AXE (1977) Review

Directed by: Frederick R. Friedel

Starring: Leslie Lee, Jack Canon, Ray Green

Logically you'd think that the infamous 'Video Nasties' list would be comprised of only the sickest and most depraved films to ever be released on video, right? But the reality is that for every Cannibal Holocaust or The Toolbox Murders on the list, there is a much more tame counterpart which really has no place being included at all. AXE is one of the latter.

Essentially AXE (aka LISA, LISA) is a home invasion / rape / revenge flick similar to Last House on the Left or I Spit on Your Grave, albeit much more mild. It's inclusion in the nasty list is probably due to its marketing, with the trailer describing it as the most terrifying movie since The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Echoing this comparison is one of the movie's alternate titles 'The California Axe Massacre'. The misleading trailer even describes a 'killing spree' which never actually happens. But unlike the three films I've just mentioned AXE isn't overly violent (most of the violence happens off camera) and its single rape scene is awkward rather than brutal. Even by 1977 standards this movie would seem tame compared to most other horror releases.

Three men - Billy, Steele & Lomax - have been involved in a murder and decide that they need to find a place to lay low until the heat dies down. After having a bit of fun with a female clerk they drive out to a house seemingly in the middle of nowhere. A young girl named Lisa lives in this house with her paralyzed grandfather.
After deducing that Lisa and the wheelchair-bound man are the only inhabitants of the house the three men decide that they've found as good a place as any to hide out. At first things go smoothly, they order Lisa to make them food etc but in general they aren't too aggressive towards her or her grandfather. But later that night Lomax gets a bit horny and decides to sneak into Lisa's room where he proceeds to slip into her bed and rape her. Lisa pulls out a straight razor and kills Lomax, but curiously she does so by hacking at the back of his neck instead of his throat for some reason. While he's being sliced he screams fairly loudly but miraculously nobody in the house wakes up. Lisa uses an axe (it's a hatchet really" to dismember the body.
You can probably figure out the rest of the movie yourself.

I was actually surprised at how much I enjoyed this movie, especially with it being a very low budget film from the 70s but it does have a certain charm. Technically it is terrible, with laughably fake red paint blood, horribly dubbed sound bites and possibly the most annoying soundtrack I have ever heard in my life. I honestly think that somebody must have said "Hey let's gather the most annoying instruments ever made and use them for the soundtrack" because AXE's music is almost entirely comprised of bongos, tambourine and a very irritating high-pitched synthesizer-like sound. The only way it could have been worse is if it had included bagpipes.
There are plenty of plot holes, some stupid writing and the acting is nothing to be proud of. Basically the movie looks bad and sounds bad. But as I mentioned there is something enjoyable about it. Maybe it's the simple fact that it was one of these 'video nasties' and subconsciously we know that it was once 'forbidden'. It's inclusion on that particular list is actually the only thing this movie has going for it, well that and the fact that the character Billy looks exactly like Bob Ross. AXE is a very tame, dull movie and ironically if it hadn't been included on the nasty list it would almost certainly been forgotten by now.

Horror Feast: Sex & Cannibalism

Went out last night and drank a little too much so I really couldn't be fucked doing anything today.

Couch + cigarettes + coffee + horror movies. That was basically my entire day. 

On today's menu: Sex & Cannibalism.

CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST (1980)

I thought I'd start out with a cult classic which I've seen numerous times but I never get tired of it. The tagline "the mother of all cannibal movies" is pretty much spot on. It's not the first cannibal movie, but it is definitely one of the most influential and definitive. A professor goes on a 'rescue' mission to the Amazon jungle and brings back tapes from a documentary a crew were filming before they disappeared. The tapes show how the crew got on the native cannibals' bad side and were eventually killed and eaten.

The gore is plentiful and still holds up pretty well to this day, and the underlying social commentary is powerful. It's a shame that the animal deaths were real and in retrospect director Ruggero Deodato has commented that he regrets ever making the film. But there's no doubt that it is a very powerful and impactful movie and the horror landscape today would be very different if it had never been made. Definitely not for the squeamish but it really is a great film. And the soundtrack is fantastic.

WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE (2007)

A quartet of naive young men and women decide to travel to Papua New Guinea to search for Michael Rockefeller who disappeared forty years earlier. The concept is ridiculous and the four main characters are all idiots. The movie sucks too. The first hour is slow and drawn out and the two couples spend most of it arguing. When things finally pick up it does get a little interesting and there is a bit of tension but ultimately it is a very disappointing film. And also I did not see one scene of actual cannibalism. There are plenty of bodyparts and blood towards the end but no people eating other people so that too was disappointing. I should also mention that this is a found footage type movie which I usually like but this time I didn't. All four characters are annoying and stupid and that really ruined any chance of me actually enjoying the film at all. I wouldn't recommend this one.

PAPAYA: LOVE GODDESS OF THE CANNIBALS (1978)

Well I have to say that is one of the most misleading movie titles ever. The only part that's accurate is the 'love' part because this is basically a softcore porn film. If I'd bothered to check director Joe D'Amato's filmography and seen entries such as "Hercules: A Sex Adventure" or "Porno Holocaust" then I may have worked that out but I'm not familiar with his work at all. I'd say that at least a third of this movie involves nudity or sex scenes. There is some vague plot about natives being angry at the prospect of a nuclear reactor being built on their island. They despatch Papaya to seduce and kill the men involved. And there are at the very most two scenes in the entire film that you could possibly say involve cannibalism. One is when Papaya bites off a man's dick and the other is one of the natives taking a bite out of a human heart. If you're looking for a softcore porno then go for this, but if you want a cannibal film then forget it.

CANNIBAL FEROX 2: MASSACRE IN DINOSAUR VALLEY (1985)

This really has nothing to do with the first Cannibal Ferox. A group of people take a flight to a forbidden place called Dinosaur Valley. The group is comprised of a professor and his daughter, a palaeontologist, a photographer and his two models, a Vietnam veteran and his alcoholic ex-wife. I understand the palaeontologist and the professor, but what the fuck are the others doing going to this valley? Anyway their plane crashes, a couple of them die and the survivors have to find a way out of the jungle without being killed by the native cannibals. They survive the cannibals and stumble across some kind of illegal mining camp where they are taken prisoner. There is a single scene once again involving someone eating a human heart but that's about it for cannibalism. The movie actually focuses more on the mining camp scenario and plays out more like an action film than horror. 

WRONG TURN (2003)

It's easy to compare this to other twisted hillbilly films like Deliverance but I think this is a great film that stands perfectly well on it's own. It's a shame about the sequels though.

After an accident a group of friends decide to go find help. They find a house in the middle of nowhere inhabited by a trio of cannibalistic mountain men. The men chase them while they try to survive and escape.

The movie is fast paced and actually has some decent acting in it. The make-up and effects are solid and those mountain men look fucking scary. And I have to admit Eliza Dushku does a pretty good job in the female survivor role. The film isn't fantastic but compared to a lot of other crap that's come out in the last decade it is definitely above average and worth checking out if you haven't seen it yet. I would advise skipping the sequels though.

EMANUELLE AND THE LAST CANNIBALS (1977)

Oh god , it's another Joe D'Amato film. So yes there are plenty of pornographic moments and in fact even more than there was in PAPAYA. Almost every character in the movie is either having sex or masturbating at some point. Emanuelle is a reporter who comes across a mental patient with a strange tattoo. The tattoo leads her to an ancient cannibal tribe and so she sets up an expedition to go check it out. After a whole lot of fucking and fingering for the first hour things actually get pretty interesting towards the end and there is some real gore and horror. Nipples get cut off, a man gets sliced in half and there are actually some real scenes of cannibalism. Hooray!

If the first part of the movie was as good as the second part this might actually have been decent. But all of those tits, asses, dicks and pussies kind of got in the way.

