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.

ON THE LIST: House On The Edge Of The Park

Two of the major associates of House On The Edge Of The Park had previously found notoriety, and placement on the Video Nasty list before this 1980 collaboration. Director Ruggero Deodato rose to infamy with his previous film Cannibal Holocaust, not only paving the way for the torrent of 'found footage' horrors we face today, but creating such a convincing film that he was formally charged with murdering his actors, and was forced to bring them to court to prove they were still alive! Star David Hess launched his acting career as Krug Stillo in Wes Craven's Last House On The Left. In fact, after Deodato watched Last House, he was so desperate to team up with Hess that he offered him half of all the movie's takings. Regardless of whether or not this happened, the two made their first of an eventual six collaborations, and started a lifelong friendship.

House On The Edge Of The Park is very different to Cannibal Holocaust and Last House, except for the kind of violence it portrays. The plot hangs on a revelation at the end. For this reason, I shall hereby declare a ***SPOILER ALERT***. The movie begins on a bold note,  with scatty cuts between the New York City skyline and lead antagonist Alex (David Hess) driving at night. He eyes up a young woman driving alongside him (Karoline Mardeck - Hess' wife under a pseudonym) and runs her off the road before raping and strangling her. This sort of sets the mood for the rest of the movie, and is the vital key to the remainder of the story.

Sometime after (we find out later a year has passed), Alex is in the garage he works in with his buddy Ricky, who is played with such fluency by Giovanni Lombardo Radice that we don't need to guess if he's all there in the head. This actor has quite extraordinary eyes, which are pivotal to us interpreting Ricky. He looks at times quite vacant, with a sideways expression, but when he straightens up and looks dead on, he is very engaging and unsettling. Alex is shutting up shop and dressing in a way-too-tight yellow suit to 'go boogyin'', when a young rich couple, Tom and Lisa (Christian Borromeo and Annie Belle) roll up with a false complaint of car trouble. Alex wants to boogie, and the couple are on their way to a get-together, so Alex basically invites himself along, and the couple are hardly resistent.

The running theme of class conflict is introduced quite early on, with Lisa condescendingly asking Alex about his living. When they get to the gorgeous pad where the party's at, Howard (Gabriele Di Giulio), Gloria (Lorraine De Selle) and Glenda (Marie Claude Joseph) are waiting. They, too, are unperturbed by the unexpected presence of Alex and Ricky, and everyone starts off having a swell time. Ricky is eager to demonstrate his dance skills, much to the odd enjoyment of the young rich folk, who laugh and yell things like 'Hot diggity!' and 'Strip! Strip!' Ricky's easy coercion by the latter exclamation displeases Alex, who grabs his friends and demands that he stops humiliating himself for the enjoyment of the rich bastards.

So instead they suggest a Poker game. While Ricky is busy getting his ass kicked and his money taken, Alex quickly pursues the sly smiles and batting eyes of Lisa, who pointedly informs him that she's off for a shower. Right at the beginning of a party. OK... She teases him into the shower with her, before making a quick exit and angering him greatly. This puts Alex's real character into motion, and where we may have first assumed that Deodato cast Hess for an effective reprisal of Krug, Alex is quite different. Hess himself noted the intelligence levels of the two characters: while Krug is very cunning and controlled, Alex is childish, stroppy and loud when he doesn't get his own way.

When he returns downstairs and realises Ricky is being cheated in the Poker game, out comes the razor blade Alex decidedly took with him from the garage, and the party turns into a violent home invasion/hostage situation. This part lasts a long time, and sees every member of the 'Young Rich' players being either beaten, threatened or sort-of raped. The rape is the difficult bit, and not really because it is very upsetting, but because it is difficult to class as 'rape'. Two of the three women seem to show some sort of genuine sexual interest in the men - Gloria to Ricky and Lisa to Alex - and when these two couples each eventually have sex, it plays out in quite a passionate and pleasing manner. Lisa having spent a good time being a serious cocktease, Alex feels entitled to payout from her, and although she hesitantly undresses, she soon appears perfectly consensual. Gloria and Ricky share a very sensual scene out in the garden.

Anyway, after Alex and Ricky have had their fill of the present guests, the doorbell rings, and gorgeous young Cindy (Brigitte Petronio) from across the street is here. Where the others take one or another opportunity to manipulate or attack the fellas, Cindy takes none, or rather doesn't get the opportunity. She is stripped naked and slashed up by Alex, in the scene most often noted in 'censorship'-related writings. Her role is not an active one; perhaps it only exists to emphasise Alex's callous cruelty. But - in another touch I'm sure Hess himself added - Alex leers over the girl, extensively, grimly singing a lullaby to her, and it is unnervingly menacing.


