Adorable bunnies grow really large and kill a bunch of people. There is plenty of blood even though it’s a little fake looking and there are a few cool shots of mutilated bodies with severed limbs scattered about. Janet Leigh, DeForest Kelley and Stuart Whitman are in it.
If you’re one of my loyal readers into the music profiles, I apologize for the movie overload. It’s way easier to write movie reviews than really lengthy band profiles where you review every album. I’m working on part one on a piece about the Stranglers so stay tuned.
In some interview on some DVD special feature, Christopher Lee scoffed at the ignoramuses who claimed that he played Count Dracula 10 times. “Ha ha, I don’t know what people are talking about! They say I played Count Dracula 10 times, haha!” Well, he actually played Count Dracula eight times so pardon the fans for rounding up. Furthermore Lee has played the mummy, Rasputin and Frankenstein’s monster among others. But, what’s funny about all of his roles is that, while he laughed at the idea of being tied to Dracula, he never seemed to blink once when playing Fu Manchu five times.
Do you know what that means? That means that in five different films, he had people put putty over his eyes so he looked Asian and acted like a maniacal super villain. Clearly he would have to find Fu Manchu a much more laughable role than Count Dracula! We can only hope.
And I’m not politically correct enough to find it offensive that a white man would play an Asian. As far as I gather, the only Fu Manchu film to really cause any controversy was The Mask of Fu Manchu where Karloff’s take on the character and situations involved caused people from back then to consider the film offensive. But, as far as I gather, Lee’s Fu Manchu does not exhibit any Asian stereotypes nor does he want to destroy the white race and rape its women; he just wants to destroy the human race so it’s okay.
I’m confused though. I’d already watched The Castle of Fu Manchu and that one begins where The Brides of Fu Manchu ends; that is, with the underground hideout exploding and Fu Manchu escaping. But there is another film that came out between the two called The Blood of Fu Manchu, which I have yet to see. So, I’ll have to get back to you on that one.
The Brides of Fu Manchu is not surprisingly really stupid and, for the most part, pretty boring. It’s basically a cross between a less interesting James Bond movie with a Sherlock Holmes mystery; the main detective looks like Peter Sellers playing Sherlock Holmes and his assistant looks like a Watson type.
So why two iron crosses? I like the hideout sets in the pyramid and the hilarious, “futuristic” command center from which Fu Manchu operates. There are also lots of Italian/Spanish tan-skin, big-eye cuties to look at. Otherwise, this film is completely lacking in gore, suspense or anything interesting at all. The “brides” don’t even really do anything. The only cool thing that happens is when one is dropped into a pit of snakes.
I apologize if this review is lacking in content but there really isn’t much to say about the film.
Christopher Lee has to be a in a movie for more than two minutes for it to be fair for American International to advertise him on the bill, I think.
I realize that this movie really doesn’t deserve three out of four iron crosses and that most people who might stumble upon it will find it incredibly boring, but what can I say? It appealed to me because it has some creepy looking sets and surprisingly realistic looking gore for 1973. If I’m not mistaken, the old blood formula made most blood look like red paint; at least this is what Tom Savini said in a special feature to some movie I saw a long time ago.
There isn’t much in the way of plot in Raw Meat. In fact, you’d be pressed to think of a reason for it to even be 87 minutes because there is almost nothing going on! An American student and his adorable, red-head gal discover a body of someone who’s important or something laying on the steps of a subway and go report it to the police in Scotland Yard. The police chief is Donald Pleasence who is delightfully dry and sarcastic the entire time.
After that, it’s basically a police precedural crossed with a gross horror movie. All of the horror takes place in a grimy, underground sewer-like hideaway, where dwells a grotesque looking man, and, over the course of the film, we get to see some awesome shots of half-eaten and decomposing corpses laying around old furniture in a dirty underground hideaway. There are some hints as to how these were apparently people who got stuck in the subway due to something happening. I honestly don’t remember the explanation and didn’t find it all that important to story.
Eventually, the not quite bad guy, who is more just a confused or retarded mutant like thing, with sick looking head wounds and messy strands of hair, kidnaps the cutie and the police go to find her. And that’s it! There is absolutely nothing else to say about this movie! There are very minor plot points here and there, like when the girl leaves the guy out of anger because he didn’t feel like reporting his finding a corpse to the cops, followed by her going back to him and a brief interrogation of whoever Christopher Lee is supposed to play.
