Spastik Children!!!

There are things that'll bug me even after I rottenly return from my grave to eat your brains.

Like for instance, why did no one release a record by SPASTIK CHILDREN? What kind of insane world do we live in where a SPASTIK CHILDREN record doesn't exist!!! James Hetfield on drums and Cliff Burton on bas, at one point Kirk Hammett was also in the band, and also other well known people from the SF metal scene back then like Paul Baloff and Fred Cotton. They had songs like "Burp" and "Cunt".



PS: the official spelling IS with a k, not a c.

TROLDKARLEN (1999) Anders Østergaard, Denmark/Sweden

How does a film manage to create a shiver down your spine when you've watched it heaps of times already? And how does a bloody documentary film create that feeling? I don't know but that's usually how I feel when I re-watch Anders Østergaard's Danish documentary TROLDKARLEN (aka Trollkarlen) about Jan Johansson. I pull out the movie ever so often and it's always the same, and last night was no exception.

Jan Johansson was a Swedish jazz musician who lived long ago and who died untimely in the late '60s. There's one point in the film where his brother vividly talks about having had dreams about seeing Jan in the Stockholm underground after Jan passed away. In his dreams he meets Jan and says to him, "We thought you had died. Where have you been?" to which Jan explains he's been away to play in Russia. His brother then continues in the doc, "But then I woke up and everything was the same". It gets me every time. So sad.

I highly recommend TROLDKARLEN, even if you're not a fan of old jazz music. The Danish dvd has subs in Danish and English (of the special kind we call Valby-engelsk, argh).

Look into these eyes and tell me you love me

Wauw!!! You know there are songs you hear in your youth and they just stay with you forever - even if you don't listen to them for years on end. For me once such track is GREEN ON RED's awesome "The Drifter" which I first heard via a live recording on a Danish radio station in the early '80s.

I taped it and played the tape over and over again. The song about being a drifter made me dream about leaving the camp (i.e. home) and piss off to faraway lands (which I later did). What I never knew was that the song is actually about... Ted Bundy!! Haha.

Diabolik from Uncut forum (aka Hans-Jørn Reimer) recently sent me the photo you see in the above and said, "recognise him?" and all it took was looking into those eyes. He appears to be reading a book ... but click the scan and you'll see he's looking right at YOU. Creepy beyond belief.




Thanks to Diabolik for the scan.

What you expect - I'll never be (Stay Sick! dance party Vol. 1) - #1

STAY SICK! TURN BLUE!

Here's some crap (or crank) info you don't know about. Sometime in a long gone decade I put out a bootleg record as a soundtrack to my fanzine STAY SICK! (it was a freebee so record labels need not sue. Thanks). The platter was entitled "What you expect - I'll never be", a title both a ref to rockabilly and wild trash film culture - as well as the obvious response to, well, you know! The track list was all awesome stuff from before these times that we squad in that are truly awful pop-culture wise. Hey, I did not eat the cranberries from a dented can! Not much anyway. I'll try and post the ol'e tracks here in days to come (or not. In the words of my friend George Costanza "I'm an enigma" so who knows). Chronological orders are so square so let's kick off with number 10: KILLDOZER doing "Cranberries" from their EP "Burl" (which if I remember correctly they dedicated to a guy called Earl, and then years later they found out he hadn't died at all). I discovered Killdozer via an interview in Moshable fanzine in 1990 when I lived in Baron's Court in London and they were one of my fave bands for so many years. They run their own fb page here somewhere but don't update much. They took their name from a telly flick by the same name which isn't on dvd and that's a bloody shame as it's the coolest killer "car" movie. I mean, a film about a slooow moving demon possessed killer bulldozer, how could that not be cool. There are bootleg dvds out there.

For those who can read it, the original liner notes from the bootleg sleeve:
"Eet af mine favoritbands gennem alle tider. Nu desværre opløst. Totalt psykotiske sange, man skrandgriner bare hele vejen igennem!! Alle numrene er fra EP'en Earl." (det sku' ha' været "Burl")

James dishing it out in 1978

I'm told that crooked ex-KGB agents are working on a time machine somewhere in a secret bunker under the Gulag, and my man behind the old rusty iron curtain tells me it'll be ready soon. I can't wait for them to put it into production. I'm gonna get a five round ticket for 1978 and I'm gonna stay there for five years straight (every time we hit December you'll get thrown back to January) and I'll go to every gig by every NO-WAVE band that ever existed! And I'll get all the records (and buy extra copies and sell them at inflated prices when I get back here). This is JAMES CHANCE & THE CONTORTIONS with "Dish it out" from the fabulous "NO NEW YORK" LP. James is a Wildman so bug off!!!

Lost stock of ONAR FILM's "Turkish Death Wish" dvd found and for sale!!!

From the semi official ONAR FILM facebook page:

"CELLAT"... "THE EXECUTIONER"... LEGANDARY REMAKE OF LEGENDARY "DEATH WISH"... IT WAS ONE OF THE BEST REMAKES OF TURKISH CINE HISTORY... BLOODY, SHOCKING, BRUTAL... AND SOMETIMES IT WAS BETTER THAN THE ORIGINAL!

ONAR FILMS' CELLAT WAS OUT OF ORDER FOR LAST ONE YEAR. IT WAS TOTALLY OUT OF STOCK. BUT, WE FOUND SURPRISINGLY 60-65 NEW COPIES LABELED / NUMBERED BY ONAR IN A SMALL DVD SHOP.

NOW, WE START TO SELL THEM AS A GREAT SURPRISE... AND A GREATER SURPRISE: WITH THE SPECIAL SIGNED MINI POSTER OF TURKISH ACTION ACTOR MR. SERDAR GOKHAN (TURKISH ARCHITECT OF THE STORY IN THIS REMAKE).
DON'T MISS THIS GREAT OPPORTUNITY!
FOR ORDERS:
onarfilms.lastfilms@yahoo.com

Onar Film on facebook

Killer toone on a Monday

Don't you just love the moment when a serial killer gets into your car and sings along to "Always on my Mind"?

Needless to say I chose a version that has Karaoke lines in Chinese (next to being an Aussie Londoner by heart I'm also fake Hongkongese).

En Lejemorder Ser Tilbage and Psychotronic Broadcasting presents...

Another of my Dogme style YouTube videos on my Psychotronikc Broadcasting channel; Bad sound, bad filming, bad intro in bad German, and let's not talk about the info provided (i.e. lack of!). But at least the jokes are bad.

Best MATTEI OF THE DEAD ever!

One of my fave YouTubers is Pete aka Mondo Squallido and his channel Mattei of the Dead. He's just so fucking interesting! Pete is this super cool pommy guy who divides his time between the UK and Deutschland. This month he goes against the grain and instead of doing horror film reviews he's reviewing 31 documentary films! How awesome is that. Too fucken right it is!

