MURDER SET PIECES

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2004/Director: Nick Palumbo/Screenplay: Nick Palumbo

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Cast: Sven Garrett, Tony Todd, Gunnar Hansen, Edwin Neal, Jade Risser

I was duped into this one by the so called rave reviews plastered on the DVD jacket, one comparing some of Palumbo’s shots “of visual brilliance” to “the best works of Dario Argento.” Well, that’s a load of crap. While I am not a big fan of Argento’s narrative style I do respect his technical ability with camera shots and movement. To say that even one frame of this movie comes anywhere near Argento’s best work is a blatant lie. I perused a few reviews before doing mine to maybe gain some sort of relevant insight in to the movie that I may be lacking and decided I was wasting my time. I am fully qualified to dismiss this movie as a load of garbage. Not because of the murders and gore and so called sickenly repulsive violence (which I did not find it to have but rather found the violence comic bookish in the way a Herschell Gordon Lewis film is) but because it is simply a poorly written, poorly acted and poorly directed movie.

The basic story is about some Nazi guy who takes porno pictures of women around Las Vegas but has a tendency to practice zero self-control and murders most of them as well as most other people he encounters. He seems to get away all this with utter impunity. He drives around and picks up hookers and kills them, kills his porno models, his girl friend and some woman who may be his German ex-wife or current wife, we never know, a little girl who is a schoolmate friend of his girlfriend’s sister, a fortune teller who won’t tell him what the cards say and a disgruntled porno book store clerk played by Candyman Tony Todd and it goes on and on into sheer absurdity. He is never questioned by the police or rouses any suspicion except in his girlfriend’s little sister played by Jade Risser but no one will believe her because SHE’S A KID!

The whole move feels like it was shot in the 70’s. Some great movies came out of the 70’s, but some shlocky ones did too. This one patterned itself on those substandard 70’s movies that are sort of fun now in a bad movie way. But this movie is not trying to be a bad movie and we do not need the 70’s done over except in parody. The music score is weird too, with some really poor heavy metal stuff that was probably done by friends of the director. The rest of the movie score sounds like typical incidental music from a 70’s exploitation film, which is what this feels like. I like exploitation films from the 70’s, they are campy and fun. This film is not either. Look, the murders here are not that shocking or brutal or original. There is one scene where the guy lunges out at Jade from a hole in the closet and is suppose to scare you, I guess, but it was so ridiculous I replayed the scene like six times for a laugh. I am tired of DVDs that advertise themselves as the “sickest movie of all-time” and then deliver Z-Movie entertainment at best. Sure, there is a ton of off color blood everywhere, again the type that looks like the too red goop used by Herschell Gordon Lewis, but so what. I like blood and gore and that is basically what I buy a DVD like this for, but to just pour blood all over the walls and on top of some moonlighting porn star because the film maker cannot do anything to get the story across simply gets boring after a few scenes and that is what this movie was, boring.

I cannot believe the reviews that seem to see something more to this movie than poor film making. The victims never seem scared and all look like porn actresses, which is what I read Palumbo hired for this film. Original Leatherface Gunnar Hansen has a small role as a Nazi gun dealer. Sven Garrett, who plays the photographer killer, is not really too bad in some ways as a serial killing, misogynist Nazi, but it is simply too unbelievable and poorly made to get anything but a weak nod from me. And it only gets that because Tony Todd was great as the burned out porno clerk and Gunner Hansen made an okay suburban Nazi.

SEE NO EVIL

2006/Director: Gregory Dark/Screenplay: Dan Madigan

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Cast: Glenn Jacobs (Kane), Christina Vidal, Luke Pegler,  Samantha Noble, Michael J. Pagan , Rachael Taylor

This movie is directed by ex-porn auteur Gregory Dark who is best known in polite society as the genius behind the New Wave Hookers series. It stars as the imposing protagonist Glenn Jacobs (a.k.a. Kane) of WWF fame. The direction is not bad but it is simply annoying in a way. It looks like a heavy metal video, the type you see late at night on Headbanger’s Ball. That style of camera work is okay for a five minute Morbid Angel video but can really become distracting in a 90 minuteish movie. It has all those shaky faces things like in David Lynch’s Lost Highway and sometimes the camera will come in from three or four angles and the sound will develop in to a swooshing crescendo to simply show something like a fly on an ashtray. I begin to think the fly or whatever is central to the plot or is telegraphing an approaching scene but it is all simply technical excess.