But most of that is just padding for time. Again: I gave the film three just because I enjoyed the dimly lit set and gory makeup effects, but if you’re one of those “story” people who wants a movie to move from point a to point b in a reasonable amount of time with actual bits of intrigue and characters you care about, then you’d best look elsewhere.
I’ve been looking forward to seeing Guyana: Crime of the Century for a while and can say that I was not disappointed. The only reason I dropped the grade from 4 to 3 iron crosses is because maybe there could have been a little bit more editing and the lighting was incredibly dim. I don’t know if that’s the DVD transfer or the way it was shot. If it was the DVD, then I apologize.
Either way, Rene Cardona Jr.’s film received the hilarious “zero stars” from Roger Ebert when he saw the film at the beginning of 1980. The version he saw was actually called Guyana: Cult of the Damned (not to be confused with the 1969 film Cult of the Damned) and was edited down to 96 minutes from the unneccesarily long 115 minute version I saw and had a voice-over narration. That might have been a slightly tighter, more compact film.
But why am I arguing technique when the only reason I watched the movie was to see if it is as tasteless, shocking and repulsive as its reputation? The Jonestown massacre is officially considered the largest loss of American lives at a single time before 9/11 and what makes it even more disturbing is the fact that the Reverand Jim Jones was such a well respected public figure. Under a socialist guise, he united people of various ethnicities and races and promoted equality. He was praised by a number of public figures like Walter Mondale and Rosalyn Carter.
So what went wrong? Of course no questions are answered in Guyana: Crime of the Century. If you want a real documentary about the topic, check out Jonestone: Life and Death of Peoples Temple. Cardona’s film is an exploitation film.
There isn’t much plot to the film really. Rev. James Johnson (Stuart Whitman) does a bunch of over the top, Hitler-like sermons in spite of preaching against Hitler, tyranny, violence and bigotry. The people believe and follow him from San Francisco to their tiny, self-constructed colony called Johnstontown in the jungles of Guyana.
At first a few people bitch about not getting any better food than rice and bread. Soon, three children are brutally punished for petty theft. This is where the dim lighting really annoyed me. Was the one kid dipped in tar, hot oil or just water? One kid had electric shockers put on his balls and one was covered in snakes, I guess. There’s another scene where a man is punished for having sex with his wife by being forced to do the sexual act with a big black guy. Unfortunately we don’t get to see this part. There’s also a scene where reporters go into a giant shack to see a bunch of bodies stowed away like in a “slave galley.”
There are a few scenes that follow the real life narrative, particularly when the movie version of Congressman Leo Ryan along with some reporters visits Jonestown in order to bring back some of its prisoners resulting in their being gunned down. Also Joseph Cotton and Yvonne De Carlo play toss-aside roles as lawyer and press person, etc.
But, as expected, the true impact lies in the gruesome climax. It starts with the Jim Jones speech as people line up to drink koolaid. Then we see people forcing others to drink the substance, we see a horrified woman shrieking that she doesn’t want to die, we see a mother feeding the substance to her baby then to herself and then clutching her baby as she crumples to the floor. But, above all, we see Rev. James Johnson from the perspective of the dying temple members in a psychedelic sepia tone, which, given this stylistic choice, sorta proves Cardona wasn’t going for a truly documentary vibe with this. At the end, the camera shows us the sign that says, “those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” Yep, it’s a message movie.
More like Chamber of Borers, hahahahaha… uh, yeah. Don’t be fooled by the poster. There ain’t nothin’ terrifying about this movie and I’m not just talking in today’s standards. According to the poster, a built-in audio-visual warning system is used to warn the audience when to turn away. The irony is that there is nothing to turn away from. The camera always cuts away from the violent part rendering the warning system rather useless. Plus they tell you in advance that this will happen exactly four times during the course of a 99 minute film. So what’s in the rest of the movie?
Chamber of Horrors doesn’t even deserve two iron crosses. But, what can I say; it looks like a Hammer horror film and has a wax museum setting in some parts, some hilariously demeaning “slut shaming” dialogue and a really hot actress who I’d never seen before. Other than that, the movie sucks.
