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Jan

(NSFW) Return to Nuke ‘Em High Volume 1:My So-Called Toxic Taco

By primalroot Closed

nukem

“You just fucked with the wrong post-apocalyptic hell bitch!” – Tara E. Miller as Rachel Ruysch in Return to Nuke ‘Em High Volume 1

a Primal Root written review

Since the very beginning of my life Troma films has loomed largely in my life. As a child of the 80’s I saw their movies on the video store shelves. Titillating, perverse and imagination fueling titles like The Toxic Avenger, Bloodsucking Freaks, Rabid Grannies and Surf Nazis Must Die immediately drew my burgeoning Trash Cinema hungry eyes to them. The vividly colored box art promised over the top gore, none stop dick and fart jokes and a plethora of nekkid women. What these videos promised was everything my eight year old heart longed for. Who the Hell am I trying to kid, it’s everything my 37 year old heart still longs for with every beat of my filthy horn dog little heart.

class-of-nuke-em-high-cover

Writer/Director and Troma’s co-founder and lovable mascot, Lloyd Kaufman, has gone back to the well again with a sequel to his video rental store mega hit Class of Nuke ‘Em High (1986), with Return to Nuke ‘Em High (2013), and Kickstarter, fan funded toxic goop soaked tit and gore filled epic that was apparently so massive in scope it had to be stretched into two separate volumes like a fucking Harry Potter film.

What I am happy to report is that Return to Nuke ‘Em High Volume 1 is a homecoming WELL worth the wait. After the events of Class of Nuke ‘Em High, which saw Tromaville High School and the the Tromaville Nuclear Power Plant blown to smithereens, Tromaville High is rebuilt and sleazier than ever, where school shootings happen just about every day to point students yawn while they happen, AND they are the testing ground for the Tromaorganic Foodstuffs Conglomerate, which just so happens to be built over the site of the old, demolished, tainted soil where the nuclear power plant once stood.

glee

We are introduced to the new motley class of Nuke ‘Em high. With a ludicrously tone deaf and nerdy glee club, blind security staff, a gym shower chock-full of naked, laughing, bouncy breasts nubile young women, the overweight, over enthusiastic, little pierced penised Zac (Zac Amico), the psychotically horny and self absorbed white boy, Eugene (Clay von Carlowitz) and an highly animated, bug eyed Principal Westley (Babette Bombshell) who is in the pocket of Troma organic Foodstuffs’ president, Lee Harvey Herzkauf (Lloyd Kaufman). All this is established before the camera moves into the janitor’s closet where two students are porking away on the janitor’s cot, when an overhead pipe explodes, green, toxic goo falls all over their feet (to which they are un-phased and and keep squeeshing pissers) and a slithery, slimy, toxic cock monster falls out of the pipe, slides into the guys ass , causing his actual penis to explode off and melt into a puddle of goo before his fuck buddy begins melting (tits first) into a puddle of putrid green and red slop. The janitor enters, sits down, notices the gory puddle of death now napping on his cot, shrugs with disinterest, and our movie begins on just the right Tromatic note.

Rich new girl to Tromaville High School, Lauren (Catherine Corcoran), who has a deep love for her pet duck Kevin (Kevin the Duck) becomes is an instant outcast at school, butting heads immediately with fellow classmate, Chrissy (Asta Paredes), who maintains a hardly noticed investigative blog uncovering the corruption and dangerous contamination coming out of Tromaorganic.

Before you can say “Go Green” the glowing green toxic waste contaminated foodstuff is passed off as guacamole and served to the guinea pig students of Tromaville High School under the guise of Taco Tuesday and transforming the tone deaf glee club into the mutated hyper violent second coming of THE CRETINS! Their reign of terror begins without hesitation as they shoot down pedestrians, and throw teachers and dogs over the railing at Tromaville Falls to their chunky, splattery demises. The Cretins look better than ever in their new duds and awesome makeup. Not only that, but they now sing beautifully together, belting out barbershop quartet ditties while viciously mutilating and killing everyone in their path.

Cretins

It’s not long before Lauren runs afoul (hehe) of The Cretins who “Duck Rape” her by lodging the recently irradiated Kevin the Duck down her throat. Lauren runs around Tromaville looking for someone to help dislodge Kevin from her gullet as Kevin shoots eggs out of his tiny pink duck vagina (huh?), but alas, duck dislodging is not covered by Obama care. It isn’t until Lauren runs across Chrissy that they work together and get Kevin out of there, although he now has glowing green eyes, a beak full of sharp teeth and if foaming at the mouth. Chrissy and Lauren end up the recently foreclosed upon house of one of their friends and their attraction to one another cannot be repressed. They begin writhing together in bikinis on the dance floor to erotic sounds of Rapedoor’s toe tapper “Last Song,” before Lauren takes Chrissy’s hand, leads her up to a squatter’s lair and they begin a wonderful and exceedingly long sex scene, where the two get nekkid, munch some toxic tasty taco and exchange nuclear goo as they slide one another the tongue, a side effect of prolonged irradiated duck rape, I imagine.

The fun is interrupted when The Cretins show up and toss a couple Molotov cocktails through the windows and burn the place to the ground. That night, Chrissy and Lauren have the very same dream…Lauren’s belly expands and her tots begin to spray toxic waste where Chrissy grows a massive toxic cock that she can wield as a weapon that also feasts of flesh. With their new toxic powers they head to The Cretin’s hideout to exact some revenge.

When Chrissy and Lauren meet up at school the next day, they aren’t sure if it was all a dream or not…but their “good friend” Zac, the fat and worthless ginger in the Alfred Packard: The Musical shirt, is tasked with finding a way to black mail Chrissy in order for her to take down her blog so there will no longer be anyone airing out Tromaorganic’s dirty laundry and Zac can join The Cretins so he can finally have some place he belongs. So what does Zac do? He gets a shot of Chrissy and Lauren locking lips at school, which if shown to the homophobic public, could prove fatal. The film ends on a cliffhanger in the girl’s locker room shower with an homage to Brian de Palma’s Stephen King adaptation, Carrie and a big ‘ol “TO BE CONTINUED…” popping up before the end credits. Needless to say, I was left chomping at the bit for more.

Man, Return to Nuke ‘Em High feels like Uncle Lloyd has been sitting on a powder keg of ideas that just sort of exploded in front of the camera. There are plot stops and starts, characters brought up that we never see again, narrative dead ends a plenty, but the manic energy of this flick never lets up even if it does feel totally lopsided. It’s a celebration of bad taste, political incorrectness, human anatomy, absolute carnage and anarchy wrapped up as one sloppy green slobbery smooch of an adolescent subhumanoid fever dream.

Like all Troma movies there are it’s strengths and it’s weaknesses. I was worried the Troma feel might be missing as soon as I noticed it looked to be shot on digital as opposed to film, which according to Lloyd Kaufman’s book Make Your Own Damn Movie, is something he would never EVER do. But, here he is, shooting in digital. I asked him at DragonCon once why he decided to shoot on digital after deriding the format so thoroughly in his book. His answer? “It’s so much cheaper!” Proving the old saying, “Don’t knock it till you try it.” Thankfully, the digital element honestly works in the films favor, lending the film a sleek, pristine sheen not typical of Troma films, coming across as the birth of a new era for the company.

One thing that annoyed the shit out of me were the title cards introducing every character and giving a bit of backstory. It felt lazy and like a last minute attempt to cover up a typically haphazard Troma screenplay. Usually the bizarre characters are left to establish themselves without us having to be directly told with text on screen. These characters fill a certain niche in a cinematic high school story, something we are all familiar with. So, I guess my one gripe is that it feels like they didn’t shoot enough coverage to make everything in the story work and shoved some sort of funny text explaining this, something I can’t recall Troma ever doing in the past.

But, all in all, Return to Nuke ‘Em High volume 1 is a fine return to form for these long time, ever present purveyors of filthy, grotesque and highly enjoyable Trash Cinema. The cast is a top notch rag tag team of Troma style performers, all willing to give their all and then some and, like always, add a screwball charm that is undeniable. The effects are as cheap and gnarly as ever with lubed up gore effects are deployed and freakish monsters come slithering out of and into every orifice. And there’s boobs a plenty, all shot with a close eye for bouncing, jiggle fondle potential, as we have all come to love and expect from Troma. What I wasn’t expecting at all was a genuine attempt at an effective love story between Lauren and Chrissy. You see it coming, but you always expect this shit to just be a lowbrow set up for someone to make queef joke, and of course there are queef jokes, but the love story is developed over time and amazingly sweetly, gently. I haven;t seen Troma try to actually pull off ‘sweet’ since Lloyd Kaufman and James Gunn’s Tromeo & Juliet. It was a pleasant surprise and one I really admired. Especially when it got to that lesbian sex scene. It made the whole sequence infinitely more boner inducing. There’s even some cameos that, when watching in 2019, are kind of heartwarming and heart breaking, Namely Stan Lee as the stories’ opening narrator and Lemmy Kilmister as The President of the United States. Rest in peace, you two, it was fun getting to spend time with you again.

