarchi, makes it worse but stripping as much of the artifice as he can out of the scene. The camera is set and left alone; for long takes this poor woman, Jennifer, is subjected to pain and horror as these four men take turns raping her.

The audience feels no respite as the voyeur aspect of exploitation cinema is dragged out and laid bare. Exploitation audiences seek out depravity, revel in the voyeur aspect of sexuality and nudity, with I Spit On Your Grave, it's rammed down their throats. The only escape is to turn the movie off and completely sever the relationship. The actress playing Jennifer Hill (Camilla Keaton) may have gone through hell for her performance (and what a performance it is; Keaton is a fabulous actress who takes the thinly written character and creates a complex show of emotion that puts a real face on the horror that is so prevalent in these films), but the true hell is reserved for the audience, their voyeurism is taken, perverted, and turned against them.

Like all good exploitation, Zarchi takes an important social function, gender relations, and re-interprets it as an apocalyptic conflict. From a feminist standpoint, oppression fills the frame in every scene and even Jennifer's stated freedoms as a successful writer and speaker cannot make her the equal to the men in the movie. The ideological fight for equality becomes physical conflict as the logical conclusion: violence is the only way men and women can relate.

I never have, and never will, overtly recommend this film to anyone. It is completely depraved, which as an exploitation film is completely what it should be. Social instance, social issues re-interpreted as conflict; active use of the gaze, voyeurism turned back on the audience, this is what exploitation cinema has always been about, if not as horrifically done as it is in I Spit On Your Grave.

**** out of ****

Ice Pirates

2009-03-25T14:12:00.000-07:00

I loved this movie as a kid. It was shown frequently on a local channel, WXPN 57, that no longer exists. Every Sunday afternoon there would be a series of movies under the heading of "Adventure Cinema" or something like that. There must have been a volume discount on Ice Pirates because I swear this flick was shown at least once per month. I loved this fucking movie.

Emphasis on the word "loved."

Of course I loved Ice Pirates when I was six; what's not cool when you're six? Twenty years later, I honestly had a hard time even watching the movie. Ice Pirates falls under that popular sub-sub-genre of B-movie cinema: the rip-off. For every Conan the Barbarian or The Road Warrior or Jaws, there are about 75 movies (mostly out of the Italian film industry) that fail to understand what made the source material so enthralling or exciting and instead copy the plot line, lower the budget, ramp up the gore, throw in about 5 times the amount of naked women and call it a day.

This is not a bad thing entirely: without these schlock treasures, there would be no B-movie scene at all. Zombie is considered one of the greatest gut-munching exploitation films and it is such a rip-off of the classic Dawn of the Dead that in European countries, the former is considered a sequel to the latter. Being a rip-off does not a bad exploitation film make. Being boring; that makes for a bad viewing experience no matter the genre.

What does all of this have to do with the film in question? Ice Pirates is a late rip-off of the Star Wars films as well as any number of barbarian fantasy films. Stuff like Beastmaster. That's bad. Well, the film isn't all bad. It mashes the pirate, fantasy, and science-fiction genres together, which is impressive; the movie attempts to be a grand adventure. Only attempts though, never succeeds.

Ice Pirates meanders along, never really providing any excitement. Honestly, there's not much to write about the movie. A group of pirates exist in a galaxy-spanning future where water by way of giant ice blocks is extremely rare and thus heavily controlled by an oppressive regime. The aptly named ice pirates liberate said ice and a princess and find a planet with water at the end. This planet is Earth. The End.

No mention is ever made, nor technology devoted to, the fact that hydrogen and oxygen can be extracted from the atmosphere to create water. Chemically speaking I think it's impossible for water to be rare. Regardless if it's water, or even if it were gold, silver, gasoline, spice, or even ketchup that was rare in this universe, nothing can overcome the boring storyline, terrible effects, and flat humor. Excitement is the real rarity.

Actually, I lied, there is one truly exciting part. At one point our heroes are threatened with castration, turned into slaves, and made to serve the evil empire before making a daring motorcycle escape with a princess in tow. It may sound it, but this is neither exciting nor funny. While escaping, our heroes encounter a family of robots going for a walk on the promenade. A father robot in the middle, flanked on the left and right by his child and his wife.

The robots are really cheap plastic effects too. The look a like like R.O.B., a crappy old Nintendo peripheral. This stupid robot was supposed to be a friend and play games with you. R.O.B. made the lonely feel even lonelier.

But I digress. Getting right to it: our heroes, speeding their way to a daring escape, collide with and completely smash to bits the robot child. As shattered plastic rolls across the promenade, the father robot begins exclaiming: "Baby! baby!" At this point, the pursuers proceed to obliterate his wife. He yells: "Baby! mother! baby! mother!" like a mantra. What a shitty day that robot's having.

I must've watched this scene three or four times. Easily the best part of the movie and the only reason to watch.

* out of ****

American Nightmare

2009-03-22T16:39:00.000-07:00

Low budget exploitation movies, and I'm talking those made with friends instead of actors or shot with a DV camera any schmuck can buy at Best Buy or wherever, are usually a losing bet. What can be an avenue for a maverick writer or director is more often than not an exercise in futility: sub-par everything without the usual exploitation benefits of good, gory special effects. Something to be avoided. American Nightmare is something different, and for exploitation cinema that's a rarity.

