Ravenous (1999)

 You are what you eat.

This has long been due and awaited by a select* few, and tonight I am ready once again: Whilst wallowing in footnotes of a scientific nature and working my pretty ass off about topics no single remotely sane and especially 'normal'** person is interested in, I needed to occupy my creative multitasking with some visual input in order to actually concentrate on being a frelling out-of-work penniless genius who is being thought of as a weird, nerdy retard. Pardon my French. So the search for DVDs working on this glorious excuse for a laptop*** led to 'not-really-anything-working-besides-for-a-handful-that-I-have-already-watched-extensively' - as a result, thinning out the collection to what is available on one backup drive. This is a sore topic for me, as most of my DVDs are not working anymore, and most of my backups are A)**** on non-working peripheral drives, or B) dead internal drives in inaccessible impossible casings. Add C) non-accessible drives in dead motherboards and D) non-working broken DVDs as your personal level of Schadenfreude demands. It's easily possible to add E) non-working DVD-player to that - but as of recently, I can say 'thank you' to Maynard of horrormoviediary.net, who volunteered to send me a working external DVD-player. Thank you.

Still, the final solution in this case having been the handful of movies of which I have several backups - having been blessed with technological paranoia from an early involvement with it on -, I chose Ravenous to be the movie of the... day? Weekend? Don't know, don't care, but what counts is that Ravenous is one of those movies I can actually watch, so there we go - praise Dame Necessity.

First of all:
Robert J. Carlyle. OMG. Robert J. Carlyle.
Your hostess has to admit to going all fan-girl-y over that Scottish guy. His characters are always memorable - Colqhoun / Colonel Ives in this wonderful movie, the father in 28 Weeks Later (Hallêlu:-Fresnadillo/Boyle!), Dr. Rush in SGU (only thing saving that series, besides for the distinctly Farscape-esque touch of the story and the ship Destiny... srsly), .... and most recently, effing Rumplestiltskin in faerytale-smooch-drama-series Once Upon A Time (again, only saving grace of that thing - I do see a pattern here).

So. Ravenous. *toothy grin*

This is the story of a young man of the American military, Captain John Boyd (Guy Pearce), who has been sent to Fort Spencer, located in what has to count as pretty much the remotest areas of the Sierra Nevadas, for a reason made very clear at the very start of the narrative; there, he encounters a very archaic concept coming to life, threatening all - an archaic concept made manifest as a ravenous hunger... for human flesh.

(cue in cheering, applause and enthusiastic hooting of the doubtlessly huge crowd here for effect)

Captain John Boyd is a coward at heart. He managed to take an enemy post in a battle once (ah, yes: The movie is set during the time of the Mexican-American war - complete with in-period garb, which of course impressed me positively A LOT, being the historical-accuracy-nerd that I am), but that was under ...special circumstances. That was ...different. *grins toothily*
You see, he let himself be captured by the enemy (= evil Mexicans in this case) by 'playing dead' - he could not bear witnessing the deaths of all his men, and so he thought it would be a good idea to fake being dead. Wise choice indeed, considering that he found himself on a wagon loaded with the corpses of his fellow soldiers, buried underneath them. Getting their, ehm, inside-stuff into his mouth. Heh.

When a mysterious stranger who calls himself Colqhoun arrives at Ford Spencer shortly after Boyd has, our soldier does not know yet that his life will change completely under the influence of the remnants of his own past and the needs of the present. A horror movie with engaging and truly memorable, well-crafted characters! [rasping-hissing-guttural-reptilian noises] Happy squeal.

Without going too much into the background-end of movie-narratives, Ravenous manages to make every single character in this movie into a well-defined semiotic entity - stereotyped just enough to provide a starting point, but crafted into veritable personalities from quite early on (well... needs to be from quite early on, as some people kind of die. No, not peacefully, rest assured). There is simply no possibility to mistake one character for another, as it so often happens with modern horror flicks; in case you don't know what I mean, think back to the last movie you watched involving some person killing teenagers and/or young adults appearing in friend-circle-sized groups, maybe even one in which this happens outdoors, preferrably in some woodland area. If you should suddenly find yourself thinking about, I don't know, Friday the 13th or any other slasher movie from the past decades in which you find yourself mixing up the victims because they are simply flesh to be killed off, then you got the point I was trying to make. However - this movie. Oh my gods. This movie. Oh my gods.***** The characters are awesome. All of them.

Witness:

• The Stoner: Private Cleaves, an awesome performance by David Arquette. David Arquette! I really had not expected that.
• The Native (I - Stoner): George, convincingly played by Joseph Running Fox. The scene which touches upon catholicism is BRILLIANT.
• The Native (II - Female): Sheila Tousey plays Martha, sister to George the Stoner. Silent, tough.
• The Bookish Boss: Colonel Hart - Jeffrey Jones! His performance in this flick is just all-around nifteh. Like, seriously.
• The Aryan Übersoldier: Private Reich (lol), hilariously played by Neil McDonough. You can feel the aryan hardcore-ness emanating from the screen. Well played, Mr. McDonough, well played.
• The Religious Shy Nutter: Private Toffler, charmingly played by Jeremy Davies.
• The Alcoholic Doctor: Knox, portrayed by Stephen Spinella. Convincing. *nods* Convincing and funny, actually - but in this movie, the 'funny' (or should I make that 'amusing'?) kind of comes with the territory... which I fully approve of.
• The Naive Coward: Captain John Boyd, our very own lead.

...as I said. No single fucking way to confuse these characters with one another - visuals and voice are particular to each person. This is a good thing. Whilst I dislike the overuse of stereotyping in general, I welcome it as a device for storytelling - and let's face it, movies are narratives, therefore the rules of storytelling apply in a kind of way. Mhkay? Mhkay.

