Moon of the Wolf (USA, 1972)

Full film: 

A TV horror film directed by Daniel Petrie that originally aired on September 26, 1972 on ABC, Moon of the Wolf is oddly likeable despite itself; just the right type of video fodder for a boring evening with your six-year old. No blood and not much logic, but it has aged well enough not to be too painful to watch – in fact, its ageing is what makes its numerous flaws so easy to overlook. Things were different back then in the ever-so-innocent 70s...
Moon of the Wolf is an entertaining werewolf tail based on Leslie H. Whitten's book of the same title which, if nothing else, at least sets the much-used creature in a new setting. Set on "Marsh Island" in Louisiana, the low-key story moves along with just the leisurely pace one expects to find down there in Cajun Country.
The film is populated with a variety of familiar faces in roles of varying importance, including that of the ever-popular cult actor Royal Dano as Tom Sr., the older of the two related backwood Toms that discover the body of Eli, who was a young and pregnant backwater nubile until something ripped her bloodlessly to death. Television star David Janssen (of Cult of the Cobra [1955 / trailer], Francis In The Haunted House [1956 / trailer] and Covert Action [1978 / title track]) headlines effectively as Sheriff Aaron Whitaker, his ever-so-familiar face and laid-back acting style lending the sheriff just the right amount of familiarity a small-town cop should have. In a town in which everyone knows each other, most since they were children, he is faced with the disagreeable task of finding the killer. Is it his friend the Doctor (John Chandler of Double Revenge [1988 / trailer] and Scorchy [1976 / trailer]), who knocked Eli up in the first place? Or maybe Eli's brother Lawrence (Geoffrey Lewis of Night of the Comet [1984]), who has both a nasty temper and a nasty left swing? Or could it be one or both of the two Toms that found her? And what about Andrew Rodanthe (Bradford Dillman of the original version of Piranha [1972]), the richest man in town and brother of the unnecessary Love Interest, played by a thunder-thighed Barbara Rush (of It Came from Outer Space [1953 / trailer] and When Worlds Collide [1951 / trailer])? In all truth these questions are a bit rhetorical, for one never really has to ask them – in terms of "whodunit," the film fails miserably.
The deputy and the now-jailed Lawrence are the next ones to get violentlessly wasted, and since the murderer is able to effortlessly rip out the steel door of the jail cell, everyone now knows they ain't dealing with the typical next-door neighbor gone postal. The werewolf is quickly revealed thereafter (at least to the viewers – down South they need a little more time to figure such things out), and as soon as Andrew makes his next transformation, he – logically enough, seeing that he's impervious to everything but silver bullets and is strong enough rip steel jail doors off their hinges – bonks the Doc over the head, scares the local nurse silly and then runs away from two puny-looking hospital wards and the ashtray-swinging Doc. The big showdown is at the Rodanthe family mansion, where the sheriff, oblivious to a burning barn, wolf howls and a woman's screams, goes running off into the darkness chasing horses while his New Found Love, caught in a strange time warp which causes the outside to change from day to night to day every other second, locks herself behind ineffectual shutters and latched doors, through which the big, bad hilariously made-up werewolf bursts....
Okay, so Moon of the Wolf isn't a masterpiece, but what should one expect from a television movie directed by Daniel Petrie, the man who eventually regurgitated Cocoon, The Return (1988 / trailer) and the 1994 remake of Lassie (trailer). That Moon of the Wolf still manages to please despite its numerous faults is merely proof that such critically acclaimed films as A Raisin In The Sun (1961 / trailer) and Fort Apache, The Bronx (1981 / trailer) – not to mention such wonderful trash as The Idol (1966) – were perhaps not just flukes of Daniel Petrie's 40-year directorial career.

In any event, as a freebie found all over the web Moon of the Wolf offers a nice mix of enjoyable horror lite and a touch of Southern Gothic that can't be beat.

Ich Piss' auf deinen Kadaver (Germany, 1999)

An edit of selected scenes of Ich Piss' auf deinen Kadaver:

It is more than doubtful this film will ever see an English-language release, dubbed or subtitled, so perhaps an English-language review is pointless – but then, one could also argue that Jochen Taubert's films in general are pointless, and just like that doesn't stop Taubert from producing one unbelievably appalling film after the other, we won't let something like "pointlessless" stop us from writing about this film, Ich Piss' auf deinen Kadaver.

