Let’s face it, every slasher freak knows that the 1980’s was the decade of the Slasher film. However, a decade is ten years, and ten years is a long time. Taking a look back over those years, a steady progression of evolving (perhaps for the worst) plot lines and stories can be seen. Continue reading
During the heyday of slashers in the early 1980’s, countries around the world were eager to cash in on the boom. International production companies did everything within their power (and budget) to disguise their film’s country of origin, sometimes actually doing the extra paperwork, hopping on a plane, and shooting on location in the good old US-of-A. Continue reading
If I am ever able to go back in time to 1975, the first place I’m heading to is Filthy McNasty’s. Yes, I am. It is quite possibly the coolest and creepiest club I have ever seen. This is where the swingers of 70s Los Angeles meet and greet, and… uh… well, you know. The band is hot but the club patrons are not. The place is teeming with extremely sweaty people who are that time capsule of 70s swinging that we tend to idealize into beautiful and perfect creatures. While some of the women are attractive, there is not much in the way of romanticizing here. Continue reading
Unmasked: The True Life Story of the World’s Most Prolific, Cinematic Killer is one of the most amazing autobiographies I have ever read. Kane Hodder grabs the reader by the throat and drags them through his personal heaven (growing up on an island in the South Pacific, becoming a slasher icon) and hell (brutal beatings from bullies, a terrible burn accident, improper medical treatment that almost killed him). We learn how every physical and psychological scar shaped the man known for playing Jason and Victor Crowley. Unmasked offers slasher fans a brutal, uncompromising look at the life of a kid from Nevada who wanted to be a stuntman and survived hell to become a horror legend.
Mike Aloisi, the writer who shaped Kane’s story into Unmasked, has to be commended for prying these stories out of Hodder. Aloisi could’ve relied on old Fangoria interviews or dvd commentaries and labeled the product an official autobiography. Instead, the writer somehow convinced Hodder to open up about secrets the actor/stuntman kept hidden for decades. Hodder admits revealing some of this personal information is down right painful. These nuggets of private information add so much depth to the book and the reader’s impression as to who Kane Hodder the man really is when he isn’t killing people on camera.
For Friday the 13th fans Unmasked provides a treasure trove of information about all things Jason as seen through the eyes of Mr. Hodder. It’s obvious Hodder thinks of Jason Vorhees as more than just a character he played for a paycheck. Reading his thoughts on being replaced for Freddy vs Jason is like watching someone pick a scab off a festering wound. Hodder’s words drip with anger and bitterness over the studio’s decision to replace him as Jason. Something I didn’t know about this episode in Kane’s career is the studio actually sent him a script and told him the film was a go. Later, after trying to get in touch with producers and studio heads, someone casually told him he’d been replaced by someone with experience playing the character.
Despite Hodder’s gruff “fuck with me and I’ll put you in a coma” exterior, the man is quick to praise everyone who’s ever helped him in his life and career. Kane admits he might not be here today if it wasn’t for fellow burn victims who helped him fight back through the pain and depression. He’s also grateful to directors Rob (The Devil’s Rejects) Zombie and Adam(Hatchet) Green, who wrote the forward forUnmasked, for hiring him at a time when he thought his career was finished. And in a rare move for an actor’s autobiography, Kane Hodder thanks the fans for supporting him all of these years. Hodder admits he loves all of his fans, except for one sick bastard who sent him a package containing a bottle of freshly squeezed semen. It’s a twisted little story about a fan’s devotion to his hero, folks, but Hodder’s reaction is funny as hell.
You don’t have to be a Kane Hodder fan to enjoy Unmasked. Hodder’s triumph over adversity is a great story worthy of notice from mainstream media outlets. There’s plenty of dark humor and behind the scene anecdotes to wet your appetite but the real meat of the book is Hodder’s life and death battle after his accident. This book is really an absolute must have for slasher fans.
Camp Motion Pictures new release The Basement includes Video Violence and Video Violence 2, two sov slashers I love more than I should. Having both films on one disc is great since tracking down the films on vhs is a damn difficult task. The first Video Violence, which tells the story of a video store owner who discovers his customers are producing snuff films, is really a time capsule that captures the look and feel of the Mom & Pop video stores during the early days of vhs. In Video Violence 2, killers Howard and Eli have graduated from snuff films to cable tv stars who torture their guests and show home movies sent in by fans. It sort of like America’s Funniest Home Videos with blood and boobies.
