Body Count (1987)

Hey look, I think I see the 1980s.

Slasher films are like comfort food. They aren't good for you but you know exactly what you're going to get. I picked up this particular slasher because of director Ruggero Deodato (Cannibal Holocaust) and although it's known under the titles The Eleventh Commandment and Camping Del Terrore, Body Count is probably the most accurate. It's a transparent attempt to appeal to the American market but it was pretty late in the game to be cashing in on slasher mania. People were already tiring of the formula and the Friday the 13th series had lapsed into winking self-parody. Still, I was hoping Deodato could put a twist in the slasher formula by cross-pollinating it with the stylised violence and absurd exploitation that makes Italian horror so much fun.

As the film begins John Steiner (Cobra Mission) appears as a doctor with nothing better to do but hang out at high school basketball games and examine teenage athletes. Kind of suspicious behaviour now that I think about it. His daughter (who looks about 30) heads out into the woods with her boyfriend for sexytimes, and during a post-coital walk in the woods she gets knifed by a mysterious killer known as "The Shaman". He may look like a guy in a crappy Halloween mask but he's well-prepared, bringing along a matching curly wig so he can fool her boyfriend and then knife him too. Now that's planning ahead.

Cutting to fifteen years later, a group of obnoxious teens are on an aimless road trip through Colorado in an RV. There is Tony the cool one, Tracy the Southern belle, Sissy the slutty blonde with huge hair, Carol the forgettable-one-who-will-probably-become-the-Final-Girl and Sidney, a particularly annoying variation on the fat prankster archetype (ie the Shelley). Along the way they pick up Ben Ritchie, a friendly young chap who is returning home after military service. He insists that they head out to his family's nearby campsite, the stalking ground of the Shaman. This comes as an unwelcome surprise to his father Robert Ritchie (David Hess) who has long since closed the campsite and has already had to deal with a trio of outdoorsy teens who have decided to camp here too (Sharon, Scott and Dave, no fucking way am I writing out all the actor credits for all this slasher spam, go check imdb if you're interested).

Scott and Sharon are the first to go, killed while on a kayaking/rock climbing expedition. Scott is pushed off a cliff with such force that by the time he hits the ground his hair has changed length and colour. Sharon runs aimlessly into the woods and is knifed by the killer too. Scott actually shows up later in the film, somehow stumbling back to camp and then lapsing into a coma. Nobody seems particularly disturbed by this development, or the fact that Sharon is missing, and their debauchery continues unabated.

They partake in many fun outdoor activities, such as tooling around on a dirt bike and doing outdoor aerobics. They take great delight in renovating the local shower block so the girls can have a legitimate place to strip off all their clothing, and once it's in working order the girls avail themselves of it at every opportunity. I think there's about six boobs on display in total, eight if you count the fat guy who strips naked at one point. Gradually the teens are picked off one by one and act even more stupid than usual. After one girl's boyfriend is killed she inexplicably runs upstairs and lies on the bed, just so they could rip off Kevin Bacon's arrow-through-the-throat kill in Friday the 13th. Hell, if you're going to rip off Tom Savini effects you'd better be able to cut the mustard and these guys aren't even close.

Turns out that Ben witnessed the original murders those many years ago, and since then his father Robert has become obsessed with the Shaman. Robert's is so consumed by his obsession that it's driven his wife Julia (Mimsy Farmer) into the arms of the sheriff (Charles Napier). I hope the sheriff a better lover than he is a cop, because he seems way more interested in boning her in the woodshed (not a euphemism) than finding the increasing number of missing campers. Since David Hess is contractually obliged to rape or kill at least one woman per film, Robert finds out about the affair and tries to strangle her, but she clocks him on the head and locks his body in the woodshed. It kind of gets complicated with some mistaken identity, but in the end a not-quite-dead Robert kills Julia, locks Carol (who witnessed the crime) in the woodshed and escapes into the woods.

It takes way too long for Carol to realise that there might be something in the woodshed to help her cut her way out, and by the time she chainsaws her way through the door she discovers she is the Final Girl. She and Dave confront the killer and the sheriff finally does something useful by gunning down the killer at the last minute. There have been many hints to suggest that Robert is the killer (not the least of which being that he's played by David Hess who is, as usual, awesome at playing an unhinged nutbag) so it's obvious that it's someone else. The identity of the killer is not much of a surprise but it still leaves several murders unsolved, which the sheriff attributes to the curse of the Shaman. Colorado's finest, ladies and gentlemen.

