Exploitation Nation

Satan’s Slave (1976) **1/2
D. Norman J. Warren
BCI/NAVARRO
in the UK ANCHOR BAY
2.35-1

This little slice of British deviltry has some good things going for it such as a solid performance from Hammer stalward Michael Gough, lots or splashy gore and plenty of babes taking off their clothes for no good reason at all. Then why is it so damn stuffy?

The story follows a young gal named Cathrine who goes to visit her Uncle and Cousin whom she has never met before with her parents for a week. She leaves behind a layabout boyfriend in the big city. But as soon as her and her parents arrive at the giant estate dad has some sort of supernatural fit and wrecks the car into a tree. Cathrine gets out to go get help and the care mysteriously explodes, killing Mom and Dad. She is taken in by her Uncle Alexander (Michael Gough), her Cousin Martin, and his squeeze Theresa. Seems Alexander is a doctor so he immediately starts doping her up to take care of the “shock” she is under. What she doesn’t know is that Martin is a murderous lunatic who killed some babe in the opening reel of the movie and there seems to be some sort of Satanic shenanigans going on as well. Naturally Cathrine and Martin start to fall in love (its natural! All cousins do it!) and we find out that her arrival there is not nearly the coincidence it seems to be. Cathrine also starts having premonitions about people dying and visions of naked babes being whipped and burned at the stake. Obviously it isn’t going to end well.

There’s a suicide scene that has a mashed head and broken bones that is especially nasty, as well as a nail file in an eyeball that should make you squirm. The Satanic rituals are fairly hokey but seem to be in the film more to get girls naked more than anything else. What hurts Satan’s Slave more than anything is the whole Britishness of it. The whole sort of “Yes Niles, I will have another wine and crumpet” feel to the proccedings work against the sleazier elements causing the reletively short running time to feel far longer. Candice Glendenning who plays Cathrine suffers the worst as her character is far to reserved for both the situation and for a 19 year old girl. At times this feels a little too Masterpiece Theater when it should be getting down to business.

The print that was released as part of BCI’s Exploitation Cinema double bill with Norman J. Warren’s Terror is heavily cut. The print on that disc is in fact a TV print with the violence and nudity trimmed out. Oddly enough it is properly letterboxed, which is weird. The way to go to see this as close to uncut as possible is the PAL Region 2 UK Anchor Bay disc available in the Norman J. Warren box set. The disc there is complete save one single shot of a girl getting her panties ripped off. It is also fully letterboxed. I’m not sure if that box set is still in print or not though.

Come back Tomorrow to read what I watched next!
2008-10-30
00:12:14
Andy Copp

Starting today I am going to watch at least one horror movie I have not seen, counting down to Halloween night. I should have started this Sunday night, but I had Episodes of The Shield to catch up on, so sue me. So I started today off with…

HUMUNGOUS (1981) *1/2
D. PAUL LYNCH
VHS OOP

When David Fincher decided to make the film Panic Room he toyed with the idea of shooting it entirely in the dark. Apparently he had never seen this 1981 Canadian lensed terror trip that is without a doubt the darkest movie ever made. When I say darkest, I don’t mean mood, I mean without lights. As in whole stretches of the movie are literally just blank screen with sounds. You cannot see characters, backgrounds or what the hell is going on. Granted I watched a rip from the good old analog days of VHS (it is not on DVD)  so it is not up to the crispy, crystal clearl digital beauty that we have all come to know and love, but this is ridiculous as my friend Nick would say. The smeary sub par film to video transfer takes already muddy and too dark cinematography and renders it unwatchable.

But I stuck it out and watched the whole damn thing anyways. It wasn’t really worth the trouble. The movie opens with a rape scene, not usually a good sign! In the late 1940’s this prim and proper girl is raped by a guy who is pissed off she wont give him the time of day. Her dogs manage to jump the fence and rip the guy apart before she brains him with a rock. Now this whole scene is lit fine and is visible. So a muddy transfer cannot be blamed for all the visual problems. Cut to 36 years later and a group of horribly obnoxious (and one borderline psychopath) group of teens going out on their Dad’s yact for a weekend. The kids are strangely reminiscent of the Scooby Doo gang with the leader being just like Fred (Blond, good looking, sporty, even wears white and blue), His girl like Daphne (A Model, Plucky, gets the job done, even wears purple) His sister is like Velma (Has glasses, is a tag along, very smart, sometimes a smart ass) The Psycho is a little like if Shaggy had gone bad (Joker, smokes dope, always stoned!). There’s an extra girl in here too though that takes her shirt off a lot. The Scooby gang never had that, though Velma in the tight sweater in the Scooby Doo movie was a very GOOD idea. On with the review… They pick up a stranded boater who tells them the island they are approaching is filled with dogs that protect the old lady who lives there. They can hear the dogs howling. Then the psycho boy commandeers to the boat, wrecks it and causes it to explode! Thus shipwrecking them all on the island of pissed off rape victims and something aparently Humungous! Oh shit! Naturally as they all wander around the island they get picked off one by one until the last girl (the model naturally) faces off with the monster (who is a retarded dude that has acromegalee we are told!) and does him in. Yep, I just told you the whole movie. You’d have figured it all out long before it was over anyways. There is no gore to speak of, and what little violence there is, is obscured in the damn awful darkness. You NEVER see the monster, not because they don’t show him, but once again, because it is too dark.

