childline.

Going away to Spain with the Cassman and his class next week so thought it'd be good to get him up to date with some quality Spain-based cinema before we go.

See? 

This is parenting done right.

Quien Puede A Un Nino? (AKA Death Is Child's Play, The Killer's Playground, Island of the Damned, Who Can Kill a Child?, Would You Kill a Child? 1976)
Dir: Narciso Ibanez Serrador.
Cast: Lewis Fiander, Prunella Ransome, Antonio Iranzo and the cast of Byker Grove.

  "Do you think the other children will start playing the way we do?"

"Oh, yes...there are lots of children in the world. Lots of them."

A pair of  particularly posh English love birds, the mightily mustached Tom and the pountily pregnant poppet Evelyn (Doctor Who's drug dealing tinker Tryst from The Nightmare of Eden Lewis Fiander and victim of the Silurian plague Prunella Ransome) are enjoying a well deserved break from drinking Pimms, watching cricket and abusing the cleaner with a holiday in sunny Spain, taking in the local lifestyle (letting your hair get greasy, not washing, seducing underage girls etc - possibly) and traveling to various festivals buying carpets and the like.

Whilst ordering food in English and sniggering at the locals trousers like all Brits abroad obviously.

After much saucy fun, bikini clad frolicking, vast amounts of el cheapo Vino and a fairly serious chat about abortion (Tom wanted Evelyn to have one, she refused - see it's a kinda child killing thing isn't it? I see what they did there), Tom decides to finish the holiday with a visit to the beautiful island of Almanzora (these days frequented by such luminaries as Ian Botham and Daley Thompson fact fans) and the small village of Shi'moo where he had many a magical holiday as a small (non mustached) boy.

Hmmm...another child reference. 

This Serrador bloke is good.

But the couple get a shock when they arrive as the town is abandoned, the hotel is empty and the local restaurant is deserted. 

Worst of all tho' is that all the TeeVee's are broken and the corner shop is out of Take A Break magazines.
 
What has happened to this island paradise?

"Look! It's Fred Titmuss!"

Tom, being a hunky hero type  decides to play detective whilst  Evelyn, being in the fat lady pudding club, rests her swollen feet.

No sooner has Tom jauntily skipped down the road than a young girl pops up at a window and waves merrily at Evelyn before slowly creeping over and obsessively stroking our plump pals mummy tummy before smiling and running away.

Weird.

Returning to Evelyn empty handed save for a kiss me quick hat the pair - in a horror movie first - decide to explore together, soon coming across an old man sitting at the roadside.

I suppose that being heavily pregnant has put Evelyn off the sex so Tom has to get his jollies where he can.
 
But before the old fella can wipe himself down or even grunt "Aye son!" a small girl appears from nowhere and bludgeons him to death with his walking stick.
 
Kids eh?

Luckily the local kids fear the Bri-Nylon.

Finding the situation a wee bit strange and probably worthy of a bit of Scooby Doo style investigation Tom and Evelyn decide to follow the girl further inland, passing deserted cars, discarded teeth and many a battered skull along the way.

All belonging to adults.

Well obviously the cars belong to adults (they aren't toy ones) but I'm trying to build tension so stick with me.

It's not long before our dynamic duo have uncovered the terrifying - if fairly obvious - truth behind the killings....the children have become possessed by mentalism, murdering all the adults on the island.

To death!

Front bum, back bum, shitey mooth....three for a full hoose!

After school activities on Almanzora now include using dead peoples as piñatas, not brushing your teeth, skewering tourists and staying up all night to play Call of Duty on the PS4 whilst listening to Pixie Lott or something.

Yes, it's every adults nightmare.

Pixie Lott: Tunnel or funnel?

Tom and Evelyn, obviously au fait with the killer kiddies genre, decide it'd probably be for the best if they attempted to escape from these wannabe ASBO's by making their way to the up-market bit of town which - luckily - is populated by posh ex-pats (with even posher kids obviously), none of this council scum they keep finding around the streets where they are now.

See? 

Even more of that socio-political stuff, the director's a genius.

Just when everything seems like it's going to be OK (isn't that the way?) Tom makes a disturbing discovery, it appears that it only takes a sly look from those perishing pre-teens in the general direction of another child to pass of the madly murderous mentalism.

Tom and Evelyn are left with no choice but to fight back, the fate of their unborn child in their hands.

Well in Evelyn's tummy but you know what I'm getting at.

Pedants.

Begging for a mooth shite-in.

Unfortunately Tom's idea of fighting back is to lock himself and his wife in someones spare room and hope they can stay quiet enough to not attract any attention till the police turn up.

Which as far as escape plans go is up their with "Let's split up and search the woods for a way out alone!"

Hal Delrich would be proud.

Settling down for a well deserved rest (and maybe, just maybe a quick fondle of Evelyn's glorious globes) Tom's top seduction technique ("Oooh Evelyn I've got a pure steamer on!" probably) is interrupted when a blond small boy brandishing his large weapon bursts in on them.

Tom jumps into action, bitch-slapping the little shite before reluctantly shooting him in the arse, giving us a chance to not only see Fiander's Oscar calibre grief acting but to answer the question poised by the film's title.

This is getting all meta-textual init?

But this tearful wank and Pot Noodle moment brings only a brief period of calm for our cooped up couple as, without warning Evelyn starts leaking piss, shit and shame as her by now infected foetus murders her from within the womb.