Much of the film was actually shot in Colorado, so it looks pretty good and there is some decent cinematography. It has some interesting character actors (Ivan Rassimov also makes a brief appearance) and a great soundtrack courtesy of Claudio Simonetti from Goblin, but it's dragged down by an overwhelming sense of familiarity. It's at it's best when it breaks from the slasher mould, such as a surreal nightmare sequence involving severed legs, heads in jars and Fulci-esque showers of maggots. Unfortunately that isn't very often. If you're after 30 year old teens doffing their tops and getting knifed in short order you'll walk away satisfied, but don't let Deodato's name fool you into thinking it's anything other than a generic slasher pic. And in case you're wondering, the body count is 12.

Last Cannibal World (aka Jungle Holocaust) (1977)

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House on the Edge of the Park (1980)

Ceramic dog figurines.
Inexplicably popular amongst the New York elite.

With the remake of 1972's The Last House on the Left on the horizon I thought it would be a good idea to go back and revisit that film. Then I realised I'd already reviewed it, so I settled for the House on the Edge of the Park, a film that arrived eight years after The Last House on the Left graced the drive-ins of the USA, and tried to prove that anything that the Americans can do, the Italians can do sleazier and with more boobs. Helming this effort is Ruggero Deodato, purveyor of fine cannibal-based entertainments, teaming up with actor David Hess, who is essentially reprising his memorable role as a sadistic rapist psycho.

The film begins with Alex (David Hess) cruising down the highway while making faces at a fellow motorist, and just in case the casting of Hess wasn't enough of a clue, he cuts her off and then rapes/murders her in her back seat. At first I thought there was something wrong with my dvd player because during the act the film will occasionally cut to a black screen for a second or two. Afterwards he steals her necklace and wears it as a memento. So, it's pretty clear that he's not a nice guy. An indeterminate amount of time later he's getting ready to boogie with his pal Ricky (he says this about fifty times, so you know he loves to boogie and also possibly the night life). Ricky is played by Giovanni Lombardi Radice, who was last seen with an enormous drill bit through his head in City of the Living Dead. Like his character from that film, he's a few shingles short of a roof, so it's abudantly clear that he's our retarded sidekick who will be manipulated into doing horrible things.

Meanwhile, a pretty girl named Lisa (Annie Belle) and her even prettier boyfriend Tom (Christian Borromeo from Tenebre) are driving along making small talk about the party they are headed to. It's at an isolated house that is presumably on the edge of a park, but like The Last House on the Left it's location doesn't figure into the plot at all. They pull into a parking garage and announce that they have car trouble. Wait, what car trouble? Is it a parking garage or an auto repair shop? Oh well, no matter, because it turns out it's the very garage where Alex and Ricky are getting ready for their night on the town. He offers them forty bucks to fix his car (forty bucks?! My mechanic charges me a hundred just to open the hood) and pretty soon Alex and Ricky have invited themselves along to the party. Awk-ward! Before he leaves Alex grabs a straight razor from his locker, so you know he's got more planned that just boogyin'.

Soon after they arrive it's clear that every one of the five guests are the kind of bored rich fucks you just want to punch in the face on sight. There's even a bald girl with two-tone lipstick who shouts out "Hot diggity!" when they arrive. They all goad Ricky into dancing and performing a strip tease for them, and it becomes clear to Alex that they're just there for these snobs' entertainment. Alex follows Lisa into the kitchen and is seduced by the way she drinks straight from the bottle ("Looks like you're givin' it head!"). She starts flirting with him, only to reject him when things get heavy and she heads upstairs for a shower. Pretty weird behaviour at a party, I know, but David Hess has just been licking her thighs so it's understandable. Upstairs she invites him in to scrub her back then cockblocks him again. What a tease!

Frustrated, Alex heads downstairs to find the rest of them scamming Ricky at a poker game. Scamming a retarded guy, that's pretty low, so Alex starts a fistfight that leaves one of the guys (a caveman looking guy named Howard) bloodied and bruised. He even calls the bald girl a twat. Alex drags Howard outside and tosses him into the pool and pisses on his head while giving a hearty maniacal laugh. He's having a great time. After tying him up he sets about terrorizing the rest of the guests with his razor blade. Tom has no balls, so he does fuck all except sit there and glare for most of the movie. At one point Alex teaches him a lesson by bashing his face against a table so many times I lost count. I assumed he was dead but he only suffers a few cuts and bruises. He doesn't even lose consciousness. He may have no balls, but at least he's resilient.

