MANIAC (1980) Review

Directed by: William Lustig

Starring: Joe Spinell, Caroline Munro, Abigail Clayton

MANIAC opens on a beach at sundown. A shady grunting character puts a quarter into a pay-per-view binocular set. The camera cuts to a POV shot then pans to a young couple laying in the sand. Cut to the couple. The boy walks off in search of wood to start a fire. Cut to the girl. She is still laying down, gloved hands come into the shot. She is under the impression that its her boy friend. Her throat gets cut. The boy returns and all is apparently well. Before he could think otherwise razor wire wraps around his neck and he gets lifted off the ground. The camera pans to his shoes that are getting splattered with blood, the boy is now dead and in the throes of death rattle.
A man wakes up in a strange room screaming. He gets up and starts weeping. In bed in next to him is a bloody mannequin. MANIAC. It is here that you are introduced to the killer two minutes and forty seconds into the film!

MANIAC is a unique horror film for its time. I haven't seen many films before this that follow the killer or allows you to glimpse at his daily struggle to remain sane. There are even shots from the killers point of view! The only pre-MANIAC film I can think of that is similar in its use of character study and POV shots is Peeping-Tom. There are of course giallo films but you find out who the killer is late in the film with very few hints of what their motive may be.

I could imagine how this movie would've pissed off the censors and parent associations world wide. There are many unsettling moments in this piece. One of them is a big internal monologue where  Frank Zito (the maniac) is rearranging his mannequin collection. He takes the bloody mannequin off of his bed and begins chastising it. He replaces it with a brand new one. While mumbling to him self and deciding what sexy underwear to put on the doll the internal monologue begins. In a pleading voice he says This is going to have to stop. A harsher voice insists that all women are evil They are all the same.

Frank Zito's personalities are arguing with each other while he is dressing up a mannequin. The cherry on the cake is a recently acquired scalp from a prostitute being nailed to the mannequins head. What an artfully fucked up scene.
Another scene I should mention is the shot-gun decapitation of Tom Savini's character, with Tom Savini special effects. It is an explosion that rivals the one in Scanners.

Although this isn't a perfect film the character development is fantastic, the film itself tightly edited along with a highly unsettling sound track. Bill Lustig has directed a great film but I think the prize should go to Joe Spinell for his role of Frank. What a dynamic acting range that man has.

I give this here film four and a half prostitute scalps out of five prostitute scalps.

THE EXTERMINATOR (1980) Review

Directed by: James Glickenhaus

Starring: Robert Ginty, Christopher George, Steve James

Vigilante revenge flicks have always been a favorite of mine. Whether somebody has been raped or tortured or had their families killed it always feels good to see the victim get even, and then some.
THE EXTERMINATOR takes this most basic of premises and although it doesn’t really add anything new it still comes across as a decent DEATH WISH-like vigilante film.

The movie opens with an explosive Vietnam War prelude with bullets flying and bombs exploding all over the place. A small group of American soldiers find themselves surrounded and captured by the Viet Cong and after one of them is killed (in a surprisingly satisfying decapitation sequence) another soldier Mike (James) attacks the enemy and saves his fellow soldier John's (Ginty) life. Obviously taking place on a sound stage, this sequence was actually shot in only 4 days as an afterthought, perhaps to try and add something different to the film but more probably to give it a bit of an APOCALYPSE NOW vibe.

Post Vietnam and the two surviving American soldiers John Eastland and his pal Michael are settling into their civilian lives, but when Mike is mugged by a gang of street thugs calling themselves the Ghetto Ghouls, his neck is broken and he is left paralyzed and unable to speak. John swears revenge on the gang and becomes The Exterminator. But wreaking revenge on his pal’s muggers is only the first step. Next he needs a quick way to come up with some money for Mike’s family since Mike obviously can’t work anymore. Eventually he finds himself involved with an abused prostitute and soon he’s wiping all kinds of scum off of the streets. But of course not all of this goes unnoticed and soon the police and CIA are hot on his trail.
The traumatic experience of war is something I hope I’ll never have to go through, but we’ve all heard stories and seen films which show what can happen to a soldier’s mind (FIRST BLOOD being a perfect example). I suppose this was the reason the extra Vietnam scenes were added in afterwards, to give John a better excuse for flying completely off the handle.

