Hey! How do you take a low budget movie from a country not necessarily known for its genre movie output and create an international horror sensation? Two words: Nazi zombies. Early posters and some killer stills of bad ass monster make up had American horror fans freaking out for months. A turn at Sundance only added fuel to the fire but reviews from the film festival painted a picture of a well meaning but ultimately disappointing entry into the global zombie arena.
I’m really not going to take it there because Dead Snow is, in fact, quite entertaining it’s just that it is home to a couple of my horror movie pet peeves. It goes out of its way to wear its influences on its sleeve and drop names at every given opportunity. Director Tommy Wirkola is out to be Norway’s Quentin Tarantino or Eli Roth by constantly qualifying his direction of a zombie horror movie by reminding you that he knows all about the classics. It also uses the rigid slasher movie framework of horny, isolated young people and the crazy dude who drops by to warn them of their impending doom. I suppose I shouldn’t be disappointed because it never promised me anything more than Nazi zombies but I was hoping for a little more than the usual zombie rigamarole.
I have difficulties reviewing Cinematic Titanic releases because I’m not sure if I should even address the movie. I mean, if it has the Cinematic Titanic label on it, you’re pretty safe in your assumption that the movie is a turkey. The riffing is always solid gold, though. These are the people who took your standard exercise of bong rips and bad movies and elevated it to an art form. They’re always honing their craft, though, and it’s evident in the latest release, the mind-bogglingly godawful Blood of the Vampires, that they’re finding the rhythm they had in their native land of Mystery Science Theater 3000. My gripe from the start of Cinematic Titanic has been that their riffs come across as rehearsed, which they are, but MST3K had a masterful delivery that sounded like improvisation. The trend continues, yet you can tell who is at home with the riffing and who isn’t.
To keep it brief, the Escodero family is cursed with a matronly vampire living in a hidden crypt. The shit hits the fan when she wakes up and bites her children who can’t seem to accept her fate. At the same time there’s a romantic angle as one of the Escodero sisters has married a man that no one else seems to like and with their new, ferocious Philipino vampire powers, the undead Escoderos take the opportunity to break them up. In the meantime, all of this is taking place in 19th century Mexico and any given set is populated by actors and actresses in blackface playing happy slaves, none of whom seem to have the ability to communicate beyond the level of a todler. It’s fucking madness is what I’m trying to tell you.
Blood of the Vampires represents Cinematic Titanic’s first real success story. The other six releases are pretty good but this one knocks it out of the park with a barrage of riffs that come fast and funny. I’d like to see the skits mature a bit and become more than brief breaks in the movie to let the cast catch their breath but once again, Cinematic Titanic delivers a solid, extremely funny product at a decent cost. Sure, you could probably find Blood of the Vampires in one of those 100 movies for $10 boxes but that way you’re paying too much for a shitty movie. This way, you get some good laughs at the expense of a movie that has no business being.
I’m so over conventional horror movies these days. I’ve been watching them for nearly thirty years and I can comfortably make the claim that I’ve seen it all. I really have. At some point I went from being a horror movie fan and became a walking horror archive and there’s some part of me that feels the need to subject myself to some seriously repugnant shit in the name of carrying the complete record of horror achievement in my noodle. So being such a jaded dick means that cliches like stalk and slash just don’t do much for me but I know what sort of search terms I’m going to rank for and I know what kinds of reviews people are going to be searching for as the release of movie x draws near. So I find myself reviewing stuff that I ordinarily wouldn’t be caught dead watching. Because of this, it’s been some time since I’ve seen something that I really liked.
So let me cast my hipster bullshit aside and tell you that Laid To Rest exceeded my expectations by a crazy big-ass margin. Slashers are easily the most rank and file of all the horror subcategories and there is a checklist of cinematic inventory that can be found in each one without exception. Laid To Rest is no different but what I was not expecting from this movie was the sheer volume of explicit, no cut-away gore and violence that even in the these times of hardcore R ratings on some extremely violent movies managed to shock and amuse me.
