Happy Valentine's Day!

It's the time of year when people's (and crabs') thoughts turn to luuuurve. On that note, it's time for some sexy sex... SMITH STYLE!

"Both of them were experiencing something which had lain dormant in them for so long. Rapidly they were getting out of control. Nothing else mattered... not even the giant crabs!"
Night of the Crabs

"...her reply was lost in the moans and writhings of their united bodies as they reached the ultimate possible peak of pleasure which any man and woman can climb."
Night of the Crabs

"She made no attempt to hold back her tears; lots of women cried when they reached their orgasm."
Doomflight

"She sat astride him, displaying the full talents of her horsemanship..."
Locusts

"Hurry up, Rog, I'm lying here in the nude desperate to be screwed. There's locusts hanging from the ceiling but don't worry about them."
Locusts

"Her nipples stood out stiff and straight, and Ron Blythe had no doubt she was fully aroused. Some inexplicable reserves were aiding her in an effort to mate with a man for the last time in her life."
Thirst

"Those twin orbs glowed with lust. It saw and understood. I'm going to crawl there as well."
Carnivore

"I... couldn't hold out... any longer. I need... it. Badly!"
Entombed

Phew... is anyone else getting the vapours?

City of the Living Dead (1980)

Bob (Giovanni Lombardo Radice) is bored to death

City of the Living Dead is another film in Lucio Fulci's "zombie trilogy". Like his other films, it eschews traditional storytelling for an atmosphere of dread and gory setpieces, a technique that would be further refined in his next offering, The Beyond.

The film opens in New York, where are bunch of fun-loving occultists are trying to have a chat with the spirit world. During the seance, Maria (Katriona MacColl, from House by the Cemetery) has a vision of a priest hanging himself in the sleepy town of Dunwich (the fictional town featured in many of H.P. Lovecraft's stories). In doing so, he has left the gate to hell open and a bunch of zombies have walked in and tracked mud all over the the house. If it isn't shut by All Saint's Day, it'll stay open forever. Well, that's just great! After her vision, Mary has a psychic seizure and dies of shock.

This kind of movie wouldn't be complete without a nosy reporter, this time taking the form of the cigar chomping Peter Bell (Christopher George) . When he visits Mary's grave the next day, he hears screams coming from inside the coffin! He grabs a pick-axe and starts laying into it, almost trepanning Mary in the process (I like to think he thought she was a zombie and was trying to kill her). After an exposition-heavy visit to the psychic from the seance, they decide to drive to Dunwich and see if they can close the gate to hell, maybe put some of those self-closing hinges on it.

Meanwhile, strange things are going on in Dunwich. Smoke-spewing cracks are opening up in walls, windows and mirrors are spontaneously exploding, walls are bleeding etc. The undead are walking around with no regard for local loitering laws. Actually, in this film the zombies behave more like ghosts, appearing and disappearing at will. The zombie priest uses his teleportation ability to spy on some teenagers making out. His disapproving glare has a detrimental effect on the girl... she starts crying blood and then barfs up all her internal organs. I did the same thing when my mother walked in on me masturbating. He then grabs a handful of the guys head and tears out a chunk of his brain matter.

We are also introduced to a psychiatrist Gerry (Carlo De Mejo), and his patient Sandra (Janet Agren). Gerry's girlfriend Emily (Antonella Interlenghi) has had a fatal visitation from the zombie priest. He shoved a handful of worms in her face, which would be a pretty awesome prank if you were seven years old, but in this case she died of fright. She soon comes back as a zombie and murders her parents.

Meanwhile, despite the fact that Dunwich seems like a fairly ordinary small town, Peter and Mary are having a hell of a time finding the place. We're an hour into the film and they still haven't arrived. Peter claims it was built on the ruins of Salem, but I always thought that Salem was built on the ruins of Salem. Maybe that's why they can't find it?

One character I haven't mentioned, because his subplot is utterly disposable, is Bob (Giovanni Lombardo Radice). He is a creepy, mentally-handicapped pervert, shunned by the local populace, who likes to sit in abandoned buildings and fondle his spontaneously-inflating sex doll. Bob crops up here and there throughout the movie, stumbling upon corpses and seeing ghosts. Bob meets his end not at the hands of the zombies, but that of a local who thinks Bob's been fiddling with his daughter. Poor Bob gets a table drill right through the cranium, and is never mentioned again.

