There is of course an uncomplicated story that is nothing out of the ordinary for such films, but its simplicity makes it all the more intriguing. Essentially the narrative begins with an escaped killer-Ross Thorn; he is on the loose and begins to stalk a group of teenage girls. One of the girls, Trish, her family goes away so she decides to have a slumber party with a few choice friends, excluding the boys (who are hiding there anyway) and the new girl who has just moved in next door. As darkness falls the killer sees his chance and decides to dispatch as many young bodies that are available. This of course is with the use of a slasher favourite, the power tool, in this case a large drill. With the help of the next-door neighbours, Trish survives and they band together and slay the madman, pretty simple, but what the plot does is add an adequate amount of suspense and just enough gory moments that appeases the horror appetite and creates plenty of tension.

Because such classic slasher films as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (USA 1974; Tobe Hooper), Halloween ( USA 1978; John Carpenter) and Friday the 13^th (1980; Sean S. Cunningham) preceded The Slumber Party Massacre it is easy to relegate this film to a lowlier place on the slasher chain. Indeed, the above films are exceptional in the fact they spearheaded the genre but most have all the same ingredients and allude to the same outcome. This brings me to the only outstanding differences, which are its female writer and director. It is perhaps acceptable to state that is where the differences end. From the outset nudity is high on the agenda, more specifically female nudity, voyeuristic in its execution as we see groups of teenage girls in communal school showers, getting dressed in locker rooms, changing into their pyjamas etc. Perhaps Holden Jones was creating female bonding scenarios and nudity, and expression of that does not necessarily have to be seen as sexual? But the contradiction regarding this premise is that these films are designed for young males, whom I’d imagine would watch this film for the nudity. There are no major feminist undertones or messages in this film, but there is a substantial amount subtext which alludes to young female apprehension regarding sex and more specifically men’s sexual organs.

There are however quite a few humorous and witty moments and as Rita Mae Brown had originally written the screenplay as a parody of the mass teenage sex slasher films that were in abundance around this time, the jokes are certainly aimed at the consumers of these films as they really play on the genres conventions which fans will easily get. However, the film was made straight. Despite this there are genuine comical scenes that reflect some of Brown’s intentions, most notably a superb scene which comes towards the end of the film. Trapped in a cellar, Valerie the next-door neighbour sees a medley of DIY tools, which would suffice, as possible weapons to eradicate the crazed killer. After perusing the tools she finally settles on an electric drill. Charging up the stairs weapon in hand she gets yanked back down the cellar by the electrical cord that is still plugged in. This is a fantastic piece of parody, mocking the yet to be established ‘Final Girl’ theory. This scene is also parodied in Eli Roth’s Hostel Part 2 (2007), another nod to his obvious fandom and influences.

Although the film is littered with funny moments it is well balanced with skilfully placed tension. The second half of the film, which essentially takes place in and around Trish and Valerie’s houses, is where the horror element of this slasher really kicks in. The stalking of the oblivious teenagers switches to all out panic as they discover, courtesy of a dead pizza delivery guy, they are at the mercy of a lunatic.

The performances of the cast are credible. The only weak areas are the buffoon-like boys, who really are weak willed when it comes to women and the prospect of death. This I’m sure is an intentional character trait as similar films of this era Friday the 13^th , The Burning (USA 1981; Tony Maylam) and The Funhouse (USA 1981; Tobe Hooper) all show teenage boys on the verge of their first sexual conquest yet still very much little boys when faced with danger. Robin Stille, who played Valerie, is a really interesting character. She is pitched against Trish played by Michele Michaels who surprisingly is a sweet natured teenager. Val unlike Trish is an outcast, and has an interesting demeanour that is imperturbable yet vulnerable. Trish is popular yet compassionate; these are the qualities that make an audience root for their survival. Their relationship is based upon mutual intelligence and a strong sense of self which seems to attract them to each other. The killer, played with frenzied enthusiasm by Michael Villella does not hide behind masks or have any background information that helps understand his psyche; this is slightly unusual for this genre yet helps take the emphasis off him as human being; creating more of an inhuman quality about him. He is a plain and simple psychopath wielding an extra long drill (bit) who just couldn’t resist killing a gaggle of nubile female teenagers.

