Movie Review: Maximum Shame (2010)
Teacher: Carlos Atanes

Students: Ana Mayo, Marina Gatell, Ignasi Vidal, Paco Moreno, Ariadna Ferrer, David Castro, Eleanor James

High School: Fortknox Audiovisual

Study Guide: www.carlosatanes.com

I first became aware of Carlos Atanes’ third feature film Maximum Shame because its cast included, among others, the British scream queen Eleanor James, whom I really enjoyed in films such as Colour From The Dark and Forest of the Damned. I was even fortunate enough to meet her on the sets of Unrated – The Movie and Karl The Butcher Vs. Axe. Elle’s scene in Atanes’ movie, however, is rather short and weird… and to be honest it didn’t help much to aid my viewing pleasure of what’s most likely one of the strangest, most fucked up and unfortunately least entertaining flicks I’ve seen in quite some time.

If I understood correctly, the film tells the story of a husband and his wife who somehow end up in a nihilistic parallel world, which is basically an abandoned warehouse or factory. Stranded in that awkward scenario, the two lovers try their best to escape the cruelty of that place’s eccentric ruler, the so-called Queen, who gets kicks out of torturing her lackeys by poking them with sticks, eating cakes in front of their hungry eyes or singing to them in a shrill, annoying voice.

And as stupid as it sounds, that’s basically all that happens in Maximum Shame… the Queen moves from one room to another and performs strange and slightly disturbing actions on her helpless victims. Every now and then the trite sequence of humiliation and torture episodes is spiced up with a weird musical interlude, but that does hardly make the movie any more fun to watch… in fact, it only makes it more annoying. Sorry guys, but as much as I enjoy indy movies in general and as much as I would have loved to write a raving review for this flick in particular, Maximum Shame is definitely one film I could have done without. If you’re a total sucker for S&M aesthetics or a fan of totally senseless films, you might even find a weird reason to get some kicks out of this flick. But if you’re just a normal guy like me who’s got a weak spot for good old-fashioned horror movies, you sure as hell don’t wanna waste 80 minutes of your precious time watching a flick that looks as if it had emerged straight from xHamster’s Femdom section.

No Grade

Starring: Emily Boresow, Eric McGrane, Meg Saricks, Sally Spurgeon
Written & Directed By: Patrick Rea
Grade: C+

Indie horror director, Patrick Rea, has shown great promise through his darkly dramatic collection of short films. They have style and substance, slowly built up to explore an unexpected yet all encompassing personal horror. His feature, Nailbater, shows much of this same promise. It has great atmosphere, production values, and performances. Still, it felt like it fell short of the potential it held.

Nailbiter follows a family on their way to pick up the father who has been away fighting in the army. On their way they hit a horrible storm and have to find shelter. They end up breaking in to a cellar in a nearby house. Before long it becomes clear that getting out of there won’t be nearly as easy with the creatures that lie outside.

The acting and dialogue was really great. I appreciate that they built up the characters so we cared about the turmoil they were going through the rest of the film. The mother was a recovering alcoholic, yet she wasn’t the typical dead beat mother. She seemed genuine and ended up being a strong character. Even the young girls were, perhaps even more so. They were unique and had realistic dialogue.

The oldest daughter was one of the strongest points of the film. Even when her mother was understandably falling apart she was there to pick up the pieces and force her mom to get a hold of herself and keep fighting. Meg Baricks gave a great performance. She showed the tragedy her character was going through as well as charging her with a necessary ferocity. She proved herself to be a fighter and perhaps the more maternal one. They have no idea what they’re up against, but that is no reason to give up.

Most of the film takes place in the cellar, where they are alone and trapped. One of the younger girls are beaten by some sort of unknowncreature that is lurking around the entrance. It’s soon revealed that there might be a connection to the family that lives there and the town as a whole. There was a lot of tension and suspense building up through the plight to escape, but the issue was more what was holding them in there. There was an original premise behind everything that was going on, but I really wish it would have explored more. The creatures aren’t really utilized. They are enticing and impose a threat on our protagonists, but we aren’t given enough origins, purpose, or just what this supernatural connection is that fuels them. If this was developed more, the film could have been much more stimulating.

WARNING: If you don’t like spoilers, do not read any further. This review is gonna be full of them. I’m sorry, but that’s just how I roll.

SHRIEK OF THE SASQUATCH is about a couple, Julie and Nick, who are on some kind of road trip and run afoul of good ol’ sasquatch. The film starts out with a photographer taking pictures of this hot chick in the woods when he suddenly spots something hairy and humanoid off in the distance.

From here on out the movie is a series of encounters with squatch bumping into people and knocking their heads off. It finally gets interesting when Nick accidentally runs over a poodle in the middle of the road (An effect that looks like a stuffed animal with guts strewn all over it). Nick and Julie discover a flyer for the missing poodle at a diner, and try to locate the owner. They finally bump into an old biker who knows the dude and who points them in the direction of his house. When the couple arrives they learn the man is dead, and that the squatch who did it is still lurking around the home. An inevitable encounter ensues, boyfriend is gutted and munched, and chick is bitten, but manages to flee into the woods.

I have to admit the movie puts an original twist on the squatch legend. After Julie blows it away, it mysteriously changes into a naked dead dude implying that sasquatches have more in common with werewolves than anyone could possibly imagine. You can pretty much guess what the final scene is… a chick bitten, wondering delirious in woods…

When I first saw the trailer to this movie on YouTube, I could tell right away it was a low-budget flick, maybe too low-budget even for my tastes, but I still wanted to check it out. It had that appearance of 70s monster movies I like , and I’m also addicted to Killer Bigfoot movies.

In the end, I’m sorry to say this movie simply didn’t work for me. The pluses, yes, there were pluses, are that the two leads are not douchebags kids. They are very likable, and the main chick is hot, and I didn’t like that Nick took a dirt nap towards the end. The other random chicks in the film are just as hot, with the chick that gets her head slammed through the window of her house being the hottest.

