“Promise, you’ll stay till the end.” -Mia, Evil Dead
a Primal Root written review
edited by Bootsie Kidd
Gang, I must apologize for taking such a dang long time getting around to typing up this review. I needed time to let the The Evil Dead remake digest, for my mind to really feel out what my thoughts were on the whole damn bloody feature. So, here goes, my thoughts on the reimagining, new take of “The Evil Dead”, “Evil Dead”. I will try and break it down as spoiler-free as possible.
Sam Raimi’s original 1980 “The Evil Dead” is the story of one man’s personal apocalypse as his friends, one-by-one, become hideous shadows of their former selves and begin attacking, brutalizing, mocking, and humiliating him. Ash (Bruce Campbell) must finally find it within himself to fight back if he wants to make it through the night alive. “Evil Dead” (2013) follows along those same lines, and though similar in a basic premise, “Evil Dead” does an intelligent job of making the material its own.
Personally, one of the aspects of the film I truly appreciated was the organizing principle. These twenty-somethings aren’t headed out to a dank, nasty, mildew farm of a cabin for a fun filled weekend. No, they are there to help their buddy kick her heroin habit cold turkey. A feat she has tried before and failed at. So, the glum bunch of attractive kids consisting of the most adorable little junkie ever, Mia (Jane Levy), her unreliable, yet studly coward of a brother David (Shiloh Fernandez) , his “just-there-to-die” girlfriend Natalie (Elizabeth Blackmore), control freak buddy nurse Olivia (Jessica Lucas) and her bespectacled, grumpy bear of a fella, Eric ( Lou Taylor Pucci) head to the desperate fixer-upper in the middle of the creepiest forest in North America and commence Betty Fording.
And nothing can deter them, not even the fact that the cabin seems to have been recently broken into, and those who did, left a basement full of at least ten dozen skinned, rotted, feline carcasses hanging from the rafters and looking like it smells of twice-baked putrescence and burnt hair. Don’t worry, it’s all part of the pre-credit prologue. Oh, and did I mention the Scooby Gang also come across a mysterious package wrapped in black trash bags and laced in razor wire? Could this be the legendary Necronomicon Ex-Mortis, roughly translated, The Book of the Dead? I have a good feeling you already know the answer. Yes, this seems like the best option for someone trying to rehabilitate herself! I’m surprised they all don’t just pick up the habit right there to make the living situation bearable. Or at least get cope with what I can only imagine is the worst smelling cabin of all time.
Anyhoo, I’m still with this new Evil Dead film Mia begins having withdrawal symptoms and everyone else kind of just sits around waiting for their cue to don their white contacts and let the arterial blood spray across the room. Before you can say “What a fucking idiot” Eric has clipped the razor wire, and ripped open the garbage bags to reveal the Necronomicon (SURPRISE, SURPRISE!), bound in human flesh and inked in blood with the ominous warnings that has since been utilized by many Bill O’Reily published works “DO NOT READ THIS BOOK”, er, something along those lines. As if the razor wire ribbon wasn’t clue enough to leave the fucking thing alone… Oh well, the beard-o opens up the book and gets to reading aloud the demon resurrection passages and, whatdya know, he unleashes Hell on Earth. Who do you think the evil spirit picks on first? Who just might be the most weak and vulnerable amongst the kiddies at Melancholy Manor?
That’s right, Mia! Seen the first movie? Then it should come as no surprise that the young lady gets a slimy, malicious, invasive surprise from the Evil Dead right up her lady bits! Which leads to her being the vessel for this special brand of demonic spirit to wreak havoc on the rest of the down trodden crew! And oh, what a splattery, nasty night of havoc it is! There’s barfing, and tongue slashing, and arm chopping, and syringe poking, and nail gunning, electric knife wielding, oh, the list goes on and on as friends are possessed and begin turning on one another with very little haste. The second Mia is possessed, the movie kicks into hyper drive with people turning into monsters from Hell left and right, you hardly have time to catch your breath as friends must battle their newly eviled chums in order to survive!
Let me tell ya, the gore is wonderful in this flick, as are all the practical effects. Everything looks sleazy, disgusting and pitch perfect. As body parts start plopping on the floor and gruel goes splashing into character’s mouths, I got a certain sense of euphoria. This reminded me much of my self made, VHS horror education back in the late 80′s all through the 90′s, when I began renting any and every horror video I could looking for just these kind of unrelenting moments of pure, unadulterated, horror insanity. I could practically feel my inner 15 year old giving my current 31 year old spirit a high five. This was some crazy, blood-caked glory that I would have creamed my shorts to have seen in those days. Better late than never, I suppose. But, yes, Evil Dead delivers the gore-met delights.
****SPOILER WARNING! SPOILERS AHEAD!****
But then the film began to reach its climax…which involves the impromptu MacGuyver-esque creation of a defibrillator by David to use in order to bring Mia back to life. That’s right, he studies the Necronomicon and discovers the many ways to cure the possessed aka: many ways to kill these people who are possessed. His plan is to bury Mia alive until she dies of suffocation and then dig her up, stab her in the heart, pump her full of juice until she is jolted back to life, and then she’ll be right as rain. And to my absolute shock and dismay, THE PLAN WORKS! Not only that, but she comes back without any injuries! the woman cut her tongue in half with a rusty old knife! How in the fuck did that heal instantaneously? Are you telling me if David were to resurrect Natalie from the dead, her arms (which she loses one to her own carving knife and the other in battle with her friends) would miraculously reappear attached to her body? I’m sorry, but unless I missed a moment in the film where it is mentioned in the Necroonomicon that if a mortal is brought back from being possessed by pure evil by the use of a defibrillator all wounds inflicted during the time of possession are null and void, that’s just an incredibly manipulative plot devise that tries to deliver the audience something they didn’t see coming. I am all for surprises and going against audience expectations, but it feels so unlikely that anything like this would work, especially without ever being established that it might, it feels like a cheat. I have a hard time buying into the idea that the Evil Dead would work so hard to possess people that they would just leave a dead body once it is brought back to life. I know I’m nitpicking, but it just feels remarkably lame. Seriously, the movie had me up until the moment David brought out the spark plug treatment. Seriously, the second that fucking thing showed up, my eyes nearly rolled out of my head.
The finale of Evil Dead is a crowd pleaser as the sky cracks open, pouring blood down on the property where the cabin is (no telling if the blood rain came down on any near by farming communities) and the evil is manifest into flesh, which is basically a tall skinny, saggy breasted knock off of the final creature in 2007′s [REC]. Personally, after such an incredible lead up, I was expecting a bit more from our final monster, but that’s okay, because the monster is dispatched in the most brutally, hysterically over the top fashion, you will want to wake up the kids and show ‘em.
****END SPOILERS! THE SPOILERS ARE OVER!****
Bottom line? I enjoyed Evil Dead. I thought it was far more emo and sad sacky than its source material, but that’s to be expected if the film is to be its own beast and set itself apart from its predecessor. But, to tell you the truth, did we ever love The Evil Dead for it’s organizing principal? Not really, the second demon possessed party revelers or concerned rehab friends start getting hacked into coleslaw, it all kind of turns into the same sorta film where the audience begins hooting and hollering at the screen, laughing when things get over the top and groaning when moments are teeth grindingly painful. Its the fucking Evil Dead, and it’s a pretty damn good time at the movies if this is your cup of tea. The audience I saw it with was obviously having a blast, laughing, cheering and talking back to the screen as is the case with any true gut buster horror film worth its weight in innards. It was fun despite the movie taking itself so seriously. Let’s face it, once demons are deflected by shock treatment and property begins flooding with blood from the sky, you’re flick has stepped into the absurd and is no longer the somber film about a junkie in need of rehabilitation.
Could the whole film just be an extended metaphor for how the wages of drug addiction can destroy your relationship with your family and your dearest friendships? That enabling someone to continue their bad behavior, or just ignoring the problem entirely, allows the behavior too go on far too long and ends up hurting more people? Could I be digging too deep? I suppose, but still… Mia was fighting her own demons long before she was invaded by those conjured up by the Necronomicon, and David, who we learn has run away from every major problem in his life, must finally find the courage within himself to man up and take responsibility to save the ones he loves. Of course, he waits way too fucking long to do this, but, then again, if he had been braver sooner we may not have had such an outstanding gore fest.
Evil Dead (2013) is a thoughtful and dark revision of Raimi’s classic. I appreciated the focus on the story arc of the two siblings, Mia and David, which did bring something totally new to the Evil Dead series. The only thing I wish there was more of would be Raimi’s twisted, perverse sense of humor, but that’s not what this movie’s about. Sure, yes, I enjoyed Evil Dead in a theater full of other fans. But without that gnarly, evil, dark sense of humor, will I ever break out Evil Dead on a movie night with my friends over like the original Evil Dead? Only time will tell.