The first special feature on the disk I’ll focus on is the interview with director Gary P. Cohen. Mr. Cohen reveals he was inspired to make Video Violence when a woman with two small children walked into his video store and rented I Dismember Mama for her kids to watch. The woman didn’t care about the violence or gore in the film, it was kid friendly as long as there was no nudity. Cohen, horrified by the encounter, decided to turn the situation into a low budget horror film with the help of writer Paul Kaye. Cohen also goes into detail about the making of Video Violence 2 and Captives, a film butchered by another video company and released as Mama’s Home. The interview is sprinkled with bloopers from the first Video Violence and shots of the special effects crew working behind the scenes. At the end of the interview Cohen makes it clear he’s willing to make Video Violence 3 if the fans want it.
(Don’t tease us Gary, just get to work on it.)
Both films feature commentary tracks with Gary Cohen, special effects guys Mark Dolson and Mark Kwiatek, co-writer Paul Kaye, and actors Art (Mr. Emery) Neill, David (retarded hillbilly vampire) Christopher, and Uke (Eli). The commentary track on the first film is full of behind the scenes anecdotes and laughter. At one point someone suggests the best way to watch Video Violence is with plenty of friends, beer, and chips. They encourage the fans to talk and laugh along with them during the slow bits between murders.
There are fewer behind the scene stories on the second audio track because Cohen seems to be the only one who remembers making Video Violence 2. Uke and the effects crew admit they were distracted during filming by the lovely Elizabeth Lee Miller, who spent most of the shoot tied up and topless. One of the funniest moments during the second commentary occurs when David Christopher watches the acts of depravity filmed in his actors studio. Christopher, who allowed Cohen to use the studio on weekends to film the “Howard and Eli” portion of the film, had not seen Video Violence 2 until the recording of the commentary track and his horrified reactions are hilarious.
The final extra is the Camp Video Vault which features trailers for Cannibal Campout, Woodchipper Massacre, Ghouls School, Video Violence, and Video Violence 2.
With its twins, dead prostitutes and copious dream sequences, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Jack’s Back is a lost Brian De Palma movie. In fact, it was written and directed by Rowdy Herrington, who – although probably best-known for the 1989 Patrick Swayzefest, Road House – specializes in hard-edged thrillers like Striking Distance (1993), A Murder of Crows (1998) and I Witness (2003), the latter of which reunited him with his leading man from this project, James Spader.
Spader plays rebellious medical student John Wesford, who splits his spare time between working at a free clinic and getting interviewed for the local news about the plight of L.A.’s homeless people. Also on the local news – and aggressively foreshadowed every time any character so much as walks past a TV set – is the ongoing police investigation into a serial killer who’s copycatting the crimes of Jack the Ripper one hundred years after the fact… to the very day! Why he’s doing it in Los Angeles, however, is never actually addressed.
Anyway, the gist of all this is that (a) prostitutes are turning up dead in very messy crime scenes, (b) a pregnant woman is probably going to be butchered next, and (c) Wesford is somehow going to get dragged into all this, along with his super-hot secret admirer and fellow med student, Cynthia Gibb! That’s all you’re getting on the subject of the plot, however, because Jack’s Back is one of those films that works better the less you know about it on the way in.
I’m tempted to draw a comparison with De Palma’s Dressed to Kill – not because this movie is anything like as good, but because the twists come satisfyingly thick even if you’ve guessed the identity of the killer (which, admittedly, isn’t a massive kick in the grey cells). That also means it’s good for a re-watch, making it all the more unfortunate that it hasn’t yet had a proper DVD or Blu-ray release. The closest is a full-frame video transfer put out on DVD in the UK a few years ago by a company I’ve never heard of before or since, called 111 Pictures.
