Sleepaway Camp (1983)

I think maybe I haven't been indulging in enough '80s movies recently. For too long have I been wallowing in the shaggy beards and flared jeans of my beloved '70s...I'd totally forgotten that there were some serious short-short-wearing gentlemen who needed appreciating ten years later. Sleepaway Camp is gloriously kitsch, with its high tolerance for guys with crop tops and hotpants and girls with...well, more on that later...

The film starts on an interesting note: a dad and his son and daughter are out on a boating trip, and fall into the water. This isn't really the issue. Issue is, there's a teenage lifeguard in a motorboat nearby who's being hassled by some girl (who rocks a fat fold on her stomach -- thanks for the achievable body image, '80s!) to let her take a turn at the wheel. The darn fool concedes and she manages to cause a major freakin' wipeout, killing the dad and one of the children. As if this isn't bad enough, the motorboat was towing a waterskiier whose college major is most likely in Hysteria. She makes more of a fuss than the kid and father did.

Wilkommen, Bienvenue, Welcooooome!

Flash forward eight years and two cousins, Ricky (Jonathan Tiersten) and Angela (Felissa Rose), are being sent off to camp by Ricky's absolutely demented mother (Desiree Gould), whose looks are reminiscent of the Emcee in Cabaret and whose delivery is too over-the-top, even for melodrama. She fusses over them and says "Wasn't that nice of me?!" a lot. She, being a doctor (surely not a GP, but a Barbra-Streisand-as-Mrs.-Focker kind of doctor) has filled out their physicals in an overly dubious manner, which she warns them not to draw attention to. I guess with this, we're either thinking that Dr. Demento here is an utter freak, or that the kids have some kind of creepy illness. Or perhaps both. Yeah, probably both.

The kids arrive at Camp Arawak, which appears to cater to the delicious age range of 13-18, facilitating all kinds of hilarious clashes and insults, and the younger ones ain't as meek as I expected! Ricky is one of those tough pubescents that Corey Feldman played a lot of. He kicks and spits and tells people to "eat shit" a lot. Angela is withdrawn; she never speaks to anyone, and has a permanent wide-eyed look of anxiety on her face. Ricky is very protective of her and makes her excuses when her introversion causes social spectacles.

Shit kicks off pretty early for Angela. In the girls' cabin, we have one bitch counsellor, Meg (Katherine Kamhi) and one overly-gentile counsellor, Susie (Susan Glaze), and for some reason, Meg's constant harrassment of Angela in front of others never seems to cost her her job. Ricky's friend Paul (Christopher Collet) takes a liking to Angela, but is being teased by the Jessica Rabbit of the camp, Judy (Karen Fields), who also makes it her mission to torment the girl. It struck me as a little odd that Judy seemed several years too old for a kid like Paul, but then, as is pointed out..."girls mature faster than boys."

It's not just the cabins that are filled with weirdos and assholes. The proprietor of the establishment is one Mel Costic (veteran Mike Kellin in his final role), the kind of cigar-chomping greaseball in checkered pants who'd be a more likely candidate for pornographic direction than for childcare management. Luckily, his right hand man is chipper and muscly Ronnie (Paul DeAngelo) who wears the speciality Eunoch range of shorts and gets the kids all pepped up for campouts and baseball games and whatnot. However, the rest of the staff are just as creepy as Mel...the first shot we get of the kitchen staff is unsettling to say the least. Head cook and professional fat slob Artie (Owen Hughes) stands leering over the "fresh chicken", telling the boys that where he comes from, "we call 'em Baldies." Wow...wherever he's from probably ain't on the map.

The pervert becomes the pervee

So what could possibly go wrong in a summer camp inhabited by teenage sluts, teenage assholes and the odd paedophile? Well writer/director Robert Hiltzik made the wise decision to nip the pervert character in the bud before it got too creepy to handle. Artie's comeuppance serves as the first in a nicely-varying range of mysterious killings going on at the camp, always shown from the killer's perspective with only their hands coming into view. And the best part is... every character does one of those hilarious unsuspecting lines of dialogue (which remains ambiguous so as not to give the game away) before getting sliced. Things like, "Oh, it's you, what the hell do you want?" To the film's credit, we are left changing our mind as to the culprit for a good half of the movie. Towards the end it filters down the suspects for us, until there's only one we haven't seen doing non-suspicious stuff at the right time.

I suppose the main thread of the story (which back in the '80s they did their best to include around the slashing) is Whatever Happened To Angela? The kids and counsellors get real sick o' her shit, and one day Meg decides to grab her and throw her into the lake, while Judy follows and taunts her. Meg remains within the camp's employment after this incident too. This, of course, further traumatises the girl, and when she finally gets to know Paul, their makeout session is interrupted by very weird flashbacks to Angela and her brother as children, and her father with his male lover. Well the story with Angela is the basis for Sleepaway Camp's notorious twist-ending, and because of its sudden nature, it was really impossible to be handled both as a serious subject and a shock....

***Spoiler Alert***

The means by which I came across Sleepaway Camp spoilt the ending for me. The terrific documentary Going To Pieces examined the 'rise and fall of the slasher movie', and interviewed Felissa Rose about various movies. When the time came to talk about her famous role, they lingered mostly on the infamous ending, complete with matching VT. So I sought out the movie because of the weird ending I had been given a glimpse of. Because even out of context, it struck me as a real killer of a twist! So, as aforementioned, the movie whittles it down, by process of elimination, to us suspecting Angela as the killer. And something is most definitely wrong when she meets Paul at the beach and insists they both get naked.Meanwhile, a single policeman has turned up, and the remaining counsellors do their best 'concerned' impressions, with highlights including, "Oh no...there's a killer on the loose". The cop sends the counsellors off to search the camp..."even the empty cabins," he advises. Wow, what would they have done without him?! Everyone knows that criminals never hide in unoccupied spaces!

Mr Short-Shorts has graciously changed into a full-length tracksuit. Well, I dunno. Perhaps his ball-bearing hotpants would have proved the killer's antidote. Never know. But he and Susie (possibly the worst-acted character in the whole picture) have gotten their pretty permed selves down to the lake, where they see Angela sat, humming and cradling Paul's head in her lap. They approach from behind, cooing her gently to come with them. Then another flashback, of crazy Aunt Doctor, inheriting little Peter after the opening speedboat accident killed his family, and deciding to raise the child as the girl she always longed for, deducting that two boys "simply will not do"... see where this is going? Up hops Angela, mouth agape and growling like an animal, Paul's severed head rolling from her lap. And there she is... naked... with a penis. A penis! In the words of Felissa Rose, "I was the chick with the dick!" 

Now, if this moment hadn't been the very reason I ended up watching the preceding 80 minutes, I would have been whooping and hollering at its awesomeness. Ironically killer twist: perfectly executed; puns most definitely intended. But I have one question about it...killer Angela remains perfectly still whilst the camera zooms out to reveal her secret. Why? Perhaps it was to accommodate the obviously immobile Felissa Rose mask worn by the drunken college boy stand in. I guess it doesn't really matter. Even if Angela's weirdly wooden stance was the only thing that gave me a weird feeling about the shot, then it still achieved its desired affects regardless.

One may also come to assess what the makers may have meant by this ending. It's deep enough to be about more than shock value, so what statement is Sleepaway Camp making? Some may argue that it's an offensive sweeping suggestion that transgender or transsexual people are in some way sociopathically ill. Some may also see a link between the brief flashbacks of Angela/ Peter's father in bed with another man and the child's subsequent issues, But on the other hand, is the real evil not, in fact, evil Doctor Auntie, who decided to gender-reassign little Peter to suit her own selfish ideals? Perhaps the plot was first imagined as a reversal on the life of a transgender person: where they might choose of their own accord to change their identity to how they feel is right, Peter is forced by someone else to change his identity to how he feels is wrong. This is probably not a terribly common situation, but perhaps by extension, it is a statement about children's need to be their own person, and not live out the ideals and fantasies of their parents or friends. The more thought I give it, the more meaning I see in this cheesy old slasher flick.

