“The Romans have taught you to live like an animal!” Pam Grier as Mamawi in The Arena
a Primal Root written review
Do you like gladiator movies? Son, if the gladiator movie you’re speaking of stars such absolute goddesses and B-Movie Trash Cinema Legends as Pam Grier and Margaret Markov, you bet your stanky little ass I do! Coming off the red hot success of the 1973 prison break flick, Black Mama,White Mama, producer Roger Corman was quick to bank on the appeal of those two amazonian beauties for yet another action packed no-budget flick and came up with the sandals and savagery epic known affectionately as The Arena.
The film begins in ancient Rome where we are witness to several raids and murder fests by the Romans where peaceful Druids and perpetually dancing tribes have their groovy rituals interrupted with unprovoked surprise blood shed where everyone is chopped into brisket and only the sexiest are kept alive to be sold into slavery. Among those captured are the tall, blonde, gorgeous Druid Priestess Bodicia (Margaret Markov) and the absolute knock out, Mamawi (Pam Grier) who are to be auctioned off to some poor white fat slob in a toga where I personally can’t imagine any of these badass, muscular, obviously strong and hardened women being forced to do ANYTHING by these wimpy dough boys. But, I will do my best to suspend my disbelief as the incredible specimens of womanhood are shackled and paraded out in rags. Thankfully, Bodicia, Mamawi and two fellow captives are sold to an incredibly wealthy Roman ruler named Timarchus (Daniele Vargas). The ladies are quickly stripped nekkid, washed up, put in shiny new clothes and forced to work as servants to the spectators in…THE ARENA! Where gladiators are forced to fight to the death night after night for the amusement of the fat, drunk wealthy pigs sitting up above the kill floor.
However, the crowds have grown bored with watching men fighting animals and other men so Timarchus is looking for the next big thing to keep the masses pleased and complicit int heir lifestyle. When he witnesses the enslaved women having a knock down, drag-out fight in the kitchen, he realizes the pleasures of woman on woman battle and Female of Female Gladiatorial Death Battle is born! The appeal is obvious and the popularity instantaneous. But as these lady gladiators are forced the kill one another for the sweaty, worthless, wealthy they begin to plot a bloody, brutal rebellion to overthrow the powers that be and reclaim their freedom.
Not nearly as misleading as it might seem, there actually were women gladiators, the minimal budget of The Arena is aided tremendously by being shot in Cinceitta, Italy’s primary studio, which provided sets, props and costumes which added to the production value. There is great attention paged to the savagery and callous nature of the gladiatorial combat and barbarity of the time period, which works really well when juxtaposed with a love story that blossoms between one of the slaves and a battle trainer as well as the relationships that grow between the lead characters who come from drastically different backgrounds who must work together to overthrow the powers that be. And once you get past the gratuitous forced shower scene early in the film, The Arena is fairly restrained when it comes to it’s nudity. Of course, there is plenty of lovely female bodies on display, but it is far less gratuitous than you’d expect from an exploitation movie of this caliber.
Grier and Markov are both a delight to watch on screen. Their battles in The Arena are not particularly well choreographed, but the actresses give it their all no matter what is called for and the audience cannot help but feel for their plight as they are forced to battle and murder their friends in the ring. And once they rise up and begin to revolt, I genuinely felt concern and hoped they would make it out of their enslaved Hellhole and reclaim their freedom. It’s hard not to cheer as these sweaty, blood, scantly clad warrior women hack, chop, and slash their way to freedom through a plethora of Roman soldiers desperately trying to cut them down. Pam Grier would, of course, became one of the hardest working actresses to come out of the era and became a cinematic icon while Markov ended up marrying one of The Arena’s producers, Mark Damon, made one more film entitled There Is No 13, and retired from acting.
The Arena has a pretty impressive horror pedigree with Joe D’Amato (director of Emanuelle in America and Antropophagus) as the film’s cinematographer and Joe Dante (director of Gremlins, The Howling and Piranha) as editor. Rumor has is D’Amato helped out tremendously with the film’s extended battle scenes and was said to have taken over directing duties for those scenes from credited director Steve Carver who went on to direct Big Bad Mama and Lone Wolf McQuade. Another fun fact, filmmaker Martin Scorsese (Taxi Driver, Goodfellas) claims Roger Corman offered him the directing duties for The Arena after Scorsese finished his film Boxcar Bertha. Instead, Scorsese decided to go on and direct Mean Streets instead.
The Arena was one of the final death gasps of a long Hollywood cinematic tradition of sand and sandal epics. The genre went into hibernation for a couple decades before being resurrected by Ridley Scott with the Oscar winning 2000 film, Gladiator. The story is pretty similar to The Arena, only recasting the lead as a white guy, one cannot help but wonder if, possibly, there might be some inspiration obtained through this Pam Grier & Margaret Markov vehicle.
The Arena is a dramatic, fun, very entertaining bare bones tale of injustice and rising up against those who own us. Despite it’s obvious low budget, the production values are solid, the story is streamlined and well told, the performances are far above average and sell the drama better than one might expect, and it;s impossible to keep your eyes off Margaret and Pam who both are just gorgeous, dynamic performers who give their all no matter what the limitations of the movie are. The performances from these two ladies are what make the film an infinitely watchable piece of classic Trash Cinema well worth your time.
I award The Arena FOUR out of FIVE DUMPSTER NUGGETS.
Man, 60’s and 70’s sexploitation cinema produced some of the most trailblazing, creative, no holds barred and completely underrated films of their era. One series of films that has always struck hard with the sexual content and even harder with it’s bizarre social commentary, is the Spanish-Italian Black Emanuelle film series, especially once the elder statesman of Italian schlock, Joe D’Amato (Porno Holocaust, Erotic Nights of The Living Dead) tackled the series. First, a little history of the Black Emanuelle film franchise. The History Lesson:
The original French erotic softcore pornographic film from 1975, Emmanuelle, starring the late, sensational Sylvia Kristel and based on the novel by the same name, was a critical flop, but a blockbuster sensation in France, and is still among the highest grossing French films ever produced and ended up creating a film series all it’s own that’s 7 movies deep (hehehe) and includes such titles as Emmanuelle: The Joys of a Woman (1975) and Goodbye Emmanuelle (1977). Not only that, but the title alone has been picked up and used for late night Skin-A-Max style softcore porn films far into this century to the delight of teenage boys and old perverts like myself who are just about over the hill.
But, for my money, the greatest thing to come out of these soft focus French skin flicks, were the grimy, gorgeous, down and dirty sexually deviant series of films Emmanuelle inspired, namely, the Black Emanuelle series, which wasted no time debuting on the scene in 1975, riding the coattails of the original film’s success, with, YOU GUESSED IT! Black Emanuelle! Black Emanuelle introduces us to our leading lady played by Laura Gemser, a truly awe inspiring beauty with dark eyes, long, raven black hair down to her waist and hails from Indonesia. Laura plays a hard boiled, sexually liberated American reporter living in New York and is about as distant from the casual, almost sweet sexuality of the original Kristel led Emmanuelle series. The franchise maintained it’s softcore porn trappings up until Italian sleaze maestro Joe D’Amato took the reigns in 1976 with Emanuelle in Bangkok, where series started it’s descent into utter depravity featuring gang rape, depictions of cockfighting and a Mongoose vs. Snakesbattle.