The movie is supposed to take place in the 70s, and that era is effectively reproduced. The instrumental score is very creepy and the landscape shots that accompany those moments work as well.

What doesn’t work about the film is mostly the star of the show the squatch himself. All sasquatch movie monsters are pretty much a dude in a suit, but how the monster is filmed is what separates those that work from the ones that don’t. I could tell right away this movie wasn’t going to work when squatch is seen simply strolling through the woods. The camera stays with him just long enough to destroy his mythic nature and make him look way too ordinary; way too much like a man simply donning a Bigfoot costume. Same goes for when the deputy spots him strolling across the road in the middle of the night. He’s just walking, casually, with the suit clearly visible to the viewer.

He’s also portrayed as being no bigger than an average person, when most of the accounts I have read of the creature indicate something that is much, much larger than a human. Yes, there is bad acting, yes, there are scenes that linger far too long, yes, there is a van that gets tipped over that is clearly a model, but for me, all that would’ve been forgivable if more effort was put into the Bigfoot FX.

There is only one effective scene in the movie and that’s when Julie finds Nick dead and the Bigfoot is pulling out his guts and munching on them. Despite the limited FX that was put into the squatch, that scene was edited effectively, with gooey gut pulls and munching sounds.

Since this was an intentionally created throwback to 70s monster fare, the lame Bigfoot FX might have been intentional, in which case I can give this movie a pass, but it’s still not something I could sit through a second time.

The DVD comes out through Retromedia, with a 1.78:1 aspect ratio, and anamorphic. For extras you get 5 minutes of deleted scenes and two trailers, one for SHREIK OF THE SASQUATCH and one for SUPER SHARK.
Oh, and one more thing, never once does the squatch shriek. He should have shrieked before every kill.

Order SHRIEK OF THE SASQUATCH on DVD.

WARNING: If you don’t like spoilers, do not read any further. This review will be full of them. Sorry, that’s just how I roll.

The trailer was my first exposure to this film. I remember seeing it on TV and it immediately caught my interest simply because of its title—HUMONGOUS! Based on what you see in it, you can easily assume it’s a monster movie, and that’s what I thought it was. I also thought it took place in a jungle and not the woods.

I didn’t end up actually seeing the movie until it hit cable, and it hit right around the time that HBO series, THE HITCHHIKER, was playing. The guy who opens and closes the show, Page Fletcher, is also in HUMONGOUS. He’s in the prologue only, and from what IMDB says, HUMONGOUS was his first acting gig.

As the movie went on, I quickly learned, to my disappointment, that it wasn’t the kind of monster movie I was hoping it would be. There’s a monster in it, no doubt, but it’s of the deformed man-child variety. I watched it regardless, and in the end it never made much of an impression on me. It’s funny, though, how your tastes in movies change as you get older. Movies you may have liked and even loved in youth, you may end up disliking or outright hating as an adult, and visa versa. HUMONGOUS falls into the latter category thanks to an opportunity I had, via a bootleg DVD I secured, by happenstance mind you, to see the movie before it hit “legit” DVD.

My express purpose was to see if my original assessment of the movie had stood the test of time. It did not. I enjoyed it more now than when I was a kid.

Okay, now, let’s dissect this mother.

HUMONGOUS begins on ‘Labour Day Weekend, 1946,’ with what one can gather is a posh party on some unnamed non-tropical island. This is where Page Fletcher comes in. He plays a real douchebag of a scumbag who’s drunk and has designs on this one particular chick. You get the impression right away that she doesn’t like him, but whether it was from a relationship gone bad, or from just some sick fascination Fletcher’s character may have had towards her, we never learn. Their backstory is never fleshed out other than what you see in the prologue. Not saying that’s a bad thing, just stating it as a matter of fact.

Like all scumbags who get drunk and have their eye on a girl at a party, things turn bad real quick. He follows her off to a secluded place, his pestering the turns into bitch slapping, and that in turn quickly escalates into a full fledge rape. As the rape occurs, the German shepherds she was paying attention to in their pen prior get agitated by her screaming, and start to climb over the fence.

Keep in mind this version Scorpion Releasing has put out is the UNCUT version, and most of the cutting that was done is right here in the rape scene. There’s a special feature you can access labeled, R-Rated Beginning Scene. On the back of the DVD it’s called, Alternate Pre-Credit Sequence. The R-Rated version was the version that was also put onto VHS and aired on cable, as is mentioned in the commentary, and the footage that is cut are close-ups of Fletcher’s drunk, sweaty, quivering face as he rapes her. Without these scenes, it looks like he only beat her. The dogs attacking him in the moments that follow the rape was edited, too. A horrible wound on his Achilles’ heel; where it’s shown to be nothing but a bloody hole was excised and so was the fatal beating she gives him with a rock was altered. She hits him twice; one of those blows was excised for the theatrical cut. In this new version you also get to see a longer shot of him just laying there coughing up blood before she bashes him.

The scene dissolves and we move into the opening credit sequence, which is a montage of period photos of this woman as she grows up, and of her family and friends, set to laid-back music from the forties. It’s a nice touch, which sets it apart from what you would expect from what was advertised as a simple “monster movie.”

When we finally get to the movie’s protagonists, we learn three of them are related: the two guys and the short chick with the huge glasses. The two remaining girls are the guy’s respective girlfriends. Aside from Page Fletcher, the only other two actors I am somewhat familiar with is the red-head, Joy Boushel, who’s the girlfriend of the group’s resident douchebag, and Janet Julian, the main squeeze of the movie’s perceived hero. The former actress I have only seen in one other movie, David Cronenberg’s remake of THE FLY. She played the chick Jeff Goldblum picks up in the bar after he destroys that guy’s wrist when they arm-wrestled. Julian looked familiar, but I couldn’t place her, that is until I listened to the commentary and learned she played Nancy Drew in that seventies, Hardy Boys TV show with Parker Stevenson and Shaun Cassidy.

