DVD:VIDEO NASTIES THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE

 

Back in the 80's when the Nasties furore was at its height, I was a regular borrower of videos from one of those corner shop video libraries. However, what I wasn't, still believing myself to overly squeamish, was a fan of gory horror movies. I remember fellow SF fan Harry Bell describing lurid details from Romero's Dawn of the Dead and Ian Penman insisting that I'd enjoy Evil Dead 2. Oh yeah, sure, like hell. I'd seen enough to clips and trailer of them and similar films for me to realise that I'd run a mile rather than see them. Of course I've now seen DotD several times and The Evil Dead (which I've just bought on Blu-ray) and ED2 are two of my favourite horror movies.

The point I'm leading up to is that at the time while being aware of the moves to ban the Video Nasties, my actual memory of the events surrounding them are vague in the extreme. I have, however, become more familiar with the details through reading various books about horror movies. And now along comes this DVD on the subject.

The focus of the DVD is Jake West's 60 minute documentary about the subject which features original contemporary footage and specially shot current interviews with a variety of horror experts and people who had been involved with the Nasties at the time. One is a smug ex-MP (Tory, unsurprisingly) who hasn't changed his views and another is Martin Barker the writer, then one of the few dissenting voices of reason opposing the witch hunt. West reveals an uncontrollable hysteria in which certain horror movies were put under the blanket Video Nasty label and anyone involved with them could find htemselves prosecuted and imprisoned. The VN's became the source of all the ills and evils in society and banning them was the cure. Barker accurately points out that this resembles the 50's persecution of horror comics, a persecution that was just as pointless and ill-informed. The media (in particular my old friend The Daily Mail -see many previous posts- always the bastion of ignorance and middle-class hysteria) seemed to wage war on these Nasties, prominently publishing the results of spurious surveys one of which claimed 40% of under 7's had watched one. An academic named Cumberbatch (any relation to the actor?) did his own survey which proved that kids would say anything that they thought adults would want to hear and happily claimed to have seen films whihc didn't exist. But watch the DVD for yourself, it's a fascinating revelation of how censorship can creep in through the back door before it even has the legitimacy of legality and is founded on sheer ignorance.

On disc 2 is a compilation of all the trailers to the 39 nasties which were successefully prosecuted and on disc 3, the 33 which were later acquitted. Each trailer has introduction (sometimes extensive, sometimes brief, all interesting) by a variety of writers and academics who can legitimately claim some expertise in the field. There's the usual suspects -Kim Newman, Alan Jones, and Allen Bryce- plus the lesser known but excellent Stephen Thrower. Director West has his mate Emily Booth do a few and she reads lasciviously from a cue card in the same manner she introduces horror movies on the Horror Channel (or Zone Horror or whatever it's called today). There are also a few academics and directors, most notably Dr Patricia McCormack, an Aussie Goth lecturing at a British university. She's very good but her appearance, particularly the nose ring, is a bit of a distraction from what she's saying. It's all good stuff and the sort of thing to be dipped into rather than watched all the way through.

Ironically, over 20 years later, most of these films have been released uncut on DVD and very few remain banned outright and those mostly for scenes of animal cruelty which is something I find hard to argue about. One of them- Contamination, which I've seen- is now, uncut, rated only 15. What we are presented with is an enormously diverse range of films from cheap trash to something approach Art, from exploitation to moral explorations. This set of 3 discs is packed with food for thought and debate -would I Spit On Your Grave have caused the same controversy if released under its original title Day of the Woman? I honestly can't make up my mind if it's sexist or feminist polemic or what.

DVD: CREATURE FEATURE: TEENAGE CAVEMAN

In 1958 the big reveal was that the past was actually the future.

In 2002 this is obvious from the outset.

After pissing off their tribe our six teenage caveboys and cavegirls set off on a journey and find the ruins of a city. They also find a teen couple who turn out to be over a hundred years old who were genetically engineered to survive the apocalypse. Neil, who unsurprisingly turns out to be the baddie, is one of the most irritating characters I have ever come across in a movie and the actor, Richard Hillman, ought to be shot as prances, gyrates, screams, sneers, and jibbers maniacally the entire time he is on the screen.

