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KILLING SPREE!!!!!!!

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Killing Spree ~ 1987, Tim Ritter, USA

The man, the myth, the legend- ladies and gentleman, I give you the star of Killing Spree, Mr. Asbestos Felt.

Before we go any further, I need to describe the Asbestos Felt approach to acting. My chosen method for doing this is to use Car metaphors, but full disclosure; I know nothing about cars. OK, so here we go:

In the world of actor/car analogies, Robert DeNiro is sorta like a Rolls Royce. George Clooney would be a Mercedes Benz, and Clint Eastwood is some sort of bad ass Cadillac that still understands how America works. Asbestos Felt, however, would be a Dodge Gremlin, the interior would smell like urine, it would have no doors, and a shattered windshield. It would also be missing three tires, the one tire it did have would somehow be taken off of a monster truck, and the engine is whatever the fuck they put in Indy Cars. Also, the whole car would probably be filled with possums, all of whom are on fire. Simply put, Felt goes fucking hard. While he can’t give you what you need, he can give you a manic, irrational enthusiasm which is almost certain to leave a trail of broken victims in its wake.

Just look at him! He looks like a scarecrow who found a magic lamp, and it’s first wish was to be human, but its second and third wishes were both just for heroin.

But, he’s our boy, and I wouldn’t change a thing. Killing Spree is a true experience, and while it starts so slow that you’ll find yourself expecting it not to live up to all the hype, by the end of the film, it fucking delivers… and then it keeps on delivering, long after your mangled corpse has been abused past the point of recognition.

The Plot: Tom and Leeza are a happily married couple- If by “happily married” you mean inexplicably mismatched and terrifyingly dysfunctional. Their problems all stem from one single root cause; Tom’s old fashioned views on gender equality- and by old fashioned, I mean sociopathic/amish. Leeza isn’t permitted to work. Or really do anything but stay at home. Toms been burned before, you see, so he’s not open to giving Leeza a fucking ounce of freedom, for fear that she’ll up and leave him, and he doesn’t exactly keep a cool head about the whole thing. Even in the face of this controlling, revoltingly unfair treatment, Leeza remains loyal, calm and compassionate, for reasons I cannot begin to imagine. This is not an evenly matched marriage.

Just look at the love.

I mean, WHY would Leeza stay with Tom? She’s utterly gorgeous, and in addition to being controlling and manipulative, Tom looks like a homeless muppet that survived a tornado. What’s the fucking deal?

I mean, level with me; is THIS what women want?!

So, things get worse from here. Despite Tom’s best efforts to Rapunzel his wife away, hidden from the world, he begins to suspect her of infidelity all the same, and his suspicions wind up being aimed at literally every many he can reasonably assume she’s has had contact with ever. This includes a gardener, about a hundred friggin’ repairmen, and even his best friend (a charming old man who’s also a total sleaze-ball).

He’s also a statutory rapist, so maybe doubting his loyalty isn’t such a crazy thing to do after all.

To be fair, Tom’s got his reasons to be suspicious. You see, while lounging about the house one day, our boy finds what he believes to be a journal written by his wife- outlining numerous graphic, sexual encounters between herself and… Well, basically every dude who dares even to approach her. Yep. Pretty damning evidence, I know I’d feel uncomfortable. What he doesn’t know, however, is that this is not a journal, but rather a series of erotic short stories, written by Leeza as a means of exercising her creativity while she’s bored as fuck, toiling away in her house all day. It’s not just for fun, either, Leeza plans is to sell these to an interested publisher, thereby secretly adding an additional income stream to the household, which is meant to help out after Tom’s pay is slashed due to corporate mismanagement. In truth, she is 100% faithful to him, aside from her insistence on bringing in a little bit of money, and what she does she does for the good of their marriage. See, this is why communication is so important in a relationships, without it, blood spattered rampages are almost unavoidable.

This is just a screen grab from the Asbestos Felt episode of MTV Cribs, it’s not even in the movie!

Tragically, Tom would not wait for all the facts before putting into motion his plans for revenge… Awesomely creative revenge. He starts small, but by the end of it he’s kind of the Rembrandt of killing people in broad daylight. It goes without saying that these scenes are the strongest bits in the movie, but there’s other good stuff, too, Like when we get to learn the mysterious origins of a man called “The Stew-Master”.

That’s right, folks, the epic tale of The Stew-master can finally be told.

Who is he?! What does he want!? How could he have come by such a unique accolade? Well, turns out he’s just some dude, and the reason they call him “Stew-master” is because he’s really good at making stew. Yep! It’s pretty much exactly what you’d assume, and it never comes up in the movie again, so the inclusion of this scene defies literally all rational thought. Typically when you’re writing a script, you  make it a point to cut out all the stuff that doesn’t make sense, serve the story, or which kills the pacing… but not with this script. If we were to cut out the bits that didn’t make sense, Killing Spree would simply cease to exist at all. And we can’t have that.

Now, while it’s certainly wacky as fuck, up until this point, Killing Spree has operated more or less within the confines of the revenge/serial killer sub-genre, albeit an atypical one. It would be logical to expect it to continue upon its established trajectory through it’s final act as well, and that’s the biggest reason why you should probably expect it to switch shit up immediately. And it does! In it’s third act, Killing Spree suddenly embarks into uncharted territory and serves us up a helping of zombies, more or less completely out of nowhere and with no explanation. These ghouls (who come with their own enjoyably funky music) are the inexplicably reanimated corpses of Tom’s many undeserving victims, now back from the dead and hungry for vengeance. Oh shit! Hens come home to roost, boys and girls. So, what happens next? Well… I recommend you check the film out and see for yourself. I’ve been told to stop spoiling the end of these movies, so this is all you’re gonna get from me.

Okay, I’ll give you this, too. Spoiler alert- whatever the fuck this is happens. Apparently.

Killing Spree is not a technicality impressive movie. It’s also not an attractive movie… or even a competent one. Does any of that matter to you? This is a splatter film, and the degree to which you enjoy or despise it is entirely dependent on your openness to that brand of low budget, run and gun, shot on video storytelling. Think about it like sushi- if you don’t like sushi, don’t eat it. If you do eat it- I’d imagine you’re not going to like it. Meanwhile, there are plenty of people out there who DO enjoy sushi, and they don’t need to hear you bitch about how gross it is (Full disclosure: I don’t eat sushi. It is gross.) If you’ve managed to stumble across my writing, then odds are you already know how you feel about movies like this, so I suggest you proceed according. For splatter enthusiasts, however there’s a whole second world of options to explore and enjoy, and Killing Spree is a fantastically fun and entertaining example of what’s out there. Every flaw in it is like a generous gift to openly ridicule and enjoy, and these flaws are plentiful, friends. Killing Spree is satisfyingly violent, and frequently hilarious by reason of insanity.

