Boobs, Blood and Cellulite: The Films of Mr. Creepo
David Hayes delves into three of the strangest indie horror flicks he's ever seen, and he regrets every minute.
Oh the job I do for you people. Oh the horror. Below you will find some DVD reviews from those loony douchebags over at Mr. Creepo productions. If anyone decides to actually go out and rent/buy any of these let me tell you right now… I warned you! Just as the titles suggest, these sexploitation/horror "films" are heavy on the skin (or the skin is really heavy… see below) but no amount of areola can make them good. Well, chilluns, feast your eyes on what I like to call: The Six Hours I Will Never Get Back.
Kevin Moyers shares his childhood love of talk radio and his joy over the emerging giant known as podcasting in the first edition of The Podcast Burrito.
David Hayes brings us the first in his series about a cult film legend in Ed Wood: King of Smut?
Edward D. Wood, Jr. has been called "The Worst Director of All Time" and is a
winner of the Golden Turkey Award. He has made some of the most laughable, and
entertaining, films to ever come out of the independent Hollywood scene. With classics
like the hastily constructed Plan 9 From Outer Space (1958) and the surrealistically autobiographical
Glen or Glenda (1953) Wood has placed an indelible mark on the art of
film production resulting in a big-budget life story by movie giant Tim Burton, titled Ed
Wood (1994). There is a lesser-known sidelight to Wood's career as a producer-writerdirector-
actor, almost another career entirely. Edward D. Wood, Jr. is one of America's
most prolific short story writers and novelists.
Kevin Moyers looks at 5 movies that he considers to be highly overrated in the fifth edition of The Movie Burrito.
I hear so-called buzz all the time about great movies that I must see. I go in wondering what the hype is all about only to leave angry and disappointed. These are definitely somebody's favorite movies. They are definitely not mine. I feel bad for people who like these movies more than they should. I feel that there is a disconnect with rational thinking. I know I sound like an ass right now, but you really need to read a lot more of what I write in order to understand that I usually do. So there.
Hal Astell introduces us to a movie that he finds enjoyable for all the wrong reasons, The Monster of Camp Sunshine, in this edition of Cinema Hell.
Is there any better location in which to set a monster movie than a naturist colony? A Nazi death camp would provide opportunity for fetishistic sleaze in black leather, but using a nudist camp preserves all the innocence of the old school monsters while gifting us with copious quantities of naked female flesh. The Monster of Camp Sunshine is a terrible movie, make no mistake about that, but it's also a truly surreal, bizarre and unique picture that deserves all those adjectives and more. Unlike most of the Z grade movies I've reviewed for Cinematic Hell, this is one I'd truly recommend you see, just for the experience. Apparently sincere in its message about naturism, its tongue is nonetheless firmly in its cheek when it comes to the monster and it goes full out holy batshit insane when it feels like it. The last fifteen minutes is sheer outsider genius and it takes something truly special nowadays to make this reviewer exclaim, 'What just happened?'
It's all about emo girls and sparkly vampires as Hollis Jay tackles Twilight.
Here we go folks; I have finally decided to vent my feelings about the abominable Twilight movies, and all other Twilight related material. First, to use the word vampire to relate to any of these movies would be unnecessary and irrational. For these are not the vampires of legend, ones who make children shiver under the covers in their beds or make their victims scream in fear. Give me a good vampire -one who pulls the gore and guts out of their victims without hesitation and thought. Vampires like those portrayed in 30 Days of Night and the novels of Brian Lumley. These vampires have no mercy, and they do not shine and shimmer in the light. They certainly do not sit longingly staring at their human girlfriends in fields of flowers. They rip and roar through their cities and towns and let nothing stand in their way.
David Hayes interviewed the late great Sid Pink nearly a decade ago. Sit back and enjoy his discussion with the cult legend.
“Might as well do this now, I don’t know how much longer I’ve got left,” jokes
Sid Pink. Heralded as one of the industry’s most daring, innovative and overlooked
writer/director/producers, Sidney Pink sits back in his Florida home not even hinting that
the man behind Angry Red Planet (1959), Journey to the Seventh Planet (1962), Bwana
Devil (1950) and Reptilicus (1961) is anything but your average retiree. As one of the
first truly successful independent film producers in the United States and abroad, Sid
Pink is in a league all his own.
Hal Astell almost loses his cool on this utter waste of a movie featuring the Siamese twins from Freaks as themselves, near enough. Chained for Life truly is Cinema Hell.
We're here to be entertained and take our minds off things, says Judge Mitchell, but I wish I could take my mind off this. It's a unique story full of fascinating moral and legal questions that centre around a pair of Siamese twins committing murder and matrimony. Some are posed on the wild publicity material. 'What happens in their intimate moments?' the posters ask us. 'Is it legal to marry a Siamese twin?' 'Can they have a normal love life?' You'd think it was a porn film from all this salacious hype but it's far from that. It's a low budget exploitation picture from 1951, loosely based on real events in the lives of the Hilton Sisters, Daisy and Violet. Yes, long before Paris and Nicky there were Daisy and Violet, and they were as unlike the modern Hiltons as you could comfortably imagine. By all accounts they were pleasant, intelligent, talented ladies who simply happened to share a circulatory system. They're the Siamese twins from Tod Browning's Freaks.
