30. CAMPOTRONIC: A summer camp that puts the zing in blazing inferno, the spice in hospice, the fest in infestation, the fun in funeral. Go and have yourself a time.
Camp Manabe is where Alan (Michael Gibney) is going through some things. He’s awkward and while he tries to be tough with the younger kids, he’s abused by his stepbrother Michael (Michael Werner) and even a girl named Bella (Shahidah McIntosh). He also gets into it with camp counselors Ronnie (Paul DeAngelo) and Ricky (Jonathan Tiersten, who was in the first movie) over the food. Ronnie feels bad for him and lets him go get an ice cream sandwich, which starts another argument between Alan and a cook named Mickey (Lenny Venito). A butcher knife gets thrown, Frank the camp owner (Vincent Pastore) screams at the kid and Alan runs away.
Mickey is soon killed by deep frying and being thrown into a trash compactor.
Alan keeps getting abused. They try and get him to smoke marijuana that is really cow manure and this causes him to fall into another student’s privates. As you can imagine, he’s really getting made fun of now. The kid who caused this, Weed (Adam Wylie)? Well, he’s forced to drink gasoline and smoke a cigarette.
Why would anyone keep after Alan? Why do Michael, T.C. (Christopher Shand) and Marie (Samantha Hahn) force Karen (Erin Broderick) to lure Alan up on stage where he’s stripped in front of the entire camp? Why does anyone let this go on so long?
Only Petey (Kate Simses) stands up for him, which makes Ronnie think that she could be the murderer. Well, the killings don’t stop. Even the owner isn’t safe, as rats eat through his face and come out of his intestines, while Randy gets his penis removed via rope tied to a jeep and Linda goes face first into barbed wire. T.C. gets a sharpened piece of wood to the eye and Bella gets impaled by a bed of nails. Ah man, this camp!
Michael saves Karen at the last minute and finds his stepbrother hiding. He beats him with a mallet, nearly killing him, before being stopped by Sheriff Jerry. He claims that the victims had it coming so…l don’t want to ruin the ending, but it’s pretty great because it gives you what you wanted for the entire movie. Of course, it would have been a better movie if this character was here from the beginning.
Director and writer Robert Hiltzik also made the original movie. This is not as well-recalled as that movie.
On Raymond Castile’s website, he posted some photos dressed up like Coffin Joe. They looked incredible.
In April of 2006, he learned that the real Coffin Joe — Jose Mojica Marins — had visited this page and loved it. Even better, in October of that year, Mojica and Dennison Ramalho, assistant director of the upcoming Encarnacao do Demonio asked Castile to be in the movie, playing the younger Ze do Caixao in a scene that would connect the final film in the trilogy with This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse.
Check out Diary do Demonio, his diary about traveling to Sao Paulo, Brazil to play Coffin Joe.
After this, he made The Blind Date of Coffin Joe in which Coffin Joe moves to America and starts his own reality dating show. If you’ve never seen a Coffin Joe movie, you probably won’t get the jokes. If you have, it’s absolutely hilarious with Castile looking, sounding and acting exactly like Ze do Caixao as he faces modern dating, all in the hopes of finding a superior woman to give birth to his child.
It took more than thirty years, but Coffin Joe was finally able to complete his story that began in At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul and This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse. Creator and star José Mojica Marins felt that since he compromised on the sending of the second film, he was cursed. Now, he could finally tell the story.
After being released from a mental ward, Coffin Joe is taken care of by his most loyal servant Bruno (Rui Rezende), who along with four fanatics has been waiting for the return of the master. Of course, his order is simple: bring the perfect woman and continue the blood.
There are so many women and so little time. Like eugenist Dr. Hilda (Cléo De Páris), who is drugged and hallucinates that Coffin Joe is feeding her one of her ass cheeks. Or a young gypsy woman named Elena (Nara Sakarê) who willingly gives herself to him.
But all is not snakes and spiders in Brazil. Coronel Claudiomiro Pontes (Jece Valadão), a police captain blinded by Coffin Joe when he escaped his fate at the end of This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse — young Joe is played by superfan Raymond Castile — and Father Eugênio (Milhem Cortaz), a priest who is the son of Dr. Rudolfo from At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul, have joined forced to destroy the undertaker forever.
Coffin Joe is also dealing with the ghosts of his many victims, including Terezinha and Lenita from At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul and Laura from This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse. He’s also been cursed by Elena’s witch aunts, which turns the opportunity to make love to Elena into a trip through a gigantic intestine into a meeting with the Mystifier (José Celso Martinez Corrêa), who shows Coffin Joe purgatory and Hell, as well as a vision of his death.