A few years later director Paul Lynch would go on to do the superior Hicksploitation/Action/Rape/Revenge potboiler Bullies that is also not available on DVD currently. Previous to Humungous he did the vastly overrated, rather tepid and silly slasher Prom Night.

Here is a scene somebody posted on youtube. thanks to them for doing so. You can see (well not see actually) how dark the movie is.

Come by tomorrow to see what I watch next!

Andy Copp
2008-10-29
02:08:12

I

I’m sorry to report that one of the greats of film history left this mortal coil on Sunday, October 20, 2008. The one, the only, the incomparable Rudy Ray Moore passed away from complications dealiing with diabetes. He was 81 years young.

Rudy Ray Moore had been doing stand up comedy since the late fifties when he would entertain his Army buddies while in the service. He also was an R&B singer during that time. He took his act on the road during the sixties developing a comedic style that was both groundbreaking and blisteringly raw. People thought that Lenny Bruce was foul mouthed and Richard Pryor was offensive, but Moore was redefining the terms at the time with albums like “This Pussy Belongs To Me” “Eat Out More Often” and the Yule Tide favorite “This Ain’t No White Christmas!”

Rudy’s “blue” style of comedy caught on in the inner cities in a big way (which explains why Lenny Bruce got arrested for his language and Rudy managed to slide by under the radar). Rudy would sell his albums out of the trunk of his car and to local independent black owned shops in the towns he frequented. He was becoming an inner city hero. He brought along his friends on the way up too. Other comedians like Leroy & Skillet and Lady Reed would become staples in his act (and later in his films).

But Rudy Ray Moore is most fondly remembered for his character of Dolemite the smooth dressing, rhyming pimp with an all girl army of Kung Fu killers from 1975. The film was directed by blaxploitation actor D’urville Martin (who also starred as the bad guy, that mean ass Willie Green) and was based on one of Rudy’s most famous characters from his comedy routines and some of his most popular records. The film is a modern example of the “lets put on a show” attitude of the old Our Gang comedies, or more specifically the films of Spencer Turner and Oscar Michaux from the fifties (a comparison brought to my attention by David Walker of Badazz Mofo Magazine, which you really should read. Thanks David!) . Two African American directors who literally had no money to work with, but found the means to make movies anyway. The movies resembles those old Our Gang plays the kids put on. Kind of ragged, worn, kind of wobbly and often get things terribly wrong just because they can’t afford to get them right. Dolemite is like that. and it is even worse for a whole generation of us who saw it for the first time on VHS and DVD in an unmatted presentation where the Boom Microphone becomes a secondary character and the MPAA cuts make it look like it was edited by a blind man. Neither of which were problems in theaters as the boom was properly masked off, and rumor has it that the footage that was supposed to be removed for the R rating for the most part simply wasn’t on most prints. I mean who from the hoity toity MPAA is gonna go into Downtown L.A. or 42nd Street or Cleveland to check? But it is Rudy that carries the show, with his outrageous wardrobe and stining insults. But more than anything it is his creative use of profanity that singes the screen over and over again. His first line of the movie “What does that rat soup eatin, no business, born insecure, jack jawed MOTHA FUCKA want with me man?!?!” That’s not just string words together people. That’s fuckin ghetto poetry raised to another level. And the movie is full of it. Rudy also gives twoo of his best “toasts” in the film. “Toasts” are long stories set to a beat. Basically where Rudy Ray Moore invented rap music. No exaggeration. Using music and comedy, ryme and meter the man developed a new way to present his material that was the birthpangs of rap music. He called these stories “toasts”. We get to hear “Shine and the Great Titanic” about the sinking of the Titianic and the one brother tryign to find a way off the boat, and “The Signifyin Monkey” about a smart ass Monkey in the jungle. Both are brilliantly written pieces of comedy gold and great storytelling. One thing Rudy never was terribly good at was the action scenes. The movie has plenty of action. with a good deal of Kung Fu so it could compete in the market place in the 70’s. But rudy wasn’t built for it. He’s a lover and laugher not a fighter. So when he starts throwing roundhouse kicks and karate chops, it can be the funniest shit in the movie. God love him. What makes Dolemite so good is that it is played straight. It isn’t really a comedy. It is a ghetto action movie, with elements of comedy in it. But audiences found it funny as hell and Rudy and crew noticed.