And that leads us to… Emanuelle in America!
The fourth film in the Black Emanuelle film series and, without a doubt, the series most notorious entry, 1977’s Emanuelle in America once again features the truly captivating Laura Gemser as Emanuelle, nude photographer and photo journalist, who goes on a world wide adventure that leads us into some pretty dark corridors of late 1970’s human sexuality. Sure, some of the stuff is fun, but man…this mother fucker isn’t afraid to take the audience to some brutal, Hellish places. Now that I think about it, the very first sequence in the films sets the town pretty damn well. We are reintroduced to Emanuelle during the opening credits as she has a photo shoot with a handful of stark nekkid models with plenty of invasive camera shots pushing in on various nude parts of these lovely ladies before Emanuelle calls it a wrap, heads to her car, and is surprised to find a gun totting, acne scarred asshole in the back of her car and orders her to pull of the road at gun point. “I just want to murder you, that’s all!” Huh, well, who can argue with that. Once he gets her pulled over, he climbs into the passenger seat besides her and begins giving he the run down of why he wants her dead and it basically sounds like a Trump supporter talking about why they hate”Feminazis.” You’re sinful! You take naked photos of people and that’s evil!” “A woman should never take her clothes off unless it;s in the bedroom!” Emanuelle keeps her cool, figures out this guy has girlfriends who has modeled nude for her and that he is still a virgin. What does Emanuelle do to deescalate the situation? Tells the confused, psychotic, violent incel of the 70’s that sex is neither dirty or wrong and can be a natural wonderful thing, then proceeds to unzip the young man’s pants and suck his cock for the split second it takes to get him off. It’s fucking adorable, especially when the guy runs out of the car holding on to his wiener for dear life as Emanuelle wipes her mouth, laughs, and goes about her day. It’s a perfect little moment of light and dark, good and evil and laughing in the face of those with the lamest of sexual hangups. Maybe don’t fill your heart with hate and you’ll actually find some love on this planet. Trust me, if this movie was made today, she would have bitten his dick off, made him eat it and then fired the gun up his asshole. Trust me on this.
So, with this scene in place we are off to the races with Emanuelle in America, which is kind of a weird title when you consider she lives there and works out of New York, but I digress. Emanuelle heads to Europe to investigate a tycoon named Eric Van Darren (Lars Bloch) who reportedly has a harem filled with willingly purchased women (aka: sex slaves) one woman to represent each zodiac sign. Emanuelle joins this modern day harem, which looks to be a pretty sweet set up. You get your own room, free meals, a pool, sauna, AND you get paid! Of course, you also have to fuck this petulant bearded man child who nearly cries when Emanuelle starts kicking his ass in Poker Dice during a fucking adorable scene where Emanuelle mops the floor with this infantile bafoon in about five shakes of the dice while all his guests and harem girls watch on in delighted silence. There’s plenty of nekkid ladies just chilling and hanging out and fingering one another in the pool as well as a really sweet girl on girl scene with Emanuelle and a fellow harem girl named Gemini in the sauna who feels unloved by her Tycoon pay-to-play fuck buddy man child and Emanuelle is the kind of sexual dynamo to show her just what love is with a properly placed tongue to the lower lady lips. What am I forgetting to mention? Hrrm…Oh yeah!
You also get to see a naked woman stroke a horses erect penis. Yes. Right out of the gate, in her very first journalist adventure in Emanuelle in America, you see a disrobed woman stroked a fully engorged horse cock. Not going to lie, I was genuinely shocked. I saw the woman getting naked in the horse stable and thought nothing of it and this it hit me like a ton of bricks. “Holy shit! She’s going to jerk off that horse!” I yelled out loud to myself. And, sure enough, she grabbed that hefty, shiny pony fucker and stroked it like a champ. No money shot, thankfully. But still, what a wonderful moment of nasty utter depravity to really jolt the audience and make you wonder just what the fuck are we in for during the rest of this goddamn sleazefest.
With the winnings from her killer streak in Poker Dice, Emanuelle buys her freedom and heads off to Venice with Alfredo Elvize, Duke of Mount Elba (Gabriele Tinti) where she shacks up with both The Duke and his wife and they get into a threesome right after he discovers his wife with banging a chunky member of the wait staff whom The Duke sends him off through the massive corridors of his gigantic magnificent gold encrusted mansion, hairy butt cheeks flapping all the way down the hall as Emanuelle giggles. During the following night’s gala for several dozen senators, their wives and other assorted stuffy aristocrats, Emanuele, decked out in this fucking gorgeous oynx gown with a plunging neckline and a slit all the way up to Valhalla that just hangs off of her and leaves little to the imagination and is my favorite of her outfits in the movie, stumbled upon The Duke’s art forgery studio. It’s a plot thread that goes nowhere, but what REALLY interests Emanuelle is a this body builder dude with a helmet of blonde haid and a five pound moustache and golden color around his neck with the number 34 printed on it. Emanuelle approaches the man, hardly says a word, and already has the stud seduced. But, damn, wouldn’t you know it? He is literally OWNED by a super wealthy older white woman who, trying to be kind here, isn;t quite on the same level as Emanuelle in the…any department. The Stud’s owner mentions a private island for single rich women where male sex slaves are auctioned off to the highest bidder and they must bring all of their masters sexual fantasies to life. NOW THAT’S THE MOTHER FUCKING SCOOP OF THE CENTURY! Or, at least it will lead to more sexcapades? I’m betting on sexcapades.
Well, the stuffy, dull as dirt gala turns into an unbridled orgy after a senator finds a golden peanut inside of a slice of cake, is rewarded with a nude young woman covered in icing he proceeds to lick from head to toe, and everyone quits their grinnin; and drops their linen for the stuffiest rich people orgy since Eyes Wide Shut! Only this time you get to see a woman give REALLY bad oral sex to some poor schmuck who is just WISHING it was the sultry Emanuel smearing her lipstick on his dipstick. Seriously, this woman uses all teeth and keeps flicking his peehole with her tongue. Thankfully we don;t ever see the guys face, or his expressions of boredom and, or, terror/suspense would have turned the film into a screwball comedy.
Before Emanuelle heads off to the private island to see how the old, rich, single ladies get frisky, she meets up with her boyfriend from back in New York, Bill (Riccardo Salvino), who is also a journalist and happens to be on a layover. The only have about an hour so, in one o the films sweetest sequences, the two run around Venice trying to find a place to have a quickie. The run all over the place and finally decide to go at it right outside the doorway of a room where a full orchestra is rehearsing Vivaldi’s Four Seasons (Spring). It’s light, sweet and a welcome bit of one on one fun. But, like so many joys in this world, it is cut short as they jump cut to Emanuelle arriving at Rich Woman’s Pleasure Island, which has very strict privacy rules set in place to protect their wealthy clientele.
While at the resort Emanuele witnesses some actual hardcore tender porn moments as one rich woman orders her sex slave to fuck her Tarzan style and we are treated to some extreme closeups of his wangdoodle doing the slip n’slop to her love shanty. We also see fellows stripping as Zorro, some casual cock sucking, a multi-racial threesome, but what really captures Emanuelle’s attention is one room in particular where a woman is getting her tits sucked and her bacon strip sizzled while watching a film…to Emanuelle’s very subdued shock, a distinctly brutal snuff film.