Anyway, eventually Peter and Mary meet up with Gerry and Sandra. Since it wouldn't be a Fulci film without maggots (Fulci's brother must have owned a maggot farm or something), the windows burst open and little fellas start raining in like wriggly little snowflakes. They manage track down the priests tomb, and once inside it's time for the final showdown with the zombie priest. Before he can do his vomit-inducing party trick on Mary, Gerry (the other two having since been killed) anti-climatically runs him through with a stake. All of the zombies burst into flame and they escape.

As they emerge from the tomb, Emily's little brother John-John, flanked by police officers, runs towards them. For unexplained reasons, Mary screams in terror and the film ends.

I'm definitely not the kind of guy who demands a strict, linear narrative with all subplots neatly wrapped up in a red bow. I don't mind if a director fucks with my head a little bit. With Fulci, however, it seems more like just plain incompetence in basic storytelling. There are a lot of Fulci fans out there who romanticise his lackadaisical approach to plot, even comparing him to Dario Argento. I don't think that's a fair comparison. With Argento, the extreme gore is just one operatic element of a stylistic whole. With Fulci the extreme gore is the raison d'etre. Not that I think there's anything necessarily wrong with that.

Anyway, if a girl puking up her own intestines sounds like something you'd want to see, you should see this film. Then seek professional help.

House by the Cemetery (1981)

You will learn to hate this child.

Along with City of the Living Dead and The Beyond, House by Cemetery completed a trilogy of horror films that defined Fulci's style as a horror director. His films' lack of narrative cohesion, elaborately staged set-pieces and bizarre lingering shots give them a surreality, a dreamlike atmosphere where anything could happen. Which is a fancy way of saying that they make no damn sense. Lucio Fulci is a style-over-substance director, and while his films very much fit the exploitation mold, there is enough attention to visual detail and genuinely memorable shots to make his films worth watching. It's still trash, but when it works, it's glorious.

House by the Cemetery opens with a couple of teens who thought the titular house would be a good place for some sweet, sweet lovin'. The guy gets his head split open and his torso pinned to a door with a pair of scissors, while the girl gets a knife through the back of her head and out her mouth. Her body is dragged away by a strange creature.

Meanwhile in New York, Dr Norman Boyle (Paolo Malco, bearded and in tweed and a turtleneck) has agreed to travel up to his colleague Professor Peterson's New England house for six months, in order to complete Peterson's research. Peterson had been conducting research into suicide, but unfortunately he got a little too into his work and killed his mistress and then himself. Accompanying Dr Boyle is his wife Lucy (Catriona MacColl) and their son Bob (Giovanni Frezza). Bob is a blonde, frog-faced urchin who is having visitations from the ghost of a young girl, warning them away from the house. Bob's atrocious and annoying dubbing sinks any chance of the film being taken seriously.

On their arrival both the real estate agent and the library archivist mention Dr Boyle having visited the town before with a little girl, but he has no recollection of doing so. Don't get attached to this plot point because it is henceforth abandoned entirely.

The house has a boarded up cellar (bad sign!) but comes complete with a caterpillar-eyebrowed, live-in babysitter, Ann (Ania Pieroni). Soon after they move in Dr Boyle finds her prying the boards from the basement door in the middle of the night. Rather than ask her what the hell she's doing he gets into a staring competition with her, wins, and goes back to bed.

It's not long before Dr Boyle discovers that the previous owner of the house, Dr Freudstein (heh) was suspended from the Medical Association for "illegal experiments", and Mrs Boyle finds his tomb in the middle of the lounge room floor. Lucy is understandably upset, but Norman claims that there are a lot of indoor tombs in the area because the ground freezes up in winter. This would be a fine excuse if the house wasn't by a cemetery!

Soon after unlocking the cellar door they suffer a protracted attack from a fake-looking bat. After what seems like a good ten minutes, Dr Boyle stabs it to death, spilling far more blood than you would expect to find in a 2 pound mammal. That's the last straw for the Boyles, and they decide to see the real estate agent about finding a new home. Her apathetic assistant promises he will send her by that evening, but I guess they forgot because when she drops by later no-one is home. She gets her leg caught in the newly uncovered tomb and is brutally stabbed to death.

The next morning Ann is cleaning up bloodstains and acting in her typically suspicious manner. I don't know if the blood is from the bat or the real estate agent, but either way Lucy doesn't seem perturbed by it. All of Ann's sinister behaviour, however, amounts to sod all, because later that day she gets herself locked in the basement and her throat slashed not once, not twice, but thrice. Bob almost bites it too, but unfortunately he escapes. When he heads down there with his mother there is no sign of Ann nor the copious amount of blood spilled mere moments ago. This is stupid.