I'm embedding his review of CORMAN, HOLLYWOOD'S WILD ANGEL here (I've got the vhs, it's not on dvd) and I urge you to check out more videos on his channel. If Pete were an icy pole I'd get a whole box right away from the ice cream parlour. And I say that in a strictly non homo erotic way.


PS: I realise the headline is confusing. It doesn't mean that this video is the best MATTEI OF THE DEAD video but that there are no other MATTEI OF THE DEADs out there as good as t-h-i-s MATTEI OF THE DEAD. lol

Knowing the difference

This song and this video by EELS are just wonderful. It also strikes home with this writer. Oh well. You just gotta make the most of it.

Winner of "Best YouTube Channel Ever" prize!!!

I'm so happy! YouTube has decided that my channel PSYCHOTRONIC BROADCASTING is thee best channel in the history of YouTube! Wauw! Wauw!! Wauw!!! Sure, it's in the alternative universe of Bizarro World but, hey, you gotta take what you can get, right!

I've been running this shitty channel since over summer and I've got something like 20-25 videos (couldn't be arsed to count 'em). Check it out. Sorry about the sound, filming, camera angle, noise, rambling dialogue, whatever. It's done that way on purpose cos I FOLLOW DOGME FILM RULES!!! (and in the words of Richard Kuklinski, if you believe that I have a couple of bridges to sell you).


PS: non English speakers may not realise this but the headline is a play on words; Piles (plural) is another word for haemorrhoids.

The Mind is a Many Splendoured Thing

I had stayed up till the early dawn. And I had asked the little man who lives in my alarm clock to wake me at 2pm but I woke before that. My house is haunted and ghost banging on the walls usually mess up my sleeping. An hour before the alarm clock were to go off I was half asleep with a mind that drifted between a late night convo and images of distant lands. Then out of a sudden, as when your computer program crashes in a split second and your wallpaper is thrown in your face, I get this vivid image from a location I don't recognise. Thinking about it, it may have looked like a table at a travel office. My dad is sitting in front of me. He doesn't look at me but past me. His face is worried and it is thin. Not quite as thin as what it later became but thinner than those old Kodak memories that float in my mind. It's like getting a bucket of cold water splashed into your face. I was wide awake in a split second but right away tried to go back to that unknown desk in that unknown room in that unknown location. I got back but the picture was now frozen. I've got a slight headache now and it is a grey and cool day outside. It has almost got the feel of a 1970s' day. The mind is an odd creature that messes with you in surprising ways that you don't expect. It's annoying and I find it fitting that I end this by quoting my friend H.J. Simpson, "Brain, I thought we had an agreement; I leave you along if you leave me alone".

Here it is. The smoking gun. Evidence of a hard-boiled meeting. Once in a lifetime.

To any reader of hard-boiled crime fiction this is an amazing photograph. This is the only photographic evidence of the two masters of pulp fiction Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Changler ever having met. The fact that it's from a dinner party at Black Mask magazine in 1936 only makes it even more awesome.
- Chandler second from left at back, Hammett far right, back.


Everyone in the photo:
Back, L-R: Raymond J. Moffatt, Raymond Chandler, Herbert Stinson, Dwight Babcock, Eric Taylor, Dashiell Hammett.
Front, L-R: Arthur Barnes, John K. Butler, W.T. Ballard, Horace McCoy, Norbert Davis

Wish you were here

Bill Barounis (with cool sunglasses on the left) passed away today three years ago.

Bill ran the coolest dvd label ever, ONAR FILMS. I never met Bill but like a few of us I knew him through correspondence; through Cinehound worldweird film forum, and through trading films with him. He lived in Greece and saw it as his life project to track down lost Turkish cult films and release them. In 2009 he got brain cancer and passed away in 2010.

The guy on the right, grinning like an undertaker, is Tom from Switzerland who met him in 2010 during a period when we all thought Bill had beat the illness. With Jared Auner (of Mondo Macabro and "Worldweird" blog) I maintain the semi-official ONAR FILMS fb page.

Bill could be tough but he knew who his friends were. He is sorely missed.

Cult of J now on the toobe

While I took a break from posting on this blog and Facebook I travelled to India, Pakistan, and also I met the good people of Africa. I wrote a book about my 6 years as a white man among the Hottentots, and I recorded an album.
 
- Alright, alright, maybe I'm slightly exaggerating but I d-i-d open an account on Youtube and became part of the horror community there. The channel is called Psychotronic Broadcasting. I think it was partly Richard Schmidt from the Cinema Somnambulist blog [and insert 10-15 other blog/podcast/radio/zine names here that he does] who does awesome vlogs (not least the ones were he watches 10+ films in a row and reviews them all throughtout!!). Oh, the Toobe is a wonderful land, you should visit us sometime. I'll buy you a lemonade. Here's a presentation I did of a random dvd shelf. I'm not featured in it but I am in some (most) of the other ones.

Mex on SWV

Here's a photo of a few random video tapes on one of my shelves. Four old Mexican horror movies from the '60s on VHS from Something Weird Video. The movies are DR. SATAN, DR. SATAN VERSUS BLACK MAGIC, ISLAND OF THE DINOSAURS and ZORRO VERSUS THE TEENAGE MONSTER. The tape on the far left is also an old Mexican horror movie, THE BLOODY VAMPIRE. It is however not a SWV tape but a bootleg. Incidentally, the bootleg tape is the only one that is dubbed into English. The other four are in Spanish only (i.e. no dub, no subs). I bought them years ago on eBay. The films have been discontinued from the Something Weird catalogue for a long time; none of them made it to dvd or dvd-r (from that label, Bloody Vampire is out on a non English friendly dvd from Mexico).

Old devil cult movie?

Here's a cool new video by the band Black Prism for the track "Satan's Country". The video looks like an old movie from the 1970s about Devil worshipping! And the music sounds like a lost Black Sabbath record from that same decade. Pretty cool!

I found the video on a Danish blog called Fra Sortsand and I highly recommend you check it out if you read Danish.

New horror channel to celebrate Halloween

There's a new film channel on YouTube called HorrorGlobe and it's all about horror flicks, and it's going to cover every day of October! Here is the first review and I'm happy to report it's done by my buddy TJ Pyramid who lives in Salem!! (I won't spoil the fun and tell you it's a different Salem). They've invited me and, hey, I might even do a review or two there. ^_^

Bloody Weekend Horror Movie Festival (2013)

Today was the third day of the Blodig Weekend (i.e. Bloody Weekend) horror movie festival in Copenhagen, Denmark. I got home around midnight after a long but very cool day. The festival continues tomorrow. The full programme is listed here.

