mean |

Posts Tagged ‘mean

Apr

Evil Dead (2013): If You Want Blood…

Categories: Evil Dead (2013)
Tags: addiction, arm, arms, basement, Betty ford, blood, Bruce Campbell, bruning, burn, cabin, car wreck, Cat, cats, cellar, chainsaw, chop, chopped, creature, dark, dead, death, defibrillator primal, demon, demons, diablo cody, drugs, electric knife, Elizabeth Blackmore, emo, evil, Evil dead, Fede Alvarez, fire, flesh, Florida, foresst, Gore, graphic, gritty, hand, heroine, horror, Jane Levy, Jessica Lucas, Lou Taylor Pucci, mean, movie, murder, nasty, Necronomicon, nightmare, possession, possesssed, puke, rain, rape, rehab, rehabilitation, reimagining, Remake, review, Root, sad, Sam Raimi, scary, serious, Shiloh Fernandez, shovel, spirit, splatter, syringe, Tallahassee, Terror, vomit, weak, woods, written

“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.

Stay Trashy!

-Root

Dec

Rotten Reviews Episode 27: Home Sweet Home

By primalroot Leave a Comment

Categories: Ep. 27: Home Sweet Home
Tags: 1981, 2012, 2013, 80's, 81, abortion, acoustic, actress, ambiguous, b, b-movie, bad, balls, ballsack, blood, body builder, body by jake, boobarians, boobs, botched, bra, breasts, Charles Hoyes, child, christmas, cinema, cleavage, cock block, Colette Trygg, comedy, cops, crappy, crazy, David Mielke, dinner, Don Edmonds, dumb, DVD, electric, electrified, family, film, flick, Florida, friend, friends, gathering, Gore, gross, guitar, guts, Hammett, holiday, home, Home Sweet Home, horrible, horror, house, insane, inventive, Jake Steinfeld, Jew, Jewish, jugs, Kevin Cole, killer, kills, knife, language, Lisa Rodriguez, mean, mime, mistake, movie, murder, murderer, musician, nasty, Nettie, Nettie Pena, new year's, NSFW, party, peas, performance, Peter de Paula, poison, poor, primal, psychopath, psychopathic, rental, review, Root, rotten, Sallee Young, Scrotar, scrotum, sex, shot, slash, Slasher in the House, Spanish, splatter, stab, steak, store, suicide, sweat, sweaty, Tallahassee, terrible, the primal root, Thomas Bush, tits, topless, Trash, trash cinema collective, trashmas, Turkey, unintentional humor, unplugged, up and coming, VHS, video, video 21, Vinessa Shaw, Vordan, warrior, women, Young

Hey Gang!

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!

Stay Trashy!

-Root

Dec

Silent Night: Dreaming of a Schlock Christmas

By primalroot Leave a Comment

Categories: Silent Night (2012)
Tags: 12, 2012, abuse, antlers, axe, bad, balls, battle, blood, blow job, boobs, break, breasts, Brendan Fehr, burn, Canada, child, children, christmas, Christmas Eve, church, cinema, cold, collective, Cortney Palm, crime, Deadly Night, death, deputy, disguise, dismember, Donal Logue, DVD, electricution, Ellen Wong, Eve, flame, flamethrower, Florida, garbage day, gifts, Gore, grandpa, grandson, graphic, gruesome, holiday, horny, horror, illness, impalement, investigation, jail, Jaime King, Jayson Rothwell, Jessica Cameron, kid, kill, killer, law enforcement, legend, lights, limited release, Lisa Marie, Malcolm Mcdowell, Maniac, mask, mass, massacre, mean, mean spirited, mental, messy, molestation, money, murder, mystery, naked, New, Noel, nudity, nuts, parade, photo shoot, pick-axe, police, presents, priest, primal, prison, procedural, red herring, Remake, Root, santa, Santa Claus, scene, schlock, Season, sex, sheriff, sick, Silent Night, slaughter, small town, snow, splatter, spree, Steven C. Miller, suspect, Tallahassee, tazer, testicles, the primal root, tits, torture, Trash, Trauma, tree, ugly, urban, USA, video, video 21, warning, woodchipper, yuel tide

a Primal Root review

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.

Stay Trashy!

-Root

Nov

Uncle Grumpyfuk Remembers ‘The Undertaker and His Pals’!

By primalroot Leave a Comment

Categories: The Undertaker and His Pals
Tags: 1966, 60's, 66, acid, blood, bondage, butcher, cannibalisim, cannibals, cheap, cinema, coffin, collective, creepers, creepy, crime, cult, death, diner, disembowelment, dissolve, eating, evidence, exploitation, favorite, fence, Florida, food, freaky, friends, fuck, funderal, funny, Gore, grind, grinder, grindhouse, gross, Grumpy, Grumpyfuk, guts, hamburger, hilarious, his, home, horror, impale, investigation, James Westmoreland, kill, killer, killers, low budget, mean, meat, melt, morgue, motorcycle, murder, murderer, nasty, pals, parlor, psycho, psychopath, Ray Dannis, sexy, skeleton, something, stab, stabbing, stalk, stalkers, stalking, swicegood, T.L.P. Swicegood, Tallahassee, Trash, Uncle, Undertaker, Warren Ott, weird

Uncle Grumpyfuk Remembers…

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!

Aug

Uncle Grumpyfuk Remembers ‘The Sadist’

By primalroot Leave a Comment

Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: 1963, 60's, 63, Arch Hall, blood, budget, car, cinema, collective, crippled, Dodgers, Don Russell, exploitation, girlfriend, Helen Hovey, horror, James Landis, Jr, Los Angeles, low, Marilyn Manning, mean, psycho, Richard Alden, Sadist, school, sociopath, thriller, Trash, trouble, Uncle Grumpyfuk, Vilmos Zsigmond, William Zsigmond

A Review by Uncle Grumpyfuk

Ahem,cough,cough,haaaack, fa-thoo!!! Aht-heh-hem…and I call to order to this month’s meeting of the fellowship of the Enormously-Endowed Blonde-haired Blue-eyed Vegan-Hatin’, Cop-Car Vandalizing, Chicken Hawk Purple Dragon Society of middle-upper Mississippi- otherwise known as ‘Big Brothers’, wink! I’d like to open with …hey! …SHUT THE FUCK UP YOU LOUSY SCRODUM-SUCKERS, take her to one of your rooms if you can’t wait! There’s a large bottle of roofinal by the anchovy ambrosia …heh, boys WILL be boys! lol ..and.. a warm, sunny new day begins my friends! To one’s mind instantly spring the lyrics from that ‘classic’ (tragic!) animated movie(*), by that McCarthy-lovin’ finger-pointing rat-bastard whose head appropriately lies cracked and frost bitten in some innovative con artist’s fucking Igloo cooler!(**)

High high ho, it’s off to work you go,
so sell that snatch I need some scratch,
then on your feet and down the street,
high-ho, high-ho,high-ho, high-ho, high-ho,
it’s back to work you go,
so find a trick and work that dick,
stick up that ass and make it fast,
I need some dough to buy my grass,
High ho, high ho,high ho, high ho, high ho,
your flabby ass in tow,
go work those Spics and do your tricks,
pick up that pace or I’ll let that crazy-ass zombie-wannabe motherfucker eat your face,(***)
high ho, high ho, high ho,high ho…

(*)You know the ‘children’s classic’ I’m talking about, about the beautiful virtuous raven-haired, porcelin-skinned Queen who was tricked and murdered most foully by the devious and meddling runaway princess, with the help of the 7 gargantuan-choaded midgets she’d shacked up with and whored herself out to for their cooperation..that…that shameless young jezebel whom the Queen had adopted through the kind charity of her generous heart, who had given the little trollop everything in the world to make her happy- a brand new scrub-mop and shiny new pail, a sweet smelling oil rag and as much luxurious lye soap as any young maiden could have wanted, to clean the rancid piss-puddled floors of the dank and ancient castle, only to be betrayed in the end by the little walking yeast infection! Yes my friends, the filthy ungrateful peasantry, always conspiring against their superior and generous benefactors, ultimately dragging them down in a bloody fit of lice-ridden animal rage, invading their crystal palaces, fouling the pristine and sweetly-scented air with the gut-wrenching stench of breaded buffalo wings, 5-hour energy drinks and anything on the Hardees menu list you care to name, destroying all, leaving a bare and ravaged wasteland where once stood the lofty towers and glittering accomplishments of their poor, former slave-masters. Typical liberals.