The follow up film The Human Tornado aka Dolemite 2 was a balls out slapstick comedy. It’s basically Dolemite on acid turned up to 11. From the moment Dolemite is caught in bed with the Sheriff’s wife and has to dive down a giant hill naked, then stops the film, then says, “ya all didn’t think that was really me doin that shit did ya?” and replays it to prove it. You know you’s in fo some wild shit. This is also the movie that immortalized the line I say nearly everyday “BITCH are you for REAL?!” They also realized the Kung Fu wasn’t so hot so they sped up the film for all the fight scenes. You be the judge on that.

Moore’s next film was a supporting role in the MGM picture Monkey Hustle with Yaphet Kotto. The movie is basically a kids film about a theif traing gangs of kids to do his dirty work and how he has a change of heart. Rudy steals the show as Goldie the pimp.

Rudy’s next real movie is yet another one based on one of his routines. Petey Wheatstraw The Devil’s Son in Law is based on the story about a young man whose circle of friends are killed by mobsters, including himself (Rudy naturally) at his mother’s funeral! so he makes a deal in hell with the Devil that he will mary the Devil’s hideous daughter if he can go back to Earth and settle the score. He is sent back with a magical pimp cane that he does things like blow up a watermelon stand, and make fat ladies thin. The opening scene where Petey is born has to be seen to be believed! Leroy And Skillet play the rival comedians who put the hit on Petey.

Next up is the movie the Rudy was always most uncomfortable with. Disco Godfather aka Avenging Disco Godfather the story of a disco owner and club king played by Rudy Ray Moore whose basketball hero nephew gets whacked outon Angel Dust. So Rudy goes on the warpath to find who is peddling the drugs in the hood and do them in. far more serious in tone than the other films and rated PG so Rudy’s colorful language is reigned in. this was the first time Rudy was aiming for a distributors list of requests and it made him uncomfortable with the final product. Still it is a fun movie, especially seeing Rudy in those disco duds yelling “Put your weigh on it!“. I think it has held up remarkably well actually.

Moore next release would be his last theatrical film starring him and it featured him doing what he did best. Telling jokes. Rude was his stand up comedy film and it was just 90 minutes of him tearing it up and not letting people breathe from laughing so hard. he’s especially ruthless on the audience. You don’t do to a Rudy Ray Moore show and expect to not get singled out. He could smell the fear on you and make you part of the show in a heart beat. Some of the best parts are him working the crowd into the act.

He made an appearence in Jamaa Fanaka’s Penitentiary 2 and then more or less retired from the big screen. He never stopped touring or recording albums though. Thanks to home video his films stayed in the public eye in inner city video stores There were some documentaries and more concert films in the age of video and dvd he was involved in (Live at the Wetlands). He spoke out often about how he found the term Blaxploitation to be limiting and somewhat offensive because it made it sound like the work was belittling. He liked to remind people that his films were a jumping off point for a lot of talent that went on to bigger things. Actors, directors, make up people, technical trade people all went to Hollywood from working on his films. No on got exploited.

By the mid 90’s there was a Dolemite and Rudy Ray Moore resurgance from two different factors oddly enough. Cult film fandom had been singing the praises of his films for a long time and he had been doing interviews in cult zines such as Psychotronic and Shocking Images (who went on to host Rudy’s official website). And the Hip Hop world where artists there were paying tribute to the godfather of rap music by having him come and rap on their albums. Artists such as Big Daddy Kane, Snoop Dogg, and Dr. Dre all worked with Rudy. this stuff led to Rudy making appearances at conventions where he could meet his public.