The drill does get employed as a phallic symbol in quite a few of the killing scenes, in particular one scene where he stands in front of a young girl who is on the floor backed up and helpless. The camera is low, and is shot behind his open legs as the drill falls in between his stance; we see the young girl scream as the drill comes to life. This use of metaphorical rape is well contrasted with the metaphorical castration that helps destroy the killer, as his drill gets chopped off leaving him powerless and open for ridicule in death.

The Slumber Party Massacre does not offer anything different in the sub genre of the slasher, but because it was written and directed by women it does beg the question why and how would it differ? What this film does provide is a thoroughly good ride through a well paced suspenseful, slightly gory slasher film. Whilst there is a substantial amount of bloodshed, and pointless female nudity it actually is a surprisingly exciting horror film. At 77 minutes long the ride is swift, there really is no time to question the usual mistakes characters make in these films ie don’t go into the dark garage alone etc, so it travels along with enough surprises and wit that complies with convention yet does not offend nor bore.

And there is nothing wrong with that. In fact, the movie would have been more successful if he had tried less for art-house obfuscation and more for the punch-in-the-gut terror that some moments in the movie produce. Although I didn’t love this movie, I respect it, and I think that most reviewers who dismissed it did so for the wrong reasons: they critiqued the violence, the supposed misogyny (more about that later), and the gratuitous gore. I could have stood a lot more of those things (minus the misogyny, which isn’t happening anyway) and less of the navel-gazing hand-held camera shenanigans that populate the first half of the film.

The movie begins with an absolutely gorgeous opening vignette, filmed in black and white, in which Charlotte Gainsbourg and Willem Defoe (both unnamed in the film) have sex in various parts of their palatial apartment to the tune of a gorgeous Handel aria. As Gainsbourg and Defoe go from room-to-room, their young son toddles from his crib, through the house, and climbs out of a window,  falling to his death. The juxtaposition of the absolutely beautiful scene, music, and sexual pleasure with the death of a young child is the first sign that von Trier is not afraid to really break the taboos of mainstream movies.

After the child’s death, Gainsbourg suffers a mental breakdown: she is filled with guilt and links her own sexuality with the loss of her child. Defoe, who happens to by a psychologist (though not a very good one, based on his methods) decides to take his wife’s mental health into his own hands. He tells her that she has to face her fears, not run from them. He makes her go to the place she fears the most, a cabin in the woods (called Eden, hmmm…) where she worked on her unfinished dissertation about medieval images of women. Von Trier’s heavy-handedness comes through in this first half of the movie, where the viewer is forced to sit through abstract conversations about fear and grief and to ponder the thuddingly obvious symbolism of Eden, death, and sexuality.  But then we get to Eden, and all hell breaks loose. In a good way.

From here, the movie goes from the usual grimy, quick-cut, hand-held camera of Von Trier’s previous movies to a more interesting and lush use of setting and camera. Von Trier creates a terrifying forest, one that looks, on the surface, to be dreamy and lush, populated with beautiful deer and animals. But even the animals are not-quite-right, and the ground burns Gainsbourg’s feet right through her shoes. The sky rains acorns and the wind blows open windows.

I won’t give anything away by discussing what happens in the cabin between Defoe and Gainsbourg, but suffice it to say that this is not a date-movie and will make both men and women cross their legs and grimace with vicarious pain. Von Trier doesn’t hold back in showing damage done to the human body and in making sexual scenes incredibly unsexy.

Ultimately, Anti-Christ is about a woman so consumed with guilt about her child’s death and so convinced of her own culpability that she takes on the misogynistic images of women from history (the woman as the witch, the vagina dentata, the woman as closer to nature, closer to the body, and therefore closer to the devil). The movie doesn’t support misogyny– the character believes herself to be the awful things that women have been accused of being. If von Trier had focused more on Gainsbourg’s own guilt and deepening insanity and less on making a grand statement about nature and evil, then he would have a truly interesting movie. Unfortunately, he feels the need to give us talking foxes and visual metaphors that don’t make sense or make sense too simply to be useful.

