Friday, September 28, 2012

She Mob (1968)

Hold on to your balls guys, this is a weird one. The infamous She Mob, the movie with no director, the movie that rants about castration, the movie that gives you Big Shim. Here it is.

Tony is a male gigolo who has some pretty rich clientele. His number one customer is a rich bitch who buys him cars and anything else he wants as long as he is willing to wake up from a hang over to her awful cackling and still preform the ole in-out, in-out on her in the marble bathtub. She isn't much to look at and this is just a taste of things to come because most of the women in this movie are pretty damn ugly. Still they bare it all and leave behind a legacy of filth and debauchery in the world of Sexploitation films. Tony the gigolo gets a call from an old friend, Big Shim. Tony is needed to turn a trick on a group of young women who have not seen a man in a long time. Little does Tony know that it is all a set up and he is in for a world of shit.

Big Shim is the leader of an all girl gang. She comes complete with a spiked leather bra and leather chaps. When I said spiked I meant it. This leather bra can pierce through flesh and kill a man. "I have some killer tits". Big Shim is about as ugly as can be. This bull dyke has a captive lesbo sex-toy names Baby and now Tony the Gigolo is the new prisoner in Big Shim's house of psychotic women. Upon Tony's arrival he is greeted by the naked bitches of the house, all of whom Big Shim just broke out of jail. Needless to say these sluts are ready to treat Tony like the piece of meat that he is but Big Shim has bigger plans for him. She ties him to the bed and writes a ransom note for ten thousand dollars to Tony's rich-bitch girlfriend. "Unless you want to see your boyfriend looking more like a choir boy" send your money. Next we get a bunch of gratuitous nudity and random sexcapades which are all dished out in bad taste. One of the criminal babes goes by the name of Twig. She has a voice that could break a chalk board and she enjoys go-go dancing, topless of course. Then we have a couple of average looking blonds and a brunette who wears some pretty cool 50's style sun glasses and fishnet stockings.

Tony's rich-bitch girlfriend can't afford to lose Tony to gang of ruthless bull dykes so she calls on a female private dick named Sweety East who is clearly the best looking babe in the whole movie. She looks like she stepped out of something like Russ Myers Faster Pussy Cat. Kill! Kill! and she drives a fast sports car and knows kung fu to boot. It is up to this titular detective vixen to save Tony from the grips of the evil Big Shim and her clan of killer lesbians. Sweety East has this shiny get up that shows off her finer aspects. It is exceptionally low cut in the back and her ass crack and cleavage is a blazzin the whole time. I would assume the outfit is gold but this 60's Roughie is shot in glorious black and white as is expected and very much necessary.

Tony takes quite a beating while he is being held captive. Baby gets shot in the face with a shotgun (complete with black and white gore) and Big Shim does impale someone with her "killer tits". We get female masturbation scenes, Gratuitous sex, car chases (complete with crash and burn explosions), ridiculous 60's kung fu, bondage scenes, whipping scenes with more blood and perhaps the most bizarre cigarette holder I have ever seen. It is a electronic mule. You press a button and a cigarette pops out of the mules ass. Where can I find one of these things? I can not live without it.

Luckily for me I don't have to live without She Mob. Something Weird Video delivers this thing on a double feature disc with Nymphs Anonymous and is a must own for the average depraved mongoloid who finds pleasure in this form of cinematic smut. A brilliant piece of trash!

And God Created Woman (1956)

Writer/director Roger Vadim knows how to make a sexy movie. After all he would go on to do the Jane Fonda sexy sci-fi epic Barbarella and come back to Brigitte Bardot again and again until he made the French sex kitten his wife.

And God Created Woman is Roger Vadim's first feature film and it is also the movie that made Brigitte Bardot the sex symbol that she is. It is a theme that most Bardot films would follow. Every guy wants the girl but the girl only wants one guy and can not have him but there is much more to this cult classic.