Hollis Jay dives in to Rob Zombie's two Halloween remakes or prequels or reimaginings or whatever you want to call them.
A wise man (namely David Hayes) once stated that a back story is irrelevant when it comes to developing evil. I agree wholeheartedly with this approach, which brings me to my review of the new Halloween movies. The original Halloween movie was the first movie that I ever saw, and at the age of five I remember being not only interested in the characters but also scared by the idea of Michael Myers. I didn't need to know where he came from or how he developed as a human being in order to understand that he was bad and/or evil. I knew that he was evil by the actions that he committed on screen.
Want to win a signed copy of the Wacky Taxi/Superargo Double Feature from Code Red DVD? Damn right you do!
Just sign up for our mailing list on the left side of the screen and you will be automatically entered. A random winner will be chosen on August 1st. Other special bonuses will be included!
Hal Astell dares to take Cinema Hell into the spider-like lair known as the Mesa of Lost Women.
Mesa of Lost Women is two films in one but that's two too many. It started out under the working title of Tarantula, which would have been original at the time as Jack Arnold's movie of the same name didn't arrive until 1955, but this one didn't arrive at all, partly because the funds started to run out but mostly because writer/director Herbert Tevos was a little too good at driving the cast and crew into quitting. A couple of years later, his replacement was one of the more fascinating names in exploitation cinema, Ron Ormond, who wasn't just a writer, producer and director of low budget movies, but also a vaudeville performer, magician and Air Force colonel. At this point he was known mostly for his Lash LaRue westerns, but this mess proved to be his ticket into an ever more eclectic world that soon included gorilla sleaze, frigid wife sexploitation and Nashville musicals. Eventually he would turn to Jesus and become the foremost name in Christploitation.
Cinema Hell lives up to its name with Hal Astell's review of the most bizarre looking creature on this or any other planet... Robot Monster.
For a bad movie, and this is a really bad movie, it's a quintessential low budget fifties scifi romp, perhaps even more fun to watch than Plan 9 from Outer Space. If it had been released half a century later it would still be in movie theaters today with cult audiences heckling the screen on a monthly basis with producer/director Phil Tucker kept busy flying from screening to screening to sign autographs. I'm sure he would have plenty to talk about during a Q&A too, given that he shot the film for a measly $16,000 in only four days without any sets, and somehow managed to make it in 3D and with stereophonic sound too, the first time that had been done on a scifi film. If Tucker was alive today, I'd try to introduce him to James Cameron. Avatar may have earned two billion dollars on the basis of its 3D ticket prices but that's only eight times its cost. Robot Monster grossed a million bucks and that meant more than 62 times what Tucker spent on it.
Kevin Moyers goes over the recently released Mel Gibson phone tapes and reveals why Mel may not be the bad guy.
We've all been there. Everyone has been in an argument in which the other person took things too far. They said something horrible about you. They said something about your family or your kids. They said they'd screw you over so bad you'd never recover. You lose it and fight back. It's a natural thing to do. This week we saw someone connected to the highest peaks in Hollywood do something so despicable that I can't even begin to share my level of disgust with this person. The person I'm speaking of is Oksana Grigorieva.
David Hayes brings the first book to the site reviewing Westchester Station by Patrick Welch.
Patrick Welch's Westchester Station is a kaleidoscope of interesting characters, some familiar throughout history and literature, and others based completely on the inventiveness of their author. Robert Winstead, Winchester Station's protagonist, is predestined, during a Chicago blizzard, to try and find his way to Schenectady, NY by the only means possible, the enigmatic train depot called Westchester Station. In a series of events not quite controlled by him, Winstead is taken to the train station and told by the stationmaster that Winstead is there for a reason. This reason is the root of Winstead's trip through the magical depot and the reinvigoration of his entire being.
David Hayes interviews special effects guru Marcus Koch.
Marcus Koch is a special effects wizard that has leant a gooey, drippy hand to some wonderful genre films, most recently H.G. Lewis' The Uh Oh Show and Vito Trabucco's Bloody, Bloody Bible Camp. He is also an award-wining director and the auteur responsible for 100 Tears, Rot (my personal favorite) and the upcoming Fell.
Marcus took a bite out of the Head Cheese and we were lucky enough to get a few words with him.
Hal Astell takes Cinema Hell deep into the womb with his review of Test Tube Babies.
There's just something at once magic and awful about the old exploitation movies of the thirties and forties that offered up tantalising titillation under the pretense of educating the masses. The fake education angle had little to do with censorship, as these films weren't shown at reputable cinemas who were restricted to screening films with an official censor's seal of approval, and more about suckering in the widest possible audience. Mostly they were distributed roadshow style across the nation, an entourage breezing into town like a carnival or revival meeting to a blaze of lurid publicity, blitzing a local rented theatre and quickly moving on before the arbiters of morality in the area descended. Films were often the least important part of the show, given that they rarely delivered on their outrageous promises and the barkers made more money off the pamplets or overpriced Bibles that they hawked than they did from actual ticket sales.
