Tuesday, March 31, 2015

Lemora: A Child's Tale of the Supernatural

Lemora: A Child's Tale of the Supernatural (Lady Dracula, Rape of the Vampires) Directed By Richard Blackburn, Starring Cheryl "Rainbeux" Smith (1973).

I'm not used to seeing Cheryl "Rainbeux" Smith in this non exploitive light, because she's bared her nekidness in all sorts of genre films (sexploits, Women in prison ones and blaxploitation like Drum the sequel to Mandingo). Lemora fits in the rare category of supernatural 50's gangster movies, there's only one other I can think of and that's Ruby with Piper Laurie. 

Lila (Smith) is the symbol of Christian purity, usually this would be stomach turning to me, but I'm used to seeing this actress in such a filthy light, that this kind of squeaky clean pedestal serves to elevate her image. She plays the daughter of a notorious gangster, who all the trash in town seem jealous of. They show headlines that say, "Devil's daughter is a Goodie goodie" or something to that effect (I'm guessing he raised her in a convent).

That's right "Squeaky Clean, got it?"

The creepy reverend in the church played by director Blackburn has got the hots for Lila and makes an example out of her. It seems as if he's using her as a charity case to make himself look better. A group of spooky hooded figures surround her gangster father and as he drives on the road, a pair of hollow sunken eyeballs are excruciatingly close and hover over the car (later on we discover these pupils belong to Lemora the Lady Vampire. It's funny seeing a wise guy being taken down by goths in halloween costumes!

Pardon me, I have to get back to the set of a Lucio Fulci film.

Lila walks downtown in a seedy area. The town is full of perverse sordid characters on the verge of raping Lila, the holy daughter. There's even a hillbilly country bumpkin song they play as she strolls thru the den of iniquity. There's all kinds of sleazy double entendres going on, the ticket taker offers her chocolates and wonders if she likes hard or soft centers!

Now take off your shoes, PU, whoops I mean bra

She gets on a bus with a warbly eyed slimeball who drives her to the next town. The bus driver is played by Hy Pyke, the gay teacher from Hollywood High, there was some welcome unintentionally delightful casting! He seems freaked out by the woods and ghouls start pounding on the doors and rush in and kill him. The makeup is creative and the monsters have coarse Brillo hair and fangs they have the same "Thing Maker" looking features as the zombies in Burial Ground.

Good thing this bus is propelled by my own natural gas!

She's confronted by a haggard witch who stares into the camera and sings an out of tune threatening lullaby, while circling the scared girl.

Just like a white wing dove, sings a song just like she's singgiinnn oooooohh

Everything in this film is stricken by blue lights and the editing and production value is great!
Lemora shows up all dressed in a black cloak, she has a pasty face and a huge forehead. There are some Lesbian tendencies with her character and Lila, I guess it's vaguely Countess Bathory-esque, but not quite. Lila eats raw bloody meat from a bowl (man she should've called for pizza instead)! Everybody bosses the timid pious girl around and treats her like a second class citizen, this is the wrong approach to convert someone over to the dark side if you ask me!

Don't laugh at me, I was born with a eggshell for a forehead

This movie is very surreal and original, but very confusing as well (it's nightmarish for sure). It's one of those films had I seen as a child, I would've been creeped out enough to seek it out and wonder if it held up.
Remember Kids, you can recreate me by using Barber hair clippings and Cold cuts!

Lila sits along with some dead kids who all drink wine, which is really blood and whenever they laugh it's really high pitched and echoey. Lila is forced to sing Christian hymns to the weird kids ( who are dressed like pirates).  Lemora spins her around 70 times as a Victrola plays. She wants the evil to penetrate her obnoxious Christian values.

I'm so good I never went go to detention, I'm the man

Lemora gets her to take a bath in one of those old timey chair tubs as the vampire remarks how exciting her body is! They block it with towels so we don't get to see it yet (she's supposed to be playing a 13 year old but was at least 17 at the time).

I get a Tobe Hooper Eaten Alive swampy vibe from this film, the music and locations are very reminiscent, but it's also kind of like a "Very special Halloween episode of Little House on the Prairie".

Rainbeaux would go onto to B-movie Corman gems like Caged Heat and Revenge of the Cheerleaders, some of my favorite films of hers are Up in Smoke, Massacre at Central High and Laserblast (well the MST3K version that is). Sadly, she died at 47 after complications from an illness related to heroin addiction. There is footage of her playing drums for The Runaways in the trainwreck movie "Du-Beat-e-o" (with El-Duce from The Mentors). This was her only starring role and she mostly played naked hippy chicks just hanging out in the background, (Tarantino allegedly based the Bridget Fonda character from Jackie Brown on her) so it's important to see what she was capable of as an actress. It's fun and spooky for what it is and the director went onto co-write Eating Raoul. Check it out, it's available on Fandor.