(**) Shit, I wish I’d thought of that ingenious scam – milking bereaving loved ones out of gobs of dough on a continual basis for lopping off the heads of their recently-croaked loved ones and tossing them into a dressed up Frigidaire for the fantasy of their being thawed in the future for something other than food! Ha! Fuck me it’s downright brilliant! I could be richer than Whitney Huston’s coke dealer, (ah it’s old news now,don’t even try) and be pissing on Walt Disney’s frozen and cracked fucking snitch-head every morning along with my hot chai and smoked mullet biscuits!!! Sometimes it almost seems like the shit-eating universe doesn’t appreciate you one little bit, you feelin’ me? Sigh,thanks.

(***) DAMN IT!!! I am so fucking beside myself, that should have been me eating that homeless dude’s face! That should have been ME!!! Now it’s old hat! Shit!!!
…yes sir, that’s what kind of beautiful Spring day it is today! why just listen to my cat and the neighbor’s fucking underneath their window! It makes you want to grab the digital camera and head down to Orlando to Nickelodeon Studios,yessir!
Well today we’re going to be reviewing another classic piece of cinematic wonder,few seem to know about this gem, makes you want to get a shotgun and ‘take ‘out’ one of their loved ones to teach’em a little lesson,you know what I mean? Heh-heh, just joking folks, there are much better reasons to do that. Wink! This month’s review is of the Arch Hall Jr. classic, “The Sadist” or ” My Nephew Timmy” – Heh, that’s a little inside joke folks, Timmy’s been in the Little/Big House since he was 7 for stabbing his 2nd grade teacher in the liver(*) with his No.2 Squidbilly pencil for not giving Tim a ‘B’ on his report card, and here he’d told that scumbag what would happen otherwise. People just don’t take young children seriously,you’d think a teacher would know better. Yep,after that and that series of pet mutilations -you all remember- from a while back, that bitch judge sent him to juvie until he became ‘of age’,but he’s gonna git her, don’t you worry folks! He’s been taught what to do! He aaalmost escaped last July damn it, would have made it if he’d smashed that prison guard fuck a few more times but,eager youth, he saw a cat at the edge of the woods and off he went like an arrow,what can you do? Ha, I miss that little scamp…aaanyway!
(*) I taught him that one,yes I did! That rascal always was a quick learner- nevermind what the teachers said about him! Just remember, ‘Right side – liver, makes the pecker quiver, left side’s the kidney, uh, …I don’t know, makes you want to move to Sydney.’ Hell I’m no fucking poet! Fuck you, he got the gist of it! Jesus Christ!

OK, I tend to digress a tad at times, excusem-fucking-wah! Ahem. Ok, the film begins with a pair of eyes, illuminated in the darkness and a chilling voice claims, “I will hurt them. I will make them suffer as I have suffered.” and we naturally assume it’s an episode of Biography featuring Mel Gibson or Andy Richter ,but you notice quickly the eyes aren’t the dark subhuman eyes of an Aussie criminal nor are they the repulsive, tiny evil porcine eyes of uh..Andy Richter , they are in fact the bright and maniacal peepers of our hero and the protagonist of this film Arch Hall Jr., son of Arch Hall Sr.(go figure!) who directed several films, trying unsuccessfully to make the fruit of his gonads a star. Such a waste that people just didn’t catch on – but homo sapiens suck each other’s crusty anal cauliflower so what a fucking surprise,right? Oi. The narrator explains that ‘a sadist is one of the most disruptive elements in society,taking pleasure in the enslavement and debasement of his fellow man.’, heh, and still we allow a group of them to play reruns of Kate and Allie without releasing our shared rage upon them. Fools.

Alternate poster art under the title ‘Sweet Baby Charlie’

The credits end and the first act opens with a sputtering old car pulling into an isolated junkyard/ repair shop out in the desert in the middle of nowhere, heh-heh-heh, perfect. Then we learn, how’s this for a sweet little touch- they’re all school teachers,eh-heh, eh-heh-heh-heh-heh! There are two men and a totally humpable ditsy blonde who really plays up the innocent virginal angle so that you just want to throw her down on all fours,rip that cheap Penny’s dress to shreds and attack that ol’ browneye like a rabid gibbon, and then you know what comes next! That’s right, tea with lemon. Ha, some tissues for the ladies usher, those panties are dripping already! Whoo! As Courtney Love once sang,and that’s using the term loosely; ”Oo-oooh that smell!”( ‘…is grossing me out, someone hit my yawning box with some freaking Lysol already!’) Anyway, teachers, heh, priceless,but this is a childrens’ educational film so you want to make it fun for the kiddies, right? Sure we do!

The older male member of our endangered educators looks like Eugene Levy’s dad so we’ll call him Papa Jewb, get it? Ah-ha-ha-ha!! …hey,that’s a Hills Have Eyes refference you lousy racist fucks! What is this world coming to people? Fucking Pollacks. Now, the younger macho teacher looks like a llama so we’ll call him Crunchy, and we’ll refer to the porkable female math teacher as Bjork who also has that similar rimmable quality, and because we’d also like to throw Bjork down on all fours and..but I repeat myself. How do you say “I am so very sore!” in Martian, or wherever that shrieking imp comes from? Anyway, the trio looks around for the proprietors but can’t seem to locate anyone, and we’re allowed to see a clue they missed – the phone chord was torn out of the wall, known as step 3 to the knowing. After searching they decide to find a spare part,fix the car and leave the money on the table like good little school teachers. Snort,they’ve got it coming to them! ..but you know, that’s how it was back then, Uncle Grumpyfuk remembers, folks would leave their houses open and unlocked on a hot day, no ac back then unless you had money. You’d even leave the house like that when you went out to eat or somewhere because no one would break in and put your pets in the George Foreman Rotisserie Grill, to think of it nowadays, all of those unguarded plums,sitting ripe for the picking, just like after Katrina!! You sometimes start to drool just thinking about it.
After Crunchy finds a car with a compatible part Papa Jewb looks around in the house and finds still-warm meals on the table. He goes back to tell the others, then, we see a .45 auto being raised. Oh yes boys and girls, it’s party time.

There, standing gun in hand is our hero of the film, Arch Hall Jr. and his ravishing and hauntingly silent girlfriend, the dark and mysterious Judy. Cash tells Crunchy to continue fixing the car and has a little fun spooking the trio with the .45, you know, just fucking with their heads a little. (wink!) He takes Papa Jewb’s wallet and gives him a little tap on the noggin for having so little cash, then Papa Jewb does a very foolish thing, he lets on that they’re all school teachers! Can you believe it?!? Bing bong, big wrong! In response Arch gives him a slightly more substantial tap on the noggin and smashes ol’ ‘teach’ a good one across the temple and down he goes. Little Jimmy would be so proud, someone just might find a pirated copy of this film in his Christmas stocking, to share with the other juvies! Ho,ho,ho!

