Thriller: A Cruel Picture (Bo A. Vibenius, 1973) DVD Review

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“You better start praying, One Eye.” Perhaps better known under the title They Call Her One Eye, Bo A. Vibenius' stripped-back revenge thriller is an unusual sight to see come from Sweden, where serious art house cinema is more the norm. Mixing overt stylistic flourishes with hardcore sleaze, the tale of Frigga – a mute young woman recovering from a horrific ordeal in childhood – proves to be a tough but rewarding viewing experience, wrought from highly charged emotion and brutality...

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Deadpool's UK Rating Illustrates Why the MPAA System Sucks...

Deadpool - you might have heard about it - is almost upon us (February 10th in the UK, and the 12th in North America) and, much to the delight of fans, this time it will play true to its naughty roots and get a full-bore R-Rating in America.

This is important because it means Deadpool can be released, unmolested by the scissors of knicker-twisted censors, upon the viewing public and - even more importantly - it means that international audiences can not only get the full beans, but a good chance of an audience-friendly rating to boot.

Therefore it's interesting to note the uncut 15 rating that Deadpool has just received in the United Kingdom from the British Board of Film Classification - and this perfectly encapsulates why cinema fans the world over need the Motion Picture Association of America to get a grip and change their rating system...

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Chained Heat (Paul Nicolas, 1983) DVD Review

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“Where hot desire melts cold prison steel!” The 'women in prison' genre enjoyed it's heyday during the 1970s and 1980s, shifting from Nazi camps, sweaty foreign locales, and South East Asian revolutions, to down-town Los Angeles, criminal conspiracies, and the abused inmates rioting against an inherently abusive system. Regardless of the framing – be it the concrete jungle or the actual jungle – copious nudity, savage gal-on-gal fights, torture, domination, humiliation, drugs, guns, and lead-fuelled vengeance (or any combination thereof) was the order of the day. Naturally, with such an influx of 'WIP' films, the quality varied immensely, but some of the greatest entries included Jack Hill's iconic double-whammy of The Big Doll House (1971) and The Big Bird Cage (1972), as well as Paul Nicolas' (real-name Lutz Schaarwachter) 1983 festival of flesh & action Chained Heat.

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Who Saw Her Die? (Aldo Lado, 1972) DVD Review

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Opening in the snowy hills of France in 1968, it's not long before Ennio Morricone's eerily memorable score seeps into the film (children singing the title like a nursery rhyme), as we are plunged behind the veil of a killer – a twisted psychopath whose modus operandi relates to red-haired girls – in one of a series of effectively orchestrated scenes of stalking. At these times, and indeed throughout the film, Aldo (Night Train Murders) Lado's tight direction, Franco (Amityville 2) Di Giacomo's gorgeous cinematography, Morricone's score, and Angelo Curi's skilled editing, combine to create a sinister journey through the echoing waterways, canals, stairways, rooftops, and breath-taking architecture of Venice.

Pre-dating the much more widely recognised Don't Look Now (Nicolas Roeg, 1973), which tread similar ground a year later, Who Saw Her Die? details the trauma suffered by sculptor Franco (a rail-thin George Lazenby) and his estranged wife Elizabeth, after their red-haired daughter Roberta is taken by the veiled woman in black and found dead in the waters of a fruit market. However, Massimo D'Avack and Francesco Barilli's script (with help from Aldo Lado and Ruediger Von Spihes) opts to pay more attention – in true giallo fashion – to a civilian's (Franco) quest to find the killer when an ineffective police force can't help (you'll find similar narrative approaches in the likes of Dario Argento's The Bird With The Crystal Plumage).

 

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Night Train Murders (Aldo Lado, 1974)

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The following is the third of three reviews for the "Shameless Slasher Nasties Box Set" - it's a 3-disc DVD comprised of Killer Nun, Torso, and Night-Train Murders.

Like Killer Nun (included in this box set), Aldo Lado’s riff on Wes Craven’s The Last House on the Left (1972) found its way onto the Department of Public Prosecutions list of 72 banned video nasties in the 1980s. However, similarly to Berruti’s film, Night Train Murders was later acquitted (33 titles in total were acquitted, leaving 39 that were ‘liable to deprave and corrupt’ anyone who viewed them).

 

While the trailer seems to suggest a lurid and fast-paced thriller, Lado’s ‘rape and revenge’ flick is in fact much more reliant on suspense and slow-build tension – and a script loaded with brutal social commentary. Furthermore, despite Lado claiming to have never seen Craven’s vicious Vietnam-weary The Last House on the Left (itself heavily inspired by Ingmar Bergman’s 1959 film The Virgin Spring), there are numerous similarities between the two films – two girls fall victim to a gang of thugs (one of whom is a junkie) only for them to in-turn fall victim to the upper middle class parents of one of the victims (one of whom is a Doctor). That said, the two films differ in two key ways – Craven’s documentary-like film is far more directly plotted, while Lado’s visually luxuriant film possesses far more twisted characters.