Brigitte plays Juliete a beautiful young orphan who has no place in society. She has a reputation for being a "whore" but this is mainly due to her attitude and appearance. Juliete is more of a tease then anything. She enjoys sun bathing in the nude and walking around with her blouse unbuttoned and the male audience enjoys it as well. Most of the men in town think of her to be nothing more then a sex object and of course there are one or two who claim they love her but it is a heartless scum-bag named Antoine that Juliete is head over heels for. As she explains "I don't love him. I hate him! It is a disease... I can't be happy with him around".

And God Created Woman almost has a feminist touch to it. Juliete is thought to be a slut but it is her lack of up bringing, morals, judgement and even class that makes her come off this way. She is a bit of a bitch. She will break a mans weak little heart in two and not even look back. She sits with her legs spread and her panties will be exposed to the world. Men drool and women are jealous. This is pretty racy stuff for a 50's film and it is no wonder that Brigitte Bardot has become such an iconic symbol of sex. Back to the story, things get really bad for Juliete when she is threatened to be sent back to the orphanage until she is 21. Antoine's brother asks Juliete to marry him and she does it to save her own ass from the prison they call the orphanage. From here on And God Created Woman becomes a pretty depressing drama. Juliete is miserable and the men around her will destroy one another for a piece of the blond bomb shell. It becomes evident that this film will end in tragedy.

And God Created Woman offers up plenty of Brigitte Bardot tease-o-ramma stuff. We have scenes where she lay totally nude. The camera angles show off Bardot's stuff without really letting us see to much in strip tease scenes that are almost unbareable for a man to watch without gasping. Her skirt always seems to be revealing her underwear which gives the film a voyeuristic sense to it and of course we get the infamous dance sequence where Bardot rips the buttons on her skirt off and does the cha cha cha half exposed to the world.

Fans of Raquel Welch's One Million Years B.C. should check Bardot out in the beach scene where she is nearly drowned and rescued by a man. Her soaking wet body is exposed through her see through dress and it is all followed by a sex scene.

I normally am not the type to watch romance dramas. Sexploitation and Splatter Films are more my speed but I have this life long obsession with Briggite Bardot. She makes it possible for me to watch any movie and in the end I always enjoy them. Brigitte Bardot has a way of making a guy feel like a school boy living in a fantasy land. It is easy to fall in love with her in every role she plays, even the really nasty ones like Contempt. And God Created Woman is no exception to the rule. As a man you can almost place yourself in the shoes of the idiotic males in the movie. Would I kill my brother for a chance with Brigitte Bardot? Maybe so...

And God Created Woman is one of the best films from the queen of sex appeal. A must see for anyone who has ever drooled over Miss Bardot.

Thursday, September 27, 2012

Assassination (1987)

This movie is awful. Everything about it is awful. From the title to the story. From the action (if you can call it that, to the {PG-13} rating. It just sucks!

Even the posters for this movie sucks. Charles Bronson works for the secret service. Jill Ireland is the presidents wife. She is also a total cunt and all I wanted through out this movie was to see her dead. Possibly the best moment in the movie shows Charlie Bronson accidentally kneeing Jill Ireland in the eye. Yes it was only an accident but I got great gratitude from this very short moment in the film and this was the only thing I enjoyed at all.

I would rather knee myself in the eye repeatedly then watch Charles Bronson ride across country trying to protect this twat from terrorists. We see Bronson drive around on motorcycles, boats and dune buggies. We see explosions and shoot outs. None of which is very entertaining. Oh wait there was two other things that deserves note in Assassination. Charles Bronson has an Asian girlfriend. Good going Bronson. Thanks to the rating she doesn't get naked. There is also a crazy guy that drives around in Indian war paint named Indian Joe.

If you are one of those Charles Bronson obsessed freaks, you should still stay far away from this movie. There are plenty of other bad Bronson flicks that are more worthy of a rewatch then this piece of shit. Watch Cold Sweat again or even The Mechanic. Anything but Assassination.

