Cinema Suicide

I didn’t think it was humanly possible for a movie to piss me off more than Bitch Slap (Review) did. Obviously I hadn’t seen Hard Ride To Hell yet. I really like biker flicks and I especially like those 70′s flavored flicks that invoke those dark age fears of witchcraft and Satan. Put them together and you got your bikers in my satanism, or you got your satanism in my bikers. Either way, the combination is a deviant union of awesome that produced really sweet Satanic bikers flicks like Race With The Devil and Psychomania. But that was then and this is now and my main criticism of Bitch Slap was the forced nostalgia bit. It seemed like no one on the Bitch Slap production crew had ever seen an actual grindy exploitation movie but they’d watched Boondock Saints about a million times. Simply put, I’m fucking sick to death of these exploitation cover bands producing these one-note throwbacks.

I’ll keep this one short because there’s really not much to talk about. Usually I love ragging on a bad movie but I’ve been seeing a lot of this worthless garbage lately and someone has to pay. It is shocking to me that genuinely good independent filmmaking has such a hard time getting distribution. I know a number of filmmakers responsible for original genre movies that are fun to watch and genuinely inventive but time and time again, they struggle in the bowels of small-time boutique distribution, counting on sales at horror conventions and advertising in small rags like Phantom of the Videoscope and Screem while borderline plagiarized dog shit like Hard Ride To Hell skates to global distribution deals. It’s a shame, it’s a sin and it should be punishable by law.

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I don’t do kung fu flicks here enough. For reasons unknown to me, I’m largely known as a horror blogger and I tend to moan endlessly about being pigeonholed when this is brought to my attention but I’m actually a fan of all sorts of exploitation. I am, in fact, as versed in the ways of Hong Kong film culture as I am with horror. I love this shit! I even trained for several years in a Wah Lum Pai kwoon, a flavor of northern kung fu with a hangup on preying mantis style. Eventually I got hurt during training and now in my mid-30′s, I have the back of an 80 year old man. I can still kick your ass, though.

There’s really nothing finer than a Shaw Brothers kung fu movie. There are so many of these fucking things, too. The Shaws are the most prolific production company in Hong Kong. They’re primarily known for their martial arts movies but kicking things off in 1930, they had their hands in a lot of the genres, having produced some musicals and comedies and occasionally dabbling in Western filmmaking with Cleopatra Jones sequels and exploiting the popularity of Japanese tokusatsu with their own franchise, Inframan. It’s fairly obvious, though, that the true Shaw Brothers legacy is their martial arts movies having established a strong pattern of wuxia flicks that bounced back and forth between serious dynasty period dramas and ridiculously awesome asian exploitations like Five Elements Ninja. Seemed like 1978 was a big year for The Shaws. That very year we got their flagship kung fu flick, The 5 Deadly Venoms. The same year, the same director turned out Invincible Shaolin and that’s a really cool thing.

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There’s really something powerful to being party to a television show that sparks a low-level cultural revolution. From the dawn of the medium, we’ve been given some shows that really set the pace for the American consciousness. We got stuff like The Honeymooners, I Love Lucy, The Twilight Zone, Star Trek, The Simpsons, The X-Files, Seinfeld and with the passing of this final season of LOST, we can now add another name to the pantheon of television avatars. For six seasons, LOST brought its A-game and introduced an entirely unexplored, extremely risky proposition to a medium that has traditionally played it safe with serialized storytelling. We were introduced to a winding, labyrinthine narrative that required a certain kind of devotion that no other TV show had ever commanded. Its primary selling point was an enduring, ceaseless mystery that kept a firm iron grasp on everyone who dared to venture down the rabbit hole. Not since the cliff hanger mystery of ‘Who shot J.R.’ had we been so captivated by the mystery of who might occupy the coffin at the close of Season 4. At its peak, LOST suggested a massive plan with a certain end-game in mind and had everyone who watched it reading hardcore weirdo literature, exploring philosophies foreign and familiar and forming their own theories as to just what the hell was going on on The Island. LOST also managed to bridge the science fiction gap with a well-orchestrated series of relationship dramas and a cast of characters that mattered to the audience. Character deaths had actual dramatic weight and the on-again-off-again nature of their romances factored heavily into the proceedings. LOST, miraculously, managed to be everything to everyone — So how did it wind up dropping the ball so spectacularly in its final movement?

