Machete Maidens Unleashed! (2010)

Another exploitation documentary, but this time with a twist. This one explores the movies from, and made in, the Philipine’s. Many with the help of the infamous Ferdinand Marcos (he of the wife with many shoes).

Covering everything from the women in prison/cage genre through to Weng Weng (the midget James Bond), but with Roger Corman being the link between each film.

The documentary is pretty much all interviews, and begins with directors, and producers, explaining how it was far cheaper to film the entire thing in the Philippines’s as they could hire everything there. The Philippines’s had a thriving movie industry and had everything at hand, and when they say everything, they mean everything, including the army! Actors, stunt men, demolition experts, you name it it was all there, and cheap, so it made sense for Corman and his directors to film there.

It began with a couple of cheap horror films then boomed into the women in prison genre.

Mentioned 'women in prison', need to show boobs...

Corman got tired of them and thought, ” hey, let’s put black people up front” and lo, the blaxploitation genre began. Next thing you know you have one armed executioners. No, I’m not kidding, there really is a film about a one armed executioner (from 1981)!

Drawing to a close the documentary spends several minutes talking about Apocalypse Now which was shot entirely in the Philippine’s (under Marcos), using the Philippino army and ended up looking nothing like Vietnam!

It’s a great documentary with many funny stories from the actors and actresses who sometimes had a terrible time in the Philippines, but still smile when telling the stories.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

American Grindhouse (2010)

American Grindhouse lays out our favourite deviancy chronologically. Right from the creation of the moving picture through to some recent picks such as Planet Terror and the like.

Our journey starts with the creation of the moving picture and how it spawned exploitation in the sense of your great-grandma whipping off her drawers to ‘titilate’ viewers. Shame on you grandma!

Exploitation, as we know it, began with the movie ‘Traffic of Souls’ which tells the story of white people being bought and sold as slaves. It was a rumour of the time that spawned a movie, but it was the first movie to exploit a genre/story and lo exploitation films were born. Yay!

The documentary briefly discusses the introduction of codes of conduct, the big classics (Dracula, Frankenstein etc.), then discusses the Tod Browning classic ‘Freaks’ which ruined the poor guy. If you haven’t seen it yet, you need to.

Moving into the 30′s it talks about the early crime dramas where criminals would discuss their crime, but with the movie always ending with a message of ‘crime doesn’t pay’. The 40′s, for some reason, brought the ‘educational’ film which either explained VD or showed child birth. Very odd!

Todays question is: guess the STD!

But the 40′s also brought us Hollywood ‘film noir’, so that’s OK then. The 50′s brought us dirty magazines, biker gangs and burlesque, and the 60′s gave us the nudist flick! It’s getting better and better all the time! Oh no, wait, the 60′s also gave us beach films. That’s beach, read it again, and the ‘roughies’ where women get their ass kicked for no real reason.

Fear not, the 60′s redeem themselves when one director decides to show the previously unseen and actually shows blood! Gasp! That’s right, along came a Mr H. G. Lewis and Blood Feast. From there on in… well, I’m sure you know the rest. Or you should know the rest!

Mr Blood Feast himself, H.G. Lewis

Oh, and some other film called ‘Psycho’ (or something) also came out around the same time. I don’t think the director of this Psycho ever got anywhere…

The 70′s gave us that crackpot Charles Manson, but it also gave us things like Last House on the Left. I’m not entirely sure if that’s a good thing or not. I’ll let you decide. It also gave us the genre we know as Blaxploitation. Love it or loathe it, it’s fuckin’ awesome. Possibly on the downside we also got the women-in-prison genre. Only good for boobs. Although this film historian, Kim Morgan, says that most women like to see other women naked and it turns them on. I love Kim Morgan!

Kim Morgan for President! And here was me thinking that all film historians were old bearded men.

Although The Big Bird Cage turned it all on its head by having gay prison guards looking after the women which is kinda funny.

By now were in the mid-70′s and that means Ilsa – Shewolf of the SS and a flood of Nazisploitation films. You name it, the Nazi’s were doing it. Closing the 70′s is when it became OK to show full sex and porn arrived, also bringing with it, into the 80′s, the animals-gone-mad films. Dozens of them. Hundreds probably!

Anyway, it’s a good documentary on our favourite genre of movies. A bit slow at the start as, I think, it spends a bit too much time setting the scene. It could have started with Freaks onwards, or even just started from Blood Feast onwards. Either way, it’s a good 90min history lesson on exploitation. Grab it if you can!

