Primal Rage (1988)

Gore? Check. Bad one-liners? Check. Eye-gouging scene? Check. I smell spaghetti! Oh wait, it’s just another American-made Italian horror film from the late 1980s direct-to-video era. But at a glance you wouldn’t know it. This one was written by the notorious Umberto Lenzi, under the pen name Harry Kirkpatrick. This may explain the constant stream of bizarre one-liners such as “It smells like a pair of sewers in here!” and “It’s sort of like eating a lot if you don’t have a colon. You never know how it’s gonna come out.”
These Italian horror guys have more aliases than the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted. They had a solid reputation for making shaky movies in the 1980s, so they used pseudonyms constantly. Bruno Matthei once commented he prefers his alias of Vincent Dawn to his own real name. This clearly shows the bizarre taste Europeans have. Who wouldn’t want to be named Bruno! That would be awesome! It’s not like he’s named Pupi Avati, director of the odd zombie film Zeder (1983).
Nowadays, anything and everything Italian horror is a collector’s item, and to many including myself, the name Umberto Lenzi spells must-watch. The man who made Cannibal Ferox (1981) The Man From Deep River (1972), Eaten Alive (1980), and Nightmare City (1980) is a real crowd pleaser.
The story starts with Frank Duffy, a school newspaper journalist, who looks like a cross between Tim Mattheson and MCA from the Beastie Boys. He gets a bite from a monkey infected with the primal rage virus, and the wound soon turns into a pulsating, bloody puss oozing sore. He runs around acting very much like the wild ape he was bitten by, exploding into violent fits of rage. Those bitten by him behave in a similar manner. When they attack, their bloodthirsty frenzy is accompanied by pounding rock music reminiscent of Demons (1985). The score by Claudio Simonetti of the Italian rock band Goblin, bears a striking resemblance to the first few bars of the theme from Dawn of the Dead. Many of the cast were reused from Lenzi’s entertaining attempt at an American slasher film, Welcome To Spring Break (1988).
The film starts out looking like another killer-animal-on-campus movie, like Shakma or Gnaw: Food of the Gods part 2, but winds up being a bit of a zombie movie.
Highlights include a fat man dressed in a baby costume getting his scalp torn off, three racquetball jocks turning on a strobe light and heavy metal music before they attempt to gange rape a co-ed, and a guy in a Dracula costume getting his throat torn out. The climax takes place during a Halloween ball and the costumes must be seen to be believed. The late-80s pop-rock band plays on as a guy gets hanged on a basketball court, and a guy in a commando costume casually gets the flesh torn off his hand. But nevermind all that, I want to know who thought up the Halloween costumes. Who the hell dresses up as a three-headed baby with faucets on its noses? I don’t want to give away too much here, but this scene sports some of the best costume party deaths this side of Terror Train (1980). I actually had to watch it twice because I kept on having to stop and write this review.
The point? There really isn’t one. The purpose of the scientific experiments that created the virus is never explained. Not that it matters. The moral of the story: When someone or something bites you, go to the doctor.
Sadly, Primal Rage is only available on DVD in Italy, and only on VHS in the United States. Used copies are still pretty cheap on Amazon, and I found mine at Video Review. This is one of those films that could disappear into obscurity at some point. I wasn't even able to find decent cover art scans to post, and as far as I can tell, you have just read the longest review of this film ever posted to the internet.

Maya (1989)

An Ancient Mayan curse is awakened in the ancient temples in Mexico, and people are killed in strange and gory ways by an invisible force. The Italian blend of supernatural and giallo horror subgenres, which climaxed early with films like Suspiria (1977), and Inferno (1980), proliferated in the late 1980s as Italian horror degraded in quality and became less focused. This is undoubtedly my favorite phase of Italian horror cinema, not because the films were better, but because they were more fun. The rules and traditional storylines went out the window as budgets grew smaller and the masters of the genre like Lucio Fulci and Dario Argento got older and less energetic.
The late 1980s phase gave birth to some of the wildest and most bizarre blends of cinematic clichés, and the films just got crazier and weirder. But they were really cool because the general disregard for film logic meant infinite creative freedom for the filmmakers. An Italian director could make a magic masala of a film with ghosts, witches, zombies, demonic possession, and serial slashers, and it would get financed and distributed. Explanations were not necessary for the less-than-critical video store crowd, and if one was usually an ancient curse, voodoo, or witchcraft. Films like The Church (1989), The Spider Labyrinth (1988), and The Devil’s Daughter (1991) are artistic, well-made examples of this new-school approach. Their lower grade, crazy, inbred cousins like Ghosthouse (1988), Beyond the Darkness (aka Ghosthouse 3, 1990), Demons 6: De Profundis (AKA Il Gatto Nero), and Spectres (aka Spettri, 1988), are far more abundant, though just as much fun to watch.
Maya falls somewhere in between, with a very unfocused plot, but excellent displays of technical abilities such as camera work, gore, and atmospheric settings. It has less of a manic feel to it than movies like Ghosthouse or Demons 6, almost as if the heat and humidity of the setting slowed down the pace. The director makes great use of Mexico’s tropical, hedonistic tourist environment, and blends it with the indigenous superstitions and belief in the occult. The evil force causes people violent deaths at the invisible hands of the Mayan curse. One woman is thrashed about in a bathtub until her nose is pounded into pulp on the edge of the tub, and another man is crushed by a rolling pick-up truck. The climax takes place on Dia de los Muertos, the Mexican day of the dead.
The attacks are exclusively on outsiders and not the locals themselves. Most of the victims are sweaty gringo expatriates, doomed to drink themselves to death anyway. The film did a good job of capturing the lazy, alcohol-soaked lifestyle so many foreigners lead when they take up residence small tropical towns in the world’s impoverished paradises. When the booze and women come cheap, many retire at an early age and lose all their ambition.
Having lived in a similar place once, Thailand, it was easy for me to put myself in the head of the film’s creators and became especially appreciative. Horror is just as popular a genre in tropical Asia as it is in America, and I learned about some of their legends and superstitions by watching their made for TV supernatural horror movies. I’ve always liked films set in exotic countries and enjoy ones that involve local legends like voodoo or indigenous religions. The fact that Italians made this one automatically made it a cut above the rest.

