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I love it when I find Nasties in the mailbox!

That familiar red envelope contains a copy of one I know very little about, Ovidio G. Assonitis' 1981 thriller There Was A Little Girl, aka Madhouse, which is both its' Nasty title and the title given on the recent DVD release.  Assonitis' biggest claim to fame may be writing and producing James Cameron's directorial debut Piranha II: The Spawning.  The story goes that Assonitis was dissatisfied with Cameron's progress after a week and took over the directing duties, allowing Cameron to film, but denying him access to dailies and editing.  Upset about his loss of control, Cameron allegedly broke into the editing room over a weekend and assembled his own cut, but was caught (Apparently his version was released to home video).  Mr. Assonitis' second biggest claim to fame is a well-respected film entitled Beyond The Door, and third would have to be landing a film on the Nasties list.  Here's a trailer for Madhouse:



The other thing I received today was wrapped in brown paper with no return address. It was covered in odd handwriting and suspicious, rust-colored stains.  It seems El Presidente has people who know people, because when I tore into the foul-smelling and hastily wrapped package, I found a worn VHS copy of Mardi Gras Massacre cut down to fit a grey clamshell case from its original big-box packaging.  Along with it was a piece of paper documenting the slew of towns it had traveled through, including a weeklong sojourn in Honduras that apparently ended the lives of two couriers.  Below that notation was scrawled what may have been a plea for help on the manifest, but I don't understand Garifuna and water damage rendered the rest of the information illegible.  I can only hope whoever wrote it got home safely.

A loose remake of Blood Feast, Mardi Gras Massacre was directed, produced, written and shot by Jack Weis in 1978, who may have gotten the idea when he scouted locations for the Southern-fried James Bond outing Live And Let Die five years earlier.  This one has never been rereleased in the UK after falling afoul of the OPA.  Here's an anomaly for an unrated film - a television ad for Mardi Gras Massacre:



I'm excited to screen these, and I'm hoping that my quest for all 72 won't kill any more Central American messengers.  But I gotta do what I gotta do.  Someone needs to document it all if it's needed, and I'm the guy for the job.  Because my name's Justin.  JustinCase.