THE SEVERED ARM – One of life's big questions - “under what circumstances will I resort to cannibalism?” - is put to a bunch of starving, hopeless guys trapped deep underground. They're rescued before they have to come up with an answer, but not before they hack off the arm of one of their number in anticipation. Years later, said amputee starts to visit his ex-buddies with a view to violent revenge. 'The Severed Arm' is a proto-slasher movie from the nineteen seventies. It has its flaws, but is really quite good. The tone is grim but shrill, somehow summed up by the way the film's credit sequence emblazons the title, 'The Severed Arm', over a shot of a dummy severed arm whilst the soundtrack blares out some grating but eerie electronic noise. That's really the tone of most of the movie, if you incorporate the essence of lots of scenes of people sitting around and talking. There is a drag factor (isn't there always?), but 'The Severed Arm' is actually quite fast paced for its time, and is eased along by some reasonable acting and some quite effective sequences. The script and direction might be awkward, but it has some grainy seventies 'strangeness of form' on its side. Going back to the soundtrack for instance, there is a really obvious “electronics are still a novelty” vibe to it, and it's a great collage of discordant synthesiser squiggles although it might be a bit omnipresent for some. I'm also a big fan of crude seventies movie psychedelia – wonky angles, fisheye lenses, slow motion and the like – and some of that is in evidence here, together with a generally murky, shadowy atmosphere. Definitely check it out if you like grindhouse obscurities, or, for that matter, slasher forerunners, of which 'The Severed Arm' is an overlooked example. Plenty of public domain type versions on the market, but you can also catch it on YouTube.
ALIEN 3000 – Haven't checked in with Jeff LeRoy for a while, but his films always bring a smile to my face. 'Alien 3000' is a pretty good example of his schtick, being gleefully bad whilst holding back from parody (only just, though). 'Alien 3000' is about a cave full of treasure which seems to be guarded by an invisible alien. No prizes for guessing where Jeff got that 'concept' from, but thankfully the monster also materialises as an awful early CGI effect and also as a rubbish Dr Who monster type practical effect. Anyway, the story follows some army types, a made up government bureau of paranormal investigators and some mercenaries (?) who covene at the site of this cave and try to figure out what's going on / kill alien / snatch treasure etc etc. As befits a low budget movie about an alien in a cave, there's lots of wandering around and chatting to 'sustain tension', but also the required trash factor – monster battles and excessive gore. Well, not too excessive, and 'Alien 3000' doesn't have the incessant craziness of the LeRoy classic 'Rat Scratch Fever', but it's not afraid to sling some entrails when asked. Cheap, plastic, disposable dreck – that's what it's all about, though. I wonder what people will make of films like this in thirty or forty years time, whether they'll be given 16K Holo-Ray special editions, or whether they'll be even talked about at all.
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