Hey Gang! It’s your pal The Primal Root here with a brand new round of Guess the Garbage! The game where I gather a few random screen caps, spatter them here across The Trash Cinema Collective blog and let you take educated and/or wild stabs in the dark as to what Trash Cinema films I tore them from all in the hopes of no reward whatsoever other than having your name plastered below the image you correctly guessed and bragging rights that are sure to get you laid when you tell that special someone how incredibly fucking awesome you are! Longest run on sentence I’ve ever typed? Doubtful. Anyhoo, without any further a due, here’s your garbage! Just post your guesses in the comment section of this post an whoever answers correctly first gets all the glory. Good luck, and Stay Trashy! -Root
ONE:
TWO:
THREE: “Revenge of the Nerds” Guessed by Jason Verschage
FOUR: “Slugs” Guessed by Philippe Bourret
FIVE: “The Toolbox Murders” Guessed by Philippe Bourret
“Whenever you want the pain to stop, I’ll be here. Whenever you want to stop hurting, you come to me.” -Aylmer, Brain Damage
Let’s take a moment to discuss the Reagan Administration’s poorly schemed “War on Drugs”, shall we? On October 13th, 1982, President Ronald Reagan declared illicit drugs to be an imminent threat to U.S. National Security, while First Lady Nancy Reagan promptly flooded the talk show circuit advising the children of our nation to “Just say NO!”. Because, you know, becoming addicted to narcotics or not is as simple as just saying “no” to your local pusher. Obviously, Nancy Reagan and the War on Drugs, itself, were more than a tad naive when it came to the nature of addiction and its beginnings.
Thankfully, 1986′s “Brain Damage”, Frank Henenlotter’s stellar follow-up to his classic 1982 debut,”Basket Case”, doesn’t cut corners when it comes to the discussion of drug use. From its depiction of the initial orgasmic rush that launches its user into a life bent around being steeped in a state of euphoria where problems are forgotten, to the sudden meteoric plummet that follows once the high is wears thin. In his usual brilliant insight, Henenlotter creatively portrays to viewers how addiction winds up taking its toll not only on users, but those closest to them, as well. Despite the laughable oddity of the seductor, Aylmer, ‘Brain Damage’ manages to tell it to us straight with a dark, horrifying, even often comical story in the realm of fantasy-horror providing a truly masterful message film about the dangers of drug use and the nature of addiction.
We meet Brian, a nice enough average guy who lives with his brother Mike in an apartment in New York. Brian even has a caring, sweet-natured, if mildly bland girlfriend he’s dating named Barbara. One evening while sick in bed, Brian blind-sided by seemingly inexplicable visions of a blood-shot eyeball where his ceiling light used to be experiencing, pulsating bright lights, blue water flooding his bedroom, and a powerful feeling of euphoria. It’s a feeling the young man has never encountered before, and as you might imagine, and one he’s eager to experience again. Only thing is, he soon discovers that what he felt was due to a small, slimy, blue-hued, phallic, turd-like creature named Aylmer (or Elmer), but, bizarrely enough, that doesn’t seem to throw Bryan as much as you might think it would.
The precise origins of Aylmer are unknown, though it is revealed through its previous users that Aylmer has a sordid centuries-old past that can be traced back to countless now-fallen civilizations. Aylmer, a creature with friendly, sleepy eyes and palsy voice of John Zacherle (yep, the host of Shock Theater, Zacherley, himself) is quite willing to inject Brian with a mysterious bright blue fluid procured from a syringe-like appendage protruding from Aylmer’s enormous, sharp tooth-filled gob. Aylmer simply jacks his juice directly into Brian’s brain stem, injecting a little “Aylmer juice” which allows Brain to, once again, experience the unique pleasure of becoming unattached from the world and embracing visions of glorious lights in junk heaps, all the while laughing his ass off in chemically-induced glee. If Aylmer is anything, he is one helluva saleman, as he perfectly pitches to Bryan saying, “This is the start of your new life Brian, a life full of colors, music,light and euphoria. A life without pain, or hurt or suffering.” I mean, really, what could possibly be the drawback?…
Aylmer artwork by Marc Palm
Well, turns out Aylmer feeds on brains. Sure, animal brains are okay, but to become powerful he must munch on the human persuasion. So, the deal becomes clear to Brian after several night’s of blacking out under the influence, and waking to find blood stains in some pretty alarming locations on his person, that for each “fix” he must pay by hooking Aylmer up with a human brain to scarf down. And let me just say, Aylmer is one very sloppy eater and NO ONE has a quick and painless death at this parasite’s merciless bite. There’s no discrimination here, either. Folks of all race, gender, and class have their skulls bitten open and brains sucked out by Aylmer. From the security guard at the junk yard, to the man taking a dump in a bathroom stall, even the slutty girl with the enormous knockers ends up getting an Aylmer down the hatch in a disturbingly violent, yet rather hilarious sequence that has since been dubbed “The Blow Job Scene”. Trust me, it’s a must-see, classic, Trash Cinema moment. And as Brian’s dependency on Aylmer grows, so does the threat to his family and friends. No one is safe from the destruction Aylmer can cause.
Henenlotter handles Brain Damage’s odyssey of a boy and his parasite with a great sense of grotesque comedy to lighten the load of an otherwise deeply dark and unsettling cautionary tale. There is one sequence in particular that is both hysterically funny and soul crushingly bleak as Brian has finally realized the dire cost of his addiction. He decides he needs to pack up Aylmer and hold up in a derelict hotel room where he can quit Aylmer long enough to think straight and come up with some sort of solution to his problem. In short, he tries to quit Aylmer cold turkey. The sequence features Brian clinging to a radiator, quivering, practically swimming in his sweat, puking and sobbing as Aylmer laughs and cracks jokes at his host’s expense. For good measure, Brian even has a grotesque nightmare wherein he picks meaty, gore glazed chunks of his own brain out of his ear and horrified reaches for more and begins pulling a long, drippy, unending piece of tissue and literally unravelling his brain. No joke, this scene will have your stomach churning while you laugh at this graphic, gory take on the classic magician’s gag. Finally, Brian is reduced to a convulsing, filth-and-sweat-drenched shadow of his former self lying on the hotel room’s concrete floor in the fetal position. The pain of withdrawal is too intense for the young man to bear. And in desperation, in tears, Brian agrees to Aylmer’s demands. Someone must die so that Brian can get his fix. Aylmer chuckles with delight. He has won.
Again, it’s that perfect blend of humor and downbeat terror which gives ‘Brain Damage’ its substantial power to both entertain and completely repulse. By the film’s end many people have fallen the voracious hunger of Aylmer, and Brian’s need to satiate his own need for Aylmer’s juice, including people Brian loves and cares for. And in ‘Brain Damage”s pitch perfect, unconventional, ending, we are left with one of the most haunting and surrealistic images from Trash Cinema, as Brian’s glazed over eyes look through us, the screen fills with the brightest white light and crackles with electricity. It’s an audacious ending and one that still gives me chills to this very day. I have often called Brain Damage the “Requiem for a Dream” of the Trash Cinema genre. I still feel this is an appropriate description of this film’s nature and intent. This is one example of how powerful Trash Cinema can be, and in my opinion, this is Henenlotter’s masterpiece.
‘Brain Damage’ is the kind of sleazy, down trodden horror film that’s unafraid to point the mirror back at society and has an eagerness to push buttons, tackle difficult subjects and shove your nose into the down and dirty details. It’s unabashedly gross, over the top, and even silly at times. But the core to ‘Brain Damage’ is one that steeped the horrors of our own world. The darkness of despair and the nightmare of addiction. The unsettling, dreadful feeling that you cannot function normally without first feeding this need that has become more powerful than your common sense, rational thought, even your own sex drive. It’s more important to you than your loved ones and their well being. Suddenly, this stuff is your drive. This is what keeps you alive. This is what gives your life meaning.
Gang, I can think of few things more horrifying. And Brain Damage handles the subject with creativity and respect.
“I think, therefore you are.” -Sutter Cain, In the Mouth of Madness
Few movie openings get me as pumped as that of “In the Mouth of Madness”. The opening synth licks, drums kick in, and the guitar commences to wailing as Sutter Cain’s latest book is being shot through the presses by whirring machines that could draw and quarter you faster than you can say “owee”. Never has book publishing seemed this incredibly badass. If you can imagine Metallica’s Enter Sandman but without James Hatfield’s goofy vocals and composed by cinematic renaissance man, John Carpenter, you’re halfway there. It’s a fucking spectacular start to a movie that’s basically the dark, evil, alarmist version of Reading Rainbow. Who would have ever guessed reading could be so goddamn cool and menacing? In my own head, I like to imagine that if this film had reached a wider audience, we would have seen cool, greaser types with their slicked-back hair, bad boy shades, a Marlboro dangling from chapped lips, leaning against a support beam in their favorite dive bar and flipping through a well worn-collection of Edgar Allen Poe.
