Video Nasty #39 : The Devil Hunter AKA Sexo Caníbal

Synopsis: When model Laura Crawford is kidnapped Peter Weston and his vietnam-vet side kick are sent to a remote South American island to bring her back, preferably with the large ransom the kidnappers have demanded for Laura's release. After the exchange goes disastrously wrong the kidnappers retreat to the jungle and straight in to the grips of 'the devil', the island's resident cannibal overlord.

Just when I thought there couldn't possibly be anymore cannibal movies on the list I find The Devil Hunter, a deceptively titled cheap horrible exploitation smear on otherwise useful celluloid. This film is so awful my laptop's DVD player rejected the disk, shaking and wailing at volume for every second it was forced to decompress, decrypt and de-interlace; as if it couldn't comprehend why its state of the art technology was being used to watch something so horribly lo-fi.

The Devil Hunter is the work of the infamous Jesus Franco, a man who has made an astonishing 160 films, mostly filth (The Erotic Rites of Frankenstein, Vampyros Lesbos, etc.). Not to renege on his reputation The Devil Hunter may as well be called 'Mr Cannibal's Sexy Weekend', as many long scenes are spent watching the afro-caribbean 'natives' and Ms. Crawford writhe in agony whilst thrusting their gyrating crotches in the direction of the shamelessly leering camera. These scenes are so long and blatantly sexualised even a pubescent 16 year old boy would find it a little too slimy to be erotic. Although one could write-off Franco's obsession with nudity as harmless, it's a little more difficult to justify the point of a casual rape scene, as the rapist's girlfriend complicity watches in a hammock ("you're a son of a bitch, but I love you". yay for feminism!).

It's not as if these scenes are required to pad the film out, at 102 minutes long the film is a chore; so much so that I had to watch it in twenty minute chunks, taking rest breaks as if I was revising for some hellish a-level. Unfortunately the promise of gorey cannibal carnage isn't really followed through; the titular devil is a naked dude with ping-pong ball eyes (literally) who likes chewing on necks and covering his victims in a weird powder-based orangey-red paint and placing a few raw sausages around their belly button. When the cannibal isn't on screen we're treated to the tiresome vaseline lensed 'cannibal-cam', complete with heavy breathing smothered in token 80's pop reverb.

That fucking reverb. Enough. It's not scary. It's shit. Stop it.

I could go on but this has just become an unhinged rant. All you really need to know about The Devil Hunter is that it's an awful film. Quite possibly the worst of the #39 i've seen so far. And i've seen Cannibal Terror.

Video Nasty #38 : House by the Cemetery

Synopsis: After Dr Peterson kills himself and his lover, it is left to Norman Boyle to continue the Dr's ground breaking research into, of all things, suicide. To pick up where his college left off Norman moves his family to the Dr's residence, a dilapidated house by an equally dilapidated cemetery. Norman soon discovers that a creepy graveyard is the least of your worries when there’s a crypt in your living room and an un-dead in the cellar...

House by the Cemetery sees Fulci returning to the Nasty List, after the impressive and gut-wrenchingly gory The Beyond. This isn’t the only connection between these two films, as they form two parts of Fulci’s ‘Seven Gates of Hell Trilogy’. Where as The Beyond is a dreamy ethereal and ultimately unremittingly bleak film, House by the Cemetery is, despite the director’s meagre efforts to suggest otherwise, a relatively straight forward monster-in-the-basement roller-coaster ride. Not that i’m complaining, of course.

The most interesting aspect of House by the Cemetery is how little Fulci relies on gore for scares. Sympathetic to the PG-13 connotations of the plot ('monster in the basement' would be the perfect title for a kid-friendly horror movie), Fulci uses flowing and lush cinematography to wring all possible tension out of some frankly hackneyed scenarios. These scene's are all horror movie staples - eyes glowing in the dark, bumps in the night, little kids being creepy and creaking door’s slamming shut to entrap a victim in the monster’s clutches. The later is particularly tense, even after its third copy-paste reprisal in the script.