I honestly never thought I'd write these words: where Halloween popularized the slasher film and Scream sounded it's death knell, American Nightmare actually reinvents the slasher film.

Big words indeed, and how can one low budget film actually do anything for such an exploitative, artistically derisive genre? A genre that's rarely if ever, even considering how many films have been labeled as such, given the popular consciousness any story worth telling or a character worth following. I'm not going to say that American Nightmare does any of these things, but it comes close, and thematically, actually has something to say.

American Nightmare is a slasher film that is literally about dying. The kill scenes, instead of being drawn-out stalkings ending in gory death are instead shot in close-up, usually just the face of the victim, the means of death off-screen. The camera is left to linger, the ultimate voyeur experience: watching a personal act both of the killer and the victim. In this way it's both chilling and more violent than any explicit killing.

That's a rarity: American Nightmare is one of the few slasher's that's actually chilling. Not scary. I honestly don't think any slasher movie has been scary since Halloween, but chilling in the sparseness and frankness of it's scenes. Every act committed by the killer is portrayed not as a simple plot point or notch in a body count, but an outpouring of grief and madness; all born out of the near-brilliant performance of Debbie Rochon.

She's awesome. Rochon is intense to watch. I've seen her in numerous Troma films where she's never been one to turn down a decent topless scene, but this is the first time I've actually seen her act. Color me impressed. As the killer in the film, there's no mystery that she's also the protagonist. There's no final girl, no mystery as to the killer's identity, it's Rochon's show all the way. The actual reason for her killings is barely hinted at, but the audience is never left looking for a reason: it's obvious she's got a personal grudge with someone or anyone. I'm leaning towards the latter. This comes through most often in the improvised dialogue. Hardly cohesive, full of obscenities and ready to leap off the screen at any moment, What could easily have been written off as overacted comes off as legitimately dangerous.

Aside from the typical low-budget traps of terrible lighting and sub-par camera work, American Nightmare is an A-level slasher. For the first time in 20+ years it does something new with the genre. I'm flabbergasted to be honest. And there goes the last of my integrity. I know, this has been a serious kind of review, but any fan of horror movies in general or interesting independent affairs should definitely see American Nightmare. To make up for the lack of exploitation in this review, I'll provide the ultimate spoiler: like any good scream queen, Rochon does provide us with an ample view of her physical attributes. It's kinda awesome. Viva la B-movie!

*** out of ****

Return to House on Haunted Hill

2009-03-19T13:43:00.000-07:00

Why would anyone want to return to the house on haunted hill? In the first film, various good-looking actors and actresses were killed by glossy ghosts who moved through an increasingly-annoying spastic frame rate manipulation that resembled stop-motion. Gruesome deaths too. One woman was put through an autopsy. Again, why would anyone return? The annoying frame rate returned, sadly.

The simple sleep-in-the-house-one-night-and-you-get-paid plot line of the original has been done away with in favor of some needlessly complicated affair involving an archaeology student hunting for a mystic urn (aren't they all mystic) before she's killed by a classmate mercenary also hunting for the urn and the quest is taken up by her successful magazine-editor sister and teacher and blah blah blah.

The biggest flaw in the beginning of Return to House on Haunted Hill (aside from that obtuse name) is it takes too long to get into the house. Since the audience is privy to the character's lives before they make the trip to the house on the hill, and the decisions and circumstances that bring them, we don't gain better insight into the characters to make them more sympathetic, just how stupid they are to even consider going to the goddamn house for so cliche and unnecessary a MacGuffin.

Once everyone is situated in the house, things move briskly (one hour to kill approximately 12 characters) and any established characterization is abandoned for copious amounts of gore. Since Return is a direct-to-video B-movie, all we're really asking for is gory kills and shamefully voyeuristic shots of boobies. This movie delivers. Well, at least at first.

The first major kill involves a ghost who was given a riff on "The Cask of Amontillado" and reaches through his makeshift mausoleum wall and gruesomely into someone's stomach, gripping their muscle and flesh like a handle, slamming them against the wall repeatedly. Nasty and brutal. The practical effects were quite good as well, which I'm always happy to see.

The second kill though; the second kill basically makes the damn movie and is almost solely responsible for the rating at the end of the review. I'm not going to spoil, but rest assured it includes great monster make-up, two naked women, forbidden lesbian trysts, and a great face-slashing effect. It's nasty, guilty, extremely voyeuristic, and everything a good exploitation flick should be.

It's a shame when the movie goes downhill afterward. As exploitative as Return can be, the later kills devolve into quick, clean affairs devoid of any scares or suspense and too reliant on poor CGI effects to resemble anything other than a video game. At this point, interest in the story could make the movie still watchable, but stupid adults acting as teenagers and chasing a mystical urn with ties to ancient evil is boring in the very best of circumstances.