The plot is simple: teenagers in a type of reform school are sent to renovate an entirely dilapidated old hotel that harbors in the secret passages the 6’8” religiously motivated psycho killer played convincingly by Kane. So then, guess what, he begins killing off the teenagers one at a time in brutal fashion and since most of them are unlikable you really do not care who gets it and how. The movie is pretty bleak and some of the deaths seem to take away from there being a possible good hero winning against the evil psycho element to the story. The cop character who lost a hand to Kane years before and so has a grudge is killed off way too soon and senselessly I felt. There are survivors at the end, but they are a pimpish thug and two bitchy teenage girls. It is really pointless anymore to try and understand these endings, since the thing called the movie leading up to the ending is usually more inexplicable. What is important here ultimately is the quality of the deaths and a couple of them are pretty good as Kane hooks people with chains and drags them then crushes their skulls with his bare hands and removes their eyeballs and saves them in mason jars. There is one rather unique death scene where one of the more likeable female delinquents falls through the roof of a glass atrium and dangles from a rope upside down and is devoured by street dogs. Kane is totally sexually frustrated because his puritanical mother never let him watch any of Gregory Dark’s earlier movies when he was boy locked up in a cage in the backyard.

Nothing will surprise fans of the splatter genre and if you like this style of in your face edgy photography (I do not in large doses) you will enjoy the ride. It is well made and the acting is okay, but I only give a mild recommendation because of the jittery, overblown camera work that could have been fantastic if it was just a little toned down.

THE COLLECTOR

1965/Director: William Wyler/ Writers: John Fowles (novel), Stanley Mann (writer)

Cast: Terence Stamp, Samantha Eggar, Mona Washbourne, Maurice Dallimore

The Collector is a film by William Wylers, based on the novel by John Fowles, starring basically only two actors in a almost stage style performance. Terrance Stamp plays butterfly collector Freddie Clegg who is actually rather brilliant but has an incredible inferiority complex. He works as a clerk who is taunted daily by his co-workers until he one day wins a substantial fortune in the British football pool. He uses his money to buy and equip a isolated, rustic old house in the lush British country side. By equip I mean he turns the Gothic looking cellar into a furnished holding cell meant to contain one Miranda Grey ( Sammantha Eggar ) who he has developed an obsession with and is determined to make her fall in love with him. The first step in his bizarre courtship is to chloroform her then kidnap her and haul her back to her cell. She has no idea where she is or what Freddie’s intentions really are and in some ways neither do we, as the viewer is uncertain of how sincere he really is with his promises and comfortings.

The film focuses on the tension and conflicts between educated and born into money Miranda and once working class Freddie who is now wealthy and has a lot of free time on his hands. Both actors deliver excellent performances. The movie came on the heels Hitchcock’s Psycho (and so cannot avoid often undue comparisions) and while technically Psycho is a better made film, The Collector is a more believable study of a broken mind and psychosis. One cannot help but sympathize somehow with Freddie’s plight (and Stamp’s insightful performance adds to our ability to connect with the unhinged young man). We almost hope that Miranda will little by little actually come around to Freddie or that he will honor his word and release her at the time he promises at the beginning of her captivity. Not just for her sake, but for his own because does not seem to be an evil person. None of this is to be and the film ends tragically, but not with Freddie being killed off by his captive, as is the norm for modern captor/captive films, but with the unintentional death of Miranda from exposure to the elements basically.

Some reviews I scanned refer to Freddie as a serial killer, but this is not the case at all. He sincerely seems to mean no harm to Miranda and while he is forceful he is never brutal or sadistic. As the film progresses however and the worlds from which Freddie and Miranda were born into seem to remain distant and unknown to the other Freddie becomes more and more frustrated and Miranda more and more terrified and dependent at the same time. In one scene Freddie tries to understand Miranda’s interest in Picasso and J.D Salinger and angrily destroys the books he bought her. In another Miranda insults Freddie’s prize winning butterfly collection that he shyly reveals to her, hoping to show something of his true self to her.

