THE KILLING OF SATAN (1983, PHILIPPINES) a.k.a LUMABAN KA, SATANAS

The Philippines has a cinematic history covering most of what you'd expect, but it's the truly mental excursions through the bizarre where it excels, from some of the more well know Eddie Romero classics and Roger Corman productions to the much loved midget spy For Y'ur Height Only.

But they don't stop there, oh no, the Philippines offerings only get more and more peculiar the deeper you dig.

Case in point - The Killing of Satan.

Dir. Efren C. Pinon

Written by: Joe Mari Avellana

One of the more imaginative Filipino Action/Fantasy/Exploitation films out there concerns Lando, a simple, mild-mannered guy who had served time in prison for killing a man that threatened his village. Free and now raising a family, Lando starts to receive messages in his dreams from his Uncle Miguel (the local Holy Man). When his daughter disappears, Lando is forced to join his his Uncle and his followers in their battle against Satan and his disciple, the Prince of Magic.

When three goons come into the village looking to kill Lando. While succeeding in shooting him, they also inadvertently kill his young son.

Lando is laid to rest in bed, recovering from a bullet wound in his head. While miles away on another island, Uncle Miguel is lying in bed as well, meditating... mentally absorbing Lando's mortal wounds into his own head saving Lando in the process.

Now recovered, our hero is drawn to the island by the chanting of his Uncle's devout followers. He, his wife, and his daughter Louisa set forth across the short distance of sea. Heavy, foreboding winds pick up out of nowhere, trying to impede their progress. They make it to the beach and are met by a strange, mute child who leads them across rocky terrain. The top of the cliff explodes, showering boulders upon them. The is forced to take cover, when the dust clears, the mysterious child has vanished.

Lando and family are greeted at the village and he is told by Renzo (the second most powerful Magician in the village) that his Uncle has died from a bullet wound, however, he had not been shot.

Renzo leads Lando to the shore where his Uncle was buried at sea. Lando rows out, stops, grasping his head in pain from some sort of psionic attack. Shaking it off and continues on. A piece of driftwood bumps the boat. He pushes it away. It floats back. When Lando reaches for it this time, a rotten, grey-skinned hand grabs his arm, and a decomposed corpse bursts out of the water and says in a horrifying voice, "I am your Uncle Miguel!" Only to disappear back into the water. It is some pretty jolting stuff.

While Renzo and Lando are still at the shore, the Prince of Magic and his underlings raid the village for girls. They use their hypno-wheel, magic hand blasts and psionic staring contests to take down the men and carry off the women including Lando's daughter Louisa. The power duo Lando and Renzo return to the village to find the few remaining baddies still left. Renzo instructs Lando to use his hitherto unknown powers, creating a swirling force field from his arm to deflect bullets as well as becoming invincible to the underlings' fisticuffs while his punches do supreme damage. He soon discovers he can use his newfound powers to heal the injuries his wife had sustained when the village was attacked.

Left with no option but to travel to where servent of Satan, the Prince of Magic dwells, Lando and Renzo must rescue Louisa. Who is being held captive in a cave in an electrified cage full of naked women. Lando fights off the Snake Man and lower henchmen of the cave only to face the Prince of Magic himself. But is overtaken before he can activate his powers and is thrown off a waterfall by the minions.

Lando floats unconscious down a river until he comes to a stop at a shore where the little boy from earlier, Nino is waiting. Nino leads him to a small, crumbling stone church where there is an old man (God ?) with long white hair and a beard. He gives Lando a magic staff that, along with Lando's own powers, will be able to destroy Satan.

With that, Lando treks back to the cave to fight the Prince of Magic, temptation used by Ava, the Sexy Snake Woman; and finally Satan himself, to save his daughter.

THE KILLING OF SATAN is certainly a fun film. A horror cartoon come to life with sufficient f/x, goofy costumes, and some cool/surreal images i.e. the aforementioned corpse popping out of the water, clear waterfalls turning into blood, the pulsar shields and firing of magic energy from one's hands, and most notably the sequence where a character is completely rolled over by a boulder revealing his body to be a red, pulpy mess only for his head to go right on talking.

With all this going on how could you not like this movie?

By

JUSTIN HUGH DICKINSON

Read more of Justin's wanderings through dusty VHS racks on his OPERATION: 24fps blog.

Ice Cream Trucks and Dwarves

It's been a while, so why not return with an undisputed classic? One that is close to many people's hearts, and certainly deserves a revisit - Phantasm

Director Don Coscarelli etches something as close to a real-life nightmare as you are likely to witness on screen. A heroically-bizarre movie including metallic flying-spheres drilling blood-spattered holes in heads and a magical gateway to a sand-ridden planet populated by not just alien but dwarf slaves. 'Phantasm' is an energised cinematic jolt of low-budget horror fantasy.