Of course things don't stay PG-13 for long; in Little Monsters Fred Savage never had a knife jammed through the back of his skull or his throat ripped out (although i'm still hopeful for a director's cut). The most bloody scene of the film is unintentionally hilarious as Norman is attacked by a bat that looks like a Goonies prop reject. The bat latches itself to Norman's hand and the scene plays like a Bruce Campbell body acting masterclass, Norman running around the house desperately trying to dislodge the flying whilst decorating the house with an inhuman (or inbat) amount of blood . Purposefully hilarious or not, seeing the shell-shocked family sprayed with blood was my favourite moment of the film.

Whilst the bat is the unintentional star of the film, the monster is for the most part an un-seen entity, only revealed (as in all good monster movies) in the last ten minuts of the film. Unlike most monster movies, the undead professor is in the full flesh still as creepy as the glimpses of limbs and glowing eyes we've had through-out the film, looking like a prune with eyes (definitely not a raisin, he wasn't poncing around in shades singing 'Heard It Through The Grapevine').

If I had to criticise the film it would be that Fulci can't help but put some inexplicable mysteries into the film, as if he's worried about betraying his Giallo origins. Most are unexplained, and add nothing to the film other than confusion - why did the babysitter clean up after the monster, why did people say Norman had visited the house before?, and what was the ending all about, complete with incorrectly attributed quote? None of this stuff really matters, it's just a shallow attempt at depth that is so ineffectual it doesn't really detract from the main show. Like a plot in a porn film.

House by the Cemetery is great. If you like your monsters grim, and your gore even grimmer, you'll love it.

Video Nasty #37 : Pranks AKA The Dorm that Dripped Blood

Synopsis: Joanne and three friends are clearing a university dormitory in preparation for its demolition. Unbeknownst to them they are being stalked by a shakey-handed camera man with a full concert orchestra in tow. Can they stop their assailant before he permanently stops them? (i'm so sorry, writing a snappy synopsis is difficult).

As slasher films go, Pranks is at best mediocre. The direction is uninspiring, the script lame and acting sub-standard. It does however have a few redeeming features - an absolutely epic score, Princess Vespa from Spaceballs head popping like a balloon, and a surprisingly vicious ending.

In stark contrast to the home-movie cinematography the film's score is the work of an accomplished composer. As the camera lumbers after a chosen victim it's accompanied by plinky plonky staccatto piano, portameto timpanis, crashing cymbals, a full string section and a xylophone. Unfortunately as great as the score is (by Christopher Young, composer on Hellraiser, Drag Me To Hell & Spider Man 3), it's a little too bombastic for this small slasher flick, sapping the film of any tension the dreadful direction hasn't already wrung out of the script (Imagine John Williams scoring The Texas Chainsaw Massacre).

Despite the clunky visuals, the directors at least deliver on the absolute basic slasher requirement - inventive, original and above all else, horrible kills. Despite increasing their chance of being captured ten-fold any self-respecting slasher wouldn't be caught dead with something as dull & efficient as a gun or an, urm, atomic bomb. The best of these prolonged kills has to be Daphne Zuniga's character being knocked unconscious, dragged onto the road and a van reversing over her head (this is after the killer has murdered both of her parents, ever the completist). Although we don't see the cranium collapse, the comedy pop noise is satisfying enough. Other unfortunates are boiled alive, drilled and, in the sombre finale, incinerated.

And on that point; the ending. Through-out the film we're led to believe the killer is the local hermit; who may as well be dressed in red fish costume wearing a sign saying 'i'm a herring'. The killer is in fact Craig, one the characterless flesh-bags that has somehow managed to appear throughout the film without me ever really noticing. This makes it particular infuriating when he says to Joanne, and by extension the audience, 'Don't you understand, it was me the whole time', as if we're stupid for not spotting all the clues liberally sprinkled through out the film (of which there are none). He then goes onto explain how he executed the killings which isn't impressive or relevant, because a) it wasn't exactly difficult and b) as most of the film is unintelligible I couldn't care less. The reasons for his killing are stereotypical but nonsensical in the context of the film. The murderer was secretly in love with the Joanne, the final girl, and he killed everyone else to keep her to himself (this doesn't explain why he killed the janitor and the family who were leaving the university).