But while all this is going on, Tom (who looks strikingly like River Phoenix) finally reaches the gun in the drawer, and Alex having accidentally stabbed Ricky in a fit of juvenile rage, the tables most definitely turn. Ricky is bleeding out, and Alex is at gun point, and Tom drops the bomb...the girl at the beginning of the movie was his sister, and this whole night was a set-up on their part. Wow...so taking in this shocking piece of information, let us reassess everything we have just seen. As a precursor to the revenge of the rape of one girl, six people allow themselves to be beaten, humiliated and sexually assaulted. Some may say that's a little nonsensical or counterproductive. They could be right. Or we just imagine that they are hardcore yuppies who know that two dead street guys in their palatial house would spell one thing to the police: self-defense during break-in. These guys really fight hard for their cause.

Well, after all the havoc he's caused, it's only right that Alex gets a quick, painless execution shot to the forehead, right? Nah, these guys are hardcore remember? So after no less than three bullets to the torso, the youngsters do the unthinkable...BULLET TO THE DICK! This is my absolute favourite sequence in the movie. Because immediately the film cuts to Alex's face in slow-mo, from the moment of impact throughout the recognition of pain, and the effects of this on face and voice are tremendously heightened by the dragging pace. It is true, that as well as being very creative and effective, this sequence is easy to laugh about. I wonder if that is a trick by Deodato, that after such ceaseless aggression and intimidation by Alex, we are finally in a position to laugh at him, to mock him. It carries out upon the audience the same mental switch of dominance that the characters themselves feel.

So after the brutal shot to the shlong, Alex falls back into the swimming pool, and Howard stalks the water's edge, finding himself in a position Alex was in earlier, in which he continually kicked Howard back into the water, and pissed on his head. Howard drags Alex out of the water, offering help. Alex, finally looking like the child he acts, gazes up at his rescuer, wrapping his arms around his neck. He is finally helpless. Howard then throws him back into the pool, where Tom and Lisa take turns in shooting him finally dead, leaving his body floating on the water. I really like the ending of House on the Edge of the Park for the dauntless way in which it reaps what it sows. David Hess' sinister onscreen presence often allows little room for sympathy (except for the beautiful Remorse sequence in Last House), but with Alex he boldly tapped into a vulnerability that we somehow felt was always there, waiting to be provoked, which he responds to with cynicism and violence.

ON THE LIST: Cannibal Ferox (1981)

Ruggero Deodato's Cannibal Holocaust set a whole flesh-eating trend in motion back in the early '80s, being one of six titles on the Video Nasty list to feature the word 'cannibal'. Many quite correct allusions have been drawn between Holocaust and Ferox, with a particularly blinding one that is handled totally incorrectly in the latter. But there are also some quite major differences between the two that make Ferox a viewing experience dissimilar to Holocaust.

Ferox starts off, as Holocaust does, in New York City, on a bright sunny day, following a funky lookin' cat with a funky disco soundtrack. He goes to an apartment looking for his smack dealer Mike, only to be confronted by two other, dodgier lookin' fellas, also looking for Mike as he owes them $100,000. They shoot the guy dead in the apartment. Then we cut to Paraguay, where siblings Rudy (Danilo Mattei) and Gloria (Lorraine de Selle) begin to believe they have made a mistake by bringing their 'insecure' friend Pat (Zora Kerova) on their vacation with them. Well, hardly a vacation. Gloria is writing her PhD anthropology dissertation, and intends to prove that 'cannibalism as an organised practise of human society does not and never has existed.' This should already strike the average viewer as a bit of a long shot, so why an anthropologist would believe this enough to trek out into the wilderness is perhaps a little beyond us. But we'll go with the flow.

After Pat has taken part in a very metaphorical 'shower' with the local authority, the trio pack their things onto a rickety ferry (including an abysmally parked Jeep) and are off into the jungle. Genius Rudy manages to sink the Jeep in muddy bogs twice in no more than two minutes, the second time rendering the vehicle useless. So they abandon the expensive mobile quite happily and continue on foot. In the jungle they very soon come across their first live native, nonchalantly noshing on bugs, and then their first dead native, with one impaled and a second wedged between a tree and a giant spiked ball. In a crucially different way to the young film crew in Holocaust, the friends show disgust and horror at their findings, and immediately try to help the two victims, despite the futility. These three are seemingly decent human beings, with all their moral and sympathetic tendencies in order.