Horror Feast: Zombies & Nazis

Saturday was just one of those days. One of those days where I really couldn't be bothered doing anything at all. So I grabbed a six-pack and a pack of cigarettes, parked my ass on the couch and decided to just watch movies all day. I have these days every now and then, so I've decided to use them as a chance to blog and do some short mini-reviews of the movies I watch.
On today's menu: Zombies & Nazis.

RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD (1985)

An absolute classic. I'm sure I don't need to go into the details of the plot, so I won't. I've always been a bit unsure on how I feel about this movie. My personal idea of what a zombie should be is basically what was shown in Night of the Living Dead. A mindless, shambling, reanimated corpse which acts purely on instinct. The zombies in ROTLD are very different. They are reanimated corpses but they can talk, use tools and even formulate plans. Despite these problems however, I can't help but love this movie. The awesome soundtrack provided by bands like 45 Grave, The Cramps, TSOL and The Damned. The famous naked graveyard dance. And of course the movie gave us Tarman, who is one of the most badass zombies ever. This is one of my favorite zombie movies, and if you haven't seen it then make sure you do.

ZOMBIE LAKE (1981)

Wow. Going from ROTLD to this was a bit of a shock to the system. I'd never actually seen this before and I really hope I never have to see it again. ZOMBIE LAKE is at the opposite end of the spectrum to the previous movie, and is a strong contender for worst zombie movie ever made. It's about a bunch of Nazis who's bodies were thrown into a lake after they were killed by the French resistance. They return as zombies. I think. Basically they just look like men with a bit of patchy green paint on their faces. You can easily see some of them take a deep breath before they go underwater, and all they really seem to do is bite peoples' necks and then leave the bodies lying there. No flesh eating or brain eating. And then there's the ridiculous subplot which involves one zombie reuniting with his daughter. No joke. And I have to mention the horrible acting and of course the terrible dubbing. The only good part was all of the gratuitous female nudity. Stay far away from this.

RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD Part II (1988)

A military truck transports the 2-4-5 Trioxin barrels from the first film. They fall out of the back and one tumbles down into a river. Kids find the barrel, open it and unleash the Trioxin within.
Obviously this sequel was aimed at a teenage audience, which isn't good because it means there is a lot less gore than in the first movie. The inclusion of James Karen and Thom Matthews playing different characters than in the original film is pretty cool. They even refer to this fact, saying something along the lines of "I feel like we've been here before"
The soundtrack is pretty lousy (except for the inclusion of Anthrax) and there is no nudity. With basically the same storyline, you're better off watching the first movie. This sequel isn't too bad (better than Zombie Lake at least) but it's not great either.

OUTPOST (2008)

A guy hires a group of soldiers to escort him to a secret underground Nazi bunker. He promises that it will be an easy in-and-out job. But of course it isn't. They find the bunker, inside which are a bunch of bodies and one survivor. Before long they find themselves under attack from an unknown enemy. It turns out that the bunker houses a machine which the Nazis developed to create a race of unstoppable zombie/ghost/ghoul soldiers.
It's a good concept, but poorly executed. The inconsistencies in the enemy were terrible. At one point they can sneak in and out completely unseen, walk through locked doors and never set of a single trip wire or claymore. Then suddenly towards the end they come bumbling down to the bunker, tripping all of the wires and can't get through the locked doors. What the fuck? Apart from that it is a fairly good film and I believe there is a sequel on the way. Let's hope they address the problems from the first movie.

SHOCK WAVES (1977)

I'd never seen this before, but Peter Cushing? John Carradine? Nazi zombies? How could it possibly be bad?
A small group of vacationers are taking a boat trip around a group of islands. Suddenly out of nowhere comes a massive ship and sideswipes the small boat. They end up stranded on a reef with a damaged hull and when daylight comes they find themselves not too far out from an island. The island is inhabited by Peter Cushing who was a Nazi commander in charge of the 'Death Corps", a group of undead soldiers which can survive underwater. The undead soldiers return to the island and slowly start killing everybody off.
I was a bit disappointed. There was basically no gore, the zombies didn't look undead enough and Peter Cushing's German/British accent was terrible. It's a fun movie, but not a must-see.