I have to stop and give Charlotte Gainsbourg her due for this film. The dialogue throughout the movie is awful–both Gainsbourg and Defoe speak in the careful, deadening tones of a badly-written undergrad philosophy essay–but Gainsbourg puts her all into this role. It’s hard to imagine the emotional depths she goes to, the things she has to do, and how fully she commits to the role of a woman who spends 90% of the movie insane with grief and half-naked. She makes the character neither hat-eable nor easily sympathetic–she is complicated and troubled, but not easy to categorize.

This movie is deeply flawed, but beautiful and awful and truly powerful–it’s more like an opera than a movie, all emotion and expression with little logic. If you go to it willing to overlook some of von Trier’s more tedious bits of arty exposition, it’s well worth the effort.

The movie opens by introducing the freshly married Denise (Tracy Coogan) and Danny (Graham Sibley) as they joyfully skip away from the wedding chapel, eager to enter the honeymoon stage of their marriage.  The two lead actors have real chemistry.  Coogan’s performance is exuberant, at times downright giddy. This nicely complements the energy of Sibley as Danny– a more mellow, laid-back vegetarian surfer type.  Unfortunately, their blissful honeymoon is interrupted by an unwelcome, undead guest.

While relaxing on the beach, what should stagger out of the waves but an honest-to-goodness zombie. (You can’t have a movie called Zombie Honeymoon without one!)  Clad in a wetsuit, covered from head to toe in seaweed, the staggering zombie catches Danny unaware.  It lurches over, grabs him violently and spews a foul, viscous brown liquid into his face and mouth.  The precise nature of Danny’s death is left a bit vague.  Amidst the chaos, the zombie disappears, leaving a dying Danny and his hysterical wife on the beach.  Cut to the hospital:  Doctors make fervent resuscitation attempts and fail.  Just as Denise is about to resign herself to widowhood, the miraculous happens.  Danny’s eyelids flutter open and, much to everyone’s astonishment, he has recovered from his ten minute “death”.  The shocked doctor warns them that Danny will need time to readjust.  This turns out to be the understatement to end all understatements.

For the first day, Danny seems okay. He and Denise make vows to live for the present and celebrate his rebirth with lots of passionate, rough sex.  The only sign that anything is at all out of the ordinary is Danny’s flaking skin.  “Baby, you need a better sunscreen,” Denise chides him.

Danny’s condition rapidly deteriorates after that.  The former vegetarian goes on meat eating binges.  His memory is shaky and his skin takes on a deathly pale pallor.  When Denise finds him crouched in the bathtub gnawing on the entrails of a bloody corpse, the truth sinks in– this is not the man she married.  She’ll have to decide whether to stay with him through better or worse and whether their wedding vows still apply:  “‘Til death do us part.”

Zombie Honeymoon does not fit into a typical genre mold.  Zombie purists may be put off by the fact that the movie is really about only one zombie– who at first seems more like a simple cannibal– and the origins of his condition are extraordinarily vague.  In fact, Zombie Honeymoon is more about Denise and Danny’s relationship than the threat of brain-devouring undead causing carnage and mayhem.  There’s blood and gore galore, with a bit of female nudity sprinkled in for good measure.  It’s interesting that some of the more romantic and sexually charged scenes occur after Danny has been zombified but before either of them fully realize it.  Many zombie films focus on a large group of zombies as a monstrous enemy, yet tend to forget that zombies were people once, too.

Zombie Honeymoon may be low-budget, with some uneven acting and sound editing issues, but the meat of the story– how a couple deals with unexpected loss of humanity– is very novel indeed.  There’s also enough off-beat dark humor to classify Zombie Honeymoon as a dark comedy.  Classic lines include gems like: “I guess vegetarians don’t make very good cannibals, do they?”

Even fans of romance movies can find something to like in Zombie Honeymoon, assuming they aren’t too disturbed by the gratuitous gore.  Zombie Honeymoon truly does have something for everyone.