Then, somewhat unexpectedly, they run into two American guys, Joe (Walter Lucchini) and Mike (Giovanni Lombardo Radice). Joe is injured and traumatised, and Mike is a tough-talking cokehead, with a pouch of his poison hanging around his neck. This little trinket immediately draws Pat's interest. Well, it's a safe bet that this cokehead Mike is the same dealer Mike those guys in NY were after. Mike tells a tale of horror: he, Joe and their Portugese guide were captured and tortured by a local tribe, who apparently took enough of a disliking to the guide to castrate him and eat his genitals. They supposedly got away with the help of two locals - the very ones the trio found dead earlier. But immediately we know something's not right. Joe is visibly distressed, and keeps interrupting Mike's storytelling, insisting that 'that's enough' and 'they don't wanna hear that.'

At first everybody gets along just fine, but the next morning Gloria is missing, and is eventually found in one of those hole-in-the-ground traps. In there with her is a pig. Mike remorselessly butchers the poor creature with a knife, much to Gloria's horror. He is increasingly aggressive, and quite obviously a raging coke fiend. Meanwhile, Rudy and Joe have ventured to the tribe's village looking for Gloria, and come across the charred remains of what is believed to be the Portugese guide. But again, Joe acts shifty, and begs that they go back. Something's definitely not right. Especially seeing as the elderly and youths of the tribe who remain after the supposed ordeal with Mike and Joe, do not seem threatening in the slightest, but actually very afraid of the now five-strong group.


Joe's injury becomes infected and he quickly turns sickly and delirious. In his fever, he confesses to Rudy and Gloria what really happened to them, or rather what they caused. Turns out the fellas came to the jungle to prospect emeralds, and take advantage of local coke supplies, but when a week of work turned out not a single gem, Mike got sniffed out of his head and castrated, tortured and killed the guide. I guess here would be a good point to talk about Lombardo Radice. Due to his use of pseudonym John Morghen, I didn't realise while watching the movie that it was none other than simple-minded Ricky from Deodato's House on the Edge of the Park, making this a reunion between Lombardo Radice and De Selle. Ricky was a rather pitiful character, whose childish trust found him almost coerced into cruelty. Mike needs to such motivation. He seems to think solely in terms of violence, which he proves once the tables have turned, and he is still yelling death threats at the natives.

Poor Joe dies, and Gloria and Rudy decide that the tribe will seek retribution from all of them, not just their aggressors (which seems stupid and illogical, but apparently true), and when they find Pat and Mike have run away with all their equipment and supplies, decide now's the time to make a run for it. But they are caught, reunited with the also captive Pat and Mike, and given front row seats to the matinee performance of Mike's Comeuppance. Unfortunately they don't seem to have anticipated this performance as highly as we have and it is met with mixed to negative reviews. I, however, enjoyed it immensely. It's fair to say that after Mike's shenanigans, a good old revenge castration was in order. But rather than let him bleed out, they take the time to cauterise the wound.How thoughtful. Until my partner pointed out: his urethra is now sealed off too. His bladder's gonna blow up like a blueberry! Ouch.


The group are then taken to another village for the suffering to continue. The girls are shoved down a hole, Rudy is shot and killed with a poisoned dart, and Mike has more to come...obviously! Whilst down the hole, Pat is well and truly freaking out, while Gloria is perhaps not freaking out enough. She suggests they sing to demonstrate their unity and courage, but also theorises with words what Cannibal Holocaust did with images: the tribes only became cannibalistic when threatened by outside forces, so who were the real barbarians? This was a very well illustrated idea in Holocaust, but it feels both too soon and too simple for such a message just a year after Deodato's movie.

I have just realised that my Video Nasty reviews are rather in-depth, and analyse most movies from beginning to end. Perhaps this is a good format, but perhaps a little long winded - I want you to be left with some things unexpected. So I'll now move on to the film's ending. We have one survivor, Gloria, who is seen being presented with her PhD, looking rather forlorn. It is revealed that her dissertation ended up covering the entire truth of cannibalism, presumably on the basis of what she said earlier to Pat. This revelation is somewhat destructive: Gloria's own brother was killed during the expedition, yet she feels it's better to lie to her parents (supposedly) about her brother's fate in order to save the tribe an undeserved reputation. For the greater good, maybe that's a good thing. But from a grieving parent's perspective, that's pretty shitty.