It starts off promising when this crazy guy named Jason Cravatte (Patrick O’Neal) forces a priest to conduct a wedding between him and this dead woman at gun point. Not having read the plot synopsis and going by the title of the film, I was under the impression that this Jason Cravatte character would conduct weird experiments and do strange things involving necrophilia in some chamber of horrors.
But, nope, that’s not the case at all. Instead the movie quickly degenerates into a boring cat and mouse chase type thing as the womanizer and wax museam curator Cesar Danova (Anthony Draco) follow clues and leads to catch up with Jason Cravatte.
There are little plot points like Cravattes holing up in a New Orleans whore house before he is caught and escapes certain death by chopping his hand off and replacing it with an assortment of scary looking but underused weapons and then heads to Baltimore where he decides to give a good life to a struggling prostitute he meets in a bar in exchange for luring in all the people who were responsible for his murder conviction or something. That was a run-on sentence
The point is is that, once again, the poster makes the movie seem scarier and more exciting than it really is. There is almost no gore or suspense. Again the wax museam was cool as these tend to be in movies like this but that’s about all there is to say about this clunker.
Okay, fine! I watch a lot of old porn! Therese and Isabelle is my introduction to the work of Radley Metzger, a director who I always had interest in. In pornographic terms, once again, this film is no worse than something you’d see an NC-17 rated movie. Hell, on a more liberal occasion, the fascist dictatorship known as the MPAA might even let this one slide with an R if some of the scenes were shortened.
But, there aren’t even that many scenes that would need to be shortened. Regardless of film’s salacious poster, the majority of the film’s 118 minute run time focuses on the relationship between the two girls and Therese’s strained relationship with her mom on account her marrying someone after her husband died. In other words, if you went into this to see some black and white lesbian shagging, you’re gonna be bored to tears my man! This ain’t no 65 minute nudie cutey, Bary Mahon picture. This is art, dammit!
And if you thought that last sentence was said with even an ounce of sarcasm, then you’re mistaken my friend. The only thing preventing me from giving Therese and Isabelle four iron crosses is that it may have run just a little too long, it had some terribly corny narration which described things that didn’t need description and a horrendous score that sounded way too old for a movie that was made in 1967.
These are all minor complaints, mind you. The film looks fantastic with some brilliant master shots; it didn’t hurt that the movie was shot on gorgeous real life locations, such as old churches, courtyards, swanky restaurants and cafes. Metzger did some crazy, awesome things with shadows that I found pretty interesting as well. The stairway sequences looked especially exquisite.
The movie is based on the Violette Leduc novel of the same name. I haven’t read it so I can’t say how closely the movie follows the book but that hardly matters. The story kicks off when an adult Therese (Barbara Laage) visits the Catholic school she attended as a teenager and begins to relive the memories. Almost right away, young Therese (Esse Persson) meets Isabelle (Anna Gael) and the two become fast friends. It’s pretty clear who was driving the boat in the developing relationship between the two; Isabelle is a gorgeous blonde who eventually seduces the slightly more plain (though, by no means ugly) Therese, which leads to the latter’s sexual awakening.
The movie is told slightly out of sequence, with their little liaisons being interspersed with little plot details such as the strained relationship between Therese and her mother on account of her marrying someone following the death of her husband. The little detail of Therese’s mother looking more like Isabelle than her own daughter and drama that ensues when Isabelle accuses her mother of betraying her by marrying adds a bit of a lesbian Oedipus complex to the proceedings.
Elsewhere, we are briefly introduced to an annoying, playboy named Pier (Remy Longa), who later takes part in a brief tryst with a curious Therese. In a later scene, the two ladies play hooky and visit a cheap hotel in an attempt to hook up but just end up leaving the place since the atmosphere wasn’t right. Other than that, there are numerous, whimsical moments, such as the one where the two ladies annoy an automobile driver by riding their bikes together and not letting him pass.
The sex scenes are more sensual than dirty but as mentioned, the voice-over narration is really stupid. The narrator uses out-dated terms such as “pearl” when describing the clitoris for instance and there is no way even the most mature among us can hold in the laughter; maybe, during those scenes, you should mute the sound? Still though, regardless of the fact that the sex was simulated and you really only see the two ladies facial expressions as it’s happening, the scenes are effective in delivering the raw emotions that such a thing should deliver. Also the nudity is brief.
I have a feeling The Lickerish Quartet isn’t going to be so wholesome.