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Right from the get go, we are assailed with a moving wall of text setting up why this film will never be able to be made again (which is true, this had to be made at a certain time for any chance at authenticity) and some mentions of a “code” that exists among the carny folk, among other things.  THIS is where I find FREAKS has the absolute most to offer anyone who watches it in todays morally bankrupt and culturally suicidal society.  For those that don’t know, the main arc examined through FREAKS is that of a couple (A Strongman performer type and a Trapeze broad who happens to be French if the accent was deciphered correctly by yours truly) that is plotting to get the lady in the couple to marry the roaming carnival promoter and then kill him in order to inherit the fortunes he apparently has coming to him.  Of course, our savvy band of deformed oddities and lovable monsters is a step ahead of the nefarious duo and their shady plan and, by the end of the film, kill the man (or at least we are led to believe that they killed him since we never see him again after he is stuck in the ribs with a knife and descended upon by a dozen or so blade wielding freaks crawling underneath a carriage in the middle of a terribly stormy night) and disfigure the trapeze artiste almost beyond recognition making her “one of them.”

Proud to be part of the Carnival of Blood Blogathon!

This is where I usually get to fist pumping and celebrating the no nonsense attitude these people took when dealing with folks who would seek to take advantage of them and, in the end, murder one of their own.  Nowadays, if someone marries into money, people applaud the move, or they get a reality tv show, or they are thought of as clever and smart and the most resentment you will get from the general public is jealousy instead complete and utter disgust.  The forces that control our media and institutions have engineered a climate where everyone is a potential enemy to the millions that is so rightfully yours and if ONLY you could get those sandbagging motherfuckers out of the picture, you would have less competition in your way and could realize your dream of being better than everyone else, consequences be damned.  But the FREAKS survive by travelling and working together to entertain audiences and use the curses that have been so unfairly bestowed upon them as a tool for something not unlike success.  They may be laugh at, teased, and ridiculed, but they have your attention and some of your cash, and they have done it by embracing what they and piquing your curiosity and allowing you to explore those emotions for a nominal fee.  Everyone wins and in a symbiotic and subconscious way, everyone takes care of everyone else.  What the fuck is better than that?

FREAKS Full Movie

Harold Shipman

10 – Harold Shipman - (14 January 1946 – 13 January 2004) was a convicted English serial killer. A doctor by profession, he is among the most prolific serial killers in recorded history with 218 murders being positively ascribed to him, although the actual number is likely much higher.

On 31 January 2000, a jury found Shipman guilty of 15 murders. He was sentenced to life imprisonment and the judge recommended that he never be released. The whole life tariff was confirmed by the Home Secretary a little over two years later.

After his trial, the Shipman Inquiry, chaired by Dame Janet Smith, investigated all deaths certified by Shipman. About 80% of his victims were women. His youngest victim was Peter Lewis, a 41-year-old man. Much of Britain’s legal structure concerning health care and medicine was reviewed and modified as a direct and indirect result of Shipman’s crimes, especially after the findings of the Shipman Inquiry, which began on 1 September 2000 and lasted almost two years. Shipman is the only British doctor found guilty of murdering his patients.

Shipman died on 13 January 2004, after hanging himself in his cell at Wakefield Prison in West Yorkshire.

Albert Fish

09 – Albert Fish – (May 19, 1870 – January 16, 1936) was an American serial killer. He was also known as the Gray Man, the Werewolf of Wysteria, the Brooklyn Vampire, and The Boogeyman. A child rapist and cannibal, he boasted that he “had children in every state,” and at one time put the figure at around 100. However, it is not clear whether he was talking about rapes or cannibalization, less still as to whether he was telling the truth.

He was a suspect in at least five murders in his lifetime. Fish confessed to three murders that police were able to trace to a known homicide, and he confessed to stabbing at least two other people.

He was put on trial for the kidnapping and murder of Grace Budd, was convicted and executed by electric chair.

Richard Ramirez

08 – Richard Ramirez – also known as The Night Stalker (born as Ricardo Leyva Muñoz Ramírez; on February 28/29, 1960) is an American serial killer awaiting execution on California’s death row at San Quentin State Prison.

Prior to his arrest, the media dubbed the unknown serial killer active in Los Angeles, California, the “Night Stalker”; following his arrest, sensationalist reporting of his apparent interest in the occult and Satanism was common.

On September 20, 1989, Ramírez was found guilty of 13 counts of murder, 5 attempted murders, 11 sexual assaults, and 14 burglaries.

During the penalty phase of the trial on November 7, 1989, he was sentenced to death in California’s gas chamber. The trial of Richard Ramírez was one of the most difficult and longest criminal trials in American history. Nearly 1,600 prospective jurors were interviewed. More than one hundred witnesses testified, and while a number of witnesses had a difficult time recalling certain facts four years after the crimes, others were quite certain of the identity of Ramírez.

