ECCO/ THE FORBIDDEN -- Blu-ray Review by Porfle

 

Originally posted on 1/31/19

ECCO (1963)


It may not have the word "Mondo" in the title, but ECCO, aka "Il mondo di notte numero 3" (Severin Films, 1963), is an offshoot of the infamous, wildly successful shock-u-mentary "Mondo Cane" just as sure as its goal is to shock, titillate, and even disgust everyone who shells out the price of a ticket to see it.

"Ecco" is an Italian word meaning "look here", and as soon as American producer Bob Cresse (MONDO FREUDO, MONDO BIZARRO) took a look at this Italian production, he knew he had to purchase the rights and release an Americanized version of it himself.  Which, one assumes, cleaned up at the box office.

He hired venerable actor George Sanders to intone the pithy narration, keeping the excellent musical soundtrack which includes both rock'n'roll and crooner-type ballads in addition to some stirring orchestral music like something out of a spaghetti western.

But the real attraction is the non-stop travelogue of exotic, outlandish, and often highly strange sights and sounds from around the world, some filmed as they occurred and others staged for the camera but, unlike many "Mondo" films, based (mostly) on actual events.

Some of this stuff is relatively mundane enough to show up in a TV travelogue, such as a look at Rio de Janiero's famed Mardi Gras celebration and a brief example of rough-and-tumble women's roller derby.

One mountain village in Europe is visited by a family of daredevil circus performers, and elsewhere we see some amazing Grecian monasteries built high atop mountain peaks (as seen in the James Bond film "For Your Eyes Only").  Portuguese fishermen go whaling in nothing but simple rowboats, a dangerous task which, if they survive, will benefit their entire village in many ways.

But before long, the more extreme exploitation aim of this eye-popping cinematic grab bag makes itself known in a variety of ways, beginning with some young German men who get together for a night of drinking and then bloody jousting with swords.

A satanic ritual ends with a naked woman drenched in chicken blood, while Swedish delinquents roam the streets getting into trouble, attacking citizens, and then having wild sex in front of a group of straight-laced oldies.  A visit to what is purported to be the final performance in the famous Grand Guignol theater finds the actors involved in a typically gruesome scene.

In one of the film's most amazing sequences, hundreds of young, half-naked Japanese men form a roiling, squirming, tightly-packed mass of humanity during a weird annual "game" in which at least a dozen of them are expected to be crushed or trampled to death just for funsies.

Sex really comes to the fore (finally!) in the film's latter half--matronly Vegas women drool over oiled, posing muscle men, a popular European stripper has a whole hall of lecherous guys in a state of giddy arousal, and a forbidden all-lesbian club engages in same-sex nudie frolics for the camera's benefit.

But just as I was beginning to write off ECCO as a fairly standard "Mondo" flick, then came a guy named Ivan--one of those "mind over body" zealots--who started driving long, sharp needles through his skinny body in a segment that may be staged but definitely isn't faked.

"Cringe" doesn't go far enough to describe watching this guy slowly penetrate his neck with a needle while describing how he's studiously avoiding the carotid artery, the jugular vein, and, of course, the esophagus.  Eventually we witness the needle's point emerge from the other side, whereupon he invites a member of the audience to pull it out. Yikes.

I figured they couldn't top this, but the next segment goes right into a reindeer roundup in Lapland where an amazing wave of thousands of reindeer swarm tsunami-like into an enclosed area where they scuttle around in a huge circle while the natives lasso them.

Some are slaughtered, while others are castrated to become steers.  How is this done? Why, the ladies do the honors with their teeth, of course.  And thus, my mind is blown.

Other things happen which I can't recall at the moment, all very beautifully narrated by silken-toned George Sanders (who even throws in a little Shakespeare), but this should suffice to give an overview of ECCO'S mindbending menu.  I expected the usual weird sex practices and bizarre rituals, but some of this stuff really had me in full "SMH" mode and then left me benumbed, bewildered, and thoroughly be-cringed.