Jeff Dolniak takes a mind altering look at eleven cult films that involve Nazis, pig sex, killer rabbits and John Waters. More than enough to justify the third installment of our quickie movie review series, The Movie Burrito.
New CHC reviewer Hollis Jay isn't feeling too good about the Liv Tyler flick The Strangers.
After watching The Strangers a few times, I became truly aware of the misogynistic views throughout the film. The women are separated into two categories: vulnerable and violent, but all three women are instigated only by their male figures. Kristen McKay’s character (Liv Tyler) cannot even seem to tie her shoe laces without her boyfriend. If James (Scott Speedman) isn’t carrying her from one destination to another or unzipping her dress and removing her jewelry piece by piece, then he is being beckoned for by Kristen throughout the entire movie. Her fervent calls for James and/or Jimmy become annoying but it is her inability for care for herself that turns from annoyance to downright ignorance.
Okay, did we say Hal Astell's last Cinema Hell review took a turn for the weird? This one gets stranger yet when Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter.
Back in the silent era William Beaudine was a name to be reckoned with. His acting career took off in 1909 but he soon became far better known behind the camera, beginning as an assistant director in 1911 at a mere nineteen years of age and progressing quickly up to full director four years and 55 films later. He made it as high as Mary Pickford movies like Little Annie Rooney and Sparrows before making four films in England and somehow alienating Hollywood. So he became 'One Shot' William Beaudine, churning out movies at a rapid pace for Poverty Row studios like Monogram and PRC, often without retakes. He racked up hundreds of these, some shot in less than a week, and while they were often capable, even astounding if you consider the budgets and the shooting schedules, they still weren't very good. This eight day shoot was his last film, shot back to back with another weird western, Billy the Kid Versus Dracula, which is even worse than this.
David Hayes reviews the Evil Dead lookalike Hellbound: Book of the Dead.
From the onset, the viewer knows that it is watching a shot on video cheapie. A young couple, Jeff Dylan Graham (Dead & Rotting, Home Sick) and Elizabeth North, living on an anonymous bay have had a few tragic occurrences in their lives. The young woman's sister recently died in a car accident and her father passed away a few years earlier. He was a scientist researching the mythical "Book of the Dead" that, if used properly, can bring back the deceased.
Just when you thought Cinema Hell couldn't get any weirder, Hal Astell proves us all wrong and brings us Hercules Against the Moon Men.
Carlo Franci's score leaps out here first for attention, a cacophony of sinister crescendos that may have been distilled from every monster movie ever made, which is highly appropriate given the material. This is generic pulp peplum at it's best, or worst, depending on your perspective. Peplum is an Italian genre usually referred to as sword and sandal, historical or mythological epics that turn out to be a little less epic than you might initially expect and which often featured bodybuilders or slumming American actors in the lead roles. They are roughly to Hollywood epics what spaghetti westerns were to the American originals: low budget attempts to capture a style that perhaps inevitably ended up creating a whole new style of their own. Their heyday was the late fifties and early sixties, after the 1958 version of Hercules with Steve Reeves, during which time they were churned out in numbers that cannot comfortably be imagined.
Hal Astell follows one brain with another in this week's Cinema Hell review of Monstrosity aka The Atomic Brain.
I just couldn't resist following up The Brain That Wouldn't Die with The Atomic Brain to make a double helping of brains, even though this film was originally titled Monstrosity only to perhaps be renamed because the original title described the picture too well. Both films ponder the same theme, the old chestnut about mad transplant surgeons, and both come down firmly on the side that it's immoral, unethical and unforgivable. How quaint we were back in the sixties when it came to such things, but then this film was co-written by no less than four writers and directed by Ray Dennis Steckler's cinematographer. Having four writers generally makes the best script turn to mush and it isn't surprising that Joseph Mascelli never directed again. He kept busy for a while on Steckler's films, with 1964 also seeing him lens Strange Compulsion, The Thrill Killers and The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!?
Kevin Moyers talks about 10 of his favorite documentaries including Tyson, When Stand Up Stood Out, Air Guitar Nation and more in the second edition of our run and gun movie review series, The Movie Burrito.
Disaster: Mexican Style - David Hayes takes a look at the film career of Rene Cardona, Jr.
Rene Cardona, Jr. The name alone inspires apathy throughout the film
community. And that is truly a shame. Cardona, following in the footsteps of his director
father, Rene Cardona, Sr. of course, has crafted a directing resume that is three decades
old and is populated with over 90 feature films. Yet, not a soul can put a face to the near legendary Mexican exploitation master. Maybe it is due solely to marketing? If Tim
Burton had cast Johnny Depp as Rene Cardona, Jr., and not Ed Wood, maybe midnight
screenings of schlock classics like Cyclone and Tintorera would grace the screens of
theaters everywhere. As far as filmmaking skill goes, both Wood and Cardona are in the
same league. Stock footage, reused footage and self-referential dialogue (in Cyclone, the
characters actually refer to Cardona Sr.’s Survive!) are all hallmarks of exploitation film
greatness yet Cardona still hasn’t received the recognition he is due.