Snuff Film
Noun
Slang. pornographic film that shows an actual murder of one of the performers, as at the end of a sadistic act.
Someone on the island reports that they’ve seen Emanuelle sneaking around taking photos with her super secret necklace camera and she is held captive by the woman who runs the island. Emanuelle quickly seduces her by appealing to her repressed lesbian tendencies, making her take a bite from a cock and balls shaped aphrodisiac cookie, getting her drunk, stripping her naked and pouncing on her like a lynx! They begin to go at it before Emanuelle steals her clothes and jumps in the back of the private island to airport courtesy car and makes her escape! She repays the driver by getting naked, yanking his knob out of his trousers and gobbling it like mad, causing him to wreck his car…but he still gets it on with her in the front seat of his totaled courtesy car. I’m certain it was totally worth the price of the repairs.
Emanuelle, now determined to find the source of these snuff films heads to Washington D.C. where she seduces a U.S. Senator who is reportedly a large supported of the snuff film market. He has a wife, kids…and a pleasure condo where takes Emanuelle to get down and dirty as only the rich and powerful can. When Emanuelle requests something truly hardcore and forbidden, he is qucik to pull down a screen and project a horrifyingly bloody and brutal snuff porn loop featuring women getting pile-driven impaled through their vaginas onto massive spikes, nipples being sliced of of screaming women and women getting sodomized with hooks ripping through their cheeks. Emanuelle watches in horror and it is edited together with a sequence of her and the senator flying in a private place to an undisclosed location in South America where she witnesses for herself the studio where these dehumanizing, savage rapes and murders are occurring and being filmed for the delight and hardons of the white, rich and powerful back in The States. Turns out women from all over the world are kidnapped and sold to these filmmakers to create these sick, disgusting, horrible murder spank films. Jump cut to Emanuelle sitting straight up in the senator’s fuck bungalow bed (“What was it? A Dream? A Nightmare? I saw something horrible!”) where the senator tells her they took LSD and she was just hallucinating everything. Sure, that sounds reasonable. Emanuelle buys this really lame explanation and heads back to New York.
However, back in New York, while discussing this turn of events with her editor, he reveals to her that they had the pictures she took with her hidden camera while she was “hallucinating” on the senator’s bed, and there they are…a dozen or more images of the film she supposedly dreamed up in clear focus and absolutely horrifying. Unfortunately, her editor must follow the orders of those from the top, and he cannot publish her article or the photos, instead, burying them in the archives. It’s a devastating turn of events (“Other girls are going to get dragged into it, and we’ll become accomplices in this whole filthy business!) that has Emanuelle considering hanging up her camera for good.
Emanuelle in America is simultaneously dark and beautiful, containing some genuinely sweet, erotic moments shuffled in with some deeply twisted, perverted content. For sleaze film connoisseurs, Emanuelle in America is a goldmine, containing every single element you could ever possibly hope a greasy, grimy, sexploitation film could deliver. It’s such a strange juxtaposition, these light soft porn elements, next to hardcore pornography, brutal fake snuff scenes and real animal husbandry. It’s not a great work of art, it;s not particularly well crafted or staged, but in it’s refusal to mold itself to expectations and Joe D’Amato’s willingness to go to the steamy, grotesque depths of carnal human desires and lusts, and actress Laura Gemser’s strength and willingness to go along for the ride and D’Amato’s vision to life, make this a truly remarkable and harrowing piece of Trash Cinema.
What I also find alluring about Emanuelle in America is it’s theme of contemporary slavery, people using other people as a means to an end. Each adventure that Emanuelle goes on, every scoop she investigates, has to do with people selling themselves for the pleasures of others all leading up to folks being stolen, raped and murdered for profit. It’s just another form of the rich fucking the poor. There’s no love in any of these scenarios. WE have a scene where a woman NEEDS love and Emanuelle must show her tenderness. The young blonde stud wants Emanuelle, but he is a kept slave. Truly, the only moments of genuine love we witness in the film are between Emanuelle and Bill, her New York lover. The genuinely care for one another and feel joy when in one another’s presence. These fleeting moments are the happiest in the film The wealthy are simply taking life from the poor, the nameless, and unknown just as they have since the beginning of time. And when these crimes are finally brought to light, at the end of the day, these people are still the ones calling the shot and will deny their story be told. And folks, that makes me want to puke more than any artificial snuff footage, horse hand-job or uncoordinated toothy blowjob. It’s a scathing indictment against the the rich and wealthy elitists which has given Emanuelle in America a lasting power and far more relevant than I’m sure it’s makers ever anticipated. Beyond the film’s shock factors, we are given plenty to ponder over by the time the credits roll.
This is one for the devotees, those who are willing to go there. This is not for the mainstream or those who like their films lite, easy and aimed to please. No, Emanuelle in America is quite possibly one of the most daring, uncompromising and gnarly sexploitation films of it’s era. And for those with the fortitude for such a film, such a reprehensible and perverse Trash Cinema offering, Emmanuelle in America is a must watch.
For ultra sleazy Trash Cinema fans ONLY! Notorious for the right reasons, Joe D’Amato’s Emanuelle in America is Sexploitation cinema at it’s most experimental, gnarly and bizarre. A must see for those who can take it.
I am awarding Emanuelle in America FIVE out of FIVE Dumpster Nuggets.
“You have to look. You have to.” – Malabimba, Malabimba, The Malicious Whore (1979)
a Primal Root written review
You know, some movies you have to wait for them to really warm up and get moving. You’re introduced to characters, you learn who they are, their motives and the roles they play in the narrative, then around the twenty minute mark we get to the inciting incident that sets the thrust of the plot in motion and we continue going through the motions from there. You know what I;m saying? Snooze-A-Rama. Malabimba, the 1979 Italian genre blender flick of supernatural horror and pornography does not suffer from any such issue. No, it hits the ground running and does not let up till the final goddamn frame. Whoever coined the term, “All killer, no filler” might have been talking about Malabimba: The Malicious Whore, because holy fuck is thing a full throttle psycho sexual taboo bending fuck fest like few I’ve ever had the pleasure to endure zipper burn watching, hot diggity dog!
Young, shy, nubile teenager Malabimba’s (Katell Laennec) mother, and matriarch of a once influential and prosperous (they live in a goddamn CASTLE!) Caroli family, has just recently passed away due to a slight case of MURDER under mysterious circumstances. The film opens on a seance where the family is attempting to contact her spirit for reasons that are not made clear. Unfortunately for them, but fortunately for the viewing audience, their medium starts flipping the fuck out before becoming possessed by the perverted, malicious, absolutely vicious spirit of the decadent late cousin Lucrezia who immediately begins berating, insulting and sexually assaulting the family. Pop’s (Andrea played by Enzo Fisichella) has his pants yanked open and his party favor yanked upon before Bimba’s Aunt/Andrea’s voluptuous sister-in-law, Nais (Patrizia Webley) gets her dress torn off exposing her for the entire family to admire then begins making the medium writhe all over the floor in orgasmic screams of horrified ecstacy. As the family carries on with the half nekkid ghostly shenanigans downstairs, the spirit soon flees to other area of the house, first dropping in on the House Nun/Nurse Sofia (Mariangela Giordano, Peter Bark’s mother in Burial Ground), and gets her masturbating a bit before being forced out of Sofia via Sofia’s strong faith in the big boss man in the sky. NOT TO WORRY! Quickly after this rejection, the ghost of Lucrezia lays her eyes upon Malabima…who makes the perfect vessel for her rude, perverse, sexually charge atrocities to be acted out upon her family…
It’s the perfect goddamn set up and Malabimba has it ALL. Incest, profanity, teen sexuality, Nunspolitation, hypocrisy, softcore pornography laced with heavy duty penetration inserts, demonic spirit possession, cock grabbing, pussy munching, unholy seduction, good vs. evil conflict, murder by oral sex, just to name a few. This is what Malabimba has to offer in a none stop sleazefest that must be seen and experienced to believe. It’s the kind of film that will leave your mind blown out of the back of your head and splattered against the back of your LA-Z-BOY. This is not a sweet, kind, romp in the sheets, no, there is no safety net in any of the unholy love pumping on display in Malabimba, this is a film which boldly charts a moral destroying course to create a filthy, disturbing, highly atmospheric, creepy and erotically charged nightmare unlike any you’ll ever see again.
