Riget (1994)

The Kingdom is the most technologically advanced hospital in Denmark, a gleaming bastion of medical science. A rash of uncanny occurrences, however, begins to weaken the staff's faith in science--a phantom ambulance pulls in every night, but disappears; voices echo in the elevator shaft; and a pregnant doctor's fetus seems to be developing much faster than is natural. At the goading of a spiritualist patient, some employees work to let supernatural forces rest. (Imdb rating 8.6)

I'll let you in on a secret; most of the time, I know before I watch something whether it will fit this blog or not. When the movie's title is something like Vampire Whores from Outer Space, you can't help it. But while I'd heard rumblings about Lars von Trier's Riget (The Kingdom), I had no idea about how gloriously scary and insane it would turn out to be.

Mr von Triers is known for being very 'artsy', hell, he's one of the founders of what is possibly the world's most pretentious film movements in Dogme 95. Riget, having been developed before Dogme 95, shows early signs of future techniques, such as the complete lack of artificial film lighting, shooting completely on location, and handheld camera work. While the resulting images are grainy and under developed, the swooping camera movements, strange angles and frankly bizarre editing at times creates a genuine air of atmosphere.

I hope there are no ghosts up there.....

The show also manages to straddle a delicate line between scenes of humour and scares very well, never sinking too deeply into either, but there are still plenty of both. It's also quite graphic for a tv show (maybe the Danish have less problems with violent/sexual material on tv?), and while the special effects are nothing special, let me just tell you to be prepared for the last five seconds of the last episode. It takes me a lot to yell out 'what the fuck!' when I'm sitting by myself watching something, but I did here....

I honestly can't wait to watch Riget II, and have a feeling it will be as good as the first. I heartily recommend Riget, if you can handle the somewhat slowish beginning of the first episode:

Things I learnt:

• Dishwashers with Down Syndrome have amazing spirit sensing/future reading abilities.
• Kids steal crappy tire hubcaps with you don't take them with you.
• Smoking is fine in Danish hospitals.

Jack Ketchum's the Girl Next Door (2007)

Based on the Jack Ketchum novel of the same name, The Girl Next Door follows the unspeakable torture and abuses committed on a teenage girl in the care of her aunt...and the boys who witness and fail to report the crime. (Imdb rating 6.9)

The title of this blog 'The Sick, the Strange and the Awful' is somewhat of a misnomer. In reality, the percentages aren't equal; the 'Awful' is a full 70% of the blog's content, 'Strange' is 25%, and 'Sick' is only about 5%. Even then, the 'sick' usually has no effect on me. Hey, it's only a movie!

I'll come right out and say it; I could only watch the first hour of The Girl Next Door, fast forwarding through the rest. I think I'm jaded more than most, I've seen quite a few disturbing movies in my time, but nothing hit me quite as hard as this did. This is a foul, foul movie.

I can hear some pseudo-gorehounds and other people intrigued by just how repulsive and vicious I'm making this movie sound. It is all of that, but somehow, it only has an R rating in America, the same as the Hangover, which is staggering. I think what makes it truly heinous is the lack of distance between what is happening on screen and what could happen in real life. As it should, because it *did* happen in real life, in Indiana in the 60s.

The real events are almost worse than the movie (real life was far more drawn out, but missing some of the more shocking parts of the movie). I'm glad I didn't know it was real beforehand, it would have only made the hit harder. The subtle way the film introduces the later appalling behaviour is also extremely effective. There are just little things at the start, the aunt flippantly giving the neighborhood kids beer, one of her sons killing earthworms by dumping them on an anthill etc, but they snowball quickly.

I'm being nice by not showing you anything

I'm still making some of you want to watch The Girl Next Door, and some of you will. Just heed my warning, that this movie isn't for any but the hardiest souls. The Girl Next Door is easily the hardest movie I've ever had to watch. I think I'll calm myself down by watching Cannibal Holocaust or Muzan E.

Chinese Torture Chamber Story (1994)

A woman is accused of the murder of her husband. In order to extract a confession the court subjects her to a series of violent methods of torture. Most of the story is told in flash backs, recounting how the story leads to the ultimate gory death of her poor husband. (Imdb rating 6.2)

The Chinese/Cantonese produced a lot of insane shit in the 90's. The pseudo-genre "Cat III", named after a rating for films in Hong Kong, was in full swing, and the focus was on creating gory, disturbing and erotic stories, and unleashing them on the public.

