Tuesday, October 20, 2015

Barricade (2007)

I wouldn't list "Barricade" as one of the highest on the German-splatter shit-o-meter, seeing as how there are some real miserable excuses for this kind of thing out there. That said, this one is still largely lacking in a number of areas - not unlike the majority of this particular sub-genre...

An effeminate, muscular dullard, his visiting New Yorker girlfriend and equally annoying buddy are camping out in the woods of Germany where a family of crazed, deformed cannibals are butchering hikers.

As you would expect, the acting is terrible which doesn't help to 'pump up' the seemingly endless, shittily written dialog. There is WAY too much of these characters and their unimpassioned "casual" banter that, in turn, makes the intermittent cut-aways to mindless dismemberment feel like a vacation. The gore scenes are occasionally decent, but nothing too exceptional (or even plentiful...), save for maybe the wire cutter nip-snip and titty fisting scene. That worked, I guess. Yet, in the film's 'climax' everything falls apart, resulting in a total mess of incomprehensibly shot, unthought out bullshit. Some would-be 'hero' is clumsily introduced who claims to have been tracking the killer inbred family for almost a year after his family was killed by them, but he's killed off immediately, as are the majority of the psycho cannibals. It was like they ran out of money and ideas so they decided to just shoot the remainder of the cast in the head in the span of 5-seconds just to end the movie as fast as possible. Whatever. There you pretty much have another cheap, plotless waste of time brought to you by ambivalent German gore schlocksters. Don't bother.

Monday, October 19, 2015

Evil Stalks This House (1981)

I'm not really sure what this was, exactly. I know it was a made-for-TV movie that aired no more than twice and clearly fell into total obscurity, but based on the alternate title it's listed under, "Tales of the Haunted", I can't help but wonder if it was part of a series or intended to be. Either way, it's actually a pretty cool flick.

A father and his two young children are stalled out at the side of a back road at night when they are offered a ride to the nearest house, occupied by a pair of elderly sisters and an oafish man-child. Turns out, the father has some dubious intentions with their more valuable belongings and when a farmhand in need of work shows up at their door things get even more fishy...

Jack Palance is in this and is badass as usual and the story has a few unique twists and turns. It was obviously shot on the cheap and on a studio sound-stage so, while it doesn't have a real 'cinematic' visual quality, it still manages to be a relatively fun watch with some decent performances for the most part. You got Palance ripping off a retard and a couple of old bags and surviving a fall in the same pit of quicksand TWICE! I'd say "Evil Stalks This House" delivers as a largely unknown made-for-TV flick.

Sunday, October 18, 2015

Zombeavers (2014)

Just because it's a movie called "Zombeavers" and I may or may not have been in an alcohol-clouded state of mind a few nights ago that may or may not have required a viewing choice of a rather undemanding nature. Either way, I watched this. Did it exceed my incredibly low expectations? No. Is it at least enjoyable? Barely.

A container of toxic waste rolls off a truck driven by a pair of idiots and it floats into a beaver dam, turning the little critters into vicious, glowing-eyed zombeavers. More cliches are piled on as a trio of babes arrive at a remote cabin to help get their friend's mind off her cheating boyfriend - who later shows up with the other girls' dimwitted boyfriends to party. Then the zombeavers show up...

As for it's strengths - the cheezy hand puppet beaver effects were kind of enjoyable; there's a nice pair of tits as well as the stand-out scene in which a little dog is sacrificed to the zombeavers. Other than that, it's got gore but it seemed considerably scant seeing as how this is a movie that had very little going for it, overall. Any off-screen zombeaver attack (of which this movie has several...) is unacceptable, as far as I'm concerned. Also, the point in the movie where people begin turning into anthropomorphic zombeavers was just too imbecilic for me, I'm afraid. The stupidity of this film's concept 'jumped the shark' with that shit, but thankfully the end was near.

"Zombeavers" isn't worth a DAM and needed more bloody beaver carnage!