Arch then does the Zombie Stomp on Bjork’s purse and hands it to Judy who gleefully rifles through it, the little cutie! Ah youth. Bjork asks for some water, pretending it’s for Papa Jewb (but she’s just thirsty) so Arch,after handing the pistol to Judy, gallantly escorts her to the well to fetch a pail of wah-ter. Bjork cops an attitude however so Arch dutifully casts her in the dirt and rubs her face around in it a little, you know, to teach her a little proper respect for a psychotic gun-weilding maniac, I mean jeez people, for educators these folks just ain’t too bright! Bjork, fortunately, responds quite favorably! Good to see a man who knows how to handle a woman with an attitude, and a woman who knows to stay in her place when put there – the shade of John Wayne smiles and continues to give the shade of Heath Ledger a good ol’ ‘cowpoke’,side-saddle…get it?!? Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Oh man I kill me…fuck I hope Tommy Morrison doesn’t!

At this point something simply must be said of Arch Hall Jr’s fantastic acting throughout. He plays the giggling psycho-killer just…just perfectly, like a true sociopath, and his leering and heckling of the trio is just superb! Bravisimo!!! ..and his laugh! His laugh has a truly wonderful unhinged quality like a mix of a young Bruce Dern, a moderately medicated Danny Bonaduce, and Butthead. (I made it my ringtone! I relish in the uncomfortable glances I receive. Life is fun!)
After returning to the others Crunchy commit’s another bungle in a long list of dumbass moves and lets on that he knows Arch is really Charlie Tibbs, a thrill killer on the run from the fuzz…remind me again how these people became teachers! Arch just about goes balistic when Judy whispers something to him and Arch turns his attention back to Papa Jewb, telling him to get down on his knees and we think woo-woo! ..but instead of the ‘purty mouth’ comment we’re expecting next Arch just starts to laugh and laugh with that great disturbed timbre, like that of a nasty disgusting retard who sees something it percieves as ‘funny’ ,like a phone book, or Mel Gibson reacting to that great bit about the 5 Kikes and the Mau-mau! (That IS a good one! “..so shove that up your fucking lemon tree Mustafa!” Ha-ha-ha! Mercy!

Anyway Arch informs the trembling teacher that his life is going to last no longer than the grape Nehi he’s gulping down. The guilty memories of a thousand confiscated love letters, pocket knives, small explosives and condoms rush forward in the mind of the helpless educator and it seems the cosmic whodawhatsits just isn’t playing ball with him today! Papa Jewb begs and wallows and crawls and sobs (I think he wallowed the best) in front of Arch and Judy,to their total amusement, just asking for it all the more. Meanwhile Bjork and Crunchy, limp with relief at not being chosen, play it up nonetheless. Arch offers the opportunity to take Papa Jewb’s place and they promptly tell him “Fuck that!” You can’t blame them, survival of the fittest,right! Then, the last sip, Nehi all gone! Uh-oh, Spagettios! ..and with sheer delight Arch plants some lead right between Papa Jewb’s eyes, point blank, and if you listen closely as his lifeless body hits the ground, he farts. Class dismissed..permanently! Pure hilarity! Once again, bra-vo! Crunchy and Bjork congradulate themselves.

While Arch and Judy chow down on some of the dead property owner’s pie and another Nehi, Bjork babbles on and on and Crunchy, realizing what a fucking ditz she is, inform her of the fact and of the additional fact that they are totally fucked. Crunchy then thinks of another inept plan and tries to get Arch to unwittingly let on how much ammo is left in his pistol, but detecting the ruse Arch goes one better, fires the gun then challenges Crunchy to attack, claiming the gun may be empty! Crunchy however tucks and chickens out,then Arch shows him the gun was out of ammo! Ha! That really had to singe Crunchy’s nut-sack hair, eh folks!

Suddenly the background silence is broken by the roar of two motorcycle engines and as Judy keeps guard Arch walks out front to find a pair of motorcycle cops. He plays it cool and bluffs them good, pretending to be a friend of the family, then Judy and Bjork start to fight over a bottle of Charlie and as the cops turn towards the ruckus Arch pulls out Mr. 45 and Bang!Bang! he takes them both out lickety split, easy as pie! ..and he’d just had some pie! Ha! Now that’s ironic comedy folks! He and Judy climb aboard the motorcycles and play and frolic over the dead bodies of the slain pigs, the little rapscallions!

They go back to the car and Arch tells Crunchy to continue fixing the pump. Bjork and Crunchy try helplessly to come up with a plan, they totally fail of course when back luck strikes! Crunchy manages to spray Arch in the eyes with some gas,dirty pool! He and Bjork take off like jackrabbits and, here’s the saddest part of the film, as Arch staggers around blindly firing he vaguely makes out a figure running up and shoots Judy! Fuck! No! Arch lets out a truly admirable scream of sorrow and primal rage and sets off to find the cursed couple and exact a Klingon’s revenge upon their mortal bodies. We can hardly wait!
Bjork meanwhile finds what she thinks is a possible refuge but stumbles upon the bloody corpses of the property owners and ‘Peow!’ makes like the friggin Roadrunner and takes off down the dirt road without a backward glance or thought for Crunchy’s sorry ass!

Crunchy’s luck isn’t so swell however and he finds himself cornered with Arch and Mr. 45,but as he raises his pistol to dispatch the pussy teacher the hammer falls on an empty chamber! Out of bullets! Crunch emits a bleat of fear and desperation and charges and we think “Arch, look out!” but Arch quickly reloads and plants two shots into the oncoming shmuck. As Crunchy lays dying and crying Arch smiles and puts three more slugs in him, ha-ha, yeah! Buh-bye Crunchy, we hardly cared to know ye. Two down, one to go!

Arch takes off after Bjork who leads him on a merry chase and you have to be impressed. She kicked off her shoes earlier and has been hauling ass all over the fucking desert barefooted and you think, shit, she might take to being thrown down on all fours and …you never know! Yep,it’s those quiet reserved types that turn into wanton animals when put in the proper environment, or chains! …like a rabid gibbon! Woo! She sprints all over the place with Arch hot on her heels suddenly he veers away from her path to intercept her when again, tragedy occurs! As he runs Arch falls into a concealed well which now seconds as a flop-house for diamondback rattlers! Oh no!!! Arch throws a shit-fit and tries to fight them off but to no avail as several sink their venomous fangs into his hide, he lets out one more agonized scream and succumbs to the poison while Bjork, hearing his cry, says “Fuck you Charlie!” (and his name IS Charlie, ha!) and heads down the road, once again just like the Roadrunner kids. Beep,beep! The End.

Let this story be a lesson about procrastination children, if Arch and Judy had simply slain Papa Jewb and Bjork right off the bat, made Crunchy fix the car then killed him,they’d be off in another state with the car before the bodies were ever found, enjoying a much longer spree of mischeif, mayhem and murderlation! Don’t forget!

Ol’ Uncle Grumpyfuk is outta here kids, Saturday morning kiddie show time, as Pete Townsend wrote “The Kids Are All Right and The Little Boys Are Oh So Scrumptious!” Bye!