Both chicks display ample amounts of T&A, with only Boushel, though, getting naked, from the waist up. Julian’s trim, tight, nipple-popping frame, however, is constantly on display in the skintight clothing she wears. The short girl, with the horrendous glasses, has a body, you can tell in a few shots, but the filmmakers decided to keep it covered with sweat pants and long sleeve shirts through most of the film.
For shame, filmmakers, for shame.

When we first see the kids, it’s evident right off the bat there is tension between the brothers, and even between the douchebag brother and his chick as they all get ready to take off to places unknown in their boat. This is the one problem I had with the movie, and with all movies where there are a group of people under siege by some outside force. For some reason filmmakers think they can’t generate any conflict if they don’t have a resident douchebag in the group. They don’t seem to realize that every person has the ability to be a douchebag from time to time, just like they all have the ability to be heroes. Instead they saddle one person with so much douchism that it makes it hard to believe he, or she, would have any friends in the first place.

Case in point with HUMONGOUS’, Nick Simmons, played by John Wildman. After they rescue a guy stranded on a boat in the middle of the foggy night, douchebag Nick, feeling perpetually inadequate and drunk decides for no reason at all to start the boat up and get it moving. Mind you the guy they rescued warned them not to keep going for their boat will get stranded on the treacherous rocks near what he calls, Dog Island. Up to the point when Nick decides to move the plot forward and fuck everyone’s lives up, they all decided to sit it out until morning.

The guy they rescued tells them about the old, reclusive woman who lives on the island and is only seen twice a year when she goes into town for supplies. We also learn later that she owns a lot of dogs. You can see there is more than a little connection between this old lady and the chick we saw raped in the prologue.

Another plot point that isn’t set up well is the fire that starts when Nick runs the boat into the rocks. All you see is a fire start up. How did it start? We may never know. Apparently, the writer and director don’t know either, for they point that error out on the commentary.

Everyone dives off the boat, except Carla, the chick with the glasses, before it explodes, and manages to make it to shore. This is when the dying starts. By the way, Carla shows up later in the last glaring plot point error when she’s discovered hiding in the boathouse, the same boathouse where Nick ends up getting killed. She rattles off a quick explanation of how she got there, but no indication she was aware of Nick’s death, which it seems to me she should have been. How could she not be.

THE ‘DEFORMED’ FACE OF DEATH

Our first kid to take a dirt nap is Douchebag Nick, who once he gets to the island is suddenly acting all normal and probably sorry he fucked everyone like he did. To make up for it he volunteers to hike up the cliff and to the old woman’s house for help. During his hike through the woods we get another pet peeve of mine that filmmakers occasionally perpetrate when filming someone at night—the dreaded day-for-night gag. Or, in the case of HATCHET, they set up so many huge spotlights, which I assume is to mimic moonlight that it still ends up looking like day. The moon does not shine that bright at night. Believe me. Anyhow, to the director’s credit he mentions that the shot I just mentioned should have been darker. Ironically, the bootleg I saw of it this passed summer was so grainy that it looked more like a night shot than this remastered transfer does.

Nick is chased by a dog and eludes it, and manages to make it to a boathouse. This is where our deformed man-child cuts the kid’s life short, first by scaring him shitless by shoving his deformed eyeball up to a crack in the wall as the kid peers out, then by making him scream like a girl when he busts in to kill him.

And that’s it.

The movie, overall, is not full of gore. Only one gore shot exists and that’s when Carla is killed.

The next ones to go are Nick’s girlfriend, Donna, and the guy they saved, whose name may or may not be, Bert. I can’t recall. Bert suffered a foot injury in the boat debacle and has gone into some kind of shock and is lying on the beach freezing, so Donna decides to put her assets to good use and undo her shirt and lay against him to give him some body heat. Our deformed man-child attacks in a rather effectively edited scene, throwing Donna onto the ground in such a fashion that insinuates she was probably just killed, and Bert has his throat stomped on by the creature. All this happens in split second cuts that work wonderfully.

Our supposed hero, Eric, is the next in line to push up daisies. His death scene is nicely played out as the “creature” bursts up from its lair in the cellar. Eric gets the upper hand first, though, by seemingly beating it into unconsciousness, but sadly this isn’t the case. The creature attacks just as he tells his chick that everything’s okay now. The humongous brute puts Eric into a bear hug and snaps his back like a fucking twig.

Finally, we get to Carla, whose walking papers are handed to her at the end of the movie when she runs out of the boathouse and into Sandy, but you see Sandy is in the middle of running for her life, and poor Carla has no idea what hits her when she’s picked up by Humongous man-child and has her face crushed. She’s then tossed aside like yesterday’s garbage as the “creature” pursues Sandy into the boathouse for their anti-climatic confrontation that involves a lot of fire and a burned down boathouse.

The ending here is where we finally get to see some of the man-child, but only from a distance, and the only close-ups we ever get of him are of his eyeball earlier in the movie and his burned visage at the very end of the flick after Sandy has impaled him on a sign post. It’s stated in the commentary that due to their low budget the FX for Mr. Humongous didn’t come out as planned, hence why we never really see what he looks like until he’s all burned up.

The movie ends with a final shot of Sandy sitting on the dock.

Also stated in the commentary is how shortchanged HUMONGOUS got come time for it’s release back in 1982. Avco Embassy was changing hands at the time, and the new guy in charge wanted nothing more to do with horror movies, it’s also suggested this is why the marketing campaign gave it such a shitty poster and why it got such a limited release.

Despite those “flaws” I mentioned earlier, which aren’t so bad that they’ll distract you from the movie as a whole, this is a damn good movie that starts out making you think you’re getting a slasher movie, or a monster movie, but it ends up giving you something a bit more subdued, and something a tad more layered, in the nature of the “creature,” that is. There are times when you do feel sorry for what it is, and what it has to do to survive. Yes, it’s a horror movie, but not a gore filled one, which sometimes, believe it, or not, I actually like.

THE DEFORMED MAN-CHILD ON DISC

Scorpion Releasing has done wonders at restoring this movie to how it should have looked when it first hit VHS. What was once a grainy and extremely dark movie, so much so that when it gets to the point in the movie when the kids are investigating the house, the film was pretty much unwatchable is now full of detail and light where there should be light. Those unwatchable scenes are still dark but not to the point where you can’t see the shapes of furniture and doorways and knick-knacks, and other sundry articles.