Cannibal Ferox must be compared with Cannibal Holocaust. One striking thing about Ferox is that the actual on-screen violence is far more scarce. The aftermath, like severed penises and skewered breasts, is shown, but the piercings and severings not so much. In fact, there is more infamous animal violence visible than simulated human violence. Ferox for some reason carries on Holocaust's detested tradition of live animal killings on-screen, but the majority of it is actually inflicted on animals by other animals. It's obviously set-up nature is no less disturbing, and we even get a brand new Turtle Death, which plays out in a very similar way to Holocaust. But I've already been there, done it and regretted it, so I actually averted my gaze when it came.

It is filmed and narrated in a typical movie style, with an invisible camera crew following a bunch of characters from all angles who can't see them. It's far more of an action picture than Holocaust as it lacks the documentary-style realism. That may be one reason why it's not so effective. It may also be that we've seen a very similar scenario before, and done better. It's an entertaining enough watch for something of its genre, but far more put-together than Holocaust. The dialogue is rather scripted, the incidents similarly. The one thing that struck me as unexpected was actually the appearance of Mike and Joe early on. It feels lacking in a sense of dread and cruelty which was so prevalent in Holocaust. It is cleaner and far more produced, and feels rather like it was riding on the back of Holocaust's infamy. But it is good, and must be credited for its horror star cast.

Voices of Desire (1972)

I should probably clear up straight away that Voices of Desire is in no way a 'Nasty', and is just barely a horror film. My review of it has ended up on Video Nasty for the same reason I was led to track down this barely-known softcore skinflick in the first place: The Sandra Cassell Mystery. Probably the most puzzling figure to be part of Wes Craven's Last House On The Left crew, was beautiful young Sandra Cassell (or Peabody), who played Mari Collingwood. She was glorious to look at, and a very good actress. But her post-Last House career is shrouded by different sources giving very different stories. In David Szulkin's book about the movie, which contains her only known interview, she stated that she only made one other movie after Last House (though its production year is unknown) entitled The Seven Deadly Sins, with the untraceable Horse Killer, and Filthiest Show In Town preceding in 1971. This apparently concludes the acting career of Cassell, except for two soap operas and a handful of commercials, before she went on to television production and acting coaching.

However, the world wide wonder of the Internet, offered a few alternatives. Her IMDb page became somewhat plagued by a poster who claimed to be a member of Cassell's family, and vehemently insisted that she only ever made Last House on the Left. They also passionately decried that she didn't make 'porn', and that that was a different Sandra Cassell. This dispute apparently forced Wikipedia to recognise the difference of the two women, one being a porn actress, the other being just an actress. However, her current Wiki page spells her name Cassel, yet the movies in which she used this pseudonym credit her as Cassell. Well, there is no record of a porn actress named Sandra Cassell, spelt with one or two Ls, and yet there are a couple of titles now credited to the one and only Ms Cassell, which could be the key to the confusion.

From 1970 to 1976, Sandra is accredited to: The Model Hunters, Love-In '72, The Last House On The Left, Voices of Desire, Filthiest Show in Town, Legacy of Satan, Teenage Hitch-Hikers, and Massage Parlor Hookers. It's true, these titles do have a certain undercurrent of sex and horror to them. Despite my copious reading, I have only actually seen two of these movies. However, research suggests that Cassell's career consisted mainly of softcore sex films. That is, plenty of sex scenes, but no actual penetration is shown. So for all we know, it's all just faked. But then, given the nature of the industry - and certainly it seemed plausible with Voices of Desire - it could be that the movies were acted and filmed pornographically, and then penetration shots edited out or reframed for a 'regular' audience.

So, on to Voices of Desire itself, which is by no means porn. If it is, then so is Basic Instinct, Last Tango in Paris, etc. Not to really compare Voices of Desire to either of these titles in terms of quality. It quite magically captures a tiny little window in a funky era, and the picture quality and sound are rather minimal. You can only begin to guess the kind of budget and equipment they had for this shoestring flick as you watch, but there is something so delightfully reminiscent about those sorts of elements. We are introduced to Anna (Cassell), who sheepishly makes her way into a detective's office, to tell of an ordeal she has experienced, which is told in flashbacks:

See? That's most definitely Mari Collingwood!