Jun

God Bless America (2011): Aiming for The Dream

By primalroot Leave a Comment

Categories: God Bless America (2011)
Tags: 11, 16, 2011, Alice Cooper, America, American Idol, atlanta, blood, bloodlust, Bobcat Goldthwait, Bonnie, buddy, cinema, Clyde, collective, comedy, deadly, death, depressing, destruction, diner, Disneyland, disturbed, divorce, drive-by, extremisim, extremist, Florida, friend, friends, georgia, giddy, God Bless, Gore, greasy, gross, headaches, high school, hilarious, honest, horror, independent, indie, infant, Joel Murray, kill, killing, kind, mean, mentor, middle age, migraine, movie, murder, murderous, nasty, office, Plaza, popculture, pretty, primal, Primal Root, punishment, reality, review, roadtrip, Root, rotten, rude, sad, satire, sexual harassement, shooting, shot, sick, single, sixteen, slay, slaying, spoon, suicidal, suicide, Tallahassee, tampon, Tara Lynne Barr, teen, teenager, television, tension, theater, thrift, TMZ, tragic, Trash, truth, TV, ugly, vengeance, wish, work

a Primal Root written review

God Bless America (2011): Aiming for The Dream

I haven’t had cable television in over a decade. I refuse to pay for something that every time I flip it on I feel as if my brain is steadily being churned into chunky apple sauce. This is not to say that I don’t know what’s on there. On occasion, I have sat and witnessed what most of our nation happily plops down and allows to be broadcast into our living rooms every evening. You know, for the entire family to enjoy. Let’s just say, it’s mildly disturbing. What are the repercussions of such resignation on our society? A world where our entire culture and society is saturated with celebrity gossip, ugly, degrading reality television, and political pundits who would rather preach hate and intolerance than have an intelligent and respectful discussion?

Bobcat Goldthwait’s latest directorial effort, “God Bless America”, takes on this disheartening concept in the form of a deeply dark, satirical comedy. It’s got something for everyone who’s sick of the “Oh, no, you didn’t!” generation that’s grown up planted on a couch, glued to the screen, all but lobotomized, and no longer concerned with discerning thought, open-mindedness, respect, common courtesy, or even kindness. It’s a generation of people who demand respect, but don’t give it in return, who demand to be heard but refuse to listen, who know they come first and the rest of the world just doesn’t fucking matter. Of course, this is a “fictional” world that our protagonist, Frank, inhabits, right? A middle aged, middle class, divorced parent who also happens to be a war veteran. He must deal with his obnoxious neighbors who don’t seem to mind their 24/7/365 wailing infant, and talk loudly and incessantly (over their screaming offspring) about occurrences on their favorite TV shows and the latest gossip on Bradgelina.

Frank is aware of this drought in the human spirit. That we have sold it for a fast food and soulless culture that worships greed and selfishness over compassion and selflessness. Frank sits in his living room flipping through the channels as photoshopped pictures of President Obama dressed up as Adolf Hitler are promoted as some kind of warped sense of reality, a random, class-act reality TV star pulls out her bloody tampon and angrily splats it across the face of her costar who, I can only assume, crossed her (the details of their quarrel are lost among beeped-out dialogue). It’s a sick, sad world Frank lives in. And not even he ever-cool “Daria” kind. To make matters worse, Frank has just lost his job, been informed he has an inoperable, fatal brain tumor growing in his noggin, and his pre-teen daughter refuses to come visit him flipping her shit over receiving a Blackberry instead of an iPhone for her birthday.

Frank can’t take it anymore, but just as he wraps his lips around the barrel of a Glock the blue light of the television screen spills over him. ”My Super Sweet 16″ is on and an entitled high schooler is cursing and berating her parents in a self-righteous rage after she is presented with a top o’ the line vehicle that is NOT the one she had envisioned. Frank comes to the epiphany that the gun he’s holding is pointed in the wrong direction. Our hero ends up on a road trip to off the outrageous brat he blames for his own daughter’s (and the general world’s) ridiculously selfish behavior. However, he, also, winds up inspiring and being inspired by a teenage girl, Roxy, who’s just as disillusioned and angry at the egomaniacally brain-dead society they are forced to abide. Or are they? They lock, load, and go on a rampage laying waste to those assholes who talk and text during movies, jerks who take up two full parking spaces, and hate mongers who stand at the side of the road holding signs declaring “God Hates Fags”. Frank and Roxy gun them down and mow them over with glee. I can’t help but chuckle at the carnage as these people are decimated and punished for being a part of a “civilization that is no longer interested in being civilized”.

As is the case with Bobcat’s previous work, God Bless America will have you laughing with dark revelry as those who make everyday life a constant struggle finally mess with with the wrong nice guy. Also typical of Bobcat, despite the deeply-etched satirical pitch-black edge, the filmmaker manages to imbue this work with genuine, human emotion, poignancy, and thought-provoking pathos. Joel Murray, the instantly recognizable character, is amazing as Frank. He infuses the role with so much heart and believability that you cannot help but root for the guy, whether due to or despite his impressive body count. Roxy,Tara Lynne Barr, as Frank’s young sidekick and voice of the younger generation is a firecracker, a natural whose sassy, fun performance, keeps the film well-paced and peppy.

God Bless America is a sometimes graphic, often profane and funny for most of its running time. However, by film’s end it starts to register that this is the same violent and malicious motivation that drives those who blow up abortion clinics or lynch people because of the color of their skin. The killers we profess to despise believe they are murdering those “who deserve to die” too, right? The first 45 minutes of God Bless America starts out blazingly funny as it lampoons pop culture and society at large, but as it winds to a close the viewer may begin to wonder, have both Frank and Roxy steadily descended into the mean-spirited people they were trying to destroy? God Bless America is hilarious, tragic, sometimes uncomfortable, frequently challenging, and totally uncompromising. It’s the kind of film that doesn’t come around very often, anymore. One that asks some nasty questions, takes an angry stance, and asks the audience to internalize these things. That they sincerely ask themselves just what the fuck they make of it all.

And keep your eyes peeled for TV’s Frank from MST3K in a brief cameo. Guck-Ga-Yuuuuw!

Stay Trashy!

-Root

Jun

Dead Girl: June Devil Girl of the Month 2012! (NSFW)

By primalroot 1 Comment

Categories: Devil Girl June 2012: Dead Girl
Tags: 12, 2012, Archduke Kogwheal, armed, beautiful, bed, bedroom, black, call, called, car, Christina Lindberg, cinema, collective, confident, Cruel, Dead Girl. Dead, devil, exploitation, Eye, eye-patch, featured, feisty, Florida, girl, gorgeous, grindhouse, Her, homage, june, lady, lovely, mean, month, naked, nude, nudity, one, panties, photo, photos, Picture, Pictures, powerful, reclined, red, red light, Revenge, seductive, sexy, Shotgun, smirk, spread, Tallahassee, tease, They, thriller, topless, toy, Trash, vehicle, woman

Hey Gang, after a lengthy hiatus it is my honor to reintroduce the popular and ridiculously well received Devil Girls Project! Showcasing a fun, sexy, photo spread from one of our awesome Trash Cinema Collective Members (Hey, Devil Boys, where you at?) every month! And who better to bring the project back to life than our original Devil Girl who graced our blog when we first began this project, Dead Girl! And what an outstanding set it is! Paying homage not only to one of our favorite films at The Collective “Thriller: A Cruel Picture” aka: “They Call Her One Eye” but also to one of exploitation cinema’s most adored actresses and models, Ms. Christina Lindberg. Kick back and enjoy Dead Girl’s awe inpiring new photo spread and REJOICE! For The Devil Girls are back!