I hit the jackpot with I Drink Your Blood. I think it was also called Satan’s Gang in Germany. What’s with me watching all these X rated movies lately? This one has some nudity, but it mainly received an X because of its violence. Either way, David E. Durston’s film is a masterpiece of bloody shocks and horror that actually delivers on all of its promises.
I Drink Your Blood perfectly fits the theme of this here very blog. The group in this film were definitely savage hippies, not to mention Satan worshipers. I also think Durston might have been influenced by the recent Manson killings, as were many directors who made films about psycho hippie cults. However, Satanism is only a minor part of the plot. The main plot concerns zombies! Durston was most definitely riffing on Night of the Living Dead, but the zombies in I Drink Your Blood are infected with rabies, and three years later Romero did The Crazies, which is roughly about the same thing, so who’s really influencing who here?
But probably the most glaring observation that Durston pointed out in the entertaining DVD special feature is no characters drank any blood! The title was made up by executive producer Barney Cohen in order to be shown as a double feature with I Eat Your Skin. Also, the version I watched was the director’s cut; the movie had apparently been cut up and edited down for different markets, which is a curious thing considering it’s only 80 minutes long.
The ethnically diverse and politically correct group of creeps – lead by a Native American and consisting of an African American and an Asian woman along with a few typical white, long-haired weirdos – are “out for kicks.” They set up their operation in a small, hick town that looks like it was left behind in the wholesome 50s, get naked, say a bunch of made up Satanic gibberish, spill some animal blood and drop a bunch of acid. One of their members is the good guy who breaks from the group and one is the adorable Lynn Lowry who plays a deaf mute and “innocently” chops a woman’s hand off.
I don’t want to give too much of the plot away, but the film turns “horror” when a mischievous boy serves rabies-infected meat pies to the hippies, who gobble it up and turn into blood crazed zombies. In perhaps a slightly ironic twist, the infection spreads to the local hard-hats when they gang bang a hippie girl who is tripping on acid. It should also be noted that these zombies aren’t hungry for flesh; they’re just crazy and like to kill.
When I Drink Your Blood gets going, it really gets going! The non-horror scenes of the hippies tripping out and being weird – including hanging their buddy by the waste and slicing his feet up – are entertaining as it is, but then it all gets crazy violent with severed limbs, impalement, decapitations, rabid bites and axe to sword combat! The blood looks real, which wasn’t typical at the time, as much blood from this era looked more like paint, the acting isn’t too hammy, the color of the film looks really lush and the musical score, although just a bunch of creepy, layered Moog tones, adds to the atmosphere.
This is one for the ages! How is it not considered more of a classic? On a completely unrelated note, I wrote this entire review while listening to A Saucerful of Secrets on me ol’ turntable!
Back in the world of pre-Troma Troma, we have this intriguing little picture which has the distinction of being the only X rated film that lost money. Upon release, the film was re-rated with an R because the sex is no more explicit than a typical soft-core porn. Sugar Cookies, although an American production from the independent Armor films, which Lloyd Kaufman worked for before starting Troma, resembles a stylish Euro-trash picture of the era. Even though there is a lot of sex, it’s still held together with a solid thriller plot and it’s also a blatant homage to Vertigo.
What I really liked about Theodore Gershuny’s film is its insight into the world of that era of pornographic films, which, at the time, were also referred to as “art films.” In this way, the movie functions as something of a time capsule; especially with the really tacky art-deco set designs. After all, while early pornographic films might have been shot well with some actual art in mind, this certainly is not the case anymore.
The plot takes off after a bizarre game in the home of “art film” director Max Pavell (George Shannon) leaves Alta Leigh (Lynn Lowery) dead. Inevitably, the police try to piece together what happened. But this only serves as a framework to a series of vignettes which further illustrate the “alternative” world in which these characters live in. Among them is Camilla Stone (Mary Woronov), a sexually dominant casting agent who brings the somewhat naive Julie Kent (also Lynn Lowery) into her world.
The Vertigo-riffing is obvious since Stone blatantly tries to turn Kent into Alta Leigh through personality and style makeovers. Along with these, we get to lesbian scenes which are well played and full of tension. There are also some interesting montage sequences which are not forced either. Lowery, although only briefly playing the first role, does a fantastic job as the second. Her adorable yet unique face – huge eyes and big teethy smile – further add to her innocent-turn-corrupt appeal.
