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Pete's Reviews Reviews for August 2009 Women in Prison Triple Feature Retro-Shock O Rama 2009 How could you go wrong with Three WIP films in one package? You can’t . You get Women in Cell Block 7, Escape From Hell, And The Hot Box. Being the lazy bastard that I am, I only watched The Hot Box. Why? Because I saw that film and Run Angel, Run at the late , lamented Troy Hills Drive in on RT 46 in the summer of 72. Hot Box was one of the earlier WIP films and it actually had nothing to do with women in prison. Four nurses are kidnapped by revolutionaries to teach them first aid and help the sick , impoverished people. Written by Jonathan Demme a couple of years before he wrote and directed the classic Caged Heat, Hot Box is head and shoulders above some of the other similar films. It has a lot more socio political overtones thanks to Demme’s writing ability. It has a lot more bloody violence and is Margret Markov’s second or third feature. Markov’s portrayal of the nurse that sympathizes with, then joins the revolutionaries, led her to better and staring roles in Black Mama, White Mama and the Arena, both with Pam Grier. On the set of the Arena, she met actor and future producer, Mark Damon, who she has been married to ever since. Director and co writer, Joe Viola, went on to do and is still doing a lot of TV directing. Now the bad part. This was obviously taken from the old Embassy Home Video VHS version. You can hardly make out the credits as the red letters just bleed out , making them unreadable. The first few minutes are a bit blurry, then it levels out. I know this was one of Corman’s New World Pictures. Why it never got better treatment than this is a mystery as it is a lot better than some of its contemporaries. As for the other two films, I didn’t watch then yet, but I have seen them in grindhouses back in the day. None are really bad and it’s a great package to kill an evening with. Invite some friends over and have a WIP Festival. Route 666 2001 Directed by William Wesley Starring Lou Diamond Phillips, Lori Petty, Steven Williams, and L.Q. Jones DVD by Lions ( if it’s a really shitty horror film, we’ll release it) Gate. I saw this , I think on the Sci Fi channel . It looked like it might have promise, but then it never ran again. Then I find the DVD in the discount bin. Bad sign, but for $3.99 I could replace one of my coasters. So how bad did Pete get screwed this time? Half & half. The premise isn’t that bad. Four members of a chain gang are gunned down and buried under the road they were working on. The road gets condemned. Present day , two feds are escorting a key witness, Rabbit, to court. The fastest way would be to use this condemned road affectionately know as Route 666. If you stop on this road, the four convicts come out of the road and turn you to gory slop using a jackhammer, pick, shovel ect. You keep driving, the road heats up and melts your tires, so either way your fucked, but not as much as me because I bought this thing. The convicts are all scummy killers except for La Roca, who was just robbing banks to support his family. We and he finds out that Lou Diamond Phillips is his son. During the climatic finale, he turns on his fellow road ghouls. The make up and effects are pretty good, but Lori Petty looks like a crack addict or an AIDs patient. She’s real hard to look at and I wonder who she slept with to get the lead in this stinker. L. Q Jones , in what amounts to a cameo, is Sheriff Bob Conway, who was one of the guards who helped kill and bury the four cons. He gets crushed by a phantom steam roller. If I haven’t killed your interest yet, look for Dick Miller in the beginning as a bartender. Stash 2009 from Bloody Earth Films. Directed by Jacob Ennis I was on the fence about even watching this because of my low tolerance for shit like Chaos, Hostel, and other “capture the girls, rape & torture them” drek that has been oozing off the DVD shelves for the last couple of years. Stash looked like it would go that route but turned out to be a decent film. Two assholes rob Bud, a huge backwoods inbred pot farmer. Now they have to supply this psycho nut job with three girls. Bud has little cells in his basement , so he must have been doing this a lot. The two idiots find girls and grab them. After delivering them to Bud, Bud shoots them full of dope , then rapes them. Thankfully Bud never gets naked as the sight of his furry, pimpled ass would get this a XXX rating. Bud’s girls tend to die on him, so he chops them up and buries them in his back yard. Of course the two stoners screw up and get caught. Then the police close in and Bud has toked up his last bud. This is pretty well done , but Bud sounds like Yosemite Sam and , if you indulge like I do, you get a couple of chuckles out of it. Not a bad film considering the plethora of crap that passes for entertainment these days. Lee Van Cleef Double