Mexico Barbaro (2014) – movie review

Mexico Barbaro (2015)

It’s a gruesome, gorefest!

Several horror shorts by Mexican directors are collected here with mixed yet overall good results. We have drug-lord murders, sacrificial slayings, witchcraft and rituals in this gruesome horror anthology. All the stories are told with Mexican folklore as the framework. An investigation into gangland executions sets the tone for the shorts that are about to follow. Two thieves hide out in an abandoned building complex in the countryside, where they see strange visions. Soon it’s difficult to tell what is real and what is deadly in this trippy-headed haunt (my fave story of the lot). Next, a young lady’s chance encounter with a dead body begins a terrifying chain of events. A young couple looking to have their first romantic evening fall victim to a creepy creature haunting their country cabin. A young mother learns why she should listen when her daughter claims she’s seen the boogie-man in one of the gorier segments. And finally, we learn why we shouldn’t enter a strip club on The Day of the Dead in Mexico. All the stories relay a simple message, there is a price to pay for evil behavior. Some of the shorts are not what English audiences would expect from a film and feel almost like vignettes rather than complete stories. Despite the serious theme and varied accomplishment of the eight collected films, overall it’s a gory fun flick to watch. Not for the queasy, you’ve been gore-warned.

A violent, gory and nasty anthology from south of the border that ties in Mexican folklore.

I give it 3.0 nasty, gory, gutted, slayings out of 5 on the gruesome death scale!

 

Galaxy of Terror (1981) – Movie review

Galaxy of Terror (1981)

Produced by Roger Corman
Directed by Bruce D. Clark

Edward Albert
Erin Moran
Ray Walston
Taaffe O’Connell
Robert Englund
Sid Haig
Grace Zabriskie

Being an artist, I often enjoy visual splendor in films. That is why I can enjoy an effects heavy film even when the story is lacking. Being a writer and author, I often enjoy original concepts and ideas in films. New ideas spark my imagination and I like to take mental note of aspects I can use or expand upon in my own work. So yes, I am making excuses for why I like this film so much. The story is lacking. The dialogue is mediocre at best.

Several characters investigate an abandoned spaceship on a distant lifeless planet. The film follows each as they meet their demise. They all die by a method they would fear most. For example, one gets killed by his own crystal bladed weapon that took him years to master. Another by her own fear of claustrophobia.

The film stars Erin Moran (yes, Joanie from Happy Days) in her first movie role since the end of her short lived spin off series. A very young, pre-Freddy Kruger, Robert England stars in the film. In fact you will most likely recognize all the actors in the cast but one or two. Naturally, being a Roger Corman film there’s lots of blood, guts and gore.

The most disturbing and talked about scene in the film is of the woman being raped and killed by a giant worm. This is a shocking scene even for a Roger Corman gore-fest. The bizarre shots in the sequence had to be trimmed to avoid an X-rating but still reveal enough to disgust you on a visceral level. (The disturbing aspect is that while I know it is vile, I find it hard to look away – something I call the “road kill syndrome). The death-by-worm-sex scene is probably the reason this film has such a strong cult status. It went as far as any scene of this nature will ever go in a horror/sci-fi film.

The film borrows some ideas from Forbidden Planet, especially the idea of the characters being attacked by their own worst fears. Event Horizon some years later has similarities to Galaxy in finding an abandoned ship and entering it only to be psychologically attacked by an evil entity. For a low budget space movie, the effects and sets are surprisingly good. It feels big and the film isn’t held back by its budget. They need a crash landing on the surface of an alien planet? They do it. A gigantic ancient pyramid, they show it. Nothing is trimmed from the script because of budget. I believe the reason for that was having James Cameron as production designer.

As I had mentioned, the film is more about shocking gore and FX than story. It might not be for everyone but having been there when these types of films came out in theaters, and having watched each film try to one up each other in the gore factor, was a fun experience. This would probably have taken the gore award for 1981 if it weren’t for Evil Dead! Good times!

A Corman space movie with horror, blood, nudity and gore, for a harsh R-rating. This ain’t no Star Wars!

I give it 3.9 severed limbs on the death by nookie-nookie scale of freaky maggot infested gore flicks!