What I’m saying is The Return to Nuke ‘Em High is a class reunion WELL worth attending. Can the Troma team keep this level of excellence up in Volume Two? Stay tuned, you Cretins!

I’m awarding The Return to Nuke ‘Em High FOUR out of FIVE Dumpster Nuggets.

Stay Toxic!

-Root

Apr

Unfriended (2014): Grumpy Young Assholes

By primalroot Leave a Comment

Categories: Unfriended (2014)
Tags: 2014, anniversay, asshole, assholes, blender, boyfriend, bully, bullying, cleavage, curling iron, drugs, drunk, facebook, found footage, game, games, ghost, girlfriend, group, Grumpy, guns, haunted, horror, internet, justice, karma, kill yourself, liars, mean, Meme, murder, never have I ever, party, passed out, poop, possession, pot, Revenge, salsa, scumbag, sexting, shit, slasher, sluts, suicide, teenagers, teens, text, texting, vengeance, video, viral, web, Young, youtube

a Primal Root written review

Man, the future according to cinema keeps looking bleaker all the time. If it’s not some kind of genetic ape epidemic, Lovecraftian unspeakable evil hostel takeover, or nuclear apocalypse it’s a fucking zombie outbreak that our military forces just can’t contain. I’ve seen these scenarios done many, many times over. Sometimes done well, often done stupidly, but typically on quite a grandiose scale. But, if you ask me, often times the terrible turd of a future the movies keep warning us of is so much more enjoyable when handled…subtly. And what makes all the more frightening is when it’s simply a teen horror film that is trying to present teenage human being as they actually are. And then you just think about the future with these fuckers and realize just how deeply fucked in the pooper we really are.

Enter Unfriended, 2015’s answer to 1999’s The Blair Witch Project and 2007’s Paranormal Activity. It’s your typical horror movie only we, the viewer, are witnessing an evening on the social networks from the perspective of young, pretty high school girl, Val, (Courtney Halverson) who begins, um, sexting (?) her boyfriend, who she professes to love but refuses to fuck, that is, until promising to on prom night. How original. Anyhoo, Laura almost pulls open her flannel shirt to give us a glimpse of her T-Birds, but these kid’s obnoxious buddies choose that moment to start up a, um, Live Chat (?) through the interwebs.

It turns out tonight is the one year anniversary of their mutual friend Laura’s suicide, which was taped on a cell phone from a distance of about 50 yards as she puts a gun to her face and pulls the trigger. People can be heard yelling “Don’t do it!” and “Stop!” But we don’t see a single person try to approach her. Thankfully, it is captured for posterity on Youtube for all to revisit whenever they please. It seems Laura was the victim of some very mean spirited bullying which came to a climax with a nasty video of her getting hammered out of her mind at a party and then passing out… and shitting her pants was uploaded to the web with a nice little credit at the end urging her to kill herself.

Sure, this might sound like loads of laughs to many sociopathic teeny boppers out there these days, but to me, I can’t understand what would prompt people to do this to someone. I can see maybe one person being an utter scumbag to someone, but for what is implied to be an entire student body urging a girl to kill herself after a video of her laying in a pool of her own chunky diarrhea is hard for me to comprehend. I can wrap my mind around the teenage jerks in Carrie, Fear No Evil, even Weird Science and the like, but this new generation of bullying jerks has reached a terrifying new height of scumbaggery where they can hurt and bully someone to the point of killing themselves and then make jokes about it and justify it after on 12 months.

What I’m trying to say is there is no hope for humanity, that is, if Unfriended is to be believed. But, thankfully, there is someone who by all appearances is the ghost of Laura hacking into their Live Chat (?) and killing them all off one by one via the old and moldy drinking game “Never Have I Ever.” Sure, it’s kind of lame, but it is pretty hysterical to watch these self proclaimed “Good People” freak the fuck out as truths are revealed and back stabbings are brought to the surface. Man, if you can;t trust the people responsible for bullying a person into suicide, who can you trust? It’s an interesting update to the slasher formula. Where once the likes of Freddy and Jason were killing off kids for smoking weed and fucking like bunnies, these kids are getting butchered for totally understandable reasons. In Friday the 13th, these kids weren’t hurting anyone else. But these kids in Unfriended are the most deplorable, detestable fuck bags I’ve seen on screen in years! The victims in the SAW franchise were more savory than these teenage “protagonists.” You will laugh and cheer as their worlds are crushed and then their skulls.

That being said, there are long patches of this flick where not a whole lot is going on. Val spends a lot of time on various search engines and texting various people. You’ll be straining to read everything that is constantly popping up on the screen, some essential to the plot, some not so much. Also, there isn’t much for you gore hounds out there. It’s all shown in drips and drabs, but in a way, I feel that might have been a bit more effective for the medium they were going for. But for you shit lovers out there, there’s plenty of shots of poo-poo puddles for your enjoyment.

All in all, I went in with a sinking feeling this movie was going to be horrendously bad. To my amazement, it was moderately enjoyable. I rooted for the unseen murderous spirit of vengeance, I laughed out loud more than once at humor both intentional and unintentional. I gotta say, I had an alright time watching this one with Bootsie Kidd. It’s not a good film by ANY stretch of the imagination, but it was a relatively entertaining take on the slasher formula. It did things a little different and by the time the credits rolled had me weeping for humanity itself. Because if the message of Unfriended is to be believed, we’re all… shit out of luck. But also, within this movie there’s a great moral to be learned. Don’t be a fucking asshole! DON’T BE A FUCKING ASSHOLE! Trust me, you fuck the wrong person over and the next thing you know you’re turning your own hand in salsa for ll your buddies to witness! Also, another important reminder, everything you post, say or do on the internet is bound to come back and haunt you. It’s an interesting new place for evil to dwell and Unfriended hits that new realm a bit closer to the mark than most.

I reward this sucker TWO AND A HALF out of FIVE Dumpster Nuggets!

Stay Trashy!

-Root

Sep

George Romero’s Martin (1976) Reality Bites

By primalroot Leave a Comment

Categories: Martin (1976)
Tags: 1970's, 1976, 70's, 76, American, belief, blood, Braddock, Catholic, christian, costume, Count, crucifix, Cuda, decay, dope, Dracula, dream, drugs, dying, exorcism, faith, garlic, George Romero, hereditary, home, home invasion, horror, John Amplas, lies, magic, Martin, murder, Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, primal, rape, religion, review, romero, Root, rotten, sad, small town, thoughtful, train, vampire, vampirisim, written

a Primal Root written review

“Do you believe God’s whole world runs by the laws of the few sciences we have been able to discover? Oh, no, Christine, there is more. But people are satisfied. They know so much, they think they know all. And that makes it easy for Nosferatu. That makes it easy for all the devils.” -Cuda, Martin

George Romero’s name immediately conjures up images of his iconic shambling, flesh eating “shoot ’em in the head” zombies, and it’s no wonder. Hell, the man’s spent the better part of a career spanning over forty years devoted to these walking dead flesh eaters who changed the landscape of horror cinema forever with movies like Night of the Living Dead (!968), Dawn of the Dead (1978) Day of the Dead (1985) and Land of the Dead (2004) among many other “Of the Dead” films and follow ups spawning countless unofficial ineffective sequels and lukewarm, forgettable remakes and also saturated the market for the past decade influencing everything in pop culture to the point I wish someone would just put a bullet in my head and end the unimaginative, cash-in, living dead hysteria that won’t seem to ever fucking wind down and die.

But to concentrate on the man’s most popular and commercially successful ventures is to ignore the bold and creative films he is lesser known for. Films like The Crazies, Knightriders, Creepshow,The Dark Half, etc. The man has made some phenomenal films outside the living dead canon he’s most known for, and I’d like to focus on what I consider to be among his most intriguing and underrated works, the independent vampire flick, Martin.