As I said, the film ends not with the death of the captor but with the slow decline and death of the captive. The last shots of the film show Freddie stalking his next victim, now more experienced and not apt to make the wrong choices as before, such as choosing someone he has nothing in common with. Freddie, while at times likable and almost naïve in nature, in the end has little remorse left for Miranda and concludes she brought it all on herself. One scene is left to the viewer to decide what really may have or may not ahve happen when Freddies lies down in bed wit the again chloraformed Miranda and caresses her hair as the scene fades in typical 1960’s fashion. He promises nothing happened as she was unconscious but why even mention the incident all then.

While the movie is nicely shot and I might say it suffered a little from a lack of a truly claustrophobic atmosphere. It also suffered from a really inadequate soundtrack by the usually capable Maurice Jarre. The soundtrack is nice… but too nice and at times a little corny and seems like more of a soundtrack for the films of the 1950’s. The movie needed a score that was a little more tension creating, rather than, honestly, soothing and inappropriate.

Another great British movie that, like The Servant, uses the action and drama as a vehicle for other messages, here such as British class struggle, the basic problems of loneliness and men and women communicating in general. I am also preparing a post on what I call Miranda style movies, and have about eight films to try and pander. Some may seem a little odd and may stretch the category a little and I will see if I can manage to be convincing or not. I searched for some quotes from the film but could find none really and will see if I can get a script from online and select some of my own, as some of the lines are so unsettling and chilling. A truly creepy film that relies on acting and atmosphere and well written lines. I have never read the book by John Fowles and being in China I may have a hard time locating it unless I can back to Beijing or Shanghai. I would certainly like to read the book after seeing this film again the other night. I cannot recommend a movie like this high enough.

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I recievied an invitation from both Chick Young at Trash Aesthetics and Gilligan over at Retrospace to participate in something called a "meme", but I am so out of touch I have no clue what that is (but that has never stopped me from getting involved before). Seems it originated from Piper and Brian over at Lazy Eye Theatre blog (a couple of the more active LAMBers) and there have been good fantasy film festivals so far by Chick, Gilligan and Barbarella apologist Becca at No Smoking in the Skull Cave. I do not know if Tal at Taliesen Meets the Vampires has contributed as of this moment, but I will plug his excellent site anyway, free of charge. The rules (as laid down by the crew at the Lazy Eye site) are:

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1) Choose 12 Films to be featured. They could be random selections or part of a greater theme. Whatever you want.

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2) Explain why you chose the films.

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3) Link back to Lazy Eye Theatre so I can have hundreds of links and I can take those links and spread them all out on the bed and then roll around in them.

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4) The people selected then have to turn around and select 5 more people.

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So, there you have it, now lets get on with the Uranium Cafe Film Festival . I think it was supposed to be some 12 day marathon, but we here at the Cafe know a lot of you have to work and maybe forking out a movie ticket each night for twelve days can be tough in these days of fiscal woe. So we are having a double feature each night for six days (with Chili Cook Off and Pentacostal Healing Revival over the weekend). Here are the films I decided to play and it was not easy to select 12 from the many I would want to see on the big screen ( I assume we are fantasizing that this is on some big screen venue and not over at my place on the sofa):

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Day 01 Japanese Cult Cinema/Matango-Branded to Kill

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Day 02 Exploitation Classics by Jack Hill/Switchblade Sisters-Spider Baby

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Day 03 Drifters and Desperados/Hombre-The Wild Bunch

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Day 04 Psychotic Women Haters/The Boston Strangler-Frenzy

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Day 05 Cops on the Edge/Bullitt-Dirty Harry

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Day 06 Monsters from Space/The Thing-Alien 3

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Branded to Kill-

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I have only been able to see this 1967 film by Seijin Suzuki in Japanese without subtitles so I really do not know what is going on all the time, but the film has a reputation for being “absurdist” and surrealistic anyway, so I am not sure if subs would help, and the experience of watching this visually mesmerizing movie is rewarding enough. The truth is Nikkatsu studios actually fired Suzuki for this film and the conflict following got him blacklisted by Japanese studios. It is the story of a hit man who himself becomes the target of another ruthless hired killer and of course a super sexy and dangerous girl. I don’t know what else you need to know, check it out. A longer essay of this odd movie is in the oven.