Despite this the film ends on a surprisingly sombre and unnerving note. The police arrive but are tricked into believing Craig is a victim. As they celebrate catching the wrong guy Craig carries the unconscious Joanne in his arms and bungs her in the incinerator. This is a surprisingly bold turn, and despite Craig's transformation from forgettable normo to forgettable psycho, the shot of him carrying Joanne to the incinerator is pretty creepy.

So, Pranks is a bit of a mess. Despite its inventive kills and big-budget score it's mostly a badly shot emotionless bore. The biggest problem is that for a film where characters are stalked around a building there's no real sense of geography to the place they inhabit, making it difficult to understand what peril the characters are in (surely a building of this size would have multiple exits?). Along with the poor camera work, direction, acting and cinematography the non-existant tension is completely smothered by the over the bombastic score. Sometimes silence can be scary.

Video Nasty #36 : Mountain of the Cannibal God AKA Primitive Desires

Synopsis: Susan Stevenson (Ursula Andress) has flown to Generic South American Country to search for her Husband, who hasn't been heard from since disappearing into the jungle in search of uranium. Joined by her brother and a local expert Susan heads to the jungle and unknowingly towards the Mountain of the Cannibal God.

I can't help but audably sigh when I realise there's another cannibal movie on the list that i'm yet to watch. It's a lousy genre, and one that was completely bled-dry during the video nasty hey-day. Given my love for all things zombie, this disdain may seem surprising; surely a zombie is just a really hungry angry cannibal? Well yes, it's not the monster at fault, it's the unwritten genre rules. Where as zombie movies are fun and ridiculous with a sincere yet often shallow, pretentious social-science a-level subtext, cannibal movies are about shock, animal cruelty and natives with no clothes on. (I'll begrudgingly admit that zombie movies have also out-stayed their welcome after the post 28 Days Later resurgence)

Given my contempt for the genre I was pleasantly surprised by Mountain of the Cannibal God. That is of course, a back handed compliment. To say this the best cannibal movie i've seen is like saying the best food poisoning i've ever had or the least painful kick in the nuts. The film does have all the halmarks of a cannibal movie - Unnecessary animal slaughter (an iguana being torn apart is almost a genre all-time low), casual sexism ('It's hard enough for a man, for a woman it would be almost impossible') and excessive nudity.

Despite it ticking most of the genre boxes the idiot director did neglect a few. For example there was no back of the cigarette packet script, incongruous stock footage of wildlife and a general disdain for the viewer. Mountain of the Cannibal God feels a little like Indiana Jones, albeit being released three years before Raiders of the Lost Ark. Rather than focusing on the cannibals the film is more of a jungle adventure with inventive traps, rafting through crocodile-infested water and exploring huge caves. Unlike Indiana Jones these boys-adventure elements do have a violent sting in the tail. One trap is essentially a wooden iron maiden, tenderising the victim in preparation for the cannibal BBQ and the crocodiles somehow manage to tear a guide's arm off.

Although the cannibals do pop up every so often as our hero's mysterious adversaries (looking like Naan Bread from The Mighty Boosh), they only really come into play in the final act. If there's one thing i've learnt from the previous #35 films, it's that regardless of what has come before if you can deliver a barmy ending the viewer will walk away happy (Well, unless they have to write a review and realise they've been hoodwinked). Mountain of the Cannibal God ends with some images I don't believe i'll ever see (or want to see) on film again. In the climax Ursula Andress is declared a goddess, tied to a poll and sexually abused by a cannibal. Said cannibal then has his cock cut off and amongst an orgy of masturbation and sex the film delivers its Pièce de résistance - a cannibal fucking a pig.