We all know that I loves me some Turkish nonsense and if the comments in my reviews of Turkish movies are anything to go on, we all know how the Turkish feel about me. So it is with great anticipation that I bring to you this little bit of madnes. Dark Maze Studios is poised to release this gem from the land where no movie was safe. Rampage is a Turkish rip off of the iconic 80′s flag-waver, Rambo and for a Turkish flick, this Dark Maze presentation is remarkably fleshed out with extras. The DVD hits April 24th.
Dark Maze provides a remastered feature, a commentary track, a making-of featurette, a gallery of posters and lobby cards, and more. I’ve seen some companies, like Onar Films, go to the wall to bring you everything they can in order to archive the cinematic efforts of Turkey but this is really something. The Turkish are worse than The Chinese when it comes to preserving their movies. But I digress. The hype for the flick is that it’s straight from the director of Turkish Star Wars, which is saying something. That is, quite possibly, the biggest piece of shit I’ve ever seen. Check out the trailer and share in my enthusiasm for this exercise in particularly awful movies. Then head by the Dark Maze site and see what else they have in store for you.
First of all, it’s called Cat Shit One. Take a moment to let that baby sink in. Cat. Shit. One.
Moving on.
I don’t know anything about this aside from the fact that it’s Japanese and sometimes, when it comes to Japan, that’s really all you need to know. I spotted this on Ain’t It Cool this morning and I usually take my Harry Knowles with a huge grain of salt because you never know when you’re going to read a movie review over there that compares a director’s talent behind the camera to their probable skills at oral sex. But here’s what I have been able to pick up from a little research. Cat Shit One was a 90′s manga title in Japan that takes the Art Spiegelman approach from Maus and applies it to Vietnam where Americans are represented by rabbits and the Vietnamese as cats. This udpates the setting from Vietnam to the current Iraq war and pits Americans (voiced in Japanese by Japanese) as rabbits against Iraqi militias represented by camels.
It seems vaguely racist yet somehow appropriate. There’s an official website which is promising something by 2010. Getting the trailer out early is certain to excite the web in a viral manner until the series finally launches. And I must admit, for such a ridiculous premise this is one exciting trailer. I’ll keep you updated. In the meantime, here’s a pair of rabbits sniping Iraqi targets.
Universal seems to be on the classic horror revival kick these days. They’re remaking the classic Universal Monster picture, The Wolf Man with Benicio Del Toro filling Lon Cheney Jr.’s shoes and now there’s this interesting slice coming from Variety.
It seems that Universal optioned the upcoming Image comic, The Strange Adventures of H.P. Lovecraft, a comic that hasn’t even launched yet, to be adapted, potentially, by Ron Howard. Many people are left scratching their heads since Howard isn’t exactly the first name to come to mind when discussing genre films but it must be remembered that he cut his directing teeth doing cheapies for Roger Corman.
The comic fictionalizes the life of the real H.P. Lovecraft wherein a curse from the Necronomicon causes the things he writes about to become reality Arkham. It has the possibility of turning Cthulhu mythos on its head, but at a glance, the plot sounds a little on the lame side. We’ll see. It hits shelves April 8th and I’ll probably pick it up to see what all the noise is about.
I promise you, this will be the last time you hear about The Rondos for a while. The blitz of reminders to vote for me are at an end because last night, March 23rd, David Colton made the announcement in the Classic Horror Film Board’s chat room amongst a group of his peers. We waited in anticipation for the winner of each category to be announced and when it finally came to category 15, best horror blog, Tim Lucas and his Video Watchblog (which ironically ceased all blogging the day after the nominees were announced) took the prize with Drunken Severed Head behind him and myself in third place.
I gotta admit. I’m disappointed. I put a lot of energy into spreading the word and making people aware that I was up for it. At one time I even thought that I was a shoe-in for it but I suppose no amount of energy is enough to take down Tim Lucas, a real force to be reckoned with. I’d like to thank all of you who voted for me. I had a lot of fun and your support means a lot to me. I’ll get ‘em next year.