Which I'll admit I didn't see coming.

As the sun rises on a new day, a weary Tom is left completely alone. 

Apart from a handy assault rifle that is.

And an obvious dislike of children.

Especially mental foreign ones.

A wee bit like all those folk who voted Brexit.

Shallow: Hal.

Violently grabbing the rifle, Tom decides (albeit a bit late in the day) to prove his worth as a  real man by running down to the harbour whilst firing indiscriminately into the crowds of kids and steal a boat back to the mainland.

Cue primal screams and comedy kid dancing as the bullets rip thru' row upon row of mad mini-people as Tom gingerly runs down the street before finally managing to cut the boat loose and head toward the open sea.

Wading into the water in an attempt to stop him leaving the children try desperately to overturn the boat as Tom valiantly tries to maim as many of them as he can.

Unfortunately (for him) Tom's world recording breaking infanticide attempt is cut short by the arrival of a Spanish police patrol boat, and the greasy crew mistakenly thinking that Tom has gone mad, shoot the poor sod dead.

Docking at the harbour, the officers begin tending to the wounded and asking the poor ickle children where their parents are.

One of the kids points toward town whilst the officer in charge asks no-one in particular the age old question "Who Can Kill a Child?"
 

Which is a wee bit silly seeing as the answer is the guy he just shot obviously.

As the three officers begin the short walk to the shops (it's thirsty work killing tourists) one of them notices a small group of children sharing out the guns on the boat, turning to stop them the trio are confronted by a small moonfaced girl who waves them Goodbye just before one of the boys shoots the three dead.

As the sun begins to set the children split into small groups, all the easier to infiltrate the mainland...

Murphy's Mob: the ASBO years.

The bastard offspring of Village of The Damned and daddy to every kiddie based horror flick since (and no doubt where Stephen King ripped Children of The Corn off from), from it's opening montage of true life atrocities committed against children to it's downbeat ending Who Can Kill a Child? is as disturbing a movie today as it was at the time of release.

Thinking about it in these child safety obsessed modern times tho' it probably comes across as even more so.

Which makes the fact that a remake not only got green-lit but actually made even more disturbing.

But it's not just  the subject matter - or the haircuts - that makes this film an unforgettable and fairly harrowing experience.


No it's more to do with the leisurely pace at which Narciso Ibanez Serrador unfolds his story, unafraid as he is to build the tension slowly as he works quietly toward the movie's climax with an ever growing sense of dread. 

Filmed completely in broad daylight, Pedro Almodóvar's cinematographer of choice, Jose Luis Alcaine adds a sense of growing isolation whilst avant-garde composer Waldo de los Ríos' soundtrack of suitably soothing lullaby style songs gives a spooky Twilight Zone vibe to the proceedings.

But that's not all it has in it's favour, the small (in number as well as height) cast are unusually good for Spanish genre flicks of the time (casting English speaking ex-Doctor Who actors probably helped) and the Kiddie cast admirably pull of the task of going from sweet to shit scary in the bat of an eyelid.

A wee bit like my own podlings then.

Finally getting the love and care it deserves after years of being butchered, redubbed, retitled and generally pissed about,  Serrador's masterpiece can now proudly take it's place as the missing link between the horrific excesses of Jorge Grau's Manchester Morgue and the Paul Naschy's Werewolf series.


Well we all know how much I like my little boxes, plus it makes it easier to put on your shelves this way.

hang the deejay.

Sorry for the lack of updates (this is becoming a habit) but I've been dead ill so haven't been around much.....I even managed to miss a whole day of Frightfest hence the lack of reviews.


Luckily I have an understanding doctor who recommended a diet of David Warbeck (and daily masturbation) to aid my recovery.


Panic (AKA Bakterion, Zombi 4. 1982).
Dir: Tonino Ricci (as Anthony Richmond tho' to be honest I'd change my name if I directed this).
Cast: David Warbeck, Janet Agren, Roberto Ricci, José Lifante, Miguel Herrera Eugenio Benito, Ovidio Taito, José María Labernié, Ilaria Maria Bianchi
Fabián Conde, Vittorio Calò and Franco Ressel.

Something has gone terribly wrong at the local chemical factory -  eminent science Professor Gerry Adams (Ricci, son of Christina) has accidentally infected himself with something or other which has turned him bright green and lumpy with a thirst for human blood.

Oh and more importantly (and amusingly) it's also turned his teeth into Pez.

Escaping from the building and into the sewers it's left to the company president  Mr. Milton Bradley (Ressel) to come up with a cover story whilst attempting to discover the whereabouts of the missing scientist before the press find out.

Calling on Adams' associates - Dr. Jane Blake (Eurotrash stalwart Agren) and Dr. Vince Clarke (Miguel Herrera) for help he's shocked to discover that Adams, instead of testing shampoo on horses and making beagles smoke like he was hired to do had been secretly working on a vaccine for gout (or was it bunions?) and had kept all the data pertaining to his work hidden.

Tho' beware as the reason for his actual research may change later if and when the plot requires it.

Don't engage in phone sex with strange men....you may get hearing aids.

As the trio umm and aah over what to do the by now muchly mutated mental medicine man is busying himself tearing various extras limb from limb, starting with a young couple having uncomfortable fake sex in a Morris Minor.

