Diary of a Serial Killer (1995, Otto Chan)

I might have to turn in my CATIII card for saying this, but I wasn't all that impressed with "Diary of a Serial Killer". At least, not as much as some of my fellow reviewers who consider it one of the 'greats' of the genre.

A family man with a ravenous sex addiction starts getting his felonious freak on with the wonderful hookers of Hong Kong after his wife fails to please him with her cooking oil tug-job. Shit gets kinda crazy when he starts torturing and murdering whores and storing them into the sealed of loft in his home, unbeknownst to his wife and small child. One day, his wife decides they're taking in a young woman who is trying to track down her boyfriend who left on business on never returned and some sexual tension is sparked between her and her new sadistic landlord... Also, like most CATIII films, the majority of the movie is told, via flashbacks...

There's a decent amount of violence and general sleaze on tap with this one, so there's no way to call it BAD. Still, it just struck me as poorly paced and seemed like it started to struggle around the middle and throughout the end. I found myself getting kinda bored around this point, whereas the beginning kicked things off with a bang. Literally! Toward the start, the guy wedges an M-80 into a chick's twat and lights it! Good shit! Then, throughout the movie there's quite a bit of necrophilia, tit and vag cutting, steamy sex scenes. Still, something about the pacing just made it feel overly long and like it lost it's footing as it started closing in on the third act.

That said, lovers of CATIII 'shockers' should seek this one out. It's been called the HK equivalent to "Maniac", which I wouldn't disagree with, though I also can't say it's on a even keel with that film. Plus, there's a neat little reoccurring reference to Ed Gein that shows up here n' there. So yeah, it started losing me after a while and I wouldn't call "Diary of a Serial Killer" the best 'category III" film by any stretch, but die-hards should probably check it out.

Dr. Lamb (1992, Danny Lee & Billy Tang)

Good 'category III' serial killer flick. Sort of in the vein of "The Untold Story", but not as awesome - "Dr. Lamb" is a compelling and reasonably nasty film.

A taxi driver is taken into custody after picking up some suspicious photos of dead women from the developing place. From the get-go, he's adamant that he's innocent and was simply picking the photos up for someone else. The cops get his family involved, drag everyone down to the police station, and begin to ruthlessly beat a confession out of their main suspect. Then, when his sister starts relaying some past perversions she experienced as a kid and it is revealed that he took sexually explicit pictures of his niece, the truth starts to come out...

The crimes depicted in the film are based closely off of the real life killer, Lam Kor-wan, who killed four women in the late 70s-early 80s. He was dubbed "The Jars Murderer" due to his obsession with removing the breasts and sexual organs of his victims and storing them in containers. He would also engage in necrophilia and take photos and home-video of them in various forms of dismemberment.

"Dr. Lamb" is a well done film. Strong performances and some fairly graphic scenes of necrophilia and circular saw dismembering. Again, not as strong as "The Untold Story", "Daughter of Darkness" or "Ebola Syndrome", but still a worthy CATIII entry.

Red to Kill (1994, Billy Tang)

Gotta love this rapey CATIII gem! Definitely in my top 3 favorite fucked up Hong Kong flicks of all time.

After her father is killed in an accident, a mentally retarded girl is brought to a Sheltered Workshop/Hotel for the mentally disabled. Turns out, one of the guys who works there moonlights as a serial rapist/killer, targeting women who wear red. According to a flashback, his mother was a bit of a whore who fucked around on his dad, which resulted in a deadly altercation between his ol' man and mommy's affaire. And his mom wore red, which obviously planted the seed of female-generated hate into his psychotic mind. So when one thing leads to another and he catches a glimpse of the new girl's red panties, he brutally rapes her, but lets her live - resulting in a big court case. Because the courts apparently don't take the word of mentally handicapped victims seriously, Mr. Rapist gets off scot-free which doesn't sit too well with the girl's social worker who plots to deck herself out in all red and flirt with the deranged lunatic. Things kinda don't go too well and we're treated to one hell of an awesome climax...