Martin tells the tale of a shy, quiet, troubled teenage boy who believes himself to be a vampire, in fact, he comes from a lineage of his family that other relatives believe is cursed with hereditary vampirisim. We’re introduced to Martin (John Amplas) as he stalks a fellow female passenger on an overnight train to Braddock, Pennsylvania. As he stalks this average young woman back to her overnight cabin aboard the train, we watch as Martin imagines her waiting for him behind the locked door in a revealing neglige, seduced by his vampire charms, lusting for him and embraces Martin with open arms, allowing him to feast on her warm red blood. What Martin imagines is presented in grainy black and white, like the classic Universal monster movies of the 30’s and 40’s, like Dracula or Frankenstein, before cutting back to the bright, technicolor of reality where Martin attacks the young woman in her cramped cabin. The reality is far from Martin’s dream scenario. He walks in to the sound of her flushing the toilet before she steps out with her hair up in a towel, wearing a well loved bathrobe, her face caked in beauty cream as she blows a huge snot rocket into a wad of toilet paper. When Martin attacks her, intent on doping her up with a well placed prick of his syringe, she fights back with everything she has, hurling obscenities like “FREAK! RAPIST! ASSHOLE!” athim while struggling against his clutches. Honestly, Martin is a shrimpy looking dude, and I have a feeling she would probably kick his ass normally, but the drugs take hold and she passes out, thus, allowing Martin to slice her arm open with a straight razor and dine on her blood. That’s right, Martin has no fangs.

When the train reaches it’s destination Martin meets his new caretaker, his elderly cousin Cuda (Lincoln Maazel). Cuda is a devoutly religious and highly superstitious man, and believes completely in the old family legend that some members are cursed with vampirisim. Cuda takes the boy in with the hopes of saving Martin’s eternal soul before destroying the creature of the night for all time. As you might guess, Cuda has nothing but contempt for young Martin, addressing him as Nosferatu and even threatening to put a stake through Martin’s heart, killing Martin without salvation, if Martin harms anyone in his city. But it’s not long before Martin ignores these warnings, and sneaks off into the night to hunt and feed.

From the very first frame, Romero, with the help of a haunting, beautiful score from Don Rubinstein and utilizing the fading landscape of Braddock Pennsylvania, imbues his film with a sad, bleak, disturbing atmosphere, one where the American Dream has run dry and the world is left to rot and decay. The mills have alls hut down, the local economy has crumbled, and everyone left is struggling just to survive. The tone is one of desperation as a population holds on to the dying old ways of their lives and existing in denial.

As Martin stalks and ambushes his victims, it becomes apparent that sex is not his concern at all. In fact, when he is propositioned by a female shopper he befriends at Cuda’s grocery store, he has no idea how to respond. Turns out, Martin’s still a virgin after all these years and has no idea what to make of this. The lure of sex seems to hang all about Martin, and his response to it comes off as confused, sad and out of place. When he finally does give in to the seduction, he comes away unfulfilled. This is not your typical lustful vampire.

What Romero has sought out to do with Martin is, much like he did for zombies in his 1968 horror milestone Night of the Living Dead , is to deconstruct the vampire legend and all of the conventions we as an audience hold to be law. Martin is Romero’s treatise that examines the myth of the vampire, (featured in black and white, either as fantasy or long ago memories of how being a vampire once was, this point is left ambiguous) and reality (shot in bright, bold, 1970’s color) de-romanticizing the vampire legend. Also being tackled here is religion and superstitious belief.

Martin cannot stomach the reality he exists in, and instead, creates intricate fantasies (presented in grainy black and white) where he visualizes himself sneaking into a grand castle rather than some sleazy 70’s bachelor pad, or striding into the arms of an eager lover rather than holding down a shrieking victim who just took a huge dump in the adjoining bathroom. He imagines himself into the romantic Hollywood reality of the movie vampire, the one that is so alluring. which might be why he’s so quick to state “There’s no magic. There’s no real magic ever.” several times in the film. Crucifixes, garlic, holy water, sunlight, the classic rules do not apply in reality. Martin has no fangs, he uses a straight razor. He has no powers of seduction, he must use dope to keep his victims from breaking him in half. This is not a world of magic and super human power, this is stone cold, un-romantic reality.

Still, Martin believes he is actually a vampire and must feed on the blood of the living in order to survive, just as Christians believe utterly and completely in the resurrection, Heaven, Hell, and the power of the holy spirit. Martin still places an importance in the canned icons of his belief system, “The Hollywood Vampire” but is intelligent enough to know he is only humoring himself with these fantasies and delusions. After one startling moment in the film where Martin scares the living shit out of Cuda by stepping out the darkness wearing a cape, bares fangs and has a pallid complexion only to finally laugh at the old man and reassure him, “It’s only a costume.” Martin has been told all his life what he is and has come to believe what’s been drilled into his head from birth. Martin longs to be one thing, but he knows he is something else and this knowledge is the essence of the film.

Martin also takes dead aim at organized religion, portraying it in vapid, empty terms. Romero himself plays a hip priest who insults the shitty wine his church serves at communion, doesn’t believe in angels or demons and loves the movie The Exorcist. And when Cuda calls upon an old school priest to ambush Martin and perform an exorcism of their own, it comes off as an old useless ritual and Martin simply walks away as the priest blubbers on reading from the holy text. But more disheartening than any of this is Cuda himself, a man so blinded by his own faith that he believes it is his divine right to wield life or death over his own flesh and blood. Cuda believes the vampiric curse and that it is his duty to destroy the evil, to murder his own relative in the name of God. This is the same mentality in religious hysteria that leads followers to murder doctors who perform abortion and claim to be pro-life but support capital punishment, to commit atrocious acts of violence in the name of your own personal lord and savior. It’s sick, it’s twisted and it’s wrong.

“It’s only a costume.”

In the end, Martin is a film about the lies we tell ourself and the delusions we live every day. Those that we have been taught by those closest to us and those we tell ourselves simply to get by. Martin wants so badly to be a vampire he is willing to kill others. Martin admires the lore and power of vampires. How they are loved, feared and lusted after, all things that the shy, timid misfit feels he can never obtain.

Martin is a singular, gorgeous, and poetic take on the vampire horror film and it’s Hollywood lore. To date, I have never seen a more thoroughly unique and sweetly sad vampire tale. This is the rarest of horror movies, one not about a horrible other, or even about the creature next door. No, this is subtle, ambiguous look at what makes monsters of us all. A look into the heart of the horror in our everyday human existence and the evils we are capable of inflicting on one another. Not only through physical acts, but through the power of ideas, belief and control.

I give Martin FIVE out of FIVE Dumpster Nuggets. If you ask me, this is Romero’s absolute masterpiece.

Stay Trashy!

-Root

Feb

(NSFW) Cindy & Donna (1970): House of Sexual Deviants

By primalroot Leave a Comment

Categories: Cindy & Donna (1970)
Tags: 1970, 1970's, 70's, accident, alcohol, alcoholisim, Alice Friedland, angst, ass, Beach, bikini, boobs, booze, boyfriend, breasts, car, Cheryl Powell, Cinday & Donna, Cinday and Donna, Cindy, cinema, collective, coming of age, dad, dath, Debbie Osborne, dig it, dirty, Donna, drugs, drunk, DVD, experimentation, exploitation, far out, Father, female, film, gang bang, girlfriend, gratuitous, groovy, group, head, hooker, incest, lesbian, male, masturbation, model, mom, movie, naked, Nancy Ison, nervous, nude, nudity, panties, perverted, photography, pop, pot, primal, prostitute, red, review, Robert Anderson, Root, scared, sex, sexploitation, sexual, shower, sleazy, stepchild, stepfather, stoned, stripper, suburban, suburbs, theme song, tits, Trash, trip, vehicular manslaughter, video, voyeur, voyeurisim, weed

a Primal Root written review

“You know, it’s just a big kick. A trip, you know? Look, don’t be so serious. I mean, you know, it’s a groove.” – Cindy’s best friend Karen explains sexual intercourse

Growing up sure can be hard, especially when you’re a disturbingly sexy yet trashy teenage girl from a divorced family, your Dad’s a lecherous creep who’s always staring at your step sister while she’s in her underwear, your stepmother’s a constantly bitching alcoholic and your step sister is forever getting laid and trading pussy for pot while you’re still wearing your hair in pigtails and are just too scared to spread those thighs for some pimply faced classmate at the local high school or one of those college jerks still looking to score teeny-bopper poon.