CAPOTE (USA, 2005) dir: Bennett Miller

I watched Bennett Miller's film CAPOTE tonight. It's basically the story of how the American author Truman Capote wrote his novel "In Cold Blood" about the two murderers who killed four people in 1959 with gun shots to the head. The film is very good but don't expect neither a serial killer film like HENRY or a horror movie. CAPOTE is neither. It is however a very good movie and Philip Seymour Hoffman's portrayal of Truman Capote is spot on. I watched the Danish dvd which came in a box set with Richard Brooks' film version of the book, IN COLD BLOOD, from 1967. I haven't watched the latter yet. The PQ on the dvd was good most of the time but shadows looked awful as they were full of pixellation squares. It looked like a fucking video-cd from Hong Kong!! I think I have the book somewhere.

Trailer for the Danish cult film STENBROENS "HELTE" now with English subs!

aka CITY STREET HEROES (Denmark, 1965)



This is the trailer for the Danish psychotronic masterpiece STENBROENS "HELTE" from 1965. It was directed by Poul Nyrup who only made three films and then disappeared back into obscurity. The film is a true CULT film in MY book but sadly almost only in my book; The rest of Denmark ignores it. Their loss I'd say. Unfortunately, a piece of pop culture can only gain cult status if the Americans have told the Danes that it's a cult film. And so since STENBROENS "HELTE" hasn't yet been discovered by the American cult movie fans we can't worship it in Denmark. Denmark, I despise you (somebody please get me out of here!). The film has (of course) never been released on dvd in Denmark, and it's not even been on TV. It was released twice on VHS in the '80s and there's a well known bootleg VHS from the '90s. The subs on the trailer were done by some crazy fanatic fan somewhere. The only Poul Nyrup film that exists on semi legit dvd is his second film, COPENHAGEN CALL-GIRLS (aka Villa Vennely) from 1964, which Something Weird Video put out on dvd-r (and probably also VHS) in the States. Their print is not the same as was used for the Danish VHS but an old English subbed cinema print.

APOCALYPSE VIRUS ZOMBIES (France, 2010) dir: Luc Lagier, 52 min.

Cinémas d'Horreur - Apocalypse Virus Zombies (French title)
Horrorfilme - Apokalypse Viren Zombies (German title)





"The 66th minute of a horror movie called The Descent. If you don't wish to watch a scene of horror you now have 10 seconds to switch over!"

I've just uploaded this horror movie documentary which covers some of the new horror movies that have come out in recent years. The doc was made by ARTE TV/France. Arte is a joint French-German culture channel which is rather exceptional as it basically exists to broaden the friendship and knowledge between those two nations (Germany and France have not always been the best of friends). All programmes are basically broadcast simultaneously in both countries, and all programmes have a voiceover in both countries' language (that being French and German - duh!).

I don't live in either country but even so I can watch the channel via a spiffy satellite dish. I dvd-r'ed both versions earlier this year and I was going to upload them both as it's a rather good film. However, lo and behold, someone beat me to it with the French version. I'll link to it at the bottom of this post.

As I said, the doc is pretty good; It has interviews with Alexandre Aja (Hills Have Eyes remake), Jaume Balagueró ([REC]), Neil Marshall (The Descent), Paco Plaza ([REC]), Eli Roth (Hostel). Some of them are interviewed in English but unfortunately translations are made via voiceover instead of subtitles. I must admit I fucking hate when they do that. You can sorta make out what they say under the voiceovers if you pay attention though.

The use of Johnny Cash's song "The Man Comes Around" at the end of the film is great (listen to it in full here). I love the DAWN OF THE DEAD remake but I gotta say that the scene that stands out the most is the fragmented collage footage at the beginning with Cash's song over it.

Click here for the doc with French language voice over.

BODY SWITCH - trailer

English subbed trailer for the Danish teen horror film BODY SWITCH (aka Farligt Venskab, Denmark 1995). From a rare Ocean Shores dvd (i.e. from Hong Kong).

Oh, Lydia

Sods bass player Knudd Odd talking about Lydia Lunch's involvement in their LP "Dagger & Guitar". From the TV documentary OMKRING EN SORT SOL - ET PORTRÆT AF SODS from 1984 (this is from the actual TV broadcast that I taped on Betamax!!!). It's never been repeated in its original form.

Well, whad'ya know!

I was walking home late one afternoon about four months ago. As I walked past an old house I saw some feller trying to get his groceries out from the boot of his car, but he seemed to be having trouble with it as he had a cast on his right arm. I offered to give him a hand, he said sure thanks buddy, I carried his stuff into his house and next thing I know I wake up in the dark and on the floor of his basement. I stayed there for four months without a fucken chance of getting out. And none of you fuckers called the cops or asked around. Gee, "thanks". Anyhoo, I'm back now and despite the deep mental scars I'll try and get things back to normal. I've got about 3000 things that need to be done but, hey, nice to be back.

SCOURGE of the tube - or endless DIY entertainment

My life fades. The vision dims. All that remains are memories. I remember a time of chaos. Ruined dreams. This wasted land. But most of all, I remember FILM FANZINES. And FILM BOOKS. And PROGRAMMES ON TV that covered films.

Nowadays we have YOUTUBE FILM REVIEWERS! And it seems everyone has their own YouTube channel to review films!

I must admit I quite like a lot of them. Not all of them, needless to say, some of them are shockingly terrible - for one reason or another. Recently I found some review guy's channel where he would have prepared and written down his reviews (a good thing) but during the videos he would read out the reviews as quickly as possible - in thee most monotone voice ever (not a good thing!). Highly annoying. I don't care if he's well-read and has good points to say, I'm not gonna go back to that fiasco channel.

Yesterday, on the other hand, I found this channel which is kind of at the other end of the spectrum; It's a chick called Elisabeth R that does (probably) ZERO preparation and just babbles away. And she shakes her camera uncontrollably, coughs, mispronounces director names, wraps up a review half way thru and just keeps talking for the rest of the video - but at the same time she has all the enthusiasm that the other guy so lacked!

Maybe I'll start posting some of my fave YouTube review channels here. I can't say "Elisabeth R" is a fave of mine as I only found her yesterday, but her videos are fun to watch and I'll recommend all three of them. One of them has cleavage too and someone commented "sexy mama" and, uh, yeah, I can't say I disagree (having said that I should point out that I would watch videos by a reviewer who looks like they've been kicked in the face by a horse if their reviews are cool!).

Wild Bollywood

I've had this track on a Bollywood film theme CD for years but never thought of looking for a video of it on YouTube. Thanks to an Englishman trapped in Sweden for making that connection for me. This track and its video are so great my eyes are bleeding.

In case you're interested the CD is called "The Kings and Queens of Bollywood - Classic Sixties Indian Film Themes".

