Double Review: Retirement of Joe Corduroy and Skin Eating Jungle Vampires

Since one of the films I’m covering today is a short, let’s make this a double review, shall we? You’re welcome. Though after reading the second review, you may die a little inside.

The Retirement of Joe Corduroy (2012)

This short film is a nice little slice of revenge exploitation. I’m not saying it’s superior to most that are already out there but only using up 25 minutes AND still getting me to care about the characters is a pretty neat trick.

Joe is a retiring dentist. He’s not all that thrilled at the reality but seems he can’t do much about it. He and his nephew, Spencer, are really close and share a love of guns. I think it’s implied that they share a lot more and have a great relationship but the guns are the main focus here. One night, Spencer is jumped, mugged, beaten, and left for dead. As he lies in a hospital bed, comatose, Joe whispers a promise to him - “They’re all gonna pay.”

And so Joe starts a new job of taking down criminals, vigilante style! 

Movie Review: Fairytales (Full Moon, Blu-ray)

Review By: Hal Astel

I've spent many years getting as many people as I can to see Peter Jackson's debut film, Bad Taste. It's my favourite film of all time, the only movie I've seen over fifty times and probably the only film I've seen over ten. It's not a great movie, though it's astounding in many ways, but favourite movies are not always great movies and they don't have to be. A good case in point is Cinderella, which is to my wife's ex husband what Bad Taste is to me. We discovered Fairy Tales via Cinderella, as it's another soft porn comedy musical that shares the same subject matter and quite a few of the same cast and crew.

This time out the prince has turned 21 and three kooky doctors serenade him with a ballad designed to instigate him into providing an heir. He'll inherit the kingdom if only he can produce one by Thursday. The only catch is that he doesn't get turned on by beautiful naked women willing to do anything he wants, even when they're Little Bo Peep wearing nothing but her cute little bonnet. So off he goes on a quest to find the princess of his dreams who was lost years ago, because he's the only one who he'll be able to get it up for.

Movie Review: Anna: Scream Queen Killer (2013)

Chemical Burn Entertainment. When that popped up on the screen I couldn’t help rolling my eyes and shuddering in disgust at the same time. My last experience with this production/distribution company brought me Piranha-Man vs. Werewolf Man. I still have nightmares... But once this flick got rolling, I was pleasantly surprised at its quality. Well, maybe ‘pleasantly’ is too strong a word. I didn’t vomit, let’s put it that way.

Anna: Scream Queen Killer is about Anna (duh), a well known horror actress who’s been called to audition for some upcoming work. It starts out normal enough - she works through several scenes calling for her to be infected by an alien virus, to become a vampire, be trapped and afraid, etc. But each scenario the director asks for becomes more and more twisted and sexual. She’s also required to remove more clothing each time. Though obviously uncomfortable, Anna continues to comply in hopes of getting the job.

As the audition process drags on (and on and on…), it seems the director just wants to get his rocks off but for Anna, the lines between reality and make-believe begin to blur.

Movie Review: "The Flying Acquaintances" (1973; Vinegar Syndrome)

...back in this reviewer's good ol' early Navy days...that is, before the onset and convenience of home video, and those occasional late-night 'gathering of the buds', at one of the 'buds' conveniently located homes...those smokey & darkened back rooms, and the flickering chatter of an overheated film projector...the murmuring and the snickers and the 'woo-wooing' and the clinking of beer cans...this reviewer's fondest memories of having been 'formally' introduced to the steamy and provocative arena of sexploitation cinema, were the late-night trips we all made, to the local, albeit tucked-away-back-in-the-fields drive-in theaters, in the early eighties. Passion pits, found while stationed in Orlando, Florida...Groton, Connecticut...Great Lakes, Michigan...Norfolk, Virgina. Breaking away from our arduous pre-weekend Naval school studies, or the dust and grit of a Friday workday in the shipyard, once the sun hit the level of dusk, a dozen of us...all young, dumb and full of (...what?? Did I just hear a high pitched 'cuckoo'?? Never mind...) would pour ourselves into a couple of rickety, run-down vehicles, and do some wayward, random bar-hopping. A couple of us would occasionally 'get lucky', and that'd be the last we'd see of them, that night...a couple others, green behind the gills, being unable to hold their 'Milwaukee's Best' (...and that's after the first 12 or 15 of them; hey, you just can't beat a case of beer, for a mere three bucks and change, right??), would pass out, and a readily available taxi would pigeon the wimps back to base...