Anyway, he and his partner Judith (a stunning looking woman of Asian extraction despite her name) introduce our band (with the exception of the hero and heroine, see DVD sleeve above for their names) into the joys of drink, drugs, and sex (which goes some way to explaining the 18 rating when the other films in the series only managed a 15). Teeny problem: sex with either Neil or Judith infects their partner with the same virus they have only it doesn't always take and results in exploding organs. And if the sex doesn't kill them, Neil, bonkers from the start, will.

A strange little movie directed by Larry Clark (of controversial Kids fame) and written by Christos Gage (who has since, and probably wisely, gotten regular gigs writing comics for Marvel and other comic companies). Apart from me wanting to put Richard Hillman's head in a blender, the film had its moments and the attractive cast were often naked which made up for some of the annoyances and there was an adequate amount of gore. But, to be honest, it really was a pretty dumb movie.

DVD: CREATURE FEATURE: THE DAY THE WORLD ENDED

In 1955 they meant it literally.

In 2001 it's a metaphor.

 

Despite co-billing with Randy Quaid, Kinski is the main character along with Bobby Edner as the isolated and bullied psychic kid Ben. The strong core cast also includes Harry Groener (previously the jolly and totally evil mayor of Sunnydale in Buffy) and Stephen Toblowsky a well known character actor.

Kinski as a school shrink from NY arrives at the sort of small town where everybody stares at you, stop talking when you enter a room/bar, and have dark secrets. She befriends the disturbed Ben, though his doctor adopted father (Quaid) isn't happy about it. Ben is totally into Science Fiction (books, comics, movies) and is convinced that his father is an alien who will come to take him back to his home planet. His mother is dead. As he begins to remember things about his past an alien arrives and starts to kill people. Curiously it resembles an alien in an old b/w movie he sees on tv.

Major spoiler! I'm going to give away the film's big reveal now so if you have any intention of watching this DVD, don't continue reading. 

The alien is killing the people that Ben's subconscious knows were involved with the murder of his mother because they believed she was a dangerous psychic. While they knew Ben also had powers they couldn't bring themselves to kill a kid. The alien is a physical creation of Ben's subconscious.

So, not a bad little movie, well cast and acted, with a neat little revelation. This series of tv movies has been an enjoyable diversion. There's only one to go which I'll be watching soon and it's the worst reviewed of the lot. Could be fun.

SOCIETY: DOWN

It's sometimes chastening to remember that less than four hundred yards from my house there are people living in deprivation -financial, emotional, cultural deprivation.

Wednesday teatime and I got a call from Carol who looks after the cats for our rescue charity Animal Krackers. She wanted me to collect a cat from a woman who was going to a woman's refuge and her partner had threatened to kill the cat after she'd gone. I went, but not before first telling Carol that if there was any chance of violence directed at me then I'd be off like a shot. Hell, I'm five foot five and 62 years old. What would you do? I help animals, I'm not a hero.

The woman lived in a street that bordered a railway line -one side houses, the other side a high brick wall hiding a steep embankment. Some of the houses are divided into flats owned by landlords who are only a little above slum landlords and the woman lived in one such. To my relief I saw a police car parked outside and was ushered into the flat by a young (and, it must be said, attractive) policewoman. The cat owner's violent husband had been told by the police to stay away for at least an hour while the policewoman and her male counterpart sorted things out. The couple were known to the police, particularly the husband, and it seemed that this was the culmination of long periods of abuse.


The woman herself was small, thin, straggly haired, and with a wrinkled face. She might not have been much more than forty though she looked nearly twenty years older. Clearly agitated, her voice was quiet but her words stumbling and repetitive. I reassured her that the cat would be well looked after and I'd done this many times (not under these particular circumstances perhaps). Once she had got herself sorted in a new life, the cat would be returned to her.