Ted Bundy

07 – Ted Bundy - (November 24, 1946 – January 24, 1989), was an American serial killer active between 1974 and 1978. He escaped twice from county jails before his final apprehension in February 1978. Bundy was executed by electric chair for his last murder by the state of Florida in January 1989.

After more than a decade of vigorous denials, he eventually confessed to over 30 murders, although the actual total of victims remains unknown. Estimates range from 26 to over 100, the general estimate being 35.

Typically, Bundy would bludgeon his victims, then strangle them to death. He also engaged in rape and necrophilia.

Ted Bundy was electrocuted by the state of Florida at 7:06 a.m. on January 24, 1989.

John Wayne Gacy

06 – John Wayne Gacy - (March 17, 1942 – May 10, 1994) was an American serial killer also known as the Killer Clown who committed the rape and murder of 33 teenage boys and young men between 1972 and 1978. Twenty-six of Gacy’s victims were buried in the crawlspace of his home, three others elsewhere on his property and four victims were discarded in a nearby river.

Gacy became known as the “Killer Clown” due to his charitable services at fundraising events, parades and children’s parties where he would dress as “Pogo the Clown,” a character he devised himself.

Gacy was incarcerated at the Menard Correctional Center in the town of Chester, Illinois, where he spent 14 years on death row.

In prison, Gacy began to paint. The subjects Gacy painted varied, although many were of clowns — some of which depicted himself as “Pogo”. Many of his paintings were sold at various auctions for prices ranging between $200 and $20,000 apiece.

John Gacy spent much of his time on death row studying books on law and filing numerous, exhaustive appeals and motions — none of which were successful. Gacy contended that he only had “some knowledge” of five of the murders: those of McCoy, Butkovitch, Godzik, Szyc and Piest and contended the remaining 28 murders had been committed by employees who were in possession of keys to his house while he was away on business trips.

In the summer of 1984, the Illinois Supreme Court upheld Gacy’s conviction, ordering him to be executed by lethal injection on November 14. Gacy appealed against this decision, although on March 4, 1985, the US Supreme Court denied Gacy’s appeal.

On May 10, 1994, Gacy was executed at Stateville Correctional Center in Crest Hill, Illinois, by lethal injection.

A man suspected of being the "Zodiak Killer"

05 – Zodiac Killer - a serial killer who operated in Northern California in the late 1960s and early 1970′s. The Zodiac killer’s identity remains unknown. The Zodiac killer coined the name “Zodiac” in a series of taunting letters sent to the local Bay Area press. These letters included four cryptograms (or ciphers), three of which have yet to be solved. The Zodiac murdered victims in Benicia, Vallejo, Lake Berryessa, and San Francisco between December 1968 and October 1969. Four men and three women between the ages of 16 and 29 were targeted. Numerous suspects have been named by law enforcement and amateur investigators but no conclusive evidence has surfaced.

In April 2004, the San Francisco Police Department marked the case “inactive”, yet re-opened the case at some point prior to March 2007. The case also remains open in the city of Vallejo as well as in Napa County and Solano County. The California Department of Justice has maintained an open case file on the Zodiac murders since 1969.

In 2002, SFPD submitted DNA evidence from Zodiac’s letters for analysis, which resulted in a partial genetic profile. The test seems to have conclusively ruled out the Vallejo Police Department’s lead suspect, Arthur Leigh Allen. During a photo line up over twenty years after Mike Mageau—one of only two survivors of the Zodiac murders—was shot, Mageau identified Allen as the man who shot him on July 4, 1969. Mageau stated he had never been shown a photo line up prior to that appointment in 1991. Allen died shortly after Mageau’s identification. Even though DNA samples taken from the letters sent by the Zodiac ruled out Allen as the person who handled them, neither the Vallejo nor the San Francisco Police Departments have ruled out Allen as a suspect.

In April 2004, the SFPD marked the case “inactive”, citing caseload pressure and resource demands.

In 2007, Jack Tarrance’s stepson, Dennis Kaufman, claimed that his stepfather was the Zodiac. Kaufman turned several items over to the FBI including a hood similar to the one worn by the Zodiac. According to news sources, DNA analysis conducted by the FBI on the items were deemed inconclusive in 2010.

In 2009, Deborah Perez claimed that her father, Guy Ward Hendrickson, was the Zodiac. However, Perez also allegedly previously claimed that she was the illegitimate daughter ofJohn F. Kennedy, so her claim that her father was the Zodiac is no longer considered to be very credible.

