WOLFGUY: ENRAGED LYCANTHROPE (1975) ***

Members of a rock group are found torn to shreds by what looks like a tiger’s claw.  Reporter Sonny Chiba (who also happens to be a werewolf) investigates, and learns they had all previously raped a woman at the behest of her fiancé’s rich father.  While on the trail of the raped girl, he learns she has a tiger spirit living inside her and uses her “grudge” to kill her attackers.  Things get really weird when a top-secret government agency brainwashes the girl and forces her to channel her rage at their enemies, thereby turning her into a weapon.  It’s then up to Sonny to rescue her.

Wolfguy:  Enraged Lycanthrope takes great liberties with the established werewolf lore.  I guess because it was made in Japan, they may not have known exactly what the traditional werewolf lore was, so they just made it up as they went along.  Even though Sonny doesn’t sprout fangs and hair, he is invincible during the full moon, so there’s that.  In that regard, he’s more like a superhero (or Popeye) than your average movie Wolfman.  The scene where he heals himself in the moonlight is just one of the film’s many batshit insane sequences.  Folks, you haven’t lived until you’ve seen Sonny Chiba’s guts reverse-motion themselves back inside his body.  

Sonny is great as always.  He’s particularly fun to watch in his Street Fighter-style fight scenes where he beats up a bunch of yakuza members.  (There’s one clever bit where he takes out some bad guys by throwing coins at them.)  These moments are more of the marinade than the meat though.

The scenes of people being torn apart by an invisible tiger spirit are jaw-dropping.  The wounds just appear on the victims and blood streams out of their bodies.  Trust me, this movie will teach you to never cross a syphilis-ridden junkie with the vengeful spirit of a tiger lurking inside her.

Just when you think it’s over, there is an entire section where Chiba goes off into the wilderness and gets it on with a hot mountain woman.  While he’s in the throes of passion, he imagines himself breastfeeding from his mother, which somehow restores his wolf powers.  You won’t catch Lon Chaney, Jr. doing that, that’s for sure!

If you can’t already tell, Wolfguy:  Enraged Lycanthrope doesn’t make a lot of sense.  Then again, when there’s so much crazy shit in this movie, you start to think a little thing like “sense” is overrated.  It moves at such a crackling pace that you don’t get a chance to even scratch your head because it’s already halfway through the next zany sequence. 

Die-hard werewolf purists will be appalled.  Sonny Chiba fans might not know what to think of it.  However, purveyors of WTF cinema will champion it as an unsung masterpiece.   

AKA:  Wolf Guy.  AKA:  Wolf Guy:  Enrage, Wolfman.  AKA:  Wolfman vs. the Supernatural. 

THE CARPENTER (1988) ***

Martin (Pierre Lenoir) comes home to find his wife Alice (Lynne Adams) cutting up his suits with a pair of scissors.  He does what any rational man would do in that situation:  Sends her to the nuthouse!  After the doctors treat her, Alice is released into Martin’s care and the pair move into an old house.  It’s a bit of a fixer upper as there are workman in and out of the place all day.  However, at night, one lone carpenter (Wings Hauser) works alone in the basement restoring the home to its original condition.  He also brutally murders anyone who messes with the still mentally fragile Alice.  Is he a figment of her imagination?  Or is he a vengeful spirit from beyond the grave?

The Carpenter is a surprising, low key, but effective horror film.  I hesitate to call it a horror comedy, but the humor in the film is really well done.  Wings in particular gets plenty of laughs with his off-kilter line readings.

What makes his performance so great is that he COULD have went overboard with the role, chewing the scenery like he did in Vice Squad.  Instead, he goes the other way with it, deftly underplaying the menace of the character.  This of course just makes his delivery even funnier.  When he tells someone, “Keep your hands to yourself” before cutting off their arms with a power saw, you laugh twice.  Once because, it’s a one-liner even Freddy Krueger would love, and the second because of the nonchalant way Wings delivers it.  

Hauer’s performance is pretty much the whole show.  For a die-hard Wings fan like me, that was more than enough.  Others may walk away feeling it’s a bit slight and lightweight.  I for one liked The Carpenter.  I’d say get HAMMERED and watch it.  You won’t be BOARD.  You’ll definitely be glad you SAW it.

AKA:  The Nightmare is Reviving.

DEATHGASM (2015) **

A teenage metalhead (Milo Cawthrone) goes to live with his extended family in a small New Zealand town.  Along with a few likeminded nerds and outcasts, he forms a rock band called Deathgasm.  When they play a forbidden song stolen from an aging rocker, it turns the townsfolk into possessed zombies.   