So it's not exactly a struggle to figure out why the film was listed. Mountain of the Cannibal God is an OK film, but its obscurity really isn't surprising. Despite the frankly childish climax the film is far more entertaining than it should be, and is put together with a confident and expert hand.

After all, even I have to admit that the man porking the pork was very well lit.

Video Nasty #35 : Tenebrae AKA Unsane

Synopsis: As horror writer Peter Neal arrives in Rome he is greeted by his latest novel incarnate; young promiscuous women are dying in horrible ways at the hands of an obsessive serial killer. When the murderer sends Peter a note the local police take a leaf out of the Scooby Doo Big Book of Law Enforcement and ask him to help with the investigation. As the bodies pile up and the inept police are without a clue it's up to Peter to put an end to the killing.

After the supernatural classic Susperia and its interesting yet ultimately dissapointing sequel Infero, Argento returned to the genre he helped define, Giallo, with Tenebrae. Giallo movies are highly stylised pulpy Italian crime mysteries, often including extended and bloody murder sequences. And on the later point, Tenebrae does not disappoint.

The murder scenes are probably the most remarkable thing about Tenebrae. The most effective set-piece, the murder of a young lesbian couple, includes a two and half minute crane shot; sweeping around the couple's home as they are unknowingly stalked by the killer. It's a technically stunning shot (especially consider the clunky technology of the time) and its creeping pace perfectly leads into a gruesome double murder. Despite the technical brilliance of these scenes, I think their length are ultimately detrimental to the rest of the film. Too much time is spent introducing characters that are blatantly victim's to be, stretching the film's runtime to a slightly flabby one hour fifty. Despite the length it's worth the wait for the finale's blood fountain, gushing from a post-arm stub. It's so ridiculous I couldn't help but laugh-out-loud. Loved it.

The story is twisty, unpredictable and ultimately satisfying. The protagonist's novel acts as a meta-commentary of the film itself, both being concerned with the attitudes to what some might call sexual deviance, and others would call 'being yourself'. This affords Argento an excuse for lots of female nudity - not that an 80's Italian pulp director ever worried about narrative justification to show a bit of boobage. Despite the awkward miscast of Anthony Franciosa as the lead (I can't help but think the role was written for someone younger), the rest of the cast is great, especially John Saxon as Neal's over-effervescent agent.

The one thing that Tenebrae will rightly be remembered for (other than the masochistically difficult crane shot) is the unsurprisingly awesome soundtrack by Goblin. The title track is so good I was already firing up Garageband to knock together a remix (to facilitate my long-deserved breakthrough into the electro scene). Unfortunately I discovered that french-electro-bastards Justice have beaten me to it with the frankly brilliant 'Phantom' on their debut album 'Cross'. Oh well, guess i'll have to continue work on my drum'n'bass opus based on the theme tune of 'The Boogeyman'.

Compared to it's company on the list, Tenebrae is a masterpiece. Compared to it's company in the history of film, it's alright. The script is great, the acting pretty good and the visual's gorgeous, but it's let down by its slightly self-indulgent length and a lead character that doesn't quite work. I suspect this film  marks one of the few peaks of genuine enjoyment i've had since starting this movie marathon. I worry that i'm heading for a deep sustained trough.

Video Nasty #34 : The Boogeyman

Synopsis: 20 years after witnessing the murder of her abusive step-father Lacey is still haunted by the past. In an attempt to rid her demons she returns to the scene of the crime and accidentally breaks a mirror, unwittingly releasing the evil spirit of her late surrogate father. Silly cow.

The 80's were responsible for some really terrifying celluloid incarnations: pizza-face Freddy Krueger  and his razor gloves, machete weilding Jason Voorhees and his iconic hockey mask, Tina Turner with electrical-incident hair and her fucking Thunderdome. None of these compare to the terror that is The Boogeyman - A dude with some tights on his head, making his nose look a bit squidgy (think Owen Wilson, but without tights on his head)

Thankfully (yet somewhat surprisingly) you only see the Boogeyman's physical form during the opening scene (which is then scattered through-out the film in pointless yet time-consuming flash-backs). For most of the film the b-man is a malevolent poltergeist trapped in shards of glass. As shitty as that sounds, the film's premise - a murdered psycho returning as a supernatural being to take revenge on his killer - greatly pre-dates the similar and far superior Nightmare on Elm Street. Unlike Nightmare, the Boogeyman's motivation to return and kill anyone who get's near his funky mirror is never really rationalised. This problematic because of all the people he murders, he pretty much ignores his killer.

