With that disturbing image of a big-eyed, quasi-realistic face coming towards you, smiling such a demonic and souless smile that seems to scream, "I SHALL SWALLOW YOUR SOUL!", I begin this post.
When I was younger, the ABC Network had a block of programming called "The Wonderful World of Disney" which ran on Saturday evenings. I'm pretty sure it's not there anymore, which sucks because I always used to watch it whenever they showed animated movies.
Around this time of the year, they began showing, you guessed it, Christmas movies. On one such evening, they showed "Disney Christmas Carol", which was the first time I'd ever heard of anything from Charles Dickens.
And this is the version of the story which I enjoy this most. I mean, there just so many things to enjoy about it.
To sum it up: Scrooge McDuck plays Ebenezer Scrooge, Mickey plays Bob Cratchett, and one of his bastard offspring plays Tiny Tim. Also, Ratty and Moley from Mr. Toad, Gunpowder from The Adventures of Ichabod, and a few others show up, but who really cares?
Of the two versions of the story I'm to mention, this is the one I most prefer to watch. For one, it's Disney, which will always have the vice-like grip of nostalgia on my mind. Secondly, it's the funnier of the two movies: I mean, you have Goofy as Jacob Marley. How can you go wrong with that flawless logic? And secondly, the Giant from Fun and Fancy Free is in the movie. You know, the one with a slight touch of Down Syndrome? Once again, you can't go wrong with that kind of character-casting logic. If there's one flaw I can find in it, it's that the story itself is WAY too simplified and misses some of the important aspects to the story, and some of its haunting power.
But, as long as Jacob Marley is tripping over stairwells, I'm good.
Which brings us to this version, from Richard Williams.
To be blatantly honest, I don't know jack shit about Richard Williams' work. I know he did Thief and the Cobbler and some crappy Raggedy Andy cartoon. But I hope to eventually know more about Mr. Williams, as this bit of animated...I don't know WHAT to call it, was quite interesting to watch.
The most noticeable change between the two is the art style.
While Disney has talking animals and retards to tell its story, Williams insists on using life-like drawings which, as you saw from the image above, are so realistic it's damn creepy.
I noticed this change immediately when I found that Jacob Marley wasn't so much tripping over stairwells as screeching in the tenor voice of Satan himself, his mouth stretched out like the Other Dad in Coraline.
This movie is far closer to the book than Disney's approach. This includes a lot of the missing parts, including the particularly stirring moment when the Ghost of Christmas Present (along with his Robin-Williams-like-hairy-chest) reveals Want and Ignorance:
This image is always a great metaphor for the burden of humanity, especially today, with the desire for more money and a better economy and America's all around...dumbed-down-iness?. But that's another post on morals and literature, a post which I will not ever make. EVER.
While it sticks the closest to the story (basically, copying it), and as awesome as it was, it didn't stick to me like the Disney one.
For one, the art is...have you ever heard of "The Uncanny Valley"? The concept is that the more realistic something becomes, the less endearing and more creepy it becomes. For example, everything Robert Zemeckis has done recently is in the Uncanny Valley: it's so realistic, it's creepy and scary. Williams' art barely misses the Uncanny Valley, as some of the characters are caricatured. But it comes super close to being incredibly disturbing.
Another problem I had was the voices. For the most part, they were good (especially because Bob Cratchett kind of sounded like John Lennon), but Scrooge's voice was a bit too quiet for my taste. It sounds at some points like super-intelligent British muttering. But other than that, it was quite a good film.
Well, that wraps up my quick little review / comparison. See ya later, y'all!
Six movies in two days. I feel like such a loser, but I love it so. Nothing makes me happier than to sit for hours watching movies. So why exactly am I watching "mainstream" movies that have connections to the world of porn? Because I am endlessly fascinated by sleaze. And filth. And smut. And all the things that make good kind religious people blush. And vomit. Plus I really don't find anything obscene about porn, it's just sex. If any of it really offended me, I'd just shut it off. True, a lot of it is degrading and stupid, but it exists to satisfy a base urge and thus doesn't require much intelligence to be put into it. Plus the level of production and acting talent involved are almost guaranteed to be the shoddiest of the shoddy, providing much amusement to my weird little brain. Porn films are the ultimate b-movies. I'm not much into modern porn films though, I tend to watch a lot from the 60s and 70s when they were required to have a story to keep people in the theaters after they'd finished their business. Sexploitation films were actually pretty tame compared to modern hardcore and in fact, most would only get an R-rating if they were released today. There's a whole history behind how porn films got started and developed that I've learned pretty much from listening to the commentaries on Something Weird Video DVD releases, but I've bored you enough, lets get to the first movie!