Alone In The Dark (1982)

Jack Palance and Martin Landau play two of the best schizoid psychopaths ever to grace the screen. You can tell these two had A LOT of fun making this movie. These two mental patients bust out of the loony bin intent on murdering one of the new doctors in their ward. Accompanied by a serial strangler nicknamed "The Bleeder," and a 400 lb. child molester named Fatty, they joyfully terrorize a small New Jersey town. The doctor they are after is played by who played Murdock, the crazy guy from the A-team, the one that Mr. T and the gang were always busting out of the nuthouse at the beginning of some of the episodes. Donald Pleasance (Dr. Loomis from Halloween) reprises his role as a psychologist for the criminally insane, and at times appears just as crazy as the inmates he is after. In fact almost every character in this film seems to have a few screws loose. Note the stuttering police captain, the weird looking little girl, and of course the nightclub band, aptly named the Sick Fucks.
You will really have to see this movie to believe it, and it is not the typical 80s slasher movie some reviewers have made it out to be. I first heard about this film when I read a rave review of it in “The Manly Movie Guide: Virile Video & Two Fisted Cinema.” Some of the best scenes were used as samples in the mid-80s horror movie documentary Terror In the Aisles (1984), alongside some other odd choices such as the Sylvester Stallone/ Rutger Hauer action movie Nighthawks (1981).
I would say the overall question this movie poses is who is crazier, the psychologist or the psychology patient? Donald Pleasance’s doctor seems just as berserk as his mental patients in a role that is practically a reprisal of his Dr. Loomis character from the Halloween series. And the other doctor is the guy from the A-team! When the lunatics escape, they are unleashed into a world of characters who seem as bizarre and illogical as those inside the institution. The film is set in suburban New Jersey during the punk rock years, and does an interesting job of holding up a mirror to society in the form of an 80s slasher film. While not exactly a gore-fest, this film did feature some make-up effects by Tom Savini. The DVD is available with extras and a pristine transfer from Image Entertainment.

The Spider Labyrinth (1988)

The Spider Labyrinth (1988), AKA Il Nido del Ragno, made me wonder; was Eastern Europe always considered a creepy looking place, or do we just think that because it is the traditional setting for so many horror films?
Atmosphere is the name of the game in this spider’s web, and this type of film should be viewed for just that and not with so much of a critical eye. This is true for most Italian horror films, and this is one of the last of the great European gothic horrors, even though it takes place in the present. Budapest is the setting for this tale of the occult, combined with a giallo type plot, and a few stop motion monsters. The gore is not over the top, except for in the final reel, and then it gets downright disgusting.
The plot follows an American archaeologist researching an ancient religion that seems to have shown up in seemingly unconnected locations. He travels to Budapest to coordinate with another researcher and stumbles upon a pagan cult. They worship giant subterranean spider monsters that possess humans and get them to carry out their dirty work and spread the religion. Sound strange? It is.
There is lots of cool camera work and eerie settings, and Budapest’s inhabitants looked like the same villagers that chased Frankenstein with pitchforks and torches. The movie reminded me of other movies about cults sworn to protect religious secrets such as The Ninth Gate or The Da Vinci Code.
My main motivation in seeking out this film was one photograph from the movie. The back cover of the book “Spaghetti Nightmares” features a gruesome, bloody still from the movie of a man with a butcher knife and a mouth full of fangs. I knew right away that I had to see this film.
Sadly, The Spider Labyrinth is a very obscure movie, even for Italian horror fans. The copy I watched was downloaded and appeared to be VHS rip of a copy from Midnight Video, with hardcoded Japanese subtitles at the bottom of the screen. The picture quality left a lot to be desired. With such a small amount of information available about this film I regret that I cannot offer many hard facts. The Internet movie database says the US DVD release is cut by about 20 minutes, but that website has been known to contain errors. Aside from downloads, the only other way to obtain a copy of this movie is to order a bootleg DVD from one of the various online companies.