ANITA LANE - "Jesus Almost Got Me"

I remember listening to an interview with ANITA LANE on radio in Melbourne sometime in the 90s. Anita belong to that group of artists that hung around Nick Cave's fantastic band THE BIRTHDAY PARTY and later they all moved to Berlin. The radio guy on that night was trying to speak to Anita and she kept interrupting herself saying her baby was crying, and you could hear this sobbing infant next to her. Unfortunately, I didn't get to tape the interview but from memory I don't think the interviewer actually got that many, if any, useful answers out of Anita. But anyway, here's one of her videos. You should watch it. It's basically Anita writhing on the floor under a table. Yeah, probably the greatest video on YouTube.

Asian film facebook fan group interview with... JACK J

Yeah, the KWAIDAN KLUB fan group on facebook has started a series of monthly interviews and the first one is with yours truly. Interview and intro by Nom Pauo.


Nom Pauo
With blessings from Sharon and Hope, KK will be doing a monthly member profile. Why? (Entering suck up mode) Because you are all beautiful people that are more than merely a screen name or obnoxious profile photos. You're more than weirdos who finds joy in seeing an innocent Japanese girl turn into a psychopath and make her victim eat puke, you're flesh and blood. You have interest and you have a story to tell. If this attempt at sucking up doesn't hold up...then i will say, we're doing it because we felt like it lmao! Enjoy or endure :)

***Interview with Jack Jenson***
Every now and then the world comes in contact with greatness. Basketball had Michael Jordan. Boxing had Muhammad Ali. Rock had Freddie Mercury. In this age of Facebook interest groups we have Nom Pauo. But that’s not to say the subject of this month’s interview isn’t an awesome person either :) How awesome? How awesome?! How dare u ask you heathens! Well for one the guy’s name is a fuckin alliteration! You wished ur name had poetic device! but thats not all folks. Jack is a connoisseur of obscure cinema - the kind that nobody would know about if it wasn’t for people like him. To top it off, the guy’s a published writer as well as established blogger. And the big cherry on top, he’s a ladies man. Observe as he breaks down the science of relationship :) So without further adieu, the talented the handsome...Mr. Jack Jenson! (oh and take notes cause you'll want to write down a few film suggestions ha!)

Nom Pauo
whats up, jack?

Jack Jensen
Hey there, hello, G'day mate!

Nom Pauo
Lets cut the crap and gettothe meat of the matter. Word on the street is, you're a popular with the ladies! Whats ur secret??

Jack Jensen
Suck it in. Agree with the ladies. It may be hard on your manhood to spend 3 hours with them on shopping but it pays off. And don't talk about the footy or your mates all the time. Oh, and it's okay to show a weak side (just don't overdo it, you don't wanna become "one of the gals" if ya catch my drift).

Nom Pauo
I concur with that last part. Get i tried getting in touch with my feminine side and was told "you're making me uncomfortable" can u believe that?!?

Jack Jensen
Weeell, as I said you don't wanna overdo it. If you start being as "feminine" as one of their gay friends you're overdoing it, LOL (oh, and to quote an entire episode of SEINFELD: "Not that there's anything wrong with being gay, of course")

Nom Pauo
Hmm...maybe i shouldnt have tried it on...
so anyways. Now that the important stuff is out of the way, why dont u tell us a little bit about urself.

Jack Jensen
Whatever you fancy is fine by me, just don't expect me to take part.

Nom Pauo
lmao!! Noted.

Jack Jensen
Hmm, about myself, eh. I'm located in the north of Europe, in Denmark. I spent a few years in the UK and a while in OZ (i.e. Australia) due to a 10 year relationship. I usually say I'm 90% Danish and 10% Aussie. I'm way too old and I always wanna go somewhere else. LOL.
I've always been a collector, comic books, crime novels, records, films.

Jack Jensen
I've written for fanzines the past 20 years, I think I did my first piece in 1993 and published my own zine in 1994, entitled "Banned in Britain". Already back then I had got into Asian films and issue #1 had reviews of Hong Kong films (and one Japanese splatter anime) in it. Nowadays I run a handful of blogs, two of them on obscure Asian films. But they're kinda *different* to what most fans of Asian cinema is into these days. If you belong to a counter-culture by watching Asian films then I'm the counter-culture to the counter-culture. LOL.

Nom Pauo
Ha, "Banned in Britain"! What was that all about?

Jack Jensen
Well, the plan was that it was going to only deal with splatter films. You know, a lot of those films were banned in the UK. The whole "video nasty" scare of the 1980s is well documented now. I lived there at the time and it was difficult to get hold of films like TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE or just about any uncut Dario Argento film. The gore films that DID get a vhs release were usually cut by the censor-board (the BBFC). I had to have tapes sent in from Europe to be able to watch them. You could go to jail if they caught you with a copy of CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST!! I wanted the title of my zine to be a comment on that. When I said that was the plan it's because I kinda failed in doing that. Haha. I began to review other cult films that weren't necessarily straight gore films. Later I also did a zine called "STAY SICK!" which was more about all kinds of various films.

Nom Pauo
Yea i saw that in ur profile description saying ur the Editor-in-Chief. Talk a little about Stay Sick Magazine. What was the inspiration? Where do u hope to go with it?

Jack Jensen
Uhh, if I had ambitions of grandeur then I think I'm probably doing what I do all wrong. LOL. I've been publishing my mag since 1999 and all I have managed to put out is 6 issues! I'm working on a new one though. The inspiration clearly came from the alternative US film magazine "Psychotronic Video" which I began buying in London when #3 came out. I wanted to cover "psychotronic" films (i.e. films that somehow belong to the "fantastic" genres). My old zine "Banned in Britain" (BIB) was entirely in English but when I started doing "STAY SICK!" in 1999 there was only one other fanzines in Denmark and I wanted to give the Scandinavians a proper alternative film zine. So I decided to write SS entirely in Danish. Of course, nowadays everything is online but I still wish to put out more print issues. It's more fun to do print mags.

Nom Pauo
So you were actually one of the earlier e-zine publisher? Thats pretty cool man!
Jack Jensen
No. I never published e-zines, only print ones. I do a few blogs though but that's not what I'd call e-zines.

Nom Pauo
Ah, gotcha. Thats still pretty cool dude even if only 6 issues were published. So lets chat asian cinema.

Jack Jensen
Ok.
I should add I also printed 2 issues of BIB and I've written for a bunch of other zines published by other people. Ever since #0 "Weng's Chop" has wanted me to take part and hopefully I'll get some stuff done for their next ish.