Meanwhile Dr Boyle is trying to find the tomb of Dr Freudstein in the cemetery. The caretaker informs him that it isn't there. Gee, you don't suppose it could have anything to do with the tomb in your living room floor. The one marked Freudstein?!

Anyway, some time later Bob gets trapped in the basement again (stop toying with me, Lucio!) This time, he finds the undead Freudstein and the bodies of the victims he uses to keep himself alive. During the rescue attempt, his parents get themselves locked in the basement too (this happens all the time in this film, have you noticed?) Dr Boyle stabs Freudstein and maggots pour from the wound. Unaffected, Freudstein tears this throat out. The remaining two attempt to escape but Mrs Boyle gets dragged down the stairs, her head audibly thumping on each step. Bob manages to escape just in time (damn it!!) thanks to the help of the little girl. Suddenly the house is back as it was a hundred years ago and Bob and the little girl are led away by Mrs Freudstein to an unknown fate.

After this head-scratcher of an ending, the film finishes with a title card of a barely relevant Henry James quote, but at least it's spelled correctly.

Fulci's films often seem like they were edited by throwing darts at a wall, and this one is no exception. The pacing seems off kilter, and subplots are built up and then never mentioned again. Undiscriminating gorehounds, however, will definitely enjoy this film. The special effects (from Gianetti De Rossi, working previously with Fulci on Zombi 2) are fantastic, but the shots linger just a bit too long, exposing their fakery. Also, Fulci's obsession with eyes reaches a ridiculous height in this film. The characters frequently engage in bizarre staring contests. This film is tolerable when taken as a gory stylistic exercise, but thinking about the plot for more than a few seconds will make your brain hurt.

Cannibal Holocaust (1980)

It's like the Swiss Family Robinson if they were cannibals...
and yes, I'd like to read that book very much

The vast majority of my movie reviews so far have been of cheap Italian zombie films, so I thought I'd branch off a bit and review a cheap Italian cannibal film. Hey, I didn't say I'd branch out very far!

The cannibal genre has it's roots in the Mondo, a kind of Italian pseudo-documentary that catalogued bizarre and shocking practices from around the world. It began in 1962 with the film Mondo Cane (literally "Dog World") and the genre was popular throughout the 60s. The cannibal genre began in earnest with Umberto Lenzi's Man From Deep River in 1972 and by 1980 the audiences wised up and realised just how cheap and despicable the films were, and Ruggero Deodato's Cannibal Holocaust is largely to blame.

Cannibal Holocaust follows the standard cannibal film template. A group TV execs task a team headed by Professor Harold Monroe (Robert Kerman, you can tell he's an academic because he wears a tweed suit and smokes a pipe) to find out what happened to a documentary crew who disappeared in the Amazon jungle. The first half of the film mostly consists of the group trekking through the jungle with the help of a captive Yacomo native. On their journey they witness a native woman being punished for adultery with a primitive dildo that certainly isn't ribbed for her pleasure. Eventually they meet up with the Yacomo tribe and gain their trust by exposing their wing-wongs. Once at the village, they are offered a delicious stew, freshly regurgitated by native women. Yummy! Eventually they are led to their destination, the lands of the warring Yanomamo and Shamatari tribes. By killing some of the Shamatari, they gain the trust of the Yanamamo tribe and soon discover the gruesome fate of the documentary crew. Monroe manages to trade some of his equipment for the missing film cannisters.

One he gets back to civilisation, he tries to find out a little bit more about the filmmakers. He discovers that they not well liked and may employ questionable methods in their quest for newsworthy footage. He shows the TV executives the recovered film, and we spend the remainder of the film watching the footage.

The three-man, one-woman film crew are immediately established as a bunch of dicks. They jabber on about how famous this footage will make them and act like jerks to everyone around them. Once in the jungle, they decide to film themselves killing some animals because, I guess, that's what TV audiences want to see.

Now, it takes a lot to offend me. I've seen enough of these kind of films to realise that it's useless getting worked up over some cheap piece of exploitative trash (after all, I keep watching them). An Italian covered in pig guts I can deal with, but the thing that appalls me about this film is the animal cruelty. Monkeys, snakes, muskrats and turtles are mutilated and killed onscreen. Apart from being morally despicable, it's cheap and lazy filmmaking. The shock and disgust it engenders quickly turns to loathing for Deodato and his crew.

The crew end up meeting with the Yanomamo, but fail to obtain the juicy violence their audience craves. In order to create more compelling material for their shock-doc, they rape and murder their way through the cannibal village until the natives decide to turn the tables. In a lengthy sequence, several of the filmmakers are raped, killed and mutilated while the surviving crew members hide nearby and film it all. In the end the cannibals discover their hiding spot and beat them to death.