THE FORBIDDEN (1966)


Having roughly the form of a "Mondo" but with much less of a travelogue element and much more unmitigated sleaze, Bob Cresse & Lee Frost's THE FORBIDDEN (1966) is composed almost exclusively of softcore sex stuff--mostly strippers pretending to be performing in Paris or London but mainly in dark little soundstages with drapes over the walls to simulate nightclubs. It's probably the same set every time, just redressed a bit.

The film does veer occasionally into actual documentary territory as when we're shown genuine footage of a riot that occurred in Los Angeles when hundreds of teenagers refused to obey a ten o'clock curfew and clashed with the police, causing much chaos and property damage.

There's also a couple of detours into lurid fiction via re-enactments of "true" cases, one involving a woman's lethal jealousy toward her ex-husband and his lovers (this one ends DEATH PROOF-style) and another telling of a lonely woman's very unconventional method of getting the man she loves to come and visit her in Paris from his home in Mexico.

Mostly, however, we're treated to the kind of nudie-cutie segments that one often saw in 8mm film loops in the 60s, given hokey wraparound stories.  One stripper is supposedly performing in East Berlin and pretending to be Hitler's girlfriend.  Another, the gorgeous "Baby Bubbles" from Frost & Cresse's MONDO BIZARRO, plays a woman who teaches timid housewives how to strip for their husbands. 

We get a good idea of what we're in for with the opening segment showing two women in varying states of undress while a creepy peeper peers at them through their window.  He breaks in and attacks, during which we find that this is supposedly a commerical commissioned by the female owner of a karate school for women wanting to learn self-defense.

A secret initiation of two girls into a lesbian club is an excuse for us to--you guessed it--watch some naked lesbians for awhile.  There's also a scene with a prostitute who drugs and rapes her female clients before robbing them. And with that, your evening's entertainment is pretty well rounded except for just one more stripper (and some fervid, near-incomprehensible narration) to send THE FORBIDDEN off in sleazy style. 


Buy it from Severin Films

Special Features:
The Bandit: Producer David Goldstein Remembers Bob Cresse
I Want More: Short Film
Ecco Trailer
English Subtitles

The Stripper is scanned in 4K from the original internegative
The Forbidden is newly-transferred from the only known 35m print in existence

ECCO/ THE FORBIDDEN -- Blu-ray Review by Porfle

ZOMBIE 4: AFTER DEATH -- Blu-ray Review by Porfle

Originally posted on 5/19/18

 

Hot on the heels of ZOMBIE 3, which he co-directed with Lucio Fulci and Bruno Mattei, comes Italian schlockmeister Claudio Fragasso's ZOMBIE 4: AFTER DEATH (Severin Films, 1989), another hot 'n' horrid terror tale of the living versus the undead on a humid tropical island.

This time we're back to basics again, with the zombies being created not by science gone wrong or some natural phenomenon, but by that old bugaboo--voodoo.  Here, a voodoo high priest raises an undead army against the interlopers (scientists again) whom he blames for the death of his wife.

In the first scene, he resurrects her as a real lulu of a zombie--really, this freaked-out hag sets the bar so high that no other creature in the movie can touch it.

They're still a motley bunch, though. In fact, these ambulatory corpses--who mostly wear hoods to save on makeup--are so sleazy-looking you'd think they'd started out as lepers before turning into zombies. 

As in ZOMBIE 3, they like to gang up on their victims and make very messy work of them as the fake blood gushes from every prosthetic gash.  The makeup and gore effects run hot and cold quality-wise, but it's all in good, dumb fun anyway.

It seems as though we've joined the story in progress when the scientists confront the voodoo priest, but just then all the potential protagonists we just got to know a minute ago start getting horrifically offed one at a time. 

In comes a whole new cast twenty years later, and they go tromping around in the jungle for about half an hour before someone finds the usual "book of the dead", stupidly reads the forbidden spell within, and starts the whole thing going all over again.

Two groups--three research scientists and some vacationing mercenaries and their lady friends--are barely around long enough for us to get to know them before it's "Ten Little Indians" time. 

The survivors of the inital carnage barricade themselves in an abandoned science lab against the advancing horde (this is one of the few Romero-esque touches) with the mercenaries--who have fortuitously stumbled onto a box of M-16s--offering some war-movie action along with the horror as everything heads toward a mindblowing finale.

