Video Nasty A Week: Oven

Showing posts with label Oven. Show all posts

2 Jul 2011

Blood Feast - Will's Review

Herschell Gordon Lewis' 1963 gore flick is not only the oldest movie on the DPP list (and one of the first additions to said list) but is possibly the first true "splatter" movie.

The Tagline boasts "Nothing so Appealing in the Annals of Horror", and back in '63 this was probably not Hyperbole; but how does it stand up now, more than 45 years later?

The plot involves Fuad Ramses, An Egyptian caterer and Author (of the hilariously titled "Ancient Weird Egyptian Rites") who worships the Goddess Ishtar (actually a Babylonian god, but Egyptian for purposes of the film) and appears to have painted his hair and eyebrows a greyish blue...

We learn (through a night-school lecture) that Ramses intends to make the goddess flesh by preforming a cannibalistic ritual that while allow her to inhabit a human body - in this case the body of our heroin, Birthday girl, Suzette.

Coincidence is the order of the day here - Suzette just happens to be interested in Egyptology, and so her mother is open to the idea of an 'Authentic' Egyptian feast when she just happens to go to Fuad Ramses' Exotic Catering to organise her birthday party.

This week's lecture at the night-school she attends just happens to be about the feast of Ishtar, and the male student she is dating just happens to be the lead investigator on the case of the spate of girls being murdered (by Ramses) in the area - not that the police have no idea that there is an Egyptian theme to the murders - the officer just happens to attend the lectures in his spare time...

Speaking of the Police, the "office" that the Homicide department work out of is clearly a very small corner of a very large, otherwise very bear, room - every time we see this room it is from the same, fixed, vantage point, and the budget clearly didn't stretch to re-dubbing the dialogue, as the voices in all the homicide office scenes are ridiculously echoey.

I wouldn't want you to think that the poor writing and acting in those to clips was typical for the whole movie by the way... Most of it is FAR worse:

So, the plot, acting and direction are all piss poor, but that's okay - this movie exists for one reason -as an excuse to get gory death on screen! in 1963!

Back then, this would doubtlessly have been incredibly shocking - unfortunately some 45+ years later, to our jaded eyes, it looks like what it is - a bunch of bright red paint, offal and shop-dummy parts.

Alas, although this is (in its own small way) an 'important' film, there is nothing to recommend it to a modern audience - go watch Lewis' "Two Thousand Maniacs" or "Wizard of Gore" instead (they're not exactly masterpieces either, but they're better than this).

By the way - at the end of the movie, is the hint of a sequel; it took 39 years, but it Lewis made it happen!

Body Count: 6

Animal Body Count: 0

Boob count: 1 pair (plus several gratuitous bikini shots)

Most Memorable Death: None - to be honest, they all bleed together (no pun intended)

Please use the comments bellow only to comment on this post - to write your own review, please comment on the "Reader Reviews" post for this movie.

28 May 2011

Absurd - Lisa's Review

So this kicks off the 'Video Nasty a week' challenge as undertaken by myself, Will and Darren. I'm relatively new to these kind of movies, so how well I do with regards to watching them all remains to be seen, but as an avid movie fan and someone who likes a challenge, I thought I'd give it a go.

My main thought after watching this movie is why on earth is it considered a 'nasty'? Why was it successfully prosecuted? I have read the background and was quite surprised that it seems a popular choice, it inspired a rock band so much they used the title as their name and it has even been compared to an Italian 'Halloween'. I did watch a lot of horrors in the 80's having a father who is a big horror fan and honestly found those much more horrific than this movie.

I don't expect much in the way of a storyline while watching these movies, but the entire cast here need enrolling for some kind of acting lessons. The adults overact or in the case of the first murder victim don't react facially at all, the actors paid to loan their voices to the movie (as its an Italian movie) sound like they are just reading badly from a page, but the most irritating thing of all is the little boy in the movie... Will. I would gladly take and shake him! That would probably make for some more horrific footage than anything shown here.

The music, rather than set the scene and add to the story, just bloody irritates you. I found myself sat turning the sound up and down the whole way through to block it out when it started. They really pushed the boat out with Bontempi for this one.

I also found this movie was cut together really badly. Rather than pass seamlessly from one scene to another, it sharply cuts from a scene of normality and dialogue to a murder scene.

Another irritation is one of those things a lot of movies feel the need to do which is explain every little thing, either with badly written dialogue or a jerky zoom in to whatever item they want you to realise tells the next part of the story..... I'm not thick.. let me work it out for myself!

