strange.

Can't believe that it's 36 years today since Will Byers went missing.....Remember the day with 60 (very) odd minutes of strange sounds from the upside down.

born to be wild.

Whilst tidying Cassidy's room today I came across a dusty old Betamax copy (ah Prism Vision where are you now?) of this behind his bed.

At first I put it down to the fact that he has a lion obsession.

Well it's either that or he's already punting my stuff down Cash Converters to get money for booze and burds.

I'm must admit to being slightly angry tho', not because he nicked it but because he actually kept hold of it.

Yes, it is that shite so I'll try to be quick.

Wild Beasts (AKA Belve Feroci. 1983).
Dir: Franco Prosperi.
Cast: Lorraine De Selle, John Aldrich, Ugo Bologna, some wild geese and an angry polar bear.

It's another sunny day at The Zoo of Frankfurt (16 Alfred-Brehm-Platz, opening times: 9AM-5PM during winter, 9AM-7PM in summer, price: Adult: 11 DM, child 5+ 5 DM), the zoo-keepers are busy feeding the animals and cleaning up the huge mounds of shite, the gift shop is re-stocking it's shelves and the polar bears are looking longingly at the dolphins.

Just a normal day then really.

Well, not quite (it'd be a pretty abysmal - well even more abysmal, movie otherwise) because during the night some mad mentalist bastard has put Phencyclidine (PCP, angel dust, supergrass, killer weed, sherm, shi-moo or rocket fuel for those street wise readers) in the zoo's water supply.

Within minutes of the gates opening and various parties of pensioners and school kids entering the zoo the animals have started to go a wee bit strange.

The elephants turn first as they attempt to stand on the keepers head, swiftly followed by the rats(?) who escape into the car park looking for convertibles to steal whilst the polar bears just stand around with their normal pained expressions.

No change there then.

"I wanted a Scottish flag hen!"

If that wasn't enough of a downer for a Monday morning it then appears that the sweat and drool from the junked up animals is infecting the local population's pets too.

Yup, the cats are eating babies, guide dogs are tearing the throats from their owners and border collies are madly licking meat paste from the naked bodies of middle-aged spinsters.

Or is that a different film?

A middle-aged spinster
(minus border collie) yesterday.

Only one man can save the city, enter (and by the look of his porn 'tache he wouldn't complain) world renowned zoo veterinarian Dr. Rupert Berner (Aldrich in his only film role outside gay tramp porn and snuff movies) who, aided by his scientist girlfriend Laura Schwarz (genre whore De Selle who's been in everything from House on the Edge of the Park and Cannibal Ferox via your dad's bed) and local hard nosed (yet scarily flaccid) cop, Inspector Natalie Braun (Nightmare City's Mr. Desmond himself, Ugo Bologna) must try to discover a way to stop the anarchic animals before they destroy the world.

But not before we've seen the frankly impressive sight of a cheetah racing an open-topped VW beetle in an attempt to eat the overweight driver.

Will our heroes find a cure that doesn't involve locking all the animals in tin sheds with bowls of chicken soup before the PCP tainted water finds it's way into the local school causing the kids to go mad too in an attempt to give us a shock ending?

Or will they think fuck it and just torch the poor beasts?

"I wouldn't want one of them swimming up my arse!"

Ah Franco E. Prosperi you bad, bad man.

After quite literally spewing forth (alongside fellow hack Gualtiero Jacopetti) the whole 'Mondo' genre and giving us the racistastic Addio zio Tom, Prospero obviously reckoned that it was time to head back into animal murder mode and decided that a film about man's inhumanity to other creatures via the world of the zoo would be a good enough excuse to kill some rodents (and cows and cats) live on screen.

That polar bear is attempting to fuck a man....must be a bipolar bear then.

Obviously influenced/enamoured by the 1949 Georges Franju documentary/drama recounting the lives of Paris slaughterhouse workers Le sang des bêtes (a film that David Lynch admitted inspired Inland Empire), Prosperi realised that the chances of him making a halfway decent movie starring Lorraine De Selle that used a zoo as a metaphor for Nazi extermination camps was pushing it somewhat, so in his wisdom he decided to junk the majority of the Franju's stark imagery and symbolism and just stick to the animal killings.

Which makes it kind of difficult to take the film's almost child-like (and naively childish) ecological message at all seriously.

De Selle happy in the fact that at least
her pussy wont get beaten
black and blue on screen.

The most shocking thing about the film tho' isn't the copious amounts of scenes of rats being burnt off windscreens and tigers let loose in cow pens but the fact that Prosperi's director of photography Franco Delli Colli seems to have decided to shoot the entire thing thru' a film of mud.

No taste, no talent, no mercy.

Tho' it is nice to see Lorraine De Selle getting enough cash to pay for he detox treatment.

film '80.

Found a few dog eared copies of Variety down the back of the sofa giving a sneak peek into the world of cinematic sales techniques.....So, how many of these gems actually made it into production?

seeing as....

...it's almost my birthday.

whoever sent me this....

cheers but surely my 31 days of horror wasn't that bad?

green fingered.

Thing 1 attended her first Rai-Con today so in celebration I thought I'd rewatch something suitable to get me in the mood.

Well, that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

Shokuhou Marunomi Acme (2008).
Dir: Ishikawa Hitoshi (as Ishikawa Kin).
Cast: Sanada Haruka, her big white pants, an industrial sized tub of KY jelly and a large slimy tentacled plant thing.

Smart and sensible shoed office girl Brenda (wild eyed and Pez toothed AV starlet Haruka, whom you may recognize from the arthouse classic Multipronged) is heading home after a hard day photocopying important stuff, sorting the pens out and the like, looking forward to a nice salad and a large glass of Lambrusco.

kicking off her Mules and heading straight for the kitchen Brenda is surprised to find a large green slimy thing in her knife drawer. Bending down to examine it closer she fails to see the mass of other wriggly, giggly slimy things slowly slithering towards her.

