|
Marcus Koch
Another one of those special effects people (Savini et al) with a love for extreme practical splatter effects that occasionally direct their own movies. Works with a wide variety of horror directors, and usually mixes it up with campy characters in his own movies. Also directed Fell, a psychological horror movie without gore, thus widening his repertoire. Many of the movies here only involved Koch in special-effects, but the gore is often its own character in these movies. Reviewed until 2016. This should satisfy its intended audience. It's an 80s slasher throwback comedy-homage to Friday the 13th and Sleepaway Camp, with a couple of extra buckets of blood and lots of extremely inappropriate catholic-bible-sex jokes. The teenagers here are hornier than a drunk virgin in a strip club, including the girls, even though, or perhaps because of, their staying in a bible camp. This is the kind of movie where Ron Jeremy acts as Jesus, and back-doors are bible loopholes. The killer is a crazed nun, and the axe and crucifix kills are only just a bit gorier than Friday the 13th movies, with a couple of extra splattery ones, courtesy of Koch.
Citizen Toxie: Toxic Avenger IV
See Troma.
Fangboner
See Borderline Extreme Movies.
Surprisingly entertaining and underrated vampire horror b-movie. In many ways, reminiscent of the early 80s when horror b-movies had more character and fun, and used gore for secondary effect (rather than being empty trash with only gore to offer, like so many modern b-movies). The world in this movie is deteriorating to the point where humans have polluted their own blood with garbage and diseases until vampires can no longer live off them, causing desperate, near-extinct gangs of vampires. In this world walks a bad-ass priest vampire hunter on the hunt for a particular gang of vampires that specializes in eating families and babies. There's lots of action, some amusing dialogue, inter-vampire rivalries where each type of vampire has its quirks and weaknesses, a chaotic society where you can't tell who is human anymore, leading to a nihilistic human 'vampire' party, and lots of splattery carnage. Old-school b-movie horror entertainment with a couple of short appearances by horror icons. Flaws are some bad sound, some weak supporting actors, and some low-budget b-movie limitations.
Nikos the Impaler
See Andreas Schnaas.
A psychotic clown runs around slaughtering dozens of people with a humongous meat cleaver while two tabloid reporters follow the trail. The tense, platonic relationship between the reporters is entertaining, the plot is barebones but doesn't have any of the idiotic twists of a typical slasher, the dialog is funny, the endless kills and gore level is extremely high, the acting is good, and there is an entertaining midget chase. Don't watch this for the horror, but for the gory entertainment.
Theatre Bizarre, The
See Extreme Movies.
Uh-Oh Show, The
See Herschell Gordon Lewis.
Haunted house movies aren't typically known for their gore, but this one is. This one pays homage to Fulci not only with its climactic scenes of ultra-violence and eye-trauma, but also with its slightly hokey characters and not-quite-convincing horror that emphasizes atmosphere over realism. A couple, mourning for their dead son, move into a strange house with a hellish basement and strange energies. The mother is convinced her dead son is hanging around, but her clairvoyant friend is not so sure, while the strange neighbours have their own agenda. The first two-thirds are slow-building, then it explodes with bloodthirsty and angry ghosts that crush, melt and explode humans. Watchable, but never convincing enough to be really good. I don't know why I was expecting something more than just another extreme faux-snuff gore film; Perhaps because the original Japanese movies (at least from the sequel onwards) that this movie is inspired by, tried to make 'art' from the gore, and then got quickly bored with just snuff on its own and switched to gory sequels with a plot, and even humor. Plus, the original was a pioneer, and today these things are, unfortunately, commonplace and therefore unoriginal and intensely boring. So I assumed, wrongly, that there would be something different here. Thing is, this isn't a movie. There's no plot or character or idea, it's just porn for gorehounds and I don't review gornography. Some youngsters with masks take apart two girls systematically in extreme, graphic, sickening and close-up gore; One by cutting off and through everything they can think of, the other by slicing everything open. This is filmed as found-footage, in a gritty faux 'VHS' style to add 'realism'. The gore effects range from sickeningly realistic to rival August Underground, to weak and unconvincing. But the fact that the only stuff you can mention about this 'movie' in a review is the quality of the effects, just proves my point. Do something original and even remotely interesting, folks. Koch takes over the direction for the sequel. Like the original Japanese movies, this sequel takes on a completely different approach without dropping the high gore and nastiness quota and anyone complaining that this isn't a sequel obviously hasn't seen the originals. In fact, whereas the first was just another boring, plotless faux-snuff film, this at least tries to do something different, and is actually much more disturbing and stomach-churning than the first. A man and a woman are being kept prisoner by a very sadistic doctor. Daily, he brings them to the chair, prepares their bodies with