The Legend of Bigfoot(1976)

3/5

I’ve heard people saying really bad things about this but it wasn’t quite as bad as I was told. Basically it takes The Legend of Boggy Creek and goes more towards a standard documentary than a horror film. The film consists of this one guy Ivan Marx who also directed the film narrating foorage of himself walking around the woods, camping and supposedly looking for bigfoot mixed with some stock footage.

There is some footage of the sasquatch himself and its obviously fake(I’ve heard that the person in the suit was actully the director’s wife) but it doesn’t really get scary in any part of the movie, only silly and campy.

Listening to some guy narrate over stock footage of various wild life sounds boring but I was entertained. Its a lot better then you’d think but don’t expect anything as good as The Legend of Boggy Creek.

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.

Death Wish II(1982)

4/5

Kersey’s wife(actually her daughter’s nanny) and daughter get raped once again and he goes on another killing spree shooting random criminals and eventually getting to the rapists.

It doesn’t really offer much new but the basic formula is good and executed well enough that it works really well as a vigilante film. They upped the violence level slightly I think and I felt that there was even more shooting and action than necessary. Because of the generally high level of violence it starts to loose its effect slightly towards the end. The film also felt a bit unbalanced since the beginning was so harsh and brutal with the rape-scenes and the violent death of Carol and the ending just kinda happened, the film just slowed down and stopped. Anyways, no major complaints. Its a great vigilante film that should satisfy most people who like this sort of thing.

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.

Delírios de um Anormal [Hallucinations of a Deranged Mind](1978)

2.5/5

This movie is a trip. The main character is a man suffering from terrible nightmares of Zé do Caixão torturing people. Some of the clips are taken from one of Mojica’s other films Esta Noite Encarnarei No Teu Cadáver [This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse]. Almost the entire movie is just the guy having insane and trippy nightmares and it gets boring very quickly. José Mojica Marins also plays himself in this and he tries to convince the man that the nightmares aren’t real because Zé do Caixão is just a character. The movie is self aware and there are some funny moments but it doesn’t justify the long and tedious dream sequences that are literally 90% of the movie. The quality of the dream scenes also varies. Some are well lighted and complicated and have special effects when some seem like they were shot in 5 minutes. Not really sure what to think of this one.

Inferno Carnal [Hellish Flesh](1977)

3.5/5

A scientist is researching a highly effective acid. He has a young wife who wants to kill him to inherit his money and get married with another man. She pours acid on her husband’s face and leaves him to die after setting the house on fire. Although his state was critical the scientist  makes it alive and after a long stay in hospital he wants revenge.

The story is alright and you really want the wife and her boyfriend to suffer. There are some twists in the plot and it stays pretty interesting. There are some violent moments and the gore is some times decent and some times pretty bad. Mixed feelings about this but its OK.

Virus[Hell of the Living Dead aka Zombie Creeping Flesh] (1980)

2.5/5

I have very mixed feelings about this. On the other hand the story is a Dawn of the Dead and Zombi 2 [Zombie] rip-off and they even use the Dawn of the dead soundtrack but on the other hand the gore effects are good. Then again the acting is bad but it could be just because of the dubbing. Some parts of the movie are just unintentionally funny and laughable but some parts are pretty effective. The movie is mostly entertaining but sometimes for the wrong reasons.

The story is this, an accident releases a toxic chemical that seems to turn people into zombies. That’s about its. The movie follows a group of soldiers fighting zombies in the jungle. There’s a lot of stock footage in this and its mostly used badly or is unnecessary. There’s also an extremely cheap and exploitative scene involving boobs. The group had to go and communicate with the natives in the jungle and to do this the female lead got shirtless and put some face paint on. So they seriously expect that a blond Caucasian girl won’t raise any attention at all in a cannibal tribe if she just wears some face paint? Its an obvious excuse to just throw some boobs in there. Even a random sex scene would have been a better idea then that.

In some ways its good and in some ways its really bad. It certainly is entertaining. You’ll be laughing at how bad it is and enjoying the good parts as well.

黑太陽731續集之殺人工廠 [Laboratory of the Devil]/Men Behind The Sun 2(1992)

3/5

This is not made by the director T.F Mou who did the original 黑太阳731 [Men Behind the Sun] and it shows. It feels firstly like an exploitation film and not like a story about a tragic historical event. Its told in a flashback and some footage from the first film is re-used.

The story is very similar to the first one, people getting experiments done on them.
Its just mean spirited, vicious and horrible. Its not as realistic as the first one but the gore effects are still well made and quite effective. One thing that really takes away from the film is the same problem that the first one did, terrible dubbing. This film really suffers from that but the first one managed to be captivating even with bad dubbing.

If you want more of the same 731 torture than go ahead and watch it but remember, this is basically just well made Nazisploitation without sex.

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.