The plot, if you can call it that, involves a young boy (A Michael Baldwin) and his older brother (Bill Thornbury) who find out that there are very strange goings-on - somewhat akin to body-snatching but suitably crazier - at their local funeral home. The stolen corpses are somehow transformed into the aforementioned undead dwarf slaves in order to serve some alien God...... Of course, at the centre of it all is the mysterious and by now, cult figure, the 'Tall Man' played by the omnipresent Angus Scrimm. Our good guys are completed with the inclusion of a hilarious middle-aged ice-cream vendor and wannabe rock-singer 'Reggie' (Reggie Bannister) - and yes, there is a musical number in here...... Strange enough for you yet?

Whilst certainly not for everyone (particularly if you're the kind of viewer who likes to know what is going on), and if you can forgive the production values and performances, "Phantasm" is cripplingly joyous entertainment leaving you with a genuine sense of awe for the imagination of Coscarelli and co. The movie runs at one hell of a pace and is infamous for the 'head-drilling' sequence alone, but there is more to savour than the short 88 minute running time would suggest - including a script swollen with cheese, over-acting, motorbikes and achingly unsubtle testosterone.

Australian Lobby Card

Although not as scary as the tagline -"If this one doesn't scare you, you're already dead!" - indicates, there are nevertheless some heart-pounding moments and more than a dusting of 'cheap' shocks (bodies falling out of cupboards, etc.). There's also a fantastic chase sequence between a hearse, or more like an evil-version of the bat-mobile to be honest, and a motorbike.

Coscarelli's vision is lovingly propelled throughout by an eerie score reminiscent of 'Tubular Bells' but along with the 'Carrie'-esque ending, is where the 'borrowing' ends - "Phantasm" is a uniquely fascinating movie, directed with panache and original to the point that it could never be understood, let alone forgotten - just like a nightmare.

Grant Davies covers similar B grade classics as well as Westerns at his Hot Dog Cinema blog

Project Arrow: Phenomena

 Once again we find ourselves back in Vince's BD treasure trove as he picks through the mess for the finest offerings Arrow might have. Yes, it's another instalment of the Arrow Project!

Let's roll!

Project Arrow

Phenomena (Arrow Video Blu-ray release)

Ah, my second favourite Dario Argento film. Really. I know most fans would peg the renowned classics Suspiria or Deep Red, but for my money the top two personal favourites have always been Tenebrae and Phenomena. Like many people of my generation the first time I saw this flick it was forty minutes shorter and titled Creepers. Forty minutes – that's nearly unfathomable. But in that extremely truncated version, I still loved this film.

Phenomena features Jennifer Connelly as boarding school student Jennifer Corvino who is transferred to a European school, and who possesses a supernatural intimacy with all species of insects. Thus we begin an Argento film that really has more in common with Suspiria than either of Suspria’s own sequels.

The catalyst for Phenomena came from Argento's fascination with forensics. Specifically, the idea that there was a particular species of butterfly whose wing membranes would shatter if in the same room when a gun was fired. In Phenomena, he further explored the world of forensic entomology through a wheelchair-bound character played by Donald Pleasence, who due to his condition also owns a trained chimpanzee, an animal that becomes an integral part of the plot. This is not the first time Argento has played in the field of criminal forensics, but at least this time the key elements appear more scientifically sound than those used in Four Flies on Grey Velvet.

 
Phenomena is truly Argento's crowning achievement in style over logic, something that has been notable in nearly all of his films but which has not been pulled off in a more gracefully cocksure way than here. Take for instance the opening scene of the film, when a schoolgirl is chased by an unseen stalker through canyon wall overlooking a waterfall, until she gets her head smashed through a plate-glass window, a window that really, has no business being in the rock-side of a canyon cliff. But the imagery is so rhythmic and exciting that we are easily lulled into this style-over-logic. Another memorable moment is the intercutting between Jennifer's first sleepwalking experience and the second murder of the film, which creates a world-within-a-world where Jennifer actually winds up witnessing this murder take place, but because she's technically asleep, she doesn't even realize what she's seen. Along with the visual style of the film we also have one of my favourite soundtracks. Argento's films are commonly accompanied by a highly stylized soundscape, and here he's hired ex-Goblin Claudio Simonetti, along with Fabio Pignatelli, Bill Wyman, and Simon Boswell to create the sometimes pounding, and always energetic, soundtrack.

Sleepwalking, supernatural powers over insects, chimpanzees, a serial killer, and incredibly, that's not all... while we have seen the giallo mixed with the supernatural before, in previous films such as Deep Red or Suspiria, such a convoluted plot in a horror/giallo is highly atypical. But it does make for a show-stopping finale.