...the rest of us, beaten down by rejection, but still enjoying a respectable buzz...still, with another case or two of the ol' 'MB' to polish off, and nothing else to do...would roll on over, sometimes on mere gas fumes, to the local, though quite out in the sticks, late-night drive-in theater, which...once the midnight hour rendered a subtle cymbal strike...would covertly screen some of the best, albeit some of the most wildly outrageous softcore film classics...most of which were dated back to the golden age of '70's 'blue' movies. Edgy sex scenes, but not too explicit...wacky fantasy scenarios, which could never possibly happen in real life, save for what might be imaginatively written in 'Forum' magazine...comical interludes, to break up the monotony of the steam sex moments (...oh yeah right...they were so-o-o-o bo-o-o-oring, too...again, yeah right)...shoddy production values, and ridiculously looking cardboard sets...and some of the most ludicrous, over-the-top performances, both in character interaction, as well as during the sex scenes...and all this for the stuffed carload price of five bits...

Movie Review: "Mandingo Sex Addict" (2014; Full Circle Filmworks)

...truth be known, often times, one cannot help but rally around and appreciate a filmmaker who, in having garnished a successful career and respectably celebrated reputation, feels ready to take his or her efforts to that next plateau, moving away from a genre expectedly known for...taking things up a notch, so to speak, as far as grander ideas, financially higher-tiered production values and more readily available resources. To be sure, it's a personal growth process, and it has to be absolutely elating, not to mention a boost to a filmmaker's ego, knowing that in being critically upheld, as far as one's work, that the talent comes looking for the filmmaker, rather than the other way around. Considering that, it's even cooler when, despite the intentful desire to move on to bigger and better things, the filmmaker feels equally compelled to get that very last obligatory fist-pump in there...one last hurrah on that lower-rung genre, if at the very least, for personal satisfaction, closing that particular chapter in one's career, taking care of an itch one just has to scratch, and at the same time, affording the devotees of his work, an appreciative genre finale, before moving on...with promise of greater and more diverse things, soon to come...

...will such a 'genre finale' be a creatively conceived and satisfying crescendo moment, or will the overwhelming desire to get to that next level be so great and alluring, that the proposed 'crescendo moment' seems rushed, forced and cookie-cutter standard...even sub-standard?? Like something which one just has to get out of one's system, before moving on...in other words, as the saying goes, 'just phoning it in'?? (...the latter suggestion of which, for good instance, we definitely saw just recently, when director Tom Six, motivated and drawn toward 'getting it out of his system, once and for all' and moving on to something other than his infamous and notorious 'Human Centipede' franchise, punched out a third and final chapter in the gratuitously grotesque and gory 'saga'...and the resulting finale proved...well extraordinarily 'ordinary', at least by what might have been expected on the Tom Six Standard...but that's another story, altogether)...

Movie Review: Prison Girl (2008)

While I am “assured” that the arrival of one of Japan’s pink films in my care package this time around was “accidental” and that I didn’t have to watch it, I figured, what the hell. I can man up and watch some soft-core porn. It’s for science! Or, work. Or…something.

Prison Girl stars Asami as Ayaka, a bored housewife who’s been having some very strange dreams lately. She keeps having nightmares about being in prison where she is man-handled and abused at the hands of the Warden and the guards. She thinks that settling into the role of housewife must be at the core of these dreams, though she’s had them since she was a teenager. 

On the advice of her husband, she starts regular visits to a psychiatrist. He seems to think that psychological disorders can be caused by not enough sex. Maybe that’s her issue. So she and her husband should talk about having kids. After all, kids make everything better!

In addition to the prison, Ayaka also dreams about being showered in blood and laughing maniacally. The nightmares become more frequent and it’s glaringly obvious that she enjoys them. When she’s not dreaming about being groped, she’s fondling herself in the real world. The shrink then has a new theory - she’s feeling guilty about something and that’s why she keeps dreaming of prison. Like guilty over keeping a secret. Like secretly being a prostitute.

Wait, what? Where’d that come from?

Eventually, Ayaka’s dream world and waking world begin to merge. Is she the repressed housewife dreaming of prison life or is she a criminal, charged with murdering her husband, who dreams of having the regular life of a wife? You can contemplate that while staring at Asami’s perfectly perky breasts. 