So, who is this Sutter Cane fellow? Well, in the fictional 1995 realm of “In the Mouth of Madness” he is the most widley read author in history. His stories have been translated into several dozen languages, outsell every other book on the market, and have even begun to lead to riots in book stores (remember? People used to go to stores that sold books!) when they can’t supply enough to meet the demands of the author’s work. Did I mention this guy does horror? So it stands to reason that the man is also getting the blame for a recent “plague of violence” that has swept the nation with folks brutally attacking one another seemingly at random. Are they getting a little inspired by their page-turner?
As we all know, that’s absolute garbage. Entertainment has as much influence over real life violence as soft serve ice cream consumption has over the migration of gopher turtles.
But, I digress. As it turns out Sutter Cane has gone missing, and his publishing company has hired a cynical, crude, disillusioned insurance fraud investigator named John Trent (Sam Neil) to find out if Cain is alive and if he ever finished his final book, In the Mouth of Madness. Sent along with him is Cain’s editor, the more open minded and vulnerable Styles (Julie Carmen). After some rather impressive investigating along with some trippy and disturbing nightmares, Trent puts together a map which will lead them to Cane who seems to be stationed in a small New England town. And not just any small New England town, but one named after Old Scratch, himself, and which seems to be the inspiration for one of Cane’s books, “The Hobb’s End Horror”.
On their drive to the mysteriously elusive Hobb’s End Trent & Styles get to know one another while chit-chatting about Trent’s love of busting people and justifying his stone-cold cynicism with sharing his view that “the sooner mankind is off the planet, the better.” Styles speaks to her lust for horror, and that if reality as we know it should happen to shift how terrifying it would be to be the last sane one left…hmmm, foreshadowing, me thinks. There’s also an impromptu clown horn awakening that leads to a fun-sized Ruffles Potato Chip beat down that adds a little levity but really just makes me want some potato chips. Great product placement, though! I want to put those chips in my OWN personal mouth of madness where they can settle in my belly of batshit… ew.
Along their journey, Trent sleeps in the passenger seat snoring one of those irritating half snores as Styles gets a nice ripe slice of Hell. She catches a glimpse of bicycle reflectors up the road, but as she gets closer it seems to be a young man in his twenties peddling furiously in the same direction on the deserted highway in the pitch black night. As she drives past. he fades into the red of her tail lights and then disappears into the darkness. This is not a thing uncommon to humans. We pass people riding bikes, yeah, pretty much all the time. But there’s just something freakishly unsettling about this one. Something that speaks to us solely in the language of nightmares. Then, of course, there’s the next moment in which we see this soul, and he’s kind of, let’s say, changed a bit.
Several nightmare scenarios later, our dynamic duo find themselves in Hobb’s End, where the main street is lined with lovely little antique shops filled with what Trent eloquently calls “old shit”. The town looks pretty empty with the exception of a tribe of kids who can’t not run in slow motion after their dog. The two check into a quant little inn that seems to be run by Viggo the Carpathian and Mrs. Pickam (the incomparable Francis Bay). OH! and oI guess it bears mentioning that Cane’s there abducting children and transforming them into his own special brood of creatures bent on spreading his signature brand of mayhem and mutation throughout the town. And where else would HQ be but the comfy confines of THE BLACK CHURCH! A creepy, evil, place whereabouts dobermans attack en mass, the doors have a malfunctioning automatic open feature, and where Cane does all of his writing and evil plottin these days.
Still, despite every gruesome event in “The Hobb’s End Horror” playing out around them, Trent still refuses to believe his own eyes and chocks it up to a ridiculously well-staged Disney World level publicity stunt put on just for him in hopes that he’ll high-tail it back to the big city, and talk up Cain’s “haunted little town.” In this one moment, I agree with Trent when he boldly declares, “Well, FUCK THAT!”
Now, you can begin to imagine Trent getting genuinely freaked out at this point, but the man just won’t give up on trying to find the logical explanation. But it seems to become more blazingly apparent that he’s driven himself right into a hotbed of slimy monsters and crazy shit ground zero. Portraits shift and change to creep the fuck out of city folk, grannies handcuff their naked hubbies to their ankles, and giant reptilians sporting a veritable mess of tentacles occupy the outdoor patio. Yeah. Sure, guy, this is all being staged JUST FOR YOU… I’m hopping on the next non demon-riddled Greyhound and heading to Chi-town as you brush chunks of brain and gore off your shoulder from the ‘actor’ who just unloaded a shotgun into his noggin.
As a mob of mutated town folk slowly inch towards Trent and a now totally whacked-out Styles (oh, yeah, she’s been lustily possessed by her demon-crazed client), the two exchange punches to the face in a Three Stooges of Domestic Battery kind of way. It gets a good laugh in (at least from me), and they head to their car to make a quick getaway. Styles gets all emotional and attention-starved, and commences to eating the car keys. ”JEEEEEESUS!” cries our hero and goes fishing down her throat, which, I gotta say, just feels a little gross & sketchy despite the necessity. Trent takes it to that further step, bashing in Styles’s mug, hot-wiring the car, and blazing the fuck out of this podunk Hell hole.
Only Trent can’t get out. No one gets out. He’s stuck in the demonic Groundhog’s Day of road trips as he repeatedly drives down the highway, finds the road lines glow a freakish neon orange, and being transported right back to Main Street USA where a posse of Basket Case 2 rejects await him hungrily. Oh, and by this point Styles is trying to smut it up with Trent, contorted her entire body into a creeping, crackly-boned, monstrosity. The beauty of this moment? These days all this would be done in sad, ineffective CGI, but cinematic treasures like this prove that unnerving realness of scenes such as this are actually pulled off by *real* effects such as the sideshow contortionist who rocked even the creepiest of moments.
After several tedious attempts to escape Trent tries a more direct approach flooring his jalopy right into the crowd! They clear a path which leads right to Styles who just stands there grinning like she just drank all the sherry. Trent jerks his steering wheel to the right and directly into a nasty collision which leaves him unconscious as the minions of mutations laugh and talk amongst themselves in the distance.
Trent then wakes up to have a one on one with the man, himself, Sutter Cain. Okay, this is it. Here is Trent’s chance to defend humanity! And what does he do? Too preoccupied with trying to light his last cigarette, Trent settles on insulting Cain by telling him his books suck. Eh, I hardly think that’s going to bruise the man’s ego, Trent. And then he drops the bomb. Trent, himself, is Sutter’s creation. A character in a book he is writes and controls. Nothing more. Understandably, Trent’s more than a little unsettled by all this, even more so when Sutter rips into his own face with is bare hands to reveal a dark pit framed by torn shreds of a novels pages. Yeah, this is looking less and less like a promotional stunt…
We’re led through a fantastic sequence wherein Trent peers into the darkness while Styles reads from Sutter’s new “bible”. This, of course, plays as narration as he is living the story she reads. It’s a wonderfully creepy piece of cinema where Trent sees creatures rising from the abyss beyond description and we, the audience, are never given a good clear shot. We are only allowed to see Trent’s face as he reacts to what he sees. Styles presents the manuscript to Trent, and Trent makes his way back into “his world”. The creatures gain, Trent trips, and all is lost…or so it seems.
Trent screams in primal terror only to open his eyes and find himself on a dirt road, back in what looks to be classical reality. Birds chirp, kids deliver the newspaper, and there are no creatures beyond description chilling out at the truck stops. Yes, things seem normal, but Trent has seen some pretty heavy shit and can’t so easily shake it. First order of business is to destroy the manuscript, which keeps mysteriously finding it’s way back into his hands. Eventually Trent heads back to the publishing company that hired him in the first place only to find out Styles never existed and that he delivered the In the Mouth of Madness manuscript months ago and that it’s been at the top of the Best Seller list for seven weeks! Trent, having no recollection of this at all, is driven even closer to the edge. He pleads with the publishers to recall the book because what’s in it will drive people insane. Trent is then gently pushed off the edge as it’s revealed that the movie adaptation of the book comes out in a week.
The epidemic of violence continues, no one can put down Sutter’s latest work, our “hero” has gone homicidal as well, bashing in skulls with an axe outside book stores., which is why he has been telling this story from within a padded sell all along. By film’s end we find Trent in a deserted city after the dark power made manifest through Sutter’s work has infected everyone, making them lash out violently and mutate, as he goes into a fully lit theater. What’s playing? In the Mouth of Madness.
Trent sits in an empty theater, popcorn bucket in hand and watches scenes fro the film we have just watched. He begins to laugh a pained, horrified laughter of sad realization. Of being broken. Tears swell up in his eyes as he tits his head back, his laughter becoming desperate and pleading as we cut to black. It”s a cold, dark, deeply unsettling ending because it brings up so many questions about who we are and reality in general. Trent, obviously was born, grew up, has gone through life and made memories, how devastating would it be to find out it were all false. That, in effect, you aren’t real. That you are simply a means to entertain someone else.