Like the Tenebrae blu-ray from Arrow Video, Phenomena includes several hi-def extra features, but the original Argento commentary from the Anchor Bay U.S. DVD release has not been licensed. Additionally, the English audio track that was used to transfer the film was missing sections of the audio, something I'm not entirely sure about, the back of the box indicates in small print that these elements “were either never recorded or have been lost”. Yet the English audio on the previous U.S. releases have been more intact than it is here. The film does look amazing on blu-ray, although Phenomena looks almost too clean for nearly a thirty-year-old film, and there is some visual residue/evidence of Digital Noise Reduction. Of course, that being said, the film has never looked so glorious either, so this is definitely a case of “take the slightly annoying with the rest of the awesomeness.” I should also mention, for any North American fans who might be looking to purchase this blu-ray, that this is the European “Integral” Cut, which runs six minutes longer than the official cut of 110 minutes. Yet this doesn't actually explain all the missing section of the English audio.
End of the day: Highly recommended.

 Amazon Link
Arrow Web Store Link

Project Arrow is a joint effort along side Videotape Swap Shop and you can follow Vince's continuing adventures here

The Woman is unleashed

Tonight The Woman sees it's UK premiere, slated to be one of the hits of this year's Frightfest, after this fantastic reaction at Sundance, you know this should be a grand old film.

CB pal and Rough Trade East head honcho, Spencer Hickman, was suitably impressed, and passes his judgement below -

Regardless of how you may feel about Lucky McKee’s films, you can’t accuse him of chasing the easy dollar of franchise horror flicks. His films, deeply personal almost to the point of introspection, are about as far removed from the ‘Saw’ culture of the last ten years or so a horror film could be. Along with fellow director Ti West (House Of The Devil) it really feels like he belongs in a different decade.


His latest The Woman is a truly brave piece of cinema; it’s nuanced, intricate layers, play out on several different levels. The film focuses on the Cleek family outwardly living the apple pie American dream, father Chris is a very successful, well-respected lawyer, Belle is a doting mother and the three kids appear pretty well adjusted. But it doesn’t take long before you realise just how wrong these outward appearances are. As slowly and very, very deliberately we begin to see the father for what he really is ‘a patriarchal control freak who expects the women in the house to do as he says when he says’


While out on one of his regular hunting trips, Chris spots a woman roaming the woods, a feral creature that has roamed the wilds for 20 odd years, visibly excited he hatches his plan. Capture the woman, take her home and ‘tame’ her.

Before we know it she is chained up in an underground work shed and the family unit are ordered to keep her clean and begin to civilise her. Nobody argues or questions the fathers’ orders; they just do as they are told. The sexual tension during these early scenes are laced with undercurrents of abuse, dominance and fear; father and son bonding through the process, making for some very uneasy viewing indeed. In one particularly shocking scene, while getting ready for bed, the wife asks if they should really be doing this and Chris replies with a quick, sharp slap to her face before getting into bed and asking ‘are you coming to bed, honey?’ It’s chilling in it’s matter of fact portrayal of spousal abuse, but is positively Disney compared to what follows in the final half of the movie.


It isn’t long before things spiral out of control and unfortunately to discuss them here would only lead to spoilers, what can be said without a doubt is that you will not see what’s coming during the final 40 minutes of the film it’s a tour de force of visceral, brutal pummelling violence and degradation, that barely leaves you with a chance to gasp for air. By the final scene you’re dazed and shattered as there is not one member of the family no matter what their intentions are that does not play a complicit part in the violence as it unfolds.


The performances are uniformly excellent, Angel Bettis as the fragile mother is confused ,scared and literally lives in fear knowing fully what her husband is capable of, newcomer Zach Rand excels as the teenage son ,his sadistic streak becoming wilder as the film progresses, Sean Bridgers brings a frighteningly unhinged (yet calm) performance as the father and Pollyanna McIntosh portrayal of The Woman is as a force of nature, animalistic, sexual, violent and untamed.
McKee’s master stroke is his slow character builds, handling the abuse in a very matter of fact way managing to create a sense of dread and tension within the first half. At the midway point you are practically begging for the tone to shift, all hell break loose, and for the protagonists to get their comeuppance. Unfortunately when this happens the film has taken you to unexpected places and you begin to question why you were waiting for the explosion of violence in the first place.


Horror fans the world over talk of how there are not many truly original voices left and yet somehow we never seem to support them enough when they do manage to emerge, Lucky McKee seems to be cursed with this very problem, maybe his films are too real, too ugly, maybe we really don’t want to see how ugly the world is if we scratch just below the surface and look a little closer or maybe , just maybe all genre fans really want is a new Final Destination film at the multiplex…..
Either way support independent movies, see this and make your own mind up

If you miss The Woman tonight, it will have a short theatrical run at The Prince Charles Cinema in partnership with ourselves. The PCC has opened it's doors for thier first late night screening in almost 10 years, so you know we're working with something special here.