Feature: Beyond the Law / The Grand Duel Wild East Productions Nice package of two almost unwatchable films that Wild East has painstakingly restored to coherent widescreen versions. These two films were badly edited and played under various titles both in the theaters and on video. Beyond the Law AKA Blood Silver has Lee and a couple of friends robbing a mining payroll. It is more acting than action in this one as Lee transitions from a robber to a lawman. Lee decides he likes the “respectability” he gets from being a lawman. The “real” outlaws are led by Burton( Gordon Mitchell) and it’s up to Lee to keep the payroll from them. Of course Lee’s former associates have issues with his new found respectability. The Grand Duel has Van Cleef as a Sheriff with a secret. This is the more violent of the two films. Lee saves a young man from bounty hunters , only to take him in himself. Seems that someone killed the patriarch of the Saxon clan. The three sons want to hang the man, Phillip. But is he really the killer? An elaborate showdown at the end reveals the real killer. Both films had horrible stateside distribution. Westerns in general were dying out and being replace with more urban shoot ‘em ups. Both films went on to the grindhouse and drive in circuit, usually at the bottom of a double bill. Now, thanks to Wild East, we see them in their uncut versions. Let the Right One In 2008 Magnolia Home Entertainment Directed by Tomas Alfredson I was told how good this film was, but I didn’t want to drop $30 on speculation. Yeah, I don’t get any screeners like the other websites do. It is good, but hardly “ The Best Vampire Film Ever “ like someone on the Washington Post raved. The film is a love story between two kids, Oskar, a frail blonde boy and Eli, a vampire child. Oskar is picked on by three other boys. Eli tells him to fight back after seeing a cut on his face. Oskar splits one of his tormenter’s ear open with a stick. Eli’s “familiar” an older man who gets her blood , is discovered, then Eli is on her own. The film is oddly poignant as Eli wants to be with Oskar, but can’t. Due to her killing a few people, she has to keep on the move. Oskar is cornered by the three boys and an older boy it looks like they “hired” to do Oskar in. When things look really bad for Oskar, Eli returns with a vengeance. Not a bad film, but a lot of people were on message boards , almost rubbing one out over this film. It is good and the two leads are fantastic, so guess what, we are going to remake, oh, I’m sorry revision this film to suit our needs just like we have remade & made worse all the J Horror stuff like The Ring, the Grudge, Pulse ect. Until all these bastards that run Hollywood and the film industry die, film making in America is dead. Unless you go to the indies as that’s the future of this business. The Human Factor 1975 / Dark Sky Films Starring George Kennedy, John Mills, Raf Vallone & Rita Tushingham. Directed by Edward Dmytryk Interesting phenomenon that began in the late 60’s and kept up until the mid 80’s was to cast a former character actors in the lead roles. Cary Grant, Spencer Tracy, Gary Cooper ect, were replaced by more rugged leading men , anti heros if you will like Clint Eastwood, Charles Bronson, Lee Van Cleef and George Kennedy. Geoge had started out playing heavies in John Wayne Westerns( Sons of Katie Elder) , Hitmen ( Charade), and hulking hanymen( Straight Jacket). After Cool Hand Luke, George started getting leading roles. Guns of the Magnificent Seven, Airport and this film, The Human Factor, put George in as a leading man. Filmed in 1975, George is a devout family man working for Nato. Political terrorists murder his entire family. George uses his computer skills to locate the cell of terrorists. When a co worker finds out that George knows where the cell is located, he tells George to turn them in. At that point in the film, George turns to him and snarls “ They killed my wife & kids”. George takes bloody revenge on the terrorists. I had seen this film in the early days of HBO when they ran this, Assault on Precinct 13, Jaws of Satan. The Arena and other great grindhouse fare. Now you get Planet Terror & Deathproof almost every night as they are still trying to recoup the 80 million they lost on that debacle. Yet someone still gives QT more money to “revision” old grindhouse classics. This film just still proves to me that the 70’s were grindhouse heaven. Story of Prunella (1982) Directed by Phil Prince Starring Geoge Payne, Ron Jeremy, Ambrosia Fox, Niko, Dennis Christopher & Cheri Champagne Part of the Avon 7 Collection from After Hours www.AfterHoursCinema.com Where most of your 80’s porn directors stroked your libido with a velvet glove, Phil Prince stoked it with a fist wrapped in barbed wire. Phil made the nastiest films in porn history. While his output of films was small as compared to his contemporaries, Phil’s brand of erotica was soul corroding.