Other winners include: The Dark Knight for best picture and Dr. Who for best TV show. Psycho took best classic DVD while the Criterion release of Vampyr took the award for best restoration. Rue Morgue Magazine swept the awards with Best Magazine, Best Article for their Coffin Joe Resurrected piece and Best Magazine Cover for their Forrest Ackerman cover (issue #83). Martin Grams’s absolutely exhaustive examination of the Twilight Zone, Twilight Zone: Unlocking The Door To A Television Classic took best book. Joe Dante’s Trailers From Hell took best website for the second year in a row. The Tippi Hedren Barbie took best toy and Hellboy: In The Chapel of Moloch took best comic. You can read the full press release and see all of the winners over at the Rondo Awards website.
I’ve never really been a big fan of the cannibal movie. The genre has its problems, most notably that they’re all the same movie at the root level. You can take the following formula and apply it to just about any cannibal movie: Civilized westerners/filmmakers/anthropologists/drug dealers head into the jungles of South America/Asia, fuck with the local stone-age tribes and wind up castrated, dismembered and/or eaten asking us the question: Who are the real savages?
I realize that I’m passing judgement on a genre of exploitation whose mission it is to copy the popular movies and that many popular post-nukes, kickboxers and slasher movies follow the very same convention but the cannibal flick has always been particularly bland to me, in spite of the excessive gore and boobs. Plus, they always seem to feature a lot of animal cruelty which doesn’t really shock me in a pleasant way. It just kind of makes me sick. There are a few twists on the formula that I actually quite like (i.e. Cut and Run and Cannibal Apocalypse) and a couple of genre gems that you just HAVE to see (i.e. Cannibal Holocaust and Cannibal Ferrox) but if you ask me, once you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all. Unless you’re talking about an archive item like Man From Deep River, which is, arguably, the source of the Italian flesh eater craze.
Juraj Herz, director of “The Cremator,” told now-defunct Euro-film zine Kino Eye in 2002 that, to him, the typical horror film is a “chainsaw massacre”. That’s not exactly what you’ll find in “The Cremator,” Herz’s twisted 1968 tale of a crematorium worker driven mad by his own desires and the growing threat of Nazism, though the bodies do pile up fairly high by the film’s end. Instead, Herz uses blacker-than-black humor, super surrealistic imagery and a fantastically creepy performance by lead actor Rudolf Krusinsky to create a horror flick that fearlessly plumbs the depths of deranged weirdness while spotting a utterly mad grin. Out of print and unavailable for years, “The Cremator” is back on DVD, courtesy of Dark Sky Films.
The titular cremator is Karl Kopfrkingl (Hruskinsky), who spends his days working a massive, palatial crematorium. He’s obsessed with affairs both earthly and spiritual. He worries about providing enough for his family—his wife, Lakme, and his children, Zina, a budding pianist, and Mili, an effeminate young boy. It’s the late 1930s, and so added to his list of worries is the spectre of Nazism, first present when Kopfrkingl encounters a portrait of Hitler at a frame shop and, later, when his old army buddy Reinke comes over for dinner. The Nazis are massing on the Czech border and Reinke, a low-level party functionary, urges Kopfrkingl to join the Reich before it’s too late.
Also known as American Nightmares, Combat Shock, directed by Buddy Giovinazzo and produced by Lloyd Kaufman and the Troma Team is a savage bummer of epic proportions. A 90 minute festival of misery, Combat Shock depicts the particularly shitty life of a Vietnam veteran pushed to the edge by poverty, the city, his miserable marriage and a sick, deformed child that never stops crying. It’s already an extremely difficult movie to endure, so why not tack ten more minutes to it?
Come July 28th, Troma will be releasing the 2-disc director’s cut of Giovinazzo’s intense exploration of human misery. You get the new extended cut, featuring ten minutes of suffering plus the original theatrical cut. Also in the package is a commentary from Giovinazzo and is moderated by Nekromantik director, Jorg Butgereit.