Directed by the highly underrated and often overlooked purveyor of many fine Italian Trash Cinema classics as 1981’s Burial Ground, 1976’s Strip Nude For Your Killer and 1972’s What the Peeper Saw, filmmaker Andrea Bianchi has crafted a powerfully nasty, sacrilegious, taboo busting masterpiece in a career built upon such giddy sleaze and exploitation. Seriously, less than ten minutes in Malabimba’s run time and you already have a 90 minute film worth of drippy, sexual naughtiness. And I am not overstating the facts, it IS this loaded with skin and horror. It feels as if the film is always trying to top itself scene for scene by upping the horror and sex ante, and for this lover of fine filth, it is something I truly admire. This film is all you could ever want and I loved every second of it.
Honestly, the horror elements are somewhat fleeting as they are generally used as a means to an end leading to sexual encounters which range from disturbing and awkward to down right erotic, sensual and titillating . What really impresses is the fact that the story, as it is, and the characters are not just defined by their salacious nocturnal activities I found myself wondering through the entire film just what will become of the young Malabima and the target of her evil seductive prowess, Sister Sofia, will she stay on the righteous path or end up pulled down to the bowels of Hell by giving in to the cruel sex kitten? Malabimba: The Malicious Whore is sexploitation cinema at it’s down and dirty trashiest, which is it’s grandest form, if you ask me. If you think you might like your sexploitation tasteless and over the edge, and you are not offended by the sight of penises entering vaginas and/or mouths, I highly recommend Malibaba: The Malicious Whore. But you don’t have to take my word for it!
I PROUDLY award this Grade A slice of filth FIVE out of FIVE Dumpster Nuggets!
Do not miss this suckers! By the way, this puppy is available to rent on DVD at Cap City Video Lounge in Tallahassee, Florida. 😉
“Norm, you’ve got pies in your Levis.” – Stephanie Fondue as Jeannie in The Cheerleaders
a Primal Root written review
This is the film that started it all. The film that bridged the gap between the cinematic beach blanket bingo goofiness era of the 1960’s and the no tits uncovered teensploitation bushapalooza of the 1970’s. That’s right, we’re talking about my favorite Trash Cinema sex comedy of all time, 1972’s The Cheerleaders. A film that pulls of the trick of combining both rosy cheeked innocence and balls deep raunchiness at the exact same time which, in short order, became the go-to magic formula for the genre. In my filthy opinion, no teen tits and ass movie ever treaded the terrain as well, either genuinely hilariously or penis swelling sexily as The Cheerleaders managed to pull it off. Not only that, but teen sex comedies for the next 40 years all owe an enormous debt of gratitude to this game changing slice of Trash Cinema sleaze.
Legend has it that after the success of the enormously bankable 3-D softcore skin flick, The Stewardesses, The Cheerleaders director Paul Glickler decided another sexploitation picture featuring ladies in and out of uniform would make a chunk of change at the box office. After witnessing a troupe of sexy early 1970’s all natural high school majorettes strut their stuff in a small town parade, Glickler knew he had a winner. When he pitched his initial idea was met with plenty of skepticism, after all, we are talking about the sex lives of teenagers which was a tiny bit taboo at the time. But once Glicker crossed paths with Jerry “I Drink Your Blood/ I Eat Your Skin” Gross, Glickler’s sleazy, perverted idea become an glorious reality. The Cheerleaders was released regionally in the budding spring of 1972 , and by the fall of that same year, The Cheerleaders had become the #1 movie in The Land of the Free, The United states of America, doing our grand, old nation proud. The proved at long last that we should never, ever, underestimate the overwhelming power of nubile, bouncy cheerleaders to draw a crowd happy to pay their hard earn cash to ogle their lovely young bodies.
The Cheerleaders commences at Amorosa High School as their football team is in the middle of their biggest winning streak in many a moon. What is their secret? Their horny cheerleading squads voracious sexual appetite and their mission to ball every opposing team in it’s entirety the night before each game. These young ladies’ immense school spirit is matched only by the fathomless rage of their teenage libidos. The Cheerleading squad is so damn popular they have their own corner in the girls locker room where the pervy janitor has placed his peep hole. The other girls peep around their lockers to watch these lovely young ladies dress and undress. However, one girl seems more enamored by the mysterious sexual allure of this band of sexually aggressive females. It is the cherubic face, young, naive Jeannie (Stephanie Fondue) and she decides she will do ANYTHING to become a part of the team.
Let me stop this review right here and take a moment to discuss my unending love for actress Stephanie Fondue. Like Jill Lansing in Malibu High (1979), this was Stephanie’s only roll and there’s not much information to be found about her or what became of her. All we know for sure is that her real name is Enid and that she did some nude modeling for magazines. Also, according to Glickler, she was incredibly open and free with her body to the extent that she even offered to actually fuck her fellow actors for the sex scenes. For whatever reason, she wondered off from an exceedingly promising cult actress career and vanished into Trash Cinema oblivion. She is absolutely phenomenal in this film. Her awesome punk rock chop top hairdo, to her goofy, awkward teenage line delivery, her fantastic comedic instincts and tomboy sexual appeal coupled with her generous amounts of total nudity, she gives a screen performance that is unforgettable and makes the whole film a joy to watch. Her willingness to do anything for a laugh, from wrestling nekkid int he shower with the entire football team, to exploding forth from a bedroom totally nekkid and spread eagle after a waterbed explodes, insured that Ms. Fondue’s performance is among the most inspiring of all sexploitation. I will forever admire Stephanie Fondue and wonder where she is…and if she’s thinking of The Primal Root, too.
Okay, back to the review!When it becomes common knowledge that one of the cheerleaders has had to quit the squad due to an unscheduled pregnancy, Jeannie grabs her pom-poms and joins the try out! Beforehand, she gets some advice from Bonnie and Debbie on how to be embody the spirit of the cheerleading squad. First, the get Jeannie to ditch the bra and then get her to put on the clothes her teddy bear typically wears before they totally lose focus and go off to seduce the men of the house, Jeannie’s chronically masturbating brother, Bonnie offers a lovely alternative, and Jeannie’s incredibly lecherous and wondrously dorky Father. Debbie attempts to seduce the bespectacled golf fanatic.
“Gee, Mr. Davis,” Debbie says, picking up one of Dad’s golfballs,” I like your balls.”
Dad, being a wile old fox, of course, gives her an impromptu golf lesson.
