Video Nasty #7: Cannibal Holocaust

Synopsis: Four young documentary filmmakers venture into 'The Green Inferno', an area of the Amazon inhabited by cannibal tribes. When they fail to return, an NYU anthropologist leads a rescue mission to find the missing group, or at least what's left of them. The professor returns to New York with reels of film that hold the horrifying and troubling truth of the filmmakers' disappearance.

In 2010 i'm attempting to watch and review all of the films on the DPP Video Nasty list. Click here for an explanation.

I really loved aspects of Cannibal Holocaust. It was far gorier and shocking then any of other nasties i've watched so far, and it was put together with aplomb. Although this wasn't the first film to use fake documentary footage, it's incredibly realistic and undoubtedly bought the technique to a mainstream audience influencing, if not directly, The Last Broadcast, The Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield. Much like The Blair Witch Project, it was deliberately implied during promotion of the film that the four documentary filmmakers were not actors and that the recovered footage shown in the film was real. Unlike The Blair Witch Project, this claim is slightly preposterous as half of the film is shot in a traditional cinematic way.

The gore in Cannibal Holocaust is at times incessant, but still manages to maintain its realism and shock factor. One infamous scene shows a woman impaled on a tall wooden stake, the spike protruding through her mouth. The effect was so realistic the filmmakers had to explain how it was achieved in court to avoid a murder charge. The marketing trick of blurring the line between fantasy and reality obviously worked on the Italian authorities.


Cannibal Holocaust is a damning criticism of the media's tendency to focus on horrific images when covering war and violent conflict. At the time various news agencies had been accused of faking such images to improve ratings. More broadly, the film questions who is more uncivilised, the cannibals with their unusual and primal rituals, or the civilised filmmakers who exploit them for ratings and cheap shocks?

Although often lacking in subtlety, Cannibal Holocaust's script makes its point well, especially during the last half of the movie when the viewer is shown the recovered reels of films. These scenes are narrated by the disapproving Professor, ensuring that even a ten year old can understand the underlying point of the film. The documentary makers not only exploit the tribes by filming their day to day rituals in a lurid manner, but they also interfere, terrorise, murder and rape the tribe's people to elicit responses for them to film. When the documentary makers discover the woman impaled on a spike the cameraman has to tell one of the men on film to stop smiling; he can't help showing his glee at finding something so horrific to capture on celluloid.

The original cut of the film lingers on a depressing amount of animal cruelty, presumably because it's a cheap way to make the viewer question what is real and what is fake. After all, these crazy uncivilised tribes will cut anything up for some wacky ritual or a quick bite, the film's just showing what happens in the real world, right?

And this alludes to my problem with Cannibal Holocaust. How can one point the finger at media for exploitation when the filmmakers themselves think it's acceptable to film an extended sequence of giant turtle being caught, decapitated and gutted, just for a cheap thrill? How can they justify cutting a live monkeys face off (twice, to get all the shots required) in the name of art or to make a political point? The filmmakers are either completely naive or, worse, making a film they know is exploitative and immoral, using the political message as a get-out clause, something to excuse the barbaric and stupid, stupid, stupid animal cruelty. It's heartening to read interviews with the directors and actors expressing remorse for using animal cruelty, but this doesn't excuse it.

Cannibal Holocaust is in parts a fun film, but it can't escape its own hypocrisy. It's a shame that the animal cruelty happened, because without it the film would be a sure fire classic.

Mini B.

This year was my tenth valentine day with Jen and to celebrate we spent a long weekend in a cosy cottage in Dorset. Sometimes I forget how beautiful this country can be and thanks to the Internet one can find some pretty amazing accommodation for the same price as a shitty chain hotel (someone should tell Lenny Henry).

Jen found a fantastic cottage near Lyme Regis which according to a fountain on the grounds was built around 1826. The main room had an open fire which, despite being lovely to sit by, contributed to my ongoing emasculation as all fire building was begrudgingly conceded to Jen. My scout leader would be very disappointed.