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Matango (aka, Attack of the Mushroom People)

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Matango is a 1963 film by Ishiro Honda and is a departure of sorts for the man who made the best of Godzilla and Toho monster movies. Bleak and claustrophobic the action and drama centers around a group of ship wrecked young Japanese people who suddenly realize there are reasons there are no birds and turtles on the foggy, dismal little island they find themselves on. Also released as Attack of the Mushroom People it found its way into late night TV in the 70's (I saw it on Project Terror in San Antonio as a wee lad) and eventually into VHS And DVD cult-dom, though never having been distributed in movie houses in the States. A longer review and critique is coming soon as I recently came into the original Japanese language version.

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Spider Baby -

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I understand a remake of this 1964 (though released in 1968) Jack Hill film is in the works, with Hill as a producer. I once had a signed copy of Spider Baby by Jack Hill but my buddy Matt inherited that when I left for China some years ago. The story revolves around f a family who suffer from a congenital disease that causes them to eventually regress in mental condition to imbecility. Gee, sounds familiar. It is a black comedy with some creepy moments and fine b/w photography. Lon Chaney Jr and Sid Haig appear in the film. I don't really know how the remake will turn out but will check it out if I can since Hill is producing it, and his original never got the distribution or attention it should have until only recently.

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Switchblade Sisters-

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Both Spider baby and Switchblade Sisters are films cited by Quentin Tarantino as heavy influences, though with Switchblade we can see a more direct influence on his work and the film was restored and released on his Rolling Thunder Pictures label in 1996. A gang deb flick with lots of great dialog and over the top acting, including squeaky voiced Robbie Lee, it is the type of action movie Hill became more associated with than horror/suspense pieces likeSpider Baby. It is really fun to watch and some consider it to be Hill's best film. There is a fight scene in the jail between the guards and the Dagger debs and you have to watch for the male stand in for the butchy female jail guard. Gets no better.

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Hombre-

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A psychological western starring a brooding Paul Newman as a "half-breed" Apache who inherits a hotel and suddenly finds himself reluctantly in the white man's world with a hair cut. Directed by Martin Ritt and based on a novel by Elmore Leonard, this is a moody and depressing film (and that is a thumbs up in other words from me) that deals with issues under the surface other than cowboys and Indians. Hardly a music score is to be heard and Richard Boone is menacing as the bad guy. No one is perfect and everyone finds themselves in the middle of the desert where a glass of water is more valued than the stolen loot most of them are trying to salivate over. A great film I have not not seen in way too long.

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The Wild Bunch-

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A totally great western (and film period!) by Sam Peckinpah about a group of mercenaries led by William Holden that try to get a kidnapped girl back from Mexican bandits and revolutionaries. The film is most famous for it cinematography and editing, using slow motion in ways that had not been done much before (like showing hordes of drunk Mexican soldiers being blasted to bloody smithereens). The men are all tough and ruthless, and there is a fine line between the good guys and bad guys. The violence is basically splatter film material and the acting and dialog is great from start to finish. Expect a longer critique one day. I love this movie.

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The Boston Strangler-

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I actually went to 1st grade in Boston at the time Albert DeSalvo (and perhaps another man as modern police theory speculates) was finishing up a series of 13 murders of women, many, though not all, found with stockings around their throats. While The Boston Strangler has receiived some criticism because of its liberty with the facts of the case that does not deter me from recommending this well made suspense film. Tony Curtis is out of character and does great here as the killer, and Henry Fonda is equally in fine form as police detective John S. Bottomly. A lot of unnecessary split scene photography and I have never subscribed to the “split personality” disorder, especially as it is shown here, but so what. It’s a just a movie and a damn good one at that.

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Frenzy-

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As far as I know 1972’s Frenzy was Hitchcock’s only R rated film. Of course back then it took much less to get an R rating than it does now. It is one of my favorite Hitchcock films outside all of his work with Jimmy Steward. Jon Finch plays Richard Blaney, a man with anger management issues who soon finds himself the fall guy for a series of neck tie stranglings that have been terrorizing the citizens of London, where the film was shot. Along with the iconic shower sequence in Psycho Frenzy contains one of Hitchcocks most graphic murder sequences. Finch is great as his life unravels and there is no where he can turn as all the evidence begins to point towards him. The ending is a classic ending where the killer is undone and apprehended and shown humiliated, rather than the stock ending of today’s film where the killer simply has to be killed off himself in some action scene or worse a hostage scene where the cop has had to lay down his weapon. Whatever happened to endings like this?!