The Phil Prince Documentary was interesting, but it seems that no one really knows much about Phil and what happened to him. Bill Landis claimed that he shot an associate and was put back in jail. This has been proven inaccurate. Just watching Phil in the documentary makes you realize he may be a little off. Sources have said that Phil admired the work of Andy Milligan and other low budget film makers and tried to emulate them. Phil wanted to make movies. In Prunella, he succeeded. The plot is decent, though you can see a Last House on the Left influence. The players could actually act , which made all the degradation that more believable. Off the women, none were raving beauties, which also added to the back alley ambiance of Prunella. The men all looked the part of degenerate thugs. Anyone wandering into the Avon 7 back in the day, thinking this was your typical sit down and stroke it kind of a film, quickly had their libido flatlined. Of course, a lot of viewers flocked to these films. Men who reviled in the degradation of women , were repeat viewers. From a historical aspect, this was one of the films singled out by the dreaded Meese Commission as the “ most vile and violent examples of mob controlled pornography“. Poor George Payne was put in the uncomfortable position of having to testify before that commission. This release is only the tip of the Avon 7/ After Hours iceberg. Check out the trailers, all of them are coming soon. These are taken off original prints that made the rounds of the Avon Grindhouses back in the day. Black Emmanuelle, White Emmanuelle Starring Laura Gemser , Annie Belle, Al Cliver, and Gabriele Tinti. Directed by Bunello Rondi Released by Severin Films.
Another trip to out in the desert finds some recently dead bodies. He wants Laura to pose with them. She does but the short haired , dykish looking Anne Belle, gets a little pissed off. Eventually so does Laura and is chased across the desert and raped by her photographer. The two are constantly telling each other to go fuck themselves or calling each other pieces of shit. Makes you wonder about their off screen relationship.Laura runs away with Anne for some girl girl fun after she balks at posing on a huge pile of camel shit. This film is very strange . One of the classy white women gets drunk and is raped by two Arabs in the desert. She is found by Anne , who tells her she doesn’t need men. Some of the film is in English, some parts, obviously restored , are in Italian. Laura flips out at a party. The Holy Man seduces Anne, who says she is leaving with him. Then changes her mind and wanders away with Laura as they both get naked and ‘fini” scrawls across the screen.
Devil Hunter (1980) Severin Films Directed by Jess Franco. Great print, but its 89 minutes that seems like four hours. This film has all the low budget Franco charm: out of sync dubbing, cheezy gore, ample nudity, racism, & really bad acting. This film was on VHS , courtesy of the defunct Transworld as Mandingo Manhunter. Shot on some island, or the Newark Botanical Gardens, we see an actress get kidnapped, interspersed with footage of natives sacrificing a girl to a huge , naked black guy , with bulging , bloodshot eyes. The actress is drugged & kidnapped for a 6 million dollar ransom. The black chic has her innards ripped out.