Hal Astell's takes us into Cinema Hell once again with his brilliant review of The Brain That Wouldn't Die.
'Let me die!' a woman's voice repeatedly pleads before the title credits begin, in fact before we see anything. It's a disembodied voice out of nowhere that suggests a female version of Johnny Got His Gun, or at least that begins where that book and film ends. It's all very promising but sadly it's all downhill from there, which possibly explains why this was completed in 1959 under the title The Black Door but wasn't released until 1962 under its current more lurid title. It isn't without merit, as it does contain a number of memorable cult moments, not least one of the most abiding images of all sixties genre cinema, but it still can't live up to the title. It comes from the common mad scientist subgenre of horror/science fiction movies of the time but unlike their progenitor Frankenstein which remains as timeless as ever, this has already been superceded as the unholy transplantation of limbs and organs that it rages against is routinely beneficial today.
Finally! Jeff, David, and Kevin return to Cinema Head Cheese form with another hilarious commentary! This time around, it's the hero flick Superargo on another Double Feature from Code Red DVD.
David Hayes shares a positive review of a film shot in Africa, The Bone Snatcher.
Set in South Africa, this independent chiller is a little more than you would expect. Ambitious story tells the tale of a Canadian researcher called into the Diamond Mines of South Africa when a team of miners disappears. The Researcher and his team of Mine Security run into trouble when they discover that the recent disappearances are the result of an ages old African legend that, in order to physical humanoid form, needs the skeletons of the people he kills.
An enormous lizard attacks Hal Astell's Cinema Hell! Is it Godzilla? T-Rex? Nope. It's The Giant Gila Monster.
One of two features produced back to back in 1959 by an independent production company in Texas called Hollywood Pictures Corporation, such a generic name that it was the second such company, this was the half that didn't even get the title right. At least The Killer Shrews starred a bunch of killer shrews, along with James Best from The Dukes of Hazzard, but this one just has a Mexican beaded lizard. Perhaps the filmmakers felt that The Giant Gila Monster made for a better title, even though most of the people watching couldn't pronounce it properly. It has two selling points today, beyond being a bad but fun film. Firstly, the font used on the promotional posters, though not on the title card, is the one memorably borrowed by Glenn Danzig for his bands The Misfits, Samhain and Danzig. Secondly, this is a monster movie with a real monster, because instead of putting a fake monster into real sets they put a real monster into fake sets.
David Hayes brings us the tale of the most amazing fighting machine of all time, or at least the weirdest, Robot Ninja.
Ok. Now, the staff over here at Cinema Head Cheese have seen some real crapfests in our collective times. The nuances of Mr. Ed Wood, the jiggly soft-core porn from the Stephen Apostolof factory and the crap regularly
churned out by Fred Olen Ray among numerous others. Nothing in the world can prepare you for the horror known as J. R. Bookwalter: producer, writer, director and actor without peers, or friends. Before we go into that, let's look and see what the movie was about. Presenting... the "plotline" for Robot Ninja.
It's Christmas in July as Hal Astell's Cinema Hell returns with Merlin, a devil and the man in red himself, Santa Claus.
Given that summer is here and the temperatures in west Phoenix are dancing around a hundred, I felt it was time for Mexican Christmas, courtesy of K Gordon Murray. He didn't just bring bizarre Mexican horror movies like The Brainiac north of the border, he brought a lot of bizarre Mexican movies for kids too, this one perhaps the most famous and the most bizarre of the bunch. Also, given that I'm writing while Arizona waits for SB1070 to become law and the substantial Hispanic population talks about the potential for racial discrimination, I couldn't help but read into this film commentary on how Mexicans see themselves. The best reality is found in fantasy, after all, and this one goes whole hog, way out there, because the Mexican Santa Claus, while obviously well known enough to get a movie of his very own, really isn't that similar to the equivalents we know from our own countries. In fact this Santa Claus mythology is well, rather customised.
Jeff Dolniak interviews actor and filmmaker Jim Van Bebber and finds out about an interesting film career.
CHC: What are your thoughts on acting, writing and directing at the same time in film? You did it throughout your filmmaking career. That's a lot to tackle in my opinion, especially if you wanna make the movie work. It did seem to work perfectly in your case.
JVB: For me, writing, directing and acting in my films is something
that I have done since my childhood regular 8mm films. By the time of
"Deadbeat at Dawn", it was just natural. I don't even think of it as
difficult. The more that I can infuse of myself in my films, the more
joy I get out of making them.
Vampires, a tomb and a guy named Abe are all David Hayes needs for his review of the ridiculous Abe's Tomb.
