Guru The Mad Monk (1970)

Andy Milligan's name alone usually causes a few different reactions with cult film and horror movie buffs. The most common is probably a cringe because Milligan's movies are out right awful and sometimes unwatchable. The second would probably be laughter. There are people who are partial to the vile works of Mr. Milligan and they just find him and his inadequate style of film making humorous. Every once and a while you get the freak who smiles and shouts out "I love Andy Milligan" while I can see the fascination with the madness of Milligan movies and I myself like to bask in the glory of the sleaziness and gory mayhem of The Ghastly Ones about once a year which is hard for people to believe considering how most people who have seen it once swear they will never watch it again. I however feel almost drawn to that film and feel the need to give it a run every once and a while. Still I don't know if I can consider myself a fan of Andy Milligan but there is definitely a strange power that flows through some of his films. They have an element of weirdness, they are violent, sometimes disturbing and done extremely amateurish. The fact that they are so bad almost makes them more fascinating.

Guru The Mad Monk, not to be mistaken for Rasputin : Mad Monk with Christopher Lee is no exception. The print that I own which is the more popular runs at only 56 minutes and while Guru may be short there is definitely enough odd things going on to fill the average 90 minute movie. There is apparently a 62 minute version out there somewhere which I have not been able to get my hands on yet but would love to.

Guru The Mad Monk is sort of a twisted tale of Romeo And Juliet with serious anti religous undertones. Guru isn't in fact a Monk. He is a Catholic priest who sends accused criminals and sinners on their way to execution. Guru is an evil man with way to much power. He also has multiple personalities and the of course the evil overcomes the good. Guru hangs around with a deformed hunchback who looks a lot like Dee Dee Ramone from the legendary punk band The Ramones. He also hangs out with a female vampire named Olga. Olga and Guru need human blood for their own reasons and they use a young man who works in a prison cemetery to bring them fresh blood.

Guru The Mad Monk offers up quick but graphic scenes of gore and violence that consist of decapitation and eyeball mutilation (complete with nails through the eye sockets). Hands are chopped off with axes and we also have public branding. The gore is so cheesy it makes the average Herschell Gordon Lewis flick look like Cannibal Holocaust but its all done in such a trashy way that a demented gore hound like myself can't help but be pleased.

Check out Guru The Mad Monk for a stab at the Catholic church from Milligan the mad director.

Oval Portrait (1972)

If I can't punch the actress, I will have to punch myself for buying this shitty movie. This American/Mexican production has to be one of the worst fucking movies I have seen in a while. The Oval Portrait or One Minute Before Death takes from the writings of Edgar Allan Poe and mangles it with wretched visuals and over all inept film making.

A mother and daughter inherit a mansion which is haunted by the ghost of the former resident. The daughter becomes possessed and runs around in an embarrassing manner.

First off the daughter is played by a 50 year old woman and no amount of Botox can help this wrinkled up old bag. Its annoying as hell watching this old bat run around and pretending to be a child. I don't care if she was the worlds greatest actress which she is absolutely not and had the worlds greatest makeup artists making her up. We still wouldn't be fooled. Then we get some really shitty ghost effects and horrible acting all around. The voice over dubbing is horrendous and the plot is totally boring. Luckily for us we have a necrophilia scene (complete with corpse slow-dancing). We also get a tid bit of blood but nowhere near enough to save this vile piece of crap.

Don't ever watch this movie!

Brideless Groom (1947)

Shemp is to inherit a large sum of money under the condition that he finds a girl to marry him before 6:00 PM. He calls every girl he knows and makes a ass out of himself each time. He catches a variety of beatings from various different women and of course Moe as well. Larry stands in the background which is typical for the average Three Stooges short but his screen time is always much appreciated.

Shemp really steals the show in this one and the movie belongs to him. Moe has some great bits as well. One that always sticks in mind is a gag inside a phone booth where Shemp and Moe get tangled up together in the telephone wires. Naturally these two can't be this close to each other without causing the other some pain. They bite each other and bang heads and its funny no matter how many times you see it. Also watch for the awesomely homo erotic moment between Moe and Larry in the hallway.

By the end of the film Shemp is ruining from herds of greedy women who want to get their hands on his inheritance. Moe takes charge and slaps a few of the women around while Larry just gets hurt a lot.

One of the most famous and most memorable of all Three Stooges Shorts. A must see for all Shemp fans. Just watch as he sticks shaving cream in his eyes and attempts to straight razor himself clean. "OOOOW OOOOW Moe, I cut my head off. My head is off Moe".

