Food Of The Gods Part 2 (1989)

This 1989 follow up to the 70's animals gone bad cult classic shows giant killer rats one more time. The giant rodents and the title is really the only way you can connect the two films because they are as different in plot as possible.

When a young boy is the subject of a hormonal growth experiment, his attitude changes along with his size. The once sweet little boy now says things like "Fuck you, Bitch! Get out of my fucking room" Naturally scientist need to find an antidote and use lab rats to continue their experiments. Well this is a Nature Gone Wrong flick and before you can whistle three blind mice these giant rats are running amok on a college campus. Surprisingly enough this late 80's flick was shot on 35mm and some of the special effects are a bit gruesome. The killer rats first attack an animal rights activist group in a scene that reminded me very much of the opening of 28 Days Later. The leader of the activist group has his eyeballs gnawed out.

Limbs are chewed off, backs are ripped out and heads are severed. We even get a completely out of place melt down in a scene that seems like it belongs more in something like Street Trash rather then A Food Of The Gods movie. Despite the bloodletting that I just mentioned Food Of The Gods Part 2 follows the style of many other B grade horror flicks from this era where we see more of the gory aftermath rather then the victims actually being torn apart. The movie is very unbalanced in this way. Some of the murder is on screen but in my humble opinion way to much of it is off screen. There is also a bit to much of a silly tongue in cheek tone that flows throughout the sequel. Where as the 70's original did its best to play it straight and of course no matter how ludicrous the subject matter, playing it as serious as possible is always the way to go.

Another problem I had with the sequel is the fact that the rodent slaughter at the end is nowhere near as graphic, disturbing or believable. I can assure that no rats were harmed during the filming of this one. We get a bunch of wire tricks whenever a giant rat is shot and well, it just doesn't look real. On the upper hand Food Of The Gods 2 does offer up some bare breasted action, foul mouthed children and a bare assed man running down a public street. The rats chase after him and take chunks out of the mans ass. Boom mic's are visible throughout the film as well and we also get an exterminator who is putting on his best Clint Eastwood impression.

Still I recommend sticking with the original. 70's is king and this late 80's flick just doesn't compete.

Faces Of Death 2 (1981)

Faces Of Death part 2 is just further proof that true Mondo Films are dead. Three years after the release of the first film this sequel follows up in a pretty stong way.

This time around there is much less fake stuff. The truth is that its a pretty rough sit. I personally sink into a bit of depression when ever I watch these movies and I really can't say why I do it to myself. I guess a part of me almost feels obligated to see how they went about it and how true it can stay to the traditional style of mondo cinema.

I suppose the first couple of Faces Of Death movies have slight more class then the average straight to video shenanigans. They at least try to be a documentary and can even be some what informative at times. Still when it is all said and done it is a pretty grim look at humanity and the evil that man is capable of. We are haunted by images of a live execution which would be used in many other straight to video pseudo mondo flicks including World Of Death but for me the more grisly stuff is the atrocities of war. Victims of bombs, napalm and radiation is quite revolting and they don't exclude children from the wrath of the cameras eye. In fact it seems they dwell more on the innocent children who lost their lives during war.

Some other moments that stand out is a woman who was hit in the head with an axe when she got a bit lippy with her husband. A violent shoot out with the police the results in one dead hostage, a man bleeding in the street with a bullet in his guts and another man shot and killed on site. We get a boxing match that ended fatally and a bunch of stunt men who lost their lives to their own brand of art.

This time they spare us the monkey brains but they do show us what happens when monkeys are injected with hard drugs. They also show a dolphin massacre in Japan, Whale hunters, Seal clubbers and plenty of other dead animals. It takes a special kind of person to sit through these movies. It takes another kind of person to enjoy them. Those might be the kind of people I do not want to meet. Still movies like Faces Of Death serves a place in society and I personally believe they shouldn't be ignored. I might not go as far as to agree with writer/director when he says "They should be embraced" but still they are here and are depictions of factual mayhem. For that reason alone they serve some importance. So get a barf bag and squirm your way through this nasty follow up to the cult classic Faces Of Death.