Movie Review: Grindhouse Trailer Classics Vol. 1 (Intervision / Nucleus Films)

A few years back the U.K genre specialists at Nucleus Films produced their first of four volumes (up to now) of cult film trailer compilations entitled Grindhouse Trailer Classics. At the time it wasn't available for anyone outside of England unless you had an all-region DVD player...that is, until now. Severin Films’ sleazy little brother, Intervision have now locked their teeth into the region one debut of this collection with their new release making it even more available to the masses. If you have yet to see it, it’s a deliciously diabolical compilation of trash that shows some major love for the lost art of the trailer and grindhouse theaters of yesteryear.

This particular collection is pretty exhaustive as there are well over 2 hours of trailers with the different genres often associated with the grindhouse -- horror, sexploitation, kung fu, Blaxploitation, Nazisploitation and so on. Here's a list of most of what you’re going to catch on this first volume:

Movie Review: Judy!/The Night Hustlers (1969/68, Vinegar Syndrome)

...previously, this reviewer had made celebrative mention of the eclectic, provocative and lurid film rarities, which cut film auteur Mike Vraney, and his cohorts over at Something Weird Video had successfully...even sometimes shamelessly...built their fine reputation on, over the years. And that the folks over at Vinegar Syndrome, had since taken up that respected mantle of provocative-ness, with an always surprising array of lurid and cutting edge films, in their own right...many of which would clearly not look out of place, in the Something Weird library. But again, all of this has been adoringly said before, and though this viewer feels it unnecessary to tread that same ground, again, there is still an irresistible compulsion to take a moment in remembering what Mike Vraney, whom we regrettably lost, recently...contributed, to the genre, and his tireless efforts in preserving a certain 'forbidden' breed of cult and exploitation films, which might have outright disappeared into obscurity, were it not for his driven devotion to the genre. Films very much like Vinegar Syndrome's latest double-feature outing...two recently unearthed sexploitation outings, once again gracing yet another edition of their most excellent 'Drive-In Collection" series...presenting 1969's "Judy", paired up with the previous year's "The Night Hustlers"...

Movie Review: Climb It, Tarzan! (2011, Independent Entertainment)

Directed by Jared Masters
Starring Jennicka Andersson, Jamie Devitt and Zrinka Dozic
Run Time: 75 minutes
Unrated

The time is the sixties, its the dawn of the sexploitation era and aspiring model Ginger (Jamie Devitt) learns the only available photo assignments are for naughty men’s magazines, and that she must risk eviction or succumb to the sadistic perversions of dominating lesbian photographer Paula (Jennicka Andersson). As naive Ginger discovers first-hand that there is no chance of becoming a wholesome pin-up queen, her secretive sister Janet (Jessica Hichborn) takes a job as a go-go dancer, baring her flesh by night and living out of a Venice Beach sailboat by night.

Billed as a tribute to sexploitation cinema, Climb It, Tarzan! consists of an all-female cast of over fifty young budding starlets, most of which are more then willing to “drop the top” for the camera of the creepy but hot Scandinavian photographer Paula. In all honesty this movie started out quite nicely, with a nude photo-shoot followed by the hapless model getting chloroformed and molested by the photographer. Five minutes in I’m thinking to myself, “Gentlemen, we have a winner!” Unfortunately it was all pretty much a free-fall into the lamest, most yawn-inducing recesses of bad-cinema imaginable from that point forward.

Sexy Sorority Girls in 3D, a Lon Chaney Jr. Classic, The Girl With Sex-Ray Eyes and Lovecraft Coming Soon From Retromedia!

“Sorority Girls 3-D”–Peek in on six sexy coeds as they compete for a spot in the hottest sorority on campus. Only the best will pass the test and become one of the elite few allowed to join. In a sizzling game of "Truth or Dare" the girls are put through their paces by sorority leader Beverly Lynne…and what these ladies will do in order to win is sure to delight everyone. All captured in alluring full-color 3D - you can almost reach out and touch them, but be careful…they're smoking hot. “Sorority Girls 3-D” is erotic fun from the cult movie experts at Retromedia Entertainment (“Bikini Drive-In,” “Housewives from Another World”) and stars Beverly Lynne, Jassie James, Penny Flame, and Angela Stone. 3D (two pairs of 3D glasses are enclosed in the package) and flat version included. Catalog number RME2130, UPC: 802993213005, $14.99 srp. Street Date April 2, 2013, prebook February 26, 2013