Terry from Reno 911! (right) and some fashion victim at camp (left)

Sleepaway Camp is the kind of movie that I felt the compulsion to tell my sister about. She and I are both raging horror connoisseurs and have shared many a movie, not to say we always agree. But I know she too would appreciate all the straight men dressed like Terry the Homo from Reno 911!, the surprisingly imaginative and gruesome killings (did I mention curling tongs getting put in the most ridiculous of places?!), and the kind of creepy predatory style that could only have been used thirty years ago. This is a wicked flashy piece of the '80s which takes a number of increasingly unexpected turns, and even in 2015 feels quite original. Sleepaway Camp is definitely one of my new favourite slashers!

Sarah T. - Portrait of a Teenage Alcoholic (1975)

This rad and retro little number comes from the funky annals of mid-'70s made-for-TV movies, and is one of several in a string of similar productions in the post-Exorcist career of the fabulous Linda Blair. Having been monitoring the situation since 2005 when I discovered Linda, I have seen Sarah T. be drip-fed to the internet very slowly over the course of a decade. My first glimpse was of a cute scene which occurs some 25 minutes in, in which Sarah (Linda Blair) sings Carole King's It's Too Late at a party as a very youthful Mark Hamill looks on endearingly. Only recently did the whole movie become available to watch, so I was very excited to finally view it in its full form.

Sarah Travis is a slightly shy and reserved fifteen-year-old who is pissed about her parents' divorce and her mother's courting of another gent, and the necessity of her starting at a new school. Things don't go too well, and nerves get the better of her during her audition for the Glee Club. Meanwhile, her father (J.R. himself, Larry Hagman) dips in and out of her life, blowing money he doesn't have on presents for her and then disappearing again. Sarah's mother's pride is hurt to see her daughter struggling to get along in society, so she is pleased when chipper young local kid Ken Newkirk (Mark Hamill) calls by and invites Sarah to a party. She is reluctant at first, but the kids there are quite receptive of her, and after a couple of stiff ones (drinks, that is) she feels groovy and ready to sing, clad in the amazing denim two-piece with matching Casey Jones hat that Daddy bought her.

One of the girls from school who's at the party was present at Sarah's ill-fated Glee Club audition, and so requests her song for her from the resident guy-with-guitar. Dear Lord, we give you thanks and praise for the shaggy-haired guitar guy in every '70s movie ever, Amen. She gives a really cute little performance with her newfound Dutch courage, and comes to the quick realization that booze is the answer to all of life's problems! Ken soon discovers her in a sloppy state and drags her home, apologizing profusely to her outraged mother, whose primary concern is what the neighbours will say.

Ken and Sarah grow close and between the not-so-subtle flask and cup in her locker and her popular boyfriend, things start to get better for Sarah. But as an AA counsellor later warns, booze starts out by giving, and then ends up taking. She gets ridiculously large booze orders delivered to the house, running the shower and pretending her mother is home to convince the guy to let her accept them. And when Mom finally notices watered-down Scotch, she jumps straight to blaming and firing the housemaid. Sarah witnesses the whole thing, and being the ultimately decent kid that she is, she feels ashamed and does try to argue her mother's decision, but to little avail. Home is getting crazier. Sarah fights with her mother, with one culminating in the classic outburst, "He's not my father, he's just somebody you sleep with!"

School is getting similarly tumultuous, with Sarah finally getting caught for cutting classes and forging notes. Her mother is called to the school about it, and poor Sarah pitifully tries to hint her mum into cutting her some slack ("Oh, that was that day, Mom, remember?") and the school counsellor tells Mother Travis in no uncertain terms that something dodgy must be going on at home to be causing this. Of course, Sarah's socially-conscious mother is utterly outraged by such an implication, and furiously reminds the counsellor that she has successfully raised an elder daughter who turned out with no problems.

Things get even worse. Sarah and Ken finally make love, but the very next day he is edgy and cold, and soon informs Sarah that he has to focus on his schoolwork, and can't afford to be distracted by a troubled, needy girlfriend. She is, naturally, heartbroken, having decided just a couple of days before that Ken was the guy she would lose her virginity to. Although Ken seems like a good kid, and a pretty sensible one too, it also appears that he's a sporter of the Schoolboy Insensitivity badge. He doesn't recognise the stupidity and downright assholishness of dumping a fifteen-year-old girl the day after taking her virginity. This situation would have explosive consequences in any case, but with Booze's recurring guest-star spot in Sarah's everyday life, things go from bad to worse. Whilst babysitting her young niece, she sorrowfully hits the bottle and blacks out on the couch. Her parents end up breaking into the house in panic, to find her in a very conspicuous state.

Sarah is a pitiful character throughout. It is good to see an ultimately preachy movie be made through the eyes of the people it's trying to preach to, and therefore decipherable to the loony horny teenagers out there. It's true that teenagers don't like to listen to anybody. I remember being the same. Feeling the ridiculousness of a schoolmarmish grey-haired nurse telling us about sex. The ridiculousness of her warning us to use condoms when performing oral sex, and then the humiliation of people's reactions to the suggestion in real life. Fact was, they were outdated and didn't seem to have a clue. And when adults make made-for-TV movies about drugs or booze or underage sex, they seem to have a difficult time of it. I imagine pained cries from the offices of NBC..."How do I reeeach these keeeeeds?!" Writers Richard and Esther Shapiro really tune in to the teen wave, and bring the material down to the audience's level, where we can feel sorry for Sarah as she takes one saddening blow after another, rather than look down on her for her methods of coping. So the kids can understand how people like them can succumb to terrible ways so easily, and how shitty it feels when they do, but how readily they could seek help. It is a story of warning, but also of redemption, which really seems like the right way to do it. If we're being presented with a problem, it's nice to be simultaneously dealt a solution.

Sarah attends an AA meeting, resentment brimming in her eyes, where she hears a 10-year-old kid talk. He's been an alcoholic since the age of 3, because his old man (one of those black-and-white Brando-as-Kowalski types by the sounds of it) would get him drunk and laugh his head off about it with his buddies. This made me double-take. Teenage alcoholics is one thing, but a fucking three-year-old?! It really got me thinking. Abuse in this world knows no limit, so what is so unbelievable about there being some degenerate asshole, who fathered an unwanted kid, spends his every unemployed day drinking and slobbing, and gets a real kick out of sousing the toddler and seeing his drunken, diaper-covered ass hit the deck? Although my mind had never before conceived such a wretched thought, and it hit me hard upon presentation, it's really no surprise at all. And that's a sad thought.

Sarah leaves the meeting, seemingly unaffected, and deliberately so. She just doesn't seem convinced, doesn't seem ready to quit. So you know what that means...a highly traumatic incident, as a result of her drinking, to shock her into quitting. And surprisingly, this doesn't seem to be the time that she approaches a bunch of young guys to buy her booze, and ends up sucking them all off for the privilege, only for them to drink it to themselves and beat her up. How low can things possibly get for this poor little creature? Well, now visibly on the brink, she wanders around one night and decides to take Ken's pet horse for a ride. Don't drink and ride, kids. In a very well-shot sequence, she rides the horse out to the freeway and causes a pile-up. Linda Blair is (or was as a young woman) a very accomplished equestrian, and it is my suspicion that her skills in this field helps them to pull off such an effective shot.