Imprint (2006)

Back in 2006 there was a pretty awful series of horror films being screened on Showtime television. The series was called Masters Of Horror and the idea was for all the biggest horror directors to do a one hour movie where anything goes. There was supposed to be no worries from the censorship board and the film makers were supposed to have 100% artistic control over their movie. Since television totally fucking sucks this was obviously not the case.

Amongst the dozens of shitty Masters Of Horror short films only two stood out. The first being Dario Argento's Pelts and the second being Imprint.

Japanese renegade, Takashi Miike was the director behind Imprint and to make a long story short, it never saw the time of day on the t.v. series. The losers back peddled on everything they said and immediately denied a screening of Imprint due to the violence, nudity and extremely morbid nature of the film. Luckily for us Takashi Miike fans, the film was saved and released by Anchor Bay on dvd. It truly is a nasty picture.

The subject matter alone is enough to turn a few stomachs. Throw in the gruesome torture scenes and wham! a classic is born. Imprint is told through a series of flashbacks that depict a horrifying life of a disfigured prostitute. We witness abortion in nasty detail. The dead fetus's float past the camera in a river that they are dumped in to. Then we are treated to incestuous rape scenes and a pedophile Buddhist priest. A child kills her alcoholic father with a rock to the achy-breaky skull. Then we get the infamous torture scenes that shows a prostitute bound with rope and burned. She has needles shoved underneath her fingernails in a extremely disgusting scene that is sure to make the most jaded of gore-hounds cringe. Metal wires are also shoved between the gums and teeth of the poor woman and she is eventually murdered. Imprint also offers up death by gun shot, strangulation and even a mutant Siamese twin.

When its all said and done Imprint will stick in your brains and make you feel uncomfortable for a while. It sure beats the hell out of anything you will see on television and it should make movies like Saw hide its head in shame for being called torture porn.

Bikini Beach (1964)

Bikini Beach trails along after Beach Party and would be released the same year as Muscle Beach Party. These Beach Party Flicks are all pretty wacky and tend to be all over the place.

Frankie and Annette have several obstacles in their way. First off we have a British rock & roll sensation named Potato Bug who is clearly a mockery of The Beatles. Potato Bug is played by Frankie Avalon but you wouldn't notice at first. With the gap in his teeth and the 60's garage-rock style mop top swaggy and shaggy haircut. Potato Bug distracts Annette from pretty boy Frankie for a while and it isn't all holding hands, singing and night walks on the beach. Of course all of that expected nonsense is there but luckily for us its a bit limited. Then we have an old timer who is trying to ban the teenagers from the beach. He drags them through the mud in the news paper claiming they are sex crazed delinquents. If only this were true Beach Party Movies might be more entertaining and not the lowest denominator on the exploitation scale.

We get plenty of Go-Go dancing scenes and a couple of catchy songs. Mainly the title song Bikini Beach but there is also a ridiculous little ditty called Secret Weapon and of course little Stevie Wonder shows up for some blind rockin & rollin.

We also have a man in a monkey suit running around and making the teenage youth look bad. The monkey can out-surf, out-dance and even beat them in drag races. This of course having something to say about the mental capacity of the teenage beach bums. The retarded biker gang The Rats tries to bring Frankie and his pack down again and we get a big fight scene for a climax which is probably the most entertaining scene in the whole movie.

I personally have never been the biggest fan of the beach flicks. Partially due to how silly they are but mainly because they are just to soft. The beauty of exploitation movies is that they push the envelope. They can be more sexy, more violent and more graphic then a major studio production which has to much to loose. These childish comedies really do not offer that and bikini clad babes only go so far. Still I punish myself and watch this mind numbing crap in a daze of confusion and bewilder. If these movies don't offer anything else at least we can dig the music.