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Look, I try and sell people on the virtues of being a blogger all the time. This hot new outlet in the media world is being seized by savvy marketing folks all the time and I’m constantly being sent shit by companies that would like me to say very nice things about their product. So if you need a reason to start up your own blog, consider this: If you’re good at it, stuff will just start arriving in the mail. Understand this, though, I’m no Harry Knowles. Free shit guarantees you nothing, my friends. I’m flattered that you would like to grace me with review swag, but if whatever it is that you send me sucks, I’m going to tell it like it is.

Most of the time I’m receiving movies and comic books, but Harcos Laboratories recently surprised me by sending me a few packs of Zombie Blood Energy Potion, a review product that I’m supposed to ingest and I have to tell you, I was pretty excited. Nobody sends me food or drink and I’d really like to see more of this stuff. I wish I could get to the point and stop orbiting this review but I’m afraid that Zombie Blood Energy Drink has me so fucking wired that I can’t concentrate.

See, I used to be a connoisseur of energy drinks. I have consumed many of them and shaved precious time off my narrowing lifespan. I know a thing or two about energy drinks. Eventually, I slowed my consumption of them because I heard really strange things about the effects of taurine on lab animals and that shit isn’t cheap, you know. So ordinarily I wouldn’t pay out for a Zombie Blood Energy Drink because it runs a mean $5. Thanks to the virtue of blogging, I get to try it out and let you know how I feel about it. Here goes:

Zombie Blood Energy Drink is a bit of a misnomer. It’s a drink and it provides energy but rather than come in a can like a Red Bull or something, it’s more like a 5-Hour Energy Drink and a smaller shot comes in a plastic bag that looks like a bag of blood, a bag of green blood, that is. Do you remember those fruit drinks that came in little plastic barrels you used to get as a kid? It had the foil top that was a bitch to peel off. When you tasted it, it was sweet as hell but seemed like it was hiding something dire and chemical beneath all that sugar. Understand this: Zombie Blood tastes a little like a “green” one of those. the flavor isn’t terribly unpleasant and when compared to a 5-Hour Energy Drink it’s like mana from heaven since those little bastards are vile and manufactured in Satan’s Cauldron. The taste is pleasing and it’s gone too soon but the real draw here is the rush. The energy doesn’t come on slow, it hits you like a freight train and lights you up like Horace Pinker. As I write this, I have to fight the strongest urge to go out and do laps around the building.

Harcos makes themed energy drinks. They have potions that looks like the hit point and mana potions from World of Warcraft and there’s a blood bag that looks like regular blood. To drive the point home, these energy drinks manage to stay remarkably low in the calories department (around 45 per dose) and contain the approximate nutritional content of actual blood, that is to say a shitload of iron and protein. The price is mostly rolled into the packaging, which is kind of a drag, but if you’re planning on spending your evening on one of those ten hour raids in WoW, this is probably what you want to be drinking instead of several cans of Monster. The price is steep, but at that sort of rate, it’s actually a bit economical and you won’t have to either get up and take a leak several times or stay at your computer, shamefully pissing into an empty Monster can.

I talk an awful lot about H.P. Lovecraft up in this bitch but I never talk about Lovecraft’s buddy, the equally as weird and exponentially more macho motherfucker of pulp, Robert E. Howard. Where Lovecraft dealt in cosmic horror and madness, Howard was all about testosterone and packed his fiction with balls and blood, tales of bad dudes who live in worlds of absolute. Not familiar with Howard? Understand this, he is responsible for creating Conan The Barbarian. To a lesser extent he also created Kull The Conqueror but my personal favorite Robert E. Howard badass is Solomon Kane.

