Cheatin' (2013)

I'm always hyped up for anything Plympton comes out with and his latest film, "Cheatin'", does NOT disappoint! Hell, this is his best film so far, if you ask me. It's such an even mix of all of his styles from over the years, beautifully incorporated into one terrific piece of animated art.

After saving her life during a freak bumper car accident, a  muscular pump-jockey and an introverted young book wormy woman fall madly in love. They get married and begin the ideal suburban life, though she begins noticing other women putting the 'moves' on her husband. A wedge is driven between them when a vindictive woman - of whom the husband shot down the sexual advances - snaps an incriminating looking (but, actually innocent...) photograph of the wife and shows the hubby. Distraught and suicidal, he decides to engage in a series of 'revenge affairs' at a nearby motel. When his wife finds out what he's doing, she concocts some elaborate plans to get even with him...

Plympton's animation style and temperament have been pretty diverse over the years - ranging from his first feature, "The Tune" - an 'experimental' musical that boggled the mind as to what ONE animator could achieve, virtually single-handedly - throughout his more sophomoric 'sex and violence' phase, with films like "Mutant Aliens" and "I Married a Strange Person". As of late, Plympton has shifted over into a more 'elegant' juncture with his work - with "Idiots & Angels" and his most recent film, "Cheatin'" - using his familiar hand-drawn style with a softer, more... cultured aesthetic, I'd say. "Cheatin'" is easily his most "cinematic" and harrowing film - telling a awesomely dramatic AND funny story through extremely expressive, non-speaking characters and physical, surreal interpretation. While "Idiots & Angels" was his take on the 'noir' genre, "Cheatin'" goes with a more luminous visual 'flair' and a very Italian, operatic emphasis that definitely compliments Plympton's abject love story.

The film also has a lot of 'dark' touches - namely, the character designs, which are often distinctively malformed - almost praying mantis-like with some. There's also some hilarious toon-sex and a touch of violence in spots - though, not quite as off-the-wall as some of his previous works. Also, the ending shifts into a strange science-fiction climax almost out of nowhere, which was interesting...

"Cheatin'" is a masterful, scrupulous piece of timeless animation that further facilitates Plympton's undeniable genius. Check it out!

A Perfect Child of Satan (2012)

"A Perfect Child of Satan" is more of what you would expect from the ever-redundant bore, Lucifer Valentine. At least it's short.

A frumpy goth call girl meets a guy online and rambles about finally meeting him face-to-face in her video diaries. When she shows up at the hotel room where he's at, he beats and chokes her to death...

I really don't have much to comment on as far as this one goes... It's pretty much like all of Valentine's other shit, minus the vomit. Dull with obnoxious editing and sound effects... I'm sure he enjoyed making it, but otherwise, I don't see what the point was.

The Turnpike Killer (2009)

"The Turnpike Killer" started off somewhat promising, but unfortunately succumbed to a few pitfalls around the halfway mark. These particular problems are all too common in these types of 'shoestring' budget serial killer/slasher flicks, I've found.

A bulky serial killer - guided by the voices in his head - is stalking, collecting and butchering women around New Jersey. Of course, they're chicks he deems "whores" and "impure" and all that jazz...

For the first few scenes, the violence and gore is decent enough. The guy who plays the killer is passable, though it's clear that not much personality was written into his character so his 'insanity' isn't all that elucidated. They also provide a little full frontal nudity amidst the terrified, bloody-titted female victims, which is obviously a MUST in MY book. Thing is, the movie starts slowing down about midway through when they start in with the detectives investigating the case and tack on a completely lame-ass ending involving the occult. As far as I'm concerned, the best 'move' with flicks like this is to keep it on track and focus on the killer and his exploits. When you cast your non-actor buddies as detectives in your micro-budget slasher flick, it usually knocks your movie down another notch on the 'amateur scale'. Films like Bill Lustig's "Maniac", John McNaughton's "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer" and Gerald Kargl's "Angst" new well enough to keep that shit out of there and focus on maintaining an effective 'flow', centering around the killer and his depravity. Don't get carried away with trying to write in CSI dialog in your B-movie.

Anyways... "The Turnpike Killer" isn't the worst thing I've seen. It just lost it's footing midway and tried getting 'clever' with nonsensical shit. Check out any of the films mentioned above instead.

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My Name is A by Anonymous (2012)

The name Shane Ryan didn't register with me until a few minutes into "My Name is A..." when I had to pause to look him up. I knew I wasn't going to recollect fondly and, sure enough, he's the insufferable hack behind the bromidic "Amateur Porn Star Killer" series. From there, I knew I was in for a rough 90 minutes...

This is an attempted biopic of sorts, focusing on the life and crime of 15-year old Alyssa Bustamante who killed her 9-year old neighbor for fun in 2009. The Missouri teen (now in her early-20s...) is currently facing a life sentence for the brutal murder.