The movie has been released as part of Katarina’s Nightmare Theater Line. Who is Katarina Leigh Waters you might ask? Good question since I have never heard of it before now either. Apparently, she’s an ex-WWE wrester, and acts in low budget films from time to time. Like Code Red who has their own ex-wrestling diva, Scorpion has scored Katarina to host a line of movies, presumably with the same tactic in mind as Code Red, to get a new demographic of buyers to see if that can make more money.

And, like Code Red, Katarina bookends each film, but unlike Code Red’s Maria Kanellis, who does comedy shtick, Katarina actually talks about the movie providing trivia about it stars and filmmakers where she can.

She also moderates the commentary with director, Paul Lynch, writer, William Gray, and Horror Journalist, Nathaniel Thompson, but does not get in the way of their very informative talk. Gray and Lynch also worked on DEADLY EYES (aka THE RATS) and THE CHANGELING respectively, and also share a couple of accounts from those movies as well. The best one being that the house in THE CHANGELING was not supposed to burn down at the end of that film! Guess someone didn’t get the memo.

There’s also the aforementioned R-Rated Beginning Scene, which I discussed earlier on the DVD, and a bunch of trailers for other movies in the Katarina’s Nightmare Theater Line. And, if you don’t like the Katarina banner on the top of the DVD cover, there’s reversible artwork without it.

Read Shawn’s Dissecting NIGHT OF THE DEMON (1980).

After releasing his magnum opus Mutilation Mile last year, underground auteur Ron Atkins now gives us the release of his long awaited The Cuckoo Clocks of Hell, a story of two psychopaths who meet up in a post-apocalyptic world.

John Giancaspro is Harry Russo, the lunatic that Atkins fans know and love from his films Schizophreniac: The Whore Mangler and Necromaniac: Schizophreniac 2. Cult filmmaking icon Jim VanBebber (Deadbeat at Dawn, The Manson Family) is Terry Hawkins, the psychotic snuff filmmaker that horror fans know from Roger Watkins’ Last House on Dead End Street. Russo and Hawkins are both individuals with pasts plagued by utter madness and human debauchery. The two eventually meet up on their own adventures through Las Vegas that are filled with sex, drugs, rape, and murder. As time runs out for what’s left of humanity in a world ravaged by chaos, the two find themselves on a Wizard of Oz inspired voyage in which they have to find the “N***** of Cause.” As you can see, the movie does not shy away from the offensive one bit as Russo and Hawkins frequently go into insane racist rants where no minority is spared and the degrading and offensive Wizard of Oz spoofs abound with no shame.

The Cuckoo Clocks of Hell is a definite winner and trash classic from Ron Atkins. His outrageous, brutal and depraved styles of filmmaking are put to their best use with the crazy performances by Giancaspro and VanBebber, Heidi Martinuzzi in multiple roles as a prostitute and Russo’s sicko mom, and an appearance by David Hayes as John Wayne Gacy. Ron Atkins even shows up as Jesus himself.

Cuckoo Clocks delivers the gore, the nudity, the sick toilet humor, and the over-the-top and outrageous antics expected from a Harry Russo movie and couples it with VanBebber’s brilliant portrayal of Terry Hawkins to make for one insane exploitation movie experience that will have sleaze fanatics jumping for joy.

The limited edition DVD of Cuckoo Clocks comes in a blue case with an insert featuring artwork by Giancaspro and the movie’s trailer is included as an extra. Go to www.cutthroatvideo.com to order this, Mutilation Mile, and Atkins’ other new sleaze opus Death Rattle LSD.

In 2011, there have been very few horror films that have actually delivered the goods. In fact, over the last decade, it has seemed that the best films have been coming from across the pond, most notably from Spain, France, and jolly old England. The English has been exporting plenty of quality programs to American audiences over the last few years spanning from The Mighty Boosh, both versions of the Office and an American remake of Shameless on Showtime to miniseries/films such as Dead Set, Colin, and the new film Panic Button which has definitely lived up to the hype it has had before this review.

The plot of the film involves 4 strangers named Jo, Max, Gwen, and Dave who have been invited onto a private jet to compete against each other to win prizes in a sweepstakes held by Norwegian social networking site All2gethr. At first the contestants are all drinking champagne and remaining relaxed having a wonderful time, but by the third round of games it is evident to everyone that this isn’t a simple competition and that their lives are all in danger.

The crew on the film did a fantastic job on almost every aspect. The acting was superb and while watching the film I was truly drawn in and actually felt the fear the characters were suffering on the claustrophobic jet. The film kept me in suspense and when I thought I knew what was gonna happen in the end, two separate plot twists caught me off guard and added a little extra oomph to the overall tone of the film.

The sad thing about this film is that the characters set themselves up for this because of what they had posted on the internet and for what they had done in the past. It’s the traditional human fault plot device along with revenge and the sense that no one can be trusted.

While my suspension of disbelief was at Saw levels (in fact you could put Jigsaw as the main villain and call this Saw and the ending felt very tacked on and shoved into the film in order to give the contest reason, the film is truly among the best of the year and proves that while a lot of shit is being put into the theaters nowadays, there are still plenty of great independent ventures out there being released all the time.

8/10

“In 1974, Glenville Sanatorium was the site of a brutal and horrific crime, as three hideously deformed cannibals went on a merciless killing spree. Now, years later, a group of college kids having the time of their life make a fateful wrong turn, giving this family of blood-thirsty cannibals new prey to stalk. The abandoned medical wards within the sanatorium soon become killing fields as the panicked victims come face to face with a chilling choice: fight back or die.”

The first Wrong Turn came out in 2003, well after I had lost faith in mainstream horror films. I have still never seen it. But after accidentally seeing the first few minutes of Wrong Turn 2, I decided to give the franchise a shot. The first sequel starts off with a fun premise, but becomes overlong and predictable.