The real fun comes when members of their own combined group get bitten and start to turn.  With all the flesh-eating, supernatural hoo-doo, and blazing gunfire going on, you may enjoy spotting all the references to THE EVIL DEAD, ALIENS, PREDATOR, and various other movies.  The opening scene at times even reminded me of one of the freakier Japanese ghost story movies.

Production values are pretty sparse, but as usual with these Italian jungle potboilers, whether they feature zombies, cannibals, or whatever, that's just part of the charm.  Claudio Fragasso (TROLL 2) has but two goals here, to entertain us and to gross us out, and with ZOMBIE 4: AFTER DEATH he has done both in splattery style.



Release date: May 29, 2018

Special Features:
Bonus Disc: CD Soundtrack (pictured below)
Run Zombie Run! – Interview With Director Claudio Fragasso and Screenwriter Rossella Drudi
Jeff Stryker in Manila – Interview With Actor Chuck Peyton
Blonde vs Zombies – Interview With Actress Candice Daly
Behind-The-Scenes Footage
Trailer

ZOMBIE 4: AFTER DEATH -- Blu-ray Review by Porfle

ZOMBIE 3 -- Blu-ray Review by Porfle

Originally posted on 5/19/18

 

Gory, lurid, and just plain nuts, Lucio Fulci's ZOMBIE 3 (Severin Films, 1988) sails over the top from the very first scene and just keeps on going. 

It's definitely not part of the George Romero universe.  Created by accident during a lab experiment to reanimate the dead, these zombies are some of the most groteseque, malicious, and aggressively hostile undead fiends to ever come leaping out of the bushes at you.

As expected, the makeup and gore effects are crude--obvious rubber masks and such--but are so wonderfully extreme that they're effective and fun nonetheless.  Lots of bladder effects are used to good advantage in the facial makeups, with plenty of graphic gore and severed limbs to go around.

The action is confined to a tropical resort island that just happens to have a top-secret military base where the disastrous experiment takes place.  After that, the good-guy scientists struggle to come up with an antidote to the highly-contagious zombie virus while the bad-guy military brass decide to just kill off everyone in the infected area, locals and tourists alike.

This includes a bevy of fun girls and their boyfriends in an RV, a young couple tooling around in their convertible, and three rowdy soldiers on leave, looking for a good time. 

Their trouble really starts when all are attacked by swarms of infected, virus-carrying birds, after which the injured must be protected by the others against growing hordes of horrific zombies intent on turning them all into pulled pork.

The rest of the film is a series of lively setpieces as various protagonists endure harrowing undead encounters which several of them won't survive.  Not only that, but they also must contend with military hit squads in hazmat suits who are machine-gunning anything that moves (which is where our three vacationing soldiers come in handy).

Direction and camerawork are pretty artless as usual, which is part of the film's charm.  ZOMBIE 3 was begun by Italian schlockmeister Lucio Fulci (ZOMBIE, DOOR INTO SILENCE, THE DEVIL'S HONEY) but actually completed by fellow filmmakers Bruno Mattei (ZOMBIES: THE BEGINNING, ISLAND OF THE LIVING DEAD, THE JAIL: THE WOMEN'S HELL, VIOLENCE IN A WOMEN'S PRISON) and Claudio Fragasso (ZOMBIE 4, TROLL 2).

As a result, ZOMBIE 3 is a frenetic conglomeration of so-bad-it's-good fun in which the subpar acting and dialogue, goofy characters, and hokey effects only add to its perverse appeal.  It's a non-stop zombie blowout that fans of the genre are sure to enjoy.



