...I’m not sure who the hero of this picture is. It’s kind of a slice of life picture about two homeless brothers who, well, I guess they’re more houseless since they live in a junkyard. Anyway, the junkyard is presided over in name by the owner, a big fat fucking piece of shit rapist and part-time necrophiliac, but it’s really ruled by a crazy homicidal racist Vietnam vet with the ugliest girlfriend I’ve seen in a major motion picture. And the local liquor store found a case of old booze that is making the hobos melt into rainbow colored sludge after one drink. And there’s a subplot about a gangster whose girlfriend has consensual (but not really because she’s blackout drunk) sex with one of the homeless brothers, but then he lets the rest of the junkyard dwellers drag her away and gang rape her to death. And there’s a cop who wants to figure out who is melting the hoboes, and a coroner who eats his lunch right off the table one of their bodies is on, and a girl who works for the junkyard who has the hots for the other brother, and probably the funniest shoplifting scene ever. It’s all very matter-of-fact, and ends abruptly with no concern for what will happen to these people next. Also, the film presents what is perhaps the only opportunity you will ever have in your life to watch a group of people play keep-away using a freshly amputated penis. Because you were waiting to see that shit...
...The film opens as warlock Joseph Curwen (Price) has just entranced a young girl from town up to his palace. This was just one of several girls bewitched by Curwen. He was using black magic in an attempt to breed the girls with a powerful demon in order to create a superior race. The citizens of the town Arkam decide to take matters in to their own hands to save the town. They assembled an angry mob, storm the palace, sieze Curwen, and burn him at the stake for his crimes. In his dying breath, Curwen curses the town’s people and all of their descendants As a result of either the curse, or the demon breeding attempts, several mutated children were born in Arkam throughout the years...
During their very brief existence Tigon British Films were responsible for some of the very best gothic horror films ever made, including Witchfinder-General and Blood on Satan's Claw. In 1971 they decided to try their hands at what was in effect a British spaghetti western. I guess you could call it a bangers-and-mash western. The movie was Hannie Caulder and it’s definitely worth a look...And that movie is MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH.
Lets start with what HORROR'S NOT DEAD had to say;
Price was a gift to directors like Roger Corman and William Castle, able to step into low-budget B-pictures and craft characters who carried genuine weight. Put Price in front of a cardboard wall, hand him a fishing pole that can control a skeleton and watch him not bat an eye: he knows exactly what kind of film he’s in and manages to find the perfect pitch, taking everything that happens completely seriously but elevating his performance to a level that can’t help but ooze a little self-awareness. They don’t make actors like this anymore, folks. There will never be another Vincent Price and his Prospero may be one of his greatest roles...
And now THE LIGHTNING BUG'S LAIR;
Much of the credit for the film's success has to be given over to Corman and Price. Roger Corman is thought of as something of a hack, but looking at the lush color palette and the lavish sets (borrowed from the filming of Beckett), it has all the visual brilliance of Blood and Black Lace or Susperia. Corman knew how to get the right people for the job, and the film's look wasn't hindered by cinematographer and future film director Nicolas Roeg (Don't Look Now, The Man Who Fell To Earth). Corman also got some great performances out of his cast. Price is at his menacing best as the lecherous Satanist. He's so delightfully slimy that he practically oozes around the screen. Jane Asher (who was Paul McCartney's gal pal at the time and brought the then unknown (to Roger Corman) Beatle to the set) is the picture of loveliness, and her decent into nihilistic numbness is well played and believable. The lovely Hazel Court appears as a would-be bride of Satan, but her plotline is disposable and the only part of the film that felt like padding. Skip Martin clearly has a good time playing the role of the vengeful dwarf, but it was Clockwork Orange's Patrick Mcgee who shines in their scenes. While Prospero seems the noble, refined devil worshiper, Mcgee's Alfredo seems only a hair away from being a snarling beast...
A flawed but oddly compelling work from director Robert Vincent O'Neill, Blood Mania (1970) is one of the most tripped-out and uber-odd works I have encountered in a long time. An delightfully sleazy film distinguished by O'Neill's undeniable skill with composition and framing, Blood Mania is both an exciting and sluggish experience fuelled by an extremely strange, but unforgettable, performance by future Star Wars cult-figure Maria De Aragon...
And in celebration of this review SING IT PETER CARPENTER! SING IT!
He posted a very well thought out review on his blog... check it out!
YellowBrickRoad, from the writing/directing team of Andy Mitton and Jess Holland, is frustratingly close to genius.
The powerful set-up (detailed above) had me hooked from the outset with its Lovecraftian overtones and engaging mystery, and this certainly isn't a movie that spoonfeeds answers to its audience.
I love a good mental challenge as much as the next person and films that don't necessarily spell out everything that's going on, but YellowBrickRoad suffers because - in a similar way to Lost - it is ultimately too obscure and obtuse.
While it is certainly a film that will stay with you as you try to ponder what fate befell the inhabitants of Friar - and the contemporary expedition - I don't believe there are actually enough clues to adequately fill in the gaps....
Sometimes you get an itch you just need to scratch and this week my itch was Julie Taymor's version of Will Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus. Titus is a full fledged horror film. In Shake's day it was called a "tragedy" but trust me, this is full on Goth horror. I saw this when it was released, well before we all knew Julie Taymor as the person who was fired from Spiderman: Turn of the Dark. I remember being deeply disturbed by it and thinking that Shakespeare was one fucked up individual. Seeing it again I am more convinced than ever that this is true...