Wrong Turn 4, which the poster subtitles “Bloody Beginnings,” squeezes an origin story into the first ten minutes and then introduces the rest of the cast. The unnecessarily large cast in this film pretty much guarantees that we won’t get to know much of anything about any of them. And if you’re expecting anything more out of the fourth installment in a horror series about mutant inbred hillbillies, then you ought to turn back. That is, unless you’re interested in the most unbelievable lipstick lesbian couple ever recorded.

So getting down to business, let’s discuss the kills. There are plenty, which is one thing the copious cast affords the audience. Most of the kills are pretty entertaining, even if a few of them overdo the CG blood. But since no one is paying for this movie to see a riveting, original story filled with working cell phones, it is a little bothersome.

But all of that being said, one of my favorite things about horror prequels is their inherently subversive quality. Because — spoiler alert? — you know who ultimately wins. There is no charade about revenge or redemption for the “protagonists.” Audiences go to see the killers do their thing; they know what they’re getting into. And that’s something I can get behind.

Being a movie hoarder, er….collector, certain titles repeat in my collection and not just once, twice but sometimes three, four or five editions of the same title. Gaining numerous items of the exact title does a number on my subconscious; the notion that is inserted about these various editions leaves me lethargic in getting to the actual movie and, in turn, can cease my ambition in reviewing a blu-ray edition of one of the best, if not the best, exploitive movie we’ve seen to date! Cannibal Holocaust is notorious around the world and was once believed, and probably considered still is, a snuff film even if the actors have revealed themselves alive and well. In my eyes, Cannibal Holocaust is a kind of snuff film, but not the sort of snuff film that you’re thinking.

A deep exploration professor is led into the vast, civilized-untouched world of the jungle where four documentary filmmakers had vanished two months ago. These cocky filmmakers seek to reap the jungle’s local tribes who have never seen the white man and prefer the taste of human as a delicacy amongst themselves. What the professor finds among the tribe are a weary group of tribesman and frightened tribal women; he also discovers the remains the skinned to the bone remains of the four filmmakers and their lost footage. He brings the footage back to America and before a mainstream program can display the images before their captivated audiences, he screens it and nothing could prepare himself to the monstrosities displayed not only by the jungle and the tribe buy also by the four documentarians.

Ruggero Deodato has been accused, arrested, guilt-driven and combated about his controversial 1980 feature in which actors have stated during production have feared for their lives and years after production wanted nothing to do with the film or Deodato ever again. The tribulations of Cannibal Holocaust mask the brilliancy of Deodato’s direction and editing creating an unfortunate blinding girth of graphic flesh eating scenes, nearly raw sexual aggressions against women, and glorifying the malevolence displayed by the four filmmakers. Cannibal Holocaust is a film within a film; creating two very separate stories and entwining them into one very real heart stopping and ghastly story that is gracefully scored playfully and disturbingly by Riz Ortolani, who ironically mostly scored comedies.

Shameless Films of the United Kingdom brings Cannibal Holocaust to Hi-Def and we all know what that means; it means every detail, every intense graphic situation will be displayed will be detailed to the very last piece of torn flesh from the bone. Watch the cannibal tribe chew bits of intestines between the gaps of their dentist forbidden chompers! Yum-mie! Shameless provides two versions of the film; the Deodato edited version which omits minutes upon minutes of real animal cruelty (the snuff film I had referred to up top) and the uncut, “road-to-hell” version. The latter option I would definitely opt into if I were you! This blu-ray edition is fine-tuned and well worth the extra few bucks in shipping from our British brothers.

“At an Antarctica research site, the discovery of an alien craft leads to a confrontation between graduate student Kate Lloyd and scientist Dr. Sander Halvorson. While Dr. Halvorson keeps to his research, Kate partners with Sam Carter, a helicopter pilot, to pursue the alien life form.”

If you’ve been a horror fan for longer than the last five minutes, the title THE THING should be very familiar to you. It’s John Carpenter’s aliens-in-the-arctic masterpiece, one of the best horror films ever made. And now there’s a different The Thing in theaters. Yet, Universal has been insisting this is not a remake, but a prequel to Carpenter’s Thing.

The producers of The Thing can tell audiences that it is not a remake and still be halfway honest. The dishonest half is likely rooted in market research, showing that audience response to the recent rehashing of genre staples has grown tepid. Wouldn’t they otherwise have given the film a name that somehow indicates it is not simply a remake (of a remake)?

That being said, the movie is not terrible. Weighed against other recent “rejuvenations” of 70′s and 80′s horror films, it holds its own. Some viewers may find the ground between the beginning and the ending a little overly familiar, and newcomers to the story may find it a little slow. But despite a couple shortcomings, at least it’s not the Nightmare On Elm Street remake.

With a film like 1982′s The Thing as an unavoidable comparison point, the issue of special effects has to be addressed. John Carpenter’s take on this story brought some of the most intense and creative special effects to 1982 audiences. Even more than creating one of the most effective senses of isolation and paranoia, Carpenter’s film is hailed for the effects. So fans of his approach to the source material are going to see the new film in part to see the update on the creatures. And what will they see? Well… they will see some pretty conspicuous CGI for the most part, and a handful of decent practical effects. The ideas behind some of the computer animated sequences aren’t that bad in theory, but were botched in practice.

A couple years ago on a Wednesday morning, I sat down in a tiny, almost empty theater, on the highest floor of the IFC Center in New York City. I was there to have an experience I had been looking forward to for months, after relishing in the promo images, the rants of sickened critics, and most of all, the online film community’s obsession with the mad scientist who stitches his victims ass to mouth.

It isn’t that I left the movie disappointed, but just somewhat puzzled. What I had just seen was a slick, well-made, very straight forward film. Mad scientist stitches victims ass to mouth. I had enjoyed it, but that was it; no more, no less. The hype wasn’t wrong, but it had ruined what could have been a beautiful discovery. Imagine sitting down in a theater for what you think is just another slasher film and seeing that happen. Imagine having no idea people are going to be stitched ass to mouth, and then, right in front of your eyes… surgically attached, ass to mouth.