torture and various strange surgeries, then extracts blood from them as his personal drug ('bloodshock' means various chemicals are released into the blood stream from trauma). The surgeries grow increasingly more gruesome and stomach-churning, and are all extremely realistic. In between these sessions, the prisoners develop a relationship, giving the audience time to breathe before twisting the knife into the victims' and audience's stomachs again. This movie seems to be inspired more by 'Philosophy of a Knife' than Guinea Pig. The climax, bringing to mind Cronenberg's Crash, features the goriest sex scene ever filmed in cinema history, then a surreal, puzzling violent ending of more blood madness. Unfortunately, while this has originality and is impressive from a special-effects and cinematography point of view (it's in B&W), it's still just pointless extreme gore and sadism that leaves you as empty as a bore-drill in the stomach. Yet another near plotless collection of filth, sleaze and gore posing as a movie. It's the old story of an insane war veteran abusing women, except this one has no story or character, and is in found-footage format. Two badly acted, unconvincingly insane, war veterans rant about their experiences in the war and claim that this justifies them to have female sex slaves. So they kidnap various women, force them into disgusting S&M acts, then snuff them in a splattery mess when they get tired of them. Features things like an old man's diseased penis, pornographic-level nudity, lots of stupid rants, sex with intestines, and a tacked-on nasty revenge ending that supposedly completes the 'story'. Brainless and sloppy sci-fi about mind-control that obviously focused more on the gore effects than on the script. A doctor is adopting runaways with migraines and social problems, and curing them by drilling holes into their foreheads (calling it 'trepanation'). His gang of devotees seem very happy and willing, but this idyllic setting soon falls apart when Tristan notices odd blank periods in his life, and a war with another gang has unexpected consequences. The laughable surgery procedure is performed with a wobbly drill attached to the doctor's arm and with no basic hygiene or sense of biology. The premise makes no sense since the gang seems to have free-will and their full personalities most of the time, yet they don't notice anything odd. The amateur actors are obviously trying too hard. In short, all you're left with is the imagery of people running around with bloody holes in their heads and the gleefully over-the-top drilling splatter. It's movies like this that made me give up on modern extreme horror. Yet another barebones movie with almost no plot that only serves as an excuse to have a bunch of people run around on a killing and torture spree, pretending to be ultimately sadistic, insane and depraved bastards. But it's boring as hell, not to mention insultingly stupid. In this case, the psychos are clowns working in a circus that use their act to find new victims, and torture and kill them on circus grounds as well as run around from city to city raping, playing extremely sick and twisted sadistic games with their victims, and killing them. The stupidity starts with the fact that their act ONLY consists of beating someone up in the circus itself for laughs complete with blood (what parent would accept that?), as well as the non-existent circus management, and the completely ineffectual law enforcement faced with what amounts to a chaotic killing spree and trail of bodies that lasts for years, not to mention the fact that they advertise themselves everywhere they go by being dressed as clowns, except somehow nobody ever sees that for years. Yeah right. No, this movie is just about the cannibalism, torture, rape, necrophilia and splattery nasty killings while letting some actors chew the scenery and get in touch with their sick side. There's even no wit or humor involved. Yawn. If any movie deserves to be labelled as gornography, this is it. It's a repeat cycle of some trashy hooker showing her wares in pornographic detail, only to get massacred in some nasty way that is as extreme as it gets. The splattery nastiness is reminiscent of early Schnaas, including a really nasty exploding stomach and disemboweling, a really gory stabbing, extremely splattery drilling and chainsawing, and a baseball bat with barbed wire used as a sex weapon. At some point amidst this repeat cycle of boring depraved nastiness, they remember that it's supposed to be a movie rather than porn for the sicko crowd, and a couple of hookers try to fight back, only to discover a typically stupid twist about the killer. Another one of those movies that are basically 'pornos' for the slasher crowd. Lots of girls, lot of boobs, a generous helping of gore, and once you have that, who needs to think up a plot or be creative or witty. If the film-makers are having fun, then you should as well. A dozen actresses that look like they were stolen from a porno set, serve as fodder for both their external and internal body parts. Ron Jeremy, Linea Quigley and a bunch of others get cameos, nobody takes it seriously, and nobody remembers to bring a plot. Christianity gets a 'bashing' from the pen of a retarded five year old, everyone is trying to party or get laid, while an axe wielding psycho dressed as a monk runs around carving everyone up. The gore is borderline: More than your average slasher with a couple of in-your-face splattery scenes, but it's nothing to write home about. Zero points for zero wit.