Basically, some rich boy (who looks WAY older then his girlfriend) is trying to get his girl drunk and score with her for the first time. A motorcycle gang with an affinity for Nazi paraphernalia bumps into them and proceeds to score with her instead, beating our protagonist and taking his girlfriend’s virginity. The rich boy, of course, doesn’t take kindly to this. He then, with his trusty Karate knowing friends (and who doesn’t have a few dozen of them?), proceeds to get revenge on the bikers at a funeral. You then get some of the laziest Karate you’ve ever seen. They also give one of the main bikers a quick John Bobbitt. Needless to say, the gang takes unkindly to this and goes after the rich boy and the Karate class, and somehow, they find where the rich boy lives. It then escalates from there, even more, to a decent trick ending that appealed to the nihilist in me, even if it comes off a little stupid. I wish I could tell you some of the characters names, but they seem almost meaningless in this film. I doubt I could place any of the actors in anything but this paticular title.

The sheer amount of violence in this film is pretty staggering. The blood starts right from the beginning and never lets up. There’s cheesy Kung Fu beat downs, machine guns, death by shears, and a lobbed off penis, as mentioned. It also has tons of gratuitous nudity, including a pretty bizarre bondage scene, which of course always helps in a film of this genre.

There are some pretty disturbing images in this film, and it’s definitely a little vile, if stupid, in parts. The dubbing on the copy I saw was pretty abominable, which of course added to the charm. Going by the expressions on some of the actors faces, I’m pretty sure there’s quite a bit of over-acting going on, bad dubbing or not.

There are a few different versions floating around, some with hardcore inserts, so viewer beware. Picture John Waters doing a biker-revenge film and you sort of have an idea of what this film is like. It’s almost delirious in parts, as it seems to veer from one incredible scene of violence and nudity to the next. If you’re into Biker films or exploitation films in general, I highly recommend this one.

The film starts in space on a prison asteroid where some evil creatures called the “Crites” escape and steal a ship, heading for Earth. Two shape-shifting bounty hunters are sent hot on their trail as the Crites crash land near a small midwestern town. Starring ’80s horror mom Dee Wallace, character actor extraordinaire M. Emmett Walsh, and a fresh-faced Scott Grimes, the stereotypically ordinary residents do their best to fight off the ferocious furballs. This is no easy task, these critters have razor sharp teeth, bad attitudes, and an insatiable appetite.

The bounty hunters arrive and have formed themselves to look like rock star Johnny Steele and the local drunk (after a couple of failed attempts as a dead cop and a minister). Just one of the many gags that help bring that quirky charm to the film. The characters are quick to spout one-liners and the critters even get some of their own, subtitled of course. It’s this sense of humor that elevates Critters above your average horror fare. Everyone involved has fun through to the final showdown and those of us along for the ride are smiling the whole time.

Even though there are some distinctly familiar elements, it feels more nostalgic than it does a ripoff of anything in particular. The filmmakers use their knowledge of the horror and sci-fi genres as well as the audience’s to their advantage. Critters knows it’s a B-movie and aspires to nothing more. It uses classic horror scenarios to build suspense, always keeping its tongue firmly in cheek and never passing up an opportunity for a laugh. I love that the monsters are smart enough to escape and pilot a ship but are so blindly driven by hunger that they often lead themselves to their own demise.

I suppose director Stephen Herek had to have a good sense of humor since eventually his career became something of a joke itself. After this film and the also under-appreciated Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure he made a string of uninspired family films, but then again contemporary Disney can suck the life out of just about anything. Despite that, his first two films remain delightfully quirky comedies that are very much products of their time period. The ’80s produced some of the most fun and most ridiculous horror movies and Critters is a prime example. It will always stay one of my favorites.

I usually recommend this film when people ask for a good introduction to Grindhouse or exploitation films. It’s not great, it’s pretty technically inept, and it’s really kind of ludicrous.  Still, this film delivers the goods, albeit a little sneakily. The film doesn’t quite live up to the title, which is one of exploitation films finest, but it’s still worth tracking down and watching.