And of course the film wants you to side with John Eastland so it throws in the type of villains you have to hate; thugs, gangsters and child molesters, leaving you to cheer on The Exterminator as he blows them all away. Well that’s the theory anyway, but John isn’t exactly the kind of guy you feel like cheering on. He’s much too bland a character and after he achieves revenge he really has no cause to kill anymore, so why does he?

After the decapitation at the movie’s beginning, I had expected the violence to continue throughout, but it’s really nowhere near as brutal or graphic as I had expected (or hoped) which was a bit disappointing.
There is a nice scene involving an industrial sized meat grinder but for an exploitation flick which was banned in more than one country you would expect to see a lot more explicit violence.

There is an unnecessary romantic sub-plot involving the cop James Dalton (George) jammed in there and also an underdeveloped plot involving the CIA which was very sloppily inserted in the film. The script and dialogue are pretty terrible (when asked what Vietnam was like, all that Detective Dalton can reply with is that “It was bad”) and the acting ranges from average to shit.

THE EXTERMINATOR isn't such a bad movie really, and for an exploitation flick it ticks all the boxes. It probably could have been a bit more violent in my opinion, but mostly by the time the credits roll the movie will make you realize just how much better a film like DEATH WISH is. Recommended for exploitation fans but others may be disappointed.

Horror Feast: John Carpenter-a-thon

Well since its been raining so much lately it seems that I'll be trapped inside my house by floodwater all weekend. Normally I'd be pissed off but I've got plenty of food and supplies and an assload of horror movies to watch.
On today's menu: John Carpenter.

THE FOG (1980)

Carpenter's original beats the hell out of the crappy remake of course. This is actually one of my favorite of JC's movies, even though it has practically no gore it still is a pretty creepy film. The start is a great opener too, a ghost story being told about a ship which sunk in a thick fog and how the dead sailors will come back 100 years to the very day. Of course this day happens to fall on the town of Antonio Bay's anniversary and while the townspeople are getting ready to celebrate, the fog rolls in and the bodies start to pile up. It seems that these ghouls are back for revenge for a past atrocity and a small handful of townsfolk have to figure out how to put and end to the curse. Both Jamie Lee Curtis and her mother Janet Leigh star alongside Tom Atkins and another JC favorite George 'Buck' Flower.
As I mentioned the movie doesn't rely on blood and gore but instead it relies on the creepy atmosphere created by the ominous fog and it does a great job.





PRINCE OF DARKNESS (1987)

With the death of a priest an ancient secret is revealed. A mysterious cylinder of green liquid is found in an abandoned church basement and after a team of physics students is called in to investigate, the cylinder is found to contain the essence of Satan himself. The liquid goes to work possessing the students and working toward its final goal, releasing the father of Satan; an all powerful anti-God. Can these physics graduates stop him in time? And will they survive the wrath of Alice Cooper? Cooper plays a murderous vagrant who leads some sort of homeless army. Yep. Donald Pleasance also stars as a priest. I love Donald Pleasance.
This is definitely one of Carpenter's darker films and is actually pretty original too. The special effects and makeup look good also and Jameson Parker's moustache is pretty cool too.
The only complaint I have is that when I watch a movie called PRINCE OF DARKNESS, I expect to see the FUCKING PRINCE OF DARKNESS! But alas he never appears.

VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED (1995)

George 'Buck' Flower appears once again here (why does he always play a drunk or a vagrant?) but this time his fellow cast members include Mark Hamill, Christopher Reeve and Kirstey Alley. I must confess that I've never seen the original film nor read the novel on which it's based but John Carpenter has done a pretty fine job here indeed. 

The entire town of Midwich fall asleep one day. As you can imagine a few people die while driving cars or standing over barbecues, but also upon waking 10 of the town's women find themselves mysteriously pregnant. They all give birth at the same time and they all give birth to creepy, white haired, mind reading children. The children aren't very nice either. They like to use their freaky telepathic powers to force people to hurt and kill themselves. Can the combined forces of Luke Skywalker and Superman defeat these evil children? Watch the movie and see for yourself.