Saturday, March 28, 2015

Curse of the Devil





Hey bring back my head!



Ooops, I accidentally turned into poodle man!


CONSTANZA! see it works sometimes


Mama-Mia, thissa some spicy red-a meatsauce



Come on wolf, you're making us canines look silly!




Did you fall asleep under a rock again?

Wednesday, March 25, 2015


Vendetta Directed By Tony Leung Siu-Hung, Starring Kent "Fatty" Cheng Jak-Si (1993). 

--Review by Goat Scrote--

     This is a goofy and violent Hong Kong supernatural flick. Elevator pitch? Home Alone meets The Omen, with a dash of HK crime-movie action for flavor. I had fun watching it, although it’s not as bloody, raunchy, or effects-laden as I expected and there’s no particular quality of the film that really stands out. It’s a pleasant diversion for fans of this kind of thing, but it’s not worth going too far out of your way for it.

     The movie centers around clean-cut pregnant couple Kitty (Linda Liu Shui-Chi) and David. David (Ray Lui Leung-Wai) is a cop, and in the line of duty he faces off with a trio of crazed thugs. The evil trio is a family, two brothers and a sister. I can only imagine the kind of parenting that led up to this senseless killing and looting spree. The thugs take hostages and end up surrounded by police. Just to be dicks, they pitch one of the hostages out a high window! A bloody slapstick gunfight follows and the two youngest thugs end up spectacularly dead at the hands of the young cop.

you've broken the windows with that nuclear fart!

     David sees phantoms of the dead duo, covered in blood, lurking in the hospital where his wife is delivering twins.  The cop has a vision of the killers taunting him from his children’s cribs. Animals go insane or simply drop dead when the babies are brought near. It seems clear that the children are possessed by vengeful ghosts.

no it's a homicidal infant!

     As Cindy (Cheng Chong) and Tony (Leung Sap-Yat) grow up they seem mostly normal, except they both have birthmarks on the forehead in the same spots where their father shot the thugs. They aren’t very nice to their dad, either. When they get a little older they begin trying to “accidentally” kill him. They manage to inflict a variety of minor injuries. Then they puncture one of his eardrums so he goes deaf in that ear. The husband finally recognizes that his own spawn really are out to get him, but his wife still won’t accept that.

Maybe you're just a shitty father?

     Meanwhile in prison the eldest brother, Hung Long (ha!) bites the fingers off a guard. He later uses the poor nine-fingered bastard’s wedding ring to pick a lock and attack more guards. When the TV news reports his escape, the little kids cheer and celebrate.

YAY! Our real dad is coming to bite off other appendages

     The cops find Hung Long (Tommy Wong Kwong-Leung), but he slaughters them and gets away. David manages to survive thanks to his bulletproof vest. Afterwards he carelessly leaves his gun laying around and takes a nap. The kids find it and nearly manage to take him out. He knows they are possessed, but he doesn’t know what to do about it. To make matters worse, he finds the corpse of his best friend, murdered and mutilated by Hung Long, who is looking for revenge.


     The kids are acting creepy as usual, and Mom ends up taking a tumble down the stairs and going to the hospital. Dad sets an improvised bomb in the kid’s room rigged to the light switch and sets other deathtraps around the house to prepare for Hung Long’s arrival. He locks the kids in their room and visits the hospital, which gives Hung Long an opportunity to get into the house and wait for him.

Yeah you need to go on a diet like me!

     The two get into an extended fight which ends when Long gets blown up. David pulls his dead children from the wreckage. They are both saved when his tears fall on their magic birthmarks. Lightning strikes all three of them, and the evil spirits are driven out of his kids, along with the birthmarks. They awaken, call him Daddy, and the credits roll.

Millie Vanilli were right, the rain does have magical powers!

     The version I saw was presented in four languages simultaneously. It had two sets of subtitles and each of the stereo tracks was in a different language. That was a little off-putting but the action made up for the confusing aural experience and the subtitle text running off the bottom of the screen now and then. Editor Notes: This one is a super rare VCD that Skunkape had to smuggle out of some treacherous locations, risking life and limb to procure a copy. A few years ago we reviewed a WIP title called Vendetta that's probably on par with the action in this flick and thankfully there's no scene with Sandy Martin hiding contraband in her cooch! There are seriously too many movies with this title, this one and the Bruce Logan film are my favorites.   

SORRY NO LINK (extremely rare film)

Thursday, March 19, 2015

Stone Age Warriors

Stone Age Warriors Directed By Stanley Tong, Starring Siu-Wong Fan (1991).