Now you want to see it don't you? You don't? Then please get the fuck out and don't let the door hit you on the ass.
Things I learned from watching this movie: 1. Peoples faces kick in really easily. 2. They're not the "Naughty Twins" they're the "Assfuck Twins." 3. Cock rockets are nothing to fuck around with. 4. Old ladies orgazaming is really funny. 5. If you're doing a porn film and someone mentions the name T-Rex, fucking run! The Girlfriend Experience (2009) I might as well just say what I learned from this movie right at the start: 1. Porn star Sasha Grey is fucking hot, but can't act for shit. 2. Rich people are really really lame. Sasha Grey plays a call-girl girlfriend to the rich and the movie meanders along, showing random scenes from her life, and the viewer has to piece together what's actually going on for themselves. That gimmick is really the only thing that keeps the film interesting though, because otherwise there's not a whole lot to it. The characters are all cold and distant and snooty, and there's not much reason to care a fuck-wit about any of them. Stephen Soderbergh is a good director though and the whole thing is well made and has a certain atmosphere. If you like it or not is going to depend on your patience for pretentious Indie/art films. I've seen quite a few that move slower and suck worse, so this wasn't too bad. I'd get my stupid fix with the next film anyways.
Zombie Strippers (2008) If you rent this movie....if you rent this movie you should know exactly what you're getting into. It's right in the fucking title. But you do get a bit extra right from the opening that smacks you right in the face with a limp dick "satire" of the Bush administration that comes back up in fits and spurts through out the running time. Thats exactly what I want in my zombie/stripper film. The whole thing is too afraid to let itself be a stupid B-movie and that robs it of a lot of campy fun, even though it all ends up becoming incredibly stupid. And there's a noticeable lack of sleaze, which really disappointed me. At least Robert Englund looked like he was having fun. You know what? Fuck this movie. This is the type of movie a twelve year old would sneak into a slumber party and watch giggling with his friends all the while watching over his shoulder for his mom to walk in the door. I wonder if they'd get to the part where Jenna Jameson shoots pool balls out of her vagina before they got caught? It is kind of late in the movie.
Things I learned while watching this shit: 1. Turning you into a zombie makes you a really good stripper. 2. Guys are so stupid that even if a girl is a living rotting smelly corpse, they'll still throw money at her while she strips and let her take them into the back room for a lapdance. 3. It is possible to rip off Idiocracy and make it suck. Thank you Zombie Strippers!
High School Confidential! (1958) My Sunday started off with this movie which has very little connection to porn, but I decided a porno break was in order. Plus I loves me some campy 1950s B-movies! If you love them too, then you really need to see this one, it's hilarious. The outdated slang, outdated drug info, and the fact that it's pretty much a 50s version of 21 Jump Street, make it must see. Plus Jerry Lee Lewis sings the awesome theme song and stars in the opening! Jerry Lee is one of the coolest motherfuckers that ever lived, and he could have been bigger than Elvis except he screwed up and married his thirteen year old cousin. Pedophilia will get ya! So the plot is that there's this new kid in town that sass-talks the teachers and the principal and lives with his aunt who's constantly trying to make moves on him. his aunt is played by Mamie Van Doren, who's one of the minor 50s sex-pots which is in no way a put down. She's fucking hot, I'll just say that. Fucking hot in that weird 1950s way. But anyways, the kid (who looks about 30 and claims to have been in highschool for seven years!) starts trying to move in on the local drug racket that consists of weed and heroin. Seriously. Once you're hooked on reefers you move up to heroin. People who smoked pot at the time this came out must have been laughing their asses off watching this. It's all great B-move fun with gangsters, car races, and stupid plot twists. And lots of curvaceous girls that they don't make anymore. Plus lots and lots of camp.