The cat was somewhere in a small cluttered bedroom consisting of two single beds, a rickety thin-panelled wardrobe which looked as if it might fall over at any time, a well worn leather armchair, an inflatable and inflated armchair, and a floor littered with a variety of items including cassettes and an ash tray overflowing with the tab ends of dozens of rollups. Now all I had to do was find the cat and get it into the cat carrier.

First off, I closed the door to the hall and the double glass-panelled doors to the living room. Then I got on my knees and looked under the twin beds which had a 6 inch gap between frame and floor. I saw the black and white cat but when I tried to touch it it moved quickly and disappeared. Unless you've actually had a cat, you'd be surprised how easily they can hide themselves in the smallest of spaces, places you would think it impossible for them to fit. It took me ten minutes before I finally trapped it in a corner, moving the leather armchair agains the wall so that the cat couldn't go anywhere except towards me.

He was fat and healthy and, once I had hold of him and was stroking him, relatively amenable. With only a little effort, I managed to get him in the cat carrier. And that's when things got awkward.

The woman -I can't remember her name, let's call her Mary- Mary said abruptly, "I'm not leaving him. I love him, he's my best friend, I love him."

The policewoman said, "Mary, we've been through all this. You can't take him into the refuge and you can't stay here."

"I don't care. I'm not leaving him and if you take him I'll kill myself."

I said, "It's only for a little while. You'll get him back when you've got you life in order. He'll be fine with us."

She got more agitated. "It doesn't matter, you're not taking him. I know what you're saying but you're not taking him. You're a lovely man and I know you'll do what you say but you're not having him."

"Look, if you stay here with the cat, you're putting yourself and the cat at risk and you said he hit him."

"Just the once. He gets under the bed clothes when I'm in bed and cuddles up to me every night. I love him."

Variations of this conversation went on between Mary -who had become almost completely irrational, aware that her actions were self-defeating but, focussing solely on the cat to the exclusion of everything else, refused to change her mind-   myself and the two officers for about twenty minutes before the policewoman pretty much gave up. She asked if I'd hang around in the van a few minutes longer while they made a last attempt to salvage the situation. Mary gave me a hug before I left and thanked me profusely and I let the cat out of the carrier. I talked briefly to the policewoman at the door, giving her my phone number and address if they needed me back later.

(I want to state very clearly, that the two officers behaved with compassion and patience throughout and they impressed me a lot.)

I wish I could say that they did get in touch but they didn't. I'm assuming that Mary and the cat stayed in the flat and waited for the return of her abusive husband. What happened then, I don't know. We (that is me, Susan, and Andrea) know a lady three doors down whom we've helped with a dog she rescued and Andrea will contact her to see if she knows of any developments.

As I said, the couple are known to the police, particularly the husband who gets violent when he gets drunk, which is often. How genuine the risk to the cat is I don't know but I suspect the risk to her is far greater and my disappointment at the end result is not about failing to save the cat but failing to save Mary.

(This is also being published in my cat rescuing blog.)

DVD: BEAST OF BLOOD

 

I'm not going to waste too much time on this as it's easily the weakest of the series, though it opens well minutes after the end of Mad Doctor of Blood Island. The monster is on board the boat and kills lots of people. the boat explodes, the monster ends up back on Blood Island and months later John Ashley (the only survivor) is on his way back to Blood Island with a new leading lady.

The Mad Doctor has survived but is now played by Eddie Garcia and he orders the kidnap of leading lady Celeste Yarnall and the rescue mission takes up most of the rest of the movie. The nubile daughter of the chief removes her top to seduce our hero but he has the hots for the (white) leading lady. The monster who can survive having his head and body separate doesn't play much part. There's a fair bit of splatter but it has little impact despite what it says on the DVD sleeve above. Considering this was written/produced/directed by Eddie Romero it's a big disappointment with none of the creaky charm of the previous films.