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Bullitt-

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1968’s Bullitt created so many of the genre formulas for the 70’s cop movies and TV shows that is hard to image that they all seemed to come from one film essentially. Steve McQueen plays Bullitt, a outsider cop having issues with insubordination and driven by an instinct to bring the bad guy to justice (of any type) regardless of who is in the way, including corrupt city officials, here played by Man from U.N.C.L.E.’s Robert Vaughn. Of course the most famous sequence is the car chase, pitting Bullitt’s Ford Mustang against the hitmens’s Dodge Charger. Contrary to legend McQueen did not do the bulk of the stunt driving but he is still cool. Action packed and gritty with Jaqueline Bisset as his sensitive, artsy girlfriend who comes to realize Bullitt lives in a world she knows nothing about. The movie serves as a template for my next cop on the edge selection…

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Dirty Harry-

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“Dirty” Harry Callaghan, like Bullitt, is a cop more concerned with justice than with city politics and the rights of murderdous bad guys. Clint Eastwood with his .44 Magum is immortal in the role (and I do not think Clint is compensating for anything), and while the film is not really as good as Bullitt story wise in my opinion, it revived the spirit of the outsider cop film established by Bullitt and cop movies and TV shows have never been the same since. Reni Satoni is simply great as well as the serial killer Scorpio (based somewhat less than loosely on real life serial killer Zodiac). Full of classic quotes and action it is really the only one of the Dirty Harry franchise I really like. The other ones just got sort of cheesy and Callaghan became comic bookish, whereas here the character, like his Sergio Leone loner cowboy, simply stands mythic in proportions to the world around him. -

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The Thing-

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There was once a time in my life where I took acid for recreational purposes. I know, I know by looking at this site you may find that hard to believe, but one night my cousin and I returned to the basement TV room at his family’s place in Lexington Kentucky and while “peaking” we surfed and stumbled across John Carpenter’s 1981 successful remake of The Thing on early cable TV. Well, this film is a mind blower without hallucinogens so you can image the impact it had on me. I am sure I have seen this movie at least 20 times and was thinking of seeing it again here later this week. With nary a stock teenager or beautiful woman (other than Adrienne Barbeau as the voice of the computer chess game) to be found in all of Antarctica the ice bound crew of a weather station (or something) led by Kurt Russell as MacReady must contend with a shape shifting alien from outer space that seems all but unstoppable as it takes over the crew one member at a time. The special effects by Rob Bottin still stand up against any of the computer generated effects of today (and I like computer effects mind you). The action takes place in a totally claustrophobic atmosphere (really the best for any horror film) and the tension between the men becomes palpable as they all try to figure out who is and who is not a “substitute” for a real man. The film is not scored by Carpenter this time but by the maestro Ennio Morricone and is it one of my favorite soundtracks. The film bombed at the box office as it had to compete with Steven Speilberg’s E.T. but has endured and became very influential along with Bladrunner and Alien in reviving quality Sci-Fi films. And on a closing note, I am older and wiser now, please do not watch this on LSD, okay kids.

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Alien 3 -

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Sigourney Weaver returns as Lt. Ripley in 1993's 3rd installment on the Alien story, which has become my favorite and the one I have watched the most. The first two are great films as well while the Alien Resurrection thing is totally forgettable except for the swimming aliens. This was David Fincher’s first film (and the pressure was enormous I understand) and he did a bang up job with this dark and existential horror/sci-fi classic. Again, the mood is totally claustrophobic (like the 1st Ridley Scott Alien film) as there is no way off the prison colony she finds herself on alongside rapists and murderers and a really grumpy warden. The creature preys alone (in contrast to James Cameron’s army in Aliens) but is faster and more clever (as it was hatched from a dog) than the one that terrorized the crew of the Nostromo. A great well shot film with the character’s nerves pushed past the breaking point as the creature starts offing them one at time at its leisure. Some people criticize the religious and philosophical undertones to the film but they are the elements draw me to this film over and over. Well, that and the creature ripping the wailing inmates to bloody shreds.

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And don't forget, the big chili cookoff and pentecostal revival. Retain your ticket stubs for one free bowl of Texas chili and the casting out of two demons.