All of the characters are loveable in their own way, and you will no doubt have your favourite (and one you like the least...) - mine is, as readers familiar with my rantings and ...delicate distinctions on decadence, death and dismemberment as well as desiccating husks of dead things might already have guessed, the cannibalistic character, as played by - remember the elegies at the beginning of this review? x-actly - ROBERT CARLYLE (*swoons*). No one, I swear, no one plays the calculating wendigo beyond human behavioural patterns - and yet using these to his advantage by impersonating them to those who still suffer from them - like him: The original nightmare from which the variety of anthropomorphic monsters we have in our world's myths, sagas, stories, tales and bedtime whispers have spawned, the original dread to which all these pay witness.


It's one of us. 
  

As for anthropomorphic monsters of movie-land - I don't know how my esteemed readers feel about this, but I personally think that there's something archaic about a human eating another human. Satisfying. Basic. Or maybe it's that 'non-monstrous-looking people doing monstrous things to one another'-theme I have going on (-- my favourite topos, really)... anyways!

[I did want to add in some deeply philosophical stuff about why the stuff witnessed in this movie can be classified as cannibalism, followed by a deeply philosophical view on why most of the stuff can't be cannibalism for purely semantic reasons; let's just state that cannibalism would be the eating of one's own kind (as Cannibal Flesh Riot! taught us so well)... and the change from human to wendigo seems to be pretty straight and without any turns back to the olden road of not eating people. There, long philosophical point made.]


When looking at the atmospheric pictures Ravenous provides the viewer with, you have to figure in the soundtrack to delve into the whole movie-experience. I'd recommend a relaxing intoxicant of your personal choice if I ever did such things or would, indeed, even assume in my child-like naiveté that this would be something people would or could do without repercussion from the righteous, just and holy Law(s) [insert the Law(s) appropriate for your geographical area, religious persuasion, social stratum, education, gender, musical taste, movie preference, political persuasion(s), favourite drink, age range and relationship to cats here] for such a heinous act of malice, evil and brooding terror.
*nods sagely*

...feel free to crack open a cold one, though.

Enjoy *grins*

So... Soundtrack. Damon Albarn and Michael Nyman truly are AMAZING composers. I was a bit disoriented the first time I heard Nyman being mentioned on the cultural radio channel over here - Ö1 for those of you who keep track******, but quickly connected the name with this movie. Seriously - the man is brilliant. Together, these two men are more than brilliant. Ravenous' soundtrack is exactly the sound you'd like to have running whilst merrily hunting down your human prey, preferrably in the mountainous and wood-covered ranges of something with only thin air left. Tenderness******* and all that.

Pacing: Comes with the soundtrack - or rather, the existence of this brilliant musical accompaniment to the narrative told here proves that the pacing is here - and it is indeed. It runs. It floats. It's natural. Sometimes, it speeds up a bit to let us cherish the rest of the story as well instead of dwelling too long on one point (as I would be wont to do, just so that you unnecessarily are aware of that); it generally can be said that the movement is fluid and follows from what has already happened how (and how fast). Natural pacing. It's rare to see that in a movie - especially in a movie about cannibalism!

By the way: Why is it that when a woman produces and directs a movie that is witty, gory, entertaining and full of suspense throughout gets called weird, but when guys do the same thing, no one says that? Oh, wait. 21st century, I nearly forgot.


Anyways! I am not writing as much and as lengthily as I would actually want to (...there's A LOT of stuff about this movie in my brain that wants to jump out at unsuspecting strangers, trust me...); this is due to me sitting here in front of the craptop, trying to go through my list of movie-reviews I have jotted down under the heading of 'to write' in order to do at least a bit of stuff that is actually really important to the world at large******** instead of just sitting around and worrying about stuff bothering me. So I ask you to forgive me this insanely short review of a movie that would deserve 30+ screens of analysis and love and hugs and kisses and kinky sex.


Hence: This movie is going to be one of the best you've ever watched, unless you seriously dislike character development, in-period-garb for actors, great and difficile acting, wonderful stereotypes used as they should be used, cognizant pacing, a beautiful soundtrack that makes you want to hunt people********* and twists and turns most people cannot foresee. I enjoy this movie immensely, whenever I have the chance to watch it. Some day, I shall make this review longer and more tedious and awesome to read...

11 / 10 holes in the ground. Like... holes. In the ground.

* Read: mad and obsessive.

** CSICON: Committee for Surrealist Investigation of Claims of the Normal: 'Finnegan's paper began with the electrifying sentence, "The average Canadian has one testicle, just like Adolph Hitler -- or, more precisely, the average Canadian has 0.96 testicles, an even sadder plight than Hitler's, if the average Anything actually existed." He then went on to demonstrate that the normal or average human lives in substandard housing in Asia, has 1.04 vaginas, cannot read or write, suffers from malnutrition and never heard of Silken Thomas Fitzgerald or Brian Boru. "The normal," he concluded "consists of a null set which nobody and nothing really fits."' 

*** Destrøyer øv t3k-N0-10gY

**** I officially and psychologically hate yellow. Hence the colour. Now delve into your Schadenfreude! 

***** Eh? Eh? EH?

****** Yes. I listen to Ö1 and love horror movies, nothing wrong with those two usually mutually exclusive things being combined into one happy package in me. :D

******* Possibly not the tenderness most people are thinking of when hearing or reading that word. Just to make this clear: There is no cuddling involved. 