After my experience with The Human Centipede, I strongly avoided exposing myself to any hype on the sequel, not wanting to know a single detail of the debauchery I was about to experience, and this was a good move on my part. Although writer-director Tom Six’s second entry in the Centipede series, The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence), doesn’t come up with anything that quite tops the initial horrible act, it definitely embellishes on it. It’s gross, it’s disgusting, it’s everything that made you cringe in the first film, amped up to the nth degree, times twelve.

And, oh boy, there are going to be a lot of angry, grossed out critics.

Yet after a few days of intense contemplation, I still am not exactly sure what to make of The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence). Part of me loves it. Part of me is highly aware of everything that is wrong with the film.

It’s like a dirty bit of art-fuck horror, totally sure of itself, and completely devoted to its repulsive tone. Shot in black and white, the film seems completely unaware of the Hollywood norm for movie making. At first glance, one would think to blame it on an unskilled, amateur filmmaking, possibly accusing the crew of being college students. But that’s impossible, this is a sequel, and the original film is the complete opposite; the clinical sterility and slickness that fueled the tone of the first film is nowhere to be found here. The only explanation is: it’s hard to watch, but everything is intentional.

The screenplay is unconcerned with structure, the only character that seems to get developed is the main character, who doesn’t even speak. His name is Martin, and he’s a middle aged mentally challenged man who works as a security guard in a parking garage and is completely obsessed with a movie. He watches it daily. He keeps a scrapbook. And the movie, this is as meta-cinema as it gets, is The Human Centipede.

All other characters are nothing. They are Martin’s problems and Martin’s victims, and they only exist to the viewer in the context that they exist to Martin. Whether or not you are comfortable engaging in Martin’s world is up to the individual. The acting is so over the top and the dialogue is so absurd, the film often comes off like it’s a hilarious parody of itself.

But Laurence Harvey, a newcomer to the horror world, brings so much to the Martin character. He is simply shameless. With merely his face and posture, Laurence Harvey transforms into one of the most disturbed characters ever captured on film. He is so convincing, I began to fear that I wasn’t watching a performance; I was terrified he wasn’t acting. He was Martin. I give Tom Six a lot of credit on his casting choices, both Dieter Laser and Laurence Harvey are unforgettable villains.

Sometimes it gets unclear if Tom Six is channeling Jörg Buttgereit or Olaf Ittenbach, but to be honest, I’m not really opposed to either. The film kind of dances a line between the two, seeming intensely artistic, but without a moment’s notice, drifting into a mindless low budget gorefest. Sometimes it seems pretty committed to the art, but usually it’s much more committed to the gross-out.

Either way, it’s hard to take it seriously. The premise, despite being entertainingly clever, feels a little too self-congratulatory. Six knows just how much hype The Human Centipede received, and he doesn’t hide it, he’s reveling in it. But then again, maybe it’s a brilliant bit of social commentary on the ridiculous accusations that violent cinema causes violence. Thinking The Human Centipede could inspire a regular person to build their own centipede is as ludicrous as claiming that watching a bit of porn drives balanced individuals to violent rape. Maybe it’s totally serious. I just can’t figure it out. It’s ballsy enough to encourage these thoughts, but not stuck up enough to omit shit splattering on people’s faces and a mentally handicapped man knocking out every person he meets with a crowbar.

I think I’ve come to a conclusion. Personally, I loved it. I loved how dirty and cheap it looked. I love that it wasn’t afraid to be risky, to make social statements, and then to show the most disgustingly gory, unbelievable things that Six could think up. It wasn’t afraid to be really stupid, and then really clever. It’s not scared to let you laugh at mental disease, at trauma, at innocent people getting shit in their mouths. I loved how hilarious it is when a character actually screams, verbatim, “He’s going to stitch us ass to mouth!” I love typing ass to mouth! I love Six’s attitude, I love Martin’s big, scary eyes, and his ridiculous laugh. But I will never, ever recommend it to another person thinking that they will come out of it feeling the same way that I do.

But the bottom line is, I will definitely recommend The Human Centipede II to someone if they want to see more ass to mouth. And I’ll cross my fingers that they’re not mad at me later. And I will watch it again. And I will be smiling, and I will be laughing.

Come back to HYB tomorrow to check out my interview with Six and Harvey. There is much more ass to mouth discussion to come!

Eric Stanze has been one of the indie horror scene’s most prominent and influential filmmakers for at least 20 years. His production company Wicked Pixel Cinema has given us low budget wonders such as the 1994 shot-on-video demonic possession picture Savage Harvest, the 1998 Super 8 surreal, experimental art house horror film Ice From the Sun, one of the most disturbing and graphically brutal serial killer movies, Scrapbook, released in 2000 and introducing viewers to frequent Wicked Pixel leading lady Emily Haack, the Severed Head Network short films compilations, and the chilling psychological horror outing Deadwood Park in 2007.

After working to get another new and bigger project off the ground in 2008 which fell through due to poor economic conditions, Stanze and the Wicked Pixel crew stayed at it to give fans of underground horror another grueling and gruesome cinematic experience with little money and used their resources to the best of their abilities. The result has come in the form of their newest feature Ratline.

Ratline stars Jason Christ (director of Savage Harvest 2: October Blood) as a seemingly normal-looking bearded, red haired man who stops along the road to help some folks who turn out to be crazed, murderous Satanists hungry for a human sacrifice. They kidnap him and force him to drive them to a location where they can sacrifice him. Unfortunately for them, it seems they underestimated his strength and he takes them by surprise turning the tables over on them and viciously offs them all in super gory ways.

Turns out he’s a Nazi who worked in a special paranormal investigations unit of the SS that was looking at ways to make a human being immortal and was given the ability to stay young as a result of the experiments. Meanwhile, a couple of runaways (Emily Haack and Alex Del Monacco), caught up in a shit storm of drugs and murder, find themselves on the run from the east coast to St. Louis where they eventually cross paths with the immortal former Nazi who appears to be nothing more than an average young man. As his immortality soon starts to wear off, he looks to continue the experiments started by the SS years ago, which involved decapitated heads and a flag which was hidden away for years. In pursuit of the flag and finishing the work started during WWII, he decides the two runaways will be his best subjects to help him complete his goals.