This one also sports a Boris Karloff cameo and oddly enough the director would go on to do the awesome 80's slasher Night Warning. Now that you should see.

Erotic Nights Of The Living Dead (1980)

The great Joe D'Amato and George Eastman (Anthropophagus) team up again for another romp in terror and eroticism. Written and staring George Eastman and of course directed by D'Amato the two make yet another zombie porno flick. For those familiar with Porno Holocaust which the the two would do in the following year, you get exactly what you expect.

The truth is I prefer The Erotic Nights Of The Living Dead over Porno Holocaust. This is the better film. The zombies are much more disgusting. These maggot infested corpses hold up to anything that Lucio Fulci (Zombie, The Beyond) has done special effects wise and there is one truly scary moment where a corpse gets up from an autopsy table and rips out the throat of a mortician. Yuck!

The main problem with this movie and Porno Holocaust is that they both run to long. The runing time on the uncut version of Erotic Nights Of The Living Dead is 112 minutes and of course this is due to the fact that they needed a significant amount of XXX stuff but also needed a story and zombie-fu at the same time.

Still somehow the movie seems to contain to much filler, with repetitive shots of the victims running in circles on the island.

The Black Emanuell, Laura Gemser shows up here as one of the only survivors on "Cat Island". Surrounding islands believe that Cat Island is inhabited by zombies led by a black cat. Well this turns out to be true and the film sort of suggests that Laura Gemser might be the black cat. Gemser offers up tits, ass and fluffy bush. She has a beautifully shot sex scene with George Eastman and a slightly more trashy lesbian scene with a fellow nympho.

The climax completely rips off Lucio Fulci's Zombi with the old mummified looking corpses being set a blaze.

Erotic Nights Of The Living Dead also went under the title of Sexy Nights Of The Living Dead, Queen Of The Zombies and Nite Of The Zombies. All of which have been heavily cut and holds back on most of the hardcore shenanigans.

Some added treats that this one has to offer is visible genital warts. A very trashy scene where a girl sticks a wine bottle where the sun don't shine and pops the cork inside. Now that's talent! A zombie has his face blown off by a riffle. We get head explosions, decapitation, a hook through the head, lots of maggots and a man with a giant bubble on his head.

If only this thing ran a bit faster in pace it would be an unforgettable gem. Still worth a watch and way better then Porno Holocaust.

Igor And The Lunatics (1985)

I recently went back and took a look at this childhood favorite of mine. It was just as bad as I remembered it... In a good way.

This thing starts off in the late 60's and the story is told from the point of view of Tom, an ex cult member of a Charles Manson like hippie group. The Manson character is named Paul and why they didn't call him Charlie is beyond me. The cult believes Paul to be a messenger from god. Sound familiar? Paul is preparing his followers for what he calls "the new way" and from what I can see, the new way consists of doing drugs, having sex and praying. Of course some of the family members turn their back on Paul and that leaves him with no alternative other then to chop them up on giant table saws.

The infamous table saw scene takes place in the very beginning of the movie and then is shown two other times in more detail. I guess they really got their moneys worth with that effect. The saw splits a topless woman in half from crotch to forehead and is clearly the most memorable scene in the movie. Paul's most deranged and loyal follower is Igor who is shown on the VHS cover art. Its a shame that the guy who plays Igor has only done this one film because he is a pretty nutty dude and really entertaining to watch. He's always yelling and making ridiculous faces. Igor uses an abnormally large switchblade as a weapon of choice and we are lucky enough to watch him gut a bare breasted babe in the back of his hippie van.

While Igor And The Lunatics starts off on a pretty strong note it quickly becomes discombobulated and none if it makes much sense. Even the characters names change. Igor suddenly becomes Paul Byron which is really confusing because the cult leaders name is Paul.

The film eventually jumps forward to the 80's and the real Paul is released from prison. He pulls a (Terry Hawkins) Last House On Dead End Street move and takes revenge against the town that locked him away. Tom goes to war with Paul and Igor... or what ever his name is and we get a couple gore scenes.