From the onset we're in a world of hurt. A serious, micro-budget world of hurt. From the very first frame, reading Abe's Tomb: The Movie (seriously, the viewer has to physically put the DVD in the player and sit down and still they felt the need to add 'The Movie'). Apparently, from the voice over in the beginning, the world has been overrun by vampires and it started in Moore 's Lake (the desolate, post-apocalyptic town consists of only a semi-empty alley). I'm not quite sure what state Moore's Lake is in, but wherever it is, they don't have anyone that can work a camera there... at least without kicking the tripod from time to time, or stop pointing the camera directly into the sun or keep it in focus. So, before the vampire plague got out of control, the town cop convinces the town reporter to ask the town ghoul, Abe, to help them with their vampire problem. Of course, we don't see the vampire problem, it is told to us, in voice over, by the owner of the ice cream shop.
David Hayes digs into vampiric ridiculosity in his review of Blood Bound: Meat Market Cut.
Gotta love any movie that has a black and white intro, 10 years in the past. Especially when the filmmakers are so concerned with authenticity that they use equipment that is 10 years old. Broken equipment, obviously. So, in the past some cops were hypnotized by a vampire lady. Then nothing happened. We flash forward, 10 years later, and now we're on a college campus... where nothing is happening. There is the obsessed cop, photo nerd, the slut, the smart girl, the jock and the jock's friends so we are all ready for a good, old fashioned massacre. Of course, these guys found a way to screw that up.
Kevin Moyers rattles off a pile of reviews for some of his favorite comedies and one he'd like to scrub from his brain with steel wool in our new series called The Movie Burrito. The Movie Burrito is designed to give you a bunch of quick and easy to digest reviews all wrapped up in a nice little package. Volume 1 is all comedy and there will be many more to come!
Jeff Dolniak takes a look at the new indie horror flick Nightmare Alley.
When I saw that NIGHTMARE ALLEY was getting an official release on DVD, I jumped at the chance of reviewing this 1947 classic thriller starring the legendary Tyrone Power. You can never go wrong with Tyrone Power. I tore open the mailing envelope and to my surprise, this wasn't Edmund Goulding's NIGHTMARE ALLEY... it was an independent splatter film with the same title from Svengoolie look alike Scarlet Fry. Imagine Svengoolie, minus the mustache with an inabilty to move his mouth well, while doing an impression of the Crypt Keeper. Thats Scarlet Fry. It wasnt a bad thing. It was fucking hilarious! Sure, no Tyrone Power but you still get horror legend David (BACKWOODS) Hayes and NORTH SIDE KINGS vocalist and up and coming genre star Danny Marianino. Even trade-off. Tyrone who???
Jeff Dolniak interviews filmmaker Cory Udler about Incest Death Squad, Lloyd Kaufman and much more.
CHC: Hello Cory! Can you tell us a little about your soon to be cult classic "INCEST DEATH SQUAD"?
CU: First, I just want to thank you for asking me to do this! Incest Death Squad, man, where to start. I wrote the script about 7 years ago, right around the time I started to do some professional screenplay writing for a company out of Costa Mesa, California. My experience with them was anything but pleasant, but I learned a great deal about how to format a script, etc. I sat on it for a while, because, honestly, at that point I had no point of reference on how to make a film. Granted, I had gone to school for multimedia arts and video production, sound production and editing, but to make a feature film? No clue. I sent the script off to a few script competitions, and let me just say if you're planning on doing something like this-DON'T BOTHER! Its' a complete racket, and anyone who has submitted their script or their completed film to film fests knows that it's not about your film, it's about who you know, plan and simple. So, probably 2 and a half years ago, I was surfing the Troma website and saw an ad that Lloyd (Kaufman) was looking for his next feature film script, so I sent him Incest Death Squad and he actually took the time to call me on the phone and tell me how much he enjoyed it, how I was on the "right track" and to keep at it.
Jeff Dolniak interviews writer/director Vito Trabucco about Bloody Bloody Bible Camp starring Reggie Bannister, Tim Sullivan, Ron Jeremy and our own David Hayes.
CHC: How did "Bloody Bloody Bible Camp" come about?
VT: ---BBBC came about 7 years ago after we finished our first film, B-Movie. The co-producer of that film, Shelby McIntyre and myself wanted to do a massacre film centered around religion, but in a comedic way. About 2 days later I get a call from him. All I hear on the other line is BLOODY-BLOODY-BIBLE-CAMP. I loved it! And I loved the fact we had a title and nothing else. So instead of making a poster, we had the first draft of the script done in about 3 weeks. After I moved to LA, Shelby stayed in Florida so we weren't sure if we were ever going to make it. Then about 2 years ago I was producing a film called Weak Species. That's where I met Christopher Maltauro who became our executive producer and the rest is history.
Kevin Moyers gets in hero mode with his review of Kick-Ass.