DVD: CREATURE FEATURE: HOW TO MAKE A MONSTER

In 1958 they did it with latex-

 

In 2001 it was computers-

Desperate for a hit game, a company hires three experts -the nerd with low self esteem, the cool black guy with too much, and Tyler Mane as the aggressive one to create a pants-wetting video game. They pretty much get locked in a room with the idealistic intern (Clea Duvall), and the cynical manager (Steven Culp) and proceed to get on each others nerves. There are extended cameos by executive producer Colleen Camp as the top bitch company boss and B-movie actress Julie Strain playing a B-Movie actress called "Julie Strain" who gets her kit off to wear a motion-capture suit. Pay attention, that was important.

After the usual fuckups, the computer decides to play the game for real with each of our 5 protagonists representing a game 'life' and the motion capture suit as the game's monster. The suit does this by killing off our heroes and attaching bits of them to itself until it finally looks like the game monster.

Given that there is only a small cast and a small location, there's plenty going on to hold the interest  such as the sexual tension/clash of views between Duvall and Culp which has an interesting resolution and not the one you expect. This keeps going along nicely until the film finally turns into a gory stalk and slash until there's only one 'life' left.

Duvall is good, Strain (who should have been in longer) is fun, and Tyler Mane proves he can act rather than just growl or shout insults (cf X-Men).

The weakest of the three to date but still fun despite the dated computer graphics.

CULTURE: HALLOWEEN PARTS 1 & 2

1.  HALLOWEEN HELL.

Sport is something you are highly unlikely to read about in this blog simply because I have less than 0.000recurring01% interest in it. The 000recurring01% of interest I do have is restricted to lerning how well my local football team, Sunderland, is doing and to a lesser extent the fortunes of other local teams.

Now it happens that this Halloween was a Newcastle-Sunderland derby when feelings run high but the game usually turns out to be a disappointment for both sides. The recent form of both teams is not too dissimilar with Sunderland having the slightly better run by virtue of only losing one match, winning two, and drawing the rest. Newcastle is a bit more inconsistent. I expected a goalless draw or maybe a one goal win for Sunderland.

So how the holy fuck did those Geordie bastards put 5 past our goalkeeper and we could only manage 1 in reply!

2.  WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO HALLOWEEN?

Childless adults can do either one of two things on Halloween night. Like my sister in law, you can draw the curtains, turn all the lights off, and pretend you're not in. Or, like me, you can lay razor wire at a height of 6 inches across the front path and for any kids who get over that you can open the door and remove your front teeth which, in my case, serves to emphasise my pointed canine teeth, and then scream loudly. Trick or treat, little bastards.

Only kidding. Ho ho ho. Nah, I went to Lidl and, among other stuff, picked up a few bags of sweets to hand out to the little angels.

So, it's 5.30 and dark outside and I'm expecting a knock on the door any moment. Susan is at the Animal Krackers shop so I've settled down with the new Ken Follett novel ("Unputdownable", "Novel of the year", Freethinking magazine) and the tv on in the background. 5.45 and there's a knock at the door. Two kids and their mother and I pass over a handful of sweets. Half an hour later and Susan has returned. No more knocking on the door. 7.00 and there's a knock but it's Susan's brother and they're off to see their mother.  I pick up the Ken Follett book. Susan is back by eight and there have been no knocks on the door and there won't be for the rest of the night.

So: what the hell happened to Halloween because it didn't happen in Weldon Avenue, Sunderland.

DVD: CREATURE FEATURE: THE SHE CREATURE

In 1956, She came from the past!

In 2001, She came from the sea!

 In both cases you have the privilege of seeing before and after. Except for one of them you have to stand on your head in front of your pc to see what the after is like.

This is actually the first of the Creature Feature series, though they were all made in a fairly short span of time, and I'll be suprised if it isn't the best. Sewell runs a fake freak sideshow in Ireland just after the turn of the last century and Gugino (with a convincing non-American accent) is his fake mermaid and lover with a shady past. One aging and drunk customer who has come to check out the mermaid actually has a real one in captivity and it killed his wife. Sewell, seeing money signs in front of his eyes, kidnaps it with one of his men (who plays a fake zombie) accidentally killing the old man in the process. Sewell gets it on board a ship bound for the States without the crew realising. Which is when thing start to get bad.

