Finally able to buy some new movies, so here's a rundown on my latest splurge with a couple of oldies thrown in at the end -
THE SEASONING HOUSE - OK, overall this is good, but I have to say it can't really survive its midway tonal shift without becoming another kind of film. I mean, it starts out as a really bleak exploration of enforced prostitution during high conflict in the Balkans, following as it does a deaf-mute pressganged into anaesthetising the prisoners of a handful of horrendous army rapists. Later, it becomes a more standard rape-revenge movie, and exchanges its initial intensity for cheap exploitation based thrills. The gore is plentiful, and the latter sections are quite riveting in a sense, but it should've stayed deadly serious.
NO-ONE LIVES - Proficient latter day splatter which sees a gang of criminals take on the wrong guy ('wrong guy' in this case being a yuppie-cum-prolific serial killer.) It's pretty lean, fast paced, very violent (although somehow not as gory as I anticipated for some reason) and seethes with a kind of rage born of perhaps a class war subtext? Maybe my interpretation, and in any case, which side are the filmmakers on? Anyway, those looking for a load of exciting murder scenes are already recommended this.
THE RITES OF SPRING - Like 'The Seasoning House', this one had me excited right up until the midway transition. Here, we start out with a plot involving a bunch of mean-spirited kidnappers on the one hand, and on the other, some weird sadism featuring animal heads, strange camera angles and a 'Barn of the Naked Dead' feel. Then it turns into another slasher movie with young men and women running up and down corridors. But still it left me feeling a little disorientated and intrigued. Admittedly I was pretty drunk before I reached the end of this one, so it's back at the top of the pile for a rewatch - in the meantime, I think it has enough about it for me to recommend.
THE BRIDES WORE BLOOD - A delve into the recesses of my DVD pile brought forth with this. Produced in Florida in the early seventies, TBWB is exactly the kind of local indie drive-in fodder that could not possibly be made today. Like many of its ilk, it seems designed to not really be watched. Shame, because those sat before it these days are less likely to be shagging teens than saddoes such as myself, wankers who take shit like this seriously, or try to. I actually rather like 'The Brides Wore Blood'. To continue the theme of midway transformations, what we have here is forty minutes of stilted, grating tedium about a family curse and vampires or something which finally blossoms into a final half hour of cheap ghost-ride weirdness, with Pan Book of Horror cover -type demons, too-long vampire fangs, hazy non-sequitors, the likely heroes dying horribly and a pretty depressing finale. Strip me naked, dress me as a mouse and put me in a barren room with this and a copy of 'Saw 7' - I know which one I'd nibble first.
THE OTHER HELL - This has to be my favourite Bruno Mattei film. Yes, such a statement has the right to exist. Yes, I am a human being. Here is nunsploitation which opens with a volley of sleazy gall-bladder stabbings, then turns into... well, I can't quite remember, but there's a faceless Giallo-type nun - or is there? - who keeps popping up, then... then there're some deamonic eyes which - who knows? A priest investigates everything, but a nun had an illegitimate kid years ago whose face was partially burned and anyway she was psychic and the dog-keeper has a fist full of maggots and someone else dies horribly... 'Robo-Commando' was linear cheapshit compared with this surreal patchwork masterpiece. And if I don't really mean that, I sort of do.
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