Angst AKA Fear (1983)

Angst is a German language, English subtitled serial killer movie with flying, dizzying camera work, an impressive musical score, and explicit violence and gore, much in the tradition of films by Dario Argento or Lucio Fulci and other European horror masters. It is a relatively short film and wastes absolutely no time, clocking in at just 75 minutes. It takes place all in one day, and has one character, the killer, who speaks almost all the dialogue and narrates the entire film almost play by play.
It starts out with a very German-looking man in his mid-thirties being released from a large maximum-security prison. We come to find out through his narration this is his release date from a ten-year sentence for murdering a 70-year old lady. Before that he had served four years for stabbing his mother in the chest. Once the prison gates open, he sets out walking through town looking for more victims.
He winds up at an isolated house where he takes a family of three hostage and proceeds to torture and murder them in the most efficient way possible, his narration tells his life story. It is almost as if he is sitting in the room with you telling you his story over a few drinks. He tells of his early life and the physical and emotional abuse and neglect he suffered at the hands of his mother and sister, his abandonment, and his ultimate discovery that his greatest pleasure was to inflict pain and fear upon other living things. He wants nothing more in life than to murder as many people as possible, and he will never stop doing it. The sense of power he feels when he does it is profound. For once in his life he feels total control over another human. Instead of being abused he is the one that is feared, hence the title Angst, which means “fear” in German.
What really made this a special film for me was the camera work. I could tell many of the shots must have used a tall crane. At points I could imagine I was looking out the window of a tall building watching the character go about his murderous tasks.
The kill scenes were quite cruel and realistic, and extremely bloody. The killer comments in the narration about how quick it all happened. There are only three victims, but keep in mind that this is only an hour-long movie, so it worked. It is such an engrossing portrait of what goes on in a serial murderer’s mind, I would actually recommend this to psychology students or anyone interested in real life serial murderers.
At the end of the film the credits roll, the killer finishes the story, and finally we hear one other voice. It is the flat voice of the criminal psychologist who interviewed and tape-recorded the killer’s confession of what went on that day. He explains that it proves the killer was aware of what he was doing, and should not be allowed the insanity plea. He recommends a life sentence without parole.
Angst is an impressive 1980s Euro-Horror outing with very high IQ. Instead of relying on shock value, it puts you inside the killers head. I felt sorry for him because right from birth, he never had a chance. He exacts his revenge on people who remind him of his abusive family. Like the avid horror movie viewer, he is addicted to fear, but he likes to cause fear rather than feel it.

Of Unknown Origin (1983)

“Did you know that over one fifth of all the grain on this planet is destroyed by rats? Now that’s more than drought, flood, or even insects destroys, did you know that? That’s over five billion pounds of food alone in this country. Can you imagine how many mouths that would feed, not to mention the possible fiscal loss it would mean to a company like this? Yes, it’s extraordinary. In the fourteenth century the rat carried the bubonic plague flea that killed one out every three people from India to Iceland….”
You take your average rat, it can nibble through a hole no bigger than a quarter, swim half a mile, and tread water for three days. They can eat through lead and concrete, with these teeth that are like chisels, they can exert an unbelievable 24,000 pounds per square inch per tooth! They can survive being flushed down a toilet and enter a building by the same route. They can fall five stories on solid ground and run off unharmed and two rats, mind you, just two, will give you twenty million rats in just three years. And they say there are as many rats on this planet now as people…”
Peter Weller spouts off on this three minute long rant to a table of well-dressed dinner guests, mouths agape, in this very memorable scene from his 1983 horror movie Of Unknown Origin.
This film is the epic story of one man, a good man, mild mannered business executive Bart Hughes, and his struggle of man versus beast against the worst that god’s animal kingdom has to offer- The Rat. One large, mean, clever Rat, that takes up residence in his Manhattan brownstone and chews up his mail, knocks over his furniture in the middle of the night, and generally scares the shit out of him and the movie viewer. This is the Moby Dick of rat stories.
It turns into an outrageous battle of wills between the mild mannered Weller, and The Rat. Between the two of them, the entire town house gets torn apart, Weller stops going to work, all his friends wind up thinking he’s crazy.
“You know what’s the matter with you,” says Weller’s overly enthusiastic, rat-hating maintenance man, “You don’t realize that you’re spending maybe twenty percent of your time thinking about him, but he’s spending one hundred percent of his time thinking about ways to outsmart you. ‘Cus he’s a rat. He’s got nothin’ better to do.”
Using some clever camera work and close-ups, the film emphasizes the grotesque-looking, alien-like appearance of rats. One particularly interesting shot is an extreme close up of the underside of a rat’s paw, showing the pink, wrinkly flesh giving way to it’s demonic shaped claws. These shots look especially good on DVD.
The films’ title refers to an illustration in a nature encyclopedia Weller is reading, in which the captions reads “Rat (Ratta, Ratte); of Unknown Origin.” A great title for the film, which points out this is the ubiquitous beast plaguing human habitation, not the great white shark or the grizzly bear.
While researching studying his foe, Weller also watches real footage of rats eating people, each other, and everything in between. Disgusting.
Shannon Tweed stars as his wife, so even though she’s only in the film for about five scenes, one of them is a topless shower scene, about two minut
The director, George P. Cosmatos, also directed Sylvester Stallone in Rambo: First Blood Part II, and Cobra (1986), a Stallone renegade-cop movie with some slasher movie elements. Also to his credit are Tombstone (1989), and the excellent Peter Weller sci-fi vehicle Leviathan (1989). Unfortunately, Cosmatos, an Italian immigrant of Greek heritage, died of lung cancer in 2005 having made less than a dozen films.