I met him at the Chiller Theater Halloween toy & Model expo in I believe 1996. He was the express reason I went to the convention. I drove 13 hours with my friend (sort of girlfriend) Kristi (who was a fan too) to NewJersey from Ohio. It was well worth it. He was gracious and funny, cracking jokes with us, demonstrating his new Dolemite back scratcher which he proceeded to sell us each on (”cause you can use the round end to scratch the pussy!”) which he signed. He sold us Dolemite for President stickers, and I bought a VHS of Rude which he signed. Nothing was more than $10 either. He even let us take our picture with him for free (that shit is never free at conventions anymore!)

In later years Rudy did a few other projects. He hosted a line of re-releases of old Kung Fu movies which were called Shoalin Dolemite, and did a movie by the same name. the movie was just a Kung Fu movie with reaction shots of Rudy cut into it. its pretty terrible. He was also in Big Money Hustlas by the Insane Clown Posse. I don’t see me watching that anytime soon just because it is ICP. But he played Dolemite for the first time in 20 years in it though. Then he finally last year made the third official film in the Dolemite series, The Dolemite Explosion. Its had a few playdates, but otherwise is still unreleased.

Rudy Ray Moore has meant a lot to me over the years. His movies have given me constant joy. I think I have shown Dolemite to more people than any other movie in my collection. His spirit of D.I.Y. filmmaking and up byyour bootstraps tenacityis inspiring to me. the fact that the man could never be stopped, always walked to his own beat and was a trailblazer are all things that should never be overlooked. There’s a moment in Petey Wheatstraw when petey is a little kid and practicing his Kung Fu with his teacher. His teacher asks him why he wants to be a comedian when he grows up. He tells the old man “So I can make people laugh and save the world from all of its misery“.

Rudy everytime someone watches one of your films, you save the world from its misery a little bit more.

You are and forever will be the man.

His filmography:

• Dolemite
• The Human Tornado
• Monkey Hustle
• Petey Wheatstraw
• Disco Godfather
• Rude
• B A P S
• Penitentiary II
• Legend of Dolemite
• Live at Wetlands
• The Great White Hype
• Shaolin Dolemite
• Big Money Hu$tla$
• Dolemite Explosion
• Vampire Assassin
• A Stupid Movie For Jerks
• Lil’ Pimp
• The Dolemite Explosion (2007)
• Afros Macks And Zodiacs Trailer Comp

Death Promise (1977) **1/2
D. Robert Warmflash
VHS OUT OF PRINT
- Intensely charming, truly bad New York action movie about a young Latino dude whose Father is murdered by a gang of thugs working for a Real Estate Agent who wants to repo the whole block. While the idea of Urban Sprawl literally killing the poor is a legit one this movie throws it to the side for loads of kung fu (some of it not that bad either) and some really outrageous kill scenes including one soul brother who kids a bag of hungry rats put over his head and another Italian guy who is put behind an archery target.

The main honky bad guy screams an amazing cry when he is hit with a ninja star too. This would have been awesome to have seen on 42nd st in New York. To make the complete in your own home invite some junkies over have them piss on your floor, dump some rats and have a buddy try to pick your pocket. You might come close! Rumor has it that CODE RED DVD might be putting this our at some point. There is a trailer on the Doom Asylum DVD for it under the alternate title Enter the White Dragon (though neither of the heroes is white!).

The Undertaker (1988) *1/2
D. Franco Steffanino -
GREY MARKET DVD
NIGHTCREW VIDEO
-Truly lost film starring the always fun to watch Joe Spinnell as “Uncle Roscoe” a Necrophiliac Undertaker who is murdering just about everyone in a small Upstate New York town, for reasons that are never made too clear. The positives of this movie? Joe and his over the top performance keeps the movie alive on more than a few occasions. There is a few scenes of splashy red stuff and the movie has a “kill ‘em all” attitude. The Bad side? It tends to err on the very slow side, especially when Joe isn’t on screen, most of the other actors are not terribly good and it’s directed for shit. Plus the movie is pretty much trying to be a runner up to the great MANIAC both in content and structure and by casting Joe Spinnell. It doesn’t work. But even with this lame rating I’d probably watch this again over most of the modern horror remakes. The is a hard movie to find and is ONLY making the rounds as a bootleg that someone sourced from what looks to be a workprint that is almost finished. It has titles and full audio but is full of grease pencil marks, dirt and splices and starts over in the middle for a minute or so.