Stay Trashy

-Root

May

Gorotica: Coldcocked (1993)

By primalroot Leave a Comment

Categories: Gorotica (1993)
Tags: 1990's, 1993, 90's, 93, AIDS, armed, bad, bath, beating, big, black, blood, boobs, Brady Debussey, break, breaking, breasts, Bushrude Gutterman, cadaver, cemetery, chains, chase, cigarettes, cinema, cloves, collective, comedy, content, cops, corpse, creepy, crime, cult, dead, detective, diamond, diamonds, Dingo Jones, direct, dirty, dominatrix, Draculina, drunk, erotica, find, freak, freaky, fresh, frontal, fuck, fucking, full, gasoline, Ghetty Chasun, glasses, Gore, Gore Whore, gorgasm, Gorotica, goth, gothic, graphic, guns, guts, hard, heist, hermit, hilarious, HIV, horror, huge, Hugh Gallagher, idea, illegal, in, independent, ingest, jewel, kill, killing, kinky, Law, laws, leather, market, masturbation, mean, metal, mistake, mohawk, molestation, murder, naked, nasty, necropheliac, necrophilia, nipple, nipples, nudity, occult, officer, old, out, panic, penetration, penis, photos, pierced, piercing, police, positive, primal, punk, rape, rare, rat, rats, Revenge, review, robbers, robbery, rock, Root, rotten, sadomasochism, Sawyer, scene, school, scrotum, sex, sexual, shades, shitty, shoot, shot, shower, shut, sick, situation, skull, smoke, smoking, spirited, store, swallow, taboo, terrible, tits, Trash, trashy, tub, twisted, unintentional, vagina, VHS, video, violence, weapon, weapons, whips

a Primal Root review

Ah, yes, after scraping the glorious dregs of the Trash Cinema dumpster and coming up with 1990′s “Gorgasm: The Ultimate Climax”, it is time we move on to Hugh Gallagher’s 1993 second installment in the much maligned, enjoyed by some, despised by other, Gore Trilogy entitled “Gorotica!” Get ready, gang, cause this one’s going to leave you feeling a little dirtier than our last flick, if you can believe it.

“Gorotica” spins the tale of two band mates, Neil (Dingo Jones) and Max (Bushrude Gutterman), who pull an armed diamond heist in order to score the funds necessary to send their band to California in the hopes of making it big! It’s a really shitty plan. Max has sold Neil on it, but being a leatherclad, crappy guitar-playing punk rock kid in your late 20′s, your whole life is more or less defined by a long string of shitty moves and really stupid decisions. So why not orchestrate a diamond heist so you can move to California for your already flaccid music career?

Speaking of The Grateful Dead…

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Before the action even gets going, “Gorotica’s” opening sequence features Carrie (Ghetty Chasun), a curvy, pierced up, well endowed goth chick, as she lays in bed watching a compilation of still shots of dead bodies at various crime scenes and masturbating. Sure, this all seems normal, that is until she pulls a skull out from under her bed and rubs it up and down against her exposed vagina. I watched this as a kid and had the distinct feeling this was actually how goth girls who never grew out of it spent their time. As I got older, I came to realize I wasn’t that far off. It’s only after Carrie has shown off her ample bongos, tried to shove a skull up her love tunnel, and knocked a totally different skull off the top of her television set with her intense, rhythmic, masturbatory gyrations & gushing climax, do our credits begin to roll!

Opening Credits by Atari

Alright, so we first meet pseudoheroes Neil and Max post robbery as they run down a dark alley, stop to catch their breath, and discuss what their next move should be. Seeing as they robbed the store in their every day attire, you know, torn jeans, plaid shirts, leather jackets and ratty haircuts, the police know just who to look for. Hell, the morons didn’t even wear fucking masks when they robbed the place! So, it stands to reason that Max would come up with the idea of swallowing the fist sized diamond they stole for safe keeping and chase with half a handle of bourbon. I don’t even want to imagine what Max’s poor sphincter will be going through when that girl’s best friend passes the threshold. The depressing concoction of blood, tears, and shit is never something I like to comprehend, let alone experience in anyway.

Thankfully, we never have to see this happen as some police officer happens down the exact same alley demanding the two young men freeze. Max pulls out a gun and he and copper exchange warm bullet welcomes, rendering both cop & kid as flat-liners. The police officer dies instantly from his gut shot while Max, on the other hand, survives but is left in critical condition which means we get the pleasure of hearing him whine and groan for the next several minutes as Neil enters a comic relief sequence where he steals a drunk old man’s car. The comic scene plays out like a when you try to fart in order to make someone laugh and then you realize it was a lot wetter than you anticipated and you’ve now shit yourself. It goes from funny to tragic in less than a second. Yeah, it’s that kind of failure.

Gotta look good for those dead bodies I’m gonna be digging up this mid-afternoon!

So, Neil heads off to the local cemetery with his newly dead band mate to lay low for a little bit, and maybe catch a few well-deserved Zzz’s. But guess who happens to be there… SURPRISE! SURPRISE! It’s Carrie! Who has come to the cemetery after an extensively gratuitous make-up sequence, which is obviously just an excuse for the filmmakers to showcase her supernaturally giant knockers, in order to gather some fresh stiffs to fuck. As luck would have it this star-crossed love triangle crosses paths and Carrie introduces herself to the hot and cold duo, Neil and Max, and the rest is history. She offers Neil a place to hide and stash Max’s body for a bit until he sorts things out. I mean, it’s mighty neighborly of Carrie but the fact that Neil isn’t immediately weirded out is a little sad to me. But, again, this guy doesn’t seem to be firing on all cylinders so I guess we can just use that as his excuse.

That a dead guy in your bucket seat or are you just happy to see me?

As soon as Carrie and Neil get to her place and they drop off Max’s body in her bathtub, Neil gets on the horn and contacts his connection, Miss Miles, who set the plan for this whole half-baked heist motion and promised cold, hard cash if they brought her the ice. Course, now that there’s a dead cop in the mix and Captain Bumblefuck is on the FBI’s shit list this ice is now “too hot”, so the situation’s changed a bit. Neil heads out on foot and runs afoul of some very angry police officers looking for his “cop killing ass”. He is held at gunpoint by one officer in civilian garb whose face spastically alters moment to moment like some kind of rodent on speed. The mustache is the icing on his ballistic cake.

This officer’s most dignified facial expression.

However, Neil gets the drop on the two cops by using his patented “Flying Rat” method! As the popo flings Neil into a pile of garbage he retaliates by grabbing some poor, bystander rat and slings the littler dumpster diver at one of the cops! Eat Temptleton, pigs!! And this… works? In terror, the cop discharges his weapon which, luckily, finds purchase right between the eyes of his fellow law enforcement pal. Neil quickly draws his weapon firing several slugs into the gutty works of rodent boy who drops to the piss soaked asphalt and fades into B-movie heaven. Good night, sweet prince! You know, for being so unlucky Neil sure is lucky…Wait a minute…

It’s hard out here for a punk.

While Neil is off getting his face bashed in and throwing rats all over the joint, Carrie is back at her abode fucking the living daylights…er, what’s left of the daylights, out of dear, departed, Max. She undresses his body in the shower and gets to work grabbing his pale arms and caressing herself with them and puppeting his fingers to pinch her nipples. If you ask me, this just seems like some really labor-intensive masturbation. I mean, really, for all the effort of moving the fucking corpse appendages and waiting for rigor mortis to settle in the damn thing’s sausage link you could be done already by just using YOUR OWN APPENDAGES to get this shit done. But, what do I know, I’ve only dabbled in necrophilia. I’m sure once it’s blossomed from experimentation to a serious, full blown addiction, your own touch just doesn’t cut it, anymore. No matter how much ice cold water you soak them in beforehand, the vag just ain’t buyin it.

Necrophilia: Not as easy as it looks.

Anyhoo, after the marathon cold-cut fuck session, Carrie decides to put that almost-cosmetology license to good use and treats Max’s corpse to mohawk makeover. All of a sudden, a bruised-up Neil busts in and is soon unnerved by his lady harborer’s glee that,”He’s starting to stiffen up! All the really good parts! *tee-HEE*” After a brief, one-sided discussion on Neil’s part explaining just how fucked his situation is and how events have “snowballed” he goes off to the crusty living room couch to crash. Carrie, on the other hand, takes the Maxcadaver to bed with her and discusses her family history with him while smoking Pall Malls, then deciding it’s time for another lengthy deep dicking of the dead. Well, damn. I guess it DOES pay to just sit and listen. Neil tries to drown out the disturbingly loud & squishy goth girl necrophiliac noises with couch cushions, firmly deciding,”When I die, I better be fucking cremated!” Because, yeah, heaven for-fucking-bid some gorgeously breasted babe makes use of your body once you’ve departed. I mean, what the hell do you care? Like you’re really doing anything better with it!