The first time I attempted to watch this scrambled quality film, I got a migraine and had to shut it off. The subs flew by at lightning speed and everything was too grainy. This director went onto super stardom when he paired up with Jackie Chan in his American debut, Rumble in the Bronx. According to Clyde Gentry III's book on Chan "Inside the Dragon", the actor was so impressed by what he saw in Stone Age that he hired Tong on the spot.

The version I watched on Youtube recently was easier on the eyes but still, it needs a re-release. In the catalog, Chas Balun really oversold this one, claiming it has "carnivorous lizards, face flesh-munchers and unscripted animal antics." Sounds pretty mind-blowing to me, so here goes my second attempt with this film.

Down in the jungles of Papua New Guinea (a perfect location for an Italian Cannibal film), pasty slow moving natives chop off limbs and ambush a group of Asian adventurers, luckily they have machine guns to battle flying arrows and sharp tools. The gore is super meaty but gets over shadowed by the squiggled video quality (if only I could see what's happening)! Now into the land of business and cubicles, a pretty black coffee drinking girl named Lucy is getting all emotional (the white on white subs make it hard to figure out what's happening). Lucy is played by Nina Li Chi from Tiger on the Beat.
Well at least I can read that!

This movie likes to get seriously continental and switches locations like people switch dirty socks because now we're in Japan. Miss Eko played by Elaine Lui Siu-Ling is an ass-kicking kung fu actress on the set, showing off her moves (she makes a mistake and they cut the scene). She gets an urgent fax from Hong Kong and must sign a form concerning her father who's lost in the jungle. She doesn't believe he's dead though and wants to find him. Now in Indonesia (where we don't see Lady Terminator make a special cross over appearance), they meet a pudgy travel agent who yammers on and on, while the white on white subs blend into each other. He's shocked when the mother and stepdaughter (which was just now established) are looking for Mr. Nakamura. Eko bribes the fat dude with a gillion dollars (she should've bargained more) and the annoying blended in subs continue. At this point I wonder if I'd enjoy this film more if I learned the language.

If you ever see that rotten shithead Plastic Man, tell him he owes me a royalty check

The chubby Asian man Eddy Comboli (this is his sole acting credit) reminds me of Plastic Man's cartoon sidekick Hula-Hula and is actually named Abdullah. They all climb up a hill and are surrounded by African natives (or "Stone Age Warriors").  Siu-Wong Fan, the actor who played Riki -Oh, the stone and bone shattering kung fu juggernaut; right after this dreadful film was finished plays Lung Fei the resident medic of the tribe. These natives seem authentic and kind of do war dances in the background while the main characters bicker.

I smash in jaw bones and tear out spleens for Jesus now

There are real Komodo dragons in this film and from what I've gathered from extensive research (Ha, yeah right), they have attacked humans and are powerful carnivores that hold down their prey and use red saliva which carry septic pathogens. You know, this movie is pretty tedious, when I start prattling on about reptiles.

If only some Komodo Dragons visited the editing room of George Lucas before the ruining of Episodes IV- Jedi

The jungle foley sounds they play are the same kind you'd hear at Disney's Parrot jungle. The two pretty girls sort of compete for the affections of the jungle medic and attempt some weak comedy.  
After Eko gets to the tropical wasteland, she hardly shows off her martial arts skills and instead becomes the kung fu medic's helpless heroine. He flies up a tree and catches her just in time, she narrowly escapes a native trap (this besides the real Komodo dragons is the most thrilling segment). Some WWF reject types show up and make the film a little more interesting. In the Sho Kosugi world, I'd equate STONE AGE as this directors 9 Deaths of the Ninja (which also takes place in the jungle) as his weakest effort. People really seem to love this film for some reason, which is baffling to me? There's a very wacky, high in the tree tops kung fu battle, that would be cooler if I could make out what's going on beneath the haze of video scramble.

but first let me wrench out this delicious nose goblin

During a scuffle, one female character sprays a goon in the mouth and covers him with whip cream (why they packed that is anyones guess), but it kind of reminded me of the end of Cut & Run when Michael Berryman is defeated by a fire extinguisher. 

Some scorpions show up and cause the girls to almost break the sound barrier in screams (possibly they were real)? The animal hijinks continue as gigantic komodo dragons make an appearance, they all feast on a real carcass and hiss at the girls, chasing them up a tree. Some WWF looking dudes it turns out have taken their father captive, they almost pierce his wife's lips together but then let her go. Also there's an abrupt topless scene with a girl who looks like an Asian female Gene Simmons and a Corey Haim clone who snorts coke off her tits (gross)!