 

Opening amidst the heavily populated consumer haven of a German shopping district on Christmas Eve, Lado’s social criticism gets off to an early start – the safety of this scene getting interrupted when the two antagonists (“Blackie” and “Curly”) mug a boozy Santa Claus. They escape the police by hopping aboard a departing train – the same train that is carrying Margaret and her friend Lisa on their way to spend the holidays in Italy – and so a night of depravity is set in motion.

 

Amongst the passengers are a cross-section of 1970s European society – including happy families, students, Catholic priests cheating at chess, and a group of well-heeled adults discussing the very nature of morality, democracy, and if there is a middle-ground between liberalism and totalitarianism. Indeed it is within this last group that we meet one of the key antagonists – ‘The Lady on the Train’ – an upper middle class woman who hides her sexual perversions in her handbag and behind her veil. It is with this character that the social criticism of the script is most potent, unleashing her inner demons via a toilet-bound tryst with Blackie – in this way depravity is almost treated like a sexually transmitted disease that brings out the worst in her suppressed character. It’s quite literally a clash of the high society and the seething proletariat.

 

As the film progresses, the social commentary continues to come thick-and-fast as the tension slowly builds – seemingly happy marriages are shown to be on the rocks, and the very nature of temptation and shame are embodied brilliantly in the figure of a bourgeois voyeur. Indeed, the film really explodes once we’ve swapped trains and the central protagonists and antagonists find themselves secreted away in a booth with each other – and it is here that Ennio Morricone’s score (central to which is a chilling, stalking harmonica) creates an almost unbearable amount of anxiety as events take a dramatic and violent turn for the worse.

 

Cast in a sinister and seductive blue light, Gabor Pogany’s cinematography expertly melds vice, violence, and virgin innocence, while Alberto Gallitti’s exceptional editing fizzes with inspired cross-cutting and sound design that blends two distinct worlds into a distillation of the troubled underbelly of (at the time at least) modern European life. While The Last House on the Left focussed more on up-front violence, Night Train Murders instead opts for chillingly lifting the veil on the potential moral squalor inside any one of us – and it is precisely this kind of rich thematic texturing that proves Lado’s film to be an extremely rewarding entry in the ‘rape and revenge’ sub-genre.

Shameless Screen Entertainment do themselves proud with a clean and crisp transfer, and a nice audio presentation that preserves all of the Godfather-like use of clattering train wheels on the soundtrack; trailers round out the package. The 3-disc 'Shameless Slasher Nasties Box Set' also comes with an essay insert from noted film writer Kim Newman (providing brief but informative context), and the set itself comes with impressive cover art that mimics a rental videotape (complete with "Be Kind and Rewind" sticker).

Torso (Sergio Martino, 1973) - DVD Review

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The following is the second of three reviews which I'll be posting for the "Shameless Slasher Nasties Box Set" - it's a 3-disc DVD comprised of Killer Nun, Torso, and Night-Train Murders.

Like Killer Nun (included in this box set), this Italian giallo flick is presented uncut in anamorphic widescreen with a handful of newly re-inserted scenes that were previously expurgated – scenes that provide some extra connections between the dots. Sergio Martino had previously delivered The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh (1972) starring giallo legend Edwige Fenech, and would go on to unleash Mountain of the Cannibal God (1978) starring Stacy Keach and a certain Bond Girl by the name of Ursula Andress. However Torso (appropriately sub-titled “Carnal Violence”) has perhaps brought the director the most acclaim in wider circles, as it stands as an excellent example of the slasher movie during the early gestation of the sub-genre.

In advance of early American slashers like Black Christmas (Bob Clark, 1974) and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Tobe Hooper, 1974), Martino’s film features examples of some of the most common themes and iconography found in such fare. Writers such as Carol J. Clover, Reynold Humphries, and many more have discussed these elements – particularly the so-called ‘final girl’ – the one female to make it out alive due to her superior moral standing. Indeed here the femme who escapes fatal consequences is played by Suzy Kendall – who also starred in Dario Argento’s superb debut The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1971).

However, Martino and his screenwriting partner Ernesto Gastaldi, and his Director of Photography Giancarlo Ferrando seem far more interested in gazing at any one of the other girls who populate the film’s bevy of gorgeous babes – gals who are no strangers to getting their kit off at a moment’s notice. That all said, once we move into the second half of the movie the focus finally lands squarely on Kendall’s shoulders – indeed it’s very much a film of two halves.