Peter Jackson pioneered the New Zealand gore movie with the cult classic Bad Taste.  He later made the Lord of the Rings franchise and turned it into the single biggest job market in the country.  Director Jason Lei Howden did special effects work on the Lord of the Rings films, and he definitely stole a few things from Jackson’s playbook.  Not only does he borrow heavily from Jackson, but Sam Raimi and Edgar Wright as well.  Too bad it all comes off feeling like a hollow imitation.

Speaking of imitation, Deathgasm doesn’t do anything Trick or Treat did better back in 1986.  It has a similar premise; just with more gore.  Sometimes, less is more though.

The gore, it should be said, is quite juicy.  We get blood-puking (and shitting) zombies, crushed heads, chainsaws to the stomach, and gut ripping.  However, the fact that the film has not one, but TWO death-by-dildo scenes is the tip-off it’s just trying way too hard.

Sure, the red stuff flies freely, but the characters are annoying, so it all just feels like overkill.  Even worse is the fact they speak in thick, impenetrable accents.  This causes the already cheesy one-liners to land with a thud, mostly because you can’t tell what the hell they’re saying half the time.  I could’ve also done without the sketchpad title cards every time a new (annoying) character was introduced.

In terms of gore, Deathgasm goes to 11, but everything else barely registers.

AKA:  Heavy Metal Apocalypse.  

THE 31 DAYS OF HORROR-WEEN: PRIME EVIL: A QUIET PLACE (2018) *** ½

Well, Prime strikes again.  This is the second time this month a movie I was going to watch mysteriously became “Unavailable”.  Well, “unavailable” as in, “Not Included with Prime”.  I’m sorry, I like Adam Ant as much as the next guy, but if you think I’m going to pay $3.99 for Spellcaster, you got another think coming.  (Luckily, it’s available for free on Tubi, so I’m sure I’ll watch it eventually.)  I was going to save A Quiet Place for November’s horror movie watching project, Halloween Hangover, but I felt that after so many bad movies I’ve watched this month, I needed a break.  As it turns out, this was just the palette cleanser I was looking for.  

The premise is deceptively simple.  Creatures who hunt using sound have pretty much wiped out the population of a small town.  John Krasinski and Emily Blunt hold down the fort with their children, hunting and gathering in total silence, communicating only via sign language.  

That’s all I’ll say.  Although according to the box office reports, you all saw this one way before I did.  It’s just pretty amazing that Krasinski, who also directed was able to squeeze so much suspense, atmosphere, and dread with seemingly so little.  In lesser hands, the suspense would’ve solely come from people dropping stuff and then trying to remain perfectly quiet.  Well, there is some of that, but the movie really cooks when its dealing with its characters’ guilt, fear, and impending motherhood.  Who knew Jim from The Office was a born filmmaker?

I can’t say it’s perfect.  People shush each other so often that it becomes comical after a while.  You could almost play a drinking game every time someone raises their finger to their lips and be in a coma before the movie’s over.  The monsters are also kind of shitty too as they look like something out of a Resident Evil PS2 game.

Those are minor quibbles.  Krasinski delivers three or four memorable suspense-filled sequences of the family in peril.  I mean the plot sounds like something M. Night Shyamalan would cook up, only he’d be too worried trying to make a “twist” to it that he’d forget to bring on the actual scares.  Luckily for us, Krasinski is no M. Night.  

I particularly liked the world-building aspects.  I love survivalist horror, and this flick presents a unique spin on that tried-and-true subgenre.  It also clocks in at a lean and mean ninety minutes, meaning it’s all killer and no filler.  

All in all, A Quiet Place is worth making a ruckus about.

THE VISIT (2015) *

I made it this far into The 31 Days of Horror-Ween without watching a single Found Footage horror movie.  My luck had to run out sometime.  To add insult to injury, it was directed by M. Night Shyamalan.  Even though I’m not a fan of his, I have to admit, making a Found Footage movie seems kind of beneath him.  As far as his films go, it’s nothing abominably bad like The Village or Unbreakable.  It’s just a rather ordinary and forgettable shaky-cam shitfest.

Two kids make a documentary about spending the week at their grandparents’ house.  At first, they seem like your typical old people.  The first hint something’s wrong is when they impose a strict 9:30 curfew.  Naturally, when the kids leave the room, they begin witnessing their grandparents’ increasingly bizarre behavior.  They try to chalk it up to dementia (and in one instance, incontinence), but they eventually come to realize there’s something seriously wrong with their grandparents.

Because your film is literally in the hands of two annoying kids, that means you have to sit through long scenes of them arguing.  Unfortunately, you also have to sit through the one kid’s awful amateur rapping.  (“It’s a form of modern poetry.”)  That’s not even mentioning the scene where they play hide and seek while holding cameras that features some of the most nauseating shaky-cam I’ve ever witnessed.  