This Lady Is A Tramp (1980)

Chuck Vincent, the director of Bon Appetite delivers a much more raunchy and comedic film the same year. This Lady Is A Tramp follows Samantha Fox through her divorce from Robert (Cannibal Holocaust) Kerman. She spills the beans to her lawyer... Actually she tells lie after lie to prove herself innocent and come off as a proper lady but fortunately for us the camera tells the truth and shows her as the Tramp she is and we watch all of her filthy exploits as she climbs the grimy ladder to wealth and fame.

It all starts when she was a young nympho adolescent who seduces her drunken stepfather with a quickie blowjob in a typical pervy jailbait scene from the sickie golden age of adult cinema. Samantha Fox takes turns sucking on her lollipop and her step daddy's cock. Mother walks in after the money shot and chases them around the house with a broom. Naturally the next step is to run away to N.Y.C. and attend some nice films on 42nd Street. Luckily for us Ron (The Rocket) Jeremy is putting on a show in this sleazy fuck-house and we are treated the visual of Jeremy blowing his own whistle. Ron's role is far more interesting and exploitative then that of Bon Appetite and its hard to believe the two films came from the same director.

The Lady Is A Tramp also offers up lesbianism, a orgy complete with sailor boys, a cripple who lost his limbs "at a Rolling Stones concert", some nasty name calling and other S&M treats, a bar fight scene complete with bottles being broken over achy-breaky skulls and lots of funny moments and laughable quotes for the average degenerate to chuckle to. Anyone who finds humor in these sick flicks is bound to enjoy this one.

Disorder In The Court (1936)

Moe Larry and Curly terrorize a court house in one of the most easily accessible Three Stooges shorts. This short is readily available on countless public domain packs and is quite memorable to any Stooges fan.

The Stooges bring in some sex appeal riff raff who does a bit of a strip tease while the three lunk-heads get rebellious with a swing number. Its not long before they are shooting hand guns off, calling the judge names, hitting the jury over the heads with hammers, blasting the court down with a fire hose and screaming like Tarzan. Curly gets his head crushed in a vice  "I'll squeeze the cider outta yer Adam's apple!" and we also get a awesome scene where Curly gives us the middle finger which would make a great T shirt.

Disorder In The Court is a timeless classic from the Stooges filled with chaos and some really funny bits from Curly and Larry alike.

Young, Wild And Wonderful (1980)

Jim Clark director of classics like Debbie Does Dallas and Angel Buns drops this 1980 porno flick on us about a high school field trip to a museum. Of course these high school kids are all in their 30's but that doesn't stop the screenplay from playing the jail bait fantasy to the max.

These kids are fucking horny and so are the teachers for that matter. Everybody sleeps with everybody but in one of the best scenes a girl seduces her teacher and we get the brilliantly creepy quote of the film "Does your daddy stroke your pussy like that?" Oh man, you gotta love it...

We get gratuitous "whore" calling in a threesome scene which is also the roughest scene in the movie. Robert (Cannibal Holocaust) Kerman does the dirty with a young piece of "Chicken". Then we get a gangbang (complete with circle jerk), some really ugly chicks with bad mullets, the typical taking of the virginity that is required for any classic jailbait porn and some really shitty 80's music to further make the movie less attractive. So in other words... I enjoyed it. Especially the disturbing close-ups on pubic hair and porno beaten vagina's.

Young, Wild And Wonderful also known as Wet, Wild And Willing offers some cheap laughs and one semi attractive threesome involving two pretty brunettes, one of which being Arcadia Lake from Debbie Does Dallas and the other looking a bit like Shannen Doherty with some super puffy nipples as an added bonus. Not a complete waste of time but nothing to memorable or exciting either. Just another smut flick from the pornographic archives involving youngsters and their devious sex starved ways.

Chopper (2000)

Ever imagine what it would be like to be a total ruthless bad-ass who shoots anybody who fucks with you with out remorse and then reality kicks in and you know you would feel bad and regret it all? That's what we kind of get with Chopper. Chopper is based on the real life Australian criminal Mark (Chopper) Read and was put together from a series of autobiography novels that Chopper Read wrote in prison. Chopper gained his notoriety for sever acts of torture and violence that he unleashed on Australian drug dealers and assorted criminals. However Chopper isn't quite a vigilante. He himself was a criminal who just chose other criminals as his victims.