Fri 30th Sept 18:15
Sat 1st Oct 23:10
Tue 4th Oct 13:00
Thu 6th Oct 18:30

3D Sex and Zen - The Review

So yeah, 3D Sex and Zen exists. As hardened (steady) cineastes, we'd be remiss here at Cigarette Burns if we didn't at least acknowledge it's upcoming debut on British shores, as it is probably the first genuine cinematic milestone to arrive here since...well, Avatar. But did Avatar spend any of its $1 trillion budget on throwing any giant disembodied cocks at you? Didn't think so. So until James Cameron rectifies this in Avatar 2 you'll have to make do with 3D Sex and Zen, if not the world's first ever 3D erotic film, then the most notable one since Blonde Emmanuelle in 1978, and certainly the first one to come anywhere close to cracking the Western mainstream. In Hong Kong, meanwhile, it's become the highest grossing film of all time, beating Titanic and - yes - Avatar. Sigh...I wish I lived in Hong Kong.

Anyway, we sent Colm McAuliffe down to Soho with a disconcertingly smudged pair of 3D glasses, a dirty mac, a door number and instructions to 'ask for Babs'. He came back with this review:

3D Sex and Zen: Extreme Ecstasy is a marketing person’s dream. After years of mutual indifference, the dual forces of pornography and cutting-edge 3D have finally come together, aided and abetted by some tantalising costume drama based foreplay and arresting scenes of post-coital pleasure, taking the heart-warming combination of endless nude bodies, metal plates and flying daggers to their natural conclusion.

It certainly had me sold. Instead of spending my Tuesday evening languishing in abject introspection on the Victoria Line to Brixton, I instead began to envisage this film being the key to a truly decadent and debauched phase of my life. ‘What could this mean?!’ I gasped in joy, reading the press release over and over again, imagining redemption and liberation from an existence of vexed incomprehension.

Of course, the reality hit home when I realised I was merely spending an evening in a Soho screening room, watching this 3D porn flick with, mainly, fellow males. But therein lies the problem – why should pornography penetrate the mainstream? Many of the stars of 3D Sex and Zen are full-time hardcore porn stars, and it’s not overtly difficult to track them down via the internet and, crucially, for free. So, what’s the point?

Well, firstly, this (theoretically) isn’t a standalone montage of sex scenes interspersed with sparse dialogue indicating some sort of vague plot. Set in the saucy 1600s, the film is an adaptation of the novel The Carnal Prayer Mat, although how it’s debatable as to how faithful this interpretation really is. And as for the story itself? Well, it’s that well-worn chestnut concerning a young scholar who fails to satisfy his breathtakingly beautiful wife and is taken under the wing of the local sex god who introduces our flaccid hero to a non-stop carnival of sexual delights where he discovers how to make love for entire days. Phew. However, his new found prowess goes straight to his head and crotch as he repeatedly betrays his long-suffering wife and replaces his microscopic member with that of a donkey’s. Honestly, it could happen to any of us.

3D Sex and Zen is a positively lavish affair throughout. The orgiastic gorefests take place in vast cavernous proto-Playboy Mansions supplanted with the sporadic 3D effects ensuring various phallic symbols and the occasional stray, luscious breast is thrust at the audience. The sex scenes initially are generally of the soft-pornography kind albeit interspersed with the odd moment of casual rape - one memorable scene sees someone literally fucked to death.

Indeed, a more linguistically advanced colleague of mine has referred to the film as being a little too rapey – the sex does get progressively more violent, barebacking becomes the norm and an increasing number of implements are used in support of each conquest. Does this make it one of the most offensive commercial films ever released? Not really – no one could surely take any of this seriously. The film rises above the bog-standard porn movie due to its superior production standards and the occasional moments of humour. But the subtitles are dreadful or maybe it’s just the dialogue – either way, neither amount to very much.

The film certainly deludes itself with notions of ‘high art’ throughout – there are heartfelt odes to the poeticism of love punctuating the porn – but these seem feeble and forced. Who needs wistful moments of Romanticism when you are soon faced with a pansexual Shaman, capable of extraordinary sexual tricks, and replete with an enormous penis-like appendage attached to his/her thigh which is then used to pummel men’s faces into an unrecognisable pulp?

To its credit, the savage screwing is varied in length and tone and never outstays its welcome. But I can’t see this film heralding a whole new era for pornography. Instead, this is simply glossy, unsophisticated and unintentionally funny adult vewing. But most worryingly, this is the work of a father-son screenwriting team, Stephen Shiu and Stephen Shiu Jr., which begs the question: what could Mrs. Shiu possibly think?

So there you go. A frankly insane looking mix of extreme violence and fortuitous nakedness, a heady combination not unlike that found in Japanese cinema's legendary 'pink' genre. Now if only there were some sort of pinky retrospective triple bill we could all go and watch in a couple of weeks...

Project Arrow - The Beyond

Obviously Vince is an unstoppable force of nature, ploughing through his "to watch pile" with almost no effort at all. Commendable to say the least.... though perhaps he should get a job... Today's instalment in our Project Arrow series is none other than Lucio Fulci's masterpiece The Beyond. You'll be forgiven for thinking that the timing is a tad suspicious, what with our Dead Will Rise Double Bill featuring The Beyond and Dead & Buried tomorrow eve at the Prince Charles Cinema in Leicester Square, but this was all Vince's idea. So without further waffle from me...


