Baryonyx

Swamp Women Review

That’s a dubious fucking start.

Looking through my embarrassingly comprehensive collection of crappy, public domain horror films, I saw this title- just the title- and got instantly excited. “Swamp Women!” I thought happily, “That’s perhaps the best combination of environment and gender possible!” And, indeed, “Desert Females” or “Steppe Men” has nothing on a title like that, so I flipped it into my Playstation and sat down, blissfully unaware of anything I was about to see.

Quickly it got better. The writer was “David Stern” which immediately led to me declaring that it must be the same David Stern who runs the NBA, despite being quite aware it wasn’t. The director? None other than Roger Fucking Corman! This couldn’t be better if it was William Castle or Jesus Franco! And as the film began, it became very clear that this was vintage Corman, making the quality of the film somewhere between the Ivan Marx Bigfoot footage and Roseanne Barr erotica. That paragraph included more name drops than any other paragraph in Baryonyx history.

Quickly I learned this was that most unappreciated genre of horror trash- the woman’s prison film. For the uninitiated (and, to be fair, this partially included me- I knew of the genre but had never seen any of it), the women’s prison film capitalizes on the erotic possibilities (?!?) of a bunch of women who kill people and are incarcerated together as a result. Now, as we’ll quickly learn- whether or not you want to- that’s not exactly how this one plays out. I would assume the 1950s date was the reason why.

Because COMMUNISTS made porn in the 1950s!

What occurs, then, is the “finest policewoman in New Orleans” is sent into a women’s prison to help some prisoners escape and lead her to stolen diamonds. Why? Well, they’re valuable, and Huey Long had been dead for some time at this point and the state needed funding, I guess, and plea bargains were apparently out of the question. So they head into the swamp, hitting into a happy couple going through the bayou on a motor boat. Since one is a man, all the women will be throwing themselves at him for the duration of the film. His girlfriend doesn’t stay in the picture long, but he doesn’t seem to mind…

See that ellipsis? You would think a plot twist is coming because of it, but don’t worry, you couldn’t be farther from the truth. Once they’re all in the swamp together, they trudge toward the (barely hid) diamonds and start trudging out, with a few environment set-pieces like “swamps” and “alligators” tossed in to give some sense of drama that the film so desperately needs. In a risque attempt to make his film sell tickets, there’s even a skinny dipping scene, but you don’t see anything and you just sort of dislike everyone more and more as the film goes hurtling toward a fairly obvious conclusion that leaves you with one overwhelming thought- what was the point?

“Shit no, but it’s got a POSTER!”

It’s so easy for me to sit back here over fifty years since the film was made and not see the point because, as an art form, exploitation has advanced so far that what seems boring and pointless today was a breathtakingly risque stunt then. So let’s give Corman credit where credit is due. I never considered turning off the film, because, you know, it was called Swamp Women and I am a believer in the strong title. And you know what else? These women are badass. From lady cop to lady prisoner, the only character who seems over his head the whole time is the vaguely-looks-like-Elvis guy! He’s at their mercy- not the other way around- and that doesn’t turn around ever in the film, although the finale sort of evens the balance out a little bit. When his strength is taken out of play by tying him up, suddenly he becomes the traditional submissive character- his looks are his only chance at survival. That is a mindblowing concept for 1955, considering we’re not really out of the woods yet with the weak feminine character in 2012.

Inevitably, a claim like that will (and should) draw some accusation that I’m projecting a favorite horror talking point onto a film that couldn’t possibly be making that sort of statement. That said, Corman’s record is not hopeless on the topic of feminism. TakeThe Wasp Women, which I’m sure we’ll get to eventually- a work that combines the drive-in monster movie with a very real examination of the feminine success’s ties to one’s looks. Corman clearly got that there was a woman’s plight that, through at least some of his films, he was interested in exploring- and of course, a barrage of sexploitation flicks so stunning in scope that the point is easy to lose. I guess there’s something to be said about being intellectual and being sleazy at the same time. Here’s to you, Roger.

The bow-tie is made of Vincent Price film.

Despite the reading I gave of the feminine power aspect of the film, I don’t want to leave you with some impression that this is some lost, great statement from a man known for making shitty movies. Let me spell it out: This movie sucks. Despite the potential feminism, it’s not as though this movie is well made, well acted, well written, well shot, well cast, well produced, or well worth your time. It’s sort of like watching the “climax” of Cannibal Terror where the actors are walking through scenes of nature for what feels like forever, except for an entire film. And while at least there’s a big gore payoff (botched as it is) in Cannibal Terror, we’re well aware that payoff is never going to come in 1956. Picture that. I just used Cannibal Terror- a shittier film- as a positive comparison, but that’s the difference in watching exploitation twenty years apart. One just exploits better.

If this were 50 years ago, the movie would have its place in drive-ins and would sell to the same teenage boys we sell these things to today (teenage boys never change), but today it exists as a relic of how we used to sell sex on the big screen. Frankly, I never minded watching it, but unless you want to see the dynamics of an undercover cop with three convicts for 50 minutes or so, it’s not really worth watching today. Worst of all, it was called Swamp Women, but there weren’t any mud monsters and shit.

Pictured: Target audience, 1956.

When an Old Priest and a Young Priest isn’t Enough

“God, no!” she breathed softly, as much of shock as in fear. The demon-boy glanced back at her condescendingly. “God has nothing to do with this.” he said sharply, as though correcting a child’s mistake. “In fact, let’s remove God from our lexicon altogether.”

-Baryonyx, poorly describing a scene in Demonic Toys. (Hey, Charles Band, let’s talk novelizations!)

—————————————

I was re-watching (no, really!) Demonic Toys the other night when I watched the scene described above. Now, in my previous review of the film, I mentioned how the movie had a very Christian take on the morality of living dolls, which tends to be explained through either magic or voodoo. To an extent, I stand by that viewpoint, but the line “God has nothing to do with this” was such an interesting one that I felt it could use a little more explanation. No horror fan left behind, and all that.

Typically, when religion is involved in horror movies, it seems as though the outcome can be solved through it. Whether it’s an exorcism or well timed holy water, it’s assumed that dark spirits are, in some way, held in check by God. It’s an easy concept- angels are good and work for God, demons are bad but God interferes with them all the time. I figure that’s why it’s used so much instead of considering the complexity such a spiritual world would be likely to have. You know, like the complexity of human life.

What is an angel? What is a demon?