Peter Weller, the Robocop himself, still acts but has also taught at Syracuse and UCLA. Of Unknown Origin was his first lead role, made four years before Robocop (1987). In 1984, Weller appeared as the title character Buckaroo Banzai, a samurai-cowboy-rockstar-scientist in The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, one of the strangest and silliest sci-fi comedies to see a major release. The film is also a virtual who’s-who of 80s actors with John Lithgow, Jeff Goldblum, Ellen Barkin, and Christopher Lloyd running around, making me wonder how much cocaine was snorted on the set in between takes.
A Canadian production, it was filmed in Montreal and funded by the Canadian Film Development Corporation, also known as Telefilm Canada, a Canadian government agency that sponsors TV and film productions. What a cool country they have up there! This is the same government agency that helped fund other low budget horror masterpieces such as Videodrome (1983), which also starred Peter Weller, My Bloody Valentine (1981), Happy Birthday To Me, Scanners (both 1981), Visiting Hours (1982), Black Christmas (1974), Rabid (1977), and The Brood (1979).
In general, Canadian horror tends to be a cut above the dime-a-dozen Hollywood low budget fare, and most of their movies deserve a second look.
This film came at the tale end of the killer animal movie trend, after several other films about killer rats such as Ben, Willard, and of course the god-awful Italian “Rats: Night of Terror” that Bruno Mattei made. At least in that used guinea pigs spray-painted black as flame-thrower fodder.
If you watch the trailer for the film, you might notice it says nothing about a killer rat, in fact it makes the movie look like a supernatural thriller. Not even the film’s description on the back of the DVD case spells it out, it just mentions the phrase “rat-race” several times. I got the DVD for about $3.00 used. It’s not an incredibly popular or well-known film, but it’s one of those movies that Warner DVD keeps churning out. There aren’t many extras to speak of, but I guess they weren’t expecting a crowd of followers wanting a special edition. In fact, most people haven’t even heard of this movie.

The Last Winter (2006)

“It’s haunted. We’re grave robbers. It’s coming up from the ground. Ghosts. I mean, what is oil anyway? Except… dead plants and animals from a long time ago.” Even as I type these words spoken by Zach Gilford’s doomed character during the film’s climax I get goose bumps.
Haunted oil? Drilling in the Arctic opens a gateway to hell? One could only hope for so much cosmic justice. The Last Winter, an excellent new direct-to-DVD horror film, raised a question posed in another apocalyptic film, 12 Monkeys. As Bruce Willis’ character mumbles to Brad Pitt, “Maybe we deserve to be wiped out.”
I thought this was a great concept for a supernatural horror film. The spirits of the animals whose fossils got turned into “fossil fuels” come back to haunt the creatures destroying the planet. The creatures of course, are us. The film follows the crew of a small oil-drilling rig in Alaska in the dead of winter. Strange things are happening left and right, and, well, the workers that aren’t disappearing are, of course, dying in gruesome ways.
The dramatic setting of the Arctic ice caps alone was enough to make this an enjoyable and absorbing film. The director, Larry Fessenden, had previously directed Wendigo (2001), another snow and ice horror movie. While Fessenden is no beginner, artists definitely have the odds in their favor when making pictures in such stark and barren natural environments. The flat, pure, bright white snow makes a wonderful blank canvas. Such perfect terrain exists the world over, but is neglected by a film industry centralized to urban and sub-tropical locales. Avid viewers will recall some of the most memorable shot on location horror films of the thirty years utilized bleak winter landscapes to convey a sense of isolation and dread. To name a few; The Thing (1982), The Shining (1980), Dream Catcher (2003), and the lesser known but equally ambitious Frost Biter (2000)
I must say I appreciated the ensemble cast of character actors. Genre favorite Ron Perlman (Hellboy, Blade 2) plays a stubborn engineer sent up by the oil company to kick ass and take names. The rest of the cast is also made up of people I remember dying in pretty hideous ways in the other movies they starred in. There is James Le Gros, who played Mike in Phantasm 2. Horror fans will recall he replaced Michael A. Baldwin as the main character only in that single installment in the Phantasm series. Viewers may also recognize Le Gros from his smaller parts in movies like Drugstore Cowboy, Near Dark, and Point Break. And we have Kevin Corrigan, who played Leonardo DiCaprio’s bone-headed cousin in The Departed, and “Goon” in the 1998 independent comedy Buffalo ’66.
As the tiny handful of my readers who watched Cookers, Encounter At Raven’s Gate or Ghosts of the Civil Dead may know, I am a fan of the atmospheric, somber horror films, and this is one of those. They make a nice little change of pace from the mile a minute gore-and-cheese fests I usually write about. I ONLY review movies that I like on this site, and I do it to spread the good word about different examples of B-movie horrors that people may otherwise skip. So check this one out. You may start to believe in ghosts as well as global warming.