Comes the monumental trauma, when the very real aftermath of her drunken actions take place. Still on the freeway, blue and red lights flashing everywhere, surrounded by cops, Sarah watches, devastated, as the agonized horse is put down by a vet, and Ken is sobbing his heart out on the roadside. Now, given the former scene I just described, and the personal degradation and trauma that Sarah endured, it speaks volumes about her character that this horse incident would be the turning point for her. Causing harm to herself was of no concern to her, but as soon as she realized she had really harmed others, it was finally too much to bear. Sarah Travis is a good kid, and one we can relate to. It's easy to forget how quickly things can spin out until we're in the spiral. That night, Sarah could have stayed sat out in the dark, drinking by herself, and then eventually gone home and passed out. But she made one unwise decision after another, and within a matter of minutes, her very quiet evening had gone to full-blown legal issue with life lost and relationships irretrievably destroyed.

Sarah's problem now formally comes to everyone's attention, and she is checked into a hospital, where she has to finally come to terms with herself and accept the help that everyone is offering her. Her parents have to endure each other to discuss their daughter's issues, and after a bunch of screaming, they both seem to see their own faults as parents, with Mother Travis guiltily putting down a glass of scotch clutched in her hand. Sarah comes to her parents, looks them straight in the eyes, and tells them, "I'm an alcoholic." Her mother still seems unbelieving of the idea. She almost laughs at the unreality of it all. But if ever, she should be proud of her daughter now, for expressing remorse for her errors, and strength of belief in herself to correct them.

Sarah T. is a really good movie for its kind. Thoughtfully written, filmed with care, and well acted. Linda Blair is a good actress, whose career took an incredibly unfortunate downturn in the late seventies. In a documentary, I heard her detail how she got caught up in a drug charge, when a friend repeatedly phoned her to ask if she knew any potential clients. Eventually she said, "OK, I might know someone," and with that recorded sentence, the police had a conviction for their commission cheque. And as is not unbelievable in the slightest, Linda's lawyer advised that her best option was a no contest, as the cops would ensure that any trial would ruin her financially, and still convict her in the end anyhow. ACAB, eh? It is particularly unfortunate that she didn't manage any big comeback like Downey Jr. or Gibson, especially as, by all accounts, she wasn't even a user to begin with. But then, she was a young hot star in late '70s Hollywood, so I dunno. Perhaps her crippling typecasting was just too big an obstacle.

Her later-young career involved a very sexy direction, both, I imagine, by choice and as a last resort. Linda did some gorgeous glamour and nude shoots for various magazines, and my God, are they a sight for sore eyes! As her teenage movies constantly teased, she indeed had an incredible, voluptuous figure, and the most beautiful face, which radiated both youth and attitude. Then her only movie credits were regular low budget exploitation flicks, in which she often got naked. Yeah, it wasn't ideal a mere decade after she was an Oscar nominee on the cover of every entertainment magazine -- she had become a B-movie queen that we loved to see naked. But she really owned it, and didn't decide years later to spin it as a story of woe and detailing how she was used and abused. She stood by her decisions. Linda Blair is one cool chick.


....Right?!

Crowsnest (2012)

One might wonder if there is a bigger 'thing' in the horror genre of recent years than Found Footage. From the dawn, with Cannibal Holocaust in 1980, through Blair Witch Project throwing it to the mainstream in 1999, Found Footage has become a highly exploited medium. Recent offerings have included [REC], Paranormal Activity, Grave Encounters, and their copious sequels and prequels. Some of these have been very effective, where others have been nauseating in their efforts. Crowsnest stood out to me for some reason. Everybody on the web seemed to hate it, but it left me thinking enough to watch two subsequent times. And the more I think, I'm still not sure why. Stupid, unlikable characters who make dumbass moves time after freakin' time... crappy and repetitive dialogue with lots of forced emotions...

We open with a douchebag whose girlfriend got him a video camera for his birthday - it's his birthday - and he's filming out of his window, spying and making asshole comments about the people he zooms in on in the apartment building opposite. Good time to mention to your girlfriend that this camera has night vision. We'd assume that she already knows because she bought the fucking thing, but how else would we, the audience, know this otherwise? Well, yes, OK, we could have just observed the change in camera setting as it occurred, but this sort of movie assumes that we are as dumb as it is. Anyway, we already don't like this guy. He is Justin (Victor Zinck Jr.), she is Brooke (Mittita Barber), and the friends who arrive at their apartment for the birthday get-together are Amanda (Chelsea Reist) and Kirk (Aslam Husain). It quickly becomes apparent from listening to their mind-numbing conversation that they are all morons to varying degrees.

The next day they are off to Kirk's parents' cabin in Kirk's parents' shiny red Jeep (bearing in mind that these douches are grown-up and well-off enough to be drinking scotch the night before, but none of them seem to own a car). Amanda's even-douchier emo sister Danielle (Christie Burke, from Twilight, apparently)is tagging along for whatever reason, and seems to have made it her personal mission to kill the buzz her sister's friends are indulging in all kinds of substances to achieve. Justin is doing one of those douchebag 'record everything' things which serves merely to give the film a medium and to emphasise his douchebaggery. You'll notice that word, in various forms, pops up a lot when describing these people. They are monumental morons throughout, which is possibly one of its draws. Stupid people facing life threatening situations surely calls for results that you just couldn't make up!

En route to the cabin (we may think it's gonna be another of those Cabin in the Woods horrors, but these guys are so dumb they don't even make it as far as the cabin), Kirk says that he knows of a place called Crowsnest, where you can get half price beer. He saw it online. So, he suggests, they should make a detour that seems to span for at least 20 or 30 miles - and that's just one-way - and incur the cost of the extra fuel to get there, in order to save 50% on beer, which is cheaper that gas. Take a deep breath, and behold the fine idiocy! Of course, Crowsnest is like the rotting set of some old spaghetti western in MGM's storage locker, and there seems to be no life there, let alone half-price beer salesmen.

The guys go off in search of half-price beer, which at this rate is pretty much guaranteed to be carbonated bottled piss, and Brooke (taking the one camera which narrates the whole story) wanders while Amanda loudly announces her imminent public urination. The camerawoman soon comes across the statutory creepy little girl in long white nightgown with dark hair shielding her face, but when she turns to inform Amanda, the kid's disappeared. We didn't see that one coming - creepy ghost children make a real habit of sticking around for sane witnesses to verify. The guys then come yelling and screaming for everyone to get in the car and get outta here now, and once they're speeding off outta there, they tell the girls about the creepy beer salesman who gave them the statutory "You kids better turn around and go back right now, or y'all's gon' diiiieee" line.

Apparently Brooke doesn't think to shut off recording for a sec to show her friends the footage of the creepy kid, so they continue on their way, drinking and smoking doobs behind the wheel. Little sis Danielle, when not busy scowling and telling people "this was a bad idea", is suffering the adverse affects of alcohol consumption. The douches then start to demonstrate a compulsion to pull over unnecessarily. You'd think they didn't actually have a destination. On the first pit stop after Crowsnest, they have no phone signal (duh) but pick up one of those cult religious radio stations, with a dark-voiced preacher talking about flames and hell and sin and all that. Super-emo Danielle takes this as an opportunity to force unwanted information on unwilling participants repeatedly. She lists off the many things that the Bible supposedly condemns people to death for, and each time one of the friends interjects to get her to shut the fuck up, she starts talking again to the point of desperation. She summarises that if this were the Bible, they would all be fucked. Not that this movie contains any religious connotations or morals beyond that.