Friday, October 16, 2015

Crazy Murder (2014)

"Crazy Murder" is one of the most ridiculously straightforward, goofy serial killer movies I think I have ever seen. Those looking for a marathon of gross-out material and savage killing will surely get their fill here, but that said, its one-note concept does start running out of steam at a certain point...

The film begins with some on-screen text giving us the skinny on the homeless population and stats on how many of them are suffering from mental illness - shit you've heard before. From there, we meet our "hero" - a severely whacked out bum in an overcoat who runs around NYC senselessly killing random people and demonstrating various types of disgusting behavior, mostly involving bodily functions.

First off, the main actor in this film is deserving of some kind of award for this performance. For the majority of the movie, they've got him screaming and duck-walking down crowded city streets with his pants around his ankles and blood and shit in his underwear! I understand it's New York City and any local will probably tell you that's about as commonplace as the sunrise each morning, but props go out to this guy for completely shedding his dignity for the sake of this retarded movie.

My problem with "Crazy Murder" is that it just drags on too long. An idea like this would've worked a lot better as maybe a 30-some-minute short, but at 90-minutes it gets much too repetitive and the vile antics start wearing a bit thin. Like they were running dry on ideas so they'd throw in another scene of poop-play. At one point, he's running around smearing "feces" on walls, pay phones and bus stops... Why? Clearly just to fill time. I DID however enjoy his knife/duct tape "superhero" killing spree. Should've been more of that...

So, things that "Crazy Murder" did well: portray the homeless in the most bat-shit, over-the-top unflattering light, accurately depict NYC as a filth-fraught shithole, toss in a few nicely bloody murders and satisfy any visual hankering for coprophagic abasement. Still, like I said, it should've been trimmed down to a more appropriate runtime seeing as how the pacing was 'off'.

Wednesday, October 14, 2015

Marfa Girl (2012)

Larry Clark continues with his oppressed-Mexican-skater motif after a seven year dry spell with "Marfa Girl", a follow-up to his 2005 film, "Wassup Rockers". It's tells a pretty similar story, which I must say, didn't really 'grab' me that much this time around. I guess I'm more fond of Clark's earlier, more 'daring' brand of film-making which he seems to be steadily gravitating away from with these last few releases that seem a lot more sappy and repetitive. Not to say "Marfa Girl" is shit, but it's definitely one of his slowest movies.

It's a slice-of-life portrait of life on the American-Mexican border for one particular Tex-Mex teenager who encounters unusual situations and characters throughout his rural-based day-to-day life - most notably a sadistic boarder patrol officer with a deep-seated proclivity for sadomasochism. He also hangs out with a group of indignant Mexican low-lives in an electro-punk band - one of whom is a young mother who is desperate to fuck a 16-year old on his birthday and eager to becoming a stripper. There's also a pregnant teacher who enjoys paddling inattentive students after class, as well as a rampant gutter-slut, out-of-towner artist who is DTF no matter fucking WHAT. Things come to a head when the artist eventually joins a drug-fueled group sex session with three of the local border patrolmen - including the white, masochistic officer who has a complete mental breakdown, resulting in a bit of violent turn of events...

While it's on par with his previous feature, "Wassup Rockers", in terms of it being a discernible departure from the more 'taboo' sustained flicks Clark is generally known for, like "Kids", "Bully" and "Ken Park", "Marfa Girl" splits the difference a bit, in comparison with "Rockers", as far as more contestable content goes. It features a bit more sex, nudity, violence, a shot of a hard dick, implied rape and the sexual abuse of a child, though it still remains considerably subdued in comparison to the aforementioned films. Clark is obviously into portraying his Mexican subjects in a more respectable light then he has been known to do with the obnoxious, degenerate wiggers of his past adolescent 'explorations', typically leaving them to fill the spot of the racist villain. This influence of cultural animosity lends a more stilted kind of cinematic basis of the poor discriminated immigrants and the caucasian 'bad guys' in almost a caricaturized simplification. Clark's agenda is getting tiring as far as I'm concerned and I hope to see him return to his more candid roots.