How far away could the next house possibly be that this isn’t going to draw some suspicion? 

This movie was re-released by some unscrupulous distributor with the title I WIll Dance On Your Grave: Killing Spree, in an evident effort to suggest that it was part of the Dance On Your Grave series, themselves something of a degenerate spin-off franchise meant to follow the legendary Video Nasty I Spit On Your Grave. This association is dubious as balls, ladies and gentlemen, and even worse is the tagline on the poster they used, which read:  “Better Run For Your Life, There’s A Babe With A Knife!”

…Yeah… And that babe is this guy:

“You just got Felt, bitches!”

Anyway. The posters for the Dance On Your Grave release of the film are still pretty solid.

Something about this does appeal to me more than Asbestos Felt does, if I’m being honest.

Highly recommended!

B+

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DARKNESS!!!!!!!!!!

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Darkness~ Leif Jonker, 1993, USA

If Dave Mustaine’s acid wash jeans were somehow transformed into a vampire movie, that movie would be Leif Jonker’s Darkness, and holy fuck, would it ever be awesome. Purported to have been written by Jonker when he was a mere 17 years of age and shot over the course of nearly three years in a Kansas Suburb, Darkness is an ultra low-budget, high gore Vampire film featuring a small band of teen agers fighting for their lives against a legion of their now undead peers. Here’s a fun drinking game for you and your friends to play; stick a copy of Darkness into your DVD player and take a shot every time you see the most metal shit you’ve ever seen in your entire life. You will all succumb to alcohol poisoning and die instantly.

Story isn’t a HUGE part of the equation here, remember, this is said to have been written by a 17 year old. I believe it, too, the plot is about what you’d expect to see in the spiral notebook drawings of the kid in your science class who wore the exact same Cannibal Corpse T-shirt everyday and never made eye contact with anybody. As it is, the story goes as such: A wave of vampire attacks is sweeping across Kansas, hitting each town one by one. Tobe, a mullet sporting teenaged survivor of one such attack, takes to the road on a mission to hunt the blood suckers down and slay them all in an act of awesome, heavy metal revenge. Meanwhile, another group of angsty youths, who were out of town at a metal concert (hell yeah) on the night their town got hit, return home to discover the grisly aftermath of last night’s vampire onslaught, and are immediately forced to struggle for survival amongst a sea of soulless, gore caked ghouls. They soon happen upon Tobe, and decide join him in his quest, since they sure as shit aren’t getting much done on their own, and evidently his background stocking convenience store shelves has somehow prepared Tobe for Vampire combat in a way few could have predicted. Thing happen, people get chased, people get bit, and it all builds up to a climax that delivers in a big way. I’ve been told that spoiling the end of these movies is irritating, so that’s all I’m going to say, but I do want to assure you: shit get’s awesome.

I’ve chosen to include the following pictures to substantiate my claim that this shit is rad as fuck:

I believe I have made my point.

Jonker clearly loved The Evil Dead, and one can spot that films as an influence routinely throughout Darkness, but it also feels somewhat reminiscent of The Dead Next Door, partially because of it’s washy, grainy aesthetic. It sorta looks like it was shot on Super 8, although I can’t be sure, but the washed out, fuzzy look actually lends itself well to Darkness‘ bleak, suburban hellscape atmosphere. In this case, it feels like a boon, and not a detriment. Occasionally we get some pretty effective visuals, and the film is executed quite admirably considering the complete drought of budget or resources available. The special effects in particular are nothing less than excellent, Darkness makes it a point to deliver big on blood and gore, because they know that’s about all they can promise the audience. The overall experience feels something like a middle point between The Evil Dead and Violent Shit (Review), and yes, I know, that’s fucking rad as hell. Actually, I might put this closer to Premutos, as it’s significantly better made than Violent Shit… but still much less accessible or polished than The Evil Dead.

Hey, look, MORE awesome shit.

And yes, it is super, super metal. This is the most metal film I’ve seen since Transformers The Movie (the cartoon one. The good one!) There are almost no adults in the entire film, suggesting that for three years, this was easily the coolest thing to do in Wichita if you were between the ages of 15 and 20 (and you were doing homework like a sucker!). It’s just a massive legion of butt rock kids running around in the dark, being mutilated and/or horribly mutilating each other, decked out to the nines with the best fake blood a minimum wage fast food job can buy, and set to a soundtrack of gloomy tones and underground thrash metal. I hope it’s coming across that I mean this all in the best way possible, Darkness, in many ways, delivers big time on promises that much more notorious splatter films fail to keep.

I will openly admit, however, that it’s absolutely not for everyone. The acting is amateurish (or worse), many of the shots aren’t lit for shit, the sound is poor, and some cuts of the film are over-narrated with an lame voice over that doesn’t add much to the film… in other words, all the traditional pitfalls of Splatter Cinema are here in full force. If any of those things bother you, then you’re not going to love this movie much at all. As for the rest of you, Darkness is quite possibly the dragon you’ve been chasing all this time. It is a fantastic example of what it wants to be, and is, no exaggeration, one of the best splatter films I’ve ever managed to track down.

A-

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Burial Ground!!!

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Burial Ground: The Nights Of Terror ~ 1981, Andrea Bianchi, Italy

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Burial Ground is a film about a lot of things… It’s a film about overcoming adversity, it’s a film about confronting the past, it’s a film about survival… but mostly it’s a movie where a full grown man plays a child who really wants to bang his mom. Yep. Now, granted, this is a very small man, but he’s definitely an adult human being, and not a child by any stretch of the imagination. And again, as I mentioned a moment ago, he really, really wants to have sex with his mom, and the reason why any of that was included in this film remains shrouded forever in mystery and lost to time. This is a movie where rotting corpses rise from their graves to tear human beings apart and devour their flesh, and none of that is even one tenth as creepy as this fucking kid/mom/incest subplot. 

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Plus, he looks like that.

burial-ground-nights-of-terror-1981-10THE PLOT~ When some professor/archeologist/whatever type guy removes an engraved plate from an ancient ruin, he unwittingly triggers a centuries old curse that reanimates the dead and imperils every lusty Italian in the immediate area. What a dumb ass, huh? Meanwhile, our cast of totally forgettable characters all arrive at the beautiful, stately Italian villa which may or may not belong to the aforementioned professor, and which also appears to be on the same property as this ancient tomb for some reason, for a weekend of aggressive sex in as many locations as possible, as often as possible. Solid plan. Sadly, none of these idiots is yet aware that the zombie apocalypse is upon them, so they only get in about fourteen or fifteen sex scenes before the place is just crawling with ghouls and everyone is forced to switch to survival mode. From there it’s your typical Night of the Living Dead style survival zombie film, they barricade, they fight, they die, the end. It’s actually pretty fun!