We were warned that the grounds was the domain of a human hating pheasant which had a habit of attacking anyone who got near it. Luckily we avoided the misanthropic bastard and instead stumbled upon a deer resting a hundred metres from our cottage. Of course it bolted as soon as it saw us, but it really was something to behold.

On the way back we stopped in Wells, the smallest city in the UK and also the setting for the fictional 'Sandford' in the movie 'Hot Fuzz'. Wells cathedral domineers the surrounding landscape and it's a little awe inspiring to see it rise on the horizon when driving towards the city. We managed to find most of the major locations from the film - the village square, the church where Tim Messenger lost his head and, most importantly, the local supermarket. At this point I realised I could no longer call myself a film geek as I had too much self respect to take a photo of the busy Somerfields car park. Wells is a small city yet a big village and it's interesting to see how the geography a film creates can be completely different to real life.



I couldn't recommend the cottage enough and the owners were lovely. Click here to find out more.

Video Nasty #6 : Night Train Murders (AKA Late Night Trains)

Synopsis: Two friends are on a long distance train journey to visit parents for Christmas. Unfortunately they choose to share a carriage with a couple of psychopathic thugs and a nympho who subject them to rape and fatal torture. When the murdering trio find themselves in one of the dead girl's parents' house the newly bereaved are left with a choice - either hand the murderers over to the police or make them suffer like their daughter.

In 2010 i'm attempting to watch and review all of the films on the DPP Video Nasty list. Click here for an explanation.

If the synopsis to Night Train Murders sounds familiar, that's because it's a slightly smudged carbon copy of Last House on the Left, a film that was made 3 years earlier and also features on the DPP list. Last House on the Left is itself a retelling of Bergman's The Virgin Spring

'Rape & Revenge' is a genre that despite some recent attempts at resurgence has been relegated to exploitation infamy. There are variations on the above plot (see I Spit On Your Grave), but the films all claim to explore the old testament notion of an 'Eye for Eye'. Is it right to reciprocate a violent act with more brutality, or does that just further perpetuate the notion that violence is ok if the person committing it believes they are morally justified? No where is this question more contentious than the scenario of a parent having the chance to avenge the rape and murder of their daughter.

It's an interesting yet tough subject to explore, especially when the film will most likely end up being labelled horror, immediately restricting its primary viewership to adolescent teens and film geeks (i'm guessing i'm the later). Unfortunately, one has to question the morality of the filmmakers when most of the movie is slick stylised violence and the little dialog that addresses the central thesis could of been written by a fourteen year old emo.

Technically Night Train Murders was fine and the cinematography exceeded most other films on the list. The characters were introduced efficiently and, where required, likeable enough. The fact that the upper class female instigates the violence and eventually avoids persecution due to misplaced preconceptions of the parents provides an interesting commentary on how we judge others with respect to class.


I especially enjoyed the way the two male villains were introduced, robbing Santa Clause in broad day light. The only more ham-fisted way to exemplify their evil trait would be to have them beating up the Easter Bunny, or possibly punching a nun.

I suspect Night Train Murders was banned for the same reason Straw Dogs was out of circulation for so long. An early scene in the film shows what begins as a rape turning into consensual sex, which is clearly obscene given the DPP's definition. It should be noted that the equivalent scene in Straw Dogs was far more ambiguous and regardless, that was a really good intelligent film.

As i've alluded, my biggest problem with The Night Train Murders was the lack of intelligent exploration of its supposed thesis. When the violence in your film is more despicable than most exploitation movies (which I think is required to elicit the required response from the parents and the viewer) it has to be balanced out with something approaching intellectualism. If it isn't you end up with a film that is far more offensive than any of the so-called unintelligent nasties. Despite the interesting social commentary on class and preconceptions, the film doesn't really address the central issue of revenge.


The parent's discover they are harbouring the murderers eight minutes from the end of the film, giving very little time to explore the key issue. In fact there were only two instances of dialog that came close to exploring the theme. The first was at a smug dinner party, where there was a brief discussion about society breeding violence (this was the point when I knew exactly how the rest of the film would play out). The second was just before the father executed the second man. His wife screamed the utterly cheesy line 'Hasn't there been enough violence?'. Yeah, she's right. There was enough violence. Just not enough of anything else.