Chinese Torture Chamber Story is one such... story. You know you are in for a rough ride when the opening five minutes are just people getting tortured in excruciating ways, like getting your penis chopped off (obvious) and getting an axe wound on top of your head and having boiling milk poured in it (not so obvious). The start and end of the movie are littered with broken fingers, ripped out nails, lashings and the like. It's not too shocking for a jaded viewer though.

But then around the middle of the film, the main female character has to marry a man with a huge penis. And I mean huge, we see him roll up his pant legs to urinate! Then characters see a couple flying through the forest having a heated sword fight. Suddenly, their clothes fly off and they are having sex in mid air, each trying to 'win' by pleasuring the other one more. Then the main bad guy takes a potion to make him invisible so he can rape the married girl, and just as he is about to 'enter' her, her husband slips his head in the way and gets a mouthful of semen for his trouble. So basically, it gets hilarious for the middle of the movie.

My mustache and I will win this flying orgasming contest!

The story itself isn't bad, the pacing of the movie is just unique. Harsh at the start, laughs in the middle, and harsh at the end. I enjoyed this movie. It may be a little heavy going for newbies to exploitation films, but it mixes funny and violent well. It does make me question once again just how crazy the Asian film makers are, no other countries in the world produce more completely random movies then China/HK/Japan. And I love them for it.

Things I learnt:

• Little Cabbage is the best name ever.
• "My little dickie" should never be a nickname for your male lover.
  
• Breast can be made larger by heating up herbs in a bowl and placing them over the breast. The larger the bowl, the larger the breasts.
• Back in the ol' days, blow up dolls were made from canvas and straw.
• Appealing to a higher court in China means rolling on a bed of nails naked.
  

Super Hell (2004)

The Devil has been kicked out of Hell and roams the Earth, causing everyone to go crazy! (Imdb rating N/A)

I'm a sad individual. Knowing just how bad movies from the Mortuary Madness boxset are, I stupidly delved once more into the abyss of shoddy amateur horror movies that are contained therein.

At least Super Hell was somewhat entertaining, the first half hour especially. And it had someone in it I've heard of! And it's sadly Robert Z'Dar, owner of the world's largest jaw, and mostly known for being a silent masked killer in Maniac Cop. He is amusing though, he randomly plays the piano a lot (and well at that), and gives terribly spoken monologues to an entirely invisible crowd (having a random guy off screen yell out 'Yeah' every thirty seconds and canned applause isn't fooling me, sorry).

Clap along with me, children, don't be scared!

As I expected, there is lots of goofy shit happening, lots of badly costumed characters running around acting like retards, guys having hot sex with hockey arcade machines, Italians/Samoans tellingsexual stories with f-bombs (there is *a lot* of swearing in this movie), children getting slapped, aliens and coffins made of cardboard boxes, killer clowns, zombies air guitaring, devils chasing and scaring ducks (twice!), and a hilarious cross-dresser trying to imitate a girl's voice, but sounding more like the Pimply Teenager from The Simpsons.

Of course the acting, camera work, special effects, editing and everything else is deplorable to the extreme. I must give a special mention to the sound, which it goes without saying is a fuzzy, soupy mess, but I confused as to who in their right mind would put a pig squeal metal band in their movie? I've watched quite a few Z-Grade movies now, and I think I have my two first axioms of a truly bad movie, which are:

• An excruciatingly bad band gets either a lot of screen time, or does a majority of the soundtrack, or both.
• The editor or another integral crew member either only has one name, or an obviously fake name, or both. (In this case, Scardavis?)

I'm also considering the whole "Magicians randomly inserted to do magic tricks for no reason, other then it's cool/wastes time", but I've only seen that a couple of times, so I'll wait before it'll be etched in stone.

I guess my main gripe with Super Hell is that there is so much completely useless things crammed into this movie, that by the half way mark, nothing this movie can throw at you will be at all shocking or unexpected. A demon struggles to do a shit in a toilet? Meh. A guy in a chicken suit is killed? Oh well. A women births a live iguana, before a guy machete's it? Fine. A nude overweight goth chick masturbates herself with a knife while one of the original police officers from Plan 9 From Outer Space looks on in utter enjoyment? Whatever.

Actually, I've made this movie sound really good, I want to watch it again, or at least, sigh, it's sequel.

Things I learnt:

• Dead devil clowns awake when you put on a red nose and squeeze it.
• "There is a Super Hell? What, Hollywood?"
• Giant African drums are an integral part of a pig squeal band.
• Negative shots are a good way of hiding awful special effects.
• Having a title card saying "Censored due to extreme graphic content" rather then showing a killing is both amusing and infuriating.
  