The first half rapidly makes it way through a whole succession of tense stalkings, bared breasts (even in the very first shot!), violent murders, and no end of red herrings and possible suspects. True to gialli, practically anyone is a suspect, and in a film populated by sex-obsessed men who lustfully/creepily leer at the central female cast non-stop, there’s no end of potential slashers. It is then with the second half that the pace slows and the spotlight lands on mystery and suspense – indeed a triple-slaying is entirely off-screen – but Kendall more than makes up for it as she becomes a captivating captive.

Making exceptionally good use of locations, Martino’s film certainly isn’t lacking in the looks department, but pleasingly it’s no “F Grade” student either. “Carnal Violence” might not be especially catchy as a title, but it matches the content perfectly. Themes of sex, death, and where the two collide are central to the plot, which also features an underlying dose of socio-political commentary. Not only is there a clear gender gap on display (many of the surviving males are sexually defunct, unlike the females), but so too is there a distinct generation gap (the students versus the ineffective police).

Shameless Screen Entertainment provides a solid transfer, however it isn’t without some problems: the audio source shows wear & tear at times, as does the video source – but being that this is the sort of film that epitomised the video nasty era (while, incredibly, never becoming one!), the slightly rough look only adds to the experience. We’re unlikely to get a prettier looking Torso in the future; finally, a series of trailers round out the disc. The 3-disc 'Shameless Slasher Nasties Box Set' also comes with an essay insert from noted film writer Kim Newman (providing brief but informative context), and the set itself comes with impressive cover art that mimics a rental videotape (complete with "Be Kind and Rewind" sticker).

Slasher fans and giallo fans are both exceedingly well-served here, as Sergio Martino crafts a murder mystery that is as sleazy as it is involving; a must-see.

Killer Nun (Giulio Berruti, 1979) - DVD Review

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The following is the first of three reviews which I'll be posting for the "Shameless Slasher Nasties Box Set" - it's a 3-disc DVD comprised of Killer Nun, Torso, and Night-Train Murders.

 

Presented fully uncut for the first time in the United Kingdom, and including freshly re-introduced scenes previously excised by the producers, Shameless Screen Entertainment bring us a nicely spruced-up presentation of Giulio Berruti’s Killer Nun. Previously one of the entries on the Department of Public Prosecution’s list of video nasties here in the UK, the film is based on a true story.

Oftentimes you read the words “based on a true story” and it’s anything but, however Killer Nun is based on a case of a Belgian nun who underwent brain surgery and consequently became a morphine addict to assuage the torment of persistent headaches and mood swings. In order to feed her addiction she would ‘help along’ patients in her care who were near-to-death, only to steal their precious belongings and pawn them in the city for money to buy the drugs she craved.

 

So far that’s the majority of the plot of the movie right there – although nowhere in the true story were there actual murders, torture, or bisexual nuns played by heavy-chested Playboy models. Anita Ekberg (La Dolce Vita) plays Sister Gertrude – the morphine-addicted nun – while Paola Morra plays her sexually obsessed junior Sister Mathieu (the actress was the Italian Playmate of the Month of February 1978).

Today the film is much tamer than its reputation or title might suggest, however it’s a relatively high-minded film that dares to mix in a little social commentary about institutionalised cover-ups in religious organisations. It’s perhaps more akin to What Have They Done To Your Daughters (Massimo Dallamano, 1974) in the respect that it’s not quite as lurid as you might expect from the title – unlike Strip Nude For Your Killer (Andrea Bianchi, 1975), which is precisely as sleazy and violent as you would anticipate. That said, considering the juxtaposition of murder with religion, and sex with Sisters of the Cloth, I can picture how it would have historically been considered quite the controversial film in certain quarters – indeed to some, for those very reasons, it could remain offensive to this day.

 

Giulio Berruti and Alberto Tarallo’s script plays with thematic substance and a gradual pace, and while it may be comparatively light on sex and gore unlike some of its peers, the film is more then backed-up by a quality production. Tonino Maccoppi’s cinematography is – typically for Italian cinema – beautiful, and is nicely complimented by Mario Giacco’s editing, and Alessandro Alessandroni’s exceedingly memorable score.

Shameless Screen Entertainment’s DVD offers a lovely restored print, trailers, and a brief chat with star Anita Ekberg. The 3-disc 'Shameless Slasher Nasties Box Set' also comes with an essay insert from noted film writer Kim Newman (providing brief but informative context), and the set itself comes with impressive cover art that mimics a rental videotape (complete with "Be Kind and Rewind" sticker).

Fans of this kind of cinema should be pleasantly surprised by Killer Nun, and would do well to give it a spin.