We’re going with the Catechism here. On angels, the Catechism says:

As purely spiritual creatures angels have intelligence and will: they are personal and immortal creatures, surpassing in perfection all visible creatures, as the splendor of their glory bears witness.

I want to call to attention two words here in particular. First, and most importantly, will. Will is a big concept here because it suggests that angels are not simply deus ex machinas in God’s service. Will means free will; it means that the angels are free to serve God, help man, or…

Or rebel.

The devil and the other demons were indeed created naturally good by God, but they became evil by their own doing… They try to associate man in their revolt against God.

So we can give the same attributes to demons as we give to angels, because a demon is really an angel that left in free agency. This means on top of will we should associate intelligence to both, and that means when a demon tells you God has nothing to do with it, he can either be pulling your leg or pointing out a pretty comparable question: why didn’t God stop Timothy McVeigh?

Or, for that matter, Bette Midler?

Free Will and Creation

If we assume (and we are, for the purposes of this shitstorm) that God gave humans and angels free will, then the best way to imagine their free will is to think of it just like ours. God isn’t driving around in a police cloud every time you call your roommate a honky. That’s not how free will works for us, so why would it work that way for spirits? Now, the best argument against that is that angels are very different, higher beings than us. And while that’s true, it’s also a matter of perspective. Angels should seem all-powerful to us because we’re a lower being, but to God, the difference between angels and humans is probably not so great.

What I’m getting at here is that we should assume that if God isn’t going to come down and stop Ted Bundy, He’s not going to stop a demon from manifesting itself in a toy factory somewhere and stirring some shit up every now and then. Free will means allowing that- and the consequences of actions that follow.

Which makes you wonder what else wouldn’t be interfered with…

In Horror

I’m glad you’ve made it this far. We took a lot of investigation to get to what this concept means in horror movies. Specifically, I think it means that horror writers are lazy.

Demonic possession and the intrusion of the spiritual world into the physical are all pretty powerful concepts in horror, but with one or two notable exceptions hasn’t been done all that well. Why? Well, maybe it’s just me, but we have an idea of how it’s going to end. In some way or another, it’s typically the setpiece of divine intervention coming in to save the day. Now, some films try to mix that with tragedy- a suggestion of human sacrifice in return for that divine help- but ultimately no matter who’s got the winning hand, the film just throws its hands up and reminds us all that we’re playing with God’s deck. Where’s the drama?

Demons, at least biblically, are powerful stuff but not invulnerable. You might remember an old bible story where Jesus is in the desert, tempted by Satan repeatedly, but keeps rebuking him. Now, I’m not saying that, you know, Jesus was an ordinary man, but for all the spiritual fanfare, Jesus was a man. You know, flesh and blood and all that stuff. He dies at the end of the book.

Which brings us to an interpretation of The Exorcist.

It’s not easy seeing green.

So the film features an exorcism- the ultimate everyday suggestion of divine intervention- as hurting a demon, but, you know, that alone doesn’t do much to expel it. It’s a human endeavor- a priest convincing a demon how much cooler it is to possess a man of God than a young girl- and then finding the willpower to extinguish his life while a demon is in possession of it to end the menace. This is exactly what I’m alluding to above. It doesn’t always have to be God taking his deck of cards and going home! The idea of man vs. demon is as compelling as the Pirates vs. the Yankees, and just as unlikely as a victory for the lesser being. It’s when a film recognizes that idea of free will that it becomes truly memorable.

Unfortunately, Demonic Toys goes the opposite route, introducing an unborn child into the mix to fight a demon, which is sort of the best reason to ban abortions I’ve ever heard. But how is this possible without divine intervention? Is this really as realistic (or as dramatic?) as a tough police officer finding a way to trick a demon? I am aware that I just suggested demons coming to the physical world and fighting humans was realistic. The idea is, though, that standing man on his own to fight the spiritual world is always, always preferable to bringing God in- both in terms of drama (humanity becomes the favorite as soon as God’s involved) and in… okay, realism (because with free will, we can’t expect God to work as a cosmic police officer).

And Jeff Goldblum as the Devil enters.

Why don’t more films take the route of Mister Frost (pictured above) where the battle is between the devil and man? In that film, Frost gets frustrated, loses some mental battles, but in the end? Maybe he wins, maybe he loses, but the point is the decision in facing a free-willed spiritual intervention is on humanity. When we’re the underdog, the film is better, and at least the writers spent time thinking of a real ending. And if you doubt any of these conclusions? Remember, God allowed Twilight.

Pictured: Being forsaken.

The Cold Review (AKA: The Game)

This is probably the greatest box art I’ve ever seen.

Usually, I make note of alternate titles in the review somewhere, but this is a special case. The film was known as The Game for, as far as I can tell, almost its entire existence until it became The Cold later on DVD in the 2000s. Why? I’m no copyright expert, so I don’t know if that was involved in any way. I’d like to think that Triple H is suing Bill Rebane for defaming his character with this hunk of shit.

Yes, Bill Rebane. That Bill Rebane. We’ve visited his shitacular films before with The Demons of Ludlow which, like The Cold, is transcendentally rewatchable and yet can’t be taken seriously as anything approaching decent film. Over a year ago with Ludlow, I had made fun of Bill Rebane for living in Wisconsin and making horror movies there. Well, life is funny, and now that I live in Wisconsin I sort of want to meet the man. Before I get too into it, if anyone out there thinks this is the worst Rebane film, you couldn’t be more wrong; other projects like The Giant Spider Invasion and Monster A-Go-Go guarantee that we’ll see him again here.

“THIS FILM IS CALLED WHAAAAAAAAT”

The plot, such that it attempts to be a plot, is that a group of three rich people who look nothing like depicted on the video sleeve have a lot of money, so they decide to hold an annual contest with plebeians in an island hotel. The concept of the contest is that whoever stays on the island the longest wins a million dollars. Lest you think this is too difficult, the old people assure the contestants (and, earlier, us) that no danger will befall them. It’s just a bunch of spooky crap. Good thing they told us that. I was worried I’d take something in this film seriously.

So the group of (entirely white) poor people come to the island and start dancing to one of the worst musical numbers to ever be put to celluloid. Look, I make music, and few people would argue it’s not terrible, but I have never, ever, approached the ear-abortion on display here. Fortunately, Bill Rebane knows this, and responds with damn-near pornographic camera angles of the young ladies dancing, and also an incredibly unintentionally hilarious shot of an old person butt grab on some dude who looks like Adam Sandler’s best friend in The Wedding Singer. Mustache dude responds by this strange twirl-to-white man’s moonwalk combo that sets back choreography by twenty years on its own. This is all within four minutes of the film staring.