VAMPIRES (1998)

I've decided that James Woods doesn't play a very convincing badass. If I wanted somebody to kill a vampire for me he's one of the last people I would think of. But here he is, leading a group of vampire slayers and working for the Catholic church. After finding a 'nest' and destroying the bloodsuckers within the team decided to have a party. Hooray! However they get ambushed by a powerful vampire named Valek who kills all but two of them. So James Woods teams up with one of the less important Baldwin brothers (Daniel I think) and a prostitute and they decide to track down this Valek before he finds an ancient artifact which will allow him to walk in the daylight and therefore be unstoppable.

Crap. I don't like this movie at all. The characters are stupid and the one-liners are lame ("How do you like your stake, bitch?")
At least the vampires aren't sparkly pussies, and there is a fair bit of gore also. One of Carpenter's less impressive films.

THEY LIVE (1988)

Roddy Piper and his majestic mullet star in this film about rich aliens corrupting and controlling the American lower class. Keith David is also here and so is George 'Buck' Flower (again) who plays a drifter (surprise!).

Nada (Piper) is down on his luck and wandering about aimlessly until one day he finds a pair of magical sunglasses which show him the world as it really is. Rich yuppie aliens are controlling humans through subliminal messages and a signal broadcast from television sets. There is probably some sort of social commentary here about the upper class feeding off the lower class, but what's more important is that we get to see Roddy Piper kicking some serious alien ass!

And watch out for the world's longest fight scene between Piper and Davis. Don't worry, you can't miss it.

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.

DEATHSHIP (1980) Review

Directed by: Alvin Rakoff

Starring: George Kennedy, Richard Crenna, Nick Mancuso

The first thing I noticed about this movie was that the more recent Ghost Ship (2002) pretty much ripped off the poster idea and the basic plot outline in general. They've basically cut the word Death from the poster, replaced it with Ghost and modernized the look. I hated Ghost Ship, so I didn't really expect a lot from this film at all. But I was pleasantly surprised.

The movie starts out on a large cruise ship where a big party/ball is underway. Another large ship appears on the radar and they find themselves on a collision course, so they adjust their course and continue. But the other ship also changes direction, and in fact it seems that they are trying to ram them. Eventually they collide and everything goes all fucked up. Water gushes in and the cruise ship finally sinks.
Miraculously a handful of people including the captain (isn't that bastard supposed to go down with his ship?) manage to survive and find themselves floating in the middle of the ocean in a tiny raft. Before long a large black ship approaches with a ladder lowered so of course they decided to climb aboard, but it seems to be deserted.
Weird shit starts to happen and people start dying, and the captain falls under the ship's influence and goes crazy.
Obviously the remaining survivors have to escape before they become the latest victims of the DEATHSHIP.

Pretty simple storyline really, and we've seen plenty of variations on it including not only Ghost Ship but also movies like Event Horizon. Since it takes place at sea and not in space, this is closer to the former but fortunately it's about 10 times better. At least. The one thing I enjoyed immensely was the fact that they don't try too hard to explain why the ship is haunted, by using some sort of lame backstory. You do get an idea though when it is revealed that the ship is a former Nazi interrogation boat, but it's still pretty vague and that suits me just fine.
Another aspect I liked was that the small group of survivors are all previously acquainted with each other in some way, which might not seem very likely but it does help to give them all some sort of emotional attachment to each other.
There isn't really a lot of gore, but the discovery of a torture chamber does reveal some pretty nasty looking corpses and there is a lot of blood thanks to one particular scene.
As for the acting it's actually not bad at all and George Kennedy in particular does a great job as the crazy/possessed captain. There were a pair of kids who were extremely annoying and I kept hoping that they would just fucking die already, but it surely wasn't enough to put me off the film.
I was surprised at how much I actually enjoyed this movie. There was plenty of action and tense moments to keep you watching and the whole atmosphere of the ship was kind of eerie. This is definitely something I would recommend and I would have no problems with watching it again.