She receives a call at a telephone booth in the city one day, and hears eery voices calling her name. This seems to set off some kind of weird possession. Later, at home, she is suddenly overcome by a nymphomaniacal force, which first manipulates her hands (in a sort of pre-Evil Dead haunted hand thing), and then her whole body, at which point she gives herself over to absolute pleasure...a fruit bowl. This scene is somewhat hilarious, and quite lengthy, but credit to her: Cassell comes up with far more imaginative things to do sexually with fruit than I could ever think of!

 The possession leads her to a creepy mansion, where she is repeatedly seduced by a gang of ghoulish looking hosts. Not to say there's only men - there are women also eager to get it on with their mesmerized captive. There are several sex scenes involving Cassell, who appears totally nude and not in the least bit hesitant. She looks like she's genuinely enjoying herself as she frolics between two men. There is also a scene or two between another girl being held in the mansion and a guy. This is the scene which looks totally pornographic, except for any explicit penetration. Perhaps these two actors were regular hardcore performers, where Cassell stuck to the softcore stuff. Anyway, that's the basic plot of Voices of Desire. A couple of escape attempts are made, but Anna is ultimately overcome by her possessed hands, and the range of pale gaunt lovers on offer.

There's another guy underneath her, by the way.

At the end, we flash back to the present, where Anna is regaling her romps to the detective. His explanation is far from helpful. It's to the effect of "Oh yeah, there was a massive muder/suicide thing up in that very house some twenty years ago. You obviously heard about that and just imagined the rest", just without the sarcasm. Defeated, Anna wanders back out into the city, where she is deafened by the voices once again. The final shot is of the door to the house being thrown open, with all her lovers there waiting for her. Literally the last shot, there aren't even any closing credits. Perhaps there were once, but they got lost on the way between a handful of drive-in theatres, and the attic some guy must have eventually pulled the movie from when it was converted to a DVD format (which, by the way, is one of those homemade style DVD releases. Don't bother searching in HMV.)

Sandra Cassell is cute and very appealing as a leading lady, and here is credited as Liyda Cassell. Voices of Desire was directed by the late legend of soft- and hardcore Chuck Vincent, whose work I am yet to familiarise myself with, but this movie most definitely has style, to the point where you may even refer to it as 'arty' in a very guerrilla way. By today's vomit-inducing standards, Voices of Desire is most certainly not porn, and it probably takes more of a sentimental person like myself to enjoy it. It is far more appealing to see lovers enjoying and embracing each other's bodies than abusing and objectifying them. This is a fun, relatively sexy, delight from the long lost annals of psychedelia.

Wolf Creek (2005)

A review, and for that matter a viewing, of Wolf Creek was for me long overdue. I was 13 when it came out - that special age where you deliberately seek thrills way beyond your maturity level - and everyone was talking about it, and how brutal it was. Of course, 13 year olds spread not an ounce of detail in terms of the movie's plot, only about its levels of violence. Last night, I got to its IMDb page for reasons I don't recall, and inevitably turned to Ebert for his opinion, and it seemed to back up, in greater detail of course, what my teenage classmates had claimed some nine years ago.

As is typical with this kind of hype, I had conjured my own vivid and frankly stupid versions of the movie's infamous scenes, which turned out to be far worse than anything contained on that shiny disc. Ebert said that "When the killer severs the spine of one of his victims and calls her "a head on a stick," I wanted to walk out of the theater and keep on walking." With this, I imagined some poor girl's lonesome head attached to nothing but a spine, with the rest of the body somehow removed. A proper head on a stick. What I was confronted by was a gritty stab to the back and some haunting allusions to Nam. Disgusting, cruel and disturbing, certainly, but in the Creativity Race, it's definitely Mind 1- Movie 0.

Opening with the now wrung-out-and-hung-out 'Based on true events' title card, we are told that 30,000 Australians are reported missing each year. 90% are found within a month. Some are never seen again... This loose statement is about the extent of movie's link to actual events. The supposed inspiration was the tragic story of British backpacker Peter Falconio, who was attacked by a driver in the Australian outback as his girlfriend eventually escaped. She, inside the car, heard a gunshot from outside, then was blindfolded and bound, and never saw her boyfriend again. He is presumed dead. This is nothing like Wolf Creek, but even if it were, is it very ethical to make a movie based on the real pain of a real victim, in order to entertain? And when I ask this, I refer mainly to the horror subgenres, which aim to disgust and sicken its audience, without addressing any deeper issues within its material.