Many of the scenes in the movie were taken from real events such as Chopper having a fellow prisoner cut both of his ears off so he can avoid an attack from rival gang members. The movie however is really pretty funny. The brutality of it all is sort of numbed down with the comic relief that is thrown in. Chopper is the true definition of a dark comedy.

We are treated to some schizophrenic behaviour that fills the screen with gore and laughs at the same time. In one scene Chopper repeatedly stabs a man in the neck and then apologizes over and over again as the man lay on the floor bleeding to death. This is pretty much the tone of the film. Every time Chopper does something horrible to someone he then apologizes for his actions. In one scene he shoots a man in the gut and then drives him to the hospital.

Some of the other treats that Chopper offers up is a shotgun blast to the face (complete with a slug through the eye), Nasty stabbing scenes (complete with tons of gore), girlfriend beatings, mother beatings, public nudity (complete with swinging dicks) and lots of memorable quotes "Cheers, Big ears".

Its almost impossible to watch this movie and not like the character of Chopper. He is charismatic, funny and of course extremely dangerous. Check it out for a violent fun time.

The Thing (2011)

John Carpenters remake of The Thing From Another World is possibly the best remake in cinema history. He offered a much more graphic take on the 50's monster movie with groundbreaking special effects for a modern audience in 1982. In theory I suppose The Thing 2011 had the same responsibility to deliver the computer graphics to the audience of today. Personally not being a fan of CGI at all I had very low expectations for this movie and knew there was no way possible they could have out done John Carpenters 82 remake which still stands up today as far as the effects go. In the 82 flick the computer scenes seem a bit dated by todays standards but the gore is still outrageously affective as it was the day it was released.

The 2011 take on the other hand will not become the timeless classic that Carpenter directed and the reason being, character development... Where is it? The characters in the new movie all seem worthless. They don't offer anything there for their lives are meaningless. This keeps the audience in a certain mind frame... Bring on the next gore scene. In that sense I suppose The Thing (2011) wasn't horrible. The CGI looked good for what it is (At least at certain times). Half of the effects looked like total shit and there was one scene in the space ship that was just an embarrassment but we also had some cool double headed monster action and stomachs that split open with other monstrous surprises that pop out. 

The film makers did their best to hold the mood and creepy pace of Carpenters film and succeeded to a certain level but failed miserably when it came to screen writing. The blood test scene in Carpenter's version is one of the most tense scenes in horror history. The characters and the audience alike await the results of the blood test and then before you can blink, Bam! in your face all out monster mayhem complete with gory catastrophe and death. This time around they check for fillings in the mouths of the suspected infected. Fucking fillings? They have to be kidding me.

I will admit The Thing (2011) is probably one of the better remakes to come out but it just doesn't meet the high expectations and standards of a true American classic like The Thing (1982).

Rituals (1977)

Every once and a while I catch a flick that I love so much that I can't help but wonder how it could have gotten past me, unnoticed for all these years. Then you have the ones that were very rare at one time and seem to be a hype at the moment. Those ones usually tend to let me down a bit but Rituals falls into this category and definitely didn't disappoint.

Many movies have jumped on the Deliverance ripoff band wagon but very few are worth a shit. I would say Just Before Dawn is probably one of the best along with this one and although Rituals isn't quite a slasher the two films have a lot in common.

Five doctors take a vacation in the woods in Canadian mountains. They are terrorized by a seemingly invisible visitor. Of course the terror in the woods isn't really invisible, he is just damn good at hiding and doing sneaky shit. The doctors are knocked off one by one until only Hal Holbrook (Creepshow, Girls Nite Out, The Fog) is left. When he meets the killer face to face he is forced to fight for his life.

Of course there is a motive behind the killings and the deformed lunatic behind the killings is pretty deranged looking. Rituals also known as The Creeper offers up a feeling of total abandonment and hopelessness. The vast woods seem endless and a happy ending doesn't seem to be in our future. The mood and tone of the film works perfectly and the tension builds to a point where the viewer really starts to feel for the characters. I suppose the good acting helps out a lot and Hal Holbrook really does an excellent job as a man with who is fighting odds that are not in his favor.