Quickly arriving at the crime scene local policeman Sergeant Richard O'Brien (little mouthed Lifante from Let Sleeping Corpses Lie) soon realizes that he's out of his depth so calls on MI6's top agent Captain Kirk - yes really - to help.

Kirk (Warbeck....hide yourself) enlists Jane to not only help him find Adams but more importantly so he has someone to fire flirty banter at and the pair head over to the scientists house to look for him.

No idea why no-one else had thought to do that but there you go.

There's no sign of the scientist but it's not a total wash out as they do find his man 'friend' strung up in the fireplace covered in blood and green goo, which is nice tho' to be honest I did originally think it was just facepaint that had accidentally wiped off the monster during a cut fight scene.

And I'm pretty sure Warbeck thought that too.

Body on mah bonnet!

Performing an autopsy on the body (as opposed to fellatio obviously) Jane discovers something unusual is happening to its cellular structure but  to explain this would take up precious time where the mental mutant could be pawing at naked women so instead we quickly cut to a suburban house where a particularly harsh faced and hairy armpitted cockernee woman is about to have a shower.

The mutant - attracted by the overpowering smell of boiled onions -  sneaks in and kills her.

But not before we've had ample opportunity to stare at her breasts and lady garden obviously.

Examining the body our heroes realize that each of the victims are covered in radiation burns and green paint with nearly all the blood drained from their bodies.

Which is probably important tho' by the way it's glossed over you wouldn't think so.

is it in yet?

Bored with all this skulking around in shite and killing random women Adams decides to spend the evening watching a movie and so to this end turns up at the local cinema.

Via the sewers obviously.

Unfortunately having a face like a half-chewed caramel causes panic amongst the cinema-goers, especially busty bombshell - or is that busted bombsite? - Agnes (who it must be said looks uncannily like a young Helen Mirren, albeit one that looks like she's been taking crack daily for about 5 years but hey beggars can't be choosers), who after letting her boyfriend Clive have a wee fanny fiddle is feeling a little peckish.

Not feeling a little pecker which after this sparkling exchange I assume she'll be doing later:


Agnes: "That's just to begin with....If you want the rest you'll have to earn it."

Clive: "Now what do you want?"

Agnes: "One of those huge ice-cream cones from the jumbo bar."

Clive: "But it's too far away. It'll take me ages."

Agnes: "Don't be silly, it's just down the street and it's worth it because I'm going to thank you in a special way."

Clive: "You promise?"

Seriously, this actually happens.

Take a few minutes to let it sink in.

Anyway Adams goes straight after Agnes and strangles her before popping her over his shoulder and taking her backstage for a wee nibble on her neck.

Please note he may be a mental mutant but he's not mad enough to go anywhere near her pock-ridden fanny.

It's a wonder Clive has any fingers left.

And that he never found the car keys.

"I can see your house from here Peter!"

Still feeling peckish but with the police in hot pursuit Adams heads off to the local church where the priest is busy dishing out sweets to the young boys in the choir.

Talking of buggery it's not long before Adams is banging on the doors trying to get in forcing the petrified priest to force the boys into a hole (which makes a change from his usual pastime of forcing himself into their holes) as he vainly beats off the beast with a standing lamp.

You'll not be too surprised to find out that he dies.

Tho' luckily we're spared the sight of his (man) breasts as it appears only ladies get naked in this film.

As a trade-off tho' in the next scene Warbeck is wearing a pair of trousers so obscenely tight that you can see what he had for dinner.

I think him and Jane were having a serious conversation about Adams' work and how he was creating some new germ warfare shite but I'll be honest and admit that the trousers were so form-fitting that I couldn't concentrate on anything except the fact that he appeared to have a baby secreted in his left hand trouser pocket.

A baby with a massive head.

And a spine.

I need a shower now.

Anyway back in London the (obviously Tory) government have decided to send the army (all wearing berets with bobbles on top for some obscure reason) to quarantine the town, setting up roadblocks and disabling all the phones and TVs.

This scene is made all the more surreal by the fact that although the film is set in the UK the footage of the army driving down the street is obviously filmed in a Spanish seaside resort full as it is with palm trees and mountainous backgrounds.

Every so often tho' it cuts to a council estate wifey kicking a phonebox of a garden shed in the hope of convincing us that we're watching a small English town being overrun by soldiers.

Well at least they tried.

Just not very fucking hard obviously.

"Don't tell him Pike!"

The lack of TV coupled with the green shite covering everything begins to rile the locals who decide to storm the barricades and start rioting but this is soon brought under control when the army shoot up a Fiat 500 whilst shouting "Go home" thru' a megaphone.

If only real-life were this simple.

Milton (remember him?) worried about his family being stranded alongside the plebs phones his friend in Westminster only to discover the real reason for the quarantine.

It appears that Whitehall aren't convinced that the army will find Adams before he infects the whole town so have decided to authorize "Plan Q," which involves dropping a bomb on the town.

It's a good job the film isn't set in the West Midlands then because if you bombed that place no-one would notice.

Especially Tipton, a town so grim even the seagulls refuse to shit on it.

Tipton: Utter wank.

As the clock counts down to zero hour Jane and Vince (yup he's still here) attempt to find an antidote, O'Brien and Kirk take to the sewers in the hope of finding (and killing) Adams before it's too late...

Fuck, marry, kill?