While my personal feelings about killing machines motivated by a strong personal connection with God is that they’re bad, Solomon Kane is just so righteous. The Howard vision of the character was like something out of a Black Sabbath song (rather, the other way around). Kane is a lone figure of pale complexion, dressed always in black and wearing a slouch hat. He has no real back story and as flimsy as that sounds, his adventures are morbid affairs that have him rooting out evil in all its insidious forms and then hacking them to pieces, burning the pieces and then pissing on the ashes. That which he doesn’t hack, he shoots full of holes and then makes with the burning and pissing. Solomon Kane was singularly committed to destroying evil and it’s hard not to like a character like that. Director Michael J. Basset’s version of Kane is, well, loose, to put it lightly, but he manages to get so much of it right and in the end turns in one hell of a fantasy epic on a fraction of the budget of the sort of garbage Hollywood offers the multiplexes. Man, if you’re a fan of decapitation, look no further than Solomon Kane. This dude chops off heads like it’s going out of style.

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I have a real problem with shock horror. I’ve been at this a long time and my search for the most shocking, most tasteless movies came to an end years ago. I didn’t find any particular movie that offended me more than any other, as you may imagine, so don’t bother asking. I can name a few but why bother? I just stopped looking. I was no longer interested. Shock horror has a tendency to be unsophisticated crap, interested only in grossing you out and while I like a good gross-out flick as much as the next guy, most shit that’s out to shock you is trying to step so far over the line that once the movie has come to an end, you can’t even see the line from where you are. Garbage like the August Underground movies also tend to thrive on a mean-streak that leaves me wondering who those movies were intended for. Idiots and psychos, that’s who.

In the last few years, though, I’ve seen a few shockers that have not only shaken me to my jaded core, they surprised the hell out of me by not insulting my intelligence while displaying a knack for weaving a capable narrative. Mostly, France is responsible for this stuff. While I thought the poster child for French intensity, Martyrs (Review), was way overrated, I actually loved the living hell out of Inside (Review) even though I never want to see it again. It’s this sort of repulsion and anxiety about shockers that makes half of me want to avoid the latest big-hype shocker like the black plague while the other half is chomping at the bit to ride the latest international thrill ride. I know it’s going to make my skin crawl and I know I’ll probably be thinking about how unpleasant the movie was for days before I can finally put it out of my mind but there’s an adventurous part of me sewn deep into the seam of my being that craves that sort of significant emotional response like a drug and let me tell you something: The Human Centipede was like heroin to me.

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Trust me, true believers. I was about ready to throw in the towel. George A. Romero, for my money, is the most important figure in horror films ever. Is that statement too big for you? Does it frighten you? Can you debate this claim? Probably, but I’m not going to give you the chance because I need this crazy-ass claim to illustrate my point. So sit tight and keep reading.

See. A lot of horror fans point back to one movie; that one particular title where they went from casual rentals on a Friday night to a full fledged and very morbid hobby. For me, it was Day of the Dead. Not Dawn of the Dead like many others claim, not Night of the Living Dead in spite of my claims that its the perfect horror movie. Day of the motherfucking Dead, yo. The talky one. The one nobody seems to like.  Why? I have my reasons, mostly having to do with awesome special effects and Joe Pilato. I hold Romero in high regard. Night of the Living Dead was the flashpoint for a whole new generation of horror filmmakers and it changed the rules forever. It marked the official end of the silver age as we moved into the modern age of horror. It changed everything. So when George finally came back around to zombies with Land of the Dead, imagine my confusion. It was like I was in a Folger’s ad.

“We’ve secretly replace Bryan’s favorite master of zombie horror with your run of the mill low-budget director. Let’s see if he notices.”

Oh, I noticed, you assholes! I noticed big time. I even fell for it a second time when George announced that he was retconning the whole damn thing and trying something new. Diary of the Dead was a harbinger of doom as far as I was concerned. In my humble opinion, Diary of the Dead was the penultimate nail in the coffin and forecasts for further Romero zombie horror were dire. Announcements of his next project, cleverly titled Of The Dead were not met with enthusiasm and solicitations for screeners were turned down because I wasn’t certain that I could watch my favorite horror director die and then twist in the wind. I’m kind of glad I came to my senses because Romero has managed to pull himself out of a career-end free fall.