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IKI JIKOGU (LIVING HELL)

2000/Director: Shugo Fujii/Writer: Shugo Fugii
Cast: Hirohito Honda, Yoshiko Shiraishi, Rumi, Kazuo Yashiro, Naoko Mori, Shugo Fujii

If it has not become evident in the few posts I have made already I should clarify that love Japanese cinema. I am a really big fan of older Japanese cinema, from the late 50’s and early 60’s but am often luke warm when it comes to a lot of contemporary Japanese cinema (while some new stuff I have seen is simply fanatstic, such as Shohei Imamura’s The Eel) As a relevant side note I am currently living in Beijing China and therefore it is easy to find droves of Japanese, Korean and Hong Kong films here at a cheap price. So even if I buy a real dud I am not out any real money. A DVD here usually runs about a buck American. I did not completely hate this film written, directed by and starring (in a less than minor role) Shugo Fujii however I confess I was disappointed after it was all over. The DVD cover I have (it is not the one I have posted here in the review) is pretty misleading and often here in China DVD covers can have little to do with the movie contents. The reviews that are posted on the back are often negative and panning the film and the credits can be from a completely different film. For a while it seemed every other movie I bought had the credits for Spielberg’s Munich on it. And when the language of the film is something other than English you have no clue as to what you may be getting. There are some scenes on the cover here that never even appear in the movie. All those trifles aside some people on the net seem to enjoy the film and the complaints they have (i.e. the terrible score) are the same ones I have, but I may have a few more that prevent me from being able to recommend this movie.

I have now watched enough of this new Japanese horror stuff that I am getting the sense that I tend to like it less than I think I ought to. I feel like I should enjoy it more but I am consistently disappointed for the most part. This low budget (under $100,000 I understand) and quickly shot (nine days) psycho-thriller shows the limitations of its budget and schedule. It contains several Japanese horror clich’s (piles of worms and eyes peering through long strands of hair) that are repeated over and over until they become irritating actually.

The general story is about a 79 year old lady, Chiyo, and her granddaughter, Yuki, who kill a couple and their fluffy dog at the beginning of the movie. A woman even has her eye eaten out by some sort of carnivorous beetle. So it all seems to start off promising enough but the movie gets stuck real fast after the initial murder sequence. The story shifts to a year later and a family takes in the old lady and the girl who are distant relatives in need. In no time they begin to torment wheelchair bound Yasu in various and often inexplicable fashions to which he never tries to defend himself. Director Shugo plays Mitsu, a tabloid reporter, who gets involved to a dangerous degree while writing an investigative story on the murders from a year before and the recent escape from an asylum by Chiyo.

It turns out that Yuki and Yasu were actually once conjoined twins that were separated during their teenage years. It is not explained why since they seemed to have been only connected at the hip and such surgery normally takes place immediately after birth. However they were the products of a mad doctor’s experiments with the evil and perverted Chiyo so maybe that has something to do with it. Nothing much is really explained. Now, in many ways all of this has the ingredients for a great horror suspense movie, eyeball eating beetles, conjoined fraternal twins, people in wheelchairs being tortured, but it really goes no where and stays there forever. I cannot express enough how distracting and terrible the film score is. It is one of the worst I have heard in years. A good score is crucial to a horror movie.

Another odd thing is that the old lady is supposed to be really scary, but the truth is that she is just an old lady whose face never alters expression. She and Yuki spend all their time just staring. In Japanese films this is supposed to be really creepy, old ladies or little girls just staring at you, or showing no emotion as they torture you. But it goes on so long in some scenes in is simply absurd. The old lady kills people but she has no super powers or anything. They simply do not resist, because if they did they would whoop her butt. Yuki does the staring out through long black hair gimmick and nothing else. The expressionless faces are simply boring and never once freaky or terrifying. As it turns out Yasu¡’s entire family are totally insane and they have been hiding it from him all these years and his mother is actually Chiyo, the evil old lady.

The movie ends on a more preposterous note when it is revealed that all of the murders were all actually committed by the crippled Yasu himself and that Yuki is his dead sister he murdered during the surgery to separate them that he keeps alive in his mind to excuse his evil deeds, for example, the murder of the couple at the beginning. But the problem here is that we see Chiyo and Yuki kill the couple long before Yasu is introduced into the story. And he is wheelchair bound and how was he at the house of this couple who had no relation to him or his family? Even all the tortures are his own self-mutilations. But the other people in his family are insane and his brother, Ken, kills a couple people too. Why make the plot so unbelievable by making Yasu the real killer?