Project Arrow

Lucio Fulci's The Beyond (Arrow Video Blu-ray release)

The Beyond is not only one of my top-two favourite Fulci films, it's one of my all-time favourite Italian horror films. Okay, I know, The Beyond is one of every Fulci fan's favourite Fulci films. Well, with good fucking reason, I say. As far as Italian horror goes, it's one of the classics.


The film is infused with an enigmatic style, and Fulci (unlike previous endeavours) has the wherewithal as a co-writer and the films' director to keep it immersed and embedded in a solid, and classic, haunted house structure. Where his earlier City of the Living Dead was roughly artistic, his attempts to end that film on an enigmatic note only felt confused and disorienting. This time though, Fulci had a far better handle on these stylistic proceedings.


The story starts out (post-credits) on a classic note, a young woman (Catriona MacColl) comes to be in possession of an old haunted hotel in New Orleans. Predictably, things go to hell – or rather, come up from hell – and the entire film glides into this anarchic supernatural action/horror story – with zombies, a ghostly blind girl, further craziness involving the Book of Eibon and a few face-eating tarantulas. What do you expect; this is Lucio Fulci, after all.

The Beyond would later be considered one of Fulci's own Italian living dead trilogy, caught between City of the Living Dead and The House by the Cemetery. I'd argue that the only thing that makes these three very different films even a loose trilogy is the fact that they were all shot nearly within a year of each other (1980 – 1981) and they all co-star Catriona MacCall. While City of the Living Dead is a true zombie film, House by the Cemetery is more of a mad doctor/monster flick and The Beyond is a wonderfully convoluted supernatural tale, which happens to involve zombies. The zombies here are interchangeable with the ghosts of a more classic haunted house tale. But the fact that they do appear as zombies lends an even more immediate tone of horror to the general haunted house tone of the film.


That is, until we get near the conclusion, where co-star David Warbeck (and might I add awesomely cast) gets his revolver and his seemingly never-ending supply of bullets. At this point, it does begin to feel less like a ghost story and more in pace with Fulci's nearly-as-awesome Zombie (aka Zombi 2). But unlike the leave-you-hanging-in-slight-confusion conclusion of his previous City of the Living Dead, thankfully the writers (which included regular Fulci and Bava scribe Dardano Sacchetti) saw fit to place everything together and finish the film with a bit of a rug-jerking enigmatic piece that at least feels right – in the film's own supernaturally nonsensical way. I feel The Beyond's success is also due in part to the dreamy pacing of the film on the whole. Elsewhere some fans and critics think the film would've benefited from tighter editing – and I'd disagree. It's this deliberate style that gives heed to the dream-like artistry that Fulci has constructed here. So bold and shocking is the ending of Fulci's The Beyond that it was riffed by Michele Soavi for his 1992 Dylan Dog interpretation, Cemetery Man.


That all being said, I definitely want to mention Arrow's Blu-ray release on this one, it was one of the more anticipated titles for me, as it had not been made available in a high-definition format until now. The hi-def transfer here is nothing short of fucking amazing. It's rough, but in all the right ways. The print used for the transfer is obviously dated and in some spots, still a little dirty. But the Blu-ray looks detailed and rich. This is exactly as I thought The Beyond should look.


It's obvious that the folks at Arrow love the movie as much as its fans do as they've provided what I can only refer to as a shitload of extra content, not just on the Blu-ray disc but on an additional DVD and booklet packaged with. In actual fact, my Blu-ray snap-case was so stuffed it wasn't even snapped shut properly, despite it being brand-new and shrink-wrapped. You could get lost in Arrow's Beyond Blu-ray.
Totally recommended.

Amazon link
Arrow web store link

Project Arrow is a joint effort along side Videotape Swap Shop and you can follow Vince's continuing adventures here


I suppose I ought to also mention our exclusive shirt of The Beyond will be available tomorrow at the Prince Charles, and provided we don't sell out they will be on sale through our shop.

Project Arrow - Funhouse

As we in the UK gear up for Film4's Frightfest, which kicks off in earnest this Thursday, Vince has squeezed in yet another in the Project Arrow series - this time around, we have Tobe Hooper's Funhouse, take it away big guy...


Project Arrow

The Funhouse (Arrow Video Blu-ray release)

Tobe Hooper's “The Funhouse” gets a fine Blu-ray transfer from Arrow Video. Though some night scenes do appear too light – and believe be, I'm never one to normally comment on the visual presentation of a transfer, so you can be sure this must be something noticeable – but otherwise the digital viewing is above par.