As the police close in, Joe escapes through the woods and into an amusement park where he kills the cop but is impaled through the heart by the priest. He’s convinced that he’s killed Coffin Joe, but you can’t kill an idea. His shadow comes loose from his body to chase the priest while Elena mounts the dying body of our, well, hero and his hands, trembling in the throes of death, hold her breasts.
Coffin Joe’s funeral should be sad, but as we see the women throw roses at his grave, so many of them have continued the blood and are filled with his heirs. The gravestone is shattered by lightning and multiple faces of Coffin Joe appear within it.
For being seventy years old. José Mojica Marins in no way took it easy in this. It’s the bloodiest of all the films and the most complete. Not the best — I really think This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse is incredible — but I had a total blast watching it. It’s a return that is in no way unwelcome or one that feels like it doesn’t belong.
June 27: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is Sammo Hung! We’re excited to tackle a different genre every day, so check back and see what’s next.
The martial arts choreography for Ip Man comes from Sammo Hung and Tony Leung Siu-hung. Hung had previously collaborated with Wilson Yip and Donnie Yen when he acted with them in SPL: Sha Po Lang. Hung was the perfect person to be the choreographer for this because he’d already worked on two other Wing Chun movies, Warriors Two and The Prodigal Son.
But Donnie Yen had the roughest challenge, as he spent months preparing to play Ip Man by doing intense Wing Chun training and only eating once a day. His goal was to show the special skills of the martial art and play Ip Man as a cultured man.
He lives in Foshan, which was a central part of Southern Chinese martial arts, a place where the many schools of combat would compete in often secret matches. One of those matches, Ip Man against Liu (Chen Zhihui), gets publicized by a young boy named Yuan (Wong You-nam). But the fights stop when the Second Sino-Japanese War begins.
Ip and his family are forced to leave their mansion and move into a small apartment, as the Imperial Japanese Army has taken their home to use as a military headquarters. All Ip can do for work is to toil in a mine, where he meets Yuan’s brother Lin (Xing Yu) and becomes his friend. But not for long, as when the Japanese General Miura (Hiroyuki Ikeuchi) challenges any miner to a fight — for a bag of rice — he kills Lin.
Things have gotten so bad that even Liu has taken to stealing rice, which ends up with him shot in the head. Miura’s karatekas are destroying the Chinese kung fu experts, so Ip Man demands to fight ten at once and easily defeats them. He must also stop Jin Shanzhao (Fan Siu-wong) and his gang from bothering the town. Once he learns that Yuan is in the gang, he takes steps to save his friend’s brother.
Miura asks Ip to train the Japanese soldiers, but Ip refuses and challenges the Japanese soldier to a match. Miura accepts the challenge to uphold his honor and crush the Chinese spirit. One of the other Japanese soldiers, Sato (Tenma Shibuya), promises to kill Ip if he wins.
As Ip Man became Bruce Lee’s martial arts master, you can guess the end of the movie. But getting there is incredible, as Hung’s fights are incredible. The closing fight is an amazing dance of violence and as the Chinese swarm their Japanese enemies, Ip Man and his family run through the chaos and into, well, four more movies.
April (Ginny Weirick), Courtney (Playboy model Trishelle Cannatella) and Monica (Maitland McConnell, Curse of Chucky) are the Ninja Cheerleaders and they must rescue their sensei Hiroshi (oh my, George Takei) from mafia boss Victor Lazzaro (Michael Paré) — who once owned the go-go club that Hiroshi bought in a tax auction — and his dark ninja girlfriend Kinji (Natasha Chang).
Directed and written by David Presley, this movie must have realized it had no nudity at the end of filming, as they put in these wipe sequences where people dance naked, including a ninja and a cheerleader. Because, one assumes, that’s why most watched this.
I am on the ninja side of the Ninja Cheerleaders brand promise.
Monica’s mom is Louise Stratten. Yes, the sister of Dorothy.
The only thing I liked about this was that the girl’s got bios at the beginning that were well written and that when George Takei sword fights, it’s sped up and lightning comes out of his sword. Well, the fights are surprisingly brutal, as well, which is not what I expected.
That said — it is beyond better than Cheerleader Ninjas, but you don’t need a grappling hook and ninja claws to clear that measuring stick. In fact, you can literally step over it.
April 26: American Giallo — Make the case for a movie that you believe is an American giallo.
This Italian/German/American — yes, I am cheating on the American Giallo theme — giallo comes from some of the same people who made 5 Dead On A Crimson Canvas. Shot in Florence, Italy, it concentrates on Roberta Parenti (Yassmin Pucci), who was once an artist but has now settled into being a politician’s wife and, if you’ve seen enough giallo, you know what that means. She’s exploring her sexuality after being assaulted in the past. Her husband forbids her from being an artist, which leads her into the clutches of a man killing the most beautiful women in the city. And he’s wearing the mask of a man within her artwork.