Wolf Creek makes no attempt to address deeper issues within its material. If I'm honest, its surprisingly sudden wind-down and wrap-up gave off a totally unsettling vibe, which - as much as I hate to go there - seemed a little...misogynist. The movie starts off with British tourists Liz (Cassandra Magrath) and Kristy (Kestie Morassi) and their Aussie mate Ben (Nathan Phillips), dedicates the majority of screen time to the ordeals and eventual deaths of the girls, and ends with Ben having been unconscious throughout, pulling himself down from the nails on the wall, and escaping, where he is rescued by two Swedish tourists. After both girls had been taken out, and the film suddenly got back to Ben again, I literally said, "Oh yeah, that guy!" It had been so long, I'd almost forgotten about him. His escape seemed like an afterthought. 

But anyhow, the start of the film is quite strong. Cinematography and locations are beautiful from the start, taking advantage of those vast dusty Australian sunsets and their every colour of the spectrum. The trio are doing some cross country trip and naturally cannot avoid pulling into a diner/gas station populated by the outback's most beardy, baccy-chewin', denim- and leather-clad weirdos, who promptly set about the young outsiders and soon scare them back out of the doors on typically petty and aggressive terms. At this point, I found myself thinking, "If these hicks are going to be the aggressors, and this tiny moment in their day is enough to prompt the massacre, then they really need to get a life!" Thankfully, these weren't the aggressors, they were just false alarms who are never again heard from. I guess they did have lives after all.

En route the buddies decide to stop in at a massive meteorite crater walking trail at Wolf Creek, and there are some spectacular aerial shots of the real Wolfe Creek in Australia. When they return to their car, it won't start and it starts raining, so they sit tight and wait for the morning. Except in the night, headlights ominously approach, and reveal themselves as that of Mick (John Jarrett), who is like Crocodile Dundee without a sense of humour. In fact it happens that Crocodile Dundee is exactly where his sense of humour lacks. Anyway, out here in the middle of the night, he offers a tow back to his to fix the automobile, and the girls are hesitant, but of course Ben, who in horror terms is dubbed 'Male Idiot', is quite open to the idea, even when they are towed off the road and further out into nowhere.

Back at Mick's (wasn't Dundee's name Mick too? I guess every Aussie man is named Mick, just like every French man is François and every Mexican man is Juan) the friends sit around his campfire and drink his 'rainwater,' while he tells them stories of his life. Then they make the stupid and frankly rude decision to mock him with the Dundee "this is a knife" line (which of course is later sarcastically repeated in appropriate context). Mick is visibly displeased, and they soon fall unconscious, the water having been spiked. From this, if not also from his aimless driving up what was a dead end at the crater, it is made known that Mick has little logical motivation for his subsequent abuse. When one of the girls later comes across camera footage of other families having their exact same experiences at the hands of Mick, it is made certain that this kind of thing is just a hobby of his, like growing sideburns or collecting flannel shirts.

Now these girls (remember, Ben is out of the picture for the majority of the action) display an overwhelming level of stupidity in the face of threat. Sure, they wouldn't be thinking straight through the trauma, but in the decisions they make and seem to put some thought into, are real misuses of the energy. For instance, after succeeding in overpowering Mick briefly, he is hit twice over the head, and the girls stagger off, leaving his probably-not-dead body next to a loaded shotgun, which they strategically decide against taking with them. Later, having succeeded in jacking a perfectly good car, they decide to roll the thing off a cliff to convince the not-dead Mick that they are dead. However, he was far behind them, and they should have used the car to get away. No two ways about it. They just make one idiotic move after another, so often that it becomes one of those Scream at the Set movies.

What is there to really say from here? The girls die, the guy lives because he slept through the whole fucking ordeal. And then...no traces of the girls were found, no one was ever taken down for the crimes, the killer is still at large, and nothing has changed. What's the point in there being a survivor if the killer is still at large? Oh yeah, Wolf Creek 2, that's the point. Except I haven't yet seen that, but a quick Wiki search reveals that Jarrett reprises his role, so there we have it. Acting is all right, nothing particularly special. The victims' stupidity really detracts any need for good acting. Jarrett is very good for how his role is written, which is not very intimidatingly. His oncoming headlights are really more menacing than his presence.