I have to admit as much as I liked this movie the ending was a bit of a let down for me. I felt slightly cheated and almost feel the need to go back and watch it again as if I will feel better after a second serving. Despite the abrupt ending Rituals is a pretty damn good movie. Fans of back-woods, survival flicks like Deliverance will not be disappointed. Check it out for some killer bees, bone breaking brutality, a severed head on a steak, severed head tossing, mutilated feet in bear traps, weird dialogue "He was a boob... Such a gentle boob.", Shotgun violence and deformed hillbillies.

Terror In The Jungle (1968)

No this isn't a cannibal flick. This is something special. Terror In The Jungle is about a airplane that crashes in the amazon and the only survivor is a little boy. The boy survives the crash but can he survive the Terror In The Jungle, which is full of deadly snakes, tigers, spiders, quicksand and of course headhunters?

Right from the beginning its obvious that this thing is going to be a lot of fun. The over the top characters are so cheesy and the film is as campy as can be. The passengers of the airplane consists of a 60's rock & roll band with really bad wigs, the sex appeal girl who breaks out go-go dance moves in the aisles of the airplane, a greedy murderess, a couple of nuns, the handsome rich man, the cool pilot and of course the blond boy who will survive it all. The plain crash is pretty amazing and deserves to go down as one of the best crashes in film history. The passengers heads are smashed into the walls in slow motion complete with achy-breaky skulls and red gore. One nun is thrown from the airplane and falls to her death. The other is eaten by crocodiles in an amazing scene complete with some awesome stock footage. The pilot is blown up in an explosion and we just have a whole mess of dead bodies.

Once the boy makes it to land he is captured by a tribe of headhunters who want to sacrifice him to the sun-god but the king sees his golden blond hair and believes him to be a son of god. The natives don't agree with the king and they burn the temple down and get a bit stabby. The king is killed with a knife to the gut complete with slow motion stab wound and red gore. Its a very strange special effect and I don't know if I have ever seen it before or since. The slow motion violence is used more then once and its just as strange every time. Terror In The Jungle also offers up a dead priest who is eaten by piranha, severed heads, a Spanish pilot is killed by a poisonous dart and in one of the best scenes a man is eaten by a tiger.

Terror In The Jungle is not so bad that its good. Its so weird that its great. Okay its pretty bad too and Ed Wood fans are sure to find a place for this in their collection as well. Check this one out for dead priests & nuns and some really weird bloodletting.

Fubar : Balls To The Wall (2010)

Terry and Deaner are back to spread more idiotic, drunken, mayhem on society and its great to see these characters again. This time around the budget is bigger and it plays much more like a movie with multiple cameras and a much obvious larger film crew. For this reason Fubar 2 lacks the artistic quality of the first film but I suppose there was no real option. The gig is up that Fubar was fake due to the end credits of the first film. So this time around we get a much more exaggerated version of the two metal-heads.

The sequel has a pretty depressing tone running through it. Deaner and Terry split paths when Terry falls i love with a fat slob who bar tends at a strip club but not before Deaner screws her too. On the plus side Tron is back and this time has a much larger role. His wife left him and now he is a hopeless junkie on a suicide mission. When Deaner's cancer comes back, he looses his remaining testicle and he makes a suicide pact with Tron. Right after Christmas the two degenerates will kill themselves together. I won't tell you how it all ends but it does pay off.

Fubar 2 offers up reckless drinking and driving, gratuitous drug use, gratuitous glam rock and hair metal, a fist fight between Terry & Deaner that ends with some gory kitchen knife-fu, a bad acid trip that involves Ronnie James Deo, toothpaste, speedo's and a house fire, We also get some insanely destructive chainsaw-fu from Tron, strippers and lots of filthy language complete with memorable quotes "I can go cunt hunting".

Fans of the original are sure to get a laugh out of the sequel but when it all comes down to it the original is still way better. If you haven't seen the first film I would stay far away from this thing. It will just ruin everything that makes Fubar so great.

Bon Appétit (1980)

Not a bad porno flick but has little to none replay value. The acting isn't horrible and we get plenty of locations from around the globe. The only problem is that its a love story. Its all done to nicely and of course whenever us sickos are subjected to movies that are to nice, we feel that there was nothing very memorable about the film.

A working class girl named Faith (Played by Kelly Nichols, Ultra Flesh, Toolbox Murders) leaves her deadbeat boyfriend for the opportunity to make a quarter of a million dollars. Her task is to fuck the ten most desirable men who were voted in by some high society yuppie bitches. Faith has 50 days to complete her filthy mission. The men consists of famous painters, a famous anchor man for channel 6 news, a politician, a famous fashion designer. etc. The only problem is that she is falling in love with her partner/photographer.

