Tag Archives: gore o’clock

Ron Jeremy and the porno lesbian cheerleader massacre

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ANDRE THE BUTCHER

2 Stars  2005/87m

A.k.a. Dead Meat

“No matter how you slice it… He’s pure terror.”

Director/Writer: Philip Cruz / Writer: James Hyde / Cast: Ron Jeremy, April Billingsley, Maury Sterling, Faye Canada, Heather Joy Budner, Justin Capaz, Liz Mullins, Alan Fessenden, Terry Mross, Gene Nash.

Body Count: 14

Dire-logue: “Could you please put aside your sexual identity issues for a minute and whip it out?”

A slasher flick with porno legend Ron Jeremy as a supernatural killer?

Three college cheerleaders and a guy cheerleader (?) driving around Florida on their way to a contest crash their car and end up at an abandoned house inhabited by a welding-mask-masked wacko who hacks people up, grinds their flesh down and eats it. Throw in a couple of escaped prisoners and the state cops who’re chasing them and there’s plenty of victims for the chop.

In spite of lowest-of-the-low production merits, Andre the Butcher isn’t such a bad flick once; T&A announced at the outset by an old man narrator is fairly minimal and the now requisite girl-on-girl scene is handled just that teeny bit more maturely than you might expect.

The final girl, Jasmine, is actually outed as a lesbian half way through. I know! A gay final girl at last! A sort of back up heroine arrives in the black police deputy. A lesbian and a black woman. What gives?

The characterisations aren’t exactly ocean deep but people turn out a little differently than it would appear. They’re generally sweet natured kids who don’t bitch and fight for a change and the prisoners are also packing a few surprises.

Andre the Butcher is full of sloppy gore and Jeremy is chucklesome as the loony toon but it’s not the kinda thing you’re ever going to watch more than once, so for a film that LOOKS like it’s going to be one 87-minute stereotype, you could waste your time far less interestingly.

Blurb-of-interest: Ron Jeremy played Jesus (!) in Bloody Bloody Bible Camp.

“It’s worse than dying!”

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WHODUNIT?

 1.5 Stars  1982/18/79m

A.k.a. Scared Alive; Island of Blood

“It’s worse than dying!”

Director/Writer: Bill Naud / Cast: Bari Suber, Rick Dean, Richard Helm, Red McVay, Jeanine Marie, Marie Alise, Terry Goodman, Ron Gardner, Jim Piper, Gary Phillips, Steven Tash.

Body Count: 11

Dire-logue: “Could you shut up? Just shut up ‘cos you’re depressing!”

Don’t you love how the 18 sticker is over the W making it look like the film is called Hodunit? That would be one awesome flick.

Is Whodunit? worse than dying? Would living in a world where Whodunit? didn’t exist be a bad thing? Hmm…well, who knows. We’ll all find out one day I guess. Maybe on my death bed as I recant all my wrongdoings I’ll be reminded of Whodunit? and it’s witty tagline (suited more to the alternate title Scared Alive) and that’ll finish me off.

Anyway, a group of actors are dropped off at Creep Island (where else?) with the director and producer of a “positive youth film” to begin rehearsals for an imminent shoot. Their mortality is soon problematised by the arrival of a maniac killer, who dispatches them in accordance with the lyrics of a terminally awful glam-rock song that is played on a seemingly endless supply of small grey portable cassette recorders that swing like pendulums from trees and telegraph each impending death to the words of the song:

“Boil me, boil me, boil me, face to face…” and so on ad nauseum with ‘boil’ substituted for shoot, spear, burn, saw, chop and nail. Still sounds better than the Christmas X Factor singles though.

Needless to say, the budding thesps soon meet their ends as predicted until only crappy singer-turned-actress BJ (phnarr!!!) remains to duke it out with the person she believes is the killer, who, in turn, believes SHE is the killer, while a third character holding a single candle (outside on a windy night, no less) encounters another suspect and says: “Stay away from me or I’ll burn you!”