We would think that even those out there that don't understand German can decipher the film's title, but just in case your brain cells are a bit more fried than most, we'll supply a word-for-word translation: in English, this film, Taubert's third direct-to-video homemade "splatter" film, Ich Piss' auf deinen Kadaver, would be entitled "I Piss On Your Cadaver" – and indeed, by the end of the film, someone does piss on a guy's cadaver. Hardly all that shocking actually, in comparison to another, earlier scene in which the same guy pukes all over the face of a cadaver.
According to an oddly anal-retentive German website that keeps track of the bodycount of movies, Ich Piss' auf deinen Kadaver totals with "76 (+ an unknown number)." It would seem that they had problems keeping track, which is hardly surprising, for you would have to be one sick fuck to give this film the amount of attention needed to truly count the dead. This is not a film to pay attention to, it is a film to swill beer to while you gab with the guys, occasionally turning to the screen to shout and guffaw loudly at the next highpoint of ineptitude that is expectorated.
In all truth, we knew what we were getting into. Not all that long ago, we experienced one of Taubert's newer films, Zombie Reanimation (Germany, 2009), so we knew what to expect. But even then, we were still left slack-jawed in shock more than once that anyone would bother to make a full-length film like this one. The back cover of Ich Piss' auf deinen Kadaver proclaims (in German, of course) that it is "a film that Ed Wood would have truly enjoyed"; we would hazard to say that Ed Wood is a much better filmmaker than Taubert and that Wood might well have been insulted to have his name in any way brought into connection to this visual car wreck. That said, we also have to say that we ourselves loved Ich Piss' auf deinen Kadaver. True, it does evidence a total lack of talent across the board (as in directorial, thespian, narrative, filmic), but much like a ten school bus pile up on the highway with no survivors or a nudist camp inhabited by leprous geriatrics, it is grotesquely intriguing. But unlike leprous geriatrics and busloads of dead children, Ich Piss' auf deinen Kadaver is also laughable.
The plot involves a deadly virus invented by the military. A renegade soldier wants to sell it to the mafia, but it falls into the hands of a local doctor with two daughters (one of whom, Petra, spends most of the film naked). Around this basic premise is, well, one badly acted scene after the other of shootouts, chases, knifings, rape and castration, and blood and guts, none of which are in any way convincing. (Well, the puke scene looked pretty real.) The "actors" seem to be all friends and family of the filmmaker as well as other untalented people with no shame, and the budget obviously non-existent. Continuity is there on occasion, logic never, and the film was edited with a blender, the cinematographer might well have been blind, and the script obviously written as the filming was being done. Yes, there is nothing to this film that in any way can be described as professional – and it is in this total lack of anything redeemable that Ich Piss' auf deinen Kadaver gains its redemption. This is truly pure, unapologetic trash, and thus it goes great with beer, weed and the guys.

Bruno, The Killer Dog:

Two clips of the film are embedded here. One features Bruno (the dog), who is perhaps the best actor in the whole film. In it, aside from the obvious lack of talent of all involved, you also get a general understanding of the "gore" and "splatter" of the film: the gore is a joke, and no matter where one is hacked or what body part is cut, the blood splatters all over the face. The other, longer clip far above, which features a variety of scenes from the movie, reveals the incredible pacing of the film, well exemplified by the scene in which the doctor impales an armed soldier (who never shoots or moves out of the way) with a slow-moving tractor. This type of temporal irreality occurs often in the film.
Another highpoint of Ich Piss' auf deinen Kadaver are the extended chase scenes in which the given girl actually runs faster than the car; neither gal gets away in the end, but the Jeeps never really overtake them. "Petra," who indeed has a tastily lithe body with pleasant orbs and a neatly trimmed bush, spends most of her scenes in undies or nude; her chase scenes are noteworthy not only for being done mostly as naked as god made her, but also for the fact that she really does – as they used to say – run like a girl: her arms swing so hilariously that they actually upstage her nakedness. (Taubert obviously liked the scene as well, because he uses it twice.)
In our review of Zombie Reanimation, we stated that Taubert's "film echoes the early anarchism of Troma's mindless flicks like Surf Nazis Must Die (1987 / trailer) or The Toxic Avenger (1984 / trailer), but with a way lower budget and far less professionalism." In all truth, Ich Piss' auf deinen Kadaver reveals that judgement to be an understatement, as this film literally makes the average Troma film look like a Spielberg production. We will surely never watch Ich Piss' auf deinen Kadaver again, but nevertheless, we give it a high recommendation. And we definitely plan to watch more Taubert films in the future...
(All images found at www.dvd-forum.at.)

Red Account: My Bloody Angel (Japan, 1988)

Original title: Akai Hokokusho: Senketsu no Tenshi. Under whatever title or language, ultimately the film must be called dreadful. And that less because of the filthy after-taste the film leaves in your mouth than from its overall dreariness. For all its transgressive elements, it is so lifeless and boring that it could easily make you fall asleep – indeed, it is truly startling just how tediously eternal 60 minutes can sometimes be.