Retired police detective Steve Hodel makes a case in his book The Black Dahlia Avenger that his father, George Hill Hodel, was the Black Dahlia suspect whose victims includeElizabeth Short. The book caused the release of previously suppressed files and wire recordings by the LA district attorney’s office of his father which showed that he was a prime suspect in Short’s murder. The LA District Attorney subsequently wrote a letter which is published in the revised edition stating that if he were still alive he would be prosecuted for the crimes. In a follow up book, Hodel makes a circumstantial case that his father was also the Zodiac Killer based upon a police sketch, the similarity of the style of the Zodiac letters to the Black Dahlia Avenger letters and questioned document examination.

H. H. Holmes

04 – H. H. Holmes - (May 16, 1861 – May 7, 1896), better known under the alias of Dr. Henry Howard Holmes, was one of the first documented American serial killers in the modern sense of the term. Holmes opened a hotel in Chicago for the 1893 World’s Fair, which he built himself and which was the location of many of his murders. While he confessed to 27 murders, of which nine were confirmed, his actual body count could be as high as 250, because he took an unknown number of his victims from the 1893 Chicago world’s fair which was less than 10 miles away from his “World’s Fair” hotel.

The case was notorious in its time and received wide publicity through a series of articles in William Randolph Hearst’s newspapers. Interest in Holmes’s crimes was revived in 2003 by Erik Larson’s The Devil in the White City, a best-selling non-fiction book that juxtaposed an account of the planning and staging of the World’s Fair with Holmes’s story.

Holmes was put on trial for the murder of Pitezel and confessed, following his conviction, to 27 murders in Chicago, Indianapolis and Toronto, and six attempted murders.

On May 7, 1896, Holmes was hanged at Moyamensing Prison, also known as the Philadelphia County Prison. Until the moment of his death, Holmes remained calm and amiable, showing very few signs of fear, anxiety or depression. Holmes’s neck did not snap immediately; he instead died slowly, twitching over 15 minutes before being pronounced dead 20 minutes after the trap had been sprung. He requested that he be buried in concrete so that no one could ever dig him up and dissect his body, as he had dissected so many others. This request was granted.

Charles Ng (left) & Leonard Lake (right)

03 – Leonard Lake & Charles Ng – Leonard Lake (October 29, 1945 – June 6, 1985) was an American serial killer. He often used the alias Leonard Hill. The crimes he committed with Charles Ng became known when Lake committed suicide by taking a cyanide pill shortly after being arrested for a firearms offense.

Charles Chi-Tat Ng (born December 24, 1960) is a Chinese-American serial killer. With Leonard Lake, he is suspected of murdering between 11 and 25 victims at Lake’s ranch in Calaveras County, California.

On June 2, 1985, an Asian man—later identified as Charles Ng—was seen shoplifting in South San Francisco. He fled by the time police arrived, but Leonard Lake, who was with him, was arrested when his car was searched and found to contain a .22 revolver illegally equipped with a silencer.

While being interviewed at the police station, Lake asked for a glass of water and used it to swallow a cyanide pill hidden in the lapel of his shirt. He collapsed and was rushed to a hospital, where he went into a coma, and survived on life support machines for four days before being pronounced dead.

The police searched Lake’s ranch in Wilseyville. It was clear Lake was a survivalist, his ranch fitted with a bunker and a stash of weapons. In a diary, Lake had written how he was convinced there was going to be a global nuclear war, and he planned on surviving in his bunker and rebuilding the human race with a collection of female slaves. The police also found videos showing Lake and Ng torturing and raping women.

The grounds of the ranch were dug up and 12 corpses were uncovered in shallow graves. Among these victims were two families: Harvey Dubs and his wife, Deborah, and baby son, Sean; and Lonnie Bond and Brenda O’Connor and their baby son, Lonnie Bond Jr. The women had been sexually abused, and killed after their husbands and infants were disposed of. Five of the bodies were of men lured to the ranch to be robbed and killed — including Robin Stapley and Paul Cosner — and the 12th was identified as 18-year-old Kathleen Allen, who knew Ng because her boyfriend had once been his cellmate in prison. Police also found charred fragments of human bones (in excess of 45 pounds in total), but they were unable to determine the identity of the victims or their number. It has been postulated the number of unknown murdered persons could be as high as 25.

Lake’s younger brother, Donald, had vanished in 1983 and was presumed dead, as had Charles Gunnar, a friend of Lake’s from his military days; the latters’ remains were discovered at the ranch in September 1992.

Jeffrey Dahmer

02 – Jeffrey Dahmer – (May 21, 1960 – November 28, 1994) was an American serial killer and sex offender. Dahmer murdered 17 men and boys – many of whom were of African or Asian descent – between 1978 and 1991, with the majority of the murders occurring between 1987 and 1991.

His murders were particularly gruesome, involving rape, torture, dismemberment, necrophilia and cannibalism. On November 28, 1994, he was beaten to death by an inmate at the Columbia Correctional Institution, where he had been incarcerated.