It’s a cold concept to think about, that we might be nothing more than the figment of something’s imagination who can change the rules whenever they like and wipe our slates clean in the process. It takes a pretty active imagination to contemplate such an existence, but what a sad and empty way for our world to end. With the realization that we were never, ever, anything to begin with…
Well, I suppose I’ve kept you all waiting long enough. It’s time for The Primal Root to take a look at the final installment in Hugh Gallagher’s legendary straight to VHS Gore trilogy. We’ve covered ‘Goregasm’, where a perpetually topless, large breasted woman was paid to spin in circles and then kill her clients providing them with the “Ultimate Climax”. We’ve checked out ‘Goreotica’, the story of a jewel heist gone wrong, necrophilia and the dead body for AIDS patients black market…but now, now it is time for us to delve into what might be Hugh’s most high concept endeavor of the entire trilogy. His ‘Return of the King’, if you will. That’s right, it is time to get elbows deep and take a deep, appreciative whiff of 1994′s “Gore Whore!”
As out tape gets rolling we are treated to some slow moving credits featuring some Atari 2800 level lettering placed over a slide show of turn of the century bondage images which have a large black, spinning dildo superimposed over them. Believe it, or not, this giant black dildo actually plays a major role in the story which is about to unfold. The credits end as the black cock dildo shoots a gob of digitized green cum out the tip and onto the screen spelling out “GORE WHORE”. And so our fantastic journey into the filthy world of undead prostitution, science run amok, peeping on co-workers in the shower and “true love” begins.
“Gore Whore” starts off right in the middle of the action as some greasy fellow in a brown leather jacket flops down on crusty, crab infested mattress in a room with blank, white, walls as he turns his eyes to his prostitute friend who begin doing a wonderful interpretive dace to a mix tape she had made and queued up specifically for just such a magic moment.
And what a moment it is! As prostitute Dawn Day begins sashaying across the jizz stained floors of her low rent apartment stripping off articles of clothing until there’s nothing between her and her client except a thick batch of pubes and a pair of cross-eyed tits courtesy of a birth defect I was also cursed with growing up called, Pectus excavatum. Once it became life threatening it was something I had surgery to correct, but it looks like our leading lady Ms. Audrey Street, decided to live with the deformity and all I can say is more power to her! It certainly gives her character, who is required to get naked in just about every damn scene she appears in, a very strange and unsettling vibe that you just can’t get with the effects a shoe string budget, straight to video production can buy. It’s a deformity that can be very awkward and I give Audrey kudos for having the balls to flaunt what she’s got. I doubt I would have been so brave when I had my concave chest.
Soon Dawn is tying her client down, warning him that condoms won;t be enough to protect him (she must have some very potent pussy grime), proceeds to unzip his fly, whip out his little John and bits that sucker off with a single chomp! He screams bloody murder as raspberry syrup his the bedroom wall and Dawn begins gnawing on his neck. Dawn gnaws for a second or two before he client’s head comes tumbling off just as her mix tape comes to an end and we fade to black. That girls got some serious chompers on her, good god!
Fade up and we’re inside a dimly lit bar where we are introduced to our hero, Chase (played by Brady Debussey, the same guy who played the necrophiliac in a cape who had AIDS in Goreotica), who looks to be spending his day emptying various bottles of whiskey and napping on the bar room pool table wile dreaming of a blonde lady holding a cleaner shaven version of himself in a poorly lit gazeebo. See, Chase lost the love of his life, Susan to cancer a year or so ago, lost his job as the town’s head detective and now just lounges around on gaming equipment completely shitfaced. This is our hero, ladies and gents.
Thankfully, mad scientist Witman shows up to hire Jim Beam, er, Chase to investigate his missing lab assistant who stole an experimental serum of his. And surprise, surprise, the lab assistant in question is none other than Dawn Day, the scrawny, filthy haired hooker from earlier! Witman offers a Chase money up front to investigate and retrieve this serum but Chase isn’t so quick to take up the proposition for some reason. Chase, buddy, you’re stinking drunk, broke and unemployed, just take the fucking money and look into this shit. Who cares if it seems like a waste of time! What are you thinking? Think of all the booze that money’ll buy!
Yeah, looks like hero material to me.
Chase begins his investigation by sitting on the side of a dirt road until Dawn happens to drive by. Chase gives chase but not before we have a completely unrelated cutaway to a very content and happy looking horse just chilling out nearby watching our gumshoe go to work. The horse has nothing to do with the story and never appears again and is the only genuinely happy character in the video.
Hello there!
Chase follows Dawn to a tall, blonde, married Catholic woman’s house. The character with wide, creepy, haunting eyes, long blonde hair, nice, bountiful breasts and a well groomed shaft alley is only known in the script as “Swingin’ House Wife” . Chase peeps through the window as the two ladies begin swapping spit that I can only imagine smells like stale Arby’s and makes the observation “A LESBIAN LAB ASSISTANT!” out loud so the idiocy of the statement is allowed to sink in with the viewing audience before he continues thinking out loud and tells us his next move before rushing off to his dented, sagging, piece of crap Chevy, “While she’s here munching carpet, I better go over to her house and investigate!” the man was the Dick Tracy of his time and place.
It’s as if “Swingin’ House Wife” is staring into my soul.
Swingin’ House Wife has called Dawn over to make out, get totally naked, discuss how her husband doesn’t get her needs or desires and then get ruthlessly, and hilariously butchered on the living room carpet. ‘Swingin’ House Wife’ seems more concerned with keeping the strawberry syrup out of her eyes and hair than she does trying to prevent her own gruesome death by filleting as Dawn flings her butcher knife around in the air as if it’s not making contact with anything. Eventually the massacre ends, bright red, sticky syrup covers nearby scripture, the naked dead body of “Swingin’ House Wife” and Dawn herself, who quickly begins the daunting task of cleaning the mess up with her tongue.
Over at Dawn’s place, which it’s interior is inexplicably covered in vines, Chase discovers a fridge containing nothing but several large containers of blood. how does he know it’s blood? The moron actual sinks his digits in there and then licks the crimson liquid of his sausage fingers. “Blood!” Chase exclaims. “A lesbian lab assistant that drinks blood!” The plot thickens and Chase has now orally contracted hepatitis C. His work here is done.
The Paternity Test concludes, Ronald McDonald, you are the Father!
Chase heads over to the local police department where upon entering we see the only officers on duty are the one officer deep asleep behind his desk and another who is HEY! It’s the pint sized and gorgeous D’Lana Tunnell playing the adorable, cynical, poorly named deputy Pat who has a huge helmet of Manic Panic red colored hair and a not so great grip on her lines, but she does try, and that’s gotta count for something. Chase asks Pat for a bit of help researching Dawn Day in the computer data base, but Pat is reluctant. She throws out an exposition guilt trip about Chase being a sad bastard and a disgrace to the department ever since his wife died (yeah, boo-hoo, you cry baby!) and it’s his own fault for getting kicked off the force and there’s no way she’s helping him out! Chase whips out a crisp, clean $5 bill and Pat is suddenly eager to please! And Chase is the disgrace to the local police department? Between sleeping beauty by the front door and the rockabilly pinup model deputy, this place has a pretty low bar set for disgracefulness.
“Prostitution, Prostitution, Prostitution.” Pat exlaims as she reads from her computer monitor what sounds like the lyrics to a pop song. “Oh, and she shouldn’t be hard to track down. She’s dead.” Ah, thanks Pat, I guess this case is closed. WAIT! She’s dead? Well this just doesn’t make sense! How can a dead woman go to a lonely housewife’s house and tickle her zesty love taco with her slobbery oral love slug? Can Chase follow the clues and solve the riddle? He tracks Dawn down to her final resting place where she happens to be lounging about naked in the mid afternoon sun. Chase watches through his binoculars and Dawn begins filling a syringe with a batch of neon green Re-animator style goo, snaps on the handy , dandy, giant black dildo attachment, runs the it between her tits, down her stomach and into her clam strip with a *GOOSH* noise that really sells the effect.
It’s cock o’clock somewhere!
Chase stumbles back, catching Dawn’s attention. She finishes depositing her green love sauce into her holiest of hollies, slips on her black nightie, deposits her black dildo, green goo kit into an open grave and departs leaving Chase alone to check out the cemetery. As one might imagine, this leads to a scuffle with a nearby zombie decked out from head to toe in some little tan plaid number. Chase and the zombie partake in classic Filipino crotch fighting as the two grab one anthers shoulders and vigorously thrust areas towards each other. Before you know it, the zombie is on Chase’s car hood as he tries to escape at top speed. To get rid of this pesky undeader, as opposed to stomping on the break and making the zombie go flying, Chas e instead rams his car into a parked automobile whose occupant just so happens to be, and I’m not kidding, masturbating to a copy of Swank magazine he had tucked under his shirt. Who are these people? What town IS this? The total carnage results in the zombie falling into a creek and the innocent bystander losing his Johnson. Tragic.