Yojimbo (1961)

Akira Kurosawa (Throne Of Blood, Seven Samurai) writes and directs this classic Samurai masterpiece. Do you like Spaghettie Westerns? How about A Fist Full Of Dollars or Django? All of which were heavily influenced by Yojimbo.

The Spag Western genre is just the start of films that would pay homage, ripoff or just plain remake this visual tale of the lone Samurai. Lucio Fulci would mimic the opening scene in the beginning of his 1982 Gialo The New York Ripper, which shows a dog running towards the camera with a severed human hand in its mouth and much more recently Takashi Miike (Audition, Fudoh) would do his own version of Yojimbo with Sukiyaki Western Django. So many film makers, mainstream and cult icons alike all owe a debt to the genius Akira Kurosawa.

The film follows a Samurai who I like to refer to as "the man with no name" who enters a desperate town which has been split in half with two big gangs controlling each side. The few towns folk who are not in the gangs have it worse then anybody. This would be the merchants, the brewers, the cooks etc. In a town with no law and nobody to protect them against the gangs these people are pretty much doomed. Now along comes this man with no name, carrying a sword. Will he save the people from this town which is about to self destruct or will he just help speed up the process of elimination. The answer is a little bit of both. The truth is that this lone Samurai only has his best interest in mind. He is an assassin. He gets payed to kill mother fuckers and he doesn't care who he kills. He will join the side with the most money and kill all of their rivals.

Our assassin proves himself by cutting down some loud-mouth punks in the streets. Arms go-a-flying and dudes are sliced to ribbons. Now everybody in the town wants this man on their side. He plays the rival gangs against each other like pawns in a game of chess. It seems like this town is coming closer to its end then ever and eventually something happens to make our Samurai decide to not work for either side. This means it will be hundreds against one. Pretty bad-ass huh? To make things even more interesting one of the gang members acquires a gun and in these times of fists and swords a gun is a pretty big deal. It may not be a Django style Gatling gun but it is still a gun.

To top it all of this bloody tale of violence has a dark, very dark sense of comedy that runs through out. You can't help but laugh at some of the characters and situations that come up. It is the humor and the violence that make Yojimbo such a memorable experience but there is also a brilliant simplicity to it all. A simplicity that I can only relate best to Alfred Hitchcock and movies like The Rear Window. There is a simple repetitiveness that holds the films pace together and while many directors and writers have undoubtedly been influenced by Akiria Kurosawa I am pretty sure it is safe to say that Kurosawa was influenced by Hitchcock. "You're a good guy, aren't you?"

Monday, September 24, 2012

Death Wish 3 (1985)

If you look at the Death Wish series and then look at the Rambo movies, you might notice an interesting pattern. The original Death Wish put Charles Bronson forever in our hearts as the revenge guy. The oh so necessary follow up Death Wish 2 comes along in 1982 which is the same year that the first Rambo movie came out. Now I am sure that First Blood just blew Death Wish 2 away in the box office and Charlie Bronson did not relive his day in the sun. Jump forward to 1985 and Death Wish 3 is being wrapped up and ready to hit screens. Guess what else is getting ready to hit theaters... If you guessed Rambo 2, you would have guessed right. Now my guess is that the Death Wish boys were not about to give up the fight so easily and lose to Rambo again, so instead of doing another 70's style rape/revenge flick they chose to do an all out shoot-em-up action flick.

Well that is pretty much what we get here and the vengeful Paul Kersey is back in New York to kill the scum that pollutes the city streets. This time Charles (Paul Kersey) Bronson is working for the pigs. The East New York police are corrupt and not much better then the punks that terrorize the streets but Kersey doesn't have much choice. He will either rot in jail for a murder he did not commit or kill the bastards who actually did it. For those who are familiar with the series, the street-scum that Kersey goes to war with in part 2 are pretty outlandish and unforgettable. Well the new gang of punks are more ridiculous then ever and have grown in numbers.