This is the very basic premise of “Cindy & Donna” a very strange brand of coming-of-age flick, exploitation film and soft-core porn. Cindy and Donna are step sisters, Cindy’s the baby of the two and Donna is the older, more sexually experienced. Cindy’s Pop is a boozer and a perv while Donna’s Mom is kind of a booze hound killjoy that I’m sure her husband blames for his tendency to spend all night at bars after work, bang prostitutes and get boners of his stepdaughter. It’s suburban dysfunction at it’s very finest and not really played for laughs, if anything, it all comes of as shockingly depressing…which makes it really funny…Huh? Stay with me.

“Cindy & Donna” tells the story of the red headed, teenage pixie virgin, Cindy (played by Debbie Osborne of “Country Cousins” and “Tobacco Roody” fame, I also happen to have a bit of crush on this chick who vanished off the face of the earth in 1972.) as she begins to blossom and become increasingly curious about what it is to be a sexually active young woman in 1970’s America. A voyeur by nature, she is constantly peeping in on her family members and being exposed to the truly depraved and disturbing sex lives of her Father and stepsister. We’re going to leave Mom out of this because she’s just an alcoholic who spends the majority of the film either drunkenly shouting out insults or passed out in bed watching what sound like bizarre Indian massacre movies.

Cindy witnesses her older stepsister, Donna (the ever foxy Nancy Ison) sneak out of the house at night and ride her boyfriend Greg’s flesh pole of freedom in order to obtain some grass. Cindy is also aware of her Father’s other vice besides alcoholism and ignoring his family, hookers. Ladies of the night. Prostitutes. We are given a front row seat to this doughy, middle aged man’s sexcapades with the lovely and incredibly well built Alice (Alice Friedland, looking like an American version of Swedish sex goddess Christina Lindberg) a professional stripper, spank magazine model and, yes, prostitute, who we’re introduced to in an extended sequence of Alice gyrating her crotch into the camera and bouncing her lovely, bountiful, natural boobs in artsy-fartsy low angle shots that make sure her tits and ass take up THE ENTIRE SCREEN. She invites Pops back to her place for a night of awkward genital grinding, fondling and utterances of the phrase, “You blow my mind!”

I can see the artistic intent here.

After Pops and Alice finish up it is revealed that Alice is only 17, the same age as his naive, peeper of a daughter, Cindy. You’d think this was primed to set up some kind of plot point where Pops would approach his daughter and talk openly with her about “the birds and the bees” and perhaps even cause the man to realize what a terrible Father and husband he’s been and get him on the straight and narrow to ensure his wife and children are provided for emotionally as well as financially and go on to live fulfilling lives together. No such luck, Pops boozes it up the following night, can’t get an appointment to poke Alice and decides to go home and fuck his stepdaughter, Donna. AND HE DOES! He stumbles into her bedroom completely wasted, disrobes and goes to town on her young, naked, nubile self AND SHE OPENLY ENJOYS IT! She pulls him in closer, smooches his whiskey drenched gob with tongue and allows the patriarch of their family to grope her chesticological region and finger her little Donna. It’s disturbing and totally unbelievable. Of course, it’s revealed that Cindy is watching this whole incestual shindig go down from the doorway of their adjoining bedrooms before throwing herself upon her bed and weeping. Strangely, the incident is never mentioned again, not once, for the rest of the film. And this a bit more horrifying than the incident where Cindy watched Donna get banged by her boyfriend Greg in the back of his sports car as payment for weed, which Cindy then went back to her bedroom and masturbated over. I started wondering if possibly Cindy is imagining all these sexual hijinks she witnesses as part of her own repressive sexual desires and fantasies, but I might be giving “Cindy & Donna” too much credit. But then again, who know, perhaps director Robert Anderson saw something in this material beyond just the TnA and deep, dark, sexual depravity. One thing’s for sure, looking at the film this way opens up a whole new perspective.

BUT I’M GETTING OFF TOPIC!

Hey, the closer the, the deeper in…

That morning Mom and Pops head to Vegas for the weekend and are never relevant to the “plot” again. Cindy confides all this, minus the Daddy/Stepdaughter action earlier, to her BFF Karen (sexy, confident, Cheryl Powell) who has recently made the transition from naive young girl to slutty, cock starved teenage hellion. Karen’s advice to Cindy? Get laid, basically. They end up going to the beach where they meet two dorky guys in tiny bathing suits. They hardly even introduce themselves before the gentlemen whisk these ladies off to their casual sex shack on the beach and start putting on the moves. The moment the scene begins Cindy starts shouting about how she just wants to go home as Karen drops her bikini quicker than you get food poisoning from a McDonald’s Filet-O-Fish sandwich and starts riding her dork pick of the litter as if he were Seabiscuit. “Don’t be a drag, Cindy!” Karen commands as she humps dork boy’s baby batter baton. The scene goes on for way longer than it should as Karen gets fucked on one bed and Cindy continuously cries “Stop it!” and “No!” on the nearby stained sofa as her zit faced, teen date rapist drools all over her neck and licks her face. This is all taking place in the same room so the camera just sits in medium shot and documents this uncomfortable moment in time for what feels like forever. As soon as Karen gets her rocks off they both head for home where they smoke some weed, put on a record and enjoy some experimental lesbianism so Karen can demonstrate for Cindy “what it feels like.” My, my, it’s been a big day for these two.

Tell me that’s not Shia LeBeouf back there.

What’s Donna up to while her parents are out of town? Just hanging out with her boyfriend Greg…and allowing several creepers to take nude photos of her as a way to pay back the money she owes Greg for the weed he purchased her the other day. Rather quickly, the photo shoot devolves (or evolves, depending on your view) into a mild mannered gang bang in Greg’s rumpus room. Donna really gets off on this “groovy” action, despite the men never having to remove their underwear in order to penetrate her baby factory, and the scenes goes on without ever showing the end of the gang bang when they, I assume, smoke a little reefer, play air guitar and eat Doritos.

The very next morning, after Cindy and Karen spend a night of playing bumper clits together, Karen assures Cindy that she was “marvelous” in the sack and that she should try the ultimate trip and have sex with an actual man. This gets the wheels turning and Cindy puts her plan into action. She invites Donna’s boyfriend Greg over and they start going at it on the family sofa, which seems like a daring place to lose one’s virginity. I mean, how will Cindy explain that stain to her folks? Anyhoo, Cindy begins taking off her awesome 70’s dress and asks Gregg “Can you dig it?” His reply? “I can dig it.” and she is soon nekkid and rubbing her petite, teeny-bopper body all over Gregg, the Scott Stapp of the 1970’s. But wouldn’t you know it, just as Cindy’s about to go cock spelunking, Donna comes home and stumbles upon this scene and exclaims “DON’T MESS WITH MY SISTER!” Gregg responds the only reasonable way any man would after being interrupted while about to have his man utter suckled by a young woman, and picks Donna up and throws her out the front door onto her AstroTurf lawn. Donna, confused and mortified (despite the fact she fucked her stepdad a night or two ago) wonders aimlessly into the road and is run over by a car. Cindy watches this happen through the screen door of her Cabrini Green model suburban home and screams. The picture freezes on her shocked and horrified face. We then cut to a brief sequence of her swinging at a jungle gym where we can see her red panties.

The End

I am speechless. I mean, after the build up of this film I totally expected Donna’s discovery of Cindy boning her boyfriend to end in a threesome, not vehicular manslaughter! This is one Hell of a way to end your sex picture! I can’t even begin to imagine what poor little Cindy’s therapy bills are going to look like. Acquiring knowledge from afar, as Cindy did, proved only to corrupt her young, curious mind, not enlighten it. Sad, really.”Cindy & Donna” is a bewildering and entertaining exploitation sex picture. Straightforward and shameless to the point of absurdity,” Cindy & Donna” is an ode to teenage indiscretion and skeezy old man perversity that will have you questioning the sanity of those who made it and yourself as you pitch a tent in your corduroy trousers. Filled with copious, unapologetic nudity, drug use, casual incest and experimental lesbianism…the mission statement is blunt. “Cindy & Donna” is a one of a kind, filthy, perverse, sleazy coming of age exploitation film. Yes, I enjoyed it thoroughly.

If you don’t talk to your kids about sex, who will?

I’m giving Cindy & Donna FIVE OUT OF FIVE Dumpster Nuggets. This puppy’s a must see.

Stay Trashy!