Hi-8 (Horror Independent 8)
See Extreme Gore.
The original was as bad as it gets. The fact that they made a sequel can only be explained by the fact that the first got some free scandalous publicity. This one is worse, and more extreme. They up the depraved sadism and add Marcus Koch to the team to include some splatter as well (only in the 2-hour-long uncut version). This movie takes place five years later, with survivors from both sides coming back together for a showdown. This time, the extreme rape and torture takes place in a shelter for battered woman, which the sadistic snuff-movie-makers use as a cover. That's about the only creativity and detail worth mentioning. The rest is bad acting across the board, constant very unwelcome trashy nudity, even more endless scenes of people trying to chew the scenery as campy sadistic lunatics, as they play the most extreme torture & rape games their little minds can imagine, often combining brutal torture with unnatural rape, sometimes in the same act (dildo impalements, wound rape). Throw in some incest and necrophilia, and brainless pseudo-attacks on religion, and you have... a movie that is too dumb to be shocking. Like a really bad porno for wannabe sadists.
Lung II
See Extreme Gore.
Underground energetic movie about an insane scientist working at a morgue who develops a virus that makes people rot. When a punk girl visits the morgue for some necrophilia, she gets infected and in turn infects her wild, violent boyfriend. The rest of the movie involves chases and running around by various punk teenagers, the scientist, drug dealers and some secret agents. The punks are good, the gore is very sparse, the lighting is atrocious, and it would still be somewhat entertaining but for the scientist who is acted annoyingly over-the-top. Dumb, dumber and dumbest. It's a slasher that starts with a really dumb huge killer who can sharpen a variety of sharp weapons but not break the window of a car to get his prey. Koch lends his special effects for a couple of splattery scenes of graphic, literal taking-apart of teenagers. The teenagers find themselves trapped in a car waiting for the cannibalistic killer to catch them, except they turn out to be dumber than the killer by not taking a dozen obvious chances to run, and when they do, they run right next door. Then there are some dumb cops that make incredibly dumb assumptions, and finally, there is us, the audience, whom the film-makers think are the dumbest of all by adding a mind-numbingly dumb twist. An anthology of snuff segments filmed (usually) realistically with home-video cameras in a gritty, very amateurish style with shaky cameras and horrible lighting, lending a sense of realism to the rape and murder going on on-screen. Teenagers kill for fun, girls are raped, cut and choked to death, people (mostly women) are killed for revenge, politics, dementia or fun, and some teenagers kill themselves on camera. The improvised style sometimes seems like a precursor to the ultra-realism of August Underground films. But all this is wrapped with a silly narration by a cop and psychiatrist that tries to be funny but is actually cheesy and dumb. So what's the point? Brainless gore-horror that seems to be more interested in coming up with costumes and lame MTV industrial goth-punk music rather than a real movie. A group of goth-punk 'teenagers' are setting up some kind of dance party in an abandoned warehouse, but keep getting distracted by their hormones. Their behaviour makes no sense from start to end, and their reaction to the horror is always to stick around, do nothing and see what happens to them. There seem to be two or three monsters and none of them have any reason for existing there or for living together in the same place. The splatter is over-the-top and treats bodies like hamburger meat, smashing them under a huge anvil-like weapon or slicing the oversexed annoying fodder in a wide variety of ways, which would be appropriate for a comedy but there is no camp, wit or creative splatstick to be found here. Special effects by Marcus Koch. |
| © 1999- by The Worldwide Celluloid Massacre | Table of Contents |