Hooper's film starts off with a humorous and (unusually for Hooper) exploitation-style opening which satirizes, while simultaneously commenting on, the Hitchcock homage of John Carpenter's “Halloween”. This is extremely unusual, in fact, it's the only occurrence I can bring to mind from Hooper's entire catalogue of directorial efforts where there is a conscientious comment on, never mind the satirizing of, another director's work.


But moving speedily past this, we are then definitely into more familiar Hooper territory. If anything defines his work as a filmmaker and storyteller, it's the idea of a group of characters who venture into a proverbial – and here, a literal – carnival of horrors. We've seen Hooper's convention of this plot several times in his career, with The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Eaten Alive, Poltergeist, and even Texas Chainsaw II. There are, in fact, others, but I'm sure the point has been made.

And another validation to The Funhouse's existence is exactly where it sits in Hooper's repertoire, very close to Poltergeist and obviously smack in between his visceral Cinéma vérité Texas Chain Saw / Eaten Alive and the far more overtly tongue-in-cheek Cannon films, Lifeforce, Invaders from Mars, and Texas Chainsaw II, which all get a few miles past the dividing line between humour and sheer cinematic lunacy.


What's especially nice about The Funhouse is that at this point in Hooper's career he had a great handle on balancing a film's humour with verisimilitude. A verisimilitude that he was able to retain for Spielberg’s Poltergeist, but which alluded him for the entire Cannon series of films that followed. As well, the obviousness of The Funhouse's title (or to my expectations, at least) is amiably undermined by some genuinely quirky plot manoeuvres that were, as in now, continuously unfolding before my eyes. As if on a carnival ride itself, maybe?


If I'm sounding like I'd never seen Tobe Hooper's The Funhouse before, it's because I haven't. Sure, I'd seen a few pieces of it here and there on television and in the American horror cinema celebration “Terror in the Aisles” (circa 1984) , but other than that... Imagine my surprise, in the opening scene, at seeing starlet Elizabeth Berridge undress completely before the camera. That had certainly been censored for the Canadian television broadcast. Elizabeth is an actress (like so many others of that time and place) who would later get more work out of a television series – this one being The John Larroquette Show – co-starring, almost ironically, a leading actor who had provided the off-screen narration for Hooper's first feature film, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.


The Funhouse is a pretty intelligent and literal script with genuinely likeable characters, written by Larry Block, and of what else he might have written I know not. Though even with all of this positive raving of the script and film, it's certainly not without its flaws. In fact, the last 20 minutes or so of The Funhouse becomes somewhat disengaging, to the point of becoming a little silly. The climax of the film has not the horror of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, nor the lunacy of Texas Chainsaw II, nor the catharsis of Poltergeist nor the sheer spectacle of Lifeforce. Although I have to say this is not for lack of trying on any of these points, as you will no doubt see (or have seen). And the ending is not completely without its merits, either, somewhat fitted into the realm of off-handed cynicism and a slightly deeper sinister aspect, which I can't delve further into without giving away choice plot points. So obviously, the film in its entirety can't easily be dismissed, not only for where it lies in Hooper's directorial career, but where it lies in the time-line of horror and its cinematic sister, the slasher/dead-teenager sub-genre. Arrow's release of The Funhouse gets a hearty recommendation from this retro-horror film fan.

Amazon link
Arrow web store link

Project Arrow is a joint effort along side Videotape Swap Shop and you can follow Vince's continuing adventures here

Project Arrow - Vamp

Sat on the South Bank, in front of the NTF, film maker Vince D'Amato had a plan, he'd just returned from an impromptu spending spree at Fopp. Poking from an over stuffed bag I spied a stack of Arrow DVDs. The Creepy Six Films kingpin enthusiastically told me that he was about to embark on Project Arrow. A respectable mission which saw him reviewing as many Arrow releases as he could get his hands on, and so we begin...

Project Arrow

Vamp (Arrow Video Blu-ray release)

The idea for this series of Arrow features struck me after the unfortunate outbreak of UK riots led to the destruction of a major warehouse and distribution centre, all but depleting several indie film distro companies and record labels of their entire stock. I realize that this might be old news to most fans by now, what with the advent of social media, but that, in my mind, does not invalidate the somewhat public celebration of not only these film titles, but of the smaller companies that had laboured to get them to us, the fans and consumers, in the most entertaining (and artistically marketable) way they could. The first order of a show of support, was obviously, get some Arrow titles! As I had just moved to London from Canada only 2 months ago, I still had a list of Arrow titles I was planning on purchasing over the next, say, six or seven months. When I learned about the warehouse disaster – burned to the ground! - I sucked it up and made a single purchase in one fell swoop. I now have, sitting next to me at my dining room table in a little Brixton flat, eleven new Arrow titles with two more still to arrive. Next order of business, was obviously, watch the fucking things! So I set about doing just that, last night, with a double-feature of Richard Wenk's Vamp and the infamous video nasty Island of Death.