-Root

Feb

(NSFW) The Naked Cage (1986): Women on the Verge of a Nervous Shanking

By primalroot Leave a Comment

Categories: Naked Cage (1986)
Tags: 1986, 80's 1980's, 86, action, ambush, Angel Tompkins, bank, basement, beef, Block, boobs, breats, Cage, cannon, cell, Christina Whitaker, cocaine, coke, convict, convicted, cops, court, dad, dirty, drama, Drive-In, drugged, drugs, exploitation, Faith Minton, family, fight, getaway, guard, heroine, horse, inprisoned, jail, lesbian, lesbians, Misty, mom, movie, naked, naked cage, nudity, Paul Nicholas, police, primal, prison, rape, Revenge, review, riot, robbery, Root, scene, sex, shank, Shari Shattuck, shooting, shot, shower, showers, smiley, solitary, Stacey shaffer, thriller, warden, wet, women, wrong, wrongfully

a Primal Root written review

What is the appeal of a women in prison movie? Could it be the hardened women struggling for power and survival behind bars? The depiction of corrupt officials and politics behind prison walls and how it mirrors our own government? Or is it simply the fact we are almost guaranteed some gratuitous female shower scenes? I ask you, why can’t it be all of the above?

“The Naked Cage”, directed by Paul Nicholas and produced by Cannon, marks what many consider to be among the last truly great women in prison flicks, a genre that became popular and peaked in the mid to late 1970’s. “The Naked Cage” tells the story of a young, blonde, nubile bank teller and bareback horse rider, Michelle (Shari Shattuck) who ends up getting sentenced to three years in a vicious women’s prison after her bonehead, coke head ex-husband decides to pull a stocking over his head and rob the bank where Michelle works. Of course, none of this would have happened if Michelle’s ex hadn’t recently gotten mixed up with the sexy, murderous, psychotic escaped convict, Rita (Christina Whitaker) who likes killing cops and having cocaine snorted off of her nipples (true story). Michelle ends up unwittingly getting pulled into the heist, which ends in a bizarre getaway that consists of driving around the bank parking lot several times and then in blood, and is thrown in jail after Rita testifies that Michelle was the ringleader of the heist. Me thinks Michelle should get herself a better lawyer.

Michelle takes her sentencing in stride, maintains a good attitude and makes friends quickly with her fellow inmates including her bunk mate and former junky Amy (Stacey Shaffer) and the badass, muscular behemoth , Sheila (Faith Minton) who runs things on their cell block. However, Michelle doesn’t quite see eye to eye with the prison’s warden, Diane (Angel Tompkins from one of my favorites, “The Teacher”) who conducts bizarre lesbian BDSM sex games with whichever inmates tickle her fancy. Also on the loose is a sadistic prison guard known as Smiley (Nick Benedict) who takes great pleasure in raping and then murdering female inmates before trying to pass it off as suicides. He justifies this to the warden by explaining “This job is shitty, I might as well do something I enjoy!” It’s not an exact quote, but something along those lines…

I wonder if the warden in “The Shawshank Redemption” ever had Andy dress like this and rub his shoulders?

Life behind bars doesn’t treat Michelle that bad, at first. But soon, Rita is released from the hospital, where she was recovering from the bank robbery car chase, and is thrown into prison on the same cell block as Michelle. Rita and Warden Diane join forces and once Rita takes down Sheila, the Warden gives Rita the go ahead to enact her revenge on Michelle. Revenge for what, exactly? Not so sure, seeing as Michelle had little to nothing to do withe the bank robbery turning into a bullet riddled botched bloodbath. I have this feeling Rita might be projecting her own feelings of inadequacy and failure as a bank robber on to Michelle. Listen, killing Michelle won’t change the fact that you robbed a bank after snorting a mountain of cocaine, let your getaway car get blocked in, and then drove a stolen car in circles around the bank’s parking lot while the police unloaded their weapons into it and you. Honey, that’s nobody’s fault but yours.

Rita quickly turns the prisons order of power on it’s head, dispatching those who protect Michelle, and turning her closest friends against her. But Michelle is far more cunning than Rita realizes. As the tables turn, Michelle learns to rely on herself and takes dead aim at Rita and during a violent, awesome prison riot, the two meet in one of the down and dirtiest female convict cat fights I’ve ever seen.

“The Naked Cage” is a glorious, spitfire of a women in prison film. One of the very last of a dwindling, glorious Drive-In culture. What really sets it apart is that, despite the conventions and obligatory women in prison cliches, is that “The Naked Cage” takes the time to create so really interesting, believable characters. It pulls off one of those rarest of exploitation tricks where the viewer ends up actually liking characters and are genuinely saddened when certain folks end up being killed off. By this point in Trash Cinema history, the women in prison genre had become more satirized and played for laughs or simply to titillate an audience rather than deliver genuine dramatic story telling. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with the formerly mentioned brand of women in prison flick, Hell, I love a good goofy romp through a prison filled with nekkid women. Sure, there’s some campy, goofy bits in “The Naked Cage” like the exceedingly awkward scenes with Angel Tompkins rotating her shoulders topless with random female inmates in her neon light clad secret love chamber as they seduce one another, but overall the film plays it pretty straight if not a little over the top. There is something to be admired about a movie of this breed that does all it can to tell a convincing crime story on an exceedingly low budget and not fall back on cheap laughs. “The Naked Cage” is bold, goes for the your throat and doesn’t let up. Damn fine stuff and one Hell of a send off to a once proliferating genre.

Oh, and there are plenty of shower scenes and gratuitous full frontal nudity.

I give “The Naked Cage” Three and a Half out of Five Dumpster Nuggets

Stay Trashy!

-Root

Nov

Motel Hell (1980): Hearts in the Right Place…The Meat Grinder

By primalroot Leave a Comment

Categories: Motel Hell (1980)
Tags: 1980, 80, 80's, animal, animals, ass, b-movie, backwoods, bath, battle, bible, black, bloody, bondage, breasts, brother, business, capitalisim, chaisnaw, Cheers, chow, christmas, comedy, compassion, cook, cooking, country, cure, cured, dark, death, delicious, devious, down home, Drive-In, drug, drugged, drugs, eat, eating, evil, family, farm, farmer, FDA, fed, fight, flesh, food, force, forced, funny, garden, god, gory, grindhouse, ham, head, Hell, Hello, hillbilly, horror, Hustler, hypnotize, Ida, jerky, John Ratzenberger, Kevin Connor, laughing gas, Law, Maniac, marriage, meat, Motel Hell, murder, naked, Nancy Parsons, nasty, Nekkid, Nina Axelrod, nudity, pain, painless, Paul Linke, pig, pigs, population, Porky's, pray, preacher, primal, rape, recipe, redneck, room, Root, Rory Calhoun, scripture, secret, sex, shortage, siblings, sister, slaughter, smokehouse, swingers, Thanksgiving, tits, trap, Trash, trash cinema collective, trashy, travel, tubing, Vincent, visitor, visitors, wet t-shirt, Wolfman Jack

a Primal Root review

“Sometimes I wonder about the karmic implications of these actions.” -Farmer Vincent

With Thanksgiving mere days away, I begin contemplating good old fashioned family values and the anticipation of devouring finely prepared, mouth watering, slaughtered animals. Hell, there’s nothing better than celebrating your thankfulness with the ones you love than by roasting the carcass and then sinking your teeth into the delicious flesh of the traditional Thanksgiving turkey, honey cured ham, or human torso. After all, as Farmer Vincent says, “Meat’s Meat and a Man’s gotta Eat.”

This is the central conceit of Kevin Connor’s 1980 black comedy horror masterpiece, “Motel Hell”, the story of a family Motel and Meat curing business torn asunder by the meddling of outsiders who just don’t understand their ways. Tall, white haired, skinny as a rail Farmer Vincent (Rory Calhoun, charming as ever) and his large, imposing, deranged sister Ida (Nancy Parson, Coach Balbricker from Porky’s!) run the rural Motel Hello and adjacent Farmer Vincent’s Smoked Meats stand. Their meat and down home hospitality are legendary to those who grew up int he area, and tourists come from far and wide to get a taste at Farmer Vincents secret recipe… I have a feeling you know where I’m going with this, it ain’t just an extra dash of Tabasco in those cocktail weenies!

Yeeeeah, I think I’m gonna go find a Ramada…

Vincent and Ida spend their evenings laying out intricate traps in order to capture unwary travels who make the mistake of passing near their homestead int he middle of the night. Once they’ve nabbed their prey, those poor souls are interred in the sibling’s “secret garden” and go through a very special procedure to prepare their succulent human flesh for the famous family recipe giving their cured meats that one of a kind flavor. As Farmer Vincent cheerily exclaims, “It Takes All Kinds of Critters, To Make Farmer Vincent’s Fritters!” The two siblings seems to have a real good thing going, the business sis booming, their little brother and local law enforcement officer, Bruce, has no idea what they’re up to and there’s no lack of dim witted heathens to run off the road and turn into beef jerky treats. But it’s when Vincent takes in one of his victims, the lovely Terry (Nina Axelrod) and decides it might be a good idea to settle down that their whole cannibalistic world begins caving in.