As for the obligatory Shyamalan twist, it’s sorely predictable.  I’m sure, you can probably guess what happens.  I mean I guessed the ending to The Sixth Sense in the second scene, but at least it was delivered competently.  Here, it just sort of happens, and then the movie goes on for another useless half-hour or so.

The finale might’ve been effective if only for the fact that Shyamalan splits the kids up.  That way, instead of watching one shaky hard-to-comprehend sequence, we have two to suffer through.  The cutting back and forth between the kids doesn’t help either scene’s payoff.  In fact, one of the sequences (the grandma scene) could’ve actually worked had it not been for the atrocious camerawork.

In short, it’s yet another case of Found Footage, Get Lost!

THE SATANIST (1968) ** ½

A writer goes away with his wife for a little rest and relaxation.  When they accidentally hit their neighbor Shandra with the car, she arises from the crash miraculously unhurt.  She then invites them into her home where she reveals to them that she is a practitioner of the occult.  As they’re about to leave, she gives our clueless hero a book on black magic that makes him have sex-filled dreams.  Then, he and his wife take turns spying on their sexy Satanist neighbor.  In the end, the couple are invited to Shandra’s black mass party where people in robes and weird masks tie up our hero while they have a gangbang with his wife before partaking in an all-out Satanic orgy.

The black and white photography looks great and director Zoltan G. (Terror at Orgy Castle) Spenser finds some interesting angles (like the accident scene) to help separate The Satanist from the other occult-themed nudies of the time.  The outdoor nude scenes and various naked rituals also help to make it memorable.  Not GOOD exactly, but memorable.

The sex scene between our hero and his wife is kind of boring, which I guess is to be expected, but the lesbian oil massage scene ekes out a spark or two.  Then things get weird when Shandra uses her black magic to turn into a man so she can bone her girlfriend.  Too bad many of the shots are held for far too long during the majority of the sex scenes.  They do have a certain allure to them, it’s just that with a little more judicious editing, they could’ve been quite steamy.  Still, there are definitely some good moments here (like when the writer bones a hot blonde next to his sleeping wife) to make The Satanist worth a look for fans of ‘60s nudies.

SMASH CUT (2009) ** ½

David Hess stars as a horror director who is enraged when audiences mock his latest film, Terror Toy.  After he accidentally kills a stripper, he notices the gore in his movies just doesn’t compare to the real thing.  He then takes to using his own blood to make the effects look more realistic.  After passing out on the set, he realizes he needs other people’s blood to keep the movie going.  Hess kills critics, producers, and financiers, all of whom he feels have interfered with his “artistic vision”.  Porn star Sasha Grey co-stars as a journalist investigating the death of her sister, Hess’ first victim, who ingratiates herself into his inner circle by winning the starring role in his latest opus.

The best part is the very beginning featuring the Godfather of Gore himself, Herschell Gordon Lewis warning the audience a la Blood Feast.  He also appears later on in a small role as Grey’s boss.  While his presence alone brought a smile to this gorehound’s face, I also wish he had more to do.

Despite the great set-up, Smash Cut spins its wheels a bit too much in the middle portion of the film.  We do get a fun scene where Hess makes Grey audition with a scene from Hamlet using her dead sister’s decapitated head as Yorick’s skull.  Unfortunately, the rest of the movie is a bit spotty when it comes to the gore scenes.  Some of the effects are good, while others (like the eyeball gag) are crappy.  (I’m thinking specifically of the odd scene where Hess dresses like a boat captain and kills a guy with a harpoon… on a double decker bus?!?)  The death-by-clapboard scene is pretty cool though.

Hess is a lot of fun as the maniacal director.  If you’re a fan of the man, you’ll want to give it a look as he shows he still has the goods.  It’s also fun just watching Hess and Michael Berryman sharing scenes together, seeing as they’re both best known for their work in iconic Wes Craven movies.  On the other side of the coin, Grey shows none of the chops she showed in The Girlfriend Experience (which came out the same year).  At least she gets by on her looks.  Jesse Buck on the other hand grates on the nerves as a completely gratuitous detective who hams it up every chance he gets and manages to sink nearly every scene he’s in.  

If you can’t already tell, Smash Cut is a loving homage to Lewis’s work (especially Color Me Blood Red).  In addition to the Blood Feast-inspired opening, the movie also uses some music cues from that film.  Heck, even the Wizard of Gore himself, Ray Sager turns up in a small role. 

As far as latter day Lewis homages go it's much better than the Wizard of Gore remake.  Still, it’s not a patch on Lewis’s own Blood Feast 2.  The tongue-in-cheek humor never quite meshes with the over the top gore, but hey, if you ever wanted to see David Hess do yoga, this is your chance.