Yikes!

Haruka (bless you): A damn good rooting.

Before she can even muster a scream the tricky, sticky tentacles have wrapped themselves around her tiny waist and begun to show a rather unhealthy interest in her undies.

And the contents therein obviously.

Brenda vainly struggles against her green assailant but only manages to get even more and more slimy and - more upsetting for her - a huge ladder in her best tights.

Kicking and screaming as more and more of these pervy penile plant things begin to wrap themselves around her, our hapless heroine becomes alarmingly aware that for what are effectively long skinny plant roots they're incredibly adept at removing clothes.

Are they just interested in the latest smart office fashion or is something more sinister afoot?

Managing to flip herself onto her back in order to kick the tentacles away (and tearing her by soaked and by now transparent blouse too) Brenda is horrified to see, hiding in the corner of the kitchen (next to the bin) the owner of the frisky tentacles.

A giant fluffy (and possibly foul) mouthed plant, dripping with sticky goo and lustfully licking its lips as it drags Brenda ever closer....

Haruka: "Leaf me alone!"

Being a plucky kinda gal, Brenda tries to pull free one last time, but the pull of the plant alongwith the slimy floor/sticky arse interface causes all her clothes to fall away leaving her stark (non) bollock (ed) naked and slipping along the lino toward the beasts quivering maw.


Just a thought but do plants have maws?

Anyway, not one to give up without a struggle, Brenda fights and wiggles with furious abandon as it tries to pull her inside, eventually managing to make it as far as her apartment door (tho' by this point she's probably cursing having all the floors tiled rather than carpeted).

Just as it seems that Brenda is free of this horny hosepipe-like horror the creature lets out a massive fart and drags her kicking, screaming and squishing into its mighty mouth.


It's comes as no surprise that poor Brenda passes out.

Regaining consciousness inside what looks like a huge blood red bouncy castle,  wearing nothing but an ample coating of slime and being prodded by all manner of long sticky things, Brenda (understandably) starts to panic, screaming loudly as she desperately tries to crawl her way towards the creatures lips as even more gooey things appear and attempt to hold her back.

Will she escape?

Remarkably it seems like she will, seeing as her high pitched nasally whine appears to make the tentacles to shudder and panic, waving around like a sea of epileptic worms at a rave before losing their grip on poor Brenda.

Noticing this she screams some more.

Which is (in hindsight) a wee bit of a mistake, seeing as it causes the tentacles to go all stiff and bury themselves into every orifice available.

I'm sure this is accidental tho' and the poor things are just trying to hide.

Plus you can tell that they're scared because they appear to be crying milky tears from the single slitty eye they all have.

At least I think it's tears, cos the picture is all pixelated at this point.

The cover in full (just in case you want to
order it for your Gran this Christmas).

Suddenly the movie takes a bizarre twist as Brenda stops trying to fight the tentacle intrusion and, gulp, begins to enjoy the experience.

I've asked a few female friends that have been in this situation to see if this would really happen or is merely for titillation purposes and they all seem to agree that the film is quite accurate on this count (tho' they do admit that Brenda's choice of shoe doesn't really match her outfit so there you go).

Slowly, lustfully and very, very stickily the plant drags Brenda back towards it's dribbling pulsating mouth....

Will Brenda escape?

Does she really want to?

Will the couple end up married with 2.4 saplings?

Or after 40 minutes or so of hot rubber tentacle on nude, glistening Japanese girl action will Brenda awake screaming inside the plant as it begins to digest her?

Clue: it's the latter.

Pants.

Yup, it's another classic from Ishikawa Hitoshi, the genius writer/director behind the fantastic love triangle weepies Captured for Sex 1 and 2 as well as the high school hooker/possession/knockabout comedy hybrid The Big Slaughter Club (amongst other great family favourites) and just like those mentioned, this too is destined to be remembered as the top quality piece of cinematic greatness that it so obviously is.

As with the other chapters in Hitoshi's Shokujuu Acme series, this fifth episode analysises the cold hard truth in regards to the sexual politics of modern day Japan according to the theoretical frameworks of Tzvetan Todorov and Sigmund Freud, exploring aspects of both the Uncanny and the Fantastic.

The traditional and playful view of female sexuality - as symbolized by the ever probing tentacles, an image that can be dated as far back as 1820, with Hokusai's erotic masterpiece The Dream of The Fisherman's Wife and based in part on the animism aspects of the Shinto religion - is frighteningly inverted through the prism of Barthesian semiotics, as if the modern Japanese Alpha male (in this case not just director Hotoshi, but the complacent young men the series is so obviously aimed at), terrified by the openness of old world Japanese female sexuality have taken it on themselves to reclaim (as it were) the males rightful place of sexual power (in their eyes), replacing the thrusting sword with the (up until now) soft tentacles so loved by artists of the Edo Period.

A frightening upsurge in violent sexism based on 17th century erotic art?

Only in Japan.

Or West Bromwich obviously.

Although I could be reading way too much into this and Ishikawa Hitoshi has actually just made a common or garden tentacle porn movie aimed at the undersexed teenage masturbator market.

You decide.

do androids dream of electric beats?

Well Blade Runner fans we made it!

Yup, the movie is no longer science fiction seeing as from today it's set right here right now.

Well it;s only really right here if you're reading this in Los Angeles but you know what I mean.

So what better way to celebrate this Autastic classic with over an hour of Tyrell approved tunes, Roy Batty beats and synthetic samples.

Listen here.