Ensemble by Andre 3000
But the battle doesn’t end there! Turns out there’s a hidden lady zombie in chase’s backseat which behind munching his neck! Chase continues driving at top speed, as opposed to pressing the brake and making a far less deadly situation for himself, goes over a small hill in slow motion, before wreaking his car in a two foot deep gutter. With his car, it’s believable. Chase stumbles out of the vehicle as the blonde, lady zombie in the backseat has vanished, falls on his face only to look up and see Dawn Day approaching. She belittles our alcoholic hero and gives us her M.O. She’s tired of being subservient to wimpy men who buy her company and now it’s time to turn the tables! see, she’s undead, must feast on blood to survive and inject herself with Witman’s green goo pussily once a week. See, she is the undead hooker queen of this dung heap of a town and she’s turning all her tricks into and undead army! THE GORE WHORE HAS RISEN! ALL HAIL THE ZOMBIE HOOKER QUEEN!
Yeah, I’d say you botched this Bris, mister.
Dawn leaves Chase to be killed by a decapitated head and body team brought to vivid life thanks to a hole in the ground and a blue screen effect that puts George Lucas and his Star Wars prequels to shame. In a bit of comedy gold, the reanimated body kicks Chase around a little which in the cutaways make it look like the body is doing some manner of the hustle. Chase impales the body before giving the green foam spewing severed head a little speech about once being the kicker on his high school varsity football team before punting the head into a nearby lake. While soaring through the air the severed head cries “FUUUUUUUUUCK!” adding the cherry to the top of this it’s-so-bad-it’s-bad-but-I-can’t-stop-watching- sundae of awesome.
It’s been a long day and Chase is pretty fucking beat. He makes his way to Pat’s house where she’s in the middle of one of those extended “scrub your tits until they are gleaming” showers where he breasts encounter about an entire Irish springs bar of soap worth of lather. Ladies, is this generally what you do in the shower? Rub your boobs with soap for thirty minutes at a time eatin’ up all the dang hot water? Low budget Trash Cinema is one of the few genres brave enough to graphically illustrate this plight. What a brave, and selfless move on the part of these filmmakers.
But I digress, Chase breaks into Pat’s house, peeps in on her showering for about ten minutes as he hallucinates that the well built, brightly red headed and short D’Lara Tunnell is his tall, lanky, blonde dead wife. Hey, if you have actresses willing to get totally naked for your artistic piece of cinema, you might as well use them! So we are treated to two lovely women lathering their breasts, buns and rinsing out their hair for what feels like a quarter of the movie. Note, I am not complaining. This is Trash Cinema at it’s finest, folks. I rent these kind of movies almost specifically for these scenes!
I guess she couldn’t afford a shower curtain one a police officer’s salary. Times are tough…
Pat steps out of the shower without feeling the need to cover up despite being shocked that a drunken, bleeding, hallucinating mad man is standing in the doorway with a protruding erection in his trousers and drool dripping from his bottom lip and unenthusiastically asks “Chase, what are you doing here?” as chase tumbles to the floor and Hugh Gallagher composes the most beautifully orchestrated shot of his entire career as he provides the viewer with both a magnificent close up shot of the lovely D’Lara Tunnell’s rump AND Chase’s hysterical pratfall. Gang, this is why I go to the movies.
Why The Primal Root loves movies summed up in one single brilliant shot.
When Chase comes to he talks Pat into helping him out in his investigation. She agrees only after, again, telling him what a fucking loser he is for still mourning the death of his wife. Chase gives a dark, sad speech about Heaven and Hell and how Hell is right here and now on planet Earth. It’s not a bad little speech for a flick that’s spent most of it’s running time telling us things we’ve already gathered from the action on screen, but it does kind of his me directly in that little spot in my heart where that emo little teeny bopper “woe is me” self resides. Life can certainly be shitty sometimes, but as we’ve learned from ‘Gore Whore” it’s nothing a bit of self medication can’t solve.
Chase and Pat head out into the hot steamy Bum Fuck Egypt night to follow up on a hunch that Dawn will be at a local watering holw where her favorite band and customers “The Third Graders” will be playing. Cut to- a deserted sports bar where three middle aged guys in colorful wigs jerk off with their instruments and Dawn day performs another one of her captivating dance numbers. The Third Graders make it through one who song before hoping off stage in the hopes of purchasing a piece of tail from Ms. Day. Unfortunately for them, she has other plans, as she whips out her Rosco and pops a cap in all their asses. If only this could have happened to Nickelback.
Chase and Pat, he’s a boozy private dick with nothing left to lose, she’s a feisty, small time cop, together THEY’RE DYNAMITE! Coming this Spring to FOX!
This prompts Chase and Pat to rush in looking like one of the coolest gutter scum, down trodden television cop duos ever devised! Pat pulls her gun and points it at Dawn’s greasy mug as Chase tells her to shoot. “NO!” Pat screams. “She’s unarmed!” Chase, along with the entire viewing audience roll our eyes and scream along with “JUST SHOOT THE UNDEAD WHORE, YOU IDIOT!” At this point Pat lowers her weapon and puts all her attention on her debate about shooting Dawn thereby giving Ms. Day the advantage. Day quickly squirts some green goo up one of the dead “musician’s” asses where he springs to life and takes a whopper of a bite out of Pat’s lovely little neck. Poor, sweet, Pat, you were a mean person who had trouble empathizing at all with anyone and you were a horrible police officer. But what you lacked in humanity you made up for with ample nudity. Farewell, Officer Pat. you were one fetching, wasted character.
Chase doesn’t make the same mistake. He quickly pries Pat’s firearm from her cold, dead hands and pops a fiery load into Dawn Day dropping her to the sports bar floor. Chase grabs Witman’s glowing green, ass and pussy ooze formula and rushes over to the the mad scientist’s lair to deliver the good, get his money and ask a few questions as to what in the Hell he just had to deal with. And Chase doesn’t have to waste any time getting over there because that sports bar where that shooting massacre just occurred was LITERALLY EMPTY. Sure, there was a concert taking place, sure they were open for business, but there was not a soul there beyond the band and Dawn Day. This makes for an ideal getaway for Chase!
Chase arrives to find Witman waiting for him and by this point Chase has had a while to stew and seems kind of living as he begins cross examining the scientist. Winston remains silent and jauntily escapes into his plywood lair where Chase follows. On a wooden table there lays a fresh corse covered by a blood stained white sheet as Witman explains his principals and that he created his re-animation formula quite by accident. He performed several tests on animals before getting his hands on Dawn Day, bringing her back to life, and making her his undead sex slave. It;s all shit we already pretty much gathered over the course of the film but now Witman sets it all in stone. It’s at this point that Dawn Day swoops in from out of nowhere, drop kicks Chase to the ground and attacks Witman, bashing his noggin repeatedly into the floor killing him. chase comes to, grabs an aluminum baseball bat and knocks that Gore Whores mother fucking block off! Her head goes sailing through the lab and crashes against the cement wall with a a pleasant, warm, *squish* sound and leaving a spatter of blood and grey matter on the wall.
MY DOCKERS!
It’s a triumphant moment to be sure, but this flick has yet to reach it’s climax. Chase drags the lifeless body of Dr. Witman down to the cellar and in full, agonizing detail we are treated to Chase sticking a black dildo full of green life cum up his ass to revive him. At this point, all of us watching ‘Gore Whore” know how the procedure works. Then again, maybe they had five minutes of time they just HAD to fill. Witman awake to find Chase standing over him with an axe. Chase looks him straigh in the eye and says “Pain is something you’ve gotta live with.” before hacking both of Witman’s legs off in the most hysterical scene of the entire film. I believe it’s the performance of Paul Woodard as Witman that gives this scene the levity it has.He channels Jim Carrey at his spastic best in his reaction to having both his legs unceremoniously removed. It really is unfathomably precious, especially once Chase goes to the top of the stairs, grabs something off camera and yells to Witman, “HEADS UP!” and tosses Dawn’s chomping severed head at him. It’s one of those scenes you must see to truly understand.
And then Chase shaves and reanimates his wife’s rotted old cadaver so they can make out again thereby ending the film on a rip off of Pet Semetary’s conclusion. That’s pretty fucking weak and far too obvious. I still think it would have been really disturbing if Chase found his wife in Witman’s basement, reanimated and being used as a fuck slave thereby making chase go totally insane and giving him a bit more of a reason to go all Jigsaw on Witman. But, who am I to mess with Hugh Gallagher’s creative vision.
Insert “Getting Head” joke here.
“Gore Whore” is fucking ridiculous from the very first frame to the very last credit. Hugh Gallagher was going for broke on this flick and it shows. From the collection of goofball effects, to the eclectic cast of characters, over the top concept, wall to wall use of naked women, even the added production value of a single, unmotivated shot of a horse chilling out makes this a video store find like none other. I guarantee you, you will never find another film that matches the gonzo, low budget trashiness of “Gore Whore.”
