GIALLOctober continues with THE KILLER RESERVED NINE SEATS from 1974
A fantastic WHO DONE IT giallo mystery.
Sadly, due to a few real life situations, GIALLOctober wasn't as big as I thought tit was going to be. I still have a few videos in mind to take on, but I'm not going to be able to do the lineup I had originally wanted. Ah, life. :)
And...as a special bonus...a silly little BEHIND THE SCENES vid! :)
DEATH LAID AN EGG has to be one of the most odd of the gialli films. There's a special level for some of these films. They have all the aspects you'd expect to see in a giallo film, but they also have a few extra bits and bobs that push things into a very strange space. That's Death Laid an Egg for sure.
We have a group working on a sort of...super chicken project. They are trying to create the perfect chicken on this high tech chicken farm. We have the husband, Marco (Jean-Louis Trintignant) and wife, Anna (Gina Lollobrigida) - scientists working on the project. And they have a lovely little beauty staying with them - the alluring Gabrielle played by Ewa Aulin. Of course, a love triangle forms and things go off the rails rather quickly. However, there are other aspects of the film that come up that are just...bonkers. Chicken talk turns to wild ramblings about chickens in smoking jackets. The "perfect chicken" is created at one point, but it's a headless, legless, living chicken mass that's a mutant. Very odd. The music is odder still - discordant and grating. It really helps to create a on-edge atmosphere.
All the odd chicken madness aside, it's actually a rather interesting little mystery with a lot to offer. Big thanks to the DAUGHTERS OF DARKNESS PODCAST for their coverage of the film in their three part, art giallo series FOOTPRINTS IN DELIRIUM: Exploring the Art Giallo! If you have not heard it, you owe it to yourself to check it out. It's fantastic. (linked above)
I'm so sorry about the keying quality. It turns out my new green screen location is not going to be so great. I have this episode and one more in the can already, but afterwards I'll be back in better form with less flickering on me!
THE HORROR SHOW presents The GIALLOctober Video Series!
You can video the video here, on YouTube, or on VIMEO. Please leave a comment! :)
In this series, we'll be covering some of our gialli favorites. Every week, we'll be releasing one or two videos giving a high level overview of a group of giallo film favorites with a given theme.
The Themes
The themes will be rather broad and we'll try to keep them spoiler free, but we'll give fair warning if a spoiler or two creep in around the edges. The planned themes are:
THE STRANGE THE VIOLENT CRIMES AND KILLERS THE CULT OF EDWIGE FENECH MY FAVORITES TO DATE MODERN TAKES ON THE GIALLO GENRE
We'd love to here from you! Please leave a comment on the video or here on the blog!
THE NIGHT OF THE VIRGIN ((La noche del virgen (original title)) is a wild, wild ride. Director Roberto San Sebastián and writer Guillermo Guerrero really hit a home run with this horror comedy playing on SHUDDER at the time of this posting. Man...I love SHUDDER! :)
It's a story told in basically one location. Poor Noco (Javier Bódalo) is stuck at a club alone on New Years Eve. His hopes of "hooking up" for the new year are a mere countdown away from never happening. But then he sees Medea (Miriam Martín) and things start to look up. Sure, she's older than him, but she has a great body and....well....she's looking right at him.
They go back to her place and that's where we're going to camp out for the rest of the film. Medea's apartment is a wreck. Dirty, filled with roaches, and horrid. Medea herself seems to be running hot and cold - being sweet to Nico one moment, then being harsh with him the next. But, poor Nico is still hanging in there for the promised sexual encounter, no matter how horrible the apartment or Medea's actions.
But, what is it that Medea really wants from him? And, will her boyfriend, "Spider" (Víctor Amilibia) eventually get through the front door to kill poor Nico?
The film hits on all cylinders. When SHUDDER and the viewers there were talking about how disturbing and gross it was, I had to roll my eyes. I mean, horror folks here this kinda crap all the time. "It was SO GROSS that people left the theater.....passed out....threatened to take the makers to court!" Most of the time, this is far from the case for a horror movie lover. We've usually seen it done before - more often than not done better as well. But, this film delivers. It does get pretty gross.