If I was to make a list of the ten most desirable men it would have been a much more interesting movie. We would have the one and only cabbage-patch-kids-faced, Arch Hall Jr. (The Sadist), Vigilante mustache bad-ass Charles Bronson (Death Wish), The Italian stallion Franco Nero (Django), Blaxploitation bad-ass ladies-man Fred Williamson (Black Caesar), Porno super star Harry Reams (Deep Throat), Rock & roll legend G.G. Allin (Hated : G.G. Allin And The Murder Junkies), King of orgies and and serial killings Charles Manson, Mutant cock Johnny the wad Holmes (Teenage Madam), The Marlboro Man himself William Smith (Run Angel Run) and of course David Hess from Last House On The Left. Now that would make for a memorable movie.

Ron Jeremy shows up for a cameo in Bon Appétit as a television announcer but doesn't put his rocket to use. Randy West (Playing With Fire) plays Faith's lover and over acts his jealousy a bit. He also makes silly faces as he strips and tries to taunt the audience with his body but for me the best and most memorable scene takes place in a dirty porn theater in Washington where Faith gives a blowjob to a perverted politician while obscenities are being shouted from the speakers of the theater. Whatever movie they were watching, I'm sure it was better then Bon Appétit.

I put this one into the category of couples/porn and that means skip it.

Q : The Winged Serpent (1982)

Exploitation director Larry Cohen offers yet another amazing cult film. This time dressed as a classic style giant monster movie like The Giant Claw but still holds that sleazy feel from his 70's flicks like Black Caesar and Its Alive.

Q is chock full of senseless violence and gratuitous nudity. Decapitation and people being skinned alive are on display in gory detail. Despite the excessive blood letting and bare breasted women Larry Cohen has the actors play their roles totally serious which helps make the movie more enjoyable. It's always nice to see a totally ridiculous movie played straight, rather then the Troma Studio's formula of never take yourself serious. This seems to be something that Cohen has always been very good at and it helps his films move along at a nice pace. Movies like Hell Up In Harlem and God Told Me To could easily have been cop-out flicks with annoying comedy bits thrown in but they remain extremely unique due to Cohen's style of direction.

The plot (also written by Cohen) tells of a low-life criminal who botches up a heist and discovers a nest in a New York City skyscraper where a ancient Winged Serpent is hiding. David Carradine plays a cop who places a connection with a brash of nasty serial killings with the giant monster. I'm sorry but you would never guess this one... It turns out that Q is in the ranks of Godzilla in the sense that the giant killer bird is a "God" and the brutal killings were sacrificial offerings to the ancient god. "This thing was prayed back into existence". Not only do we have the privilege of a giant monster eating the people of Manhattan but we get to watch David Carradine go to war with it.

In the 80's there just wasn't to many giant monster movies in America and especially not monsters that would terrorize N.Y.C. While Godzilla had a craving for Japanese food, Q is lucky enough to be in the melting pot and we all know that New York has the best food in the world. In other words this fucker is hungry. Q offers up dead cops, 80's special effects, severed heads, limbs falling from the sky, a man has his heart cut out, another is hit my a taxi and we even get a baby monster as a added bonus.

Wesley Willis's Joyrides (2008)

You have cult films and then you have cult musicians. Both cater and appeal to a certain audience and the rest of the world would normally dismiss it as garbage. Why not mix the two with a movie about idiot savant, musician, Wesley Willis?

Personally being a fan of Willis and his repetitive and completely insane form of "Rock & Roll" Joyrides was a nice watch for me. It was slightly more informative then the previous Willis documentary Wesley Willis : The Daddy Of Rock 'N' Roll and just as fun if not more.

This one digs back deep into the tragedy that is Wesley's life. Discussion from family members on his abusive household and the foster homes are all here and it does clear up a lot of questions of where somebody like Wesley comes from. His brothers have their share of screen time and lets just say somebody definitely pissed int the Willis family gene pool. Retardation and mental disease seems to run in the family and Wesley is the lucky one who was able to turn it into art.

The fact that a man who most thought was a homeless bum was in fact walking around with ten or twenty thousand dollars on him is just insane but then again insane is what we came to see. During the runtime of the documentary Wesley has his ups and downs or as he calls them Joy-Rides and Hell-Rides. He speaks of his schizophrenia and his demons. He abuses himself on video for us and its a funny and disturbing at the same time.