When I first saw the trailer for Kick-Ass, I was amped up and ready to go. I was ready for a funny and even cute little action flick. I never would have expected to connect with a movie on so many levels. Yeah, connect. It's not often that I get this kind of pleasant surprise. I remember watching Click, the Adam Sandler film about the magical remote control, and realizing that even though it was marketed as a goofy comedy, it was really a lesson in missing out on the little things. Kick-Ass isn't just a comic book movie. It's a story about a nerd standing up for himself, a single dad and his daughter, and a kid who will do anything for his father's approval. This is real life in a very cool package.
In Cinema Hell this week, Hal Astell brings out star power to reach out and grab you with his Tentacles.
Tentacles, a low budget rip off of Jaws, made two years later with a giant octopus replacing the shark, appears to be about as Hollywood as you can get from moment one. The MGM lion roars, then Samuel Z Arkoff of American International presents John Huston, Shelley Winters and Bo Hopkins with a special appearance by Henry Fonda, all major names in 1977. Sure, we haven't heard of the director, Oliver Hellman, but there are always new directors in Hollywood, right? Well, this isn't Hollywood in the slightest, this is an Italian monster movie. Oliver Hellman is a pseudonym for Ovidio Assonitis, which sounds like a reason to stock up on anti-inflammatory cream but is really a hidden hint that this isn't what it seems, a terrible hint to be sure but the next one's even worse. In an attempt to tell us the secret to the film before we've even seen it we're forced to watch the opening credits unfold over a full sixty second shot of a taxi radio.
In this week's Cinema Hell, Hal Astell would like to introduce you to Zontar, the Thing from Venus.
Any dabbler into Cinematic Hell knows that the modern trend of remaking bad films into even worse films is hardly a new one. Back in the sixties Larry Buchanan built something of a name for himself by doing precisely that when American International Pictures decided to sell material to fledgeling television companies eager to pad out their late night scheduling. The company still owned the scripts to a number of old black and white Roger Corman movies they'd released, so they hired Buchanan to remake them for a television audience. Unfortunately Buchanan had only a third of the budget Corman had to work with, which was hardly substantial to begin with, and he had to shoot in colour too. No wonder these films are awful. He churned out eight TV movies for AIP, half of which were Corman remakes and half of which I've seen. This remake of Corman's It Conquered the World is by far the worst thus far.
Hal Astell takes Cinematic Hell through a bout of the crepy crawlies with Horrors of Spider Island.
You may have a picture in your mind of how a 1960 film called Horrors of Spider Island is going to play out, but you'll be wrong. You might be closer to the truth if you mishear the title as Whores of Spider Island but unfortunately not too much closer. Originally a German/Yugoslavian coproduction whose title translates to A Corpse Hangs in the Web, it ran 89 minutes long and contained quite a lot of nudity. Released Stateside in 1962 under the title of It's Hot in Paradise, all that risqué material is supposedly intact as it was an adults only release. Finally in 1967 it was trimmed down into this version, which supposedly runs 77 minutes but by the time it made it to the public domain box sets ended up as a mere 74. And whatever you think it's going to be you're wrong. Trust me. It's so bad that the director apparently took his name off the thing. He was Fritz Böttger but he's credited as Jaime Nolan and he never directed again.
Hal Astell takes putting himself through Cinematic Hell very seriously when he delves into White Pongo.
Even though we're about to visit West Africa, the opening music by an uncredited Leo Erdody feels rather Arabian. By the time we get through the introduction that tells about 'vast areas of dense forests and swampland as yet unseen by white men' and 'virgin territory penetrated only by the Congo river', we half expect to see a giant cobra being summoned out of a basket, but no, it's just a bunch of half naked savages leaping around a tiny campfire. What makes it special isn't the natives, or even the fact that the most recognisable name in this debacle, Guy Kibbee's brother Milton, is strung up by his wrists presumably waiting to be sacrificed. It's that there's some lunatic leaping around in a white gorilla suit pretending to be the missing link. He's actually Ray Corrigan, who worked inside most of the ape suits Hollywood put into movies, at least when he wasn't playing Tucson Smith or Crash Corrigan in western series.
Hal Astell starts this week's Cinematic Hell two-for-one with The Creeping Terror.
Of all the many atrocities low budget cinema has thrust upon us thus far, the closest anyone has ever really got to Manos: The Hands of Fate is this one, whose title describes the film far better than its monster. Like Manos, this is mostly the product of one man who promptly left the movie business, though he had previously made Street-Fighter in 1959. The difference is that this time out there's a back story that's not just interesting, it's far more interesting than the actual movie itself. That one man is Arthur N White, a small scale conman from Connecticut who came up with a new name and a new gimmick every time the wind changed, making this film under two pseudonyms. As A J Nelson, he produced it, edited it and directed it. As Vic Savage, he played the lead role of Martin Gordon. His real role was as conman though, because the movie itself was the gimmick and during a break in filming he simply packed up and left town with the money.
Hal Astell explores the true meaning of Cinematic Hell by torturing himself with Maniac.