Camp Motion Pictures’ Retro 80′s Horror Collection Big Box doesn’t just have a long name, but a long list of contents – so much we had to split this review into two. The centerpiece of the set is Tim O’Rawe’s The Basement, a never-before-released 1989 horror anthology. You hear “never-released” a lot, applied to movies that never made the leap from VHS to DVD, but The Basement was truly never released. Or even edited together properly for some time.
To celebrate the unearthing of this relic, Camp have released The Basement in a “big box” similar to those put out by, among other 80′s companies, Wizard Video, who had used the box production facilities of a blue movie company to ensure their titles stuck out on shelves bigger and bolder than standard video boxes. That’s what we have here, and The Basement is packed inside on DVD (with its own dedicated DVD cover which jams 3 discs into one holder) and a VHS – writing the wrong of this flick never debuting on the video format when it was supposed to circa late 80′s.
Now, I had grand plans to swagger into this review with the lofty statement that I had opted to watch it on video first instead of the disc, however I couldn’t find my power lead to my video player nor does anyone I know close by have a video player. Some don’t even know what one is. I can’t think of a sadder but more apt analogy to the poor fate of VHS in today’s societal consciousness.
The linking segment has a bunch of characters approached by a Crypt Keeper-style character, The Sentinel, who shows them their dark futures, each of which are our stories. The Swimming Pool is the weakest of the lot and perhaps should have been schmushed in between the others. It’s a sort of wet riff on The Pit as a women feeds various annoying dudes and dudettes into a demonic pool, with the expected comeuppance in the ending. Zombie Movie is an enjoyable little entry that makes you wonder what it would have been like for real zombies to overrun the shooting of Night of the Living Dead, well before Dave Parker’s The Dead Hate The Living. Home Sweet Home is a bit of a plodding affair dealing with a haunted house but the real gem in these is Trick or Treat, the second story. It recalls the bygone era of latex monsters as well as the fun to be had exploiting October 31st which few horror films did post-Halloween.
The stories are essentially morality tales, some dealing with Faustian choices. This feeds into the final fate The Sentinel has in store for those would one day sin, in a climax to the linking segment that has the cheekiest use of stock footage I’ve seen in a while.
The horror anthology is a tricky thing to get right. For me, Creepshow represents its apex…and any number of cheap cheesefests represent the subgenre’s gutter (Tales from the Quandead Zone, anyone? Points for cool name, though). The Basement falls somewhere in between. There’s enough practical Special FX and WTF accents to tweak your nostalgia bone, and the Super 8 stock it was shot on gives it an unpolished charm.
Satan’s Blade starts off with a bang, literally. A couple of bad girls rob a bank, kill the tellers after a little sexual humiliation, and run to a cabin in the hills. Ruth (Meg Greene) double crosses her partner but only after she’s talked the poor girl into taking off her clothes. When Ruth tries to hide the body an unseen killer stabs her in the back and paints bloody symbols on the wall. The next day, Tony (Tom Bongiorno), Lisa (Elisa R. Malinovitz), Al (Thomas Cue who also wrote the script), and Lil (Janeen Lowe) head to the same winter retreat the crooks visited. Checking in gets a lot more interesting when a gaggle of girls show up and request the infamous death cabin for the weekend. A crazy old lady tries to warn everyone about an evil mountain man who haunts these here hills but no one listens. Eventually, after a lot of talking and shots of characters roaming through nature, a killer armed with the titular weapon ruins everyone’s weekend.
Watching Satan’s Blade is like watching two different movies. The first half has plenty of bad movie charm but the second half has a very brutal, almost nihilistic tone. Director L. Scott Castillo’s nickname should be “One Take” considering the number of scenes with flubbed dialogue included in the final film. The actors/actresses know they’ve screwed the line all to hell but bravely soldier on until the words, any words, come to them. During the check in scene it’s obvious some of the cast, especially the crazy old lady, is reading lines from the pages on the desk. The check in scene is also memorable because Castillo tries to fit twelve characters into the same shot. The shot is a jumbled mess but it’s fun to watch all of the characters squeeze into frame.
All of the joking and laughing stops when the killer finally makes an appearance. The flubbed lines are forgotten when the actresses scream, beg, and writhe in agony while the killer stabs them. Castillo uses shadows on the wall for maximum effect here. His budget is too low to include gore so the shadows convey the killer’s brutality without splashing blood all over the furniture. A scene involving Tony fighting the killer by firelight also shows Castillo has some skills as a director.