And, yes, slowly but surely spooky things start to happen, like a fake shark in a swimming pool, or contrived kidnappings that, again, we know aren’t real because they told us so. So one of the plebes fancies himself an investigator and looks into files in the hotel that we barely give a damn about, because the plot has been laid out well enough that if a twist comes, we can easily determine if it’s actually going to have any effect on the ending. Toward the end, the hotel gets colder- my best guess is that after realizing they couldn’t scare anyone away, they just decided to have a mini ice age migration to see who can put up with it. And around that time a cold ice ghost appears, straight out of Luigi’s Mansion, but don’t worry, because again, we’re probably not going to take it seriously when there’s fake gags around here everywhere anyway.

By the way, I heard there’s a Luigi’s Mansion 2 coming out. Didn’t see that coming.

Aside from the plot being a 0/10, the execution of the plot being a -5/10, and the characters having an interesting lack of diversity, there’s very little to interest anyone with The Cold. In a lot of ways, I guess it’s a rip off of House on Haunted Hill, but without the interesting ulterior motives or scumbaggy noir cast of characters. It’s sort of like stripping a superior film for parts, but only taking the frame and half the engine. I guess it moves, but it doesn’t go anywhere.

Fortunately, this is a bad horror movie in the 1980s, so as you can imagine the 12 year old boy audience was in full effect. One of my favorite things about this era was, as I’ve stated before, that horror was relied on as a source of pornography that even a 12 year old could rent. By the time I rolled around, this was pretty much the past, but what a concept. This is why nudity almost always appears in horror films in the 1980s. But I digress.

Anyway, mustache dude is walking by a steam room and sees Southern Accent Girl laying in the steam room, naked, with no towel on. That’s sort of the worst idea I’ve ever heard, until mustache walks in and convinces her to have sex with him. “Is it safe?” she asks, blissfully unaware that President Reagan hadn’t even mentioned AIDS yet. “Of course it’s safe,” mustache returns educationally, “I’ve had a vasectomy.” Ding-ding-ding! When I have children, I’m not going to talk to them about sex, I’m just going to show them this scene. And then I wait for grandchildren.

Company of Wolves Review

No, dammit. The movie.

Uh… yeah, this is better, I suppose.

BeingBaryonyx does not mean I make fun of crappy movies all the time. For instance, despite the above screenshot, I don’t think you’d find many people to call Company of Wolves a truly crappy movie. No- instead, it’s weird as shit, which is why I wanted to talk about it, and I have the microphone, so deal with it. I’ll talk about some crappy movie tomorrow.

Company of Wolves is a lot like Inception, except original. The entire movie takes place within a dream, except even within said dream there are often stories being told by Rosaline, who we’ll call the main character, so much of the time the structure looks more like this:

Story > Dream > “Real” world… because to be fair, I’m not so sure that it’s real at all. The point being that we should expect logic to work a little bit differently in this film. Dream logic is already messed up as it is, but adding old wives tales and bits of advice like “don’t trust a man whose eyebrows meet” and then making that integral to the story? You sort of roll with Company of Wolves, take what it gives you, and then go back with an eye for how damn Freudian the thing is later.

Bette Midler’s Birthday Extravaganza

So with an eye toward the plot not meaning much, let’s go into it anyway. Rosaline- if that IS your real name- is sleeping and probably ill, judging by her tossing, in her bedroom. So we go into her dreamworld, which originally features a bunch of evil giant toys, then some wolves, then makes sense finally. Her sister has been eaten by wolves, so she’s at the funeral with her Grandmother and her mother and father. She stays the night with her grandmother, and an awful lot of time with her from here on out. Grandma, like most grandmothers, dispenses advice with social meaning like “never stray from the path” and tells stories about what happens to women who marry traveling men with unibrows.

Specifically, this means the unibrow’d will actually turn out to be a werewolf.

Like this.

So from here, it’s more important to view the film as a series of scenes that have a tenuous connection to each other, but barely manage to tell a cohesive story. It’s much more about what the scenes show than what they mean to the plot. Rosalina travels through the woods with a boy, climbs a tree, finds some bird eggs, lipstick, and a mirror- then the bird egg hatches and reveals a miniature fetus. Around this time, aristocrats in a story turn into wolves due to the interference of a lower class ex-lover. Wolves are hunted in the forest, priests are mocked, and finally the film reaches its centerpiece with a retelling of Little Red Riding Hood that’s heavy on the Freud with a massive dowsing of feminism.

Actually, more on the feminist part. I’ve mentioned before that most horror movies tend to suggest the female as weaker or more vulnerable, exploit nudity, and a whole host of other things that you can find with the ease of a Google search. Company of Wolves veers in the opposite direction hard enough to give you whiplash. Rosaline isn’t just strong- in the climax of the film you might really feel she’s the one with the power over the wolf, and that her fate is her choice; she is no victim, and the story isn’t just richer for it, but perhaps more than anything else, should not be told without this consideration.

Pictured: powerful female.

Even if it appears the wolf is preying on her, her sexuality is the real power, and perhaps this is part of the message of the film. Every story that veers us (rather mercifully, actually) from the plot is another lesson in gender studies, though not in such a way that it’s unviewable if you have an aversion to intellect in your horror. An early tale shows the marriage relation as one of male power and female subservience; you could argue the aristocrat-wolves tale later is similar but with a happier ending for womanhood; and exactly what would you associate with a wolf other than predatory dominance, anyway? It’s a great, disjointed exercise in artistic pretension, but one that works. And, truthfully, we don’t see it often enough.

Author Angela Lansbury wrote the original story, which is excellent in its own right, and if memory serves wrote the screenplay as well. What follows is one of the better literary to film conversions, and something that you should never, ever watch if you’ve been doing drugs.

On that note: Top 3 horror films to never watch on drugs.

Interestingly, Baryonyx is straight edge, but wasn’t always so.

3) The Tingler

The Tingler features an LSD death scene in the middle of the movie that just won’t work if you’re ready to freak out.

2) Company of Wolves

“What’s going on man…. hey…. why is that dude a wolf?”

1) HOUSE

Please, for all that is holy, don’t watch this movie after doing drugs. I, sober that I am, once watched it with friends who were decidedly not. I have never seen anyone freak out at a flying lampshade nearly so much in my life. Later that night I hummed the theme as a high friend started freaking out badly. I think I gave him an aneurysm.