Things I learned from watching the hep cat jive: 1. If you run your car over a small ditch it will somehow land on it's top. (I rewound that part like 4 times, it's so funny!) 2. Weed leads to heroine which leads to gangsters and prostitution for small town highschool girls. 3. Never stash your stash in the hubcap of the car you're drag racing! 4. Beatnik poetry is really really funny to listen to. 5. Threating your principal with a knife and seriously hitting on your teacher will get you nothing but horrified looks from everyone. 6. Remember to always smoke those harmless cigarettes! Alright, back to porn...
The People Vs. Larry Flynt (1996) It's hard to believe but there was a time when Courtney Love was not only a credible actor, but not bad looking either. It's a good thing too, because she has several nude scenes in this movie. Don't let that scare you though, it's a good movie. Larry Flynt is one of those guys that, even if you don't like what he does, you still have to respect him. He's a very smart guy that just so happens to make very good money peddling smut. Anyone that has the balls to mock a massively popular religious figure by saying he had sex with his mother in an outhouse, and then to not back down when they get sued and thrown in jail for it, has my utmost respect. Mr. Flynt has balls, thats for sure, even if they're useless to him now. He's also had a hell of an interesting life, one that's only really hinted at in this two hour film. It all moves by pretty quickly and when it's over you'll want to learn more about this guy and his never ending quest to push the limits of free speech and good taste. God Bless Hustler and God Bless Larry Flynt. Unfortunately there's no extras on the disc so I'd suggest you also rent...
Larry Flynt: The Right to be Left Alone (2008) This hour long documentary is what should have been included as an extra on the above DVD. It's a bit skimpy on his personal life, but you do get brief glimpses of some of the real people that were fictionalized for PVLF. Flynt's fourth wife Althea (there was no mention of the other wives in the movie) doesn't seem as crazy as Courtney Love portrayed her, but I think Love as pretty much playing herself in that movie anyways. Maybe that's why her performance seemed so good? The doc focuses mostly on Flynt's politics through interviews mostly with the man himself when he was young and full of pep, and now when he's old and confined to a wheelchair after getting shot in the spine. It also reveals that they've probably found his shooter, which was left open ended at the end of the movie. If you're like me and believe that free speech should be preserved, even if you don't like what the person is saying, then you'll probably like both of these movies. If you don't then you're probably Jerry Falwell. Go back to masturbating to pictures of your mother.
Things I learned from watching both movies: 1. If you're pissed off at a trumped up obscenity charge, throw oranges at the judge. And wear the American flag as a diaper. 2. Watching the real Larry Flynt (who has a cameo as a judge) sentence his younger self to jail time gives one a very weird feeling. 3. When shooting a sex scene for a porn magazine, make sure your smoke guys know what they're doing. 4. Actually the thing I learned most is just how much I really hate snooty uptight authority figures, and just how much fun it is to see them made a mockery of.
So, was any of this interesting? Please give me feedback! If you want me to blather on about movies some more, next time we'll have a bunch of documentaries and the first volume of an infamous TV show. Plus maybe another b-movie or two. Stay Classy!
My Netflix movies came in on Sunday rather than Saturday but I did manage to get two of them watched after I stupidly started later than I should have. I'll talk about the good one first.
Rabid (1977) The problem with modern day zombie movies is that they're so formalic that they're becoming boring. Most of them are just ripping off George Romero's zombie movies (even Romero himself seems to have fallen into this rut). I'm not putting Romero down, I love the guy to un-death, but it saddens me that we can't get zombie movies that have variety anymore. No one wants to play with the rules, everything plays by established rules and any variation will make the zombie fanboys scream with rage. It's a genre that's become safe for mainstream consumption, although they haven't been pussified as much as vampires, thank god. So it was a huge relief to watch a zombie movie that followed it's own rules, that was gleefully sick, and one that was incredibly low budget, like a fucking zombie movie should be. Okay, so Rabid isn't explicitly called a zombie movie. I think that you could rightfully argue that it's not. It stars porn star Marylin Chambers (most famously of Behind the Green Door fame) as a motorcycle accident victim given an experimental skin graft that, for shakily explained reasons, makes her lust for blood which is sucked through a penis in her armpit. I'm am not making that up. Can you guess who the director was? If you guessed David Cronenberg, then you've probably seen his other movies. Cronenburg is the king of body horror movies including the famous head explosion in Scanners. There's a kind of gleeful reveling in disease and body fluids that pervades his work that I really dig. When you pick up one of his movies, you know you're in for a sick good time. His movies are also surprisingly intelligent. Underneath the blood and violence there's a lot of subtle things going on. So Chambers and her arm penis lust for blood. The