Ratline is another excellent effort from Stanze and Wicked Pixel which may be their best film yet. Emily Haack turns in another great performance as does Jason Christ and indie horror newcomer Sarah Swofford does a fine job as the caring young girl who provides a place for the runaways to stay. The film is very brutal and gory and delivers some really intense moments. It’s definitely Stanze and company returning to their roots in the realm of gutsy, renegade micro budget horror filmmaking with some great gore effects and nice scenery (the dilapidated cemetery has a very gothic feel to it). Ratline is certainly one of this year’s best indie horror releases and a great sign of things to come from Wicked Pixel.
After dealing with distributors like SRS Cinema, Image, Elite, and Cinema Epoch, Wicked Pixel has now jumped on the do-it-yourself distribution bandwagon as they have released Ratline on DVD to the fans themselves. The DVD contains two audio commentaries, “making of” documentary, deleted scenes, bloopers, and trailers. For more info on this and other releases, head on over to www.wickedpixel.com and order your copy today.

Teachers: Adam Rifkin, Tim Sullivan, Adam Green & Joe Lynch
Students: Richard Riehle, Joel David Moore, Kane Hodder, Laura Ortiz & others
High School: ArieScope Pictures
Study Guide: www.chillerama.com

Do you still remember the heighday of the drive-in cinemas, when hundreds of thousands of American teenagers sneaked out of their bedroom windows at night, short-circuited their daddy’s factory-new Buick convertibles and took their high school sweethearts to the local drive-in, where the two love birds made out on the leather-upholstered backseats while trashy terror flicks like Humanoids From The Deep, Sadomania and I Drink Your Blood flickered across the giant screen in front of them? Well, to be perfectly honest with you, I don’t recall that time at all, because not only was I born too late but also on the wrong side of the ocean to ever have been able to take part in this wonderful era. Thus, I’m always more than happy when I stumble upon a movie such as Chillerama which lives and breathes the reckless exploitation spirit of yesteryear throughout each and every second of its playing time.

While these movies turn the theatre into a loony bin and the screen gets soaked in a gooey mass of gore and body fluids, I can happily sit back in my chair, stuff a handful of popcorn into my mouth and dream of a magical time long past when independent horror films weren’t as timid, tame and polished as they are today and still managed to irritate, shock, disgust and freak out their audiences. And, so much is certain, irritating, shocking, disgusting and freaky are sure as hell attributes that have to be mentioned when talking about a tiny ‘lil scare flick by the awe-inspiring name of Chillerama.

Written and directed by four long-serving and loudly hailed veterans of indy cinema, namely Adam “Detroit Rock City” Rifkin, Tim “2001 Maniacs” Sullivan, Adam “Hatchet” Green and Joe “Wrong Turn 2” Lynch, this unsparing horror anthology is by far the most gross and outraging splatter fest I’ve seen since Troma’s fierce ‘n furious fast food fright film Poultrygeist! Not even five minutes into the movie we already get to see in gruesome close-up how a flesh-eating zombie wife bites off her necrophiliac husband’s scrotum after he dug her up in the cemetery and tried to molest her corpse. And that’s just the beginning, guys… from here on it only gets weirder, wilder and more violent by the minute! Because when our dickless friend shows up at his work at the local drive-in, which is about to show its last monster movie marathon that night, everything goes totally out of hand and all hell breaks loose.

The first movie to grace the drive-in’s screen and make the audience’s jaws drop to the floor in utter shock and disbelief is Adam Rifkin’s Wadzilla, which tells the tragic story of a young man (played by Rifkin himself) who suffers from a genetic defect that causes him to produce not more than a single, solitary sperm whenever he’s aroused. To pimp his tattered manhood he takes an experimental drug which indeed increases the growth of his semen. Unfortunately, he does not produce more sperms from now on, but the one sperm he produces just grows to unnatural proportion and hence he has to get rid of it as soon as he can whenever he feels it swelling in his balls. While he successfully kills most of his apple-sized sperms right after he delivered them, one of the nasty little fuckers manages to escape through the toilet and make its way into the crowded streets of New York City, where it feeds on spoiled Chihuahuas, dumb chicks and horny hobos until it reaches the size of a family home and ultimately sets out to impregnate the only woman in NYC that’s big enough to survive such an erotic encounter of the weird kind: the Statue of Liberty! The Big Apple’s fate looks grim and the only man who can save the city is the fearless General Bukkake (Eric Roberts) who is about to launch Operation Moneyshot, a reckless all-or-nothing mission that will either save the precious lives of the city’s 19 million inhabitants or make them all drown in a deluge of cum!

Uh, that was sticky! But before you even find a second to wipe your face clean, you’re already drawn straight into the next festival of the grotesque, namely Tim Sullivan’s lycanthropic musical spoof I Was A Teenage Werebear. Said episode could best be described as a totally fucked up mixture of Grease, Lost Boys, I Was A Teenage Werewolf and Twilight, which is so hilariously stupid that it’s got to be seen in order to be believed. Jam-packed with latent homo-eroticism on the one hand and the most awesomely awful Doo Wopp songs I’ve ever heard in a horror movie on the other, this colorful piece of sing-a-long sleaze confronts us with a bunch of so-called werebears who are sick and tired of living in the shadows of society and hiding their true faces from the humans they’ve co-existed with for centuries… they’re well assured that their time to rise is now and their hard-fought struggle for acceptance sets them up against a bunch of dim-witted high school jocks, who refuse to tolerate a group of fruity werebears among their rows and hence the two embittered enemies fight each other to the last! Limbs are torn off, heads are crushed and bodies are impaled by furry erections until the violent battle finally comes to a thunderous conclusion which only one species will survive!