On second thought, yeah, watch this one with high people.

Lake Dead Review

A comparison so easy, even Baryonyx can make it.

I’ve seen enough of the damn things to drown a meerkat, but I still have no idea what the “8 Films to Die For” box set is all about, or what After Dark Horrorfest is. Apparently, it’s a good way to ship out a bunch of shit horror movies in a set and even convince some poor sap collector down the line that they’re worth having. Of the set Lake Dead is in, I’ve seen a couple, but Lake Dead is the only one I’ve bothered to track down and watch again later. (This is, in part, due to the unfortunate fact that I can’t remember the title of the one where the protagonist literally runs around New York City punching rat-people in the face. That’s a fucking concept). There are a number of reasons why Lake Dead is memorable, but before anyone gets excited, the film sucks and whoever organizes these things should feel bad about themselves.

Lake Dead builds on the always present fear of inbreeding creating redneck superhuman monsters who kill in the name of preserving their way of life, sort of if the Civil War were fought by insane, fiercely traditional men hellbent on their own traditions instead of just the sou… oh. Now, I think it’s passing into common knowledge that the genetic risks of inbreeding are much lower than we thought, and that even if inbreeding causes genetic mutations, the odds are against creating linebacker sized men with the strength of gorillas. Still, it’s a plot piece here and I think we have better things to do with science than turn it against Lake Dead. It’s safe to let this one go and just put it into the fine tradition of inbred monster movies.

Some comparisons can’t be made, however.

The plot of this movie follos three sisters who have inherited a motel from their grandfather, a man who is shot in the first scene yelling about how “the tradition is sick!” and “we are abominations!” which, believe it or not, is not exactly making it difficult to guess what it is. Anyway, they inherit the motel and go to see it with a boyfriend who looks way too much like Seth Green for me to get comfortable, a promiscuous girl-friend (every movie’s gotta have one), a jealous girlfriend, and a frat boy male friend (every movie’s gotta have one), which is a terrific setup for any Judge Judy episode. Shockingly, they are attacked by two Geico Cavemen and the one police officer doesn’t seem as helpful as he could be. Will the only strong male character save the day, or will someone else appear and save the day? I think I’m getting bitter.

Now, if your film won’t rely on suspense or well-developed scares to be effective- and, please, you should- you’ve got options (last resorts?) as a horror director: nudity and gore. For the latter, I’ve seen an unrated version of the film that seemed to be bloodier (including an absolutely brutal shot of a spike being driven through legs. Oooooooh), but this isn’t the version I own on DVD. As such, this is not an overwhelmingly gory film in this form and doesn’t impress on that end, unless masks getting hit repeatedly and unconvincingly with a gun stock get you. At the least, let’s say it’s no Dawn of the Dead.

This is the biggest mistake Lake Dead makes, except for “not sucking.” There was no way this film was ever going to be released in theaters, anyway, so the ability of gore to make it… well, at the least, stand out, was maximized. You have no censors to impress! Gore it up! Show someone getting hit with something sharp! And there are half hearted attempts, but it looks a lot more like the budget was spent on one scene in particular and the whole hardcore gore thing was skipped. I’m not saying Baryonyx enjoys movie gore or, for that matter, gratuitous nudity- but you need to do something to make your movie more than just another redneck misadventure flick.

Before we continue, we all understand Baryonyx is not a pig, right?

So you would think this means the movie would rely on nudity.

I know he would.

I can see how the conversation would go in the pitch meeting. The writer describes the plot and intricacies of the movie (“It’s sort of like a really shitty Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but with more girls!”) and details how it wouldn’t use atmosphere, or good writing, or capable actors to drive the plot. The producer leans back, nodding.

Producer: So the writing will suck, the characters are two-dimensional, and you’re going to use this strange style of jumpcutting during two scare scene the entire movie and then never mention it again (this happens, by the way), and you can’t even come up with a premise better than something we came up with in the 1970s?

Writer: That’s… write! (does the pun dance)

Producer: So, nudity’s our focus here?

Lake Dead responds with a firm: NO! Which is not to say there isn’t nudity- this is a horror movie- but that it doesn’t rely on it thickly like, say, Massacre in Dinosaur Valley or Literally any Italian Film Ever Made does. One character gets naked, but what’s interesting here is that there are three other female characters that the film can- and doesn’t- exploit for the benefit of 12 year old boys the world over. I’m not saying this is what should have happened- I’m just asking you, the casual observer: do you think Lake Dead sounds strong enough to survive on its own merits?

If I’m a horror producer and I’ve got a shitty script on my hands, I’m going to always, always lay on the gore and the nudity heavy, because you need to find a way to make your film stand out in a crowded field. There will always be gore hounds, and there will always be 12 year old boys. You can hit both, or you can pull a Lake Dead- a film not quite strong enough to stand out without this. I hate to say things like “everyone should have gotten naked” or “they should have had brains flying out of heads like they have an eject button” but really, you have options to save your movie. You gotta take them. And… the product right now is pretty bland. I don’t think there’s any choice but to turn this into something ridiculous enough to be funny, or at least memorable.

What do these posters show you? It’s… it’s nothing, right?

That doesn’t mean there aren’t redeeming moments to the film. The rednecks are used in a threatening enough way, even if the defining trait of them is a “retarded strength” that gets old and feels plenty used up from other films. The end of the movie hits you with some great one-liners (“The family fuckfest is over!”) that, if you find the right group of people, you can use at least twice before being arrested. The boyfriend goes from being “a dumb construction worker” to a college graduate within minutes of dialogue. You can use the DVD as a coaster.

Also, since we seem to be bringing it up a lot lately, this has one of those all time hilarious sex scenes.

EXACTLY

It’s really the same problem we’ve run into earlier. Why- why, ever- would you include super dramatic epic orchestral music during a meaningless sex scene before anything bad has happened to the main characters? It’s blown up to proportions that no meaningless scene can ever deserve. In fact, the scene doesn’t even make sense to be included! (I realize I just spent a paragraph questioning why there’s not more nudity in the film- there’s no nudity in this scene, so I stand by it not needing inclusion). This is really the oddest form of gratuitous- it’s unnecessary, and yet PG-13 at the same time. And I guess it brings us back to a question raised when discussing Flesh Eater- how does nudity happen in these films at all? If you turn it down for Lake Dead, is it because it’s not enough money? Or because you’re too serious of an actress? And, ultimately, which is the stranger claim?

