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THE GORE GORE GIRLS – Here is my review of 'The Gore Gore Girls', a belated birthday present for the great H G. Hershell, tuck in and enjoy! I bet it beats that scented candle set your wife got you from Wilkos! She's shagging your gardener, by the way! Your whole life is an illusion which will crumble bit by bit as you slide towards oblivion! Thanks for the movies, though. Well, I never used to rate TGGG very much, and I kind of dismissed it for appearing to be merely a couple of gore gags strung together with dull plot and irritating characters. In all fairness, the youthful FT probably had his head even further up his arse than the contemporary version, and, watching TGGG with eyes that have since witnessed an endless tide of B movie monstrosity, these days the finer points of this trashy delight are much more obvious to me. TGGG has a slightly grating figure at its core, a private investigator who comes on like a vague cross between a regency era Jason King and Dr Who's 'The Master'. Said PI investigates the gruesome murders of some local strippers – and that's about it. For those not expecting 'Anna Karenina', TGGG contains a wealth of oddity within its simple structure. First of all, the violence is really sadistic although utterly fake, and pretty much exemplifies that HG butchershop feel. I remember being a bit thrown by how yucky the facial mutilations seemed when I first watched it many moons ago. I can take or leave that kind of thing now, but what really drew me into TGGG this time was the whole vibe, the almost verite level cheapness, which gives it a really fractured feel. There's almost always a looped psychedelic – surf – 'strip club jazz' riff playing in the background which just pushes the bad editing in your face, although this gets taken to new heights when a completely out of context military tattoo plays over shots of a young woman having her ass tenderised! Genius. All this zaniness has a hetero John Waters feel to it, too – we're given a vision of America on the brink of groovy social apocalypse, where militant feminists take down strippers and Vietnam vets vent their bloodlust by crushing anthropomorphisised vegetables. Like all or most of HGL's films, TGGG somehow has an unearthly glow, a feverishness. Films like this take the temperature of a sick, dementing culture. TGGG isn't my fave HG Lewis film, but it has gone way up in my estimation.
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It makes perfect sense that people do not really talk about themselves and their families, or why they are in jail when they are inside – Piper only encounters Alex (in real life she is called Nora) at the very end of her sentence and in a different jail – so quite a bit of the stuff in the TV show is fabricated.
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Womaneater (1957) A colourful, (well it would be were it not black and white), British shocker about a mad scientist who has a carnivorous tree with tentacles for branches, that produces sap which can bring the dead back to life. Alas, said tree can only do this by devouring pretty young women. Vampiric trees are nothing new. 1960's Little Shop of Horrors is one of the more famous examples. However unlike the Corman film, Womaneater is no comedy. Yes it's clunky, and some of the performances are a little on the campy side, although George Coulouris as the loony Dr. Moran is always watchable and Vera Day makes for a charming heroine. The direction is a little on the generic side exposing a fair share of padding However the film and Brandon Fleming's script does try and bring something new to the table in the form of voodoo and it's continent spanning storyline. Albeit elements not seen as original nowadays, but the fifties up to this point had been extremely sparse for horror with only five or six of any real note from anywhere in the world not just Britain. Of course this year, 1957, was the year all that would change but that's another story. Admittedly mad scientists and monsters were a b-movie staple in the US at the time but generally concentrated in the sci-fi genre. Womaneater is cetainly more horror than sci-fi and being a British production looks and feels totally different to anything the American market churned out. After all you don't get bobbies on bycycles, lovely old country mansions and Soho hookers in Cold War America. Womaneater is a brisk affair, clocking in at a mere 71 minutes and may not be that original with it's central plot motif, but any film that explores voodoo, mad scientists, monstrous trees, not to mention zombie women, is always worth treasuring in my book, especially as it's British. US label Image should be proud of this dvd. As a film i have to be honest and say i'd not even heard of until this time last week, and i wasn't expecting much, and from reading, it's other releases have been murky of picture and dreadful of sound. However this dvd looks lovely, dirt free and with clear, crisp sound. A bit of an unheralded gem really. Recommended |
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Has a good soundtrack too and the central female vampire is quite cute. I really liked it, but don't expect much gore. Recommended.
__________________ MIKE: I've got it! Peter Cushing! We've got to drive a stake through his heart! VYVYAN: Great! I'll get the car! NEIL: I'll get a cushion. |
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Yeah, sorry about that one. Does that make you HG Lewis, though? If so, thanks for all the great films and sorry once again for the adultery, I do get murdered with a trowel after a water hose enema at some point in the third reel of one of those Vinegar Syndrome rereleases no-ones really watched.
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