Subconscious Cruelty (2000)

Disgust and contempt for the human condition expressed through graphic sex and gore. That is pretty much this film in a nutshell. It was directed by Karim Hussain (THE BEAUTIFUL BEAST, ASCENSION) which apart from his original aforementioned works also worked as cinematographer on ANTIVIRAL and HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN. You can spot him again in his segment “Vision Stains” from the movie THE THEATRE BIZARRE.

CRUELTY is divided into four segments. The first segment, “Ovarian Eyeball”, is the shortest. We see a hand holding a brain with flashing lights and later an eyeball is removed from the abdomen of a naked woman laying on a slab. In “Human Larvae” a delusional man kills his pregnant sister and the child inside her belly. He says he wants to ‘deface the process of creation’, whatever that means?! He spends his nights masturbating in his bedroom, dreaming about his sister’s naked body. He is afraid of her menstruation and has a nightmare about that. The woman chooses to give birth in her bedroom with no one else there but her psycho brother and his dirty nails. He holds the infant’s corpse to her face and proudly thinks (narration) he has committed the ultimate  mockery by killing during creation. Stupid, filthy fucker was what I was thinking!

“Rebirth” is also fucking retarded. Six naked people are writhing on the ground, playing with mud and blood that spurts out from a hole in the earth. Of course one dude sticks his wiener in there and fucks the gawd-damn ground, while we see his naked ass humping. Another woman GIVES A BLOWJOB TO A TWIG! I have to admit that watching her work that mouth was pretty hot. The final segment is titled “Right Brain/Martyrdom” and it’s about an office worker that beats the meat at home watching porn on television. He plays with his sticky hand and for no good reason flicks some jizz at the TV screen. He then has a nightmare where a hand is mutilating his cock and jacking him off. Abruptly as fuck we jump to a “Jesus figure”, a nude dude with a crown of thorns and three cannibal women eat his flesh and masturbate themselves with his entrails. They also sodomize him with a tree branch!

I don’t buy this pretentious crap one bit. I write poetry and this is a bad example of “poetry on screen“. A good example would be any Bergman film. Good imagery stimulates your imagination but this garbage insults the audience. That was why I gave this movie zero stars. It’s a waste of good nudity and gore. CRUELTY, joins the ranks of BEGOTTEN and ERASERHEAD and if you like that type of film you might like to give this a watch. Being a poet, I know that getting your work slammed is part of the trade and I dare say, any great poet is humble enough to loathe his own work. I don’t know if that makes sense to you guys. Anyway, my intention here is not to pass judgment on the filmmaker but write an honest fun review.

0 / 5 STARS

Don't Go in the House (1979)

The people that worked on this movie may not have had a conventional idea of how a horror film works but they did a damn good job creating a character in the throes of madness. I say this because director Joseph Ellison only worked on one other film and it wasn’t a horror movie. Certain talented directors hone in on the roots of psychological terror and here it is presented wonderfully.

Donny Kohler is a pariah stuck in the midst of late 70s libertinism. He is a broken young man; a schizophrenic with a troubled childhood. As a  kid his mother would pull out his arms across the burning stove and let the flames “purify” him from sin. He works at a garbage incinerator plant. Fire is all around him and it is only natural that when he snaps he would kill with that disastrous flamethrower. To add to the impact, he wears an asbestos suit (a suit that protects against fire) with the heavy hood and foggy glass visor. Arriving home from work one night he finds his mother dead and this opens up  Pandora’s box, releasing pent up violence and wild delusion.

 From here on out he stalks young women, luring them into his house (hence the title). Then he strings them up naked, by their hands, like a piece of meat on a hook. This all takes place in some kind of steel plated room he happens to have?!…in the house that he shared with mom?! You know I don’t really care about the how or the why because this scene is jaw-dropping fantastic. The beast stands with the full bulky outfit, big-ass flamethrower and a naked girl hanging like a pig. He douses the victim with paint thinner and burns them alive!! Unfortunately we only get to see the full murder scenario once. Although there is no blood in the film the burn effects and burn victim makeup is cool. He keeps the decaying, charred, corpses in the house and often has nightmares and hallucinations in which these zombie like victims rise up to get him. I would have wanted to see more flame thrower action but sometimes less is more.