Directed by Giovanni Pianigiani, who wrote the story with Bruno Di Marcello, you may notice that unlike nearly every other giallo you’ve seen this isn’t dubbed and everyone is speaking English. Dubbing is something that throws off people not used to Italian movies. A lack of dubbing conversely threw me off.
But you know what made this work for me? Joe Zaso shows up and not just to be a producer. He plays Derek, a detective with an incredibly keen sense of smell to make up for his blindness. That’s the kind of character that can only exist within this genre and it’s absolutely great, as is the music by Marco Werba.
While this doesn’t push itself to have the Argento camera angles and Bava colors of so many modern giallo that try and tackle the look, if not the story and experience of 1970s yellow postered psychosexual murder movies, this gets the lunatic feel of those films right.
Also: I love that so many reviews are like, “This has some really gratuitous sex scenes.”
Tell me you’ve only told people you’ve watched giallo without telling me.
April 4: Remake, remix, ripoff — A shameless remake, remix or ripoff of a much better known movie. Allow your writing to travel the world (we recommend Italy or Turkey).
Mikhail Porechenkov is Ivan, who let’s face it, is John Matrix, because this movie is pretty much a shot for shot remake of Commando minus, you know, being made in America. Instead of Sherman Oaks Mall, it’s a beach resort and instead of a car chase, you get snowmobiles. But still, this is still the same movie and you know, if you’re going to steal, at least they steal from the right movie, you know?
As Matrix just wants to retire with his daughter Jenny, Ivan wants to do the same with Zhenya ( Varvara Porechenkova). Instead, terrorists attack, kidnap her and force him to kill a world leader if he ever wants to see her again. You’ve seen it all before, but…well, you’ve seen it all before.
FilmReporter.de had a line about this movie that made me laugh out loud, saying that Porechenkov had all the one-man fighting techniques of a Bud Spencer, so this movie has a lot of slaps, if no beans. If you got that one, congrats. You’ve seen as many Italian movies as I have. Actually, both German websites I found info on this movie from compare Porechenkov to Spencer. He also directed the movie and I think he’d rather be compared to Schwarzenegger.
Well, in Germany, this was called Die Ruckkehr or Phantom Commando. That makes sense.
I learned about this movie from Ed Glaser, author of How the World Remade Hollywood, which you can buy from McFarland Books. Here’s a fun video he made about D-Day.
Deaf Crocodile Films — who released the amazing Solomon King on blu ray this year — has also released four feature films by acclaimed Iranian filmmaker Shahram Mokri on demand for U.S. audiences. The four films will be available on Amazon, iTunes and Projectr and tell the stories of aerial killers, kite flyers, vampires and arsonists who disappear into time. You can also buy the blu ray box set from Deaf Crocodile.
Careless Crime (Jenayat-e Bi Deghat) (2020): Inspired by the Cinema Rex fire in 1978 that triggered the Iranian Revolution, this movie follows three different paths: arsonists planning the fire, the students at the cinema interacting with the employees of the theater and the characters on the screen of the movie that played that night. The crime that was committed that night was so horrible that it literally burns through the reality that unites these three storylines.
The night Cinema Rex burned — one of the biggest terrorist attacks in Iran for decades — The Deer was playing. Two women attempt to play that same film in the desert in another storyline as they come across soldiers who have discovered an unexploded munition from another conflict in the past.
The theme of carelessness is carried through by so many in this, as many of the terrorists believed that the audience would just rush out and be unharmed and their message would be heard. Yet the theater manager oversold tickets to the show and his greed is just as responsible for the deaths.
This is a movie that is historical beyond true crime while also telling of the world of film. It may get repetitive and a little long at two hours and twenty minutes, but wow, those last twenty minutes make up for it. You won’t just know about what happened. You will feel it.
Fish & Cat (Mahi Va Gorbeh) (2013): In the Caspian region, students have gathered for a kite-flying event during the winter solstice. Next to their camp is a small hut occupied by three cooks who work at a nearby restaurant, a place that serves human meat on the menu. Meanwhile, the space-time loop within this film both gives away the ending and also makes it seem suspenseful at the same time. And here’s one more thing that makes this break from the pack: The entire movie is one single 140-minute take.
Director Shahram Mokri said, “I like the paintings of Maurits Escher, where you can see a change in perspective in the same visual. In my film, I wanted to give a change in perspective of time in one single shot. So the idea for the film came from his paintings.”
Consider this an Iranian Texas Chainsaw Massacre, yet one where we don’t see the horror of cannibalism yet feel it even more, if that’s possible. What a wild film.