When Dad gets a look at Jeannie’s nipples pocking through her super tight and tiny shirt, he loses his boner quick and flips his shit, going off on poor Jeannie. Outside, as she consoled by Debbie and Bonnie, it comes to light that Jeannie is in fact…still a virgin.
“Norman thinks I’m a piece of toast,” Jeannie strangely asserts. “Buttered.”
Zod, I love the dialog in this movie. ❤
Jeannie tries out and she is horrible, however, she is a virgin and according the wisdom of the 1970’s, less likely to get knocked up, so they decide to give her a chance. First stop, initiation. They tell her she must shower int he boy’s locker room, convincing her by lying that football practice won;t be over for another hour. Of course, as Jeannie stands nekkid, wet and alone in the shower, the entire football team comes running in nekkid, filthy and as is the case with most teenage boys, horny as fuck. Not the best strategy if you don;t want your new cheerleader getting pregnant, but for sheer visual impact, this is among the finest scenes in annals of teensploitation. No other woman in trash cinema history has ever pulled off fully nude pratfalls with such lovely timing and grace.
And then Debbie fucks the guy at the hamburger stand. And Claudia fucks the coach, And Patty fucks the lesbian gym teacher of a crotch thrusting piece of gym equipment. As you may ascertain, there’s a fuck ton of fucking in The Cheerleaders and if it’s not actually kind of sexy it is bafflingly over the top and awkwardly funny. On the way home from school Jeannie mentions to fellow cheerleader, the red headed Suzy, that she has no idea how to seduce a boy. Suzy shows her how it’s done by hoping over to fellow bus rider, grabs his dick and starts going to town. As we all know, this is pretty much a spot on representation of all a woman need do to seduce a man. Suzy then goes on to fuck the bus driver as he continues his route.
Soon, an actual plot begins forming as Jeannie invites the Squad over for a slumber party before the big final football game of the season that will determine the championship. The entire football team crashes the party and the Cheerleaders can;t help themselves, like a filthy version of Pokemon go, these ladies gotta fuck ’em all! And they do, with relish. Only thing is, now it is their own team that has been fucked into a near comatose state which will end int heir loss of the championship. It is now up to The Cheerleaders to pull an all night, county wide fuck fest to pound the other team’s pud until every single one of their pinkies is all stinky and the odds are matched. The girls ambush and have sex with their team’s opponent, no one is safe as they attack them at the gym posing as weights, at the drive in, at the garage, in various bedrooms, and in my favorite bit, bursting forth through a table and a pepperoni pizza at an Italian restaurant.
However, the next day there is one player that didn’t get laid last night. The 4th string QB was somehow missed during the all night cum raid. But whose pussy is pure enough to take down this final swinging dick that stands hard against Amorosa High and their championship victory? Could it be…Jeannie the virgin?
The Cheerleaders is by far and away one of the most bizarre, sexy and funny sexploitation teen sex comedies I’ve ever seen and one I hold very close to my filthy heart. It was quickly followed by an onslaught of cheerleader sex pictures giving way to the term Cheersploitation, and is a genre that has stuck around to this very day. As long as you have enthusiastic, energetic, chicks in skimpy outfits and as long as folks continue to enjoy baring witness to their cinematic antics, it’s genre that will be with us until humanity finally dies out.
Still, The Cheerleaders was the first and will always be, by this purveyor of filths humble opinion, the finest example of the genre.
I award The Cheerleaders FIVE out of FIVE Dumpster Nuggets.
Trashy New Year, Gang! It’s your filthy friend The Primal Root here and thrilled to pieces to be off on another year of gnarly, disgusting adventures through the world and many dimensions of Trash Cinema. And what better way to get this foul year off on the right foot than with a stunning, slimy, sexy Devil Girl spread from Madame Cupcake! The Madame is treating us to a very risque and messy spread sure to get your balls dropping just in time for 2018! But, before you feast your eyes, let’s get to know our Madame Cupcake a little better, shall we?
The Primal Root: Trashy New Year, Madame Cupcake! Hot damn, this is one sexy, slimy, perfect spread to ring in the new year here at The Trash Cinema Collective. What made you decide to go with a slimy Ghostbuster 2 themed set? And please tell us more about the brilliant giant slime cock.
Madame Cupcake: I chose Ghostbusters 2 for lots of reasons! It’s one of my absolute favorite movies. It is set on New Years Eve, which was convenient to the timing, and I have ALWAYS loved being slimy and wet.
As for the slime-cock, I was struck with inspiration on the day of the shoot. Luckily, I already owned a suitable prop!
Root: Tell us a little something about yourself. What are you into? What are your passions?
Cupcake: I’m a secret ninja. I’m into slime-cocks and binge watching Netflix nature shows. My passions are my girl friend’s tits, boobs in general, and putting cats into human clothes.
Root:What are some of your favorite Trash Classics you like to watch this time of year to ring in the New Year?
Cupcake: Rocky Horror and Harold & Maude are perfect for any season.
Root: What song would you like attached to your Devil Girl spread? What song sums it up for you?
Cupcake: The Ghostbuster’s theme song of course!
Root: Any words of wisdom for The Trash Cinema Collective?
Cupcake: When the slime gets you sticky, make a cock and get frisky.
TRASHY HALLOWEEN, GANG! It’s your pal, The Primal Root here and i am thrilled to pieces to be introducing you to our Halloween Devil Girl for 2015,Liquid NitroJeanne! It looks like her Halloween evening is getting off to an eventful start with a visit from The Boogeyman himself, Mr. Michael Myers. But Before we delve into her sexy, naughty, devilish trick or treating sex party, let’s ask the lovely Liquid NitroJean a few getting to know you questions…
ROOT:Liquid NitroJeanne, we’re honored to have you as our Halloween Devil Girl 2015! May we ask what you’re looking forward to most this Halloween?
Nitro: The pleasure is all mine!! This Halloween, I’m looking forward to spooking the neighborhood trick-or-treaters and consuming mass quantities of sugary delights from mysterious sources — razor blades, anyone?
ROOT: How was it having to seduce The Boogeyman, Michael Myers, The shape for this year’s Halloween spread? Was the guy one tough cookie or easy to win over? Any tips for the ladies and / or fellas out there?
Nitro: Seducing Mikey was a real treat. Sure, he was a little distant at first, but I’ve found that every boogeyman really just wants to be loved. My advice to all the gals & ghouls out there is to let the monster in, feed your demons, and enjoy the ride!
ROOT: What are some of your favorite scary movies to watch around Halloween? Any recommendations?
Nitro: Of course I’ll always love the standard classics. Personal favorites include “The Shining” and the original “Psycho” with Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates. Kubrick & Hitchcock manipulate suspense in such a brilliant and beautiful way! (Fun fact: my cat’s full name is Simon Anthony Purrkins.) If you really wanna get mind-fucked, though, I recommend the 1979 flick, “Phantasm,” or any South Korean horror films, like “The Doll Master.” Yikes!
ROOT: If you could pick one song to be the soundtrack to your Halloween Devil Girl spread, what would it be?
Nitro: Nina Simone’s version of “I Put a Spell on You” wink emoticon
DAMN fine selection,Liquid NitroJeanne! Well, Gang, without any further a due, sink your teeth into the slasher seduction depravity of Halloween Devil Girl,Liquid NitroJeanne! Oh, and of course, have a Trashy Halloween!