I believe the comedy elements work really well, even if you're not usually a lover of foreign comedy. They are simple, cute, and sometimes painful. Javier Bódalo is a show stealer with his wild teeth and crazy facial expressions and motions. The physical humor is hilarious as well as we watch our hero get battered and abused on screen. As the action ratchets up, so did my laughter and mutterings of, "Ok...yeah...that's really gross!" while I laughed and winced at the same time.
This is a slow burn, but it's SO worth a viddy. It's a funny and gross journey you'll really dig.
The trailer isn't TOO spoilery, but I'd probably aim to watch the film without looking at the trailer. That being said, the trailer is a fun edit! :)
Blood Demon is a low budget feature - no hiding that factoid. Low budget. But, the film has a heart and life to it that carries it up and out of the grim world of cheap horror and into a very entertaining space indeed.
Long and the short - there is a blood demon and people are trying to bring it into the world. There's a house of horrors amusement house involved and frat boy characters wandering along with a priest dealing with psychos, hot vampire girls, and masked cultists. But, it's all about how the story is presented that makes it really interesting. I've seen a lot of films in this budget range and many of them don't make the blog. Blood Demon Rising earns it's place on the blog right from the get go and manages to impress.
Lots of 3D sets as backgrounds. Not bad work, really!
While some films with a lower budget drop in 3D elements here and there to pep things up and most of the time they just come off as a little sad, BLOOD DEMON goes for the fences and uses a ton of 3D. And, it's not half bad, really. It creates a look and feel that's unique and engaging.
The film itself has the look of a cool stage play. In addition to the 3D mentioned above, they use negative space and darkness to imply a larger space and to highly the action. It's really rather smart.
When the film started, I got a little cringe. "Ut oh....what are we watching here?" But as it went on, it really grew on me. When the 90 minutes was up, I found myself really enjoying what I saw. Didn't even fast forward through any of it. Harry Tchinski wrote, directed, and did the special effects like some sort of one man army. :::grin:::
If you are able to not be a snob about a films budget and see the efforts people put into a film, I'm sure you'll enjoy BLOOD DEMON RISING as much as I did. Well worth a viddy!
HA! Spaceship Terror is Harry Tchinski first film from 2011 :)
There's gourmet chocolate. It's refined and delicious. It melts in your mouth bursting with wondrous flavor combinations and sensations. Think SUSPIRIA or BLOOD AND BLACK LACE or DON'T TORTURE A DUCKLING.
Then there's A Virgin Among the Living Dead - the M&Ms brand of chocolate that's not magical or expensive, but still tastes pretty darn good and makes you happy.
A young woman's relative is ill, so she pays a visit to her estranged family at their villa in the country to see her before she passes away. She makes it just in time to say her goodbye and gets a sinister warning. "Run. Run far away!"
It took me a while, but I'm a big Jess Franco fan now. I kinda get him. He loved horror. He loved women. He loved film making. He just went up to 11 on everything. Nude women romping through horrific situations as his wild camera followed them kinetically. They are so much fun. And this "Old Dark House" style film delivers all of the above and more as the mystery unfolds. And of course, Jess is right in there as one of the family members, so that's fun too.
And the film as some fantastic, Franco dialogue as well as his wild storyline and convenient situations.
"Poor soul! Beyond words! You must get away from here. You'll fry in your own hell, believe me. Ask me no questions, just get away from here."
"Run! Get out of the valley! Can you see everything here is dead?! Get out of here!" "Come on. You're not going to believe a crazy old man." "Come and try it. There's nothing like the taste of blood. Try it. Try it, Christina. hahahahahahah"
It's a warm blanket of a film that delivers up some crazy characters, giggles, lot and lots and lots of camera zooms, and....yeah...a lot of nudity. The film does have a great, shadow filled look to it that makes me happy. Everything is lit by candles and dim, but then you'll enter a room and it's bright as day in the middle of the night! heheheh I love it.