Return to House on Haunted Hill limps its way to a lackluster conclusion and I was struggling for a reason to care. Being only 80 minutes long is pretty much the sole reason to finish. Gotta love short runtimes on boring exploitation films. Aside from the two kills in the middle of the movie, there'd be almost no reason to watch in the first place. The aforementioned 80 minutes goes a long way to recommend it for party or abbreviated viewing. Give it a shot.

** out of ****

Prom Night

2009-03-16T14:48:00.000-07:00

I hate this fucking movie.

To hell with being objective or whatever one is supposed to be when reviewing movies: 1) it's an exploitation movie site, the rules can be a little lax; 2) Prom Night is a terrible fucking movie.

Remake in name only, Prom Night is the story of a group of friends and a last hurrah at senior prom before going their separate ways after high school. Of course, the kink is that one of the girls witnessed her family being murdered years ago by her teacher because he's psychotically obsessed with her. What are the odds he's broken out of the mental institution?

The entirety of Prom Night is made possible because every single character from the dimmest of high school bimbos to the most hardened of seasoned detectives is an absolute moron, even by standards of the typical slasher movie. The first two-thirds of the plot is coming up with increasingly mind-boggling reasons, ranging from quickie sex (no nudity, of course) to washing one's hands (really, there's no bathroom anywhere else), for each teen to go up to their post-prom suite one by one to get murdered by the oh-so-handsome psychopath.

Forget plot line though, even as an exploitation slasher, Prom Night is a complete failure. A bloodless, frightless, sexless affair that plays like a primetime sitcom. I've seen more chilling episodes of CSI.

What's the point of making a slasher film where every single kill happens offscreen? There's ni visceral thrill, there's not even a decent jump-scare. Stalk scenes are so drawn out that they fail to even be engaging. Honestly, I fell asleep at least three times during this thing. Prom Night even lacks the rudimentary excitement of the mystery of the killer's identity. The killer is revealed in the prologue to the film and that's about that.

A horror movie without scares, suspense, or excitement. I won't even continue. There's no reason to watch this movie unless for some reason you care about the characters and want to see who makes it out alive. I can't imagine anyone being that invested in this flick.

* out of ****

Slither

2009-03-16T13:54:00.000-07:00

The people who made Slither must have loved the unsung 80s classic Night of the Creeps. Not only does Slither ape the latter's not-so-original-to-be-considered-stealing plot line of intergalactic slugs that invade Small-Town America and turn the unsuspecting populace into grotesque zombies, but also attempts to mimic the shameless 80s "cheesiness" that defined the latter movie. The irony of that being Night of the Creeps tried hard to mimic the naivete of 50s teen horror movies. Slither is a throwback to a throwback.

What Slither may lack in terms of original ideas, it makes up for in it's sense of fun. As far as B-movies go, it's damn good.

Contributing to the fun is genre-vet Michael Rooker giving a twisted turn as the unfortunately named Grant Grant; a controlling, jealous, yet ultimately decent man who is the first to play host to conquering brain slugs and eventually finds himself covered under mounds (literally) of grotesque make-up as an undulating mass of slug/human flesh. As the monster of the movie, Rooker does a good job of grounding the outlandish special effects that make up his final sluggy forms. He never overacts to such a degree that the audience regards his transformation as totally cartoonish. Only half-cartoonish. He is the RookerSlug.

The other actors come and go, screaming when they have to, running while not screaming and generally doing a good enough job of not making their thin characters annoying, but not a good enough job to make one really care if their characters live or die. As far as I was concerned, any character was far game as slug fodder. In fact I was rooting for the movie to throw some curve balls and kill off our leads half way through the movies just for kicks. No such luck.

Because it's rooted in other films that genre fans have probably seen, nothing in Slither is totally surprising or unseen. The movie unfolds exactly as expected, offering only minor surprises along the way. Some of the character deaths are interesting; kills are set up in a such a way to make you think they'll end in a recognizable fashion, but then there's always a small twist to it that changes the bloodletting just enough to make any B-movie hound smile.

Of course, therein lies Slither's greatest strength: the gore effects. Just to get the negatives out of the way, as with most low-budget movies, the computer effects suck, which means it's good that they're not used often. The practical effects on the other hand are gross, gory, and great. Every kill is something different; the movie never repeats itself. James Gunn is a good enough director that he keeps each kill exciting, not weighing the pace down with tedious stalks scenes or lingering too much on the ultra-violence as to make the movie an exercise in constitution. The stand-out effects are two monster set-peices: a woman who's grown to the size of a house (ew) and the aforementioned RookerSlug.

I love RookerSlug; by the end of the flick he's a slimy, tentacled mass of undulating flesh barely recognizable as a man. The various slug zombies strip down in an orgy of flesh and proceed to be absorbed via some kind of freaky sexual osmosis into RookerSlug. The end is a complete rip of another unsung horror movie from the 80s, Society. B-movies are supposed to be gross in some fashion though; if they weren't exploitative at all, why the hell would we watch them?

Slither is as a good time: fast-paced, gory, but fun. Given the current spate of "torture-porn" flicks like Hostel and Saw that sacrifice any sense of excitement for mind-numbing queasiness, a movie as unoriginal as Slither seems like a breath of fresh B-movie air. Definitely check it out.

*** out of ****