Nom Pauo
Weng Chop? Thats Brian's publication right? Pretty awesome dude! (Shoutout to Brian btw) You mentioned earlier u were exposed to asian cinema early. I remember in one of the discussion in KK u mentioned that The Green Hornet was the first asian film u saw. Was that the film that sparked ur appreciation for asian cinema?

Jack Jensen
I reckon that was the very first "Asian" film I saw yes. Asian because it has Bruce Lee in it but needless to say it was made in the USA and it's in reality a few episodes of the 1960s tv series that were edited into a film. It ran in the European cinema and I watched it in 1979 or '80 with my dad and my cousin. But my real interest in Asian cinema came much later, in around 1989 and it kinda takes us back to the video nasties in the UK again. I bough a couple of issues of a UK fanzine called "In the Flesh" and they would write about the usual stuff, ZOMBIE FLESH EATERS, DAWN OF THE DEAD, RE-ANIMATOR, etc. but in addition to all that they also had a section on Hong Kong cinema. This was around 1990 and it's important to remember that nobody, and I do mean nobody, in the West knew anything about Hong Kong genre cinema. So this was the time when the very first few fans began to discover HK horror and gangster films; the new wave of HK cinema so to speak. The gangster films were soon dubbed "Heroic Bloodshed" films and in those pre-dvd days there were no legal ways to get these films. To be a fan of Asian or HK cinema is easy. You get any film you want from Amazon, eBay or download. But then there was no Amazon, no (illegal) torrents, not even video tapes. I remember the only HK films that were released in the UK back then were THE KILLER and A BETTER TOMORROR and a few fullscreen, English dubbed kung fu films. You simply had to rely on tape-trading. I'm not sure if I have to explain this to, uhh, our younger readers (yes, I feel THAT old now). What you'd do is you'd write up a list of the films you had on vhs and then send it to your friends. Friends that you might have got in touch with thru classifieds in fanzines, and then they'd send you a list and you would make vhs dupes of your films and send them. You'd swap so to speak. My god, I haven't thought about this for so long. Haha.

Jack Jensen
But back to your question; Well, I read those early HK reviews in "In the Flesh" and some of the other small fanzines, and in 1991 I was fortunate to catch HARD-BOILED at the 40th Film Festival in Melbourne and when I was staying there (on and off betweeen 1991 thru to '96) I would go to the Chinese cinemas and catch as many HK films as I could.

Jack Jensen
Later in the '90s there were a couple of cool video labels that popped up in the UK, "Made in Hong Kong" and "Eastern Heroes", that put out heaps of these films so it definitely became easier to get them.

Nom Pauo
Ha surprisingly i just recently saw Hard-Boiled, lol!! I was always more into the fantasy kung fu stuff lol. Being around asian cinema for as long as you have, what's your thought on the current state of Asian Cinema?

Jack Jensen
Well, the funny thing is even though I've been around for so long I'm not even all that good at asking. I discovered the new wave of HK cinema and kinda like Robin Williams in JUMANJI I got stuck in the past! I STILL try and track down every 1980s and 1990s HK film ever made. But I couldn't tell you about the state of new Korean or Thai cinema. Sure, I've watched a pile of those films, and Japanese ones as well but most of them were random viewings. I don't follow the current state of those countries. Ask me about an old Taiwan film about a flying head with its intestines dangling underneath and I can tell you, but new cinema not so much. I'm sure there's heaps of cool new horror films (as most members of the fb page keeps mentioning) but I'm not the right one to ask. On the other hand... sometimes I'm thinking I'm actually the ONLY one who does actually watch old dark HK or Taiwan horror films. LOL. We're back to the "counter-culture to the counter-culture". I love Godzilla films and Japanese horror films like KAÏRO but I'm by no means an expert on those. There's still films being made in Hong Kong but it's nothing like in the "good old days" (the '80s/90s). And I fear the freedom and wanting to do wild films may very well be over due to Mainland censorship.

Nom Pauo
What are some of the recent ones you found yourself impressed with? (Recent as in after 2000 lol)

Jack Jensen
I thought Jonnie To's VENGEANCE was great. A kinda return to A BETTER TOMORROW style films kinda. KAÏRO was great. One of the few films that have scared me for many years. And the early new wave of Japanese horror films like RINGU etc. (end)
Oh, and GONG TAU was great too. My mind is blank. LOL.

Nom Pauo
Lol. Kairo, from many discussions ive had was one of them love/hate film. I rather enjoyed the allegory presented in that film! South Korea has been on a tear the last couple years. Whats ur thought on their outputs?

Jack Jensen
Well, like I mentioned earlier I'm really the wrong person to ask about most Asian cinema. I'm a Hongkongese! (film wise). I've seen a fair share of Japanese monster films as well, and I love the LONE WOLF films but I've only watched a handful of S-Korean films films, one was H which I quite liked. I've watched a ton of films from the Philippines that no-one else regards as "Asian" (but they are). In the 80s and 90s they filmed heaps of lowbudget Vietnam War movies in the Philippines and I quite like those.

Jack Jensen
A lot of fans of Asian cinema follow what's happening currently. I'm more someone who seeks out forgotten stuff that nobody else knows about. The obscure stuff. Old horror films from HK, Taiwan or even Thailand about flying heads and stuff like that. Or gangster films that totally bombed when they came out because they tried to imitate John Woo and failed miserable. I track down those films and enjoy them.

Nom Pauo
Ha, well as a connoisseur of older hong kong flicks recommend a few Jack Jenson's essential. The more rare and obscure the better ha!

Jack Jensen
Haha. Well, one genre that I always try and persuade fans of new Asian horror to track down is a genre I like to call the "Dark and Nasty Hong Kong Horror Films of the 70s & 80s" LOL. These films were wild and gory to say the least. They often dealt with black magic and they were set in the "backyard" of Asia. Some of them were:
Black Magic 1 &2, Black Magic With Buddha, Boxer's Omen, Brutal Sorcery, Centipede Horror, Calamity of Snakes, Curse of Evil, Dead Curse, Devil Fetus, Her Vengeance, Killer Snakes, Lewd Lizard, Seeding of a Ghost, Red Spell Spells Red.
Some of them are on dvd in the US or HK, but unfortunately quite a few were only released on vhs and/or vcd - but I highly recommend that fans of Asian horror track them all down. Even if you have to sit thru fullscreen prints from vhs (I'm sure most of them are on torrent sites or you can get a dvdr from a friend).

Nom Pauo
Niiiice!! (Sam jot down list of title later)
Lets go with a more cliche question. Whats ur favorite asian movie of all time and why?