2008-10-23
18:18:12
Andy Copp

Return To Sleepaway Camp (2008) ????? - Sleepaway Camp is one of my favorite bad film classics. I’ve seen it more than an human rightly should. It was my friends and I’s Rocky Horro Picture Show. We would sit and watch this cinematrocity over and over and over and over again. Just marvelling at the crazy cloths, pumped up hairdos (and don’ts) the very special turn on a time acting style and all the out of site sick characters. For a movie about kids this was fool of Homosexuals, greasey old men shacking up with young woman, and the greasiest of all the camp cook who leared at all the 12 years old as they hopped off the bus for the summer. We finally ended up with a running routine for the movie and recorded it. A Riff Tracks. MST3K before there was a such thing. But its long gone.  A lot of people love the sequels, but I only think they are okay at best and really don’t hold a candle to the original. Here we have the original film’s writer, director Robert Hiltzik taking the reigns again and he delivers another movie that is straight from the planet only he lives on. Without a doubt this movie is terrible. Completely and insanely terrible. But it is forehead slapping, laugh out loud, so bizarrely terrible that you can’t take your eye off it. How or why the decisions made throughout the movie were thought to be a good idea are so unfathomable that it just becomes immensily enjoyably to watch this play out in a cruel way. Maybe it takes a little masochism (and sadism too) to appreciate it. The story takes place 25 years later and Camp Arawak has reopened under a new name and new owners except for Ronnie (Paul DeAngelo the speddo wearing muscle head form the first film). Apparently the kids here are all from penitentiaries or something because they are the worst behaved, most sadistic, mutated, mean spirited, spiteful little fuck ups EVER to grace a movie screen. The main character is a fat, greasy, troll named Alan is introduced picking on littler kids, cursing people out, pulling girls hair and generally being an asshole.Yelling his catch phrase of “you’re Ass Stinks” at everyone. But as the movie progresses we are supposed to become sympathetic to him because everyone else in the movie is a BIGGER asshole than him. They all pick on him, and I mean ruthlessly. Almost every remaining frame of film is taken up with someone fucking with Alan in some way and him cursing and screaming at them. The movie becomes almost like primal therapy as we watch this kid be tormented. There is one scene where the entire camp gets him alone in the woods and cut loose on him with paintball guns that made feel a twinge of pain…for the actor! Those shits hurt like motherfucker and they lit him up hundreds ofd times and shot in slow motion too! Yikes. I hope that kid god a klondike bar. But the problem is that he is set up to be such a jerk from the get go, that you don’t really feel all that bad for him. I give the actor Michael Gibney credit for playing such a total fuckin spaz. He goes all out. Oh yeah there is someone killing people too, but its almost an after thought to people picking on Alan. The kills are retarded to the max and stretched out for suspence, but sre just silly. Only the last two kills on the movie once we know who it is are effective at all. Though the stick in the eye is hilarious because the kid was so fucking stupid. It is also painfully obvious who the killer is from  the get go. And to those who loved the cop with the electrical tape mustache in the original film (I know I do!) there is a cop in this one with a just a ludicrous paste on beard that will have you howling. But it at least plays into the movie. Felisa Rose and Johnathan Teirstan make appearances in their original roles as well. There is one other really impressive kill involving a literal bed of nails that is almost worth the whole wait. I’m sure I’ve done a piss poor job of describing how bizarre of bad this movie is, but it is also one of the better times I’ve had watching a movie in a while.