After thought: On reflection I think i was expecting too much from the film, after all, it is an exploitation revenge movie. With this in mind, the pay off is surprisingly tame and just wasn't satisfying enough.

Video Nasty #5 : Don't Go in the House

Synopsis : After Donnie Kohler's mother dies, the voices in his head tell him that he is free to do all the things he's always wanted to do. He can turn music up loud, jump on the furniture and lure women back to his house, cover them in petrol and light them up with a flame thrower. Ah, the incandescent joys of being young and single.

In 2010 i'm attempting to watch and review all of the films on the DPP Video Nasty list. Click here for an explanation.

Making a good film about a serial killer is difficult, especially when the murderer is the protagonist. The lead character of a film normally has to be engaging and interesting, something which is easily achieved by making them likeable or somebody the viewer can identify with. Unfortunately it can be difficult to empathise with someone who thinks a normal night in is hosing down his next victim and then slapping on some makeup and tucking his cock'n'balls between his legs.

Such films normally address this problem by making the killer so dislikable and abhorrent that the viewer is determined to see them die in a way far more grissly and torturous than his victims endured (Night of the Hunter, Death Proof, Eaten Alive). Another approach is to make the killer likeable or even justifiable, but the film is then walking a fine line between good gory fun and material that is at best morally questionable and at worse (to use a very loosly defined term) obscene. Basically, the film becomes the sort of thing Mary Whitehouse and her cronies were, in their eyes, trying to protect us from.

Most of the low budget serial killer films exist because it's an easy way to get the blood flowing and to scare the audience silly. To avoid the moral quandary of making a serial killer the leading role the filmmaker normally throws in some half arsed exploration of what drives the person to kill, mother issues being the pedestrian but oft-used explanation. In this case you can almost guarantee that the dead mother is decaying in her Sunday best in her favourite chair in the basement, bedroom or attic.

Given this, I had to groan when five minutes into Don't Go In The House the main character's mother dies and he starts hearing voices. Regardless of how good the film is, in my mind it was never going to recover from this tired cliché.


Donnie is obsessed with fire. But unlike most pyromaniacs he's only happy when using a human being as an organic tinderbox. The idea was kindled by his mother, who burnt the evil out of him as a child. When she passes he's set free to carry on her good work, and converts a room of his house in to a metallic fire proof chamber. His victims are women he lures into his solitary house on the hill, and he keeps their flambéed remains like his decaying mother, in a comfy chair in a pretty dress. His house becomes reminiscent of a life size doll house that's been set on fire by a kid playing with matches.

There is very little violence in Don't Go In The House, but the few moments of violence are particularly shocking. There is one scene that undoubtably got the film listed on the DPP's array of nasties and it has now been burnt into my memory, laying dormant for when horror films finally turn me into a murdering nut job. If videogames don't do it first. Or comics. Or the Internet. Or the next big technological advancement that our moral guardians don't understand and don't want to understand.

Donnie's first victim wakes up stripped naked, her hands chained to a hook in the roof. Wearing a flame retardent suit he covers her in petrol and despite the woman's pleas he sets her alight with a flame thrower. The camera then lingers on the poor women dying with surprisingly effective special effects. This is a horrible act of violence and is filmed effectively well, immediately making me hate the previously mild mannered and quiet Donnie.

How anyone could watch something so totally repellent and be inspired to go out and do the same is unimaginable. The whole point of the DPP list was to stop this 'filth' corrupting children's minds. One has to question why it's deemed unacceptable to show something that is filmed to make the violent act so clearly abhorrant when its ok for people to watch Schwarzanneger heriocally mowing down 100s of people with a machine gun.


Despite this truly effective moment, the rest of the film is relatively dull. The Donnie character is played well, but I found him too weedy and pathetic to be a really interesting character. The highlights of the film has to be the fleeting shots of his decaying mother's corpse watching over him, or a dream sequence where he's dragged into a hole by his crispy victims. In a fun sequence at the end of the film the mother and victim's corpses return to life to ensure Donnie's inevitable fire based demise.