On July 22, 1991, Dahmer lured another man, Tracy Edwards, into his home. According to the would-be victim, Dahmer struggled with Edwards in order to handcuff him, but ultimately failed to cuff his wrists together. Wielding a large butcher knife, Dahmer forced Edwards into the bedroom, where Edwards saw pictures of mangled bodies on the wall and noticed the terrible smell coming from a large blue barrel. Edwards punched him in the face, kicked him in the stomach, ran for the door and escaped. Running through the streets, with the handcuffs still hanging from one hand, Edwards waved for help to a police car driven by Robert Rauth and Rolf Mueller of the Milwaukee police department. Edwards led police back to Dahmer’s apartment, where Dahmer at first acted friendly to the officers. However, Edwards remembered that the knife Dahmer had threatened him with was in the bedroom. When one of the officers checked the bedroom, he saw the photographs of mangled bodies, and called for his partner to arrest Dahmer. As one officer subdued Dahmer, the other opened the refrigerator and found a human head. Further searching of the apartment revealed three more severed heads, multiple photographs of murdered victims and human remains, severed hands and penises, and photographs of dismembered victims and human remains in his refrigerator.

The story of Dahmer’s arrest and the inventory in his apartment quickly gained notoriety: several corpses were stored in acid-filled vats, and implements for the construction of an altar of candles and human skulls were found in his closet. Accusations soon surfaced that Dahmer had practiced necrophilia and cannibalism. Seven skulls were found in the apartment. A human heart was found in the freezer.

With evidence overwhelmingly against him, Dahmer pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. The trial lasted two weeks. The court found Dahmer sane and guilty on 15 counts of murder and sentenced him to 15life terms, totaling 957 years in prison. At his sentencing hearing, Dahmer expressed remorse for his actions, and said that he wished for his own death.

Dahmer was attacked twice in prison, the first time in July 1994. After attending a church service in the prison chapel, an inmate attempted to slash Dahmer’s throat with a razor blade. Dahmer escaped the incident with superficial wounds. While on work detail in the prison gym, Dahmer and another inmate, Jesse Anderson, were severely beaten by fellow inmate Christopher Scarver with a bar from a weight machine on November 28, 1994. Dahmer died of severe head trauma while on his way to the hospital in an ambulance. Anderson died two days later from his wounds. Dahmer’s brain was retained for study.

Ed Gein

01 – Ed Gein – (August 27, 1906 – July 26, 1984) was an American murderer and body snatcher. His crimes, which he committed around his hometown of Plainfield, Wisconsin, garnered widespread notoriety after authorities discovered Gein had exhumed corpses from local graveyards and fashioned trophies and keepsakes from their bones and skin.

After police found body parts in his house in 1957, Gein confessed to killing two women: tavern owner Mary Hogan in 1954, and a Plainfield hardware store owner, Bernice Worden, in 1957. Initially found unfit to stand trial, following confinement in a mental health facility, he was tried in 1968 for the murder of Worden and sentenced to life imprisonment, which he spent in a mental hospital. The body of Bernice Worden was found in Gein’s shed; her head and the head of Mary Hogan were found inside his house. Robert H. Gollmar, the judge in the Gein case, wrote: “Due to prohibitive costs, Gein was tried for only one murder—that of Mrs. Worden.”

With fewer than three murders attributed, Gein does not meet the traditional definition of a serial killer.^[2] Regardless, his real-life case influenced the creation of several fictional serial killers, including Norman Bates from Psycho, Leatherface from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Buffalo Bill from The Silence of the Lambs.

On March 20, 1958, while Gein was in detention, his house burned to the ground. Arson was suspected. When Gein learned of the incident, he shrugged and said “Just as well.”

In 1958, Gein’s car, which he had used to haul the bodies of his victims, was sold at a public auction for $760 ($5,773 when accounting for inflation) to carnival sideshow operator Bunny Gibbons. Gibbons later charged carnival goers 25¢ admission to see it.

On July 26, 1984, Gein died of respiratory and heart failure due to cancer in Stovall Hall at the Mendota Mental Health Institute. His grave site in the Plainfield cemetery was frequently vandalized over the years; souvenir seekers chipped off pieces of his gravestone before the bulk of it was stolen in 2000. The gravestone was recovered in June 2001 near Seattle and is now in a museum in Waushara County.

HONOURABLE MENTIONS:

Aileen Wuornos

Aileen Wuornos – (February 29, 1956 – October 9, 2002) was an American serial killer who killed seven men in Florida between 1989 and 1990, claiming they raped or attempted to rape her while she was working as a prostitute.