Playing out like a (care in the) community version of Romero's The Crazies - or in this case The Crazy - crossed with Frankenstein (albeit one with featuring a monster with a potato for a head) via the genius of Nightmare City, Tonino Ricci's Panic is a threadbare, poundshop production marred by a lack of logic, budget or common sense that's held together purely by the presence of the late great David Warbeck and his spray on trousers ably aided by Janet Agren with a home perm and sensible slacks alongside the frighteningly ferrety José Lifante dressed for all the world like Prince Charming in a particularly shoddy school panto.

And whilst they leads may have gotten the short straw costume wise at least they get to wear clothes unlike the poor sods playing the beasts victims expected as they are to strip nude at a moments notice to allow the camera to linger over their harshly lit tits before being dispatched by a spud-faced freak dribbling poster paint everywhere. 

The things your mum had to do to pay the bills when you were growing up eh?

Laugh now!

Directed (if you can call it that) in a workman-like (as in he spent all day leaning on a spade wolf-whistling ladies) way by Tonino Ricci, the name behind the arse-numbing Thor the Conqueror amongst other classics - probably - Panic scarily enough was scripted by Victor Andres Catena alongside Jaime Comas Gil (who believe it or not wrote A Fistful Of Dollars) which makes me think that they were either having a bad day or someone did a wee bit of script editing before shooting seeing as entire plot points are left unresolved or ignored - the escaped guinea pig that may grow to the size of a dog, the fact that Adam's is contagious - as Ricci races thru' the threadbare story in order to maximize the amount of nudity on screen as he valiantly attempts to convince us that the entire thing (and not just the second unit stuff) has been shot in dear old blighty by getting Blur and Dick Van Dyke to dub the actors.

It's a pity then that the only Englishman in the cast is dubbed by an American.

Tho' it can't have been too much of a chore for Warbeck seeing as he appears to have gone on holiday for a fortnight halfway thru' turning up as he does around the 50 minute mark with sunburn and a new coat.

Which let's be honest is a fuck load more than we get for sitting thru' it. 

Still it's worth a watch for Warbeck tho.

And for this closing caption obviously:

Utter shit but in a good way and you can't say fairer than that.

 

video naschy.

I love Paul Naschy.

I love Maria Kosti.

I love corpses.

But scarily I'd never seen this till Wednesday.

I wont say too much about it because:

A. I don't want to give too much away.

B. I'll make it sound shit.

but more importantly

C. I really can't be arsed.

Enjoy.

A Dragonfly For Each Corpse (AKA Una libélula para cada muerto, Red Killer, 1974).
Dir: León Klimovsky.
Cast: Paul Naschy, Erika Blanc, Eduardo Calvo, Ángel Aranda, Antonio Mayans, Maria Kosti, Ricardo Merino, José Canalejas, Rafael Albaicín, Susana Mayo and Maria Vidal (not the one that sang Body Rock).

Welcome to the  fashion capital of the world, - tho' you wouldn't guess that from the state of the ties and collars -  the groovy city of Milan where a mentalist murderer clad in a ladies raincoat and massive red flares that are oh so slightly too short is busy ridding the city of what they term as 'undesirables'.

You know the types, monkey-faced junkies, various dirty ladies and skinny bearded men in big white pants who are dispatched using a variety of implements ranging from ceremonial swords to umbrellas with sharpened tips.

Which is nice.

But with this being a Giallo (as opposed to a common or garden slasher) the killer - by law - must leave a bizarre clue cum calling card which in this case is a shoddy dragonfly broach which appears to have been made by the producers hook handed blind child.

BBBBZZZZZ!!!!

Leading the investigation is girdle-wearing, bewigged bad boy of the old bill Inspector Paolo Scaporella (the legend that is Paul Naschy) - mustached machoman who loves nothing better than slapping perverts whilst chewing on a big cigar.

Oh yes, and cooking spaghetti whilst wearing a pink apron.

As the corpses pile up (tho' not literally mind) Paolo soon realises - with the help of his gorgeously ginger missis Silvana (The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave's Blanc) and their group of high society dinner party pals (which appears to include Jess Franco's evil twin) that all the victims aremembers of the cities criminal underworld and that the dragonfly is an ancient symbol used to denote bad people.

And whores obviously.

Blood on mah thigh!

As is the way with these films tho' it appears that many of their 'friends' have their own dark secrets which means that any one of them could be the next victim.

Or even the killer.

With a head full of conjecture and half-arsed theories, Paolo finally discovers a clue, it seems that one of the victims put up a wee bit of a struggle tearing a massive 'fashion' button from the killers coat so our hero enlists the help of his Kaftan-clad, haute couture homosexualist designer friend, Vittorio to try and track down the button's owner.

No, really.

But with the killer aware of Paolo's plan and Silvana taking to studying crime scene photos in the nude it's a race against time and good taste (plus a gang of biker neo-Nazis) to find the killer before there's no-one in the cast left to kill.

Or any viewers left to care.

Title.

Obviously bored with being stuck inside a furry suit 24 hours a day when making Waldemar Daninsky werewolf movies Paul Naschy decided to try a different tact  with A Dragonfly For Each Corpse and emulate the erotically charged Giallo's spewing forth from Italy at that time.

Well it was either that or he fancied a free holiday to Milan.

The result is, shall we say interesting.

George and Mildred: The Yewtree years.