The natives, who look like they just left an 80’s disco, pray to a bulging eyed idol that looks like a Weirdo Model by Ed’ Big daddy” Roth. Now there’s a dated reference. They point out that their jungle has been invaded by white folk. This riles up the big guy, who goes in search of the intruders. One is decapitated. In the close up of his “severed head” his neck has a pulse and his tongue is moving. The “blood” looks like a mixture of red food dye & honey. Blood is supposed to flow like water, not ooze like snot. Peter arranges a swap, the money for the girl. This goes badly as a shoot out starts and one of the crook’s blonde girlfriend gets shot in the leg. The helicopter is about to explode. No smoke trail or anything. Now you see it, then there is a explosion. The actress has now been captured by the cannibals. Peter finds the kidnappers camp and the wounded woman. He chains her up , but she gets free and is killed by the big guy. After all of the minor characters are wiped out, Peter faces the big guy, who now has the actress, in a fight to the death on a cliff. Not exactly a career highlight for Al Cliver as he fights a big , naked black guys, who junk seems to fill the camera in some scenes. Too many close ups of a big black dick & yam bag. This was the “restored” footage ? Shoulda stayed lost if you ask me. The big guy gets tossed off the cliff, Al gets the girl and the natives trash the idol. End of story. This film is best viewed with a bunch of friends, lots of liquor, and a bong. The only saving grace is the hot chics. Even the rape scene is boring. For Franco completests and insomniacs only. Extras are a new interview with Franco. Last House on the Beach (1978) from Severin Films Directed by Franco Prosperi Starring Ray Lovelock, Florinda Bolkan, Sherry Buchanan, & Laura Trotter. Last House on the Left rippoff by the director of Mondo Cane. Real high on the cringe factor as three scumbags rob a bank, then hide out at a beach front house where a nun and five school girls are staying. One of crooks caves in the maids skull with an iron. Another of the guys tries to rape one of the girls and gets the business end of a rat tailed comb shoved into his groin. The threesome torment and rape the girls. First the nun is raped. Then, one of the guys puts on make up and he and the guy who got stabbed double team one of the girls. The nun makes a deal with Aldo, the head douchebag. She’ll fix up the guy who got stabbed if they leave the girls alone. He agrees, but when one of the girls tries to escape, she is raped with a tree branch and left dead on the floor. Finally the nun gets the upper hand and she and the girls extract bloody revenge. Florinda Bolkan is great in the lead as the nun. Lovelock is a convincing sadist and you despise him and his gang. An extra is an interview with Ray Lovelock, who is actually Italian. Franco Prosperi was one of the guys who created the phenomenon known as the “Mondo” movie. Mondo Cane, Africa Addido, and Farewell Uncle Tom are all part of his resume. Last House on the Beach was part of a slew of Italian ripoffs inspired by the granddaddy of sick flicks, Last House on the Left and each one was progressively grimmer than the original. The print is great and other extras include the German & Italian trailers. Emanuelle and the White Slave Trade (1978) Directed by Joe D’Amato Starring Laura Gemser, Gabriele Tinti and Ely Galleani DVD released by Severin Films I always said that Joe D’Amato was one of the best when it came to erotic films , either hard or softcore. Joe was a master at this genre, yet totally sleazy with other genres. Joe had a long collaboration with Laura Gemser, one of the most sensual women in the history of exploitation and grindhouse. Gemser’s exotic looks and smoldering sensuality gave all us 70’s grindhouse junkies fantasies. She made the character she played, Emanuelle , an extension of her personality. This was their last Emanuelle film together. The film starts out in Africa as Emanulle and her assistant are looking to expose a mobster who is hiding out. She arranges for her and her assistant to be introduced to the gentleman. She has a camera hidden in her zippo lighter. Lots of very hot sex scenes occur before the job is done. She catches wind of a prostitution ring run by her real life husband , Gabriele Tinti. We see an auction in New York as young girls, with hairy armpits, are auctioned off. One girl, who is supposed to be a “16 year old virgin” has more hair under her arms than I have left on my head. Think brillo pads. The girls parade in and do a strip before the potential buyers. They are very calm for girls being sold as sex slaves. Anyway after a lot more sex, Emanuelle agrees to work in a high end brothel in San Diego. She befriends a cross dresser and they plan an escape. They are cornered by thugs and we are treated to a tranny kung fu fight until he/she gets killed and Emanuelle gets gangbanged. The ring is exposed, Emanuelle gets her story and this film got lost for a good many years.