Hell, that could be said about the Gore Trilogy as whole! It’s a three part series of degenerate, disturbed, sleazy ideas made all the trashier by the production values and VHS format. They do have some very creative and interesting ideas scattered withing their rotten running time, and it’s that blend of utter sleaze and sparks of genuine intelligence that make these tapes worth tracking down and giving a look. That is, if you have to stomach for this sort of drek. Again, one man’s terrible, worthless film is another man’s nugget of VHS gold. And for me, it doesn’t get much better, worse, stranger or more enjoyable than Hugh Gallagher’s Gore Trilogy.
Stay Trashy and watch that pooper!
-Root
Ms. D’Lana Tunnell in a still from “Teenage Tupelo”. Another oddity worth tracking down. -Root
It’s your old pal, The Primal Root, and to celebrate the holiday season I’ve decided to throw a Trashmas New Year’s Bash over at my pad and everyone is invited! That includes YOU! But beforehand we’re checking out an all time favorite Trash Cinema Slasher film from 1981 called ‘Home Sweet Home’. It’s supposedly a holiday themed horror movie, but a turkey dinner does not a holiday make, gang. In fact no one even mentions what holiday it is! From what I understand I think it’s supposed to be Thanksgiving?
I digress, get prepared for feral children, satanic electric guitar playing magical Jewish mimes, Body by Jake, body builder body glaze, sex with your pants on, spanish racial sterotypes, bribing cops with “bazooms”, roid rage, flattened grannies, disapearing balls, hostage negotiations, the missing peas and so much more! It’s The Primal Root’s Rotten Reviews Episode 27: Home Sweet Home! Gather round and share it with those you love.
Thank you for all your support and for spreading the word! See you in 2013!
If you know me, you know my stance on remakes. It’s not something I am incredibly fond of but I will always give them a fair shot as from time to time I find myself surprised and impressed. This is why I gave the remake of one of the best slasher films ever made, ‘Silent Night, Deadly Night’, a run for it’s money. Would it be as heartfelt, tragic, disturbing and filled with campy, inappropriate jet black humor as it’s original source material? I had my doubts. I took a deep breath, popped this sucker in my DVD player and braced for impact.
. Seeing as the movie has little to nothing in common with it’s source material outside of it’s organizing principle (Christmas) the killer’s disguise (Santa Claus) and two of the original film’s most notorious and popular set pieces this thing hardly registers as a remake. It’s more of a springboard for an altogether new slasher film. ‘Silent Night’ adopts the narrative structure of Wes Craven’s ‘Scream’ franchise with a “Who-done-it?” premise and written in the often imitated style of one of cinema’s most acclaimed screenwriters, Rob Zombie. We are introduced to a crazed killer dressing up as Santa Claus in a urine soaked, filth caked bathroom as he puts together his Santa Claus mask and clips his finger nails, which I assumed at the time would be some clue to the killer’s identity and kept looking for some with well manicured nails. By the film;s end realized this shit had nothing to do with anything, really.
Our killer takes care of business, dispatching of a screaming woman in an adjoining bedroom and then unceremoniously electrocuting a man tied to a lawn chair with festive Christmas lights down in the basement. The guy shakes, screams, his eyes explode in geysers of blood…and our movie begins. Who were those people? Why should I care that they’re dead? Next thing you know, it’s Christmas Eve morning and it turns out the guy who just got electrocuted in the previous scene was the local deputy and a young woman is called in to work his shift by the over confident small town America British crime Sheriff, Malcolm McDowell, who plays his character for laughs and it just doesn’t work.
As bitchy, spoiled little girls are butchered, men are stabbed in the testicles and large breasted, half naked women are sent slowly through wood chippers, this crack team of police investigators zero in on large people in Santa suits, this being Christmas Eve, the town is overrun by fellows in Santa suits and several of them are disgruntled assholes and violent offenders, so they have their work cut out for them. Why do they not bring in some outside help? Because the Sheriff wants to solve this on his own. Eh, stupid is as stupid does, I suppose.
Just about every character we encounter is brutally slaughtered which I am sure will send us gore hounds off to bed with visions of woodchippered meaty chunks of nude photography models dancing in our heads. There’s not much of a moral compass present in this new Christmas slasher, but I guess that’s just fine fo0r the approach they;re taking. It’s a full speed ahead train of pain where buying a ticket insures a perversely gruesome ride. Mean spirited and full of self interested slime balls, ‘Silent Night’ is actually a fairly good modern Christmas horror, even if it pains me a little to admit it.
Jaime King as Deputy Sheriff Audrey Bradimore does a damn fine job of trying to give her character the gravity she deserves, but it’s all for not, as ‘Silent Night’ has other fish to fry and body parts to hack off. The rest of the cast play this film as the hamfisted piece of garbage it is and yuk it up with a wink and a nudge as they await their paychecks. You can literally feel the apathy these performers bring to the film.
The film even cherry picks two of the original ”Silent Night, Deadly Night”s most memorable moments. you know, the one where loony bin Grandpa warns his Grandson that ‘Christmas Eve is the scariest damn night of the year!”, only this time Grandpa’s voice turns demonic and is delivering this warning to a character who only has one other scene…where he receives some obligatory Holy Night oral before having his head pulped by one well placed whack of an axe. Also, extracted from the original ‘Silent night, Deadly Night; is the notorious ‘Antler Kill’, which seems puzzlingly less effective here. Oh yeah, and there’s a reference to it being “Garbage Day”. WOKA, WOKA, WOKA!
All in all, ‘Silent Night’ delivers the sloppy, gooshy, gory goodies but severely lacks the underlying message and heart that made ‘Silent Night, Deadly Night’ such a memorable and dare I say, classic of the 80′s slasher period. As I have mentioned in The Primal Root’s Rotten Review for ‘Silent Night, Deadly Night;, it is a film about the cycle of violence, the lack of care for the mentally ill, and the failure of our system and religious fundamentalism. Is it shocking? yes. Violent? Of course. Over the top? Most certainly! But it was all for a purpose as opposed to this remake which is happy to deliver nothing but carnage. Gore drenched kills and a town populated by halfwits, unapologetic assholes and sociopaths that serve no purpose other than axe fodder.
‘Silent Night’ is a bloody hot mess of a stocking stuffer. If you can get passed the annoying, unlikable cast of characters, there’s a wonderful mix of nasty kills (including one little cuntface of a child!) and gratuitous Tits and Ass for the old schooler purists. It’s trashy to the core and about as dumb as a box of coal but just might make a good stocking stuffer for the gore hound on your Christmas list.
V/H/S is one of those lucky horror entries who’s sails get caught up in a wind of hype and praise from the horror community, a community ravenous for something worth a damn in this genre that, when not about people eating other people’s shit or featuring a cast made almost entirely of guests from the current horror convention circuit getting torn into chunks by a mad man, is remaking films from decades past and transforming masterpieces into dumbed down fodder for the masses. So ravenous are they, that V/H/S has become the toast of the community at the moment. Over hyped? Maybe a bit. But V/H/S sure is a fun little anthology film.
Basically, V/H/S, is a found footage horror anthology period piece. It tells six separate tales by different filmmakers all taking place in the mid to late 1990′s. It’s about two hours of none stop shaky cam footage that will give ‘The Blair Witch Project’ a run for it’s money in stomach churning motion sickness department.
The central wrap around story of V/H/S features a group of college age hooligans and criminals who tape their Jackass inspired shenanigans and sell them to online distributors. Now, who would pay good money to watch a bunch of twenty something assholes break the windows of abandoned houses and sexually assault random women to show their bare breasts in parking garages is beyond me. But these jerks, the rapist criminals, are our protagonists. We follow them as these scumbags as they are sent by a mysterious party to break into the residence of an elderly man and retrieve a tape. Easy enough, right? HA! Wrong! If it were that easy we wouldn’t have a fucking movie!
Bizarrely enough, these bros find what looks to be the old man’s lifeless corpse upstairs in a recliner with several TVs flickering snowy static in front of him and surrounded by mountains of VHS tapes. Seems they have their work cut out for them. So, as these jerk-o’s have never seen a horror movie before, they decide to split up and leave one man behind to review tapes. This feels like the flimsiest of premises, but I’ll take it. Not sure if this even warrants a *SPOILER ALERT*, but the old guy ain’t so lifeless.
Let us get to our TALES OF TERROR!
*SPOILER AHEAD! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!* I will try to keep things as vague as possible, but the basic premise and plot points to many of these stories might be spoiled if you read the below synopsis. Just a heads up.