Here are the specs:
American Nightmares (100 min): The Never-Before-Seen Director’s Cut
Combat Shock (90 min): The Troma Theatrical Cut
Audio Commentary with Director Buddy Giovinazzo and Jorg Buttgereit
Post-Traumatic, An American Nightmare featurette
All-New Interview with Director Buddy G Conducted by Lloyd Kaufman
Never-Before-Seen Short Works by Buddy Giovinazzo including Mr. Robbie, starring Joe Spinell (Maniac)
Hellscapes featurette
Original Press and Photo Gallery
Original Theatrical Trailers
Solider of Misfortune: Buddy Giovinazzo’s Combat Shock – New Liner Notes
Hey! How do you take a low budget movie from a country not necessarily known for its genre movie output and create an international horror sensation? Two words: Nazi zombies. Early posters and some killer stills of bad ass monster make up had American horror fans freaking out for months. A turn at Sundance only added fuel to the fire but reviews from the film festival painted a picture of a well meaning but ultimately disappointing entry into the global zombie arena.
I have difficulties reviewing Cinematic Titanic releases because I’m not sure if I should even address the movie. I mean, if it has the Cinematic Titanic label on it, you’re pretty safe in your assumption that the movie is a turkey. The riffing is always solid gold, though. These are the people who took your standard exercise of bong rips and bad movies and elevated it to an art form. They’re always honing their craft, though, and it’s evident in the latest release, the mind-bogglingly godawful Blood of the Vampires, that they’re finding the rhythm they had in their native land of Mystery Science Theater 3000. My gripe from the start of Cinematic Titanic has been that their riffs come across as rehearsed, which they are, but MST3K had a masterful delivery that sounded like improvisation. The trend continues, yet you can tell who is at home with the riffing and who isn’t.
I’m so over conventional horror movies these days. I’ve been watching them for nearly thirty years and I can comfortably make the claim that I’ve seen it all. I really have. At some point I went from being a horror movie fan and became a walking horror archive and there’s some part of me that feels the need to subject myself to some seriously repugnant shit in the name of carrying the complete record of horror achievement in my noodle. So being such a jaded dick means that cliches like stalk and slash just don’t do much for me but I know what sort of search terms I’m going to rank for and I know what kinds of reviews people are going to be searching for as the release of movie x draws near. So I find myself reviewing stuff that I ordinarily wouldn’t be caught dead watching. Because of this, it’s been some time since I’ve seen something that I really liked.
We all know that I loves me some Turkish nonsense and if the comments in my reviews of Turkish movies are anything to go on, we all know how the Turkish feel about me. So it is with great anticipation that I bring to you this little bit of madnes. Dark Maze Studios is poised to release this gem from the land where no movie was safe. Rampage is a Turkish rip off of the iconic 80′s flag-waver, Rambo and for a Turkish flick, this Dark Maze presentation is remarkably fleshed out with extras. The DVD hits April 24th.
Universal seems to be on the classic horror revival kick these days. They’re remaking the classic Universal Monster picture, The Wolf Man with Benicio Del Toro filling Lon Cheney Jr.’s shoes and now there’s this interesting slice coming from 
I promise you, this will be the last time you hear about The Rondos for a while. The blitz of reminders to vote for me are at an end because last night, March 23rd, David Colton made the announcement in the Classic Horror Film Board’s chat room amongst a group of his peers. We waited in anticipation for the winner of each category to be announced and when it finally came to category 15, best horror blog, Tim Lucas and his Video Watchblog (which ironically ceased all blogging the day after the nominees were announced) took the prize with Drunken Severed Head behind him and myself in third place.
I’ve never really been a big fan of the cannibal movie. The genre has its problems, most notably that they’re all the same movie at the root level. You can take the following formula and apply it to just about any cannibal movie: Civilized westerners/filmmakers/anthropologists/drug dealers head into the jungles of South America/Asia, fuck with the local stone-age tribes and wind up castrated, dismembered and/or eaten asking us the question: Who are the real savages?
Juraj Herz, director of “The Cremator,” told now-defunct Euro-film zine 
Also known as American Nightmares, Combat Shock, directed by Buddy Giovinazzo and produced by Lloyd Kaufman and the Troma Team is a savage bummer of epic proportions. A 90 minute festival of misery, Combat Shock depicts the particularly shitty life of a Vietnam veteran pushed to the edge by poverty, the city, his miserable marriage and a sick, deformed child that never stops crying. It’s already an extremely difficult movie to endure, so why not tack ten more minutes to it?