That's the other thing. This movie contains more uses of the word 'fuck' than most. It seems to be down to poor screenwriting (improv?) and/or the characters' (actors'?) lack of intellect. And then the cheeky motherfuckers have the nerve to feel like the wronged party when Amanda obnoxiously wanders into the middle of the road and is almost (damn) creamed by a massive RV. Next thing you know, there's shit loads of screaming going on, and the guys are doing that typical "I'm gonna get that fucker's plates, you don't mess with me, fucker!" stuff and are speeding up a mountain road after the RV. The point of filming everything now becomes "for insurance". The girls scream, the boys grunt and growl, and the RV suddenly stops dead, then does a miraculous 180 turn on the narrow mountain and comes speeding back at them. And to be honest, can we help but laugh? Even though it would be impossible for a vehicle of that size to turn so quickly on that road without getting ditched, it's hilarious to see the douchebags suddenly screaming for a different reason.

They get through this episode, but haven't learned their lesson. Whilst speeding away, Danielle succumbs to drunkenness, and insists they stop the car so she can vomit. Bitch, haven't you ever heard of the window?! Having just seriously pissed off a bunch of hicks in a vehicle far bigger than theirs and only just gotten away, and not even gotten a mile up the road yet, the last thing they need to be doing is stopping. But you know what horror movie girls get like with the "Stop the Car" thing: throw a couple of "fucking"s into the mix and slap the back of the driver's seat, and they get what they want. Danielle does her chundering and everybody's about ready to go, but then suddenly she must hop out of the car again, and BAM! The RV, which they would've heard and seen thundering down the road, comes out of nowhere and totally wipes her out.

In typical horror fashion, now that they have to get a mangled emo to a hospital, the car won't start (for whatever reason) and there's still no cell phone service. These being dumb fuckers, they scream at each other a whole bunch, before deciding to hike through the woods up to the top of the mountain, where they think they can get a signal and call a helicopter. Danielle promptly dies, but Amanda stupidly decides to stay with her sister's body at the car, despite having been the original source of annoyance to the RV hicks, whilst the others bugger off up the mountain. Chelsea Reist's performance is a weird one. In the earlier scenes, her delivery is very contrived, and particularly her laughter is painfully forced. The area she does strongly in is hysteria, which I guess to a mediocre horror maker seemed to outweigh her terrible speaking.

One semi-potent element of the storytelling is that there is only one camera, which is pretty unusual to this subgenre, as the camerapeople in the stories are usually professional to some capacity, warranting multiple perspectives. This means that for the duration of the group being separated in whatever combinations, we only know what is happening to one party, which does produce a sort of tense worry for the unseen characters, despite how idiotic they are. The woodsy Justin-Brooke-Kirk gang head on into the woods with the camera, and it doesn't take long for them to bitch up a storm among themselves, culminating in the revelation of Brooke having cheated on her asshole boyfriend with Kirk, and Justin storming off in response, camera in hand. Just prior to this they heard Amanda screaming in the distance, so Brooke and Kirk try to head back to the car, where she will obviously still be!


Meanwhile, Justin gets himself full-on, flat-out lost in the woods, as dickheads who storm off in a tantrum in the middle of nowhere tend to do, and it's not long before he's giving his snotty-nosed Blair Witch confessional to Mom and Pop, detailing very simplistically how scared he is, how cold he is, how much he loves them all etc. etc. But after his mini-breakdown, he sensibly (don't hold your breath - this is where his sensibility ends) decides to carry on, and soon *gasp* stumbles across the RV parked in a bald spot on the mountain. Problem is, by the time he spots it, he is about as central to this bald spot as the vehicle is, and seems to think that crouching on the upper edge of the pit is a completely inconspicuous move. He sneaks up, snoops around, checks the fucker's plates, but there are none, and then decides to investigate the blood running out of the door.

This is one of the film's strongest sequences, and even then it's certainly not exceptional. But thankfully, the concept of the camera containing night-vision had been gracelessly handed to us on a verbal plate by Justin at the beginning, so he flicks it on, and takes in all the black-and-green gore he's standing in. Lots of blood, ambiguous giblets and plastic sheets lay about the place, and on a slab lies Amanda, with her foot sawed off. We, the audience, plead guilty to lack of sympathy. She was loud and annoying - but wait, she ain't finished wailin' yet! Justin wakes her up, to which she starts screaming hysterically. He tells her "Sshh! It's me, Justin!" several times, and yet the dumb bitch doesn't quieten. The RV's sinister and as yet unseen occupants are currently absent for whatever reason, but chances are they're nearby. So now would be a really fucking good time for Amanda to shut her hole. For her own good.

But did we really expect her not to die? The dumb blonde always dies. Shoulda stuck in school, Amanda, things woulda worked out diff'rent. As Justin takes the opportunity to stoop to her level of idiocy and explore the vehicle's interiors, where of course he should just been grabbing the annoying bitch and getting the hell out, he ventures to the bedroom compartment, where Danielle's body is having its finger chewed by that creepy kid from earlier. Except is it her? Earlier, that was definitely a kid, and a female one at that. We get a brief 'menacing' glimpse at this creepy kid's face, and it's quite obviously a male uh--- little person. Now is this meant to be a different kid, or are we meant to be startled because originally she looked a little sweet, and now she looks minging, or is it either in addition to the typical 'creepy midget' stereotype that horror almost forgot?

Oh, now I realise that I said Justin's sensibility ended with his decision to keep walking, but I was forgetting this bit. Upon coming across said finger-chewing midget, he keeps quiet and still and attempts to make a swift exit, for he is as yet unseen. But we also have a dumb bitch on board, who is yelling "Justin! Justin, where are you?!" over and over again, so of course the finger-muncher looks up, gives us the scary face, and makes a dive for Justin. But he manages to beat the thing to death. OK, despite his douchiness, Justin gives it a fair go in this five-minute window. He then tries to saw through Amanda's chain, fails, and decides to leave her there and come back (yeah, right), which as you can imagine, goes down like a sack of shit. So she yells even more, even louder, and the hicks come a-runnin'. Justin makes a dive under the RV while they tumble inside and Amanda starts screaming even louder still. Wow, anybody else developing tinnitus?

Now that we have finally seen at least the feet of the two recreationally vehicular hicks, the remaining characters start doing that annoying horror thing that dead teenagers always do: wait literally two seconds from the bad guy disappearing from sight before coming out of their hiding place. I mean, seriously, they barely give him a chance to turn his back. He is still right there, they need to wait until he's a safe distance away, for Christ's sake! So two seconds after the RV door closes, Justin hops out and runs back up...to the edge of the pit, which he doesn't seem to realise acts more as a podium than a shelter. And he turns back again to face the vehicle. Does he honestly not know he's totally visible? They're gonna come out aft---they're coming out after him!! He's screwed! I really do like the way they capture these 'hick assailant bumbling towards victim' shots. I'm not sure what it is, but they are really quite menacing. With the help of the classic 'camera fallen in front of doomed victim' trick, the audience, and later Brooke and Kirk, get to witness his demise, which is actually a fairly impressive special effect. We also get to learn that these hicks aren't too smart. Murderers usually take the victim's camera (evidence!) with them, but these guys just leave it for others to find.


Here we have it folks, the imminent horror situation: two left - one guy, one girl. We never know, will one get out, or both, or neither? Brooke and Kirk find the camera, suddenly realise what they're up against, and freak out. Whilst walking back to the car, they find a road again, and duck down as the RV trundles past. It stops briefly and then carries on, having dumped some bloody remains of one of their friends on the road. They freak out some more. The point of the camera now becomes "for the police". After a bit more walking, the RV passes again. Have they been seen? They must've been. Oh, OK, I guess maybe they haven't-- OH MY GOD, THEY'VE BEEN SEEN! Out come bursting the hicks once more in an even more menacing shot than the last one, and they leg it. Kirk has his hand sliced up but they get away. God knows what they actually do to his hand (finally, no one really cares about angles, they just want to get out alive) but it must've been something pretty gnarly, as Kirk is soon rendered incapacitated, turning pale and cold and tired from apparent blood loss, with Brooke having to coax him up off the ground. And eventually he screams that his hand has fallen off! Pretty freakin' gnarly!