So with the realization that I sound like a pig devoting most of a review to the question of nudity, please try to understand. It’s a tool to be used in making trash horror, and when your horror isn’t trash, you probably don’t need it at all. So my advice to budding horror filmmakers out there: Come up with a good scenario, and come up with good ways of dispatching your characters, and you’ll never run into the problem where you’re running out of ways to make a movie marketable, and you’ll never have to reach into the trashbag that is cheap movie sex at all. And as a maturing horror fan, I’ll be grateful for it.

Flesh Eater Review

What a difference 20 years makes to the undead.

This is a little bit of a weird one. When we talk about the tree of films Night of the Living Dead is directly tied to, we get a far larger sample of films than you would expect. There’s the direct sequels- Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead, Land of the Dead, Diary of the Dead, and Survival of the Dead that were all made by George Romero. Then, we have Return of the Living Dead, which had cowriter John Russo’s direct involvement and is considered to be a continuation of that storyline as well. Return of the Living Dead, not to be outdone, also has four sequels that I can recall. Then, we need to count the sequels to Dawn of the Dead made by Italians- so that adds on Zombie, Zombie 3, Zombie 4, and Zombie 5. And then we need to count unofficial sequels like Children of the Living Dead and Day of the Dead 2, which, yes, is an unofficial sequel. And then we need to count remakes, so that’s two remakes for Night of the Living Dead and further remakes for Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead. And, finally, we need to count sequels that haven’t come out yet and should later on- two unofficial Night of the Living Dead sequels slated to come out this year and one Day of the Dead sequel that might never come out, if we’re all lucky. So Night of the Living Dead is a lot like those Bible passages where everyone’s begetting people. You never know just how long the timeline is going to be, only that it stopped being important twenty sentences ago.

Okay, but where does Flesh Eater fit in here? It’s closer to official than any unofficial sequel, and is less a sequel than a homage. It was made in 1988, a few years after Day of the Dead and twenty after Night of the Living Dead, by Bill Hinzman, who played the first zombie we see in the original 1968 film. He wrote, directed, produced, and starred in this one, which as it turns out was probably not the best choice. Then again, you get the feeling this was more of a labor of love than a major motion picture. You get the feeling Hinzman got really into his zombie in 1968 and built up a backstory and a scenario in which his character could really shine. Twenty years later, he finally got his chance.

And he did this with it.

With that sort of introduction, you get the idea that this is anything but a cinematic masterpiece. The film’s direction is amateurish, with more fade-to-blacks than a Metallica concert, poor writing, and actors that scream local theater. And while I suppose that’s a disadvantage, there’s something contagious about the film that really feels like it was done purely out of a desire to resolve a storyline that had been brewing for all of twenty years. The gore effects are hit or miss (generally, miss), but this is the rare zombie movie that gets by on pure enthusiasm.

The story is extremely minimalistic (read: nonexistent). A group of friends (who are all clearly from Western PA- you can just smell it on these people) go up into the woods to spend Halloween night on top of a mountain. It’s around that time that a random man finds a runestone (?!) under a stump and, blaming college kids, pulls it up. A strange inscription is on the stone, so he peels it up and finds a grave. It’s then that the zombie is revealed, who quickly yells and bites the guy. It’s comical, but it’s how the film is going to go from here on out, so get used to it.

Here’s the inscription. It’s obtuse, but whatever, it’s about zombies.

So when he bites you, you die and turn into a zombie. Pretty straight-Romero stuff. And it spreads quickly, only taking a turn when there’s a shot at providing nudity in a story that turns more quickly into a series of vignettes than anything cohesive- a short siege, zombies attacking a family home, and zombies at a college Halloween party. You really get the idea that these vignettes have been formulating for years, since they are pretty much ideal zombie movie scenes across the board. It’s best viewed with a disregard for story and an idea that this is going to add a few more ideas to the outline established in Night of the Living Dead, if done usually pretty poorly. As for the ending, it’s something you’d see coming from twenty years away.

You know, I always sort of wonder how such small scale productions like this get nudity to happen at all. It’s not like these actresses are ever going to be in anything else, or that they can be paid well. As a casting agent, do you just sort of say “C’mon, let people look at you naked! Fuck it!” as your pitch? That’s what I’d go with, but I don’t know, I’ve never made a movie or anything.

“25 years from now, you’ll perplex some splatterpunk nerd on the internet! Fuck it!”

The film’s most interesting facet in 2012 might be the cultural moment it occurred in. See, zombie films were sort of being beaten back in the 80s due to a series of articles and mass paranoia regarding Satanic rituals happening on farms like the one the film originally takes place on. Now, I don’t doubt that there were satanic cults- there’s one of everything in this country- but I do want to point out that no evidence of sacrifices or even of the cults’ existence was ever found. All we had to pay for that evidence was a moralistic political faction gaining steam and organizations claiming to be made up of parental authority keeping kids away from zombies and, later, music. Now, the film’s reason for zombie attacks? That’s right, satanic cults! This would almost never be used today! There’s something extremely telling about an era and its’ zombie movies. Why the dead come back to life is very often related to a concern of the day- Satan, space radiation, or chemical gas, it’s there. Anthropologically, it’s pretty fascinating.

In the film, this image is animated and growls at you. Really!

In a sense, I’m shocked this film is available on DVD or widely available, because it feels so provincial- but that’s its charm. I don’t know if it feels as special, charming, or exciting to people that don’t feel a connection to the places and people depcited, but it’s certainly worthy of a view. The enthusiasm’s as contagious as the zombie bites, and hey, it’s not Italian.

Just as a final note, Bill Hinzman passed away earlier this year, on February 6th 2012. He grew up 15 minutes from where I did in the next town over. Rest in Peace, Bill, and thanks for scaring the hell out of me for most of my life. No need to get back up this time.

Leprechaun 4: In Space Review

Warwick Davis, Cher is your mother.

Look, I talk about some stuff that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but trust me: I swear this movie really happened. You won’t believe this, but it was released straight to video. I’m not ready to say something like “A once proud franchise goes down the shitter” because, let’s face it, Leprechaun was never exactly what you would call a good franchise, but it was better than this. Jennifer Aniston starred in the original- and now we’re watching a movie called Leprechaun in Space? How did we get here from the last movie, Leprechaun 3, which was about… well, okay, it was about the Leprechaun getting to Las Vegas, but still. I think.