Hey Gang, The Primal Root here, and I am extremely proud to not only be the very first Devil Guy featured on The Trash Cinema Collective, but to be sharing this honor with the gorgeous and remarkable Devil Girl, Maiden Detroit and to have been photographed by the remarkably talented, gorgeous and uncanny love of my live, Ms. Bootsie Kidd. The stars aligned and we created a photo spread I am incredibly proud of. Something I’ve been dreaming of for years and, through the kindness and creativity of my friends in The Trash Cinema Collective, has been brought to glorious, bloody life. Before we take a look at our Devil Girl/Devil Boy Texas Chainsaw Massacre inspired spread, let’s get to know our subjects, shall we?
Maiden Detroit Interviewed by The Primal Root
Root: We’re so fucking happy to have you back in the Devil Girl fold, Maiden. What prompted your return?
Maiden: When the opportunity to be apart of the first Devil Guy shoot presents itself you don’t say no. Done deal, Ass up, tits out!
Root: How was it working so intimately with The Primal Root and Bootsie Kidd?
Maiden: Coming up to the set as the first shots were being taken, seeing the ease in which Bootsie and Root worked together; Chainsaw in the air, apron on and little to nothing else. I immediately felt at home. Bootsie’s ability to direct so gracefully with steady encouragement made being strung up incredibly comfortable. I am sure Root was just as nervous, as I, but you would not have known. There were some intense scenes: head knocking, hair pulling, body dragging and a lot of BLOOD. It was sticky mess, but I’d work with these two again in a heartbeat (so long as my heart continues to beat.)
Root: Got any cool plans for this Halloween? What are you dressing up as? What will you be drinking? What’s the Trashiest wish you’re filthy heart is hoping for this Halloween?
Maiden: Turns out, I know these really two cool cats who are throwing a Haunted Hootenanny. So, after working I will most certainly be there. I will be dressed in my finest blood soaked garb, drinking PBR, whiskey, wine, blood and whatever else ends up in my hand. I know that it is going to be a blast. As for a trashy Halloween wish, I want all the adults get their treats from tricks. Trix are not just for kids.
Root: Can you give us some of your favorite Trashy Halloween movie selections you like to watch this time of year?
Maiden: Hmm…that’s a tough one. I’m kind of a horror junkie. I guess I might have a thing for the “tortured” baddies. I really like a nice Ciante. Hannibal Lecter is sexy as hell, so Silence of the Lambs. Hellraiser introduced me to Pinhead and I have never been able to get him out of my mind. There is something about that puzzlebox. Oh, and the bondage 😉 Freddy Kruger and his Nightmare on Elm Street has always been my favorite. After all, he was my first.
Root: If you could pick one song to be the soundtrack for our Trash Cinema Collective Gang to view this spread to, what would it be?
Maiden: It would absolutely have to be “Let Me Love You To Death,” by Type O Negative.
“Now close those eyes and let me love you to death!”
The Primal Root Interviewed by Bootsie Kidd
Boots: So, Primal Root, you’ve had The Trash Cinema Collective blog up and the Notorious Devil Girls as a staple feature for going on six years now, What prompted you to brave being the very first Devil Boy? What Now?
Root: Well, to be honest, I’ve always felt kind of lame seeking out Devil Girls and never taking the plunge and risking getting nekkid myself for a photo spread featured on my own blog. I never want to ask someone to do something I would never ever do myself. The horror market is so intensely saturated with nude women in horror scenarios but never guys. It’s always felt really one sided to me. For such a progressive genre, there seems to be very little in the way of equal play in these sorts of flicks. So, I figured, since i am a nudist with deep, abiding love for all things Trash Cinema, I might as well get nekkid and pay homage to one of my all time favorite horror films, the savage slice of cinema, Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Plus, this is something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time and I am incredibly happy and proud with how this spread turned out.
Bootsie: Okay, let’s take it back a turn, what are your earliest most vivd memories of horror films?
Root: Oh man, that’s a good one. I remember being freaked out by the Large Marge moment in Pee Wee’s Big Adventure I always had a fascinating with monster, ghosts and the massacre ever since I was a very little kid. I lived for Ghostbusters and The REAL Ghostbuster animated series as well as Monster Squad, Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom, Gremlins and the classic Universal Monster Movies I rented form the library like Dracula, The Wolf Man and Bride of Frankenstein. But, I think the moment which solidified horror as a passion for me was when I saw Who Framed Roger Rabbit? for the first time. When Judge Doom is in the ACME factory, turns his head and reveals himself to be a Toon with this red cartoon eyes, and at the same time confesses to being the murderer of Teddie Valiant with that high pitched, screaming voice, I nearly shit myself. I was terrified, but at the same time totally in awe and in love with how warped and mortifying this was. The creativity and the terror brought it all home and I knew horror was what I lived for. It will forever be my genre.
Bootsie: I think we, and countless fans van agree, Leatherface is unique. What makes him special to you and why did you choose as the subject for this project?
Root: I put on my Leatherface costume for the first time a couple Halloween’s ago and I have never felt more at home in a disguise. Leatherface just suits me somehow. It just seemed a natural choice for me, plus, his character and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre films themselves lent our set a story that pretty much told itself. I was lucky enough to have you as my photographer and the beautiful, brave, up for anything Maiden Detroit to collaborate and shre this spread with. There is a lot of horror here, but there’s also this odd, morbid romance where Leatherface becomes this beautiful woman he has just killed by doning her face. It gross, nasty, in slightly romantic in a very twisted way. I was lucky to have incredible talent to help me bring this spread to life.
Gang, in the world of current Trash Cinema I am seldom supremely impressed anymore. It’s easy to shock people or gross them out, but to entertain while doing so? Not since John Waters or Lloyd Kaufman have I seen a filmmaker who can pull it off so seamlessly. Enter, filmmakers Drew Bulduc and Dan Nelson and their exemplarily slice of down and dirty filth, The Taint. Not since Pink Flamingos have I been this genuinely entertained and repulsed by a movie. Here’s the low down…
The Taint is the story of a very different kind of apocalypse. The world’s water supply becomes tainted by a mysterious chemical which affects only men, making their cocks grow ridiculously large, spew goopy man milk through the air, and drives them to homicidal rage towards women, whom they dispatch in graphic, nasty, hysterical ways. We learn of this taint through an excellent opening credit sequences that explicitly shows the spread of the chemical agent through our world and just how vast it’s reach is. I’m not going to spoil it, but we do get to see just how and why this chemical agent was created and how it ended up contaminating our water supply. Trust me, it’s a story well worth witnessing.
As society collapses a handful of survivors must come to terms with this new world of brutal violence, constantly hard, violently ejaculating cocks and men who have become monsters, constantly looking for female skulls to crush. Two survivors, Phill O’Ginny (Drew Bolduc) a man-whore teenage skater who’s too cool for school and Misandra (Colleen Walsh) a shot gun toting, take no prisoners feminist badass must band together in the heat of this armageddon to do battle with the hordes of psychopaths, both tainted and un-tainted, and face down their personal demons in order to pave their own way in this terrifying new world order.