******** The snark comes from realising that nothing I do is actually really important to the world at large. 

********* I don't know about you guys, but I feel like doing a Ravenous impromptu-show whenever I hear the soundtrack... *grins*

Tucker & Dale vs. Evil (2010)

Sheesh. A person turns their back onto modern horror in order to descend into madness for a career in stuff no one's interested in besides for the occasional madman or creep, only to return and see that they fucking missed a lot of cool stuff in the two years they were busy. Jeez. Give a body some rest.

Then again, I distinctly remember seeing the DVDs in a friend's preferred video store, thinking something along the lines of "this is so not going to be funny". And now, roughly 2 years later, I can come here and say 'dude, I was wrong. SO WRONG', because this, ladies and gentlemen, ghosts and ghouls, zombeasts and vamplings, is frelling hilarious. And I mean HILARIOUS.

So... let's start with WEST VIRGINIAAAAAAAA!!! Not just the home of my favourite band Blitzkid - who are going to finally split up after this tour, and damn, I shall have to run amok if I cannot manage to get to their final gig in Köln on Halloween - but also the trusty location where all horror movie nerds from around the world* know to find the evil woods that house, well, hillbillies. Murderous hillbillies. Madness, murder, slaughter, violence, death! Not necessarily in this order, though.

So yeah, the second we move into West Virginia, we know we're in for... well. A ride. I would totally offer you screenshots of the West Virginia woods scene in Tucker & Dale vs Evil and drag up my old West Virginia woods screen from Wrong Turn now, but alas, this laptop is not able to do that.

Our two heroes are Tucker and Dale. Tucker (Alan Tudyk) is one of the nifteh guys from Firefly in case you think you remember that face; in this movie, the eponymous Tucker is one of two 'hillbillies' on their way to their vacation in their dilapidated cabin in the woods; he is a simple yet philosophically skilled man who understands the truths of the world as it presents itself to us (and, according to Dale, also quite the man with the ladies, which I feel compelled to believe him). Dale - played by Tyler Labine - is the sweet-natured, slightly bigger guy. To be honest, I felt eerily reminded of Cannibal Flesh Riot! and the comedic trope of the tall, thin, clever guy teamed up with the beer-belly, bigger, less clever guy; the slight Cannibal Flesh Riot! - feeling probably comes from the fact that both movies subvert the trope successfully.

Tucker & Dale vs Evil is something that will probably be funny to most people, but only hilariously funny to those of us who have watched a few too many horror flicks. Every single stereotype is there, magnificently enhanced by the movie's joy to take the genre-specifics that all make us groan and just run with them; there's no need to pretend that the victims are not picked out for our viewing pleasure, that what happens is actually happening due to circumstances and not because it's what happens in horror flicks, that people get hilariously killed in extremely funny ways not because this is a horror flick but because this is, you know, serious business.

Generally speaking, this movie did everything right.

I particularly want to praise how writer** and director Eli Craig made it really easy for the viewer to see the two sides of the story - the hapless Dale and the a-bit-less-hapless Tucker (reminding at least me not just a little of his Firefly-character Wash) with all the weird stuff that happens around them, seriously confused by what they experience: perfectly contrasted with the young college people (I freely assume they are being young college people as actors of that age and dressed like that in such movies are always college people) and their preconceptions about what kind of people Tucker and Dale might possibly be.

As someone who is fascinated with the differences that make up each of our realities due to inferring that the world is the way we see it, I find this movie to be simply AWESOME - funny and awesome. It is hilarious, but at the same time, I could easily make a comparison between our college youths and Nazi Germany - but alas, I will refrain from doing that***.

The faithful horror fan will enjoy the scenes presented in Tucker & Dale vs Evil so much more than a non-horror viewer - although I have to admit I do not think too many people without at least a slight penchant for horror would watch it. Then again, I have no idea what normal people who are not into horror actually watch...

Old horror movie key-scenes and tropes have been used in such a fucking ingenious way that I feel it would be unfair to rob you of them by talking about them. Let's just say that the scenes are nearly flawless.

Oh, and I want to state that the free use of beer is awesome in this movie. Beer is an important part of civilisation, and these two proud men know it. Tucker and Dale are on the case!

Seriously though: Serious message (do not assume that people are what you think they are just because of their looks and your preconceived notions of stereotypes), hilarious flick. Along with the fun, the brain-stuff, the subtle social undertones we also get some really heart-warming scenes about friendship and acceptance (and cute romance). As I said, in my opinion, this has pretty much everything and has been done very, very, very very well. :D

The acting is pretty solid throughout - our two male leads and the female lead (Katrina Bowden as Allison) are obvious in this regard, but the college kids are also... more believable than their non-funny-horror-flick-with-hillbillies-counterparts on which they have been modelled. Then again, overacting such a part is way easier than trying to act believably - I mean come on. Would you be able to act in a believable way if you were to be cannon fodder for a woods-slasher-movie? I know I probably wouldn't.

The dialogue, too, is one of the most hilarious things ever, especially if you're watching this with the horror stereotypes we all know and love in mind. To be honest: Writing a review for this is a bit weird for me because I am giggling most of the time if not laughing out loud due to the hilarity of it all.

Hence:

Highly recommended to everyone!

9.5 / 10 creepy college kids hurling themselves to their premature death ("...Grab a leg!")

* Including females with hardly any idea about the geography of the world today who are nonetheless still able to split hairs about how much distance can be calculated to be lying between two ancient sites that have been ancient and dead for more than 4,000 years, obviously.

