Le notti del terrore [Burial Ground: The Nights of Terror] (1981)

2.5/5

Yep its another Italo zombie flick and this is a particularly cheap and sleazy one.

There’s pretty much no plot, all we see is some archeologist guy opening what I’m guessing is supposed to be a tomb and getting immediately eaten by zombies. The next thing we know these random people are coming to visit the archeologist dude. They split up into pairs and start having sex(literally all of them) and get attacked by zombies. The rest of the film is just them running from the zombies and fighting with them.

There’s as much sex as they could possibly fit in the film and there’s absolutely nothing apart from either sex scenes or zombie scenes. Usually I like films that go straight to the point but damn, I would have liked at least something resembling a story. The dvd cover says that there’s a gate to hell under the house which sounds like a Fulci rip-off but the film makes no mention of that. As far as I could tell, there’s absolutely no explanation for the zombies.

Acting is absolutely horrible and its enhanced with equally terrible dubbing. There’s actually a child character played by a midget (I’m guessing so that they could legally use him in the sex scenes) and he is dubbed by a really bad adult dub actor. None of the characters are important or interesting and I guess they figured that would be a good way to go since(SPOILER) they all end up dying.

There are all sorts of really noticeable mistakes in the film. A woman’s leg gets stuck in a bear trap and it doesn’t leave any marks what so ever, a zombie gets paint thrown on him and set on fire and when his on fire there’s no sign of the paint that was just thrown on him a second ago, actually you can clearly see his wet with gasoline. There’s also a bunch of weird editing mistakes, a guy runs and kneels down and in the next shot he’s standing etc.

Probably the coolest thing about the movie is the gore which looks pretty good and the zombie make up which varies from good to terrible. All the zombies look different and the quality of the make up and masks are not consistent at all. Also some of them look really good from a far but terrible in close-up. Especially the zombies with the skeletal rotten look are fine in long shot but in close-up you can clearly see their real noses and eyes inside the mask just painted black.

In short the film is 100% sex and violence, terrible acting, no plot, tons of silly mistakes, good gore and zombie effects that vary in quality. Terrible movie but its actually good fun.

The Legend of Boggy Creek (1972)

3.5/5

Creepy extremely low budget mockumentary film. The film consists of faked interviews, re-enactments of supposed Big Foot attacks and incidents as well as a bunch of atmospheric shots of dark forests and moors. The documentary feel is enhanced by the dry narration and shaky handheld camera. It feels a lot like 70s grindhouse shlock because of the dirty and gritty film footage.

The film works really well because of the documentary style and reasonably convincing interviews as well as good use of atmosphere and music.

This was made in the middle of the 70s Big Foot craze and spawned a ton of sequels, rip-offs and such like and its really quite fascinating. Who would have thought there were so many Sasquatch films made in the 70s and 80s. This obviously had a lot to do with birth of the horror mockumentary genre as well.

Night of the Comet(1984)

3.5/5

This is a kinda 1980s teenager version of The Last Man On Earth . A comet passes earth and emits strange radiation (or sumthin) that kills almost everyone or turns them into zombies. We meet two girls and a young dude who seem to be the only survivors. They fool around, occasionally meet a ghoul or two and look for answers. Eventually we are also introduced to a secretive organisation of people in white coats who apparently know something about the comet…

The film is definitely fun and silly thats for sure. Its very light hearted and not scary in the slightest. The zombie stuff is quite campy as far as effects go but fairly well executed and actors do a good job at making the ridiculous situations seem believable. It could have been a lot worse in many ways. The story has been done many times before but this is an interesting and different take on it.

Subconscious Cruelty(2000)

4/5

This movie is fucked up. Its barely an anthology and the plot is very vague. The first segment is about a brother who is planning to do something terrible to her sister. There’s also a segment about a businessman and one about Jesus. Its that kind of a movie.

The movie is pretty much just a collage of sexual violence combined with religious imagery. Its beautifully shot and well acted but its also extremely slow and weird and many will probably find it boring.

The crew of the film started making this with a ridiculously low budget of 20.000 Canadian dollars in the mid nineties and finally finished it after 6 years. Thats some indie film making for you.

L’ultimo treno della notte [Night Train Murders](1975)

4/5

Italian The Last House on the Left rip-off.

Two girls get on a night train to get to home for the Christmas holidays. They meet two young thugs and another woman who start to torment them. They start easy but eventually kill both of the girls after raping the other one. They get out off the train and the woman calls a doctor because she got a scratch on her knee. Unfortunately the doctor is the father of the girls. I think you can see where this is going.

The revenge takes place pretty late in the film but is well worth it. Its not that gory or horrible but its fun to watch the father smack the other guy around and hunt the other one with a shotgun. The story is pretty much the same as Last House and Jungfrukällan [The Virgin Spring] but its not as disgusting or vile as Last House in my opinion. Sleazy, yes but in a fun entertaining way.

Autostop rosso sangue [Hitch-Hike](1977)

4.5/5

Personally if I was driving a car and saw David Hess hitch-hiking I wouldn’t pick him up because I’d be certain that he’d just kill me and rape my wife(and I’m not even married).

So this is basically what happens. A couple pick up a hitch-hiker who says his car broke down. We can immediately see that there’s a dead body in the car (and cm’on its David Hess, what did you expect?). The hitch-hiker was involved in a bank robbery and has 2 million dollars in a bag and he’s going for the Mexican border. Eventually he rapes the wife and shoots a couple of cops and other violence occurs including a revenge.