The Taint is the most brashly wonderful and original piece of trash cinema I’ve seen in what feels like an eternity. It is a film of uncommon grotesqueries to match it’s extraordinary intelligence. The jokes and gags are made so much stronger due to the wit behind them. Sure, you’re witnessing mindless death and destruction filled with puke, piss, shit, tits and dicks, but it’s all handled with such confidence and savvy, that it is goddamn impossible to not be thoroughly entertained. I could not wait to see where this fucking madman of a movie was going to take me next. The score, which is fucking spectacular and composed by Drew Bolduc, feels like a beautiful mix of John Carpenter at his very best mixed by Daft Punk and then fucked an 8-Bit video game.
The Taint never lets up, never slows down and is never short of incredible concepts, savage strangeness or fantastic energy. It feels like the most amazing backyard movie project ever filmed. There’s even an underlying and interesting subtext broaching such subjects as post-feminist society, misogyny and misandry in American culture. We watch as women are killed, their blood spraying through the air as men jerk off and laugh while watching. In another scene, a woman mentions how all men will eventually turn into this a monster, lusting after the destruction of women…and then we can;t help but laugh as a rock hard cock gets shoved through her skull and out her face before a young man packing heat blows the cock off and calls the cock wielder a misogynist. It’s ludicrous and hysterical but at least it’s trying to strike the conversation up. And for this, I totally commend The Taint.
I am in love with this film. I am going to go buy a copy, abduct people, tie them to the couch and make them watch it. Well, maybe just continually invite a steady stream of my Trash Cinema loving friends over to witness The Taint‘s greatness. If we still lived in a world with art house cinemas and drive-in theaters, The Taint would be an instant Midnight Movie classic. Why The Taint is not a sensation, I have no clue. But I will preach the gospel of The Taint to my last dying breath. Gang, this is Trash Cinema at it’s very finest. virtuoso filmic filth. YOU MUST SEE THIS! Find a copy, come over to my house, or attend a Trash Cinema Night at Bird’s Aphrodisiac Oyster Shack one day when we screen it. IF you love what Drive-In Movies once were, witness the second coming. The Taint is one of the funniest, nastiest, most ceaselessly entertaining flicks I’ve ever seen.
FIVE out of FIVE Dumpster Nuggets! INSTANT TRASH CINEMA CLASSIC!
Among the most everlasting and endlessly interesting paradoxes of the horror slasher genre are those rare films that charm your cinematic pants off with their absurdity, their unabashed disregard for the established genre rules and conventions and being totally different from anything else you’ve ever thrown down to watch on a Trash Movie Saturday with The Gang. I’ve always found such films to be thoroughly engrossing simply because I don’t have the slightest idea of what to expect, we’re in the hands of an original thinker, one who says “fuck you,” to the old horror genre guards, “we’re going to tell this story my way!” It’s a bold, strange tactic for approaching a horror sub genre and often delivers something unlike we’ve ever seen. Unfortunately, this approach often plays poorly with the genre die hards, and are typically rejected for being “too weird” and are relegated to the ever growing pile of forgotten and neglected horror oddities.
Enter Canadian made slasher horror lost nugget of pure gold, “Killer Party,” Directed by “Funeral Home” helmer, William Fruet, and written by Barney Cohen, the visionary who wrote 1984’s perennial fan favorite, “Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter”, “Killer Party” is one of the most off beat offerings of the entire slasher era. To describe it would be a disservice, as the film actually contains some fun moments where the rug ends up being pulled out from underneath the audience, leaving us in a form of exhilarated bafflement as to what the Hell movie we’re actually watching…or resentment and annoyance, if you’re looking for another Friday the 13th clone. Obviously, these two creative minds knew the well treaded rules of the genre and it’s apparent they had a blast fucking with everything audiences had come to expect from their dead teenager opus.
The main story of “Killer Party” centers on three high school best friends who are starting out on their freshman year of college and are pledging to the same sorority together. Phoebe (Elaine Wilkes, playing the excited optimist), Vivia (Sherry Willis-Burch, playing the adorable nerd with a penchant for awesome pranks and excellent special effects), and Jennifer (Joanna Johnson, playing the quiet, shy, somewhat repressed young lady). As luck would have it, their hazing ritual will be taking place in an abandoned Frat house that’s been left to rot since a freshman was decapitated by guillotine when an initiation ritual went murderously haywire. Of course, someone on campus has their nuts twisted in a knot over this, as evidenced by the house mother getting her brains bashed in with an oar and smeared all over the steps of this old, sagging, frat house.
The hazing itself, with a ritual highlight being the girls having raw eggs dumped into their mouths and then spitting the aborted baby chicken goo they catch into sundae glasses, but the fun and games come to an end when shit starts getting all poltergeist. Noises are heard, glasses fling themselves off tables and shatter across the floor, and someone puts a light on a dimmer and turns on a fog machine from the other side of the door down to the basement. Vivia goes to investigate on her own as the other Sorority Girls hold each other and cry. Once the ladies gather up enough courage to check on Vivia, they witness her fastened to a guillotine, where her head is unceremoniously, but efficiently, lopped off and sent rolling down the stairs.
Turns out this was all a hand crafter prank by the creative, resourceful and immanently lovable Vivia, who not only managed to scare the living shit out of every woman in the house, but also secure herself and her two best friends, spots at the sorority house of their dreams, which seems to be filled with judgmental uber bitches and I can;t for the life of me figure out WHY they want to be a part of this sisterhood so badly. Never the less, the following evening the Sorority sisters will be throwing a celebratory April Fool’s Day party at the abandoned frat house and will be inviting the boys from their fraternity that likes to prank them by unleashing jars full of angry bees upon them while they’re nekkid in the sorority hot tub. Now that’s fun!
Several university staff members investigate the frat house on their own and go missing on account of their brutal murders, but thankfully for us, no one notices these folks have vanished into oblivion without a trace and the party can commence. The only person who senses that there might be some spooky shit going on in the crusty, dank, frat house is the lovely, quiet, Jennifer, who gets the oogie-boogies every time she steps foot into that roach motel. Once the festoonery is displayed, the kegs are tapped, and the costumed revelers arrive, things start getting just a little bizarre. Supernatural shenanigans start going down, subtle at first, but then more apparent, pranks are had, but what are pranks and what are vengeance fueled demonic paranormal phenomena? As an audience, you’re never quite totally sure what the fuck is going on, even when somebody starts trudging around the house in a turn of the century scuba harness and begins spearing folks with a trident. Is this for real, or some sick and twisted joke? By the end of “Killer Party,” all is made clear, and it might be a bit more disturbing than you expect.
Coming out in the same year as “JASON LIVES!: Friday the 13th Part VI,” Tobe Hooper’s “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre part 2”, and the year after Dan O’ Bannon’s “Return of the Living Dead,” it was apparent that the genre had begun having fun with itself, it’s fans and the conventions of the genre they had created in the late 70’s and early 80’s. By the mid 80’s, there had been so many fucking slasher films that the formula was practically etched in stone. It seems many filmmakers decided one of the best ways to go about eschewing these predictable traditions was to turn those rules on their heads and have fun with what folks were expecting. In a way, those films became final salutes, the last gasping breathes of a cinematic genre that had all but run it’s course and are now hailed as some of the most beloved cult favorites from that time period. “Killer Party” is another entry in this select group of offerings from the mid 80’s.