Release date: May 28, 2018

SPECIAL FEATURES:
Bonus Disc: CD Soundtrack (pictured below)
The Last Zombies – Interview With Co-Director/Co-Writer Claudio Fragasso and Co-Writer Rossella Drudi
Tough Guys – Interview with Actors/Stuntmen Massimo Vanni and Ottaviano Dell’Acqua
The Problem Solver – Interview with Replacement Director Bruno Mattei
Swimming with Zombies – Interview with Actress Marina Loi
In the Zombie Factory – Interview with FX Artist Franco Di Girolamo
Audio Commentary With Stars Deran Sarafian and Beatrice Ring
Trailer

ZOMBIE 3 -- Blu-ray Review by Porfle

SHINING SEX -- Blu-ray Review by Porfle

  Originally posted on 6/24/20

 


I think it's fair to say that incredibly prolific cult filmmaker Jess Franco wrote and directed SHINING SEX (1977, Severin Films) as an excuse to closely examine the naked body of his lifelong love and artistic muse Lina Romay in what can only be described as loving detail.

Hence, the narrative consists of roughly 10% story and 90% naked Lina Romay, which is great if (a) you're really, really into Lina Romay, and (b) you enjoy just sitting back and watching compulsive film addict Franco getting his celluloid fix by thinking up different reasons to aim a camera at things.

Those things in this case would be parts of Lina Romay's body, which we get to know almost as intimately as her ob/gyn.  In fact, this film goes a long way toward making up for the fact that I never had sex education classes in school.  It's like an anatomical textbook in motion.

Of course, even Franco's simplest films usually have some kind of plot, and in this case it's the story of wildly popular nightclub dancer Cynthia (Romay), whose act consists of wearing next to nothing and rolling around on the floor in front of patrons like a kitty cat in heat, being taken to the luxurious home of an interested but strangely aloof couple.

Playfully seductive Cynthia strips off upon arrival and gets the woman, Alpha (Evelyne Scott), into bed for some girl-girl action while the man, Andros (Raymond Hardy) is supposedly off "putting the car away."

But whereas this is usually a prelude to naughty fun, we can see (even if Cynthia can't) that there's something very not right about Alpha's disaffected, almost robotic behavior.

Even her growing sexual arousal in response to Cynthia's efforts to engage her has an ominous feel to it, as the accompanying music itself sounds like something out of a Herk Harvey movie.

How much should I reveal about the rest of the plot? I like to watch movies like this without much foreknowledge, and in this case the mystery just made it that much more enjoyable. Suffice it to say that Franco takes a big left turn into sci-fi territory with elements of the mystical and the metaphysical.

All that, of course, is in service to the abundance of prolonged sex scenes, which get about as close to hardcore as I've seen in a Jess Franco movie. I'll even wager that this one would need extensive cuts to have been shown on Cinemax or the Playboy Channel back in the day.

Evelyne Scott (DEVIL'S KISS) is a commanding presence as Alpha. Monica Swinn (BARBED WIRE DOLLS) appears about halfway through as mystic Madame Pécame, who becomes involved in the paranormal goings-on along with Franco himself as Dr. Seward, head of a private psychiatric hospital. Also appearing are Olivier Mathot (THE SADIST OF NOTRE DAME) and Elmos Kallman.

The 2-disc Blu-ray from Severin contains a CD of music from this and other Franco films. The uncensored print has been scanned from the original negative. Soundtrack is English 2.0 mono with English subtitles. A slipcover features different artwork than the box itself.

Bonus features include "In the Land of Franco, Part 3" with Stephen Thrower, an interview with Thrower entitled "Shining Jess", "Never Met Franco" with filmmaker Gerald Kikoine, "Filmmaker Christopher Gans on France", Commentary with scholars Robert Monell and Rod Barnett, some very explicit outtakes, and a trailer.

While the sci-fi angle gets nuttier (and the sex kinkier) as it goes along, there's always the spectacle of Jess Franco's beloved Lina languishing in the nude and getting ravished by everyone in sight. If you're not a Francophile, this will probably mean very little to you. But for those to whom every aspect of the director's career evokes endless fascination, SHINING SEX will prove evocative indeed.


2-Disc Blu-ray Featuring Limited Edition Slipcover
Limited to 1500 copies

Slipcover art:

SHINING SEX -- Blu-ray Review by Porfle

ANTHROPOPHAGOUS -- Blu-ray Review by Porfle

 Originally posted on 9/24/18

 

Italian goremeister Joe D'Amato does it again with the 1980 proto-slasher/thriller ANTHROPOPHAGOUS (aka "The Savage Island").  Like ABSURD, which he directed the following year, this bundle of blood-soaked chills doesn't pour on the gore non-stop, but when it does, it doesn't fool around.