only problem is that her victims turn into zombies that foam at the mouth and lust for blood themselves, a fact that she doesn't become aware of till it's too late. They're mindless zombies, but they can be killed like normal people and in fact, they actually die by themselves if they're left alone. So why does the epidemic spread till It's taken over the whole city of Quebec? I think the subtle implication is the government is incompetent and doesn't realize what's going on until it's too late and they end up pretty much just acting as a clean up crew for bodies. What's funny about that is the movie was itself partially funded by the Canadian government as part of it's program to further the Canadian art scene. I guess governments aren't that great at grabbing subtle things. So...what of our porn star, Marylin Chambers? She's surprisingly good actually. She's not great but if you didn't know that she was a porn star, you'd have no idea. It's kind of funny though because there's several scenes that seem like they could have been made for a porn film, except instead of sex there's violence and blood. Take an early scene, for example, where Marylin wanders into a barn and the horny redneck farmer finds her. Total porn set up right? Except the farmer gets a needle penis to the eye instead of getting into Chambers pants. I don't think Cronenberg planned it that way, but thats the way it came across, at least to me. It's sad that Chambers didn't have much of a career in mainstream film after this because I think she would have fit quite well. This was made in 1977 after the general publics fascination with porn had worn off which is probably one of the reasons why she ended up going back to porn after this. I love Cronenburg and I would highly recommend any of his films and this is a very good early one. Marylin Chambers is hot as all hell, Santa gets gunned down, and you get to see a zombie movie that doesn't follow the rules of the game.
Daylight (1996) To paraphrase Spoony, some movies are awesome because they're well made films. Some movies are awesome in spite of the fact(or maybe because of the fact) that they're terrible. Daylight one of the second type, like most disaster movies. It manages to entertain despite the fact that it's completely implausible and, to put it nicely, shit-balls retarded. Stallone stars, in what he said at the time would be his last action film which of course was a lie, as a taxi driver that used to be the head of some sort of city funded rescue team. He's a taxi driver because something happened on his last gig and a bunch of people died. They explain it but it's not important. Like most disaster movies all the characters are paper thin cliches that spout inane dialog that makes the writer part of me cringe whenever they speak. Stallone has a speech about the first guy that ate oysters that had me laughing pretty hard. I'd love to meet the screenwriter and ask him what the hell he was thinking. But anyways, some guys are illegally hauling toxic waste through a tunnel when some morons that stole a car crash into them and all their trucks explode causing the tunnel to collapse and trap our walking cliches inside. Whats really funny is that everyone in that tunnel should have been dead since they all get enveloped in a HUGE FUCKING FIRE BALL! There's no way being in their cars would have saved them and there's no explanation as to why those people survived and everyone else got roasted. I guess they lucky ones had their windows rolled up. So everyone's trapped and Stallone has to go in and rescue them! Yah! Well actually he comes to rescue them and then tells them he really didn't have a good plan for getting out once he got into the tunnel. Then they all bitch at him. Throughout the course of the movie the tunnel collapses, spews fire and water, and tries to kill as many of the annoying sobs as possible. Towards the end Stallone gets really pissed and starts screaming at the tunnel. Then he blows it up. It's a stupid ending to a really stupid movie mostly because EVERYONE SHOULD BE DEAD RIGHT FROM THE START! Oh well, at least the special effects look good, and thats the only reason anyone watches these things anyways. Shit gets blown up real good, bad actors try to emote, the laughably 90s end theme song plays and we all go home, thankful that we're not trapped in a tunnel with the guy who starred in Stop or My Mom Will Shoot. Wait. Where was Madison Stone? That's the only reason I rented this thing, where was my porn star? Madison's part was so small I actually missed it the first time and had to hunt her down in the credits which said that she played a reporter. I couldn't really remember a part with any reporters though, except for a scene early in the movie that might have been it. I rewound it and, lo and behold, there she was, sitting at a typewriter for literally like a second during a pan over in an office scene. I hardly recognized her since she had this weird wig on and looked like an old lady! That pissed me off! Madison was an alright actress, why didn't Hollywood giver her a chance? Oh well, if I ever make a movie I'll be sure give her tattoo parlor(www.myspace.com/madisontattoos)a call and see if she wants to be in it. Oh well, this movie was a stupid good time. It'd be a great movie to rip apart with friends. Be sure to check out the making of documentary on the DVD to see how some of the impressive special effects were done and listen to the director blab on till you want to pop his over-sized head with a pin. Oh and be sure to watch the included music video which is 90s cheese at it's very best.