There is definitely a sad tone that runs through Joyrides and it plays with the senses. One moment you laugh at Wesley's ridiculous behaviour and the next you feel bad for him.

The dvd offers up plenty of head-butting, lots of silly rock & roll music. Some really funny interviews with family and friends. We follow Wesley through the city streets all the way to his death-bed. Wesley fans won't be disappointed.

Rock over London! Rock on Chicago! and long live the insanity of Wesley Willis!

The Legend Of Lady Blue (1978)

The alternate title to this is Confessions Of Lady Blue but I have a confession to make. I am embraced of myself for even renting this lovey-dovy piece of shit. Naturally this nostalgic piece of smut appealed to me due to the fact that it was from the 70's and also has the word BLUE in it. Little did I know that this thing was made for a female audience. Maybe if they marketed it that way, I would have kept my pride and have stayed far away.

The Legend Of Lady Blue tells the sappy tale of two virgin lovers who go all the way before they split paths. Boy goes to the Marines and girl goes to Hollywood to be a star. Well things don't go as planned because boy becomes a love-sick junkie who shoots heroin and slaps Vietnamese prostitutes around and girl becomes a total whore bag who preforms cunnilingus on her superiors to get where she has to go.

Sure there are a couple of funny moments, one of which shows a homoerotic African American circle jerk (complete with silly orgasm faces) but the rest of the movie is just to god damn sensitive. Not my cup of tea. Last time I checked I had a penis which means this movie doesn't appeal to me in the least.

The Wizard Of Gore (1970)

The genius of Herschell Gordon Lewis titles doesn't leave much room for question. Movies with titles like She Devils On Wheels and Gore Gore Girls. The title above gives you exactly what you expect... a magician and a whole lot of blood letting, gut spilling and general gory mutilation and mayhem.

The film opens up with our magician Montag The Magnificent giving a speech on the human race and the fascination with murder, execution and death. He then sticks his head in a guillotine and pulls the string. His severed head falls in a basket and blood squirts from his neck. Don't worry he is a magician... His head is rejoined with his body so the audience can enjoy a full 95 minutes of dismemberment and ghastly tortures.

They just don't get much better then this. If you're into conventional film making The Wizard Of Gore and any other Herschell Gordon Lewis production is probably not for you because these movies are definitely from mars.

For those familiar with H.G. Lewis and his earlier films like Blood Feast and Color Me Blood Red, the format is the same. Gore substituted for budget and production value but Lewis definitely takes this one to the next level. More blood and much more graphic special effects are used and we end up with a true piece of smut that wouldn't be topped till The release of Gore Gore Girls. There is no doubt about it, The Wizard Of Gore was done in bad taste and that of course is the beauty in it.

This one also stands out in the sense that it is a supernatural film. The Wizard Of Gore and Something Weird are the only two Lewis films that I know of that deal with supernatural powers.

Not only is the gore exaggerated but the acting is so far over the top in almost appears to have been purposely. Some of the gory treats that The Wizard offers is a chainsaw to the torso complete with splatter and flying guts. A spike is hammered through a girls achy-breaky skull complete with brain matter. Hilarious hypnotism complete with nose-bleeds. Swords are rammed down throats of not only one but two girls who are bound at the wrists, An eyeball is popped out of the face of a girl, A man is burned alive, A drill press is pushed through a woman's stomach complete with gut fondling and blood appears on the hands of the magician's victims which is never really explained but I think it has something to do with the hypnotism. It reminds me a bit of The Wolf Man and the pentigram that appears in the palm of Lon Chaney's victims but it just adds to the weirdness that I love so much from a H.G. Lewis flick.

The Wizard Of Gore is the perfect remedy for anybody who is sick of polished horror movies. Stay away from the 2007 remake with Crispin Glover and chill with The Godfather Of Gore who delivered the goods and exploitation for all us filth fans for all those years.

Beatrice Cenci (1969)

To the average horror buff Lucio Fulci's name usually means one thing... GORE! Unfortunately most of his early films go unnoticed by the true horror community. Beatrice Cenci also known as Conspiracy Of Torture is definitely one of Fulci's great gems that has been forgoten and is never spoken of which is a shame because it is one of his greatest works visually and holds a serious social commentary on the Catholic church.