Amazon.com Widgets

01:08:34

Sexual Freedom In Denmark (1970) *** - This new DVD from After Hours Cinema finally releases one of the most famous of the “white coat” porn documentaries from the era right before porn became legal. In the moment in time when this was made a filmmaker had to justify the sex on screen by surrounding it with social and scientific wraparounds to make it seem redeeming to the public. The term “white coat” is from the fact that usually a faux scientist or doctor in a white coat appears on screen rattling off factoids to support the sex. This film doesn’t have a doctor. Instead we get an intrepid reporter on assignment in Denmark circa 1969 when all pornography was legalized. All pornography. He goes about asking people how they feel about the proliferation of pornography and most seem to think it is a good thing. He goes on to ask a teen age girl about her sexual practices, her opinions on birth control and finally porn. Her answers show a positive, well adjusted attitude to all things sexual. He then visits the set of a porno film with a gaggle of giggling females. he briefly talks to the director, wielding a microphone that looks more like a giant food mixer. he finally gets to talk to the naked girls about there relationships, how old they where when they started having sex, if they make a living with the work and if they think that pornography is okay. Once again the attitude is pretty positive. A different narrator gives us factoids claiming that since the ban on porn was lifted sexual crime has lowered by 25% in Denmark. He also says that most of the sales of sexual materials now go to the tourist trade. Cut to a woman in a sex shop putting away a penis enlarger and gigantic fake vagina. The rest of the movie movie is mainly dealing with other forms of sexuality such as nudism or strip joints. I.E. excuses to show big tit gals shaking their stuff. There is a bit on hippie body painting that has some gorgeous busty girls that will knock your socks off. Then about two thirds of the way through it flies full throttle into mondo film territory as it focuses on the body, reproduction and disease. A close up of a syphilis ridden penis is sure to sober you up fast. A run down of the male and female anatomy/physiology includes so many micro close ups of both sets of genitals that it becomes almost like surgery. Though the gal doing her Kegal exercises is pretty fascinating to watch. Then the last ten minutes become the only real pornographic content in the movie was it becomes an “marriage manual” on different positions that a couple can have sex in. this segment isn’t really erotic, But it IS really informative. Especially the information about having sex while pregnant. Oh yeah there is some startling footage of births, including a breech birth, that could be a bit much for wimps and expectant moms. The last image is beautifully enough, Uschi Digart and her fabulous bosoms. Though this functioned as pornography upon its release in 1970, it’s really much more of a Mondo/Documentary style sideways look at sex with a very little titillation thrown in. It sits nicely along side something like Mondo Cane more so than say Deep Throat. the new DVD looks great, with the print being extraordinarily clean and blemish free. After Hours finally did what fans have been asking by putting an original aspect ration 1.33 edition on disc #1 and the reformatted 1.78 edition on disc 2. So you get a choice instead of cropping like in some instances. There is a second feature from the same director, John Lamb, called Sexual Liberty Now which mainly focuses on the government’s investigation into pornography. but I need to watch it still. A really nice disc of an interesting time capsule.

Andy Copp
01:08:41
2008-10-16

Jive Turkey aka Baby Needs a New Pair of Shoes (1974) *** - I had never heard of this nifty little blaxsploitation oddity before but decided to give it a try since it was in the Mill Creek Drive In Classics 50 pack. I was immediately taken with it’s no budget charms. From the get go this is not quite like the other black action picture of the era, instead setting the action in 1956 Chicago (though the budget clearly doesn’t allow for any real vintage set pieces, clothing and only one or two cars). The plot deals with a numbers runner named Pasha who is being put under the gun by the Italian mob and the Mayor’s task force. Both of whom he had been in good graces with previously. Seems the main mobster he had grown up with, but is now being leaned on hard by the higher ups in the family, and the Cops whom he had always kept paid off anr ebeing leaned on hard by the Mayor who is up for re-election. To show that Pasha don’t take shit laying down he lets his main assassin, a six foot rather mainly dame (or is she? Suprises are in store), slit the throat of a mafia enforcer in a shocking moment. But Pasha makes it clear he is a gambling and numbers man, he don’t play in the narcotics business and that is what he is trying to keep out of his community. Seems the who neighborhood is in the numbers game and everyone loves Pasha. He’s a Father figure and a respected man who treats the neighborhood right. But when his people start getting killed, he pushes back. Highlights include the scene where the amazon assassin beats two hitmen to death with her high heeled shoe, and a scene where Pasha hides his car during a car chase in a waiting U-Haul van. But what makes this work is the very real sense of community and people. Yeah the feel out of place to the time period, but it very much feels like these are people who know and live with each other. Everyone on screen feels lik ethe real deal, from the little kids to the old barbers, this oozes legitimacy. The movie moves at its own pace, which is never very fast. Instead it sort of just lets you tag along with Pasha and his gang as they outsmart those trying to do them wrong, with some very graphic violent moments along the way. Some will slag the movie for its low budget, hell even a credit is mispelled on the front of the movie, but I think this is a unheralded little gem of the era. First time seeing this.

FORCED ENTRY
D. SHAUN COSTELLO
AFTER HOURS CINEMA
FULL SCREEN

Shaun Costello’s FORCED ENTRY is one of the most brutal and unpleasant films every made. It horrifies and shocks on several different levels, pummeling an audience into submission, leaving them shattered and brutalized. Most shockingly it is a porn film.

Made for peanuts in the warm months of 1971 the film was shot in three long days the movie was fashioned as a way to get around the censor boards of the time. The idea being that if the film has a plot and some sort of discerning social value then it cannot be totally considered obscene and can get around prosecution. So Costello fashioned his quickie porn film that tells the story of a Vietnam vet, (Played by Harry Reams under the pseudonym Tim Long) scarred by memories of the war who finds him self outcast at home. Sexually frustrated and tormented by his wartime past he stalks the women that come into the service station he works at. He garners the information from the credit card receipts and follows them home. He watches them have sex and once he reaches a fever pitch (and the men have left the premises) be barges in and proceeds to humiliate, degrade, torment, rape and kill the women inside. All the while having Nam flashbacks consisting of actual newsreel footage from the war.