So that was the first installment of Porn in Mainstream Film. Next time we'll be looking at a comedy about the porn industry, a drama and a documentary about the porn industry, and some more b-movies starring porno actors. It should be a good time. Thanks for reading!
Netflix sent me a broken DVD. A glitchy unplayable disc that turned the screen into a nightmarish blur of pixels and froze up my DVD player. This was a godsend because the movie happened to be Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2 which is currently sitting at #1 on IMDB's Bottom 100 list. It's the last film of Bob Clark who directed both Porky's movies, Black Christmas, and both A Christmas Story and it's little known sequel, It Runs in the Family. It also stars Jon Voight who won an Oscar for 1978s Coming Home and Scott Baio who loved Chachi and give Cartman pinkeye. At least two of those three people should fucking know better! In the opening Jon Voight gets beat up by a five year old. But thats not really the most cringe worthy thing. The thing that made me put my hands over my eyes was the incredibly fucking creepy CGI lips they put on the babies to get them to talk. I only got sixteen minuets in and I was already light-headed from taking shots of schnapps after every terrible joke and uncanny valley'd lip movement. I'm glad I don't have to watch anymore of this piece of shit. I don't know why I started on this project in the first place. These movies defy description. They deserve to be shot into the sun or buried under the ground or melted down and used as bedpans in hospitals. They don't deserved to be watched because by watching them we validate their existence which they really don't deserve at all. So, I failed but at least I learned something. I learned that there are bad movies, and then there are godawful pieces of shit that no one in their right mind would sit through unless they had a fucking gun to their heads. Movies like this are depressing. They're depressing because people put time and effort into making them. Someone thought up the idea, someone sat down and wrote a script. Other people wrote the painfully awful jokes. They had a casting call and people auditioned to be in this fucking thing. Sets were built, time was spent directing and editing and finishing and all to create this abomination. I feel broken. Even though it wasn't my fault that I couldn't watch anymore than sixteen minuets of this thing, I was seriously already struggling not to turn it off and throw the DVD against the wall. I could have fast-forwarded and watched as much as I could, but I really had no will. I just wanted it to end. At two movies in, this project is officially over. I'll still review bad movies but no more from the Bottom 100. I don't know if my soul can take anymore of this.
Next time: Porn! Well, sort of: all the porn-related stuff you can get on Netflix! Porn actors in mainstream films, porn documentaries, mainstream films about porn, and R-rated edited for content porn films. Huzzah! I feel a little better just thinking about it...
Edit: And no, I'm not putting up clips from Youtube. This film deserves to die and the only way that's going to happen is if we ignore it's existence. (Slams head against wall till forehead is bleeding.) There, what was I writing about again? Oh well, I guess I forgot! I also forgot my middle name, dammit...
Okay, I meant to post this a couple days ago after I watched it, but I've been distracted. Hopefully everyone's had enough time to see it already.
Ian's Review:
I'm quickly becoming a big fan of claymation, simply because it's such a fun looking medium and even if nothing else is going on in a movie it's still interesting to me to watch inanimate objects movie. I don't know if I saw any Wallace and Gromit as a kid, but I did see this movie and remembered that I enjoyed it, but didn't remember much else about it. So in that regard, I found this viewing quite satisfying.
The plot is fairly well formed for a 80 minute film and I didn't dectect much, if any, pandering to children or adults. The characters are all fun to look at although some of the chickens look a little too similar, but with 80 or so on screen from time to time what could I expect. The characters are a little bit one-dimensional and only Ginger seems to have a real personality, but the others are good for a few laughs.
My favorite thing I would have to say, after some of the gags, was probably the colors, everything looks rich but not garish, it wasn't neon pastel, there were real earthy tones with highlights of pleasing colors throughout the film.
My only real complaint would be Mel Gibson, and not so much the man himself (because this movie was cast long before he became a disreputable character), but he's just not a voice actor. I'm not saying they need someone with a super cartoon-y voice like Tom Kenny, just someone who would take the part seriously. The cocky self-assured-ness fits the character, but it sounds like Mel didn't really care about the role from time to time. The other voice actors fit perfectly, even if some (Mr. / Mrs. Tweedy) were more or less stock voices.