Tho' nowhere near as polished or as accomplished as it's Italian counterparts Dragonfly is still a load of fun, partly due to the always watchable Naschy (and his mighty man breasts) alongside genre stalwarts Erika Blanc and Maria Kosti (or Kosty as she's credited here) but mainly because of the sheer amount of early seventies fashions on show.

Especially the ties.

No, really there are kipper ties, crotch covering paisley ties, ones with squared off edges and some so thin you'd mistake them for a hunger striker.

It's like a down at heel charity shop made flesh.

Add to that an arse end sixties style score, a stripper clad only in a crotched doily lounging in a coffin, Erika Blanc's tan lines, a group of geriatric Nazi boot boys and a climax featuring Naschy chasing a bandy legged transvestite thru' a kiddies playpark and you have all the elements needed for a top night in.

Recommended.

nun too happy.

It's the school holidays so time to let the kids pick the films up for review.

Seeing as the laydees are away at Easter Adventure Camp (TM) it's left to Cassidy to choose.

Again.

Don't forget to be kind in the comments he's only 10.

Satan's Baby Doll (AKA La Bimba di Satana, A Girl For Satan. 1982)
Dir: Mario Bianchi
Cast: Jacqueline Dupré, Mariangela Giordano, Aldo Sambrell, Joe Davers, Giancarlo Del Duca, Alfonso Gaita and Marina Hedman.

Somewhere in the polyester hell that is seventies Spain, the wealthy yet scarily swarthy landowner Antonio Aguilar (Sambrell) is mourning the death of his wife Maria and trying to figure out how he can sneak young girls into the house now that he's got his teenage daughter Miria (Dupré, the 'actress' not the famous cellist) to look after.

Du Pré: Overjoyed to be featured on this blog.
Or she would be if she were alive.

Things begin to take a sinister (yet vaguely amusing) turn when, during the funeral service, just as Miria is gazing doe eyed at her mum, the body begins to shudder and shake in an alarming display of europorn cum acting.

Obviously Miria finds this sight terrifying as do the majority of mourners tho' I must admit it was kinda sexy in an old lady stroke kind of way.

I miss Helen Daniels.


Returning home to their ancestral castle we discover that disco dancing dead mums and sweat sodden dads are the least freaky of the family when compared to Antonio's paraplegic, four-wheeled brother Ignazio, his big haired, bold hipped carer and nun-in-training Sol (Amazonian thighed sleaze bucket Giordano from Nights of Terror) and the shiny headed wooden toothed servant Isidro.

Tensions are high between Sol and Antonio and to make matters worse Ignazio has the hots for Sol, taking any opportunity he can to squeakily follow her round the house (well, the downstairs rooms at least) and spy on her in the shower.

Insert comment about a man biting a big cock here.

Miria, not too surprisingly, seems to be quite depressed due to her mum's death and Isidro, with all his talk of Maria's spirit not being at rest and other superstitious bollocks isn't helping matters.

he's convinced that Miria's dead mum is attempting to possess her daughters body toward some foul act of revenge or maybe just for a laugh.

Who knows?

Late one night Miria is awoken by her mothers voice whispering softly in her ear and ordering the confused teen to visit the family crypt. Being a good girl, Miria obeys her mum only to come across Isidro frantically fiddling with a big cock whilst trying to invoke some nonsensical supernatural protection rite.

Jade Goody: The final interview.

Drawn towards her mother's corpse as if pulled by some strange, talent draining force Miria is horrified to find Maria's cold dead eyes staring back at her.

Miria (being female) screams and faints.

Bless.

Concerned by his daughters behavior (but not, it seems by his handyman's predilection for choking chickens) Antonia arranges for a doctor friend to visit Miria.

Oh and to embalm Maria whilst he's at it.

Much to her dismay, the doctor recommends that Miria should go on holiday for a few weeks and try to forget the spooky voices and bird based violence she's been experiencing. Miria huffs and stamps her feet like a typical teen but Antonio and Sol agree with the doctor and begin to pack her bags.

Everything seems to be back to normal, Ignazio is following Sol around the house with what looks like a dead rat poking out of his lap, Sol is cutting Antonio filthy looks, Isidro is polishing a pair of gorgeous brass knockers and the doctor is embalming Maria in the crypt.

It's a wee bit like Eastenders only better scripted.

Especially when Maria returns to life and injects preserving fluid into his neck.

Miria was shocked to find that her real father was
the unknown, third dwarf Chuckle Brother.

Going down to the cellar with some crisps and a can of Fanta for the doctor, Antonio is shocked to see his friend lying stiff as a board with his dead wife's body astride him holding a big needle. In a bout of panic he decides that rather than call the police it would be easier to torch the car before dumping both it and the doc's body in the local canal.

Sol, either pissed off at the situation or annoyed that this is the longest she's ever gone in a movie without stripping to a pair of cream stockings and sharing her ample bush with the audience, finally loses it with Antonio shouting "You dirty old sod!" at him whilst waving her fists in the air.

But this only helps fan the fire of his insane lust for her and he storms out of the crypt shouting "I promise you this, you little whore....I will eventually have you!"

Oooeerr missis.

Mariangela Giordano wonders if it's in yet.

As the days go by it seems to all concerned that Isidro's hunch about Maria taking over her daughters body was correct (who knew?) as with each passing moment Miria is morphing more and more into her dead mum, revealing secrets about her life as yet unknown to poor Antonio.