There are exploitation films that surprise because of what they are or what they contain, and then there are exploitation films that continue to surprise so much that the most surprising thing of all is that they're not far more famous than they are. This little picture from Dwain Esper pulls out all the stops, with almost everything you could possibly imagine from exploitation cinema except garish colour, all stuffed into a mere 51 minute running time. What's more it was released in 1934, which seems unbelievable given some of the things that go on, though others are admittedly staples of thirties horror. Sourced primarily from Poe, it was ahead of Roger Corman by a quarter of a century. The eyeball eating scene feels like it should be in a Fulci movie half a century later. The personal take on zombies is a very modern one that writers are only now starting to get back to, three quarters of a century later. Talk about ahead of its time. Every 25 years someone catches up to something else in this film.
Cinematic Hell wild man Hal Astell has a hot date with The Wild Women of Wongo.
I'm sure you're not going to be surprised to find that something called The Wild Women of Wongo isn't some existential Ingmar Bergman picture, though it does start with an arty introduction from Mother Nature herself. Unfortunately it isn't an early Girls Gone Wild video either, done 1958 style with Bettie Page and a host of tiki room beauties, but it's a lot closer to that than Bergman because this one does at least have a girl in a leopard skin outfit wrestling an alligator. She's Jean Hawkshaw, and like almost everyone else involved in this picture, this was the only thing she did. Cedric Rutherford didn't write anything else. James Wolcott didn't direct anything else, except to patch together some old Laurel and Hardy shorts into a compilation in 1967. The other star, Johnny Walsh, did make 29 movies but he was only credited in three of them, and trust me, we're not looking at Johnny Walsh in this picture.
What's that? Another Cinematic Hell? That's right! Hal Astell kung-fus your ass with Fist of Fear, Touch of Death.
Bruceploitation is a wild and crazy world, one conjured into existence by filmmakers in Hong Kong, China and Taiwan after the death of Bruce Lee in 1973. Lee had been the breakthrough to whole new markets for them, becoming an international superstar and iconic figure around the globe, especially after Enter the Dragon, which was a Hollywood production shot mostly in English. Everyone knew who Bruce Lee was in the same way everyone knew who Charlie Chaplin was. Yet now he was dead and so couldn't make another movie. So they conjured up a successor. Actually they conjured up a lot of successors. What seemed like everyone in Asian cinema suddenly changed their name to either Bruce or Lee and they suddenly starred in films with portmanteau titles of other Bruce Lee movies.
In this week's Cinematic Hell, Hal Astell decides you don't have to be a genius to enjoy The Brainiac.
One of the most annoying things about living in west Phoenix with its large Hispanic population is discovering that the cheap and plentiful supply of bizarre Mexican films in stores around the valley never come with subtitles. It's like being a child in a world of candy but being forbidden to eat anything. One day I'm going to need to learn Spanish just to be able to understand what's going on in bad Mexican wrestling and horror movies. So to me, K Gordon Murray is a godsend. He was a American film producer, often known as 'the King of the Kiddie Matinee' and what he did was to take these Mexican films, give them outrageous new titles and dub them into English so we single language speakers can understand them.
There's only one thing Hal Astell can say about this week's Cinematic Hell review: Eegah!
There are films that live on in legend because whatever else they might be, they're mostly prominent embarrassments in the career of someone eminently recognisable. I'm not talking about the direction John Carradine's career went as it dragged on way down into the depths, but about things like Trog with Joan Crawford, Teenage Caveman with Robert Vaughan and Eegah with Richard Kiel, three films that coincidentally share a theme. Yes, Richard Kiel is a 7'2" apparently ageless prehistoric giant caveman, which might have seemed a step up at the time from being merely a bouncer in a night club, but may well have been a little too prominent for comfort when he put on his steel teeth and started duking it out with James Bond in The Spy Who Loved Me fifteen years later.
Hal Astell leads us through an amputee ass kicking in this week's Cinematic Hell review of The Crippled Masters.
Any martial arts movie that begins with a horrific cry and a severed arm falling onto the ground can't be too bad, right? Well think again, this one is as bad as you could imagine, albeit bad in the most fun way possible. There are bad films that are endurance tests and there are bad films that are joys to behold: think Manos: The Hands of Fate and Plan 9 from Outer Space as the epitomes of the two. This certainly falls into the latter category because it's a real guilty pleasure. If you thought The Terror of Tiny Town was politically incorrect, how about this little gem from Taiwan, shot in Hong Kong, that features as its two stars an actor with no arms and an actor with shrivelled legs, who team up to become a killing machine. Well, why not? It's just like a version of Transformers with cripples instead of robots.
Why does Hal Astell keep putting himself through Cinematic Hell? We don't know, but we're glad he did for The Terror of Tiny Town.
You knew this was going to turn up sooner or later, right? There's just no way I could resist adding to the ranks of Cinematic Hell something that the title card suggests is supposed to be 'a rollickin', rootin', tootin', shootin' drama of the great outdoors,' but patently isn't, at least not how you expect. It was produced in 1938 by Jed Buell who owned Jed Buell's Midgets (given that this was the golden age of the studio system, 'owned' probably had many meanings), who constitute the entire cast. Yes, folks, this is a musical western with an all midget cast, many of whom you'll recognise because they went on to play Munchkins the following year in The Wizard of Oz.