After a lot of hobbling about in woodland, they finally make it back to the car, which of course won't start, and Kirk pops the camera on the dashboard, facing them. So while he babbles a bunch of romantic crap about how he's always loved Brooke, we can just feel that at the end of that long mountain road we see behind them, a big ol' monster is gonna come rumbling at any moment. It does, and they carry on chatting shit and turning the key, and funnily enough, it gives them the jump start they needed, and soon gets run off the road. Wow, things are starting to look up for the two survivors of the original five-man party. They even get a cell phone signal, and get a call through to the police, and are just telling that they're in Crowsnest when HHHOOOOONNNNKKK! Rumble, smash, etc. It seems the hicks specialise in un-ditching massive vehicles at record-speed. Maybe they have their own reality show like the Storage Hunters and the Lizard Lick Towers.

"I told you this was a bad idea, guys. Fuck."

So that's Crowsnest. Having dissected it in a sarcastic humour, I still find myself unsure as to why it's so enjoyable. Maybe cos DTMs are always more satisfying the stupider the characters are. If we don't like them, don't sympathise them, and don't root for them, then we root against them, just like whichever Slasher pursues them. It makes it pretty damn exciting at times. And it's safe to say that this gang's lack of chemistry, camaraderie and loyalty to one another - along with their constant flaunting of their collective 5 brain cells - sticks them firmly in VIP lounge at the National Douchebag Awards. Fuck me, fucking congratulations, guys. Shit!

Donkey Punch (2008)

It took me some five years to finish watching Donkey Punch. Way back when, I rented it from a Blockbuster (remember those?!) but in a sterling example of why the company is still so affluent today, the DVD started skipping 40 minutes in and ruined my viewing pleasure. Today, I saw it, decided that its first 40 minutes had shown promise, and decided to rewatch from the start. I'm actually pretty glad I did. This movie's an interesting one. For one thing, it's odd and somewhat refreshing to not have to listen to 90 minutes of Californian-accented screeches from big-tittied blondes in lingerie. True, English accents are not always the most attractive things (as a kid I always longed to swap my English accent to an American one) but again, it's a little more tolerable to hear girls call each other "babes" instead of "sweetie". Accents are funny things: just as an American picture would have some hick with a Southern drawl be the 'shady' fella, for us Brits, give us a chav and we're terrified. We have a monumental chav in Donkey Punch, whose speech is dismally common in England, and always looks and sounds as if the speaker is swirling a mouthful of toffee.

The chav in question is Bluey (Tom Burke), who is swaggery and mouthy, and has a dormant menace about him, enhanced by a hairlip. Burke's performance, and dare I say it his general non-enhanced appearance, are painfully realistic, to the point where I'd be unsurprised if he'd been raised in some dodgy council estate by a family of criminals, and managed to break out into something better. He's really got the look about him. Anyway, Bluey is one of four guys - the other three are far less distinguishable - who befriend three girls on holiday in Ibiza. The girls are there for the dreaded reason that compels me to cringe so dreadfully: "a girly weekend away". Blllleeeuurrrgghh! We have Lisa (Sian Breckin), Kim (Jaime Winstone, daughter of Ray) and Tammi (Nichola Burley), the two former being the loud, reckless ones who shout "whooo" a lot, and the latter being the shy good girl who's there to get over a breakup. They are spoilt for choice, with Marcus (Jay Taylor), Sean (Robert Boulter) and Josh (Julian Morris) also part of Bluey's crew, and when they're invited on board the yacht the boys work on, the only one who thinks that this is a bad idea is of course Tammi.

The boys are frustratingly difficult to tell apart. I hate it when they do this in films. I'm no simpleton, but when you have three male characters, all with very different personalities and actions, who are of the same body type and colouring, I really struggle to keep on top of it. I found myself distracted by their shirts instead of the movie, just in an attempt to keep track of who was who. Bluey, like I said, speaks for himself, Josh is the mouse, this movie's version of Matthew from I Spit On Your Grave, the simple-minded one who doesn't take much goading to do others' bidding. One of the others is Josh's brother, and the other is the acting Skipper of the yacht while the actual owner is away. When the guys suggest that they "take this party on the high seas", ie leave the marina, Tammi is once again proven to be the sensible one, but not sensible enough to voice her concerns.

She is taken with Josh's brother (I think that's Sean and the Skipper is Marcus - I think) and they get innocently chatting about their failed relationships, while the other girls and boys take the party downstairs to the cabin, having taken hits on a crackpipe and whipped out a video camera. Now just before this, whilst taking a swim, the young vulgarians were discussing various crude sexual acts which no one with any respect for themselves or their partner would perform. Bluey regales the legend of the Donkey Punch, in which the guy takes the girl from behind and smacks her in the back of the neck when he cums, apparently producing an involuntary muscle spasm which is awesome for the guy. "What's in it for the girl?" one of them asks. "I don't understand the question," Bluey retorts.


Josh, being the dimwit that he obviously is from his sheepish cowering, can't believe his luck when he finds himself in the midst of a below-deck camera orgy, and Bluey hops off Lisa to give him a go. He mounts her, and has a whale of a time, until system-overload becomes imminent, and Bluey unwisely eggs him on, "Remember what to do? Do it! Do it!" Thwack! Woman down. Oh shit. Now it looked like a bit of a jab, but apparently poor Joshy don't know his own strength. He has just killed a girl mid-fuck. It's not quite Of Mice and Men.

It's cool to see a horror movie (I guess this just about qualifies) with no masked man or evil genius or crazed loon scouring the seas for dead young flesh. As we can imagine, these 20-somethings are never going to decide calmly that they must go to the police and explain exactly what happened. They are going to play the Blame Game, and turn on one another. And of course, Bluey caught the whole incident on tape (and it's not below him to later suggest earning 'a pound a pop' for it on the net). The rivalries and differences of opinion are what drive the rest of the movie, which gets a little slow towards the end, but it's actually an interesting journey, with intriguing power shifts. For example, the sex scene at first may seem a little female-driven, if you catch me (I hate to say misogynist just because a woman is nude onscreen), but just after Lisa's been killed, all three of the guys in the room are seen full-frontally naked, tackle and all, where the girls never bare so much at any point. We see the guys at their most vulnerable - naked, and covered in the juices of a girl they just killed - and it really works.

Later, one of the girls has managed to obtain the onboard rifle that's changed hands several times, and the raw anger in her voice (and flinching from her assailant) as she threatens him at gunpoint feel very genuine. Power levels fluctuate wildly throughout, with each character having different theories as to who will get off, who will go down, and what the authorities will make of their situations, and these theories are what motivates each character. No one is really on the same level, and eventually the characters seem to lose sight of everything as things spiral further out of control. Crazy thing is, all the shit that happens is down to stupidity and absent-mindedness. I'm of the opinion that without the crazy sexual ideas and crackpipe, these guys could've had a pretty decent time together and all gotten home intact. But then fear and rivalry can do weird things to people.

Although most of the acting is better than expected, the one shining star of the picture is Tom Burke as Bluey, who throughout manages to inject absolute truth into his performance, and he obviously has a good understanding of pain. Do you ever notice in movies that when characters are in physical pain, their reactions never seem quite on par with what you can see being done to them. Anybody who's ever experienced real indescribable pain will know that everything loses structure: your consciousness, your thought patterns, and your will for any form of control. Screams of real pain are distinctive, and quite disturbing because they're just not something you hear often (I guess unless you're a medic or a murderer). Burke is one who understands. His first scream when he's stabbed in the chest is more like a hysterical laugh, as he comes to terms with what has just been done to him. When one of his mates starts pushing on the knife, his screams are bloodcurdling. It feels so utterly genuine.