You see, behind the safe, floral dressed mumsy exterior Maria was a sex obsessed pervert due, in part to Antonio's drug induced impotence but mainly because she was a dirty lady like the type your gran told you to stay away from. It seems that no one was safe from her ungodly desires and that she'd been shagging everyone from the recently deceased family doctor and a pre-accident Ignazio as well as having a long term lesbian tryst with Sol.

Each to their own.

Antonio, however has more important stuff to deal with and totally ignoring the fact that his nympho dead wife has return from the grave decides that this would be the best time to kill his brother and Sol. Coming up with a plan to wall them both up in the crypt.

For what reason I have no idea, I mean I've had girls knock me back before and I've never had the urge to bury them alive in my garden.

Well maybe just the once.
But whilst he puts his fiendish plan into action Maria has taken total control of Miria's (admittedly curvy) body and is intent on revenge herself....

Miria farted...and it was an eggy one.

Dismissed by many as an inferior remake of the 1979 erotic horror classic Malabimba (albeit with nicer wallpaper), Satan's Baby Doll is a near perfect example of everything that's right (and in some cases so wrong) with the Eurotrash genre.

The film is virtually plotless, existing only to showcase a few cheap scares, some high fashion trousers, a couple of scenic locations plus a fair bit of female nudity from Mariangela Giordano (playing the same role in both films - tho' it would be nice to see her fully clothed for a change seeing as she resembles that drunken auntie you always see at weddings) and the flat faced, lazy eyed Jacqueline Dupré (in her only film role).

I almost feel sorry for her in a way, I mean, imagine being so charisma free as to make a sleazy lesbian love scene appear boring (at least Malabimba's Katell Laennec tried frowing every so often, tho' from the look of her she was thinking about cakes during the sex scenes).

Whatever she's asked to do her expression never changes from one of mild apathy. You should be lusting after her yet all you want to do is give her a blanket to cover her modesty and a hug.

If you're still around Jacqueline please get in touch to say you're OK.

"Pull my nightie down when you're done".

At just over an hour and ten minutes in length Satan's Baby Doll is mercifully short and, if you're a fan of Mariangela Giordano (and frankly who isn't?) must be deemed an essential purchase.

And that, my friends is the scariest thing about it.

the sting.

Saw this Brian (Society, Bride of Re-Animator and The Dentist) Yuzna classic about 5 years ago and had totally forgotten about it till I came across it in the pound shop earlier today.

Never turning down a bargain (ask your mum) I excitedly paid my cash and hurried home.

Returning home I noticed that the original review had only been read by about 5 people so as a public service I decided to rewatch it and see if it had gotten any better.

And had it?

Go on.....guess.

Amphibious 3D (2010 or is it 2012?....from the look of the whole thing I'll go for 1978).
Dir: Brian Yuzna.
Cast: Michael Paré, Janna Fassaert, Francis ("You're not taking Claire, Liam!") Magee, Monica Sayangbati, Francis Bosco, Verdi Solaiman, Timo Ottevanger and Elke Salverda in an ill fitting bikini.

If indeed you are what you eat then this poor fucker must of gorged itself on clichés and cardboard.

 

  

The oddly shaped - and even odder named - marine biologist Skylar Shane (Fassaert, an unholy hybrid of Uma Thurman and Noomi Rapace in a candyfloss wig) after drunkenly filling in her grant application realizes that if she hasn't proven the existence of giant shite encrusted sea scorpions by the end of the summer holidays she'll be sacked by the university and have to go back to tossing burgers (and old men off for coppers) in McDonalds.

Probably.

I mean I really wasn't paying too much attention as I was still recovering from the sight of Elke (part-time actress cum traveler cum freelance writer and owner of Wander-Lust.nl and Green Up Your Life Events) Salverda and her comedy breasts being spiked by a computer generated winged dog turd in the opening scenes.

"Put it in me!"

Anyway, Skylar decides to hire salty sea man "handsome" Jack Bowman (an upsettingly bloated Paré, channeling Han Solo via a Fulham taxi cab driver) to aid her quest to find fossil samples and the like in the depths of the north Sumatran Sea.

Or the local public baths as we like to call it.

Bowman isn't all that he seems tho' and during the trip has to go visit a group of his fish smuggling, child kidnapping friends led by ex-Eastenders badboy Magee to whom he owes money.

Operating from a ramshackle wooden  platform in the middle of the sea, Magee and co. spend their days drinking, smoking, beating children and disguising fish as tourists in order to get them past Indonesia's notoriously strict passport control.

I.E. They are very bad men.

On arrival at the fishing platform, Skylar is approach by a pretty lipped young orphan named Tamal (Scrabble scoring Sayangbati from Ghost Island, Obama anak menteng and the fantastic The Beetle Soldiers), who was sold to the smugglers by a mad uncle cum wizard.

Don't you just hate it when that happens?

"Laugh now!"

It appears that due to a lack of facial hair, aforementioned kissy lips and obvious child bearing hips, Tamal is constantly picked on by the other crew members for being a bit gay, and upon meeting our heroine, begs Skylar to take him away.

Being an empathic kinda woman and still suffering nightmares due to the death of her daughter (I forgot to mention it earlier, sorry), Skylar is determined to help Tamal with or without Bowman's help.

Just not right now obviously as there's a gunfight and a bit of will they/wont they? romance to deal with first.