Vamp is a film that has been a guilty pleasure of mine since back in 1987 when I first caught it (and subsequently taped it onto a blank VHS) on the Canadian pay-television network Superchannel. After a few months, the tapes was worn out and warped. I was in grade 6/7 at the time and I thought Robert Rusler was a fucking bad-ass with his shirt sleeves rolled up, kicking albino psycho's asses and smooth-talking all the hot chicks in the movie. Charming as hell. Actually, the entire cast had been pretty damned charming, even Gedde Wantanabe, who was pretty much straight off from playing another dork in Sixteen Candles. Anyway, as grade 7 waned into the summer (which was about to lead into high school) my worn-down EP VHS recording of Vamp slipped somewhere in between oblivion and off-the-face-of-this-earth. It's just one of those things you never actually remember what happened to it.


Thankfully, now in the age Blu-ray, Arrow has seen fit to bring one of the more understated Hollywood writer/producer's first films into the glaring light of HD. And I have to say, both the HD presentation as well as Richard Wenk's vision do Vamp a hell of a lot of good. Does Vamp, as a film, stand up 25 years later? Logic might dictate not, but actually, it holds up surprisingly well. The humour is entertaining if not riotously laugh-out-loud, and both the performances and the direction have a fantastic rhythm, carrying the unfortunate characters from a collage-fraternity mission into the pits of hell that is an urban-after-dark strip club run by a nest of vampires in a cheeky take on the standard Hollywood “hero's journey”, where our lead character Keith (Chris Makepeace) is thrust from the world he knows into a world of strange, dark humour and viscous bloodsuckers, where he literally must leap through several hoops of hell in order to prevail and end up with the romantic lead (Deedee Pfeiffer)


But hold on right there. That main plot point... the one about the characters ending up at a strip club fill of vampires... sounds familiar. Ah, yes, it was riffed by Tarantino for his own From Dusk Till Dawn. And while the grindhouse-pastiche boys may have put their own spin on the ensuing mayhem, Richard Wenk's film has more in common with Argento's Inferno (visually) and Demons (both visually, thematically, and with the look of the monsters themselves), which was also released around the same time ('86/'87, depending on what country you lived in).


Among the many lovely extras on Arrow's blu-ray release is a lengthy interview with star Deedee Pfeiffer, which I would recommend sitting through the length first half to get to the much better, and more interesting, parts in the latter fifteen minutes. Robert Rusler also makes a welcome appearance in the film's new introduction as well as on his own commentary track, and Arrow has thankfully included Rickard Wenk's early short film, Dracula Bites the Big Apple, a sort of Vamp predecessor.
Check it out!

Amazon Link
Arrow Web Store Link

Project Arrow is a joint effort along side Videotape Swap Shop and you can follow Vince's continuing adventures here

In space no one can hear you laugh...

Star Crash has got less of a cohesive plot than a series of random happenings one after another. Luckily for us, these are really cool moments. As such, the plot is best recounted in the rushed manner of a schoolboy who’s had too much e-number-heavy fizzy pop while at the cinema.

“They’re-in-space-and-then-they-get-chased-by-the-space-police-who-are-robots-and-a-green-man-then-they-go-to-prison-and-then-they-are-rescued-by-the-space-police-who-are-now-good-and-they-go-to-fight-the-evil-king-but-they-crash-and-there’s-kung-fu-cavemen-and-giant-robots-then-they-are-in-a-giant-robot-fist-then-it-all-blows-up-and-it’s-wicked”


“Breathe, Little Billy, breathe”

Made in the post-Star Wars, sci-fi crazy, late 70s, Starcrash was conceived, written and directed by Luigi Cozzi, (who’s most noteworthy other credit is as director of the Italian language version of Godzilla, cobbled together out of the original Gojira, the Americanized Raymond Burr version and some cheaply colourized World War Two footage). Often criticised for being a cheap Star Wars rip off, Starcrash was actually written before A New Hope was released. Visionary Cozzi struggled to make a film that lived up to his original aspirations, however budgetary constraints and a constantly nagging studio demanding he “make it a bit more star warsy” was bound to lead to problems. This uphill battle was not made easier when prop failures and poorly exposed film of some of the exciting climaxes of sequences resulting in unusable and ultimately lost footage, and thus plot strands that never really pay off. However, Signore Cozzi deserves a tip of the hat in recognition of managing to piece together an thoroughly enjoyable cinematic experience from what was left.


Starring Caroline Munroe (who readers of a certain age will fondly remember as the slave-girl from 7th Voyage Of Sinbad) as the clothes-phobic intergalactic smuggler Stella Starr, Joe Spinner delivers the wide eyed pantomime villain Count Zarth An (following small parts in Taxi Driver and the first two Godfather films, he fancied a bit of proper acting) , and drunken heartthrob David Hasselhoff as the space prince.


