Tagarchief: Horror

Zombie Flesh Eaters

Posted on by Jeppe Kleijngeld

OT: Zombi 2

Director: Lucio Fulci
Written by: Elisa Briganti
Cast: Tisa Farrow, Ian McCulloch, Richard Johnson, Al Cliver

Year / Country: 1979, Italy
Running Time: 91 mins.

Sun, sea and zombies in Lucio Fulci’s unofficial sequel to George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, which is weird considering that was a sequel itself (to Night of the Living Dead). Also, this film has nothing to do with Dawn. Well, it’s about zombies obviously and it pretty much kicks ass as well.

A seemingly abandoned sailboat is found in the New York harbor with a zombie on board (zombies are called ‘zombies’ in this flick. Cool huh?). A reporter and the daughter of the missing boat owner head for the Atlantic to find out what happened. Along with two friendly sailors they meet in St. Thomas, they head out for the supposedly cursed island Matool. Already underway they stumble upon a zombie who is fighting a shark underwater. This is a spectacular scene: classic stuff!

On the island, the struggle for survival really begins. The horror starts with the infamous eye splinter scene, another classic moment, but perhaps not so brutal if you see it coming. From then on it is kill or be killed for the main characters. Fulci is not known for delivering a subtle underlying message. Neither is he specialized in directing actors to towering heights. No, he is a man of the gore. And he does what he does best with this movie.

Compared to Romero’s classic to which this is supposedly a sequel, it is done in a more low budget style. There are fewer zombies and it certainly misses the intellectual layer. But, the tropical location is almost as cool as Dawn’s shopping mall, the make-up and special effects are far out, and the music adds to a creepy atmosphere. This might just be Fulci’s best film. Definitely a must see for zombie aficionados.

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Biography: Lucio Fulci (1927, Rome – 1996, Rome) originally studied medicine but quickly turned to filmmaking instead. He started his film career with directing comedies, musicals and spaghetti westerns. Later he turned to Italian shock horror films and made a name for himself as the goriest director ever. His international career came off the ground in 1979 when he directed Zombi 2, an unofficial sequel to George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, which had been released in Italy under the title Zombies. Fulci died from diabetes in 1996.

Filmography (a selection): The Thieves (1959) / The Jukebox Kids (1959) / Getting Away with It the Italian Way (1962) / The Strange Type (1963) / The Maniacs (1964) / 002 Operation Moon (1965) / How We Stole the Atomic Bomb (1967) / The Conspiracy of Torture (1969) / A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin (1971) / Don’t Torture Donald Duck (1972) / White Fang (1973) / Challenge to White Fang (1974) / Four of the Apocalypse (1975) / Silver Saddle (1978) / Zombi 2 (1979) / City of the Living Dead (1980) / The Beyond (1981) / The New York Ripper (1982) / Evil Eye (1982) / The New Gladiators (1984) / Dangerous Obsession (1986) / Zombi 3 (1988) / Demonia (1990) / Door to Silence (1991)

Cult Radar: Part 9

Posted on by Jeppe Kleijngeld

FilmDungeon is glad to explore the video trenches to find that oddball treasure between the piles of crap out there. Of Course, a treasure in this context can also be a film that’s so shockingly bad it’s worth a look, or something so bizarre that cult fans just have to see it. Join us on our quest and learn what we learn. Hopefully we’ll uncover some well-hidden cult gems.

Researched by: Jeppe Kleijngeld

Tormented (UK, 2009)

Directed by: Jon Wright
Written by: Stephen Prentice
Cast: Alex Pettyfer, April Pearson, Dimitri Leonidas

Fat schoolboy Darren got bullied to the point where he committed suicide. Tormented opens at his funeral. Not only do Darren’s tormentors don’t have any regrets whatsoever, they even throw a party to celebrate his demise. That’s just too much… Soon after, each member of the group of bullies starts receiving text messages from the dead Darren. They first think that someone is playing a prank on them, but as soon as the first body drops, they know they’re totally screwed. Tormented is a very effective horror flick that is both funny and inventively satisfying. Whether you thought high school was fun or not, this will keep you entertained for an hour and a half easily. Reviewer Kim Newman, who runs a Dungeon over at Empire Magazine gave it four stars also. It’s a recommendation.