** Together with Morgan Jurgenson.

*** Take the superstitions the college kids have towards our friendly heroes and how that enrages them to act further and further, drowning down the spiral of pointless violence, under the aegis of a leader, and simply compare mentally with how the Germans and Austrians had these weird superstitions towards the Jewish people and how that enraged them to act further and further, drowning down the spiral of pointless violence under the aegis of a Führer... damn, I did it! ><

The Last House on the Left (1972)

To avoid fainting, keep repeating "It's only a movie...It's only a movie..."

It seems to be 70s time these days - Rabid was from 1977, Shock Waves from 1977 as well, and The Last House on the Left is from 1972.

The first things I noticed was the soundtrack. It's very ...70s like. Jazzy. Snazzy. You can just feel the summers of love, and can smell the weed (well, that might just be me) pervading the air. Girls are not wearing a bra, Daddy remarks upon his little girl's nipples, gives her a little gift (see below, maybe to enhance the nipples)... and one o those girls, namely one of our initial protagonist, is going to a concert to visit a gig by a band that dismembers live chickens on stage. Want to see them live.




She and another female friend of hers have no intention to go to that concert, though - they are sitting outside together, exploring the wild, drinking whisky, laughing, having fun. On their way in their car to... somewhere else... they hear of a group of escapees of violent rapists and murderers.




Cut to the violent rapists and murderers - a quite nice group of young men and one woman, whose habits include drinking, smoking, possibly listening to wild music and misbehaving.




The paths of our two parties cross when the two girls meet the youngest of the bunch, as they approach him for weed... and he takes them with him, to get some Columbian Gold. However, things don't go as they are planned.

I find this scene strangely erotic.

Meanwhile, we learn that tomorrow, one of the girls would have her birthday, and the parents are busy preparing the gifts and cake for Mari (their daughter).





Who is, in the meantime, watching helplessly as her friend gets raped.

Next day - Mari's birthday - we can see her being carried out of the flat in which she and her friend found themselves, thrown into the trunk of a car ("right on top of your friend!"), whilst the gang of misfits drives somewhere else - with their car breaking down in front of Mari's place. They take her out of the trunk, down into the dense woods. The police decides to not see the car (could cause problems, you know)... good old law enforcement. You can always rely on them.




It's suspenseful to watch the girls trying to escape from the group of violent fugitives - engaging. Something that this movie has in abundance and which new movies from the US lack is suspense. You never quite know what will happen next, the plot isn't so watered down that you could as well have none, and the plot we do have is simple, straightforward and believable. There's nothing fancy about this movie. And I mean that quite literal. Besides for the beginning, with Mari an her friend drinking and enjoying themselves, every minute of this movie is bleak and mercilessly realistic. Me like.




There's also a constant comical element contained within the movie in the form of the incompetent policemen.

Things start to turn weir when the brutes, who killed Phyllis as well as Mari, show up at the house of Mari's parents. They behave a little bit suspiciously. Junior, the youngest member of the gang and a heroin addict, has nightmares in his withdrawal symptoms about letting the gang shoot Phyllis and kill Mari. Whilst throwing up, Mari's mother hears him, comes to help him to his bed... and notices that the gift her husband gave to Mari looks the same as the chain that Junior/Willow is wearing around his neck. Suspicious, she opens one of the bags of the gang... and finds the bloodied clothes of her daughter. A plan begins to form.




One hell of a bloody plan.


All in all, a pretty enjoyable movie with a satisfying plot, satisfying violence, realistic behaviour, and it looks pretty good for 1972.


7.85/10 things that aren't too little, just afraid *grins*

Cannibal Holocaust (1980)

Man is omnipotent; nothing is impossible for him. What seemed unthinkable undertakings yesterday are history today. The conquest of the moon for example: who talks about it anymore? Today we are already on the threshold of conquering our galaxy, and in a not too distant tomorrow, we'll be considering the conquest of the universe - and yet man seems to ignore the fact that on this very planet there are still people living in the stone age and practicing cannibalism.

There is so much baggage and back story that goes with the movie that it is entirely impossible to simply write a review of Cannibal Holocaust without delving a bit into the reasons why this movie is as infamous as it is.

But first, I'll try to give you a short synopsis of what passes for a plot in this flick: Professor of anthropology Harold Monroe (Robert Kerman) travels to the Amazonas - the "Green Inferno" - in search for a team of four young people, who travelled there to film a documentary about cannibalism as practised by certain tribes living in that area. Together with Chaco Losojos, a man who knows the jungle like his, errr, pockets and what I can only surmise to be a half-native guide (and a native tribesman who is used like a dog) he embarks on a search that makes him experience for himself how cruel reality can be - and when he discovers the remains of the film the four missing (and dead) people left behind as their legacy to the world, he discovers that the cruelty of reality isn't just confined to "primitive" people, and leads him to wonder who the true cannibals are...

I have a few issues with this movie, to be honest. Let's start with the most obvious one:

Lack of cannibalism.

Yes, you read that correctly. Maybe my appetite for gore (no pun intended) is a bit too high for a movie from 1980, but considering that this movie is named Cannibal Holocaust and deals with, well, cannibalism, I was definitely expecting more. What we get are a few scenes of implied cannibalism, and the few shots of "actual" cannibalism just look fake. And not gross and disgusting at all. Or, you know, bloody and violent.

My favourite scene - a meouwser, only in big!

Which brings me to my second point: The blood and the gore effects. For Flying Spaghetti Monster's sake, can it be that hard to at least produce artificial blood that doesn't have that faint touch of pink? Considering that Ruggero Deodato had enough money to film on location in Colombia and New York, only filming the interior scenes in his native Italy, it sure as hell couldn't have been a question of money.

