Cannibal Holocaust (1980)

The simplified moral I came away with from this bit of celluloid is ‘Americans can be real jerkwads’. I know what you are thinking, that really isn’t something that the world doesn’t already know. Well maybe the world was a bit hazy on the point back in 1980.

It’s a movie about an anthropologist who goes off into the deep green jungle to find out the fate of a team of documentarians. The anthropologist finds the remains of the team, along with all the footage they shot. The footage is reviewed and it turns out the documentarians are a bunch of real jerkwads: killing the local fauna, killing members of the various tribes they encounter by gun and mass immolation, the occasional rape of some local lucky lady; you know, general dickholery. The natives eventually kill all members of the group one by one, most of it caught on film.

Most of the deaths of the humans seemed realistic, apt for the “real documentary footage” feel of the film within the film, but the error the director made was having the footage be all nice and spliced together. There were two cameras in the documentary crew and the footage the anthropologist recovered from the jungle was seemingly already through the editing room, rather than separate reels from the separate cameras.

The big negative that just completely distracted me for the length of the film was the killing of animals that happened throughout the “recovered” footage. 7 different species are killed on film, purely for the sake of the film. For a shitty cannibal movie like this, the director was seemingly scrambling for anything to gain some sort of notoriety. This kind of bullshit stunt erases any positives his movie may have accrued. I guess Italians can be real jerkwads, too.

0 Georges





Sidenote: There was a bigass billboard ad for J&B whiskey in the movie, staple of Italian horror of the 70s.

À l'intérieur (2007)

Dang, a dearth of posts, now a plethora... that's how the Dudes roll.

À l'intérieur

Well, goddamn, those French sure are a stabby bunch of people. If ever there was a reason not to contract sperm poisoning, this movie is it.

Highlights include some of the most creative arterial I’ve seen in a while spray (In fact, I laughed so loud at one scene, the people walking by stopped and looked in the window and backed away slowly*), a number of cringe worthy stabbing scenes (Boys take note – look away after La Femme stabs the guy in the knee – trust me its for your own good.), a cesarean section and tracheotomy that I’m sure the AMA would frown upon, and the clever application of what I can only imagine is oven cleaner. Not to mention the creepiest final frame I’ve witnessed in ages.

À l'intérieur runs about 83 minutes (9 of which are the credits, and speaking of credits, the opening ones are worth watching just to figure out what it’s supposed to be, and the music, which reminded me A LOT of Irreversible.), uses at least 780 gallons of fake blood, kills all but three of the cast members, and features about 15 different kinds of stabbing with various implements. Actually, everybody sort of gets into a stabby frame of mind, if they’re not being stabbed, they are stabbing something.

Beatrice Dalle gives new meaning to the term “scissor sister.” In fact, I wonder if the band didn’t come up with the name after watching this movie. She’ll use a gun, but watch out, if she has her scissors, you best be runnin’.

So, would the “Dudes” like it, well it’s hard to say, no one gets their kit off, as mentioned above there’s an ouchie scene for the boys, however, it’s everything Haute Tension and Hostel could have been but wasn’t. 4 George’s just for the copious amounts of gore.

Sorry kids, I’m out of practice, I’m sure the posts will get better...

*Why yes, I do use humor as a defense mechanism, why do you ask?

A Big Fucking Rat!

I have a sinking feeling that this post's title might aptly describe the 2007 After Dark Selections quite well. With good ol' Karl at my side, I took in three of the selections now that they have been released on DVD.

They largely sucked.

Why does the local bar stock a frying pan on Mulberry Street? If the answer is "to be prepared in the event that rat people unexpectedly attack our patrons" then how about stocking some cheese-scented guillotines or even a handy shotgun?

Why was the sound editor allowed to make the decision that rock songs and ominous you're-about-to-be-scared score selections should eclipse the impact of the actual scares being attempted? Why do I even care when this movie is nothing more than a failed attempt to ride the coat tails of 2004's Dawn of the Dead remake?

And we all know that if you want to improve an already great movie, you simply replace the key antagonists with crazed rat people. Casablanca didn't need Nazis... it needed more rats, damn it.

I like that the writer tried to get us involved with the individual characters before they all met and interacted to fend of the rat people... but it sure would have been nice if those characters did or said anything that I could- pardon the expression- give a rat's ass about.

5 Georges go to Karl for providing the actual entertainment during this viewing. When a character explained "They're Rat People! Fucking Rat People!" Karl replied "We need some Fucking Cat People! Fucking Cat People to chase out these Fucking Rat People!"

The Ghost of George was scurrying around nearby when this was said. George overheard Karl's comment, laughed his ghostly ass off, and left it for Mulberry St. to have as its rating.

3 Films to Get Slightly Bruised For

At chez Karl, Jeff and I plopped down and watched 3 of the 8 Films to Die For 2007.
Here is my brief take on them.


Mulberry St. (2007)



a.k.a., 28 Rats Later, or Dawn of the Rats. No, not really. But it sure seems like the writer/director was a big fan of both of those movies.. Take the remake of Dawn of the Dead, change zombie to rat-person, center the story around one crappy apartment building in New York (on Mulberry St), and do it on 1/4000th the budget and VOILA!
It has all been done before and done better. It really didn’t bring anything new to the horror table, and it committed (in my distorted opinion) one of the most egregious errors that a movie of this low caliber can commit. If you are going to be unoriginal, crappily acted, and unscary, then at least do the viewer the service of granting a gander at some bewbs or at the very least, a messy/creative death.
1 George, only because it made me feel unclean due to the general gunginess of the apartment building/environs.





The Deaths of Ian Stone (2007)



Great concept, decently executed on a decent budget. Oh, and a Stan Winston production. So already, we are way ahead of Mulberry St.
The main character, a poor man’s Johnny Lee Miller, gets killed every day. And each day he comes back as a different person. Groundhog Day for the horror crowd.
There is a deeper story behind that idea and I won’t spoil it, but it eventually all makes sense.
Some decent visual effects as well as blood and gore appropriate to the story keeps the view engaged throughout. I was excited to see the crazy British antagonist from the second season of Dexter (Jaime Murray), but disappointed that she didn’t shed any vestments for the movie, as she did for the series. So my review takes a negative hit for that.
3 Georges (could have been more but Jaime had to go and get shy on us)





Unearthed (2007)



An archaeological dig and small town get terrorized by a creature in the middle of New Mexico. Been done. Not a lot of new ideas here. The creature looks like a rejected design of H.R. Giger and one of the scenes is a DIRECT rip off of the Alien series. Really bad animation on the creature’s movements and attacks, however the film does have a few great stuntman stunts, with people being blown through the air from explosions and such. When the creature starts attacking, it isn’t totally clear as to why it is doing what it is doing or if and why it has changed its intentions, even though there are several scenes which are very heavy handed plot explanation sequences. I did enjoy the ‘loogie shrimp’ though. Occasionally the creature would attack by spitting these little guys a victim and these little shrimp-like projectiles would stick in their skin and burrow inside.
Bonus point for having Charlie Murphy as one of the stranded motorists in the town, to grace the film with his Charlie Murphy-ness. He also had a pretty sweet death.

2 Georges (this movie could have been so much more)