All Hail Zoltan!

Just a quick post today to thank all the followers of this unworthy little blog.  I now have over 300 of you bastards!  Woohoo!  So thanks again to all of you guys and gals for your support.

Also, an old friend has emerged from the cold and desolate Saskatchewan plains to present a review of the first spaghetti western here on Beasts in Human Skin.  He's probably going to use fancy writing tricks like "proofreading" or "not using hyperbole all the time."  Whatever.  I'm not going to change my style just because of him.  It will be posted tomorrow, and then look for more reviews from Zoltan in the future. He has been mentioned in previous posts but never by name (and obviously Zoltan isn't really his name).  He's the guy who made me stay to watch Knightriders when I just wanted to go home to sleep and who I used to watch Manos: The Hands of Fate with every year.

Have a great weekend everybody and thanks again for your support!

Razorback (1984): Nine Hundred Pounds of Marauding Tusk and Muscle!

Razorback

I had no idea what to expect from Razorback but after only the first couple of minutes, my panties were wet with the moisture of awesomeness. (I don't know what that means.) It has one of the best opening scenes I have ever seen in any movie.  I want to describe it but I cannot do it justice.  Unfortunately, the rest of the movie failed to sustain this lubricating effect and ultimately, my panties dried up. 

A kangaroo hunter is attacked in the night by a giant boar.  It takes his grandson and destroys his home and the old man is left with nothing but his fixation on revenge.  Several years later an American animal rights journalist travels to the Outback to report on the use of poached wild animals as ingredients in pet food.  The locals don't like her snooping around so a couple of deranged brothers run her car off one of the back roads, smack her around and just as one of them is loosening his trousers for a little bit of fun, the giant razorback appears.  The men flee the scene but the boar eats the American woman before she is able to escape.

And so, the journalist's Canadian husband travels to Australia to try to find out what happened to her.  He learns about the razorback and teams up with the old kangaroo hunter to destroy the beast.

"Yes, I understand about the beer... but how do men 'chunder'?"

Razorback is a really good movie if you like campy (some might say crappy) movies like I do.  My main problem with it is the ending.  Like many movies from the '80s, the end fight scene just dragged on for too damn long.  I just wanted the thing to end but it wouldn't and by the time that it finally did, I had tuned out.  Still, Razorback is definitely worth watching.  It's way better than I thought it would be.

Disclaimer:  I don't actually wear panties...  or do I?  No, I don't.

Violence Rating:  3 out of 5
Booby Rating:  1 out of 5

Well hell!  I just found the opening scene on YouTube.

Rob Zombie Trusts Woolite

I thought everyone already knew about this but after talking to a friend the other day who hadn't, I realized that other people may actually have lives.  So for all of you who have productive things to do with your time and haven't already heard, Rob Zombie has directed a commercial for Woolite.  Yes, Woolite. 

From his official movie production blog:

 "I just wrapped a very odd directing gig in sunny Vancouver… a scary TV commercial for Woolite, called ‘The Torturer.’  Yes, I said Woolite. This ain’t yo Mamma’s Woolite. Can’t show you much but, below are a few shots from this crazy week of filming.”

And here are a few of those shots.

Rob Zombie, Producer Danielle Lovett and Director of Photography Brandon Trost

Source: A ROB ZOMBIE FILM

*UPDATE*  Check out the commercial HERE

A Lizard in a Woman's Skin (1971): Biting, Gnawing Terror Claws At Your Brain!

A Lizard in a Woman's Skin

A Lizard in a Woman's Skin, also known as the slightly edited Schizoid in the United States, is one of my favorite Lucio Fulci films.  In fact I have an original one-sheet of that poster art hanging on my wall. I'm not exactly sure what I like so much about this film but perhaps it's the ample amount of boobage, blood, psychedelia and sideburns. Everything just seems to come together for me.  It's a giallo so basically the story revolves around a murder investigation with some crazy Fulci elements thrown in.  It can be slow sometimes but never so slow that one loses interest in the mystery.

A somewhat repressed and sexually timid woman (Florinda Bolkan) dreams each night of explicit encounters with the sexually liberated woman who lives in the flat next door.  After lengthy psychoanalysis she is unsure what to make of these dreams.  One night she dreams that she stabs this drugged up hippie chick to death with a letter opener only to wake up to the fact that this woman really has been murdered and that she is the prime suspect.  Did she do it or was it a dream?  That's not the only thing going on in this film.  There's blackmail, a philandering husband, a rich politician/lawyer who smokes a pipe, LSD, bats and of course, the infamous "dog scene."

