sexohot!

monkey trouble.

Nuff said.

devil gate drive.

It gives you a warm fuzzy feeling inside when people go out of the way to suggest things (other than to fuck off obviously) to you, so on the recommendation of the lovely Screamstress and the manly Mr. Dissolved I popped this little gem in my film slot t'other night.

The House of The Devil (2009).
Dir: Ti West.
Cast: Jocelin Donahue, Tom Noonan, Dame Mary of Woronov, Greta Gerwig, AJ Bowen and Dee Wallace.

I spy Norman Price's handiwork.

Button nosed and boyish hipped beauty Samantha (Donahue, last seen covered in dirt in the JT Petty classic The Burrowers) is just a normal, everyday college girl trying to make her way in life, juggling with her coursework and saddled with a man-faced whore of a room mate whilst trying to make ends meet.

But an end to her flatmate troubles may be in sight when Samantha finds a perfect house for rent. It's homely and the landlady (the fantastic Wallace in a blink and miss it cameo) is desperate to give Samantha a chance.

The only problem is that she can't afford to pay the rent.

Aw, it's heartbreaking I know.

Heading back to campus with a heavy heart (and a nice line in knitwear) Sam notices a flyer advertising for a babysitter pinned to the notice board.

It doesn't pay much but it'll help towards her dream house (note: dream house, not devil house) so Sam calls the number.

The phone is answered by the softly spoken Mr. Viv Ulman (genre giant Noonan from The Monster Squad, Manhunter and Robocop 2 amongst others) who quickly accepts her offer and arranges to pick her up so she can get acquainted with the wee bairn within the hour.

Nothing like being keen I guess.

Rushing excitedly to the front steps of the building Samantha sits and waits.

And waits.

And waits.

Being nice but dim it takes our heroine about 4 hours to realise that she's been stood up by the mysterious Mr. Ulman but being a sassy kinda gal, Samantha cheers herself up by sharing a pizza with her best bud Megan (indie chick type Gerwig who, for once is fully clothed and not playing the trumpet in a bath).

Heading back to her smelly, semen encrusted room and prepared for a night of study and soda, Samantha is surprised to find that Ulman has left her a message apologising for the earlier mix up and is wondering if she's still free for babysitting.

That very night.

It seems that Mr Ulman and his long suffering wife Tracy (Amazonian uber-MiLF Woronov) have some very important business to attend to that can only be done during that evening lunar eclipse. Their regular babysitter has let them down and they'd be more than happy to double Samantha's pay if she'll say yes.

To the job that is, not just say yes randomly on the phone.

"Hat on mah heid!"

Samantha quickly phones Megan for a lift (the Ulman's live in the middle of nowhere, what a surprise) and seeing as she has no pressing nude scenes that night, she agrees to take her pal to the Ulman residence.

Once at the house the girls are met by the peg-legged Viv who, after some stilted small talk about pizza and the price of cheese makes a strange admission.

You see it appears that when Mr. Ulman said he needed a sitting for his wee baby what he really meant was that he needed someone to sit in the house and listen out for his mother in law who, after a stroke (of the non sexual kind obviously) has been left bedridden (sort of) and occasionally requires a cup of tea taken up to her (probably).

"But don't worry" coos Viv, "you won't actually have to make her drinks because she's asleep, so you can spend the night watching teevee and eating pizza".

And on that bombshell he offers Samantha 400 bucks and a Kinder Surprise from the attic.

Beard of evil.

Hesitating whilst she weighs up the pros ($400, free pizza) and cons (this bloke's a nutter, he's insistent that Megan goes home) Samantha is finally persuaded to take the job when Mr. Ulman starts crying and jigging about on his good leg.

Pushover.

But saying that, what could possibly go wrong?

A house (of the Devil) yesterday.

Take a smattering of goodness from the frequently overlooked late 70's/early 80's Demon possession genre, mix with a smidgen of babysitter under siege and marinate with a healthy dose of video boom nostalgia and you're someway to creating something as creepily enjoyable as Ti West's horror love sonnet The House Of The Devil.