Now, before I go and give you the idea that Vincent and Ida are both out of control backwoods psychopaths ala The Texas Chainsaw Massacre family, let me state that these are two of the most friendly, accommodating and thoughtful human flash slurping cannibals in cinematic history. These two are concerned with making their victim’s, er, livestock’s slaughter as painless as possible, and go through some bizarrely comical means in order to make sure of this. Hell, they even have lovely introspective conversations where they ponder the karmic implications of their work and whether or not they will be remembered fondly for the work they do on the farm. Vincent and Ida are murderers, plain and simple, but one cannot help like this introspective, God fearing duo. Hell, later in the film when Terry starts flashing her tits and Vincent and tries to make out with the old man, he stops her and insists they should be married before there will be such hanky-panky. Could you ever imagine Leatherface doing this? Hell, head probably start hollering, tearing his hair out and rev up his chainsaw…Not Farmer Vincent, that guy’s got one strong, if deeply flawed, moral compass.

Don’t worry, I’ll send the Christ cuts to Hebrew National.

In one stand out scene from ‘Motel Hell”, Farmer Vincent, Ida, and younger brother and lawman Bruce, tell Terry a down home story about how their long dead Grandmother was the one who taught Vincent everything he knows about curing and smoking meats out of necessity since the family didn’t have an icebox. One day, when Granny was sick and tired of a neighbor’s dog constantly barking, she asked Vincent to go take care of it. Vincent chuckles as he recalls throwing the dog in the meat smoker and serving it up for dinner. Ira and Bruce both chuckle and join in, recalling how the meat was a bit like goat meat, only stringier, as Terry looks on in stunned disbelief before chocking it up to simple hillbilly behavior. Farmer Vincent justifies his actions by quoting his Granny, “Meat is Meat and a Man’s Gotta Eat!”

Really, being raised with such a mentality it’s totally understandable that Vince and Ida don’t see a difference between the meat of animals and the meat of human beings. Int he end, really, what is the difference? The slaughter, clean and cut up the meat just the same as all the others int he smoke house. It’s just business, nothing personal, plus it gives them their one of a kind flavor which makes them stand out from the competition! It’s literally a dog eat dog world in Motel Hell, as our homicidal duo take care in selecting those they feel don’t contribute to society like bikers, metal bands, working girls, swingers and FDA inspectors, and add them to the ever growing mouth watering deathloaf. Even though the public has no knowledge of the human content in their smoked meats, at least they can rest easy knowing here are no chemicals or preservatives in the product they just ate. Hey, that’s just good, down home quality! Who has time to worry if a couple members of that missing hair band you saw last week are in that jerky stick?

Grazing in the grass is a gas, baby, can you dig it?

As we all expected from the beginning, Terry wonders into the smokehouse and stumbles onto the big family secret and end sup bound, gagged and listening to Vincent’s fundamentalist dogma as he explains why it is he does what he do all while chopping a human body into hot dog meat. Vincent goes on to explain that he’s helping out the human condition by controlling over population and handling the food shortage problem all in one fell swoop. “What gives you the right to play God?” Terry asks. “Play God? I wouldn’t even know where to start! I’m just helping out.” It’s a strange “Greater Good, God’s Plan” argument I feel many folks on the political right could totally get behind, especially when espoused by such a seemingly down to earth and loveable folk hero as Farmer Vincent. Hell, we all have to make sacrifices, right? Might as well be the working class that won’t be missed!

As soon as the heroic, if incredibly dumb and rapey, Bruce bursts into the smokehouse to save the day, “Motel Hell” dives head first into it’s absurd, surrealist underpinnings and bursts through the floodgates with blood spattered jubilant glee as Farmer Vincent dons a severed pigs head, picks up his chainsaw and engages his little brother in chainsaw, to chainsaw combat while laughing like a maniac the entire time. It’s graphic, it’s goofy, it’s gory and unlike anything I’ve seen before or since in the annals of American backwoods cannibal horror cinema. It feels like some kind of blood drenched fever dream you would have after consuming to much Christmas ham and then getting a stomach bug. My words fail to do the finale of “Motel Hell” justice, you’ve gotta see it to even begin to comprehend it.

Babe III: The Reckoning

“Motel Hell” is a queer duck of a horror film. It delivers the horror and the comedy, but it doesn’t exactly mix and ends up more often than, simply being absurd. I laughed my ass either way, as this is some truly peculiar, yet, entertaining food for thought. Try not to fall in love with Farmer Vincent and Ida, I dare ya. Those two are such fantastic, memorable characters, you’ll find yourself deeply saddened to see them go by film’s end.

So, this Thanksgiving, be thankful for your family, friends and take a closer look at that dead thing you’re shoveling into your face. you never know just who might be over for dinner.

Four and a Half out of 5 Dumpster Nuggets. Root highly recommends you spend a night at “Motel Hell!”

Stay Trashy!

-Root

Jul

Savage Streets (1984): Revenge is Best Served Busty (NSFW)

By primalroot Leave a Comment

Categories: Savage Streets (1984)
Tags: action, bad hair, bath, bathroom, bear trap, blood, boobs, breasts, brutal, bush, busty, camp, catsuit, classroom, coma, confrontation, crossbow, cult, Danny Steinmann, death, debt, drugs, exploitation, exposed, fabric store, Fall, family, fight, fights, friends, fuck, fun, game, gang, Gore, hardware, high school, homoerotic, horror, hospital, iceberg, immolation, John Vernon, justice, kiss, L.A., last stand, leather, Linda Blair, Linnea Quigley, locker room, Los Angeles, marriage, mean, molestation, murder, naked, nasty, nude, nudity, oublic, porn, pregnancy, rape, Revenge, Savage Streets, Scars, shower, sign language, sister, sisters, slum, steal, suburbs, switchblade, teen, teenagers, teens, theft, tits, Trash, trashy, vengeance, vigilante, violence

a Primal Root written review

Man, there really isn’t anything quite as life affirming as a good exploitation revenge film done right. That’s just what we’re dealing with in the 1984 flick, ‘Savage Streets’ starring Linda Blair, John Vernon, Linnea Quigley and Robert Dryer. Battle hardened teenage girls, psychotic greasy 30-something teenage guys with bizarro Flock of Seagulls hairstyle, a hard nosed school principal who calls female trouble makers “tough bitches”, add in some gratuitous violence and nekkid women and you’ve got yourself the ingredients for a tasty cinematic exploitation stew. I am here to tell you, brothers and sisters, this is one tasty concoction.

Now, I’ve never been to L.A., but apparently in the early 80’s gangs of roving, spandex clad young women roamed the streets at night window shopping for crossbows, porn and bear traps. One such roving pack of sexy jail bait is led by a teenage girl named Brenda (Linda Blair) who’s hard to miss as she traipses down the sidewalk in a bright turquoise, nipple enhancing ensemble while wearing those giant dark shades they give you at Lens Crafters after you’ve had your pupils dilated. Her entourage includes several other tough, bubbly girls dressed head to toe in neon and Brenda’s deaf/mute little sister, Heather (Linnea Quigley) who sticks out like a sore thumb in her Librarian inspired number.

Must be cold out.

Brenda is your typical badass chick with a heart of gold, sticking up for her friends and extremely protective of her naive, innocent, handicapable little sister. Why would Brenda decide to bring her little sister out to the slums on a bustling Saturday night is unclear, perhaps Brenda wants to expose Heather to the hunky drug dealing, leather clad sociopaths who roam the streets in their convertible while making out with one another and beating up guys who wear those lame-o polo shirts with little crocodile patches over the left nipple . You know the type. Brenda soon gets her chance as Heather is nearly run over and crushed into pavement pudding by a foursome of sleazy, knife totting, greased up low lives known as “The Scars.” To be honest, after a couple viewings of ‘Savage Streets’, I don’t see The Scars being at fault here, as Heather just kind of collapses in front of their car. Heather falls over and Brenda, backed by her posse, begins screaming at The Scars for being reckless fuckheads bent killing every deaf mute teenage girl who happens to stumble in front of their moving vehicle. If this were true, I have a feeling this band of misfits would have simply put their pedal to the metal and simply killed precious little Heather rather than coming to a halt and not harming her in the slightest.