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Burial Ground is a rip off, and no buts about it. If you read the plot blurb above, the you already know that these guys watched Romero’s contributions a time or two, but this flick is also clearly indebted to Lucio Fulci’s Zombie, at one point even going so far as to directly copy of one of that film’s most memorable eyeball related gore gags. Even so, in watching Burial Ground, you’re more likely to be reminded of Jean Rollin’s Grapes of Death, or even the uber-shabby mummy/zombie mash up Dawn of the Mummy, as Burial Ground is tonally dissimilar to the work of either Romero or Fulci.

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I actually sort of love it it. The make up effects are truly terrible, but the music is really great. It’s much more ambient and freeform than the synth scores you would get from Goblin or Fabio Frizzi, but it suits this film excellently. Burial Ground is also super pleasant visually, whoever managed to acquire this location for the film should be given a freakin’ trophy, because it probably saved the movie in the end. The grounds and house are both beautiful, and do more to push this film in the arty/poetic direction that Rollin has on lock than any other element in the mix by far. That’s not to say that the movie feels anywhere near as poetic as the work of Jean Rollin, and truthfully, it doesn’t want to be, which is okay. The proof is in the pudding, and Burial Ground is very forthcoming about its intentions; it wants to entertain, and deliver. In this film we don’t waste any time with plot, character development, or really anything that takes too much mental energy. Instead, we get zombies; we get them fast, and in as much abundance as is available, and to hold us over while we wait the scant few minutes it takes to fetch our wobbling ghouls, we are compensated with liberal doses of naked Italians gettin’ busy. Folks, Burial Ground isn’t here to judge. Burial Ground knows what you want, and you don’t have to pretend with Burial Ground. Burial Ground isn’t the kind of movie you take home to mother, but it’s the kind of movie you meet in a back alley when you really need a fix.

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VIDEO NASTY BREAKDOWN

Yep! is also made the list of gnarly flicks which raised the English Ire back in the rough and tumble 1980’s! So, how does it compare to all the other films it tries so very hard to imitate? Pretty damn well, actually. Burial Ground has lots of footage of people having their guts fondled and yanked out by grizzled old zombies, but it also has a few memorable gags and scenes that stick out to the viewer; such as a somewhat elaborate sequence involving a dart and a scythe. More than anything else, what probably put Burial Ground on the map for both British Censors and psychotronic film fans is its puzzling inclusion of the aforementioned incest subplot, as well as the hardcore off-putting choice of casting a full grown man to play the role of Michael, who is supposed to be the child in question. We’re pretty much forced to assume that the biggest reason behind these decisions was that it was one more way to jazz the film up with sensational content that was smutty, and which felt markedly inappropriate, both traditionally seen as desirable traits for Italian Genre films. In the end no matter how you feel about the movie, Michael’s horrifyingly wrong relationship with his mother makes Burial Ground difficult to forget, and it also adds a lot of weight to later scenes in the film, wherein we learn the fate of young(?) Michael. Burial Ground’s blood and gore isn’t quite as over the top as some other films in the Video Nasty lexicon, but it hits home, because Burial Ground doesn’t work hard- it works smart. And by smart, I mean they cast an adult man as a child who wants to bang his mom, and then we see his corpse being eaten, and it’s super bloody and I love it. You probably will, too.burial10

It also has one of the most bleak and nihilistic endings of any zombie film ever, which is quite a statement indeed. Suffice to say, nobody survives this one, and we end with a freeze frame, followed by this text (spelling errors included):

 

 

“The Earth Shall Tremble…
Graves Shall Open…
They Shall Come Among the Living as Messengers of Death and there shall be the Nights of Terror…

Profecy of the Black Spider.”

DAMN! That’s the most metal shit I’ve ever heard in my LIFE. So, yeah, if you want to know more about The Black Spider and whatever his deal was, then be my guest and google that shit. Meanwhile, this is a pretty amazing way to end a zombie movie, and I don’t even know if that caption is bogus or not. I really don’t care. At the end of the day, Burial Ground pretty much delivers in the same way that junk food does, it’s not good for you, but if that’s what you wanted, you wouldn’t have bought those Cheetos in the first place.

A-

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DEAD ALIVE!!!!

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  1. Brain Dead/AKA Dead Alive ~ 1992, Peter Jackson, New Zealand

braindead_poster_02

Before New Line made the ballsiest gamble of the 21st century and entrusted him with directing the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy, Peter Jackson, honorary Hobbit and King Kiwi of the cinematic lexicon, was a handsomely bearded, but little known director, who spent the first phase of his career crafting some of the zaniest splatter films ever made. Like, obnoxiously, unreasonably zany.

It’s worth mentioning this was not necessarily the most hospitable environment for that type of cinema, either, the 1990’s were a bleak and dismal period for horror films on the whole. The genre had enjoyed a reckless hayday in the 1980’s, but by the close of the decade, the market had become saturated, the products dated, and mainstream audiences no longer gave a shit. The once proud horror subculture retreated underground like the primitive Morlocks that they are, and America’s first tier film studios lost faith in tentpole horror franchises of yesteryear, motivating them to move away from the likes of Freddy and Jason, and onto greener pastures, like Ace Ventura 2, Battlefield Earth, and Big Momma’s House. As such, 1992 yielded precious few zombie films, but one that it did produce was Brain Dead, or, as its known in the United States, Dead Alive. Luckily, sometimes it’s quality over quantity, and Dead Alive has quality on lock down.

THE PLOT: Lionel is a meek and unremarkable man who lives with his manipulative, over-baring mother Vera, in a small coastal town somewhere in New Zealand. Lionel is a straight up momma’s boy, Vera has him 200% under her thumb, and he doesn’t appear to have the strength of character to tell her to friggin’ back off now, or ever. In fact, Lionel is so incapable of letting go of his unhealthy relationship with his mother, that when she becomes zombified in a freak primate exhibit accident at the zoo (yep), he does everything in his power to conceal her condition from the public, even going so far as to round up all of her newly zombified victims and keep them hidden away in his basement. Seems like if he had any intention of moving out of his mother’s house, her turning into a homicidal ghoul would be as good a time as any to pull the trigger. Clearly, this birdie ain’t leavin’ the nest.

…But if Lionel won’t ever man up his own, a much needed catalyst arrives in the form of Paquita, a pretty young woman who meets Lionel through coincidence, and who quickly decides that he’s the man she’s going to marry, whether he likes it or not. For a time, Lionel tries to juggle these two relationships, but eventually this becomes infeasible, and he is forced to choose between his controlling, domineering mother, who makes all of his decisions for him… and his controlling, domineering girlfriend…. who makes all of his decisions for him… So, really, this is sort of a long trip to wind up right back where you started, but at least Paquita isn’t a zombie. He for sure upgraded.