The back of the DVD case has a quote from Pick 'N' Mix Flix (never heard of 'em...) that touts, "Think Kids, Gummo, Ken Park...". Clearly, in some inconceivably pretentious way, that's what this guy was going for, but, I must say, I can't think of a less fitting comparison. This movie is a completely aimless mess that never even comes close to exploring it's subject matter, psychological insight or anything of interest - instead, consisting mainly of emo girls sitting around, cutting themselves and making gun gestures to their heads... Constantly! There is absolutely NO development of this girl or her friends or any discernible lead-up to the crime. There DOES, however, involve a range of other characters who are given their own incredibly meaningless, drawn out scenes of hanging out around a warehouse, pulling a shovel out of a dumpster, putting it back, crying, vomiting, etc. There's also a totally random (and equally boring...) Spanish 'music video' (clearly for the sole purpose of helping this chick's singing career...) thrown in, as if the movie wasn't padded with enough tedious bullshit.

"My name is A by Anonymous" is a beyond dull, semi-'found footage' movie that does absolutely nothing with the material it is suppose to be depicting.

Visit Wild Eye Releasing

Gorepump's Sewer of Short Horror #5

It's been long overdue, but here is #5 of "Gorepump's Sewer of Short Horror". To refresh your memory - I do up a couple of my mini-reviews to some mini-movies; short films (horror, arthouse, generally oddball shit...) placed in no particular order or ranking. Some are good, some are total shit. Some old, some brand new. And nothing exceeding 15-minutes in length. There's ten this time, as opposed to last year's eight so ENJOY!

Slash-in-the-Box (2011)

Little generic but well shot short about a guy who scores a vintage jack-in-the-box toy that is haunted by something murderous that lures him and his chick out of bed that night...

Good atmosphere and lighting. Kudos to the crisp production values for an apparent budget of only 2,000 bucks. The premise consists of your basic horror conventions, but works well in this capacity as a 'spooky' short film with a nice gory jolt at the end.

Not bad.

Directed by: Nick Everhart
Runtime: 5 minutes

Forklift Driver Klaus - First Day on the Job (2000)

Was actually going to do this one last time, but somehow it managed to slip my mind. That's fine, cuz it gave me an excuse to watch it again. 

Pretty much everyone's familiar with this German splatter short - chronicling the disastrous first day of a warehouse employee in the 'style' of a corporate training video. A series of deadly accidents take place as a result of Klaus' safety violations, no matter how minor. By the end, limbs are flying, people are cut in half and so on.

Fun stuff. It actually looks like a legit workplace safety video despite the gore, which is cheezy as hell, but laughably entertaining and clever. If you're one of the few who hasn't seen this one, track it down!

Directed by: Jörg Wagner & Stefan Prehn

                                                          Runtime: 10 minutes

Jabberwocky (1971)

aka. Žvahlav aneb šatičky slaměného Huberta - This is definitely one of Jan Švankmajer's strongest, most impressive shorts I have seen. It's based on Lewis Carroll's 1871 poem having to do with the Alice in Wonderland saga and by that I mean it contains the poem read in voice-over at the beginning. The remainder of the film is a cavalcade of surreal stop-motion animation, involving dolls, clothes, knives, furniture, etc - in typically hypnotic Švankmajer fashion.

If 'trippy' animation is your thing, check this out out as well as all of the other Czech film-maker's shorts and features.

Directed by: Jan Švankmajer

Runtime: 14 minutes

Tom Thumb in the Land of the Giants (1999)

This Nick Zedd short plays out like a bizarre movie trailer - showing a kid running around a cemetery - being pursued by figures in gas masks, holding severed limbs. A fiendish voice-over impalpably explains the hellish scenario as it cuts to a one armed guy and ends with the kid crawling in a giant woman's vagina...

"Tom Thumb in the Land of Giants" is quite obviously played for laughs in its absurdity, which makes it a reasonably enjoyable, quick watch. 

Directed by: Nick Zedd

Runtime: 4 minutes

Night Pastor (1998)

This is easily Alex Chandon's least memorable short. It's done in the style of a grindhouse movie trailer for a fictional feature called "Night Pastor", about a gun-toting Las Vegas minister. He jerks off in confessional booths and savagely beats a homeless guy to death before pissing on him...

None of the imagination or creative gore FX of Chandon's other shorts. I got the feeling this one was pretty much slapped together on the fly. Check out "Bad Karma" or even "Chainsaw Scumfuck" for a better (and gorier...) example of his work.

Directed by: Alex Chandon

Runtime: 9 minutes

38/79: Sentimental Punk (1979)

Kren's films are either mildly interesting or downright stupid and "38/79: Sentimental Punk" would be placed in the category of the latter. I have absolutely no idea what this was supposed to be.

All it shows is choppy, fast-motion crowd footage, seemingly looped with no sound at all. I have no idea where it was or what was going on...

I guess some would find it "artistic". I find it to be a typically pretentious piece of 'experimental' shit, courtesy of Kren.