"Red to Kill" is a pretty phenomenal shocker that incorporates both 'exploitation' and heartbreaking drama very well together. To be honest, the impact of the character's emotions and struggles really outweigh the 'exploitation' factor which I would say is a good thing, despite many people labeling the film as just "violent" and "sadistic". The scene with the mentally retarded girl sobbing in the shower after her rape, while shaving her pubes off until she bleeds is an especially powerful moment. Also, the guy who plays the rapist is, without a doubt, one of the all-time BEST psychopaths in the history of cinema. Especially during the big ending when he's bald and wearing wrestling tights. He's just a spastic, bulky, sweaty, screaming nutjob.

If you're looking for top-quality CATIII awesomeness, you can't go wrong with "Red to Kill".

The Video Diary of Ricardo Lopez (2000, Sami Saif)

This is some pretty fascinating shit. Like most people who often seek out flagrant forms of 'shock material' on the internet, I had come across "The Björk Stalker Suicide Video" online a while back. Knowing nothing about it at the time, the video depicts a fat bag of shit, naked, with his face painted up, rambling on about Björk angrily before shooting himself in the mouth to one of her songs. The video is very non-graphic - containing no blood or brain matter until after homeboy has collapsed out of frame, which is when you can hear his skull emptying out onto the floor. It wasn't until I saw "The Video Diary of Ricardo Lopez" recently that it was all put into some kind of perspective.

Ricardo Lopez was a 21-year old exterminator from Florida who started video recording himself in his shithole apartment as he spouted off about his obsession with the singer, Björk. Apparently, R-Lo was none-to-happy with his beloved Björk marrying a negro so, like an evil mastermind (or full-blown retard), he began constructing an acid bomb hidden in a book that he intended on mailing to her.

As the videos continue - taken from about 20 hours of footage that the detached lardass had shot explaining his life and hatred, yet LOVE, for Björk - we see as he gradually becomes more and more mentally unhinged as his sulfuric acid package nears completion. He explains his intentions of suicide immediately following the shipping of the package, how he quit his job and stopped paying his bills, how his family became increasingly more worried about him and actually made him see a shrink on a few occasions. Finally, he gets his idiotic parcel done, loads his gun and heads to the post office and the whole thing apparently goes off without a hitch. The film ends just shy of his suicide...

This is definitely a candid and 100% authentic look into a deteriorating psyche, buckling from insurmountable depression, paranoia, sexual frustration and delusions. Ricardo Lopez was an extremely pathetic and isolated individual who succumbed to his feelings of utter hopelessness and self-loathing and, like quite a few of these guys, wanted to take someone with him and 'make his mark'. It didn't pan out all that well for him, seeing as how his months of handy work was intercepted in London and never got to Björk. Tough luck there, Ricky.

Un Chien Andalou (1929, Luis Buñuel)

What we have here is a textbook example of "the art film" in all of it's mystifyingly unintelligible glory. From the looks of it, "Un Chien Andalou" - aka. "An Andalusian Dog" - is about a guy who wipes out on his bicycle outside of a chick's apartment building. She takes him in and he stares at a cluster of ants crawling on his hand. They then watch out the window as some dykey haired woman (could've been a little boy, maybe) pokes at a severed hand with a stick in the middle of the road while a crowd is gathered around her. A cop puts the hand in a box and the woman (or little boy) is struck by a car. Back in the apartment, the dude gets a little rapey, chases the chick around and gropes her tits until, all of a sudden, he is tied to two pianos with two dead mules laying on top of them. Then, the woman disappears and the guy dukes it out with another guy until one of them gets gunned down by some dual-pistol action...

Just weirdness. Bizarre 'arthouse' shit from the silent age of cinema, which is kinda interesting, seeing as how it's a little sleazy (by 1929 standards) and, of course, for the notorious razor blade eyeball slicing scene. There's really not a whole lot of straight-up entertainment value one could derive from "An Andalusian Dog" unless they're a major film school art-fag creep. For the average cinephile, however, it's short and worth checking out just for the sake of saying you did. And Salvador Dali is in it briefly.

Pig (1998, Nico B. & Rozz Williams)

"Pig" is a brooding, gothic experimental "arthouse" flick co-directed by and starring deathrock vocalist Rozz Williams. This film came out about a year after Williams committed suicide and, from the looks of it, this might've been more-or-less a personal "home movie" displaying some of his personal fetishist kinks...