Ashkan, The Charmed Ring And Other Stories (Ashkan, Angoshtar-e Motebarek Va Dastan-haye Digar) (2008): Mokri’s first feature was a black and white comedy about fate that, yes, has the feel of Tarantino yet establishes the director’s own voice as it tells the tales of blind jewel thieves Shahrooz and Reza; Askhan, a man who can’t quite seem to commit suicide, some cops, some hitmen, a young couple who wants to run away to get married, the boy’s angry father, art dealers, two female morgue attendants and, oh yeah, a fish on the loose and a missing ring.
Beyond Tarantino, there are moments that feel like film noir and others that reference Jim Jarmusch. Remember when Crash or Magnolia or any of those post-Quentin movies where everyone’s connected seemed to be every other movie? Sure, this is like that, but it also has an episodic nature and fun edge that makes it stand out from also-rans like Eight Heads In a Duffle Bag.
I know that Mokri made shorts before this, but it’s pretty amazing that this was his first full-length movie.
Invasion (Hojoom)(2017): I can honestly say I’ve never seen another movie like this and it was absolutely astounding.
The sales copy for this describes it as “a science-fiction/detective/vampire story, with nods to stylized 1980s New Wave-era films like Liquid Sky” and yeah, that’s almost as close as I can come to figuring out how to explain it to you.
At some time somewhere in the future, teams of tattooed athletes play a never explained sport in a foreboding and dangerous stadium where a murder has already taken place. The police have been trying to reconstruct the crime over and over again, using the vampiric twin sister of the married man in his place. There’s also a way too long eclipse and a global pandemic happening all at the same time.
I mean, this movie also has the one shot technique of Fish & Cat while also looking like a grimy 70s science fiction horror movie — Thirst maybe? — along with way too much fog and the red-eyed, face-tattooed and androgynous female vampire Negar gliding through all of this. Did Ali kill her brother, his best friend Saman? What’s up with the way he poses in front of the mirror in the beginning? What’s up with all those no gender mixing warning signs? Were Saman and Negar the same person when it comes down to it or were they really just switching lives and souls? How can an Iranian film made in 2017 feel so much like Jean Rollin or Jess Franco?
And most importantly, why did it take me so long to find this? Absolutely essential.
Made 24 years after Bachelor Party and having nothing at all to do with it, this was directed by James Ryan and written by Neal Israel, Pat Proft and Jay Longino from a story by Bob Israel.
Ron (Josh Cooke) is going to marry Melinda (Sara Foster), as long as he makes it through the bachelor party. Her brother Todd (Warren Christie) thinks Ron isn’t good enough for his sister, so he makes sure that that party gets Ron in trouble. Maybe he’s right, because all of Ron’s friends are pretty dumb: the do-nothing Jason (Greg Pitts), nerdy Seth (Danny Jacobs) and three-time marriage failure Derek (Harland Williams).
That said, nice girl dancer Eva (Emmanuelle Vaugier, Addison Corday from Saw IIand Saw IV) is really the right girl. But whatever — this movie is so set in its ways. Audrey Landers is the mom, so that’s kind of cool, I guess. You could do better and watch her and her sister Judt in Deadly Twins.
I mean, the height of wit in this is that the guys end up sleeping with Aryan strippers. Should I expect anything of a past its expiration sequel to Bachelor Party? Yeah, I should. That movie had not just. Tom Hanks, but Tawny Kitaen, Michael Dudikoff and Ginger Lynn. Come on, Israel and Proft. You guys made, well, Moving Violations and Surf Ninjas. Ah, never mind, Neal. But Pat, you wrote Police Academy, Real Genius and Naked Gun. Come on, dude.
Directed and written by Tom Shankland from a story by Paul Andrew Williams, The Children is a low budget British holiday horror movie that stunned me: it takes no prisoners, it goes places few movies are brave enough to defy cringe and convention.
Casey (Hannah Tointon) wanted a holiday away from her mother (Eva Birthistle), stepfather (Stephen Campbell Moore) and their children Miranda (Eva Sayer) and Paulie (William Howes) as they go to visit her aunt (Rachel Shelley), uncle (Jeremy Sheffield) and cousins (Rafiella Brookes and Jake Hathaway). Now, she’s stuck somewhere in the country with low reception. As the snow begins to isolate everyone, a virus takes over the children, making them black bile-spitting pure evil incarnate.
If you are upset at all by violence done by — or to — children, stay far away. This is a toddler version of Night of the Living Dead and I don’t just mean the violent attacks on humans. It has a real feeling of menace and dread that many movies try and fake. This gets it perfect.
I really enjoyed the way this film juxtaposes the strangeness of extended time with extended family along with violent horrific imagery. I never expected Who Can Kill a Child? the holiday edition, but here we are and it’s incredible, a film that when I saw the title and heard it was a seasonally relevant horror movie I wrote off for a long time. I was wrong.
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