The mermaid is very effectively done. Human (and naked) from the waist up without swirling hair conveniently obscuring certain parts, but with odd bits of fins sticking out from her back and a long and very finny and warty lower half. Although non-speaking per se, the actress playing the mermaid is convincing. 

She also has psychic powers and it's clear quite early on that she is playing a game with Gugino, Sewell, and various supporting characters. One of the crew (Gill Bellows) knew Gugino from when she 'worked' in London and took all his money.  Shortly after threatening her, the mermaid gets loose and he disappears with claims that she's eaten him. This is ludicrous of course as she's human size. Eaten large chunks of him yes, but not swallowed him whole. Or did she?

Tension builds, new facts are discovered, and mist covers the ship until the mermaids plans are revealed and it becomes an all-out monsterfest when we see her true form and it's pretty ugly. This is a good well-made chiller and a nifty variant on the mermaid legend. Plus a neat little surprise at the end as all good horror movies should have.

Okay, She also comes from the sea as well.

This mermaid you don't want to bring home to meet your mum.

Happy Halloween.

DVD: CREATURE FEATURE: EARTH VS THE SPIDER

In the early years of the 21st century someone came up with an idea which would revolutionise nothing. It would, nevertheless, provide some entertainment for fans of monster movies. The idea was that, using the titles of some AIP horror movies produced by the legendary Samuel Z (pronounced Zee) Arkhoff, a new production team which included Lou, son of Samuel Z, and the equally legendary Stan Winston would create new and different movies. While made for cable on a relatively low budget, these movies would nevertheless look good and star moderately well-known actors including the likes of Rufus Sewell, Carla Gugino, Clea Duvall, Dan Aykroyd, Theresa Russell, Natassia Kinski, etc.

I'd seen a couple of these when they were first released on DVD, under the banner title Creature Features, borrowing them from a nearby and now long-closed Blockbuster store and rather enjoyed them. In the last few days I've discovered all five of them available on Amazon and all for £3.00 or less. A couple of them have pretty terrible reviews but what the hell I thought and ordered the lot. And here is the first I watched.

Now the original was a giant monster movie so popular in the 50's but this one comes over as a cross between Spiderman and Cronenberg's version of The Fly.

Nice but ineffectual security guard superhero obsessed (The Arachid, a Spiderman type) Quentin has a crush on a pretty young nurse who lives in the same rundown apartment building and they are both harrassed by a couple of young thugs. After a tragedy at work (genetic engineering research experimenting on spiders) Quentin injects himself with spider juice which at first appears to give him super powers -he's certainly strong enough to save the girl from a serial-killer- but is actually turning him into a spider-monster with all the attendant inclinations. He even got his own action-figure.

Investigating is weary detective Grillo (Aykroyd) haunted by the death of his partner and stressed out by his slatternly wife (Theresa Russell).

And it's all rather good fun with plenty for both superhero and monster movie fans. The acting is fine, the effects, both cgi and mechanical (Stan Winston remember) are very good, the pace is good, particularly towards the end and Devon Gummersall (of whom I've never heard) is excellent as the nerdy hero turning into haunted monster. I'd seen this before and remember it as being fun and it still is.

Coming soon to this blog -explosion of thunder- is She Creature!

BOOK REVIEWS: CHRIS MULLIN -DECLINE & FALL: DIARIES 2005-2010

From the introduction:

"... by the end of the Thatcher decade, male unemployment in Sunderland stood at well over 20%; today it is less than half that... In 1997 you could wait up to two years for a hip operation at City Hospital Sunderland; at the time of writing the waiting time is 18 weeks and falling. At Sandhill View, a secondary school  in my constituency, in the early nineties fewer than 10 per cent of pupils were achieving the standard 5 GCSEs at grades A to C; today that figure is nearly 80 per cent. There are many other examples I could cite. No-one can tell me that Labour governments don't make a difference."

Chris Mullin was my Member of Parliament for the last 23 years, standing down at this year's General Election, and these are the diaries of his last five years in Parliament. As with the previous volume, they are well written, honest, perceptive, compassionate, possessing a sly wit, and, for political diaries, extremely interesting and very readable.