Ron Slinker IS Mr. No Legs, a mob enforcer with no legs. Not just in a wheelchair, but an amputee with no legs.   Maybe he was born that way,  honestly, the film doesn’t let you know either way and there isn’t too much written history assosiated with the film either.  I’m not a huge wrestling fan, but apparently Ron Slinker was also a big-time wrestler, of some sorts. Apparently, he was also a raging alcoholic. I hope this film bought him a few crates of Wild Irish Rose. This flick was also directed by Ricou Browning, better known to the world as the Creature from the Black Lagoon. He was the man squeezed into the infamous monster suit. He also was a big stunt guy for anything aquatic apparently, and did work on Flipper and other nautical shows. But he only solely directed one film, and this is it. And who would have thought it would be so entertaining, and so sleazy? The film, per the IMDB page, was released in 1981, but don’t you believe it. The styles, camera and film style all scream Seventies. If this was made in 1981, they were clearly using clothes from 1977.

Mr. No Legs is a mob enforcer in the film. He gets fed up with his immediate boss’s insults and pay, and decides to double cross the mob when he’s had enough. The insults about his condition enrage him to the point that he decides to wage war on the mob. Personally, I think the guy had it made: wimming pool, good looking seventies floozy, but I guess enough was enough. Armed with his pretty awesome wheelchair of death (it has throwing stars on the wheels, drop down shotgun boxes on the side) and his martial arts (which he’s stunningly good at – this guy is in phenomenal shape) he begins to muscle in on the mob action. Two detectives (who, sadly, the camera follows as much as Mr. No Legs) try to stop the bloody mayhem that ensues as Mr. No Legsmurders everyone in his way, including a hooker who may be a police rat. The said murder occurs in one of the crappiest, sleaziest bars I’ve ever seen, and looks genuinely authentic. The hookers in the film all look legit as well. This is clearly a film shot on the cheap, and it pays off. Sometimes a lower budget can help a film, and it really works here. The only issue with the film would be some of the overly long dialog (which is a true sign of exploitation films, in general) and the fact that Mr. No Legs isn’t in it as much as you’d want.

I’m not going to bore you with all the plot details, or the plot ‘twists’, as they are almost irrelevant. What matters is a muscular dealer of death with no legs and his wheelchair of mayhem. Set in the Seventies, with all the great seventies fashions to boot. He gets the chicks, he kicks serious ass with his wheelchair-fu, and does it all in a film that is completely worth seeking out. I’m not saying its perfect: no film in this genre will ever be, but come on, doesn’t the premise alone sound pretty intriguing? I’d recommends seeking it out, if possible.

As Mari, our main character, emerges from the bathroom, we meet her parents, a handsome middle-aged couple, seemingly good-hearted and concerned about their daughter. Although none of the actors seem like professionals, they have a decency about them that the gives the move a documentary-like feel. The very 70’s banter of the opening scenes, where Mari’s parents express mild disapproval of her shirt, which is a little too revealing, and warn her to be careful at the rock concert she is about to attend, is charming because the family seems to be amused to be in front of a camera. This strange realism of this amateur acting creates a queasy, uncertain tone right at the beginning of the movie. It’s clear something awful will happen, but the viewer doesn’t know when or how.

In addition, the cheerful score throughout the film adds to this strangeness. This being the 70’s, we have some cheesy singer-songwriter fare, but also some jarringly happy banjo music during crucial scenes. As a viewer in 2009, knowing that this film is a famous horror/exploitation flick, I was waiting in dread for something awful to happen to the characters, and the naiveté of the film’s characters and music left me completely unsettled. Craven’s choice to let the viewer linger so long in this wistful 70’s almost-innocence is one of the many reasons why Last House on the Left rises above its exploitation flick status. By the time Mari and her friend Phyllis make it to the city, we are thoroughly on board with them as characters.

In a particularly skillful transition, as Mari and Phyllis drive to the city for the concert they hear a radio report about an escaped murderer and rapist, Krug, and his band of cronies: the knife-happy Weasel, his son Junior (a heroine addict), and an “animal-like” woman named Sadie. As the report plays, the scene cuts to an apartment building where Krug, Weasel, Sadie, and Junior are hiding out, watching television and drinking beer.