Zombies In Prison: Dead Men Walking (2005), Shadow: Dead Riot (2006), and Zombie Death House (1987)

I work at a video store where I can tell the owner has purchased certain films just to fill up shelf space. Each week we get in a new shipment of films, usually between ten and twenty films, and there are ALWAYS ultra low budget horror films. Most of these films look both horrible and terrific, depending on who is looking at the DVD box art. So each week I make it my duty to watch at least one of the micro-budget terrors to see if I have found a gem. I am always digging for that diamond in the rough. And I have decided to give a little free advertisement here on my blog for some of the better ones. I think I can best sum up my state of mind right now by quoting the text message I sent a friend today: “You can watch what you want, all I want to watch is shot-on-video zombies-in-prison films.”
Zombies in prison. I dare you to come up with a better idea for a film than that. If you can, then you will forever know my respect. It’s like when my friend Hunter once mumbled “They should just make a movie called GUNS.” I was like “Man, I had that idea three months ago!” Who knows though, maybe he thought of it before I did.
Our first zombie prison movie is Dead Men Walking (2005). A guy goes to prison for murdering three people who had just turned into zombies. He is a doctor working for the government, or something like that, involved in a viral strain that turns people into fast moving zombies. One of the zombies bit him before he could kill it, so he winds up in prison a dead man, literally. The virus spreads, just like in most zombie movies, and chaos ensues. There is loads and loads of gore, and even a few moments of actual suspense, providing the viewer thoroughly secure their suspension of disbelief. This is but one of three zombie prison movies I have watched recently, and I must say that it is the best. It makes good use of the claustrophobic environment, it actually looks like something resembling professional, and there are lots of zombies. I liked it more than Beyond Re-Animator, to hold up better-known example of a zombie prison movie.
Next up we have the film Shadow: Dead Riot (2006). I noticed on the Internet Movie Database a reviewer described this as a C-movie. That statement sums up the mentality of almost all the reviewers on the IMDB rather than the actual movie they are reviewing. Most of these people are only impressed by movies with Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie in them, and hate all horror films made before this decade unless they are called The Exoricst or The Shining.
Dead Riot is a good example of a modern horror film that is not afraid to let loose and revel in its own absurdity. The 80 minute long kung-fu/ zombie/ women-in-prison in prison combines three of the best exploitation film ideas of twenty years ago into one festival of gore, shower scenes, and prison fights. Totally awesome! If you can appreciate this one, or even the premise, then we will probably get along just fine.
This movie isn’t quite as amazing and awe inspiring as it might sound, but let’s face it, I don’t need to give it a good review for people to want to see it. If the words kung fu zombie women in prison film don’t peak your curiosity, then you probably shouldn’t bother.
To round out our trio of zombie prison films, let me tell you about Zombie Death House (1987), also known simply as Death House. Veteran horror and exploitation actor John Saxon took his sole turn as a director and made this forgotten zombie film. It’s not very good, but it’s a hell of a good idea for a zombie movie. As far as I know, this was the first of it’s kind, and the sheer cheese factor alone made it the most memorable of the trio.
The plot is a combination of Attica and Re-Animator, and while extremely clumsy, does have a couple good scenes. This is probably more of a prison movie than a zombie movie. As far as time-wasters go, you could do much, much worse than this one, and the pace was pretty good. Any movie about a prison riot is always entertaining, and this one is good campy fun. I heard about this movie because it constantly pops up in my recommendations on Amazon.com. It sure as shit was a hell of a lot more exciting than some of the other ones the square world has tried to push on me like Prom Night, April Fool’s Day, or Saw. Sorry folks, but I am going to give you until the end of this article to think of something in those films that was edgy and insane. At least with zombie prison movies you can’t say “Seen one, seen ‘em all.”

Ghosts...Of The Civil Dead (1988)

Horror. Real life horror. This is story of what fear is made of in our society. This is a real horror movie because this is something that really happens all the time. Anyone could wind up in a prison like this one. In fact, most maximum security prisons, in America or elsewhere, are even worse than the one portrayed in the film.
Starring Nick Cave, who also made the soundtrack, Ghosts of the Civil Dead is the story of ten months inside a maximum security prison in an Australia. It is narrated mostly by one of the guards and told from the point of view of several inmates and correctional officers. Over the course of the year we see the usual prison violence and the administration react by taking away the few possessions the inmates have. First they crack down on drugs and the various forms of chemicals that keep the general population sedated and docile. Then they cut off their TVs. Then they take away all personal property. Then they take away recreation time. Nobody is the hero and nobody is the bad guy. The guards hate the administrations actions almost as much as the inmates do because these vices are what keep the violence at bay. Some guards resign and one kills himself. The inmates kill each other and sometimes the guards. Everybody is just doing their job.
In one of the climax scenes, a prisoner retaliates by stabbing a guard 56 times. I was not counting, but I'm pretty sure they show all 56 stabs happening. The prisoner then turns on two other guards, who take refuge by cowering inside a cell, erupts into a frenzy of violence that I can only describe as animalistic. The guard working the electric cell block doors does nothing to help the two officers because he is on the floor puking and crying, frozen with fear.
The inmates are put in these prisons as killers, and return to society as more efficient killers. And when they return to society and kill again, they are just doing their job, the same way the prison guards are doing their job and the police are doing theirs. It creates fear in our society so things stay the same, and our military-industrial-prison complex gets stronger. They let the inmates out so they can kill innocent people. Then the innocent people are afraid of each other because of them. Then the innocent people want the police and the military to have more power.
There is very little soundtrack, and the overall feel is one of dread and sorrow. The film is presented in the same dreary, fluorescent bulb-lit lighting as the inside of the facility. This film should be mandatory viewing for anyone studying criminal justice or corrections, as it does not stray from the subject of prison itself the way many mainstream prison movies do such as The Shawshank Redemption or Cool Hand Luke. It was also of interest to me as a horror movie fan because it is a look at the real life horror show we call the penitentiary. Personally, I would much rather confront Freddy Kreuger or Michael Myers than serve a sentence in a place like this.
Of all the films I've reviewed on this site, this one is probably the hardest to obtain a copy of in the United States because it has never been released here on home video. You can buy it on an Australian PAL Region 4 DVD if you have a PAL region-free DVD player.