With a candle. Ooooh, scary!!

This tangles mess fills in some of its slack with long scenes of people meandering around an old dilapidated building in a bid to create tension – but the murders are quite gory and there are some half-neat one-liners.

Without the ever-reoccurring annoyance of THAT song and some closure on why a totally anonymous and forgotten woman gets shot in the face at the beginning, this might’ve been good in an after-dinner cheeseboard sorta way.

So, no, not WORSE than dying. But that song certainly is.

Rubbish films: Heed thy warnings (or don’t)

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A sort of themed return to Rubbish Films That Don’t Deserve Long Reviews, with an emphasis on the films that almost tried to warn you in their titles. Maybe it’s simpler to do nothing.

Among the advice in horror films is not to go in the woods, look in the basement, answer the phone, go to sleep but none have yet ‘fessed up and called themselves Don’t Watch This Piece of Shit Movie…

DON’T GO IN THE HOUSE

1 Stars  1979/76m

“You have been warned!”

Director: Joseph Ellison / Writers: Joseph R. Masefield, Joseph Ellison & Ellen Hammill / Cast: Dan Grimaldi, Robert Osth, Johanna Brushay, Ralph D. Bowman, Kim Roberts.

Body Count: 5

A completely depressing little attempt at stapling a pyromanical theme to the basic plot of Psycho.

Grimaldi is a quiet labourer who lives in a big gothic house with mom, who tried to ‘burn the evil out’ of him as a child. When she dies, he finally realises he’s free to do whatever he wants and so inexplicably decides to pick up women and burn them alive in a specially converted sheet-metal room in his attic.

Considering it was made before Friday the 13th opened the floodgates for the genre, House shows a progression from the sleazier rape n’ torture flicks of the early 70s towards the stalker formula. Consequently, it has more common ground with The Driller Killer than Halloween.

Still, even at a mere 76 minutes (cut from the original 81), it’s flabbergastingly boring, attempting to direct our sympathies to the killer and his cheater work buddy who ultimately saves the day! Conversely, the female victims are hardly given anything to do and (in this version at least) there’s only one on-camera kill.

The effective Maniac-style finale is good but just too damn little, too damn late. This leaves only a squalid, sexist and homophobic addition to the Don’t mini-movement. No sale.

DON’T OPEN TILL CHRISTMAS

1984/18/82m  1 Stars

Directors: Edmund Purdom & Al McGoohan (additional scenes) / Writer: Derek Ford / Cast: Edmund Purdom, Alan Lake, Belinda Mayne, Mark Jones, Gerry Sundquist, Kelly Baker, Kevin Lloyd, Caroline Munro.

Body Count: 16

Dire-logue: “I shall look like a gay old queen!”

There are very few successful Christmas-themed slasher films (Black Christmas excepted of course) and this hopeless London-shot film fucking directed by Edmund Purdom probably belongs at the bottom of the stack. OK, maybe Christmas Evil sucks harder.

Street Santa’s, store Santa’s, Christmas Party Santa’s and anybody else unfortunate enough to have donned Saint Nick clobber are themselves being clobbered by a Christmas-hating psycho (possibly from Tower Hamlets?).

Purdom is the Chief Inspector in charge of stopping the mayhem, whilst dealing with the sulky daughter of an early victim and her mullet-headed boyfriend, who visually epitomises everything wrong with British 80s fashion. This mismatched pair goes about trying to solve the mystery on their own, amidst trips to take part in dodgy photo shoot and busk in the middle of a market with nothing but a flute!?

Meanwhile, Santa’s all over the place are being knifed, burnt, glassed and even castrated in the middle of taking a piss. Who’s doing it? There are several palpable suspects in supporting roles and Purdom himself might even be our guy.