Oh well, this is just the beginning of ‘Savage Streets.’ There’s plenty of time for The Scars to prove just how loathsome they can be.

The Scars decide to pull repo duty on a pair of implants.

Not long after the incident with Heather we are treated to a tender scene of The Scars brutalizing a man who owes them money and illustrating the dangers of being a fully stacked woman walking through seedy alley ways at night wearing a tube top, Brenda comes across The Scars’ convertible and gets a bright idea that will end up costing her, and her friends, greatly. Brenda and the gals decide to provoke The Scars even further by stealing their convertible and speeding by them hollering, laughing and flaunting the fact they just committed grand theft auto. The Scars are not too pleased by this, but thankfully, they’ve gotten a good look at all of the girl’s faces and set out to getting some good, old fashioned rapey revenge after finding their convertible littered with rotten garbage and drippy, rank used tampons. The girls were in the clear until Brenda decided to pull this stunt. Just saying, all that happens later in the film could have totally been avoided if Brenda hadn’t antagonized a group of blood thirsty lunatics. You live, you learn, and those closest to you pay the price.

C’mon, brah! Let’s make out our aggression.

We soon learn that, for The Scars, revenge is a dish best served…later, as there are other subplots to get to like the one about Brenda being persuade by the head of the football team. Brenda constantly tells him she wouldn’t hop his cock if he were the last man on Earth, but that doesn’t stop the tanned, blonde geek from trying, much to the dismay of the jock’s equally tanned and blonde girlfriend, Cindy. This leads to an incredible confrontation in the girl’s locker room after gym class. As some fully well developed young ladies lather up their assets, Cindy tells Brenda to stay away from her football hero fella, Wes. Brenda restates how much she can’t stand Wes and has no interest in him all, and Cindy lets out her battle cry, as if furious that Brenda doesn’t want to fuck her boyfriend. This leads to a wet and wild shower room beat down as the girls scratch and tear at one another. Cindy in her undies, Brenda fully clothed. but no worries, there are two young girls who start beating the shit out of each other in the background in what I can only assume is an unrelated feud. Still, this is a directorial choice I can do nothing but praise. Take note, Gang! This is exploitation done right!

So, what are those nekkid ladies in the background fighting about? We will likely never know…

Hold on, I’m getting ahead of myself, let me tell you about the four pack of No Good who call themselves The Scars. These men range in age from late 30’s to mid-40’s and are kind of supposedly in high school. Well, at least they show up there in order to collect drug money, pummel the student body and get into incredible stand-offs with their no nonsense principal, Principal Underwood (John Vernon), who in a stand out moments orders the punks to “Go fuck an iceberg.” Fuck yeah! With this man;s can-do spirit and use of disturbing sexual imagery as insults, I can see him being Savage Street County superintendent in no time! The Scars are primarily led by a fellow named Jake (Robert Dryer) who seems to have only two emotional states, malicious glee and deep, furious anger. This man lives to inflict pain on others and has more protruding neck chords than you can shake a stick at. Seriously,The Incredible Hulk’s neck veins could take lessons from those of Jake. When this man is angry, it is not only printed across his face, but his uncannily expressive neck.

Like an enraged turtle!

So, while Linda Blair is getting cracking skulls and bouncing boobs in the ladies locker room, The Scars are steadily closing in on her vulnerable, trusting, deaf/mute little sister, Heather. The scene slowly and surely ramps up the repulsion as one member of The Scars starts to befriend Heather as she teaches him proper sign language techniques before he busts out the old finger through the hole technique and the ensemble of scum bags assemble, drag poor Heather into a boy’s restroom and begin to savagely rape and brutalize her. It’s a down right traumatizing on screen rape sequence, made all the more chilling due to the fact Heather cannot even scream for help. She is held down as Junior Scars member, Red, is given first dibs in the gang rape, deflowering Heather in what seems to be a kind of disgusting initiation ritual. Truly, this is some very nasty, harrowing, stuff that’s well executed and staged. It all ends with a boot to Heather’s skull and she is rushed to the hospital, having lapsed into a coma.

In this kind of movie, we all know this beautiful smile will soon be savagely raped away.

Why this does not IMMEDIATELY invoke the wrath of older, and incredibly protective (if not totally careless) sister, Brenda, is beyond me. It takes a few more run ins with The Scars and the daring broad daylight murder of one of Brenda’s pregnant and soon to married friends before she decides to hit up the Two-4-One Death Wish Store, don her full body latex cat suit and get to painting these Savage Streets red with the drippy entrails of The Scars! And, OH, what an evening of vengeance it is! Three words: WATCH YOUR KNEES!

Savage Streets is an oddly fun piece of exploitation cinema. On one hand, you have some truly sick and disturbing subject matter and on the other you have a lot of goofy, sleazy comedy sequences played out in the high school. I can honestly say I’ve never seen another rape/revenge film like it. Our female protagonists are all likeable and you could sense the connection between. Likewise with the sociopaths, The Scars. Even in their dysfunctional way, they fit together well as a pack, even if their only real goals are to torture, kill and sell drugs. Savage Streets it’s a funky, dirty, and abrasive time capsule of mid-80’s trash cinema, it’s a movie that plays by it’s own rules and rises to the occasion throwing in every single element you can imagine.

Linda (Crazy Eyes) Blair: Still got the Devil in her

A cool side note about ‘Savage Streets’ is that is was directed at the very last minute, after the film’s original director dropped out, by Danny Steinman, whose previous work included a Deep Throat cash-in porno flick called ‘high Rise’ and would direct one of my favorite entries in the Friday the 13th franchise, ‘Friday the 13th part V: A New Beginning’ the following year before, sadly, dropping into obscurity. He only has four films to his credit, and out of the two I;ve seen, I am a huge fan of the guy’s stuff. He knew his audience well and delivered to them what they wanted and I appreciate him for that. I only wish he could have made more flicks in a similar vein to ‘Savage Streets’. Danny passed away on December 18th, 2012.

This scene is integral to the plot.

I genuinely enjoyed Savage Streets in all it’s sick, demented, exploitative glory. However, if I have one gripe at all about the flicks, it’s that Brenda, after spending the entire movie being a badass, hard as nails teenage hellcat from the streets, devolves into a whimpering, panicking damsel in distress in the film’s final ten minutes as her quest for vengeance takes a momentary turn for the worst. We’ve watched Linda’s character show he resourcefulness and calm demeanor repeatedly as she’s dealt with jerks, blonde bimbos and the most vile psychopaths humanity has to offer, but once things get only moderately bad and she is called upon to act quickly she starts crying and fumbling like a dipshit bimbo from a half rate slasher flick. It’s the only blemish in an otherwise phenomenal piece of Trash cinema.

I’m awarding this puppy 5 out of 5 Dumpster nuggets. Well worth your time, chump!

Stay Trashy and keep your nose clean!

-Root

Jun

John Dies at the End: Not a Spoiler (2012)

By primalroot Leave a Comment

Categories: John Dies at the End (2012)
Tags: alien, aliens, alternate earth, amputees, Angus Scrimm, beer, blood, boobs, book, change, cinema, Clancy Brown, cock, collective, college, complicated, concepts, creative, creature, cult, Daniel Roebuck, dead, death, decapitation, dick, Dies, dimensional, dimensions, Don Coscarelli, Doug Jones, drug, drugs, end, end of the world, exploding, explotions, eyes, fast, flame thrower, Ghosts, girlfriend, Gore, Gun, guts, hallucinations, head shot, horror, hot dog, ideas, imagination, immortality, incubate, infection, infestation, inventive, john, John dies at the End, kids, meat, monsters, movie, multi-dimensional, naked, nudity, paintball, party, Paul Giamatti, phantom limb, planet x, possession, primal, Robert Marley, Root, sci-fi, science fiction, Shotgun, snakes, soy sauce, supernatural, time travel, tits, Trash

a Primal Root written review

“Time is an ocean, not a garden hose. Space is a puff of smoke, a wisp of cloud. Your mind… is a flying corn snake hovering through all the possibilities” – Robert Marley, John dies at the End

Let me tell ya, “John Dies at the End” is a film, a story, full of ideas. Time travel, alien invasions, alternate dimensions, ghosts, monsters, paintball flamethrowers…well, you get the picture. It’s the kind of film that plays it fast and loose with it’s multitude of concepts, throws caution to the wind and wishes you luck as you try to keep up with the blisteringly fast pace. filmmaker Don Coscarelli is the ideal choice to helm such a film. I doubt many other filmmakers would even come close to this material. It’s mind meltingly unconventional stuff and Don’s background with the Phantasm series and decades of maintaining that bizarro franchise and having it make some sort of narrative sense in spite of itself, pretty much makes him the perfect man for this particular job.