Some of the bad acting in Satan’s Blade is sure to bring a smile to the faces of bad movie lovers but other performances are really good and give the characters a likability factor sometimes missing in low budget slashers. Tom Bongioro and Thomas Cue play the two buddies like they really are buddies. Their scenes together are pretty funny, especially when they get drunk. Cue has a natural chemistry with Janeen Lowe so it’s easy to believe these two have been married for a long time. Stephanie Leigh Steel is the best actress out of the group of girls looking for a goodtime at the resort. Meg Greene as Ruth the robber makes an impression when, dressed in lingerie and boots, she drags a naked dead woman across the floor. I can’t tell you anything about her performance but that one scene stands out in my mind. Scream fans should pay special attention to Ski Mark Ford’s performance as Deputy Ski. You’ll scream “Deputy Dewey” at the screen when Ford bumbles his way through the murder investigations.
Satan’s Blade is a bit uneven at times but it has some good performances and a terrifying second act going for it. Thomas Cue’s complex script offers up a couple of surprises that takes the story in a very different direction from what you expect. These days Satan’s Blade is considered a rare slasher due to its lack of availability on dvd. If you can find a copy of the TVC or Prism vhs for cheap, then grab it. Some dealers won’t let go of a copy for less than $100. The Prism vhs features a trailer for The Forest at the start of the tape. The TVC edition has better cover artwork.
Italians would use the term “giallo” to describe any mystery or thriller story, particularly those tales in the tradition of Agatha Christie, whose novels were originally published in the yellow-backed format that gave the genre its name. In fact, it’s only amongst us film fans that “giallo” has come to refer exclusively to the particular brand of violent, titillating shocker of which Tonino Valerii’s My Dear Killer is often cited as an example. But My Dear Killer also falls firmly into the first camp, being driven by a traditional whodunit narrative that some might say outweighs the lurid thrills. So which is it? A gruesome giallo or a more conventional mystery?
Show me an over-the-top, style-heavy thriller full of gruesome murders – like Tenebrae or Dressed to Kill– and I’m a very happy slasher-fan, although I’m just as likely to be found pondering over the more reserved convolutions of a drawing-room puzzler like The Honey Pot or Sleuth. Thankfully, movies likeMy Dear Killer prove that you can have it both ways: while carefully and densely plotted, it’s also one of the more fast-and-furious gialli I’ve seen – one that whistles briskly through its dark twists and turns like an underground train hurtling down a tunnel, before bursting out into the light with a clever and satisfying resolution.
George Hilton plays Inspector Peretti, called out to a flooded quarry to examine the decapitated body of an insurance investigator, but soon drawn into an older case involving the kidnapping of a little girl called Stefania, whose body was found nearby. Convinced the two cases are related, he visits the family of the dead child, only to initiate a further string of increasingly nasty murders. As Peretti probes further, the killer proves to be always one step ahead…
I’ve seen Hilton in several other gialli – and, having made around ten, he probably qualifies as the male equivalent of Edwige Fenech – but this is the first time he’s struck me as an irremovable part of the film. Definitely not just a serviceably bland leading man, he seems fully in charge of this investigation, revealing and explaining each new clue for the audience in such a logical way that you can’t help but be drawn in. In a romantic subplot that for once doesn’t feel extraneous, we also see the effects his workaholic nature have on his relationship, culminating in a confrontation with his girlfriend that indirectly breaks the case.
Though more concerned with plot than many a giallo, My Dear Killer also has the requisite visual touches: the quarry location returned to again and again is always bleached in eerily harsh sunlight; the camera whirls around the apartment of a victim in an extended POV scene, before closing in on a blood-spraying murder using a circular saw. There’s even a little homage to Orson Welles’ celebrated “hall of mirrors” scene from The Lady from Shanghai, as Peretti encounters the killer in a darkened room full of smashed glass. Like all the best gialli, the most important clue involves looking at a picture in a new way – in this case, a child’s drawings (an element that also effectively incorporates another of the genre’s obsessions, childhood trauma).