Directed by: Kurt Kren

Runtime: 5 minutes

Sittin' Pretty (1992)

Second part of a two-film animated series that may be the greatest fucking pair of animation shorts ever produced. Baby Elmo and Mr. Olaf first appeared in a fucked up lil' 1989 short, named "Quiet Please", and they return in this slightly more slickly animated toon, "Sittin' Pretty" (not even sure why it's called that...).

Mr. Olaf shows up at the door in drag - disguised as a babysitter - who is left with the adorable infant, Baby Elmo. Olaf immediately shoots the baby in the head and hangs it from a coat rack. He then exclaims, "I'm fuckin' starvin'!" and goes rummaging through the kitchen, only coming up with an endless supply of "fuckin' baby food!". He gets the brilliant idea to chop the dead Baby Elmo up with a machete, grind some of his limbs in a meat grinder and stick the rest in the blender to make his pulverized body into a pie and eat it. The mother comes back, Olaf flees and the mother eats the pie.

Awesome shit! Not as funny as "Quiet Please", but definitely more offensive. I wish Michael Grimshaw had done WAY more of these back in the day. Truly classic. Look for another animated short he did back in the early '90s called "Deep Sympathy", in which a priest fucks a corpse during a funeral. Fantastic!

Directed by: Michael Grimshaw

Runtime: 2 minutes

Honey, I'm Going to Ride My Bicycle (2008)

A guy tells his chick he's going on a bike ride and will be back before dinner. A while later, he comes crawling up the stairs to their apartment with the bicycle seat painfully wedged deep in his anus. His panic-stricken girl tries to pull it out by the bar, but only the bar and a length of his intestines is successfully extracted...

Funny little gross out short, clearly made on a nothing budget and just for a goof. Also, anything involving torn assholes gets my personal stamp of approval.

Directed by: Mirte Eggenkamp & Maarten Prins

Runtime: 5 minutes

Boo (1932)

The best way to describe "Boo" is basically as being the Rifftrax of 1932. 

Some silly-voiced tool does some voice-over narration for "Frankenstein" (1931) and "Nosferatu" (calling it "Dracula"...) that is suppose to be funny. It's not. Maybe for the time it was, but it's incredibly weak, cheesy humor and considerably hard to follow for the most part. The guy talks too fast and his wise cracks and puns rarely make any sense.

Pretty lame...

Directed by: Albert DeMond

Runtime: 9 minutes

Alexia (2013)

Yeah, horror flick about a haunted Facebook page - big whoop. Not my thang, but for 9 minutes of my time and a decent wrap-up I'll give "Alexia" it's dues.

This Spanish short is about a guy who broke up with a girl who ended up killing herself. He keeps tabs on her Facebook and her lovelorn ghost decides to haunt him on her birthday...

It's a well shot little movie and the googly-eyed ghost FX at the end were kinda cool. However, I wasn't too 'into' the - now outdated - "Grudge"-inspired imagery. Still, like I said, for the length and a fairly spooky vibe, it's worth checking out.

Directed by: Andrés Borghi

Runtime: 9 minutes

Thanks for reading. Until next time...

The Human Centipede 3 (2015)

I'm pretty much with the majority on this one - "Human Centipede 3" sucks. I found the first two enjoyable as gimmicky "shock" for the online message board masses with a neat idea from a seemingly self-aware B-film maker. Unfortunately, I think Mr. Six topped out with the second installment, as far as the 'zany' gore goes and got a bit too swept up in his "hater"-directed cynicism this time around. Part 3 just seemed completely phoned in.

The loud, sadistic warden of a desert-based correctional facility gets the idea from his accountant lackey to keep the inmates 'in line' by sewing them all into a human centipede...

... But, before that happens... in the last 10-15 minutes, a lot of non-centipede stuff goes on in an arbitrary, episodic fashion - involving the warden torturing prisoners. An arm snapping; boiling water boarding; testicle removing/eating... So much of the movie is just Dieter Laser screaming unintelligible bullshit at everybody (often nobody...) in his office. When the human centipede (and human caterpillar...) are revealed, that's pretty much it; aside from Eric Roberts having a change-of-heart on the whole thing.

In the same token, one must ask themselves: what can be done with a 500-person centipede that can not or has not been done with the previous 12 or 3-count centipede? I don't know. Perhaps bigger is NOT always better. They kneel in a row and shit down each other's throats - like before - and then the movie ends. In the second film it was more about the 'journey' than the 'destination'. Seeing a rotund wacko collecting people, knocking their teeth out, stitching their cheeks to their o-rings, etc. Babies being killed, barb-wire rape, bugs up people's asses... All the marbles. Needless to say, I think part 3 was a little 'light' on ideas and attempted to compensate for this by just having its lead scream all of his lines and get blown by Bree Olson.

It's a shame the "Human Centipede" trilogy had to conclude on such a lame note. I don't know if it was Six sabotaging his own film out of some kind of spite, a lack of ideas, a joke or a complete accident. I don't know. Fuck, or all of the above. It just seemed incredibly slapped together and weak. Let's hope Six reinvents himself after this.