Igor And The Lunatics comes complete with giant switchblade's, a machete to the torso, meat cleaver to the achy-breaky skull (complete with red splatter), really ridiculous acting, naked ladies and a hilarious police raid where hippies get the beating of their lives.

Personally being a fan of all these Charles Manson type films I have to admit this one is amongst the worst. Still if you free your mind and keep repeating its only a movie... Its only a movie and take this cheese-fest for what it is, you might even enjoy it. For a much better and more coherent time with Manson like hippie cults and murder you should just stick with I Drink Your Blood. Oh yeah and this thing comes complete with a typically dumb 1980's jump-scare ending.

Death Wish 2 (1982)

It took eight years for the first sequel to Death Wish to come but it came at us with guns blazin and still stays true to the original. Perhaps if they took their time on the sequels to follow they would have been as interesting as this follow up to the classic rape/revenge tale.

Yet again Bronson proves that it never pays to be close to him. His daughter is raped yet again by another gang of vicious punks but this time she doesn't make it out alive. After the violent rape scene she tries to make her escape but ends up impaled on a metal, spiked pole from a fence in a scene that looks like it should have been in a horror movie. For those who remember correctly in the first Death Wish Bronson's daughter was not the only victim of sexual abuse. His wife was also attacked and killed by the scum bags. I guess the film makers decided that if there was two rapes in the first film there had to be at least two rapes in the sequel. The second rape victim in Death Wish 2 is Bronson's maid. The scum take turns with her and then smash her achy-breaky skull in. Naturally there is vengeance to pay.

Charles Bronson takes to the Hollywood streets. Oh yeah this one takes place in California since the police forced him out of New York City in the first film. He searches every sleaze-ball corner for the degenerates who killed his friend and daughter but what he finds instead is criminals in every parking garage, bus and arcade but the main difference between the sequel and the original is this time around he actually finds the low lives that harmed his family. He finds a few rapping a woman and he shoots them to shit. He takes out a few more in a big shoot out scene when he catches them purchasing automatic weapons.

He drops a cheesy line in one scene when he asks one of the punks "Do you believe in Jesus? You're gonna meet him" the he shoots him full of holes and takes back to the streets for more revenge.

In my favorite scene, the only remaining gang member beats the shit out of half the police force while high on P.C.P. after his arrest he is sent to a rehabilitation hospital. Bronson poses as a doctor and sneaks into the hospital for a final fight scene where Charlie gets stabbed full of holes.

Laurence Fishburne (Apocalypse Now, King Of New York) shows up as one of the rapists. He meets his fate with a bullet to the face. Fishburne walks around with a ghetto blaster and does some silly dances but he sure does have some cool sun glasses. We also get a death by electrocution, some knife violence, dead cops and a really sneaky Charles Bronson. It all makes for a great follow up.

Guess What Happened To Count Dracula? (1971)

A totally weird and bizarre vampire flick. Its no good but it is worth at least one viewing just for the sake that it is so strange.

Angelica is visited by a vampire named Count Adrian. The vampire hypnotizes her and sinks his teeth into her neck. Angelica quickly falls for Adrian and its not long before she is invited to spend a night in his castle.

Withing the walls of Count Adrian's castle they practice satanic rituals, dance like voodoo maniacs, eat lizards and read tarot cards. There is a mongoloid vampire locked in a cell, there is also a Gorilla roaming about and Count Adrian has a pet tiger named Alucard. Not to be mistaken for the movie and for those of you that are a bit dim witted Alucard is nothing more then Dracula spelled backwards. Its pretty crazy to see these actors walking around with a giant fucking tiger and especially because the film is on a shoestring budget but this just add to the strange flavor that Guess What Happened To Count Dracula leaves in your mouth.