With regards to the 'gore', Ok so I realise this is early 80's but having seen a lot of supposedly less gorey 80's horrors, this was nowhere near them in effects and realism. The blood was too red... regardless of where the victim was bleeding from. Surely the movie makers realise not all blood looks like poster paint. The consistency however is not bad. The fake skin is horrendous.. thats probably the worst bit. Rather than leave you feeling squeamish and horrified, it makes you laugh at how ridiculous it looks.

I will give the writer his dues, that the ideas behind the murders were generally good and had promise, had they been executed (no pun intended) properly.

In complete contrast however, the latter half of the film has a 'head in oven' scene which is very well done. Not very gorey but the make-up is great, its very realistic and avoids the temptation to overdo it, the effect works well, the acting is actually good in this part and you do feel the horror of the situation. It really made me wonder why they got the rest of the movie so wrong, when this part was so right?

I won't give the supposed 'twist' of the movie away but you'll probably (like me) see it coming a mile off. I wish they'd put more thought into how they were going to play out this scene as its a bit of an anti-climax to be honest and there is just too much wrong with it (by way of inconsistencies and 'its-a-miracle' like recoveries) to take any of it seriously. The closing scene has probably the best gore of the entire movie, but I don't think its worth wading through the rest of the dirge to get to this bit. On the other hand, its not bad enough to watch for laughs like some of these movies.

In conclusion, I'd say if you want to watch something for the gore, don't bother, theres bugger all in the way of proper gore here. If you want to feel tension and peril, again don't bother, there is more of all of these changing my sons nappy. Sadly if you want to view it for laughs with friends, again, its not quite bad enough to do that with either.

I would only recommend this to someone who, like us, wants to watch our way through this list just so they can see them all, say they have and hopefully find some gems in the process. I know there will be much worse than this movie (I've seen them) but I'm genuinely hoping on day 1 of this challenge, there is much better.

Oven Scene = 9/10

Gore = 2/10

Makeup = 5/10 (mostly for the oven scene)

Disgust Rating = 0/10

Story = 2/10

Acting = 3/10

Overall movie rating = 2/10

Please use the comments below only to comment on this post - to write your own review, please comment on the "Reader Reviews" post for this movie.

Absurd - Will's Review

I cannot for the life of me see how this movie found itself on the DPP list; much less how it was Successfully Prosecuted; It boggles the mind a a jury could watch this and find it sufficiently offensive to jail people over!

With the Tile "Absurd", and the US title "Horrible" I was so hoping to hate this film - the review would have written itself!

Okay, opens with the most casual "Chase" sequence I've ever seen (it looks like 2 guys just out for a jog) the "Acting" (both from the origional Italian actors, and the US voice actors hired to do the dubbing) is mostly terrible, and some of the effects are less than special, but it has a certain charm to it, and with another pass of the script and a better cast, I think it could actually have been quite good!.

When 2 men arrive form Greece to a small town (I believe, despite its Italian roots, the film is set in the USA), things take a turn for the strange - One of the men has seriously accelerated regeneration / healing powers (he needs to be operated on after impaling himself on a fence during the aforementioned jog, and almost heals while still in theatre) the other is a mysterious priest, reluctant to divulge any information about himself, or healing-man.

We're also introduced to a family who's members include a girl on traction for a deviated spine, and the most irritating boy in the world, who's reaction to not enjoying a TV show seems to be to pull "I'm pooing myself" faces and then have the fakeist tantrum in the history of film:

see?

The priest also gets what is now officially my 2nd favourite priest-line (after the 'Braindead' / 'Dead Alive' classic "I kick arse for The Lord"); The line "I serve god with Biochemistry" is delivered without a trace of irony or humour.

By about the 20 minute mark, the movie has all the trappings of a decent mystery, and the last half hour of the film is very reminiscent of a low-rent "Halloween", right down to the films moody electronic score, which recalls Carpenters classic theme. And some genuine tension is somehow squeezed out of "Indestructible killer v's Near-crippled Girl" which is impressive.

The movie also has a great (but Cheesy) final shot, that may have been meant as a sequel setup, but was more likely just intended to be a 'sting' (although it does feature the most awkward lingering close up of ever survivor in turn).

There are better ways to kill a couple of hours, and it's not a "get the beers in" movie, but if you can borrow a copy for free, it's worth a look when you're board one Sunday afternoon.

Human Body Count: 6
Animal Body Count: 1 (implied)
Boobs: 0
Most memorable death: Worlds fastest pre-heating oven.