Nude Nuns with Big Guns (USA, 2010)

Directed by: Joseph Guzman
Written by: Joseph Guzman, Robert James Hayes II
Cast: Asun Ortega, David Castro, Perry D’Marco

Violence, drugs, guns, boobs and off course lesbian sex. Nude Nuns With Big Guns is an immoral cocktail delivered by Freak Show Entertainment, the team behind the similar Run Bitch Run!. An abused nun has a vision from God. She is told to slay all sinners that are somehow connected to an elaborate heroin network, led by a money hungry padre who uses naked nuns as personnel. Sister Sarah is not supposed to show any mercy and she doesn’t! Is this entertaining? It kind of is in the sense that it is well shot and cut. Your eventual appreciation of Nude Nuns With Big Guns will depend mostly on your tolerance for graphic sex and violence featuring nuns. If this is low, you can easily deduct a star from this rating.

Hobo with a Shotgun (Canada, 2011)

Directed by: Jason Eisener
Written by: John Davies, Jason Eisener, Rob Cotterill
Cast: Rutger Hauer, Molly Dunsworth, Gregory Smith, Brian Downey

The awesome film poster promises an exploitation film pur sang and delivers. Hobo With a Shotgun was originally a fake trailer that won a Grindhouse competition organized by Robert Rodriguez. The story is about a homeless guy (Rutger Hauer) that takes on psychopathic scum in a city riddled with crime and depravity. Since it was made on a modest budget and has no Hollywood stars in its cast, it is more convincing than Tarantino’s and Rodriquez’ own Grindhouse pictures Death Proof and Planet Terror. The cheap violence gives you the real sense of watching a cult flick from the seventies. However, the sadistic violence is so excessive and beastly that it is hard to care about the characters at all, even the protagonists. The build-up is also not entirely effective; Hauer changes into a bloodthirsty vigilante in minutes, taking away some of the pleasure when he settles the score. Still, the underlying message about the human condition is well delivered and the exploitation feel is sublime; you can almost hear the exciting screams in the grindhouse theater. This hobo is certainly worth spending some loose change on.

Orcs! (USA, 2011)

Directed by: Andrew Black, James MacPherson
Written by: Anne K. Black, Jason Faller, Kynan Griffin and Justin Partridge
Cast: Adam Johnson, Renny Grames, Maclain Nelson

‘It’s an orc! No, it’s not. There is no such thing.’ A movie in which orcs show up in modern times sounds pretty horrendous. While certainly no masterpiece, Orcs! manages to entertain during its first half, which is basically a comedy about two idiot park rangers. Some jokes and The Lord of the Rings references are pretty funny. The second half is one long and tiresome battle against the orcs. This is the boring part. The costumes and special effects are laughable. All in all, don’t watch Orcs!. Just don’t!

Killer Klowns from Outer Space (USA, 1988)

Directed by: Stephen Chiodo
Written by: Charles Chiodo, Edward Chiodo, Stephen Chiodo
Cast: Grant Cramer, Suzanne Snyder, John Allen Nelson

From the special effects team behind Critters and Team America: World Police comes an original eighties classic. On a Friday night in Cove Crescent, a couple of youngsters witness a shooting star land nearby. At the place of impact, a circus tent appears, but what’s inside aint no funhouse… The acting in Killer Klowns From Outer Space may not be world class, but the production design is very well done and reason enough to check this out. It certainly beats cotton candy.

The Hills Have Eyes

Posted on by Jeppe Kleijngeld

Director: Wes Craven
Written by: Wes Craven
Cast: Dee Wallace Stone, Michael Berryman, Robert Houston

Year / Country: 1977, USA
Running Time: 86 mins.

A lesser known movie by horror master Wes Craven is The Hills Have Eyes, the shocking account of a family (the Carters) trapped in the desert and attacked by a family of cannibals. It reminds very much of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, both in story as in creepy execution.

Craven builds the tension up steadily. The cannibals are not seen for a long time (only heard) and then, during the nighttime, they appear and deliver a tremendous blow to the Carter family. Afterwards, the surviving Carters strike back and eventually become as brutal as their attackers when they seek revenge.

The movie is based on the legend of Sawney Beane and his family, a feral clan who inhabited and roamed the highlands of Scotland’s East Lothian County, near Edinburgh, in the early 1400s. They captured, tormented and ate several transients. They were eventually captured on the order of Scotland’s King James and brutally executed without a trial, inspiring the aspect of the film that the Carters become bloodthirsty themselves.