This film is deep in the straight-to-video low budget tradition of taking a script with no connection to any other film and calling it a sequel for another. If this sounds strange to you, I’d like to point you in the direction of the Witchcraft series, which has been doing this since the second film. “But sure,” you might retort, “But the Leprechaun is a more famous character!” And you’d be right. But before you do your victory dance, this is nowhere close to the only time a “major” franchise character was stuck in one of these exercises- some of the latter day Hellraiser films employ this strategy, and I’ve long suspected that the last Halloween film does the same. So we can’t be too shocked that this is going on. What we can be a little shocked at, though, is that the film is a sci-fi shitstain of epic proportions, the Ben-Hur of crap.

This is actually the climax of the movie. Really.

So the film ignores the previous installments and just starts off in space. This would be effective- we might have just fallen asleep during the last film, after all- except the CGI used to render the spaceship is, even by 1997 standards, somewhere between “A box of Cap n’ Crunch” and “Kip Wells” in terms of objects that look like a real spaceship. We’re soon introduced to the Leprechaun himself, who has taken some princess hostage and wants to make her his wife so he can be a king. The Leprechaun has apparently made some wise investments in the last millennia or so, because he’s rich and this alone convinces the princess (who is, you know, your typical do-it-yourself evil princess character) to go through with the plan. Then, marines that look like the bizarro version of the military in Aliens go into a cave and take out the Leprecuhaun. Fortunately for our story, and I am not making this up, the spirit of the Leprechaun travels up a stream of pee into a soldier. You can guess which body part.

So through this method, the Leprechaun invades the ship and slowly takes out a team of marines, a mad scientist with a fantastic German accent, balding Rick Moranis, and the usual blonde attractive biologist who can’t fit in with the marines due to a college education. Considering that even in 2012 a college education is why a lot of people join the military, this is probably the twenty-eighth worst plot point of the film.

In Space, everyone is travelling on a disguised Segway.

The mad scientist ends up being, in a shocking twist, mad, and wants to use the now-recovered princess’s blood to regenerate his body. Unfortunately, he pisses off the Leprechaun in doing so and, as we all anticipated, turns into a half-spider mad scientist. This really happens. Before long, we’re in a pitched battle between marines in contract negotiations against a space-leprechaun, which is really the worst kind.

What I’m getting at here is, not only does this have nothing to do with the previous movies, it also has nothing to do with being Irish, or anything like that. What’s really amazing about the film, though, is that once you think it has finally made the craziest possible decision, it will find a way to up it, in a burst of either brilliance or mania- I’d love to say it’s intentional, but I’m sorry, I just don’t know. Grinding a spider into someone’s life-support thing turning a dead mad scientist into a spider? Weird. Having a princess flash marines and give a speech about how seeing her topless means they are condemned to die? Kind of crazy, but honestly better than anything the Italians were gonna think up. Immediately following this up with a sergeant performing a random crossdressing dance? Hmm. Immediately following that up with the revelation that the sergeant was an android? Do you see what I mean? And this keeps coming! One amazing occurrence after another cascades upon you with such speed and ferocity that you stop flailing your arms in surprise. You just kind of take it in.

Is that what the film set out to achieve? I’m not sure, only that I can’t imagine any film taking as many consecutive turns to left field unless it was intentional. It’s sort of like when Mankind fought Undertaker at King of the Ring (and THAT, ladies and gents, is the all time obtuse Baryonyx reference) and seeing Mankind keep taking bumps from the steel cage, through tables, then through the cage itself, on to tacks spread over the ring. It just sort of pounds you into submission after awhile. And, to be fair, that’s probably for the best. It wasn’t going to pull any effect like this off through storytelling, that’s for sure.

Does this look like a story you want to see?

Strangely, this sort of thing would actually become the calling card for the Leprechaun series. He wouldn’t go back to space, but in his next film, he went to… the hood.

Again. This really happened.

And whatever you might think about the Leprechaun being in space, when the sequel has Ice-T in a starring role, you’re either jumping the shark or punching the shark in the face, tying it up, peeing on it, and making it watch Season 2 of Elf on DVD. Making the shark your slave. Flicking off the concept of the shark. That’s Leprechaun in a nutshell, aware of how long ago it passed the shark, and keeping on anyway.

Dawn of the Mummy Review

Sort of… sort of speaks for itself, right?

“Woah, wait a second!” you might say. “You’ve just done Day of the Dead, and now you’re doing Dawn of the… Mummy?” Yes. I mean, we all know where this Egyptian (yes, Egyptian) production got their idea for the title from, as well as pretty much everything that happens in the movie, so why not embrace it? Here’s where good zombie films go bad, where a good idea turns into shit, where Imhotep goes to die- this is Dawn of the Mummy, the first and, so far as I’ve ever heard, last hardcore gore mummy movie. What a concept! All mummy movies tend to be slow affairs in Egypt where a PG-13 rating is acceptable (see the recent remakes for that), which is all well and good if you wanted to make money, but… well, what exactly is the real difference between a mummy and a zombie, anyway? And if you were an Egyptian film company, wouldn’t you want to go to your heritage of horror and pull out something uniquely you? And then, you know, rip off a title from a movie that came out a few short years before? 

Unfortunately, the lack of originality for this gore-mummy movie ended way before we got to the title. There’s nothing here you haven’t seen done better in any zombie film, with the added bonus of rags and something resurrected that died long ago through, so far as I can tell, boiling skin or something. Speaking of which, the mummies aren’t just slow flesh eaters- that’s too destructible, and this is fucking Egypt, so we have to do better. These zombies- er, mummies- are impervious to explosions, gunfire, and dryrot. Lest you think that there is actually something new to this canon, they also eat flesh, for, so far as I can tell, literally no fucking reason. Nothing about instinct; no hints that it has anything to do with a curse- this just happens.

Wait

So ordinarily I would laugh at trying to describe a plot like this, but screw it, you might think it’s funny. We start in 3000 BC with a bunch of bedouins killing people. If this has any relation to the next scene, where they set a curse over anyone who enters Pharaoh’s tomb, no one told me. He’s buried with about half a dozen guards who will rise when he returns to seek his revenge, or whatever. Fortunately, an American and two Egyptians opens up the tomb in present day and waits for the poison to clear out. Then, three Egyptians go in to steal the treasure, but are mauled by, as far as I can tell, no one. Then, a full 8 minutes into the movie, the title screen shows up.