The gore effects are really cool. There is a scene where a motorcycle cop gets shot in the head in slo-mo and we see his brains spurt out through the bullet hole in his helmet. There’s also burning vehicles and a lot of havoc on the road.

Its great fun, Hess is perfect for the role and Franco Nero is also great in it. Its funny and grim at the same time. Hess’ performance is so sleazy but still such a delight to watch. This complete’s the trilogy of David Hess Rape & Revenge flicks with The Last House on the Left and La casa sperduta nel parco [The House on the Edge of the Park]. Last House is my favorite of those 3 but this was probably the most fun.

黑太阳731 [Men Behind the Sun](1988)

4/5

I haven’t been shocked by a movie for a long time but this one actually made me pause. The violence is extremely sadistic, violent and realistic.

The film follows a group of youths from the Japanese army. More specifically youth corps of unit 731, a special division whose mission is to develop bacterial and biological weapons. They spend their days on a research facility where they perform the most brutal and inhumane human experiments since the Nazis. Heck, these guys are worse then Nazis. They use Chinese civilians as their guinea pigs and call them “Maruta” which means lumber or log. To them they are not human, they are wood for the fire.

The gore and violence is as extreme as it gets. One woman gets her hands frozen, boiled and skin peeled  off and one man gets his hands frozen solid and cracked off with a stick. They also kill a woman and child with poisonous gas, tie a bunch of people to crosses on a field full of explosive and denote them sending limbs and body parts flying off and other such things.

It sounds like total exploitation but actually its not. Its a reminder of the things that the 731 did. Unlike nazisploitation films like La bestia in calore [SS Hell Camp] and Lager SSadis Kastrat Kommandantur [SS Experiment Love Camp] the film is historically accurate well made and thoughtful of its subject matter. I think it presented the story in a fair and non-biased way, the Japanese seemed mostly like good people who had just been brainwashed except for commander Shiro Ishii who was a total psychopath.

It definitely bares resemblance to nazisploitation films but there are few critical differences. Firstly, this is not pornographic in anyway and there’s not really any sexual content(there’s one scene where Ishii is fondling a waitress but thats it and its not explicit) and secondly the gore is there to shock but not for entertainment purposes but to shove it down people’s throats how bad these guys were. Many people still don’t know that this happened or don’t believe it and the 731 actually got away pretty much scot-free.

Oh yeah, the infamous cat scene. There’s a scene which has stirred a lot of controversy where we see a cat getting eaten by a swarm of rats. Unlike the rumors say, its not real. Its obviously fake, the cat is covered in mix of honey and red dye. I think the part where the rats get set on fire looks a lot more real and I really hope its not. The reason why it all seems so real is because they actually used a real corpse for the autopsy (the heart close-up is of a pig) and for many of the special effects. This was done for budgetary reasons.

Its an extraordinary film which I urge you to watch but beware, its gruesome.

Apocalypse domani [Cannibal Apocalypse](1980)

4/5

Very different from the other cannibal films of the 80s like Cannibal Holocaust, Cannibal Ferox [Make Them Die Slowly] or La montagna del dio cannibale [Mountain of the Cannibal God]. I had heard that this was more of a zombie/plague film but I thought that maybe I was mixing this with Zombi Holocaust [Zombie Holocaust] since the names have that similar Italian 80s exploitation feeling. Actually what I heard was right, this is more of a virus film than a traditional jungle cannibal film.

Basically the film is about a group of Vietnam veterans who contracted some kind of virus while in the jungle and  this virus(apparently a rabies of some sort) makes them have a craving for human flesh. The virus is also highly contagious so there is a definite zombie connection here.

John Saxon and Giovanni Lombardo Radice are great in the film and up the realism. As expected there is some gruesome gore but its nothing like Holocaust or Ferox. This film is actually a lot more of an action film compared to those. Its fast paced, well shot, well acted and the effects are good. Its great fun, just don’t be expecting a jungle film.

Phantasm(1979)

4/5

This is weird. A space alien from another dimension disguised as a undertaker called “The tall man” kills people with flying metal balls with spikes. Wanna know why? He re-animates the corpses so he can turn them into brown dwarfs and use them as slaves on his home planet. Seriously, wtf? It feels very spacy and Lovecraftian which I like but there’s also this sense of realism to it. Its hard to explain. I haven’t really seen anything quite like this but it reminds me of A Nightmare on Elm Street because of the supernatural killer and the dream like atmosphere. Now that I think about it the ending is very similar to one of the deaths in A Nightmare on Elm Street remake. Phantasm tribute maybe? I dunno.

The film is very hard to explain but I’d say I enjoyed it quite a lot. It was pretty fast pace and there was always stuff happening. The cinematography and sets were interesting and the story is certainly something a little different. Don’t think about it too much and you’ll be fine.

Zombi Holocaust [Zombie Holocaust] (1980)

A bunch of anthropologists go to a jungle island to solve a mystery that has to do with strange incidents of cannibalism that have been occurring. What they find is a cannibal tribe, zombies and a mad scientist who is waking the dead by giving them new brains.

There’s the cannibal stuff such as people being impaled on traps and guts being eaten and there’s the zombie splatter and gore stuff blended together with Re-Animator science fiction. Its an odd one but I was entertained. There’s no virus or a curse or anything like that so the number of the zombies is very small since they are all made by the doctor. Don’t expect Dawn of the Dead, its more of a cannibal film that tries to capitalize on Zombi 2 [Zombie].

3/5