This is only Craven’s third movie after the horror movie The Last House On the Left (1972) and The Fireworks Woman (1975), an adult movie he directed under the alias Abe Snake. The Hills Have Eyes is very raw and contains violence that is still shocking by today’s standard. Some of Craven’s fans even say it is his best movie. It might just be true.

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Biography: Wes Craven (1940, Cleveland – 2015, Los Angeles) is the maker of a number of classic, genre bending horror films. The debut was the gruesome The Last House On the Left in 1972. In 1984 he reinvented the youth horror genre with A Nightmare on Elm Street, which became a genre classic and a popular horror franchise. Twelve years later, he again created a commercial and critical success with Scream. This film also spawned many sequels, three of them directed by Craven and all successful. Craven also occasionally worked within other genres, such as drama/music with Music of the Heart in 1999.

Filmography (a selection): The Last House on the Left (1972) / The Hills Have Eyes (1977) / Deadly Blessing (1981) / Swamp Thing (1982) / A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) / The Hills Have Eyes Part II (1985) / The Twilight Zone (1985-86, TV-episodes) / The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988) / Shocker (1989) / The People Under the Stairs (1991) / New Nightmare (1994) / Vampire in Brooklyn (1995) / Scream (1996) / Scream 2 (1997) / Music of the Heart (1999) / Scream 3 (2000) / Cursed (2005) / Red Eye (2005) / Paris, je t’aime (2006, segment: ‘Pere-Lachaise’) / My Soul to Take (2010) / Scream 4 (2011)

Bad Taste

Posted on by Jeppe Kleijngeld

Director: Peter Jackson
Written by: Ken Hammon, Tony Hiles, Peter Jackson
Cast: Terry Potter, Pete O’Herne, Craig Smith, Mike Minett

Year / Country: 1987, New Zealand
Running Time: 88 mins.

The Lord of the Rings isn’t the only movie-project Peter Jackson worked on for years. His debut Bad Taste, an amateur movie turned cult classic, took him four years to complete. Jackson and his friends shot it on weekends. The title says it all; a clan of extraterrestrials, under management of Lord Crump of Crump’s Country Delights, land in New Zealand because they think that with the delicacy of human flesh they will conquer the universe. But the government sends an anti-alien force and it’s splatter galore.

Bad Taste was filmed with amateur cameras and it shows. Still, because of Jackson’s dedication and perfectionism, the movie runs like clockwork; the steadicam shots and editing are done excellently. Also the improvised – no budget – special effects are very impressive. It’s even got an exploding sheep! True New Zealand style. You don’t have to look very closely to see that Jackson is a young master at work here. With his very own airbrush I might add. The gore is definitely not suitable for all stomachs.

Jackson felt he couldn’t let his friends do all the acting, so he took on one of the main parts himself. Derek (“Derek’s don’t run”) is a twisted maniac, who’s so devoted to saving planet Earth, that he is willing to kill and torture as many aliens as he can in the process. He is having as much twisted fun as his creator is. Jackson said in an interview one time that he would love to make Bad Taste 2. Let’s hope that he does, because it will be a blast to see Derek and the boys take on a new Lord Crump. “Those bloody bastards!”

Rating:

Biography: Peter Jackson (1961, Pukerua Bay, New Zealand) started making films at around the age of eight. His early short films already featured special effects that would become one of Jackson’s trademarks. Together with friends and family he worked on his first feature length movie Bad Taste which took him four years to complete. What had started as a joke became a cult classic and opened many doors for Jackson. He then made a number of professional horror films, including genre classic Braindead. Then he embarked on one of the most ambitious movie projects of all time; The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Jackson succeeded with glory and the three LOTR films were enormously successful. He continued with a remake of the film that inspired him the most as a filmmaker: King Kong.

Filmography (a selection): The Valley (1976, short) / Bad Taste (1987) / Meet The Feebles (1989) / Braindead (1992) / Heavenly Creatures (1994) / Forgotten Silver (1995) / The Frighteners (1996) / The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) / The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002) / The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) / King Kong (2005) / The Lovely Bones (2009) / The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012) / The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013) / The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014) / They Shall Not Grow Old (2018, doc) / The Beatles: Get Back (2021, TV Mini Series)