All in all, I'd give the film 4 out of 5, if you like claymation or a fun silly story you'll enjoy it quite a bit, but it's not something I'd call a "must-see".
I have seen both of these movies just right now, and let me tell you: they're not for the faint of heart. Let me just tell you some things about the movies themselves before I do my reviews:
Nobody under at least 13 who has never seen a bloody horror movie before should avoid these movies. Hell, even in "Flower", they warn you that it should be forbidden to sell the movie to anybody under 18. I am 14, and I got sick watching this. These movies are Passion of the Christ times 50. These are Dawn of the Dead times 70. And they're My Little Pony times infinity in creepiness. Read back on my old posts and you'll see I've also seen a man get a metal tube lodged up his ass. But I didn't get sick watching that. I cringed, but I didn't puke. Both of these movies made me sick. So, test yourself: do you puke watching Tetsuo when he gets that probe trapped in his ass? Then you should not watch this movie. Do you cry when you see his dick morph into a drill? Then you should not watch this movie.I'm not saying don't watch it: if you're that sick, watch the whole freaking thing. Rewind it and wank to the bloodiest scenes. I could give a damn. Just know that I don't condone this.
Flower of Flesh and Blood (1985), directed by Hideshi Hino
This movie is described on Wikipedia as a "snuff film", where people are shown to be violently murdered. Apparently, some people wank to this. If you wank to this, good for you, you bastard.
For some background: Charlie Sheen actually sent this movie to the FBI because he thought it depicted someone actually being killed. Hino had to prove this movie's murder scenes were all fake. Same with Cannibal Holocaust.
Oh, and I watched the whole movie with no sound. It came with subtitles. I didn't need any audio. And you don't need audio. Just have some Cannibal Corpse in the background and you have the appropriate sound you need.
The movie itself starts off with a woman being stalked and chased by a man. He eventually catches her and smothers her. We are taken to her being bound and gagged, apparently at this man's domicile. There's blood all over the walls. And she hasn't even been touched yet, mind you.
She's tied to a bed and can't get up. Standing before her is a man dressed as a shogun sharpening a weapon. She tries even harder to escape. He picks up a chicken and says "This is your fate." He cuts off its head with a scythe.
You see all of this. And I don't dare make this up.
He drugs her, and then cuts her clothes off. He then proceeds to cut her apart. And it starts with her hand. He doesn't just slit her wrist like some emo hipster prick, no: he cuts it OFF. And he's clearly getting a boner off of this. The camera constantly cuts to the tools. You're just thinking, "Which one will he use next?"
The rest of the movie follows about the same: it's very slow paced, which makes it even harder to watch. It is purely a sadistic hour of cutting limbs off of this poor girl and watching the blood splatter and the bones crack. And all the while, she can't feel it.
To watch this, I had to go to the bathroom a couple of times. I needed to get away from it. It took me 5 minutes, and then I'd come back and sit through the rest. This happened 10 times.
This movie is nothing tasteless violence. If you thought GTA had tasteless violence, then Flower will steer you in the right direction. Cutting off the woman's limbs is supposed to be sexual to this samurai dude. I will not recommend anyone to see it. But if you're going to, or if you have to because of a dare, then let me just warn you: you will not be able to sleep for the whole night. I think I'm going to hell for watching this movie. And I'm an atheist. 1/10.
Our next movie is pretty much just as bad but...it serves as a fake documentary of, well...cannibals.
Cannibal Holocaust (1980)
While Flower had violence towards a single woman, this movie is all around violence: it's violence towards women, animals, men, fetuses, monkeys, and most of all, the audience.
How bad is it?
16 minutes in: man falls on top of a skeleton covered in maggots.
18 minutes in: native cuts up a live rat.
19 minutes in: another native eats live rat's innards.
20 minutes in: native fucks a woman with a hard rock. Both of them are covered in mud.
21 minutes in: makes woman's vadge bleed with a ball of rocks and mud. He actually kills her.
30 minutes in: natives smoke a woman out of the trees.
31 minutes in: savage beating
Still 31 minutes in: cutting a native's stomach open
32 minutes in: hardcore mud fucking. Again.
52 minutes open: they basically cut up a turtle.