This movie is not from the 1950s, regardless of the titles

Then, some models from New York come to Egypt to do a photoshoot. They get shot at by some dumbass who is trying to steal treasure, so they invite themselves in to a tomb to do photoshoots. This goes on for some time as the mummy starts to, uh, rupture and bleed and stuff. I’m not sure why he gets up. Maybe because his tomb was violated, but you have to figure he’d get up right away and not cook for a few hours first. Look, this crap goes on for too long, then he gets up and looks kind of soggy but starts killing people. I’m not sure why, but whatever. The curse or something.

So before long, the other mummies rise, and occasional shock scenes are attempted and fail miserably, and towards the end I guess they mount an attack on the city nearby, and since you can’t hurt them or anything it goes on for awhile, there’s some gut munching, and interestingly no nudity. I think the Italians were involved in this project to an extent, and if this is so, this is probably the first Italian gore movie to ever not have more nudity than the internet itself.

One of the few Americans. Another is dressed as a cowboy.

That’s most of the plot of the movie, which is a full 90 minutes long. Best of all, a lot of that stuff I described takes place in about 30 minutes or so. I don’t even know what’s going on in the rest of the movie that attempts to make me give a crap. Look, you have a movie about mummies that eat people. Tacky, yes, but you better give me 90 minutes of… something, I guess, to make me want to watch it. This is not what occurs. I started yelling at the screen, to try and make something happen, finally announcing in disgust that the movie should have been called Dawn of the Nothing Fucking Happens. In fact, the middle of this movie is so slow that I’m not sure I even registered much of what was going on when there wasn’t a mummy on screen! Who cares! Show me the mummy!

So ultimately, the movie fails to really be entertaining for most of its duration, and it’s not even close. I wish I could tell you that this idea worked, or was at least as unique as it should be. I wish I could tell you it was action packed, or that the shock scenes were anything besides hilarious. I wish I could tell you that I didn’t waste 90 minutes of my mortality watching this. The fact is, I did, and I’ll never get it back, even if I manage to get a curse placed on my grave and return to life with six minions to eat people for no reason. I regret everything.

I don’t even want to show you the mummy, but screw it, I have nothing to lose.

“Look at him!” you cried. “He looks sort of like Sagat from Street Fighter! Look at the sinus condition all over him!” But alas, that’s not a sinus condition, that’s what a dried out and dessicated mummified body looks like- wet.

And while I took a lot of shots at this movie, I want to point out something very positive in its favor. It’s actually extremely influential. A young Vin Diesel saw this movie at a drive-in and decided to become an actor on that very day. The style permeates his acting to this day- some say he does everything possible to mimic the movements, expressions, and emotions of a long dead pharaoh.

Day of the Dead Review

A hands on review.

Full disclosure: I can’t imagine there are many reviewers on the internet that owe as much to George Romero as I do. Not just because I grew up on zombie movies, and that Night of the Living Dead is the movie that scared me the most for years, but because Romero and I share the same city as a hometown. As an expatriate now, though, my hometown means more to me than it ever has before. It’s like Lori Cardille says in one of the documentary featurettes on my edition- Pittsburgh people have this connection. If watching Romero’s movies just makes me feel closer to home, so be it, but who I am as a splatterpunk was crafted in the Alleghenies. So in the pantheon of horror directors, Romero stands as proudly as a blood-splattered marble statue. And as such, it’s time for me to start talking about his “Dead Trilogy.”

Day of the Dead is the least popular of the trilogy, but it’s not much lower in quality from the preceding two- Night of the Living Dead in 1968, and Dawn of the Dead in 1978. This one’s coming at us from the 1980s, almost a decade after the preceding film, which is interesting in its own right. I’ve brought up that Dawn was very profitable upon its release, so a sequel was quickly churned out in Italy- Zombie today- but in the States, we’d have to wait seven years for a real sequel. So in the midst of the 1980s, a script was written. And then quickly discarded- it would have went overbudget massively, so instead it was compressed and finally, the script was finished- half of what it could be.

Unfortunately, Romero didn’t “persuade” the producers enough.

So as a result, the social commentary aspect of the film is a little weaker than we’re used to from Romero’s films, but the film is still intelligent and, impressively, chooses not to take shortcuts to make the film work for a mainstream audience. In a film where the primary aspect is Scientists vs. Military, it would have been very easy to simply make one side ‘good guys’ and one bad. This is avoided, however. Everyone in this movie is nuts, probably even the most likable of the characters, so we’ll have to work to get into it a little. It’s worth the effort, but it’s not necessarily as pleasant as in the earlier two films.

The story here is an indeterminate amount of time after Dawn of the Dead. A small group of scientists and military personnel are in an underground cavern (in Florida, actually; typically, these take place in Western Pennsylvania) searching for a way to solve the problem of the dead coming back to life and eating the living. Unfortunately, the ratio of dead-to-living is now close to 400,000 to 1, so any progress is doomed anyway. And the experiments, particularly those conducted by Dr. Logan, are both obtuse and terrifying- training a zombie (named Bub) to behave- but if you know anything about training, well, anything, you know about positive reinforcement- and what would be positive reinforcement for a zombie?

So while the scientists are crazed, the soldiers aren’t much better, if at all. A soldier named Rhodes has taken command recently, and has quickly been turning the leadership of the operation into a fascist military camp. There’s no guarantee the protection for the scientists will be there much longer, with a confrontation looming in the very near future…

Are we forgetting a group?

Oh yeah. The ones in the title.

Yeah, there’s zombies in this one too, although they don’t take the center stage like they do in Night of the Living Dead. And since this is a Romero movie, you know that at some point they’re going to get in to the facility, and when that happens, we’re looking at more gore than you’ll see this side of Peter Jackson. You know, before he made those movies with elves and shit.

And that’s really my favorite thing about Romero’s movies. The man makes intelligent social commentaries, but with more blood than exists in most hospitals. Seriously! And as much crap as horror movies get for being so unintelligent and immoral… it’s great to have examples of films that are brilliant as well as enthusiastically bloody. There’s a place for intelligence and stupidity in horror. For the latter, it’s Italy.

It was too easy, wasn’t it?

Today, Day of the Dead still has a lot of ground to make up on its siblings (we are not discussing Romero’s latter day zombie movies here) but, over the years, its reputation has been slowly gaining steam. It’s not the groundbreaking Night of the Living Dead or the day-glow splatter of Dawn of the Dead. It’s dark, bleak, with no hope from the outset, with a prevailing philosophy of “let’s not worry about things and get drunk” which, while admirable, isn’t exactly how you develop a conscientious society. Still, Romero himself has said it’s his favorite- and while I don’t quite share those sentiments, it’s surely not for a lack of quality. I’d have, you know, preferred a movie where steelworkers turn into zombies. You know, because of Reagan or something. Wait, I’d better write that one down.