In the end the TV executives order the film burned and, because Deodato must consider his audience a bunch of idiots, the film ends with Monroe wondering "who the real savages are". Perhaps it was the bunch of cynical Italian dirtbags who decided that animal mutilation made for compelling cinema, and worse, hypocritically asserted that it was in service of a profound message about ruthless filmmakers?

Whereas a lot of cannibal films play out like gory adventure flicks, full of corny dialogue and hammy performances, Cannibal Holocaust's tone is somber and serious. Technically, the film is quite accomplished, especially among the lenient standards of the cannibal genre. It works best in during the mock-documentary portion, where the grimy, low-tech feel lend an authenticy and hide any rough edges in the special effects. The gore effects in particular are very convincing.

In order to generate publicity for the film, Deodato had the actors sign contracts stating they wouldn't appear in public for a year after the completion of filming. Unfortunately his plan backfired, and upon his return to Italy, Deodato was prosecuted for making a snuff film. He demonstrated to the court how some of the more convincing gore effects were achieved (the infamously impaled woman, for instance, sat on a hidden bicycle seat with a piece of balsa wood in her mouth) and appeared on television with some of the actors. He cleared himself of the murder charges, but he was charged under obscenity laws due to the animal mutilation. For a long time the film was banned in many countries, or released in a truncated form.

If you can stomach it, I'd give this film a chance. It's central message is ham-fisted and hypocritical, but it's genuinely powerful and far more accomplished than most cannibal films. Of course, that's like being the smartest kid in Special Ed.

Guy N. Smith Book Review - Bats out of Hell

Professor Brian Newman is busy researching meningitis on bats when he accidentally creates some sort of bat-borne supervirus. Whoops! Rather than kill all the bats, he decides to wait around for a few days and hope things blow over. Unfortunately, he gets into a fight with his girlfriend/lab assistant, the cage is smashed and the bats disappear out of a convenient open window. Let the carnage begin!

First to die are a couple of horses, an unfortunate motorist and a little girl. Newman's unbearably smug colleagues refuse to believe their deaths are caused by his bats. Soon, though, the death toll rises to the hundreds, then to the thousands as widespread panic leads to riots and looting. The Prime Minister declares a state of emergency and a trigger happy British Volunteer Force attempt to contain the infection. Birmingham is burnt to the ground, though, so I guess the bats aren't all bad.

Between you and me, I don't think Newman is a very good scientist. He routinely confuses the terms "virus", "bactera" and "toxin", plus he makes repeated references to the bats' "radar" (they actually use sonar). Every experiment he attempts ends in failure and the only reason he manages to defeat the bats in the end is because of some article he saw in Scientific American, of all places.

The book concludes with one of Smith's favourite characters, the gamekeeper, musing about how science has upset the natural balance of things, and it will only be restored when mankind is wiped out.

Compared to some of Smith's other novels, this one doesn't seem particularly well researched. All of the science and bat biology is pretty much glossed over, pushing the would-be hero into the background. When he does appear, he is usually sitting around feeling sorry for himself while his lab assistant gives him backrubs and strokes his ego. He doesn't even have sex with her! In fact, there is no sex whatsoever in this book (the second Smith book I've read in a row to feature a distinct lack of sex), although Newman's girlfriend is almost raped by a gang of incensed anti-vivisection thugs before the cops reluctantly intervene.

Aside from one or two scenes of mayhem, this book doesn't have a lot to offer. Later in his career Smith managed to produce some highly entertaining animals-on-the-rampage disaster books, but this early offering is a little limp in comparison. It doesn't even have much of the trashy lunacy that makes his books so much fun to read. I'd pass on this unless you are a dedicated Smithophile.

Hell of the Living Dead (1981)

Imagine their embarrassment when they all showed up at the
Dawn of the Dead convention dressed as Roger

The viewing public were ravenous for more zombie films after the success of Dawn of the Dead and Zombi 2, and a group of Spanish and Italian producers were ready to offer dozens of dollars to a reliable hack. Stepping up to the plate were the one-two punch that is director Bruno Mattei and writer Claudio Fragasso, showing that whatever competent genre filmmakers can do, they can do worse, but cheaper. This film goes by more aliases than a con-artist on the lam, in what is undoubtedly an attempt to fool hapless consumers. Even Mattei is credited as Vincent Dawn. However, a turd, by any other name, would reek just as bad.