To all you ambitious film makers out there who want to avoid someone like me ranting about how the lack of quality-blood makes your movie terrible: Add a little bit of green to it. Make sure it has the right consistency. Make sure it's not too bright, or, gods forbid, pink. Trust me - a little effort with the blood makes up for a lot. Deodato or whoever was responsible for the creation/acquisition of the fake gore sure as hell didn't go for quality with the blood. Or quantity, if I might add that with a slightly nagging voice.

Third point: The portrayal of the Yanomamo and Shamatari tribes... I don't care that the film is presumably misogynistic, but damn, if that isn't exploitation at its core, I don't know what is. I seriously don't know how they got the natives to cooperate and play their assigned roles in Cannibal Holocaust, because man... demeaning. I was constantly reminded of animals - only that, in my experience and in this movie, animals actually are treated better. As long as they're inedible. Ehm.

Plus... careful with the word "primitive" and the use of the term "stone age" to indicate that something is "primitive". At least try to be careful with that around me, movie, because that happens to just include my archaeological field of study, and I'm easily offended when it comes to calling my chosen cultures "primitive". Or any other culture that is remotely linked to mine by the derogatery use of the term "stone age". Let me add that "stone age" is a bit of a vague term, because it encompasses quite a long time.

Then there's the sex scenes... or should I make that "rape scenes"? I have no problem with rape scenes in general, but watching one in particular, in which the documentarists are gang-raping a young native female, made me feel ashamed of being a member of the species homo sapiens.

Pwetty. Me like.

On to the strong points of Cannibal Holocaust.

The first thing that I noticed was the incredible soundtrack, created flawlessly by Riz Ortolani. It is atmospheric and incredibly well made - it adds a special quality to what may otherwise remain a more or less unspectacular exploitation flick from the very beginning of the eighties.

The gore and violence, whilst not exactly on a level which sits well with the gorehound in me (as the three people who read this blog of mine know, the more blood and guts and pointless violence I get to witness in a horror movie, the more happy I am), is at times beautifully executed, as with the skull in the screenshot above.

What I could have done without was the animal cruelty. 'Nuff said about that topic.

Stone peni:

I will never look at a vibrator with the same eyes after witnessing how the script of Cannibal Holocaust uses that stony, ehm, member.

The acting is actually good - not great, not wonderful, certainly not something that would win an award these days, but it is brutally realistic - partly due to the nature of the scenes the actors were forced through. If you're interested in reading more about the details of the tribulations the cast had to go through, check wikipedia - the whole story is way too long and detailed for me having the flu and still being up, freezing and hungry, at 7:15 AM on this beautiful Tuesday morning. Man... I need sleep badly. And something against the flu. Merf.

A surprisingly good movie, everything considered. Even with the amount of criticising on my part, I still find the movie to be entertaining and moving at the same time with its scenic, sweeping shots, its fast-paced and hectic certainty and bitter grimness. Truly, Cannibal Holocaust manages to do something which I noted with the French directors of The Hills Have Eyes, Inside and other recent awesome movies from that part of Europe: The merciless camera. The viewer becomes entangled in the movie, he is the voyeur for whom these scenes have been staged and created - and although we may flinch and shy away from the brutality, we still are captivated by what happens on the screen.

You certainly won't be bored with this example of cinematic voyeurism.

A moving and brutal criticism of our modern society and how it behaves when there is no law to keep the darkness of humanity in check.

7.75/10 ritualistic punishments for adultery.

Hexen bis aufs Blut gequält aka Mark of the Devil aka Austria 1700 (1970)

Udo Kier! Awesome!

And it's a truly fucking Austrian movie. Holy crap, I am so proud of my country. And our mountains. Can you see those mountains? They're truly awesome mountains.

According to the imdb, this movie has been shot in "West Germany". That's not true. It has been shot in Austria - namely the districts of Salzburg and Niederösterreich (Lower Austria). I lived there for 16 years (in Salzburg, but part of my so-called family comes from Niederösterreich), I should know how the area looks like. And turns out I was right:

Castle Moosham, Salzburg, Austria

Mauterndorf, Salzburg, Austria

Krems, Lower Austria, Austria

- funnily enough, my (now dead) grandmother (from my mother's side) lived there, and I was there often enough. And it's just half an hour on the train to Krems (which I am speaking about).

This is Krems. Yes, most of the... place looks like this.

Mauterndorf is also a place I am familiar with, as is Castle Moosham. Sheesh. No wonder this movie looks so familiar.

A guy who raped a nun:

Being tarred and feathered? Cool. That's awesome. I especially approve of the gleeful expressions on the faces of those present.

Idyllic everyday scenes from rural Austria...

Witch burning (see above). Could have been more graphic, but alas, it's the 70s.

Now, get ready for... NARRATOR VOICE!

"In Europe, between 15th and 19th centuries, it is estimated nearly eight million people were convicted of heresy and executed by fanatical witch hunters, in order to save their souls.

Their deaths on the scaffold or the funeral pile was for them the release from agonizing torture which often lasted for years.

This motion picture shows three cases taken from authentic documents from the time when witch-hunting had reached its peak and can only give a slight idea of the cruelties of one of the blackest pages in the history of Man."

(Actual quote from movie - in fiery letters, no less!)


There seems to be a problem with wide-spread witchcraft (in Austria?!). The local witchfinder doesn't really want to cooperate with the two new arrivals (one of them is Udo K... I mean, Christian) who come with a letter from the Holy See, authorising them as well. To do... witch-finding.

Our Hero

(Believe it or not, but this actually is Udo Kier, about 4 decades ago. I actually said out loud "I don't believe it!" when I looked it up on the imdb. Then again, I could have guessed - after all, he has the eyes...)