Once unmasked, the killer is reminded by sulky girl that he killed her dad, to which he responds by saying: “That was unfortunate – but he reminded me of Christmas time.” He then kills her! (Possibly offended by the flute).

With the nominal heroine out the window, a peepshow employee who witnesses one of the murders in promoted to the role, kidnapped by the killer and then chased about deserted Soho streets in the middle of the day (!) and her ultimate fate is never really explained. There’s a brief flashback scene fisted in to do with a crappy family Christmas in some ill-conceived attempt to make sense of it all.

Though it looks okay on the surface, this is a real mess. Caroline Munro, whose named is emblazoned all over the video box, has a cameo of about three minutes as herself, probably as a favour to Purdom.

Don’t open ever.

DON’T PANIC

1 Stars  1987/18/90m

“The REAL nightmare is just beginning.”

Director/Writer: Ruben Galindo Jr. / Cast: Jon Michael Bischof, Gabriela Hassell, Helen Rojo, George Luke, Juan Ignacio Aranda, Eduard Noriega, Roberto Palazvelos, Melinda McCallum, Cecilia Tijerina.

Body Count: 7

If you thought Don’t Open Till Christmas was an acid trip into bizarro WTF territory, why not give this completely demented Mexican combo of Elm Street and The Exorcist a spin?

Dorky teen Michael – who sports a sort of permed mullet hairstyle – and friends play with a Ouija board that gets his friend Tony possessed with an evil spirit named Virgil who then kills the others.

The catch here is that Michael has precognitive Laura Mars-style visions, during which he is blind to everything else, illustrated to us with some tacky plastic contacts that look like they’re hurting the actor.

Beyond the bad writing, acting and production, Michael has got to be one of the most embarrassing lead characters on celluloid. He’s 18 but spends the majority of the film in dinosaur pyjamas and whines like a ten-year-old when he doesn’t get his own way.

In its efforts to ape Freddy, mom is an alcoholic and the killer’s face (when seen) is burnt and disfigured. The video box I had bore the tagline: “Forget Freddie [sic] and Jason, Virgil’s the newest nightmare in town.”

The dinosaur PJ’s are far more frightening.

DON’T LOOK DOWN

1998/12/87m  1.5 Stars

Director: Larry Shaw / Writer: Gregory Goodell / Cast: Megan Ward, Billy Burke, Terry Kinney, Angela Moore, William McDonald, Kate Robbins, Aaron Smolinski, Tara Spencer-Nairn.

Bodycount: 5

Dire-logue: “OK, so it’s me against the bogeyman.”

A nauseatingly tame made for TV thriller with ‘Wes Craven Presents’ all over the box and “this is the best Wes Craven film I’ve ever seen” written on it. What? Like, seriously? He also lent his name to fucking Wishmaster. And it’s rated 12.

Racked by guilt after she fails to save her little sister from falling over a cliff edge, reporter Ward finds herself increasingly anxious when faced with vertigo-inducing situations and so joins an intense therapy course run by iffy shrink Kinney, who might be the one shoving the patients off rooftops outside working hours.

An impressive opening act that has shades of the Stallone actioner Cliffhanger, a not-entirely predictable exposition from the killer and the fact that the black woman lives are the only distinguishing features in this boring crack at a potentially interesting premise.

The acrophobia angle is played out mainly with psychobabble and boring exercises for the group members, only two of whom are given that fatal push.

This should’ve been better.

*

Overrall blurbs-of-interest: Dan Grimaldi was in iMurders; Caroline Munro and Kelly Baker were in Slaughter High; Munro was also in Maniac and The Last Horror Film; Edmund Purdom was in Absurd and Pieces. Ruben Galindo also directed the far better Cemetery of Terror and Grave Robbers. Fortunately, that’s all.

Rave to the grave

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SWEATSHOP

2 Stars  2010/18/87m

“One hammer. No prisoners.”