I know I'm totally wasted but that is one crooked nipple

Obviously I was not as enamored as Chas was by this film, but what do I know? During the credits there's even a blooper real with all the crazy animals. I'd say if there was a pristine copy of this film, I'd give it another chance in 10 years but the storyline itself is sloppy and all the best elements don't ever get off the ground and kind of bump into each other. Tong is a really great Jackie Chan director however, he's just not cut out for exploitation jungle fare.  


Monday, March 16, 2015

What The Peeper Saw

Directed by James Kelly and Andrew White (Andrea Bianchi)

 Review By Greg Goodsell 




I want a Ponnyy!


I'm stocking up for my Hawg party!


What the Lifeguard Saw


Who let the dogs out? Twas The Peeper!


Can you toss in some Epsom salts?



Friday, March 13, 2015

White Dog

White Dog (1982)
Directed by: Samuel Fuller
Written by: Romain Gary (story), Samuel Fuller, Curtis Hanson (screenplay)
Starring: Kristy McNichol, Paul Winfield, Burl Ives
Review by "Machine Gun" Kristin

"White Dog" is about a mysterious German Shepard that struggling actress (with an amazing house), Julie (Kristy McNichol) accidentally hits with her car one dark night on a hill in Los Angeles. After rescuing him, by taking him to the emergency vet, she tries to find the dog's owner by posting flyers with her screenwriter boyfriend (Jameson Parker). She soon discovers though that the dog has a horrible behavior trait; he attacks black people.

Do the math!

 Julie seeks help for this by taking her dog to a trainer at Caruthers (Burl Ives) And Keys' "Noah's Ark" Zoo. Keys (Paul Winfield, who was also awesome in "Serpent And The Rainbow") attempts at reprogramming the dog after a fellow worker discovers upon an attack that this is a "white dog". A "white dog" is an attack dog solely trained by white racists to kill black people. It's an insane concept and racism is a super touchy subject with people. I'm sure this lent a hand in this film's obscurity despite it's famous cast. The NAACP were heavily against the film, which lead to boycotting. 

Mmm chocolate snasages 

Burl Ives hates RD2D!

I thought the dog, while huge, was so cute but he was also believable as an attack dog. There were many very tense scenes where you didn't know if the dog was going to jump at any minute. I sometimes feel that way around dogs, or really animals in general. They're not human, so no matter how friendly they may appear, there could be something else lurking around in their mind that is unjust. This is even dealt with in this movie, when Carruthers explains about a friend whose dog suddenly attacked him after years of bonding. A good example of this animal inner dialogue is weird French film, "Baxter", which is about a dog that kills people as well, although not racially influenced. 
Baxter? He's my French Nazi cousin!

Nobody can get Holly Jolly Christmas out of their head Nobody!

 "White Dog" presents a whole weird new perspective on racism that I haven't really seen before. It sorta creeps up on you in this film. Keys is attempting at undoing this misguided hate by breaking down this dog's one dimensional hatred against skin color. He does succeed in some form, but not 100% which is a real hard pill to swallow since it mirrors societies inability to not judge one another based on something not chosen. Prejudice is pure ignorance. I personally find it hard to believe that such a thing as racism still exists after all these years. I'm sure things are better now, (at least I sure hope so), but in 1982 when this film was made, there may have been more unfortunate racial tension. 

 "White Dog" to dedicated to the original story writer (first in "Life" magazine, then a novel), Romain Gary. He's probably best known for the novel "Lady L", which was also adapted into a film in 1965. 

Samuel Fuller and Curtis Hanson adapted this story. Hanson directed horrible sex comedy "Losin' It" which I love, "The Children Of Times Square" made for TV movie (which is on Netflix), "The Hand That Rocks The Cradle (which I saw in the theater with my mom) and one of the worst movies of all time, "Wonder Boys". "Wonder.." I wrote a hilarious movie review on for my 10th grade film class. I think I got a C. haha. Fuller is probably best known for "Naked Kiss" and "Shock Corridor" and has a pretty lengthy career.  Watch an interview with him here about "White Dog". 

There's a few great cameos (at least to me) in "Dog". Paul Bartel ("Eating Raoul", "Rock'n'Roll High School) is a camerman on Julie's ill-fated commercial shoot and Dick Miller (veteran character actor in millions of films) is shown at the zoo with a monkey. Fuller is listed in the credits as someone named "Charlie Felton", but I couldn't seem to locate him.

Fancy-schmancy, hit or miss, DVD/Blu-Ray company, Criterion thankfully released "White Dog" and it's available for purchase in their catalog. I appreciate the risks they take with releasing films such as this one, as well as unwatchable ones like as "Salo". 

I recently watch "Cat People" which reminded me a little bit of "White Dog". I think it just because they're both from 1982, involve zoos, cute central female characters and killer animals.

Watch the trailer:

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