I wonder if Donkey Punch should have been subtitled "A Cautionary Tale". Even in the six or seven years that have passed since this movie was made, the sexual activities of my contemporaries seem to know no inhibitions. It is perfectly commonplace for people to have sex having only known each other a few hours. Of course, highly-efficient sexual health services make this possible to do safely, but the morality behind it has disturbed me for years. My sister went on holiday to Magaluf a few years back, and I was actually moved to nausea by photos she showed me of a crowd of young holidaymakers, circled around a teenage girl and boy having sex in broad daylight on an outdoor patio, apparently because they had been promised free booze by the reps if they did it. Just writing that out made me feel queasy all over again. I cannot fathom the kind of person who would even consider this offer. It's low, it's dirty, it's disgusting in every way. I hate to sound like a frump, but it is just wrong. This kind of shit is so common that the English media spew similar stories on a regular basis, and reality shows on TV.

The first time I saw this movie, I was just a teenager. Now, I am an adult and mother of a daughter, and it crossed my mind to show her this movie one day, when she's older. I want her to understand that if you have no respect for yourself and your dignity, then no one's going to have it for you. Men and women are as bad as each other. Do you think Lisa (and subsequently Bluey, Josh, Kim, Sean and Marcus) would have survived if she hadn't thought an unprotected orgy with absolute strangers was a good thing? As one of the boys points out to Lisa's friends, "Do you really think her parents want to know what she was doing when she died? That she was fucking strangers?!" Bluey already established earlier that he had no comprehension of a partner's feelings, and yet she deemed him a wise choice. And then had no problem with Bluey suggesting that Josh have a go with her too. She allows herself to be objectified, and then they're surprised when things go wrong. Granted, a girl allowing herself to be objectified may not always result in death (check the labels) but it's a shitty place to put oneself in willingly.

Although it's disputed as to just how lethal Josh's rookie moves are in reality, I think this movie contains some truths about human behaviour and cause and effect. There's the aforementioned respect for lovers, but then, of course, when shit goes down, who is your real friend? Apparently the girls were trusting enough to allow these strangers access to their vaginas, yet once these same fellas have fucked their friend to death and carried out a "burial at sea" (in the same graceful tradition of Bin Laden), all feelings of amity have vanished. I'd hope that the girls, at this point, started scorning themselves for their poor judgement of character, and utter lack of common sense. But if either of these things is true about them, then they probably didn't. Eventually even the original friendship groups (boys v girls) turn against each other. You'd think that really good friends, and decent, mature human beings, would have materialised the following scenario:

[JOSH SMACKS LISA'S NECK. WE HEAR A SNAP AND SHE FALLS DOWN DEAD. JOSH GASPS, SHAKES HER, CHECKS HER VITALS. SHE IS DEAD. HE FLOPS DOWN ON BED AND CRIES]

BLUEY:     Oh my God, man! Oh Christ, it's OK, don't worry. It was an accident, I know it was. Let's call in an ambulance and the police and tell them what happened. And show them, look, I have the camera. They'll know it was an accident, man. You didn't mean to hurt her, it was innocent!

JOSH:         Oh my God, we'll have to. I can't believe what I've done! Oh, I'm so sorry Lisa! [HE SOBS OVER HER BODY] I didn't mean to hurt you! It was an accident.

BLUEY:      Look man, I'll go and tell the others, and make the calls. Everything's gonna be OK... [EXIT BLUEY]

You know, something sensible like that. From there, everybody instead starts trying to shift the blame, and incriminate each other, eventually pretty much everybody on board is down for at least an assault charge, if not worse. But at this early stage, Josh would have been the only 'guilty' party, and even then, with the video footage, it would be manslaughter at the worst. We didn't think he was a bad guy at this point, just a bit of a stupid and gullible and unlucky one. But because of the gang-up he is eventually the subject of, he goes a bit crazy, and by the end of it, has done far worse than the mistake that set this whole shitball rolling. They'd definitely all have been better off had they chosen a sensible course of action, But they're dumb, selfish and all (but one) end up dead as a result. It seems Donkey Punch has more thought and moral behind it than you'd first think.

The Sinful Dwarf (1973)

I'm having trouble finding bad movies recently. The old, minimal-budget exploitation genre can often be a good place to look, but suddenly even that is failing me! I thought when I came across a 1973 production entitled The Sinful Dwarf with a dodgy, hand-painted cover, that I was in for something to well and truly berate, but alas, my beration stores remain somewhat unrelieved. For all that I was sure it was going to be, it was really nothing at all. But it went, sometimes, in unexpected directions and presented times where I had to admire the work. Although, thankfully, plenty of ridiculous touches to sarcastically remark on too.

The movie opens in the street (even by the end, I'm not sure where it's set; most of the actors have English accents, but I'm pretty damn sure British coppers didn't carry guns back then...) with a, uh-- female, playing hopscotch. You'd sort of guess that a female in pigtails playing hopscotch in the street is a child, but on closer inspection, this female doesn't even look adolescent. She looks like a fully grown woman in her early 20s...playing hopscotch. Weird. A hobbling little dwarf with a cane and a clockwork dog approach her, and she is juvenile enough to not only be impressed by the toy, but to go back to the dwarf's house for more. Very weird.

The dwarf is Olaf (Torben Bille), and he runs a boarding house with his crazy drunk mother Lila Lash (Clara Keller). It's a big house with long wooden stairs and corridors, and at the end of the corridor is an attic room with a secret door. Behind the secret door are three mattresses, upon which are three junked-up sex slaves. The latest addition is the Hopscotch Girl. But Olaf and Clara have their sights set on a new girl, the female half of a young couple who come to board at the house. The fella, Peter (Tony Eades) is a writer (not the Stephen King kind, the perpetually-unemployed kind), and I guess the wife Mary (Anne Sparrow) is just a professional hottie.

Just as soon as Peter and Mary have been shown to their room by Olaf (who jumps on their bed in such a fashion that I'd demand a change of sheets), they are busy at it, and the dwarf has pulled the old painting-actually-a-spyhole trick, taking a very enthusiastic front row seat to their peepshow. Voyeuristic little devil! Admire, he may, though. One thing I never expected from this movie was one of the nicest and most moving sex scenes I've seen in a long time. Not only does Miss Sparrow have an absolutely insane body, her fella really appreciates it. They are totally into each other, and he spends his entire coital duration telling her things like "Let me look at you, you're so beautiful". This guy gets it!

Anyhow, with audience and dwarf thoroughly satisfied, it's off to real life. Peter is out looking for work, Olaf is busy playing with his clockwork toys and playing piano accompaniments for his mother's maniacal cabaret numbers, and Mary has nothing to do but snoop around, and so she is quick to notice the weird noises and men coming and going from the attic. Although we really know what is coming, it takes rather a long time to materialize. When it seems that taking Miss Blonde Hair Blue Eyes Big Boobs Mary as their newest recruit is dragging a bit, they have their heroin dealer Santa Claus hire Peter at his toy store, necessitating him to go away for a few days.

Whilst alone, Mary snoops further yet and finds the secret door in the attic, and decides to call the police. But not before she has changed out of her perfectly presentable sweater and jeans into something far more easily removed by force. With just enough opportunity to slip into a button-up mini dress, Mary is on her way, but doesn't get as far as the street. Olaf and his mighty cane (which has an uncanny talent for knocking people unconscious despite its slight frame) are on hand, and she is dragged into the sex slave emporium where her button-up mini dress is easily removed by force. Honestly girl, what was wrong with the sweater and jeans?!