Jack Jensen
Now that's a touch one! (and an unfair request, I mean how do you even start to pick just ONE!!). It's a close call between THE KILLER, PEKING OPERA BLUES, ROUGE, A CHINESE GHOST STORY, and A BETTER TOMORROW. Well, right now I think I would have to go with A BETTER TOMORROW. It's got a ton of cool John Woo style gun violence (always good!) but in addition to that it's also got a good story about friendship, honour, loyalty, and doing the right thing for a friend when it's needed. And I love the sentimentality of the film. It's emotional in a way you never see in films from the West.
If you had asked me tomorrow I might have said CHICKEN AND DUCK TAL K! Haha. I love Ricky Hui and that's probably the funniest film I can think of.

Jack Jensen
(alright, either you have ONE more question and that's it - or we continue later) I need to get going. sorry.

Nom Pauo
Lol!! definitely an unfair question but unfair is my grandma's maiden name. "A Better Tomorrow" is classic Woo so i dont think anybody will argue that pick, lol!!
Well we're approaching the end of the interview and I’d like for you to list your 5 favorite Asian flick of all time.

Jack Jenson
THE KILLER
A CHINESE GHOST STORY
A PEKING OPERA BLUES
BLACK MAGIC II
LADY TERMINATOR

*note*
Thank you Jack for this awesome interview! And if you havent yet, check out his blog yet:

http://backyard-asia.blogspot.dk/

Lots of awesome interesting stuff!


--------------------------------------------------------

PS: and no worries about the "Jack Jenson" spelling, I quite like it actually, it almost sounds like Jack Jetson. Haha
/Jack

TWO LOVERS (James Gray, USA, 2008)

So I'm doing this job-centre financed course at the moment and every day I come home and I'm just BEAT. Completely knackered! (maybe if I slept more that four hrs a night it'd help matters but what can you do, this is how it's always been). Anyhoo, so today I come home, decide to gulp down a yoghurt before hitting the showers, I turn on the telly and this movie is just starting and before I know it I've "wasted" 90 minutes on a tragic, romantic flick about some psychically unstable young guy and his Jewish parents, the pill popping chick he's in love with, and somewhere there's another chick as well. And in the middle of it all the creepy guy from David Cronenberg's CRASH turns up. The film was on ARTE TV so needless to say I sat thru it all with German dubbing. Good film.

In a category of its own

Can someone please explain this? The VCD for the HK film THE LAST DUEL (Tommy Fan, 1989) has not one but two ratings on the cover! The film is apparently rated both CATEGORY II and CATEGORY III. How is that possible. Wouldn't the CAT III rating render the CAT II rating void? In accordance with standard procedure the rating notification slip from the HK rating board is printed on the back of the VCD but like with the two ratings there are also two rating slips. Unfortunately, they've been squeezed down to a size too small to read.

I checked the film on the HKMDB and they list it with both ratings as well. One explanation could have been that the different ratings were for different territories - but seeing as the HK Category rating is strictly for Hong Kong I don't see how that would be possible.


EDIT (13.05.13): I also posted this on my Asian blog and an anon reader sent me this explanation (thanks, mate!):

The Cantonese audio track is Category II
The Mandarin audio track qualifies for Cat III.

It was common for a foul language to be cut (silenced) or bleeped by censors in HK. It's very rare you will actually hear an "F" word on a Canto soundtrack to a HK film. Funny, cos it's easy to hear them on the streets.

I'm quite a fan of this film.
It's worth noting that "The Last Duel" received censor cuts for violence. I remember the old Ocean Shores rental tape! This VCD however, has all the violence, blood and gunshots.

The original film that Joseph Lai cannibalised for his INFERNO THUNDERBOLT

Thanks to JESUS MANUEL of the way cool blog Golden Ninja Warrior Chronicles I learnt which film was the source film that Joseph Lai and his IFD label in Hong Kong used for their cut & paste film INFERNO THUNDERBOLT. The film is the Taiwanese THE ANGER and after having had it on eBay auto search for quite a while I finally struck gold a few days ago when the Ocean Shores VCD release of the film popped up. And tonight the auction ended with only one winner! LOL (altho the winning bid makes me feel like I pulled the short straw at the same time! Argh!). Check Jesus Manuel's post about the film here and see screen grabs.


No, that's not me but JESUS MANUEL of GOLDEN NINJA WARRIOR CHRONICLES blog!

What's in a mug

I remember an incident some years back. I was visiting my parents and it was in the afternoon. We were in the lounge room watching tv. As always, I had a cup of coffee next to me. Then around 3 o'clock my dad announced it was time for Coffee (afternoon coffee was almost a separate meal in our house) and off he went to the kitchen to prepare coffee and probably a cake of some kind. My mum also got up, wobbled around the coffee table and asked if she should take my cup. Now, to understand this you need to know my mum suffered from dementia the last five years of her life. At this stage it was somewhere in the middle, she didn't recognise the present but she wasn't completely helpless either. She had lost her sense of balance though and it was almost a daily occurrence that you'd hear a "clonk" from somewhere in the house, and you knew mum had fallen over again. And what you also need to know is that we always had our own cups (mugs actually) when I grew up. When I was a kid it was unavoidable that you'd accidentally smash your mug every once in a while. The one I've got now I've had since sometime in the '80s (it's probably survived this long due to the fact that I moved out in the '80s and thus haven't used it all that much!). It's a Flintstones mug (I think my mum bought it for me but I'm not sure). Anyway, so on this particular afternoon 5-6 years ago my mum asks me if she should take my mug to the kitchen. It was a difficult question; I remember thinking there was a great risk she'd drop it accidentally on the floor due to her less that steady balance. It was my fave mug and it had history. I simply didn't want to lose it. But on the other hand, I didn't have the heart to reject her offer. She was ill, didn't have much enjoyment in life any longer, and - she wanted to help. So I said yes and crossed my fingers that I'd see my mug in one piece again. She wobbled to the door. Walked out. Closed the door. And I deliberately decided not to think about the possible ill fate of my mug. I probably turned on the tv. Five minutes later my mum wobbled back into the lounge room with the mug in her hand. She had washed it. She put it on the table and said, "One needs to have a clean cup". I said "I fully agree". Today is Mother's Day but, quite frankly, it makes no difference to me. I miss my mum always.

Japanese Zombie Schoolgirl

Here's something totally fun! Three years ago a young YouTuber called Constantine uploaded two videos in which she presented her Top 5 of favourite Japanese zombie movies. Now, I know what you're thinking; "Meh. Another lame YouTube film review!" And I fully understand you; YouTube is floating over with lame film "reviewers" whose every review (and I use the term loosely) is made up of lines like, "Man, this is an awesome movie, you should check it out, totally awesome, and it's a bargain from Target at 1 dollar, and the director Looschio Foolschee is, like, really awesome". No need to worry, this chick knows a thing or two about Japanese films. She speaks the language, has always read up on the subject matter, and basically knows her shit.