Gnaw: Food of the Gods Part 2 (1989)

I cannot recommend this film enough to fans of B-horror. There's lots of gore, violence, slapstick humor, and it's like watching a how-to guide of making movies about giant rodents. I thought it was alot better than the first one. Plus it's Canadian, and their horror movies are usually better than the average hollywood low budget programming. The land of the bloody maple leaf previously brought us David Cronenberg films, Pamela Anderson, and My Bloody Valentine, as well as this beauty. If you study the camera angles you can see how trick photography made the rats look enormous. The scene with the giant 5-year old kid was the absolute best though. If you want to see a little more of the film before you get this product just see if you can find the trailer on youtube. I saw the preview for this movie on an old vhs tape of a different movie and I immediately had to watch it!

The Unseen (1980)

This movie is pretty cool and has some really good acting. But the main reason to watch it is to see the retarded man child who lives in the basement, sleeps in a trash pile, and likes to play with, kill, and then eat the people daddy gives him. Especially the girls. The sight of this gigantic man dressed in a diaper and dirty tank top who communicates only in a series of grunts and maniacal laughter pretty much made it among the most memorable films I've seen. View it on an intellectual level or just watch with some buddies and laugh, either way it's alot of fun. I hope they release a DVD soon. The last half hour of the film is worth a million bucks.
On a sidenote, I have to mention something in the small world category. Last Christmas, my dad was talking about his friend who lives next door to him, a fellow by the name of Goldbach. Mr. Goldbach, clearly a rather wealthy man, mentioned that his sister had been married to Ringo Starr for the last 25 years. Her name is Barbara Bach, the former Bond girl, and the star of this film! Apparently she shortened her last name to Bach when she started her acting career. At some point after that she starred in this movie as prey for the retarded, diaper wearing man-child in this monumental so bad it’s good movie, The Unseen.

Bone Sickness (2004)

Finally, some of these penniless shot-on-video filmmakers got the right idea! If you can't make a good movie, make a SICK ONE!! If this film had a bigger budget it would have been amazing. The zombie gore is extreme. It looks pretty fake at times, and some of the gags clearly involved props purchased at the local Halloween store, but the murder and dismemberment they depict with it is imaginative and funny.
While the film itself is extremely amateur, I must say it's the thought that counts. It's a very ambitious take on the no-budget zombie movie genre. While it's not as good the more well known shot on video films like The Dead Next Door, Street Trash, or Slime City, it's still a lot better than Ghoul School, Night of the Living Dead 3-D, or Days of Darkness. The filmmaker really had the right ideas here. Blood spurts everywhere, people vomit worms, numerous people are torn in half, entrails or are eaten, heads broken open, etc.

The extreme stuff doesn't really start up until the one hour mark, but after that it's relentless. There's a lot of nudity too. Pretty much every female character gets naked at some point. Most of the acting sucks. But just sit tight and your patience is rewarded. Just pretend you are watching Citizen Kane or something with Helen Mirren in it. Then go F yourself dildo butt!! Just kidding.

If the film had a bigger budget that allowed really professional looking special effects, this would have been the best gore film of the decade. I really hope the filmmakers are able to make more films that get better funding. I think if they got the proper equipment, a half decent budget, and some help from the right people, we might have the next Dead Alive on our hands. And I am proud to say this was lensed entirely in my native New England, in Massachusetts and Rhode Island (which is neither a road or an island).

The Final Terror (1981)

This is one of my all time favorite "killer in the woods movies, and it is really a lost gem. The main characters are played by Darryl Hannah, Rachel Ward, and Joe Pantoliano! I can't believe more people haven't seen this film. It ranks up there with The Burning as one of those great early 80s teen horror movies with a big cast of actors who later went on to make it big in mainstream hollywood. Another cool thing is that the plot is not one of the those formulated slasher films that is completely predictable. There are actually some original ideas here!
The only thing that I found inexcusable is the DVD transfer quality. It is awful, worse than a VHS!! The sound is bad, the picture is blurry at parts and dark, just poorly done! The original movie is not like that. I originally watched this movie on VHS made by Vestron Video about 20 years ago and the picture and sound are fine. Shame on these jerks who manufactured this cheap knock-off DVD. This film deserves a deluxe treatment!! If they put out a good edition a lot more people would probably buy it.
But all in all, I would still recommend this film. The DVD is still worth 10 bucks if you don't mind poor picture quality, or just buy one of the VHS copies still floating around. Somebody will eventually reissue this film if it sells.