Anyway, they chain her up and shoot her up, and soon she is just another, albeit the hottest, sex slave this side of the attic door. Meanwhile Lila types up a fake 'I'm Leaving You, Goodbye Forever' note from Mary, and leave it in her room for Peter to find upon his return. For a lover who showed he appreciates what he has, Peter is somewhat unperturbed by his wife's sudden disappearance. He goes to the toy shop and tells Santa Claus Mary has left him, to which the fatty responds "Oh, I am sorry. Well, nothing like work to take your mind off it!" and the unconcerned husband seems to agree.

Upstairs in the attic, the girls seem to only have one client (or several guys of equally weedy stature who look very alike), and it's not a wonder this dude's gotta pay for it. He screws like a dog with a limp. Not to mention he always wears the same beige turtleneck. All four of the girls get thrown around in unusual positions, shot at the sorts of angles that haven't existed since pubic hair was apparently boycotted back in the 90s. Then along comes Olaf, to give us a gross preview of what would later be Verne Troyer's weird sex tape. He takes a shine to the lovely Mary, and then he takes the handle of his cane to her. Dude, we didn't even hate you that bad - your mum was obviously the real weirdo - but now you've just stooped to her level. Bad dwarf.

Between all the piano accompaniments and wind-up toys and cane-fuckings, Olaf makes a forbidden visit to Santa Claus' toyshop, where Peter overhears their dope deals. Being the upstanding, starchy-collared, BBC-accented fellow that he is, he promptly informs the police and they arrest Claus, who rats on Lila and Olaf and their highly erotic love palace in the attic. Upon arrival at the house of debauchery, they quickly get to the attic door, giving Lila an amusingly hard shove in front of them. She makes the most hilariously futile protests, to the extent of, "NO! There's nothing in there! Don't open that door!" Way to play it cool, Lila. Naturally, they are undeterred, and finally uncover the four poor sex slaves, with Peter running in to scoop a naked Mary into his arms. All's well, but she seems incredibly minimally affected by her newfound habit with a capital H.

At this point, the copper hands a gun to Peter, and pursues the dwarf of all things sinful. He takes a very sloppy shot at Lila, who dies dramatically on the lap of junked-up Hopscotch Girl, who laughs hysterically at the wretched bitch. A few other coppers who are hanging around in the courtyard outside see Olaf opening the top floor window as if it's a door. Here comes the best shot of the whole movie. Close up of Olaf prepping to jump...Shot of the most obviously-a-rag-doll dummy in a checkered shirt being thrown out of the window...shot of Olaf lying bloodied on the ground. Oh my God, I had to skip it back to laugh again. That dummy is the funniest thing I've seen in some time.

Man, the '70s were a special time! Only then could something like this be made! It's totally stupid, pretty funny, bordering on sinister at times, and has lots of nudity and one seriously, ball-achingly sexy leading lady. I mean, no one really expects anything in terms of acting quality from a picture like this, do they? And there's no doubt that none of these performances are exactly award-worthy, but there are some memorable characters: Olaf being one, with his crooked grin, his wide buggy eyes and gruff Swedish accent, Lila being another, who sort of reminds me of Carol Burnett as Miss Hannigan in Annie; she plasters herself with music hall Baby Jane make-up and gracelessly bellows old melodies in weird fruit hats and grass skirts. They are an entertaining duo, who should really have sought their own variety show on TV or something. Landlording really ain't their bag.

Teenage Hitchikers (1975)

A short while back I tracked down and reviewed here an obscure little 70s horror/sex flick entitled Voices of Desire, the main reason I cited being the Sandra Cassell mystery. Beautiful star of Craven's Last House On The Left, some supposed relation of hers took to IMDb to insist she only ever made that classic picture, ruling out any possibility that she starred in 'porn'.

Cassell in Teenage Hitchhikers (left) and Last House on the Left (right)

Of course, the internet is a wonder, as I am reminded every time I find a link to some long forgotten indie production. And this same wonder had proven the key to the Ranter's undoing. Like it or not, the same lovely Sandra is accountable for in several other titles. She looks the same, has the same speaking voice, and in Teenage Hitchhikers, she is credited by her real name of Sandra Peabody. I even noticed she wore the very same ring on the same finger that she wore throughout Last House! Call me crazy, but I think it's the same girl.

However, if one thing can be validated in the supposed relative's argument, it's that Sandra didn't do porn. True, there are a couple of her credits I am yet to see, but so far I have seen her participate in traditional simulated movie sex and a couple of nude rollarounds with other females. This isn't porn. Not in the 70s and certainly not today. If it's Sandra's dignity and modesty that feels threatened, I see nothing to be ashamed of.

Teenage Hitchhikers is a fun and silly sex comedy flick that's deliberately stupid. It gets off to a folksy start, with Mouse (Kathy Christopher) and Bird (Sandra Cassell/Peabody) hitching a ride in a band's RV. When naked groupies start almost literally appearing from the woodwork and telling the girls "if you wanna ride, you gotta slide", the girls decide that this is their stop, though Bird is a little more enthusiastic about groupiedom than her friend. The girls complain that people only ever want one thing, and so decide to stop being victims and take for once.

And so the girls start putting out in silly, raunchy manners like doing a striptease in a diner and giving a salesman the sexual runaround in a used car lot. Then they take the guys' money and carry on. There is a particularly amusing scene in which the girls hitch a ride with a ladieswear salesman, who invites them to help themselves to his merchandise. So they dress up in negligees and hop on his cock, but are promptly pulled over, inciting a cheeky Some Like It Hot-style routine. Saving to get a car and eventually to be "goin' strong by summer", the girls are on a roll.

  The movie takes a darkly hilarious turn when a third girl is introduced. She is being chased down by some dodgy geezer, and so the girls put into practise their patent-pending defence techniques. Bird strips off and wraps herself around a nearby tree with a book in her hand, and nonchalantly criticises the attacker's technique whilst munching on an apple. His masculinity takes a knock, and he gets up and fights his corner. He even convinces Bird to let him 'rape' her to prove his capability. Alas, she deems him unsatisfactory, and Mouse suggests, "Maybe rape just ain't your thing." Defeated, the guy allows the girls to 'rape' him in return, to show him how it's done. So when he's bound and naked, they take his victim off with them and leave him in the lurch. 

Having participated in an aforementioned romp with a used car salesman, the girls head off with his best motor, one of those sweet slick convertibles. This seemed about the extent of their ambition, so from here on in, they relax, take it slow, and let the good times roll. Pulling over for a couple of thumbing hippies in possession of a robust ganja supply, the crew head on over to a swingers party organised by a cute camp dude. There they work themselves into a room patchworked with people screwing, and have tons of fun with their legs in the air whilst gleefully blowing gum-bubbles (that's GUM, you sickos!) in the faces of their lovers.

This orgy scene is obviously the 'money shot' of the production. It appears to be real to me. Each of the couples we see have a real chemistry and seem happy and comfortable. Moreover, the long wild hairstyles of the '70s, on the heads, the faces and the crotches, allow for real sex to be taking place without any genitals being seen. It seems like a really great compromise. It's not so explicit to be classified as porn, but it has the sensual realism that exaggerated movie sex is usually tragically lacking in.

Of course, with their funky clothes noticeably absent, and the only other possible hiding places for a roll of cash positively occupied by shaggy beardy dudes, the girls find themselves distracted away from their hard earned savings, and the hippie girl they came with steals their wad and legs it. Their rescued rape victim reunites with her long-lost boyfriend and happily fucks off into the sunset with him. When Mouse and Bird awake after an awesome night, they find themselves down one companion and several thousand dollars, and back to Square One.