Something for the ladies! And the smokers!

The next morning Neil wakes up to find Carrie moving Max’s body out of the apartment. Ummmm… Seems she has other plans for his rotting flesh. It goes without saying, Neil has a bit of an issue with this seeing as in his buddy’s cold, punctured gut sits that gigantic rock that’s the difference between living life on the lam, soaking up some sun in Kokomo or life on the lam bunking in a nicotine stained, musty apartment with a corpse fucker. They get into a bit of a tussle in which Neil seems to have the upper hand after delivering a very slow kung-fu kick to Carrie’s mid-section sending her flipping up and over her Goodwill, filth encrusted love seat. Oh, and manages to flash us all her whole fruit basket in the process! But the tables turn as Carrie grabs a nearby fuck-skull and smashes it over Neil’s head. Before he goes unconscious Carrie forbiddingly quips,”I’m sure when you come to you’ll see things my way. You’ll have no choice! *MANIACAL LAUGH*.” Kinda makes you think he’s going to wake up trapped in a coffin being buried alive, but instead, he just wakes up in the apartment, but Carrie’s left with his pal’s body. He’s not tied up or anything, sooooo, yeah. Neil just leaves.

NEIL DOWN BEFORE CARRIE!

Where did Carrie take Max’s remains, you ask? Well, she spiked up his mohawk and took the guy over to the abode of a flamboyant fellow named Blake. You know, the kind of guy who wears puffy armed shirts and capes. He’s in the market for a dead guy to fuck because he has AIDS (!) and wants to have a partner he can ride bareback. Nice to see people play it safe, I guess. Seems he’s purchased cadavers from Carrie before, but never one this fresh. Lucky dog Blake and corpse-pushing Carrie haggle over the price a bit before agreeing on a deal and Blake gets to town riding his new, well broken in, dead fuck mate. But that’s not all! He throws in some more cash for Carrie and hands her what looks like a trash bag to wear with a holes cut into it so her tits hang out of it and then hands her a whip so she can go all Roots on him whilst he rides Max’s Hershey Highway to Hell. I’m sure this was meant to be disturbing but I cannot help but laugh at Gorotica’s grandiose attempt at being provocative and deeply disturbing. Sorry, gang, but this shit is comedic gold.

Joe Don Baker and Edward Norton share a tender moment.

Somehow, nitwit Neil is able to track Blake’s place down (…?), and with gun drawn he barges through the door and claims the body of Max in name of Asshole. What follows is an action-packed finale where Carrie busts out her Indi Jones moves and disarms Neil with a crack of her whip! Neil stabs Blake to death getting the guy’s blood all in his mouth, eyes, and up his nose in the process thereby, in all likelihood, ensuring that he’s contracted HIV/AIDS. Carrie, who can see the bright side of everything, points at the guy, explains his now very topical 90′s doomed dileama, and laughs her ass off. You gotta admit, it is pretty funny. Neil doesn’t quite see the humor in it and blows Carrie away. He FINALLY cuts Max’s stomach open and locates the hidden diamond within. Hastily giving the diamond an unnecessary tongue bath (ew), Neil heads to some seedy motel where he shaves his head into a Travis Bickle style mohawk, douses himself with gasoline and booze, and waits for Miss Miles splayed naked in bed. Miss Miles shows up, gets an eye full, comments on the strong smell of GASOLINE in the motel room and still, as Neil sits on the edge of his bed and put a cigarette to his lips, gives him a light upon request thereby sealing both their fates. Or so I assume as whatever happens after she flicks the Bic happens off camera.

And so ends, Hugh Gallagher’s bizarre, unintentionally comical, mildly boner inducing, low budget horror cult sophomore effort, “Gorotica”!

Immolating oneself is sooooo erotic! Excuse me, Gorotic. A. Gorotica.

I’ve heard the hand full of fans of this series call Gorotica a huge disappointment after Gorgasm because this follow up doesn’t feature any of the gore the title promises. Personally, I’m really okay with this because Gorotica is a far better movie, if you ask me. The acting’s better, the streamlined, MILDLY believable story doesn’t just kind of make sense, it’s actually relatively coherent! Sure, there’s not much gore in this second entry in the trilogy, but that’s a moot point when you have such goofy story that hunkers down and takes a little bit of time to tell it’s terribly trashy tale. It’s not a good movie, at all, but it feels like Gallagher has grown a little bit as a video maker. Not a whole lot, I mean, the man’s no Scorsese, but he doesn’t over reach. It’s a small scale story that can be handled on the cheap and doesn’t have an over reliance of effects the man has never been able to pay t have pulled of at all effectively.

The performances are uniformly bad, but you know what, they’re a damn sight better than the performances in “Gorgasm.” Gutterman makes an outstanding corpse, to be honest, rivaling Kim Basinger in tom Petty’s Last Dance with Mary Jane video. In my opinion, the glue that holds this thing together? Ghetty Chasun as Carrie. She may not be a great actress, but she has plenty of charisma, is always game for whatever is thrown her way in the film, doesn’t mind showing off her goods and is pretty easy on the eyes, which you can’t really say about the lead in “Gore Whore”, Gallagher’s final installment in the Gore Trilogy. It’s always fun watching Ghetty Chasun on screen, whether it’s mingling with an AIDS infected necrophiliac wearing a cape or putting out her cigarette in an ashtray balanced on a naked dead guy’s chest, I just can’t keep my eyes off of her.

Desperately Seeking Ghetty. We miss you!

What the Hell ever happened to Ms. Chasun, anyway? She did a handful of flicks in the 90′s and then just kind of vanished off the face of the earth. IMDB lists her birth date, her measurements, (36C-29-38 according to the experts) and that she’s a Capricorn. If anyone has any information as to how Ghetty’s doing or if she’d be interested in doing an interview, drop your pal The Primal Root a line, will ya?

Gorotica is a more mature and more refined offering from Gallagher (which isn’t saying much) and if you can get past the fact that there simply isn’t that much GORE in GORotica, this flick’s actually a pretty fun piece of stinky Trash Cinema. And in this Trash Cinema Connoisseur’s eyes, Gorotica is the strongest flick in the Trilogy. But, it could just be my unhealthy crush on Ms. Chasun talking…

Stay Trashy!

-Root

May

Carnosaur (93): Handpuppets from Hell

By primalroot Leave a Comment

Categories: Carnosaur
Tags: Adam Simon, animal, attack, babies, baby, beast, birth, blood, budgetm indie, butcher, Carnosaur, chains, cheap, chicken, chickens, Clint, Clint Howard, comedy, community, Corman, corporation, Darren Moloney, decapitation, Dian Ladd, diner, dinosaurs, domination, Eggs, evil, evolution, extinct, extinction, Fake, flesh, funny, genetics, genius, Gore, government, gravy, hand, hatch, heartland, horror, Howard, independent, Jennifer Runyon, Jurassic Park, killer, low, massacre, mean, Monster, nasty, peeing, piss, poultry, protest, puppet, Raphael Sbarge, ripped, Roger, sci-fi, science, science fiction, sheriff, small town, sneaky, sneeze, south west, Speilberg, splatter, Stan winston, sterilization, teenagers, teens, terrorisim, torn, trapped, unprovoked, violence, virus, wet, World

a Primal Root review

“It’s heading this way!” – Smith, Carnosaur

If there is one thing we’ve learned from good ol’ Roger Corman is that you sure as Hell don’t need the same budget as the big boys to beat them at their own game and rake in a little money for yourself. Case in point, Carnosaur, a low budget dino-chicken on the loose tale made strictly to make money off the then upcoming Speilberg project some of you may have heard of “Jurassic Park”. In fact, Carnosaur was released merely two weeks before the Jurassic Park showed up on the scene to break all kinds of box office records and usher in a new era of innovation in special effects. Therefore, Carnosaur did exactly what it was designed to do and scraped up some profit by riding the coat tails of the oncoming giant and undoubtedly falls into the Mockbuster sub-genre.