Tisa Farrow (Mia's sister) stars as Julie, who's traveling to an island off the Italian coast to help care for a vacationing couple's blind daughter Henriette (Margaret Donnelly) in their opulent villa. 

She hitches a boat ride with a group of twenty-somethings out for some island-hopping fun themselves, but once they stop over at Julie's island to drop her off, things start going wrong.  And I mean really, really, gore-splatter-cannibalism wrong. 

It's strangely prescient of the 80s cliché of the group of young partiers cavorting off to some isolated location to be stalked and slashed by a psycho killer.  (A cliché that's still going strong today.)

Here, however, the premise hasn't yet become a tired trope, and the characters are mature enough so that their interactions, and later misfortunes, have a dramatic heft that makes them more than just subjects for fun gore effects.

D'Amato (BEYOND DARKNESS, EMANUELLE AND THE LAST CANNIBALS, THE ALCOVE) takes his time establishing all of this and letting us get to know such characters as the nervously expectant Maggie and her equally nervous husband, amorous Daniel who takes a liking to Julie right away, and brother-and-sister Andy and Carol, the former a level-headed good-guy type and the latter, a Tarot-reading flake whose unpredictable actions will eventually make a bad situation worse.

The bad situation in question, which they discover upon setting foot on the island, is an empty village in which (as we already know but they don't) the local population has been wiped out by a mysterious killer whose handiwork we saw in an earlier scene of a young couple getting meat-cleavered on the beach.

Taking up temporary residence in the villa of Julie's missing friends, the group makes a shocking discovery in the wine cellar that gets our own blood going as the story continues to build at a leisurely pace. 

More unrest within the social unit leads to creepy scenes within the big, dark house and its environs, including a crypt and a spooky foray into the shadow-strewn streets of the deserted village.  And before we know it, there's a sudden, cannibalistic attack that leaves one of them dead. 

To make a long story short, the character described in the title (if you can figure out what that title means, that is) finally makes himself known and proves a terrifying, stomach-churning force of un-nature with a voracious appetite for human flesh and one of the ugliest mugs in monster-guy history. 

Played by co-writer Luigi Montefiori (as "George Eastman"), who would portray a much less hideous killer in ABSURD a year later, the "Anthropophagous" dude is like something straight out of a nightmare, one of the most repellant stalkers ever to stalk. 

Blood 'n' guts sequences are few, but striking--the fetus scene alone is the stuff theater walkouts are made of. And D'Amato shows some style in unfolding the "dark, scary house", "deserted village", and "burial catacombs" scenes as well, giving us some genuine chills between the gouts of gore.  

The Blu-ray from Severin Films features a really nice-looking 2K scan from the original 16mm negative.  The film can be viewed either in Italian with subtitles or in English.

Severin doesn't disappoint with its usual ample menu of bonuses, here offering interviews with writer-star Luigi Montefiori, actor Saverio Vallone ("Andy"), FX artist Pietro Tenoglio, editor Bruno Micheli, and actress Zora Kerova ("Carol"). Three trailers for the film are also included.  The cover art is reversible.

ANTHROPOPHAGOUS has a simple, uncluttered plot that sets out to scare, startle, and sicken us, and it does exactly that with a singleminded determination.  It also boasts one of the ickiest cannibalistic creeps I've ever seen, whose final horrific act sets a standard of "WTF?" of which goggle-eyed gorehounds may never see the equal.


Special Features:
Don’t Fear The Man-Eater: Interview with Writer/Star Luigi Montefiori a.k.a. George Eastman
The Man Who Killed The Anthropophagus: Interview with Actor Saverio Vallone
Cannibal Frenzy: Interview with FX Artist Pietro Tenoglio
Brother And Sister In Editing: Interview With Editor Bruno Micheli
Inside Zora’s Mouth: Interview with Actress Zora Kerova
Trailers
Reversible Wrap

Buy it at Severin Films

ANTHROPOPHAGOUS -- Blu-ray Review by Porfle