Teenage Hitchhikers is quite a lot of fun. For Sandra Cassell, it's an interesting change from her meek, victimised roles of Mari and Anna. Bird is sassy and outgoing, and the most adventurous of the girls. Mouse is vibrant and energetic, and they make a very amusing pair. It's another of those little gems that is completely of its time, and feels like a little time capsule in itself. The girls have those terrible bikini-shaped tan marks, and oversized Casey Jones hats, and big white underwear yet still look quite sexy. It's a cheesy, quirky load of fun. Good stuff!

ON THE LIST: I Spit On Your Grave (1978)

Its titlecard is inappropriately similar to that of Deep Throat, isn't it? I mean for what is infamously a real torturefest, it conjures some rather unwelcome erotic connotations, doesn't it? But anyhow... I Spit On Your Grave was probably the first Nasty I ever saw, and I can't quite remember how I first came across it. Possibly my dad. But either way, I read up, added it to my LoveFilm list and got the DVD through the mail. I remember being unimpressed in terms of production, and overwhelmed by just how much rape you can fit into a single scene. Nowadays, I own the double DVD set with the unsettling remake attached, which I will probably review separately for this page at some point. So I have seen the movie a few times since, and with my later-gained film knowledge and admiration for Ebert's work, I look at it similarly, yet in more detail.

In my research, I found an amazing fact out. Director Meir Zarchi was once driving by a park in NY at night when a girl came running out of the bushes bloodied and naked. Zarchi helped her by seeking police and medical assistance, later receiving a thank-you letter and offer of reward (which Zarchi declined) from the girl's father. So what inspired thing did Zarchi decide to do in response? Sponsor a rape charity? Get involved with some kind of rehabilitation centre for sexual assault victims? Nah. He made I Spit On Your Grave. If you've read this far and still have no knowledge of the movie, continue and see why this seems like such an inappropriate decision.

Jennifer Hills (Camille Keaton) is an author who has rented a pretty stonking 'cabin' in the woods, where she plans to pen her novel in peace. But unfortunately she stops at the Wrong Gas Station that Roger Ebert so wonderfully summarised. It is occupied by weirdo hicks, including one simpleton who works as the bicycle delivery boy. Jennifer stupidly tells the strangers where she is staying, and the delivery boy Matthew (Richard Pace) is ordered up to deliver some groceries. He seems harmless enough, but his three buddies take a pervy liking to Jennifer, and kidnap her boat when she's sunbathing in it later. With their speedboat, they tow her to shore where they proceed to gang rape her in the woods.

It's long and painful to watch. It goes on for ages, and I seriously mean ages. Minute after minute. When it is finally, mercifully over, Jennifer drags herself back to the cabin. She grabs the phone...BAM! The fellas are all there before her. And they start to gang rape her again, this time forcing Matthew to join in. Yep, seriously. These two barely separated sequences make up some 25-odd minutes of solid rape. While cruel and gratuitous, it also just gets ridiculous. They beat the hell out of her and leave her for dead.


But Jennifer gets up again, and takes bloody revenge on all the guys, including poor Matthew, who expresses simple and confused remorse, and was definitely bullied into it. Ebert expertly says that the guys treat Matthew as "their pet retard". The revenge is silly and largely unexciting and lacking in mayhem. One part also relies on one of the guys being seduced by the girl he repeatedly raped and left for dead, without for a second hesitating due to her supposedly being dead and yet actually being alive to tell the tale. In any case, he gets what he deserves. So by the end, Jennifer has been lengthily and repeatedly sexually and physically assaulted, but emerges somewhat 'victorious' with all the guys dead. The end.

There are reports of real rowdy catcalls from audiences back when the movie opened. Apparently men would shout encouragement at the men during the rape scenes, and women would should encouragement at Jennifer during the revenge scenes. Ebert speculated as to what each group of hecklers thought about the portion of the movie for which they were silent. This movie is definitely brutal and distasteful, mostly for its ridiculously lengthy rape. People are still divided as to whether the movie is misogynist or feminist. If Zarchi's sentiments are to be believed, he intended it as something of a feminist movie. But the product is most definitely questionable. I mean, at the very least, if the suffering is meant to be equaled out by the end, each man should have received a 25-odd minute torture.

I Spit On Your Grave is pretty terrible on all levels. Camera work is minimal, sound quality is crap, acting and dialogue is wooden, and the entire scenario seems to me a really shitty way of responding to such a traumatic event as stumbling across a rape victim. It's a crappy product, and unlike most of the other overhyped titles, very much deserved its place on the ridiculous result of media sensationalisation that was the Video Nasty list.

ON THE LIST: The Driller Killer (1979)

...so we are informed in the opening seconds of Abel Ferarra's notorious The Driller Killer. I upped it as far as I dared, for I feared that my parent-of-two neighbour may well re-enact the movie's conclusion should I subject him to its repetitive Punk Rock soundtrack. Goddamn paper-thin walls. But I really liked this titlecard. 'Blah blah blah actual events blah blah suspects still at large blah blah' has been as inappropriately used as Macaulay Culkin's childhood bank account. 'This film should be played LOUD' not only acknowledges the movie's fictitious nature, but braces us for a thrill ride. I like its style.

Reno Miller (Ferarra under pseudonym Jimmy Laine) is an artist living in a squalid apartment in the city with his girlfriend Carol (Carolyn Marz) and dopey friend Pamela (Baybi Day). He is busy obsessing over his latest piece, which he has promised will be his best ever. But the girls have been racking up the phone bill, rent is months overdue and a large ensemble punk band have just moved into the building, screaming and thrashing out bass chords at 2am. The financial and artistic pressure starts to render him insane, and he starts off on impulsive drill attacks on hobos.
Of course, nowadays the Driller Killer would be fine in terms of tools, as efficient battery-pack drills are commonplace. But in 1979 when, apparently, drills were all mains-powered, he had no outlet for his creative massacring until the Porto-Pack belt is invented, allowing him to carry his power supply around with him. Neat, what this technology stuff can do!

If I'm honest, that's about all there is to it. Having said that, Driller Killer comes as one of very few titles to grace the list that is a fully realised picture. I would, of course, also mention Last House on the Left and Cannibal Holocaust in the same vein. I say this because despite its rather amateurish camera work, the dialogue, sets, editing, sound, score and lighting all really come together beautifully. It is perfectly usual in the Nasty/Exploitation genre for movies to be made for the sake of it, and thrown together in the most graceless manner. It inspires much confidence when all the elements are recognised and utilised.

There are several sequences which stand out, my favourite (in spite of its gruesomeness) is one in which Reno slices up a butchered rabbit his agent gave him. He then starts to repeatedly stab the head of the carcass. Cut into this are scenes shot from below of people dancing at a gig, with pinky red lights reflecting off of the shimmering lycra and glitter. Each time it cuts back, we are unsure for a second whether we are looking at mangled giblets or writhing dancers. It's quite mesmerising.

Use of darkness and shadow is great, the soundtrack is really very catchy, and the use of sound is also used very successfully. An entire funky feel of late '70s punk mayhem is about the picture, effortlessly evoked by Ferarra, who although scary-psychotic at times, doesn't handle his everyday dialogue too naturally. He is good at his crazed and raging monologues but terribly unconvincing when ranting about the phone bill. Unsurprisingly he made his name behind the camera as a director, famously helming Bad Lieutenant.

It's certain that The Driller Killer only gained the notoriety that it did because of the still used as its release cover taken from the scene of the hobo getting drilled in the head. That is probably the most violent scene in the movie; it doesn't seem a particularly explicit movie in any respect. Not much blood, barely any sex or nudity despite the rampant threesomes the friends' living arrangement surely facilitates. But it is a good movie, funky and underground and dingy. It's pretty cool.