"Shite in mah mooth!"

Leaving the platform in a hail of gunfire, Bowman and Skylar head towards the local tourist island in order to experience the local sea scorpion festival and in Skylar's case to also have a few incense induced child death flashbacks before booking into a hotel for the night.

Padding anyone?

Maybe, but it does give us time to return to the smuggler's den where Magee has drunkenly beaten Tamal's pal to death causing our tiny chum to mutter curses whilst holding a special scorpion shaped pendant donated by that mad uncle I mentioned earlier.

Could this be related to the inky black blob spotted jerkily moving under the water earlier?

We soon find out as without warning (well except for the ominous soundtrack and change in picture quality) a giant plasticine poo with legs emerges from the water to snatch one of the pirates from his perch and into a watery grave as Tamal watches silently from behind the chemical toilet.

David Yip, up the casino, Margate, 1981...YESCH!

It's the next day and our heroes are out searching for stuff when they come across the putrefying corpse (or a passable facsimile of) Magee's henchman bobbing alongside the boat like so much discarded (Natalie) Wood.

Bringing it aboard for Skylar to have a fiddle with (well it's either this or Bowman's salty man tits...which would you choose?) she soon deduces that his body is full of a nasty venom that turns human flesh into latex.

Sorry, I mean into mush.

Worried for Tamal's life (or fancying a bit of rough, you decide) Skylar persuades Bowman to head over to the platform to check everything is OK and excited at the thought of some exotic foreign arse (or at the very least a wee boy's embrace), he agrees to her request. 

On arrival Skylar sneaks aboard the platform whilst Bowman drags that dead blokes body around whilst shouting "I never done it! T'was a big boy what done it and ran away!"

Unfortunately no-one gives a fuck, so it's not long before the shooting contest starts up again giving the heroic Bowman no other choice than to leg it back to his boat and sail away.

Leaving poor Skylar at the mercy of a cut-throat band of horny smugglers and, most disturbingly in a scene that would probably give Kenneth Clarke nightmares, a filthy twelve year old Indonesian boy who keeps rubbing his crotch and winking.

Janna Fassaert: Dirtier than your mum.

With Magee drunkenly preparing to kiss Skylar on the lips against her will his fat pal Bruno attempts to pull Tamal from the relative safety of the mumsy marine biologists arms but only manages to tear Tamal's shirt revealing that him is really a her.

No way.

And that's not all.

It seems that the creepy scorpion pendant given to her by the mad wizard bloke seems to control the mysterious creature, killing anyone who even thinks about harming Tamal.

Oh and that unrelated couple from the start obviously.

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

And when the beast finally makes an appearance it's heralds an even stranger connection between itself and Tamal.

Alongside a sense of crushing disappointment obviously.

Will our erstwhile heroine and pudgy hero be able to unravel the mystery and kill the best?

Or will everything ended with a ludicrously illogical ending with no other reason than to set up a sequel?

 

Fucking hell Brian that was rough.

Not content with giving us a plot so rehashed and recycled that it could barely stand unaided, the once cult favourite heartlessly throws in the largest group of wooden actors this side of builders yard stranding them on a flimsy water-based shed and leaving them to the mercy of criminally cack handed editing and a CGI beast that appears to be rendered in shite.

Apart from that tho' it's not too bad.

By that I mean it's a damn sight better than his previous two efforts; the Paul Naschy starrer Rottweiler back in 2004 and the waterlogged - in more ways than one - Beneath Still Waters in 2005.

Inside Jimmy Savile's mind.

And when the only good thing you can say about a movie is that it stars the fish-lipped star of Dagon, the charisma free yet smooth of thighed Raquel Meroño  then you know you're onto plumbs.

But as much as I'd like to see every copy of this abomination burned every time I go to slag it off I just see poor Brian's face pleading to me.

A conscience can be a bad thing in this line of work.

meat is murder.

Mondo Cannibale (AKA Cannibals, Barbarian Goddess and White Cannibal Queen among others. 1980)
Dir: Jess Franco.
Cast: Al Cliver, Sabrina Siani, Lina Romay, Robert Foster, Shirley Knight, Pamela Stanford and Olivier Mathot.

Where the natives are pleased to MEAT you!

Famous researcher of 'things' Dr. Jeremy Taylor (Euro-god Cliver, unfortunately for him being out-acted by his trademark beard), his scrummy wife Elisabeth (Stanford sans son) and his young, pug faced daughter Lana (that wee girl from Zombie Lake!) are traveling along a treacherous stretch of the Amazon River (played in this instance by the coast of Spain) said to be inhabited by a tribe of bloodthirsty cannibals (fantastically essayed by a squad of tubby, bequiffed Frenchmen in kiddies facepaint).

No sooner has the salty boat captain finished spinning a lurid tale about these savages when a group of them sneak aboard his vessel and start slaughtering the crew before turning their lustful gaze toward Taylor's missis.

After a valium-tastic slo-mo feeding frenzy in which Cliver gazes into the distance manfully as the brutish savages eat his wife we suddenly find ourselves on the banks of a tiny garden fish pond where Taylor's daughter is lying unconscious.

But still with a pug face obviously.

(multicoloured) shite in her mooth.

Scooping her into his arms like a rickety old dumper truck the toothless tribal chief (who looks uncannily like Max Wall) takes the young girl home and declares her a sacred white goddess before adopting her into the tribe.

