Happy birthday to Lucio Fulci, Godfather of Gore, Il Maestro, and Gatekeeper of the 7th Door.
He passed away on March 13, 1996 from complications of his diabetes...but anyone who has seen his films is aware that the dead don't die. FULCI LIVES!!!
So stay out of The House By The Cemetery, or you too will know Fear In The City Of The Living Dead and learn what lies in wait for us in The Beyond. Heed this warning. Because my name's Justin. JustinCase.
In case you haven't heard by now (horror fans are buzzing about it no matter where they live), you can hear it here: The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence), the latest film from Dutch director Tom Six, has been rejected for classification by the BBFC. Let's take a look at the teaser trailer:
As you can see, he is well aware of the polarizing effect his film has had. The Human Centipede (First Sequence) is a film that allegedly made Eli Roth (Cabin Fever, Hostel) physically ill. I was bored stiff. The tale centers on Dr. Heiter, a German doctor living alone who kidnaps three tourists and sews them together, mouth-to-anus, to create a new kind of creature. The film's tagline "100% Medically Accurate" is, according to Six, true: if given an IV drip to supplement the rear segments' diet of feces from the front segment, they could "live for years". Accurate or not, the first film is mostly a statement about fascism and the horror of Nazi medical experiments. There is little gore, and most of what makes the film so uncomfortable is left in the imaginations of the viewers. Not so with the sequel, as the BBFC will attest. In their own unique brand of paradoxical moralizing, they've included graphic descriptions of why they rejected the film in their press release on the subject. I hesitate to print it here because it contains spoilers about the events of the film, so I will instead post a link to the BBFC and let them do the spoiling:
Why am I writing about this? Because it shows that, while the board may have "loosened" their restrictions in the last 30 years, they are a long way from allowing truly free expression in film. Also, as keen eyed readers may have noticed, Full Sequence was NOT submitted for cinema classification. A direct-to-video release was sought. That would have been a nasty video, indeed.
Many UK horror fans are outraged by this turn of events, and I can't say I blame them. What makes this almost funny is that, in the "digital age", all the BBFC has done is ensure that it will be downloaded illegally thousands of times over as soon as it is available. Horror fans who would normally respect the artists and pay money for their own DVD copy are not given the option to do so, and must resort to piracy. The BBFC has robbed the rightful copyright owners of hundreds of thousands of pounds in revenue. Six Entertainment has six weeks to appeal the decision, and if they can overturn this one, it would be an incredible coup. Here's hoping.
If it remains banned, maybe we should stock up on DVDs and mail them, unsolicited, to our friends across the Atlantic. Could they arrest me for that? I should check the customs laws to make sure. Because my name's Justin. JustinCase.
MAD CREATURES OF THE NIGHT EXISTING ONLY FOR SENSUAL SADISTIC MOMENTS OF HUMAN SLAUGHTER!
Actual title: The Ghastly Ones
NTSC Running time: 71:43
Directed, Written, Shot, Edited, Sound, Costumes & Set Design by Andy Milligan
Produced by Jerome-Fredric (quite possibly a pseudonym for Milligan)
Starring: Veronica Radburn, Maggie Rogers, Hal Borske, Anne Linden, Carol Vogel, Eileen Hayes
Body Count: 9 + a rabbit.
Availability: Region 1 DVD from Something Weird Video, paired with another Milligan film, Seeds
BBFC Status
Why it's a Nasty: Those BBFC favorites, gore and rape.
What was cut: No cuts made because...
Current UK Status: Blood Rites has never been submitted for cinema or video classification.
Blood Rites was successfully prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act, making it one of the DPP39.
As you can probably tell from the trailer above, this movie sucks. It's poorly made, shoddily edited, woodenly acted and sounds like a pillow has been placed over the microphone. The fact that it's still a lot of fun is a welcome surprise.
We open with another of those shock openers that mean nothing: A man and woman in Victorian dress enjoy an afternoon in the countryside. They notice a strange house and sit for a moment. They are then set upon by a drooling idiot who hacks them to pieces.
Roll Credits.