What sets “Killer Party” apart from these other offerings is that our lead protagonists, Vivia, Jennifer and Phoebe are incredibly likable characters. They’re not your run of the mill sex pot, teen dream, centerfold, slasher standbys, in fact, the three girls straight up dorks. All three look and are played as your “girl next door” type, they don’t dress for sex appeal, they dress for warmth and comfort (this thing was filmed in Canada, after all). Not only that, but they are intelligent, headstrong and ridiculously funny, never taking themselves too seriously. If I am being honest, I’d rather hang out with these three ladies than anyone in any other slasher franchise. Seriously, they’re that appealing. And I gotta give credit to Joanna Johnson’s performance, especially in the last fifteen or twenty minutes of the film. That woman goes for broke and it’s pretty goddamn outstanding. My jaw drops to my popcorn littered floor every time I watch her transformation at the end of this thing.
“Killer Party” doesn’t redefine the genre, or anything and it’s lacking in the gore department and the TnA quotient is pretty low. Hell, it’s not even all that great of a movie, but what it IS, is a very fun and unpredictable piece of Trash Cinema. Filled with bizarre funeral home mishaps, nekkid young women being chased by furious swarms of killer bees, and impromptu rock and roll zombie dance parties taking place at one of the coolest god damn drive-in’s I’ve ever seen, “Killer Party” is a rare, wonderful oddity. The kind you used to see on the video rental store shelf and take a gamble on. Killer Party never ever makes the mistake of taking itself too seriously, which may rub many hardcore slasher film fans the wrong way. But for the rest of us willing, able and hungry for something refreshingly bizarre and unique, this is a party worth crashing, Gang.
I’m giving this sucker THREE AND A HALF Dumpster Nuggets
Folks in the late 60’s and early 70’s must’ve loved to imagine somewhere out there in the Philippines there are prison/labor camps filled with gorgeous, violently horny American women wearing nothing but the tiniest of shorts and shirts that hang open so their ample, sweaty bosoms simply pour out of them as they sweat and work in the baking hot sun. How did I come to this conclusion, you ask? Because Corman and Co. were pumping these flicks out like chicken nuggets. One thing’s for sure, they tapped into some strange, dark fantasy of the time that proved profitable and a wonderful showcase for gonzo politics, dark satire, even darker attempts at comedy, and bizarre perversions of all kinds.
Among the grandest touchstones to come from these scantly clad and brutalized women in exotic prison movies was the steady appearances by the sassy, energetic, Ms. Pam Grier, who would go on to become a legend in her own right. In 1972’s “The Big Bird Cage” Pam Grier and Sig Haig play two revolutionaries, Blossom and Django (in possibly my favorite pairing of the two in their long history of working together), who end up dragging a gorgeous social climber by the name of Terry ( the lovely Anitra Ford of TV’s The Price is Right and the forgotten and highly underrated “Messiah of Evil” from 1972) into their crime wave as a hostage. It’s a short lived affair that end with Blossom and Django getting away and Terry going to a brutal concentration camp run by a sadistic warden and his army of burly, homosexual guards. Terry and the rest of the girls are put to work in the sweltering Philippine heat harvesting the sugar cane crop in the fields and within a giant wooden contraption of the prison warden’s own nefarious design known as…THE BIG BIRD CAGE. His device crushes, maims, and kills the perky, naked women just as efficiently as it brings sugar to market. Hell, most of the prisoners would rather commit suicide than work within…THE BIG BARD CAGE.
When the ladies aren’t working nearly completely nude they’re showering, making sexual advances towards their gay captors and each other or plotting to escape. These women are all perpetually horny and lusting for hard cock and much of the film’s lighter moments are derived from their attempts to seduce the guards who have no interest in them whatsoever. It;s a strange mishmash of politically incorrect humor (back when that was the acceptable norm. Ah, the good old days…) and brutal revolt, punishment and death. You’ll be laughing your ass off as a tall, skinny blonde covers herself head to toe in Crisco and runs after her nemesis and fellow inmate stark nekkid so no one can stop her, and the next second you’ll be staring in disbelief as a woman is gang raped by a horde of sweaty, butterfly knife toting Filipino men before a gay prison guard can make a bizarre joke about how he never gets that kind of action. This is the kind of filthy, off the wall tone shifty comedy Jack Hill (Spider Baby, Coffy, Switchblade Sisters) seems to really go for in his film, and frankly, I love him for it. It’s sick, it’s sleazy, and it sure as shit is like nothing else you will ever see in cinema. It’s so vulgar and eye wideningly weird that you cannot help but laugh even though what’s left of your heart which is not black tells you that you’re going to Hell for finding this humorous.
During a botched act of revolution where Blossom attempts to explode a gathering of politicians at some kind of public art Chautauqua with a grenade her lover and fellow revolutionary Django gave her. The grenade lets out a sizzling spark fart rather than exploding and Blossom is sent to the same sugar cane Hell hole Terry was imprisoned in. As you might expect, Blossom establishes herself quickly as the Queen B of the women’s concentration camp as she kicks ass, tears off clothes and generally shows everyone who’s boss. But soon the Evil Warden is suspicious that Blossom is one of the jungle’s revolutionaries and begins beating and torturing the head strong and drop dead gorgeous Blossom to try and get her to talk.
In the meantime, Django begins posing as a fellow homosexual in order to seduce the prison guards and land himself a job within the women’s penitentiary so that he can rescue Blossom and get his revolution going. It isn’t long before the entire prison camp is in flames, women are gunned down, guards are stabbed and hacked into pieces and much time is spent on a gang rape scene where about a dozen women tie down one of the gay guards, force him to get his cock hard and then ride it like the proverbial pony. It’s an odd, uncomfortable scene that’s trying to play itself for laughs. Again, the laughs are of the “what the fuck is this? Am I meant to laugh?” variety. It plays as retribution for this guard making lite of a gang rape that happened earlier, but it’s still pretty fucking uncomfortable listening to this fellow struggle and whimper as a group of sexy, sweaty, naked women suck on his wang and start straddling. I did laugh out loud when one women has to think fast and muffles the guard’s screams by placing her pussy squarly on his mouth before letting out a “WOAH!” of surprised ecstasy. Now THAT’S funny. Jack Hill is one of the last true rape joke artists. See what I meant when I told you this thing is politically incorrect and deeply inappropriate? This ain’t no Shawshank Redemption, Gang.
The women who survive the initial riot make their way into the jungle as they are tracked by vicious dogs, and guards packing all kinds of heat and out for blood. Many are killed, few are spared, and the only folks to survive are saved by gentlemen revolutionaries who send the survivors off into the sun set on a little schooner sure to capsize and kill them all before they ever make it to dry land. THE END.
“The Big Bird Cage” is one fantastically off the wall film filled with gratuitous nudity, torture, blood shed, and ruthlessly mean spirited, dark, offensive comedy. I say offensive because the sensitive rubes out there would certainly find this film to be vile and despicable with little to no socially redeeming qualities. To those rubes, I say sit and spin. These are the exactly reasons I enjoy “The Big Bird Cage” so much! It feels like a satire of the entire women in prison genre and has it’s sleazy little tongue planted firmly it’s slimy cheek. The Big Bird Cage is a wild mother fucking ride and one Trash Cinema Connoisseurs will lovingly embrace.
What lesson did I take away from “The Big Bird Cage?” Never keep a woman horny and sugar cane is an excellent cash crop.
I’m giving this slice of sleaze FOUR AND A HALF Dumpster Nuggets.
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