PART 1


PART 2


Apart from these two fun zombie videos Constantine also has a pile of "ordinary" reviews of Japanese films. Unfortunately, she hasn't made any new ones for a long time but do check out the old ones here.

Beat poet TAYLOR MEAD has died

I discovered The Velvet Underground and because of them I discovered Andy Warhol which made me discover Taylor Mead. He has just passed away. I don't know too much about him so I'll send you off to another, better source, The New York Times. They printed this obituary yesterday. Taylor Mead was 88.

RIP, Taylor.

Here's a good 6 minute documentary film that a fan made about Mead in 2006:

Roger Corman pay tv channel on YouTube o_O

This was just uploaded to YouTube on the official Roger Corman channel. I wonder if this means they'll broadcast the same prints as they offered on dvd or they'll get the much better restored prints that Shout Factory used for their dvd's and blu-rays?

Somehow I already know the answer. LOL. The sad thing is I'm sure lots of fans are gonna go for the YT channel versions because it's now considered old-fashioned to own hard-copies and won't bother with the (mostly) awesome Shout versions.

Published on 9 May 2013
Hollywood rebel Roger Corman offers his unique brand of entertainment at Corman's Drive-In on YouTube Paid Channels. Coming soon!

Bruce Baron - RIP

Sad news: Bruce Baron passed away on April 14, 2013.

The news was confirmed to Régis Autran of Nanarland by Baron's widow. Bruce Baron had cancer. According to his wife, Bruce Baron prepared his own obituary that has been posted on his facebook profile. However, it's only for friends so I'm not even able to refer to the contents as I'm on that list. Baron was in some of the Filipino films that this site deal with but also other well known cult films. He was in Tsui Hark's amazing DON'T PLAY WITH FIRE. Nanarland did a good interview with him (it's on their site in both French and English). For more info on Bruce Baron check Wiki here and the Nanarland interview here.

Here's Bruce Baron on the cover of the Danish (i.e. from Denmark) vhs for DON'T PLAY WITH FIRE (courtesy of DEVAG fb page).

Introduction to Nanarland's interview with Bruce Baron:

Bruce Baron was a riddle for us during a long time : this Caucasian actor appeared during the eighties in a great number of Asian B-movies, managing to act in some of the most utterly insane flicks ever. Lead actor of Philippines-made Ramboid actioners, mustachioed ninja in Godfrey Ho's bottom-of-the-barrel films, barbarian from beyond in Ruggero Deodato's "Atlantis interceptors", slimy drug smuggler in "Overdose" made by French schlockmeister Jean-Marie Pallardy, Bruce had the most bizarre career before disappearing from the screens in 1989. The most contradictory legends ran amok on the internet : one site described him as a British-born martial artist, another mentioned his death in Sweden from an overdose of diet products... We knew nothing about him, except that he was still alive, judging from the angry e-mails he sent to websites relaying the legend of his death.

We were of course flabbergasted and overjoyed when a French-speaking Bruce Porter Baron wrote us to fill the gaps the bio we had written about him! With biting humour, Bruce gave us some truly fascinating and unheard-of infos about his career as a Caucasian actor in Asia and the world of Oriental B-movies. And there it is, ladies and gentlemen, the ultimate Bruce Baron interview, exclusive full and uncut!

[read the rest via this link]

When you're BACK AT THE OLD HOUSE in your dreams...

Last night's very vivid dream. I was in the house that I grew up in. My girlfriend that I was with for a decade (and more than a decade ago) was there. My dad was there. I have a faint notion that my mum was there in the early part of the dream leading up to the part that I can actually remember. My dad was in his blue work-clothes that he wore when he would do some work on the house or the garden. Then he went for a drive to get something. I think I said, "Now that they're out of the house you can play some music" and my girlfriend takes off all her clothes and plays some loud music on a stereo (in the dream there's no stereo or radio, the music just kind of comes from the house itself!). She then puts on a jumper and makes a phone-call. She says to her friend Lisa at the other end of the line, "Now I can finally play some loud pop and rock music". I utter, "bullshit!" and I can immediately see it was a mistake so I lower my voice so that the person on the phone can't hear me, and I continue "You can always play pop music". My girlfriend replies, "Oh, okay". I get a feeling it's not quite okay. In my dream I blame myself for the outburst. Then while she's still on the phone standing next to the old desk in the lounge-room, I walk to the other end of the lounge-room and see a dog outside on a dog-leash. I can't see who's at the other end of the leash. In my dream I recognise the dog but now I can't for the life of me remember whose dog it was. Then a moment later I see who's at the other end. It's my dad and he's coming around the house with the dog. In the dream I reckon he wants the dog to meet our own dog (which was my dog really). In the dream I'm thinking our dog will have a fit when it sees the other dog and it'll start barking like crazy. I think about telling my dad not to bring other dogs around because our dog is old and it'll just have a stroke. Then I woke up.

All of it very strange. And all of it gone. As you know my dad passed away in February. My gf from back then is no longer my gf. My dog got diabetes and was put down. We had her for 12 years. Unfortunately, it happened while I was away for 6 months at some school in 1984/85. In my dream the house looked like it did in the old days when my mum was still with us. In reality my dad changed it all after she passed away. The widow after my dad, his second wife, still lives there. I'm not sure what it all means. Probably the Universe saying, "Get your arse in gear and move on, buttmunch!"


For more of the old dreams click the "dreams" label at the bottom of this post.

DEADLY DREAM WOMAN (HK, 1992)

I watched Taylor Wong's DEADLY DREAM WOMAN tonight after having had it collecting dust on my shelf for a couple of years. LOL. My tape is from the EASTERN HEROES label in the UK. On the cover it's retitled DEADLY DREAM WOMEN but the print clearly says "Woman". EH had a knack for changing titles of the films they put out, most notoriously THE LAST BLOOD which became Hard-boiled 2: the last blood, haha (incidentally, DEADLY DREAM WOMAN was produced by Wong Jing who directed THE LAST BLOOD).

The convoluted plot: A female superhero called Nightingale Wong (played by sexy Cheung Man) gets knocked over the head in a triad shoot-out and loses her memory. She's found drifting at sea by a bunch of prostitutes who save her. She's given a new name and hangs out with the hoes (their "Madam" is also a fake witch!). She starts work as a nightclub hostess with the madam's sexy daughter (played by sexy, very sexy, Chingmy Yau) but instead of spending the night with horny men they simply rip them off. The sexy daughter is engaged to a retard (played by Jacky Cheung) who turns out to be an ex triad boss. Ehh, what? Haha. Later Nightingale recovers her memory and they all go on an awesome gun tooting revenge spree. Death and mayhem follow.