First up:
‘Amateur Night’ tells the tale of a trio of guys who strap one of their buddies up with a pair of now-trendy, ‘Revenge of the Nerds’ spectacles equipped with a hidden camera as they head out to enjoy a night of drunken debauchery and date rape. The three central male figures all come off as totally legit, obnoxious, collegiate horn dogs who generously rent the seediest of hotel rooms for taking advantage of the two drunken young ladies they’ve picked up. Honestly, the behavior of these young men is far more disturbing, in my opinion, than what happens to them. They gather around, dicks out and at the ready for gang banging, but as they soon realize that the one they undress, a troubling, mousy “girl” with wide creepy eyes, matted dreads, and a nervous way about her, is something they couldn’t have ever imagined. Out of all the tales in V/H/S, this may possibly be my favorite as it utilizes the hand-held, “found footage” aspect in a clever way and beautifully illustrates how being a completely loathsome, gutter-feeding, tool can literally bite you on the ass. These are the type of dudes who seek power and validation that they have penises via lording control over women, but in the end, they get a horrific taste of what it’s like to be on the receiving end of someone (something) else looking for validation. One of the cherries on this blood-soaked cake, is in the pretty awesome and grueling final chase scene climax that film-makers of ‘Amateur Night’ managed to put forth. Ultimately, this story works because it doesn’t shy away from its racy subjects of desire, power-mongering, and douchery comeuppance dealing with everything directly, brutally, and unflinchingly.
‘Second Honeymoon’
These two are married? How old are they, 23? And they are on their second honeymoon? Eh. Okay… This one tells the story of a (very) young married couple driving through the desert. That’s pretty much it. It was strange to find out these two are married since they come across as an awkward, unlikable couple who don’t seem to get one another and might have just started dating a couple months ago. The wife is creating a video diary of their road-trip, which, as we watch it in it’s uncut form, comes off as more of a negative comment card than a tribute to their affectionate good times. She does little more than whip the camera about and complain about where she is and what she’s doing. Yeah, this is the woman you wanna travel with. Her husband is just as unbearable. Anyway, she gets her fortune read for a buck by a redneck buckaroo version of the Zoltan machines at an old west tourist trap, and it makes mention of reuniting with a loved one. That very night a strange woman knocks on their motel room door in the dead of night asking for a ride in the morning. Who is she? What does she want? Why does she like breaking into hotel rooms, filming folks with their own cameras, poking people in the butt with her switchblade, and pulling lame, elementary school pranks on them while they sleep? Who knows! Sure, it builds some much-desired tension, but the stories’ load is blown a bit prematurely, and doesn’t have much weight as it is as we don’t know these characters very well and from what we do gather of them we don’t like, anyway. The story ends leaving the audience hanging with their questions, which is just fine. These people are dull, and you’ll probably be ready to move on.
‘Tuesday the 17th’ is a cool concept where a young woman takes some of her friends out to the woods where, in the past, she had encountered a Jason-esque killer who brutally murdered her buddies. Only thing is, he is either invisible and can only be seen through the video camera’s view finder or he is actually conjured to life via the actual presence of the video camera. It is never explained, but the effect of the killer as a humanoid shape appearing on the tape in scratchy glitches, a visual distortion, works well and is pretty damn eerie. The presentation of this killing specter is this story’s greatest asset. It’s an idea worthy of a feature-length movie but, as it is, the whole thing comes off as a tired Friday the 13th clone as the love-child of Jason Voorhess and ‘The Ring”s Samara stalks down some dumb, canned-character kids in the woods. Despite a cool set up, the story rushes to it’s conclusion and falls apart, as a result. I can’t help but wonder what it could have been had it been fleshed out.
‘The Sick Thing That Happened to Emily When She Was Young’ is an intriguing story about a long-distance relationship taking place over video chat as our heroine experiences a haunting and some kind of mystery growth under her arm… It’s a nifty little ‘Outer Limits’ style yarn that’s relatively satisfying. I couldn’t help but wonder how great this story would have been if captured in the format of a normal film narrative as opposed to found footage. Our main girl is remarkably sweet, likeable, and attractive with a vulnerable but outgoing quality to her. Although her beau says he’s working out-of-area for his business, we cannot help but wonder about the nature of this curious long-distance relationship. Does anyone else sense some early commentary possibly co-dependence, manipulation, and abuse in the relationship? I wouldn’t put it past this one as all motives are made clear by story’s end. As it featured a great leading lady who didn’t annoy the ever-loving shit out of me, ‘The Sick Thing’ was a nice change of pace.
’10.31.98′ is right up there with ‘Amateur Night’, vying as a favorite of the anthology. Four surprisingly charming and likable college age fellows, one dressed as a Nanny Cam (teddy bear with a built in camera. CLEVER!), traverse across town to find the Halloween party they were invited to. When they finally come to the address where the party is rumored to be it seems the house is empty, but as they investigate they find they most certainly are not alone. These guys walk into a situation with no frame of reference, expecting the light-hearted frivolity, and come out with the worst possible scenario imaginable. Once they come across what appears to be a damsel in freaky distress the story explodes into an effects-heavy, supernatural nightmare, and works better in its brief running time than all the ‘Paranormal Activity’ films combined. Matters escalate in the blink of an eye and the guys react with righteous bravery, putting their lives in peril to save a young woman whose life seems to be on the line. This welcomes us to one of the most well-played shocks of the whole film. These guys aren’t out to take advantage of anyone, they don’t act like drooling, poon-hounds. It’s Nice Guys vs. Pure Evil delivering chuckles, anxiety, and, by story’s end, pure terror closing V/H/S out on a high note.
Oh, and the ineffective, brain-dead wrap around of the original tape-retrieval asscapade? Well, they all die. The End.
*END SPOILERS!*
In the final analysis I enjoyed V/H/S, despite myself. It’s got a bit of everything, post-modern horror, supernatural, psychological serial killer, the whole shebang. It’s almost like a sampler case featuring several of horror’s most beloved sub genres, and when these stories are at their best (see: ‘Amateur Night’, ’10.31.98′) they work pretty damn well. At their worst, they still have some cool ideas to dig into (see: ’Tuesday the 17th’, ‘Second Honeymoon’).
V/H/S proved to be an entertaining collaborative experiment that spins some imaginative tales. By no means a masterpiece, V/H/S is a creepy excursion into the macabre, the supernatural and the rewindable.
Sigh, hey there folks, yer ol’ pal Uncle Grumpyfuk sitting here, a bit in the doldrums today. As the grandmaster comedian Jerry Lewis would say, “Creativity is hard sometimes, it’s not an easy thing.” It leaves you speechless. Who says we have no great philosophers in this day and age? Well writing IS hard, it’s not an easy thing, it’s hard to put into words…heh-heh.
It’s like, I don’t know… you know when you’re at the Friday Night Mud Rasslin’ Extravaganza and you eat a big bag of hot roasted peanuts,then later the next morning when you’re taking a squat and they’re slowly grinding and scraping their way out, you rub your inflamed anus clean, the minute peanut crumbs tearing the delicate white tissue,however there remains one tiny jagged little chunk that eludes the toilet paper like a vicious,sentient little sandspur maneuvering to avoid your attempts to remove it so that finally you have to take your fingernail and…what? What?! Oh,I see ‘that’s disgusting’ is it? What, do you think you’re reading the blog of your favorite fairy from the Hallmark channel? This is TrashCinema folks, if you can’t take it then you can wad it up and stuff… sigh, hey, you know what? Fine, Uncle Grumpyfuk is in a fairly mellow mood today so fine, you want something more pleasant? Fine. Something perhaps with beautiful flowers or something? Fine, never let it be said Uncle Grumpyfuk can’t be flexible, at times.. somewhat…a little.
Fine then, ahem, you know what it’s like when you.. when you eat a bunch of fucking daffodils and later when you’re trying to crap them out and the putrid, partially digested petals are sticking to the walls of your rectum like adhesive tape and you finally have to use the tweezers because tp won’t touch them? Well that’s what creative writing is like. Eh? …well fuck you too! I tell you it makes perfect sense, to me anyway,you just don’t ‘know’. Yeah. Well then for the rest of your lives you remember that pretty little mental image I just planted in your minds whenever you see a pot of fucking daffodils! Yeah, ha-ha! I’m starting to feel better!
Well, speaking of bouquets, we’re going to review an aromatic funnel plant of a film today, the bizarre and nonsensical “The Undertaker and His Pals” which reminds me of that old joke; “What did the corpse of General Grant say to the corpse of General Lee on the 100th anniversary of the Civil War?” …Nothing! Jesus weren’t you listening? They’re both dead! My God if i said ’Simon says stick your dicks in your mouths’ you’d break your spines trying, it’s like talking to the army of fiddler crabs as you run in ever tightening circles around them, causing them to pile up on top of one another in their panic, until you light and throw the M80… but alas, I have no M80s, sigh. You people are soooo fucking lucky! (breathes in deeply) Shit,I feel much better now!
Ok, the film begins with a trio of motorcycles riding in circles at night. They stop at a phone booth, one looks up an address and off they go. As they approach an intersection at which they have a stop sign, they come to a complete stop, look to the left,the right, then the left again and then turn right and proceed,carefully observing the speed limit all the while. ..what the fuck? Grrr, well something is coming,I feel it… or it’s those tulip petals! Ha! Thiiink aboouut it!