Like I said, "Marfa Girl" was a little thematically redundant after "Wassup Rockers" and, while it wasn't as 'light' as that film, it's a pretty unremarkable furtherance in depletion of Clark's controversial 'edge' that once was. Hopefully he gets back on track with a more abrasive effort in the future, as I will continue to see what he has to offer out of admiration of his cutting-edge potentiality.

Saturday, October 10, 2015

The Green Inferno (2013)

Despite his status as an implicit 'one-trick-pony', relying predominantly on the pandering of low rent, fanboy-run social media-based horror "news" outlets who have continually publicized his plethora of ill-fated projects over the better part of a decade, Eli Roth actually managed to complete something and get it released. And, I'll be damned, I was actually somewhat interested in this latest work as it was a departure from the infantile, jump-scare laden, supernatural toilet waste that passes as 'horror' these days, as far as more 'mainstream' releases go. The idea of a NEW tribal cannibal flick hitting the big screen was inherently appealing to me, regardless of the smug douche hackster gracing the director's chair...

A wanna-be activist chick joins up with some environmentalists who travel to the amazon to ambush a crew of corporate loggers with a live-streaming cyber protest. Shit doesn't totally go according to plan (or does it?), yet they still manage to avoid getting their heads blown off by the militia. Their victory celebration onboard their little plane is cut short by a crash that kills about half of them, leaving the rest to be kidnapped by a tribe of people-eating savages who mistake the do-gooders for the "evil" tree choppers. From there, you pretty much just watch the remaining captives get killed and eaten.

So, once you make it through the slow start, involving inane college kid babble and the botched protest, things actually start looking promising. The petrified group of Americans being herded into the tribal village made for a pretty strong and dire looking scene and the first guy to be gruesomely dismembered alive (after having his eyes and tongue yanked from his head and devoured...) was a delectably brutal bit of carnage, courtesy of some convincing and bloody practical FX work. Then, unfortunately, it's pretty much downhill from there with the remainder of the human livestock sitting in their bamboo cell and hatching their hair brained escape attempts in between idiotic scenes that only a frat boy-minded tard like Eli Roth would think fits into this type of movie. Shit like: a guy jerking off amidst bloodshed in order to "keep his mind clear", a chick with cartoonishly explosive diarrhea and getting the tribe high by jamming a bag of weed down the throat of a soon-to-be cooked corpse.

Aside from all this unfunny and out-of-place bullshit, the death scenes following the initial dismemberment are quite weak and ineffective. One of them kills herself in the cage. One demise is entirely off-screen and another involves lousy looking CGI bullet ants. That, on top of Roth's insufferable writing and one of the shittiest 'payoffs' I can recall in quite some time, "The Green Inferno" disintegrates quickly into a  tragically unremarkable and all-too 'traditional' looking horror flick, encompassing a cast of genre stereotypes. I guess I was hoping for a few less punches pulled in the long-run. Granted, it was a safe bet that animal killing and rape-sprees weren't going to 'fly' as far as a studio film in this day n' age goes, but there was ample opportunity for some dick chopping that never played out! And the topic of female genital mutilation is prevalent, but still never comes to fruition... Again, it all comes down to that one stand-out death scene.

On the flip side, is it better than all the other "Poltergeist/Paranormal Activity" shit coming out? Absolutely. Without a doubt. Hell, it's way better than the "Hostel" movies by a long shot and props go out to Roth for at least attempting something like this and pushing as hard as he did to get it released in theaters so I can't bitch too much. I only wish it was more worth the effort and the wait. It's worth checking out for those who appreciate the top dogs of the 'cannibal exploitation' subgenre, such as "Cannibal Ferox", "Man from Deep River" and, of course, "Cannibal Holocaust". It's nowhere near as raw and visceral as those, but when is the last time you saw a NEW jungle cannibal flick?

On a side note of bonus douchebaggery, Roth decided to include the Twitter handles of the main cast and select crew members along with their credit at the end. Good idea since the popularity of social media sites has never been known to dwindle and accounts are never suspended or deactivated. Way to incorporate that timelessness into your movie, asshole. Twitter will surely remain eternally relevant.