The premise is slim, but it involves a killer who picks up some guy wandering through the desert with a completely bandaged face. The two drive to a secluded, rundown house where the gauze-wrapped dude is subjected to various forms of torture and body modification rituals taken from some evil looking book. The guy has blood (or some kind of dark liquid which was a little hard to identify due to the black-and-white film) funneled into his mouth, the word "pig" carved into his chest, some blood catheterized from his cock, his nipples pierced, etc. Then, there's some weird, surreal shots involving sign language and more gauze wrapping and then the movie wraps up.

I'm not really sure how to rate something like "Pig". It's basically just a series of masochistic acts shown over gloomy, ambient sounds. Nothing all that "shocking" or memorable about it and I guess I'm too unfamiliar with Rozz Williams to really understand any real meaning behind any of it. Still, it's a fairly interesting oddball film.

Gorepump's Sewer of Short Horror #3

Once again, a collection of 'mini reviews' for a selection of short horror films I have seen. Brief reviews for brief flicks that do not exceed 15 minutes cuz that's how I roll. There's some good shit here and some shitty shit. You can find most of - if not ALL of these online - so enjoy!

Fist of Jesus (2012)

If you've seen the short film "Brutal Relax", well "Fist of Jesus" is very much in the same vein. Top notch short zombie splatter comedy - coming in at 15 minutes and making each second count. The first few minutes is Christ talking to his disciples when Jacob runs up saying that his son Lazarus has died. Jesus isn't willing to accept this and wants to prove his godly powers by reviving the distraught man's son which kinda backfires and sparks a undead uprising. Zombie Romans, Pharisean zombies and... of course... zombie cowboys! And a big-ass bloodbath ensues, prompting Jesus and Judas to save the day by fighting back with... what else? Fish.

This thing is a well shot Spanish joint. The effects are an enjoyable combination of practical with moderate CGI gore and it's over-the-fuckin-top! Like, "Dead Alive"-esque. And it's goofy as all hell. Speaking as someone who has grown exhausted by the zombie genre over the past few years, "Fist of Jesus" is what I personally want in a zombie flick. Short, to-the-point, gory as fuck and just the right level of tongue-in-cheek. Recommended.

Directed by: Adrián Cardona, David Muñoz
Runtime: 15 minutes

Tufty (2009)

This was a peculiar blend of ridiculously silly and oddly harrowing. "Tufty" is an Irish short that answers the age-old question: where do teddy bears come from? Well, apparently there's a forest in which teddy bear families live peacefully until their dwelling is one day invaded by a hunter who chases them down, puts a bullet in 'em and takes 'em to a professional who removes their organs and replaces them with stuffing so they can be sent off to toy stores.

Yeah, it's a silly concept but the unexpectedly serious tone works well and makes "Tufty" all the more amusing. Also, the puppetry is pretty damn good.

Directed by: Brendan Butler, Jason Butler
Runtime: 8 minutes

The Big Shave (1967)

One of the earliest works from Martin Scorsese. It's an okay little flick showing a guy shaving his face until his face and torso is streaked in blood flow. By the end, he pretty much severes his jugular veins with the razor while a jazz number plays throughout all of the "action".

"The Big Shave" is fine. Clearly a little experiment from Scorsese from way back in the day. I guess there's some timely Vietnam War symbolism behind it, but I'm just basing my opinion on the film at total face value. True film snobs will probably adore this.

Directed by: Martin Scorsese
Runtime: 6 minutes

Tub (2010)

Here's a strange one. Once again, another flick with a silly premise that doesn't play it for laughs to the degree that you would expect.

Plot here: A guy can't seem to get any from his old lady so he jerks off in the shower, thus... impregnating his bathtub.

The pacing is good, the effects are enjoyably nasty here and there and the concept had some promise. However, "Tub" was still pretty boring and it just felt too flat and conventional to me. It reminded me of the Alison Maclean short "The Kitchen Sink" - another short in which a drain births a surreal being. I dunno, "Tub" just didn't do much for me.

Directed by: Bobby Miller
Runtime: 12 minutes

Unlocking Charlie (2011)

Charlie is an agoraphobic shut-in who has a serious crush on the neighbor girl. She seems pretty 'into' him too - enough so that she wants to spend New Years with him, though he's too much of a panicky, awkward neurotic to put the moves on her. Unfortunately, his buddy seems determined to swoop in on Charlie's babe. Charlie ends up having a bad nightmare and some hallucinations before the film wraps up with a sweet and touching bit of romance.