They pull up to an apartment building,one goes through the front entrance and finds ‘Lamb’ on one mailbox,while the others park around back and climb up the fire escape,somehow knowing which room is the right one. Hmm. The camera suddenly focuses on a sweet pair of feminine feet – mm-mmm, shrimp cocktail! We pan slowly up a righteous pair of gams that are attached to a pretty hot blonde who is putting the final touches on her latest blacksploitation novel “The Ghost of Uncle Tom’s Choad”. “..and her squeals went unheard as the storm raged outside. The End “. She sighs and leans back into her chair, reaching into the drawer and lighting a reefer to celebrate when a knock upon the door stops her in mid-toke. Damn I hate that! She scrambles to stash when biker #1 at the door bursts in and the two who crept up the back fire escape climb in through the window. She backs away,unsure whether the three figures are, like, real, or whether it’s just the reefer when the front man grabs her. As they struggle the other two pull out really fakey plastic knives and front man throws her on them,and it’s really fake, I mean really. She dies and they cut off her leg then our hearts leap as we think ‘Frankenhooker”? but think ‘No way.’ just as quickly. The Sherman Williams Red No.3 Flat Finish flies everywhere and the bikers escape with their trophy, her leg! …oookay…well, why take just one?
Next we’re outside the front of the local funeral parlour,and they give savings stamps, what a nice service! We see Mama Fat and Papa Skinny enter, Mama Fat blubbering away, heh, get it? The undertaker sees them enter,presses a tape player and the films crazy theme plays for a sec,then he switches to the standard funeral music, he escorts them to the coffin where Blondie Lamb lies,with her eyes open and looking at them! What a great idea! He then hits them with the bill and engages in a little mental torture when they refuse to pay. This guy is pretty cool.
Now we’re at an office where a slick suit is totally dissing his hot-ass secretary, Miss Poultry (easy Grumpy, eeasy!). They get in a righteous set of wheels and head over to the Greasy Spoon where we meet Spike the waiter and Doc the cook,a friendly pair. The couple order the daily special, the ‘leg of Lamb’ and we finally get it! Oho, forcing unsuspecting patrons to engage in cannibalism! Suh-weet! One of those things we’ve all wanted to do in life, if only once. The couple devour the cooked human flesh with relish, literally, ‘goes great with blondes’, and they leave full and content, resolved to go back for more of that yummy Lamb. It is said you know, by members of that particular culinary fraternity that it is the sweetest of meats!
Slick takes Miss Poultry home and takes off without even getting a quickie in, so inside she’s about to call Spot when she hears someone outside doing the worst cat imitation you’ve ever heard – your retarded sibling can do better…not really. She walks back to be confronted by the bikers who are also looking for the terrible cat-caller,they were going to see if he really did sound like a cat with broken knee-caps. Both parties glare at one another,convinced the other is the afore mentioned cat-caller so Miss Poultry goes on the offensive and comes at them like a fighting cock on Vivarin, however it’s 3 to 1 so she ends up being shish-ka-bobbed on the fence. Meh, it’s been done.
The investigation the next morning yields little evidence, the portly officer in charge being more interested in lunch takes off and Slick turns to see our undertaker has appeared out of nowhere. Slick springs for the cheapest funeral for Miss Poultry,what a guy, then hits the Greasy Spoon for a good meal! Whew, that bitch had been getting way too clingy. What a break the ol’ cosmos had thrown him, yes sir!
Back at the Spoon, Doc is in the back obsessively reading medical textbooks on surgery when the darkie delivery man shows up,and while poking around he discovers the identity of their ‘secret meat’ flavor hanging in the walkin cooler so Doc appropriately buries a cleaver in his noggin, and Spike,seeing what happened, makes a witty ‘dark meat’ remark to one of the customers about the chicken special. Har-har!
Back at the funeral home Slick stops by to inspect the coffin he bought; a bloody shipping crate. He’s quite satisfied, not bad for $149.98! He then heads back to the office and damn, another hot blonde walks in, I mean yowza! Slick plays it cool and pays her to go get some din-din while he masturbates thinking about her elbows, mmmm. She moseys over to the Greasy Spoon, and Doc can’t contain his excitement another moment,deciding this is the day he practices his surgical skills on something other than kittens! “I tore her clothes off!” Spike informs him, “Ah that’s good thinking!” replies the Doc, what a wacky pair of knuckleheads! He slices her open and fondles her inards and she dies, big surprise. So they put her in the meat grinder and Spike changes the special of the day to hamburger. Woomp-waaaaah.
That night the 3 bikers are back on the prowl and we see a hideous hag in a sauna, molting. As her two companions leave our leather-clad trio enter and quite rightfully beat the living dogshit out of her with a chain and we only wish we could take a swing ourselves. Ugh. The thress sub-stooges hack her up and as they’re leaving with a bloody bag of the choisest parts her two companions return to see them exiting out the window. One grabs a pistol and demonstrates the correct posture and body reactions for a hot female when shooting a handgun. LOL!!! Miraculously she manages to shoot the tag off of one of the bikes and the next morning Slick gets word from the fat cop that it belongs to the undertaker. Slick is shocked! He then finds that Doc and Spike are his accomplices! Here he wanted to thank the person responsible and it’s three guys he knew all along! Ain’t life crazy?
Back at the Spoon, Doc and Spike are about to kill the undertaker for leaving evidence, but for some inexplicable reason Doc says something you can’t make out and he and Doc kill Spike then vamoose. Talk about temperamental!
Slick shows up and pokes around, finding Spike has been enjoying an acid-bath until his bones are nice and shiny white! He almost shits his britches when a hand taps him on the back; it’s the twin sister of the blonde Doc and Spike turned into quarter pounders. What she’s doing in the basement of the restaurant is beyond me but this film makes no sense anyway so… He takes her home, the two remaining bikers follow, he falls asleep before even getting any! Man this guy is slick! They take off the next morn, still followed by Doc and the undertaker,I guess they just sat on their bikes all night in the cold.
A few miles later Slick’s car ‘runs out of gas’ and now we think we might see some action, a nipple at least, but he bails and leaves her out in Bum Fuk Egypt as bait. The two bikers come along and chase her around with their little rubber knives and it’s totally funny because she runs just like a girl. All of a sudden a produce truck comes barrelling around the bend and flattens Doc but good, and the undertaker scoots his ass out of there quick-like. Slick informs the blonde that her sister was killed by the trio and she seems about as upset as if he’d told her he drank a coke out of her fridge. She walks outside, looks up and there’s the undertaker waiting to shut her up permanently. There’s a lame chase scene using the same set of stairs a bunch of times from different angles and they end up on the roof where he backs her to the edge, lunges at her and falls over the ledge to his supposed death. Notice I said ‘supposed’. She walks downstairs but we see that the undertaker somehow reached 12 feet over and grabbed a railing as he fell and saved himself…right. Well we reached ‘absurd’ a while back so… Blondie goes back to the office where the cop is rubbing his chubby and as they talk the undertaker stalks up from behind a curtain. Just as his hand is ready to strike however the cop accidentally stabs him. …oi. The End! What a fine film!
Now we have a unique ending, as the credits roll we see everyone who died in the film come back to life and smile and wave at the camera, assuring us they really weren’t killed, and here I was so worried for their families! ,,,Ah-ha-ha-ha!
Well that wraps up another insightful and uppity-fuk review, enlightening your mind and refreshing your spirit. Yer ol’ pal Uncle Grumpyfuk is going to take a little hiatus and tackle a little comedic B-movie of some note that contains many questionable historical facts and references. Yes Uncle Grumpyfuk is going to review “Roots” …and ah, my M80s just arrived!
Hey Gang, it’s The Primal Root here and I am very proud to announce our Devil Girl for the Month of November, Scarlett Vixen! One of The Trash Cinema Collective’s very first supporters, Scarlett is making her Devil Girl debut here. However, having personally witnessed her creativity, enthusiasm and being right at home in front of the camera, I have a feeling this will not be the last we hear from this particular Devil Girl. Please, check out our good friend, Ms. Vixen’s photo spread and be sure to give her a warm welcome to The Devil Girls.
Stay Trashy!
-Root
a quick word with Scarlett Vixen, our Devil girl of the Month
Primal Root: Scarlet, what was your inspiration for your Devil Girl spread?
Scarlett: Carrie has always been one of my favorite horror films and I have always wanted to do a sexy photo shoot with blood.
Primal Root: Do you have any other favorite Trashy movies? What are you into? Tell us a little about yourself.
Scarlett: ‘Switchblade Sisters’ and the ‘Highlander’. I’m addicted to tattoos and piercings, zombies, Batman, Rocky Horror Picture Show and Nightmare Before Christmas. Im a single mother of 2 adorable munchkins ages 18 months old and 4 years old.