 Its unpleasant business to be sure and there is only one or two scenes in the movie of consenting sex in the film for a porno audience to attach themselves to. The first being a busty young woman and a partially balding man (who happens to be the director!) whom the stalker watches through a window. This scene goes on for some time and is the only legit hetero hardcore scene in the film that you could possibly “get off” on. Its only moments before the movie plunges straight into hell and never looks back.

 Once the Stalker has entered her apartment all bets are of. He forces her at knife point to perform fellatio on him all the while spewing forth some of the most hate filled dialogue ever heard on the silver screen. He compares her to the “ no good gooks in Nam” while the movie flash cuts cowering civilians from Vietnam. The scene is brutal and ugly. Even if you were someone who wanted to fantasize a rape scenario it is filled with the Vietnam war footage too, so it offends on multiple levels. To a sane person it is uneasy viewing on EVERY level and not arousing in the slightest. Finally he ejaculates, directly into the camera lens, thus assaulting us the audience, and then slits her throat.

 Now at that point, 1971, there were roughies that were regular movie experiences. But from what I understood it was simply understood that the violence and hardcore imagery didn’t cross. Yet here it was hardwired together creating a frission that had to send audiences screaming. But it gets worse.

His second victim is a woman that he finds after watching her take a shower. He corners her in her bedroom and holds her at gun point. She cries and begs, but he starts in with his hateful ranting and forces her to suck him until he is erect and able to start the violation of her body. Laura Cannon is the actress who plays this role and this is outstanding. Her performance is of the highest caliber. We believe her plight, and feel her pain and agony. Her cries and screams are terrifying and very, very real. When the stalker finally gets his way and sodomizes her, it is unrelentingly grim and horrible.

Remember all of these rape scenes are hardcore sexuality portrayed on screen. So the actors are indeed have full penetrative sex. But they are still acting as well. So they are taking the level of performance up a notch to include full on sex as part of the performance, something no mainstream movie has ever dared to do in the United States. Laura Cannon proves her self on equal to a mainstream actress in her horrible violation scene. When he pulls out and screams at her while she is cowering before him “you got my prick all full of shit!” it is a terrifying moment. You feel this, for real.

Soon the flashbacks to the real life Nam footage start coming into play again and he starts hacking her up with his switchblade. She doesn’t die easily, it takes several slashes to do her in. Horrible stuff.

Soon after this Reams character meets some Hippies on the street, his thoughts on hippies are looped on the soundtrack “Scummy hippies!!!”

*** SPOILER***

But these hippies turn out to be his downfall because with their free love and wild drug use he can’t rape them. When he pulls his gun out on them to force himself, they just laugh and invite him into their beds. They begin to try and seduce him and it blows his mind. His sexual powertrip is premeditated on sexual sadism and when faced with two young women he cannot humiliate or control it shatters his character and ability to deal. He puts the gun to his head and amidst a montage of Vietnam war footage and the savagery from the film, he blows his brains out.

***END SPOILER***

Shaun Costello went on to a healthy career in the porn biz both in front of and behind the camera directing tons of movies and starring in a few too. Venessa Del Rio named him as one of her favorite performers to work with on screen. Harry Reams of course went on to fame as the stare of DEEP THROAT and DEVIL IN MISS JONES and made efforts to avoid being associated with FORCED ENTRY as he had a hard time reconciling the person he saw on screen with the person he was in real life. Forced Entry started a sub genre of the porn film that lasted through the 70’s and into the early 80’s where some directors made an effort to weld the hardcore imagery into dark and brooding storylines. Some of these films work well such as SEX WISH, others cascade along as exercises in brutality such as CLIMAX OF BLUE POWER. And some are just fucking weird and goofy like HOT SUMMER IN THE CITY and HARDGORE. But the granddaddy of them all, the best of them and the one that still holds the power to shock, revolt and squeeze the life out of a viewer is FORCED ENTRY.