The DVD cover proclaims "In the style of the infamous Guinea Pig series" which, as you surely know, is that infamous series of Japanese gore films (seven between 1985 and 87) from Hideshi Hino, an instalment of which once had Charlie Sheen running to the FBI claiming that he had found a real snuff film. Red Account: My Bloody Angel carries on the tradition of excessive and realistic gore of the better-known template, but utilizes even less plot and jacks-up the sex. Seeing that the film was directed by Sato Toshiki, a man who went on to gain minor fame doing pink films, the addition of so much sex is not surprising. What is mildly surprising, perhaps, is that the dreary sex scenes are mostly hardcore – although, as is common in Japan, the details of the (excessively long and oddly nauseating) sex scenes are pixilated out. (One truly surreal sight of the film is how the money shot squirts out from the pixilated circle and all over the girl's pale rump, a sperm-heavy scene trumped by a later one in which, amidst the blood and guts of her vivisected husband, she spits out a mouthful of white juice she just sucked out of the "exorcist".)
Next to the virtually non-existent plot and lack of dramatic development, it is the sex that actually makes the film so unbearable. My Bloody Angel is slightly less than 60 minutes in long, and probably about 20-30 interminable minutes of it are dedicated to sex scenes. In general, we here at A Wasted Life have nothing against a good porn film – in fact, let us go on the record as liking porn – but there is nothing good about the porn in this film: filmed with all the professionalism and artistic sensibility of a badly lit, grade-Z home video and dubbed with the most idiotic of moans and groans, neither protagonist is particularly attractive nor do they exude any eroticism or believability or affection or even simple horniness – it is, in the end, the kind of porno that makes hard men limp and the horny hetro asexual. And, in turn, it makes a relatively short film seem endlessly long.
The bare-boned and illogical strand of a plot that supplies the excuse for the sex and gore concerns the ugly Tomoko and her ugly musician husband Masao. Once a happy couple, when he starts concentrating on his music again, she realizes that he has been possessed by the devil. And his friend Kawakami not only agrees, but does the exorcism. But wait! The demon, which originally resided in Masao's eye, has moved to his innards, so the only way free Masao of the evil spirit is to kill and vivisect him...  
How Tomoko comes to the realization of the possession flies over the head of the viewer, as does Masao's tacit agreement and all subsequent actions of all those involved. Still, the illogic and stupidity of the slim plot is so played out with such consequence that it gives the film an oddly Dadaistic touch, a minor plus that is drowned by the equally incessant lack of humour, pacing and noticeable talent on part of either the director or the "actors".
That said, once the gore cuts in, the special effects team is for the most part on par with vintage Savini. But the good comes way too late, and the last ten minutes of blood and entrails – and one retardedly fake-looking head – really doesn't balance out all the other bad factors forced upon the viewer the prior 40 minutes, so it does little in way of making the film any less tedious or aggravating. 

Perhaps there are some aspects of Akai Hokokusho: Senketsu no Tenshi that could be argued to be comparable to those found in the transgressive art horror/porn films like those by Richard Kern – Fingered (1986 / scene), for example – but the directorial incompetence of Sato Toshiki's badly framed, garish video never achieves any of the visual seductiveness, artistic integrity or technical proficiency (!) of Kern's multi-violent B&W sex film. As offensive as Fingered might be, it nevertheless offers much more in intention and execution – not to mention basic thespian and directorial skills – than this Nippon-made turd.

 Akai Hokokusho: Senketsu no Tenshi is for undemanding gore-hounds only... In all truth, though, the scene where the ugly and talentless lead actress uses the bone of the chopped-off hand of her dead husband to masturbate does get brownie points.

Boogie, el aceitoso (Argentina, 2009)

 