The Sinful Dwarf (1974) Box Office International DVD From Severin Films It says on the box that Severin Films may go to hell for releasing this and I’ll be going along for watching it. When you think of epic drawfsploitaton , several classic performances come to mind: Louis De Jesus getting head from a severed head in Bloodsucking Freaks, Billy Barty turning into a sparkler in The Undead, Angelo Rossito falling head first on his axe in Dracula vs Frankenstein ,Ralphie De Jesus fist fucking Vanessa Del Rio in Anal Dwarf, and Torbin Billie’s tour de force performance in The Sinful Dwarf. Only an auteur like Harry Novak would have the keen insight to realize the cultural impact The Sinful Dwarf would have. Only a company like Severin Films would have the balls to release this film, beautifully restored from a pristine 35mm print. You’d be hard pressed to find a film with more depravity crammed into a 95 minute running time. If Jack Black was a breech birth , this might have been the result. Torbin, at times , actually reminds me of Jack’s performance in the King Kong remake. Before the credits roll, our miniature madman has lured a young girl into the bushes with a wind up toy, hit her over the head with his cane, and dragged her back to his attic lair where other girls are imprisoned. He has a drunken slob mother, he shoots the girls up with drugs as they lie around in a shitty room naked. A British couple rent a room and fuck in a hot, softcore scene. This is Danish and it really pushes the envelope similar to They Call Her One Eye. The Dwarf is selling the chics and this was way before the internet.
Scenes of The Dwarf in bed with his mother are pretty unsettling. They want to “get the Blonde” . They need new girls as these are using too much heroin. It gets sicker, Mom’s dope connection is a toy store. Mom looks like Sarah Palin after she got hit in the face with a hockey puck. A Girl gets fake whipped . The toy store’s drug runner gets killed, so they hire the Brit, mainly to get his wife for the midget, ah, dwarf, ah, little fucker. She gets caught in the attic and chained up by Mother & Dwarf. Funny , the younger chics are buck naked, she is in bra & panties. Eventually she gets humped by the drooling dwarf. This is sick shit and I’m enjoying every minute of it. The law is closing in after a teddy bear od’s on heroin. The cops really want the “little bastard” . The cops find the girls and now go dwarf hunting. Mom gets shot and the Dwarf caves in a cops skull. The Dwarf falls off the roof with a wet splat . Great stuff, best enjoyed with friends over massive bong hits. Quarantine 2009 from Screem Gems Directed by John Erick Dowdle . First off, I hadn’t seen a film that sucked this bad in years. Here we have another shitty, palmcorded Clover Field clone that is a darkly shot , incoherent mess. You have to be a really crappy film maker to rely on this format, proving that anyone who got that $119.95 special from Best Buy is now a ‘Film Maker”. This steaming pile of dog shit follow two news people following two paramedics. The woman of the team and “star” of the film, Jennifer Carpenter, is just a whiny , chickenshit bitch that you want to see die early on, but keeping this film mired down seems to be the key as she is around until the bitter end. A call to a run down apartment house has the team , including two cops, trapped in the building as the Government seals it up. I’ll spare you the first hour of darkly lit, shaky palm corder bullshit and cut to the chase: Some bio terrorist is living there and has created a mutant strain of rabies. At this point I will refer my readers to Rabid 1977 and I Drink Your Blood 1971 which dealt with rabies and you could actually see what the hell was going on. You don’t identify with the characters, mainly because you can’t really see them and no one stands out. Everybody dies and everybody connected with this film should die also. People say that this could be the best horror film this year. If you expectations are that low, it probably is. The two big remakes, Friday the 13th, & Last House on the Left reportedly sucked, next up is the Elm Street & Halloween II remakes which will also suck. So if this is the bright spot & the “best horror film this year” it may be time for me to re evaluate my love of the genre and stick to what I like, old school films, instead of this idiotic, copycat dreck. That picture of the girl on the box says it all. The expression on her face looks like she’s being ass raped and after one viewing , the viewer will probably feel the same way. Forry Ackerman or Uncle Forry to a lot of us, past away last Thursday at age 92. Forry created the world’s first monster magazine, Famous Monsters of Filmland back in the 50’s. I came to find