Despite the fact that this is a vampire movie it all comes off quite comedic but this is mainly due to the fact that the acting is so bad as is the writing. The actor who plays the role of Dracula or Count Adrian for that matter does his best Bela Lugosi impersonation which isn't so good. Okay in fact its quite bad. We learn that Count Adrian is from Romania and has fled to the United States to avoid the communists. "I Will return to my home country only after the communists have left". The sets are lit with red and green lighting which reminds me of a cross between a Dario Argento movie crossed with A Taste Of Blood. Of course leaning more towards A Taste Of Blood... Much more!

The director of Guess What Happened To Count Dracula would go on to do the awesome documentary Manson which would document Charlie and his family and their insane ideology. If only Manson had a pet tiger and some green lighting.

Dracula (The Dirty Old Man) (1969)

Find a Dracula movie that is weirder then this one, I dare you! It amazes me how dumb people really are. If you have the patients to read anything anybody has ever said about this movie on IMDB.Com you would know what I mean. Apparently people have a hard time realizing that this movie is supposed to be funny.

Dracula (The Dirty Old Man) is exploitation at its best. When the final cut was finished and test screened the film makers must have buried their heads in their hands knowing that they have failed. Sure people might see it at the local drive inn but they most certainly are not going to like it. What to do? Flush the audio track down the fucking toilet and redub the film. Mock it the whole way through and make the people laugh. Woody Allen was very successful three years earlier with Whats Up Tiger Lilly and I'm sure that's where the producers grabbed their inspiration from and subconsciously they might have even thrown a little more proof that Woody was the inspiration because the narrator gives Dracula a thick Jewish accent.

The redubed version, which is the only one available tells the story of a man who is under Dracula's hypnotic influence. Dracula places a curse on him and turns him into a werewolf named Jackal-Man. Jackal-Man's orders are to go out and bring Dracula women. Lots of women. Dracula (Dirty Old Man) is a sexploitation film disguised as a monster flick. It is filled to the brim with naked female flesh. Bare breasts, butts, big bush and even bigger 60's underwear is on display for the next 80 minutes. There are even scenes that were obviously filmed after the fact, which do not fit into the already disjointed film in any possible way. Jackal-Man does indeed bring women to Dracula where they are fondled and then killed by the horny vampire. Jackal-Man goes out and gets some action himself from time to time. He rapes women with all of his clothes on. It is quite the site to see... A giant rat like werewolf grabbing naked women and thrusting in a not so erotic fashion.

We also get a bit of gore as if this movie wasn't weird enough. We really needed a vampire, werewolf, sexploitation, comedy filled with gore didn't we?

The truth is that this movie is still a pretty rough sit even with the comedic audio track. Sure it has some very funny moments but it still drags along at a very evil pace.

For a better time with redubed horror flicks check out Revenge Of The Sun Demon. That one is funny as hell. The Hideous Sun Demon was a stand up monster flick on its own so you can't go wrong with that one. Still Dracula (Dirty Old Man) does hold a certain charm for all you demento's out there who collect totally bizarre novelty flicks. Its worth seeing at least once for its strangeness if nothing else.

The Serpent And The Rainbow (1988)

Wes Craven, where did you go wrong? By the time this movie came out it was already to late for writer/director Wes Craven. The good ole days of rape revenge and mongoloid cannibals in the mountains were a thing of the past. Now we are in the dreams and nightmares obsessed times for Mr. Craven where logic can be thrown out the window.

A Nightmare On Elm Street was creepy and original enough for the teenage horror hound version of myself but to many of Cravens films dabble in  supernatural events and or dream state nonsense from this point on.

Even when the director attempted to go back to making movies that made sense all he had to offer was Scream. Thanks a lot but you could keep it Wes.

This movie actually has a very unique plot and really could have been a good movie. Bill Pullman plays a scientist who comes to Haiti when he learns that voodoo priests are using a drug to create zombies. He wants to bring the drug back to America where they can possibly use it as an anesthetic in the medical field. Well lets just say its more magic then an actual drug and Pullman becomes the walking dead himself when he betrays a fascist dictator who also has his hands in voodoo. Yes you guessed it... The dictator controls our zombie in his dreams and things happen without any explanation, rhyme or reason. For instance someone can burst into flames and disappear in mid air but then come back and curse their enemy? What the shit!