When I first learned that Chris was to be our MP, which was as soon as he was selected -a Labour victory in Sunderland being a foregone conclusion- I was both impressed and a little wary. Impressed, because he came here with an established reputation for integrity as his victorious uphill battle to free those wrongly convicted of the Birmingham bombings (when he was excoriated and vilified by the right-wing press, among others) demonstrated. There was never a question in my mind that he would do his best for Sunderland. I'd also read and enjoyed his novel The Last Man Out Of Saigon. A writer (and journalist) as our MP! 

My reservations concerned his reputation as a member of the loony left -a phrase I now despise and maybe I'd been reading the Daily Mail too much (which I did at the time).  Back then I'd have considered myself to be maybe a tiny bit left of centre while Chris, I regarded, as being of the far left. Having read his diaries and learned more about him, this is probably something of simplification and a disservice to him. He is a socialist (with a small 's' as he describes it), always was and always will be, but he also an open-minded person seeing truth when it is shown to him from different ends of the political spectrum and he has good friends from both (including a man I find absolutely loathesome -the Tory grandee Nicholas Soames). I suppose I'd really call him a principled pragmatic idealist. He's probably moved over to the slightly right of centre left (whatever that is) while I've gone the other way and am probably on the borders of left of centre left and the radical left (whatever they are).

For 23 years as an MP Chris has fought for the City of Sunderland and for the people of Sunderland, including (though it didn't win him many friends among his constituents) for immigrants who wanted to stay in Sunderland, something I approve of. I remember being on the City library enquiry desk and trying to help an immigrant who wanted to be relocated from Sunderland because of the racism. I could only apologise and tell him we weren't all like that. He's fought to do the right thing in Parliament and to get Parliament to do the right thing to regain the respect of the public for its representatives, and he has been knocked back so many times. He's seen the Labour Party nearly tear itself apart because people who should know better keep doing the wrong thing.

All this is detailed in his diaries. What is also mentioned, all too briefly, is his love for his family, indeed absolute adoration of his daughters (the pride he has in his eldest who is studying at Oxford), and his love for the North East countryside. I have heard it cynically said that now he's no longer an MP he'll be buggering off back to Birmingham as if his tenure here is over. The Mullins may well move but it won't be because his sentence has come to an end.

Chris Mullin was my MP for 23 years and I couldn't have wished for a better one. Thank you, Chris, for all you have done. Now enjoy your retirement, mate. You've earned it.

Photo of Chris and his daughters, ironically, from the Daily Mail, as is the one below.

He's even mates with-

God, I'm so jealous.

DVD: THE MAD DOCTOR OF BLOOD ISLAND

So:

Is there more gore than Brides of Blood? Yes!

Is there more nudity than Brides of Blood? Yes!

Is there more sex than Brides of Blood? Yes! (But then there wasn't any really at all in BoB)

Is the monster better than Brides of Blood? Um, possibly.

Is it better than Brides of Blood? Yes! Er, no, er, maybe. Ah hell, I just liked of Brides of Blood more.

First off, this isn't the same Blood Island as the last one. It just happens to be an island named Blood where strange things happen. There are no wobbly plants or other mutations. John Ashley returns as the lead but he's a different character. So it's a sequel in name only, and that it's a horror movie set on an island named Blood.

Ashley (see main cast on poster above) is a pathologist sent by the government to investigate stuff. Pettyjohn (a younger actress than Beverly Hills in BoB but just as well endowed) has come to find her father whom she hasn't seen since she was twelve -he's become an alcoholic beach bum. Remy is the doctor with a gammy leg, a sinister manservant, and a superior attitude. Guess who is the title character? Go on, guess. No, you're wrong, it isn't Ashley it's Remy. What a shocking reveal. Not listed above but the third person on the boat is young Alfonso Carvajal as Ramu who has come to get his mother off the island where his father died several years ago. His mother, Tita Munoz is quite a hottie (40 at the time and looks younger and Ramu -or rather the actor- looks as if he's looking at her wishing she wasn't his mum or what she's doing when shooting is finished for the day) and she doesn't want to leave, preferring to stay and help the Mad Doctor. Also hanging around the Mad Doctor's house is Ramu's childhood friend Marla, now a nubile and available young woman.