Like many cheap Italian zombie films, it opens with stock footage of a chemical plant. This is the Hope Center, one of a number of UN funded installations in developing countries with the aim of solving world hunger. The project is called "Sweet Death", which is admittedly a pretty cool name. Inside the center, a bunch of guys in lab coats are doing some science. You know what they are doing must be important because there are lots of buttons and gauges. Professor Barrett is talking to Fowler, a technician who looks like he should be shooting Calvin Klein ads in wind tunnels.

Meanwhile couple of guys are taking measurements in a supposedly sterile area of the plant. I'm not sure what they're measuring, but the readings can't be very accurate because the position of the needle is being manually controlled by a dial right next to the gauge. They discover a dead rat which comes to life and starts munching away on one of the scientists while the other stands there and watches (this seems to be a common reaction in this film). Pretty soon the whole plant is being filled with a zombifying green gas. Professor Barrack manages to retreat to his office and record your standard "May God forgive us" speech before he falls victim to the deadly gas.

We now cut to the American Consulate (in Spain, I presume), where a bunch of terrorists have taken hostages and are demanding that the Hope Centers be shut down. A group of four Interpol commandos have been called in and they are wearing eye-searing blue outfits that will look familiar to anyone who has seen Dawn of the Dead. Following a reminder by their commander not to get their "balls wasted", they storm the consulate. Sure, their methods may seem brutal, slitting the throats of unarmed terrorists may not be strictly by-the-book, but you can't argue with their results! As the final terrorist gasps his final breath, he tells them that they are "doomed to be eaten up".

On their next assignment our crack team is off to Papua New Guinea, where the women are "naked and wild". Once there they get busy pissing on some native graves and generally acting like assholes. It is here that we first see one of many egregious uses of grainy documentary footage. You see, in an attempt to lend authenticity to the exterior sets, Mattei spliced in copious amounts of footage from La Vallée, a 1972 French pseudo-documentary about remote New Guinea tribespeople. It didn't work.

Meanwhile, a couple in serious need of counseling are seeking help for their zombie-bitten child. Joining them are obligatory annoying reporter Lia (Margit Evelyn Newton) and her cameraman Max (Josep Lluís Fonoll). They seek help at an abandoned mission but pretty soon the kid is chowing down on the dad while everyone stands around vomiting. The Interpol dudes show up and the kid gets blasted about a dozen times (and unlike Romero, Mattei is not above showing us the full monty). All the Interpol guys and the two journalists manage to escape.

It is about now that the annoying reporter decides she has to go ahead and meet with the natives, which involves doffing her top and painting targets on her nipples while she jogs about ten feet in front of their jeep. Needlessly to say, this is awesome. Apparently her nudity does the trick, and soon everyone is kicking back with the natives. It's now that Mattei starts splicing in documentary footage with reckless abandon. We see random shots of native burial rituals (very tasteful, Mattei) while the protagonists interact with natives that look nothing like those in the documentary. When Mattei runs out of doco footage, native zombies appear and our heroes beat a retreat.

After an argument that ends in a gunpoint confrontation and a few other shennanigans, they stumble upon a large house and split up to investigate. One commando discovers a zombie granny with a cat nesting inside her, while another, upon discovering a large wardrobe in the cellar, dons a green tutu, top hat and cane and does an impromptu dance routine. His bizarre musical interlude is fatally interrupted by ravenous zombies and soon everyone is forced to escape.

Eventually they make it to the Hope Center and Lia unravels the true purpose of the experiments. It seems that they were trying to develop a chemical to turn the citizens of the third world into flesh-eating zombies so they can eat each other out of existence. That kind of misguided, letting-the-problem-solve-itself thinking would be a neat piece of social criticism in the hands of a better filmmaker. Unfortunately Lia's tardy realisation doesn't stop her from getting a zombie hand down her throat and her eyeballs popped out from the inside. All of the Interpol guys get eaten up too. You should have listened to that terrorist, dudes!

The film concludes with a tacked-on epilogue that implies the virus has made it's way to the first world.

There is a lot to hate about this film. The acting ranges from bad to abysmal, and is often hilarious. The dubbing is atrocious and done in service of nonsensical dialogue. The gore effects, though plentiful, are mostly cheap and unconvincing. The doco footage seems to have been clumsily edited in with the use of a meat cleaver and sello tape.

Also, Mattei's shameless pilfering from better films is even more obvious than usual. I haven't even mentioned the soundtrack, which consists entirely of music lifted from Dawn of the Dead and a few other Goblin-scored films.

With all these problems and more, I can't help but have a lot of love for this film. When I'm in need of a good laugh it never fails. Invite all your friends around, crack open a beer, and give this film a go. You will not regret it, unless you are expecting competent film-making.

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