the magazine when it was at issue #4. I forked over my 35 cent allowance for this issue. My big mistake was taking it to school, catholic school. An evil nun took it out of my desk and ripped it up in front of the entire class, in essence, branding me an outcast, a mantle I still wear proudly today. You see, back then , if you liked this stuff you were branded an outcast, a weirdo, a creep ect. You got beat up by the jocks and ostracized by your so called peers. Such was the way it was with the monster fan right up until the mid 70’s when horror films started getting some respect. Uncle Forry always respected the genre and it’s fans. Forry introduced the youth of America to Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, Zacherly, Lon Chaney Sr & Jr, Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, Basil Rathbone, George Zucco, Glen Strange, Ray Bradbury, Robert Bloch, and cover artist supreme, Basil Gogos. If you could get past Forry’s horrible puns, you learned about the classic horror films that we still love today. I first met Forry at one of the early Chiller conventions were I had the honor of being his “bodyguard” for the show. Fans were lined up endlessly to meet the “Ackermonster” as Forry called himself. He signed the covers of back issues of Famous Monsters with his trade mark puns and showed the fans his most prized possession, Dracula’s Ring. He gave a seminar that day to an SRO crowd. He was at Chiller a couple of more times. He was always running around in his loud jacket and sneakers. He was quite a sight and was always very cordial with the fans. I lost track of Famous Monsters in my late teens. I had almost every issue. Then I discovered beer, cars, & women and sold my Monster Mag & Comic book collection to pursue them. I’m still kicking myself in the ass over that move. Forry’s Famous Monsters of Filmland spawned many imitators. Castle of Frankenstein, Horror Monsters, Mad Monsters, Shriek, and others came and went. None would ever have the fan base or respect that Forry’s brainchild had. We at Scars owe Forry a debt of gratitude. The Monster Magazine was his idea. Yeah, in all probability someone else may have come up with something similar if there was no Forry. But I doubt that anyone else would have had the respect or the integrity that Forry had for the genre. Forry broke the ground so that guys like me could follow a dream and write for a Monster Mag. I read today that Forry once said that once he’s gone and some time passes that no one will remember him. I would have to say that he was wrong. When I think of the countless people who’s lives he touched, the opportunities and encouragement he gave young writers , and just being a wonderful person, I’d say no one will ever forget “ The Ackermonster”. Forry was like the little kid in all of us, lurking beneath the surface. I’d like to think that he’s up in the clouds with the rest of the greats that he knew and respected. Thank you , Forry, for all you have done for the genre. As hard as it is for me to write this, I realize that eventually we all must pass through the veil. It’s hard to lose someone we all care about, but I really like to believe that we will all meet up eventually in that big grindhouse in the hereafter. RIP , Uncle Forry, you will live forever in the hearts and minds of all of us horror fans. You will never be forgotten. The Dead Pit 1989 from Code Red DVD. Starring Jeremy Slate, Cheryl Lawson, and Directed by Brett Leonard. This was another late 80’s right to video movie. It had a cool box with a zombie that had lite up eyes when you pushed the box. This is the unrated director’s cut. Leonard went on to direct Lawnmower Man and Virtuosity. Even though I’ll admit I’m not a fan of this film, Code Red did a bang up job as it has never looked better. A mad doctor enjoys doing bargain basement surgery on mental patients. When he is done, he dumps their remains in a pit. A rival doctor( Slate) kills him and dumps his sorry ass in the pit and seals it up. 20 years later, the hospital opens again. “Jane Doe” ( a nice scantily clad Lawson) show up with amnesia. She is haunted by the bloody specter of the murdered doctor. An earthquake rocks the building, freeing the mad doctor and his army of zombies . They all have exposed brains and start tearing the throwaway victims apart to get to their brains. Gore hounds will dig the brain ripping out sequences. Even the good doctor gets his grey matter exposed. Another quality DVD from the Code Red guys, When’s Nightmare coming out? Exploitation Cinema Double Feature: Satan’s Slave (1976)& Terror (1978) from BCI I have been really impressed with BCI double features. This one was also a pleasant surprise. I watched Terror first because I had a vague recollect |