That being said, there are few similarities between Carnosaur and Jurassic Park. In all actuality Carnosaur is one bizarrely unique horror film, at least in concept. The story proper involved an evil geneticist, Dr. Jane Tiptree (played by Diane Ladd, of all people), who has hatched an idea to destroy humanity by bringing dinosaurs back onto the playing field through genetically altered chickens. I shit you not, these dinosaurs are born of omelets as these poor hens grow gigantic dinosaur eggs within them and explode in a gush of blood rather than actually laying the damn things. One by one these clucking little guys rip and pop open to reveal the dino-egg prize within. Poor chickens, that’s pretty fucking rough no matter what animal you are. Save a leg for me!

Anyhoo, these dinosaurs begin raising Hell all over the American south west as they attack just about every human being in sight, and in some cases, teleporting to do so. These dinosaurs get around, man. From a pick -up truck full horny teens to some Native American fellow who is introduced just long enough to have his lower intestine yanked out of him and slurped down by a couple Carnosaurs as if this was Hershel Gordon Lewis’s personal version of Disney’s Lady and the Tramp. One has to wonder if these damn things ever get full because they devour just about any and everything their gaze happens to fall upon.

but the dino-chicks aren’t the true plan, only a red herring. See, Tiptree has created a type of virus that will steadily kill us all and prompt the female of our species to ACTUALLY CONCEIVE THE DINOS and then GIVE GRAPHIC, BLOODY, PAINFUL BIRTH to the little jerks! Thing Alien or Humanoids from the Deep if you want something to compare it to. It’s nasty, it’s mean and it’s pretty damn messy.

All that stands in Dr. Tiptrees way is a drunk asshole and an environmental activist who must aside their differences to fight the good fight against dinosaur baby birthing and basic disemboweling by dinosaur in general. The pacifistic idealistic Ann, aka: Thrush, becomes an trigger happy dino killer once her Eco-concerned gang chains themselves to some bulldozers in protest of…um, stuff that hurts the environment and end up getting chewed into hash by a rampaging, munch happy, dinosaur in a harrowing sequence. Did I say harrowing? I meant hilarious. The cheese factor is through the roof on this one and my favorite moment of this massacre has got to be when one young lady ends up getting her leg taken off by an adorable little dinosaur. She screams, kicks and fights but once her leg is gone and she begins to spew geysers of blood from her fresh leg stump she seems kind of okay with it. No longer screaming or reacting at all, really, she just sits and seemingly contemplates, calmly, the fate of her appendage.

Now, the resident alcoholic named Smith, his motivations are a little less clear. He is somehow tied to the evil corporation responsible for these dinosaurs and the killer dino-preggo virus, but his official position from what I can gather is “Passed Out Drunk In Mobile Home”. Now, he could be some kind of guard or something who watches over all the equipment right outside his door, but if that’s the case, the man is a pretty big fuck up allowing protestors to chain themselves to the equipment and then going out to dinner while said protestors become dino chow. Why he begins a campaign to infiltrate the evil corporation and put a stop to their shenanigans is vague. Either the small lake of blood that used to be his front door has given him a new found respect for human life or he is now in the throws of the nookie monster as he has overcome his whiskey dick thanks to the blonde, militant and cute as a button environmentalist, Ann aka: Thrush.

There’s no telling, but the film reaches it’s awesome climax as the government shows up to neutralize the situation by killing every single living thing in sight and it is left up to Thrush and Smith to take down the big daddy Tyrannosaurus-Rex with by battling the creature with industrial load bearing equipment. Really, it’s the action packed climax Jurassic Park only wishes it had.

Carnosaur is not to be taken seriously by any means. In fact, the things a pretty ridiculous experience to sit through. From the opening credits informing us that chickens are being cross bred with vultures and iguanas (?) to the very first appearance of the gut bustingly funny appearance of the forced perspective hand puppet dinosaur and then the films laughably goofy final act, Carnosaur is the epitome of the guilty pleasure, bad movie night viewing experience. The thing has one very strange concept going for it, some game actors and the thing sure as Hell doesn’t skimp on the gore or arterial spray. And a performance by the inimitable Clint howard, and you have yourself on Hell of a Grade-A ticket to B-Movie paradise!

Bottom Line, Jurassic Park might be considered a modern day classic. Even a milestone in contemporary cinema tic history. Carnosaur, in my humble opinion, is it’s own milestone. Few horror movies have captured the horror of being eaten by a dinosaur and the prospect of child birth and combined the two so well! Name another film that taps into this uncharted nightmare terrain! Sure, the film is silly as all get out, has sock puppet dinosaurs that are far more adorable than they are menacing, and our heroes are all rather unlikeable, but at the end of the day, Carnosaur is pretty dang entertaining for a total piece of cash-in schlock.

Stay Trashy!

-Root

Mar

Rape Squad aka: Act of Vengeance (1974)

By primalroot Leave a Comment

Categories: Rape Squad aka: Act of Vengeance
Tags: Friday the 13th, horror, hockey mask, Trash, action, exploitation, martial arts, violence, cinema, collective, pimp, nudity, Tallahassee, Halloween, Revenge, Florida, 70's, murder, rape, mean, attack, peeping, gang, villain, kung-fu, sleaze, sleazy, skinny dip, police, mutilation, drama, detective, sexual, van, Angry, vengeance, Corman, genitals, crime, stalk, peep, phone, obscene, genital, Rape Squad, Act of Vengeance, Violator, attacked, karate, Jingle Bell, Jingle bells, Chrismtmas, Jingle Bell Rapist, stalking, peeper, call, calls, scum, jumpsuit, orange, fat, hot tub, shame, 74, 1974, Jo Ann Harris, Bob Kellijan, Peter Brown, Jennifer Lee, American International Picture, Lisa Moore, Connie Strickland, Patricia Estrin, rape/revenge

a Primal Root written review

Okay, we’re getting into a touchy area right now with Rape Squad, the 1974 Rape/Revenge exploitation sleaze fest. Hell, the title alone is enough to make one uncomfortable which may explain it’s alternate title… The rape/revenge format is one of the very few film genres that still disturbs me. I can watch a whole camp full of horny counselors get hacked into chop-suey and laugh my ass off but watching the depiction of anyone, woman or man, being sexually violated always chills my blood and makes me sick to my stomach. It’s probably the last form of violence you can film a fictionalized reenactment of and it will chill my blood.