Dead Alive’s dodgy super-motif doesn’t bother us. The journey is enjoyable enough that we aren’t deterred by Lionel’s half assed character arc, and the film is silly enough that we assume this lateral development to be deliberate. And anyway, this is easily the most true to life component in the entire film,  everybody knows somebody like Lionel, and that guy usually winds up with a Paquita. Most people even know a Vera!

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Sadly, few of us have religious leaders like this guy in our lives.

It’s a hell of a movie. For years, Dead Alive was said to be the goriest movie ever made- a boast that’s easy to believe if you see the unrated version of the film. It really feels like if Peter Jackson could have conceived of a way to make this movie gorier, he would have done it. The much coveted “goriest film ever” crown has been snatched up more than once over the years- last I checked, Fede Alvarez’s remake of The Evil Dead is the curent record holder, but I’ll tell you this; Dead Alive still FEELS gorier. In fact, I’ve searched and searched, and no film feels quite as bloody as this one does. No matter how many gallons of red stuff Alvarez dumped onto a sound stage, Dead Alive will trump that volume through it’s execution. Truly, if you have any interest in gore cinema, this needs to be your next stop.

Dead Alive’s 1992 vintage is indeed a rarity. Zombies were sort of in hibernation during this period, meaning that Dead Alive came out after the second wave of zombie fiction, but before the third. More than likely this helps to make the film feel fresher, it’s not really part of any trend, and it’s not really a rehash of anything else, it’s a zombie film that was made because Peter Jackson wanted to tell a zombie story. Really, it’s a rare home run from an era where not many people even cared to swing the bat. If you’re a fan of Jackson’s Hobbit and or magical elf related motion pictures, or if you fancy yourself a fan of zombies, but kinda want to see a film that isn’t a broken mess of lowest common denominator pandering and heat chasing, then do yourself a favor and get this shit on your TV pronto. It’s plenty of fun.

A+

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THE BEYOND!!!!

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The Beyond~ 1981, Lucio Fulci, Italy

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THE BEYOND!

The Beyond is the second film in Lucio Fulci’s semi-official “Seven Gates of Hell” Trilogy, which is the very definition of squandered opportunity. SEVEN gates of Hell TRILOGY? Come on, dude. What’s the deal? We still got, like, four more gates of hell out there somewhere.

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What kind of person tells us he has seven gates to hell, and then only shares three? Fucked up.

Regardless, The Beyond is often thought of as one of Fulci’s best films, and that’s a reputation that I think is well deserved. This is, indeed, a good movie.

The plot really isn’t that impressive, though. It’s basically just a straight line that connects our protagonist’s introduction, with her eternal damnation. In short, she inherits a hotel (that’s good!) and wouldn’t ya know it, it’s built over one of the Earth’s seven, hidden entrances to Hell (that’s bad).  Immediately everything is really, really horrible, and then she goes to hell forever. A lot of secondary characters die, and that’s the movie.

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Awesome.

Just like with Suspiria, the weak plot isn’t really an issue, we didn’t come to The Beyond with high expectations for an engrossing narrative. What makes this film truly great is it’s superb execution. Like many of Fulci’s films, The Beyond is straught up dream like, and in fact, most of this shit just flat out doesn’t make sense at all. Is this a deliberate abuse of your suspension of disbelief, or evidence of incompetence on the part of the director? I tend to believe it’s the former, but either way, Fulci plays it straight, and when you experience the many frustrating lapses in basic logic alongside the film’s near constant air of menace, the end result is a wildly effective movie for those who have the patience to invest in it. The Beyond is scary for reasons that you can’t quite pin point, which seems to be a common goal amongst the Italian horror maestros of yesteryear. Fulci nailed it this time.

Good ol’ Lucio’s eye for cinematography is here in full force as well, this is a film that probably has a lot more love and care put into it’s aesthetic than you may notice if you don’t know what to look for. When Fucli was playing at the top of his game, he put out movies that got more beautiful the longer you picked at them, and that certainly is the case here. It’s also extremely gory, which is great, The Beyond is a full fledged Video Nasty, folks, and understandably so. The main jam here is lingering. Just lingering! This movie likes to find really, really gross shit, and then just rub your face in it for much longer than is required to get the point across. For gorehounds, that makes this movie well worth the cost of admission alone. For fans of Italian splatter cinema, it’s hard to argue against The Beyond as a must see.

Small gripe; People often call The Beyond a zombie film, which I think it ill-advised. Yes, there are zombies in this movie, but there’s also a whole lot of other stuff going on too. Calling this a zombie movie is sorta like saying that E.T. is a movie about bicycles. Even worse, if you’re looking for zombies specifically, this might leave you feeling underwhelmed, as they are most certainly not this film’s primary focus. If it’s the undead you crave, have a gander at this list for recommendations, because The Beyond really isn’t going to get you what you’re looking for.

Additionally, the movie also bares many traits which are very much typical of European productions of the era, but which also tend to turn off mainstream American horror fans, who expect a more accessible Hidden Gateway To Hell experience. Slow pacing, obnoxious English dubbing, and a sometimes aggravatingly negligent narrative, these are all here, and in spades. If you haven’t seen a lot of these films before, then you might have trouble with The Beyond. You need to think of these films like a hot tub; dip your toes in first to test the temperature, and then lower yourself in as your body adjusts to the warmth. If you just dive in, you’re gonna get burned.

Otherwise, The Beyond is absolutely great, and a highlight of Fulci’s epic filmography.

A+

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RESIDENT EVIL!!

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RESIDENT EVIL – 2002, Paul W.S. Anderson

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In the late 90’s, the Resident Evil video games were totally the cat’s pajamas. Critics and gamers alike couldn’t get enough of the impressive graphics, spooky atmosphere, and innovate “survival Horror” play style, and absolutely nobody ever companied about the game’s lack of Milla Jovovich doing karate. It seemed inevitable that a movie based on the series would soon enter production, and lo and behold; this prophecy was fulfilled.

Initially, the studio went after beloved horror director and zombie O.G. George Romero to direct an adaptation, which, at the time, seemed like a slam dunk, but after a long courtship, these negotiations fizzled out, leaving producers to apparently just throw up their arms in frustration and ask, “What about that smarmy ballsack who directed Mortal Kombat?” And that, boys and girls, is how Paul W.S. Anderson, who is to film franchises what Jack the Ripper is to 19th Century British Prostitutes, destroyed any possibility of there ever being a good Resident Evil movie, ever.

Here’s the thing, it should not be hard to make a good Resident Evil movie, you guys. For reals, this one should have been in the bag. The problem is, though, that Resident Evil was a game about surviving, not fighting. Paul W.S. Anderson doesn’t care about that. That’s boring, in Paul’s book, he really only makes one type of movie; it’s gotta be an action film, it has to be really, really stupid, and if at all possible, his girlfriend Milla Jovovich has to be in it, so she can pretend to be a bad ass. Though this is an unconfirmed suspicion, most experts agree that the only way Anderson can retain that Leeloo Dallas Multipass to her downstairs Ukrainian bang-situation is by constantly crafting full length motion pictures wherein Jovovich get’s to pretend to be a bad ass and beat people up. Do the math, she’s a model and he’s a squirmy little turd. I’ve seen guys do more elaborate things to seal the deal, but seriously, bro, this is extreme. Just find somebody who likes you for you.