She was convicted and sentenced to death for six of the murders and [...] executed by lethal injection on October 9, 2002. She was the tenth woman in the United States to be executed since the Supreme Court lifted the ban on capital punishment in 1976, and the second woman ever executed in Florida.

She declined a last meal and instead was given a cup of coffee.

‘Jack the Ripper‘ - is the best-known name given to an unidentified serial killer who was active in the largely impoverished areas in and around the Whitechapel district of London in 1888. The name originated in a letter, written by someone claiming to be the murderer, that was disseminated in the media. The letter is widely believed to have been a hoax, and may have been written by a journalist in a deliberate attempt to heighten interest in the story. Other nicknames used for the killer at the time were “The Whitechapel Murderer” and “Leather Apron”.

Attacks ascribed to the Ripper typically involved female prostitutes from the slums whose throats were cut prior to abdominal mutilations. The removal of internal organs from at least three of the victims led to proposals that their killer possessed anatomical or surgical knowledge. Rumours that the murders were connected intensified in September and October 1888, and letters from a writer or writers purporting to be the murderer were received by media outlets and Scotland Yard. The ”From Hell” letter, received by George Lusk of theWhitechapel Vigilance Committee, included half of a preserved human kidney, supposedly from one of the victims. Mainly because of the extraordinarily brutal character of the murders, and because of media treatment of the events, the public came increasingly to believe in a single serial killer known as “Jack the Ripper”.

Extensive newspaper coverage bestowed widespread and enduring international notoriety on the Ripper. An investigation into a series of brutal killings in Whitechapel up to 1891 was unable to connect all the killings conclusively to the murders of 1888, but the legend of Jack the Ripper solidified. As the murders were never solved, the legends surrounding them became a combination of genuine historical research, folklore, and pseudohistory. The term “ripperology” was coined to describe the study and analysis of the Ripper cases. There are now over one hundred theories about the Ripper’s identity, and the murders have inspired multiple works of fiction.

A History of Horror with Mark Gatiss

Mark Gatiss is (apparently) a writer and actor who loves his horror movies. In this three part BBC series he talks about three of the best eras (in his opinion) of horror movies.

The first episode starts off with a nice nod towards the beginnings of horror with an elderly gentleman stepping out from behind some stage curtains and announcing that it would be rude not to warn the viewers of forthcoming horror. Complete with black and white crackles it’s a nice start to the series.

Archetypal old dude bringing warning...

Lugosi, who was buried wearing his Dracula cape.

Peter Cushing - horribly under rated!

Hooray for Cronenberg and serious nudity!

Either way, it’s a good little series (he covered a lot of ground in three hours) and has made me consider re-watching many of those mentioned. Even Halloween!

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Schlock! The Secret History of American Movies (2001)

Schlock! The Secret History of American Movies is a documentary about, as its title suggests, the history of American movies, but not your Hollywood blockbusters, oh no, this is about the history of American exploitation movies.

The documentary begins with the end of World War II, the baby boom, televisions and quite probably the first ‘scream queen’, Vampira, who introduced the viewers to low budget movies on TV. The mid 50′s brought many headaches to Hollywood, not just people watching TV rather than going to the movies, but a law came in to force breaking up the monopoly that the studios had. The ‘theatre divorcement’ as it was nicknamed.

Around this time AIP started up producing low budget movies that put teens in the limelight with rebellion at the forefront. Then Roger Corman appears…

Vampira - the black and white version of Elvira

Corman could turn out films within days on a low budget yet still make a profit, something that AIP quite liked, and so a partnership was formed. Next thing you know we’re getting colour, Corman and Vincent Price. All in one film!

The 30min mark is where it heats up and moves in to sinema. It’s here that exploitation movies came in to their own. Hollywood movies were forbidden to show certain things in movies, but low-budget studios didn’t have the same constraints as Hollywood so they churned out the nudist, nudie-cuties, and then you have Russ Meyer.

Boredom set in and now in the early 60′s the exploiteers were looking for a new niche. Enter, Blood Feast.

The infamous 'Blood Feast'.

Prior to Blood Feast (as one man puts it) ‘no one had ever filmed blood before, or saw anyone die with their eyes open.’ After that came the ‘roughies’ which were the ‘torture-porn’ of their day with men beating women black and blue (in black and white). But when the restrictions on Hollywood are lifted, there’s no niches left for the cunning exploiteers and low-budget independent movies effectively died.

Schlock! is really interesting documentary, there’s plenty of good titbits of info and trivia in here and it’s amazing to see how much of Hollywood is built upon the shoulders of Corman. His films may suck at times, but without him there’d be no Jack Nicholson, Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, Robert De Niro, Francis Ford Coppola, Joe Dante, James Cameron… the list goes on. They all worked with Corman, many getting their big break (or starring role) thanks to Corman.