Three sisters and their husbands are summoned to New York for the reading of their father's will...many years after his death. Apparently he was a bit of a weirdo. The couples must spend a weekend at his house "in sexual harmony", after which the bequests will be handed out. They arrive at the sprawling estate and meet Hattie, Martha and Colin, the servants. Colin is recognizable (barely) as the loony from the opening. He's still batshit and tears open a live rabbit with his teeth while hauling the luggage. The couples settle in, and then a hooded figure begins prowling and killing. Will our stuffy, upper crust heroes care enough about what's going on to even attempt to solve the mystery?
Nope. They don't bother. It's actually pretty funny.
The murders are gory, and the effects are so inept that the cheesiness actually makes them more disturbing than they would be otherwise. Andy Milligan made a lot of movies. What I've read about him paints a picture of a flamboyantly gay dressmaker and theater geek who hated all women due to harsh treatment from his domineering mother. It shows in this film: The women are almost all greedy and domineering. The one who isn't gets raped by her husband. Early on, Richard (Fib LaBlaque) has to borrow money so he and his wife can travel to New York. Upon his wife's insistence, he borrows from his brother Walter, a gay priest who desperately wants to resume a sexual relationship with his brother. Wow. I'd say you can't make that shit up, except Milligan did and it's so twisted that I can't do much except respect it. What can I say? I love bad, evil movies, and The Ghastly Ones certainly qualifies.
I don't have much else to say about this one, except that numerous sources list this film as running 81 minutes. I can't find a print at that time, and if you send me one, I'll watch it...but this was so crappy that I'm not sure that I care. No recommendation for this one unless you're someone who really loves bad filmmaking. But I can say this: at least it wasn't Faces Of Death. I'd sooner watch The Ghastly Ones five times in a row than submit to that shitstorm again.
So avoid crumbling estates on Staten Island, lest you meet a gibbering idiot who packs a hatchet. I'm staying FAR away. Because my name's Justin. JustinCase.
Original Italian title: Rosso Sangue (translation: Blood Red)
aka: Horrible, Monster Hunter, Anthropophagus 2
NTSC Running time: 93:50
Directed by Aristide Massaccesi (as Peter Newton)
Written by Luigi Montefiore (as John Cart)
Produced by Donatella Donati and Massaccesi (as Joe D'Amato; he also takes credit for cinematography using the name Richard Haller.)
Starring: Luigi Montefiore (as George Eastman), Edmund Purdom, Katya Berger, Kasimir Berger, Annie Belle, Charles Borromel, Ted Rusoff
Body Count: 6
Availability: Uncut Region 1 DVD under the title Horrible from Mya Communications [although, like There Was A Little Girl (see Madhouse,Video Nasty #4), Horrible only appears on the disc and packaging. The print itself bears the original title, Rosso Sangue].
BBFC Status
Why it's a Nasty: Extreme gore murders.
What was cut: 2 minutes 32 seconds of unspecified cuts to the original cinema release, which was classified 18 on August 22, 1983.
Current UK Status: Absurd has never been submitted for video classification. It remains banned in the UK.
Absurd was successfully prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act, making it one of the DPP39.
I had been looking forward to seeing Rosso Sangue since I first heard about it in the late 1990s, but it was so hard to find at that time that I nearly forgot about it. Now, with an uncut DVD release that is easy to locate here in the states, I can see why the DPP went after this one...and why a murderous German black metal band took its' moniker from this film.
Absurd delivers the goods.
After white titles on a black screen, we find Mikos Stenopolis (Luigi Montefiore, the Anthropophagus Beast himself) running from another man (Edmund Purdom, whose next role was the college dean in Pieces) through the countryside. We intercut this with Katya and Willy Bennett (real-life siblings Katya and Kasimir Berger) and their babysitter. Katya is bedridden and wearing a neckbrace, though we are never told if this is an injury or an illness that's keeping her down. Meanwhile, Mikos tries to scale a wrought iron gate, but is impaled on the spikes at the top when his pursuer grabs his leg and pulls. The fence is, of course, the Bennett's, and Mikos soon bursts into the home, clutching a spill of his own entrails in a shot that recalls the end of Antropophagus. Mikos collapses. An ambulance is called.