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Ah, Snuff. That enduring urban legend. Since the dawn of film, people have been passing around the horror story that sick motherfuckers in this world film murder for entertainment. Books have been written, documentaries have been filmed and not one shred of evidence has ever surfaced out there in this sick world of ours to support the claims of  the morality police that for the right price, you can buy an actual snuff movie. The advent of the internet has done so much to cultivate the mythology of the snuff film, as well. As much as I hate to believe it, people out there in the world want to watch this sort of thing. If this were untrue, my analytics wouldn’t rank me so high for the keyword “snuff film” and I can’t help it that I rank so well for that term. It just happens. The horrible irony of all this is that there’s plenty of death as entertainment out there on the web. A quick search in any given search engine will turn up Iraqi beheadings and Chechen rebels carving the throats out of Russian soldiers. Yet people want to believe that there is some kind of organized syndicate out there; operating in Bulgaria or Mexico City, producing snuff films in the traditional mold. I don’t know what’s worse. That people think there’s some kind of organized snuff film underground or that anyone would watch the execution of Daniel Pearl for fun and good times.

Yes, these are strange times we live in and in spite of overwhelming evidence that conclusively proves that there’s no such thing as an actual snuff film, the legend persists and horror filmmakers are going to latch onto the concept until the eventual heat death of the universe. It simultaneously repels and excites us. So here’s a review of the latest movie to squeeze as much energy out of it as possible.

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You know? Fred Olen Ray is psychic or something. Evil Toons opens with David Carradine trying to find a way to end the evil spell of the book and decides to kill himself… by hanging! The only thing missing was amyl nitrate and some women’s clothing.

The late 80s and early 90s were the only time when guys like Fred Olen Ray and Jim Wynorski could get away with making the movies that they do. I hate to say this but they just don’t make them like they used to. The hey-day of the home video market didn’t really have anything approaching a rulebook so forty thousand dollars, some exotic locations and a bunch of actresses more than willing to go topless was all you needed to make a mint. Scripts were strictly incidental. The people paying to have these movies made wanted to know if there would be tits and if so, how many. I’m telling you, what a weird industry.

It’s tough to review a movie like Evil Toons because no matter how you slice it, unless you outright trash the movie, you’re going to look like a total scumbag. The Fred Olen Ray experience is similar to spending 90 minutes in a strip club. Sure, you’re watching a horror movie, but the gore is minimal and the special effects aren’t terribly sophisticated because let’s face it, nobody watches Evil Toons for the suspense and gross out factor. You’re probably tuning in because half the cast are mid-profile porn stars or maybe, just maybe, you’re a Dick Miller fan.

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I readily admit that Mark Millar is one of the most interesting dudes working in comics right now. I sometimes feel like he’s a one-trick pony, though. I really, really didn’t care for Wanted, the comic not the movie. The final panel of the book pissed me off more than anything and anyone who spent their time and money following it should have been pissed off, too. Kick-Ass, though thematically removed, bore a lot of resemblance to Millar’s other book at the time, 1985. I guess his current book, Nemesis kind of sucks a dick, though. I can say one thing for the guy, at least he’s trying something different with comics and you know what they say about those who dare.

They win. At least that’s what I’m told.

I was ready for Kick-Ass. I loved the comic but I have something confess. I originally gave up on it after only two issues. I would come to regret that, of course. The book went into delay land. Word that it had been picked up for a feature production fueled the fan frenzy and pretty soon you couldn’t find back issues anywhere. Obviously,  I got caught up but by the time I got to the end I was stunned. How the hell was anyone going to make a movie based on that comic? It’s extremely fucking violent and embodies all of the fears that adults have for children these days.  It was also lots of fun and subtle shifts in theme and tone were able to take parts of the comic that felt like a comic and turned them into major dramatic setpieces with emotional weight. Kick-Ass, the movie, essentially became the Anti-Spiderman. This is the movie no parent would be taking their kids to and you won’t find action figures at Walmart, either.

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