Of course, the local witchfinder didn't really keep his books on witch-killing properly, so he wants his underling to make up proper manuscripts of the... "investigations", complete with confessions. So that everything looks alright to the annoying newcomers - who are nothing but heralds for the true problem to come: Lord Cumberland, some sort of really important witch-hunter.

Albino

Even if his underling has to write all night - something which I personally find hilarious, as I've spent many a night doing nothing but writing up stuff and then presenting it to an audience. If a female, sickly student can do it in 2008, a witchfinder's sidekick should be able to do so, as well.

This is how Evil Guys intimidate underlings to write stuff all night. Professors can do it with a glance and a "...I need it tomorrow."

Albino, the local witchfinder (remember?), takes a fancy to the young lady working at the inn he's staying at.

The girl. The one with the skirt, you moron...

His attempt to rape her results in a scar on his cheek, so he accuses her of witchcraft.

Boob-touching can result in...

...this.

I also want to draw attention to Hitler-Beard. I don't know if it was fashionable during the 70s to spout a Hitler-moustache, but damn me if I didn't laugh out loud when I first saw the guy sitting around. He's just there. He does nothing. I think he even says nothing.
You have to realise that, in Austria, whilst funny to some people like me who just have a weird sense of humour, anything WWII-related is somehow attached to a deeply rooted stigma - a taboo, practically. By merely cracking a Hitler joke on teh intartubes, I am technically breaking the law in Austria. We're very touchy about this subject, and very obsessed with it. In school, you're herded into a bus once your mind is able to be imprinted and influenced by the authorities and then driven off to Auschwitz, where you experience a day filled with mind-blowing guilt techniques.

Let me tell you something about Hitler Beard. I like to think that he was just hanging around the set, a curious, yet simple farmer with an oddly shaped, funny but socially awkward beard. The director saw him, and thought "ZOMG that's freaking hilarious - Hitler Beard!" ...and so, a legend was born.




By the way - we get cool torture scenes. Not really cool kinds of torture, but at least some.




The whole attempted rape - violence - accusing of witchcraft out of spite and revenge is a bit of a problem, because Udo Ki... Christian found the local witchfinder's underling (I call him "Chinny") trying to forge documents, AND he (Udo K... Christian) has taken a fancy to the girl as well. Apparently. At least he invites her over to dinner at his place. I take that to be an expression of ...emotion. And usually, he doesn't have any of that stuff. Emotion, I mean.

May I sleep here? Just... for one night...?

Man, this is going fast! She obviously likes him ("What is... your name?" - "...Christian..." - "...good night... Christian..."). As in... really likes him. Has the hots for him. Wants to do the nasty with him... you get the picture. Also, look at that face - if that isn't an inviting smile, I don't know what is.

Our beautiful heroine wakes up to the sound of drums - it's the messengers of Sir Cumberlain, and the accursed heretics brought with them.

As the story goes on, the local witch-finder is jealous of the budding relationship between his younger rival (Christian) and the young lady working at the inn (girl with name). So, what's a guy to do?

That's right. You accuse your desired girlfriend of witchcraft. Again.

As soon as Lord Cumberlain arrives, the music becomes... intense. Intense and dramatic. I congratulate the person who wrote it on the soundtrack - it truly is beautiful, and it manages to convey an additional sense of intensity to the scenes.

A problem arises when our local witch-finder Albino brings in a young, obviously tortured woman, who he accuses of various very witchy crimes (all of them really strange, weird and unbelievable). She was actually raped by the Lord Bishop, but that makes her even more of a suspect, so she's going onto the rack.

And then... of course... the young woman working at the inn. (Her name's Vanessa Benedict - the scriptwriter was nice enough to make them tell us her name legitimately during a ...hearing (?)) -Accused of having had intercourse with the Devil, making a pact with him and thereby rendering another man (we can just guess...) impotent. Lord Cumberlain doesn't want to deal with this case, and relegates Vanessa to the jail.




Christian expresses his desire to become a learned witch-hunter to his mentor, the Lord, and the topic of Vanessa comes up. Lord Cumberlain doesn't approve of Christian's feelings for her, stating that it's her witchcraft that makes him attracted to her.

We also get pretty girls in irons and with thumbscrews, actually smashing fingers.

Christian starts to see the ugliness of the church when he witnesses his mentor trying to make a convicted sorcerer sign over all of his belongings (= a lot) to the church in exchange for his life.

I have read quite my share of books about witchcraft, the inquisition, witch trials and what went on during the Dark Ages. However, reading about it is one thing. Watching it is an entirely different thing. For once, I don't masturbate to the Malleus Malleficarum. Or at least I haven't tried it yet...

...just kidding.

(Or not?!)

But these scenes are awesome. Never have whipped, abused females looked as good as in this movie (then again, it's my 2nd exploitation movie, so I can't be considered an authority on the subject...).

Man. That's so pr0n.

Especially with the sweet, vanilla sex scene afterwards (two random people we'll never see again, just there to provide us with softcore porn).

Aesthetic shots. But whereas it's morally totally okay for me to show graphic pictures of violene, I can't show you the sex scene. It would make this into a pr0n-blog (let's see how much weird google search results this will produce).

Albino (the local witch-hunter's name) notices naked nameless woman, he and his horde of edumacated idiots storm the room, he gets it on with her (implied rape), and his idiot underlings kill the guy she was doing it with first. Problem? Problem.