...we see Bigfoot rising from the underbrush like a zombie from his grave, as drawn-on lightning flashes from a clear blue sky! Luckily he's within striding distance of a nice-looking KOA Kampground, where a headkerchiefed hippie lady has just finished an afternoon rowboat excursion and climbed out onto the bank to shed all her clothes and take a nap. Like you do. Overcome by perfectly natural acquisitive desires, the stealthy manbeast quickly lopes up, snatches the hippie, and spirits her off to his woodland abode. To what dark purpose we can only conjecture and fear!...
Click here to read the rest of the Vicar of VHS' thought-provoking article
And then....something funny happened. I suddenly realized that Tourist Trap was possibly a little too creepy for comfort. Creepy is good yes, but in some cases, like when you watch The Exorcist at age seven while hiding behind a couch at your older sister's sleepover, the creepy is too much to handle and before you know it you're staying up until 5 in the morning because you think that a moth flew into your eyeball and is going to possesses you. Not that I speak from experience or anything like that....
click here to read the rest at THE HORROR DIGEST
Oh and also.. they article contains a scene from the movie... what I think is one of the creepiest scenes in cinema...
I no longer remember where or when I first encountered the phrase “outsider art,” but given my tastes, it quickly became a very useful addition to my conceptual toolkit. Also known as intuitive art, visionary art, naïve art, and an inevitable constellation of borrowed French terminology, outsider art is exactly what it sounds like: art created by people operating in deep isolation from the mainstream of their chosen field. Outsider artists have little or no formal training, receive little or no support from the culture industries, and enjoy little or no prospect of achieving financial prosperity or critical approbation through their work (unless they’re dead, of course— then the critics start fawning and the sales to galleries and well-heeled private collectors commence). They may use improvised media, strange techniques of their own devising, or subject matter so particular to their own psyches as to be nearly (or indeed completely) incomprehensible to anyone else. Not infrequently, outsider artists are markedly eccentric if not downright crazy...
PS
And be sure to spend some time perusing 1,000 MISSPENT HOURS, it is a fun and well written site.
PS PS
Do I count as an 'Outsider Artist'?
I really had no clue though that Basket Case was about separated siamese twins. Actually, I had no clue about anything happening in Basket Case at all. Funny? Bloody? Ridiculous? All of the above---and all this time I thought it was just about some monster stuck in a basket....
Brian is a terribly average guy. He lives in a passable New York City apartment with his brother and spends most of his free time with his loving girlfriend. Unfortunately for Brian, the neighbors in the apartment above him are neither average nor are they passable human beings. For years, they have been harboring an ancient parasitic brain worm named Aylmer who injects a highly potent narcotic directly into the cerebral cortex of those who in turn offer him delicious brains as tithes. Aylmer derives his strength from human brains but the neighbors have been feeding him animal brains to keep him weak enough to control but strong enough to get their fix from his venom. Unfortunately, for everyone, Aylmer escapes and finds his way onto the brain stem of poor Brian who instantly gets addicted to the venom. Will his craving drive him to commit murder to satisfy Aylmer’s hunger for human flesh?...
It was originally released under the name The Forgotten as the 2nd act of a drive-in double feature featuring Last House on the Left, directed by someone guy called Wes Craven. The original name for this film directed by S.F. Brownrigg seems quite apropos. ..
I was curious to see it of course judging from all the praise it received in the acting department. There were muffled whispers about some crazy ending--and being the really smart person that I think I am, I thought I guessed it but was of course, way off. It turns out that The Last Exorcism is vastly different than your typical exorcism film. It in many ways is actually an anti-exorcism film but we'll get to that...
Robert Fuest is a director whose name I learned early on in the world of horror movies. I was then very disappointed when his name stopped cropping up. Reports of a third (and fourth) Dr Phibes movie turned out to be rumours and Fuest settled back into TV and TV movies, most of which I haven't seen. Partly because they were rarely shown, but also because I was afraid they'd mar my admiration for his best work.
While he's mostly associated with the stylised world of The Avengers and the two Dr Phibes movies, he also made two straightforward horror films, the original And Soon the Darkness and The Devil's Rain. Between directing episodes of The Avengers and The New Avengers, he directed almost a cult movie for every year...
“LOOK,” I said, cutting across yet another plea, “You’re dead. You need to accept that.”
“But -”
“No. Stop pretending to be alive. It’s stupid. It’s creepy. Now GO. THE. HELL. AWAY.”
She crossed her arms and stared at me.
“Never.”
I rolled my eyes. Women! Can’t live with ‘em, can’t escape even by killing ‘em...
As I was watching this Australian film I couldn't help thinking of another one of my favorite Aussie movies, Peter Weir's Picnic at Hanging Rock. Both films deal with not only the loss of a young life, but also the loss of innocence, or what we as adults want to believe is innocence...
(And if you haven't seen LAKE MUNGO yet- DO IT!)
Willard Huyck’s Messiah of Evil is one of a legion of elusive genre films from the 1960s and 70s that have cropped up for decades on bootleg and public domain videotapes mastered from source tapes often ravaged by scratches, splices, and colour so oversaturated it bled like an opened vein. Blood Sabbath, Bury Me An Angel and Oliver Stone’s Seizure spring readily to mind as examples; all now exist looking exactly the same – un-restored and badly duped – except on DVD, instead of VHS. These ragged transfers had been duped and pan and scanned to the point that the film print often appeared on the verge of disintegration. As with all holy grails of psychotronic cinema, fans wanting to see the film as intended prior to the era of the DVD plunked down exorbitant change for Huyck’s flick in cropped and pan and scanned VHS tapes and, later, DVD...