A friend from work invites Donny to hang with some horny girls at a disco club. Donny doesn’t want to dance, and when pressed, he sets a fat girl’s head on fire with a table candle. Her brother catches up with Donny and pummels him saying “You scarred her for life.” I found that hilarious and laughed out loud! Donny flees in his pick-up truck and finds two drunk girls wanting a ride. He makes up something about throwing a party at his house, to which they reply “far out!” I wanted to see these women naked but we don’t because his murder ritual is interrupted  by unwanted guests. All the excitement turns into a fearful hallucination where the zombie-like victims circle around him. Donny ignites the flamethrower INSIDE the house (not in the special steel room) and sets the whole place on fire and gets burned up himself. Those who live by the fire die by the fire.

After watching this movie I was not sure whether to assign it 2 or 3 stars. Everything that happens is cool and fun and creepy. But I couldn’t fully immerse myself in the story. I couldn’t get lost in the flames or in the killer’s psychological clockwork. In theory I should have loved this film, since I love serial killer profiles. Just writing up this review entices me to watch the movie again. I think about the zombie hallucinations, Donny’s complex character and the wonderfully original idea of having a serial killer with a flamethrower!!  Quentin Tarantino selected this film to be included in his film fest in 1996! I’d certainly watch it again and definitively recommend this to you sickos!

3 / 5 STARS

Blood Feast (1963)

  I don’t really remember when I first heard of the film BLOOD FEAST and its notoriety as being the first gore/splatter film but I do remember first renting it on VHS when I was 16 years old. I remember a few key gore scenes but it didn’t seem as a big deal for me then. The movie, especially the story started to grow on me. I loved the story because it was simple and effective. The acting was decent and carried the film along. The directing and score was excellent because I felt as if I was in a gory fairytale.

 Fuad Ramses played by Mal Arnold is clearly the star of the picture. Ramses runs an exotic catering service but his real desire is to perform an ancient Egyptian ritual called the blood feast. In this feast a choice virgin is sacrificed so that the goddess Ishtar will come to life.  So he limps across town killing young women and stealing their body parts to cook in a stew in honor of Ishtar. In the back room of the store he has prepared a life size idol of Ishtar which he worships, cooks stew, and bake body parts for. And oh yeah he also whips a girl chained to the wall.

 As for the gore, well you have to keep in mind that this movie came out in 1963! It was revolutionary for it’s time but even today you can still get chills. I’m thinking of the scene where he opens a girl’s mouth and pulls out her tongue. It’s slowly done, there’s lot’s of blood and the tongue looks great. The scene at the beach looks real as hell. I have seen real pictures of a person with their head smashed (don’t ask) and this looks very real.  I want to mention that I also noticed some light humor in the movie and it adds to the whole feel. A lot of the lines are very funny. Most of the dialogue between the two policemen is ridiculous but very funny. You have to enjoy every part of the film. I just finished watching it for the second time and I wouldn’t mind watching it again. Also Faud Ramses is one of the strangest villains I have ever seen. His eyes and how he takes the whole ritual so seriously is great. If you want to laugh look out for one of the last scenes in the movie where he is trying to get Suzette, the innocent victim onto the table to sacrifice her while her family naively waits in the room next door!

 With BLOOD FEAST directed by Herschell Gordon Lewis, the godfather of gore and produced by David Friedman, gore films were born. A gore, or splatter film, as it may also be called is a movie whose chief purpose is to portray gore, blood, and carnage. The story is then wound around that. Lewis and Friedman produced several other gore films including: TWO THOUSAND MANIACS, GORE GORE GIRLS, and WIZARD OF GORE.  All of these and more are available on DVD.

If you love gore films you owe it to yourself to at least rent and see where the whole sub-genre began. We have a classic here!

4 / 5 STARS