In the operating room, the doctor is horrified to see that Mikos' body is healing itself on the operating table. The police begin investigating the strange man and his pursuer, who is soon revealed to be a Spanish priest (he is never named, referred to simply as Father). Upon exiting the operating room, the surgeon spouts. "This is absurd! It's just absurd!" regarding the remarkable physical properties of Mikos. It seems his blood coagulates at a much more rapid rate than any other human...which has driven him insane. He awakens, dispatches a nurse with a power drill to the head, dons his bloodsoaked clothes, and flees into the night to kill again!
That's just the opening. The murders are graphic, bloody and well done. Montefiore once again plays a silent madman from a Greek island who exists only to kill. The film soon becomes an homage/tribute/ripoff of Halloween, and of all the Halloween imitators I have seen, this is the best. I'd love to have a copy of the film's score by Carlo Maria Cordio, who worked with D'Amato and Lucio Fulci on several occasions, and also on one other Video Nasty, Umberto Lenzi's Cannibal Ferox. The music sounds like a collaboration between John Carpenter and Italian prog-rock quartet Goblin, and would work great for scaring the shit out of trick-or-treaters.
The cast features folks we'll be seeing more of: Annie Belle (who plays babysitter Emily) had at the time just filmed Ruggero Deodato's The House On The Edge Of The Park, which holds the record for Video Nasty With The Most Footage Cut By The BBFC (over 11 minutes!). Michele Soavi, who went on to become a writer/director of such films as Stagefright, The Church and Dellamorte Dellamore, has an uncredited role as a motorcyclist who is unfortunate enough to make Mikos' acquaintance. Soavi has similar small roles in Dario Argento's Nasty Tenebre (for which he also directed the second unit), Lucio Fulci's Paura Nella Citta Dei Morti Viventi and Lo Squartatore Di New York, among others (including the Italian sequel to Ridley Scott's Alien, Alien 2: On Earth).
Mark Shannon and Lucia Ramirez, who can be seen in some of D'Amato's early porn efforts, including Erotic Nights Of The Living Dead, appear on a television program watched by Willy. I'm not sure if the footage comes from one of D'Amato's previous films (most likely) or if it was shot specifically for Rosso Sangue, but knowing that this eight-year-old boy is watching a show starring two porno actors made me laugh. Also regarding television, characters keep referring to the "big game" between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Los Angeles Rams, most likely Super Bowl XIV, which means the film opens on January 19, 1980, with the bulk of the action taking place on gameday, January 20, 1980. The fact that footage of the game appears in the film makes me wonder what percentage of the film's budget was given to the NFL to use it. (I'm sorry to say that the Steelers won that game, 31 to 19.)
The gore here is B. R. U. T. A. L. Mikos is a mad killing machine, using whatever is handy to dispatch whoever is unlucky enough to be near him. Fortunately for us in the audience, he is often near power tools and does not hesitate to use them. Mikos' silence and need to kill for no reason, his menacing of a babysitter and her charges, Father's obvious parallels to Dr. Loomis and how he teams with local law enforcement to stop the monstrous killer make it painfully obvious that much of the plot was stolen from Halloween, but where Carpenter's film is about suspense and jump-scares, Rosso Sangue is all about gore, and the whole thing is so well done that only the most die-hard purist fan of Halloween would take issue with the similarities. And D'Amato's cinematography is excellent, as always. Dean Cundey (who shot Halloween)used a more claustrophobic style, focusing more on details, which heightened the suspense. D'Amato frames his shots more like paintings, which lessens the suspense, but makes things a little more grandiose and overblown, which fits the tone of Rosso Sangue perfectly.
I highly recommend this one. I enjoyed it immensely and it stands as one of my favourite Nasties so far. If they were all this good, perhaps I'd be farther along in the list...but I did tell you all at the beginning that this would take a while, and I want to savour this experience like a piece of rare steak. However, maybe I should hurry it up a little. You never know when a crazed psychopath might break in, clutching a spill of his own entrails, and try to cut short my trip through these films. I think I'll keep a large axe handy. Because my name's Justin. JustinCase.