The Beast Within (1982)

The Beast Within
The Beast Within is an absolute classic of the horror genre, regardless of its status as a "drive-in" or "Grindhouse" or "Midnite" movie. This film has never had the recognition it deserves. It is atmospheric, edgy, and extremely well acted. The teenager undergoes a gradual transformation into a giant man-cicada swamp creature, but about 85 percent of the film focuses on his mental change. It is not a cheesy swamp monster physical transformation, but it is more like in the film "Christine" where you watch this ordinary teenager slowly degenerate into a blood-crazed loony.
His change is kind of a metaphor for puberty, much the way the "Ginger Snaps" films depicted turning into a werewolf as a metaphor for a girl going through puberty. What carries the film is the boy's acting ability as he grows creepier and creepier. Ronny Cox (the guitar playing city slicker from Deliverance) is great as his concerned father coping with the fact that his son may actually be the offspring of a savage beast-man. And L.Q. Jones is another recognizable face, reprising his role as a rural southern sheriff.
Another quality of the film is the way the story deals with the way some small towns have a guilty secret. Some vile crime against humanity lurks in their past. This is a quiet place in the middle of nowhere, yet something horrible happened there 17 years earlier that they just want to forget. Then along comes this boy...
I love movies about small towns, and I especially love films about the rural American South. There is an anthropological edge to this movie. It is almost as if the film, made in 1982, is telling America to wake up. The time of the sleepy, innocent farming community is over. Or so it may seem for so many small communities in the South. A violent incident reminds us there is a “beast” within us all, and 17 years later everybody remembers. The film uses the metaphor of the 17-year cycle of the cicada bug. This is probably the only film ever made about a man turning into a giant cicada monster. It is actually a good animal to choose if you are going to make a monster movie about teenagers, as many generation gaps are 17 years wide. It is an approximate timeline from human birth to sexual maturity.
In 1982, 17 years ago would have been the year 1965, which may have a turbulent time in parts of the south. There was the civil rights movement and all the violent resistance to it throughout the south, not to mention the birth of a counterculture that still isn't completely accepted. A town can erupt in violence and paranoia, and later people feel ashamed for having acted a certain way or still harbor resentments towards their neighbors. They just want to forget and go back to being a sleepy little farm town.
The climax of the film features quite incredible creature effects that will satisfy the gorehounds and probably nauseate the film critics. This film is an absolute must-see for horror fans, especially if you enjoy similar films like those of David Cronenberg and Stephen King. I would love to see a special edition release of this film with extras and more info about this lesser known horror gem.

Horror Hospital (1973)

This film is absolutely great! It's kind of like a 90 minute R-rated episode of The 70s TV show "The Monkees" if it was produced by Hammer films. There are lots of cheap thrills and sick jokes, sex, nudity, violence, drug abuse, midgets, and of course a good amount of blood and guts.
One of the first scenes in the movie introduces our hero, a Mick Jagger look-alike living in the excesses of rock and roll decadence. He's had too much to drink and sniffs too much coke and starts a fight. He gets beat up and his band members are fed up with him so he agrees to go somewhere to chill out and get his head together. There was this one scene where the guy booking his trip to this "health spa" (the "Horror Hospital" of the title), and the guy is slyly eyeing his crotch and the bulge in his super tight 70s pants. By this time I was cackling with laughter at the plentiful tasteless humor, and this is all just within the first 15 minutes of the film!
This is a great, great 70s tongue in cheek horror movie. It's basically a satire of the UK rock and roll lifestyle done as a horror comedy, much the same way as the films Rock n' Roll Nightmare and Hard Rock Zombies are horror movie satires of the American hair-metal music scene of 1980s. There is a playful nature to the movie that makes it stand up to repeat viewing. The film is also quite atmospheric with some great visuals and scenery of old England. I especially recommend this movie to those who enjoyed the Hammer horror films of the 70s, or any of the horror films starring Christopher Lee and/or Peter Cushing. If you like this movie, another one I would recommend is Dr. Frankenstein’s Castle of Freaks, that one is even trashier!

Cookers (2001)

It’s about time somebody made a horror movie about meth heads. Hector and his girl manufacture methamphetamine for a living. They take up residence in an abandoned house in the middle of the deep woods and set up a little meth lab. As they descend into amphetamine psychosis, it seems the house may be haunted. Or are they just getting too high on their own supply?
This shot-on-video thriller is an absorbing journey into the paranoia of hardcore drug bingeing. Low on budget, but high on atmosphere, Cookers is a typical episode in the life of heavy speed freaks, but with a spooky, supernatural horror edge to it. At times it gave me goose bumps.
It is more of a suspense film and psychological horror film than a blood and guts type movie. There are hardly any special effects, just three very talented new actors running around geeked out on meth in a big old house. The video footage has a soft, muted look to it, but the dialogue and soundtrack are well done with good sound quality. The almost constant indoor setting gave the movie an eerie look. Inside a house with no electricity, the characters blacked out the windows so nobody can see their meth lab. It is easy to convey the sense of isolation and the feeling these people must have of being in their own little drugged up world where anything could happen.

Automaton Transfusion (2007)

Automaton Transfusion is great. I don’t know what the title means. It’s a straight-forward zombie movie. The zombies are the fast moving kind that can think and run, like in the Dawn of the Dead remake, and some of them even seem a little stronger than an average living person.
Like the zombies, the movie is very fast paced, and the run time is only 75 minutes. It wastes no time in getting the mayhem started up. The opening scene features an extremely bloody, painful looking zombie attack to kick off the apocalypse. The characters are just high school kids, so there’s the usual mild drama nonsense going on.
But the real highlight of the film is the gore, glorious gore! The film is a throwback to the days of the Italian zombie gore films. There are several scenes lifted right from some of those movies that well versed fans will recognize immediately. There’s the usual eye gouging, face ripping, and intestine pulling. Blood spurts every which way, and there are several scenes of entire rooms full of zombies feasting on cadavers. The living dead eat their victims’ flesh right down to the bone. Don’t watch this one hungry, it’ll make your mouth water!
Besides being an excellent rehash of zombie films past, there are also some pretty cool original scenes. The best was when our heroes charge full speed at a bloodthirsty mob of undead. Armed with only a few meager weapons such as a shotgun, a baseball bat, a fire axe, and best of all, a chainsaw, an insane frenzy of ultra-violence. The camera work is deliberately jumpy, and at times I even thought my DVD was skipping. It is a clever way of disguising the lack of professionally choreographed action sequences.
Overall, Automaton Transfusion is a fast paced zombie adventure. Most Gore hounds will be delighted by it if they can suspend their critical eye. And even if they don’t like it very much, it’s still only about 10 minutes longer than a TV episode, so they really won’t be wasting much of their evening if they watch it.