In every film like this there's got to be a scene where the leader tries to force the retarded sidekick into raping one of the victims in front of everyone. It's a law or something. This film is no exception and naturally Ricky can't go through with it. She tries to escape later and when Ricky chases her down in the greenhouse and she fucks him right there in the geraniums. Maybe it was sudden case of Stockholm Syndrom or maybe she was seduced by his gentlemanly act of not-raping-her. Alex, however, is not a gentleman, and rapes Lisa in an upstairs bedroom. During the act some cheesy soft-porn music kicks and she gets a look on her face like she's totally into it. I don't know if this is supposed to be interpreted as just payback for giving him blue balls, but either way... not classy.

Eventually a tardy guest named Cindy shows up, and when Alex terrorises her, strips her and starts cutting her up with his razor, it's the last straw for Ricky. When he tries to intervene Alex slashes him across the chest. The wound doesn't look fatal, but this doesn't stop Alex from launching into a tearful death scene, cradling Ricky in his arms and sobbing. It's somewhat less than heart-wrenching, but Tom finally mans up and uses the opportunity to grab a pistol from the desk drawer. He shoots Alex in the leg and shoulder, sending him stumbling backwards through the glass door and into the yard, and it's here that Tom reveals the film's big twist, which I'll come back to later. Tom punctuates his speech by blasting Alex right in the balls. This illicits the most cartoony, slow-motion scream I've ever seen. He opens his mouth so wide I could count his fillings (lay off the sweets, Hess). He falls backwards into the pool and several of the guests take turns shooting him. The battered Howard lifts him out of the pool and holds him so close I though he was going to start making out with him, but he just tosses him back in the pool and shoots him. He doesn't piss on his head though, he's not going to stoop to his level.

Now, I guess we are supposed to symphathise with Alex at this point, realising that the victims are a bunch of cold-blooded murderers and really no better than Alex and Ricky. But really, Alex has raped or attempted to rape several women by this point, beaten two of them to a bloody pulp and psychologically tortured them for hours on end, so it's hard not to feel like justice has been served. They were rich assholes, but they didn't deserve that. The only time the party guests get close to crossing the line is when Howard goes to shoot Ricky (yeah, he's still alive) but is convinced to let him live. Plus it's hard to buy Tom as a stone cold killer when he looks like an even girlier version of Cillian Murphy.

Okay the big twist? All aboard the non-stop express to Spoilertown! It turns out that the woman Alex raped and killed at the beginning of the film was Tom's sister and the party was all a set-up so they could goad him into action and then shoot him in "self defence". I don't think I really need to explain why this is dumbest plan in the history of planning. Their decision to let Ricky live will probably have some repurcussions, but Tom seems pretty satisfied with the outcome. In the understatement of the year, he notes that it was more difficult to get at the gun than he thought it would be. Next time maybe you should carry the gun on your person, champ. Just a helpful suggestion. I don't know how they figured out Alex was the rapist, either. I thought maybe he noticed his sister's necklace around his neck, but that couldn't be true because he says that the engine trouble was part of his plan. Oh well, the world is full of mysteries.

With Deodato as a director it probably goes without saying, but the execution is extremely tacky and exploitative. Almost every women in the film strips down bare-ass naked (yay!), usually in the context of a sexual assault or rape (boo!). He isn't subtle about it either, some of the shots of nipples were so close up you could count the bumps on the areoli. There's only one death, but the beatings are very brutal and bloody. Acting is not so great, but with David Hess his ocasionally hammy acting works in the movie's favour. When he's putting on his nice-guy act at the beginning of film it's so obviously false it makes him seem pretty creepy. I'm sure this guy is nice enough in real life, but between this film and The Last House on the Left, I don't know if I'd invite him around to babysit my children. I'm not sure I'd trust him to water my plants. He'd probably rape them.

Obviously the film tries to set-up a bit of class warfare, the rich snobs versus the working class Alex and Ricky. Like an 80s college movie, only with rape and brutal beatings instead of a yacht race or zany fundraiser. The problem is that the punishment Alex dishes out is so extreme compared to the crime (of being assholes) that it's hard to care about him when he finally gets his comeuppance. There was the same problem in The Last House on the Left, but it's even worse here and there isn't even the comical sight of a middle-aged man running around menacing people with a chainsaw to make up for it. At least this film doesn't have an awful comedy subplot about a bumbling sherriff, so score one for Deodato. This is not a bad entry in Deodato's catalogue, especially since he managed to punch out Cannibal Holocaust in the same year. It was a complete flop artistically, but I can't say I didn't enjoy it. If you enjoy watching tasteless filth and depravity, you might enjoy it too.

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.