Elsewhere, there is a subplot involving an overweight kid trying to lose his virginity. His tie in the film is that he’s Max Pavell’s brother in law and he visits a prostitute in a comic subplot that is okay but not particularly necessary. Also, look out for Lloyd Kaufman somewhere in this movie.
I’ve been a fan of Mary Woronov since I first saw her in Rock ‘n’ Roll High School and enjoyed her dominant sex appeal. I’ve also enjoyed Lowery who was in I Drink Your Blood, The Crazies and Shivers (a.k.a. They Come from Within) among others. One interesting scene involves Woronov’s character who watches the dailies of the first Lowery character in a voyeuristic manner and later tries to recreate the scene with the second Lowery character. Another neat scene is the sequence in which several different actresses audition for the role in the next Pavell film; some are pretty frank about what they are doing while others treat it as “art.”
OH, ya know what I just realized as I write this? Remember the frankness with which Sharon Stone talks to the cops in Basic Instinct? Do you think this movie invented that shockingly frank female character? In this film, Woronov answers the officer as such: “you mean, did we fuck? Why yes, we did.” Haha!
So yes, I would say it’s a soft core film about the world of hard core films but, really it’s just a sexy, Eurotrash thriller, ya know? Ah, how the world of sex films has changed!
This is the second night in row that I’ve been mislead by a movie’s title and poster. And, incidentally, in both cases, the alleged blood and gore were replaced by copious amounts of nudity. Strangely, Tintorera: Killer Shark is the first film I’ve seen from Mexican director Rene Cardona Jr., who I otherwise wouldn’t know about except that I’m dying to see Guyana: Crime of the Century (and now Terror Storm and The Bermuda Triangle have piqued my interest as well).
But daaamn… it’s hard to fathom that a b movie about a killer shark could be 2 hours and 6 minutes long except for the fact that Jaws is two hours long and Tintorer: Killer Shark isn’t about a killer shark.
Okay, it sort of is since there is a killer shark in the movie. But most of this ridiculous film’s running time concerns two shark hunters played by Hugo Stiglitz and Andreas Garcia (who resembles Elliot Gould) and their attempt to shack up with as many women as possible.
Holy hell, this movie is so bad and stupid it’s surreal. There’s no beat or structure to it; there’s just scene after pointless scene in which people meet up in a cantina, beach or late night dance, bed together, have romantic montages in various locations – including a particularly pretty one atop some ancient pyramids – before something goes wrong and it starts over again. Somewhere, in all of this, there is a plot about a killer shark – the kind that attacks you if you provoke it. How this got marketed as a piggy-back off Jaws, I have no clue.
The shark kills exactly two people in the entire movie. The first is a woman over whom the two main characters are pining after. Neither character inquires about her disappearance. She’s gone and that’s that and let’s move on to other women. More than halfway through, they start a sex triangle with Susan George who must have been starved for work after her performance in the abominable Mandingo. And this is where the movie gets a bit more interesting. All of a sudden, there are copious amounts of homo-erotic insinuations including their “sharing” of George in one sex act – which is unfortunately not shown – to blatant closeups and point of view shots from our two characters which imply they might have a secret attraction to each other.
That’s how damn weird this movie; where is the shark, goddamit? Eventually we get to a climax where one of the guys hunts the shark down to avenge the other (oh spoiler!) as if the shark killed the guy out of maliciousness because, ya know, sharks think like that. Then, after that, it flashes back to Susan George and the two guys for some reason, as if to remind the audience of the love they once shared. Wow.
Oh, and this movie isn’t exactly female friendly either. All of the women are just sex-crazy and jump into bed the second they are asked. The most creepy scene is when two thrill seeking women who have nothing to do with the plot get sexually assaulted atop an orange truck but, instead of being repulsed by the two ugly, overweight rapists, they unzip the old jeans and get busy; cuz ya know, being raped can be good time as long as it’s in a foreign country atop an orange truck.
Say! That’s a unique coincidence, isn’t it? Susan George has now been in two films where a woman who is being raped begins to enjoy the experience – the other is Straw Dogs where George is the woman in case you’re wondering.
What else is there to say about this film? Nuttin’, it sucks but it’s weird so I guess watch it but be warned that it’s over two hours long and has almost nothing to do with the shark.