Now it gets complicated (Whoa there, cyn!, you say - a 70s horror flick with a complicated plot?! Slow down, slow down, this can't be true!), so bear with me: Albino's underling/secretary betrays his master's behaviour to Lord Cumberland as he is about to torture a young woman (the one who got raped by the Lord Bishop). For example, with ingenuous contraptions that are made to hold someone tight and secure. In case you want to rip someone's tongue out with a old, rusty metal thingie.

See? Told ya you could use it for that!

Lord Cumberland wants to relieve the witch-finder Albino of his duties due to the incident with the implied rape of a young woman, which turns into a heated argument, with Albino threatening to tell everyone that he is evil, rapes women and burns them out of fun. When he adds impotence to the list of crimes (huh?) he wants to accuse Cumberland of (of which Cumberland is mostly innocent, we can guess, but Albino isn't), the Lord Cumberland snaps and kills Albino by strangulation.

Christian happens to watch this - and his faith in god and the church is a bit... shaken, you might say.

"I slept with faith and found a corpse in my arms on awakening; I drank and danced all night with doubt and found her a virgin in the morning.", as Uncle Al would have said. Probably.

The interaction between Christian and Lord Cumberland gets increasingly strained with tension due to the murder the Lord committed. Cumberland reminds him of the fact that innocents get killed in their line of business. Morals and ethics all play a big part in this, as does the eternal question: Is it alright to kill for something that has to do with religion?

Interspersed throughout the movie and its actual plot (I still find it hard to believe that) are the torture scenes. Quite some of them. And for people like me, who know obscure stuff about torture methods, even the mere notion of "The Spanish Boots should convince him" makes me happy.




Of course, they serve a reason - they illustrate the cruelty and pointlessness of a religious system inherently flawed in its conception of "good" and "evil" and its ways of deciding which is which.

Some part of me, however, thinks that it's also exceedingly awesome.

I won't go into any further details, as I have already given some things away, but this movie delivers.




Torture, rape... you want it, you get it.




The pacing is just right - scenes float into each other in just the right way. There is a careful, measured element to the way everything works and interacts. This is storytelling well done.

The camerawork is, for a movie from 1970, outstanding. Granted, I know more 50s and 60s movies than 70s ones (that period seems to be the one decade that I somehow managed to miss out), so I don't have a reference point to what could be considered a standard for how good movies during the 70s have to look like, but it's very beautiful. They chose really good locations for shooting this film.

The acting is equally as good - especially our leads are outstanding. Udo Kier is brilliant as ever, especially in the later parts of this movie, and the beautiful Olivera Katarina portrays her character with full conviction. Herbert Lom, who plays Lord Cumberland, was a no-namer to me until I checked him on the internet and found out that he's playing Insp. Dreyfus in the Pink Panther movies that my dad always used to watch with me when they were on TV. Dad, posthumously: I don't know if you ever knew that this guy also played a woman-raping and torturing witch-finder, but he does it good.




And now let me dedicate a little bit to Reggie Nalder (born Alfred Reginald Natzick here in beautiful and decrepid Vienna, back when it was still the center of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, which was about a century ago - see, horror movies can be educating!).

I was impressed with his role as the lecherous witch-hunter Albino. He is a great actor - and constantly, there was this nagging feeling back in my mind that I somehow KNEW his face. Turns out I was right: He played the vampire Barlow in the 1979 TV series "Salem's Lot", based on the Stephen King novel. When I watched that more than a decade ago, I was pissed off at how shitty the vampire looked. Herr Natzick, you ruined one of the few Stephen King books for me with your decidedly blue depiction of the vampire. However, you made it up with your role in this movie.


9/10 really not happy endings. Which maketh me happy.

Edit I: I also just notice how incredibly good-looking all of the somewhat important female characters are. They look naturally pretty - not the glamorous, glossy version of "good looking" we have come to expect from new movies made with a shiny cast of hot young actors, not the kind of looking good that is achieved by tricky use of lighting and make up - just plain, normal, good looking women. It's good to see that once in a while.

Edit II: Somehow, after the whole impotence thing got brought up in the movie, I constantly had the feeling that there was something more to it. A sort of sub-sub-plot, if you will. But check the timing of sayings like "I know who you are!", "I know WHAT you are!" and the word "impotence" and see for yourself. It was almost like a running gag... at least in my head. Ahem.

Narok (2005)

I got this movie from a very good friend, who shares my appreciation for horror movies (granted, he prefers actually GOOD ones, whilst I will watch pretty much anything). So, one sunny and warm, terrible afternoon, he suddenly walks over to his DVD collection, searches for a while, and then hands me a beautifully looking metal casing - a movie called "Hell". I was a bit confused. So, after enquiring why he would hand me such a pretty looking thing, he just told me that I should take it. I naturally said "no", because I usually don't like taking gifts from other people. When he resolutely walked to my bag and put it into it, with the words that he NEVER EVER wants to have it back, I knew that I would be in for a treat.

Let's start with the basics: A bunch of young people and their older uncle are driving in a car. Apparently, they want to film something. So, basic set-up: Young people, older adult that warns them about the dangers of hell (could we call that "subtle foreshadowing"?), and a car. Guess what? They have an accident! And wake up in... you guessed it, hell.

Now, that sounds like a premise I can live with. I imagine a movie about souls trapped in hell to sate my lust curiousity concerning torture methods and violence, making the gorehound that is me happy. I have to admit that the torture scenes do indeed make me happy (I will occasionally gift you with one - yes, it was screenshot time again).

But the rest... sheesh. I had to figure out the plot through tedious piercing together of useless dialogue. The dialogues are crap (granted, I watched the German dubbed version, for I wasn't in the mood for Thai. Oriental languages make me nervous, for some reason I do not really understand. Nervous and a bit annoyed. No offense to those who love them, or even speak them). The characters are as stereotypical as it gets (well, not as stereotypical as in Teeth, but it's a close call).