The only other thing of note about the film is the Disco soundtrack. Films that use popular music on the soundtrack date fast, especially when the music is in a relatively new genre (disco, electro, grunge, metal etc.). The film was made in 1980, such that the soundtrack probably made the film look dated the day it was released. Despite the music showing the film's age the disco was a fun backing to the seriously demented main character. In one memorable scene he smashes a glass candle holder in a woman's face at a disco because she was coming too close to seeing his childhood burns. The brutal act becomes slightly surreal because it's soundtracked by the most upbeat music ever written.

Don't Go In The House isn't a bad film, it just isn't particularly good. It's quite dull, which is impressive for a film that's 80 minutes long. Coincidentally, Don't Go In The House is one of many films with instructional titles on the DPP list. We're not just told to avoid the house, but also Don't Go In The Woods, Don't Go Near The Park, Don't Go In The Basement and Don't Stick Lego Up Your Bum (I may of made the last one up).

Video Nasty #4 : Driller Killer

Synopsis - Reno lives with his girlfriend and her other lover in a dilapidated apartment building in New York. He's been working on his masterpiece for sometime, inexplicably a painting of a giant buffalo, whilst his partner makes ends meet. His emasculation, the failure of his art and the success of those less talented then him heat the slow boil of Reno's rage until he finally snaps and in a fit of insanity takes to the streets to kill the very people he is fearful of becoming, the homeless.

In 2010 i'm attempting to watch and review all of the films on the DPP Video Nasty list. Click here for an explanation.

Driller Killer is a hard film to classify. Its aesthetic is too grimey and cheap to be classed as an art house movie, but it's too ambitious and difficult to be labelled a slasher film. After all, no one is killed until fifty minutes into its relatively short running time and of those who do succumb to Reno's Black and Decker (11 by my count), not one is a woman. With that said, the film doesn't pull its punches when it comes to gore which matches the best (or should that be worst?) nasties.


There's never really an explanation as to Reno's weapon of choice. Maybe it's a phallic symbol, a desperate assertion of his dwindling masculinity. After all, his girlfriend not only supports him financially but also has to turn to another women to fulfill her carnal needs. Or maybe he chose the drill because it makes a cool noise and requires very little effort on his part. After all, killing ten people in one night with a knife would be exhausting. Whatever the reason, when Reno sees a portable power supply advertised on television his eyes light up. One can only assume his previous killing efforts could only happen within a two metre radius of a plug.

The killings are surprisingly unsettling and perfectly timed. The camera will linger on a vagrant shuffling along just long enough for the viewer to relax, at which point Reno will come sprinting into frame, jamming his drill into the poor victim's chest. These mostly bloodless kills are pretty shocking due to their sheer ferociousness. Well, they were until I realised that they reminded me of the scene in Monty Python's Holy Grail where Sir Lancelot is slowly advancing towards two guards only to suddenly appear and stab them. As soon as I'd made the Python connection I couldn't help but giggle whenever the killer came flying in to the shot.

Other than the fact that the film's called Driller Killer (a title which I can't help but think was meant to be funny), there's one scene in particular that got the film on the DPP list; a quite nasty prolonged shot of Remi giving a 6mm frontal lobotomy to a suprisingly static tramp. He doesn't even finish the job off with a Rawl plug, which in my opinion is sloppy workmanship. A still of this scene was the cover of the original VHS cover, providing the final screw in Driller Killer's DPP coffin.

One thing the film does particularly well is capture the sleazyness of New York in the 70s. Aside from the odd synth, the film is mostly soundtracked by 'Tony Coca-Cola and the Roosters', a shitty punk band (aren't they all?) who live in the flat above Reno and sound oddly like The Kings of Leon. There are numerous uncut full performances by the band, providing little apart from boredom and irritation. Driller Killer opens with the text 'This film should be played loud'. Maybe the director wanted us to be driven as mad by the crappy music as Reno was? If so, it worked.