To quote Barbra Streisand: "Memories, light the corners of my mind, misty-water-colored memories..."
For a memory came to mind as we watched this film, an Argentinian film that you will probably never see because to date it has been released in English-speaking countries only with subtitles, something most English-speaking people don't know what to do with. The memory that came to mind was that of our first pal in Alexandria, VA, when we moved there from the mill town of Lee, MA, during second grade. At that time – the early 70s – Alexandria was not yet the totally yuppified and expensive place it is now. It was split down the middle by Washington Street: going down towards the water, it was mostly white and nice neighbourhoods (the most obvious exception being the local projects, The Burg), while going upwards towards the Masonic Temple it was a lot more "mixed" and even had a few deserted houses; unlike today, after dark you really didn't see any white folks on upper King Street, much less on Duke or Prince or anywhere around the city library.
Our first pal in Alexandria, whose name we've long forgotten, was a black guy a year or two older than us; we stayed friends until he brought us home once too often and his mother finally flipped her wig (plaits? cornrows?) and took him to task for bringing that honky into the house again and berated him for not having any real friends – for some odd reason, he didn't want to have much to do with us thereafter, and then he and his mom moved away. (We became friends with the boy of the white trash family that moved in afterwards, too – his parents used to beat him for being the kind of boy that likes Judy Garland and Barbra Streisand and talks funny, but that's a different story.) But before our first pal moved away, he once told us a joke: "What the difference between a white man and a bucket of shit?" The answer, of course, is: "The bucket."
As the years went on and we grew older, we heard that joke in varieties: In California: "What the difference between a Mexican and a bucket of shit?" In New York City: "What the difference between a Jew and a bucket of shit?" In Miami: "What the difference between a N-word and a bucket of shit?" In Berlin (of all places): "What the difference between a Kraut and a bucket of shit?" For all the variances of the question, the answer, of course, never changes.
But it is that "joke" (and, in turn, the memories associated with it) that the 3-D animated film Boogie, el aceitoso brought up. Why? Well, probably because Boogie, el aceitoso is the most politically incorrect film we've ever seen – it makes Rob Zombie's The Haunted World of El Superbeasto (2009) look like a Disney film – and, as tangential minds like ours tend to work, the confrontation with jokes that defy any and all good taste and/or concepts of PC rekindled our childhood memories of jokes of similar calibre. Face it, if you're offended by racist jokes or sexist jokes or sadistic jokes,* this film is not for you – but if you think cartons like Drawn Together are as funny as shit, then this film might be right up your alley, providing you can figure out how to read subtitles.
To put a little history to the film, Boogie the character has been around for awhile down in Argentina, where he appeared regularly in graphic novels 1974 and 1995. The creation of the writer Roberto Fontanarrosa, who died in 1997 of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis ("Lou Gehrig's disease"), Boogie is a parody of the kill-happy macho American hero ala Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry, only instead of being a cop he's a freelance gun-for-hire and thug that is easily 1000% more psychotic, violent, sexist, callous, rude, cynical, kill happy, whatever than Dirty Harry, who, in comparison, is a total limp-wristed puff. When Boogie, a former mercenary, answers the question whether he's ever loved anything with "Loved the smell of napalm in the morning, it smelled like victory," he ain't just quoting a film, he's telling the truth.
Boogie is, basically, the personification of all the negative traits that Fontanarrosa saw as endemically US American, and indeed, for all the film's aggressive tastelessness, the film is also very much a critique of the USA's gung-ho attitude towards violence and its general "fuck the rest of the world" attitude. (The dream sequence in which Boogie rides a bald eagle that proceeds to scalp the world is perhaps the most blatant example of criticism of the US found in the film; the rest of the film criticizes mostly by parodist excess.) Next to the problem with the subtitles, this total disrespect for the US is probably the main reason this film will never get much attention state-side, where criticism from foreigners is met with even less patience than criticism from natives, who should really leave the fucking country if they ain't happy with it.
In regard to the film's 3-D, Boogie, el aceitoso is less 3-D than three layers: the characters are rendered in 2-D but placed in different depths, while backgrounds and other objects – like the hollow-tipped bullets that Boogie uses – are in 3-D. The visual result is odd and oddly primitive, but nevertheless effective and highly distinctive.
The plot is as mundane as that of any shoot-em-up action film: hired to kill a witness, Boogie gets doubled-crossed by his contractor and is now out not only for revenge and money but has decided to ensure that the witness makes it to her court date. Around this thin storyline, the bullets and bodies fly and blood splatters as thickly as the one-liners and throwaway jokes and visual gags, few of which can be said to be of good taste even if your taste is felching, water sports and Mexican hot chocolate. (It seems almost ironic that the director of Boogie, el aceitoso, Gustavo Cova, followed this animation film with a kiddy animation flick called Gaturro [2010 / trailer]).
Luckily, as offensive as Boogie, el aceitoso is, its contempt is universal and, since it is aimed at and hits everyone, is easier to handle than it would be if the film only hated women and black people; in the end, the misogyny and racism is simply as baroquely parodist as the film's violence and overall disrespect for everything it tips its hat at.
Boogie, el aceitoso ain't a pretty film and ain't for pansies or Ms. readers or Glen Beck fans, and we have our doubts it would sit well if screened at an NAACP meeting or, for that matter, at an NRA gathering, but it had us on the floor laughing our head off, so we give it a hearty recommendation. And who knows, maybe it'll awaken some misty-water-colored memories of your own...
*The German title of the film is Boogie – Sexistisch, gewalttätig und sadistisch, which literally translates into "Boogie – Sexist, Violent and Sadistic".