Seventies horror lovers need to check this one out for sure. I don't know what else to say here. Is it a good movie? Well, it's very entertaining and fun, so I'd say yes. But, it's not good in that "good" way. It's good in a "what the hell am I watching here?!" sort of way that I love. You watch things unfold and giggle as you mutter little quips and jokes as the film plays on. I dare you to give this a go!
I think I might have to snag a Franco box set. His films are so strange and interesting.
I was passed a CUTE LITTLE BUGGERS screener today and I gave it a watch at once. I had seen a teaser and few articles on it and then it dropped off my radar. When I saw the screener link roll in, I was super excited. Now, before I really get rolling, I'm going to address the elephants in the room. • This is a low budget film. Relatively, of course. I just saw a short with the budget of $25, so.... • This does have some rather dodgy 3D in it. Some bits more wonky than others. I mean...we're dealing with CGI rabbits on a low budget. But, even though it may not be "A List", it was solid. • Lastly, we have almost a full ADR dubbing situation. Some of it comes off as odd, but seeing as I'm a huge giallo fan, I was over that within 10 minutes.
But, none of that matters in the long run.
Tony Jopia, Garry Charles, Andy Davie, Kristofer Dayne, and the cast and crew of CUTE LITTLE BUGGERS have managed to do something highly entertaining and fun here. That means a lot to someone who was a teen horror lover in the 80s. Their press kit was saying that this is "Hot Fuzz meets Gremlins", but - while those ARE fun films, I'm going to give this film an even bigger complement. This totally reminds me of the fun I had watching the awesome Peter Jackson work of the 80s and 90s with films like MEET THE FEEBLES, BRAIN DEAD and BAD TASTE. It's wacky, silly, funny, and a bloody good time.
The plot is throwback as well. Aliens are using our women to breed. And, what better tool to use as a hunter / gatherer for said women than...rabbits. The rabbits are altered to become fierce creatures of death that the aliens use to drag women back to their breeding chamber and to defend. When the towns folk find out what's happening, they have to fight back to save their women...and their world!
I had a blast watching this. It's just a lot of fun all around. While the budget might have been low on this, it had a ton of things going for it that elevated it immensely. At the base, of things the writing was lively and highly entertaining. The overall look and feel of the film was very professional and far better than many indy films I've seen. It was clear that the filmmakers knew what they were doing. The lighting and camerawork were grand.
The 3D in the film was ambitious and totally got the job done. The 3D and effects production teams were doing a lot of work here and it shows. I was watching the film and trying to think of just how long the effects production work took seeing all the shots that had some sort of 3D or post effects work done on them. I believe the aliens had post work done on their eyes and tongues, ALL the rabbits....so many rabbits...moving around and attacking. But, the thing that I found to be the most fun about this was the CG gore.
I'm not usually a computer gore fan. Blood sprays that used to be done with squibs back in the day were far more visceral and real than 75% of the CGI stuff we are seeing today. When used sparingly, computer generated gore and blood can be a big help. (see Greg Nicotero and Team's WALKING DEAD work) What I loved about the use of computer aided nastiness here is the fact that they didn't dabble.
It's like they just said, "Ok...we have rabbits whose heads split open with tentacles attacking humans. Let's go big!" And big they go. Blood sprays, limbs are ripped from bodies, and deadly rabbits fly!
The characters were a hoot as well. Over the top caricatures of small town residents were in abundance from the slightly bumbling police officer, to the crazy old folks, to the wondrous Caroline Munro appearance as Mystic Mary. This really had a BRAIN DEAD feel for me because I love over the top characters being alive, energetic, and invested in films. You could tell that these folks were not just phoning it in. They were going above and beyond and they were having fun doing it.
And, while I'm chatting this film up, I have to mention the women. :::swoon::: While they are not going to be seeing a passing grade on the Bechdel test, they are taking things back to the 80s here again with the amount of beautiful women finding various ways to "get their kit off" as they say. It's comical in it's own right and really did remind me of 80s movies. Shirts were flying.