For most of the viewing I was unsure of what to make of the film, I was struggling to understand if the filmmaker had something interesting to say, or the dialog was just foreplay to Reno's power tool penetration (I promise i'll not mention my phallic symbolism theory again). Any doubts I had were quelled by the final scene. The director applies remarkable restraint when a normal horror hack would of exploited the situation for all it is worth. The film ends with something that would normally be considered a cop-out in low budget horror: implied violence. The viewer is plunged into darkness and we can only imagine what actually happened.

I'll leave the final word to Steve, a school child from Coventry allegedly* questioned for the Parliamentary report 'Video Violence And Children'.

I like the bit in Driller Killer where he puts a man up on sticks and then he gets a drill and puts it through his stomach and he screams for ages

Me too little man, me too.

* This is from the excellent 'Seduction of the Gullible' by John Martin. The report quoted Steve from Coventry, even though no schools in Conventry were involved in the survey.

Video Nasty #3 : Eaten Alive AKA Death Trap

Death Trap opens with Buck, a young pre-Krueger Robert Englund, taking liberties with a newly recruited prostitute ('My name is Buck and I'm here to fuck'). The girl is fired for not indulging in Buck's rear-end shinanigans and is advised to stay the night at Judd's. Before leaving she's warned not to let Judd know she worked at Miss Hattie's, he doesn't take kindly to sinners!

Judd's motel is seemingly located on a smokey low rent sound stage. As if the constant country music and ramshackled rooms weren't enough of an attraction, Judd's hotel has a zoo comprising of a dead monkey and huge man eating african crocodile. Before you can say 'rubber reptile' Buck has beaten the ex-whore to death with a rake and thrown her to his pet crocodile. The film then follows a parade of guests inexplicably renting a room at Buck's and most of them meeting a grissly end, before the inevitable and predictable demise of Buck.

In 2010 i'm attempting to watch and review all of the films on the DPP Video Nasty list.Click here for an explanation.

Eaten Alive is a gory exploitation movie and for the most part good sleazy fun. It's a perfect example of the style Rodrigeuz and Tarantino were trying to capture in their ridiculously expensive homage to exploitation cinema, 'Grindhouse'. In fact, Tarantino quotes the first line of Eaten Alive in Kill Bill (the aforementioned chat up line from Buck). Eaten Alive has an aesthetic that thankfully wasn't ruined by the supposed digital mastering; the scratches on the film are still clearly visible, constantly breaking the blood splattered fourth wall. One could easily imagine a drive through full of teens in the 80's screaming and cheering when the unfortunate guests are fed to the croc. I like to think that in a cinema full of like minded people, I'd be cheering too.


The hotelier Judd is the star of the film, in terms of appeal and screen time. He's a protagonist you really love to hate. We were both shouting 'kill him' at the TV when ever the opportunity arose, which has to be the mark of good bad guy. Basically, Buck is your run of the mill hollywood pyschopathic extreme rightwing nazi christian. He despises prostitutes and spends a lot of his time grumbling whilst using a magnifying glass to read porn magazines on his swastika adorned arm chair. I think the original intention of the film was to try and expand on the Judd character, but on a production fraught with problems something was lot in process (The film had a total of six producers and director Tobe Hooper eventually walked off the set). The Judd character was inspired by the serial killer Joe Ball, a bar owner who also had five pet alligators. When confronted about several missing women, Ball shot himself.

The gore is silly and good fun, but what else would you expect from a movie where the main murder weapon is a ten foot 'invincible' crocodile? The Croc is put to good usage, ripping heads off and even eating a girl's cute furry dog. Judd does his best with his trusty sythe, jamming it in people's necks and dragging them into the pool. Realistic, this is not.