Given his previous track record (Cabin Fever 2, a movie that not even Lion's Gate can be arsed releasing? how scary is that?) I'd have usually given a film like this a (very) wide berth had it not been for the wise words of the two aforementioned folk who's choice of films (if not in Mr. Dissolved's case his choice to wear his dads grey Hush Puppies when his feet are sore) I don't baulk at.

And I'm glad I did.

Shot in a perfect copy of that stark cold eighties style, West's genuine admiration for that particular time in film making is obvious from the first frame, capturing as it does (and in perfect detail) the whole look and feel of that bygone time without once descending into kitsch or parody and with neither a wink nor nudge.

It's like a breath of fresh air blowing away the rancid belch breath of Hollywood horror.

"Is that a knife in your hand or
just a strange shaped erection?"

Starting quietly and slowly building toward it's climax, The House of The Devil is more about the nail biting tension and the uncomfortable mood created by the journey rather than the destination and whilst the pay off is somewhat obvious from the start, it's played with enough conviction by the cast as to not really matter.

"Blood in mah mooth!"

A freaky flashback to times gone by for all of us on the wrong side of 30 and a fantastic lesson in minimalist chills for all those poor youngsters force fed a diet of Hostel clones and Halloween remakes.

bonnie.

Perusing my local charity shop again today and I came across (quite literally) this for one measly quid.

Bargain!

As an aside, who knew Bonnie Langford had such a great arse?

hungary like the, um, snake?

From 1987, the first part of the Hungarian bootleg Cobra comic adaptation.

Enjoy!

Obviously it helps if you speak Hungarian.

yellow peril.

Another year, another Argento film released to mild audience apathy and a hostile reaction from the critics.

Unfortunately my 'press credentials' (a cut out Daily Bugle card stuck in the side of a trilby and a cardboard box painted up as a camera) weren't enough to get me in to see it at it's Edinburgh premiere earlier this year, so I've had to wait with baited breath for a screener to arrive.

Well, was it worth the wait?

Giallo (2009).
Dir: Dario Argento.
Cast: Adrien Brody, Emmanuelle Seigner, Elsa Pataky, Valentina Izumi, Linda Messerlinker, Taiyo Yamanouchi, Giuseppe Lo Console and Byron Deidra.

The cosmopolitan city of Turin, where two foxy girls about town, the teeny tiny Keiko and her man chinned pal Marjorie are enjoying a (fairly stilted) night at the opera.

Realising that this is an Argento movie and that watching a fat bird sing is, in this situation a fair way to get killed (or at the very least shat on by crows) they decide to bid their farewells and hit a local discotheque instead, hoping to find some hot tunes and even hotter men.

Fat chance of that seeing as the place is full of greasy haired, tight t-shirted 80's throwbacks dancing badly to cheesy Europop, including one poor sod wearing a t-shirt with a suit and bow tie printed on it.

If anyone in this movie deserves to die then it's him quite frankly.

Nice legs, shame about the imminent face cutting.

When Keiko manages to pull the only bloke in the place under fifty, Marjorie reckons she'd have better fun with the wobbly plastic pal she keeps under her pillow so decides to head back to the hotel.

With brightly lit rain pouring down in that heavy, Suspiria fashion and Marjorie having a high, hairsprayed bonce, she quickly flags a passing taxi and jumps into the comfy back seat, little realising that the cab driver is a notorious kidnapper and mutilator of fit young birds.

Arse.

"Teeth in mah mooth!"

It's not long before she's being taken down a deserted alley (which is, I must admit better than being taken up the casino) and jumped on by the driver.

Which is nice.

Tho' not as nice as the beautiful catwalk (as opposed to Airfix) model Celine (Beyond Re-Animator's Pataky), who is counting the hours (and pretty frocks) till she can head home to see her older, harsher sister Linda (Mrs. Roman Polanski, Seigner), recently arrived from America on a visit.

Wouldn't you know it tho' but on her way back to her apartment, Celine has the bizarre misfortune of hailing the same taxi as poor Marjorie, soon finding herself injected in the face with drugs, her expensive shoes stolen and a final indignity waking up in a dirty, egg stained, spunk encrusted basement owned by a Mister Tony Yellow.