Um, oh yes, the Chlorophyll Monster. There seem to be a few people O.D.ing of excess chlorophyll as diagnosed by the Mad Doctor who recommends soup for a recovering victim, "but no vegetables." But there is only one Chlorophyll Monster who follows a naked native girl (she'd been skinnydipping) and rips her apart in the opening scene.

After that there's a lot of character stuff and info dumping broken up by odd stuff like Pettyjohn's alky dad doing the peeping tom act on a skinnydipping native girl -bad! bad!- before we cut back to the monster doing the hack and slash and shaking it (severed heads, limbs) all about.

Ramu finds a letter from his departed daddy dated a few months after departed daddy's death. What can this mean? Let's open his tomb and find- a python which Ashley manly throws into the bushes- but no body.

To cut a long story short: Marla had sex with Ramu's dad starting when she was fourteen and he was the best lover she's ever had but this doesn't stop her stripping off and jumping on Ramu. Pettyjohn gets naked and gets it on with Ashley. Tastefully, despite a briefly glimpsed boob. Or it might have been a shoulder. I'd taken a statin tablet earlier than I should have, closed my eyes and opened them again at the scene below.

The Mad doctor kidnaps Ramu. The Monster kills several more people. Ashley discovers the secret laboratory where the Mad Doctor has been experimenting on people and rescues Ramu. The Monster (Ramu's father) arrives and rips his nubile young ex-girlfriend to shreds Oh, and he also killed his wife earlier, the luscious Tita Munoz whom I suspect I've gone on way too much about. Big explosion, Mad Doctor and Monster die. Our three heroes leave the island older and wiser.

Well, yes I enjoyed it but it somehow lacked the more naive charm and clunky chunky monster of its predecessor. The jacket blurb quotes someone saying that it's the goriest of horror movies from the 60's except for Herschell Gordon Lewis's sadistic schlock. This may be true in terms of body parts strewn about but you don't actually see them being removed in detail unlike, as I've said, the sadistic and cruel garbage by Lewis so they don't really have much impact. Still, I'll be keeping it and watching it again sometime.

And before I go, here's the Mad Doctor himself with Ashley and Pettyjohn.

And here's the Mad Monster about to turn his ex-girlfriend into top quality mince.

COMING SOON!

COMING SOON!

COMING REAL SOON!

 DARE YOU READ THE POST?

dARE YOU LOOK AT THE HORRIFYING IMAGES WHICH WILL BE DISPLAYED HERE!

IN THIS BLOG!

VERY SOON!

IN BLOOD COLOR!

DO YOU REALLY DARE?

DVD: BRIDES OF BLOOD/ BEAST OF THE YELLOW NIGHT/ KEEP MY GRAVE OPEN

In the right mood, I'm quite fond of a series of US/Phillipines co-production, particularly this one, which usually have blood in the title and are sometimes even related like Mad Doctor of Blood Island which I've recently ordered. But Brides of Blood (1968) in particular is big fun. They're made cheaply enough, a fading/aging star as lead, with a handful of American actors in the other major roles, the rest done by Phillipino cast and crew. The director is Eddie Romero, a national treasure (if you're a Phillipino) and legend in his homeland and this is one of his earlier works.

Basically an aging American scientists (Kent Taylor) comes to Blood Island to do some scientific research. He's brought along his younger sluttish wife (Beverly Hills aka Beverley Powers, who is damn sexy) who has a quickie with a rough trade sailor before they've disembarked.

Also along is John Ashley as the young male lead here to help the primitive people with social projects like irrigation.What they find is that plant and insect life are prone to sudden  mutation which sometimes just abruptly reverses itself which is all a result of nuclear testing a few hundred miles away. So we get lots of dangerous plants with wobbly rattling branches and lumpen roots just waiting for someone to grab and turn and wrap them around themselves as if they were actually moving. To be fair, this is quite effective.

