Friday, November 30, 2012

Flesh Feast (Brad F. Grinter, USA/1970)



Just finished watching FLESH FEAST (1970). The 15-20 minutes of maggots, corpses and Hitler are fun. The remaining 50 minutes are the longest 50 minutes of any film. Ever! Michael Weldon called it "tedious". I tend to agree. The cover of my Greek vhs is awesome tho. Actually better than the movie itself. LOL. It was Veronica Lake's last film. She was a film noir star in the 40s and I bet she would have regretted making the film had she known this was going to be her last. I bought the tape from Bill Barounis (RIP) four years ago and paid 10 bucks for it. Best line: "I had notsching to do vith it. It vas Eichmann und Göring!"

Thursday, November 22, 2012

Paul Naschy's last werewolf movie: Unwatched, unwanted, unreleased



Here's the trailer for the Brazilian horror movie WEREWOLF IN THE AMAZON (Um Lobisomem na Amazônia) starring PAUL NASCHY as the wolfman - for the very last time. The film is from 2005 and apart from a very few screenings at film festivals it remains unwatched and unreleased. The film was shot in Portuguese but Naschy speaks Spanish. There's a trailer on YouTube and altho I'm sure we'll see a release somewhere down the road nobody knows how long we'll have to wait.

Saturday, November 17, 2012

ARTE Film Festival: MAMMUTH


The French/German TV channel ARTE TV screened the French movie MAMMUTH last night as part of their annual film festival and while I found the film to be extremely funny I must admit I didn't see the two-guys-jerk-each-other-off scene coming; It's not the scene as such but the fact that it stars Gérard Depardieu!! (and some old guy). It was slightly unsettling, haha.

Anyhoo, as I said the film was really funny. It's about this guy who retires from work but he hasn't got enough money so he decides to travel thru the country (France) in order to seek out his old employers and ask for his old worksheets so he can get a higher pension (or some such, I'm not familiar with the French system). The film is basically a road movie. Very funny. Very weird. Very different from other road movies I've seen.

The ARTE screening was presented by Isabella Rosellini who also introduced the other two festival films that were screened last night, SINGULARIDADES DE UMA RAPARIGA LOURA and TOURNÉE. SINGULARIDADES was directed by Manoel de Oliveira who was born in 1908 and made the film when he was 100 years old! I believe he's still alive.

Trailer:


Unfortunately, I couldn't find an English friendly trailer so here's a German dubbed one. There are French, Spanish, Dutch and Portuguese friendly ones on YouTube if you prefer any of those.

EDIT: Like so many other trailers this one got deleted from YouTube, but fortunately I found another one right away. This one is even subbed in English and it was uploaded to YT in 2011. I see I posted my original post in 2012 (ten years ago!!!), so how come I didn't find it back then but had to resort to a German trailer I have no idea. But here it is anyway. And I've downloaded it as well just to make sure in case they delete this one as well! (14.06.2022)

Thursday, November 15, 2012

Scanner Cop 2

I watched SCANNER COP 2 a couple of night ago and had a whale of a time (plus I ate some tuna while at it, haha). SCANNER COP 1 & 2 are kinda official sequels to SCANNERS 1-3, and in some markets they're apparently even released as Scanners 4 & 5. I still haven't bought SCANNER COP 1 but I've seen the sequels to Cronenberg's original film and, altho it's been a good number of years since I saw them, I remember them as being kinda lame compared to the first film.

This one, however, was pretty cool and certainly great fun. I'm told the first one (i.e. the first SC) is equally entertaining. Basically there's an evil scanner out to get our scanner cop hero and in the process he snuffs a bunch of other scanners in the most gory ways (and no, don't worry, we don't get cheated of a head explosion!). There's also a pretty chick but no nudity (but I don't think there ever was in any of the SCANNERS if I remember correctly).

SCANNER COP is out of DVD in Denmark and a few other places, and SCANNER COP 2 is released on DVD in Germany, Thailand and Canada. I bought the Canadian DVD from a store in Quebec via Amazon Canada. It has one of those double sided covers where you can choose between text in French and English. The DVD has absolutely zilch extras. For some reason they recorded the film twice on the DVD, one version in English and one in French. And I do mean they included the film twice! In other words, you can't switch between the two audio tracks while watching the film, you'll have to stop, go to the menu, and start again. Very strange.