THE PLOT~ Deep underground in a genetic research facility, there is an outbreak of a deadly, biologically engineered virus which turns people into zombies. Immediately, the job is put to Milla Jovovich to be a bad ass and do karate.

Resident Evil is glorified Sci Fi channel tripe, it’s a cheesy, predictable action film full of stupid characters doing stupid things, start to finish. There actually are a few decent scenes here and there, shockingly enough, but the story is boring, and the zombies are seriously downplayed. We do have some zombie dogs that turn up, which are briefly almost neat, but Jovovich just karate kicks them to death in a sequence totally and utterly divorced from the spirit of the source material, so that scene and everything in it is therefore reduced to suckary of the lowest order.

As mentioned before, Zombies do not factor into this “zombie movie” nearly enough. Our most memorable sequence in the whole film involves someone being killed not by the undead, but instead, by….. an elevator. Alright…. It’s a good scene, but I kinda wonder why you’re not doing any zombie stuff in your zombie movie, Paul… Moving right along… The second most memorable sequence in the film… also, zero zombies. Instead, we have a bunch of people who get laser beamed to death in some kind of futuristic, laser-hallway. Again, kinda neat, but one would think that, when sitting down to write and direct a zombie movie, zombies would be something you would want to make sure got in there somewhere. I feel like that would be the very first item on the checklist, so it seems really weird how minimal they are in the grand scheme of this movie. I mean, if any of you out there really have a thing for laser-death, please, step up, this movie has a scene that you should totally see, but given that this was supposed to be a zombie film, it for sure comes across as being far too light in the zombie department.

And that’s not the only thing this movie skimps on, either. It really feels like there must have been a conscious effort to avoid including anything that made the games effective, and the only qualities that made the jump from the game to the film are the qualities that don’t really matter. The crumbling atmosphere, the claustrophobic, tension laden camera angles,  the emphasis on survival over Matrix style karate shootouts like we ended up with, all of that is either minimized or just flat out missing altogether, and replaced with bland cinematography, slick action sequences, and childish, two dimensional characters who nobody ever asked for. This movie sucks, and it could have been really great.

Resident Evil is a massive failure in every way except for commercially, because when Paul W.S. Anderson is on board, you are guaranteed a fate worse than death. Not only do his movies totally suck, but they also make money, thereby guaranteeing a long, miserable line of sequels, each even suckier than the last. If you had any connection to the source material at all, your life just took a virtual belly flop into Hell’s lake of fire.

So, Devil’s advocate time: From a very zen, calm state of mind, one can look at Resident Evil and say, “okay… It’s not that terrible. It’s not the kind of movie we should have received, but as a cheesy, paper-thin sci-fi action flick, this certainly isn’t the worst movie out there.”

That’s true… but is that enough? I’m pretty tired of constantly trying to lessen the sting of how shitty everything is by telling myself that other things are even shittier. That’s a poor excuse, and if we keep on justifying things in this fashion, nothing is ever going to get better. We need to rethink that train of thought right here and right now, if you get stung by hornets, don’t just say “Hey, at least my entire family wasn’t murdered before my very eyes, because that would be worse than being stung by hornets.” That makes no sense, dude. I mean, I agree, the murder of your immediate family would be worse, but you’re allowed to be upset about getting stung by hornets. Too many people aren’t, though, and sadly, by this point we’ve tolerated and even rewarded shitty media for such a long time that now there’s almost nothing decent out there. Now we have people so desperate to actually enjoy something that they’re willing to convince themselves that being stung by hornets is just terrific. Its not!!! Hornet stings are freaking terrible!!! And so is this damn movie! Stop paying for hornet stings!!!

Followed by a spree of horrible sequels. In fact, there are now like, six of these things. Or maybe I’m dead and this is Hell, both seem probable.

D

ZOMBIE!!!!

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ZOMBIE~ Lucio Fulci, 1979 – Italy

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As of 2015, zombies are super, super boring. That well is dry, there’s nothing left to harvest, the market is flooded with garbage, and we really need to move on to something else. Let’s do werewolves for a while, or something, anything else. We can come back to zombies in like, fifteen years, because honestly, I  cannot handle Zombieland 2, you guys. Please, don’t make me do it.

Actually, it’s worth pointing out that this has happened before, this is the third time that Western pop culture has been just gaga for friggin’ zombies. It’s super ironic, zombie movies rise up, become overwhelmingly numerous, die off, lay dormant for a few decades, only to rise and repeat the cycle again. I guess everything sorta does that… But anyway, this most recent cycle has been pretty lame overall, so if you count yourself as a zombie fan, it would be a good idea to go back and check out some of the classics from previous eras. Assuming you’ve seen the three original George Romero Dead films (Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, and Day of the Dead,) this one right here would be my recommend for the next zombie flick you need to see. For more, check out this list I published some time ago for a couple extra recommends.

Released initially as an unofficial sequel to Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (which was called Zombie, or ZOMBI in Europe), Zombie (AKA Zombi 2) is a damn masterpiece. This was a better time for horror film in general, especially in Europe, where Italy and Spain really seemed to have the market cornered on trashy splatter films for a few years, some of which didn’t even suck. Zombie is one such film, and it truly is enjoyably gruesome, so much so, in fact, that it wound up on the U.K. Video Nasites hit list back in the 1980’s. Never fear, however, nowadays the movie is widely unavailable in it’s raw, uncut glory, so grab yourself a copy and stick it to the Queen of England for trying to keep rad movies out of the hands of the peasantry.

THE PLOT~ When a seemingly abandoned yacht drifts into The New York City Harbor, police make a grisly discovery which kicks off an island hopping adventure for a Newspaper reporter (played by Ian McCulloch) and the daughter of a missing scientist (played by Tisa Farrow.) Along the way, they’ll face many challenges, including an endless legion mindless, man-eating corpses, possessed of an unstoppable urge to kill, as well as the formidable winds of the open sea, which threaten to undermine the complex infrastructure of Ian McCulloch’s elaborate comb-over hair-do.

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Looks good, bro.

The movie is awesome start to finish, but it does have several especially well known sequences in it, two of which I think are worth mentioning here. Firstly, this movie features Fulci’s most infamous eye gouging scene ever, which, believe it or not, is a pretty prestigious accolade, because Fulci really liked to fuck people’s eyeballs up in his movies. He seemed to understand that folks really got super freaked out by that sort of thing, so anytime he wanted to make an audience to squirm even more than usual, eyeball destruction was one of his favorite go-to resources. Awesome. This one is pretty gnarly, and the British censors really didn’t like it. It’s a true highlight.