Vase de Noces (1974)

A mad farmer falls in love with his pig and has mutant piglets with it. When the "piglets" prefer their mother over him, he hangs them all and the sow kills herself. Then he does the same (Imdb rating 5.5)

That's the entire movie, that's it. And it is just as screwed up as it sounds, if not moreso. I mean, the English title for Vase de Noces is.... the Pig Fucking Movie. It's something that could only be made in Europe (or Japan).

I will have to clarify a few things about Vase de Noces; it most definitely resides under the bold heading of 'arthouse'. It's shot in black and white, has zero lines of dialogue, and contains a very loose storyline. I highly doubt it was made for the express purpose of entertainment, and as such, I can't really yell at it too much.

There are many other positives I can attribute to Vase de Noces, such as the expert cinematography, shot selection and the like. The naturalistic sound effects needed to be good, and are, lots of interesting animal calls and squealching noises, whilst the soundtrack is a mix of choral, almost dystopian sounding synths and weird avent-garde keyboarding which work well with the film. The director Theirry Zeno was obviously well skilled in the art of film making. The lead and only actor wasn't bad either.

But I'm skipping around the facts; Vase de Noces is deathly boring for someone with a low attention span like myself. I'll respect it, but I sure as hell am not going to like it. And then there is the pig-loving...

It's gonna be literally squealing like a pig, as it were.

The sex scenes are grossly overstated in the title, as there is only one or maybe two scenes of man-pig love, and they are mainly thrusting from behind, so you can't see anything. And he's in love with the pig, so I guess that makes it more appropriate? It'd be less concerned with the sex, and more concerned with the live pig births, the hanging of the piglets from trees, the beheading of chickens, turkeys having sex, and the man fingering and eating his own shit. It's all fantastic stuff, really...

I can't really say much more, if you are an intellectual who stares at paintings for hours whilst stroking your beard and drinking plum-based alcoholic drinks, you'd probably enjoy this piece of cinema more then I did. I'm just a guy who reviews shitty movies.

(It's interesting to note that this film is banned in my hometown after police raided a film festival showing of it in 1975. I guess I can be expecting the same any minute.)

Things I learnt:

• Wheel n' Stick and kites are hours of amusement for mentally challenged individuals.
• Don't waste chicken heads; put them in a jar with leaves and store them in a weird menagerie.
• You can train a pig to go to the toilet the same time as you.
  

Attack Girls Swim Team vs the Unliving Dead (2007)

The story revolves around a virus of sorts that is turning all the non-swimmers at the school into zombies. Some talkative, some not. Throw in a mysterious new girl and a back-story with her and some mad doctor. (Imdb rating 4.4)

Japan has come out with the the most bat-shit insane movies of the last 20 years. And it's my duty to pick the best sounding ones, and Attack Girls Swim Team vs the Unliving Dead fits the bill.

I'd first like to mention that this movie is two thirds main storyline, one third random sex scenes that show off the sizable.. talents of main character Aka. As since it is Japan, that means a lot of panty shots, shower scenes, lesbian lovers that have known each other a few hours, and of course, female masturbation brought about helplessly by a guy in a red suit playing a flute. I still don't know what that last one means.

You may ask why I referred to the softcore porn scenes before the rest of the movie? Because the rest of the movie honestly feels slightly tacked on, just to get Aka naked. I mean, she shoots some kind of laser out of her vagina!

Here it is!

The rest of the movie is fine, just a overly gory pseudo-zombie movie (that's a good thing). The swim team themselves bar Aka prove themselves useless at fighting, and that only fuels the carnage of later on in the movie. There's some stupid storyline about testing new killer viruses on the school kids and teachers and Aka being a former 'Water Terrorist' (?), but they are lackluster, and are mainly there so Aka can do pushups in a bra. It is short in runtime, which is always a plus in a gore movie.

A few other points need to be addressed. This is clearly a product of both low budget and the MTV Generation, with the soundtrack an awful mix modern hardcore and cheesy video game music, to go with the choppy fast editing. I swear in one shot, they showed someone surprised with a zoomed close up in slow motion four times in a row! Film student in me, I know, but still.

And I can't say I've seen a worse translation job done on any other movie I've ever seen. It's like the guys Nintendo hired to translate games in the 80's are back.

A Winner Is You!

Overall, a goofy diversion that won't win any prizes, but is still watchable. Just mind the constant nudity.

Things I learnt:

• When you see a new girl standing in front of a pool with clothes on, push her in first, ask questions later.
• It'll be a great day when Japanese people master the use of l's in "I rike you".
• Sometimes it's better just to hire a carnival guy who can juggle and breathe fire, and work it into the script somehow.
• Low blows don't work when the recipient has a killer virus.