These comic bookish bad guys all come complete with silly face paint and are completely decked out from head to toe in leather. These leather clad bad boys are lead by a Irish goon named Fraker who comes complete with a deep transvestite type voice, an inverted Mohawk and fully automatic weapons. Well it looks like the body count is going to be pretty fucking high in this one huh? Paul Kersey kills everything that jingles when it moves including a stereotypical punksploitation cackling bad guy named "The Giggler". Once the Giggler's brains are splattered across the city side walks Fraker and his gang call in other local gangs to help take out the one man army that is Charles Bronson. Naturally Bronson is going to need a little help of his own so he brings out the heavy artillery which comes in the form of a rocket launcher and a Gatling gun.

To say the least Death Wish 3 is an over exaggerated and over the top version of the classic 70's revenge flick. It is ridiculously mind numbing and you are bound to come out of it short of a few brain cells. Then there is the really cheesy score which Jimmy Page can take the credit for. Despite the huge body count and the giant explosions Death Wish 3 is really a lot softer then the first two films. That nasty 70's vibe is gone and replaced with big shoot outs and typical 80's action type stuff. There is even a rape scene that manages to come off extremely tame compared to the first two films.

Still if you can look past this, Death Wish 3 can be a good time waster. It is fun, it is moronic and it is of course Charles Bronson. This one goes perfect with some beers and some friends who are equally retarded and can enjoy this form of mayhem for mental midgets. Perhaps the funniest thing about Death Wish 3 is that is supposed to take place in East New York but is clearly the suburbs. We also have a ridiculous scene where Kersey shoves a fat skinheads head between prison bars, leaving him stuck and fucked or high and dry if you are more of the sensitive, politically correct type. Is that even possible? This one will raise many of dumb questions.

Check it out for Bronson gun-fu and dead punkers!

Friday, September 21, 2012

War Of The Worlds (1953)

The original film adaption of H.G. Wells War Of The Worlds is an excellent movie. The special effects were ground breaking for its time and the film did win some awards in that department. The story is also interesting and it holds the viewers attention all the way through. At the same time War Of The Worlds has a bit of camp value to it which makes the film easy to go back and look at it again and again.

War Of The Worlds opens up with a narration on World War I and World War II and prepares us for The War Of The Worlds which is supposed to instill fear into its audience that there will eventually be an invasion from other worlds. In this case the martians will invade us from planet Mars and destroy Earth from within. The martians will be armed with heavy artillery that man of Earth can not compete with or even understand. The martians superior minds and machinery is far beyond that of a Earthling and it all makes for one hell of a chaotic ride. There is anarchy in the streets and brother turns against brother in a fight for survival as mankind becomes another endangered species. However the martians destroy more then human beings. They kill birds, cattle and wild life alike. Earth will become the martians new home. You can call it a migration if you like.

As great as the original War Of The Worlds is, the film is not without flaw. It comes complete with one of the biggest cop-out endings I have ever seen but I will get back to that in a bit. War Of The Worlds also has this religious subtext to it which comes off as a giant contradiction for me. When the aliens first land a priest believes that they "must be closer to the creator" since they are more intelligent. That is a joke in its self but doesn't this man of god realize that the bible is limited to the people of earth. Nowhere in the so called good book do they mention little green me from Mars. Nope, for that we need to look back to the exploitation gods, to men like Roger Corman (Invasion Of The Saucer Men) and so forth. Well if it makes you feel any better when the dip-shit priest approaches the U.F.O. with book in hand and ranting some ancient scripture he is burnt to ash from the high powered laser weapons that the aliens use. Next we get an all out battle. The United States army against the beings from Mars. Our tanks, planes, bombs and ground troops are all useless against the machines from the other world and victory seems hopeless. The government even goes as far as to drop the atomic bomb on our own soil to try to win the battle but with no prevail.