Wolf Creek is tense in places, predictable in more, and downright stupid in most. It's not particularly scary, and it won't be one that particularly stands out in my memory.

ON THE LIST: Cannibal Holocaust (1980)

Quite possibly the most infamous title on the list, Ruggero Deodato's Cannibal Holocaust took filmmaking, exploitation and suspension of disbelief to a whole other level. I sought out a DVD copy at the age of fifteen (what a rebel!) having heard of it on a Top Scary Movies list, and apparently being on some hardcore teenage horror-high at the time, was glad I'd watched the movie, but didn't see it as anything insanely upsetting. In the seven years that have since passed, I have continued to study film, and gone on to write about it a whole bunch. And the launch of my Video Nasty page was the perfect excuse to revisit Cannibal Holocaust. This time around, it affected me in an entirely different way.

Not only was I veritably disturbed by its content, I also found myself pondering its ideas and motives and themes. There's no doubt that Deodato has always been something of a sensationalist in his work, and so I'm sure at least a fraction of his reason for making Cannibal Holocaust was essentially to be gross. But, it addresses other matters, and at least he does gross with utter conviction, and never stops short. He also managed to find himself a cast who evidently had few inhibitions and were suitable for manifesting the material. As a now serious observer of film, I saw this movie in a new light - one which I'm sure echoes, in part, what audiences in 1980 saw too.

Cannibal Holocaust is staged in two acts: Act 1 introduces us to Dr Harold Monroe, a New York anthropologist who leads a rescue mission into the Amazonian rainforest in hopes of finding a young film crew, missing in action. The crew went to film a documentary about an indigenous tribe of cannibals, and never returned. Although their expedition involves gruelling on-screen animal killing for food, Monroe's motives are ultimately peaceful, and when they reach the tribe's camp, he makes peace with the people. He then finds an altar made of human corpses and decorated with film reels. Bingo.

The reels are brought back to NY, where a guy from a broadcasting company wants to make the footage into a documentary. However, Monroe has already examined the films himself, and knows what horrors they contain. He insists on showing the reels, to prove just how unwatchable they are. The footage of the young film crew is Act 2, and is disgusting, reviling and quite brilliant. An absolute shining example of cinematic realism. The oldies are usually the goodies, but I don't think even Blair Witch captured such mind-bending horror from a handheld camera perspective. The continuous use of only two separate perspectives at any given time is a tough trick to keep up realistically, and Deodato pulls it off with utter fluency, to the point where it surely cannot be just a film.

Upon this second viewing, it became utterly apparent to me just why Deodato was formally charged with the murder of his cast members. Act 2 is a parallel universe to Act 1 in terms of behaviour. In his trip, Monroe makes a sign of peace by stripping naked and bathing in the river, which attracts the friendly attention of a group of naked native ladies. He integrates himself into their society, even reluctantly accepting their offering of human meat. He quickly succeeds in his mission by doing so and gets home to New York alive. The filmmaking gang are director Alan Yates, his girlfriend Faye and cameramen Jack and Mark. They all quickly succeed in proving themselves utterly depraved assholes with out of control sadistic tendencies. They start off by herding a tribe into a straw hut and setting it on fire, they then take turns in raping a local woman while Faye stands by and yells about wasting film.

The crew's treatment of the tribes is senseless and utterly cruel, and so one really wonders what they imagined would occur as a result of their behaviour. This is perhaps where the theme of media cruelty hits home the hardest: the crew film all of their shenanigans, with the aim of editing it all to look like warfare between two opposing tribes. One need only glance at any Daily Mail Online article to see not only atrociously below-standard spelling and grammar, but also ridiculous sensationalism created out of deliberate distortion of source material. An actress exits a restaurant with a suitably full belly, and suddenly she's 'fuelling pregnancy rumours'. A musician is  photoed looking 'worryingly thin' despite the warped coffee table and wine glass courtesy of Photoshop. The media is increasingly deceptive in its depictions of everything, and often unethical in its methods. This is clearly a theme constant throughout Cannibal Holocaust.

Act 2, or rather, the film crew it follows, goes wild in its depravity. Firstly, their guide Felipe is bitten by a snake, and in an almost seamless sequence, his leg is hurriedly amputated and cauterised against his will by the crew, and the snake hacked up. The intense mixture of fiction and reality worked into the production of each scene is what makes the lines eerily blur. The amputation, even by today's standards, is entirely convincing effects-wise, and so quickly followed by the obviously real footage of a snake being cut up, there's little in our subconscious to convince us that any of it is faked. The documentary-style shooting only heightens this.