Krug (one of the best villains in movie history, in my opinion) is played with a sexy menace by David Hess. The other actors, though they do not rise to his level of magnetism, are excellent: Junior is endearing, as he is basically a good person with an addiction that keeps him bound to Krug; Weasel works through the scenes with a subtle, quiet menace; and Sadie, with her thick eyeliner and teased hair, is the high school bad-girl from hell. When the girls go looking for some weed before the concert, they meet Junior, who has been sent out by Krug to snare some prey. When the girls meet Krug and his gang, it’s clear that they won’t make it out. As the audience, we know this, but they do not; this makes their pleading, their reasonable arguments, all the more painful.

At this point, it’s probably time to mention that this film roughly follows the plot of Virgin Spring, a 1960 film by Ingmar Bergman about the rape and murder of a young girl and her murderers who take refuge in her family’s house, only to be murdered themselves by the girl’s father. Although there has been some debate about how seriously one should take this imitation (after all, Bergman’s film is considered a “serious” movie and Craven’s was an “exploitation” movie, terms that affect critical reception, if nothing else), I think that Craven’s film is interested in completely different aspects of this basic set-up. In Bergman’s movie, the girl is much younger, twelve or thirteen, and is more of a symbol of purity than a real person. In Craven’s movie, the girls aren’t angels—Mari and Phyllis are out to score pot before they see a rock band. They are aware of their sexuality—in scenes before they leave for the concert, they discuss sex and romance, and Phyllis dismisses Mari’s childish ideas about sex. In this movie, the girls are human and complex, and therefore more personally compelling than Bergman’s allegorical girl could ever be. They could be any normal teenage girls, and they are targeted simply because they are beautiful and curious.

This movie is famous for being bloody and graphic. Although it is more graphic and bloody than any regular thriller, it’s not really the blood or gore that is disturbing—it’s the acts that the girls are forced to perform, the terror and hope that flits across their faces as they perform humiliating acts, and the hope that they just might escape (a hope that is never realized), that makes the movie tense and distressing. During the protracted scene where the girls are taken to the woods (just across the road from Mari’s house), made to perform humiliating sexual acts, then murdered (in Phyllis’ case) and raped and murdered (in Mari’s case), the cheap, documentary-style film making really work to Craven’s benefit—the movie looks cheap, and dirty, and real, which makes it terrifying.

Another remarkable aspect of this film is the complexity of the villains. They are indeed villains, and they take real joy in the terrible things they do, but they also express remorse. In the case of Junior, who does not participate in the murders, we have a complete innocent who is bound to his father by love and by his addiction. In one pivotal scene, after Krug and the others (excluding Junior) have raped Mari, the gang look away as she gets on her hands and knees and vomits. We get closeups of Krug, Weasel, and Sadie picking grass from their hands, trying to compose their faces and ignore the sound of her gagging.

The most famous scenes in the movie involve the revenge that Mari’s parents take on Krug and his gang after they figure out that Mari was murdered. The elaborate, bloody ways that they kill Krug, Weasel, Sadie, and ultimately Junior are satisfying—at this point, the viewer wants something to happen to them, for some kind of justice to be meted out–but they are also terrible. They transform Mari’s parents, two decent and normal people, into sadistic murderers, and this is difficult to see.

Although I think this movie is a classic and one of the best examples of the genre, it does have some less than stellar moments. The most glaring error in the movie was Craven’s choice to include a bumbling sheriff and deputy in the movie. They are supposed to be for comic effect, I suppose, but whenever they show up in the movie, it feels like we have suddenly been thrown into an episode of Dukes of Hazzard.

Overall, this movie creates a tightly-wound, distressing, and alarmingly realistic picture of murder and revenge. Craven showed in this movie that he could both terrify his audience and make them think about what it means to view humiliation and death. The movie leaves its audience disturbed and haunted.