And even stranger is the fact that while they used the original NTSC print for the English version they used a PAL master for the French version!? This means the French version finishes about four minutes quicker than the English version (i.e. because the print runs faster, there's nothing missing). Go figure. o_O

trailer:




Thanks for the info on the SC 2 releases to Member-X and Joachim Andersson.

Sunday, November 11, 2012

"I come in peace"

- "You go in pieces"



I've just heard that SHOUT FACTORY are releasing DARK ANGEL (aka I COME IN PEACE) next year and that it'll have a commentary track by fave B movie star DOLPH LUNDGREN (certainly a fave on this here blog). Awesome piece of news!

Tuesday, November 6, 2012

Is that flesh in your bag, Cronie?


Here's a photo of David Cronenberg visiting the Criterion video label a couple of months back and needless to say fans are now wondering what he was doing there. Are Criterion working on upgraded blu-ray releases of their old DEAD RINGERS and CRASH releases maybe? Or did he just want a Criterion bag?? Personally, I think he just went in to borrow taxi fare as he forgot he only had Canadian dollars in his pocket. LOL.


Btw, talking of CRASH; check this out! My new US laserdisc release of that much beloved film!! Well, most beloved by ME anyway. A lot of fans seem to think Cronenberg went over the line in perversity with this films but I beg to differ! It's one of my favourites of his films. I already have the Danish VHS and the UK DVD. Unfortunately, this old and way out of print laserdisc is the only proper release there is. It's presented in Cronenberg's preferred format of 1.66:1 (the DVD's and video tapes are either 1.85:1 or fullscreen) and as the only release it has a commentary track by Cronenberg. There's also a making of which may not be on any DVD's either but I'm not sure about that.

Monday, November 5, 2012

Month of Halloween - horror film #9: THE NEST

Yeah, Halloween lasts another week in this house!!

I've just watched THE NEST for the first time and totally loved it. One of the most fun killer insect flicks I've seen for a long time. And very cool old-skool gore too!! I watched the old New Concorde dvd which is fullscreen and looks alright, however I've just discovered there's gonna be a bluray/dvd from Shout next year! Can we get a Woo-woo!!

In the extras department there's three trailers and a cool 12 page booklet. Unfortunately, the trailer for the film is nowhere to be found despite it being listed on the cover.


Sunday, November 4, 2012

It's hard being a conservative

Iggy not being very conservative while doing "I'm a conservative" in 1981.


As I reported here I bought CD re-releases of three old IGGY POP LP's recently and I've been playing them ever since. Don't get me wrong, I love THE STOOGES but these early 80s records are pretty fucken cool too. In the first post I posted a live version of "I'm a Conservative". I've later discovered that the entire gig is up on YouTube in a brilliant picture quality (good enough for fullscreen viewing). The concert from November 25, 1981 was originally released on a TARGET VIDEO vhs in 1986. Watch it in all it's full mini-skirt & stockings glory here.

Funnel me this, Batman

So in my dream last night I’m trying to watch an old western on a new big tv but the picture is blurry so I try and adjust but nothing works. The good thing is that it’s a big screen and I can see the tv removes the black bars on the screen (in the dream it’s a video tape I’m trying to watch, obviously). After a while the tv screen is as big as a cinema screen and covers the entire wall. I get a great idea, why not tune the tv so I can actually watch tv programmes. So I start tuning but now I realise I ought to blow-dry the screen as that’s surely gonna help get rid of the blurry picture. I pull out a very weird blow-dryer with a kind of funnel at the end. I look into the funnel and see old food in there. Bummer, what if my dad sees I haven’t even cleaned it, he’ll think I’m crappy at living on my own. So I start digging old potatoes out of the funnel but suddenly I notice something else is in there: There’s a young caveman standing looking at the wall of the funnel (I’m now inside the funnel!) and then... zapp... he’s no longer standing but sitting on some big rocks that are also in there and next to him is a real Neanderthal man. This is too good to miss so I pull out my camera. “Stay there don’t move” I say and start taking photos of them. Suddenly something from behind grabs my attention and I turn around. The funnel entrance is now gone and there’s an open forest footpath and a naked young woman walks past. She's sporting a Brazilian wax and I’m wondering how I know that as I only see her from the side and behind. And with this bewilderment in my head I wake up. I have... no idea what it means.


My buddy Steve Nyland sent me this scan as a suggestion to what my dream was about. LOL.