Let me TRY to summarize the basic premise. At a college party a drug is introduced to the kids entitled “Soy Sauce”. It’s a black liquidy substance that come sin a syringe and promises out of body experiences with each hit. What these youngster’s take to be a poetic sales pitch turns out to be the honest to God truth, as they begin traveling through time and parallel dimensions. The bitch of it is, many of these youngsters are coming back…changed, and thus heralds in an other worldly invasion that just might spell out the end of life on this planet. Thankfully, college dropouts and general goofballs, David and John, now endued with supernatural powers are humanities last chance at survival. It’s one unbelievable story, all of which is being told to journalist Arnie Blondestone (Paul Giamatti) in the hopes of making the truth known.

It plays something like “The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension” meets “Hellboy” with a dash of “Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey”. And if that sounds like an insane concoction, you’d be right. “John dies at the end” is almost an acquired taste. The kind of film that becomes more interesting and enriching with each repeated viewing. It all happens at such a rapid temp it’s near impossible to keep up, but with each viewing new images, thoughts and ideas present themselves, fleshing the film out as a whole. I know this sounds like a lot of work for one little move, but I suppose that’s why such flicks become “cult” films. And this flick seems tailor made for that crowd. Hell, with performances from cult favorites such as Clancy Brown, Daniel Roebuck, Angus Scrimm and Doug Jones, it’s cult status is pretty much built into it’s very fabric.

Now, I am not a recreational drug user, I know, “surprise, surprise”, but I have a feeling that those dabbling in a few choice narcotics might have a far better time watching this movie that someone who is stone cold sober, like I was during my initial viewing. Just an idea. If you decide to try this out, let me know how it goes.

I enjoyed “John dies at the End” but I never felt like it really congealed into any kind of coherent story, at least the first time I watched it. This is neither a good or bad thing, just don;t expect anything conventional to come from “JDATE”. It’s unlike any movie you will see at your local googaplex. Which, if you;re tired of the same old mainstream offerings sold to us over and over again, this might just be your ticket. But I don’t expect this is everyone’s cup of tea.

The Primal root says take the trip. What could it hurt?

Stay Trashy!

-Root

Apr

Evil Dead (2013): If You Want Blood…

By primalroot Leave a Comment

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

Mar

Spring Breakers (2012) Bikinis, Bullets and Britney Spears

By primalroot Leave a Comment

Categories: Spring Breakers (2012)
Tags: alien, amazing, art house, Ashley Benson, Beach, beautiful, beer, beilliant, bikinis, boobs, break, breasts, Britney Spears, Bud Light, Budweiser, bullets, busted, cinema trash, cocaine, corn rows, dance, dance sequence, dirty, drive-by, drugs, everytime, exploitation, faith, fantasy, filthy, flip flops, Florida, fried chicken, fun, grill, gross, guns, Harmony Korine, heist, high watermark, jail, James Franco, massacre, montage, movie, narcotics, nasty, Neon, nightmare, oral sex, parking lot, parol, perfection, piano, pool, Primal Root, prison, pussy, Rachel Korine, rap, rapper, religion, sand, Selena Gomez, sequence, shooting, simulated, ski masks, south, spirituality, Spring, Spring Breakers, St. Pete, St. Petersburg, sun, Tallahassee, tanned, technicolor, terrible, tits, trashy, tuf war, Vanessa Hudgens, video games, violence

“Jut pretend it’s a video game. Pretend it’s a movie.” – Brit, Spring Breakers

a Primal Root review

edited by Bootsie Kidd

I walked out of the the theater with what felt like a hangover. My head throbbed, my eyes burned and hazy recollections of what I had recently experienced swirled in my mind like some kind of abstract dream from the night before. Was it all imagined? Was it a reality? One thing’s for sure, the images seared into my mind from seeing Harmony Korine’s latest flick “Spring Breakers” won’t soon be forgotten. It left me feeling as I am sure many young people who go through this yearly right of passage do on their way home. Dirty, a little warped, and and not quite the same as when they went in on their journey.

A title like “Spring Breaks” along with its Disney Queen stable of leading ladies (Selena Gomez and Vanessa Hudgens are both here for the party) and the addition of James Franco sounds like some kind of terribly conceived throw back to the days of ‘Beach Blanket Bingo’ or ‘Catalina Caper’. But Korine came through with his usual catchy darkness and we’re actually given a badass, fever dream of a film about a foursome of young, impressionable college girls (Gomez, Hudgens, Rachel Korine and Ashley Benson) who decide they MUST go to Spring Break in St. Petersburg, Florida in order to find themselves, and are willing to do just about anything in order to obtain the bread to get there. How do they get the cash to go? Why, by stealing a professor’s El Camino and robbing a local fried chicken hut, of course! Three of the young ladies pull off the heist and coerce their religious, naive friend “Faith” to come with them, and it’s off to the land of tits, pot, and Bud Light for a week of exploitative, brain-dead fun under the deep frying Florida sun!

The young ladies dive head-first into a hedonistic wonderland of narcotics, terrible rap artists, and rampant fornication while taking breathers in order to call their Grandmothers to falsify their shenanigans of flashing tits and guzzling beer from cans phallically positioned cock level by men in seedy hotel rooms wearing nothing but jock straps and caked in their own slimy man-glaze. Of course, the girls are testifying to family members that the St. Pete Spring Break scene is possibly the most spiritual place they’ve ever experienced, and in a way, I suppose it might be as these girls find out what they are capable of and just how far they can bend their moral compass. Which, for most of the ladies, their compass has been pointing south since the get-go. The only girl we are even concerned about in the middle of all this chaos is poor, little, Faith (Salena Gomez) who is perpetually 14 years old but looks to be having a blast for a few minutes there.

That is until the girls get busted on a drug charge, and are sent to prison with nothing but their bikinis to cover their asses. It’s up to an ambitious sleazy, local drug dealer/rap artist with a grill of silver and scalp covered in rows of corn, Alien (James Franco in an Oscar caliber performance. Stop laughing!) to pay for the ladies to be released and give them a Spring Break they will never, ever forget. And oh Momma, does the man deliver as the girls get dragged into a seedy, drug-ladened underbelly of their spring Break paradise. Oh, and they, also, become part of a turf war between Alien and the man who used to be his best friend Archie (Gucci Mane) and end up going on a well-armed crime spree throughout the city in a slow motion montage to Britney Spear’s slow and drippy song “Everytime”, (whose lyrics might shed more light on the characters of all involved than one might expect, or could just be as vapid and shallow as some might think these characters are). In what must be a high watermark in current Trash Cinema as girls in bikinis and ski masks prance seductively with shotguns and a cornrowed James Franco plays Britney Spears on a white piano with the Florida sun setting behind him. However, Alien has no idea what he’s in for with these Spring Breakers up in his crib. This is art Trash at its finest and I felt my heart soaring during what might be one of the greatest sleazy flick moments in recent memory. Not since Killer Joe has a movie brought Trash up to this level. You’ll know what I mean when you see it…

Spring Breakers is not for the faint of heart or those who have grown dependent of the tropes of the current motion picture main stream crop of films that must spell everything out and whose sense of humor typically revolves around piss, shit or any combination of the two. “Spring Breakers” ain’t that typical piece of shit. This movie is an experience of both heaven and hell, paradise and purgatory, sleaze and beauty. It took me back to a time and place where movies like Harmony Korine’s “Gummo”, and his collaborative break out hit “KIDS” were the toast of the town and the type of films people actively sought out to see for some unusual, different, grimy, honest and totally unique.

Spring Breakers can be seen as nothing more than mindless entertainment, and it certainly does function on that level if that’s all you’re looking for, but it also can be seen as a meditation on the mixed messages and desensitization of today’s youth in a culture of crassness, sex and violence. It’s not a new message, to be sure, but it is always one worth taking a closer look at with every new generation. Harmony did it once with his screenplay for “KIDS” (1995) and with his film “Spring Breakers” it feels as if he’s showing us just how far we’ve come since then. And Gang, it’s a disturbing, sick, nasty sight to behold. And that’s a good thing.

The Primal root Approves! 5 Dumpster Nuggets!

Stay Trashy!

-Root

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