Which is pretty lucky considering the alternative.

Taylor on the other hand is less fortunate seeing as he's quickly captured, has one of his arms chopped off and eaten in front of him before finally being trussed up like a sexy yet still attractively skinny pig.

Before the tribe can get to work on the rest of him tho' he manages to escape into the undergrowth and is soon rescued by a couple of blokes in obscenely tight jeans driving a jeep.

Caught wanking by your mum....again!

Ending up in a New York hospital with amnesia (and no shirts that sit right), he is nursed back to health by the buxom, bouncy lipped Ana (Romay billed here as Candy Coster which going by the amount of shite she's appeared in under her own name shows how truly awful this film is) a foxy doc who has spent the last 10 years sitting at his bedside trimming his beard occasionally.

Feeling much better (but unfortunately unable to return all the pairs of gloves that well-wishers have sent him), Taylor heads off to the world famous Shelton Foundation, funders of the original expedition in the hope of securing backing for a second trip into the jungle to find his daughter.

Unluckily for our hero it turns out that the foundations head Barbara (Knight) and her camp British boyfriend Charles ( Mathot, bless you) are more interested in taking the piss out of Taylor, accusing him of hiding his arm behind his back (hmmm...they have a point) and wearing a stick on beard.

Taylor leaving the office with a loud 'fuck you' decides to go to the Amazon anyway and with Ana in tow, goes about securing the services of a guide, however seeing as they only have about 60 pence to their name this proves a wee bit difficult.

Life is cheap down south but not that cheap.

But just as Taylor is about to give up and go home he runs into Charles and Barbara, who've come to South America with a group of posh pals in the hope of finding the one armed doc, you see they want to apologize for all their nastiness and have decided to bankroll his trip, provided their group of friends get to join in the fun.

Don't worry hen....he's 'armless.

A grimly serious Taylor warns them that it'll be a dangerous journey into uncharted cannibal country, waving his stump around as proof but the drunken toffs just giggle and start packing their swimming trunks, wide brimmed hats and sunblock.

Heading out into the jungle (well, the local park) the party come across the folk (bits of them anyway) that rescued Taylor in the movies opening.

Now you or I may see this as a sign to turn back, but not Taylor and co. who continue further into the unknown, stopping only to adjust their lip gloss.

It's not too long tho' (thank Christ) before the members of the expedition are being picked off and butchered one by one in particularly gruesome ways (well in slow motion whilst members of the crew throw offal around) by the bloodthirsty savages till only Taylor Ana and some disposable young guy (whose name escapes me) are left.
Captured and bound they're taken before the tribes whitey-hating leader Jeff Yakaké (Foster) and his harsh faced yet surprisingly pale skinned wife (Siani, 'star' of Fulci's Conquest and your Granddads bed).

Could this be Taylor's missing daughter?

"I wanted to be a tiger!"

Whilst Ana is dragged off by the cannibals (sounds painful) Taylor has the idea of asking his daughter to untie him and his mate so that they can escape.

Her expression is one of either faint recollection or boredom but either way she sneaks out of her hut that night to free her dad who promptly slings her over his shoulder and legs it into the trees speedily pursued by his irate son in law and his pals.

Watch out watch out....Ross Thomson's about.

Will Taylor, his pal and his daughter manage to escape from this tropical hell or will they be forced to partake in a post pub style fisticuffs match in a small stream?

Will Taylor shed even one solitary tear over Ana's death?

And will Siani ever change her slightly bemused expression?

Also known by an obscene amount of alternate titles ranging from names like Barbarian Goddess to Mondo Cannibale (see how many more you can find dear reader there may be a prize!), Jess Franco's second foray into the world of the cannibal (his first was the sleaze-tastic 1973 'epic' Bare Breasted Countess) came about when producer Marius Lesoeur approached the sleaze guru with regards to him producing his own spin on the by now lucrative flesh eating film fad.

Casting cult idol and not to mention dirt cheap Cliver (with whom Franco would go on to make the classic 1980 film The Devil Hunter with) and his own missis should have meant that Franco had more cash left to put towards some breath taking special effects and lush locations but unfortunately (due in part to Lesoeur only managing to raise a budget of £75.81) this wasn't to be.

The West Bromwich Olympic
hopefuls - led by Tom Savini -  go thru' their paces.

The usually top drawer Cliver sleepwalks thru' the movie, his 'severed' arm obviously hidden down his shirt as he struggles to hide his embarrassment as he is poked and prodded by the most bizarre ethnic mix of cannibals ever committed to celluloid. Chubby, pasty faced Frenchmen, slick haired Latinos and even a couple of Japanese folk fill out the tribes numbers, forced to jump about in tiny leather thongs and blackface.

But not even that can prepare you for the sight of a wooden topped Sabrina Siani*, her face smeared in blue gloss paint, her nipples (only just) covered by her blonde mane and her (albeit) peachy arse exposed for all the world to see uncomfortably jerking from scene to scene like an anorexic Bambi on amphetamines.

Yes it really is a performance to remember.

Arse.

The films one saving grace tho' is the always reliable Lina Romay in a role that actually allows her to act for a change as opposed to standing around with her kit off showing her frighteningly furry 70s bush to the world.

Which is one reason to see it I guess.

Nothing like damning with faint praise is there?
















































*Want to know more? then click here for my exclusive 'interview' with her.

Well I say interview.