Fun facts:

James Cameron was the 2nd unit director and production designer on this film. I tend to think that much of the huge scope of this film had a lot to do with Cameron. This film most likely prepared him for directing Aliens a few years later. He had worked on several Roger Corman films.

The worm sex scene was trimmed down to get its original X-rating changed to R. Despite the editing, the film was still banned in many countries. It was released in some countries with the scene completely removed.

like earth, isn’t earth

one-tenth of the budget for Star Wars, take that!

Well maybe Potsy did it, or Ralph Mouth…

Mr. Hand hasn’t aged since the 1960’s – I do believe he is a martian

looks like a teenager here, lol

I wouldn’t go in there

sucker tentacles

that’s not how you use this weapon

look out, giant slimy slug maggot worm…

disgusting!

Yuck!

gross!

dog face demon, woof!

a little more sunscreen would’ve helped

This shot foreshadows his next job! can you say Kruger?

 

 

From Beyond (1986) – Movie review

From Beyond (1986)

Directed by Stuart Gordon
Produced by Brian Yuzna

Jeffrey Combs
Barbara Crampton
Ted Sorel
Ken Foree
Carolyn Purdy-Gordon

(***warning, explicit and graphic images and descriptions below)

Ever since Freddy Kruger uttered his first snarky line at his wincing victim, horror in the 1980’s was headed down a path to morbid humor. Few would take it as far as the Stuart Gordon directed, Brian Yuzna produced, re-imagining of the HP Lovecraft tale, From Beyond. This film is morbid black humor taken to the extremes of sadistic gore and horrific irony. While a majority of fans will pick Reanimator as their favorite Gordon/Yuzna collaboration, I like this one a little better, mostly because of the strange abstract creature that Dr. Pretorius becomes.

A machine invented by Dr. Pretorius and Dr. Crawford Tillinghast called The (Tillinghast) Resonator is believed to stimulate an unused gland within the human brain. The gland enables a person to see into a parallel dimension. The life forms in this parallel dimension have a penchant for human flesh and anyone who moves within the energy field of the machine is attacked.

Dr Katherine McMichaels (Barbara Crampton), is the psychiatrist assigned to Crawford’s case. He has been in the mental institution since the death of Pretorius. When she brings Crawford to the lab to reconstruct the scene of the crime, they both discover that Pretorius is not dead, just transcended into the beyond. As Crawford and McMichaels become mesmerized under the machine’s influence, Pretorius returns to devour them both. A detective sent to guard them, played by Ken Foree, is eaten alive by the strange creatures. McMichaels acts out some repressed sexual desires, made evident by how her eyes linger on a video of Pretorius performing sadistic sex acts. Crawford’s pineal gland bursts out of the front of his forehead like an eel and demands for Crawford to find new sustenance. He attacks the head psychiatrist, sucks out her eyeball then devours her brain by sucking it out through her eye socket. Yeah, gross! But I can’t look away. I haven’t been this mesmerized by gore since a possessed woman stabbed a number two pencil into a woman’s Achilles tendon in Evil Dead! Crawford goes on to suck out more eyeballs and brains, I giant worm grows in the basement and McMichaels is turned-on by the vibrations of the resonator and goes full tilt S&M.

This gory grind-fest is not for the feint at heart, but if you like Evil Dead 2 and Dead Alive, I think you will like this film. It’s absurd violence, a bizarre journey into gory blood-lust entertainment.

Fun Facts:

The Lovecraft story that this film is adapted from is only 7 pages long.

The house where the lab is located and the experiments take place has an odd address, 666 Benevolent St.

At the mental hospital, automatic doors use the door opening sound from the original Star Trek series.

Here’s some alternate posters and dvd/blu-ray art:

Combs at his best!

impressive machine

you are getting sleepy…

repressed sexual desires?

inter-dimensional Piranha-eels

suprise! It works…

Let’s see Pac-Man do this!

Scar face

Barbara Crampton, Yeah!

I believe the poster on the wall is her…

Not now, he has a headache

she has nice…feet

Tastes like chicken

daddy long fingers

you don’t want to know where those fingers have been.

head like a hole…

you’ll be fine…uh, oh, what is that!

eye suck!

talk about brain foods…

I knew I should have had that skin growth looked at.

kiss me, darling.

awesome blobular creature 🙂

head sucker

yyyyuck!