Fittingly for a film that juggles whodunit and slasher elements so well, we arrive at a double-climax: the first is a gruelling stalking sequence with an unlikely (and likeable) final girl; the second a traditional unmasking, with all the suspects gathered in one room in the manner of an Hercule Poirot mystery, and Peretti beginning by announcing, “The story of Stefania is also the story of your insanity my dear, sick killer!”
Whilst not quite on the level of some of the classic gialli, which transcend the genre to become horror/mystery masterpieces, My Dear Killer is a more-than-solid outing and one that’s a good introduction for anyone interested in getting into the genre as a whole. Just bear in mind that things can get much more crazy and colourful than this.
Through the month of August you’re going to be reading about Giallo (plural Gialli) here at Retro Slashers. For those unfamiliar with the genre, Giallo is the European cousin to, and a major influence on, our beloved North American Slasher flick. The word Giallo means yellow in Italian, and is a reference to the nickname given to a number of pulp novels, all thrillers that were typically given yellow covers in Italy. Christian Sellers did a terrific series of gialli reviews on this site not so long ago, so for information beyond what we’ll be posting this month, check them out. Another essential source for giallo info is Adrian Luther Smith’s fantastic book Blood & Black Lace: The Definitive Guide to Italian Sex and Horror Movies.
From the mid-1960’s through the mid-1980’s, Italy was the hot spot for gialli. In fact, it’s the birthplace of this brand of thriller, beginning with Mario Bava’s The Girl Who Knew Too Much in 1963. Though he’s not as widely praised as his fellow countrymen Dario Argento, Lucio Fulci and Mario Bava when it comes to handing out Giallo accolades, Umberto Lenzi made a number of superior gialli including two separate films known as Paranoia (One was released in 1969 and is also known as Orgasmo, and the other was released in 1970 and is also known as A Quiet Place to Kill. Both star Carroll Baker.), Seven Blood Stained Orchids, Knife of Ice, Spasmo, and the film at hand – Gatti rossi in un labirinto di vetro – Red Cats in a Glass Labyrinth or Eyeball as it is known in North America.
Released in 1975, Eyeball is a joy to experience. It’s fast paced, ridiculous and a hell of a lot of fun. Basically it’s an episode of the Love Boat with an eyeball-collecting killer on board. Here, a group of tourists take a bus tour of Spain as a red rain slicker-wearing psycho kills them one by one, plucking out an eyeball each time. The characters are archetypes straight out of a 1970’s disaster flick: a minister, a good old boy and his granddaughter, a bickering middle-aged couple, a lesbian couple, a woman on the run from her married lover, and a number of other victims and suspects. The cast may not be familiar to those who have yet to dip into Euro-Horror (i.e. Mirta Miller, George Rigaud), but Giallo fans will recognize faces from Torso, Horror Express, Lizard in a Woman’s Skin, All the Colors of the Dark, Don’t Torture a Duckling, etc.
The logic of the movie (or delightful lack thereof) is revealed as our plucky group continues to press on with their tour despite their number dropping like eyeless flies. And as is typical of some gialli, the killer’s motive when revealed is ludicrous, but who cares? There are a number of set pieces along the way that are a blast (including a murder on a midway ghost train ride), the cast is always fun to watch, and the lo-fi effects all add up to a giallo on the silly side, but so good natured and willing to entertain that disliking it would be like kicking a three-legged dog for moving too slow!
Though Eyeball is not generally considered a prime example of the genre, it’s one of my favourite gialli, and as my comments reflect, it’s clearly a flick that I can only gush over like the fan that I am. In many ways it’s the perfect entry film for a slasher fan who wants to give gialli a try as it’s structure is very similar to that of a typical 1980’s slasher flick, and it’s not so outrageous or obscure as many other examples of its genre.
Director Lenzi is also credited with starting the notorious Italian cannibal cycle with The Man from Deep River which he followed up with Eaten Alive and Cannibal Ferox. He also directed the very silly and entertaining Nightmare City starring the inimitable Hugo Stiglitz, but Eyeball is the Lenzi for me! It’s the kind of film I expect to find written about in blood on a bathroom stall: For a good time, call Eyeball.