Probably listening to Skrillex, as other zombies do. What?

Massacre in Dinosaur Valley Review

Yeah, I don’t know why I watched it, either.

Here’s one that has a title for you. Massacre in Dinosaur Valley is up there with the all time anachronisms. 1985 was a late year for cannibal movies- in fact, although it was just a few years later, it seems like a different century from Cannibal Ferox. There’s barely any cannibals, no animal violence, and more humor than would be typically expected from the genre. In fact, it’s hard to wrap your head around just how much brighter it is than even Jungle Holocaust. Did cameras change drastically in the early 80s? Probably not- Amazonia: The Catherine Miles Story came out just around the same time as this film and has the same look of the earlier cannibal films. So, no- this was just a stab at taking the genre in a more “adventure/comedy” direction while retaining the basic ideas of it. It works pretty well, but isn’t what everyone might expect.

Why? Well, here’s one way it was released in the UK:

Not exactly lighthearted, is it? I’ll go one further- this thing looks like a snuff film. It’s associated with a particularly gruesome and boneheaded entry in the genre, which was much closer in tone with Cannibal Holocaust as opposed to, say, Raiders of the Lost Ark. However, that’s not to say Massacre in Dinosaur Valley is all sunshine and butterflies. There’s hardcore gore, and an amazing string of sexual encounters that are entirely, and without exception, deviant. Whether it’s voyeurism, coerced, or a tribal ritual, there is no such thing as a healthy sex scene in this movie. My guess is that this is one of the ways they tried to stay true to the roots of the genre.

At its core, it’s an adventure movie starring a paleontologist/archeologist (sounds familiar, right?) who gets on a plane to “Dinosaur Valley,” a supposedly cursed area that a tribe of natives lives in. Unfortunately, the plane is the same one used in Plan 9 From Outer Space, and it crashes, killing some of the passengers. The remainder head toward a river, encountering the usual slew of piranhas, leeches, and finally cannibals. The cannibal section of the movie is low on cannibalism, fortunately, and the survivors (which are by now thinned from the original plane crash survivors) head downriver where they’re seized once again, this time by a capitalist. This is often worse than cannibals, and allegorically speaking can represent the same thing. Most of the characters that made it this far have spent 2/3 of the film naked. WILL THEY SURVIVE?

Also, this happens.

There are no actual living dinosaurs in thefilm, which surprised me the first time I watched it, but after considering the budget this movie probably had the decision makes sense. Why not use a fat guy as a nemesis instead of dinosaurs? Fat people are everywhere. Plus, if the translation (I hope it’s a translation, not poor screenwriting) is any indication, the dinosaur’s lines would have been poorly dubbed like everyone else’s. It’s like I always say, nothing derails a movie like a poorly dubbed dinosaur.

The score for this movie merits special consideration. It’s bad and sounds like it was composed on a Casio, alright, but that’s par the course I guess. What’s really important about it is how jawdroppingly inappropriate it can be at some points. Such as: in the least deviant sex scene in the movie (don’t worry, it’s still sort of deviant), the latin-inspired, happy-go-lucky score picks up for it. Really? We couldn’t get… I don’t know, I guess romantic is asking a lot, but something low-rent Barry White? No? We’re going to listen to… this? It’s hard to describe, but you remember in Watchmen how every sex scene was kind of awkward? Music didn’t help much, there, either, but I really feel this scene’s ridiculousness is actually on a higher level than in Watchmen!

“Yeah, quicksand is in every jungle, right?”

So eventually, we’ve seen strange musical cues, every single cannibal/jungle cliche in the books (pictured above is a particularly offensive one- quicksand), and guess what? We’re HALFWAY THROUGH THE MOVIE! It doesn’t stop shoveling heapings of dumb at you, but the feel is never serious enough for that to be a real problem. I mean… it’s Massacre in Dinosaur Valley. What sort of intellectual stimulation did we anticipate? And, possibly because of that, it never really stops being entertaining, either. I feel like this is a movie you have to approach in the right way, which is actually what makes the cannibal genre association so maddening. This is usually a stone-cold serious genre, not something full of softcore and slapstick jokes. And yet… I think it works.

As I pointed out in the introduction, this is late in the cannibal genre game, but the film honestly comes as close to reviving the anthropophagus schtick as any one I’ve seen after Cannibal Holocaust pretty much became the definitive statement for it. It takes the good ideas at the core of the genre- adventure, the threat of an uncivilized world- and decides to add comedy and change focus from a poorly conceived anthropological statement to the adventure aspect. And… yeah, they stuck with the deviant sex angle when they should have let it go (or at least cut it down to, I don’t know, wouldn’t one or two scenes have worked?), but the film’s jettisoning of the animal cruelty makes it viewable to a wider audience than the genre was accustomed to. At the very least, it’s ten times the revival that Amazonia: The Catherine Miles Story is.

You mean… you mean it’s good?

Not so fast. The film still has basement-level dialogue, too much nudity to be viewed by a 12 year old boy, and plays a little too much like a bargain Indiana Jones flick. With limitations like these, the well intentioned ideas behind it failed, and the genre continued toward the scrap heap of cinematic obscurity- in fact, it’s probably the latest one we’ll ever review here. So much for the try.

Lest you think it’s all mindless, though, I want to talk about the film’s attempt at anthropological intellectualism.

Pictured: Intellectualism.

So the first villains our heroes try to escape are cannibals. What’s interesting is that, upon escaping the tribe, they’re next forced to escape a mining operation. Slaves are used, people are commodities, and there’s a boss that works men to exhaustion and chains them to, uh, something. I didn’t catch what it was. Sorry.

But there’s a comparison, right? We’re escaping cannibals and returning to civilization… only to be eaten alive by the capitalists! Sounds like some director wanted to make a statement. Instead of killing people to eat them, the mine owner is killing them to make money. And, since he’s fat, the end goal is presumably still to eat.

This is the same “who are the real savages?” that each cannibal movie makes, but it is made in a different way- I can’t quite recall anyone using the capitalism/cannibalism angle before, which is a shame because it is really so easy to use. It’s not the comparison that’s important here, so much that it’s not shoved in your face. You have the option to take this message, here, and that’s refreshing enough that it’s a shame the film didn’t spin off a few copycats.