Throwing up an assortment of depravity and blood-drenched insanity into a film always makes for good fun, but never makes up for a lack of plot, lazy writing, or poorly-executed filmmaking, a few key problems that permeate through many of these gory, low-budget efforts. These are all issues readily apparent in “The Machine Girl”, a prior similar undertaking which, for all its excessive gore and dismemberment, was at its core really nothing much different than most substandard Hollywood fare. Here, directors Yoshihiro Nishimura (who tread similar ground with Tokyo Gore Police) and Naoyuki Tomomatsu have crafted both an emotionally-charged teen love story and a hilarious satire of popular trends, the film elevated by the over-the-top absurdities rather than reliant on them. High-school heart throb Mizushima finds himself in the center of a vicious tug-of-war between two lovers: Keiko, his high-maintenance girlfriend whose spineless vice-principal daddy bows to her every demand, and Monami, a new student in the school who falls for Mizushima’s kind personality…and who also happens to be a vampire. Of course, when the two girls get into a feud, Keiko is no match for the supernatural Monami and is flung from the top of a building. However, Keiko’s spineless father moonlights as a mad scientist and he reanimates Keiko, upgrading her with a variety of different physical attributes swiped from certain corpses. Now, the Vampire Girl and the Frankenstein Girl find themselves facing off in a battle to the death for Mizushima’s affection.

There are a plethora of outlandish gags to please any hardened gore-fan. Among the best are the Vampire Girl tearing a hole in a girls face and unraveling her skin like the wrappings on a mummy, a reanimated foot-hand creature, blood drops with a life of their own and the Frankenstein Girl tearing off an arm, screwing it onto her head and using it as a helicopter propeller to zip around through the sky. This is the love-child of a three-way between Looney Tunes, an early Peter Jackson film and a Troma movie. Nary two minutes go by where someone’s head isn’t being crushed in or where some appendage isn’t being attached to some other ludicrous concoction. It is amazingly fun, completely original and absolutely never dull. Even those who don’t enjoy the film, possibly too much for their tastes, will likely be enthralled by the madcap display enfolding in front of them.

However, it’s when the film steps back from the lunacy that it’s at its best. The characters at their best are, particularly Monami and Mizushima, surprisingly fleshed out, likeable and quite funny; at their worst, over-the-top caricatures that usually provide some satirical laughs. There are a lot of laughs mined from the absurd notion of falling in love with a vampire, as well as the battle being waged for Mizushima, the tone always light and self-deprecating, unlike the stuck-up seriousness of another unmentionable vampire-love story; one comical part has Mizushima proclaiming, as he narrates the battle, something along the lines of “Has anyone ever asked my feelings about this”, which sums up the ridiculousness of the obvious lapses of logic that allow the fight over him, and pretty much the entire film, to occur. Perhaps the funniest scenes involve those lampooning current teenage trends. The “emo’s” are part of an after-school wrist cutting club. The trend of imitating black culture is taken to absurd limits with a trio of girls not only in black face, but with afros, oversized lips and the refusal to drink any coffee but black.

The only shortcomings are the occasional limitations of the low-budget paired with the wide scope of the film’s imaginative dismemberment. Some of the effects, although most often not, are poorly executed. As well, the arterial spray of blood throughout the film is less than satisfying due to the reliance on CGI effects, which look both incredibly cheap and silly (in a bad way). The entire film carries a somewhat cheap vibe to it, which leads me to believe it was either digital video or inefficiency behind the camera. Regardless, these are small prices to pay for the amount of imaginative fun and hilarious splatter that “Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl” delivers, making it one of the better exercises in this type of frenetic insanity that so often falls on the wayside.

Carnival of Souls begins abruptly, with no set-up, with a drag race that ends in a car full of young women plunging over a bridge and into a river. As locals gather after the accident, a young woman emerges from the muddy water, streaked with dirt and dazed, but otherwise unhurt. She is the only survivor.

This scene, which is almost silent, is one of the most effectively creepy moments I have ever seen in a film, and the mystery of the moment, the impossibility of her emergence from that shallow, muddy river, sets the tone for how this entire movie will unfold. The film doesn’t explain how she, out of all of the others, survives the accident, and she never discusses it. This silence around the inciting event of the film leaves an effective mystery at the heart of the story—what has happened to this woman? How did she survive, and why won’t she talk about how she made it?

We soon learn that this young woman, Mary Henry, is a church organist. This gives the movie an excuse to include an abundance of creepy organ music, but it also reveals some interesting points about Mary Henry’s character—she insists, several times, that playing the organ at churches is just a job to her and that she is not a “church person”. As Mary plays the organ and interacts with people around her, it’s clear that something is wrong with her—she speaks in an emotionless monotone and seems cold. It’s not clear if this is because of her accident or had been a part of her personality before, but either way, it creates a strange, stilted manner that immediately makes the viewer a little uneasy with her—she isn’t a particularly sympathetic character, and this makes our response to her accident more complicated.