Also, I think the DVD we were watching was defective. We wanted English dubbing because acting is negligible for this type of movie. So they’re talking in English. Then they’re talking in Spanish so I thought those are just minor parts that we don’t need to understand. Then, after they started talking in Spanish for long periods of time, I put on the sub-titles so I’d understand it and turns out they were saying things that were relevant to the plot. Then they would switch back to English – sometimes in the same conversation – and the subtitles for the English parts would be in Spanish! If you happen to stumble upon this review and have seen this movie on DVD, can you tell me if you’ve experienced the same thing?
More like Crud Mania if you ask me, yuck yuck. This movie totally blows and delivers nothing even close to the alleged “shocking climax” that is advertised on this here poster. In fact, the little netflix envelope claimed the movie was going to be “gory” but I think the guy writing it meant to say “boring” because, blah blah, etc…
The bottom line is; don’t watch this movie, it sucks. And when I say that, that actually means something since I’ll watch practically anything. I thought I was in for a real treat since the movie has a really cool title sequence in which a scantily clad young lady is running away from a psycho-stalker all under an awesome, psychedelic sepia tone followed by animated blood splattering out the name of the movie in a manner similar to the poster above.
But that’s a tease. Most of the film is a series of shack-ups under psychedelic lighting usually involving the gorgeous, psychotic red head (Maria De Aragon) and a doctor (Peter Carpenter). There’s some plot involving blackmail or something but it was so damn boring it made no difference. This was NOT a slowly paced, stylish thriller where there is a slow build up – I like Roman Polanski films, you see – this is just boring, borderline soft core porn.
And, ya know, that’s okay! There was a fair amount of flesh to look at and it was stylishly shot, I suppose. And I love trashy European looking films especially if they’re from Europe. So, if you’re the type of person who likes to just look at stuff and doesn’t care if anything actually happens, you might dig this film.
But, in my case at least, if a film is advertised as “gory” and only two people get killed – one of which was by forced amyl nitrate overdose – then I feel I didn’t really get what I asked for.
Just for shits and giggles, I copied and pasted a review from an IMDB user so, if you actually want to know what the movie is about, read further. He (she? it?) pretty much gets it right except for the “isn’t as bad as I’d read”, “there’s plenty of plot twists” and “worth a look if you’re open-minded” part. It ain’t worth jack shit and I’m very open-minded!
Stylish film noir-like thriller concerning a dashing doctor (Carpenter) whose medical practice owner (Allison) is bed-ridden following a heart attack, his daughter (De Aragon) a seductive vixen with a psychotic streak and a penchant for mind altering substances is eager to sink her claws into the virile Carpenter, but he’s already got his hands full with another lusty companion (Wilson). De Aragon paints bold, expressive canvasses, has lots of sex and looks dazzling in the buff. She also agrees to help out Carpenter after he’s blackmailed for having been a backyard abortionist, a stain that threatens his career, but the grand plan they conjure begins to unravel when her little sister (Peters) returns to claim the inheritance.
Funky, psychedelic sex soap opera isn’t as bad as I’d read; it’s not so much “blood” as it is “mania”, and there’s plenty of plot twists and diversions to keep you engaged. Carpenter isn’t the best actor, but he’s charismatic and has the charm to pull it off, as his character digs his grave ever deeper with each carnal lapse, while De Aragon, Peters and Wilson are three impressive specimens in spite of their apparent amateurish acting (De Aragon does improve as the film progresses, her ‘mania’ is at times quite chilling). Leslie Simms is sometimes amusing as an ugly duckling nurse and Alex Rocco gets a few frivolous moments as an estate lawyer. You’d also have to appreciate the minor yet absorbing role played by Dalya as Peters’ loyal lesbian minder.
The soundtrack is a hybrid electronica, progressive rock sound, a fusion you’ll either find petulant and irritating, or fitting with the offbeat nature of the film. Overall, I like it – it’s cheap, dated and clichéd (it also ends quite abruptly), but it remains a sensory attraction with plenty of effort displayed in light, sound, sets, cinematography (some credited to Gary Graver), costumes and colour, not garish or gaudy when taken in its temporal context. Worth a look if you’re open-minded.
Or if you like boring, shitty movies!
savagehippie 