The Latest Acquisitions.

I'm back!  I've been pretty tied up with work, school and family, but the Nasties (and this blog) are never far from my mind.  Neither are you, you awesome readers.

"Postmaster General loves me.  You know how that one goes." ~ Digger, "Security Envelopes"

In the mail this week: Three Nasties so far, plus one legendary title that has to be seen to be believed.

I received a factory-sealed VHS cassette of the Bruce Starr/Ulli Lommell sequel Boogeyman 2 (known to the DPP as Revenge Of The Bogeyman) on Tuesday.  Boogeyman 2 found its' way onto the list mainly because of the large amount of footage from the first film, and while a DVD is available, it is a completely different version, re-edited with a much larger amount of footage from the first film.  Make no mistake: Ulli Lommel's Boogeyman 2 Director's Cut does NOT count as a Video Nasty.  I am still awaiting the arrival of the first film from a different source, but I'd like to give big thanks to Leslie at MovieJukeboxReplay for kicking ass above and beyond the call.

Yesterday brought more: Aldo Lado's 1975 L'ultimo Treno Della Notte (on DVD from Blue Underground under the title Night Train Murders, and on the Nasty list as Late Night Trains), Guilio Berruti's 1978 nunsploitation film Suor Omicidi (on DVD under its' Nasty title Killer Nun, also from Blue Underground), and a film that, if it had been available in 1980s Britain would have given Mary Whitehouse a coronary, Joe D'Amato's 1980 groundbreaker Le Notti Erotiche Dei Morti Viventi (from Shriek Show as Erotic Nights of the Living Dead).

Late Night Trains is essentially a Last House on the Left remake: Two girls are menaced, raped and killed by vagabond lunatics who meet their end at the hands of one of the girl's parents.  One of the selling points for me is the appearance of Macha Meril, who portrayed psychic Helga Ulmann in Dario Argento's Profondo Rosso.  A score by Ennio Morricone doesn't hurt, either.

Killer Nun stars Anita Ekberg (probably best known as the lead in Fellini's La Dolce Vita) as Sister Gertrude, a morphine-addicted nun who is losing her mind.  Other notables in the cast are Alida Valli (Suspiria) and Joe Dallesandro, who we will see again when we view another Nasty, Andy Warhol's Frankenstein.

Which brings me to Joe D'Amato.  Born in 1936 in Rome, Aristide Massaccesi directed at least 193 films.  I say at least because no one seems to be sure just how many aliases he used.  He directed only one film under his real name, 1973's La Morte Ha Sorisso All'assassino, aka Death Smiles On A Murderer.  Other noms de film include David Hills, Alexandre Borsky, and Robert Yip, but he will always best be known by his most used alias, Joe D'Amato.  He has two Nasties to his name...but almost all of his films would qualify.  The two on the list are Antropophagus, aka Anthropophagus The Beast (and a censored American cut under the title The Grim Reaper), and Rosso Sangue (aka Monster Hunter and Horrible, its' Nasty title is Absurd, a moniker also adopted by a Black Metal band from Germany who gained infamy as teenagers when they commited a murder), a loose sequel to Antropophagus.  The only thing that really makes a link between the two is the presence of Luigi Montefiore (often billed as George Eastman) as an unstoppable monster, but when you're dealing with Joe D'Amato, that's enough.  While he is most famous for his horror films (the two Nasties and a well-respected taxidermy-horror film titled Buio Omega [literally The Final Darkness, available from Shriek Show as Beyond The Darkness and in a censored cut from Thriller Video as Buried Alive]), he made all kinds of films, but the majority were...I'll be polite and say "erotic" movies.  His late career was filled almost entirely with hardcore porn, but his most famous are from earlier in his career: the Black Emanuelle series starring Laura Gemser, an Indonesian actress who retains a cult following to this day (she branched out into costume design later on, notably for Lucio Fulci's final film Porte Di Silenzio and the supposed "best worst movie" of all time, Claudio Fragasso's Troll 2).  The Black Emanuelle films were an Italian take on the famous French sexpot that made her a reporter in more volatile situations than the usual fare: tracking down the makers of snuff films, adventuring in search of a cannibal tribe, and a two-film stint in prison.  D'Amato didn't instigate the series, nor did he finish it, but his twisted melding of violence and sex made his films the most well-regarded.

Santo Domingo, 1979:
D'Amato, and his stock company (which mostly means Gemser and Montefiore, D'Amato started as a cinematographer and continued to act as such for his own films) arrive in the tropics to make some movies.  Several of them.  They share actors, and sometimes whole scenes transposed from one to another.  Scripts?  Minimal.  Scenery?  Abundant.  Twisted sensibility that unknowingly creates legendary (though not great) cinema?  Oh yeah, because this tropical vacation produced the first (and perhaps only) serious attempts at combining horror and pornography in the forms of Erotic Nights Of The Living Dead and Porno Holocaust.

I screened Erotic Nights soon after it arrived.  I'd like to recommend it...but therein lies the problem.  Am I glad that I have seen it?  The answer is an undeniable yes.  Its' sheer weirdness of form is unmistakably D'Amato (his "touch" is competent but almost without style), and the first couple of reels consist of about five or six sex scenes interspersed with four or five zombie attacks, making good on the title...until the "story" begins and then it is a lovely travelogue of a tropical beach and nothing much else until it perks up slightly in the final reel with more zombies.  That's about it.  So I can't truly recommend it as a good film to anyone...but I won't tell you not to watch it, either, because just being able to say that I have witnessed it is, to me, a badge of honor, a symbol of my commitment to terrible, sleazy, unwatchable movies, and if I can ever find a copy I can afford, I will not hesitate to purchase a copy of Porno Holocaust, which itself has some similarities to Antropophagus, again featuring Montefiore as a hulking beast, only this time he has a much more..."personal" way to dispatch female victims.

If he were still alive, I'd vote Joe D'Amato for pope.

The next Nasty?  Yes, I know, it's been awhile, and I'm excited to dive back in.  I've got 19 now, and I'm weighing my options: The Burning, Frozen Scream, The Werewolf And The Yeti, I Miss You Hugs And Kisses, Tenebrae, so much more.  I'll keep you posted.  In the meantime, remember:

"Quite upset, angry, just plain annoyed - No recourse except for celluloid." ~ Type O Negative, "How Could She?"

So keep your VCR plugged in, and kill your Tivo: the government is watching you through it.  I give this advice because I care.  Because my name's Justin.  JustinCase.