The crew continue to slaughter animals (again, for real) and people for seemingly no other reason than to have fun and assert their dominance. They come strutting into the village with guns over their shoulders like rockstars walking onstage, so full of their own perfection. When a neighbouring tribe launch attack on the crew, they are soon made to look very foolish. It is admittedly good to see comeuppance for these degenerates. Cameraman Jack is impaled with a spear, and ringleader Alan barely hesitates to shoot him dead, so that they can film the tribe ripping him apart. There's team spirit for ya! This is one of those really exceptional sequences that I cannot figure out no matter how much I think. The tribe grab Jack's body, face still partially visible, and cut off his penis. I think I remember reading somewhere a theory that the body of a recently-killed cyclist was used. It doesn't really seem beyond any of them, all things considered. But looking closely at the still (the shot is continuous), that does not look like a prosthetic, especially by 1980 standards:

The now hysterical Faye is captured, gang raped and decapitated, while her loving caring boyfriend Alan looks on, filming the whole thing from behind the trees. The entire cast must have had it rough out in the jungle, but all the dragging around and struggling entirely naked through mud and forest must have been an absolute nightmare on many levels. I bet a long hot bath was in order when they each got back home. Having had their way with Faye, the cannibals see the fellas, advance, and we are given our first ever, in the history of cinema, 'camera lands in front of fallen cameraman' shot...

Back in the reality of NY, the thoroughly disturbed broadcaster people concede and Monroe orders the footage burned. End of movie.

This is definitely, alongside Last House On The Left, the most provocative and well made picture to grace the Video Nasty list. It is probably the nastiest too. In many of the other titles, my pre-imagined versions of infamous scenarios I'd heard of turned out to be far scarier than anything I eventually saw in the actual movies. Cannibal Holocaust is just as grizzly as it promises to be. It is totally there, in your face, inescapably real and brutal. The movie also caused a probably record-breaking plethora of controversy, firstly over the frequent animal cruelty, and secondly over the apparent torture and murder of an entire cast. People were convinced it was a snuff film, and Deodato was facing life imprisonment for the actors' deaths, and was forced to produce them all, alive and well, in court, as well as to reproduce several special effects, such as the infamous Impalement, to prove it had been faked.

The movie remains banned or heavily censored in some countries, and the wide outrage and trauma the movie caused is definitely testament to its effectiveness. And thankfully, the population of intellectuals out there recognised the film's social commentary. Monroe concludes, 'Who are the real cannibals?' All of the cruelty the crew filmed in order to edit into alternative narratives, incriminate them all as sadistic numbskulls with absolute lack of human emotion or empathy. Ironically, they went to the Amazon to document a supposedly cruel tribe of cannibals, who were backwards enough to kill and eat their own kind. But what does it say about three grown men from a civilised country, who laugh and holler while taking turns raping a girl, all whilst rolling around in the mud like animals? The very act plays out animalistically.

Monroe's initial visit to the forest demonstrated that peace is rewarded with peace. The crew's nihilistic cruelty was met with nihilistic cruelty. Cannibal Holocaust really examines the cycle of cruelty as human nature dictates it. Are the tribespeople the real enemies, or the real barbarians? It could be argued that the scariest thing about the movie is what the Everyman is capable of inflicting upon the innocent, and it is a bold move to cast the typical native antagonist in an anti-hero light.

Can I condone the animal cruelty? No, I just cannot. I spent all my teenage years as a strict vegetarian who once threw up after accidentally ingesting a gelatine-containing product, and I abhor animal cruelty in any form. That said, I do not spend my days and nights planning the hijacking of animal testing labs either. I have to say that every scene of animal killing in Cannibal Holocaust turned my stomach and unsettled me greatly. What especially struck me was how long the animals took to die. I don't know if this was recognised and used as some kind of metaphor, but it upset me greatly. Far more so than any scenario played out on humans. Probably because of the element of innocence in an animal, and perhaps that is another point to linger on. What we are to recognise is the senseless suffering of an innocent at the hands of a barbarian, and how (whether with animals or humans) once violence is initiated, it becomes a brutal cycle.

Cannibal Holocaust is a brilliant, pioneering and overwhelmingly effective film. Deodato cemented himself as a horror maker with real balls, and launched a horror subgenre that is now a well and truly flogged dead horse. His will always be the reigning supreme.