That being said, the first act of Rape Squad is some pretty harrowing stuff. We are introduced to Linda ( played by the very lovely Jo Ann Harris) who is briskly established as running her own food truck and works with horses. It’s not ten minutes into the movie before Linda is attacked in the middle of the night at the stables. Jack, the man who rapes her, she later finds out is known to the authorities as “The Jingle Bell Rapist” as he always demands his victims sing the popular Christmas carol as he rapes them. Jack seems to be a little obsessed with the holiday season as he is constantly overheard singing carols and compare stripping his rape victims to unwrapping presents. Even stranger, it looks like he’s committing his raping spree in the middle of summer…a little explanation as to why this psychopath is so caught up in the yule tide cheer would have been appreciated. One thing I now know, there’s something REALLY creepy about someone not only forcing sex on you AND making you sing while they do it. It’s some pretty sick, disturbing shit. Not only that, but Jack dressed in an orange jumpsuit and wears a hockey mask and comes off looking like a rape happy, jail break spawnage of Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees. I’m sure those two are truly disappointed in their son…

The rape scene goes on for what feels like forever as Linda repeatedly fights for her life and escapes the clutches of her attacker several times before finally being brought down and violated. Jack likes to boast that he’s the best and Linda should thank him for kicking her in the face, slapping her around repeatedly and then raping her. It’s all very rough to take and it gets just about as bad as Linda faces the aftermath of having to go down town to the police station to report the crime. She is questioned about the details of the attack (were you drunk? Did you try to resist? Did you provoke the attack?) by a male detective in front of about a dozen perps and fellow lawmen. It’s grueling and extremely uncomfortable to watch as the traumatized young Linda does her best to put up with this disrespect (there’s not another female in sight) before finally justifiably laying into the detective about how she’s being treated like the criminal for having being dressed in a kind of Daisy Duke Lite ensemble when she was assaulted. Of course, she is labeled a bitch and sent to the doctor to undergo a rape kit.

The doctor lays Linda down and repeats the lines “Thata’ girl” and “Take it easy” as he probes and examines her vagina. It’s cold. clinical and the patronizing language the doctor uses makes the whole sequence feel as if Linda’s being raped all over again. The camera stays focused on Linda’s face as she fights back tears and bears the psychological and physical pain. The test results show no traces of semen so now the police assume she made it all up. And, the cherry on top of the insensitive police department sundae arrives as Linda is leaving the station and an officer makes the offhanded comment “Gee, I wish that would happen to me. I’d just sit back and enjoy it. HAR, HAR, HAR!” Linda stop dead in her tracks, gets in this assholes face and verbally turns him into mince meat. It’s really a pitch perfect response to his idiocy and must be seen and heard to feel it’s impact. It’s one of those little monologues where you want to get up and cheer.

The police do nothing, another woman’s house is broken into and she is, like Linda, slowly, methodically, brutalized by the same hockey mask wearing, carol singing, sicko that stalked her down the night before. The police hold a lineup held behind protective chicken wire (WTF?) and all five of the previous victims assemble in order to identify their rapist. This line up turns out to be a waste of time set up to illustrate how impossible the detective’s job is of tracking down the Jingle-Bell Rapist and even harder it will be for the victims to identify him. (“Well, shoot, guys! This case is just too damn hard! We should probably just give up.”) The victims join forces and create an all woman team they call “RAPE SQUAD”! They start taking martial arts lesson replete with a montage of them repeatedly whacking a sparing dummy in the ballsalogical region, creating an emergency phone line for victims of sexual predators, and providing chaperon service to the apparently all male police station so that victims might have a woman present while being asked “So, were you asking for it, miss?”

The RAPE SQUAD learns how to disarm the offending weapon. It's basically like squashing two Cadbury Cream Eggs and flattening a Jimmy Dean cocktail weeny.

Not only that, but they manage to turn the tables on all manner of sex abuse scumbags from dirty night callers whom they accost in dark alleys, strip, shame, and threaten with law suits to angry horrifically scrawny slap happy pimps whose cars the RAPE SQUAD savagely beat with hammers and then crush their testicles and then kick them in the head till the lose consciousness. They even go as far as to go home with forceful, cocky guys to see if they might be the kind to date rape someone. Once the arrogant would-be raper makes their move, the RAPE SQUAD, moves in to destroy their apartment, beat ‘em up, tie em down and dye their cock and balls Smurf Blue so they are marked and identifiable if they should ever raise their dicks to rape anyone.

The ladies kick ass and take names all while indulging is in a few totally nude sequences, one of which they go and dip themselves in a hot tub and discuss their plans to begin the RAPE SQUAD. It’s exploitation, pure and simple, and it;s to be expected. They dealt with the worse case scenario of the rape and it’s aftermath so disturbingly well that a little bit of the ladies getting naked and showing off how comfortable they are with themselves and their bodies is kind of commendable. Either that or I am trying to justify the filmmakers for inserting some titillating submerged full frontal nudity and luscious bobbing breasts in order to play to the crowds baser instincts…The hell with it, it’s an exploitation film and that nekkid shower/hot tub scene is integral to the plot! They just finished kung-fu practice, damn it!

The final act of the film bring the RAPE SQUAD face to face with their rapist as he leads the five of them into a final showdown in a dilapidated, abandoned zoo. The final battle is pretty hardcore and even a bit subversive, bloody, and savage. However, I couldn’t help but wonder how The Jingle-Bell Rapist managed to stay so well hidden while wearing a bright orange jumpsuit and blazing white hockey mask…Well, anyway, when the final conflict finally happens it ends up being a match between the rapist and RAPE SQUAD ring leader, Linda over the fate of the Squad and to deliver vengeance onto the individual who scarred the lives of so many woman…

I smell an act of vengeance a'brewin'.

Rape Squad aka Act of Vengeance was a far better film than I was expecting. The subject matter is handled with great care and some fantastic performances are given. The stand out being Jo Ann Harris as Linda who gives everything she’s got and really sells her rage, shame, trauma and eventual strength and triumph over her aggressor. She basically carries the entire picture and is one very talented actress for an early 70′s sleazy exploitation picture. I really do admire the first parts of the film dealing with Linda’s attack and the horrible aftermath. It feels earnest and like the filmmakers really wanted to make a point as to how horrifying the act of rape is and that victims of this crime should be treated with far more care. I mean, it seems almost unimaginable that those sworn to serve and protect would be so callous towards someone whose just been sexually assaulted. still, I’ve heard many accounts of just such thins happening to women who report being attacked and raped and, if you ask me, I would much rather be stalked down and murdered by a Jason Voorhees style slasher (yes, even the spear gun impale through the dick death from The Final Chapter) than go through what Linda does.

It’s only when the film switches gears from the rape to the revenge plot that it delves a bit into the campy side. Like I said, there is an extensive nekkid hot tub scene and some preventative rape violence that I cannot help but assume were played for laughs. Especially when they beat the living hell of of an angry pimp that looks like a skeleton wearing my grandma’s old wardrobe. But without the intensity of the rapes and the ordeal that happens being illustrated so effectively, I doubt the RAPE SQUAD’s actions would be as crowd pleasing as they are.

Rape Squad is not exactly a sexist film…nor is it a feminist film. This is a really odd package deal. I enjoyed it thoroughly and was pleased how all aspects of the picture were handled. It’s an exploitation film that falls into the usual cliches but not before grounding things in stark, cold, reality and showing us the dark side of violence and ignorance. Rape Squad aka Act of Vengeance is an above average grindhouse flick well worth checking out if you’ve got the fortitude for this type of endeavor.

Stay Trashy!

-Root

Posts Tagged ‘mean

Evil Dead (2013): If You Want Blood…

Rotten Reviews Episode 27: Home Sweet Home

Silent Night: Dreaming of a Schlock Christmas

Uncle Grumpyfuk Remembers ‘The Undertaker and His Pals’!

Uncle Grumpyfuk Remembers ‘The Sadist’

God Bless America (2011): Aiming for The Dream

Dead Girl: June Devil Girl of the Month 2012! (NSFW)

Gorotica: Coldcocked (1993)

Carnosaur (93): Handpuppets from Hell

Rape Squad aka: Act of Vengeance (1974)

Dumpster Diving

Categories

Blogroll

Top Posts

Follow “”

Posts Tagged ‘mean

Dumpster Diving

Categories

Cloud of Categories

Blogroll

Top Posts

Follow “”