From here on it is total chaos across America. Cities are destroyed very realistically and the survivors are running wild in the burning streets. It is shot perfectly and it really does look to be hell on Earth. This is my favorite part of this movie. Since American soil has never been invaded by another country it is amazing to see what could happen to our cities. Buildings falling to the ground, people fighting in the ruble over things like food, water or even vehicles. It is quite the spectacle but then the film completely cops out. We go from being in the most hopeless and desperate situation to returning to safety. It is clear that mankind is finished. There are a few hanging on by a thread but they will be removed at any moment but at the last moment the Martians lose the battle. If you want to know how they lose the war you will have to see the movie for yourself but I will say it was a cheap way out and it all relates back to that religious stuff I was talking about. Still, War Of The Worlds is a brilliant piece of sci-fi cinema from the 50's. The perfect film for monster and alien obssessed maniacs.

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

A Pussy To Die For (1992)

Let me defend myself before I even get into this review. I am a bit of what you might like to call a sleazy bastard. I enjoy raunchy exploitation films, trash cinema and 70's smut. This also includes 70's porno films but I would usually never sink to the depth of boredom to watch something like this. I don't even like regular movies from the useless decade I grew up in which is known as the 90's. I also hate just about everything that is shot on video or as I like to call it "Shiteo". So really the last thing I want to do is watch some lame ass 90's porno video like this.

So why did I watch A Pussy To Die For? The answer is simple. I work at an adult video store and some fat ass-munch gave me a box of "classic" vhs movies. Most of which did not have any boxes and the tapes are all a bit of a mystery. Some of which are cool while others are an out right embarrassment to the porno gods. A Pussy To Die For is one of those embarrassments.

Imdb.com claims it to have "shades of Citizen Kane" within. It is an atrocity to even mention Citizen Kane while referring to this shit-fest. The story, if you can call it that, follows some private dick who is trying to get to the bottom of a mysterious death involving a millionaire named Mr. Hardon. Oh wow they are so fucking witty, I think I'm gonna shit my pants. Anyway the private dick screws a few girls to gather information on this dip-shit named Hardon. The story sucks, the sex scenes suck, the acting sucks and even the film stock... oops, I mean video sucks. Don't be a sucker like me. If some fat fucker walks into your place of employment and hands you this movie just throw it right in the garbage because that's where it belongs.

Naked Killer (1992)

If you took a sleazy Category 3 flick and crossed it with a John Woo action movie like Hard Boiled you would end up with something like this. I of course not being the biggest fan of Hong Kong gun-fu flicks this movie was a breath of fresh air for me.

The Naked Killer relies more on its over the top violence, raunchy dialogue and sheer sleaze factor then the actual shoot-em-up stuff. Sure we have all of the exaggerated shoot outs but they almost seem more comic bookish then anything else.

The movie follows a cop who is tracking down a group of female assassins. These hot Asian babes are known for shooting their victims full of holes, breaking arms and legs and almost always causing some sever genital damage. They cut the dicks and balls off of the men they kill and in one of the more memorable scenes a stupid cop eats the severed dick of a dead man, mistaking it for a sausage.

The plot thickens when our main character learns that the assassin that he has been tracking is a young girl named Kitty who he fell in love with a while back. From here on The Naked Killer turns into a demented romance flick and makes American movies in the same genre like True Romance pale in comparison.

Kitty is the only girl for our dead-beat cop (literally). Ever since he witnessed his brothers death during a cops and robbers shoot out, he has been impotent. The day he met Kitty he became as he says "Hard as a rock" and she is the only girl in the world that can cure him of this affliction. Naturally Kitty is very important to the cop. More important then the police force and even more important then his own life. If that's not a twisted love story, I don't know what is.

The movie also sports lots of hot lesbian action and a bunch of sleaze-bag, rapist men. These moments of course help The Naked Killer achieve its Cat III rating. While this movie undoubtedly would appeal more to a male audience it still can be a fun watch for couples. That is providing your best girl isn't a typical, jealous, paranoid freak. Naked Killer has this sort of romantic charm to it but it is of course all done in very bad taste. We do get some bare breasted babes here and there but the film works perfectly the way it is and that being hot scantily dressed Asian babes who will shoot you full of holes and break your neck.