"Unlocking Charlies" is a decent little short. Well shot, well acted and had a promising concept. The whole dream sequence didn't really work for me though. It just seemed a little out of place. Still, this one is worth checking out.

Directed by: Stephen Crilly
Runtime: 13 minutes

He Dies At the End (2010)

This is a good one to show your friends. It's really short, simple, tense and has a fun little pay off. A guy is alone at his desk at work with nobody else around. He starts taking an online quiz that will determine how he is going to die.

It's quiet, suspenseful and there's a laughably cheesy, yet satisfying surprise at the end. Look for this one.

Directed by: Damian McCarthy
Runtime: 4 minutes

Krueger: Another Tale From Elm Street (2013)

Well, this was pretty pointless. It's some fan-film prequel showing Freddy Krueger before he became the disfigured phantom dream killer of teenagers. It was directed by some guy who apparently has some predilection for making shitty fan films, such as "Escape from New Jersey". This one, however, pays no real respects or tribute to Wes Craven's iconic film OR the knife-clawed murderer - instead, it's just showing a young girl being abducted from a playground... Who gives a shit?! The guy who plays Krueger sucked and was SO douchily hammy I could barely keep from spitting at the screen.

This could've just as easily have been a short film about just some pedophile who snatches kids. Using Freddy Krueger's name and sweater was pointless.

Directed by: Chris R. Notarile
Runtime: 7 minutes   
   
 

The Killing of America (1982, Sheldon Renan)

It's funny how after seeing pretty much every kind of real-death 'shockumentary' on the market, it took me this long to check out "The Killing of America" - which I will say is, beyond all reasonable doubt, the best of it's kind out there. The whole 'Mondo film' thing really stopped interesting me as I advanced into, I'd say, my late teen years and total desensitization took effect. The thrill that came along with my juvenile obsession of gaining access to videos of authentic documentation of real-life carnage - such as the "Faces of Death", "Traces of Death" and "Faces of Gore" series' - diminished and my tastes advanced to the next 'phase'... Whatever it was. Now, that's not to say I can't enjoy one of these types of flicks on occasion or find them socially pertinent. It's just not a way in which I get my gore-craving 'jollies' in this day and age of the bounteous amounts of 'shock sites' and online craziness that is so easily accessible. Hell, if there's any real reason to watch a 'shockumentary' these days, it's to relive a period BEFORE the existence of the internet and all of the wonderfully gruesome and sleazy content it has to offer.

I guess what makes "The Killing of America" stand out to me, is that it doesn't come across as gratuitous and debauched as many other similar flicks out there that merely exploited genuine misery and 'taboo' acts/rituals under the guise of "cultural study". Here, there's no faked electric chair executions, monkey brain eating, alligator attacks - i.e. "Faces of Death" - and no tedious, 10 minute long autopsy sequences with death metal soundtrack accompaniment. "The Killing of America" covers two decades or so of high profile, as well as lesser known, examples of killing in the U.S. with a much more journalistic approach than your standard Mondo flick. Everything from the Kennedy assassination (including Bobby), Charles Manson, Martin Luther King, Ted Bundy, John Hinkley Jr., Charles Whitman and Jim Jones are covered in just enough detail, but with plenty of actual footage to go along with each event. Yeah, this may seem like totally familiar stuff by today's standards, but again, this was pre-internet and it's pretty fascinating still. Plus, you get some insight into guys like Lawrence Bittaker (aka. The Toolbox Killer), Wayne Henley and an interview with the lumbering, nerdy and oddly likeable Edmund Kemper in prison.

Also featured is the tragic murder of a convenience store clerk caught on camera and a three day long hostage situation involving an extremely pissed off guy who kidnaps the owner of a mortgage company who refused him a loan and the stand-off that lasted 3 days. Also got the disturbing ramblings of James Hoskins who took the employees of a news station hostage in 1980 and claimed he wanted a shootout with the cops before completely buckling and killing himself.

While "The Killing of America" demonstrated a more tasteful and, I guess, moral "wake-up call" on violence motive than many other graphic, real-death compilation mix-tapes that have circulated throughout the years, though this one comes across as more 'legit' and informative. It's excellently paced, has great voice-over narration, plenty of great footage - some of which I'd never seen before - and it didn't feel exploitive. Definitely check out "The Killing of America" if you have the stomach for this kind of stuff and want a little more substance.