"Damn this astigmatism."

From IMDB:

The scene in which Carol encounters the disemboweled dogs in the clinic became quite controversial because of the startlingly realistic (and graphic) appearance of the fake prop dogs. Director Lucio Fulci was nearly sent to prison because it was believed that the dogs were real and Fulci had allowed animal cruelty on the film. However crew members were able to testify in court that the "dogs" were indeed fake and no animals had ever been harmed. Special effects artist Carlo Rambaldi even presented the dog props in court to convince the jury. This was the first time that an effects artist had to testify in court that their work were fake.

A similar incident happened with the Italian gore-fest Cannibal Holocaust.  Also from IMDB:

The film caused some scandal in Italy at the time of its release. Ten days after premiering in Milan, the film was seized by the courts, and the director, Ruggero Deodato, was arrested and charged with obscenity. He was later charged with murder and faced life in prison on the belief that several of the actors were murdered for the camera. Deodato contacted Luca Barbareschi and told him to contact the three other actors who played the missing film team. He presented the actors, alive and well, to the courts, and thus, the murder charges were dropped. The film remained banned in Italy for another three years.

So there you go.  All of you guys who like movies like Saw and Hostel owe more than a little to the Italian directors of the 1970s who pushed the envelope of gore and nudity, and even had to go to court to defend their films.

Violence Rating: 3.5 out of 5
Booby Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Get the Unrated Version
of Lizard in a Woman's Skin
at TLACult.com

Girls of Grindhouse: Britt Ekland

I know what you're thinking.  Britt Ekland?  She's a Bond girl, not one of the Girls of Grindhouse.  Au contraire, mon frere for she has been in more than a couple of grindhouse films.

Britt Ekland was born in Stockholm, Sweden on October 6, 1942.  In her youth she attended a drama school which eventually led to her joining a traveling acting group where she gained some measure of fame in Italy, but it wasn't until she became the significant other of British actor and comedian Peter Sellers that she became a celebrity.

After seeing her photograph in a newspaper, Sellers arranged a meeting in London and was immediately smitten.  The two married shortly thereafter and it is said that he had a heart attack on their wedding night, but that can't be confirmed.  He did however suffer from thirteen heart attacks in a matter of days shortly after they were married.

The two made a daughter and a couple of films together.  The little girl was called Victoria and the films were called Caccia alla volpe (1966) or After the Fox which was written by Neil Simon, and The Bobo (1967).  They divorced in 1968.

After gaining attention for her performance as an Amish striptease artist in 1968's The Night They Raided Minsky's, Ekland was offered many more roles but these were often because of her looks instead of her acting ability.  She did star in some first rate films including Get Carter (1971) and The Wicker Man (1973), but her most famous role came in 1974 when she played Bond girl Mary Goodnight in The Man with the Golden Gun.

Around this time she became romantically involved with rock/disco/whatever star Rod Stewart and temporarily left her acting career to focus on the relationship.  Things didn't work out and the two separated after living together for two years.  In 1979 she started seeing and eventually became engaged to glam metal vocalist Phil Lewis.  They broke up in 1981.  In 1984 she married rocker Slim Jim Phantom, who was almost twenty years younger. They had a son, Thomas Jefferson in 1988 but they divorced in 1992.

Britt Ekland was one of the biggest celebrities of the 1970s but by the mid 1980s the quality of the film roles offered to her had diminished significantly.  Besides made for TV movies she starred in some cinematic crap like Fraternity Vacation (1985) and Beverly Hills Vamp (1989).

In the 2004 film The Life and Death of Peter Sellers the role of Ekland was played by Charlize Theron and later, Ekland accompanied Theron to the Cannes Film Festival as her date. Also in 2004, she was diagnosed with osteoporosis after falling and fracturing both her wrist and ankle at an awards show.  Today she is involved with both osteoporosis and Alzheimer's organizations.  Even with her health concerns, Ekland is still a regular fixture on the British rock'n'roll social scene.

And if you're wondering which of her films are considered "grindhouse" films, The Grindhouse Cinema Database says Get Carter (1971), The Wicker Man (1973),  Asylum (1972),  Machine Gun McCain (1968), and Slavers (1978).

Here's Rod Stewart's package to haunt your dreams.

See all of Britt's nude scenes at MrSkin.com!

Exploitation on the Internets

Some of you were wondering (I guess D4 equals some of you) where some of these obscure movies that I write about are available online.  Here is a list of some online shops worth checking out.

Super Strange Video

TLACult

OMG Entertainment

Boulevard Movies

Diabolik DVD

It's been a very long long-weekend so I'm going to crash now.  I'll have a new review up tomorrow!  Hooray!