It’s kinda like watching a documentary on the Titanic, you know the sad end is coming, but at least with exploitation films you know it’s not THE end… as one interviewee commented ‘exploitation films are still alive, everything out of Hollywood now is exploitation.’

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

The documentary, narrated by Lance Henrikson, starts with the movies made after the real horror of World War 1 and moves along swiftly in to the gothic era of Lon Chaney (Phantom of the Opera et al), Bela Lugosi (Dracula) and  the creature features of Frankstein and King Kong. Along the way we see clips from all the relevant movies with brief thoughts from directors such as Joe Dante, Brian Yuzna, John Carpenter and, of course, George A Romero.

A third of the way in to the 92 min doc and we move in to the colour era with Blood Feast and down into the depths with Last House on the Left and the other shocker movies of that time, including the more recent The Exorcist. The next batch is the slasher era with Friday 13th (good batch of clips showing plenty of boobage), Halloween and all that bunch, returning to the classic monster theme with The Howling. Next is George Romero explaining the meanings behind his numerous zombie epics and moving along in to the more comedy based horrors (Ghostbusters, Gremlins and the like) with, of course, mentions of the horror icons such as Freddy Krueger (Nightmare on Elm Street) and Hannibal Lecter (Silence of the Lambs) and what made them the heroes, rather than the villains that they should have been.

As the documentary winds down it tries to justify remakes of Texas Chainsaw Massacre (which actually wasn’t that bad) and several others. It also very briefly mentions the little nuggets of gold that are also coming out of non-American countries with clips from Pan’s Labyrinth and (one that I hadn’t seen, but need to track down) The Devil’s Backbone, both directed by Guillermo Del Toro (who’s name I’ve more than likely spelled horribly wrong) and with that, it ends.

Nightmares in Red, White and Blue runs at, as I said, 92 mins, but it was interesting enough that I didn’t have to check my watch out of boredom, so kudos to the makers for keeping me interested for over an hour. They got all the big name directors in there for comments, showed clips from the films I expected to see, gave the history in chronological order (which kept things flowing nicely), gave me some knowledge and, as a bonus, a couple of movies to look out for. Can’t complain there!

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Alexander "Sawney" Bean at the entrance to his cave.

And now, we take a moment from our ‘normal’ programming schedule to bring you something a little different, yet still related to horror movies. Several movies have been based upon the tale of Sawney Bean and his cannibalistic family, The Hills Have Eyes being one such movie.

Our tale begins in the 16th century, in East Lothian (near Edinburgh), Scotland. Alexander “Sawney” Bean (sometimes called Beane) grew up working hard labour with his father and quickly realised that honest labour wasn’t for him and fled with a woman, a reputed witch, by the name of Agnes.

The couple ended up living in a coastal cave in Bannane Head near Galloway (now South Aryshire) where they lived undetected for over 25 years rearing several children. The cave was several hundred yards deep and when the tide rose the entrance was blocked by water and inaccessible.

After many years grandchildren appeared. The product of an incestuous, lawless, family. The family included eight sons, six daughters, eighteen grandsons and fourteen granddaughters. Since Bean had tried and disliked honest labour, the family would lay careful ambushes at night to rob and murder passers-by. The dead were taken back to the cave, dismembered, and cannibalised. It is said they even took to robbing fresh graves for ‘food’.

As more and more people began to vanish in the area several searches were done of the area, one search passed by their cave since the men refused to believe anyone could live in such conditions.

Bannane Cave where it's alleged Bean and his family lived.

One night, the Bean family attacked a couple riding from a fair on horse back, but the man fought them off with sword and pistol but not before the clan had mauled his wife to death. A large group of fairgoers appeared and the Bean family fled in fear.

It’s said that King James VI of Scotland personally led a manhunt with a team of  over 400 men and several bloodhounds. It was the bloodhounds who lured the men to the coastal cave where the family were finally captured. Taken, in chains, to the Tollbooth in Edinburgh, where they were executed without trial. The men had their hands and feet cut off and left to bleed to death. The women were to watch the men bleed to death then be burned at the stake.

Fact of Fiction?

No one knows for sure whether the tale of Sawney Bean is a myth, several investigators have found no evidence of disappearances in the area at the reputed time of the Bean family, but one theory is that the story was political propaganda from the English to make the Scots seem more barbaric and animalistic.

But the tale of Sawney Bean also closely resembles the story of Christie Cleek which was in the 1400′s, earlier than Sawney Bean.

Christie Cleek

Andrew Christie was a butcher, by trade, in Perth.During a great famine in the mid-1400′s Christie joined a group of scavengers in the Grampian mountains. When one of the party died of starvation, Christie put his butcher skills to work on the corpse and fed himself and the group. They now began to ambush travellers as food. Christie used a hook on a pole to haul his victims from their horse, this device was a ‘cleke’, a hook or crook, hence his nickname, Cleek. Eventually an armed force from Perth defeated the group but not before Christie fled. He was never heard from again.