There are scenes where the actors show their insanity simply by giggling hysterically and ranting and crawling around on the floor. It is the type of acting that a non-actor would do if told to act insane. The annoying screaming that Yasu makes all of the time and the camera focusing on his open mouth as he does it is very annoying and it happens a lot.

I have read that this movie has been billed as the Japanese Texas Chainsaw Massacre (see the print on the cover graphic), but that is simply not the case at all. The violence here is not that intense or unnerving. There is a scene where all the family gathers together around a dinner table ala every Chainsaw movie made and acts weird and insane and cannibalism is inferred (and an eyeball eaten out of Shugo Fujii’s face), but the acting is bad and nothing is really shocking. The actors just act stupid and giggle and bounce around. The ending where Yasu winds up with a split personality is simply hurried and contrived. The only more ridiculous alternative would have been to have Yasu wake up screaming and find it has all been a dream, only to then have Chiyo and Yuki actually knock on the door at the end as the hokey synth-pad soundtrack goes into the end credits and the camera into his open mouth. So I guess it could have been worse. But as always, do not take my word for it, you may really enjoy it. I liked Brando’s Mutiny on the Bounty, so what do I know?

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A - Z LIST OF URANIUM CAFE POSTS

2006/Director: Jonathan Liebesman/Screenplay: Sheldon Turner

Cast: Jordana Brewster, Taylor Handley, Diora Baird, Matthew Bomer, R. Lee Ermey, Andrew Bryniarski

This is yet another chapter in the life of Texas born and inbred cannibals the Hewitt family. Contrary to how the narration sounds this is in no way a true story. It is a patchwork of serial killing cases (such as Wisconsin’s Ed Gein) all wove together but there has never been a real Hewitt family in Texas. I lived most of my life in and around San Antonio Texas and so some of the landscapes and stereotypes are familiar to me. I have never seen so much road kill as in Texas and the sweltering heat and road kill are what I remember most sometimes. There are expanses of land that seem all but unexplored by civilized folk from places like New York City and it seems far from inconceivable that some family of fruitcakes like this might be hidden out there somewhere.

So the deep plot here if you do not already know it before you even see the movie is that this family of twisted degenerates get a hold of yet another car load of hippies and kill them off one by one in assorted gruesome fashions, usually with sledgehammers and chainsaws, but sometimes even a shotgun. The story line here goes a bit under the surface and tells the story of lovable Tommy “Leatherface” Hewitt. I do not really know if we need to know the story of little Tommy but there it is for us. It even shows how he made his first mask of human flesh and this touched his uncle (R. Lee Ermey) who tells him how much he likes it. There is nothing much new here at all but the movie is not a total waste of your time if you like this sort of thing. I guess it is more exciting to someone who not seen a thousand or so of these things. The hippies all look like they are from the 90’s really and murder for murder most of these later Chainsaw flicks still are not as cool as the first low budget Tobey Hooper one for some reason. Maybe simply because they all are doing what the first one did over and over, and yet, honestly, what else would you want them to do right? I have seen them all and this one works well enough as a follow up to the remake a few years ago

The movie follows the trend of a lot of newer slasher movies where there is no hero or heroine who survives at the end. Maybe this is suppose to convey some sort of message about the ultimate meaningless of life and that evil wins out over good in the real world, I just don’t know. I just find it sort of pointless to sit through an entire movie and have everyone killed off one by one and not have one person end up alive, even if they are in an insane asylum babbling to themselves. The movie is not really scary and there are no big surprises but it is well made and the acting is good over all. Ermey is redneckishly loathsome as the “cop” but the rest of the family is not too strange here (well, not compared to my own anyway). We learn why he is a cop and we learn why the guy in the remake has no legs, but the characters are not really that strange. Not as strange as the ones in Rob Zombie’s Devil’s Rejects films that are basically the same story. It is not a super great movie of the genre but is not too bad either and has some “fun” moments.Not for the squemish or vegetarians.

Note: I know the gif animation here is not from this movie, but from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remark movie that came before it, but it is such a cool little ditty I did not want to waste it.