The Mutilator (1985)

An odd blend of campy college kid humor, 80s pop, and typical low budget horror acting and screen writing combine with extreme gore and violence, and some eerie settings to make a pretty good slasher movie. The film opens with a stupid little kid whose Dad should have taught him a few gun safety lessons. He accidentally shoots and kills his mom with a huge M-1 rifle, in a scene that is both disturbing and hilarious in the way it is executed.
The rest of the film plays out like a standard slasher movie. The boy who shot his mom is all grown up and at college, and is a relatively healthy, mentally sound young adult. Him and five of his friends go to his dad’s beach house on the North Carolina coast for some fall break party time, and the usual underage drinking and premarital sex ensues. For whatever reason, however, the boy’s dad has chosen to finally flip out after all these years. He is a hunting and fishing enthusiast and kills of the kids one by one, using a variety of edged and pointed weapons. There’s a pretty disgusting involving a gaffing hook, the kind used for marlin and tuna fishing. There is also a battle-axe, a machete, and a power saw. But I don’t want to give the whole thing away. You’ll have to watch the film yourself, if you can ever find a copy.
It was released on VHS by Vestron Video, but never released on DVD in North America. The PAL Region 0 disc is uncut, as is the the Vestron Video release. This film is probably available on bootleg DVD. Code Red DVD has announced plans to give it a deluxe DVD release in NTSC format, probably with a good transfer and some extra features.

Scalps (1983)

Top to Bottom: 1. Scalps is filled with strange images, often appearing as short flashes in the minds eye of the characters that add to the creepy atmosphere.
2. A scan of the UK VHS cover.
3. Scalps was originally released with The Slayer (1982) on a double feature VHS tape by Continental Video.
4. The uncut DVD by Retromedia features some colorful cover art

Cheese-meister Fred Olen Ray directed this odd supernatural slasher flick, with some pretty graphic gore and an incredibly eerie atmosphere. Of all the Fred Olen Ray films I’ve seen, and I’ve seen more than a few, I think this is by far his best one. It’s also one of his first. He pretty much went rapidly downhill after this, and descended into the world of b-grade sci-fi and softcore skin flicks. It’s a shame, although it’s pretty obvious why. Hollywood doesn’t reward art (sigh). Skin flicks make more money.
I once read a review of this film in which the viewer compared the first five minutes of this film to a documentary about the highways of America. There are long shots of the lonely roads that cut through the barren desert wastelands of the Southwestern United States accompanied by eerie music and sounds, similar to the kind heard in Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The 16mm film used gives it a very soft look which helps set an atmosphere of gloom and dread. It’s almost easy to imagine you are watching some deranged killers home movies.
This film has a real mean streak to it, something that isn’t seen in most 80s horror films, especially those made by guys like Fred Olen Ray. It doesn’t play around when it gets violent. It’s one of those rare 80s amateur horror films that isn’t completely laughable. Sure, there are gorier and more action-packed films to be seen, but I would highly recommend this one to those looking for a slight change of pace from the usual 80s campy horror fare.

Demon Wind (1990)

Demon Wind:
Priceless garbage, lay down and bask in its’ badness! This film is soooo awesome. The only reason I rented it was because I thought it was hilarious that the VHS box had a holographic cover. I figured it would either be bad in stupid, boring way, or bad in a senseless, over-the-top, hilarious way. It was the latter of the two. The plot is a real snoozer until the 45 minute mark and then the zombie/demon carnage begins. Despite the hack script, there are very professional gore jobs and decent horror action sequences. Italian zombie fans will notice the plot was ripped off The Beyond and the zombies resemble the hellish creatures in Bava and Argento’s Demons and Demons 2. This film has so much in common with Italian zombie films, I had to search everywhere for information about it just to make sure it wasn't Italian.

Monster Dog (1984)

Monster Dog AKA Leviatan
Claudio Fragasso, aka Clyde Anderson (Zombie 4: After Death, Troll 2) directed this cinematic time capsule of 1980s headbanger horror starring Alice Cooper. Cooper stars as Vincent Raven, international rock superstar, “the biggest rockstar in the world” in the poorly dubbed dialogue of his girlfriend. He is also a werewolf, and has returned to his ancestral home in the old country to film his latest music video with his band, and confront the family lycanthrope curse. The film opens and closes with an original music video from Cooper, and I must say it is worth every penny to buy the bare bones DVD with the piss-poor transfer just to have the music video, whether you like his music or not. The film also features Fragasso’s trademark overused fog machine, and a motley crew of actors who overact or underact, but can’t seem to do anything in between.