Some of the other highlights involve a man who has his achy-breaky skull smashed in with weights (complete with head explosion and splatter), violent genital stabbing, an exploding house, suicide, rape, dead cops and really funny dubbing. Even the subtitled versions are all really funny and to top this all off the film is very well made, with very slick camera work, plush sets and very nice lighting. I recommend only picking this thing up if you can find it uncut. The cut version can be missing as much as 11 minutes.

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Over 18... And Ready (1969)

What we have here is the worst example of a Roughie that I have seen in a very long time. It is the oh so familiar exploitation story of a young girl who wants to make it in the acting business and gets sucked into the smut picture racket. You know the rest, the only way this girl is going to make it to the top is from laying on her back.

For starters Over 18... And Ready casts an overly ugly crew. The main nudie here is not exactly horrible in the face but she has a body like a water buffalo and perhaps the worst posture I have seen in my life. For a minute I got excited because I thought this movie was going to be the first sexploitation scoliosis flick that I know of. Then we have this old wrinkled up lesbian who likes to take her clothes off on the beach. Yuck! So right off the bat this 60's sexploitation flick is pretty damn unattractive. Then there is the fact that it posses as a roughie when it is really nothing more then a very very boring nudie flick. The way they get around this is that the new "actress" is supposed to be staring in a rough flick. So its a movie within a movie and we as the audience get to see the very raw footage of the new film. We get one very tame whipping scene and then a simulated rape scene but the director calls "Cut" before we get to the nasty stuff.

Over 18... And Ready clocks in at just over a hour but it seems like a lifetime is going by as we try to stick it out through the horrible acting and awful sex scenes. In one of my favorite moments the new actress is asked if she can act. She replies "I think so. Besides you don't have to be very good to make it in one of these pictures". Oh boy, she wasn't kidding. If only you could here her deliver those lines. This is basically the same exact movie as A Sweet Sickness, which also wasn't very good but if I was forced to sit through one of these two titles again I think I would have to choose A Sweet Sickness. At least I didn't start to fall asleep through that one.

The only things that stood out in this movie at all is the fact that our leading woman has a shaved... well you know. This is pretty rare for these 60's sexploitation flicks. It also comes complete with a downer ending or at least what is supposed to be a downer. I have to admit the tragedy at the end made me a bit happy. For one, this means the movie is over and secondly I wanted someone else to feel some of the pain that I just endured while making my way through this rough sit.

Monday, September 17, 2012

Tourist Trap (1979)

This has to be one of the weirdest slasher films ever made. Not weird in an artsy-fartsy kinda way but just weird in general.

A group of four kids on a road trip are stranded in the middle of bum-fuck nowhere. A seemingly nice old man invites them back to his now out of business wax museum where they are stalked by a maniac and haunted by the wax dummies which seem to come to life.

Now when I said this is a weird slasher, the weird part is obviously not the four kids being stalked and killed by a nutso maniac in crazy masks. Its weird that The Tourist Trap blends super natural horror with prototype serial slash-em-up scenes. It all makes more sense as the film runs on and we learn that the dummies are not actually alive but they are being moved by our killer who has a sort of Carrie White telekinetic power going on.

To make things even cooler The Tourist Trap has a sort of Texas Chainsaw Massacre vibe to it. For starters some of the masks are very reminiscent of Leather Face and the film also deals with a demented and psychotic family in the middle of nowhere. The director who was actually born and raised in Texas was probably influenced by the Tobe Hooper classic of 74 but I can not say for sure. The director would go on to do movies like The Crawl Space with Klaus Kinski and later the shot on video embarrassment Puppet Master. Well at least the guy started off strong.