That scene is pretty great, but the second sequence I want to mention is more than great, it’s the stuff of legend. I’m going to break it down for you:

So, to start with, it takes place on a boat, far out in the ocean. We have not yet found our mysterious island, so there’s some tension built into the sequence from the beginning; Will we locate our destination? Will we not? Then, for reasons I do not remember and which are not at all important, it is decided that one of our female characters is going to go for a dive, and she’s going to do this wearing almost no clothing whatsoever. I take great care not to appear sexists in my writing, but if we are being candid, a huge cross section of Zombie’s audience is going to respond to that in a pretty favorable way, so it’s for sure worth a mention. Anyway, so we’ve got our mostly naked lady swimming around in this cool tropical, ocean setting, and then holy shit, suddenly there’s a big ol’ shark zooming up on her! She’s super scared, one minute she’s just swimming around, minding her own business, and the next, a freakin’ shark shows up. So far so good, right? Well, friends, it ain’t over yet. While hiding amongst a rad reef, hoping to escape the hungry snout of her menacing aquatic adversary, our frightened scuba-diving nudist happens upon another terrifying denizen of the deep; a mother fucking underwater zombie!!! We don’t know how this guy got down here, or how many other aqua zombies might be lurking about, but we do know one thing; Zombie is a film in which there is a sequence that features all of the following elements simultaneously:

A) An attractive, topless woman
B) A fucking shark
AND
C) A damn zombie, who is underwater for some reason.

And it’s a real shark! It might even be a real zombie, honestly, I wouldn’t put it past them. And they fight! You should all be ordering Zombie Blu Rays off of Amazon.com right now, even if you already own Zombie on Blu Ray. If you’re not, it’s safe to say that you and I will never truly be able to understand one another, though I am willing to try. This is, almost definitely, the single best use of the motion picture medium ever in human history, and if you cry a little bit the first time you watch it, please, don’t be embarrassed, that’s a perfectly natural reaction.

Plus, the rest of the movie is also super, super awesome. Zombie is a high water mark from the “Yes I’m grumpy, but I still give a shit” phase of Fulci’s career, so the production is quite competent, and even artfully executed at times. It features excellent photography, impressive special effects (for the late 70’s), a boss-ass theme song, and more than enough graphic, zombie related violence to please any seasoned horror fan who hasn’t already seen this movie two thousand times (assuming that someone like that even exists.)

Really, the only thing about this full blown super-classic that I can say which isn’t straight-up, glowing praise is that I have shown the film to lots of people before, and I am sometimes surprised when it fails to hold their interest. For many mainstream, American cinema-goers, the pacing and trappings of Euro-cinema can often prove challenging in unexpected ways. If you’re not used to this style of film, you may find yourself getting bored, though I cannot fathom how. For fans of Euro-sleaze, however, Zombie carries my highest recommendation, and I even encourage less seasoned zombie enthusiasts to give it a try. Truthfully, if you think you like zombies, you should WANT to see this.

A+

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Versus

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Versus– 2000, Ryuhei Kitamura

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At some point, someone in Japan said “Hey- I really liked The Matrix! Let’s do that! Only, we want zombies. And blood. And swords. And we only have 11 dollars. And we aren’t really very talented. Also, the zombies can do karate sometimes. Now go!”

And with that, Japan crapped out Versus. This formula apparently works for a lot of people, and the film does have a large following. I was misled into first viewing Versus after a blitz of positive buzz from some of its fans, who assured me that if I like sword films, Evil Dead, Dead Alive, or zombies in general, I would LOVE Versus! Think again, friend. This movie is live action anime, first and foremost. Just because something works as a cartoon does not mean it should be brought into reality. Did none of you see Cool World?! If not, don’t.

The biggest issue with Versus is that it lives in eternal pursuit of the cultural construct we call “The bad ass.” For many, being “a bad ass” is the single highest honor a fictional character can achieve. Idiots especially worship the Cult of Bad Ass, because to them, the bad ass is in direct contradiction of subtlety, which they despise and do not understand. To them, a Bad Ass can do anything cool that it wants to, and it completely ignores boring things like “motivation,” “depth,” or  “not having a learning disability.” Therefore, when a moron generates media (Paul W.S. Anderson), in this day and age it is overwhelming how often they will strive to create a “bad ass” for their piece. Since they don’t understand what actually makes someone a bad ass, this usually means taking a douche bag, tossing him in some wrap-around sunglasses, maybe a tank top, a trench coat, or both, and asking him to speak in a low, raspy voice and act like he can’t be bothered by explosions or impending death.

The characters in this movie want to be bad asses so, so hard. Everyone wears black exclusively. It’s like the costume designer showed up with dark blue once and the director punched them in the throat for insulting his mandatory and entirely monochromatic wardrobe demands. These black clad dopes spend a lot of time slowly and laboriously sleazing through shots, just basking so hard in how much of a bad ass they want to be, techno music doing it’s part to confirm that yes, in case you missed the wrap-arounds and black clothes, these guys are total bad asses, seriously, you guys.

Here’s an example of the sort of blatant, towering douchebag colossus you will see in Versus:

photoBehold! This is possibly the most flamboyant of Versus‘ childish, “bad ass” characters. As you’ll notice, he has a black belt in over-compensation, and the term “understated” ain’t in his dictionary. Every single aspect of his personage has to just tug on your sleeves and plead with you to believe that he is a bad ass. Let’s break it down;

  1. ponytail
  2. sunglasses
  3. no sleeves
  4. fingerless gloves
  5. leather pants
  6. a damn motorcycle

All of which are black. If douchebag/faux-badass spotting was birdwatching, this would be like spotting a bald eagle soaring above the Rocky Mountains with an American flag clenched in it’s talons.

Here’s another fun “bad ass” character- this magical flying Kung Fu zombie (I hate you so much, Versus…)

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First off; if your hairstyle could be described as “The Ronald McDonald,” you are not a bad ass. EVER. PERIOD.

Secondly, look at this asshole’s face. Where does he get the gall? Look how cool he thinks he is. Let’s talk about this. That asshole went in to a salon and paid to get his hair dyed. This means he had to sit quietly in one of the little caps while it bleached, and then wait in the lobby wearing a little towel on his head, and then lean back in one of those sinks, ALL of that shit this guy did- OR he had to go to a store, buy a dye pack, and do it at home, probably with a friend to help him. Not very bad ass. It’s important for you to visualize anyone who will pass themselves off as unflappably cool primping their balls off on the regular like a high school sophomore to remind yourself that this guy did a lot of really, really, really not cool stuff to look this way, so you shouldn’t just take his word for it. Do you think he wore those sunglasses and kept his eyebrows cocked throughout his entire barber shop experience? Do you think he went to one of those trendy salons? And then he gelled it. Every morning. Think about that. Try to imagine anyone looking like a bad ass while they painstakingly primp their hair so that it looks just spiky enough. A bad ass doesn’t care if his hair is combed!!! Fuck you, Versus! Fuck you, these people are not cool! All your characters are total dorks!!!