They soon learn that there's a monster on the island and the islanders are sacrificing, by means of a lottery, the local virgins to appease its hunger. This means the population is on a rapid downward spiral as it's a small island with a small and getting rapidly smaller population. So the sacrifices are pretty stupid really but at least the monster doesn't wreck the village as it passes through on its way to the sacrificial area where the girls are tied up after having their tops riffed off to entertain the viewer, I mean to make it easier to get at the meat. The headman has a nubile daughter who speaks English and the young male lead isn't exactly immune to her charms. And who can blame him?

This still is taken from the ritual courting dance (at the end of the movie after....) where the soon to be ex-virgins dance to entice their chosen mate. Towards the end the headman's daughter gets up and couldn't make her intentions more plain if she had a neon sign above her head saying "Shag me! Now!", though it takes the young male lead a little while to get the message before he finally stands up and she drags him into the bushes. Literally.

But you aren't interest in that soppy rubbish, you want to know about the monster. Well it so happens there's an old mansion on the hill where lives an educated and handsome Spanish type aged between the young and old leads (and you just know can't be totally kosher as he has a sinister manservant  and load of midgets to do the housework) and whom Beverly gets the hots for. This is a mistake as every night he turns green, toothy, and carnivorous.

There are various exciting bits with man-hungry plants (as opposed to man-hungry Beverley), the monster, chasing the young lead when he rescues her above before she can be eaten by the monster, and stuff like that. This is the movie that the word cult was created for.

Just recently, and as a result of my foray into the world of Rareflix, I came across another Eddie Romero film -Beast of the Yellow Night (1971)- as part of a Grindhouse double with Keep My Grave Open (1976).

John Ashley from Brides is the lead here. The idea is interesting but not much happens with it. Satan sort of  saves an American murderer (living in the Phillipines, as if it would be set anywhere else) from the police and has him inhabit the bodies of decent people and corrupt them at which point he moves on to someone else. Twenty years later he's given the body of an American businessman whose face was blown thereby enabling Ashley to have his own face restored.

Much to Satan's annoyance he begins to fall in love with his new wife and to start having regrets about his previous evil deeds so Satan has him change periodically into the Beast of the title. I don't, however, know what a Yellow Night has to do with anything as it's never mentioned once. Needless to say, it all ends badly and with a face like this it's no surprise.

Keep My Grave Open is an interesting little curio. Someone in a big house appears to be murdering intruders, or anyone they dislike, with a sword. Now there are only two people living there, a brother and sister, but we only ever see the sister -the lead played by Camilla Carr- who is as batty as a fruit cake.

Aha, thinks the perceptive horror fan -in this case, your humble writer- there is no brother! (Did you hear the rumble of thunder at the end of that sentence?) Or he's dead and she killed him because she is the murderer!

That he's not around at the very least appears to be born out when she puts on makeup and offers herself to him for sex. We seen no sign of him, though the camera takes what would be his point of view. Fruitcake, murderer, right?

She has a young handyman and a girl comes round pestering him at work for sex. Once night she comes round and the madperson with a sword kills her. A few scenes later, just after the sort of sex scene, the handyman calls and it appears the sister is trying to seduce him. What happens is, wearing the clothes of the killer, she kills him. With the sword. Now, totally bananas, she lures a prostitute, whom the handyman had sex with, to the house to have sex with her brother just in case he'd told her anything. She then appears, dressed as her brother and, after a long stalk and chase during which she gets slashed in the arm, she manages to kill the woman who tried to hide in a station wagon where the sister had stored the bodies.

She calls her shrink, gives him her will, and takes an overdose. Only two people attend the funeral. And that is it.

Hold it! Where do you think you're going? I only thought that was it. After the mourners have gone, the brother appears and makes a few comments before going to the house, picks up a spade and, looking at the bodies, says, "Well you could have buried them for me."

Da dum! I didn't see that one coming and I had to rethink the whole movie. So he killed the first... And he did have... And he was...

Neat little twist. Better movie than I expected. Reasonably okay print unlike Beast which was fucking terrible. That's all folks.