Survival, however, is something Adolf Hitler (Joel David Moore), the giggly protagonist of Adam Green’s 30s-styled monster movie parody The Diary Of Anne Frankenstein, does not have in mind… at least not for his political enemies! To finally fulfil his fiendish plans and extinct the human race, he steals an age-old Jewish journal which provides him with a formula to build an artificial superhuman from the rotten body parts of the deceased. Unfortunately, the Fuhrer’s creation, a golem-like Super-Jew by the name of Meshugannah (Kane Hodder), is not only a hundred times stronger but also a thousand times more clever than his creator and hence we don’t have to wait long until the clumsy colossus turns against the Nazis and brings death and destruction to Uncle Adi and his gang. Shot entirely in black and white and acted out by a German speaking cast, The Diary Of Anne Frankenstein is a hilariously bizarre homage to the works of gloomy expressionists like F.W. Murnau on the one hand and inapt trash kings such as Ed Wood Jr. on the other. Believe me, you’ll be literally laughing your ass off when Meshugannah bashes Hitler from one fake-looking set to another or when the nazi officer he just slammed to the ground is suddenly played by a black guy after the cut. Like his partners-in-crime, Adam Green perfectly parodies all the lovable little flaws and failings of the horror genre in his episode by carefully carving out each and every one of them and driving them totally over the top!

To round the whole thing off, however, Chillerama still needs a befitting finale which comes in the form of Joe Lynch’s Zom-B-Movie, a demented orgy of the dead that’s literally brimming over with excessive violence, depraved sex and blunt anarchism! The nude-o-meter and the gore-detector both go through the roof throughout this episode and I’m almost a hundred percent certain that even a tried and tested advocate of bad taste such as Lloyd Kaufman or Frank Henenlotter would blush at the sight of a film as fucked up as the nasty-beyond-belief intermezzo Deathication!

Adam Green said about Chillerama that the guys involved in the making of this flick had to finance it out of their own pockets, because right from the start they wanted to make a movie that was so gross and outrageous that no studio would ever greenlight it… and he sure as hell didn’t exaggerate a bit when he said that! Chillerama is a perfect movie for all the fun loving gorehounds, trash freaks, b-movie junkies and rebel rousers out there, who enjoy their fright flicks edgy, daring and totally over-the-top! When I saw that movie at Fantasy Film Fest, the theatre was jam-packed with hundreds of expectant indy film lovers and they all loved each and every second of the film, yelling and clapping at all the right (and wrong) places and giving Chillerama standing ovations afterwards! So, if all the stuff I wrote so far didn’t convince you of the sheer awesomeness of this movie, just rely on the judgement of a multitude of devoted horror supporters who all had a total blast watching a nasty little fright fest by the name of Chille’freakin’rama!

Grade A

[Editor's Note: I would like to welcome our first international contributer Tobias Piwek. I know the movie Super is not horror related, but neither is Christian Serratos in a bikini. Plus Piwek promised me it's violent, and a must see for gore hounds.]

Super is currently available on Blu-ray and DVD in the U.S..

Teacher: James Gunn (Writer & Director)
Students: Rainn Wilson, Ellen Page, Liv Tyler, Kevin Bacon, Michael Rooker, Sean Gunn, Nathan Fillion & others
High School: This Is That Productions
Study Guide: www.jamesgunn.com

For as long as he can remember, life’s not been kind to Frank D’Arbo (Rainn Wilson). Beaten by his father, harassed by bullies at school and ignored by just about every girl he’s ever had a crush on, he ekes out a dreary existence as a cook in a run-down, barely frequented diner. The only shining light in his otherwise depressing life is his beautiful wife Sarah (Liv Tyler), whom he loves more than anything else in the world. When she leaves him for an arrogant strip club owner Jock (Kevin Bacon), Frank is crushed beyond repair and willing to let go of whatever tiny bit of self-respect he had left.

However, he doesn’t have time to revel in his misery for long, because the sight of his idol, a bible-bashing superhero known as The Holy Avenger (Nathan Fillion), followed by a divine intervention finally gives the insecure, self-pitying outsider, a new purpose in life… To avenge the bullied!

D’Arbo wears the blood-red costume of The Crimson Bolt and prowls the darkest alleys and most dangerous corners of the city at night, in order to tell crime to shut the hell up! Frank’s energetic new alter-ego doesn’t care whether you’re a child molester, a drug dealer or just an average guy who cuts in line… if you don’t behave right, you’ll feel the skull-crushing impact of his red-painted pipe wrench across your face.

In order to finally bring his nemesis Jock to justice and make the slimy pimp pay for stealing his wife, Frank still needs a little assistance, which he finds in the form of Libby (Ellen Page), a lively comic store clerk craving for recognition and attention. As his sexy and sometimes a bit over-ambitious sidekick Boltie, Libby regfuses to leave Frank’s side and helps him fight crime and injustice at any given occasion.

The crazy-ass situations that Frank and Libbie, erm sorry, The Crimson Bolt and Boltie end up in range from hilariously funny to disturbingly uncanny to wholeheartedly tragic. Quite often we find ourselves confronted with more emotions than we can handle. Within a few minutes, our reaction to the happenings in front of our eyes might change from hysterical laughter to shocked disbelief to disgusted refusal to sincere empathy and just about everything that’s in-between. James Gunn’s rich script and skilful direction, and the dead-on performances by just about every actor in the entire film, certainly are the key ingredients that turn Super into a wild ‘n freaky indy masterpiece you won’t soon forget. The fantastic soundtrack, excessive gore, action sequences and last but not least, the kick-ass comic effects give the film a totally unique look and feel. They all do their part in heaving this extraordinary flick over the edge of greatness making it a prime example of daring and deviant counter culture filmmaking at its very best!

To sum it all up, Super is super-funny, super-violent, super-crazy, super-deep and super-touching in equal shares and while I watched this movie, my eyes filled with tears. Not only because the film’s grotesque and over-the-top humour made me laugh like a hyaena, but also because the misguided but still loveable antiheros tragic yet strangely uplifting fate literally moved me to tears!

Grade: A