Director: Stacy Davidson / Writers: Ted Geoghegan & Stacy Davidson / Cast: Ashley Kay, Peyton Wetzel, Brent D. Himes, Naika Malveaux, Danielle Jones, Melanie Donihoo, Julin, Vincent Guerrero, Krystal Freeman, Jeremy Sumrall.

Body Count: 21

Dire-logue: “It’s always the quiet ones that cut your dick off when you’re not looking.”

Here’s a film that was due a one way ticket to one-starsville until it pulled a decent finale out of its grimy, dirty back pocket. A rarity for a film to start off crap and get better – usually it’s the other way around.

Young-ish ravers arrive at a dirty old warehouse to fix it up for an illegal rave party. The organiser, Charlie, is a hard-ass, there’s punk-haired spunk-o-phobic Scotty, several of his on-off girlfriends, ‘cool’ DJ Enyx, lollipop-sucking lesbian, uh, Lolli, Scotty’s fat, repulsive brother Wade and a few other less memorable ones.

Their pals who left ahead of them to set up have disappeared and after what seems like an eternity of ‘fuck you’-heavy dialogue, drug use, alcohol use and conversations no deeper than your average Justin Bieber fan’s brain matter, they start dying. Gruesomely.

Sweatshop is a weird film. Several things occur which make no sense. The title itself is as redundant as an ex-Apprentice candidate: it’s a warehouse. That’s it. Call it Warehouse. Add to this a trio or more of bizarre zombie-esque girls who torment the newcomers, all tombstone teeth and scraggly hair like they wandered off the set of the latest Ring sequel.

The killer is a Jason-like hulk who favours a giant war-hammer thing that reminded me of a Buffy weapon she nicked off a troll. It’s a giant steel thing that nobody but your average malformed giant killer could ever hope to lift.

With this implement, he smashes and obliterates the young-ish cast one by one. A girl’s jaw is ripped off, another has her fingers snipped off before getting the hammer to her lower half, a third is smashed through a mesh fence… Most of the preliminary violence is against the girls.

However, before you wail “misogyny ahoy!” and light your torches, the most despicable male characters are held captive and forced to choke on severed cocks, which is supposed to be some funny irony for the guy who won’t reciprocate certain favours to female company.

Charlie is the last one standing and although she’s a nasty pimp we don’t even like, we don’t care what happens to her. Live, die, whatever.

Her survival for the moment leads to the film’s best scene at the end, where she is chased by the killer into the rave (somehow in progress despite the DJ being murdered earlier on) and he goes ape on the drug-addled attendees.

It’s essentially a rip-off of the corn-field massacre from Freddy vs Jason but provides some pretty good moments: glowstick in the eye, handwalker split down the middle (another lift from a Friday), and numerous head-squishings.

There’s a nice moment where a blood-stained disco ball rolls across the floor of an empty chamber and one of the actors is known as Fernando Phagabeefy!!! It’s immature to smirk at someones name but, c’mon, Phagabeefy!?

So it ends better than it starts out, which ever way to cut it, I can’t picture myself ever being drawn to watching Sweatshop again. But if you’re a gorehound who likes to hate characters rather than root for them, this could be right up your back street. (Not a euphemism, I was referring to the area in which one might find such a sweatshop warehouse).

 

Icky ways to go: Time to change the shower head

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From the original cut of the surprisingly vicious My Bloody Valentine (eventually unleashed in 2009, about the only thing we can thank the remake for), the standard one-half-of-couple-finds-reason-to-leave schtick unfurls as usual, leaving poor Sylvia here to be attacked by the creepy miner, who decides to do away with her by impaling her head on one of the rusty, pointy shower nozzles, resulting in her acting as a sort of novelty shower head for her boyfriend to discover a few minutes later. Ouch.

Probably the most inventive demise in the film, which when restored also included a gruesome pick-axe through the jaw and out of the eye. I feel twisted to be so thankful they eventually gave us the extra bloodletting. Oh well, the world still turns…

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