THE PLOT- In a veritable “clash of the bad asses,” two bad ass escaped prisoners rendezvous with some yakuza bad assess for some reason. I’m not sure. However, this bad ass cocktail turns out to be a little too bad ass, and the deal goes south, leading to a massive yakuza bad ass karate throw down, which, according to movies, is  customary in Japan. Things are further complicated when we discover that, holy smokes, this is some kind of fancy zombie forest! You die here, and you get back up. Get ready for some techno.

So, the gangsters brought a woman with them, and apparently, the plan was to sacrifice her in some ritual. The yakuza boss, who arrives a little later in the film, is some sort of black magic practitioner bad ass who hopes to open some magic portal, which is hidden somewhere in the forest. This is the cliched, boring plot Versus has to offer, but it’s buried underneath a big, stupid heap of stylized violence, so you might have a hard time following it. Or giving a shit. Guys, I know that on some level this sounds awesome, but trust me, it sucks so hard.

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Do you think this guy was thinking “yeah, I’m such a bad ass!” while he gelled his fucking hair and shaved his little goatee just right in his bathroom mirror that morning? It had to be perfect. He got up early to do it.

Almost no one in this movie has a name- details like that are deemed trivial by Versus. The identities of these characters are throwaway, all that matters is their actions and the role they play in this story. That’s really reflective of two tenets of Versus‘ theology; one; the rejection of anything too boring to hold the interest of today’s youth culture (Translation: “Uuhhhhh, who cares what his name is? Fred- No! Master Chief! Look, he’s a bad ass, okay?!”), and two; the notion that throughout history there are cyclical patterns caused by the reincarnation of key individuals, an idea central to Versus’ plot. The film takes place mostly in present day, but also features brief scenes set in Feudal era Japan, as well as the distant future; and in all three eras our character’s roles remain identical. These people are reincarnated again and again and forced to carry out the same battles throughout history, so their individual histories at any given point in the timeline are unimportant next to their roles in the grand scheme. I can recognize that this is a cool idea, but that’s really the only thing going on here that I respect. Beyond that, Versus is a vapid thing, and it’s saddled with stylistic choices that are childish and annoying. And stupid. They are. They really are.

Here, look, some stupid; these yakuza hop into a nifty little trio pose before blasting a zombie.

12345678910Isn’t that cute? While the man on the bottom, or “the power bottom,” as I believe they call him, holds in place, the two men on the outside edge of the screen run to the opposite sides of him, do little gun twirls and freeze into some choreographed yakuza power pose so they look extra bad ass while shooting. What the fuck?!? Is this a shoot out or a chorus line?!?? Attention; people who like Versus; THAT is in your movie. Who is going to argue with me over this?! Are you kidding me? I can’t believe the shittiness of this movie is disputed!!!

And don’t you dare pull that “you’re thinking about this too much” shit with me. When an artist does their job well, you will appreciate their work more and more once you start to analyze it. If spacing out and drooling happily to the noises and moving shapes is required to appreciate your art, then you suck and you’ve done a horrible job, and also you are an idiot and I hate you.

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One legitimate boast for Versus; it’s gory. Lots of blood, lots of violence, and that’s going to win over a lot of people. However, it’s no Dead Alive. There’s also nothing to anchor the gore that isn’t stupid and totally void of substance, so unlike Dead Alive’s goofy RomComZomDram hero’s quest, Versus comes out feeling like a goofy snooze fest full of losers and dorks. On this one I must differ with popular consensus, Versus sucks, and it can fuck itself.

Fuck you, Versus.

D-

 

OGROFF/MAD MUTILATOR!

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Ogroff AKA The Mad Mutilator ~ 1983, Norbert Georges Mount

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Ogroff is a low budget, nonsensical French gore film about a masked Frenchman who lives in a shack in the woods and massacres anyone who blunders into his little world, which actually seems pretty easy to do. People wander all over his woods like it’s no big deal all the time! Ogroff always finds them, too, one lady doesn’t even leave the highway, she just pulls over and walks to the rear of her vehicle and somehow Ogroff is already in her trunk, just chompin’ at the bit to do some mutilating. The movie does nothing to smooth over how hard that makes no sense at all. It’s sort of like a French version of Violent Shit, but although the craftsmanship is arguably slightly better than it’s German cousin, from a narrative, or even artistic perspective, Ogroff lags miles behind, and that’s a terrifying statement. Simply put, the film is real, real horrible, like so horrible it makes Andy Milligan or J. Piquer Simon look like Orson Wells by comparison. Apparently, director Norbert Georges Mount was a video store clerk by day and a filmmaker on the side when he shot Ogroff. Most people are aware that Quentin Tarantino was at one time himself a video store clerk, but not everyone who works at Home Depot is qualified to build your house for you. We should remember that.

THE PLOT~ Ogroff lives in his flimsy shack in the woods, where his right to mutilate is utterly unchallenged by any form of resistance, and where people constantly intrude with no apparent knowledge of danger, only to be mutilated, by Ogroff. He loves it!

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He’s a pretty happy guy, all things considered!

Most of the people in this film are such horrible actors that they stare Ogroff, actively in the process of killing them, dead in the face with no expression whatsoever, as though partial facial paralysis was a mandatory requirement to audition for a role in the movie. They wander about, completely unresponsive to their surroundings or the situation. It’s like a nearby android manufacturing plant suffered storm damage and now all the droids have escaped and are wandering about the countryside without their brains plugged in. Basically, Ogroff is all about gore laden games of cat and mouse, but with the element of suspense completely absent from the equation entirely.

Until it changes it’s mind about what it wants to be. For a while, Ogroff is effectively, a slasher. HOWEVER… at some point in the film (Maybe around the nine hour mark? Ogroff drags on for days) Ogroff chooses to spare one of his victims, so that he might enjoy her companionship. She actually doesn’t seem too put off by this, and sort of jumps into the backwoods murderer lifestyle relatively easily, until, that is, curiosity gets the better of her and she decides to investigate what Ogroff has in his cellar.