The beginning of the movie actually wasn't bad. Random pictures of terrible things happening to people, mostly being done to them by other people, whilst a narrator tells us that life is truly violent. I agree, and I like that part. Maybe it's because I like pictures of terrible things. But no matter why, it started out promising.

And then we suddenly are faced with DRAMA.

Seriously, if I want to watch a movie about the relationship problems between young adults, I am going to watch... uhm... I'm sure there's some sort of TV series I could watch in order to see stuff like that. When I put something into my DVD player that looks like THIS,



I don't want to know about the character's dramatic relationships and lives.

First, we get our heroine (we can easily identify her as the heroine because she is sad) in one of the most terrifying scenes known to mankind: Waiting for the result of a pregnancy test. Now, for people of the Teeth persuasion (celibacy and all that), something like a pregnancy test might not be scary. To me, it is one of the essential and fundamental scary things in life. And as far as I know, a lot of males feel the same. I freely admit it - I am scared of pregnancy tests (or rather, what they indicate). So this was probably the one scene in which I felt myself recoil inside in terror.

Then we get even more drama. The heroine's boyfriend, who is a really evil and uncaring young man (I would give him a stern look if I could) is cheating on her with the other female member of our merry team of young people going to hell.

The Lord of Hell will have a lot of work to do with that filthy, evil man. And the filthy harlot.
Mmmmmmh.... harlots...
...where was I? A, yes. Drama. A broken heart... nice pictures, though. The rain, the tears... it's actually pretty.

So, basically, we get to know that everyone in this little group of people going to hell has committed some sort of sin. As if that was important. It's a movie about people in hell, I don't care WHAT their sins were, I care about seeing them tortured.

So... car-crash. Background drama. Hell. And what, pray tell, do my eyes have to witness? Instead of creepy demons...




Thai Half-Orc Barbarians!


At this point I want to say something about the dialogues again. Seriously, they are fucking brilliant. I mean... they have a chance to flee the Thai Half-Orc Barbarians, and what is the first line I hear uttered?
"Stay here! Where do you want to go?"
....Uhm... away, possibly?



Anyways, they seem to face being confined to hell in a quite stoic way.

They also made this hell a bit... fiery. Fire vortexes, fireballs (as in D&D), torches, lava, more fire, lots of scorching sun... very...errr.... creative.

We also have "The Dark Lord of Hell".


He looks constipated, doesn't he? Please tell me that this is intended to be comedy.

I have to suppress the insane urge to giggle all the time. Not a good sign, if you ask me. I mean, granted, there is good giggling and bad giggling when it comes to horror flicks, but this is the kind of bad giggling that shows that I just... just can't take it seriously. Luckily, I have a Meouwser sitting on my back. He disapproves of this movie. On the other hand, that means I can't smoke a cigarette (the Dark First Primordial Malice From Beyond Time and Space doth not approve of cigarette smoke).

The tortures are nice, though. Could be more imaginative, but I am not going to complain. Tongue ripping out, drinking molten gold, being impaled alive, drawn and quartered, thrown into a lake of fire, hanging, hanging on the legs, hanging with the head down and being cut open...




Gods, I like crude torture methods. I'm more of a fan of sharp things, but sometimes, brute force can be nice. Crude, but apparently effective. Not that it would give me any kind of perverted ideas.



Then we get a plot twist: THEY AREN'T ACTUALLY DEAD, JUST IN AN INTENSIVE CARE UNIT! Gods, I NEVER saw that coming! Clever! My, M. Night Shyamalan couldn't come up with something like that!

At least now the colour filter of the movie changed. To this:


I like the demons, they look funny. Notice the chubby one in the middle? Hilarious. I had to stop the movie in order to stop laughing. It/He/Her looks a bit unsure what to do - "Whatever, I'm just going to stand here, looking somewhere... man, I'm bored... maybe I should really do that SlimFast diet they told me about?... *sighs*.... stupid movie..."

Or at least that's how I imagine it.

Anyways, those threatening Thai Half-Orc Barbarians are on a bridge. And by PURE COINCIDENCE, all our heroes and heroines are back together, just HAPPENING TO HIDE UNDER THE SAME BRIDGE?! Yeah. Sure...


I just like showing you pictures of torture scenes. Because there were three things I liked in this movie:

1 - The torture scenes (the more graphic ones).
2 - Cannibalistic children (sorry, no screenshot, I keep that to myself because of the sheer awesomeness. It's like small ghouls, only less cool than ghouls, but at the same time infinitely better than normal cannibals or mutants, because they are children and rip living people into pieces! ENTHUSIASM!).
3 - Evil tempresses.

As for point 3, I present:



I volunteer for this sort of punishment. I'm just wondering when they'll turn into man-devouring, dead, rotten night-hags. (Answer: Less than a minute later, and I am actually good at predicting how seducing and alluring females from hell will look like as soon as they got their prey in their clutches...)

In short: Nice torture scenes, one far too short cannibalistic children scene, a far too clothed appearance of evil tempresses, and far too much drama and moralising. Seriously, keep your morals to yourself, movie. We don't want to hear stereotypical characters whining about the evil they did in their life. And we don't want fucking relationship dramas. At least I don't. Cut away 40 minutes of your "plot development", add more half-naked ladies and torture and cannibalistic children, and this could actually be a decent movie. If you replace the Thai Half-Orc Barbarians by ANYTHING else that is more scary.

3/10. Just because of the torture scenes, trust me.