So the script is pretty awful. But like all good horror b-movies the creaky script and rubbish acting is inconsequential if there's some inventive gore and an absolutely insane finale. As a poltergeist the Boogeyman takes no prisoners, flinging garden forks and knifes at anyone who gets in the evil mirror's reflection (yes, I realise how stupid that sounds). The Boogeyman's most entertaining kill has to be the young couple immortally held together in a kiss via a bbq skewer thrown through their heads (shown above).

The ending is a blinder (although not quite as mad as Evilspeak). Under possession of the Boogeyman Lacey jams a piece of the haunted mirror in her eye and starts levitating. The local vicar attempts to rid Lacey of the evil spirit (how come all clergy in horror films know how to perform exorcisms?) but unfortunately has his face melted off and knives thrown in to his back. Lacey eventually overcomes the evil glass and throws it down the well, which then explodes. But we could all see that coming, right?

The Boogeyman is a good idea, executed very badly. It's presence on the DPP list is baffling, but as this is true for most of the films on the list i'm not that surprised (I can only assume it's on the list due to the implied child-abuse at the start of the film). The film ends with a requisite opening for a sequel, which was unfortunately made and also ended up on the DPP list, probably for crimes against cinema. I'll let you know when and if I find a copy.

Video Nasty #33 : Dead & Buried

Synopsis: After a series of grisly accidents, Sheriff Gillis suspects foul play. As the accidents continue the dead and buried are inexplicably sighted around town. Welcome to Potter's Bluff : A new way of life!

Dead & Buried is by far the biggest budget movie on the list, and accordingly it's team is also of the highest calibre. Co-writer Dan O'Bannon worked on Alien and went on to write one my favourite zombie movies, Return of the Living Dead. O'Bannon was joined by the his co-writer on Alien as a producer, as celebrated/exploited on the poster. Horror legend Stan Winston (Aliens, Predator, The Terminator) also provides special effects for many of the film's 'accidents'.

What they and director Gary Sherman created is a tonally-unbalanced yet surprising, gory and darkly funny original movie that deserves to be better known than it is. This isn't helped by the lousy DVD transfer; many scenes are too dark and most of the audio is time shifted as if all the actors are performing an elaborate ventriloquist routine. Spoilers ahead.

The plot itself owes somewhat to Invasion of the Body Snatchers (feel free to pick any version), although in this case the alien plants are replaced by a nutty mortician who can use makeup, embalming fluids and a bit of voodoo to quite literally bring corpses back to life. Unlike Invasion, there isn't any  subtext (lack of freedom, communism, blah blah blah), instead the plot is milked for all its paranoid and gloriously gory potential.

And god bless Stan Winston is this gory. Much like the film's tone the effects vary, ranging from vicious realism to intentional silliness. The most memorable scenes are head-meets-acid (not very well done, but A+ for effort), a needle being jammed into a completely incapacitated burn victim's eye (ewwww!) and the utterly insane prehumous embalming. Things get a little silly when Sheriff Gillis' collision with an undead results in a dismembered hand getting stuck in his car's grill, the hand still wriggling like Ash's bird-flicking paw in Evil Dead 2.

And this alludes to probably the only major issue with the film. In parts the film is deadly serious yet as the admittedly daft plot gathers momentum it feels like there's some resistance to embrace the potential for humour (unlike the similarly gory and funny Strange Behaviour).

Regardless, Dead & Buried is worth a watch if only for the third act's plot twists that are so good they'd make Shyamalan jealous. It's films like this that make my idiotic year long movie-night worth it.