The setting 1599 Italy. The villain Francesco Cenci... or is it religion? Francesco Cenci is a rich and powerful man with a very sinister side. His daughter who goes by the title name of Beatrice Cenci gets the brunt of his abuse. She is beaten and locked inside a concrete dungeon. Beatrice prays for an escape from the tyranny of her evil father. Her dreams of being sent to a nunnery are shattered when her father tells her she will remain in her cell until he is dead. Plan B... kill daddy. Beatrice and her lover plot out the murder of Francesco Cenci along with the help of her mother, two brothers and a infamous criminal. After the murder is acted out Beatrice and the guilty party learn that the horrors of the church and their brutal form of punishment is far worse then anything they could have imagined.

Lucio Fulci didn't make a lot of friends with release of Beatrice Cenci. Italy being a very religious country viewed the film as an assault on the Catholic church and it was. This caused an outrage that ended with theater goers chanting in the streets "kill the director". Luckily for us gore-hounds these religious psychopaths didn't get they're hands on Fulci and the director didn't live out a nasty execution in the name of god. That really would be life imitating art or the other way around.

Fulci would go on to attack the church more then once through celluloid with movies like Don't Torture A Duckling about killer priests and such but its Beatrice Cenci that really portrays Catholics as scary and horrible people. The black hooded men of god seem no different from the executioners who send severed heads-a-rollin. They are fat, sweaty, greedy and most of all corrupt. Whether or not Fulci knew his film would have such an impact on viewers is questionable but there is no second guessing who the director was pointing his finger at.

Beatrice Cenci almost differs from Fulci's typical misogynist undertones at first with a female lead as the victim but soon falls into familiar Fulci territory with questionable ideals. As the film moves on Beatrice almost seems selfish and to be a manipulator of men and I suppose the film leaves her loyalty to her lover open to sugestion from the viewer.

Beatrice Cenci is a masterpiece from a once brilliant director who would be remembered as The Godfather Of Gore (not to be mistaken with Herschell Gordon Lewis). His talent is here and most wouldn't believe what he was capable of. The film plays in true Quentin Tarantino fashion with a story that is told through flashback and no emphasis between runtime and events similar to movies like Pulp Fiction. It has its share of brutality with a scene that shows a man being mauled by wild dogs. We have a father, daughter incest rape scene, a spike is stuck through a mans eyeball (complete with gore), some bare breasts and decapitation. We also get a fair share of nasty torture from various device's in the same vain as Mark Of The Devil but less exploitive.

Fans of Lucio Fulci need to own this movie and pay respect where it is due.

Monstroid (1980)

Monstroid also known as It Came From The Lake, Monster : The Legend That Became A Terror, The Toxic Horror and The Toxic Monster... You can call it what you like but I call it a fucking mess.

Monstroid crawled out of the murky watter and was released upon the world in 1980 which is ridiculous because the production started almost ten years earlier in 1971 and its very obvious. To call movies like Dont Answer The Phone and Maniac polished seems crazy but by the standards of Monstroid's film quality it is very reasonable. The sound is muffled, the colors are faded, and the acting is pretty damn bad but its okay because (Yes you guessed it) John Carradine appears in it. Monstroid is yet another title in the seemingly endless list of sludge from bottom of barrel movies in which Mr. Carradine makes an appearance. Carradine has a bit more screen time then the average awful B-movie that he shows up in with a pretty big character as a priest.
 The print that I own is really shaky ass well. The opening credits jump up and down on the screen as if the film makers were trying to make us nauseous before we even see anything and it only gets worse as the runtime marches on.

Defending this movie is pretty hard to do because Monstroid is no more then another big let down. It had potential with a huge monster that doesn't look half bad if you're into these goofy types of movies but of course they fuck it all up with scenes that are so dark you really can't tell what the hell you are looking at. In one scene two kids snap pictures of the monster as they escape through the woods. When they show the pictures to the adults all you can see is a eye in one picture, scales in another and maybe a few blurry teeth. The pictures were good enough for the grown ups but the blurry and way to dark scene were not good enough for me. Us monster movie hounds want to see our blood, breasts and beasts and it pains me each time when a movie is dark to enjoy.

Of course the inept film making is all part of the fun and we do get plenty of botched up night for day shots of the monster but it really just hurts this flick in a very bad way. Although the monster is sort of a giant Loch Ness Monster, for some reason I couldn't help but be reminded of the far superior sleazy, sea urchin, monster flick Humanoids From The Deep which also came out in 1980 but is a much more gory and trashy monster flick.