And on a closing note I know how hard it can be for parents out there to find something nice for today’s selective and discerning kids for Christmas or birthdays, so may I kindly suggest this quint little model of ol’ Leatherface torturing and peeling the flesh off of some useless hippie. The little ones, as well as grandma and grandpa, will have hours of fun and excitement with this amusing little item.

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CHAOS

2006/ Director: David DeFalco/Writer: David DeFalco

Cast: Kevin Gage,Sage Stallone, Kelly K.C. Quann, Stephen Wozniak, Chantal Degroat

There is plenty of hoopla one way or the other about this film by writer-director David DeFalco and it really does not deserve all the attention it is getting, so I figured I would just give it a little more. A lot of the chatter is directed at the opening statements of the film that are given in a serious “safety film” tone about the dangers that can befall careless teenagers and young women each year. There are even murder statistics quoted for some reason in the Jack Webb style narration. It reminded me of those Criswell intros to some of Ed Wood’s cooler films really. It is really as if Defalco believes this load of rubbish has some sort of socially significant message and will save lives. On the DVD version I have there is a commentary by DeFalco and the film’s producer about a review by Roger Ebert that pans the movie. They seem to feel Ebert misses the point of their “valuable” film and go on and on trying to redeem it in a sometimes point by point rebuttal. At one point goofy looking DeFalco says (paraphrased) that Ebert never said it was bad film (technically I assume he means) but that Ebert did not approve of the film’s “stark realism and ultimate nihilism” (quotations and phrase are mine). Okay, then let me be clear: this film is inept and amateurish. The film making is shoddy and simply void of any talent. It makes Murder Set Pieces (a review is coming up soon here at The Uranium Café) look like a David Lean epic.

The acting (especially by usually reliable Kevin Gage) is not always bad though the actors seem to be hamming it up for fun at times, as if they know they are trapped in a bomb and are going to enjoy the ride until the check comes in. In the end however the film lacks any humor or wit. This it could be argued by supporters of the filmn (and there are more than few on the net) was the intention of DeFalco because how could you imbue such a socially serious subject with anything other than despair and gloom.

The Last House on the Left plot is very simple and in more talented hands (or hands with some talent) the film could have been an homage to Satanic stalker, Manson family, psycho revenge films of the 70’s, rather than this exercise in gratuitous and meaningless excess. Okay, okay movies do not have to have deep meaning here at the Cafe, but they cannot simply suck either. Real quick: A group of drugged up social misfits target and brutalize anyone that crosses paths with them and wind up in a cabin in the woods (I forget how and refuse to rewatch the film to remember) and are soon bored and send out Sage Stallone (Sly’s fat little boy) to bring back some chicks to have fun with. Of course there are two “nice girls” who can’t help but rebel against mommy and daddy so that when they arrive at the usually-pretty-safe-to-be-at (unless you wander off with strangers) rave they are so taken away with Sage’s moody, aggressive “so do ya want some free ecstasy or not” charm they decide to wander off with him into the woods to the cabin full of sexually deranged psychos. They are immediately set upon and tortured and assaulted and chased through the woods and caught and killed in horrible and, yes, disgusting fashion. However the deaths are far from the most brutal deaths ever put to film and the movie is in no way as shocking as all the banter would lead you to believe.

Eventually the killers wind up back at the house of one of the girls with her parents aware of who they are and what they did (ala Last House on the Left). Unlike Last House we are treated to an ending not where the killers receive their just desserts of warm revenge but an ending where everyone but Chaos (Gage) is killed and he leaves to continue his bloody rampage on more ecstasy hungry rave goers… so like the opening monologue preaches… beware young ones who you wander off into the woods with for free ecstasy, HE IS STILL OUT THERE! So please listen to ex-wrestler and amateur porn star David DeFalco and watch his “training” film on how to survive raves and bad hitchhiking experiences!

Ultimately the problem with this film is not the so called brutal murders but the lameness of the film making and script. The DVD commentary is entertaining but the movie is pointless in a pathetic way while taking itself way too seriously. It fails on all points and even Kevin Gage is a let down. He was far more menacing in Heat as DeNiro’s protagonist and hooker serial killer. I saw a review on the net that says it best. Just keep telling yourself… it’s only a rip off, it’s only a rip off…

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