Flavours of the Month: January 2014...

LOOKS:

Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee Season 3 - Jerry Seinfeld's web show that does what it says on the tin in a pleasant, humorous, and laid back manner. A couple of the new episodes have been a bit 'meh', but if you don't know of/take to the comedian one week then that's inevitable, but most others have been great.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (Extended Edition Blu-Ray) - 5 discs, 3 hours of movie, 9 hours of extra features, blimey! It took a couple of weeks to crack through it all, but it's a treasure trove of behind-the-scenes information (which also helps better define the thirteen dwarves). The Lord of the Rings was better, but you can't help but allow yourself to be consumed by the world of Middle Earth.

Shameless Screen Entertainment Sexploitation 'Triple Sinema Bill' Boxset - a triple dose of Euro-sauce in the forms of Love Goddess of the Cannibals, Satan's Baby Doll, and The Beast In Space; click the titles for full DVD reviews of each.

Click "READ MORE" below for more looks, sounds, vibes & flavours of my January 2014...

Double Bill Mini Musings: Horror show double dose...

V/H/S/2:
What's it about?
Horror sequel to the format-obsessed anthology horror in which four chilling and experimental tales are viewed by private investigators who break into a creepy house furnished with television screens, VCRs, and stacks of VHS tapes.
Who would I recognise in it?
Nobody probably, with this it's more about recognising the names of the directors involved.
Great/Good/Alright/Shite?
The original V/H/S was a pretty solid anthology horror with some good scares and plenty of atmosphere, but it also had significant downsides: some of the dialogue was flat-out awful, the majority of the male characters were 'alpha male brosephs' at best and full-on misogynists at worst, and it was one-tale-too-long. Thankfully the filmmakers have listened to the commonly-held criticisms of the first and addressed them. This sequel does chuck in nudity that's not strictly necessary, but the characters are far more balanced (and therefore easier to invest in) ... likewise the writing is much improved, although Simon Barrett's segments still featuring some moments of terribly blunt exposition that could have been easily solved with some minor tweaks ... and it's now four main stories with a wrap-around, rather than five.

Click "READ MORE" below to read more about V/H/S/2, as well as The Seasoning House...

Currently working on "The Racket"...

Over this dingy, dark, winter period, one of the projects I'm currently working on is editing a new documentary called "The Racket". It's kind of a tie-in to this year's 100th anniversary of the start of World War One, but looking at the conflict - arguably the first war to be fought on an industrial scale - from a financial and political perspective. While good men were fighting on the battlefields, who was enabling (and paying for) this endeavour behind the scenes? "The Racket" explores this topic.

Check out the official website HERE, and watch a portion of the film.

The Beast In Space (Alfonso Brescia, 1980) DVD Review

Find more Shameless Screen Entertainment DVD reviews here.

“In space no-one can hear you come...” Under the pseudonym of Al Bradley, director and co-writer (with Aldo Crudo) Alfonso Brescia's post-Star Wars intergalactic sexploitationer has to be seen to be believed. Absolutely defining the term 'trash cinema', The Beast In Space – a semi-sequel to Walerian Borowczyk's 1975 art house grot flick The Beast – is a bizarre and scatterbrained odyssey of diffused lighting, gaudy design, and flesh-jiggling distraction.

Click “READ MORE” below to continue the review and see more screenshots…

Satan's Baby Doll (Mario Bianchi, 1982) DVD Review

Find more Shameless Screen Entertainment DVD reviews here.

“Tender young flesh seduced by the ultimate evil.” / “When the Devil calls, she comes...” Mario Bianchi, here credited as Alan W. Cools, directed this lurid film Satan's Baby Doll, sometimes known in America as 'A Girl For Satan', mixing pornographic pleasure with possession and pain. Within the confines of the Aguilar castle, a lushly decorated tomb resting high upon an emerald hill (the same exterior in Antonio Margheriti's Seven Deaths in the Cat's Eye), the forces of evil are about to sink their teeth into some delicious revenge.

Click “READ MORE” below to continue the review and see more screenshots…

Love Goddess of the Cannibals (Joe D'Amato 1978) DVD Review

Find more Shameless Screen Entertainment DVD reviews here.

“You'll die of pleasure!” Also known as 'Papaya dei Caraibi', Love Goddess of the Cannibals concerns itself with Papaya, a voracious lover and apparent voodoo priestess, who uses the lure of enduring sexual adventure in a tropical paradise to ensnare the male workers at a nearby nuclear reactor. Given a lingering sexual charge by the mucky mind of Joe D'Amato, director of Death Smiles on a Murderer (1973) and the notorious Emmanuelle in America (1977), this is certainly a film for fans of classic European sleaze.

Click “READ MORE” below to continue the review and see more screenshots…

Hard To Die AKA Sorority House Massacre 3 (Jim Wynorski 1990) Review

Find more film reviews here. Read the review for “Sorority House Massacre 2” here.

“They may have killed his body, but he swore his spirit would never die.” Produced in the same year directly after Sorority House Massacre 2, with much of the same cast and crew involved, Hard To Die: Sorority House Massacre 3 (minus the sorority house aspect) – otherwise known as Tower of Terror – is kind of like Die Hard, but with beautiful women in lingerie.

Click “READ MORE” below to continue the review and see more screenshots…

Sorority House Massacre 2 (Jim Wynorski 1990) Review

Find more film reviews here, or read the review for “Hard To Die: Sorority House Massacre 3” here.

“It's Cleavage vs Cleavers and the result is Delta Delta Deadly!” In 1986 Carol Frank wrote and directed Sorority House Massacre, a thinly-veiled rip-off of John Carpenter's Halloween (much like many of the slasher films of the decade), and while several franchises were pumping out annual sequels, it wasn't until 1990 that SHM would become a series. Moving away from copycat stalk-and-slash hijinks, SHM2, subtitled 'Nighty Nightmare', was a saucy direct-to-video dose self awareness that favoured knowing winks to the audience as often as it lingered on the nubile young bodies of the gorgeous cast … in other words, exactly the kind of VHS rental any teenage boy in the 1990s would have sought out with wide-eyes.

Click “READ MORE” below to continue the review and see more screenshots…

The Black Belly of the Tarantula (Paolo Cavara, 1971) Review

Find more giallo reviews here.

“With needles dipped in deadly venom the victims are paralysed – so they must lie awake and watch themselves die!” During the 1970s, Italian silver screens were crammed full with giallo films; lurid murder mysteries that combined achingly beautiful visuals with sharp shocks and jagged social commentary, and it was in The Black Belly of the Tarantula that perhaps the most original Modus Operandi in the history of gialli was exhibited.

Click “READ MORE” below to continue the review and see more screenshots…