But the name, and story, of Christie Cleek was used in a bogeyman-like fashion to silence even the most unruly of kids, so maybe Christie Cleek is a myth too.

Of course, no one knows for sure whether Sawney Bean, or Christie Cleek are fact or fiction, but they’ve given rise to some more well known stories such as Wes Craven’s The Hills Have Eyes (1977), which has a family of cannibals in a more modern setting. Several bands have written songs about Sawney Bean but, sadly, no one has yet made a decent movie on the tale of the incestuous Bean family. Maybe one day, when some rich benefactor gives me the budget…

—-

YouTube has a video which gives a tour of the reputed Sawney Bean cave in South West Scotland:

The dangers of fake suntan - mass suicides!

So, this mixtape, B-Videos 101, Vol.1, starts off with this really creepy looking old guy. Not only is he babbling on about the end of the world, but he sports an amazing fake tan.

Oh, wait, it’s just the Heavens Gate crackpot.

After a stop-motion toy shop orgy with dildos and inflatable dolls we get some old clips from The Daily Show followed by some mad preacher clips. I do like mad preacher clips.

After a clip of a dancing midget we get a rather hot contortionist chick dressed in a white leotard. Oh my!

Next… well, even this had me staring at the TV and thinking ‘what the fuck?!’ It’s a sex-ed video with a rather retarded looking girl asking about periods.

And remember: never trust anything that bleeds for days and doesn't die.

That’s right, periods. So for the next ten minutes we have her mother and sister explaining a Japanese flag to her. Very odd, but then we get to rock out to some KISS which is actually a news item about some God-squad nuts who were trying to get their concerts banned. Can I start a non-religious movement where we go around closing bibles and burning churches? Oh no, sorry, burning bibles and closing churches. Oops, my bad.

Dancing, deformed, strip-show anyone? I’m not even going to try and explain it. Behold:

Yes Alex, she does go topless...

After the half-way mark we get a couple of spoof ads, short films and animations oh, and a lengthy segment of what looks like The Osmonds doing Star Wars on stage. We finish with a rather arty chick who sticks paint up her ass and fires it at a wall, I should try that, might actually sell them.

If that's not paint, she needs to stop eating her veg with tomato sauce.

It’s a solid mixtape full of unusual weirdness (aka: retarded kid asking about periods) it’s only downside is that it’s obviously from the VHS era so the picture quality isn’t top-notch, but that didn’t bother me.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Grindhouse (2007)

Grindhouse is a 42nd Street style double feature comprising of Rodriguez’s Planet Terror (reviewed here) and Tarantino’s Death Proof (reviewed here). Before, after and between the two films are trailers for (non-existent) movies. Both movies, mainly Planet Terror, have added grain to give them that extra 70′s feel.

This review isn’t about Planet Terror or Death Proof, you can read those reviews separately, this is about the package as a whole.

As you can see from the poster on the left, and for the two movie posters, they’ve gone for the grungy tatty look, which I really like. Definitely gives the posters that old look. The films themselves have, like I mentioned, that old look too, most evident in Planet Terror where you can see the vertical lines running down the right side of the screen (in this scene, shown below) with dirt effects added too.

The start of the package is trailers for films that don’t actually exist.

The first trailer is directed by Robert Rodriguez for ‘Machete’ which I reckon looks pretty spiffing and SHOULD be a film!

Someone make this a full film, it looks AWESOME!

Then we’re in to Planet Terror. After Planet Terror we’re treated to Rob Zombie’s trailer for ‘Werewolf Women Of The SS’

I'd still watch it though... Werewolf Women of the SS! Hey, isn't that just Rob Zombie wearing an SS outfit?...

which looks pretty cool, but not as action packed as Machete, and then we get some food ads and another trailer, ‘Don’t', by Edgar Wright which is the typical spooky house thing then ‘Thanksgiving’, from Eli Roth, which if I went to that thanksgiving party, I’d be pretty excited!:

Well, looks like someone enjoyed themselves at that 'Thanksgiving'!

Then Death Proof starts, which is the end of the package.

Like I said, this rating doesn’t include the movies, they get their own ratings, but the double feature idea, old posters, grainy film and fake trailers are a great idea and definitely something that brings back fond memories. I was never in 42nd Street, or in grindhouse theaters, but I grew up renting badly worn VHS tapes of crappy films that began (and ended) with similar trailers, so this I love!

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars <– gets a 4 but with +0.5 for the Machete trailer having topless women.