Hal Astell's next review in the "Cinematic Hell" series is a little masterpiece known as Child Bride.
I knew that Manos: The Hands of Fate had been referenced by many people in the know as the real worst film of all time, including the writers of Mystery Science Theater 3000 who had effectively rescued it from cinematic oblivion. However when researching that film I found tantalising snippets about another movie that they declined to screen on their show, one that they once threw out in answer to a convention Q&A question as to whether they had seen anything worse. That movie was 1938's Child Bride, so naturally I had to add it to my Cinematic Hell viewing list. It was a US government funded movie intended to be shown as an educational piece in the Ozarks and other areas of the American deep south where it was seen as acceptable for grown men to marry young girls. And by young, I don't mean seventeen. This is a film that's in the public domain, available on cheap box sets everywhere but is still categorised at Wikipedia under 'films with a pedophile theme'. Be warned.
The newest review in the "Cinematic Hell" series from Hal Astell gives us a history lesson in the making of They Saved Hitler's Brain.
They Saved Hitler's Brain is one of the greatest movie titles in existence, one that just exudes badness in the most awesome way. I've wanted to see it for years but hadn't realised that it would highlight to me a whole new subset of bad movies that I didn't even know existed, the precise opposite of something that plagued me in England growing up. It's not difficult to see why some movies being shown on television would be cut for content, especially exploitation films. However I saw films on TV like Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home that were cut too, films that contained absolutely nothing that might warrant censorship.
The fourth review in the "Cinematic Hell" series from Hal Astell takes us to madness... Reefer Madness.
Somehow I've managed to avoid seeing Reefer Madness up until now, even though I probably own half a dozen copies of it in various public domain box sets and I have seen a number of its peers. It's an important film, generally seen as the benchmark of the educational exploitation films of the thirties and forties, the standard by which they're judged. Unfortunately it's somehow neither particularly good or bad and so has attained its lofty and legendary status through a salacious history and a particularly delicious form of irony. Financed as a cautionary tale by a small church group, it is most popular with the very people it warned against, thus it amazingly achieved the precise opposite of what it aimed at and continues to do so over seventy years after its initial release. Beyond that irony, it apparently improves in quality the more stoned you are. To be truly entertained you need to be so high that it becomes topical humour.
Yet another brilliant review from Hal Astell of "Apocalypse Later" in his new series "Cinematic Hell" with a peek at Plan 9 From Outer Space.
I couldn't resist watching Plan 9 from Outer Space after Manos: The Hands of Fate. It's the film most usually regarded as the worst ever made, but there's really no comparison. Harold P Warren didn't know how to make a movie in the slightest, but Ed Wood did. Sure, he chose to do so in his own very outsider way but he was capable nonetheless, hardly the no talent hack movie history tries to make him out to be. Outsider art is an acquired taste that surely isn't for everyone, and Wood can only be fairly contextualised as an outsider, especially given that his films, which like Tarantino's movies are patchwork quilts of everything he had seen and thought was awesomely cool, are undeniably his. You simply can't mistake an Ed Wood movie for anything else, just as you can't mistake a Russ Meyer movie for anything else.
Reviewer Hal Astell of "Apocalypse Later" continues his new series "Cinematic Hell" with an in depth look at Manos: The Hands of Fate.
Ask any random moviegoer what the worst film of all time is and they'll generally throw back Plan 9 from Outer Space because they just don't know any better. It has to be the mostly widely seen really bad movie of its era, it features more outré celebrities than any John Waters movie ever made and it got special attention in the high profile Tim Burton/Johnny Depp biopic of its director, Ed Wood, so it's simply the easiest choice. Ask people who actually know about the really bad films, though, people like the writers of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and films that make Plan 9 from Outer Space look like Citizen Kane (well not quite but you get the picture), and they'll come up with a whole bunch of other suggestions. The one that tends to sink through all the dross to the very very bottom is this one, Manos: The Hands of Fate. It's supposed to be a horror movie but Quentin Tarantino, who owns what may be the only 35mm print of the film, calls it his favourite comedy of all time. Now I've finally seen it, I can understand why.
Reviewer Hal Astell of "Apocalypse Later" unveils his new series "Cinematic Hell" with a look back at the cult classic The Beast of Yucca Flats.
How bad can a movie be when it begins with a surreptitious yet entirely gratuitious nipple shot? Well, the answer is really, really bad. This is the worst film I've ever seen, currently ranked 22nd on the IMDb Bottom 100, though bizarrely that still makes it the highest rated of the three features that Coleman Francis wrote and directed. It's a sheer joy to see it again, to remind myself of how truly awful it was while simultaneously torturing members of my family in the process. I simply couldn't think of a better choice to begin a set of reviews of the worst of the worst films to ever escape from Cinematic Hell and disgrace us with their presence. It's also hardly a coincidence that my hosts at Cinema Head Cheese have shot an unauthorised sequel almost half a century later, Return to Yucca Flats: Desert Man Beast.