Apparently, and for reasons that are never explained in any way, Casa De Ogroff is like, crammed to the gills with zombies. Ogroff apparently collects them. Many are kept in the cellar, under a flimsy, unsecured hatch, which apparently did the job in keeping them all rounded up just fine until whatshername peeks down there, and then all hell breaks loose. Not only does her intrusion rile up the Undead Basement Bunch, it seemingly activates all zombies, worldwide, because from this point forward this is no longer a slasher, but instead a zombie film, and Ogroff’s Creep Pad is swarming with ghouls in seconds. They literally come out of the walls, but it’s not just Ogroff’s place, the forest surrounding the shack is completely infested as well, and now we mostly leave Ogroff and instead follow our nameless female as she tries to escape from her startlingly more supernatural nightmare, which includes zombies, a Motorcycle riding Ogroff (awesome,) spooky ghost eyes, a vampire priest, and some sort of strange sewer ghoul. Ogroff’s role becomes greatly minimized, and in the last thirty minutes the movie changes it’s mind about what it wants to be wildly, like a child losing interest. The result is both confusing and somewhat delightful, and it sort of puts Ogroff over the top and into psychotronic legend. It is by going that extra mile to suck even harder that this movie reaches it’s brass ring.

I do not believe that Ogroff ever had a script, but if it did, and that script was taken to a scriptwriting workshop for peer review, there would be absolutely no aspect of the work that was salvageable. It’s not about what Ogroff does wrong- you see, nothing works. There is no single idea or concept in this work that is worth saving, from an academic perspective, the only way to have improved this while it was still in the script phase would have been to simply destroy it completely and start fresh.

That’s not to say that you can’t enjoy Ogroff– on the contrary, I had a pretty good time. It’s just that you really, really have to accept that the film completely fails to adhere to any form of logic at all. I don’t feel the “mad genius” vibe on here that you might see from Lynch or Jodorowsky, this just feels shabby and poorly executed. When wading through the muck of the psychotronic film genre, sometimes it’s hard to differentiate between what is stupid, and what is insane. I am not sure where Ogroff lands on that plane… That’s for God to decide.

One particularly unforgivable sequence takes place with some French youths who have set up a chess game out in the middle of nowhere. They sit, essentially motionless, for two hundred years, in silence. The scene drags on like I can’t express, it is incredible. I should also mention that there is almost no dialogue in the entire movie. How did Mount think this was okay? The film’s long list of problems would have been a lot easier to overlook had we not also been torpedoed with this excruciating sequence of inaction. Seriously, there’s a girl hanging out with them who moves around a little, but other than that, nothing happens, they just sit and listen to awful synth music on their radio and wait to die. And if that’s what it’s like to be young in France, I would welcome the coming mutilation. Ogroff would be like an angel of mercy if he were taking me out of that horrid purgatory. The scene really is the worst thing the film does, and it’s pretty hard to pardon it.

But Ogroff is still pretty fun… There’s just something about it. Ogroff, the character, is actually pretty likable, he’s just a man doing what he really loves, and that’s always nice to see. Actually, in a very direct way, Ogroff is the main character in this movie; since none of his victims are around long enough, or have anywhere near enough characterization to steal the show away from him, and because all of his mutilatees are already so lifeless and empty to start with, his reign of axe swinging terror doesn’t even feel like a bad thing. The only emotion we ever see in this film is sheer glee, and it comes from Ogroff himself, while he chops madly at strangers. I wish my job made me that happy.

It’s probably worth addressing Ogroff’s reputation for ultra violence; I think it’s undeserved. While it’s absolutely decently gory, especially for a French film, it isn’t going to blow your mind, and if you’ve seen Violent Shit or have spent any time with Italian splatter films or video nasties, you’ve already seen worse. I think maybe it feels more graphic than it is, in part, because it’s so low budget, but also because the violence is done in such a labored, ritualistic fashion, and because the gore effects are actually decent when compared to how piss poor the rest of the production is. Ogroff almost feels like the home movie of a murderous French hillbilly sometimes, so the blood has more weight to it than in films that are clearly more anchored in fantasy. I only bring it up to clarify that if you get your hands on a copy thinking you and your friends are about to take it to the next level, you might be let down.

So, Ogroff is an oddity. Equally terrible and wacky but a lot of fun for people who are accustomed to this kind of movie experience. I recommend it.

B-

HARD ROCK ZOMBIES

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HARD ROCK ZOMBIES ~ 1985, Krishna Shaw, USA

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Oh my goodness. If I could remake any movie that I wanted to, I would choose to remake Hard Rock zombies. This thing is pretty wild.

The movie follows the exploits of what we are supposed to accept is a talented, up and coming hard rock band. Of course, just look at them and you’ll see immediately that our main characters are actually a profoundly lackluster 80’s pop metal band with no future at all. The band (Do they even have a name?) is fronted by a dude who looks like Frank Zappa’s Turkish stunt double, and he rocks about as hard as Neil Diamond’s mom. This doesn’t really matter, though. The movie is bonkers.

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That’s him.

So, our guys pull their gross van into a backwoods town somewhere where they are inexplicably scheduled to play a show, and they then proceed to get down to the business of cutting loose- hard. Apparently, they compensate for their lack of a street team by spreading word of mouth via their too-cool-for-school attitude. Naturally, the eleven people in town under the age of 65 love it, and the remainder of the town’s populace grumps their asses off until they can’t stand it anymore, at which point our guys are jailed and told to leave town asap. Who booked these guys here and why? Never fear, however, our band (Let’s call them Stink) is next invited to bunk at a nearby mansion, where they can finally count on a little American, Small Town Hospitality. Hospitality administered by who else, but Hitler, who secretly lives here with his weird, freak children, and a now Werewolf-ized Eva Braun. No idea why this is part of Hard Rock Zombies, but that’s all in there. Naturally, Hitler and co. have taken in our friends with the intention of murdering them, which they do, but not before Turkish Frank Zappa (his real name escapes me, I promise it’s not important) begins laying ground work with a local girl who is clearly super, super under age, and creepily gives her a cassette tape to play in the event of their demise. What great timing! The cassette tape contains a recording of a bass riff based upon the mad writings of Abdul Alhazred or something, and apparently brings people back from the dead.

So, our hard rocking band of gross losers and potential statutory rapists returns from the dead to groove off in the direction of Casa De Hitler for revenge, and I’m serious when I describe their method of locomotion as “grooving.” Afterwards,  they go right back to trying to make it as a crappy 80’s rock band, leavings Noweheresville, USA infested with murderous zombies, including a now Zombified Hitler. The townsfolk then go about the task of trying to rid themselves of the undead, mostly in pretty wacky ways. Around this time I realized the movie was supposed to be funny, which is always a let down.

How the movie ends is something I have chosen to keep to myself, even though I’ve already spilled the beans on 99% of the movie without so much as a “spoiler alert,” but what you need to know is this; Hard Rock Zombies is freaking nuts. It’s really, really crappy, and the funniest parts of the movie are inadvertent. Getting your hands on a copy is easy, but the DVD currently in circulation has a pretty shabby print, which leaves the third act of the film a murky, dark mess of visual confusion. Who knows, maybe it was shot that way, or perhaps it’s some kind of day-for-night shooting gone horribly over-board. Anyway, the movie deserves a better release, but I recommend people watch it, because it’s pretty funny.

B+