This film managed to entertain me, but it also did more than that. It provided some genuine laugh out loud moments that had me giggling and chuckling at all over the place. By the end of the film, I found myself being very surprised and just how much I was laughing and how I wasn't doing my usual indy film groan & eye-roll ® combination. A refreshing treat!
You're going to want to down this as soon as it comes out. Get some food and beverages, gather your friends round the TV, and prepare to have a silly good time!
I'm a Jean Rollin fan. I get that his works isn't for everyone - totally makes sense. I've watched a handful of his films and love the strange storylines and pace choices. I'm all in. However, the IRON ROSE had me blinking blankly at the screen and questioning whether or not I was going to fast forward or simply switch films.
When I looked it up later, I saw that many sites bill it more as a fantasy rather than a horror film.
We have The Girl and The Boy who see each other at a party and make plans to go for a bike ride together. The ride around and play flirty games. It's very sweet. Then they decide to take a break from cycling for a bit and do a bit of exploring in this large, beautiful cemetery. Now, you may want to call shenanigans here, but I could totally see doing the same thing. The place was beautiful.
Here's where things run a bit off the rails. They decide to get some privacy by climbing down into this crypt and end up making love. Spoiler. :) Well, they stay down so long that day turns to night and all the visitors have left. They can't find their way out and slowly slip into a hysterical state as they try to find their way.
And they wander, pontificate, scream, explore.....
All the while, it's very pretty, but it's also so arthouse it hurts. I was happy that I got to see the film that was called out as one of his best. It is gorgeous. But, man is it an odd one! heh Knowing what I know now, I'd settle in for more of a fantasy or self exploration film and wouldn't expect horror elements. I believe that that is what confused me more than anything. I thought one of the characters was going to be the "villain" or that the dead would rise or something, but it really never goes there.
Françoise Pascal, though. My goodness. She's one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen. She's amazing and mysterious and super interesting.
There are some rather haunting images in the film as well. It never goes into "horror", but they can be creepy and scary in their own way for sure!
I do recommend watching the film, but make sure you check out some of his other films as well - like THE GRAPES OF DEATH or THE LIVING DEAD GIRL if you're looking for true horror. THE IRON ROSE is a beautiful and poetic film and well worth a viddy!
Marilyn Manson's new video - WE KNOW WHERE YOU FUCKING LIVE - features home invasion, explosions, LOTS of guns.....and fetish nuns...who eventually get inside the family's home....and sexually assault them. It's right out of the grindhouse, 1970s catalogue! Wild stuff!
Needless to say....this is not for the mild hearts in the world. Whew!
DEATH LAID AN EGG has to be one of the most odd of the gialli films. There's a special level for some of these films. They have all the aspects you'd expect to see in a giallo film, but they also have a few extra bits and bobs that push things into a very strange space. That's Death Laid an Egg for sure.
Blood Demon Rising. What to say....
It took me a while, but I'm a big Jess Franco fan now. I kinda get him. He loved horror. He loved women. He loved film making. He just went up to 11 on everything. Nude women romping through horrific situations as his wild camera followed them kinetically. They are so much fun. And this "Old Dark House" style film delivers all of the above and more as the mystery unfolds. And of course, Jess is right in there as one of the family members, so that's fun too.
"Poor soul! Beyond words! You must get away from here. You'll fry in your own hell, believe me. Ask me no questions, just get away from here."
I was passed a CUTE LITTLE BUGGERS screener today and I gave it a watch at once. I had seen a teaser and few articles on it and then it dropped off my radar. When I saw the screener link roll in, I was super excited. Now, before I really get rolling, I'm going to address the elephants in the room.
The plot is throwback as well. Aliens are using our women to breed. And, what better tool to use as a hunter / gatherer for said women than...rabbits. The rabbits are altered to become fierce creatures of death that the aliens use to drag women back to their breeding chamber and to defend. When the towns folk find out what's happening, they have to fight back to save their women...and their world!
Mr. Marilyn Manson - you are doing things up BIG!