I should probably stop here and say something about the acting in this movie. It’s obvious that most of the actors aren’t professionals. Almost everyone in the film (save Mary and her sleazy neighbor) speaks their lines with stilted, awkward inflection, as though they are reading straight from a cue card. At first, it seems that Mary speaks this way too, but her manner seems more calculated, more a part of her character than a failure in acting. Somehow, this stilted acting adds to the overall strangeness of the movie, but for modern viewers used to acting that looks like real-life interaction, this might be a bit grating.

When Mary leaves for a job in Salt Lake City, she begins to see visions—mostly they consist of a pale, old man who shows up in windows and mirrors. Mary also finds that she is obsessed with an old carnival ground site. Mary’s mix of horror and attraction to this place creates the primary tension and mystery of the movie.

At this point, what seems like a quiet, atmospheric, creepy little film becomes strange. Mary, though generally cold, and self-admittedly not very interested in other people, begins a strange flirtation with her obviously sleazy neighbor, Mr. Linden , played with slimeball panache by Sidney Berger. The movie hints that Mary’s vacillation between ice queen and vixen come somehow from her accident and from whatever connection she now has to death after her own brush with it. She also begins to experience strange spells where she is deaf and invisible. Mary’s terror and confusion in these scenes are genuinely frightening, and the lack of special effects increase the realism of Mary’s situation.

Although Carnival of Souls won’t keep you awake with nightmares, it is a psychologically interesting film that takes risks by presenting the viewer with a mysterious main character and a storyline that never neatly resolves itself or explains the mystery. I wish more contemporary horror movies would do the same.

Say hello to Divine! She might look like your typical trailer trash: make-up enthused, overweight, foul mouth individual, but really, she is much much more. She is deemed as the filthiest person alive, and Divine has no problem, of what so ever, at living up to this title on a regular day to day basis. Now, Divine is also a woman that belongs to a very loving family. It just so happens that her family is just as filthy. They are all cannibals, incestuous, and murderous. Divines son performs random acts of bestiality, her mother sits in a cradle all day eating eggs (yes, eggs), and her daughter likes nothing more than to see her own brother perform various sex acts (including the animal loving) on various other women, or if you will, victims. The important thing that Water’s wants you to realize is that the members of Divines family don’t go out of their ways to be this incredibly filthy. They are simply filthy by nature.

Now, somewhere, in a town nearby, lies a middle aged couple that decides that they are in fact the filthiest people alive. They are also successful entrepreneurs, however; the business is just a little more than a tad bit unconventional. They kidnap innocent young women, their butler impregnates these women, the women are then kept in captivity until they have the child, and the child is then sold to lesbian couples. Our entrepreneurs are not heartless however. Some of the profit from the sale goes to heroin addicts and various pornography shops. Think of it as charity! Anyway, this brings us to the basic plot that surrounds the film. The filthiest couple claims that they together are the filthiest people alive and will stop at nothing to claim this title from Divine. The battle has begun!

I could go on and on about the films filthiness, but there is a lot more to Water’s film than just almost every single disgusting act or wretchedness that you can think of. The actors in the film suggest that they were suddenly costumed from a thrift store, not given any character direction or coaching in the least, and left, by our director, to lollygag throughout their entire roles with the littlest attention given to any production value. Does the production value bring the film down to shit-list status? Absolutely not, and although the film does take some time to get used to, soon you will be laughing in hysterics at the cast, the films concept, and the way every single ethical moral in film-making, as of 1972, because of John Waters, has just innocently fluttered out a wide open window.

Pink Flamingos is basically the senior school play that I always wanted to be a part of, but nobody could direct without consequently being thrown in slammer. Still, it’s not so hard to imagine a film, which derives purely on filth, becoming such a huge cult classic either. Maybe it’s the fowl use of nudity or just the overall perversion of the film that sends it over the edge, but if you’re anything like me and a rather large handful of midnight film goers, it’s an edge you’ll probably want to cross again and again.