The top bad guy is played brilliantly by Ken Lo who completely steals every scene he's in. At one point he comes out of his house in nothing but a morning gown and a machine gun in each hand and starts blazing away. Smashing! Absolutely brilliant!! In real life Ken Lo was Jackie Chan's bodyguard for 30 years! If you don't like or know how to appreciate Hong Kong humour you're probably gonna be major bored by the 30 minutes that follow the initial 10 minutes of action. Personally, I was well entertained and I'll recommend the film even if you DON'T like HK humour! There's enough awesome action to satisfy fans of 1980s HK action flicks.

The UK vhs is presented in Cantonese with English and Chinese subtitles. Unfortunately, it's also in fullscreen. There's no dvd release anywhere. The best release (which I sadly don't own) is a laserdisc released somewhere in Asia; it is letterboxed and subbed in English/Chinese, but I'm told there is a HK LD that doesn't have subs so be careful of what you buy if you want subs. There's also an unsubbed HK vcd and a vhs in the US that retitles the film Lady Black Mask.

Widescreen version from laserdisc

Fullscreen version from VHS

update

To Danish/Scandinavian readers: the Danish section is gonna be back up shortly, no worries.

Jeff Hannemen - RIP

This is very sad news indeed. JEFF HANNEMEN of SLAYER has died. He was 49.

The news on the SLAYER facebook page.

LEMMY (USA, 2010)

directed by Greg Olliver and Wes Orshoski



I watched the new(ish) documentary on Lemmy last night. It's not a doc on Motörhead as such but needless to say we get a lot of band related footage. I thought it was pretty good and the Scandinavian 2-disc dvd has heaps of extras (I would have liked to see the entire "Metallica plays Motörhead songs at Lemmy's 50th Birthday Party" footage instead of a five minute feature about it. I guess the film could have been more incisive but it's cool enough.

Aenigma! #2 - contents that attract flies?

When you live in the SOUTH there's always dead flies everywhere. Like, I've only just today received the new issue of Nigel Maskell's fanzine and already one of them nasty creatures has decided to go belly-up on it. So yukky. Better wipe it off onto the floor so I can git inta this new spiffy zine!! xD

Hey it's Sat'day, I've got a farken headache so here's that there ol'e Belsen track...

Drop Dead Fred... the horror movie

What if DROP DEAD FRED were a ... horror movie? Check this spoof fan-trailer. Good fun. Oh, and I rewatched the film (without fan edits) on Friday. I hadn't watched it for at least 10 years but I enjoyed it as much as the first time I watched it on tv. This time it was on a UK dvd that I bought from Blockbuster last week. I don't actually recall the last time I laughed so hard at a movie, I had literally tears in my eyes.

My VCD collection from ... some Chinese territory

Here's a whole pile of VCD's (video-cd's) that I bought second-hand at a video store in Copenhagen in the early 2000s. I have no idea where they originate from other that it's a Chinese speaking country. Mainland China or Taiwan I would guess but not Hong Kong as there's no English text on the covers. Some of them are actually called DVCD ("dvd + vcd = dvcd"!!). Is there a difference to the ordinary VCD format? No idea! Most of them have no English titles on the covers either but if I remember correctly they all carry English and Chinese subtitles (i.e. they're off HK prints).

PICTURE OF A NYMPH aka Portrait of a Nymph

A sinful DWARF and lake BUNNIES to save the day

I'm visiting relatives and unfortunately they wanted to treat me to a funny Danish comedy from 1975 called BRAND-BØRGE RYKKER UD!

"Unfortunately" cos it was shite! Worse than the time I got a piece of rusty metal in my eye as a kid. It would have been more "fun" to get my wiener stuck between a fridge and a slamming fridge door. Yes, that awful! However, there were 2 (T-W-O) brief scenes of true 1970s Danish sleaze to save the movie!!

40 minutes into the film, two dimwits are outside a loo door yelling to a man in there; "Have you got a lady in there?" The door opens and at first the retards can't see anybody until they look down and see... TORBEN BILLE! Yes, the sleazy creepy rapist dwarf from the Danish-American co-production DVÆRGEN aka The Sinful Dwarf!!! He's in the film for all of 5 seconds.

The second scene sees another two spassies steal clothes from three nude girls near a lake!!! The scene runs for about a minute and the girls look like real '70s chicks with proper shapes (proper bums and non plastic boobs rule!) and bush galore. It's a beautiful scene and saves the film. Haha. As I never ever wanna watch this stinkeroo again I thought I'd save these two scenes in screen grab galore instead. I'm confident this is gonna win the "Blog Post of the Day" award. ^_^

In the red!

Ahhh, just ordered a handful of dvd's from CODE RED. At New Year's Eve I made a New Year's resolution of not buying any DVD's in 2013. I guess with this order that resolution is now down the toilet!

Bruno Mattei's last cannibals on vhs

Bruno Mattei's two last cannibal movies (that are among his much neglected post 2000 movies) were LAND OF DEATH (2003) and CANNIBAL WORLD (2004) were probably the last of his films to come out on video tape. And only in Japan! His later film, including THE JAIL: A WOMAN'S HELL, ZOMBIES: THE BEGINNING, THE TOMB, and ISLAND OF THE LIVING DEAD didn't make it to VHS as far as I'm informed (and neither did his post 2000 soft-porn films but I don't know much about those). Feel free to correct me but I've certainly never seen any video releases of any of those films. His last film was ZOMBIES: THE BEGINNING from 2007. A third film in the series was planned by sadly Mattei passed away before it was made. So sad. We could have had yet another masterpiece by this true il Maistro di italieno horror film. ^_^

I already had the two films on DVD (one on official Japanese dvd and the other on American bootleg from Pan-something off the Japanese dvd). But when I saw the other vhs versions from a seller in downtown Japan I knew I had to have them. Yay! Both tapes are ex-rentals and both carry English dubbing with Japanese subs. You'll notice there's a plastic box with the tapes in them inside the case itself. This is something I believe only existed in Japan and was a way for rental shops to be able to on one hand quickly get the tape out of the case and at the same time let the customer rent the tape in the plastic box while the case (and the cover) stayed in the shop. This way other customers could see and (I would assume) pro-order renting the tape once the first customer delivered it back.

If you look at the covers you'll notice the two films were marketed at sequels to CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST, the Japanese titles carry sequel numbers 2 and 3 and the Japanese title itself is the same as for CH. Also the English (i.e. English in Japan) titles were changed to resemple sequels; LAND OF DEATH became "Cannibal Holocaust: Cannibal vs. Commando" while CANNIBAL WORLD became "Cannibal Holocaust: The Beginning" (notice: the Japanese titles include the sequel numbers but the English titles don't). Bruno Mattei's two late cannibal films are fun on a very trashy level but there's no way in hell that they compare to Ruggero Deodato's masterpiece from 1980.




- and check this crazy trailer...