Bad Biology (2007)**- Frank Henenlotter’s (Basket Case) long awaited return to the screen starts off strong, but ultimately ends on such a sour note that it can’t be considered anything but a huge disappointment. The film covers ground that underground filmmaker Scooter McCrea has already mined (in a much more serious way) in his brilliant movie Sixteen Tongues. Oddly enough McCrea is editor on this film. Bad Biology tells the very loopy tale of a girl that was born with seven clitorises in her vagina. So she is basically in a constant state of arousal and neads sex all the time. But she gets so aroused during the act that she sometimes kills her partners. She is also an artist/photographer and likes to snap pictures of these anonymous men while they are in the throws of passion and/or death. Then the really weird part is that she also has a sped up metabolism that causes her to conceive and give birth to mutant babies within two hours of each fuck she has. But since these babies are basically mutated monsters, she just dumps them in the trash. The second prong of the story deals with a young man who has a mutant penis. Seems when he was born his genitals were deformed and as a young man he began injecting them with growth hormones to make them normal. But instead it not only made the organ enormous, but gave it its own consciousness. So it demands sex and more drugs all the time. Naturally these two will meet, but the conclusion is highly disappointing. All this sexual loathing and body dismorphia is prime material for Henenlotter and for at least half the movie he has an uneasy balance of really sick humor, nasty sex and a weirdo dirty street vibe. But about two thirds of the way through the film it starts to just rehash Brain Damage with the Elmer monster replaced with a mutant dick. Then it goes into territory that was done recently in the film Pervert, but done there with a lot more humor and charm. The final joke is so resoundingly not funny that you end up angry you just sat through the whole movie. I wanted to like this movie much more. I LOVE Henenlotter’s other films. I think he is one of the most interesting directors around and his world view is incredibly unique. His love for weirdo trash is appareled. But this one goes was astray before it is over. Watch for Tina Krause oddly enough playing herself!

Frank Henenlotter Interviewed on Fear.net

SNUFF: A Documentary About Killing On Camera (2008) - Completely bogus, filled with bullshit “mockumentary” about a subject that is endlessly fascinating to those of us who have love for the grindhouse movies of the 70’s. This movie purports to be a documentary about the origins of the snuff film but never even trots out the Ed Saunders explanation from his book The Family about the Manson Murders which is where the term originated. Instead the play the entire ending murder scene from the movie Snuff and actually have on screen text asking you to decide if it is real. Of fucking course it isn’t real! It was shot in Carter Stevens’ (famous porn director) studio in New York and tacked onto the Roberta Findley (another famous porn director) movie to spice it up and cause controversy. But they don’t interview the easily accessible Carter Stevens who could have told them that. Instead they get a bunch of “independent” filmmakers, all of whom have no actual IMDB credits that are supposed to be experts. Ummm, if they wanted some credibility they should have had Fred Vogel and Myself in the movie talking about this shit, but I digress. They talk a little about Faces of Death but once again do not talk to the director, who is, once again, fairly accessible. They cover the standard stuff dealing with the Leonard Lake and Charles Ng murders, complete with pirated footage from a crime show, and how the Iraq war has bumped up the availability of death footage thanks to all the beheading videos (which they show some of). The showpieces of the movie are two long interview segments with a dude named Mark Rosen who claims he used to work for Byanston Films in the seventies (the mob outfit that released Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Deep Throat). He tells a story about a Russian pedophile ring busted in 2000, that made snuff films that some corroboration can be found online for. Click Here for the article. But the sources online are a little questionable at best. Yet this story has a bit of a ring of truth, or at least the possibility of truth to it. The the movie ends with Rosen getting all teary eyed recounting how he saw a Filipino snuff film in the 70’s. The story smacks of bullshit, though his recounting of it is pretty convincing. Most suspect is that he is the producer of this film so it is in his best interest to have a killer story to end on. The trailer for this movie on you tube has a production assistant talking about how on their last day of production they got an actual snuff tape with the word “enjoy” written on the label. Nothing of the sort is in the movie. Once again just hyperbole to sell this thing. One last thing, one of their “experts” is a dude named Raymond Whalen, who I’m sure is a beautiful person in real life, but his “performance” in this is so bug-eyed and wildly over the top that you want to throttle him any time he is on screen. Every other word he utters he has to emphasis like its his last. His delivery reminds me of those people in chats rooms that type in all capital letters. Funnily enough he is the only one in the movie with actual IMDB credits  as an actor and screenwriter. If you are interested in this topic of Snuff films and the myth behind them check out The Dark Side of Porn: Does Snuff Exist?. It is an excellent 45 minute BBC documentary that gets all the details right and doesn’t skimp on interviewing people. Then read Killing For Culture by David Kerekes and David Slater which is due to be revised and re-published sometime soon. But this movie is pretty much a waste of time.

Andy Copp

2008-10-02

00:14:52