A moon faced slobbering beast of a bloke so named because of his yellow jaundiced skin.

Before we move on I'd just like to point out that Mr. Yellow is portrayed by one 'Byron Deidra' (which could be an anagram of the lead actors name if I'm not mistaken) in a frankly magnificent tour de force performance the like of which hasn't been since Lord Udo of Kier fondled a sheep's innards during Flesh For Frankenstein.

Showing us all just why he won nine awards (including an Oscar) for his heartbreaking turn as Wladyslaw Szpilman in The Pianist, Brody (wearing a fat suit, dirty vest and a Bo Selecta! Mel B. mask) brings a truly subtle sense of realism to Yellow. Whether he's mumbling profanities at various chained women or simply having a sly wank whilst staring at photographs of his victims, the performance is truly terrifying.

No, really.

It's as if that Brody, for a giggle during rehearsals decided to do a drunken Robert DeNiro impression to amuse the crew and, not wanting anyone to steal his crown as the giallo joker, Argento called his bluff and told him that it would be a perfect way to play the villain.

Obviously neither of them wanted to admit defeat so the performance stayed in.

"Laugh now!"

Anyway back to the plot.

When Celine fails to return home, a worried (I think she's worried, tho' she does spend a fair amount of the film frowning) Linda heads over to the local police station, where she ends up interrupting an important pizza delivery much to the annoyance of the desk sergeant who hurriedly sends her off to the cellar, hang out of the maverick no nonsense inspector Enzo Avolfi (Brody).

Moody, mysterious and armed with a sexy beard (and with a great line in 1980's blouson jackets), Avolfi is a cop on the edge, haunted by the death of his mother at the hands of the bald bloke from Do You Like Hitchcock? and obsessed with finding the maniac responsible for this recent spate of murders.

"Wahey! Stop starin' at me tits mon!"

"Kiss kiss no more... wakey wakey!"

But time is running out for Celine and as more and more bodies begin turning up in the city, the only clue to the killers identity is a word whispered by a dying Japanese victim....

"kiiroi".

"This is the most extreme case of
mooth shite-in I have ever seen!"

After the cinematic abortion that was the final ten minutes of The Third Mother and the pantomime villainy of The Card Player you'd be forgiven (by some people but not me) for thinking the the master of the home haircut, Mr. Dario Argento had lost his mojo.

I say lost but from the evidence it seems more likely that it was violently removed from his chest with the same rusty nail scissors he cuts his fringe with.

I'll be the first to admit that the performances veer wildly from the kite flying, crack fuelled excesses of Adrien Brody to the almost narcoleptic lows of Emmanuelle Seigner and yes, the labyrinthine Argento plots of old have been replaced by characters randomly shouting out facts for no other reason than to get the story done and dusted but what the Hell I loved every minute of it.

Coming across like a cut price, lobotomised version of Tenebrae, it's true that it lacks that certain 'something' that made Argento's earlier such a joy but how much of that is down to the director and how much is down to the well publicised studio interference?

"I can see your house from here Jesus!"

But come to the film with the right mindset (or a head full of red) and there's plenty to enjoy.

Including the earlier mentioned masturbation scene, which is well on the way to becoming the greatest cinematic wank since Harvey Keitel cracked off a Barclay's in The Bad Lieutenant and, on a more serious (if less sticky) note, Frederic Fasano's lush cinematography coupled with the Danny Elfman-esque score from Marco Werba.

Guilty pleasures don't come better than this.

sports for all.

I've never been the sportiest of folk so I must admit I do love a chance to take the piss out of misguided attempts to make the idea of big muscled men kicking balls about and showering together cool......

Way back in 1992 there was a vaguely amusing Nike commercial featuring Godzilla and a giant-sized Sir Charles Barkley (or was it a normal sized Barkley, a man in a rubber suit and a miniature cityscape?) playing basketball in the streets of Tokyo.

As funny as it was (slightly at best) God only knows why Dark Horse decided to stretch it out to 48 arse numbing pages in this full colour one off.

Tho' as a plus point it did feature Godzilla wearing a pair of trainers 'slam dunking' (as those pesky Americans say) a ball.

Marvel obviously had to go one better.

Nuff said?