1 hour in: natives cut the face off of a monkey.
1:10 to 1:13: natives perform a live, homemade abortion and stone the mother to death.
And I skipped over the stonings, the impalings, and the missing piranha scene. This movie is gruesome. Extremely graphic. But to some, it actually serves as a social commentary. What to us is civilized and uncivilized? What to us is taboo and what to others is regular life is different. Both films illustrate this to a degree, but it's mostly Cannibal Holocaust which begs the question.
That doesn't make it any less disgusting and graphic, but it had a helluva lot more meaning than Flower did. It at least warrants a 5/10.
To a degree, Cannibal Holocaust has a bit more credibility as a film than Flower does. And by a bit more, I mean this movie has an understandable plot. It may be fake, but at least there's a damn story. It's not a psychotic bastard cutting a woman up to add her to his body part collection. It's a bit more in that. It's still pretty a bad movie, but it's not as bad as Flower of Flesh and Blood. It has a plot. Not a good one, but it's a plot.
I write this the day after I saw these: I got 6 hours of sleep. Normally, I can get 10, but I could not sleep thinking about these movies. If you're going to see them, do it over a weekend and not on a Sunday so you don't fall asleep during math class or whatever it is adults do. -jmm
Wow. Apparently, 1978 was a really good year for horror movies. You had the John Carpenter masterpiece that was "Halloween", and now you have George A. Romero's zombie flick, "Dawn of the Dead". Why couldn't I have been born 7 years before that and have the shit scared out of me by these movies? Why?!
And it had no trouble with that, because this movie starts with a SWAT team raiding a building. Bullets flying, Puerto Ricans dying, it's all a crazy wave of violence and police brutality. And THEN the zombies start coming! People get bitten, zombies get shot, at least one of the police dudes kinda looks like Mark Hammil: it's starting to get really bloody! In the first 15 minutes, I counted like 30 people dying (and that's including zombies). Shit, 16 minutes into it, the two cops shoot up an entire room filled with zombies.
Oh yeah, and there's a plot. A couple of cops and their friends are trying to escape Philadelphia and head to Canada to escape the zombie hordes. On their way, they end up stopping at a shopping mall as a place to rest. They find supplies and everything they need to outrun the zombie apocalypse.
I really don't want to spoil it like I did with the last two movies. I'll just leave it at that.
Well...okay, the girl's pregnant.
I'll leave you to squirm now.
All in all, I love the violence and story in the movie, as I always do with Romero's work. The entire theme of being trapped in a mall has always been interesting (I've seen this movie a few times and play Dead Rising endlessly). The story is always engaging. There's never a slow moment in the whole movie. Definite 10/10.
Highlights:
Peter (played by Ken Foree) has to shoot two little kids who have turned into zombies. I shit you not: two cute, adorable, blonde-haired zombie kids run at him and try to bite him. He takes them both out with an M16. I was on the floor in hysterics because it all looked so damn funny.
In the beginning, a woman tries to hug her zombie husband. Lady: his skin's gray, his eyes are dead, he's not your husband anymore. Get the fuck away from him! Apparently, the zombie must've heard what I said, because he bit her shoulder off (and it looked like he had just bit into styrofoam. And he probably did.)
Dead Rising is a rip-off of this movie. Two of the cops even get weapons out of a damn gun shop. Everything you can do in that game was probably done in this damn movie.
This movie laughed in my face by accomplishing my two greatest wishes: running around with zombies in a mall and sliding down the banister of an escalator. Damn you, Romero!
My guess is that Romero was a fan of classic cartoons, The Three Stooges, The Marx Bros. or Laurel and Hardy: there's an entire scene where bikers tear up the mall and spray seltzer and throw pies at the zombies.
This movie ends with what would eventually be the Robot Chicken theme song. Enough said!
------------------ ADDENDUM ------------------ I promised the next review would be of "Flower of Flesh and Blood", the second movie in the Japanese Ginni Piggu series. However, I've had some trouble finding it. I only now started loading it. So, that'll have to come tomorrow.
But, to make up for it, it'll be a Gory Double-Feature: Flower of Flesh and Bloodand one of the most gory, controversial movies out there: Cannibal Holocaust.
------------------------------------------ ADDENDUM TO THE ADDENDUM ------------------------------------------- As you can see, I posted the reviews already. Never mind the bullshit up top.