For such rushed shambles, the production design is gorgeous. From the opening shot of a charmingly obvious miniature space ship (I’m sure I spotted some sprues from an airfix kit stuck on the side) cruising through an every-felt-tip-in-the-packet, spacescape (reputedly made by literally hanging fairy lights in front of some black cardboard, no Star Trek style poring over NASA’s star maps for these cats) to the final scenes in front of the Alien King’s snazzy throne the Italian eye for design shines through.


Special mention must be made of the score, composed and conducted by the great John Barry who sadly passed away this month. While he is quite rightly best remembered for his bombastic Bond scores and heartbreaking work on Midnight Cowboy and The Deer Hunter, he was also willing to put the graft in on less prestigious projects. Echoes of his better known work can be heard throughout, most clearly during an “entering the villain’s lair” sequence to my ears, and the whole thing sounds lovely.

Most importantly, it’s got a fist shaped space station, a comedy-accented robot, a mechanical giant with tits, and a lightsaber-wielding android tackling two bionic swordsmen. Get in touch with your inner 9 year old, load him up on cheap orangeade, and enjoy.

Float through the stars with us on Monday the 7th at the Mucky Pup More info here

Bronx Warriors Redux

So back in October we screened Bronx Warriors and did a piece then, but there's nothing wrong with giving this epic trilogy a bit more love, is there? I think not.


Welcome to guilty pleasures. Or rather, welcome to Enzo Castellari's low grade Warriors/Escape From New York mash-up/rip off, an inspired saga of post apocalyptic New York wasteland inhabited by violent rival street gangs. At first glance, appearing for all the world like yet another Italian cash-in on the bigger and more successful American films, these three flicks are surprisingly entertaining and enjoyable. While the acting and dialogue is on par with Cannibal Ferox for the idiotic and laughably quotable, you can see just why a certain Mr. Tarantino never shuts up about this trilogy or its lovable, cheery director. The very same chap who directed the original Inglorious Bastards back in 1978. He comes across as a thoroughly likeable guy on the DVD extras in which he runs us through the film's development and legacy. Castellari remains passionate and proud of his films to this day.


Unlike the previous low grade and deceivingly titled "Vault of Horror" Vipco "Churn 'em out" VHS releases, Shameless Screen Entertainment present these for what trashy fun that they are, who for starters aren't advertising these films as anything other than the fun trash they are and have gone and put out a superb looking trilogy box set in a wonderfully skull embossed metal tin. The care and attention to detail that Shameless put into their DVD releases is a great way of introducing bizarre films such as these to an audience who would otherwise not know they existed. And as daft as this trilogy is (its pacing is at times uneven and makes no sense), it's particularly hard to dislike, especially if you're a fan of The Warriors, Mad Max or just post apocalypse films in general.
There's a tradition with most Sci-Fi films of this type, even with the more respected titles, of slapping a date on the film, in this case it's 1990. Made during the golden period of Italian exploitation films and sharing more than just a passing resemblance to Lucio Fulci's films of the early 80s, Castellari also shared producer, screen writer and apparently locations with Fulci, as there are several scenes set on the same Bronx harbour as the famous opening sequence to Fulci's Zombie, and the twin towers crop up ominously in several shots.


The story itself revolves around Anne (Stefania Girolami), a 17-year-old heiress to The Manhattan Corporation. Feeling guilty over having to inherit a morally questionable company on her 18th birthday, she flees into the lawless wasteland of The Bronx and seeks refuge with The Riders, a street gang, led by the charismatic Trash (Mark Gregory, who for some reason walks more like a horse than a man). Throw into the mix a Clockwork Orange-esque rival gang in clown paint, an insane ninja pony tailed George Eastman (of Absurd and Rabid Dogs fame) and a low key appearance from Vic Morrow as the renegade ex cop out on a manhunt and you have yourself an entertaining night of rock n roll urban hell. Though not anywhere as near as violent or brutal as you would think from the poster art or the time they were conceived, all three films pack quite a punch, and surprisingly, both sequels are fairly strong.


The New Barbarians (part 2 or part 3? Different sources say different things) was shot the same year as the first film and is intentionally silly in comparison. Taking place in 2019 where laser guns and cyber-punks roam the desert wastelands chopping each other up and doing little else. Escape From The Bronx is similar in tone to the first instalment but flies along at high speed as Trash returns alone to stop the Bronx being torn down and turned into a high tech city of the future. Apparently, Castellari felt that Mark Gregory was a bit too pudgy by this point in his career, so asked him to keep his jacket on throughout filming. Though slightly more cynical and downbeat in tone, Escape From The Bronx is a great companion piece to the first film and stays truer to its origins than the more lightweight and sci-fi tinged New Barbarians. Sadly the glowing plastic skulls that adorn the gangs' motorbikes from the first film don't make a return.


All in all solid trashy fun that, whilst not begging for THAT many repeated viewings, is a worthwhile addition to any respectable collection. Especially in this incarnation as it just looks great and feels all the more special for its almost unnecessarily deluxe treatment. Another classy job from Shameless Films.