The movie was directed by Tobe Hooper, whos previous film was the the seminal Texas Chainsaw Massacre (TCM). Coincidently, although TCM was banned, it never appeared on the video nasty list itself. Apart from being in the same genre, TCM and Eaten alive have very little it common. TCM was and is still a visceral and intense movie, leaving a lasting imprint on the viewer. It is a masterpiece of suggestion; how else could a film with hardly any blood, no swearing and no nudity receive an 18 certificate when finally released on DVD? Eaten Alive on the other hand is a big dumb gore-fest, where nothing is left to the imagination. One has to wonder if Hooper only made TCM so sparse of gore for budgetary reasons. Although I think it's more likely that Hooper originally expected TCM to receive a PG certificate (this is true).

Maybe I'm being too kind to Eaten Alive because it's the first movie i've watched on this stupid endurance test that's actually been as I expected, not that it was a particularly memorable film. I wouldn't recommend it to everyone, but if you like a bit of silly violence and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, it's probably worth checking out just to see what Hooper did next. There's no reason this film should ever of been banned, but I can understand how it got caught up in the Video Nasty fiasco far more than Unhinged due to the sheer amount of gore. Regardless, it's far too silly to be taken seriously.

Video Nasty #2 : Unhinged

Synposis: Three teenage girls are travelling to a music festival when they crash their car into a ditch, most likely because they're being pursued by a camera man in a helicopter playing cheesy synth music. They awake in a mysterious Mansion, inhabited by a spinster and her man hating mother. One by one the girls are stalked by a mysterious sexually repressed killer, who reveals his true self in an utterly bizarre climax.

In 2010 i'm attempting to watch and review all of the films on the DPP Video Nasty list.Click here for an explanation.

From the outset Unhinged has all the classic hallmarks of a Slasher movie. There's unnecessary nudity and as soon as the DJ on the crackly car radio has warned the girls of unexplained disappearances in the local area, they crash the car. And all of this happens within the first ten minutes. Unfortunately, instead of maintaining the momentum the films slows to a crawl and never really gets back to walking, or more suitably, stalking pace.

The lack of pace is surprising considering the film's attractively short running time of seventy nine minutes. I think the directory and his script monkey made two mistakes. Firstly, if you're making a slasher film you really need more than three people to kill. Secondly, write more then twenty minutes worth of a script. Rather than writing more dialog then your average Pingu episode, the film makers decided to flesh out the film with excruciatingly slow shots of, well, nothing. One could argue that the intention of such languid shots were to deliberately build tension. If that's the case then it's ruined by the Rick Wakeman wanna-be noodling on the 303 whenever there's some dead air to fill.


The acting was worse then one could expect from a low budget film, the three girls focus so much on their lines that they forget to act. The stand out performance has to be the scene stealing eldery mother, who has two fantastically melodramatic Jekyll and Hyde scenes at the dinner table. When talking to the girls she's a loveable grandma figure (with bizarre Shatner-esque intotation), but when talking to her daughter she's a physco man hater, venting her misandry at her 'slut' of a daughter. As if the barn storming schizo act wasn't enough she sporadically stops mid speech and becomes enticed by small silverware in front of her, grasping at them for some inexplicable reason (see picture).

Other than the mad mother the only other redeeming factor of the film is its ending. We discover that the mother has a son who lives in the shed due to her irrational hatred of cock bearers. The brother is obviously the killer and as he chases the Final Girl she shoots him dead. In a fit of rage the sister then reveals herself to be the killer and also a man, before bludgeoning the remaining girl to death with his hair chest on display. What I love about the reveal is that the he-she's voice literally drops three octaves (think Judy Dench suddenly talking like Brian Blessed).


The film really is dull and despite a few bizarre moments (the mother, the ending) I can't say I'd recommend that anybody watch it. As a physcological thriller it's poorly acted and follows a mostly predictable path. As a horror film the horror is almost non-existant, a five year old wouldn't find this scary. There was promise with the first kill, carried out by an ominous death character (see picture). Unfortunately the film makers didn't capatilise on this truly scary image and instead settled for a P.O.V. axe murder and a shemale axe attack.

I have no idea why this film is a video nasty, although I do agree that the public do need protecting from films as bad as this. To label it obscene wrongly gives it credit for achieveing something on an emotional level, which it clearly doesn't. I've been more emotionally affected by burning a piece of toast.