Another highlight of this movie for me is the screen presence of the beautiful Tanya Roberts who I remember best for her wet t-shirt movies and of course the 70's low budget sickie Forced Entry, not to be mistaken for the 70's slasher porno with Harry Reams which goes by the same title. Well unfortunately miss Roberts doesn't show any nipples in this one but we do have the privilege of watching her skinny dip with her girlfriends. Full frontal or not Tanya Roberts is always nice to look at and adds to any horror film.

For me personally I think this film works best for younger genre fans. When I was a little kid this movie probably would have scared the shit out of. There are some very creepy scenes where the mannequins come to life and sort of scream at the cameras. When you are an adult it is all a bit funny, especially if you are like me and seen way to many horror films. Still The Tourist Trap is good campy fun from the late 70's. It comes complete with an axe that is swung into a mans neck, multiple shotgun blasts to the torso, a pole is shoved through a mans back, a woman is suffocated, drownings, strangulation's, stabbings and plenty of evil doll action.

Show this to your 12 year old cousin and it will probably scare the shit out of them.

Sleazemania Strikes Back (1985)

For those familiar with Johnny Legend (Teenage Cruisers) and his 1985 compilation Sleazemania, you get exactly what you expect with this 2nd entry in the series.

Sleazemania Strikes Back is another composit of filthy trailers, stag films and other bizarre entries in the annals of offbeat and trashy cinema. This compilation throws a bunch of classic Ed Wood trailers at us, such as Gelen Or Glenda aka I Changed My Sex, The Violent Years and The Sinister Urge. We also get a whole bunch of Herschell Gordon Lewis : The Godfather Of Gore trailers such as Blood Feast, Two Thousand Maniacs and a lot of his less gory and widely lesser known stuff such as This Stuff'ell Kill Ya and Suburban Roulette. Its obvious what audience Sleazemania speaks to. Lovers of trashy exploitation flicks from the 30's up to the 80's. Another nice highlight is the trailer for Johnny Legend's Teenage Cruisers.

Check it out for a great time in the gutter with trash film nostalgia.

The Manson Family (2003)

Jim Van Bebber is a god damn genius! Those out there who are familiar with the hard hitting violence of his films know exactly what I am talking about. I think that one general feeling for all Van Bebber fans is just wishing that the director had a bigger of body of work to his name. While I feel this way at times I am also very happy that the man doesn't just shit movies out because Deadbeat At Dawn and The Manson Family in particular are perfect for what they are.

This movie took the director close to 20 years to complete and all of the substance is there. Money of course being the main issue, it is amazing how much stamina and conviction a man like Jim Van Bebber has.

The film is perfect. It plays kind of like a documentary and it is obvious that these cats really did the homework on the subject. Many famous interviews are recreated and look as if we were watching the real family in 1970. Those familiar with the classic documentary Manson (1973) should know exactly what I mean. Doing a straight forward documentary would just be repetitive and Bebber opts to not just make another Manson-esque exploitation movie like I Drink Your Blood, so what he offers is a look at the family and not so much Charlie. The hippie sex, the drugs, the murder... Its all there. He also manages to blend the relevance of Manson and his family on society today and a new generation of dementos who want to carry on the old glory of antiestablishment and murder.

In one of the best moments Jim Van Bebber creates hell on earth in a scene where a dog is slaughtered by the hippie cult. They bath in the dogs blood and what follows next is a psychedelic trippy-dippy orgy with Charlie as Satan. The scene is amazing and looks like something that would have been shot in the late 60's or early 70's. Its really pretty mind blowing. The murder scenes are equally as memorable and the level of violence is really high on the gore-o-meter. By no means do these murder scenes seem to glorify the Manson Family murders. They do quite the opposite. They stand here to nauseate and horrify the audience and I feel that the mission was well accomplished. The stabbing scenes are relentless. We see the knives plunge down into the bodies of the victims over and over again.

The Manson Family is really not for everyone. Those who enjoy watching movies on Manson or really dig gory horror movies are probably the main audience here. For those people, myself included Jim Van Bebber left us something witchy. In other words it is an instant classic!