Shot! Gun! Shotgun!

Before there was a Hobo with a Shotgun there was Shotgun Jones... This movie came along too late to be considered grindhouse but it still looks incredibly horribly bad.  And by bad, I mean awesome. There is no doubt in my mind that after seeing this video you will want to rush out to find a copy of Shotgun to watch it in all its glory. 

Also, I must apologize in advance - not for this video - but because I may have to neglect my blogging duties over the next three days.  Enjoy your Zombie Jesus celebrations!

The Grapes of Death (1978)

When the Wine Flows, the Terror Begins...

The Grapes of Death

Another zombie movie.  I mean another "infected people" movie.  I've seen The Grapes of Death in the past and it didn't blow my skirt up so I decided to watch it again to see if my opinion of it had changed.  Nope.  It's still not one of my favorite "zombie" films.  It's strange though because while I'm watching the movie, it actually seems like a pretty decent film and then later when I think of it, I remember it sucking.  So there you have it.  It's a good film while you're watching it.

Pesticides used on a vineyard are turning people who drink the wine made from these grapes into zombies.  (That was a pretty awkward sentence but I don't care.)  They aren't really zombies because they're still alive and don't eat people but their flesh oozes and falls off and they get really angry and kill non-infected people.

And so, a young woman named Elizabeth and her friend are traveling by train to this small French village when they are accosted by one of these infected.  The friend is killed and Elizabeth desperately runs across the countryside in search of safety and to find her boyfriend who lives in the village.  Her world becomes a nightmare as the non-infected are just as disturbing as the infected.  Life sucks for Elizabeth.

"Gimme' head till I'm dead."

What this film does have going for it is Brigitte Lahaie who will certainly be one of the future Girls of Grindhouse here on Beasts in Human Skin.  She does have a nude scene although it is quite brief.  That's another thing.  Since The Grapes of Death was directed by Jean Rollin and features adult film star Brigitte Lahaie, I was expecting a lot more nudity.  Oh well.


Violence Rating:  3.5ish or maybe 4 out of 5
Booby Rating:  2.5 out of 5

Get the Unrated Special Edition

The Grapes of Death 

at TLACult

Gwendoline (1984): Outrageous Adventures in the Kingdom of Women

Gwendoline

It seems there are a million versions of this film.  The one released in North America back in 1984 was called The Perils of Gwendoline in the Land of the Yik Yak and was cut for time and content to comfortably attain an R rating.  The version that I watched and am reviewing is simply called Gwendoline and is sixteen minutes longer... which means more boobies.

Gwendoline features Tawny Kitaen who everyone remembers from that Whitesnake video where she basically humps the hood of a Jaguar.  No?  Well, she also doesn't wear her seatbelt and it looks very dangerous.  Anyway, this is the first time I've seen her in a movie and her acting abilities surprised me.  She's never going to win an Academy Award but she was definitely better than I thought she would be.  I think Zabou Breitman is the hotter of the two ladies, though.

The plot of Gwendoline is worthy of its B-Movie classification.  It begins with Gwendoline (Tawny Kitaen) being kidnapped after she shipped herself in a wooden crate to China in an attempt to find her father after he disappeared searching for an elusive species of butterfly.  As she is being sold to the owner of a shady casino, Willard (Brent Huff) climbs through the window and kills all the bad guys in the room to collect a gambling debt.  Gwendoline immediately falls in love and she and her companion Beth (Zabou Breitman) somehow convince this rascal to escort them to the dangerous and mysterious Land of the Yik Yak to find the missing entomologist.  After deserts and jungles, the three of them come upon the legendary Land of Yik Yak - a society of scantily clad women warriors ruled by an evil queen who wants Gwendoline's life and Willard's seed. 

"I will turn the laughter of these slaves into wails of torment!"

 Gwendoline is certainly not a great movie, but it is a decent one.  It's a campy cult film with a nude Tawny Kitaen; a fun, mindless bit of action and romance worth watching to pass the time.  This is another film that I don't think is worth hunting down, but it's worth checking out if you happen to come across it.  If you have a thing for Tawny Kitaen however, this may be the greatest movie ever made.

Violence Rating:  2.5 out of 5
Booby Rating:  4 out of 5

And here is that Whitesnake video.  If you look closely, there's a nip slip at 2:19.

See all of Zabou's nude scenes at MrSkin.com!

See all of Tawny's nude scenes at MrSkin.com!

Get Gwendoline Unrated 
at TLACult.com