The movie does have a couple of things in its favor. It offers up some penis violence (complte with nails driven into groinal area), a crazy hallucinogen drug that makes people do the unthinkable, some naked female flesh which may not be the most attractive scene in cinematic history but at least it is there. Last but certainly not least we get a decapitation which is pretty cool. The gore scenes make The Serpent And The Rainbow somewhat watchable but the movie is still a big hack-job and deserves more criticism the praise.

Schizo (1976)

Not to be mistaken for Nightmare In A Damaged Brain or the shit-ton of other movies that went under the brilliant exploitation title of Schizo. Nope, this one comes from British director Peter Walker. Walker is my favorite of all English directors mainly because his brand of horror was a bit more nasty then the Hammer Studios type stuff that was coming out of England at the time.

Responsible fro such trashy delights as Frightmare and House Of Whipchord, Peter Walker offers up another violent piece of horror. Its funny because Schizo plays more like an Italian Giallo with a black gloved psychopath on the lose. It has plot twists, a surprise ending and a bit of mystery going on. It is clearly different then the British horror that was going on at the time. I'm sure Mr. Walker was influenced by the work of Dario Argento or Mario Bava when he dished this slasher flick out.

This one starts off a little slow with cheep gags and cheesy scares but it makes up for it with some bare breasted women here and there. For those of you familiar with Peter Walkers The Flesh And Blood Show which I feel should have just been titled The Flesh Show due to the lack of blood, I can assure you that this one does not follow in the same footsteps. It gets more violent as the time runs on and before long throats are being slashed, achy-breaky skulls are smashed in with repeated blows from a metal mallet. Bodies are run over and mangled, sharp objects are shoved through eyeballs, faces are slashed, bodies are impaled and naked women are stabbed and hacked to shit. There is also a cool scene where a psychic is possessed and goes Bat-shit which reminded me a bit of Deep Red.

Check it out for schizo's and various sharp objects being put to good use.

The Howling VII : New Moon Rising (1995)

Suicide might be a better alternative. I first saw this piece of shit on Joe Bob Briggs Mosntervision when I was a teenager. It played right after The Howling III : The Marsupials which is far superior in camp value alone. The Howling franchise was never a very good one with the exception of the first film but The Howling 7 is by far the worst of the lot. It can barely be considered a movie. Shot on video with a cast that consists of no actors with the exception of one man who did a silent film when he was about 8 and then came back to do this movie when he was 80. I'm sure you can guess but the acting is horrendous. The whole movie takes place in a bar in bumble-fuck California and I'm pretty sure everyone in the movie are just regulars at this shit-hole bar. We get a bunch of useless chit-chat that tries to tie this flick into the rest of the series and nothing happens at all. We don't even get a werewolf until the last five seconds of the movie. Oh boy is it bad!

We have endless scenes of line dancing which Joe Bob refers to as "Line dancing from hell" then we get a bunch of shitty musical numbers and gratuitous drinking. The Howling 7 has to have one of the worst soundtracks of all time and watching these shit-necks play their awful songs is torture. However we do get a cool sing-along about drugs and a scene that has to be seen to be believed where these losers play the zippers on their pants as instruments. I'm not making this up!

Watching any movie with Joe Bob Briggs is worth while so I recommend if you ever dare to watch this thing find a copy of the Monstervision version somewhere on the Internet. Otherwise stay as far away as possible.

Some of the other treats that this one has in store for you is gratuitous farting and the worlds laziest detective. When other character are trying to explain what is going on the detective usually says things like "Is this going to take long?" or "I would really like to hear this but I have had enough". Who the fuck wrote this shit?

You're gonna need a lot of booze to make it through this one!